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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Contemplating “No”A monk asked Chao Chou, “Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?” Chao Chou said, “No.” This one word “No” is a knife to sunder the doubting mind of birth and death. The handle of this knife is in one’s own hand alone: you can’t have anyone else wield it for you: to succeed you must take hold of it yourself. You consent to take hold of it yourself only if you can abandon your life. If you cannot abandon your life, just keep to where your doubt remains unbroken for a while: suddenly you’ll consent to abandon your life, and then you’ll be done. Only then will you believe that when quiet it’s the same as when noisy, when noisy it’s the same as when quiet, when speaking it’s the same as when silent, and when silent it’s the same as when speaking. You won’t have to ask anyone else, and naturally you won’t accept the confusing talk of false teachers.During your daily activities twenty-four hours a day, you shouldn’t hold to birth and death and the buddha path as existent, nor should you deny them as non-existent. Just contemplate this: A monk asked Chao Chou, “Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?” Chao Chou said, “No.”There seems to be a misunderstanding on the part of Ta Hui. Perhaps it is something to do with his unconscious, because he has been speaking in a sarcastic way against Gautam Buddha. Now the pendulum has moved to the other extreme – because the answer of Chao Chou was not “No,” but “Yes.”It is possible, when you are unconsciously trying to get rid of guilt, that you can read things which are not there or you can miss things which are there. Your mind is never reading what is actually the case; it is continuously interpreting according to its own prejudices. One thing is certain, that Ta Hui is feeling guilty for a misbehavior. He has been disrespectful to a man who has done no harm to him.But there was a reason to be disrespectful: Ta Hui was an intellectual, he was a man of mind. And all the people who are confined to their minds are bound to be offended by men like Gautam Buddha, whose whole insistence is that mind is wrong and no-mind is right.All intellectuals are bound to condemn such an attitude, just to defend themselves. They don’t know anything about no-mind; they know only what mind is. But they have achieved honors, respectability, prestige and power through the mind, and anybody who says that mind is not a power but a bondage, that mind is not a prestige but sheer stupidity, that mind is not your honor but simply an indication that you belong to the lowest of human beings… The real power belongs to the man of no-mind; hence, intellectuals always have felt offended by the mystics.Ta Hui started his journey as an intellectual. Although he was part of a tradition that was created by Bodhidharma in China in the name of Gautam Buddha, somewhere in his unconscious there was a vengefulness which was coming up again and again in sarcastic remarks like, “the old pale face,” “the barbarian.” To call Gautam Buddha a barbarian is such nonsense, and in time he must have realized what he had done. Now he wants to put things right, but he is in such a hurry to put things right that he starts misreading things – with all good intentions. Remembering this, you have to understand what he is saying:A monk asked Chao Chou, “Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?”It is an ancient strategy. It is not only Chao Chou who has been asked; thousands of other masters since Gautam Buddha have been asked the same question, and the disciples have been receiving the same answer. The answer has always been “Yes,” because Gautam Buddha had answered “Yes.” The same question was asked to him: “Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?” – because he was teaching that all beings have buddha-nature. It is very natural to ask, “All beings…? You mean dogs and donkeys and buffaloes? Do you really mean all beings?”If he was saying all human beings, then too it would be questionable. What about Adolf Hitler? What about Ronald Reagan? But he is saying all living beings, and so naturally the question arises – it is not only about dogs, but simply about the lower categories of animals. And how can Gautam Buddha say, “No”? It will contradict his whole fundamental attitude about life, it will contradict his reverence for life.Whether life exists in the form of a dog or in the form of a Gautam Buddha, it does not matter. It is life. Just the form is constantly changing; the life inside, which is absolute and eternal, is exactly the same as it is in Gautam Buddha. His “Yes” accords with his reverence for life. To him, there is no God except life.So when you ask such a question as “Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?”, without even asking Gautam Buddha I can answer on his behalf: Yes! A dog has a buddha-nature. That is the very essence of his philosophy. And this master Chao Chou is an enlightened master; he cannot say “No.”But it seems Ta Hui cannot say “Yes,” because again that will remind him, “I am doing the same thing again. I have called him ‘pale face’, I have called him ‘the barbarian’, and now I am doing even worse. I am calling him equal to a dog!”It is because of his past utterances that he reads “No,” where there is “Yes.” This should be a great lesson to you: you can read things which are not there. Just because you want to read them, you can read them. You can go on missing things which are there if you don’t want to see them. Your mind is not only a receptacle, not only a vehicle to receive information, it is also a continuous censor.Scientific work on the mind is almost unbelievable; they say that it does not allow ninety-eight percent of information to enter, but keeps it outside, and it allows in only the two percent which fits with it. Ninety-eight percent… If the mind does not hear, or hears from one ear and allows it to go out from the other ear, then it is a man’s mind. If it is a woman, then she hears from both ears and allows it to go out from the mouth. That is the only difference – but that difference is there. Mind retains only the two percent which fits with its expectations, with its conditionings, with its prejudices.And that’s actually the case with Ta Hui. He reads “No” – which is impossible! I cannot say “No”. How can Gautam Buddha say “No”? And how can Master Chao Chou say “No”? Anybody who knows life and the potential of every living being for growing someday, sometime, somewhere, finally into an ultimate luminous being, is bound to say “Yes.” So I will read “Yes” instead of “No.”“Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?” Chao Chou said,“Yes.”This one word– “Yes” –is a knife to sunder the doubting mind of birth and death. The handle of this knife is in one’s own hand alone: you can’t have anyone else wield it for you: to succeed you must take hold of it yourself. You consent to take hold of it yourself only if you can abandon your life.Many things are implied in these few sentences. This one word “yes” is a knife to sunder the doubting mind of birth and death. Without knowing, how can you believe that you were before you were born? And how can you believe that you will be after you have died? But if Gautam Buddha says, “Yes, a dog has buddha-nature,” that means Buddha is accepting the eternity of life, and that forms go on changing.Evolution is not something discovered by Charles Darwin. Evolution is an Eastern concept discovered by the mystics – and in the East they have really gone deeper. Charles Darwin is only superficial; he thought that man has come from the monkeys, and he was laughed at all over the world. The idea looks strange…but the mystic’s idea does not look strange. He does not say that man has come from the monkeys; he says that the essence of consciousness has passed through many forms, and it has passed through the forms of monkeys too.According to me, not every man has come to be a man from being a monkey; different people have traveled different lines of evolution. All are coming from different animals, and that is one of the reasons why they are so unequal. A man who is coming from monkeys is bound to carry some traits, some characteristics, of the monkeys. Another man coming from horses will have different characteristics.There are millions of animals in the world, and every person has moved through different forms. It is not a highway, with the whole of humanity coming from the same source. If that were the case, all people would have been equal. Somebody is a genius, somebody is a born idiot – certainly they are coming from different sources.Gautam Buddha himself remembers his past lives: in one life, he says, he was an elephant, and after the life of the elephant he was born as a man. And the reason why the elephant was born as a man…he tells a beautiful incident:The forest in which the elephant lived suddenly caught on fire. It was a summer night and a strong wind was blowing, and the whole forest was on fire. The elephant, just like the other animals, started moving out of the forest. Because the fire was all around, it was very difficult to find a way out of it, particularly for such a big animal like the elephant.Finally he comes under a big tree which has not yet caught fire, and just to take a little rest, he stands under the tree and looks all around to see in which direction he should move to get out of the fire. As he takes up one of his feet to move, suddenly a small rabbit comes just underneath his foot, thinking it is a shelter. Of course the rabbit cannot see the elephant – the elephant is too big.In the dark night every animal is so shaken and frightened; the rabbit is trembling, afraid for his life, and the elephant will kill the rabbit if he puts his foot down. If he does not put his foot down to move – and the fire is approaching closer! But the elephant finally decides to sacrifice his own life, and not to kill the rabbit. Just because of this decision, the consciousness takes a jump from the elephant form into human form.People are coming from different sources for different reasons. The theory of reincarnation is basically a more scientific approach to evolution than that of Charles Darwin. It is well known that different animals have different characters. If you read Aesop’s fables or the ancient Panchtantra, which is the most ancient book of parables – and researchers think that the fables of Aesop are all taken from Panchtantra. In fact, historically, there has never been any man with the name Aesop; these are the stories of Panchtantra told by Gautam Buddha, who is also called Bodhisattva.As the word bodhisattva moved from India – Alexander was the first to take the name of Buddha to the West – it became bodhisat. It is always a problem: whenever a word moves from one language to another language, and then another language, it goes on changing its form. It is Bodhisat which becomes Aesop, but it has gone through at least five or six languages before it turns up as Aesop.All the stories are told by Buddha himself. All the stories are about animals – animals talking – and each story has tremendous significance. If you look in the animal world, for example, the elephant has a memory which is far stronger than any human being. He never forgets; it is just not in his nature to forget anything. The elephant will recognize its master even after thirty years.It happened…Gautam Buddha’s cousin-brother, Devadatta, was very jealous of Gautam Buddha and his enlightenment, and his thousands of disciples. He was a very intellectual man himself, and he became a disciple of Gautam Buddha in the hope that Gautam Buddha would choose him as his successor. First, he was Gautam Buddha’s cousin-brother, very close; secondly, he was as intelligent as you can hope a person to be – very erudite, very scholarly.Time went on and Buddha started becoming old. Finally one night Devadatta told him, “It is time you should declare the name of your successor because you are getting old. Without a successor your disciples will break apart into small groups after your death.”Buddha said, “Do you have somebody in mind?”Devadatta was in much difficulty. He had not thought that this was going to be the case, but he was very ambitious, so finally – although he was feeling embarrassed – he said, “Yes, I offer myself. I belong to the same family; our blood is the same and I have grasped everything that you have said. I can represent you perfectly well, and I don’t think anybody else can be a competitor to me.”Buddha said, “The very idea is egoistic. I can only choose someone who has never thought about being chosen, who is so innocent that he could not even think of it. Certainly you cannot be my successor, so forget all about it.”But Devadatta could not accept this situation, which looked to him like a humiliation. He revolted against Buddha, and took five hundred disciples away with him – but that did not make much difference. Buddha had thousands of disciples, and if five hundred had gone with Devadatta, that did not make even a dent in the great commune that Gautam Buddha had created.These five hundred were the people who were also ambitious, who wanted position, who wanted to be declared enlightened – although they were not enlightened – and who were jealous of people who were being declared as enlightened. These were the people who had entered the great commune of Gautam Buddha with some egoistic ambition – they left.But Devadatta could not sit silently; he had not left just to retire to the Himalayas. He started conspiring against Gautam Buddha. He made many efforts to kill him. And that’s what I wanted to tell you about. He had caught a mad elephant, not knowing that that elephant used to be a friend of Gautam Buddha when he was a child. It had belonged to Gautam Buddha’s royal palace, and it was so heartbroken when Gautam Buddha left the palace that it simply escaped to the forest and started behaving in a crazy way – the shock was too much. He had loved him as a child, and they were really great friends. They were always moving together; in the great garden near the river they were always found together.It was almost forty years afterward that Devadatta found this mad elephant in the forest. He managed to catch hold of it, and he thought that this would be a great opportunity; he would take it to where Gautam Buddha meditates under a tree and leave it there, because that elephant has killed many people… He was not aware that that elephant had gone mad because Gautam Buddha had left him forty years before.So the elephant rushed at Gautam Buddha, and he would have killed him. But as he recognized Buddha, all his madness disappeared. He bowed down, touched Buddha’s feet with his head, and sat at his feet, putting his head in his lap. Forty years of separation…! Buddha opened his eyes and he could not believe that his old, old friend…he had forgotten! And Devadatta could not believe it. He thought it was a miracle. He became so afraid that after that he stopped making any effort to kill Gautam Buddha. But he had no idea what had really happened. It was not a miracle; it was simply the memory of the elephant.A person who is coming from the body of an elephant into the body of a man will have a tremendous memory. In the same way, all the animals have their own special talents. I am saying this for the first time – that every human being has come from a different animal. Charles Darwin’s idea that all have come from the monkeys is wrong. If it was so, then all will show the same characteristics – which is not so.A dog can be born as a human being, or may go through a few other life-forms – may become a lion, may become a deer and then come as a human being. But if he comes from a lion, then he will have tremendous courage; then he will have the courage to be a rebel. If he is coming from a sheep, he will become a Christian – particularly a Catholic – because a sheep cannot do anything else. You cannot say that Jesus Christ was wrong when he said, “I am the shepherd and you are my sheep” – he must have recognized that all these guys have come from sheep.Charles Darwin’s idea is right, but not in the details; in the details he has not been able to work it out. I agree with him on this essential point that man has evolved out of animals, but I don’t agree with him that all human beings have evolved from the same animal – monkey, ape, or chimpanzee. Human beings have come from all different directions. It is a gathering of all kinds of animals, and if you watch people you can find from where each person is coming. Just a little watchfulness is needed, alertness, and you can feel that this man seems to be related to a certain species.Ta Hui is saying, This one word “yes” is a knife to sunder the doubting mind of birth and death.Now you can see: “No” cannot do that, only “Yes” can do it. If Chao Chou had said, “No. Dogs are dogs and buddhas are buddhas and there is no bridge between them” – then dogs die as dogs, then there is no evolution for dogs. Then elephants die as elephants, and there is no evolution for elephants. This seems too much. It is man’s monopolistic ideology that only man has the capacity to evolve and nobody else…I have heard…Somewhere in Sweden in a railway station there is a statue of a dog. It is not more than a hundred years old. The master of the dog used to come to that railway station every day to catch a train for a nearby city. The dog would come with him and would go on looking until the train moved far away beyond the horizon. When the train was gone he would return home, but he would always be present exactly at the time the master used to come back in the evening.One day the master never returned. He had had a heart attack and died. The dog was waiting – the message had come, but how to explain to the dog? The dog was searching for the master in every compartment of the train. All the people of the railway staff were really feeling sad for the dog. They had all known him for years. It was a daily routine, which he had never missed: he had always come at the right time, and if the train was late he would sit exactly where the master’s compartment used to stop.They tried to chase him away, but he would come back again and again and sit there. One train passed, another train…and he would search in every compartment with tears rolling down from his eyes. Seven days continuously…the dog searched every train, every compartment, and tears were continuously coming to his eyes and he refused to eat. The whole staff of the railway station was immensely concerned; they could not believe that a dog could have so much love. Even human beings don’t show so much love.The dog died sitting at the same place where he used to meet his master every day for years. The station staff contributed money and there they have raised a statue of the dog, and the whole story is written on the marble base on which the marble statue of the dog stands. It is not just about one dog…there are many dogs who have proved immensely loving, trusting, who have even sacrificed their lives for their masters.To stop the gates of evolution for every other kind of being and to keep them open only for human beings is simply ugly. What is the difference between human beings and other animals, except for the bodies? The form of your bodies is different, but the no-form consciousness within you is the same.If Chao had said “No,” then all the statements following it would not be right. They can be right only with my correction, with “Yes.” Then,This one word becomes…a knife to sunder the doubting mind of birth and death. The handle of this knife is in one’s own hand alone: you can’t have anyone else wield it for you: to succeed you must take hold of it yourself. You consent to take hold of it yourself only if you can abandon your life…If you are ready even to abandon your life, you will rise to the ultimate peak of your consciousness. That’s why the path is called the razor’s edge, because it is risky. One has to risk everything to find that ultimate splendor. It cannot be found without risking everything for it; you cannot hold something back. Without holding anything back – if you are ready to abandon your life, you can find it this very moment.If you cannot abandon your life, just keep to where your doubt remains unbroken for a while.He is suggesting a beautiful meditation again. If you cannot abandon your life because of your doubts, because of – who knows? If you abandon your life and nothing happens, no enlightenment, then you cannot even complain! You cannot even go to the police station and report that, “These people are deceiving. They say, ‘Abandon your life!’ – I abandoned my life and no enlightenment, nothing.”Once your life is gone, it is gone; you cannot complain. The risk is total. You cannot hold back a little bit, so that if it does not happen you can at least inform others, “Don’t believe such a thing. I have abandoned almost ninety-nine percent of my life. Just one percent I am keeping to inform others, as a warning.” But that is not the way it works: either you risk one hundred percent, or you don’t risk at all.But if you doubt, then there are other ways. There is no need to feel hopeless. If you cannot abandon your life, just keep to where your doubt remains unbroken for a while…Just remain alert to your doubt. It cannot remain forever on the screen of your mind. That’s the beauty of all the meditations: they can finally can be reduced to watchfulness. From any direction you can come to watchfulness. Just watch the doubt, and go on looking at it. It will not remain there forever. Even if it remains for just a few seconds, that will be a great achievement. Soon it will disperse in the smoke, leaving a silent space behind it.…suddenly you will consent to abandon your life…as the doubt disappears without any effort on your part. If you repress the doubt it will remain. Don’t repress, just watch – and it will disappear into thin air, and you will be ready suddenly to abandon your life.And then you will be done. Only then will you believe that when quiet it is the same as when noisy, when noisy it is the same as when quiet, when speaking it is the same as when silent, and when silent it is the same as when speaking.Once you are ready to abandon even your life, which is our deepest longing… We can abandon money, we can abandon family, we can abandon everything – but when it comes to abandoning life, that is the last thing we would like to save.The question is not that you actually have to commit suicide…just your willingness…and the miracle happens. Not that you have really to abandon it – just your willingness, “I am ready to abandon it.” But don’t try to deceive, because that means deep down you know you are not going to abandon it: you are just talking about it because it is not really needed that you abandon it. You cannot deceive on that point.If you are willing to abandon it, then suddenly all dualities in life will disappear; then silence and noise both will look exactly the same: neither silence has any appeal to you, nor has noise any disturbance. Then life and death are the same to you: neither life makes you cling to it, nor death makes you run away from it.You won’t have to ask anyone else, and naturally you won’t accept the confusing talk of false teachers.During your daily activities twenty-four hours a day, you should not hold to birth and death and the buddha path as existent, nor should you deny them as non-existent.What he is saying is that all these categories of existence or non-existence, life and death, misery and happiness, all these categories belong to the mind. A person who is ready to abandon life is naturally ready to abandon mind, because mind is only a small part of your life. It is not all of it.Once you are ready to take the jump, the jump is no more needed. Only your readiness is needed…but your readiness should be total, and in that readiness you can live your ordinary life doing whatever you have always been doing. Your doing and your non-doing will not be opposed any more; your speaking and your being silent will not be opposed; the world and renouncing it will not be opposed. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you will do it without any disturbance and without any clinging – absolutely balanced.The word that Buddha uses for this experience is sammasati – right remembrance. You are just full of a remembrance of your own eternal being. The moment you have renounced dualities, you have entered the path of the eternal, you have become an immortal.Just contemplate this: A monk asked Chao Chou, “Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?” Chao Chou said,“Yes.”Why contemplate this? If a dog has buddha-nature, obviously you also have it; and if a dog one day is going to become a buddha, then your destination is also not far away. There are many implications in it: if a dog has a buddha-nature, then you have it, then your enemies have it, then all living beings have it – so there is no question of superiority or inferiority.It is only a question of when one decides to wake up. It is up to you whether you want to have a little more sleep – then turn over and pull the blanket up. But even while you are asleep inside the blanket, enjoying a beautiful morning, you are a buddha. It is up to you.Buddha decided to sit under a tree; you have decided to lie down in bed – but there is no essential difference. If Buddha can become enlightened under a tree, you can become enlightened under a blanket. It will really be better, because you will be opening a new possibility for future humanity; otherwise people will think that you always have to sit under a tree. And particularly in the cold winter, and in the rainy season, and in all kinds of trouble they will go on postponing buddha-nature.I say to you that there is no problem: you can be perfectly cozy under your blanket and become a buddha there. There is no problem, because becoming a buddha has nothing to do with sitting under a tree, it is not a pre-requisite; nor do you have to sit in a lotus posture – what does buddhahood have to do with a lotus posture? And if the lotus posture is essential, then dogs cannot become…impossible! How can a dog manage to sit in a lotus posture?Of course it is possible under a blanket, and I think most of you will prefer it under a blanket. It was just coincidental that poor Gautam Buddha was sitting under a tree. He had no idea that the same can happen under a blanket. In fact the same question was asked to him by his wife…After twelve years, when he came back to the palace, he knew that his father would be very angry. He was the only son, born when the father was very old, and all his father’s hopes were dependent on him. The old man was just waiting for him to be ready to take charge of the whole kingdom – he was tired and he wanted to retire – and just before that Gautam Buddha escaped from the palace.Just one day before Gautam Buddha left, a child had been born to his wife. It is such a human story, so beautiful: before leaving the palace, he just wanted to see at least once the face of the child, his child, the symbol of his love with his wife. So he went into the chamber of his wife. She was asleep, and the child was covered under a blanket. He wanted to remove the blanket and to see the face of the child, because perhaps he will never come back again.He was going on an unknown pilgrimage. Nothing can be known of what will happen to his life. He is risking everything, his kingdom, his wife, his child, himself, in search of enlightenment – something he has only heard of as a possibility, which has happened before to a few people who have looked for it.He was as full of doubts as any one of you, but the moment of decision had come…. That very day he had seen death, he had seen old age, he had seen sickness and he had also seen a sannyasin for the first time. It had become an ultimate question in him: “If there is death, then just wasting time in the palace is dangerous. Before death comes I have to find something that is beyond death.”He was determined to leave. But the human mind, human nature… He just wanted to see the face – he has not even seen the face of his own child. But he was afraid that if he removes the blanket, if Yashodhara, his wife, wakes up – there is every possibility she will wake up – she will ask, “What are you doing in the middle of the night in my room? – and you seem to be ready to go somewhere.”The chariot was standing outside the gate, everything was ready; he was just about to leave, and he had said to his charioteer, “Just wait a minute. Let me see the child’s face. I may never come back again.”But he could not look because of the fear that if Yashodhara wakes up, starts crying, weeping, “Where are you going? What are you doing? What is this renunciation? What is this enlightenment?” One never knows about a woman – she may wake up the whole palace! The old father will come, and the whole thing will be spoiled. So he simply escaped…After twelve years, when he was enlightened, the first thing he did was to come back to his palace to apologize to his father, to his wife, to his son who must be now twelve years of age. He was aware that they would be angry. The father was very angry – he was the first one to meet him, and for half an hour he continued abusing Buddha. But then suddenly he became aware that he was saying so many things and his son was just standing there like a marble statue, as if nothing was affecting him.The father looked at him, and Gautam Buddha said, “That’s what I wanted. Please dry your tears. Look at me: I am not the same boy who left the palace. Your son died long ago. I look similar to your son, but my whole consciousness is different. You just look.”The father said, “I am seeing it. For half an hour I have been abusing you, and that is enough proof that you have changed. Otherwise I know how temperamental you were: you could not stand so silently. What has happened to you?”Buddha said, “I will tell you. Just let me first see my wife and my child. They must be waiting – they must have heard that I have come.”And the first thing his wife said to him was, “I can see that you are transformed. These twelve years were a great suffering, but not because you had gone; I suffered because you did not tell me. If you had simply told me that you were going to seek the truth, do you think I would have prevented you? You have insulted me very badly. This is the wound that I have been carrying for twelve years.It was not that you had gone in search of truth – that is something to rejoice in; not that you had gone to become enlightened – I would not have prevented you. I also belong to the warrior caste. Do you think I am that weak that I would have cried and screamed and stopped you?“All these twelve years my only suffering was that you did not trust me. I would have allowed you, I would have given you a send off, I would have come up to the chariot. First I want to ask the only question that has been in my mind for all these twelve years, which is that whatever you have attained…and it certainly seems you have attained something.“You are no longer the same person who left this palace; you radiate a different light, your presence is totally new and fresh, your eyes are as pure and clear as a cloudless sky. You have become so beautiful…you were always beautiful, but this beauty seems to be not of this world. Some grace from the beyond has descended on you. My question is that whatever you have attained, was it not possible to attain it here in this palace? Can the palace prevent the truth?”It is a tremendously intelligent question, and Gautam Buddha had to agree: “I could have attained it here but I had no idea at that moment. Now I can say that I could have attained it here in this palace; there was no need to go to the mountains, there was no need to go anywhere. I had to go inside, and that could have happened anywhere. This palace was as good as any other place, but now I can say that at that moment I had no idea.“So you have to forgive me, because it is not that I did not trust you or your courage. In fact, I was doubtful of myself: if I had seen you wake up and if I had seen the child, I may have started wondering, ‘What am I doing, leaving my beautiful wife, whose total love, whose total devotion is for me. And leaving my one-day-old child…if I am to leave him then why did I give birth to him? I am escaping from my responsibilities.’“If my old father had awakened, it would have become impossible for me. It was not that I did not trust you; it was really that I did not trust myself. I knew that there was a wavering; I was not total in renouncing. A part of me was saying, ‘What are you doing?’ – and a part of me was saying, ‘This is the time to do it. If you don’t do it now it will become more and more difficult. Your father is preparing to crown you. Once you are crowned as king, it will be more difficult.’”Yashodhara said to him, “This is the only question that I wanted to ask, and I am immensely happy that you have been absolutely truthful in saying that it can be attained here, it can be attained anywhere. Now your son, who is just standing there, a little boy of twelve years, has been continually asking about you, and I have been telling him, ‘Just wait. He will come back; he cannot be so cruel, he cannot be so unkind, he cannot be so inhuman. One day he will come. Perhaps whatever he has gone to realize is taking time; once he has realized it, the first thing he will do is to come back.’“So your son is here, and I want you to tell me what heritage you are leaving for your son? What have you got to give him? You have given him life – now what else?”Buddha had nothing except his begging bowl, so he called his son, whose name was Rahul. I will tell you why his name was Rahul; it was the name Gautam Buddha had given him…He called Rahul close to him and gave him the begging bowl. He said, “I don’t have anything. This is my only possession; from now onward I will have to use my hands as a begging bowl to take my food, to beg my food. By giving you this begging bowl, I am initiating you into sannyas. That is the only treasure that I have found, and I would like you to find it too.”He said to Yashodhara, “You have to be ready to become a part of my commune of sannyasins,” and he initiated his wife. The old man had come and was watching the whole scene. He said to Gautam Buddha, “Then why are you leaving me out? Don’t you want to share what you have found with your old father? My death is very close…initiate me also.”Buddha said, “I had come, in fact, just to take you all with me, because what I have found is a far greater kingdom – a kingdom that is going to last forever, which cannot be conquered. I had come here so that you could feel my presence, so that you could feel my realization, and I could persuade you to become my fellow-travelers.” So he initiated all three of them.He had given his son the name Rahul because in Indian mythology when there is a moon eclipse… The Indian mythology says that there are two enemies of the moon. In the mythology, the moon is a person, a god, and he has two enemies: one is Rahu and the other is Ketu. When the moon eclipse happens, it happens because Rahu and Ketu catch hold of the moon. They try to kill it, but each time the moon escapes from their grip.Gautam Buddha had given the name Rahul to his son because he thought, “Now this son of mine is going to be my greatest hindrance, he is going to be my greatest enemy. He will prevent me from going to the Himalayas. Love for him, attachment to him, will be my chains.” That’s why he had given him the name Rahul.They all moved into the forest outside the city, where all his sannyasins were staying. In the first sermon to the sannyasins that evening he told them, “My wife Yashodhara has asked me a question which is of tremendous importance. She has asked me, ‘Was it not possible to become enlightened in the palace as a king?’ And I have told her the truth: ‘There is no question of any place, any time. One can become enlightened anywhere – but at that time nobody was there to say it to me. I had no idea of where it was to be found, whom I had to ask, where I had to go. I just jumped into the unknown.’ But now I can say that wherever you are, if you are courageous enough to risk everything for being alert and aware, enlightenment is going to happen.”Hence I say Master Chao Chou could not have said, “No.” That is not the answer of a man of enlightenment. The answer can only be “Yes” – and even if master Chao Chou has to say himself to me, “I had said ‘No’,” I will refuse it. I will not listen even to Gautam Buddha, because the “No” goes against his whole philosophy. His whole philosophy is a tremendous reverence for all life. Hence every living being in every situation has the capacity to blossom into enlightenment.This should be a great encouragement to you: it is not only for some special people to become enlightened; even a dog has a buddha-nature. All the religions have been doing just the opposite. They have been condemning you: you are born in sin; you cannot redeem yourself; unless a redeemer is sent by God, you are going to live in misery and sin and suffering.Buddha gives man absolute dignity, freedom, as nobody else before him has ever done. He drops the idea of God just to raise your dignity and your freedom to its ultimate height. He removes God to make you God. There has never been another human being who has loved other human beings as Gautam Buddha has loved them – and not only human beings but all living beings. His love is infinite.So when I make any correction, I am absolutely certain that my correction is going to be approved by anyone who is enlightened. I am not going to make any compromise. It may be master Chao Chou, it may be Ta Hui, it may be Gautam Buddha – I am not going to make any compromise because my own innermost experience says, “Yes!” Then I don’t bother about anybody, any history, any scripture.I was speaking in a Buddhist conference in Bodhgaya. One of the most learned Buddhist monks in India is Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan, and he was the president of the conference. When I had spoken he came to my camp, and he told me, “I have heard you a few times before, once in Nagpur, once in Wardha and this was the third time. You are a strange man: you go on saying things which Buddha has not said. I have devoted my whole life” – and he was an old man, nearabout seventy at that time. If he is still alive he must be nearabout one hundred.“Buddha has not said it; you go on telling stories which I have never found in any scripture – and the trouble is that your story seems to be so right and to the point that it feels that perhaps the people who were collecting the scriptures have forgotten to write it. It fits, I cannot deny it – I cannot say that it goes against the essences of the scripture – but it is not there. So my problem is,” he said, “I cannot deny the truth of your story, but I cannot support its historicity. Do you have any suggestion?”I told him, “There is no problem. Whenever I tell a story about Gautam Buddha, if it is not in the scripture then put it in your scriptures, because it should be there. If I say something that Gautam Buddha has said and you don’t find it anywhere, manage to put it in the right place, where it should have been and is missing. Because whatever I am saying… I am not a historian and I am not a scholar, but I am speaking from the same space as Gautam Buddha was speaking. So you can accept my word as the authority without any trouble.”He said, “My God, even if I do it, no other scholar is going to accept it! After twenty-five centuries, a certain scripture has been accepted – and you want me to add something into it. They will kill me.”I said, “It is better to be killed; it is worth it if you can make the scripture a little more beautiful, a little more truthful, a little more authentic. If you say that what I am saying is not true, then I am ready to argue for it.”He said, “No, I am not saying that. But please forgive me – I cannot make changes in the scriptures, because that is not allowed by any religion.”I said, “This is the trouble – that all religions become prisons. Every religion should remain a flowing stream, and new rivers should be allowed to meet. Why make your religions like dead stale ponds? Let it be a river and let continuous new streams go on meeting into it. New people will be becoming enlightened and they will bring fresher insights; the river will become broader and broader, and bigger and more valuable. But this has not happened yet, because people are too much past-oriented and too much afraid of changing anything. The reason is that they don’t have the experience about which they are talking.”I asked Bhadant Anand, “Do you have the enlightenment that Gautam Buddha had? If you don’t have it, then just listen to what I am saying, because I have it.”Ta Hui is suffering from his past faults, and he is afraid to say “Yes,” because that means he is saying that buddha-nature and the nature of a dog are just the same. It is because of his own guilt that he cannot say the truth.But I don’t have any guilt. In fact I don’t have any past. Whatever I am saying is exactly the response in this moment, and I don’t feel even a single part of me to be reluctant. I am saying it with my whole being. That puts my statements in a totally different category. They are not intellectual, they are not historical, they are not scriptural – they are existential.I am saying it from the same space from where Buddha has spoken, from where Chao Chou has spoken, from where one day Ta Hui is going to speak.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Present Awareness and Comparative AwarenessYen T’ou said, “In the future, if you want to propagate the great teaching, it must flow out point by point from within your own breast to cover heaven and earth: only then will it be the action of a man of power.” That which flows out from one’s own breast, as he calls it, is one’s own beginningless present awareness, fundamentally complete of itself. As soon as you arouse a second thought, you fall into thinking. Awareness is something from before your parents were born.This affair is not a matter of intelligence or acuity. Actually, it’s just an abrupt bursting out that’s the criterion. As soon as you’ve attained this scene, then whatever words you have, they’re established. When where they’re established is real, this is the so-called “flowing out from within one’s own breast to cover heaven and earth.”Truth can never be a missionary, but only a heart-to-heart message – not to convert the other, but just to share your abundance of love, compassion, blissfulness.This has to be remembered: a missionary is one of the ugliest persons in the world. He himself knows nothing; his heart is empty, but his head is full. He has read, he has studied…but all the words which are written, howsoever significant, are dead corpses. The scholar is a gravedigger. He brings out skeletons, and he lives among skeletons.There is a psychological problem: the man who has not known the truth wants to convince himself that he knows it, and the only way to convince himself that he knows it is to start converting people. It is a feedback system. As more and more people become impressed by his words, by his philosophy, the ultimate outcome is that he becomes convinced that he must have the truth, because so many people could not be idiots.I have heard…Once it happened – it very rarely happens, just once in a billion years – that a journalist reached to the gate of heaven. A journalist, by his very profession, is already booked for hell, but there are always accidents….A journalist knocked on the doors of heaven, and Saint Peter opened the door. But seeing the journalist he said, “Forgive me, we have a quota of only twelve journalists, and it has been full since eternity. Even they are absolutely useless here, because nothing happens in heaven – no murder, no rape, no robbing, no suicide. So only the first issue of our newspaper was ever published, and that remains relevant forever” …because good people don’t have stories. To have stories you need bad people. It is unfortunate, but that is how it is.The saints go on sitting in silence. Now, silence is not news; unless there is a riot, a massacre, a war, nuclear weapons, Ronald Reagan, there is no news. 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. All politicians are news – they are men biting the dog.But in heaven there is no place for politicians. St. Peter said to the journalist, “So forgive me, you will have to go to the other door, which is just opposite. There are only two places, not many alternatives to choose from…”But you know, journalists are very stubborn people. He insisted, “At least give me twenty-four hours, just to look around. And after twenty-four hours, if you have some place vacant, you can allow me to remain. Otherwise I will be gone.”It was not asking too much, so Saint Peter said, “For twenty-four hours you can be in heaven.” And immediately the journalist started a rumor that in hell a great new daily newspaper is going to start, and they need a chief editor, they need an editorial board, they need assistant editors, they need all kinds of journalists. Rumor for the journalist is just like water for a fish: he lives in rumors, in lies, in all kinds of things which are not in any way true, but have a quality of sensationalism.There was great commotion, particularly among the twelve journalists. They were tired of heaven, they were tired of dead saints…. Saints can’t have any life, because all religions have condemned life. To be a saint, you have to cut your roots from the earth, you have to become a dry bone with no juice in you. The more dead you are, the greater a saint. Any small fragment of life is enough for your fall.Those twelve journalists were roaming around for centuries among those dead people – but they could not get any news, nothing was happening. When they heard the rumor, they all became so excited. After twenty-four hours, when our journalist reached the gate, Saint Peter did not open the gate. He said, “Listen, fellow, now you cannot go out. All the twelve have gone.”“It seems that in hell they are going to start a very big newspaper on a great scale,” the journalist said, “and I don’t want to stay here.” Although he knows he has created the rumor, now the suspicion arises that if so many people believe it – and even Saint Peter believes it – there must be some truth in it.A missionary is in search of converts, so that he can be convinced that he has the truth. His search for converts is really a psychological need of his own. He is feeling empty and hollow, but if he can manage a few people…which is always possible.There are people who are in need of a father figure; they themselves feel afraid in life, helpless. Life seems to be too big, unmanageable, that’s why they have created a father in God in heaven. But it is so far…and still no phone connection is available, except to a few very cunning people like the pope, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Shankaracharya of India – these people have direct lines, invisible. But for the common person, there is no way to communicate; he needs a more visible, more tangible person who can take the place of the father.Only a very few people in the world grow and mature; most remain children, and they need a father to protect them. It is not coincidental that Catholic priests are called fathers. But they don’t have wives, they don’t have children – I always wonder how they have become fathers.These Catholics are strange people: they believe in the Virgin Mary, who gives birth to Jesus Christ without any contact with any human being, and becomes a mother without a father. There are these millions of Catholic fathers, and they don’t have wives, they don’t have children. Catholicism is really mysterious.But to call them “father” indicates that inside you is a need for a protective figure. You have been brought up by your father: he was always a protection, a reservoir of knowledge and wisdom. In your eyes he was the greatest man in the world, and you could relax and depend on him. Now the father may be dead.Physically you have grown older, but psychologically the average man is less than thirteen years of age, and that child is hankering for protection. Without protection in this vast universe – unknown, unpredictable, full of all kinds of diseases, sicknesses, and finally death – a man is bound to be deeply afraid.I used to stay in a house, and the woman of the house said to me, “We have a problem with our child.” They did not have a bathroom attached to their bedroom; they were old-fashioned people, and they had outhouses far away from the house, at the back. The child was absolutely insistent that when he went in the night to the toilet, the mother or father had to follow him, the doors had to be kept open, and they had to stand there, otherwise he would feel very much afraid.I said to him, “Why don’t you do one thing: you are harassing your mother and father, and a simple solution is possible.”He said, “I am willing. Just tell me, what is the solution?”I said, “You can carry a lamp with you, or a torch.” He laughed. I said, “Why are you laughing?”He said, “In the darkness somehow I can manage to escape from all the ghosts, but with a lamp they will immediately see where I am. You are suggesting a great idea, but I will be caught immediately. I cannot follow this idea. Even if I have to go in darkness, I am willing, because in the darkness I can dodge them. But with a lamp they all will be able to see where I am, and they all will jump on me.”A father is needed. A missionary fulfills some psychologically sick needs of humanity. He is not interested in giving you the truth; he does not have it in the first place.It is very much a mutual conspiracy: you are feeling happy that you have somebody to protect you, a mediator between you and the invisible god, and the missionary is feeling good that so many people believe in his truth – “They cannot be wrong. I alone can be wrong, but a multitude of people, the whole congregation of the church, cannot be wrong. It must be that I have the truth.” So this is a mutual, unconscious arrangement.Ta Hui is saying something tremendously important. If you want to give the message to people about the great truth, the truth of enlightenment, remember one thing: it should not come from your head, it should not be intellectual jargon. You will be so full of it in your heart that it starts overflowing.Then you are not the giver, and you don’t have to brag that you have converted so many people. You are not the converter; it is truth itself which is creating the magic of transformation. You are simply a vehicle.But the first thing for you is to be filled with truth, filled with light, filled with fragrance, so that you can share it. In fact, you have to become a rain cloud which becomes heavy with rain and wants to shower. You have to become so heavy with your ultimate experience of freedom, of joy, of blissfulness, of truth, that you want to rain, just like a rain cloud.This is a very significant message and it must have come to Ta Hui as an experience. He was an intellectual, and we are watching a great transformation: an intellectual being transformed slowly, slowly into an enlightened human being. We are watching the birth of a great buddha, the great awakened one.The first sutra:Yen T’ou said, “In the future, if you want to propagate the great teaching, it must flow out point by point from within your own breast to cover heaven and earth: only then will it be the action of a man of power.”Yen T’ou is saying that not only is your heart full, it will be so full that it starts radiating in all directions; the whole sky becomes filled with your flavor, with your charisma, with your presence. Those who have eyes will see it, those who have ears will hear it, those who have hearts will feel it, those who have beings, alert and aware, will immediately experience it…and be transformed, transmuted, into a totally new being – beyond misery, beyond suffering, beyond agonies – into a world of ecstasy.You will be so full that the earth and the sky both become filled with your experience, filled with your light, filled with your energy, filled with your radiation.Yen T’ou is right: In the future, if you want to propagate, don’t become a missionary. It is a human weakness to pretend that you are knowledgeable. It is a subtle way of humiliating people: you know, and they don’t know. So even if you have got only a little intellectual understanding, you immediately start propagating it because it gives great nourishment for your ego. You start becoming the knower, and everybody else is ignorant.In fact, you are falling into a great ditch. It is better to be ignorant than to be an egoist, because ignorance is natural and can be transformed into innocence very easily. But ego is a perversion: it is very difficult for the egoistic person to understand anything that demands the demolition of ego. Ego is his only treasure; he knows nothing else in the world except his prestige, respectability, knowledgeability, honor.…if you want to propagate…it is not necessary that you propagate. There have been millions of mystics around the world, down the ages, who have decided not to propagate. I cannot say that they are absolutely wrong; they are ninety-nine percent right.They have decided not to propagate because there is no way to explain to you something which you have not experienced. If you have experienced it, there is no need to explain it to you. Their logic is clear. In the East these mystics have been called arhatas. They attain to the ultimate enlightenment and remain silent. If somebody comes to drink out of their well he is welcome, but they do not make any effort on their own to reach people.Only a few people have decided in favor of the one percent possibility: in Buddhism they are called bodhisattvas. They have decided… It may not be possible to reach to the people’s hearts; they are so closed, they have already chosen…somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan, somebody is a Buddhist. They have already chosen without knowing anything. Their minds are prejudiced and polluted, and these prejudices are functioning like walls around them. They don’t allow anything new to enter in.But perhaps once in a while you can find a small crack in the wall, and if a person is a seeker, a searcher, open to encounter any truth, then there is a possibility that if you have the truth, his heart will immediately start beating with your heart. It is a synchronicity. Suddenly he will become aware that the man has come for whom he has been waiting and waiting for many lives.It will not be an intellectual conviction, because you have not even spoken. It will be a subtle, invisible transfer – a transmission of the lamp. The other person just has to be open. You cannot force anybody to be open; the more you try to force, the more closed he will become. It is absolutely in his own hands to be open and vulnerable, to be available just like a womb and to give birth to himself into a new space, a new consciousness.The man of truth can only be a triggering point. That’s why Yen T’ou says, “…if you want…” If you don’t want, the question does not arise. “…if you want to propagate the great teaching…” And why is he calling it the great teaching? Why not just teaching?This is a difference made very clear by Gautam Buddha. Teaching is from the mind; it is a philosophy, a theology, a religion, but it is from the mind. Mind is immensely capable of fabricating systems of thought, very logical, very rational – but missing the foundation, the foundation of experience.The great teaching is that which has arisen out of your experience. Its greatness also is that you don’t have to make any effort to propagate it. Its very presence starts ringing bells in the hearts of those who are worthy to receive it, who have earned some kind of meditativeness, who have earned some kind of silences of the heart…whose ground is ready so that the seed of enlightenment can be sown.The teaching is just a rational approach to existence, and the great teaching is an experiential approach to existence.“…to propagate the great teaching, it must flow out point by point from within your own breast to cover heaven and earth: only then will it be the action of a man of power.”So much is condensed in this small quotation from Yen T’ou. Scriptures can be made out of the commentary, and out of the implications of it.…it must flow out… You should not make an effort, because your effort will be destroying its beauty, its purity. Your effort means you are not trusting existence and truth. And your hands are very small; your efforts cannot be great enough to transfer the truth.It has to be a flow, point by point. You have just to be a witness, not an active agent; you have just to see the flow from your heart, and rejoice.And if it reaches to a few hearts, they become joined in a certain mystical union. That’s what an authentic commune is – where people are joined by an invisible flow of energy, from heart to heart. Then they are separate as individuals, and yet deeply connected with each other…just like a garland of flowers – each flower is individual, but a thin thread, invisible to the eyes, runs through all of them, and makes it a garland.A gathering of disciples has to be a garland. But it is possible not by any effort, not by any action, but only by a spontaneous flow, and it happens on its own. Just like when the rosebud opens…do you think it makes any effort to spread its fragrance to the winds? It happens spontaneously. It is something absolutely natural.Once your heart has become a roseflower and has opened its buds, then the fragrance starts reaching in all directions. This is the right way of sending messages to those who are worthy of receiving them, and only then will it be the action of a man of power. This has to be understood.Ordinarily you think a man of power must be a president of a country, or a prime minister, or a great general, or a man like Alexander the Great. Your idea of power is always power over others; it is inhuman and ugly from the very start.Nobody has the right to have power over anybody else – neither the husband over the wife, nor the parents over their children, nor any politician over the people. Freedom is our most fundamental right, so that kind of power has to disappear from the world.That power has created thousands of wars, and that power has been our undoing. Man has not been able to use this time for his evolution, for a better earth, for a more human society, without demarcations of nations, religions, political ideologies.All our energy goes into such stupidities! Killing each other seems to be the main purpose of man’s being on the earth. In three thousand years there have been five thousand wars. Anybody watching from another planet will think that humanity has gone mad.There is one great thinker of our age, Arthur Koestler, who thinks exactly that – that something in the growth of man’s mind has gone wrong: either the nuts and bolts are too tight or too loose. All our energies devoted to destruction…what can be more insane? All these energies can make this earth a paradise, but they are making it only a battlefield.This meaning of power is not the same meaning as when Yen T’ou uses the word power. In the East we have used the word power – not over others, but over oneself. Conquering your own unconquered areas of consciousness, bringing your potential to its total flowering, will make you immensely powerful – not over anybody, but just a source of power on your own accord.Power over others is very impotent: just put the president of any country down from his seat, and all power disappears. What kind of world is this? – where chairs are powerful, where chairs are more important than man, where chairs make man powerful, not vice-versa. What will Ronald Reagan be without being a president? – just a senile fellow. What is Richard Nixon? Who cares whether he is alive or dead?It happened before the Russian Revolution that a man named Kerensky was the prime minister of Russia – a great power. While the revolution was happening he escaped from Russia, and people remained concerned about what happened to him. Perhaps he had been killed – because no footprints could be found, no sign of where he had disappeared to. He simply disappeared into thin air. It was found in 1960 – almost half a century after the revolution – that he was running a grocery store in New York. Of course, under disguise; he was not telling anybody that he had been one of the most powerful men in the world.Strange…but the mystics know of a different kind of power. Wherever the mystic sits, that place becomes holy, that place becomes full of power. The mystic’s power is not dependent on any votes, it is not dependent on any chair, it is not dependent on any post. The mystic’s power is his own, it is not borrowed.Every president and every prime minister is just a beggar, begging for votes. I have heard about an American politician who was campaigning for his election. He knocked on a door, and he started kissing every child – and there were at least twenty children with running noses, but one has to tolerate everything if one wants power. He was feeling very much disgusted with the whole affair, but he was smiling – just like the Jimmy Carter smile.Have you heard anything about Jimmy Carter’s smile? It has disappeared. I have seen his latest photographs, and only one thing is missing – that smile. His smile was from ear to ear…but it was not his smile, it was the chair. With the chair gone, the smile is gone too.The poor politician kissed all the children and the woman who was standing there, then he said to her, “You have beautiful children. I have come to tell you that your vote should go to me.”He gave her his card and the woman laughed, saying, “I will think it over. But these are not all my children; I am just a caretaker. Because all the woman of the neighborhood are having a meeting, they have left their children here, and I am just looking after them.”He said, “My God, why didn’t you say this before? Now I feel even nauseous!…these dirty children, with running noses. I have been kissing them, and their mucous was getting on my face.”But one has to tolerate…! These beggars become very powerful once they are in the post, but their power is very ugly, inhuman, and brutal.The power of a mystic has a totally different quality, and a different dimension. His power is not dependent on anybody else. His power is not the power of a beggar; his power is the power of an emperor. His power arises within his own being. He becomes a radiant star.All mystics are men of great power. To be in contact with them is enough to be thrilled, to be thrilled about the unknown possibilities of your own being. Just to be in the presence of a man of truth is enough; no argument is needed to convince you – his presence is the argument, and his power is the convincing force.One great Christian missionary, Stanley Jones, used to stay with me whenever he was passing through the place where I was living. He has written beautiful books and he used to give beautiful sermons. Once I told him, “You spoke so beautifully! You were using the same words as Jesus…but I don’t see the power behind them, they are just old gramophone records. The words are the same, but the man behind the words is not the same. You use every effort to make your message emphatic, but you don’t have the power.”He was a very sincere man, and he said, “Perhaps you are right.”I said, “Not perhaps, I am right. If you had that power, which Jesus had, you would already have been crucified. It is hilarious that you hang a golden cross around your neck. Jesus did not hang a golden cross around his neck; his neck hung on a wooden cross, a cross so heavy that although he was only thirty-three years old – and the son of a carpenter who was accustomed to carrying big logs from the forest to his father’s workshop – he fell three times, the weight of the cross was so much. Whom are you trying to deceive? Your neck has to be on the cross – not the cross dangling on your neck, a small cross that cannot kill even a mouse.”That was the crime of Jesus… The whole land of the Jews was full of great scholars, intellectuals, great rabbis, and this single man offended them all. He was not speaking against them, he had not said a single word against any of them. But just his presence, his powerful individuality, was enough to reduce them into pygmies – and all the pygmies joined together to destroy this man.Pygmies are in the majority in the world, and they have been doing the same down the ages. Socrates they poisoned, because he was a giant. Even today his arguments are so fresh, as fresh as this morning’s roses blossoming in the sun and dancing in the air. They murdered al-Hillaj Mansoor, although what he was saying will remain eternally true. He has only declared a simple fact: “I am God, and you are also God. I know it, you don’t know it. Any moment you can recognize it…”But the pygmies are feeling very comfortable and cozy in being pygmies. They don’t want to take the risk of becoming giants, because they have seen what happens to giants – crucifixion, poison, murder… They freak out with these ideas. It is better to be a Christian, with one hour’s religion every Sunday; it is better to be a Hindu, it is better to be a Mohammedan. Just belong to a crowd…because you don’t have power, and a man of power stands alone like a lion roaring. He does not need to mix with a crowd.That which flows out from one’s own breast, as he calls it, is one’s own beginningless present awareness…What starts flowing, the moment you become aware of your awareness, which is beginningless and endless, which is eternity – as you become aware of your eternal sources of consciousness, inexhaustible, suddenly the flow comes to you without any effort.You are not a missionary; your very being is the mission. You are not trying to convince anybody by your argument; your very being is the answer, self-evident, needing no proof, no argument.…fundamentally, complete of itself.The enlightened being, the awakened soul, is complete in itself. It is not in need of anything from anywhere. This gives the awakened person the possibility to be absolutely free of all bondages, of all chains, of all handcuffs. You can put him in a jail, but you cannot enslave his consciousness. Now he no more identifies himself with the body. He has found his real identity. To identify with the body is to carry a false passport.But Ta Hui wants you to be aware not to allow a second thought to arise. What is the second thought? When you first feel yourself in deep meditation, you say, “Aha, this is it!” – and you have missed. This sentence you have to remember not to use at any point, because the moment you say, “This is it,” your mind has come in. Mind is the most corrupting force, more poisonous than any cobra. It simply spoils the silence and the meditativeness.There is a tendency in every mind to try it, so one has to be very aware not to give rise to a second thought. Just be alert, just be aware, just be conscious, just be meditative…but there is no need to reflect about it, or to make a statement about it, or even within yourself to say, “I have arrived.”As soon as you arouse a second thought, you fall into thinking. Awareness is something from before your parents were born.Jesus was asked, “Who do you think you are? You are just a young man, and the land of Judea has old learned rabbis who have devoted their whole life to looking into the scriptures. Who do you think you are? You don’t even have any education, you can’t read, you can’t write, and you are too young to be wise.”And the answer of Jesus is one of the most tremendous answers which has ever been given. He said, “I have been before Abraham was.” Abraham is the oldest name in the genealogy of the Jews. “I was before Abraham was.” This is a statement of power and self-realization. He is saying, “I am beginningless. Don’t look at my body – it may be young, but I am eternal.”This affair is not a matter of intelligence or acuity. Actually, it is just an abrupt bursting out, that is the criterion.Ta Hui has come a long, long way. In the beginning, when he was just an intellectual, he was laughing at sudden enlightenment. How can enlightenment be sudden? In existence everything is gradual…. A tree grows gradually, a man grows gradually. It is not that there was nothing and suddenly a rosebush appears – complete, with the flowers and the fragrance. Existence does not believe in suddenness. It is a gradual process. Intellectually, it seems to be perfectly right.But now he is saying that this is the criterion of whether your enlightenment is true or not: …it is just an abrupt bursting out, that is the criterion – a sudden illumination, just like a bolt of lightning. Now he is speaking from his own experience. As far as mind is concerned, it can observe that everything everywhere grows gradually, so why should there be this exception – that enlightenment is sudden?The reason is clear: enlightenment is not something that is growing in you; it is something that is already complete, just waiting. It has been complete forever, from the very beginning. You have just to look at it – a one hundred and eighty-degree turn.You will not find a small plant of enlightenment growing slowly, leaf by leaf, branch by branch. No, you will see the whole complete illumination – because it is your nature, because it is already there, because it has been there forever. It is just that you were not looking at it; you were standing with your back toward it.And it cannot grow – it is complete, it is entire, it is as it should be. The only new thing that is going to happen is not to enlightenment, but to you. You were not aware of it; now you have seen it, now you are aware of it.And this awareness of yours, is also sudden. You cannot see the enlightenment of your being gradually, piece by piece – one day you see a little enlightenment, then another day you see a little more, and so on it goes. Once you have seen just a little part of it, you will be pulled completely inward to recognize its totality.It is very easy, as far as awakening is concerned, to know when a man is only talking intellectually or is talking existentially. Now Ta Hui is talking existentially. It has not only been a great pilgrimage for him, it has been also a great pilgrimage for you all. Seeing how intellect is capable of turning into enlightenment, how an ordinary mind can change into no-mind, how a mortal can become immortal – it is your story.Ta Hui is coming to the very end of his pilgrimage. You may be far away from the destination, but Ta Hui’s progress will give you tremendous encouragement, however far away you are. He was also very far away, and if he can manage, there is no reason why you cannot manage!As soon as you have attained this scene…Just look at the words, how they change. The intellectual cannot say this; it is just out of his possibilities. He can talk about concepts, he can talk about hypotheses, he can talk about ideologies, but Ta Hui is saying, As soon as you have attained this scene… It is only a scene: it was already there – you were just not seeing it. Now you have opened your eyes and seen it.I have heard about a small child who saw the Catholic priest coming by, and he ran to him and said, “Father, my dog has given birth to six small kids. And why I am so excited is because they are all Catholics.”The father said, “That’s very good.”After three weeks, the father was coming and he saw the boy sitting on his steps crying. He said, “What happened? What happened to your six Catholics?”He said, “That is why I am crying. Their eyes are now open, and they are no longer Catholics.”To be a Catholic or to be a Hindu or to be a Mohammedan, your eyes need to be closed, but to be enlightened your eyes need to be open. It is a scene…the most beautiful scene that you can ever see, or can conceive.As soon as you have attained this scene, then whatever words you have, they are established.Out of an awakened consciousness, each word is on fire, each word is alive, each word is established. It does not need any support of scriptures, and it does not need any support of anybody else in the world. It is its own authority – that is the meaning of its being established.When where they are established is real, this is the so-called “flowing out from within one’s own breast to cover heaven and earth.”When you are established in truth, you will fill the whole cosmos with your truth, with your ecstasy, with your fragrance. And wherever there are people who are sensitive, they will start searching for the man who has attained the power, and whose words have become established.Now, you are here from almost every country of the world. Every government is against me, every government is trying to prevent people reaching here. The government of India is trying to prevent journalists, scholars, professors, all kinds of other news media, from reaching here. They are asking every tourist, “For what reason are you going to India?” Just a little suspicion that they are going to meditate, and their application is rejected.It should be counted as one of the most wonderful things…because meditators have always come to India from all over the world, down the ages. It has been the land of the mystics and the buddhas and the Jainas. Its only contribution to the world is meditation. But this is not a small contribution; it is the greatest contribution possible.Now the people – the so-called political leaders – who don’t know anything about meditation, are ready to give visas to visit the Taj Mahal, Khajuraho, Konarak, Ajanta, Ellora. But I have received letters from people saying that “because we said we want to learn meditation, our applications were rejected.” They are not allowing them to come.When all the governments of the world – the Indian government included – are trying to prevent them, still people are finding ways to come. Something is pulling them. Even if the whole world is against me, it does not matter. The people who have a little sensibility, sensitivity, toward higher states of consciousness are bound to come here.This is the power Ta Hui is talking about.I don’t have any power in the ordinary sense, but I have a power within myself. I am full of my own awakening, and I am willing to share it with anybody. I don’t ask whether you are qualified – who cares about qualifications? I have come to an inexhaustible source, so even if unqualified people can be benefited, there is no harm. I am not losing anything.Qualified, or unqualified, deserving or not deserving… One thing is certain: they have come from far away, from all over the world, and all the governments are trying to prevent them. But something invisible is calling them, and the call is irresistible.I am not a missionary. I don’t convert you.I am a mission.If you come close to me, you will be transformed.It will not be a conversion – from Hinduism to Mohammedanism, from Mohammedanism to Christianity – that is simply changing the jails.Ta Hui has given us some beautiful sutras this morning. Allow them to sink deep into your being. They will be of immense help on the path.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Power…The senses are manifestations of one’s own mind. If you can understand thoroughly like this, then it’s called the knowledge that there’s neither self nor others. Heaven and hell are nowhere else but in the heart of the person.…As soon as you become aware of gradually conserving power in the midst of the afflictions of daily activities – this is how a person achieves buddhahood.…When you see it as it really is, practice according to reality and act according to reality.…Only if you arrive at this stage can you say there is no heaven or hell, and such things. Yung Chia said, “There are neither humans nor buddhas. The universe is like a bubble in the ocean, all the sages are like flashes of lightning.” If he hadn’t gotten to this stage, how could Yung Chia have said this? But with these words, those who misunderstand are many….Feelings and Affliction…It is precisely when afflicted that you should carefully investigate and inquire where the affliction arises from. If you cannot get to the bottom of its origination, then where does the one who is afflicted right now come from? Right when you’re afflicted, is it existent or nonexistent, empty or real? Keep investigating until your mind has nowhere to go. If you want to think, then think; if you want to cry, then cry. Just keep on crying and thinking. When you arouse yourself to the point where the habit energy of love and affection within the store-house consciousness is exhausted, then naturally it’s like water being returned to water – giving you back your original being, without affliction, without thoughts, without sorrow or joy.“Having entered the world, leave the world completely.” Is there such a thing as a father who is not troubled when his son dies? If you try to suppress (such sentiments) forcibly, not daring to cry or think about it, then this is deliberately going against the natural pattern, denying your inherent nature: (it’s like) raising a sound to stop an echo, or pouring on oil to put out a fire.Ta Hui, the man who started searching, has disappeared in the search. Now the one who is speaking is no more the old Ta Hui; he is discontinuous. The old is gone and the new is born. Whatever he is saying now has a totally different significance: it is not coming out of his mind, it is coming out of his experience.One of the most significant experiences is power – power not over others, but simply a tremendous energy arising in you from the very core of your being. It is not that you are powerful over others, it is simply that you are powerful. The power that is over others can be taken away; it is dependent on others, it is not yours. You are simply hiding your impotence.Every politician in the world is psychologically sick. His sickness is a deep inferiority complex, a deep impotence. Now, there are only two ways to get out of this state of impotence: the cheapest and the simplest is to become powerful over others. But that is an illusory experience – certainly cheap, but not real.Real power comes only with the experience of your own being.That’s where politics and religion separate. Their inquiry is basically the same – the search for power – but politics chooses the cheapest, the most plastic way of attaining power, and religion goes in search of the authentic, the real, your own.If you are independent, absolutely rooted in your own being, this experience of power can be shared. If you are close to the man of power and you are not afraid of opening up, you will immediately see a great flash, a great flow entering into your being, as if a flame has jumped from one lamp to another. It has been called, in the tradition of Zen, the transmission of the lamp. It is transmission of power, and it is a very strange experience.One of the disciples of Gurdjieff – perhaps the one who was with him the longest – was Bennett. He had found Gurdjieff in a refugee camp in Constantinople after the Russian Revolution. Gurdjieff had escaped out of Russia. He knew that remaining in Russia would be absolutely dangerous for his life, and his disciples who were around him also persuaded him to escape in time. There was every danger, particularly from the communists, who don’t believe in any spirituality, who don’t believe that man has something eternal in him – and that was Gurdjieff’s lifelong work.There was chaos all over the country. The czar and his government had failed, collapsed. The communists had not yet been able to establish order and peace. Everything was in chaos; the whole bureaucracy was disrupted – and that was the time when all the people who wanted to get out of Russia had the opportunity.Gurdjieff landed in Constantinople, in a refugee camp, where there were thousands of homeless Russians. Bennett discovered him in the refugee camp in Constantinople. That was the first time the world came to know about Gurdjieff. Bennett was in the army; he helped Gurdjieff to reach Paris, and whenever he was able he would come and live with Gurdjieff.Bennett remembers in his autobiography something concerning power. He had come, utterly tired, to see Gurdjieff, and he was feeling for a few days as if he was going to die, as if all power to resist sickness had disappeared. He was pale, weak, and he had come just to see Gurdjieff for the last time, thinking that he would not be able to see him again.When he entered Gurdjieff’s room, Gurdjieff said, “What has happened to you, Bennett? It is not time for you to die.” He put his hand on Bennett’s head, and Bennett could not believe it: a great energy started flowing from his hand into Bennett’s body. Bennett became young again, just within minutes. He opened his eyes, he could not believe it. He looked at his hands – all his paleness had disappeared. There was a feeling of rejuvenation, almost a rebirth.But when he looked at Gurdjieff, he could not believe it – he had become pale. Bennett had never seen him so weak, and he could see what had happened: Gurdjieff had given himself, his life-force, his energy to him.Gurdjieff said, “Don’t be worried. It will take just ten minutes for me to be refilled.” He went into the bathroom and when he came back, after ten minutes, he was just the same – full of energy. Bennett wanted to know more about what had transpired.Gurdjieff said, “If you go on practicing the discipline that I have given you, one day you will see for yourself that everybody has an inexhaustible source of power. It was an urgent situation, an emergency, so I poured myself; otherwise you would certainly have died. But I know that it is almost like a well: you can take the water out…if you do it quickly, the well may become empty – but just for a few minutes, because many currents are coming in and filling the well. Soon it will be full again. You needed so much that I could not give slowly, I had to pour myself totally.”You all have that power. It has nothing to do with anybody else; it has something to do with your roots in existence. The more you become aware of your roots in existence, the more powerful you become.This power has no equivalent in any other source of energy; it is not material, it is not electrical, it is not atomic, it is not nuclear. It is spiritual. It is a totally different dimension, which science has not yet even touched. But all the mystics of the world have lived in it, have danced in it and have given to their disciples without any restraint – because the more you give it, the more existence brings to you from invisible sources.Man is just like a tree. As the tree has roots in the earth, which you don’t see, man has roots in existence which are invisible.Once you become aware of your innermost center, at the very same time you become aware of your immense power. And this power can never do any harm to anybody. This power can be used only as a blessing. Ta Hui is talking about this power.The senses are manifestations of one’s own mind.In fact, the mind and the senses are one phenomenon. The senses are doors of the mind, connecting it with the world. Eyes, ears, nose, hands, the whole body – all your six senses are nothing but your six connections with existence.Mind goes on gathering information, energy, nourishment, from all these senses. Mind is only your seventh sense and nothing else – or in other words, the central pool. From every sense, whatever comes falls into the mind. The senses are manifestations of one’s own mind.If you can understand thoroughly like this, then it’s called the knowledge that there is neither self nor others.If you can become aware of your mind, its senses, and be just a watcher, two things will disappear: the self and the other selves, I and thou.One of the great Jewish thinkers of our age, Martin Buber, has worked his whole life on only one theme. His theme was dialogue, and his central and the most essential book about it is I And Thou. He says, “The ultimate experience is a dialogue between I and Thou.”He is very articulate, tremendously intelligent, certainly one of the greatest geniuses of this age – but he is not a mystic. He is still talking in terms of the duality, I and thou. What he is proposing is beautiful: that there should be a dialogue. Right now, even if you love somebody there is no dialogue; there is continuous conflict, an effort to dominate, not an effort to understand each other.One of my friends is a professor. His doctors are tired, his wife, his children, everybody is tired of his drinking. The doctor came to me and said, “We have tried every possible way, but your friend simply seems to be incapable of dropping his habit of drinking. He is willing to die, but not to drop drinking.”So I went to see him. Before I could see him – he was in his bathroom – his wife told me, “Just the other day I read in the newspaper all the harm that can happen to drunkards. So I went in the bedroom…because he still had a hangover. I shook him and told him, ‘Look how many dangers there are for drunkards, how many things in the body can go wrong.’He listened, and I was happy because he said, ‘Enough is enough, I will stop it from tomorrow.’ And from the next day he stopped purchasing the newspaper, but the drinking continued – why bother about newspapers that create such trouble?”What kind of dialogue is possible? Nobody seems to listen to anybody else: everybody is talking, but they are all having a monologue.So Martin Buber’s thesis has an importance of its own: that mankind will be better if people could come to an understanding, could see the other’s point of view, could stand in his shoes. That is the only possibility for having a peaceful world. But he does not understand that even a dialogue, although a beautiful thing in itself, is not going to bring peace in the world.Only one thing can bring peace in the world, and that is when I and thou, the self and other selves, all disappear. A feeling arises of oneness, of one consciousness, of one being. And it can arise, because it is the reality.If you can understand thoroughly like this, then it is called the knowledge that there is neither self nor others. Heaven and hell are nowhere else but in the heart of the person.Because we are thinking of ourselves as separate from everybody else, we have created a hell. If we can start having a harmony, a deep accord with each other, this very earth is the lotus paradise.As soon as you become aware of gradually conserving power in the midst of the afflictions of daily activities – this is how a person achieves buddhahood.And because you are continuously in conflict with others, you are losing your power. If all conflicts disappear – that means if you understand and feel the oneness with existence – then you will start conserving your power without any effort, because there is nobody else to fight with, there is no way to destroy your power in unnecessary fights. You will conserve so much power that even if you are involved in the day-to-day activities of life, you will attain to buddhahood wherever you are.This is a tremendous insight of Ta Hui. Now he is not talking from the mind; now he is saying things which only a man of experience can say.When you see it as it really is, practice according to reality and act according to reality.This is where the man of authentic experience differs from your so-called moralists, puritans, social servants, religious leaders.The man of experience has no ten commandments, he does not have any fixed moral concepts, he has no ready-made ideas and ideals about good and bad, about right and wrong. He simply acts according to the harmonious reality; he does not fall in discord with it. That’s all he has to do: he remains alert not to fall in discord; to remain always in accord. In tune with reality, you are right; the moment you are out of tune with reality, you are wrong.This is a very different approach toward morality. It does not say, “Thou should not do this, thou should do this.” There are no shoulds and should-nots. A very simple principle: Thou should not fall in discord with reality. Be in tune with it and you will be automatically on the right path. When you see it as it really is, practice according to reality.Have you ever thought that the word according comes from accord? I don’t think you will have even thought about it.…practice according to reality means: remain in accord with reality and act according to reality. Just remember one thing: be in accord with existence, and your life will be a rejoicing, a blissful ecstasy, a continuous dance; your life will become an eternal spring.Only if you arrive at this stage can you say there is no heaven or hell and such things. Yung Chia said, “There are neither humans nor buddhas. The universe is like a bubble in the ocean, all the sages are like flashes of lightning.” If he had not gotten to this stage, how could Yung Chia have said this? But with these words, those who misunderstand are many.To understand a man like Yung Chia, who was the master of Ta Hui… It is always easy to misunderstand a man like Yung Chia. It is difficult – almost impossible – to understand him, because the basic ground for understanding is missing. You don’t have any experience of what he is saying, and whatever your ways of understanding are, they are being contradicted by these statements.He is saying, “There are neither humans nor buddhas.” Ordinarily we understand that people who are asleep are human beings, and the people who are awake are the buddhas. But Yung Chia is saying something even greater. He is saying, “There are no humans, no buddhas, but only forms of awareness.” One form we call human, another form we call the buddha – but the reality is of the same energy, the same power, the same awareness.You can make from the same mud many, many toys of different shapes – but the reality within them is simply one. They are all mud. This whole existence consists only of consciousness; even rocks are nothing but condensed, fast asleep, snoring buddhas. If you listen closely you may hear their snores. They are really asleep – so deeply asleep that you cannot wake them – in a state of coma. But essentially there is no difference.Essentially we are made of the same stuff. Whether you are a human being or a rock or a tree or a buddha, these are only forms. A man of ultimate awakening will know that all forms are just forms and nothing more. The reality within them is simply one and the same.But such people as Yung Chia are bound to be misunderstood. Hence Ta Hui says, “But with these words, those who misunderstand are many.” How can you accept that a rock and a buddha are no different?In fact, three hundred years after Gautam Buddha died, when the first statue of him was made the artist, the sculptor who made it, made it specially from pure white marble. Asked why he had chosen white marble – because there are many other colors of marble and many other kinds of stones – he said, “The white marble and Gautam Buddha sitting in his silence have some similarities: the same beauty, the same softness, the same grace. Watching certain great statues, it seems as if the statue is going to open its eyes any moment….”In Ajanta, the Buddhist monks have done something absolutely miraculous. They have carved out the whole mountain, made great caves; a few caves are as big as this auditorium, so that five hundred people can very easily sit in meditation in one cave. Each cave has a statue of Buddha, and the last cave has the statue of Buddha when he is lying down and is ready to move into eternal sleep. It is a beautiful statue of Buddha lying down – so alive that one feels any moment he is going to wake up.The man who made the first statue made the remark that there is something very similar in the marble, because in its softness, in its beauty, something of Gautam Buddha’s qualities is present. Perhaps he was not himself an enlightened being, otherwise he could have said that in the statue Gautam Buddha is fast asleep, and in Gautam Buddha the statue has awakened. That is the only difference – not much of a difference.But this kind of mystical statement can be understood only if you start having some experiences, if you start having some moments of accord with reality, of deep harmony and oneness. Then not only these statements but millions more will become immediately clear to you.I have spoken on hundreds of mystics, and you will be surprised that I have never read those people before. For example, this Ta Hui: I don’t know what he is going to say tomorrow, I don’t know how he is going to end up; I simply go on responding to his statements as they are presented to me. But I don’t have to read Ta Hui and other supporting material on his life, his works, his teachings. That’s what a scholar will do: he will study everything possibly available about Ta Hui.My approach is that of a mystic, not of a scholar. This is a very strange approach, because nobody else before me has ever done that; it is unprecedented.Mystics don’t care about other mystics; they have come home, now they want to move into eternal sleep – so why bother? Scholars, who don’t have any experience, are left to work on the meanings of the statements and the actions of the mystics. These poor scholars have nothing but libraries, other books, but they don’t have any experience of their own. So whatever they do, howsoever clever, howsoever articulate, it remains fundamentally wrong. Only a mystic has the right to say anything about another mystic.I have been able to talk on hundreds of mystics without any difficulty, for the simple reason that it is my own experience, and I respect my experience. If I find some mystic committing a mistake in his statements, or perhaps the mistake is committed by the people who recorded them, then I don’t spare anybody – it doesn’t matter who he is.I have a criterion of my own. I judge everything against my criterion, and if it is not twenty-four carat gold, then I say so. It hurts many people, but they don’t see that one’s commitment should be to the truth, not to personalities. Everything can be sacrificed – all the saints and all the mystics can be sacrificed – but not the truth.…It is precisely when afflicted that you should carefully investigate and inquire where the affliction arises from.Now he is coming closer and closer to devices of meditation. This is one of the devices: you are feeling sad or angry, and he is saying you can make it a meditation. Don’t fight it, don’t try to distract your mind into something else. Don’t go to see a movie because you are feeling very sad. Don’t try to repress your feeling. It is a great opportunity for meditation.Just watch from where the anger arises. Just go to the very roots. Just go to the very roots from where the sadness is coming – and the greatest surprise is that it doesn’t have any roots.So when you look for the roots, by that time your emotions start disappearing seeing that, “This man is strange – he is looking for the roots!” And those afflictions, emotions, sentiments, feelings – none of them have any roots. They are just clouds, without any roots, surrounding your mind.So, if you start looking for roots, your emotions start dispersing – “This is not the right man, he is not going to be affected by us. He is a little strange; here we are, and he is looking for the roots!”Rather than being sad, rather than being angry, rather than being miserable – search for the roots!Every sentiment, every emotion, every feeling will disappear if you look for the roots. If your awareness goes that deep in search, then the emotion will be gone, and the sky of your inner being will be absolutely clear and clean. Ta Hui has given you a simple meditation. Just try it, and you will be amazed.If you cannot get to the bottom of its origination, then where does the one who is afflicted right now come from?Perhaps you may not be able to remain unaffected and just be a pure scientific investigator. You may become affected – then you cannot find the very bottom from where these clouds are arising. So Ta Hui suggests another method: if you cannot find the origin, try to find out who this fellow is who is becoming miserable. Just turn your awareness and focus it on the person who is becoming angry, instead of on the misery or anger. It is another device: the method is the same and the purpose is the same – just the object changes.The moment you turn to look: who is this fellow, who is this guy who is becoming angry?…you cannot do both the things, because you are the guy. Either you can be angry, or you can look for the guy; you cannot do both things together. Either you can be angry or you can be in search for the one who is angry – and if you are in search, you will not find the guy. Again the sky is clean and clear.What you do is not the question; the point is that mind should come again and again to a state of utter silence and nothingness.Right when you are afflicted, is it existent or non-existent, empty or real?He is just giving you different devices, similar to each other. You are angry. He is saying: “Now become aware whether this anger is real, or you are just acting. Is it existent or nonexistent?” The device is to create a dislocation, a discontinuity between you and the anger.Is the anger real?Are you really angry?You have never asked these things.When you are angry you become so involved, so impressed, that you lose yourself in anger. If you start asking, “Is this anger real?” The purpose of this question is to keep a little distance. Only then can you see whether it is real or not. From every aspect, from this corner and that corner, from behind and from the front ask, “Is this anger real?”But anger cannot remain there if you are looking at it from all around. Anger can remain there only if you are absent. This looking for anger’s reality makes you present, alert and aware – and that’s the end of the whole game. The anger starts disappearing like smoke.So whatever feels right to you, that method has to be followed. Or you can try all the methods at different times – because the whole day there are problems: sometimes you are miserable, sometimes you are angry, sometimes you are sad, sometimes you are feeling dull, sometimes you are feeling meaningless, sometimes you are feeling in great love and sometimes in great hate. You are such a marketplace, and the shops remain open twenty-four hours, day in, day out.So it is a great opportunity: use all the methods for different things. And you can devise your own methods. The only thing to be remembered is that you should create a distance between the emotion, the feeling and you.Just use any method of creating distance, and you will be amazed: this anger that has tortured you so much simply disappears, because you start looking for its roots, or you start looking for the person who is angry, or you start looking at all the aspects of the anger. You forget all about the person toward whom your anger was arrowed; your whole attention is focused now on the reality or unreality of anger itself. These are experienced, absolutely valid methods of transforming your mind into no-mind.Keep investigating until your mind has nowhere to go. If you want to think, then think; if you want to cry, then cry. Just keep on crying, and thinking. When you arouse yourself to the point where the habit energy of love and affection within the store-house consciousness is exhausted, then naturally it is like water being returned to water, giving you back your original being.Among many methods that I have devised… When I used to lead camps myself, there was one method where every afternoon all the participants in the camp used to sit together and everybody was allowed to do whatsoever they wanted – there was no restriction, just that no one should interfere in anybody else’s work. Whatever you wanted to say, you could say: if you wanted to cry, if you wanted to laugh, you could laugh – and one thousand people… It was such a hilarious scene! You could never have imagined people – serious people – doing such stupid things! Somebody was making faces, putting out his tongue as far as he could, and you know that this man is a police commissioner!One man I cannot forget, because he used to sit in front of me every day. He was a very rich man, from Ahmedabad, and because his whole business was the stock market, he was continually on the phone. Whenever this one hour meditation would begin, within two or three minutes he would take up the phone. He would start moving the numbers, saying “Hello!” And he would… It looked from his face as if he was getting the answer – “Purchase it.”This would continue for one hour, and he was again and again phoning to this and to that place, and once in a while he would look at me and smile: “What nonsense I’m doing!” But I had to keep absolutely serious. I never smiled at him. So he would again start phoning: “Nobody is taking any notice, everybody is engaged in his own work.”One thousand people doing so many things…and these things were continuously going on in their minds. This was a great chance for them to bring them out. It was such a drama.Jayantibhai used to be in charge of the camp in Mount Abu, and one of his closest friends took off all his clothes. That was a surprise! Jayantibhai was standing by my side, and he could not believe it. That man was a very serious man, very rich; what was he doing in front of one thousand people? And then he started pushing the car in which I had come to the place – it was Jayantibhai’s car. We were in the mountains, and just ahead there was a thousand-foot drop, and he was pushing the car, naked.Jayantibhai asked me, “What has to be done? He is going to destroy the car, and I had never thought that this man was against my car. We are close friends.”So I told him, “You push it from the other side; otherwise he is going to…”So he was preventing the car…and his friend was jumping around and shouting, “Get out of my way! I have always hated this car.” – because he did not have an imported car, and this was an imported car which Jayantibhai was keeping for me. I was coming to Mount Abu three or four times a year, so he was keeping that car just for me.His friend must have been feeling jealous inside because he did not have an imported car. And then a few people rushed to help, seeing the situation. When he saw that so many people were preventing him, just out of protest he climbed a tree in front of me. Naked, he sat in the top of the tree, and he started shaking the tree. There was every danger that he would fall on top of the thousand people with the tree. Jayantibhai asked me, “What has to be done now?”I said, “He is your friend. Let him be, don’t be worried. Just move the people to this side and that, and let him do whatsoever he is doing. Now he is not destroying the car. At the most he will have multiple fractures.”As people moved away, he stopped. Silently he sat in the tree. After the meditation was over, he was still sitting in the tree, and Jayantibhai said, “Now get down. The meditation is over.”As if he woke up from a sleep, he looked all around and saw that he was naked! He jumped out of the tree, rushed to his clothes, and said, “What happened to me?” In the night he came to see me and he said, “This was a very dangerous meditation! I could have killed myself or somebody else. I could have destroyed the car, and I am a great friend of Jayantibhai, and I had never thought…but certainly there must have been this idea in me.“I hated the idea that you always come in his car and I hated the idea that he has got an imported car, but it was not at all conscious in me. And what was I doing in the tree? I must have been carrying so much violence in me, I wanted to kill people.”That meditation was immensely helpful. It relaxed people in one hour so much that they told me, “It seems a heavy load has disappeared from the head. We were not aware what we were carrying in the mind.” But upon becoming aware of it, there was no other way except an unlimited expression.It was only a small experiment. I told people to continue it: Soon you will come to many more things, and one day you will come to a point where all is exhausted. Remember only not to interfere with anybody, not to be destructive. Say anything you want to say, shout, abuse – whatever you want – and exhaust all that you have been collecting.But this is a strange world. The government of Rajasthan passed a resolution in their assembly that I cannot have camps in Mount Abu, because they had heard all these things were happening there – people who are perfectly alright become almost mad, start doing all kinds of things. Now these politicians in the assembly don’t have any idea of human mind, its inhibitions and how to exhaust them, how to burn them. I had to stop that meditation because otherwise they were not going to allow me to have camps in Mount Abu.What Ta Hui is saying is exactly what my meditation was.If you want to think, then think. If you want to cry, then cry. Just keep on crying and thinking. When you can arouse yourself to the point where the habit energy of love and affection within the store-house consciousness…That’s something of which Western psychology has not yet become aware, this store-house consciousness. It is just like a basement of your mind.In Sanskrit the name is alaya vigyan, the house where you go on throwing into the basement things that you want to do but you cannot, because of social conditions, culture, civilization. But they go on collecting there, and they affect your actions, your life, very indirectly. Directly, they cannot face you – you have forced them into darkness, but from the dark side they go on influencing your behavior. They are dangerous, it is dangerous to keep all those inhibitions inside you.It is possible that these are the things that come to a climax when a person goes insane. Insanity is nothing but all these suppressions coming to a point where you cannot control them anymore. But madness is acceptable, while meditation is not – and meditation is the only way to make you absolutely sane.With no possibility of insanity remaining anywhere within you, with this store-house consciousness exhausted, you will feel so clean, so fresh, as if you have just taken an inner shower.Then naturally it is like water being returned to water, giving you back your original being without affliction, without thoughts, without sorrow or joy. “Having entered the world, leave the world completely.”Ta Hui is saying, “You have entered the world. Don’t leave it incomplete, otherwise you will have to enter again.” This is the law of reincarnation. It is one of the great contributions of Eastern mystics. Complete your life…and your life completes only with enlightenment. After that, there is no birth, no death. But if you leave this world incomplete you will have to come back, again and again. Millions of times you have come back; how many more times are you going to do the same routine job?Is there such a thing as a father who is not troubled when his son dies? If you try to suppress (such sentiments) forcibly, not daring to cry or think about it, then this is deliberately going against the natural pattern, denying your inherent nature: (it is like) raising a sound to stop an echo or pouring on oil to put out a fire.He is absolutely in agreement with my idea that nothing should be repressed, everything should be expressed. If you feel like crying, cry; there is no harm in it, it is absolutely in accord with nature. If you feel like doing anything that is arising in you with a great urge, do it, because once done you are freed from it.If each moment we go on doing everything naturally, we don’t accumulate in the store-house of consciousness any rubbish, any crap.And if your consciousness is clean, pure, innocent, the moment is not far away when you will explode into a luminous splendor. That’s what is known as enlightenment, or awakening, or self-realization.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Understanding Right Where You AreIf you want to study this path, you must understand right where you are. As soon as you rely on the slightest knowledge, you miss the scene right where you’re standing. When you’ve completely comprehended the scene right where you are, then all kinds of knowledge – all without exception – are things right where you are.Thus the Patriarch said, “At the very moment one speaks of knowledge, knowledge itself is mind. And this very mind itself is knowledge.”Since knowledge is right now, if right now you don’t go another moment, but do away with your knowledge right where you are, then you’ll join hands and walk along together with the patriarchs. If you cannot yet be like this, don’t go wrong in your knowledge.Ta Hui is learning every day the language of the mystics. A few holdovers are still there, but they are only because of old habit. He has come to the new experience, but he has not yet clarified his old language. He will manage to do it…because if you can manage to experience the truth, you cannot continue with the knowledge, the words and the language accumulated before you became enlightened. For a few days they linger on their own momentum, but whatever he is trying to say now is not of the intellect. Intellect never speaks that way.The intellectual approach is purely verbal and empty. The experiential approach is non-verbal, but so full, so pregnant with immense meanings, significances and indications of your future growth.The sutra this morning is Understanding Right Where You Are.Mind is never where you are. It is always wandering, running in all directions. Even if you are sitting in a lotus posture with closed eyes, like Gautam Buddha, that does not mean you are meditating – you may be thinking of all kinds of rubbish and garbage. Your mind is not changed just because your body is still, just because you are sitting in a certain posture.This has caused great misunderstanding for those who have been following the path. Your body posture does not change your mind, but if your mind changes, your body posture automatically changes. Seeing this again and again, the vast majority of seekers start from the wrong end. Because the body is visible, and the mind or no-mind is not visible, it was a logical understanding that sitting in a certain pose, you will attain to a certain state of mind. It is not so, but millions of followers of yoga are under the same mistaken impression.If you move to the no-mind, in utter silence, your body is bound to become still, unmoving. The body carries your tensions, and when you are relaxed inside, the body immediately reflects your relaxation, but not vice-versa. You can distort your body in strange postures, hoping that enlightenment will come. I have never seen a single enlightened yogi…and I have been in search, looking in the Himalayas, and all over the country. They are perfect in their gymnastics – they could have joined any circus and would have impressed the people with their performance – but inside they are very ordinary, in the same ignorance, the same unawareness.It is now my considered opinion that if the inner changes, the outer will follow the change. The outer is not essential – it is just a shadow of the inner – so if you change the outer, there is no necessity for the inner to change.Ta Hui says: Understand right where you are.It does not matter where you are – in the marketplace, working as a carpenter, or as a doctor, or as a surgeon. Whatever your profession, whatever your activity, understanding has to come to you amid the hubbub of the world. You should not escape to the mountains, to the Himalayas, to attain to understanding. The Himalayas can’t give it to you, but they can give something that can keep you under a fallacy your whole life.Deep in the Himalayas there is eternal silence – snow that has never melted. The cold is so much that you will not even find birds. Everything is absolutely quiet… This quietness of the Himalayas has been attractive for centuries, because surrounded by this quietness and silence and serenity, you start feeling yourself becoming silent. But this silence is fallacious; it is only a reflection of a vast surrounding circumstance.Many people who have gone to the Himalayas are afraid to come back to the world. I have asked them, “Why are you afraid? You have attained silence; now the world cannot take it away.” But they know better. Once in a while when people come to them, very trivial things can disturb them. Somebody traveling into the Himalayas comes to the cave of a yogi but does not touch his feet, and anger immediately arises in him. It is just the opportunity that he is missing; he has not gained anything.Ta Hui is right. Don’t go anywhere. Understanding has to be acquired wherever you are. Then you can depend on it; you can rely on it; it will be with you wherever you will be. Nothing can disturb it, because you have gained it among all disturbances.If you want to study this path, you must understand right where you are.Your body is in one place, your mind is roaming all over the world. This is not the way of the seeker. Your mind should also be where your body is.For example, you are here now. Your body certainly is here, but only if you fall into a deep silent communion with me, and your mind is utterly quiet, receptive, with no ideas of its own, no prejudices, will your mind also be here now. If you can remain in this state moment to moment, enlightenment is not far away. It can happen any moment. It happens when your body and mind are in such a harmony, in the present, in this moment…then you give opportunity for your ultimate potential to explode.But mind’s ways are very strange, very subtle, very cunning. It starts making a goal of enlightenment – enlightenment is not a goal. It starts thinking in terms of ambitions: enlightenment becomes its ambition – and ambition needs time, ambition needs future, ambition needs tomorrows.So you may be sitting silently in meditation, but your mind is far away, searching for enlightenment. It is not different from any other ambition – ambition for money, ambition for power, ambition for respect. It does not matter at all what the object of your ambition is; every object of your ambition takes you away from your enlightenment. Nothing can take you to enlightenment, because enlightenment is your nature.A man, completely drunk, staggering, somehow reached home in the middle of the night, but he could not figure out whether the house was his or somebody else’s. Looks like it is his…but he’s not certain. He knocked on the door, and an old woman, his mother, opened the door. Again the same problem: the old woman looks like his mother – but only looks like. He fell at her feet and started asking her, “Help me find my home. Help me find my mother. She must be waiting.”A crowd gathered, and they were laughing: this is strange, he is holding his mother’s feet and asking her to help him find his mother; she must know his house because she lives in this neighborhood somewhere.And then another drunkard came with a bullock cart, and he said, “Don’t waste your time. Just come into my bullock cart and I will take you to your house and to your mother.” Now, the mother was trying hard, the neighbors were trying hard, saying, “If you go into this bullock cart…. That man seems to be more drunk than you are; wherever he leads you will be going away from your mother and from your house, because this is your house, and this is your mother.”Something similar is the case with the human mind. It cannot feel at rest wherever it is. It is always looking for the right place, the right experience, but it cannot be here. Of course, how can it be here? Thousands of years of continuously being taught that you are sinners, has made a deep unconscious impression that as you are, you are not right. Wherever you are, you are not in the right place.All the religions have succeeded only in one thing: in rejecting you, your place, your time, your life. And they have all given you great ambitions – ambitions for heaven. It is strange that nobody says to these religions, “You are all against greed, but heaven means nothing but the ultimate greed. You are all against fear, you all want us to be fearless – but what is your hell and hellfire?”Between hell and heaven, they have taken away the reality of your being, the existential status of where you are. Avoiding hell, you are running to catch hold of heaven. You are running, but that which you are running for is within you. If you stop running and drop all the ambitions for greed and power and prestige, and just relax into your ordinariness – then, this very moment, this very body the Buddha, and this very place the lotus paradise. That’s what Ta Hui is saying.If you want to study this path, you must understand right where you are. Everything is there – wherever you are, the whole of existence is centered there.As soon as you rely on the slightest knowledge, you miss the scene right where you are standing.Now this is from a man of great knowledge, of great acquaintance with scriptures.As soon as you rely on the slightest knowledge, you miss the scene right where you are standing.Because knowledge is taking away your mind and creating a screen between you and reality, like a cloud covering your eyes. You become interested in that knowledge, and you forget your reality, your presence, your here-nowness.When you have completely comprehended the scene right where you are, then all kinds of knowledge – all without exception – are things right where you are.You need not be worried. If you can discover yourself in the present moment, you are not only discovering your being, you are also discovering all the buddhas of the past, of the present, of the future, too – because it is the same experience, it is the same music, it is the same dance. Finding it within yourself, you have become a contemporary of all the buddhas of all time.Thus the Patriarch…and by patriarch, Zen people refer to Bodhidharma. He was their main source from where others learnt the art of being real, authentic, sincere, from whom people learnt awareness. He was the man who introduced India’s greatest contribution to the world, the art of dhyan, to China.Thus the Patriarch said, “At the very moment one speaks of knowledge, knowledge itself is mind. And this very mind itself is knowledge.” Since knowledge is right now….That’s what I was saying – that his intellectual past still shadows his language. For example, first he said, If you want to study this path… That is the language of a teacher, not the language of a master. What has a master to do with studying? The master would have said… “If you want to follow this path…” Now again he misunderstands: although what he is saying is right, it is just that his language is too much under the impact of his past.Since knowledge is right now… Instead of knowledge, a man who has come to his own being will say, “Since knowing…” not knowledge – and the difference is great. The words come from the same root, and I would like you to understand it clearly: knowing is always in the present, knowledge is always of the past. Knowledge means knowing has become part of your memory, it is dead; it is no more alive, it is no more breathing, it has no more any heartbeat.For example, when you are seeing a sunset and you are overwhelmed by its beauty, in that moment there is knowing. You don’t even say to yourself, “How beautiful!” – because even the words how beautiful will be a disturbance, will take you away from the present. If you simply stand before the setting sun, with all the colors spread over the horizon, shadows, reflections in the ocean, it is so enchanting that you almost stop breathing. You are in a state of awe. Those few moments are knowing. Tomorrow you will tell somebody what a beautiful sunset you have seen the day before – that will be knowledge. Now it is only words.I have told you the story of Lao Tzu. He used to go for a morning walk in the mountains. An old friend used to follow him, and one day the friend told him, “I have a guest in my house, and he also wants to come for the morning walk.”Lao Tzu said, “I have no objection, just make sure that he does not start talking. Knowing should remain knowing, it should not be converted into dead knowledge.”The friend said, “I will take care of it.” He convinced his guest that it is a great opportunity to be for two hours in the morning with Lao Tzu. “It is rare and invaluable, but the condition is that you should not speak.”The guest said, “That is not a problem. I will keep completely silent.” And then they started. It was still dark and when they reached the peak of the mountain, the sun was rising. The birds started chirping, the trees started coming out of their sleep…flowers all around, wild flowers opened their petals and their fragrance. The man forgot that he was not supposed to speak – and he did not think that this was much speech. He simply said, “How beautiful.”Lao Tzu looked at his old colleague and friend with such stern eyes… When they were back home he told his friend, “Please don’t bring your guest again tomorrow because he is too talkative” – and in two hours he had said only two words, How beautiful!Lao Tzu said to his friend, “I was present, he was present, you were present, the sun was present, the songs of the birds were present, the fragrance of flowers was present – there is no need to say anything. I was also aware… I am not saying that it was not beautiful; I am saying that by saying it is beautiful, you have reduced its multidimensional beauty into two ordinary words. You have made knowing into knowledge.”The difference is very subtle. Knowing is a living, flowing experience, still vibrating in your heart. Knowledge is of the past – it may be just one minute past. Knowledge is part of the memory; knowing is part of awareness.So when he says, Since knowledge is right now, he really means, since knowing is right now – because knowledge can never be right now. If right now you don’t go another moment, but do away with your knowledge right where you are, then you will join hands and walk along together with the patriarchs, with the buddhas, with the awakened ones.It is the most immediate approach to existence. You don’t have to pray to God, you don’t have to believe in a messiah, you don’t have to have faith in a holy book, you don’t have to go through tortuous disciplines. You have just to be this very moment alert, awake. Then, whatever is happening around you, you listen to it, but you don’t make it a knowledge. You don’t say, “The birds are singing” – you listen to the song. You relish the song, you absorb it into your being, but you don’t reduce it into words.If this becomes your way of life, your very style of existence, then any moment – whenever you will be absolutely attuned, your totality present here and now – the explosion is going to happen. Look at the beautiful trees, but don’t say they are beautiful. Is not looking enough? Is it necessary to bring language in? Can’t you enjoy the beauties around you directly, without any language? Just try it.You have thousands of opportunities every day. Even in the fast hubbub of a marketplace, to be alert, without making any judgment…it is one of the most wonderful experiences that even the noises in the marketplace don’t disturb you. On the contrary, they seem to have a beauty of their own, a life of their own.Whether you are sitting or working, chopping wood or carrying water from a well, just be alert to everything that is going on around you, without reducing it to knowledge. If you can avoid words and knowledge, which are like dust in your eyes…they don’t allow you to see that which is. And that which is, is the only authentic name for God. It is not a goal somewhere else; it is always available, just you are not available to it.So the whole process of dhyan, chan, or Zen, is simply to make you available to the existence which is always available to you. Just a meeting, an introduction with the reality in which you are existing – so simple and so obvious – and you will not be able to find even traces of all your miseries and afflictions and agonies. They were nightmares, and you were asleep; that’s why they were happening. Now you are awake, and all the nightmares have disappeared.If you cannot yet be like this, don’t go wrong in your knowledge.This is just for those who cannot see the obvious, who cannot do the simple. If you cannot yet be like this, don’t go wrong in your knowledge. At least if you cannot do the full process – the full process is dropping knowledge and becoming aware – if you cannot become aware, at least drop knowledge. That will help you immensely to become aware.If you cannot see right now, at least remove the dust from your eyes. That will help you to see with clarity whatsoever is available to us. And so much is available that only idiots can go to the temples and to the mosques and to the churches and to the synagogues. Any man of a little intelligence will find his temple wherever he is. This whole existence is nothing but a temple, holy ground.In the story of Moses, when he met God on Mount Sinai, as he reached close to God, he heard a shout. He started trembling because there was nobody, only a green bush, and inside the bush great flames of fire – and the bush was still green. The shout had come from the bush, “Moses, take your shoes off. You are on holy ground.”I have always wondered why Moses did not ask “Is there any ground which is not holy? Is only this ground surrounding the bush holy?” But perhaps he was so much overwhelmed…and people don’t like to argue if they come across God. It is dangerous, and he had shouted so loudly, Moses may have forgotten all. But whenever I have come across that story, the only question that has arisen in me was how he could accept a division between the holy land and the unholy land. If the whole existence is full of godliness, then in every place, wherever you are, you are on holy ground.Nanak was far better than Moses. He had gone to the Mohammedans’ holy place, Mecca. It was evening time, and his disciple, Mardana, prepared his bed. They were tired from a long journey, and in the morning they would go into the temple and see Kaaba. But they had done one thing wrong: they were keeping their feet toward Kaaba. Somebody informed the high priest that these two persons had come. Their fame had reached ahead of them. “The master is a man of great understanding and the disciple is so merged with the master that they are almost one – it is difficult to say that they are two – but they are misbehaving by keeping their feet toward Kaaba.”Mohammedans, living anywhere in the world…there is no question of not keeping their feet toward Kaaba – even when dead their graves are made in such a way that their heads are pointing toward Kaaba.The high priest was very angry indeed. He came with a few people and said to Nanak, “We have heard you are a master, but this does not show the understanding of a master. You are keeping your feet toward the holy Kaaba.”Nanak said, “No problem. You can turn my feet wherever you feel God is not; wherever God is, it will be the same. So you can do it – I am just lying down; take my feet and move them wherever you think God is not.”I think this is an historic incident, because this was enough for the high priest to apologize and say to Nanak, “I am sorry…because I cannot find any place where God is not. And naturally, you are right: wherever you keep your feet, they will be pointing toward God. There is no way to avoid it. Forgive me.”But the story has a metaphorical ending. The priest is so blind that he calls his men and turns Nanak’s feet almost in a circle, and he is amazed that wherever he turns Nanak’s feet, Kaaba also moves in the same direction. This must be mythological because Kaaba is just a stone. In this world, even men are so dull and dead – one cannot hope that a stone will be so intelligent.But the metaphor has the same meaning…finally they got the idea. They moved him all around, and Kaaba moved wherever his feet were. It may not have happened, but it is true that wherever his feet were, God was there.But why did Moses forget about it? If existence is divine, then each moment and each inch of it is divine. There is no need to create cathedrals and great temples – these are done by blind people. Those who have eyes will find this vast starry sky, this beautiful earth, the greatest temple of God. If you look at this whole existence as a holy place, naturally your actions need not be of prayer and ritual. All that your actions need to be is of alertness and awareness in this very moment.God is available from all sides; just you are not here. He knocks at your door but finds you have gone somewhere else, you are never in your house – perhaps you have completely forgotten where your house is – and you have not informed God of your new address. It will be very difficult, because each moment you will have to inform him of your address. It goes on changing.But if you can relax right now…Just listen: the rain has started. Now the trees will be immensely happy, they will dance in the rain. Can you find any moment more precious?The rains have heard me.This whole existence is so beautiful. If you can drop your knowledge, your mind, and just merge in the here and now…this is the great principle of all the awakened ones.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Discriminating Consciousness and WisdomConstantly calculating and making plans, flowing along with birth and death, becoming afraid and agitated – all these are sentiments of discriminating consciousness. Yet people studying the path these days do not recognize this disease, and just appear and disappear in its midst. In the teachings it’s called acting according to discriminating consciousness, not according to wisdom. Thereby they obscure the scenery of the fundamental ground, their original face.But if you can abandon it all at once, so you neither think nor calculate, then these very sentiments of discriminating consciousness are the subtle wisdom of true emptiness – there is no other wisdom that can be attained. If there were something attained and something realized besides, then it wouldn’t be right. It’s like a person when he’s deluded calling East, West, and when he’s arrived at enlightenment, West is East – there is no other East.This subtle wisdom of the true emptiness is coeval with the great void: the void is not subject to being obstructed by things, nor does it hinder the coming and going of all things within it.In the sutras this evening, Ta Hui is raising the most fundamental questions about meditation.A few things need to be understood before we can discuss the sutras. The first is about your thinking process, which Ta Hui calls discriminating consciousness – in other words, your mind.The mind is constantly involved in thinking, in judging, in evaluating. Its whole function seems to be to keep you involved in thoughts, which are nothing but soap bubbles – or perhaps soap bubbles have more substance to them than your thoughts.Your thoughts are almost like writing on water…no thought leaves any trace on your mind. Your mind is almost like the sky: the birds fly, but they don’t leave any footprints in the sky. The sky remains as it was before the birds came and after the birds are gone.To become aware of this is to enter into another dimension of your consciousness, beyond the discriminating consciousness. The discriminating consciousness consists only of thoughts. Beyond it is a consciousness which consists only of watching – not thinking but only witnessing, just seeing…not for, not against, nor appreciating, nor condemning – simply seeing, just the way the newborn child sees.Look for a moment at the newborn child: he has eyes, he has consciousness. He looks all around, he sees all the colors, the flowers, the light, the people, their faces, but do you think the child recognizes the color green as green? Do you think he discriminates between a woman and a man? Or that this is beautiful and that is ugly?He has a non-discriminating awareness. He is simply seeing everything that is there, but he has no judgment about it. He cannot have – he has not yet been introduced to the color called green, the color called red. It will take a little time for him to learn discrimination.In fact, our whole education is nothing but creating discriminating consciousness in every person. Every person is born with a non-discriminating consciousness – that is a witnessing consciousness. He is born with that which a sage finally achieves. It is a very mysterious phenomenon that what the sage attains ultimately, the child has from the very beginning.It is not coincidental that different sages, different mystics of different ages, have become aware of the fact that the final illumination, enlightenment, is nothing but regaining your childhood. The same consciousness that you had the first moment you were born has to be attained again. It is not something new that you achieve; it is something ancient, eternal, that you rediscover.You get lost into the world…there is every opportunity for you to be lost, because the world needs all kinds of discriminations, judgments, evaluations, the idea of good and bad, the idea of right and wrong – all kinds of shoulds and should nots. The world necessarily needs them, and it trains every child for them. The child goes on getting more and more lost into language, into words, into thoughts, and finally comes to a point from where he cannot find the way back home.Jesus says, “Unless you are born again you will not understand the kingdom of God.” What does he mean when he says, “Unless you are born again…”? It is obvious, the meaning is clear: unless you look at the world and existence again as a child….And that is the essential meaning of meditation: to help you to get out of the mind, to help you to get out of the discriminating consciousness and make a path so that you can enter into a witnessing consciousness.These two are the only possibilities in your consciousness: either you can be pure sky or you can be sky with clouds; either you can be a consciousness without any thought or you can be a consciousness full of the traffic of thoughts, feelings, sentiments, emotions.When you are full of the traffic of the mind, you cannot know who you are; you are too engaged, you are too busy. When there is no traffic you are so at ease, so relaxed, that it is impossible to avoid knowing yourself. Nothing is left there to know, so knowing turns upon itself. The knower and the known are no more separate.This state – where the knower and the known become one and consciousness is just a pure witness – Ta Hui calls wisdom. To understand him, remember that he is not using the word wisdom in the ordinary sense.There are two senses in which the word is used by ordinary language: one is the man who has experienced all kinds of failure, success, poverty, richness, the worldly experiences – one meaning of wisdom is to be rich about worldly experiences – that man is called wise. Naturally, this means the man must be old.Experiences need time. Hence, in all cultures and all societies old people were respected and honored for their wisdom. This is one meaning of wisdom, which has become absolutely out of use and out of date.In the past it was necessarily so: the older person knew more than the younger person, because there was only one way of knowing and that was from actual experience. If your father was a carpenter he certainly knew more than you. You would have to learn from your elders. Knowledge was transferred from generation to generation. The older person was always more knowledgeable than the younger; that’s why in the past there was no generation gap.But today the situation has become different. As education has become more and more universal, it is possible to know more than your elders. In fact, it is not only possible, it is always the case. A father who is a doctor sends his son to the university to become a doctor. When the son comes back…the father is experienced in his profession, but the son knows more than the father, because he knows the latest research, the newest developments of which the father is absolutely unaware. The father had become a graduate of medical science perhaps thirty years before. In thirty years almost everything has changed. What was relevant thirty years ago is no more relevant; what was thought to be scientific has become absurd and unscientific.This is a new situation which humanity is facing – that the younger person knows more than the older person. It is not accidental that respect for the older people has been disappearing. The older people are tremendously concerned about why it is happening – but they don’t see that the situation has changed.Once it was impossible for the younger person to know more than the older person; now it is impossible for the older person to keep pace with the younger person. The younger person will know the latest developments and the gap between the two will be at least twenty or thirty years. Progress in science is going with such speed that scientists say they cannot write a big volume on any subject because by the time their volume will be ready for publication it will be out of date – it will not be publishable at all.So now in science instead of writing big volumes, people write papers. They immediately either read those papers in conferences or they publish them in periodicals. They cannot wait long, because if they do, somebody else, somewhere else, is going to find something better.When Albert Einstein was asked, “If you had not discovered the theory of relativity” – upon which the whole of atomic energy and all the development of nuclear weapons depends – “do you think there is a possibility that somebody else may have discovered it? And if somebody else may have discovered it, how long would it have taken?”Albert Einstein laughed and said, “Not more than three weeks. If I had not been quick enough, then some other fellow would have published his research.” And it turned out that a German scientist had already discovered the theory of relativity – he was just a lazy guy. He had discovered it before Albert Einstein, but he had not published it. There were at least twelve people in the world who were working on the same lines, and they all would have reached, within just two or three months, the same point to which Albert Einstein had reached.In the scientific field, which is now the only valid field of knowledge, things are moving so tremendously fast that the gap between the new generation and the old generation is going to become bigger and bigger. Soon they will not be able to understand each other’s language. It is already happening: fathers and sons don’t sit together and discuss anymore, because the fathers think their children have strange ideas, and the children think, “The poor old man! He is still repeating things that went out of date long ago.”Now, if this is already in their minds, how is a dialogue possible? They are both thinking badly about each other already, they have arrived at conclusions without any discussion, without any conversation, without any dialogue. And the gap is becoming bigger and bigger.Because of this gap, the thousand year old tradition of being respectful toward the elders is disappearing, because its fundamental, basic situation is no more valid. The same is the situation between students and professors: the professors know less than the students. If the students are intelligent enough, then they are always capable of knowing more than the professors. Only stupid and mediocre students still know less than the professor. If the students are going to the library and are well acquainted with the latest developments in any field of knowledge, they will be twenty or thirty years ahead of their professors.The same problem is felt in every educational institution, in every university. Students don’t have the same respect that they always had in the past – they cannot have it. In the past it was natural: the teacher always knew more. Today it is only the mediocre student who knows less than the teacher. The intelligent student certainly knows more than the teacher can afford…. The teacher is so much accustomed to the old ideas which were prevalent when he was a student, which may have been half a century before.I remember my own days in the university. The professor of psychology would quote names which were important fifty years before. Now you can find those names only in the Encyclopedia Brittannica as history; they have become absolutely irrelevant, so much water has gone down the Ganges and so many fresh insights have come into being. I was simply at a loss. It seems by the time a person graduates from the university he stops reading, because people read only for examinations and now there is not going to be any examination. They have done their best. And if they have become gold medalists and they have attained a first class they will soon be professors in some college, in some university; now there is no need for them to read.My own suggestion to the Education Commission of India was that every professor should be sent every year for at least a two months’ refresher course – otherwise he cannot keep pace with the knowledge the way it is growing. This is another meaning of wisdom: knowledge and its quantity; how much you know; how well informed you are.But the way Ta Hui and the mystics use wisdom is a totally different thing. It is neither the past, old type of knowledge that came from experience, nor is it the knowledge that comes from education. It is the knowledge that comes from a transformation happening within yourself, moving from the discriminating consciousness to the witnessing consciousness. Witnessing consciousness is wisdom, so you should not get confused about the meaning of the words.Ta Hui says,Constantly calculating and making plans, flowing along with birth and death, becoming afraid and agitated – all these are sentiments of discriminating consciousness. Yet people studying the path these days do not recognize this disease….To the people of the path, to the people who want to meditate and enter into their innermost being, into the only real temple of God, this kind of knowledge, this kind of mind, this kind of consciousness is a disease. It will hinder you from going inward, it will become the barrier, and it will keep you engaged in the non-essentials of life, in trivia. It will keep you unaware of the most fundamental question: “Who am I?” It will allow you to know everything in the world except yourself – and what is the purpose of knowing the whole world if you don’t know yourself?At the moment of death all your knowledge of the world will be lost into thin air. Only one thing will go with you, and that one thing is being constantly ignored – that is your self-knowledge, your self-realization. In fact, this is the only ignorance – ignoring yourself.But even the greatest scientist, the greatest philosopher, the greatest thinker thinks about faraway stars, thinks about strange things – like, “What is the speed of light?” – works day and night to find how to split the atom, and never thinks for a moment, “Who is this being within me? What constitutes my consciousness?”Certainly discriminating mind, discriminating consciousness, is the greatest disease, because it will keep you ignorant till the moment of death. Then certainly you will become aware that you have been engaged in a futile exercise. You know so much and yet you don’t know who you are. Suddenly all your knowledge is of no use, all your power is of no use, all your money is of no use, all your prestige is of no use. The only thing that could have been of use you ignored your whole life – and now there is no more time.Death comes so suddenly, without even knocking at your doors – it does not give you a single moment’s notice. It always comes so silently that you cannot hear its footsteps, you are caught unawares. It is such a shock that most people become unconscious before dying. It is not necessary that they should become unconscious, but the shock that “I have wasted my whole life….”Somebody is working his whole life in finding how many species of insects exist in the world, how many kinds of mosquitoes there are. To them it seems these are important questions. These people don’t have time to sit silently even for a few minutes and to move away from discriminating consciousness, that is from mind, and to become just a witness – that is a no-mind, a silence, a peace, a serenity, a pure space, utterly still, with no movement.In this stillness comes wisdom, and wisdom means self-realization. No other meaning of wisdom has any relevance on the path of the seeker.Yet people studying the path these days do not recognize this disease, and just appear and disappear in its midst.People come and go. People are born and die without knowing who was born and who has died. You are born without a name and you die without a name, and all that existed between birth and death disappears just like writing on the water.How many people have lived here before us? – billions and billions of people…and you don’t find any trace that they even existed. They also had love affairs and they thought that great things were happening to them. They also had enemies, they also had anger, they also had sadness, they also had moments of happiness. They also knew failure and the pain of it; they also knew success and the pleasure of it. They knew everything that you know…and while you are passing through that moment you think it is so important.Just think of those billions of people who always thought that when they fell in love it was something unique which had never happened before and which would not happen again. But they have all disappeared without leaving any trace. Whether they existed or not, whether they fought or not, whether they loved or not makes no difference. The sun goes on rising, the moon goes on moving, the stars go on their paths. Existence remains absolutely unconcerned, as if whatever you think so very important is nothing but a drama.But it is one of the most significant things to remember: whatever your experience, this has been the experience of billions of people – so don’t be too much concerned about it, don’t make too much fuss about it, don’t take much note about it. Don’t become obsessed with it – it will disappear and you will disappear, and everything will be silent, as if nothing has happened.Because of this understanding the mystics have been telling you that the world and its experiences are nothing but dreams, so don’t take much note. Keep a distance; don’t get lost in your dreams.If you can keep a distance from your dreams you will come to know the only reality that remains forever, which has no birth and no death: that is your pure consciousness, that is your divine consciousness. You can give it any name, it doesn’t matter. It is the buddha-nature within you, or it is the god within you.In the teachings it’s called acting according to discriminating consciousness, not according to wisdom.The people who are functioning in life according to their discriminating minds are spiritually sick; they are suffering from the great disease.It happened that Gautam Buddha had come to Vaishali, one of the biggest cities of those days. The old king of Vaishali had died and his son had come into power; he was young and as foolish as young people are bound to be. His old prime minister, who was also the prime minister of his father, told him, “Gautam Buddha is coming to the city, and you have to go to receive him at the gates of the city.”The young man said, “For what? He is just a beggar, and I am a great king. If he wants to see me he can ask for an appointment. But you are giving me strange advice, that I should go and receive him – a king going to receive a beggar?”The prime minister said, “Then please accept my resignation.”The king said, “You are making so much of such a small thing. Why should you resign?”The prime minister replied, “I cannot work under a man who is so ignorant and so spiritually sick. It is humiliating. I have worked under your father, and your father used to go to receive Gautam Buddha and touch his feet. You are only a king – he was also a king, but he has gone beyond that. He is a beggar not because he could not be a king; he is a beggar because he renounced the kingdom. His begging bowl is far more valuable than your whole kingdom. Either you have to go and receive him, or please accept my resignation, because I cannot work under a man who has no wisdom.”The young man could not afford to lose that old man, because he was experienced; the young man had just become king, he had no knowledge of how to run things. The old man was almost like his father, so he said, “I will go.”And the story is very beautiful…when the king – this young man – went to receive Gautam Buddha with his old prime minister, Gautam Buddha said, “There was no need for you to come. I’m only a beggar, and you are a great king. If I wanted to see you, I could have come myself.”The young man could not believe that Buddha was exactly repeating the words that he had said, and neither could the old prime minister understand. The old prime minister used to come to Gautam with the old king. Now he told Gautam Buddha, “You have created a great turmoil in our minds, because this dialogue has already happened between me and the young king. He is young and he does not understand how a man of wisdom should be received.“I told him, ‘The man of wisdom may be a beggar to those who don’t understand, to those who don’t have the inner eye to see. But those who have the inner eye to see…a man who has realized himself has not only conquered this world, but has conquered that world too – he has conquered the outer and he has conquered the inner. His kingdom is eternal. Your kingdom is only a dream – just as your father has gone, you will be gone. But the kingdom of Gautam Buddha will remain, will remain in the eternity of time.’ This dialogue has happened between us, but he was not willing to come.”And Gautam Buddha said, “Looking at his face, I could see his reluctance. I could see that you brought him, he did not come. I could see that although he has come to receive me, he still sees me as a beggar and himself as a king. So just to console him – as if he were obliging me – I had to say these words, ‘You are a great king; you need not have come to see or receive a beggar.’ And in fact, I am a beggar: I don’t have anything except myself. You have everything except yourself: your possessions are many, your dominion is big, naturally. My possessions are few. In fact, except myself, I don’t have anything else.”But this is called wisdom. And this wisdom is the greatest bliss and ecstasy in the world. If you can find even a few minutes to look into yourself…. In the hubbub of the world, still there are moments when you can look within yourself, however busy you may be. There is not a single person in the world who cannot find a small amount of time to look at his own being. And in the end you will find only those moments were real which you devoted to searching for yourself, and everything else was unreal.Everything else has disappeared; only those few moments have remained which you have spent with yourself. Friends are gone, lovers are gone, everything is gone or is going. But those few moments which you have spent with yourself in your aloneness are still with you. Even death cannot take them away from you. They are your only treasure.The people who follow the discriminating mind are wasting a great opportunity to discover the ultimate and the intimate – which are not two different things. The ultimate is the intimate. And those who are concerned with things, howsoever valuable, sooner or later will repent.Jesus used to tell his disciples again and again, “Repent!” – and I don’t think Christians understand what he means. Suddenly he starts talking about repenting…. What is there to repent? People think perhaps he is saying, “Repent for your sins!” – but in fact he is saying, “Repent for all that time that you have wasted in accumulating junk, in accumulating information.” Repent for all that – and the only way to be authentically repentant is to do something that takes you to the undying element in you, to the source of your very life.Thereby they obscure the scenery of the fundamental ground, their original face.We never come across our original face. We are so engaged, so busy with a thousand and one things that there is no time left, no energy left, and no inclination either. In millions of people, perhaps, the very longing to know oneself has not arisen. They are all imitators: because other people are running after money, they are running after money; because other people are ambitious, they are ambitious; because other people are doing this, they are doing this.A woman was saying to her husband, “Do you see that our neighbors have got a new car?”He said, “Yes, I can see, it is standing in their porch.”The woman said, “Then you have to decide: either bring home a new car or we will have to change neighborhoods, whichever you think is cheaper, but this I cannot tolerate. So I leave it up to you: either find somewhere else to live so I don’t have to see that car standing there continuously, or bring a better car for our porch. Just get busy.”People are continuously living their lives of imitation, competition, jealousy… Who is bothered about his original face – and what is one going to do with the original face? But the only people who have known anything worthwhile, who have lived in the authentic sense of living, are the people who have searched for their original face.Certainly you have to get out of this rut of jealousy, competition, imitation, otherwise they won’t leave you any time. Somebody is doing something, somebody else is doing something else, and your whole business is to imitate everybody – they have better clothes, somebody has a better house, somebody has a better garden. People say the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and it is true; it looks greener.One man was trying hard to sell his house, because more beautiful houses had sprung up and he wanted to have something better. So he called an agent, and the agent said, “It is not difficult, don’t be worried.”The agent placed an advertisement and described the man’s house in such beautiful terms: “If you want a scenic place…just behind you is a lake,” – it was not a lake, it was just rainwater that had collected, with at least five million mosquitoes – “and behind the lake is a beautiful range of mountains. The sunrise is so beautiful that you can search around the world and perhaps you may not find such a beautiful sunrise. And a beautiful garden….”The man read the advertisement, and he said, “This is the kind of house I want” – because there was no address given under it, only the phone number of the agent. So he called the number immediately, “I am really interested, whatsoever the price. The price does not matter: come immediately and we will settle it.”But the agent said, “This is strange! This is where you live, your own house.”He said, “My God! You are a poet! You have described it with such beauty, and I am being tortured by this house…and the mosquitoes…and you call it a lake! And you call those mountains which are thousands of miles away, ‘behind the house’!”But this is how things are. You are impressed by somebody else’s house and he is impressed by your house; you are impressed by somebody else’s wife or husband, and he is dying for your wife, he is ready to sacrifice everything. He does not know what trouble you are in.But this imitative mind keeps you engaged. And the only problem is that it manages to keep you unaware of yourself. Otherwise, nothing is wrong in the world. I’m not against the world, neither is Ta Hui against the world. He does not want you to renounce it; he simply wants you to understand that all that is outside you is phenomenal, it has no ultimate significance.Just think: twenty years before you had fallen in love with somebody. At that time you were ready to do anything, and now it does not matter at all.I had a friend who was in love with a Bengali girl. I have seen many lovers, but he was the topmost. He was so much in love that he went to Bengal and lived in Bengal for two years to learn the language and the actual Bengali accent. He used to dress like the Bengalis, talk like the Bengalis…but the girl was not interested. And after such an effort, when he proposed to the girl she simply refused, saying, “I feel very repulsed by you.” Naturally, it was too much.He was the son of a doctor. He went home, closed his room, and informed the house, “Don’t try to open the door. I’m going to die inside my room.”He was the only son of his father, and the father asked, “But tell us what is the problem. You wanted to go to Bengal for two years, and we arranged it. Now what is the problem? Where do you want to go? You can go….”He said, “I don’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to marry a girl, and for her I went to Bengal. Even with the Bengali accent, and Bengali clothes, she has refused me.”The girl used to live near my house, and just because she lived near my house, he had become friendly toward me! It was the right place for him, because the girl used to come to my house to sit in the garden, to read or to borrow some books from me. This was the right place for him, and that’s how I became aware of his existence.Everybody in the neighborhood tried hard to convince the doctor’s son, “We will find a better girl. Your father is rich, you are the only son, there is no problem. We will manage everything, whatever…. If you want a Bengali girl, the whole of Bengal is there! We will find a Bengali girl whatsoever it costs – but don’t do anything stupid.” They were afraid he might have taken poison from the father’s dispensary or something and he might eat it or do something stupid. But he would not speak, he was completely silent. Then they became very much afraid, because they would knock and he would not answer.The father came running to me and said, “He used to come to you, and perhaps you can manage that at least he should speak. We are worried: perhaps he is unconscious or has fallen in a coma or taken poison, and we are afraid because he has warned us, ‘Don’t try to open the door, otherwise you will find my dead body inside.’ So we cannot forcibly open the door, he may do something…we are at a loss.”I went there and I said, “There is no problem.” I knocked on the door and said, “Arjun” – his name was Arjun – “do you want to commit suicide?”He said, “Yes.”I said, “Then this is not the way. You come along with me and I will manage a beautiful suicide for you!”He said, “What?”I said, “Open the door and just come into my car and I will arrange it, because I know the right place to commit suicide.”In Jabalpur, just thirteen miles away from my house, is one of the most beautiful places in the world – the marble rocks. For two miles continuously a beautiful river, Narmada, flows between two mountains completely of marble. On a full-moon night it becomes absolutely dreamlike – one cannot think that this can be real. With the full moon, high, white marble on both sides, reflecting in the river, absolutely silent…It is so unbelievable that when I took one of my professors there…he was an old man and he had been around the world. He had been a professor in America, in England, in Hawaii; his whole life he had been like a nomad with great qualifications so he was able to get into any university anywhere. I insisted that he should come and see, and he said, “I have seen the whole world, what more can there be?”I said, “Don’t say that until you have seen what I am going to show you.”Finally he agreed, reluctantly. I took him there and when he saw the scene he could not believe his eyes. He said, “Take the boat close to the rocks. I want to touch them because I can’t believe they are real. It looks almost like a dreamland.” And he touched the rocks, and only then could he believe that they were real, that I was not trying any magic trick on him.So I took Arjun to my house, and I told him, “The best place is the marble rocks. There is a beautiful waterfall…so just rest, and whatever you like best to eat – have a good dinner and we will go to sleep. We will put the alarm on for three o’clock, and at three o’clock we will leave. I have to take you there, and when you are gone I still have to look after other things.”He was continually looking at me with very amazed eyes. Finally he said, “What kind of friend are you? Everybody has been telling me, ‘Don’t commit suicide. Such things happen. This is very common: one falls in love…and if the other person is not willing, there is no need to be worried. The world is full of beautiful girls, and that girl is no Cleopatra. There is nothing to be worried about: we will find a better girl.’ Everybody was trying to persuade me not to commit suicide. You are a strange fellow: you are suggesting the exact plan to me!”I said, “Whenever one has to do something, one should do it with accurate planning. It takes one hour to reach there, then I say good-bye to you, and you jump. I will wait and see that you have jumped, and then I have my own work to do. I will come back.”So I ordered whatever food he liked – Bengali sweets, everything Bengali – but even while eating he was continually looking at me.I said, “Why do you go on looking at me like that?”He said, “I just wonder what kind of friend you are.”I said, “I am exactly what a friend should be: a friend in need is a friend indeed! If you want to commit suicide, I am ready to help; if you want to live, I am ready to help. I don’t interfere.”And when at three o’clock the alarm went off, he immediately put his hand on the clock. I caught his hand on the clock, and I said, “This won’t do.”He said, “But it is too cold.”I said, “Cold or not – for you it is only a one-way affair. For me, I have to come back and I have to live. Think of me!”Then he suddenly burst out, “I don’t want to commit suicide!”I said, “This is strange. We have been planning for it, and at the last moment you decide not to do it? No!”He said, “But I don’t want to commit suicide.”I said, “Think about the girl.”He said, “I don’t care about any girl.”I said, “But you should have told me before. I wasted money for the dinner.”He said, “I will pay for it.”I said, “That’s okay. So you have really decided not to commit suicide? Never mention it again! Life is going to be difficult, so don’t blame me. Don’t say to me, ‘Why did you not persist?’ I am persisting! Life is not going to be a bed of roses – forget all about that. It is going to be all kinds of sufferings and troubles and miseries. You will get married and you will have a dozen children – and then, don’t blame me! Still there is time: you just come. I have kept the car ready…and it takes just a single moment to jump, and you are free from all misery.”He said, “But I don’t want to! I want to go home.”I said, “If you want to go to your home, you can take a rickshaw and go, because I’m not going to take you on this cold night. Then I’m going to sleep; you get out of the house and find your own way.”He met me twenty years later when I went again to Jabalpur and he said, “You were right: I got married and I got into misery. You are a strange person…I have already seven children, and I know, because you have said so, that there will be twelve. I have got a woman that I pray to God not even my enemy should get. She is a bitch. And I always think of that night – how beautiful it would have been if I had listened to your advice.”I said, “Nothing is lost yet. I can still arrange it.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “The same thing: those marble rocks are still here, that waterfall is still here, nothing has changed. I will arrange for a car, and at three o’clock….”He again looked at me and he said, “What about my wife and children?”I said, “That is not your problem at all. Once you have jumped…that is their problem. Why should you be worried about that? They are torturing you.”He said, “Even after twenty years you seem to be haunting me somehow. And are you still of the same opinion?”I said, “I will be of the same opinion till your very last breath, because you are simply going to suffer. These twenty years you could have avoided.”He said, “That’s true – if I had listened.”But I said, “Still I am ready, and you are not listening.”He said, “There are problems. My father is dead, my mother is dead. Now the whole business has come on my head.”I said, “Everything disappears in the moment you jump, and if you cannot jump, I can push you!”He said, “It is better not to talk with you at all.”And since then I have been to that city a few other times. I went to his house and he was in, but somebody came out and said he was not in. And I told anybody who came out, “Tell him…go inside and tell him that I am still ready, whenever he wants to be freed from his misery.” That is my whole business: freeing people from their misery, liberating people.The last time I simply pushed the boy who was telling me – his boy – and I went inside. He was hiding inside, and I said, “Come out! You need not be worried, I have not come to take you.”But he said, “I don’t want to talk anymore, because you again raise the same matter, and the desire arises…perhaps that was the right thing to do. Now I am worried because I have so many children; now from seven they have become nine.”I said, “You make them twelve, then I will come. You finish the job, and suffer as much as you want.”He said, “Isn’t there any other way than suicide?”I said, “There is, but you have never been listening. I have been in this city for twenty years continually teaching people meditation. But you were engaged in your own affairs – you were ready to die. You are married to a better, more beautiful and more educated woman, and you are suffering with her. It is not a question of this woman or that man – you would have suffered with anybody.”A mind that is not meditative is bound to suffer in every situation: riches, poverty, failure or success, it makes no difference. For the non-meditative mind, suffering is the destiny. Only for the meditative mind who comes to know his original face, his authentic being, misery disappears as if it has never existed. For the first time a new world opens its doors: the world of blissfulness, the world of ecstasy, the world that you are born to discover, that it is your birthright to find.But you go on moving everywhere searching for joy, for happiness, for blissfulness, and you never look within yourself. All that you are searching for outside is there already in the very innermost shrine of your being.This is the only truth which is unexceptional. Nobody who has looked in has come out saying that all these mystics, sages, are speaking about something that does not exist. Without any exception, whoever has gone in, has come out with absolute affirmation.But if you can abandon it all at once, so you neither think nor calculate, then these very sentiments of discriminating consciousness are the subtle wisdom of true emptiness – there is no other wisdom that can be attained.Your very being, once it is free of discriminations, once free from thoughts, emotions, once it has become an empty sky, is the only wisdom there is.If there were something attained and something realized besides, then it would not be right.This can be said with absolute certainty: the only wisdom is the wisdom of no-mind, of a silent space. Besides that there is nothing else to attain. If anybody says there is, he is not right; either he is deluded or he is trying to delude other people.Ta Hui is absolutely right that there is no other wisdom, no other enlightenment, no other awakening than a simple silent space within you…without any stirring, without even a small ripple of thought – just a lake without any ripples, a sky without any clouds.Then you have arrived home. There is nothing else to be achieved, nothing else to be attained. Even the idea of attaining something else has never arisen to a man of wisdom.It is like a person when he is deluded calling East, West, and when he’s arrived at enlightenment, West is East – there is no other East.He is saying that it is almost like a person who thinks in his ignorance, mistakenly, that two plus two is five. When he becomes alert and aware he comes to know that two plus two is four. He will not ask anybody, “What happened to five?”A great psychoanalyst was asked, “We hear so much about psychosis and neurosis, but we don’t know the difference between the two.” The man who was asking was a journalist, and particularly an expert in psychological matters. He said, “It seems very difficult to understand what psychosis is and what is neurosis. What is the difference?”The psychoanalyst said, “The difference is very small, very minute, very subtle. It is this: the psychotic person thinks two plus two is five; the neurotic person thinks two plus two is four, but he is not easy about why it is four.”The difference is very minute, certainly, very minute. One is absolutely certain two plus two is five; one is aware that it is four but is very much anxious about why it is four – why is it not five? Perhaps the second is on the way toward the first. The difference is not very much – perhaps one step more and he will become rested and will declare that two plus two is five. In fact, the second stage is better: at least one is at ease. But knowing that two plus two is four, and still feeling uneasy that it is so, is really more troublesome.The enlightened man simply comes to know two plus two is four – and there is no restlessness. In fact, there is tremendous rest and relaxation with things as they are. There is no expectation in the enlightened being that things should be otherwise. As they are, he is absolutely in harmony with them. This accord with existence as it is, is the greatest benediction possible to human beings.This subtle wisdom of true emptiness is coeval with the great void: the void is not subject to being obstructed by things, nor does it hinder the coming and going of all things within it.This last part is very significant to understand, because many become obsessed with the idea that there should be no thought, no emotion, no feeling – that only then are you enlightened. It is true that you should attain to enlightenment by going beyond all thoughts, feelings, emotions, but once you are enlightened, then there is no problem. Then you are the vast sky; everything can pass through and does not make any scratch on it. Then clouds can pass and they will not be any problem.A man who has attained enlightenment can use thoughts, can use words, can convey through language what he has attained. It may not be perfect – it cannot be perfect – but he can use his mind as articulately as possible. Going beyond the mind does not mean that you cannot use your mind.In fact, only then can you use your mind as a servant, because the master has arrived home. Now the mind is a servant, the heart is a servant, the body is a servant, and the master can use everything the way he wants. He is no more used by the servants; he is no more dragged by the servants in their own direction. He is absolutely free. Neither mind nor body nor heart – nothing can dictate to him his lifestyle. He is beyond any dictation from anybody. He is the master of his own destiny, and this is the greatest joy in existence.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

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So Very CloseJust because it’s so very close, you cannot get this truth out of your own eyes. When you open your eyes it strikes you, and when you close your eyes it’s not lacking either. When you open your mouth you speak of it, and when you shut your mouth it appears by itself. But if you try to receive it by stirring your mind, you’ve already missed it by eighteen thousand miles.It is such a rejoicing to see Ta Hui coming closer and closer to reality, to the truth, and to his awakening. Just a step more and the old Ta Hui will be no longer there; and the new Ta Hui is naturally going to speak the language of all the awakened ones without exception. This sutra is one of the most important that we have come across up to now.The greatest difficulty with the human mind is that whatever is available from the beginning it tends to forget, it takes it for granted. There is no gap between you and your truth because you are the truth. This is such a tremendous phenomenon, but one goes on missing it for the simple reason that every search leads you away from it, every question misguides you, every answer is going to be wrong.If truth was separate from you, things would have been very easy. If the truth was far away from you, you would have achieved it long ago; if truth was difficult, almost impossible, it would have challenged your ego. The ego cannot be challenged by something which is already the case: there is no question of any achievement. If truth was somewhere on Everest, then thousands of Edmund Hillarys would have started moving toward Everest. If truth was on the moon, millions would have been attracted.There is an ancient story…God made the world and in the beginning he used to live in the world, in the marketplace. But his life was becoming a nightmare – not a single moment of rest. People were standing the whole day and waking him in the night, they had so many complaints, so many things were wrong. They were bringing new suggestions as to how things should be changed, how things should be made – about each and everything.The torture became too much, and he inquired of his closest angels, “What has to be done? These people will kill me. Somebody comes and says, ‘Listen, tomorrow there should be no rain because I am going fishing’ – and just after him a woman comes, ‘I need absolutely that there should be rain tomorrow because I have sown the seeds today and if rain comes tomorrow they will settle in the soil.’ Now, what I am supposed to do? And this is just one instance.”You can conceive the situation of poor God. He was so fed up with man that he never made anything after he had made man. It is not that his creativity was exhausted with man; he could have created many more things, but man was too much! He was repenting – why had he created man? Without man life was peace, silence, trees, animals and birds. They were all joyous, without any fear of death, without any religions, without any philosophies, without any theologies, without any wars. Things were utterly silent – but the moment he created man he committed his first and last mistake. So he asked, “Now what to do?”Somebody suggested, “Go to Everest.”He said, “You don’t know…I can see the future. Soon Tensing and Edmund Hillary are going to reach there, and if they find me there then you can be sure roads will be made, airports will be made, buses will be running, trains may be reaching, airplanes will be landing – and the same trouble will start there.”Somebody said, “Then it is better you move to the moon.”But he said, “You cannot see the future. To me, past, future and present are all simultaneously available. Soon they are going to reach the moon. It is only a question of a little time – and in the eternity of existence, a few years, a few hundred years, don’t mean anything. Give me some idea where they will never reach!”And an old angel who had been listening all the time whispered in his ear, “Then there is only one place. You start living in man himself; that is the only place he will not bother to look. He will look for you all around the world, to the faraway stars, but he will not look within.”When the first Russian astronaut came back – he was the first man to reach close to the moon, circulating around it, studying it, bringing photographs from there – the first question asked to him in Russia was, “Did you see God there?”And he said, “I didn’t see anybody. There is not even water, there is not even a single tree – there is no possibility of anybody being there. Life cannot exist. The air is so thin – oxygen is one eighth of what it is on the earth, so I don’t see any possibility. God is not there.”This man Yuri Gagarin…they have made a museum in Moscow in memory of Yuri Gagarin, the first man who came close to the moon. On the top of the museum they have written, “We have searched everywhere, we have even looked on the moon, and God is not there!”Perhaps the old angel was right: “They will look for you everywhere. Just start living in the very innermost core of man himself.” And since then God has been at peace.Of course since then you have not been in peace, because even complaining gives a great relief, and now there is nobody to complain to. In the churches, in the synagogues, in the temples, people are still doing the same nagging device they call prayer. They are still suggesting, “Do it this way! Don’t do it that way!”In the Second World War Germany was praying, “Victory has to be to the Germans,” and England was praying, “Victory has to be to the English.” But now all these prayers disappear into the empty sky; there is nobody to hear them.Two generals after the Second World War, one English and one German, were talking in a restaurant in Paris. The German said, “What went wrong? Five years we were continually winning, and then suddenly came the collapse.”The English general smiled and said, “My friend, you don’t understand. War is not all…we were praying to God continually. Our armies were praying to God before they started moving, every morning.”The German said, “Do you think we were doing otherwise? We were also praying all the time.”The English general laughed and said, “What was the language in which you were praying?”The German said, “Obviously it was German.”The English general said, “Now the point is clear. God does not understand German, he understands only English!”Although he has disappeared within you, you are looking at the sky. It is empty, infinitely empty, and you are praying to God…you will not look even for a single moment within yourself.The attraction for the faraway is tremendous. It challenges your ego. It will make you the greatest man, the first man who reached the peak of Everest, the first man who walked on the moon, the first man who walked on Mars, and I don’t see any point in it. What is the point in it? First or second or third…a man standing on Mars for a few minutes just looks stupid. But people are trying to reach to the stars.The faraway has a tremendous magnetic force, particularly for the ego, because it gives you the promise of great achievement. The psychology of the ego is contained in the word achievement: achieve something. The truth is already there, within you; you cannot achieve it, you cannot lose it, because it is your very being. That’s why millions of people never become interested in it – what is the point? You can neither lose it nor can you attain it – it is already there.Down the ages slowly, slowly it has become taken for granted that there is nothing to be found inside. And it is true: there is nothing to be found. Nothing to be achieved, because your inside has already the whole kingdom of God – you cannot add anything to it and you cannot take anything away. But your ego is driving you crazy, taking you to all the corners of the world. The ego is not interested in what you already have because that will not be a great achievement.Ta Hui’s sutra is,Just because it is so very close, you cannot get this truth out of your own eyes.Even to say, “It is very close,” is not right; it is you. Closeness also means a little distance. When you want to see things you need a certain perspective. If you put your mirror just on your nose you will not see anything; you have to keep it a little away from you, then you can see your face. But the truth is closer than anything. In fact, the word closer gives the idea of distance. That’s why I say, Ta Hui is just one step away. One step more and he will disappear.Truth is you.He has almost reached the end of his pilgrimage:Just because it is so very close you cannot get this truth out of your own eyes. When you open your eyes it strikes you, and when you close your eyes it is not lacking either.When you open your eyes it is really the truth opening its eyes, and when you close your eyes it is the truth that is closing its eyes. One who has realized knows that the seeker himself is the sought. That is the trouble: the pilgrim is himself the goal of the pilgrimage.There is a Sufi story about al-Hillaj. He was a poor man, but very sincere in his search. Mohammedans think that if you go to their holy place, Kaaba, just once in a lifetime, that’s enough for your liberation. So he collected money, sold his house, his land, whatsoever small things he had – and the village gave him a good send off.But just outside the village under a tree was sitting a great master, Junnaid. Al-Hillaj had no idea who he was, but Junnaid said, “Listen, where are you going?”Al-Hillaj said, “I wanted to ask you which way I should go. I am going to Kaaba.” Al-Hillaj looked at the man more carefully. He was so radiant – he was not an ordinary man.Junnaid said, “Forget all about Kaaba. I am here. Just make seven circles around me, the way you would be doing if you reached Kaaba, and put all your money in front of me. Don’t waste it!”The man was so authoritative that poor al-Hillaj gave him all his money and made the seven circles. Then Junnaid said, “I have found the truth within myself. In Kaaba there is only a stone; I am a living truth! Your pilgrimage is fulfilled, but just one step more….”Al-Hillaj asked, “What is that step?”He said, “The step is when you start making the circle around yourself. Still, my truth is my truth. You will be blessed, you will feel great, you will have ecstatic moments, but still it is my truth. You should learn to circle yourself.”Al-Hillaj said, “That seems to be a very difficult job. How one can circle oneself?”And Junnaid said, “Just whirl…whirl in the same place seven times, and wherever you are is the truth.”Al-Hillaj never left Junnaid. He said, “Now give me a place at your feet. I am feeling so fulfilled and contented, I don’t know why; so relaxed, I don’t know why. I have never been in such a beautiful space. Just allow me to sit by your feet.”And al-Hillaj proved to be the greatest disciple of Junnaid – so great that he became a master in his own right. Today the situation is that Junnaid is remembered only because of al-Hillaj; otherwise Junnaid would have been forgotten.Al-Hillaj was crucified because he declared, “Ana’l haq – I am the truth.” That was his crime – but that is the reality. But no religion wants you to know the reality, because their whole business will go bankrupt. Then who is going to bother about the holy scriptures? Who is going to bother about churches and organizations? Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Jews – who is going to bother with them?If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find. Truth is functioning through you. When you open your eyes, it is truth opening his eyes. When you close you eyes, it is truth who is closing its eyes.This is a tremendous meditation. If you can simply understand the device, you don’t have to do anything; whatever you are doing is being done by truth. You are walking, it is truth; you are sleeping, it is truth resting; you are speaking, it is truth speaking; you are silent, it is truth that is silent.This is one of the most simple meditation techniques. Slowly, slowly everything settles by this simple formula, and then there is no need for the technique. When you are cured, you throw away the meditation, you throw away the medicine. Then you live as truth – alive, radiant, contented, blissful, a song unto yourself. Your whole life becomes a prayer without any words, or better to say a prayerfulness, a grace, a beauty which does not belong to our mundane world, a ray of light coming from the beyond into the darkness of our world.When you open your mouth you speak of it, and when you shut your mouth it appears by itself.Even the mystics who have chosen to remain silent have been heard, and people have come to them. Their silence was as loud, perhaps louder than their words could have been. Even though they were living in the deserts or in the mountains, people have tracked them down.Something invisible joins us all into one network, and whenever some point becomes luminous, suddenly the whole network feels the thrill. Those who are more sensitive feel more; those who are less sensitive feel less; those who are intellectuals feel it, but interpret it in such a way that they miss the point. Have you seen a spider’s web? Just touch it from any place and the whole web will feel your touch; every fiber in it will be vibrating.Ta Hui is right: “Even when your mouth is shut, it speaks.” Whether you want anybody to hear you or not, people from faraway places will start traveling toward you. Otherwise it would have been almost impossible to find the silent mystics.The story is told that when Jesus was born, three wise men from the East traveled to Judea to pay their respects to the newborn baby. It is said that, in fact, that’s how Jesus got his name: when the first wise man entered into the stable where Jesus was born – the door was small, it was made for donkeys, not for men – he struck his head against the door and said, “Jesus!” Mary said to Joseph, “That seems to be a very good name for the boy.”The story is mythological. It says, “A star led the way and guided them” – otherwise how were they going to find where this small child was? They were old, they had no time to wait, and they had traveled thousands of miles. They were waiting, and a star led the way and stopped exactly over the stable. This is a mythological or perhaps a poetic way of saying it, but it has some truth in it; it is not just a fabrication, a beautiful story.First, all the three wise men came from the East. Perhaps the West was not able to be so sensitive as to understand Jesus, and that too when he was just a baby. They did not understand him even when he was thirty-three, when they crucified him, and they have not understood him even today! They worship him, but that worship is just a sociality; half the world is Christian, but that is simply politics.It is significant that all three old men came from the East. My understanding is that the light was not of a star shining ahead of them and leading them to the place. The East has its own explanations, which Christians have never been able to understand. The light was the third eye of these three old wise men – it is also called “the star” – and it led them in the right direction.Stars don’t move that way; stars go round and round, they cannot go straight. And stars are far away – even if it were to stop exactly above the stable you would not be able to figure out where the stable is because that star is so far away that the stable could be anywhere on the earth.Christians have not been able to explain what this star is. They have taken it literally – that a real star guided the way – and they don’t understand that stars are very big. Our sun is a mediocre star; it is six thousand times bigger than the earth, but still it is in the mediocre category. In comparison to some stars this sun is just non-existent. But even this sun cannot lead you. If it comes too close it will burn the whole earth; it has to remain as far away as it is.Stars are millions of light-years away; certainly it was not a star at all. It is the star that shines in your third eye, between your two eyebrows, and fills your whole being with light; it has a magnetic pull toward a man who is going to became enlightened some day, or who is maybe already enlightened.The story about Gautam Buddha is the same: A great saint came from the Himalayas. He had not visited the world for fifty years, but his death was approaching and Buddha had been born. No messenger had informed him, nobody knew that this man was going to be a Buddha, but the old man had an absolute certainty. The same star was guiding him too. He rushed fast because he was not certain that he would be able to reach there in time; he might die before reaching. But he reached there and as he was known all over the country as one of the most wise men, the father of Gautam Buddha touched his feet and said, “Why have you taken the trouble? The journey is tedious; you could have simply sent a message and I would have come. What is the reason?He said, “No, I had to come. I want to see the baby that was born in your house.”The father could not believe it, but the man was so respected he could not even ask him why. He thought that perhaps he wanted to bless the baby – so the baby was brought and the old man with tears of joy touched the feet of the small baby. The father said, “What are you doing?”The old man said, “I will not be here when he becomes enlightened; my days are finished. But he will become a great enlightened being, and at least I will have the satisfaction of touching his feet. And at least I am the first man to touch his feet – millions will touch them, millions will gather around him, but I am the first to recognize him, to see him. You can see only the baby; I can see his inner light, because I can see my own inner light.” Once you see your own inner light you start seeing light wherever it exists. Then time and space are no more barriers.But if you try to receive it by stirring your mind, you have already missed it by eighteen thousand miles.The truth that is within you, the truth that you are, cannot be found by your mind. Mind is a very low faculty. The higher can see the lower but the lower cannot see the higher.Mind’s function is to know the objective world, and it is a perfectly good mechanism for that. But it has no way to look within itself, to look beyond itself; it simply has no faculties to perform that act. It is just a mechanical device developed through millions of years of evolution.Not a single man in the whole of history has been able to say that he has recognized truth through the mind. Those who have recognized it have recognized it when the mind was completely silent, nonfunctioning…no stirring of thoughts, as if the mind was put aside. Mind is not a ladder to your being; it is a wall, not a bridge.The essential religiousness consists of only one thing; the transcendence of the mind. Immediately all the doors of your innermost being start opening of their own accord, and all the mysteries of life and existence become available to you. Once this truth is recognized, known, you can use the mind – just as a vehicle trained to express in a fragmentary way. Something can be expressed; although those words are not absolutely correct – they cannot be, they were not made for it – they can indicate. At least they can give you a few hints.There have been two types of saints, sages: one, I have told you – is the arhatas – who remain silent; it takes sensitive people to find them. And bodhisattvas – they make every effort to reach out to the sensitive people. There is no way to say who is doing better; they are simply following their own inner light. Nobody is higher than the other.The world is so strange: sometimes if truth comes to your door and knocks, his very coming to your door may become a barrier. The reverse is also true: when you go on the search and you knock on the door of truth and everything remains silent…perhaps you may be more receptive to the silent one, to his presence, than to the bodhisattva who runs after you, who tries every effort to approach as many people as possible. But both have helped in their own unique ways.You have the capacity, you are just not aware of it.The most costly and most famous diamond in the world is the Kohinoor – the word kohinoor means the light of the world – which was presented to the British king of that time by a Sikh king of the Punjab, Ranjit Singh, just as a friendly gesture. It is still in the crown of the British queen, but it is such a unique piece that it is not used, it is being kept in a museum for people to see.This Kohinoor has a tremendous story behind it…It was found in the state of Hyderabad, in a small village called Golconda. A poor man had a small field by the side of a small river in Golconda. One day he found this Kohinoor: it was three times bigger than it is now, because so much cutting and polishing has gone on that only one-third has remained, two-thirds have been removed. It was shining in the sand of the river, and he thought it would be good for the children to play with – so he brought home the Kohinoor and his children were playing with it.Just by coincidence a wandering sannyasin reached Golconda and asked this poor man for shelter for the night. The poor man was immensely happy: although he was to give him his own food and he himself would have to remain hungry, it is a great blessing that a man who has left everything in the search for truth has knocked on his door.When the sannyasin had eaten the food and before going to sleep, they started talking. The wandering sannyasin was a source of great information because he was wandering from one corner of the country to the other. He said to the poor man, “Looking at your things, your small hut, your torn clothes, I feel sad. I know places…if you sell your land and your house here, for the same price you can find at least four times more land. Then your life will be richer.”So the man sold everything, but the children carried their toy, the Kohinoor. And on the way some jewelers saw those children carrying such a big diamond that their breath stopped. They could not believe, they had never conceived that such a big diamond could exist.The jewelers asked him the price, and he said, “There is no question of price – it is just a toy for my children. You can give whatever you feel like giving and take it.” But the children were reluctant, they wouldn’t give it up. So finally the poor man said, “We don’t have anything else, just that children’s toy. Don’t disturb them” – and he moved on.But by the time he reached to the place the sannyasin had spoken of the prices of things had changed. It was years before that the sannyasin had seen that the prices were very low in that part of the country. So rather than settling there he came back home, and the Nizam of Hyderabad, the king of Hyderabad state, heard about this diamond that those children used to play with. He inquired and was informed that it was the best diamond in the whole world, of the finest quality, of the finest water, without any flaw. You can purchase it at any price and still it will be cheap.So the king purchased it, gave the man a few thousand gold coins, and the poor man was very happy. The king purchased also his field – because where the Kohinoor was found, there must be other diamonds in that part of the field. This field became Golconda, one of the greatest mines for diamonds, and the field of that poor man and that small river have produced almost all the famous diamonds of the world – and in thousands. And the poor man’s family had possessed that land for centuries, generation after generation, but was not aware of its treasures.You also have had the Kohinoor from the very beginning of eternity. But you are not a jeweler – you cannot appraise what you are carrying within yourself. A Gautam Buddha is nothing but a jeweler who can see immediately that you are carrying a tremendously valuable Kohinoor inside you. If you start searching for it through the mind you will miss it. It can be found only when mind is completely silenced.That’s what meditation is all about. Silence the mind: whatever method you follow is immaterial. Silence the mind, and you are in for a great surprise – perhaps the greatest surprise, because there is nothing greater than that. You will find your truth, you will find your home, you will find your eternity. You will find everything that you have been dreaming of, desiring, and feeling frustrated and miserable about, because that which you were asking was within you and you were looking everywhere else.Ta Hui is right:But if you try to receive it by stirring your mind, you have already missed it by eighteen thousand miles.Just a small stirring of the mind and you are far away from yourself; no stirring of the mind and you are exactly where you need to be.Just become aware of your tremendous treasure.Religion is not to make you poor, religion is to make you the richest man in the world. But your riches will not be of the mundane; they will be of the sacred, they will be of the divine. Blessed are those who are capable of knowing themselves, because without this, life remains a hell, and there is no way out.Jean-Paul Sartre has written a very beautiful small book, which is a description of hell. The name of the book is No Exit. There they do not have the old type of tortures, hellfire, etcetera; all comforts, air-conditioning, everything that they need is available. The only problem is there is no exit.So they are stuck in an air-conditioned place, with all kinds of strangers, with nowhere to go, nothing to do; everything is supplied without even asking. You just desire and you get it – this used to be the description of heaven! There you just desire and you have it, but there is no exit.It is an air-conditioned nightmare! You cannot go out; everybody is sitting on a beautiful sofa – but just sitting there. People are getting fed up with each other for no reason…just continuously in the public eye, no privacy, and the problem continuously arises, “Now what is going to happen? – because we cannot get out…”What he has described is an air-conditioned nightmare because there is no exit…without knowing it exactly, he is describing your mind. You are also enclosed in your mind with all kinds of dreams, imaginations, projections, ideologies – but no way to get out.Meditation is not a way to get out of the mind. Meditation says, “Just watch the mind and you are out. In fact, you have always been out.” Your being inside the mind is your fallacious idea. Once you stop the mind functioning, suddenly the fallacious idea will disappear and you will find you are out in the open. Then the whole sky is available to you – your freedom, your eternal life, this vast beautiful existence is always available to you, to shower you with all kinds of blessings.Just a small trick…it is not really even a technique, just a trick. You are not in the mind, but you have been thinking that you are in the mind – that is your trouble.You must remember some nightmare: that will explain to you how this situation continues. In a nightmare, you want to open your eyes and you cannot; you want to move your hands and you cannot. No exit! – and the nightmare becomes so intense…perhaps a lion is standing on your chest or you have been thrown from a mountain into abysmal darkness and you can’t even see the bottom of it…. When it comes to its absolute intensity, the very intensity wakes you up.You cannot manage to wake yourself up if the nightmare is of a mild quality; you cannot come out of it. But if it is very intense then that very intensity wakes you up, and suddenly there is no nightmare. You have never been under the paws of a lion and you were not being thrown from any mountain; you were not being crushed by a bulldozer – nothing was happening. It was only a dream, but you were thinking you were in it. You were not in it; even when it was happening you were out of it. It was only a film going on in front of you. You were out of it.Three-dimensional films did not succeed in the market. Perhaps only one or two films were made, because the working and making of them was too costly, too arduous, and they did not succeed. Some day a better technology is bound to bring them back…but I saw the first, and I was amazed about one thing. Because the film is three-dimensional, people are just as people are: a man comes running on his horse and the whole movie house gives way. The people in this half of the movie hall rush to that side, the other half rush to the other side – because the horse is inside the movie hall. Being three-dimensional, it looks exactly like a horse.A man throws a certain weapon and everybody hides his head, because that weapon looks as if it will come out of the screen. Everybody knows that it is a movie, and everybody laughs afterward when he has done his act, knowing well that, “It is a movie and we are outside of it, nothing can come out of the movie screen.” It may be only three-dimensional…but the moment the horse comes running so fast, you forget all about the movie, and the first question is to save your own life.You are out of it: the mind is only your belief that you are in it. This belief has to be broken – and the way to break this belief, I have been telling you, is very simple. Just watch – and just by watching suddenly you are out of it, because the watcher cannot be inside; he has to stand outside and look at the whole thing.And the moment you are identified with the watcher – which is your real identity – the mind loses all its grip on you. Mind no more stirring, you have arrived to the truth.This small sutra is very significant. Perhaps it may be that Ta Hui spoke it when he realized – not through his intellectual acumen but through his meditation – the existential truth. This may be the turning point from the intellectual into an enlightened being.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The InescapableWhenever you run into something inescapable amid the hubbub, you’ve been examining yourself constantly, but without applying the effort to meditate. This very inescapability itself is meditation: if you go further and apply effort to examine yourself, you’re even further away.Right when you’re in something inescapable, do not bestir your mind and think of examining yourself. The Patriarch said, “When discrimination doesn’t arise, the light of emptiness shines by itself.” Again, layman P’ang said:In daily activities without discrimination,I alone naturally harmonize.Not grasping or rejecting anywhere,Not going with or going against.Who considers crimson and purple honorable?There’s not a speck of dust in the mountains.Spiritual powers and wondrous functioning:Hauling water and carrying firewood.Just when you can’t escape, suddenly you get rid of the cloth bag (of illusion) and without being aware of it you will be clapping your hands and laughing loudly.The inescapable…it is one of the most significant problems for every meditator.There are things which will disappear as your meditation deepens. All that is false will be gone, all that is illusory will no longer exist; all that you have projected, expected, or dreamt will have no reality. But still there will be something left which is not your dream, which is not your projection, which is not the creation of your mind: this is called the inescapable. In other words, the real will remain – only the false will be gone.The meditator has to learn two things: first, to be capable, powerful enough, to allow the false to disappear. But this is not a great problem. Every morning when you wake up you allow the dreams to disappear. You don’t hanker for them, howsoever sweet they may have been, you don’t even think about them. Just within two or three seconds you start forgetting, and after a few minutes it as if they had never existed at all. You don’t cry because in your dream somebody died, and you don’t feel very sad because in your dream you became bankrupt. Whatever has happened in the dream, the moment you wake up it becomes meaningless.So the false known as false is immediately no longer a problem. Now another problem arises which is far bigger, far more profound: the real remains. Up to now, because you were lost in the illusory you were not aware of the real. Suddenly you become aware of the real; now you have to come to terms with the real.The world remains outside – the same world, the same people, although your projections will not be there. You were thinking of somebody as immensely beautiful, somebody a great wise man, somebody the most religious person: if these were your projections, they will disappear, but the person whom you were thinking beautiful or religious or enlightened will remain. Now you will have to cope with his reality. And the only way to cope with reality is to create a tremendous harmony with the real. You cannot avoid it, it is inescapable, there is no way to disperse it.That which was dispersible, you have dispersed; almost ninety percent of your world will have disappeared, and this ninety percent was your projection. But ten percent is not your projection, and you have to be with it in total harmony.Ta Hui makes a very remarkable statement. Ordinarily to be in harmony means to go with, not to go against. But Ta Hui makes harmony something far deeper – neither to go with, nor to go against. Even in going with, there is some reluctance: you are still thinking of yourself as separate, that you are going with the current, you are no more fighting with the current. But you are there – and your very being is a resistance. The very idea that you are going with the current is enough of a disturbance in the harmony.Ta Hui is making an immensely important point, and only a man who has come to this experience can make that statement. Otherwise it is very simple, ask anybody: to go with means to be in harmony, and to go against is to be in discord.But Ta Hui says, “Even to go with is a discord, very subtle, very hidden, but you are keeping yourself separate. Real harmony is neither to go with nor to go against. Let reality possess you. Just be overwhelmed by that which is inescapable, and you will find immense peace.”These sutras are important for every meditator on the path.Whenever you run into something inescapable amid the hubbub, you’ve been examining yourself constantly, but without applying effort to meditate.The first point: your meditation has to be without any effort on your part, because all effort is of the mind, and mind has no way of reaching to meditation. So if you are making some effort, your very effort is the barrier to reach to the space you want to reach.Meditation is simply a pure understanding that if you can watch the mind without making any effort – and remember, watching is not an effort, watching is your natural capacity. Effort is something that you have to do; watching is something that you don’t have to do. It is already there. It is your very breathing, it is your very heartbeat, just you have never looked at it.Ta Hui is saying that meditation has to be without any effort, and that is an agreed point among all the meditators of the world. Still, effort will disturb and bring the mind in, so with effort there is no meditation, only mind. No effort, no mind…and a spontaneous awareness that is not your work. You simply discover it as your intrinsic nature.So this is the first thing about meditation. And the second thing he wants to remind you of is that your meditation should not be something where you put aside one hour every day in the morning, or as Mohammedans do, five times a day. Different religions have different special times for meditation, but the idea of having a special time for meditation means the remaining time you will remain non-meditative.One hour of meditation and twenty-three hours of non-meditation…do you think there is any hope that meditation will win in the end? Those twenty-three hours will wash out anything that you think you are doing in meditation.Secondly, a man who is twenty-three hours in a non-meditative state, how can he suddenly become meditative for one hour? It is not possible. It is like a man who is sick for twenty-three hours and suddenly for one hour becomes perfectly healthy and then again sick, as if it is in his own hands – whenever he decides that it is time to become healthy, he becomes healthy, and when the time comes to be sick, he becomes sick.Meditation is your inner health. Twenty-three hours a day sick, spiritually sick, full of anger, hate, jealousy, competition, violence, and suddenly for one hour you become a Gautam Buddha – how can you manage it? This is not possible.All the religions have been deceiving people. Because people want to have something spiritual, they have given a toy – one hour do this and you are doing meditation – but they have not looked at the psychology of it. It is just not in the nature of things, you cannot do it this way. Either you have to be meditative twenty-four hours a day or you have to be non-meditative twenty-four hours a day, the choice is yours. But you cannot divide your life into two parts – in the temple you will be meditative and in the shop, in the office, you will be non-meditative.Gautam Buddha and the people who have understood him down the centuries insist on a meditation that goes with every action, with anything you do. It follows you like a shadow. It runs within your consciousness like an undercurrent. You may be in the market, you may be in the temple – you may be anywhere, and your inner silence remains undisturbed, unperturbed. This is the only true meditation.So first, no effort has to be made, only understanding has to be awakened. If anger is there, watch. Don’t make any effort to push it away, just remain a spectator, as if it is not your business to be involved. If hate is there, watch. And these are very thin clouds; if you can just remain watchful, within minutes they will be gone. They will be gone on their own accord.Don’t push them, because the more you push them, the more you accept their reality. The more you push them, the more you fall to their standard. The more you push them…they have a strange habit. Have you seen insects? – you throw away an insect, and it will immediately turn and run toward you. A very strange idea: the whole world is available, but it will not go anywhere else. It takes the challenge, “Who are you…?” Any small insect, any cockroach – just throw it away and watch what happens: it comes back immediately with tremendous force.The same is the situation with your mind. In fact, the mind of the cockroach and the mind you have are not very different. Their basic structure is the same. Their mind is a little smaller, a miniature; yours is a little bigger, but they have the same capacities as you have.Scientists have been very much puzzled that wherever man is found, cockroaches are always found, or vice-versa: wherever cockroaches are found, man is always found. They have simply never lived separately; they are the ancientmost colleagues in existence. Man is thought to be capable of adapting to any situation – cold, heat, rain – and cockroaches have the same capacity.Even when man went to the moon, cockroaches were found in the rocket. They could not believe this strange fate. They were going to the moon and they were well-prepared, they had had a long training, and the cockroaches were going without any training. But they managed; they came back with the people in the same rocket, without any training. They proved far superior! They had no training, and they managed a situation which no cockroach before them had ever managed.You don’t realize…the situation was very new: no gravitation, and cockroaches were flying. The men at least had belts on their seats, but the cockroaches had no belts, so they were really flying, and for the first time. They were not puzzled by the non-gravitation; they lost all weight, but they did not make any fuss about it. And on the moon there is no oxygen, but the cockroaches managed perfectly well. They have a miniature mind, but the same model as man’s.The moment you make any effort to throw away your mental stuff, it simply runs back. You can try it. Just sit for five minutes and try not to think of monkeys and then see what happens. All the monkeys of the world will become interested in you. And you had not even told them; you were just sitting in your room with the idea that you are not to think about monkeys – and that’s enough. It has been broadcast to all the monkeys, and whatever you do they will be there till you say, “Now five minutes are over. Now if you want you can remain, if you don’t want to remain it is up to you. I am no longer interested.” They will be gone…but if you want them to go that is against their pride.Every single thought, every single emotion, feeling, has its own ego it seems. That’s why people who try to fight with them get defeated. Don’t fight, just watch. There is no harm if they are there. Anger cannot do any harm unless you become identified with it – then you may do something which can be harmful to somebody. Anger itself cannot do anything; it is absolutely impotent, just an idea. Let it be there, and watch, watch joyfully, and see how long it can last without your support. It won’t even last for a few minutes. It will be gone.Meditation has to be only a watchfulness, then it is possible to have it twenty-four hours a day. Even while going to sleep, be watchful. To the last moment, when you see that now sleep is taking you over – the darkness goes on growing, the body is relaxing and the point comes when suddenly from wakefulness you move into sleep – watch up to that moment. And first thing in the morning, as you become aware that the sleep is finished, immediately start watching; soon you will be able to watch even while you are asleep. Watchfulness will become a lamp that goes on burning day and night inside you.This is the only authentic meditation. All else that has been told to you in the name of meditation is simply a toy to play with, to deceive yourself that you are doing something spiritual. With this meditation you will come across the inescapable. Everything illusory will disappear.But everything in existence is not illusory. That which is not illusory is inescapable, and what are you going to do with the inescapable? Perhaps you have never thought about it.This very inescapability itself is meditation.If you go on watching even the inescapable, you will be able to see clearly that that which disappears while watching is illusory; that which becomes even more clear, more crystal clear, which was before hidden behind the cloud of your illusory dreams, desires, now stands absolutely clear….Ta Hui is saying,This very inescapability itself is meditation…The moment you see that this is the real there is no question to be with it or to go against it. The real is vast, immense; in fact we are simply dewdrops in the ocean of the real. There is no question of us going with it or not going with it – watching silently you will see a deep harmony arising between you and the real. So meditation does two works: one, it destroys the unreal, and second, it creates a harmony with the real.…if you go further and apply effort to examine yourself, you’re even further away.There is no need to go further. You have come to the place where merger can happen. Going further is dangerous. You may start again from the back door bringing thoughts, projections; all that you have rejected at the front door will start entering from the back door.It is necessary to remember that the moment you come across something that becomes clearer in meditation, truer, more solid, then it is time to allow harmony to happen. There is no need to think what to do about it. Neither do you have to think about the false, because the false disappears with meditation; nor do you have to think about the real, because the real becomes so crystal clear, so certain, so categorical that there is no doubt in you. There is no need to go on. It is time, the right moment to allow the merger to happen.Right when you’re in something inescapable, do not bestir your mind and think of examining yourself.Because that will be going backward.The Patriarch said, “When discrimination doesn’t arise, the light of emptiness shines by itself.”So don’t still the mind again, don’t start thinking whether it is real or unreal, don’t bring in discrimination again, because with discrimination the mind comes back. Simply remember the symptoms: that which is unreal will be immediately gone, just like dreams go in the morning when you wake up.In sleep you may have been sleeping in a palace; when you wake up, of course the palace is not there, just your old poor house. The unreal has disappeared, and the real – which was completely forgotten because of the unreal – is clear. When you were in the palace you did not even wonder what happened to the house. It was completely covered by the illusory.Once you see the real, then just remember one thing: Bodhidharma says, “When discrimination doesn’t arise, the light of emptiness shines by itself.” Just wait…don’t start stirring your mind again, which is your old habit. There is every possibility you may have the temptation to bestir your mind. If you don’t stir your mind, “…the light of emptiness shines by itself.”– and he has said tremendously beautiful things – In daily activities without discrimination, I alone naturally harmonize. Not grasping or rejecting anywhere, not going with or going against. Who considers crimson and purple honorable? There’s not a speck of dust in the mountains. Spiritual powers and wondrous functioning: hauling water and carrying firewood.…layman P’ang said:– and he has said tremendously beautiful things –In daily activities without discrimination,I alone naturally harmonize.Not grasping or rejecting anywhere,Not going with or going against.Who considers crimson and purple honorable?There’s not a speck of dust in the mountains.Spiritual powers and wondrous functioning:Hauling water and carrying firewood.Each sentence of Layman P’ang is significant: In daily activities without discrimination – just remaining silent and doing whatever is needed to be done – I alone naturally harmonize. Because there is no discrimination, there is no barrier to prevent one from harmonizing. Carrying water or chopping wood or cooking food, there is no mind between the activity and your consciousness. A totally new kind of activity arises – that of harmony. You act in harmony and it does not matter what kind of activity….One of the greatest dancers, Nijinsky, was asked by scientists again and again, “We cannot believe it. How do you manage?” – because his dance was a miracle. When he would come to the peak of his dance he would take such long jumps that are not possible according to gravitation. Even the people who compete in the Olympics for long jump could not jump the way Nijinsky used to jump.Nijinsky jumped so high that it was simply not possible according to the laws of science. Looking at his weight and the force of gravity, one should only be able to jump so far and not more – there is a certain limit – but he broke all the records. This was the first problem for the scientists.The second was even more difficult. When things fall, they fall with a speed; gravitation pulls things fast. You see in the night what you call a falling star. Stars don’t fall – a star is too big. If they fell we would have been finished long ago. Our planet is so small that even if a star passes by without hitting us, we will be finished – just its heat will be enough to burn everything that is alive.What goes on falling – and it is not a small number, at least six thousand stars fall every day, twenty-four hours, around the earth – are not stars, they are small stones. These stones happened because…it is conceived by scientists that some time back – nearabout two million years back – a great star passed near the earth, and because of its passing, it pulled out the moon.The moon was part of the earth, but the star’s gravitation was such that where the Pacific Ocean exists now was once filled by the material that is now the moon. It was pulled away. The star went by, but because a star moves with the speed of light, it pulled out a great chunk which became the moon. When such a great chunk is pulled out of the earth, millions of small pieces of earth also go into the sky, beyond the two hundred miles’ scope of gravitation.Those millions of pieces of stone and earth are still roaming around in space. Whenever by chance they come close and fall within the limit of gravitation – that is if they come as close as two hundred miles – then earth immediately pulls them back. But the force with which they are pulled back is such that the heat from friction with the air burns them up. You see them burning with light, and it is just the friction from the speed at which they are falling.Most of them disappear in the air, they never reach the earth. A few do manage to reach if they are big enough – they are a different kind of stone. Because they have existed in space outside of the earth’s gravitation for two million years, they have developed different characteristics.In Mecca, what the Mohammedans worship as Kaaba is a big stone that has fallen from the sky. Those stones can be recognized – they have grown different characteristics – and they are called asteroids.So whenever a thing falls it falls with great speed – but Nijinsky used to fall just like a feather, wavering, coming slowly this way and that, not in a direct line pulled by gravitation. This was almost magic, and Nijinsky was not able to explain it because it was not something he was doing. Finally he accepted that “Whenever I have tried to do it I have failed. Whenever I forget myself completely, whenever the dancer is forgotten and the dance alone remains, it happens. Not only are you surprised, I am also surprised. I did not do it; I was no more, only the dance was there.”A meditator naturally harmonizes. All his activities are a kind of dance, he is one with them. Carrying water he is not separate from the water he is carrying; chopping wood he is not separate, he is simply chopping. Each action is no longer of the old quality, where you were the doer.Now the doer is gone, only the doing is left.And because only the doing is left, the dancer is no more, only the dance is left, and there arises a natural harmony – not grasping. Although it is tremendously blissful, no desire comes to grasp it, no fear that “I may lose it.” One is so filled and so aware that it is natural, there is no need to grasp it. It is your own nature. You grasp other things; you don’t have to grasp your own nature.Not grasping or rejecting anywhere, not going with or going against – all these questions of for and against belong to the mind. When the mind is no more there, you are neither for nor against: you are simply there, and a natural harmonizing happens. It is not your doing.Who considers crimson and purple honorable? P’ang is a Buddhist – just as Bodhidharma is a Buddhist and Ta Hui is a Buddhist – and in Buddhism, the colors purple and crimson are traditionally accepted as holy colors.P’ang is saying, Who considers crimson and purple honorable? There’s not a speck of dust in the mountains. All that could prevent your vision, all that could prevent your clarity exists no more – not even a speck of dust in all the mountains.And who cares what is holy and what is unholy? – because the mind that used to discriminate is no longer there.Spiritual powers and wondrous functioning are no more different than hauling water and carrying firewood. So whether you are worshipping in the temple or carrying firewood it is all the same, because both are done in a deep harmony and meditativeness. Both have the same fragrance and the same music and the same dance.Just when you can’t escape, suddenly you get rid of the cloth bag (of illusion) and without being aware of it, you’ll be clapping your hands and laughing loudly.He’s saying that the moment somebody becomes enlightened – just when you can’t escape, just when you are so one with reality that there is no escape, when you cannot find any separation from the ocean of existence – suddenly you get rid of the cloth bag of illusion. You are only separated by a cloth bag, and that too is illusory – it is just an idea. …and without being aware of it, you’ll be clapping… – and you will not be aware what you are doing, you will be clapping your hands and laughing loudly.I will tell you a small story to explain it.Two monks, the master and the disciple, are passing through a forest and it is getting late. They have lost their way, and the old man, the master, was continually asking, “How long will it take to reach the next village? It is dangerous to remain in the dark night in this wild forest – there are wild animals.” And he was continuously clutching his bag.The young man, his disciple, is a little bit concerned: What has happened to the old man? – because many times they had lost their way and many times they had had to stay in the forest, but he was never before afraid of wild animals. He is not afraid of death either, it is something new. And why does he go on clutching his bag again and again? And it seems he tries to feel something in the bag….The whole day they have been walking, and finally, when the sun is setting, they stop at a well just to take a little shower, wash their bodies which are full of dirt, and then have something to eat before the sun sets.The master gave the bag to the disciple and told him, “Be careful of it.” This too was new. He had given him that bag many times in their wanderings but he had never said, “Be careful!”So the disciple said: “Yes, I will be careful” – and he looked inside the bag and found two bricks of solid gold. He said, “Now I can understand what the problem is. When the old man was washing his body the disciple threw those two gold bricks into a ditch thousands of feet down, and placed two stones almost of the same weight in the bag.The old man finished his bath quickly and the first thing he said was, “Give me the bag.” He took the bag, felt the weight and was satisfied. They ate their supper and by that time the sun was down, so then they moved. But still there was no sign of any village close by, and the old man was very much worried.Two miles from the well the young man said, “Now, master, drop the worry.”The old man said, “What do you mean, ‘drop the worry’? What worry?”The disciple said, “In fact I have dropped your worries in a ditch near the well.”The old man immediately opened his bag and took out those two stones. He said, “My God, you have thrown out those two gold bricks?”The disciple said, “Yes, because they were making you for the first time afraid. And the most miraculous thing is that for two miles, although there was nothing to be afraid of, still you were afraid. Just the illusion that there are gold bricks in the bag is enough to make you afraid.” He had been continuously touching the bag and feeling….All our illusions – our friendship, our family, our society, our money, our power – disappear suddenly the moment you see there is no escape, now the dewdrop has fallen into the ocean.And in this moment, without your thinking, you start clapping and a loud laughter explodes from your being: “I am the ocean. I have been thinking up to now that I am the dewdrop, and feeling unnecessarily worried that if I by some accident fall into the ocean that will be my death. Now, falling into the ocean, I have found just the opposite. It is my eternal life.”It is time for the dewdrop to clap its hands and have a good laughter. Anyone who has become enlightened – the first right act is to clap and have a good laughter.If you can do it even without becoming enlightened, who knows? – you may become enlightened. Just give it a try!

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Two AwakeningsIn the old days the venerable Yen Yang asked Chao Chou, “What’s it like when not bringing a single thing?” Chou said, “Put it down.” Yen Yang said, “Since not a single thing is brought, put what down?” Chou said, “If you can’t put it down, pick it up.” At these words, Yen Yang was greatly enlightened.Again: A monk asked an ancient worthy, “What’s it like when the student can’t cope?” The ancient worthy said, “I too am like this.” The monk said, “Teacher, why can’t you cope either?” The ancient worthy said, “If I could cope, I could take away this inability to cope of yours.” At these words, the monk was greatly enlightened.The enlightenment of these two monks is precisely where you are lost; where you have doubts is exactly where these two monks asked their questions. “Phenomena are born from discrimination and also perish through discrimination. Wipe out all phenomena of discrimination – this dharma has no birth or destruction.”Zen is special in many ways from other traditions of the mystics. But one thing that stands out, very unique, is these strange, small dialogues: just reading them you cannot see how those small dialogues can bring enlightenment to someone.Secondly, Zen itself gives no explanations. That is one of the reasons a living tradition of enlightenment has not overtaken the whole world. I would like you to understand these small dialogues which apparently mean nothing, but in a certain circumstance, produced by other Zen methods, can bring awakening. The dialogues are remembered down the centuries; and the people on the path of Zen enjoy them immensely. But for outsiders they remain an anathema, because the context is never told; in what reference the awakening happened is never discussed.Behind these small dialogues there is a long discipline of meditation, understanding – maybe years and years of work. But only the dialogue is known to the outside world. You don’t know the men who are discussing with each other; they are not ordinary people. The awakening is possible only if they have a background which can make the small piece of dialogue – which in itself is nothing – of tremendous importance.But when you read them, you cannot believe how these dialogues can make somebody enlightened – because you are reading them and you are not becoming enlightened! Something is missing in your perspective.My effort will be to give you the whole context, and to explain not only the words of the dialogue but also the individuals who are engaged in these small dialogues. Only then will you see that they are not small things, they are the very optimum. Those people have reached to the last point; these dialogues are just a little push. They were almost ready…it can be said that even without these dialogues they were going to become enlightened, maybe a week later. These dialogues have cut not more than one week from their being enlightened.Now that Zen has become fashionable all around the world there is so much written about it. But nobody I have come across up to now…and I have seen almost everything that has been written about Zen by people who don’t have any enlightenment, but who are impressed by the beauty of the people who have been following Zen. They have picked up things which make no sense, are almost nonsense, and they don’t have the capacity to give you the background.Remember, everything depends on the background: long years of preparation are there, long years of waiting, longing, long years of silent patience, meditating. This dialogue comes at the apex, at the very end. If you can understand the whole process, then it will be explained to you how the dialogue can bring enlightenment to someone.Without knowing the whole process, Zen will remain just entertainment to the world. What is enlightenment to Zen people falls down to a state of entertainment. These dialogues are not the whole process. It is just like an iceberg: a small piece is showing above the sea – one-tenth of the whole iceberg – and nine-tenths is underneath. Unless you understand that nine tenths, this one tenth will not give you any insight.In the old days,– says Ta Hui –…the venerable Yen Yang asked Chao Chou, “What is it like when not bringing a single thing?” Chou said, “Put it down.” Yen Yang said, “Since not a single thing is brought, put what down?” Chou said, “If you can’t put it down, pick it up.” At these words, Yen Yang was greatly enlightened.Now, if you remain confined to this small anecdote, you cannot explain how it can bring great enlightenment. First, in the context of the whole Zen approach: in the eyes of Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Ta Hui, the world is nothing but emptiness. And when they use the word emptiness, they have their own meaning; it is not the ordinary meaning that you can find in a dictionary.If everything is removed from your room – all the furniture, the photographs hanging on the wall, the chandelier and everything – and nothing is left behind, anybody will say, “This room is empty.” This is the ordinary meaning of the word. But from the perspective of Gautam Buddha, this room is empty of things but it is full of space. In fact, when things were there, they were hindering the space. The very word room means space. So it is overflowing now with space, with nothing to hinder, nothing to prevent and obstruct the space.Space is not a negative thing like the word emptiness connotes. Everything in the world has come out of space and everything disappears into space. Space seems to be the reservoir of all that is….Now, scientists say they have discovered, a few years ago, black holes in space. It is the most amazing story that science has to tell. They themselves feel embarrassed, but what can they do? They have come across a few places in space…the moment any star, even the biggest, comes into that area, you can no longer see it: it has become just pure nothingness. The pull of these few places is so tremendous that anything that comes close to them is immediately pulled into the black hole, and disappears from the world. Every day, many stars continue disappearing into black holes; that was the basic idea.But then, certainly, scientists started thinking: if there are black holes, there must be white holes too. If everything goes on disappearing into the black holes, one day everything will have disappeared. But every day new stars are being born – from where do they come? It is still an assumption, a hypothesis, that from wherever they come, that place should be called a white hole.My own understanding is that the black hole and the white hole are just two sides of the same phenomenon; they are not separate. It is just like a door: you can go in, you can go out. On one side of the door is written “Push”; and on the other side is written “Pull.” The black hole de-creates; it is a death.Not only do you get tired and old, now they say even metal gets tired; even for machinery, working twenty-four hours a day is not right. You are creating too much tension in the metal. It needs a little rest to recover itself; otherwise, soon it will not be functional anymore. Even machines become old, just as men do.Stars become old, just like anything else. When a star or a planet has become too old and cannot hold itself together any more, it disappears into a black hole. Its death has come. It is a de-creation. The function of the black hole is to disperse all constituents of the planet or star – they return to their original form.The original form is just electricity, just energy, so matter melts into energy. Energy cannot be seen, you cannot see it. Have you ever seen electricity? You have seen a byproduct of electricity, like your light bulb, but you have not seen electricity itself. When it is passing through a wire, do you see anything? And if the bulb is removed, electricity is still there – but do you see it?No energy can be seen. No energy is visible, so when the whole mass of a vast star or a planet falls back into the original source, it becomes pure energy. That is why you cannot see it: it has disappeared. Perhaps it was time for a long rest. And once it is rested, then the basic constituents can again come together, can again form a new body and get out into the universe from the other side of the black hole – that is the white hole.This is very significant today in the minds of physicists. It means the universe is continuously renewing itself in the same way as every individual is born, grows old, dies, and then somewhere else is born in a new form, fresh, young. This is the process of rejuvenation.Existence itself is full of space. Space looks empty to us – but it is not empty, it is a potential for things to happen. Everything has come out of it – hence, how can you call it empty? Can you call a mother’s womb empty? It has the potential of giving birth to life. It appears empty, because its potentiality has not been transformed into actuality.Gautam Buddha was the first man to use the word emptiness in the sense of spaciousness, infinite space. Everything is just a form and the thing that is creating the form is invisible. Only the form is visible, but the energy that makes it is invisible.The Zen disciple meditates continuously on the emptiness of existence, on the spaciousness of existence. All forms are empty, no form has a self. Only existence has a self. All others are only dreams lasting for a few years – and in the eternity of time, a few years are not much to brag about, they don’t matter at all. The meditator continually goes on and on realizing the nature and the flavor of nothingness.The day he understands that everything phenomenal that appears will disappear…today it is, tomorrow it may be gone – it is nothing eternal. And unless something is eternal, it is not real.Getting deep into this meditation will change your whole life. Anger comes and you know that it is just an energy form; you don’t pay attention to the person against whom you are angry. The meditator pays his whole attention to anger itself. The form disappears, and the energy contained in the form is absorbed by the meditator.As things go on disappearing – sadness, tensions, unhappiness, misery – you go on becoming more and more powerful, because everything is falling back into the form of energy. In this state, try to understand the first anecdote.…Yen Yang asked Chao Chou, “What is it like when not bringing a single thing?” It is just customary. Both are adepts – one has already become enlightened, the other is just on the verge – and it is respectful to bring something as a present to the master.But Yen Yang asked, “What is it like when not bringing a single thing?” He has not brought any present to the master, and he is asking the master himself, “What is it like, how does it feel, when you come to the master without a single thing as a present?”Chou said, “Put it down.” Logically it is an absolutely absurd answer. When you have not brought anything, what is there to put down? But there is something, and it is not absurd. Yen Yang has asked, “What is it like,” how does it feel, “when not bringing a single thing?” And when Chou says “Put it down,” he is saying to put down whatsoever it feels like. He is not saying to put anything down; that much is understood between the two of them. How can you put down something which you have not brought? But you are feeling something – put that feeling down, get rid of it.Because all things are empty forms, you never bring anything, whether you bring them or not. It is always nothingness – either potential nothingness or actual nothingness, but it is nothingness. So don’t be bothered about it. Whatever your feeling is, there is no need to discuss it; you just put it down, get free of it.Yen Yang said, “Since not a single thing is brought, put what down?”It is not that he has not understood; it is not your kind of question that he is asking. He is a man of meditation, and he understands exactly what Chou means when he says, “Put it down.” But he is teasing the master; he wants him to say something which is not right, so then he can catch hold of his neck.He has raised a question in which anybody could be caught. This is the old playfulness in the tradition of Zen. Since not a single thing is brought, put what down? He is making a logical statement, knowing perfectly well what the master means when he says, “Put it down.” But you cannot defeat a master.Chou said, “If you can’t put it down, pick it up”But he remains in his state of pure nothingness. He does not move a single bit. Although the disciple is trying to move him to say something wrong, an enlightened man, an awakened consciousness cannot be tricked into anything. You can try it from every corner – and there are thousands of stories in which disciples have been trying to pull the leg of the master. But nobody has ever succeeded. If somebody succeeds, that means the master is not a master yet, he is a pretender.So when he asks, “Put what down?” he is making a logical statement, and he is trying to prove that what the master is saying is absurd. But the master cannot be moved from his state of being. He says, “Okay, if you can’t put it down, pick it up.”The situation remains the same. The same question can be asked again: “If I have not brought anything, how can I pick it up?” But Yen Yang understood that it was enough. You cannot trick the master into making a statement which is not according to his experience of nothingness. There is nothing to pick up and there is nothing to put down, other than the feeling that you are carrying. Either put it down…or, if you cannot put it down, then pick it up. What else can be said?This absurd statement, which looks absurd to any outsider, suddenly triggers in the disciple who is just on the verge of enlightenment the same light, the same understanding that there is nothing to carry, nothing to put down, nothing to pick up – that you are only a pure awareness in an ocean of nothingness.Listening to it from the master Chou, it goes directly as an arrow to his being. At these words, Yen Yang was greatly enlightened.I would like to give you another instance which is more clear and which will help you to understand this instance.One great king, Prasenjita, a contemporary of Gautam Buddha, was going to receive Gautam Buddha outside the main gate of the city. He had a very precious diamond which was unique; all the kings of this country were jealous of this diamond. So he thought, “What would be an appropriate present for Buddha’s coming into my city? I will take this diamond….”His wife was a long-time follower of Gautam Buddha, since even before she was married to Prasenjita. In fact, Prasenjita was going only because his wife was insisting, “It is a precious moment, don’t miss it.” He wanted deep down to show the world his generosity, his ego, by offering the great diamond.On the surface it was one thing: he is so polite, so nice, so humble, that he has brought the greatest, most valuable present. But deep down in his unconscious it was something else: Thousands of monks will be there – ten thousand monks used to move with Gautam Buddha, wherever he went – and the whole capital will be there to receive him. So it will be a good chance to show his wealth, his power, his generosity.His wife could see it in his eyes. She said, “Listen, to Gautam Buddha this is just a stone; don’t think that he will be impressed by it. My feeling is, in our pond in the palace, there is a beautiful lotus flower – you should take that. That will mean much more to him than a dead stone.”He said, “I will take both, and I will see whether you are right or I am.”He went there with his wife. And he was the king, so of course he was ahead of the whole crowd of people who had come to receive Buddha. He brought the diamond before him, and said, “I am not very rich, but I have one of the most precious diamonds, and I offer it to you.”Buddha said, “Drop it.”He could not believe it, but before thousands of people, when Buddha said, “Drop it,” he could not even resist or say no. He had to drop it. He thought that perhaps his wife was right: to Buddha it is just a stone; to you it is a very precious thing.Then he brought with the other hand the lotus flower, and Buddha said, “Drop it.”He said, “My God, my wife is also wrong!” – so he dropped the lotus flower.Now there was nothing to present. Just with empty hands he was standing there…. and Buddha said, “Drop it!” Now, this was too much! When there is nothing left, what can he drop?And Mahakashyapa started laughing. Mahakashyapa was the originator of Zen. He was really the founder, but because he never spoke, all that is mentioned once in a while is his laughter.Prasenjita looked at Mahakashyapa. He himself was the son of a great king and had renounced his kingdom and followed Gautam Buddha. Prasenjita said, “Mahakashyap, why are you laughing?”He said, “I am laughing because you don’t understand what Buddha is saying. To understand him, a deep experience of meditation is needed. He is not saying to drop the diamond, or drop the lotus flower; they are just false. Drop yourself! Unless you drop yourself, you don’t drop anything. Fall at his feet!”This was too much. Prasenjita had not thought about it. He had brought presents…he was not a follower, his wife was. But now, before so many people, it looked awkward not to bow down.He touched Gautam Buddha’s feet with his head, and this time Gautam Buddha laughed. He said, “You are pretending to drop, but not dropping! There is no need to pretend here. Either be authentic, or don’t do it. Now take up your diamond and your lotus flower and get lost. If you cannot drop yourself, there is no other present that you can bring to me.“Unless you are the present itself, no present is acceptable. Only love can be a present. Only a deep let-go can be a present. Only merging with the one who has arrived can be a present. All presents are just too ordinary: even to bring them is to show your stupidity.”Listening to him, seeing him – suddenly he was seeing Buddha for the first time. Feeling the energy field around him…he had never been silent, and now for the first time he was feeling silent – and thousands of people were utterly silent, as if there was nobody else.Prasenjita touched Gautam Buddha’s feet a second time, and Gautam Buddha said, “Now it is right, it is coming from your very heart. Now I can accept your present.” For the ordinary person, the question will be, “What present?” because the diamond has been rejected, the lotus flower has been rejected…and Buddha is accepting the present now. For the ordinary mind, nothing is transferred anymore; but to the perception of the enlightened one, everything has happened.Prasenjita is no longer the same man. He did not return home. He said to his wife, “I am puzzled: you have been so long a disciple of Gautam Buddha; why then did you get married, why are you still in the palace? When your master is moving barefoot in the hot sun around the country you should be with him, you should take care of him. You can go back home – the chariot is ready – but I have dropped myself, I have given myself as a present. I am not coming home.”The wife had not thought of such a possibility. She was a disciple, but that did not mean… But now, when the husband was not coming…she also rose to a higher state of consciousness. She said, “You cannot defeat me; I belong to the same race of warriors to which you belong. Defeat is simply not acceptable. Death is acceptable, but defeat – no. I am also going to remain. The chariot can go back empty.”This dropping will help you to understand the dialogue between Yen Yang and Chou. Chou is saying, “Don’t carry any tension. If you have not brought anything, it doesn’t matter. When you bring something, then too it doesn’t matter. So put it down. This whole feeling that you have not brought anything, this whole guilt, this whole embarrassment – put it down.”But when Yen Yang says, “When I have not brought anything, how can I put it down?” Chou then says, “It is up to you. Pick it up.” At that very moment, like a sudden bolt of lightning, Yen Yang could see what he means: he is not talking about any thing; he is talking about the tense mind. Either put it down, or if you cannot – it is sad, but it is okay – pick it up.An immediate understanding arose in him. Yen Yang was greatly enlightened.If you can see the whole background – how meditation functions, how masters of meditation have functioned…. And remember, Chou would not have said this to anybody or everybody. Certainly it is Yen Yang’s state that is clear to Chou. When you come before the master, he knows where you are. Seeing that just a small thought was preventing him from entering the great nothingness, he answered this way – otherwise he would not have. If a professor were visiting, a scientist, a logician, he would not have said that. It would be pointless; the other man would not be ready for it.That’s why I have been continually saying to you, I don’t answer your questions, I answer you. The question is irrelevant; the questioner is my target, not his question. So it is possible that the same question may be asked by different people and I may answer differently, because the questioner is different. Different people can phrase the question in the same way, in the same words; but different people cannot ask the same question, because those different individuals have different states of consciousness. I have to answer their consciousness, not the rubbish that comes out of their minds.This creates a problem for anybody who wants to work out what my philosophy is. He is soon going to be in an insane asylum, because he will find so many answers for the same question that he is going to go crazy, nuts! It is not a philosophy; it is not a consistent logical system. It is an intimate, individual-to-individual transfer of some energy, of some light.Again: a monk asked an ancient worthy, “What is it like when the student can’t cope?” The ancient worthy said, “I too am like this.”This is strange as far as the mind is concerned – the master saying, “I am also like this.” A student cannot cope – that is understandable. But the master saying, “I too am like this” leads you into a dimension which is not of logic, it is of existence itself.The monk said, “Teacher, why can’t you cope either?” The ancient worthy said, “If I could cope, I could take away this inability to cope of yours.” At these words, the monk was greatly enlightened.First the monk asks about somebody else, from which the master can see directly that he wants to ask a question about himself, but is not courageous enough to ask it.Thousands of times I have come across people bringing question like, “My friend has this problem,” and I have told them always, “It is better you send your friend, and he can say that his friend has the problem. If you cannot even accept that it is your problem, you don’t deserve any answer. You are not authentic even in your question.He says, “What is it like when the student can’t cope?” On the path, the master’s time has not to be wasted about others; in these rare moments you should ask about yourself. He is really asking, “What is it like when I cannot cope?”, but is cowardly.The ancient worthy said, “I too am like this.” Now the thing becomes even more puzzling. First, the questioner is not opening his heart, but he thinks whatever the master answers will be applicable to him too. And what the master answers is, “I too am like this.”This makes no sense.The monk said, “Teacher, why can’t you cope either?”It is okay for a disciple, for a student, but for you…? You are a master, you have already arrived, why can’t you cope?And The ancient worthy said, “If I could cope, I could take away this inability to cope of yours.”He is not talking about the student, he is not talking about anybody else; he directly hits the monk, who was hiding behind the word student.The master says, “If I could cope, I could take away this inability to cope of yours.” If I cannot take it away, that simply means I myself can’t cope, I am not a real master. Before a false student, how can I be a real master? I can expose my reality only to one who is authentic toward me. He has caught hold of the man, and he says, “I could take away this inability to cope of yours.”It must have been a sudden shock – the monk was asking about somebody else, and the master is answering him. That sudden shock stopped the functioning of the mind. Anything sudden and the mind cannot manage. It can manage only with that which is stale and old, perfectly known to it; it can repeat like a parrot the old answers. But now, what to do? – the master has caught him red-handed, cheating.A silence, a shock, but the shock and the silence have helped immensely…. At these words, the monk was greatly enlightened.The enlightenment of these two monks is precisely where you are lost; where you have doubts is exactly where these two monks asked their questions. “Phenomena are born from discrimination and also perish through discrimination. Wipe out all phenomena of discrimination – this dharma has no birth or destruction.”This path, this alchemy of Zen, has no birth and no destruction. It is one of the most direct transmissions from the master to the disciple. It does not go into long verbiage, it does not discuss unnecessary problems. Zen has reduced everything to the very essential; it has cut out everything that was not necessary.Zen is like a telegram. Have you noticed that when you write a letter, it goes on becoming longer and longer. It is easy to start the letter, but it is difficult to end it. When you send a telegram, just ten words, it is a condensed message. Your ten-page-long letter will not have the same effect as the ten words of a telegram. The more condensed the meaning is, the more striking. The more spread the meaning is, the less impressive.Zen believes in the very essentials. It has no nonsense around it, no rituals, in which all other religions have got lost, no chanting, no mantras, no scriptures – just small anecdotes. If you have the right awareness, they will hit you directly in the heart. It is a very condensed and crystallized teaching, but it needs the person to be prepared for it. And the only preparation is meditative awareness.You cannot teach Zen in universities. It will be difficult for the simple reason that the students don’t have meditative awareness, and you don’t have books on Zen which can make meaningful that which looks absurd. You will be surprised that in many Zen universities they are teaching Zen through my books, because my books are at least making an effort to make the absurd appear sensible. I’m trying to give a context, the right background, because I am talking to people who are not born in the Zen tradition. Zen books themselves are very fragmentary.I have never been to Japan and most probably the government of Japan won’t allow me. But in many universities…in Japan, the Zen monasteries have a university attached where the Zen monks can teach. It is simply strange that it is their tradition…they have an almost twelve-hundred-year-old history with great literature, paintings, poems, but they are all fragmentary. Nobody has tried to give more than just the conclusion; nobody has given the whole context.It was very strange. When I was arrested in America, the first telegram protesting to the president came from a Zen master from Japan: “This is absolutely ugly of your country – to arrest a man who has not committed any crimes and who cannot commit any crimes. Although we don’t know him personally, we teach from his books in our university. The insight that he has brought to Zen is so clear that it is not possible that the man has not reached to the same space as Gautam Buddha.“You have arrested a Gautam Buddha. Please immediately release him, or it will be a condemnation of you and your country forever.” The jailer immediately came to me and showed me the telegram. A copy was sent to me and a copy to the president of the United States.Just now they are having a great festival of sannyasins in Japan. Everybody else is also invited, and thousands of people are going to gather; most will be monks, people who are meditating, but are somewhere stuck – people who have been reading, but cannot find the right explanation.All absurd statements appear absurd only to the mundane mind. Once you have risen above your mundane mediocrity, once you can see clearly, the absurdity disappears. And not only the absurdity disappears – its disappearance will be a disappearance of your own ego too. Your mind will also disappear with it.These small dialogues and stories have served so many people in attaining enlightenment, which great scriptures have not been able to do. Great scriptures have created only scholars. There is no place for scholars in Zen. For example, what is a scholar to do with these two stories? But a scholar is perfectly at ease with the Vedas, with the Gita, with the Bible, with the Talmud, with the Torah. He is very much at ease, because those are ten-page letters and these are telegrams – urgent, immediate, not giving you any explanation, but simply giving you the very essence, the perfume of thousands of flowers. You just have to be alert and meditative enough to absorb them.If you can absorb them, in the whole world’s literature there is nothing more important than Zen anecdotes. In everything they are unique. They are small paintings, and just watching them, you will fall into such peace that you cannot conceive of getting from a Picasso. Seeing a Picasso, you will get such nightmares…but watching a Zen painting, it is very simple; you will have a great peace descending on you.There are great poetries, but not of the same significance as the small haikus from Zen. I have always loved Basho, one of the haiku masters. His small haikus say so much that even a whole thousand-page holy scripture does not say – it is all so much prose. A small haiku of Basho is: The ancient pond…And when you hear the haiku, you have to visualize it. It is so small that it is not a question of understanding, it is a question of entering into it. The ancient pond…just have the feel of an ancient pond, visualize it.The ancient pond.A frog jumps in.Plop.And the haiku is complete.But he has said so much: the ancient pond, the ancient trees, the ancient rocks around it…. and there must be silence…and a frog jumps in. For a moment the silence is disturbed, plop. And again the silence is restored…perhaps deeper than it was before.What does he want to say in this haiku? He is saying, This ancient world…and your existence is just a plop, a little sound in the silence. And then you are gone, and the silence deepens. In this way he makes the whole world ephemeral, dreamlike – nothing solid in it, except the great silence.That great silence is your very being. It is also the very being of the whole universe.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 26 (Read, Listen & Download)

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There Is No Second PersonMaster Chang Ching said, “The ultimate truth is wordless. People of the time do not realize this: they impose the practice of other things, considering them accomplishments.They do not know that inherent nature has never been sense objects, that it is the gate of subtle wondrous great liberation, aware of all there is without being stained or obstructed.This light has never stopped: from ages past up to the present it’s been steady, never changing. The subtle illumination of the spiritual light does not depend on being cultivated and refined.Since they don’t understand, people grasp the forms of things – it’s just like rubbing the eyes, falsely making optical illusions arise.There is no second personIn this small statement Ta Hui is saying that the whole of existence is one. And because there is no second person we cannot even say that it is one. This has to be understood…because the moment we say “one,” “two” arises. Then all the numbers follow.In India we have developed a roundabout way of saying “one,” not direct. The mystics of this country have never said that the world, existence is one; they have always said, “It is not two, it is non-dual.”It may seem that there is no difference – but there is some problem logically. If you say “one,” it implies the whole series of numbers, all the digits. If you say “not two,” you don’t say “one,” still you are indicating “one” without saying it, indicating oneness.That’s why Ta Hui is also saying in the same way, “There is no second person.” He could have simply said, “There is only one person” – but he is a well – trained logician, an intellectual of the first grade; hence he is also very clear not to commit any mistake when he is saying anything about the truth. And now he is in a position to say something about the truth.One of the great logicians of our times, Ludwig Wittgenstein, has written a book on pure logic. He was a strange person, verging on the mystic side, but never saying anything about it. Only once in a while, writing about logic, he would give certain indications which show that he was aware that there is much more to existence than just logic. In this book, Tractatus, he says, “One should not say anything about something which is inexpressible.”I wrote him a letter. I was a student and I wrote him a letter saying, “If you are true, you should not have said this much even. You say, ‘One should not say anything about the inexpressible’ – but you are already saying something about it. You are saying, ‘It is inexpressible.’ You are already giving some indication.”My professor of logic said, “You have been torturing me, now you have started torturing faraway people. He lives in Germany, now…it is none of your business to harass people.”I said, “I am not harassing him, I am simply saying that if he really means it then he should remove this sentence.”He was one of the best minds. Even his own teacher, Bertrand Russell, had recognized him as a better logician than himself. But he never replied to me, because to reply to me would have meant he had to remove that sentence from the book. There is no logical defense about it. Whatever you say, you are saying something. Even if you say, “Nothing can be said about it,” you are still saying something about it. So logic has its own subtleties.Ta Hui is a well-trained professional logician, but any logician – if he goes to the very extreme of his own logical thinking – is bound to come to the point at which logic has to be left behind, because logic ends and existence continues. You have to leave logic behind and go with existence. But then you have to start speaking a different language.Rather than simply saying, “There is only one existence, hence only one person” – in which case he knows he will be committing a logical mistake – he uses the same device that has been used for centuries in this country. He says, “There are not two existences, there are not two persons.” He is indicating the one, but without saying anything about it, simply denying the duality, but not affirming the oneness – because the moment you affirm the oneness you have affirmed the whole multitude of numbers.It is not something philosophical; now his statements are becoming more and more existential.We are all part of one oceanic unity.Our separation is an illusion.Except our separation there is no other illusion, and because of the separation there are all kinds of problems: enemies, friends, anger, hate, love – all the problems of ambition, struggle, conquering, dominating, becoming somebody special.But the moment you realize that there is nothing that separates you from anything in existence…not only the human beings but the animals of the wild, the trees, the birds, the stars – they are all part of one organic unity. And I emphasize the word organic, because there are two kinds of unities.One is a mechanical unity, for example your car or your bicycle or your typewriter. They have a certain unity, but it is mechanical – you can take them apart. You can separate each part of your car: that does not mean that the car has died, it simply means that you have to put all those parts together again. And if you do, that will not mean that the car has come back to life, it is not a resurrection! The car does not have any life, it is only a mechanical unity. You can pull parts apart, you can put parts together: the car is not more than the sum total of its parts.The organic unity differs in the sense that it is more than the sum total of its parts. Once you have taken it apart, something invisible disappears. Then you may try hard to put all the parts back together, but you will not bring it to life again. You may again have a skeleton, but the skeleton is not what the man used to be. You have simply taken parts apart, and you have not seen anything disappearing. But something invisible to the eyes is no more there. You can put all the parts together perfectly, but it will only be a corpse.The mechanical unity is a dead thing. The organic unity is a living phenomenon. That’s why I emphasize that existence is an organic unity. We are all one; there is no other.Master Chang Ching said: “the ultimate truth is wordless.”It is almost impossible to say something about truth without committing mistakes. However intelligently you try to express it, still you will have to commit mistakes because it is just not possible to bring the ultimate experience into words.Chang Ching is right when he says, “The ultimate truth is wordless,” – and he is wrong too. If it is really wordless, then why call it ultimate, and why call it wordless? because that too is a word; you are using two words, ultimate and wordless. Although your effort is to indicate something true – your intention is good – the very nature of language is such that you cannot manage not to commit mistakes. Hence many mystics have remained silent.It is true that truth is wordless – but don’t say it. By saying it you are contradicting yourself. I would prefer a little roundabout way: say that “Where words end, you enter into truth,” or “When you are in absolute silence, whatever you experience is truth.” But you cannot say anything about it. Just the nature of language does not allow it.Once it is understood that truth becomes available to you when you are in utter silence, how can you manage to bring that which comes in silence to the lowest level of language?Language is mundane; it has been invented for mundane purposes, for the marketplace. But for the temple there is no language. In the temple you have to be silent. It is perfectly right to use language when you are talking about things, but the moment you go beyond things you have simply to leave language behind.So the intention of Chang Ching is right. He is a man who understands what he is saying. But I want you to understand one thing: all that has been said about truth is bound to be full of faults and flaws. This is the least faulty statement:The ultimate truth is wordless. People of the time do not realize this: they impose the practice of other things, considering them accomplishments. They do not know that inherent nature has never been sense objects, that it is the gate of subtle wondrous great liberation.The mystics have always condemned their contemporaries – obviously, because those were the people who were misunderstanding them. Nobody condemns the dead because nobody knows whether they understand you or misunderstand you whether they hear you or do not hear you whether they even know about you. So about the dead, nothing can be said. But with their contemporaries, the living people, all the mystics have felt this problem – that they don’t understand.People of the time do not realize this….Ta Hui is not very ancient; only one thousand years have passed since his times. But in the Rig Vedas, which are the ancientmost scriptures in the world, you will find the same statement: “The people of this time don’t understand.”Gautam Buddha, two thousand five hundred years before, says the same thing. And unfortunately I have to say the same thing: the people of the time don’t understand. It seems to be consistently the situation. The mystic is destined to be misunderstood, and perhaps the same will remain the situation in future, because the whole world cannot become mystics….One would love to have the whole world become mystics, seekers of truth, but it is hoping too much. Even the most optimistic person cannot conceive that the whole world one day will be able to understand the mysterious experience of spiritual realization.Chang Ching is right: people of the time do not realize that the ultimate truth is wordless. They go on asking questions about it – and there are people who answer them too. There are thinkers who think about truth. That is one of the most impossible thing in the world: how can you think about truth? – either you know it or you don’t. A blind man thinking about light – what can he think? is there any possibility? He cannot even think about darkness, what to say about light.I think many of the people in the world never consider the fact that blind people are not living in darkness. It is being taken for granted that a blind man, poor fellow, is living in utter darkness because he has no eyes. But you don’t look at the fact that to see darkness, eyes are needed. How can you see darkness without eyes? I can understand…when you close your eyes you see darkness – because you have eyes. The blind man has not closed his eyes; he has no eyes at all.Do you think the deaf person is living in utter silence? Then it would have been really blissful, because that’s what all the mystics are searching for, utter silence. If the deaf person is living in utter silence, then the problem is very simple – so why go on doing unnecessary meditations, yoga exercises, standing on your head and making all kinds of contortions? Leave all this to the circuses; you simply go to the hospital and get your ears finished – and you will be in utter silence!But you will not be. The moment your ears are gone, you can neither hear noise nor you can hear silence. The moment your eyes are gone, neither can you see light, nor can you see darkness. So how can you think…? But all the thinkers of the world are doing the same thing: people are asking questions, and great thinkers are finding answers, and both are sitting in the same boat. Neither the questioner knows what he is asking nor the answerer knows what he is answering.Truth is an experience, not a conception. It is not something that you speculate about, think about, and then come to a conclusion. It is not your conclusion.Truth is something that…you open, you become silent, you become receptive, you become wordless…your whole mind comes to a full stop, and then what is left is the truth.To be showered with that experience is to be transformed into a new being. It is true resurrection. And is true because now you will never die, now you will never know death. Now you will always know what life, eternal life, is. And it is not going to be only your life. It is going to be simply life as such, neither mine nor yours.I am also a dewdrop in the same ocean in which you are a dewdrop. The moment the dewdrop falls in the ocean, all separation disappears.Aware of all there is without being stained or obstructed, this light has never stopped….The moment you go beyond words and beyond mind you know something which can be indicated by light – the closest thing to it is our experience of light – but it is far more.Kabir says, “As if one thousand suns have arisen all around” – but even one thousand suns will be simply a difference of quantity. One sun or one thousand suns…the difference is not of quality, so I have an objection to it.All that can be said is that in our ordinary experience, light comes closest to becoming a metaphor for that experience. But the experience is qualitatively different, not just more, light, bigger light. It is something that can be represented by light in our ordinary, mundane world – but even light or love or beauty are all simply metaphors, poetic representations. But the actual experience is qualitatively different.Aware of all there is without being stained or obstructed, this light has never stopped… Now, when Chang Ching says, “…this light has never stopped,” he is trying to indicate the qualitative difference. All the lights that you know depend on fuel: you light a candle, it burns the whole night, but in the morning it is gone. The fuel is finished, it was dependent on the fuel.Scientists say that our sun has been giving light to the whole solar system, our solar system. There are millions of solar systems; there are millions of suns, and every sun has its own territory of planets and moons – that is a solar system. Our sun has its own solar system, and it has been giving light to this solar system for at least ten million years. Our earth is four million years old, but even the sun, a tremendous source of light, is every day diminishing. Quantity, howsoever big, is bound to end one day – although they say it is not very close.I have heard…At a scientific conference, a scientist was saying, “According to my calculations…” and scientists don’t agree about the calculations. It is very difficult to calculate how much more energy the sun still has inside it. All is inference. One scientist was reading a paper on how long our sun is going to last, and he said, “According to me it is going to last four billion years, and not more than that. That is the maximum limit I can give to the sun; longer than that it cannot have energy.”A woman sitting in front of him started trembling, so he became worried about what was wrong with her. He asked, “What is the matter, lady?”She said, “Repeat what you said – how long is the sun is going to last?”He said, “It will last at least four billion years.”She said, “That’s okay. I was afraid that you said four million.”“But what difference does it make to you? You are not going to last even forty years,” the scientist said to the old woman. “You need not be worried, it is not going to happen in your lifetime. You will be finished.”And then whether it lasts four million or four billion years does not make any difference! It may not make any difference, but one thing is certain: it is not different from the candle. Your candle lasts one night, the sun lasts billions of years – but there is a beginning and there is an end to both. So it is the same kind of light as your small candle that burns the night over, and in the morning is gone.But this light has never stopped. The light that one experiences when mind stops is the light that has always been there, eternal, with no beginning and no end. It does not depend on any fuel. And that makes the great difference, the qualitative difference: it is independent of any fuel, it is autonomous. Because it is autonomous it will continue forever.And to enter into such light…the entering is not an ordinary entry. The entering is almost a merger, a melting. As ice melts into water, you melt into this light.From ages past up to the present it’s been steady, never changing. The subtle illumination of the spiritual light does not depend on being cultivated and refined.This spiritual light is what we mean by enlightenment. One who has seen this light has seen the ultimate source of life itself. Just by seeing it, he has become it – hence we call him enlightened. His innermost being is now connected with the ultimate.This experience of enlightenment does not depend on being cultivated. It does not depend on what you do, whether you practice yoga postures or chant certain mantras or read certain holy scriptures or do fasting or any other kind of nonsense. It does not depend on what you do – it is already there. It is not a question of cultivating it and it is not a question of making a goal of it. It is not far away from you, so there is no question of going in search of it. It is within you.All search has to stop, only then will you find it. All ambition has to collapse; all desiring, all longing, all goals have to disappear. You are simply sitting, going nowhere, not even in your thoughts…just sitting silently, still, unmoving, going nowhere, relaxed within yourself, completely centered…and suddenly it is all there.With the experience the awareness that it has always been there. It is not dependent on any act of yours. No prayer is going to help, no fire worship is going to help, no reading of scriptures is going to help. What is going to help is stopping all activities of body and mind just for a few moments being within yourself, going nowhere, just being at home…and it explodes with such tremendous force that what people have seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is just a faraway echo. It was a great light, according to the witnesses, as if the sun itself had descended in Hiroshima – it was so bright.But the light that is within you is far more different – qualitatively, because it has many aspects that no other light has. Love is one of its aspects, beauty is one of its aspects, grace is one of its aspects, blissfulness is one of its aspects. And it is a light that is not hot, it is cool.You have just not to go anywhere, and you will find it. Do not cultivate anything; what you are going to find is already there, only you are not looking at it, you are keeping it at your back. Just turn and look inside.Since they don’t understand, people grasp the forms of things – it’s just like rubbing the eyes, falsely making optical illusions arise.You can, by rubbing your eyes, create illusions. For example, there is only one sun or one moon, but you can rub your eyes and you can see three moons, four moons – it all depends on you.One man had taken his son to the pub. He was a well-known drunkard in the locality, and his son had come of age and he wanted to teach him how much drinking is allowable, is harmless. So they both started drinking, and then after a few drinks the father said to the son, “Look at those four people sitting by the side of the other table….”The son said, “Four? Only one person is sitting there.”The father said, “My God! I have gone already past the limit. But still you can learn the teaching: before you enter the pub, look all around, see accurately, and before one man starts looking like two, that is the time to stop. I am already gone, I had…one man looks like four! And what have you been doing? Have you been drinking or not?”The boy was afraid, so he had not been drinking. He was just pretending – the father was drinking, and he was pretending just to see what happens. He said to the father, “Now let us go home. You have already passed the limit, according to yourself. You are seeing double!”I have heard about another drunkard who was coming home and was obstructed by an electric pole. He tried hard, this way and that, but always the pole was coming in front of him, and he was bumping into the pole. He said, “This is too much. I have never seen that there are so many poles just in front of my house.”Finally, a policeman watching him felt compassionate, came up to him, and asked, “What is the matter?”He said, “What is the matter? I am surrounded by electric poles, so in whichever direction I go, immediately I am hit by the pole.”The policeman said, “Wait, I will try to get you out. You are certainly surrounded by many poles.”But the man said, “Just when I went out this evening, there was one pole, as always. From where have so many poles come?”And the man…the policeman took him to his house. Because he was always coming home late, the wife was tired of it, so she had given him the key: “You take the key, and whenever you come, don’t disturb me, just silently open the door and go to your bedroom and go to sleep. There is no question anymore of fighting and quarreling; we have done enough, and it doesn’t make any difference. In fact, the more I fight the more you drink.”He tried hard, the policeman could see, but both his hands were shaking, so the key was not going into the lock. This wife was watching from the window and she said, “What is the matter, have you lost the key?”He said, “No, I have not lost the key. Something seems to be wrong with the lock. If you can throw me another lock, I may be able to open it.”The policeman said, “Don’t be stupid. The lock is perfectly okay, and even if you can manage to open another lock, that won’t help. Can I help you?”He said, “You can help. You just keep the house still for a moment, because it seems there is going to be a very big earthquake. The house is moving, and because of the house the lock is moving, I am moving, the key…I cannot manage to put it in the hole.”It is not only the drunkards who see many things. Even in our ordinary experience we are seeing many things which are not there. You see a beautiful woman or a beautiful man, and you get married, and after a week you don’t see any beauty, you simply don’t want to see that woman at all – and neither does she want to see you. Love turns into hate within a week. Weekend is love’s end – you have come to the very end. It is five working days, so on the weekend in two days find somebody else to be with.What happens when you see so much beauty? Are you behaving differently than the drunk? Is the beauty there, or are you projecting it? Is it your lust that is creating the beauty? Try to understand: you are projecting the beauty, that’s why the beauty is finished when your lust is fulfilled. There was never anything in the first place. You managed to see it, but it was your biological lust that gave you the illusion.And the same was true for the poor woman: she saw you as if you were Alexander the Great, and after seven days she finds you a third-rate mouse of no value at all. You both are caught in a hell, and it seems to be difficult to get rid of each other.And it is not going to give you any experience: if somehow you can get away from the woman and the woman can get away from you, immediately you will fall in love with another woman and she will fall with another man. The same story can be repeated your whole life, and still you will not be aware that it is your projections.A man who is aware can only see the reality. Otherwise, whatever you see is your own idea; whatever you want to see, you see. If you see the reality then there is no frustration ever, because reality remains as it is. But your projections cannot remain.A drunkard is simply a perfect example of all our experiences…and not only a symbol, but almost exactly the case. Now scientists say if they inject a few more hormones into you, immediately what you are seeing around you will be different. For example, you see a woman as ugly. If a few more of the hormones which make your manhood more vital are injected into you, immediately the ugly woman will start looking like Sophia Loren: “My God, where has Sophia Loren come from!”Those hormones are affecting your eyes, your sensibility; they are forcing your mind to see what is not there. Any love affair can be destroyed without any difficulty.One of my students was in a great love affair. All love affairs are great; there is no point in saying great love affair. He was a very intelligent student, and the father of the girl was an army colonel, who has said that if he sees the boy near his house he will shoot him. And he was such a dangerous man he was known to do things like that. So he could not even go near the house of the girl.The more he was prevented, the more his mind was projecting, dreaming continuously. He asked me, “What should I do? – because that old colonel is so idiotic, he may shoot. The whole day he goes on polishing his gun. I look from far away at what he is doing, but whenever I see him he is polishing his gun as if he has only this to do.”He was a retired man, and just out of old habit, he had nothing else to do. And it was known that he is the dangerous type. One can talk to somebody if he will allow you to come close, but this man would shoot him immediately. He had told him, “If I see you near my house, then whatever happens to me I will shoot you.”I said, “I know a doctor. The best way for you is to go to the doctor.”He said, “What can the doctor do about it?”I said, “You do one thing. The doctor will take a few hormones out of you or he will give you some anti-hormones. If he cannot take them out, he can give you some anti-hormones.”He said, “My God, then what will happen?”I said, “What will happen? Your great love will disappear. There is no need unnecessarily to waste the poor old colonel’s one cartridge. There is no need. Let him polish his gun.”He said, “I used to think that he is strange – but you seem even more strange. What kind of advice are you giving me?”I said, “That’s the only right advice. It is nothing but hormones. How many times have you seen his girl?”He said, “Not many times. Because of him, it is so difficult.”I told him, “You consult any doctor, or consult the professor of biochemistry in the university. It is a simple phenomenon, there is nothing special in it. It is only hormonal attraction. But you get confused; you think you are in love. Those hormones are playing tricks.”All your senses are under the impact of your biology, physiology, your hormones, your chemistry, and your whole life is surrounded by all kinds of illusions. Only a man of realization sees things as they are.You cannot see things as they are. You can only see things as you want to see them, or perhaps as your physiology, your biology, your chemistry makes you see them. Once a man goes beyond mind, he goes also beyond biology, beyond physiology: these are all parts of his mind.Knowing the light of the beyond, knowing the truth and being the truth and merging with one organic whole – all this will happen inside you. Nobody else will know about it, but suddenly your perception of the world will change. Your ambitions for power will disappear; your ambitions for money will disappear; your delusions about beauty will disappear. You will see beauty in a totally different way. You will see life not as surrounded by death.This whole world will remain the same, but for you, it will not be the same anymore, because you have changed. Your change, your transformation is going to transform the whole world. You will see things in a new light.There will be no attachment; there will be no desire to grab; there will be no greed; there will be no jealousy. And when all these poisons are no more there, your life is going to be a life of immense grace, of tremendous joy…full of a light which will start radiating from you, which will be felt by those who are receptive to it. It may trigger the same experience in others. It can become a chain reaction.That’s how it has been going on from masters to disciples. It is not transferred through words; it is transferred through presence, through energy. All that is needed on the part of the disciple is an open heart, with no expectations, with no prejudices – just a simple, silent, open heart. And if the master is a man of enlightenment, his fire can start your own inner flame; his fire can make you afire, aflame.That’s how light has been transferred, truth has been transferred, from masters to disciples down the ages. They have been speaking, but their speaking was only a net to catch hold of your minds. Your minds need words, and if they can catch hold of your minds, then there is every possibility you will start coming closer and closer. Then without your being aware of it, any moment the fire from the heart of the master can jump into you. Then it will be too late, you cannot do anything. It has happened.Now, all you can do is allow the fire to jump into others. There is no way to escape from this fire, because in fact it is your own fire; it was just repressed with mountains of rubbish. Because you trust, because you love, because you have a certain faith and you open your heart without any fear, the master’s fire can burn all your rubbish, and your own fire can start being the way it has to be.Once you have known your own fire, your own light, your own flowering, life is such a contentment. Only one thing remains after that, and that is a constant gratefulness, a gratitude. I call it the only prayer. It has no words, but just a feeling toward existence of deep gratitude.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Who Is In the Way?When Master Jui Yen was dwelling constantly in his room, he would call to himself, “Boss!”And also respond to himself, “Yes?”“Be alert!”“I will.”“Hereafter, don’t fall for people’s deceptions.”“I won’t.”Just arouse yourself right here, and see what it is. The one who does the arousing isn’t anyone else, he’s just the one that can recognize dimness and dullness. He’s your own fundamental identity. This is me giving medicine to suit the disease, having no other alternative; briefly pointing out the road for you to return home and sit in peace, and that’s all. If you stick to dead words, and say it really is your fundamental identity, then you’re acknowledging the conscious spirit as your self, and this has even less to do with it. What I said before about depending on dimness and dullness to enter is this. Simply see what the one who can know dimness and dullness like this ultimately is. Just look right here, don’t seek transcendent enlightenment. Just observe and observe: suddenly you’ll laugh aloud. Beyond this, there’s nothing that can be said.Who is in the way? Nobody else except yourself. You are blocking, standing in the way of your own enlightenment. Nobody else can block the way, because the way is inward. It is accessible only to you and absolutely to you. But how can you block the way?It is not your real identity – because that is the goal – but your false personality, in which you have started believing as the real… You believe you have a certain name, you believe you have a certain caste, a certain profession, a certain religion, a certain nationality, but when you were born did you have any of these things? You were simply there without any identity. You were, but there was no idea of ‘I’, there was no ego.The ego is blocking the way.The whole science of meditation is to take away the ego – and then you don’t even have to travel the way. Once the ego is no longer there, not only is the ego gone, but the way disappears too.Suddenly you recognize…you are it; you are the treasure that you were seeking before. But you lost your treasure, forgot about it, because you become so much involved in seeking, searching, finding. Naturally, all seeking, all searching, all finding is outside.Inside there is no space to move; there is only space enough to be still, unmoving, silent. That is your reality.So the first thing Ta Hui is saying in this sutra is, never be deceived by priests and religious systems, theologies which tell you how to attain enlightenment, how to attain awareness – because the very how is the problem. The more you try techniques and methods, the more you are nourishing your ego. It is very articulate as far as words are concerned, scriptures are concerned, philosophical systems are concerned. It is very articulate, but the more you nourish the ego, the more you are blocking the way.You have to be as innocent as the newborn child, who has consciousness but who has no ego. He does not know that he is. Although we know he is, and he feels he is, still the conceptual idea of an ego, of I am, is far away. His consciousness is like a pure sky without clouds.Once you start collecting things from the outside to create your identity…any created identity is false, because you are not what you do: you are not your profession; you are not your emotions, your thoughts; you are not your prestige, your power, your respectability. These are all components of your false identity – hence your ego is continuously ambitious for more and more. Its desire for more and more is unending. Because it is a false phenomenon, you have to keep continuously busy nourishing it, so you don’t have any time left even to look at whom you are nourishing. You are nourishing your greatest enemy.The whole society is supportive of the ego. Then the problem becomes tremendous: your father wants you to be somebody in the world, your mother wants you to be somebody in the world, your teachers want you to be somebody in the world. All are driving you away from yourself, toward a false identity.It is very rare to come across a person who wants you to be nobody in the world. If you can find a person who wants you to be nobody in the world, he is your master.You have to understand clearly that you have to be reborn. Last time you were too small, too helpless. You were not aware of the ways of the world, and you trusted and loved your parents, your teachers, your priests without any doubt, so they were able to manage a false identity for you.I was staying in a house with a friend. He had only one son; he was very rich, and the son was very friendly to me because I used to listen to all his nonsense, gibberish. Everybody was telling him, “Shut up, go and play outside!”He became very close to me, and I asked him one day, “What are you going to become in life?”He said, “I think I will go crazy.”I said, “Who has you given you that idea?”He said, “It is simple: my mother wants me to be a doctor, my father wants me to be an engineer, one uncle wants me to be a politician, another uncle wants me to continue in our family business… And if I have to become all these things, naturally I think only one thing will happen: I will go crazy. And nobody asks me; you are the first person to ask, ‘What do you want to become?’ They have their ideas and they are imposing their ideas on me. They are all powerful; they are quarreling among themselves, nobody is concerned with me. I am not even part of the discussion, and they are deciding my destiny.”I said, “If you are that much alert, nobody can drive you crazy. Just remember one thing: whatever you want to become, don’t move from that position – no compromise. Insist that this is what you want to become.”And he asked a fundamental question: “But I don’t know exactly what I want to become.”I said, “That is very easy to find, because in fact the whole idea of becoming is the idea of creating a false personality. You are a being, you are already where you want to be. This is the time – this childhood is the most precious time – when you can be silent, when you can be inside yourself more easily because there are not many obstructions, many thoughts, businesses, problems, anxieties, worries.”It is so easy for a child to move into meditation, but no society up to now has made it a point that every child should be introduced first to meditation, and then left to his own understanding, what he starts feeling, what he is. Then that isness, that being, goes on growing, flowering, becomes fruitful.But a strange calamity has happened to humanity, and the calamity is that people who love you without an understanding at all – but with all good intentions – try to make something out of you. They don’t see the point that you are already your being, and your being has to grow according to its own spontaneity.If they really love with awareness and alertness, then they will support whatever you want to become – even if you want just to become a musician or a painter or a dancer or a flute-player, with not much chance of becoming world-famous, not much chance of leaving your name written in golden letters in the history books. I have simply heard about this…I have looked in many history books, and I have not seen anybody’s name written in golden letters. Once a man is dead, who cares? Certainly, if the dead men were writing history they would write at least their names in golden letters.Think how many millions of people have lived before you and disappeared into thin air without leaving any trace. They were all trying hard to be somebody and they were all miserable; they all lived a life of tremendous anguish. Once you want to become somebody…that is not natural to you, you are creating a great tension that will follow you your whole life like a shadow. And as days pass the tension will become bigger and bigger.People ask me, “How can we live a life without tensions?”One of the education ministers used to come to me because he was so tense, so worried…and somebody suggested to him that he should see me. He told me, “I want to get rid of all these worries and tensions.”I said, “That is not difficult. But remember, then you cannot be the chief minister.”He said, “Why?”I said, “You don’t understand the simple arithmetic of life. All your worries are about how to become the chief minister. I know you: first you were just an MLA and your worries were about how to become a deputy minister. You became a deputy minister – then your worries were how to become the minister. Now you have become the minister, your worries are how to become the chief minister. Do you think that is the end of the road?”He said, “No, that is not the end of the road. I can see beyond it. Once I am chief minister I would like to go to the central cabinet.”I said, “Then first you do all these things. When you have become the prime minister, either you will go insane…. Most probably by the time you become the prime minister you will become senile.“But with these ambitions you cannot be without tensions; and if you want really to be without tensions, without worries, without anxieties, then get out of this mad race to become somebody more important, more powerful. Then just be whatever you are, and relaxation comes very easily.”Tensions are our guests, we have invited them. Relaxation is our nature. We don’t have to invite it. You don’t have to relax; you have just to stop inviting tensions, and relaxation will start on its own accord. In your very being, in every fiber, in every cell of your being there will be relaxation. This relaxation is the beginning of meditation.In this relaxed state nobody is hindering the path. You are standing before the temple of your being, and the doors are open. They have never been closed – existence can’t be so cruel. Once you are not standing in the way…Rabiya al-Adabiya was a Sufi woman, very unique. Man has not allowed women any opportunity to grow in the spiritual dimension. Only a few women have escaped from the slavery of man, very few; they can be counted on ten fingers, and Rabiya would be at the very top. She was going to the marketplace to fetch some vegetables and she saw a famous religious man, Hasan, kneeling down in front of a mosque – outside, where people leave their shoes, because he used to say he was not worthy enough to enter into the temple of God. For years he had been praying five times a day before the mosque, and his only prayer was, “Father, open the doors, let me in! How long have I to wait?”Rabiya had heard this many times while coming and going, and one day she could not resist the temptation: she hit hard on Hasan’s head. This is very irreligious. When somebody is praying you should not disturb him – and this was not an ordinary disturbance.Hasan simply jumped up, and he said, “Rabiya, are you mad, or what?”She said, “I am not mad. The doors are always open! What kind of nonsense are you continually praying to God? ‘Open the doors, let me in’…who is preventing you? And who has given you the idea that the doors are closed? I say to you, the doors are open! It is just you who is standing in the way. If you really want to enter, you can enter this very moment. The only condition to be fulfilled is that you should be as an innocent child, and right now you can enter into the temple. But as a religious saint, with a great religious ego, a pious ego….”The pious ego is the most poisonous ego. Somebody is egoistic because he has so much money – but still he knows that death will take it all away. Somebody is bragging because he is the president of a country. He knows that at the next election he will be going down the drain – if he remains alive, because most probably he will be assassinated before that.In America, twenty percent of the presidents have been assassinated – and this is the most civilized country. Either they are assassinated or somebody throws them into the toilet and flushes it. So even if you are a president or a prime minister, it does not matter; you know deep down that soon you will be thrown off your throne. I have always wondered why the throne is called a throne – perhaps it is the place from where people are thrown. Whoever has given it the name must have been a man of great understanding.But a man who has a religious ego is the most poisonous because he thinks he is holier-than-thou, higher than everybody else, and he has some spirituality which will go with him beyond death. Everybody else’s ego and identity will be left behind on this side of death; only the saint can claim, “My ego is going to go beyond death itself.” He does not call it ego; he calls it humbleness, simplicity, religiousness. He gives it beautiful names, decorates it as beautifully as possible.But even if you have the idea of yourself as spiritual, you are not innocent. No child has the idea that he is spiritual. Take the child, the newborn child, as the criterion: he is, and yet he has no idea of any ego. That will give you the insight that you can also just be: if the child can do it, what is the problem for you?Without any ego, you can also just be.This just being is what I call meditation.Not chanting some stupid name or some stupid mantra…that is not meditation. It is good for monkeys but not for man. Monkeys cannot sit without chewing something; if they cannot get anything else, they will get chewing-gum. The people who are continuously repeating a mantra are doing nothing but using the word, the language, as chewing-gum – and cheap, because you will have to pay something for chewing-gum. Chewing-gum lasts long, but still it gets finished, but your mantra is always there – whenever you want to chew you will start chewing.Meditation has nothing to do with mantras and chantings. Meditation is simply the pure consciousness of a child regained – paradise regained. It was once yours, but you had lost it, you forgot it. Because it was yours you started looking all over the world, avoiding just that which was in your very heart. You were born with only consciousness, and everything else you have gathered after that. Whatever you have gathered in the mind after your childhood, put it aside – and you will be no longer in the way. This simple understanding, and you will find the doors of the temple of your being open.Nobody is preventing you from realizing yourself.And to realize oneself is to realize God.There is no difference.Ta Hui relates a beautiful Zen anecdote:When Master Jui Yen was dwelling constantly in his room, he would call to himself, “Boss!”And also respond to himself, “Yes…– sir?” –“Be alert!”“I will.”“Hereafter, don’t fall for people’s deceptions.”“I won’t.”His disciples were very much disturbed because he was a great master and he had thousands of disciples. This was the first thing he would do when he woke up in the morning, before getting out of bed. First he would call, “Boss!” and then say, “Yes, sir.” “Remain alert,” “I will.” “Don’t be deceived by people and all their expectations.” “I won’t.” After going through this dialogue with himself he would get out of bed.His disciples felt a little uneasy about it. If somebody else comes to know, how are they going to explain? They will say, “Your master is insane. Why are you wasting your life and your time with this insane man?”Finally they gathered courage and asked master Jui Yen, “What is the secret? Very early in the morning you start, in the day time once in a while you repeat it, and when you go to sleep again…. We have heard many mantras, many chantings, but this is simply made up by yourself. You ask the question and you answer the question – we are very much embarrassed.”Jui Yen said, “You need not be embarrassed. I simply want to assure myself that I am not standing in the way. When I say, ‘Boss,’ I’m calling to my being. My body is a servant, my mind is a servant, my being – which is deathless – is the boss. And when I call ‘Boss,’ and the answer comes, ‘Yes?’…’Be alert,’ because that is our whole process of meditation, remaining alert, not to forget alertness. Whatever you are doing, an undercurrent of alertness should continue. And the determination again and again arises in me, ‘I will.’ ‘And don’t fall for people’s deceptions.’“People are continuously deceiving you – perhaps not knowingly, perhaps they don’t want to deceive you, but they are unconscious and they are behaving almost like a somnambulist in his sleep.People are giving you ideas: somebody says to you, “You are so beautiful” – and it is really difficult to deny his idea, it is so ego-fulfilling. Perhaps he has his own design why he is calling you so beautiful; perhaps that is the beginning of cheating you, persuading you for something.I used to know a man – the whole city thought that he was mad, but I watched him very closely. He was one of the sanest men I have come across, and his sanity was that nobody could deceive him. If you had said to him, “You are very beautiful,” he would say, “Wait, define beauty, what do you mean by beautiful? You will have to convince me. I cannot let you go so easily – and what is the purpose of calling me beautiful?” And it is very difficult to define beauty, almost impossible.If somebody would say to him, “You are very intelligent” …the same problem. Only on one point he would never argue with anyone. If people told him, “You are mad!” – he would say, “That’s perfectly right, I am mad. From a madman you cannot expect anything: you cannot ask, ‘Can I borrow some money from you?’ The moment you say ‘mad,’ you have put me outside the society, you have made me an individual. Now you cannot manipulate me.”He used to be a professor, but because of his strange behavior he was thrown out of his college. I used to go to him when I was a student. I liked the man very much. He played the flute so beautifully; I would simply go in and sit, and I never asked anything and I never said anything. One day he looked at me and said, “It seems you are saner than me.”I asked him, “What do you mean by saner?”He said, “Right, absolutely right. You have got the point. I will never ask anything and never say anything. You are always welcome; there is no need to go through any social ritual. You can simply come and rest, sit.”We became friendly. He was living in poverty, but he was immensely happy. He said, “I always wanted to be a flute player, never to be a professor. Just my parents forced me…but thanks to God the college people expelled me. Now I am absolutely free, and because people think I am mad nobody bothers me. I play my flute, I write songs….”He has translated into Hindi the poetry of Omar Khayyam. There are at least a dozen Hindi translations of the poetry of Omar Khayyam – some done by great poets – but none comes even close to his. And he lived a life of anonymity. It was I who insisted that his book should be published.He said, “Who is going to listen to me? I am a madman.”I said, “Don’t be worried. I will approach publishers and I will not mention your name in the beginning. First let them see the manuscript – because there are so many translations, but your translation is not only a translation but in some way an improvement.”I have read Kahlil Gibran, I have read Omar Khayyam. He was interested in these two men and was slowly, whenever he had time, translating them. But I told him, “No translation comes close to yours, and listening to you singing Omar Khayyam I sometimes feel perhaps the original Omar Khayyam does not have that quality, that much poetry, because he was not an insane man; he was a mathematician.” Now, one cannot hope for a mathematician to write great poetry. These are opposite poles, poetry and mathematics – what do they have in common?Finally I persuaded a publisher…because he was also amazed and he was continuously asking who the translator was. When he was absolutely convinced that this was the best translation, then I told him the name. He said, “My God, but I used to think he is a madman.”I said, “In this insane world, to be sane is to be mad. He is not insane at all, but he enjoys this idea that people have forgotten about him. Now nobody expects anything from him, nobody expects that he should behave in a certain way. He has attained freedom by being condemned as a madman. He is completely at ease with himself, he goes on doing his own thing and he is immensely happy.”This man died very soon after. Perhaps he was poor and he could not afford medicine – he had tuberculosis – but he died so peacefully and so joyously…singing a song of Omar Khayyam. I was present when he died. The song that he sang last says…in Hindi, just as in English or Arabic, the body is called the earth. The word human comes from humus, and humus means mud. The word adami or adam comes also from mud.The song that he was singing and died singing was, “When I die, don’t take my body to the funeral or to the cemetery. The earth in my body belongs to the pub” – he was a drunkard – “so please let my body be put in a grave inside the pub. I will be dead but others who will be alive…if they can just drop a few drops of wine over my grave, that will be enough satisfaction for me.”You would not call him a saint, you would not call him religious – he was not, but he lived a life of utter simplicity, of tremendous beauty. He never harmed anybody, and there was a shine in his eyes because he knows something which other people don’t know.Your ego is not you.You are beyond yourself.If you are alert you will simply move to the beyond – because awareness is not a faculty of the mind, nor is it possible for the ego to be aware. If you are alert and aware, the only thing that can be aware within you is “the Boss,” your being.Master Jui Yen is absolutely right to remind himself and to remind his disciples, “But don’t forget for a moment who is the master in you.” If the mind is the master you are living in illusions, and if your consciousness is the master all illusions are left far behind. You have come to realize the reality.Just arouse yourself right here, and see what it is.Don’t say, “I will try some day”; don’t say, “I will try tomorrow” – because tomorrow is not certain. You don’t have any power over the future. If you become accustomed to postponing, tomorrow will become today, and again you will postpone for tomorrow. That will become your habit, a mechanical habit. If you understand, then just arouse yourself right here, and see what it is.It is not a question of practicing, disciplining, going through rituals – all those things take time. But becoming aware does not take time. The only question is: Are you ready to experience awareness? – because it will disturb many things in your illusory life. If you are ready, then this moment is the moment – not the next moment. Then see the reality around you: these same trees will look greener, the same flowers will look immensely psychedelic, the same sun rays will make you full of ecstasy.As far as the inner world is concerned…if you are aware, you are aware of your immortality, you are aware of your divineness, you are aware that life continues – that birth and death are simple episodes in the long eternal pilgrimage of life.All fear will disappear, and suddenly your life will have a lightness, unburdened. You will walk, but your walk will have the quality of a dance. You will talk, but your talk will have the quality of silence. Then, whatever you will do will have a qualitative difference. You may have done the same thing before, and you may be doing the same thing again; for the outsiders it may not be visible that a great difference has happened, but to you it will certainly be visible.There was one mystic in India who was a potter – his name was Gora. Even after becoming enlightened he continued to make the same pottery as he was making before, but now his work had a totally different quality. Now he felt he was preparing those pots for nobody else but for God. Before he used to make the pots in such a way that they were soon broken, weak, so that he could supply his customers with new pots. Now he was making pots with such care, with such love, that they will not break ordinarily as his old pots used to.His disciples said, “Now you are wasting more time on making things.”He said, “Obviously. Now every customer that comes to me is a disguised God. He may not know, but I know. I cannot deceive God…and I would love for my pot to serve God as long as possible, so I will make it as beautiful as I can.”Even kings used to come to his gatherings. Rich people were also his followers, and they all said, “Gora, it is better that now you stop doing this work. We can provide you with everything that you need.”He said, “It is not a question of business; it is my prayer, it is my worship.”A man of enlightenment makes his whole life a prayer, a worship. Whatever he is doing is qualitatively different, it has a grace. It comes not just as a commodity to be sold, it is a piece of art…and the customers are no longer ordinary human beings. To the person of awareness the whole existence becomes divine. He cannot hurt even a tree. Out of this awareness comes a life of non-violence.Mahatma Gandhi was trying just the opposite way. He was trying to practice nonviolence, which goes against the whole science of meditation. You cannot practice nonviolence. You can force yourself to be nonviolent, but deep down you will remain violent, and it will show in small things. He never could attain the nonviolence that comes naturally to the meditator, because he never knew anything about meditation. All that he knew about religion was the very ordinary religion practiced by the people, the masses, in their unconsciousness. His religion was only praying to God.When you don’t know whether God exists or not, how can your prayer be authentic? and what prayer? Either you will be praising God – but there are no words to praise him – or you will be asking for some changes in your life, asking for some things to be given to you. Prayer cannot be begging and prayer cannot be like advice to God: Do things the way I think…A prayer comes out of meditation also, but that prayer is wordless, a pure gratitude, a thankfulness. And it is not addressed to any particular God as a person, because there is nobody like a person sitting somewhere high in the sky listening to your prayers.The meditator comes to know that God is spread all over existence. It is better not to call him God, but to call it just the quality of godliness. He feels grateful to the river, to the ocean, to the moon, to the sun, to the stars, and it is simply a feeling in his heart. It cannot be brought to the lips through words, because the ocean does not understand any language. Neither does a beautiful sunset or the starry night…but they all understand the language of silence and gratitude.The one who does the arousing is not anyone else, he’s just the one that can recognize dimness and dullness.Who is within you? The real, the immortal, the eternal, the divine…he is the witness who can see dullness, dimness. Who can watch all the clouds that pass on the screen of the mind? – thoughts, emotions, moods…The watcher is your authentic being. He is your own fundamental identity. The watcher is your fundamental identity, and any other identity card that you are carrying, any other passport that you are carrying…they all are just arbitrary.The authentic identity is only one, and that is of the witnessing self, who simply sees. He is not a doer. It does not mean that things don’t happen around the witness; they happen – but they happen spontaneously, without any effort, without any tension, without any deliberate action, but just out of spontaneity. Just as flowers blossom and birds sing and trees grow…things happen around the witness spontaneously.This is me giving medicine to suit the disease, having no other alternative…And there is no other alternative, remember. The witness cannot be replaced by anything else. That’s why I say again and again that there are no religions in the world. There cannot be…because if the self-nature has no alternative, then how can you have alternative religions?The witness is one; it is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Jew…it is neither theist nor atheist…It is a pure clarity of seeing.It is just pure consciousness.It is just like a mirror, reflecting.Have you come across mirrors which are Christian, Catholic, Hindu, Mohammedan? A mirror is just a mirror; its function is mirroring, it reflects.Your fundamental identity is just like a consciousness which has the capacity to reflect and to respond. Whatever comes out of your consciousness is always fresh, always spontaneous, always graceful, always sincere, always true to reality. It is in accord with existence. There is a tremendous synchronicity between you and the whole.Briefly pointing out the road for you to return home and sit in peace, and that’s all.Yes, that’s all!If you stick to dead words, and say it really is your fundamental identity, then you are acknowledging the conscious spirit as your self, and this has even less to do with it. What I said before about depending on dimness and dullness to enter is this. Simply see what the one who can know dimness and dullness like this ultimately is.First, remove your ego from the way; then only consciousness remains. Now let the consciousness know itself. Because there is nothing else left to know, and consciousness has the capacity to know, it can become a “self-knowing.”That’s what Socrates means when he says, “Know thyself.” I have made some addition to Socrates’ saying because to me it seems incomplete: Know thyself, because that is the only way of being thyself. So know thyself and be thyself…and you have come home…and there is no other alternative.Just look right here, don’t seek transcendent enlightenment.This is a very pregnant statement by Ta Hui. He is saying to you that even seeking transcendent enlightenment will become a barrier. Any seeking takes you away from yourself. Don’t seek anything, so that you can remain within yourself.Transcendent enlightenment seems to be different from money or power or prestige…people think seeking transcendent meditation or transcendent enlightenment is a different thing from seeking worldly objects. It is not.The question is not of the object, the question is of seeking, and the seeking is the same. What you are seeking does not matter; every seeking takes you away from yourself.Don’t seek, don’t search. Just sit within yourself, with no desire, with no ambition, nowhere to go. Relax at the very center of your being. This is transcendent enlightenment – but you can get there only if you don’t seek it.Just observe and observe; suddenly you will laugh aloud. Beyond this there is nothing that can be said.The last word that can be said is, “Observe and observe, watch and watch.” Then you will see the whole ridiculousness of your life: that which you have been doing was as stupid as a dog trying to catch its own tail. Sometimes you may have seen it – the dog becomes more and more intrigued with the phenomenon. This is strange – it is so close…and when he tries to jump, naturally the tail also jumps, and the distance remains the same. The dog becomes almost frantic because he does not know it is his own tail.Once you are silently conscious your whole life will look ridiculous. What have you been doing but chasing your own tail – which was always yours; there was no need to chase it. So the last thing we have heard from the mystics is a sudden loud laughter. After that is absolute silence and serenity. That laughter is the last thing, and beyond that nothing can be said. Beyond that there is the infinite, the eternal to experience…but that is beyond words, nothing can be said about it.But if you have been able to laugh at your own ridiculousness, that proves you have become an observer, detached from your mind, from your body. Now you can easily understand that what you have been doing up to now can be done only in unconsciousness.I have heard…A man was suddenly awakened by his wife and told, “I have heard that my husband is coming. I have heard the horn of his car, he has just parked the car.”So the naked fellow got up and said, “What shall I do?”The woman said, “You just jump out of the window.”It was a cold night and it was raining. He jumped out of the window, and only then he realized, “What nonsense! I am the husband!” But just old habit…he must have been sleeping with other women. The wife must be sleeping with other men.If you watch life it is ridiculous, and if you can laugh at yourself, that is the last boundary line. Beyond that begins the wordless experience of silence. But the laughter of a man of observation also has a different quality: you always laugh at others, he laughs at himself. Laughing at others is a little cruel – there is some violence hidden in it – but laughing at oneself is a great awakening.Ta Hui is giving his experiences as clearly as it is possible to give them in language. I agree with him categorically that every enlightened man has laughed. That was the boundary line of moving from this world to the world of the beyond. Before moving beyond, he had to laugh – for the simple reason that he could see his whole life was nothing but hilarious. Up to now he was doing it so seriously because he was almost asleep; but once awake, all seriousness is fake. He was doing things which now he cannot do even if he wants to…they are irrational, they are illogical, they are unintelligent.Start by observation, come to a great laughter…and go beyond. This is in essence the whole of religion.The world needs religion, but it does not need religions. That is also ridiculous. You have one science, and you never ask whether this science is Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan. About the objective world you have one science, and about the inner world…you have three hundred religions in the world. This is ridiculous.The man of awareness comes to understand that religiousness is needed, but religions are no more needed.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 28 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Not “Keeping the Mind Still, “But MindlessnessThough you may not fully know whether the teachers of the various localities are wrong or right, if your own basis is solid and genuine, the poisons of wrong doctrines will not be able to harm you, “keeping the mind still” and “forgetting concerns” included. If you always “forget concerns” and “keep the mind still,” without smashing the mind of birth and death, then the delusive influences of form, sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness will get their way, and you’ll inevitably be dividing emptiness into two.Let go and make yourself vast and expansive. When old habits suddenly arise, don’t use mind to repress them. At just such a time, it’s like a snowflake on a red-hot stove. For those with a discerning eye and a familiar hand, one leap and they leap clear.Only then do they know lazy Jung’s saying: Right when using mind, there’s no mental activity. Crooked talk defiled with names and forms, straight talk without complications. Without mind but functioning, always functioning but non-existent – the mindlessness I speak of now is not separate from having mind. These aren’t words to deceive people.There has been a long misunderstanding about these two things: keeping the mind still, and mindlessness. There have been many people who have thought that they are synonymous. They appear to be synonymous, but in reality they are as far apart as two things can be, and there is no way to bridge them.So first let us try to find the exact meanings of these two words, because the whole of Ta Hui’s sutra this evening is concerned with the understanding of the difference.The difference is very delicate. A man who is keeping his mind still and a man who has no mind will look exactly alike from the outside, because the man who is keeping his mind still is also silent. Underneath his silence there is great turmoil, but he is not allowing it to surface. He is in great control.The man with no mind, or mindlessness, has nothing to control. He is just pure silence with nothing repressed, with nothing disciplined – just a pure empty sky.Surfaces can be very deceptive. One has to be very alert about appearances, because they both look the same from the outside – both are silent. The problem would not have arisen if the still mind was not easy to achieve. It is easy to achieve. Mindlessness is not so easy to achieve; it is not cheap, it is the greatest treasure in the world.Mind can play the game of being silent; it can play the game of being without any thoughts, any emotions, but they are just repressed, fully alive, ready to jump out any moment. The so-called religions and their saints have fallen into the fallacy of stilling the mind. If you go on sitting silently, trying to control your thoughts, not allowing your emotions, not allowing any movement within you, slowly, slowly it will become your habit. This is the greatest deception in the world you can give to yourself, because everything is exactly the same, nothing has changed, but it appears as if you have gone through a transformation.The state of no-mind or mindlessness is just the opposite of stilling the mind – it is getting beyond the mind. It is creating such a distance between yourself and the mind that the mind becomes the farthest star, millions of light years away, and you are just a watcher. When the mind is stilled you are the controller. When the mind is not you are the watcher. These are the distinguishing marks.When you are controlling something you are in tension; you cannot be without tension, because that which is controlled is continuously trying to revolt against you, that which is enslaved wants freedom. Your mind sooner or later will explode with vengeance.A story I have loved…In a village there was a man of a very angry and aggressive type, so violent that he had killed his wife, for something trivial. The whole village was afraid of the man because he knew no argument except violence.The day he killed his wife by throwing her into a well, a Jaina monk was passing by. A crowd had gathered, and the Jaina monk said, “This mind full of anger and violence will lead you to hell.”The situation was such that the man said, “I also want to be as silent as you are, but what can I do? I don’t know anything. When anger grips me I’m almost unconscious, and now I have killed my own beloved wife.”The Jaina monk said, “The only way to still this mind, which is full of anger and violence and rage, is to renounce the world.” Jainism is a religion of renunciation, and the ultimate renunciation is even of clothes. The Jaina monk lives naked, because he is not allowed to possess even clothes.The man was of a very arrogant type, and this became a challenge to him. Before the crowd he threw his clothes also into the well with the wife. The whole village could not believe it; even the Jaina monk became a little afraid, “Is he mad or something?” The man fell down at his feet and said, “You may have taken many decades to reach the stage of renunciation…I renounce the world, I renounce everything. I am your disciple – initiate me.”His name was Shantinath, and shanti means peace. It often happens…if you see an ugly woman, most probably her name will be Sunderbhai, which means beautiful woman. In India people have a strange way…to the blind man they give the name Nayan Sukh. Nayan Sukh means one whose eyes give him great pleasure.The Jaina monk said, “You have a beautiful name. I will not change it; I will keep it, but from this moment you have to remember that peace has to become your very vibration.”The man disciplined himself, stilled his mind, fasted long, tortured himself, and soon became more famous than his master. Angry people, arrogant people, egoistic people can do things which peaceful people will take a little time to do. He became very famous, and thousands of people used to come just to touch his feet.After twenty years he was in the capital. A man from his village had come for some purpose, and he thought, “It will be good to go and see what transformation has happened to Shantinath. So many stories are heard – that he has become a totally new man, that his old self is gone and a new, fresh being has arisen in him, that he really has become peace, silence, tranquility.”So the man went with great respect. But when he saw Muni Shantinath, seeing his face, his eyes, he could not think that there had been any change. There was none of the grace which necessarily radiates from a mind which has become silent. Those eyes were still as egoistic – in fact they had become more pointedly egoistic. The man’s presence was even more ugly than it used to be.Still, the man went close. Shantinath recognized the man, who had been his neighbor – but now it was beneath his dignity to recognize him. The man also saw that Shantinath had recognized him, but he was pretending that he did not. He thought, “That shows much.” He went close by Shantinath and asked, “Can I ask you a question? What is your name?”Naturally, great anger arose in Shantinath because he knew that this man knew perfectly well what his name was. But still he kept himself in control, and he said, “My name is Muni Shantinath.”The man said, “It is a beautiful name – but my memory is very short, can you repeat it again? I have forgotten…what name did you say?”This was too much. Muni Shantinath used to carry a staff. He took the staff in his hand…he forgot everything – twenty years of controlling the mind – and he said, “Ask again and I will show you who I am. Have you forgotten? – I killed my wife, I am the same man.”Only then did he recognize what had happened…in a single moment of unconsciousness he realized that twenty years have gone down the drain; he has not changed at all. But millions of people feel great silence in him… Yes, he has become very controlled, he keeps himself repressed, and it has paid off. So much respect and he has no qualification for that respect – so much honor, even kings come to touch his feet.Your so-called saints are nothing but controlled animals. The mind is nothing but a long heritage of all your animal past. You can control it, but the controlled mind is not the awakened mind.The process of controlling and repressing and disciplining is taught by all the religions, and because of their fallacious teaching humanity has not moved a single inch – it remains barbarous. Any moment people start killing each other. It does not take a single moment to lose themselves; they forget completely that they are human beings, and something much more, something better is expected of them. There have been very few people who have been able to avoid this deception of controlling mind and believing that they have attained mindlessness.To attain mindlessness a totally different process is involved: I call it the ultimate alchemy. It consists only of a single element – that of watchfulness.Gautam Buddha is passing through a town when a fly comes and sits on his forehead. He is talking to his companion, Ananda, and he just goes on talking and moves his hand to throw off the fly. Then suddenly he recognizes that his movement of the hand has been unconscious, mechanical. Because he was talking consciously to Ananda, the hand moved the fly mechanically. He stops and although now there is no fly, he moves his hand again consciously.Ananda says, “What are you doing? The fly has gone away…”Gautam Buddha says, “The fly has gone away…but I have committed a sin, because I did it in unconsciousness.”The English word sin is used only by Gautam Buddha in its right meaning. The word sin originates in the roots which mean forgetfulness, unawareness, unwatchfulness, doing things mechanically – and our whole life is almost mechanical. We go on doing things from morning to evening, from evening to morning, like robots.A man who wants to enter into the world of mindlessness has to learn only one thing – a single step and the journey is over. That single step is to do everything watchfully. You move your hand watchfully; you open your eyes watchfully; you walk, you take your steps alert, aware; you eat, you drink, but never allow mechanicalness to take possession over you. This is the only alchemical secret of transformation.A man who can do everything fully consciously becomes a luminous phenomenon. He is all light, and his whole life is full of fragrance and flowers. The mechanical man lives in dark holes, dirty holes. He does not know the world of light; he is like a blind man. The man of watchfulness is really the man who has eyes.Ta Hui slowly, slowly is penetrating into the deeper secrets of inner transformation. He says,Though you may not fully know whether the teachers of the various localities are wrong or right, if your own basis is solid and genuine, the poisons of wrong doctrines will not be able to harm you…He says it is useless to think who is right and who is wrong. There are thousands of doctrines, hundreds of philosophies, and if you go on searching for truth in those words, you will be lost in a jungle where you cannot find the path. All that you know is to attain to a solid basis within yourself.…”keeping the mind still,” and “forgetting concerns” included. If you always “forget concerns” and “keep the mind still,” without smashing the mind of birth and death, then the delusive influences of form, sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness will get their way, and you will inevitably be dividing emptiness into two.Let go and make yourself vast and expansive….It is not a question of controlling yourself separate from existence; it is a question of letting-go and becoming vast – as vast as existence itself. And in watchfulness you become infinite: that is the only thing within you which has no limits.Just have a look at your watching, witnessing. It is unlimited. No beginning, no end…it is formless.This absolute stillness of the mind is exactly no-mind or mindlessness. It is not control, it is not discipline; it is not that you are putting all your pressure on your mind and keeping it silent. No, it is simply not there. The house is empty. There is nobody to control and there is nobody to be controlled. All concerns for control have disappeared into a simple watchfulness. This watchfulness is expansive. Once you have tasted it a little, it goes on expanding to the very limits of the universe.When old habits suddenly arise, don’t use your mind to repress them. At just such a time, it’s like a snowflake on a red-hot stove.He is reminding you that even when you are moving on the path of watchfulness, sometimes old habits may revive. But don’t be concerned; they are like snowflakes on a red-hot stove, they will disappear of their own accord. You simply watch. Don’t get concerned, don’t get disturbed, don’t be worried.Sometimes there will be anger, sometimes there will be a desire, sometimes there will be an ambition, but they cannot disturb your watchfulness. They will come and they will go without leaving a trace on your mirror like purity. But you have only to remember one thing: not to start fighting with them, smashing them, destroying them, throwing them away. It comes very naturally to the mind that if something wrong is happening, jump on it and destroy it. This is the only thing you have to be aware of, because this is what never allows a man to get beyond the mind. Old habits will come – and old habits are very old, many, many lives old. Your awareness is very fresh and very new; your mechanicalness is ancient, so it is very natural that it will come back.Somebody insults you – you don’t have to be angry, but suddenly you find anger arising. It is not an effort, it is just an old habit, an old reaction. Don’t fight with it, don’t try to smile and hide it. Just watch it, and it will come and it will go…like a snowflake on a red-hot stove.For those with a discerning eye and a familiar hand, one leap and they leap clear. Only then do they know lazy Jung’s saying: Right when using mind, there’s no mental activity.If a man has learned the art of watchfulness he can use his mind too, and still he has no mental activity.I am talking to you, and I am using my mind because there is no other way. Mind is the only way to convey any message in words; that is the only mechanism available. But my mind is absolutely silent, there is no mental activity: I’m not thinking what I’m going to say, and I’m not thinking what I have said. I’m simply responding to Ta Hui spontaneously without bringing myself into it.It is as if you go into the mountains and you shout and the mountains echo: the mountains are not doing any mental activity, they are simply echoing. When I am talking on Ta Hui, I am just a mountain echoing.Right when using mind, there’s no mental activity. Crooked talk defiled with names and forms, straight talk without complications. Without mind but functioning…This is a strange experience, when you can use mind without any mental activity…Without mind but functioning, always functioning but non-existent.I was from my very childhood in love with silence. As long as I could manage I would just sit silently. Naturally my family used to think that I was going to be good for nothing – and they were right. I certainly proved good for nothing, but I don’t repent it.It came to such a point that sometimes I would be sitting and my mother would come to me and say something like, “There seems to be nobody in the whole house. I need somebody to go to the market to fetch some vegetables.” I was sitting in front of her, and I would say, “If I see somebody I will tell….”It was accepted that my presence meant nothing; whether I was there or not, it did not matter. Once or twice they tried and then they found that “it is better to leave him out, and not take any notice of him” – because in the morning they would send me to fetch vegetables, and in the evening I would come to ask, “I have forgotten for what you had sent me, and now the market is closed…” In villages the vegetable markets close by the evening, and the villagers go back to their villages.My mother said, “It is not your fault, it is our fault. The whole day we have been waiting, but in the first place we should not have asked you. Where have you been?”I said, “As I went out of the house, just close by there was a very beautiful bodhi tree” – the kind of tree under which Gautam Buddha became awakened. The tree got the name bodhi tree – or in English, bo tree – because of Gautam Buddha. One does not know what it used to be called before Gautam Buddha; it must have had some name, but after Buddha it became associated with his name.There was a beautiful bodhi tree, and it was so tempting for me. There used to be always such silence, such coolness underneath it, nobody to disturb me, that I could not pass it without sitting under it for some time. And those moments of peace, I think sometimes may have stretched the whole day.After just a few disappointments they thought, “It is better not to bother him.” And I was immensely happy that they had accepted the fact that I am almost non-existent. It gave me tremendous freedom. Nobody expected anything from me. When nobody expects anything from you, you fall into a silence… The world has accepted you; now there is no expectation from you.When sometimes I was late coming home, they used to search for me in two places. One was the bodhi tree – and because they started searching for me under the bodhi tree, I started climbing the tree and sitting in the top of it. They would come and they would look around and say, “He does not seem to be here.”And I myself would nod; I said, “Yes, that’s true. I’m not here.”But I was soon discovered, because somebody saw me climbing and told them, “He has been deceiving you. He is always here, most of the time sitting in the tree” – so I had to go a little further.There used to be a Mohammedan cemetery… Now people ordinarily don’t go to graveyards. Of course, everybody has to go once, but except that, people don’t like going to graveyards. So that was the most silent place…because dead people don’t talk, they don’t create nuisance, they don’t ask you unnecessary questions, they don’t even ask you who you are or for introductions.I used to sit in the Mohammedan graveyard. It was a big place, with many graves, with trees, very shadowy trees. When my father came to know that I was sitting there he said, “This is too much!” He came one day to find me and he said, “You can start sitting in the bodhi tree, or under the bodhi tree, and nobody will disturb you. This is too much, this is dangerous – and in fact, when somebody goes to the graveyard he should take a bath and change his clothes. You have been sitting here the whole day and sometimes at night, and when you come home we don’t know from where you are coming.”This is usual, that when you come back from the graveyard… Ordinarily nobody goes there unless they are sent, and they have to go; so, reluctantly they go. From the graveyard people normally go directly to the river to take a bath, to change their clothes, and only then do they enter the house. So my father said, “I don’t know how long you have been doing this.”I said, “Since you disturbed me on the bodhi tree. I had to find some place…” And I told him, “Even you will enjoy it once in a while. When you get tired and too tense, just come here – no dead man disturbs anybody.”He said, “Don’t talk to me about dead men – and particularly in a Mohammedan grave…” Mohammedans are poor; their graves are mud graves. In the rain, sometimes a dead body will appear. The mud has washed away and you can see the dead body – somebody’s head is showing, somebody’s leg is showing. He said, “Don’t ever tell me to go there. Just the idea that one day I will be in such a position, with my head showing out of a grave, makes me feel so frightened…you are a strange boy!”I said, “What is wrong with it? The poor fellow is dead, he cannot do anything. It is raining, he cannot manage to have an umbrella, what can he do? If one of his legs is showing, what can he do? He cannot pull it in – if he pulls it in then too there will be trouble, so he keeps silent and lets things be as they are.”A love of silence and a love of being absent has helped me so tremendously that I can understand when he says,…Always functioning but non-existent – the mindlessness I speak of now is not separate from having mind. These are not words to deceive people.Ta Hui is saying, “I am not using these words to deceive anyone; I am not trying to show my knowledge; I am not trying to pretend that I am more knowledgeable than you are. I am saying these words just to share my experience that no-mind and mind can exist together. There should be no repressive methods used, only pure watchfulness…and slowly, slowly mind loses all content. It becomes no-mind.”So mindlessness and mind are not separate. Mindlessness is mind without any content, without any thought. It is just like a mirror not reflecting anything.The silence of being a mirror not reflecting anything is the greatest bliss that existence allows man to have. And from there things go on expanding – mysteries upon mysteries…no questions, no answers, but tremendous experiences…nourishing, fulfilling, giving contentment to the hungry soul which has been wandering for lives upon lives.It is time to stop this wandering.To stop this wandering there is a simple method, and that is to start watching your mind, your body, your actions. Whatever you are doing or not doing, one thing you have to be alert of – that you are watching. Don’t lose the watcher – then it doesn’t matter whether you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Jaina or a Buddhist.The watcher is no one.It is just pure consciousness.And this pure consciousness can only bring a new humanity, a new world, where people will not discriminate against each other for stupid reasons. Nations, races, religions, doctrines, ideologies – those are just for children to play with, not for mature people. For mature people there is only one thing in existence, and that is watchfulness.…A monk is going to spread Gautam Buddha’s message. He himself is not enlightened yet; that’s why Gautam Buddha calls him and tells him, “Remember, I have to say this because you are not enlightened yet…you are articulate, you speak well, you can spread the message. You may not be able to sow the seeds but you may be able to attract a few people to come to me – but use this opportunity also for your own growth.”The monk asked, “What can I do, how can I use this opportunity?”And Buddha said, “There is only one thing that can be done in every opportunity, in every situation, and that is watchfulness. You will sometimes find people irritated by you, angry because you have hurt their ideologies, their doctrines, their prejudices. Remain silent and watchful. You may have days when you cannot get food because the people are against you, they will not even give you water. Watch…watch your hunger, watch your thirst…but don’t get irritated, don’t get annoyed. What you will be teaching people is of less importance than your own watchfulness.If you come back to me watchful, I will be immensely joyful. How many people you approached does not matter; how many people you spoke to does not matter. What ultimately matters is whether you have come home, whether you yourself have found the solid basis of witnessing. Then all else is insignificant.”This is the only meditation there is; all other meditations are variations of the same phenomenon.So this sutra of Ta Hui is one of the most fundamental ones.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 29 (Read, Listen & Download)

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One SuchnessTo take up this great affair, you must have a determined will. If you’re half believing and half in doubt, there’ll be no connection. An ancient worthy said, “Studying the path is like drilling for fire. You still can’t stop when you get smoke: only when sparks appear is the return home complete.” Want to know where it’s complete? – it’s the worlds of self and the worlds of others as one suchness.FaithBuddha said, “Faith can forever destroy the root of affliction; faith can focus you on the virtues of buddhahood.” He also said, “Faith can transcend the numerous roads of delusion, and display the path of unexcelled liberation.”If you can believe directly that this mind has definitely attained enlightenment from the beginning, and abruptly forget all your views, then these roads of delusion themselves are the route of enlightenment, by which the person escapes from birth and death.One SuchnessIt is a special dimension Gautam Buddha has opened up. Nobody before him has ever talked about suchness. It contains so much that it has to be understood in its totality. If you have understood suchness in its totality, there remains nothing else to understand.The mind is always questioning, doubting, deciding what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false. In other words, the mind is always in a division and in a conflict. In yet other words, the mind is not at ease with existence.Suchness means to be at ease with existence. The trees are green and the roses are red – what can you do? There are murderers and there are great saints. If you don’t distinguish, if you simply accept the fact that this is so – one tree is tall and one is small, existence allows all varieties, expresses itself in diverse ways – if you are at ease with it all, with the saint, with the sinner, you have attained buddhahood.If you have no condemnation for the sinner and no admiration for the saint, you have transcended both – you have come to one suchness. The world of two, the world of dualities, has dropped away from you.And the moment the world of two, the world of dualities, is no more there, where are you? Where is your mind? Where is your ego? They are all gone in a single blow of the sword. Suddenly the whole existence becomes part of your heartbeat, and your heartbeat becomes the heartbeat of the whole universe. Then birds start singing, and it is not the birds, but you. Then the trees stand in silence – it is not the trees, but you. Then the sunlit peaks of the Himalayas and the tidal waves of the oceans are no more objects; they are your very subjectivity.This state Buddha calls “one suchness.” There is no need of any God; there is no need of a certain code of morality, there is no need of any sense of right and wrong. Who are you to decide? – you are simply here to rejoice and to join in the dance. In this dance the sinner is as much a part as the saint. Just think of a world without sinners, and it will be so boring, so utterly dry, just a desert, unending.Life as it is…this faraway cuckoo calling you is your own heart. Once this is not only a theory but an experience – that you start dancing with the wind when the trees dance, that you start blossoming with the flowers when they open their petals, that when suddenly a cuckoo calls it is your own song – then there is no question of discrimination: right is right, and so is wrong.The ultimate experience of consciousness is that this whole drama needs contradictions. If you take away days, nights will be very poor. If you take away nights, days will be very tiring. They appear to our mind as contradictories, but in existence they are complementaries. It is just the pendulum of the clock moving from one extreme to another. Seeing the saint and the sinner as two points between which the pendulum goes on moving, you drop all admiration for the saint and you drop all condemnation for the sinner. You simply enjoy the beauty of both. Their very being is enough to fill you with great gratitude.This experience of one suchness is the greatest contribution of Gautam Buddha. And Ta Hui is going deeper and deeper into Gautam Buddha – not as an intellectual anymore, but as one who has experienced too.Just for the moment let this one suchness possess you…. Everything becomes so serene, so silent, everything becomes so joyful that there are no words to express it. This inexpressible experience is the ultimate of religiousness.Ta Hui talks about two things in this morning’s sutra: one suchness, and faith. They are two names for one thing. It is not the faith of a Christian. Words change their meaning as they change their context. Words don’t have their own meaning; their meaning comes from their context.Faith to a Christian or to a Mohammedan or to a Hindu is nothing but another word for belief, and a belief is never anything but a repressed doubt. Every belief has behind it a doubt. To repress the doubt you believe more and more…but the doubt goes deeper and deeper into your unconscious.Faith in the world of Gautam Buddha’s experience is not belief. It has nothing to do with doctrines and philosophies, theologies, ideologies. It has something to do with trust, something to do with love, something to do with being at ease with the world, however it is.There is an ancient story of a Zen monk…Every night the king used to go on a round of his capital in disguise, to see whether things were alright or there was some trouble which he was not allowed to know. Is somebody miserable? – if he could do something, he wanted to know it directly, not through so many mediators and bureaucracies.He was always puzzled by a very beautiful, very silent man, always standing under a tree. Whatever time of the night he went, the man was always standing there silently, just like a marble statue. Naturally, curiosity arose, and finally he could not resist the temptation to ask this man what he was guarding. He could not see that he had anything…in fact he was standing naked.The young man laughed and said, “I am guarding myself; I don’t have anything else. But guarding itself – being alert and aware and awake – is the greatest treasure. You have much, but you don’t have the guard.”The king was puzzled, but intrigued by the beauty of the man and by the authority of his words. Every night they used to talk a little bit, and slowly, slowly a great friendship arose. The naked monk never asked, “Who are you?”The king asked him, “I have been asking so many questions of you – who you are, from where you have come, what you are doing, what is your discipline – but you have never asked me, ‘Who are you?’”The young man said, “If you knew who you were, you would not have been asking all these questions. I don’t want to humiliate you – I simply accept whoever you are. I never asked the trees, I never asked the animals, the birds, I never asked the stars – why should I ask you? It is perfectly good that you are, and I am perfectly at ease with you and with everything.”The question is an uneasiness, it is a tension; it arises deep down from fear. One wants to know the other, because the other may turn out to be an enemy, may turn out to be mad. The other has to be made predictable, then one feels at ease. But can you make anybody predictable?The young man said, “Nothing can be predicted. Everything goes on moving into more and more mysteries, and I am perfectly at ease; whatever is happening is a joy. Each moment is so sweet and so fragrant, I cannot ask for more. Whoever you are, you are good. I love you, I love everybody…I simply love. I don’t know any other way to relate with existence.”This is faith: not knowing another way to relate with existence except love, except a total acceptance – the one suchness.The king was so impressed. He knew well that a man who has renounced the world, even renounced his clothes, and in cold winter nights goes on standing alone in his silence, is bound to refuse his invitation – a simple expectation of any human being. But he said, “I have fallen in so much love with you that the whole day I wait for when the night comes and I go on my round. I am always afraid that some day you may not be here. I want you to be closer to me. Can I invite you to my palace? I will arrange everything as you want.”There was not even a single moment’s hesitation and the man said, “This is a good idea.”The king was shocked. One expects from a saint that he has renounced the world, he cannot come back to the world – and the saint would have risen in honor and respect in his eyes. But the man said, “This is a perfect idea! I can just go with you right now. I don’t have anything to carry with me, no arrangements have to be made.”The king was in doubt – perhaps he has been befooled. Perhaps this man is not a saint; he has only been pretending and must have been waiting for this moment. But now it was very difficult to take the invitation back. So sadly, reluctantly, he had to take the man whom he had desired so much, loved so much, his company, his presence, his eyes, his every gesture…He gave him the best palace where his guests, other kings and emperors, used to stay.He was hoping that the saint would say, “No, I don’t need these golden beds and marble palaces. I am a naked monk, more in tune with the trees, with the wind, with the cold, with the heat.” But instead of this, the man became very interested. He said, “Great! This is the right place!”The king could not sleep the whole night, although the monk slept the whole night perfectly well in those luxurious surroundings. From that morning the monk’s respectability in the mind of the king went down every day, because he was eating luxurious food, he was no longer naked, he was using the costliest robes. He was not worried about women – the most beautiful women were serving him and he was quite at ease, as if nothing had happened. He looked just the same as he did naked under the tree.But it was too much; it was becoming a wound in the king’s heart that he had really been befooled, cheated. Now, how to get rid of this man? He is not a saint…. One day he asked him, “I have been carrying a question in my mind for many, many days, but have not been courageous enough to ask.”The man said, “I know – not many, many days, but from the very moment when I accepted your invitation.”The king was again shocked. He said, “What do you mean?”He said, “I could see that very moment the change in your face, in your eyes. If I had rejected your offer, you would have respected me, touched my feet. But I don’t reject anything. My acceptance is total. If you are inviting me, it is perfectly good. When I said the palace is right, it is not the palace that is right, I am right wherever I am. I was right under the tree naked; I am right under these royal robes, surrounded by beautiful women, all the luxuries. Naturally I know you must be very puzzled. You look tired, you look sad, you don’t look your old self. You can ask me the question, although I know the question.”The king said, “If you know the question, then the question now is that I want to know what is the difference between me and you?”The young man laughed and he said, “I will answer, but not here because you will not understand it. We will go for a morning walk, and at the right place, at the right moment, I will answer.”So they both went on the horses for a good morning ride, and the king was waiting and waiting. It was a beautiful morning, but he was not there to enjoy the morning; only the young man was enjoying. Finally the king said, “Now this river is the boundary of my empire. Beyond the river I cannot go; that belongs to someone with whom we have been enemies for centuries. We have ridden miles, and now it is time enough. It is getting hot, the middle of the day.”The man said, “Yes, my answer is – this is your robe, this is your horse” – and getting off his horse, he took off the robe. He said, “I am going to the other side of the river, because I don’t have any enemies. This robe was never mine, and this horse was never mine. Just one small question: Are you coming with me or not?”The king said, “How can I come with you? I have to look after the kingdom. My whole life’s work, struggle, fight, ambition is behind me in the kingdom. How can I go with you?”The man said, “That is the difference. I can go – I don’t have anything in the palace, I don’t have anything to lose, nothing belongs to me. As long as it was available, I enjoyed the suchness of it. Now I will enjoy the wild trees, the river, the sun.”The king, as if awakened from a nightmare, could see again that he had been mistaken. That man had not been deceiving him; he was authentically a man of realization. He said, “I beg your pardon. I touch your feet. Don’t go, otherwise I will never be able to forgive myself.”The young man said, “To me there is no problem. I can come back, but you will still start doubting, so it is better that you let me go. I will be just standing by the other side of the bank under that beautiful tree. Whenever you want to come you can come – at least to the other shore – and see me. I have no problem in coming back, but I am not coming back because I don’t want to disturb your nights and days, and create tensions and worries.”The more he became reluctant, the more the king started feeling sorry and sad, guilty about what he had done. But the young monk said, “You could not understand me because you don’t understand the experience of suchness: wherever you are, you are in a deep love relationship with everything that is. You don’t have to change anybody, you don’t have to change anything, you don’t have to change yourself. Everything is as it should be; it is the most perfect world.“This is my faith, this is not my belief. It is not that I believe it is so, it is that I experience it is so.”So faith in the world of Gautam Buddha and his disciples has a totally different dimension, a different significance. It is not belief. Belief is always in a concept – a God, a heaven, a hell, a certain theology, a certain system of ideas. Belief is of the mind and faith is of your whole being. Belief is borrowed, faith is your own immediate experience. You can believe in God, but you cannot have faith in God. You can have faith in the trees, but you cannot believe in the trees.Faith is existential, experiential.So both the words are of tremendous significance for all those who are not in search of burdening themselves with more knowledge, more information, but are authentically seeking to transform their whole approach to existence.To take up this great affair…Ta Hui is right to call it “the great affair.” You all know small affairs – you call them love affairs – but you don’t know the great affair. Nothing is wrong with small affairs; they are like a staircase. Go on having more and more small affairs, and one day you will have the great affair. Loving this person, loving that person, loving this situation, loving that situation – suddenly you will open up, “Why be miserly? Why choose? Why not love choicelessly?”When love in small quantities gives so much joy – the whole ocean, the whole existence loved, trusted, without any complaint, without any grudge, without any desire to change, just as they are – you suddenly fall into the great love affair. Ta Hui is absolutely right to call it this great affair. But to experience this great affair you are not expected to believe; you are expected to have a determined will. You can see how the paths change.Belief means surrendering your will to some savior, to some messenger, to some prophet, to some God. But this great affair needs tremendous will on your part to get rid of all ideas and all beliefs, in fact to get rid of your mind itself, so that you can become open in all the dimensions of existence, available to all the experiences – and they are infinite.It needs a determined will that you will not carry borrowed knowledge, that you will not remain conditioned by your parents, by your teachers, by your priests, a determined will that you will clean all this crap from your heart, and you will remain just as you were born – a small child with no mind but absolute consciousness, with no language but a great clarity. A small child sees the trees but he cannot say they are green; he sees the beautiful moon but he cannot say it is beautiful. Words are not standing between him and existence. It will take some time for him to create a wall around himself of words, language, concepts, ideologies, philosophies, religions. The greater and bigger the wall becomes, the more imprisoned he is: every human being is an imprisoned splendor.Great will is needed to drop all that you know – because it is not your knowing – and just be simple and innocent. Suddenly, in a split second, the transformation happens…you have fallen into the great affair, the one suchness, and the faith. This faith has no adjective; it is simply faith-fullness.If you are half believing and half in doubt, there will be no connection.If you are half believing and half in doubt, you will not be connected with this great affair, with this existence. You are always making the house with one hand and destroying it with the other. Just look at your life: you create a small affair – forget about the great affair! – even in your small affairs you are creating it with one hand and destroying it with the other.It is an established psychological fact that love is never alone, it is always with hate – you hate the same person you love. And they go on changing shifts: in the morning you hate, in the evening you love.But this kind of affair of coming close and going farther away is an unending process. It is not going to give you contentment; it is not going to give you the faith, the trust and the blissfulness. Yes, it will give you a few glimpses once in a while, but it will also give you many nightmares. Then they all get mixed up and people become just a mess. Their nightmares and their sweet moments, their golden moments all get mixed up – look into any mind and you will find this mess. They are unable to sort it out.In fact, there is no way to sort it out. Either drop it or take it up – these are the only two alternatives. One day everybody is going to drop it, because how long can you live in hell, how long can you torture yourself? No small affair can be a fulfillment; you are born with the capacity for the great affair.It needs a determined will – not a belief, not knowledge, but an absolute determination that you are going to be yourself, that you are going to throw away all that has been loaded onto you, that you are going to be nude, as you were born, and you are going to look at existence without any prejudiced eyes.There is a possibility of getting connected. You were connected. In your mother’s womb you were at ease – that was your whole world. You have tasted for nine months an eternity of utter peace, blissfulness, no tension, no worry, no sadness, just a dancing of the heart. As you were born you were disconnected with your mother, and then that disconnection goes on and on continuously in the name of education; in the name of making you civilized, cultured, you go on becoming more and more disconnected with existence.Sigmund Freud is right when he says that all the religions are nothing but a search for another womb. He has great truth in his statement. Sometimes he is shocking, and to his contemporaries he was very shocking when he said that every man’s desire to enter the woman’s body is nothing but an unconscious effort to find the womb which he has lost – although that is not the way to find it.Now you need a bigger womb…and existence is available, but you don’t know how to enter into it. You are cluttered with so many unnecessary hindrances that you don’t know how to enter existence. The only way is to drop all these hindrances – hindrances which are being supported by you.An ancient worthy said, “Studying the path is like drilling for fire. You still can’t stop when you get smoke: only when sparks appear is the return home complete.”A great will is needed to go on drilling, even though for a long time nothing happens. But one day you will see the signs of smoke: don’t stop there, smoke is not fire! Unless sparks, unless flames are available to you, don’t stop; go on drilling till the moment when you yourself become a flame. That is the completion of your pilgrimage. That is the great affair.Want to know where it is complete? – it is the worlds of self and the worlds of others as one suchness.Want to know where it is complete? – it is complete when the worlds of self and the worlds of others are all dissolved into a great suchness, when there is only one oceanic consciousness expressing itself in different forms.This whole existence is a brotherhood.Saint Francis used to travel on his donkey, and people were very much puzzled because he used to call the donkey “Brother Donkey.” Many times they said, “This does not look good; people laugh at it.”He said, “But the donkey has never laughed, and I am addressing the donkey, not the people. And we have a certain brotherhood.”The day he died his last words were addressed to the donkey, not to the followers who had gathered from faraway places. He said to the donkey, “Brother, I’m going. You served me your whole life with such deep love that it will remain always a memory in me, wherever I am in existence. And you have opened for me the door of the great brotherhood. It was feeling in tune with you that I started feeling in tune with other animals, with trees.”There are eyewitnesses that Saint Francis would sit in the wild forest and wild animals would come to him, hug him. Birds would come and sit on his shoulders, and when he would come near to the ocean or to any river, different kinds of fish would jump for joy, start dancing in the water. So many people have seen it that it cannot be a mythology; there are so many records of other people who have seen these things. And whenever he was asked, “What is the secret of it?” he said, “I don’t know. I know only one thing: the day I became just a brother to my donkey, suddenly the whole existence became a brotherhood.”So to know where it is complete, a simple indication is that you fall into a deep suchness.In my whole life I have never felt that anything is wrong. Everything fits so beautifully in the drama that without it, life would have been a little less rich.When I was put in jail in America, the sheriff of the first jail was a man of great intelligence. He immediately recognized me. As he took me to the cell, he would not sit on the chair; he sat on the floor, and he said, “To sit on the chair in front of you is not possible for me.” And he asked, “Don’t you feel that something has gone wrong somewhere? This cannot be part of your destiny.”I said to him, “This must be part of my destiny. Nothing goes wrong; nothing ever goes wrong. This is the whole religion that I teach: everything that happens is right.”After twelve days, when I left the last prison, the sheriff said, “It is strange, you look better than when you entered the jail.”I said, “Because I enjoyed it so much, it was such a new experience. If I had not been in the jail something would have remained incomplete in my life. It has made me richer.”He said, “Looking at you, it seems….”And I said to him, “If you want the life of your presidents and vice-presidents to be richer, give them the same experience. They really need it!”But not for a moment have I felt an unease with existence. I don’t have any temple, I don’t have any mosque, I don’t go to any church, I don’t have any belief system, but I have lived so totally that I can say life is such a great gift that no gratitude can express it.Buddha said, “Faith can forever destroy the root of affliction…”All your afflictions are reduced to a simple statement, nothing more: things are not what they should be. You should have a better post, you should be recognized more, you should have more riches, you should have a more beautiful body, you should have a better house, a better wife, a better husband…Your complaints are millions, and all these complaints in your mind create your misery.Buddha is right when he says, “Faith can forever destroy the root of all affliction” …faith in his sense – accepting whatsoever is the situation without any complaint, knowing that this is how existence wants it to be. And if existence wants it to be, it must be right, because you cannot be wiser than existence itself. You must need it in some way; there must be some part in you that needs it to make you complete.“…faith can focus you on the virtues of buddhahood.”It is by the door of faith, trust, love, suchness, that you enter the doors of buddhahood.I am reminded of another buddha, Socrates. His wife was enough to make anybody enlightened, so it is not the greatness of Socrates that he became enlightened; the whole credit goes to his wife. He was continuously teaching – students from faraway places were gathering at his house – and his wife was naturally offended that he never took any notice of her, he had no time.One day she was preparing tea for him, and then a few students came and he became engaged in deep argumentation. His wife became so angry that she poured the hot water over his face; half his face was burned forever – but he did not discontinue his dialogue with his students. The students were shocked! They could not believe it: “My God, his face is burned, but he is not disturbed at all!” They had almost forgotten the matter that was being discussed, but he continued. They said, “We have forgotten what the matter was. First clarify one thing to us: your wife is a monster, your face is burned.”Socrates said, “She is my test of fire. I am immensely grateful to her. She has done everything to disturb me, to make me angry, but my being has remained unruffled. I owe much to her. Whatever I am, without her it would not have been possible. My peace, my silence, my understanding, my acceptance of any situation is all due to her.”If you look at life – and this is the way of the seeker – then you change every affliction into a stepping-stone, every nightmare into a situation for awakening.“Faith can transcend the numerous roads of delusion, and display the path of unexcelled liberation.”Feeling oneness with existence… [Banging sounds from outside are heard.] Now somebody comes with his monkey and with his drum…!Life is so rich and so unbelievably beautiful. If you can relax with it you have reached the path of unexcelled liberation, you have reached to the very ultimate beyond which nobody has ever gone. And it is so simple: all that you need is to learn the art of acceptance, suchness, and the faith will arise out of it. With the faith arising, all the doors of existence are opened to you, inviting to you.The religious people of the world have destroyed the real and the essential meaning of religion. Creating rituals, prayers, statues, churches, synagogues, they have misled the whole of humanity. Nothing of that is needed; it is all junk. All that is needed is a small flame of love toward all, without any conditions, without any expectations – and whatever life brings, to accept it with gratitude.So simple is the real religious experience. No holy scriptures are needed. You don’t have to go anywhere. Wherever you are you can create the experience of suchness, and you can blossom into the flower of faith, which automatically becomes the fragrance of buddhahood.Ta Hui has gone a long way. It has been a beautiful experience to see an intellectual, a man of knowledgeability, transforming himself into a man of innocence, faith, suchness. He has gone from mind to no-mind.It is good that we also traveled with him, with all his frailties, which are our frailties too. But it is also a certainty that if he can reach to buddhahood, everybody else can reach to buddhahood also.You are all in essence carrying the ultimate child, the ultimate innocence. Just a little will, a little courage, and you have arrived home.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 30 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Be ThoroughgoingNow that you have taken up this affair, you must steadfastly make yourself thoroughgoing, and sit upright in a room with what you’ve truly experienced and awakened to in the course of your life. It’s like crossing a bridge made of a single plank carrying a two-hundred-pound burden: if your hands and feet slip, you can’t even preserve your own life, much less save others. When monks came seeking the path, Mu Chou would say, “An obvious case: I forgive you thirty blows.”Wu Ye of Fen Yang told questioners, “No false thinking!” whenever Lu Tsu saw a monk enter the gate, he would immediately turn around and sit facing the wall.The problem with every awakened soul has always been the same: before awakening it is the very fact of awakening that is his problem. After awakening, it is again the awakening that comes as a problem – how to express it?To experience something is one thing, and to express it is totally another. It is possible to feel at ease with existence, in a deep suchness, but how to say it? It is possible to listen to this beautiful evening, the dance of the rain and the silent joy of the trees, but how to say it?Words are so poor, and life is so rich. Life is so vast and words are so small. Just feel this very moment, and you will be able to see its immensity, its tremendous beauty, its splendor, its silence, its song. The heart feels it. The being is showered with flowers. The whole universe is so poetic. It is always poetry, it is never prose. If you just have eyes and sensitivity, life is always a rejoicing. And the deepest source of life is within you.The whole effort of a seeker is to be awake to the source of being within – which is eternal, immeasurable, immortal. But then the problem arises…a deep urge, an irresistible longing to share it. All the masters, all those who have become awakened, have struggled hard in different ways, rational, irrational. They have even taken recourse to absurdities, just to give you a hint.Ta Hui is facing the same situation. He has arrived home, and now he wants to invite all those who are still wandering in the darkness. He wants to send the invitation, but where are the words? He is trying his hardest. This morning he gave you two words. One was the great affair of suchness – experiencing life as it is without bringing your mind in – and the second word was faith. Faith is a natural outcome of the experience of suchness. It certainly is a great affair.Now he will be trying in these last sutras, for a few days more, from different angles, to approach this great affair again and again. One never knows what will penetrate to your heart. There is not much to say, but there is much to show. Every effort has been made, certainly, by different teachers in their uniqueness. Ta Hui will be describing other masters too.This evening the sutra is, Be Thoroughgoing. Ordinarily people are never thoroughgoing. They are always lukewarm, just so-so, wishy-washy, half-hearted, always thinking with a divided being: To be or not to be? A person who is divided takes one step forward and immediately takes another step backward. He remains in almost the same place as he has always been, although he is making every effort to move.I have heard about a small child…it must have been a rainy day like today. The child was always a latecomer to the school, and he was always ready with some excuse. That day the excuse was absolutely clear – it was raining hard.The child said to the teacher, “Before you ask, I can answer the question today. At least today the excuse is absolutely clear. The muddy road to the school is so slippery that you will not believe me, teacher: I would take one step forward, and I would slip two steps back!”The teacher said, “If this is true, then how did you manage to reach here?”The boy said, “I started walking toward my home, then finally I managed to reach the school.”Every man is in search. It may be better to say that every man is a search, a longing for something; he does not understand exactly what, but something is missing, something is incomplete, something is not entire. There is a gap, and that gap allows no one to remain at rest; it asks to be filled, and unless it is filled, you will never feel that you really are.George Gurdjieff wrote a book, Meetings With Remarkable Men. One of his disciples asked him, “What is the definition of a remarkable man?”He said, “A remarkable man is. An ordinary man is still trying to find where he is, whether he is or not. A remarkable man is one who has found.”Everybody is a search, a hunger, an appetite, a thirst, a longing – a longing to know oneself and a longing to know through oneself the whole beautiful universe. Certainly one of the most important things should be, Be Thoroughgoing. Don’t run in all directions; remain one-pointed, remain crystallized.Life is small and time is moving fast. If you go on only thinking and never taking a solid step toward transformation, toward awareness, toward crystallization, it is not going to happen on its own accord. It cannot happen in a confused mind. Even at the last moment when a person is dying, if you ask him, “Are you certain, can you tell us what you wanted to be in your life?”, ninety-nine point nine percent of people will not be able to answer it.Gertrude Stein, a woman of tremendous genius, one of the greatest women in the whole of history was dying. Her very close, intimate friends were sitting in silence when suddenly she opened her eyes and said, “What is the answer?” The friends were shocked because the question had not been asked, so how can you say what is the answer? But to a dying woman they could not be hard. A great silence fell over them, but somebody managed to ask her, “You are asking what is the answer – but you have not asked, What is the question?”Gertrude Stein laughed and said, “Okay then, tell me: What is the question?” And that was her last statement. She died.In this small incident is contained the life of millions of people. They don’t know what is the question and they don’t know, of course, what is the answer. And still they are running all over the place in all directions.Be Thoroughgoing means, have a determination that you are going to discover yourself, whatsoever the cost. Having life without knowing it is almost equal to not having it. Living and not knowing what it is, is very humiliating. Loving and not knowing what it is, is unforgivable.When Ta Hui says, Be Thoroughgoing, he means: put every iota of your energy, stake everything on a single arrow and then perhaps you may be able to come home. You may be able to discover that which is missing. In fact, the reality is that the moment you are absolutely thoroughgoing, one-pointed, single-minded, with an undivided heart, this very thoroughgoingness is the arrival. You don’t have to go anywhere. In this totality, in this intensity, the flower blossoms.Now that you have taken up this affair…I love Ta Hui’s continuous use of the words this affair.Now that you have taken up this affair, you must steadfastly make yourself thoroughgoing, and sit upright in a room with what you have truly experienced and awakened to in the course of your life. It is like crossing a bridge made of a single plank carrying a two-hundred-pound burden: if your hands and feet slip, you can’t even preserve your own life, much less save others.Here, each moment is risky, because each moment can turn into death. You are all crossing the plank with a mountainous burden on you; just a small slip is enough, and you are gone. You have to be alert, so alert that no other energy is left in you, everything has become just a flame of awareness.It happened once…A great warrior came home and was shocked to see that his servant was with his wife in his bedroom. He was a warrior, and warriors have their own ways. He said to the servant, “The only punishment should be that I behead you right now. But being a warrior I cannot do that. You come out, take a sword, and have a chance: you will have to fight with me.”The poor servant said, “It is better you cut off my head, because you are a great warrior and I don’t know even how to hold the sword. Why are you making a mockery of me?”But the warrior was persistent. He said, “If you want a few days to learn, I can send you to the best teacher. Learn…but you will have to fight. Whoever wins will have my wife.”The servant knew that his master would not change his mind. He went to the teacher, and the teacher said, “Don’t be worried, and don’t try to learn because your master is also my student. I know him: as far as swordsmanship is concerned, even I cannot defeat him. He has entered far more deeply into the art. You forget about learning. Learning is dangerous: if you know a little bit, you are finished.”The man said, “Then what do you suggest?”The teacher said, “I suggest one thing. You just take this sword; this is the way it is to be held. Go immediately and challenge your master to come out! Certainly your life is at risk, but now there is no way out. So do whatsoever you want to do: the sword is in your hands; hit your master any way it comes to your mind. This way you will be more thoroughgoing, because your mind will not be divided in thinking what is right, what is wrong, and what step should I take and what step should I avoid? It is better to be ignorant in this situation.Only one thing you should remember: your life is at risk, so be thoroughgoing! And because you don’t know anything, there is nothing wrong, everything is right. And I am coming with you to judge.”The warrior was amazed that he had come back so quickly – it takes years of learning – and that his master was also with him. The master said, “I have come to see a strange phenomenon: the fight of a great warrior with a man who does not know even how to handle the sword. But I want you to be aware, be alert, because he is going to be more thoroughgoing than you are. Because you will depend more on your training, on your knowledge, you will not be afraid for your life; you will feel a kind of safety and security which he has not. He is absolutely insecure; hence, be alert and thoroughgoing, because he is going to be more thoroughgoing than you are. You will depend on your knowledge.”And as they started, the warrior became afraid. The servant was hitting him almost madly, not knowing what to do, and he was moving backward just to save himself; he had never known any warrior to do such things as the servant was doing. Every warrior has a certain discipline, but this ignorant man had nothing!Finally he came to the fencing wall – the servant has pushed him to the fencing wall – and the warrior said, “Wait! I don’t want to lose my life for an unfaithful wife. You can take her. But I am amazed: great warriors have not been able to defeat me, and you made me so afraid because you were hitting this way and that way. I could not believe it – has this man gone crazy or mad or what?”It was a question of life and death for the servant. It was not a question of life and death for the warrior – and that made the difference.There are only two types of people in the world: those who understand that every moment life is at risk, hence they do something, and those who are absolutely unaware that death can strike any moment and take away their whole future – all their dreams, all their imaginations, all that they were thinking they were going to do tomorrow.Death does only one thing:It takes away your tomorrow.A man who has entered in this affair of the search leaves tomorrow himself; he does not wait for death to take it away. He has no tomorrow. He has only this moment, and he has to concentrate himself into this moment, without holding anything back. In this crystallization is the great happening of enlightenment.Now that you have taken up this affair… Certainly you are here, so these words are actually addressed to you; they are not addressed to somebody fictitious. Being with me means you have taken up this great affair, that you are no more just an ordinary human being but a seeker, that you are ready to risk everything to find the secret of existence.…you must steadfastly make yourself thoroughgoing. Do everything as if there is no time left, as if this is the last moment to do it; so do it fully, completely, without postponing, without saying, “There is no hurry. Something can be done today, something can be done tomorrow.”Don’t live in installments: that is the meaning of being thoroughgoing. It means don’t be American! Don’t live in installments; live totally now, as if tomorrow does not exist. In fact it does not exist; it is only our idea, it is our laziness. It is our reluctance to put ourselves totally at risk, now. We say, “What is the hurry?” – we find a thousand and one excuses for postponing, particularly the great affair.Gautam Buddha was dying and a man came running. Buddha had passed by his village thirty times in his forty-two years of wandering; his village was kind of a crossroad. Buddha had passed by the side of his house and had stayed outside the village thirty times – and this man had always postponed. He wanted to see Buddha, he had heard so much about him, but always small excuses…a customer has come, and he is tending his shop; his wife is sick and he has to go to the physician, or something else.But suddenly one day he heard that Gautam Buddha was outside his village and had told his disciples that now he is going to leave his body: “If you have anything to ask, you can ask. It should not be said by the coming generations that Buddha did not answer a question which was in the mind of one of his disciples. For forty-two years I have been answering you, but perhaps there may be some questions still. Before I leave the body, I want to answer them all.”The disciples said with tears in their eyes, “You have answered more than we had ever asked, or ever thought to ask. We don’t want to disturb you. You can silently leave your body. This is no moment for any question or answer; this is no moment for any communication with language. We simply want to be silent, watching your disappearance into the universal consciousness.”Three times he asked – that was his routine… Many times he was asked, “Why do you ask three times?” He said, “Even three times are not enough, people are so deaf.” He again said, “I still ask; if anybody has any question, don’t hide, don’t be shy” – but again and again they said they didn’t have any question.So Buddha said, “Then I shall enter into the four stages: The first stage of meditation, in which one leaves the body; the second stage, in which one leaves the mind; the third stage, in which one leaves the heart; and the fourth stage, in which one leaves the very self and the dewdrop disappears into the ocean.”So he closed his eyes… Just then this man from the village came running, saying “I have a few questions!”People said, “Don’t be stupid. Thirty times Buddha has been near your town, and where have you been?”He said, “Sometimes there was a customer, sometimes there was a guest, sometimes my wife was sick, sometimes I was engaged in fighting with someone – just trivia, I know. It was stupid of me to postpone, but hearing that Buddha is leaving the body, now I cannot postpone.”But Ananda, Buddha’s chief disciple said, “Now be silent. He has already moved inward. He has closed his eyes, and it is absolutely ungentlemanly…now wait for some other life. When you find some other buddha, then you can ask your questions. And your questions are not very important either, because if you can postpone them for thirty years they cannot mean much. They are not a priority in your life.”When the meaning, the significance of life becomes a priority, everything else becomes secondary: you have entered the great affair.But Buddha had just left his mind. He came back, opened his eyes and said, “Ananda, I would not like it to be on record that when I was still alive somebody had come to ask, and I did not answer. Let the man come. I have just gone beyond the mind; It is not much trouble for me to come back, because that has been happening my whole life. The moment I talk to you, I have to come to the mind. The moment I am not talking to you, I move away from it. There is no problem. Don’t take it seriously.”The man had many questions in his mind, but the situation was such that he forgot all. He simply said, “I used to think that I had many questions, but looking at you, I only want to ask you one question: What should I ask you? There is not much time…you had just entered the boat and now you have come back out. I cannot waste your time in unnecessary things; just tell me exactly what is the question.”Gautam Buddha said: “It was worth coming back. You are a man who may not have been very alert in life, who may not have realized your potential, but in this moment you are showing your pure intelligence. The question is only one: you are the question and you are the answer. You in your unawareness is the question; you as awareness is the answer.”And it is said that that man became enlightened. The situation was such… Buddha came back. There were ten thousand monks with tears in their eyes, and silence all around. Buddha had condensed his whole philosophy: “You as ignorance is the question, and you as alert awareness, you as consciousness, is the answer.”And how does one becomes conscious? Just by being thoroughgoing, just by being total in every act. “Be as alert,” says Ta Hui “as if you are …crossing a bridge made of a single plank, carrying a two-hundred pound burden: if your hands and feet slip, you can’t even preserve your own life, much less save others.”In such a situation you will become absolutely aware. You will be simply awareness, nothing else. Just a purity, a luminosity…and that is enlightenment, the great affair. Your seeking the path is really nothing but seeking awareness, Ta Hui reminds you.Mu Chou once said:“An obvious case. I forgive you thirty blows.”Now Zen has special methods of its own, not developed by any other tradition. Mu Chou is one of the great masters who used to hit his disciples with his stick when they would bring the answer to a koan meditation. They were asked to meditate on a koan. A koan is a puzzle which has no answer, and they were told to find out the answer, “and when you have found it, come.”Naturally every answer was going to be wrong. The sound of one hand clapping…now what answer is going to be right? So Mu Chou did not wait for their answers. He would simply hit them and tell them, “Go back, your answer was wrong. Meditate again; find the right answer.”He was known as a crazy master – at least he should have the generosity to listen to the poor disciple’s answer. The disciple had been meditating day in, day out, and he has found some answer – he had heard the wind passing through the pine trees and the music…he had heard the sound of running water and he thought, “Perhaps this is it!” – and he had run immediately to the master to tell him that he had heard the sound of one hand clapping, with great expectation. But the master was really a hard taskmaster! He would hit him even before he had uttered a single word.Many other masters said to Chou, “This is too much! You can hit…but at least listen to his answer.”But Chou used to say, “Even to listen to their answers is to give an indication that there can be a right answer. I want to make it absolutely clear to them that all answers are wrong. By hitting them again and again, one day it dawns on the disciple that perhaps no answer is right, perhaps there is no answer at all…and then he will not come, because now what is the point? Then he will sit under the tree in the garden of the master, enjoying.”And when the master sees that a certain disciple has not come for many days – the disciple had to report every day what is his finding for those twenty-four hours – then Chou would go to look for the disciple and would find him giggling under a tree. He would sit with the disciple and giggle, and he would say, “So you have found it!”This is the man who said once… He gave to a disciple a famous koan: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” And the disciple, rather than going out, took the stick of the master and hit him hard. This was the situation in which Chou said to him, “An obvious case. I forgive you thirty blows” – otherwise, if you had gone and meditated, you would have got thirty blows. You did the right thing. I was asking you something absurd.But what is the point of asking the absurd? The point is that mind comes to a stop only when it faces the absurd; if it can solve the problem it goes on functioning. When it cannot solve it this way or that way, it tries hard all the doors and everything is closed, a realization arises that there is no way out – mind stops.In that very stopping is the answer. In that very stopping is the silence, the transcendence…the peace that passeth understanding.Wu Ye, another master, told questioners,“No false thinking!”That was his only teaching. He was asked by the emperor to come to the court to deliver a sermon on some auspicious occasion. He came with his thousands of disciples. There was great silence. All the warriors and the samurais and the courtiers and the queens and the princes and all the rich people of the capital were invited. Wu Ye stepped up onto the platform, looked all around and said, “No false thinking! The sermon is over” – and he stepped down.The emperor looked…the whole court was shocked: “What kind of sermon is this?” But Wu Ye’s disciples had a great laugh, because they knew this was going to be the sermon. This was the only sermon they had been hearing every day. Every day, without fail, with great seriousness Wu Ye comes and says, “No false thinking!”He was a simple man. In fact, he has condensed the whole philosophy of Buddha into a simple statement: No false thinking. And if you start looking into the matter, all thinking is false. No false thinking means no thinking; no false thinking means falling into a deep silence, becoming a no-mind.His disciples slowly, slowly had understood, because they were meditating. But every day the sermon was there – and with great seriousness he used to come. Even his old disciples sometimes were expecting that perhaps today he is going to say something else. But in his whole life, as far as I know – he was the only consistent man – he never said anything else.Another master Ta Hui mentions is Lu Tsu. Whenever Lu Tsu saw a monk enter the gate, he would immediately turn around and sit facing the wall. Strange behavior! – somebody comes to you and the moment he enters in the door, you immediately turn around and start looking at the wall!But Lu Tsu had many enlightened disciples. That was his teaching: without saying a word he was saying, “Just sit and look at the wall.” Looking at the wall, how long can you go on thinking? – you will get bored. The same wall…you may paint it many times in your imagination, but you know it is all imagination. Thoughts will come and float like clouds in the sky, but you know that the sky is always empty. The clouds don’t leave any footsteps and slowly, slowly the wall becomes just a screen with no pictures on it, no thoughts on it.Lu Tsu’s method reminds me of Bodhidharma. He must have learned at least the idea of facing the wall from Bodhidharma, his ancient master, who for nine years continuously…Bodhidharma did not even bother first to face toward you and then to turn toward the wall; he used to sit only facing the wall, for nine years continuously! And he had made it known that he would turn around only when somebody who was total in his search came; he was there not for ordinary disciples, but only for extraordinary seekers, who were total.One day a man came, and without saying anything he cut off his left hand with his sword and threw it at Bodhidharma’s feet and said, “This is only the beginning. Either you turn around or I will cut off my head.”Bodhidharma turned immediately. He said, “So you have come! No need to cut off your head. You have given enough proof of your being a seeker who is really ready to risk.”This was the man who was finally chosen by Bodhidharma as his successor; he had the guts, he had the right to be a successor. When asked why he had been looking at the wall for nine years, Bodhidharma said, “Looking at people hurts, because they are buddhas and they don’t know it; they are buddhas and they are miserable. Looking at them makes one feel so sad and sorry for them, and there is no way you can help them.“Watching the wall is good, because the wall is not a potential buddha. You don’t have to be concerned about the wall. And anyway, somebody who can understand me will be able to understand even while I’m facing the wall…he can at least sit by my side and start facing the wall.”And actually many disciples did that. The master is showing the way: what more do you want? Just sit by the side and watch. Watching the wall – slowly, slowly thoughts disappear, thinking stops, mind evaporates and what is left is your authentic reality.Without finding this authentic reality you will never feel entire and whole, you will never be able to have the feeling that you are part of a great, magnificent, mysterious universe. And not only that you are a part…you are also the whole. You just have to disappear into the whole, then you are in the trees, and you are in the rains and you are in the clouds and you are in the sky and you are all over.Just to conceive the idea that “I am one with existence” is so relaxing, is so liberating, that even if you want to become miserable, you cannot. I have tried, and I have failed. Sitting alone in my room, I have tried many times to be miserable – because people go on telling me they are miserable, and I also want to taste what this misery is.But to be frank with you, I have been continuously a failure. I have tried to be angry, I have tried all kinds of things – but if you have realized your oneness with existence there is no one to be angry with, there is no one to fight with, there is no one to be jealous of. This state is certainly the great affair.Listen to Ta Hui’s invitation! Become part of the great affair. On this pilgrimage from here to here, just be thoroughgoing; half-heartedness will not do. And then even in a single moment one can become enlightened – because one is already enlightened.You just have to gather yourself. You have fallen apart: your hand is lying here, your leg is lying there, somebody is playing football with your head. You have just to put yourself together. And once you are together, there is nothing more to achieve. But you yourself go on splitting yourself, dividing yourself.I have heard…A thief was brought into the court. He was a famous thief, and the magistrate said, “You are such an experienced man. What was the reason that you entered into the house, remained there the whole night, did not steal anything, and yet, got caught?”He said, “It is a strange story. First I want to ask you one thing: that if you want to send me to the gallows, you can; but don’t give me one sentence, and that is to have two wives.”The magistrate said, “But there is no punishment like having two wives.”The thief said, “That’s very good. That’s what happened. I entered into this house, and this man has two wives. One wife lives on the ground floor and the other wife lives on the first floor. They both dragged this man on the staircase, and the drama was so great that I forgot completely for what I had come.” It was so pitiable! Somehow one woman would pull him upstairs, and as he was reaching, the other woman would come and start dragging him downward. This went on the whole night, and I could not escape because I was inside the house and all the three people were awake, and I could not steal anything because the scene was so hilarious.”But if you look at yourself, do you know how many wives you have? how many husbands you have? in how many places you have left your parts? how many desires, how many ambitions? You have cut yourself into pieces. You have behaved like a butcher with yourself.All the teaching of the awakened people is simply one: Be integrated. Come together. Find out all your parts and get crystallized. Become one.In this oneness is your realization, the end of the world of darkness and the beginning of the world of light, truth, blissfulness…and much more that has no words to be expressed.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 31 (Read, Listen & Download)

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ReleaseIn our family there is indeed a subtle marvel not transmitted. It wouldn’t help even if the sky became my mouth, and grass, trees, pebbles, and stones all emitted light to help me expound the truth. Thus we believe that this thing cannot be transmitted and cannot be studied: it requires one’s own realization and enlightenment.Be sure to remember the words of the previous day: “In principle, it’s sudden enlightenment – taking advantage of enlightenment to clear everything away. In the event, phenomena are not suddenly removed but exhausted gradually.” Whether you’re walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, you must not forget! You don’t have to seek special excellence or extraordinary wonders besides.Master Shui Lao asked Ma Tsu, “What is the true meaning of the coming from the West?”Ma Tsu then knocked him down with a kick to the chest: Shui Lao was greatly enlightened. He got up, clapping his hands and laughing loudly, and said, “How extraordinary! How wonderful! Instantly, on the tip of a hair, I’ve understood the root source of myriad states of concentration, and countless subtle meanings.” Then he bowed and withdrew. Afterward, he would tell the assembly, “From the time I took Ma Tsu’s kick, up until now, I haven’t stopped laughing.”Last night it rained cats and dogs. I have always wondered where this phrase may have come from. There is only one possible source, and that is a fable of Aesop: A cat was very happily walking by, smiling to herself, and a dog asked her, “What is the matter?”She said, “Last night in my dreams it rained, and it rained rats!”The dog said, “Listen, you stupid cat. You don’t understand a thing about dream psychology. I was also here last night and I can testify that it rained – but it rained cats, not rats.”That seems to be accurate enough. Dogs can dream of cats raining, but the saying is, “It rained cats and dogs.” Who would be dreaming about dogs…? Except for this small anecdote in Aesop there is no reference in the whole literature of the world, but it seems in almost all the languages somehow the saying has taken root. One thing is certain: whatever the roots – or no roots – the saying is very expressive.The rain last night was an immense joy…not only to the earth – thirsty, waiting for it – but to the trees and to you all. These small experiences can release in you the ultimate experience…just the beauty of them, the splendor, unexpected, unpredictable. Suddenly you are surrounded with such tremendous peace, silence – and not empty, but full of songs and dances, and the whole existence rejoicing.As one goes deeper on the path, as one releases oneself from the prison of one’s own mind, ordinary experiences start taking extraordinary colors. Just an ordinary flower looked at silently becomes a wondrous experience. What a marvel that a small flower can exist with beautiful colors, with a little fragrance of its own, an individuality of its own. The greatest philosopher cannot fathom the meaning of the smallest flower.But the mystic is not a philosopher; he does not bother to fathom meanings, to measure meanings, to think about things. He simply rejoices in them. When it rains, he dances, he joins hands with the rain. When trees are rejoicing, becoming fresh, one starts feeling the same freshness. Only one thing is needed, and that is the offering of the sutra this morning…release.Ta Hui is intending to convey a simple thing to you: you are the prison, you are the prisoner, and you are the one who has imprisoned you. You are playing a game with yourself. One part of you functions as the jailer, another part functions as the jail, and your innermost core is crushed between these two parts. You become a prisoner; it is not that somebody else is making you a prisoner.It would have been a great calamity if man’s consciousness was imprisoned by somebody else. Then freedom would not be in your own hands; then freedom would be in somebody else’s hands. It is marvelous that you are yourself imprisoning your being, hence the release can happen instantly. It is only a question of a little understanding, just a little intelligence.This sutra is very beautiful. It says,In our family…To whom is Ta Hui referring as “our family”? You are included in it, as are all those who are involved in this great affair of searching, seeking, trying to penetrate into the mysteries of existence. They may have been past, they may be present, they may be in the future, but they constitute the only family worth calling family.There is a physical, biological family: your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your husbands, your wives, your children – but that is a very superficial phenomenon, accidental. There is a deeper family which has nothing to do with your biological origins but is concerned with your ultimate search. It is spiritual. It is not accidental – it is very essential.Once you become aware, you will be suddenly amazed that all the buddhas of the past and all the buddhas of the future and all the buddhas of the present constitute a single family, because their experience is the same, their truth is the same, their life is surrounded with the same fragrance. They in no way differ from each other. If you have come across a single buddha, you have come across all of them. He contains all of them; he represents all of them.Ta Hui is immensely beautiful to mention it as a family…In our family there is indeed a subtle marvel not transmitted.Everybody in the family knows about it, but nobody says anything about it. Everybody in the family has experienced it, but remains absolutely silent about it, because knowing the ultimate is also to know simultaneously that it is inexpressible. Those who try to express it are those who don’t know.This is the marvel: Those who know don’t try to express it, and those who don’t know try to express it.The ignorant are very articulate; they say things about God, about heaven and about hell, and the ones who know are utterly silent about the mysteries of life. You can know whether a man has experienced something or not by his being silent about the ultimate matters. He may indicate, he may give a few hints, he may create devices in which you can also awaken to the experience – but he will not say a single word.Because of this fact, Zen has strange ways of transmitting. The truth has always been transmitted; it has never been said. It is more like a gesture of the hand, more like a smile on the lips, more like a twinkle in the eyes…but it is never a word.In our family there is indeed a subtle marvel not transmitted. It would not help even if the sky became my mouth, and grass, trees, pebbles, and stones all emitted light to help me expound the truth. Thus we believe that this thing cannot be transmitted and cannot be studied: it requires one’s own realization and enlightenment.This has to be understood as the very fundamental: if you are ready, open, receptive, alert, you will get it. And you will get it in strange ways which have no logical relationship, no causal relationship.Many intellectuals in the world who have become aware of Zen in the past century were, in the beginning, simply laughing at the craziness of these people, because it does not make sense to their reasoning minds. Somebody hits you and you become enlightened…the mind cannot believe it. There seems to be no reason why a certain hit will destroy all your ignorance.Even today, Zen is being studied in the West on a vast scale; it has become one of the universal phenomena. But the very idea of studying it goes against it: you cannot study Zen. You can have it, but you cannot get it from someone else. And the simple reason is that you have already got it. It is just a question of forgetfulness.It will be helpful for you to be reminded… Perhaps in everybody’s life there are moments when you know that a certain name, a certain person, a certain face is known to you. The expression exists in all the languages that it is “just on the tip of my tongue.” Then who is preventing you, why don’t you tell it? You know perfectly well it is there, but it needs some release – and perhaps a hit may do it. You have only forgotten – perhaps a good hit will help you to forget to remember it, because the effort to remember a thing makes your mind tense, and the more you try to remember, the more tense you become.Tension means narrowing of the mind. It becomes so narrow that nothing can pass through it. A good hit and the mind opens…because you have forgotten that you were trying to remember something, and suddenly that which was on your tongue is no more a secret; now you know it fully well. Something like this has been happening in transmissions of a higher and deeper level.But Zen is not a study. There is no way to make it a subject of studies in the universities; that will be very stupid. There is no way to find someone who has it who can give it to you. It is not that the people who have it are miserly or not generous – just the contrary. They are the most generous people; if they could give it to you they would not bother whether you want it or not, they would give it to you.But the very nature of the experience is such that it does not come from outside; it happens within you. The people who have experienced it are in constant search of creating a situation around you so that what is asleep becomes awake. Once you understand it, Zen will not look crazy, it will not look irrational. It will look certainly super-rational – beyond the capacities of the mind.Thus we believe that this thing cannot be transmitted and cannot be studied: it requires one’s own realization and enlightenment.It has become more difficult because Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Jews have created a very difficult situation for millions of people. They have been giving people the idea that it will be delivered to you by a savior, it will be given to you by a messenger; all you have to do is to believe and wait. Jesus will redeem you – or Mohammed or Krishna.What I want to point out very clearly is that the idea that somebody else, it does not matter who – Jesus, Moses, Krishna or Mohammed…the idea that somebody else will do it on your behalf is absolutely wrong. But this idea has prevailed and it is very easy to accept it, it is very simple to be imprisoned by it, because somebody else is taking the responsibility.In this world people are very easily ready to give responsibility to somebody else. They think that by giving away responsibility they are free of the burden. They are absolutely wrong. Responsibility is freedom, and the moment you give responsibility to somebody else you have also given your freedom.Now two thousand years have passed and Christians are waiting for the savior to come. I tell you he is never going to come, for the simple reason that what he has promised he cannot deliver. Krishna has promised that he will be coming, but it is strange that nobody wonders why these people did not redeem humanity while they were here. What is the point of postponing it for the future, for the next time when they will come?People were as much in misery then as they are now, people were as much ignorant as they are now – so what was the reason to postpone? Jesus could have redeemed the whole world, Krishna could have enlightened everybody. But it was a very subtle game: they took the responsibility – and helped you to remain a prisoner till they come back. Just go on praying…one day he is going to come.This has taken away not only your responsibility but your freedom. It has taken away your very individuality and your uniqueness.I love Gautam Buddha for the simple reason that he is the first man in the long history of man who refused to take the responsibility of redeeming anybody. He seems to be the most courageous man – because it is so easy to gather followers if you take responsibility, and rather than taking responsibility he was saying that there is no way for anybody else to redeem you.Let it sink deep in your hearts. Only you are capable of awakening. Because only you are capable of falling asleep. Nobody else is responsible for your sleep.How can somebody else be responsible for your awakening? All those who have promised to redeem you have humiliated you; they have reduced you to less than human beings.It is not a coincidence that Jesus goes on calling himself the shepherd and you the sheep and I sometimes wonder why not even a single man stood up and said, “This is very insulting.” Not that people must not have felt it, but it was very cheap, and “the fellow is taking all the responsibility, that is good – so we need not bother about it. We can go round and round in our trivia and he will take care of our spirituality.” It was a good chance to get rid of the whole affair.It seems hurtful…but I cannot say anything which is not true. All these people behaved more like businessmen; they were more concerned in having more and more customers.Gautam Buddha seems to be the single man who is not interested in having followers, who is not interested in being a shepherd, who is not interested in reducing you into sheep. On the contrary, his whole life he insisted on only one thing: You are just like me; the difference is very small. One day I was asleep, today I am awake. Today you are asleep, tomorrow you may be awake – and if you are intelligent you can be awake this very moment.Buddha alone gives respect to individuality, to human beings – no one else has ever given it. He denied God for the simple reason that God cannot be accepted. The very acceptance of God as a creator destroys the whole beauty of humanity. Then you are just a puppet in the hands of a God who seems to be whimsical. For no reason he created you, and for no reason he can decreate you.Buddha removed God completely from the vision of the people who understood him: God and man cannot exist together. No coexistence is possible, because God is basically a dictatorial concept, absolute dictatorship…and man cannot raise his head in freedom if there is a God. You can hear people say that without the will of God not even a leaf moves. Then this whole existence becomes an imprisonment, a great concentration camp, and God becomes Adolf Hitler a million times magnified.Gautam Buddha, rather than talking about hypothetical nonsense, takes the existential problem directly: the problem is your release. And the problem is simple because the release is within your own hands: you have just forgotten who you are. Just by telling you who you are, you will not understand, and the danger is that by telling you who you are, you may become a parrot. You may start…In India you will find a whole country full of parrots. Everybody is talking about the soul, enlightenment, awakening, nirvana. They have all been repeating beautiful sentences from scriptures. Buddha also does not want to make you a parrot; hence he says there is no way to give you the truth, for the simple reason that you already have it.So all that can be done is somehow to create situations to wake you up and, if it is needed, to give you a good slap at the right moment. Anybody’s slap won’t do, only a master’s – and only a disciple who has been working on the way for years, or maybe for lives, comes to a point just on the boundary line, where a little push…and he has reached to the other shore. So there are disciplines in Buddhism, but those disciplines are not going to give you the truth. They are only going to bring you to the point where some insightful compassionate master will be needed to create a device which releases you.Have you seen small birds? They see their parents flying all around, and they also flutter their wings. But they are afraid – naturally, because they have never flown – and they cannot believe that going out of their cozy nest is safe. The vast sky…and no experience of flying – although they are capable of flying, they have the wings, and they will rejoice to fly in the sky under the warm sun.Finally the parents of those small birds have to push them. That is a device – that is a Zen device. But the parents have to wait till their wings are strong enough; they do many things which to me seem to be exactly what the Zen master does for the disciple. The mother will fly in front of them, showing that if she can fly, why can’t they? The young birds flutter their wings to gain confidence, to become acquainted with the fact that they also have wings – it’s true!But to take the jump… They come to the very edge of their nest, they weigh all the pros and cons. There is a great longing to take the jump, but there is also a fear because they are going into the unknown. Who knows – they may fall flat on the earth and be finished. The mother goes to the other tree, and from there she starts calling them: Come on! It is irresistible. They try, but some invisible boundary prevents them.When the parents see that now they are perfectly capable, it is only fear that is preventing them, one day, without informing them, suddenly a Zen push…! Of course in the beginning they flutter in a haphazard way, but they know now that although they are not flying as they should, they can keep themselves up in the air. Then the mother starts calling them from faraway trees. First they go to very close trees, then they start going to farther trees, and then one day they are gone forever into the infinite; they never come back. Then the whole sky has become theirs.I have always thought that the Zen devices of transmitting must have come from such sources. Zen monasteries are in the forests, and some genius master may have seen the situation of a bird being pushed. There is no logical sense. You cannot convince the bird intellectually, and a push is not a rational way.Be sure to remember the words of a previous day: “In principle, it is sudden enlightenment…”In principle only is it sudden enlightenment. In practice, in reality, the small bird has to grow strong wings, wait for the right moment, and has to be under the protection of a right master. Any hurry can be fatal.If somebody is awakened before his ripening time, before his maturity, that enlightenment can be dangerous. He may not be able to survive it, it may be too much. He was not yet able to contain it, to absorb it, to relish it. So in principle Ta Hui is right; it is sudden enlightenment.Intellectuals all over the world have asked, “If it is sudden, then why is it not happening to us? Then why does somebody have to meditate for years if it is sudden?” They have not understood that in principle it is sudden. When it will happen, it will happen suddenly – but before that happening, a certain maturity is needed. That means enlightenment in itself is sudden, but its preparation is gradual.Ta Hui is bringing a tremendous synthesis to two conflicting schools. One says it is gradual, one says it is sudden – and they have gone on fighting for centuries, arguing against each other. They cannot see that gradualness and suddenness are not necessarily opposite, that gradualness can be a preparation for suddenness. They cannot see that both can be part of a synthetic process.“…Taking advantage of enlightenment to clear everything away. In the event…– but in the actual event –“…phenomena are not suddenly removed but exhausted gradually.”It takes time, different times for different people. According to their love, according to their trust, according to their longing, according to their passion, according to their readiness to risk all, the time element will differ.Mahakashyapa was the first to become enlightened among Gautam Buddha’s disciples, and he was the most silent person. He never asked a question, never even came close to Gautam Buddha. He had his own tree, and he would sit under his own tree; it became known that that place was reserved for Mahakashyapa. He did not speak, he did not question…he simply sat under the tree, not far away from Gautam Buddha.Among ten thousand disciples everybody was asking questions, and many were asking Mahakashyapa, “Why don’t you ask?” He would simply smile…One day Gautam Buddha came with a lotus flower in his hand – and that day was the beginning of Zen. Buddha was supposed to give a discourse as usual, but rather than giving a discourse he sat there in the utter silence of ten thousand disciples, just looking at the lotus flower. Moments passed…people started becoming restless. What has happened? In the first place he had never come before with anything in his hand; in the second place, he seems to have completely forgotten for what he has come. Thirdly, it is strange that he goes on looking at that lotus flower. It is beautiful…but that does not mean that you have to go on looking forever and forever.Hours passed and people became really agitated. Something has to be done…and at that very moment Mahakashyapa laughed. Gautam Buddha looked at Mahakashyapa, called him close and said, “This flower belongs to you. Take care of it.” This is the first transmission without words.People looked in amazement: “What has happened?” In the first place, to laugh in the presence of the master without any reason is not courteous, it is not respectful. Secondly, there was nothing to laugh at. Thirdly, what has been transmitted? All that people can see is a lotus flower.But Mahakashyapa became the first Zen master. He is rarely mentioned in the Buddhist scriptures because he rarely spoke. And because he received the transmission without words, nobody knows what he has received. When finally forced by other disciples – older, more prominent – Mahakashyapa said, “I have not received, I have only recognized. In that great silence when you were all becoming restless I started becoming restful. My silence became deeper, to a point that I suddenly saw that it is so ridiculous to search for truth because I am the truth. At that very moment I could not contain it, and I laughed. The flower was given to me as a confirmation that ‘your laughter means you have opened your wings in the sky. You are released.’”When one comes to a master, one has so much garbage which the master has to remove gradually, because to him it is garbage, but to the disciple it is knowledge. To the master it is chains; to the disciple, these are his ornaments. So it takes time…the master goes on throwing the garbage out and the disciple goes on collecting it back, and hiding it in deeper places where the master cannot reach, until there is a recognition that the master and the disciple stand in the same space. Then anything will do, just a little push…Whether you are walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, you must not forget!…Must not forget what? Simply must not forget. Simply remain alert and aware, not of anything special, not of any object, but just alert, as if something great is going to happen, you don’t know what; as if a great guest is going to come and you are standing at your door waiting. You don’t know who is coming…you don’t know whether he is coming or not. You don’t have any confirmation – but greatly alert you are standing at the door, not knowing for what. A pure awareness…You don’t have to seek special excellence or extraordinary wonders besides.On the path the greatest hindrance is that you can find special qualities, extraordinary powers, miracles, mysterious experiences, and you can get lost into all that. It was not your search; you got off the path. Remember not to seek special excellence or extraordinary wonders besides.Master Shui Lao asked Ma Tsu, “What is the true meaning of the coming from the West?”This is a special way of asking the question, “What is the true meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West?” – because to China, India is the West. “What was the special reason for Bodhidharma coming to China?” In other words the question is, “What has he come to transmit?” It took him three years to reach so far, and it took him nine years to transmit. What was it?Ma Tsu then knocked him down with a kick to the chest: Shui Lao was greatly enlightened. He got up, clapping his hands and laughing loudly, and said, “How extraordinary! How wonderful! Instantly, on the tip of a hair, I have understood the root source of myriad states of concentration, and countless subtle meanings.” Then he bowed and withdrew. Afterward he would tell the assembly, “From the time I took Ma Tsu’s kick, up until now, I haven’t stopped laughing.”Remember that Master Shui Lao is not an ordinary disciple; he is already recognized as a great master, although he is only a great teacher. But the difference is very subtle and can be known only by those who are beyond the master and the teacher. He was known as a master himself…and he was not just a teacher; he had come gradually closer and closer to being a master but he needed a last push. He was fluttering his wings…he was waiting, but just on the verge of flying into the sky.Master Shui Lao asked Ma Tsu…Ma Tsu is one of the strangest masters in the assembly of strange masters of Zen. Shui Lao is asking a simple question: “Why did Bodhidharma come to China? What special transmission was there that he had to deliver?”MaTtsu then knocked him down with a kick to the chest: Shui Lao was greatly enlightened.Now incidents like this make intellectuals confused. What has happened? Ma Tsu has shown him that Bodhidharma has come to kill your ego, to release you from the fear of death. He kicked him in the chest, knocked him down. It was so strange and so sudden, it was not expected. He had asked a simple routine question; any intellectual could have explained why Bodhidharma had come to China – to spread Buddhism, to spread the message of the great master.But nobody could have thought that Ma Tsu would do this to the poor questioner and it was so sudden and so unpredictable… But it is only sudden and unpredictable to us; Ma Tsu could have seen the ripeness of the man, the maturity…that he needs just a small push, that this moment should not be missed. His kicking him on the chest and knocking him down may have completely stopped the functioning of his mind, because it was so unexpected and so strange. In that stopping of the mind is the release. Suddenly the goose is out! Shui Lao became enlightened.He got up, clapping his hands and laughing loudly, and said, “How extraordinary! How wonderful! Instantly, on the tip of a hair, I have understood the root source of myriad states of concentration, and countless subtle meanings.” Then he bowed – in deep respect – and withdrew. Afterward, he would tell the assembly – he became himself a great master – “From the time I took Ma Tsu’s kick, up until now, I have not stopped laughing.How can one stop laughing? This great affair is so ridiculous!It is just like a dog who, on a winter morning in the warm sun, sitting silently looking at his tail, becomes interested in catching it. He tries in many ways, and the more he tries, the more he becomes challenged, because the tail jumps immediately. The faster he jumps, the faster the tail jumps – and the difference remains the same. Standing by the side you will laugh: “This stupid dog! That tail belongs to him; there is no need to catch hold of it – and there is no way…”Your enlightenment belongs to you.There is no need to seek and search.You are it. It is not an achievement, it is only a recognition – hence the laughing.Naturally, people who have not been accustomed to the tradition of Zen will be shocked by such behavior. If I suddenly knock Maneesha here and now, although she is not yet ripe – but if I knock, will you understand? You will think, “This man has gone mad.” You will think, “We already knew that he was mad; now he has crossed all the boundaries.” And from tomorrow, those who sit in front will remain alert: at any moment…And this is going to happen, because I am not going to leave this world unless I make more people enlightened than Gautam Buddha. I am watching who is growing wings, who is becoming ready to be knocked – so don’t be surprised. And when somebody gets knocked, rejoice in the happening! The man has become enlightened.But people who are not in a deep resonance with Zen will not be able to understand it – Hindus or Mohammedans or Christians or Jews – because there is nothing like that in their whole history. Their whole history is more or less just intellectual gymnastics.Zen is absolutely existential. The master is there not only to teach you certain doctrines; he has to release you from the prison that you yourself have made. Whatever arbitrary, expedient methods are needed, he is not going to be worried about what people will think of them; he will use them.There have never been more compassionate beings than Zen masters. It is a great compassion of Ma Tsu; otherwise, who cares? – he could have just answered the question and the whole thing would be over. He took so much effort, hit the man, knocked him down…And it is not only Ma Tsu who is compassionate: Shui Lao also knows tremendous understanding. If it had happened to somebody who was not ready, he would have started fighting or he would have become angry, saying “This is absolutely absurd! I am asking a question and you are hitting me.” But he took the hit in the same way as Mahakashyapa had taken the lotus flower – with even more beauty: “How extraordinary! How wonderful!” – and with great reverence, …he bowed down and withdrew.No other question…everything is solved. He has been kicked out of the nest, now his wings are open in the sky. Now he can fly across the sun. Now there are no more any boundaries. And he remembered the event his whole life, even when he became a great respected master, saying “The greatest thing in my life was the kick that Ma Tsu gave me. I have not stopped laughing since then.”Something that is not visible to the eyes must have happened in that moment. As Ma Tsu reached and knocked him, perhaps – most probably – he may have knocked him out of his body, and Shui Lao must have witnessed the whole scene, standing outside his own body. The first experience of being outside your own body is one of the most exquisite, sweet, marvelous experiences: you are released.Your body is your prison.Your mind is your prison.Ta Hui has named the sutra rightly as The Release.Get ready and be prepared. It is a totally different world from the days of Ma Tsu, but I would like to make that beautiful time and those beautiful incidents contemporary again. But it all depends on you. If you are gradually dropping all your garbage, becoming more alert, not forgetting for a single moment – walking, sitting, working, lying down, a constant undercurrent of remembrance – then the day is not far away when I will start knocking people down. There is no necessity to actually knock somebody down, because between me and Ma Tsu much time has passed, and I have got more refined methods! He is, in a way, primitive.I do my own kind of kicking and knocking, so don’t wait for me to actually hit you on your chest. There is no need…I have developed more subtle methods – but you have to be ready anyway.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 32 (Read, Listen & Download)

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ReleaseOne day Ku Shan approached Hsueh Feng. Feng knew his circumstances were ripe, so he suddenly got up, held him tight, and said, “What is it?” Opening up, Ku Shan was completely enlightened – he even forgot his comprehending mind and just raised his hand and waved, nothing more. Feng said, “Will you express some principle?”Having left the fifth patriarch’s place, Hui Neng traveled south for two months, and had reached the Ta Yu range. He was pursued by the monk Hui Ming, who was originally a general, accompanied by several hundred men, who wanted to seize the robe and bowl (emblematic of succession to the patriarchs). Ming was the first to overtake him. The sixth patriarch threw down the robe and bowl on a rock and said, “This robe signifies faith: how can it be taken by force?” Ming tried to pick up the robe and bowl, but was unable to move them. At that point he said, “I have come for the dharma, not for the robe.” The patriarch said, “Since you’ve come for the dharma, you should put to rest all your motivations, and don’t give rise to a single thought, and I will explain for you.” After a silence, he said, “Without thinking of good, and without thinking of evil, at just such a time, which is your original face?” At these words Hui Ming was greatly enlightened. He also asked, “Besides the intimate words and meaning that struck home of a moment ago, is there any further intimate message?” The patriarch said, “If it were said to you, it wouldn’t be intimate. If you turn around and reflect, what’s intimate is in you.” Ming said, “Though I was at Huang Mei, I never really had insight into my own face. Now, encountering your instruction, I am like a man drinking water who knows for himself whether it’s cold or warm.”“Just know how to be a buddha: don’t worry that a buddha won’t know how to talk.” Since ancient times, people who have attained the path, since they are full themselves, have put forth their own surplus to respond to potentials and receive beings. They are like a bright mirror on its stand, like a bright jewel in the palm of the hand; when an outsider comes, an outsider appears, and when a native comes, a native appears. And it’s not intentional: if it were intentional, then there would be a real doctrine to give to people. You want to be clear.Ta Hui still continues with the meaning of release. The question is so fundamental that however often it has to be repeated it will never be said completely.There are things which you can only indicate, and the indication is always capable of being misunderstood – most probably it will be misunderstood – because the indication is only an arrow. Unless you know to look in that direction, unless you are aware that the arrow is pointing to something beyond itself, there is every possibility you may cling to the arrow itself.Because of this complexity, things which were said for the freedom of man have become his imprisonment. What are your churches, your temples and your synagogues except prisons of your soul? What are your holy scriptures? They were meant to be arrows pointing beyond words, but even the so-called learned people cling to the words and forget completely that those words are only arrows; they are only pointing toward something which is wordless – something which they cannot say, but they can point to. But they are only fingers pointing to the moon.Hence it has to be again and again hammered on your conditioned mind from different aspects what is the meaning of release. Ta Hui gives you a few examples of when the release did happen. And it happened absolutely irrationally; there was no necessity for it to happen – except that the disciple was ripe and the master’s insight was so clear that he did not miss the moment. He struck, he slapped, he shouted, he did something, and suddenly there was an opening – the clouds disappeared.One day, Ku Shan approached Hsueh Feng. Feng knew his circumstances were ripe.When a woman is pregnant she knows she is pregnant, and when the child is nine months old the mother knows that the time has come to receive a new guest in the world. There are no indications from When a woman is pregnant she knows she is pregnant, and when the child is nine months old the mother knows that the time has come to receive a new guest in the world. the child, but the very ripening has its own impact. In the East when the mango groves are full of ripe mangos, passing by the road, suddenly you are aware that the whole air is full of the sweetness of the mangos.Scientists have been working for almost half a century on bees, because they suspect that bees know a certain kind of language. It is very exciting to find out what kind of language bees use; it will open up a tremendously new area of communication. One bee goes miles in a certain direction for no reason at all – but she finds the place where flowers are blossoming, and she goes directly to those flowers, as if she is following a map.Once she has found the flowers she returns, and she dances in a certain way before the whole crowd of bees who are watching the dance. The dance has all the indications – in which direction, how far away you will find the flowers – and suddenly thousands of bees start moving toward that direction, without any failure, without going in any other direction.In the dance of the bee there are indications which have not yet been deciphered. For half a century work has been done, but it is very difficult because we know a language, but we don’t know how a dance…and the same kind of dance with small differences can give different meanings. If there are no ripe flowers the dance will be almost the same, but with such a slight difference that only bees can decipher it; scientists have not been able…. It is certain that there is a difference because no bee moves in that direction; they will wait, and tomorrow again the bee will go.Certain bees are the messenger bees, the postmen. Bees have a hierarchy; there are soldiers, there are postmen, there are laborers, and there is a queen, and they all do different kinds of work. If there is danger…the same dance but with a slight difference.Between the master and the disciple something happens so that when the disciple is ripe, he knows he is ripe and his master knows he is ripe. This is the time to allow him a breakthrough. There are thousands of tremendously beautiful incidents. This one is so simple but so pregnant.Feng knew his circumstances… If you are aware, how can you miss knowing it? Feng knew Kushan was ripe…So he suddenly got up, held him tight, and said, “What is it?”And there was an opening:Opening up, Ku Shan was completely enlightened.Nothing special happened; just the master knew, the disciple knew, that something had come to a climax. And the master got hold of the disciple tightly and said, “What is it?” It is not a question to be answered; it is a question that opens up a new dimension in the disciple.Opening up, Ku Shan was completely enlightened. He even forgot his comprehending mind.The experience was so great, the splendor was so overwhelming, that he even forgot to show his reverence to the master, or to say some right words to express his gratitude.He just raised his hand and waved.This waving of the hand is a mute expression that “I have got it! You got me right in the moment – it has happened!”He just raised his hand and waved, nothing more. Feng said, “Will you express some principle?”But there is absolute silence, the story has ended. The master’s question – “You have waved your hand, that’s right. But will you express some principle that you have understood, experienced?” – the disciple has not answered. There is no answer! He must have stood before the master, being himself the answer – his silence, his joy, his sudden opening… His crazy gesture of waving the hand simply indicates that it is beyond the mind and beyond his comprehension…what principle? – there is only silence and no principle.It is something rare; only a Zen story can end in such a way. The master asks the question, and the disciple remains silent – that is the answer. If he had spoken he would have got a good hit, because his speaking would have shown that he had missed, that he could not manage to open himself entirely, that he had still remained in the mind.But his silence shows that now there is no question, no answer; there is no principle, no philosophy. There is no you, no me, but only a total serenity, an eternal silence which has never been disturbed.These are not stories; stories don’t end in such a way. This is an actual incident. The silence is being understood by the master. Nothing is said, but everything is heard.A second incident…just giving you different aspects, from different doors.Having left the fifth Patriarch’s place, Hui Neng traveled south for two months, and had reached the Ta Yu range. He was pursued by the monk Hui Ming, who was originally a general, accompanied by several hundred men, who wanted to seize the robe and the bowl (emblematic of succession to the patriarchs).In Zen, every patriarch gives his robe and his bowl to his successor, and naturally there is great competition and human frailties, jealousies….This man, Hui Ming, was far more learned, in every way far more cultured. He had renounced the great post of general, and had become a disciple; he had practiced for a long time. But the master chose a very strange man, Hui Neng, to be his successor.In his monastery there were at least twelve thousand monks, and not a single one would have thought that Hui Neng was going to become the successor.Hui Neng’s only accomplishment was that since he had come, twenty years before, he had been cleaning the rice for the twelve thousand monks from the early morning till late at night. For twenty years he had not done anything else. He had never been in any of the discourses of the master, he had never read any scripture – in fact he was illiterate. He was a villager, but a man of tremendous determination.The day he got initiated, Hui Neng asked the master, “What am I supposed to do?”The master said, “Go to the mess, clean rice and never again come back to me” – and he never came back again. Twenty years of silently waiting…because the master had said, “If it is needed, I will come to you. But you should never again show your face to me. You simply clean the rice from morning till night, then go to sleep; again clean the rice, then go to sleep.”You can understand, twenty years just cleaning rice and going to sleep, his mind became silent. No meditation was needed. He never went to any discourse – there was no time. Nobody talked to him because he was thought to be of the lowest category, just a poor villager who knows nothing, and he never asked anything of anybody. People passed by him as if he was not there. He was taken for granted.The day came for the master to leave his body, and he said, “Before I leave my body I want to choose my successor. The way I want to choose is this: whoever knows the right answer should come in the night and write it on my door; if the answer is right, he will receive my robe and my bowl.”This ex-general, Hui Ming, was certainly the most important person of the whole following of the master, and everybody thought that he would be the winner. So he went in the night and he wrote on the door, “No-mind is the answer.” But he was so afraid of the master – afraid that if it is found to be wrong he is going to get a good beating – that he did not sign it. He thought, “If it is right then I will declare that I have written it; if it is wrong then it is better to keep silent.”In the morning when the master woke up he said, “Who is that idiot?” Hearing this, Hui Ming escaped from the monastery – somebody may inform the master because a few people had got the idea…they were looking out for who was going to write. In fact it was public knowledge that it was Hui Ming!Two monks, after taking their food, were just passing by Hui Neng and discussing, saying, “The master is too hard. The answer seems to be right: “no-mind” is the whole philosophy of Gautam Buddha. What more can be said?” People had completely forgotten that Hui Neng even speaks; for twenty years he had not spoken a single word to anybody. He simply did his work, would go to sleep, wake up, start his work again. That day, listening to those two monks saying that the answer seems to be right and the master is too hard, he laughed. Those two monks stopped and they said, “Why are you laughing?”He said, “Whoever wrote that is an idiot.” This was exactly what the master had said, “Who is the idiot who has spoiled my door?” Those monks could not believe it, but they informed the master that a man of the name of Hui Neng, whom he had sent twenty years before to the mess, had said exactly the same thing: “Whoever wrote this is an idiot.”The master said, “I know. He is the only man…I was hoping that he would come and write the answer. But I forgot completely that in the first place he is non-ambitious; in the second place he cannot write, he is illiterate; in the third place I had prohibited him: ‘Whenever the time comes I will come to you, you have to remain in the work I have given to you. Never show your face.’”In the middle of the night the master came, woke up Hui Neng, gave him the bowl and his robe and said, “Now escape, because you are a simple fellow. There is great competition, and there are dangerous people – that man Hui Ming has been a general, he is a warrior. They will try to snatch away the robe and the bowl, so you simply escape as far away as possible.”Hui Neng said, “But I don’t know anything. Moreover, I have not committed any crime. Why should you make me your successor? Why can’t I be left to live peacefully? You can find…so many people are eager, wanting to be the successor, why are you bothering me?”But the master said, “These are the reasons why I am bothering you: a man who is not interested at all is the right man. A man who has no ambitions is worthy. A man who can refuse the highest stage in the tradition of Zen of being a patriarch, a master of masters…”Hui Neng still tried to persuade him, “Just let me clean rice and don’t disturb my sleep! I am tired and in the morning I have to start my work again, and just think of twelve thousand monks and their rice…”The master said, “Stop all this! If people become aware that I have chosen you they will kill you. Just take this bowl and this robe and run away, because tomorrow morning I am going to die, and before that I want you to be miles away.” That’s how Hui Neng was chosen to be the successor.Strange people…and strange are their stories, but of tremendous importance. This Hui Neng was followed by Hui Ming, the general, with thousands of people, to catch hold of him and forcibly take away the bowl and the robe so that Hui Ming could declare himself the master. This is the background to the story.Ming was the first to overtake Hui Neng, and there were many others also following.The sixth patriarch threw down the robe and bowl on a rock and said, “This robe signifies faith: how can it be taken by force?”Faith cannot be taken by force. Faith grows only in the climate of love. Faith is the highest flowering; it cannot be taken away by force.“So this is the robe and this is the bowl. But remember, This robe signifies faith, and you are only a general – you know the ways of force, you don’t know the ways of love. How can it be taken by force? If you can take it by force, take it.”Ming tried to pick up the robe and bowl, but was unable to move them.It may seem to be fictitious, but in the deepest experience of my own self I don’t think it is fictitious. I have my own explanation of why it happened… Hui Neng was a man of peace and silence, a man without any desires, and when such a man speaks, he speaks with authority, his words are pure power. And when he said, “This bowl and this robe represent faith, and faith cannot be taken by force,” his very statement would have weakened Hui Ming.Hui Ming knew perfectly well that he does not have faith, he knows only what force is. It must have weakened his whole will. It is not a miracle; it is a simple psychological fact. He tried to pick it up…but he must have tried knowing perfectly well that he could not pick it up.There is a place near a beautiful river, Narmada, where there was a temple of Shiva. Outside every temple of Shiva is his bodyguard, the bull; the bull sits outside the temple. There is a story that underneath the bull at that particular temple – it is an ancient temple – there is a little space which you can pass through…but only if you have faith.I had gone there with a friend who was a professor – full of doubts, although he was not too fat. When I told him, “Try to pass through this small space underneath the bull,” he said, “I don’t see any problem. Because I am not a fat man, I can pass.”I said to him, “You cannot pass, because unless you have faith… It is not a question of being fat or being thin; I have seen fat people passing through it, and I have seen thin people getting caught.”He said, “It is all nonsense, I will show you.” But even while he was saying it, deep inside he was trembling. A crowd gathered, which made it even more fearful, and he was caught in the middle. He started shouting – “Help me!”I said, “In questions of faith, nobody can help. Try your logic, try your reason, try your arguments.” And people were laughing! They were laughing because he was so thin, why has he got caught? He just lost his nerve. He knew perfectly well he had no faith, he had no trust, he was full of doubts – he is doubt and nothing else. He knew perfectly well in the depths of his heart that he could not pass.I had to pull him out – of course from the back side, “because,” I said, “from the front I cannot, because I cannot go against the rule.” So I had to pull him by his legs, backward. He looked very strange.He said, “I can see that the space is enough, but something inside me simply gave way. I simply lost my nerve.” I myself went through that small space, and I was at least twice the weight of the professor.There are things which may look like fictions if you don’t understand man and his psychology. To me this is not a fiction, this is a historical fact. It must have happened. The words of Hui Neng must have created the atmosphere, the climate, such that Hui Ming lost his willpower. He tried, but he had no force. He suddenly became impotent.Ming tried to pick up the robe and bowl, but was unable to move them. At that point he said, “I have come for the dharma, not for the robe.” The patriarch said, “Since you’ve come for the dharma, you should put to rest all your motivations, and don’t give rise to a single thought, and I will explain for you.” After a silence, he said, “Without thinking of good, and without thinking of evil, at just such a time, which is your original face?”When there is no movement of thought, desire, motivation – at such a moment you are, in your original purity. And to know this original face is to know all.At these words, Hui Ming was greatly enlightened. He also asked, “Besides the intimate words and meaning that struck home of a moment ago, is there any further intimate message?” The patriarch said, “If it were said to you, it wouldn’t be intimate”– because words create distance.The intimate is not a communication.The intimate is a transmission from heart to heart…In silence, in love, in peace.Nothing is said, nothing is heard, but everything is understood…that is intimate.“If it were said to you, it would not be intimate. If you turn around and reflect, what’s intimate is in you”– it is not outside you. You are the most intimate to yourself; nobody can be closer to you than yourself. However close somebody may come to you, that closeness is still a distance. Only you are intimate.Ming said, “Though I was at Huang Mei, I never really had insight”– he recognized that although he had been in the monastery for years studying, disciplining himself, he had never had any real insight –“…into my own face. Now, encountering your instruction, I am like a man drinking water who knows for himself whether it’s cold or warm.”“Just know how to be a buddha: don’t worry that a buddha won’t know how to talk.” Since ancient times, people who have attained the path, since they are full themselves, have put forth their own surplus to respond to potentials and receive beings. They are like a bright mirror on its stand, like a bright jewel in the palm of the hand; when an outsider comes, an outsider appears, and when a native comes, a native appears. And it’s not intentional: if it were intentional, then there would be a real doctrine to give to people. You want to be clear.These are the two ways…whether you want to be clear or you want to be clever. However clever you become you will remain ignorant, and you may know nothing, but if you are clear – a mirror without any dust – you will reflect the very essence of existence.There is a strange story…Before Hui Neng died, many years after this incident, he chose Hui Ming to be his successor. What Ming could not get by force, he got by becoming non-ambitious, meditative. When Hui Neng asked him, “Now the time has come for me to depart and, Hui Ming, you have been so ambitious to be the patriarch, you may have the bowl and the robe which you could not take with all your force. Are you ready now?”Hui Ming said, “I am no more interested. There are many others.”Hui Neng, the illiterate, became one of the greatest Zen masters, just by his simplicity, just by his innocent ways. He attracted many disciples of great qualities, and he had many followers who could have been chosen as his successor. But first he told Hui Ming, “You were so desirous; I wanted to give it to you at that very moment, but it was not within my capacity: neither I could give it, nor was it in your capacity to take it. But now I can see you are ripe.And Hui Ming is reported to have said, “It is a strange game. When I wanted it I could not have it; now I have not the slightest desire, and you are offering me… Can’t you find somebody else?”Hui Neng said, “These are the indications of a right successor.”Zen is the path of desirelessness. There is nothing to attain, there is no goal to reach. You are simply to relax, be at ease, and you will find that you have always been there, where you wanted to be. You have never left the Garden of Eden. The Christian story is wrong.I have been talking about the Christian story from so many different angles…it is a beautiful story and certainly has tremendous potential. This aspect has also to be remembered, that wherever you are, you are still in the Garden of Eden. It is not even in the capacity of God to throw you out – where will he throw you? – because everywhere is the Garden of Eden. I am always wondering why not a single Christian theologian has raised the question in two thousand years: God drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, but where did he drive them to? Is there something outside of existence?Everything is within, there is nothing without. There are no boundaries to reality – you cannot be thrown out of reality. It is such a simple fact: you are still in the Garden of Eden, you have just fallen asleep.Your sleep consists of your mind, of your desires, your dreams, your ambitions, your motivations. Once you drop all this crap, suddenly you wake up and you will find yourself in the Garden of Eden. And the Garden of Eden does not belong to God, it is not his monopoly. It belongs to everyone, to every living entity, because God is only a collective name for all the consciousnesses that exist in the world; God is not some person.The Christian story has made God very ugly. If I have to write the story again, the first instructions I will give to Adam and Eve – and those are the instructions I am giving to you – will be: Eat the fruit of wisdom, eat the fruit of eternal life. You belong to the ultimate consciousness, you belong to deathlessness.You are a buddha.You just have to be shaken up.It is not that you have to do many austerities and knock on the doors and beg and pray: “God, Father, please open the door. I will never eat the fruit, I will never look at it.” You are sitting under the tree. Just open your eyes, and wisdom is yours, and eternal life is yours. And these are not two trees…The story is wrong on many points. First, a God who is a father cannot prevent you from eternal life, and cannot prevent you from being wise. Secondly, wisdom and eternal life are not two; they are two aspects of the same experience.I declare to you; this is the Garden of Eden.If you want to sleep a little more, there is no harm. There is no need to be in a hurry either. Sleep well; just stop dreaming…and you will wake up. It is the dreams which go on keeping you asleep.In other words, I can define meditation as a non-dreaming consciousness.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 33 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Silent IlluminationOld P’ang said, “Just resolve to empty all that exists: don’t make real all that doesn’t exist.” Just master these two propositions, and your whole life’s task of study is completed.These days there’s a breed of shaven-headed outsiders whose own eyes are not clear, who just teach people to stop and rest and play dead. Even if you stop and rest like this until a thousand buddhas appear in the world, you still won’t be able to stop and rest – you’ll be making your mind even more confused and troubled. They teach people to “keep the mind still,” to “forget feelings” according to circumstances, to practice “silent illumination.” As they go on and on “illuminating” and “keeping the mind still,” they add to their confusion and oppression, with no end to it. Utterly losing the expedient means of the patriarchs, they instruct others wrongly, teaching people to go on in vain and wastefully with birth and death; furthermore, they teach people not to care about this state of affairs. “Simply go on putting things to rest this way,” they’ll say. “When you’ve stopped feelings as they come and thoughts are not produced, at such a time it’s not unknowing silence – in fact, it’s alert and awake and perfectly clear.” This kind is even more pernicious, blinding peoples’ eyes.To say that when one has put things to rest to the point that he is unawares and unknowing, like earth, wood, tile, or stone, this is not unknowing silence – this is a view born of wrongly taking too literally words that were only expedient means to free bonds. To teach people to reflect according to circumstances and take care not to let any bad perceptions appear – this again is an interpretation produced by accepting the skull’s emotional consciousness.All the above diseases are not the students’ doings – they’re all due to the wrong instructions of blind teachers.Man has been miserable – not without reason. The reasons are of his own making; hence release is possible. But very few people have experienced absolute freedom.There are a thousand and one causes for this calamity which has happened to humanity. It is just like a vast garden of thousands of rosebushes, where only once in a while a flower blossoms on a rosebush, and the remaining thousands of bushes simply remain barren. They have the same potential, but something has gone wrong in their structuring.Ta Hui is trying here to show a few fundamental errors that have been made by man – and he continues to make them – which hinder his own growth.Most of the causes that have destroyed your dignity, your pride, your glory, your splendor are the doings of so-called teachers. There is a subtle egoistic joy in teaching because the moment you teach someone, without saying anything, you have become higher: you know and the other does not know. This has created great trouble for human beings.So many false teachers go on appearing…perhaps it is the greatest crime in the world to teach things which you have not experienced. But what are your bishops and cardinals and popes, imams and shankaracharyas? – just a long line of false teachers. They don’t know what they are saying. They may be quoting the right scriptures, their words may be coming from right sources, but it is not the sources and not the scriptures – it is the man who speaks that is the ultimate criterion of whether what he says is true or not.One great master, Naropa, has repeatedly said one thing: “Don’t listen to what I say, listen to me! It does not matter what I say; what matters is what I am.”A true teacher speaks out of spontaneity, experience, awareness, his own realization. The false teacher is very learned; he knows all the scriptures, he quotes them beautifully and he can easily deceive people. In fact it is very difficult not to be deceived by such a person, because you don’t know how to judge. He is speaking the right words, but his right words are just like a gramophone record. You cannot make a gramophone record your master; what it is saying is absolutely true, but there is no one inside. It is just a dead record.Your memory is also a dead record. Teachers teach through memory, masters teach through awareness, intelligence; hence it is possible to find inconsistencies and contradictions in masters – in fact, they are bound to be found. This can be used as a criterion: if somebody is continuously consistent, he cannot be a master. He is only repeating things mechanically.The master has to respond each moment, and each moment is different. The master never answers the question; he always answers the questioner – and the questioners are different. The master is not concerned whether what he says is in tune with the scriptures, tradition, convention, or is against. His whole and sole concern is the real person whom he is encountering…nothing else matters.But the false teachers have not stopped, and will never stop. It is so easy to be learned; it is so difficult to be wise. Any idiot can be learned; all that he needs is a good memory system, a good biocomputer. But to be an authentic master is a rare flowering, and one has to understand some indications through which he can make a judgment in order to avoid the false and to listen to the authentic.The first thing is: the false teacher is always repeating somebody else’s words; he has none of his own. All his statements are within quotation marks. The second thing: the false teacher, howsoever articulate, learned, clever, will not be able to practice what he preaches. Look at the man rather than looking at his words, and you will see the disparity.In one small village there were two brothers, twin brothers. One was a doctor and the other was a priest, and the whole village always had difficulty in recognizing which was which. A stranger had come to the town. He saw both of them and he could not believe his eyes. They were not exactly alike, but they used to have the same clothes, the same hairstyle, and it was almost impossible to make a distinction. He approached one of them and said, “Is there a way to distinguish between you two? Only you can say…”This brother was the doctor, and he said, “Yes, there is only one way: he preaches and I practice!”The false teacher only preaches. If you look at his practice you will be very much disappointed; he goes against his own statements continuously.Thirdly – and this needs a little more intelligence and awareness to see – the false teacher is always hesitant. He himself is not certain whether what he is saying is true or not because it is all borrowed. But the true teacher is an absolute authority. What he says he means, and he says only that which he means.The teacher is only paying lip service to all the good things that you have been told. You will not find any original freshness; he stinks of dead corpses, very ancient corpses. The authentic master has a freshness, a newness. You may go on hearing him for ages, but you will never feel that he is stale because it is always coming from the original source.Consider the things that Ta Hui wants to point out to you:Old P’ang said, “Just resolve to empty all that exists: don’t make real all that does not exist.” Just master these two propositions, and your whole life’s task of study is completed.With the masters you will always find something strange, because you are unfamiliar with their world; it is untrodden. With the teachers you will find very familiar things which you already know – you have heard them. In every church the same sermon, in every temple the same discourse; the whole atmosphere is filled with old and rotten statements.With the real master you will always find something strange, some wildflower which does not grow in ordinary day to day gardens. Its taste, its fragrance, its color, its form – everything will have a newness.Now what master P’ang says is absolutely unique. Nobody has ever said that: “Just resolve to empty all that exists.” He is making two statements. And in those two statements, Ta Hui says, your whole religion is complete: “Resolve to empty all that exists: don’t make real all that does not exist.”But people are doing just the opposite: they go on creating the unreal – that which does not exist. What do you know about God? Yet millions of people every day are praying to a fiction. It is pathology. What do you know about heaven and hell? But they have entered deep into your psychology: you are greedy for heaven, afraid of hell – and these are all nonexistent things.P’ang is saying, “Don’t create that which does not exist; and that which exists, empty your mind of all attachment to it, of all infatuation with it.” Your infatuation is your bondage; if you are not infatuated with that which exists, and you are not imaginative in creating gods and ghosts, what is left?A simple silence…A pure serenity…An undisturbed, unruffled consciousness.And that is it!Hence old P’ang is right. Within two simple sentences he has condensed all the teachings of all the awakened people. There are thousands of scriptures, but these two statements are enough; anything else is just unnecessary fabrication by the deluded people for the deluded people.People can get concerned with such stupid things – you cannot believe it.Christian theologians of the middle ages had argued for centuries in great treatises. You will not believe what kind of idiots these theologians were. Their problem was how many angels can stand on the head of a pin. Why were they concerned? – but it became such a big problem as if their life depended on whether one angel more or less can stand there. Those angels are fictitious – and why should even those fictitious angels stand on the head of a pin?But it was a very serious matter, and for three or four centuries it was debated almost continuously by great theologians, philosophers. If you look into the history of religions you will find such stupidities that you cannot believe that this is our heritage, that these are the old sources of our so-called great religions.For two thousand years Christians had been arguing and insisting that Jesus was born of a virgin – Mary. Now what does it matter? Even if he was born of Virgin Mary, he can be wrong. Just by being born of a virgin, you don’t become right; in fact, more is the possibility that from the very beginning you are wrong. But even today the pope insists that this is their fundamental principle. What will Christianity be if three fictions are removed? One is the virgin birth of Jesus, which can be cancelled without any trouble.One young girl was brought to a doctor by her mother, who was an old friend. She was very much worried because it was so apparent that the girl was at least seven or eight months pregnant – there was no need for any test. Still the doctor took the test and he said, “I am sorry, but nothing can be done. It is too late now; abortion is dangerous. The girl is pregnant.”But the mother said, “How it can be? Because I never allow her any chances….”And the girl said, “I have not even touched the hand of any man. How I can be pregnant?”The doctor looked at both of them and went to the window and looked at the sky. For a moment there was silence. Then the mother said, “What are you doing there?”He said, “I am waiting for the three wise men from the East. If it is true that she has not even touched the hand of a man, and you insist…then the miracle has happened again: she is a virgin mother. You should rejoice. Why you are looking so miserable?”Just a few days ago the pope has again insisted… A few Christian thinkers are feeling awkward about this virgin birth, but he has insisted that it is “one of our greatest pillars”.The second pillar is that Jesus is the only begotten son of God. Nobody knows about this fellow God – and except for Jesus’ own statement, there is no other evidence or any proof. But the whole of Christianity depends on the statement of Jesus. No contemporary thinker, no contemporary literature even bothers to mention that Jesus is the son of God – and not only the son, but the only begotten son. It is great: fictions are creating sons and daughters! And we have no evidence of their own existence…And what is so great in Jesus that he should be the only begotten son of God? Why not Gautam Buddha, why not Bodhidharma, why not Mahakashyapa, why not Ta Hui – why not you? You just need a little courage and a little craziness and you can declare: “I am the only begotten son of God.” No proofs are needed, because even Jesus has not given any proofs.And the third: the trinity of God the father, Jesus the son, and the holy ghost. This holy ghost is the strangest guy you can come across. This holy ghost is the person who made the poor virgin Mary pregnant – and still he is holy. Then what is the meaning of unholy?And it is strange…for centuries Christians themselves have insisted that it looks strange, this trinity, because there is no woman in it. It looks incomplete; it does not look like a complete family. What is wrong in accepting Mary, who is worshipped by Catholics as part of this hierarchy? But the woman, just because she is the woman, cannot be accepted on that high pedestal. The criminal ghost can be accepted.Just the other day an Italian sannyasin has told me that he wants to put on record – he is collecting my statements – what I think about illegitimate children. I said to him, “There are no illegitimate children, there are only illegitimate parents.” How can a child be illegitimate? And who are the illegitimate parents? – not necessarily those who are not married. Any child who is not born of love makes the parents illegitimate. Whether they are married or not is irrelevant – but the child certainly is never illegitimate.This illegitimate person, the holy ghost, is part of God’s trinity; he is part of God. These are three phases of God – but the woman cannot be accepted.These are the three fundamentals, the three pillars of Christianity. If you remove these three, the whole edifice of two thousand years disappears like a soap bubble. But what is so great in all these ideas? Those who have been teaching these ideas can only be called false teachers, misguiding humanity. You cannot question them; your question will bring you condemnation. And this is not only so about Christianity; this is so about all the religions. Religion should be very simple, a pure and innocent affair. It should not be made complicated by unnecessary superstitions, stupidities.Old P’ang has given you the whole of religion in two small statements: “Empty yourself of all attachment, of all infatuation, of all ambition for that which exists.” And “Don’t create fictions.” Nothing more is needed.This is an authentic master, bringing the essential, pure serenity of your being in tune with the blissfulness of existence.You are one with this silence…and how marvelous it is…and how wonderful. Can you think that something more is needed to rejoice and dance and sing?Religion, to be authentic, has to be concerned with man’s transformation, not with these stupid ideas; whether they are real or unreal does not matter.These days…– and unfortunately, although one thousand years have passed since Ta Hui, “these days” still continue –These days there’s a breed of shaven-headed outsiders….I want to emphasize the word outsiders. Humanity can be divided in that way very easily – the insiders and the outsiders. The insiders are very few – those who know the inside story, the inside mystery. And the outsiders are the millions who are just standing outside of themselves, never trying to figure out what it is that makes them tick, what it is that is their life, what it is that is their consciousness, what it is that is their love…simple matters.The outsiders are concerned with faraway stars, quasars, remote galaxies…so remote that there is no possibility that the earth will ever come in contact with them, because the universe has been found to be expanding. It is just like a balloon which goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and all the stars that you see are moving away from some center, which science has not yet been able to locate. But there is some center from which all these stars are moving at tremendous speed.Now the old fools were concerned with God, the holy ghost, the virgin birth, and the new fools are concerned with the galaxies, millions of light-years away. They have changed their objects but they have not changed their vision: they are still looking outward. The outsider is one who is always looking outside. He is never at home.Religion is basically the experience of the insider. He closes his eyes and enters into the depths of his being, into the silences of his heart, and finally into the mysterious source of life, of all life, of all consciousness.This is the only contentment, the only fulfillment, the only realization. For the first time there are no longer any problems, no longer any questions. You don’t know anything, but your capacity of knowing is absolutely clear. You are just a pure mirror without any dust.These days there is a breed of shaven-headed outsiders whose own eyes are not clear, who just teach people to stop and rest and play dead.Most of the religions have been teaching you to renounce the world, which cuts off most of your life. To renounce all pleasures cuts off your remaining life. “Become more and more dead, and you will come closer and closer to God.” This is a very strange god….God can be synonymous with life, then it has some meaning. But God synonymous with death…? But this is what your saints have done: they have become fossils. Although they breathe, they have died to life in all its concerns. They have withdrawn all their sensitivity, their love, their joy; they have become shrunken.So Ta Hui is right:Even if you stop and rest like this until a thousand buddhas appear in the world, you still won’t be able to stop and rest – you will be making your mind even more confused and troubled.This overwhelming, poisonous idea of renouncing the world, of renouncing pleasures, of renouncing the body, of renouncing all that can make your life a little juicy, a little musical, a little poetic, and just being like a stone…still your mind inside will be in turmoil.There is a beautiful story from Mulla Nasruddin’s life. He had been cutting wood and his donkey was standing by the side; he would load the wood on the donkey and take it home. But he was feeling very tired, and it was a hot afternoon and the shadow of the tree was alluring, so he allowed himself a little relaxation.Just then a group of wolves came around. Seeing the wolves, Mulla thought it is better to pretend to be dead, because it is known that wolves don’t eat dead corpses. They want fresh food; they are not interested in canned food! So he stopped his breathing, but from the corner of his eye he was looking about for the donkey, because that was the problem: he himself is pretending to be dead, but the donkey is a fool…and those wolves started eating his donkey.Now he is seeing it and there is a great turmoil inside – but he is pretending to be dead. Finally he forgot and said, “Okay, you can kill my donkey because I am dead. If I had been alive I would have shown you what it means to attack my donkey!” This was going on inside his mind, and it came out of his mouth! It was just a coincidence that a few people arrived and he was saved.But I want to tell you this story because he was pretending to be dead, although he was not. All your saints are pretending to be dead; they are not dead. How can they be? But all the religions have respected these dead people. And because of this respect for dead people, as a counterpart, there is a condemnation for living people. To be alive, fully alive, singing and dancing, rejoicing in the pleasures of existence, has become a sin according to all religions. Condensed to the essentials: life is sin and death is virtue.My own experience is just the opposite, the opposite of all these religions. Life is virtue, and the more alive you are, the more virtuous; the more sensitive you are, the more religious; the more dimensions your life has, the more spiritual. Leave that old style of saintliness to the idiots because they cannot do anything else; but they can do that saintliness perfectly. My own understanding is that all your great saints are perfect idiots. They have not understood even the abc of the mysteries of life, and they have fallen into the trap of false teachers.They teach people to “keep the mind still,” to “forget feelings” according to circumstances, to practice “silent illumination.”They use beautiful words because all those words are available in thousands of scriptures, but they don’t know that one cannot keep the mind still. Either you have the mind or you don’t have it. A still mind is a contradiction in terms.One famous American rabbi, Joshua Liebman – I don’t know whether he is still alive or not – has written a book, Peace Of Mind. I was a student in the university when I came across the book. I wrote to him in a letter: “Even the title of your book is a contradiction in terms. ‘Peace of mind’ is simply absurd. When mind is not, there is peace; when mind is, there is no peace. Hence, ‘peace of mind’ is simply befooling people. But perhaps you yourself think…”His book has been sold in millions because everybody wants peace of mind – and so cheap, in a paperback edition! But I have never come across any man who has attained peace of mind by reading Rabbi Joshua Liebman’s book. I was in the habit of writing letters to people, but it is an unfortunate situation that none of them had the courage to answer. Perhaps they could see the point, and it was better to remain silent.These people who are telling others, “Keep the mind still” …who is going to keep the mind still? You cannot force the mind to stillness. Mind has to be transcended, and in the transcendence of mind, in the realization that you are not the mind, suddenly the stillness, the peace, the calm, the quietude.As they go on and on “illuminating” and “keeping the mind still,” they add to their confusion and oppression, with no end to it. Utterly losing the expedient means of the patriarchs, they instruct others wrongly, teaching people to go on in vain and wastefully with birth and death; furthermore, they teach people not to care about this state of affairs. “Simply go on putting things to rest this way,” they will say. “When you have stopped feelings as they come and thoughts are not produced, at such a time it is not unknowing silence – in fact, it is alert and awake and perfectly clear.”These are deeper realities of life. You can attain a certain state of controlled silence, forced silence, but it will be dead. It will be like a bird on the wing that looks so beautiful. You catch hold of it and you put it in a golden cage; you may think it is the same bird – it is not. Apparently it is, but the bird on the wing and the bird – the same bird – inside the cage are two different beings.The bird on the wing has the whole sky…he has a soul, he has an individuality, he has a beauty. The same bird inside the cage is just dead. It has lost its sky, it has lost its freedom, it has lost its individuality – and what has it gained? To the bird the golden cage does not mean anything; gold or steel are just the same.In the name of religion people have been trying to force themselves into a cage of discipline, precepts, hoping that they will attain to great illumination, alertness, awareness, enlightenment. It is not possible. If you want to be aware you have to start with awareness. If you want to be free you have to start with freedom. Whatever you want to be, your first step is the indication of your last.Finding realization… You cannot do it by making yourself a slave of doctrines, precepts, moralities and hope that these will bring awareness, the ultimate flowering of your being.It is true that if the ultimate flowering of awareness happens you will have a morality, but that morality will have a totally different nuance to it. It will be your own, not Moses’, not Manu’s, not Confucius’. It will not be a bondage, it will not be a burden, it will not be a commandment that you have to do. You will simply rejoice in doing it. It will not be a duty. It will be simply your joy.I have heard that when God created the world he went to the Babylonians and said, “Would you like to have a commandment?”They said, “What is the commandment?”He said, “Thou shall not commit adultery.”They said, “Forgive us, without adultery what is the point of living. You just find somebody else…!”He went to the Egyptians, he went all around, and nobody was ready to accept a commandment – and I think they were all right. Commandments cannot be from somebody else, otherwise they make you a slave. They should arise from your own understanding; then they are not commandments, they are sheer joy.But poor Moses got into trouble. Being a Jew, he asked the wrong question. When God asked, “Moses, baby, would you like to have a commandment?”, Moses asked, “How much does it cost?” He did not ask what the commandment is! – he asked the price!God said, “It is free!”Moses said, “Then I will have ten!” If it is free… And under those ten commandments, for four thousand years the Jews have been crushed.You certainly need a morality but it has to arise out of your own love, out of your own reverence for life. It has to be your own; it needs your signature. It cannot be a blind belief, it cannot be a duty that you have been conditioned to fulfill. It has to be your freedom. An authentically religious man is amoral; he has no morality, ready-made. Each moment he responds with love and reverence and that is his morality.This kind is even more pernicious, blinding peoples’ eyes.When teachers start talking about illumination, enlightenment, stilling the mind, they use beautiful words to create a prison cell for you. What you need is freedom from all prisons.The past has been continuously creating prisons upon prisons. You need a release, and only you can give this gift to yourself. I can only make you aware that you have the capacity – that’s the function of the master. He can only make you aware of your potential, of your possibilities, and then he leaves you to your own decision.To say that when one has put things to rest to the point that he is unawares and unknowing, like earth, wood, tile, or stone, this is not unknowing silence – this is a view born of wrongly taking too literally words that were only expedient means to free bonds.The false teachers are collecting words, beautiful words. They are good collectors but they don’t know the context, because the context is not present in the scriptures. The context is always present in a living master.To teach people to reflect according to circumstances and take care not to let any bad perceptions appear – this again is an interpretation produced by accepting the skull’s emotional consciousness.All the above diseases are not the students’ doings – they are all due to the wrong instructions of blind teachers.It will be a great day in the history of man when he becomes at least this much responsible: to realize that to teach something that he himself has not experienced is ugly, is criminal; it is the greatest sin. If false teachers disappear from the world there will be a tremendous revolution, because the people who get caught into the nets of the false teachers are really seekers, but they don’t know where to go, they don’t know how to judge…and they can be forgiven because they are only searching and looking.It is the greatest blessing to have found a living master. It is the most difficult thing, because the living master will be condemned by the whole world, so you will be discouraged by the condemnation. The false teachers will be appreciated, honored, respected; naturally, you will think that if the whole world respects, honors, then these must be the right people. It is just the opposite: the authentic master has been always condemned by the contemporaries.So whenever you find a man condemned unanimously by all, he has something; otherwise why should the whole world be disturbed by him? When the world appreciates, respects, gives honors and awards, beware! This is a false teacher. He is honored because he is serving the vested interests of the society.If you can keep this small criterion, it is always possible to find the right master. But without a right master, things which are very simple will become so complicated; things which can happen right now do not happen for lives. Beware of the honored ones!If somebody is condemned, and condemned unanimously, that man is bringing truth into the world, which is living in all kinds of lies.Be with him!Take the risk!And your reward will be tremendously great.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 34 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Enlightenment: The KeySome take sitting wordlessly with eyes shut beneath the black mountain, inside the ghost cave, and consider it as the scene on the other side of the primordial buddha, the scene before their parents were born – they also call it “silent yet ever illuminating,” and consider it Ch’an. This lot don’t seek subtle wondrous enlightenment: they consider enlightenment as falling into the secondary. They think that enlightenment deceives people, that enlightenment is a fabrication. Since they’ve never awakened themselves, they don’t believe anyone has awakened.There’s a kind acting as teachers spreading false talk who tell students, “Just preserve stillness.” Asked, “What thing is this, preserving? Who is the still one?” they say, “The still one is the basis.” Yet they don’t believe that the enlightened one exists: they say that the enlightened one is an offshoot, and quote this from Yang Shan:A monk asked Yang Shan, “Do people these days still make use of enlightenment or not?” Yang Shan said, “Though enlightenment is not absent, nevertheless it falls into the secondary: don’t talk of dreams in front of fools.” Then they understand this literally as a real doctrine, and say that enlightenment is secondary.Such people scarcely realize that Kuei Shan himself had a saying to alert students; indeed,it’s very cogent: “Enlightenment is the standard for investigating the ultimate truth through to the end.”Where do those false teachers put these words? It’s impossible that Kuei Shan was bringing doubts and error to later people by having them fall into the secondary.Enlightenment is certainly the key, but almost all the traditions are against it – and there is a reason why they are against it. The most fundamental reason is that if enlightenment is a reality, God becomes an unreality. If your own illumination is the ultimate, then nothing can be above it. Then man’s own consciousness becomes the highest reality.Religions and traditions believing in God cannot allow enlightenment. It goes against all their fictions. Their fictions can exist only in the darkness, not in the light. To keep their fictions alive, to keep their dreams real, they don’t allow human beings to be awake. You don’t hear of Christian mystics as enlightened, you don’t hear of Jewish mystics as awakened. In fact, enlightenment is the alternative of God.All that belongs to the ritualistic religions is endangered by enlightenment, because enlightenment has no ritual, it has no prayer, it has no scriptures. It so totally believes in you, its respect for humanity is so absolute and irrevocable… It is natural that all the priests are going to be against it, because the whole profession of the priests depends on fictions, and enlightenment destroys fictions.All theologies are fabrications of the mind, and enlightenment is a transcendence going beyond the mind. All that belongs to the mind is a nightmare. Where do your gods exist? Where is your heaven, your hell? Where are your angels and your ghosts? They all constitute the entity called the mind.Enlightenment is the greatest revolution you can conceive of because it destroys all fictions, all rituals, all gods, all traditions, all scriptures. It leaves you with only the essential consciousness of your own being. Its trust in consciousness is so total that there is no need of anything else.It has not been said as clearly as I am putting it…I want to make it absolutely clear that the very idea of enlightenment is against all religions. Or, in other words, the only authentic religion is that of enlightenment. All other religions are part of the marketplace; they are businesses exploiting human helplessness, exploiting human weakness, exploiting human limitations.Religions have done so much harm to man that it is unparalleled. Nothing else has been so dangerous. In every possible way they have been preventing man from even hearing the word enlightenment. You should not become aware that raising your hands to the sky is stupid – there is no one to answer your prayers, no prayer has ever been answered.All your gods are your own creations. You sculpt them, and you never think about it – that you go on worshipping things which you have created. The Christian Bible says, “God created man in his own image.” The truth is just the contrary: man has created God in his own image. And then – the ultimate foolishness – you worship your own image. In fact, if you were a little intelligent, you could just purchase a mirror and worship.All your gods are nothing but your own reflections. There is no need to go to a temple or to a church; you can just keep a small mirror. Perhaps ladies are very intelligent about it – they go on looking again and again in the mirror, they believe in the mirror.But all your gods are the same, all your rituals are created by crafty priests. None of your scriptures are even first-rate literature; they are very third-class contributions. But just because they are holy… Who makes them holy? There are people who have their vested interests…It is a long chain from God to the prophets, to the messiahs, to the holy scripture, to the church. But the only reality in this whole long line of fictions is the priest, and his whole effort through the ages has been to exploit you. And not only to exploit – exploitation is possible only if certain conditions are fulfilled: you have to be made to feel guilty.Strange ways have been invented to make you feel guilty. The Hindus say that you are suffering, in misery, not because of your stupidities, not because of your unconsciousness, not because of your unmeditativeness, not because you have made no effort to become enlightened, but because of the evil acts you have done in millions of past lives. Now you cannot undo them; there is no way backward. That burden you have to carry, and under that burden you lose all your dignity, all your pride. All that you can do is pray to God to help you, to save you.Christians – because they don’t have the idea of many, many lives, but only one life – cannot use the same strategy. They have found their own strategy: the Hindu is suffering because of millions of past lives; the Christian is suffering because Adam and Eve, faraway, back in the very beginning, disobeyed God. The idea is so farfetched… In what way can I be responsible if Adam disobeyed God?But Christianity goes on insisting – and Christianity means half of humanity – that you were born in sin because your forefathers, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God. You are born of sinners; hence, you are miserable. And you will remain miserable unless you repent and unless you are forgiven. Only the son of God, Jesus, can save you. He is going to plead on your behalf; he is going to be your advocate. You have just to believe in him and at the last day of judgment he will choose the people who believe in him, and will ask God to forgive them. The remainder of humanity is going to fall into eternal hell.These are great strategies to bring people into the fold of Christianity…because that is the only way to save your future; otherwise there is no hope. Every religion has in some way taken away your beauty, your greatness, has destroyed the very idea that you have any worth, any meaning, any significance, that you have any potential.Enlightenment is a rebellion against all traditions, against all priests, against all religions, because it declares that there is nothing higher than man’s consciousness. And man is not suffering because some stupid man in the past disobeyed a fictitious God; man is not suffering because of millions of lives of evil acts. Man is suffering for the simple reason that he does not know himself. His ignorance about himself is the only cause of his suffering, misery, torture.Enlightenment brings everything to a very simple and scientific conclusion. It pinpoints that all that you need is to learn the art of awareness.Ta Hui is right to say that enlightenment is the key, the only key which opens all the realities and all the blessings and all the potentials which have been hidden within you. You are a seed: enlightenment is nothing but finding the right soil and waiting for the spring to come.Enlightenment is such a radical standpoint.It is not another religion.It is the only religion.All other religions are pseudo.Ta Hui says,Some take sitting wordlessly with eyes shut beneath the black mountain, inside the ghost cave, and consider it as the scene on the other side of the primordial buddha, the scene before their parents were born – they also call it “silent, yet ever illuminating,” and consider it Ch’an. This lot don’t seek subtle wondrous enlightenment: they consider enlightenment as falling into the secondary.This word secondary has to be understood because it has a context, and without the context you will not be able to grasp the meaning. Gautam Buddha has said, “To experience enlightenment is primary, but to say anything about it is secondary.” To know it is fundamental, but to say anything about it – howsoever articulate, howsoever intelligently worded – falls into the secondary, into the nonessential. The essential is the experience; the expression is nonessential.But this is one of the great misfortunes of humanity, that even great truths are destined to be misunderstood by people. What Buddha is saying is one thing; what people hear is another. There is a school which says enlightenment is secondary, and Gautam Buddha himself has said it. Don’t be bothered by it. Certainly Gautam Buddha has said it, but he has not said that enlightenment is secondary. He has said that to say anything about it is to go wrong…even the very word enlightenment, and you have gone far away from the experience.And you know in your ordinary life there are situations… When you see a beautiful rose, is it the same to experience the beauty of the rose and to say that it is beautiful? Can the word beautiful contain your experience of the rose? You experience love, but is it possible to say through the word love exactly what you experience in the silences of your heart? The love that you experience and the word love are not synonymous. The word is not even an echo of your authentic experience. And these are ordinary realities: beauty, love, gratitude.Enlightenment is the ultimate experience of being one with the whole. There is no way to say it.Lao Tzu refused his whole life to say anything about it: “You can talk about everything, but don’t mention the ultimate experience” – because he cannot lie, and to say anything about the ultimate truth is a lie.Gautam Buddha was right, but he was not taking into consideration the stupid people who are always in the majority. He would never have thought that there would be a school quoting him, saying that enlightenment is secondary; the real thing is to worship, the real thing is to pray. Gautam Buddha has denied… His last words were, “Don’t make statues of me, because I don’t want you to be worshippers, I want you to be buddhas. And a buddha praying before a stone statue is simply ridiculous.”But such is the ignorance of man that the first statues made of any man were those of Gautam Buddha. There had been statues, but those were of fictitious gods. Gautam Buddha is the first historical person whose statues were made, and made on such a great scale that even today he has more statues in the world than anybody else. And the poor fellow had said, “Don’t make my statues, because I am not teaching you to worship, I am teaching you to awaken. No worship is going to help; it is simply a waste of time.”But the priest is interested in worship; hence Buddha’s words were not taken care of, and priests started making statues. Rituals were created, and he had been fighting for forty-two years continuously against rituals, against temples, against scriptures. Exactly what he had been fighting against was done afterward – and done with all good intentions by people who thought they were doing some service to humanity, by people who thought that they were followers of Gautam Buddha.It is a strange history. Every master has been betrayed, without exception, by his own people in different ways. The betrayal of Judas was very ordinary, superficial. But the betrayal of those who have created statues of Buddha, made temples of Buddha, created scriptures in the name of Buddha, brought everything back against which that man had fought for forty-two years continuously… From the back door everything has come in.These people say…and they are many, and of many different sectarian ideologies. There are thirty-two buddhist sects in the world, and they all think they are teaching exactly what Gautam Buddha has said. But there are only a few who can be said to have understood Gautam Buddha – because the only way to understand him is to become him, is to become an awakened being.Except for that, there is no way to understand Buddha. You cannot study him from scriptures and you cannot persuade him by your prayers. You can be in his company only by being awakened the same way as he was. On those same sunlit peaks of consciousness you will be able to understand him. In other words, the day you understand yourself you will have understood the message of this strangest man who has walked on the earth.The priests have been trying to misquote him, to distort him, to interpret him for their own interests.They consider enlightenment as falling into the secondary. They think that enlightenment deceives people…The fact is, only enlightenment does not deceive people. Except enlightenment, everything in the name of religion deceives people.…that enlightenment is a fabrication…And I say again to you: only enlightenment is the ultimate reality. Other than that, everything else is a fabrication.All your gods, all your messiahs, all your prophets are nothing but your own imagination, your own projection. They are fulfilling certain needs in you, but those needs are sick. They are providing you with father-figures.It is not strange that people call God “the father,” because everybody feels alone in the world, unprotected. Always death is walking by your side; it can grab you any moment. Life is so insecure and unsafe that you need some insurance, some guarantee. God comes in handy; he is your father. In times of trouble you can always rely on him, although he has never helped anybody.Even Jesus on the cross is praying. Finally he freaks out and shouts at the sky, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” But still he goes on looking, hoping that God will be coming on a white cloud to save him, with angels playing on their harps, singing “Alleluia!” But not a single white cloud appears.Jesus can be taken as the greatest example of all those who believe in fictions. He believed too much… The sky is not responsible for his beliefs, and if the sky is not fulfilling his expectations, only he is responsible – nobody else. He had immense belief, but he was not enlightened; he did not trust. He believed in a God; he believed madly that he was the only son of God.These very ideas show that the man was a little neurotic. Instead of helping him and giving him the right treatment, there were other idiots who crucified him…but crucifixion is not a treatment. So one sort of idiots crucified him and another sort of idiots, in their imagination, have resurrected him. Now half of humanity is following a man who was a mental case.But why has he been able to influence so many people? The reason is not that he had a great, convincing philosophy – he had no philosophy at all! The reason is that humanity at large is also neurotic. It feels very good to believe in Jesus Christ, to believe in God; it creates a protection – just in your mind. You will be deceived, finally you will be disillusioned, but to be disillusioned at the time of death is meaningless. Then there is no time is left to do anything else.The people who say that enlightenment deceives people, the people who say that enlightenment is a fabrication, are people whoSince they have never awakened themselves, they don’t believe anyone has awakened either.It is like blind people who don’t believe that there is light – and there is no way to convince them. Even the greatest logician will not be able to convince a blind man that there is light, because light is not an argument but an experience. You need eyes – you don’t need great philosophical proofs.If you are deaf, no music exists for you. If you are crippled, it hurts you that somebody else can dance. And if the majority is crippled – which is the case as far as enlightenment is concerned… If once in a while there is a dancer and millions of people are crippled, they cannot believe that he is real. Maybe he is a dream, maybe an illusion, maybe a magical trick – but he cannot be real. Their own experience does not support his reality.The awakened ones have found themselves in utter aloneness in a world where everybody is capable of becoming a dancer, but people have chosen to remain crippled, people have chosen to remain blind. There are people who can exploit you only if you are blind, if you are crippled, if you are deaf, if you are dumb. These parasites are your prophets, these parasites are your priests.Enlightenment is a rebellion against all these parasites.There is a kind acting as teachers spreading false talk who tell students, “Just preserve stillness.” When asked, “What thing is this, preserving? Who is the still one?” they say, “the still one is the basis.” Yet they don’t believe that the enlightened one exists: they say that the enlightened one is an offshoot, and quote this from Yang Shan– a great master in his own right.A monk asked Yang Shan, “Do people these days still make use of enlightenment or not?”True to his awakened state of consciousness,Yang Shan said, “Though enlightenment is not absent, nevertheless it falls into the secondary: don’t talk of dreams in front of fools.”Now these great masters are bound to be misunderstood. What they are saying is absolutely right, and there is no way to improve upon it – they are saying it so beautifully. Yang Shan is not denying enlightenment, but neither is he asserting that it exists, because the phenomenon is so big that it cannot be contained in any positive statement.The moment you make a positive statement, it has already fallen to the state of secondary, non-essential. But who is going to understand him? – only a man of his own category; otherwise he is bound to be misunderstood.He says, “Though enlightenment is not absent… He could have said, “Enlightenment exists” – that’s what he is saying, but he is aware that saying anything positively brings limitations. All positive words are limited; hence, out of necessity the awakened ones have used the negatives – nothingness, nobodiness – because nothingness has no limits.Have you ever thought about nothingness? Its beauty is that it has no limits; otherwise it will become something. It is nothing because it has no limits. It does not mean that it is not: it simply means it is so much, limitless. But to understand that nothingness is not negation…it is a way of indicating that which cannot be said by any positive word.“Though enlightenment is not absent…” Yang Shan will not say it is present, but he can say, “Though enlightenment is not absent, nevertheless” – because even to say this much is to go against the ultimate experience and its inexpressibility – “nevertheless it falls into the secondary: don’t talk of dreams in front of fools” …because the fools may take the dreams to be real.It is better to be silent with the fools; at least they cannot misunderstand. But there are great fools who can even misunderstand your silence… There are so many kinds of idiots in the world; their categories are inexhaustible.I have heard… A man was dying of aids and his gay friends were consoling him, “Everybody who is born has to die.” And one of them said, “At least you should be happy that your results are positive.”In his mind, the word positive has some value: be happy that you are dying of positive aids, not of some negative disease.Then they understand this literally as a real doctrine and say that enlightenment is secondary.Such people scarcely realize that Kuei Shan himself had a saying to alert students; indeed it is very cogent: “Enlightenment is the standard for investigating the ultimate truth through to the end.”Where do those false teachers put these words? It is impossible that Kuei Shan was bringing doubts and errors to later people by having them fall into the secondary.I will tell you a strange story.You will see everywhere in India people bragging that this is the country of Gautam Buddha. But even the people who are bragging don’t know what the brahmins have written about Gautam Buddha.Of course the man was so charismatic… His teaching was negative: he had no god, he did not believe in consoling you, he was not a man just to give you false pacifications. He called a spade a spade. He was very pragmatic, and committed absolutely to the truth. He denied that the Vedas are holy – which was a shock to the whole country, because the country had believed in the Vedas for centuries. They are the ancientmost scriptures of the world.But Buddha was so impressive, his personality was such a great argument, his presence was so convincing, that although there were many who wanted to have a dispute with him, they remained silent because they had no guts.Once he was dead, the Hindus, the priests, wrote a very strange and very ugly story in one of the Hindu Puranas. They were in a dilemma: what to do with Gautam Buddha? The man does not believe in God – and you cannot prove that God exists. He does not believe in the Vedas, that they have anything sacred in them – and you cannot prove it. He does not believe in your rituals – he calls them foolish. He is against all kinds of priesthood; he does not want anybody to stand between individuals and existence – there should be an immediate meeting and communion – no mediator in between, no commission agents.The man’s influence was great. The brahmins could not say that he was wrong because then they would have to prove it. They could not ignore him either, because the whole country was overwhelmed by his presence. But priests are a cunning race. They created a holy scripture – invented a story – that when God created the world he created heaven and hell, and he gave to the devil the charge of hell. But thousands of years passed and nobody reached hell because people were innocent, nobody committed any sin; everybody was going into heaven – and the devil was bored sitting alone.Finally he went to God and he said, “What kind of stupidity is this? Why have you created hell? – just for me? And I am there in charge, but where are the people? Thousands of years of waiting, and not a single customer. I want to resign. You can appoint somebody else.”God persuaded him, “Don’t be worried. You go back. I will be born as Gautam Buddha, and I will teach wrong ideologies to people and then they will start falling into hell automatically.”And the story says that since then, since Gautam Buddha, hell is overcrowded. In fact, many people have to wait outside in a queue.Do you see the cunningness? They accept that Gautam Buddha has the impact of a god, they accept that he has influenced millions of people, but they managed to plant the idea that whoever follows Gautam Buddha – although he is one of the incarnations of God – will fall into hell. And slowly, slowly they convinced the people.After Gautam Buddha’s death, within just five hundred years, there was not a single buddhist left in India. Who is going to follow a man, howsoever beautiful he may be, if the ultimate result is going to be hell?The situation became so strange that in the memorial temple where Gautam Buddha became enlightened – his lovers had raised a beautiful temple by the side of the bodhi tree under which he was sitting when he became enlightened – there was not even a single buddhist left to take care of it.The memorial temple has been in the possession of a brahmin family for almost two thousand years. Even today the temple is the possession of a brahmin family. They don’t believe in Buddha, but there was no other way…no buddhist was left. Even the tree under which Buddha had become enlightened was destroyed by the Hindus – and these are the so-called religious people. The tree that exists today is not the original tree; it is one of the branches of the original tree.It was just a coincidence that King Ashoka sent his daughter, Sanghamitra, who had become a sannyasin of Gautam Buddha, to Sri Lanka to spread the message. He sent with her a branch of the bodhi tree. And the bodhi tree is a strange tree, in a way it is an eternal tree: it never dies unless you destroy it, because from every branch new roots go on growing. It is a tree of its own kind. Those new roots go into the earth, so around the tree many children of the tree start growing. The tree can become so big that thousands of people can sit under it, because it goes on and on spreading its new generations. Even if the old original tree dies, its descendants will still be alive.So that branch was brought to Sri Lanka by Sanghamitra, and it was planted there. Sanghamitra must have been a great, an impressive woman; she converted the whole of Sri Lanka to Buddhism. And when the original tree was destroyed, just when India became free, a branch from Sri Lanka was brought back. It is a descendant that is now in the place where the original tree must have been.Buddhists were killed, burned alive. Those who could, escaped out of India, and that’s how China became Buddhist, Korea became Buddhist, Taiwan became Buddhist, Japan became Buddhist, Burma became Buddhist, Thailand became Buddhist. The whole East turned toward Gautam Buddha, except his own land. India became absolutely without any influence of Gautam Buddha. The old priests came back, the Vedas became again holy. Old, meaningless rituals again became significant.There have been people in the world who could have transformed humanity, but there are so many parasites who would not like you to become enlightened because your enlightenment means their profession is destroyed.Enlightenment is the very essence of human dignity, human grandeur. It is certainly the key, as Ta Hui is saying. It is the golden key. And for anybody in the world who really wants to be religious, except enlightenment there is no other way.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 35 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A Talk to the Assembly (Part One)Do you want to attain true one suchness of mind and objects? It requires an abrupt, complete break: pick out the one inside your skull that’s doing the false thinking, take the eighth consciousness, and cut it off with one blow.Haven’t you read Master Yen T’ou’s saying? “As soon as there’s something considered important, it becomes a nest.”All of you people have spent your whole lives inquiring after this matter – without any attainment – sitting in your nests your whole lives without being able to come out, totally unaware of your error. Those who’ve become infatuated with the words and phrases of the ancients take amazing words and subtle phrases as their nest. Those who take delight in the verbal meaning of the scriptures take the scriptures as their nest.All the above have things they consider important where their infatuations lie. Lacking the qualities of great men of power to step back and recognize their error, they think of what they consider important as extraordinary, as wondrous and subtle, as peace and security, as the ultimate, as liberation.For those who entertain such thoughts, even if Buddha appeared in the world, it would be to no avail. With nothing considered important, naturally you’re full of rawboned power, without desire or dependence, and master of the dharma.Every man creates a certain psychological security, unaware of the fact that his security is his prison. People are surrounded by all kinds of insecurities; hence the natural desire is to create a protection. This protection becomes bigger and bigger as you become more alert to the dangers you are living through. Your prison cell becomes smaller; you start living so much protected that life itself becomes impossible.Life is possible only in insecurity.This is something very fundamental to be understood: life in its very essence is insecurity. While you are protecting yourself, you are destroying your very life. Protection is death, because only those who are dead in their graves are absolutely protected. Nobody can harm them, nothing can go wrong for them. There is no longer any death for them – all that has happened. Now nothing more is going to happen.Do you want the security of a graveyard? Unknowingly that’s what everybody is trying to do. Different are their ways, but the goal is the same. By money, by power, by prestige, by social conformity, by belonging to a herd – religious, political – by being part of a family, a nation, what are you seeking? Just an unknown fear surrounds you, and you start creating as many barriers as possible between you and the fear. But those same barriers are going to prevent you from living.Once this is understood, you will know the meaning of sannyas. It is accepting life as insecurity, dropping all defenses and allowing life to take possession of you. This is a dangerous step, but those who are capable of taking it are rewarded immensely, because only they live. Others just survive.There is a difference between survival and living. Survival is only a dragging – dragging from the cradle to the grave. When is the grave going to come? In the space between the cradle and the grave, why be afraid? Death is certain – and you don’t have anything to lose, you come without anything. Your fears are just projections. You don’t have anything to lose, and one day what you have is bound to disappear.If death was uncertain there would be some substance in creating security. If you could avoid death, then naturally it would be perfectly right to create barriers between you and death. But you cannot avoid it. Ta Hui has said in his previous sutras, “Accepting the unavoidable is one of the fundamentals of coming to illumination.” Death is there; once accepted it loses all fear, nothing can be done about it. When nothing can be done about it, then why be bothered?It is a well-known fact that soldiers going to the war field are trembling. Deep down they know that all will not be returning back in the evening. Who is going to return and who is not going to return is not known, but it is possible that perhaps they themselves may not be returning home. But psychologists have been observing a strange phenomenon: as they reach the war front, all their fears disappear. They start fighting very playfully.Once death is accepted, then where is the sting in it? Once they know that death is possible at any moment – then they can forget all about it.I have been with many army people – I had many friends – and it was strange to see that they are the most joyous people, the most relaxed. Any day the call can come, “Join the forces” – but they play cards, they play golf, they drink, they dance, they enjoy life to the full.One of the generals used to come to me. I asked him, “You are prepared almost every day for death, and still…how can you manage to be happy?”He said, “What else is there to do? Death is certain.”Once the certainty, unavoidability, inescapability is accepted, then rather than crying and weeping and complaining and dragging yourself toward the grave, why not dance? Why not make the most of the time that you have between the cradle and the grave? Why not live every moment to such totality that if the next moment never comes, there is no complaint? You can die joyously because you have lived joyously.But very few people have understood the inner working of their own psychology. Rather than living, they start protecting. The same energy that could have become a song and a dance becomes involved in creating more money, more power, more ambition, more security. The same energy that could have been a tremendously beautiful flower of love becomes just an imprisonment in a marriage. Marriage is secure – by law, by social convention, by your own idea of respectability and what people will say. Everybody is afraid of everybody else…so people go on pretending.Love disappears; it is not in your hands. It comes just like the breeze comes, and it goes just like the breeze goes. Those who are alert and aware dance with the breeze, relish it to its deepest potential, enjoy its coolness and fragrance, and when it is gone they are not sorry and sad. It was a gift from the unknown, it may come again. They wait…it comes again and again. They learn slowly a deep patience and waiting.But most human beings down the centuries have done the very opposite. Afraid that the breeze may go out, they close all the doors, all the windows, all possible cracks from where it can escape. This is their arrangement for security. This is called marriage. But now they are shocked. When all the windows and the doors are closed and they have plugged even small cracks, instead of having a great, cool, fragrant breeze they have only a stale dead air.Everybody feels it – but it needs courage to recognize that they have destroyed the beauty of the breeze by capturing it. In life nothing can be captured and imprisoned. One has to live in openness, allowing all kinds of experiences to happen, being fully grateful as long as they last, thankful – but not afraid of tomorrow.If today has brought a beautiful morning, a beautiful sunrise, songs of birds, great flowers, why be worried about tomorrow? – because tomorrow will be another today. Maybe the sunrise will have different colors, maybe the birds may change their songs a little, maybe there will be rainclouds and the dance of the rain – but that has its own beauty, that has its own nourishment.It is good that things go on changing, that every evening is not the same, that every day is not exactly a repetition. Something new…that is the very excitement and ecstasy of life; otherwise man will be so bored. And those who have made their life completely secure are bored. They are bored with their wives, they are bored with their children, they are bored with their friends. Boredom is the experience of millions of people, although they smile to hide it.Friedrich Nietzsche is right when he says, “Don’t think I am a happy man. I smile just to prevent my tears. I become busy in smiling so I can prevent my tears. If I don’t smile, tears are bound to come.” Completely wrong attitudes have been taught to people: hide your tears, remain always at a distance, keep others at least at arm’s length. Don’t allow others too close, because then they may know your inner misery, your boredom, your anguish; they may know your sickness.The whole humanity is sick for the simple reason that we have not allowed life’s insecurity to be our very religion. Our gods are our security, our virtues are our security, our knowledge is our security, our relationships are our securities. We are wasting our whole life in accumulating security bonds. Our virtues, austerities, are nothing but an effort to be secure even after death. It is creating a bank balance in the other world.But meanwhile a tremendously beautiful life is slipping out of your hands. The trees are so beautiful because they don’t know the fear of insecurity. The wild animals have such grandeur because they don’t know that there is death, there is insecurity. The flowers can dance in the sun and in the rain because they are not concerned about what is going to happen in the evening. Their petals will fall, and just as they had appeared from an unknown source, they will disappear back into the same unknown source. But meanwhile, between these two points of appearance and disappearance, you have the opportunity either to dance or to despair.Ta Hui is saying that people go to the churches and to the temples and to the mosques, not because they are religious, but because they are cowards. Because they cannot live, they are finding ways to protect themselves.I used to stay with a friend in a house in Surat. This friend belongs to a strange Mohammedan sect, and Surat is their headquarters; their high priest lives in Surat. I could not believe what intelligent people can do…the community is very rich and very intelligent; all are educated people. Just talking to him I came to know that in their society, when somebody dies, his friends and his family give money to the high priest. Sometimes lakhs of rupees are given to the priest as a representative of God; because the man is going on a pilgrimage, his life after death should be taken care of.The priest writes a letter to God, a letter of recommendation: “This man has to be taken care of. A good place” – according to the donations – “should be arranged for him in heaven.” That letter is put in the pocket of the dead man, the dead man is put in the grave, and the money – of course – goes in the pocket of the priest.I asked the friend, “Do you think that money in some strange way reaches to God?”He said, “That’s the belief.”I took him to their graveyard one night, to a new, fresh grave. We opened it, and he said, “This is very sacrilegious.”I said, “I don’t belong to your religion; don’t be worried, all the responsibility is mine.” And I pulled out the letter from the pocket of the dead man. I said, “The letter is here. The fellow has forgotten to take the letter. Now what will he do?” A character certificate…in the twentieth century! We are still primitives.And the priest himself I have met. He is a well-educated person, he has a doctorate in literature. I told him, “At least it is your responsibility, being an intelligent person, educated, not to lead people into false securities. People are giving their whole life’s money to have a secure place in the other world, but they have not lived here.”He could not deny it to me: “This is not good – but I am just a representative of a long heritage. My father was a priest, my grandfather was a priest. It is our family profession.”I said, “It may be your family profession, but it is more of a crime than a profession. You are an intelligent man, you should expose this hypocrisy.”But he said, “I have thought about it many times. As far as I’m concerned, I’m already too rich…centuries of accumulation. I can expose it – that the whole money goes into the pocket of the priest – but I stop myself because this gives people great consolation and security. I don’t want to disturb their consolation and their security.”I can understand his concern and I don’t think he was just trying to defend himself. He was sincere. But such are our consolations given in different ways by different religions, different priests, different politicians. Everybody is making your life secure – and everybody is destroying you.An authentic religious person simply drops the idea of security and starts living in utter insecurity, because that is the nature of life. You cannot change it. That which you cannot change, accept – and accept it with joy. Don’t unnecessarily hit your head against the wall; just pass through the door.Ta Hui, in his last sutras, is giving you his standpoint.Do you want to attain true one suchness of mind and objects? It requires an abrupt, complete break…These are the words to be remembered: It requires an abrupt, complete break… It requires a discontinuity of the way you have been living up to now. You have to stop living in ostrich logic.The ostrich is a very logical animal. Whenever the ostrich sees any enemy, a hunter, he puts his head deep into the sand. Seeing no enemy, he feels completely secure. In fact, he has become more insecure. If he was looking at the enemy, then there would be possible ways to escape, or at least an effort could be made. But when he is standing there, his head in the sand, eyes closed, he is absolutely vulnerable.This has become many people’s lifestyle – ostrich style. Whatever seems to be dangerous, they ignore it; they don’t look that way. They believe that if they don’t see it, it disappears.Have you ever consciously looked at death? Have you ever gone to the cemetery and sat there and thought about the people who are lying in their graves? No…you will go only one time and one way – you will not come back. Why are graveyards and cemeteries and funeral grounds made outside the city, out of the way? – so that you don’t have to come across them. In fact, the graveyards should be made exactly in the middle of the city, so you have to come across them many times every day, knowing perfectly well that the people who are sleeping in those graves were also one day living just like you, and one day you also will be lying in the same kind of grave.The insecurity has to be made absolutely clear. In that clarity there is a possibility of acceptance; there is no other way. You cannot escape, so don’t waste time in escaping.The same time has to be used in coming to know a deeper life which knows no death, a deeper love which is not ephemeral, a love that has nothing to do with infatuation of any kind, a love that is just like a heartbeat to you, not addressed to anybody in particular. It is not loving someone, it is simply loving, it is being love – that is eternal.But an abrupt and complete break is needed in our lifestyles. Our lifestyles are based on cowardly, fearful attitudes toward life.Pick out the one inside your skull that’s doing the false thinking, take the eighth consciousness, and cut it off with one blow.By an abrupt, complete break Ta Hui simply means that if you are intelligent enough, you will change in a single blow. You will not say, “I will change gradually, slowly, part by part;” you will not say, “Change will take time.” You will say, “I have seen it; now there is no question of changing. I have changed.”There is a Buddhist story…A woman is in deep love with Gautam Buddha’s philosophy. She is a princess, and Gautam Buddha is in the town. She has just come from the discourse; she is full of the great ideas that Gautam Buddha was talking about. In ancient days in India it was customary…it was a loving gesture but may have become, by and by, part of women’s slavery. She was giving a shower to her husband, rubbing his body.She said, “By the way” – because her mind was still filled with Gautam Buddha. She said, “My brother has been thinking to become a follower of Gautam Buddha.”Her husband laughed. He said, “That’s ridiculous. Thinking? – how many years has he been thinking?”The woman said, “As far as I know, nearabout five years he has been thinking.”The man said, “He will never become…he will go on thinking. A person who can think for five years can think for fifty years.”These are not matters to be thought about; either you understand or you don’t. These are abrupt quantum leaps. The moment you see the snake on the road you don’t think whether to move away or to jump, you do something abruptly.When you see the house is on fire, you don’t sit there for five years thinking about what to do. Once you have seen the house is on fire you don’t even bother to put on your dress properly. If you are taking a shower, you will jump out of the bathroom window naked. This is not a time to follow social etiquette. It does not matter whether it is Pune or anywhere else – when the house is on fire, you don’t think of the police commissioner! The idea simply does not come to your mind.The man said, “Your brother is simply enjoying the idea that one day he will become a follower and perhaps attain the blissful state of buddhahood. But I can say to you it is not going to happen. These things happen abruptly.”Naturally the wife was offended, because her brother has been criticized. To defend her brother she said to her husband, “Can you do what you are saying? Can you do it abruptly? – because you are also listening to Gautam Buddha.”The man did not answer; he simply jumped out of the bathroom window. The woman said, “What are you doing?”He said, “Forget all about it.”She said, “At least take the clothes…!”He said, “Abrupt means abrupt.”People on the street could not believe that the prince was naked. They asked him, “What has happened?”He said, “I have become discontinuous with my past life!”He reached Gautam Buddha, naked. Gautam Buddha said, “At least you could have put on some clothes.”He said, “The situation was such that I had to do it abruptly. Initiate me this very moment!”The wife came running behind, the family came running behind, saying “What are you doing? It was just a playful argument.”The man said, “What I have done I cannot undo.”And this man, because of his courage and a sudden understanding, became one of the enlightened disciples of Gautam Buddha. His name was Sariputta. He is one of the most loved characters in the Buddhist tradition. Certainly he was a man worthy to be loved and respected.Ta Hui is suggesting to you also…an abrupt and complete break with your lifestyle, which is nothing but consolation, protection, security, safety, guarantee, insurance.Haven’t you read Master Yen T’ou’s saying? “As soon as there’s something considered important, it becomes a nest.”The moment you think something is important – money, knowledge, power – it becomes a cozy nest, and you start living within that small nest. You become a prisoner.A man of ambition cannot be a free man. A man of desires cannot taste the beauty of freedom. His desires are his chains. And whatever has become important – Yen T’ou is right – that very thing becomes your bondage.Nothing should be more important to you than your own consciousness. Anything more important than your consciousness makes a prison for you; you become secondary. You humiliate yourself, you yourself fall in your own eyes.All of you people have spent your whole lives inquiring after this matter – without any attainment – sitting in your nests your whole lives without being able to come out, totally unaware of your error.The error is that you have made something more important than your own being, you have put something higher than yourself. It may be a god… Don’t put anything as a goal, don’t put anything higher than you. You are the ultimate, nothing can be higher than you. You have to explore yourself, because the moment anything becomes important to you, you stop exploring yourself; you start running after that which is important to you, whatever it is.Those who have become infatuated with the words and phrases of the ancients take amazing words and subtle phrases as their nest.What are your so-called learned people? – the pundits, the rabbis, the great scholars. Words, beautiful words, have become so important to them that they have forgotten themselves. Words have become their whole life; they go on accumulating more and more beautiful quotes, statements, but what they are? – just imprisoned in scriptures.Those who take delight in the verbal meaning of the scriptures take the scriptures as their nest.It does not matter what it is – it may be money, it may even be enlightenment – if you make it a distant goal, something to be achieved, you have missed the point. Enlightenment is not something to be achieved; it is something that happens to you when you are in a non-achieving mood, when there is nothing important to you, when there is no greed, no desire, no ambition – not even the ambition for enlightenment. Then suddenly you settle within yourself, not going anywhere, because every desire is going away from you.When there is no going anywhere, your consciousness concentrates at the very center of your being…and the explosion. This explosion is enlightenment, but you cannot make it a goal. This explosion is liberation, but you cannot make it a goal.All the above have things they consider important where their infatuations lie. Lacking the qualities of great men of power to step back and recognize their error, they think of what they consider important as extraordinary, as wondrous and subtle, as peace and security, as the ultimate, as liberation.Man is a very self-deceiving animal; he can manage to deceive himself. He can call his imprisonment his palace, he can call his handcuffs his ornaments, he can call borrowed knowledge his experience. It is not a great crime to deceive somebody else, but to deceive oneself is certainly the greatest crime.One who cannot deceive himself cannot deceive anybody else, and one who can deceive even himself is bound to deceive everybody.For those who entertain such thoughts, even if Buddha appeared in the world, it would be to no avail.Those who are infatuated, running after certain projections of their mind, even if they meet Buddha they will not recognize him, because to recognize Buddha one needs an innocent mind, non-ambitious. You can recognize him only if you also have something of the same quality. If you don’t have anything of alertness in you, how can you recognize the ultimate of awareness? You will bypass it.Thousands of buddhas have happened and millions of people have passed them, without even looking back. They are so infatuated, their eyes are so full of their own greed that they cannot see clearly. And a buddha can be seen only if your eyes have no dust, if your mirror is clean.With nothing considered important, naturally you’re full of rawboned power, without desire or dependence, and master of the dharma.With a very simple statement he has made a great invitation to you. You are the most important thing in existence; never put anything above you, otherwise that will become your bondage, your nest. Remain always clear that the greatest thing is throbbing in your own heart. It has to be explored, inquired into, experienced, but the Kohinoor is within you.The moment your eyes become fixed on something else, you have reduced yourself into something secondary – and you are primary.It happened that I had to be present in a court because I had made a statement and somebody’s religious feelings were hurt. I cannot conceive how anybody’s religious feelings can be hurt; they must be very weak, they must not have deep foundations. And what I have said he had not even understood.I had related a small incident in the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi used to listen to the Hindu scripture, Ramayana – the story of Rama – and Acharya Vinoba Bhave, who was a Sanskrit scholar, used to read it. There comes a point in the story where Sita, the wife of Rama, is stolen, abducted by his enemy. Finding no other way, Sita used a small strategy to leave some marks on the path, so that Rama could find where the enemy has taken her; she started dropping her ornaments. She was a queen – Rama was a king – so she had many ornaments, immensely valuable, and she went on dropping them on the way.Rama found the way, but there was trouble. His brother, Lakshmana, was with him. Rama said, “I cannot recognize these ornaments.” His argument was very clear; he said, “You see ornaments only when the person is not worth seeing. Sita is so beautiful that when I see her I forget completely to see anything else, so I don’t recognize these ornaments. Lakshmana, perhaps you can recognize them; you have always been following behind Sita.”Lakshmana said, “You will have to forgive me. I can recognize only the ornaments she used to wear on her feet.”This is the incident:Mahatma Gandhi asked Bhave Vinoba, “What is the matter? Why can’t he recognize…?” And Vinoba Bhave gave the explanation that because Lakshmana was a celibate he could not look at Sita’s face. But because the elder brother’s wife is equal to the mother, Lakshmana had to touch Sita’s feet every day – in the morning – so he could recognize the ornaments which were worn on her feet.Mahatma Gandhi was very much impressed – so much so that before this moment the word acharya was not used for Vinoba Bhave. It was conferred by Mahatma Gandhi because of this incident, meaning “You are a great teacher” – acharya means a great teacher – “I could not have thought about it this way, but you have a very deep insight.”I was speaking in Ahmedabad and I said, “Vinoba Bhave himself is a repressed person, trying to be celibate, otherwise I don’t see any problem. Why can’t you see a beautiful woman if you can see a beautiful flower, if you can see a beautiful moon? Beauty is not the problem; the problem is your repressed sexuality. You are afraid to see the face because you know that if you see the face you will be infatuated.”And I said, “Vinoba Bhave was wrong, and Mahatma Gandhi was wrong in accepting the explanation. The explanation is sick.”Mahatma Gandhi was dead. I told the court, “I have not made any statement on my own. I have simply said that the statement of Vinoba Bhave shows his own psychology; it does not say anything about the incident. And if it says anything about the incident, then Lakshmana was also sexually repressed. And I’m not saying it; it is a simple conclusion from what Vinoba said. Vinoba is alive, and – if the court agrees – he should be called. I am ready to dispute on the point.”But the court was convinced: it is simple – unless you are repressed you cannot be so afraid of seeing a woman who is almost your mother. And the man whose religious feelings were hurt… The case was dismissed, but there were thousands of people surrounding the court. The man was so much afraid to come out of the court – because people would have given him a good beating – that he asked the judge for police protection.I said to the judge, “I need police protection because I am hurting the feelings of the Hindus, and the people surrounding the court are all Hindus. Why should this man be afraid? Certainly he knows that he has brought the case only to harass me – and the people are outside to take revenge.”But I said to the judge, “Give him protection.” And I said to the man, “Remember, never let your religious feelings get so easily hurt.”A religious man cannot feel hurt. Even if something is said against his religion, he will give it consideration: it may be right. If it is right, he will change; he will have the courage to change himself. If it is not right, who bothers? – he will ignore it.Why do religious people get easily hurt? There have been dozens of cases against me all over India in different courts for the same simple reason: somebody’s religious feeling is hurt. Why do you go on carrying such religious feelings that get hurt so easily? These are not religions; these are their securities, their consolations. And because I have said something which takes away the consolation, the security…that’s what hurts.It is as if I have taken away the protection which was hiding their wound. I have not created the wound, I have simply made them aware of it. They should be grateful to me, not angry, because if the wound is opened to the sun, to the air, there is a possibility of its being healed. But the very recognition is lacking that they are living in an imaginary security.I used to go to my town and I heard that my old teacher, who taught me in school and who loved me very much, was on his deathbed. So I ran to see him, but his wife said, “Please don’t disturb him. You have disturbed him so much; whenever you come he cannot sleep for a few nights. And this is a very critical moment: he is just on his deathbed.”I said, “Then I cannot go back. Let me disturb him for the last time! Because there is still time for him to understand.” His fear always had been that I would destroy his securities. He used to worship a Hindu statue of Ganesha, the elephant god. I had said to him, “Your statue of Ganesha seems more like a cartoon than a god. And can’t you see that this seems to be some joke?” The body is of a man, the head is of an elephant, and the belly is so big that Ganesha cannot see his own feet, and on top of it he is riding on a mouse! I said, “Some practical joker must have made this, and you go on worshipping every day…”He said, “Don’t disturb me! I’m an old man, and when you say such things they enter in my mind, then my worshipping is half-hearted, because I can see that it is right. This heavy man should not sit on the mouse; he could have found any other kind of vehicle. And such a big belly…”But lifelong security…because it is thought by the Hindus that Ganesh is a very protective god; in your difficulties he will be your savior. So when I pushed past his wife I said, “You get out of the way. I have to see him.”And as he saw me he closed his eyes. He said, “Just forgive me, don’t say anything. Let me die peacefully.”I said, “For that very purpose I have come. If you can drop all your nonsense you can die peacefully.”He said, “You have started again! All that I have got is nonsense according to you, and I don’t have any rational support for it. But it is not the time to argue; let me die believing in things I have always believed in. You have been distracting me continuously my whole life. I love you, and I know your intention is right, but on a poor old man you should show a little compassion.”I said, “That’s what I have come for. I even had to push your wife out of the way. There is still time. If you can abruptly, in a single blow, drop all your beliefs, and without believing in anything die silently and peacefully, perhaps the last moments of your life will be the crescendo, the highest peak of consciousness. Don’t miss these moments.”But you will not believe it: he closed his eyes, he closed his ears also. He was not ready to listen to me, because this is the moment to invoke God’s help – death is standing by the side of the bed.People are living their whole lives in psychological prisons. The authentic religious revolution is an abrupt jump out of your prison cell. Nobody is blocking the way. You are the maker of it, and if you are courageous enough, you can jump out of it.To know life in its insecurity is to know life in its immense beauty, is to know life in its authenticity. To know life in its insecurity, without any fear, is to transcend death, because life never dies.Anything that dies is not life; it is only the house in which life was living. The flame of life goes on eternally. Because of your securities and consolations and beliefs you remain unacquainted with the greatest treasure. You live in misery, you die in misery.It is possible to live in immense bliss and to die dancingly, at ease with existence.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 36 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A Talk to the Assembly (Part Two)Buddha said, “One may wish to reveal it with comparisons, but in the end there is no comparison that can explain this. Saying it’s broad and vast has already limited it – to say nothing of wanting to enter this broad and vast realm with the limited mind. Even if you managed thereby to enter, it would be like taking a ladle to ladle out the ocean: though the ladle is filled, how much could it hold? Nevertheless, the water in the ladle, before it went in there, was identical to the limitless water (of the ocean). Likewise, because your world is just this big, and you feel satisfied with it, this limitless world adapts to your capacity and fills it up. It’s not that the water of the great ocean is only this much.”Therefore Buddha said, “It’s like the great ocean, not deferring whether mosquitoes or titans drink its water – all get their fill.”It is the perennial problem: those who have known have come across an unbridgeable gap between their experience and their capacity to express it. What they have known is so vast that whatever they say is going to limit it, and to limit the unlimited is unforgivable. If they don’t say anything, then too they are saying something. They are saying that nothing can be said.But the experience is so glorious, so nourishing, so fulfilling that to say that nothing can be said about it is to show your uncompassion toward those who are not so blessed with the experience. Unless you say something, howsoever limited, millions will remain unaware that their potential was for the whole sky, and they remained limited in a small world. They never opened their wings into the sky, because they never thought that beyond the cage there exists anything else.To let people remain unaware of their capacity to fly, and the infinity of the sky, is certainly unkind. This is such a dilemma: if you say something it is not right, and if you don’t say something it is again not right. You have to say something, howsoever small. It may give someone a hint; perhaps it may not quench the thirst but it may provoke a search.It may not quench the thirst but it may make you aware of it, that you are thirsty. Even to become aware of your thirst is a great beginning, because one cannot remain thirsty if one knows – one is going to seek and search in every possible way. And the ocean of life is not far away. We are in it, we are part of it.There have been two types of mystics in the world. One Gautam Buddha has called the arhatas. They have chosen to remain silent. They are absolutely committed to the truth and they are not going to compromise on any account. They will not say something which is not absolutely right, they will not say something which is only approximately true, because the approximately true is nothing but a lie. They will not give an example because there is no parallel to their experience, there is no possibility of any comparison. Seeing the situation, one can understand why they have chosen to remain silent.But there has been another category of awakened people, enlightened ones, who have tried, although their efforts have not been very successful. By their very nature, they cannot be. But even if one person in a million has become awakened by the efforts of a bodhisattva, the second category of enlightened people, the effort was worth making.The arhatas also have an answer for this. They say that if one man in a million becomes awakened by listening to a bodhisattva, that man was destined to become enlightened whether the bodhisattva had spoken or not.I have been in a dilemma. You cannot deny what the arhatas are saying. They are saying the man has not become awakened from listening to you, because whatever you are saying is just a hint, far away; it cannot make anyone enlightened. And they have a certain reason for saying it, because people have become enlightened sitting by their side in silence, too. Nothing has been said, nothing has been indicated, but just the presence of the arhata, his silence, his peace, have proved contagious. Anyone who is receptive, available, open, has felt something which was not said, and has moved on the path. Not only has he moved…many have reached to the ultimate.Hence the arhata has also a reason for saying that there is no need to say anything. Those who can understand will understand even your silence, and those who cannot understand are not going to understand; you may go on for years and years speaking to them, and they will remain deaf. You may talk about light, but they will not open their eyes. You may try to excite them about the beauties of the ultimate, but they will go on postponing the journey.But the bodhisattva has his own reasoning – and perhaps both are right. The bodhisattva says that there are people who are just on the verge: just a little push and they may be transformed; just a little indication – a finger pointing to the moon – and they may be able to see. And anyway, even if nobody understands, it is still worthwhile to make the effort; at least it shows your compassion, at least it shows you are not unconcerned with the vast humanity which is groping in darkness. You have done whatever is humanly possible to do. If nobody hears it, if nobody listens to it, it is up to them – but they cannot blame you. They cannot complain that you knew and yet you remained silent, that you should have made some effort to wake them up.These two categories have been in conflict for centuries, and both have been so clear about their approach that not even a single arhata has been converted by the bodhisattvas, or vice-versa: not a single bodhisattva has been converted by the arhatas.My own understanding is that this conversion has not happened because both have something absolutely true about their approach. One is committed to the truth absolutely; one is committed to love, to compassion absolutely. And both values, truth and love, are of equal significance.I think there is no need for any arhata to become a bodhisattva, or any bodhisattva to become an arhata. Perhaps both are needed. Perhaps people are needed to sing songs of that which cannot be said, and people are needed to remain silent, so silent that their silence itself becomes a magnetic force. Perhaps both have done immense service to humanity, the one by making different efforts – through language, through devices, singing, dancing – and the other by remaining absolutely centered, but available to anyone who knocks at his door.I don’t see the conflict as it has been seen down the ages. Those who see the conflict are only learned people; they are neither arhatas nor bodhisattvas.I am reminded of a great master, Ma Tsu. His monastery was just opposite another monastery in the deep mountains, and the other master was absolutely antagonistic to the methods and to the teachings of Ma Tsu. One disciple of Ma Tsu was having difficult times with the master, because Ma Tsu used to hit, beat…It was known that once Ma Tsu had thrown a disciple out of the window and jumped on top of him. The disciple had a few fractures and Ma Tsu was sitting on his chest asking, “Got it?” And the strangest thing is that he got it! He never asked a question again! That simply shows he must have got it; since then he became absolutely silent.The other master was very angry at Ma Tsu: “What kind of things does he go on doing? He seems to be a crazy man!”One day a disciple who was meditating on a koan came in. He had been coming for many days and getting a beating. There are hundreds of koans in Zen – strange puzzles. He was meditating on the famous koan, “the sound of one hand clapping.” Ma Tsu had said, “Whenever you have found the sound, come to me.”The disciple meditated in the silence of the night, he heard the wind passing through the pine trees, and he jumped. He said, “This is it!” The sound was so sweet and of course so musical that he went to the master and told him that it is the sound when the wind passes through the pine trees… The master hit him hard and said, “Don’t bring any idiotic answers to me, just go back and meditate.”And this went on happening. One time he heard a cuckoo calling in the night…so sweet, so overwhelming, so touching that he forgot all the beatings and went again. Finally he got tired. He had brought all the sounds possible, and no answer was being received, every answer was being rejected. An idea arose in his mind, “Perhaps this is not the master – at least for me. I am not saying that he is not a master, but at least he is not for me. I should try his opponent who is just nearby.” And he went there.The master asked him, “You are a disciple of Ma Tsu, why have you come to me?” The disciple described what had been going on for months: he brings new sounds and he gets only beatings. There is a limit to patience, and he has come here in search of truth, not to hear the sound of one hand clapping. “Unnecessarily, I am being held back by this, and now I have almost exhausted every sound, but he goes on beating. I have come to you. Accept me as your disciple.”That master had never beaten anyone, but he gave this disciple such a beating that Ma Tsu’s beating felt far better! The master said, “You idiot! Just go back, your master is very compassionate. He only beats you, you need to be killed! Just go back.”The disciple said, “My God! I have been in search of truth… First these people go on talking about enlightenment, and when you get caught in their idea, then they do all kinds of strange things to you. This man has been known always to be against Ma Tsu, and he has never used the device of beating. Why has he done this to me? But certainly, if I have to choose between the two, Ma Tsu is better.”He went back, and Ma Tsu asked him, “Where have you been?”He told the whole thing. He said, “I have been beaten very badly. You beat very considerably, but that man is absolutely mad; he wanted to kill me!”Ma Tsu said, “He is very compassionate.”The disciple said, “This is strange. You are enemies, you have been quarreling for years. Everything that is said by one is opposed by the other – but you both agree as far as killing a poor disciple is concerned!”Ma Tsu said, “I have never said he is wrong, he has never said I am wrong; we are just different. He is an arhata; he simply lives in silence, and anybody who comes has to sit in silence with him. Years pass, and the other also becomes engulfed, overwhelmed, by the silence of the master. But very few people are capable of bearing such a long wait.“I make every effort to create a shortcut for you. I am a bodhisattva. I trust that there is a possibility that something can be done to bring you toward truth. All these devices, all these teachings, have nothing to do with truth, but they have something to do with you. The effort is to destroy your clinging to the mind, the effort is to defeat your mind. The day your mind is defeated, the day you are free from the cage of the mind, our work is done; then you will know what truth is. Neither of us can give it to you. But still we differ: the arhata never makes any effort; I make every effort possible.”It is very difficult to say that one category of enlightened people should disappear. As far as I am concerned, both are equally valid and both enrich the existence.Ta Hui is saying that truth is so vast that even to call it vast is to make it limited. It is oceanic, but even to call it an ocean is to give it boundaries. All words fail, no word is big enough. There is no possibility of any comparison; nothing comes close enough to being a comparison or an example.He is quoting Gautam Buddha:Buddha said, “One may wish to reveal it with comparisons, but in the end there is no comparison that can explain this.”For example, Jesus says God is love. This is a comparison, perhaps the best comparison. In human experience, love has a tremendously significant place; in its purity, perhaps love can give you a hint of what happens to the man who becomes realized, who comes to know the divinity of existence. But even love is not a right comparison according to Gautam Buddha. It is beautiful, but enlightenment is far beyond. Love is a beautiful flower, but it is just a flower, ephemeral; in the morning it blossoms, in the evening it is gone. It was beautiful when it was, but it is not eternal, it does not have immortality. It is beautiful and delicate, and one can enjoy its dance in the wind.It is poetry to compare love with God or enlightenment, but it is not truth. There is no human experience which can explain that which goes beyond the human mind. It is simple, it is arithmetic; that which is beyond the human mind certainly cannot be compared with any experience of the mind.You must have heard the ancient parable of a frog who had come from the ocean – he was on a religious pilgrimage. On the way he found a small well, and just to have a little rest he jumped into the well. He was happy to find there another frog, and they started talking to each other. The frog of the well asked him, “From where are you coming?”The stranger frog said, “It is very difficult to describe. You will have to forgive me, because I am coming from a place which is beyond your comprehension. You have never left this well, and I am coming from the ocean.”The frog of the well certainly felt offended; this was not expected of a guest. He jumped halfway across the well and said, “Is your ocean this big?”The frog from the ocean was in great difficulty. He said, “Please, just drop this subject. The ocean is so big that there is no way to measure it by your experience of the well.”The frog in the well jumped the whole length of the well and he said, “Is it that big?”And the frog from the ocean said, “You are forcing me to be unnecessarily unkind toward you, but I cannot say such a stupid thing that this small well of yours can be compared to the infinity of the ocean.”This was too much for the frog in the well. He said, “You just get out! You are talking about this ocean only to humiliate me.”That’s how people of the mind have always reacted to the people of meditation. People who have never been beyond their mind are always offended by the meditators, because the meditators are talking about the ocean…and there is no comparison if you have lived only in the mind. If you have gone beyond the mind, there is no need of any comparison – you know it yourself. Either you know it or you don’t. There is no way to explain to the one who has never gone beyond the mind.“Saying it is broad and vast has already limited it – to say nothing of wanting to enter this broad and vast realm with the limited mind. Even if you managed thereby to enter, it would be like taking a ladle to ladle out the ocean: though the ladle is filled, how much could it hold?”Once Gautam Buddha was passing through a forest and it was the season of autumn. The forest was full of dry leaves, and Ananda finding him alone, said to him, “I have always wanted to ask, but before the others I could not dare. Just tell me the truth: have you told us everything that you know or are you still holding back a few secrets?”And Gautam Buddha took a handful of leaves from the ground and said to Ananda, “I have told you only this much – the leaves that you see in my hand. But that which I know is as vast as all the leaves in this great forest. It is not that I want to hold it back, but it is simply impossible! Even to talk about a few leaves is an arduous effort, because it simply goes above your head. You know thoughts, but you have never experienced thoughtlessness. You know emotions, but you have never known a state where all emotions are absent, just as if all the clouds in the sky have disappeared.“So I am trying my best,” he said, “but more than this is not possible to transfer through words. If I can make you understand only this much: that there is much more to life than words can contain; if I can convince you that there is something more than your mind knows, that’s enough. Then the seed is sown.” Otherwise all the efforts of the great philosophers of the world are like taking a ladle to ladle out the ocean.In fact, such an incident is on record.Plato, one of the greatest Greek philosophers – the father of Western philosophy – was walking on the beach, and he saw a naked man bringing out the ocean water in his cupped hands and pouring it in a small hole that he had made in the sand. Plato watched him; he was not aware that the other man was none other than Diogenes.Diogenes was, in the Greek tradition, a very strange fellow. In the Zen world he would have been accepted with great joy; he would have fitted perfectly well. But in the Greek tradition of reason, logic, philosophy, he was a strange fellow. But that was the first encounter between Plato and Diogenes, so he was not aware who this man was. Plato asked him, “What are you doing?”Diogenes said, “I have decided to empty the ocean.”Plato said, “You must be mad! This cannot be done. Just by taking with your hands a cupful of water, even in millions of years you will not be able to empty the ocean.”Diogenes said, “My work is done. I wanted to show to you that even if you go on thinking about truth for millions of years you are not going to find it. Your effort to find the truth through mind is exactly the same as my effort to empty the ocean by taking cupfuls of water out of it.”Plato was very much shocked, but he had nothing to say against the man. He simply asked, “Are you Diogenes? – because I wanted to meet you.”Once in the school where Plato used to teach, he had defined man as “a two-legged animal.” When Diogenes heard this he picked up a two-legged sea bird, took out all the feathers, and sent it with a disciple to the academy of Plato: “I am sending a specimen of your definition. This is a human being, a two-legged animal.” Since that time Plato wanted to meet that man…and today Diogenes again had smashed his whole philosophical approach to existence!Philosophy is nothing but a teaspoon. You can fill it up with ocean water…Buddha is right when he is saying,“Though the ladle is filled, how much could it hold? Nevertheless, the water in the ladle, before it went in there, was identical to the limitless water (of the ocean). Likewise, because your world is just this big, and you feel satisfied with it, this limitless world adapts to your capacity and fills it up. It is not that the water of the great ocean is only this much.”Therefore Buddha said, “It is like the great ocean, not deferring whether mosquitoes or titans drink its water – all get their fill.”You can watch the ocean…every day millions of rivers are falling into the ocean, but the ocean remains the same. Those millions of rivers pouring into it make almost no difference. And all the clouds that shower rain all over the earth are filled by the ocean. The sun rays are taking the ocean water into the clouds as vapor. Still that does not make any difference – the ocean remains the same. Whether you add millions of rivers to it or you take all the water that all the clouds rain over the earth, it remains the same.The upanishads have a very strange but very true statement: The ultimate is so perfect that even if you take the whole out of it, it will still remain the same; or, if you can add the whole back into it, it won’t be bigger – it will still remain the same. All these statements are just to show that we are part of an existence which is infinite in all the dimensions. There are no boundaries to it.As you get out of your mind you suddenly become aware of your own limitless, unbounded, oceanic consciousness. No word is capable to describe it. You can experience it, but you cannot explain it. You can have it, but you cannot say anything about it. Only your silence may give a little indication of the tremendous vastness of existence, of life, of consciousness.Enlightenment is only an effort to make you aware of your infinity, of your eternity.You are the whole past.You are the whole present.You are the whole future.The moment one comes to know it is the most blessed moment. You have fulfilled your destiny, you have come home; now there is nothing else beyond it. This is the only richness, this is the only victory. All else is mundane; only this experience is the sacred.And to be filled with this sacredness, nothing much is needed on your part – just a silent mind, a peaceful heart, a wordless, thoughtless serenity. Suddenly you are no more the dewdrop; instantly you have become the ocean itself. To know the ocean there is only one way…to become it.Ta Hui is coming to the close of his journey. He started as an intellectual, but he was a fortunate intellectual; he did not get lost in words and theories and arguments. He managed to get beyond the mind, and now he is making statements which belong to the beyond, which are not arguments but only hints for those who are in search.The whole journey of Ta Hui is significant because it is the journey of everyone who moves from ignorance to innocence, from mind to mindlessness, from darkness to ultimate light.It is your journey.Going with Ta Hui, step by step, will help you immensely, because there is no other book that I have come across which describes the whole transformation. All other books come after enlightenment; people have spoken only when they have known. This is a special case. We start with a teacher and we end up with a great master.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 37 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A Talk to the Assembly (Part Three)Don’t remember what I’ve said, and consider it right. Today I speak this way, but then tomorrow I’ll speak otherwise. As soon as you’re thus, I am not thus; when you’re not thus, then I am thus. Where will you search out my abiding place? Since I myself don’t even know, how can anyone else find where I stay?This is the living gate: you can enter only when you’ve put to death your fabricated “reality.” Yet students consider paying homage to the Buddha, upholding the scriptures, and disciplining themselves in body, mouth, and mind, as their sustenance, hoping to find realization. What does this have to do with it? They are like fools intent on going west to get something in the east – the farther they go, the farther away they are; the greater the hurry, the greater the delay. This is the gate of the great dharma: unconditioned, undefiled, without accomplishment. If you arouse the slightest notion of gaining experience of it, you are running off in the opposite direction. How can you hope for it, wanting to rely on some petty, contrived accomplishments?It’s not a forced action: the dharma is fundamentally like this. Don’t take a liking to other people’s marvels – the marvelous misleads people.This morning it is raining so beautifully.Tomorrow…one never knows; it may be sunny, the clouds may have disappeared.This morning the cuckoo is continuously singing, tomorrow it may have gone. Life is such. You cannot ask permanency, consistency, that things should always remain the same.Watching life you will come to know the very secret, and you will also become aware that mind is not functioning according to life. Mind believes in consistency; it wants that it should rain every morning, just the same. Mind is not able to cope with the unknown, with the spontaneous, with the ever-renewing existence.The disparity between mind and life is the whole problem. Either you listen to the mind…then you live in misery, because life is not going to fulfill the demands of the mind. Unfulfilled, miserable, your life will become just a long drawn-out tragedy. But nobody else except you is responsible. You listened to the wrong adviser: you should have listened to life, not to mind.Mind is a small mechanism, good for day-to-day affairs, good for the marketplace, but if you want to enter into the vastness of existence mind is absolutely incapable. But you are accustomed to the mind, and even when you are seeking for truth or for love or for the ultimate meaning you go on carrying your old mind, which is absolutely a hindrance; it is not a help on the way.If you listen to life instead of mind, things are very simple. You never say to life, “You are contradictory. Yesterday there was no rain and today it is raining. Yesterday it was hot and today it is cold.” You simply accept life as it comes – there is no other way. It is one of those inescapables Ta Hui has talked of before. It is unavoidable.The child will become a young man, the young man will become old, and the old man will die. A man of understanding simply accepts this whole flux, change, without any resistance, because he knows this is how things are. By your expectations they don’t change. Your expectations only create frustrations for you.My whole life I have been told, “You have said something a few years before; now you are saying something else. Your philosophy is contradictory, you are not consistent.”And they have been shocked when I told them, “Yes, you are right. But it is not an objection against me, it is a compliment. It means my philosophy is in tune with life. It changes…the climate changes, the season changes. Sometimes it is fall and the trees are standing naked; against the sky they have their own beauty. And sometimes it is spring, and the trees are so green with foliage and ready to shower their flowers for anyone who happens to be nearby. No introduction is needed, no acquaintance is needed; the friend and the foe are both treated the same way.”From my very childhood I watched the river of my village swelling in the rains, becoming so vast as if it is the ocean itself. In summer it shrinks to a small stream. I have told people, “You don’t ever say to the river, ‘Your behavior is very inconsistent.’ You never ask the flowers, you never ask the birds, ‘Why are you not singing today? What has happened?’ But you go on asking about philosophies, ideologies, whether they are consistent or not.”Once and for all, in a single blow, you have to drop the idea of consistency. It is a by-product of the training of your mind. Mind cannot be with the inconsistent – but life is inconsistent. I am not responsible for it, and neither are you. Nobody is responsible for it; it simply happens to be so. And it is beautiful.Ta Hui is making a great statement. No philosopher can make such a statement, only a mystic who has put his mind aside and looks directly into existence and becomes aware of its constantly changing flux. Except for change, everything changes. The only permanent thing in the world is change. And the moment you ask things not to change, you are creating misery for yourself.Ta Hui says,Don’t remember what I have said, and consider it right.Mysticism is not academic, it is not an ordinary school. It belongs to the beyond, the ultimate and the mysterious. If you live with a living master, you have to learn that. There is no need to remember what he has said yesterday. Yesterday was yesterday; today is today.A living master responds to reality moment to moment; he never bothers whether it is consistent with yesterday or not. His only concern is whether it is true to the moment or not; whether his response to the moment is authentic or not. If it is authentic, then there is no need to bother what he has said yesterday or the day before yesterday.This is where the philosopher and the mystic differ. Philosophers remain consistent; they avoid inconsistency. Their only fear is to commit a mistake, to say something which goes against something that they have said before. But just because of this consistency they remain unaware of the mysteries of existence, they remain confined in their mind. They never come to know the rain, the sun, the moon, the trees, the children playing. This whole drama of tremendous beauty is missed by the so-called philosophers.But strangely enough they are the people who dominate the mind of humanity. There is a natural reason: they can dominate the mind because mind loves consistency and philosophers are consistent people.Ta Hui is saying: Don’t remember what I have said, and consider it right. The day has passed, the statement is out of date. ‘Right’ belongs to the present. Never compare dead corpses with living people; never compare flowers which have disappeared with the flowers that are blossoming now, otherwise you will be getting into a confusion. To come out of such a confusion is very difficult, almost impossible. It is good to remember it from the very beginning: Don’t remember what I have said.Teachers go on saying to the students, “Remember what I’m saying to you.” Only a master can say to the disciples, “Forget all that I have said to you. When it was needed, when it was a response to something actual, it was said and you heard it, and you absorbed it. Now there is no need to remember it. It has become part of you.”Memory never becomes part of you. That’s why after the universities your so-called gold medalists, your so-called first-class people, simply disappear in the world; nobody ever hears about them. What happened? They were so great in the university. They should have made a remarkable life outside the university; they should have left a mark in the world; they should have left their signature in life. But nobody ever hears about them, and the reason is that in the university memory is all. They were good at remembering.In life just memory is of no use. In life something more and something better – intelligence, spontaneity, being in tune moment to moment with all the changes that are happening – is needed. A man who is stuck with his memories falls far away from life. That’s what happens to your so-called scholars. They know much about scriptures, but they know nothing about life.Don’t remember what I have said, and consider it right. Today I speak this way…Because today is today. It has never been before, and it will never be again. It is absolutely new and fresh. It is not a repetition, it is not a continuation either. Life goes on jumping from moment to moment abruptly.Do you see this rain? Abruptly it starts, abruptly it is gone, abruptly it becomes intense and for no other reason becomes soft again.Today I speak this way, but then tomorrow I will speak otherwise.Ta Hui knows one thing certainly: tomorrow is not going to be the same. Naturally he can say with confidence, …tomorrow I will speak otherwise…and if you go on collecting what I say, you will become puzzled. You will start wondering what is right and what is wrong.”As far as the mystics are concerned, their statements are not to be considered the way you consider the statements of philosophers. You have to look at the mystic; his statements are only responses to changing life. You have to see that the mystic is always in the moment; he never looks back, he never looks ahead. Feeling this will bring you closer to the mystic.I have heard an ancient story…A drunkard went in the night, after getting completely drunk, to a sweet shop and he purchased some sweets. He gave a ten rupee note, but the shopkeeper said “I don’t have any change. Tomorrow you can collect the remaining rupees; right now I don’t have them. Either you can keep your ten rupees and tomorrow you can pay, or you can leave ten rupees and tomorrow you can take the remaining part.”The drunkard said, “I am not in a fit state; I may forget those ten rupees somewhere. You keep it. Tomorrow I will collect them.”But in his drunkenness – confused and dismal – still he thought, “I should remember exactly the name of the shop, the face of the man, exactly where the place is because tomorrow morning I will not be drunk and I will have to remember. I should make something special as a mark so that this man cannot deceive me.”He looked all around. He could not see anything except a bull sitting in front of the shop. He said, “That’s right. This man could change the sign; tomorrow his father or his brother may be sitting there and they can simply refuse, saying, ‘You never came last night’ – but they won’t think about the bull who is so silently sitting.”Happily he left, and the next morning he came to collect his money. But the bull was sitting before a barber’s saloon. The drunkard said, “My God! Just for a few rupees you have changed the sign; you have changed even your profession – you have become a barber just for a few rupees!”The barber said, “What nonsense you are talking! I have been a barber always.”The drunkard said, “You cannot deceive me. Look at the bull; he is still sitting silently where I had left him last night.”The drunkard was behaving like a philosopher, finding a certain consistency. Reality is different. The bull can change places; there is no obligation for him to sit continuously before the sweet shop – he can sit anywhere. Life goes on changing.A mystic is committed to life, not to his own statements. Those statements are old newspapers. He remains alert moment to moment and he remains alert to the disciple, his changes. Your questions may be the same, but the master may answer differently because you are not the same. And the question is not important; you are important.As soon as you are thus, I am not thus…Living with a master one has to be flexible, not dogmatic. Whatever the master is saying is not an ultimate statement – no statement can be ultimate. So don’t take it as an ultimate answer, because tomorrow he will change and then you will be in a difficulty.Your mind would like to remain with the past because it has become familiar, accustomed to the statement. Now this new statement disturbs the mind and its constant search for consistency.Ta Hui is saying,As soon as you are thus, I am not thus; when you are not thus, then I am thus. Where will you search out my abiding place? Since I myself don’t even know, how can anyone else find where I stay?The mystic has no philosophy as such. You will be surprised to know that in India we don’t have any equivalent word for philosophy. The word that India has used for centuries and which has now become synonymous with philosophy is darshan.Darshan has a totally different meaning. Darshan means clarity of vision, ability to see; it has nothing to do with philosophy. Philosophy literally means love of knowledge, love of wisdom. Darshan means seeing the reality and responding accordingly. Philosophy is of the mind, darshan is of meditation.This is the living gate…This understanding that life is changing, you are changing, everything is changing. Don’t cling to anything, don’t be a fanatic; don’t be a fundamentalist Christian, don’t be a Hindu. How can you be a Hindu? Five thousand years ago your scriptures were written; in five thousand years the bull has moved! Bulls are not predictable, they are very free, beautiful animals. And you are still holding the dead scripture, and thinking you are a Hindu, you are a Mohammedan, you are a Christian, you are a Communist.Belonging to the past – even the closest past, yesterday – is a wrong approach. Not to belong to anything but to remain available to whatever life brings to you – this is the living gate. Then every moment is an excitement and every moment is a discovery and every moment is a challenge. Every moment you have to grow because you have to learn to respond in a way you have never responded. You become mature.All fanatics, fundamentalists, fascists remain retarded. They are living in the past, which is no more. They are completely blind as far as the reality is concerned. They go on seeing things which have disappeared from the scene, and they are incapable…they really avoid seeing what has become real.You can enter only when you’ve put to death your fabricated “reality.”Unless you learn the art of dying every moment to the past, you are not really living. The past goes on becoming heavier and heavier, because the past is growing every day. And your future is so fragile, so small, that the past does not allow you to live in the present. It pulls you backward.It is as if you, being a fundamentalist, go on insisting, “I will continue to use my underwear from my childhood.” You will be a phenomenon…!I have heard about a man who had ordered a tailor to make a beautiful suit for him. He was going to a marriage celebration in a few days, “So make it really beautiful.” The suit was made, the man tried it and he could not believe it: one arm of the coat was long, the other arm was short; one leg of the suit was long, another was short. He said, “What kind of thing have you made?”The tailor said, “Nothing is wrong with it. The arm of the coat which is short…you just pull your hand inside!”He said, “This is a difficult job, continuously to keep the hand pulled inside. And what about the other hand?”The tailor said, “You put your hand outside, and you have to do the same with your legs.”You can conceive…and the tailor said, “It is such a beautiful suit. I have worked day and night over it, and you complain about small things!”So the poor fellow went out. A couple came by and the woman said, “Look at that poor fellow. He seems to be paralyzed or crippled. What has happened to him? One arm is short, one arm is long, and the way he is walking…!”But the man said, “Forget about him, look at the suit; it is really beautiful. And what can the tailor do? – if the man is like that, the tailor has done the best he could do.”Almost everybody in the world – the Christian, the Hindu, the Jaina, the Buddhist, the Mohammedan, the Jew – they are all wearing coats and suffering immensely. One hand has to be kept pulled in, another has to be kept pulled out. Man is not important, but doctrines, philosophies, ideologies are important. They are not for man, but man is for them; he has to fit accordingly.Every idea that comes from the past is crippling your consciousness. You have to learn the art of dying to everything that has passed, so that you can live in the present with totality, with no burden. And when the present moves, you also move, because now the present is becoming past – die to it.Always remember that the fresh, the present has to be totally lived, and anything that hinders has to be dropped. Don’t bother about being consistent; otherwise to be consistent you will have to wear for your whole life the underwear that you happened to wear in childhood. Then you cannot be inconsistent; you have to be consistent, however you suffer – and you are going to suffer. Your whole life will be destroyed by underwear that is too small. You cannot walk, you cannot sit, you cannot talk; you have always to consider the underwear. But everybody is in the same psychological position.Ta Hui’s golden gate is certainly a golden gate.You can enter only when you’ve put to death your fabricated “reality.” Yet students consider paying homage to the Buddha, upholding the scriptures, and disciplining themselves in body, mouth, and mind, as their sustenance, hoping to find realization. What does this have to do with it? They are like fools intent on going west to get something in the east – the farther they go, the farther away they are; the greater the hurry, the greater the delay.A few things that he has said… First, remain fresh and clean; go on dropping the dust that naturally gathers as time passes by.One Zen master, Rinzai, was sent by his own master to another master. This has been a tradition in Zen, that sometimes masters sent their disciples to different masters just so that they don’t become accustomed to a certain way, a certain style; they don’t become fixed, they remain flexible. Naturally a different master will have a different style – and Zen masters are very unique people.The disciple went to the other master, and he was very much puzzled. What he heard there was almost in contradiction to what he had been hearing from his own master. He asked the new master, “What am I to do? I have come from a master – he has sent me – and I have become accustomed to a certain way of life, a certain way of thinking, and here things are totally different.”The master said, “Forget your old master and forget all that you have learned there. One of the greatest principles of learning is the art of forgetting. You have heard that learning is the art of remembering, but you can remember the new only if you forget the old. So forget the old! While you are here, be here!”After a year or two he became accustomed to the new master, and as he was becoming more and more familiar, relaxed, and the conflict was disappearing, the master said, “Now you go back to your old master.”The disciple said, “This is a strange thing. It took me two years to forget that fellow, and now to go back again…”The master said, “You will not find the same fellow, because in two years he must have changed.”The disciple said, “This is a very difficult thing. If he has changed, then I will have to learn again. I will have to forget you.”The master said, “Obviously! That is the whole purpose of exchanging disciples – so they become flexible and more and more capable of dying to the old and always resurrecting themselves into the new.”When the disciple arrived, he was surprised: everything had changed. And he said to his old master, “Now it will be very difficult for me. First, I became accustomed to your old style; as I was settling you disturbed me, you sent me to another man. As I was settling there, that man threw me back to you. I was hoping deep in my heart that perhaps it won’t be a difficult matter to get back into the old style I have already lived, but you have changed. You are saying things you have never said before; you are doing things you have never done before. You look almost like another person. What I am supposed to do?”The master said, “Forget all those…both your old master and your new master. Now you are here with me. I’m not the same man, although I look the same. So much water has gone down the Ganges…”I remember old Heraclitus, whose statement has not been taken very seriously in the Greek tradition of philosophy because he goes against the whole trend. He is unique and alone. He says, “You cannot step in the same river twice,” because the river is constantly flowing.If I ever meet Heraclitus – and I think I am going to meet him some day, because in this eternity people are bound to stumble again and again on the old fellows – I am going to tell him, “Change your statement. It was great when you made it, but it has a flaw in it. You say, ‘You cannot step in the same river twice.’ I want you to say, ‘You cannot step in the same river even once’ – because even while you are stepping in, the river is flowing. When your foot touches the surface, the water underneath is flowing; when your foot is in the middle, the waters above and below it are flowing; when you reach the bottom, everything above it is flowing…you cannot enter into the same river even once!”And such is the nature of life. Everything goes on renewing itself; only mind is a dead thing, it remains the same. Hence mind has no resonance with life. If the mind is Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan it is fixed, it is a fossil, it is dead. It cannot live in the present; it is still searching for answers in the ashes of the burned bodies which do not have any life any more.The golden gate is available only for those who are always alive to the new, and who are open – and joyfully, not reluctantly – who are happy to drop the past and remain unburdened.And the second thing Ta Hui says is that your whole life is moving toward the future, and your whole mind is moving toward the past. You are in a dichotomy; you are in a very strange conflict, as if one leg is going backward and one leg is going forward. You are bound to suffer immense anguish. You can neither go back, nor can you go forward; you will remain stuck, you will become paralyzed.As I see it, all fanatics are paralyzed people. They think they are believers, they think they are faithful people, but actually their psychology is paralyzed. They don’t have any contact with the living sources which surround them; they are not contemporaries. It is very rare to find a contemporary. Somebody has come to a full stop one thousand years before. He is still hanging there with Hazrat Mohammed, with Jesus Christ, with Krishna, with Buddha – and life has left all those places.Life is here, this very moment.And Ta Hui makes a very significant statement:…the farther they go, the farther away they are– because if you are going backward and life is moving forward, you will become farther and farther away from reality.…the greater the hurry, the greater the delay…hurrying in a wrong direction is dangerous!I have heard… Three professors were standing on the platform. The train was getting ready…and they became involved in a discussion. One was to leave, two had come to give him a send-off. Suddenly the train whistled, the guard showed the flag, but they were so involved in their discussion that they did not hear anything. Just when the last compartment of the train was leaving the platform, they saw it. They all ran…two could make it, one was left behind.A porter was looking at the whole thing. He came to the man and said, “It is sad that you missed.”The professor said, “You don’t know the real story. Those two fellows had come to send me off, but in their hurry they jumped into the train going in a wrong direction!”The greater the hurry, the greater the delay. One has to be very clear about one’s direction. The direction can be either toward the past…that’s the direction of the majority of humanity. Their golden age has passed. A small section of humanity, a minority, has its golden age in the future: the communists, the socialists, the Fabians and all kinds of anarchists are hoping that the golden age is going to come in the future.But the past is no more and the future is not yet: both are unnecessarily moving in directions which don’t exist. One used to exist, but no longer exists, and one has not even started to exist.The only right person is one who lives moment to moment, whose arrow is directed to the moment, who is always here and now; wherever he is, his whole consciousness, his whole being, is involved in the reality of here and in the reality of now. That’s the only right direction. Only such a man can enter into the golden gate.The present is the golden gate.Here-now is the golden gate.This is the gate of the great dharma: unconditioned, undefiled, without accomplishment. If you arouse the slightest notion of gaining experience of it, you are running off in the opposite direction.He is making very significant statements. First, the present is the golden gate, and you can be in the present only if you are not ambitious – no accomplishment, no desire to achieve power, money, prestige, even enlightenment, because all ambition leads you into the future. Only a non-ambitious man can remain in the present.Secondly, If you arouse the slightest notion of gaining experience of it, you are running off in the opposite direction. If you are thinking to gain experience of the present moment, you have missed the point already – because the present moment is so small that if you start thinking of having some experience, you have got into your mind. Thinking, contemplating… and meanwhile the present moment is slipping by.A man who wants to be in the present has not to think, has just to see and enter the gate. Experience will come, but experience has not to be premeditated.How can you hope for it, wanting to rely on some petty, contrived accomplishments?It is not a forced action…You cannot force yourself to be in the present; it comes out of understanding, not out of force. You have simply to see that the past is not there. You have simply to understand that the future has not come yet. And between these two is the small golden gate.Enter into it without thinking, without desiring, without having an achieving mind – just to explore, just to see what is hidden in the present. Innocently, just like a child, enter into it.It’s not a forced action: the dharma is fundamentally like this. Don’t take a liking to other people’s marvels – the marvelous misleads people.And the last statement is: don’t start thinking of other people, and what are their accomplishments.A man came to Ramakrishna. He had been in the Himalayas for a long time; he heard about Ramakrishna and he came to see him. Ramakrishna was sitting under a tree by the side of the Ganges, near Calcutta, where he used to live. The man looked at Ramakrishna; he was thinking that he would be a very marvelous man – but he was a simple villager, uneducated, very humble.So the man who had been in the Himalayas practicing yoga said, “I have come from afar and I am very disillusioned seeing you. You look to be absolutely ordinary.”Ramakrishna said, “You are right. I am absolutely ordinary. How I can serve you who have come from so far?”He said, “There is no question of service. You have so many followers – for what reason? Can you walk on the water? I can.”Ramakrishna said, “You are tired. Just sit a little, and then if you want to walk on the water we will enjoy it. How long did it take you to learn the art of walking on water?”The man said, “Nearabout twenty years.”Ramakrishna laughed. He said, “You wasted your life. What is the point in the first place? When I want to go to the other shore” – the ordinary rate in those days was two paise – “ because I’m a poor man and people love me, they won’t even take me to the other shore if I insist on giving them two paise. They refuse. They say, ‘If you want to come, don’t talk about money. You can come and we will feel blessed. It is enough to be with you while we are crossing the Ganges.’ So something which costs only two paise…you wasted twenty years to attain it? You surprise me.”The man at first was shocked, but then he realized that what Ramakrishna was saying was right: “What is the point? – I have become a showman. These twenty years…almost one third of my life is wasted. And what is my achievement?”Ta Hui is saying, Do not take a liking to other people’s marvels – the marvelous misleads people.The golden gate is open for those who are simple, who are humble, who are almost nobodies, who don’t have great achievements to proclaim to the world, who don’t carry awards and Nobel prizes, who have nothing to brag about…who are just as simple as birds, as trees.Perhaps you have never thought about it, that the whole existence, the trees, the clouds, the mountains, the stars, are all humble. There is no arrogance anywhere. Only a man who understands the secret of being nobody can enter into the narrow gate.The gate is very narrow; if you are somebody, you cannot enter into it. You have to be almost nothing, only then the gate of the present is available to you. You have to be egoless, nothing to claim, just being as ordinary as the rainwater or the silent trees, as innocent as the just-born child. He looks all around, he is conscious, but he has no claim. He is, but he has no identity. He does not say, “I am this, I am that”; he does not carry certificates and degrees and miraculous powers.It has been one of the most significant things that although you hear the Christian missionaries and the Christian bishops talking about the miracles of Jesus, you never hear anything like that about Gautam Buddha, about Mahavira, about Ramakrishna. In fact, if you take away all the miracles of Jesus which Christians go on bragging about, which are all fictitious…if they are all taken away, nothing will be left in Jesus.But Gautam Buddha has no miracles. He has never walked on water and he has never raised anybody from the dead; he has never cured anybody from diseases, he has not turned water into wine – he has done nothing. You cannot destroy him. His greatness is not in his actions but in his presence. His greatness is not in miracles but in his silence, in his humbleness.I don’t think that Christ ever walked on water – no intelligent person will do it – but these stories are fictions created by the disciples. Not a single Jewish scripture mentions it; they don’t even mention the name of Jesus. Can you think that if a man today walks on water, raises dead people, turns water into wine and things like that it would not be reported as headlines in all the newspapers of the world?But not a single mention of the name of Jesus is found in any Jewish scripture. And he was a Jew, remember, he was not a Christian; he had never heard the name Christian. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he died a Jew. A Jewish boy – he was only thirty-three when he was crucified – doing such miracles, it is inconceivable that he would not be mentioned in some chronicle by somebody. It is impossible to conceive that a Jew doing such great miracles should be crucified. And he was not saying anything against Judaism; in fact all he was claiming was, “I’m the long-awaited Jewish messiah.”Gautam Buddha was criticizing everything Hindu. If Hindus had crucified him, there would seem to be some justification. But Jesus was not criticizing anything; on the contrary, he was proclaiming himself the Jewish prophet for which the Jews have been waiting since the days of Moses – “He will come and deliver us.” And if this man was walking on water, raising dead people, this must have proved that he was the right messiah: what more can you expect? He must be the only son of God, because no man can walk on water.The reality is that after three hundred years Christian disciples created fictitious miracles, because if these miracles are not there, then there is nothing in Jesus that can be of any importance. He is not a meditator, he has not said that he has become enlightened, he has not opened any doors of mysteries – so fictions are needed.I have heard that a bishop and two rabbis had gone fishing in Lake Galilee, where Jesus used to walk. The bishop said to the rabbis, “I’m new here, you live here. Do you think Jesus really walked on water?”One rabbi said, “What to say about Jesus – here almost everybody walks on water.”The bishop said, “What? Can you walk on water?”The rabbi said, “Yes.”They stopped the boat. The rabbi stepped out, walked on the water a few feet, and came back. The bishop could not believe it. The bishop asked the other rabbi, “Can you also walk…?”The second rabbi went out of the boat a few feet on the water, came back and both the rabbis said, “We are not Christians. You are a Christian – can you walk on water?”The bishop said, “Of course. If you can walk, even without being Christians, certainly I can also.” He gathered confidence, seeing two persons walking, and he got out of the boat…and started drowning.One rabbi said to the other, “Should we tell that idiot that on that side there are no rocks? The rocks are on this side!”It is possible to walk on water if you know where the rocks are. But people become very much interested in all kinds of stupid things…Ta Hui is saying, “Don’t bother about what others have achieved.” That always misleads people, because they also start trying to achieve the same marvels, the same miracles. And in existence there is no miracle.In existence there are mysteries, and you can enter those mysteries, and you can enjoy and relish, and you can dance with great blissfulness. But that does not mean that you will be able to walk on water; nature does not allow exceptions. That does not mean that you will be able to turn water into wine. That is really a crime; don’t do that!It is enough – perhaps the greatest miracle according to me, and Ta Hui will agree with me – to be humble, just to be nobody, with no claim, silent, aware, and capable of entering the golden gate, the present moment.The present moment contains all the mysteries of existence. The present moment is the only temple of God.

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The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 01-38Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui 38 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A Talk to the Assembly (Part Four)If you were a man, a real Ch’an man, when you heard me say, “Where are there old adepts appearing in the world?” you should have spit right in my face. If you don’t act this way, but accept things as soon as you hear someone bring them up, you’ve already fallen into the secondary.Again, haven’t you seen Master Lo Shan’s saying? “The mystic gate has no doctrines, establishes no general principles. If you want to search for it, look before the sound.” All you disciples of Buddha, real mind is not fixed, and real wisdom is not bounded. Even if I let these two lips go on talking – from now till the end of time – without a break, you still can’t depend on another person’s power: this is a matter in which each and every person is fully sufficient in his own right. It can neither be augmented nor diminished the least little bit.The Patriarch said:“Hold to it and you lose it,and are bound to enter false roads.Let go of it and naturallyits essence has no going or staying.”Just have faith in this truth of one mind: it cannot be grasped, it cannot be rejected. Then you should give up your body and your life right there. If you cannot give them up, it’s because of your own hesitancy – on the last day of your life, don’t blame me.The weather is hot and you’ve been standing a long time.Ta Hui gave a shout and descended from the seat.It is sad to have come to the end of Ta Hui’s sutras. It has been an immensely rich pilgrimage, going step by step as Ta Hui was growing, as he was transforming, as he was beginning to change from an intellectual into a mystic.It was great just to watch the transformation from intellect to intuition, from mind to meditation, from an ordinary human being into an immortal…the explosion that happened to him. We have also shared a little bit of light, just by being alert and aware.These are the last sutras. They are conclusive; they conclude his whole experience, hence they have great potential.If you were a man…And by man he means only a man of meditation. A man who is not a man of meditation is only a man in name; there is not much difference between him and other animals. Animals are violent – so is man; animals are competitive – so is man; animals are jealous – so is man. Animals are also capable of thinking – though not much, but still there is not any qualitative difference.The only thing that creates the difference is meditation, because no animal has shown the capacity of being meditative. Even in the vast humanity, only very rarely a man comes to the height of meditation. Hence Ta Hui is perfectly right when he says,If you were a man, a real Ch’an man…‘Ch’an’ is Chinese for meditation. He is saying that you become authentically a man only through meditative transformation, and he is saying it now on his own authority. He has been a man of intellect; he began his journey as a thinker. He is ending his journey as a thoughtless silence. He certainly has the authority to define man: he has passed through the fire test himself, he has proved himself a man.Man, according to all those who know, is the capacity of going beyond the mind, the capacity to become a no-mind, the capacity just to be without a single thought stirring within you. Once you have known this vastness, this silence, you will not ask any question about existence. Not that you know all the answers – you don’t know even a single answer – but all questions have disappeared, hence the need for any answer has also disappeared.In this state of no questions, no answers, just a pure consciousness, a mirror reflecting nothing…just being yourself, without going anywhere, remaining herenow…you attain to the ultimate bliss which every human being has been seeking for centuries, from life to life, but goes on missing because his search is in a wrong direction: he is always looking outside, and the treasure is inside.He is searching in the temples and in the synagogues and in the churches, and the person for whom he is searching everywhere is just within him. If he can stop all his searching, all his desiring, all his going away – just for a single moment – the revolution happens. Suddenly he is no longer a beggar, no more longing, desiring, hoping, waiting. Suddenly he has become the master.There is an ancient story…A king had become very old, and he had only one son. He consulted a great sage to whom he had always looked for advice, and who had always given rare insights into any problem that he had brought to him. He said to the sage, “I am old. I have only one son, and he is going to succeed me. A vast kingdom I am leaving in his hands, not knowing whether he is capable…will you suggest some way that I can become certain?”The wise man, the old sage, suggested something very strange, and it was followed. The prince was sent in a chariot outside the kingdom. His clothes were taken away and he was told that he had been expelled from the kingdom, and the clothes of a beggar and a begging bowl were given to him. He could not believe it. He said, “What crime have I committed?”The charioteer said, “I know nothing. I am simply following the orders given by your father. You are not allowed to enter the kingdom, otherwise you will be put in jail. So simply escape far away.” And the chariot returned to the palace.The young man was shocked. This is ridiculous behavior; has his father gone insane? He was hoping to become the king and he has become a beggar. But what can you do? Soon he was feeling hungry, thirsty and although it was very shameful, he had to beg. He started begging on the street like an ordinary beggar.Years passed; he completely forgot that he used to be a prince, he settled. Man has immense capacity to adapt to any condition, and when something is absolutely inescapable you cannot do anything else. A certain afternoon, in the hot sun, he was standing before a hotel asking people, “I have been hungry for two days, give me something.” A few coins had been dropped into his begging bowl…and then suddenly he heard the noise of a golden chariot. In a second, instantly, he remembered his own chariot. Strange…it looked exactly like that.The chariot stopped and the same charioteer – although he had become very old – got down, touched the feet of the prince, gave his robes and his crown back to him, and said, “Drop it! Throw away all those beggar’s clothes. First come to a good hotel; take a good bath, clean yourself, dress well. Your father is dying and he has remembered you; he wants you to come immediately, because he wants to give you the kingdom and the key to his treasures with his own hand.”The people from whom he was begging gathered around. They could not believe their eyes, not because of the clothes, the crown, the golden chariot, but because the face of the young man immediately changed. His eyes had a different look, his pride returned; now he was standing there with great dignity and grandeur. The beggar disappeared in a split second.Just a moment before he was a totally different man; just a moment later a discontinuity had happened. The abruptness, the suddenness…even he could not believe it, because he could see the change even in his consciousness. The way he walked, the way he sat in the chariot, everything had changed; the way he looked at people – it was not with the same eyes. Just the remembrance, nothing else had happened; just the awakening of the fact that he is a prince and is going to be a successor to a great kingdom, just words…but all is changed.The same kind of miracle happens through meditation: you suddenly recognize that a great kingdom belongs to you, the kingdom of the whole existence; that you are not a beggar who was ambitious for trivia, who was desiring this and that, who was hoping to have more power, more prestige. All the symptoms of being a beggar…as one enters into meditation, all these symptoms disappear. One suddenly finds one has the kingdom, one’s home; one lacks nothing, one is entire, complete, fulfilled.It is for this reason that Ta Hui says, If you were a man, a real meditative man,When you heard me say, “Where are there old adepts appearing in the world?” you should have spit right in my face.These are special ways of Zen; they are not understandable outside the world of Zen. Now Ta Hui is a master and he is saying, “When I was talking nonsense, if you were a real man you would have spit right in my face. You could have stopped me.”It happened that one bishop in Japan wanted very much to see a Zen master, Lin Chi. He had heard much about him, and he was certain that if he went to him with the Bible and read a few beautiful statements of Jesus, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, he was sure that he could convert Lin Chi into being a Christian. And to convert Lin Chi meant converting thousands of his followers; even the emperor of Japan was one of his disciples. Going into the mountains and doing the tedious journey was worth it.The bishop reached Lin Chi and said that he wanted to read a few sentences from his master, that he hoped that Lin Chi would like them, and that he wanted also to know what Lin Chi thinks about them. And he started to read those beautiful statements of Jesus. When he had read two or three statements, before he could go further, Lin Chi said, “Stop all this nonsense! Whoever has said these words will become a buddha in some future life, but right now it is all gibberish. Just take it away.”The bishop could not believe it; it was not mannerly. Lin Chi could have disagreed, he could have at least been polite. But people don’t understand that Zen does not believe in being polite, it believes in being authentic. It is not important to follow the etiquette of the society; to Lin Chi what is important is to state exactly what he feels and what he sees.Lin Chi said, “These statements right now are meaningless. But whoever has said them – I don’t know him and I don’t want to know him – will become a buddha in a future life. He is on the right lines, but he has to travel much.” In Zen it is understood that there is no question of manners, there is no question of etiquette. Those are all part of the ordinary society.So when Ta Hui says, “If you were really a man of meditation… There were many moments when I was talking nonsense, when I was only an intellectual but speaking as if I knew, and I knew nothing. You remained silent and you heard me as if a buddha was speaking to you. If you had known a little bit of meditation, you would have spit right in my face.”If you don’t act this way, but accept things as soon as you hear someone bring them up, you’ve already fallen into the secondary.I have explained to you the meaning of the word secondary. It has great significance in the terminology of Zen. The secondary means the borrowed – you have already fallen from the original to the borrowed. If you are a man of meditation and you are listening to a learned man and you don’t stop him, you have already fallen into the secondary. You have lost touch with the primary source of knowing. But this strange behavior, although authentic and sincere, has not gone outside the boundaries of Zen.I have loved Zen, particularly because it does not care for anything except the true, except the experienced. It does not even allow anybody to pour nonsense into your mind. It is very difficult for a man who knows nothing of meditation to talk to a Zen master. They live in two different worlds; communication seems to be impossible.You go on behaving the way you are expected by the society to behave, and the Zen master behaves the way his consciousness responds in the moment. He has no ethical code to follow, no discipline beyond his own consciousness. Naturally he is strange and wild, but that is his beauty. It is the same beauty as you will see in the wild animals – their innocence, their authenticity.Man’s politeness is nothing but another name for cunningness: you go on listening to people, smiling, and inside you are saying, “When is this idiot going to stop?”A man used to come to my house; he was a friend of my grandfather. I had seen them talking, and he was really a nuisance, bringing all kinds of gossips, wasting time, and my grandfather would go on saying, “Good, very good.”I said one day, “There is a limit to everything. This story goes on every day and it is not even that he brings new gossips and stories. I have heard those things many times, and still you go on!”My grandfather said, “Do you think I hear him? I go on doing my own thinking; just in between I give him the incentive to continue. The poor fellow needs someone to listen.”I have remembered it particularly because everybody is in need of somebody to listen to him – it doesn’t matter what he has to say. Bertrand Russell in one of his great insights says, “In the future, I can see a possibility that there may be millions of psychotherapists in the world. That will be the biggest profession.”It is becoming bigger every day. The only reason for its growing is not that it helps people to become healthy; the only reason is that it allows you to speak all kinds of nonsense and a learned, well-educated man listens to you. Of course you have to pay him….I have heard about one great psychoanalyst who was tortured by a billionaire. He was talking such rubbish and such nonsense…but he was paying, so there was no question of stopping him. He was paying the greatest fee you could want, and he would go on hour after hour. It was good business but it was very tiring and very boring.One day the psychoanalyst said to him, “Because I have to give two or three hours to you, I cannot look after my other patients. So I have found a small strategy: I will leave my tape recorder, and you go on talking; everything will be taped, and in the silence of night I can listen to it. It will be more valuable too because my mind will be completely free of business and office work and other patients, so I can pay deeper attention.”The billionaire said, “It is a good idea.”The next day he came, went to the couch and within two minutes he was going out. The psychoanalyst looked from his chair and asked, “What is the matter? Where are you going?”The billionaire said, “I have talked to my tape recorder; now my tape recorder is talking to your tape recorder. I thought, ‘Why should I waste my time? I also have many other things to look after.’ My business is far bigger than yours – and late in the night, in silence, I can also talk more freely. It is a good arrangement.”Bertrand Russell says that there will be many, many people getting involved in psychoanalysis just for the simple reason that people will be so much burdened with their thoughts and nobody will have the time to listen to them; they will need professional listeners. That’s what a psychoanalyst is – a professional listener. He does nothing…but even listening helps; one becomes unburdened.…My grandfather said, “It doesn’t matter what he says, or who listens – I am thinking my thoughts… That poor fellow cannot find anybody.”My grandfather died, but that man continued to come. My father was very much disturbed: “This is a nuisance; now who is going to listen to him?”I said, “You are of course because I am not going to listen. While you are alive, it would not look right that I should listen to him. First you die, and then if he is still alive, I will listen – but right now it is your responsibility.”He said, “You are strange. You don’t have anything to do; why can’t you just sit and listen to him?”I said, “Right now it is your duty. Your father has died, not my father. You are getting the whole heritage, and this man is part of the heritage.”One day he was very busy and the man knocked. He told me, “Somehow tell him that I am not at home.”I went out and I told the man, “He is inside, very busy, and he has asked me to tell you that he is not at home. So you please decide for yourself. It is good that you should go.”He said, “What! He is inside and he says he is not?”I said, “That’s exactly the truth” – and my father was listening.So that man said, “Then I will come in.”I said, “That is up to you.”My father was very angry at me. When the man left, after torturing him for two or three hours, he took great revenge on me.I said, “You are taking revenge on me when in fact you are angry with that man. It is your father who has given you the heritage; I am nobody in this whole business.”He said, “But why did you say that I am in? I have told you that I am out.”I said, “I told him the whole thing, why should I lie? You insist always when you ask me things like ‘Where have you been?’ – you say, ‘Don’t lie.’ Now remember, never say to me, ‘Don’t lie.’ Sometimes one needs to lie…do you understand?”He said, “This is a different thing.”I said, “It is the same thing. You have taught me continuously to be true, and I will remain true whatsoever the consequence, unless you tell me that I am allowed to lie and you will not again insist on the truth…”He said, “Let me think about it, because it is a very difficult decision to allow you to lie. It is better to listen to that man. There is no need to lie; you should say the truth. You have done right.”But I said, “You should start doing the same as my grandfather was doing. He was never tired; in fact by the evening he used to wait for him. Many times he used to ask me, ‘Has he not come yet?’ Just learn the secret.”He said, “What was his secret? – because I never came close to them. I never even wanted to be acquainted with this man.”I said, “His secret was very simple: he never listened; he just allowed him to talk. It will take a little time, but it is a good discipline.”In society you go on tolerating people telling lies. You know they are lying, but you will not say to their face, “You are lying.” You will pretend that you agree. Society requires you to be hypocrites, and that is the difficulty.When you come in contact with Zen, hypocrisy is not allowed at all. It is the only small current of non-hypocritical people in the world. Otherwise, can you think of a master telling his disciples, “If you think I am talking nonsense you should spit on my face”? Masters have been beating disciples; that can be understood. But in Zen it happens that disciples have beaten masters.There was a monastery which had two wings, and the master had a beautiful cat. Every monk – there were one thousand monks: five hundred in one wing, five hundred in the other wing, and just in the middle was the master’s hut. The cat used to wander in this wing, in that wing, and it was so beautiful and so loving that in each wing every monk tried to keep that cat as long as possible. Sometimes there was a quarrel, a fight, because the left wing wanted the cat and the right wing was not allowing them.The master became tired. One day he called all the monks and said, “It has to be decided; this cat has become a disturbance. Say something, do something which shows your meditation – anybody, from any wing. If you cannot… If somebody can act in a way that shows that he has meditative insight, the cat will be given to that person, to that wing. If nobody can say anything, that leaves me only one possibility: I will cut the cat in two, and give each wing half of the cat.”The monks were shocked. They tried, but nobody could find a way to show their meditation – what to do? what to say? – and you cannot deceive the master, that is absolutely certain.Because nobody came out, the master had to cut the cat in two. He gave those dead pieces of the cat to both the wings. The monks were crying, but it was no use: the master had given them the chance, but they could not show their meditation.Just then Rinzai, a monk who had gone to do some work in the city, came back and heard the whole story. He could not understand that one thousand monks were there, “and you could not prevent that old fellow from killing the cat?” He went in and slapped the master.The master said, “It is too late. If you had been here before, the cat would have been saved.”This can happen only in the atmosphere of Zen. The disciple hits the master and the master accepts with gratitude and says with appreciation, “Where have you been? If you had been here, the poor cat would still have been alive. Not a single monk came to tell me, ‘What nonsense you are talking! Killing the cat…’ And that would have been enough. But they all remained silent, they could not give any response.”Zen has created a very special world – not of etiquette and manners and hypocrisy, but simply of authenticity. Rinzai hitting the master is simply showing the truth as he feels it: “It was absolute nonsense to kill the poor cat, there was no need. The very idea was wrong and you need a good slap for that. Never do such a thing again.”Anywhere else in the world such a disciple would have been expelled. But in Zen the disciple was appreciated: “Where have you been? You should have been here. You could have saved the cat, you could have prevented me killing unnecessarily a poor cat, a beautiful cat. It was my cat, and I will miss it.”If you go on listening to something that you feel in your consciousness and awareness is nonsense and stupidity, you should do something to stop it; otherwise you are yourself falling into the secondary. The secondary means you are falling from truth into the world of lies; you are falling from silence into the world of language, society, social manners.Again, haven’t you seen Master Lo Shan’s saying? “The mystic gate has no doctrines.”Doctrines are created by philosophers; doctrines are created by those who do not know. It is a very strange phenomenon: those who do not know feel the wound of not knowing. It hurts. They want something to cover it up, so they create doctrines – Christian doctrines, Hindu doctrines, Jaina doctrines. Those doctrines help them to forget their ignorance. They don’t become wise, they don’t become enlightened, but for the time being the device helps them to forget that they are sick, that they are ignorant.But it is dangerous. It is always good to know that you are sick because then some treatment is possible. It is dangerous to hide your ignorance because that will keep you ignorant forever. The more you hide it, the more it goes on growing like cancer inside you. Ignorance is exactly the cancer of the soul. Don’t hide it; if it is there, recognize it so that it can be removed, it can be operated upon.Gautam Buddha used to say again and again, “I am not a philosopher, I am a physician.” You can see why he insisted that he was not here simply to cover up your wounds, to give you a false notion that you know; he was here to heal you. Healing needs a recognition that you are ignorant. Just to recognize for oneself that, “I am ignorant and all my knowledge is borrowed,” is a great beginning.“The mystic gate has no doctrines, establishes no general principles.”I have been asked throughout my life what my general principles are – because every religion has its own catechism, its own established doctrines, principles, disciplines. I have been in difficulty to explain to people that I don’t have any general principles, I cannot have – and anybody who has is wrong, because life goes on changing. You cannot have fixed and established principles; they will become your prejudices, and in a changing life your prejudice will always create a distance between you and the real. You will act out of your prejudice, and your action will not be adequate because it will not respond to the reality.Another small Zen story…There were two ancient temples, very antagonistic to each other. Their enmity had been very ancient, traditional, and their priests were not on speaking terms. Both the priests had two small boys as their disciples and as their helpers to assist in the worship, to bring things from the market, or to do other small things which those old priests could not do. Both had insisted to the boys, “Don’t ask anything, don’t talk, don’t even say ‘Good morning’ if you meet the other temple’s boy on the way.”But boys are boys! They were very curious, and in fact the old priests had made them more curious. They were also feeling alone with those old people, they wanted to be friendly with each other – and one day, finally, one boy dared. He stood on the crossroads, waited for the other boy to come, and he asked, “Where are you going?”The other boy said, very philosophically, “Wherever the wind takes me.”The first boy was very much shocked. He thought, “My master is right that those people are very strange. It was wrong of me; I wanted to be friendly, and the answer he gave cut me short. It was not a friendly answer – and I could not find what else to say to a man who is saying, ‘Wherever the wind takes me.”He told his master, “Forgive me, but out of curiosity I asked that boy just a simple question, ‘Where are you going?’, and he said, ‘Wherever the wind takes me’. You were right. I am sorry. But I am feeling very much ashamed that I could not answer him, because I could not find in that moment what would be the appropriate answer to this.”The master said, “I had warned you but you didn’t listen! Now remember, tomorrow stand in the same place, and he will come because he goes to the market. Ask him again, ‘Where are you going?’, and if he says, ‘Wherever the wind takes me,’ just tell him, ‘And if the wind is not blowing, are you going anywhere or not?’”The boy repeated it, rehearsed it, prepared himself, became perfect by the morning, and reached the place one hour before. He was standing there repeating it in his mind. It was a question of his prestige.The other boy came, and he said, “Where are you going?”The other boy said, “Wherever my legs take me.” Now the whole preparation was useless, because the answer was inadequate. He was at a loss what to do.He went crying to the master. He said, “Those people are very inconsistent. He has changed his answer. Today he said, ‘Wherever my legs take me.’”The master said, “Don’t be worried. Prepare for the next answer. Tomorrow when he says ‘Wherever my legs take me’ tell him, ‘If you were born crippled, lame, would you be going anywhere or not?’ Just puzzle him. It is a question not only of your prestige; now it is a question of the prestige of our temple, of our whole heritage, our tradition.”And the boy tried. He could not sleep the whole night; many times in dreams he saw the other boy. In the morning he got ready, reached the place… The other boy came and he asked, “Where are you going?”And the other boy said, “To fetch some vegetables from the market!”Such is life. You cannot respond to life with principles, established doctrines. You have to be alert and conscious and responsive to the moment. You have to be unprepared. Life is not an examination in a school or college or university. It is not even for a single moment the same.This morning, Ta Hui was saying, “Don’t remember what I have said to you yesterday, because today I am not going to say it.” And he was right: this morning it was raining so much, and now the whole sky has changed. There is no sign of any rain.Life is constantly changing; hence those who want to be in tune, in synchronicity, in an organic unity with existence, can’t afford to have fixed principles, general principles, established doctrines, philosophies. They can only have an alert and conscious being. Then whatever the situation, they will respond accordingly – not according to any principle, but according to the situation that they are encountering.There is a story in the life of the founder of Hassidism, Baal Shem Tov…One woman came to him and said, “I am without a child. Your master had blessed my mother, and because of his blessings I was born; otherwise my mother would have been childless.”So Baal Shem blessed her, but the blessing did not work. The woman waited and waited. Years passed and she came with anger saying, “You are thought to be a great master, greater than your own master, but your blessing has not worked.”Baal Shem said, “Did I say that it would work? Have I given you any promise?”But the woman was insistent: “Then why has your master’s blessing worked?”Baal Shem said, “Your mother had not asked for a child…I was present. My master had blessings for everybody: whoever used to come, he used to bless; it was not especially for your mother. If you were born, it is just an accident. In the first place your mother had not asked and you have asked – that makes all the difference. Your mother simply loved the master, and the master out of his love used to bless everybody.“But the situations are different. First, your mother had not asked for anything special – you are an accident, you are not a by-product of the blessings. Secondly, you asked – and whenever one desires, one becomes incapable of receiving the blessing. Thirdly, my master used to bless everybody; it was just his habit. I don’t bless everybody; it is not my habit. My master was himself, I am myself.“You asked, and I simply thought, “The chances are fifty-fifty. If I bless this woman the chances are fifty-fifty that she may have a child – why miss? If she has a child, my blessings have worked and there will be a miracle. If my blessings don’t work, I know how to get out of it; I can prove that she is an accident – nobody is produced by blessings.’”One should live life without any prejudice and without any doctrines, without any religions, without any philosophies. Only then can one live in innocence, in purity, in spontaneity.Master Lo Shan’s statement has to be remembered:“The mystic gate has no doctrines, establishes no general principles. If you want to search for it, look before the sound.”I have told you that the Bible says, “In the beginning there was the Word, and God was with the Word, and God was the Word.” Now, according to Zen it is rubbish – because a word needs meaning; that’s the difference between a sound and a word. When you listen to the waterfall, you don’t say the waterfall is speaking words; you say, “There is the sound of running water.” Sound is meaningless. Certainly there could not be a word in the beginning because there was nobody to give it meaning. It is better to say there was sound.That is the standpoint of Hinduism. They say, “In the beginning was Omkar….” is just a sound, it is not a word. Hence in the Sanskrit alphabet there is no letter for Om, just a symbol. It is not part of the alphabet; it is in the margin. In the beginning was Om…just a sound.But Zen goes still further. Master Lo Shan is saying, “If you want to search for it, look before the sound” – because sound needs at least two things to clash. That’s why the sound of one hand clapping cannot be heard: there cannot be any sound. If you want to know the ultimate, look before the sound. What is before the sound? Before the sound is silence…Now you can see these three statements: there was silence in the beginning; there was sound in the beginning; there was word in the beginning – and you can see the difference. The word is the most superficial; the sound is a little better; but silence is perfect – and if you don’t say it, then it is even more perfect.If you simply remain silent, without saying “silence” …if you are asked what was in the beginning and you remain just silent, not answering, that’s exactly right. Otherwise silence, sound, word…and you go on falling into the secondary.Remain in the primary, remain in the fundamental, remain in the ultimate. And the ultimate is beyond sound.All you disciples of Buddha, real mind is not fixed, and real wisdom is not bounded. Even if I let these two lips go on talking – from now till the end of time – without a break, you still can’t depend on another person’s power: this is a matter in which each and every person is fully sufficient in his own right.You don’t have to depend on anybody else; you contain your own truth. You are absolutely independent in your being. Your freedom is absolute and there is no way to disturb it. You can forget it but you cannot lose it.It can neither be augmented nor diminished the least little bit.The Patriarch said– the Patriarch always refers to Bodhidharma; he was the first patriarch in China –“Hold to it and you lose it…”In the very holding you show that it is separate from you. Your very holding shows your misunderstanding, your ignorance.“Hold to it and you lose it,and are bound to enter false roads.Let go of it and naturallyits essence has no going or staying.”Let go of it and it is there. It has always been there. The truth is your very essence, so there is no need to cling to it. You are it, you cannot be otherwise.Just have faith in this truth of one mind: it cannot be grasped, it cannot be rejected. Then you should give up your body and your life right there.The moment you understand that your essence is eternal, you will drop the idea of my body, my mind, my life. The moment you become aware of the eternal in you, you will not confine it to my and mine. It is neither mine nor yours; it simply is. We are all part of one organic unity.If you cannot give them up, it’s because of your own hesitancy – on the last day of your life, don’t blame me.Ta Hui is reminding you in his last statement that if you don’t lose your ego, if you don’t lose your identity with the body and mind, if you don’t become pure meditation, then “don’t blame me at the time of your death.” Then you will see the body is going, the mind is going…and you had remained always confined to the body and to the mind, and you never looked beyond.When the body and the mind are going, people fall unconscious. The shock is so terrible that they cannot remain conscious. Only a meditator can remain conscious because he knows. Even before death, many times when he was in meditation the body was lying there, the mind was there…and he was far above. He was a totally different phenomenon.A man of meditation dies consciously; hence he does not die. He dies joyously because to him death comes as a freedom, as a freedom from the bondage of body-mind…as if suddenly all the walls have fallen and you have become the whole sky.Ta Hui’s last statement is so beautiful and so poetic:The weather is hot and you have been standing a long time.Ta Hui gave a shout and descended from the seat.In Zen, the shout of the master has a significance which has not been understood anywhere else. There have even been masters who would not speak at all: they would simply ascend onto the platform, look around the audience, give a good shout, and go back again. Their shout would be as if suddenly a lion had come in and roared.Just think of yourself coming across a lion, and the roar… Your mind will stop, your breathing will stop, your heart will lose a beat.The Zen master’s shout is simply a way to give you an experience of silence. He has tried in many ways, through many aspects, explaining to you – and finally he gives you a little taste. He gives you a shout. Suddenly the shout… Naturally everybody becomes silent – what has happened?And the master is gone…Leaving you in silence…Giving you the taste which he has been explaining all along the way.Nirvano has a stick hidden behind her; she wanted me to hit poor Niskriya. I said, “Niskriya is German and he will not understand it. Rather than becoming silent, he will stand up to fight – and to disturb poor Niskriya’s work is not right.”I had to persuade her to leave the stick; it is not needed here. I can manage without a shout. Whenever I become silent in the middle of my sentences while speaking, you become silent.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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When my friend is away from me, I am depressed;nothing in the daylight delights me,sleep at night gives no rest,who can I tell about this?The night is dark and long…hours go by…because I am alone, I sit up suddenly,fear goes through me…Kabir says: listen, my friendthere is one thing in the world that satisfies,and that is a meeting with the guest.Man is not what he is. Man has become what he is not. That’s the root cause of his misery. He has gone astray from his being, he has become too involved in becoming.“To become” means to become false, “to become” means to become that which you are not. “To be” is already the case. Man has not to become anything other than he is, he has to relax in his being and know the truth.The truth is already given, the truth is not somewhere in the future. It is not a goal, but the source. You are coming from truth. If you can find the source again, you will know what truth is. You are not going toward truth: all going takes you further and further away from truth.You must have heard the name of Radha. Mythologically, she is known to be the most beloved woman of Krishna. He had many lovers; Radha was the suprememost. But historically, there has never been a woman by the name of Radha, and in the ancient scriptures her name is not mentioned. It is an invention of later mystics, later sages, and that has tremendous significance; it will be good to understand it.In Sanskrit there is a word, dhara, which means the flow of a river moving from its source toward the ocean. If you reverse the word dhara, it becomes radha. Radha means the flow of a river moving toward its origin, not toward the ocean; radha is a metaphor. And one can be a beloved of God only if one turns the whole process of life from moving toward the goal to going deeper and deeper down toward the source – from being a dhara, one becomes a radha. And the source is within you. The goal is without, the source is within. The source is your very being.But the mind is aggressive – it wants to explore, it wants to go on adventures. It wants to know that which is not known, it wants to demystify existence, it wants to conquer – it is on a journey of conquest. The mind is basically masculine, and through the mind there is no way toward godliness.One has to become feminine. One has to become receptive rather than aggressive. One has to learn the art of relaxation rather than learning strategies to conquer the world and reality. Truth is not going to be a conquest, it is going to be a total surrender. One has to become a host, one has to open up, one has to be just a receptivity – so the wind can come in, so the rain can come in, so the sun can come in. And one day, just hiding behind the sun and the rain and the wind, comes the guest. The guest does not come from the outside, he arises within you. God is the guest.But you have to be a host first, you have to learn the art of being a host. You have to become a welcome, you have to become a prayer, you have to become an invitation; you have to become a waiting, an infinite waiting. If it takes ages for him to come, you have to wait, with tears in your eyes of course, but with tremendous trust in your heart.Kabir calls God the guest because he wants the seeker to be the host. The masculine mind cannot become the host. The masculine mind can only become an aggressor; it knows how to snatch things away. The masculine mind is a doer, a great doer; hence the masculine mind gives birth to science – science is basically male.Religion is female, and those who want to enter the world of religion have to understand this very deeply because it is fundamental. If you miss this point, you will miss it all: you have to become feminine. And when I say “feminine,” I don’t mean biologically; it is not a question of man and woman, it is not a question of physiology – it is a question of your psychology. You can have the body of a woman and yet your psychology is masculine.That’s what is happening now: many women are turning masculine, becoming more aggressive. In the name of liberation they are losing something infinitely valuable. They are losing contact with the sacred, exchanging it for the mundane. Women have always been connected in a subtle way with the sacred. Women have been mankind’s contact with the divine, but now they are becoming more and more masculine. It is not a question of physiology or biology: remember, you can have the body of a man, but a psychology that I call feminine, receptive. Buddha is feminine if you look at his psychology; Jesus is feminine if you look at his.Friedrich Nietzsche was the first to point out that Buddha and Jesus are womanish. He was being critical of course, he was not appreciating the fact, but he was the first to point it out; he had that intuitive genius. He would have become a buddha himself, but he used his genius in the wrong way; he used his talents in a very destructive way and released the greatest destructive force seen on earth up until now.Fascism, Nazism, are nothing but offshoots of Nietzsche’s mind. He was very masculine, he appreciated the masculine mind. He appreciated the soldier not the sannyasin; war not love; swords not flowers; destruction, murder, conquest. He did not appreciate the beauty of surrender, trust, love, friendship; he did not appreciate compassion, ecstasy, celebration – no, those were not his values. Hence he criticized Buddha and Jesus, more particularly Jesus; when he said Jesus was feminine he was condemning him.I also say Jesus is feminine, but I am not condemning him – I could not appreciate him more. To say Jesus and Buddha are feminine is the greatest appreciation possible because they have become hosts; they have become open, vulnerable to existence. They have sent the invitation and they are simply waiting.The way of Buddha is meditation, the way of Jesus is prayer. But these are simply different names for the same phenomenon. Meditation means becoming silent, utterly silent, becoming a no-mind; and prayer also means becoming a deep listening. What you think is prayer, is not prayer. You think saying something to God is prayer? It is not prayer at all. What can you say to God; what have you to say to God? Real prayer begins only when you start listening to God, when you become just a listening, utterly silent: then meditation and prayer become very close. Meditation is silence, and prayer too is silence, they are just different names for the same phenomenon.Jesus and Buddha are feminine, and that’s what Kabir wants you to understand and to be. Kabir says of himself, “I am a woman married to God, God is my lover. I am fortunate that he has chosen me as his wife, as his beloved.” He sings many songs in which he says, “Ram ki dulhaniya – I am wedded to Rama, I am wedded to God.” In his simple poetry, Kabir is giving you tremendously important insights.The first thing to be understood is that “becoming” is driving you crazy. You are not to become anything, you are already that. You have to accept yourself and relax into that acceptance. The person who is trying to become something is bound to remain tense, naturally: the constant fear of whether he is going to make it or not, whether what he is doing is going to lead him to the goal or not, whether he has chosen the right path or not; the constant fear of whether he is doing enough to achieve or not, whether or not there are others who may reach before him. Becoming creates fear, becoming creates competition, and becoming drives you crazy, neurotic. Becoming takes you further and further away from your being.Do not become. Be, just be. Becoming is the root cause of all confusion, misery, and anguish: confusion because you cannot in fact become that which you are not. The rose can try as much as possible, but it is going to remain a rose, it can’t become a lotus. The lotus can try hard, can practice all kinds of yoga exercises, but the lotus is going to remain a lotus, it can’t become a rose. A rose is a rose, and a lotus is a lotus. But the lotus is beautiful, and the rose is beautiful. There is no confusion because the rose is perfectly happy in being a rose, and the lotus is perfectly happy in being a lotus. Only man is miserable.Man is the only being on earth that is miserable because he is not happy in being himself; he wants to become something else. We have been brought up with this poison: “Become.” We have been driven by society, by the church, by parents, by teachers: “Become.” Nobody says to us, “Be.” And if you can find a person who says “Be” to you, that is the person to listen to, that is the real master, because he is giving you the most fundamental thing. Through that vision you will be able to relax, and in relaxation there is clarity.Confusion arises out of the idea of becoming because you become a duality – that which you are, and that which you would like to be. You become a duality, you deny your reality and impose the unreal upon yourself – a great tension. You become phony, you become pseudo, you become split. And what I am saying is not theoretical: you can look all around – the whole of humanity is split because everyone is trying to become someone else. Someone is trying to become a Christ, someone is trying to become a Buddha, someone is trying to become the richest man in the world, someone is trying to become the president of a country – but becoming, not being; in the name of religion also, becoming.Then what difference is there between religion and ordinary worldly affairs? If the worldly man is trying to become the richest or most powerful, and the religious man is also trying to become someone – a Buddha, a Krishna – then what is the difference? Both are in the same boat; the name of the boat is becoming.The truly religious person is the one who drops out of the whole trip of becoming, who relaxes in his being, who rejoices in his being, who says, “Aham brahmasmi – I am that, I am already that; Ana’l haq – I am truth, I am God.” These are just expressions of being. The basic message is: “I am already that, so I need not try to become.”I have heard one of the most beautiful stories about a Hasid master, Sosya…About seven hundred years ago, a great master and mystic named Sosya, ripe with years and honors, lay dying. His students and disciples asked him if he was afraid to die.“Yes,” he said, “I am afraid to meet my maker.”“How can that be? You have lived such an exemplary life. Like Moses, you have led us out of the wilderness of ignorance. Like Solomon, you have judged between us wisely.”Sosya replied, “When I meet my maker, he will not ask, ‘Have you been Moses or Solomon?’ He will ask, ‘Have you been Sosya?’”This is one of the most beautiful stories, meditate over it. Sosya says, “God will not ask me, ‘Have you been Moses or Solomon?’ He will ask me, ‘Have you been Sosya?’”And remember, God is going to ask you the same thing. He will not ask you, “Have you been Jesus or Buddha or Kabir?” He will simply ask you, “Have you been yourself?” And millions of people are not being themselves. They are all trying to be someone else, something else. Rejecting their beings, they go on rushing toward some idea of becoming. They remain in confusion because they remain in duality. They remain in misery because becoming is not possible – they are trying the impossible.Remember, misery arises only when you try the impossible – because you want it to happen and it can’t, in the nature of things. You want two plus two to be five: you will be miserable until you realize that two plus two cannot be five. For a few moments, you may believe it can be five, but sooner or later the truth will reveal itself: it is four. How long can you deceive yourself, and what is the point? You are simply wasting your life.Don’t try to do the impossible – becoming is impossible. You cannot be anyone other than you are; let this idea sink deep into your heart. Let me repeat: you cannot be anyone other than you are, there is no becoming. All becoming is the world. Not to be a part of becoming is to be a sannyasin.What is a sannyasin? – one who is no longer worried about becoming someone because he is absolutely attuned with his being; one who knows who he is and is happy in being that; one who is grateful in being that. Misery comes whenever you try the impossible. So remember, whenever you are miserable you must be trying something impossible.Bliss is simply an outcome of being natural. Bliss is not an achievement: it is a by-product of relaxing with yourself, of simply being that which you are. Then this very moment, all misery can disappear; this very moment, there is bliss; this very moment, there is benediction – and the heavens open up and godliness starts showering. Suddenly, a great stirring is felt in your heart; you, who have been asleep, become awake.Becoming is your sleep. Being is your buddhahood, being is your awakening. And becoming creates anguish because you have to find ways and means. And everything fails, nothing ever succeeds – nothing can ever succeed. Hence great anguish arises; your life, which could have bloomed into flowers, becomes only a bed of thorns.But you are responsible, nobody else; it is your life, it is your responsibility. You have to take care of your being. And the greatest thing that can be said to you is: “Just be yourself.” Carry no idea about how you should be: drop all how’s, drop all ideals, drop all ideologies, drop all concepts, images, of how you should be. You are already that. Start enjoying that which you are, and then this very ordinary life suddenly becomes extraordinary. Then these ordinary days have such tremendous poetry, then these ordinary moments are full of dance. Then these ordinary people are no longer ordinary people; they turn into gods and goddesses. The moment you accept your being you accept everybody’s being.Why has this happened at all? And why only to man? Why not to the trees and the birds and the animals? Why are the Himalayan peaks so beautiful, and why are the birds on the wing so enchanting, and why do the trees have such splendor? Why has all this disappeared from man’s life? There is a reason, and it has to be understood.Man is the only conscious being on earth; that is his glory and that is his agony too. It depends on you whether it will be agony or glory. Consciousness is a double-edged sword. You have been given something very valuable, but you don’t know what to do with it; it is like a sword in the hands of a child. A sword can be used rightly, to protect, but it can be used to harm too. Anything that can become a blessing, can also become a curse – it depends on how you use it.Man is the only conscious being, and consciousness has two possibilities: either it can become divine consciousness – then it is a benediction, or it can become self-consciousness – then it is a curse. And we have made it a curse. We have changed our consciousness into self-consciousness, we have created an ego out of being conscious. Rather than becoming aware of the organic unity of existence, rather than becoming aware of the orgasmic joy of existence, rather than becoming part of the universal, we have used our consciousness to separate ourselves from the universe, from existence, from life. Rather than making a bridge out of consciousness, we have made a wall.And that’s what we are continuously being taught. Even modern psychology goes on teaching a very nonsensical thing: that the ego needs to be strengthened, that a man needs a strong ego because he has to fight in the struggle of life. If he does not have a strong ego, he will be defeated by other strong egos. There is a point to that, it is true: if you don’t have a strong ego, you cannot be a politician; if you don’t have a strong ego, you cannot become very rich. You have to fight tooth and nail for these things; you have to fight madly, neurotically, fanatically. You have to fight, utterly blind to what is happening. You have to go rushing into the crowd, you have to risk everything. Only then can you become very rich, very powerful.But what is the point of much money and much power? In the first place they are not really needed to be happy, they are not really needed to be contented. Modern psychology is still teaching people to have strong egos: it is still not modern enough, in fact; it is still persisting in the old ideology, the old ideas. Psychology has a very long heritage; it has not yet been able to disconnect itself from its past. What the priest was saying in the past, now the psychologist is saying; he is simply repeating the same thing, with new jargon of course, with more scientific terminology – which is dangerous. The priest is exposed now, the priest no longer has any power; the power has moved to the psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, psychologist. The psychologist is the modern priest, and he is saying the same stupid thing that the priest has been saying down the ages: “Have a strong ego.”The whole of education is based on giving you a strong ego. And the problem is that the stronger an ego you have, the more you feel you are separate, the more you are separate, and the more you are disconnected from existence. And to be separate from existence creates fear, creates paranoia.Why are people so afraid of death? Do you think they are really afraid of death? You may not have meditated over it. Nobody is afraid of death. How can you be afraid of something which you have not yet seen? You cannot be afraid of something which is unknown, you can only be afraid of something which is known. A child is not afraid of catching hold of a snake, a child is not afraid of putting his hand into the fire. Why is he not afraid? – because he does not know. How can he be afraid of the snake? He has no past experience, no bitter experience. How can he be afraid of the flame? He has never been burned before.How can you be afraid of death? You don’t know anything about death. Who knows, it may be a beautiful rest? Who knows, it may take you to a higher plane of life? Who knows, it may give you freedom from your body? Who knows? How can you be afraid of death? No, let me say it clearly: nobody is afraid of death.I know you will say, “Everybody is afraid of death,” but there is something else in it: people are not afraid of death, they are afraid of losing their separation, they are afraid of losing their ego. The fear of death arises when you start feeling separate from existence because then death seems to be dangerous. What will happen to your ego, your personality? You have cultivated your personality with such care, with such effort, you have polished it your whole life – and death will come and destroy it. You will no longer be separate.If you understand, if you see, if you feel and experience that you are not separate from existence, that you are one with it, all fear of death disappears – because there is nobody to die inside you.There is nobody at all in the first place, existence lives through you. Saint Paul says, “Not I, but Christ, lives through me.” And Christ says, “Not I, but God, lives through me.” They are expressing their non-separation, they are declaring they are one with existence. Once you know you are one with existence, no death is possible. For death to be possible, first you have to create a private, personal life, then death becomes possible. You make death possible by creating the ego, and the stronger the ego, the more fear of death there will be. Hence, deep down, the most egoistic person is very, very prone to trembling, to fear of death. The less the ego, the less the fear of death.That’s why small children are not afraid of death: their egos are not yet born. Animals are not afraid of death, they simply die; when death comes they die. When birth comes they are here, when death comes they are gone. A person of true consciousness will come like the wind, and will go like the wind; he will not leave any traces anywhere. He will not struggle with death because he does not struggle with life itself. He will allow life to flow through him, and he will also allow death to flow through him. Life comes from existence, and death comes from existence. Life is a manifestation, death is a rest.And remember, if the fear of death disappears, then all other fears disappear automatically because they are nothing but by-products of the main, basic fear – the fear of death. Go into any of your fears, and ultimately you will come to rock bottom, and that will be the fear of death. You are afraid of losing money? Go deep into it and you will find that money somehow gives you a feeling that you are more protected, that you can resist death more than the poor man – hence you are afraid of losing money. If you are powerful, politically powerful, it appears you have conquered death: because you have power over other people’s lives there is the illusion that you have power over your own life too. It is sheer illusion, maintained by your high position: you are the president, the prime minister, and millions of people look up to you. You are so important, how can existence afford to lose you? You are so important, how can life continue without you? You are so important that you are needed – that gives you the feeling that you have conquered death.And because you have such power over people you can kill thousands. Adolf Hitler killed millions of people, and those who have looked deeply into his mind are all convinced of one fact: he was very afraid of death. He was so afraid of death he never allowed anybody to be in his room at night, nobody was ever allowed to stay in the same room, not even the woman he had fallen in love with. He would lock the room and check everything because while he was asleep somebody could kill him. Who knows? The woman he had fallen in love with may be just a spy. He was so afraid, he never allowed anybody to come too close to him.He married only three hours before he was going to commit suicide; there was not even the chance of a honeymoon. In fact, that was his honeymoon – suicide. In the middle of the night, the priest was called to marry him to the woman who he was in a kind of relationship with – it could not have been love because a man like Hitler cannot love. They were married, and the next thing they did was kill themselves.When he was going to commit suicide there was no fear, he could allow the woman to come close. The game was lost, all was lost; the enemy had entered the capital, he could hear the bombs exploding close by. Now there was no hope, he had failed. Now he could marry. For what? For twenty years he had been waiting, for twenty years the woman had been waiting – but he was afraid of letting anybody too close.This man killed millions of people for stupid reasons. He killed Jews, millions of Jews, with the stupid idea that it was because of the Jews that Germany had lost the First World War; that because of the Jews, the nation, the country, the race had fallen. Now, this is a stupid reason, with no logic, no relevance. The Jews had nothing to do with it, they had nothing to do with the fall of the German race. In reality, they have given us the greatest geniuses that Germany has ever known: Karl Marx was a Jew, Sigmund Freud was a Jew, Albert Einstein was a Jew. In fact it was the Jews who were the cream, but Hitler killed millions of them. Deep down, it seems he was suffering from an inferiority complex. And deep down he was suffering from such a fear of death that he wanted to kill, to convince himself: “If I can kill so many people, if I can kill millions of people, then I am so powerful I am beyond death.”A man who is afraid of death is dangerous, dangerous to himself and to others. And this fear arises out of a very fallacious belief. The fallacy is that we think we are separate – consciousness gives us that possibility. In being conscious, man has been given such potential power that he has to be very careful how he uses it. Remember, if you move on the plains there is no danger of falling; if you move in the mountains, if you go toward the peaks, there is a great danger of falling. The higher you move, the more acute becomes the danger. Man is the only animal who is moving higher, toward the peaks, at the peaks. Consciousness is the mountain, and we have to be very alert.That is the whole teaching of all the Buddhas and all the Krishnas and all the Christs; and that is the teaching of Kabir: be conscious. Be so conscious that you don’t create the self; be so alert that self-consciousness is not created at all. Just being conscious is a great freedom, a great liberation. By just being conscious, sooner or later you will become God-conscious. Self-consciousness is a disease: by being self-conscious you will eventually lose even that little consciousness that lies behind the self like a small tail; that consciousness will disappear too.It is the ego that is the problem. The ego will make you more and more unconscious. The ego will enclose you like a prison wall. It will not even leave windows in your being to look out of. It will make you a monad: a windowless, closed cell. You will be encapsulated by the ego.Hence I repeat again: the male mind is egoistic. You have to learn the way of the feminine. You have to become egoless, you have to learn the path of surrender. You have to learn how to melt into existence, how to become one with the rivers and the mountains and the clouds, how to feel affinity, attunement, at-onement. And then slowly, slowly, you will become a host. And the day you are a host, the guest comes.God is not a hypothesis; religion does not propose any hypotheses. The hypothesis is part of the scientific world. A hypothesis is just an assumption to explain a few facts which cannot be explained without it. But a hypothesis is always temporary: “Tomorrow we will find a better hypothesis, and then we will discard this one.” Hence, science is discarding hypotheses every day; better and better ones are found and older ones discarded. Now Newton’s hypotheses are discarded because of Einstein, and sooner or later we will find even better hypotheses to explain the facts of the world.A hypothesis is just a way of explaining the facts – it is man-made. Facts are there, and the mind wants to fix all those facts into a certain system because unless they are put into a certain system the mind feels uneasy, restless. Unless the facts are systematized, categorized, the mind feels very restless. The mind is a great systematizer, it wants to systematize everything. If there is no system available, it will invent one. Always remember that the hypothesis is only an assumption, it is an invention of the mind. You only use the hypothesis, you need not believe in it.God is not a hypothesis. What is God then? God is a hypostasis, an experience. It does not explain anything, it is the experience of the unexplainable. I call it hypostasis – it cannot be changed, it is absolute, and it is not a belief. Those who believe in God, their God is a hypothesis. Those who know God, their God is a hypostasis, not a hypothesis.Kabir knows. What he is saying is not an explanation, he is talking about an experience – he is sharing his joy, he is sharing something that he has known, he is singing a song about the unsung. Remember, whenever Kabir talks about God it is not a belief: he knows it, it is his experience. He is talking from his experience, hence he can be of immense help to you.Those who believe cannot be of any help: they themselves don’t know. If somebody says, “I believe in God,” remember, he cannot be of any help to you. He himself is ignorant, hence his belief. Find a man who says, “I know God. This is not my belief, but my experience.” The miracle is that if you know God, you are God. Knowing God, one becomes God. The old Upanishads say: “Knowing God, one becomes that.”Kabir is talking as a God-realized man, utterly drunk. His songs are short, but of immense beauty; the songs of a drunkard, drunk on the divine. They may not be great literature because he does not bother about the meter and the grammar and the language, but they are not composed songs, they are outpourings of his joy; a drunkard dancing, singing. You can’t expect formalities to be observed. These songs are very small gems; it is a question of quality, not quantity.The original song begins:Sai bin dard kareje hoy…Without the beloved my heart aches, without the beloved my heart is nothing but pain, without the beloved I am living in hell. Sai bin dard kareje hoy… Without the beloved we are empty, hollow, we are negatives. Unless God enters into our beings, unless God blooms in our beings, we cannot be really existential, we remain shadows. And it is painful, it aches, it hurts, it is like a wound.When my friend is away from me, I am depressed;nothing in the daylight delights me,sleep at night gives no rest.Who can I tell about this?The helplessness of the mystic: on the one hand he has tasted something of God, he has seen a glimpse, on the other hand he hankers for more; he does not want to leave that experience, that space, even for a single moment. But one cannot take hold of that space in one go. The experience is so tremendous, so huge, so enormous, that you cannot swallow it. You have to imbibe it slowly, slowly; you have to chew it and digest it. God is an ocean – you cannot drink it. You will have to slowly, slowly, become one with it.Kabir knows, he has seen the face of the beloved. Now his heart is full of pain, the pain of separation. He has known the state of non-separation, maybe only for a few moments; for a few moments he has been transported to another world, he has tasted the nectar. Now he is back in the world, back to earth, and it is very painful. The world seems to be pale, utterly meaningless, with no significance. His heart longs for the beloved. There is only one thirst – to be again in that vast space, to be again with the friend.When my friend is away from me, I am depressed; nothing in the daylight delights me… Once you have known God then these so-called days are like nights. Once you have known God then this life is like death. Once you have known God then all the joys of this life are nothing but sorrows. Now you can compare: everything that you had thought of as very sweet before, turns sour.If you have been to the Himalayan peaks and you have experienced the virgin silence, the coolness, the smell of the snow, that otherworldly something which still exists in the Himalayas, coming back to the marketplace, the heart longs for it. Nobody will be able to understand why you look so sad, nobody will be able to understand why your eyes are so full of tears. It is not so in the Alps; no other mountains have that something, all other mountains are already polluted by man, all other mountains are already destroyed by man. Only the Himalayan peaks still have something very primitive, primordial, ancient, virgin. If you have experienced that silence you won’t enjoy, and nobody will understand why. To the man who has tasted God, the world becomes so futile, so utterly futile, that he is here, but not here; his heart continuously longs for God.…nothing in the daylight delights me, sleep at night gives no rest. To know God is to know ultimate rest. Your sleep is not much of a rest. If you have known something of meditation you will understand what I mean when I say your sleep is not much of a rest. Your sleep is another kind of restlessness, that’s all; it is good for a change. In the day you are restless in one way, in the night you are restless in another way. Sleep is a kind of rest, good for a change. It is like you have been doing mathematics for three hours and you are tired, then you go into the garden and you dig a hole – it is a kind of rest. In fact it is a new kind of work, but now, tired of mathematics, digging the hole feels good.That’s why in the schools, colleges, universities, we go on changing subjects; it is a kind of rest: one hour for mathematics, then an hour for geography, then another hour for history. We go on changing because the part of the mind that functions when you are working on mathematics is not the part which functions when you are studying literature. There are different parts, different centers in the mind, so if one center starts functioning the first center goes to sleep, has a kind of rest.That’s exactly what happens during the night. In the daytime, your conscious mind functions and your unconscious remains hidden. In the night, the conscious mind goes to sleep and the unconscious functions; but work continues, much work, really great work. Your blood circulates, work continues; your heart beats, work continues; your breathing continues, your digestion continues. A thousand and one things are going on in the body, and a thousand and one things are going on in the mind too. Dreams upon dreams are coming; and not only that, a part of your mind blocks everything from the outside, prevents it from disturbing your sleep.You want to get up early in the morning, at four o’clock. You fix the alarm and the alarm goes, but your mind is constantly working. It does not want you to be disturbed. The mind creates a dream: you start dreaming that you are passing a church and the church bells are ringing. This is a way for the mind to protect your sleep. It misinforms you, misguides you; it changes the alarm into church bells. Great work is going on. The mind is guarding, seeing what can be allowed and what cannot. And if something cannot be prevented, at least it can be interpreted in such a way that sleep is not disturbed. The mind is constantly on guard; great work continues the whole night.But if you know meditation, then a few minutes of meditation can give you so much rest. Compared to that rest, your whole night will look like restlessness because in meditation you are utterly relaxed, the mind is not on guard, you are not focusing on anything. You are simply open and available, available to all kinds of things – the birds singing, the airplane passing by, the train, the people, the traffic noise. You are available to all. Meditation is not concentration, meditation is not excluding anything; meditation is inclusive of all.And then there is a great silence amidst all the noise around you, great rest amidst all the turmoil around you. Once you have known the rest of meditation for even a few minutes your whole night will look like restlessness. Comparison will arise, but that is natural for one who has known God – that means one who has known samadhi, the ultimate peak of meditation. Kabir is right: …nothing in the daylight delights me, sleep at night gives no rest. Who can I tell about this? This is one of the greatest problems for the mystics: “Who can I tell about this, who will understand?”I was traveling in this country for fifteen years, day in, day out, year in, year out, talking to thousands of people. Slowly, slowly, I became aware that I was talking to the walls. Those people could not understand what I was saying. They could hear, but they could not listen. The words reached them, but the meaning was left behind. I tried in every way, but it was impossible. Then I decided to stay in one place and only to talk to those few who really wanted to understand – and who were ready not only to understand, but to be transformed.Many people come here, particularly Indians, and they ask, “Why isn’t the meeting open to all?” Because it is of no use to them and they will be a nuisance here. Their very presence will destroy something immensely beautiful that is being created. It is open only to those who are seekers. It is not a public place, it can never be a public place. It is a mystery school, it is only for those who are ready to go into the unknown, the unexplainable.And it has been my experience that if I am talking to my sannyasins I feel a deep rapport, but if I am talking to non-sannyasins there seems to be some difficulty in communication. Many non-sannyasins have asked, “Why can’t we sit in front?” For the simple reason that if you are in front and I see you, it will be difficult for me to say that which I would like to say. Just looking at your faces, communication becomes difficult, some things become impossible. And what to say about communion? Looking at my sannyasins, looking into their eyes, communion is possible.Kabir is right. He says: …who can I tell about this?…kase kahun dukh hoy…There is a great pain in my heart because I have known the bliss of being with the divine, but to whom can I communicate this? It would help me if I could communicate.Hence, a buddhafield is always needed, satsang is needed. A community is needed where many people are searching together, where you can speak and you can rest assured that you will not be misunderstood. A commune is needed where you can share your burdens, your experiences; you can pour out your heart, and you will be understood, you will not feel embarrassed.That’s what is happening here. If one sannyasin comes to another and starts crying, the other understands; the other will not start asking questions, questions which would be embarrassing to the person who is crying. He may hug him, he may hold his hand, but he will not start a great discussion about it: “Don’t be emotional, this is not good. Be a man, don’t cry.” No, he will understand, he will have sympathy, he will support. A commune becomes a support, where you can say things which are not ordinarily said in the outside world, where you can share experiences which seem imaginary, illusory, hallucinatory; things that if you tell them to somebody in the outside world they will think you are mad.…kase kahun dukh hoy… Kabir says, I cannot find anybody to whom I can say this – that I have seen my lord, that I have been with my lord, and now I am again separated. I have known non-separation, those orgasmic moments, those peaks, and now I am thrown back into the dark valley. Now nothing here appeals to me anymore; the beauty here is almost ugliness compared to the beauty that has arisen in my vision. And the happiness here is just false because I have known authentic joy. And all the celebrations here are just a formality, people are moving in empty gestures. I have seen the real celebration!The night is dark and long…hours go by…because I am alone, I sit up suddenly,fear goes through me…The night is dark and long… You don’t know the night Kabir is talking about. He is not talking about the ordinary night, he is talking about the night that is known only by those who have seen the light – a very paradoxical phenomenon. He is talking about the night that only happens to those who have seen the dawn, who have seen something of the morning. And that morning has disappeared again, and now the night is darker than ever before. Great fear arises: “Will I ever be able to attain to that peak again? Was it real? Or have I only been dreaming?” Great fear grows, great trembling arises, he is scared to death. And he cannot even share it.It would have helped Kabir if there had been a companion with whom it was possible to share the fear. It would have helped if some consoling words had come from somebody, if they had told him, “Don’t be worried, it will happen again. It has happened to me again.” That would have given him confidence. But whom to talk to? Kase kahun dukh hoy? I am in tremendous pain. But where to go, whom to go to, with whom to share?…adhi ratiyan pichhle paharva,sai bina taraf rahi soy…Half the night is gone, waiting, waiting, waiting, and there is no sign. I cannot hear his footsteps. …adhi ratiyan pichhle paharva, sai bina taraf rahi soy… I have waited long, half the night has passed. Now the last of the night is passing and he has still not come, and I don’t see any sign, any indication, any message. And the darkness is becoming darker and darker; there seems to be no possibility that I will attain to him again. In deep despair, in great pain, I have fallen asleep again.The night is dark and long… Remember one thing: that time is relative. If you are rejoicing, time goes fast, very fast; if you are in misery, in pain, time slows down. The clock moves at the same speed, but the psychological experience of time is very subjective.You are sitting by the side of a person who is dying – then you will see how long the night becomes, there seems to be no end to it. You are with your beloved, you have met after many years – and the night goes as fast as if it were just a few moments. You cannot believe how fast it has gone. It seems the night has played a game with you, it went so fast – just to not allow you enough time with your beloved.Time is relative – psychological time, not clock time. For those who have seen glimpses of God this world is really difficult to live in, and the night is very dark and very long. The Christian mystics have the right words for it; they call it “the dark night of the soul.”Hours go by… because I am alone… You will know real aloneness only when you have seen God. Before that you have known aloneness: sometimes your friend is not with you, your wife is not with you, your husband is not with you, your children are not with you; yes, you have known a certain kind of aloneness. But that is nothing compared to the aloneness that you will know when you have seen God. That aloneness is like a knife to the heart. One is almost crucified.I sit up suddenly, fear goes through me… I cannot sleep because he may be coming. Who knows when he will come? His ways are unpredictable, he comes at very unexpected moments. One has to be alert and watchful. So I wake up, I suddenly sit up, again and again, and fear goes through me: “He has not come. Has he forgotten me? Has he lost interest in me?”These are the fears of a lover – tremendously magnified, infinitely magnified – when the lover is nobody but God himself, no other than God himself.Kabir says: listen, my friendthere is one thing in the world that satisfies,and that is a meeting with the guest.Nothing else ever satisfies, nothing else can ever satisfy. Without attaining to God, without becoming God, without merging with God, you are going to remain discontented. Contentment, real contentment, has only one meaning – the meeting with the guest.…kahat Kabir suno bhai pyare…My dear friends, listen.…sai mile sukh hoy.There is only one possibility of bliss, and that is when the beloved has been found. And what is the way to find the beloved? – not searching. Lao Tzu says, “Seek, and you will not find. Do not seek, and find.” Seeking is not the way because seeking is again the male mind. Non-seeking is a passive waiting, just being ready, the door open, the house prepared for the guest, sitting on the doorstep, waiting.This waiting is prayer, this waiting is meditation. This waiting is what is meant by being a host. The moment you have become a host the guest comes, inevitably comes; it has never been otherwise. It is not that you have to find God; if you are ready, God finds you. And how could you find God anyway? – you don’t know his address, you don’t know where he is, you don’t know his face. Even if you came across him you would not be able to recognize him. Even if you met him, the meeting is not going to be a real meeting because you will not recognize him. How could you recognize him? You have never seen him before.Man cannot seek God – that is the message of these sutras. God can seek man – but then, what can man do? He should be ready, he should be available. If a hand comes from the beyond, he should not shrink back. If a voice comes from the beyond, he should be ready to listen – he will not be able to listen if his mind is noisy.If God comes and knocks on your door, you should be ready to open the door, you should not be afraid of him. Yes, fear arises when the unknown comes, and when God knocks on your door it is a death for you – and a resurrection. But the resurrection will come later: first the crucifixion, first you will have to die.Being with God means only one thing: dissolving in him – just as rivers come from the mountains and disappear into the ocean. Maybe there is a moment when the river hesitates. Kahlil Gibran says: “I have watched rivers falling into the ocean and I think that for a moment they hesitate, for a moment fear grips them. I have seen rivers looking back with great nostalgia at all the mountains that they have crossed, and the plains, and the beautiful trees on the banks, and the sunrises and the sunsets, and a thousand and one things.”The ocean is vast – the river is going to lose its identity, and forever. There is a great nostalgia for all one’s memories, and a great desire not to lose one’s identity – but the river cannot go back. Man can go back, that is the problem. The river is bound to fall into the ocean, but man can turn back, even from the ultimate door.If fear grips you, if you have a really strong ego and you become too protective of your separate existence, of your personality, of your ego, you may turn back, or you may close your doors. You may not listen to the voice of the beyond. And let me tell you, God comes every day and knocks on your doors. Sometimes he comes as the wind and knocks on your doors, but you don’t open them. And sometimes he comes in the rain, but you don’t go into the open, and you don’t stand under the sky to be soaked by him. No, you hide, you open your umbrellas. And you have psychological umbrellas too, and whenever he comes you avoid him; whenever he comes across you, you escape.Kabir says, “If you want the guest to come, be a host.” Welcome him, receive him, embrace him. And he always comes, continuously comes, every moment of your life he is coming and searching for you, but you go on avoiding. All that is needed on your part is not to search for God but to be available. When God comes, be ready to surrender; when the ocean comes, be ready to disappear into it. Slip into it like a dewdrop: silently, prayerfully. Dancing, laughing, loving – disappear.…kahat Kabir suno bhai pyare, sai mile sukh hoy. Kabir says, “My beloved friends, listen. All that I have to say is there is no other bliss than the meeting with the guest.”Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Something inside me cringes with distrust when I hear you say “God,” and I notice that I am reluctant to embrace the word. Love, yes; divine presence, yes; the ultimate, yes; but this word God brings a hesitation to my lips and a shudder to my being. Will you comment on this condition?There is a reason for it: in the name of God so much harm has been done. It is natural, this will happen to any intelligent person. The word God has become very dirty; remaining in the bad company of the priests it has lost all its beauty. It has become associated with the wrong people, the wrong meanings. Hence it is very natural that a shudder goes through your being, that a hesitation arises in you, that you cringe with distrust – but it has nothing to do with the word God. The word God in itself is beautiful, the word God in itself is innocent.What has been done in the name of religion, the same has been done in the name of love. Mohammedans have been killing in the name of religion, God, brotherhood. Christians have been killing in the name of love. And this has been the case all over the world. If you look at the history of the word love, millions of people have been killed. Now the same is happening in the name of communism. The word is beautiful, it comes from commune. The same is happening in the name of democracy; that word too is beautiful.So one thing has to be understood: words in themselves are innocent – depending on what you do with them. And if you have used the word God wrongly, who can prevent you from using the word love in the same way? And brotherhood, democracy, communism, humanity, peace? In the name of peace only war, and preparation for war, happens. So understand that one thing: do not become too conditioned for or against words – words are neutral.The word God itself has tremendous beauty. It comes from a Greek root in which g stands for that, o stands for which, d stands for is. God is a code word; it means “that which is.” It contains all: the trees and the birds and the clouds and the sun, you and me. All that has happened, all that is happening, all that will ever happen.God does not mean a person. Yes, it has been used that way, but what does that have to do with the poor word God? The word cannot prevent people from wrongly using it. It has been used as if there is an old man, very ancient, sitting in heaven, dominating, controlling – a great engineer who has created the world. The word itself does not have any meaning of that kind. It simply means the whole, the total.And the whole is. Nobody can deny it, not even an atheist. The atheist can deny God as a person, but there is no God as a person, so the atheist is fighting with a shadow – just like the theist who is worshipping a shadow. The theist is stupid, so is the atheist; they are in the same boat. One is worshipping something which is not; the other is criticizing, fighting with something which is not. Both are engaged in a futile exercise. God means the whole, the total, the all.It will be good if you can free the word God from the so-called religious people. The word in itself is beautiful and has to be saved. Hence I go on using it, knowing that it has been associated with the wrong people. But it is not the fault of the word God; it is helpless. You can use any word wrongly, and almost all beautiful words have been used wrongly. Remember, only beautiful words are used wrongly because they can become camouflage. Hiding behind them, you can do bad things more easily. God becomes a screen, and behind it you can be as violent as you like. Love, humanity, can also serve as beautiful words for hiding behind.If you become antagonistic toward words in this way, not a single beautiful word will be left to you; all will have been used wrongly. And even if we invent new words, they will be used wrongly because the people, the great crowd on the earth, are still the same. The mind is still the same.In Russia nobody believes in God now, but they believe in communism. They do the same in the name of communism as Christians have done in the name of God. What is the difference? In Russia nobody believes in the Bible, but they sacrifice as many people at the altar of Das Kapital as have been sacrificed in the name of the Bible. So what is the difference? Kaaba or Kremlin, there seems to be no difference at all. In China nobody believes in Buddha now, so nobody can commit any more crimes in the name of Buddha, but the same crimes are being committed in the name of communism and Chairman Mao – because the people are still the same.Unless the mind of humanity changes this is going to go on happening. Hence, I won’t stop using the word God because then I would have to drop the word love too – while knowing perfectly well there are many people who would like me to drop it completely; you are not alone. You say, “Love, yes…” That simply means you are not aware that what has been done in the name of love is no less criminal than what has been done in the name of God. You say, “…divine presence, yes; the ultimate, yes…” But the same can be done; these words are just synonyms. Life, love, God, godliness, divine presence, the ultimate, the absolute, truth – they are all synonyms.Don’t be too conditioned by the past, it is like remaining in a kind of bondage. One person hearing the word God simply falls to their knees and starts praying, but somebody else hearing it cringes. Both are conditioned, neither are free. If you shudder, if you hesitate, then the word God has immense power over you – negative of course, but great power – as much power as it has on the people who go to the churches and the temples. You are conditioned in a negative way, they are conditioned in a positive way. But conditioning is conditioning; whether negative or positive, it does not make you free.Be free. And by being free, free these beautiful words too. Hence, I go on using the word God. To me God is synonymous with love, love is synonymous with life, life is synonymous with existence – they are synonyms. We have to claim these beautiful words back from the priests and politicians.The second question:Osho,What is time?Time has two meanings. One is chronological time, clock time. I cannot say much about it. You will have to ask a physicist, only he can say something about it, that is not my dimension of work. If you ask a physicist, like Albert Einstein, he will say time is the fourth dimension of space. But that does not make much sense, the mystery remains. The mystery remains as mysterious as it was before Albert Einstein.Saint Augustine is reported to have said, “I know what time is if nobody asks me; if somebody asks me then I don’t know.” Time has a mysterious quality. Everybody lives in it, everybody feels it, everybody knows it – yet it is inexplicable.The physicist has come to a certain understanding – that it is the fourth dimension of space – but that still does not demystify it. In fact it becomes even more mysterious. We have never thought of space and time as one, but now physicists say that they are one – not two. They use a single word for both: space-time.But that is not my world, science is not my world. There is another meaning of time – psychological time. And whenever I use the word time I use it in this sense, which has significance, more significance than chronological time.What is psychological time? – the mind is psychological time; the mind is time. If you don’t have a mind and you are simply silent with no thought moving within, there is no time for you – not psychological time. The clock will go on moving, but for you the inner clock stops – time stops, the world stops. That is my dimension, the dimension of meditation.As you go deeper into meditation, time disappears. When meditation really blooms there is no time. When the mind disappears, time disappears – it happens simultaneously. Hence, down the ages the mystics have said that time and mind are nothing but two sides of the same coin. The mind cannot live without time and time cannot live without the mind. Time is a way for the mind to exist.The mind creates the future through desire, through dreaming. The future does not exist, it is only in the imagination. And the mind creates the past too, it also does not exist, it is only in the memory. The past is no more, the future is not yet, but both exist in the mind. And because of the past and the future you have the feeling of time.Time is not divided into three parts, as it is usually. Mystics divide time into two parts: the past and the future. Time has only two tenses: past and future. So what about the present? Mystics say the present is timeless because the present is mindless. When you are utterly in the present, herenow, there is neither mind nor time. You transcend both time and mind, you enter eternity. You are beyond time. You are in a totally different world – transformed, transmuted, transported.When I talk about time, I mean the time that is created by the mind. The mind clings to the past and it clings to the future. It is not ready to renounce the past, it is not ready to die to the past, because it is in the past that it has its roots. And it is not ready to renounce the future, the desiring, the dreaming, because it is in desiring and dreaming that the mind lives. It needs space, a false space that it creates for itself: tomorrow – which never comes. The mind knows about yesterdays and tomorrows, but nothing of today.Hence all the buddhas have insisted, “Live in this moment.” To live in this moment is meditation, to be simply herenow is meditation. Those who are simply herenow this very moment with me are in meditation. Meditation is the cuckoo calling from faraway, the airplane passing, the crows and the birds. All is silent, there is no movement in the mind – you are not thinking of the past and you are not thinking of the future. Time has stopped, the world has stopped.Stopping the world is the whole art of meditation. And to live in the moment is to live in eternity. To taste the moment with no ideas, with no mind, is to taste immortality. Time is mind. Time is death. Going beyond time is going beyond mind and beyond death.But if you want to know about chronological time, that is not my concern, you will have to ask a physicist. Psychological time is my basic concern. That’s my whole work here: to help you get out of psychological time.The third question:Osho,What is greed?Greed is the effort to stuff yourself with something – it may be sex, it may be food, it may be money, it may be power. Greed is the fear of inner emptiness. You are afraid of being empty and want to somehow possess more and more things. You want to go on stuffing things inside to forget your emptiness.But to forget one’s emptiness is to forget one’s real self. To forget one’s emptiness is to forget the way to God. To forget one’s emptiness is the most stupid act in the world that a man is capable of.Why do people want to forget? We are carrying an idea, given to us by others, that emptiness is death. It is not. That is a false notion perpetuated by society. Society has a deep investment in this idea because if people are not greedy this society cannot exist. If people are not greedy, then who is going to be mad for money, for power? The whole structure of this power-oriented society would collapse. If people are not greedy, who is going to call Alexander “the Great”? Alexander would be called “the Ridiculous” not “the Great,” “the Stupid” not “the Great.” Who is going to call the people who go on and on possessing things “respectable”? Who is going to give them respect? Those people would become a laughingstock: “They are mad, they are wasting their lives.” Who is going to pay respect to the prime ministers and the presidents? People would think them neurotic.And the world will be really beautiful when Adolf Hitler and Mussolini and Churchill and people like that are thought to be neurotic; when nobody pays any attention to them. The whole structure of politics will collapse because the politician is only there to get more and more attention. The politician is a child, he has not grown up. He wants everybody to be at his disposal, he wants everybody to look up to him, he wants everybody to go on being attentive, to pay attention to him.Attention makes one intoxicated; it is the greatest drug in the world. Just think of passing through the whole town and nobody paying you any attention, not even a dog barking at you, everybody ignoring you, even dogs; nobody taking any note of you, everybody thinking you are not. How would you feel? – you would feel very bad. Nobody saying “Hi,” “Hello,” “Good morning,” “Where are you going?” “How are you?” – people simply not looking at you. If you became invisible and you walked around, and nobody looked at you because nobody could see you, and nobody said “Hello,” nobody paid you any attention – how would you feel? You would feel reduced to nothingness, like a nonentity, a nobody. It would look like death.Hence, people are in search of more and more attention. If you cannot get attention by being famous, then at least you can get attention by being notorious. If you cannot get attention by being a saint, you can get attention by being a murderer. And psychologists say that, basically, many murderers commit murder for no other reason than getting attention. When they murder, their photos are on the front pages of the newspapers, with their names in capital letters. They are on the TV, on the radio, everywhere; they become somebody. For a few days at least they can enjoy being famous; the whole world knows about them. They are not nonentities any more.Just think of a world where people are not greedy – then the rich person will be thought neurotic, the politician will be thought neurotic. Then the people who are constantly hankering for attention will be thought retarded. If people are not greedy, we will have a totally different world, more beautiful. There will be fewer possessions, certainly, but more joy, more music, more dance, more love. People may not have so many gadgets in their houses, but people will be more alive. Right now we go on selling our life energies for gadgets. Gadgets go on accumulating and the soul goes on disappearing; machines go on increasing and man goes on disappearing.When the world is nongreedy, people will be playing the guitar, the flute. People may be sitting silently under trees, meditating. Yes, people will be doing things, but only to the extent that is absolutely necessary; people will be fulfilling their needs. But needs are not desires: needs are necessary, desires are unnecessary. And desires never end. Needs are simple and can be fulfilled, but desires go on asking for more and more. They go on desiring for even more of the thing that you already have. You have one car, desire says have two; unless you have a two-car garage you are a nobody. You have one house, desire says have two; one in the hills at least. And when you have two, desire says have three: one on the seashore, one in the hills, and so on and so on.Paddy was digging his garden one day, when he saw a little creature at his feet. He lifted his shovel up to kill it, but to his surprise it spoke.“Paddy, I’m a leprechaun. Spare my life and I will grant ye three wishes.”“Three wishes? Done!” said Paddy. Then he thought: “Well, I’m thirsty from all this digging. I would like a bottle of cold Guinness.”The leprechaun snapped his fingers and Paddy found he was holding a bottle of Guinness.“That there,” said the leprechaun, “is a magic bottle. It will never empty – it will pour forever.”Paddy took a swig – lovely.“What are your next two wishes, Paddy?” asked the leprechaun.Paddy thought.“I think I would like two more of these, please.”It is of no use, but that’s how it goes, and it is never ending. You have a million dollars, already more than you can use, but you are asking for more. Yes, you need food, shelter, you need a few things. Your needs are small; everybody’s needs can be provided for. The world has enough to fulfill everybody’s needs, but desires… It is impossible, desires cannot be fulfilled. And because people are fulfilling their desires, millions of people’s needs are not fulfilled.Basically, greed is a spiritual problem. You have been taught that you are a nobody if you don’t have lots of things; so you are afraid, so you go on stuffing yourself. That does not help; at the most it gives you temporary relief, and sooner or later you start feeling the emptiness again. Then, yet again, you fill it.But that inner emptiness is the door to God. You have been told that an empty mind is the Devil’s workshop, or the Devil’s mind – that is absolute nonsense. The empty mind is the door to God. How can an empty mind be the Devil’s workshop? It is in the empty mind that the Devil dies completely. “The Devil” means the mind; an empty mind means no-mind.Greed is one of the most fundamental problems you can encounter. You need to see why you are greedy – because you want to keep yourself occupied with things. By possessing more and more you remain occupied, engaged. You are able to forget all about your inner world, you can go on saying to it, “Wait. Let me have this much more, and then I am going to turn toward you.” And death always comes before your desires are fulfilled. Even if you live for a thousand years, your desires are not going to be fulfilled.In India we have a very beautiful story…A great king, Yayati, was dying. Death came.It is an ancient story; in those days things were simpler and the other world was not so far away.Death came and knocked on the door.Yayati opened the door and said, “What? I have only lived for a hundred years, and here you are – and without any notice. I have not yet fulfilled my real desires. I should be given some time at least. I have been postponing things – tomorrow and tomorrow – but now you are here, and there will be no tomorrow. This is too cruel. Be kind to me.”Death said, “I have to take somebody, I cannot go back empty-handed. But, seeing your misery, your old age, I will grant you a hundred years more – but one of your sons has to go with me now.”Yayati had a hundred sons – and a hundred wives – so he said, “That is simple.”But it was not as simple as he thought. He called his hundred sons, and asked one to go. “Save your old father’s life. You have said many times, ‘Father, we would die for you.’ Now the time has come to prove it.”But these things are often said; they are polite nothings.The sons started looking at each other. Someone was seventy, someone was seventy-five, someone else was sixty; they themselves were getting very old. But the youngest was just twenty.The youngest son stood up and said, “I am ready to go.”Nobody could believe it. His ninety-nine brothers could not believe it; they thought he was a fool. He had not lived yet, not at all. He was only twenty, just beginning life, just on the threshold. Even Death felt compassion.Death took the young man aside and whispered in his ear, “Are you a fool? Your older brothers are not ready, and they have lived long lives. Someone who has lived for seventy-five years is not ready, but you are ready? Your father does not want to die, and he is a hundred years old – you are only twenty.”Then the young man said something very beautiful, something of tremendous import. He said, “Seeing this – that my father has lived a hundred years, has all that one can have, and is still not satisfied – I see the futility of life. What is the point? I may live a hundred years and be in the same situation. If it was only my father, I would have thought, ‘Maybe he is an exception.’ But my brothers have also lived long lives – seventy-five years, seventy, sixty-five, sixty – they too are getting old and they are not satisfied. They have already enjoyed every kind of thing; what else is there?“So one thing is certain: that is not the way to become satisfied. Hence I am ready to come with you, and I am coming, not in any despair, but in tremendous understanding. I am coming with you with great cheerfulness because I do not have to pass through that torture, those one hundred years of torture which my father has had to suffer. And because he is not yet able to go with you.”And the story continues…Again a hundred years passed; they came and went, unnoticed. Again Death knocked. Only then did Yayati become aware that another hundred years had passed. He said, “But I am still not ready!”And this went on happening. And each time a son went with Death. And Yayati lived for a thousand years.This is a very symbolic story.After a thousand years of coming, Death came once again, and said, “What do you think now?”And Yayati said, “Enough is enough. I am coming. I have seen that nothing can ever be fulfilled here. Desires go on growing. You fulfill one desire and ten others arise. The process goes on ad infinitum. I am coming willingly, and I can now say that my first son, who went with you, who was only twenty years old, had intelligence. I was stupid. It took a thousand years for me to see it, and he could see it when he was only twenty. That is intelligence.”If you are intelligent, you will see the futility of greed. If you are intelligent, you will start living, rather than preparing to live. Greed is preparing to live. You can go on preparing, and the time to live will never come. If you are intelligent, you will not miss today for tomorrow. You will not sacrifice this moment for another one, you will live this moment in its totality. You will squeeze the whole juice out of this moment.Jesus says to his disciples: “Think not of the morrow.” He is simply saying, “Don’t be greedy.” Whenever you think of the morrow you become greedy; it is greed that thinks of the morrow. Jesus says to his disciples: “Look at the lily flowers in the field. What is their secret? Why are they so beautiful? Even Solomon attired in all his grandeur was not so beautiful.” What is their secret? Their secret is simple: they think not of the morrow, they live in the moment. This moment is all and all – there is nothing behind, nothing ahead. The flowers enjoy this moment with their total being. Greed means postponing your life for tomorrow.Try to see your greed. It can take so many forms: it can be worldly, it can be otherworldly. Beware. It may take the form of: “This life is not worth living, so I will prepare for another life; this earth is not worth living on, I will prepare for paradise.” But this too is greed.Of your so-called saints, ninety-nine percent are greedy people, far more greedy than the people you will find in the marketplace. The greed of the people who live in the marketplace is not that great, it is very ordinary. They are asking for more money. That is very ordinary. But your saints, your mahatmas say, “That is temporary. We ask for something permanent, we want something eternal. We will sacrifice the temporal for the eternal.” They have a great motivation – they are looking out the corners of their eyes for paradise. There they will enjoy, and show those fools rushing about in the marketplace: “Look, we told you before, we warned you. Now you have to suffer in hell, and we will enjoy all the heavenly joys.” But this is greed, and wherever greed is, there is no heaven. It may be worldly, it may be otherworldly, but greed is hell.See the stupidity of greed. Watch my words, I am not saying renounce, I am saying see the stupidity of greed. In that very seeing it disappears and your energy is free. Your consciousness is no longer entangled, entrapped, by things – money, power, prestige. Your consciousness is free. And freedom of consciousness is the greatest rejoicing.The fourth question:Osho,Why don't I feel that I am myself?Because you are not yet. Your feeling is indicative of a truth: nobody is himself. Everybody is wearing a mask, everybody is pretending to be somebody else. Your smile is painted, your face is not yours. You are simply fulfilling others’ expectations. Your parents wanted you to be this way, that’s why you are this way. Your teachers wanted you to be like this, that’s why you are like this. Your society demands that you are of a certain type and you simply fulfill it. You are a slave, you are not your own being.So many demands are being made on you that you don’t have just one mask, you have many, because over twenty-four hours you have to change many times. When you go to the office and see the boss, you have to wear one mask – smiling, wagging your tail. When you are with your servant, you have a totally different mask – now you expect him to smile and wag his tail. You take revenge: what the boss has done to you, you will do to your servant, he will go home and do the same to his wife, and the wife will do the same to the kid, and the kid will do the same to his toy… And this goes on and on. With the friend you have one mask, with the stranger another; with the wife one and with your girlfriend another.And you have become so skillful that the masks slip and change of their own accord. It has become an almost automatic process, and very smooth. This is what your personality is. Hence, it is true that you don’t feel you are your own self – this is the beginning of a great revolution in your life.People think they are themselves. They are deceiving themselves; they are living in an illusion. It is good to know “I am not myself,” because that is the beginning. If you become very aware that you are not yourself, then sooner or later you will have to drop all falseness; then you will have to assert your true being.An Irishman went for a job at a building site. The foreman told him, “You can start at 7:30 on Monday morning.”Paddy went back to his flat and told his mates, “You must get me up at 7:00 a.m. on Monday morning because I start me new job at 7:30 and I mustn’t be late on the first morning.”Monday morning arrived, and before his mates woke him up, they painted his hands and his face black.“Paddy, get up. It’s 7:00 a.m.” Paddy woke up, had his breakfast and walked across town to the building site. The foreman went over to him.“Yes, what can I do for you?”The Irishman said, “You gave me a job and told me to start this morning.”“I’m sorry, sir, there must be some mistake. I’ve only got one man starting this morning, and he’s Irish.” The Irishman left the building site and walked home slowly. As he walked past a shop window, he turned and saw that his face was black.“By Jaasus, Dave woke the wrong bloody man up!”This is the situation. You are not yourself. You go on doing things – getting married, giving birth to children, bringing up children – and you are not yourself. You will carry out all the functions of your life and die – and you never lived, you never allowed yourself to live. Somebody else lived in your place, and somebody else will die. You came here and you didn’t use the opportunity of life. You simply passed through without being at all enriched by life, by love, by the thousand and one experiences that life consists of.Now, if the feeling is arising that “I am not myself,” don’t be worried. This feeling will create great worry in you; you will start feeling shaky. But don’t be worried. This is a blessing. This is a truth that is dawning on you – you are not yourself.Now start searching for who you are. You are not your faces. Begin to search for your original face, the face you had before you were born, and the face you will have again when you are dead. Between the two, birth and death, you will have many faces which are not yours.The time has come to be free of others’ expectations. Don’t go on fulfilling the expectations of others; that is a very subtle slavery. Your mother wants you to do this, your father wants you to do that, society wants this… And everybody wants something, everybody is making demands on you. Nobody leaves you alone, nobody wants you to do what you would like to do. Now the time has come – do your own thing, get out of this bondage.This is what sannyas is all about: a declaration of freedom, a declaration that “I am going to be myself whatsoever the cost and whatsoever the consequences.” And you will not be a loser, that I can promise you; you will not be a loser, you will be infinitely enriched. You are not here to fulfill others’ expectations, you are here to live your authentic life.And those who are doing the expecting are not aware of what they are doing to you: they are simply expecting the things which were expected of them. Their parents had expected certain things, so they followed, they remained slaves. And now they have given birth to you they are expecting the same things from you.You will give birth to children. Remember, don’t force your expectations on them. Help them to be free: love them, but don’t give your ideas to them; love them, but don’t give your religions to them. Love them, help them to become more aware, so they can choose their religion, their ideas, whatsoever that might be. Help them to become strong, more conscious. Don’t give them any conscience, any character; give them more consciousness, every opportunity to become more alert. And trust life, don’t be so afraid: don’t prepare everything for them, otherwise they will never grow any backbone, they will remain spineless; don’t protect them too much. Yes, protect them when there is danger, but not too much, so they can learn to walk on their own two feet. Leave them alone sometimes, don’t constantly be after them; give them enough rope, give them some space where they can be themselves. Don’t overcrowd them, don’t impinge on them.Get free of the interference of others. Yes, it will be difficult because the others are not going to leave you so easily – nobody wants to leave his slave. And they will talk about love, they will say, “I love you, so you have to follow me.” Love never asks that; that is not love. Love says, “Be a light unto yourself.” Love, if it is true, always gives you freedom; it trusts that the inner life you have – the inner light – will lead you, will guide you. Even if you go astray sometimes, that is good because one only learns by trial and error – there is no other way. You cannot be protected from committing errors. If you are protected from committing errors, you will never learn; you will always remain stupid, retarded – and that is the situation for millions of people in the world.The average mental age of humanity is only twelve years. This is a very sad situation, very unfortunate. A seventy-year-old with a mental age of twelve? It can be the other way round too: the seventy-year-old can have a mental age of seven hundred years – that’s how it should be.Somebody asked Emerson, “How old are you?” He was sixty, but he said, “Three hundred and sixty years old.”The questioner could not believe his ears. He said, “Please, repeat that.”And Emerson repeated it slowly. He said, “Three hundred and sixty, that is my actual age.”And the man said, “Are you kidding? You don’t look more than sixty.”Emerson said, “Chronologically I am sixty, but I have lived so much in those sixty years – six times more than people usually live – that I calculate my age to be three hundred and sixty years.”Don’t die a retarded person. And don’t sacrifice yourself for beautiful names: love, duty, service, society. Your first duty is toward your being. Fulfill that duty first, and then all else will be fulfilled.My own observation is that a person who loves himself deeply becomes so blissful that his whole life becomes a prayer, a service, compassion. Only a blissful person can have compassion, and only a blissful person can have love. The person who goes on following others, remaining so miserable deep down, so crippled – how can he love, how can he be compassionate? Yes, he can go through the empty motions of love, duty, but that is not going to fulfill him or the person he is dutiful to. It is not going to fulfill anybody.Look at the situation. The whole of humanity pretends to love, and still there is no love. You don’t feel the fragrance of love, you don’t see the joy of love. And everybody is a lover. If so many millions of people were loving, the world would become a paradise. But it is not; it is a hell. And the reason is that nobody is courageous enough to be free of the expectations of others.Be free. The time has come to be free. You need not hurt anybody. By being free I don’t mean being angry with others, or fighting with others, or reacting negatively. That again is not freedom. If you react, others will go on controlling you in a negative way.For example: your mother has been teaching you that cleanliness is next to godliness, and now you want to be free – so uncleanliness becomes next to godliness. Your mother has been teaching you, every day, to take a cold shower first thing in the morning – and now you have forgotten completely what it feels like to have a shower; for years you have not taken a bath. This is not freedom, this is reaction: your mother is still controlling you in a negative way. She is still dominant; you are fighting with her.Freedom simply means that you start living intelligently on your own, neither according to your mother nor against her. If you are against her you can never be free. Don’t be against anybody and don’t be for anybody, simply live out of your own simple intelligence. Yes, many times you will commit errors; that’s perfectly okay because that’s how one learns. Many times you will go astray; that’s absolutely all right – by going astray you will learn how to get back onto the right track. And when you get back onto the right track – what joy, what rejoicing, what celebration.Don’t react, be rebellious. Rebellion is not reaction. Rebellion is not at all concerned with others, for or against. Rebellion is something that arises in you, that is not concerned with others. Reaction does not arise in you, it is concerned with others; first you were obedient, now you are disobedient. Don’t be obedient, don’t be disobedient – be intelligent. And soon you will be able to discover your original face, and that is how one should be.The fifth question:Osho,The whole of existence, the birds, beasts, flowers and air, calls for our stillness, our meditation. All except one small insect, this winged parasite, this buzzing disturber, this mosquito.Is he the Devil?Mosquitoes are ancient meditators who have fallen. Hence, they are against anybody succeeding in meditation; they are very jealous. So whenever you meditate they are there to disturb, to distract.And this is nothing new, this has always been so. It is mentioned in all the ancient scriptures; particularly in Jaina scriptures because the Jaina monk lives naked. Just think of a naked Jaina monk. And India. And mosquitoes. Mahavira had to give specific instructions on what attitude to take toward mosquitoes. He told his disciples that when mosquitoes attack, accept. This is the ultimate distraction: if you can win this, then there is no other difficulty, no greater difficulty. And when Mahavira says this, he knows it; to live naked in India is a difficult thing.Once I stayed in Sarnath, where Buddha first turned the wheel of dhamma – delivered his first sermon, the most important sermon, which became the beginning of a new tradition. I was staying with a Buddhist monk.I have seen mosquitoes, but nothing to compare with Sarnath mosquitoes. Pune mosquitoes are just nothing! You should be very happy about it; you are fortunate that I am not in Sarnath. The mosquitoes were really that big. Even in the daytime we used to sit under mosquito nets. On one bed, under one mosquito net, would sit a Buddhist monk, and on the other I would sit, and we would talk.I said, “I am never going to come here again” – because he was asking me to come and stay again. I said, “Never, never. This is my first and last time.”He said, “That reminds me that Buddhist monks have been laughing and joking down the ages about why Buddha never again came to Sarnath. He came only once. He delivered his first sermon, and escaped.”Buddha went to other places many times. He must have gone to Shravasti at least thirty times, he must have gone to Rajgiri at least forty times, and so on and so forth. Each place that he visited, he visited again and again. But Sarnath, only once; he never went back there.“And,” the monk said, “it is because of these mosquitoes. And you also say that you will never come again.”I said to him, “At least in one thing I will follow Buddha. I cannot follow in other things – I have to be a light unto myself – but about this thing let him be the light.”I know it is difficult, very difficult, but you will have to learn. Don’t be distracted. That does not mean that you allow the mosquitoes to exploit you. Protect yourself in every possible way, but with no anxiety, no irritation. Protect yourself, avoid the mosquitoes, wave them away, shake them off, but with no irritation. They are doing their thing, and that much has to be accepted. They are not particularly against you. Every mosquito must have his breakfast or lunch or dinner… So be polite. You have every right to protect yourself, but there is no need to be irritated. Irritation will disturb the meditation, not the mosquito. You can shake the mosquito off very meditatively, attentively; fully alert, with no irritation. Try it.The real problem never comes from the outside; the real problem always comes from inner irritation. For example; dogs are barking outside and you are meditating. Now, immediately you are angry – these stupid dogs! But they are not in any way disturbing your meditation, they are simply enjoying their life. They must have seen a policeman or a postman or a sannyasin. Dogs are very much against uniforms, very anti-uniform. The moment they see a uniform they start barking. They don’t believe in uniforms, and they are entitled to have their own beliefs – but they are not particularly trying to disturb you.Once I stayed in a rest house where a politician was also staying. He was the chief minister of a state. And just as you see mosquitoes here, exactly the same was the case with that rest house.Somebody else has written that the mosquitos have disappeared from all over the city and have come to the ashram. They are not so much in the town as they are here in the ashram. In fact, they cannot get such juicy food anywhere else.At that rest house, all the dogs of the town had somehow gathered. Such a great fight was going on. I fell asleep, but the politician could not. So he came to me, shook me awake, and said, “I feel envious of you. How can you sleep when there is so much disturbance? And I have gone outside and thrown stones at the dogs three times. They go away for a moment, but when I come in, they are back. I don’t think that I will sleep the whole night.”I said, “If I can sleep, you can too.”He said, “What is the secret?”I said, “The secret is simple: you lie down and listen to the dogs as if they are singing a lullaby.”He said, “Lullaby? And dogs?”I said, “Try. You can’t lose anything by trying. Why be against them? Just the idea ‘I cannot sleep because the dogs are barking’ is the root cause of your disturbance: not the dogs and their barking – your idea. Drop the idea, accept the barking. Listen attentively, listen as if you are listening to music.”He said, “Music?”I said, “You have to drop it. Otherwise get lost and don’t disturb me. I have to sleep.”Seeing no other way, he said, “Okay, I’ll try.” After fifteen minutes he was snoring. I went in and shook him. He said, “What are you doing? This is too much. Somehow I managed to get to sleep, and now you have awakened me again.”I said, “I have come to ask. Did it work?”He said, “It worked. Somehow I managed it. It was very difficult; it was very difficult to think of the barking as music, to think of it as a lullaby, to think of the dogs as friends. But seeing no other way I said, ‘Okay, let’s try.’ And it worked! Let me try once more. And please, don’t come again.”In the morning he told me, “I will remember your secret. It can work in many situations; it can work in all situations.”Mosquitoes are doing their thing. You have to protect yourself, you have to do your own thing, but don’t become irritated. Irritation is the only problem. If you cannot be irritated, if you are not distracted by all the nuisance that the mosquitoes are creating around you, you will even feel grateful to them: they have given you a secret key.If the mosquitoes are not distracting you, then nothing can distract you. Then you have come to a very stable state of meditation.The sixth question:Osho,You often speak of becoming a buddha. But Shankara often said that Buddha only brought his disciples to cosmic consciousness, and there are still higher states of consciousness, such as unity consciousness and Brahma consciousness.Please will you comment on this and, if you know, tell us about the paths which lead to these states.Buddha has not talked about cosmic consciousness at all. He talks about ultimate no-selfness, beyond which there is nothing, beyond which there cannot be anything. He talks about the total disappearance of the ego.All other states belong to the ego: “I have attained this, I have attained that, I have attained cosmic consciousness and unity consciousness and Brahma consciousness…” Who is attaining these things? There must be some identity, some “I,” however subtle. Shankara remains confined to the self. He goes on refining it, polishing it, but he never goes beyond the self.Buddha goes to no-self. Now, no-self cannot have many states. No-self is simply no-self – utter nothingness. How can nothingness have states? It is impossible because two nothingnesses cannot be different. Nobody has gone beyond Buddha. What Shankara is talking about is far lower.There are ways to attain to cosmic consciousness and unity consciousness and Brahma consciousness, but they are nothing but new illusions. Even when you say and think, “I have become one with God,” you are there. Who is feeling that “I have become one with God”? Even to declare “Aham brahmasmi – I am the ultimate,” needs something of the “I” there to declare it; maybe the tail end – the elephant is gone but the tail is still there. And the tail is enough to bring the whole elephant back at any time.Buddha is the ultimate, beyond which nobody has ever gone. Shankara is still groping far behind. Shankara is a great philosopher; Buddha is not a philosopher at all. Shankara is a great logician; Buddha is not a logician at all, he is a pure, existential mystic. Hence, Buddha never talks with all this jargon: cosmic consciousness, unity consciousness, Brahma consciousness – you can create as much jargon as you want.If you are really interested in such nonsense, there is a sect in India, Radhaswami Sampradaya. They talk about fourteen levels, and they have a map, and only their master has attained to the fourteenth. Buddha and others are somewhere on the third, fourth, fifth levels; Krishna, Christ are somewhere on the second; Shankara and others are just somewhere on the seventh. The fourteenth they call the Land of Truth, satch-kand; that space of truth has been attained only by their master, Radhaswami. Now these games can be played…Once a Radhaswami follower came to me and he said, “Do you know anything about the fourteenth level?”I said, “Who cares about the fourteenth? Do you know about the fifteenth?”He said, “The fifteenth? Never heard of it.”“I have attained to the fifteenth.” I said, “And I know your guru – he is lagging just behind.”And then he asked me for the secret of the fifteenth level!All foolish talk – but this is how the ego works.Now you seem to be a Shankara-freak; there are many in India. Shankara has impressed many because he was really clever at logical argumentation – but logical argumentation is just meaningless as far as existential experience is concerned.Shankara used to say that the world is an illusion, and he would prove it. And it can be proved – logically – because it is very difficult to prove logically that the world is real. Who knows, you may simply be dreaming that you are listening to me, that I am here talking to you? Sometimes in a dream you have listened to me, and it seemed so real. So who knows, maybe you are dreaming now and it seems real? How can it be proved that I am really here and you are really there? There is no way to prove it; it may be a dream in fact.Chuang Tzu says that in the night he dreamed that he had become a butterfly, and since then he has been very confused. Confused because now, in the morning, he thinks it may be just the butterfly that had fallen asleep and was dreaming that she was Chuang Tzu. Now, who is right: Chuang Tzu dreaming that he has become a butterfly, or the butterfly dreaming that she has become Chuang Tzu? Which is true? If Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly in a dream, why can’t a butterfly dream, sitting on foliage in the shade in the afternoon, and think that she has become Chuang Tzu? What is wrong with that? It can happen both ways. It is difficult to prove that the world is real.Hence, Shankara was proving that the world is illusory, that all is illusory, only God is true. But one strange man – nobody knows who he was, he must have had great insight – greatly disturbed him…One day, as was his habit, Shankara was coming from the Ganges, in Varanasi, early in the morning – he had taken his usual bath of purification in the river. It was still dark, he was coming up the stairs; and an untouchable, a sudra, touched him. Shankara was very angry and said, “You have destroyed my bath. I will have to go and bathe again. You should know better. Is this any way to behave? Can’t you recognize a brahmin?”And the sudra, the untouchable, started laughing. He said, “But last night I heard you arguing, with great intelligence, with great acumen, that the world is illusory. So, first I thought that if the whole world is illusory, then untouchables must be illusory. How can an illusory untouchable touch you in the first place?“Secondly, how can an illusory person destroy your purity? Who has touched whom? If my body is illusory, then your body also is illusory. Two illusions touching each other cannot be different. Or do you think your soul is pure and my soul is impure? If the soul can be impure like the body, then there is no way of making it pure. What do you think – have I touched your body or your soul? Who has become impure?“Only last night I heard your argument; it was so great and I was so convinced – that’s why I have come.”Shankara was at a loss, he touched the feet of the man and said, “Excuse me. It seems it was only logic – I have not yet experienced.”Shankara was a great philosopher, the greatest that India has produced, but remember one thing: he is nowhere close to Buddha, and cannot be. In fact whatsoever he was saying was all borrowed from Buddha, hence he is known as a hidden Buddhist. Whatsoever he was saying, he only changed the words and terminology, he was talking about the same things. That is one of the arguments against Shankara: that he was just a Prachchhanna Buddha, a hidden Buddhist – using Hindu terminology instead of Buddhist terminology, that’s all. Don’t be too bothered with Shankara unless you are interested in philosophy. Then it is okay, you can read Shankara and you can read Nagarjuna and you can read Nimbarka, and you can read so many more in the West.But if you are really interested in transformation, then Buddha will be of great help, Lao Tzu will be of great help, Jesus will be of great help. Listen to those who have reached the ultimate peak if you are really interested in transformation. Shankara was trying, and he said a few beautiful things, but nothing to compare to Buddha. And this is all nonsense, this cosmic consciousness, unity consciousness, Brahma consciousness. They are clever strategies to befool the masses.Buddha talks only of anatta: no-self, ultimate emptiness, absolute death of the ego. When you have disappeared there is nothing more that can happen. To whom is it going to happen? When you are no more, all has happened. All happening disappears. That state where nothing happens any more is called nirvana.Nirvana is a beautiful word. It means utter cessation. It means literally “blowing out the candle.” Just as you blow out a candle and suddenly the light disappears and is nowhere to be found, in deep meditation the small flame of the ego disappears. You blow it out, and there is utter nothingness: no experiencer, no experienced. That is nirvana. There is no more, and nothing beyond it.The last question:Osho,Come on, be a sport and tell us that juicy joke!One day, while studying the alphabet with her second-grade class, the teacher looked up and said, “Who can tell me a word that starts with the letter A?”All the children raised their hands, but the teacher didn’t pick Johnny Badmouth because she knew he’d say “asshole” or some other bad word. Instead she called on Billy.“Apple,” said Billy.“Very good,” replied the teacher, “and who can tell me a word that starts with the letter B?”Many children raised their hands, but again she didn’t pick Johnny Badmouth because she knew he’d say “bastard” or some other dirty word. She called on Mary.“Boat,” said Mary.“Very good,” the teacher replied.And so she went on through the entire alphabet, each time ignoring Johnny Badmouth. “And who can tell me a word that starts with the letter R?” All the children raised their hands. The teacher racked her brains, but couldn’t think of a single dirty word that started with the letter R, and decided to call on Johnny.“Rats,” said Johnny, and raised his hands to demonstrate. “Big fucking rats!”Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,When such incredible happiness descends, why do I feel so unworthy?It’s natural because that which descends has nothing to do with your effort. It is grace, it is a gift from existence. And the gift is so big, so huge, so enormous, it is natural to be overwhelmed. It is like a flood, as if the ocean has descended into the dewdrop.How can one feel worthy? You have not earned it. It has nothing to do with your effort, your doing, your practicing. It has simply come to you for no reason at all. Hence, one feels dumb, lost, in such awe that breathing stops, that the heart beats no more. The whole world stops.Whenever it happens to someone, the experience is the same – a feeling of great unworthiness. But it is beautiful. It will give you a depth of humbleness; slowly, slowly, the ego will be eroded. And sooner or later you will find that only small things are possible with your effort, with your worth. All great things happen, they cannot be done – and remember, they happen for no reason at all.The beauty of the sunset, the song of a bird, a small lonely flower, the moon… There is no reason for it at all. Nobody can answer why it is there: why the rose is so beautiful, why this existence exists at all, why the universe moves with such tremendous grace, harmony. There is no reason for it at all. Hence, I say it is a mystery, and it remains a mystery even for those who have gone deeply into it, who have become dissolved into it. It is never demystified.But you are fortunate that those moments have started happening. Don’t be shy about receiving them, don’t be embarrassed. In the beginning it is natural to feel unworthy. Slowly, slowly, that grace will transform you. Those moments will come more and more; they will become natural. They will become a shadow to you: wherever you will be, they will be there. Waking, asleep, you will find that grace surrounding you. That grace will be without and within. That grace will become a luminous point within your heart, and the flame will go on burning.But remember, don’t become too worried about your unworthiness. If you become too worried about your unworthiness, those moments will start disappearing because your focus will have changed. Rather than becoming focused on feeling unworthy, feel the compassion of the ultimate and become focused on that. Remember, they are two different gestalts; both are possible.The unintelligent man will become too concerned about his unworthiness and will start denying those moments: “How can those moments happen when I am so unworthy? It must be my imagination, it must be a trick of the mind, I must be going crazy.” And you will become convinced by your own logic that those moments are not true. If they were true, then you would not be unworthy. Because you are so focused on your unworthiness you will prove them untrue.And your society has been teaching you that you are unworthy. You have been told that you are of no use, that you are utterly worthless. You are nothing but dust – dust unto dust – you are more worthless than dirt. That’s what you have been told in so many ways; it has become a deep-rooted idea in you. If you pay too much attention to that idea, then the only possibility is that you will deny those moments.I know many people who have denied the mysterious when it has knocked on their door, just because they cannot drop the idea of their unworthiness. Then your only possibility is to deny those moments, call them imaginary, hallucinations, dreams, deceptions; something must have gone wrong in your head, you are going berserk; forget all about them because they remind you of your unworthiness. But don’t be focused on your unworthiness, become focused on the compassion of God.That’s why all the religions emphasize that God is compassionate: “Rahim, rahman, God is compassion.” That is just to give you an alternative gestalt, so you become focused on God’s compassion not on your unworthiness. You may be unworthy, but that is irrelevant – God is compassionate. You may be a sinner, that is irrelevant too – God is compassionate. He gives for no reason at all; he is simply a giver, he knows only giving. And he does not give conditionally; he gives unconditionally.Jesus tells a parable again and again…A rich man called for some laborers to work in his garden in the morning. The fruit was becoming ripe and had to be collected soon. But by the afternoon it was felt that there were not enough laborers; more were needed. So more laborers were called. By the evening it seemed that even those laborers were not enough; a few more were needed, and more were called. And when this third group of laborers came, the sun was almost setting.Then it was night, and all the laborers were gathered together to be paid. The rich man gave exactly the same amount to everybody. Those who had come in the morning, those who had come in the afternoon and those who had only just come and not worked at all; they were all given the same amount of money. Naturally, the people who had been working the whole day in the hot sun complained; they were angry.They said, “This is unjust! These people have only just come. They have not done anything at all, and they receive the same amount of money? And the people who came in the middle of the day and have done only half the work, they too receive the same amount of money as us? This is unfair!”The wealthy man laughed and said, “Answer me one question. Is what I have given you enough for the labor you have done?”The laborers said, “It is more than enough, but what about the others?”And the rich man said, “You need not worry about the others. I give to them not because they have worked, I give to them because I have so much to give; I am burdened. Can’t I give my money to anyone, to whomsoever I want to give? Can’t I throw my money to the winds? You have received your worth. You have received because you worked, they have received because I have so much to give.”This is a very strange parable; nobody has said such a thing except for Jesus. He is saying that those who have worked hard, those who have cultivated culture, virtue, character, those who have practiced austerities – the doers – they will receive; they will receive according to what they have done. But he says lovers will also receive, those who have not cultivated any virtue, who have not cultivated any austerity, who have simply lived and rejoiced, who have simply prayed, who are not great saints, who may even be known in the world as sinners. They will also receive, and the same amount because God is compassion.Jesus is saying something of immense value. He is opening the doors of grace for people. That’s what is happening for you – not because you have done anything special to attain it, but because God has so much to give he goes on showering on anybody who is receptive.And my work here is to help you become receptive. My function here is not to teach you how to attain to godliness, but to teach you how to receive godliness when it comes. And it comes; it comes every day, it comes every moment. You are just not in a receptive mood, hence you go on missing. It is not according to your saintliness that you will receive it – it is according to your emptiness, receptivity, humbleness.You cannot earn godliness. It is always a gift, and whenever it comes you will feel unworthy. It is good to feel unworthy but don’t become focused on it, don’t become obsessed by it. When feeling unworthy, emphasize God’s compassion. When feeling unworthy, see the beauty of it – that the gift is unconditional, that you cannot claim it, yet it has been given to you.You have heard Jesus’ famous statement: “Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask, and it shall be given. Seek, and ye shall find.”One day, Rabiya, a woman Sufi mystic, was passing by the mosque when she saw Hassan, another Sufi, praying with great fervor, tears rolling down his cheeks, hands raised to the sky. He was crying and weeping, and saying to God, “Come, open the door. Let me in.”This was usual with Hassan, an almost everyday ritual, five times a day. And it was not just a ritual, he was doing it very sincerely. He was a man of great qualities. It was not a mere ritual, his heart was in it. Rabiya had heard him many times, and whenever she heard him she smiled, laughed, and went on her way.But on this day she went up to Hassan and shook him. Hassan looked at her, and Rabiya said, “How long are you going to do this? I tell you, the door is already open. You need not ask God again and again, ‘When will you open the door?’ Enough is enough. Don’t be foolish. I have heard enough of this nonsense. The door is open – just open your eyes and see.”Rabiya’s statement goes far deeper than Jesus’ statement. Jesus says, “Knock, and the door shall be opened.” Rabiya says, “Open your eyes – the door is already open.” And I am saying to you: God is already coming, God has come. He is standing at your door. Open your door, open your eyes – just open your heart.But certainly, when God’s energy showers on you, how can you feel you are worthy? Impossible! The gift is so big, as if somebody has given the Kohinoor diamond to a beggar. He cannot believe it; he will think it must be artificial, or maybe somebody is kidding him: “I am a beggar. Who would give me the Kohinoor diamond? Impossible! Maybe I am dreaming, maybe I have gone mad. I am projecting – this is an ordinary stone.”That’s what happens to everybody when God comes in. So don’t become focused on being unworthy, become focused on God’s overflowing energy. God is overflowing energy, God is overflowing joy. God is sat-chit-anand – overflowing truth, overflowing consciousness, overflowing bliss. Whenever you are ready, receptive, it is just going to happen. It could have happened at any time; no time was the wrong time, no time was an unripe time. It did not happen for just one single reason: you were not open.If you become obsessed with your unworthiness you will become closed again; it is natural. But see the compassion of existence. See the friendliness of existence, see its acceptance of you, whoever you are, wherever you are. Existence sees no difference between the saints and the sinners. God is available to everybody.The second question:Osho,Why do I go on forgetting myself?It is an ancient habit; for many, many lives you have practiced it. You have put so much energy into it, into forgetting yourself. You remember money, you remember others, you remember the world – all these things which Taoists call “the ten thousand and one things.” If you want to remember those ten thousand and one things, you will have to forget yourself because your eyes will be focused on things, on people, on the world, and of course you will fall into their shadow.It is a long, long habit, just a habit. You are there – you could turn inward. But turning inward seems to be difficult because your neck has become paralyzed. For how many lives have you remained in this forgetfulness? Now, suddenly, you want to remember.For one or two seconds at the most you can remember, then again you will forget. But those one or two seconds open the doors of hope. Don’t be worried: if you can remember for only a single moment, that’s enough, you have the key. You are never given more than a single moment at a time; you are never given two moments together. If you can remember for a single moment that’s enough, the key is there – now you can work it out. You know how to be alert, aware, in a single moment. After this moment is gone, another moment will be given to you – be alert and aware in that one too.Remember, you will forget many times, but don’t be repentant. Otherwise one starts feeling guilty and creating complexities which don’t help, which in reality hinder. If you forget, so what. For millions of lives you have been forgetting – accept it. And the moment you remember that you have forgotten, it is good. Remember that you will forget again. When you forget, forget; when you remember, remember; but don’t make a problem out of it. Slowly, remembering more and more, by and by, gradually, the forgetfulness, the habit, will be broken.Mrs. McMahon went berserk one afternoon. She broke every dish and cup and reduced her usually spotless kitchen to a shambles. The police arrived and took her to the city’s mental institution.The head psychiatrist sent for her husband.“Do you know any reason,” asked the shrink, “why your wife should suddenly lose her mind?”“I am just as surprised as you are,” answered Mr. McMahon. “I can’t imagine what got into her. She has always been such a quiet, hardworking woman. Why, she has not been out of the kitchen in twenty years!”For how many lives have you not been out of the kitchen? For how many lives have you remained in a state of forgetfulness, in a state of unconsciousness? Now, suddenly, you try to be aware – the weight of the past is too much, the chains of the past are too heavy. But they can be broken; all that is needed is perseverance and patience.And you have to be very, very intelligent about it. Otherwise, I observe, people try to remember and when they cannot, they start feeling very guilty. That too is part of your habit: if you cannot do something you immediately start feeling guilty. And if you feel guilty it will be more difficult to remember. If you feel frustrated, sooner or later you will stop the very effort of remembering. Be intelligent. Because for many lives you have not remembered yourself, it is natural that you forget. Even if you can remember for a few moments, feel grateful, feel thankful – you are doing the impossible.A little intelligence is needed. Otherwise, so-called religious people, rather than becoming religious, become simply guilt ridden. They become repentant, they start feeling as if they are condemned, as if they are not the chosen ones; as if God has thrown them into the dark night and has forgotten them: “It may have happened to a Buddha or a Kabir or a Krishna or a Zarathustra, but it is not going to happen to me. They were special people, that’s why it happened to them. They were already born enlightened, that’s why it happened to them. It can’t happen to me, I am an ordinary person.”Just to avoid remembering, people have created all kinds of theories. Hindus say Krishna is an incarnation of God. Christians say Jesus is the only begotten son of God – the “only begotten,” mind you, and all others are bastards? The Jainas say Mahavira is a tirthankara, very special, not an ordinary soul. Not even an ordinary body: Mahavira does not perspire; he is not an ordinary human being. He does not defecate or urinate; no, he is not an ordinary being – he is very special, his body is special. Jesus is born of a virgin mother; he is not an ordinary mortal, even his birth is special, and so on and so forth.Every religion has created these theories, and on the surface it looks as if you are paying great respect to Mahavira, Krishna, Buddha. You are not. In fact you are simply trying to avoid remembering yourself. You are saying, “They are special and I am not, so they can remember, they can realize, they can become enlightened. I cannot.” This is a very political strategy, but very unintelligent. This is how you are preventing yourself from becoming enlightened.Nobody is special, or everybody is special. Nobody is an incarnation of God, or everybody is an incarnation of God. Choose either, but don’t make a few people special. That is a trick, and it is a very stupid trick. Because of it you have not remembered who you are yet. Be a little more intelligent. You have not remembered up to now because you have not yet decided to remember, that’s all. Now decide to remember.This decision to remember is going to create many, many problems for you. Forgetfulness is easy, habitual, it has become second nature. Now you are going against your habits, and they will create every kind of hindrance, obstacle. You will only be able to pull yourself out of your habits for a few moments, and then they will drag you back into the old mire again. But don’t be worried: if it is possible to remember for even a single moment, it is possible to remember. That one moment is enough proof. And that one moment will give you such joy and such freedom that you will not be able to relapse back into forgetfulness forever.But don’t make a fuss about it. If you forget, it is natural, accept it. If you remember, that is something great to rejoice about. Rather than repenting your forgetfulness, rejoice in being able to remember. Just a little intelligence…The Irish paratroop trainees were flying out for their first parachute jump after several weeks’ training.“Remember, lads,” said the instructor. “Yell ‘Geronimo!’ jump out, count to eight, and then pull your ripcord.”The door opened at 10,000 feet, one by one all the lads jumped out, and Paddy went last. The instructor shut the door, and the plane flew down and landed. The instructor got out and saw Paddy still frantically clutching the plane’s wing.“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” yelled the instructor.“Sorry, sir,” said Paddy, “but I forgot the name of that bleeding Indian!”That “Geronimo!” is not the name of any “bleeding Indian” – it is just an exclamation like “Hallelujah!” It is irrelevant too: the whole point is that after counting to eight you pull your ripcord. And counting to eight is also not to be followed literally – you can count to ten, you can count to six; that would do.Don’t become too unintelligent in what you are doing, particularly when you are moving toward inward consciousness. Remember, everything is just a formal support; anything can be of help.For example, you are sitting here. Just use, and remember, these words: “I am here.” And feel it – “I am here.” Not just the words, but the existential feel of “I am here” – a sudden remembering, a witnessing. Whenever you want to remember, repeat it: “I am here.” And then slowly, slowly, when you are capable of remembering “I am here,” and it has become a feeling in you – not just words in the head, but a feeling in the guts of “I am here” – then drop the word here. Then simply say: “I am,” and that will do, that will do far better. Just “I am” – a great remembrance, a great light, a great feeling of being rooted in existence.But don’t become attached to the words. When you have become capable of remembering “I am,” drop the I. Then simply use the word am. Whenever you want to remember, just say: “Am.” But, finally, that too has to be dropped; these are just simple devices, not mantras to be repeated. Drop am, and simply remember without using any word. You can just give a small shrug, a nudge, and remember. Then even the nudge should be dropped.All devices have to be dropped because the human tendency is to become more attached to the device than to the purpose.You say, “Why do I go on forgetting myself?” – because you have been living in forgetfulness for many lives. This may be your first chance to remember. There are people who have tried to remember in their past lives; when they come, it is easier for them because nothing is ever lost. If you have meditated in your past lives, everything that you have done in those meditations will have remained part of your being, and whenever you meditate again that energy will become available.But a few people are meditating for the first time; then it is a little more difficult, but not impossible. Take up the challenge. Never feel repentant. Just rejoice in the positive that happens to you and never be worried about the negative. Accept the negative as it is and rejoice in the positive – the positive will go on growing and the negative will reduce of its own accord.The third question:Osho,I live in the world of the conditional: could, should, would, may, might and if are my dream operatives, accomplished only by my mind and usually in the past tense. Why am I so secure in this illusion?One can be secure only in an illusion because security is the greatest illusion there is. Life is insecure. Love is insecure. To be is to be in insecurity. To be is to be in constant danger. Only the dead are secure because they cannot die anymore; nothing can ever happen to them now.The more alive you are the more insecure you are. Hence many people have decided not to be alive because a kind of deadness gives security, protection, armor. Many people have decided not to look into reality because reality is insecure. I cannot do anything about it, you cannot do anything – it is how it is. Reality is insecure; one never knows what is going to happen in the next moment. I may be here, I may not be here; you may be here, you may not be here. The next breath may come in, may not come in. The person who loves you may simply forget all about you tomorrow. That’s how life is.We have created illusions to hide ourselves behind, so we need not see the insecurity of life. Marriage is an illusion; love is a reality. Love is insecure. Nobody knows whether it is going to be there tomorrow or not. It is like a breeze: when it comes it comes, when it is gone it is gone. You cannot manipulate it, you cannot control it, you cannot predict it.But the mind is very much afraid: if tomorrow your woman leaves you, what are you going to do? How will you ever be able to live without her? You have become so dependent on her, you cannot conceive of yourself without her, so you make some arrangements: you close the doors, close the windows, lock everything, so she cannot escape. That’s what marriage is: making legal locks so you cannot easily escape. You can go to the police, you can go to the court, you can harass the woman to come back. But when you close all the doors and all the windows, the woman is no longer the same as she was when she was under the sky, under the stars; she is no longer the same. The bird on the wing is a totally different phenomenon from the bird in the cage. The bird in the cage is no longer the same bird because it no longer has the same sky, the same freedom. It is imprisoned, its soul is killed. It only appears to be alive – its wings are cut. It only appears that it is alive; now it will just vegetate.Without freedom there is no life. But there is one good thing about the cage: it has security. Now the bird need not be worried about food; tomorrow morning he is going to be fed as usual. He need not worry about enemies, predators; nobody can attack him. The bird may think he is not caged but protected. He may think the iron bars are not enemies but friends; he may start loving them. Even if one day you want to make him free, he may not like the very idea; he may resist. He may not go even if you open the door. He will say, “I am not going. How can I leave my security?” He has forgotten all the joys of freedom; now he only remembers the comfort and convenience of security.Marriage is a cage, love is the open sky. We have destroyed love and created an illusion, marriage. It is ugly. Two persons together out of love is one thing, but two persons together because of the law is totally different. Their souls are no longer together, only their bodies are tied together. Because they cannot escape they decide to remain slaves because escape seems to be costly – the children are there, and all the comforts of family life and the home. They decide not to live but just to exist.And then of course, people have many kinds of illusions about the past, about the future. You are not alone: every human being is in the same boat – because we cannot live in the present. It is dangerous to live in the present because to live in the present means to be authentic. We live in the past, we live in the future. The past and the future are very easy, comfortable, no danger. You can manipulate your past, you can control it; you can order your past, it is very obedient. It is nonexistential, it exists only in your memory; you can arrange it again and again.Hence, one of the greatest psychological insights is that up to now no autobiography has ever been written. Millions seem to have been written, but they are all untrue. To write an autobiography seems to be almost impossible because you go on always arranging your memories. When you look back, it is not the real past that you are looking at; it is no longer there, just your memory of it.And in the memory, you also choose. First, you choose while you are experiencing something. A thousand and one things are happening every day, but you choose to remember only a few; scientists say two percent. Ninety-eight percent is not chosen, only two percent. Everything that feels good to you – ego enhancing, gratifying – you choose. Anything that seems like suffering, pain – all that hurts – you don’t choose.First, your memories have been chosen and then, each time you remember them, you are giving them new colors because your experiences are growing, and your new experiences are being reflected in your memories. You go on painting your memories again and again, so that by the time you write your autobiography there are many coats.And people write autobiographies only when they know they are dead. When they know that nothing more is going to happen now, then they write their autobiographies. When a person is alive, how can he write his autobiography? But when he thinks that everything is finished: “I have lived, I have come to the full stop, nothing else is going to happen,” then he writes. Now he looks back, paints all the memories as he wants them to be. All autobiographies are fiction. My suggestion to librarians is this: all autobiographies should be counted as fiction and should be categorized as fiction. They are fiction and nothing else.You magnify things which you like. You unconsciously add many things which never happened. And I am not saying that you are cheating knowingly – no, you may believe it. Just start telling a lie, and after ten years you will be suspicious of whether it is a lie or the truth…A journalist died. He knocked on the doors of heaven. Saint Peter opened the door and asked, “Sorry, are you a journalist?”Because it is very difficult to miss a journalist: his face, his eyes; he looks like one.And the man said, “Yes, but how did you know?”“It is very easy to spot a journalist. I am sorry, but we don’t have places for any more journalists in heaven, our quota is full. We only have a dozen journalists, and even those are not used because nothing ever happens in heaven, nothing worth reporting, nothing like news.”Do you know George Bernard Shaw’s definition of news? “When a dog bites a man, that is not news,” that is nothing. “If a man bites a dog that is news.”Saint Peter continued: “In heaven, no newspaper is published, news doesn’t happen. Even those twelve journalists are not used, so what do we need you for? Go to hell – down there, there is news and news and news. Everything there is news, nothing else ever happens. And there are many, many high circulation papers. Go there and you will get a good job.”But the journalist said, “No, I can’t go there. Can’t you manage something? If you give me twenty-four hours, I can convince some other journalist to go to hell, and then you can allow me in, in his place.”Saint Peter said, “Okay… Twenty-four hours. In you go.”The journalist entered heaven and used all his journalistic skills and acumen. He started a rumor: to whomsoever he came across he said, “Have you heard? A big newspaper is being started in hell and all the posts are vacant – the chief editor, the assistant chief editor, other assistants…” And this and that he said to whomsoever he met.But after twenty-four hours, he went back to the door. Saint Peter would not open it. He said, “You cannot go out, you have to stay in.”The journalist said, “But what is the matter?”Saint Peter said, “All twelve journalists have left. We should have at least one journalist, just for the sake of representation. You must stay here!”The journalist said, “I can’t stay here anymore. Let me go! There must be some news in hell. How can twelve persons believe it if there isn’t any? It can’t be just a rumor, there must be some truth in it; maybe just a little, but there must be some truth in it. I can’t remain here any longer. Open the door, let me go!”If you start a lie, sooner or later you will believe it. In fact you will believe in it before others do, and after ten years it will be difficult to tell whether it was a lie or not. After ten years it will be difficult to tell whether you dreamed the thing or you really lived it. Your dreams and your life will become mixed into each other.It is very difficult to write an autobiography. It has not yet been done, and I don’t think it ever can be done. Those who can write, don’t. A buddha can, but he says he has no autobiography to write. He says, “I was never born.” He says, “I have never uttered a single word.” He says, “I never became enlightened because I was never unenlightened.” He says, “I never died because nothing ever dies.”So what autobiography? There is no self, so what autobiography? There is no ego, there is no center, so what about the circumference? No circumference is possible. A buddha can write, but he will not, and others who write are bound to write fictions.You go on living in the past; it is very comfortable. You are the master of your past; you can do anything you want to do with the past. And you are also the master of your future: you can become the President of America, of India – in the future. You can do anything you want – everybody can do something. Just sitting silently, you can start imagining that by the side of the road you have found a bag full of money. And not only that, you can start planning how to use that money; you can start purchasing things. You are the master.The past and the future give you the idea that you are a king. The present takes all illusions away, the present simply reveals the naked truth. The present reveals the insecurity of life because life implies death: everything that is, implies that life cannot be forever; everything that is, is going to be nonexistential sooner or later. The flower that has bloomed in the morning is beautiful, but by the evening it will be gone, the petals will wither away and tomorrow you will not find even a trace of it. That’s how life really is: changing, moving, dynamic, nothing static, nothing permanent, always in a flux. That’s why everybody, not only you, is living in the past and the future: to avoid the present and its danger.Friedrich Nietzsche is right: he says, “Live dangerously.” There is no other way to live in fact. One can only live dangerously; the other way is to avoid life, not live. And that’s what sannyas is all about: accepting the insecurity of life, accepting death, accepting that everything can disappear at any moment. Your love, your friendship, you – everything is only for the moment. The next moment the petals will wither away, all will be gone.Knowing this and yet rejoicing, knowing this and yet dancing, knowing this and yet having a song on your lips, knowing this and yet having joy in your eyes – that’s what sannyas is all about. In fact, this insecurity is beautiful. This insecurity has a blessing in it because if everything were secure there would be no life at all. If everything were secure there would be rocks and rocks – no flowers, no birds, no people. If everything were secure there might be notes, mathematics, science, but no poetry, no music, no dance. The world would be a dead world, phony, plastic. The real world has to be in constant danger. That danger adds to its beauty, that danger gives it depth, that danger makes it challenging. Come out of your security and your illusions.You say, “I live in the world of the conditional…” The world of the conditional is the world of the mind. The true world is unconditional. You cannot put any conditions on the truth, and truth never puts any conditions on you. Neither can you put conditions on existence, nor does existence ever put any conditions on you. All is given unconditionally.You say, “I live in the world of the conditional…” That means you don’t live, you only pretend. You say, “I live in…could, should, would, may, might and if…” These are words which belong to the world of death, not to the world of life. Life simply is, it knows nothing of should, could, would. Life simply is, it knows nothing of may, might. Life simply is, it knows nothing of ifs and buts.You must live that which is, whatsoever it is. Yes, sometimes it hurts, and it hurts very much. Sometimes it brings great agonies, but those agonies are stepping-stones to ecstasy; those hurts are nothing but birth pains. You have to accept the day and the night, birth and death, summer and winter. You have to accept all that life is. You cannot reject anything, you cannot make conditions. Your conditions won’t make any difference, they will only drown you in your own illusions. Live in the is. The word ought is a mind construction – avoid it.You ask, “Why am I so secure in this illusion?” One can only be secure in illusions; there is no question of why. If you find somebody who is secure, you can be certain he must be living in an illusion.You have become too accustomed to a dirty pool of water, stagnant, stinking. Insecurity has tremendous beauty; you have not tasted it. You have forgotten the beauty of a river, constantly flowing from the known to the unknown, from the limited to the unlimited. I have to revive your memory of it. It is a remembering because you knew it before.When a child is born he knows nothing of security; he knows nothing of the past, nothing of the future. He simply lives in the is. We drive him out of the is. That’s what we call education, that’s what we call the process of civilizing a child: driving him out of the is, taking him out of life’s naturalness and making him arbitrary and artificial. By the age of three or four a child becomes part of society; he loses all contact with existence, with reality.Once, you knew what it meant to be insecure. All that I need to do is remind you, to provoke that remembrance in you. And once you have tasted it again you will drop all your illusions and start moving into the unknown, with all its insecurity.And you will not feel frightened, you will feel thrilled. You will not feel that insecurity is something wrong, but the root of all adventure. Insecurity is not something that is against you, it is the very possibility of your existence. It sharpens your intelligence, it keeps you alive, alert. It keeps you always mystified, it keeps you in a state of constant surprise.Insecurity is beautiful. And the day that you know that insecurity is beautiful, you will know the wisdom of insecurity – and you will have understood the very core of sannyas.The fourth question:Osho,I am a staunch Catholic. Nobody can shake my beliefs, so why do I feel a little frightened here?Alexander, you have fallen into the wrong company. Escape from here as fast as you can because you have already been shaken!A belief has no roots, it is just an imposed phenomenon. Howsoever staunchly you believe in it makes no difference. In fact, the more you are afraid of losing it, the more staunchly you believe in it. Whenever somebody says, “This is my strong belief,” know well that he is afraid. Otherwise what does it mean? Why should he brag about his staunchness? If he knows, he knows.You know that the sun has risen, that it is day. You don’t say, “I strongly believe that this is sunrise,” you simply say, “I know this is sunrise.” You don’t say, “I strongly believe, nobody can shake my belief.” If you say it, people will think you are crazy. If you say it, people will think you must be blind; you are not seeing the sun, you have only heard about it. Others must have told you and you are saying, “I believe strongly.” Just to protect yourself you create a great armor around yourself. But a real experience needs no protection. The real experience needs no bragging about being staunch. One simply knows or knows not; things are very simple.You say, “I am a staunch Catholic.” It is just accidental that you were born in a Catholic house. If you were born and brought up by a Hindu you would be a staunch Hindu. And if you were born in Soviet Russia and you were brought up by a communist, you would be a staunch communist. The staunchness would be the same, everything else would be different. That staunchness simply shows that you are not intelligent.An intelligent person does not believe. He tries to know, he inquires. An intelligent person is neither Catholic nor Protestant; an intelligent person is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan. An intelligent person says, “I don’t know yet, so how can I claim what is right and what is wrong? How can I say that the Bible is right and the Koran is wrong, or vice versa?” An intelligent person is bound to say only one thing: “I don’t know, and I cannot carry any prejudice if I really want to know.” He remains unprejudiced, open.By being a Catholic you are closed, by being a Jaina you are closed, by being a Buddhist you are closed. You are not an inquirer, you are not a seeker. You don’t love truth, you love security. Belief gives you security.And if you want to know the truth you have to begin with agnosticism; you have to begin from the state of not knowing. Every true inquiry starts from not knowing. You have to be clearly aware: “I don’t know – but I have to seek, I have to search, I have to find. And I should start without any a priori conception.”That’s why you are becoming a little afraid, frightened. You may not have landed in such a society before – these people are dangerous. Don’t tell me later on that I didn’t give you any warning.Alexander, please escape. You don’t seem to be much of an Alexander either, and you are certainly not in the right company.Have you heard this story?During World War Two, Ferrara the Flyer had never shot down a British plane and everybody in the squadron kidded him about it.One day while on patrol Ferrara spotted five British transport planes. He zipped into their formation and shot down all five. Now he couldn’t wait to tell his fellow pilots. Ferrara quickly landed, jumped out of his plane and rushed over to a colonel standing beside a map table.“I just-a shoot down five-a British-a transports!” shouted the proud Italian.“I say, bad luck, old chap!” replied the officer. “You are in the wrong place. You shouldn’t have landed here, old chap!”You say, “Nobody can shake my beliefs…” But why do you say it in the first place? Why does the idea come into your mind? I have not asked you, nobody has asked you.“Nobody can shake my beliefs…” You are already shaking inside, I can see you trembling. And it is natural because you know that you don’t know, you know that those beliefs are just borrowed from others. The priests have told you and you have believed. You have believed because you were not really interested in the truth, so you said, “Okay.” You were not really caring enough about truth so you said okay.People are so uncaring about truth that they say, “Whatsoever you say, it must be right. Who cares? I am not interested enough to bother.”That’s the situation in the world: a few are Christians, a few are Hindus, a few are Mohammedans. If you look deeply into them you will see that they don’t care whether God is or is not, they don’t care what truth is. They have simply accepted the belief that the people around them have. It is formal, a type of social security; it feels good to be part of the crowd, it feels good that others think you are religious.But you are not religious. It is not easy to be religious. To be religious is one of the most dangerous adventures in life. It means dropping all beliefs and going into the unknown without any maps. It is good if you allow us to destroy your beliefs; it will be healthy for you if you don’t cling to your beliefs. And something seems to have started.You say, “…but why do I feel a little frightened here?” You have started becoming aware that your Catholicism is phony. There has only been one Christian, and he was crucified on the cross. Since then there have not been any Christians.In fact, be a Christ, don’t be a Christian. Don’t disrespect yourself by being a Christian. You are meant to be a Christ. You are meant to be a Buddha, not a Buddhist. What is a Buddhist compared to being a Buddha? A Buddhist is just a believer, not a seeker, not an inquirer. Go on the voyage, the sea is calling you. Go alone, and go without maps and without scriptures. And if you can drop all your scriptures and maps and ideologies on this bank, the other bank is not far away.The man who is utterly empty of knowledge is immediately worthy of receiving the ultimate gift of knowing from existence. Only those who renounce knowledge become capable of knowing.The fifth question:Osho,What do you mean when you say, “Meditate over it”? Please explain it in relation to my problem of jealousy?When I say, “Meditate over it,” I don’t mean think it over, I don’t mean concentrate on it, I don’t mean contemplate it. When I say meditate over it, I mean watch it, be a witness. Whatsoever the problem – anger, sexuality, jealousy, greed, ego – whatsoever the problem is, the medicine is the same.If you suffer from jealousy, just watch how it arises in you, how it grabs you, how it surrounds you, clouds you; how it tries to manipulate you, how it drags you into paths that you never wanted to go to in the first place. How it finally creates great frustration in you, how it destroys your energy, dissipates your energy, and leaves you very depressed, frustrated. Just watch the whole thing.And remember not to condemn it because if you condemn, you have started thinking. I am not saying condemn it. Just see the facticity of it without condemnation, without any appreciation, without any judgment for or against. Just watch it, aloof and distant, as if you have nothing to do with it. Be very scientific in your watching.One of the most important contributions of science to the world is nonjudgmental observation. When a scientist is experimenting he simply experiments without any judgment, without any conclusion. If he has a conclusion already in his mind, that means he is not a scientist, his conclusion will influence the experiment.One man has written a book about how in America people are very superstitious and afraid of the number thirteen. Even in hotels you will not find a room number thirteen. After twelve comes fourteen because nobody stays, nobody wants to stay, in the thirteenth room. You will not even find a thirteenth floor – the whole floor is missing. After the twelfth floor they have the fourteenth because who wants to stay on the thirteenth floor?This writer has collected thousands of facts that say this is not a superstition, that this is the truth. He has collected information about all the people who have committed suicide on the thirteenth of the month. Of course, millions of people murder, commit suicide, on the thirteenth, as much as on the twelfth, as much as on the fourteenth – but he only collects information about the thirteenth. And many people commit suicide from the thirteenth floor, and many people commit suicide in room number thirteen. Many things happen; in the world things are continuously happening. This man brought his thesis to show me, and I told him, “You have done a really great job.”He said, “I have been working on it for almost five years.” He had gathered millions of facts. He said, “Now who can say that this is superstition?”I said, “Do one more thing – it will take another five years – now try to find out about the number twelve.”He already had a conclusion: that there was something wrong with the number thirteen, something evil about it – he had chosen his facts with that idea in mind.And I also said, “Do another thing. After you are finished with the number twelve, then for five more years do another experiment. Find out how many good things happen with the number thirteen. Room number thirteen, the thirteenth story of the hotel, the thirteenth day of the month – find out how many good things happen. Only then can your conclusion be of any scientific value. You are already prejudiced.”A Hindu psychologist, Doctor Bannerji, once came to see me. He said, “I am trying to prove scientifically that rebirth is a fact and not a hypothesis.”I said, “Doctor Bannerji, you say you are trying to prove it scientifically?”“Yes,” he said.I told him, “But if you are trying to prove something scientifically, you should not have any conclusion beforehand. You have already accepted the Hindu idea of rebirth. You are working as a Hindu, not as a scientist.”He got very angry because he had come to me for support for his belief.I said, “I am not saying anything against your belief, I am not saying whether or not rebirth is a fact. All I am saying is this: don’t bring science into it. If you bring science into it, then a fundamental principle of science is to be an unprejudiced, nonjudgmental observer, without any a priori conclusion.”A priori conclusions make you a believer, not a scientist.When I say meditate over it, I mean watch. Be a scientist in your inner world. Let your mind be your lab, and observe – without condemning, remember. Don’t say, “Jealousy is bad.” Who knows? Don’t say, “Anger is bad.” Who knows? Yes, you have heard, you have been told, but that is what others say, that is not your experience. You have to be very existential, experiential. Unless your experiment proves it, you are not to say yes or no to anything. You have to be utterly nonjudgmental. And then watching jealousy or anger or sex is a miracle.What happens when you watch without any judgment? You start seeing through and through. Jealousy becomes transparent: you see the stupidity of it, you see the foolishness of it. Not that you have already decided it is stupid; if you have already decided you will miss the whole point. Remember, I am not saying to decide it is stupid, it is foolish. If you decide, you miss the point.Simply go ahead without any decision, just to see exactly what it is. What is this jealousy? What is this energy called jealousy? And watch it as you watch a roseflower – just look into it. When there is no conclusion your eyes are clear; clarity is attained only by those who have no conclusions. Watch, look into it, and it will become transparent, and you will come to know that it is stupid. And when you know that it is stupid, it will drop of its own accord. You don’t need to drop it.Mrs. Weissman had her portrait painted. When it was finished, the artist presented it to her. “How do you like it?” he asked.“It’s nice,” answered Mrs. Weissman, “but I want you to add a gold bracelet on each wrist, a pearl necklace, ruby earrings, an emerald tiara, and I want you to put a twenty-carat diamond ring on each finger.”“But,” said the bewildered artist, “why do you want to ruin a good picture with all those gaudy trinkets?”“My husband is running around with a young tramp,” explained Mrs. Weissman, “and when I die, I want her to go crazy looking for the jewelry.”Just look into your jealousy and you will see how it drives you crazy. Seeing it, just seeing it, sanity arises. I am not saying renounce jealousy. Those who say renounce jealousy don’t understand a thing.I am saying: look, watch, meditate, and if it is stupid it will drop – because how can you carry anything stupid with you? But its stupidity has to be your own experience. If it is not your own, then you will only repress, you will condemn. You will not look into it. You will throw it into the basement of your unconscious and there it will boil, there it will grow. And the growth will be more dangerous because it is growing underground. It will become a cancerous growth, it will spread all over your life. It will simply be waiting for an opportunity; it will explode sooner or later. Any day it could explode, and it will destroy you.Paddy and his two friends, an Englishman and a Scotsman, were sentenced to five years in jail. But they were told they could take with them one thing that they badly wanted. The Englishman took a big blonde, the Scotsman had bottles of whisky, and Paddy chose packets and packets of cigarettes.Five years went by and they were let out, one by one. The Englishman came out with his blonde, looking absolutely knackered. The Scotsman came out staggering all over the place and hiccupping. Last of all, out came Paddy, looking very frustrated. And do you know what his first words were? “Has anybody got a light?”Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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My body and my mind are in depression because you are not with me.How much I love you and want you in my house!When I hear people describe me as your bride I look sideways ashamed,because I know that far inside us we have never met.Then what is this love of mine?I don’t really care about food, I don’t really care about sleep,I am restless indoors and outdoors.The bride wants her lover as much as a thirsty man wants water.And how will I find someone who will take a message to the guest from me?How restless Kabir is all the time!How much he wants to see the guest!Aristotle defines man as the rational animal. No definition could be more false than this. Man is the most irrational animal because man is not yet conscious. Reason is possible only as a by-product of consciousness. Man is asleep, man is dreaming. How can he be rational? He has no eyes to see, he has no awareness to know, he is utterly confused.Man is in confusion: confusion between the body and the soul, confusion between the material and the spiritual, confusion between logic and love. Out of this confusion there is no possibility of knowing God. Out of this confusion you can go on crying and praying, but your prayer will never reach the divine, your crying is futile. Out of this confusion you will not be able to see the light. This confusion has to be dropped.One has to become intensely aware or intensely loving. These are the only two keys to bringing man out of the state he is in: either intense awareness, which is the path of meditation; or intense, total love, which is the path of devotion.Kabir is a devotee, he is on the path of love. He will talk of love again and again, but what he means by love has to be understood well. By love he means an intense desire to disappear into the whole. It is not the love you know of, that you talk about; it is a totally different phenomenon. Your love is an effort to dominate the other; it is a strategy to possess the other, to exploit the other. Kabir is not talking about that love. You cannot possess God, you can only be possessed by God.To love God means to surrender, to trust, to be ready to die into him. Because dying in godliness is the beginning of a new life; it is resurrection. Love has to become such an intense flame that it burns you up, that you are not left behind, that you are consumed in it – then the guest comes.This paradox has to be understood: the guest cannot come if the host is there; the guest can come only when the host is not there at all. In fact, that’s what host really means: absent, utterly absent, with no ego, with no idea of “I” within you, just an utter, pure emptiness; then you are a host. When the host is not there, then you really are a host. Then not even a split second is lost – the guest comes.The guest does not come from the outside, hence there is no time gap. The dying of the host is the resurrection of the guest. You are the host, you are the guest. If you live with the “I” you remain a host, unacquainted with the guest. If you drop the “I,” you are the guest.What matters is intensity, total intensity. Neither awareness nor love matters; the real thing is intensity. But before man can attain to such intensity, either of awareness or of love, before that total intensity can happen you have to be perfectly conscious of your unconsciousness. Man is so unconscious that he is not even conscious of his unconsciousness.Just the other day Mulla Nasruddin was telling me: “I had eighteen bottles of whisky in my cellar, and was told by my wife to empty the contents of each and every bottle down the sink, or else. I said I would, and proceeded with the unpleasant task.I withdrew the cork from the first bottle and poured the contents down the sink, with the exception of one glass, which I drank.I extracted the cork from the second bottle and did likewise, with the exception of one glass, which I drank.I then withdrew the cork from the third bottle and poured the whisky down the sink, which I drank. I pulled the cork from the fourth bottle down the sink and poured the bottle from the cork of the next and drank one sink out of it and threw the rest down the glass. I pulled the sink out of the next glass and poured the cork down the bottle. Then I corked the sink with the glass, bottled the drink and drank the pour. When I had everything emptied, I steadied the house with one hand, counted the glasses, corks, bottles and sinks with the other, which were twenty-nine, and as the house came by, I counted them again and finally had all the houses in one bottle, which I drank. I’m not under the affluence of oncohol, as some tinkle peep I am, I’m not half as thunk as you might drink. I fool so feelish I don’t know who is me, and the drunker I stand here the longer I get. Ah me!”This is precisely the situation man is in. He is not aware of who he is, he is not aware of where he comes from, he is not aware of where he is going. He is not aware of why he is at all, why the whole of existence is. He simply goes on like a robot, doing things, managing somehow.From birth to death, man is in a long sleep, sometimes dreaming with his eyes closed, sometimes dreaming with his eyes open, but dreaming all the same, all the time.In this situation you cannot invite the guest. In this situation you cannot know what God is because God is nothing but the name of the totality. You don’t even know yourself, how can you know the totality? You are just a tiny being compared to this great, vast existence, you are just a dewdrop compared to the ocean of existence; you don’t even know the small part which is your being, the dewdrop – and you start inquiring about the ocean.Hence, all philosophy is foolish. It is bound to be foolish because it inquires into the ocean without knowing the dewdrop. Religion is very sane: it starts by inquiring into the dewdrop.The first and the most fundamental question of religion is not a question about God, but “Who am I?” Someone who starts with this question, “Who am I?” is moving in the right direction. But remember, this question should not be just an intellectual inquiry. You should not ask this question with the expectation that somebody else is going to answer it; nobody can answer it for you. You cannot find the answer in any source like the Bible, the Veda, the Koran. As far as the answer is concerned, no buddha can be any help.Then what is the purpose of the buddhas? – to make it clear to you that your question is unanswerable, that your question has to become an inner quest. You should not look outside for the answer, you should look in for the answer. The question is hiding the answer: if you go deep down into the question you will find the answer. The answer has to be through your own realization. It cannot be through the scriptures, it cannot be through the sermons of those who are awakened. It can only be through your own awakening, through your own enlightenment; there is no other way, there is no shortcut. There is no way to get the answer cheaply. You will have to dive deep into your being, you will have to take a risk. And the greatest risk is to dive deep within yourself. Why do I call it a risk? Because when you dive deep within yourself, you come across abysmal emptiness and it frightens you. There are only two possible ways: one is superstition, blind belief; the other is doubt.You can be superstitious and just go into it with all your superstitions – you will miss. The superstitious person can never become religious. You can believe, but your belief will be blind and if your belief is blind, you cannot open your eyes. If you begin with blindness you will end with blindness.Or the other possibility is doubt. But if you doubt, you cannot dive in. If you believe, you dive in, but in vain. These seem to be the immediately available alternatives; the third is not so immediately clear.The third possibility is intelligent trust – again a paradox. You have always thought of trust as needing no intelligence; you have always thought of intelligence as skeptical. You have never thought of the beautiful synthesis, the harmony, of intelligence and trust. When intelligence and trust meet, when you dive deep but fully aware, fully aware of the risk; when you dive into your being risking all, gambling, but knowing, knowing perfectly, that you may simply be entering something from which there is no return. You may die and there may be no resurrection, not even a “perhaps” in your mind; risking without motive, risking intelligently.Seeing that life outside is futile – you have seen it, you have lived it, you have been through it, and enough is enough – you are ready to risk the inner journey intelligently. But remember, I say intelligently: the love cannot be blind. Ordinarily, that’s what your love is: it is emotional blindness, it is sentimentality, it is not intelligence. Unless love has the quality of intelligence, it is not the love that Kabir is talking about.There are two stories to be pondered over…There is this guy from India and he is walking along a cliff. He falls off, grabs a branch and pleads, “Is there anyone up there? Help me!”True to form, God answers, “Trust me – let go!”The guy lets go, and immediately falls to his death on the rocks below.God speaks again through the clouds, “That will teach you, you stupid Indian!”And the second story…A Jew is walking along a cliff. He falls off, grabs a branch and pleads, “Is there anyone up there? Help me!”God answers, “Trust me – let go!”The Jew thinks for a minute, then lifts his eyes up to the sky and says, “Is there anyone else up there?”These are the two alternatives available, simple alternatives. Either blindly believe or blindly doubt. But remember, God is not available to blind, superstitious people, and God is not available to doubters either. God is available to intelligent inquirers.What is intelligent inquiry? The first requirement for it is to be a little more conscious than you are. Whatsoever you are doing, bring the quality of consciousness into it. Walking, remember “I am walking.” Not that you have to repeat these words “I am walking,” just remain alert to your walking. Drinking water, remember you are drinking. Remember it is cool, remember it is quenching your thirst. Not afterward, not when your thirst is quenched, not when it has become a past thing; but when it is on the way, when the process is happening, when the thirst is really being quenched. Not when drink has become a noun, but when it is a verb, still alive, vibrating. Feel the coolness of the water in your throat, the quenching of the thirst. Not afterward, let me repeat, not even a split second later.Eating, working, taking a bath, whatsoever you are doing, bring a quality of awareness to it, so that awareness soaks into your being. Only then will you become a conscious lover because love is one of the deepest phenomena. Unless you are aware, conscious, in your ordinary life, you will not be conscious in your love. And conscious love is prayer. If love is not conscious it remains lust, and lust can never have anything of prayer in it. Lust is unconscious, love is conscious.The lush staggered into the middle of Lover’s Lane, blundering into the parked convertibles and causing a minor commotion. Just then a young man appeared from the shadows, breathing heavily. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “What a dynamo. A woman like that could kill you in no time flat. She can burn a guy up.”“So what?” slobbered the drunk.“I’m bushed, pal,” said the young man, “want to take over from me for a while? I gotta rest up.”“Glad to buddy, old pal,” mumbled the drunk, as he staggered over to a car parked nearby.He had no sooner made himself comfortable than a police car drove up and the darkened convertible was flooded by the beam of a strong flashlight.“C’mon you two,” snarled the law, “break it up.”“But offisher,” protested the lush, “this is my wife!”“Sorry mister, didn’t know it was your wife.”“Neither did I until the lights went on.”You don’t know what you are doing. You call your lust, love; you call your desire to possess, love; you call your exploitation, love. You use the other person and you call it caring. You don’t know what you are doing. You can’t know, unless you start becoming alert and aware about small things first. One has to learn swimming in shallow water.When you go for a morning walk, try to remember: be mindful, alert. Whatsoever is happening, don’t exclude anything, be aware of it: the distant call of a bird, the car that has passed by, a child crying in some house. Be alert to everything, inclusive of all. Just be alert.It will be difficult. Only once in a while will you be alert, and again you will become unconscious; being unconscious is such an old, ancient habit. But slowly, slowly, a part of you will be freed. In the beginning, it will only be the tip of the iceberg, but that is the beginning of a great revolution in your life. Then you can start moving your light of awareness onto deeper things. And love is the deepest thing. When love and consciousness meet, prayer arises.These songs of Kabir are his prayer. Kabir says:My body and my mind are in depression because you are not with me.Man without God is a corpse; man with God is a celebration. Minus God or plus God – these are the only two ways to live your life. Minus God you are nothing but misery, plus God you are nothing but bliss. Minus God you are a negative, a black hole. Minus God you only pretend to live, you cannot live. How can there be life minus God? God is life! Yes, you go through all the empty motions, gestures; you act as if you are alive. But deep down you know you are not alive, life has not yet happened to you. Birth has happened, but not life.Life happens only when God has happened. Then a man is twice-born. In the East we call him dwija, twice-born. Then a man really becomes a brahmin, but not by birth; nobody can be a brahmin by birth. The word brahmin does not mean a caste; it means one who has known Brahma, one who has known God, one who has become one with God, with existence. A brahmin is never born, a brahmin is resurrected. One has to first die to all that one thinks one is, then one is reborn, twice-born.With God, your life really begins. You start pulsating on a new plane, radiating joy. Your life takes on the colors of the rainbow; you are all the colors, the whole spectrum. Your life becomes music, all the notes; you become an orchestra. Each moment goes deeper, becomes sweeter and sweeter. For the first time you start having a love affair with existence. The world remains the same and yet not the same. The trees are greener than they have ever been before, and the roses are rosier. And people are no longer ordinary people: each person represents a facet of God, a face of God.Knowing God for the first time your life starts soaring high, you have wings. Minus God you are just crawling in the mud; plus God you can fly up to the sun. The flight of the alone to the alone becomes possible.Kabir says:Balam avo hamare geh re…Oh my beloved, when are you going to enter my house, my being?…tum bin dukhiya deh re…Without you, my body aches, my body is nothing but pain, my body is nothing but agony. Without you I live in agony. How much longer do I have to live this way? How much longer do I have to call you forth?My body and my mind are in depression because you are not with me. And I know why I am in such despair, in such anguish. I know perfectly well it is not because I don’t have much money, no. It is not because I am not politically powerful, no. It is not because I am not very respected, no. I have come to the basic thing: it is because you are not with me.Have you come upon this fundamental of life? People go on thinking they will be happy if they have a little more money; or if they are more respectable, more famous, more known; or if they have more power, more prestige. People go on thinking that this is missing, that is missing, and even when they get those things, they don’t see… They again start thinking of something else. You were thinking that if you had one million rupees you would be happy; now you have, but you don’t see the futility of it. By the time you have one million, you have started thinking that unless you have ten million you are not going to be happy. What is one million, after all? Unless you have ten… And remember, this is going to happen again when you have ten million.Your desires go on projecting into the future. The desiring mind never stops desiring. You can provide each and every thing that it desires, but it can always find more to desire; there is always more. The desire for more is the basic root of the mind.Look back at many things you have thought: “If I have this woman, this man, I will be happy.” Now you have that woman, that man – are you happy? No, now you are thinking, “Some other woman, some other man,” and the same thing will be repeated. To keep going round this vicious circle is what I mean by stupidity; then you are not intelligent.Kabir is showing his intelligence. He says, I have come to know that only one thing is missing in my life, and that is you – God is missing. I am minus you; that’s my misery. I am just pain and nothing else, pain all over. My body is pain, my mind is pain, I am aching all over. It is just agony. Without God there can be no ecstasy.How much I love you and want you in my house!Can’t you see how much I love you and want you in my house, in my temple, in my heart? He is asking: What is missing? Is my love not enough yet? Is there something wrong with my love? Is my love still lukewarm, not intense enough, not boiling at a hundred degrees? Just tell me.When I hear people describe me as your bride I look sideways ashamed…And I am very much ashamed because people have already started talking about me as your bride. People have started saying that I am married to God. People have started saying that I have reached the beloved, that I have found the beloved; I feel very ashamed. Yes, I have seen glimpses. I have seen you from faraway, just as you can see the Himalayan peaks from thousands of miles away on a clear day. In the sunlight you can see those virgin peaks and the snow from thousands of miles away. Just like that, I have seen a few glimpses of you; but I have not yet melted in you, and I have not yet found you in my heart. In the depths we have not met, only on the circumference. Yes, a few meetings have happened; I have been introduced to you, you have been introduced to me, that’s true. But those meetings can only be called acquaintances – and people have started describing me as your bride.…sab koi kahe tumhari nari,moko lagat laj re…Everybody is talking; the news that Kabir has attained has reached many. Kabir is authentic and very true; he says: I have seen only a few glimpses, that is not attainment. In fact, I have never been in more misery than I am now. I was far happier when I had not seen your face at all because I was far more unconscious. Before I had seen you I had no idea that you are, hence there was no misery. I was not missing you at all. Since I have seen your face from far away, since a few glimpses of you have entered my being, since you have sometimes happened in the dark night of my soul like lightning, the darkness is darker than ever before. Now I know anguish because I have seen joy. Now I know agony because I have felt ecstasy. Now I know where I am – my existence is utterly useless without you.And people have started talking of me as your bride. …I look sideways ashamed… I cannot deny that I am your bride. It is true from my side, but it has not yet happened on your side. On my side, I am ready, but you have not accepted me, you have not shown any indication that you will accept me. I cannot say that people are wrong; the marriage has happened – as far as I am concerned at least. I am married to you; I cannot live without you. I will wait for you for eternity. I cannot fall into the trap of the world again; even if I have to wait forever and ever, I will wait. On my side, I am married to you, wedded to you – but what about you? You have not yet entered my heart. What is missing?That’s how real prayer arises: it simply says, “You are ready to come, but something must be missing in me. I desire, but my desire must be impure. I love, but there must be a shadow of lust in it.”When I hear people describe me as your bride I look sideways ashamed,because I know that far inside us we have never met.Saying that needs courage for a man like Kabir: he is already known as one of the enlightened. Thousands have come to him, hundreds are his followers. It needs courage to say it so truly. He says: “Deep down, far inside us, we have never met. Yes, there has been a certain kind of meeting, circumferences have overlapped, but at the centers no meeting has happened yet. There has not yet been an orgasmic unity, we have not yet made love to each other. I have not penetrated you, you have not penetrated me; we are poles apart. And people are talking, and I feel ashamed. Then what is this love of mine? Why is this meeting in the depths not happening? What is this love of mine? Tell me.”This is how a devotee prays. Prayer is a dialogue, a dialogue with the whole. No answer comes from the other side – it looks like a monologue to the outsider. The devotee goes on asking, inquiring, praying, demanding, complaining, thanking – no answer ever comes. If you see a devotee of Kabir’s caliber, it will look like a monologue because there is nobody else: “With whom is he talking? Has he gone mad?”But as far as Kabir is concerned it is a dialogue, not a monologue. No response may come from the beloved, he may remain silent, but his silence is so tangible, and his presence is so tangible, it can be felt. The beloved may not say a single word, but he is there; now there is no missing it. Kabir knows God is, he has seen glimpses of him. Kabir knows that God loves him, he too has seen those few moments of joy.But when you know that sometimes light can happen in your darkness, a great desire, a great longing, arises to end this night completely, to reach the dawn.Then what is this love of mine?If there is something wrong with me, tell me. If there is something missing, I will try harder. I will cleanse my heart if it is not ready to receive you. I will prepare, I will learn the art of being a host – just tell me what is missing.I don’t really care about food, I don’t really care about sleep,I am restless indoors and outdoors.The devotee knows a totally different kind of restlessness from any you have known. Your restlessness is very mundane, superficial. You are restless for money, power, this and that – a better house, more money in the bank, a little more prestige in your life so you can brag that you are somebody – but you don’t know the restlessness of a devotee. He cannot say of it to anybody, he cannot show it to anybody – nobody will ever understand. He would be thought crazy, he would be thought mad.And his restlessness is not on the surface. On the surface, Kabir will be utterly calm and quiet, but his heart is burning, his heart is on fire. Only those who know what love is, what devotion is, will understand the pain, the suffering of Kabir. Those who don’t know about the heart will see Kabir so quiet on the surface, so silent, so still – but deep down he is carrying a storm.I am restless indoors and outdoors. I don’t care about food and I don’t care about sleep. My whole concern is you, my whole concentration is you. Day in, day out, I think only of you. I simply wait at the door, waiting for you. The wind comes and knocks on the door; I rush to open it – maybe he has come? The wind moves dry leaves on the street; I rush – maybe it is the sound of his footsteps?I cannot sleep, Kabir says, I cannot eat. I am so full of you that there is no space left in me for anything else. Still something is missing. What?The bride wants her lover as much as a thirsty man wants water.Just like a fish thrown onto the bank, I am thirsty for you, dying for you, but you have still not arrived. And you cannot be wrong, so I must be wrong. It seems that my thirst is still not enough, my longing is not intense enough. I have not yet prayed and called you. It seems my host is still unworthy of receiving you.And how will I find someone who will take a message to the guest from me?I go on calling and you don’t answer, and sometimes I doubt whether my words are reaching you, whether you are hearing me, whether you care about me. Yes, suspicions arise, doubts arise. There are moments when I start losing hope, when hopelessness settles into me, when the despair is so much that I start thinking, “If there was somebody to take a message to you…”Kabir is saying: Where can I find a master who can become a bridge between you and me; whom I can tell, and trust that the message will be delivered to you; and who can answer on your behalf? Where can I find such a master?The story of Kabir is tremendously beautiful. Nothing is absolutely certain, but it is said that he was born into a Mohammedan family, abandoned by his parents, and then brought up by a Hindu family. So there was always that suspicion, that he was brought up by Hindus but born a Mohammedan. He knocked on many so-called gurus’ doors and they would not accept him because they thought he was a Mohammedan; or even if he was not, his birth was at least suspicious, uncertain. The parents had simply thrown the child onto the riverbank and somebody found him and brought him up. Why was he abandoned? – maybe he was an illegal child. Nobody would accept him.His name also showed that he was a Mohammedan; Kabir is one of the names of God given by Sufis. Sufis have a hundred names for God. Ninety-nine can be communicated verbally, the hundredth cannot: it is understood only in deep silence between the master and the disciple. One of those ninety-nine names is Kabir; it literally means “the great, the vast, the infinite.” Kabir is certainly not a Hindu name.So, his birth was suspicious, his name was Mohammedan. Who would accept him? All the so-called masters were afraid. He was rejected.Then Kabir played a trick. He wanted to become the disciple of a very famous master, the great Ramananda, but he was afraid to go to him – maybe Ramananda would not accept him, just as the others had not. And once he had been rejected it would be very difficult to turn the no into a yes; so he played a trick.Ramananda used to go to the Ganges in Varanasi to take his morning bath, early, when the sun had not yet risen and it was still dark. Kabir went there and slept on a step where he knew Ramananda would pass. It was dark, and Ramananda’s feet touched Kabir – and Kabir clung to Ramananda’s feet. Ramananda said, “Hey Ram! My God! Who are you? What are you doing here?”Kabir said, “Forget about that – you have given me the mantra ‘Hey Ram.’ You have initiated me, I am your disciple now.”Now Ramananda could not go back on his word. He said, “That’s true, this is your mantra, ‘Hey Ram, O God,’ and you are my disciple.” It was only later on, when the sun rose, that Ramananda became aware that it was Kabir.That is how Kabir got initiated into disciplehood. Normally, it is the master who creates a device to initiate the disciple, but in Kabir’s case everybody knew about him, that he was knocking on every door asking to be initiated. So it was the disciple who created a device to be initiated by the master.Kabir says it is very difficult to find a master. And how will I find someone who will take a message to the guest from me? This song must have been sung before he met Ramananda.How restless Kabir is all the time!How much he wants to see the guest!…hai koi aisa par-upakari,pivson kahe sunay re…The original is: Is there anybody in the whole world who has any compassion for this poor man? Because I have a message to be delivered to my beloved. Is there somebody who is compassionate enough, who can deliver my message to God? …pivson kahe sunay re… Somebody who can go to the beloved; somebody who knows the beloved, knows his address, knows the way. I don’t know his address, I don’t know the way, I don’t know his house, where he resides. I go on calling for him, not knowing in which direction to call, not knowing what name to call. Is there somebody in the world compassionate enough to take my message to my beloved? To just tell him, “There is a madman dying in deep love for you.”And if there is any fault I must drop, just tell me, and I will drop it. I am ready to risk all, but I don’t know what to drop. How restless Kabir is all the time! Cannot someone go and tell God how restless I am? My heart is burning, I am constantly crying and weeping.…ab to behal Kabir bhayo hai,bin dekhe jiv jaye re.Now, says Kabir, the situation is this: things have come to such a point that if you don’t show up I will die, trust me. I cannot remain alive any longer without you. …bin dekhe jiv jaye re. If I cannot see you, I cannot live anymore. I am finished. Either you come, or I am going to die. I am breathing my last.…ab to behal Kabir bhayo… Kabir has come to such a state that only death seems to be possible. “Either you appear, or I disappear.”And it is at this point that the guest appears, at this point that the meeting happens. In fact it is not right to call it a meeting because a meeting needs two, and this meeting happens only when you are not.In another song Kabir sings – it must have been composed after the meeting – he says: “In the beginning I used to seek and search for you, and I was at a loss, I was continuously frustrated. I used to seek and search for you and there was no sign of you. Now you seek and search for me, and you will not find me anywhere. Herat herat he sakhi rahya Kabir herai…”Seeking and seeking, searching and searching for the beloved… A moment came – the beloved was not found but the seeker disappeared. And the moment the seeker disappeared, the sought was found because it is the seeker that is hiding the sought.The seeker is the last citadel of the ego, the very last citadel of the ego, where the ego hides. It becomes the seeker, the great seeker; it becomes the devotee. Remember, the ego can take any form, and the subtlest form is that of a devotee, a humble devotee, a surrendered devotee. Beware of the subtle ways of the ego. It has to die totally. One has to come to a point where one finds oneself not, where one is just utter nothingness; that is the purpose of the meeting. When you are not, godliness is.How restless Kabir is all the time! How much he wants to see the guest! This longing to see the guest, this desire to see the guest, brings you a long way. But finally, ultimately, even this desire has to be dropped.There is a very famous story about another mystic, a contemporary of Kabir, Sheik Farid…Farid was going to the river to take his bath. A young man asked him, “Can you tell me how to find God?”Farid looked at the young man with his very penetrating eyes; he looked for a long time, and the young man started feeling frightened. And then Farid said, “Come along with me to the river. First take a bath, and if I get the opportunity I will answer while we are bathing, or if not, then later on.”The young man was puzzled: “What does he mean? I have asked a simple question – how to find God? – and he is talking in riddles. Bathing in the river? If he gets the opportunity he will answer? Why can’t he answer right now?”But the way the man had looked into his eyes – he had a magnetic attraction. And, knowing that the ways of the mystics are mysterious, strange, he felt like going with him. He was a little afraid, scared, but still the attraction was strong enough that he followed. He said to himself: “Let’s take a risk – what can he do?”They both went into the river, but when the young man dived in Farid caught hold of him under the water and wouldn’t allow him to come up; he forced his head down, deeper and deeper.Farid was strong, and the young man cannot have been because strong people don’t ask such questions, such philosophical questions: How to find God? What is God? These inquiries are philosophical; fragile people ask them. Really strong people, rather than asking here and there, start the journey; rather than becoming philosophical they become religious.The young man was dying, but when you are dying, suddenly a great energy arises in you. When there is such a risk, you cannot afford to be half-hearted. His whole energy, which had never before been available, became available to him.You know only the first layer of your energy, which is very ordinary; it is enough for day-to-day work, then it is exhausted. You need sleep to become refreshed again. The second layer is the emergency layer; it arises only in an emergency. For example, if somebody is coming at you with a bayonet, or a lion is following you in the forest, then you run. No Olympic runner can compete with you – and if you don’t know how to run, it will come, it will happen. When your life is in danger the second layer becomes available. And when your life is really in danger, totally in danger, absolutely in danger, the third layer becomes available; the third layer is inexhaustible. The third layer is already joined with existence, it is rooted in existence. And so it was the case with the young man…Farid was a strong man and he was not leaving the young man alone, he was forcing him down and down. When the first layer was exhausted, Farid suddenly felt there was great strength; the young man was becoming stronger and it was difficult even for Farid to keep him down. And soon Farid became aware that the third layer had now become available, and the young man threw him off as if Farid were just a toy. The young man came out, very angry, obviously, and said, “Are you mad or something? I ask a religious question and you were going to kill me. Are you a murderer? And people think that you are a great sage!”Farid said, “We can discuss those things later. Right now, lest you forget, let me ask you a question: ‘What happened when I went on forcing you down and down into the water?’”The young man said, “What happened?”“Were there many thoughts in your head?” Farid asked.“Many thoughts? There was only one thought – how to get out.”“Was it a thought or was it a feeling?” Farid asked.And the young man said, “It was a feeling, you are right, it was not a thought. I was not verbalizing it; it was not in my head, it was in my heart. It was just a feeling – now I am verbalizing it.”“And how long did it stay?”“A moment came when that too disappeared,” the young man said. “You are right again: there was no feeling, no thought. But something was happening, I don’t know what or from where. I was not doing it, it was happening – a great uprush of energy from some unknown source. Now I can look back, I can express it. At that very moment I was conscious, absolutely conscious. I have never been so conscious – because I have never been in such danger before. I was alert, absolutely alert, but still there was no thought, no feeling, not even a desire to save myself. In fact there was no me. I had disappeared, but something was happening beyond me, something transcendental.”Farid said, “Now you know the answer – this is the way to find God. When you are not, the transcendental descends into you. Now you can go. Never ask anybody again, you know the key: let God become such a problem, such a quest, that your life is at stake.”That’s what happened to Kabir. He says: …ab to behal Kabir bhayo… Now, closer and closer, the moment is approaching when I know my death is an absolute certainty. Now it is a question of either–or: either you or death. All other alternatives have disappeared. Everything has been narrowed down to two things: death or God.Death or God: …ab to behal Kabir bhayo hai, bin dekhe jiv jaye re. If you don’t appear I will be gone, and then it will be too late for you to come. And then you will repent that one who had prayed his whole life, who had devoted his all to you; one who was so surrendered, who was so deep in trust, died – and you didn’t appear.The song ends at this point because beyond this nothing can be said. Kabir died, and God appeared. The host disappeared and the guest came in. The guest waits for you to die.That is the meaning of the Christian symbol of the cross. Jesus says to his disciples: “If you want to follow me, you will have to carry your own cross on your own shoulders.” Everyone has to carry their own cross, everyone has to prepare for their own ultimate death. I don’t mean physical death, remember. Physical death has happened to you many times; millions of times you have died physically. That is not true death because the mind continues, enters another womb, starts another game; again the whole story is repeated. You go on moving in circles; that is not true death.True death is known only by the devotee who comes to the point where he cannot live without God, where it becomes impossible to live without God. When this impossibility arises, that one cannot live without God, the death is so deep that nobody can help you. This is what Jesus means by “carrying your own cross.” Of course, nobody else can carry it for you. This death is so much of the interior that nobody can approach it from the outside. You cannot be murdered, you can only commit suicide – because of this death, because of this internal disappearance, because of this subjective annihilation, cessation.Kabir died, Kabir disappeared – and the guest was always there; it was only the presence of Kabir that was preventing the guest from entering.One of the greatest poets that India has given birth to in this century was Rabindranath Tagore. He has written a memoir of tremendous beauty and significance:He was staying in a boat on a river; he loved his boat and the river. It was a full-moon night. In the small cabin of his boat he was pondering over one of the ancientmost questions that all the poets have pondered over: What is beauty? He was looking into books, ancient and modern; he had a great library in his cabin, all about aesthetics. What is beauty? That had been his lifelong concern – what is beauty? – because he had the feeling that God is beauty; not truth, but beauty.Truth looks dry, truth looks logical. The very word connotes some head trip; truth seems to belong to the head. Hence Rabindranath used to say that God is not truth but beauty. Beauty is a feeling, it is not a logical phenomenon; it is of the heart. It is closer to love than logic.This had been his lifelong meditation: What is beauty? And on that night also he had been thinking about it, looking into books, finding definitions. Half the night passed. He was completely oblivious to the full moon, he was completely oblivious to the silence outside, the absolutely silent river and the full moon and the beauty of the full moon. And the whole river was transformed into silver, the silent trees meditating on the banks, and only once in a while the distant call of a cuckoo. But he was completely oblivious to it all.Then, feeling tired, exhausted, he closed his books, blew out the small candle, and suddenly a great revelation happened. As he blew out the small candle, from the windows, from the doors, from every side, the moonlight came in, started dancing in the cabin. The candle had been burning and the moon had not been coming in. The moment the candle was blown out the moonlight entered.That sudden change – for a moment Rabindranath was in such awe. He says, “I knew in that moment what beauty is. I cannot say it to anybody, I cannot define it yet, but in that moment I knew what beauty is – the utter silence, the distant call of the cuckoo, suddenly the moonlight entering.”He went out. It was sheer beauty. The whole of existence was celebrating. The river was just silver, the whole sky open with just a few white clouds floating.He wrote in his diary, “How foolish I am. I was looking in books for the definition of beauty, and beauty was standing at my door. And a small candle prevented the great moon from entering. On this night, exactly like that, I felt my small ego and its pale light preventing the guest, God, from entering.”Blow this candle out, blow it out. Let there be no ego, and suddenly, from every nook and corner, the guest enters – and you will know what beauty is, you will know what God is. That is exactly what must have happened to Kabir.He does not say so in this song; in another song elsewhere he says: There was a time when I used to go on religious pilgrimages in search of God. I went to Kashi, I went to Mathura, I went to this and that temple. I went to every place wherever I heard God is, and I never found him anywhere. Then one day, Kabir disappeared. Since then, God comes following me wherever I go, calling, “Kabir, Kabir. Where are you going?” He follows me like a shadow. And I don’t care. Because I am no more, how can I care? He goes on calling, “Kabir, Kabir.” I used to call him and he never answered – why should I answer now? Tit for tat!Meditate over Kabir’s beautiful songs. They are very precious, the more so because Kabir is not a learned man at all. He says: “Masi kagad chhuyo nahin – I have never touched paper and ink.” And that is exactly so: he cannot write, he cannot read. He has no idea of the Vedas and the Koran and the Bible, but what he says contains all the Vedas and all the Korans and all the Bibles. Not knowing a single word of the Upanishads, his poetry contains all of them. He is not a learned man but he is a wise man; not knowledgeable, but he knows. And he has come up the hard way. In fact there is no other way – no cheap way, no shortcut.If you meditate on Kabir, slowly, slowly, a great desire, a flame of longing in your heart will arise because you also will be able to see that nothing in the world can ever satisfy you except the guest. Minus God you are a corpse, plus God you are a celebration.Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,You, the fountain of love, our source is in thee.Loving thy will our spirit is free.This beautiful day that all of us see.The hope of the world is love.Love is not only the hope of the world, but the only hope. Up to now man has lived an absolutely loveless life. All the societies and the cultures and the religions that have existed on earth have talked about love, but have lived a very loveless existence. There has been much talk about love in the past, but the structure that societies have created is basically against love. Society is geared for war, and a society that is geared for war can only talk about love, not live it.We have now come to the peak of this ugly, stupid structure of hatred. We have come to the point where man has to either change totally or die. The new man can only be born by having a new heart, a new soul – and the flavor of that soul will be love, and the poetry of that heart will be love. A society that lives without love is competitive, ambitious; obsessed with money, power, prestige. A society that lives without love lives through beliefs. Beliefs divide people, and all divisions breed war. A society that lives without love lives a very lustless existence because without love there is no splendor in life, no significance. Without love no song arises in the heart of man.We have come to the point – or are coming to it, approaching it every day – that by the end of this century man will have to choose either total destruction or revolution. Not a political or social revolution, but a revolution of the heart. The turning point is coming closer every day; you must be prepared for it.Sannyas has to become the herald for a new world, the first ray of the dawn. Man is reaching toward total war; all the preparations are there to commit global suicide. This is what your history has brought you to. All the Alexanders and all the Napoleons and all the Stalins and all the Hitlers and all the Maos have been working for centuries and centuries. Now their dream is going to be fulfilled: we can destroy this whole earth within seconds. Destruction has reached its peak; unless creativity also reaches its peak man cannot be saved.And to me, love is nothing but the birth of creativity in you. By love I mean an overflowing heart. Love to me is not only a relationship; the relationship that we call love is a faraway, distant echo of the real thing.The real thing is not a relationship but a state; one is not in love, but one is love. Whenever I talk about love, remember this: I am talking about the state of love. Yes, a relationship is perfectly good, but the relationship is going to be false if you have not attained the state of love. Then the relationship is not only a pretension, it is a dangerous pretension because it can go on befooling you; it can go on giving you the sense that you know what love is – and you don’t know. Love is basically a state of being; one is not in love, one is love.And that love arises not by falling in love with somebody. That love arises by going in – not by falling, but by rising, soaring upward, higher than yourself. It is a kind of surpassing. A man is love when his being is silent; it is the song of silence. A Buddha is love, a Jesus is love – not in love with a particular person, but simply love. Their very climate is love. It is not addressed to anybody in particular, it is spreading in all directions. Whosoever comes close to a buddha will feel it, will be showered by it, will be bathed in it. And it is unconditionally so.Love makes no conditions, no ifs, no buts. Love never says, “Fulfill these requirements, then I will love you.” Love is like breathing; when it happens you simply are love. It does not matter who comes close to you, a sinner or a saint. Whosoever comes close to you starts feeling the vibe of love, rejoices. Love is unconditional giving – but only those who have are capable of giving.One of the most mysterious things about man is that he goes on giving things which he doesn’t have. You go on giving love and you don’t have it in the first place, and you go on asking for love from others who also don’t have it – beggars begging from beggars.Love first has to happen in the deepest core of your being. It is the quality of being alone, happily alone, joyously alone. It is the quality of being a no-mind, of being silent. Contentless consciousness is the space, the context, in which love arises in you.And so much love arises in you it is unbearable. The pleasure is so unbearable that it almost becomes pain. It is heavy like clouds full of rain; they have to shower, they have to rain, they have to unburden themselves. When love arises in the silent heart, it has to be shared, it has to be given; you are helpless.And the person you give your love to is not obliged to you in any way. In fact, you are obliged to them because they help to unburden you, they share something that was too much for you. And the economics of love are: the more you give, the more you have because in your silent being you are joined with the oceanic, the divine source of all. And you can go on sharing; more and more goes on flowing through you, welling up.Yes, you are right, love is the only hope of the world. And we are coming close to the turning point: either total war or total love. This is a question of either–or, there is no third alternative. There is nothing like a compromise possible now, you cannot be in the middle. Man has to choose. It is a question of life and death: war is death, love is life.By creating you here, by creating sannyasins here, I am creating a new kind of space. This is the beginning of a totally new man. Hence the old traditions will be unable to understand what is happening here; the experiment is so new they don’t have any criterion. Yes, in the past, once in a while, men like Buddha, Kabir, Krishna, Christ, Zarathustra, have happened, but they are only individuals. Now, only individuals won’t do; only a buddha here and there won’t be of much help. The world has gone too far into hate. The world is so full of hate that it is almost like an ocean of hatred, and a buddha will be just a spoonful of sugar – it won’t change the taste of the ocean. We need thousands of buddhas.Hence I am not interested in Christians, I am interested only in Christs. I am not interested in Jainas, I am interested only in Mahaviras. I am not interested in Buddhists, I am interested only in Buddhas. My effort here is not to create a following, not to create believers, but to create individuals, lovers, meditators who can stand on their own; and each one can become a light. The night is going to become darker and darker every day and we will need millions of lights around the world, millions of people who are capable of love – unconditionally, without asking for anything in return – and who are so silent and so blissful that wherever they are they will be able to dissipate darkness.Yes, love is the hope of the world, the only hope.The second question:Osho,When dreaming, something is constantly telling me that I have to die. I remember no other dreams. What is happening?Meditate first over this small anecdote…The young man had been keeping company with a girl for over two years, but still had given no indication of serious intentions.“I had a strange dream last night,” he remarked one day. “I dreamed I proposed to you. What that is a sign of, I wonder?”“It’s a sign you’ve got more sense asleep than awake.”And that’s exactly my answer to you: you have got more sense asleep than awake. In fact, the whole of psychoanalysis is based on the understanding that people are more intelligent while dreaming than while they are awake.Why has this strange thing happened? People should be more intelligent when they are awake than when they are dreaming. There is a reason: society can make an impression on your waking mind; it has not yet been able to make an impression on your dreaming mind. Society has destroyed your waking mind, distorted it, polluted it, disfigured it; it is almost unrecognizable now from what it could have been naturally. So much has been pruned, cut, so much has been repressed, so much has been imposed from the outside, that you don’t know what you would have been if society had not interfered.But your unconscious, your dreaming mind, is still out of range of being grabbed by society. But it will not be for long, there are people who are working to grab your unconscious mind too, remember. In Soviet Russia particularly, they have been experimenting for at least twenty years on how to influence your dreaming, sleeping mind – and they have succeeded. They have succeeded enough for you to need to be alert, to beware.In Russia now, they have found that a person can be taught even while he is asleep and dreaming. Earphones are put on the person and messages are given, in a very, very, silent way, in a subliminal way, so that his sleep is not disturbed. He continues to sleep yet his mind goes on receiving messages. You can teach new languages, mathematics, history, philosophy, anything, and he will remember in the morning. In fact, it seems to work far better than ordinary schooling because in ordinary schooling you have to go on repeating the same thing again and again; when it is repeated often, only then does it go a little deeper. But when you are asleep your deep mind is available.It is okay to teach mathematics and science and history – but politicians cannot stop there. They will teach communism, fascism – it is bound to happen. They will teach Gandhism, they will teach Christianity, Hinduism, Islam – it is bound to happen. Once the politicians have got the means to influence your sleeping mind they will not leave you alone.At least right now you are free to dream; soon the danger is that you will not be. The government will go on influencing your dreams; it will allow you to dream only certain dreams, it will create dreams in you. In a communist country you will not be able to dream a capitalist dream; even in a dream you will not have a car of your own, it won’t be allowed.And if your unconscious becomes available to the politicians, man is utterly destroyed. It should not be allowed. This is far more dangerous than atomic bombs because the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb can only destroy your body, but these new techniques of behaviorist psychology can destroy your psychology. Right now at least you have some privacy, but politicians are not willing to give you even that much; they want to interfere, they want to poke into your dreams. Up to now it has not happened much; they have succeeded with experimentation, but it has not yet been used on a wide scale.You say, “When dreaming, something is constantly telling me that I have to die.” That is the voice of your inner being. It has nothing to do with your physical death, it has something to do with your psychological death. It has something to do with the death of the ego.It happens to every meditator: the more you meditate, the more your inner voice says, “Let the ego die.” The more you meditate, the more you become aware that a certain death is going to happen. And you only know one kind of death, so naturally you misinterpret: you think, “I am going to die.” You are not going to die. Only the “I,” the ego, the personality, is going to die, is going to disappear. Your dream is giving you a very significant message.And you say, “I remember no other dreams. What is happening?” This dream is not an ordinary dream, it is something extraordinary. It is not just the rubbish of the mind.Ninety-nine percent of your dreams consist of rubbish, rubbish that you gather in the day, rubbish that you carry on chewing over in the night. They are a reflection of your day, they have nothing special in them. That’s why psychoanalysis takes so many years – to find a gem in the rubbish takes time. There is so much rubbish that it takes two, three years for the psychoanalyst to find something significant, sort it out, figure out where you are, what you are.But in meditation it can happen very quickly because in meditation you go directly. You don’t search in the rubbish, you simply dive deep into your being to where the diamond is, where the lotus paradise is.You are hearing something of your inner voice. It is not really a dream, it is far truer than any truth you have yet known. It is the voice of your soul, it is existence speaking to you. Listen, follow – help the ego to die. Become absolutely nonexistent as far as the ego is concerned.And in the death of the ego love is born, godliness is born, light is born. In the death of the ego you are transformed; all misery disappears as if it had never existed. Your life right now is a nightmare. When the ego dies, nightmares disappear and a great sweetness and a subtle joy arise in your being, for no reason at all. You cannot explain it to anybody, you cannot explain it to yourself either. It is unexplainable, mysterious. But who cares for the explanation? When you are bathed, when you are rejoicing, when your being is in a dance, who cares?Only when you are suffering do you ask, “Why?” You ask when you are ill, you never ask when you are healthy. You never ask your physician, “Why am I healthy?” When you are ill, you certainly ask “Why am I ill? Why this headache, why this stomachache?” But when you are perfectly healthy you don’t go to the physician to ask, “Why am I healthy?” Health is natural, so is bliss; misery is unnatural. Misery is pathology, illness, disease.Let the ego die. The time has come, and your inner voice is saying, “Don’t cling to it. Let go.”The third question:Osho,If I should meet Osho walking down the road, should I kill him?Certainly. That’s why I never walk down the road, you know.But you don’t understand; you have asked the question, but you don’t understand the meaning of it at all. This is a message only for disciples, and you are not yet a disciple, you are not yet a sannyasin.This is a Zen way of saying something of immense value. It is a Zen saying: If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him. But Buddha is dead, and has been dead for twenty-five centuries. Where can you meet him, on what way? And how can you kill someone who has been dead for twenty-five centuries?It has a totally different meaning: it is a message to the disciple who loves Buddha, who loves him so much that there is a possibility that Buddha may become his last barrier – because of his love, because he is a disciple, because he is a sannyasin; because he meditates, goes deeper and deeper into his being and feels more and more grateful toward Buddha.At the last moment even the master has to be left behind – at the last moment. This is something inner, remember; it has nothing to do with the outer – this is something inner. All your thoughts disappear, then only one thought remains – the thought of your master. At the very last you have to say good-bye to the master too.And it is very difficult to say good-bye. You owe so much to the master: he has been your source, your transformation, he has been your nourishment, your life, he has brought you along the long way. And now to say good-bye to the person who has been your guide, your friend? Now to say good-bye to him who has been a constant companion in the dark night of the soul; to say good-bye to him when the dawn is coming? It seems impossible. And the disciple, at the last moment, starts clinging to the idea of the master.But that becomes a barrier. The master himself will give you a push, and if you don’t feel the push then he will give you a kick in the pants – because you have to go, you have to go into the unknown.The master says to you, I say to you, “If you meet me on the way, kill me.” But what way is implied? You will not meet me on MG Road. What way? If you go inward, on the inner way, on the inward journey, at the last checkpoint I am waiting for you.And it will be difficult to say good-bye, it has always been difficult to say good-bye. Hence the statement is to just kill the master, so there is no need to even say good-bye; kill the master so there is no need to look back; kill the master so you can now be left totally alone, with not even the shadow of the master with you. And this is done in great gratefulness, in great gratitude.But this is not for you. First become a sannyasin, a disciple; start moving inward – only then can you meet me. You have not yet met me, even outwardly, how can you meet me inwardly? You have not yet come closer to me, how can you be in a state of clinging to me? You are far away, you are distant, you are avoiding. You have not even said good morning, so what is the point of saying good-bye? First become a disciple. Move on the inward way, let me help you to the ultimate point, and then certainly, if you meet me on the inner way, kill me.But it happens that people only understand according to their own ideas. You have not understood this Zen koan. And it is not, remember again, it is not, that the disciple kills the master in anger: he kills him in gratitude. In fact, he kills him because the master orders him to kill him; he simply follows the commandment – crying, weeping, with tears in his eyes. And even when he has killed, the gratitude remains.Do you know this story?…The famous Zen master, Ikkyu, was staying in a temple on a very cold night. There were many wooden Buddhas in the temple, so he brought two, three Buddhas over and made a good fire, and enjoyed.In the middle of the night, what with the fire and the smoke and the crackling of the wood, the priest awoke: “What is happening? What is going on?” He saw this monk – who was a stranger, who had asked for, and been given, shelter – and what had he done? Three Buddhas gone. Naturally, the priest was in a rage. He said, “Are you mad or something? You have burnt three Buddhas.”Ikkyu took his staff and started searching for something in the ashes. There was nothing left now, just ashes, but he was searching. The priest asked, “What are you searching for?”“Buddha’s bones,” Ikkyu said. “I am searching for the flowers, for the bones of Buddha.”In India, in the East, the bones are called flowers – symbolically. Now the priest laughed. He said, “You are really mad. How can you find flowers, bones, from the wooden Buddhas?”Ikkyu said, “So you are not as stupid as you look. Bring a few more Buddhas because the night is long and it is cold. If you know that these are only wooden Buddhas, then what is there to fear? We can enjoy. My buddha inside is feeling cold. And what do you think – should I care more about the living buddha or the wooden Buddha?”It was too dangerous to keep this man inside the temple, and the priest had to go to sleep, so he said, “Please get out, otherwise you might burn more Buddhas. Simply get out. I don’t want anything to do with this nonsense.”The priest threw Ikkyu out into the cold night. While he was being thrown out Ikkyu said, “What are you doing? On such a cold night, are you throwing out a buddha, a living buddha, to protect the wooden Buddhas?”But the priest wouldn’t listen, he closed the door in Ikkyu’s face.In the morning when the priest went out of the temple he found another miracle happening. Just by the side of the road there was a milestone. Ikkyu had gathered some flowers from the roadside and was offering them to the milestone. He was bowing down and saying, “Buddham sharanam gachchhami, sangham sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam gachchhami – I take shelter at the feet of the Buddha, I take shelter in your commune, my lord, I take shelter in the dhamma, the law that you have taught us.”The priest said, “What are you doing? During the night you burnt three Buddhas, and now you are worshipping the milestone as a Buddha!”And Ikkyu said, “If you have gratitude you can show it anywhere. If you don’t have it, even thousands of wooden Buddhas cannot create it.”“If you have gratitude you can show it anywhere.” Now this is a man of Zen. If you understand Ikkyu, then you will understand this statement: on the one hand he burned, on the other hand he worshipped.The masters who used to tell their disciples, “If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him,” were worshipping the Buddha every day – morning, afternoon, evening. They were prostrating themselves before the Buddha. And many times the disciples asked, “Sir, you say, ‘If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him.’ Then why do you worship him?”And the master would say, “Because he is the only master in the world, Buddha is the only master in the world who helps you to get rid of him. Hence the gratitude.”You have not understood the statement. These statements have a very different meaning than is apparent. To understand these statements you will have to become a little grown-up. As far as these statements are concerned, you are like children…A teacher first explained to her class that the four basic elements of successful fiction were religion, royalty, sex and mystery. Then she asked them to write their first novel. After about five minutes little Peter walked up to the teacher’s desk and said, “Teacher, I’ve finished.”“In five minutes?” said the teacher. “Are you sure you have included all the four basic elements: religion, royalty, sex and mystery?”“Yes, I have,” said the boy. “I’ll read it to you:‘Holy Moses!’ said the princess. ‘Pregnant again? I wonder who done it this time?’”The novel was finished, and the four basic elements were all there: ‘“Holy Moses!” said the princess. ‘Pregnant again? I wonder who done it this time?’” To understand these great statements you will need a more grown-up mind.Yes certainly, if you meet me on the way, kill me. But first, please, be on the way – where I am waiting for you, to be killed by you.And you don’t know another thing which is not really ever said. This statement is only the half of it; the other half, the first half, is missing. Before you can ever kill me, I will kill you. That’s how you will enter the way.The fourth question:Osho,My wise Shiatsu teacher at home told us, “You cannot fight against the Devil, you can only play with him.” I feel that this could help me but I do not understand it completely. Would you speak about it?It is a beautiful statement and of great significance. You cannot fight against the Devil because if you fight with the Devil you take him very seriously, and to take the Devil very seriously is to believe in him.The Devil is created by your seriousness about him, your seriousness is his nourishment. It is by being serious about the Devil that you pay him respect, that you feed him. And the more serious you are about him, the more frightened you are; the more frightened you are the more he will scare you. The Devil must not to be taken seriously at all, but if you fight you cannot avoid taking him seriously.How are you going to fight with the Devil? Where will you find him? – you will find him within yourself, you will condemn some part of your being as the Devil and you will fight with it. And that is like your right hand fighting with your left hand, condemning; condemning the left as the Devil. And that’s how people think: right is right and left is wrong.The left hand is as much you as your right hand. You will divide yourself: your head will start fighting with your heart, your mind will start fighting with your body. You will become fragmentary, you will become divided, there will be a great civil war within you. You will condemn sex, you will condemn anger, greed, you will condemn a thousand and one things – but they are part of you. The more you condemn them, the more power you give to them because whenever you condemn something you become focused on it – and to be attentive to something is to give power to it. Whenever you become too attentive toward something you become hypnotized by it.The person who is against sex becomes obsessed with it. He continuously thinks about it because he has to be alert, on guard; otherwise the enemy will defeat him. And for twenty-four hours you are on guard against whom? – against your own energy. So you are split; and to be split is to be in misery, and to be split is to be poor because the energy dissipates. To be in inner conflict is to be in anguish, agony. Bliss means being integrated.Where is the Devil? – it is some condemned part of you. And you cannot cut it out because it is so deeply a part of you that there is no possibility of separating it from your self. So you can go on fighting, but you will never win.The statement is beautiful: “You cannot fight against the Devil, you can only play with him.” And that’s what I am teaching you here: be playful, nonserious. Yes, even with sex, anger, greed, everything that has been condemned down the ages, be playful with it. And then the miracle happens: if you are playful, the Devil starts evaporating because it is seriousness that gives him shape and form and solidity. When you become playful about him – when you are not on guard, when you are not fighting – he is being starved; when you are playful you take the very earth from underneath his feet.Try being playful with anything and you will see the miracle happening. Be playful with sex and soon you will be beyond sex. That’s the whole secret of Tantra: just be playful about it, don’t take it so seriously, it is nothing to be worried about. It is not a problem to be solved, it is your energy to be understood – and not only understood but reabsorbed.If you can absorb your own sexual energy you will be far richer than you are, far stronger than you are. If you can absorb your anger into yourself, your greed into yourself, you will no longer be a schizophrenic; your whole pathology will disappear. You will be whole and healthy, and you will have a totally different feeling of well-being. You will be surrounded by sunlight. You will be sunlit. And wherever you go you will carry peace around with you – very tangible, very substantial – because there will be no conflict in you.Being playful is one of the great secrets of inner transformation. Learn to be playful. If all seriousness disappears from your life, you are religious.But this is not what is ordinarily understood by a religious person. A religious person becomes very, very serious. He looks at you as if you are a sinner condemned to go to hell, doomed. He walks erect, with great pride. You can see in his eyes that he knows that he is “holier than thou,” higher than thou, that he is saved and you are condemned. So of course he becomes very serious; his going to the church, to the temple, his prayer, his ritual, are all very serious affairs. He does not take it nonseriously, playfully.But you cannot know what prayer is if you don’t know what playfulness is. Real religion teaches you playfulness – sincerity of course, but seriousness no; authenticity of course, but seriousness no.You have come to the right place, that’s what we are doing here. This whole space that is being created here is one of playfulness. People are working, but the work has no seriousness about it, no tension about it. They are enjoying it; that is prayer, that is worship. They are continuously working; nowhere else can you find so much work going on, and with such nonseriousness, with such playfulness.Just a few days ago I told you that there are three hundred people working here. I was wrong –I am not very reliable with information, even about my own ashram. I never go out because I am afraid somebody may kill me, fools are everywhere. It is perfectly okay with Buddha if you kill him because he is already dead.Laxmi told me that there are not three hundred, but seven hundred people working; and a hundred waiting because there is no space for them. How can there be enough space in such a small – six-acre – piece of land? Seven hundred people working – more than a hundred per acre. But you don’t feel crowded because there are no serious people around. Otherwise, one serious person is enough to make the place seem crowded. A hundred playful persons don’t make a crowd; they remain individuals, they don’t create a crowd. You can see the joy and the celebratory mood.This I call true religion – playfulness, lovingness, cheerfulness.The fifth question:Osho,How long does this stupid sex continue to haunt one? I am almost sixty and it is still there.Sex has nothing to do with age, you can be six hundred and it will still be there. It has something to do with awareness, not with age. Remember, just by growing old you don’t grow up. You may be sixty physiologically, but you may just be nearabout twelve, thirteen, or at the most fourteen psychologically, hence this hang-up. A person who is psychologically fourteen is bound to be haunted by sex, and people are stuck at somewhere near thirteen, fourteen.The average mental age of humanity is twelve. It is unbelievable that people get stuck so early. What happens? And why at just nearabout twelve, thirteen, fourteen? – because that is the time when sex ripens in you, and no society wants you to go beyond that point. Every society wants you to remain sexually starved because a sexually starved person is very useful to society – to this ill society. A sexually starved person can be channeled in any direction very easily because he is boiling within. You can make him go after money: then money will be his sex, then his whole starved sexual energy will move toward money. Then money will be his beloved, his God, and for his whole life he will run after money. And naturally, sex will haunt him because money cannot satisfy it. You can gather as much money as you want, but how can it satisfy your basic urge? Society has diverted your urge, has given you a diversion; it has given you a toy.And that’s how we start from the very beginning: the child is crying, he wants milk, and he is given a pacifier. And the poor child starts sucking the pacifier and thinks that it is the mother’s breast. How mean can we be? That is sheer meanness. We are being very political with the poor child, diplomatic, cunning. The poor child has no understanding yet to make a distinction between the pacifier and the breast; he is being deceived. It will be no wonder if later on that child disrespects his mother, one day hates his mother.You can go to any psychoanalyst and ask him, “What is the fundamental problem with every person?” and you will be surprised to know that he will not give you some name: neurosis, psychosis, schizophrenia, hysteria, etcetera, etcetera. If you ask him, “What is the fundamental problem with every psychologically disturbed person?” he will say, “the mother.” But why the mother? – because she was the first one to start deceiving the child; she was the child’s first acquaintance with the world. Because a child needs warmth as much as milk; it is a very deep physiological need of the child. And when the child was crying and wanting to be hugged… And now he cannot trust anybody. If he cannot trust even his own mother, how can he trust anybody else?It is a proven scientific fact now, that if a child is given nourishment but no bodily warmth, he will shrink and die. Or if he survives he will remain retarded, unhealthy for his whole life; something will be missing in him. He not only needs the mother’s milk, he needs the warmth of the mother’s bosom, the warmth of the mother’s body. That warmth is now understood to be absolutely fundamental, absolutely necessary.But when the child is crying he cannot say, “Mum, I want to be hugged,” because he has no language yet. By crying he is saying, “Hug me, kiss me, caress me, let me come close to you.” And he is being given a teddy bear, or some toy to engage with. He is being deceived from the very beginning: he wants something, he gets something else. That’s how we go on distorting him.When a child is coming to sexual maturity we start giving him ambitions. We start telling him, “Come first at university, come first at school – come first. Wherever you are, whatsoever you are doing, you have to be first.” We implant a great desire into his mind to be first anywhere he is; this gives a new direction to his sexual energy.Society is trying to divert his natural energies. We start telling him, “Unless you have a big car, a big house, lots of money in the bank, you are a failure.” He begins running after big things. He may not need a big house. In fact his needs are not such that he needs a big house with many, many rooms; a smaller house may be far more beautiful because it can be kept cleaner. But the idea that has been implanted in his mind is: “Unless you have a very imposing big house you are a failure.” Now the big house, the money in the bank, become his symbols of fulfillment – but they are only symbols, empty. Deep down he is still hankering, deep down he is unfulfilled. His deep consciousness is continuously telling him, “Be natural, let your energies flow in a natural, spontaneous way.”You ask me, “How long does this stupid sex continue to haunt one?” Why do you call it stupid? – you are angry at it. Sex is not stupid. You may be stupid; sex is simply sex. You can be stupid with it, you can be intelligent with it; that is something to do with you, not sex. And if you call it names, if you condemn, it will persist. You will be sixty, you will be seventy, you will be eighty – it won’t make any difference. In fact, the weaker your body becomes, the more the repressed sex will explode in your consciousness.A big burly rapist broke into a Texas homestead. All the men were out on a cattle drive, and he raped all ten women living there – all except the eighty-five-year-old great grandma.The victims lay around groaning in a state of confusion. The rapist lay in the corner, naked and exhausted.Old Granny took her spectacles off her nose, put them on the nose of the rapist and cried, “Look around, big fella, see if you missed anybody!”Sex will persist. Don’t call it stupid; you are being stupid with it. Accept it. It is a natural desire, a natural energy, the very fountain-source of all life. Yes, there are things beyond it, beautiful spaces beyond it. Sex brings joy, and sex brings misery too. They are both mixed with sex because sex is a mixture of the sky and the earth, the body and the soul. Hence it brings both: one moment it gives you wings, another moment it cuts them. One moment is a great ecstasy, another moment you have fallen into deep agony. One moment you are on a peak, a sunlit peak, another moment you are groaning in a dark valley. One has to learn about the valleys and the peaks; sex is both.And one has to learn by one’s own experience, not by what others say, not by what I say. Your own experience of sex will make you free of it. And I am not saying simply be free of it; don’t try to be free of it, otherwise you never will be. What I am saying is: freedom from sex is a consequence, a by-product. You cannot achieve it directly, it comes indirectly. If you live sex with deep playfulness, meditativeness, as a gift of existence, seeing the peaks and the valleys again and again, slowly, slowly, a third point will arise in your being: the witness who witnesses the peak, who witnesses the valley – and neither peaks are important, nor valleys are important. Slowly, slowly, your consciousness has gone through a revolution; you have become more centered in the witnessing soul. That witnessing is brahmacharya, that witnessing brings real celibacy. It is not against sex, it is beyond sex.Otherwise, sex will go on haunting you to your very last moment. You will be dying and you will not be thinking of God, you will be thinking of sex. That’s why the moment you die, you are immediately reborn – not a minute is lost because you die with the idea of sex in your head. You leave this body and because sex can only be fulfilled through the body, immediately the desire to enter another body arises.Down in sunny Mexico there lived an old aunt with four very pretty nieces. One day Pancho Villa and his gang of revolutionary bandits broke into the house. Accosting the women on the patio the brigand said, “This place is in our possession and you are in our power.”“We are helpless!” one of the girls exclaimed, “and we must submit, but please spare our poor old aunt.”“Shut up!” snapped the aunt, “War is war!”Freedom from sex has nothing to do with age, it has something to do with gaining a higher awareness, a deeper awareness. Become a witness, and don’t call sex stupid. Become intelligent, see, watch, observe. Whatsoever is given to you must have a reason, a rhyme in it; whatsoever you have got must have something of the beyond in it. You are only able to see the lower part of the ladder because your eyes are not open and your being is not conscious; hence you see only sex, the lower part of the ladder. The higher part of the ladder is samadhi. If you can see the whole ladder, all the rungs of it, you will be surprised – sex is the door to samadhi.The very idea of samadhi was born because of those few rare people who were able to attain to total orgasmic joy through sex. They became aware that there is something in sex which is not sexual at all. In a deep orgasmic state time disappears, mind disappears, ego disappears. Now these three things have nothing to do with sex. And because they disappear, great joy arises. That arising of joy has nothing directly to do with sex either – it arose because sex helped, became a context for the disappearance of the ego, mind and time.The first experimenters – it must have been thousands of years ago, their names are lost – the first tantrikas, the first people who attained to samadhi through sex, watched, meditated, and saw one thing – sex is only a physiological triggering of a certain process which can also be triggered without sex, which can be triggered just by meditation. There is no need to go into sex. Once they knew that the process could be triggered by other means – by Yoga methods, by Tao methods, by Tantra methods, by Sufi methods – once they knew that the same state of no ego, no mind, no time, could be attained without going into sex, they had found the key. But the key was found only through searching in sex.Sex has been the very source of religion, and the sexual experience was the first experience of samadhi. Don’t call it stupid, please. Go into it lovingly, playfully, meditatively. Try to understand because liberation comes through understanding and in no other way.The sixth question:Osho,Should one listen to and follow the wise advice of parents, teachers and well-wishers?Listen, but don’t follow. Listen well, but follow your own insight. Don’t follow others’ advice. Listen, certainly, very meditatively, try to understand what they want to convey to you. They may really wish you well, but if you start blindly following you will never attain to your own intelligence. You will remain dependent, on crutches, you will always be looking up to others to tell you what to do, what not to do. You will always be needing leaders – and to need leaders is a very unhealthy state.Listen, because people have great experience, and if they are sharing, willing to share, it would be foolish on your part not to listen. Sharing in their experience may give you great insight; help you become more aware – but don’t follow.People follow literally and then they just become blind. When others are giving you all that you need, what is the need to have your own eyes? When others are chewing for you, what is the need to chew for yourself? Slowly, slowly, you become more and more weakened, more and more impoverished, more and more starved.A man who had recently opened a shop had a large notice overhead which read: Fresh Fish Sold Here.A friend came along and said, “Why have you got Here on the board?” So the shopkeeper took off the word Here.Then another friend came along and said, “Sold? Of course it is sold. You are not giving it away, are you?” So off came the word Sold.A third friend came along and said, “Fresh fish? It has to be fresh. Who would buy stale fish from you? Cut out the word Fresh.”The shopkeeper obliged. Now only the word Fish remained on the board. A fourth man arrived and said, Fish? Fancy having that up. You can smell it a mile away.” The shopkeeper erased this last word from the board.A fifth man arrived and said, “What’s the idea of hanging a blank board over the shop?” The shopkeeper removed the board.Finally a sixth man came along and said, “You have opened such a big shop here. Why don’t you put a board up saying: Fresh Fish Sold Here?”Now if you go on listening to people you will become more and more confused. Your confusion is that you have been listening to many kinds of people and they are all giving different advice; that’s how you have become confused. And I am not saying they are not wishing you well; they are well-wishers, but not very conscious well-wishers, otherwise they would not give you advice. They would give you insights, not advice. They would not tell you what to do and what not to do. They would help you to become more aware, so that you can see for yourself what has to be done and what has not to be done.The real friend is one who does not advise you, but helps you to become more alert, more aware, more conscious of life – its problems, its challenges, its mysteries; helps you to go on your own voyage, gives you the courage to experiment, gives you the courage to seek and search, gives you the courage to commit many mistakes – because one who is not ready to commit mistakes will never learn anything at all.Commit as many mistakes as you can, but don’t commit the same mistake twice because that makes you stupid. Commit new mistakes, invent new mistakes, and you will be learning all the time and your intelligence will be growing all the time. Your intelligence needs sharpening.Real friends help you sharpen your intelligence. They don’t give you fixed advice because fixed advice is of no use. What is true today may not be true tomorrow, and what is right in one situation may be wrong in another. Situations are changing all the time, so what you need is not a fixed pattern of living, but a way of seeing, so wherever you are, in whatsoever situation you find yourself, you know how to behave spontaneously, how to depend on your own being.The seventh question:Osho,I simply can't believe in God. What should I do?Krishna Kant, I have not been telling you to believe in God. Why should you be worried about it? If you can’t believe, you can’t believe – forget all about it. Now it is God’s problem that Krishna Kant does not believe in him; if he is anxious, worried, he will take care of it. But why are you worried? Deep down somewhere you must want to believe, otherwise why the question at all? I am not telling you to believe in God; there is no need.Buddha attained to the ultimate without believing in God, why can’t you? Mahavira attained to truth, to enlightenment, without believing in any God, why can’t you?In that sense, the Eastern religions are far richer than the Western religions. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the three religions that were born outside of India, are a little poor, unsophisticated, crude in that way. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, the three religions that were born in India, have a tremendous sophistication about them; they don’t make such unnecessary demands on you.Buddhism is the ultimate in sophistication. Buddha says there is no need to believe in God, there is no need to even believe in the soul; there is no need to believe at all. Belief is not a necessity for being religious. Then what is necessary? – meditation is necessary, not belief. And one can meditate without belief because meditation is a scientific method.It has happened many times that an atheist has come to me and asked, “Can I meditate?” The idea has become prevalent that you cannot meditate unless you believe in God. Now that is a very foolish notion, meditation has nothing to do with God. In fact the truth is, if you believe in God it will be difficult to meditate; your very belief will become a disturbance.The person who does not believe in anything can simply move beyond thinking; the person who believes clings to thinking because his belief is a thought. Belief is part of the mind. If you believe too much in God you cannot leave the mind because leaving the mind will obviously mean leaving your belief. The man who cannot believe is in a better situation.You should be happy that you cannot believe in God. So far, so good. Now meditate.And remember, the English word meditate gives the wrong connotation. In English there is really no word which can translate the word dhyana. From dhyana the word ch’an arose in China, and then ch’an moved to Japan and became zen, but the root is dhyana.When we use the word meditation it gives a feeling that you are meditating upon something – on what? To meditate means you have to have some object, and that is the problem. Dhyana simply means that it is not a question of focusing, concentrating on something; rather, it is dropping all the content of the mind and just being. Meditation in the sense of dhyana needs no object; it is an objectless, contentless state of consciousness. You go on dropping, neti neti – neither this nor that, you go on rejecting all thoughts, good and bad. When all thoughts are eliminated what is left? – you, and that is God.But what you call it does not matter. You can call it God if the word appeals to you; if it doesn’t appeal to you, you can call it nirvana, you can call it Tao, or whatever. But don’t be worried that you can’t believe in God; that is good – this is my approach. If somebody says “I believe in God,” I say “That is good. Now let us start from there, that will do.” If somebody says “I don’t believe in God,” I say “That is good. Now let us start from there.”You have to start from the point where you are. And all points are good because all points are on the circumference and from every point on the circumference the center is available. So move toward the center, don’t be worried about where you are.One afternoon Mulla Nasruddin was getting a haircut in a barber’s shop. He noticed a pricelist on the wall of the shop and on the list was, “Singe – five rupees.” He asked the barber why it cost so much.“Every hair on your head,” said the barber, “is a little hollow tube, open at the ends, so the body’s energy sort of bleeds out of it. After you have had a haircut it is a good idea to get a singe because it closes up the hole at the end of each hair and seals in the energy. Otherwise your hair, and your whole body, just keeps getting weaker and weaker every time you have it cut.”“Now, wait a minute,” said the Mulla, “what about the hair on my chin? I shave it every day, and cut off the ends, and it just keeps getting thicker and stronger. How do you explain that?“Easy!” said the barber. “You just ain’t the kind of a fella this story was made up for!”These are all just stories. If it appeals, good; if it doesn’t appeal, very good.Forget about God. There is no need to believe; you do not need to do anything about it. Don’t waste your time on God. Just because of this word so many people are wasting their time. Somebody is trying to prove, somebody is trying to disprove, great treatises are being written – more books are written about God than anything else, millions of books, the libraries are full. Don’t waste your time. If you can’t believe, then that story is not for you. But we have other stories, so why be worried? For Godless people too there is a way.My way is for all. Whosoever comes is accepted. The Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Christian, the Jaina, the Sikh, the Buddhist, the Parsi – whosoever comes is accepted. I love all kinds of stories.Any kind of beginning is good, but begin. Don’t remain stuck where you are, move toward the center. Meditate, and that will bring you home. And then you can call it whatsoever you like; it is none of my business what you call it. You can give it any name you fancy.The last question:Osho,Should children be told all the facts of life, irrespective of their age?What to tell children, and what not to tell them, has always been a problem down the ages; parents have been very concerned. In the past, the strategy was not to tell them the facts of life, to avoid the subject as far as possible because people were very afraid of the facts of life.The very phrase “facts of life” is a euphemism; it hides a simple thing. To avoid saying anything about sex, to not even use the word sex, they have made this metaphor, “facts of life.” What facts of life? – it is just to not say anything about sex.The whole past of humanity has lived with this deception, but the children discover it sooner or later. In fact they discover it sooner rather than later, and they discover it in a very wrong way. Because the right person is not ready to tell them, they have to work it out on their own. They collect, they become peeping toms – and you are responsible for reducing them to peeping toms. They collect from all the wrong sources, from ugly people. They will carry those wrong notions with them their whole lives, and you are the cause of it. Their whole sex life may be affected by the wrong information they have gathered.Now there is as much wrong information prevalent in the world about sex as is possible. Even in the twentieth century people are living with immense ignorance about sex; even people who you think should know better. Even your doctor does not really know what sex is, does not know its complexity. He should know, but even doctors live very superstitiously; they too learn things from the marketplace. In no medical college is sex taught as a separate subject – such an immense, powerful subject and yet nothing is taught about it. Yes, the physiology of sex is known by the physician, but the physiology is not all; there are deeper layers: there is psychology, there is spirituality. There is a psychology to sex and there is a spirituality to sex; the physiology is only the surface. Much research has been done, and in this century we know more than ever before, but the knowledge is not widespread.People are afraid because their parents were afraid, and that fear has become infectious. You are afraid of sex and you don’t want to tell your children about it. But you have to tell your children about it, you owe it to them. You have to be truthful. Don’t shirk from the truth and don’t lie – in the long run, truth always pays.“Mom, do we get our food from God?”“Yes, we do, Barbara.”“And at Christmas time does Santa bring all our presents?”“That’s right.”“And on my birthday the good fairy brings presents?”“Hmm, yes.”“And did the stork bring little brother?”“True.”“Then what the heck does Pop hang around here for?”It is better to be truthful. But I am not saying to jump on your children and start being truthful whether they want it or not. Now that – the other extreme – is happening particularly in the West because the psychologists are saying that the truth has to be told. People go on telling the truth whether the children are inquiring about it or not. That too is wrong. Wait! If the child inquires, be truthful; if he does not inquire then there is no need, he is not interested yet.At the dinner table the father almost choked when his little eight-year-old boy asked, “Daddy, where do I come from?”Reddening, he said, “Well, I guess the time has come for you and me to have a man-to-man talk. After dinner I will tell you about the birds and the bees.”The kid said, “What birds and bees? Little Frankie down the block told me he came from Chicago. All I want to know is where I come from!”So wait a little. They will ask themselves, don’t be in such a hurry. And remember, whatsoever is the case, be truthful, however hard it seems. It will be hard because you were not told the truth by your parents. For centuries the truth has not been told; nobody ever tells it to their children, everybody gathers it from rumors. People feel embarrassed, afraid that the children may discover the truth. Drop all those fears, and don’t try to deceive the children in any way – it can be dangerous.Six-year-old Luigino comes home from school where he has learned three new words, without knowing their meaning, so he asks his mother, “Mom, what do prick, pussy and balls mean?”The mother, extremely embarrassed, answers, “Well, dear, prick means cheese, pussy means chair, and balls mean boots.”After a few days the grandmother, a pious, prudish, country lady, visits her daughter and grandson She rings the bell and Luigino opens the door. The old woman hugs the child and Luigino, proud of his new vocabulary, says, “Granny, you must be tired. Sit down on this pussy.”The woman almost faints, but Luigino goes on without hesitating. “And if you are hungry eat this piece of prick.”Shocked and horrified the grandmother finally asks, “Luigino, where is your mum?”“Ah, she is in the next room polishing Daddy’s balls!”Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,What is fear made of? It is always there, round a corner, but when I turn to face it, it is only a shadow. If it is nonsubstantial, how does it manage to have such power over me?Fear is as nonsubstantial as your shadow, but it is. The shadow also exists, nonsubstantial, negative, but not nonexistential. Sometimes the shadow can have a great impact on you. In a jungle when night is approaching you can be frightened of your own shadow; in a lonely place, on a lonely path, you can start running because of your own shadow. Your running will be real, your escaping will be real, but the cause will be nonsubstantial.You can run away from a rope thinking it is a snake; if you come back and look closely, observe, you will laugh at the stupidity of it. You are afraid to go to places where fear exists. You are more afraid of fear than of anything else because the very existence of fear shakes your foundations. And this shaking of your foundations is very real, remember.Fear is like a dream, a nightmare, and when you awake from a nightmare the aftereffects persist, the hangover persists: your breathing has changed, you are perspiring, your body is trembling, you are hot. You know that it was just a nightmare, a dream, nonsubstantial; but this knowing will take time to penetrate to the very core of your being. Meanwhile, the effects of the nonsubstantial dream will continue. Fear is a nightmare.You ask me, “What is fear made of?” Fear is made of ignorance of one’s own self. There is only one fear – it manifests in many ways, there can be a thousand and one manifestations, but basically fear is one thing – and that is: “Deep inside, I may not be.” And in a way it is true that you are not.God is, you are not. The guest is, the host is not. And because you are suspicious – and your suspicion is very valid – you don’t look in. You go on pretending that you are. You know that if you look in, you are not. This is a deep, tacit understanding. It is not intellectual, it is existential. It is in your very guts, the feeling that “I may not be.” It is better not to look in; to go on looking out. At least it keeps you befooled, it keeps intact the illusion that “I am.” But because this feeling of “I amness” is false, it creates fear; anything can destroy it, any deep encounter can shatter it. It can be shattered by love, it can be shattered by meeting a master, it can be shattered by a great disease, it can be shattered by seeing someone die. It can be shattered in many ways, it is very fragile. You are somehow managing it by not looking in.Mulla Nasruddin was traveling on a train. The ticket collector came and asked for his ticket. Mulla Nasruddin looked in all his pockets, in all his suitcases, and couldn’t find the ticket. He was perspiring and becoming more and more frightened.The ticket collector said, “Sir, you haven’t looked in one of your pockets. Why don’t you look in it?”Mulla Nasruddin said, “Please don’t ask about that pocket. I am not going to look in it. That is my only hope! If I look in that pocket and it is not there, then it is not there, absolutely not. I cannot look in that pocket. Mind you, I will look everywhere else. That pocket is for my safety, I can still hope that it may be in that pocket. I have left it deliberately and I am not going to touch it. Whether I find the ticket or not, I am not going to look in that particular pocket.”This is the situation with the ego too. You don’t look in, that is your only hope: “Who knows? Maybe it is.” But your tacit feeling says that if you look, it is not. This false ego which you have created by not looking in, by continuously looking out, is the root cause of fear.You will be afraid of all those spaces in which you have to look. You will be afraid of beauty because beauty simply throws you in. A beautiful sunset, all those luminous colors in the clouds, and you will be afraid to look at it because such great beauty is bound to throw you in. Such great beauty stops thinking: for a moment the mind is in such awe it forgets how to think, how to go on spinning and weaving. The inner talk comes to a stop, a halt, and suddenly you are in.People are afraid of great music, people are afraid of great poetry, people are afraid of deep intimacy. People’s love affairs are just hit-and-run affairs. They don’t go deep into each other’s being because the fear is there that the other’s pool of being will reflect them. Because, going deep into each other’s being, if they are not found in that pool, in that other being’s mirror, if the mirror remains empty, reflects nothing, then what?People are afraid of love. They only pretend, they are only playing games in the name of love. They are afraid of meditation. Even in the name of meditation they are engaging in, at the most, new ways of thinking. That’s what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation is – it is neither meditation nor transcendental. It is simply chanting a mantra, and chanting a mantra is nothing but a process of thought, concentrated thought. It is again a new device, a device to not meditate. People are repeating Christian prayers, Mohammedan prayers, Hindu prayers – all ways to avoid meditation. Remember, these are not meditations; the mind is so cunning that in the name of meditation it has created many pseudo-phenomena.Meditation is when you are not doing anything at all, when the mind is not functioning at all. That nonfunctioning of the mind is meditation – no chanting, no mantra, no image, no concentration. One simply is. In that isness the ego disappears, and with the ego the shadow of the ego disappears. That shadow is fear.Fear is one of the most important problems. Every human being has to go through it and come to a certain understanding about it. The ego gives you the fear that one day you may die. You go on deceiving yourself that death happens only to others, and in a way you are right: some neighbor dies, some acquaintance dies, some friend dies, your wife dies, your mother dies – it always happens to somebody else, never to you. You can hide behind this fact: maybe you are an exception, maybe you are not going to die. The ego is trying to protect you. But each time somebody dies, something in you becomes shaky. Each death is a small death for you. Never send somebody to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Each death is your death. Even when a dry leaf falls from the tree, it is your death.Hence, we go on protecting ourselves. Somebody is dying and we talk about the immortality of the soul. The leaf is falling from the tree and we say “Nothing to be worried about. Soon the spring will come and the tree will have foliage again. This is only a change, only the garments are being changed.”People believe in the immortality of the soul not because they know but because they are afraid. The more cowardly a person is, the more possible it is that he will believe in the immortality of the soul – not that he is religious, he is simply cowardly. Belief in the immortality of the soul has nothing to do with religion. The religious person knows “I am not,” and that whatsoever is left is immortal – but that has nothing to do with “me.” This “me” is not immortal, this “I” is not immortal. This “I” is very temporary – it is manufactured by us.Fear is the shadow of “I,” and because somewhere deep down the “I” is always alert: “I will have to disappear in death,” the basic fear is of death. All other fears only reflect this basic one. And the beauty of it is that death is as nonexistential as the ego, and between these two nonexistentials – the ego and death – the bridge is fear.Fear is very impotent, it has no power. You say, “If it is nonsubstantial, then how does it manage to have such power over me?” You want to believe in it – that’s its power. You are not ready to take a plunge into your inner depth and face your inner emptiness – that is its power. Otherwise it is impotent, utterly impotent. Nothing is ever born out of fear. Love gives birth, love is creative; fear is impotent…Mr. and Mrs. Smith were brought before the bar of justice.“I would like to divorce this character,” shouted the wife.“I would like to get rid of this battle ax,” screamed the husband.The judge asked, “How many children do you have?”“Three,” said the wife.“Why don’t you stay married one more year,” said the judge, “have another child, and then you will have four. Then you can take two each and both be satisfied.”“Yeah,” said the husband, “but supposing we have twins?”“Ha!” said the wife, “Look at my little twin-maker. If I depended on him, I wouldn’t have had these three!”Fear is utterly impotent. It has never created anything. It cannot create; it is not. But it can destroy your whole life, it can surround you like a dark, dark cloud, it can exploit all your energies. It will not allow you to move into any deep experience of beauty, poetry, love, joy, celebration, meditation. No, it will keep you just on the surface because it can exist only on the surface. It is a ripple on the surface.Go in, look in, and if it is empty, so what? Then that’s our nature, then that’s what we are. Why should one be worried about emptiness? Emptiness is as beautiful as the sky. Your inner being is nothing but the inner sky. The sky is empty, but it is the empty sky that holds all, the whole of existence, the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, the planets. It is the empty sky that gives space to all that is. It is the empty sky that is the background of all that exists. Things come and go and the sky remains the same.In exactly the same way, you have an inner sky; it is also empty. Clouds come and go, planets are born and disappear, stars arise and die; and the inner sky remains the same, untouched, untarnished, unscarred. We call that inner sky sakshin, the witness – and that is the whole goal of meditation.Go in, enjoy the inner sky. Remember, whatsoever you can see, you are not it. If you can see thoughts, then you are not those thoughts; if you can see your feelings, then you are not your feelings; if you can see your dreams, desires, memories, imaginations, projections, then you are not them. Go on eliminating all that you can see. Then one day a tremendous moment arrives, the most significant moment of one’s life, when there is nothing left to be rejected. All the seen has disappeared and only the seer is there. That seer is the empty sky.To know it is to be fearless, and to know it is to be full of love. To know it is to be godliness, to be immortal.The second question:Osho,What is love?Tallis, love is the radiance, the fragrance of knowing oneself, of being oneself.Tallis is very young, he is only nine, but he is far ahead for his age. His mental age must be almost double that, nearabout eighteen, hence the question.Love is overflowing joy. Love is when you have seen who you are; then there is nothing left except to share your being with others. Love is when you have seen that you are not separate from existence. Love is when you have felt an organic, orgasmic unity with all that is.Love is not a relationship, Tallis. Love is a state of being; it has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not in love, one is love. And of course when one is love, one is in love – but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.And who can be love? Certainly, if you are not aware of who you are, you cannot be love. You will be fear. Fear is just the opposite of love. Remember, hate is not the opposite of love, as people think; hate is love standing upside down, it is not the opposite of love. The real opposite of love is fear. In love one expands, in fear one shrinks. In fear one becomes closed, in love one opens. In fear one doubts, in love one trusts. In fear one is left lonely, in love one disappears – hence there is no question of loneliness at all. When one is not, how can one be lonely? Then these trees and the birds and the clouds and the sun and the stars are all within you. Love is when you have known your inner sky.And Tallis, this is the right moment, the right age, to enter the world of love. This is the time when parents, society, the state and the church are poisoning children and making them afraid. This is the time when fear is created by the exploiters. This is the time when society reduces small children to slaves; and one can be reduced to a slave only if great fear is created.But if the society is sane, and not dominated by stupid politicians and priests, if the society is not pathological, then this is also the time when it will help the children to become more and more loving, will help the children to know more about beauty, about music, about poetry, about dance, about meditation. This is the time when a child can simply take a plunge without any difficulties. Later on it will become more and more difficult because as the children get older, their fears also grow older and stronger. As they get older their egos becomes stronger. As they get older their capacity to learn decreases. As they get older they become more and more cowardly, afraid of the unknown.Young children are free of fear; they are born without any fear. If society can help and support them to remain without fear, can help them to climb the trees and the mountains, swim the oceans and the rivers; if the society can help them in every possible way to become adventurers, adventurers of the unknown; and if society can create a great curiosity in them instead of giving them dead beliefs, then the children will turn into great lovers, lovers of life – and that is true religion. There is no higher religion than love.Tallis, meditate, dance, sing, and go deeper and deeper into yourself. Listen to the birds more attentively; look at the flowers with awe, wonder. Don’t become knowledgeable, don’t go labeling things. That’s what knowledgeability is: the great art of labeling everything, categorizing everything. From this age, start playing guitar or learning to play the flute. Meet people, mix with people, as many people as possible because each person expresses a different facet of God. Learn from people. Don’t be afraid, this existence is not your enemy, this existence mothers you, this existence is ready to support you in every possible way.Trust, and you will start feeling a new upsurge of energy in you; that energy is love, that energy wants to bless the whole of existence, because in that energy one feels blessed. And when you feel blessed what else can you do except bless the whole of existence? Love is a deep desire to bless the whole of existence.The third question:Osho,Why are so many people attracted toward you from all parts of the world?I don’t know. I also am surprised; it should not be so. The government is against me, society is against me, all the religions are against me, and still people keep on coming. All kinds of barriers are created, but still people keep on coming.Something mysterious is happening, something which cannot be explained. Something elusive is transpiring. That’s why those who come as observers or spectators or journalists cannot catch hold of it. So they collect rumors from people in the town who never come here, and they carry on reporting. All over the world almost, in nearly all the languages, there are rumors on rumors. This is very strange. Those people have not experienced what is happening here, they have not been participants, and yet they think they have understood.There are things which can be understood only when you participate. You cannot know what love is if you see two lovers hugging each other. If you watch from the outside, scientifically, you will know that two persons are hugging. But where is love? What is love? The meeting of the bones and the meeting of the flesh is not love. Two people kissing – you cannot explain it through chemistry, that would destroy the whole truth of it; chemistry cannot explain it.The people that come here, unless they are participants, deep down they are still outside. And when they are just coming as participants in order to report, then they are not participants at all; they are taking notes, invisible notes about what they are going to report. They are not drunk with the wine that is available here.This is a place for drunkards. This is a place for people who are crazy for God, for godliness. This is a place of love. You can see people dancing and you will shrug your shoulders: “So what? How can dance be meditation?” – because you see only the gestures, you don’t see the dancer disappearing within. And you cannot see. When the dancer disappears and only the dance remains, it is meditation; if the dancer is there, it is only dance, not meditation. When the singer disappears and only the song remains, it is meditation. When the musician is not found and only music remains, then it is meditation. But how are you going to find out from the outside? It is impossible – you will have to become a participant. The only way to know what wine can do to you is to drink it.Many years ago, in a rural district, a farmer was helping at his wife’s delivery by holding up a kerosene lamp. When the doctor had produced not one, but three fine babies, the farmer ran away.“Come back with that lamp,” said the doctor. “I think there is another one.”“I will not!” answered the farmer. “I think it is the light that is attracting them.”So I don’t know what is happening. Maybe it is because of the light that people keep on coming from every corner of the world. And the lamp that I am holding is not such that I can hide it; I cannot even escape. It cannot be put out – it is something that is beyond me, it is something that surpasses me. I am as much surprised by it as you are, I am as much intrigued by it as you are; so I cannot give you an exact answer as to why people are attracted. You will have to feel it for yourself.You also have come here. Now get deeper, deeper into me and into the space that is being created here. That is the only way to know; there is no other.The fourth question:Osho,Thank you. I still don't know what to drop, but thank you.Kabir, this is beautiful; this is how it should be. In fact there is nothing to drop. Just the understanding that the ego is not something to be dropped, just the seeing that it is not, is the dropping. The seeing is the dropping; the understanding is the liberation.Jesus says, “Truth liberates,” but I would like to tell you, truth liberates only when it is your own. Jesus’ truth cannot liberate you, my truth cannot liberate you – only your own truth can. Liberation cannot come from the outside, liberation has to arise within you.And this is good, Kabir, that you say, “I still don’t know what to drop, but thank you,” because you have started seeing. And the moment you start seeing you will find there is not anything to drop. The deeper you go into the ego the more nonsubstantial you will find it. And once you have looked through and through, you will simply laugh at the whole thing; it is so ridiculous because the ego is not there. And for so long it has tortured you, and for so many lives it has been a hell for you, so many miseries it has created for you. The harm has been incalculable – by something which, in the first place, is not.The ego is a misunderstanding: so when you understand, the misunderstanding disappears. It is as if you have been calculating and you have put two plus two is five, and the whole calculation goes wrong. Then suddenly you look, you find the error, you see where you went wrong – two plus two is not five, two plus two is four.You need not drop anything, there is nothing to drop. Simply seeing the error, the error disappears. Ego is a misunderstanding.Two young lovers were strolling along a garden path. The boy felt exceptionally romantic. “Some moon in the sky, eh, honey?” he remarked.“Yes, dear,” she agreed, “some moon in the sky.”He steered her toward a part of the path where roses were blooming. “Some roses out there, eh, honey?” he nudged.“Yes, dear,” she admitted, “some roses out there.”By this time the dew was already shining on the grass and in his exuberance, the boy could not help remark, “Some dew on the grass, eh, honey?”“Yeah, some do on the grass,” she snapped. “But I don’t, so be on your way.”The ego is a very simple misunderstanding, just a fault in calculation, just a linguistic fallacy – just as your name is only part of the utilitarian world. A name has to be given – it would be difficult to manage in ordinary life without a name – but you know perfectly well that a name is not reality. Still, if somebody insults you by insulting your name you will be offended, although when you came into the world you had no name. Your parents called you Rama so you became Rama; they called you Chris, you became Chris. They could have called you something else, but if somebody now says something against Rama or Chris you are offended, you go mad. You are ready to kill or be killed – for a name which is only a utility, not a reality.This is the case with the “I”; it also is a utility. You have to call yourself something, otherwise things would become very difficult. If you all started using the third person, if you all started calling yourselves “he” or “she,” it would become very difficult; things would become more complicated, it wouldn’t help anybody. Even when people become enlightened they go on using the word I, but now it is only a word; they are using their names still, but they are only labels. That has to be understood.You cannot insult Buddha by insulting his name because he knows he is not it. You cannot insult Buddha by insulting his personality because he knows he is not that either. In fact you cannot insult him because he knows he is always the witness, and the witness cannot be insulted. That is the miracle: when you are insulting him, the witness is witnessing the insult. You cannot insult the witness. Buddha will always be the witness, you cannot reduce him to anything else. The witness always escapes any traps you lay, it is never found in those traps, it simply disappears; it is always standing outside. You cannot put it in prison, it is always standing outside.Kabir, there is nothing to drop. One just has to see it, see that there is nothing to drop. And there is nothing to gain either. All is as it should be. And I am happy that that understanding is arising in you – hence your thankfulness.The fifth question:Osho,Why can't I understand you?There is no need to understand me at all. What is needed is to understand yourself.How is it going to help you if you understand me? And what will you understand by understanding me? You will understand what I say, you will collect it, you will become more knowledgeable – and that is not going to help. In fact it can even be a great hindrance. All knowledge becomes a hindrance to wisdom.I am not here to make you understand me, I am here to help you to understand yourself. You have to watch your own actions more closely, your relationships, your moods; how you are when you are alone, how you are when you are with people, how you behave, how you react; whether your reactions are past-oriented, fixed patterns of thought, or spontaneous, responsible. Watch all these things, go on watching your own mind, heart. That’s what has to be understood, that is the book to be opened; you are the unopened book.And millions of people die as unopened books, their pages uncut. Please don’t die as an unopened book. Read – go deep into your being. You are carrying all the Vedas and all the Bibles and all the Korans in you. You are carrying all that has happened to humanity or can ever happen to humanity. You represent in a tiny drop, in a dewdrop, all the oceans, past, present and future. In your small flowering will be represented all the flowers.Do not to be worried about what I say. How can you understand it in the first place? I speak from my heights using the same language that you use because there is no other language, but I give those words different meanings, twists and turns. When you listen to those words you listen according to your own mind, according to your own conditioning. How can you understand me?You can love me, but you cannot understand me. But if you love me, a great understanding will arise. And that will not arise through understanding my words, but by understanding your own being. The deeper your understanding is about yourself, the deeper will be your penetration into my words.You are here, but you may not find it easy to understand me. There are different kinds of people; a Buddha is one type, Jesus is a totally different type. A man who can easily understand Jesus may not be able to understand Buddha easily, may find it almost impossible. That is one of the reasons I am speaking on so many enlightened masters – so that I can use different languages, so that I can become helpful to different types of people. One who can understand Tilopa may not be able to understand Kabir, and one who can understand Kabir may not be able to understand Saraha. I speak on different masters; different masters are just different excuses to approach different types of people. And all types of people have gathered around me.This is happening for the first time, remember; this has not happened before. This is utterly unique. Thousands gathered around Buddha, but they were of a single type, the type for which Buddha had appeal. Thousands gathered around Mahavira, the type for which Mahavira had appeal. And Mahavira and Buddha were contemporaries: the people who had gathered with Mahavira remained with Mahavira, and the people who had gathered with Buddha remained with Buddha – they could never understand each other’s master. The followers of Mahavira could not understand what Buddha was talking about, it all looked like nonsense to them: There is no self? – what more nonsensical statement could there be?Self, the Supreme Self, is at the center of Mahavira’s thinking. And when Mahavira uses the words Supreme Self, with a capital S, he means exactly the same thing as when Buddha uses the words no-self. The Supreme Self is not the ego; in the Supreme Self there is no idea of “I.” That’s why Buddha calls it no-self: when there is no “I” why call it self? The Supreme Self would make the “I” look even bigger.These are different people; their language is different, although they are expressing the same truth. Around Jesus there was a certain kind of people, but only one type. With me it is a totally different phenomenon. Here there are Christians, and Mohammedans, and Buddhists, and Jainas, and Hindus, and Parsis, and Sikhs, and Jews, and all kinds of people. This is a world gathering.Buddha lived in a small place, just in a small province, Bihar. The province was so named because of Buddha. Bihar means “wandering of the enlightened one,” the place of his wanderings. He wandered in a small place. Jesus was never heard of beyond his small country. His country was of almost no importance. It became important only because of him, and only later on. Otherwise it was just an unimportant country, a desert.I have heard…Two Jews were talking, and one said, “Our whole misery, this whole hell that we have suffered down the ages, can be put on the shoulders of Moses. He was responsible.”The other said, “I don’t understand. Why? Why was Moses responsible for all our misery? He did all he could to help us.”But the other was adamant. He said, “No! While leading us out of Egypt, if he had gone left rather than right, all the oil would have been ours. But he led us into the desert!”Jesus was born in a very, very unimportant country. His name was not heard of beyond the small province where he lived. While he was alive not much was known about him, only a few Jews gathered around him. It was a similar case with Mohammed.With me it is a totally different phenomenon. Almost all kinds of people have arrived here. This is a world gathering, for the first time this is a universal brotherhood. Hence I am speaking on all the enlightened masters. They are just excuses so that I can be available to all kinds and all types of people.If you cannot understand me right now while I am speaking on Kabir, wait – soon I will be speaking on Buddha, maybe then you will find something closer to your heart. And then I will be speaking on somebody else: maybe it is Zen that rings bells in your heart, or Sufism, or Hasidism – I am going to speak on all the possible ways. If you can wait, sooner or later you will find something that fits you.You cannot change your type, that is unchangeable. Your type changes only when you go beyond it – then you disappear. Then a pure consciousness remains; neither introvert nor extrovert, neither male nor female, neither of the head nor of the heart.The bus was crowded and a lanky mountaineer was sitting next to a pretty girl, whose short skirt kept creeping up over her knees. She fought a constant, though losing, battle with it. She kept pulling her skirt down, but as soon as she let go, it began to slide up again. In desperation she gave it one hard yank, then looked up to meet the eyes of her traveling companion.“Don’t rip your calico, sister,” he advised her. “My weakness is liquor.”There are different types; people have different characteristics.If these talks are not reaching your heart, if you are feeling a little at a loss, don’t be worried. Try to make the best of it, and be silently patient. I go on speaking every day; one never knows when it is the right moment for a certain person. It is a question of type, and also of mood. In a certain positive mood you simply understand with no effort; in a negative mood you can make a great effort and still fail. On a certain morning you are feeling in such harmony, such deep well-being, that your eyes are clear; the mind is not noisy, you are in a state of melody – and then something suddenly strikes home, goes in like an arrow and penetrates your being. One never knows when that moment will come. So I go on talking to you every morning, I go on shooting arrows in the dark. Somebody is bound to be hit. I know you are there; your time, your moment, will come. Be a little more patient.The sixth question:Osho,For years I have been listening to you to find out the right way to God. But the more I listen, the more confused I become. What is wrong with me?Satya Prakash, there is no right way to God. There are ways and ways, but there is no right way to God. There are ways, but don’t seek the way. The search for the way creates fanatics. All ways are his, so don’t be too worried about the right way.And how can you decide what is right? You don’t know anything about what is right and what is wrong. If you already knew what was right, there would be no need to search. You must be carrying a certain idea in your head. You must be carrying an a priori criterion, a conclusion given to you by others, and you must be judging according to that criterion. That’s why you go on missing me. And rather than clarity happening to you, you are becoming more and more confused.My observation is that people who come already with a conclusion always become confused when they listen to me, because there is a constant struggle between what I am saying and their conclusion. Between these two they are crushed. People who come here without any conclusion immediately start attaining to clarity.So that is what is wrong with you: you must be carrying a hidden conclusion – Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Jaina. In a way you have already arrived, deep down in your heart you think you know. Now the only question is to find somebody who can support your conclusion.You are not in search of a master, you are in search of somebody who can strengthen your ego, who can strengthen your knowledge; who can supply you with more information supporting what you already believe. But I don’t support any knowledge; I destroy all kinds of knowledge. I go on pulling away all that you know, brick by brick, slowly, slowly, until one day you find the earth beneath your feet has disappeared – hence the confusion. Listening to me, you have become attached to me as well, and you are not yet detached from your old conclusions. Hence, you are pulled in two directions, opposite directions, and because of that you are in confusion.Either you have to drop listening to me or you have to drop your conclusions. If you drop listening to me you will have a kind of certainty; not clarity but certainty, a kind of certainty – the stupid kind. Because you don’t know much, you can think that you know enough. A little knowledge is dangerous because it can give you the feeling that you have arrived.An intelligent person knows that one is always arriving but never arrives, that life remains a pilgrimage, an eternal pilgrimage. One is approaching closer and closer to godliness every day, but this is an eternal process. One cannot say one day, “I have arrived.” When someone says “I have arrived,” he is simply saying that all his resources are finished, that he is no longer interested in the pilgrimage, that he is no longer interested in the journey, that he is tired, that he is weary, that he wants to settle down.The real seeker goes on and on. And the joy of the journey is infinite, so who bothers to arrive? The stupidest person is one who has not taken even a single step along the way and still has the idea that he knows what is right and what is wrong.If you drop listening to me you will have a kind of certainty: the certainty that ignorance gives, the certainty that false knowledge, borrowed knowledge gives; the certainty that will make you more and more stupid, more and more unintelligent.Or you can drop your conclusions and come along with me. All the certainty that you have will disappear. I cannot promise you any certainty. I can promise you only infinite uncertainty – but clarity will arise, your mind will be unclouded. And in that clarity is truth, in that clarity you are able to see what life is. You may not be able to come to any conclusion because life is vast and cannot be reduced to any conclusion – but you will be able to enjoy the bliss of existence. You may not be able to make a theory out of it, a system of thought out of it, but great poetry will arise in you, and great dance and great love and great compassion. Your life will become a rejoicing. I don’t promise you any philosophy of life, I only promise a new way, a new style of life.You say, “For years I have been listening to you to find out the right way to God.” You seem to have arrived at right and wrong about almost everything, even about God. How do you know that God is? What certainty have you got about God? You have already decided that God is – and now you are searching for the way?God is not a hypothesis. You cannot start with God, you can only start with an open heart, an inquiry into what is. You cannot call it God, you can simply call it an inquiry into whatsoever is: “I don’t know what it is, God or no God, but I want to inquire.” Then you don’t seek a way to God, then you seek a totally different thing. You seek methods of inquiry, not ways to God. And I can teach you methods of inquiry.Meditation, all the types of meditation, are methods of inquiry, not ways to God. Yes, if you go on inquiring, one day God is revealed, but that is not for you to decide in the beginning. It happens one day when your heart is really clear, with no clouds in your inner sky. What is revealed is called God by a few people, no-God by a few others; truth by a few, beauty by a few others; paradise by a few, nirvana by a few others. And there have been many who have not called it anything at all, they have remained completely silent about it.One of the greatest philosophers of this age, Ludwig Wittgenstein, says in one of his most important aphorisms, “That which cannot be said, should not be said.” Down the ages, many have followed this dictum. Buddha has not said anything for or against God. He must have been asked thousands of times, but he would never say anything about it.Whenever I come across somebody asking Buddha about God in the Buddhist scriptures I always remember a small anecdote…A husband came home very late at night. It was three o’clock in the morning, the night was almost gone. He entered his wife’s room, and was very shocked because his wife was in bed with a stranger. He was so shocked that for a moment he could not say anything. Before he could find the right words his wife asked, “Where have you been? Why are you so late?”He said, “First, tell me who the man in the bed is.”And his wife said, “Don’t change the subject!”Buddha always changes the subject; whenever you ask about God he talks about something else, immediately. He simply bypasses the subject. Why? – because he does not want to say yes or no. His respect for the ultimate is so deep that to say yes would be wrong, to say no would be wrong; because yes gives a limitation as much as no gives a limitation. No word can be unlimited, each word becomes a limitation. He never defines because all definitions limit. He is so respectful of the ultimate, toward the ultimate, that he simply does not talk about it. He will not even say this much, that “nothing can be said about it.”Once he was asked, “If you don’t want to say anything about God, why don’t you at least say that nothing can be said about it? Because that’s what the seers of the Upanishads have been saying: ‘Nothing can be said about it. God is anirvachana, unspeakable, indefinable, ineffable.’ Why can’t you say this much, that nothing can be said about him?” And Buddha replied, “Even to say that would be saying something about him.”You see the delicate point? Even to say that would be saying something about him. If nothing can be said about him you have said something already, you have given a definition already. If you say he is indefinable, then that is your definition. If you say he is unspeakable, you have spoken. There has been a long tradition of many mystics who have simply kept quiet, who have not uttered a single word.But you have come here, Satya Prakash, with a certain idea, conclusion. You already believe in God, now you are searching for the way. Your name makes me suspect that you may belong to one of the most fanatical religious sects that has developed in this country during the last century, Arya Samaj, because this name, Satya Prakash, is usually used by the Arya Samajis, the followers of Dayanand. It is one of the most fanatical sects that has evolved in this liberal country; it is almost as fanatical as the Mohammedans.Now a bill is coming in the Indian parliament called “Freedom of Religion.” It is supported by Arya Samajis all over the country; they are the only supporters of it. The name is just the opposite of what it really means to do: if it becomes a law then it will be impossible for anybody in India to change their religion.It is called “Freedom of Religion,” but it will destroy all freedom of choice. It is basically against the Christians who convert Hindus, saying that no conversion should be allowed. The Christians are against it; they are demonstrating all over the country, making resolutions that it should not become law. Only the Christians are against it, and only the Arya Samajis are for it; both are in the same boat and nobody else is saying anything. The Arya Samajis’ concern is that no Hindu should ever leave the Hindu fold, and the Christians’ interest is that they should be able to convert as many Hindus as they can into Christians, by fair means or foul.Satya Prakash, you may be an Arya Samaji. And my experience of different religious people is that the Arya Samajis seem to be the most closed; Jainas, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs are not so closed. Arya Samaj is a reaction against the Mohammedans and the Christians. In fact Arya Samaj should not be counted as an Indian religion at all; it is a reaction against Christianity and Mohammedanism, and reactions always reflect the original source. It is like the Christians and like the Mohammedans: very closed, adamant, stubborn.If you are not an Arya Samaji, very good. If you are, please drop it. Only then can you understand what I am saying to you, and only then will it not be confusing; otherwise you will become crazy.You say, “What is wrong with me?” This is wrong with you: that you are listening with all kinds of prejudice. Listen with no mind, listen being neither for nor against. I am not saying to believe whatsoever I say, no, not at all. There is no need to believe, but there is no need to disbelieve either; simply listen. Why can’t you simply listen?And there is a beauty in truth. If you are listening silently without being for or against, when truth is uttered, it immediately stirs your heart. A dance arises in your being, you start feeling deep sympathy. And finally you become so deeply attuned to the utterance that there is no time to think about whether you believe it or not. If it is not truth, no bell rings in your heart, you remain unaffected by it – but no decision is needed by the mind.And one thing more: my whole effort here is to confuse you because unless I confuse you I cannot create clarity. You are settled, you are certain; I have to shake you, shock you, I have to confuse you. Only then will you start seeking and searching for new planes of clarity. So in a way this is good, this is not wrong; it is good that you are confused. Something is happening – your foundations are being shaken.They were seated on adjoining stools in a dimly lighted cocktail lounge. “Honey,” he said, “what about forgetting your inhibitions and spending a quiet weekend with me in Atlantic City?”“See here,” she answered, “after an exhaustive perusal of the corpus of documented evidence garnered by research on heterosexuality as applied to contemporary sociological mores, and in view of the innate predisposition to the more exotic manifestations of concupiscence evident in your demeanor, a categorical negative is my answer.”“But honey,” he said, “I just don’t get it.”“That’s what I mean,” she answered.That’s what I mean. If you are confused, it is a good sign, it shows intelligence. Only an intelligent person can be confused. A stupid person cannot be confused; you cannot shake him, you cannot shock him. He is absolutely certain. Remember, only fools are absolutely certain.Mulla Nasruddin was saying to one of his disciples, “Never be absolutely certain because only fools are absolutely certain.”The disciple asked, “Mulla, are you absolutely certain about that?”And Mulla Nasruddin said, “Yes!”An intelligent person is always ready to hesitate. The more intelligent you are, the more easily you become available to hesitation because each hesitation is a new beginning, a new search, a new inquiry.But if you have come here not to be confused, if you have come here to gain more certainty – not clarity but certainty – if you have come here to attain more knowledge so that you can become wiser, so that you can attain to God more easily, more certainly; so that not only in this life but in the afterlife you have a guarantee, an insurance; if you have come to find a certain catechism, certain principles, fixed theories, dogmas – then you have come to the wrong place.I am not a scripture, I am a living light. You can learn how to see by being with me, but I will not give you any commandments. And commandments never help anyway because life goes on changing and principles are always out-of-date.A devoted husband commissioned a Frenchman to paint his wife’s portrait. She was quite nervous during the first sitting and said to the painter, “I realize I am not young anymore. I would like a good likeness, but please paint me with sympathy.”When the portrait was completed, the husband gave a party and invited a hundred friends to the unveiling. The cover was removed, and revealed a beautiful likeness of his wife. But a gasp of horror went through the audience because the picture showed a man’s hand reaching into the lady’s bosom.“How dare you insult my wife like this!” shouted the irate husband.“Insult your wife?” exclaimed the painter. “How can you accuse me of that? I did everything I could to please her. She asked me to paint her with sympathy, and when I looked up the word sympathy in your dictionary, it said: ‘A fellow feeling in your bosom.’”Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains, and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!All seven oceans are inside and hundreds of millions of stars.The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.And the music from the strings no one touches, and the source of all water.If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:friend, listen: the god whom I love is inside.Why should we two ever want to part?Just as the leaf of the water rhubarb lives floating on the water,we live as the great one and the little one.As the owl opens his eyes all night to the moon,we live as the great one and little one.This love between us goes back to the first humans;it cannot be annihilated.Here is Kabir’s idea: as the river gives itself into the ocean,what is inside me moves inside you.T. S. Eliot says, in “Choruses from ‘The Rock’”:But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no god; and this has never happened beforeThat men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason,And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.The Church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, and what have we to doBut stand with empty hands and palms turned upwardsIn an age which advances progressively backwards?Yes, something has happened that has never happened before: for the first time in the evolution of human consciousness man stands alienated from God. Man stands separated from existence. Man stands lonely, with no companion, in great darkness, with no light to lead him, guide him. Man has never been in such despair, man has never been in such a state of homelessness.T. S. Eliot is right: “…something has happened that has never happened before…” And why has it happened? How has it happened? It is difficult to pinpoint, but not difficult to vaguely understand. These things are not very tangible and they don’t happen in a certain moment. They happen so gradually, so slowly, that no-one ever really becomes aware of when, where, how; but a few things can be understood.Man had always lived with nature. To live with nature is to live with God in an indirect way because nature reflects God in a thousand and one ways. The growing trees and the faraway call of the cuckoo, the wind in the pine trees and the rivers moving toward the ocean, the proud mountains standing in the sun and the starry night: it is impossible not to be reminded of some invisible hand. It is impossible not to feel this tremendous harmony. It is impossible not to see that existence is not dead but alive. The ocean heaves, breathes; the whole of existence is a growing phenomenon. It is not dead, it cannot be dead – everything is growing.Because of this experience of growing, man has been constantly aware of some invisible, mysterious force behind everything. That force is called God. God is not a person, let me repeat, only a presence. Still now, when you go deep into the Himalayas, you again start feeling a kind of reverence, awe, wonder; again you start feeling something that was very easily available to primitive man.Civilized man has lost something because now we live in a man-made world where it is almost impossible to find the signature of God. How can you find God on asphalt roads? They don’t grow, they don’t breathe. How can you find God in cement structures? They are not alive. How can you find God in machines, in technology? Although there is great technology, even the greatest machine cannot give you a sense of the mysterious, of the miraculous. Facing even the greatest machine you cannot feel awe, you cannot feel reverence, you cannot feel like falling on your knees and praying. And if you cannot feel like falling on your knees and praying once in a while, how can God remain a part of your being? How can you remain alert, aware of the divine?Yes, “…something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.” It is difficult to pinpoint the exact date and time when God died, when – at least in our consciousness – God disappeared from our world. And with him, disappeared all poetry; with him, disappeared all dance; with him, disappeared all that is beautiful and sacred; with him, disappeared all which one can live and die for – now we don’t have anything worth living for or worth dying for. We are simply dragging out our existence; burdened, seeing no point in it all; just carrying on somehow because the only alternative is suicide. That too seems pointless. To live seems pointless, to die seems pointless.Man is facing a tremendous flood of meaninglessness for the first time. Everything seems to be utterly insignificant, and the reason is simple: without God there can be no significance, without God there can be no grandeur, without God there can be no splendor. Life can have meaning only in the context of something that surpasses life. The meaning always comes from the context; now man stands without a context. Meaning comes only when you can look upward to something bigger than you, something greater than you. When you feel related to something greater, holier, your life has meaning. When you feel unrelated, uprooted, how can you feel meaning?The first thing that has happened is that man has left nature and created an artificial world of his own. This most shattering phenomenon has disrupted him, unbridged man from God and all that God implies: meaning, significance, majesty, love, prayer, meditation, all that is valuable, precious. Man has never been such a beggar as he is today.The irony is, man has never been so rich, so affluent, as he is today. Two things have happened together: the inner has become poorer and poorer, and the outer has become richer and richer. We have more money than any other society before, we have more medical facilities than any other society before, we have in every way more power than any other society ever had. And still no society has ever felt such meaninglessness; no society has ever felt such suicidal desire, such longing.Secondly, we have cultivated reason too much and become lopsided. God is feeling, God is not thinking. You cannot think about God because God is not an object to think about. Science thinks, religion feels. Science functions from the head, religion from the heart. Our whole education, our whole civilization, is obsessed with the head because it has made possible all kinds of technological advances. And because we have become too obsessed with the head we think reason is everything.What can the heart give to us? No, it cannot give you great technology, it cannot give you great industry, it cannot give you money. But it can give you joy, it can give you celebration, it can give you a tremendous feeling for beauty, for music, for poetry; it can guide you into the world of love, and ultimately into the world of prayer – but these things are not commodities. You cannot grow your bank balance through the heart; and you cannot fight great wars, and you cannot make atom bombs and hydrogen bombs, and you cannot destroy people through the heart. The heart knows only how to create and the head knows only how to destroy. The head is destructive, and our whole education has become trapped in it.Our universities, our colleges, our schools, are all destroying humanity. They think they are serving it, but they are simply befooling themselves. Unless man becomes balanced, unless the heart and the head both grow, man will remain in misery and the misery will go on growing. As we become more and more hung up in the head, as we become more and more oblivious to the existence of the heart, we will become more and more miserable. We are creating hell on the earth, and we will create more and more of it. Paradise belongs to the heart.That is the third thing that has happened: the heart has been completely forgotten, nobody understands its language anymore. We understand logic, we don’t understand love. We understand mathematics, we don’t understand music. We become more and more accustomed to the ways of the world and nobody seems to have the guts to move onto the unknown paths of the heart, the unknown labyrinths of love. We have become very much attuned to the world of prose, and poetry has simply become nonexistential.The poet is the bridge between the scientist and the mystic. And the poet has died, the bridge has disappeared. On one hand stand the scientists – very powerful, tremendously powerful, ready to destroy the whole earth, the whole of life. And on the other hand, few and far between, stand the mystics – Buddha, Jesus, Zarathustra, Kabir. They are utterly powerless in the sense that we understand power, but immensely powerful in a totally different sense – and we don’t know that language at all. The poet has died, that is the greatest calamity. The poet is disappearing.And by “poet,” I mean the painter, the sculptor. All that is creative in man is becoming reduced to producing more and more commodities. The creative is losing its grip and the productive is becoming the goal of life.God can be approached only through the creative. Why? – because he is the creator. If you want to know God, you will have to have something similar because only the same can meet the same. You will have to learn a little of the rhythm of creativity. When the musician is in a really creative mood, in a creative space, he disappears; God starts playing on the flute. Suddenly the musician’s flute is no longer in his own hands, it is in Krishna’s hands. And then the flute brings something from the beyond, something virgin, something utterly new. When the painter disappears, his hands are just the instruments of God.God is creativity, so if you really want to enter the world of God you will have to learn the ways of creativity – but they have disappeared. Instead of creativity we value productivity; we talk about how to produce more. Production can give you things, but it cannot give you values. Production can make you rich outwardly, but it will impoverish you inwardly. Production is not creation. Production is very mediocre; any stupid person can do it, he simply needs to learn the knack of it. Creativity is intelligence. The deeper you go into creativity, the more meditative you become.The poet has died, the poet exists no more. And what exists in the name of poetry is almost prose. What exists in the name of painting is more or less insane. You can see Picasso, Dali and others – it is pathological! Picasso was a genius, but ill, pathological. His painting was nothing but a catharsis; it helped him, it was a kind of vomiting. When you have something wrong with your stomach the vomiting relieves you. It helped Picasso; if he had been prevented from painting he would have gone mad. Painting was good for him, it saved him from becoming insane, it released his insanity onto the canvas. But what about the others who will be purchasing those paintings, hanging them in their bedrooms and looking at them? – they will start becoming ill at ease.I am talking about a totally different sort of creativity. The Taj Mahal – just watching it on a full-moon night, great meditation is bound to arise in you. Or the temples of Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri – just meditate on them and you will be surprised, all your sexuality is transformed into love. These structures are miracles of creativity; they were not created by pathological people, they were created by those who had attained.The great cathedrals of Europe are the longing of the earth to reach the sky. Just seeing those great creations, a great song is bound to arise in your heart, or a great silence is bound to descend on you. Man has lost the poetic urge, the creative urge – or it has been killed. We are too interested in commodities, in gadgets, in making more and more things. Production is concerned with quantity, and creation is concerned with quality. The quality has disappeared and, with the quality, God has disappeared – because God is the ultimate quality of creation.You will have to bring the heart back. You will have to be aware of nature again. You will have to learn to watch roses, lotuses again. You will have to make contact with the trees and the rocks and the rivers. You will have to start a dialogue with the stars again. Otherwise God cannot be brought back to humanity, and without God humanity is doomed, is lost.Yes, T. S. Eliot is right: “…something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where. Men have left GOD not for other gods…”In the past, people used to move from one god to another. It was quite usual and really very significant, it was an evolution. Naturally, the God of Moses was less sophisticated than the God of Jesus – there are thousands of years between those two enlightened beings. Moses was as enlightened as Jesus, but he had to use a language that could be understood by his people, and they were very primitive. Hence, Moses spoke in the language of law and commandments: do this, don’t do that. Law was his central emphasis.By the time Jesus arrived man had evolved. Jesus talked about love, not about law. Love was his law. Now love is a higher value than law, certainly holier than law. Law is mundane. The God of the Jews was a jealous God – because we make our God in our own image. The God of the Jews was a very angry God, he would destroy cities for little reason. If just one person committed a sin, God could destroy the whole town. And what was the ancient concept of sin? – just disobeying a certain commandment. God was very angry, violent. But it was not really God who was violent and angry, it was the people. Their eyes were so full of violence and anger that they could not see the real God.God is always the same, remember this. It was exactly the same when Moses was alive, it was exactly the same when Jesus was alive, it is exactly the same now, when we are alive; it will remain the same. God is always the same, but our eyes change.Jesus could see God as love, as compassion. God was growing because man was growing; man was changing one god for another, for a higher conception of God. Man has always been changing gods, and that’s perfectly right. When we change, how can our rudimentary ideas of God remain the same? When our eyes change everything changes.There is a very beautiful story…There was a great saint, Ramdas. Thousands of years after Rama walked on the earth, Ramdas was reciting his story again – after thousands of years. The way he used to tell the story of Rama was so enchanting, so magnetic, so charismatic, that Hanuman, an absolute devotee of Rama – he had seen everything with his own eyes – used to come to listen to Ramdas. He would sit in the crowd, in disguise of course, and enjoy it very much.Sometimes it happens that when you were involved in something, the action itself, you cannot get a perspective on it, you can’t see the whole thing. You were involved in it, you were doing your own thing, and there were a thousand and one things going on; you could not watch all of it.The life of Rama was over now, completed. Ramdas was telling his disciples the story, and Hanuman was very happy, utterly glad to come and listen. Many things he had only heard of through rumors, and now he was hearing them again from an authentic source.But one day a problem arose. Ramdas was describing when Ramana stole Rama’s wife, Sita. Ramana kept her on Sri Lanka in a beautiful garden full of white flowers. Ramdas was telling that part of the story – when Ramana kept Sita in a beautiful garden full of white flowers.Now Hanuman had visited Sita in the garden and had not seen a single white flower – he had seen red flowers. So he stood up. He forgot that he should not interfere, that he was not expected to be there at all. He stood up and said, “Excuse me, everything else is okay, but there was not a single white flower: this you have got wrong. All the flowers were red, blood red. Change it.”Ramdas said, “Who are you to correct me? Sit quietly.”In anger, Hanuman threw his blanket off. He was a monkey god, so he appeared out of the blanket with his tail and everything. He said, “You ask me who I am? I am the Hanuman you are talking about. I am the man who went to the garden. You never went, you were never there – and after thousands of years you are telling the story? You have got some nerve! You are telling me to keep quiet? I cannot keep quiet! Change the story – the flowers were red, absolutely red.”But Ramdas said, “Don’t be stupid. In the first place, you are not meant to be here. In the second place, you may have been in the garden, but I cannot change the story. I know for sure that the flowers were white.”This was too much. Hanuman was an eye-witness, and five thousand years later this man was just making up the story. He seemed to be very stubborn: he was saying, “Be silent! Don’t be monkeyish! I know who you are – just keep quiet.” Not only that, this man was calling Hanuman stupid.Hanuman said, “I cannot allow this. You will have to come with me, I will take you to Rama. Only Rama can decide now – and this has to be decided.”So Hanuman took Ramdas on his shoulders, flew back to heaven, went to Rama, and said angrily, “Look at this man! After five thousand years he is making up this story. Tell him to change it. I love his stories, he is a beautiful storyteller and I have not objected to anything else where I was not an eye-witness, but he is not ready to listen to me about things I was involved in. He goes on insisting the flowers were white, and they were all red. Not only that, he is calling me stupid, and telling me, ‘Be quiet, don’t disturb me and don’t interfere.’ I say again: the flowers were red. What do you say?”Rama said, “Hanuman, Ramdas is right – the flowers were white. Because my wife had been stolen, you were so angry your eyes were full of blood. Hence, you saw the flowers as red. You should not interfere. When a person like Ramdas says something, it cannot be changed. It is not a question of time; for a man like Ramdas there is no time. Five thousand or fifty thousand years, it doesn’t make any difference; he has entered eternity, all time has disappeared. When he is telling the story he is not only telling the story, he is seeing it too; it is not something of the past. For him there is no question of time.”Now this was really too much! Hanuman said, “You also were not there. You didn’t go into the garden, so who are you? I was there! This is unfair! You are being partial, unjust. Ask Sita, she was there – and I hope she will not be unfair.”Sita started laughing and said, “Hanuman, simply apologize – the flowers were white. You were just so angry that you could not see them; you were so bloodthirsty you imposed your anger on the flowers. Just apologize to Ramdas. In the first place you need not go to listen, and if you do, then make a point of keeping hidden and not interfering; nothing can be changed. Whatsoever Ramdas is saying is right because he has a more aloof, distant witnessing than you can ever have – you were too involved.That’s how it has been. When Moses talked about God, he talked about a God which the Jews of his time could understand. When Jesus talked about God of course, three thousand years had passed, man had grown, come of age; it was possible to talk about love. Some people at least could understand him – some, but not many. Hence he was crucified because many could not yet understand.In the past, people were changing their gods. One of the Indian incarnations of God is Parasuram – he killed millions of people, his whole life was that of a killer. Another incarnation of God is Buddha – he was absolutely nonviolent; he would not kill even an ant. Between the time of Parasuram and Buddha much water flowed down the Ganges. Buddha brought a new concept of God, a new vision; it is the same God, but Buddha gives you new eyes.In the past people were changing gods, but in the present day something else has happened: “Men have left GOD not for other gods they say, but for no god…” Man has not left God for other gods – that would be okay – he has dropped the whole idea of God, the whole idea of a divine presence in existence, the whole idea of any meaning, the whole idea that existence is alive, conscious. And now we are standing empty, and we are feeling empty.But man cannot remain empty; it is difficult to remain empty. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so is the case with man’s inner nature – “…men both deny gods and worship gods…” So there came a new phenomenon: man created his own gods.He didn’t worship God the Father, the Holy Ghost and Jesus Christ anymore; he changed that old trinity. He worshipped a new trinity: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin. Now this is very ordinary – to worship Karl Marx or Engels or Lenin is to worship something very ordinary. And remember, whatsoever you worship you will become because deep down your worship is your longing.“…professing first Reason…” Because man cannot remain empty for long, he first replaced the emptiness with reason. Reason became God, the head became God. So anything proved by reason was truth, anything not proved by reason was untruth. Now this is nonsense: reason is limited, it cannot prove many things. For example, it cannot prove the beauty of a rose, but the beauty exists; reason is impotent to prove it. Reason cannot prove the existence of love, but love exists; reason is inadequate to prove it. If you ask reason about music it will say it is only noise; it may be arranged in such a way that it gives an illusion of melody, but there is no melody, only noise; reason is blind, it cannot see the melody. Yes, reason has certain qualities, but only certain qualities; the whole of existence is not available to it.And then money became God. Millions of people worship money as God. You will be surprised to know that this country, India, which goes on bragging about its spirituality, bragging that it is destined to lead the whole of humanity toward spirituality, worships money more than any other country – actually worships it! There is a festival, the Festival of Lights, Diwali, when people worship money – they actually worship notes, coins: money is God. In other countries they may not be actually worshipping, but unconsciously the worship is there.And power has become a god. The politician has become the most important person in the world. The dirtiest politician is thought to be something superhuman. We have denied God, but how can we deny our emptiness? We have rejected God, and we have to stuff something into the empty space, so we stuff it with political power, with money, with reason, with race, with dialectics – if you cannot find anything else, then dialectical materialism, the philosophy of communism, fascism, Nazism.Man cannot live without religion. Man cannot live without God. If the true God is not available, man is bound to create homemade gods. “The Church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, and what have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned upward in an age which advances progressively backward?” Yes, T. S. Eliot is right.With this background, try to understand Kabir’s sutras. They are of tremendous beauty.Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains, and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!The original is:Is ghat antar bag-bagiche, isee men sirjanhara,is ghat antar sat samundar, isee men nau lakh tara.Kabir says if you drop the mind, if even for a single moment you become pure consciousness, the difference between the inside and the outside will disappear. Then the inside will be the outside and the outside will be the inside, because the only thing that separates you from the outer is the glass wall of your thoughts. Once this is not there a miracle happens: you find the whole of existence inside you. You become so vast.Is ghat antar bag-bagiche… Then all the gardens and all the roses and all the lotuses are within you.…isee men sirjanhara… And it is not only that the roses are in you and the stars are in you – the one who created them is also within you.…is ghat antar sat samundar… The seven seas are within you.…isee men nau lakh tara. And millions of stars are within you. Once the mind is dropped, the inner and outer meet, merge into each other and become one. This small body is not as small as you think, it is a temple of God.Inside this clay jug… If you look at it from the outside it is nothing but clay, it is nothing but dust. Omar Khayyam says, “Dust unto dust” – but man is not only dust, although the idea has been very persistent. Do you know that the word human comes from humus? Humus means dust, earth, clay. The word adam comes from the same root; adam means earth. If you look from the outside, man is made of clay; if you look at him scientifically he is clay.It is like looking at poetry scientifically: you will find words but not poetry. Poetry is something between the words, in the gaps and between the lines, in the intervals. You need a totally different kind of sensitivity to understand poetry. Just the words are not poetry; the words are language, grammar. And what are words? – just different combinations of the alphabet. Where is the poetry? If you dissect the poetry – even the greatest poetry, of a Kalidas, Milton or Rabindranath – if you dissect it, what will you find? Only words! And if you dissect the words, then just the alphabet.It happened…A great spiritual preacher invited Mark Twain to one of his sermons. They were friends, but Mark Twain had never gone to listen to him. And the preacher wanted him to listen; he wanted him to know the art of his preaching, he wanted to be appreciated. He insisted again and again, and one day Mark Twain went with him. The preacher had prepared his best sermon. He talked beautifully, he made people as if drunk. But he was very much puzzled and embarrassed too because Mark Twain was just sitting in front of him absolutely unimpressed, uninfluenced.The sermon finished, and they were going back home. But, not even for a few moments could the preacher gather the courage to ask Mark Twain what he was thinking. And Mark Twain didn’t say a single word.Finally, when they were getting down from the carriage, the preacher gathered enough courage and said, “At least you owe me a few words. How did you like my sermon? Even if you did not like it, you can say so. But don’t keep so silent – it hurts.”Mark Twain said, “There was no question of liking it or disliking it. You are a thief. Only last night I was reading something in which is written every single word that you uttered this morning. You are a thief and nothing else.”The priest was shocked. He said, “That is impossible, I haven’t stolen from anywhere. Show me the book.”And Mark Twain said, “Tomorrow morning I will send the book to you.”And do you know what happened? The next morning Mark Twain sent him a big dictionary, and he wrote, “Do you see: every single word that you spoke is in this book.”Poetry is not just words, poetry is something totally different. The words only create the space for the poetry to become visible. The words only create a context for the poetry to descend from the beyond.Man’s body is not just clay, it is clay plus God. If you look from the outside it is clay, but if you start looking from the inside it is the whole universe.All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.And the music from the strings no one touches, and the source of all water.The original is far more beautiful, and the reason is the same as I have been saying. The original is poetry, and it is very difficult to translate poetry from one language to another. Prose can be translated easily. Poetry cannot be translated, never adequately. Something is missing because each language has its own nuances, its own flavor; you cannot bring that flavor and nuance to another language.The original is:Is ghat antar paras moti, isee men parkhanhara,is ghat antar anahad garje, isee men uthat fuhara,kahat Kabir suno bhai sadho, isee men sai hamara.A paras, touchstone, is a specific symbol in Eastern alchemy. In the West, alchemists have been searching down the ages for the secret of transforming base metals into higher metals, into gold; searching for ways and means, chemical ways to transform the lower into the higher, the nonprecious into the precious. In the East also, there has been the same search, but there they have a different metaphor for it. They call it a paras. A paras is a stone, a miracle stone. If any base metal is touched by the paras it immediately becomes gold. No other chemistry, no other chemical processes are needed, just the touch of the paras. It is a metaphor: in fact it stands for the master. Just the touch of the master, just the touch of his energy, immediately transforms the ignorant into the wise one, immediately transforms darkness into light, death into immortality. Paras is a metaphor for the master.Is ghat antar paras moti… Within you exists the miracle stone. If you know how to use it everything will become gold, everything will be transformed into diamonds.…isee men parkhanhara… And the one who can recognize this miracle stone is also present in you. You are not to ask anybody else. Your own witnessing self, your own pure consciousness, is the one who knows already where the precious stone is hidden in you. You just have to discard the garbage of the mind, the garbage that has been given to you by society. You just have to be alone in yourself. When the mind drops all the contents given by society, the witness arises in you.…is ghat antar anakad garje… And deep within you there is music which is not created by anybody, which is not created by any hand, which is not produced on any instrument. There is a special name for it: it is called anahat.When you play on a guitar it is called ahat because you strike the strings with your fingers; Ahat means striking. The musician is struggling to create music on the instrument, it is created out of conflict, there is a little aggression in it, there is struggle, there is a kind of fight. In the innermost recess of your being there is neither instrument nor musician, but music is there – without the musician and without the instrument.Zen people call it “the sound of one hand clapping.” The Christian mystics call it “the soundless sound.” It is silence, and yet it is musical silence.Again, the words of T. S. Eliot are significant:At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;Neither from nor toward; at the still point where the dance is.But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,Where past and future are gathered…. Except for the still point,There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.“…the still point…” There is a point within you where nothing ever moves – no movement from or to, no stirring, no sound created by any instrument. Nobody is there, just stillness, but that stillness is the dance and that stillness is the music. It is called anahat.…is ghat antar anahad garje, isee men uthat fuhara… And the moment you have heard that music, a great fountain bursts forth, of joy, of bliss. You become a rejoicing, you become a dance yourself, you become a song yourself. Then your life is religious. Not like the so-called saints – sad, serious and ugly. The really religious person is one whose inner wells have started flowing, who has become a fountain of joy, of song and dance and celebration.And the music from the strings no one touches, and the source of all water.If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:friend, listen: the god whom I love is inside.Kabir says: If you want the truth… Truth cannot be imposed upon you, it cannot be forced upon you. Unless you desire and long for it, unless you spread your hands, unless you are ready to receive it with great longing and intensity, unless longing becomes a fire in you, it cannot be given to you. No master can give it to you, but you can take it. If you have fire enough, it will be transferred to you. It is a transmission beyond scriptures.If you want the truth – Kabir says – I will tell you the truth… I am ready to tell you, I am ready to share my truth, my experience with you. But, friend, you will have to listen. Just hearing won’t do, you will have to listen.Listening is totally different from hearing. Hearing, anybody who is not deaf can do. Listening is a rare art, one of the last arts. Listening means not only hearing with the ears, but hearing from the heart in utter silence, in absolute peace, with no resistance. One has to be vulnerable to listen, and one has to be deep in love to listen. One has to be in utter surrender to listen.…friend, listen: the god whom I love is inside. Kabir says, I have found him within myself. I searched for him everywhere, and all the searching was nothing but frustration. Then I looked within and he was there, laughing, smiling at all my stupid searching. It was so ridiculous: I was searching for the one who is already present within me.…kahat Kabir suno bhai sadho, isee men sai hamara. In this ordinary body of clay, God resides. Hence, don’t be against the body; notwithstanding what your foolish saints go on saying to you, don’t be against the body. Love it, respect it, it is the temple of God. It may be clay in the eyes of the scientist, but in the eyes of the mystic, God has chosen it to be his abode.Why should we two ever want to part?Mohi-tohi lagi kaise chute…The original says: we have fallen in such love that now it cannot be broken. We have fallen into each other so deeply that we cannot be separated. No sword can cut us apart, it is impossible.Mohi-tohi lagi kaise chute… Now even if somebody wants to separate us and tries to, it is impossible. Even you cannot separate us. I am no more, only you are. Who can you separate from whom?Why should we two ever want to part? The translation misses, it misses the point. It is not a question of Why should we two ever want to part? No, even if we want to, there is no possibility of parting. The mystic, once he knows that God is within, has gone beyond the point of parting. There is no possibility of any divorce anymore. He is really married. And the marriage is not just a formality, the marriage is like a welding. He is welded with God – not only wedded but welded. He has become one, just like the river disappears into the ocean – how can you separate it? Just as the milk becomes one with the water – how can you separate it?Just as the leaf of the water rhubarb lives floating on the water,we live as the great one and little one.…jaise kamalpatra jal basa,aise tum sahib ham dasa…The lotus leaf has been a symbol of great importance. Down the ages, it is impossible to find a mystic who has never talked about it – all the buddhas have talked about it. They had to talk about it because it represents something so significant that it cannot be ignored. It represents the very essence of sannyas.There is one thing of great importance about the lotus leaf: it lives in water, it floats on water, but the water cannot touch it. During the night dewdrops gather on the lotus leaf but they remain separate – just like pearls, separate; they cannot touch the lotus leaf. The lotus leaf remains untouched in the water; it remains in the water and yet aloof, distant, faraway. That’s how the mystic lives, how the sannyasin has to live: in the world and yet not of the world.Jaise kamalpatra jal basa, aise tum sahib ham dasa… Kabir says, I am living in this world, but this world is not my master. You are my master. I am living in this world because this is what you want me to do; I am simply following your orders. I am living in this world because I am just a slave to your love, I am just a shadow of you. I have no interest in the world: I am not after money, I am not after power, I am not after prestige. But if you want me to be in the marketplace, then it is perfectly okay. If you want me anywhere, I am ready to go there.There is a story in Buddha’s life…One day one of Buddha’s sannyasins was passing along a street where he had gone to beg. The most beautiful woman of that town, the prostitute of the town, fell in love with this monk. She came out of her house and asked the monk to come and stay with her. The rainy season was coming soon, so the prostitute said, “Why don’t you stay with me during the rainy season?”Because monks have to stay somewhere.“During the rainy season,” the prostitute said, “for four months, monks don’t move. You will have to stay somewhere, you will have to find some shelter – why not with me?”He said, “That’s perfectly okay. I will just have to ask my master, ask his permission. If he says yes, tomorrow morning I will be at your door.”The prostitute could not believe the way the monk said it so simply, as if there was no problem. He said, “I have to stay somewhere. I was going to ask somebody to give me shelter for the four months, and this from you is a gift. I just have to ask my master, ‘Can I stay with her?’ That is the way, it is just a formal request. I have to tell him that a certain woman has requested that I stay with her.”The other monks heard about it, and of course they were jealous. This was too much, it was impossible to tolerate. But they waited. They waited because they thought Buddha would absolutely say no, would categorically say no. A sannyasin, and staying with a prostitute?But when the monk asked Buddha, Buddha looked at the monk and said, “Perfectly right. You can stay with her.”Now the other monks stood up and said, “This is not fair. Don’t you see the risk? This is a young man, and that woman is almost a magician. Even great kings are entrapped by her, and this young man is almost innocent. She is not interested in giving him shelter, she has become lustful toward his beautiful body. And you say yes?”Buddha said, “Wait. We will decide who is right after four months. Let him go and stay with the woman.”Those four months seemed very long for the other monks. It was really difficult to wait, but they knew Buddha was going to be proved wrong. Living with that woman for four months? She could not leave the monk alone, she would seduce him – it was absolutely certain.After four months the monk came back and touched Buddha’s feet. The others said, “Now tell us the truth – what happened?”The monk said, “Just wait a few minutes because the woman herself is coming and it will be better for you to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”And the woman came and touched Buddha’s feet, and she asked to be initiated into sannyas.Buddha asked, “Why?”She said, “I tried to seduce him, but I failed. He seduced me. He seduced me into sannyas. For four months I tried every possible way, but he remained like a lotus leaf. I would dance naked around him and he would meditate. I have never failed in my life, this is the first time. For the first time I am impressed by a man; for the first time I have encountered a man. Up to now I have seen only slaves. They may have been great kings, but they all touched the dust on my feet. This is the only man I have seen who remained like a lotus leaf.“I tried every possible way: good food, a beautiful room, a beautiful bed, beautiful clothes, every possible comfort for him – and he would never say no – but I failed. I could not distract him. And he used to laugh at me. I would dance my most cherished dances and I would start throwing my clothes off, waiting that some lust might arise in his eyes – but it never did. He would laugh and giggle, and he would say, ‘What are you doing? It is too cold, you will catch cold.’ He has transformed me. Now I would like to become the same, a lotus leaf.”Jaise kamalpatra jal basa, aise tum sahib ham dasa… You are my master, I am your shadow; wherever you go, I go. If you take me into the world, it is perfectly okay. If you take me out of the world, it is perfectly okay. I can only say yes. Every dance is your dance. Who am I to say no? This is the ultimate meaning of sannyas: not renunciation but rejoicing.It is said, by John in the Acts, that on the last night, when Jesus was departing from his disciples:…[Jesus] gathered all of us together and said: Before I am delivered up unto them let us sing a hymn to the Father, and so go forth to that which lieth before us. He bade us therefore make as it were a ring, holding one another’s hands, and himself standing in the midst he said: Answer Amen unto me…Glory be to thee, Father.And we, going about in a ring, answered him: Amen.Glory be to thee, Word: Glory be to thee, Grace. Amen.Glory be to thee, Spirit: Glory be to thee, Holy One. Amen.We praise thee, O Father; we give thanks to thee,O Light, wherein darkness dwelleth not. Amen.The word amen means, “Yes God, yes. If you want us to die, yes. If crucifixion is your will, yes. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”That’s what Kabir is saying. He is saying, I am just a shadow to you. Wherever you go I will go. I have no desire of my own. How can I have any desire of my own? I am not, you are.As the owl opens his eyes all night to the moon,we live as the great one and little one.…jaise chakor takat nis chanda,aise tum sahib ham banda…Chakor is a poetic metaphor. The chakor is a waterbird, not exactly an owl; you can call it a water-owl. It is not found in the West, hence there is no word for it in the English language. The chakor is a bird which is fascinated by the moon. When the full moon is in the sky he cannot sleep for the whole night. He goes on looking at the moon, for the whole night he is focused on the moon. This may not be exactly true, it may be just poetically true. Maybe the chakor has some other reason – maybe his neck is made in such a way that he cannot look anywhere else.But he has become a significant poetic metaphor: that is the way the lover looks at the beloved, the devotee looks at the deity, the disciple looks at the master. Jaise chakor takat nis chanda… Just like the chakor which goes on looking at the moon the whole night. …aise tum sahib ham banda… Just like that I go on looking at you.In fact when you have recognized him within you, wherever you look you look at him because he is everywhere.This love between us goes back to the first humans:it cannot be annihilated.…mohi-tohi adi-ant ban ayi,ab kaise lagan durai…Kabir says, this love has been going on from the very beginning, and it is going to go on to the very end. There is no possibility of it being annihilated; it is the eternal love.God is the eternal goal. Consciously or unconsciously, we are searching for him. And the day we stop searching for him we become miserable, our life becomes darkened, we lose the star that was keeping us moving. Our life becomes stagnant, there is no flow any longer. And when there is no God there is no glow either.Here is Kabir’s idea: as the river gives itself into the ocean,what is inside me moves inside you.…kahe Kabir hamara man laga,jaise sarita sindh samai.Just as the river moves into the ocean and becomes the ocean, so has something exactly like that happened within me. …kahe Kabir hamara man laga, jaise sarita sindh samai. My own being has disappeared, my own private existence is no more. I have become just a part of you, a part of the total. I have become an organic unity with you.And the moment you become an organic unity with God, your life becomes an orgasmic joy – joy and joy and joy. Your whole life becomes a sheer blissfulness from this end to the other end.Sydney Carter says:They cut me down and I leap up high;I am the life that’ll never, never die.I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me;I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.I danced in the morning when the world was begun,And I danced in the stars and the moon and the sun,And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth;At Bethlehem I had my birth.Dance then wherever you may be;I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be.I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he….The invitation from God is constantly there:And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be,I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.Those who are ready to accept the invitation, those who are ready to open the door when God knocks, those who are ready to let him in, their lives become a dance, a dance of utter beauty.You also can rejoice – but you can miss if you are stubborn, if you are closed, if you are not available. You are free to be miserable, remember. Misery is your own choice: you have chosen it, hence you are miserable. You can drop it instantly, right now, this very moment, herenow – just a shift of gestalt. Don’t be a separate entity. You are not, in fact – it is only an illusion that you think that you are separate. You don’t have to lose anything but your illusion of separation, and the dance begins.And unless the dance begins, life remains futile. God is always ready, inviting, calling you forth: “Come. Come follow me. Come, be in the dance with me. Come, let me dance in you. Come, like a river comes to the ocean.”…kahe Kabir hamara man laga, jaise sarita sindh samai. I have disappeared just like the river disappears into the ocean. And the day I disappeared was the greatest day. The day I died was the beginning of real life.One has to be ready to die, only then does eternal life become available. It is yours, just for the asking. Gather courage, and don’t go on missing the dance of life.Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Five years ago I had a dream in which you looked at me and said very sternly, “Why don't you go away?”Now whenever I am in front of you, and at other times also, I feel me so strongly – I wish I would go away.You are just holding on to something which is no longer there. You are clinging to a shadow. You are just clinging to a memory. And that is the case with many of my sannyasins – their egos are gone, there are just traces, footprints, past memories. They go on clinging to these past memories, thinking they are their egos.It takes time to recognize the fact that you are no more. Sometimes it can take years to understand that the ego has been left somewhere on the path long before. And about you I can say it absolutely: it is only a shadow that is torturing you. The ego has disappeared, but you have not yet been able, alert… The ego has disappeared in deep love with me.The ego disappears in two ways. When it disappears because of meditation one immediately becomes aware that it is gone because meditation means awareness and nothing else, so there is no gap. On the path of awareness the disappearance of the ego and the recognition is instantaneous, simultaneous.But on the path of love, the ego disappears and recognition only comes later on. The path of love is the path of the drunkard. He is utterly drunk, so how can he recognize what has happened or what is happening? And when you are in love, so much goes on happening that even to take note of it all becomes more and more difficult. And when deeper things happen, it really takes time for them to be recognized.Meditation is the way of the head. Recognition also, is a function of the head, so when meditation happens, immediately recognition happens. But love happens in the heart, and there is a great distance between love and logic, the heart and the head. In the heart you are no more, but the head is still clinging to an old idea. The bird has left the cage long ago. You are drowning in me more and more every day.Dad was pretending to be asleep. “If I play possum,” he thought, “maybe the kids will go away.”But they persisted in their efforts to try and rouse him from his delicious sleep. Finally his little daughter tried to open one of his eyelids, looked intently in, and reported to her brothers, “He is still in there!”I have looked into you and I say you are not there. It will be difficult to believe what I am saying: how can you believe it unless it becomes your own recognition? But my saying it will help, it will help the recognition to happen sooner than otherwise. The news has started traveling from the heart.Physiologically the heart and the head are very close – the distance is maybe not more than eighteen inches – but spiritually the head and the heart, these two points, are the furthest apart. Even stars are closer to you than your own heart. The greatest distance in existence is between the heart and the head, between love and logic, between intuition and intellect. Recognition happens in the intellect and love happens in the world of intuition.And you are in love. Your path is that of love. Don’t be at all worried – you are gone, and gone forever. You cannot return even if you want to. And this is so with many of my sannyasins who are in deep love with me, who are following on the path with tremendous drunkenness, who have abandoned themselves, whose trust is total – they also will need time. But who cares about the recognition? The real thing is the realization, not the recognition.On the path of love it is always the master who makes the disciple aware: “It has happened! Now don’t worry about it. It is already dawn and the night is gone.” It is always the master who reminds, who helps, the disciple to recognize. On the path of awareness, there is no need. The disciple himself becomes alert; alertness is his whole work.The second question:Osho,Listening to you speak this morning on the different paths for different people, it struck me as strange that over the years the entire collection of my personal tapes has been of your talks on meditation, such as the Dhammapada, the Heart sutra, Yoga sutras, Shiva sutras, Hakim Sanai, and the latest, on Atisha. Also, even during the three great celebrations at the ashram, I have preferred to sit silently rather than sing and dance. Neither of these things are done deliberately though, it has just happened that way. I sometimes wonder if I am caught in the attraction of the opposite. Would you please comment?Ajit Saraswati, you are not caught in the opposite: meditation is your path, awareness is going to be your key, the master key. Go totally with it and don’t be worried about the lovers. Many times, many things will make you jealous because those who follow the path of love will dance, they will sing, they will laugh, they will celebrate. A thousand and one flowers will bloom on their path; their eyes will sparkle, will become candles; their lives will become more and more juicy.On the path of awareness these things don’t happen at all. Yes, a totally different kind of beauty happens – the beauty of the desert, the silence of the desert. And remember, the desert has its own beauty; all that is needed is one who can understand that beauty. There are no trees, no greenery, just an infinite expanse of sand and sand, and the patterns that the wind makes on the sand, and the starry night in the desert, and silence, utter silence.You cannot find that silence in a garden. The birds will go on chirping, and the wind will go on blowing through the pine trees, and the fountains and the streams… And much goes on because it is a dance. In the desert it is all stillness. Those who can appreciate the beauty of a garden may not be able to appreciate the beauty of the desert; those who can feel the beauty of the desert may sometimes feel jealous of those who are living in the garden.It is an ancient phenomenon: the follower on the path of awareness has always felt suspicious; doubts arise in him many times. That’s what is happening to Ajit. The doubt is natural because the lover displays so many things that prove that something is happening, and the meditator simply starts disappearing into his own being, into his own interiority. No flower manifests, no song bursts forth; he becomes more and more aloof, distant. Others may even start thinking that he has become sad or serious.Vivek always asks me, “What is happening to Ajit Saraswati? Why does he look so serious? He does not even laugh at the jokes, or very rarely, and that with an effort, just as if not to feel left out.” Vivek reminds me because her path is of love; she cannot understand. It is impossible for the lover to understand that there can be any beauty in the desert, in being simply, utterly alone. But both have their beauties.Ajit Saraswati, you need not worry, you are not attracted by the opposite. Meditation is your path. On the path of the lover you would feel strange, it wouldn’t suit you. And it is not only in this life that you are following the path of meditation: for many lives you have been following it, on and off. But this time I think it is going to remain on. There is every possibility that this may be your last life. Enjoy it deeply. Enjoy this stillness, silence – which may appear to others as seriousness, even as sadness. Don’t be confused by it, don’t be shaken by it.The third question:Osho,Why am I still so scared of exposing myself?Gita, who is not? To expose oneself creates great fear. It is natural because to expose oneself means to expose all the rubbish that you carry in your mind, the garbage which has been piling up for centuries, for many, many lives. To expose oneself means to expose all one’s weaknesses, limitations, faults. To expose oneself ultimately means to expose one’s vulnerability, death. To expose oneself means to expose one’s emptiness.Behind all the garbage of the mind and the noise of the mind there is a dimension of utter emptiness. One is hollow without godliness, one is just empty and nothing without godliness. One wants to hide this nakedness, this emptiness, this ugliness, cover it with beautiful flowers, decorate those covers. One can at least pretend that one is something, somebody.And this is not something personal to you; this is universal, this is the case with everybody. No one can open themselves up like a book. Fear grips you: “What will people think of me?” From your very childhood you have been taught to wear masks, beautiful masks. There is no need to have a beautiful face, just a beautiful mask will do; and the masks are cheap. To transform your face is arduous, to paint your face is very simple.Now to suddenly expose your real face makes you shiver in the deepest core of your being; a trembling arises. Will people like it? Will people accept you? Will people still love you, respect you? Who knows? They loved your mask, they respected your character, they glorified your garments; but now fear arises: “If I suddenly become naked are they still going to love me, respect me, appreciate me, or will they all escape, run away from me? They may turn their backs on me, I may be left alone.” Hence, people go on pretending. This pretension is out of fear, and out of fear arises all pseudoness. One needs to be fearless to be authentic.One of the fundamental laws of life is this: whatsoever you hide goes on growing, and whatsoever you expose, if it is wrong it disappears, evaporates in the sun, and if it is right it is nourished. Just the opposite happens when you hide something: the right starts dying because it is not nourished. It needs the wind and the rain and the sun; it needs the whole of nature available to it. It can grow only with truth, it feeds on truth. Stop giving it its nourishment and it starts getting thinner and thinner.People are starving their reality and fattening their unreality. Your unreal faces feed upon lies, so you have to go on inventing more and more lies. To support one lie you will have to lie a hundred times more because a lie can only be supported by bigger lies. So when you hide behind facades the real starts dying and the unreal thrives, becomes fatter and fatter. If you expose yourself the unreal will die, is bound to die because the unreal cannot remain in the open. It can remain only in secrecy, it can remain only in darkness, it can remain only in the tunnels of your unconscious. If you bring the unreal to consciousness it starts evaporating.That’s the whole secret of the success of psychoanalysis. It is a simple secret, but the whole secret: the psychoanalyst helps to bring up all that is inside your unconscious, in the darker realms of your being, to the level of the conscious. He brings it to the surface where you can see it, others can see it, and a miracle happens: just your seeing it is the beginning of its death. And if you can tell it to somebody else, just exposing it to a single person is enough to bring about great changes in your being. That’s what you do in psychoanalysis, you expose yourself to your psychoanalyst.But to expose yourself to a psychoanalyst is limiting: you have exposed your secrets to only one person, in deep privacy, with the condition that he is not going to make them public. That is part of the profession of the physician, psychoanalyst, therapist, that is part of his oath: he will keep your secrets, he will not tell them to anybody. So it is a very limited exposure, but it still helps. And it is exposure to a professional, that’s why it takes years. It still helps, but what could be done within days takes years in psychoanalysis – four years, five years – and even then it is never complete. The world has not yet known a single case of total psychoanalysis, of the process completed, terminated, finished, no, not yet. Not even your psychoanalysts are completely psychoanalyzed because the exposure itself is very limited and with conditions. The psychoanalyst listens to you as if he is not listening because he is not to tell your secrets to anybody. But even then, it helps tremendously to unburden you.If you can expose yourself religiously – not in privacy, not to the professional, but simply in all your relationships – that’s what sannyas is all about. It is self-psychoanalysis. It is twenty-four-hour psychoanalysis, day in, day out. It is psychoanalysis in all kinds of situations: with the wife, with the friend, with the relative, with the enemy, with the stranger, with the boss, with the servant. For twenty-four hours you are relating.In the beginning it is going to be really very scary, but if you go on exposing yourself soon you will start gaining strength because once the truth is exposed it becomes stronger and the untruth dies. And with the truth becoming stronger you become rooted, you become centered. You start becoming an individual; the personality disappears and individuality appears.Personality is bogus, individuality is substantial. Personality is just a facade, individuality is your truth. Personality is imposed from the outside; it is a persona, a mask. Individuality is your reality; it is as existence has made you. Personality is social sophistication, social polishing. Individuality is raw, wild, strong, with tremendous power.The fear will be there only in the beginning. Hence the need for a master, so that in the beginning he can hold your hand, so that in the beginning he can support you, so that in the beginning he can take you a few steps with him. The master is not a psychoanalyst – he is that and far more. The psychoanalyst is a professional; the master is not a professional – it is not his profession to help people, it is his vocation, it is his love, it is his compassion. And because it is his compassion he takes you only as far as you need him. The moment he starts feeling that you can go on your own he starts slipping his hand out of yours. Although you would like to cling on, he cannot allow that. Once you are ready, courageous, daring, once you have tasted the freedom of truth, the freedom of exposing your reality, you can go on your own. You can be a light unto yourself.Fear arises because of a great identity crisis. This fear is natural because from your very childhood what you have been taught is false, and you have become so identified with the false that to drop it looks almost like committing suicide. For fifty years, sixty years, you have been a certain kind of person.Gita must be reaching sixty now. For sixty years you have been a certain kind of person. Dropping that identity now, in this last phase of your life, and starting to learn about yourself from ABC is frightening. Death is coming closer and closer every day – is this the time to start a new lesson? Who knows if you will be able to complete it or not? Who knows? You may lose your old identity and you may not have enough time, enough energy, enough courage, to attain a new identity. So are you going to die without an identity? Are you going to live in the last phase of your life without an identity? To live without an identity would be a kind of madness; the heart sinks, the heart shrinks. One thinks, “Now it is okay to go on for a few days more. It is better to live with the old, the familiar, the secure, the convenient.” You have become skilled at it. And it has been a great investment: you have put sixty years of your life into it. Somehow you have managed, somehow you have created an idea of who you are – and now I tell you to drop that idea because you are not that?No idea is needed to know yourself. In fact, all ideas have to be dropped, only then can you know who you are. Fear is natural. Don’t condemn it, and don’t feel that it is something wrong. It is just part of your whole social upbringing. You have to accept it and go beyond it; without condemning it you have to go beyond it.Expose slowly, slowly. There is no need to take jumps that you cannot manage; go by steps, gradually. Soon you will learn the taste of the truth, and you will be surprised that all those sixty years have been a sheer waste. Your old identity will be lost, and you will have a totally new conception. It will not really be an identity, but a new vision, a new way of seeing things, a new perspective. You will not be able to say “I” again with something behind it. You will use the word because it is useful, but you will know all the time that the word carries no meaning, no substance, no existential substance at all; that behind this “I” is hidden an ocean, infinite, vast, divine.You will never attain another identity. Your old identity will be gone, and for the first time you will start feeling yourself as a wave in the ocean of existence. That is not an identity because you are not in it. You have disappeared, godliness has overwhelmed you. If you can risk the false, the truth can be yours. And it is worth it because you risk only the false and you gain the truth. You risk nothing and you gain all.My work here is to somehow persuade you, seduce you this way or that, to drop the old identity. You have succeeded in being able to hide many things you have done in the past. Now opening again those closed chapters, closed chambers for no reason at all, and releasing the ghosts of the past, many, many fears will come.You may not have been faithful to your husband once in a while, but you have been able to manage a certain face of sincerity, faithfulness. Unnecessarily exposing yourself now is bound to create fear. You may not have been faithful, but what is the point of exposing it now? Or you may have been faithful in deed, but not in thought, what is the point of exposing it? The mind will say, “There is no need. There are so many problems already, why create new ones?”You may have succeeded in telling many lies and circulating those lies as true. You may have succeeded, and now those lies are almost truths for others, and even for you. Now going back and looking again, it is very, very natural to be afraid, to not want to look back, to not go into all those nightmares.Harry constantly irritated his friends with his eternal optimism. No matter how bad the situation was he would always say, “It could have been worse.”To cure him of this annoying habit his friends decided to invent a situation so completely black, so dreadful, that even Harry wouldn’t be able to find any hope in it.Approaching him at the club bar one day, one of them said, “Harry, did you hear what happened to George? He came home last night, found his wife in bed with another man, shot them both, then turned the gun on himself.”“Terrible!” said Harry, “but it could have been worse.”“How in hell,” asked the dumbfounded friend, “could it possibly have been worse?”“Well,” said Harry, “if it had happened the night before, I would be dead now.”It is better to keep quiet, the mind says. It is better not to bring out all the old ghosts, not to release them; it is better to go on sitting on them. For sixty years you have been able to manage a certain demeanor, a certain gracefulness, a certain personality – polished, civilized, respectable. And now to suddenly expose it for no reason at all? The mind will say, “Have you gone mad? If you have waited so long, you can wait a little more.”Little Siddhartha writes to me again and again, “Osho, I want to become part of the ashram now.” I have been telling him to wait just a little more, a little more, a little more, but he is persistent. Every month or two he asks for a darshan, and the only question he asks is, “When can I come into the ashram?”Three or four days ago, he again wrote a letter saying, “It is time now. When am I going to be in the ashram?” So I said to Laxmi, “Tell him, within four or five days. Make any arrangements and let him come in.”Laxmi told him, “Just wait four or five days.”He said, “Why four or five days? Osho always says ‘Do it now!’ Why four or five days? Why wait? Why can’t I come right now? Osho’s insistence is always on the right now, here.”Laxmi told him, “You would find it very difficult right now.” The room had to be prepared, the room had to be painted.So he said, “Okay. If I have waited for so long, I can wait for four or five days more. If it is only a question of four or five days more, I can wait. And I have waited so long already. Okay, I will wait.”After sixty years of life the idea simply arises in your mind that you have waited for so long, why can’t you wait for a few days more? Why create any disturbance? Why create any unnecessary ripples? Things have settled, everybody respects you: your children respect you, your husband respects you, your society respects you. It has been a hard struggle, it has been a struggle with the outside, it has been a struggle with the inside. Somehow you have repressed all that is wild in you: you have repressed sex, anger, greed, jealousy; you have repressed all that society condemns. You have somehow managed to create a beautiful character; why expose it now, in the last phase of your life? For what? What are you going to gain from it? The mind will give you all these cunning reasons – they are rationalizations.If you have lived in a false way for sixty years, enough is enough! It is now time to drop that whole falsity. What can people take away from you now? Sooner or later you will be dead, and all respect, and all character, and everything, will be gone; soon you will be forgotten. A few people will remember you for a few days, then they will die and even the memory of you will be gone from the earth.How many millions of people have lived on the earth? Nobody even knows their names now. In their own time they must have bragged about their character, personality, strength, truth, courage, religiousness, saintliness, this and that. Now nobody even knows their names. When a person dies, almost ninety-nine percent of their life disappears; one percent lingers a little bit as memories in the minds of the few people who knew them. Yes, they will remember that person once in a while, but that is all that is left. And then those people will die and even those memories will disappear. Within a few years a person disappears so totally, it is as if he had never been there in the first place.What have you got to lose now? You have nothing to lose and you have everything to gain. You are fortunate that in the last phase of your life you have come into contact with this energy field. You are fortunate that in the evening of your life a door is opening – and the person who comes back home, even in the evening, should not be thought lost. That is a proverb in India: even in the evening when the sun is setting, if somebody comes back home he is not thought to be lost. He has arrived, finally, he has arrived.Your life has gone down the drain – now don’t miss this last phase. And the last phase is the most important because it will bring death. If you can die as truth you will not be born again. If you can die with all the falsities dropped, with all false identities renounced, disconnected from you; if you can die utterly naked before God, absolutely naked before God, like a small child before his parents – your death will be the most beautiful experience that you have ever had.Those who have known death say that life is nothing compared to death. Life has extension, it is spread out over seventy, eighty years. Hence, it cannot have the intensity which death can have, and only death can have because it happens in a split second. You live over eighty years and in a split second you die. Death has intensity, not extension but intensity. It has depth.Life gives you a long time in which to live; you can postpone things to tomorrow and you can live in a lukewarm way. But death is so total – if you can die consciously. And you can die consciously only if you expose yourself totally, so all that the unconscious is carrying is poured out, all that the unconscious is repressing is released, so the unconscious becomes empty and there is nothing to hide. Then you can totally expose yourself in the moment of death and you can die consciously.Remember, a person who has any repression cannot die consciously; repression creates the unconscious. The more repressed you are, the bigger an unconscious you have. What actually is the unconscious? – it is that part of your mind that you don’t want to see, it is that part of your mind that you bypass, it is that part of your house where you never go, the basement. You go on throwing all kinds of things into it and you never go in.The unconscious is not a natural phenomenon. The more civilized man becomes, the bigger the unconscious becomes. Uncivilized people have very small unconscious minds. You will be surprised to know about aboriginals, the very primitive people who still exist in some parts of the world. In India, in some deep forests, in the hills, there are still people who are as primitive as you can find anywhere, they are at least five thousand years behind. One of the most important things about these people – I have lived with them – is that they don’t dream. It is tremendously important. It is very rare that a primitive dreams because he has no unconscious. He lives his life so naturally, so truthfully, he represses nothing. When you don’t repress anything you cannot create dreams.A dream is the boiling unconscious. The whole day you go on repressing and in the night, when you fall asleep – when the repressor falls asleep – all that is repressed starts surfacing. That’s what your dreaming is. And if your dreams are nightmares that simply means you are really repressing. Your repression is dangerous. You are repressing neurotic things inside your unconscious and the deeper they go, the more damage they do.I have lived with the primitives. I have noted many things in them, but the most important is that they don’t dream. If you ask them, “What did you dream last night?” they say, “What dream? We slept well.” Yes, once in a while somebody dreams, but only once in a while, and the person who dreams has a totally different kind of dream from you. His dream is not the sort of dream that Freud, Jung and Adler study. His dream is intuitive, his dream is a prediction of the future, his dream is a foreshadowing of something that is going to happen.So in a primitive society the dreamer becomes the seer; he becomes the shaman. Because he can dream he becomes a tremendously important person. In a civilized society the psychoanalyst becomes very important because he can analyze dreams, he can interpret dreams. In a primitive society the dreamer becomes the most important person. He becomes the religious head of the commune because his dreams become predictions, his dreams always prove to be true. He does not dream about the past because he never represses it. If he dreams at all, he dreams about the future, that which has not yet happened and is going to happen – his dreams are almost always true. And his dreams have to be understood in a totally different way. Modern psychoanalysis is not able to understand his dreams; it is too obsessed with the civilized man, his unconscious. The primitive man has no unconscious.And the same happens to a buddha: his unconscious disappears because he goes on exposing, pouring out whatsoever is in his being. He never represses it, he never creates an unconscious. The unconscious is a creation of civilization: the more civilized you are, the more unconscious you are. If you become absolutely civilized you will be robots, you will be absolutely unconscious. That’s what is happening. That calamity is happening all over the world – it has to be stopped. And the only way to stop it is to help people to pour out their unconscious in meditations.Gita, expose yourself. That will unburden you. And I am here. Don’t be worried and don’t be afraid. I am coming with you. I will keep company with you to the point where you don’t need me. I will only leave you in the unknown when I see that you can now walk on your own – and then there will be no fear.But don’t miss this opportunity. This time, die consciously. You have to start right now to live consciously, only then can you die consciously. If you can live consciously for even a few years, that will be enough. A few months, a few days, or – if the intensity is great – even a few minutes, are enough to live consciously. Then one becomes capable of dying consciously. And to die consciously is to be resurrected into a totally different dimension, the dimension of the divine.I would like all of my sannyasins to die so deeply that they are never born again, so they can disappear into the cosmos, become part of the whole.The fourth question:Osho,Each morning at discourse I feel you are beckoning me with your eyes to walk across the water to you. Courage arises and I step from my boat. Exhilarated, I take a few steps, but I become afraid and begin to sink. What is this?I am continuously beckoning you to come across, certainly, but who has told you to walk on the water? Why should you step out of your boat? Use the boat and just come across.Once, a man went to Ramakrishna, who was sitting on the bank of the Ganges. The man was a very famous yogi of those days. He had gone there to brag about himself – that’s what these so-called yogis go on doing. He said, “Ramakrishna, what are you doing sitting here? Let us go for a walk on the Ganges.”Ramakrishna asked him, “How many years did it take for you to learn to walk on water?”The man said, “Eighteen years, practicing in the Himalayas: hard work, fasting, yoga postures. It was difficult, very difficult, almost impossible. Many times I wanted to drop the whole project, but somehow I persisted. Now I have the siddhi, the power – I can walk on water. Can’t you?”Ramakrishna said, “I am not so foolish. When I want to go to the other bank I give the ferryman only two paise, and that’s enough! Your eighteen years are worth just two paise. Get lost! I am not interested.”Only fools are interested in miracles.Another story…One day Hassan, a Sufi mystic, went to Rabiya, the great Sufi woman. He had just learned how to walk on water, so he told Rabiya, “Let us go and walk on the water and have a little spiritual discourse, a discussion.”That spiritual discussion was just an excuse; he wanted to show Rabiya that he could walk on water.Rabiya said, “On the water? That does not appeal to me. Let us go up to the clouds. We will sit on the clouds and have a spiritual discourse.”Hassan said, “But I don’t know how to go up and sit on the clouds.”Rabiya said, “Neither do I. But what is the point? Why can’t we have a religious discourse here? Why go to the water, or to the clouds?”All great mystics have been against miracles, and all fools are interested in miracles.Use your boat. You have to come to the other shore, certainly, but there is no need to get out of your boat. You have misunderstood my calling you.A group of tourists were standing at a vantage point overlooking an awesome panorama of the Grand Canyon, when someone could be heard saying, “You know, every afternoon there is a tremendous updraft here caused by warm air rushing up the canyon. A person can actually float on it.”“You don’t say!” replied his friend.“Why yes, watch this,” the man said. And he stepped off the edge of the cliff, floated away, and then came back easily.“Wow!” said someone standing nearby, “I’ll try that!” And he stepped off and went plummeting out of sight down to the bottom of the canyon.Said the friend, “You can be really mean sometimes, Superman.”But I cannot be mean to you – please, don’t get out of your boat! Of course you will sink, it is not your fault; that’s how it should be. But use the boat – that’s what is it made for! I am not for any stupid miracles, I am totally for the natural. Use the boat, use all natural means. Godliness is only available through nature, not through the cunning devices of man.You say, “Osho, each morning at discourse I feel you are beckoning me with your eyes to walk across the water to you. Courage arises and I step from my boat. Exhilarated, I take a few steps, but I become afraid and begin to sink. What is this?”Stupidity, just pure stupidity. Next time courage arises, don’t do it. Don’t you have oars? Use them, use the boat. There are two kinds of foolish people in the world: one who does not like to use the boat, who would like to walk on the water; and the other who will use the boat, but when they have reached the other shore they will not leave it. Just out of gratitude, they carry the boat on their head all their life.I go on beckoning you, but you have to understand it rightly. Just a little misunderstanding, just a little misinterpretation, and you will go astray. That’s where I am totally different, and you will see the difference. The same story is there with Jesus: Jesus calls; he is walking on water.I don’t know that stories like this are true; they must have been invented by priests. Priests are the most cunning, inventive people in the world. I cannot think that a man like Jesus could be so mean as to walk on water. Why would he? These stories have been invented to convert foolish people because only they are interested in such things.But the story is…Jesus is walking on the water. Thomas is sitting in the boat and sees him coming. Great enthusiasm arises in him – just like you, great courage – and he thinks, “If the master can do it, why can’t I?” So he asks Jesus, “Can I come and follow you?”Jesus says, “Certainly, come and follow me.” But Thomas walks only two, three steps before great doubt arises in him and he starts sinking.Jesus somehow has to save him, and tells him, “Don’t be a doubting Thomas.” Since then there has been the phrase “doubting Thomas.”If I had been in Jesus’ place, I would not have walked on the water in the first place, and secondly, if by some chance I had walked, I would have stopped Thomas: “Stay in the boat, don’t be too courageous.”Intelligent people are always courageous, but not vice versa: courageous people are not necessarily intelligent. I would have told Thomas, “Wait! There is no need to walk on the water. Follow me into the dimension of the unknown, but there is no need to walk on the water; that is not a prerequisite for it.” I would have stopped him there and then, rather than allowing him to walk a few steps and sink, and then saving him. I would not have liked all that trouble at all.So, next time this courage hits you, wait; close your eyes, take your oars, use the boat. Don’t misunderstand me: I would like you to trust, but very intelligently. Trust is the ultimate essence of intelligence; it is not blind faith. I am not against your doubt. You have to use your doubt in purifying your intelligence. You have to use your doubt in sharpening your intelligence. That is the function of doubt – to sharpen intelligence. Once intelligence is sharpened doubt disappears, trust arises. Doubt is not against trust. In fact, doubt is a servant, it serves trust.So I am not here to tell you to faithfully believe in me – trust intelligently. But people have their own understanding. I say one thing, they understand something else.Charlie was taking his out-of-town pal for a stroll through the city. The friend saw a good-looking girl and asked Charlie if he knew her.“Yes, that’s Betty – twenty dollars.”“How about that one?”“That’s Dolores – forty dollars.”“Here comes one that is really first class. Do you know her?”“That’s Gloria – eighty dollars.”“My God! Aren’t there any nice, respectable girls in this town?”“Of course there are, but you couldn’t afford them.”People have their own way of understanding. It is not much of an understanding, but that’s what they have got, and they go on interpreting through it: “Of course there are, but you could not afford their rates,” he says.A man was discussing his problems with his next-door neighbor. “That selfish wife of mine,” he was saying, “you know what she has done? She has rationed me, cut me down to a miserable once-a-week!”“Don’t feel too sorry for yourself,” said the next-door neighbor. “I know at least ten fellows living in our block who she has cut off completely.”I am saying things which have to be meditated upon. Don’t come to conclusions in a hasty, hurried way, because I am saying things which are really paradoxical. This doubt is a paradox. You have been told down the ages, “Believe, don’t doubt.” I am saying something totally different – doubt, and doubt totally, so that your intelligence is sharpened. And then trust arises of its own accord.Nobody has ever said this to you, hence the world has remained blind, hence the people have remained just sheep. It has been good: good business for the priests, good business for the politicians, good business for the so-called leaders – because people are at a loss, they need leaders. In worldly matters, in other-worldly matters, they need leaders. In worldly matters the politician becomes their leader, and in other-worldly matters, the priest. And the priest and the politician have been in a conspiracy: “Don’t allow people to become intelligent.” Once they become intelligent they will not need any leader and they will not need any priest. They will learn how to walk on their own.My approach is totally new: use doubt as a sharpener. I am not against doubt, I am all for it. Doubt very scientifically. And why am I not against doubt? – because I know if you really doubt, it is bound to make your intelligence clearer and clearer. It is bound to give you more and more clarity. Belief confuses, doubt clarifies. And there comes a point when doubt cannot doubt anymore. I trust in truth so much that I can tell you to doubt because I know, if you go on doubting, a moment is bound to come when doubt dies of its own accord. When you see the truth, how can doubt exist? Then trust arises.Trust is through knowing, not through believing. Don’t believe me. Trust me certainly, but don’t believe me. And if you want to trust me you will have to go on a long pilgrimage of doubt, of sharpening your intelligence. That’s why I go on talking to you, creating a thousand and one doubts in you. I don’t allow you to settle anywhere. You would like to settle very soon because who wants to travel forever and ever? One wants to make a home and settle. I say one thing one day, and just the opposite another day. I create doubt continuously because my trust in truth is so tremendous that I know no doubt can disturb it. If you go on doubting, even doubt will bring you to truth.All doors bring you to godliness, even the door of doubt. Sincerity is needed and intensity is needed and totality is needed.The fifth question:Osho,In the old days you used to hammer us fiercely. I remember clutching at the tiles of the floor in despair after a lecture when you had once again shouted at us, “You stupid disciples!” Now you come into lectures looking around happily, like a farmer looking at his golden cornfields. Are you happy with us?I am absolutely happy with you. I am one of the most fortunate masters in the world because a great many intelligent, alive, loving people have gathered around me. The very cream of the modern mind has gathered around me. I am tremendously happy, yes, just like a farmer when he looks out on his golden cornfields.You are my golden cornfield. The crop is becoming riper and riper every day. Many are blossoming, many are coming to fruit. Many are growing – in love, in awareness, in trust, in every possible way. I am tremendously happy that you are here with me.It happens very rarely. Jesus was not so fortunate: he had only a few disciples, and they were not very intelligent people either. They were asking really stupid questions, even to the very end.The night Jesus invited them to say good-bye, to dine and drink with him, and dance with him – because this was the last night, when he would be caught, and the next day he might be killed – do you know what the disciples were asking? One disciple asked, “Lord, now that you are leaving us, please tell us one thing. We know perfectly well that in the Kingdom of God you will be by the right side of God, you will be his right hand. But who among us will be by your side? And what will be our numbers and positions?”The master is going to die and the disciples are talking politics! “Who will be the first after you, and the second, and the third?” The master is going to die and the disciples are feeling jealous of each other, competitive. They are thinking of the other world in terms of this world. Jesus must have cried deep down in his heart. These are the people on whom he has wasted his life, for whom he was ready to die. Then he was caught, and only one disciple, Peter, stayed and followed him; the others fled. And out of the twelve one, Judas, deceived him; he sold him for thirty silver coins.When I read that the man who hanged Z. A. Bhutto of Pakistan got twenty-five rupees for hanging him, suddenly I remembered Jesus – he was sold for thirty rupees. The price has fallen; now you get five rupees less. In fact, the price has fallen too much because thirty rupees of pure silver in those days and twenty-five paper notes of today – the difference is not just five rupees, it is much more. Thirty rupees from those days would be equivalent to almost one thousand rupees today.But what kind of humanity is this? What kind of civilization and what kind of progress are we talking about? Jesus was killed by Jews. The man who hanged Bhutto was a Christian – in a Mohammedan country, they could not find anybody else to hang him. A Christian! How could a Christian do such a thing? And how could he still remain a Christian? He was a professional; that is what his family had been doing for many generations. By a very strange coincidence, this man’s father hanged one of the great Indian martyrs, Sardar Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary – one of the greatest revolutionaries that India has produced in these hundred years.And in the exact same place where Bhagat Singh was hanged – although now the jail has been demolished – Z. A. Bhutto shot one of his political opponents. That man was the magistrate who ordered the hanging of Bhagat Singh. And now Bhutto is hanged by the son of the man who hanged Bhagat Singh. History goes on spinning, weaving strange patterns in a very mysterious way.The night Jesus was taken away, a disciple betrayed him for only thirty rupees. For just thirty rupees, one can sell a man like Jesus? And seeing the danger, the remaining ten fled immediately. What kind of disciples were they? Only one remained, and he was not following Jesus but hiding in the crowd; he had only remained out of curiosity. Jesus said, “Escape, because before sunrise, before the cock crows, you will have thrice betrayed me.”But the man thought in his heart, “No, Judas has betrayed you, the others have fled, but I am made of better stuff. I cannot deny you, I cannot renounce you. I will be true to you to the very last.”But it happened exactly the way Jesus had said. Before sunrise, this man, Peter, had thrice denied him because the crowd taking Jesus, making him a prisoner, became more and more suspicious of Peter. They were carrying torches, and he looked like a stranger. They asked, “Who are you? Are you a follower of Jesus?”And he said, “No.”And when he had said no three times, Jesus looked back and said, “Remember now.” At the time of the crucifixion not a single disciple was there, they had all escaped.Jesus was not very fortunate. Buddha was far more fortunate. But I am even more fortunate than Buddha because Buddha had only one kind of people around him. My disciples are multidimensional; they come from every nook and corner of the world. This is a universal brotherhood. This is the first time that religion is taking off, becoming airborne, losing local limitations. This is the first time that religion is losing racial associations, national associations – Indian, Chinese, Japanese, German, Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Buddhist. We are creating a kind of religiousness without any name; a nameless religion can only be true to a nameless God.Yes, I am tremendously happy. The moment I look at you my heart dances with immense joy. And this is only the beginning. Many, many more people are going to come, they are on their way. You are just heralding the coming of millions more. Hence, your responsibility is great because you will be preparing the way; the others who will come will learn from you. The others will learn love, awareness, discipline, spontaneity, individuality, freedom – all of these dimensions – from you.The new commune will have at least ten thousand sannyasins resident, and thousands and thousands will come and go. You are also fortunate because you will be the first bricks: out of you this great temple is going to be created, you will be the foundation. Remember that responsibility, and remember that such a responsibility comes only as a benediction.The last question:Osho,I am suspicious about my father. I don't think that he is my father. Can you help me get rid of this doubt?Christopher, this is a really difficult question. In the first place, it matters not. It is irrelevant whether A is your father or B is your father. How can it matter? Christopher is Christopher; you are that which you are. From where your first cell came; from where, from what source, makes no difference now.Sooner or later it will be impossible to decide who is whose father because there are going to be semen banks, just like there are blood banks. People will donate their semen to the banks, and the doctors will decide the right type for a particular woman.Why are you so worried about it? Such things sometimes become obsessions. Even if you come to know, even if I say that “This man is your father,” then what? For example, if I say Paritosh, old Paritosh, is your father – are you going to believe me? You will start doubting me, so it is better that you doubt your father. Or you may start doubting poor Paritosh, who has nothing to do with it.Only your mother can answer. Even your father cannot answer because even your father may not be right. Ask your mother.A youngster went to his father and said, “Dad, I would like to marry Suzy.”“Don’t marry her, son,” said the old man. “When I was a kid I sowed my wild oats, and well, you know how it is.”About a week later the boy came to his father again and said, “Dad, I am in love with Mildred and I want to marry her.”The old salesman said, “She is your half sister, son. You can’t marry her.”“How about Mabel?” the kid asked a couple of weeks later.“She’s your half sister too,” said Dad.The youngster, who was anxious to get married, went to his mom and complained, “Pop says I shouldn’t marry Suzy, Mildred or Mabel because they’re my half sisters. What can I do?”Mom put her arms around her boy and consoled him: “You can marry any one of them if you like – he’s not your father.”So it is a very difficult thing. Unless your mother is truthful about it, nobody can give you a guarantee. But I have heard about a machine that IBM has produced. I don’t know whether it is true or not, you can inquire.A woman, having heard how fantastic IBM machines are, enters the IBM salesroom to look around.“You can ask the machine any question you like and it will give you the correct answer,” explains the salesman.The woman writes the question, “Where is my father?” and puts it into the machine. The answer comes back, “Your father is fishing off the west coast of Florida.”“Ridiculous!” exclaims the woman. “My father has been dead twenty years.”“The machine never makes a mistake,” the salesman proclaims. “There is simply a misunderstanding. Rephrase your question and ask it again.”The woman writes down for the machine, “Where is my mother’s husband?”The IBM machine answers, “He has been dead twenty years, but your father is fishing off the west coast of Florida.”But please don’t ask such questions of me, I am not an IBM machine – neither am I your mother.Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,If you know, can you tell me what is best for me?Miguel, the best thing is to never be born, but you have already missed that. The second best thing is to die as soon as possible – that’s a little bit difficult. I don’t mean physical death, that is not difficult. To commit suicide is the easiest thing in the world, the most cowardly. It needs no guts. But to commit psychological suicide needs great courage – to be and yet not to be, to drop the ego.Yes, there are a few people who have managed to do the first. Lao Tzu must have been one of those who were born and yet not born, who came into the world utterly egoless. Hence the story that Lao Tzu lived in his mother’s womb for eighty-two years. He resisted the temptation to come out of the womb until he became ripe, until he became capable of existing in the world without the ego. He allowed himself to be born – permitted himself – only when there was no possibility of any ego arising. What Buddha attained under the bodhi tree, Lao Tzu must have attained in his mother’s womb. Yes, there is a way to be aware even in the mother’s womb. Then a person is born, but born without the ego; Jesus must have come that way.Some people have managed the second best way: this means to go on dying to the past. The ego is nothing but the cumulative effect of all your yesterdays. If you can die to all your yesterdays, even to the moment that has just passed and is no more, you remain without the ego. You are there in utter radiance, in great splendor, there is no idea of “I.” There is a pure “amness,” just a fragrance of being, with no center – then you exist in godliness and godliness exists in you.This second way is also very difficult. One needs to be utterly alert, so that the instant a moment passes by, one has slipped out of it. One does not stay lingering in the past, one does not go on clinging to memories. There is no nostalgia, no looking back. It means not looking ahead because looking ahead is another way of looking back. It means not beginning life in the future, projecting life into the future, because the future is nothing but a reflection of the past. What you desire in the future is bound to be nothing but a repetition of the past. Modified, refined, more sophisticated, more polished, but still the same. There cannot be any qualitative difference; maybe there are some quantitative differences. The future is nothing but a projection of the past.So I am not saying drop the past so that you can live in the future – that is the past coming in again through the back door. If you drop the yesterdays, you will have to drop tomorrow too. When all your yesterdays and all your tomorrows have disappeared, then what is left? – this moment, this purity, this silence. Thisness. Buddha calls it tathata, suchness. There is nothing else to desire, there is no should, no ought, there is nowhere to go. One is utterly contented in this moment; one is relaxed, calm and quiet. All desires have disappeared because they can exist only through the past or through the future. And when there is no desire, how can there be a mind? The mind is desire. And when there is no mind how can there be an ego? Ego is the center of the false mind. This is the second best way.The third best way is to love because love is a sweet way to die, to disappear. The sweetest way to die is to love. It helps you to drop the ego, and with no effort. It helps you to drop the ego with such grace, with such joy, that if you cannot drop the ego through love then it will be very difficult to drop it at all.In love, the other is available, the beauty of the other, the caressing warmth of the other, the protection, the shelter; the other is an excuse to drop the ego. It is easy to die because love gives one courage, courage to do the impossible. And love gives one a kind of drunkenness – in that drunkenness it is easy to make the jump, the quantum leap.Love sends one mad. That madness is higher than what you call sanity because your sanity remains crawling in the dark holes of the earth, and love opens its wings toward the sun. Love dares, is adventurous. Love is ready to die because in love one feels that even if one dies – one cannot die. Love gives a feeling of immortality. And the path of love is full of flowers – the birds are singing, the trees are green and it is very sunny. The third best is the easiest.But for some people it is very difficult, the very idea of drowning oneself in the other makes them very scared. The very presence of the other makes them shrink inward; the very presence of the other, and they become closed. If you are of that type, Miguel, then the fourth way is to meditate.This too is a way of dying, a little dryer than the third way, a little more alone, not so sweet certainly, even a little bitter. But likes differ, some people like bitter tastes – coffee, cocoa. And there are people who are intrigued only by a harder course; the easy is not a challenge for them, the easy has no appeal for them. The harder the task, the more they rise to it. They are challenged only by the arduous, the difficult, the impossible; the impossible is their passion – for them is the way of meditation.So if you like something bitter, spicy, something hard: be alone, doing nothing, sitting silently – the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. In love there is a song, a dialogue, a meeting, a merging, but in meditation one simply evaporates. Slowly, slowly, in aloneness one evaporates, and one day nothing is found, the ego has died.These are the four possibilities.Miguel, you ask me, “Can you tell me what is best for me?” These four things. But the basic note is the same, and that is: learn to die because that is the only way to learn to live. Let the ego die and your life starts taking on the flavor of the divine. Death – the death of the ego – becomes the door to the divine.And the fifth way – which is not really the fifth but a combination of all four ways, a symphony, an orchestra – I call sannyas. It combines all that is beautiful in the four, it is multidimensional. All these four ways are one-dimensional; sannyas is multidimensional. It teaches you how to be born and yet never be born. It teaches you how to die and yet live immensely. It teaches you how to fall in love and yet go on rising up. It teaches you how to disappear in love and yet remain aloof, unpossessed, nonpossessive. It teaches you how to be with the other and yet remain free and let the other be free. It teaches you how to meditate and be alone and yet not let your aloneness become an escape; to be alone and yet be in the world. It teaches you how to be a lotus leaf in the lake; in the water, yet untouched by it. Sannyas is the synthesis of these four dimensions; it is the very crescendo, the cream of them all.Many religions have concentrated on the first way, particularly the Indian religions; their emphasis is on how not to be born. Hence, in India all the religious people are praying, “God, help us to not be born again. We don’t want to go back into the wheel of life and death.” All Indian religions are basically rooted in this one concept: how to be free from the vicious circle of birth and death, how to go beyond birth and death, how to not be born, how to enter into eternity and never come back into the turmoil of time.The Christian, the Mohammedan, the Jew: their emphasis is on the second way – to die as soon as possible, to surrender to God. Prayer is their method. Prayer means dying; dying and disappearing as a person, becoming part of the universal; a surrender, a trust in God. Their whole emphasis is on how to surrender their ego, sacrifice their ego, at the altar of the divine.The third way, to love as a method of dying, has been chosen by all the devotees of the world: the Vaishnavas in India and the Sufis of Islam and the Hasidic mystics of Judaism have all chosen the third. Love: love intensely, love totally, love holding nothing back and you will attain because love kills the ego.The fourth way, to be aware, to be meditative, has been chosen by Buddhism, Jainism, Zen, Taoism.My effort here, Miguel, is to create a symphony of all the religions. Here, Sufis and Hasids and the people of Zen and Taoism, are meeting and merging. I am creating an ocean in which rivers from different mountains, bringing different flavors, bringing different fragrances, are meeting and merging; and creating something absolutely new that has never happened before – a universal religiousness. I don’t give it any name.Miguel, if you are listening to my suggestions, become a sannyasin. And the only way to know what that is, is to be a participant.Miguel is a journalist from South America. It will be very difficult for him to participate. The whole training of a journalist is to observe, to be a spectator, to watch with a critical eye, and to find whatsoever he can find that is negative. And if he cannot find the negative, then to invent, project, because only the negative becomes news. The positive has no news value, only the negative, only something sensational. People are only interested in the wrong.If you murder somebody it is news, but if you help somebody, you can go on helping your whole life, it will never become news. If you love it is not news, but if you hate and you destroy, it becomes news. Buddhas don’t really count in the history books.That’s why it remains a problem whether men like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu, ever existed or are just mythology. Nobody is suspicious about Alexander the Great, and Napoleon, and Tamerlane, and Genghis Khan, and Nadir Shah; nobody is suspicious about them. They have left such destructive proof, you cannot deny it. History is full of fools: from Tamerlane to Adolf Hitler they are the major part of history because they create news. History is ancient news. What is in the newspaper today will become history tomorrow, and what is history today was news yesterday.But somehow the buddhas are left out of the accounts. Why? What is the reason? The reason is that these people were not destructive: they never killed, they never conquered, they never possessed anybody. They lived so silently, so blissfully, they never created a ripple.Once I was talking to the Prime Minister of India and I asked, “How do you choose your cabinet colleagues? What are the qualifications?”The Prime Minister said, “Whosoever has nuisance value, whosoever can create more nuisance has to be chosen.” That is the qualification. If he is left out of the cabinet he will create trouble. He has to be taken into the cabinet, he has to be made a minister so he does not create trouble. Troublemakers become powerful, troublemakers become heads of state, troublemakers create news.Miguel is a journalist. If his training has gone too deep it will be really difficult for him to participate here. But there are a few things you can know only by participation. If you don’t dance you will not know what dance is. You can see somebody else dancing, but it is one thing to see a dancer and it is totally another thing to be a dancer. Seeing a dancer from the outside, you are simply seeing physical gestures. Being a dancer from the inside, you will know the real feel of it.Somebody can tell you that he has a headache and you can understand that he is in pain. But from the outside – if you have never known a headache – will you be able to understand exactly what his agony is? You will never be able to understand it; it is something interior. You have to participate.Even suffering cannot be known from the outside – suffering, which is gross. What to say about bliss? What to say about peace, serenity? They are the highest peaks, the Everests of human consciousness. Even dark valleys cannot be known from the outside. You have to go into them, you have to disappear into them.So if you are really interested, if the question is not just for question’s sake, then be a participant. Fall en rapport with me. Put your mind aside, put your ego aside – that’s what I mean by death. Enter into this buddhafield like a small child, innocent, knowing nothing. Function from a state of not-knowing – that’s what I mean by death. Function from a state of innocence, and the possibilities are tremendous: you also can bloom, as other flowers are blooming in my garden.The second question:Osho,Is God really dead?Friedrich Nietzsche killed God, and Sigmund Freud buried the corpse. God’s death is no longer new and no longer news either. Now the new idea is that death is God. And that’s what I am teaching you here: forget about God – let us learn death, the art of dying. And if you know how to die you will know what God is.The old God is certainly dead, and that is good. The old God was getting heavier and heavier on the human heart; the old idea was becoming like a rock, not helping growth, but hindering it. It was very childish, it was created by primitive people, it was their need; it was perfectly suitable for them.Just go back five thousand years, to the days of the Vedas: it is cloudy, there is thunder and lightning and you are sitting in your cave, with no clothes on of course, shivering, trembling. You will create a kind of God, a God that is born out of fear.The caveman was constantly in fear: wild animals were roaming all around, no security, no medicine, no protection, no shelter, no light, no fire. Just think of the plight of that man with danger, insecurity, darkness, all around. It was natural for that man to create God as a consolation; it was his illusion. Hence he created a God in the heavens.If you pray to him he will help you, he will protect you. If you don’t pray, if you don’t obey him, he will punish you. This is a childish concept, perfectly suitable for the people who created it, but it persisted. Times changed, caves disappeared, life became totally different; man was more secure, more sheltered, more safe. How could he keep on carrying that old idea? Sooner or later a man was needed to declare that God was dead.That’s what Nietzsche did. He did a great service to humanity, he declared something which needed to be declared. He was a courageous man, and he risked much because he was the first man to declare that God is dead. Remember, there were people before him who had said there was no God, but that was totally different. There had been Charvaka in India and Epicurus in Greece, and many more courageous, intelligent people all over the world who denied the existence of God. But to deny the existence of God is one thing, and to declare that God is dead is another. Hence Charvaka never went mad, Epicurus never went mad.Nietzsche went mad. To say God does not exist is one thing, then there is no question, but to declare that God is dead is another. He was the first man to encounter the fact that the old God had become irrelevant and the new was not on the horizon. The old was gone and the new had not come. And the gap – that gap was maddening, as if somebody has taken the earth from beneath your feet and you are falling into abysmal darkness. You cannot find the bottom anywhere, you go on falling and falling. That’s what happened to Friedrich Nietzsche. He went mad. The day he declared God is dead, the whole edifice that had been used as protection up till then was shattered.Some people had the idea that “God is” because they felt protected by God. But a few others, who rather than feeling secure in God wanted to be more natural, started feeling afraid of God – because he could punish them. “If you are natural then you will be in hell.” Just to avoid that fear many of those people declared that there was no God. See the point: the person who believes in God and the person who disbelieves in God may not be different. Their psychologies may be exactly the same, they may be two sides of the same coin. One declares that God is, because without God he feels alone, afraid. The other declares there is no God because he feels afraid in the presence of God, afraid of being judged – God is the judge and is there, constantly watching.Remember, those people who were ascetic, who were ready to deny their nature, were very happy to believe in God. And the people who were more natural, more normal, were happy to believe that there was no God. The reason is the same: the natural person will feel afraid because the natural person will have sex, will have anger, will have jealousy. And God is going to punish him; if God is there, then punishment is certain. It is better for him to say that there is no God; at least for the time being he can relax. And the person who can repress his sex, his jealousies, his anger, would like to declare that God is, because all his investment is in God’s existence. God’s existence is very necessary for his asceticism.The pathological people declare that God is, and the natural people declare that there is no God. And because there have been very few natural people – society does not allow them to exist – the majority declare God is. But also, the majority only declares “God is” on the surface; deep down they all become hypocrites because to deny nature is not easy, it is a rare feat. Only a few people can deny it; really mad, insane people are needed to deny nature.Then what is the natural person supposed to do? – he is supposed to become a hypocrite. He should go to the church and the temple, and on the surface, formally, declare that God is, but go on living his natural way. He will become a dual personality.Nietzsche’s declaration was very original, he was a pioneer. He said, “God is dead” – not that God is not. Up to then, God had been; but now God was no more. Nietzsche took away all the shelter, security, safety; he left man all alone. And naturally, Nietzsche suffered; he himself went mad, he could not tolerate the absence of God. Nietzsche had declared something of immense importance, but it was difficult even for him to absorb it. The truth of it was too much, he was not yet ready.You ask me, “Is God really dead?” Yes, the old God is dead. The God that used to sit on a golden throne in the seventh heaven is dead. The God you used to believe in during your childhood is dead. The God of your conceptions is dead.Recently, a new jet plane was invented that goes nine hundred miles an hour. The test pilot was taking it on its maiden flight when he noticed a button he hadn’t used before. He pressed it and the plane zoomed miles upward at a fantastic rate.He breathed in sharply, and whispered, “Oh, my God.”And a voice answered, “Yes?”The God that used to say “Yes” from on high is gone. But it is good that the old God is dead; man needs a new conception, a new perceptivity. God will not be back, godliness will be back. God will not come back as a person again – man has passed that phase, man has come of age. Now we have to think in terms of godliness, not God, of presence not personality.That’s what happened to Gautam Buddha. H. G. Wells has made a tremendously significant statement about Buddha: that he was the most godless man, and yet the most godly. Godless in the sense that he never believed in any childish conception of God, he never believed in God as a person. But he was the most godly; he believed in the quality of godliness. In that way, now God will not be a father figure, but an experience of love. Now God will be synonymous with love; now God will be synonymous with meditation, awareness. Now God need not be worshipped; God will not be the deity in the temple anymore. God will be your inner consciousness, your inner witnessing, your subjectivity; God will be synonymous with life itself.Yes, a new God is being born. He has already arrived, but it will take time for humanity to understand it. Nietzsche declared, “God is dead.” I declare, “God is born again,” but with a new face, certainly – Nietzsche would not recognize it. Only a man like Gautam Buddha will be able to recognize it, or a man like Kabir, or a man like Rinzai. Only those who have loved tremendously and meditated tremendously. Only those who have died as egos will be able to understand this new God – not as a person, but as a quality; not as something in particular, which can be pinpointed, but as something diffuse, permeating the whole of existence.God is the green in the trees, and the red and the gold. God is the song of the bird. God is the white cloud floating in the sky. God is the starry night. God is when two persons meet and hug each other. God is when two lovers melt and merge into each other. God is in all experiences of beauty, joy, celebration. God is in every orgasmic experience.Now this is a totally different conception of God. You can experience it, but you cannot worship it. You can be it, but you cannot be the worshipper. That’s why my sannyasins are not worshippers. My sannyasins are experiencers. Their God is not something outside, their God is something inside. The inside of things is God. The inside of this whole universe is God.And if you can experience your own interiority, you will know God is not dead. God cannot be dead. Yes, concepts change because man changes, but God is eternity, God is this totality – how can God be dead? If God is really dead then Nietzsche cannot be alive, then trees cannot bloom anymore, then the earth will not be here, then the sun will not shine, then the stars will simply disappear. Then there will be only darkness and emptiness.But all is as it has always been. God as an old concept is gone. Prepare the way for the new God to arrive – that’s what sannyas is all about. I am not initiating you into any traditional sannyas, I am not helping you enter any traditional way. I don’t represent the past, I represent the approaching dawn that is very close by. It only needs a little love in your hearts, a little awareness in your beings, and you will become aware.This time God is going to be born in you. You have to be a little more innocent, more virgin. You have to become the womb. And as man grows, again and again new concepts will be coming. They simply show the growth of man. God is always there, but we grow, our concepts grow, our vision becomes clearer. Naturally, old concepts have to be discarded, thrown out to the junkyard.All the old Gods are dead – the Hindu Gods and the Mohammedan Gods and the Christian Gods. All the old Gods are dead, and those who are still worshipping in the ancient temples and mosques are simply following a dead routine. God has disappeared from there. Now God needs new people, new mediums to become his vehicles. He needs a totally new human being, a new man.Become part of this great experiment. My whole experiment is to bring the new God into the world, to help the beyond penetrate the earth. What Nietzsche has done has to be undone.The third question:Osho,I laughed like everyone else when you humorously replied to the question, “If I see you walking along the road, should I kill you?” yet my heart experienced flutters of fear because I perceive fanatics in this town and all over the world who would like to kill you. I see so many angry people who drink the hemlock of hate and scoff at the nectar of love. Are these feelings of fantasy, reality or paranoia?The feelings that arose in your heart are not of fantasy, are not of paranoia, they are real. There are fanatics, the world is full of them. They would like to kill me. They killed Jesus, they killed Socrates, they killed al-Hillaj Mansoor. Those same fanatics are still here, but there is no need to be afraid of them because in a way, unknowingly, they help the work.Just think, if Jesus had not been killed, there would have been no Christianity at all. It was the murderers who helped create Christianity. In fact, George Gurdjieff used to say humorously that it was Jesus’ own plan – that he arranged for them to kill him, that he wanted to be killed so that his message would spread. George Gurdjieff used to say that Judas was not Jesus’ enemy, he did not betray him, he simply followed orders. He was the closest disciple, and the most intelligent of all Jesus’ disciples, the most educated, the most sophisticated. Gurdjieff used to say that Jesus ordered Judas: “If you really love me and if your surrender is total, then go now and hand me over to my enemies.”This is a beautiful story that Gurdjieff invented; it has some truth in it. The truth is that the people who murdered Jesus played into his hands. He may not have planned it, but it worked out perfectly well in his favor.Just think, there have been many Sufi mystics of the same caliber as Mansoor, but the world knows only Mansoor’s name, nobody else’s. Bahauddin is not known so much, Junnaid is not known so much, Hassan is not known so much, Junnun is not known so much. And they were of the same stature and the same quality, the same enlightenment; but Mansoor has become the greatest name. Without Mansoor there would be no Sufism at all. Mansoor has become the central focus for a simple reason: he was killed.There were many great philosophers of the same caliber as Socrates, but because he was poisoned his name cannot be effaced. As long as humanity exists, as long as there is some intelligence available somewhere, he will be remembered. Looking back now it does not seem a bad thing, retrospectively, that he was poisoned and killed. He was going to die anyway, he was an old man; he could have lived one more year, two years, four years at the most.The court told Socrates, “You can save your life if you leave Athens. We will leave you free, but you will not be entitled to enter Athens again.”Socrates said, “No, I will not compromise just for the sake of my life. I am going to die sooner or later, so why compromise for something which is going to happen anyway? What difference does it make? It is better to be killed, than for it to be known later on that I compromised, that I was a coward.”The court made another proposal, “We can give you one more option. The pressure is such, we may have to kill you, but we would like to help you in every possible way. If you insist on living in Athens, you can live in Athens, but then stop talking about truth.”Socrates said, “That is impossible, that’s my business. If I live, I will talk about truth. To me, life and spreading truth are synonymous. What is the point of living if I cannot even talk about truth? If I cannot commune with people, if I cannot initiate people into the world of truth, what is the point of living at all? Please kill me and be finished with the whole thing. I am not going to compromise.”And he did well. If he had compromised nobody would ever have heard of him. It would have been more calculating to compromise. He could have saved himself, but he was ready to die. He chose death. Why? Because in a very mysterious way death becomes a seal of approval. So don’t be worried about those fanatics. If they kill me they will be helping my work.Death is bound to come one day, and the best way is not to die in bed; almost ninety-nine percent of people do that. And people like me have been known to find better ways of dying.A Zen master was dying. Thousands of disciples had gathered; he was a great master. In his last moments he opened his eyes and asked his disciples, “Can somebody suggest how to die? Because people go on just dying in bed. I would like to try something new.”The disciples were shocked. What kind of question was that? Who had ever heard of someone asking how to die? People don’t even ask how to live. People go on living without asking how to live, and here is a man who cannot even die without asking how to die. He wants to make it a celebration, something a little special.Seeing that the disciples were silent, he himself suggested, “Have you ever heard of anybody dying buddhalike, in a sitting posture, in padmasana?”A disciple said, “Yes, I know of a Zen master who died sitting in the lotus posture.”The old master said, “That won’t do. If somebody has already done it, it is not worth repeating. Have you heard of anybody dying standing up, like Mahavira?”Mahavira used to meditate while standing. That is unique, very unique; ordinarily, people don’t meditate standing. That’s why in India you will find thousands of Mahavira’s statues standing. You will never find a single statue of Buddha standing, he is always sitting. The sitting posture had always been used for meditation, but Mahavira was his own type of person.Someone said, “Yes, we have heard – we have not seen but we have heard – that in ancient times one Zen master died standing up.”The old man said, “Then that won’t do either. Find something soon because death is close by.”“Have you ever heard,” he then asked, “of somebody dying standing on his head?”Now nobody had ever heard, nobody had ever even dreamed, of anybody dying standing on his head – in shirshasan, a headstand. They said, “No, we have not heard of it, we have not even thought of it.”The old man said, “Then that’s perfectly right” – and he stood on his head.It was a problem now to decide whether he had died or not. And the disciples were afraid to disturb him now that he was standing on his head. They tried: “His breathing seems to have almost disappeared. But how can a man go on standing on his head if he is dead? He will fall. What do we do now? There is no precedent.” Normally, you know what to do when a man dies, what has to be done. But nobody had ever heard of anybody dying standing on his head: “Now what has to be done?”Somebody remembered that he had a sister who was a nun; she was older than him and lived in a monastery close by. So they ran and asked the old nun what to do. She said, “I am coming. That old fool, is this any way to die? – I will teach him a lesson. I tell you, he has always been a nuisance, even when he was alive he was doing eccentric things.”She was not worried about death. She came and shouted at the old man, “This is not right! Doing such a stupid thing, and creating trouble for your disciples. Is it right for you? Get up and be normal!”So the old man laughed, got up, lay down on his bed and said, “Okay, I will die in a normal way then” – and died.Don’t take death too seriously. Nothing is serious, neither life nor death because nothing matters in the ultimate sense. Life and death are just episodes in the eternity of time, just soap bubbles – life and death both.I can understand your apprehension, your love for me, but don’t be worried. Neither life nor death have any significance. The only thing that is significant is: if while I am here I can impart some truth to you, if I can impart something that I have seen, if I can impart my perspective to you; if I can help you to see a little bit of reality through my eyes, if I can help you just a few steps into the unknown, then you will be able to go on on your own. Everything else is irrelevant.And remember, if your love for me is immense, even if I am gone I will go on helping you. These connections are not disconnected by death. Death simply makes no difference for lovers. Death does not exist for lovers. If you have trust, if you have love for me, death doesn’t mean anything at all; we will go on communing the same way. Everything will be the same, nothing will change at all.The fourth question:Osho,Are children really as intelligent as you say they are, before society starts destroying them?A child is pure intelligence because a child is as yet uncontaminated. A child is a clean slate, nothing is written on him. A child is absolute emptiness, a tabula rasa.Society starts writing on you immediately that you are a Christian, Catholic, Hindu, Mohammedan, Communist. Society immediately starts writing the Bhagavadgita, Koran, Bible. Society cannot wait, it is very much afraid that if the child’s intelligence is left intact, he will never be a slave; he will never be a part of any slavery, of any structure of domination; he will neither dominate nor be dominated; he will neither possess nor be possessed – he will be pure rebellion.His innocence has to be corrupted immediately. His wings have to be cut. He has to be given crutches to lean upon so that he never learns to walk on his own two feet, so he always remains in a kind of dependence.First, the children are dependent on the parents, and the parents enjoy it very much; whenever children are dependent, the parents feel very good. Their life starts to have some meaning: they know they are helping some new people to grow up, some beautiful people to grow up – they are not meaningless. They have the vicarious enjoyment of being creative; it is not true creativity, but at least they can say they are doing something, that they are occupied. They can forget their own problems in the anxiety of bringing up the children. And the more the children are dependent on them, the happier they feel. Although they go on saying they would like their children to be independent, that is only on the surface. A really independent child hurts the parents; they don’t like it because an independent child has no need of them.That is one of the big problems the older generation is facing today: the new children are not dependent on them. And because they are not dependent you cannot force things upon them, you cannot tell them what to do and what not to do. You cannot be their masters. The old generation is really suffering. For the first time in human history the old generation is feeling utterly empty, meaningless because their whole occupation has gone, and their joy in bringing up children is shattered. In fact they are feeling guilty, afraid, that they may be destroying their children. Who knows, whatsoever they are doing may not be the right thing.Parents destroy the intelligence of children because that is the only way to enslave them; then the teachers, school, college, university – nobody wants a rebel, and intelligence is rebellion. Nobody wants to be questioned, nobody wants his authority questioned; and intelligence is questioning, intelligence is pure doubt. Yes, one day trust arises out of this pure doubt, but not against doubt – it arises only through doubt.Trust comes out of doubt like a child comes out of the mother’s womb. Doubt is the mother of trust. Real trust comes only through doubting, questioning, inquiring. And false trust, which we know as belief, comes by killing the doubt, by destroying questioning, by destroying all quest, inquiry, search, by giving people ready-made truths.The politician is not interested in children’s intelligence because leaders are only leaders when people are stupid. Just think, if this country were intelligent, can you believe that a man like Morarji Desai would be Prime Minister? It would be impossible. It is ridiculous. But people are so stupid they get stupid leaders. People are so unintelligent that are ready to fall into the trap of anybody who pretends lead them.Children are born with pure intelligence and we are not yet able to respect it. Children are the most exploited class in the world, more than women even. Sooner or later, after women’s lib there is going to be children’s lib – it is far more necessary. Man has enslaved woman, and both man and woman have enslaved the children. And because the child is very helpless, naturally he has to depend on them. It is very mean of them to exploit the child’s helplessness. And hitherto parents have been mean, although I am not saying that they have been so deliberately or consciously, but almost unconsciously, not knowing what they were doing. That’s why the world is in such misery, the world is in such a mess. Unconsciously, unknowingly, each generation goes on destroying the next generation. This is the first generation which is trying to escape the trap; this is the beginning of a totally new history.But certainly, children are utterly intelligent. Just watch children, look into their eyes, look at the way they respond.Little Papo, at the zoo with his father, seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly. As they were looking at the lions however, a troubled look came over the boy’s face. His father asked him what the matter was.“I was just wondering Daddy. If a lion breaks loose and eats you, what number bus do I take home?”Just watch children, be more observant…A teacher asked her class of small children to draw with crayons a picture of whichever Old Testament story they liked best.One small boy drew a man driving an old car. In the back seat were two passengers, both scantily dressed.“It is a nice picture,” said the teacher, “but what story does it tell?”The young artist seemed surprised at the question. “Well!” he exclaimed, “doesn’t it say in the Bible that God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden?”No proof is needed. Just look around, children are everywhere, just watch.Another story I have heard…In another school the teacher asked the children to do the same, to draw a picture of any Bible story that they liked. And instead of a car, one child drew an airplane. The airplane had four windows. From one window God the Father was looking out, from another, the Holy Ghost, and from the third, Jesus Christ. But the teacher was puzzled, “These three I can understand, but who is the fourth?”And the child said, “Pontius the Pilot.”But nobody watches children. In fact, everybody thinks they are just a nuisance. They should not be heard, they should only be seen; has been the dictum down the ages. Who cares what they ask? Who cares what they say? Who listens?A child came running home, panting and breathing hard, and said to his mother, “Listen to what happened! A tiger chased me from school all the way up to the house. Somehow I managed to get away. I had to run so hard.”The mother said, “Listen, I have told you millions of times not to exaggerate – millions of times. And there you go again. You found a tiger in the street? Where is it?”The child said, “Look out of the window, it’s standing there.”The mother looked: a small dog!She said, “That is a tiger? You know perfectly well that’s a dog. Go upstairs and pray to God, ask for forgiveness!”So the child went upstairs. After a few minutes he came back down. The mother said, “You prayed? You asked God for forgiveness?”The child said, “Yes. I said, ‘God forgive me. It was totally wrong of me to think of that little dog as a tiger.’ And God said, ‘Don’t be worried. When I first saw it, I thought it was a tiger too.’”Children have immense intelligence, but down the ages they have not been allowed to use it. We have to create a new kind of education where nothing is imposed on the children, where they are helped to strengthen their natural, God-given intelligence. They should not be stuffed with information which is in fact almost useless. Ninety-eight percent of the information that we are throwing into our children’s minds is just stupid, foolish. Because of that load, that baggage, the children will never be free of the burden. I have been a university professor, and I have been a student from primary school to university. My own observation is that ninety-eight percent of the information is not needed at all; to go on throwing it at children is utterly futile. And not only is it futile, it is harmful, positively harmful.Children should be helped to be more inventive; not more repetitive, which is how our education is geared right now. Our whole educational system is based on repetition. If a child can repeat things better than others then he is thought to be more intelligent. In fact he only has a better memory, not better intelligence. It almost always happens that a man with a very good memory is not very intelligent, and vice versa.Albert Einstein didn’t have a very good memory. Newton, Edison, and so many more great inventors were really very forgetful. Once it happened that Edison even forgot his own name. Now that should be the last thing you forget. Can you imagine forgetting your own name? Even asleep you don’t forget it. If all three thousand of you go to sleep and I suddenly come and call “Rama,” nobody else will hear it, but Rama will say, “Don’t disturb me. Let me sleep. Somehow I have managed to sleep a little bit, fighting with the mosquitoes, but now you are here, calling me.” Nobody else will hear it, but Rama, even in his sleep, knows that is his name.Edison once forgot his own name. He was standing in a queue during the First World War; he had gone to get his rations. When Edison’s number came up, the man on the counter looked here and there, and asked, “Where is Thomas Alva Edison?”Somebody in the queue said to Edison, “If I’m not mistaken, you are Thomas Alva Edison.”Edison said, “You must be right. I suspected it too. The name seemed familiar, but I was thinking maybe it’s a friend’s name, or some other name I’m familiar with.”Our whole education system is built around memory, not intelligence: stuff more and more information into the memory, and make the man into a machine. Our universities are factories where men are reduced to machines. Twenty-five years are wasted – one-third of your life – in making you into a machine. And then it becomes really difficult to unwind you, to make you a man again.That is my trouble, and my work here. You come as machines, very uptight, full of memories, information, knowledgeability; absolutely in the head, hung up in there. You have lost all contact with your heart and your being. To pull you down toward the heart, and then toward the being, is a really difficult task.But in a better world this will not be needed. Education should help people to become more and more intelligent, not more and more repetitive. Right now education is repetition: you cram in whatsoever nonsense is told to you, and then you vomit it out on the examination papers – and the better you vomit the more marks you get. There is only one thing you have to remember: be repetitive, repeat exactly. Don’t add anything, don’t delete anything, don’t be inventive, don’t be original.Originality is killed, repetitiveness praised. And intelligence can only grow in an atmosphere where originality is praised. The goal should not be efficiency, but originality.One morning, Johnny came late to his school in the farming district.“Johnny, why are you late today?” the teacher asked.“I had to bring the bull out to the cow this morning, teacher.”“That’s no excuse,” said the teacher. “Couldn’t your father do that?”“No teacher,” said Johnny. “You’ve got to have the bull.”Meditate over it – you missed it.The last question:Osho,Why should there be a press office in the ashram?Why not?I am an ancient Jew, you know – I answer a question with another question, it is an ancient Jewish habit.Once Adolf Hitler asked a rabbi, “I don’t understand. Whenever anything is asked of you Jews, why do you always answer with another question?”And the rabbi said, “Why not?”I am a modern man; in fact I’m a little ahead of my time. I am going to use every possible means to spread the truth: newspapers, video, tape recorders, films, radio, television, satellite transmission – everything.Buddha had to go to every village. You didn’t ask him, “Why do you go on walking from one village to another?” That was the primitive way of spreading the message. For forty-two years he was traveling and traveling. But to do that now would be foolish.I can be in my room and I can fill the whole earth with my message. Now it would be very unintelligent to go walking from one village to another; Buddha was helpless. If I had been there in Buddha’s time I would have done the same as him. If Buddha were here now he would do the same as me.The Press Office creates a question in many people’s minds – they think truth need not be declared. It needs to be declared. Jesus said to his disciples, “Go in every direction and shout from the housetops. Only then will people hear because people are deaf.”I will not tell you to go and shout from every housetop. Better means are available, man has invented great technology. Everybody else is using that technology, but when it is used for truth, questions start arising. If you use it for business, good; if you use it for politics, good; if you use it for evil, perfectly all right. But if you use it for God, then questions start arising. I am going to use all kinds of media.A new, and rather young, lady teacher had joined the school. One day she found written on the blackboard the words: “Johnny Jones is a passionate bastard. He can kiss and cuddle better than any other boy in the class.”“Who wrote this?” she demanded. After a while, she discovered that Johnny Jones had written it himself.“Right,” she said, “you can stay behind after class.”When he eventually reappeared, several of the other boys clustered round him and asked, “What happened, Johnny? Did she cane you?”“Oh no, nothing like that,” replied Johnny, who was rather a big boy for his age. “But it pays to advertise.”It always pays to advertise, and that is not a new thing either. Krishna Prem has been with Moses as well. He is an ancient pilgrim, he is not here with me for the first time.Moses, standing on the shores of the Red Sea with his press agent, announces, “I am now going to raise my hand and the sea will part so my people can walk across safely. Then I will lower my hand and the sea will come together again.”Elated, Krishna Prem, his press agent, screams, “Baby, you pull that one off and I’ll get you two full pages in the Old Testament!”Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit, the teacher, is near,wake up, wake up!Run to his feet –he is standing close to your head right now.You have slept for millions and millions of years.Why not wake up this morning?There is a flag no one sees blowing in the sky-temple.A blue cloth has been stretched up,it is decorated with the moon and many jewels.The sun and the moon can be seen in that place;when looking at that, bring your mind down to silence.I will tell you the truth:the man who has drunk from that liquid wanders around like someone insane.A poem from J. Krishnamurti:I have no name,I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.I have no shelter;I am as the wandering waters.I have no sanctuary, like the dark gods;Nor am I in the shadow of deep temples.I have no sacred books;Nor am I well-seasoned in tradition.I am not in the incenseMounting on the high altars,Nor in the pomp of ceremonies.I am neither in the graven image,Nor in the rich chant of a melodious voice.I am not bound by theories,Nor corrupted by beliefs.I am not held in the bondage of religions,Nor in the pious agony of their priests.I am not entrapped by philosophies,Nor held in the power of their sects.I am neither low nor high,I am the worshipper and the worshipped.I am free.My song is the song of the riverCalling for the open seas,Wandering, wandering,I am Life.I have no name;I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.Truth has no name, and truth is not confined to any system of thought. Truth is not a theory, a theology, a philosophy. Truth is the experience of that which is.Truth is not intellectual or emotional. Truth is existential. These are the three layers of human consciousness.The first is the intellectual: it theorizes, it spins and weaves beautiful words, but with no meaning at all. It is very cunning, very deceptive. It can make you believe in words as if they have some substance. It talks about God, truth, freedom, love, meditation, but it only talks; it is just words and words and words. Those words are empty shells; if you look deep down into them they are hollow.This part of human consciousness goes on decorating; it uses jargon, to hide its inner emptiness. And our whole education – social, religious, cultural – consists only of words; it only cultivates the intellectual part of our being, which is the most superficial. Through the intellect you cannot reach the divine, through the intellect you will be lost in a jungle of words; that’s how millions of people are lost. Between you and the divine the greatest barrier is your so-called intellect. Remember, your intellect is not intelligence. Intelligence is a totally different matter.Intellect is a pseudo coin; it pretends to be intelligence but it is not. And because you don’t know the real you are easily deceived by the unreal, by the pseudo. Beware of the intellectual layer of your being, it is the most developed; that is the danger. The most superficial is the most cultivated. The most superficial is the most nourished. From school to university the superficial is being nourished, strengthened. And slowly, slowly, you get caught up in it, you become trapped. Then people think about love – they only think, they don’t feel.Krishnamurti relates an incident which happened when he was traveling in a car. The car accidentally knocked down a poor animal, but the two people in the car did not notice what had happened because they were engrossed in a conversation on how to be aware. This is the situation of the majority of humanity.God is present everywhere. Wherever you turn, he is. Open your eyes, he is, close your eyes and he is – because nothing else exists. God means isness.Anything that participates in existence is divine. But you don’t see. You go on talking about God, discussing. You have become so clever at hair-splitting, at logic-chopping; you can repeat like parrots the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible; you have become so full of rubbish – which you call knowledge. You have to be aware of this dangerous layer that surrounds you like a hard shell.Krishnamurti is right when he says:I have no name…The word God is not God, and the word love is not love either. If you become too engrossed in the word God you will go on missing godliness forever. If you become too intrigued by the word love then you will go to the library, you will consult all the books – and there are millions written about love by people who don’t know anything about it – and you will collect great amounts of information about love. But to know about love is not to know love. Knowing love is a totally different dimension.Knowledge about love is very simple; you can become a walking encyclopedia. You can know all the theories of love without ever testing any theory by experience, without ever living a single moment of love, without tasting what love is.…I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.God is neither old nor new – or God is both the most ancient and as fresh as the dewdrops in the early morning sun. Because only God is. God is nontemporal; it does not belong to the dimension of time. Hence you cannot call it old or new – it is fresh, virgin. You need not go into the scriptures. But you certainly have to go into the breeze that is passing through the pine trees, you certainly have to go into the fragrance that is being released by the flowers. Now! You have to go into this moment with your total being, you have to relax herenow, and all the scriptures will be revealed to you. The Vedas and the Gitas and the Korans will be sung in the deepest core of your being. Then you will know that all the scriptures are true. But first your own inner scripture has to be known, understood.I have no shelter;I am as the wandering waters.God is life. Hence God is movement, hence God is in constant change. That is the paradox of existence – it is something that never changes and yet constantly changes. At the innermost core everything remains the same, but on the circumference nothing is ever the same. God is change and no-change. God is eternity and flux.If you look at the world, you look at the manifest God, which is in constant change – it is like a river moving and moving – but if you look at the unmanifest, then God is always the same. God is both. This world is not separate from God. You need not go in search of him anywhere else; he is hidden here, he is playing hide-and-seek here.I have no sanctuary; like the dark gods;Nor am I in the shadow of deep temples.I have no sacred books;Nor am I well-seasoned in tradition.Religion has nothing to do with tradition or sacred books, religion has something to do with existential experience. Your first layer is intellectual – that has nothing to do with religion. You have to bypass it, you have to jump out of it.Your second layer is emotional, the layer of feeling, where intuitions arise, visions are revealed, dreams of the unknown descend; where poetry is born, and dance, and song. It is closer to God. The intellectual layer is perfectly good for the mundane world, for the marketplace. It is calculation, mathematics; it can become science, technology. It has its uses – use it, but don’t be used by it. The second layer is closer to God, it is the layer of feeling.The first layer is masculine, the second layer is feminine. The first layer is aggressive, the second layer is receptive. The first layer believes in action, the second layer is a tremendous passivity. It is like a womb. It is an open door, it is a deep welcome. The first goes in search of truth in a very aggressive way; it thinks in terms of conquering.Even a man like Bertrand Russell writes about “the conquest of nature.” Bertrand Russell remained confined to the first layer. He had the intrinsic capacity to go far deeper into reality, but he remained concerned with words, logic, mathematics. He thought in terms of conquering nature: how the part could conquer the whole, how the drop could conquer the ocean, how the leaf could conquer the tree. It is utter nonsense. The very idea of conquest is ugly, but that’s how the male part of your being thinks. It is aggressive, it is violent, it is destructive, it is coercive, it is possessive, it is imperialistic.The second layer is intuitive, of feeling, dreaming. The second layer is poetic, aesthetic, of deep sensitivity. It is totally different, its approach is different – it does not analyze. The first part believes in analysis, the second part synthesizes.Sigmund Freud remained with the first part, Assagioli moved to the second. Hence Sigmund Freud could create psychoanalysis, but Assagioli could introduce the totally new concept of psychosynthesis. Obviously Sigmund Freud looks more scientific, more logical, rational. Assagioli looks like a visionary, a poet, but he goes deeper. Poetry always goes deeper than prose. Singing always goes deeper than syllogism.Become aware of the second layer in you, help it to revive. Society has repressed it, society does not want it to function. Society is afraid of the second layer because it is irrational, uncontrollable, unpredictable; because the second layer cannot be reduced to mechanical manipulations. The first layer is easily available for the politician, the priest to dominate; it is easily available for the educator, the pedagogue to condition, to hypnotize. The second is not available. The second is so deep that the hands of the priest and the politician and the pedagogue cannot reach it. You have to help your second layer to become more prominent. The emphasis has to shift from the first to the second. And the second is not the last, the second is only the door. The third is the last. The third layer is that of being.The first layer is intellectual, the second is emotional, the third is existential. With the first you think, with the second you feel, with the third you are. With the third, thinking disappears, feeling disappears. Only a kind of witnessing remains, a pure consciousness, an awareness. That’s what meditation is all about.All sacred scriptures are in the head; and all your rituals, religions, are in the head. Your rituals, your religions, your theologies don’t even reach the second layer. If you want to reach the second you will have to learn from the painters and the poets, and the singers, musicians, dancers. You will have to go into the world of art. But if you want to go to the third layer you will have to go into deep communion with a master – and without going to the third you will never know what God is.Only a mystic can make you attuned with your own innermost being. Only one who is in at-onement with his own being can infect you. Religion is something like a contagious disease. It is not a disease, it is health, ultimate health, but health can become as contagious as any illness.Religion has to be learned in the vicinity of a master. It cannot be learned from traditions, from scriptures. You need somebody alive so that you can be in love, somebody alive whose presence can trigger a process in your being. It cannot be taught, it can only be caught.I am not in the incenseMounting on high altars,Nor in the pomp of ceremonies.I am neither in the graven image,Nor in the rich chant of a melodious voice.I am not bound by theories,Nor corrupted by beliefs.I am not held in the bondage of religions,Nor in the pious agony of their priests.I am not entrapped by philosophies,Nor held in the power of their sects.I am neither low nor high,I am the worshipper and the worshipped.This statement is of tremendous value: “I am the worshipper and the worshipped.” You are the seeker and the sought, you are the devotee and the deity, you are the temple and the master of the temple. You need not go anywhere. If you need to go anywhere it is only inward, into your own interiority.I am neither low nor high,I am the worshipper and the worshipped.I am free.My song is the song of the riverCalling for the open seas,Wandering, wandering,I am Life.These words will help as an introduction, to understand Kabir.Kabir says:My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit, the teacher, is near,wake up, wake up!The original is:Parmatma guru nikat viraje,jag jag man mere…Your real master, your God, is very close by. You need not go to the Kaaba or to Kashi in search of him. He is so close that even to say that he is close by is not right because closeness means a little distance. He is exactly you. God asleep – that’s what you are. If you awake, you need not go anywhere else.The difference between you and a buddha is not the difference of any physical distance, is not the difference of any quantitative change. The difference is of only one thing, otherwise you are exactly the same: you are asleep, he is awake. Open your eyes and you are a buddha, be awake and you are a buddha.Paramatma guru nikat viraje… For whom are you searching? He is just within you and he is the real master. The outer master only functions as a mirror; he simply shows you who you are. He does not impose anything upon you, he only reflects.The pseudo-master imposes things upon you. He teaches you this and that, he conditions you, makes you a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian; creates great greed in you for the other world, for heavenly pleasures, makes you afraid of hell. He uses a very psychological strategy.That’s what the most materialistic school of psychologists – Watson, Skinner, Pavlov – goes on teaching. The behaviorists’ whole teaching is that man can be conditioned by only two things, fear of punishment and greed for reward; punishment and reward. That’s how they work with rats, and when they succeed in conditioning a rat they think the same can be done to a man. They don’t give you any more respect than they give to the rats. And in a way they are right; for about ninety-nine percent of you they are right. They are not right only when a person is awake; they are not right about a buddha. Otherwise humanity functions almost like rats, there is not much difference. The rats function through punishment and reward, and that’s how man functions.The false master simply makes you afraid of hell, greedy for heaven, and through this strategy he exploits you. The real master does not make you afraid and does not make you greedy either. What is the function of a real master then?The function of a real master is to be a pure mirror so that you can see your own face, so you can recognize your own face. Once you have seen your own heart throbbing in the mirror, your own heart being reflected, you will become aware of the inner master.The function of the outer master is to make you aware of the inner master. Once that is done then the outer mirror is no longer needed. You may remain grateful to it because it helped you, you may remain thankful to it forever and ever, but it is no longer needed. The real master works hard so that he is no longer needed. His success simply makes him unneeded.The false master works in such a way that he is always needed, that without him you cannot move a single inch. He makes you dependent on him. He does not give you awareness – eyes to see, to function – he gives you ready-made formulas. And of course life goes on changing, and those formulas go out of date every day.I have heard…A rich man was suspicious of his secretary and asked if she was fooling around. She was not only adamant that she wasn’t, she became stubborn and very angry, saying “I’m a virgin!”The man said, “Then produce a doctor’s certificate.”She managed somehow to get a certificate that she was a virgin – she bribed a doctor – and brought the certificate to her boss. He looked at it, then looked at the secretary and said, “But it’s dated yesterday…”Twenty-four hours had passed. Who knows? One can lose one’s virginity within seconds.And that’s how it happens in your life: whenever fixed, ready-made answers are given to you they are dated, they are always lagging behind. If you ask me how to behave in a certain situation and I give you a particular answer, you will always be in trouble and dependent on me; because the same situation is never going to happen again – never exactly – and the answer is never going to fit any particular situation. You will always be a misfit. Your whole life will become a great misery of trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Your whole life will be a long, long story of frustration; you will worry why your life is not working.You can see that nothing seems to be working for Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Jainas, Buddhists – their lives are proof of it. What more proof is needed? What Mahavira said is now twenty-five centuries old, how can it fit in this world? But people are still trying, they don’t take note that twenty-five centuries have passed.Mahavira said not to eat at night. He said it so that insects – mosquitoes and anything else – were not eaten: people used to eat in the dark. They still do in India; in villages, they eat in the dark. The people are so poor that they cannot afford even a kerosene lamp. Mahavira was not aware that one day there would be electricity, how could he have been? Now, there is no problem at all, but still the Jaina goes on insisting that he cannot eat at night.Once I was staying at the home of a very religious Jaina in Kolkata, a very rich man, and a very beautiful man too. He had a completely soundproofed, centrally air-conditioned palace, but he would not eat at night. I said, “Why? No mosquito can enter, no insects can enter. Why not?” – just because Mahavira said so. This is what happens when people become too obsessed with principles.The real master never gives you principles, he only gives you insights. He gives you understanding, not commandments. He simply makes you more aware, so that whatsoever the situation is, you can always respond to it on your own; you need not follow a certain fixed principle. He makes you more fluid, more flexible because life goes on changing and if you are very, very inflexible you will suffer.Parmatma guru nikat viraje, jag jag man mere… Kabir says, the only thing worth doing is to wake up my mind. God, the real guru, is inside.The word guru is untranslatable. Neither the word teacher nor the word master has its beauty. In fact, the phenomenon of the guru is so deeply Indian that no other language, of any country, is capable of translating it. It is something intrinsically Eastern. The word guru is made of two words, gu and ru. Gu means darkness, ru means one who dispels it. Guru literally means “the light.” And yes, you have the light within you!If you come across a Buddha or a Jesus or a Krishna or a Mahavira, it will be of tremendous help to you in finding your inner guru. Because seeing Buddha, suddenly a great enthusiasm and hope will arise in you: “If it can happen to Buddha” – who is just like you, the same body, the same blood, bone, marrow – “if it can happen to this man, why not to me?” That hope is the beginning. Meeting with the master on the outside is the beginning of a great hope, a great aspiration.And this can happen only if you meet a living master. It cannot happen just by reading about Buddha because who knows whether this man was real or not? And the story is being told in such a way that nobody can believe he was historical. Followers are always creating more and more unnecessary stories about their masters. Maybe they do it with good intentions, but even the good intentions of unconscious people are of no use; they are harmful. Maybe the followers want to impress people so they become more attracted, but what really happens is just the opposite.The Buddhist story is that when Buddha was born his mother was standing, walking in a garden. Buddha was born while his mother was walking. Not only that, the first thing he did was walk seven steps himself. The first thing the child did – walk seven steps. And not just that, the second thing he did was declare, looking at the sky after the seventh step, “I am the awakened one, I am the great Buddha. Nobody has ever been like me and nobody will ever be like me.”Now, these stupid stories naturally make intelligent people suspicious. One thing is absolutely certain: Buddha is not like us – so maybe, perhaps, he became enlightened, but he gives no hope to us. Jesus was born of a virgin mother – nonsense, patent nonsense. But how can you become enlightened? – you were not born of a virgin mother. Krishna was born as God, he is an incarnation of God – you are not an incarnation of God. These stories, rather than creating hope in you, create a kind of hopelessness.You need living masters who have not yet become myths. You need living masters who are just like you and yet different, just like you but with something plus, something mysterious surrounding them; in every other way the same as you, but different in one respect: they have a certain understanding which is missing in you, they have a certain luminosity which is missing in you, they have a certain grace, a certain climate which is missing in you. In every other way they are exactly like you: they fall ill, they need food, they become thirsty, they are tired, they have to go to sleep; they are exactly like you in every possible way. Then great hope arises: maybe the “something plus” thing that has happened to them is also latent in you and can become manifest.The outer master is simply a mirror so that you can see your face, so you can see that you also have the same face, the same possibility, the same potential. And once this has settled in your heart: “I also have the same potential, the same seed,” a great journey has started. You will never be the same again. Looking into the eyes of a living master something synchronizes in you, something is triggered in your being – a process has already started.My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit, the teacher, is near, wake up, wake up! But we have been asleep so long, for millions of years, for millions of lives, that sleep has become a deep-rooted habit, almost our nature. So it is even possible that you may be with a living master and still miss because the mind goes on creating new ways to go on sleeping, new rationalizations. The mind will say, “Now I have found a guru, I have found a master. What more is needed? It is enough. Now by his blessings I will become enlightened one day.”This is a trick of the mind. Blessings are of immense help, but just blessings will not make you enlightened. Otherwise one master could make the whole earth enlightened because his heart is not miserly about blessings. He can bless the whole world – he does bless the whole world – but just his blessings won’t do. The mind can give you the idea that there is no need for you to wake up; the mind always thinks in its own old patterns.A teacher was checking her children’s knowledge of proverbs.“Cleanliness is next to what?” she asked.“Impossible!” a small boy replied with great feeling.The boy knows that the most difficult thing, just about impossible, is cleanliness. His response comes from his experience.When you are with a living master, your responses are bound to come from your own experience. But there is every possibility you may distort things. The master may mirror your real face, but you may close your eyes, you may start dreaming about your face, you may project something else.“What did you learn in school today?” a mother asked her young son.He replied, “We learned that one and one, the son of a bitch, makes two. Two and two, the son of a bitch, makes four. Four and four, the son of a bitch, makes eight.”The mother was shocked. She went to the school and complained to the teacher, “How could you teach your class such a terrible thing?”“Madam,” said the teacher, “I taught them ‘one and one, the sum of which makes two.’”The real master can also be misunderstood, misinterpreted. He may reflect your face, but you may go on seeing something else. You have been asleep so long that you will need to be shocked again and again.Hence, a constant companionship with the master is needed; it can’t be a hit-and-run affair. Some people come here and they say, “We have come here for three days. Is something possible?” They don’t see the absurdity of it. They don’t see how long they have been asleep; they want to be awakened within three days. In fact, by the way they say that they are here for three days, it seems as if they are obliging me by being here for three days. Even if you became awakened after three lives, that would be too early. And yes, still I say it can happen in a single moment – it depends on you.There is a story…Two soldiers, utterly drunk, meet in a training camp. “Where are you from?” inquires the first soldier.“Mobile, Alabama.” replies the second soldier.“Mobile?” exclaims the first. “Why, I’m from Mobile.”“What street in Mobile do you live on?” asks the second.“Main Street and Elm Avenue,” replies the other.“That’s where I live too!” says the second southern lad. “I live at 1195 Main Street.”“Me too! Say, are you married?” asks the other.“Sure am,” replies the second soldier. “Married a gal whose name was Daisy MacLee.”“So did I!” gasps the first soldier. Then he pauses for a moment. “Hey,” he drawls, “you reckon we could be husbands-in-law?”The fact is there are not two soldiers, only one, standing in front of a mirror. But when you are utterly drunk anything is possible. When you are utterly drunk, you need constant hammering from the master. And the truth is not far away:My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit, the teacher, is near,wake up, wake up!Run to his feet –he is standing close to your head right now.The original is:…dhaya ke pitam charanan lage,sai khada sir tere…The original has some beauty in it: …dhaya ke pitam charanan lage… Don’t waste time, not even a single moment. Run, fall at the feet of the beloved. He has been standing there for so long, waiting and waiting for you. For lives and lives God has been waiting for you; his patience is infinite.There are only two things that are infinite: God’s patience and man’s stupidity. If you are fortunate enough to be in the presence of a master, look into his eyes and rush inward. Don’t waste time.…dhaya ke pitam charanan lage… The beloved is within you, the worshipper is the worshipped. The beloved is within you; you just need to go to the very core of your being. Descend from the head to the heart, and from the heart to the being. Move from thinking to feeling and from feeling to being. Just be! That is the meeting with the beloved. And the meeting is already happening, you are just not aware, you are unconscious.Run to his feet – he is standing close to your head right now. Without finding him you will remain dissatisfied, discontented. Whatsoever you do, everything is doomed to fail. Except God nothing succeeds.They say, “Nothing succeeds like success,” and I say to you: nothing fails like success. Once you succeed in your so-called worldly matters – money, power, prestige, respectability – then you will know that all has failed. Your money is there and so is your inner poverty; it has not changed an iota. In fact now, because of your riches, you will become more and more aware of your inner poverty, you will be able to see it more in contrast.That’s why poor people look a little more satisfied than the rich. Not that the poor people are satisfied, not that poverty has something spiritual about it, not that poverty should be preached – enough of all those stupid things that have been told to people down the ages. The poor person looks a little more satisfied for a totally different reason: he has nothing to compare himself with, he has no contrast. He is a white line drawn on a white board. The rich man is a white line drawn on a black board – a contrast.The richer a country gets, the more frustrated it becomes. Indians brag a lot: they think their satisfaction, their so-called contentment, has something to do with spirituality. It has nothing to do with spirituality at all. It is a simple psychological fact: they are so poor they cannot afford to be discontented. Only rich people can afford to be discontented. Only rich people really become aware of discontentment.But one thing is certain: whatsoever you attain, if you have not attained the inner beloved, you will remain poor. You can become rich, you can become respectable, you can become virtuous, you can become a so-called saint, a mahatma, be worshipped by thousands of people, but you will remain in misery deep down, you will remain in darkness.No one is ever satisfied. Poor men wish they were rich, rich men wish they were handsome, bachelors wish they were married, and married men wish they were dead, and so it goes, on and on. Have you ever come across a person who is really contented? If you do come across a person who is really contented, then be with him, imbibe as much of the vibes of his being as possible because that is the only way to find your inner beloved. The person who is contented must have found him.Buddhas are surrounded by tremendous contentment, a great silence, almost tangible; you can touch it, you can feel its texture. Buddhas are surrounded by great grace; if you are not closed you will be overwhelmed by it. Buddhas are just pure love; if your hearts are open and beating, if you are still alive, then immediately a great dance will arise in your being. You will start celebrating immediately because on seeing the buddha you will immediately become aware of the inner buddha – it has been asleep for so long, but so what? Even if you have been asleep for millions of lives it makes no difference, you can wake up right now, this very moment.Kabir says:You have slept for millions and millions of years.Why not wake up this morning?…jugan jugan tohi sobat bita,ajahu na jag sabere?Don’t be foolish anymore. The time has come, this is the time. Buddhas always speak of this moment. …ajahu na jag sabere? The morning has come. This is the morning for which you have been waiting for so long, this is the moment. Buddhas know only one time, that is now, and only one place, that is here. Their time is always now and their space is always here. They don’t talk about yesterdays and they don’t talk about tomorrows.…ajahu na jag sabere? The morning has come, and you are still asleep? Are you not going to wake up? Are you not going to wake up and see the sun rising? You have missed for so long, so long; but forget all about that – you can still wake up, it is still early. Whenever you wake up, it is early.The weight of old habits is not easy to throw off. You listen, you may even feel a little understanding arising, but still your investment is in sleep. You have been dreaming such beautiful dreams in your sleep and now suddenly Kabir comes and says, “Wake up!” You would like to awake, but not right now – and the masters insist, right now. They don’t want to wait, they start shaking you. You feel angry, naturally. All the great buddhas of the world have created anger in people against them for the simple reason that they disturb sleep, and who wants to be disturbed? Particularly in the early morning when it is cold and you would like to turn over, pull the blanket up and tuck yourself in just a little more.And people have such beautiful dreams in the early morning. You are having a beautiful dream: you have become the president of America or something, and along comes Kabir and says, “Wake up! …ajahu na jag sabere? The morning has come, and what are you doing here?”You would like to tell him, “Shut up. Is this the moment to wake me up? It has been a hard, hard struggle for me to become the president of America. Somehow I have managed it, and now you come. Where were you before?” The weight of the dreams, of the sleep, all the investment, is great.A man arrived at the Pearly Gates. On being asked his name he replied, “Charlie Graball.”“I don’t think we had any notice that you were coming,” he was informed. “What was your occupation in earthly life?”“Scrap metal merchant,” Charlie said.“Oh,” said the angel, “I will go and inquire.”When he returned Charlie Graball had disappeared. So had the Pearly Gates.Old habits – a scrap metal merchant, even at the gates of heaven. Who cares about heaven? When you can escape with the gates, who bothers about heaven?And this is the reason you go on finding new excuses for sleeping. You would not believe how much you have invested in your sleep. And the most cunning thing the mind does is make you convinced that you are not asleep at all, that you are already awake: “Kabir must be talking to somebody else.”That’s what happens when I am talking here – you always think I must be talking about other people. I am talking about you! Sometimes it happens that when I keep on looking at one person, for two, three seconds, he starts looking here and there: “He must be looking at somebody else.” Because nobody thinks that they are Charlie Graball. No, it is always somebody else. This is one of the most powerful strategies of the mind to keep you asleep.Gurdjieff used to tell this story again and again…Once there was a magician who had many sheep. Every day a fat sheep was killed for him. Of course, the sheep became alert – they are not as foolish as men. They knew one thing for certain, that they were all going to be killed one day or another. So the sheep started escaping into the hills, into the forests. The magician was at a loss as to what to do; the sheep were becoming aware of their destiny.Then he invented a strategy: he gathered all the sheep, hypnotized them and told different sheep different things. For example, he told some, “You are exceptional, you are not ordinary sheep. What happens to the others is never going to happen to you.” From that day on those sheep stopped escaping. You could have killed another sheep in front of them, and they would not be afraid because they knew they were exceptional.Just watch your mind deep down: you all have that idea, “I am exceptional.” One Arabian proverb says that when God creates a man and sends him into the world, before he drops him down he always whispers in his ear: “You are unique, exceptional.” God goes on playing this joke, and so every person carries “I am exceptional,” deep down in his heart. That’s why you can see someone dying, but you never think, “I am going to die.” It is always someone else who dies, it is never “I”: “I am exceptional.”To some other sheep that he hypnotized, the magician said, “You are lions, you are not sheep at all.” And from that day on they too stopped escaping. They started roaring like lions.To yet other sheep he said, “You are not sheep, you are men. You are here to keep all the other sheep imprisoned. You are here to help me, you are my friends.” From that day on those sheep became detectives, working against their own kind. They would inform the magician if a certain sheep was trying to escape.And to other sheep he even said, “You are magicians – not only men but magicians. You can do miracles. You are immortal.”Once he had done all this, no sheep were escaping – and every day they were butchered.And every day you are butchered. Every day somebody dies, somebody is killed, somebody is murdered, somebody commits suicide. Every day it is going on, but somehow, deep down, you go on believing you are exceptional. When somebody goes mad you think, “Poor fellow,” you don’t think that you also can go mad. But the difference between you and mad people is not much; it is very nominal, very minimal, only a matter of degrees. Maybe you are at ninety-nine degrees and he is at a hundred and one – just one degree more, you cross the boundary and are mad. Only one day earlier that person was as normal as you are – now he is mad. Today you are normal, tomorrow you could be mad. But in our deep sleep we have auto-hypnotized ourselves. This auto-hypnosis is what is meant by sleep, metaphysical sleep.…jugan jugan tohi sobat bita, ajahu na jag sabere? How long have you remained auto-hypnotized, in a deep metaphysical slumber? The dawn has come. Now wake up. It is time. Don’t postpone anymore, you have postponed enough.Why not wake up this morning?There is a flag no one sees blowing, in the gagan, in the sky-temple.A blue cloth has been stretched up,it is decorated with the moon and many jewels.Gagan math gaib nisan ure,chandrahar chandva jahan tange,mukata-manik marhe…If you wake up, you will be surprised that you are living in such a tremendously beautiful world. But how can you know the beauty of it if you are asleep? You are not aware of the splendor that is showering all around. You are not aware of the glories of life, of the benediction that life is. How can you be aware of it? You are so deeply asleep, you are dreaming your private dreams, utterly unaware that the whole of existence is a constant celebration.There is a flag no one sees blowing in the sky-temple. A blue cloth has been stretched up, it is decorated with the moon and many jewels. It is a very mysterious existence. You cannot conceive more mystery, more miracles, more splendor, more beauty. It is the ultimate of all that one can imagine, but we are missing it. It is as if a man is asleep in the garden and cannot see the roses blooming, and cannot hear the distant call of a lonely bird, and cannot see the bird on the wing, cannot see the sun and the moon and the stars. He is fast asleep. The fragrance from the roses comes to his nostrils, but he is not aware of it; the fragrance of the wet earth, but he is unaware; the dewdrops shining like pearls in the morning sun, but he is unaware of it, he is fast asleep. This is our situation.Why not wake up this morning? …ajahu na jag sabere? Morning is knocking on your door, the sun is rising, the call has come, and you go on sleeping? This is the master’s work: hammering his disciples, going on hammering. Any moment the disciple may wake up. There are moments when you are more vulnerable, there are moments when you are more flexible, more feminine; and there are moments when you are very hard, impossible to penetrate. Hence the master goes on hammering every day. He goes on, without taking any notice of whether you are listening or not. He knows one thing: that ultimately everybody has to listen. Finally, everybody has to listen.The sun and the moon can be seen in that place;when looking at that, bring your mind down to silence.…mahima tasu dekh man thir kar,ravi-sasi jot jare…Kabir says, if you can do only one thing, if you can attain to silence, you will know the splendor of God. …mahima tasu dekh… You can see that splendor, you can see that infinite beauty. That joy is yours. Just do one thing, become silent. It is another way of saying wake up – the mind remains asleep because of so many thoughts. Sleep simply means a continuous thought process inside you, a procession of thoughts, a continuous traffic. And it is always rush hour in there: day in, day out, thousands of thoughts and desires and imaginations and projections and memories go on rushing in a crowd. You are always surrounded by a big crowd – this is your sleep.The inner talk has to stop. You can call it being awake, you can call it being silent – it is the same thing. To be silent is the way to be awake, or to be awake is the way to be silent; both methods have been used. Buddha uses the method of being silent so that you can be aware. Krishnamurti uses the method of being aware so that you can be silent. They are two aspects of the same coin; if you have one you will have the other automatically.…mahima tasu dekh man thir kar… Stop this constant traffic of the mind, stop these thought processes. Then you can see the infinite beauty. …ravi-sasi jot jare… You will see the sun and the moon and the stars inside yourself. The whole sky is yours. And even the sky is not the limit – you are all. If you are ready to die as a drop, you will become the ocean.I will tell you the truth:the man who has drunk from that liquid wanders around likesomeone insane.This world is almost a madhouse. To be sane here will look like being insane.H. G. Wells wrote a story…There is a valley somewhere in Mexico, hidden deep in the mountains, where a small tribe lives. They are all blind. There is a fly found in that valley, and once a person is bitten by that fly he becomes blind. Every child is born with eyes, but it is difficult to avoid the flies; they are very common, every house is full of them. So sooner or later a child is going to be bitten by a fly and become blind. Maybe one day, two days, three days, at the most a week or two; if a child is very fortunate then one month, two months, three months. By the time he becomes a little conscious he finds himself already blind. So the whole community is blind.A man from another community comes to visit. He has heard rumors, but he cannot believe that the whole community is blind. He sees, and he cannot believe his eyes. And he falls in love with a blind girl. But her community won’t allow them to be married. It has never happened before, there is no precedent. They cannot believe that he has eyes. They think he is mad. And of course they are in the majority. Nobody has ever heard of eyes – what is he talking about? Rainbows and colors and the sun and moon – who has ever heard of such things? He must be mad, utterly mad.But the man is so in love and the girl is so in love that finally the community concedes, but with a condition. They say, “We have never before allowed a girl to marry someone from another community. This is happening for the first time. We will allow you to marry our girl, but with one condition: we will have to destroy your so-called eyes. We cannot allow our girl to be married to a madman. Only if you are ready to be blind, as you think we are, can you marry the girl.”Their logic is right – if they have never heard of anybody having eyes, how can they believe?Kahlil Gibran wrote a similar story…A magician came into a town. He chanted a few mantras, threw something into the town well, and said, “Whosoever drinks the water of this well will go mad.” Now there were only two wells: one for the common people and one inside the palace for the king, his queen and his ministers. By evening the whole town had become mad – they had to drink the water from the town well.The king was very happy, the queen was very happy: they had a special well – otherwise they also would have gone mad. But in the evening their happiness started to disappear because a rumor went round the town: “Our king has gone mad.” The king and queen became very frightened and scared in fact. The majority of people had gone mad, the king’s guards, the policemen, the army, everybody. Now only three people were left: the king, his queen and his prime minister. It was very dangerous, there was no protection now and the whole town was convinced that these three people had gone mad. The king asked the old prime minister, “Now what do we do?”The prime minister said, “I will keep these people engaged, I will talk to them. You and your wife go out by the back door and drink from the town well. Later on I will go and drink from it. This is the only way.”The king and queen went out by the back door. They drank from the town well… Of course, then they didn’t come back in by the back door, they came dancing in the front door! The people were rejoicing, they had never seen them in such a state. That night there was a great celebration in the town. The people thanked God that “Our our king and queen are sane again.”This is the situation. The whole world is insane, hence the man of godliness looks insane. The whole world is neurotic, they have drunk from the well, the contaminated well. But they are in the majority. Now anybody who is not mad like them is a danger to their security, is a danger to their sanity, is a question mark. Not to be neurotic here, just to be healthy and whole, is very dangerous. The presence of anybody who is not mad is irritating, he has to be destroyed. Hence, you crucify Jesus, you kill Mansoor. That’s why thousands of people are against me, for the simple reason that they are neurotic.Kabir says: I will tell you the truth… I will not tell you to wake up without telling you the truth. He is saying, “Let me tell you the truth: if you decide to wake up one thing is certain – you will be thought mad. You have to take that risk. Otherwise you will go on sleeping, go on dreaming, remain part of the mad crowd. But please don’t blame me later on.” That’s why Kabir says, I will tell you the truth… if you decide to wake up. Maybe listening to Kabir or to Buddha or to me, you start deciding to wake up. The truth has to be told beforehand, before you decide to wake up.…the man who has drunk from that liquid wanders around like someone insane. You have to risk your so-called sanity. It is insanity – but you will have to risk it, and you will have to be ready to accept the world of the few sane people. They are very few – Mansoor and Jesus and Buddha and Kabir and Farid and Nanak… They are very few, they can be counted on the fingers. If you wake up you will become part of that small, fortunate minority, but you will be thought insane by the people.…kahe Kabir piye joi jan, mana firat mare.Not only that, you will live like a madman in the world; you will also die like a madman. But it is worth it, the risk is worth taking. It is better to be mad like Kabir than to be sane like Morarji Desai. It is better to be mad like Jesus than to be sane like Pontius Pilate. It is a great decision; guts are needed, great courage is needed.Sannyas – initiation into the world of truth – is not for cowards. Cowards can go on rationalizing, cowards can go on sleeping, dreaming. Cowards can even start dreaming that they are awake, but they will not risk anything. They remain part of the mob, the insane crowd. And of course their lives will remain ones of misery, of pain, of agony.If you want to be ecstatic, risk – risk all. Only by risking all does one attain all. Blessed are those who are drunk with God. Blessed are those who are mad for God. Blessed are those who are no longer part of the insane crowd but have learned a new way of insanity – the way of the buddhas.…kahe Kabir piye joi jan… It is very rare that somebody decides to risk all because it is very rare for someone to be so courageous, so brave. …mana firat mare. Then he lives like a madman, in utter ecstasy, in absolute benediction; and he dies in utter ecstasy, in absolute benediction. Life can be a celebration – and death too, but you will need to risk all.And that’s what my whole effort here is: to seduce you into risking all for the divine. Remember, you have slept enough and you have not found anything, you have dreamed enough and your hands are empty, you have thought enough, and where have you arrived? Now wake up.Friend, now wake up!Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Never belonged, never been on the “inside,” never felt “at one” with another.Why such a loner all my life?Madhura, life is a mystery, but you can reduce it to a problem. And once you make a mystery a problem you will be in difficulty because there can be no solution to it. A mystery remains a mystery, it is insoluble – that’s why it is called a mystery.Life is not a problem: this is one of the most basic mistakes we all go on committing – we immediately put a question mark on it. And if you put a question mark on a mystery, you will be searching for the answer your whole life and you will not find it. Naturally it brings great frustration.My observation is that you are a born meditator. Rather than making it a problem, rejoice! Not to belong is one of the greatest experiences in life. To be utterly an outsider, never feeling a part of anything, is a great experience of transcendence.An American finally decided to go and see a Sufi master. For many years he had been hearing about him and he had fallen in deep love with his words, his message. When he entered the master’s room he was surprised – it was an utterly empty room. The master was sitting on the floor; there was no furniture at all. The American could not conceive of a living space without any furniture. He immediately asked, “Where is your furniture, sir?”The old Sufi laughed and said, “And where is yours?”The American said, “I cannot come carrying furniture! I am a tourist here.”And the old man said, “So am I. I am just a tourist too. I am here for only a few days and then I will be gone, just as you will be gone.”This world is just a pilgrimage – of great significance, but not a place to belong to, not a place to become part of. Remain a lotus leaf, as Kabir says.This is one of the calamities that has happened to the human mind: we make a problem out of everything. Don’t call yourself a “loner.” This should be something of immense joy to you. You are using the wrong word because the very word connotes some condemnation. You are alone, and the word alone has great beauty. You are not even lonely. To be lonely means you are in need of the other; to be alone means you are utterly rooted in yourself, centered in yourself. You are enough unto yourself. You have not yet accepted this gift of existence, hence you are suffering unnecessarily. And this is my observation: millions of people go on suffering unnecessarily.Look at it from another perspective. I am not giving you an answer, I never give any answers. I simply give you new perspectives to see, new angles. Think of yourself as a born meditator who is capable of being alone, who is strong enough to be alone, who is so centered and rooted that the other is not needed at all. Yes, one can relate with the other, but it never becomes a relationship. To relate is perfectly good. Two persons who are both alone can relate, two persons who are both alone cannot be in a relationship.Relationship is the need of those who cannot be alone. Two lonely people fall into a relationship. Two alone people relate, communicate, commune, and yet they remain alone. Their aloneness remains uncontaminated; their aloneness remains virgin, pure. They are like peaks, Himalayan peaks, high in the sky above the clouds. No two peaks ever meet, yet there is a kind of communion, through the wind and through the rain and through the rivers and through the sun and through the stars. Yes, there is a communion; much dialogue goes on. They whisper to each other, but their aloneness remains absolute, they never compromise. Be like an alone peak high in the sky. Why should you hanker to belong? You are not a thing. Things belong.You say, “Never belonged, never been on the inside…” There is no need. To be an insider in this world is to get lost. A worldly person is an insider; a buddha is bound to remain an outsider. All buddha’s are outsiders. Even if they are in the crowd, they are alone. Even if they are in the marketplace, they are not there. Even if they relate, they remain separate. There is a kind of subtle distance that is always there. And that distance is freedom, that distance is great joy, that distance is your own space.And you call yourself a loner. You must be comparing yourself with others: “They are having so many relationships, they are having love affairs. They belong to each other, they are insiders – and I am a loner. Why?” You must be creating anguish unnecessarily. My approach is always: whatsoever existence has given to you must be a subtle necessity of your soul, otherwise it would not have been given in the first place.Think of aloneness more. Celebrate aloneness, celebrate your pure space, and great song will arise in your heart. And it will be a song of awareness, it will be a song of meditation. It will be a song of an alone bird calling in the distance. Not calling to somebody in particular, but just calling because its heart is full and it wants to call, because the cloud is full and wants to rain, because the flower is full, the petals open and the fragrance is released – unaddressed. Let your aloneness become a dance. And Madhura is a dancer. I am utterly happy with you, Madhura. If you stop creating problems for yourself. I don’t see that there are any real problems.The only problem is, people go on creating problems. Problems are never solved, they are only dissolved. I am giving you a perspective, a vision. Dissolve your problem. Accept it as a gift of existence and live it with great gratitude. You will be surprised: what a precious gift, and you have not even appreciated it yet; what a precious gift, and it is lying there in your heart, unappreciated. Dance your aloneness, sing your aloneness, live your aloneness.And I am not saying don’t love. In fact, only a person who is capable of being alone is capable of love. Lonely persons cannot love. Their need is so much that they cling – how can they love? Lonely persons cannot love, they can only exploit. Lonely persons pretend to love; deep down they want to get love. They don’t have it to give, they have nothing to give. Only a person who knows how to be alone and joyous is so full of love that he can share it. He can share it with strangers.And all are strangers, remember. Your husband, your wife, your children, all are strangers. Never forget it. You don’t know your husband, you don’t know your wife. You don’t even know your child; the child that you have carried in your womb for nine months is a stranger.This whole life is a strange land. We come from some unknown source: suddenly we are here, and suddenly one day we are gone, back to the original source. This is a few days’ journey – make it as joyous as possible. But we do just the opposite, we make it as miserable as possible. We put our whole energies into making it more and more miserable.The second question:Osho,What is creativity? Does it correspond more to the path of awareness or more to the path of love? Or is it a child of both?Creativity is when you are not because creativity is the fragrance of the creator. It is the presence of God in you. Creativity belongs to the creator, not to you. No man can ever be creative. Yes, man can compose, construct, but he can never be a creator.When man disappears, when man becomes utterly absent, a new kind of presence enters his being – the presence of God. Then there is creativity. When godliness is inside you the light that starts falling around you is creativity. The climate that arises around you because of the presence of God within you is creativity.It has nothing to do with awareness or love, although the creative person is both; the creative person is aware, the creative person is loving. But the creative person is neither a meditator nor a lover – loving yes, but there is no lover; meditative yes, but there is no meditator.And when there is nobody inside you, that very nobodiness brings creativity. Like a spring, it wells up, you become full of it. Whatsoever you touch becomes gold. It is not your touch, remember; the miracle is always God’s. It has nothing to do with the path of love or with the path of awareness. The path of love and the path of awareness bring you to godliness because they help you to disappear.When godliness is there, then creativity is simply a consequence of its presence, just its presence. You can attain to its presence through love or awareness, it doesn’t matter. How you annihilate yourself is irrelevant; the only thing is that you should be annihilated, that you should not be. Do it through love, that will do. How you commit suicide, with what kind of poison, does not matter. Whether you jump from a cliff, or you lie down in front of a railway train; whether you shoot yourself, or you hang yourself, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you should have committed suicide of the ego. Through love, through awareness, through Yoga, through Tantra, Taoism, Zen, Sufism, Hasidism – it doesn’t matter; these are all different ways of committing suicide. I don’t mean physical suicide, I mean metaphysical. Once you are not there, all that is left is godliness.You ask me, “Does it correspond more to the path of awareness or more to the path of love? Or is it a child of both?” It has nothing to do with the path. Creativity is possible only when the goal is achieved, it is a by-product of the goal. And don’t start thinking in terms of crossbreeding, crossbreeding is dangerous. You are thinking, “Or is it a child of both?”Just the other day I was reading…A farmer was very fond of crossbreeding. First he crossed a chicken with a goose and got a “choose.” Then he crossed a pheasant with an eagle and got a “pheagle.” Then he crossed a road with a bicycle and got killed.Beware of crossbreeding. If you feel at home with love, it will do. Or if you feel at home with awareness, it will do. Just remember one thing: manage somehow to disappear.There are people who need not even go on any path – love or meditation. Just sheer intelligence is enough, just seeing the point is enough. Just seeing, “How can ‘I’ be? I cannot exist alone, separate. I cannot exist as an island; I am continuously connected with the whole. I am breathing from every pore of my body; if even for a few seconds my breathing stops, I will be no more.”You are continuously eating, drinking. What are you eating? – the universe, that’s what you are eating. What are you breathing? – the universe, that’s what you are breathing. What are you drinking? – the universe, that’s what you are drinking. Continuously, the universe is coming in and going out. You are just a passage. The breath comes in, refreshes you, rejuvenates you, goes out, then another breath comes in. We are in a continuous relationship with existence. In fact, to say it is a relationship is not right – we are one with existence.If one is really intelligent, then neither love nor meditation, just intelligence, is enough. Just see the point that we are one with existence – hence nobody is separate – and the ego is gone. And the ego going is the coming of godliness. In fact, godliness is always there; just because of the ego you cannot see it. And to see yourself as divine, as part of this immense existence, is the beginning of creativity.And it is not only the mystics of the world who experience this. Of course, you can ask Kabir or Eckhart, you can ask Farid or Mansoor, you can ask Lieh Tzu or Rinzai. You can ask different kinds of mystics, born in different times, to different races, in different countries, unaware of each other’s existence, and they will all say one thing: “The moment I disappeared, godliness came in. Or maybe it was already there; just my presence was not allowing it to express itself, to become manifest. I was obstructing the way.” But it is not only the mystics who experience this: even the poets, the musicians, the painters, have a few glimpses of it – only glimpses of course, then they fall back into the ordinary world. They rise to the sacred for only a few moments.Whenever Rabindranath would have a visitation, would have creativity arising in him, he would not eat, he would not drink, he would not sleep for days together. He would lock himself in his room, he would not come out. He would come out only when the glimpse had disappeared.And those who saw him coming out, after three, four days of remaining in some other world, all noted one fact: he looked so different, so fragile, so unearthly, so light; as if not made of matter, so subtle, nothing gross in him; his eyes so clear and so deep and his whole being so transparent. But after a few hours he would be back again, settled in the gross body; would be his old self again.People used to ask him, “What happens when you shut yourself in?”He would say, “I shut myself in, I lock myself in, so that nobody can disturb me because I am here no more. Any disturbance can be a very shattering experience. I am so fragile that I do not like to be disturbed. Even a little sound is enough to bring me back to earth, and those moments are when I am flying high, when great poetry arises in me.”That’s how Gitanjali was born, the main book for which he got the Nobel Prize. Many, many people have been given the Nobel Prize, and I have seen almost all the books for which a Nobel Prize has been given, but there is no comparison with Rabindranath’s Gitanjali. Gitanjali means “offering of songs.” It has some totally different quality, not of this world. It echoes something of the Upanishads. It has some reflections of Buddha, Jesus, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu. But Rabindranath was not a mystic, he was only a poet.A poet is someone who becomes a mystic once in a while, who enters the world of the mystic once in a while, but comes back because he is not yet capable of remaining there forever. He cannot abide there, he can only visit. The poet is very close to the mystic.These three words have to be remembered: scientist, poet, mystic. The scientist is the farthest from the mystic because he lives with gross matter, he works with gross matter. The poet is closer to the mystic. The scientist functions from the head, the poet from the heart, and the mystic lives in the being. When you are in the being, creativity is simply your nature.You ask me, “What is creativity?” For the mystic, his very existence is creativity. He walks and that is creativity. He talks and that is creativity. He remains silent and that is creativity. Buddha sitting in silence is far more creative than Rabindranath writing poetry, far more creative than Picasso doing his painting, far more creative than Moore working on his sculptures – just by sitting silently.So creativity has nothing to do with creating something, creativity is simply the presence of God. Those who are fortunate enough to come in contact with a buddha’s silence will be transformed; they will know what creativity is. The buddha has not done a thing and miracles have happened. He has not uttered a word and the message has been heard. He has not moved, but he has transformed you. He has not even touched you, but you are no longer the same.At the ultimate peak of being a mystic, creativity is just a climate. Lower than that is the poet; creativity then brings great songs, sculpture, architecture, poetry, music, painting. And even the scientist, the lowest in this categorization – lowest because he works with the lowest form of existence, matter – even the scientist, when he is creative, has a few glimpses like the mystic. For example, Albert Einstein has said many times, “All my insights happened when I was not working at all, when I was not, in fact. All my great insights came to me from some unknown source.”The great scientist Eddington said, “When I started working as a scientist I used to think of the world as matter, as only matter. But the more deeply I went into it, the more things started happening to me which were incomprehensible in terms of science, mathematics, calculation, measurement. And now I can say that those few things revealed something to me: that the world resembles a thought more than a thing.”All the great scientists – I am not talking about the technicians, they are lower than the scientists. They are the fourth category, the last, the sudras, the untouchables. I am not talking about the technician. The technician has no flight, no insight, no visitation from the beyond. He simply knows how to do a certain thing, he is an adept in “how-to-ism.” He turns everything into a method. The technician is not a scientist.The scientist is someone who still reaches the peaks of the mystic, but very rarely. The poet is a visitor there more often and the mystic remains there. For the mystic, creativity is a climate, for the poet it is great activity, and for the scientist even more so – it is the materialization of something which is immaterial; a great amount of work. It took almost twenty years for Albert Einstein to formulate the theory of relativity – a great amount of work. The insight happens in a split second, but then you have to work it out, you have to prove it through experimentation.The poet needs no proofs; you never ask him for proof. The scientist is asked for proofs, experimental proofs, and the experiments may take years. Sometimes it has happened that the insight is there but the experimentation has taken years and years. A few of Albert Einstein’s theories are still not yet proved by experimentation. They are just theories, with every possibility of being proved true, but with no way to prove them this way or that, for or against. Still now, no experiment is possible.For example, Albert Einstein said that time is a relative phenomenon such that if a passenger leaves the earth on a spaceship at the speed of light – the speed of light is immense, almost inconceivable: one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second – if a spaceship leaves the earth at that speed, then the person who is in that spaceship will never age because at that speed time stops. If he is young, twenty-five years old, he will remain twenty-five years old. Even if he comes back after twenty-five years, all his friends on earth will be fifty years old, but he will be twenty-five.Now this is simply a theory, an insight. We have not yet been able to devise a spaceship which can move at that speed. Scientists say that it seems right theoretically – but only theoretically. How did Einstein arrive at this theory? There was no possibility of experimentation, obviously. It was not the conclusion of an experiment; you cannot do any experiment. There is no spaceship which moves at such a speed. In fact there are difficulties, and it may never be possible to make such a spaceship.The most difficult thing is: whenever something moves at that speed it turns into light. At that speed, the heat is so much that no spaceship can move at that speed: the heat will burn it up. Just the friction – at one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second – the very friction will be enough, and the spaceship and the passengers will all be reduced to light, they will burn up. But maybe someday we can find something which does not burn up, which remains intact, and the passenger can move at that speed.But other scientists think that Einstein was right: at that speed, time stops. And if time stops you cannot age, so it is theoretically possible that a man could leave on a spaceship and when he comes back his children would be older than him, and even his grandchildren could be older than him. If he came back after eighty years, all his children would be gone, his children’s children would be older than him, and he will have remained at exactly the same age, with no change, with no difference, as if not a single moment has passed.Now this is pure theory; they call it “pure physics.” How did Einstein arrive at it? It was an insight, it was a mystical experience. Albert Einstein had a few mystical experiences; other theories of his were conceived in the same way. Slowly, slowly, they have been proved right by experiments. Maybe this one is right too.Even the scientist comes to truth only when he is not. The poet comes to beauty when he is not, and the mystic comes to godliness when he is not. The scientist can only be approximately true because the moments are very rare and very fleeting. The poet is on firmer ground, he can be a bit more sure because the moments come often. But the mystic is absolutely certain, hence his declarations.The Upanishads say, “Aham brahmasmi – I am God.” al-Hillaj Mansoor declares, “Ana’l haq – I am the truth.” These are not conclusions, they are not arrived at through thought processes. They are intuitions, experiences of the ultimate revelation. Mansoor had become one with truth; he was no longer separate.So creativity has three layers. The ultimate is the mystic, he lives in a climate of creativity. The poet, once in a while, brings some treasures from the beyond. The scientist also brings something precious to the world, but very rarely, whenever he can visit the ultimate. But – mystic, scientist or poet – one thing is certain, whatsoever comes into this world comes from the beyond.To bring the beyond is creativity; to bring the beyond into the known is creativity. To help godliness to be manifested in some form is creativity.The third question:Osho,What is history?History is time, hence all that is really significant is not included in it because all that is really significant is beyond time.Buddha’s enlightenment under the bodhi tree is not a historical fact; there is no way to prove that it really happened. It is such an interior experience that you have to take it on trust. Buddha says it happened. You can believe it, you can disbelieve it. If you disbelieve it, there is no way for Buddha to prove it. If you disbelieve it, you only prevent your own enlightenment, that’s all. If you trust Buddha, a door opens for you. In trusting, you can hope that if it happened to Buddha it can happen to you too. Belief and disbelief have nothing to do with Buddha’s experience, but they have something to do with you and your future.History cannot prove that something happened that morning; history has no record of it. It happened beyond time, hence history cannot record it. It is unrepeatable and history only records that which is repeatable. History is nothing but the record of repetitious human stupidity. History is the record of all that is stupid in the human mind. Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, Alexander, Adolf Hitler, these people are repeatable; Buddhas are not repeatable, a Buddha happens only once.Tamerlane will have many, many, incarnations, sometimes as Adolf Hitler, sometimes as Ivan the Terrible, sometimes as Josef Stalin and sometimes as Mao Zedong; he will have many incarnations. Buddha will never come again. He has gone beyond, gone to the further shore. Jesus will not come again; Jesus cannot be repeated. These people are unique.History takes no note of the unique; history only takes note of the common, the average; and the average is the lowest. History is nothing but a vicious circle. It is a wheel, it goes on revolving, the same spokes keep on coming up, again and again and again.Just the other day I was reading a parable by James Thurber, The Last Flower. Meditate over it…World War XII, as everybody knows, brought about the collapse of civilization. Towns, cities and villages disappeared from the earth. All the groves and forests were destroyed, and all the gardens, and all the works of art. Men, women and children became lower than the lowest animals. Discouraged and disillusioned, dogs deserted their fallen masters. Emboldened by the pitiful condition of the former lords of the earth, rabbits descended upon them.Books, paintings and music disappeared from the earth, and human beings just sat around, doing nothing. Years and years went by. Even the few generals who were left forgot what the last war had decided. Boys and girls grew up to stare at each other blankly, for love had passed from the earth.One day a young girl who had never seen a flower chanced to come upon the last one in the world. She told the other human beings that the last flower was dying. The only one who paid any attention to her was a young man she found wandering about. Together the young man and the girl nurtured the flower and it began to live again. One day a bee visited the flower, and a hummingbird. Before long there were two flowers, and then four, and then a great many. Groves and forests flourished again.The young girl began to take an interest in how she looked. The young man discovered that touching the girl was pleasurable. Love was reborn into the world. Their children grew up strong and healthy, and learned to run and laugh. Dogs came out of their exile. The young man discovered, by putting one stone upon another, how to build a shelter. Pretty soon everybody was building shelters. Towns, cities and villages sprang up. Song came back into the world, and troubadours and jugglers and tailors and cobblers and painters and poets and sculptors and wheelwrights and soldiers and lieutenants and captains and generals and major-generals and liberators. Some people went to one place to live, and some to another.Before long, those who went to live in the valleys wished they had gone to live in the hills, and those who had gone to live in the hills wished they had gone to live in the valleys.The liberators, under the guidance of God, set fire to the discontent, so presently the world was at war again. This time the destruction was so complete that nothing at all was left in the world – except one man, and one woman, and one flower.But that’s enough, that will do – that one flower will do. Again everything will come back. History is a wheel; it is a vicious circle, it goes on revolving in the same rut. Many, many, times man has become very civilized, and many, many, times all civilization has disappeared from the earth.This is not the first time we have discovered science. Ancient records tell something else, a totally different story, that the great continent of Atlantis was drowned not by a natural calamity, but by an atomic explosion. Particularly in Hindu scriptures, great proof is available that by then man had discovered all the technology that we have now; ours was not discovery, it was rediscovery. The great war known as Mahabharata had almost all the weapons that we have now, and these ancient Indian scriptures have stories about airplanes, atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs and similar things.Now we are again coming to a point where total destruction could happen. But a flower will be left, and that will do, and again the whole story will begin from ABC. Many times it has happened. This is not the first world that we are living in: many worlds have come and gone, many civilizations have appeared and disappeared. Many civilizations have reached the same peak of affluence, technology, know-how as us. History is repetition.One has to learn how to get out of history and out of time. One has to learn how to get out of this wheel. One has to learn how to slip out of the very process of time. And that’s what meditation is all about.The greatest contribution of the East to the world is nothing but meditation because it teaches you how to get out of the mind. Mind is time, and time is history. When you get out of the mind you get out of history and out of time. And when you are out of the mind, time and history, where are you? – you are in the whole, in the cosmic. You are in that orgasmic, organic unity called God.God is not part of history, God runs parallel to history. Hence, those who want to know God will have to unlearn history. History has made you Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Indians, Germans, Chinese. History has conditioned you. History has given you particular minds, ideas, ideologies. You have to get out of all that. History has to be forgotten. History is the past and the past is heavy. And if the past is in the mind too much, you will go on repeating it in the future. What else can you do? The past goes on repeating itself through you. Get out of it!Don’t ask “What is history?” Ask how to get out of it; how not to be a Hindu because that is being part of a certain history. Ask how not to be a Christian. Ask how not to be an Indian, an American. Ask how to just be, without any adjective. And that’s my whole effort here: to help you to get out of the bondage of the past.A sannyasin is one who drops the bondage of history. He says, “I am simply a part of the whole. I am not part of human history, I am part of cosmic eternity.” And becoming part of cosmic eternity, you are freed from all bondage and from all misery. More and more people are needed in the world who are free of history, free of the past. Only then can we create a new world where wars can cease, where more and more people can bloom in love, where more and more people can become lotuses of celebration.Enough of history. It should be stopped. There is no need to go on teaching the students all that nonsense and garbage, but we go on telling them more and more about the past. And the more we tell them about the past, the more they become conditioned by it, and naturally they will repeat it. There is no need to tell them about the past; the past is the past, gone is gone. They need something totally different: they need to be introduced to the present. They need to be made aware of this moment. They need a taste of now, not of then. They need to drink something from here, not from there.It will be a great blessing to the world if history simply disappears from schools, colleges, universities and if rather than teaching history, we teach how to get out of time, how to cease being a mind, how to become a no-mind. Because the no-mind is the door to godliness.God has no history, history has no God in it.The fourth question:Osho,Do you think it is possible to be honest, intelligent, religious, and yet be in politics?It is impossible. It is absolutely impossible, categorically impossible. If you are intelligent, why should you be in politics? It is for the stupid, for the mediocre.The intelligent person will have much more important things to do. The intelligent person will not be interested in dominating others. His whole interest will be in knowing himself. To dominate the other is a way of escaping from one’s own inner meaninglessness, inner emptiness, inner hollowness. It is an escape from oneself. The intelligent person is not an escapist.Politics is an escape, a great escape. It keeps you so occupied, day in, day out, that you cannot find even a few minutes for yourself. Even when you sleep you think politics; it continues in your dreams. To be a politician is a twenty-four hour job. You cannot relax because if you relax you will be left behind. It is tooth-and-nail struggle, it is cut-throat competition. It is pure violence.Why should an intelligent person be in politics? And how can an honest person ever be in politics? Honesty does not pay in politics. And even if sometimes a politician is honest, he is honest only if it pays, not for honesty’s sake. The proverb “honesty is the best policy” must have been invented by a politician. Even honesty becomes a policy. How can honesty be a policy?Honesty is religion, not a policy. Honesty is your heart, not a policy. It is not that you are honest to gain something; you are honest for the sheer joy of being honest. You are honest even if you have to lose everything; it is worth losing everything. Honesty can never be a policy, but politics makes everything a policy. An honest person and in politics? Impossible.“I hope I’ll be able to count upon your support,” the candidate said to a merchant he called on.“I’m afraid not,” was the reply. “You see, I’ve already promised my support to your opponent.”The politician laughed. “In politics,” he said, “promising and doing are two different things.”“Well, in that case,” declared the merchant affably, “I’ll be happy to give you my promise.”In politics, and honest? It has never been heard of.A politician named Strange lay on his deathbed. His lawyer was summoned. “On my tombstone, as an epitaph,” he gasped, “I want only the words, ‘Here lies an honest politician.’”The lawyer protested, “Then how will people know who’s buried there?”The old man nodded wisely. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Folks will take one look at those words and they’ll all say, ‘That’s strange.’”The politician’s name was Strange. Honesty needs guts. It needs you to expose yourself as you are. It needs the courage to be naked.The politician cannot do that. He has to wear masks, he cannot be naked. He has to fulfill the expectations of the masses, so whatsoever you want he pretends to be that. Whatsoever you want, he is ready to promise it. He goes on promising contradictory things to different people; his promise means nothing. He goes on playing different games and different roles.If he goes to the Mohammedans, he starts reciting the Koran. If he goes to the Hindus, he quotes the Gita. If he goes to the Christians, he pretends to be a lover of the Bible. And all this is just pseudo: neither does he love the Gita nor the Vedas nor the Bible nor the Koran – he loves only his ego. He is ready to do anything, whatsoever is required, to fulfill his ego. You know it and the whole world knows it.The whole world complains about these politicians, but somehow people are so stupid that when they get out of the clutches of one politician, they immediately get into the cage of another. People go on complaining, but still they keep falling victim to the same types of people – not a bit of difference.Man has to be freed from his stupid mind, only then will he be free of the politicians. Hence, politicians don’t want you to be intelligent. They are very much against creating intelligence in people. For thousands of years they did not allow people to be educated because that was dangerous. Now they allow people to be educated, but the education is such that it does not make you intelligent. On the contrary, it makes you less intelligent.When the child begins school he is far more intelligent than when he comes back from university. Those twenty years destroy much that is immensely valuable. The real diamonds are lost and he carries just words, jargon, theories, knowledge. He has sold his intelligence and brought home just dead knowledge, dead weight, dead wood, and he will live with that knowledge for his whole life. We still don’t have an educational system which helps people to become intelligent.That’s why all over the world in all the universities there is a great fermentation, a great rebellion. It is a good sign: it simply indicates that the young people of the world are becoming more and more alert that what is called education is not education, but a kind of conditioning, a hypnosis. The older generation tries to mold the mind of the new generation. The teacher is just an agent of the older generation. The teacher is respected by the older generation because he is the agent. He corrupts the minds of the new generation, but the corruption is done with such skill that you will not become aware unless you are really alert, watchful.People keep on complaining, but they go on doing the same thing.Four friends met in a Moscow park. The first man heaved a sigh. The second also sighed. So did the third.The fourth said impatiently, “Oh, do stop talking.”Now in Moscow you cannot talk, but you can sigh. That is the way now; you cannot say anything, but you feel, you understand, what is being done to you. The whole country, the whole Russian mind, is conditioned by the politicians, so much so that no other way is even available.I receive many letters from Soviet Russia. My books are being smuggled into Russia. People are reading, but underground; the books are passing from hand to hand. People cannot even write letters directly from Russia because they will never reach me. First the Russian government, and then Morarjibhai Desai – it is impossible to reach me. Every letter is opened, every letter is delayed, and one doesn’t know how many never get to me. But a few letters have reached me because Russians have given them to tourists to send from somewhere in London or Paris. Their letters get to me, but I cannot answer them – they will never receive any answer.People want to come here. One woman wrote from Russia that she is even ready to marry an Indian, any Indian, if that will help her to get into India and be a sannyasin. Inside Russia too it is very difficult; they won’t allow you to leave even if you do marry. One of my friends married a Russian woman but he could not bring her to India. He remained in India, she remained in Russia. He has now died; the woman and children are still there. In China now, the situation is the same. In the so-called democratic countries it may not be so much, but it is exactly the same situation: the difference is only of degree, the difference is not qualitative.Remember, politics is against all kinds of expansion of consciousness because if people really become conscious they will not follow stupid leaders. They will not need any leadership at all – they will be a light unto themselves.You ask me, “Is it possible to be honest, intelligent, religious, and yet in politics?” Why should a religious person be in politics? For what? Politics is a power trip. The religious person is going in the opposite direction, where the ego has to be dissolved utterly. The religious person is simply dissolving himself. It is not a power trip, it is just the opposite. Yes, when the religious person has disappeared, great power descends, but it is not your power, it is divine power.The politician is for his own power; he wants to be powerful. He wants to command armies, nations. Deep down he is suffering from an inferiority complex; deep down he knows his worthlessness. He wants to prove to himself and to others that he is not worthless, that he is great. Politics is a kind of disease.Some day in the future, when people have become a little more alert and aware, politics will be thought of as a neurosis – just as you think now of many things in the past that were incomprehensible then. For example, five thousand years ago magic ruled the whole world, the magician was the most important person in any community. Now where is the magician? Who bothers about the magician? Maybe once in a while he can entertain at a party, or in a club, or in a hotel – just entertain. Other than that, where is his power now? Once he was very powerful – he still is in primitive societies. In African tribal communities he is still very powerful, the people believe that he has power. We now know that he has no power; he has power only because the people believe he has power. His power is not in him, but in the people’s beliefs.Then the magician was gone and the priest became very powerful; even kings were not as powerful as the priest. And where is the priest now? Where is his power now? – nowhere at all. He has become part of the past.Let me tell you, it is going to be the same with the politician. Sooner or later the politician will go the same way as the magician, the same way as the priest, the same way as the kings have gone – down the drain. As human consciousness grows bigger and bigger, brighter and brighter, all the illnesses that are hanging around us – hangovers of the past – will disappear.The new man will not know much about politics. The new man will not be nationalistic. The new man will not believe in states; the new man will believe in a universal brotherhood. Yes, there will be a kind of government, an international government, but it will be functional, just like the post office. You don’t think about the postmaster, do you? Who cares about the postmaster-general even? He is just a functionary. So it should be with the prime minister and the president. Yes, a certain kind of order is needed in society because there are so many people. A certain kind of government will be needed, and a few people will have to do that work, but it is nothing to brag about. Politics is finished. It is only a relic of the past, an antique relic, soon to be preserved in museums. The future does not belong to politics.The future belongs to a totally different kind of man: a man who will know how to love, not how to possess; a man who will know how not to be, not to be powerful; a man who will know egolessness. A man who will be capable of dropping all games and living an authentic life of deep meditation, of great love, of poetry.The last question:Osho,When I first came to listen to you a couple of months ago, I felt a oneness with you. I have attended many of your morning discourses.I was a bit sad one day when I heard you say that your energies, graces and blessings are only available to your sannyasins. Still, I attended one of your energy darshans, on the 27th of April, and stole energy from you.What is it that makes it difficult for a Catholic priest to take your sannyas? Can one be both a priest and your sannyasin? Or are you thinking of forming a group of anonymous sannyasins?From my side there is no problem at all – you can be a sannyasin. It does not matter whether you are a Catholic priest or a Catholic thief. I don’t prevent even Catholic thieves, so what to say about Catholic priests? To me, it is all the same.I give sannyas unconditionally. There are no conditions attached to it, no strings attached. I don’t even ask who you are, what your profession is, what religion, what nationality; those are irrelevant things. Somebody has to be a businessman, somebody has to be a policeman; just like that, you are a Catholic priest. It is a profession.From my side there is no problem, you can become a sannyasin. And deep down your heart is ready for it. How can I say no to you? I never say no to anybody. If your heart is ready, then become a sannyasin and go on doing whatsoever you are doing.But the problem may come from the Catholics; about that I cannot guarantee anything. They will be afraid, they may not allow it. I am not afraid, but the darkness will be afraid. Whatsoever its name – Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Mohammedan – the darkness will not allow you to take the light in. I give sannyas to you because I know that if you become a sannyasin, if this light enters your being, then the darkness will go.But if you are not courageous you can go on stealing. Don’t be worried, that too is perfectly good. Sooner or later, when you have stolen enough light, the darkness will be gone. There are different kinds of people. Sometimes things like kisses and so on are sweeter when they are stolen – the stolen kiss has more sweetness. Maybe, if that is your way, it is perfectly good. The whole point is that the light should reach your heart.In fact, by becoming a sannyasin you will become a real catholic for the first time. Catholicism is a quality: to be catholic means to be liberal, to be understanding, to be humble. To be catholic in reality has nothing to do with the Vatican. It has something to do with a new quality in your heart: the openness, the vulnerability, the capacity to accept even those who are opposed to you, the capacity to love your enemy. That is the real spirit of being a catholic. By becoming my sannyasin you will be entering into the real catholic spirit. You will be in difficulty with your church, certainly, but that risk has always been there.When Jesus started his work he got into trouble with his church, the Jewish church; he got into trouble with the rabbis. It was those rabbis who killed Jesus, but it was good that Jesus tried. And it will be good if you try also. What can be taken away from you? Yes, I know a Catholic priest enjoys many privileges, material privileges, which are not available to other priests; and if you are satisfied with them, then that is okay. But you are not satisfied with them, that’s why you are here; your being here is enough proof. I am not saying to leave your priesthood. If your church allows it, you can be both a sannyasin and a priest. In fact I would like you to both remain a priest and be a sannyasin, so that you can seduce a few more Catholics.You also ask, “Or are you thinking of forming a group of anonymous sannyasins?” I am not thinking to form a group of anonymous sannyasins, but that group is already forming itself. There are many who would like to be sannyasins, but are not courageous enough. I am not thinking to form a group because the anonymous sannyasin simply shows that he is not courageous enough to declare to the world that he belongs to me. He is hiding the fact that he is afraid of facing the world. That is a kind of cunningness; that is a dual personality. In your heart you will be with me, but on the outside you will not be with me. That duality will create a split in you. On the outside you will have to speak against me; it will hurt you and you will become two people – and to be divided is to be in misery. If you are cunning, even if you are here, you will not be able to get as much nourishment as would easily be possible if you were a little less cunning, a little more sincere and honest.Yes, you can steal a little bit of light, but there is no need to steal it because I am ready to offer it to you. I can give it to you in abundance. All that is needed is the courage on your part to receive it. And remember, these are rare opportunities. There were many who missed Jesus, there were many who missed Buddha, and there will be many who miss me. I hope that you will not be one of them.Maggie was bemoaning her hard luck to her friend Tilly. The story she told was a real heartbreaker.It seems Maggie was coming home late from work, and when she was only a few blocks from her home a shiny new Cadillac convertible drew up alongside her. In it was one of the handsomest young men Maggie had ever seen. He whistled at Maggie. “Baby, would you mind my company tonight?” he asked.Maggie drew herself up. “On your way, mister,” she snapped.The young man stopped the car and got out. He seemed contrite.“Don’t take offense,” he said to Maggie. “You see, I just broke up with my girl. I’m lonesome. I just want to go out to dinner, to a nightclub, to dance. And you looked so pretty, so sweet, I couldn’t resist asking you.”Maggie didn’t trust herself. The guy was too good-looking, the situation too attractive. She didn’t think it was okay.“Tell you what,” she said to the young man. “Would you still want to date me tomorrow?”“Sure,” replied the young man.“Take my phone number. Call me tomorrow. I’ll tell you then.”“You’ve got a date,” said the guy.Maggie gave him her phone number and the guy hopped back into his car. “Look real nice for me,” he said and pressed something into her hand. Then he drove away.“You see,” Maggie told her friend Tilly, “when I opened my hand, I found he’d put a hundred dollar bill into it.”“So why are you crying?” asked the puzzled Tilly.“Because,” sobbed Maggie, “I gave him a wrong phone number!”If you are with me anonymously, one day or another you will repent – because you will be giving me a wrong phone number.Be true. If your heart is beating faster with me, if a flame is arising in your being – of love, of surrender, of trust – then go with it, risk all. Then whatsoever happens will be good, you will never repent.Many times it happens that we unnecessarily miss some opportunity. And so it is today. Tomorrow your heart may not beat, tomorrow you may become hardened. Your mood may change, the situation may not be the same. The connection may be broken, the bridge may be lost. I may not be here, you may not be here. Who knows what will happen tomorrow? Never postpone.As far as I am concerned you are accepted perfectly, respectfully, lovingly. You can remain a Catholic priest – there is nothing wrong with that – and yet be a sannyasin. Because to be a sannyasin is something so deep that nothing can destroy it. Your being a Catholic priest is something imposed on you by others. Your being a sannyasin will be your own longing, it will be your own desire.And whenever something arises in your heart as your own longing, never deny it because to deny it is to deny godliness. To deny it is to deny your whole life. To deny it is to remain unfulfilled.Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,For me, you are all the masters that have been before and all the masters that will come. More and more a strange knowing grows that only death is the door to a perfect union with this “I don't know what.” Death can make us see what loving the master, love, only gives us glimpses of. Is this not so?Love is a small death, and death is great love. They are not two things. Love is a small wave in the ocean of death. Hence, as much as people are afraid of love, they are afraid of death too.People love because life without love is meaningless. But they only pretend the game of love, they don’t go into it. They keep a distance from any deep commitment, from any total involvement. Because if they really go close in the world of love, the flame of love will burn their ego. If they don’t love, life is meaningless, but if they really love, the ego disappears, so they pretend, they believe, that they love. Hence they make a compromise, they go only so far. They don’t go to the deepest core of love, they only touch the surface.But they cannot remain without love; without it they are utterly useless, they only vegetate, they don’t really love, they don’t really live. Then life is a desert with no significance, no song; then life is utterly futile. Loving and living are synonymous.So people have to at least play the game of love. That keeps them involved, but they don’t really go into it. They keep out of it because if they really go into it, the ego disappears. Then they are no more, then godliness is: the experience of orgasm, of deep orgasmic joy, is the first experience of God. Godliness comes when two lovers meet and merge into each other. When two are no longer two, when that union happens, God penetrates you. Then the beyond comes to the earth, the sky meets the earth.But rarely are you in an orgasmic unity; rarely are you so much in tune with the other that you are ready to sacrifice your ego. In fact, you go on doing the contrary. Your love is also an ornament for your ego; your love is also a new treasure to strengthen the ego, to gratify it. Rather than destroying the ego, your games of love go on nourishing it.But your insight is absolutely right: love can only give you glimpses. If you allow the ego to disappear, love will make something of the unknown available to you. Love will teach you how to die; love is the first lesson of death. Death is the crescendo of love, the highest peak. Those who know how to love know how to die. Their death is not an end; it is a beginning, it is a birth, it is moving into the divine. It is transcending the human and entering the superhuman. It is transcending the mortal and entering the immortal. Death is a portal, a door.But death is a door only if you have learned the lesson through love. Love is the school that prepares you for death. Love and life are synonymous: if you love you live. If you love and live you become capable of dying. Millions of people die, but without being capable of dying. They die in unconsciousness. Then death simply takes them back into another body; then death simply helps them to enter into another womb. And the whole wheel starts moving again, the same repetitive wheel.Love makes you utterly conscious because love makes you alert, because love is light. It dispels all darkness, all unconsciousness. It becomes a lamp inside you. And if you have that lamp, death has a totally different quality, it is not death at all; it is life abundant, it is life infinite, it is life divine, it is life eternal – for those who die consciously.Yes, you are right: “Death can make us see what loving the master, love, only gives us glimpses of. Is this not so?” It is so, but it is only love that will prepare you. The greater the love, the greater the preparation. Hence, one has to remain forever grateful toward all that love has contributed to your preparation, not just your love for your master. Even loving a tree, or a rock, or an animal; or your woman, your man, your child; even these loves prepare you for the great love that happens between the disciple and the master. All your loves are involved in it, implied in it.Love toward the master is the whole spectrum of love. The way you have loved your woman will be there, the way you have loved your man will be there, the way you have loved your mother will be there, and the way you have loved your child will be there. The way you have loved music, the way you have loved poetry, painting, dancing; all your loves, the whole multiplicity of loves, all the dimensions of love, will join together. Between the master and the disciple, love comes in its whole spectrum. It becomes the whole rainbow, all the seven colors. And that love will prepare you for the ultimate quantum leap, death.In the ancient scriptures, the master is defined as death. You will be surprised that ancient scriptures say: acharyo mrityuh – the master is death. If you have come to know the master, you are coming closer and closer to death. Coming very close to the master is coming closer to the ultimate death. One day the disciple and the master both disappear.The master has already disappeared. The master is a person who has attained nothingness. The master is one who is already dead, who is no more, who is just an absolute emptiness. And of course, if you come close to the master, closer to somebody who is no more, it is going to destroy your ego utterly. That’s what disciplehood means, coming closer and closer to somebody who is no more. One day, through the master you will taste your first experience of death.Hence, people avoid living masters because living masters are nothing but death. People love dead masters because they cannot do anything to you. It is beautiful to worship Buddha, it is very, very convenient to worship Jesus; it is difficult to come close to me. It was difficult to come close to Buddha too when he was alive. Remember the paradox: when Buddha was alive he was death, hence the fear. Now Buddha is dead there is no problem – you can worship, you can hold the statue of Buddha close to your heart. Now Buddha is just a toy, he is in your hands. He cannot destroy your ego. In fact, your ego will use him. Even Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, are used by the ego to become stronger. Only a living master is fire enough – aflame enough to burn you totally, utterly, absolutely. Satsang, to be with the master, is the ultimate in love and the beginning of death.Your insight is beautiful, a gift of your meditativeness, of your love for me, of your love for the commune. Go on moving in the same direction, don’t go astray. Many fears will arise. Many times the mind will say, “Go back! It is too dangerous.” Don’t listen to the mind, listen to the heart. The heart knows what is right, the heart feels what is right. It is a feeling. That’s why you don’t know; “I don’t know for what, toward what.” The movement is happening. You cannot know it, but you can feel it; the feeling is there. And one day the feeling becomes knowing.When feeling becomes knowing, you have become enlightened. Knowledge is not real knowing. When feeling becomes knowing, you are enlightened. The moment feeling becomes knowing, there is no distinction between being and knowing, and that is wisdom. Then your heart starts pouring out not only your joy, not only your songs, but your wisdom too. That’s how all the great scriptures were born.Mohammed was an ignorant person, illiterate, but when this knowing, this feeling, this being, happened – when he managed to die in the love of God – this illiterate, ignorant person started pouring out immensely beautiful verses. The Koran has tremendous beauty; both simplicity and beauty together. It is not complex. It has the beauty of the roses, the stars; it has the music of the birds, and the wind passing through the pine trees, and the sound of running water. And it came out of a man who never knew how to read, how to write, who had no knowledge, but who had a heart. In fact, because he had no knowledge it was easy for him to feel, and it was easy for him to dive deep into feeling, so deep that he touched the very rock bottom of his being.And this is how Jesus speaks. His prose is not prose, it is poetry; there is no comparison. Jesus’ statements have such poetry in them, they are incomparable; so are Buddha’s. They are all unique in their own way; they are peaks, different peaks reaching beyond the clouds. But one thing is exactly the same for all their statements – they are all rooted in the same experience. The experience is not of knowledge; the experience is first of feeling and then of being.Go on moving in the same direction, unafraid. That’s why I am here with you – to help you; that’s what sannyas is all about. When dangers arise and when your mind starts thinking of escaping, I have to keep you, I have to hold you. I have to go on pushing you, I have to go on persuading you. If you can listen, and if you can gather courage, and if you can go through this dark night of the soul, the dawn is not far away. In fact, when the night is darkest, the dawn is closest.The second question:Osho,It appears that the pattern of human behavior is almost always this: we search for food, shelter and clothing, then money, power and prestige. And having attained these, we then search for God. Would it not make matters much simpler to somehow impress upon our young ones to begin with God?Zareen, there is a hierarchy of needs, and you cannot bypass any step. If you bypass any step you will have to come back to it again. Life has an intrinsic logic in it. Each step has its own place and you cannot miss a single step. Otherwise the chain will be broken and your life will become discontinuous, your life will become chaos.There is a hierarchy of needs: body, mind, soul, God.First the bodily needs have to be fulfilled. If they are not fulfilled you cannot have the higher needs arising – impossible. The hungry person cannot think of music. If you start playing the guitar in front of a hungry person, there is every possibility that he may retaliate in anger. He may throw your guitar, he may break your guitar because it is insulting, it is humiliating.Once, in America, Vivekananda was asked, “Why do you have to teach here? Why don’t you teach in India?” He said, “Here I can talk about Vedanta, the ultimate truth. But in India, seeing people hungry, I feel ashamed of talking about God, ultimate realization. It is insulting to those poor people. They need bread.”Jesus is right when he says man cannot live by bread alone, but this is only half a statement. The other half should not be forgotten: man cannot live without bread either. And in fact, the bread is fundamental, your body is fundamental. If your body is ill, hungry, in pain, you cannot compose poetry, you cannot paint; or even if you paint, your painting will be that of suffering. If you compose music, your music will be nothing but your cry, your scream, If you write poetry, your poetry will be political. Your poetry will not be poetry at all but slogans. The bodily needs have to be fulfilled first; don’t get stuck there.This has to be remembered. The children have to be helped to go beyond the body, but they cannot bypass it. They have to be helped to know the joys of the mind, the beauties of the mind: art, poetry, painting, music, the great joys of the mind. When they are fulfilled then the third need arises, the need of the soul. Then meditation becomes important.Only a person who has lived deeply in music is capable of meditation because music prepares the background, creates the space, the context, in which meditation becomes simple. And the person whose soul needs are fulfilled, whose meditation needs are fulfilled, will be able to pray. Prayer is the fragrance of the flower of meditation. That is the ultimate.You say, “Would it not make matters much simpler to somehow impress upon our young ones to begin with God?” That’s what people have been doing, that’s what you have been doing, that’s what has been done down the ages. It is being impressed upon children to begin with God, but they cannot because all three steps of the temple are missing and they cannot enter. Those steps are much needed. That’s why our temples have become false. Our temples are arbitrary, artificial; our temples are creations of the mind – with good intentions, of course.Now Zareen is asking us, with good intentions, to help the children. But this is not the way to help, this is the way to hinder. That’s how people have become irreligious. They are Christians, they are Mohammedans, they are Parsis, they are Hindus, but they are not religious. We have created artificial gods. We adults had to create artificial gods because our own needs are not grown up.In contacting the real God, these steps cannot be made hurriedly. These things are not like seasonal flowers; they are great trees, cedars of Lebanon, they take hundreds of years to grow. Lives are nothing; time is not the question at all. And one should go very scientifically.First, fulfill the needs of the body. But what do we do? – we condemn the body. Rather than fulfilling its needs, rather than helping a child to enjoy the joys of the body, we condemn the body. The body has many joys of its own: the joy of running, the joy of surfing, the joy of swimming, the joy of jogging, the joy of climbing a mountain. These are all physical joys, of tremendous value. When one is climbing a mountain alone, the body has a thrill of its own, its own ecstasy.First teach the child bodily ecstasy. Let him dance as totally as possible, so he can feel his own body. There are millions of people who don’t have any feel for their own body. They use the body, just like a mechanical device around them, but they don’t have a feel for it. They live in the body, but they are not bridged to the body. They don’t know the joys of the body. The children first have to be taught the physical joys. Help them to climb trees, help them to run, help them to swim, help them to dance. Help them to do physical yoga, Hatha yoga, so they can get the feel of their bodies, so they can feel their bodies as alive phenomena. Not as something dead around them, not as something disconnected, not as a machine to be used. So that they can have respect for the body, love for the body; so their bodies can become sacred temples.And don’t be in a hurry. The next step has to be taken very slowly. The movement from the body to the mind has to be very, very delicate because you are moving from the gross to the subtle. The movement cannot be very direct; it has to be very indirect. Slowly, slowly, let the child know about music, poetry; let the child know about great paintings, architecture. Let the child enjoy the exercise of his mind.And then, when the child is ready, when he has fulfilled his mind needs, help him to meditate. Nothing should be done in haste. Let everything ripen; help everything to become mature. Just remember one thing: the child should not get stuck anywhere. There are many who have become stuck in the body, the physical pleasure; then sex remains the center of their life. There are many who have got stuck in the mind; then thinking, philosophizing and logic – and the joys of thinking and philosophizing and logic – remain with them for their whole lives. These people are half grown.Before the child gets stuck, push him to the next level, the next plane: help him to meditate. Only after meditation is prayer possible because only if you have learned to experience your own soul can you experience the universal soul. If you cannot know your own soul, how can you know the soul of the whole universe? If you cannot look deep into a drop of water, how can you see into the ocean? – impossible. Prayer is the ultimate fragrance.But what happens is you start teaching the children prayer first. That’s where you go wrong. You start teaching them about God. They have not yet asked about God, they are not worried about God, that is not their concern – and you start implanting ideas in their minds. The question has not yet arisen in their hearts and you start stuffing them with answers. Into their immature minds, you go on putting conditions, indoctrinations, philosophies – which will remain just as baggage, as a burden. The children will be Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans, but they will not be religious, ever. In fact, because of your indoctrination they will hate you, and they will hate your gods, and they will hate your temples, and they will hate your priests. Although they will go to church on Sunday and they will go to the priest to marry, these will simply be formalities because it is the accepted thing in society. Deep down they will hate, deep down they will have no love for all this.Parents, without being aware that they themselves are not religious, have been trying to help their children become religious. Do you really know that God is? You have become concerned about the children, but this may just be a way of escaping from your own problems. Do you know God is? Have you felt God yourself?If you have known godliness, if you have felt it, this question would not arise because then you would see that there is a logical sequence of growth: the body, the mind, the soul, and ultimately God. You cannot bypass any step. If you bypass one, something will be missing. And there is every possibility you will have to come back to that missing part.Let every part of your being be saturated, contented, so there is no need to look back and you can go ahead and ahead and ahead.The third question:Osho,Why am I afraid of women?It is not your personal question, it is almost universal. All men are afraid of women and all women are afraid of men – because all people are afraid of love. The fear is of love. Hence men are afraid of women because they are the object of their love, and women are afraid of men because they are the object of their love.We are afraid of love because love is a small death. Love requires that we should surrender and we don’t want to surrender at all. We would like the other to surrender, we would like the other to be a slave. But the same desire is on each side: the man wants the woman to be a slave, and of course the woman wants the man to be a slave; the desire is the same. Their methods of enslaving each other may be different, but the desire is the same.Man’s methods are crude, the woman’s methods are more subtle. If the man wants to destroy the woman’s freedom, he may beat her. If the woman wants to destroy the man’s freedom, she may beat herself – and that is far more effective, remember. She may cry and weep, that is far cleverer too, that leaves the man absolutely defenseless. If you hit somebody the other can retaliate, react, the other can hit you, or at least defend themselves. But if you hit yourself, then the other cannot do anything. The other is simply defenseless, is simply defeated.So men only think that they are the masters in the home, the women know far better. But they never declare their mastery. In fact, they do not need to declare it because it is so certain. Man has to declare it because he is uncertain, hesitant. And the woman always agrees with him, “Yes, you are the master.” She can afford to agree, she knows far better.It is very rare to find a husband who is not henpecked. In fact, to be a husband means to be henpecked because I have not yet come across a husband who is not. The word henpecked is superfluous, husband is enough because the ways of the feminine mind are so subtle that the cruder ways of man never succeed.It is said…A king was talking with his ministers one day and the conversation moved onto the perennial subject of men and women. Somebody said, “In your court everyone is henpecked.”The king was offended. He said, “This cannot be so.”But the man insisted. He said, “Not only in your court. In your whole capital you cannot find a single man who is not henpecked.”The king was so offended he immediately called one of his wisest men. He gave him his two most precious horses, one black, one white, and told him, “Take these two horses and let whoever you are convinced is not henpecked choose one. If he wants the black horse he can have it, or the white one if he chooses that. Give it to him as a gift.”The wise man left. Days passed, weeks and months passed, but the wise man could not find anyone who was not henpecked. Finally, in a hilly place, he came upon a very strong man, just sitting outside, sunning himself. The wise man was impressed, he had never seen such a man before. He said to himself, “Here is a man who must be master of his house.”He asked him, “Who is the master of the house? Be truthful.”The man simply showed his fists and his muscles. They were so big that even the wise man became afraid. The big man said, “Just look at my muscles. What do you think? Who else could be master of this house?”The wise man asked, “Where is your wife?”She was a very lean and thin woman. The man could have killed her at any moment, could have just crushed her with his hands. She was working in a corner, cooking something.The man said, “That’s my wife.”The wise man was absolutely satisfied that this man must be the master. So he said, “You can choose. The king has said you can choose the white or the black horse, either, whichever you want.”The man looked at the woman and said, “Lalou’s mother, which one should I choose?”And the wise man said, “You don’t get either. If Lalou’s mother is going to decide, we’re finished.”That lean, thin woman was going to decide. This is the situation. Man tries in his way to somehow possess the woman; the woman tries to possess the man. The woman is afraid because the man can be physically violent. The man is afraid because the woman is psychologically very, very clever; very, very powerful.You ask me “Why am I afraid of women?” You are afraid of love; you are afraid of losing your ego. You are asking the wrong question. And remember, the mind always tries to give you the wrong question. A little twist, a little turn, and the question is wrong. Now, you ask, “Why am I afraid of women?” The question seems to be perfectly all right – it is not. It is the wrong question. You should have asked: “Why am I afraid of love?” – and then it would have been the right question. But many times we ask the wrong one, thinking it is right.Before you decide to ask me a question, meditate over it. Look at it from all sides. Sleep on it for a few days so that it becomes truer and truer – because if you ask me a true question my answer will be of immense help to you. But if your question is wrong in the first place, then my answer cannot be of any help. Be straight, be down to earth. And don’t be in a hurry to ask, meditate over the question, look at it from all possible sides. First try to find your own answers. Do your homework first and then you will be able to ask the right question. In fact, to ask the right question is almost half the answer.The story is told of a Russian who came to a Welsh village to contact a spy named Jones. Approaching the stationmaster, he inquired where Mr. Jones lived.“Oh, there’s lots of Joneses,” the villager replied. “I’m Jones the stationmaster, and there’s Jones the postman, and…”The Russian leaned close to the stationmaster’s ear. “It’s raining in Birmingham today,” he whispered significantly.“Oh,” said the stationmaster, “it must be Jones the spy you’re looking for. Why didn’t you say so straight off?”Be straight. Never zigzag. Your question is basically, “Why am I afraid of love?” But you may be afraid to even ask the question because nobody wants to say “I am afraid of love.” Even to say it feels embarrassing, so we go on asking other questions. We never ask exactly the question that we need to ponder over. We ask other questions, very close to it, but not exactly it.And this is not the first time that such a question has come to me. Almost every day some woman asks “Why am I afraid of men?” some man asks, “Why am I afraid of women?” Everybody seems to be afraid of everybody else.And just look – what can the poor woman do to you? What can the poor man do to you? We are all in the same boat. We are afraid, certainly, but we are not really afraid of each other.A defeated politician, after days and days of vainly looking for a job, is walking home in despair, when he suddenly sees the tent of a big circus. He decides to try his luck and asks the director of the circus for a job.“The only person we need is a tightrope walker,” replies the director.The politician feels afraid, but still accepts.That evening, he is dressed as a monkey.“Ladies and gentlemen. Now admire the flying monkey.”The terrified politician climbs up a ladder until he reaches a rope. Trembling, he starts walking along the rope until, overwhelmed by the lights, the emotion and the crowd, he loses his balance and is about to fall.Suddenly, he sees a pack of lions climbing on top of each other, trying to reach him. Sure that his last moment has come, he starts to pray when he hears: “Don’t worry, brother, we are all defeated politicians.”Don’t be afraid of women. They are really afraid of you. You are afraid of them unnecessarily and creating much fuss, much noise, for no reason at all. And both sides are missing the point. The point is: the fear of love.Love frightens, scares, because love demands something which you are not ready to pay. Love asks you to drop the ego, that is the price love asks for. Without paying the price you cannot attain to love, and our whole life is an effort to attain to love without paying the price. Hence fear, jealousy, possessiveness, and all kinds of things arise in life, but not love. We go on hoping against hope that there may be some way we can save our ego and still be in love. It is impossible, it is not in the nature of things.So if you want to be in love, the first thing to do is decide: “I am ready to drop the ego.” And remember, you are not surrendering to the woman; neither is the woman surrendering to you. That is a fallacy; the wrong approach has given you that idea. You are both surrendering to some unknown god of love. You are both surrendering to something invisible. You are not surrendering to each other, not at all. That is the wrong approach and because of that it becomes difficult to surrender: “Why should I surrender to somebody else? That means her ego will be more fulfilled.” And she also thinks, “Why should I surrender to somebody? His ego will be more fulfilled. Who is he? Why should I surrender to him?”Remember, those who have looked deeply into this matter have something else to say. My own observation is that lovers don’t surrender to each other, they surrender to something unknown that exists between them. They surrender to love. Call it “the god of love” – they both surrender to the god of love. Hence, nobody’s ego is fulfilled by your surrender; both the egos disappear in love.If you go with this understanding, all fear of women will disappear. There is nothing to be afraid of. On the other side there is the same trembling heart as yours, with the same fears. You will feel compassion rather than fear. Both will help each other rather than frightening each other, because both are in the same boat.But remember, the surrender is on the altar of love, neither to man nor to woman. Down the ages you have been taught that lovers surrender to each other. That is utter nonsense, it must have been said by people who don’t know what love is. Lovers never surrender to each other, lovers simply surrender to love. Yes, lovers lose their egos, but they don’t give them to each other. Their egos simply evaporate.Lovers don’t become dependent on each other; they are not enslaved by each other. On the contrary, love gives freedom. Lovers are the most free people in the world. They help each other to become more and more free because freedom brings joy, and meeting out of freedom has immense beauty. When two lovers meet not out of some kind of bondage but out of freedom, there is benediction.The fourth question:Osho,You once said that this is a very beautiful world, but it is in the wrong hands. I agree, with all my being, I feel it. But how can we stop the greedy hands which are torturing nature and enslaving men if we don't fight and struggle? Is not the destruction of the old necessary for the building of the new?Giovanni, this is one of the oldest traps into which man has fallen again and again. Yes, I say, “This world is a very beautiful world, but it is in the wrong hands,” and immediately your mind starts thinking how to destroy those wrong people, how to take the world from out of the hands of those wrong people. Rather than transforming yourself, rather than transforming your own mind, you immediately start thinking in terms of politics. I talk religion, you immediately interpret it as politics.And it looks logical because it seems perfectly right: “How can we stop those greedy hands which are torturing nature and enslaving men if we don’t fight and struggle?”But do you think if you fight and struggle you will be able to transform the world and its situation? By fighting and struggling you will just become like those people against whom you are fighting and struggling; that is one of the fundamental laws of life. Choose your enemies very carefully. Your friends you can choose without any care; there is no need to be worried about your friends because they don’t have the same impact on you, don’t affect you as much as your enemies. One has to be very careful with your enemies because you will have to fight them; and in fighting, you will have to use the same strategies as them, the same tactics. And you will use those strategies and tactics for years and years; they will condition you. Down the ages, that’s how it has happened.Joseph Stalin proved a far more dangerous czar than the actual Czars that ruled Russia before communism took over. Why? – because he learned his strategy from the Czars. Fighting the Czars, he had to learn the same ways and means, the ways and means that they were using; his whole life was spent fighting, practicing violence. By the time Joseph Stalin came to power he was far more dangerous than the Czars because, obviously, he had succeeded against them. He must have been more cunning, must have been more violent, must have been more ambitious, must have been more Machiavellian. Otherwise it would have been impossible for him to win against the Czars.And he did the same as the Czars on a far greater scale: he defeated all the new Czars. All the old Czars put together never did so much violence, so much murder, as Joseph Stalin did alone. He had learned the lessons very well; it is suspected that he killed Lenin, the leader of the revolution. Lenin was ill and, in the guise of medicine, he was slowly, slowly, poisoned. While Lenin was alive Joseph Stalin was the number three man because another man, Leon Trotsky, was number two. So the first thing was to destroy Lenin – he killed Lenin. And the second was to kill Trotsky – he killed Trotsky. Then he was in power, and once he was in power he started killing everybody. By and by, all the highest communist leaders, the members of the Politburo, were killed by Stalin. They had to be removed because they all knew the same strategies. This has happened with all revolutions.Now when I say, “This world is a very beautiful world, but it is in the wrong hands,” I don’t mean that you start fighting those hands. What I mean is, please don’t be those wrong hands, that’s all. I don’t teach revolution, I teach rebellion – and there is a great difference. Revolution is political, rebellion is religious. Revolution means you have to organize yourself as a party, as an army, and fight against an enemy. Rebellion means you rebel as an individual; you simply get out of the whole rut. And at the very least you should not destroy nature.If more and more people become dropouts the world can be saved. It will be a true, nonpolitical, revolution; it will be spiritual – if more and more people get out of the old mind and its ways, if more and more people become loving, if more and more people are non-ambitious, if more and more people are non-greedy, if more and more people are no longer interested in power politics, in prestige, in respectability.That’s what sannyas is all about. Sannyas is dropping out of the old, rotten game and living your life on your own. It is not a struggle against the old, it is simply getting out of the clutches of the old – and this is the only way to weaken it, this is the only way to destroy it. If the millions of people in the world simply get out of the clutches of the politicians, the politicians will die on their own accord. You cannot fight with them; if you fight you become a politician yourself. If you struggle against them you become greedy yourself, ambitious yourself; that is not going to help.Be a dropout. You have a short life, don’t waste it struggling and fighting. You may be here for only fifty years, sixty years, seventy years. You can’t hope to transform the world, but you can still hope to enjoy and love the world. Use the opportunity of this life to celebrate as much as possible. I am not creating a political force here, no, not at all. All political revolutions have failed so utterly that only blind people can go on believing in them. Those who have eyes are bound to teach you something new.This is something new. It has been done before, but not on such a large scale. Millions of people have to become dropouts; we have to do it on a large scale. By dropping out, I don’t mean that you leave society and go to the mountains. You live in society, but you leave the ambition, you leave the greed, you leave the hatred. You live in the society and are loving; live in the society as a nobody. That is the pure essence of sannyas: living as a nobody, with no greed, with no ambition. Then you can enjoy and you can celebrate. And by celebrating and enjoying, you will spread ripples of ecstasy to other people.We can change the whole world, but not by struggle, not this time; enough is enough. We have to change this world not by struggle but by celebrating, by dancing, by singing, by music, by meditation, by love. Certainly, the old has to cease for the new to be, but please don’t misinterpret me.Giovanni is an Italian and modern Italy is really too political; its whole thinking is political. The whole Italian mind is obsessed with politics. Maybe one of the reasons is that they are fed up with the Catholic Vatican and the Pope and all that nonsense. They have seen too much of it and moved to the other extreme.Certainly the old has to cease – but the old is within you, not without. I am not talking about the old structure of society, I am talking about the old structure of your mind: that has to cease for the new to be. A single man dropping the old structure of the mind creates such a great space for many to transform their lives that it is incredible, unimaginable, unbelievable. A single man transforming himself becomes a trigger; his presence becomes a catalyst and many more start changing.This is the rebellion I teach. You drop out of the old structure, you drop out of the old greed, you drop out of the old idealism. You become a silent, meditative, loving person. Be more in the dance, and see what happens. Sooner or later, somebody is bound to join you in the dance and then more and more people. That is how it happened here.Lao Tzu says that you need not go outside your room; everything can happen just by living inside your room. But Lao Tzu had to go out; he used to go out on his buffalo, moving from one village to another. I have simply followed his advice – I never go outside my room. Little Hasya lives in Lao Tzu and other kids ask her, “Do you see Osho walking around the house sometimes?” But she has not seen me yet, so what can she say? I am just living in my room, and you have all come from different corners of the world. It is a miracle. Why have you come? And many more are on their way, they will be here soon. This place is going to become a tremendous force in the world, a transforming force in the world. It is going to become a spiritual explosion – but we are not to fight with anybody and we are not to struggle with anybody.I have no political leanings; I am utterly against politics. Yes, the old has to cease for the new to be, but the old has to cease within you, then the new will be there. And once the new is within you it is infectious, contagious; it starts spreading into other people.Joy is contagious. Laugh, and you see others start laughing. So is it with sadness; be sad, and somebody looking at your long face suddenly becomes sad. We are not separate, we are joined together, so when somebody’s heart starts laughing many other hearts are touched, sometimes even faraway.You have come from such faraway places. Somehow my laughter has reached you, somehow my love has reached you. Somehow, in some mysterious way, my being has touched your being and you have come here against all the difficulties. A thousand and one difficulties are being created and they will be more and more. Although I am not struggling against anybody, those in power are still afraid because they cannot think there can be a man with no political leanings. They cannot believe that there can be a man who can attract thousands of people and will not use the power of those people to attain political power, political status. They cannot believe it. How can they believe it? They can only understand the way they understand.So the politicians are afraid and creating every kind of barrier, but that is not going to hinder anybody. In fact, it is going to help me tremendously. It will be a challenge to all courageous people. It may prevent a few cowards – and that is good because they will not be of any use here. In fact, it will be a kind of screening: only the people who can benefit from me will reach here. So it is good; whatsoever hindrances are being created are good.But I am not teaching you to struggle against anything. Whenever you struggle against something you become a reactionary because it is a reaction. You become obsessed with something; you are against it. And there is every possibility that the thing you are against will dominate you, maybe in a negative way, but it will dominate you.Friedrich Nietzsche was very much against Jesus Christ. But my own analysis is that he was too impressed by Jesus Christ, just because he was against him. He was obsessed; he was really trying to become a Jesus Christ in his own right. His great book, Thus Spake Zarathustra, is an effort to create a new gospel. The language he uses, the metaphors he uses, the poetry he uses, certainly reminds one of Jesus Christ; and he was very much against him. If he could condemn Jesus, he would, immediately – he never missed a single opportunity – but one is reminded again and again of Jesus. He was obsessed.When he went mad in the last phase of his life, he even started signing his letters “Anti-Christ Friedrich Nietzsche.” Even when he went mad he could not forget Christ. First he would write “Anti-Christ” and there he would sign. You can see the obsession, the deep jealousy of Jesus that dominated his whole life. It destroyed his immense creativity. He could have been a rebel, but he reduced himself to a reactionary. He could have brought something new to the world, but he did not; he remained obsessed with Jesus.I am not against anything or anybody. I don’t want you to be free from something, I simply want you to be free. See the difference: freedom from is never total; that from keeps it trapped in the past. Freedom from can never be real freedom. Neither can freedom for be real freedom; that is a search for a new slavery. Freedom from and freedom for almost always go together as two sides of the same coin.What I teach is simple freedom, neither from nor for, just freedom; neither against the past, nor for the future; just in the present.The fifth question:Osho,I am getting on seventy-five, yet I hesitate to take sannyas. Why?Seventy-five is nothing. Morarji Desai is eighty-four and he is not a sannyasin yet. And J. B. Kaplani is ninety-three and he is not a sannyasin yet. And Ravishankar Maharaj is ninety-five and he is not a sannyasin yet. Compared to these people, you are in the prime of your life. Enjoy it. Forget all about sannyas. Why be bothered with it? Seventy-five? You are quite young.A 75-year-old man had just taken for his bride a 21-year-young luscious blonde. “You’re heading for a broken marriage,” warned a friend. “I’m telling you, the age difference will break you up.”“What would you suggest?” asked the old groom.“As soon as you get back from your honeymoon trip,” the friend advised, “fix up a room in your place, and take in a boarder.”It sounded a wise policy to the old man, so he decided to try it.After a time, the friend came to visit and was cordially received by the elderly bridegroom.“And how’s the little bride?” the friend asked cautiously.“Couldn’t be better!” the old man answered. “She’s in the family way.”“Looks like my plan worked. And how is that boarder of yours?”“Fine.” explained the old man. “And, by golly, she’s also in the family way.”Seventy-five? This is the time to fool around. And you are thinking of sannyas? Wait. Wait until you are a hundred at least.Great-great-grandma studied the newborn baby with obvious satisfaction. “If my memory doesn’t fail me,” she cackled, “it’s a boy.”At least wait until the point where you cannot recognize who is a boy and who is a girl – then sannyas. That was the ancient way. In India people used to take sannyas only when they were of no worth at all. People used to take sannyas only when life was really finished, when there was nothing left.An eagle-eyed mortician noticed an old crone shuffling away from a funeral service at his parlor and asked her how old she was.“A hundred and one,” cackled the old lady proudly.“Well, well,” said the mortician suavely. “Hardly worth going home, is it?”Wait. When it is hardly worth going home, then you can become a sannyasin. That was the old way and because of it, sannyas never became the force it could have become.But my sannyas is totally different, it has nothing to do with age. It has something to do with youth rather than old age. The younger you are, the more possibility there is of entering my sannyas. Even those who are old physically – but only the ones who are young spiritually – will feel attracted to it.I am not teaching you to escape from life. I am not teaching you the other world. I am teaching you how to live this life with great gratitude, with immense joy, with ecstasy. I am not anti-life; I am all for life because to me life is God. There is no other God.You tell me, “I am getting on seventy-five, yet I hesitate to take sannyas.” Why do you mention your age? The old idea in India is that after seventy-five one should become a sannyasin. But age has nothing to do with sannyas, at least not my idea of sannyas. The younger you are the better because you have more energy and more juice and more aliveness.Sannyas needs all the juice, all the aliveness, because sannyas is not a shrinking but an expansion; it is not getting out of life and life’s context, running away from life and its complexities. My sannyas is living in life, in all its complexities, and yet remaining simple, remaining innocent. I am teaching you something of a great paradox: to be in the world and not be of it, to be in the world but not let the world be in you.Why should you hesitate? The old sannyas can certainly make you hesitate. In fact, no intelligent person would go into the old way because it is so against nature, against life; only stupid people can be victims of it. Hesitation is perfectly right if you are thinking of becoming an old Indian sannyasin. Then, hesitation is perfectly right; that simply shows intelligence.But if you are hesitating to become my sannyasin, that simply shows indecisiveness, not intelligence, because I am not telling you to leave anything. You will be the same, in the same world; everything will be the same. Only deep down, at the center of your being, will a new quality be added. I don’t take anything from you, I give something to you. I make you more, not less. A quality of meditativeness will be added to you, a subtle fragrance of prayer will be added to you. You will become more fragrant, more perfumed, so why hesitate?You also ask me, “Why?” It must be confusion, a confusion between the old concept of sannyas and the new; this is troubling many Indians. At the very word sannyas, the idea of the old sannyas arises with all its connotations. And that is natural in a way because the old idea has existed for at least ten thousand years, and my new sannyas is only ten years old. Ten years are nothing against ten thousand years; ten thousand years of conditioning has gone very deep into the Indian mind.So when Western people come, sannyas seems to be easy for them because they don’t have any old ideas. They have nothing to compare it with so they simply understand what I am saying. They see the beauty of it; they take a jump into it. But naturally when Indians come, somehow the old idea of sannyas lingers.I have deliberately chosen the name “sannyas” – I could have chosen something else – and I have deliberately chosen orange, the ancient color of sannyas, for a certain reason: I want to destroy the old idea completely and this is the only way. I want to destroy the old idea absolutely and the only way is to create so many new sannyasins that the old sannyasins, few and far between, are completely lost in an ocean of orange.It must be the old idea that is creating the hesitation. Just try to separate the old and the new. My sannyas has nothing to do with the old, it is an absolutely new concept. It is very worldly and yet very godly.The last question:Osho,Listening to you, I have decided that until I have found God I will not leave any stone unturned. Please help me.You are certainly hearing me, but not listening. God is not a goal. God has not to be achieved. The achieving mind is the only barrier to God. It is not a question of your “leaving no stone unturned.” It is not a question of willpower, it is a question of surrendering. Leave all the stones unturned. Don’t turn even a single stone, please. Why disturb the stones?It is not a question of will, and you are thinking in terms of will. That’s what you have been told again and again: have great willpower; struggle, search, seek; only then can you find God. That’s all nonsense. God is never found by seeking, you have been misunderstanding me.Two men were sitting in a doctor’s office and after a while they began to talk.“I’m aching from arthritis,” said one man.“Glad to meet you,” said the other. “I’m Willy from California.”That’s what is happening between you and me. I am saying I am aching from arthritis, and you are saying that you are Willy from California.The town band was doing its best, when someone in the audience called the piano player a bastard.The leader beat a tattoo on the music stand with his baton and the players became silent.“Who called my piano player a bastard?” he demanded.“Who called that bastard a piano player?” a voice yelled from the back of the theater.Something like that is happening between you and me. I am saying one thing, you are hearing something else.I am not teaching the way of will, I am teaching the way of utter will-lessness. I am teaching you not to be strong but to be vulnerable. I am teaching you not the way of the male but the way of the female. Be more feminine. Be more delicate, vulnerable.A man was driving across the continent. He put up for the night at a rural hostelry. There was a lovely view of peaceful meadows from the second floor, and a beautifully kept lawn just below the window.However, during the night there was a cloudburst, and when the man awoke, the ground had disappeared under water fully five feet deep. This was surprising enough, but then the man spotted something even more unusual. A straw hat floated by, reached the boundary fence, turned and floated back. Three times this was repeated. The man rushed to the proprietor with a hushed, “Do you see what I see?”“Sure,” laughed the proprietor. “That’s Uncle Henry. Stubborn old coot. He swore he was going to mow that lawn this morning, come hell or high water.”That is not the way to find God. In fact, you need not go anywhere and you need not do anything to find God. God is already trying to find you. But wherever he comes you are gone. Just stand still or sit still so he can find you. He can never find you, or even if he finds you sometimes, you are not there; you are somewhere else. You are always somewhere else. It is not a question of finding God from your side: God is in search of you.Please be quiet and still. Sometimes do nothing, sit silently, just wait, and he will find you. Certainly, he will find you. That’s how he found me, that’s how he always has. It is not that you reach him, it is always he who reaches you. Allow him to reach you. And that is possible only when you are open, surrendered, in deep trust; your heart becomes an open lotus.Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The guest is inside you, and also inside me;you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.The blue sky opens out farther and farther,the daily sense of failure goes away,the damage I have done to myself fades,a million suns come forward with light,when I sit firmly in that world.I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,inside “love” there is more joy than we know of,rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,there are whole rivers of light.The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.With the word reason you already feel miles away.How lucky Kabir is, that surrounded by all this joyhe sings inside his own little boat.His poems amount to one soul meeting another.These songs are about forgetting dying and loss.They rise above both coming in and going out.Friedrich Nietzsche declared that God is dead, hence man is free. That was one of the most ancient arguments: if God is, man cannot be free. How can man be free if God is? Then God is the master and man is the slave. Then God decides, man can only follow. Then God has will and man has no will; man is only a plaything in the hands of God. So either God is, or man is free. If man is free, there can be no God at all.The Charvakas in ancient India, Epicurus in Greece, and then Nietzsche, Marx, Diderot, Freud, Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, were all repeating the same argument, again and again, in different words. The argument seems very appealing, it proposes freedom for man, and man can only be free if God is removed. Then there is nobody above man; then there is nobody to dominate man, nobody to decide for man. If there is nothing higher than man, then freedom is absolute. But howsoever appealing the argument, it is fundamentally wrong; it is based on the wrong premise.The declaration that God is dead is true in a sense: the false god, the man-made God, is certainly dead. The God of the temples and the churches and the synagogues and the mosques and the gurdwaras is certainly dead. The God that man imagined in his own image, the God that man made according to his own wishes, the God that was nothing but a projection of man’s mind and desires; that God certainly is dead.But that God never really existed; he is dead because he never existed in the first place. And it is good that the man-made God is dead because when the artificial is removed, the natural can sprout. When the false ceases, the true can explode. The untrue must cease for the truth to be.I look at atheism with great respect because it removes the false. It has great work to do. Its work is not against God; its work is really for God because it destroys all the man-made idols of God. And then, in that emptiness, the true God can become manifest, can be revealed.All the great saints have been against the false god; they agree perfectly with Nietzsche, Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre. Of course, they agree for a totally different reason: that the true God is not dead, that the true God can never be dead. To say that God is dead is a contradiction in terms, if by God you mean the true God, “that which is.” It is a contradiction in terms because God is nothing but life, and how can life be dead? It goes on and on, it is an unending process. Life is a pilgrimage with no beginning and no end; God is another name for life.Those who know, know God as the fragrance of life, the perfume of existence, the very ground of being. For them, God is not a concept, not a theory, not a hypothesis. For them, God is an existential experience. For them, God is not separate from man; for them, God is man’s innermost core.Hence, how can man’s freedom and God be antagonistic? Without God there would be no freedom because without God there would be no man. Without God there would be no inner core to your being. Without God you would be hollow; you wouldn’t have any meaning, any significance. Without God you would just be accidental, a plaything of circumstances. With God you have a certain significance, some meaning, some poetry.With God you are free because God is your freedom. God gives you space to grow; God is the space to grow in. Because there is something higher, you can grow, you can reach for it. But the higher is not separate from you; the higher is nothing but your own depth trying to manifest itself. The higher is not something like a goal to be achieved. It is more like something which is already there and has only to be recognized. The height and the depth are one and the same. Your innermost core is also the innermost core of the whole of existence.To think of God and man is wrong. God is man fulfilled, man is God on the way. Man is the journey, God is the reaching, the arrival. Man is like a seed and God is like a flower; one chain of growth. God is not to be worshipped but realized. There is no need to make temples for God. You have to learn how to look within you. The temple is already there: your body is the temple. That’s what Kabir is saying again and again: your body is the temple. God has already chosen it as its abode.God is already in you, God exists as you. Hence there is no question of any conflict between you and God; there cannot be. Without God you would be just a flower without any fragrance. Without God you would be just a temple without any deity, empty. Without God you would be just a pure accident, with no significance at all. It is only with God that you become part of the great symphony of existence, that you become something which is needed, utterly needed. Without you existence will be missing something, without you existence will be the less.God is not an ideal, as we have thought down the ages. It is good that God is dead; now we can declare the birth of a new God. Now we can declare the true God. The true God is always your interiority, your subjectivity.Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the most important atheists of this age, says that we cannot allow God to exist because his existence reduces us to objects; God becomes the subject. He is omniscient, he is looking at us; and because he looks at us and we cannot look at him, we are reduced to objects, things, commodities. Whenever you look at something you cannot look at its interiority, you can only look at its outer core. By looking, you reduce everything to a thing.That’s why in all cultures, in all societies down the ages, looking at somebody for a certain time is thought to be unmannerly. You can look for about two or three seconds and there will be no objection – that is casual, you are passing by and you look at a person, it is just a casual look, a glance. But if you stare it is offensive. Why? Why is looking at a person for too long offensive? – it reduces him to an object. You become the seer and he becomes the seen. And who are you to reduce him to an object? It is offensive.Jean-Paul Sartre also says that is one of the reasons why lovers are always fighting: because they are both looking at each other, reducing each other to things – and nobody likes that. The man does not like to be reduced to a thing, and neither does the woman. But they are lovers, so they stare at each other. It is offensive, even in love it is offensive. Somewhere deep down your being revolts against it.Women are far more sensitive, naturally; they are more graceful. When they are making love they close their eyes; they don’t reduce the man who is making love to them into an object. Man is a little crude; he likes to see while he is making love. Even while making love he wants to see, he would like to keep the light on. And there are extremists who would also like it to be photographed, so they can make an album and look at it later on. But the woman feels offended. She is certainly more sensitive, and her sense of propriety is far more refined than that of the man. If you kiss a woman, she immediately closes her eyes; she gives you the freedom to be the subject.There is some truth in Jean-Paul Sartre’s statement that lovers are always in conflict because they reduce each other to things, and nobody wants to be a thing. What to say about God then? He reduces the whole of humanity, all beings, to things. He is the eternal subject and we are objects. Hence, Sartre says we cannot allow God to exist – and if he does, he has to be killed, he has to be destroyed.There have been thinkers – like Immanuel Kant, Schiller, Hegel – who say if there is no God, he has to be invented because without God man will lose all significance. And they also are right. Even if there is no God, he has to be invented, for man’s sake. It is better to have an invented God than not to have any. At least he will give an appearance of significance to life, a certain rhythm. At least the noise will start looking like music. The accidental will not be accidental anymore, some meaning will arise. Hence they say that if there is no God, he has to be invented.And at the other pole are Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud. They say that even if there is a God, he has to be killed because if he remains, man is reduced to an object; man loses all his freedom, man loses all his will. But both sides are wrong because both are thinking in terms of God as if God is the other.Kabir says – just as all the mystics of all the ages have been saying – God is not the other. He is you. He is your inside. He is your subjectivity, so how can he reduce you to an object? He is not separate, so how can he take your freedom away? He need not be invented because he is already there. And he need not be killed because in killing him you would simply be committing suicide. And that is impossible, nobody can commit suicide. You can drop one body, but you will immediately enter another womb; suicide is impossible. You can play the game of committing suicide, but you can never succeed at it because nothing can be destroyed; not even a grain of sand can be destroyed.Physicists say there is no possibility of destroying anything. Neither something new can be created, nor something existent can be destroyed. If this is so, even for a grain of sand, what to say about the being of man? That is the highest flowering, how can it be destroyed? Life is eternal. Life is immortal. It changes form, certainly; just like the waves in the ocean go on changing, but the ocean remains. Bodies come and go, minds come and go, but your innermost witness always remains there. And that witness is God.Hegel, Kant, Schiller, are wrong; so is Freud, so is Nietzsche, so is Jean-Paul Sartre. Both sides accept the same premise: that God is the other. And God is not the other. God is your very soul. God is already in you.Just a little alertness – wake up and see. You need not wait for the guest. The guest has already arrived in the very being of the host. The guest is found in the host.The guest is inside you…says Kabir,…and also inside me;you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.Exactly like that: just as the sprout is hidden in the seed, God is hidden in you. Of course, if you cut into the seed, if you dissect the seed, you will not find the sprout. Or will you? You can cut the seed – you will not find anything at all: no sprout, no foliage, no branches, no flowers, no fruits, nothing at all, because the seed is the unmanifest. It needs growth, it needs the right soil, it needs a gardener. It needs great art to help the unmanifest become manifest; great skill is needed to bring that which is hidden to the world.Buddha has called religion nothing but skill, art, upaya, a methodology – a methodology to bring the unseen into the world of the seen, to bring the invisible into the world of the visible. The flowers are there in the seed, but they are invisible. A proper context is needed where they can become visible.In exactly the same way, God is in you; you are the seed of God. God is not to be worshipped but revealed. You have to grow and become a God. You are not to seek and search for a God somewhere, ready-made already. You have to grow; growth is religion. You have to grow into a God. You are carrying the seed, you have to find the soil – you have to find a buddhafield. You have to find a gardener, a master. You have to find a commune where many trees are blooming, so that hope can arise in the heart of the seed: “Yes, if other seeds can become trees, great trees, why can’t I?”; so that longing can arise in the heart, so the heart becomes aflame, afire, athirst. In that very thirst, in that very longing, the seed has started moving toward the flower.It is a long journey, but an inner journey. You can make the whole journey by sitting silently, not going anywhere, because the going has to be something inner. It is not in space, it is in consciousness.The original is:Sahab ham men sahab tum men,jaise prana bij men…The master is in me and the master is in you, just as life is hidden in the seed. It is because of too analytical an approach, too logical an approach, that you are missing God. It is because of a too scientific upbringing. A kind of “scientism” has arisen in the world, a very vulgar religion; it is not scientific really, it is scientism. People have started believing in science as if it were a religion. It is just a very crude methodology to learn about matter. It is so crude that it cannot grasp the subtler aspects of life.If you behave in a crude way with the seed – you can cut it with a knife – you will simply be destroying its possibilities. You will be killing it. You will not find anything by cutting into it, and of course then you can say, “Because I didn’t find anything in it – no life, no flower, no fragrance – I have decided that there is no flower, no fragrance, no fruit, no tree. They are all just imagination.”That’s what science has done to religion: it dissects it and cannot find the subtle. Through dissection the subtle can never, never be found. Science dissects man and cannot find the soul. The soul is unavailable to dissection. If you dissect the body of man, you will find the bones and the blood and the marrow and everything; you will find all that is measurable. But you will not find the immeasurable – and that’s what is really valuable.Sahab ham men sahab tum men… Kabir says, remember, God is not separate from man. He is in me, he is in you, he is in everybody. Wherever life is, God is. God is synonymous with life. He is in the trees and in the birds and in the animals. Wherever life is, God is. Howsoever rudimentary life may be, God is there.…jaise prana bij men… God is hidden in everything, in every being, just as life, great life, is hidden in the seed. It is unimaginable – if you just see the seed, you cannot believe that a great tree is going to be born out of it, a great tree which will whisper with the clouds, a great tree which will try to reach the stars, a great tree which will become shelter for hundreds of travelers, a great tree which will become a nest for thousands of birds, a great tree with all the colors, green and red and gold. Looking at a seed, you cannot imagine it. Even if you look through a great microscope you will not find it. The tree is there, and yet you cannot find it. Why is that so? – it is there, but not yet manifest. Find the right soil, help the great tree to become manifest. Help the seed to die.When the disciple comes to the master, he comes to die. The disciple is one who decides to die in the master. In that very death is resurrection. In that very death, life starts manifesting itself in its multidimensionality. Dying, one attains to a higher life. One has to go on dying on lower planes; the moment you die on a lower plane, you ascend to the higher. And there are planes and planes.Always go on dying to the plane you find yourself in, so you can move to the higher plane. You have to leave the lower step, only then can you reach the higher step. If you cling to the lower you cannot reach the higher.The guest is inside you, and also inside me;you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.The mind is very arrogant, without knowing a thing it starts proving it, this way or that way. There are arrogant atheists who try to prove that there is no God, and there are arrogant theists who try to prove that there is a God. Proving or disproving, it is the same mind and the same arrogance. Neither the theist nor the atheist is religious.The religious person is not arrogant. The religious person is not trying to prove for or against, not trying to come to some conclusion by reasoning; he is available, open, ready to see. His eyes are unclouded. Unclouded because he has no ideas, no ready-made formulas; unclouded because he has no conclusions already arrived at; unclouded because he has no a priori approach; unclouded because he is innocent, childlike, ready to see with no prejudice, with no ideology.The religious person is never a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Parsi. A religious person is simply a vulnerable consciousness, an open heart. The religious person is a quest, an inquiry. And an inquiry cannot begin with the conclusion already arrived at.If you have already come to a conclusion, your inquiry is finished. You are dead. If you already know that God is, without knowing, if you already know that God is not, without knowing, you are simply being stupid – not religious or theist or atheist, just stupid.The real inquirer will say, “I don’t know.” Unless he has realized, he will not say, “I know.” Even when he has realized, the emphasis will not be on “I,” but on knowing. To be exactly true, he will not say “I know”; he will say, “Knowing has happened.”We are all struggling; none of us has gone far. Neither the believer nor the unbeliever – nobody has gone far. We are all tethered to our conclusions, hence the struggle is absolutely unnecessary and foolish. We are struggling because we are tethered.I have heard an ancient parable…A few friends were celebrating the birthday of one of their most beloved friends. They drank, they ate, they danced. It was a full-moon night. They went to the river, but the boatman had gone. It was late at night, the full moon in the sky, the river, beautiful – the silence. And they were all drunk, in a really joyous mood, singing, dancing. They got into the boat, took the oars in their hands, started rowing to the other shore. They thought they were traveling for hours and hours.When it was getting close to morning and cooler winds started blowing, they came to their senses a little. One of them said, “We have been in the boat the whole night. We must have traveled a few miles at least. It is time to go back home now, somebody should get out and see where we have got to.”So one of them got out. He started laughing madly. The others asked, “What is the matter?”He said, “What is the matter? Everybody get out and see!”They all got out, and then they all started laughing and rolling on the bank. They had forgotten one thing, a simple thing: the boat was tethered to the bank with a chain. For the whole night they had struggled, thinking that they were traveling, but they had not moved an inch. They had remained in the same spot.This is the situation of all those who go on struggling in their minds, who go on arguing, reasoning and thinking that they are coming closer and closer to the truth.You are tethered to your prejudices, everybody is tethered, because society never allows a child to grow without prejudices. Every society tries to contaminate the child, to pollute his mind, to condition him, to hypnotize him. That’s why you find Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians, and you don’t find human beings anywhere. The world is ugly because human beings are missing. The world would be a blissful place, a paradise, if Mohammedans, Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists, would disappear and only human beings were left.A child is born as a human being, but we condition him, we stuff his mind with beliefs. And the child is very impressionable; he is very, very soft. You can engrave anything on his mind and he will have to carry it for his whole life – unless he is very intelligent, and fortunate enough to drop all the nonsense that parents and society have given him. Unless he is like a Buddha or a Jesus or a Kabir or a Nanak, he is bound to remain tethered to the prejudices given to him. For his whole life he will struggle and never reach anywhere. And when death comes he will not be able to laugh even; he will have to cry because his whole life has been a waste, a sheer waste, a great opportunity lost.Get rid of all your prejudices. Get rid of all that others have given to you, that you have not known. Get rid of all your knowledge. If you really want to know one day, the first thing is not to get rid of ignorance, the first thing is to get rid of knowledge. Knowledge is ignorance, the real ignorance. If you get rid of knowledge, ignorance is innocence. Then you are left with just an inquiry, a question mark in your heart: “Who am I? What is this existence?” And because you don’t have any conclusion, you can start moving. Because you are no longer tethered to any prejudice you can inquire, you can search, you can seek.We are all struggling; none of us has gone far. We have not been able to go far because of an unnecessary struggle.The original is:…mat kar banda guman dil men,khoj dekh le tan men!We have become too arrogant in the head. The head is full of holy cow dung, full of bullshit. Scriptures, philosophies, ideologies are all just rubbish because you have not known them. You have been made into a parrot.…mat kar banda guman dil men… Don’t be arrogant in the head, don’t be an egoist in the head. Don’t think that you know. Don’t think that your scripture can supply you with the truth. No Vedas, no Koran, no Bible can give you the truth. Truth has to be achieved through individual effort.Truth has to be achieved by everybody on their own; it is untransferable. Buddha cannot give it to you. He knows, he has arrived, but he cannot give it to you. Hence his last words, his departing words to his disciples: “Be a light unto yourself.” Naturally, the disciples were crying – the master was leaving. The master had said good-bye to them; he had said, “Now this body is tired, and I would like to leave it. My work is finished.” The disciples started crying. Some had lived with Buddha for thirty years, for forty years. Their whole lives were permeated with his presence, with his love and compassion, with his light.Ananda had lived the longest with him, almost fifty years, serving him, following him everywhere like a shadow; not for a single day in fifty years had he been away from Buddha. Tears started rolling down his cheeks. Buddha said, “Ananda, you, and crying? Why?”Ananda said, “I could not become enlightened while you were alive. And now you are going. What will happen to me?”Buddha laughed and said, “Maybe my presence was the hindrance. Now you will become enlightened within twenty-four hours. You depended too much on me. Although I was continuously telling you that I cannot give it to you, nobody can give it to you, deep down you still carried the hope: ‘When he can, he will give the key to me. At least to me, if not to anybody else. I have been serving him for fifty years. Can’t he see that I have devoted my whole life to him, sacrificed my whole life? One day, he will finally give me the key.’“You were hoping and hoping and hoping, and I was telling you that all your hopes were futile; truth is untransferable. Not that I would not like to give it to you; I would like to give it to everybody, to those who ask and to those who don’t. If it were possible to give you the truth I would have already given it. I would not have made you wait for fifty years. But it is impossible. Truth is untransferable. One has to know it, experience it in one’s own being. It cannot be given from the outside. No scripture can supply it, no master can supply it.”The master can only provoke a great longing to seek and search. The master can only seduce. The master can only convince you that your seed carries infinite glories in it, that you are not just what you appear to be, that you are far more – that you are an infinite universe. The master can only convince you by his presence that you are God. By declaring himself a God he can convince you that you are also God. Sahab ham men, sahab turn men… The guest is in me, the guest is in you. The master can only convince you. He can trigger a process in you, but he cannot give it to you.Buddha said, “Because you were depending and hoping, you missed. Had you listened to me it would have happened long before. But now I say to you, it will happen within twenty-four hours. Once I am gone, all your hope, that has become a barrier, will disappear.”And exactly as Buddha had said, it happened: within twenty-four hours Ananda was enlightened. The death of Buddha was such a shock: his whole life was gone, and Buddha too, and now there was only dark night ahead, death. The shock was so much, so shattering, that for the first time he turned in. At last he heard what Buddha had been saying again and again. He had to, because now Buddha was gone and there was nobody else to tell him to look in. He closed his eyes.Those eyes were wet with tears, and he closed them for the first time. Up till then, for fifty years, those eyes had been focused on Buddha. And Buddha was so beautiful and so graceful, it was impossible to close your eyes while he was present in the same room, in the same place, under the same shelter. Ananda used to just look at Buddha. Just to look at him was such a joy, he had never meditated. But now Buddha was gone there was nothing else to see. Ananda closed his eyes; for twenty-four hours he didn’t open his eyes. Somebody asked him, “Why don’t you open your eyes? Your tears are flowing, why don’t you open your eyes?”Ananda said, “There is nothing left to see now. I have seen the greatest, I have seen all that is worth seeing, I have seen the ultimate glory. Now there is nothing to be seen. I will not open my eyes until I have seen myself.” And he only opened his eyes when he had seen himself.The guest is within you, but you have to turn in. You are too focused on the outside and on the futile. You are leaning on your scriptures; reading, reading, cramming, and thinking that by knowing more and more of the Vedas and the Bible and the Koran you will become enlightened. You will only become burdened with knowledge.We are all struggling; none of us has gone far. Why have none of us gone far? – because of the conclusions, ready-made conclusions; because of borrowed knowledge.Let your arrogance go… Kabir says: …mat kar banda guman dil men, khoj dekh le tan men! Just let this arrogant mind go. Say good-bye to this arrogant mind. See that all the mind contains is worthless, and turn in. Look into your own body – and the guest is there. Your body is the temple, he has already chosen it; he abides there. And you go to Kashi, and you go to the Kaaba, and you go to Kailash. You go on searching all over the earth, you have been doing this for many, many lives, and you have not found him; he is inside you.Another ancient parable…When God made the world he used to live on MG Road, in the marketplace. Of course, it was very difficult living there because people would come knocking at all hours, odd hours. Even in the middle of the night they would be asking: “What kind of world have you made? Why is there so much suffering? My child is ill. I don’t have any employment. I am getting old, I am weak. What kind of world have you made?”People were coming with demands, all day and all night. And their demands were so contradictory that God was almost going mad. One would come and say, “Tomorrow I need rain because I have sown seeds in the garden and rain is needed.” And another would say: “Please, let there be sun tomorrow, no clouds, no rains, because I am doing something that will be spoiled if it rains. I need a clear, sunny day.”What to do? Finally, God called his council of advisors and asked, “What should I do? I am going crazy. Why did I create man? All the time I am regretting it – the world was so beautiful.”The story is that whenever God made anything he was so happy. He made the trees and he said, “Good, very good.” He made the birds and the animals and he said, “Good, very good.” He appreciated his own creations, he was so thrilled. But when he made man he was at a loss to say anything; in fact, that’s why he stopped creating after man. He has not created anything since then; man was the last. He got so fed up with man that he stopped being a creator. God simply abandoned the world.He asked his advisors, “What should I do? I have created this nuisance, and now he is torturing me. I would like to hide somewhere. Where can I go?”Someone suggested, “Go to Everest. People will not be able to get there.”God thought for a moment then said, “No, you don’t know the future. In just a few years” – and in God’s vision thousands or millions of years are just a few – “there will be a man, Hillary. He will reach there and then a chain of events will start. Once the world comes to know that I live on Everest, airplanes and helicopters and everything will start coming. It won’t do, it won’t help much. It’s okay for the time being, but it’s not a solution. I need something permanent.”Someone else suggested, “Then why don’t you go to the moon?”God said, “You don’t know, but sooner or later man is going to get there too. He is going to reach every planet, every star.”“Then the best thing I can suggest to you,” an old advisor said, “is why don’t you hide in man himself?”And God loved the idea. He said, “That is the perfect place because it is the last place man is ever going to go. He will go everywhere, but he will never go inside himself.”Since then, God has been hiding there.You need not go into the scriptures, all that you need to go into is your own subjectivity. All that you need to go into is your own consciousness. You have to become more conscious of your consciousness, you have to become more aware of your awareness. You have to become so aware of your awareness that everything else disappears. A point of stillness comes where you are simply aware of your awareness and not aware of anything else.When awareness is the only content of your awareness, and there is no other content, that is the moment when the host disappears into the guest, when the guest is found, when bliss descends on you.Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.The blue sky opens out farther and farther,the daily sense of failure goes away,the damage I have done to myself fades,a million suns come forward with light,when I sit firmly in that world.If you go in, things start happening, miracles start happening. And you are entitled to miracles, miracles are your birthright. But because you are always going into the outer, you become more and more of a beggar. The mind is a beggar, remember, howsoever arrogant, but a beggar. The mind is like a begging bowl, and the beggar is never satisfied. The beggar goes on asking for more and more and more.One day, a beggar knocked on the doors of a great king. By chance, the king himself opened the door. He saw that it was not an ordinary beggar, he was almost luminous. He had such grace, such beauty, such a mysterious aura, that even the king felt jealous. He asked, “What do you want?” – pretending to take little notice of the beggar – “What do you want?”The beggar showed the king his begging bowl and said, “I would like this to be filled.”The king said, “Is that all? What do you want it to be filled with?”The beggar said “Anything will do. But the condition is that you have to fill it, otherwise don’t bother.”This was a challenge to the king. He said, “What do you mean by that? Why couldn’t I fill this small begging bowl? You don’t even say what with.”“That is irrelevant,” said the beggar. “Anything will do, even pebbles or stones, but fill it. And if you start filling it I will not leave your door. I will stay here until it is filled.”The king ordered his prime minister to fill the begging bowl with diamonds; he had millions of diamonds: “This beggar has to be shown that he is encountering a king.” But soon the king became aware that he was being deceived. The begging bowl was as extraordinary as the beggar, more so in fact. It remained empty. Anything dropped into it simply disappeared, was gone. Treasure was thrown into it, but it all disappeared.By evening the whole capital had gathered. The king was now becoming almost desperate. The diamonds were finished, and then the gold; the gold was finished, and then the silver. The sun was setting, and the king’s sun was also setting. His whole treasure room was empty, and the begging bowl was still the same: empty, not a trace. It was too much, it had swallowed all of his kingdom!The king knew that he was trapped. He fell at the feet of the beggar and said, “Forgive me. It was wrong of me to accept your challenge. This bowl is not an ordinary begging bowl, there is magic in it. You have deceived me.”The beggar laughed and said, “There is no magic in it. I simply made it out of a man’s skull.”The king said, “I don’t understand. What do you mean? If it is just made out of a man’s skull, how can it go on swallowing my whole kingdom?”And the beggar said, “It is an ordinary skull, just like everybody’s. The begging bowl in the head always remains empty. That’s what is happening everywhere – nobody is ever satisfied.”But once you have looked in, once you have come down from the head, once you have left the arrogance of the head and become humble in the heart, a new world opens its doors to you.The blue sky opens out farther and farther… You have a blue sky inside you far deeper and far vaster than the outer sky, and far more beautiful. The outer sky is nothing compared to the inner.…the daily sense of failure goes away… Once you look in, the daily sense of failure simply goes away, evaporates. Just look at your life; there is a daily sense of failure. Every day you know that again you are going to fail. The morning comes and you know – another day of dragging – then the evening comes, and tired, you go to sleep. The day is finished and your hands are still empty and your heart is still empty. Nothing has been achieved and another day is gone. And you know that tomorrow it is going to be repeated because this is how it has been in the past, not only in this life but in many, many lives. Days come and go, years come and go, lives come and go. And you remain as empty as ever, no fulfillment, no contentment.Kabir says that a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn is needed as you look in, as you turn in. Right now you are keeping yourself behind you, with the world in front of you. A hundred-and-eighty-degree turn is needed so that the world is behind you – and you are facing yourself. That’s what meditation is all about: looking into your own being, into the well of your own being.…the daily sense of failure goes away, the damage I have done to myself fades… And the damage is great because we have been doing it to ourselves for many lives. We have been killing ourselves, wounding ourselves, in a thousand and one ways. We are all wound and nothing else. Every pore of our being has become a wound, and every cell of our being hurts. What are you? Just think for a moment, watch for a moment – a great agony, a great pain, a great sigh of failure, of boredom, of meaninglessness. But still you go dragging on in the hope that maybe that which has not yet happened will happen tomorrow – but tomorrow never comes.If you look in: …the damage I have done to myself fades, a million suns come forward with light… All darkness disappears. At your innermost core is the source of light, as if millions of suns have suddenly come in.…when I sit firmly in that world. If you can sit firmly, unwavering, in that world inside yourself, all is light, nothing is dark; and all is life, nothing is death; and all is eternal, and nothing is time.That moment is the moment, the momentous moment, when the guest appears. Those millions of suns simply declare his coming, that he is very close by. The sense of failure disappearing, and a sudden feeling of being healed: those are the symptoms that the guest is close by. His very presence is a healing force. He makes you whole; just by his presence you are whole. When you start feeling a well-being, a wholeness, when your agony starts disappearing, and ecstasy instead of agony arises in you, know well that God is close by. Listen attentively, you will hear his footsteps coming closer and closer and closer.I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken…Kabir says, I am hearing a strange music, as if bells are ringing, but nobody is shaking them.The sound of one hand clapping; anahat nad, unstruck music. All other music is struck music; you have to strike the strings of the instrument. It is only by striking the strings that the music arises. It is violence – playing a guitar or a sitar, you are being a little violent. It is a kind of coercion; you are forcing the instrument to release the music. It is a kind of fight. And there is a duality: the musician and the musical instrument are in conflict, fighting. It can’t be great music, it can’t be eternal music. Once the musician stops fighting, the music will disappear. It is caused, so it cannot be eternal.But when you turn in, there is light and there is music – music which is eternal. It is simply there, it is not a created phenomenon.Anahat ghanta baje mridanga,tan sukh lehi pyar men…Anahat ghanta baje mridanga… Something strange is happening, says Kabir. Some bells are ringing, but nobody is ringing them. There is some music, some melody, but he can’t see anybody creating it.This music is known by the Christian mystics as logos, “the Word.” Nanak calls it nam, Lao Tzu calls it Tao, Buddha calls it dhamma. But it is best to call it music, to call it nad, because it is a tremendous orchestra. All the planes of existence are involved in it. It is not only the soul that is full of music: once you have heard the inner music your mind is full of it, your heart is full of it, your body is full of it, all the layers of your being are full of it. Once you know, not only do you hear it inside, but outside too. In the songs of birds you will hear it, and in the wind passing through the trees you will hear it, and in the waves striking the rocks you will hear it. In sounds you will hear it, in silence you will hear it.In fact, the greatest music in the world is nothing but an echo of the inner music. Whenever a musician comes close to that music, great music is born. Only a very few have come close: a Tansen, a Baiju Bawra, a Beethoven, a Mozart, a Wagner; only a very few have come close, but whenever some music comes close to it, resembles it, there is something great in it.Modern trends in music are far from it: the music is more noisy, less musical. Jazz and other music is more sexual, less spiritual; it is loud. It certainly keeps your mind occupied – it is so loud that you have to be occupied. You go on listening to the radio, to the television, at full volume, as loud as possible, blaring, so you need not think, so you need not worry, so you remain occupied. There is so much noise you cannot think – you are tired of thinking, tired of worrying. You are glued to your chair for hours just listening to stupid noise; it is not music at all.Music, to be worthy of being called music, has to be meditative. If it brings meditation to you, if it brings silence, if it fills you with silence; if it reminds you of the soundless sound inside you – only then is it real music. Otherwise it is a false coin.I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,inside “love” there is more joy than we know of…Kabir says, this small word love contains so much. We are not aware of it. We are only aware of the lowest expression of it: sex. We are not even aware of the next highest expression which can be called love. And what to say about the highest, which is called prayer? Love contains three dimensions: sex, love, prayer. And unless your love has reached the dimension of prayer you have not known love. Sex is the lowest form, the animal form, love is the human form, and prayer is the divine form.Kabir says: …inside love there is more joy than we know of… Because inside love you can find God himself. If prayer arises, godliness is found.…rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds…And, says Kabir, I cannot describe what is happening inside me. Things which are illogical, things which should not be happening, are happening. There are no clouds in the sky, and rain is pouring down, a rain of nectar.…bin pani lagi jahan barsha,moti dekhi nadin men.I don’t see any clouds anywhere. I don’t see water falling, but I am becoming full of nectar. I am being bathed in nectar; it is showering on me.…there are whole rivers of light.It is difficult to describe, hence these metaphors.…rivers of light.The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.And now I see that the whole of existence is joined together by only a single thread; you can call that thread love and nothing else. The world is a garland of millions of flowers, and running through all those flowers is a thread that keeps the garland together: that thread is love.Love can have many manifestations. For example: the physicist will say the earth has a certain power called gravitation. But if you ask the mystics, like Kabir, they will say that that power is nothing but a very low form of love – because gravitation attracts, and all attraction is love.What keeps the universe together? Why does it not fall apart? There must be something that is keeping it together, some force. Mystics call that force love. You can call it God, because love is God.How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!It is difficult in the beginning because we are not accustomed to dancing on such high planes. We are not accustomed to such pure air. When you go to the mountains, if you move to the highest peaks, you have difficulty breathing. You are not accustomed to inhaling such pure air; you have become accustomed to inhaling the impure air that surrounds the earth – and we have made it more and more impure.In fact, scientists are at a loss. They cannot figure out how people are managing to live because in cities like New York, Los Angeles, London, Kolkata, Mumbai, the air is so polluted that man should not be able to live in it. It is three times more polluted than scientists used to think man is capable of tolerating – three times more. But man has great adaptability; he can adapt to any kind of situation.When people living in Mumbai and Kolkata go to the Himalayas it is hard for them; breathing is difficult – the air is so light and so pure.Once it happened…A woman gardener went to sell her flowers in the town. After selling the flowers, when she was coming back, she met one of her old friends, a childhood friend. She asked her, “What are you doing here?”The friend said, “I have come to sell fish, I am now a fisherman’s wife.”The woman asked her to stay at her garden, for a night at least, she could go home in the morning. So the woman stayed. The gardener and her husband prepared a beautiful bed of flowers for her. But the friend could not sleep; she turned and tossed and turned. Finally the couple asked her, “What is the matter? Why can’t you sleep?”The friend said, “It is because of these flowers. I know only one perfume – fish. Bring my bag. Although it is empty now, it has carried fish for years. Sprinkle it with water and give it to me. If I keep it close to my nose I may be able to fall asleep.”And that’s what happened – she immediately fell asleep.One who knows only the smell of fish will find it difficult, at least in the beginning, to live with flowers.Kabir is right; he says, how hard it feels, how difficult: …to feel that joy in all our four bodies! The Eastern mystics have divided human bodies in many ways. They talk about four bodies – and the fifth is you. The first body is the gross body, the physical body. The second body is the vital body, more subtle than the physical; you can call it the body made of electricity. There is an electric current inside your body that is your second layer. The third body is even more subtle; you can call it the psychic body, the body of your mind. The fourth is the subtlest; you can call it the body of your consciousness.And the fifth is not the body but the guest. That fifth body is called bliss – anandmay kosh, the body of bliss – it is the guest. Once you have seen the fifth body, the bliss will slowly, slowly descend – although it is hard – to the fourth body, to the third, to the second, to the first.And when it has descended to the first body, you are totally enlightened. When you can feel the bliss even in the physical body, even in your material form, when you can feel God even in matter, then perfection is achieved. Then enlightenment is total. Then there is no longer anywhere to go: you have arrived home.Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.Remember, this is the world of the mysterium: if you try to be reasonable about it you will fail. Hence, whenever a sannyasin comes to me with something mysterious, I immediately tell him not to talk about it, not to analyze it, not to find explanations for it; because if you become too reasonable about it you will miss. You will fail, the door will close. One has to go into the mysterious without any reasoning. One simply has to go in tremendous trust and love, with a deep prayer in the heart, and not trying to be scientific, rationalistic, analytical in any way.Andh bhedi kaha samjhenge,gyan ke ghar te dura…Those who are too obsessed with analysis are blind; they are not able to understand. They are not able to understand that which resides in you.Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.Godliness is found not through reason but through love. Godliness cannot be proved by reason and cannot be disproved by reason either. But if you love, if you love enough, love itself becomes the evidence – such certain, such absolute, evidence that even if the whole world says there is no God, it cannot shake your trust. Godliness is found in love, remember. Let me repeat it again and again: not in reason but in love. Make your temple in love. Get out of the obsession of reason.With the word reason you already feel miles away.Reason, at the most, can think round and about; it goes round and round in circles. It never penetrates the real core of your being. To know about God is possible through reason, but to know God is possible only through love. Remember, to know about God is not to know God. To know about is acquaintance, not knowing; it is borrowed, it is somebody else’s. So what can you know through reason?Just think of a blind man thinking about light: howsoever hard he works, howsoever great a thinker he is, he will never be able to understand what light is only by thinking – impossible. Whatsoever conclusion he arrives at will be wrong because light can only be seen, not thought. And God can only be lived, not inferred.How lucky Kabir is…Kabir says, I am fortunate that I got out of the prison of reason, that I escaped from the clutches of reason and gathered the courage to follow love.How lucky Kabir is, that surrounded by all this joyhe sings inside his own little boat.His poems amount to one soul meeting another.These songs are about forgetting dying and loss.They rise above both coming in and going out.I am fortunate, Kabir says. The original is very beautiful:Barhe bhag almast rang men,Kabira bole ghat men…I am infinitely fortunate because I am colored, dyed, in the madness of love. Barhe bhag almast rang men… God has drowned me in his color of joy, bliss, celebration. He has drowned me utterly in himself. Now I move like a mad poet, singing his songs. Barhe bhag almast rang men, Kabira bole ghat men… what I am saying is not coming from my head now; I am pouring out my heart. In fact, whatsoever is coming from me now, is not coming from me, it is coming from God. He is speaking through me. I have become just a flute in his hands; he is singing his song.…hans-ubaran dukh-nivaran,avagaman mite chhan men.The moment I saw God inside myself all misery disappeared, all bondage disappeared. In fact, the moment I saw him, I saw that all my misery was only a nightmare, that my bondage was only a dream, that I had somehow fabricated it myself, that I had projected it, that I was the creator of all of my hells.…hans-ubaran dukh-nivaran… The moment I saw him, the bird was freed from the cage and all misery disappeared …avagaman mite chhan men. And in a split second I was freed from the wheel of life and death.How lucky Kabir is, that surrounded by all this joy he sings inside his own little boat. His poems amount to one soul meeting another. My songs, Kabir says, are my orgasmic joy; the meeting, the ultimate meeting of the soul with God, of the lover with the beloved; the merging of the river into the ocean. My songs are orgasmic explosions.These songs are about forgetting dying and loss. And these songs are singing only one thing: that there is no loss. There is no death; forget all about it. Life is eternal, and life is bliss. There is no birth and there is no death, no beginning, no end. Life is an eternal pilgrimage, from one joy to another, from one peak of orgasmic blissfulness to another. From peak to peak, from joy to joy, it is an eternal journey.They rise above both coming in and going out. My songs are the songs of transcendence. Once you have looked in, the outer and the inner are no longer separate; you become a witness to both. You see the outer, you see the inner; you are neither and you are both.These statements are known as ulatbansi – as if someone is playing the flute from the wrong end; so illogical, so irrational. Kabir says, “What can I do? It is so. I can only state the fact. If the fact is absurd, it is absurd.”Kabir agrees perfectly with Tertullian, the Christian mystic. Somebody asked Tertullian, “Why do you believe in God?” And he said, “I believe in God because God is absurd – Credo qua absurdum.” Hearing this, Kabir would have danced. Yes, God is not a logical hypothesis – it is supralogical. No reasoning can prove it or disprove it. You have to learn the art of love.Be a lover, and you will find the guest. Be a singer, and you will find the guest. Be a dancer, and you will find the guest. Turn in, tune in – he is waiting there for you.Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,What is receptivity?Receptivity is a state of no-mind. When you are utterly empty of all thought, when your consciousness has no content, when the mirror reflects nothing, that is receptivity. Receptivity is the door to the divine. Drop the mind and be. In the mind, you are miles away from being. The more you think, the less you are; the less you think, the more you are. And if you don’t think at all, those are the moments when being asserts itself in its totality.Receptivity simply means dropping the garbage that you go on carrying in your head. And there is so much utterly useless garbage there. The mind means the past. Now the past is no longer of any use; it has happened, and it is never going to happen again because in reality nothing ever repeats. Even when you think, feel, that this is the same situation, it is never the same. Each morning is a new morning, and each morning the sun that you encounter is a new sun. I am not talking about the material sun, I am talking about the beauty, the benediction, the blessing that it brings every day – it is so utterly new.If you keep on carrying pictures of the past you will not be able to see the new. Your eyes will be covered by your experiences, expectations; and those eyes will not be able to see what confronts you. That’s how you go on missing life: the past becomes a barrier, encloses you, traps you into something that is no longer. You become encapsulated in the dead. And as you become more experienced, more grown-up, the shell of dead experience becomes thicker and thicker around you. You become more and more closed. Slowly, slowly, all the windows, all the doors, are closed. You exist, but you exist alienated, you exist uprooted; you are not in communion with life. You are not in communion with the trees and the stars and the mountains. You can’t be in communion because a Great Wall of China, your past, surrounds you.When I say become receptive, I mean become a child again. Remember Jesus, who keeps on saying to his disciples: “Unless you are like small children you will not be able to enter my Kingdom of God.” What he is saying is exactly the meaning of receptivity. The child is receptive because he knows nothing – not knowing anything, he is receptive. The old man is not receptive because he knows too much – knowing too much, he is closed. He has to be reborn, he has to die to the past and become a child again. Not in the body, of course: the consciousness should always be like a child. Not childish, remember, but like a child – grown-up, mature, but innocent.And that’s how one learns the truth that is presented to you every moment of your life; learns to know the guest who comes and knocks on your door every moment, day in, day out, year in, year out. But you are so surrounded by your own inner talk, by your own inner procession of thoughts, that you don’t hear the knock.Do you hear the distant call of the cuckoo? Do you hear the birds chirping? That is receptivity. It is an existential state of silence, utter silence; nothing moves, nothing stirs, and yet you are not asleep, and yet you are alert, and yet you are absolutely aware. Where silence and awareness meet, mingle, and become one, there is receptivity. Receptivity is the most important religious quality.Become a child. Start functioning from a state of not-knowing, and then silence will come of its own accord, and great awareness. And then life is a benediction.The second question:Osho,Why are you so much against philosophy?Philosophy means mind, philosophy means thinking, philosophy means going away from yourself. Philosophy is the art of losing yourself in thoughts, becoming identified with dreams. Hence I am against philosophy because I am all for religion.You cannot be philosophical if you want to be religious; it is not possible. Religion is existential, philosophy is intellectual. Philosophy is round and about, religion is direct. Philosophy is thinking about things you don’t know. Religion is a knowing, not thinking. Philosophy depends on doubt because the more you can doubt, the more you can think. Doubt is the mother of thinking.Religion is trust because the more you trust, the less need there is to think. In trust, thinking commits suicide – trust kills thinking. And when there is no thinking, and trust pulsates in your being, trust permeates every pore of your being, overwhelms you – you know what is.Philosophy tries to know, but never does. Religion never tries to know, but knows. Philosophy is an exercise in futility, of futility. Yes, it talks about great things – freedom, love, God, meditation – but it only talks about them. The philosopher never meditates. He talks about meditation, he spins and weaves theories, hypotheses, inferences about meditation, but he never tastes anything of meditation, never meditates.Hegel and Kant, Plato and Aristotle – they are philosophers. Buddha and Kabir – they are not. But Heraclitus and Plotinus are also not philosophers, even though in the philosophy books they are called philosophers. They are not. To use the word philosopher for them is not right, unless you change the whole meaning of the word. Aristotle and Heraclitus cannot both be called philosophers in the same sense. If Aristotle is a philosopher, then Heraclitus is not; if Heraclitus is a philosopher, then Aristotle is not.I use a totally different word, philosia, instead of philosophy. Philosophy means, literally, linguistically, “love of knowledge.” Philosia means love of seeing, not only love of knowledge. Knowledge is not enough for the real inquirer, he wants to see. He does not want to contemplate God, he wants to encounter God. He wants to hold God’s hand in his own, he wants to hug and kiss God. He is not satisfied with the concept of God. How can the concept be of any help?When you are thirsty, you cannot be satisfied by the formula H2O. Howsoever right it is – right or wrong, that is not my concern, that is irrelevant – the formula H2O cannot quench your thirst. You would like water, and whether you know about H2O or not does not matter. For millions of years man has been drinking water without knowing anything about H2O, and it has been perfectly satisfying. Philosophy talks about water, religion drinks.Talking about food is utterly stupid. You have to prepare it, you have to eat it, you have to chew it, you have to digest it. Unless food becomes blood and bones and marrow, just talking about it is not going to help. Hence I am against philosophy.A woman went to the doctor for a physical examination before her fourth marriage. During the course of her examination the doctor was startled to discover that she was still a virgin.He asked for an explanation, “How can this be? You are preparing for your fourth marriage and yet you are still a virgin?”“My first husband,” she replied, “I married for love, but as we were leaving the church to go on our honeymoon, there was a tragic automobile accident and he was killed.”“My second husband,” she continued, “I married for money. He was very old, and so nothing ever happened between us.”“My third husband,” she said, “was a great philosopher, and all he could ever do was sit on the edge of the bed and tell me how good it was going to be.”Philosophy is pseudo-religion. Religion is true philosophy because religion leads you into the world of seeing, knowing, experiencing. In exactly that sense, Pythagoras coined the word philosophy. Sophy comes from sophia, meaning wisdom; philo means love: love for the ultimate wisdom – that was the meaning given by the man who coined the word philosophy. Pythagoras had traveled all over the world: he had been to India, he had conferred with the great mystics of the East, he had met seers, enlightened people; and it was he who coined the word.The original meaning is beautiful, but it got lost. When the word fell into the hands of the Greeks it started to have a totally different meaning because the Greek mind is analytical, logical, rational. There are only two types of minds in the world: the Greek and the Hindu. The Greek mind is logical, the Hindu mind is illogical. The Greek mind is intellectual, the Hindu mind is intuitive. The Greek mind has given birth to philosophy and science, the Hindu mind has given birth to religion and poetry.The Greek and the Hindu exist in each person because each person has two minds. The brain is divided into two hemispheres, one is Greek, the other is Hindu. The left side of your brain is Greek, the right side of your brain is Hindu. I am using the words Hindu and Greek metaphorically; don’t take it literally. Your left-side brain, which is joined with your right hand, calculates, thinks, analyzes. Your right-side brain, which is joined with your left hand, intuits, sings, loves.The religious person goes through an inner conversion from the Greek to the Hindu. He moves from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere. Yoga and all other techniques of meditation are nothing but bridges to take you from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere. Once you have reached the right hemisphere, the world of poetry, the world of beauty, the world of love, opens its doors. Then God is. No proof is needed, one simply feels. It is a feeling. It is a feeling in the guts; for no other reason, one simply knows. Once you are centered in the right hemisphere of your brain you can use the left hemisphere as well, but now it will function as a servant. And the left hemisphere is a good servant but a bad master.I am all for religion because, as I have seen, life is far, far, more than logic can comprehend. Life is so vast and your capacity to think is so tiny. Life can be envisaged only through love, not through logic.You will have to melt into existence. You will have to dance with it, sing with it. Dancing with the trees in the wind, singing with the river in flood, being in communion with the clouds and the stars, you will know what God is – not by thinking about him.The third question:Osho,I love you. In a magazine you said that you are not a person. What are you then?This question is from Bindiya. She is a small girl, ten years old.Bindiya, nobody is a person, although everybody believes that they are a person. Nobody can be a person because we are not separate. We are like waves in the ocean. No wave has a personality. Yes, it has a form, but it is not separate from the ocean. It is one with the ocean, you cannot separate it from the ocean. You cannot take the wave away from the ocean; it will disappear, it will not be a wave at all. It can only be a wave in the ocean, with the ocean. It is not separate, it is part of the dance of the ocean. It has no personality. Yes, it has a certain individuality because it is different from the other waves – it is unique – but it is not separate from existence. And it is not separate from the other waves either because they are all joined together in one ocean.When I say I am not a person, I simply mean that I am not separate from existence. I am one with the trees and one with the rocks and one with the earth and one with the sky. I am a presence not a person, and so are you, and so is everybody else. To believe in the person is to believe in the ego. And I can understand from your question that this is how every child has been brought up, for centuries. Your question is relevant.You say, “I love you. But if you are not a person, then how can I love you?” You have been told that you can only love people. The truth is just the opposite: you cannot love people. People can only fight, people can only be in conflict, because wherever there are two egos there is conflict, constant war; sometimes hot, sometimes cold, but war continues. Sometimes the warriors are tired so they maintain a certain peace, but whenever their energy comes back they start fighting again.You can see it happening with all kinds of lovers – a continuous fight, a kind of intimate enmity, together and yet not together. Why is there this fighting? – because of the two egos. There are two people, and of course each person wants to dominate. The ego is a deep desire to dominate. The ego is a deep desire that says, “I am special, higher, bigger, greater than you.” And both are trying to dominate. Conflict is inevitable, necessary. Love cannot exist in such a state. Love exists between two presences, not between two people. Then there is no conflict; then there is great harmony, melody, music, rhythm. When there are no more egos and both feel at one with existence, they can be at one with each other. Love is possible only when you disappear. I have disappeared, and now my work here is to help you disappear too.You ask me, “Then what are you?” I am not a person, I am a presence. I am a nobody. I am a kind of nothingness, emptiness. The host has disappeared, and the disappearance of the host has made the guest appear. I am not, godliness is. I cannot love you, but I am love. You can partake of me as much as you like, you can drink of me as much as you like. I cannot be in a love relationship with you because relationships only exist between egos.But I can share. It will be a relating, not a relationship. It will not be static, it will be a flow. And it will have no motivation to it: I love you because I am love. There is no motivation, no desire to get anything back from you. It is enough that you accepted my love.And I know this time… Two days ago, when Bindiya came to see me – she had come back after a long time away – I could see great love in her eyes. I had to call her close, I had to hold her face in my hands and pour my love into her eyes. She is a small sannyasin, but because she is small she is still capable of receiving. Because she is small, still uncontaminated, still unpolluted, still uncorrupted, something natural is still there.And you are fortunate, Bindiya, that you have become a sannyasin so early – now nobody will be able to corrupt you. Now you will be able to protect yourself against this corrupt society, against all kinds of corruptions. The church corrupts, the state corrupts, the educational system corrupts. You have become a sannyasin at the right time. You will be able to see all the games that are being played around you. You will become more and more intelligent, more and more loving, and less and less a person.Those who are really with me are on the way to disappearing, evaporating. Just as in the early morning sun the dewdrops start disappearing, that is the way for the disciple to disappear – when he is in a close love relationship with the master.The fourth question:Osho,Why did Friedrich Nietzsche declare that God is dead?He had to declare it because God was dead. The God that had been worshipped for thousands of years was dead. Not the real God, but the God that the human mind had created – the God that was in the temples and the mosques and the churches and the synagogues, the God of the Old Testament, the God of the Vedas. Man had outgrown those concepts.Nietzsche simply declared a fact. Of course, he was as shocked by it as everybody else. He himself was not ready to accept it. In fact, for his whole life he struggled to accept it. He tried to convince himself that God was really dead by argument, but it was difficult for the poor man. It would have been difficult for anybody. And he was a man of steel; he was no ordinary man, he was a really strong man, but still it was too much. He suffered tremendously because he was the first to declare it, and to be a pioneer is always dangerous. He had a nervous breakdown and the last part of his life was spent in a state of madness. He risked much for his declaration.In his great book, Thus Spake Zarathustra, comes a parable…“God is dead” is now almost a cliché. But when Nietzsche first used that phrase it was like an earthquake, a thunderbolt from the skies – it shattered man’s illusions. But remember, it is only half of his message, the other half has almost been forgotten. He declared “God is dead” because he wanted to declare the coming of a new man. He called the new man the “overman” or “superman.” He said that if God continues to live in the old way, man cannot assert himself in total freedom. Man cannot grow, man cannot mature; he will always remain dependent on a father figure. This is the first half of the message: God as the great father is dead. The other half is: now be on your own, stand on your own; now become mature. Enough of this dependence, enough of this stupid praying, enough of these rituals. Stop these games.Man has been playing many, many, games in the name of God. And priests have been exploiting man in the name of God. Nietzsche put an end to all that; the world has never been the same again. Although Nietzsche suffered much for his declaration, he served humanity in a tremendous way. He heralded a new age.The old God being dead is a very basic requirement for the new God to appear; a new vision of God more in harmony with modern, contemporary consciousness. The God of the Old Testament was perfectly right for the people who invented him, perfectly right for the people Moses was talking to; he used a language they understood. Now thousands of years have passed. God needs new clothes, but man goes on and on putting old, rotten clothes on him. God is not dead. God cannot be dead. But the old concept is dead.Zarathustra is entrusted by Nietzsche with the task of conveying the news of God’s death to the world. He starts out on his journey and meets an old hermit, a saint. The saint tells Zarathustra that he loves God, but not man because man is imperfect. Zarathustra replies that he loves man. Then he asks the saint what he is doing in the forest.The saint replies, “I make songs and sing them. And when I make songs I laugh, cry, and hum. Thus I praise God.”The two separate, laughing like young boys. But when Zarathustra is alone again he wonders to himself, “Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of it, that God is dead!”The old saint says that he loves God, not man because man is imperfect. But Zarathustra says that he loves man, and that God is dead: this is going to be the new religion.But it has not yet become a reality, even though a hundred years have passed since Nietzsche’s declaration, and it has spread all over the world like wildfire. The destructive part has happened, but not yet the creative part: Nietzsche’s declaration of the superman.Man has to be loved because it is only through the nourishment of love that man can grow. Man has to know that he is alone, and he has to know that he is dependent on his own resources, not on some heavenly father. Once man takes responsibility, total responsibility, onto his own shoulders, a great revolution is bound to happen because man has an infinite potential for growth. But, by remaining dependent on some God, he has become completely oblivious to his potential, to his future, to his growth.It is good that God has been discarded. Now you have to take your life in your own hands. You have to declare your freedom because God is dead, because there is nobody higher than you. And the beauty of it is, if you become responsible, responsible for yourself, if you declare your freedom, life will take a new plunge into the depths of the unknown. If you accept that now you have to seek and search your way, now you have to grope for it on your own, life will again become an adventure. Life will again be an ecstatic discovery of new facts, new truths, of new territories, of new peaks of joy. And it is only by becoming an adventurer that you will come upon the new face of God – which will be far truer than the old because it will be far more mature than the old.Nietzsche remained in difficulty. On the one hand he continued fighting with the old God, and on the other hand, in moments when he was not so strong, he became scared.Zarathustra says:Away!He himself fledMy last, only companion,My great enemy,My unknown,My hangman-god!No! Do come backWith all thy tortures!To the last of all that are lonelyOh, come back!All my tear-streams runTheir course to thee;And my heart’s final flame –Flares up for thee!Oh, come back,My unknown god! My pain!My last – happiness!These words look almost insane: “My unknown god! My pain! My last happiness! Ah, come back!”Nietzsche remained divided, split, schizophrenic. One part of him was still afraid – maybe he was wrong, maybe God was still alive. Who could know? How could he be certain about such a profound matter? And he was the first to say it, so naturally he was scared. He wanted to get rid of the enemy. He called God “the enemy,” the enemy of man, because God, man’s so-called God, had been like a rock on man’s chest.I am not talking about the God of Buddha and Mahavira and Zarathustra and Jesus and Moses, no. I am talking about the God of the common masses, of the mob. Nietzsche also is talking about the mob. The God of the crowds is an ugly concept: it says much about man’s weaknesses, but nothing about the truth of existence. When you pray on your knees you simply show your weakness, not that you know what prayer is. When you go to the temple, you go to demand something, to beg for something. You simply show your beggarliness, it has nothing to do with God. Very few people have known the truth of God.If Nietzsche had met Buddha, Buddha would have agreed with him perfectly, and yet disagreed. He would have said, “You are right: God is dead, the God of the crowds. But there is another vision, the vision of the enlightened ones; their God is not a person, their God is life in its essence. How can life be dead? The trees are still green, the birds are still singing, the sun is still there, the night still becomes poetry, love still happens. How can God be dead?”God as existence can never be dead. But God as a concept has to die many times. Each time man grows, the old concept has to be dropped. And the old has been dropped. But the problem with the contemporary mind is that although the old has been dropped, man has not yet become rooted in his own being. Only half of Nietzsche’s declaration has been fulfilled; the other half is missing. Hence, there is great meaninglessness all over the world. Everybody is feeling a kind of dullness, sadness, frustration. Everybody is living nothing but a kind of long, drawn-out, misery, anxiety, anguish. Life has become synonymous with a kind of agony. All that you can do is to use pain killers, tranquilizers; somehow pull yourself together until death comes and you can rest forever.Sigmund Freud said that man can never be happy. At the most we can reduce his unhappiness a little bit. At the most we can make him normally unhappy. That is the goal of psychoanalysis: to make people normally unhappy, to help them not to become abnormally unhappy. What kind of goal is this? But this is what has happened, and Freud was simply stating a fact. He had looked at modern man, looked into the unconscious of modern man. He was the one who looked the deepest into the conscious and the unconscious mind. How could he lie? He had to say the truth. He came to understand that, when God dies, it is impossible for happiness to happen if man has not yet searched for another vision, for another goal, for another star – so that the journey can start again, the journey of meaning and significance. Hence, without God, how can man ever be happy? – at the most, man can be normally unhappy.Freud’s conclusion is part of Nietzsche’s declaration. My work here consists of doing the other half, hence I don’t talk much about God. Even if atheists come and want to become sannyasins, I accept them with an open heart; even if they are a little suspicious of why I am accepting them. They say, “We are atheists. We don’t believe in God. Are you still ready to accept us as sannyasins? Can we still meditate?”And I say to them, you are the people who can meditate. People who believe in the old God cannot meditate, they depend too much on God, they are never grown-up people. Meditation needs a certain growth. You can meditate – God is not needed. God is not a prerequisite for meditation, but when you meditate, slowly, slowly, you become aware of God. God is the ultimate revelation, not the prerequisite. God is not a condition of becoming a sannyasin. God is the ultimate realization of sannyas.And you will not then be angry with Nietzsche, remember, because you will know that what he was saying is also true – he was talking about the concept of God. Moses’s concept of God is certainly dead. When Moses died, his concept of God died. In fact, it lived too long; for three thousand years continuously it prevailed. That simply shows the stupidity of humanity – otherwise the moment an enlightened person leaves the world, his concept of God will also disappear. But if we could learn something from the enlightened person, we could go ahead, further ahead. We could stand on the shoulders of the enlightened person and be able to look further ahead than him. We could create better visions of God, beautiful visions of God. We would come closer and closer to the truth.And remember, one can only come closer and closer to the truth. The moment you come absolutely to the truth, you disappear. Then only truth is. Nietzsche says, “God is dead.” I say: I am dead and God is alive, very alive. That’s what happens if you go on meditating: one day you suddenly find that you are not, only God is.The fifth question:Osho,How can I get back the will to live?Wolfgang, you are suffering from the ancient German disease, “the will to live,” “the will to power,” will and will and will. You have fallen into the wrong company here. Either escape or we are going to de-Germanize you because here the message is surrender, not will.Listening to me, you must have been misunderstanding me. I am not teaching you the will to live. The will to live is already there, otherwise how would you be living? You are alive. That’s enough proof that the will to live is there. If the will to live leaves you, you will not breathe even a single breath more. Who will breathe? For what? If the will to live leaves, your breath will leave you immediately. You are still breathing; the will to live is there. The will to live is not something that has to be learned, it is inborn.What has to be learned is the will to surrender. That is not inborn, that has to be learned. The will to live is a natural phenomenon, instinctive. The will to die is not instinctive; one has to learn it with great effort. It needs tremendous courage to learn it, even to think of it. Sannyas is the will to die – so that God can live, so that you disappear, so that you are no longer a hindrance, so that you are no longer a rock in his way. But you must be misunderstanding me. I am saying one thing, you are hearing another. The German screen must be misinterpreting.A fat man was sitting on his front steps, drinking a can of beer, when a busybody spinster from down the street began to berate him for his appearance.“What a disgusting sight,” she said. “If that belly was on a woman, I’d swear she was pregnant.”To which the man simply smiled and replied, “Madam, it was and she is.”It is always possible to understand things in your own way. Words are very flexible. Words don’t have any fixed meaning; they cannot have. The meaning is always provided by you. When I say something, the moment it reaches you it changes its color. You immediately dye it your own color.But one thing I must make you aware of, is that if you want to learn the will to live, you are in the wrong place. Here, I am teaching you how to die – although one who is ready to die attains to eternal life, but that is another matter. That is something which happens as a consequence and cannot be used as a motive. You are in the wrong place.The bank robbers arrived just before closing time, and promptly ordered the few remaining depositors, tellers, clerks and guards to disrobe and lie face down behind the counter. One nervous blonde pulled off her clothes and lay down on the floor, facing upward.“Turn over, Mabel,” whispered the girl lying beside her. “This is a stick up, not an office party.”You have to beware of where you are. You are not listening to Friedrich Nietzsche, “the will to power.” And you are not listening to Adolf Hitler either. You are in a totally different dimension.I teach you how to die because that is the only way that you can attain eternal life. When the seed dies in the soil, the sprout arrives. And when the drop disappears in the ocean, it becomes the ocean. I teach you crucifixion because resurrection follows; it inevitably follows. I cannot promise you anything because if you crucify yourself with the motive that you will be resurrected, then it will not happen.You have to be unmotivated in the world of religion. You have to move for the sheer joy of it and for nothing else. You have to not be result oriented, and that is the most difficult thing for the modern mind to do, to not be result oriented. Whatsoever we do, we always do it to get something else. Everything is a means and has to be used to some end. And what I am teaching here is the end itself; it is not a means to anything else. Each moment is an end unto itself. Enjoy it, die into it, disappear into it, and then something miraculous happens: great eternal life descends into you. You will be surprised because that was not your motivation.I don’t talk about what is going to happen because that can create disturbance in your mind; you can become too interested in it. I only talk about what you have to do, I leave the outcome to the future. It will happen, I know it is bound to happen. I don’t tell the seeds, “Die so that you can become trees,” because if the seeds are too interested in becoming trees they will not be able to die at all. If the dewdrop is too interested in becoming the ocean, it will become very hesitant, afraid to risk dropping into the ocean: “Who knows?” I persuade the dewdrop to disappear, that disappearance is a benediction.Disappear, drop yourself into the ocean, because dropping, and dying into the ocean, is the greatest orgasmic joy in itself. And if I can persuade the dewdrop to do this, it is going to become the ocean. That will be a surprise, a gift from the unknown.The sixth question:Osho,I have been asking this question of myself in myriad ways for several weeks now; watching it change and shrink as witnessing brings insights, yet leaves the essence untouched.I left last year, overflowing with the experience of your compassion, love, and understanding, and with a deep sense of love and personal connection to you. Your books and tapes spoke your parting words, “Hurry back,” to me, and my focus on returning never wavered, only deepened, leaving all else pointless.Now I am here, and I feel lost and disoriented and alien. Where I used to pulsate with you in the magic of your discourse, I now listen to you with dry eyes. They are quite wet as I write this.Where is the love and connection I felt for you as my master, such an incredible being, that so penetrated me and my life for the last year and a half? What is happening?Sharda, it is natural, it is expected. The last time you were here, you were here without any expectations. You were simply here, with no motivation. You enjoyed being in my presence. You were open, available, because you were functioning from a state of not-knowing.Now, coming back, it is not the same thing. I am the same, the whole situation is the same, but you are not the same: now you are functioning out of a state of knowing. You are now expecting things which you were not expecting the first time.This happens to almost everybody. The first time you come you are very innocent. My love simply reaches you, there is no barrier. My compassion overwhelms you. You cannot believe it, it is unbelievable, it is too much. Then you go back with all those memories rambling through your mind. Now those memories start becoming desires. Now those memories say to you, “Go back. Much more is going to happen. If the first time it happened so deeply, this time it will happen even more deeply. The first time you were just an amateur, now you are an adept. So much more is going to happen.” For all the months that you have been away, you have been dreaming, desiring, fantasizing. Now you are here with all these fantasies, desires, expectations – and your eyes are dry, and nothing is happening.You have to drop your expectations. You have to become innocent again. You have to start functioning from not-knowing again, otherwise you will be unnecessarily creating a hell for yourself. And it will be an absolutely private hell because others, just sitting by your side, are in heaven.But don’t be worried, this is absolutely normal and natural. This happens to everybody, once at least. If you are intelligent it happens only once. If you are not intelligent it happens many times; each time you leave and come back, you do the same foolish thing.I cannot fulfill your expectations, I cannot fulfill your fantasies, I cannot fulfill your desires. I can fulfill you, but not your mind. You have brought a big mind with you. It will be difficult, hard to drop it, but there is no other way. You will have to drop it, and the sooner you drop it the better.Sharda is a very intellectual woman, very clever, calculating, logical, rational. She functions as a money therapist in the West. She helps people to get more money, to earn more, to create money, to attract money toward themselves. So you can understand that she has a certain type of very, very, intellectual mind. She is not intuitive. It was a miracle that the first time she was here she fell in love. Money therapists are not expected to fall in love. I was surprised also. Now the money therapist is back again, and with ideas about how to have more – more of those experiences that happened the last time; how to attract those same spaces again.That is creating trouble for you. You have eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and paradise is lost. Please vomit it – just throw it out of your system. When you are here, be just like an innocent child, and not just with me – it is very easy to be innocent with me; you have to be innocent with the commune too. Put aside your knowledge, put aside all your expertise about money.The commune also functions through money – there is no other way, it has to function – but it moves in a very illogical way. That too creates problems for Sharda. With her expert eye, she cannot believe how things are happening; they can be done better, they can be done more methodologically. But with me, everything always remains in chaos. I love it. I never allow anything to settle because once things settle people start dying, people start becoming zombies – so nothing is ever settled. I go on separating couples, I go on changing their rooms, their jobs – using every possible way to unsettle them.I never allow you a single moment of respite, rest, so you can never say “Now I have arrived.” The moment you say “I have arrived” something will be created for you so that you have to gather up your luggage and move.Sharda’s mind is bound to be in great difficulty; I can understand. I don’t know anything about money, although money comes. I am not a money therapist, but whenever money is needed, money comes; somebody simply comes with the money. And this has been so my whole life. I don’t have a single rupee – you can see, I don’t even have pockets. I have lived for many, many years without money. And I have not lived like a beggar, that is not my way. I live like an emperor, and without money. What Buddha could never manage to do, I am managing. He was an emperor; at that time he could not manage to live with the freedom of a beggar. To live with the freedom of a beggar he had to leave his kingdom. Then he was free, but he had to live like a beggar, begging.I am living in absolute freedom and yet I am not living like a beggar. I don’t go outside my room, but things happen. I cannot tell you the secret; in fact there isn’t one. I don’t know myself how it happens. But once you disappear, God takes over. Then it is his responsibility and his worry. I never worry about anything, and I don’t think of anything as my responsibility. If this commune grows, good; if it disappears, very good. It doesn’t matter either way.But I can understand Sharda’s mind; she must be in difficulty. With good wishes, good intentions, she wants to help the commune; but then there is a conflict because the approach of this commune is not scientific toward anything. It is a totally different approach – paradoxical, illogical, intuitive.I am trying to get this whole commune to function through the right hemisphere of the brain. And you are entrapped in the left hemisphere; that is creating all the trouble. Now you have come for a year – but that too is calculation. I wanted you to come forever, I wanted you to simply burn all your bridges, but your money-therapist mind would like to manage both worlds. Who knows? You would like to keep your home so that if you don’t like it here you can always go back there. You are moving in a rational way.I wanted you to come back forever. Then there would be a good chance of you shifting from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere. Because every risk throws you toward the intuitive, toward the supralogical; every risk is helpful in transforming your being. But you have managed the risk, you have come for a year – that is a compromise. A year is a long time, so you feel contented that you are coming for at least one year. But one year is one year; it will be gone soon. And you know you have a home and you can always go back there. You have not yet got into my boat; you are still keeping your boat separate. There is nothing wrong in keeping it separate, but be conscious, be alert that you are doing it, that you are only half-heartedly with me.And you are no longer young. What is left for you there in the West? Even the young people here don’t want to go back. For them the West has everything; what is there in the East? They are young, and the West can supply everything they would like to enjoy. But you have enjoyed your life, you have seen everything there; America is finished for you.Take another look, a very dispassionate look, at your mind, and you will see what I am saying. You are still being calculating with me and a distance remains. You have to be absolutely noncalculating. You have to be like Mukta.She comes from a very rich family. She is Greek, basically logical, but the day I told her, “Finish things there and come,” she said, “Okay.” And she finished everything and has never looked back. Even when her father was dying, and he was asking again and again for her to come, to see him at least, she was not willing to go – I had to push her. I simply had to order her to go, she was not willing to. She had completely forgotten that other world, as if it had never existed. That is the way to be with me, that is the way to become part of my heart, that is the way to melt into me. And with no expectation. She has not asked for a single experience, she has not asked for a single thing in all the years she has been here, and she has given everything to the commune.Only such surrender, such trust, such unmotivated love, can bring the transformation that you long for. Your longing is right, but you will have to change your mind. Your mind is wrong, it is expert in things which are hindrances here.The last question:Osho,I know for sure that my wife is utterly faithful to me, but still, somewhere inside me, doubt lingers. What should I do to get rid of this doubt?In the first place, why should you ask that she be faithful to you? It is from there that the doubt arises. The very desire that your wife should be faithful to you is the beginning of doubt. Why? Who are you that she should be faithful to you? She should be faithful to herself, you should be faithful to yourself.That’s what love is. If you love the woman, you would like her to be faithful to herself because you would like her to be authentic. You would like her to be an individual in her own right. Why should you demand that she should be faithful to you? Who are you? – just a stranger. You need not be faithful to her, you have to be faithful to yourself.This is my basic approach, it has to be understood well. Down the ages it has been said: be faithful to your husband, be faithful to your wife, be faithful to this and that. Nobody has told you: be faithful just to yourself. And that’s exactly what my message is: be faithful to yourself. Then doubt disappears.Doubt is not good, it is a by-product of the desire that she should be faithful to you, the wrong desire. And how can you expect anybody to be faithful to you? In that very expectation, you are asking something so unnatural that doubt will arise. Who knows, she may come across a beautiful man, far more beautiful than you are. And you know there are far more beautiful men; fear, doubt, are bound to be there. Who knows, she may be getting fed up with you! In fact, there is every possibility that you are fed up with yourself. You know how ugly you are, how ugly your habits are – and she must have come to know that by now.In the beginning things are different. When you meet a woman on the beach, just for a few hours things are different. The full moon creates great illusions, and the ocean, and the vibrant air, and the silence, and the night – and the unknown territory, the woman. She is unknown to you; you are unknown to her. You and she would both like to explore each other’s geographies; you are tremendously interested, so is she. But when you have traveled over the same geography so many times, the same contours… You know you are fed up with your wife, so deep down the doubt arises that she may be fed up with you.Don’t ask for faithfulness, ask for freedom. Give freedom, so that you can have freedom. And if out of freedom you go on loving each other, it is beautiful. Out of freedom everything has beauty. But out of a certain duty, even if she remains faithful to you, it has no value. If she comes across a beautiful man on the road and a longing arises in her heart to know this man, to be with this man, she knows it is not right so she represses it. Then she has already gone away, she is no longer with you. You may be holding her hand in yours, but she is no longer with you. Her whole being has gone in that moment. She may not ever do anything, but you cannot control her fantasies, you cannot control her imagination. In her fantasies, in her imagination, in her dreams, she may be making love to other people. Who makes love to one’s own husband in a dream? Have you ever heard of such a foolish woman or foolish man? Have you ever made love to your own wife in a dream? One always makes love to other people’s wives. In dreams you are free and private: the magistrate is not there, the policeman is not there, the wife is not there, nobody is there. You are free again. You can fulfill the formalities just on the surface.Doubt arises because you have the wrong expectations in the first place. I cannot help you to drop the doubt unless you drop the desire that your wife should be faithful to you. Drop that, and then how can doubt arise? If you can create doubt, then it would be a miracle.We never go to the very root of a problem, we only go on changing the symptoms. My help is available to you only to go to the deep root of the problem, to the very foundation of it. Change it there!And you say, “I know for sure that my wife is utterly faithful to me.” How can you be so sure? You are just trying to convince yourself by using these words, “I am sure” – just using great words to hide something. You are not sure. See the cunningness of the mind. You are not sure, hence you are using the word sure: “I know for sure that my wife is utterly faithful to me.” Just faithfulness won’t do? Utterly faithful? Is there some doubt? Why utterly faithful?A circle is simply a circle. You cannot say that it is a complete circle, utterly circular. If it is a circle it is a circle. You cannot call it a perfect circle because if it is not perfect then it is not a circle, it must be something else. Watch, meditate on these words.“But still,” you say, “I doubt. Somewhere doubt lingers.” You doubt your wife? Are you certain about your faithfulness toward her? Maybe that’s why the doubt arises. You may be fooling around, if not actually, then in your imagination. And then, naturally, the inference is there that your wife may be fooling around, if not actually, at least in her imagination. And the male ego is such that it cannot allow the wife to fool around, even in her imagination.The story is told…Mulla Nasruddin got married and spent a pleasant honeymoon with his bride. But one day he came to the office with a rather glum expression on his face. When a fellow clerk asked him what was bothering him he said, “Gee, I made a dumb mistake this morning. Getting out of bed, like an absent-minded jackass, I laid a ten rupee note down on the table.”The other man consoled him. The wife won’t think anything of it, he assured him.“That doesn’t bother me,” Mulla Nasruddin answered. “But she gave me three rupees change.”Your own mind may be creating the doubt. When a beautiful woman passes by, does something happen to you or not? Only in two cases does nothing happen: either you are dead or you are enlightened – which both mean the same thing. Otherwise something is bound to happen. And then the suspicion comes that the same must be happening to your woman because she is as unenlightened as you are, and as alive as you are.Maybe the doubt is there because you are not loving her as much as she would like. That happens to couples – how can you go on being at the same peak of love as you were in the beginning, at the honeymoon peak? One has to come down. Sooner or later one has to come down from the hills to ordinary, mundane life. Sooner or later one has to forget all the poetry, fantasies, romance. And then fear arises: maybe I am not loving her as much as I should, I am not taking as much care of her as I should? Maybe this will be an opportunity for her to move on to somebody else?Look into yourself…A husband comes home and finds his wife in bed with a man. He is furious and makes to leave at once.The wife pleads, “Give me a moment to explain. This man came to my door an hour ago and asked for something to eat, so I gave him a sandwich. I noticed that his shoes were worn out. So I looked in your closet, found a pair that you haven’t worn for five years, and gave them to him to put on.“Then I saw that his jacket was very torn, so I went back to your closet and found a jacket that you haven’t worn for eight years. When he took his old jacket off to put yours on, I saw that his shirt was falling to pieces, so I opened your bureau drawer and gave him a shirt that you haven’t worn for the past twelve years.“Then as he was going out of the door he turned back and asked, ‘Is there anything else round here that your husband doesn’t use?’”Your wife is not the question, the question is your own mind. Just look deep down – have you been with her? For how long have you not been with her? I don’t mean physically, I mean spiritually. Just remember: for how long have you not seen her face? For how long have you not looked into her eyes? Figure it out, and you will be surprised that for years you have taken her for granted – and that may be the cause of your doubt. Remember, problems are always part of the mind; go deep into them.In the first place, don’t ask that she should be faithful to you; that is violent. Nobody has the right to ask anybody to be faithful toward them. Help her to be faithful toward herself.And secondly, look inside your own being. Are you still in love with her? If you are, then doubt is not possible. The doubt is simply a reflection that your love has disappeared. Life has become a drag; you have started taking her for granted. Love is no longer there. Now it is only a hangover, hence the doubt. Bring the love back, bring the poetry back, bring the romance back. And those who are intelligent can bring it back every day. Every morning they can look at their wife, their husband, with fresh eyes.Go on dying to past experiences, so that you can remain available to the present, fresh, young, utterly intelligent. And then life has a totally different flavor. Then these stupid things don’t arise in the mind at all.Enough for today.

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The Guest 01-15Category: KABIR

The Guest 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,You have never chosen to answer in discourse even one of my many questions, and yet you have answered them all. Sometimes by your words, sometimes in the tone, texture and rhythm of your song, and sometimes just in the way the moments unfold while being near you. There are no words for my gratitude, there is just the throbbing of my heart, like a newborn bird.Prem Atta, I did not chose to never answer your questions deliberately. I know you can understand my silence; words would only be a disturbance. You can understand my heart. There is no need for any language to exist between you and me.I was always thinking that you must be worried about why I am not answering your questions. And all your questions were significant, worth answering, but still I did not answer them. I was waiting for your response; that has come today. You understand my silence, you understand my not answering you. I am tremendously happy.Each of my sannyasins has to slowly, slowly, learn to understand just the language of my presence, to understand just love, to understand just being with me – that’s enough. Anything said creates a distance; nothing said – and all distance disappears.Two hearts can become one if they are able to drop language because dropping language means dropping the mind itself. The mind is language and nothing else. The moment there is no language, there is no thought. When there is no thought, there is no mind. And the utter silence that pervades in those moments, the primal silence that descends and permeates you in those moments, is what God is all about. To feel that primal silence is to know God.God is not a person, God is not a principle, God is not a theory. God is the experience of primal silence: wordless, mindless consciousness.I have given you the name Prem Atta. Prem means love, atta means self – one whose very self is love. Not love as a relationship but love as a state of being. Love cannot be expressed. It can be understood but it cannot be said; it can be shown but it cannot be said. I have been showing you the answer and I am happy, tremendously happy, that you have heard it. You are blessed.Get more and more in tune with my presence, not with my person, because I am not a person at all. I only appear as a person, otherwise I am just an absence. As far as my person is concerned I am utterly absent, but in that absence there is a light, there is a presence. That presence has nothing to do with me. That presence has no center to it, that presence has no self in it. That presence is as much yours as mine. That presence is divine. If you are silent your heart will start pulsating with it, your heart will start singing with it, your heart will dance with it. Your heart will start moving, soaring upward.Every man, every woman, is born with a bird in their heart. Their heart has wings, but it can only open its wings in the sky of silence. Words are weighty, words gravitate toward the earth. Forget all about words and let the celebration be.The second question:Osho,What is learning?In the first place, learning is not knowledge. Let us start with negating, with eliminating; let us first say what learning is not.Learning is not knowledge. Learning has become much too identified with knowledge; it is just the opposite of knowledge. The more knowledgeable a person is, the less capable he is of learning. Hence, children are more capable of learning than grown-ups. And if the grown-ups also want to become learners, they have to forget whatsoever they have learned. They have to die to whatsoever has become knowledge in them. If you collect knowledge your inner space becomes too heavy with the past. You accumulate too much garbage.Learning happens only when there is spaciousness. A child has that spaciousness, innocence. The beauty of a child is that he functions from a state of not-knowing, and that is the fundamental secret of learning: functioning from a state of not-knowing. Watch, see, observe, but never form a conclusion. If you have already arrived at a conclusion, learning stops. If you already know, what is there to learn? Never function from the ready-made answer that you have arrived at from scriptures, universities, teachers, parents, or maybe from your own experience.All that you have known has to be discarded in favor of learning. Then you will go on growing, then there is no end to growth. Then you will remain childlike, innocent, full of wonder and awe to the very end. Even when you are dying you will continue learning. You learn life, you learn death. And the person who has learned life and learned death goes beyond both; he moves to the transcendental. Learning is receptivity, learning is vulnerability. Learning is openness, open-endedness.Learning can be divided into many categories – I would like to divide it into eight levels, eight planes. The first level of learning is called by Gregory Bateson, “zero learning.” I love that denomination – zero learning. It is not really learning, it is only called learning. Zero learning means learning something mechanically, like a computer, like a parrot. You don’t really learn anything at all; you only repeat it, just like a parrot repeats things.You can teach a parrot a prayer and he will repeat it, not knowing what he is doing at all; there is no meaning in it. You may think that there is meaning because those words carry meaning to you. If you are a Hindu and you have taught the parrot “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,” the parrot will repeat it, and listening to it you will think there is meaning. That meaning is within you, not the parrot. The parrot is simply repeating the phrase, not knowing what it is; it is a purely mechanical gesture.It is very unfortunate that much of our so-called learning comes into this first category, zero learning. Our whole educational system is rooted in zero learning: we just teach children to repeat things. The better they are at repeating certain things, the more intelligent they are thought to be. We don’t teach them to discover, we don’t teach them to be original, we don’t teach them to invent. We simply teach them to repeat, and if they can repeat well they go on passing examinations. This creates a very mechanical humanity; people live like robots. They are just machines because almost ninety percent of what they know belongs to this zero learning category. They have learned a lot and yet they have not learned a thing.Beware of this first level of learning, avoid it. And if you are parents, help your children not to be repetitive, but to be original. Sometimes it is better to be wrong and original, rather than right and repetitive, because the original will bring intelligence to you. The repetitive, howsoever right, is not going to make you intelligent. And what kind of learning is learning if it doesn’t create intelligence?Look at the world, look at the whole situation of humanity; it is so unintelligent that there appears to be no learning happening at all. From the kindergarten to the university, the whole thing seems to be repetitive. The whole thing seems to be rooted in memory, not in consciousness. It does not help you to become more conscious, more alert. It does not help you to find new answers.And life goes on changing, life is never the same. You need to freshly respond, again and again, but your knowledge does not allow you to act freshly. You go on repeating the same old clichés, the same old routines. You go on repeating the same old answers, although life is asking new questions. Life never asks the same question again. Life is so original: each moment it is new, the situation is new, the challenge is new – and you are old. That’s the misery. You are always lagging behind, you are always missing the train. You reach the station only when the train has left, hence a great feeling of missing something. You can look into anybody’s eyes and see it; everybody feels they are missing something.What are you missing? – you are missing life itself because there is a gap between you and life. Life requires you to be original, but your educational system, your society, your culture, requires you to be repetitive. Your culture is more interested in efficiency than in intelligence, so you are efficient. You have ready-made answers for everything. Your mind is nothing but a filing system; your mind functions like a computer. You have not yet learned how to function like a man.The second level of learning after zero is “learning one”; it is purposive. The first level of learning has no purpose to it because you function mechanically and machines cannot have purpose. The second level of learning, learning one, has purpose. You have a sense of direction, although that sense of direction is unconscious; you are not clear about it, you are not conscious of it. You function like a plant, like a tree. A tree has a certain sense of direction, it knows where the sun is, it moves, but that movement is instinctive.In African jungles, trees grow very tall. They have to because if they remain short they die. They would never be able to absorb the sun’s rays; they would miss getting vitamin D. They have to struggle to grow taller and taller and taller. If you bring the same trees to India they don’t grow that high. You can give them good soil, good manure, water, everything, but they don’t grow. There is no need – the sun is available so easily, why should they bother?The second layer of learning is far better; the first is like a machine, the second is like a tree. With the second layer you start becoming alive. Our bodies function in this second way, instinctively. The body has an instinctive wisdom, but it is at a very low stage of learning, so there is no need to remain confined to it. Just to be a tree is not very significant; rather than living, it is vegetating. This second level of learning is called learning-one because learning starts from the second level.The third level of learning I call “learning-two.” With it you become a little bit conscious. You start functioning like animals, not like trees. Trees are rooted, but you can move. Trees have some freedom in growing upward: changing their direction, growing in certain directions, not growing in other directions. But they are rooted; they don’t have a will, they can’t move.This third level of learning, learning-two that is, is a little bit conscious; some intelligence has arisen. Animals behave in a more intelligent way; they are vaguely conscious of purpose. This level is a twilight phenomenon: it is between consciousness and unconsciousness; you can call it subconscious. It is the beginning of real intelligence, just the beginning. Many people have remained at zero learning, very few move to learning-one, an even lesser number move to learning-two.The fourth level of learning I call “learning-three” – conscious direction, meaningful existence. You don’t keep on simply drifting; you are no longer driftwood at the mercy of the wind and the waves. You have a goal, a clear-cut sense of direction, you know where you are going, you know why you are going. Life starts becoming more disciplined.The word discipline really means learning, hence the word disciple – one who is capable of learning. Real learning starts with learning-three. Very rarely, a few people come to this point. Only a very few fortunate people have a clear-cut sense of direction; they do not move accidentally. Ordinarily, people are just moving accidentally.Just a few days ago I was reading the autobiography of a Jewish poet…He begins by saying, “My birth was an accident. My father was traveling in a train; the train was late. He arrived at his destination in the middle of the night. At the station, no taxis were available, they had all left already. Snow was falling.”It was so cold and so dark, and he was feeling so lonely. He looked around for somebody to talk to, to find a way to get to a hotel, or to see whether it was possible to stay the night at the station.The woman who ran the cafe there was just closing up. He asked her for a cup of coffee; the woman gave him a cup of coffee. She was also alone and they started talking. The poet’s father said he was in a fix: there were no taxis available. He was tired, and he would like to get to a hotel to sleep. The woman said, “Why don’t you come with me in my car? I can take you to a hotel.”He went with the woman in her car, and that is how their friendship started. When they reached the hotel, it was closed, so the woman said, “You can come and stay with me.” So he stayed with the woman. And fell in love with her. After a few days they got married and thus this poet was born.Now he says, “My birth was just an accident. If the train had not been late I would not have been born at all. Or if the train had been a few minutes later still, and the woman had left, then I would not have been born at all. Or if the hotel had still been open, I would not be in this world at all.”This is how ordinary life goes on: just accidental, no definite goal, no definite direction; no faraway star calling you forth, so you can manage to go straight and not zigzag.The fifth level of learning I call “learning-four.” It is not only conscious of direction, it is conscious of consciousness itself. It is learning-four that becomes meditation. That’s what we are doing here: it is learning-four – making you conscious of your consciousness.To be conscious of a goal is one thing; you are objective. You are not conscious of your consciousness, you are simply conscious of the goal. That is the function of the ordinary school, college, university – to make you conscious of a goal-oriented life.The function of a mystery school – a mystery school just like this – is higher than the function of a university. Its function is to make you conscious of your consciousness. To be conscious of your consciousness is meditation; it is the first step to being really human. Learning-three was the beginning of being human. Learning four is attaining humanity, attaining manhood; it is attaining maturity. But it is not the end.The sixth level of learning, “learning-five,” gives you glimpses of the divine, satori. That is the purpose of meditation, of dhyana: to bring you to glimpses of the beyond – because man is not the end. Man himself is only a means, a passage, a bridge. Don’t build yourself a house on the bridge. The bridge is not for building houses on; it has to be crossed. Man has to be surpassed.Friedrich Nietzsche is reported to have said: the greatest day in humanity’s life will be when man becomes absolutely aware of surpassing himself. And the worst day, the greatest calamity, will be the day when man forgets how to surpass himself. Man is the arrow in the bow. It should not remain there in the bow; it has to leave the bow, it has to move. Man is a pilgrimage.First become conscious of your consciousness. And in that very becoming, in that very silence, in that moment, something immensely miraculous happens. When you are only conscious of your consciousness and not of any other contents – no thoughts, no desires, no dreams – when you are just conscious of your being conscious, when the mirror is reflecting itself and nothing else, you become aware of the divine, you become aware of the essential core of your being.That is learning-five, the sixth level of learning. It gives you glimpses of no-self. It gives you glimpses of the beyond. It makes you aware that man is not the end, that man is only a step. You become aware of the temple. You become aware of the mystery of existence, of the eternity of life, of deathlessness, of timelessness. This is the point where you start feeling that God is.The seventh level of learning, “learning-six,” Patanjali calls savikalpa samadhi. You have already attained a glimpse of the ultimate; now it is not just a glimpse, not just a shadow, it is settling, crystallizing, becoming substantial. But there is still a possibility of losing it. Patanjali calls this level savikalpa samadhi because savikalpa means there is still some thought lingering; not ordinary thought, but a new kind. You are thinking “I have arrived, I have attained, I am fulfilled.” A very purified ego, a very pious ego, very subtle; like the fragrance of a flower, you cannot catch hold of it.You have to be very, very careful. Otherwise you think you have come home, and the seeking stops at learning-six. Because you feel God’s presence you are tremendously happy, as never before. You know there is no death, all fear disappears – but you are still there.A disciple of a Zen master had been meditating for twenty years. Again and again he had taken his experiences the master, and the master had thrown him out saying, “This is all rubbish. Go and meditate again. Unless you can come with an experience of nothing, don’t bother.”But one day it happened; the experience of nothing happened. The disciple felt no-being, a deep nothingness, nobody inside. He was tremendously happy. He went running to the master, fell at his feet, and said, “It has happened – I have seen nothingness.”The master said, “Get out. Get out immediately. Because if you have seen nothingness, you are still there. That is not true nothingness – something of you is still rooted there. Only come to me when there is nobody to even say ‘I have known nothingness.’”More years passed, and the disciple never came again. Then one day the master had to go to the disciple. The disciple was sitting underneath a tree, playing on a flute. The master came closer. The disciple continued playing on his flute as if nobody was there.“Now it has happened,” the master said and blessed him. “Now you are utterly unconcerned. Now you don’t claim anything. Now it has become so natural that there is no idea of ‘I.’”At the seventh level of learning, learning-six, you feel nothingness, but you feel it. That is the last barrier: the “I.”The eighth level of learning I call “learning zero.” The first I called zero learning, the last I call learning zero. Patanjali calls it nirvikalpa samadhi; nirbeej samadhi, seedless samadhi. Now even the seed is burned, nothing is left. You are gone forever. You are no more, only God is. Not that you know God is; you are not separate to know. There is no duality, there is no I–thou, there is only godliness. This is the moment of primal silence.These are the eight levels of learning. Move from zero learning to learning zero, and the circle is complete. People are caged in the first, zero learning, and they have to be freed from it. And the ultimate is learning zero. Hence, Buddha called the ultimate, shunya, zero.You ask me, “What is learning?” Learning is the movement from zero learning to learning zero.The third question:Osho,I think I have become enlightened. What do you say about that?The moment one becomes enlightened, one does not think that one is enlightened; one simply knows. Thinking is guessing, it is not knowing. And when one becomes enlightened one never asks, “Have I become enlightened?” because it is self-evident; no certificate is needed.When you become enlightened I will come to you, to bless you. You will not need to come and ask.An old Welsh lady, seventy-five years old, is in the doctor’s surgery.“Well, I know it’s hard to believe, Mrs. Jones, but the tests are conclusive. You are pregnant.” the doctor tells her.“But I am seventy-five years old, doctor, and my husband is eighty-five. Are you certain? This will be such a shock for him.”“Yes, I’m certain. And because of his age, you must tell your husband very carefully. I suggest you telephone him from my office.”Mrs. Jones dials the number, and says: “Hello Hughie, darling, I have some news to tell you. Please sit down first. Are you sitting? Good. I am pregnant. The tests are all positive and the doctor is certain.”There was a short pause, and then Hughie’s quavering voice: “Who is that speaking, please?”That’s what I would like to ask: Who is that speaking, please? If it has happened, you are no more. If it has happened, there will be nobody to ask the question. If it has happened, your fragrance will tell people; you will become luminous.Mulla Nasruddin had a male child, after producing fourteen girls in a row with his four wives. When he heard the good news he went on a record-breaking, week-long celebration. On the seventh day somebody asked him, “Who does it look like, you or your wife?“I don’t know yet,” the proud father chortled happily. “We haven’t looked at his face yet.”When, after fourteen girls, you have produced a male child, who has time to look at the baby’s face? When you become enlightened, after millions and millions of lives, who bothers to ask? It is so absolute, and it is such sheer joy. Yes, one can dance, but one cannot ask; one can sing, but one cannot ask. One will almost go mad, that’s what Kabir says. Again and again he says that those who know God go mad, mad with ecstasy.You are perfectly in your senses; you have not gone mad. I have been watching you – there is no ecstasy. It may be just a desire, wish fulfillment: you would like to become enlightened, you would like somebody to tell you that you have become enlightened. You would like to be certified, but these things cannot be certified. These are not things of the outer world; when they happen it is a totally new phenomenon.When a Buddha is there, or a Krishna, or a Kabir, or a Jesus, or a Mohammed, something of God penetrates into the very earth, something of the sky starts walking here on the earth. Those who have eyes can see it, those who have ears can hear it, those who have hearts can feel it; and those who are intelligent enough will learn the secret of it.But you need not ask such questions; these questions are meaningless. I understand your desire, but on the way of enlightenment even the desire to become enlightened is a barrier – the greatest barrier.Forget all about enlightenment. Dance with abandon. Whatsoever you are doing here, do it totally. Forget all about enlightenment; it will take care of itself, it will come of its own accord. You cannot bring it; it is not something that you can do by managing. If you can simply be lost in the ordinary activities of life – totally lost, utterly lost – then one day, when the ego is missing, suddenly it is there. You may be just cleaning the floor, or chopping wood, or carrying water from the well. It comes as a surprise, when the ego is completely absent, as if there is nobody chopping wood – wood is being chopped but nobody is there. And when it comes, it brings its own absolute certainty.The fourth question:Osho,Is it possible to raise children in such a way that they never become interested in the dirty things of life?What do you mean by “the dirty things of life”? All life is beautiful. Even dirt is not dirty, even dirt has its own splendor because life is divine – how can it be dirty? You have not asked this question out of intelligence, awareness, meditativeness; you have asked this question out of prejudice, tradition. This is not your question, your society has implanted it in you. You must be a typical Indian, hence the question.India has great expertise in condemning. India has lived for at least twenty-five centuries in a very life-negative way. It was not always so. India is an ancient land: civilization has existed here for at least ten thousand years. It is only in these last twenty-five centuries that it has become more and more life-negative. Other than that, the Indian mystic was the most life-affirmative mystic the world had known. The Indian mystic loved life, rejoiced in life and all that life implied.But whenever something reaches a peak, the valley is bound to come. It is the constant rhythm of life; mountains cannot be without valleys. When a great wave comes, following in its wake is a hollow wave, a negative wave. Day is followed by night, night is followed by day. Life is followed by death, death is followed by life. Existence consists of polar opposites.India reached the highest peak of life affirmation in the Upanishads. The Upanishads are an expression of life affirmation. Then the decline came; it was bound to come. The life-negative aspect started asserting itself and everything was condemned. Sex became condemned – in the country which had made Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri. Sex became condemned in the country which had written the first book of sexology in the world: sex became condemned in the country of Vatsayana. He was the first man in the world to write a great sexual treatise, one of the most profound, and he had been loved and respected as a buddha by the whole country. Sigmund Freud, Havelock Ellis, Masters and Johnson are just children compared to Vatsayana and his insights into sex. Sex became condemned in a country which had raised sex to the highest levels of Tantra, a country which said that the sexual experience is closest to the experience of God.And when life becomes condemned, not only sex, everything becomes condemned: food, clothes, relationships, everything that life implies becomes condemned. For twenty-five centuries, India has lived in a terrible mess. But now a turning point is approaching again. Now the days in the valley are over. Now life-affirmation will assert itself again. My sannyas is just to herald a new phase, a new dawn.What do you mean by saying, “the dirty things of life?” You cannot protect children; those protected children will not have any backbone, they will be dull, insipid, dead. They will not have any sharpness of intelligence because you will be protecting them too much. They will be avoiding all the challenges in their lives. Your protection will become an imprisonment.No, children have to be made aware of all that life implies – good and bad, all; day and night, all; summer and winter, all; flowers and thorns, all. Children have to have the whole of life made available to them because only then will they be whole.Once, there was a king and his young wife. They were very much in love, and life was good. But one day the queen died while giving birth to their first child, a son. The king was beside himself with grief, and determined to protect his son from the possibility of such cruel misfortune. He decreed that the young prince would never know of the existence of women. So the boy grew up in peace, but knowing nothing of women.One day, when he was almost fifteen, the boy was walking with his father in the orchard. A little urchin girl, who had come to steal apples, ran across their path.“Ah, look father,” said the boy. “What is that?”The king hesitated a second or two. “It is a swan,” he replied.Some days later, the king called for his son. “Well my son, you are almost fifteen. What would you like as a birthday gift?”“Ah, father, please may I have a swan?” the boy replied.It is impossible to keep somebody unaware of life’s complexities. The experiment has been tried many times, and each time it was a failure.When Buddha was born, all the great astrologers of the country gathered of course. The king had fathered a child in his old age, and no one had ever seen a child so beautiful, with such grace. He did not seem to be part of this world; it was as if a god had been born.So, all the astrologers gathered to make predictions about him. They calculated and they looked into their scriptures, but they were at a loss as to what to say. All the astrologers, except one, raised two fingers.The king said, “What do you mean by raising two fingers? Don’t speak in riddles.”They said, “But we are in a riddle ourselves. We are raising two fingers because all the scriptures we have consulted say two things about this child: either he will become a chakravartin, an emperor of the world, or he will become a sannyasin.“But nothing definite can be said, hence we are raising two fingers: one finger to say he will be the greatest emperor and will rule the whole world” – chakravartin means one who will rule all the six continents – “and the other finger to say he will be a sannyasin, renounce the world, move into the mountains, into the forests, into deep meditation and become a buddha.”The king looked at the one man who was silent, the youngest astrologer, and asked him, “What do you say?”The young astrologer raised only one finger.The king said, “Now what do you mean by one finger – emperor or sannyasin?”The young astrologer said, “He will become a sannyasin, that is absolutely certain.”The king was not happy with the young astrologer. He said, “You are young, inexperienced. All your older colleagues are saying it is a case of either–or.”The king simply forgot the young astrologer’s advice. He listened to the older men then asked them, “What should I do so that he becomes a chakravartin and does not renounce the world?”The old astrologers gave some very commonsense advice. They said, “Do a few things. For one, keep him in such pleasure that he never becomes aware of pain, that he never comes to know of suffering. Then he will never renounce; people renounce the world because of suffering.”That is utter nonsense. If I had been there I would not have suggested that at all. But I know the king would not have listened to me either, just as he did not listen to the young astrologer. People listen to what they want to hear. Remember, people don’t renounce the world because of suffering – people renounce the world because they become fed up with pleasure.You can see it here: so many Westerners and so few Indians. Why? – because India is in suffering and people cannot think of sannyas. They are hankering for more and more possessions. They don’t know that possessions can’t give you anything, they don’t know the futility of riches. How can they renounce? How can they start moving above worldly things? How can they think of meditation? In fact, looking at all you Westerners coming to me, they are puzzled, they are very much puzzled, confused: “Why are they coming here?”Many of my sannyasins come to me and say, “Whenever we meet Indians, they immediately ask how they can get their son admission into Harvard, into Cambridge, into Oxford. ‘How can we get some help from the Ford Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation? I would like my son to become a great engineer, or a physicist, or a surgeon.’” My sannyasins say, “They don’t see that we have left Harvard and Cambridge and Oxford, and see the whole futility of it.”There are at least two hundred PhD’s present here today, and at least one thousand postgraduates from universities all over the world. But the Indians cannot see that these people are coming here; they ask them how to get admission. Their only hope is to make their sons “foreign-returned” – that is a qualification. Even if they fail at Cambridge that doesn’t matter, they are “London-returned”; that is enough of a qualification. A poor country, a suffering country, cannot think of anything more.The astrologers suggested, “Give him all kinds of pleasures. Gather all the beautiful women of the country around him. Let him live each twenty-four hours as if he is in paradise – music, song, dance, beautiful women, wine. Let him be drowned in pleasure and he will never renounce.”That’s what the king did and that’s why Buddha renounced: he became completely fed up. He had all the beautiful women, all the good things of life. His father made three palaces for him for the different seasons, three palaces in different places, in different climates, in different situations; so he would never suffer the heat of summer, so he would never suffer the cold of winter, so he would never suffer from too much rain. He was on a continuous merry-go-round, every day was a holiday. From morning till night he was surrounded by beautiful women, wine, dance, music, good food. Life was all roses. But when he was only twenty-nine, he became so bored with all this that he escaped. He simply ran away.If the king had asked me, I would have said, “This is stupid. If you do this he is bound to become a sannyasin. If you want him to become a chakravartin then let him suffer, let him go through pain, let him go through starvation. Let him see how life is a misery so that he longs for pleasure, strives for pleasure.” But that was not going to happen.And it is good that I was not there, otherwise you would have missed Buddha. It is good that the king didn’t listen to the young astrologer. His name was Kodanna. He must have been a rare man, of great insight. But those old fools convinced the king. And it is good that it happened the way it happened; to have missed Buddha would have been a great calamity. The world has never been the same since Buddha. Some fragrance has been released into the world. Man has moved his consciousness to a higher plane.India has lived in poverty for many centuries and when you live in poverty, and when you live with starvation, and when you are ill, the only way to console your ego is to condemn life. Try to understand this, it is a rationalization – life condemnation is a rationalization.It is the same as in this famous fable from Aesop…A fox was trying to reach some grapes, but they were too high and he could not reach them. He looked around, there was nobody – he was afraid that if somebody was looking and saw that he had failed, it would lower his prestige. Seeing that nobody was there, he walked away. But hiding behind a bush, a hare was looking, and he said, “Uncle, where are you going? What happened? Were the grapes too high? Could you not reach them?”And the fox said, “No. They are perfectly within reach, but they are sour and not worth eating yet.”The fox is the most cunning animal, he represents the politician. In all cultures down the ages, the fox represents the diplomat, the politician. The fox said, “No.” That has been the logic here in this country for two thousand years. Life became unreachable. The only way to save face was to condemn it: life is sour, it is not worth anything.Drop all that nonsense. Life is beautiful, life is tremendously graceful. All is good. Even that which does not appear to be good on the surface has goodness in it. It can’t be otherwise. In fact, the thorns are not against the flowers; they are guards, bodyguards for the flower. And pain is not against pleasure, it is the background; without it there would be no pleasure. In the night you see the sky full of stars. Where do those stars go in the day? – the background disappears. The stars need the background of darkness; only then can you see them. In the day the background is not there, it is fully light. The stars are still there in the sky, they don’t go anywhere. It is not that they suddenly run away in the day and by the evening they have come back. They are still there, it’s just that the background of darkness is needed for them to shine forth.Life depends on polar opposites: good and bad, love and hate, body–mind, matter–God. Nothing is bad, nothing is good. You have to grow between good and bad. You have to mature between good and bad – and both are opportunities, great opportunities. Don’t condemn them.Respect life, and life will respect you. Love life, and love will shower blessings on you.The fifth question:Osho,I thought meditation was a simple thing. But, seeing people doing vipassana, I am losing all hope of ever becoming a successful meditator. Please give me a little encouragement.Meditation is simple. Precisely because it is simple, it looks difficult. Your mind is accustomed to dealing with difficult problems, and it has completely forgotten how to respond to the simple things in life. The simpler a thing is, the more difficult it looks to the mind because the mind is very efficient at solving the difficult, but it does not know how to tackle the simple; it has been trained to solve difficult things. Meditation is simple, your mind is complex. Meditation is not creating the problem. The problem is coming from your mind, not from meditation.Vipassana is the simplest meditation in the world. It is through vipassana that Buddha became enlightened, and through vipassana more people have become enlightened than through any other method. Vipassana is the method. Yes, there are other methods, but they have helped only a very few people. Vipassana has helped thousands, and it is really very simple; it is not like Yoga.Yoga is difficult, arduous, complex. You have to torture yourself in many ways: distort your body, contort your body, sit this way and that, stand on your head, exercises and exercises – torture. But Yoga seems very appealing to many people.Vipassana is so simple that you don’t take any notice of it. In fact, coming across vipassana for the first time, you doubt whether it can be called a meditation at all. What is it, just watching your breath coming in, going out – finished? No physical exercise, no breathing exercise, a very simple phenomenon. That is the method: sitting silently, watching your breath coming in, going out, not losing track – that’s all. You do not have to change your breathing, it is not pranayam; it is not a breathing exercise where you have to take deep breaths, exhale, inhale, no. Let the breathing be simple, as it is; you just have to bring one new quality to it: awareness.The breath goes out, watch; the breath comes in, watch. You will become aware of the breath touching your nostrils in one place – concentrate there. The breath comes in, you feel it touching your nostrils; then it goes out, you feel the touch again. Remain there at the tip of your nose. It is not that you have to concentrate on the tip of your nose; you have to be alert, aware, watchful – it is not concentration. In the beginning you will miss again and again. Don’t miss: just keep on remembering and bring yourself back. For some people it is difficult to watch the breath there. If it is difficult for you, then you can watch the breath in your belly. When the breath comes in, the belly goes up; when the breath goes out, the belly goes down. Go on watching your belly. If you have a really good belly, it will help.Have you seen? – if you look at an Indian statue of Buddha, it doesn’t have a real belly, no belly at all in fact. Buddha looks like a perfect athlete; chest coming out, belly going in. But you will be surprised if you see a Japanese statue of Buddha. It does not look buddhalike at all – a big belly, so big that you cannot see the chest at all; all belly, almost as if Buddha was pregnant. The reason for this change happening is that in India, while Buddha was alive, he himself was watching the breath at the nose, hence the belly was not at all important. But as vipassana moved from India to Tibet to China to Korea to Burma to Japan, slowly, slowly, people became aware that it was easier to watch at the belly than at the nose. Then their Buddha statues started being different, with bigger bellies.You can watch either at the belly or at the nose, whichever feels right for you, whichever feels easier for you. The point is that it be easy. And just watching the breath, miracles happen.Meditation is not difficult. It is simple. Precisely because it is simple you are feeling difficulty. There is nothing to do, and you would like to do many things – that is the problem. It is a great problem because you have been taught to do things. You ask what should be done, and meditation means a state of non-doing. You do not have to anything, you have to stop doing. You have to be in a state of utter inaction. Even thinking is a kind of doing – drop that too. Feeling is a kind of doing – drop that as well. Doing, thinking, feeling, all gone; you simply are. That is being. And being is meditation. It is very simple.In your mother’s womb you were in the same space. In vipassana you will again enter that space. And you will remember, you will have déjà vu. When you enter deep vipassana, you will be surprised that you know it, you have known it before. You will recognize it immediately because for nine months in your mother’s womb you were in the same space, doing nothing, just being.You tell me, “I thought that meditation was a simple thing, but seeing people doing vipassana I am losing all hope of ever becoming a successful meditator.” Never think about meditation in terms of success because that is bringing your achieving mind into it, your egoistic mind into it. Then meditation becomes your ego trip. Don’t think in terms of success or failure. Those terms are not applicable to the world of meditation. Forget all about them; they are mind terms, they are comparative. And that’s the problem: you must be watching others succeeding, reaching, ecstatic; and you are feeling very low. Sitting, looking at your breath, watching your breath, you will be feeling silly. You must be looking very silly and nothing is happening. Nothing is happening because you are so much expecting something to happen.In the beginning, every new process looks difficult. One has to learn the taste of it.A wife had never tasted alcohol in her life, yet her husband was a souse.“Here, you souse,” she said. “Give me that bottle. I want to taste whatever it is that has made you the bum you are.”Taking the bottle of cheap whiskey, she took a good gulp of it. “Aargh…glompf…breecch…fuy…brrrit…ptui!” she gasped. “That is the most vile-tasting liquid I have ever had the misfortune to let pass my lips. It tastes terrible.”“You see?” said the old man. “An’ all these years you thought I was having a good time.”Just wait a little. Just have a little patience. In the beginning everything looks difficult, even the simplest thing. Don’t be in a hurry. That is one of the problems with the Western mind – hurry. People want everything immediately. They think in terms of instant coffee, instant meditation, instant enlightenment.A city slicker had just inherited a farm full of cows and, being a shrewd operator, he decided to increase the size of his herd right away. So he imported three of the finest bulls he could find in the area and locked them in the barn with the cows overnight.The next morning he called the owner of the bulls to complain.The stud man laughed. “What did you expect?” he asked. Did you think you’d find calves the next day?”“Maybe not,” retorted the city slicker. “But I sure did expect to see a few smiling faces on those cows.”No, not even that is going to happen soon. Just sitting for one day in vipassana, you will not come out of it smiling. You will come out utterly tired. Tired because you were told to not do anything, tired because you have never ever been in such a silly thing before. Not doing anything? You are a doer. If you had chopped wood the whole day, you would not be so tired. But sitting silently, doing nothing, just watching your silly breath coming in, going out – many times the idea arises: “What am I doing here?” And it will seem a very, very long time; the time will lengthen because time is relative. One day of meditation will seem like years and years: “What is happening? When is it going to finish? Is the sun not going to set today?”If you are in a hurry, if you are in haste, you will never know the taste of meditation. The taste of meditation needs great patience, infinite patience. Meditation is simple, but you have become so complex that it will take time for you to relax. Let me remind you again, it is not the meditation that is taking time, it is your complex mind – it has to be brought down to rest, to a relaxed state. That takes time.And don’t think in terms of success and failure. Enjoy. Don’t be too goal oriented. Enjoy the sheer silence of watching your breath coming in, going out, and soon you will have beauty, a new experience of beauty and beautitude. Soon you will see that one need not go anywhere to be blissful. One can sit silently, be alone, and be blissful. Nothing else is needed, just the pulsation of life is enough. If you can pulsate with it, life becomes a deep inner dance. Meditation is a dance of your energy, and breath is the key.The last question:Osho,I always wonder why people misunderstand you. In my whole life of seeking the way, I have never come across such a simple approach as yours.People are bound to misunderstand; it is nothing unexpected. It is expected because what I am saying is not according to their tradition. What I am saying is according to Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Kabir, Farid, Bahauddin, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, not according to any tradition.Those people are not part of any tradition. They are Himalayan peaks, alone. A Zarathustra is a Zarathustra and a Buddha is a Buddha. They don’t belong to any country and they don’t belong to any tradition and they don’t belong to any race, color or religion. They simply belong to existence. They simply belong to the whole. And whenever there are such people they are bound to be misunderstood because the tradition that priests create, that scholars create, that politicians support – the tradition which is a conspiracy against man’s freedom – is bound to retaliate, react.It is not an accident that Jesus was crucified, the real accident is why Buddha was not crucified. It is understandable that Socrates was poisoned, the more problematic thing is why Lao Tzu was not poisoned. How did they manage to escape?Maybe the reason for Lao Tzu’s escape is that he expressed himself very mildly, hence nobody bothered much about him. Socrates was not mild; he expressed himself very strongly. He was like a sword, sharp. He could not be tolerated.Buddha could be tolerated, but with difficulty of course. Stones were thrown at him, mad elephants were released to kill him, rocks were rolled down hills to crush him, but still he was not crucified like Jesus. The reason may be that his expression was very, very silent. His expression was very polite, his expression was very poetic. Jesus spoke in words of fire, Jesus spoke in terms of utter rebellion. Jesus was raw, Buddha was so cultured. Buddha was also a rebel, but a very sophisticated rebel. Naturally it was going to be so: Buddha came from a royal family, very cultured, educated, mild, with all the manners, etiquette. Jesus was the son of a carpenter; he had the same raw quality as wood, and the same smell.But one thing is certain: whenever there is a man like Buddha or Jesus or Lao Tzu, he is bound to be misunderstood because the crowd belongs to a tradition, a certain tradition – Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jew, Jaina, Buddhist – and the tradition cannot tolerate any new revelation. The people are so full of knowledge, so full of prejudice, that they understand in their own way. And because they understand in their own way, it becomes a misunderstanding. It is a very unconscious process.People don’t want to misunderstand me; they are not deliberately trying to misunderstand. They are trying to understand, but they come with conclusions, already arrived at conclusions, a priori conclusions. Hence, whatsoever they hear is not what I say: their minds distort it, change it, give it a new color.Ma and Pa’s farm had been mortgaged and their life savings had gone to giving their daughter a college education.Pa drove the truck to the station to pick up his daughter after her graduation. She climbed in beside him, slipped her arm through his and whispered, “I want to confess something, Pa. I ain’t a pure girl anymore.”Pa dropped his face into his hands and wept bitter tears. “After all the sacrifices me and your Ma made for your education,” he sobbed, “you still say ‘ain’t.’”That is how a prejudiced mind functions.Three young women were attending a class in logic. The professor said he was going to test their ability at situation reasoning.“Let us assume,” he said, “that you are aboard a small craft, alone in the Pacific, and you spot a vessel approaching you with several thousand sex-starved sailors on board. What would you do in this situation to avoid any problems?”“I would attempt to turn my craft in the opposite direction,” said the redhead.“I would go past them, trusting in my knife to keep me safe,” said the brunette.“Frankly,” murmured the blond, “I understand the situation, but I fail to see the problem.”It depends on you.What I say is very rarely heard. To hear it, you will have to become a disciple. To hear it, you will have to learn the art of learning. To hear it, you will have to be receptive, in deep love and trust. If you can put your mind aside, if you can listen to me in deep silence, in great reverence and love, then there is no possibility of misunderstanding. Otherwise you are only going to understand everything the way you understand.That is one of the problems with language: it is very good, very adequate, in communicating the ordinary things of life, but the higher you move, the more inadequate it becomes.Cohen met Levy for the first time in years. “How are things, Levy?” he asked his old friend. “I hear you got very rich here in America.”“I can’t complain,” Levy replied. “I’ve got a house and garden in the country, an automobile, a wife, ten children, and money in the bank.”Cohen, nettled by his friend’s success, tried to soften his hurt by saying, “But what can you do that I can’t? After all, we both eat, sleep and drink every day. What else is there to life?”“Aaah,” said Levy, “you call your life living? In the morning I get up, have a fine breakfast and a good Perfecto cigar. Then I lie on my verandah. After that I play a round of golf and come back with a healthy appetite for lunch. When I have finished I have another Perfecto and lie down on my verandah again. I go to dinner with an appetite like a wolf, I smoke another good long cigar and lie on my verandah again. And at night I go to the theater or the opera, whatever I like.”“And you don’t do no work? That’s wonderful!” said Cohen, marveling.On his return home, Cohen told his wife of the encounter. “You know who I met today?” he announced. “Levy, who came over on the ship with me. Is that man rich! He’s got a house and garden in the country, an automobile, a wife, ten children.”Mrs. Cohen interrupted, “What’s his wife’s name?”“I don’t know,” said her husband, “but I think it’s Verandah.”Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Hear then the wisdom of the wise:Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.We enter today into one of the most beautiful worlds – that of a small document called Desiderata. It is strange because it has appeared many times and disappeared many times, hence nobody knows exactly who wrote it. Truth has the capacity to appear again and again. Because of human stupidity it is lost again and again too.Desiderata seems to be one of the most ancient documents available today, but it is copyrighted by a poet, Max Ehrmann. In his book of poems it is given as a poem authored by him and copyrighted in 1927 in America. But in the first edition he talks about the legend that this small document was discovered on a plaque installed in St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore when built in 1692 But it was lost: there is no proof anymore whether it was installed as a plaque in St. Paul’s Church or not. The legend is there, it has persisted. It seems Max Ehrmann had a vision of it – it came to him as a vision. He is not really its author but only a receptacle, a medium.This has happened to many other documents too. It happened in the case of Blavatsky’s The Voice of Silence. She is known as the authoress of the book, but the book is very ancient. She discovered it in her meditations, it appeared to her.Many parts of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra are also very ancient, and the same is the case with Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. Mabel Collins’ Light on the Path is of the same category, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet also.I have looked into all Max Ehrmann’s poems but no other poem has the same quality, not even a single poem. If Desiderata was written by him, then many more poems of the same quality would have flowed. It has not happened. In fact, Desiderata seems to be so different from all his poems that it is impossible to believe that it has come from the same person.The same is true about Mabel Collins’ Light on the Path. These are strange documents. The possibility is that they have always existed, again and again lost visibly, but truth manifests itself. Whenever there is a vulnerable soul, a receptive person, truth again starts flowing through him. And of course the person will think, “I am writing it.”It is because of this fact that the Upanishads have no names of authors; nobody knows who wrote them because the people who received them were very alert and aware. They were mystics, not only poets.This is the difference between the poet and the mystic: when something happens to the mystic he is perfectly aware that it is from the beyond, it is not from him. He is immensely glad, he rejoices that he has been chosen as a vehicle, as a medium, but his ego cannot claim it. In fact, you become a mystic only when you have dropped the ego. But the poet is full of the ego – not always, but almost always. Once in a while, when he forgets his ego, he touches the same world that is the mystic’s world; but the mystic lives there. The poet once in a while gets a glimpse of it, and because his ego is not dead, he immediately claims it as his creation. But all the ancient seers were aware of it.The Vedas, the Bible, the Koran, the three greatest scriptures of the world, are known not to have been written by anyone. The Vedas are known as apaurusheya – not written by any person. Certainly somebody wrote them, but they are from existence, from the beyond, from some unknown source. The mystic becomes possessed by it, he dances to its tune. He is no longer himself – he is it. The poet once in a while gets a glimpse of it, a faraway glimpse.In Sanskrit we have two words for the poet; in no other language is it so, because no other part of the world became alert, very alert about this fact. In Sanskrit one word is kavi. Kavi means exactly the poet. The other word is rishi; rishi means a mystic poet. The difference is great. The poet has a deep aesthetic sense, he is very sensitive, he can penetrate into the very core of things. He has a way of knowing which is not that of the scientist. He does not analyze, he loves; his love is great, but his ego is alive. So when he looks at a roseflower he comes closer than the scientist, because the scientist immediately starts dissecting the flower – and to dissect something is to kill it. The very effort of knowing is an effort to kill.Hence whatsoever science knows is about dead things. Now even scientists are becoming aware of the fact. When blood is taken out of your body and is examined, analyzed, it is no longer the same blood that it was when it was circulating in your body. Then it was alive, then it was an organic part of your life. Now it is not the same. It is like your hand, or your eye; when it is part of the organic unity of your body it can see, but take the eye out and it is dead, it cannot see. It is no longer alive, it is something else, it is a corpse.The greatest scientists are becoming aware of the fact that whatsoever we have known up to now is basically, fundamentally wrong. We only know about dead things – the alive things we miss. That is why science cannot say there is something in you which is beyond the body, more than the body. Science cannot say that you are more than the sum total of your parts, and unless you are something more than the sum total of your parts you are not. Then you are only a machine – maybe very sophisticated but that does not matter. You are a computer, you don’t have a soul; you are just a by-product, an epiphenomenon. You don’t have any awareness, you are only behavior.Science reduces man to a machine, not only to an animal – remember. Those days are gone when science used to think, like Charles Darwin and others, that man is nothing but another animal. Now Skinner, Delgado, Pavlov don’t say that man is another animal – because there is no anima, no life, no consciousness – they say man is another machine.Religion says man is more than the body, more than the mind, but science cannot believe it because of its very methodology. The way it tries to know things prohibits it from going deeper than the material, than the dead.Hence the poet reaches closer than the scientist. The poet does not dissect the flower, he falls in love. He is immensely glad, he rejoices in the flower, and out of that rejoicing a song is born. But he is still far away from the mystic, the rishi. The mystic becomes one with the flower. The observer becomes the observed; there is no distinction left.It happened once…Ramakrishna was crossing the Ganges in a small boat with a few of his disciples. Suddenly in the middle of the river he started shouting, “Why are you beating me?”The disciples were puzzled. They said, “Paramahansa Deva, what are you saying? We, and beating you?”And Ramakrishna said, “Look!” He uncovered his back and there were marks on it as if somebody had beaten him badly with a stick. Blood was oozing out.The disciples were puzzled. What had happened? And then Ramakrishna pointed to the other shore: a few people were beating a person. When they reached the other shore they went to the person, they uncovered his back and the marks were exactly the same as on Ramakrishna’s back – without any difference, exactly the same! Ramakrishna became one with the person who was being beaten. He was not an observer, he was not separate; he became one with the observed.This is the meaning of the English word empathy. Sympathy the poet knows, empathy the mystic knows. When the mystic sings, it is a totally different flavor, a different beauty, because it is not a faraway glimpse of the truth – he is inside the truth, at the very core of it.But there are many things to be understood. The mystic may not be able to sing at all because he becomes so at one with the truth that he may forget to sing the song. It has happened to many mystics: they have never said anything. It is as if you ask the sugar, the sugar may not be able to say that it is sweet. A little difference is needed to know the sweetness of the sugar. The mystic becomes the sugar.Once in a while the mystic is also a poet. That is a coincidence. Whenever it happens – as in the case of Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, Mohammed – then we have something of the beyond available to us. But a mystic is not necessarily a poet; to be a poet is a different talent. One can be a mystic without being a poet, one can be a poet without being a mystic.When a mystic is a poet an Upanishad is born, a Shrimad Bhagavad Gita is born, a Koran comes to the Earth. But it is not always so. So many times it happens that the truth has to find the way through the poet because the mystic is not available.That’s what happened with this small document, Desiderata. No mystic seems to be available who can sing this song; hence Max Ehrmann is chosen to be a vehicle – but he is an unconscious person. He thinks he is writing a poem of his own; it is not his own, it has nobody’s signature on it. And as you enter into this small document you will understand, it cannot be from a poet. It has the same quality as the Koran, the same quality as the Upanishads.It is also a strange document because in such a small space it says so much. It is really made of sutras – just a few hints. Nothing is said very solidly: just a few hints, fingers pointing to the moon. It is so small that after Adlai Stevenson’s death in 1965 it was discovered that he had intended to send out Desiderata as a Christmas card to his friends. It can be printed on a small card, a postcard, but it contains infinity – a dewdrop that contains all the oceans.It can be of immense help to you on the path; hence I call it Guida Spirituale. It begins:Hear then the wisdom of the wise…Jesus used to say to his disciples again and again: “If you have ears, listen. If you have eyes, see.” He says it so many times, as if he was not seeing people as having ears and eyes. And that’s my experience too: you all have eyes, but very few people are capable of seeing. You all have ears, but it is rare, very rare, to come across a person who is capable of hearing – because just to hear the words is not hearing and just to see figures is not seeing. Unless you see the meaning, the content, unless you hear the silence which is the soul of the words, you have not heard.One has to listen in deep silence, in deep agnosia. Remember Dionysius’ word agnosia: a state of not-knowing. If you know, your very knowledge is a disturbance. You cannot listen. That’s why pundits, scholars, are incapable of listening: they are too full of rubbish, their minds are continuously chattering inside. Maybe they are reciting shastras, scriptures, but that makes no difference; what is going on inside is of no value.Unless you are absolutely silent, not even a thought stirring inside, not even a small ripple in the lake of consciousness, you will not be able to hear. And if you cannot listen, then whatsoever you think you hear is going to be wrong.That’s how Jesus was misunderstood, Socrates was misunderstood, Buddha was misunderstood. They were speaking very clearly. It is impossible to improve upon the statements of Socrates; his statements are very clear, almost perfect, as near perfect as language can be. Buddha’s statements are very simple, there is no complexity in them, but still misunderstanding arises.Where does all this misunderstanding come from? Why have all the great prophets, tirthankaras, all the great enlightened masters been misunderstood down the ages? – for the simple reason that people cannot listen. They have ears, hence they believe they are capable of hearing. They are not deaf, they have the instrument to hear, but behind their ears there is so much noise. Their minds are standing behind their ears to interpret what is being said, to compare, to analyze, to argue, to doubt. They get lost in all the processes.Just a small word, and watch your mind, what happens – not even a word, just a sound. This airplane passing by and watch your mind. You cannot hear it simply, you start thinking of many things. Maybe you are reminded of your own journeys, some friend who died in a plane crash, somebody you loved very much, and all the memories associated with the person, and you have gone far away into the memories. And one thing leads to another; you are no longer herenow. You have not heard the plane passing by. This plane simply triggered a process in you of thought, of memories, of desires. Maybe suddenly you thought, “It would be nice if I had a plane of my own.” Or maybe you simply thought, “What a distraction! This noise is a disturbance. I was listening so silently, and here comes this stupid airplane!”It is not the airplane that is disturbing you; it is your own mind which is calling it stupid, a distraction, a disturbance. If you don’t call it anything, nothing is disturbed. If you simply hear the noise, you will be surprised: it deepens your silence; it is not a distraction at all. When it passes by you fall into a deeper valley of silence than you were in before.Hence the first word of the Desiderata: Hear then the wisdom of the wise… A strange beginning, particularly from a Western poet, from an American poet. This is how all the Eastern sutras begin. Just a little difference is there, and that seems to be because of the Western medium. He has not been able to relate exactly what was happening in his innermost being.All the great Eastern sutras begin with now: “Athato brahma jigyasa.” The Brahma Sutras begin this way: “Now the inquiry into the ultimate” – not then but now. The Bhakti Sutras of Narada begin: “Athato bhakti jigyasa. Now the inquiry into the universe of devotion.” It is never then, it is always now. In fact, then does not exist, only now exists.There does not exist, only here exists. You will never find there and then anywhere. Wherever you go you will always find now and here. If it had come through a mystic there would have been no then, there would have been now. Hear then the wisdom of the wise…And that makes more sense. But the logical mind functions in a different way, and when you use a logical mind as a vehicle it interpolates something of its own: then, therefore… Now is never part of the logical mind, now is part of the meditative mind. And Ehrmann is not a meditator, is not a mystic, hence he has missed with that word. He says: Hear then the wisdom of the wise…Just change then to now, and see how the quality becomes totally different: Hear now the wisdom of the wise… because except now there is no time and except here there is no space. Then and there are part of our noisy mind. When the noise ceases and the mind is put aside, what is left? – just herenow.Swami Ramateertha used to tell a beautiful story:There was a very great atheist and he was continuously talking against God. He had written on the wall of his drawing room in big golden letters, “God is nowhere.” And then a child was born to him, and one day he was playing with the child and the child was learning language. He was not capable of reading such a big word – nowhere – so he divided it in two. The child read the sentence: “God is now-here.” Nowhere was too big a word, he divided it in two: now-here.It must have been a rare moment for the atheist. In fact, when you are playing with a child you forget your seriousness, you forget your ideologies, you forget your religion, you forget your philosophy, you forget your theology. When you are playing with a child, something of meditativeness happens to you, hence playing with children is of great value. Playing with a child, for a moment you become a child. And remember Jesus’ saying again and again: “Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of God.”In that moment something happened. The child said, “God is now-here,” and the father was taken unawares. He heard it and he was in a playful mood with the child. And you cannot argue with a small child by saying, “There is no God.” And because he was playful, silent, enjoying, the statement from the child became something of tremendous importance, became very pregnant, as if God had spoken through him.He looked at the wall for the first time. His whole life he had been looking at that sentence. It was never, “God is now-here,” it was always, “God is nowhere.” He had never conceived that nowhere could be divided into now-here, that nowhere consists of now-here. He was transformed. It became almost a satori. He was no longer an atheist.People were puzzled. They could not believe what had happened because he had been so argumentative and he had had so much proof against God. What had happened? And when they asked him, he would shrug his shoulders. He would say, “I can also understand why you look so puzzled. I myself am puzzled. Ask this child – he has done something. Hearing this sentence from him, something has changed in me. Looking into the eyes of the child, something has been transformed in me. And it is not only logically that I am a different person, I am existentially different too. Since then I have been seeing God now-here: in the wind passing through the trees, in the rain falling on the roof, I hear his footsteps, I hear his song. The birds sing, and I am reminded God is now-here. The sun rises, and I am reminded God is now-here. Now it is no longer a question of argumentation, it has become something of my experience.”Mind is always going somewhere else. It is never now-here; it is always then-there. Mind exists only in then and there. That’s why Max Ehrmann has missed. He says: Hear then… Then looks more logical, but it is not existential. Now is existential, although very illogical – because you cannot catch hold of now with logic. The moment you think you have caught hold of it, it is already gone, it is already past. You can be in the now, but you cannot try to understand, to know now. By the time you try to understand, it is no longer there. It is like a river flowing continuously.Heraclitus says: “You cannot step in the same river twice.” And I say to you: you cannot step in the same river even once because when your foot touches the surface of the river, the water underneath is rushing by. By the time you touch a little deeper it is different water, the surface is rushing by. By the time you reach to the rock bottom of the river, so much water has flowed by that you have not touched the same water even once!And such is life: except change, nothing is permanent. Only change is eternal. It looks paradoxical, that’s why I say it is illogical.Hear then the wisdom of the wise… A strange statement, in fact: …the wisdom of the wise… seems to be tautological. Of course, wisdom can only be of the wise. What is the point of repeating it? Why say, “wisdom of the wise”? Can wisdom be of the unwise too? But there is a very subtle point to be understood because there are so many knowledgeable people in the world and the knowledgeable person appears almost as if he is wise, and he is not. He speaks in the same way. The scholar who has studied the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita his whole life speaks the same language as Krishna. But when Krishna speaks it, it is the wisdom of the wise, and when the scholar, the pundit speaks, it is not the wisdom of the wise, it is the wisdom of the unwise. It is mere knowledge, it is not even wisdom. How can it be wisdom?Remember the distinction between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is a pseudo coin. Knowledge is easy, it can be borrowed from anybody. You can go to the university, to the library, you can ask the knowledgeable people, and you can accumulate it. It is very cheap. You need not go through any transformation, you need not be reborn for it. You will remain as you are, and knowledge can be accumulated. It will be added to you, but it will not be of any value because you will remain the same. In fact, it can even be dangerous. It will deceive others, they will think you know. And if many people think you know, you can fall into a self-deception. You can also start thinking, “How can so many people be wrong? If they think I know, I must know.”I have heard a story:A journalist died and reached heaven. St. Peter opened the door and told the journalist, “Please, our quota for journalists is full. We have only twelve journalists in heaven, not more than that. Even those twelve are almost always unemployed because there is no news. Nothing happens!”What will happen in heaven? No riot, no rape, no politicians, no toppling of governments, no divorces, no murder. Nothing happens there. George Bernard Shaw has defined news as: “If a dog bites a man it is not news, but if a man bites the dog then it is news.” Now in heaven who is going to bite the dog and for what? In the first place where will you find a dog in heaven? And to find the person who will bite the dog will be almost impossible. So there is no newspaper there, or maybe just empty sheets distributed early in the morning, and saints sit and look at the empty paper and feel very happy that nothing has happened – good. Nothing is always better than something.So St. Peter said, “Please go to hell. There are thousands of journalists and hundreds of newspapers, and there is so much news.”But the journalist was adamant, as journalists tend to be. He said, “No. Give me at least twenty-four hours time, please. And if I can convince one journalist to go to hell then one place will be vacant. That you can give to me – just twenty-four hours’ time – otherwise I will go to hell.”St. Peter saw the logic of it and he said, “Okay, you can try.”And the journalist tried. Journalists are experts in lying. Truth is not their business, truth cannot be their business because truth is so simple and so plain. You cannot make a story out of it; there is nothing much in it, it is simply so. Lies are very complicated and you can make many stories out of them, and you can go on making stories from one story to another. But as the foundation you need a lie, not truth.The whole art of journalism is the art of lying in such a way that people think it is true – so he was an expert. He started spreading a rumor. The moment he entered he started saying to people, “Have you heard that a new newspaper, a very big project, is being started in hell? A chief editor is needed with a great salary and all the facilities. Assistant editors are needed, news reporters are needed.” And he created so many rumors around that in twenty-four hours’ time when he came back to the door to ask St. Peter, “Has any journalist left for hell?” St. Peter closed the door and said, “Get in! Now you cannot go out. All twelve have escaped! And we should have at least one journalist in case something sometimes happens. So now I cannot allow you out.”The journalist was mad. He said, “This is not right, this is not according to our contract. I asked for only twenty-four hours. I want to go to hell!”St. Peter said, “Why? For what? – because you spread the rumor. It was all lying, you invented it!”He said, “Yes, I invented it – but there must be something in it when twelve journalists have believed it. There must be something in it! It may be a coincidence that I invented it and a big newspaper is really going to begin. I cannot stay here! When twelve people have believed it, a great doubt has arisen in me. Maybe it was not a lie at all.”This you can experience in your own life. Start telling a lie to a few people and when they start believing it you will be surprised that slowly, slowly you are believing it too. Hence I say that many people live in lies knowing perfectly well that they are lies, but just because so many people believe – how can so many people be wrong?Once George Bernard Shaw said something and then he argued against it. He was a beautiful man, in many ways his insights were great. He used to say that science is all wrong. The Earth does not go around the Sun, the Sun goes around the Earth – and he was telling this to a friend.The friend said, “What nonsense are you talking? What proof have you got? Now science has proved it completely and I cannot believe a man like you – so intelligent, so contemporary – is believing in such nonsense, that the sun goes around the Earth.”Bernard Shaw said, “Yes, the Sun goes around the Earth. It has to because Bernard Shaw lives on the Earth! My Earth cannot go around the sun.”The man said, “But now almost the whole world, so many people, millions of people, believe that the Earth goes around the Sun.”Bernard Shaw said, “When so many people believe in a thing I always suspect it must be a lie. Otherwise, how can so many people believe in it?”Truth has always been in the possession of very rare people. Only once in a while is there a person who has truth; otherwise the masses live in lies, all kinds of lies. But if they have been propagated for centuries they become truth.Adolf Hitler says in his book Mein Kampf: “The difference between a truth and a lie is only that of time, nothing else.” The truth is a lie which has been propagated for a long time; the lie is a new truth which will become a truth finally if somebody goes on propagating it.You believe in hell – have you ever thought it is a lie? You believe in heaven – have you ever thought it is a lie? You believe in a thousand and one things without ever giving it a thought that they may be lies, only lies given to you by others. Authoritative people have given them to you so you believe them: your parents, your teachers, your priests, authoritative people, those who have power. “Such people cannot lie.” In fact, such people always lie, their whole power depends on lying. Truth is humble, not powerful. Lies become very powerful; they are very competitive. Lies are all politicians, struggling, fighting, trying to prove, “I am the truth.”Knowledge is nothing but lies you have collected from others. Remember, unless something is of your own experience it is a lie. Truth has to be your own authentic experience.Buddha says, “Don’t believe because I say so, believe only when you know. Don’t believe because it is written in the scriptures, believe it only when you know.” And I say to you too, if you are a real seeker of truth you will not believe in knowledge. Knowledge is very superficial. One can talk about God without knowing anything of godliness, without ever tasting anything of godliness. One can talk about love without ever knowing through experience what love is – even a blind man can talk about light and can explain to you the whole physics of light. That does not mean that he is not blind – he is still blind. And these scholars and pundits, ayatollahs, imams, popes, they are all knowledgeable people. They pretend to be wise – they are not wise.Unless one is fully awakened, unless one’s whole being becomes awareness, unless all darkness, all unconsciousness disappears, you are not wise. Knowledge is information, wisdom is transformation. Hence it is meaningful: Hear then the wisdom of the wise… Not “of the knowledgeable.”Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.A very significant sutra. This is how the seeker of truth begins his journey. The first thing is: Go placidly… don’t make much fuss. Go peacefully, don’t create much dust. There is no need.Sufis say, “If you really want to pray, pray in such a way that nobody knows that you are a man of prayerfulness.” In the middle of the night when even your wife is snoring, sit silently in the bed and be prayerful, and so silently that nobody comes to know. Don’t make a fuss.The real man of prayer hides and prays and the pseudo makes much noise about it. In fact, his prayer is nothing but noise – he goes to the temple shouting. In India every temple has a big bell; he rings the bell so the whole neighborhood knows. And if there are many people in the temple, then his prayer becomes very long; if there is nobody he finishes quickly. What is the point? – there is nobody to see. If there is a photographer, then see how prayerful he is, how his face becomes divine! If the news reporters are there, then he will really pray. You will see his humbleness, his simplicity. He will fall down on the ground, he will roll on the ground, he will cry and weep – and all are crocodile tears, because when nobody is there he does not care a bit.I have heard about a man who used to say a prayer every night to God, just one word. He would look at the sky and say, “Ditto!” and cover himself under his blanket and go to sleep. What is the point of repeating the same thing again and again? Isn’t God intelligent enough to understand ditto? Once, at some time he had prayed; now what is the point of repeating the same prayer again and again? And God knows it anyway. Just to remind him, “I am praying,” he said, “Ditto.”Sufis say to pray in such a way that nobody knows. Why? For the simple reason that ego is very cunning. It wants to brag; it even wants to brag about religion, about spirituality, about prayer, about meditation. It wants to brag; it does not matter what it brags about. It will brag about money, it will brag about meditation, it will brag about power, it will brag about prayer. The ego wants to brag: “I am doing something special, something great, something extraordinary. Don’t think that I am nobody – I am somebody!”Go placidly amid the noise and the haste… The world is full of noise and haste. Why is the world so full of noise? – because each mind is noisy, and the world consists of minds; hence there is so much noise. The whole world has become almost a madhouse. Everybody is shouting and nobody is hearing. Everybody is talking almost to himself; the other is only an excuse.A psychologist was observing two of his patients; both were professors of philosophy. Because they were both friends and had gone mad they were put in a single cell in the madhouse and the psychologist was watching them. He was very puzzled. The most puzzling thing was that although they were absolutely insane, about one thing they were very sane: when one was talking the other would remain silent, when the other started speaking the first would be silent. This is strange – two madmen! Why should they bother whether the other is silent or not, whether he is talking or not? So he inquired.He said, “I am very puzzled. Why when one talks does the other become silent?”They said, “We know how to converse. That’s how we used to do it when we were thought to be sane – it is just old habit.”“It is not really that I am silent,” one man said. “Just on the surface I have to be silent because I know the rules and regulations of conversation. Inside I am chattering, talking, waiting for the right opportunity, for when this fool stops; waiting for the right moment when he says something which I can use as an excuse to start on what I want to say to him.”In fact, that’s what you all are doing. Just look at your conversations: when the other is talking you are simply pretending to listen, just pretending to listen. Inside you are working on your own. And then you will find a word, a sentence, a statement that you can use as a jumping board, and then you start talking. Your talking has nothing to do with what he has said; it has a connection with what was going on inside you, it is a continuum inside you. He is just an excuse.That’s why people never agree, because they never listen. Husbands never listen to what their wives are saying, wives never listen to what their husbands are saying, children never listen to what their parents are saying. Nobody listens; everybody at the most pretends. The world is full of noise because the world is full of insane minds.The world can be really silent only when there are many, many meditators. Only when the world consists of a great majority of meditators will there be a profound silence, an almost tangible silence. You can touch it, you can taste it, you can smell its perfume.We are living out of noise and everybody is in a hurry. There is great haste, everybody is rushing. Nobody knows where, nobody knows why – just a deep restlessness. You can’t sit; if you sit, others won’t allow you. They will say, “Don’t just sit there, do something!” And I say to you, “Don’t just do something, sit there!” Nothing is better than something. But people say just the opposite; they say, “Something is better than nothing. Do something!”One woman was saying to another woman, “I have heard that your son has become a sannyasin. He meditates?”The other woman said, “It’s better than doing nothing.”Now the poor woman does not know what meditation is. Meditation means doing nothing. That’s what I teach here: doing nothing, just sitting there, just being.Why is there this hurry? Are you really trying to reach somewhere? Are you conscious about the goal, the target?A pilot said to the passengers, “All our engines are okay, the plane is functioning perfectly well. There is only one bad piece of news, otherwise everything is good. The bad news is that we have lost contact with the Earth so we don’t know where we are and we don’t know where we are going. The good news is that we are going at full speed!”Everybody is going at full speed; that is the good news. Who cares? Who has time to think about where he is going? When you see the whole world rushing, you start rushing.We force children to run. That’s what our whole educational system is meant for, from the primary school to the university. Twenty-five years we waste on every person, almost one third of the life, to teach him to rush. Then twenty-four hours in his day it is rush hour. He is never anywhere for a single moment. He cannot see the beauty of the trees because he cannot sit underneath the trees – Buddha must have known the beauty of the trees. He cannot see the beauty of the stars, he cannot see the beauty of people. In fact, when he is in Kabul he is rushing to Kathmandu, when he is in Kathmandu he is rushing to Pune, when he is in Pune he is rushing to Goa! He is never where he is; his mind is always ahead of him, planning how to reach there. And if you ask him, “For what?” he will say, “We will enjoy.” And he is not enjoying this moment, how can he enjoy any other moment? He has lost all capacity to enjoy herenow; his only enjoyment is planning, always planning, planning to enjoy.There are people who are working their whole lives and just waiting for their retirement; then they will relax and enjoy. And they know perfectly well: six days they work in the office and wait for the seventh day, the holiday, and hope, “Soon Sunday will come and we can relax and enjoy.” And they cannot relax and they cannot enjoy – in fact, the holiday seems to be so long and so boring; they have to fill it with something.They go for a picnic. The same things that they would have eaten at home, relaxedly, now they rush toward a picnic spot miles away to eat. And they are sitting in the grass, and ants are very clever; they know perfectly well where the picnic spots are. Their astrologers tell them, “Go ahead, that is the place!” And the mosquitoes, they are always there waiting for you. They say, “Hello, so you have come!” And then quickly people finish because they have to reach home; and they rush and cars are going there bumper to bumper. And many more accidents happen on Sunday than on any other day, many more deaths on the road than on any other day. Strange – some holiday!The whole city is going toward the same picnic spot, the same beach. I have seen pictures of beaches and I cannot believe what is happening. There is not even space to walk! They are packed – no marketplace is so packed – and all kinds of fools are there. Six hours it takes them, six hours to reach the beach, then for one hour they lie down amidst this whole mass of fools under the sun, and then back home… And the whole way they are quarreling with the wife and the wife is quarreling with… This you can do more at ease at home, relaxed in an armchair – nag each other, do whatsoever you want! What is the point of going to the beach? Nobody is seeing the sea, nobody is seeing the sun. Nobody has time.These same people think that when they are retired they will rest – they cannot. Sixty years of habits, how can you drop them? Impossible: the habits have become so deep-rooted that people suffer more when they are retired than they have ever suffered, because nobody knows how to rest, how to relax. This is sheer madness!These people go on saying beautiful things. They say, “Time is money.” They have beautiful proverbs to drive you crazy: “Time is money, so save time.” And everybody is always looking at his watch – as if they are missing something. They have to reach somewhere, and there too they will do the same thing. If the train is five minutes late everybody is complaining, all are angry.I had been traveling for twenty years all over this country and I was puzzled. If the train is just one hour late, everybody is so angry and condemning the government and the society and everything. Why can’t you rest? If the train is one hour late it is a great opportunity. One hour is yours – you can rest. You have at least an excuse: “The train was late, what to do? So I rested, relaxed.” But no, they cannot; they become more and more boiled up, they start spitting fire.These same people when they reach home will sit before the idiot box, TV, for five hours. The average American is doing that for five hours per day. There is a great danger for America because of this idiot box. If you look at an idiot box for five hours, it has a hypnotic effect – you are bound to become idiotic! Only an idiot can look at a box for five hours, and they are glued to their chairs; they cannot get up. I have heard they eat their food just sitting in front of the TV. Not only that – they will even make love just in front of the TV so they can do both the things, making love and watching the TV because something may be missed!Now these idiots are in the majority. And they will play cards and if you ask why they will say, “Killing time.” One minute the train is late and they are angry, and then what do they do with the saved time? They kill it! Going to the movie, killing time – sometimes going to see the same picture again. Stupidity seems to be infinite. Now what are you going for – the same picture again? But the time has to be killed.They will go to the Rotary Club, to the Lions Club. And all these clubs exist for people to kill time, to meet the same fools, to say the same foolish things, to gossip about the same old nonsense – to kill time. They will go to the restaurants, to the hotels, to the parties to kill time.And look at their faces – they are bored everywhere. Whatsoever they are doing they are bored, obviously, because they are not into it. They are somehow trying to finish it to save time, and then they have to kill time. Killing time, saving time, killing time, saving time… The whole of life is gone! And you come empty-handed into the world and you go empty-handed.Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. The only thing worth remembering again and again is: …what peace there may be in silence. Give a little time, energy, to silent moments because only in silent moments will you know what peace is. And the person who has tasted something of peace is rich, is immensely rich – all others are beggars – because he starts knowing the inner kingdom of God. Peace is the door to the inner kingdom of God. Silence helps you to know peace and peace leads you into godliness.As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.Just to avoid unnecessary troubles. As far as possible, without surrender… Don’t compromise, don’t surrender to people. That’s why Desiderata says: As far as possible… – without any compromise – because if you compromise with the mass mind, you will never be able to become that which you are here to become. You will remain ungrown-up, you will remain retarded. You will never come to a flowering, you will never know fruitfulness. Your life will be barren, uncreative.As far as possible, without surrender… So two things have to be remembered. Don’t surrender to the mass mind; but that does not mean continuously fight with people, that everything has to be argued about – because if you do that then you will be wasting your time.Be exactly in the middle. Without compromising, avoid unnecessary quarrels. …be on good terms with all persons as far as possible, without selling your soul, without compromising on any ground, without surrendering at all. But there are many things which can be avoided. In fact, ninety-nine percent of the problems which create fighting, argument can be avoided.The child asks you, “Daddy, can I go out and play?” and the immediate response of almost all daddies is, “No!” Now the quarrel starts. And all children know how great your patience is. They will stamp their feet in front of you, they will go into a tantrum, they will cry, they will start throwing their toys, tearing their books. And then finally you will say, “Go out and play!” This you could have done before, you could have said yes because there was nothing wrong, but somehow our whole upbringing is quarrelsome, argumentative.The wife says, “We should go to this movie,” and the husband immediately says, “No, that is not worth going to. We should go to another.” And the husband knows perfectly well, the wife knows perfectly well, that when the wife has spoken she has spoken – it has to be done. But now before it is to be done there will be a few hours’ argumentation, nagging, and a thousand other things will come up which could have been avoided. And finally you will see the husband following the wife to the same movie, just hiding his tail between his legs, following the wife. Now you are going to the same movie, so what was the whole fuss about?It seems we never learn anything. Just watch and you will be able to cut out many unessential things in your life. The word desiderata is beautiful: it means the essentials.Mahavira has said: “The most fundamental quality needed by the seeker is to know what is essential and what is nonessential.” He calls it vivek, discrimination, because if you don’t know what is essential and what is nonessential you may be lost in the nonessential. The nonessential is ninety-nine percent and the essential is only one percent. The nonessential is a vast, thick jungle; once you get lost in it you may never find the essential. And people get entangled in every way with the nonessential.Just watch how many things can be avoided without compromising, then avoid them; how many words can be avoided without any trouble, then avoid them, because each single word uttered may bring some trouble for you. In fact, except words, what brings trouble to you?You say something and the wife jumps up, and she says, “Why did you say this?” And you go on explaining, “I didn’t mean that,” and now it is impossible to come to a conclusion. Soon there will be a banging of doors and throwing of pots and pillows. And you simply uttered a word which could have been kept inside; there was no need to utter it. Just a single word can cause so much trouble which was not essential at all. If it is essential utter it, say it; otherwise avoid it.Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.The man who is in search of truth learns to listen not only to the wise; he learns to listen even to the unwise – or the otherwise – because everybody has a story to tell and everybody has passed through a life, and something of his life may be of tremendous help to you, may give you an insight.It is easier to have an insight into your own life watching others because others are like mirrors. Every other person is a walking mirror around you. If you are capable of listening you will see some of your own qualities reflected in them which you were not aware of directly, but via the other you become immediately aware. You can see the stupidity of the other person more easily than your own stupidity. But seeing his stupidity you will become aware that, “These are the things I have been doing myself. This is the foolishness that I go on and on doing myself.”When somebody else is angry you say he is insane. It is easy to see that he is insane; it is a momentary insanity. But how many times do you get angry? Then you are so much involved in the anger you cannot watch it. Watching others is a way of watching yourself, and it is easier because you are not involved.That’s why a very strange thing becomes possible: the psychotherapist can help his patient but he cannot help himself, because he can see the faults of the patient very easily but he cannot see his own faults. He can give good advice to the patient, he may not be able to follow that advice himself.You can watch it. Everybody is a good adviser to others; when it comes to his own life he is as much a fool as anybody else. Much can be learned by observing, by listening, by seeing, even from those who are ignorant because you are also ignorant; even from those who are dull because you are also not very intelligent. And this will be the beginning of intelligence, the beginning of wisdom.The intelligent person is one who learns from every opportunity, who never misses a single opportunity to learn something, who makes his whole life a school, a learning, a discipline, a search, an inquiry.But remember not to compromise, not to surrender. As far as the essential is concerned, beware. Even if you have to risk your life, risk it, but don’t surrender as far as the essential is concerned. And as far as the nonessential is concerned, don’t even waste a single moment on it – agree.This was one of the agreements between me and my father. When I was a very small child I told him, “Listen, I will agree to every nonessential thing. You can tell me what clothes to wear, what shoes to wear, what to eat, what not to eat, you can tell me. But as far as any essential is concerned, beware – I am not going to agree to it.”Slowly he watched and he was convinced, because whenever it was a nonessential thing I was always ready to agree with him. He would say, “Go to this college, not to that.” So, okay, because to me each college is like any other college – they are all stupid, so it doesn’t matter. I will go to this college. He would say, “Study this subject.” Okay, because what does it matter? – economics or politics or history or geography or philosophy or psychology; anything will do.But as far as any essential was concerned I told him, “This is an essential point, I will not agree with you, so you had better not say anything about it because that will be an unnecessary misery for you.”When I came back from the university it was a natural thing to ask whether I wanted to get married or not. I told him, “This is an essential,” and that was the last time he inquired about it; then he never inquired again. “If it is an essential then you have to leave it to me – I will not compromise. I will not compromise at any cost.” He never asked again; he kept his contract. “For nonessentials,” I told him, “you can tell me anything – I will do it.”Any fool would come into the house and he would say, “Touch his feet,” and I would, because he was an old fool, an old relation: “Okay, it doesn’t matter, it is just an exercise.”Once you become very clear about what is essential and what is nonessential, things are never as confusing as they seem. You go on fighting for nonessentials, wasting your energy and others’ energy, and then, when the question of the essential arises, you don’t have any energy to fight. And then sometimes you have to compromise on the essential.This has been my approach: As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. But as far as possible… That does not mean that I have to be absolutely on good terms. I am on good terms with everybody, but as far as possible… Whenever the question of the essential arises, then it is not a question of being good or bad, it is a question of life and death. Then I can rebel, then I can fight back, then I can sacrifice everything.The advice of Desiderata is of great significance to all those who want to find truth, because the very finding needs great energy. If you become a reservoir of energy, only then is it possible to know, to be, to come to the ultimate realization of life’s mystery.Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Can you tell us more about the essential?Man is also a seed, a possibility, a potential, a hope, a promise. But the seed is not yet the flower. In essence it has the capacity for millions of flowers, but not in reality. Those flowers have to be actualized. The essential is that which you are born with – which is your very being.That is exactly the purpose, or should be the purpose, of education: to help you to seek and search your essential, to help you to grow it. The word education means to draw out. That which is in has to be brought out – just as you draw water from a well. But something has gone basically wrong, the whole educational system is doing just the opposite of this. Rather than drawing anything out of you, it forces, imposes things upon you.That which is imposed upon you is nonessential; it creates your personality. The essential is your individuality, the nonessential is your personality. In other words, the essential is your very soul, your being; the nonessential is your ego. All that helps the ego is nonessential, all that helps you to become egoless is essential. Ambition is nonessential, greed is nonessential, desire, any kind of desire, is nonessential.Meditativeness is essential. To be silent, to be still, just to be alert, aware: that is the first step, the door into the essential. And once you have found in deep, profound silence what you are meant to be, you have found your destiny. And then life has a sense of direction not imposed by others but discovered by yourself.The function of the master is educative – not informative but educative, educative in the original sense of the word. He is not to give you a certain character because that will be imposed upon you. He is not to make you a Christian or Hindu or a Buddhist. He has to help you to know what you can be, because that which you can be you already are in essence, in the potential. You can be a Christ, you can be a Buddha, you can be a Krishna – but you cannot be a Christian; Christianity is something imposed from the outside. You cannot be a Hindu. Nobody is born a Hindu, it is nobody’s destiny to be a Hindu; it is the effort of others to lead you astray from your destiny. Nobody is born to be a communist or a fascist, but everybody is born with a certain direction in which he will find fulfillment.Maybe you are a painter, but you are functioning in the society as a doctor. You will remain unfulfilled your whole life, because you listened to your parents and the society and the greed and ambition. Everybody was saying, “Be a doctor. It is a good profession, respectable, and you will be able to earn more money than if you become a painter.” Who knows? – a painter may not be able to earn money at all, because painting is not something which has any utilitarian purpose. And by being a painter you may remain a beggar. You may never become famous because painters become famous only once in a while.If you are a musician, a poet, you cannot fulfill the ambitions of your parents, of your society, of all the well-wishers. But one thing is certain: you will be tremendously happy whether you are known or unknown, whether you are poor or rich. You will have a tremendous contentment because you are fulfilling something very fundamental at the deepest core of your being. Unless you start moving in the direction of your essential you remain miserable.Bliss is a consequence, a by-product. Whenever the river starts moving toward the ocean there is bliss. And one never knows what is hidden in you. No astrologer can help you, no palmist can help you. Except with deep meditation you will never be able to feel what is possible for you.As I see it, almost everybody is in the wrong place. The person who would have been a tremendously happy doctor is a painter and the person who would have been a tremendously happy painter is a doctor. Nobody seems to be in his right place, that’s why this whole society is in such a mess. The person is directed by others, he is not directed by his own intuition.Meditation helps you to grow your own intuitive faculty. It becomes very clear what is going to fulfill you, what is going to help you flower. And whatsoever it is – it is going to be different for each individual. That is the meaning of the word individual: everybody is unique. And to seek and search your uniqueness is a great thrill, a great adventure.Your question is significant in many more ways too, because it is not only a question of finding the essential in the individual. In life we are burdened with the unessential, in religion too, in every dimension.The religious person goes on doing certain rituals which are taught to him by others. He never finds his own religiousness, a quality which cannot be imposed on you, a quality which can only be helped to grow in you. It is not like a plastic flower that can be given to you from the outside, by the priest. It is a real roseflower, and for that you have to be very alert, very aware.The Christian goes to the church every Sunday. It is a formality, it does not make him religious but it gives him a false sense of religiousness. The Hindu goes on chanting the Gita. It does not make him religious at all, on the contrary it prevents, because by reciting the Gita he becomes very knowledgeable. He becomes a parrot or a computer. He can recite the whole Gita, but he understands nothing because he has not experienced anything. He knows words; he has not encountered the meaning of those words. People go on being imitative.For example, Mahavira lived naked, that was his individuality. Nobody else is supposed or expected to live naked, unless one finds it an inner, intuitive vision, unless one finds that that is the only way he can be true to his self. Then it is another matter. But the Jaina muni, the Jaina monk, practices nudity – just an imitation, a carbon copy. And remember, imitation is always ugly because it creates a false person, it never gives you authenticity.Mahavira was not naked because anybody had told him to be naked. He felt the immense urge to be just like a child and he followed his urge, and he suffered for his urge. He was chased from one village to another, mad dogs were sent after him, he was stoned – because people thought he was destroying their morality, that he was a dangerous man.In an orthodox country like the India of twenty-five centuries ago, a man walking naked would have been certainly a nuisance to people, to their conventional way of living, to their traditional style of thinking. Krishna did not live naked, Rama did not live naked, no Hindu avatar has lived naked. This man is destroying the whole tradition, culture, religion. Of course he has to be punished.But Mahavira was immensely blissful. The Jaina muni does not seem to be blissful at all because he is simply an imitation. He is really torturing himself, forcing himself to be naked, because in his mind now greed has arisen: unless he looks like Mahavira he is not going to attain the ultimate liberation.Now nakedness has become an essential thing – which it is not. Nakedness is not an essential thing. Buddha attained without being naked, Jesus attained without being naked, and you can attain. And I am not saying that Mahavira did not attain by being naked – he attained. But these are individual things.Buddhist monks go on following Buddha. They sit in the same way, they talk in the same way, they behave in the same way. That is not going to help at all; that is not going to make you religious; that is not going to make you another Buddha. You are simply being stupid. And the more stupid you are, the better you can imitate because imitation needs no intelligence. In fact, only a mediocre mind can be imitative. The more intelligent you are, the more you want to be simply yourself – whatsoever it is. Now the whole thing is nonessential. For Buddha it was essential to sit that way; that was his intuitive feeling.When Buddha dropped the ideas imposed on him by others, his followers left him. He had five followers – before he became very famous he had only five followers; that was before he became enlightened. Those five followers were very devoted to him for the simple reason that he was behaving just like any other Hindu ascetic – only with great stubbornness, doing all kinds of austerities, following all kinds of rules and regulations given in the scriptures. He was so particular about everything that these five followers thought that he was the greatest master.Then one day he understood the whole stupidity of it: he is not following his own intelligence, he is simply following others, which may be right, may not be right. One thing is certain: they are a different kind of people and he is not that kind. He was suffering, but he was thinking it is necessary to suffer, that this pain is necessary to grow.The day he realized it, he dropped all ascetic practices. He relaxed. That was the first time he ate in the night and he ate food offered by an untouchable woman. All five followers immediately left him, thinking that he had gone astray. First, eating in the night is not right; secondly, the food offered by an untouchable, a poor woman, is not acceptable to a holy man. He is no longer holy.That very night Buddha became enlightened. Those five fools missed his enlightenment. That very night he became enlightened, and he became enlightened for the simple reason that for the first time he relaxed into his being and simply followed his essential core.All religions are destroyed by the nonessential. Your whole life is destroyed by the nonessential. But nobody else can decide for you what is essential and what is nonessential.Remember that I cannot say exactly, “This is essential and this is nonessential.” Each individual has to discover it. Each individual has to be a light unto himself or herself.All that I can suggest is: be silent so that you can hear the still small voice of your heart. And it is always speaking, but you are so noisy you go on missing its message.The second question:Osho,The shankaracharya of Shardapeeth, Dwarka, is reported to have said that your ideas about spirituality do not conform with the sanatan dharma which gives great importance to self-control and prescribes rules of conduct given in the ancient scriptures. The shankaracharya also remarked that wherever you and your ashram move, it will spoil the spiritual environment of that place.Osho, this is perhaps the first time that the shankaracharya has openly criticized you and this place. Would you kindly say something?The shankaracharya is right in a way: I do not conform with his ideas about spirituality. Why should I conform to anybody else’s ideas of spirituality at all? Spirituality is not an ideology in fact. It has nothing to do with ideas. It is a state of no-mind – how it can be an ideology? The shankaracharya has no experience of meditation at all, otherwise he would not have spoken this way.Spirituality simply means that you have gone beyond the mind, and in that transcendence all ideas are transcended – Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, communist – all ideas. Ideas as such are transcended. There is only silence, and two silences can never be different. They are like two zeros. What difference can there be?Buddha in his deep meditation is not different from Mahavira. Mahavira in his deep meditation is not different from Zarathustra. Zarathustra in his deep silence is not different from Lao Tzu. And I call this the sanatan dharma.The word sanatan means eternal, and dharma means Tao, the law, the ultimate law. “Aes dhammo sanantano,” Buddha repeats again and again: “This is the eternal law of life.” But by sanatan dharma the shankaracharya means Hindu religion. Hindus think that their religion is the eternal religion: that is sheer nonsense.Religiousness is eternal, but no religion is eternal. Every religion is born and dies in its own time. No religion is beginningless and no religion is endless. Everything that is born in time is bound to die sooner or later, and it is good that it dies because it creates space for something new to arise. Sanatan dharma – eternal religion – cannot be identified with any religion in particular.Jainas believe that their religion is far older than the religion of the Hindus, and it may be far older because their first tirthankara, Adinatha, is remembered in the Rig Veda, the first Hindu scripture, with great respect. That shows two things: that Adinatha must have already been an established, accepted spiritual leader; he must have preceded the Rig Veda, and the Rig Veda is the ancientmost scripture of the Hindus. Jainas say their religion is far older, but older does not mean eternal.Thousands of religions have existed on the Earth and have died, and when they were alive they had millions of followers, but now they have completely disappeared. The followers have disappeared, the priests have disappeared, their gods have disappeared. When they were alive, they also used to think they were eternal. But whatsoever happens in time always dies; nothing can be eternal in time.My meaning of sanatan dharma, eternal religion, is that religiousness is eternal. For example, life is eternal – people come and go. We were not here a few years before and after a few years we will not be here, but people were here and people will be here. Life will continue, the forms will go on disappearing and appearing, but that which appears and disappears, that which becomes sometimes manifest and sometimes unmanifest, is eternal. It is religiousness.Jesus becomes Christ through that religiousness. Buddha becomes Buddha – enlightened – through that religiousness. It cannot be identified with Hinduism.The shankaracharya is right: if sanatan dharma means Hinduism, then I cannot conform with its ideas. But if sanatan dharma means eternal religiousness then there is no question of conforming – I am living it, I am it. And my whole effort here is to help you to be religious – neither Hindus nor Christians nor Mohammedans nor Jainas.Now this may be the only place in the whole world where all religions are meeting and merging into a new kind of religiousness, a totally different quality. Nobody bothers here whether you are a Christian or a Parsi, whether you are a Taoist or a Buddhist, because we have found the source. And once you know the source it does not matter from what shore you drink, in what kind of bucket you draw the water from the source. The bucket is nonessential, the water is essential. We have found the eternal religion: it can only be a religiousness, a quality, a fragrance.My meaning of sanatan sharma is totally different from the shankaracharya’s meaning. The shankaracharya of Shardapeeth, Dwarka, simply represents a tradition, a convention which is already dead. All traditions are dead.What I represent is a living experience.The shankaracharya is only an imitator of the Adi Shankaracharya, the original shankaracharya. One thousand years have passed. The original shankaracharya had experienced; now this shankaracharya is only a priest. These people are the people who destroy spirituality, but they will condemn me, they will criticize me because I don’t conform to their stupid ideas about spirituality. As far as I see, their spirituality is nothing but hypocrisy. They go on saying one thing and they go on doing just the opposite.The original shankaracharya has said: “The world is illusory, it is maya.” If the world is illusory, if it is maya, if it does not exist at all, then why do these priests go on preaching to people to renounce it? That is their whole life’s work: to tell people to renounce the world – the world which does not exist in the first place! It is like telling people to renounce their shadows. If you are right, there is no world to renounce; if there is a world to renounce, then you are not right.Because of such stupid ideas, people become hypocrites. They go on condemning the world on the one hand, and on the other hand they go on grabbing the same world. You will not find more greedy people anywhere in the world than you will find in India, and the Indian goes on condemning the whole world as materialist.One of our sannyasins, Kamal Bharti, had gone to America and traveled all over the world. He wrote a letter to me saying, “It is strange, Osho, that I traveled all over the world without any money, just sannyasins and friends were supporting me, and I never ran out of money. I was never in any difficulty anywhere in the whole world. But the moment I landed at Mumbai airport my money and my things were all stolen!” This is a religious land, people are spiritual!Kamal Bharti, that shows that somebody who thinks the world is maya has taken your things. What does it matter? Why allow you to carry such illusory things? He has helped you to unburden!These people have created such a hypocrisy by telling people to do something anti-life. The shankaracharyas, the priests of the Hindus, go on condemning life and also go on praising God for creating the world. And they don’t see the illogicality of it, the ridiculousness of it. They are blind people. They cannot understand me because what they think is spirituality is nothing but hypocrisy.The pope lay dying. His doctor called the cardinals together and announced: “We can only save his life with a heart transplant.”“We must tell the people,” said one of the cardinals. “Perhaps a donor will volunteer to give his heart for the Pontiff.”The announcement was made and thousands gathered beneath the pope’s balcony, shouting, “Take-a my heart! Take-a my heart!”The cardinals now had to decide on the person who would donate his heart to the Holy Father. “We will drop a feather from His Holiness’ hat,” said the head cardinal. “Whoever it lands upon will be the lucky person.”The feather floated down from the balcony. From the multitude below came: “Take-a my heart! Pfhoo, pfhoo! Take-a my heart! Pfhoo, pfhoo!”They were doing both things: “Take-a my heart!” and blowing the feather as far away as possible! That’s what these people call spirituality.“The world is illusory.” And these temples of the shankaracharya accumulate as much money as possible. “Money is dirt” – and they collect gold! “Gold is nothing, it is dust…” These people are against everything, and yet from the back door they go on doing the same as anybody else.My spirituality is not hypocrisy, it is authentic living. I don’t tell you to be life-negative. I tell you to be life-loving, life-affirmative, because God is nothing but life. The aliveness of existence is what God is all about.These people are afraid that I may destroy the spiritual atmosphere – as if the spiritual atmosphere exists! I have traveled all over India – there exists no spiritual atmosphere. A spiritual atmosphere exists only around a buddha. It is like light: if there is a flame, there is light around it. Once the flame is gone the light disappears.When Gautama the Buddha was alive there was a spiritual atmosphere that surrounded him. Wherever he went that spiritual atmosphere went with him; it was his light. There was light when Krishna was alive, when Christ was alive, but now Christianity is only talking about light.Maybe they have paintings about light, of light, but those paintings will not give light in darkness.The Mother Superior of the convent awoke in a happy mood, dressed and set off to visit her flock. “Good morning, Sister Augusta, God bless you! Are you happy at your work?”“Yes, Reverend Mother, but I am sorry to see you got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.”The Mother Superior ignored the remark and passed on to another nun. “Good morning, Sister Georgina, you look pleased with yourself!”“I am, Reverend Mother, but it is a pity you got out of bed on the wrong side today.”The Mother Superior, greatly puzzled, moved on to a young novice. “Tell me, little Sister, do you also feel I got out of bed on the wrong side?”“I am afraid so,” said the nun.“But why? Am I not as happy as a song-bird and pleasant to you all?”“Yes, Mother, but you are wearing Father Vincenzo’s house slippers!”These are the people who go on talking about spirituality, celibacy, renunciation! And if you look deep down into the world that surrounds you and these spiritual, so-called spiritual people, you will be very much puzzled: they live a double kind of life.Yes, I will destroy this double kind of life wherever I go! He is right in that way. Whatsoever he calls “spiritual environment” exists nowhere. Whatsoever exists is hypocrisy, and I am going to destroy it, certainly, because that is the only way to create a spiritual atmosphere. Something that is destroying people’s very lives has to be ruthlessly uprooted. All the weeds have to be uprooted so we can grow roses.He says that sanatan dharma, by which he means Hindu dharma, Hindu religion, gives great importance to self-control. I don’t give any importance to self-control because all control is ugly, because all control is repressive. Life should be spontaneous, not controlled. Yes, your inner world should be so clear and transparent that you can see what is right and what is wrong; and you should live according to it, not by any dictates in any scriptures.He says: “Hindu dharma lives according to prescribed rules.” All prescribed rules create slavery. I don’t prescribe any rules for my sannyasins. I don’t give you a character from the outside, but I give you something far more valuable: I give you meditativeness, out of which a character arises which is your own, out of which you start living a life full of insight. Then you know what is right and what is wrong and you live accordingly, but not according to Krishna or Manu or Rama. They may have been right – that was their intuition – but to live according to any prescribed rule is to live the life of a slave. And I am against slavery.I teach people rebellion. In that way the shankaracharya of Shardapeeth is right: that wherever I go I will destroy their so-called spiritual atmosphere. He has not really criticized me, he has praised me – unknowingly of course, unconsciously of course, because these people have no consciousness.A man of consciousness cannot be a priest. He cannot be part of any tradition or convention. He is bound to be free from all conventions and all traditions. He lives a life of freedom, spontaneity, love, joy.The third question:Osho,It seems, when the hits come through our work, it is not a hammering on the rock but a simple knocking on the door. Would you comment?It is true. The master only knocks on your door, but if you are too much identified with your sleep the knock on the door hurts you. It feels as if you are knocked on the head by a hammer. When you want to sleep and somebody tries to wake you up, he looks like an enemy. Otherwise, the function of the master is to wake you up. It depends on your sleep how many and how loud the knocks you will need. Sometimes he even has to knock exactly on your head because you don’t listen to the knocks on the door. He has to throw a bucket of cold water on you!Mulla Nasruddin was saying to his wife, “What makes you think, dear, that I am a loafer?”The wife said, “Because when opportunity knocks you complain about the noise!”The master knocks because there is an opportunity. He knocks only when there is an opportunity. When he sees that the opportunity is waiting at the door and you are fast asleep, he knocks.Unless you love the master deeply you will not be able to understand his knocks; they will look inimical. They are out of his compassion, out of his love.You have understood well: it is a knock on the door. Wake up and open the door because the sun has risen, the birds are singing. There is not time to sleep anymore. Come out of your slumber of many, many lives! And then you will be grateful to the master who knocked on the door, because the sun will not knock on the door, the flowers will not knock on the door. They will go on flowering, the sun will go on shining, the moon will come, the stars will come, but nobody will knock on your door. God goes on without knocking on your door.Kabir has a beautiful poem in which he says:Guru govind doi khare, kake lagun paeBalihari guru apaki, govind diyo batae.Kabir says: “The master and God both are standing in front of me, and I am in a confusion, whose feet to touch first?” The master’s feet or God’s feet? – because it is the master who has shown me God; he should be respected first. But when God is standing there, how can you respect the master first? You have to bow down to God.And Kabir says: “But my master was so great that he immediately looked at me and showed me the feet of God. ‘Touch the feet of God, forget all about me.’”Buddha says: “If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately. Don’t let me stand between you and the ultimate.”The master knocks on the door and goes on knocking. The moment you open the door, the master will disappear; he will not stand in the way. That is the difference between the true master and the pseudo master. The pseudo master will stand between you and existence. The true master will disappear. The moment you are awake you will find existence. And the master is not standing there anywhere, but because the master disappears he creates more respect and more love in you.I have always wondered about this small statement of Kabir, “Whose feet to touch first? And great is my master who has shown immediately the feet of God to me.”I have wondered whose feet Kabir really did touch first. As far as I can see, he must have touched the feet of the master because he says, “Great is the master who has shown me the feet of God.” Now how can you not help touching the feet of the master first?Buddha says, “Kill me if I come in the way.” And the disciples who became enlightened continued to touch Buddha’s feet. Buddha said, “Now there is no need. You are as much enlightened as I am, because in enlightenment there are no degrees. You have come home, you are a buddha yourself – no need to touch my feet.” But they continued, out of deep gratitude.The last question:Osho,I am going to Italy and the situation there is very bad. People are killing each other in the streets and a bomb destroyed ninety people in a station a week ago.Now, Osho, you love Italians. Will you please say a few words so that they become a little aware of their insanity?The whole of humanity is in the same situation. We have worked for thousands of years to make the Earth a big madhouse, and we have succeeded, unfortunately. It is not only in Italy, it is the same everywhere; people are killing each other. There is violence everywhere for the simple reason that we have, in subtle ways, not allowed people’s energies to be creative, and whenever creative energies are prevented they become destructive.Violence is not the real problem. The real problem is how to help people to be creative. A creative person cannot be violent because his energies are moving in the direction of godliness. We call God the creator. Whenever you are creating something you participate in God’s being. You cannot be violent, you cannot be destructive; it is impossible.But for thousands of years we have destroyed every possible door to creativity. Instead of helping people to be creative we train them to be destructive. We have respected the warrior, the soldier, too much. In fact, the warrior is something which should be condemned not respected – he is destructive. The soldier should not be respected.We need sannyasins, not soldiers. We need lovers, not fighters. But love is condemned and violence is praised. What is great in Alexander the Great? – nothing but violence. He is great because he was the most violent person of those days. He killed throughout almost all the known world of his day – he killed millions – and still we go on calling him Alexander the Great. What is great in your kings and emperors and their history? Why do you go on praising them? They should be completely forgotten. Nadir Shah, Genghis Khan, Tamurlaine, why should they be remembered? Why should small children be told all the stupidities that man has done to man? – because we still want people to fight.The politician lives on violence, the nations live on violence. If the violence disappears, there will be no Italy, no India, no Japan. There will be only one humanity. Why these boundaries? But without these boundaries the politician disappears, and he does not want to disappear, obviously. He has a great vested interest in the boundaries and the boundaries have to be defended. And the only way to defend is to kill, and whosoever is the bigger killer is the winner.The same is true on a smaller scale in people’s lives. People are taught to be violent because unless you are violent you are not going to succeed in life. You have to be very violent, only then can you fulfill your ambitions. A gentle person cannot succeed, he is bound to fail because he cannot be competitive. He cannot push and pull people, he cannot step over people’s heads.All the politicians are criminals for the simple reason that crime pays. You only have to be cunning enough not to be caught. The most fundamental rule of this violent life is: all means are good if they fulfill the end. And of course, rather than arguing – because argumentation is a long thing and it may never come to any conclusion – it is better to pull out the sword, it decides things immediately. It is easier to fight with a person and decide who is right. “Might is right.” That rule still remains; the rule of the jungle.We call man civilized? He has yet to be civilized. Civilization is only an idea which has not yet been realized. Man is just superficially civilized, not even skin-deep. Just scratch a little and you will find the animal coming out – a ferocious animal, far more ferocious than any wild animals because wild animals, howsoever wild they are, don’t carry bombs – atom bombs, hydrogen bombs. Compared to man and his violence all animals are left far behind.In the past this has been the rule. The buddhas are exceptions. Of course, they are the only civilized human beings. The remaining crowd of people, the mob, is very uncivilized.It is not only in Italy; it is the same here in this country: a great spiritual country, a long, long heritage of religion, and still people are killing – it makes no difference to people.Just now all over the country there are riots. And strange: in Moradabad where the riots started, the Mohammedans had gathered to pray. It was their religious festival, Id, and they had gathered to pray. And after the prayer meeting the violence erupted. It means the people who had come to pray had brought weapons with them. Immediately one hundred and thirty people were killed. What kind of hypocrisy is this? What kind of insanity? People who have come to pray are hiding knives, swords, bottles full of acid. They have come ready, prepared. Everything seems to be pre-planned. And they have been there to pray. What kind of prayer can be possible in such a situation?The word Islam means peace and Islam has created more violence in the world than any other religion, and the word means peace.Christianity says, “God is love” and Christianity has killed millions of people, burned people alive. And God is love!It is a very unconscious state of affairs. People are living unconsciously, not knowing what they are doing, why they are doing, not even pondering over it.Manetti, the mechanic, woke up one morning with a black eye.“What happened?” he asked his wife.“While you were sleeping,” she explained, “you reached over and felt my arms and said, ‘What a smooth finish!’ Then you reached over further and said, ‘What perfect headlights!’ Then you reached down further and said, ‘Who left the garage door open?’ And that is when I let you have it!”People are almost asleep. Even when you think they are awake they are not awake.Rigamonte was visiting a small town in the Italian Alps. After a few lonely nights he began feeling the need for a woman. He asked the local barkeeper how to find the ladies of the town.“We ain’t gotta no prostitutes. The church would never allow it. But the thing-a you want-a is kept-a out of sight-a.”“What I gotta do?” asked Rigamonte.The bartender explained that up in the mountains were caves. “Go up there at dusk-a and shout-a, ‘Yoo-hoo!’ and if the lady yoo-hoos back-a you work out-a the price. If she’s-a busy you no get-a an answer.”That evening Rigamonte yoo-hooed his way from cave to cave, but without luck. He finally decided to go back and get drunk, but at the foot of the mountain he found a fresh cave. “Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!” he shouted.“Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!” came back so clearly. He rushed into the cave and was killed by a train.People have to be helped to be a little more aware, a little more alert. They need a little more clarity to see what they are doing. But there is no clarity, and the vested interests don’t want any clarity. They want more confusion. The more confusion there is, the more power politicians have. The more confusion there is, the more power priests have. They don’t want man to become aware; they want him to live as unconsciously as possible.Rinaldo returned to Italy to see his relatives. One day he tried to ride his uncle’s horse. “Giddy up! Giddy up!” he said to the animal, but it did not move. “Hey,” he said to his relatives, “why this thing-a no move-a?”“You no say, giddy-up,” said his uncle. “You gotta say, mamma mia to make-a him-a go and mangiare to make-a him-a stop.”“Mamma mia!” he yelled and the horse galloped off into a clearing. Ahead was a steep cliff and Rinaldo noticed it almost too late. He pulled back on the reins and screamed, “Mangiare!” The horse came to a screeching halt at the edge of the cliff. Looking down and then up at the sky, Rinaldo whispered, “Mamma mia…”And this is not so only with the people, this is so with everybody else – the so-called intellectuals, the intelligentsia, the politicians, the religious. It is applicable to all except a very few people, and those few people cannot be of much help.That is why my effort is to create a great buddhafield, to release as much energy as is released in an atomic explosion. Sannyas is an effort to collect all those people who are ready to be aware, to be intelligent. And we have to spread the color all over the world. This is the color of spring.Man needs a new life, a new birth. All that has been told and taught up to now has failed. It was bound to fail because it was not meant to create a better humanity; it was meant to keep man as much enslaved as he is.A Polack was badly injured in an automobile crash and had to have a brain transplant. A team of surgeons put him under anesthesia, removed his brain, and went into the next room to get the new one. When they returned to the operating room the Polack was gone. The police searched everywhere for him but to no avail – he had vanished. The doctors contacted Interpol and they checked throughout the world trying to find this poor Pole who had left the hospital without his brain.Finally, five years later, he was found. The Polack was now the pope!Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,My problem is that I think there is something wrong with me. If I think that I have a problem then I really do have one. In fact, thinking seems to be just the making up of problems. What do you think?I don’t think at all! That is why I have no problems, only answers and answers – no questions at all. It is exactly so. Mind is the root cause of all problems. Problems grow on mind like leaves on trees. You can go on pruning the leaves; that is not going to destroy the tree. On the contrary, it will help the foliage to become thicker – more and more leaves will come. Every gardener knows it: cut one leaf and the tree will accept the challenge. To protect itself, it will give birth to three leaves.Mind can go on trying to solve problems, but it cannot solve them. Each solution will bring many more problems in its wake. That is why philosophy has utterly failed. Philosophy is the greatest failure in the world. And it has been such a great wastage of human intelligence that it is almost incalculable, because the people with the greatest intelligence have remained involved with philosophical problems. From Aristotle to Wittgenstein, thousands of brilliant people have wasted their whole brilliance for the simple reason that they were trying to solve single problems rather than going to the very root of all.The mind is the only problem. Hence philosophy comes up with many solutions, many conclusions, but no conclusion is conclusive. Immediately many more problems pop up. Not one single question has been solved by philosophical endeavor, but still philosophy goes on and on moving farther and farther into the desert. It cannot reach the ocean; it is going basically astray. That’s where religion differs.Religion means not trying to solve particular problems, but looking at the root of all the problems and cutting the root. That is what we call meditation: meditation is cutting the root. Meditation is not a solution of any problem in particular; it solves nothing. It simply helps you to get rid of the mind, the problem-creator. It simply helps you to slip out of the mind like a snake slips out of the old skin.Once you know that you are not the mind, the great transcendence has happened. Suddenly all problems become insignificant; slowly, slowly they evaporate. You are left with a profound peace; a great silence prevails. This silence is the solution. This peace is the answer, the answer of all answers.This is the miracle of religion, or the miracle of meditation to be more particular: that without solving a single problem it solves all the problems in a single blow. It is a sudden leap, a quantum leap.And, you have the feeling already arising in you. You say, “If I think that I have a problem then I really do have one.” The moment you think, you create it; and once you have it you start looking for solutions. And who will look for solutions, and where? The mind will look for the solutions – and in the mind! Do you see the absurdness of it all? It is like pulling yourself up by your shoestrings; it is not possible. Yes, mind will fabricate many solutions but they will only be superficial. The basic question will remain untouched and many more will arise, and it is a process – ad infinitum.But it is good that you have the feeling – a vague feeling, of course. Mind you, I am saying feel; I am not saying that you have come to the right thought. No thought is ever right. I am telling you that you have come to the right feel. It is still vague, clouded, just like early morning: the sun has not yet risen, but it is no longer night either.You will have a little difficulty because this is the moment of transition. You will feel very vulnerable. You will feel almost split because you will not be in the night, you will not be in the day. You will be somewhere in between, on the way. Naturally a part of you will go on talking in the language of the night, and that is the older part and the major part. Just a small fragment of you will start speaking the language of the future, the language of the day, and you will find it is as if you have become two persons.This period of transition is the most difficult period for every meditator – he starts falling apart. If you go to a psychologist he will say, “This is a breakdown.” And if your mind gets the idea that this is a breakdown, then of course it is. It is not a breakdown; it is a breakthrough but psychology still has no idea of the breakthrough. It will try to push you back into the old skin which you have left behind or are in the process of leaving behind. But that cannot be done, that is impossible.Hence psychology – with all its different schools of psychoanalysis, psychosynthesis, gestalt, and so on and so forth – is groping in the dark because it is still unaware of the fact that a man can go beyond mind. There are psychologists like B. F. Skinner or Delgado who think man is just a behavior. It is another way of saying that man is nothing but physics, chemistry, physiology. Science is capable of explaining everything, nothing else is needed; man is a body and nothing more. That is the major part of modern psychology, and that is the only psychology in the Communist countries.There are a few people who are striving to get a little beyond that, but they get caught into the subtle traps of the mind. Then they start thinking psychology is nothing but mind. Freud, Adler, Jung are all of the opinion that psychology is nothing but a concern with the mind, an inquiry into the mind.The word psychology is beautiful: it comes from psyche, and psyche means the soul. But no psychologist agrees with the idea of the soul. In fact, they have no right to call their thinking psychology; they are using a wrong word, a far bigger word. They are all either believers in the body or believers in the mind, which are not really separate things. “Mindbody” is one phenomenon. In fact, we should not use the word and between the two. Mindbody should be a single word because there is not that much difference that you can use the word and. Not even a hyphen is needed, not even that much space is available. Body is mind looked at from the outside; mind is body looked at from the inside. Or, in other words, the body is the outer expression of the mind and the mind is the inner expression of the same phenomenon – just in two different dimensions.Unless one goes beyond both, one never knows anything about the breakthrough. And man is really falling apart all over the world because of this stupid idea that man is nothing but body or nothing but mind, or at the most both. A breakthrough is possible if there is more space available inside you so that you can put the mind aside and still be.When the skin of all the past, of all the memories, is dropped, there are moments, very delicate moments, when you are nowhere. You are neither the old nor the new; you are just passing through the birth canal. It is painful too because the old identity is disappearing and the new has not yet arrived. You can become very frightened; hence the master is needed.The function of the master is to help you in such critical moments. Socrates used to say that the function of the master is that of a midwife, and I absolutely agree with him. It is just to help the child leave the womb in which the child has lived for nine months. And the child has lived in immense comfort. In fact, he will search and seek for the same comforts his whole life. There was no responsibility, no worry, no problem. Everything was supplied; existence took every care. Some unknown energies went on flowing from the mother to the child. Everything was done by the mother, and the child was simply floating inside the womb. Those nine months are nine months for the people who are outside the womb; for the child it is almost infinity because he is not aware of time, he cannot be aware of time. You become aware of time only when there are events happening.Have you watched this? If one day many things happen you have a different sense of time, if some day nothing happens you have a totally different sense of the time. The sense of time depends on what happens. Time is measured through events. But nothing is happening in the womb, all is quiet. The child cannot feel that this is only nine months; it is infinity, it is a timeless state. And floating in the mother’s womb in a warm liquid is immensely pleasant.That is how the desire for bliss arises in us – because we have experienced it. Otherwise, you cannot seek for anything that you have never experienced. Something must be there lingering deep down in your unconscious – some experience, some nostalgia that keeps you searching for bliss.The whole search for godliness is basically the search for the mother’s womb. And the meditator really enters into the womb of existence.In the Hindu temples the innermost shrine is called garbha – the womb. When you go into a Hindu temple the innermost shrine, where the statue of the god is, is called garbha – the womb. It is very significant, very meaningful. To enter again into the universe in a deep let-go is to find peace, bliss, a non-problematic existence. That is breakthrough.If you go to a psychoanalyst, he will try to bring you back to your old identity. That is the whole function of psychology in the West: helping people to be adjusted again because they have become a little maladjusted with their past. Of course, the moment you are not adjusted with your own mind you are not adjusted with society, because your mind is part of the collective mind of that society. You are no longer adjusted with your religion; you are no longer adjusted with your political ideology. You simply find that everywhere you are in a way uprooted. And great fear grips you: you are no longer part of the collective mind, you are alone and you hanker to be part of some crowd so that you can feel a little warmth, a little coziness, and you can be on familiar ground again.That is what psychology is doing in the West. Its whole work is against religion. Religion tries to give you a new identity, a new birth, and psychology gives you your old identity back again. It forces you somehow into the skin that the snake has left behind. The work can never really be done because the skin can never be your skin again. You can live with it, but it will be just hanging around you; it will be a burden, it is no longer part of you.A father was telling his child, his small son, “There is nothing impossible in the world. Napoleon has said so: there is nothing impossible in the world.”The child said, “Wait, and I will show you. One thing is impossible – I have tried.” He ran into the bathroom, brought a tube of toothpaste, forced the tube. The toothpaste came out, and he told his father, “Now put it back! If you can do this I will believe that Napoleon is right.”Now it is almost impossible to put the toothpaste back into the tube, but that may be possible. Just a little scientific device will be needed to suck it back. But man cannot be put back into the old skin again. At the most he can go on carrying the skin like clothes, but clothes are not skin.The function of the master is to help you to become acquainted with the new territory that you have already jumped into, and to help you to forget all about the old.That’s where your problem is. You can create many problems – they are all excuses – but the real problem is that you are passing through a beautiful process of immense value. This is the process of rebirth. So you vaguely sense that, “It is me, my own mind which goes on creating problems.” You have started feeling, in fact you say, “…thinking seems to be just the making of problems.” Then why go on thinking? That’s the whole purpose of being here!Young Mazzilli was not getting along too well with his wife. One night he threw a big party and invited all his friends. At the beginning everyone sat around just making small talk. But as the evening progressed, people started to couple off and find cozy corners. Soon the lights were dimmed and moans of love and passion could be heard. Mazzilli began looking for his wife, but could not find her.After searching everywhere in the apartment he stepped into the kitchen and there she was, sitting on the sink, her legs in passionate embrace around Vince, one of his friends.“Your wife and I love each other,” stammered Vince, “and we want to get married. Can you forgive me for taking her away?”“Hey,” smiled the husband, “that’s what this party was for!”The second question:Osho,Can you really learn from everything and every situation in life, as the Desiderata says?Certainly. Sometimes it may seem, “What is there to be learned in this situation?” That only shows that your awareness is not deep enough, otherwise no situation is without a lesson, no situation at all. All situations are pregnant, but you have to discover, it may not be available on the surface. You have to be more watchful, you have to look at all the aspects of the situation.Desiderata is absolutely right – this is my own experience. I have learned from every situation possible.One of the great Sufi Masters, Junaid, was asked when he was dying… His chief disciple came close to him and asked, “Master, beloved Master, you are leaving us. One question has always been in our minds, but we could never gather enough courage to ask you. And now that you are leaving there will be no more opportunity to ask, so all the disciples have forced me to come to you and ask. Who was your master? This has been always a great curiosity among your disciples because we have never heard you talk about your master.”Junaid opened his eyes and said, “It will be very difficult for me to answer because I have learned from almost everybody. The whole existence has been my master. I have learned from every event that has happened in my life and I am grateful to all that has happened, because out of all that learning I have arrived. But I did not have any single master. I was not so fortunate as you are,” Junaid said to them. “You have a master.”I can understand Junaid because this has been the case with me too. I never had any master; you are far more fortunate. I had to learn the hard way: from every experience, from every event, from every person I came across. But it has been an immensely rich journey.Junaid said, “Just to satisfy your curiosity I will give you three instances. One: I was very thirsty and I was going toward the river carrying my begging bowl – that was the only possession I had. When I reached the river a dog rushed, jumped into the river and started drinking.“I watched for a moment and threw away my begging bowl because it was useless – a dog can do without it. I also jumped into the river and drank as much water as I wanted. My whole body was cool because I had jumped into the river, sat in the river for a few moments. I thanked the dog and touched his feet with deep reverence, because he had taught me a lesson. I had dropped everything, all possessions, but there was a certain clinging to my begging bowl. It was a beautiful bowl, very beautifully carved, inlaid with gold. It was presented to me by a king and I was always aware that somebody might steal it. Even in the night I used to put it under my head as a pillow so nobody could snatch it away. That was my last clinging – the dog helped. It was so clear: if a dog can manage without a begging bowl, I am a man, why can’t I manage? That dog was one of my masters.“Secondly,” he said, “I lost my way in a forest and by the time I reached the village, the nearest village that I could find, it was midnight. Everybody was fast asleep. I wandered all over the town to see if I could find somebody who was awake to give me shelter for the night. I could only find a thief who was searching to find some house to enter.“I asked the thief, ‘It seems only two persons are awake in the town, you and I. Can you give me shelter for the night?’“The thief said, ‘I can see from your gown that you are a Sufi monk…’”The word Sufi comes from suf – suf means wool, a woolen garment. The Sufis have used a woolen garment for centuries; hence they are called Sufis because of their garment. Just as in the world you are called the orange people, they are called the Sufis.The thief said, “I can see you are a Sufi and I feel a little embarrassed to take you to my home. I am perfectly willing, but I must tell you who I am. I am a thief. Would you like to be the guest of a thief?”For a moment Junaid hesitated. The thief said, “Look, it is better I told you. You seem hesitant. The thief is willing, but the mystic seems to be hesitant to enter into the house of a thief, as if the mystic is weaker than the thief. I am not afraid of you. In fact, I should be afraid of you – you may change me, you may transform my whole life! Inviting you means danger, but I am not afraid. You are welcome. Come to my home. Eat, drink, go to sleep, and live here as long as you want, because I live alone and my earnings are enough. I can manage for two persons, and it will be really beautiful to chit-chat with you of great things – but you seem to be hesitant.”And Junaid became aware that that was true. He asked to be excused. He touched the feet of the thief and he said, “Yes, my rootedness in my own being is as yet very weak. You are a really strong man and I would like to come to your home. And I would like to stay a little longer, not only for this night. I want to be stronger myself!”The thief said, “Come on!” He fed the Sufi, gave him something to drink, helped him to go to sleep, and he said, “Now I will go. I have to do my own thing. I will come early in the morning.” Early in the morning the thief came back.Junaid asked, “Have you been successful?”The thief said, “No, not today, but I will see tomorrow.”And this happened continuously for thirty days; every night the thief went and every morning he came back, but he was never sad, never frustrated, no sign of failure on his face, always happy, and he would say, “It doesn’t matter, I tried my best. I could not find anything today again, but tomorrow I will try. And, God willing, it can happen tomorrow if it has not happened today.”After one month Junaid left, and for years he tried to realize the ultimate, but it was always failure. But each time he decided to drop the whole project he was reminded of the thief, his smiling face and his saying, “God willing, what has not happened today may happen tomorrow.”Finally when he achieved the ultimate, Junaid said, “I remembered the thief as one of my greatest masters. Without him I would not be what I am.“And third,” he said, “I entered into a small village. A little boy was carrying a candle, a lit candle, obviously going to the small temple of the town to put the candle there for the night.”And Junaid asked, “Can you tell me where the light comes from? You have lit the candle yourself so you must have seen from where the light comes? What is the source of light?”The boy laughed and he said, “Wait!” and he blew out the candle in front of Junaid. And he said, “You have seen light go out. Can you tell me where it has gone? If you can tell me where it has gone I will tell you from where it has come, because it has gone to the same place. It has returned to the source.”And Junaid said, “I had met great philosophers, but nobody had made such a beautiful statement: it has gone to its very source. Everything returns to its source finally. And secondly, the child made me aware of my own ignorance. I was trying to joke with the child, but the joke was on me. He showed me that asking foolish questions, ‘From where has the light come?’ is not intelligent. It comes from nowhere, from nothingness, and goes back to nowhere, to nothingness.”Junaid said, “I touched the feet of the child. The child was puzzled. He said, ‘Why you are touching my feet?’ and I told him, ‘You are my master, you have shown me something. You have given me a great lesson, a great insight.’“Since that time,” Junaid said, “I have been meditating on nothingness, and slowly, slowly I have entered into nothingness. And now the final moment has come when the candle will go out, the light will go out. And I know where I am going – to the same source.“I remember that child with gratefulness. I can still see him standing before me blowing out the candle.”Buddha has used the word nirvana for the ultimate experience. Nirvana simply means blowing out the candle. Suddenly the flame that was manifest goes into unmanifestation; it disappears.You ask me, “Can man really learn from everything and every situation in life, as Desiderata says?” Yes.Poor Pete was known as “Broomstick” among his friends. He was awfully skinny and looked so emaciated it did not help his social life. One night, to drown his sorrows, Pete wandered into a bar in New York’s Little Italy and by some miracle became friendly with Rosalie, a buxom divorcee. He nearly fainted when she invited him home.At her apartment she led Mr. Skin-and-Bones directly to her bedroom and said, “Why don’t you get undressed and wait for me in bed?”Pete ripped off his clothes and, panting with excitement, waited for her return.Five minutes later the Italian girl walked in with a six-year-old boy. She threw back the bedsheets, pointed to Pete and exclaimed, “Now, you see, Roberto, that is what you are gonna look like if you don’t start eating your spaghetti!”Sheela has written a letter to me. It will help you understand what Desiderata means. She says:The third question:Osho,The other day two really weird-looking Hare Krishna people came to check out this place and the way we run it. One of the men, Haridas, is the head of the Hare Krishna movement in Mumbai. And the first question the guy asked me was why I am here, so I casually replied, “Because I am in love with Osho and I enjoy what I do here.” And then he asked me, “You have no interest in scriptures?” So I again casually replied, “No, they don't make any sense to me.” So the guy looked at me weirdly and asked me, “What do you do for spirituality?” So I said, “Who needs it?” So he turned toward me and said with a very serious voice, “I feel sorry for you.” Then I just smiled at him and the guy said to me, “If you don't have any interest in scripture, how do you learn?” So I said to him, “By living.” And he jumped, and said, “Do you know what happens after death?” I said, “No, I am still alive!” He said, “But scriptures can tell you what happens after death.” So I said to him, “Did the scriptures tell you what happens after death?” He said, “No.” So I said, “Ah!”Then the guy jumped up, and picking on the word bhagwan, started reciting a ten-page sutra in Sanskrit and explaining, “Do you know what the word bhagwan contains?” And I said, “No,” and he said, “The word bhagwan is made of sex.” And I am looking at the guy in amazement, and the rest of the questions were more absurd than the previous ones. And then I just had fun with them, and the guys left disgusted. Osho, what is up with them?The Hare Krishna movement attracts the most stupid people. It is a miracle! Only the stupid ones are attracted toward it. It is in a way strange, because almost every movement attracts all kinds of people, but the Hare Krishna movement is special: it is only for the stupid. The more stupid you are the better.Now all his questions are foolish. I have come across many Hare Krishna people. While I was wandering around the country I would meet them, and I can understand Sheela’s amazement because I know all their questions are foolish. Now what kind of a question is this? – “Why I am here?”Once Mulla Nasruddin was caught making love with a woman by the woman’s husband who suddenly entered the room. Naked, Nasruddin rushed, tried to find some place to hide. Finding nowhere else, he stood inside the cupboard.The man looked all around. He opened the cupboard.Nasruddin was standing there completely naked, and the man asked, “What are you doing here?”Nasruddin said, “Everybody has to be somewhere! I am in such a difficulty, and you are asking metaphysical questions? Obviously, everybody has to be somewhere!”Now this foolish guy, even if he meets God, will ask, “What are you doing here? Why you are here?” And do you think God can answer that? Impossible! But there is one thing, fortunately: these Hare Krishna people will never meet God. They are so stupid that even if they meet him they will miss.He asked, “What do you do for spirituality?” As if spirituality is something that can be done. That’s what their idea of spirituality is, that you have to do something.Spirituality is disappearance of the doer, and when there is no doer how can there be doing? It is a state of being, not of doing. Doing keeps you in the world; being takes you into the beyond.I have heard…A Western businessman and his sannyasin son were discussing his coming trip to Pune. “You know, son,” said the father “you can get very sick in India.”“Yeah!” replied the son. “I can get killed walking across Fifth Avenue!”“Well, at least think of your mother – she is worried sick,” the father urged.“She certainly does not need me around to be worried sick,” replied the sannyasin.“Well,” said the father, “this guy you are going to see, is he a Christian?”“Hell, no!” replied the son. “He even works on Sundays!”Disgusted, the father snapped back, “You know, son, you are going to amount to nothing.”“Gee, Dad,” said the sannyasin with a grin, “you really do understand!”“What do you do for spirituality?” Spirituality is not something that can be attained by doing. It is your innermost core, you feel it when all doing ceases. Once you have felt it, then it always remains like an undercurrent even when you are doing a thousand and one things. Then wherever you are, whatsoever you are doing, it is there: a presence surrounding you, a light arising from your deepest core, radiating all around you, a peace, a love, a joy, a fragrance.But these Hare Krishna people think that you have to go on chanting, counting beads, repeating the name of God. As if God has a name! As if by counting beads you can become spiritual or by repeating the name of God. Your repetition will make you even more dull than you are. Repetitiveness always makes a person duller than he was before because repetition creates boredom.And every mother knows it. When the child is not going to sleep, she starts singing a lullaby. And what is a lullaby? – a mantra, a transcendental meditation, forced on the child. Now the child cannot escape; he is tucked under the blanket. He fidgets and he has to listen to some nonsense words. Continuous repetition in a monotonous voice bores him to death. Finally he escapes into sleep – seeing no other way out he goes in and falls asleep and starts snoring. That is the only way to get rid of the mother and her lullaby.Once Mulla Nasruddin was very ill. He was treated by all kinds of doctors – allopathic, ayurvedic, homeopathic, etcetera, etcetera, but nothing was helping; he was deteriorating every day. Finally his son went to a hypnotist and asked him to come and help him. That was the last resort.The hypnotist said, “Don’t be worried.” He came, he started repeating again and again, “You are falling asleep, falling asleep, falling asleep… Deep, deep sleep… Falling, falling…” for half an hour continuously, “Falling into deep sleep…”Suddenly Mulla started snoring. That was one of the problems, that he had not slept for months and the doctors were saying that their medicines were not working because he could not fall asleep. In sleep the body recovers, recuperates. If somehow it can be managed that he falls asleep, then the medicines will start working. So this was a miracle!The hypnotist tiptoed out of the room very silently, and the son was very much impressed. He gave him double his fee and thanked him very much. The hypnotist left, the son went in.Mulla opened one eye and asked, “Has that nut gone? He was killing me! I have never been so bored in my life, I have never thought of committing suicide. For the first time when he continued, continued, I thought, “There is no way to get rid of this guy,” so I acted snoring. Either he would have killed me or if I were a little better, a little healthier, I would have killed him. But never bring such people here again, otherwise there is going to be bloodshed. Either I will kill myself or I will kill the person! What nonsense is this?”But these people believe that by repeating a certain mantra you can attain to spirituality. All that you can attain to is a bored state of mind. You will lose your intelligence, that’s all. You will lose your sharpness.And he says, “Bhagwan contains sex.” Now he has understood only language and nothing else. In Sanskrit each word means many things. Sanskrit is one of the most poetic languages of the world. In fact, all ancient languages are poetic; modern languages are scientific. A poetic language has many meanings for one word so you can play upon those many meanings. It gives you freedom, poetic freedom. The scientific language has a precise meaning for every word.Bhagwan has many meanings. Yes, one of the meanings contains “sex” because in ancient India sex was considered and respected as the very origin of life, and God is the origin of life. Bhag really means vagina. But those were the beautiful people who thought of sex as divine, as if God is the womb, the vagina. Out of that vagina, out from that womb, the whole of existence has come. Hence the word bhagwan certainly contains “sex” in it, and the whole of creation is a proof that sex is the origin of life.But he must have got caught by this one meaning. And why did he get caught with this one meaning, because bhagwan also means “the blessed one” – another meaning. That’s why we call Buddha, “Bhagwan” and we call Krishna, “Bhagwan.” And these Hare Krishna people go on repeating the name of Krishna as Bhagwan. Are they repeating some sexual symbol? They are repeating the other meaning, “the blessed one.”Bhagwan can also come from another root, bhagya. Bhagya means fortune. One who achieves the ultimate is the most fortunate one, hence he is called Bhagwan. Bhagwan means “the blessed one,” the most fortunate one. There is nothing more to realize for him. He has arrived home.But to his stupid mind the sexual meaning has become the predominant meaning. And the reason is not in the word, the reason is in his own mentality – because Hare Krishna people are sex-repressive people.He had also asked, “There are so many men and women here. Do they all live together?” He was shocked. An ashram, and men and women are living together? Hare Krishna people make a demarcation: the women have to live separately, the men have to live separately. No love relationship is allowed; hence naturally their minds become full of sexuality, perversion.The meaning of bhagwan comes from his perverted mind. And whatsoever Sanskrit he knows has nothing to do with it. Just that meaning, one meaning of the word, has become his obsession.Mario missed a day at work and O’Riley, the foreman, wanted an explanation. “Where have you been?” he asked.“It was-a my wife – she gave birth-a to a wheelbarrow!”“If you can’t do any better than that,” said the foreman, “I am gonna have to let you go.”“I think-a I gotta it wrong,” said Mario. “My wife she is-a in bed-a having a pushchair.”“That’s it, wise guy!” shouted O’Riley, “You are fired.”Mario went home and said, “Hey, missus, what-a was wrong-a with you yesterday?”“I told-a you, I had a miscarriage!”“Ah, I knew it was-a something with-a wheels on!”Now, you can learn many things from this leader of the Hare Krishna movement. You can learn much about stupidity, and you can learn much about yourself – when and where you are also behaving stupidly. You can learn a thousand and one things. And that’s what Sheela had told him, “I learn from living.” But they think one can learn only from scriptures.Nothing can be learned from scriptures. One becomes knowledgeable but never wise. And the knowledgeable person is in a far worse state than the ignorant one, because the ignorant one is at least innocent, ready to learn; at least receptive. These people cannot listen, they cannot see. They are so full of bullshit! But to them bullshit is holy cow dung.Just watch. Whenever you are fortunately with a stupid person, just watch him; it will help you immensely to become intelligent.In London, Lady Ashcroft decided to give a snooty party and hired a maid, Miss Scapeccia, who had recently immigrated to England.“Now don’t forget the sugar tongs,” ordered the English matron. “It is not very nice when the men go in the loo, and they take themselves out and they put themselves back, and then they have to pick up the sugar lumps with their fingers.”“Yes-a, ma’am,” answered the Italian girl.Later that night after the guests had gone, Lady Ashcroft said, “Miss Scapeccia, I thought I told you about the sugar tongs.”“I put-a them out, my Lady, I swear!”“Well, I did not see them on the table.”“On-a the table? I put-a them in the toilet!”The last question:Osho,How do I open my sense of humor?Everybody is born with it. It is not a talent, it is intrinsic to human nature. But the society tries to destroy it; it is afraid, even of the sense of humor. We teach children to be serious. Seriousness is praised, highly praised. In fact, seriousness is a kind of disease; it should be condemned.Every child brings a sense of humor in the world but we destroy it, at least we repress it. We don’t allow him to enjoy it, we don’t allow him to share it with us. We don’t encourage him to help it grow because we are afraid; if he becomes too non-serious then he will become dangerous to the serious society. Then he will start rebelling against many things because a sense of humor is an essential part of intelligence.You don’t see donkeys laughing, you don’t see buffaloes enjoying a joke. It is only man who can enjoy a joke, who can laugh. Your saints are like buffaloes and donkeys! They have fallen below humanity, they have lost something of immense value. Without laughter a man is like a tree without flowers.But society needs serious people: presidents, prime ministers, vice-chancellors, professors, popes, shankaracharyas, ayatollahs, imams, all kinds of priests, teachers, commissioners, collectors, governors… Everybody has to be serious. If they have a sense of humor the society is afraid efficiency will be lost. If they have a sense of humor they will become human. They are expected to be just like machines.The way Adolf Hitler walks is mechanical. Just see his pictures, the way he stands, the way he walks, the way he takes the salute, the way he salutes. It seems almost mechanical, as if he is not a man but a robot. His face, his gestures, all are robotlike, and he made the whole of Germany robotlike. He destroyed Germany more than he destroyed anybody else, but he created a very efficient army. The efficient army is possible only if people lose all intelligence and all that intelligence contains.A sense of humor is one of the very essentials of intelligence. The moment you lose it you also lose intelligence; the more you have it, the more intelligent you are. There is no question of how to open the sense of humor; you simply remove the barriers. It is already there, it is already the case. You simply remove a few rocks which your parents, your society have put there to prevent it. The society teaches you self-control, and sense of humor means relaxation.Just the other day somebody from London, a sannyasin, sent me a cutting from a newspaper. He had heard my jokes about Zimbabwe’s president, Reverend Canon Banana, so he sent me a small cutting: that one of Banana’s cabinet ministers was traveling with Banana in an airplane and that he pissed all over the passageway. He was asked, “What is the matter?”He said, “I was trying to use self-control, and it became impossible!”Of course, in the presence of President Banana you have to be a banana! He was trying to use self-control so he tried his best. If he had undergone the EST training, he would have succeeded!You cannot laugh before your elders, you cannot laugh before your teachers, you cannot laugh before your priests, you cannot laugh in the churches.The Christians say Jesus never laughed. I cannot believe that – he was not a buffalo! He was one of the greatest, most intelligent men who ever walked on the Earth. He must have laughed, he must have enjoyed it. He was a man far more of the Earth than Buddha. He lived more passionately and more intensely than anybody else who has ever become enlightened. He loved the company of women; he had beautiful women disciples, even one of the most famous prostitutes of those days, Mary Magdalene. He loved eating, he loved drinking. He is the only enlightened person who loved wine – a real man! And he loved feasting very much. Every night there was a feast, and the feast continued for hours.Just a few days ago some sannyasins, samurais, had a small party, and my medium, Radha, did a belly dance. Good! I enjoyed the news, and I told Radha, “Then one day you have to do it before me. Just seeing your belly dance, I will really enjoy it!”Jesus would have enjoyed Radha’s belly dancing too. Buddha may have closed his eyes, but not Jesus, not Lao Tzu!The rumor is that one day Lao Tzu, Buddha and Confucius, all three were sitting in a restaurant in heaven, and a beautiful woman came with a big beautiful jar and told them, “This is the juice of life! Would you like it?”Confucius said, “I will only taste a little bit of it because without tasting it I cannot say anything.” That was his way, always to be scientific, pragmatic. So he just tasted it and he said, “No, it is bitter!”Buddha closed his eyes. He said, “There is no need for me to taste it. Many people have tasted it – just now Confucius has tasted it. I declare it is bitter!”She went to Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu drank the whole jar. He said, “Unless you drink it totally you have no right to make any comment, any judgment on it.” And when he had drunk the whole jar he started dancing, he started laughing.Buddha and Confucius left: “This man Lao Tzu is giving a bad name to all of us enlightened people!” And of course he was not dancing alone, he started dancing with the woman. When you are full of life…Jesus was a man of the Earth. He repeats many times – many more times than he says “I am the son of God” – he says many more times, “I am the son of man.” He is closer to Earth than to heaven. He is a very earthly person. He must have laughed, enjoyed. But the priests and the popes and the churches are very serious. To enter into a church is like entering into a graveyard. You have to be serious, uptight.All that has to be dropped. And if you cannot drop it here, where else can you drop it? Either here or in Italy! Go for a little visit to Italy.Ten years after his arrival in America, Roselli had saved enough money from his fruit and vegetable business to build a huge house. “I wanna three bedroom-a upstairs,” he explained to the builder. “I wanna large-a living room with a nice-a big-a staircase leading up to the room. And right over here next to the staircase I wanna hollow statue.”Months later he returned and found everything built to his specifications. Then he noticed a statue next to the staircase. “Hey, what’s-a matter with you?” shouted Roselli. “You no capisci what I tell-a you?”“Is not that what you ordered?” asked the builder. “A hollow statue?”“Are you-a stupid or something?” cried the Italian. “I wanna one-a those things that goes ring-a ring, you pick them up and say ‘Hallo, s’tat-a you?’”Go to Italy and you will come across many situations!For a wedding present Brambilla gave his son Aldo two hundred dollars. Two weeks later he asked him, “What-a you do-a with-a the money?”“I bought-a a wristwatch, papa,” answered the boy.“Stupido!” cried his father. “You should-a have bought-a a rifle!”“A rifle?! What for?”“Suppose-a some-a day you come-a home and find a man sleeping with your wife-a,” explained the father. “What-a you gonna do? Wake him up-a and tell-a him what-a time it is?”Gannon, staying in a small Rome hotel, called the desk and said, “Send me up a whore!”Mrs. Agostini, the owner’s wife, was shocked and demanded that her husband throw the man out. But he was afraid, so Mrs. Agostini decided to go up and throw him out herself.In a few moments, the husband could hear the sound of furniture breaking and screams and curses.Finally Gannon came downstairs panting, his face scratched and his shirt torn. As he walked out he confided to Agostini, “That was a tough old bitch you sent up, but I screwed her anyway!”Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Sitting near you I increasingly feel deep silence and what seems to be emptiness, but there is no bliss in it. I tend to regard this as an indication that something is wrong, especially at darshan where so many people are so blissful. I don't seem to have any idea whether I am on the right track or not. Sometimes I think I am becoming more meditative and other times I think I am totally off beam and lost. Please comment.Deva Ashoka, the temple of God has many doors. Each door has its uniqueness and one should not compare one door with another door. Silence is one of the doors to the divine, just as bliss is, truth is, love is, freedom is, awareness is, meditation is, prayerfulness is. Man can enter into the divine through as many ways as there are types in the world. And each type will have its own joys, experiences on the way.Finally, when one has entered the temple, all those experiences melt and merge into one experience which is not possible to express. The ways can be expressed, but the goal remains unexpressed. Nothing can be said about it, it is a nameless experience, but the ways have names.Silence is totally different from bliss. If you start comparing with others you will be getting into unnecessary difficulty. Comparison creates anxiety – no need to compare with what is happening to others, just see what is happening to you. Is it healthy? Is it nourishing? Without any comparison just watch what is happening to you. Are you becoming more centered, more rooted, more grounded? Are you feeling at home?And this has to be without any comparison, otherwise everybody here will be in difficulty, because somebody is moving through the door of bliss and he will start comparing, “Why I am not as silent as Ashoka? Something is wrong. I dance and I sing and I feel great joy, but where is that profound silence which Buddha speaks of? Something is wrong, I am not on the right track.”The same is happening to you, and each path has its own language. I have given you the name Deva Ashoka. It will be helpful to be reminded that Ashoka was the man who transformed the whole face of Asia. It was he, and only he, who made Buddha the light of Asia. Ashoka was one of the greatest emperors in the world. In many ways he was a far greater man than Alexander the Great, because even being a great emperor, the only emperor who ruled over the biggest map of India possible… Since then India has never been so big, many chunks of it have fallen away. Still it is a vast country, but Ashoka was the emperor of the greatest India possible, almost half of Asia.When he became a meditator, when he became surrendered to the master, Gautama the Buddha, such a transformation happened to him that he remained an emperor and yet he possessed nothing. He lived like a man who has nothing. He had everything, but he lived like a man who has nothing. Apparently, on the surface, he never renounced the kingdom, but inwardly he was no longer part of this world. It has rarely happened in any other emperor’s life, in the whole history of man.I have given you the name Deva Ashoka – divine Ashoka – feeling the possibility that silence will be your path. Silence means the path of via negativa. Bliss is very affirmative; it is via positiva. It affirms that the whole existence is divine, hence rejoice. It says yes to all that is. It does not renounce, it does not eliminate, it does not negate. It learns to enjoy, to experience, to sing, to dance, to celebrate. It is the way of a beautiful garden path. Many flowers bloom, birds sing.The path of silence is just the opposite of it: it is like a beautiful desert. Remember, the desert has its own beauty. Not only gardens are beautiful – they have their beauty, but the desert also has its own beauty. The immensity of it, the unboundedness of it, the silence of it, the undisturbed, virgin peace that prevails in a desert – that has its own beauty. Beauty is not found only in one color and one size; it comes in all shapes, all sizes, all colors. There have been people who have loved deserts more than gardens.I live in Lao Tzu House and my garden is a forest. Mukta, my gardener, was very reluctant to make it that way – obviously; she is a Greek and thinks logically, and this is very illogical. No symmetry, no pruning is allowed. She prunes, although when I am not looking! She tries to make something out of the mess.Vivek hates the whole forest around the house. She says it has destroyed all perspective; you cannot see. You cannot see the vastness of the sky, you cannot see anything from the room – it is so covered! In fact, I don’t need to see anything; I have seen everything. But for poor Vivek it is difficult, she still needs to see a few things. I can understand her difficulty.You can go on and on seeing a desert; it ends nowhere. All the horizons are available. Its vastness and its profound silence has its own song, unheard, unspoken. The same is true about the path of silence.Buddha cannot dance, cannot sing. Of course he has his own song, but that song is not of sound. It is not the sound of running water; it is the song of a desert. You can feel it, you can live it, you can be it, but it is not tangible. You cannot touch it, you cannot hold it in your hands. How can you hold nothingness in your hands?Buddha attained to the ultimate by negating: “I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am not the heart even.” He went on negating: “I am not a self, I am just nothing.” He went on negating till nothing was left to negate. His method is like peeling an onion: you go on peeling layer by layer, layer by layer. The onion starts becoming smaller and smaller and smaller, and finally the last layer has been taken off and the onion has disappeared. Now there is nothingness. This is Buddha’s path. When you have become absolutely nothing, you have entered. But don’t compare.Buddha cannot compare himself with Meera, with Chaitanya, with Kabir. He cannot compare. If he looks at Meera dancing with her veena, singing ecstatically, of course he will feel something is being missed. If Meera looks at Buddha, the silence…The first statues in the whole world were made of Buddha, and for the simple reason… It is not accidental that the first marble statues were made of Buddha. Buddha had some quality, the same coolness as the marble and the same stillness as a statue.You cannot make a statue of Meera – impossible, because how is the statue going to represent a dance? Meera is fluid, flowing. If you want to make a statue of Meera, you will have to make a statue out of a fountain. You will have to give a shape to the fountain of Meera because she is volatile, dynamic. The dance has to be there. If the dance is not there… Yes, you can catch a posture of Meera dancing, but the moment the dance stops it disappears. Dance is a process, not a thing. Buddha can be caught beautifully in a statue; hence it is no wonder that he has the most beautiful statues in the whole world. His silence can be caught in a marble statue very easily.Never compare. Comparison simply creates unnecessary problems. Go on moving into this silence and don’t call it empty – because when a Westerner calls anything empty it means one thing, and when the Easterner calls something empty it means something almost diametrically opposite. In no Western language has emptiness the connotation of something that really exists. Emptiness simply says that nothing exists, that nothing is simply nothing. But in Eastern languages, shunyata, the word that Buddha used for emptiness, does not mean nothing exists; it means nothing really exists. Nothing is not simply nothing: it is all, it is overflowing.In English you have the word room; room simply means space. I lived in Raipur for six, eight months once, and I had a totally empty room, not even a chair, just a bamboo mat; that was the all that the room contained. Anybody entering the room would say, “Nothing in the room?” And I would say to the person, “Room simply means space; nothing else is needed. This is a room! It is spacious. You are looking for things and because there are no things you say ‘nothing.’ That is where the word nothing comes from – no thing. But you are not seeing the roominess, the spaciousness which is very positive. The room is full of space, it is not empty – empty of things but full of space.”The desert is empty of trees and people and animals, but is full of space.The Eastern languages also have a positive sense about nothingness, emptiness. So remember when you feel nothing, when you feel empty, drop the Western idea. It is a change of gestalt.You must have seen pictures in children’s books – a very famous picture, almost everybody must have seen it, it exists in almost every psychology book: just a line drawing of an old woman, but if you go on looking at it, a moment comes when the gestalt changes. Suddenly the old woman disappears and there is a beautiful young woman. Those lines contain both the figures. If you go on looking at the young woman, soon again the gestalt will change and the old woman will appear, because the eyes cannot remain static; they become tired of one thing so they change the gestalt.If you try to find the young woman while your eyes are focused on the old woman you will not be able to find the young woman, or vice versa: when you see the young woman in the picture and you try to find the old woman you cannot find her. And you have seen her, you know she is there, but you cannot find her. You cannot see both together, remember. You can try, but your failure is absolutely certain.You cannot see both together because the same lines have to be used. Those lines can either show you the old woman or, if you have exhausted the lines in the old woman, then the old woman is nowhere, she has no more lines left for her. If you have exhausted the lines in the young woman then the young woman disappears. But if you go on looking you will have shifts: sometimes the young woman appears and then the old woman disappears as if she has never existed. You search for her and you will not find her.The same is true when you look at an empty room: it is a question of gestalt. If you are focused too much on things – looking for the furniture and for the paintings and for things that are almost part of a room – then you will say, “There is nothing in it,” and your “nothing” will be Western. If you are focused on the space of the room, on the roominess of the room, you will see it is full, overflowingly full; full of itself. Then your nothingness will have an Eastern meaning.The Eastern and the Western mind really differ in many ways; they have become focused on different gestalts. The West thinks of things; the East thinks not of things, it thinks of nothings. Its whole gestalt is different.Your gestalt is changing from the Western to the Eastern, and it will be a little difficult for you to drop the old habit. Hence it looks as if it is empty and there is no bliss in it. This is your old habit; otherwise it will not look empty.Nothing is as full as the empty hand: it has the whole sky in it. And nothing is as empty as a fist: it has nothing in it. The fist has “nothing” in the Western sense, and the open hand has “nothing” in the Eastern sense.Once Ananda asked Buddha, “Bhagwan, what is your teaching, in short?”And Buddha opened his hands and he said, “My teaching is like open hands, not like fists.”A very significant statement: when your hands are open, in one sense you are empty; in another sense you are holding the whole world, all the stars, the whole sky. How much can you hold in a fist? – almost nothing. But to change from the Western gestalt to the Eastern is a little bit difficult.In the West, via negativa has never been the predominant gestalt. Nothing like Buddhism has ever happened in the West, nothing like Zen. It could not have happened, it was not possible. The whole Judaic tradition out of which Christianity and Islam are born is basically affirmative: “God is” and Buddha says, “God is not.”Remember the Eastern meaning. When Buddha says, “God is not,” he is not an atheist. He is simply saying that the nature of God is nothingness. He is not denying God at all; he is not agreeing with Epicurus or with the Charvakas. When he says “God is not,” you have to remember, you have to be constantly aware, that his “not” is not your “not.” His “not” does not say that God does not exist. His “not” simply says that God exists as nothingness. Hence we cannot say God is, because that will make your gestalt change to the positive. Either you can say God is nothingness or you can say God is not. And of course saying God is nothingness will not come closer to the truth. “God is not” comes very close, so close that one step more and you will disappear into nothingness. But that nothingness is overfull, it is pregnant. It is the nothingness that is found inside the seed.If you cut a seed, what you will find? – nothing. But you know perfectly well that nothing contains millions of flowers – invisible, but they are there, all the colors, all the fragrances. Nothing can be felt right now, but the potential is there.Enjoy this silence and don’t compare, and don’t call it empty. You are absolutely on the right track; this is the way for you.I cannot conceive of Ashoka dancing; that will look very ridiculous. When you see Ashoka next time, just think – Ashoka dancing! It will look absurd, it is not possible. Ashoka singing – impossible! He tries because he sees so many people dancing and singing.He writes jokes many times to me but I have never chosen a single joke because he has no sense of humor at all! But he tries, poor man, tries his best!Once he wrote to me, “Osho, what do you think about it? I have an idea that I would like to start an ashram magazine just full of humor.”I said, “My God – and Ashoka will be the editor of the magazine!” If he wanted to start a magazine on boredom or something like that it would have been perfectly logical, but he wants to start a magazine full of humor and he has no sense of humor at all, no possibility even! But there is no need.Go on falling deeper and deeper into your silence. And never, never compare yourself, your experiences with others, because everybody has to go in his own way. Of course in the end, the one who has come dancing to existence and the one who has come in silence meet and merge into one experience.Bliss is not right now the thing for you. It may happen as a by-product at the final stage.A joke for you Ashoka. Think over it. Perhaps you may get it!Garrity’s member was twenty-five inches long. The poor man could not find a woman who could hold him. The doctors could not help, so he went to a little sidestreet sex shop.The clerk showed Garrity a stick of peppermint candy and said, “This has a secret medication inside. As you suck, your stump shortens. In your case about five minutes ought to do the trick. But let me warn you, the drug makes you very sleepy and drowsy, so you must have someone there to pull it out of your mouth when the time is up.”Garrity could not wait to try the miraculous treatment. He dashed into the nearest men’s room, handed the Italian attendant twenty bucks and said, “I am popping a medicated rod into my mouth and it might make me doze off. It is extremely important that you pull out the dopestick after five minutes.”Garrity woke up several hours later, saw the attendant watching him and asked, “Did you remove the stick after five minutes?”The man replied, “No speak-a the English.”Bliss is not your language – forget all about it. Silence is your language. And don’t try to be blissful because that will be simply false. Don’t try at all to be something that you are not; just be that which you are and whatsoever it is, it is right, because you have to find yourself and nobody else. And remember another thing, don’t condemn others either: “What are you doing, dancing, singing and wasting your time? Sit silently.” Because that is also a possibility.Either people compare and then feel that they are missing or they become aggressive and they start destroying other people’s lives; they start condemning: “This is wrong.” That is a kind of defense, and it is said that the best way to defend is to attack. They start attacking others, “You are wrong,” just in order to feel “I am right.” That aggressiveness is also wrong because that may distract somebody from his or her path.The religious person has to understand that people differ, they are unique. In fact, each individual comes to godliness in his own way, in his own unique way. Nobody else before him has ever come to it in the same way, exactly the same way, and nobody else in the future is ever going to come to it in the same way.This is one of the calamities that has befallen humanity. The Christian goes on condemning the Hindu, the Hindu goes on condemning the Christian, the Mohammedan goes on condemning others. Everybody is condemning everybody else: “You are wrong.” The basic thing is, they are all defensive, they feel deep down, “Perhaps we are wrong.”Naturally, Jainas are only such a small minority that a deep defensiveness is natural. There are millions of Christians in the world; almost one half of the world is Christian. There are only three hundred thousand Jains. The natural, the obvious logic is, “How can so many people be wrong? We must be wrong.” Hence they become very aggressive.If you meet a Jaina monk, he is more aggressive than anybody. Of course he believes in nonviolence, so he is nonviolently aggressive! But I have looked in Jaina scriptures: they have been criticizing everybody and vehemently, for the simple reason that they are so few, they have to defend themselves. They are trembling inside: “How can we be right? It is impossible for us to be right, we are so few. If we were right we would have been victorious all over the world. And Christians are so many and Mohammedans are so many and Buddhists are so many – they must be right.” But they cannot concede that, hence: “Destroy them as much as possible.” If you cannot do anything else, logically, in your own scriptures, you can condemn them.Either a person starts feeling, “I am wrong,” or he starts hankering to make the other feel wrong. Both things are absolutely unnecessary. No need for you to feel wrong; no need for others to be made to feel wrong. Allow everyone his own individuality to flower in its own way. Roses are roses, marigolds are marigolds, lotuses are lotuses. There is no need to compare and there is no need to say, “You are wrong.”Just watch inside. If you are feeling good, if you feel well-being arising in you, then you are on the right path. If you feel your misery disappearing, if you feel your anxiety falling away, if you feel your anguish evaporating, you are on the right track. Don’t be bothered about anybody else; that is none of your business.The second question:Osho,If another man who has already realized his own self comes to you, can you recognize him simply by looking at him? I would like to meet you if you permit me.Abhedanadan, no need to bother. I can recognize you even without seeing you – you have not realized. There is no need to see you. This is not the question of a man who knows. The very desire to be recognized as self-realized is enough proof that it has not happened yet. Once it happens, who cares, who bothers? There is no point, not at all.A few days ago I was reading about Baba Franklin John. He writes that he went to Satya Sai Baba and he waited there in the crowd to see whether Satya Sai Baba could recognize him as a God-realized person or not.If he recognizes Franklin John: “This man is a God-realized person,” and comes to him and says this to him, then Franklin John will know that he too is God-realized. But he never looked at him, so Franklin John says he knows nothing. He was waiting to be recognized – a childish desire for certificates, somebody authoritative giving you a certificate.When I left the university there was a post vacant for a professor of philosophy. I applied for it. The education minister called me for the interview, and you can understand what kind of interview it must have been. We immediately clashed. Instead of him interviewing me, I interviewed him! And finally he said, “What is the matter? Have you come here to be appointed to this post or are you interviewing me?”I said, “That doesn’t matter, that is secondary. That we can decide later on. The essential things first!”But he said, “I have other things to do. You just do one thing,” he told me. “Give me one character certificate, that’s all. I have seen that you are well-qualified and you can be appointed, and I am ready to appoint you because I cannot argue with you. Just give me one character certificate, which is absolutely necessary, and here is the appointment order.”I said, “That is very difficult because I have not yet found a man whose character certificate I would like to have!”He said, “What do you mean? Can you ask your vice-chancellor?”I said, “No, I cannot, because even if the vice-chancellor asks me to give him a character certificate, I cannot – he has no character at all. How can I ask him for a character certificate?”He said, “This is very difficult. You can’t find anybody?”I said, “I cannot find anybody. You suggest someone to me. For example, you are the education minister, but I cannot take your character certificate!”He said, “Why?”I said, “Just now I have seen you. You have no intelligence at all! Appointing a man like me, who is absolutely anti-philosophical, who is against philosophy, to the post which is vacant for a professor of philosophy – what further proof can there be that you are absolutely unintelligent? I would not appoint myself to that post!”He said, “You are very difficult!” But he started feeling for me, loving me, feeling a softness for me. He said, “Somehow manage. Bring any certificate. I would like you to be in the university.”So I said, “I can do only one thing: I can write one myself, because that is the only certificate I will accept.”He said, “That will do – because who looks in the files?”It must still be in the files, my own character certificate! – “Hereby I recommend: this man has a great character.”Abhedanada, you say, “If another man who has already realized his own self…” What self? The moment you realize, there is no self. The self exists only for the unrealized; for the realized, the self disappears. There is pure emptiness, just nothingness, no “I,” no shadow of “I,” no “I-amness.” Hence, what self? Self is only a religious term for the same game called the ego. It is the same number; it does not differ in any way.Self means: “I am separate from the whole,” and the realized one knows he is not separate from the whole. He cannot have a self; he can only have a no-self, anatta. That’s what Buddha calls it – no-self.It is a very paradoxical phenomenon. To realize who you are is to realize that you are not. If you want to be, never try to realize because in the very process of realization the ego disappears. And the self is only another name for the ego. There is nothing like “self-realization.” Yes, there is realization, but the realization always makes you absolutely clear that the self had never existed in the first place and it is not there; it has never been there.And for whom are you looking for recognition? As I see it, to me, everybody is a no-self whether he knows it or not. Yes, if he knows that there is no self, I will immediately see that he knows. His humbleness, his simplicity, his spontaneity, his no-nonsense will be enough. His eyes will be absolutely empty because only in emptiness is there clarity. He will be a nobody, a nothingness. Of course, as far as I am concerned everybody is a no-self, but you may not be aware of it. If you are not aware of it, nothing is changed in reality – you still remain a no-self but you go on living in a dream-world of the self. And the greatest dream of that dream-world is the dream of self-realization.You ask, “If another man who has already realized his own self comes to you…” For what should he come to me? Is there something still left to realize? “…can you recognize him simply by looking at him?” Certainly, but there is no question of recognition. I will see that he knows, but I will not say.Kabir and Farid met once – two enlightened masters. For two days, forty-eight hours, they sat in silence together. Nobody uttered a single word. Nothing was said, nothing was heard. They hugged each other, they kissed each other, they laughed, and then they departed.The disciples of both were very frustrated because they had come in thousands to see the great meeting of two self-realized persons, and nothing happened! What can you expect? When two zeros meet, what can happen? It becomes one zero. Two zeros are not two zeros. As they come closer it becomes one zero.So when they departed, the disciples of Kabir asked him, “What happened to you? You go on talking to us and torturing us every day, but for forty-eight hours suddenly you went crazy or something? And we were waiting and waiting for something to be said.”Kabir said to them, “I can talk to you because language is the only way you can understand, but this man Farid can understand silence. I need not say a single word. If I speak I will only prove that I am ignorant.”The disciples of Farid asked him, “What happened to you?” – Farid sang such beautiful songs – “What happened to you? You could have at least sung one of your beautiful songs, but you didn’t utter a single word! And what were you laughing about? – because not even one joke was told.”Farid said, “We were laughing at you – that so many fools are waiting as if something is going to happen, but nothing is going to happen. The moment I saw him, the moment he saw me, everything was clear. He knows, I know, and we know the same thing. So what is the point of speaking?”It is like Lao Tzu… A man asked Lao Tzu, “Can I follow you when you go on your morning walk?”Lao Tzu said, “Yes, but with one condition: no talking.”The man agreed. For one hour continuously they walked in the mountains, and the man was really in difficulty. He was controlling and controlling and controlling. And then finally the sun started rising. The valley was so beautiful with the sunrise that he forgot that he was not to talk and he didn’t think that this was much talk either: he simply said, “What a beautiful dawn!”And Lao Tzu said, “That’s the end! Never again come with me – you chatter too much!”The man said, “What? I have simply said, ‘What a beautiful dawn!’ after one hour, and you are telling me, ‘You chatter too much!’”Lao Tzu said, “Yes, you chatter too much, and unnecessarily because I have got eyes, I am also seeing the beautiful dawn. What is the point of repeating it? Do you think I am blind, do you think I am insensitive? Do you have to say it to me? I know it is beautiful, so what is the point of saying it?”He never allowed the man to follow him again. He said, “No, that is not possible. You have proved yourself too stupid.”If somebody who has come to know that he is not comes to me, I will immediately see. But there is no need to come – by chance the meeting is possible. Farid and Kabir met by chance. Farid was traveling and on the way came to Kabir’s hut, so Farid’s disciples said, “Kabir lives here, and it would be beautiful for you to be together for a few days, and we can also enjoy your being together.”He said, “Okay.”And Kabir’s disciples said, “Do you know Farid is passing by on the road? If we can invite him for just a few days it will be good to have two enlightened persons in the same hut.”Kabir said, “Okay.”It was a coincidence.It happened during Buddha’s and Mahavira’s lives that many times they were in the same town, and once at least they were in the same caravanserai; Mahavira occupying one part of the serai and Buddha occupying another part of the serai. Yet they never met – there was no need.Once I was in Mumbai and J. Krishnamurti was in Mumbai. Somebody told him that I was there. He said, “Good.”People persuaded him, his disciples, that the meeting would be good. And my people also came running to me and they said, “J. Krishnamurti is here, and this is the opportunity of a lifetime for us. It will be good if you meet.”I said, “Perfectly okay, but who is going to whom? I am not going anywhere. If Krishnamurti comes, he is welcome!”And Krishnamurti said the same thing, “I am not going anywhere. If Osho comes, he is welcome.”And there the matter finished, finished forever. There was no need. I told the people, “What will we do? We will sit, unnecessarily wasting each other’s time!”One thing is certain: you have not attained yet. That I can say without seeing you.He has also asked another question which becomes proof of what I am saying: “Osho, can you enter into samadhi whenever and howsoever long you like to remain in it?” One only enters samadhi once and then one never comes out of it. There is no way out. There is no exit, there is only entrance. I have entered samadhi. Now wherever I am, whatsoever I am doing, it is all happening in samadhi. Now there is no way to come out of it. Samadhi is not a state, is not a mood into which you go and then you can come out. Samadhi is your very being. Now where can I leave my being? It is my very nature. Now where can I leave my nature? I am it.You don’t understand at all. You may have studied scriptures – Abhedananda seems to be an old type of Hindu sannyasin – you may have studied, you may have read, you may have listened to great scholars, pundits, but you have not tasted the wine, not yet.The third question:Osho,I feel so sad about leaving. Can you kiss me goodbye with a joke?A mouse was looking for a new place to live. He traveled for days, always finding something wrong with each house he came to. At last he came to a beautiful mansion and as he approached it he could hear singing in the distance.He went in, and to his surprise all the rooms on the ground floor were deserted, but the singing got gradually louder. He went up to the next floor – the singing got louder and louder, but there was still no sign of anyone.He went to the next floor, and as he went from room to room, the noise was becoming really deafening. At last he tracked the sound down to a small bedroom, but to his amazement there was no one inside. Then he noticed an old chamber-pot. Inside there was a little mouse singing his heart out as he paddled a tiny boat across the piss.The first mouse asked the mouse in the pot if this was a good place to live. He was assured that it was safe, plenty of food, and that he would be very welcome. So he went back down to the kitchen to find some food, but to his horror was faced with an enormous cat, ready to pounce. He fled back upstairs and shouted at the other mouse, “I thought you said this was a safe place to live!”“Ah!” replied the second mouse. “You know, you really should not believe anything I say – I have been on the piss all night!”Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter,for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.It was on a coast-bound train, Mieczyslaw was slumped in his seat and every few moments he sighed and cried, “Ah my! Ah my!” Forbes, sitting nearby, heard him cry but did not butt in, thinking the fellow was troubled by some great personal tragedy.The next day it was the same cry of, “Ah my! Ah my!” And again the same the day after.Finally, Forbes leaned over and whispered, “Anything seriously wrong?”“Ah my, yes!” said the Polack. “For three days now I have been on the wrong train!”This is exactly the situation of humanity: everybody, almost everybody, is on the wrong train; hence there is so much misery. Misery simply indicates that you are not where you are supposed to be; that you are not moving toward your own destiny; that you are not flowering into your own potential; that you have been diverted by others, distracted by others. Maybe those others were not intending any wrong to you, but they were unconscious people just like you.Every parent distracts the child from his essential being, leads him astray. Every teacher, every priest goes on doing the same. Nobody respects the individual. They have already decided what is right and what is wrong, and for all.Each individual is a unique phenomenon. Hence no law, no morality can be applicable to all. Of course, we have to agree on a few minimums just to exist together, but those minimums have to be the nonessentials.That is the fundamental message of Desiderata. Desiderata means “the fundamentals,” “the essentials.” About the essentials there should be no compromise at all, with nobody, not even with God, because you don’t know anything about God. The priest goes on speaking on behalf of some God which nobody knows. It is the priest, the cunning priest, who pretends that his voice is God’s voice.One of the most ancient scriptures in the world is the Hindu scripture, Rig Veda. Ninety-nine percent of it is sheer nonsense, not only nonsense but irreligious too – not even religious nonsense! All the prayers in the Rig Veda are prayers for the nonessential. People are asking for money from God, asking for power, prestige, more cows, more horses, more land; not only that but for the death of their enemies and the prosperity of their friends. And this scripture is worshipped by the Hindus as religious.Religion means one is trying to transcend the mundane; otherwise, religion loses all its meaning. But the Rig Veda is full of the mundane. It is really a miracle that once in a while you come across a statement which can be called significant, concerned with the essential and not with the peripheral.And this is not only the case with the Hindus: this is the case with the Buddhists, with the Jainas, with the Christians, with the Jews, with the Mohammedans, with almost all the organized religions. They have all gone astray. And when I say they have all gone astray I mean they have become entangled with the nonessential.In Buddhist scriptures there are thirty-three thousand rules; unless you follow those thirty-three thousand rules of conduct you can never become a buddha. One cannot even remember those rules! Just think of thirty-three thousand rules to be followed and you will drop the idea, the very desire, to be a buddha. All those rules will drive you crazy if followed, and only an insane person can follow those rules.There cannot be thirty-three thousand rules about the essential, it is about the very nonessential: while you are walking, how much you should see of the road? – only four feet, not more than that, not even four feet six inches. If you go beyond the limit of four feet, you fall from grace. Now what nonsense is this, and what does it have to do with religion? You have to have only three pieces of clothing, you cannot have four – only three, and you have to be very strict about it. You have to beg in a certain way, from certain people, not otherwise. You have to eat only at a certain time; if you are feeling hungry again you cannot eat, you have to remain hungry.The Buddhist monk has to eat only once a day. The Jaina monk cannot even drink water in the night. The Jaina monk cannot even urinate where the earth is wet; the Jaina monk cannot urinate in water. That’s why no Jaina monk can use modern toilets. Such stupidities – but they have been propagated in the name of religion, and once something takes the color of religion it starts looking important to people.Character has been very much emphasized; in fact, character is a peripheral phenomenon. The real thing is not character but consciousness, but consciousness happens inside and is not available for others to observe; others can only observe your character. And it is always the others who are deciding for you, hence they decide something that they can observe: they decide about your behavior. And of course man is capable of conducting himself in a certain way; he can force himself to do all kinds of contortions, but that does not change his consciousness at all.I have seen Jaina monks who have followed all kinds of rules prescribed in the scriptures, and their most important value is nonviolence. But they are not nonviolent people; they are aggressive. Of course, their aggression takes a different form – it has to. It cannot be expressed in an ordinary way because they have prevented the ordinary way. They are very argumentative, their whole aggression becomes argumentation. Now argumentation is a way of fighting – not with the body but with the mind. A really nonviolent person will not be so interested in argumentation.Jaina scriptures are full of arguments, hairsplitting. In fact, nobody else has done as much hairsplitting as Jainas have done. It was bound to happen because their whole violence has turned into a mental phenomenon; it is a perversion. They cannot kill even an ant, but they can kill a great argument – and they enjoy killing.In India, Jainas, all the Jainas, have become business people. Why did it happen? It happened through the idea of nonviolence. One cannot conceive the relationship. But if you look deep into it, the Jaina rules say you should not cut a tree, you should not uproot a tree, because trees have life. True, but then you cannot cultivate, you cannot be a farmer. So that dimension was closed for the Jainas: they cannot be farmers, cultivators, gardeners. Even cutting a leaf is violent.Of course they cannot be warriors, they cannot go to the battlefield. All their tirthankaras, the twenty-four masters, were born into the race of the warriors; they were all kshatriyas, samurai. But all their followers have become business people for the simple reason they cannot be soldiers, they cannot be farmers. And to be a brahmin one has to be born a brahmin. You cannot become one and even if you want to become one, the brahmins won’t allow it to happen, so that door is closed. And of course, who wants to be a sudra – the untouchable? Who wants to fall so low?So the only possible outlet was to be a businessman. So all the Jainas became business people, and their whole violence became concentrated on exploitation; hence they are the richest people in India. Their violence turned in a subtle way, it took a very subtle form: suck the blood of the people, exploit, oppress. Money became their goal, through money they became powerful. They cannot be powerful directly because they cannot fight for power, but in a vicarious way, by having more money, they can purchase all. They can purchase brahmins, they can purchase sudras, they can purchase the warriors – they can purchase everybody! Their consciousness is not changed, they are as violent as everybody else. Of course, their violence has taken a very strange turn.Have you observed the fact that hunters, who are violent people, are very good people, very friendly people? – for the simple reason that their violence is thrown out in hunting.Psychologists have observed that woodcutters are very nonviolent people, very peaceful, because their whole violence is thrown out of their systems by cutting wood. Their profession is such – chopping wood, cutting wood – that their whole desire to cut and chop disappears. They have done enough chopping, enough cutting; they are no longer interested in it at all. They are very loving, good people.This world is a strange world, and the strangest thing is that we go on trying to change the inner by changing the outer – and it is not possible in the very nature of things. You can change the outer by changing the inner, but not vice versa. But the society cannot see the inner; the society can only see the outer. Hence the society emphasizes the outer and makes everybody a split personality, makes everybody in a certain way schizophrenic. You are one on the outside, you are totally another on the inside – not even different, but diametrically opposite.You can observe people on the surface and you can decide about their inner beings. You can conclude, more or less, and you will be on the right track: whatsoever they are on the surface, they must be the opposite of it in their innermost being. The so-called brahmacharins, the so-called celibate people, think continuously of sex and nothing else. That is bound to happen, it is natural because celibacy has not arisen out of meditation. It is imposed, it is cultivated, it is not even skin-deep; hence they are always afraid of women. The Jaina monk, the Buddhist monk, the Hindu sannyasin are all afraid of the woman. A great trembling arises in them just by seeing a woman; hence the Buddhist rule: don’t look beyond four feet.Mahatma Gandhi has written about one of the incidents that happened in his ashram. He was reading the Ramayana, the story of Rama, and in the story of Rama there was a passage where he became a little puzzled. The passage is that Rama, with his wife Sita and brother Laxmana, are going into the forest. They have been expelled by their father for fourteen years. Rama is the first, behind him is his wife, Sita, and behind Sita is Laxmana.This way they roamed in the forest for years. Then Sita was stolen by Ravana. When Ravana was taking her away she wanted to leave a few clues for Rama to find out where she has been taken, so on the path, unnoticed by Ravana, she dropped her ornaments one by one. She was a queen and she had many ornaments, so she dropped ornaments all the way, and of course that was the clue.Rama found those ornaments, but he was in such shock and his eyes were full of tears; he was almost going crazy. He was asking the trees, “Trees, tell me, please, where is my Sita?” He looked at the ornaments but could not recognize them.He asked Laxmana, his younger brother, “Can you recognize these ornaments? Do they belong to Sita? If they belong to Sita, then this is the route which she has been taken on and we have to follow this route.”Laxmana said, “I can recognize only the ornaments that she used to wear on her feet because those are the only ornaments I have ever seen.”Mahatma Gandhi became very puzzled: “For years they have lived together, wandered in the forest, and Laxmana has not seen another ornament – from her hands or a necklace or something else. He sees only the ornaments of her feet. Why?”Vinoba Bhave, one of his great disciples, suggested, “Because Laxmana was following an ancient rule: don’t look at any woman because looking at a woman may create desire in you. So he was simply focusing on her feet, he was not looking up. And of course, he could recognize the ornaments on her feet because for years he had looked only at her feet. He must have touched her feet, bowed down to her feet; he must have seen those ornaments.”Mahatma Gandhi was very much impressed by Vinoba Bhave’s interpretation – this was a great revelation! Laxmana was following the rule of celibacy, he was following brahmacharya.When I read about this whole incident, I said that if Laxmana was so much afraid even to look at Sita’s face, then one thing is certain: he was not a celibate. The elder brother’s wife is almost like a mother – and he could not look at her face, could not look at her whole figure? What kind of fear is there, what kind of paranoia? Is this something healthy? Does this show a man of understanding, of awareness, or only a man fast asleep? And if he was forcing himself to look only at her feet, can he avoid the desire to look up at her face? You may not look, but can you avoid the desire? In fact, the curiosity will become more and more, bigger and bigger. You may become obsessed with it: “How does she look? The feet are so beautiful, so impressive – how must her whole figure be?”Then she will start entering into your dreams. Then more fear will arise. The fear can be so much that there are stories in India of saints like Surdas, who destroyed his eyes because he saw a beautiful woman and became allured, fascinated. Obviously he concluded, according to the Hindu tradition, that these eyes are leading him astray, so he destroyed his eyes, became blind. But can you see the stupidity of it? Do you think the blind person has no sexual desire? Do you think just by becoming blind you can avoid sexual desire? But Surdas is respected for this act, tremendously respected: “What sacrifice and what a great character! What great morality, what purity!”I don’t see any purity in it and any greatness in it. I see simply something idiotic, something utterly silly. You can destroy your eyes or you can close your eyes, but your mind will still continue. In fact, the woman is never as beautiful when you look at her as she is when you avoid her. When you forcibly distract yourself from her she becomes more beautiful. And the same is true about the man, because nobody is, in fact, as beautiful as your fancy can make him appear.That is why psychoanalysts try to penetrate into your dreams, for the simple reason… It is a condemnation of humanity. Nobody has thought that way: why the psychologist, the psychoanalyst, is trying to know about your dreams, not about you while you are awake. Strange – he should ask you questions while you are awake. He never bothers with what you do while you are awake; he wants to know what you do when you are asleep. Why? – because he has come to know one thing absolutely and certainly, categorically: that man is false when he is awake. Centuries of outer imposition have made his so-called awakened state absolutely false and pseudo. If you want to know the real, authentic, man you have to know about his dreams; only in his dreams will you find him.And then you will be surprised: the man who has renounced all money, in his dream goes on counting money and he does nothing else. The man who has renounced the woman – the woman he loved, the woman he wanted to love – goes on dreaming about the same woman or maybe about thousands of other women. His dreams will be full of women.I have heard about a Catholic monk who went to a psychoanalyst and said to the psychoanalyst, “I have come in great trouble to seek help from you. Every night in my dream I am surrounded by at least a dozen naked, beautiful women!”The psychoanalyst said, “But why be worried about it? There is nothing wrong. You should on the contrary be happy. What is the problem? If the women are beautiful and you are surrounded by beautiful women the whole night – enjoy it!”The monk said, “You don’t understand. In the dream I am also a woman – that is the trouble! I am not objecting to the presence of the women; that is the only solace. The problem is I am always a woman myself in the dream. Help me somehow so that I can remain a man in my dreams.”Now on the surface he is a Catholic monk and deep down just a human being. And I am not condemning his humanity and his human desire, but I am certainly condemning his bogus Catholic monkhood.All the religions have done the same in different degrees: they have divided man into two. And what he is on the surface is one thing and what he is underneath is totally different.Because of this the whole of humanity lives in a very strange state: divided, tense, anxious, fighting with itself. And the way it has been done is by leading people astray through the nonessential. The character is nonessential. What you do is not the essential thing, but what you are, because doing comes out of being. Being does not come out of your doing, so doing is secondary, just like a shadow. Being is essential. And you should know first who you are. Rather than trying to become somebody – Mahavira, Buddha, Christ – try first to know who you are.A great Hasid mystic, Zusya, was dying. His old aunt was always worried about Zusya because he was not following the traditional Jewish religion; she was very much worried about him. She was an old woman with all the orthodox thoughts. At his deathbed she came and asked Zusya, “Have you made peace with God?”Zusya opened his eyes and said, “But I have never been in any conflict with him. Why should I make any peace with God? I have never struggled against him. I have lived a life of let-go.”The old woman could not understand the life of let-go, the life of total surrender to the ultimate, to the whole – flowing with the whole. She asked again, thinking that he had not understood it. She said, “Have you made peace with Moses?”Zusya said, “When I am in front of God, he is not going to ask me, ‘Zusya, why are you not a Moses?’ He will ask me, ‘Zusya, why are you not a Zusya?’ I am not supposed to be Moses, otherwise he would have made me a Moses. Who was preventing him? He never made another Moses.”God never repeats. He never sends carbon copies to the world. Mahavira is not repeated, Buddha is not repeated, Christ is not repeated, Mohammed is not repeated, Kabir, Nanak; nobody is ever repeated.And this is what we are all doing: we are trying to be like Moses or like Mahavira or like Mohammed. Zusya is right, his insight is great. He says, “God will ask me, ‘Why are you not Zusya?’ He has made me Zusya and I have to be myself. That is my responsibility. To be Moses is not my responsibility; that was Moses’ responsibility and that is something between Moses and God. I have nothing to say about it, nothing to do with it; it is not my concern at all.”The most essential thing is: you have to be yourself. Don’t be distracted by anybody, by any scripture, by any priest, by any politician. Don’t be distracted. Stick to one thing: I have to be myself.Don’t be stubborn, don’t bother about nonessentials. If the rule is to keep to the left, follow it; it is a nonessential thing. Whether you keep to the left or whether you keep to the right does not matter; it is just a traffic convenience. In India we keep to the left because of the British, because they had the idea of keeping to the left; the Americans keep to the right. Both are okay – there is nothing essential about it. But one thing is certain, that the traffic has to be managed and one has to decide either left or right – the traffic cannot be left in a chaos.These are nonessentials. Don’t start fighting for them; that is a sheer wastage of energy. But about the essential no compromise should ever be made.Desiderata says: “Without surrender, without making any compromise, remain yourself.” That does not mean that you have to be continuously fighting. It simply means if you are alert, aware, watchful, you can save your being from being contaminated by others.Everybody is like a vulture trying to dominate you. Even the love of those who say they love you is also nothing but an ego trip. They love you so that they can dominate you. The husband loves the wife to reduce her almost into a thing, into a commodity. The wife loves the husband just to dominate him, just to exploit him. All this love, all these relationships… Parents love their children if the children are following the ideas of the parents. If they are obedient, then they love their children, if they are not obedient then all love disappears – instead of love they start hating.A sannyasin asked me just the other day: “Listening to the Desiderata I am in a confusion about what to do. I have not gone to see my mother for two years because she insists that I have to come to her not as a sannyasin. I cannot come in orange with a new name.” So she is puzzled: what to do? “Is it an essential or nonessential? Should I compromise?”If you think only of clothes it will look nonessential: why hurt the mother unnecessarily? You can go in white, you can go in any other color – clothes are just clothes. But that is not the point: the mother is trying to dominate you. It is not a question of clothes, because why should she be against orange? If you go in blue, she is not against it; if you go in green, she is not against it; if you go in white, she is not against it. Why should she be worried about orange, what is wrong with orange? Is your mother a kind of bull or something? Why should she be worried about orange? Orange is one of the colors. If all other colors are acceptable and orange is not acceptable, it is not a question of colors or clothes; the question is deeper. She insists that you have to be obedient to her. And the sannyasin is thirty-two years old, not a small child. But the desire to dominate… “Otherwise,” the mother says, “I don’t want to see you.” What kind of love is this? It insists that “You have to be according to me.”Forget the clothes. It is a very essential question; it is not nonessential. It is essential to defend yourself against all those who try to dominate you, because they will not stop only at that. Once you give in, then the whole trip begins, and then there is no end to it.Every person has the freedom to be himself or herself. And if the mother really loves you she would like you to be yourself, she would like you to come the way you are. Love always accepts the other without any conditions; if there are conditions, it is not love.So you will have to be very, very clear about it, otherwise Desiderata can create much confusion in you. Desiderata is a simple statement because it is for the beginner, for those who are just beginning the journey into the world of truth, those who are beginning the inquiry. Listen to it very intelligently. Try to understand it without bringing your mind in. Just put your mind aside and listen in silence, because whatsoever is listened to in silence is understood immediately. Otherwise you will hear today, and some day in the future you may be able – and that too is a “perhaps” – to understand it. But meanwhile your life will be a wastage, and it will become entangled into many nonessentials.Zowicki, in a body-cast, lay in a hospital bed explaining to a doctor how he fell off the roof and broke most of his bones. “Twenty years ago, I am on the road selling brushes when my car break down and I walk to nearby house to use the phone,” he began. “A good-looking blonde built like a brick shipyard answered the door. She did not have phone, but ask me to stay over till morning.“I stay in upstairs room. That night she ask if I need anything. I tell her no. One hour later she come back again, ask if I want anything. I tell her everything all right. Around midnight she stop by again and ask if I want anything. I tell her I be fine.”“What’s that got to do with your accident?” asked the doctor.“Well,” said the Polack, “I be up on the roof fixing TV antenna when I remember that night back then, and all of a sudden I realize what she driving at. I jumped up, fell off the roof, and here I am!”After twenty years! Don’t be a Polack: try to understand right now, here.These are simple words and simple words are in a way dangerous: because they are simple you think you have understood them. Simple words contain more truth than complex words; complex words are creations of the stupid scholars. Simple words are direct, immediate; they are not roundabout. If you silently listen to them there is nothing which can prevent you from understanding them, but the silence is a prerequisite. If your mind is full of thoughts and you are listening through all the garbage, then those simple words will become complex by the time they reach you and they will not have the same meaning.Czarobski walked into a drugstore. “Give me a can of talcum,” he said.“Mennen’s?” asked the clerk.“No, wimmen’s – it’s for my wife,” he answered.The clerk shrugged. “You want it scented?”“Nope,” replied the Polack. “I can take it along.”And did you hear about the Italian girl who almost ruined her health by going to the doctor?She thought he prescribed three hearty males a day.Mrs. Marzanini complained to a lawyer that every time she had relations with her husband it hurt her unbearably.“He is big! He is like a horse!” she added.“In that case,” said the attorney, “the best thing you can do is to file your petition.”“Oh no! Let him sandpaper his!”Beware of simple words.Little Pierino walked into a cocktail lounge and said to the barmaid, “Give me a double scotch!”“Hey, kid,” she sighed, “you want to get me in trouble?”“Maybe later, lady! Right now I just wanna drink!”Desiderata is very simple, but don’t postpone. Let it be an immediate understanding.Desiderata says:Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.A very simple statement, but of tremendous importance. It is very pregnant. Avoid loud and aggressive persons… Who is a loud person, and why is a certain person loud in the first place? The person who feels inferior deep down is always loud. He is afraid that if he is not loud, you will see his weakness; if he is not loud, you may be able to see his inferiority; if he is not loud, he may be exposed. By being loud he creates smoke around himself: he hides behind his loudness.Adler’s insight is right when he says that all politicians basically suffer from inferiority complexes. Unless somebody suffers from an inferiority complex he will not go into politics. Politics is loud, very loud, very noisy and very aggressive. The inferior person tries to prove that he is not inferior. He wants to hide his inferiority by becoming a prime minister, by becoming a president, by having much money, by conquering the world.Alexander the Great must have suffered from the greatest inferiority complex, more than anybody else; otherwise who bothers to conquer the world? When he was coming to India – that was the last part of the world which was still not conquered by him – he met a tremendously beautiful man, Diogenes. And Diogenes asked him, “Why are you bothering to conquer the world? Why not conquer yourself?”Alexander laughed – a shallow laugh. He said, “What you are saying is true, but right now I cannot stop. I have to finish what I have decided to do. First I have to conquer the world and then I will do what you are saying to me.”Diogenes said, “There will be no time left then – the world is vast. By the time you have conquered it, your life will have slipped out of your hands.”But he did not listen.And actually that’s what happened: he could not reach back to his home. He died on the way back from India; no time to reach back to his home, what to say about reaching back to one’s own center, the real home? His whole life was lost in proving: “I am a great conqueror.” But why should one try to prove it? People always try to prove something which they feel they are missing. Hence: Avoid loud and aggressive persons… they are empty, they have nothing. You cannot learn anything from them. On the contrary …they are vexations to the spirit.They will distract your mind. They will give their stupid ideas to you. They will advise you and guide you. They have reached nowhere, they know nothing, but they will pretend that they are wise, they will pretend that they have arrived. They will pretend all kinds of things.Avoid loud and aggressive persons… Seek the company of the humble, of the simple, of the silent ones, of the nonpolitical, of the nonaggressive, and you may learn much. But it is always learned in the company of the innocent. Yes, you can learn much more by playing with children than by being with a politician. You can learn much more even by being with animals or trees than by being with the so-called rich.And they can easily distract you because you are not yet centered. Ambitions are infectious. Avoid ambitious people, otherwise something of their fever is bound to infect you, is bound to affect you. You may start moving in a direction which is not yours, you may start doing things which you had never thought to do in the first place, just because you fell into company with somebody.Just look at your life – it is almost all accidental. It is not essential, it is accidental. Your father wanted you to be a doctor so you are a doctor. Now, it was his ambition that his son should be a famous doctor; he fulfilled his ambition. He used you as a means to fulfill his ambition. This is not love – this is exploitation.My father wanted me to be an engineer or a scientist or a doctor. I told him, “If you insist, if it makes you happy, I will do any stupid thing you tell me. But remember, this is not love. If you love me, then let me be what I want to be. I don’t want to be a doctor and I don’t want to be an engineer. I have no desire at all to be a scientist – that is not my way. I don’t feel any joy in the scientific way of thinking. My love is totally different: I am in deep love with poetry, aesthetics, beauty, truth.”He said, “Then you will remain a beggar!”I said, “That’s perfectly okay, that I can accept. I will be a beggar, that is okay, but let me be what I want to be. Even in my poverty I will be rich, and following you and becoming a doctor I may become very rich but I will remain poor, and I will always hanker for that which was my real longing.”He was a man of tremendous understanding. He meditated over it and he said, “Then it is okay. Do whatsoever you feel like doing, and you have my blessings.”He could have forced me easily because he had the money. He could have forced me to go in any direction because I was helpless. He showed love, he showed understanding. He allowed me to be whatsoever I wanted to be.If you are with loud people they are bound to distract you. He was not a loud person at all, very humble, he was not aggressive at all. I have never seen him fight with anybody. He has not even shouted at me for any wrong that I had done that he did not like. I have never seen him in an angry mood. It was beautiful to be with such a man; but rare is the opportunity.At least do one thing: avoid loud people, aggressive people. If you cannot find loving, silent persons – if you try you will find them – if you cannot find them, be with trees. At least they are not loud, at least they are not aggressive. Learn to be with animals, be with children. Or you can be alone; no need to bother with being with others. Make the minimum contact and remain alone, or remain with those who are silent.One of the greatest sayings of Lao Tzu is: The most beautiful company is when you can be with someone as if you are alone. See the insight of Lao Tzu: when you can be with someone as if you are alone, when he allows you so much silence and so much freedom that you are absolutely alone, as if almost alone. His presence is not a hindrance; his presence in fact, enhances your aloneness, enriches your aloneness.Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter…And never compare. Comparison is a disease, one of the greatest diseases and we are taught from the very beginning to compare. Your mother starts comparing you with other children, your father starts comparing you with other children. The teacher compares you: “Look at Johnny, how well he is doing, and you are no good at all! Look at others!” From the very beginning you are being told to compare yourself with others. This is the greatest disease; it is like a cancer that goes on destroying your very soul – because each individual is unique, and comparison is not possible. I am just myself and you are just yourself. There is nobody else in the world you can be compared with.Do you compare a marigold with a roseflower? You don’t compare. Do you compare a mango with an apple? You don’t compare. You know they are different – comparison is not possible.Man is not a species because each man is unique. There has never been any individual like you before and there will never be again. You are utterly unique. This is your privilege, your prerogative, existence’s blessing – that it has made you unique. Don’t compare. Comparison will bring trouble.Desiderata says:If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter,for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.If you fall a victim of this disease comparison, naturally either you will become very egoistic or you will become very bitter; it depends with whom you compare yourself. If you compare yourself with those who seem to be bigger than you, higher than you, greater than you, you will become bitter. You will become a complaint against existence, angry: “Why am I not greater than I am? Why am I not like that person? Why am I not physically so beautiful, so strong? Why am I not intelligent? Why am I not this, not that?” And there are millions of things in the world.If you compare yourself with the people who are greater in some way than you, you will become bitter, very bitter. Your life will become poisoned by the comparison. You will always remain in a state of depression; as if life has deceived you betrayed you, you have been let down.Or if you compare yourself with people who are smaller than you, in some way lesser than you, then you will become very egoistic. It is one of the reasons why politicians are always surrounded by smaller people than themselves; they collect them, that is their joy. They collect smaller people around themselves so that they can look bigger than they are in comparison. It is stupid, but one cannot expect anything more from a politician.Rich people are always surrounded by those who are smaller. They feel good, very good, great in comparison to those people. But ordinarily people always look at others’ houses, their successes, their achievements, and feel very bitter against God. In the world, religion cannot prosper because people cannot pray to a God who has betrayed them from the very beginning, who has made them so small, so ugly. How can they be thankful toward him? Impossible. And without thankfulness there is no prayer, and without prayer there is no religion.A man who understands the uniqueness of everybody can be religious, can only be religious because he feels immense gratitude for whatsoever life has given to him. If you don’t compare, then you are neither bigger nor smaller, neither ugly nor beautiful, neither intelligent nor stupid. If you don’t compare, you are simply yourself. And in that state of simply being yourself spring comes, flowers come, because a deep acceptance of life and a deep gratitude to existence helps to bring the spring.Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.Don’t be bothered with others. Enjoy whatsoever is your achievement, enjoy whatsoever is your vision to achieve.Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.Don’t be bothered that others are earning more money, that others are becoming more successful, more famous. Remain interested in the thing that you are really interested in; whether it keeps you poor and humble does not matter. If you enjoy doing it, if you love doing it, if it is your creativity, then you are rich, very rich, immensely rich, and existence will be very pleased with you. If you are pleased yourself, existence is pleased with you.Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.Desiderata is very pragmatic. It says: Exercise caution in your business affairs… As far as worldly things are concerned, be cautious. Don’t blame others that they are cunning. If you allow them to exploit, they will exploit. They are not cunning – you are not cautious, that’s the only thing to be remembered. Don’t blame them; that is their business, to be cunning or not to be cunning. Don’t think that they are sinners and will suffer in hell; that is not your concern at all. Your concern should be: “I am not cautious enough.” Be more cautious, more alert, more aware.Lorenzo staggered home filled with vino, and his wife would not let him in the house.“Hey, Rosa,” he shouted from below their window, “if you don’na let me in, I am-a gonna tell-a everybody I slept-a with you before we gotta married!”“Go ahead!” yelled back his spouse. “And I am-a gonna tell-a them you were not-a the first-a one!”Don’t blame others. Whatsoever they are, they are. In fact, all the cunningness of the world and the trickery of the world helps you to be aware. If this world cannot help you to be aware, then what world will ever be able to make you aware, to be cautious? It is a good world – it gives you a tremendous challenge to be cautious. But – reminds Desiderata – let this not blind you to what virtue there is…It is not only trickery, it is not only cunningness. There are many beautiful things in the world. There is always a silver lining to the cloud – don’t miss that. So don’t be blinded by the trickery, otherwise you will never find anything beautiful and the world is full of beauty: …many persons strive for high ideals and everywhere life is full of heroism.If you watch you will be surprised: this may be the most perfect world. With all the darkness, with all the thorns, there are roses, there is great light too. And you have to learn from both.Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Is my name an essential or something nonessential?Premananda, existence is nameless. We are all nameless but the name has a certain utility; without it life will be impossible. When the child is born he comes as a nobody, as pure nothingness – that is the beauty of a child – but it is a necessity that he should be given a name. Once the name is given, slowly, slowly the child becomes autohypnotized by his own name; it becomes almost a reality to him. In fact, he can sacrifice himself for the name. That is what millions of people are doing all over the world: sacrificing themselves for the name, for the fame – sacrificing the essential for the nonessential.A name is not an essential, but it has certain purposes; without it life will be very difficult. Hence we even have to invent names for existence. It cannot have any name, but it has to be addressed. There are moments when you would like to shout to it out of sheer joy – some name is needed.That is why I give you new names. Why new names? The new is as nonessential as the old, but the new will give you some insight. First it will make you aware that you are not the name, because the name can be easily changed and you remain the same. When the first name was given you were a small child, absolutely unconscious, unaware of what was happening to you. Now you are no longer a child. A new name is given to you, it has significance and that significance is essential. The name is nonessential, but the change of the name is of the essential.Once you change the name you know that a name is just utilitarian; to know it is very essential. Now it will be more difficult for you to get identified with it.Secondly: the name that your parents give to you is almost meaningless. Any name that comes to their minds is given to you, any name they feel they like. But the name I give to you is given for certain reasons – those reasons belong to the world of the essential.For example, I have called you Premananda. It consists of two words: prem and ananda. Prem means love, ananda means bliss. For thousands of years man has tried to live either in the world of love or in the world of bliss; it has been an either–or, a choice. But to be total it has not to be either–or, it has not to be a choice, it has to be both together.My sannyas is a synthesis, and that synthesis belongs to the essential. So keep on remembering; something nonessential may become an indicator of the essential, something nonessential can be used in a very essential way. The fool can use the essential in a nonessential way; the wise man can use the nonessential in an essential way. It all depends on you.So don’t be so concerned with what is essential and what is nonessential. It is not a quality of things that we can put into two different categories – this is essential and this is nonessential. Rather, it is the use that you make out of a certain thing which decides to what category it should belong.When I give you a name it indicates toward the essential.Man has lived only a partial life up to now. The worldly man lived a partial life; the worldly man lived the life of love. He was trying to figure out with the wife, with the children, with the parents, with the friends, with the society: “What is this phenomenon ‘love’ all about?” In every possible way he was trying to know what love is.Consciously or unconsciously his whole effort was devoted to one thing: to know the joy that can happen between two persons in deep harmony.Love is a harmony between two persons – two universes beating in the same rhythm, dancing hand in hand, melting, merging, becoming almost an organic unity. It is the way of the drunkard. You become drunk with the wine of the other, the other also becomes drunk with the wine of you. But it is only half the truth of your life. You start knowing more about the other and you completely forget yourself; love requires you to forget yourself and remember the other. The other becomes the focus – you fade away into deep darkness, you become secondary.The people who live in this partial way are bound to be frustrated sooner or later because no partial life can ever be a fulfillment. When they become frustrated – and the more intelligent someone is, the sooner he becomes frustrated because he can see that something is missing, something very essential is missing. You are missing. You are groping for the other not knowing at all who you are. And how can you find the other when you have not even found yourself? Hence you go on only stumbling with the other. You may call it love, but it is just groping. There is no insight, no clarity, no light; it is all dark.You are afraid of being alone so you seek the company of the other. It is out of fear that your so-called love arises – and love can never arise out of fear. It is pseudo. The partial is always pseudo, only the whole is true. Only the whole has meaning, never the part. The part has meaning only in context with the whole, but never separately.So many intelligent people became frustrated; then they decided to move to the opposite extreme. That is the way of the mind – if you fail in one thing, the mind immediately suggests the polar opposite to you. And it appeals, it looks logical. If love has failed, if you have not been able to rejoice and dance and celebrate with the other, then the logical conclusion is that it is better to be alone, to move into solitude, to become a monk. The word monk literally means to be alone. It comes from a root; from the same root come words like: monotony, monogamy, monopoly, monastery. It comes from the same root.A monastery is a place where many people are trying to live a life of aloneness. This is the way of the monk, the other-worldly. And he has also failed in the same way; he is bound to fail. He has chosen the other half, but now he will miss something. He will learn how to be alone – he will learn the way of bliss, he will be blissful, but his bliss will miss something: it will miss sharing. And a bliss that cannot be shared starts dying, becomes sour, goes bitter. Even nectar can turn into poison if it stops its flow.The monk is really far more blissful than the worldly people, but his bliss is not a river. It is not going to reach the other. He becomes just a pool, not a river; a pond – in a certain bondage, afraid of the other.Just see the point: the worldly person is afraid of his aloneness; hence he tries to reach the other, in the darkness he shouts for the other. And the monk is afraid of the other because the other may disturb his solitude – he may start interfering with his space, he may start encroaching upon his space, his territory, which he has found with such difficulty. He lives in fear; he lives in a dark, walled, self-imposed imprisonment. He makes walls between himself and others; he avoids all possibilities where love can grow. Then his bliss slowly, slowly becomes a dead pool with no flow, and he also starts missing. He starts getting fed up with himself. Rather than being alone he starts feeling lonely.If a monk is intelligent, now a higher kind of intelligence is needed. The ordinary intelligence will again take him to the other pole. Now Catholic monks are revolting against the church and getting married. For what?For hundreds of years they have tried to live alone – nuns have lived separately, monks have lived separately. There are Christian monasteries like Athos where for one thousand years no woman has ever entered. For one thousand years continuously the doors of the monastery have remained closed to women. Not even nuns, not even a small, six-year-old girl or six-month-old child is allowed in. Such fear! One wonders whether monks are living inside or monsters! If you are afraid even of a six-month-old baby girl; what kind of people are living there? There is fear, great fear, trembling. The monks don’t come out of the monastery. Once you enter Athos you enter forever; the world is finished.There have been thousands of Hindu monks living in the Himalayan caves, never coming back to the world. But these people lose something, something very essential: sharing. Life is sharing, and only in sharing do you become fulfilled.Just think of a sun which keeps itself enclosed, with no rays going out. Or think of a lotus which keeps its petals closed so no fragrance can reach to anybody. Think of a bird which is afraid of singing – somebody may hear it. Then this whole existence will be dead.That is what these monks have become: dead people, living in their graves – whatsoever they call those graves – caves, monasteries. Whatsoever they call them does not matter, but they are graves and they are living an almost dead life.Premananda, I have given you this name, prem and ananda – both love and bliss. That is the message for all my sannyasins: that you have to learn both. You have to be fluid, you have to be flowing. You have to know how to be alone and you have to know how to be together. You have to be simultaneously both meditative and loving; only then will you be whole. And to me, to be whole is to be holy.Man has not been holy up to now because he has not been whole – how can he be holy? Yes, once in a while a person may have attained – a Lao Tzu, a Zarathustra. Once in a while a person may have attained to his wholeness, but as I look I feel even Buddha’s wholeness can be enriched a little more, even Lao Tzu’s wholeness can become a little more than it is; something can be added to it. Even Jesus’ wholeness can have a few more dimensions to it.My effort here is to give you a multi-dimensional existence; all the dimensions that are possible for human beings should be available to you. You should be capable of love and you should be capable of bliss. And my own experience is, and my observation is, that the man who is blissful is the only man who is capable of love, and the man who is capable of love is the only man who is capable of bliss. They enhance each other.You have heard about the vicious circle: that one thing leads to another, then the other thing leads to the first, and there is a vicious circle. But you have not heard about the virtuous circle. I call this a virtuous circle – it is not vicious, it is virtuous – because one thing leads to the other and you go higher, moving in higher altitudes. More and more plenitudes are added to you. The highest that I can conceive of is love added to your bliss in deep harmony; not interfering with each other but enriching each other.But Desiderata is going to create such questions. I was aware that you would become very much puzzled about what is essential and what is nonessential. And your mind is very cunning; it can find ways, it can start thinking, “Then why not drop the new name, why not drop sannyas – why not do this, because these are nonessential things? The essential thing is inner and these are outer things.” And this will be sheer cunningness and nothing else. You have not understood the message: the nonessential can also be used as essential.But Premananda is an American and for an American to be sane is difficult! And he is not only an American, he comes from California-land!Benson returned to Naples where, as a youngster during the war, he had befriended a native named Capitini. When the Italian saw Benson, he simply could not do enough for him and insisted that he meet his sister.“Is she pretty?” asked Benson.“Ah, bella, bella!” cried the friend.“Is she young?” continued Benson.“Si! Si!”“And is she pure?” asked Benson.The Italian shrugged and exclaimed, “You Americans are all crazy!”In Chicago a couple came before a justice of the peace to be married. The young man handed him the marriage license.“Join hands,” said the magistrate.Then he looked at the document, which authorized him to unite in the bonds of matrimony Wlodzimierz Lineandowski and Nehrebecka Zozislawsieka.“Ahem,” he said, clearing his throat. “Wlod-hm-h-m-ski, do you take this woman…?” and so forth.“Yes sir,” responded the young man.“Nehre-hm-hm-hm-sieka, do you take this man to be…?” and so forth.“Yessir!”“Then I pronounce you husband and wife,” said the Justice, “and I congratulate you both on having reduced two names into one!”A few days after the new pope had been elected, Cardinal Sicola had dinner with an old friend, Rabbi Finkalari. They chatted about many things and the Rabbi noticed that Cardinal Sicola seemed rather dejected.“Dear friend,” said the Rabbi, “you seem disturbed. Is it anything you would care to discuss with me?”“You know, I did not labor under any illusion that I might be elected. I just never dreamt I was so unpopular as not to have received even one vote!”“My dear Cardinal!” consoled the Rabbi, “dismiss such thoughts from your mind. You are held in very high esteem by your colleagues. I know what must have been on their minds. Each one undoubtedly figured that if you were elected, it would sound demeaning to call you Pope Sicola!”The second question:Osho,If a master's teachings are perfect, why are they corrupted over time?It is something very essential to understand because it has always happened and it is always going to happen in the future too. There is not going to be any change. Every teaching is bound to be corrupted; it is in the very nature of things. Just as every child will become old one day and everyone who is born is going to die one day, each teaching is out of necessity bound to be corrupted. It cannot be avoided. It is not that the great masters have not tried; they have tried their best, but you cannot go against the laws of nature. Nobody can go against the laws of nature.There are seven things to be taken note of. The first is the experience of the master himself. When he experiences the truth there is no mind at all. It is a state of no-mind, or as Dionysius will call it, a state of agnosia – absolute innocence. Not even a single thought moves in the mind. Hence the memory system is not functioning, the mind is in a complete state of non-functioning. It is frozen, it is absolutely still.This is the moment when the teaching is perfect, but nothing has been taught. The teaching has not yet become teaching. Nothing has been said, nothing has been heard. In fact even the master is not yet aware of what has happened. Something has happened, but he is so deeply lost in it that there is no possibility of he himself becoming aware of it. To be aware of something means division, the observer and the observed; the experience has become split. When the experience happens it is indivisible. There is no knower and no known, no subject, no object. All is silent. This is the most perfect teaching.The second stage is when the master becomes aware of what has happened – corruption has begun, even inside the master. He has not said a single word, but a vague awareness has started arising in him. The experience is no longer undivided, it is divided. It has become not one but two. It is no longer the same, it is not the whole. Part of it has become subjectivity; the knower, the observer, the awareness. And the other part has become the object; the known, the experienced. This is the first corruption, and it happens inside the master.The third is: the master formulates his experience; he starts making it more clear, more expressible. Now there are not only two but three things. The one is divided into three: the subject, the object and the mind, because without the mind nothing can be made articulate. The mind is the expert. Language has to be used, logic has to be used. The mind has to be awakened from its deep sleep; the mind has to be called forth. Just as one day the master struggled hard to put the mind into a deep-frozen state, now he struggles hard to unfreeze it, because without it there is no possibility of being absolutely clear about what has happened. It has to be conceptualized.Now, the moment the ultimate experience becomes conceptualized a great corruption happens, because the wordless is being forced into the word. And words are small things, and the experience is as vast as the sky – even the sky is not its limit. The unlimited has to be brought within limits. Naturally much will be lost. First it was the whole sky with all the stars, with all its infinity and eternity. Now it is only a small window with a frame, a man-made frame. Now you are looking through the window: it is no longer the whole sky but just a small piece of it.The fourth thing to be understood is the expression. Out of great compassion, out of love, the master would like to share with others what has happened, because he can see millions of people groping in the dark in the same way as he was groping one day. He can see everybody groping in the same darkness, with the same confusion, with the same misery and now he is in a state where he can help. At least he can indicate the way; at least he can show something of the beyond. He can transpire; he can trigger some process.He has to use the art of synchronicity. He has to sing the song so that your song which is in the seed starts moving, becomes alert, comes out of its dormant state, starts reaching toward the sky – so that your seed is broken, so that your song also starts having a longing. Your heart has to be touched.The master speaks. But the moment he speaks even much more is lost – because to conceptualize within yourself is one thing, to communicate it to somebody else is totally different. Now you have to look at the other person, what can he understand? – only that can be said. You have to come to the lowest possibility because that’s where people exist. You have to use language which they can understand.A buddha cannot use the language which only other buddhas can understand. He has reached the sunlit peak, but he has to come back, he has to descend back into the darkness of the valley. He has to use your language, your expressions, your ways of saying things. And naturally, almost ninety-nine percent is lost, only one percent is expressed and that too needs a very skillful master. Not all the masters have been able to express even that one percent; many have remained silent seeing that they have no skill.When I decided to become a teacher in the university, a few of my friends who were aware of what had happened to me asked me, “What are you going to do?”I said, “It will be good if I can be a teacher for a few years, it will help me tremendously: it will give me the skill. Now I have something to express, I have something to share, but the skill is needed. The best teacher is one who can help the last person hearing him, the lowest in intelligence, to understand. Of course the best ones will understand easily, but you have to keep aware of those who are not that intelligent.”And humanity, the greater part of humanity, is not intelligent at all. It lives in a very stupid way, it lives in mediocrity. Its consciousness is so much covered with dust and rust that its mirroring quality is completely lost. It cannot reflect anything, it cannot echo anything. Great skill is needed; only then can one percent of the experience be expressed.The fifth thing is the hearing of the experience. Now the master has spoken, he is no longer the master of what he has spoken. Now the person who has heard becomes the master of it; now it is his possession. Up to now the corruption was happening inside the master, because he was bringing it to the level of the mind. Once he has spoken, it enters into a mind which has never experienced anything of the unknown, anything of the beyond. In the very entry, out of that one percent almost ninety percent is lost. It is bound to be so because everybody understands things in his own way, according to his own conditioning, his past experiences, his philosophy, his religion, his ideology.Nobody listens in silence. If you listen in silence, then there is a possibility you may be able to get hold of the one percent, and that is enough for you to be transformed. Once a small flame enters into you, the whole forest will be afire soon. That one percent is enough – it is pure fire, it will make you afire.But even that one percent never enters. It enters only into those who are devotees, who are totally devoted to the master, who have no conditions, no barriers, who are almost like shadows, who have effaced themselves completely. Otherwise, ordinarily the sixth thing is bound to happen: the interpretation. The person who hears is going to interpret it. The moment your mind comes across any word it immediately interprets it, it cannot allow it to remain as it is.Looking at a roseflower your mind immediately says, “A beautiful flower!” You cannot resist the temptation of saying it. You may not say it to anybody, but deep inside you have said it to yourself: “What a beautiful flower!” You could not remain silent with this beauty; interpretation is bound to happen.Now you are here – Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, Jainas, Buddhists, Parsis, Sikhs – all kinds of ideologies, all kinds of philosophies are there in your minds. Whenever you hear something you will give it your color. Then even point one percent is not left, what to say about one percent? Not even point one percent is left. It has become so diluted, so contaminated that it is almost something else.There is the seventh possibility, the moment the hearer starts telling what he has heard to others. All the Buddhist sutras begin with: “I have heard the Blessed One say this…” Buddha never wrote a book, neither did Christ nor Lao Tzu; they all depended on the spoken word. There is reason in it: while I am speaking the word is one thing, but the pauses are far more pregnant, the silences are far more meaningful. My gestures may touch your heart more easily than my words. My words are bound to go into your memory system, they will revolve there. But my presence, my eyes, can penetrate you far more deeply.Hence all the great masters have used the spoken word. Nobody has ever written a book and I don’t think they are ever going to write a book. The moment you write something it becomes dead. The moment you say something it is not only a word: behind it is standing an alive being, full of joy, full of the experience, so full that he is overflowing. His words can take many, many things toward you, crossing all the barriers. There is a possibility of reaching.But when the person who has heard it from somebody else goes on telling it to others, he is just repeating like a parrot. That’s why all the great teachings, all the teachings which were perfect become corrupted over time. They become corrupted even in the presence of the master.These are the seven steps of corruption. And if you keep alert then something can be saved, only something, but that something is enough. If you can even save a seed, that will do because out of that seed the whole Earth can be made green.The last question:Osho,I am a Polack. I don't understand why people think that Polacks don't have any intelligence.I also wonder why people think that Polacks don’t have intelligence. They have a different kind of intelligence, that is true – so different, a unique kind of intelligence. Nobody else in the world has that.I have heard about the Polack Pope…He was aboard a plane and the pilot said, “It is unfortunate that out of the four engines one has stopped working, but there is no need to worry. Three engines are more than enough to take us to our destination. The only thing is we will be three hours late.”After fifteen minutes he said, “Sorry to interrupt you again: the second engine has stopped, but no need to worry. Two engines are still more than enough and we will complete our journey, but now we will be six hours late.”And after half an hour he announced again, “Ladies and gentlemen, sorry to announce that the third engine has also failed, but still there is no need to panic. One engine is enough to take us to the destination, but now we will be nine hours late.”And after just five minutes he said, “If you want to say your prayers you can, because the last engine has stopped.”And there was great panic and chaos, but the Polack Pope was sitting silently. The lady sitting by his side started crying and weeping and screaming. He said, “What is the matter? Why are you so worried? At the most we will be twelve hours late!”This is pure intelligence! It is mathematics, nothing else. Who says Polacks don’t have intelligence?I have read Bertrand Russell’s Principia Mathematica – that’s nothing as far as the pope’s mathematics is concerned.Watkins walked into a Hollywood talent agent’s office. He placed his suitcase on the agent’s desk, opened it, and thirty mice scampered out, carrying little musical instruments.In seconds, they were positioned as an orchestra and with a snap of Watkins’ fingers, the mice began playing exactly like Benny Goodman. Watkins snapped his fingers and this time they sounded like Guy Lombardo. Watkins snapped his fingers again and the rodents played a medley of Paul Anka tunes.“Well,” asked Watkins, “what do you think?”“Can’t use them,” replied the agent.“What do you mean, you can’t use them? What’s the matter with this act?”“To tell you the truth,” said the agent, “they don’t play half bad, but the drummer looks too Polish!”There are people who don’t understand the Polacks and they go on spreading rumors that they have no intelligence. I am not anti-Polack. I love them, I enjoy them – I can see their intelligence is totally different!Kyacki’s son had been acting a little strangely lately, so Kyacki took him to a psychiatrist.“Tell me, son,” questioned the shrink, “how many wheels does an auto have?”“Four.”“Very good,” said the doctor. “Now what is it a cow has four of that a woman has two?”“Legs.”“And what does your father have that your mother likes most?”“Money.”The psychiatrist turned to Kyacki and said, “You don’t have to worry about him – he’s smart!”“He sure is!” said the Polack. “I missed the last two questions myself!”Just a matter of different intelligence! Who says they don’t have any intelligence? Don’t be worried. Enjoy the intelligence that existence has given to you.Banducci, Sullivan and Piwalski, traveling together in Mexico, got drunk and killed a Mexican. All three were sentenced to the electric chair.First they sat Banducci down and asked him if he had any last words. “I am a dentist,” said the Italian, “and I will care for everyone in the village for twenty-five years if you will let me go.”The authorities refused and the executioner proceeded to carry out the sentence. He pulled the switch and nothing happened. “By law,” said the executioner, “the Italian is a free man, because the electric chair did not work.”Then the Irishman sat down. The same question was asked. “I am a doctor,” said Sullivan, “and I would care for the villagers for twenty-five years in exchange for my freedom.”Again the answer was no. The switch was pulled and nothing happened. He went free.Then Piwalski sat down. He was asked if he had any last words. “I am a graduate in electrical engineering from Texas A&M,” said the Polack, “and if you put that white wire in that hole, and the red wire in that hole…”And who says that Polacks don’t have intelligence? Just sheer nonsense! They have intelligence – in fact only they have intelligence.In Poland, disorder – or what is known as “the Polish mess” – is referred to by Poles as Polski balagan.It is said that Jimmy Carter, Leonid Brezhnev, and Polish party chief Edward Gierek met God. He allowed them one question each.“Is it true,” asked Jimmy Carter, “that America will go Communist?”“Yes,” answered the Lord, “but not in your lifetime.”“Will the Chinese take over Moscow?” asked Brezhnev.“Yes,” replied the Almighty, “but not in your lifetime.”“Will disciplined labor ever replace Polski balagan?” asked Gierek.“Yes,” answered God, “but not in my lifetime!”Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I welcome your stern steps to guide a country like India from slavery and poverty, etcetera. However I feel very sorry to hear you quoted as saying: “For fifteen years this country needs no democracy. It has not that much intelligence.” Please explain what you mean.I love democracy, I love freedom, but to transform a country which has lived for two thousand years in slavery is not possible through democratic means, otherwise it will take two thousand years or even more.The mind of India has become accustomed to slavery, and when you give freedom suddenly to slaves they go berserk. It is like suddenly throwing open the doors of a prison and releasing all the prisoners, making them free. What do you suppose they are going to do?Democracy needs a certain context which is missing in India. That is why these thirty years have just been a failure. All the work that has been done since India attained its so-called freedom has not been of any value. In fact, we have more problems than we had before. We have not been able to solve a single problem; we have created thousands of other problems.I love democracy so much that I am even ready for a fifteen years temporary benevolent dictatorship to train the country, to teach the country how to be free. It will appear paradoxical, it will appear contradictory, but don’t be deceived by the appearance.It is easy to condemn and criticize my views because the paradox is so apparent. Any fool can say that it is contradictory. But life works in a dialectical way; it is not linear logic, it is dialectics. It is far more complex than you think it is.Two thousand years of slavery is a long time, very long. The slavery has gone into the very blood and bones, into the very marrow of the nation. To uproot it, something surgical is needed. Just telling people to be free is not enough. And how can the surgery be done if democratic means are adopted? “Democratic means” simply means telling people things, not doing anything, just telling people to be more understanding, to be more democratic, to be more independent. But that is not going to help – it is like telling an ill person to be healthy.Something drastic is needed, something radical is needed; not only medical treatment but something surgical. That is possible only if for fifteen years at least – that is the minimum limit – the country lives under a benevolent dictatorship. Then compulsory birth control can be imposed on the people. Otherwise their freedom to reproduce is going to create so many problems that no government can ever solve them. By the time you solve a few problems, thousands more people have arrived with all their problems. They don’t bring land with them, they don’t bring factories with them; they simply come empty-handed. And already millions of people are unemployed, half the country is starved.This country can be happy only with a population of two hundred million. It is now reaching the limit of seven hundred million, and by the end of this century it will reach the highest peak, one billion. It will even defeat China because China is under a dictatorial regime; they have been able to impose strict birth control. Right now they have more people, but by the end of this century India will be the most populated country in the world – and of course the most poor, the most hungry.When there is so much poverty, so much starvation, talking about democracy is all nonsense. It is like playing a beautiful song on the flute before a hungry man. The song is beautiful – I love the flute, I love the song – but to play the song before a hungry person is absurd, it is ridiculous.The so-called Indian democracy only helps to increase its problems, to increase violence, because when people are hungry they become violent. When they are not even able to live as human beings, what can you expect from them? These communal riots and all the rape, murder, arson, show that the animal is surfacing. You cannot expect the great quality of being human from hungry people – it is impossible.This “democracy” helps only the politicians; hence I will be condemned by the politicians. Morarji Desai has already said yesterday in Rajkot that, “Osho should not be allowed in Gujarat, he should not be allowed in Kutch, because he is against democracy.”Now just look at the statement: if it is a democracy then I can live anywhere, wherever I choose. You see the stupidity of the remark? – I should not be allowed to enter Gujarat.That is what I am saying, that it is better to drop this empty word democracy. It is just a beautiful word borrowed from others. In fact, because India was under British rule, all the great Indian leaders were educated in England. They saw democracy working beautifully there, but in England it has a context of one thousand years. When they came back to India, they had seen democracy functioning perfectly well. It can function in England, so they started imitating England, but where is the context here? India cannot be England so easily.These thirty years have been sheer nonsense. India should think first about its own tradition, history, past, and in that context we should create a government. We cannot borrow a certain ideology from another context. Those trees cannot be transplanted into another climate so easily; first you have to change the climate.India has no sense of a nation, has never had. In fact, it has never been a nation. In Buddha’s time it was divided into two thousand kingdoms. It has never felt an organic unity; there exists no organic unity. There are divisions and subdivisions, and they are all in conflict; they are each ready to destroy the other. There are so many religious and political ideologies that it is chaos.England has only two parties, a two-party system – a very logical way of running a government smoothly. India has hundreds of political parties. It is impossible for any party to be powerful enough or stable enough to implement any program. Hence they promise but they cannot fulfill. But the game can be continued; one party fails in fulfilling its promises, then another party starts promising the people. One party has deceived the people, then another party will deceive the people, and so on and so forth.But the politicians enjoy it because that is their great opportunity to rule the country. Nobody is concerned with the real problems of the country.Democracy is not really a problem for the poor. They are ready to sell their votes for just two rupees, five rupees. Now in a country where people are ready to sell their votes for just five rupees, how do you think a democracy can function? Whosoever has the money will purchase the votes. So it is good for the people who have money, it is good for the people who are in politics, ambitious. It is good for smugglers because a certain freedom allows them to do whatsoever they want to do. It is good for the hooligans, the gundas, because nobody can prevent them from having freedom of expression. It is good for all kinds of criminal elements, but it is not good for the people.Ninety-nine percent of the people have nothing to do with democracy. They need bread, butter, shelter – they don’t have the very essentials to exist, to survive. And talking to these people about democracy is ridiculous.I love democracy. I would like this country to be democratic. I would like all the countries to be democratic, the whole world to be democratic, because I respect freedom as I respect nothing else. But a context has to be created, and two thousand years of slavery has to be destroyed.The Indian mind thinks very selfishly, everybody thinks only of himself. That is the heritage of the Indian culture; it has made everybody very selfish. And they have rationalized it beautifully. They say that everybody suffers or rejoices according to his karmas, the acts that he has done in his past life. It has nothing to do with the social structure, it has nothing to do with the government, it has nothing to do with anything else; it is a question of your own past life. So if you are poor, you are poor because of your past life, you have committed certain sins and you are suffering. If somebody is rich, he is rich because of his past life; he had attained great virtue.You have heard it said, “You cannot purchase virtue with money, but you can purchase money by virtue.” In India that is an accepted rule: you can have more money by being virtuous – not in this life, remember. If in this life you are virtuous you won’t have any money! In the past life you were virtuous, in this life you have to be as cunning as possible, then you will have money and you will have power.Nobody is concerned with the whole nation as such. My concern is with the whole nation. When I say that it needs a fifteen years benevolent dictatorship I mean that a certain discipline has to be created. People have to be forced to do certain things because they won’t do those things if they are left on their own.For example, every Indian thinks it is his birthright to give birth to as many children as possible, because to prevent him from giving birth to children is to prevent his freedom, and children are God-given. And he has a certain karma that he has carried from his past life: he has to be a father of one dozen children or two dozen children, and anybody interfering with it is interfering in his freedom. So in a democratic setup it is impossible to impose compulsory birth control.It is impossible to force people to be a little more industrious. The country has lived in laziness for thousands of years. It must be the laziest country in the world; nobody wants to work. Now in a democratic setup it is impossible to make them work. They will go on strike for the sheer joy of not doing anything!Almost half the time all the factories are closed, and even when the factories are open nobody is interested in really producing, creating. They don’t have these values. They think that the world is illusory, so what is the point of producing and creating? Their whole creativity has become focused on reproduction They don’t feel any need to create anything else.It is impossible in a democratic setup to bring people to their senses. But I say, “a benevolent dictatorship” – what do I mean by a benevolent dictatorship? I mean a dictatorship which is used only as a means – the end is democracy.And my own feeling, my own observation is that Indira Gandhi is the right person, the one who can do it. First she is a woman, has a far more loving heart than any man can ever have. She is a mother and has tremendous love for the country. She has the grace to become a benevolent dictator.The only problem is that once somebody is a dictator it is difficult to take power from his hands, it is difficult for him to give way to democracy again. But Indira is over sixty. In fifteen years’ time she will be seventy-five; she will have enjoyed the power more than enough. She will be really tired – she is already tired. She is already bored with the whole thing. She is carrying it on because she loves the country; otherwise I don’t see any desire in her to dominate the country. She has tasted the power for a long time. In these fifteen years she will get older, wiser; she will be getting closer to her death.And she is a woman, and up to now she has proved very intelligent, broad-minded. There is every possibility that a benevolent dictatorship can function through her.It cannot function through a man like Morarji Desai. He is a fanatic and utterly narrow-minded, utterly stubborn, and very ambitious. If Morarji Desai was in power I would not suggest that there were no elections for fifteen years; I would suggest elections after every six months!I see that Indira can be of tremendous help to transform the climate of the country. All that she needs is encouragement because she has been brought up in a very democratic family. For four generations she has been brought up in the climate of freedom, independence, respect for others. She has been educated in the West. Her father was almost Western, not Indian at all. Her father was the person who introduced democracy into India. She loves democracy.The only problem is she is afraid to be associated with the idea of dictatorship. If she can drop that fear… The West will condemn her; particularly America will condemn her, England will condemn her. The West will condemn her – but they don’t help in any way, so what does their condemnation mean? Let them condemn. This much sacrifice she has to make for the country. I call it a sacrifice because her name will become associated with dictatorship. That much sacrifice she has to make. If she can make that much sacrifice for the country, if she is ready to become notorious, then there is no other problem.All these stupid politicians who are creating chaos in the country can be stopped, all smuggling can be stopped, all the crimes which go on growing every day to new heights can be stopped. The country can be trained in fifteen years to be more industrious, to be less selfish. And a country, which is creative, productive, rich… It can become rich because the land is rich, its potential is great – just a little less population.So two things have to be done. One is birth control: nobody should be allowed to have children unless the medical board of the city or the town or the village approves. Secondly, euthanasia: old people who want to die should be given the freedom to die. These are two sides of the same coin: stop new people coming in and help the older people to go. Create a little more space in the country.And in those fifteen years the whole context that is needed for democracy can be created. After fifteen years people will not be ready to sell their votes for anything because they will have understood. They will not be just going on strike for any excuse.I have not even moved to Kutch, we have not even purchased the land there yet, and just three days ago the people who are opposing the move closed the capital city of Kutch, Bhuj. All the shops were closed, all the factories were closed, all the schools and colleges were closed – as a protest.I have not entered yet, I have not even got any land there, not even a single house, I have not even visited Kutch – just the rumor that we are going to Kutch is enough! And they are creating so much nuisance in Kutch, in Gujarat, that in two places the police had to force people by lathi charge, people had to be beaten to disperse.In one place, Mandvi – the whole city of Mandvi is for me – they want me to be there because the would-be commune will be close to Mandvi and Mandvi will have all the benefits of the commune. So Mandvi is totally for me. Bhuj is against me; not against me really, but against Mandvi. They are jealous.Once Mandvi was the most important city in Kutch; two centuries ago it was the richest city in Kutch. Then the River Sind changed its course and Mandvi became a desert, and of course when it became a desert it lost its glory. Then Bhuj became more important. Now Bhuj is afraid: if ten thousand sannyasins move to Mandvi, the glory will again come to Mandvi. Bhuj will become secondary again; Mandvi will become an international center. They are not really against me; the conflict is very political – it is between Mandvi and Bhuj.Bhuj people, politicians belonging to Morarji Desai’s party, went to Mandvi to tell people to close that city too. Mandvi people gave them a good beating. One thousand people gathered and threw them out and they had to escape, run away.Now, I have not gone there yet and all this is happening. And the Gujarat government is puzzled because no land has been purchased; no land has been given to us. Nothing concrete has happened – it is just a rumor, but just for a rumor Indians can go crazy, as if they are just sitting on a volcano. Anything is enough for them to strike, to protest, to make a noise and to create chaos.This is why I call the country unintelligent. It has lost intelligence, through the priests and through the politicians – not that it does not have the potential of being intelligent. It can be intelligent, but it has to be helped. It needs tremendous help: first a surgical operation, then nourishment. But the country has to be transformed into a new context; just the old country having democracy is impossible.India has never been democratic, remember. It has always been ruled by kings. It was always monarchic, it has never been democratic. Democracy is a foreign idea, a Greek idea; there are no roots in Indian soil for it. We will have to change the soil, we will have to change the climate if it is going to happen. And the problem is, if you want to change the climate, the context, people will be against you.Why are people against me? I am not doing any harm to anybody, but they are against me because I am trying to change their culture. But their culture is the problem! I am trying to change their religion, and their religion is the problem. I am trying to cut the very roots, the very causes of their problem. All this can be done very easily by a benevolent dictatorship, by somebody who is intelligent enough and loves and respects democracy, and is ready after fifteen years to give the country back its freedom.My feeling is that if Indira was gone, then I don’t see on the Indian horizon any other politician who can be so benevolent. Once Indira is gone, India will be in the hands of Hindu chauvinists. Then it will be a Hindu country, and then it will become impossible to change the context because they will go on emphasizing Hindu culture in every school, college and university. And that is the cancer – what you call Hindu culture. That culture has to be removed. A better, far better human culture has to be introduced.My feeling is that Indira may be the last person who can do it. If she cannot do it, then this country cannot hope for much. That is why… I love democracy, I love freedom – still I insist that for fifteen years it is better to put aside the idea. The time for it has not come yet.The second question:Osho,The priest inside me seems to have a strong hold. Are sannyas and meditation really going to cure me of being a miserable, stupid bastard or should I join the Hare Krishna movement? I could do it for the price of a haircut – I need not even change the color of my clothes!Dhyanakirti, the priest has always a strong hold because the priest is the most ancient institution in the world. They say the most ancient profession in the world is that of the prostitute. I don’t agree. The most ancient profession is that of the priest, because without the priest who will create the prostitute? How will the prostitute come into existence? It is through the priest.The priest is the source of all kinds of ugly institutions. And if you have been a priest yourself, then of course it goes very deep in you. Joining the Hare Krishna movement is not going to help – it will be jumping from the frying pan into the fire; it will lead you toward more stupidity.The priest creates something in you which he calls “the conscience,” and by creating a conscience he destroys your consciousness. Conscience is nothing but a state of hypnosis. By repeating certain things again and again, the priest creates a deep hypnotic state in you, and then you are under the spell.You are right to ask, “Are sannyas and meditation really going to cure me of being a miserable, stupid bastard?” If you have understood that it is stupidity, then a cure is not difficult, then sannyas will do it. And if my sannyas cannot do it, then drop all hope – then it cannot be done at all.A man standing beneath the Eiffel Tower looked up, and saw another man jump from the top of the tower and fall at a great velocity. On the way down, however, he seemed to hit a pocket of air which broke his fall and brought him gently to the ground. The spectator was impressed.A man standing close by noticed the look of wonder spread over the spectator’s face and told him to stay around and watch his friend do it again.The spectator looked up and saw the same figure jump and fall at great speed, then come once again to a smooth landing on the ground nearby. He got up, walked over to the spectator casually and said, “Go on, have a go. There’s nothing to it – you only have to jump.”“Okay,” said the man. “I’ll give it a try.” So he climbed to the top of the Tower and jumped. He fell downward at a tremendous speed and hit the pavement. He was a real mess!The man who had been standing close by turned to the skydiver and said, “D’you know, Gabriel, for an archangel you are a real bastard!”The priests and the angels and the archangels and the gods and even your so-called God: they have all done tremendous harm to you. In the name of religion so much crime, so much calamity, so much misery has happened to man as has not happened from any other source – even politicians are secondary.Certainly every religion tries its best to force its ideology into the heart of the child. So the hold is certainly strong. But once you understand it, once you get unidentified with it, there is no trouble – because it is something imposed on you. It is like a dress, you can drop it any moment. But if you think your dress is not a dress but your skin, then it becomes difficult. That’s where you get identified with it.Don’t get identified with your conscience. That’s the whole purpose of meditation: to make you aware that you are not your mind. The priest can only reach to your mind, he cannot reach to your being – fortunately he cannot pollute your being, he can only pollute your mind. Meditation means creating a distance between your mind and yourself.The moment you are aware that the mind is a separate thing, created by others – the priests and the politicians and the parents and the teachers; it has nothing to do with you – you can slip out of it very easily.A man lost his hat. He decided to go and steal one from the entrance of a nearby church. When he arrived at the church, a sermon on the Ten Commandments was in progress.At the end of the service, he approached the minister and said, “Thank you, Reverend. You have saved me from committing a crime. I came here with sin in my heart. I wanted to steal a hat.”“That’s very good, my son,” said the minister. “But tell me, what did I say to make you change your mind?”“Well,” explained the man, “when you got to the part about ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ I remembered where I had left my hat!”The conscience that the priest has created has not become your soul; it has just become your mask. It has given you a pseudo personality, it has made you a hypocrite.An attractive, sexy young woman goes for a checkup to the Catholic doctor-cum-monk, who has devoted his whole life to serving the people as a physician. He looks her over, impressed, and as his breathing becomes heavier, he tells her to undress so that he can check her temperature rectally.She bends over and says, “Hey, doc, this is not my rectum!”“That’s okay, my dear,” says the Catholic doctor-cum-monk, “nor is this my thermometer!”The priest has not really changed anything, he cannot; he has only imposed a certain layer of hypocrisy on you. So it is not difficult to get rid of it. It is just a layer of dirt; you can clean it any moment you decide to.Sannyas is a bath. It is a shower, it will cleanse you, Dhyanakirti. And I have given you the name Dhyanakirti – the glory of meditation. This is the glory of meditation: that it can help you to get rid of all imposed ideas, and it can give you back that which is really yours, your real center.The Hare Krishna movement will be another imprisonment. Yes, when you move from one prison to another, for a little while the change feels good. The new prison has different architecture, different decoration, different jailers, different guards – everything is different so it feels good. But soon you will realize that it is again the same thing because the slavery is the same.You say, “…or should I join the Hare Krishna movement? I could do it for the price of a haircut.” Don’t think that just by cutting your hair anything changes.Ya, ya means yes in German. But in the Polish language, a yaya is what hangs below a Pole’s belly button if the Pole is a male.Brudzewa from Warsaw stopped in a Berlin barbershop and asked for a shave.“Ya, ya,” said the barber.“Nie yaya,” screamed the Pole. “My beard!”So be aware. You can get into some difficulty. If you want to cut your hair, don’t go to Germany. Otherwise the barber will say, “Ya, ya”…and you seem to be a Polack!Sannyas and meditation are enough, nothing more is needed. Sannyas changes your whole vision about reality. It helps you to drop all ritualistic religion, all serious religion. It helps you to become nonritualistic, nonserious. It helps you to become playful, it helps you to take life as fun. It helps you to rejoice in existence, and through that rejoicing comes real renunciation.In the past it has been said again and again by the priests that if you renounce you will attain to bliss. I tell you just the opposite: if you become blissful there is renunciation. And that renunciation has a beauty of its own because you have never renounced anything. In your blissfulness, in your rejoicing, all that is nonessential starts dropping away because you can see it is nonessential. The very seeing is the transformation. If after seeing you have to do something for transformation, then your seeing was incomplete, was not entire, was not total, was not real.Sannyas means seeing how you are caught in prisons, why you are caught in prisons. And the very seeing is enough, because nobody is really holding you in the prison except your own fears; the fear of the unknown, the fear of the unfamiliar keeps you huddled together like sheep in the crowd. And there are many crowds: Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jewish – different crowds. And people are clinging to each other; they are afraid to be lost in aloneness. Meditation teaches you aloneness.Sannyas helps you to get rid of the nonessential – in the words of Desiderata – sannyas helps you to negate the nonessential, to drop the nonessential. And meditation helps you to find the essential, to discover the essential. And these are the only two things that are needed, nothing else is needed. Withdraw your energy from the nonessential and let it move into the direction of the essential. Discover your being, your individuality. In that authentic experience is the miracle.The last question:Osho,I love the way you appreciated the intelligence of the Polish people.Are you too a Polack? – because there are Polacks everywhere. Particularly India has many Polacks, they are masquerading as Indians. Polacks are found in every shape and size everywhere. Remember, Polacks don’t belong only to Poland; in fact, we should rename the whole Earth Poland. Polacks are everywhere!India has many Polacks, very famous Polacks – Morarji Desai is a Polack, Muktananda is a Polack.Do you know, if Jimmy Carter, Leonid Brezhnev and Morarji Desai together went skydiving and none of their chutes opened, who would be the last one to hit the ground? Of course, Morarji Desai because he would have to stop to get directions – or maybe a few times to sip his own water of life.Just the other day when I was talking about the mouse who said to the other mouse, “Don’t believe a thing that I say because I have been on the piss the whole night,” I remembered Morarji Desai, because what will Morarji Desai say? He has been on the piss his whole life! Now where can you find such a Polack?How can it be proved that Adam was an Indian?Who else would stand beside a naked woman and just eat an apple?Several young boys were called by the New Delhi authorities for a medical checkup to determine the paternity of a certain teenage girl’s baby.Chandulal went in and after a few minutes came out. “Don’t worry, fellows,” he smiled. “They’ll never find out. They’re taking samples from the finger!”Pundit Ramprasad Shastri comes home and finds his wife in bed with another man. The pundit takes out a gun from the drawer and puts it to his head. The wife’s lover jumps up and shouts, “Hey, what are you doing?”“Shut up!” says the Indian pundit. “You are next!”Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,What is your message?My message is very simple: Live life as dangerously as possible. Live life totally, intensely, passionately, because except for life there is no other god.Friedrich Nietzsche says, “God is dead.” That is wrong because God has never been there in the first place. How can he be dead? Life is, always has been, will always be. Allow yourself – and I repeat again, allow yourself to be possessed by life.The so-called religions of the past have been telling you just the opposite. They say, “Renounce,” I say, “Rejoice.” They negate life, I affirm it. They say life is something wrong, illusory, and they create an abstract idea of God which is nothing but a projection of their own minds. And they worship that projection. It is so unintelligent, so utterly stupid that one wonders how millions of people have believed in such sheer nonsense. That which is, is denied for that which is only an abstraction of the mind. God is only a word, but they say God is real. And life is a reality You feel it in your heartbeat, it pulsates in your blood, it is all over the place: in the flowers, in the rivers, in the stars. And they say this is all maya, all illusion. They say that it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. And they create a God, and of course everybody creates a god in his own image, so there have been thousands of gods.It is your imagination. You can make a god with four heads, you can make a god with a thousand hands. It is up to you, it is your game. And these people have been telling and poisoning the minds of others. They say, “Brahma satya – God is true,” and “Jagat mitya – the world, life is untrue.”I say to you, life is the only truth there is. There is no other god than life. So allow yourself to be possessed by life in all its forms, colors, dimensions – the whole rainbow, all the notes of music. If you can manage this simple thing… It is simple because it is only a question of let-go. Don’t push the river, let the river take you to the ocean. It is already on the way. Relax, don’t be tense and don’t try to be spiritual. Don’t create any division between the matter and the spirit. Existence is one, matter and spirit are simply two sides of the same coin. Relax, rest, and go with the river.Be a gambler, don’t be a businessman, and you will know more of God because the gambler can risk. The gambler is non-calculative, he can put all that he has at stake. But the thrill of the gambler when he stakes everything and waits – what is going to happen now? In that very moment a window can open. That very moment can become a transformation of the inner gestalt.Be a drunkard, drunk with life, with the wine of existence. Don’t remain sober. The sober person remains dead. Drink the wine of life. It has so much poetry and so much love and so much juice. You can bring the spring in any moment. Just give a call to the spring and let the sun and the wind and the rain enter into you.It is because of this message that the spiritualists are against me: they think I am denying God. I am not denying God. For the first time I am bringing God into a real perspective: I am making him alive, I am bringing him closer to you, closer than your very heart, because he is your very being – nothing separate, nothing far away, nothing there in the sky, but herenow. I am trying to destroy the very idea of there and then. My whole vision is of here and now because there is no other space than the here, and no other time than the now.The spiritualists are against me because they think I am making people materialists. And the materialists are against me because they think I am taking people into meditative drunkenness.The shankaracharya would not agree with me because he says, “God is true and everything else is false.” I cannot agree with him. And Karl Marx will not agree with me because he says, “Religion is the opium of the people,” – that religion is something utterly false, that there is no God, no spirit, no life except matter; that what you think is your consciousness is an epiphenomenon, just a by-product. The moment you die everything dies.I tell you, you are born and you will certainly die but something in you was there before your birth, and something in you is there which will remain after your death. And that something is life. Life is eternal.Twenty sannyasins walk into the World Trade Center in New York singing, “Drinking from your wine, Osho, drinking from your wine!”The front desk receptionist calls for the manager to come quickly. He tells the sannyasins that they must wear formal dress to enter, so one of the sannyasins goes over to the desk and gets the “Rules of the House.” He finds out that priests and people of religious orders do not have the same dress code. He presents this rule to the manager who is thereby forced to allow them entry.The twenty sannyasins walk into the bar on the one hundred and thirtieth floor still singing, “Drinking from your wine, Osho…” A couple of drinks later, the same sannyasin notices a fat old Texan sitting on the stool next to him. He raps him on the back and they get talking. Fatso happens to import fine scotch whiskey into the States. He listens in amazement as this sannyasin tells him that he is a connoisseur and that he knows of a wine that just keeps getting you higher and higher – it is made in India and brewed by a master called Osho.“Faarrr out!” drawls the Texan, and he calls the bartender and pays for everybody’s drinks.A short time later, twenty sannyasins walk out of the bar, singing, “Drinking from your wine, Osho, drinking from your wine…”That is my message.The second question:Osho,We have come to know that you believe that all religions are humbug. How can you say this? All people have every right to believe in some specific religion. Everything can be good as well as bad. So how can you say that other religions are humbug?I don’t believe in anything. I am not a believer at all. I need not believe, I know. All the religions are humbug. This is not my belief, it is simply my experience. I can see it – they are humbug. The whole of human history proves it.The moment you say, “all the religions,” you have already gone astray because there is only one kind of religiousness. There cannot be many. Just as science is one, the scientific approach is one, so is religion, so is the religious approach.Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu – they all belong to one kind of religiousness. Of course, they speak different languages – that is another matter. They are bound to speak different languages. Lao Tzu will speak in Chinese, Jesus will speak in Aramaic, Buddha will speak in Pali, and of course they will use the idiom of their day. But that is the difference of expression, and one should not be deceived by expressions, one should not be deceived by words because religion has nothing to do with the words. In fact, it is because of the curtain of the words that we cannot see. It covers our eyes, it hinders our insight. Religion is a wordless experience. Hence Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism are all false.Jesus is right, Buddha is right, Krishna is right. But Christianity is not right, cannot be right. In fact, to be a Christian is to settle for something pseudo. You can be a Christ – then why be a Christian? To be a Christian is just to be a shadow. You can drink from the very source of existence – then why go on only talking about it, thinking about it?A Christian is one who talks about truth and knows nothing about it. A Christ is one who knows about it. It is his experience. The Christian has no experience of his own, he is simply repeating the words of Christ. And repeating others’ words is a stupid activity. This repetition is called believing. Remember, religion has nothing to do with believing. The whole foundation of religion is seeing, not believing. Remember, only blind people believe in light. Those who have eyes don’t believe in light, they know! The moment you know something, the necessity for belief disappears.But the world is full of believers. That means the world is full of blind people. And how have you come to a certain belief? Just a coincidence, that you were born into a certain family and they started imposing their beliefs upon you. You are a Hindu. You have not chosen to be a Hindu, you have been forced to be a Hindu by your parents, by your society. Or you are a Jew, or you are a Mohammedan, but you have not chosen it, and religion is not so cheap that anybody else can impose it upon you. It has to be one’s individual choice.Religion has to be chosen out of freedom. It is not a conditioning. Belief is a conditioning. Belief means you have been made afraid that if you don’t believe you will be punished; hence, the hell. Hell is for those who don’t believe. And those who believe? – for them are all the joys of paradise.It is the same psychology that pervades the schools, the colleges, the universities, the law courts. They all think that if you want people to be a certain way, the only possibility is to create fear and to create greed. And how can you be religious if you are full of fear and greed, fear of hell and greed for paradise? That is the trick that has been played upon you. You have been cheated, you have been exploited, and you have been only given words – words which mean nothing to you.When Buddha says something it has meaning. When Buddhists repeat it they are repeating like parrots. The parrot can repeat a mantra, there is no difficulty in it, you can teach the parrot. And the same methods have to be applied as are applied to you: if he learns the mantra he gets beautiful food, if he does not learn the mantra then he is punished, he has to starve, he is denied food. He is forced to learn. This is what psychologists call conditioning.There are people like B. F. Skinner who say that man can be conditioned for any behavior. Just give him enough punishment and enough reward and you can manage, you can change anybody’s behavior.Why are you being good? Not that you really feel like being good – there is a great fear that if you are not good then you will have to suffer for it later on. The whole of humanity is living in fear and greed – and you call these religions?Religions are not possible, only a religiousness is possible.You are too much burdened with words. You say, “We have come to know that you believe that all other religions are humbug.” You have not even listened to me, you have not even been in communion with me. You have “come to know…” You have heard it from others who may have heard it from somebody else. That you believe. If you had been here for a few days you would have come to know that I don’t believe in anything.I know. I have eyes, I can see! What is the need to believe? Belief is for those who are not courageous enough to open their eyes. Belief is for those whose religion is formal, who have not experienced anything of life, anything of beauty, anything of joy, anything of love – for whom God is a word, life is a word. They live in words.“Hey, Paolo, how come-a I no see you around no more?”“I gotta new business now, but I am-a no doing so good-a!”“What’s your business?”“I am a pump!”“What the hell-a is a pump?”“I gotta these eight-a girls who work-a for me, and every time they go out-a and make fun-a with a guy, I make-a money!”“You be a dope! You ain’t a pump – you are a pimp!”“No wonder business is-a no good-a. In the Yellow-a Pages, I am-a listed under ‘Pumps’!”Beware of words. You are listed as a Hindu, as a Mohammedan, as a Christian – you are none of these.Friedrich Nietzsche is right when he says that the first and the last Christian died on the cross twenty centuries ago – neither before him was there another Christian nor after him. Only Christ is a Christian in the true sense of the word. He lived and experienced, and whatsoever he said was coming from his innermost core, it was not something borrowed. Everything borrowed is ugly. Beliefs are borrowed, hence they are ugly. And when you live according to borrowed beliefs you create chaos in the world. You remain unconscious and you go on talking about the Bible and the Veda and the Gita. And you are repeating all these things in your dreams. You have not understood a single word.One Sunday morning a drunkard stumbled into a big building, not knowing it was a church. When he entered, the ten o’clock mass was in process – the organ was playing, a choir was singing and the church was very crowded. The priest was standing in front of the people, swaying a pot filled with smoking incense.Suddenly a shout was heard from the back of the chapel, “Madam! Hey, Madam! Your bag is on fire!”You are not in your senses, you don’t have any awareness, you are sleepwalkers. Almost the whole of humanity suffers from somnambulism, sleepwalking, and in your sleep the priests have caught hold of you. It is only accidental who was close by and who got hold of you.If a child who is born into a Hindu family is given to a Christian family from the very beginning, he will never come to know that he is a Hindu. Or do you think he will ever come to know that he is a Hindu? – he will be a Christian.So what is your religion? Just whatsoever is forced upon you by others is your religion. Religion basically is freedom, but your so-called religions are slaveries, they are humbug, and humanity has suffered much because of this nonsense.I would like more buddhas but no more Buddhists – enough is enough.An Australian country town had an old nunnery at its center. The town was growing up fast all around it and the nuns would stand at the windows and watch the new multi-story building being erected on the other side of the street.Around midday, the lunch siren would go, and the bronzed sweaty bodies of the laborers would come down the scaffolding to the ground floor to have their lunch.The nuns would watch the blokes sit around in a big circle, get out their lunch-boxes and thermos flasks and dive into their lunches.“Sister, sister, did you notice that the gentlemen did not thank the Lord for their food?” said one nun to the other.The other replied enthusiastically, “Yes, yes, I did! Perhaps we could mention it to Mother Superior.”So off they went upstairs to relate their tale to the Reverend Mother. After a moment of silence, she said, “Bring me a lunch-box tomorrow – just the kind the gentlemen use!”The next day, when the siren sounded, Mother Superior picked up the lunch-box and slipped downstairs and across the street. She sat quietly down next to the men who were noisily chomping into their lunches, then she raised her hands suddenly and said, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Have you heard of Jesus Christ?”One of the fellas stopped, pushed back his hat, scratched his head and said, “Hmmm, ah, Christ – Jesus Christ… Hey Danny, you heard of a Jesus Christ working here? Well, tell him his mum is here with his lunch!”Jesus Christ? Twenty centuries have passed! Who cares? Who bothers? You have to live your life. You have to be authentic to yourself. You have to discover your individuality. And all these religions are humbug because they hinder discovering, they hinder exploration. They hinder you from knowing the truth. They hinder in every possible way.They go on stuffing knowledge in your head, and that knowledge only creates stupidity. Pundits are the most stupid people in the world because they are parrots. There are so many simple people who even start trying to live according to the teachings that they have been given by others. They start trying to live… They create a mess of their lives. Then life becomes unnecessarily repressive because you are not a Mahavira, and you are not a Buddha, and you are not a Krishna.Just try to be a Krishna. Stand in the street playing on a flute, and immediately the police will catch hold of you. You cannot repeat Krishna. You have to be only yourself. Nobody is capable of repeating anybody else; there is no need either. It creates repression. You repress your individuality and you start acting like somebody else, and you are not that somebody else so your life becomes an hypocrisy. Hence I call all these religions humbug.Chandulal got an out-of-town construction job, and asked his guru, Swami Dharamdas Brahmachari to check up on his wife to see that she did not fool around with anybody.Of course he argued within himself that his guru, Swami Dharamdas Brahmachari is a celibate, so his wife is in the right hands, there is no fear. If he had asked me I would have said, give the control of your wife to anybody else. Anybody else will be far better than this so-called celibate!Six months later he returned and found his spouse and his guru in bed doing the very same thing he had tried to prevent. He called his wife every name in the book, and then threatened divorce.“And as for you, you dirty dog!” Chandulal shouted at his guru, “Couldn’t you at least stop while I am talking to you?”Repression sooner or later explodes. You are sitting on a volcano.You say, “We have come to know that you believe that all other religions are humbug.” They are. “How can you say this?” Because I know it.You ask, “All people have every right to believe in some specific religion.” There is no specific religion. There is only a religiousness. And nobody has the right to believe! Everybody has the right to know.You say, “Everything can be good as well as bad.” No. If you know, then the right is right and the wrong is wrong. Then white is white and black is black. If you don’t know, then of course you are in a confusion.You ask, “So how can you say that other religions are humbug?” What can I do? If they are humbug they are humbug. I am simply stating a fact. To me, it is a truth which has to be said. And the time for it has come.The third question:Osho,My wife has become a Brahma Kumari with the Raj Yogis of Prajapita Brahma in Mount Abu. It is hard for me to accept her way, especially her ideal of purity and her believing in such things as the five-thousand-year cycle of mankind which will end in about 1987 with a big atomic war and natural catastrophes to start a new golden age. What can I do?You need not do anything. Let her have her own way. You can see the nonsense that she is falling into, but that is her freedom. And one learns only by experience. If you try to pull her out she will not be able to live her experience totally.In the first place it will be almost impossible for you to pull her out, because mind functions in a very different way; your very effort will push her deeper into the mire. And particularly a husband is the last person to transform a wife or convert a wife – impossible. Wives can convert husbands very easily, but husbands have never been known to convert wives.A wife can nag you. She knows the art, that is part of her femininity. She will torture you in such subtle ways that finally you have to give in. It is very difficult to find a husband who is not henpecked. All husbands are bound to be henpecked. If somebody is not henpecked that simply means that he is not a husband. He may be somebody else but he is not a husband. And every husband knows it and every wife knows it. But wives are very clever. They go on giving the sense to the husband that he is the master, and deep down they know who is the master, so what is wrong in it? – let him pretend. So he can go and walk in the streets and in the factories and in the office as if he is the master!The wife gives him enough rope, but remember, it is a rope and the wife keeps the other end in her hand. She gives enough rope and goes on pretending, but she is the real master.So if your wife was trying to get you out of the hold of these so-called Prajapita Brahma and their Brahma Kumaris then it would have been very easy. But it will be almost impossible for you.And I think it is a good chance to get rid of her. Don’t miss the opportunity. People are so foolish. When opportunity knocks on the door they complain about the noise!A Jewish comedian telling jokes about women: “Now take my wife, for instance… Please!”It is such a good opportunity, such a golden opportunity for you. You are out of the mousetrap. Why do you want to get into the mousetrap again? Let her do her own thing – she will learn by bitter experience. I know these fools because I have been visiting Mount Abu for almost twenty years.India has given birth to two of the most stupid religious movements. One is Hare Krishna – that has become worldwide – the other is these Brahma Kumaris. It has not reached the whole world, it has remained confined to India. They talk utter nonsense, and they talk with authority, and they go on saying everything. This date that you mention – that in 1987 this world will end – has changed many times in thirty years, and it will change again. But fools are fools. ’87 is not far away, only seven years. And you will see that in ’87 it will become something else – ’97 or 2000 will be the exact, the right time. It goes on, it goes on changing, and people are so foolish, they go on believing.The world is not going to end in any atomic war for the simple reason… It is not that humanity has become nonviolent, not that it has heard the message of Buddha and Mahavira and has dropped all violence, no. It has come to a point where total war is possible. It is strange, what Buddha and Mahavira could not do Albert Einstein has been able to do. The discovery of atomic energy on one hand has been one of the most dangerous discoveries – because two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were destroyed within minutes. One hundred thousand people in Hiroshima were reduced to nothingness within three minutes. But on the other hand, the discovery of atomic energy is going to change the whole future of humanity because it has made it possible to go into a total war.All the wars in the past – and they have been many: in three thousand years we have fought five thousand wars – were partial wars. Even the First World War and the Second World War should not be called world wars because the whole world was not really involved; a major part was involved but not the whole.The Third World War will be the first and the last world war, both the first and last because it will be total destruction – nobody can win it. That is one of the greatest blessings, that nobody can win it, neither Russia nor America. The difference between the victor and the defeated will be of only ten minutes at the most because if America attacks Russia first then it will take ten minutes for Russia to attack America. Just ten minutes – or vice versa. And we have so many atom bombs and hydrogen bombs available that the whole of humanity can be destroyed seven hundred times. In fact, a person simply dies on the first attempt. There is no need to kill a person seven hundred times. But politicians are very calculative: in case somebody survives they have made it in such a way that there is no possibility to survive. Not only men, but trees and birds and insects and all the amoebas you are suffering from will all be destroyed.In fact, before the Third World War you cannot be free of amoebas! Amoebas are the longest-living beings. An amoeba can live at least one hundred thousand years. They are immortals, gods. And their reproduction system is really aesthetic. Man’s reproductive system is very ugly compared to the amoebas.Amoebas are brahmacharis, celibates, absolute celibates. There are not females and males, remember. The way the amoeba reproduces itself is a very different one. The amoeba simply goes on becoming fatter and fatter and fatter, and then it splits in two; then there are two amoebas. Both are fathers, both are sons. And then they go on, start eating and becoming fatter and fatter, and a moment comes when they split into four. This is a beautiful way to reproduce.Just think of a man doing push-ups on a woman. What nonsense! Amoebas must be laughing, “What are you doing?”I have heard a story…The first human couple reached Mars. And of course they were interested to know how the Martians reproduce. So they asked the first Martian couple they met, “How do you reproduce?”They said, “It is very simple.” They invited the couple into their home. They opened the freezer and they brought out two bottles of some strange chemicals. They mixed the chemicals in a jar in the same proportions. They put the jar back into the freezer and they said, “After nine months we will have a baby.”The human couple was very much puzzled. “What kind of reproduction is this?”Then Martians asked, “And how do you reproduce?” And so they started making love. And while the man was doing push-ups on the woman – because they were Christian and they knew only the missionary posture, the Christian posture – those two Martians, the Martian couple, started laughing. They laughed so much that tears came to their eyes. And of course the human couple felt very awkward.When they had finished they asked, “Why you are laughing?”The Martians said, “This is the way we make coffee!”Amoebas must be laughing at you and all the Tantrikas and all the tantra methods, and amoebas must be laughing at the whole nonsense – nonsense in the sense that they have a very simple method. No sex is involved at all, they are non-sexual beings. In fact, they are the only beings eligible to enter into paradise.Your wife has gone into some stupid ideology. It is good riddance – forget her. She will come to her senses if you don’t try to force her. And the world is not going to end because everybody is aware that now war has become meaningless. The whole meaning of war is of becoming victorious. Now nobody can be the victor. The days of war are over, the days of love are coming. And this world is not going to end, but certainly it is going to go through a tremendous change, a radical transformation.I am preparing you for that radical transformation. I want you to be the future of humanity.And of course, you are worried about her ideal of purity. Indians have very strange ideas about purity. They have suffered much because of that. The whole country lives with such deep suppression, with such deep unnaturalness that everybody is miserable, everybody is sad and serious.Just the other day three Indians came to visit and they had come from one of our friends, so Sheela received them as guests. And they were very rich people, belonging to the topmost, richest society of Mumbai. One of them asked Sheela, “We have heard many things about free sex here – this is against spirituality, this is against religion,” and all kinds of things. And then one of them asked, “Why don’t we see many Indians here?”Sheela said, “You have come to see this place – first have a look around. You will have a better perspective, and then we can sit and talk.”And the same man, do you know what he did? In the fashion department – Padma was alone – he grabbed her breasts. The same man who was asking why there are so few Indians.Then Sheela told him, “Now, you know…” he was caught red-handed “…why there are so few Indians. We have to throw them out. Now we have to throw you out! We would have given you a good beating and handed you over to the police, but because you have come from a friend, a well-wisher of our commune, we will not do anything to you. We will just throw you out.”Now a rich person, well-educated, behaves in such a way and thinks himself spiritual. Indians have a strange idea of spirituality. Their whole mind is sexual and they talk of purity in the sense of no sexuality – to drop sexuality is to be pure. Then only amoebas are pure!You cannot be pure because you are born out of sexuality in the first place. How can you be pure? You cannot change your birth, it has already happened. You came out of your mother and father’s sexuality. Half the cells of your body belong to your father, and half the cells belong to your mother. They are sexual, those cells are sexual. Hence each man carries within him a woman, his mother, and each woman carries a man within her, her father.And now psychologists have come to a certain insight about it. You will fall in love many times but every time you will feel frustrated for the simple reason that deep down the cells of your mother are projecting a chemistry in you which can be fulfilled only if you can find a replica of your mother in your beloved, and that is impossible. Where will you find your mother as your beloved? Or where are you going to find your father as your lover? Hence all love affairs are bound to fail; they can only be temporary affairs. No love affair can be permanent. Stable it can be; stable only because of security, convenience. But no love affair can be really fulfilling for the simple reason, a basic reason, that each man is trying to find his mother in the woman he loves. And of course that woman is totally different. She comes from a different sexual source: her father was different, her mother was different.You fall in love with a woman who has something similar to your mother – maybe the color of the hair, maybe her eyes, maybe her nose, maybe her shape.Just a few days ago, Vivek brought to me a picture of Krishna Prem’s mother. It was amazing! The mother looks exactly like Vasumati, exactly like Vasumati – the nose, the face. And Krishna Prem has been gay for many years, and suddenly seeing Vasumati his gayness has disappeared; he has fallen in love with a woman. And he has not even been consciously aware of his mother’s existence because his mother died very early. I think he was only two months old or something when his mother died, so he does not remember. But the chemistry remembers.Each cell has its own memory. Falling in love with Vasumati, here in the ocean of so many women, just finding Vasumati is strange – and that too for a person who has remained gay for many, many years. In fact, it was one of his problems. He was asking again and again, “How can I get rid of my homosexuality?” and suddenly the meeting with Vasumati and the homosexuality disappeared. He has found something similar.But it can be only similar; hence when they asked, “Can we live together?” I said, “Beware. If you live together then the relationship will be very short-lived. If you remain aloof and meet only once in a while, then your relationship can be prolonged, can be far more enriching.” And they understood it. They both understood it, which is rare. Because when you are in love you are crazy, you don’t understand anything. You go cuckoo. But they both understood. They both proved that they can see things clearly. They remain separate. Only once in a while – two, three times a week they meet. Now this can be a lifelong relationship – unless I disturb it!So, it is good. Thank these Brahma Kumaris of Mount Abu – they have been of tremendous help to you.Abe died of a massive heart attack. His wife, Rose, followed Abe’s instructions and had him cremated. She insisted on taking the ashes home to their small apartment in Brooklyn, and had the following conversation: “Abe, remember the Cadillac you promised me? Well, here are the keys.“Abe, remember the trip to Europe you promised me? Well, here is the ticket.“Abe, remember the condo in Miami Beach you promised me? Well, here are the keys.“Abe, remember that blow job you always wanted? Well, here it is!”And she blew the ashes, “Phooow!”What else can you expect from a wife?Don’t be bothered at all. Let her try her own way. And everybody has the freedom to do whatsoever he likes, she likes. Don’t interfere. You be on your path and let her seek her own path. She will come sooner or later because nobody is so foolish as to remain trapped into something ridiculous. But it helps many people at least to get rid of their absurd ideas.In this world everything has a purpose. Because there are so many fools, that is why there are so many foolish philosophies. Wherever there is a demand there is going to be a supply. So your wife must have needed something like that, and it is not time for her to come to me. Let her wander around.There is a famous Sufi story…A man went in search of a master. He was ready to go around the world, but he was determined to find the master, the True Master, the Perfect Master.Outside his village he met an old man, a nice fellow, sitting under a tree. He asked the old man, “Have you ever heard in your long life – and the way I see it, you look like a wanderer…”He said, “Yes, I am a wanderer. I wandered all over the Earth.”The man said, “That is the right kind of person. Can you suggest to me where I should go? I want to be a disciple of a Perfect Master.”The old man suggested a few addresses to him, and the young man thanked him and went on.After thirty years wandering around the Earth, finding nobody who was exactly fulfilling his expectations, he came back dejected and depressed. The moment he was entering his village he saw the old man, who had become very old now, sitting under the tree. And suddenly he recognized that he is the master! He fell at his feet and he said, “Why didn’t you say it to me that you are the master?”The old man said, “But that was not time for you. You could not recognize me. You needed some experience. Wandering around the Earth has given you a certain maturity, a certain understanding. Now you can see. Last time you also met me, but you did not see me. You missed. You were asking me about some master – that was enough proof that you could not see me, you could not feel my presence, you could not smell the fragrance. You were utterly blind; hence I gave you some bogus addresses so you could go. But even to be with wrong people is good, because that is how one learns. For thirty years I have been waiting for you here, I have not left this tree.”In fact, the young man, who was not young anymore, looked at the tree and was even more surprised. Because in his dreams, in his visions he was always seeing that tree and there was always a feeling that he would find the master sitting under this tree. Last time he had not seen the tree at all. The tree was there, the master was there, everything was ready but he was not ready.Let her wander, let her search. Don’t try to pull her here, otherwise she will even distract you. You have come home. Drink as much wine as you can out of me. Maybe your transformation will help her too.These are not things which can be proved or argued about. And never argue with a woman. You will always be defeated because she does not argue logically. She simply jumps from one conclusion to another while the man follows the hard way – he completes the whole process of arguments. That is why it is almost impossible between husband and wife to come to any conclusion.Mulla Nasruddin was saying to me, “I have never argued with my wife in my whole life.”I said, “How did you manage it?”He said, “The day we got married we decided that every nonessential thing” – remember Desiderata – “every nonessential thing she has to decide and I will decide only the essential ones. And we have remained true to our contract.”I said, “What are the nonessential things?”He said, “Almost everything.”“And what are the essential things?”He said, “For example: whether God exists or not, whether Jimmy Carter should be chosen again or not, whether Communism is the right thing or not, how many hells there are, one or seven. All the essential things I decide, and everything else – what type of car to purchase, what kind of food to eat, what kind of restaurant to go to, what kind of movie to see, which school, which hostel the children are to be sent to… Almost everything is a nonessential thing. It covers everything except the most essential. That I decide. And there is no argument, there is no question of argument.”I think that is great wisdom. If every husband and wife decided “You decide the nonessential and I will decide the essential”… Anyway the wife is going to decide it, so why bother?Leave her alone. You be transformed. Maybe seeing the transformation in you, seeing your blessing and benediction, she may be transformed, she may be converted. That is the only possibility. But not by dragging her, not by pulling her out, but helping her to be herself. Tell her, “You are completely free.” Don’t make her feel guilty. That is ugly and irreligious.The last question:Osho,Why do you call Morarji Desai a Polack?It is very rare in life to come across perfection, but Morarji Desai is a perfect Polack. It is a rare phenomenon. Perfection is not easy.I call him a perfect Polack because that’s how he thinks. He thinks only in words; he has no experience, no experience about the ultimate, but he talks about it. Only a Polack can do that.Just the other day I read this statement. He said he had one ambition to be fulfilled: to know God and attain the heights of truth. “I have not acquired the truth in totality yet,” he said, “nor had Mahatma Gandhi.” Now these words are enough to prove what I mean by being a perfect Polack.In the first place any ambition is a barrier. Ambition for truth is a contradiction in terms. He is a politician, and all politicians are Polacks. He is a politician, he knows only the language of ambition. He knows no other language. And the ambitious person suffers from an inferiority complex, otherwise he will not be ambitious. He knows perfectly well that he is mediocre, that he is stupid. Just to hide the fact of his stupidity he tries to create some status, some outside status; he wants to become the president, the prime minister. His whole lifelong ambition was to be the prime minister. The day he became prime minister, he said immediately, “This is one of my ambitions which has been fulfilled. Now only one more is left, and that is God-realization. I want to know truth. That is my only ambition now.”It is okay if you are ambitious to be a president or a prime minister, but one cannot be ambitious about knowing truth. That is a contradiction in terms.Truth is known only when all ambitions have been dropped – the ambition for truth is included in it. When all ambitions and all desires have been dropped, suddenly truth is available. Truth is not somewhere far away. It is not that you have to reach to it, it is not a goal. It is already a given fact, it already exists in you. You can be ambitious for money, for power, for prestige, but you cannot be ambitious for truth. If you are ambitious for truth that means you are trying to find, search, seek – and truth is inside you. It is not to be sought because it is in the seeker himself. The moment all your outer seeking stops, the moment you have understood the futility of desire, the futility of ambition… In that state of non-ambitiousness, desirelessness, truth is revealed. And it is not revealed as something objective. It is your own interiority, it is your subjectivity.Søren Kierkegaard says, “Truth is subjectivity,” and he is right. Jesus says, “The Kingdom of God is within you,” the same thing expressed in a different way. Buddha says, “There is no God. There is no self to be sought, just go in, turn in – a one hundred and eighty degree turn – and you will be surprised. The thing that you have been searching for for lives has always been inside you.” God is hiding within you. He is not in the Himalayas.Now to say, “I am ambitious: the only ambition to be fulfilled now is to know the truth,” is to live in just words. He knows the word ambition, he knows the word truth but he has not experienced any meditativeness. If he had experienced even a drop of the nectar of meditation, he would have dropped the word ambition, it would have been impossible to use that word. That word is ugly.And then he says, “I want to know God” – as if God is a person, as if God is something objective that you can know. There is no God to be known in that way. It is not a question of encountering God, you will not meet him somewhere. God is the name of absolute silence, the name of profound peace, a name – just a name – for overflowing love and bliss. God is nothing but godliness.H. G. Wells says Gautama the Buddha was the most godless person and yet the most godly. H. G. Wells has a great insight there worth meditating upon: the most godless and the most godly.All godly people have been godless. They have to be – aes dhammo sanantano – because this is the ultimate law. When you know, you know there is no God. Your very knowing, your awareness, your consciousness, is all that is.But people who live in words go on talking about these things unconsciously.One hundred Italian soldiers had only ninety-nine rifles with bayonets. Their sergeant said, “Everybody rush up the hill. You, Luigi, without a rifle, you just say, ‘Bang-bang, stick-stick.’”They charged up the hill. Luigi came face to face with a six-and-a-half-foot tall Polack.Luigi shouted, “Bang-bang, stick-stick.”The Polack said, “Tank-tank!”This is how theologians go on talking: God-God, self-self, truth-truth! But there is nothing else.“Why are you huffing and puffing, Zbigniew?”“I have just been on the slippery slide.”“Why should you be out of breath from sliding down the slide?”“Ah, down?”He was trying to go up. That’s what ambition is. Ambition means going up, and non-ambition means slipping down into a state of nothingness.Pulpushki showed up one morning at work with a big smile on his face.“Why you so happy?” asked a co-worker.“Thursday I find wife in bed with the electric meter reader!” explained the Polack, “Friday, I catch her taking samples from a salesman on the living room sofa. Saturday morning, the milkman do business with her on kitchen table. But I fix them all. No one get last laugh on Pulpushki. I just phone ‘Goodwill’ and tell them to take away the furniture – all the furniture of the house!”Morarji Desai is a Polack, and a perfect Polack.Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.Be yourself. These two words are enough to transform the whole of humanity; they can give birth to a new man. They are immensely pregnant with meaning. The past of humanity has been a constant effort not to be yourself; hitherto we have been told by the priests and the politicians and the pedagogues to be somebody else. “Be a Christ,” they say, and the people who are trying to be a Christ are the Christians. “Be a Buddha,” they say, and the people who are trying to be a Buddha are the Buddhists. No other Christ has yet happened, neither has a Buddha, and it is not going to happen ever. It is not in the nature of things.History repeats, existence never repeats. History repeats itself because history is constituted by the unconscious humanity. Existence never repeats itself because existence is nothing but godliness, creativity. Creativity is non-repetitive, consciousness is non-repetitive. Unconsciousness is bound to repeat, it moves in a circle: it goes round and round in the same circle, it becomes more and more efficient in doing the same thing again and again. And the more efficient it becomes, the more difficult it is to go beyond the known.The creative person is always leaving the known behind and moving into the unknown. To repeat somebody else is nothing but pretending, cheating, deceiving. It is beautiful to know Christ, it is beautiful to love Buddha, it is beautiful to understand Lao Tzu, but it is ugly, humiliating to repeat them, to be imitators.But for centuries man has been conditioned to be somebody else. There are vested interests against you being yourself. The vested interests want you never to be yourself because they are afraid of anything new; everything new seems to be a danger to them. They are at ease with the old, hence they say, “All that is old is gold.” The older it is, the better.Hindus say, “Our scriptures are the oldest, hence the best.” They go on trying to prove that their scriptures, their Vedas are far older than the historians recognize. The scientific historian concludes that they are not more than five thousand years old, but the Hindu chauvinist believes they are at least ninety thousand years old. That is at least; it is possible they may be older than that.Why this effort to prove: “Our religion is so old”? – because the old is more valuable, has been more valuable in the past. The new has been condemned because the new cannot be absorbed by the establishment.Jesus is dangerous to the Jews because they lived a certain pattern of life: following Moses, repeating Moses, trying to be carbon copies of the prophets of the Old Testament. And here comes this man Jesus who starts saying things which go against the tradition, convention.The Old Testament says that “tit for tat” is the most fundamental law. If somebody throws a brick at you, reply by throwing a rock at him. If somebody takes out one of your eyes, take out both of the eyes of that man: murder for murder, violence for violence. Jesus says, “If somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other cheek too because God is love.” But the Old Testament God is not love. God himself declares, “I am a very jealous God.” Now jealousy can never be love; it is impossible for jealousy to be loving. In the Old Testament God says, “Remember, I am not nice, I am not your uncle. Beware! I am a very jealous God. If you worship somebody else, some other God, then be ready to be punished – punished for eternity.”And Jesus says, “Love your enemies just as you love yourself.” Jesus brings a new horizon with him. Every awakened master brings a new light, a new universe, a new perspective – and that is the trouble. Otherwise Jesus was not a troublemaker at all but a simple, innocent man.Why did the Jews want him to be crucified? He was shaking their foundations, their very foundations. They had lived according to a certain ideology, and this man’s presence was proof enough that they were wrong. He was talking about higher values, higher truths. The whole establishment was shaken up.The Jews were slaves, they were dominated by the Romans – and the Romans and the Jews conspired to kill Jesus. It was not only the Jews, remember: fifty percent of the crime was committed by the Jews in the case of Jesus’ crucifixion and fifty percent was committed by the Romans – because the Romans were politically powerful and the Jews, of course, had the religious tradition. The priests and the politicians both conspired. They were enemies in a way, because the Roman conquerors were not friendly with the conquered and the conquered were not friendly with the conquerors. But as far as Jesus was concerned, both agreed that he had to be destroyed because he was cutting the very roots of both establishments, the religious and the political.But now Jesus is imitated, and a strange irony has occurred: he was killed by the Romans, who are now Italians – and now the Vatican has become their headquarters. Strange, but in a way significant, in a way not just accidental. Once Jesus himself was absorbed by the establishment, then there was no problem; he started functioning just like Moses. Before him it was said, “Be like Moses.” Now they started saying, “Be like Jesus.” Now Christianity was itself a part of the vested interests. The same people who had killed Jesus started worshipping him.And it has been happening almost all over the world. It happened with Mahavira, it happened with Buddha, it happened with Lao Tzu, it happened with Nanak, it happened with Mohammed. The same people… They are not different people – the same unconscious humanity.One thing can be concluded: the unconscious humanity always worships the established structure because it is familiar with it. And a man like Jesus or Buddha or Krishna is a stranger. He does not belong to the common, he does not belong to the unconscious; he comes as if from another world. He speaks a different language, he brings new messages – and the masses are afraid to go into the unknown, into the unexperienced. They cling to the old, to the past, to the dead. They worship the dead and they destroy the living.To perpetuate this stupid ideology everybody is told to be somebody else. That helps the establishment tremendously, for two reasons. First: by trying to be somebody else your life will be a mess because you can never be somebody else. That is impossible – you can only be yourself. So trying to be somebody else you are distracted from your authentic being; your energies will be wasted. You will be in a constant conflict with yourself, you will be in a civil war. Your mind will represent the past and your heart will go on saying, “Be yourself.” But the mind makes so much noise, you cannot hear the heart. You will be split, you will be schizophrenic: one part moving in one direction and the other part moving in the opposite direction. You will be always in a kind of tug-of-war. Your life will be of tension, anxiety, anguish.And a man who lives in anguish can be easily enslaved because his energies are always wasted. He has no more energy to be rebellious. To be rebellious one needs energy, one needs to be a reservoir of energy. In fact, overflowing energy is needed to be a rebel because you will be fighting against millions, you will be fighting against a long, long tradition. You will be fighting many, many vested interests, and they are powerful people. The rich, the religious, the political, those who are dominating the society and exploiting it, are bound to be powerful. You will be powerless, so powerless that you cannot even raise your head. You cannot say no, you cannot assert yourself.So on the one hand this is a very subtle psychological strategy to destroy your energy. It is just like this: watch a bull – he has energy. You cannot use the bull in a bullock cart; it is dangerous. If you use two bulls in a bullock cart it is very dangerous. First it will be almost impossible to keep them on the road, they will be so powerful. They can run into the fields – if they see some cow, a beautiful cow, they will forget all about you and your cart, and everything will go upside down! First the bulls have to be castrated. Once a bull is castrated he is no longer the same animal; the ox is a faraway echo of the bull. He is weak, his energies have been destroyed. Now he can be enslaved; it is so easy.And to castrate human beings this strategy has been used: your parents say to you, your teachers say to you, everybody around you goes on saying to you, “Be a Buddha, be a Krishna, be a Jesus, be a Zarathustra,” but never, “Be yourself.” This is a psychological castration: they create guilt in you – if you are yourself you will feel guilty. And you can never be the person you are trying to be, but in the effort energy is wasted and their purpose is fulfilled. Your life will be a life of misery because you can feel joy only if you are yourself.The rose is beautiful dancing in the wind, in the sun, in the rain, because it has not wasted itself in trying to be a lotus. The lotus is beautiful for the same reason. The marigold is beautiful, all the flowers are beautiful, for the simple reason that they are just themselves. Think of a rose trying to be a lotus. Sooner or later it will end up in a psychoanalyst’s office, it will drive itself crazy, it will go nuts! And in trying to be a lotus its whole energy will be wasted, and it will not be possible even for it to be a rose. Or if it becomes possible at all then it will be a very poor rose with no color, with no perfume, with no dance, with no song.You can see it everywhere: people are looking so sad, so burdened, as if they are carrying mountains on their shoulders. And they are carrying a psychological weight; they have been burdened, they have been knowingly burdened.If a child is continuously told that he is not to be himself, that he is worthless… The parents say, “I will love you only if you behave in a certain way” – that is, according to them, according to their idea. The child has to survive; hence he has to listen to the parents. All children are beautiful like roses – small children, before the age of three, are beautiful. You can see their joy overflowing; they are flooded with energy. You cannot compete with a child as far as energy is concerned.In an American university they did an experiment. They told a great wrestler, a man of immense power, that he has to follow a small child and do whatsoever the child does. “If the child jumps, you jump; if the child runs, you run; if the child starts rolling on the ground, you roll on the ground. Do whatsoever the child does. If the child screams, you scream; if the child giggles, you giggle. Just imitate the child.”Within three hours he was flat on the ground. He said, “I cannot continue. This child will drive me crazy!” And the child enjoyed the whole thing because, seeing that a grown-up person was imitating him, he did many more things that he had never done before. He stood on his head, he invented so many things just to see whether this man could do them or not. In three hours the child was as full of energy as before and he said, “Are you finished? What happened?”You cannot follow a child; he has overflowing energy. But we start curbing, cutting, chunk by chunk. We start creating a small prison around the child – a psychological prison, of course. Slowly, slowly the child shrinks, becomes more and more encaged. By the time he comes out of the university he is stupid, mediocre, with no energy, with all kinds of foolish ideologies – full of bullshit. And all that he was is lost. Now he is just an imitator, a carbon copy.Desiderata has a great message: Be yourself. And this has been the message of all the enlightened ones. Buddha says: “Be a light unto yourself.” That was his last statement. Dying, on the deathbed, he opened his eyes and gave his last message to humanity: “Be a light unto yourself” – don’t imitate anybody.On the one hand imitation makes you weak, on the other hand it makes you miserable. Weak and miserable, that is how the vested interests want you. And they have found such a beautiful trick that unless you are very intelligent you are bound to be trapped – because who would not like to be like Jesus? The idea fascinates. Who would not like to be a Buddha? It hypnotizes. Buddha is beauty – pure beauty, pure grace. Who would not like to be a Buddha?Hence the child cannot say to the parents or to the teachers that they are wrong. It appeals even to his reason; it feels reasonable, sensible. And it does one tremendous harm, it makes you hate yourself. You cannot love yourself, and the more you fail in being the other, the more you hate yourself.I have observed thousands of people, I have been working on thousands of people continuously, and my own observation is that I rarely come across a person who loves himself.Jesus says: “Love your enemies as you love yourself,” and you would think that it is a very difficult thing to love your enemies. No, it is not. The real difficulty is to love yourself. You can love your enemies, that is not that difficult at all. The real difficulty is to love yourself, to respect yourself, to accept yourself as you are, unconditionally. And that is the beginning of the revolution, the beginning of the transformation.My whole teaching can be condensed into these two words: Be yourself.Just the other day I quoted Morarji Desai as saying that he had only one ambition to be fulfilled: to know God and attain the heights of truth. What harm has God done to Morarji Desai? Why should he be after God? Is it not enough to know oneself? Does one have to know God? Why? For what? And what are you going to do even if you know God? You will still be as foolish as you are now – even if you come across God, what are you going to do? You will say, “Hello, how are you? The weather is fine!” What else? What are you really going to do? By knowing God you will not know yourself; and how can an ignorant person who does not know himself know God?The authentic seeker has nothing to do with God; he wants to know himself. That is the most fundamental thing: to know oneself. Because out of that all knowing, all light arises. If one knows oneself one will know God too. In fact, only by knowing oneself does one become capable of knowing the ultimate, because at the very core of your being the ultimate is present. But religions say: “Know God, try to realize God.” That is again a strategy, the same strategy to distract you from yourself.And these people like Morarji Desai think they are religious; they are not religious at all. The religious person has only one longing – and remember, it is not an ambition, it is a longing. And there is a difference, a tremendous difference, between ambition and longing. Ambition is of the mind, longing is of the heart. They belong to different centers.When you fall in love with somebody it is not an ambition. You feel the pain in the heart, not in the head. You don’t have a headache. I have never heard of anybody falling in love who feels a headache, but heartache certainly everybody who has fallen in love has felt. Heartache, and that is a totally different phenomenon. Whenever you talk about love you don’t put your hand on the head, you put your hand on the heart. Your body knows better than you exactly where the center is. The heart longs, thirsts, yearns, but there is no ambition.Morarji Desai is a poor politician; he knows only the language of ambition. Now he has fulfilled his one ambition of being the prime minister of India; there is no higher post in India than prime minister. Now that he has been prime minister the only ambition the political mind can have is to know God.It is very strange. In the first place, how do you know that God exists? If you have not known God yet, how can you start being ambitious for God? One thing is absolutely certain, indubitably certain: “I exist.” You cannot deny yourself because even your denial will prove that you are.There are a few things which cannot be denied. For example, you are in your house and somebody asks, “Are you in?” You cannot say, “I am not.” If you say, “I am not,” that is enough proof that you are in. If you are lying down with closed eyes and somebody asks, “Are you awake?” and you say, “I am not, I am fast asleep,” that is enough proof that you are awake, you are not asleep. There are a few things which cannot be denied because even the denial proves its opposite.One of the great Western philosophers, Descartes, worked for years to find something which is indubitable, which cannot be doubted. Only something which cannot be doubted can be the foundation of a valid philosophy, and ultimately he decided, “I am the only thing that cannot be denied, that cannot be doubted, because even to doubt it is to prove it.”And that has been the teaching of Socrates, Buddha, Desiderata. Socrates says: “Know thyself.” It is the same – be thyself or know thyself – because knowing who you are will help you to be yourself, or trying to be yourself will help you to know who you are.Ramana Maharishi, one of the greatest masters who has lived in this age, used to say to his disciples, “I teach you only one mantra: ‘Who am I?’ Go deep into it: ‘Who am I?’ – not only repeating it but being in the feel of it. Let it become an existential question, not just words. Let your whole being become the question mark. ‘Who am I?’ Let it penetrate you like an arrow.”Once you have known yourself, all is known and to know all is to know God. God is not a person that you have to come across; God is a quality. But to experience that quality, the first, basic thing needed is self-knowledge.Morarji Desai also says, “I want to attain the heights of truth.” The same political language, the same political mind: “heights of truth.” The desire is to be higher than everybody else, and something unconscious has also come into it. He says, “I have not acquired the truth in totality yet, nor did Mahatma Gandhi.”The first thing is: truth cannot be divided into parts. You don’t acquire truth in installments, truth is not acquired in degrees. Either you know or you don’t know. You cannot say, “I know only a little bit of truth.” That is impossible. It is impossible, just as you cannot say that an arc is a little bit of a circle. Circle means the whole; if it is not a perfect circle it is not a circle at all.Truth is indivisible; you cannot have it in parts, by and by. Hence the realization of truth is sudden, not gradual. It is not that first you acquire one kilo of truth and then another kilo of truth, and so on and so forth. Either you have it or you don’t have it. It is a radical transformation, it is a mutation.It is just like either you are alive or dead. You cannot say, “I am just a little bit alive.” That is not possible. Even if you are a little bit alive you are fully alive – you are alive.Morarji Desai says, “I have not attained truth in its totality.” Truth is always total. And suddenly he brings Mahatma Gandhi in; that is something unconscious erupting, “…nor had Mahatma Gandhi.” Because that is his ultimate desire: to be like Mahatma Gandhi. His whole effort his whole life has been trying to be like Mahatma Gandhi. So suddenly he remembers that there is no need to be worried – Mahatma Gandhi has also not acquired truth in its totality. He wants to be another mahatma.Mahatma Gandhi is wrong in saying that he has not attained truth in its totality; he was on the wrong track himself. He was also trying to be like Krishna. He said, “Srimad Bhagavad Gita is my mother.” He wanted to be like Krishna, but he failed – everybody has to fail in such efforts – and he was frustrated, deeply frustrated for it. His whole life he was trying to become perfect, but the idea is always of somebody else.Once he had even contemplated becoming a Christian because Christ attracted him very much and he wanted to be a Christ. He was reading Tolstoy and Ruskin and Thoreau, and they were all great Christians – but Christians, remember – and they impressed him very much. And he started contemplating whether to become a Christian or not.He was born in Gujarat, which is very much influenced by Jaina philosophy. Even the Hindus of Gujarat are almost Jainas. And from his very childhood he had seen Jaina monks and he was very much impressed by the Jaina monks and their idea of nonviolence. He wanted to become a Mahavira – but it is always somebody else.Then he came in contact with a Jaina scholar, Srimat Rajchandra, and he became very much impressed. He says “These three people are my great teachers: Srimat Rajchandra” – the Jaina scholar. I call him a scholar because he is not a realized person. He knows all about the scriptures, he quotes scriptures, but he has not known himself. “Second,” Mahatma Gandhi says, “my teacher is Tolstoy” – who loved Christ very much and tried to be like Christ and failed, utterly failed, lived in great misery. Very few people have lived in such misery as Tolstoy did. His whole life was an agony, he never knew any moment of ecstasy. Imitators cannot know it. And he says, “My third teacher is Henry Thoreau” – who was also trying to be like Christ. They were themselves imitators, and Mahatma Gandhi was trying to imitate the imitators – a carbon copy of a carbon copy. And Morarji Desai is a carbon copy of the carbon copy of the carbon copy! He is trying to be Mahatma Gandhi.Just this morning I came across another statement of his. He says, “I have complete faith in God, and that I consider to be my greatest achievement.”This mind always talks of achievement, ambition, heights. It is always on a power trip. And how foolish it is. On the one hand he says, “I have the ambition to know God.” He has not known God, that much is certain. On the other hand he says, “I have attained to complete faith in God and that is my greatest achievement.” How can you have complete faith in something you have not known? Your faith must be repressing your doubts somewhere. Hence the word complete – he himself is afraid. Just the word faith won’t do; it has to be complete, it has to be absolute, it has to be categorical. The statement shows that there is doubt, otherwise faith is enough; there is no need to say, “complete faith.” Is there any possibility of incomplete faith?When you say to a woman, “I love you,” that is enough. You don’t go on saying, “I love you absolutely, I love you categorically, I love you completely, entirely!” If you say all these things with all these adjectives she may become a little aware that something is missing – why this emphasis?There is some unconscious fear.A ventriloquist traveling in the interior of Brazil was taking a ride in a bullock cart with a Brazilian who was very silent. So to break the silence the ventriloquist decided to play with him a little. “Listen, friend, did you know that your bull speaks?” he told him.The Brazilian did not believe him, but at that exact moment the bull started talking to him. The Brazilian was astonished. Then a horse passed by and said, “Good morning,” to the man; then came a cow and she spoke too.Following these animals up the road was a very charming white goat. Moving her body graciously, the goat stopped right by the side of the cart, stared at the Brazilian and started to say something. But the Brazilian cut her off and said to the ventriloquist, “Don’t believe her, she is the worst liar!”Now, some fear!These people like Morarji Desai go on in very stupid circles – complete faith in something that he knows not, only ambition for that which he knows not, a claim that he has achieved a little bit of truth – as if truth can be divided. But in a way he represents the ordinary, unconscious humanity. He is representative; that is how millions of people go on thinking and behaving.The greatest root cause of it all is that you have been told constantly, you have been conditioned and hypnotized constantly for thousands of years: “Don’t be yourself.” It has not been said so directly, it is said in a roundabout way: “Be a Buddha, be a Christ, be a Mohammed.” But have you ever heard your parents saying to you, “Just be yourself”? No parent will ever say that to any child, for the simple reason that he himself is afraid – if the child is allowed to be just himself he may not be obedient. He may start doing things that are against the ideas of the parents. He may start living a life that is not conforming, is not conventional. He may turn out to be a rebel. And it is better to kill that rebellion in the very seed.Hence so much misery in the world, no laughter at all, and no love – because if you cannot love yourself, how can you love anybody else? The first person to be loved is your own being. Unless love happens inside you for yourself it cannot radiate and reach to others. A man who is a darkness inside cannot be a light to others. Only a man who is a light in himself may be capable of radiating a little light to others too.The whole of humanity is living in a deep, deep sleep.Miss Gambioni was a new patient and quite pretty. The doctor took her name and background and then said, “In order to determine what is wrong with you, I will have to give you a thorough examination. Please get completely undressed.“Okay, doc,” said the Italian beauty, “but to make me feel right, you first!”Your unconscious goes on erupting into your consciousness. If you watch a little carefully you will become aware of your sleep – you may even hear yourself snoring!A drunk staggered into a pub in the East End of London and ordered a gin. He promptly threw up all over a small dog sitting beside the bar. His drink arrived, and in that moment of clarity when strong liquor hits the back of the throat, he looked down, saw the dog covered in vomit and muttered to himself, “That’s odd! I don’t remember eating that!”A young monk went to a prostitute and said, “I know nothing about sex. Will you teach me?”“Okay,” said the prostitute, “but it will cost you fifty quid.”He agreed and paid her the money in advance. She disrobed, then undressed him and told him to lie down and said that she would start with the sixty-nine position. When she climbed on top of him, she accidentally farted in his face.“Sorry!” she said, and climbed back on again farting one more time as she did so.“Fuck this!” the monk shouted as he jumped up from underneath her.“What’s the matter?” asked the prostitute.“Well,” replied the monk, “I don’t think I can stand another sixty-seven of those!”Man has been forced to remain unconscious, he has been forced to remain in a deep slumber. You are being driven through many subtle ways to remain drunk with power, with money, with prestige, with fame, name. All these are different kinds of opium. Power makes people so drunk, money makes people so drunk. Ambition is the greatest intoxicant invented ever.Desiderata says:Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.That too is of tremendous importance. When you are trying to be somebody else, naturally you start acting. The Buddhist monk acts like a Buddha, the Hindu sannyasin acts like Shankaracharya, the pope tries to imitate Christ. Just a few days ago the pope climbed up a hill near the Vatican, a small hillock, with a small cross on his shoulders, and thousands of Italians followed him. He was acting the role of Jesus, and Italians very much loved the whole play. It was a drama.Just the other night I was telling an Italian sannyasin, “Come back soon because all the intelligent Italians are coming here. Where are you going?” She is going back. All the Italians who have eyes are coming here – I call them “Eyetalians”! Only the blind will be left behind; all “Eyetalians” are going to be here.This pope is blind. In the first place a Polack being a pope, then trying to dramatize Jesus with a small cross – a child can carry it. When Jesus carried the cross up the hill, three times he had to fall and each time he fell because the cross was very heavy – a wooden cross, a big cross. It must have been at least seven or eight feet long; to crucify a man it has to be that long. He fell thrice, and each time he was whipped to get up again and carry the cross.Now carrying a small cross… And do you know? The cross was made of gold! The pope carried a golden cross. At least they should have crucified him on the hillock! Let it be a golden cross – crucify him, be finished with this whole nonsense! But no, nothing like that happened – the real thing never happened. Just carrying the cross up the hill and down the hill.And on the hill he did only one thing: he washed the feet of a poor man and kissed the feet of the poor man. And I know perfectly well that that poor man must have been prepared for this. You know Italians! He must have been given a good bath and a rubbing and massage, and his feet must have been clean. This whole drama! But in the name of religion there is drama everywhere.And particularly when you start imitating, you will imitate everything. You will imitate love, and that is the most dangerous thing. Jesus loved, so you will start loving. But how can you love unless you attain the consciousness that Jesus attained? Love is a fragrance. When the one thousand-petaled-lotus of consciousness opens in you, the fragrance is released. If you start feigning it, that will be just artificial. You can bring perfume from the marketplace and you can start throwing the perfume all over yourself, and of course it will stink because it will not be your own flowering. It will be artificial and ugly.And once a person starts feigning love, his whole life becomes false because love is the center of life. Love is the very purpose of life, the destiny of life. Desiderata has a great message there: Especially do not feign affection.If you feign affection you will feign intelligence, you will feign freedom – you will start pretending everything else. A man who is capable of deceiving himself that he loves without loving is so stupid that he will imitate everything and will believe it, but your life will show that that’s not so.I have heard about a Christian monk who was always sermonizing on the message of Jesus that if somebody slaps you on one cheek, give him the other too.A man became interested in the idea and he thought, “Let us try it on him – whether he proves by his response that what he says he lives too, practices too or not.”So he slapped him really hard on one cheek, and he was surprised: the Christian monk gave him the other cheek. But the man was not going to be defeated so easily – he slapped him on the other cheek too.The moment he slapped him on the other cheek, the Christian monk jumped on him and started beating him.He said, “What are you doing? Have you forgotten your sermon? Have you forgotten your Christ? What are you doing?”He said, “Jesus said only once that if somebody slaps you on one cheek give him the other. And I don’t have another cheek anymore – only two. Now the message is finished! Now I am free! Now I will show you what it means to hit somebody.”Once Buddha replied to one of his disciples who was asking, “Bhagwan, you always say forgive, but how many times?” In fact, to ask that question is enough proof that the disciple has not understood. It is not a question of how many times: forgiveness simply means you accept the person as he is, you still love him the way he is. Forgiveness means that you don’t judge him, that you are non-judgmental.But ordinarily we think forgiveness means you know that he has done wrong, still you forgive him. First you judge and then you forgive. Your forgiveness is false.Real forgiveness has no judgment. It never says, “No, you have done wrong, but still I forgive you.” It simply accepts the person as he is. There is no grudge, no complaint, no grumbling. There is no question really of forgiving because there is no anger in the first place.But the man asked, “How many times?”Buddha said to him, “At least seven times.”The man said, “Okay.”The way he said okay, Buddha said, “Wait! Seventy-seven times, or better, seven hundred and seventy-seven times.”But even seven hundred and seventy-seven times will be exhausted – then what about seven hundred and seventy-eight? Then he will take revenge with a vengeance, because all those seven hundred and seventy-seven times have to be taken care of; he has to take revenge for all those too. He was somehow tolerating – somehow. It was not out of understanding.If you feign, if you pretend, you become pseudo. A man who has a pseudo personality loses all intelligence, and that is the greatest loss in the world.Lukowski had come to such desperate straits he kidnapped a millionaire’s son, a boy of six.Lukowski wrote a ransom note, asked for half a million dollars in small bills – and signed his name. But he forgot the address of the millionaire, so he gave the note to the kid and told him to take it to his father. The boy did, and when he returned with the money there was also a note from the victim. “Here is your filthy money and I gotta say it is a rotten thing for one Polack to do to another.”That is why I say the whole Earth has become Poland!Kazewski and Candelli agreed to a bet on who could make love to his wife more times in one night. They took adjoining hotel rooms and decided that each time they succeeded they would carve a notch on the wall.Candelli performed once at ten o’clock and placed a scratch on the wall. Then at two a.m. he drew another gash. By six o’clock he had three scratches.At eight in the morning the Polack came in and looked at the marks. “My God! One hundred and eleven!” cried the Polack. “He beat me by three!”Corporal Torlonia had been overseas for eighteen months. He came home and found he had a three-week-old baby. His wife explained that she dreamt she had intercourse with him, and she got pregnant.Torlonia sued for divorce. In court even the judge was astounded by the wife’s story. He stood up and asked the audience if they had ever had intercourse with a ghost.In the back, Torlonia’s father raised his hand. His Honor called him to the bench. “Now,” said the judge, “you say you had intercourse with a ghost?”“Ah, scusa,” said the elderly Italian, “I thought-a you say-a goat!”Pseudo people are bound to hear something else. They are bound to see that which is not. They are bound to miss that which is, because in their very beings they have deceived themselves. Now their whole lives will be again and again missing the point.The first thing one has to remember is to be whole, not to be divided, not to become two persons. And the teaching “Be like somebody else” always creates two persons in you. One is just a facade, superficial, and you have to live a double life. In your drawing-room you are one person, in your bathroom you are another. You have to live a double life. At the front door you are totally different and at the back door simply somebody else. This split can become so deep that you completely forget: when you are one you forget the other, when you are the other you forget the first one.This is what happens to schizophrenic patients. And now schizophrenic patients are growing every day in the world, in increasing numbers, as if humanity has come to a climax. Enough is enough! Thousands of years of stupid teachings have brought this sad state of affairs.Neither be cynical about love…Love is something natural. You can doubt God, there is no problem in it. In fact, one should doubt God because unless you doubt, the inquiry cannot begin. One should begin one’s inquiry into God as an atheist; to begin as a theist is to begin in a wrong way. You have already believed, now how can you inquire? I am not saying disbelieve in God because that again is a belief, a negative belief. Begin with doubt – doubt is natural.Every child is born with doubt; no child is born with belief, remember. No child comes as a Mohammedan or a Hindu or a Jaina or a Buddhist or a Christian or a Jew. Every child comes with thousands of questions; hence doubt is a God-given gift.But Desiderata is right: don’t doubt love because love is also a gift from existence; you bring it with you. Each child is loving, is very responsive toward love. Just smile at a child; the moment he feels your love he is ready to come to you – with great trust. Each child knows something of love.Both love and doubt are gifts given by existence, but you should not doubt love because to doubt love is dangerous. One natural gift will start destroying another natural gift. You will be in a conflict. And if you start doubting love you will start repressing it. If you start doubting love you will become incapable of loving, you will become closed.The moment your loving becomes encapsulated you are lost, because you lose the very bridge between you and existence.Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.A beautiful statement: a beatitude, a benediction, a blessing. Meditate over it: It is as perennial as the grass in the face of aridity and disenchantment. Your life is arid like a desert. If there is no love then your life will be dry, there will be no juice. There will be no flowering in your life, nothing of greenery. You will be just dry, hard.And there is disenchantment, disillusionment on every step, because each desire is bound to come to disillusionment. You desire money and you hope that when the money is there you will be happy. The moment money is there, suddenly you realize you are not happy. Money is there, but the happiness has not followed it. Money cannot purchase happiness; it can purchase comfort.I am not against money and I am not against comfort either, but comfort is comfort; happiness is a totally different phenomenon. Comfort is good, but it is not happiness, it is not blissfulness, it is not fulfillment. You can live comfortably and die comfortably, but that will not make you contented.Money can purchase many things, but there are a few things it cannot purchase and those are the few things which are really valuable. The really valuable has no price, it is priceless, you have to deserve it.Life is bound to be arid, desertlike, if you don’t have any love in you. It is going to be a continuous disillusionment, from one disillusionment to another. By the time you reach to the very end you are nothing but a sad, sad story: “…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”People die utterly disillusioned. People die complaining against life. And you cannot expect gratitude from them toward existence; you cannot expect prayerfulness, you cannot expect any thankfulness, because they have not known anything for which they can be thankful to existence. And the whole thing was missed because they missed love.Love is …as perennial as the grass. Love is the only experience which transcends death. All that is given to you by existence, which are many things: intelligence is there, compassion is there, sympathy is there, creativity is there, sensitivity is there, and so on and so forth, but love is the only experience in which time disappears. Love is the only experience in which naturally you enter into meditation. Love is the only experience in which you are not afraid of death at all.Lovers are the only people who can die joyfully because they have known something, tasted something of the nectar. They have tasted something of immortality. In those few moments of love, windows have opened and they have experienced that which is beyond.Desiderata trusts deeply in love, so never doubt love. Doubt God, nothing is wrong in it; doubt truth, nothing is wrong in it; doubt everything else, but never doubt love because if you doubt love you close all doors. If you don’t doubt love, then sooner or later everything else will come on its own accord.It is love experienced that one day becomes prayer, and it is prayer that one day becomes the experience of godliness.Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.People don’t seem to learn anything. They go on from one stupidity to another. From one disillusionment they immediately start moving toward another. They never seem to learn.An intelligent person learns. An unintelligent person simply goes on dragging himself from one failure into another failure. He never sees the whole truth of all these experiences. How many times have you been disillusioned? How many times have you loved a woman? And each time something went wrong, and you started hoping again with another woman or another man; again the same thing happens. What do you learn out of it? Do you learn something or not? It is not a question of the woman; by changing the woman again and again you are not going to be fulfilled.I have heard about a Hollywood actor who married forty times, and when he married the fortieth time he married a woman he had married already once before. But he could not recognize her, so much time had passed. He recognized her only because he recognized the mother-in-law – then he recognized that this was the same woman.But this is not an exceptional experience. Whomsoever you marry you will be marrying the same woman. Mothers-in-law will be different, but the woman will be the same, the man will be the same, because you are the chooser – and you are as unconscious as before, you have not learned anything.If your love fails, that simply means you don’t know what love is. It is not the fault of the woman, it is not the fault of the man. If you are a real inquirer you will see: “Something is wrong with my love. Either it is just pseudo – I am feigning it, I am just pretending – or my love has so many conditions that it destroys the other’s freedom, that it destroys and reduces the other person into a thing. Something is wrong with me, my love.”But people always decide something is wrong with the woman, something is wrong with the man. They hope that if they can have a palace they will be happy, but they will be in the same situation, they will be the same. Hence, whether you live in a hut or in a palace does not matter; it all depends on you. The miserable person living in the hut will be miserable in the palace too. Maybe there he will have more space to be miserable! And vice versa is also true: there are many other fools who think if they renounce the palace and move to a beggar’s hut they will be happy; that is the same logic. If you are not happy even in a palace, you will not be happy in a hut either. Yes, more uncomfortable, but not more happy – unless you are a masochist, unless you enjoy torturing yourself. Then it is a different matter.Take kindly the counsel of the years… Life teaches you everything that you need. Life is the only university. Take the counsel of the years very kindly, very understandingly: …gracefully surrendering the things of youth. In fact, each day one has to surrender many things of yesterday; each day one has to die to the past. When you were a child you were so interested in toys, all kinds of toys. When you became young you renounced those toys. In fact, you did not deliberately renounce, you simply became a grown-up and they withered away from your mind, they disappeared.One day it was so difficult to go to bed without your teddy bear. But learning is difficult: the teddy bear has disappeared – now it is very difficult to go to sleep without your wife or without your husband. Now the wife is the teddy bear, or the husband. The child has his own ways. For example, he will cling to the blanket and then only can he go to sleep. Now you have to make love before you can go to sleep – just a replacement, but nothing has been learned. A new habit, a new substitute, but you are the same childish person.The child used to go to sleep only when the mother gave her breast to him; now you will play with the breasts of your wife. It is the same old foolishness. At least the child has some reason; you don’t have any reason at all. Have you seen the silliness of it? Playing with the breasts of your woman, can’t you see your silliness? What are you doing? The child has some reason – the breast is his nourishment – but you have not gone beyond it yet. You are still clinging to something, of course unconsciously.Mrs. Glowicki was walking down the street with her right breast exposed. A man stopped her and with some embarrassment pointed it out.“Oh, my God,” cried the Polish woman, “I left my baby on the bus!”The child has some reason, it is his nourishment – but a grown-up person looking always at the breasts of women, or avoiding them; it is the same. If you are a monk you will avoid, but what are you avoiding? Whatsoever you are avoiding you want to see. And women know it perfectly well, so they go on pretending to have big breasts: using artificial breasts, many artificial devices to make the breasts look young. The real breasts may be just hanging down touching their belly buttons, but fools are deceived.Madhuri, one of my sannyasins, was telling me that she was traveling by car with her mother in Mexico; the mother was driving the car. Her mother is also a sannyasin. The mother’s breasts have been operated on, both the breasts have been removed, so she has plastic substitutes for the breasts. And of course, plastic substitutes look far better, hidden behind the clothes.When she stopped at a crossroad to inquire from a policeman which way led to a certain place, the policeman’s eyes became fixed on her breasts. She said, “Do you like them?”The policeman was a little embarrassed, but he said, “Yes, they are beautiful!”So she took them out and gave them to him!But for centuries man has been obsessed with breasts: in paintings, in poetry, in sculpture. Go to Khajuraho and see the fantastic ideas about breasts. In fact, the breasts are so big one feels sorry for the woman. How will she carry such big breasts? Impossible, it seems. Those women are just stone statues; that is good. If they were alive they would not be able even to walk – they would have to crawl! But who made these sculptures? The people who have not become grown-up yet; childhood is still there.You become a young man or a young woman only on the surface; deep down the child is still trying to live. One becomes old, but the youth persists psychologically. It is very rare to find an old man and wise. You can find many dirty old men, but old men and wise is very difficult because wisdom’s first necessity is renouncing the past. Every day it has to be renounced, that is the counsel of the years: …gracefully surrendering the things of the past.When you are young, surrender the things of your childhood. When you are old, surrender the things of your youth. Go on surrendering gracefully – and remember the word gracefully. Don’t escape, don’t run, don’t avoid, don’t close your eyes. That is not grace. That simply shows you are as ignorant as ever, just pretending to be holy. Gracefully means through understanding, through real growing. Growing in age is not growing up, that is only aging. Growing up happens only when you go on renouncing the past every day, every moment really. Each moment die to the past that is no more. Come out of it so you can remain fresh, so you can remain clean, so you can remain clear. Only that clarity can encounter the ultimate truth.Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.That is the only moment when you can see whether you have real intelligence or not, when there is something sudden. Otherwise you are always prepared. Even a stupid person can be prepared if he knows beforehand what is going to happen. That’s why people want to live always in the familiar and in the known, because there they can have the joy of being intelligent. Sudden situations for which you don’t have any ready-made answer in your memory store show whether you are intelligent, wise, or not.A sergeant took his troop of new recruits to a nearby pine forest to practice tactics. “I want you to spread out among the trees,” he said, “and when I give the signal, you freeze. Imagine enemy planes overhead looking for you – one movement and they’ll blast you all to bacon! Okay men, get to it!”During the maneuvers the sergeant spotted, to his annoyance, a few fidgeting figures and noticed, with pleasure, one promising young recruit so still he really seemed frozen. Hardly had the sergeant’s beady eye moved on than the same young soldier was suddenly tearing through the forest as if being chased by a whole army.After rounding up the troop, the sergeant bellowed at the young recruit and demanded to know why he had suddenly bolted like a frightened rabbit after starting the exercise so well.“Sorry, sarge,” said the young offender. “You see, a pair of squirrels got up my trouser legs.”“That’s no excuse, boy!” bellowed the sergeant. “Even while sitting on an ants’ nest, in the sight of the enemy, you have to be still!”“But, sir,” protested the soldier, “It was fine until I overheard one squirrel say to the other, ‘Wow, look at these nuts! Let’s eat one now and store the other for the winter!’”In sudden situations, how do you respond? Only that shows whether you have any intelligence or not. Nurture strength of spirit… And what is strength of spirit? Intelligence.But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.The mind always enjoys imagining about misfortunes. The mind lives, feeds on misfortune, real or unreal.Desiderata says:…do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.So don’t fight with yourself, otherwise you will be fatigued; you will be always tired, in a state of low energy. And then dark clouds will surround you, nightmares will happen to you, and loneliness.Loneliness is felt only by those who have lost the capacity to love, who have forgotten the language of love. Then they are lonely. Lonely, fighting with themselves, fatigued, tired, they can be enslaved by the establishment.Desiderata brings you a message of freedom, a simple but tremendously significant message. If you can follow it you will be a free man, you will know the joys of freedom. And they are the ultimate joys; there is nothing higher than that.Be yourself.Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,When my children knew I was coming to see you, the only thing they wanted was for me to bring back some of your jokes. They told me that all the stuff between the jokes was good for grown-ups, but for them just the jokes. So could you tell us some jokes for Nathan, twelve years, Andrew, eleven years, Rosemary, ten years, and Benjamin, five years.They are such lovely intelligent people, but I have a soft spot for Benjamin because he is quite crazy – he wants to take sannyas. And my wife is also quite crazy, but the other way. She hides my red tailor-made suits and threatens to cut off the sleeves if I wear them, and she hides your pictures. First the photograph falls down, then it is turned to the wall, then it is on a shelf, then she cannot remember where it is. So I wear pink shirts and meditate in your presence without your photograph.Perhaps you could tell her a story too.Every child is intelligent, far more intelligent than the so-called grown-ups. The grown-ups are only “so-called,” it is very rare to come across a person who is really a grown-up person. The most fundamental quality in a really grown-up person will be that he still keeps the innocence of the child alive, the wondering eyes of the child, the inquiring heart of the child. The purity, the clarity of the child will remain intact in him. He has defeated the society. He has not allowed anybody to destroy his intelligence.People only grow in age, they don’t grow up. Growing up is something vertical, growing in age is something horizontal. You remain on the same plane; just time passes by. And of course, time helps you to collect many experiences, knowledge, words and information, and you start thinking that you know. And that is the greatest calamity that can happen to any man: not knowing and believing that you know. It means now the doors for knowing are closed forever.Socrates is a grown-up person. He said: “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” His childhood is absolutely unpolluted. The time that has passed by has not been just dust gathering on the mirror. On the contrary, it has helped to sharpen his sword; it has not been like rust on the sword. Knowledge is rust: it destroys your intelligence and gives you poor substitutes; knowledge is a poor substitute for intelligence.Remember, one can be very intellectual and yet unintelligent. The child is not intellectual. He does not know anything about the great philosophers, the great scriptures. He is not a scholar; he knows nothing. But out of that state of not knowing he functions. Hence he is always full of wonder and awe; he looks at the world feeling that it is a mystery. The more you know, the more you destroy the mystery.The whole function of our so-called schools, colleges and universities is to de-mystify the universe. Even scientists brag about it, that they are doing a great service to humanity by de-mystifying the universe. In fact, they are creating more and more boredom in the world.No child is ever bored; he is always finding something or other which is immensely interesting for him. He can get absorbed in any small thing – a butterfly, a flower, a stone, a rock – anything will do. He immediately becomes aware of something extraordinary in it. That is insight, that is intelligence.If we help children in every possible way to remain as intelligent as when they come into the world, then there will be many grown-up people. Right now you can count the grown-up people in the whole world on your fingers very easily – because everybody has been manipulated, has been poisoned. It needs a totally different society, a totally different vision of life in which the child is respected.For centuries we have respected the old man: the older the man is, the more we respect him. Why do you respect the old man just because he has existed for a hundred years? Just existing is not enough for respect; living is a totally different matter. Existing is very ordinary, living has a totally different flavor to it.Living means living out of agnosia, living out of a state of not-knowing, living life as a mystery. That is the only way to live it. Others only exist, others only survive.A grown-up person moves in a deep harmony. His body, his psychology, his spirituality are always attuned; they all move together. This does not happen to the people who only grow in age. Their bodies become older but their minds remain retarded.At the time of the First World War, psychologists became aware for the first time of this fact, because for the first time on a large scale they tried to observe, experiment, to know how many people are really psychologically grown-up. And they were amazed, shocked: the average psychological age of human beings is only twelve years. The body may be eighty years old and the mind is lagging far behind. In fact, there seems to be no connection – the gap is of seventy years or eighty years. And the eighty-year-old person pretends to know because he thinks he is eighty years old, and he stopped growing when he was only twelve years of age. Really he should be counted as only twelve years of age, not eighty. And as far as the spirit is concerned he may be still in the womb of the mother, he may never have come out of the womb.Grace, light, love: these three together in deep harmony create beauty. When they are all in accord, life is an orchestra – but they are in discord, the spirit is almost nonexistent. Hence George Gurdjieff used to say, “I have come across very few people who have any soul.”Ordinarily everybody believes that he has a soul because the religions have been saying for centuries that everybody has a soul. Everybody has only the potential for being a soul, but that potential is not actualized, not realized. It is still a seed; it has not come to be a tree. It has not reached the point where spring comes and flowers open up and one feels fulfilled, contented.A grown-up person is flowering. His life is not divided, his life is an organic unity. He moves in a kind of absolute unity; nothing is lagging behind, nothing has gone far ahead.This disunity that we see in the world is multidimensional. The soul is in the womb; the mind, the psychology is somewhere hung up at the age of twelve, and the body is eighty or ninety years old. This is only one kind of discord; there are many kinds of discord.The head goes on becoming bigger and bigger and the heart goes on shrinking. They lose all synchronicity. And when the head becomes too much, man is a monster.If you watch, if you observe within yourself, you can see it. I am only stating a fact. You will not feel any heart in you. You will see your head is heavy, full of junk, but your heart is only a word. You have read about it in poetry, in novels. It seems to be a fiction, a myth. In fact, physiologists say there is no heart. What you call the heart, from where love arises, does not exist for the scientist. What exists is only a blood purifying system. Your heartbeat has nothing to do with the heartbeat the poets have been talking about, the mystics have been praising; it is something else.But scientists are right in a way because the people they observe don’t have any hearts. They have not observed a Buddha or a Meera, they have not observed Chuang Tzu or Kabir. They have never come across a man of the heart, so what they know is only about lungs.The mystics are talking about something else which is not grown-up in you. It is something behind your physical heart which has not started functioning. It starts functioning only when you shower much energy on it, when your energy starts moving it. But your whole energy goes to the head.Our structure of education is such that we bypass the heart. In fact, we try in every possible way to ensure that nobody’s energy should enter the heart, because once the heart starts functioning it becomes difficult for the head to take possession of you.Society needs heads and hands. That is why society is divided into two kinds of people: the heads – the people who work with their heads, the so-called intelligentsia – and the hands, the people who are laborers. The society does not believe in the heart because the heart has no utilitarian purpose. You cannot produce commodities out of the heart, you cannot make people rich, you cannot create bigger houses, sophisticated machines, you cannot reach to the moon. So what is the purpose of it? Its purpose is totally different: it is non-utilitarian. It brings joy, but the society is not interested in joy. The society wants people who are efficient robots. A joyful person is not a robot. The society does not want you to be loving; it wants you to be calculating.A lover is never a calculator; he is always risking. He is not a good businessman. He lives in a totally different world; he sees things in a different perspective. For him flowers are far more important than all your scientific gadgets, stars are far more important than all your political ideologies, rivers and mountains are far more significant than all your churches and temples.The vested interests are against the heart; hence, they have put it aside. They have created a shortcut: your sexual energy moves directly to the head without passing through the heart. That’s why your psychological age remains nearabout twelve, because that is the time when sexual maturity starts happening – twelve, thirteen, fourteen. That is when you become sexually mature, and that is where the society stops you because once the energy is ready to move, it starts moving it toward the head. That is the most important time in the life of a man, between twelve and fourteen. That is the time when either you move through the heart or you move through a no-heart directly to the head. And every society takes care that before the energy starts working in the heart – stop it, close that door completely, forever.Psychologists have not been able to explain why the psychological age should be nearabout twelve – this is the reason. They don’t yet have any explanation for it, but this is the reason: because your sexual energy is the only energy you have got, and the moment it becomes ripe there is danger – because it can become love. If allowed a natural course it is bound to become love; it will move through the heart. And, in fact, once it moves through the heart, once the heart opens up, the head can never be the master; it will remain a slave because a higher value has entered in your being. Now logic can never be supreme, it will always be secondary. And it is good that logic should be a servant to love; then it is beautiful. But love is a dangerous energy.All the social institutions are afraid of love because the whole society depends on unloving institutions. Our society is rooted in marriage; marriage is an unloving institution. Marriage has been invented against love. That is why parents never like it that their daughter or their son fall in love. They would like to choose the right wife, the right husband, for their sons and daughters. They would like to choose, and how can they choose? – they will choose through the head. They will say to the children, “You don’t know. You have not experienced life – we have experienced life, so we know what is right and what is wrong.” For centuries, all over the world, marriage has been arranged by parents at a very early stage so the child was not even aware of what was happening.My mother got married when she was seven; she was not aware of what was happening. My father must have been nearabout ten; he was not aware of what was really happening. He enjoyed the whole thing because he was riding on a horse and so many people were following him – so of course he enjoyed it!But when the marriage procession came to my mother’s home, she was puzzled because she was not allowed to come out and see what was happening. And a whole crowd was there, the whole village was there; only she was not allowed to go. She could not understand: “What is the matter? Why can’t I go?”Of course she was interested in what was happening outside – music, a band, a horse, a procession – there was enough to get interested in.Now, marrying a girl of seven years is a very dangerous strategy of society. If child marriages happen, love has been prevented forever. They will grow like brother and sister and they will start accepting each other and the convenience that they give to each other. They will like each other, but never love. And liking is not loving; they are not synonymous. You may like a person very much, but you may not love him, and you may not like a person very much but you may love him. Love is a strange phenomenon; it is illogical. Liking has a logic about it: you can give reasons why you like a person, but you cannot give any reason why you love a person; it is irrational.To prevent love, child marriages were prevalent all over the world. To prevent love, pseudo love was taught: “You have to love your mother because she is your mother.” But there is no necessity. She may be a mother; that does not mean that the child has to love her.That is what Desiderata says: “Never feign affection.” But we have been doing that for centuries. You have to love your mother, just because she happens to be your mother; you have to love your father, just because he happens to be your father. You have to love your brothers and your sisters. These things can be easily forced onto a child, he is helpless – and then you can force him to marry! And then, of course, the husband has to love the wife, the wife has to love the husband. This whole love is pseudo, it has never happened. You are simply fulfilling a formality.That is why people remain psychologically retarded at the age of twelve, or somewhere between twelve and fourteen. The head becomes the suprememost center. That is why there is so much misery in the world, because without love, bliss is impossible. That is why there is so much irreligiousness in the world, because without love there is no godliness. Logic cannot prove godliness, only love proves godliness. Knowledge can never prove godliness, only innocence experiences it.Your children are beautiful. They have understood what is most important.Another sannyasin has just asked: “I write questions, but the moment I have written the question I immediately see the answer, and then both the question and the answer become unimportant. And I can never ask because they become unimportant. Why does this happen?”This happens because you take life too seriously. You want your question to be very important. That will give you a reflected glory, that will make you important. You don’t want to ask an ordinary question; you want to ask something very important. And of course you will never be able to ask one. Any question is bound to be unimportant; no question is important – or all questions are important.If you are a child, if you have the innocence of a child, then all questions are important – not only questions about God but questions about the dog are also of the same value. A child can ask, “Why does the dog start barking when the moon rises in the sky?” Dogs are very much against the moon! On a full-moon night they will bark and bark their hearts out. They go crazy. A child can ask. When you are a grown-up you cannot ask such a question. It looks so unimportant – what has it to do with you? If the dog barks, let him bark. And what will people think if you ask such a question? It seems unimportant. It seems unimportant because of the ego. You want to ask questions about God.Hence, particularly in India, I have experienced people whose problems remain unasked, and they go on asking metaphysical questions because that gives them importance. They will come and they will ask, “Does God exist?” – as if that is something they are really interested in! What will you do if he exists?When I was traveling around the country, thousands of times I had to ask people, “Are you really interested in God? What will you do if he exists? Is it going to make any difference in your life whether God exists or not? Is it a life and death problem for you?”They will say, “No, but we are curious whether God is or not.” And sooner or later, when they become a little more acquainted with me, their real problems will come up: anger, jealousy, possessiveness. They are real problems, but they hurt the ego. To ask, “Why am I jealous?” is to recognize your jealousy, is to declare that you are jealous. Nobody wants that. Everybody is jealous, everybody is possessive, but everybody thinks it is not so. “It is not so with me – it may be with others.”Nobody wants to look at his real face; people avoid themselves as they avoid nobody else. That’s why everybody else will be able to see your faults except you. You minimize your faults and you maximize others’ faults; you have double standards. When it comes to your fault you rationalize it; when it comes to somebody else’s fault you don’t accept any rationalization. You magnify it as much as you can; you make it look as big as you can because your fault brings your ego down. The other person has a bigger fault; the bigger it is the better because that helps you to feel, “How nice I am! How simple, how humble I am. And look at these people – they are all full of faults, they are all full of fallacies, superstitions, stupidities. I am not that bad.” That gives you a good feeling.The sannyasin has asked, “Why does it always feel unimportant?” It is bound to feel unimportant because you are asking out of your knowledge, not out of a real inquiry.Your children are far more intelligent. Children are always authentic because they are not worried about the ego; otherwise they would not have said this to you. They asked you, “When you come back, bring a few jokes.” A serious person cannot ask that. A serious person will ask, “Bring some great philosophy, great religion. Bring some truth for me.” But children are simple and innocent. They simply open their hearts and they say whatsoever their real need is.If everybody is like a child, the whole quality of human consciousness will go through a transformation. We can bring a new humanity very easily. Jesus is right when he says: “Unless you are like small children you will not enter into the kingdom of my God.”The first joke is for Benjamin.There is the story about the fellow who walked to work each day and passed a window where he saw a lady hitting a boy over the head with a loaf of bread. The fellow decided it was none of his business and walked on. He saw the same thing happen every day for five months. Each day the lady was hitting the boy with a loaf of bread.Then one morning he saw the woman toss an entire chocolate cake into the boy’s face. Astonished, he peered into the open window and asked why.“Oh,” the lady said, “it’s his birthday!”Second, for Rosemary:Charlie the cat was scampering all over the neighborhood, down alleys, up fire-escapes, down cellars. A lady who knew Charlie’s little owner, Johnny, knocked on his door. “Your cat is running around like mad!”“I know,” said Johnny. “He has just been neutered and he is rushing around canceling engagements!”Third, for Andrew:It happened in Naples. The teacher asked little Pierino, “Pierino, tell-a me, who was-a the first-a man?”“I don’t-a know-a nothing!” replied the little boy. “I didn’t see-a nothing, and I will die before-a confessin’!”And fourth, for Nathan:Two children are playing, imitating the sounds of different animals. Suddenly Johnny says to his friend, “My grandfather is really good at imitating a wolf. Just listen!”He goes to his grandfather, whispers something in his ear, and the old man starts howling, “Oooh! Oooh! Oooh!”Astonished, the friend asks Johnny where his grandfather had learned to imitate a wolf so well.Says Johnny, “Well, all I do is ask him how long it has been since he last fucked!”And, as far as your wife is concerned, she certainly is crazy – but she loves me. In fact, she is afraid of falling into my love. The love is there, but she is afraid also. Hence all her maneuvers – hiding your orange clothes, hiding my photographs is nothing but an unconscious effort to hide herself from me. But she cannot hide for long.There is a Sufi story:A Sufi master wrote a small book which was outrageous in many ways to the traditional, orthodox mind and then he told one of his disciples, “Go to the imam, the greatest priest, and give this book to him as a present from me. And watch. Watch carefully what happens and come and report to me exactly what happens, without any interpretation of your own.”This was a device, a double-edged sword. It was a device for the disciple – whether he can report exactly what happened without changing it, coloring it, interpreting it. His commentary was not needed; he just had to be absolutely factual, a pure, detached observer, as if he was not concerned at all.He went there very alertly, he knew that this was a kind of test. He presented the imam the book. He was sitting in the garden – it was a winter morning and he was enjoying the sun. His wife was sitting there.When he presented the book, the imam asked, “Who has written this?”He told him his master’s name. The imam suddenly became so enraged that he threw the book outside the gate and said, “This type of nonsense, this type of outrageous, irreligious, sacrilegious thing cannot enter into my house! And you, get out immediately – never come here again. Your master is a danger to the society. He is creating chaos, he is destroying our religion.”For a moment the disciple started losing his detachment because great anger was arising in him, but he remembered that the master had said that he has to be just a reporter; he has not to bring his emotions in, his sentiments in.Just when he was leaving, the wife of the imam said, “You could have thrown it out a little later on when the man had gone. There was no need to be so enraged – it doesn’t fit you, your status. Or, as you have such a big library in which there are all kinds of books, you could have put that book in there also. If you don’t want to read it there is no need to read it. And I have seen all kinds of books – religious, irreligious, belonging to our religion, belonging to other religions – in your library, so why can’t this book also be a part of the library?”Again the disciple felt some emotion arising, that the woman is more compassionate, more loving, more human. But suddenly he became aware that he has not to bring his attitude in at all; he has just to report. He came back and he just reported, but when he was reporting, at the last moment he forgot and he said, “One thing I must say, that the imam’s wife is a very nice, beautiful woman, and she even seems to understand you. Maybe one day she can be converted to your path.”The master said, “Wait! Who has asked about your commentary, about your interpretation? You missed the point, you should simply report. And as far as your commentary is concerned, it is absolutely wrong. If you ask me, then I will say this imam is sooner or later going to be trapped by me, but his wife will never be a part of our commune, never, because his wife is indifferent. She says, ‘You can put it in the library.’ The imam hates me – hate can be transformed into love – but the wife is just indifferent: she does not love me, she does not hate me. She is not interested in me at all. She says, ‘There is no need to throw it out.’ But the way the imam became enraged shows his emotion; soon he will feel that it was not right.“And I tell you: go again and see what has happened to the book – the imam must have taken it back into his home, he must be reading it now. A man who becomes so enraged is already interested. He cannot avoid reading it – he has to read it.”And the disciple went again. And wonder of wonders, the master was right: the imam was reading the book.Your wife may show anger, may show hatred. Don’t be worried about it. She is already getting interested; she is not indifferent. She is a little upside-down, but that is not a big problem – doing a headstand! We can put her right-side-up.The fifth joke, for your wife:Astonished to find the new nurse, Miss Flack, pursuing the patient down the corridor with a bowl of boiling water, the head of the hospital, Dr. Killcare, buttonholed the young intern on duty and asked what was going on.“I told her to prick the patient’s boil,” the youthful sawbones said, “but that Miss Flack is such a dummy, she gets everything backward!”You get it?The second question:Osho,Would you talk about trust?Trust is a mystery – that is the first thing to be understood about trust. Hence it cannot be explained. I can give you a few indications of it – just fingers pointing to the moon – a few hints, but it cannot be described or defined.It is the highest form of love, it is the essential core of love. Love itself is a mystery and indefinable, but love is like a circumference and trust is its very center, its soul. Love is like a temple and trust is the innermost shrine in the temple where God is situated.Ordinarily people think that trust means faith; that is wrong. Trust does not mean faith. Faith is emotional, sentimental. Faith creates fanatics. Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, these are the people who have faith. Trust creates only a quality of religiousness. Trust never makes anybody a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian. Faith is borrowed – borrowed from the parents, from the society in which you are born. Faith is accidental. You live in faith out of fear or out of greed, but not out of love. Trust is out of love.Faith is a conditioning, imposed; it is a bondage. The man of faith is a prisoner. He may know it, he may not know it. He may have been living in a very beautiful palace, but he is imprisoned in it. The prison may be very well decorated – with Bibles and Korans and Vedas and Gitas – it may be made out of beautiful doctrines, philosophies, ideologies, but it is a prison because you have not entered into it on your own; you have been forced to enter it.I was a small child and my father used to take me to the temple, and I always resisted it. I would tell him, “I will stay outside the temple – you go in.”He would say, “But why can’t you come in?”I would say, “When I feel like coming in I will come in, but I don’t feel like coming in. It is so beautiful outside. Why should I go in? And I don’t see any point in it at all. The trees outside, the birds singing outside, the sun… It is so beautiful. I will wait here for you. If you choose to be inside and sit in that windowless, closed place, that is your choice.”He would try to persuade me but he was never successful. Every parent tries, and the intention is not bad. The intention is good – but unconscious intentions, even if they are good, are not of much help. They hinder, they harm. An intention can be really good only when it is conscious, otherwise prisons are created and you become attached to prisons. It is so difficult.Even a man like Bertrand Russell, who does not believe in Christianity, has confessed that although he has dropped believing in Christianity, if somebody suddenly asks him, “Who was the greater man, Buddha or Christ?” somewhere deep inside he knows that Buddha is greater, but he will answer, “Christ.” That Christian upbringing, the mind that has been dropped, has left scars.He says, “When I think about it, when I am alert, I can see the greatness of Buddha. Compared to Buddha what Christ says looks ordinary – but that is when I am alert. When I am not alert, if you wake me up suddenly from sleep and ask me, I will certainly say Christ. It hurts somewhere to put Buddha above Christ.”I can understand his difficulty. The same will be the difficulty of a Buddhist. He may be convinced that Christ is far better, he may be convinced that Christ’s sacrifice is greater than Buddha’s, but deep down in the unconscious the training, the conditioning is there – he cannot put anybody else above Buddha.A Jaina scholar who was a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi wrote a book on Mahavira and Buddha. He showed me his manuscript and he told me, “I am trying to synthesize both the religions.”I looked at the title and I said, “You won’t be able to synthesize them, you will not be able to bring about a synthesis. Just your title is enough!”He said, “What can you know from the title?”The title was Bhagwan Mahavira and Mahatma Buddha. I said, “You cannot call both ‘Bhagwan’?” Mahatma means a very great man but still a man, and Bhagwan means one who has gone beyond man. I said, “How can you bring about a synthesis? You have already discriminated.”He was shocked and he said, “I have shown my book to many people – nobody has indicated that. I have shown it to great scholars, pundits, and they have all appreciated it.”I asked him, “Have you shown it to any Buddhist?” He said, “No.” I said, “Show it to any Buddhist and he will see the insult that you have done to Buddha. Ask him what he would suggest. He will say, ‘Write Bhagwan Buddha and Mahatma Mahavira – change it!’”What is Mahavira compared to Buddha to a Buddhist? But to a Jaina, Mahavira is greater. Buddha comes very close, but close; a distance is still there. It may be only of one step, but that much distance has to be there. Our egos are involved.Faith is egoistic, hence it is fanatic. Faith is borrowed, hence it is ugly. Faith is a bondage because you have been forced into it by subtle strategies. It is not trust. Trust is a total phenomenon, different, with a different flavor. It is your own growth that brings you to trust; it is your own experience, it is your own knowing. Faith happens through conditioning and trust happens through unconditioning. One has to drop faith before one can attain to trust.The second thing to remember: trust is not belief either. Belief is again a trick of the mind to repress doubt. Man is born with many doubts, millions of doubts, and it is natural, it is a gift from existence. Doubt is a gift from existence, but it creates trouble for you. If you start doubting… You can doubt everything, and you have to live with people who believe; your life will be in constant conflict, you have to compromise. If you are born among Christians you have to believe; if you don’t believe you will be in trouble.Why was Jesus crucified? – for the simple reason that he refused to believe; he tried to experience. In the Bible the major part of his life is completely missing; eighteen years are missing. And in a life of thirty-three years, eighteen years is a major portion. He is mentioned first when he is twelve and then he is mentioned when he is thirty, and by the age of thirty-three he is crucified.What happened between the ages of twelve and thirty? Where has he been? In these eighteen years he lived with many masters, he moved in many mystery schools. Particularly, he lived with a secret school of Essenes; his whole teaching comes from that secret school. But all those eighteen years were of deep meditation, experimentation; he went to the deepest core of his being. When he arrived, when he came to know for himself what truth is, there was trust, it was not belief.Trust has to be deserved; belief is a very cheap substitute. Belief means you are afraid of doubt because doubt creates trouble, and doubt keeps you in a state of confusion. And you are not courageous enough to live in confusion, not courageous enough to live in a state of chaos, in anarchy – and doubt creates that. So you immediately repress the doubt, and the way to repress is to believe.The way to trust is doubt, and doubt to the very end. Go the whole way! Don’t repress your doubt at any point, otherwise you will miss trust. Trust arises out of doubt, not by repressing but by experiencing doubt to its ultimate extreme.When you go on doubting and doubting and doubting, a moment comes when all beliefs are destroyed by the doubt, all faith evaporates in the heat of doubt, and all that is left is your being. Now there is nothing to doubt because you have doubted all and everything. When there is nothing to doubt, doubt dies, commits suicide, because there is nothing to keep it on, nothing to nourish it any more. That has been my way. I have not arrived through belief, I have arrived through doubt. It is better to begin as a great doubter than as a believer because the believer will always remain pseudo; he will always remain superficial, shallow. Belief can never be more than skin-deep: scratch it a little bit and immediately the doubt is there. Trust needs a continuous hammering; doubt has to be used as a hammer. Unless you reach to the rock bottom of it all…An American tenor was making his debut in Pagliacci at La Scala Opera House in Milano. When he finished the exciting aria, “Vesti la giubba,” the audience applauded, and Carbogno, an elderly man sitting at the front, stood up and exclaimed, “Sing it again-a!”The tenor, delighted by the request, did an encore. Carbogno, the opera-lover, again leapt to his feet and implored, “Sing it again-a!”After five encores, the tenor walked to the edge of the stage and said, “Thank you for your very gracious reception.”Once more the old man shouted, “Sing it again-a!”“I’m sorry, sir,” begged the singer. “We must go on. I cannot sing it again.”“Yes!” declared the opera fan. “You sing it again-a until-a you sing it right!”One has to go on and on doubting – until-a you sing-a it right! Doubt is a sword: it cuts all beliefs, but it is a dangerous path. The path to truth is bound to be dangerous because truth is the ultimate peak. The higher you move toward Everest, the more you are entering into a dangerous arena. A single wrong step and you will be lost forever.Truth liberates, but to reach truth you have to go through a very narrow passage, climbing toward the heights. It is dangerous. Hence, millions of people decide to live in their dark valleys. They believe that Everest exists, and it is sunlit and there is tremendous beauty because Jesus has reached there, Buddha has reached there: “We can believe in them. What need is there for us to go there? We can live in our dark valleys comfortably. There is no need to take any risk.”But without risk there is no truth, without risk there is no life. You have to learn gambling, you have to be a gambler.If you doubt and go on doubting, a moment comes when all that you have ever believed disappears, evaporates. It is almost a state of madness. One can fall any moment into the abyss that surrounds you. If one falls, it is a breakdown. If one keeps alert and aware, watchful, cautious, then it is a breakthrough.Trust is the ultimate breakthrough: it helps you to know the truth on your own. And truth liberates only when it is yours. Somebody else’s truth cannot liberate anybody; it creates bondage and nothing else.The last question:Osho,I have heard that you sometimes make up questions to fit your jokes. Is this so? Please be truthful!It is very difficult for me to be truthful. I don’t believe in anything, not even in truth – I am not a serious person at all! I believe in playfulness. So, what does it matter whose question it is? And do you think when you write a question it is better than when I write a question? And do you think that when you are writing a question you are really writing or I am writing through you?If I have to tell a joke tomorrow I can say something today and many questions will come tomorrow! There is no need for me to write really – I can create questions in you; there is no difficulty. Otherwise, how do so many questions come?But you seem to be serious. And I am only serious about jokes, I am not serious about anything else. That is why you never see me laughing at the jokes – I am really serious – because jokes are not a laughing matter. It is not a joke! It is one of the most serious things in life, in fact, the only serious thing.You ask me, “I have heard that you sometimes make up…” Sometimes? Always, every day, because whenever I come across a good joke, I cannot wait for tomorrow. Who knows? Tomorrow may come, may not come. I may not be here, you may not be here – and the joke has to be told!Just look at these jokes: they cannot remain untold!A Negro walks into the fish market and buys an eel for his dinner. He puts it into the pocket of his overcoat and decides to have a drink before going home. One drink leads to another and another…Hours later he staggers home and stumbles into the toilet for a piss. Reeling backward and forward he fumbles inside his trousers and pulls out what he thinks is his johnny. He feels a warm tickle down his legs, then looks down and utters in wide-eyed disbelief, “I knew you was big and I knew you was black, but I sure as hell did not know you had such beautiful, big blue eyes!”A man walks into an optometrist’s office holding a cardboard box. He hands it to the optometrist who opens it and upon seeing its contents exclaims, “Wow! That’s the biggest turd I’ve ever seen!”“Isn’t it a beauty? I did it myself.”“It must be at least two feet long!”“Twenty-five and a half inches, to be exact.” boasts the man, “And four and three-quarter inches in diameter.”“Incredible! How much does it weigh?”“One and a half pounds.” comes the proud reply.“That is simply amazing!” exclaims the optometrist, unable to take his eyes off this marvelous specimen. “But why bring it to me? I am an optometrist.”“Well, you see, I have this problem: every time I do one of these monsters, my eyes water!”Mary comes to the police station with her mother. She is sobbing loudly when she reports to the policeman that she had been raped. The officer, concerned, asks her when and where all this happened.“Well,” says Mary, crying, “three days ago in the cemetery, the following day in the forest, and yesterday evening in Johnny’s own room!”You missed it! Perhaps you will get this…Dino was making pretty good time with Sally, the office steno. She agreed to go away for the weekend, provided he brought a sheath with him.When they went upstairs to bed he admitted he didn’t know how to wear it, so she rolled it down his thumb to show him. Then they put out the light and really went at it.In a few minutes Sally said, “I’m really sticky. I think you broke that thing.”“No, I didn’t,” said Dino, switching on the light. “Here it is, still on my thumb!”And you ask me, “Is this so? Please be truthful!” Even this question is invented by me! What more truth is needed to prove it? You have not asked it, but I have answered it.Two Jews are walking. Ahead of them they notice Moishe walking like a duck along the footpath.“I bet you he has hemorrhoids,” says Saul, “That’s why he walks that way!”“No,” says Mo, “his balls are enlarged, that’s why.”They catch up with Moishe and tell him of the bet they just made.“You are walking this way because of bad hemorrhoids, right?” says Saul.“No,” replies Moishe.“Aha!” exclaims Mo. “Then it is because of your swollen balls, right?”Moishe stops and turns toward them. “I am sorry, but both of you lose. You see, I thought it was going to be just a good old fart, but…”Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Is there quality in nothingness?Nothingness can either be just emptiness or it can be a tremendous fullness. It can be negative, it can be positive. If it is negative it is like death, darkness. Religions have called it hell. It is hell because there is no joy in it; no song in it, there is no heartbeat, no dance. Nothing flowers, nothing opens. One is simply empty.This empty nothingness has created great fear in people. That is why in the West particularly, God has never been called nothingness except by a few mystics like Dionysius, Eckhart, Böhme; but they are not the main current of Western thinking. The West has always conceived nothingness in negative terms; hence it has created a tremendous fear about it. And they go on saying to people that the empty mind is the Devil’s workshop.The East has known its positive aspect too; it is one of the greatest contributions to human consciousness. Buddha will laugh at this statement that emptiness is the Devil’s workshop. He will say: “Only in emptiness, only in nothingness does godliness happen.” But he is talking about the positive phenomenon.For Gautam Buddha, for Mahavira, for the long tradition of Zen masters and the Taoists, nothingness simply means no-thingness. All things have disappeared, and because things have disappeared there is pure consciousness left behind. The mirror is empty of any reflection, but the mirror is there. Consciousness is empty of content, but consciousness is there. When it was full of content, so many things were inside; you could not have known what it is. When the consciousness is full of contents, that’s what we call mind. When consciousness is empty of all contents, that’s what we call no-mind or meditation.To create nothingness in you is the goal of meditation, but this nothingness has nothing to do with the negative idea. It is full, abundantly full. It is so full that it starts overflowing. Buddha has defined this nothingness as overflowing compassion.The word compassion is beautiful. It is made out of the same word as passion. When passion is transformed – when the desire to seek and search for the other is no longer there, when you are enough unto yourself, when you don’t need anybody, when the very desire for the other has evaporated, when you are utterly happy, blissful, just being alone – then passion becomes compassion. Now you don’t seek the other because you are feeling empty and lonely; now you seek the other because you are too full and you would like to share.The enlightened person also seeks the other just as the unenlightened person seeks, but there is a qualitative difference. The unenlightened person seeks the other because he feels a negative nothingness in him. Left alone he does not feel aloneness, he feels loneliness.Remember, loneliness and aloneness are not synonymous, notwithstanding what the dictionaries go on saying. It is not a question of language; it is something existential. Loneliness is negative – you are missing something. Aloneness is positive – you have found something.The unenlightened seeks the other because it is his need; he is needy and greedy. He grabs the other, he clings to the other. He is always afraid the other may leave. Husbands are afraid, wives are afraid, parents are afraid, children are afraid, everybody is afraid. Even your so-called religious teachers are afraid their disciples may leave them, so they have to concede and compromise with the disciples. Can you see the irony of it?Jaina monks send messages to me saying, “We want to see you, but we cannot because our followers don’t allow it. They become angry, they become antagonistic.” Now the teachers are afraid of the followers! What kind of teachers are these? They need the follower because without the follower they are nobody – and that is power in the hands of the follower. The follower really dictates the rules. He says, “Do this, say this, behave like this – only then am I going to respect you. Of course I will respect you if you follow all the rules prescribed by me.” It is a contract.The so-called religious leaders go on following their own followers and the followers, of course, in return pay great homage, respect. Both are satisfied. The follower needs somebody whom he can follow and the leader needs somebody to follow him. Both are fulfilling each other’s needs, but both are dependent; both are clinging, possessive.Just the other day I was reading a statement: a Christian organization in England has asked Sheldon Press – because Sheldon Press belongs to that Christian association, it is one of the branches of the association – why they have published my books. Sheldon Press has published seven of my books; the director seems to have fallen in love with me. The director has replied, “We have published the books because they are beautiful, and we have published the books because they come closest to the teachings of Jesus.” But the head of the association and the members who possess the association are very angry; they may even throw this Sheldon Press director out of his job.They have asked one of my sannyasins who is a chaplain at Cambridge University, “Why do you, being a priest, a Christian priest, go on wearing orange?” And Dynamic Meditation is being done in the church. They have asked for an explanation; naturally they are afraid.But the sannyasin is not afraid. He has written a beautiful letter to them saying, “I am doing the work of Christ and I am doing the work of a living christ, and I don’t see any difference.” But ordinarily… Now he can be thrown out, is bound to be thrown out. No organized religion can tolerate such individuals, such rebels.The followers want you to behave the way they decide, the way the tradition decides, and if you need their respect you are bound to follow them. They will follow you, you follow them. Hence I say, religious or political, it does not matter: leaders are the followers of their own followers.And that is the criterion whether a man is really a master or not. The master is one who does not follow the followers, who does not compromise in any way because he has no need. Whether there are people or not, there is no question of greed.The unenlightened seeks the other because he feels lonely. It may be the teacher-disciple thing, it may be the husband-wife trip, it may be friendship; it may be any kind of relationship. You seek the other out of your loneliness, and the other is also seeking you out of her or his loneliness. And two lonelinesses are bound to create hell, great hell, because both are negative. When two negatives meet it is not a simple addition, it is a multiplication. The same is true about two positives: when they meet it is not simple addition, it is multiplication.The enlightened also seeks the other. Jesus moved from one village to another – for what? Mahavira traveled thousands of miles on foot – for what? For forty-two years Buddha was going, he was always on the go. Even when he was very old, eighty-two, he was still moving from village to village, for the simple reason that somebody has to be found with whom he can share. But now it is not a need, hence he will not compromise. It is not a need, hence he will not possess. It is not a need, in fact, it is just the opposite of it: it is abundance.He is like a rain cloud full of rainwater: it wants to shower somewhere. If it can find a garden, good; if it cannot find a garden, then too it has to shower. It may shower even on the rocks; it does not matter, but it has to shower. When the flower opens up, the fragrance has to be released. Whether anybody comes to know of it or not is immaterial. It is not a need, it is overflowing joy. When there is overflowing love it is compassion.Passion arises out of negative nothingness and compassion arises out of positive nothingness.Buddha says, defines, “The real man of wisdom can be judged only by one thing: his compassion, his love.” He will be radiating compassion. He will be always ready to help people on the path. People will be insulting him, people will be in every possible way against him, people will be angry at him, because people are fast asleep and to put them on the path he has to wake them up. And nobody likes to be awakened – because people are dreaming beautiful dreams and you shake them and you wake them and you destroy their dreams, and that’s all that they have got. Otherwise they are lonely, otherwise they are empty. So they are somehow filling their inner spaces with dreams, projections, imaginations.The function of the master is to destroy all your dreams, to make you empty of all content. But when you drop all content consciously, deliberately, you are not lonely: you become alone. And aloneness is beautiful, loneliness is ugly. Loneliness is like a wound, aloneness is like a flower. Loneliness is sick – Søren Kierkegaard has called it “sickness unto death” – and aloneness is life, abundant life. It is health.The Sanskrit word for health is very beautiful; the English word also has its own beauty. Health means the wound is healed; it comes from healing. The person is no longer sick; the wound of negative nothingness is no longer there. It has healed. It is beautiful, but nothing compared to the Sanskrit word for health. The Sanskrit word for health is swasthia; it means becoming centered. It means coming to one’s own self, realizing one’s own self. Swa means self; swasthia means getting rooted in the self.People are not rooted in their own selves, hence they are clinging to others. All clinging is an indication that you are afraid that if you are left alone you will not be alone, you will be simply lonely, miserable.The West has yet to recognize this tremendously significant fact. The Western religions have remained confined to prayer. They have not touched even the periphery of meditation, for the simple reason that meditation means nothingness, and to them nothingness has only one connotation: that of loneliness, emptiness. And they start feeling that if you are nothing then you will start falling into an abyss, you will be lost.But we have tasted a totally different quality of nothingness. We have tasted the hidden godliness in it, we have known the uttermost of bliss in it, we have known its benediction.It is my own experience that there is no greater joy than to be alone; the joy of love is secondary. And the joy of love is possible only if you have known the joy of being alone, because only then do you have something to share. Otherwise, two beggars meeting each other, clinging to each other, cannot be blissful. They will create misery for each other because each will be hoping, and hoping in vain, “The other is going to fulfill me.” The other is hoping the same. They cannot fulfill each other. They are both blind; they cannot help each other.I have heard about a hunter who got lost in the jungle. For three days he could not find anybody to ask for the way out, and he was becoming more and more panicky – three days of no food and three days of constant fear of wild animals. For three days he was not able to sleep; he was sitting awake on some tree, afraid he might be attacked. There were snakes, there were lions, there were wild animals.After the third day, the fourth day early in the morning, he saw a man sitting under a tree. You can imagine his joy. He rushed, he hugged the man, and he said, “What joy!”And the other man hugged him, and both were immensely happy and they asked each other, “Why are you so ecstatic?”One said, “I was lost and I was waiting to meet somebody,” and the other said, “I am also lost and I am waiting to meet somebody. But if we are both lost then the ecstasy is just foolish. So now we will be lost together!”That is what happens: you are lonely, the other is lonely – now you meet. First the honeymoon: that ecstasy that you have met the other, now you will not be lonely any more. But within three days, or if you are intelligent enough, then within three hours, it depends how intelligent you are… If you are stupid, then it will take longer because one does not learn; otherwise the intelligent person can immediately see after three minutes, “What are we trying to do? It is not going to happen. The other is as lonely as I am. Now we will be living together – two lonelinesses together.” Two wounds together cannot help each other to be healed. Two blind people leading each other Kabir says, “Both are bound to fall in a well sooner or later – and more possibly sooner than later.”Nothingness, meditativeness, no-mindness is a totally different phenomenon. Loneliness is natural. You are born lonely, and immediately the child starts searching and seeking for the other; he starts searching for the mother, he starts groping. He clings to the mother; he does not want to be left alone even for a few moments. He starts crying, he starts screaming; he makes much fuss so that the mother comes back. He learns the language – how the mother can be manipulated. It is a very strange world. Even small babies become politicians. They know how to manipulate. They will start crying, they will start weeping.Once it happened…I went to see a friend with one of my friends driving me. His small son had come with him – not more than three years old. The friend went into some other person’s house to inquire whether he was there or not. I was sitting in the back of the car and the child was sitting in front. The child somehow fell over and hit his head against the wheel. I closed my eyes, as if I had not seen it. He looked at me; remained silent. After ten minutes when his father came back he started crying.I said, “This is not right! This is not fair. Why are you crying now?”He said, “What to do then? What was the point of crying? You were not even looking at me!”I said, “Now it cannot be hurting. At that time it must have hurt, I know.”But he knows politics because he understood immediately: “This man will not take any note of it. Even if I cry or weep it is useless. When my father is back, then…”The child behaves differently when his mother is there. When the mother is not there he is far more grown-up, far more mature, because he has to be alert and cautious – he is alone, the mother is not there. When the mother is there he can do anything, he can take risks.From the very childhood we know the negative aspect, but the positive aspect has to be discovered. It is a lifelong discovery; one has to go on discovering it.Meditation is nothing but the method of discovering the positive aspect of nothingness, the positive quality of it. Meditation means dropping the content of the mind very consciously, knowing that you are dropping it. And when you have dropped everything, suddenly you realize that everything has disappeared but you are. And you are fuller than ever because all those things, all that junk that you have been carrying all along was simply taking your space. Now the whole space, the whole sky is available, and your heart can open its petals. In the East we call it “the one-thousand-petaled lotus.” Now there is space. With all the junk that you carry in your mind, where is the space for the one-thousand-petaled lotus to open? You are not spacious enough. You are so full of junk, rubbish, that only weeds can grow in you, not roses. It is impossible for the roses to grow; they need a little spaciousness.Nothingness is spaciousness, and to be spacious means to be vast. The moment you feel nothingness in its positive quality you feel vastness, you feel infinity. You don’t see any limit anywhere; you are unlimited. Even the sky is not the limit. That experience makes you enlightened. That experience makes you full of light, life, love; so full that you start overflowing, that sharing is now possible.Only a meditator can be a lover. In the past, people have tried to be lovers or to be meditators; both have failed. The whole history of humanity is a history of failures, and the greatest failure has been this: lovers have failed because they were not meditators, and without meditation you don’t have anything to share. Before you can share something you have to have it. And the meditators have failed because instead of being nothing, instead of being nobodies, instead of being the experience of utter emptiness, shunyata, they were full of mantras, chanting, praying, repeating any word constantly. But they were not nothing, they were not in a state of nothingness. Maybe they were not thinking of the market, not thinking of money, not thinking of politics – but they were thinking of God.It does not matter what you are thinking: thinking as such keeps you away, far away from experiencing the beauty of nothingness. Whether mantras fill you or film songs fill you, it is all the same – you are too full of rubbish. Whether that rubbish has been collected through scriptures or through magazines like Playboy does not matter; it is the same rubbish.One has to be utterly empty of all Playboys, all Bibles, all Gitas. One has to be completely empty of all Korans, all Vedas. When you are in that beautiful space you will know what godliness is, what truth is, what freedom is. In fact, knowing this, love is bound to happen as a shadow of it, as a consequence of it.Meditators have failed because they were not real meditators; they were doing something else in the name of meditation. Concentration, they were doing; contemplation, they were doing; prayer, they were doing; chanting, they were doing; and they were doing a thousand other things, but not meditation. In fact, they were avoiding meditation – in a religious way. Ordinarily people avoid meditation in worldly ways, and your so-called saints avoid meditation through other-worldly ways, but it is the same: avoiding.One has to discover the positive quality of nothingness. One has to be courageous enough to go into it. Once you have known it you have known everything that is worth knowing. Then you can share. Not only can you then share: only then will you be able to understand the Koran, the Bible, the Gita, because those are expressions of people who had known the same positive emptiness, the same beautiful nothingness. You cannot understand Christ unless you are a christ, you cannot understand Buddha unless you are a buddha. Before being a Buddha you will be simply a parrot repeating the Dhammapada. Before being a mohammed you cannot understand a single word of the Koran. That is impossible because unless you have the same consciousness and the same connection with the ultimate source of things, how can you understand Mohammed? No Mohammedan understands Mohammed, no Christian understands Christ, no Buddhist understands Buddha, no Jaina understands Mahavira. They are simply imitators, repeaters, just going on parrotlike, mechanically. And their whole effort is how to fill the negative nothingness. The negative nothingness has not to be filled; you have to be consciously aware of it: “Yes, it exists there.”The moment negative emptiness is joined with awareness it becomes positive – the miracle happens. That very moment the alchemy transforms you. Let me repeat: negative nothingness plus awareness is equal to positive nothingness.The second question:Osho,Why are the so-called religious people against you?They are not religious they are only so-called religious, hence they are bound to be against me. The so-called religious people have always been against the religious people; it is nothing new, it is the most ancient thing in the world. They worship a religious person only when he is dead because then there is no problem.Jesus alive is a problem. He disturbs you in many ways, in thousands of ways. In his presence you start feeling that all that you are is just holy cow dung, nothing else. It hurts, it hurts the ego. The so-called religious person starts looking so stupid. He is stupid, but when he is living with other so-called religious people he looks like a saint. He is a rabbi, he is a pundit, he is a priest; he is respected by people. The moment he comes close to a really religious person, immediately he is nothing. That negative nothingness is felt. Now he can see that he is like darkness.Encountering a buddha you are encountering a mirror, a perfect mirror.I have heard about a woman who was very ugly. She was very much against mirrors, obviously, so much so that whenever she came across a mirror she would immediately destroy it – even other people’s mirrors! People were afraid to let her come close to their mirrors. She would immediately hit the mirror with anything available. And her logic was the same, her argument was the same.She used to say, “These mirrors make me look ugly. I am not ugly – these mirrors are wrong!”The so-called religious people are bound to be against me. The argument is the same: I am functioning like a mirror. The moment your mind disappears and you become a no-mind, you are a mirror. Whosoever comes to you is bound to see his reality. And people live such unreal lives, such unauthentic lives, that how can they forgive me? Impossible. They have to be angry.They would like to destroy me the way they destroyed Jesus, the way they destroyed Socrates, the way they destroyed Mansoor. They would like to destroy me too, because once they have crucified me they will be at ease again. Again they are beautiful because there is nobody to reflect them. The mirror is no longer there, so they can believe in whatsoever they want to believe.They are against me because I am trying to expose them. I am trying to bring to their notice their real, original faces. They are hiding behind masks and I am pulling their masks away. And they are hiding because they feel their ugliness. They have found a cheap way to feel beautiful: to wear a mask. That is the meaning of the word personality: it comes from persona. Persona means a mask. You can wear a beautiful mask and you can deceive others. And slowly, slowly, when many people are deceived by you and they start thinking this is your real face, you become auto-hypnotized; by your own deception you create a self-deception. First you deceive others, then their eyes reflect your face – the mask – then you think, “This is my real face.”When you come to a master his work is to pull the mask away, to loosen the hold of the mask on you. And you have believed in it for so long, and you have rationalized in every possible way: “This is my real face,” that you will be angry with whosoever is going to show you your real face. It is not accidental that always it has been the same; it seems to be the very law of existence that people like me are bound to be crucified in some way or other.I have to destroy much in you. In fact, that is not your reality, but unless your unreal is taken away you will not be able to make any distinction between what is real and what is unreal. You will not be able to know what is essential and what is nonessential.Desiderata is right: one should know exactly what is essential. But to know the essential as essential, first you have to become aware of the nonessential because that is where you are living: a nonessential life, a superficial life. You are acting, you are not really living. You are playing games, you are acting certain roles, you are not living a true life. Of course you have many ways to rationalize whatsoever you do; you have to rationalize, otherwise you will become aware of its falseness. You have to give it all your support, all kinds of arguments.The Christian will give a thousand and one arguments why to be Christian is right. Why is he so self-defensive? Why is the Hindu so self-defensive? – “I am right! I am the only spiritual person in the world. My tradition is the greatest spiritual tradition. My country is the most holy country – even gods desire to be born here.” And every country thinks in the same way and every religion in the same way. These are rationalizations, supports, props for something false. The real needs no support, no crutches. And my work is to take away your crutches.It was somewhat disconcerting to the minister’s wife to hear him exclaim, “Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus!” every time he reached orgasm, and she finally asked him about it.“It is perfectly proper, my dear, and in accordance with the Bible,” he assured her. “Don’t you remember where it says, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’?”People are ready to bring all kinds of rationalizations for whatsoever they are doing. You can always find something in the scriptures to support you.The so-called religious are to be pitied. I feel sorry for them because they are thinking they are religious. They are only pretending – going to the church, going to the temple has nothing to do with being religious.Religiousness is sensitivity, it is awareness. How can you become more sensitive by going to a church and listening to some stupid priest or minister who knows nothing; who lives almost as double a life as you live, in fact more so, who wears thicker masks than you are wearing? Your masks are thin; sometimes even your real faces show. Your masks are very thin. But the priest, the saint, the rabbi, the pope, has to wear a very thick mask. He has to believe in himself and he has to live a double kind of life – one at the front door, one at the back door. And the front-door life is just hypocrisy – he knows it.That is why every so-called religious person feels guilty – guilty because he knows that he is doing something wrong, but he cannot stop doing it because that “something wrong” is wrong only because others say it is wrong. He has not experienced its wrongness. He does not know on his own what is right and what is wrong. He has no light of his own. He has believed others that this is wrong, but his own biology says that it is right. Now he is in a jam, a real jam. If he follows his natural instinct, guilt arises: “I am doing something wrong.”Even a man like St. Augustine says, “My Lord, help me because I go on doing that which should not be done and I never do that which should be done.” Now, this simple statement is of tremendous significance. At least Augustine is sincere and honest; in many ways he was an honest man. If he had not been trying so hard to be a Christian, he would have become enlightened. He missed enlightenment for the simple reason that he was trying too hard to be a Christian. Rather than being himself he was trying too hard to follow the Ten Commandments, to follow in the footprints of Jesus. And, of course, when you follow somebody else this is going to happen. Again and again you will do something which should not be done, and again and again you will not be doing the thing that should be done and that creates a division, a split.If you do what should be done, what is told by the others, then your nature suffers. Then you have to repress, and nothing that is repressed is going to remain repressed forever. It will assert itself again and again, it will start surfacing because it is accumulating momentum, energy.Ruth was too shy to confess, so the priest offered his help.“Did he do this?” asked the padre, kissing her.“Yes, Father, and worse.”“You mean he did this?” he said, touching her breasts.“Yes, Father, and worse.”Finally he had intercourse with her. “You mean that is what he did?”“Yes, Father, and worse, too!”“What worse could he do?”“He gave me the clap, Father!”The so-called religious person is bound to be repressive, and those repressions will create perversions. All sexual perversions are created by the so-called religious people. And the amazing thing is that they are the people who are against all perversions – and they are the creators! They are the culprits, the criminals. For example, they condemn homosexuality, and the source of homosexuality is religious because religions always separated men and women. For monks there were monasteries, for nuns there were different monasteries called nunneries, and they were not allowed to meet, mingle, merge with each other. Now if you put many people of the same sex enclosed behind walls for long periods… And there are monasteries in which you enter once and then you cannot leave; you enter for your whole life. Now, thousands of men living together and thousands of women living together without any way to transform their sexual energies, without knowing anything of Tantra because they are afraid of knowing anything of Tantra…Tantra is the only science which can transform your energy; there is no other science which can transform your sexuality. Just as when you want to know something about atoms you have to know physics, and if you want to know something about chemicals you have to know chemistry, the same way, if you want to understand sex, without Tantra there is no other way, no possibility that there will ever be another way. Tantra has to be understood, but these people are afraid.Because I have been talking about Tantra, the religious people are against me. They never told their people how to transform their sexual energy, so the nuns were bound to become lesbians and the monks to become homosexuals. Homosexuality has its roots in religion – it is a religious phenomenon.Father Sanchez, a priest in Venezuela, went to the Caracas hospital with a stomach tumor. As a gag they told him he was pregnant and that his child had to be delivered by Caesarean section. He was given the baby of an unmarried girl who had died in childbirth.The priest brought up the baby as his son. Years later, on his deathbed, Father Sanchez called the boy to him.“There is something I must tell you,” said the priest. “You have always called me father, but now that I am about to die I have to tell you the truth. I am not really your father, I am your mother.”“Then who is my father?” asked the boy.“The Archbishop of Caracas!”Because I call a spade a spade, the so-called religious people are against me. I can understand their anger and I have no reaction to it. I have only compassion. I can understand why Jesus prayed to God at the last moment on the cross, “Forgive these people because they know not what they are doing.” The same is my feeling: they know not what they are doing. And they are so unconscious that they are bound to behave in this way.And you all have to understand it, and you all have to be very compassionate, because what can they do? For centuries they have been told lies, for centuries they have been brought up on lies and they have accepted them as truths. And I say it is not truth; what you are believing is a lie.Every belief is a lie. Truth has to be experienced, not believed. Truth liberates, but it has to be your own experienced truth; anybody else’s truth is bound to create bondage for you.To help a prisoner who has always lived in a prison to be free is a difficult task, but it is a beautiful challenge too. I have accepted the challenge and I am trying whatsoever I can. And of course, the more I succeed in doing, the more the crowd, the mob will be against me. But I have to do my work and I enjoy doing it. Even if I am crucified for it, that will be perfectly okay as far as I am concerned. That will be a perfect reward for my work.The third question:Osho,Do you have any wish?I wish I were Adam. If I pulled a joke, no one could say, “I heard that one before!”The fourth question:Osho,Why are you being compared with Rasputin rather than with Jesus, Krishna, Mahavira or Buddha? And especially when you are continuously and bitterly criticizing present politics and politicians and giving the world a dynamic view of religiousness?Do you know what they did with Jesus? Do you know what they did with Mahavira? Do you know what they did with Buddha? You are not aware. Of course, they could not have compared Jesus with Rasputin because Rasputin had not yet come into existence. But isn’t it enough proof that they crucified him; that they were not thinking that he is a good man, that they were perfectly certain that he is evil, that he is doing the work of the Devil, not of God; that he is not the Messiah, that he is a pretender? If they were not convinced “He is a pretender and destroying our spirituality, our culture, our religion,” why should they have crucified Jesus?They tortured Mahavira in every possible way. They wounded Buddha; they did everything to kill him. Of course, they could not succeed. That’s the difference between Indians and Jews: when Jews do something they succeed! Indians are Indians: they do, but they can’t succeed.Just a few days ago they threw a knife at me to kill me. Now in a twentieth-century world, trying to kill somebody with an old-fashioned knife – it was something very ancient, totally rusted. When it fell I thought it was a stone.They could not kill Buddha or Mahavira; that simply shows Indian efficiency, nothing else. And do you think they were very happy with Krishna?Jainas have thrown Krishna into the seventh hell. Jainas believe there are seven hells: the seventh is the last hell where the greatest criminals are thrown. Now Jainas have thrown Krishna into the seventh hell. Even Adolf Hitler will be somewhere near the third! Genghis Kahn, Tamurlaine, Nadir Shah cannot go beyond the third. The seventh is reserved only for people like Krishna.Jainas have thrown Krishna into the seventh hell. Why? I don’t think they can throw Rasputin into the seventh hell. Rasputin may go at the most to the second, not to the seventh. Krishna seems to be a far more dangerous man. It was he who persuaded Arjuna to go to war; in that war millions of people died. Now the whole violence, that great massacre of people, was caused by Krishna. Arjuna wanted to renounce the world. The story is beautiful…The war was about to start. The enemies were facing each other, just waiting for the signal to be given so they could start killing each other. Arjuna, seeing the millions of people, became a little shaken. He thought, “This is stupid. Just for the kingdom’s sake, just to be a king, it is not worth killing millions of people.” The insight was so penetrating that he dropped his famous bow and he told Krishna – Krishna was his driver, his charioteer – he told Krishna, “Turn the chariot away. Take me to the jungle, leave me there. I want to renounce the world. I don’t want this kingdom any more and I don’t want to fight.”Krishna persuaded him, argued with him, convinced him that this was his duty, that he was being a coward, that this was escapism. And finally he made him fight. Now according to Jaina philosophy Arjuna was right. He was really becoming a Jaina monk, dropping all violence. Krishna is the dangerous person who gave great logical rationalizations for him to go into war.He says to Arjuna, “It is decided by God – the war is going to happen, it is inevitable. Even if you escape, somebody else will have to take your place, but the war is going to happen. So don’t be worried, you are just an excuse. You are not killing these people; God has already decided that these people have to be killed, and these people have to be killed to save religion. These people have to be killed for the sake of peace. You have to do it – it is your duty!”And he gives great arguments. He says, “And remember, when you kill a person…” and that is the most dangerous argument. He says, “…when you kill a person you only kill his body. The soul is not killed, the soul is eternal. So why be worried? He will be born again. He will have another body, in fact a new body. You take away an old model and he will get a new model because the soul is eternal.”This is a very dangerous argument according to Jaina ideology. This means you can kill, it is not a crime. This man is dangerous. They have thrown him into the seventh hell.You ask, “Why are you being compared with Rasputin rather than with Jesus…?” Jesus was not thought to be a very nice fellow – you don’t crucify nice fellows! Neither was Krishna thought to be a very religious person. You don’t throw religious people into the seventh hell. And Mahavira was thought to be utterly mad by the Hindus, by the Buddhists, because he was roaming naked. He was destroying the Hindu culture. He was not even behaving like a gentleman, what to say about an enlightened man? They chased him out from one village to another village. Finally he was poisoned in his old age – he suffered for six months.Hindus have so much anger against Mahavira that they have not even mentioned his name in their scriptures – they have completely ignored him. Even to take note of him would have been giving some importance to him. His name is not mentioned in a single Hindu scripture. A man of such tremendous truth and even his name is ignored, deliberately, so that he can be effaced from history. And they knew that it can be done because there were very few followers and those followers can be destroyed or converted; the whole thing can be effaced as if it had never happened.They had to mention Buddha in their scriptures because Buddha had millions of followers; it was almost impossible to destroy his name. So just out of sheer necessity they have mentioned Buddha, but in a very condemnatory way. They say Buddha came into the world to destroy religion, to destroy people’s virtue, because hell was empty and the Devil was continuously nagging God: “You have made hell, and hell is empty. For centuries we have been sitting there doing nothing. Send us people! We have perfected every means of torture, but there is nobody to torture and we are hankering. And people are so virtuous; the Hindus are so virtuous, so religious, so spiritual, all the Hindus go to heaven.”So God took compassion on the poor Devil and he said, “Okay. Now I will come to the world as Gautama the Buddha and I will destroy people’s faith in the true religion and I will distract them from their path. I will make them go astray; then they will start falling into hell and you will have enough people to torture.”Hence Buddha is accepted by the Hindus as an incarnation of God, but for what? To fill hell! Hindus are cunning people, far more cunning than anybody else.Crucifying Jesus did not succeed in a way because by crucifying him, Christianity was born. But accepting Buddha as an incarnation of God and yet giving him such a twist, giving such a condemnatory turn to the whole thing, India became completely non-Buddhist. Who wants to go to hell? Buddhism completely disappeared from India, totally disappeared. Even in the temple in Bodh Gaya where Buddha became enlightened – the temple is made in his memory – for centuries they could not find a Buddhist monk to be the priest. There is a Hindu priest in the temple. The temple stands as Buddha’s memorial, but Buddhists disappeared so completely that even for a single temple there was not a single Buddhist to be the priest. The priest is still a Hindu because now it has become a traditional thing. Now the temple is owned by Hindu priests, by brahmins. Strange, because Buddha is against the brahmins, against the Vedas. And the most sacred place for the Buddhists is possessed by the Hindus – a brahmin priest!The Jews killed Jesus, but they forgot that crucifixion will attract many people – it will prove that he was a messiah, it will become a proof, it will become historical, it will go deep into people’s hearts. In fact, the Jews themselves started feeling guilty afterward. Judas immediately committed suicide after twenty-four hours. Just twenty-four hours afterward he committed suicide – he felt so guilty. In the Jews who had crucified this simple man, this poor man, of course a feeling of guilt was bound to arise and when guilt arises, the only way is to cover it up by worshipping, by giving respect. The same Jews turned Christians – they were the first Christians.Hindus succeeded far more cleverly. They did not crucify Buddha, although they tried many times to kill him but could not succeed. But philosophically, metaphysically they succeeded.Do you think that when Buddha was alive people were thinking that he is a god? Then you are wrong. Do you think Mahavira was worshipped by the people as a god? Then you are wrong. Of course, he was accepted by a few disciples as divine, but the major part of the society condemned him. They condemned Buddha, they condemned Krishna, they condemned Jesus in the same way they are condemning me. In fact, in a roundabout way, by calling me Rasputin, they are putting me in the same category as Jesus, Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha – because Rasputin is nothing but an evil spirit in their minds, a very powerful evil spirit. And of course, they are accepting one thing: that there is some power which is working here.Just the other day I received a letter from a sannyasin: a few months ago a television company had made a film of the ashram, and now a Christian priest is doing the commentary on it. And the sannyasin has seen the commentary and the film, and the priest is just stating lies, absolute lies. He has never been here. The film was made by the television company; the priest has never been here and he is commenting on the film, he is giving a running commentary on the film. So when in darshan people are moved, and they are dancing and they are singing and they go ecstatic, his commentary is: “Look! This is black magic! This man is an incarnation of the Devil. What he is doing is hypnotism, mesmerism.”They are bound to compare me with Rasputin just to condemn me. Once they have crucified me, the same people will worship me, but first they have to crucify me. And I am not in any way in a hurry – that’s why there are so many guards and security arrangements. Naturally, twenty centuries after Jesus I am a little more alert about what they can do. Jesus was not alert about it, that they would go to such lengths. I know they can go – I know they will go – but I would like to linger on a little more so I can infect as many people as possible.So they will make every effort to destroy me – but because they cannot destroy they become enraged. Then at least they can write in newspapers and spread rumors – and I love it. I love all those rumors. Even respected newspapers, news agencies go on doing stupid things, but it creates sensation and they live on sensationalism. This is absolutely natural; it has to happen in this way. It can only happen in this way – this is inevitable.Only my people will understand what I am, and I don’t care what others say – not a bit. In fact, I would like them to create as many rumors as possible because their rumors bring people to the ashram – and once they are here I can always hypnotize them! Those rumors are bringing many people here. Once they are here their vision changes, their perspective changes. They start seeing that it is a totally different phenomenon: what is happening here is something totally different from what they have heard. What they have heard helps me because that becomes a contrast.If you come to me thinking “Here is a Rasputin,” and then you see and you listen and you sit in silence with me, suddenly the contrast is clear: where is Rasputin? Here is a simple man, talking in simple language, pouring his heart and his love, sharing his joy; neither interested in any politics nor interested in any organized religion, only interested in one thing – how people can become more aware, more alert, more meditative.The priests are afraid – their business can be destroyed by me. The politicians are afraid because I can create, through creating consciousness, rebellious people. Hence they are going to conspire against me, but all their conspiracy is ultimately a help.It is my observation that truth cannot be killed. You can kill me, but truth cannot be killed. You can crucify Jesus, but how can you crucify truth? In fact, crucifixion becomes a background in which the truth shines forth more clearly, more definitively than ever. So I enjoy their rumors. I never say anything against their rumors.Just a few days ago there was a picture in a German magazine – that I have got two wives, one Indian, one English. And they have even taken the picture as I was getting out of the car. The picture is taken from behind Shiva, and Shiva sometimes does his hair in such a way that his head looks like an Indian woman – so Shiva is my Indian wife! Now I don’t criticize and I don’t say a single word. I loved the idea. Shiva is so beautiful, what is wrong in it? Good! In fact, I should have at least thirty wives, each wife representing one country. Why just Indian and English? Go on spreading the news: “He has thirty wives, one representing each country.” That will be far more right. I have got thirty mediums, you can use them as my thirty wives.But these fools are bound to do such things – this is expected. And I am not worried, because I have nothing to worry about. I have found that which is the fulfillment of my life. Now whether I am famous or notorious does not matter. Whether I am Rasputin or Buddha does not matter. A few people will think about me as Buddha, a few people, and the majority, will think about me as Rasputin. That’s beautiful.One thing I am certainly interested in is that everybody should think something about me!The last question:Osho,I am very angry that you are telling so many jokes about the Polacks.I am very sorry but really the fault is not mine; I am not the culprit. I have got three librarians: Lalita, Gayan and Nandan. It seems one of them has fallen in love with some Polack this month, so they go on sending me beautiful jokes about the Polacks. And the jokes are so juicy that whether you are angry or not I am going to tell them!And this is also a beautiful way to find out how many Polacks are here, because they go on hiding. Nobody says, “I am a Polack,” but this is how I find out who is a Polack.Now even by asking this question you have proved all those jokes are true.Did you hear about the tiger who cornered Mr. Aesop and then proceeded to eat him for his Sunday dinner?“Go ahead, Aesop,” said the tiger, “try and make up a fable about this!”Naturally, tigers and wild animals must be angry about Aesop – he goes on making up stories about them. But I am not making up these stories, I am simply stating facts. You cannot improve upon the jokes – the jokes are perfect.Have you heard about the Polack who started saying intelligent things? He was born perfectly stupid and then had a relapse!What would you suspect if a Polack started behaving in an intelligent way? Rather than suspecting, you could be sure that his mother had not been faithful to his father!Two Polacks go to see a Western movie. In the middle of the film a cowboy, mounted on a white horse, and an Indian, mounted on a black horse, begin to race each other across the plain.The first Polack turns to his friend and says, “I’ll bet you fifty dollars that the black horse gets to the river before the white horse.”“Okay, you’re on!” exclaims the second Polack.A few seconds later, the white horse and his rider splash into the river ten lengths ahead of the black horse.“Listen,” said the second Polack after a pause, “I can’t take your money. I have seen this movie before and I knew that the white horse would win.”“Ah!” said the first Polack. “I have seen it twice before, but that black horse got off to such a good start this time!“The sawmill foreman hired Sofronski, led him to a buzz saw and explained how it worked. He warned Sofronski that it was extremely dangerous, and left him alone.Sofronski, fascinated by the saw, reached out a probing finger toward it. One second later the finger was gone. Sofronski screamed in pain, bringing the foreman on the run.“What happened?” he asked.“Your saw cut my finger off.”“Well,” asked the foreman, “what did you do wrong?”“I don’t know!” said the Polack. “I just touched it like this… Ow, damn! There goes another one!”A gorilla in the zoo died. His female companion, after a few months, began getting violent as her need for sex increased. The zookeepers decided to get a man to make love to her. They picked up a Polack down on skid row and offered him twenty dollars for the job.They muzzled the she-ape, tied her arms to the bars, and let the Polack gingerly into her cage. When the gorilla saw the guy had an erection, she suddenly ripped her arms loose from the bars and began crushing him in her embrace. “Help!” he shouted. “For God’s sake, help!”“Don’t worry,” the keeper shouted back, “we’ll get an elephant gun and shoot her.”“No! No! Don’t shoot her. Just get her muzzle off – I wanna kiss her!”Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,In reference to your advising Indira Gandhi to impose a stricter emergency and suspend elections for fifteen years, Mid-Day carries the headline: “Stick to Your Religious Pursuits, Osho!” Do you have any response?I teach the total man. One of the greatest problems that humanity is facing today is the fragmentary man. For centuries we have divided life into compartments. We have tried to make those compartments absolutely separate, so much so that one expert, one specialist knows nothing about anything else. He becomes very much informed, knowledgeable, about one aspect of life at the cost of the whole. His vision becomes lopsided.They define science as knowing more and more about less and less. The problem now is how to make all these experts understand each other, how to create bridges – because man is not compartmentalized, man is one organic unity. Life is not divided, but we look at it as if it is divided. That “as if” is a fiction.A man is not only a father: he is also a husband, he is also a son, he is also an uncle, he is also a brother; he is so many things. You cannot define him by labeling him as father, as son, as brother. That will be absolutely unjustified and absurd. A man has a multi-dimensional being.Religion, in fact, is not one-dimensional. Religion is a very comprehensive view of the whole of life.I am not a politician, and I am sticking to my pursuit – but religion is multi-dimensional, religion has to be all-inclusive. A politician may not be able to make any statement about religion because he is working in a one-dimensional pursuit. Politics is one-dimensional, science is one-dimensional, art is one-dimensional, philosophy is one-dimensional. That is where religion is totally different from all pursuits. It is not one of the pursuits, it is a vision that includes all. Hence a religious man has to be aware about the whole.That is why sometimes I make statements about art, about science, about politics and about so many things. But up to now religious people have also thought that their pursuit is one-dimensional. After me they will have to redefine religion. I don’t believe in that definition. And I would like to say that I am strictly sticking to my pursuit, but my pursuit is not one of the pursuits – it includes all.Religion is like a bird’s-eye view: the hills, the rivers, the trees, the people – all are included. That is the beauty of religion: it is not a specialized field. And that is why there is great hope that religion will have to be revived to its true nature, resurrected, because now the sciences, philosophy, politics, have all become so fragmentary that nobody knows what is actually happening. The physicist is not aware of what the chemist is doing, the chemist is not aware of what the mathematician is doing, the mathematician is not aware of what the politician is doing. That is how the atom bomb happened: the physicists went on pursuing, and they were doing right as far as they were concerned. To know about atomic energy is one of the great revelations.Albert Einstein, the man who was most responsible for making us know about atomic energy, wrote a letter to the American president, not knowing anything at all about politicians. And his whole life he felt great guilt; he felt himself responsible for all that happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, whatsoever he did, he was not aware, he was not at all conscious about the politician, his mind, his cunningness. He himself wrote a letter, saying, “Why don't we make atom bombs? Now the secret is there, and America can use the energy in many creative ways. It can transform the whole scene on the Earth. It can make man for the first time really rich, healthy; in every possible way atomic energy has the possibility to transform the whole Earth into a paradise.”The American politicians jumped on the secret immediately, but what they did was totally different: the Earth has not been transformed into a paradise; it has become uglier than it was before.In fact, there was no justification at all for dropping atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan because Japan was already losing its fight, they were losing the war. It was only a question of days; maybe the war would have continued two weeks or four weeks longer without dropping the atom bomb. And American politicians were in a hurry: before the war ends they have to throw the bomb to see what power they have gained through atomic energy, whether it is worthwhile or not. Thousands of people died, innocent people. Even the justification that it was needed to end the war is not true. The war was ending on its own; the German and the Japanese resources were finished. They were going to surrender; it was only a question of a few hours or at the most a few days. In a hurry the atom bomb was dropped on two cities, and two cities were reduced into deserts within seconds.Albert Einstein felt the weight of the crime on his own heart; his whole life he remained sad. And when he was dying he was asked if he were born again whether he would like to be a physicist again. He said, “Never, never again. I would like rather to be a plumber!”Can you see the point of it all? The politician has taken over whatsoever science has discovered. It has been done in America, the same has been done in Russia. Now the politician has become so powerful that there is every possibility that any madman – and they are all, almost all, mad people – can destroy the whole Earth.A scientist himself delivered the secret; it could have been prevented. But the scientific pursuit is one-dimensional.Now, it is as if a man’s hands are working on their own, his legs are working on their own, his head is working on its own; his heart is going toward the north, his head is going toward the south, his hands are going toward the east, his feet are going toward the west – and man is falling apart! Who is going to keep man together?Except for religion, nothing is capable of keeping man together. Hence every day the importance of religion will become greater and greater. And remember, when I say “religion” I don’t mean Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism: I mean a quality of religiousness.I am not a politician, but I can see what is happening in this country, and I can see better because I am not a politician. I have no vested interest in politics. I can observe more detachedly, I am just a witness. And because I have no vested interest, my vision is going to be clearer.The more meditative you become, the more clarity there is, and life is no longer like a puzzle. Things which were not fitting before start fitting with each other like a jigsaw puzzle; all the parts start fitting with each other. A pattern arises, a gestalt arises.I say many things about art: I am not an artist. Neither am I a cook, but I can say whether the food is worth eating or not, whether it is tasty or not. One need not be a cook for that. I don’t even know how to prepare tea! I have never done anything like that, but still I can say, “This tea does not taste like tea at all.” And you cannot say to me, “Stick to your religious pursuits, Osho. You have no right to say anything about tea because you don’t know how tea is made. You have no right to say anything about spaghetti!” I have not even tasted spaghetti – ever. Only once it was brought to me. It was stinking, so I simply had to throw it away. That much I can do, for that I have absolute freedom.I talk about music – not that I am a musician, but I have got ears, and sensitive ears, and that is enough. I can talk about art because I have got eyes and my eyes can see what is beautiful and what is not. I need not be a painter to see the ugliness of Picasso’s paintings. I need not be a sculptor to see the beauty of Konarak, Khajuraho or the Taj Mahal. I can see the beauty of Michelangelo’s work. I am not a novelist but I can see Dostoevsky and his great work; I can appreciate Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky. Nobody will say, “You are not a novelist so you cannot appreciate a novel like Brothers Karamazov.”I am not a politician, that is true, but I can see man in his totality because I am deep down utterly silent and clear. And I can see not only that which is happening but that which is going to happen. I can see in the seed the flower, I can see the child in the womb. I can almost visualize what is going to happen, and it is not imagination because I dropped imagination long, long ago. It is not projection either because I have no desires left.As far as I am concerned I am totally fulfilled. If I die this moment, herenow, there is no problem about it. You see? It always happens at the right moment. I can die absolutely blissfully, peacefully, because my life is fulfilled – the flower has released its perfume. So now any moment will be right because nothing is incomplete.I would like to say emphatically that experts are good, but we need a new, comprehensive way of looking at things which thinks of the whole man, and which can make connections between the sciences, which are falling apart.It is very strange that whenever I have made any statement about politics, the journalists have always condemned, me saying that being a religious man I should not make such judgments – but they never condemn the politicians who go on making judgments about religion. This is strange.Morarji Desai makes statements about religion every day. Just the other day he said, “I am serving the Almighty God.” What does he know about God? And just a day before he had said, “I have not yet known God, I have not yet realized God.” Then whom are you serving, and who is this Almighty? If you have not known God, if you have not seen God, how can you serve him? You are serving your own ego, but you want your ego to be puffed up. You even want to decorate your ego with the idea of God. You are not doing ordinary work – you are serving God the Almighty.What service has Morarji Desai done for the poor God? He has been ambitious for himself for his whole life. Does his life in any way give any indication that he has served the Almighty? And he says, “I don’t know, I have not yet realized.” But nobody will condemn him; they will appreciate him. They will say, “Look, our politicians are so religious!” And these politicians go to inaugurate religious conferences. What do they know about religion?In fact, the politician is the last person to know anything about religion because religion needs simplicity, religion needs clarity, religion needs intelligence, and the politician lacks all these things. He is simply cunning, he is not intelligent. He is not even clever, just cunning. He is not intelligent, he is stupid. Otherwise, why should one waste one’s life in just becoming a prime minister or a president?Morarji Desai says, “My first ambition was to be the prime minister. Now that that is fulfilled, only one more ambition is left: to know God. Now that is the last.” The man who has wasted his last eighty-five years in becoming the prime minister, how can he suddenly know God? He will have to transform himself totally and he is not yet out of politics.For a few months he remained silent, seeing that now there was no possibility of his coming back into power. But just three days ago as the riots started and people started creating chaos in the country, he came out. Again a hope has arisen that maybe in the next elections he can gain power again. By the next elections he will be reaching nearabout ninety, but the desire never dies. It seems stupidity grows as you grow. It becomes more and more thick.Just three days ago he said, “Now I am going to be active again because the country needs me.” I have never come across a man who has said, “We need Morarji Desai.” For what? What has he done? But whether you need him or not he is going to serve God Almighty, he is going to remain active in politics. Now he will be active in politics and still ambitious to realize God. He wants to have not only power here but power in the other world too; he wants to know God.He said, “I have realized only a little bit of truth. I have not been able to know the truth in its totality.” Now, except me, nobody in the whole of the country has criticized him. The truth is always known in its totality; truth cannot be known in parts, in fragments. Truth is indivisible.And just to prove that he is right he says that even Mahatma Gandhi has not known the truth in its totality. So he becomes parallel to Mahatma Gandhi; that is his great desire. Mahatma Gandhi was called Bapu. Bapu means father. And whenever somebody addresses Morarji Desai as Bapu, that is the only time he smiles. So those who want to buttress his ego address him as Bapu, and then he is just as joyous as one can be. That is his deepest desire, to be put alongside Mahatma Gandhi.Mahatma Gandhi also never knew the truth because he was on the wrong track as much as Morarji Desai is. Truth cannot be known the way Mahatma Gandhi was trying to know it. To know truth one needs meditation, but to know meditation is to get out of your mind. And then you cannot be a politician. That is the trouble: the politician has to be in the mind, constantly in the mind. Mind is a cunning mechanism. Mahatma Gandhi never knew anything of meditation.A man who knew meditation had written to him, but he felt offended and insulted. That man was also in Pune – Meher Baba. He had lived for thirty years in silence, in absolute silence, not uttering a single word. He was one of the greatest mystics of all the ages, but he was condemned in Pune in the same way I am condemned.Meher Baba, knowing that Mahatma Gandhi wants to know truth, sent him a telegram out of his compassion. He was absolutely silent, but he used to make gestures and the person, the one person who remained with him for thirty years, had become capable of understanding his gestures. There had developed a communication, a deep, heart-to-heart communication, between Meher Baba and his secretary, Adi Irani.Adi Irani came to see me once and I could see that this man has a beauty – such beautiful space and such silence. It was bound to happen: to live with a master like Meher Baba for thirty years, to drink his wine, his presence – and he was his interpreter. It was not from mind to mind because Meher Baba’s mind was put aside. It was a heart-to-heart message.So he was given the message. He telegrammed Mahatma Gandhi: “If you really want to know truth, come here. Be here with Meher Baba for a few days. He feels great compassion for you because you are striving so hard to attain to truth, but what you are doing is not the right way.”Mahatma Gandhi felt offended, as anybody will feel offended. If I invite Morarji Desai, saying, “Come here!” he will feel offended. He felt very insulted. His secretary replied to the telegram saying, “Stick to your own pursuits. I am trying to find my own way and I will find it in my own way. I don’t want anybody’s help.”The politician is so egoistic. Even if somebody is willing to help he will not take it. But these politicians go on talking about religion; Mahatma Gandhi went on talking about religion.He has written a commentary on Srimad Bhagavad Gita, the most childish commentary, because thousands of commentaries have been written on the Bhagavad Gita – Mahatma Gandhi’s is the most childish. It is the only commentary which can be made a text in the primary schools.Now Morarji Desai has become a great commentator on Srimad Bhagavad Gita and nobody says, “What right do these politicians have to talk about the Bhagavad Gita? What can they understand about it?” But when a man like me says anything about politics they are immediately ready. It seems there is a great fear. But they don’t understand my vision, my approach.My approach is total. I am going to talk about art and painting and music and poetry, politics, philosophy, theology. I am not going to leave any dimension untouched. I am not an expert about anything.Just as science is defined as knowing more and more about less and less, religion is defined as knowing less and less about more and more. Religion is concerned with the whole. It cannot know as much as the expert knows, but it has a very inclusive view, a very organic view. It thinks of the whole, the religious man takes account of the whole; hence he is the only person who can guide humanity. The experts are dangerous.A scientist was helping at the accouchement of his wife, holding the paraffin lamp. When the doctor had produced not one but three fine babies, the scientist disappeared with the lamp.“Here, come back with the lamp. I think there is another!” called the doctor.“I will not!” called back the scientist. “It is the light that attracts them!”The live-wire salesman walked into the factory and demanded an interview with the manager. “Look here, sir,” he began energetically, “I would like to talk to your men and sell them my correspondence course on how to put fire and sparkle into their work.”The manager turned pale. “Get out!” he yelled. “This is a dynamite factory, you idiot!”On a plane flight there was a lively child who nearly drove everyone crazy. He was running up and down the aisle when the stewardess started serving coffee and he ran smack into her, knocking the cups of coffee to the floor.As he stood watching her clean up the mess she glanced up at the boy and said, “Look, why don’t you go out and play?”A little house is up for sale and the owner is showing around a philosopher who is going to buy the house. “The house is small,” he says to the philosopher, “but very comfortable and cozy – there is even an orchard. And the price is very low. There is only one inconvenience: every two hours there is a train which passes by just a few feet from this window. But I assure you, after a week you won’t notice it any more.”“Well,” says the philosopher, “it means that for the first week I will sleep somewhere else!”The engineer was standing underneath some scaffolding where he had been working. Looking up, the boss noticed him and yelled, “What are you doing down here? Why aren’t you up there working?”“Well,” said the engineer, “I was up there, but when I was winding my wristwatch it fell.”A little puzzled, the boss told the engineer that the watch was gone and he had better get back to work.“Ah, no, boss, you don’t understand. The watch was ten minutes slow, so I have still got another three minutes to find it!”The expert knows only his line, his dimension, and that is a very narrow one and it is becoming narrower every day. He loses all contact with the whole of life. That is why we have destroyed the whole ecology of the Earth. Our expertise is responsible for it because ecology means thinking about the whole.The carpenter is interested in wood, he knows about wood; he does not know anything about what the trees are doing. He is not aware that they attract clouds and rain, that they keep the earth together, that without them the Earth will become a desert, that clouds will not come any more or even if they come they will pass without showering their rainwater. He is interested in wood, he knows about wood – the texture of the wood, the beauty of the wood – but he is not interested in the whole phenomenon.So we went on cutting forests. Now we are suffering immensely because trees are a must. The whole climate is disturbed, not only the climate but the whole atmosphere, because trees breathe in the carbon dioxide that we breathe out, and they breathe out oxygen which we breathe in. We need oxygen, they need carbon dioxide; we are interdependent. If trees disappear, oxygen disappears, and then the air becomes more and more polluted with carbon dioxide which is not needed by your hearts, by your lungs, by your bodies. Already there is too much carbon dioxide in the air, which is dangerous to health.But a woodcutter or a carpenter has no vision; his whole interest is in the wood. The woodcutter is interested in how to find out more efficient ways to cut wood. The person who knows about the oxygen and hydrogen and carbon dioxide knows nothing about wood and its texture, he knows nothing about the carpenter. He goes on working in his direction, the other goes on working in his direction, and they go on destroying the ecology.Ecology means the interdependent cycle of existence. Everything depends on everything else; nothing is absolutely independent, cannot be. We are parts, very small parts, cogs in a wheel. Somebody has to know about the wheel: of course, the man who knows about the wheel will not be able to compete with any expert because he will know less and less about more and more.The ultimate state of buddhahood is knowing nothing about all. And what will be the ultimate state of the scientist, the expert? – knowing all about nothing. That is the logical consequence. If science knows more and more about less and less, then what will be the ultimate result? – knowing all about nothing! It is becoming narrower, narrower, narrower and there is only one point left: nothing, zero.And religion knows less and less about more and more, and what will be the ultimate state? – knowing nothing about all. That is what Dionysius calls agnosia. That is why Socrates says, “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” But that does not mean that Socrates has not made statements about politics. He has, and he has suffered for it.And I know that I will suffer, but now nothing can be taken away from me. Even if my life is taken away, nothing is taken away from me. So I am going to make statements about everything, and that is really sticking to my own work. I am not entering into anybody’s field. I am not an active politician and I am never going to be. I am not going to paint, I am not going to compose poetry. I am not going to write a novel, but I will go on making statements about every dimension so that I can give you a total vision: of how it looks from far above, from the clouds – when you sit on a cloud and look at the Earth.The first man who walked on the moon – his greatest surprise was not the moon: his greatest surprise was to look at the whole Earth as one single unit. For a moment he forgot that he is an American. For a moment there was no America, no India, no Russia. He shouted, “My Earth!” The Earth was whole. Of course, from that distance the Earth is one, all political boundaries disappear because they are only on the map.In fact, every child should be taken to the moon and should be shown the whole Earth, as a whole. That will be real teaching of geography. What you are teaching in the name of geography is politics, not geography. India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran; this is not geography, this has nothing to do with the Earth, this has something to do with politics. You are just teaching them nonsense. Let them go to the moon and from the moon let them see the Earth as one whole. Of course, they will not come to know much about India or China. As they go up, far away, they will come to know less and less about more and more, but they will have a comprehensive view.I am looking from the moon – my name means moon. Mr. Rajneesh means Mr. Moon! And whatsoever I am saying I am going to continue because I have nothing to lose. I have no vested interest, so whatsoever happens is good.The second question:Osho,Is moral character absolutely useless?Moral character simply means something imposed by others on you: it is not really religious. It is a form of domination, a form of slavery, because you have not come to the understanding of what is right and what is wrong, you have simply been told by others. You don’t know really whether what you are calling “moral” is moral or immoral. One thing is moral in one society and the same thing is immoral in another society.Just look around the Earth, have a little bigger vision, and you will be surprised: there are so many moralities. How can there be so many moralities? Right is right and wrong is wrong – there is no possibility of many moralities. There is no possibility of a Hindu morality or a Mohammedan morality or a Jaina morality – but there are different moralities. That simply shows all these moralities are inventions, inventions by different societies to dominate the individuals that make up those societies. It is a strategy for imprisoning the individual.The whole process is a very subtle trick. Now we have even found a shortcut to it. One great scientist, Delgado, has found that electrodes can be put into the human brain, and you will not know anything about it because the brain is the most insensitive part in your body.It happened once that a bullet was found in a man’s skull after eleven years. When he went for some other operation and an X-ray was taken, they found a bullet inside his skull. He had been in the army and for eleven years the bullet had been inside, and he was not even aware of it because the brain has no sensitivity, it is absolutely insensitive.An electrode, a small electronic mechanism just like a small button, can be put inside your head and you will never know that it is there. And you can be controlled from far away; you can be controlled by anybody who knows about that electronic mechanism inside your brain. He can have a small remote control unit: he can push one button on it and you will be angry, he can push another button and you will be full of love, he can push a third button and you will become very quiet, and a fourth button and you will become utterly violent.Delgado has proved it. He inserted an electrode into a bull’s brain and he stood there with his remote control unit. The bull was left wild, and he pressed a button. The bull became so enraged that nobody had ever seen a bull becoming so enraged for no reason at all. And he charged toward Delgado. Thousands of people had gathered to see the experiment, and they thought the bull was going to finish Delgado, that the experiment was over. Their breaths stopped. The bull reached so close, just one foot away; one second more and he would have killed Delgado. But he pushed another button and there was a sudden stop. The bull stopped as if frozen, became just a statue, just one foot away. All rage simply disappeared. He was standing there in a yoga posture, frozen, not moving at all!And Delgado says the same can be done with man. Now Delgado, sooner or later, is going to deliver the secret to the politicians, just as Albert Einstein did, and then you need not wonder what will happen. Then it is absolutely certain that in countries like Soviet Russia and China, when they are born children will be immediately changed into slaves – just a small operation in the skull. And from the Kremlin, from Moscow or Peking, the president of the country or whosoever rules the country can control the whole country. He can send waves and there will be great peace, and he can send waves if he wants the country to fight some other country and people will be so violent, so murderous that one single individual will prove to be like ten or a hundred murderers. This is going to happen because now the secret cannot be kept away from the politicians.The same thing has been done by the so-called moralists down the ages, but their process was a bullock-cart process. This is a jet-set age. Delgado is saying that this is the way to control human behavior. There is no need to teach morality – for what? Simply insert an electrode and let everybody be controlled.That is what the priests have been doing for centuries, but of course they were not aware of such a subtle mechanism. They were creating conscience in you; that is also an electrode. Every child was continuously being told: this is right, this is right, this is right… And what was wrong: you have to do this and you have not to do that. This creates a conscience, an auto-hypnotic state. By the time the child comes of age they have created a certain idea of good and bad in him. Now his whole life he will be in trouble. If he follows the morality he will become a hypocrite, because morality has never taken any consideration of his nature, of his uniqueness, of his individuality. He has never been taken any account of, he has not been considered at all.Some guy, Manu, five thousand years ago, decided what is right and wrong for the Hindus. It is still valid – for the Hindus it is still valid. Still there are women who commit suicide by jumping into the fire at the funeral of their husbands because Manu said that to be a sati – to die with your husband – is the greatest virtue a woman can ever attain. Still today, every day, almost every day, somewhere or other some woman commits suicide, burns herself alive. And these women are worshipped by the Hindus, they are worshipped like saints and all that they have done is to commit suicide.It is illegal, it is a crime, because the British who ruled India for two centuries could not conceive any morality in it; they could see that it was just suicide. Their mind was not created by Manu. Their mind was created by Moses and in the Ten Commandments there is no commandment which says that the woman has to commit suicide, so they were very much against it. They made a law against it. The law is still there but in spite of it, every day the crime happens. And the woman who is committing suicide believes she is doing something really great, something belonging to the high order of values.The Mohammedan has his own morality. Just a few days ago in Moradabad a riot happened because a pig, an innocent pig, entered into the sacred prayer place – the Idghah – of the Mohammedans. While they were doing their prayer the pig entered. Now some stupid person somewhere in their history has said to them that the pig is the most unholy animal on the Earth. Pigs are just poor people, maybe a little bit Polack, but poor people and very innocent! How can a pig make the holy place unholy? That means the unholiness of the pig is far more powerful than thousands of Mohammedans praying in a holy place. Their prayer is not great enough to transform the pig. The pig changes their whole atmosphere.They killed the pig and they killed the constable who was standing outside because they thought he had allowed the pig to enter – he was a Hindu. And the riot broke out. One hundred and thirty people died immediately and this is the official number; whenever there is an official number given, multiply it by four, then you will have the right number. At least six hundred people must have died, or more.The Hindus believe in the cow, that it is the holiest animal in the world, even holier than many human beings. The sudras, the untouchables, who constitute the major part of the Hindu society, are not as important as the holy cow. To murder a sudra, says Manu, is not a big crime; to murder a cow is the greatest crime one can commit. You can commit hundreds of other crimes, it is nothing, but to kill a cow… Now that is Hindu morality, and every Hindu believes that the cow is his mother. This has become his conscience. And the same is true about everybody.Morality is invented religion, not discovered religion. Discovered religion has to be your own, then certainly a great revolution happens in you. Then certainly your character has a virtue, but then it is not moral; it is religious, it is spiritual. Moral character has value to those who want to enslave you, but it is against you. You need a spiritual character, and spiritual character is not born out of moral education; it is born out of meditation. You need more awareness, not more moral education.That is why I am not emphasizing moral character at all; my whole emphasis is for the essential. If at the very center of your being some knowing, some clarity arises, your life will be different, totally different. It will have a beauty, a grace. It will not be Hindu because you will not live according to Manu; only stupid people do that. Living according to somebody else is stupidity.You are not here to live according to me. I can only help you to find your own insight, that is all. I am not going to give you my insight – that will be moral character if whatsoever I think is right I impose upon you. But one man’s nectar may prove poison to another; something which is a medicine to one man may kill somebody else. So what is right to me, what is true to me, is only true to me. But I can help you to discover the source from where you can also see.For example, a blind man can be helped in two ways. One is you give him detailed information: “Go a hundred feet forward, then turn to the left ninety degrees, then go two hundred feet, then turn to the right a hundred feet again,” and so on in this way, in detail. This is morality. The blind man remains blind, but he starts functioning, starts moving.To give meditation is to give a blind man eyes. Then you need not give him detailed information: “First go right and then left and then this and that.” There is no need; you have given him eyes. Now he can see where he has to go, where the path turns toward the left and where the path turns toward the right – because life is such a complexity.You cannot guide the blind man forever. He is bound to stumble somewhere or other, he is bound to commit many mistakes, he is bound to forget many things. And every moment new situations go on arising, and he will be simply following your information that may not be true any more. Life goes on changing.Chalecki, a traffic policeman, asked his friend Manzini if he knew of a bawdy house in town. Manzini gave Chalecki the address. The following day they met on the street.“Well,” asked Manzini, “did you enjoy yourself?”“Nah,” replied the Polack, “I find house okay, then I spend whole night waiting outside.”“Why didn’t you go in?”“I was waiting for the red light to change!”Now a traffic policeman has become fixated! A red light means only one thing for him.A smart New York career girl married Stefano, a handsome young Italian farmer. She was not too happy with his social manners and started trying to improve him immediately. Throughout the wedding reception she continuously corrected his mistakes, telling him what to say, which knife to use at the table and how to pass the butter.Finally the celebrations were over and they were in bed at last. Stefano fidgeted between the sheets, unsure of himself, but finally he turned toward his new wife and stuttered, “Could you pass the pussy, please?”That is bound to happen! That is inevitable.A moral person remains stupid and unintelligent because he depends on others’ guidance. And guidance that Manu gave five thousand years ago is no longer relevant at all, the whole context has changed. The moral person lives according to the past and the meditator lives according to the present. The meditator responds to the real situation and the moral person only goes on reacting according to ready-made formulas.These puritans and moralists have stuffed your minds and your beings with rubbish. They have made you junkyards!A housewife adorned with a head full of curlers, puffy eyes, no make-up, covered in a tatty old dressing-gown and worn-out furry slippers runs out of the house with the garbage just as the garbage truck is about to move on. She rushes up to the truck and, panting, asks the garbage man, “Am I too late?”“No, ma’am, just jump right in!”Drop conscience and create consciousness, and then you will be living an authentic life. And to be authentic is to be divine. To be authentic is to know what godliness is all about. To be authentic is to be true to Tao, the ultimate nature. “Aes dhammo sanantano,” Buddha says. “This is the ultimate law. Be conscious, be a light unto yourself.”The third question:Osho,I love to make love in the morning, but my wife hates it. What should I do?Your wife is right, as wives are always right.Enrico Caruso was the matinee idol of the society opera world in the early 1900’s. He was also privately one of the more active lovers of his time. The following remark is attributed to the great Italian tenor.“I never make love in the morning,” said Caruso. “It is bad for the voice, it is bad for the health, and besides, you never know who you might meet in the afternoon!”Listen to your wife – she is right!The fourth question:Osho,Can you please speak on your vision of an intelligent person?Every child is born intelligent, and every grown-up person behaves like an unintelligent person. This is one of the strangest things, because intelligence is a gift from existence and existence is not a miser. It gives to everybody out of its abundance, out of its overflowing intelligence, bliss, love. Everybody comes so rich and everybody becomes so poor! What goes wrong?

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.We have come to a beautiful end of the journey. These are the last sutras of Desiderata. Each word of these sutras is pregnant with immense possibilities. Each word has a multi-dimensional meaningfulness; hence it has to be meditated upon. Go slowly with each word.Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.What is a wholesome discipline? The word discipline comes from the same root as the word disciple. It means learning. Remember, learning is a verb, not a noun. It does not mean knowledge, it means the constant process of knowing. Knowledge is a dead thing, you can accumulate it. Even a computer can have knowledge, but a computer cannot learn, cannot be a disciple. A computer can only reproduce whatsoever has been fed into it; it is mechanical.Knowledge is mechanical accumulation; learning is a conscious process. It is a process like a river, always moving from the known toward the unknown, always ready to explore. Knowledge stops, learning never stops.A man like Socrates is a man of learning. Even at the moment of death he is still learning. When he was given the poison, his disciples started crying and weeping. He said, “Don’t miss this opportunity to learn something about death. It is one of the greatest events in life, in fact the greatest event because it is the culmination, the crescendo, the climax. Wait, watch, meditate on what is happening to me.”That is actually what he did. The others were crying and weeping; they were not in a state of exploration – as if they knew what death is. Nobody knows what death is, although you all have died many times; but you still don’t know what death is because you missed the opportunity of learning, you were not alert enough to learn. Hence, again and again you have died, again and again you have missed the opportunity. You have missed the opportunity because you go on believing as if you know what death is. You don’t even know what life is, how can you know what death is?Once a man came to me and asked, “What happens after death?”I said, “Forget about it! First try to learn what happens before death. Have you learned that? Do you know what life is?”He said, “I don’t know.”I said, “You are alive and you don’t know what life is – how can you know what death is? You will know it only when you are dying. But if you don’t know life, the same way you will miss that opportunity too.”Socrates remained alert to the very last moment. He went on telling his disciples to the very last moment what was happening to him. He was learning, he was teaching.A real master is always a disciple. A real master is always learning. He never claims knowledge; in fact, he claims agnosia, a state of not knowing. That’s what Dionysius calls it: a state of not knowing. Socrates has said: “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” This is agnosia.One has to remain in a constant state of not knowing, one has never to allow oneself to become knowledgeable. The moment you become knowledgeable the process of learning stops, you have come to a full point.Socrates said to his disciples, “Listen, you can weep and cry later on. That can be done later on, it is not very essential right now. Right now something immense is happening. My feet are becoming numb, they are dying, but strange – although they are dying, I don’t feel I am dying.” Then he said, “My legs have gone absolutely numb, I don’t feel them. They are dead, but I am still whole – nothing is missing. As far as my consciousness is concerned, it has not even been touched by death.” Then he said, “My hands are disappearing.” Then he said, “Now, even – I am afraid any moment my heart will stop; it is sinking. But I am still as whole as I have ever been, so one thing is certain: that by the death of the body one does not die. Death happens to the body, not to the consciousness because my consciousness is still intact.”His last words were, “My tongue is getting numb and I cannot say anything more, but remember, even up to now I am as whole as I have ever been. Nothing has died in me. Something has died around me, on the periphery, but in contrast the center is, in fact, more alive than ever. I feel more alive because the body is dead, all the life has become concentrated. It has disappeared from the body, from the circumference. It has become focused on a single point: I am.”These were his last words. This is the process of learning.A knowledgeable person is always a stupid person, he is unintelligent. You will not find pundits intelligent. They cannot be, they know – the process has stopped long, long before. Professors are almost always stupid people. It is very rare to come across a professor who is still learning. They stopped the day they left their universities, the day they graduated. The day they became MA’s or PhD’s or DLitt’s, they died.Taoists in China have a saying that a man dies nearabout the age of thirty; then it is only a question of when you are going to bury him. You may bury him after thirty years, forty years, fifty years, that is another matter – but as far as life is concerned a person dies nearabout thirty.This saying is certainly true. In fact, psychologists say that the average human being’s mental age is only twelve years. That means the mind has become dead, has stopped functioning at the age of twelve – not even thirty. That’s why people go on behaving childishly.And remember, to be childlike is totally different from being childish. To be childish is ugly: to be childlike is to be a sage. To be childlike means to be in the state of agnosia, learning. To be childish means you already know. Only a childish person can think that he already knows, that there is nothing left to know.The more stupid you are, the sooner you become knowledgeable. The more intelligent you are, the more difficult it is to become knowledgeable – because to become knowledgeable means you have come to the very end of your intelligence. You are finished, you are spent.This is the first meaning of “wholesome discipline.” Your priests, your imams, your popes, your shankaracharyas are all dead people. They go on quoting from the scriptures like parrots, but if you just dig a little deep in them you will not find anything; you will find only rubbish. You will find them as ordinary as anybody else. The only difference is that their egos are puffed up with borrowed knowledge.A learner never depends on borrowed knowledge. He himself tries to experience life, love, death – everything. He tries to explore every possibility. He never misses an opportunity, he never misses any challenge in life. He risks; he takes all challenges, accepts them, welcomes them. And whenever the unknown calls him he is ready – ready to go, to take a jump, to go into the uncharted, to go into the unmapped, to go into the unmeasured, unfathomable. It needs courage.Otherwise, it is very easy and cheap to become knowledgeable. It needs no courage; any coward can become knowledgeable. But knowledge remains only skin-deep, not even that.A wealthy jazz musician decided to go to church one Sunday. After the service he approached the preacher with much enthusiasm. “Reverend,” he said, “that was a swinging sermon, man. I flipped my lid. That was the grooviest!”“I am happy you liked it,” said the Reverend, “but I wish you would not use those terms in expressing yourself!”“I am like sorry, man…Reverend, but I dug that sermon so much!” said the cat. “In fact, it sent me so much, I flipped a C-note into the collection pot!”The Reverend said, “Crazy, man, crazy!”Just skin-deep! Just scratch a little bit and you will not find much difference. There is no difference; the qualitative difference is non-existential. But there exists a difference that is of quantity – you know less, they know more – but it is of quantity. And a quantitative difference is not really a difference – not a difference that makes any difference. The quality is the same; you are moving in the same way. Between the rich man and the poor man the difference is not of quality, the difference is of having less money or more. With the ignorant and the knowledgeable it is the same.The real difference happens when there is a buddha around; then you know the difference of quality. He functions from a different level altogether.I have heard…Hillary was on the last leg of his momentous climb. Just as he was about to reach the virgin summit of the highest peak on this Earth, he saw a Hindu monk squatting in the snow ahead of him. Hillary was so astonished he could not utter a single word. But the Hindu monk, seizing the opportunity said, “How much for your watch?”Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. The discipline is wholesome, healthy, only when it comes not out of the mind but out of meditation. Mind is only a small part of you: whatsoever comes out of the mind is going to remain fragmentary. And we live in the mind. Mind means knowledge – borrowed, accumulated, not experienced. Experience happens only when you go into something totally, not only mentally.You can know much about love. There are thousands of books in the libraries about love, but you will not know love that way. You have to be in love to know love.Knowing about love is not knowing love. Knowing about God is not knowing godliness. By knowing about God you will become a great theologian but not a mystic. You will not be a Christ or a Buddha or a Lao Tzu or a Zarathustra. You will be simply a pundit who has become capable of repeating the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, the Bible, the Dhammapada, the Talmud; but the pundit knows nothing. He has not tasted godliness, he has not become drunk with the divine yet.Mind is a very small fragment of your totality; its function is to know about. If you really want to know something, not only about – remember, the meaning of the word about is around. About and about means around and around. One goes in circles but never reaches the center, and the real thing is at the center. It is the center that matters.A man like Ramakrishna is absolutely unknowledgeable. You can even call him ignorant – ignorant in the sense that he is not a scholar, he cannot quote scriptures. But there is no need for him to quote scriptures. He knows God; he need not know God through anybody else. He knows God because he knows through totality, he contacts existence through his totality.The discipline is wholesome, healthy, organic, when it happens not through a fragment but when you are intensely, passionately, totally involved in something. You cannot love through the mind; for that you will have to enter into the world of no-mind. That is what meditation is all about.True learning happens through meditation. Meditation means putting aside the past and looking into the present, making an immediate contact with the now and the here, because God is now, God is here. God is always now and always here. Mind lives in the past because it lives in knowledge. Knowledge means that which you have known, understood, learned. And existence is now and mind is then, existence is here and mind is always there. Mind looks backward; it is like a rearview mirror. If you are backing your car the rearview mirror is okay, but if you are going forward then it is dangerous to go on looking in the rearview mirror. And if you become fixated on the rearview mirror you are bound for an accident. You are in great danger, you are being suicidal. Life moves always forward; it has no possibility of going backward.When the first Ford car was made it had no reverse gear. That is how life is. The reverse gear was added later on – from experience, because when you wanted to get back home you had to go miles around to do it. Then the thought occurred that it would be better… Even if you had gone just a few feet ahead of your house you could not come back; you had to take a long route. Maybe you had to go around the whole town, only then you could come back. Then the reverse gear was added.But existence has not yet added any reverse gear. There is really no need to go back. The past evaporates – there is no past. It leaves only traces in your memory system; otherwise it is not there. Existence is always present; past is only memory and future is only imagination. There is no future, no past. That which exists is the only real thing, and mind does not allow you to be in contact with it. How can you learn, how can you experience? Your experience cannot be wholesome, healthy. It will be sick, it will be unhealthy. And it has turned every person almost into a monster.Your head goes on becoming bigger and bigger, and everything else has become so shrunken that it is almost disappearing. People are just like heads, with small legs and hands; just heads. This is a state of being a monster. Man has become a monster: he has lost all balance, all harmony. The head has exploited everything. It has destroyed your organic unity; it is like a parasite that goes on becoming bigger and bigger at the cost of your totality.Desiderata says, Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. It is because of this unwholesome state of affairs that discipline has taken a very wrong connotation. It has become almost synonymous with control, and control means repression. And repression is not the way of learning, repression is a way of avoiding. The man who represses sex is avoiding sex, and he will never understand it. And that which is repressed is bound to take revenge because it is not finished, it is there. Unless something is experienced you cannot go beyond it, you cannot transcend it. The only way to transcend is through it, not by repressing it, not by bypassing it, not by ignoring it. It will come and it will come with a vengeance; it will explode one day. Yes, you can win little battles, but you are going to lose the ultimate war. You are going to lose in the race – finally. Maybe for the moment, for the time being, you can deceive yourself that you have succeeded.Repression cannot succeed because that which has not been lived, that which has not been experienced, remains in you, in the unconscious. In fact, it goes deeper into the unconscious and it starts spreading there like a cancer.Humanity up to now has lived in a very controlled way; that’s why humanity is suffering. Everybody is miserable, everybody is in anguish, tension; everybody is depressed, everybody is in a strange state – always falling apart, falling into pieces. Life seems to be just a struggle to survive somehow, not something to rejoice in, not something to dance about, not a song, not a celebration – just a drag. If you can go on holding yourself together somehow, that seems to be more than one can expect.Why has this happened? Why has man become so sad? The trees are not sad, the animals are not sad, even the rocks are not sad. The whole existence, except man, is always celebrating. It is always a dance, a song. It is always “Alleluia!” – an unending celebration, a festival. What has happened to man, what has gone wrong with man?The so-called religious people are responsible. They have taught humanity only one way, which is a wrong way: the way of repression – repress yourself, control yourself.Mahatma Gandhi used to say – and he is quoted by his disciples as if he had said something immensely significant. He used to say to his followers: “Be gentle with others, but never be gentle with yourself. Be hard upon yourself, otherwise you will lose the battle.”What does he mean by being hard upon yourself? – control, repress. His whole life he repressed many things, and they all asserted themselves sooner or later – they came to the surface. He repressed his sex, and then at the age of seventy he became aware that what he had been doing had not succeeded. His sexuality had gone deeper; it had spread its roots to the unconscious realm of his being.At the last phase of his life he started experimenting with Tantra. That phase is not mentioned by his followers at all; they avoid it. They don’t want to say anything about it, they don’t write about it. He started sleeping with a naked young girl, just to bring up to the surface what he himself had repressed for forty, fifty years continuously. Now he wanted to bring it to the surface so he could see what had happened. He was in a mess: a man who has repressed his whole life and has been against Tantra his whole life.You will be surprised to know that he was the man who had suggested to the government of India that temples like Khajuraho should be buried under earth. They should be covered with mud so nobody could see them: “Of course, don’t destroy them, but let them be covered with earth, so once in a while if somebody wants to study them, only for that purpose can they be uncovered, otherwise there is no need.” He was so afraid of the naked statues of Khajuraho and finally he started sleeping with a young, naked girl. This shows what happens to a repressive person. In the last phase when all time was spent, when he was a spent force, the repressed sexuality started asserting itself.He was a sincere man, but an utter failure as far as spiritual growth is concerned. He succeeded as a politician, succeeded greatly. He was one of the most successful politicians ever but he failed spiritually. But he was a sincere man. That much must be said about him – he was a very sincere man. He confessed, “In my dreams sex still enters. In my dreams I still go on seeing naked women.”A repressive person has a totally different logic. Rather than trying to understand the message of the dreams, that it was a message from the unconscious… He never read about Sigmund Freud; he must have avoided Sigmund Freud. The man who wanted the temple of Khajuraho to be buried, how can he study Sigmund Freud? – because Freud was digging out temples of Khajuraho in every person! Thousands of years this repressing has gone on and on; it has driven humanity mad. Mahatma Gandhi never read a single word of Sigmund Freud, which would have been of immense help to him. He must have been afraid. But he confessed that still sexual dreams, sexual fantasies, floated in his dreams.The logic of a repressed person is totally different. If he had been a man of meditation he would have pondered over the message, he would have learned something – but he started repressing more. It is a vicious circle: you repress more, your dreams become more sexual, then you repress more. You become harder – you think that you have not repressed enough.He started cutting his sleep from seven hours to five, from five to four. He even became afraid of sleeping, because whenever you sleep dreams come. And the dreams were becoming more and more sexual as he was becoming weaker, as old age was entering into his body, the vigor of his youth was disappearing.People think that when you are young it is very difficult to repress sex; they are wrong, totally wrong. The real difficulty comes when you are old because when you are young you have enough energy to repress, and when you become old that energy to repress is no longer there. So whatsoever you have repressed starts coming up; it starts surfacing.Control is not the meaning of discipline, repression is not the meaning of discipline. That is a very unhealthy attitude. Understanding, meditation, is the meaning of discipline.Rabbi Greenberg died and went to heaven. He saw only three people there, reading by a dim light. One of them was mad “Jibhai” Morarjibhai Desai who was reading Playboy, the second one was Ayatollah Khomaniac – he was reading Gallery – and the third was Pope the Polack who was reading Genesis. And they were all reading very religiously. He could not believe his own eyes. First he could not believe that there were only three people in heaven, and then he could not believe they were all religiously reading Playboy, Gallery, Genesis – and reading so religiously, as if they were reading the Gita, the Koran or the Bible.He decided to see what hell was like. The rabbi got to the Devil’s domain and it turned out to be a big nightclub with every kind of music being played. There was an eight-piece Dixieland band, a thirty-piece swing band, and all the people were dancing.Rabbi Greenberg went back up to heaven and asked for an audience with God. “I don’t understand it, Lord,” he said. “There are only three people in heaven and they are all reading, and they are all reading things which should not be read, and they are reading them so religiously. I am amazed, I am surprised! And down in hell everybody is dancing and having a good time and these three people look so sad and so ugly. Why can’t we have some music in heaven, some dance in heaven?”The Lord said, “I can’t hire a band just for these three stupid people!”Repression, control can only make you stupid. And remember, even if you go to heaven you will smuggle some old copies of Playboy, Gallery and Genesis, because here you missed them. They are bound to go with you. Here you were reading the Gita, the Koran and the Bible; here you were repressing. It is easy to repress in a life of seventy or eighty years, but in heaven it is infinity. How long can you repress, how long can you sit upon a volcano? Sooner or later it is bound to erupt.Remember, a wholesome discipline has nothing to do with control or repression. Desiderata is tremendously significant when it says: Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.Meditate, and meditate totally, and put your whole energy into it. Beyond that, be gentle with yourself.Now the so-called religious people have never been gentle with themselves. In fact, we call a person a saint only when he tortures himself, when he is masochistic. The more masochistic, the greater a saint he is. The more he tortures himself, the more followers worship him. That’s how we have been deciding who is a real saint.I am condemned in India, and also condemned outside India, for the simple reason that I am not an ascetic, for the simple reason that I am not masochistic, that I don’t torture myself and I don’t tell you to torture yourselves. I am neither a masochist nor a sadist, and for centuries religion has been sado-masochistic.The saint tortures himself and teaches others to be like him, and he creates guilt in you if you cannot torture yourself – and no intelligent person can torture himself. Hence all intelligent people have been feeling guilty. Only stupid people can torture themselves. That’s why in the faces, in the eyes of your saints you will see nothing but sheer stupidity.You can go around India and you can see so many saints, and you will be surprised; no intelligence, no sharpness. They are not like swords, sharp; their swords are all full of rust, covered with dust. They have lost all their sensibility, all their awareness. They have become fixated on one thing; to torture themselves more and more. And intelligence will not allow it, so they have to repress intelligence, they have to become stupid, they have to be almost dead. They don’t teach you how to live; they teach you how to commit slow suicide. And all the religions have been doing it, more or less. Hence the so-called religious cannot think of me as religious, they cannot think of me as holy. But to me, to be whole, to be wholesome, is holy.…be gentle with yourself. I agree with Desiderata. Love yourself, respect yourself, be gentle with yourself. Unless you are loving toward yourself, you cannot be loving at all. Unless you care about yourself, you will not care about anybody else; it is impossible.I teach you to be really selfish so that you can be altruistic. There is no contradiction between being selfish and being altruistic: being selfish is the very source of being altruistic. But you have been told just the opposite up to now, you have been taught the contrary: if you want to be altruistic, if you want to love others, don’t love yourself – hate yourself in fact. If you want to respect others, don’t respect yourself – humiliate yourself in every possible way, condemn yourself in every possible way.What has happened out of such teaching? Nobody loves anybody. The person who condemns himself cannot love anybody. If you cannot love even yourself – because you are the closest person to yourself – if your love cannot even reach to the closest point, it is impossible for you to reach toward the stars. You cannot love anything – you can pretend. And that’s what humanity has become: a community of pretenders, of hypocrites.Please try to understand what I mean by being selfish. First you have to love yourself, know yourself, be yourself. Out of that you will radiate love, understanding, tenderness, care for others. Out of meditation arises true compassion. But meditation is a selfish phenomenon, meditation means just enjoying yourself and your aloneness, forgetting the whole world and just enjoying yourself. It is a selfish phenomenon, but out of this selfishness arises great altruism. And then there is no bragging about it. You don’t become egoistic, you don’t serve people, you don’t make them feel obliged to you. You simply enjoy sharing your love, your joy.You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars…Desiderata says, don’t condemn yourself: You are a child of the universe… You belong to this beautiful existence. This existence has needed you, otherwise you would not have been here. And it needed you the way you are, otherwise it would not have created you the way you are. So don’t try to be somebody else.If existence needed another Jesus, it would have created another Jesus. If it can create one, why can’t it create millions? Just as we create cars on an assembly line – millions of cars, similar cars go on coming out of the factory. Every second a car comes out of the Ford factory. Existence could have done it; existence can do it. If Ford can do it, do you think existence cannot do it? Just an assembly line: only Jesus Christs or Gautama Buddhas. But then the world will be very ugly.Just think of a world of Jesus Christs, it will lose all enrichment because it will miss variety. And who will crucify Jesus? It will be very difficult! He will go on carrying his cross on his shoulders and he will not find anybody to crucify him because he will find other Christs who are carrying their crosses – nobody to crucify, nobody to teach. To whom will he say, “Blessed are the meek”? They all will say, “Shut up! We know it already. Of course, blessed are the meek!”Just think, all Gautama Buddhas sitting under trees. Who will feed them? The day Gautama Buddha became enlightened, a beautiful girl called Sujata had brought him sweets, food. In fact, Buddha remembered three persons very respectfully: the woman who raised him, because his mother died immediately, and his mother’s sister gave him her breast – he respected her tremendously; Sujata, because before he became enlightened she had fed him, she brought nourishing food for him – he had fasted for many days and she nourished him; and the man who gave him the last food before he died.He said these three people were immensely fortunate, blessed, because to give your breast to a buddha or to nourish him just before his enlightenment or to give him food, the last farewell food, is serving existence in a very invisible way. Because with every buddha, with every enlightened person, with every awakened human being, existence starts reaching toward higher peaks. It takes a jump with every buddha.But existence never repeats anybody. If there are only buddhas, then there will be no Sujata. Who will feed these buddhas, who will serve them? Who will follow them, who will listen to them? Who will they transform? They will feel utterly bored! They will not have anything to do, their lives will be just empty.No, existence needs everybody the way he is. Never try to be somebody else. Desiderata says: Be yourself – because existence needs you the way you are, you fit exactly as you are. You see the tremendous message? Desiderata is saying: Accept yourself.You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars;you have a right to be here.You belong. You are not a stranger. You are not accidental; you are intrinsically needed. Remember, the greatest need in life is to be needed, and if you can feel that the whole existence needs you, you will become tremendously cheerful, you will be turned on! You will feel the most significant experience; you will become ecstatic if you can feel that the whole existence needs you, that you will be missed, that if you are not here there will be a gap, you will be missed. You are not unnecessary, you are not superfluous; you have tremendous significance.Hence, love yourself. You are needed as much as the trees, as the flowers, as the birds, as the sun, as the moon, as the stars. You have to be here and you have a right to be the way you are. Assert yourself as you are; never feel guilty.All the religions have created guilt in you, and that’s how they have been exploiting you. They create guilt in you, then you are bound to go to the priest; you are bound to go to the church, to the temple to pray because you are feeling guilty, a sinner. They go on telling you that you are a sinner. And why are you a sinner, why does God go on creating sinners? If this is the way he works, then he is at fault!Why did God create Adam and Eve the way he created them? Why did he tell them not to eat from the tree of knowledge? If he had not told them, I don’t think they would have discovered the tree of knowledge; in the great, vast Garden of Eden they would not have been able to discover it. By saying to them, “Don’t eat from the tree of knowledge,” he made them obsessed with the idea. Now it was very difficult for them not to eat from it. He is responsible, nobody else.A man was traveling along a road when he suddenly felt an urgent need to shit. He happened to be passing a huge mansion, so, driven by his urgent need, he went up to it and rang the bell. When the maid answered, he told her his plight and asked if he could use the bathroom.The maid said, “Wait a minute, sir, and I will ask Madam.”She then came back and said, “Madam says you may use the bathroom, but on no account are you to press the fourth button!”So he was shown to a most luxurious bathroom with gold fixtures and wall-to-wall carpeting. With great relief he shat in the toilet. Then noticing the buttons on the wall he pushed the first one – and a spray of warm, soapy water sprang up and washed his bottom clean. Fascinated, he pressed the second button – and cool, perfumed water arose to rinse him. In great delight, he pushed the third button – and a hand bearing a soft towel appeared and gently patted him dry.It was too much! He could not resist the temptation. He pushed the fourth button. Wham! Bam! Excruciating pain… He woke up in a hospital. The lady of the house was standing by his bed. “I told you, I warned you not to press the fourth button,” she said.“Wh-what wa-was the fourth button for?” he stammered weakly.“That,” she said, “is my tampon remover!”Drop all guilt. Otherwise, beware of the tampon remover!And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.It is the most perfect universe. Don’t try to improve upon it. Do you see the beautiful message of Desiderata?Therefore be at peace with God…There is no need to be worried about God, there is no need even to seek him, there is no need even to search for him. Just be at ease, at home in this universe. And that is the way one finds him – not the seeker, not the searcher, but one who is at home, one who is at rest, one who is relaxed with existence, one who knows the beauty of total acceptance.Buddha’s word for it is tathata – suchness, acceptance. Buddha used to say again and again: “This is the way things are, and this is the way they are supposed to be.” Don’t get into unnecessary troubles trying to improve upon them.That is what your missionaries go on doing, and your social reformers and your so-called politicians. They are all trying to improve upon the world and all their efforts to improve are simply making things worse; they are creating a mess in the world. If somehow these social reformers, these do-gooders, can be stopped from doing their good, the world can be at ease: …at peace with God.Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be.It does not matter how you conceive God. Don’t quarrel about it; it does not matter. You can conceive him as having one thousand hands. He really has millions of hands, otherwise how can he create so many trees and so many people and so many stars? With just two hands it will be too difficult. If you want to conceive him as a trinity, perfectly good, because really existence can be understood as a trinity.Even physicists will agree with you. Their names will be different, but not very much different either. They call those three elements the electron, neutron, proton. Nobody has seen them and nobody will ever see them, so physicists cannot say that believing in the Christian trinity – God the Father and Jesus the Son and the Holy Ghost – is nonsense because nobody has seen them. Who has seen electrons, neutrons, positrons? They are all Holy Ghosts! And the physicist knows nobody will ever see them; all that we see are consequences. We don’t see electrons, neutrons, proton, but we see something which can only be explained if we accept those three; otherwise existence becomes unexplainable. So it does not matter: you can conceive God as a trinity, or as Hindus conceive him, as trimurti – three-headed.Just the other day somebody asked me, “What do you say when you meet a three-headed monster?”Of course you say, “Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!”So how do you conceive? It doesn’t matter! Three times “hallo.” You go round and say, “Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!” to all the three persons.How you conceive, Desiderata says, does not matter. Those are all possibilities. But if it helps you to be at peace with existence it is good.You will be surprised to know that Buddha has defined truth as that which works. A strange definition, but I think perfectly right: that which works. Whether it is a lie or a truth does not matter; if it works it is a truth.You see a rope in the dark and you think it is a snake and you run away. And you are huffing and puffing, and you fall down, and you have a mild heart attack. It is a truth! For you at least it has functioned as a truth.Buddha says: “Whatsoever works is true, whatsoever helps is true, whatsoever leads you toward more understanding is true.” It is all hypothetical. That is the meaning of hypothesis: that which helps you to understand.Desiderata says, don’t get into arguments about God because that is unnecessary. And Christians and Buddhists and Jainas and Hindus and Mohammedans are continuously arguing, barking like dogs against each other, always at the throat of the other, trying to cut it, trying to prove themselves right.The person who is continuously trying to prove himself right simply says that he is afraid of his not being right. Deep down somewhere he doubts, and he tries to convince others “I am right.” He is trying through others to convince himself “Yes, I am right” and the other is also trying the same way. The Christian is not interested in Christ, remember, neither is the Hindu interested in Krishna, nor is the Buddhist interested in Buddha: their interest is in trying to prove themselves right. But the trouble is, there are many others who are saying different things, so first they have to prove them wrong, only then can they be at ease. But it is impossible to prove anybody wrong. How can you prove that the other is wrong if his hypothesis has worked for him?Mahavira attained to truth, to the ultimate, to peace – the peace that passeth all understanding, the peace that transcends all understanding. So whatsoever his hypothesis is does not matter, it is only a jumping-board. No need to argue – just look at Mahavira. That is enough proof.Jesus reached home, so by what route he reached, whether that route is the shortest or not, does not matter. There are people who enjoy the longer route.I had one friend; just a few days ago he died – a beautiful man. While I was traveling around India, sometimes he used to accompany me. He loved to travel by passenger trains. I said, “What nonsense! We can reach from Mumbai to Kolkata in one hour’s time by plane. Why waste forty-eight hours on the train? – and that too if you catch an express train.” In passenger trains in India, it is as if one goes on and on for eternity! If you travel in passenger trains in India you will start believing in eternity. It really feels eternal, non-ending.But he said, “At least once you should come with me.”So I said, “Okay.”We traveled by passenger train from Jabalpur to Jaipur. We reached in four days. But he was also right, because he had always traveled by passenger trains. At each small station they stop, and you can get out and they stay for hours, and you can have tea and you can go out of the station. You can even have a trip around the village and come back! It was a beautiful experience. And because he was always traveling by passenger trains he knew where you can get the most delicious tea, on what station, where you can get the most beautiful food, where you can get whatever. He knew everything, and everybody knew him because he was always traveling, so he was acquainted with everybody.And he said, “Look, almost the whole country knows me and nobody knows you. How can people know you if you just fly over them? They will never forgive you!”And I really never knew that there are so many beautiful stations and so many beautiful trees and so many beautiful people. And he had so many friends. I understood his idea. I enjoyed that journey.So don’t condemn anybody; let them follow whatsoever they feel fits with them. And no two persons are the same; hence no single path is applicable to everybody, no single hypothesis.That is why I speak here on Jesus, on Buddha, on Mahavira, on Krishna, on Lao Tzu, on Chuang Tzu, and Dionysius and Heraclitus, and I have been speaking on almost all kinds of mystics. And people think I am eclectic – no, I am not. I am simply making you aware of the millions of paths to truth, because I see something beautiful on each path which the others miss. They each have their own beauty.You have to choose your own path – you have to choose. Millions of alternatives are available, and it is good that you can choose.When Ford made his first cars they were all black, and he used to say to customers, “You can choose any color provided it is black.” Then what choice is left? “…provided it is black.”It is good that existence has so many flowers of different colors, different shapes, different sizes, different fragrances. It makes it multi-dimensional. …whatever you conceive him to be. Desiderata does not say anything to you about God, it simply says be at peace with existence. And whatsoever hypothesis helps you to be at peace, it is good.And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.These words have to be understood: And whatever your labors… When a woman gives birth to a child we say she is in labor. That’s exactly the meaning of the word labor. You should not call all laborers “laborers”; only the creators know what labor is. A Van Gogh knows what labor is, a Michelangelo knows what labor is, a Dostoevsky knows what labor is. Labor means giving birth to something, sharing with existence by creating something.The only way to worship God is to be a creator in some way, whatsoever you can create. You can create a garden, you can create a statue, you can paint, you can compose a song, you can play upon the guitar or the flute, or you can dance. Whatsoever you can contribute, be a creator. To be creative is the only real prayerfulness, all other prayers are just empty rituals. If God is the creator, then the only way to know God is to be creative. That is the only way to participate with him, to be a participant in his life, in his work, in his being.Here my sannyasins are taught only one prayer: that of being creative. If you can act, be an actor. If you can design clothes, design clothes. If you can do some woodwork, do woodwork. If you are a jeweler, be a jeweler.…whatever your labors and aspirations… Ordinarily we call the creative person the inspired person – that is not right – we should call him the “aspired” person. Why? Desiderata has chosen aspiration instead of inspiration. Inspiration means taking something in; when you breathe in it is inspiration, when you breathe out it is aspiration. Inspiration means taking in; aspiration means sharing, giving out. Aspiration simply means exactly what the word education means: bringing something out; the flower out of the seed, the water out of the well – making the potential actual.Because for thousands of years you have been told that inspiration is good, you go on following others. You become inspired by Christ, then you become a Christian, an imitator. You become inspired by Buddha, then you become a Buddhist, something pseudo. A Buddha is beautiful, a Buddhist is ugly. A Krishna has tremendous beauty, but the Hindu is just a fanatic. Don’t be inspired by anybody because by inspiration you will become only a follower.Become afire with aspiration, with the joy of creation. Then you will know that there is pain in giving birth, but there is immense ecstasy too. And because of the ecstasy, the pain of giving birth is transformed into a sweet pain. Then even thorns are beautiful because they come with roses. Then even nights are luminous because they are part of the days. Then darkness is beautiful, velvety, because light cannot exist without it. Then all is acceptable; then nothing is rejected. In that total acceptance one can live peacefully at the center.…in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. Then it becomes very easy to be always at peace. If you are at peace with existence, if you are at peace with yourself, then nothing can disturb you, nothing can distract you. Then you remain centered, rooted, grounded in your being. Even in the marketplace where it is all noisy and all confusion, you remain clear.But be a follower, be an imitator, and you will lose all peace of your being because you will be trying to be somebody else, which you can never be. You can never succeed in being somebody else. Hence you will remain in anguish and you will remain in confusion; and you will remain split, you will remain schizophrenic. You will go from insanity to more insanity. Your life will become a hell.I would like nobody to be a follower, an imitator. My sannyasins are not my followers, they are my friends – lovers but not followers. They are not inspired by me, but they learn aspiration. They are not to function like me, they are not to be like me; they have to be themselves. I teach them freedom, not following. I teach them individuality, uniqueness, not imitation. Hence they are at peace.Whosoever comes to this commune, even the people who are against me, even they feel that something is totally different. It is not the same atmosphere as it is outside the gate. The moment they enter the gate they can immediately feel a different energy field. It is because my people are at peace with themselves, they are not trying to improve upon anything. They are just being themselves, they are sharing whatsoever they can, and they are perfectly happy. There is no desire to be more, there is no desire to be somebody else. There is no guilt, there is no goal. They are at rest. That creates this tremendously peaceful atmosphere.With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.Remember, never forget. Yes, you have traveled long in a way which was not true to your being; hence you have felt as if you are dragging yourself and life is a drudgery. People are deceivers – because they have deceived themselves, how can they not resist the temptation of deceiving others? If you deceive yourself – and what is a Hindu doing? – trying to deceive himself. What is a Christian doing? – trying to deceive himself. He knows nothing of Christ, but he is trying to imitate.One of the greatest Christian books is Imitation of Christ by Kempis. Imitation? – the very word is ugly! But Christians have loved that book very much. In fact, next to the Bible that is their most cherished document.Every religion wants people to be imitative, and the total result is that it creates boredom. Life becomes a drag, not a dance. And because you deceive yourself, you try to be that which you are not. Naturally, when you can deceive yourself, if you are not even honest with yourself, how can you be honest with anybody else in the world? You become totally dishonest. And you have lived in dreams, and all dreams are bound to be broken – so that has to be accepted; it is nothing to complain about.To live in a dream means you will have to suffer; sooner or later the dream is going to shatter. No dream can be made permanent. You have loved in your dreams, you have been ambitious in your dreams, you have been greedy in your dreams. You have wanted this and that, and always more and more, but in your dreams – and they have all to be shattered. In fact, it is good that they all are shattered sooner or later because unless they are shattered you will never wake up, you will remain fast asleep.Your dreams are like intoxicants. You can drink alcohol, but how long can you remain in it? Tomorrow you will be back, and all the worries and all the anxieties will be back, and you were trying to escape from them. There is no escape. There is only understanding – which helps. Escape does not help at all, your troubles will go on increasing. But that’s what we are doing with our dreams. All our dreams are our ego projections.A majestic elephant is in the jungle eating lunch when he sees a little mouse eating some seeds near his foot. He says grumpily, “Go away, you little runt! You are ugly and too little to be in the big jungle!”Shyly, the little mouse looks up at the elephant and squeaks, “It is just because I was sick when I was small!”Nobody accepts himself. Everybody is trying to be big. Even the mouse has its own rationalizations! Then, of course, how long can you go on believing in something which is false? Your life becomes a long series of broken dreams, but it is because of your own stupidity. It is not because life itself is a drag. Life is a dance! If you are falling out of the dance, it is up to you. Life gives you freedom to be in step with the dance or out of step. It is your choice. If you fall out of the dance, of course you will feel everywhere as if you are unwelcome. The simple thing is, you are not harmonious with the whole – it is your decision. The whole is always ready to welcome you; the whole cares about you. Because it cares about you it has given you freedom.Freedom to be oneself is the greatest gift of existence to every person. You can misuse it, and when you misuse it you suffer. You can live in a sleepy way, you can live like a drunkard; that’s how people are living.Two men went duck hunting one cold morning. One of them produced a large bottle of whiskey and proceeded to keep himself warm with the spirits, getting drunker and drunker, much to his companion’s dismay.Finally, a lone duck came over flying very high, too high to be taken. The drunkard fumbled for his gun, got steadied, and finally pulled the trigger. The duck tumbled to the ground.“An amazing shot!” exclaimed his companion.“Nothing really,” said the drunk, “I usually get two or three out of a flock that size!”What you are seeing may not be there at all; it may be just a projection, a dream. You are not in your senses. You are not conscious, you are not alert, you are not aware.Siwicki, about to be married, mentioned to a buddy that he was planning to take only two days for his honeymoon because he was so busy at the office.“That’s too bad,” said his friend. “You won’t have much time. How far did you plan to go?”“Oh,” said Siwicki, “all the way, naturally!”People have become stupid, and out of their stupidity they act, they understand; they try to work out, figure out what it is all about. And of course there is confusion.The Nagorskis were driving to Miami Beach in a brand-new car. As they drove along, he put his hand on her knee.“We are married now,” she said, “you can go a little further.”So he went to Fort Lauderdale.Because of your sleep you remain retarded, you remain childish.Joey, age six, and Suzy, age seven, decided that they would marry and had a meeting with their parents to break the news.Joey’s father asked, “Where will you live?”“Well, we thought that we would live one week here and one week at Suzy’s house,” replied Joey.“And what about money?” inquired Suzy’s mother.“Well,” said Suzy, “I get one dollar a week and Joey gets one dollar a week, and I have always heard you say that two can live cheaper than one.”“And what about children? Have you thought about having children?” asked Joey’s mother.“Oh, we have decided to wait a little while with that one,” said Joey. “And if Suzy should lay some eggs, I will step on them!”With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.Have laughter in your heart. Take life playfully.Strive to be happy.If you are miserable it is your own work, it is your own creation, it is your own decision. You can instantly change – you can drop it all. It is not natural. To be miserable is an unnatural state; to be blissful is just natural, so there is not much of a problem. Once you understand that somehow you have lived in a state of unconsciousness, and that’s why you have created all kinds of anxieties around you – if you wake up those dreams will evaporate.Meditation simply means waking up – it is time, it is always time. Wake up!Being a sannyasin simply means that you have decided not to remain any longer in an unconscious state. And the moment you wake up, all misery disappears. Suddenly you find all is joy, all is bliss, all is benediction. Your very being is the kingdom of God. Jesus says again and again, “The Kingdom of God is within you,” and you are seeking it outside; that’s why you are miserable. It is inside and you are seeking outside – you will never find it. Hence the broken dreams: the drudgery, the boredom, the fed-upness, the tired, exhausted feeling and the constant complaining, grumbling mood. You are surrounded by no’s.You can live as a yes, and to live as a yes is to be religious. To say, “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” to existence is to be religious.Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,What is surrender? I used to think I knew. Now it is a mystery.False knowledge demystifies existence; true knowledge re-mystifies it. Knowing, if authentic, makes life more of a mystery than it has ever been before. Knowledge certainly covers your eyes with dark clouds and creates a wall of thick smoke; you start feeling you know. In fact, you are going deeper into ignorance. To be knowledgeable is to be more ignorant than even the ignorant ones.The Upanishads have a tremendously significant statement. They say: “The ignorant man is lost in darkness, but the knowledgeable man is lost in deeper darkness than the ignorant man.” – because the knowledgeable lives in an “as if” world. He thinks he knows, but he knows not. He only believes; he has not seen. He believes in God, he believes in love, he believes in surrender, but belief is always a cover-up. Your wound is covered, but it is not healed that way. In fact, the more you cover it the less is the possibility of its ever being healed. Expose it to the sun, to the wind, to the rain – expose it to the healing forces that surround you.Mahavira standing naked under the sky is simply saying, making a silent statement: “Be naked, drop all your clothes, don’t hide!” And we are not only wearing clothes on the body – they are not that important – we are wearing clothes and clothes, layers and layers of knowledge, which are really hiding our truth from ourselves.To be really naked before existence is to know, but that knowing is totally different from knowledge. It is closer to feeling than to knowledge, it is closer to love than logic, it is closer to experiencing than believing. It is existential.The blind man believes in light; the man of eyes sees it. And when there is seeing, no question of believing arises. Only the blind believe; the seers have no need to believe – they know! But to know life is to know that it is unknowable. To know life is to know that it is an unfathomable mystery, immeasurable.The word matter means the measurable, it comes from measure. Science is wrong because it thinks that life can be measured, fathomed, demystified. Knowledge believes that life can be divided into two departments: the known and the unknown. That which is known today was unknown yesterday; that which is unknown today will become known tomorrow. The unknown will go on receding, the unknown will go on disappearing. The known will go on becoming bigger and bigger, and one day all will be known.The buddhas, the awakened ones, have divided life into three planes: the known, the unknown and the unknowable. The known and the unknown are not different, not much different. They belong to the same category – they are measurable. That is the world of matter. The unknowable is the world of life, consciousness, love, light, truth, godliness.It is beautiful that you say, “What is surrender? I used to think I knew. Now it is a mystery.” This is the beginning of real knowing, when the whole of life becomes a mystery, when you come to a state of not knowing at all – agnosia in the words of Dionysius. Or remember the words of Socrates, “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” Or the words of the Upanishads – the Upanishads say: “The person who thinks he knows, knows not; the person who knows he knows not, knows.”To enter into the unknowable is the greatest adventure, the greatest ecstasy, but one feels afraid, one feels that one is losing something. You can lose only that which you have not got. Let me repeat: you can lose only that which you have not got. You can never lose that which you have got; there is no way to lose that which you have got. If your knowledge has disappeared that simply means it was not real knowing.Now is the beginning – athato brahman jigyasa – now begins the enquiry into God.Surrender is the quantum leap from mind to no-mind, from ego to egolessness. And in a single step the whole journey is contained. It is not a long journey from you to God; it is a single-step journey. It is not a gradual phenomenon; it is not that slowly, slowly, gradually you come to the divine. It is a quantum leap. One moment you were in darkness and the next moment all is light. All that is needed is to put the ego aside.Zusya, the great Hasid mystic, was dying. His old uncle came to see him and said, “Zusya, have you made peace with God?”Zusya opened his eyes, laughed, and said, “How many times have I said to you that I have never been in conflict with him, I have never fought with him – so why should I make peace with him? For what? There is no reason in it! I have always been at peace with him.”Nobody had ever seen him praying, there was no need. Nobody had ever seen him going to the synagogue, there was no need. No one had seen him reading the scriptures, there was no need. He had done the real thing: he had put his ego aside. And the moment you put the ego aside, the curtain disappears. Godliness is not hidden, only your eyes are closed. Open your eyes!Surrender means opening the eyes. Surrender means dropping the false idea, “I am separate from the whole.” It is a false idea, so in fact you are not dropping anything.You are calculating wrongly: you are doing some arithmetic, two plus two is four, but you are putting five. The moment you realize that two plus two is not five but four, are you dropping something, are you renouncing something, are you losing something? Will you feel that it is a loss – it was five and now it is only four? No, it is not a loss because it was never five, it was always four. When you were thinking it was five, then too it was four. Not even for a single moment was it five. You were in a delusion.Ego is an hallucination. You are not separate from the whole – trying of course; hence the whole misery. Trying to do something which is not possible, which is impossible, is bound to create misery. Misery is unnatural; it is your invention. Misery does not exist; it is your hallucination, it is a nightmare created by you. It is your great work!Bliss is natural. Bliss is the very nature of the way things are. “Aes dhammo sanantano,” says Buddha, “Bliss is the way things are.” But you are trying to be something which is not possible: you are trying to be separate, you are trying to be an island, and you belong to the continent, the vast, infinite continent of God or godliness.Surrender means seeing “I am not separate” – just seeing “I am not separate.” Nothing is surrendered, nothing is dropped; just a nonsense idea, a dream is no longer there because you are awake.Two young couples had decided to spend their honeymoon at the same hotel. The first morning the two young men came into the hall at the same time and met at the elevator.One turned to the other and said, “Say, where’s your wife?”“Oh, she’s in her room, smoking. Where’s yours?”“Oh, she’s hot too, but she’s not smoking!”Just a misunderstanding!An Irishman, on the night that his wife was confined in childbirth, went out a bit prematurely to celebrate the addition to his family, with a few chosen cronies. He did not return home to his family until three o’clock in the morning.He was barely in the house when the nurse rushed up and uncovered a bundle of blankets, showing the bewildered Irishman triplets. At this very moment the clock struck once, twice, three times.“One, two, three… Sure, an’ I could count ’em myself, small thanks to ye,” Pat addressed the clock solemnly. “An’ one thing more – I’ll be thanking the good God I did not come home at twelve!”Ego is a state of blindness, of drunkenness, of dreaming. Just waking up is surrender. Either wake up and surrender happens, or surrender and you are awake. They are two sides of the same coin.The moment you are awake, the whole becomes a mystery. Suddenly all knowledge evaporates like dewdrops in the early morning sun. For the first time your eyes are full of wonder like a child. It is a second birth. In India we have called the man who comes to know the mystery of existence, dwij – twice-born.Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Unless you are born again you will not enter into my Kingdom of God.” He also says, “Unless you are like a child you will not enter into my Kingdom of God.” What does he mean? He simply means that a rebirth is needed. The way you have lived is the way of the ego. You have to drop that whole lifestyle. You have lived believing that you are separate from the whole.It is as if a leaf on the tree believes that it is separate from the tree, although believing makes no difference in reality – it is still part of the tree. But its belief will create much misery for it because the moment the leaf starts believing, “I am separate,” it starts dreaming of separate aspirations of its own. It starts thinking in terms of achieving something. It becomes ambitious, it has to reach some goals. It starts deciding its own goals – which are not possible, because when the wind comes and the whole tree sways and dances, this small leaf wants not to dance. Now there is frustration. It has to dance with the whole tree. Hence the proverb: Man proposes and God disposes. God really never disposes.The problem is you, the problem is in you, the problem is in your very proposal. The leaf is proposing “I want to be still,” and the whole tree is dancing. Now, it is not possible. The leaf of course will think the leaf proposes, and the tree disposes and then what can the tree do? The tree is part of the earth, of the sky, of the sun. The tree cannot exist without the sun, without the wind, without the rain – it is part of it. What can the tree do? The wind is blowing, it is swaying with the wind. The tree is part of a bigger phenomenon. Everything is part of something bigger. Ultimately we are part of one organic unity; we are rooted in existence.But our whole effort, our whole education, our whole so-called religion, culture, all give us the idea “You are separate.” Even the so-called religion which goes on talking about dropping your ego on one hand, on the other hand goes on nourishing and feeding your ego. “Be virtuous and you will be respected,” they say. You will be respected, remember. “Be virtuous, be knowledgeable, and you will be respected – not only here but even after death, in the other world too. You will go to paradise, to heaven and those who are not virtuous will fall into hell.” As if we are separate.Buddha has said: “The moment I became enlightened, the whole existence became enlightened with me.” Now there is something of tremendous significance. What does he mean by this statement? Certainly you are not enlightened, but he is saying, “The moment I became enlightened I came to know that I am not separate. And if I am enlightened, the whole existence is enlightened, because there is no separation anywhere, there is no demarcation. Either the whole is enlightened or I am not enlightened; there is no other possibility.”Buddha is right; the same is my experience. I see you all as enlightened – not only you but the trees and the mountains too. The whole existence is enlightened. But man has one privilege; he is free to choose, he is free to believe. He is free to forget who he is, he is also free to remember it.Think over the word remembering. It really means becoming part again of the whole, becoming a member again of the family that existence is: re-member. It means that we suddenly learn the language that we had forgotten. It is like a name forgotten: you see somebody on the road, you recognize him, you feel that you know who he is, but you cannot remember. You have forgotten, although you can remember that you have known him before. You say, “His name is just on the tip of my tongue.” But if it is on the tip of your tongue, then why is it not coming? You feel absolutely certain; the name is just on the tip of your tongue. And then you try hard: the harder you try, the more difficult it becomes, because whenever you try very hard with something you become tense, you become closed. Your consciousness becomes narrower and narrower and it becomes more and more difficult in such a tension, in such anxiety, to remember.Then you drop the whole project, thinking that it is not possible. You forget all about it. You start listening to music or you go into the garden and you sit under a tree, or you start doing something else, sipping tea or talking to somebody – and then suddenly from nowhere the name surfaces.This is the whole secret of enlightenment: it happens in relaxation, it happens in a deep state of rest. Surrender means relaxing. Ego means tension, carrying a load of anxiety, and unnecessarily.I have heard that a woman, an old woman, was traveling by bus, and she was trembling and continuously asking what stop it was.The stranger sitting by her side said, “Relax, don’t be worried. The conductor will go on announcing what stop it is, and if you are too worried I will call the conductor. You can tell him where you want to get down so he can keep a note of it – and you relax!”He called the conductor and the woman said, “Please remember. I don’t want to miss my stop. I have to reach somewhere very urgently.”The conductor said, “Okay, I will make a note of it, although even without your asking I would announce it. But I will make a note of it and I will come to you particularly and tell you whenever your stop comes. But you relax. Don’t be so worried about it!”She was perspiring and trembling and looked so tense. So she said, “Okay, note it down – the bus terminus.”Now if it is the bus terminus, why should you worry? How can you miss it? There is no way of missing it!The moment you rest, the moment you relax, you know that existence is already going, moving, reaching toward higher peaks and you are part of it. You need not have separate ambitions, you need not think of yourself in terms of a person. You are not a person.This is surrender: relaxing, resting, dropping all private goals, dropping the whole achieving mind, all the ego projections. And then life is a mystery; your eyes will be full of wonder, your heart will be full of awe and to me that is authentic religiousness: wonder and awe. The man who is full of wonder and awe is the only religious person – not the Christians, not the Hindus, not the Mohammedans. They are too full of knowledge; they are too full of rubbish, junk. They are simply repeating scriptures like parrots.Hindus go on reciting the Gita. Of course, if you go on reciting the Gita you will become acquainted with words, but not with meanings. You can go on repeating them for millions of lives, but there will never come the moment of understanding. In fact, the more you repeat, the more mechanical you become. The more you repeat, the more you lose the quality that can bring you closer to awakening. Repetition helps you to fall asleep.That is the whole secret of lullabies that every woman knows, every mother knows. She simply sits by the side of the child, tucks him underneath the blanket, and starts a monotonous lullaby – just one line again and again and again. Of course the child falls asleep – he has to fall asleep. It is so boring! He wants to escape somewhere and there seems to be no way out, so he escapes into his sleep. The lullaby is the most ancient form of hypnosis.There are methods for grown-ups too; for example Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation. It is just a lullaby, a little sophisticated. It is meant for grown-ups, for adults. It is a process of auto-hypnosis. The mother is no longer there and your wife certainly is not going to sing a lullaby to you. She can freak out, but she cannot sing a lullaby; she can throw pillows at you, but she cannot sing a lullaby. She will say, “I am not your mother!” – and you cannot ask her either please to sing a lullaby because that will hurt your male chauvinist ego.So you start repeating a mantra. It has to be in some dead language which you don’t understand; Sanskrit, Arabic, Latin, Greek, Chinese, anything that you don’t understand. If you understand you will not get into it. If you understand, doubts will arise. If I say, “Just repeat, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola,” you will repeat it two or three times, and then you will say, “What nonsense am I doing?” A Sanskrit mantra is just like Coca-Cola – nothing special in it, but you don’t understand so you believe that there must be some secret in it, some great mystery in it, and you go on repeating it. You are singing a lullaby to yourself; soon you will fall into sleep.Transcendental Meditation and such methods have become more important in the West for the simple reason that the West is losing the art of how to fall asleep. People are suffering from sleeplessness more and more; they have to depend on tranquilizers. Transcendental Meditation is a non-medicinal tranquilizer. And nothing is wrong if you know that you are using it as a tranquilizer, but if you think you are doing something religious then you are stupid. If you think this is going to lead you to meditation you are a fool, an utter fool, just a simpleton.It is not going to take you into meditation because meditation means awareness. It is taking you toward just the opposite of awareness; it is taking you toward sleep. I am not against sleep – a good sleep is a healthy thing. And I prescribe TM for all those who suffer from sleeplessness, from insomnia. It is perfectly good, but remember that a good sleep has nothing spiritual about it. It is good for the body, it is good for the mind too, but it has nothing to do with the spiritual dimension. The spiritual dimension opens up only when you are awake, fully awake. And the only way to be awake is to drop all sleep and all dreaming.The ego is the center of all your sleep and all your dreaming. If you can put the ego aside – seeing that it is a false thing, why go on carrying it? Put it aside. In fact, there is no need to put it aside – seeing that it is false, it drops of its own accord. The moment it drops a tremendous explosion happens in you. For the first time you are awake, fully awake, totally awake. There is no unconscious in you, there is no darkness in you. All becomes light; hence the word enlightenment. You are pure light, made of light, eternal light. And when you open your eyes and look at existence, the whole existence is made of light.This is the only point on which physicists and mystics agree, the only point where science and religion meet. Physicists say matter is made of light – electrons in their jargon. Mystics say, in a more simple way, that everything is made of light. This is the only meeting-point, but from this meeting-point much more is possible. It can become the triggering-point for a deep communion between science and religion in the future. It is pregnant with immense possibilities.But neither the mystics have recognized the point yet nor the physicists. One can forgive the physicists because they exist on a lower level, they exist in the valley. But one cannot forget and forgive the mystics: they are on the top of the hill, they are on the peaks – from there they can have a more inclusive view of things, from there they can see far more; the valley is included in their vision. The physicist may not be able to see the peak. He may be too occupied with material, objective investigations. He may be looking at the earth too much, he may not look at the peak at all, he may even be afraid of the peak.There is an Arabian saying that camels don’t like to go near the mountains; that’s why they exist in the deserts. Obviously no camel would like to go to a mountain, because seeing the mountain for the first time he feels utterly humiliated. In the desert he is a mountain! Standing by the side of a mountain he is just like an ant, utterly reduced, disgraced. His ego feels hurt.Man does not want to look at the peaks. That’s why persons like Friedrich Nietzsche say, “God is dead” – not that God is dead, but Nietzsche is an egoist. The very idea that God exists is not acceptable to him, because if God exists then the camel is standing by the side of the Himalayas; then who is Nietzsche? Then nobody is anybody in particular. Then you have to drop the ego; then you cannot go on carrying it. It becomes utterly futile, foolish. It is better to kill God. Nietzsche is speaking for your egos; he represents your egos.I have heard that somewhere on the Earth there are two graves with two tombstones. On one is written: “God is dead,” and signed “Friedrich Nietzsche” and on the other is written: “Nietzsche is dead,” signed “God.”But it is too late; Nietzsche went mad. That is the logical consequence of going to the very end of the ego. He is very representative: he represents the contemporary mind, the twentieth-century mind. He is far more representative of this age than anybody else. One hundred years ahead of you he said that which now everybody feels. You may not say it because you may not have the courage to go to the logical end of your argument, but that is what is really happening in smaller degrees to everybody; the difference is only of degrees. Nietzsche is a stubborn person: he follows the track to the very end, to where the road ends. He goes to the very point where the abyss has to be encountered, and he goes mad.More and more people are going mad, more and more people are becoming insane, more and more people need psychotherapy. More and more people are just on the brink, for the simple reason that that is ego’s ultimate result: you go insane, you go mad.Surrender’s ultimate result is: you go sane. In fact, for the first time you know what sanity is, what wholeness is, what health is. Your wounds are healed. It is a mystery.It is a good beginning. Don’t shrink back. Go on moving into the mysterious. It is the mysterious which will melt you, merge you like a river moving into the ocean. It is the mysterious which will transform you and will make your darkness luminous. It is the mysterious which will open your one-thousand-petaled lotus of consciousness. Allow it to happen.People are very much afraid of the mysterious because the mysterious means the unknowable – not only the unknown but the unknowable. People are even afraid of the unknown, what to say about the unknowable?The religious person needs guts; it is only for the courageous few. Religion is not for the cowards. Religion is not a mass phenomenon; it is not for the crowds. The crowds can only be Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans; the crowds can never be religious. Only very courageous people like Jesus, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Buddha – only very courageous people can be religious. It is not for the cowards.Cowards create a pseudo religion for themselves, a toy religion; they go on playing with it. They go to the church every Sunday and they think it is enough – a Sunday religion! The church is not more than a club. A few people go to the Rotary Club, a few people go to the Lions Club, a few people go to the church. It is not much different, it is a social affair. It is something formal. It is good; it functions like a lubricant, it makes you more adjusted to the crowd. The crowd feels good that you belong to it, you feel good that you belong to the crowd. The church is just a meeting-place where you talk sweet nothings – beautiful things, but they are meant only for the church. They don’t change your life, they don’t transform you; in fact, they prevent transformation.Encountering the mysterious is the beginning of religion, the beginning of godliness. You are blessed. Go on. Buddha says: “Charaiveti, charaiveti – go on, go on.” Never stop, because life is a constant movement, a continuum, a process. It is not a noun, it is a verb.The second question:Osho,Do you ever get frustrated with us because we are continuously making the same mistakes and playing the same games over and over again?I really enjoy it! There is no way for me to get frustrated. You cannot do anything that can make me frustrated because frustration happens only when there is expectation. I don’t expect anything. I have no expectations about anybody. I accept you the way you are. If I have some expectations then, of course, in the wake frustration is bound to happen.I accept you as you are because for me you are all enlightened. What more can happen? There is nothing more. As far as I am concerned, all that has to happen has already happened. Now it is up to you how long you want to go on playing the games – the game of hide-and-seek. It is up to you. If you are enjoying it, why should I get frustrated? If you are not frustrated, who am I to be frustrated with your games? It’s perfectly okay – in fact, I enjoy and giggle. Seeing you falling in the same ditch again, I am amazed!There is a Persian saying: “Man is the only animal who can fall in the same ditch again.” Even donkeys will avoid it. You cannot force a donkey to fall in the same ditch again – he will resist, he will fight, he will protest, because he knows the ditch, he has suffered it. It is only man. Man is a strange animal, the most absurd of all the animals – and this is a zoo! I call it Buddha Hall, but as far as you are concerned it is Noah’s Ark. All kinds of animals are here. And when you are in a zoo one enjoys. In fact, I am the only person who is enjoying it to the full.You are unconscious. How can I be frustrated with you? Whatsoever you are doing is bound to happen. Nothing else is possible right now unless you become conscious.The hanging party made its slow and solemn way through the pouring rain to the place of execution a few miles away.The executioner remarked, “Well, you’re not very lucky with this storm and mud today, are you?”The sentenced man replied smilingly, “Oh, but you’ve got to go all the way back through it again!”You are so unconscious. You are not aware of what you are doing. You are not aware of what is happening to you. You are not learning anything.Mrs. Brickman, aged eighty-nine, lived in a retirement center. Despite her age the old woman still had a great spirit. “Tonight, Ida,” she told another senior citizen, “for fun I’m gonna run through the dining room without my clothes on!”“What!” shrieked her friend, “You’re gonna go naked in the dining room?”“That’s right!”That night, without a stitch of clothing on, ancient Mrs. Brickman dashed through the dining room. Two elderly men spotted her. “Was that Mrs. Brickman?” asked one.“Yeah,” said the other. “And whatever she is wearing, she should at least have it pressed!”Who is aware? Who is looking? People’s eyes are closed.Boy: “I’m tired of this fooling around. I’m coming over to your apartment tonight and I’m going to throw you down on the couch and pull off your pants…”Girl: “Oh, no, you’re not!”Boy: “And I’m going to screw you so hard you won’t be able to walk straight!”Girl: “Oh, no, you’re not!”Boy: “And what’s more, I’m not even going to wear a condom!“Girl: “Oh, yes, you are!”The third question:Osho,What do you call a clean, hard-working, kind and intelligent politician?A failure!The last question:Osho,The other day there suddenly arose in me a deep desire to take your sannyas. It was just a feeling. I thought that there was no one reason for doing it – not really one reason and so, why? Maybe as a gift for myself?Sannyas is not taken because of any reason. The person who takes sannyas for any reason at all is taking it for a wrong reason. Any reason is a wrong reason. Sannyas is taken out of sheer joy. Yes, it is a feeling; it is not logic, it is a love affair. You don’t fall in love because of some reasons. If you fall in love because of some reasons soon you will fall out, because no reason can remain there forever. Reasons are like shifting sands. Today it seems rational, tomorrow it may seem irrational. Reasons go on changing like the climate. Mind is never the same even for two consecutive moments, and mind supplies the reason.Sannyas is not taken by the mind. How can mind take sannyas? Sannyas means dropping the mind. Mind cannot take sannyas because that will be suicidal to the mind. Sannyas is something that arises in the heart. That’s why it is like a feeling, a love affair, for no reason at all. A desire arises in you, a longing of the heart.That is the difference between ambition and longing: ambition is goal-oriented, longing is source-oriented. Ambition means there is something to achieve there. It depends on a goal, there is a motive; hence you can be rational about it. You can figure out whether it is worth achieving or not. You can be rational about it. It is not a question of feeling, it has to be calculated. You have to move in a certain direction cautiously, because the world is very cunning and everybody is trying to achieve the same goal – maybe power, money, prestige – but millions of people are running, rushing toward the same goal. There is competition. You have to be very clever and very cunning. You have to be very cautious. You have to be very political, diplomatic. Longing has no goal, but it has a source. The heart is the source.Vincent van Gogh, one of the greatest painters ever, one of the great masters, was absolutely misunderstood in his day. Not even a single painting was sold because people could not understand: what was he doing, what were his paintings all about? They looked absurd. For example, he would always paint his trees so big that they would go beyond the stars. The stars would be small, the sun and moon would be small, and the trees would be so huge.Somebody asked him, “Are you mad or something? Who has ever seen such trees? Such trees don’t exist. Why do you go on painting such big trees? And why do you paint the stars so small? Even the sun is so small, and the tree goes beyond it!” The sun is so far away that even for light to travel to the Earth it takes almost ten minutes. And light travels really fast: in one second it travels one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles – in one second. Sixty times more in one minute and ten times more than that in ten minutes. And it is not possible for any tree to transcend the sun – and what to say about the stars? The closest star is four light years away; it takes four years for the light to reach to the Earth. And the farthest star is millions and millions of light years away – “And your trees go on transcending the stars! What nonsense is this?”Van Gogh laughed and he said, “I know! But I know something more too of which you are not aware: trees are longings of the earth to transcend the stars. I am painting the longing, not the trees. I am more concerned with the source, not with the goal. It is irrelevant whether they reach the stars or not. And I belong to the earth, I have no obligation to the stars. I am part of this earth and I understand the longing of the earth. This is the longing of the earth: trees go on reaching for the stars.”Longings are irrational, and I agree with Van Gogh. Only the longing can think of godliness, not ambition, because for ambition godliness will look absolutely impossible. But for a longing everything is possible, nothing is impossible because there is no question of reaching anywhere – it is enjoying the source of longing itself.If your love has any motivation it is false love. When your love has no motivation at all it is true, it is authentic.You say, “The other day there suddenly arose in me a deep desire to take your sannyas.” Yes, this longing arises suddenly and it comes from nowhere. It simply possesses you. And if you start looking for reasons you will miss, because looking for reasons is to look in a wrong place, from where the longing has not arisen.Look deep into your heart; listen to the still small voice within. And remember one thing: life is fulfilled only through longings, never through ambitions. Life becomes blissful only through the heart, never through the mind. Mind creates science, the heart creates religion. Mind can give you better technology, better gadgets. The heart gives you the real, ultimate values: love, bliss, truth, freedom, awareness, godliness. And a life without these values is valueless.That is why millions of people feel meaningless. Millions of people feel as if they are just accidental, they are not needed. But Desiderata says you are needed: you are fulfilling some immense need of the existence.Respect your longings. To respect your longings is to respect the voice of existence within you. And remember, if you start thinking it was just a feeling, there is already condemnation: “It was just a feeling” – as if there is something wrong, as if when something is just a feeling it is not enough; there has to be a reason.If you go on doing only rational things in your life you will miss the real mystery of life. You will miss the treasure, you will miss the kingdom of God. You will live comfortably, but you will live meaninglessly. You may have many possessions, but you will be worthless. You won’t have any worth, you won’t have any sense of worth.Listen to the heart if you really want to grow. Don’t call it “just a feeling,” because a feeling is a higher thing than knowing. There is something still higher – that is being.These are the three planes. The lowest is knowing, the highest is being, and between the two is feeling. Feeling functions as a bridge. It functions as a link between knowing and being, between this shore and the further shore. It is a bridge. Remember, the bridge is not the place to make a house. You have to pass it, but you have to pass through it. You cannot avoid it. If you avoid it you will remain clinging onto this shore, you will never go to the other shore. You will remain on the outside; you will never go into the interiority of your existence – and there is real beauty. Jesus says: “The Kingdom of God is within you.”The heart is always calling you forth, but the head is very noisy and the head never allows you to listen to the heart. It is fortunate that at least you listened. At least you heard something arising in you: “…a deep desire to take sannyas.”But then the mind immediately interfered. It said, “It is just a feeling.” But a feeling is a higher phenomenon than knowing. Love is higher than logic. Nobody can live only logically, and if he does his life will be useless. Only love opens the windows toward the beyond.Please, don’t condemn anything as “just a feeling.” And you say, “I thought that there was no one reason for doing it.” There is none. That’s the beauty of it. It is a jump out of reasoning, so how can there be a reason for it?The mind cannot support you, the mind can only hinder you. The mind cannot nourish your longings; it has its own projections, ambitions. It wants you to put your total energy into the ambitions, it wants you to go ahead with all your dreams; they have to be fulfilled. Of course they are never fulfilled…All dreams are bound to be broken, they are doomed to fail, but the mind is immensely inventive. One dream fails, it creates another. In fact, even before the other has failed it has already created a few more dreams. It keeps them ready in case there is a gap and in the gap you start hearing the heart. It never gives you a gap, it keeps you running faster and faster. It goes on telling you, “This dream has failed – that does not mean that all dreams are bound to fail. If not today, then tomorrow you will succeed. You have failed because you did not put your totality into it.” And nobody can put himself totally into a dream.A dream is a very small thing. How can you enter into a dream totally? One can enter more intensely, more passionately into a feeling; even then one is not total. Totality happens only when you enter into being, but feeling is closer to being. Feeling is like a door of the temple. The moment you stand at the door, there are both possibilities: you can run out, you can run in.This is my observation: that the poet and the mystic both stand at the same door because both are in the world of feeling. Neither the mystic thinks nor the poet thinks. The poet and mystic stand at the same door, but there is a great difference. The poet still goes on looking outward. The door is the same, the space is the same, but the mystic looks toward the inner world, toward the shrine, inside the temple, and the poet looks outside. So sooner or later the poet is lost in to the outside world. He again and again comes to the door, and again and again loses the door because he never looks in. If he takes a one hundred and eighty degree turn, only then will he be able to run in.And the moment you run in, the miracle – the only miracle there is – that moment you know who you are.Sannyas is not motivated by any reason, there is no “why” to it. That’s why the worldly will call it mad – but they also call Jesus mad. Even today, after two thousand years, psychoanalysts think that he was insane.Buddha was thought to be mad – of course, it is so obvious: he was going to be the king and he dropped out, he escaped into the jungles to meditate. He went out of the boundaries of his father’s kingdom because he knew that his father will start searching for him and he will be caught, so he escaped as fast as possible to the neighboring kingdom.But he was wrong in thinking that there he could not be caught. The neighboring king was a friend of his father. His father informed him, “My son has escaped, my only son, and maybe he is hiding somewhere in your kingdom because I have searched in my kingdom – he is nowhere. So look.” And the friend searched for him and found him.The king came and told him, “It’s perfectly okay: if you are not happy with your father, forget all about it. I have a bigger kingdom than your father and I have no son, only a daughter. So get married to my daughter and this kingdom is yours. Forget all about it! And of course, finally your father’s kingdom is going to be yours, so you will have both the kingdoms. Your father is old, seventy. He is sick, any day he will die.”What a beautiful offer. And Buddha laughed. He said, “So I have to escape from your kingdom too! I was thinking that here I am safe. It is not a question of any quarrel. I have not quarreled with my father, I have no quarrel,” he said. “I have simply seen that the way I was living was absurd. I am in search of a deeper way of life. I want to live, but authentically, sincerely. I don’t want to exist as a hypocrite. And unless I have found the truth I am not going back. Yes, I will go back when I have found the truth. I will go, and if my father is alive I will share my joy with him. I respect him and love him, but he has lived in misery and I don’t want to repeat the same story again. I know my wife will be suffering, my child will be suffering, but they were suffering anyway. They were suffering with me, they will suffer alone.“There is a possibility that I may find the truth. Then I can go and share it with my wife, with my child.”And after twelve years he went back. His wife was of course angry, very angry, enraged. She started shouting. Twelve years of accumulated anger, you cannot blame her – neither did Buddha. He stood there silently, allowed her to cathart. She cried and screamed and wept.Finally Buddha said, “Please look at me. I am not the same man who went. I am a new being. Just wipe your tears and look at me. I have come to share. Forgive me, but the moment you know what I have brought for you, you will not blame me, you will be happy that I did it.”His wife looked, and, of course, this was a totally new man – so radiant, so graceful, so blissful. The fragrance was unmistakable. Something of godliness surrounded him, some aura of the unknown. She bowed down to him. And she brought her son who was now twelve years of age, and she told the son, “Ask your father for your heritage.”And Buddha initiated immediately, first the son, just a twelve-year-old boy, Rahul was his name – he initiated him into sannyas. He gave him his begging bowl and said, “Now you are a sannyasin and I will teach you meditation.” Then he initiated his wife, then his father – they all felt to be initiated when their anger was spent, thrown out. And Buddha did not react to it at all. He simply stood there like a midwife, helping them to go through the pains. And then he shared his joy.Sannyas had happened to Buddha himself by seeing the utter stupidity of the way we are living. A desire, a deep longing came to him: “This is not what life should be – something is missing.” And it can be felt only by the heart that something is missing, because the heart is a more sensitive part of you than the mind. Mind is always thick, even the best mind is thick. The heart feels first, and then there is no reason.You say, “Maybe as a gift for myself?” That is far better. Yes, take it as a gift. Rejoice with me, celebrate with me. Participate in this great happening, in this ecstasy, and forget all reasoning, and you will for the first time touch something deeper in yourself. And then there is a possibility, if you stand at the door of feeling, you can move into the temple.The temple does not exist on the outside; they are all false temples – Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jaina, they are all false temples. The true temple exists in you and true God is waiting there for you. This is his voice that you have heard. Follow from where it is coming, move toward that source, and immense will be your experience. You may have never tasted anything like it – it is pure nectar.The fifth question:Osho,Please can you tell us – when is the world coming to an end?Today, 8th of September 1980, at lunchtime!Meditate over this story, a story by Roger McGough:When the bus stopped suddenlyto avoid damaginga mother and child in the road,the younglady in the green hat sitting opposite,was thrown across me,and not being one to miss an opportunityi started to make love.At first, she resisted,saying that it was too early in the morningand too soon after breakfast,and anyway, she found me repulsive.But when i explainedthat this being a nuclearagethe world was going to end at lunchtime,she took off her green hat,put her busticket in her pocketand joined in the exercise.The buspeople,and there were many of them,were shockedandsurprised,and amusedandannoyed.But when the word got aroundthat the world was coming to an end at lunchtime,they put their pride in their pocketswith their busticketsand made love one with the other.And even the busconductor,feeling left out,climbed into the cab,and struck up some sort of relationship with the driver.That night,on the bus coming home,we were all a little embarrassed.Especially me and the younglady in the green hat.And we all started to sayin different wayshow hasty and foolish we had been.But then, always having been a bitofalad,i stood up and said it was a pitythat the world didn’t nearly end every lunchtime,and that we could always pretend.And then it happened…Quick asa crashwe all changed partners,and soon the bus was aquiverwith white mothball bodies doing naughty things.And the next dayand everydayIn everybusIn everystreetIn everytownIn everycountryPeople pretendedthat the world was coming to an end at lunchtime.It still hasn’t.Although in a way it has.But, if by any chance it does not end today, see you tomorrow!Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,There is deep in me a yearning for the permanency of love. Is that stupid?Love can exist in two dimensions: either as horizontal or as vertical. We are acquainted with the love which is horizontal; that is also the dimension of time. The vertical is the dimension of eternity.The yearning in the heart is not for permanency. There you have misunderstood but that misunderstanding is almost universal because we know only one plane; the horizontal, the dimension of time. In that dimension there are only two possibilities: either something is momentary or permanent. But the permanent is nothing but many moments; that too begins and ends. Permanency is not eternal, it cannot be. Nothing can be eternal in time. That which is born in time is bound to die in time. If there is a beginning, there is an end.And your love begins, it begins at a certain moment in time – then it is bound to end. Yes, it can end sooner or later. If it ends quickly you call it momentary, if it takes a little longer time to end you call it permanent. But permanency also is not going to fulfill the heart, because the heart longs for that which does not end at all, which is forever. It is the longing for God. God is another name for eternal love.Jesus says: “God is love.” That is one of the greatest statements ever made. Love becomes synonymous with God. If you can know the eternal love you have known godliness. Nothing is left, all is fulfilled.But the mind knows nothing of eternity. The heart yearns for the eternal, but the heart is continuously being interpreted by the mind, and mind knows only either a very short-lived love or a little long-lived love. But even if love lives a little longer, the fear will always be there that it is going to end, and your fear is right – it is going to end. In fact, it will be longer if you are unintelligent. If you are very, very thick and very, very unintelligent it will take a long, long time for you to understand the futility of it all. If you are very intelligent it can end quickly because you will see that there is nothing much in it.The more intelligent a person is, the more short-lived will be his love – love as you know it. That is why as humanity is becoming more intelligent, love is becoming a short-lived phenomenon. In the past it was almost permanent; there was nothing like divorce. In uneducated countries there is still nothing like divorce. The more a country becomes educated, cultured, sophisticated, the rate of divorce increases, in the same proportion, for the simple reason that people can see that they get bored with each other. Then there is no point in dragging it on; then it is better to finish it. But the mind can finish one thing and immediately substitute it with another illusion, again and again.Mind is a non-learner. Even the intelligent person remains a non-learner and the mind has become so powerful that anything coming from the heart never reaches you, your being, uninterpreted by the mind. The heart says eternity and the mind interprets permanency. That’s where you are missing the point. The yearning of the heart is for a vertical dimension; that is the dimension of meditation. Mind lives horizontally; hence the mystics of all the ages have realized the fact that mind and time are not two different things – mind is time. Mind cannot live vertically; mind lives in the past, in the future. For the mind, the present is non-existential. From the past to the future mind goes on moving. The present seems to be only a passage from the past to the future.I have heard…A hunter was going to the jungle to hunt. A friend wanted to accompany him; he also wanted to be a hunter, but he was very unskillful and amateurish. The hunter said, “Okay, you can come along.”The hunter brought him to a place where tigers used to pass and lions used to pass, because it was close to a pond and they were bound to come to the pond when they felt thirsty. So they were hiding in a bush. The hunter gave him indications, hints: “When it is going to happen, be alert and shoot immediately.”A tiger passed. The hunter was amazed because the friend remained almost frozen; he didn’t even move, he didn’t do anything to shoot him. He asked, “What happened?”The friend said, “It went so fast that I saw him only when he was out of sight.”That is exactly what the present is: you see it only when it is out of sight; when it is already past, only then do you see it. You never see it as the present – mind is not that quick. Mind is not alert, not aware. Mind is dreaming. It is always surrounded by past and future, and the small, atomic moment of the present goes fast. It must be moving faster than light itself because we never catch hold of it. By the time we are aware it is already gone. The time that we take in becoming alert is enough, and it is gone. You always know it when it is out of sight. So all that you are aware of is the past which is no more, and the future which is not yet. You live between these two non-existential things.The dimension of the vertical is a totally different phenomenon: you jump out of the mind. That’s what meditation is all about: you get out of the mind, you get out of the past and the future, you get out of time. You are no longer thinking, you are no longer dreaming, you are no longer desiring. There is no memory, no imagination. All is silent. Then you can see the present, and you can see there is only present and nothing else. And present is eternal, in fact, present is not part of time at all. Present is part of eternity; it is always now, it is never otherwise. And that is the yearning of the heart.You are not being stupid because of the yearning of the heart, but you are misunderstanding it. You want a love which is born out of meditation, not born out of the mind. That is the love I continuously talk about. That is the love Jesus is speaking of, that love is godly. It is not your love; your love cannot be godly. Your love is only a mind phenomenon; it is biology, it is physiology, it is psychology, but it is not eternal. Eternal is of the essential being.Desiderata will call my love essential and your love nonessential. The nonessential cannot become eternal. Even if you try to make it permanent you can manage, but it will die sooner or later. You can even befool yourself that it is still there; you can pretend at least that it is there.Millions of couples around the world are living as if it is there. They are living in a world of “as if.” Of course, how can they be joyous? They are drained of all energy, they are trying to get something out of a false love. It cannot deliver the goods, hence the frustration, hence the continuous boredom, hence the continuous nagging, fighting between the lovers. They both are trying to do something which is impossible; they are trying to make their love affair something of the eternal, which it cannot be. It has arisen out of the mind and mind cannot give you any glimpse of the eternal.My suggestion is, if you are really ready to fulfill the longing of the heart, then forget all about love. First go into meditation, because love will come out of meditation. It is the fragrance of meditation. Meditation is the flower, the one-thousand-petaled lotus. Let it open, let it help you to move in the dimension of the vertical, no-mind, no-time, and then suddenly you will see the fragrance is there. Then it is eternal, then it is unconditional. Then it is not even directed to anybody in particular; it cannot be directed to anybody in particular. It is not a relationship; it is more a quality that surrounds you. It has nothing to do with the other. You are loving, you are love – then it is eternal, it is your fragrance. It has been around a Buddha, around a Zarathustra, around a Jesus. It is a totally different kind of love: it is qualitatively different.You are asking only for a little more quantity – not one day, but two days, three days, four days; not one life, but a few lives – but anyway it is going to end. And the longer you stretch it, the thinner it will become, the more boring it will become because it wants to die and you are stretching. And sometimes it dies but you are not able to drop it; you go on carrying the corpse. It stinks. Once it was a beautiful phenomenon; now it is simply dead and it stinks.There is a beautiful story in the Indian scriptures about Shiva. His wife, Parvati, died, and he carried the corpse of his wife for twelve years all around the country, hoping that somewhere some physician may be of some help. Slowly, slowly, limbs of the dead body started falling off, but he continued his journey in search of a physician; some alchemist, some magician, some miracle-maker may do it. Crying, weeping, he went around the country.In India there are twelve sacred places. It is said that these are the places where the parts of the body of Parvati fell. Wherever a part fell, it became a sacred place.You can carry the dead body – but you cannot find the physician.This is far truer than the story of Jesus reviving a dead man, although it looks impossible that a man like Shiva will carry a dead woman. But my own observation is that I have seen millions of people carrying dead love affairs which have died long before, but carrying out of fear, clinging – just clinging with the known, with the familiar, although it is just misery and nothing else but clinging.When love dies, it dies. In time one has to accept death and one has to say goodbye, with no complaint, no grudge, because when something ends what can you do? In time that is the nature of things; they begin and they end. Buddha says: “Everything that happens in time is bound to die, so accept” – it is the suchness of things.But if your heart is really yearning for something eternal, then I can show you the way. Then drop the idea of love. Before you can give, you must have. You are trying to give something which you don’t have; you are trying to get something from somebody who has not got it in the first place. Then how can it be eternal? Sooner or later the disillusionment is bound to happen. How long can you carry it, how long can you remain in a deception? That’s why I say the more intelligent you are, the quicker it slips out of your hands.Only stupid people can live a married life, thinking that it is something permanent. Intelligent people cannot live the so-called married life, or if they live it then they will have to change their partners many times in their life. But each time the same thing will happen.The mind goes on finding other causes, but never looks at the real cause. It cannot, because to look at the real cause means suicide of the mind. It will find a thousand and one faults in the woman, in the man you have been living with – that’s why the love has failed. Not that the love in time is bound to fail, but there are faults in this woman. You have chosen a wrong woman, you don’t fit with her, you are not made for each other, and so on, and so forth. But one day you were thinking you are made for each other, and you have completely forgotten it. Remember those days, the beginning days of the love affair, and you were thinking, “This is going to last forever!” You had even promised to each other that it is going to last forever.Just a few days ago, Aneeta and Anubhava wanted to live together. My suggestion was that they should live separately and continue to meet. But lovers are lovers – fools are fools. That’s why it is called fooling around! They wanted to live together. Aneeta even gave in writing that, “We will never separate, I promise. And we are absolutely certain that we want to live together, twenty-four hours together.” So I said, “Okay, then it is up to you.”And not two months have passed, and yesterday I received Aneeta’s letter: “We want to separate.” Just two months! She has forgotten that she had given it in writing, “We will never separate, we will always live together.”It happens to everybody. This is an illusion, a mirage – and you want to make a mirage permanent? How can you make a mirage permanent? How can you make a dream permanent? The morning will come and you will have to wake up and once you wake up you can close your eyes again and go on trying to find the dream – where has it gone? You want to continue it, but you cannot continue the dream again. It is lost forever. Once you are awake it is broken forever; you cannot find the thread again. It is not mendable, remember.You cannot mend a broken love – a broken mirror, maybe. Ways can be found: it can be again melted and again it will be one. But with a broken love there is no way, no possibility; hence the fear. The fear shows that deep down you are aware it is slipping out of your hands, so you want to make it permanent. Now the way is to go to the court and get married. This is the way to make it permanent. Make it a legal phenomenon so that the court and the police and the magistrate and the law and the state will hinder in every possible way; if you want to separate they won’t allow you to separate.It is good that Aneeta has given it in writing to me, not to the court! She need not be worried – the day she gave it to me I threw it away because I knew it: there is no point in keeping it. Sooner or later it is going to end and I don’t want her to feel embarrassed. I have thrown it. She can separate, but she will do the same thing again, that is the problem. And believe me, she can write it again, just after two months.Now she wants to be absolutely alone; she does not even want to live with anybody. Finished – she is awakened! But this will happen again and again. It is going to happen at least a few more times because I can hear her snoring so I know she will dream again! No dream can be permanent, and your love is a dream. Mind can only dream; it cannot give you the reality.Get out of the mind. Forget all about love. You don’t have any understanding of love – you can’t have any understanding of love. Only through meditation will you change the dimension of your being; from horizontal you will become vertical, from living in the past and the future. Now, why this permanency? Permanency means you are trying to figure it out even in the future. You want it to remain as it is, even in the future – but why? In fact, it must have already flown away; only then does one starts thinking about permanency.When two lovers are really in the illusion they don’t think about permanency. Ask any two lovers in their honeymoon days – they don’t care, they know that they are going to be together forever.But the moment it starts slipping out of your hands, then the mind says, “Now cling. Make it permanent. Do everything to make it permanent. Don’t look at the cracks that are happening. Don’t look, avoid, forget all about them. Go on covering them up – somehow manage it.” But you are asking for the impossible.I can teach you meditation, and out of meditation a different quality of love will happen. Then it is not fooling around. Then it is wisdom, not foolishness. Then you don’t fall in love, you rise in love. Then love is a quality to you. Just as light surrounds a flame, love surrounds you. You are loving, you are love. Then it has eternity, it is unaddressed. Whosoever comes close to you will drink out of it. Whosoever comes close to you will be enchanted by it, enriched by it. A tree, a rock, a person, an animal: it does not matter. Even if you are sitting alone… Buddha sitting alone under his tree is radiating love. The love is continuously showering around him. That is eternal, and that is the real longing of the heart.Don’t misunderstand it – but mind can only misunderstand. Understanding is possible through meditation alone.The second question – it is not addressed.For the first time in my life I feel absolutely free and unconditioned: free to be myself every second without any compromising. And I realize that the only effort I have to make is to become aware.Can you say something about awareness? By the way, I love you.Matthias… “By the way…”? “By the way…” you love me? And you don’t know what awareness is and yet you feel “…absolutely free and unconditioned: free to be myself every second without any compromising.” The only thing missing is awareness. This is far out! That is why he has not even addressed the question, because addressing me maybe creates some disturbance in his freedom; maybe it shows some kind of surrender; maybe it shows that still he is not absolutely free, he is not absolutely himself. And love is never “by the way.”The scene: the maternity ward of a large New York City hospital. Ralph is anxiously waiting for the arrival of his first-born child. He is pacing up and down the aisles of the waiting room, nervously glancing through the twelve magazines he has read three times each and, of course, chain-smoking.Out of the corner of his eye he sees a doctor leave the surgery with a tiny, newborn babe in his arms and walk toward the waiting room. Since he is the only expectant father in the room, Ralph is sure that this must be his baby. He is overjoyed!He runs out to meet the doctor, but to his horror he now sees the doctor is throwing the baby up in the air and catching it by the leg as it comes down. Ralph is shocked! He runs to get his baby before some tragedy occurs, but just as he is about to reach it, the doctor once again throws the child high into the air and misses grabbing hold of the leg on the way down. The baby crashes to the floor with a soft thump!“My baby! My baby!” Ralph screams. “What have you done to my baby?”“Take it easy,” replies the calm doctor. “He was dead anyway!”By the way, you love me? It is dead anyway! And without awareness there is no freedom. Without awareness, how can you become unconditioned? Who has ever heard of such a thing? Don’t deceive yourself. At least be a little more attentive to what you say, be a little more observant of what you ask. This is sheer madness!Awareness happens first, then unconditioning. Unconditioning is the outcome of awareness. Awareness functions like a key; conditioning is a lock on you. The key of awareness unlocks you; it brings you out of your prison. And then there is freedom – but without awareness you can only dream about freedom. You can dream about unconditioning, you can start even believing in this.And the way you say, “Now I am free to be myself every second without any compromising,” shows that you have not understood what I have been saying. What to say about unconditioning and freedom? They are far, far away from you. You have not even understood, you have not even been intelligent enough to understand what I am trying to relate to you.One is free only when one is not. One is oneself only when one is not. Freedom does not mean that you become more of a self. Your statement, “I am free to be myself…” is egoistic. It is ego now trying to decorate itself with freedom. If you become deceived by it you will fall into a far deeper ditch than you have ever been in before.The ego wants to claim enlightenment, and when you hear me saying that you are all enlightened your ego feels very joyous. So inside you say, “That’s really what I have been telling myself – that I am enlightened!”Matthias has not even addressed his question. How he can address it? It will be difficult. He has become enlightened. He cannot call me his master, he cannot call me Osho. He has become absolutely free!Freedom happens not for the self. Freedom really means freedom from the self, not of the self. When you are unconditioned the self disappears because your self is nothing but conditioning, layers and layers of conditioning. It is the onion. When you start peeling it, what are you going to find in the end? When the whole onion is peeled, nothingness is left in your hands – not a self but a nothingness, shunyata, anatta – no-self; absolute emptiness as far as ego is concerned.But the ego is very clever. If you throw it out of the front door it comes from the back door, but it goes on grabbing you again and again. Now this can become your conditioning. Remember, even the idea “I am unconditioned” can become a conditioning. Conditioning is a very subtle process.I have heard about a man who was a disciple of the famous Russian psychologist, Pavlov. Pavlov founded the theory of the conditioned reflex, and the whole of Russian psychology depends on that, because Pavlov tries to explain everything through conditioning. Pavlov says everything is conditioning, and he is ninety-nine point nine percent right because he is wrong only about the buddhas; otherwise he is right. Only a buddha lives a life of unconditioned consciousness because only a buddha lives a life of no-mind and no-self.But the people we come across are all conditioned. The Christian is conditioned in one way, the Hindu is conditioned in another way, but they are all conditioned. Their ideas are different, their philosophy is different, their mythology is different, their superstition is different. They have different types of cells in which they live, their prisons are made in different ways, but they are prisons. Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist – all are prisons.Buddha is not imprisoned, Jesus is not imprisoned, but Jesus is not a Christian. Do you think Jesus was a Christian? He had never even heard of the word. Do you think Buddha was a Buddhist? These are the other people who become conditioned.This discovery of Pavlov’s is of immense value as far as the ordinary, unconscious human being is concerned. The whole discovery was made by observing dogs. Pavlov had hundreds of dogs; he was continuously experimenting with dogs. But there is not much difference between a dog and an unconscious human being, so whatsoever he found out about dogs is true about human beings. He is a behaviorist. He says man has no soul, only behavior, and behavior can be conditioned. You can make a Jaina out of a man, you can make a Christian out of the same man. All that is needed is a little reconditioning. But there is no question of unconditioning. You have to put on another conditioning, you have to replace your old conditioning. You believe in Buddha, you start believing in Jesus, but you remain a believer.One of his disciples also tried an experiment with a dog, just as the master was doing. The master has proved it logically that behavior can be conditioned. You can make a man moral or immoral; it is only a question of punishment and reward. If you reward some behavior it becomes rooted in, because nobody wants to suffer. If you punish the person for certain behavior it becomes uprooted.In fact, not only in Russia, all over the world we are doing the same. What are you doing with the criminals? – punishing them in the jails. This is behaviorism. You are trying to punish them for a certain behavior so that they don’t do it again, but the outcome is totally different. When you send a criminal to live in a jail for twelve years he becomes conditioned to living in a jail; he starts, in fact, enjoying it. Rather than taking it as a punishment he starts reconditioning himself, otherwise it will be impossible for him to live for twelve years. Hence the repetition.Once a person is in jail for a few years he is bound to come back to the jail again and again, because the outside life does not look comfortable to him. In the outside world you have to search for a job, you have to find some employment, you have to earn your bread and butter, and there are thousands of worries. And a man who has lived for ten or twelve years in a jail has become completely free of all these worries of employment, working, finding jobs, earning money. He lives, he pays no rent for the room; everything is given to him. At the right time he gets his lunch, his supper, his breakfast, his tea. Life is not very comfortable in a jail but, in a way, unworried. Insecurity is not there; there is absolute security. He becomes conditioned to it.Pavlov was continuously trying experiments. He would give food to a dog and would ring a bell. The dog would eat his food and the bell would be ringing. After fifteen days he would simply ring the bell and the dog would react as if the ringing of the bell is something like food. His saliva would start flowing, his tongue would start hanging out. Now, ordinarily if you ring a bell no dog will behave like that. What has he to do with a bell? But if you give him food for fifteen days and continuously ring a bell, they become associated.So this disciple of Pavlov was trying an experiment on his own. He brought a dog from a friend and he tried to condition the dog. He wanted the dog to bark standing on his two legs – only then would he be given food. To teach him the lesson he kept the food in his hand, and the dog had to stand on two legs; and to teach him that he had to bark, the man also barked. After two weeks he waited for the dog to bark, but he didn’t bark. In fact, he became so tired that he gave him the food. But the dog didn’t eat the food, he rejected the food – unless the man barked again! He became conditioned to that. For fifteen days you bark and give food, and now suddenly you don’t bark. The dog rejected the food. The man had to bark! Now this has happened – a new conditioning.Listening to me, beware. You may start having a new conditioning – that you are enlightened.Just a few days ago I talked about Somendra. Yesterday I received his letter. He says, “Yes, Osho, it has happened to me that now I can be a master on my own. There is no need to have a master – although I don’t know what enlightenment is – so I have dropped the mala.“But one day, after eight or ten days working in the group, such great energy happened that I wanted to stand up, but I went on falling. Something strange was happening, and suddenly I heard a voice saying, ‘Put the mala back on.’”He must have become frightened – what was happening? He must have become frightened. He does not write about fear, that he could not get up. He was doing some energy work on people in a group and he fell on the floor, rested on the floor, tried to get up and could not get up so he called his assistant. Thrice he heard the voice. That is nothing but his own unconscious because I have not spoken to him. He thinks he has heard my voice, “Bring the mala back. Put it on again!” It was just out of fear, he must have become frightened of what was happening. It was going beyond his control: he could not control even his own energy. So he asked the assistant, “Find my mala – it is somewhere in the bag.” The mala was brought, and then he felt calm and quiet and the energy settled.But still something of that experience has left a mark on him although now he is wearing the mala again and saying to people, “I am a sannyasin.” He is talking about me and has forgotten about his being a master but he ends the letter – it must be a hangover – “With great gratitude I touch your hand.” Not feet – “your hand.” This is a hangover! Now some day he will get into trouble again. Then he will write, “I touch your feet, Osho, I heard the voice.”He says he knows nothing about enlightenment. Then how can you be a master if you don’t know anything about enlightenment? But these ego trips are bound to happen to many people.Matthias, beware – you can become conditioned. And I am here to uncondition you, not to recondition you – remember. My work consists only of unconditioning you and then I leave you alone. But my work is my work; how you will take it depends on you.A madman whispers to his friend, “I am going to run away!”“How?” asks the friend.“I am going to run through the keyhole!” he replies enthusiastically.After a few minutes he returns to his room with blood gushing from his forehead.“What happened?” asks the friend.“Well,” the madman replies sulkily, “the key was still in the lock!”Matthias, nothing has happened yet. When I say you are enlightened, that is my vision of you, not your understanding. The day it becomes your understanding you will not ask, “What is awareness?” – because without awareness it cannot happen at all.So forget all about your absolute freedom, unconditioned freedom, that you have become totally free, that you are yourself every second without any compromising. This is just bullshit!The third question:Osho,I don't get many of your jokes. What to do?You must be trying too hard to get them. You must be too serious. When I say that I am very serious about my jokes I am joking! You should not listen to me at all. Be alert, be watchful. I am not a man to be relied upon always. There is no need to get the joke – the joke will get you! You simply relax – you simply relax. You are trying to find some significance, some hidden meaning, something esoteric in it. It is simply a joke.But that is how we have been conditioned for centuries: to take everything seriously. I want to destroy your seriousness, that is why I have to search for all these stupid jokes – just to destroy your seriousness. In fact, it is very troublesome for me. It will be easier for me not to tell you any jokes, but then you will become very, very serious. Even telling you these jokes you go on clinging to your seriousness. You are trying to find some meaning.Life has no meaning – rejoice! It has no meaning. Dance, sing, enjoy; it has no meaning. You need not be serious – it is a cosmic joke. What is there to get? But the achieving mind is always trying to get something, even out of a joke. Can’t you relax at all? Can’t you simply listen and laugh? Do you have to understand it and its significance and its esoteric meaning – then you will laugh? By that time the joke is finished, you have missed the point. The point is simply to relax; but you will be very serious about it, you must be.I have heard… [Moments pass as Osho searches for a joke.]Jesus, I have lost it again! I have not heard anything, not a word. Do you see – even without a joke people are getting it. So if you want to get it, you get it, joke or no joke! I have not heard, I have not told you, and you have got it. It is a question of relaxing.The fourth question:Osho,Will I only recognize you when I am enlightened?Recognition is possible even before enlightenment, but it will remain vague, it will remain hidden behind a mist. Just as in the early morning, a winter morning, you can see that somebody is coming, but who he is you cannot exactly say. Something you can figure out, that a man is coming or a woman, but the mist is thick and it is difficult to figure out who the person is exactly.This type of recognition is possible; without it there will be no possibility of a master and a disciple. How does one become a disciple? – a vague recognition, a fragrance that has touched you, a love that has moved your heart, something of the beyond. It is a feeling, it is not knowing. You cannot be absolutely certain about it; it is mysterious.As you become more and more meditative you will become more and more clear about it. It is a faraway call of the cuckoo – yes, exactly the call of a cuckoo – a distant call. You hear it and it is no longer there, but it lingers around you, it hangs around you for a while as if in a dream. But this much is possible, and only this much is possible. If you ask more than that in a state of unenlightenment, then you are asking for the impossible.You cannot be absolutely certain who I am unless you know who you are. But the moment you are absolutely certain, you don’t need me. You need me only because you are not absolutely certain. But something in you is triggered, something in you starts growing.When the first leaves come out of a seed above the earth you cannot be certain what kind of flowers will follow, but you can be certain that something has started growing, something is on the way. That’s the state of the disciple: he can feel in himself something has started. It is like when the child in the mother’s womb is six weeks, eight weeks old, and one day she starts feeling the new life. She cannot be certain whether it is a boy or a girl; who is going to be born – an Albert Einstein, a Gautam Buddha – what is going to be his potential or her potential; whether the child will be beautiful or ugly; whether the child will be born alive or dead – even of that she cannot be certain. But she starts feeling the presence of a new life in her, and not only that, she starts feeling certain things that the new life starts triggering in her.Sometimes a mother becomes sad for no reason at all and she wonders why she is sad. The reason is, the new life inside is sad and that affects, that creates a shadow, and the mother is bound to be affected by that shadow. Sometimes she becomes cheerful without any reason. The new life within her womb is in a cheerful mood. But she is not capable of making a distinction – what is what, what belongs to her and what belongs to the new life.That is the state of the disciple. The disciple is exactly in the womb of the master. Many times you suddenly feel a tremendous wave of energy arising in you. You don’t know from where it comes – from you, from the master, from the field, from the other fellow-travelers. From where it comes you are not absolutely certain, but it is coming – sometimes a wave of joy and sometimes a wave of sadness. Sometimes you feel very calm and quiet and sometimes very excited and ecstatic. And you become aware about one thing certainly: that you are not alone, that things which don’t belong to you have started penetrating you. The beyond has started communicating with you but it is all vague – it is bound to be so.Hence the need for trust – otherwise, there will be no need to trust. Trust is needed because in this vague state, if you cannot trust you cannot move ahead. If you doubt, you will shrink back. Doubt disconnects, trust connects. If you can trust, the mist will disappear, the sun will start shining, you will come closer to the master. If you doubt you will create a distance. Doubt creates distance, trust destroys distance.But if you mean by recognition absolute knowing, then it can happen only when you are enlightened.That is why even men like Sariputra, Mahakashyapa or Moggalayan, the great disciples of Buddha, when they became enlightened still remained disciples. Again and again they were asked, “Now you are enlightened – why are you yet a disciple? You are a master on your own!”This is a strange thing that happens: the ego wants to be a master as quickly as possible, the ego wants to be on its own. It hurts to be a disciple.Just a few days ago a sannyasin has written to me, “I am going to the West. How do I behave there? – because I cannot say to anybody that you are my master, that I am somebody’s disciple. That I cannot say.” Why can’t he say that he is a disciple if he is a disciple? And if you cannot even say to others that you have a master and you are a disciple, then forget all about it. You are not a disciple, you don’t have a master! Either you have or you don’t have. Forget all about sannyas!Now he is asking me that he should be allowed to remain hidden from the public, he should be allowed to hide his mala, he should be allowed to wear other clothes so he is not in an embarrassing situation where people ask, “What has happened to you?” Then forget all about sannyas!Here being a sannyasin is easy; in fact, it can be very ego-fulfilling because thousands of sannyasins are here. In fact, not to be a sannyasin here is very difficult. You feel awkward, you feel out of tune, out of step. You feel a stranger, an outsider. So even those who are non-sannyasins here wear orange just at least to feel a part, so they don’t feel like strangers, so they can participate more easily.The real difficulty is when you are in Berlin or London or Tokyo or New York, where people will ask, “What has happened to you?” And if you cannot accept your disciplehood there, you have not accepted it here either. You were just deceiving yourself.A disciple rejoices in being a disciple, rejoices that he has found a master. But the ego wants to be a master quickly, as quickly as possible so that you are finished with being a disciple.Just the paradox of it…Manjushri, Sariputra, Moggalayan, Mahakashyapa became enlightened and remained disciples; still touching the feet of Buddha – not touching his hand! And people asked them – even Buddha has asked Manjushree, “Why do you touch my feet? There is no need. Now you are as much a buddha as I am. You are absolutely free.”And tears came to Manjushree’s eyes. He said, “Never say again to me that you are free. Now is the point when I can really bow down to you because now I can recognize you absolutely. In those dreamy days I had only a vague sense; the doubt was also lingering somewhere in the unconscious: maybe he is enlightened, maybe he is not. Maybe I am just projecting. Maybe it is only my desire to find an enlightened master that has created the whole illusion. Maybe I am living out my dream because my need to depend is so much I may have projected the whole thing on this person. He may not really be enlightened.” It remains because the vagueness is there, so it remains somewhere lingering around on the periphery.Manjushree said, “In those days I touched your feet, but it was not total. I touched your feet, I had tried in every possible way to trust you, but there was effort involved. Now the moment has come when I can really bow down to you and touch your feet with absolute knowing that you are the one that I have been seeking for many, many lives.“And my enlightenment is nothing to brag about. I am grateful to you – it has happened through you. Although you go on saying that you have nothing to do with it, I know it has happened through you. You may not be the cause of it, but you triggered the process; your presence triggered the process.”This is what Carl Gustav Jung calls synchronicity. The master is not the cause of your enlightenment because the cause cannot be outside. Enlightenment cannot be caused from the outside, otherwise it will be something caused by the outside. If it is caused by the outside, then it can also be taken away from the outside, it can be destroyed by the outside. If the master wants one day to make you unenlightened again he can make you unenlightened. If the cause is in his hands, then the process can be reversed.But no master can do it. Even if the master wants to do it, it is impossible. It cannot be done because the master is not the cause of your enlightenment. He is only what Jung calls a catalytic agent. Yes, it has happened in his presence, but his presence was only a catalytic agent – not a cause but a synchronicity. You saw the master and something started growing in you, something clicked. But it happened inside you; the outer master was just a mirror. You saw your original face in the mirror. The mirror has not caused the original face; the original face was always there inside you. The mirror has only made you aware of it but without the mirror you may not have become aware for millions of years or millions of lives still.Hence Manjushree says, “Now I can bow down, I can touch your feet in totality. You may go on saying, ‘Don’t touch my feet, there is no need,’ but as far as I am concerned I am going to touch your feet. I am going to worship you because in those days my worship was not total. Now the moment has come when I know you are the one I have been seeking and searching for. Through you I have also become the one that I have been trying to become and was not able to become because there was nobody to reflect my original face.”Right now you cannot recognize in that sense. You will have to become enlightened. To know a Buddha one has to become a buddha, to know a Christ one has to become a christ. Knowing will happen only in the end, but feeling can happen. Feeling is the beginning. Remember, I am not saying knowledge, I am saying knowing. Knowledge is of the mind, feeling is of the heart, knowing is of the being. Feeling is closer to knowing; it is half-way between knowledge and knowing. You drop out of knowledge, you enter into the world of feeling.This is the beginning of disciplehood. Then one day you drop out of feeling and you enter the world of being – you become enlightened. That is the end of the disciplehood, in a sense, and the beginning of a real disciplehood in another sense. The old disciplehood disappears; now you are no longer dependent. And remember, only the dependent person wants to be independent. One who is independent, why should he hanker to be independent? Only the person who is not free wants to be free. One who is free, why should he want to be free?I can understand Manjushree’s standpoint: “There is no need to touch your feet, there is no need to be a disciple.” Buddha is right, and Manjushree is also right – he said, “There is no need to cling, but there is no need either to drop out of this love affair now that it has blossomed, now that I have come to the highest peak. There is no need – because I am free, so there is no need to be free. I know I am freedom, hence all hankering for freedom has disappeared.”In your state of mind it is bound to be either knowledge – then you are not a disciple, you can at the most be a student; or a feeling – then you are a disciple. When you become enlightened you become a devotee, the master is no longer needed.The master says, “If you meet me on the way, kill me,” but you cannot kill – there is no need. You can kiss, you cannot kill. From Buddha’s side it is perfectly okay. He says, “If you meet me on the way, kill me.”But one of my sannyasins wrote to me, “Osho, I cannot kill you. When I will meet you on the way I am going to kiss you!” I can understand her standpoint also – that’s perfectly right. But in killing the same happens as in kissing. Why does Buddha say, “Kill me”? – so that there is no longer duality. The same can happen through kissing: there is no longer duality, you become one. That’s what is needed: either kill or kiss!In your state, it seems you are still living in the world of knowledge, otherwise this question would not have arisen. You are still a student, not a disciple.A homosexual was walking down the street with his dog. A little kid started teasing him, “Homo, homo!”The gay stopped and politely asked the little boy not to say such things. But the boy persisted, “Homo! Homo!”“Look, kid, I am warning you – don’t say that!”“Homo, homo!” came the reply.“Hey, kid, one more time and I will put my dog onto you!”“Homo, homo!”“Okay, Rex, go get him!”The dog stood up, and in a soft, furry voice said, “Woo-oof!”Now the homo’s dog is bound to be a homo! Is this a way to call “woof” – so politely, so lovingly?A sannyasin to our dentist, Devageet: “I don’t know what is worse, having a baby or getting a tooth pulled.”Devageet: “Make up your mind, I’ve got to know which way to tilt the chair!”Complaining of the distance between campus buildings, Velma, the veterinarian’s daughter, wrote home for money to buy a bicycle. But by the time the money arrived she had changed her mind and bought a monkey instead.After a few weeks the animal began losing its hair. Hoping her father might know a cure, Velma wrote, “All the hair is falling off my monkey. What shall I do?”Her father sent this telegram: “Sell the bicycle!”After a really wild night in a hostel party the young Jordanhill lad was hauled off to Mass. He was ignorant of the various rituals involved and his girl seemed constantly to be whispering, “Bless yourself, kneel, sit down, stand up, sit.”Perspiring from all this activity, he took out a hanky from his pocket to mop his brow. He then laid it on his lap to dry. Seeing this, his girl leaned over and whispered, “Is your fly open?”“No,” he replied testily, “should it be?”Sheik Abdullah was looking for a few girls for his teenage son’s harem. He asked a neighboring sheik, “Do you have any extra brides you would like to sell?”“Yes,” said the neighbor, “I have got a few lying around loose.”The son nudged his old man. “Try to get some tight ones,” he whispered. “Yours are all loose – loose as camels!”Your understanding, your knowledge, your mind, cannot recognize, but your feeling, your love – not your logic – can have a vague sense. It can smell, it can taste something of the divine. It can have an encounter with a faraway, distant call. But it is going to be a faraway, distant call. If you move in the direction from where the call has come, you may arrive to the third plane of your being where knowing happens, when you are also in the same space as I am. Then it explodes totally, then you know it. It is no longer knowledge; it is your experience. You see it, and seeing is transforming, knowing is transforming.Move from being a student toward being a disciple, and then go on moving. Charaiveti charaiveti. Go on moving toward being a devotee.And what I am, you can be. I am simply your future. What has happened to me can happen to you. That day, the total and absolute, unconditional, irrevocable recognition will come. Before that it is not possible.The last question:Osho,Are you sure that you get the jokes that you are telling us?I am not as thrunk as you dink!Enough for today.

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Guida Spirituale 01-16Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

Guida Spirituale 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Who needs God when we are blessed with the beautiful feet of a beautiful master to sit under?You fool! That is the surest way to find God – one cannot miss. The master is only a window. The master simply opens into godliness, just as the window opens into the sky. What you see in the master is not of the master himself – he is no more. What you see through the window is not of the window; it is of the sky, the stars, the sunrise, a bird on the wing, the flowers. Whatsoever you see through the window has nothing to do with the window; the window is only an opening. The master is only a way.If one can surrender, if one can trust the master, one has surrendered to existence, one has trusted existence. And sooner or later one is bound to come out under the sky. One will remain grateful to the master forever because without the window there was no sky, there were only walls. But one has to go through the master and go beyond. One should not cling to the window; the window frame should not become a hindrance.Hence the perfect master is one who helps you to surrender through him to existence, not to him. Of course, in the beginning it appears as if you are surrendering to the window because you don’t have any other acquaintance with the sky; you may even start worshipping the frame of the window. That is what has happened again and again in the history of human consciousness.Buddha is a window, so is Mahavira, so is Christ, so is Mohammed. But then you forget about the sky. You close your eyes and you start worshipping the window. You have missed the point.I am not to be worshipped.The real master’s work is to become gradually useless for the disciple. Buddha says: “If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately.” The master would not like to stand between you and the divine, and if the master wants to stand between you and the divine he is not a master at all. If he teaches you clinging, then he is teaching you the world; if he teaches you let go, then he teaches you godliness.The function of a master is really a very delicate one, because in the beginning he has to help you to surrender to him, knowing the danger – but the risk has to be taken. As the disciple comes closer, as he becomes a devotee, the master helps him to understand the point.The beginning of disciplehood is not its end. The beginning is bound to be a little false for the simple reason that you live in a world of lies. You only understand language, you don’t understand that which is beyond language; hence you have to be spoken to in words. Now to speak in words to persuade you to be silent is very paradoxical work. You understand relationship; you don’t understand love.The master first helps you to create a relationship between himself and you, and slowly, slowly he withdraws himself; as you become capable he withdraws. He helps you to become free of him.But the misunderstanding can happen in two ways. One is that you may start clinging to the master, you may start worshipping the master; you may forget completely that he was just a finger pointing to the moon. The finger has not to be worshipped. Of course it has to be understood – and forgotten – so that you can look at the moon. If you cling to the finger, who is going to look at the moon? If you become obsessed with the finger, who is going to look at the moon?This is one calamity. It has happened so much that a man like J. Krishnamurti has moved to the other extreme. He is constantly afraid of this calamity, naturally, because it has happened so many times that he is afraid it may happen again with him. So from the very beginning he says that there is no need for a master, that there is no need to be a disciple. Now he is being misunderstood because only the egoist becomes interested in him – only the egoist, who is incapable of surrender, who is incapable of trust, who is absolutely obsessed with his own ego. He finds Krishnamurti very appealing. He says, “This is the right man. You need not surrender, you need not trust, you need not follow. You are absolutely free. There is no question of dropping anything: you remain yourself.” Now he clings to his ego.This is another calamity. And Krishnamurti has emphasized the point so much that people have started clinging to the idea of non-clinging. He has scared people.If disciplehood does not happen, then there is no question of killing the master or going beyond the master because in the first place there has been no master. Krishnamurti’s listeners will never be able to go beyond the master because they have never gone through the master. They will remain surrounded with their own ego walls, they will remain imprisoned in their egos. And many Krishnamurti lovers have come to me, asking me, “What to do? – because we have been listening to him for years – nothing happens. We understand whatsoever he is saying is true, but then we are the same.” Nothing is going to happen because happening is possible only if you are ready to go through this paradox. You are to begin with the master but not to end with the master.The master is like a ladder: you use it, then a moment comes when you have to drop the ladder. You don’t cling to it. The master is like a boat. That’s what Buddha has said: “The master is like a boat.” You go from this shore to the other shore, but then you get out of the boat. You feel grateful to the boat, you may even thank the boat, but you need not carry the boat on your shoulders.Buddha again and again has told the story of five fools who were carrying a boat on their shoulders, and Buddha saw them, and a crowd gathered. Buddha asked, “What is the matter? Why are you carrying the boat?” And they were perspiring, and the boat was heavy and big.They said, “This boat has helped us. We were on the other shore. If this boat had not been available, the wild animals would have eaten us, but this boat saved us. Now how can we leave this boat? We have to carry it. It is our very life!”Now this boat has become dangerous. If they had listened to Krishnamurti they would not have entered in the boat itself; then the wild animals would have been very happy. They used the boat, that’s perfectly good, but there is no need to carry the boat on your shoulders your whole life.In the past, the first extreme has happened: the fingers pointing to the moon became objects of worship. Mohammedans, Christians, Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists have all done the wrong thing. Now there are statues and people are worshipping them. Krishnamurti has moved to the other extreme.My approach is exactly in the middle. I teach you to surrender, and then go beyond surrender. When the ego is dropped, then you can be yourself, not before it. When you are no more, you can be yourself. Remember, being yourself has nothing to do with the idea of self; being yourself is closer to no-self than to self. It is a state of nothingness, shunyata. It is utterly empty of the ego.Use the ladder, but don’t carry it. Use the boat. When you have reached the other shore it is time to get out of it.It is good that you say, “Who needs God when we are blessed with the beautiful feet of a beautiful master to sit under?” This is the beginning of devotion but I have to go on reminding you that I am only a window, a door. Be thankful, be grateful, but go beyond. My work is to help you to become part of the whole.Just the other day I received another letter from Somendra. He has understood. He has tremendous intelligence; hence I was hoping that sooner or later he will understand the point. And just the other day I was talking about him because I had received a letter the day before. This letter will be useful for you. Somendra writes:Osho,I have been listening to your tapes these last days and find myself in a state of shock. I suppose that is what being with a master is like. Everything seemed to be going so beautifully, and I felt so innocent and happy and of such help to others – and now this! All the stuffing knocked out of me – which shows only that it was there. I am grateful. After all, that is what you are there for: to show us what is there inside but hidden.I can’t afford to let you go again. It is obvious that only through you and your love can I really be free. So I try and open my heart to you and my ears too at this distance, and trust that you can find your way through this deeply hidden nonsense of mine.Never have I knowingly acted out of a need for personal aggrandizement, though that may have been there. Only ignorance of the deeper and more unknown truths has led me astray, if I have wandered. Please forgive me for that, and this I know you can and will do.Whatever the program is I am on, it is arranged ahead and already until next May, if it is at all worthwhile in your eyes. But it is of no real importance, just a jolly leela. I will come instantly at your bidding any time. Nothing, hopefully, will ever cause me again to leave you in my heart, though there is always the risk for someone like me of losing contact with his own heart. If you lead me back, beloved friend and master, I will endeavor to follow again as best as a stumbling sannyasin can.I love you with all my heart and will try to be more and more aware of the fear that keeps me from you and that oneness of love.Namasté. And I touch your sweet feet,Somendra.He had gone astray, but he is back. And when he really comes physically back, give him a good welcome. Celebrate his coming!Jesus talks about the prodigal son. A man had two sons. One was very faithful to the father, utterly devoted to the father. The other was a problem. He was always creating trouble. Finally the father decided – he was getting old – to divide the property and separate the two sons. The elder one remained with him, and the younger one – the moment he got the money – left the father, left the village, went to the big city, and spent all the money in gambling, in drinking with the prostitutes.Within a few years all was lost; he became a beggar. He had come as a rich man and now he was begging. One day while he was begging, suddenly he was reminded, “Why can’t I go back to my father? At least he can accept me as a servant. He has many servants, my brother has many servants. I am no longer a worthy son. I cannot claim, ‘Accept me back as a son’ – but I can go and beg, ‘Accept me as a servant.’ At least that will be far better than begging from strangers and getting insulted again and again, humiliated.”He sent a message, “I am coming home.” He sent a message, “Accept me just as a servant. I am no longer worthy to be accepted as a son.”The father rejoiced. The moment he heard that he was coming that evening, he arranged for a big feast, a great celebration.His elder son was in the fields, in the gardens working the whole day; he did not know what was happening at home. Somebody told him, “Look, this is unfair! You have always been obedient, always followed your father’s footsteps, you have helped the old man in every way, but a celebration has never happened for you, no feast has been given for you and now that your brother is coming back – he has lost all the money in gambling, prostitution, drinking – that vagabond is coming back, and your father is arranging a feast. Sweets are being prepared, the whole village has been invited because the son is coming back, back home.”Of course, the elder brother was angry, enraged. He rushed home. He shouted for the first time at his father: “What is this? I have always been obedient to you, always serving you, always following you. I have never said no to you, and never was a feast given for me, never a celebration. You have not been fair. And you are giving a feast for that no-good son of yours? Do you know what he has been doing there?”The father wept, tears came to his eyes. He said, “You don’t understand. You have been with me. I know your love, your trust, your surrender, and my love has always been showering on you – but he had gone astray. Now that he is coming back he needs to be received well so he can gain his dignity back, so he can again feel part of the family, so he can again feel the love, so he does not feel a stranger, so he does not feel that he has done anything wrong, so he does not feel guilty. This feast is arranged to remove his guilt. You don’t have any guilt, hence no feast is needed. Every day is a feast for you, every day I have showered my love.“But if he is not received well, not welcomed, he will feel that he is back home but this is no longer his home. He has sent the message ‘Accept me only as a servant.’ He has to be accepted as a son, not as a servant. And what does it matter that he had gone astray? What matters is that he is coming back.”In India we have a proverb: If a man who gets lost in the morning comes back home by the evening he is not called lost. It is natural.And the father said, “You know perfectly well that if a shepherd comes home with all his sheep and counts them and finds that they were a hundred and they are now only ninety-nine – one sheep is lost somewhere in the jungle – he leaves all the sheep, goes back in the dark night, to search for the lost sheep. And when he finds the lost sheep he rejoices, and he brings the lost sheep back home on his shoulders because the one who had gone astray, who had fallen into danger, is back. It is almost a new birth.”So I say to you, when Somendra comes… I have given him the message “Finish all your programs that you have booked and then come back home.” When he comes, receive him.This can happen to anybody because this is how the mind functions, the ego functions. The ways of the ego are subtle. The work of the master is first to destroy your ego; and your unconscious will try to protect it. Once your ego is destroyed then the second step, the second phase of the work begins: to help you to stand on your feet. The second phase is not so difficult; the first phase is very difficult because to drop the ego hurts very much. For millions of lives you have carried it, it has become almost your identity. That’s how you know yourself. That is functioning as your being. It is not a real center, it is a false center, but it has become so powerful that the real is hidden behind the false.You have forgotten your original face, and the master has to pull off your mask. It hurts, because it is no longer a mask; it has become almost like skin. It is not just like clothes, it cannot be dropped so easily. Your skin has to be peeled. It hurts, it certainly hurts, and everybody will try to protect it in some way.Hence this Somendra’s going astray is of immense value to all of you. This can happen to anybody – your ego functions in such ways.The numbskull who asked the last question yesterday, “Osho, do you get your own jokes?” – now this can happen to him. He seems to be very egoistic. The question simply shows aggressiveness, ego – nothing else. He is trying to show that he is very intelligent. He is not aware of what he is saying, what he is asking.This can happen to anybody. Everybody is capable of going astray and the first part of the work is to help you not to go astray, to bring you back home again and again. And once your ego is finished, then the second phase begins: to help you to stand on your own feet.Krishnamurti’s work will remain futile because the first phase he has completely dropped; he starts with the second phase. And then there are others who only work with the first phase and they never start the second. For example, Sri Aurobindo works only with the first phase. Then there is danger.Krishnamurti is too much aware of that danger – in fact, too much, unnecessarily too much aware of that danger. The danger is there, but one has not to become focused on it. It has to be accepted and one has to pass through it. He starts with the second phase. Now you cannot start with the second phase. If the boat has not been used you remain on the other shore, you cannot move. If the ladder is not used you cannot go on the higher plane and he starts talking about the higher plane. The foundation is not laid and he starts creating the temple; the temple can never be made. And there are people like Sri Aurobindo who make the foundation, but the foundation becomes the temple.My work is total, it is organic. I have to lay down the foundation and also to raise the temple.Krishnamurti is reacting against the past fallacies. I know what has happened to Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Mohammed, and I know also what has happened to Krishnamurti. So I am working in a different way: I am trying to remain exactly in the middle, not going to any extreme. Hence I will be misunderstood by everybody; by people who start with the first and never go to the second phase I will be misunderstood because of my second phase. And I will be misunderstood by people who never do the first phase and start with the second.Just a few days ago, Amrito went to see Krishnamurti and for one and a half hours Krishnamurti went on hammering him: “Drop this idea of being a disciple, of being somebody with a master – drop this idea. Drop sannyas. Be free.”Amrito listened lovingly, felt his compassion – he is a man of great compassion, great love – but finally he said, “You are right, but I would like to fall out of this relationship not in a hurried way but like a leaf which is ripe and falls from the tree without making any noise, without any effort, like a leaf falling from the tree effortlessly.“Krishnamurti wouldn’t hear it. He said, “Do it immediately!”And Amrito said, “That I cannot do immediately because still I am not ready. If I drop the master right now I will remain in my ego. First let my ego disappear through the master and then I know my master is capable of helping me to fall like a leaf silently, even without a whisper.”And when this happens the miracle is complete, the journey is complete.It is good that you love to be with me. This is the first phase of the work. Right now, no need to bother about God – right now it is good. Be totally involved with me, be totally surrendered, and then the second work can be done by me. Then I will start helping you to go beyond the door, to go into the beyond.Surrender is only a way to freedom. It takes away only that which you do not have in the first place and it gives you that which you already have, but have forgotten all about.The second question:Osho,I am too possessive in nature. How to get away from this Indian male chauvinistic mind? Osho, please help me.Yes, you are right. The Indian mind is basically very possessive, very materialistic, although it pretends to be spiritual. That pretension is a cover-up. This is one of the strategies of the unconscious mind: if you feel inferior inside, you try on the outside to be very superior. You have to hide your inferiority with pretentions, with superiority. If you feel poor inside, you start accumulating money to show to the world and to show to yourself that you are not poor. “Look how much I have got!” Proving to the world that you are rich you are trying in an indirect way to prove to yourself that you are not poor – but deep down the poverty cannot be dispelled by all your riches. You can have the whole world, you can conquer the whole world, still you will remain a beggar. And this happens in many dimensions.To India it has happened: for centuries the country has been pretending to be spiritual. It is not spiritual at all, that is why it is pretending to be spiritual. It is just the opposite of it. If you look into the Indian scriptures, if you go back to the Vedas, you will be surprised: the Vedas are very materialistic. It is very rare to come across a statement in the Vedas which can be called spiritual. The rishis, the seers of the Vedas – the so-called seers – are asking for money, power from God; asking for things, worldly things. They are praying to God, “Give us more wealth, more health, give us a long life, give more milk to our cows, give more crops to our fields, more fruit to our trees.” And not only that: “Destroy our enemies, destroy their crops, destroy their cows, their horses. Don’t rain on the fields of our enemies. Give us everything and don’t give them anything.”And you call these scriptures spiritual? They are utterly materialistic! Not only the Vedas but all the puranas are very materialistic. Not only the so-called seers but the Indian idea of gods is very materialistic.Indra is the suprememost god in heaven – and what does he go on doing? All that is condemned here: eating, drinking and making merry, that’s all he goes on doing there. He has beautiful apsaras – beautiful women – wine, delicious food. And he is very jealous, so much so that whenever somebody starts attaining heights of meditation he becomes afraid that he may become the next Indra. “He may take possession of my kingdom.” And he sends his beautiful girls, his apsaras, to tempt, to destroy this meditator. They allure him with all kinds of temptations.Now what kind of god is Indra? Utterly materialistic. Utterly possessive, monopolistic. And still India goes on pretending to be spiritual, and anybody can see the pretension. Deep down something else is hidden – a wound, but it is covered with flowers.My own experience is – because I have come to know almost all kinds of people, they have come to me from all over the world – that the Indians are the most materialistic people in the world. And they will remain materialist till they understand what they have been doing: they have become hypocrites.“Today we will have a nice walk,” said Seth Chandulal to his kids. “We will go down to the fair and watch people eat ice cream!”“Hey, boss, I have been here twenty-five years and I have never asked for a raise before,” said Popatlal to Chandulal.“That’s why you have been here twenty-five years!” replied Chandulal.Chandulal took his dog to the veterinarian and asked him to cut his tail off completely.“Why in the world would you want me to do that?” asked the vet.“Well,” Seth Chandulal said, “my mother-in-law is coming to visit us, and I don’t want anything in the house to suggest that she is welcome!”The Indian mind is materialist, the Indian culture is materialist. Yes, there have been a few people who rebelled against it – a Mahavira, a Buddha – just a few people. And because they rebelled, the Indian culture has not tolerated them. Buddhism was completely destroyed in India; it was against the Indian materialist mind.Buddha introduced a totally new vision of life – it was spiritual, but he was against the Vedas and he was against the whole idea of Hindu gods. And the Hindus of course said, “He is destroying our culture, our religion, our spirituality.” In a way they were right – he was destroying – because what you think is culture, spirituality, religion, is not so, is not the case. It is only your hypocrisy; it is something false, and unless you see the false as the false you cannot know the real. And Buddha tried hard to make you understand that the reality is just the opposite – opposite to your beliefs about yourself. Hence the Hindus have never been able to forgive him; they destroyed his whole heritage. He was uprooted from India.And you can see it in every way. Their whole idea of spirituality is repressive. When they come to this commune their eyes are focused on the women, and they throw the whole blame on me. They become angry because the commune reflects their faces, the commune becomes a mirror to them. They become aware of what they are and nobody wants to know one’s nudity. They are enraged. Seeing their real faces they become angry at the mirror; they want to destroy the mirror. They are against me because I am mirroring them.When they come here they only look at the women, and of course their lust, their repressed lust, their repressed sexuality starts surfacing. And they become so afraid, they have to repress it again and they become angry at me because I was the cause. They think I caused what was happening inside them. I am simply reflecting what is already there.They can’t see my sannyasins in the true light, because it is impossible for a repressive person to see anything in true light. If they see a woman and a man hugging each other they immediately feel, “This is sexuality!” They cannot see any tenderness, they cannot see any loving quality. If they were unrepressed they would be able to see the love that is overflowing here. They project their own ideas. And this is not only so with the ordinary Indians, the so-called Indian gurus are the same.A prudent guru did not want to waste too much time in cultivating people who were without sufficient prestige and collateral. He was introduced, it is said, to an American widow who was reputed to be very wealthy. Having learned a thing or two about how things are done in the West, he asked an inquiry agency to check her out.When he opened the report it said: “She has a million dollars in the bank, but will probably not have it for long, as it is reported that an Indian phony is trying to get his hands on it.”It is not surprising that all the so-called Indian gurus have reached America. Wherever money is, you will also find the Indian. Muktananda, Satchitananda, Yogi Bhajan, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, are all in America for the simple reason that the money is there. And they go on talking against the money, that’s the most beautiful thing about it! They are not authentic.I am not against money at all. What I am against is hypocrisy. They talk against money and they go on accumulating money.Remember, to me there is no problem. I am not against materialism either. In fact, my whole effort is to create a synthesis between materialism and spiritualism. There is no need to divide them, because man is both body and soul. If man can be both body and soul, then religion should be both materialist and spiritual.But the Indian cannot accept the materialist point of view; he is afraid of it. He is afraid if it is accepted then all his repressed lust, greed, is bound to surface. And he goes on finding cunning ways to avoid seeing his true face.An Indian guru ran into a buxom blonde he had met casually at a bar a few nights before.“Great seeing you again,” he said. “It just happens there is a groovy party happening tonight and I would like you to come. I won’t take no for an answer.”“Where is it at?” asked the pretty doll.“At my ashram, baby, and it is gonna be a gas. Lots of music, dancing and love. And it could last all weekend.”“Sounds good,” said the girl eagerly. “Who is gonna be there?”“Ah,” said the guru, “just you and me!”If you watch, if you observe what the Indian gurus are doing in the West, you will be surprised. And they go on talking about spirituality, and the gullible are always there. And the West is more innocent because the West is honestly materialist. To be honestly materialist has an integrity in it, an innocence. The East is dishonestly materialist.You say, “I am too possessive in nature.” That is part of being an Indian. Unless you drop the whole nonsense called “Indian” you will not be able to be free of your possessiveness.Jainas talk about spirituality, renunciation, but if you look in their scriptures you will be surprised. They praise Mahavira because he renounced big marble palaces, a great kingdom, immeasurable wealth, a great army, etcetera, etcetera. And they go on magnifying it, making it bigger and bigger. As time has passed, their idea of Mahavira’s kingdom has become very, very huge.In fact, he was the son of a king of a very small kingdom – very small – because in his time India was divided into two thousand kingdoms. It was not bigger than a district, it was a very small kingdom. It can’t have had so many thousands of elephants in the army, it can’t have had that big an army either. It was a very poor kingdom. If Mahavira had not been born, nobody would have ever heard of it, no mention would have ever been made about it, nobody would have ever known Mahavira’s father’s name. It was so small.But how do you measure renunciation? – through wealth. If a poor man renounces, nobody respects him because they will ask, “What have you renounced? In the first place you have to have, then you can renounce.” That’s why all the twenty-four tirthankaras, all the twenty-four great masters of the Jainas are sons of kings. Not a single person comes from a poor family. What does it show? It shows pure materialism, nothing else.All the avatars of the Hindus are sons of kings – as if the whole country is dead! Not a single avatar, not a single incarnation of God in a poor family or even in a middle class family. No tirthankara, no enlightened Jaina master is from an ordinary family; they all come from royal families.You can see the point. The point is that the respect is for money. Even in renunciation, the respect is for money. If you have money, then you are respected. Your renunciation will also be respected. If you don’t have money you can be as great a meditator as Mahavira but nobody is going to respect you. They will ask, “How much have you renounced?” and if you cannot show them that you have renounced a big bank balance you are not of any worth.Drop this idea of being an Indian. You ask me, “How to get away from this Indian male chauvinistic mind?” Just by understanding it one gets away, one gets beyond. We are taught to cling to such ideas – Indians, Russians, Americans, Hindus, Christians, Mohammedans – we have been taught to cling to these ideas.I am teaching you just to be human beings. The whole Earth is one and people everywhere are the same. They differ only in superficial things – in nonessential things, in the language of Desiderata. As far as the essential is concerned they are not different at all. Maybe their color is different, maybe the color of their hair is different, their skin is different, their height is different, but these are nonessential things.The human being is essentially the same everywhere, so why carry these ideas of being Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian? Drop all these ideas. Just being religious is enough, just being human is enough. Just being is enough – loving, meditative, alert, aware. And all these poisons will disappear on their own accord.Go deeper into meditation because all these things are part of the mind, and meditation means going into no-mind. Just become aware of your mind, whatsoever it is – Indian male chauvinistic, or Russian communistic, or Catholic, or Protestant. Just become aware. Awareness is neither communist nor socialist nor fascist nor capitalist. Awareness is just awareness. Whatsoever is in the mind, leave it there as an object and be aware – and you shift your identity from the content to the consciousness.Remember: “I am only awareness,” “I am not my mind.” The more this vision “I am not my mind, I am pure awareness – sat-chit-anand – I am truth, I am consciousness, I am bliss, I am not the contents of the mind” penetrates in you… Contents have been put in by others. “Contents” means conditionings. As you become aware, you become unconditioned; there is no other way. Awareness is the master key – it opens all the doors of the divine. It opens the doors of all the temples of all the mysteries.Be more alert, aware, watchful. I teach nothing else but awareness; then everything else comes on its own accord.The third question:Osho,Please say something about English sex education in schools.There is nothing much to say about it!The vicar is called in to tell the children not to do it.The doctor is called in to tell them why not to do it.Finally, the headmaster comes in and tells them where not to do it.This is the whole of English sex education!The last question:Osho,I don't seem to have any real questions. Is there something wrong with me or is it because I am a Polack?It is nice of you to accept that you are a Polack! This is the beginning of getting out of being a Polack. Polacks hide it. There are many hidden Polacks here, they are everywhere. If you ask a Polack, “Who are you?” he will say, “Why are you asking, who are you to ask me? I am not a Polack!”It is good that you accept. The moment a person accepts “I am ignorant,” he has taken the first step toward knowing, toward wisdom. Only the stupid person claims knowledge; the intelligent person never claims knowledge. The intelligent person has no claim about anything. All that he can say is, “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” He is as innocent as a child.Nothing is wrong with you. If there was something wrong with you there would be questions. Questions arise out of something wrong.When one has innocence there are no questions. Innocence wonders, it does not question. It experiences the awe of existence and life, the beauty. It is constantly wondering what it is all about, but it is not a question. It is a heartfelt feeling. One is surprised every moment, one is always in for a great surprise.A Hasid master was dying. He was a very extraordinary human being of great innocence and joy. He loved to laugh and dance and sing; that’s the way of the Hasids. Jews don’t think well of them; they think they are untraditional, in fact anti-traditional, but that’s how real spiritual beings have always been treated by the so-called religious people, by the formally religious. The real religious person is always condemned. This master was also condemned by them and his ways were always new; he was unconventional, unorthodox.So when he was going to die, his disciples asked, “What are we going to do with your body? – because you have lived such an unconventional life we don’t know whether to bury or burn you. What we are supposed to do?”The dying master opened his eyes, laughed his last laugh, and said, “Surprise me!” closed his eyes and died.This is the way of the innocent: “Surprise me!” Even in death there is innocence, laughter. Even in death there is no complaint. He is waiting to be surprised. Whether you burn him or bury him, decide yourself, but make it a surprise. Don’t ask it, don’t follow any given instructions because then it will not be a surprise at all. “If I say bury me or burn me, then I will already know about it.”That is how ready-made answers accumulate: you know about everything and that destroys the beauty of life, that destroys the blessing of life, the bliss of life. Your knowledge goes on covering you, covers on covers, layers upon layers. You become a junkyard. You are carrying such unnecessary weights; otherwise you can fly, you can be weightless.You ask, “I don’t seem to have any real questions.” That is a great insight. There are no real questions in existence. All questions are false, unreal, nonessential, because life is not a problem to be solved; it is a mystery to be lived. Only the fools go on questioning and go on thinking that some answers will help them. No answer is going to help you; every answer will create more questions.You can see the whole history of philosophy: every answer has brought thousands of unnecessary questions. It has not been an answer, it has been a problem – every answer! Not a single answer has come out of five thousand years of philosophizing. Philosophy is not so much philosophy – it is “foolosophy.” It is the domain of the fools. Fools are great philosophers because they go on and on. They find a question, then an answer, then the answer brings ten questions. Then they go on and on and the foliage becomes thicker and thicker. The foolishness becomes deeper and deeper.It is good that you cannot find any real questions.Buddha is reported to have said that a meditator loses all his questions. A moment comes when there are no questions left, and that is the moment when you attain to wisdom – not to answers but to wisdom. Wisdom is not an answer; it is the unfolding of your consciousness. Not that you come to know something, but you start experiencing life in its totality. It is not an answer, it is an experience, and the experience goes on unfolding. So it is not experience, it is more experiencing. It is a process, not an event.Nothing is wrong with you – something is right with you. That is why there are no questions arising. Don’t be worried. It happens: when you don’t feel any questions and so many people are asking so many questions, you start worrying about it. “What is the matter with me? People are bringing so many questions!” You don’t know how many questions I go on throwing out every day – hundreds of questions! Mind is a question-creating factory. Just as leaves come out of trees, questions come out of the mind. You must be entering into the world of meditation. Then there are no questions.A great philosopher – or “foolosopher” – went to see Buddha, and he asked a long series of questions. Buddha listened, and he went on and on, questions and questions and questions. Finally Buddha had to say, “Wait!” The man stopped. Buddha said, “Wait for two years, sit by my side, and for two years no question, no answer. Just sit by my side and be silent, and after two years you can ask any question you want and I am ready to answer.”The man said, “This is strange, because I have gone to many religious philosophers, theologians, thinkers, and whenever I asked questions they always answered. This is no way of answering!”Buddha said, “Yes, you have been to many philosophers and they have answered, but have you got the answers?”He said, “That is true. Their answers have simply created more questions.”So Buddha said, “What do you want? Do you want more questions? – then I can answer. But if you are really interested in getting beyond the questions, then do this strange act which you have never done: sitting silently, doing nothing. Just wait for two years.”The man thought for a moment and agreed because the point was so clear. He was old, sixty years old, and he had been to many masters; so-called masters of course, because if he had been to a real master then there was no need to go anywhere else. A real master is a full stop. And that’s what Buddha became to him – a full stop. He agreed.The moment he said, “Yes, I will wait for two years and remain silent, but don’t forget your promise,” Mahakashyapa, a disciple of Buddha who was sitting under another tree, started laughing.The man asked – his name was Maulingaputta – he asked, “Why is this disciple laughing?”Buddha said, “You can ask him yourself. Ask and be finished because after that for two years you have to be silent!”So he asked Mahakashyapa, “Why are you laughing?”He said, “I am not laughing at you, I am laughing at myself, because this is what has happened to me. This man is tricky! He told me to sit silently for two years, and twenty years have passed and I don’t have any questions, and he goes on again and again. Whenever he passes by me he says, ‘Mahakashyapa, ask! Where are your questions?’ – and I cannot ask because there are no questions left. He tricked me into silence. I am enjoying life, I am enjoying existence, I am enjoying my being, but there are no questions – mysteries of course; but no questions, no problems, so I cannot ask anything. And he goes on poking me. Whenever I come across him he says, ‘Mahakashyapa, have you forgotten? I am ready to answer now, but you don’t ask!’“So I would suggest to you,” he said to Maulingaputta, “that if you really want to ask, ask now. Be finished with it. Otherwise, after two years it will be too late.”Buddha said, “I will stick to my promise. If you ask me, I will answer.”And two years passed, and really Buddha remembered. Exactly on the same day after two years, from ten thousand sannyasins, he called Maulingaputta, “Where is he?” He was hiding because he knew two years had passed, so he was hiding somewhere in the crowd. He said, “Maulingaputta, come out! Ask your questions. Where are your questions?”And he said, “Mahakashyapa was right. They have all disappeared, Bhagwan, I don’t have any questions to ask. And please, don’t ask me again to ask questions because that will be very embarrassing. You will be asking me and I will not ask anything because I don’t have any questions. They have simply withered away.”That is what happens when you enter into the world of meditation.It is nothing to do with your being a Polack. You have become innocent, you have become like a child. And becoming a child, becoming reborn, becoming innocent is the greatest achievement there is, the highest peak of spirituality. When you are utterly innocent your vision becomes so clear, your insight is so perfect that you can see. There are no barriers, hence no questions arise.The blind man asks whether the light exists or not, and he can be forgiven because he is blind. The man with eyes never asks whether light exists or not. Have you heard of any man with eyes asking whether light exists or not? And if somebody with eyes asks that, that will only show that he is mad. Eyes are enough – one knows light exists.Whenever a man asks whether God exists or not he is simply showing his blindness. He is showing that his inner eyes are not functioning, that his insight is clouded. When somebody asks, “What is love?” what does he show, what does it indicate? It simply indicates his heart is closed, his heart is not open like a lotus. He has forgotten all about his heart, he has bypassed his heart. He lives in the head, he has made his house in the head. And slowly, slowly, logic is all that he knows; hence he asks, “What is love?” A man of heart will not ask, “What is love?” He will know.When you ask, you simply show that you need clarity – not an answer but a clarity. And what am I doing here, in fact? I am not trying to answer your questions, I am trying to destroy your questions. These are not answers. I am hammering! I am destroying your questions, your heads. My whole effort is to free the energy from your head – it is imprisoned there – and to allow it to move into the heart, and then into the being which is your real center. The heart is mid-way between the head and the being. Thinking is head; it creates questions and never gives you any answer. It is the world of philosophy – the world of the fools. Below it is the world of feeling, heart; it is the world of the poets.Have you observed the fact that philosophers ask, poets answer? All poetry is an answer – no poetry is a question. No poetry has a question mark on it; it is an answer. The heart answers. Hence it is far better to come into the world of feeling; that is wiser, but still you are a little far away from absolutely clear insight, because when the insight is clear there is not even an answer, what to say about a question? Not even an answer.The philosopher questions, the poet answers, and the mystic is neither interested in questioning nor interested in answering. If you come to a mystic master, his whole work is to destroy your questions, your answers – everything that you are carrying along with you, to make you utterly empty. That is the moment when insight starts functioning: you become innocent.I have heard…Morarji Desai, when he was the prime minister of India, was traveling in a plane with his cabinet. “If I throw out a hundred-rupee note,” he said, “I will make one person very happy.”One of the members of his cabinet added, “But if you throw out two fifty-rupee notes you will make two people happy.”Another said, “Well, you could make ten people happy by throwing out ten, ten-rupee notes.”And the wisest of them all said, “Why not throw one-rupee notes? You will be making one hundred people happy?”At this point a little child who was sitting in the seat next to them said, “Why don’t you make seven hundred million people happy by throwing yourself out of the window?”This is clear insight! Only a child can have it, only a child can say it.You are coming close to the second birth. The first birth is given by the mother and the father; that is a physical phenomenon. The second birth happens through the master; that is a spiritual phenomenon. You are coming close to the second birth. And once you are twice-born, once you are a dwija – twice-born – you will not have any questions, you will not have any answers, and you will not be worried about why you are not having real questions. You will rejoice immensely that you are free from questions and free from answers. Then you enter into the real, the essential, the very core of things. Then you enter into the depth, the profound depth of that which is.God is a code word for “that which is.” God is not a word, it is a code word. It does not mean anything unless you know the code. G stands for that, o stands for which, and d stands for is: that which is. God is not a person but all that surrounds you, within and without. When your insight is clear, when all the clouds are gone and the sun is uncloudedly in the sky, who bothers about questions and answers? Who is concerned with words and theories, ideologies, philosophies, theologies? They all disappear.In that silence is the truth. That silence is the shrine of the truth. Enter into it, take the jump into it – that is the essential thing. If you miss it, you miss your whole life and the great opportunity that life has given to you. If you reach this essential core you are blessed, you have arrived home.That is the message of Desiderata and that is my message too.Enough for today.

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The Hidden Harmony 01-11Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

The Hidden Harmony 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The hidden harmonyis better than the obvious.Opposition brings concord.Out of discordcomes the fairest harmony.It is in changingthat things find repose.People do not understandhow that which is at variance with itself,agrees with itself.There is a harmony in the bending back,as in the case of the bow and the lyre.The name of the bow is life,but its work is death.I have been in love with Heraclitus for many lives. In fact, Heraclitus is the only Greek I have ever been in love with – except, of course, Mukta, Seema and Neeta!Heraclitus is really beautiful. If he had been born in India, or in the East, he would have been known as a buddha. But in Greek history, philosophy, he was a stranger, an outsider. He is known in Greece not as an enlightened person, but as Heraclitus the Obscure, Heraclitus the Dark, Heraclitus the Riddling. Aristotle, the father of Greek philosophy and Western thought, thought him no philosopher at all and said, “At the most he is a poet,” but that too was difficult for him to concede. So later on in other works he said, “There must be some defect in Heraclitus’ character, something biologically wrong; that’s why he talks in such obscure ways and talks in paradoxes.” Aristotle thought that he was a little eccentric, a little mad – and Aristotle dominates the whole West. If Heraclitus had been accepted, the whole history of the West would have been totally different. He was not understood at all. He became more and more separate from the main current of Western thinking and the Western mind.Heraclitus was like Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Basho. The Greek soil was absolutely not good for him. He would have been a great tree in the East; millions would have profited and found the way through him. To the Greeks he was just outlandish, eccentric, something foreign, alien; he didn’t belong to them. That’s why his name has remained just on the side, in a dark corner; by and by, he has been forgotten.At the moment when Heraclitus was born, precisely at that moment, humanity reached a peak: a moment of transformation. It happens with humanity just as it does with an individual: there are moments when changes happen. Every seven years the body changes, and it goes on changing. If you live for seventy years, your total biophysical system will change ten times. If you use those gaps when the body changes, it will be very easy to move into meditation.For example, sex becomes important for the first time at fourteen; the body goes through a biochemical change. If at that moment you are introduced to the dimension of meditation, it will be very, very easy to move into it because the body is not fixed. The old pattern has gone and the new has yet to come – there is a gap. At twenty-one, again deep changes happen because every seven years the body completely renews itself; all the old cells drop away and new ones are formed. It happens again at thirty-five, and goes on. Every seven years your body comes to a point where the old goes and the new settles – then there is a transitory period. In that transitory period everything is liquid. If you want a new dimension to enter your life, that is precisely the moment.It happens exactly the same way in the history of the whole of humanity. Every twenty-five centuries there comes a peak. If you use that moment, you can easily become enlightened. It will not be so easy at other times because at that peak the river itself is flowing in that direction; everything is fluid, nothing is fixed.Twenty-five centuries ago in India, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira were born; in China, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu; in Iran, Zarathustra; in Greece, Heraclitus. They are the peaks. Never before were such peaks attained, or if they were attained they are not part of history because history starts with Jesus. You don’t know what happened twenty-five centuries ago. The moment is coming again; we are in a fluid state. The old is meaningless, the past has no significance for you, the future is uncertain – the gap is here. Humanity will again achieve a peak, the same peak as there was in Heraclitus’ time. If you are a little aware, you can use this moment – you can simply drop out of the wheel of life. When things are liquid, transformation is easy. When things are fixed, transformation is difficult.You are fortunate that you are born in an age where things are again in a state of liquidity. Nothing is certain, all old codes and commandments have become useless. New patterns have yet not settled in. They will settle soon; man cannot remain unsettled forever because when you are unsettled there is insecurity. Things will settle again, this moment will not last forever; it is only for a few years. If you can use it, you can reach a peak which will be very, very difficult to reach at other times. If you miss it, the moment is missed again for another twenty-five centuries.Remember, life moves in a cycle; everything moves in a cycle. The child is born, has his youth, old age, his death. It moves just as the seasons do: summer comes, rains follow; winter comes, and it goes on in a circle. The same happens in the dimension of consciousness. Every twenty-five centuries the circle is complete and before the new circle starts there is a gap that you can escape through; the door is open for a few years.Heraclitus is a rare flowering; one of the most highly penetrating souls, and one of those souls who has become like Everest, the highest peak of the Himalayas. Try to understand him. It is difficult; that’s why he is called Heraclitus the Obscure. He is not obscure. To understand him is difficult; to understand him you will need a different type of being – that is the problem. So it is easy to categorize him as obscure and forget him.There are two types of people. If you want to understand Aristotle you don’t need any change in your being, you simply need some information. A school can provide some information about logic, philosophy; you can collect some intellectual understanding and understand Aristotle. You need not change to understand him, you need only a few additions to your knowledge. The being remains the same, you remain the same. You need not have a different plane of consciousness; that is not the requirement. Aristotle is clear. If you want to understand him, a little effort is enough; anyone of an average mind and intelligence will understand him. To understand Heraclitus is going to be rough terrain, difficult because whatever knowledge you collect will not be of much help; a very cultivated head won’t be of any help. You will need a different quality of being, and that is difficult – you will need a transformation. Hence, he is called obscure.He is not obscure. You are just below the level of being where he can be understood. When you reach that level of being, suddenly all the darkness around him disappears. He is one of the most luminous beings; he is not obscure, he is not dark – it is you who are blind. Always remember this because if you say he is dark, you are throwing the responsibility on him, you are trying to escape from a transformation that is possible through encountering him. Don’t say that he is dark. Say, “We are blind” or “Our eyes are closed.”The sun is there in the sky. You can stand in front of it with closed eyes and say that it is dark, or you can stand with your eyes open in front of it, but the light will be so strong that your eyes will temporarily go blind. The light is too much to bear. It is unbearable, and suddenly, darkness. You open your eyes, the sun is there again, but it is too much so you feel the darkness. That’s the case with Heraclitus ? he is not dark. Either you are blind, or your eyes are closed, or there is a third possibility. When you look at Heraclitus, he is such a luminous being that your eyes simply lose the capacity to see. He is unbearable, the light is too much for you. You are not accustomed to such light and will need to make a few arrangements before you can understand him. When he’s talking he looks as if he is riddling, he looks as if he is enjoying riddles because he talks in paradoxes.All those who have known always talk in paradoxes. There is something in it – they are not riddling, they are very simple. What can they do? If life itself is paradoxical, what can they do? Just to avoid paradoxes you can create neat and clean theories, but they will be false, they will not be true to life. Aristotle is very neat, clean; he looks like a well-managed garden. Heraclitus looks like riddles – he is a wild forest. With Aristotle there is no trouble; he has avoided the paradox, he has made a neat and clean doctrine – it appeals. You will be scared to face Heraclitus because he opens the door of life, and life is paradoxical. Buddha is paradoxical, Lao Tzu is paradoxical; all those who have known are bound to be paradoxical. What can they do? If life itself is paradoxical, they have to be true to life. Life is not logical. It is a logos, but it is not logic. It is a cosmos, it is not a chaos; it is not logic.The word logos has to be understood because Heraclitus will use it; the difference between logos and logic also has to be understood. Logic is a doctrine about what is true, and logos is truth itself. Logos is existential, logic is not existential; logic is intellectual, theoretical. Try to understand. If you see life you will say that there is also death. How can you avoid death? If you look at life, it is implied. Every moment of life is also a moment of death; you cannot separate them. It becomes a riddle.Life and death are not two separate phenomena; they are two faces of the same coin, two aspects of the same coin. If you penetrate deeply you will see that life is death and death is life. The moment you are born, you have started dying. If this is so, when you die you will start living again. If death is implied in life, life will be implied in death. They belong to each other, they are complementary. Life and death are just like two wings or two legs; you cannot move with only the right leg or the left leg. In life you cannot be a rightist or a leftist, you have to be both together. With doctrine you can be a rightist, or a leftist. Doctrine is never true to life and cannot be because doctrine, out of necessity, needs to be clean, neat, clear, and life is not that – life is vast. Somewhere, one of the greatest poets of the world, Whitman, has said, “I contradict myself because I am vast.”You will attain a very tiny mind through logic – you cannot be vast. If you are afraid of contradiction you cannot be vast. You will have to choose, you will have to suppress, you will have to avoid the contradiction, you will have to hide it. Can it disappear by your hiding it? By just not looking at death, are you not going to die?You can avoid death, you can have your back toward it, you can completely forget about it ? that’s why we don’t talk about death; it is not good manners. We don’t talk about it, we avoid it. Death happens every day, it is happening everywhere, but we avoid it. The moment a man dies we are in a hurry to be finished with him. We make our graveyards out of the town so nobody goes there, and we make graves in marble and write beautiful lines on them. We put flowers on the grave. What are you doing? ? you are trying to decorate it a little.In the West, how to hide death has become a profession. There are professionals who help you avoid it, and make the dead body beautiful, as if it is still alive. What are you doing? Can this help in any way? Death is there. You are headed toward the graveyard; wherever you put it makes no difference – you will reach there. You are already on the way, standing in the queue waiting for the moment; just waiting in the queue to die. Where can you escape death?Logic tries to be clear, and just to be clear it avoids. It says that life is life, death is death – they are separate. Aristotle says A is A, it is never B. That became the foundation stone of all Western thought: avoid the contradiction – love is love, hate is hate; love is never hate. This is foolish because all love implies hate, has to; that’s how nature is. You love a person and you hate the same person, you have to; you cannot avoid it. If you try to avoid it everything will become false. That’s why your love has become false; it is not true, it is not authentic. It cannot be sincere, it is a facade.Why is it a facade? – because you are avoiding the other. You say, “You are my friend and a friend cannot be an enemy. You are my enemy, you cannot be my friend.” These are two aspects of the same coin – the enemy is a hidden friend and the friend is a hidden enemy. The other aspect is hidden, but it is there. But it will be too much for you. If you see both, it will be unbearable. If you see the enemy in the friend you will not be able to love him. If you see the friend in the enemy you will not be able to hate him. The whole of life will become a riddle.Heraclitus is called “that Riddler.” He is not, he is true to life. He simply reports whatever it is. He has no doctrine about life, he is not a system-maker – he is simply a mirror. Whatever life is, he represents it. Your face changes, the mirror represents it; you are loving, the mirror represents it; the next moment you become hateful, the mirror represents it. The mirror is not riddling, it is true.Aristotle is not like a mirror, he is like a dead photograph. It doesn’t change, it doesn’t move with life. That’s why Aristotle says, “There is some defect in the very character of this man Heraclitus.” The mind should be clear for Aristotle, systematic, rational; logic should be the goal of life and you should not mix the opposites. Who is mixing them? Heraclitus is not mixing them. They are there, mixed. Heraclitus is not responsible for them. How can you separate them if they are mixed in life itself? Yes, you can try in your books, but your books will be false. A logical statement is basically going to be false because it cannot be a life statement. A life statement is going to be illogical because life exists through contradictions.Look at life; everywhere there is contradiction. Nothing is wrong in contradiction, it is just that it is unbearable for your logical mind. If you attain a mystical insight it becomes beautiful. Really, beauty cannot exist without it. If you cannot hate the same person you love, there will be no tension in your love. It will be a dead thing. There will be no polarity; everything will become stale. What happens? If you love a person, in the morning you love and by the afternoon it will have become hate. Why? What is the reason for it? Why is it so in life? ? because when you hate, you separate; the initial distance is again regained. Before you fell in love you were two separate individuals. When you fell in love you became a unity, you became a community.You must understand this word community. It is very beautiful; it means common unity. You became a community, you attained a common unity. Community is beautiful for a few moments, but then it looks like slavery. To attain a common unity for a few moments is beautiful, it leads to a height, to a peak – but you cannot live on the peak forever. Who will live in the valley? The peak is beautiful only because the valley is there. If you cannot move to the valley again, the peak will lose all its peakness. It is because of the valley that it is a peak. If you make a house there you will forget that it is a peak – the whole beauty of love will be lost.In the morning you love, by the afternoon you are filled with hate. You have moved to the valley, you have moved to the initial position where you were before you fell in love – now you are individuals again. To be individual is beautiful because it is a freedom. To be in the valley is also beautiful because it is a relaxation. To be in the dark valley is soothing, it helps you to regain balance. You are ready again to go to the peak; by the evening you are in love again. This is a process of parting and coming together – again and again. When you fall in love again after a hateful moment, it is a new honeymoon.If there is no change life is static. If you cannot move to the opposite everything will become stale and boring. That’s why people who are too cultivated become boring because they always go on smiling, they are never angry. You insult them and they smile; you praise them and they smile; you condemn them and they smile. They are unbearable. Their smile is dangerous, and cannot be very deep; it remains just on the lips, it is a face. They are not smiling, they are just following a code; their smile is ugly.You will always find that people who are always in love and never hate or get angry are superficial – because if you don’t move to the opposite, from where will you gain depth? Depth comes through a movement to the opposite. Love is hate. In fact, we shouldn’t use the words love and hate, we should use a single word, lovehate. A love relationship is a love-hate one – and it is beautiful! Nothing is wrong in hate because it is through hate that you gain love. Nothing is wrong in being angry because it is through anger that you come to a silent stillness.Have you noticed? Every morning, airplanes pass over here making a loud noise. When the plane has passed over, a deep silence follows in its wake. It was not so silent before the plane came, no. When the plane has passed over, it is more silent. You are walking down a street on a dark night, suddenly a car comes. It passes by at full speed; your eyes are dazzled by the light – when the car has passed it is darker than before.Everything lives through the opposite, through the tension of the opposite – and becomes deeper. Go away so that you can come near; move to the opposite so that you can come closer again.A love relationship is one of falling again and again in a honeymoon. If the honeymoon is over and the thing has settled, it is already dead – anything that is settled is dead. Life remains through an unsettled movement – anything that is secure is already in the grave. Your bank balances are your graveyards; that is where you have died. If you are totally secure you are no longer alive because to be alive is basically to move between the opposites.Illness is not a bad thing; it is through illness that you regain health. Everything fits in the harmony – that’s why Heraclitus is called the Riddler. Lao Tzu would have understood him deeply, but Aristotle could not understand him. Unfortunately, Aristotle became the source of Greek thought; even more unfortunate is that Greek thought became the whole base of the Western mind.What is Heraclitus’s deepest message? Understand this so you can follow ? he does not believe in things, he believes in processes; process is God to him. If you watch closely, you will see that things don’t exist in the world; everything is a process. In fact to use the word is, is existentially wrong because everything is becoming. Nothing is in a state of isness, nothing!You say, “This is a tree.” By the time you say it, it has grown; your statement is already false. The tree is never static, so how can you use the word, is? It is always becoming, becoming something else. Everything is growing, moving, in a process. Life is movement. It is like a river – always moving. Heraclitus says, “You cannot step in the same river twice,” ? because by the time you come to step in it the second time, it has moved. It is a flow. Can you meet the same person twice? Impossible! You were also here yesterday morning – am I the same? Are you the same? Both rivers have changed. You may be here again tomorrow, but you will not find me; someone else will be here.Life is changing. Heraclitus says, “Only change is eternal.” Only change never changes. Everything else changes. He believes in a permanent revolution. Everything is in revolution. It is how it is here. To be means to become. To remain where you are means to move; you cannot stay, nothing is static. Even the hills, the Himalayas, are not static; they are moving, moving fast. They are born and they die. The Himalayas is one of the youngest mountain ranges in the world, and it is still growing. It has not reached its peak yet, it is very young – every year it grows one foot. There are old mountains whose peaks have been attained; now they are old, falling down, their backs are bent.These walls you see around you, every particle of them is in movement. You cannot see the movement because it is very subtle and fast. Remember, now physicists agree with Heraclitus, not with Aristotle. Whenever any science reaches nearer to reality, it has to agree with Lao Tzu and Heraclitus. Now physicists say that everything is in movement. Eddington has said, “The only word which is false is rest.” Nothing is at rest, nothing can be; it is a false word, it doesn’t correspond to any reality. The word is, is just in language. In life, in existence, there is no is; everything is becoming. When Heraclitus talks about the river – and the symbol of the river is very, very deep with him – he says, “You cannot step in the same river twice.” He also says, “Even if you do, you are the same and you are not the same.” Just on the surface you look the same. Not only has the river changed, you have also changed.It happened…A man came to Buddha to insult him – he spat on his face. Buddha wiped his face and asked the man, “Have you anything more to say?” – as if he had said something. The man was puzzled because he never expected this type of response. He went away.The next day he came again – because he couldn’t sleep the whole night; he felt more and more that he had done something absolutely wrong, he felt guilty. The next morning he came to Buddha, fell at his feet and said, “Forgive me!”Buddha replied, “Who will forgive you now? ? because the man you spat on is no longer the same, and the man you were when you spat is no longer the same. So who will forgive whom? Forget it, now nothing can be done about it. It cannot be undone – finished! Nobody is there, both parties are dead. What can be done? You are a new man and I am a new man.”This is Heraclitus’s deepest message: everything flows and changes; everything moves, nothing is static. The moment you cling, you miss reality. Your clinging becomes the problem because reality changes and you cling.You loved me yesterday; now you are angry. I cling to yesterday and say, “You have to love me because yesterday you were loving and said that you would always love me – now what has happened?” But what can you do? Yesterday when you said that you would love me always, it was not false, but it was not a promise either. It was simply the mood, and I believed too much in the mood. At that moment you felt it, that you would love me always and always and always, forever. Remember, it was not untrue. It was true in the moment, that was the mood, but now that mood has gone. The one who said it is no longer there. And if it is gone, it is gone; nothing can be done. You cannot force love. That’s what we are doing – and making so much misery out of it. The husband says, “Love me!” The wife says, “Love me because you promised – have you forgotten the days when we were courting?” But they are no longer there. Those people are no longer there either. Just remember yourself as a young man of twenty ? are you the same man? Much has passed; the Ganges has flowed too much – you are no longer there.I have heard…One night Mulla Nasruddin’s wife said, “You no longer love me. You never kiss me, never hug me. Remember when we were courting? You used to bite me and I loved it so much! Can’t you bite me again?”Nasruddin got out of bed and started walking. His wife said, “Where are you going?”He replied, “To the bathroom to get my teeth.”No, you cannot step in the same river twice. It’s impossible. Don’t cling; if you cling you create a hell for yourself. Clinging is hell, and a nonclinging consciousness is always in heaven. One moves with the mood, accepts it, and accepts the change; there is no grudge, no complaint about it because this is how life is ? things are. You can fight, but you cannot change.When someone is young, of course there are different moods because youth has different seasons and moods. How can an old man experience the same? An old man will look very foolish with those moods. How can an old man say the same thing? Everything has changed. When you are young you are romantic, inexperienced, dreamy. When you are old all the dreams have gone. There is nothing bad about it because when the dreams are gone, you are nearer and closer to reality – now you understand more. You are less of a poet because you cannot dream now, but nothing is wrong. Dreaming was a mood, a season – it changes. One has to be true to the state in which one finds oneself at a certain point.Be true to your changing self because that is the only reality. That’s why Buddha says, “There is no self.” You are a river. There is no self because there is nothing unchanging in you. Buddha was thrown out of India because the Indian mind, particularly the brahmins, the Hindus, believed in a permanent self, atma. They have always said, “Something is permanent,” and Buddha said, “Only change is permanent – nothing is permanent.”Why do you want to be a permanent thing? Why do you want to be dead? ? because only a dead thing can be permanent. Waves come and go, that’s why the ocean is alive. If waves stop, everything in the ocean will stop. It will be a dead thing. Everything lives through change – and change means changing to the other polarity. You move from one pole to another; that’s how you become alive and fresh again and again. During the day you work hard, and at night you relax and go to sleep. In the morning you are alive and fresh to work again. Have you ever noticed the polarity?Work is against relaxation. If you work hard you become tense, tired, exhausted, but then you fall into the deep valley of rest, a deep relaxation. The surface is far away, you move to the center. You are no longer the identity you are on the surface, no longer the name, the ego; nothing is carried from the surface. You simply forget who you are, and in the morning you are fresh. This forgetfulness is good, it makes you fresh. Just try not sleeping for three weeks – you will go mad because you would have forgotten to move to the opposite.If Aristotle is right, and if you don’t sleep at all, and don’t move to the opposite, you will become an enlightened man. You will be mad! It is because of Aristotle that there are so many mad people in the West. Sooner or later the whole West is going to be mad if they don’t listen to the East, or to Heraclitus. It is bound to be so because you have lost the polarity. Logic will say something else. Logic will say, “Rest the whole day, practice rest the whole day, so that in the night you can fall into a deep sleep.” This is logical. “Practice rest!” This is logical. This is what rich people do; they rest the whole day, have insomnia and then say, “We cannot sleep.” They are practicing the whole day – lying on their beds, their easy chairs, resting and resting and resting. At night, suddenly they find that they cannot sleep. They have followed Aristotle, they are logical.One day Mulla Nasruddin went to his doctor. He entered the room coughing. The doctor said, “It sounds better.”Nasruddin replied, “Of course, it has to sound better – because I practiced it the whole night.”If you practice rest the whole day, at night you will be restless. You will change sides again and again; that is just an exercise the body is doing so that some rest becomes possible. No – in life you cannot find a man more wrong than Aristotle. Move to the opposite. Work hard in the day and you will go into a deeper sleep at night. Go deeper in sleep, and in the morning you will find that you are capable of doing tremendous work, and will have infinite energy. Through rest one gains energy; through work one gains rest – just the opposite.People come to me and say, “We have insomnia, we cannot sleep, so tell us some way to relax” – they are Aristotelian. I say to them, “There is no need for you to relax. Just go for a walk, a long walk, run madly – two hours in the morning, two in the evening, and rest will follow automatically. It always follows! You don’t need relaxation techniques; you need active meditation techniques, not relaxation. You are already too relaxed; that’s what the insomnia is showing – there is no need for more.”Life moves through one opposite to another. Heraclitus says, “This is the secret, the hidden harmony; this is the hidden harmony.” He is very poetic, he has to be. He cannot be philosophic because philosophy means reason. Poetry can be contradictory; poetry can say things which philosophers will be ashamed to say – poetry is truer to life. Philosophers just go around and around; they never hit the center point, they beat about the bush. Poetry simply hits directly.If you want any parallels to Heraclitus in the East, you will find them in the Zen masters, Zen poets, particularly in the poetry known as haiku. Basho is one of the great masters of haiku. Basho and Heraclitus are absolutely close, in a deep embrace; they are almost one. Basho has not written anything in a philosophical way; he has written in small haikus, just three-line, seventeen-syllable haikus, just small pieces. Heraclitus has also written fragments; he has not written a system like Hegel, Kant; he is not a systematizer – just oracular maxims. Each fragment is complete in itself, just like a diamond; each cut to its perfection in itself, no need to be related to another. He has spoken in an oracular way.The whole method of the oracular maxim has disappeared from the West. Only Nietzsche wrote in the same way. His book: Thus Spake Zarathustra consists of oracular maxims – since Heraclitus, only Nietzsche. In the East, everyone who has become enlightened has written in that way. That is the way of the Upanishads, the Vedas, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Basho; just maxims. They are so small that you have to penetrate them, and just by trying to understand them you will change, your intellect unable to cope.Basho says in a small haiku:An ancient pond…a frog jumps inthe sound of waterFinished! He has said everything. You can picture it: an ancient pond, a frog sitting on the bank, and ? the frog jumping. You can see the splash, and the sound of the water. Basho says that everything has been said. This is all life is: an ancient pond, the frog jumping, the sound of water – silence. This is what you are; this is what everything is – silence.Heraclitus talks in his river fragment in the same way. First he uses the sounds of a river – autoisi potamoisi. Before he says something, he uses the sounds of the river, and then gives the maxim: You cannot step in the same river twice. He is a poet, but no ordinary poet – a poet Hindus have always called a rishi. There are two types of poets. One who is still dreaming and creating poetry out of his dreams – a Byron, a Shelley, a Keats. Then there is another type of poet, a rishi, who is no longer dreaming – he looks at the reality and out of the reality, poetry is born. Heraclitus is a rishi, a poet who is no longer dreaming, who has encountered existence. He is the first existentialist in the West.Now, try to penetrate his oracular maxims.The hidden harmonyis better than the obvious.Why? Why is the hidden harmony better than the obvious? – because the obvious is on the surface, and the surface can deceive and can be cultivated, conditioned. At the center you are existential, on the surface you are social. Marriage is on the surface, love is at the center. Love has a hidden harmony, marriage has an obvious harmony.Just go to some friend’s house. If you look through the window you see the husband and wife fighting, their faces ugly. The moment you enter everything changes; they are so polite, they are talking to each other so lovingly. This is a harmony that is obvious, a harmony that is on the surface. But deep down there is no harmony, it is just a mannerism, it is just for display. A real man may appear inharmonious on the surface, but he will always be harmonious in the center. Even if he contradicts himself, in his contradictions there will be a hidden harmony. And a person who never contradicts himself, who is absolutely consistent on the surface, will not have the real harmony.There are consistent people: if they love, they love; if they hate, they hate – they don’t allow opposites to mingle and meet. They are absolutely clear who their enemy is and who their friend is. They live on the surface and they create a consistency. Their consistency is not real; deep down inconsistencies are boiling, and on the surface they are somehow managing. You know them because you are them! On the surface you manage, but this won’t help. Don’t be bothered too much with the surface. Go deeper – and don’t try to choose between the opposites. You will have to live both. If you can live both, nonattached, unattached to either; if you can live both, love and remain a witness, hate and remain a witness ? that witnessing will be the hidden harmony. You will know that these are climates, changes in season, moods that just come and go – and you will see the gestalt in them.This German word gestalt is beautiful. It says that there is a harmony between the figure and the background. They are not opposites, they appear as opposites. For example, in your first school you look at the blackboard, and the teacher writes with white chalk on the blackboard. Black and white are opposites. Yes, for Aristotelian minds they are opposites; black is black and white is white – they are the polarities. But why is this teacher writing with white on black? Can’t she write with white on white or black on black? She can, but it will be useless. The black has to be the background and the white becomes the figure on it; they contrast, there is a tension between them. They are opposites and there is a hidden harmony. The white looks whiter on black; that’s the harmony. On white it will simply disappear because there is no tension, no opposition.Remember, Jesus would have disappeared if the Jews had not crucified him. They made it a gestalt; the cross was the blackboard and Jesus became whiter on it. Jesus would have completely disappeared; it is because of the cross that he has remained. It is because of the cross that he has penetrated people’s hearts more than a Buddha, more than a Mahavira. Almost half of the world has fallen in love with him – it is because of the cross. He was a white line on a black board. Buddha is a white line on a white board. The contrast is not there, the gestalt is not there; the background is just the same as the figure.If you simply love and can’t hate, your love will not be worthwhile, it will simply be useless. It will have no intensity in it, it will not be a flame, it will not be a passion; it will be simply cold. It becomes a passion, and passion is a beautiful word because it has intensity. But how does it become a passion? – because the same man is capable of hate also. Compassion has an intensity if the same man is also capable of anger. If he is simply incapable of anger, his compassion will be impotent – just impotent. He is helpless, that’s why compassion is there. He cannot hate, that’s why he loves. When you love in spite of hate, there is passion. It becomes a figure and background phenomenon, there is a gestalt.Heraclitus is talking of the deepest gestalt; the obvious harmony is really no harmony, the hidden harmony is the real harmony. So don’t try to be consistent on the surface; rather, find a consistency between the deep inconsistencies, find a harmony between the deepest opposites. The hidden harmony is better than the obvious. That is the difference between a religious man and a moral man. A moral man is just harmonious on the surface; a religious man is harmonious at the center. A religious man is bound to be contradictory; a moral man is always consistent. You can rely on a moral man; you cannot rely on a religious man. A moral man is predictable; a religious man, never. Nobody knew how Jesus would behave – even his close disciples were not aware, they couldn’t predict him, saying, “This man is unpredictable. He talks of love and then takes out a whip in the temple and chases the moneychangers out. He talks of compassion, he talks in terms of ‘love your enemy’ and upsets the whole temple – he is rebellious.” A man who talks of love seems to be inconsistent.Bertrand Russell has written a book: Why I Am Not a Christian. In that book he raises all these inconsistencies. He says, “Jesus is inconsistent and looks neurotic. Somewhere he says ‘love your enemy’ and then he behaves in such an angry way; not only with people, but with trees – he curses a fig tree. Jesus and his disciples were hungry and came across a fig tree, but it wasn’t the season for figs. They looked at the tree and saw there were no fruits on it, and it is said that Jesus cursed the tree. What type of man is this? And he talks of love!”He has a hidden harmony, but Bertrand Russell cannot find it because he is the modern Aristotle. He cannot find it, he cannot understand it. It is good that he is not a Christian – very, very good. He cannot be a Christian, he cannot be a religious man. He is a moralist; each act should be consistent – but with what, with whom? With whom should it be consistent? With your past? My assertion should be consistent with another – why? It is possible only if the river is not flowing.Have you ever watched a river? Sometimes it is flowing left, sometimes right; sometimes to the south, sometimes north, and you will see that the river is very inconsistent – there is a hidden harmony; it reaches the ocean. Wherever it is going, the ocean is the goal. Sometimes it has to move southward because the gradient is to the south; sometimes it has to move just the opposite way, northward, because the gradient is to the north. It is finding the same goal in every direction ? it is moving toward the ocean. And you will see that it has reached.Think of a river which is consistent and says that it will always move to the south because how can it move to the north? People will say that it is inconsistent. This river will never reach the ocean. The rivers of the Russells and Aristotles never reach the ocean; they are too consistent, too much on the surface. They don’t know the hidden harmony – that through opposites you can seek the same goal. The same goal can be sought through the opposites. That possibility is completely unknown to them. That possibility is there. The hidden harmony is better than the obvious. But it is difficult, you will be in constant difficulty. People expect consistency from you and the hidden harmony is not a part of society. It is part of the cosmos, but not of society. Society is a man-made affair, and has worked out the whole plan as if everything is static. Society has created moralities, codes, as if everything is unmoving. That’s why moralities continue for centuries. Everything changes and the dead rules continue. Everything goes on changing and the so-called moralists always go on preaching the same things which are absolutely irrelevant – but they are consistent with their past. Absolutely irrelevant things go on.For example, in the times of Mohammed, in Arabian countries there were four times more women than men because the Arabians were warriors and continuously warring and killing each other; they were murderers. Women have never been so foolish, so their survival was four times greater; what to do now? In the whole of society, if there are four times more women than men, you can understand that it will be too difficult for any morality to exist there. Many problems will arise. So Mohammed made a rule that every Mohammedan could marry four women. They are still following the rule.Now it has become an ugly thing, but they say that they are consistent with the Koran. Now the whole situation is different, absolutely different; there are not four times more women now – but they follow the rule. The thing that was a beautiful response in a particular historic situation is now ugly, absolutely ugly. But they will follow it because Mohammedans are very consistent people. They can’t change, and they cannot consult Mohammed again, as he is not there. Mohammedans are very, very cunning. They have closed the door for any prophet to come again; otherwise he might do something, make some changes. So this Mohammed is the last – the door is closed even if Mohammed himself wants to come. He cannot because they have closed the door. It always happens. Moralists always close the door because any new prophet will always create trouble; a new prophet cannot be consistent with old rules. He will live the moment. He will have his own discipline – consistent with the reality now, but what is the guarantee that it will be consistent with the past? There is no guarantee, it is not going to be so. So every moral tradition closes the door.Jainas have closed their door. They say that Mahavira is the last, now no more tirthankaras. Mohammedans say that Mohammed is the last. Christians say that Jesus is the only begotten son of God, now no more – all doors closed. Why do moralists always close the doors? – just as a safety measure because if a prophet comes, a man who lives moment to moment, he will turn everything topsy-turvy; he will create a chaos. Somehow you get settled: a church, a morality, a code; everything fixed and you follow the rules. On the surface you attain an obvious harmony. Again a prophet comes and he recreates everything, disturbs everything; he starts creating everything anew again.A moralist is a man on the surface. He lives for the rules, rules are not for him. He is for the scriptures, scriptures are not for him. He follows the rules, but he doesn’t follow awareness. If you follow awareness, witnessing, you will attain a hidden harmony. You are not bothered by the opposite, you can use it. Once you can use the opposite, you have a secret key; you can make your love more beautiful through hate.Hate is not the enemy of love. It is the very salt that makes love beautiful – it is the background. You can make your compassion intense through anger, then it is not the opposite. This is Jesus’s meaning when he says, “Love your enemies.” This is the meaning: love your enemies because enemies are not enemies – they are friends, you can use them. In a hidden harmony they fall and become one.Anger is the enemy – use it, make it a friend! Hate is the enemy – use it, make it a friend! Allow your love to grow deeper through it, make it a soil. It becomes a soil.This is the hidden harmony of Heraclitus. Love the enemy, use the opposite. The opposite is not the opposite, it is just the background.Opposition brings concord.Out of discordcomes the fairest harmony.Heraclitus is never surpassed.Opposition brings concord.Out of discordcomes the fairest harmony.It is in changingthat things find repose.People do not understandhow that which is at variance with itself,agrees with itself.There is a harmony in the bending back,as in the case of the bow and lyre.The name of the bow is life,but its work is death.Of course, to the rationalist he will seem to be speaking in riddles, obscure, dark. But is he? He is so crystal clear if you can see, he is so luminous. But if you are addicted to the rational mind it becomes difficult because, he says: “Out of disharmony the fairest harmony is born, opposition brings concord, love the enemy.”Life will be absolutely saltless if the opposition is simply destroyed. Just think of a world where evil doesn’t exist. Do you think good will exist? Just think of a world where there is no sinner. Do you think everyone will be saints? The saint cannot exist without the sinner – the saint needs the sinner. The sinner cannot exist without the saint – the sinner needs the saint. There is a harmony, a hidden harmony; they are polarities. Life is beautiful because of both. God cannot exist without the Devil. God and the Devil are eternal.People come to me and ask, “If God exists why is there so much misery, evil, bad – why?” It is because God cannot exist without them – that is the background. Alone without the Devil, God will be tasteless, just tasteless – you can vomit him up, but you cannot eat him; just tasteless, nauseous. He knows the hidden harmony; he cannot exist without the Devil, so don’t hate the Devil – use him. If God is using him, why can’t you? If God cannot exist without him, how can you? So real saints, saints who have an intensity, are just like Gurdjieff.Alan Watts has written: “Gurdjieff is the holiest rascal I have ever known!” And it is so; he is a rascal, but the holiest. God himself is that rascal, the holiest. If you cut out the Devil, simultaneously you have killed God. The game needs two parties.When Adam was tempted by the Devil, it was God himself who was tempting him. It is a conspiracy. The serpent is in the service of God, the Devil too. The very word devil is beautiful; it comes from a Sanskrit root which means the divine. Divine comes from the same root, dev, as devil; both words come from the same root. It is as if the root is one, only the branches are different; on one branch the devil, on another branch the divine – but the root is the same, dev. There must be a conspiracy, otherwise the game cannot continue. There must be a deep harmony – that is the conspiracy. Here God says to Adam, “You are not to eat from this tree of knowledge.” Now the conspiracy starts, the game starts; now the first rules are being set.Christianity has missed many beautiful things because it has tried to create an obvious harmony, and for twenty centuries Christian theologians have been worried about how to explain the Devil. There is no need, it is simple, Heraclitus knows. It is very simple, no need to explain. But Christians have been worried because if there is the Devil, God must have created him; otherwise, how is he there?If the Devil is there, God must be allowing him to be there; otherwise, how can he be there? If God cannot destroy him, your God becomes impotent; you cannot call him omnipotent. If God created the Devil without knowing that he was going to be the Devil, he is not omniscient, all-knowing. He created the Devil not knowing that this was going to disturb the whole world. He created Adam not knowing that he would eat the fruit of the tree. He prohibited it! – he is not omniscient, all-knowing. If there is the Devil, God cannot be omnipresent because who is present in the Devil? He cannot be everywhere; at least he is not there in the Devil’s heart. If he is in the Devil’s heart, why condemn the poor Devil?There is a conspiracy – a hidden harmony. God prohibited Adam from eating just to tempt him. This is the first temptation because whenever you say, “Don’t do this,” temptation has entered. The Devil comes only later on – the first temptation is from God himself. Otherwise, there were millions of trees in the Garden of Eden so if Adam had been left to himself, it is almost impossible that he would have found the tree of knowledge – almost impossible, unbelievable!Even up to now we have not been able to find all the trees on this earth. Many trees still remain unknown, uncategorized, and many species still have to be discovered. This earth is nothing – the Garden of Eden was God’s garden, with millions and millions of trees, infinite. If Adam and Eve had been left to themselves, alone, they would never have found it – but God tempted them. This I insist, that the temptation comes from God. The Devil is just the other partner in the game. He tempted by saying, “Don’t eat!” – immediately the tree was known, and the desire must have come. Why does God prohibit it? There must be something to it. It is not prohibited to God, he himself eats from it; it is prohibited just for us. The mind has started to function, the game starts. Just as a partner in the conspiracy, the Devil comes, the serpent, and says, “Eat it! – because if you eat it, you will be like gods.” And that is the deepest desire in the human mind, to be like gods.The Devil did the trick because he knows the conspiracy. He didn’t approach Adam directly, he approached through Eve – because if you want to tempt man, you can tempt him only through woman; otherwise, there is no direct temptation. Every temptation comes through sex, every temptation comes through the woman. It is more important for the Devil to have the woman play the game because it is impossible to say no to a woman who loves you. You can say no to the Devil, but to the woman? And the Devil comes in the form of the serpent. It is just a phallic symbol, a symbol for the sex organ because there is nothing comparable to the serpent in representing the male sex organ; they are exactly alike. It comes through the woman because how can you say no to a woman?Mulla Nasruddin had arranged for his wife to go to the mountains for her asthma. She was not willing to go, she refused and said, “I’m afraid that the mountain air is going to disagree with me.”Mulla Nasruddin replied, “My dear, don’t worry. There is no mountain air so brave as to disagree with you! Don’t worry yourself.”It is impossible to disagree with a woman you love, so women become easy conspirators with the Devil. The temptation entered, and Adam ate the apple from the tree, the fruit of knowledge – that’s why you are out of the Garden of Eden, and the game continues.It is a deep hidden harmony. God cannot function alone. It would be just like electricity functioning with only a positive pole, no negative pole; he would be functioning only with man, no woman. No, he had tried it before – he failed. First, he made Adam, but he failed because with Adam alone the game was not happening, there was no go. Then he created woman, and the first woman he created was not Eve. The first woman was Lilith. She must have believed in the Women’s Liberation Movement. She created trouble because she said, “I am just as independent as you.” On the first day when they were going to sleep the trouble surfaced because they had only one bed. So who was going to sleep on the bed, and who would sleep on the floor? Lilith simply said, “No! You sleep on the floor.” This is how the liberation movement carries on. Adam didn’t listen and Lilith disappeared. Lilith went to God and said, “I am not going to play this game.”In the West, this is how the woman is disappearing – Lilith is disappearing – the beauty, the grace and everything. The whole game is in trouble because there are women who say, “Don’t love a man.”I was reading a pamphlet. These women say, “Kill men! Murder every man! – because if man lives, there can be no freedom for the woman.” If you kill man, can you still be here? The game needs both.Lilith disappeared, and the game could not continue, so God had to create a woman. That’s why this time he added a bone from man himself because to create a separate woman would make trouble again. So he took a rib out of Adam and created a woman. Hence, there is a polarity and a unity still. They are two and still they belong to the same body. That is the meaning that they are two, opposites, but they still belong to the same body, the same root deep down; they are one body deep down. That’s why when they meet in a deep, loving embrace, they become one body. They come to that state where Adam was, alone; they meet and merge, become one.There is opposition to the game, but still there is oneness deep within. These two things are needed for the game to continue: opposition, and still harmony. If there is absolute harmony the game will disappear – because with whom will you play? If there is complete discord, absolute opposition, no harmony, the game will disappear.Harmony in discord, oneness in opposition, is the key to all mysteries.It is in changing that things find repose. People do not understand how that which is at variance with itself, agrees with itself. The Devil agrees with God, God agrees with the Devil – that’s why the Devil exists.There is a harmony in the bending back, as in the case of the bow and lyre. A musician plays with a bow and a lyre; the opposition is just on the surface. On the surface it is a clash, a struggle, a fight, a discord, but beautiful music comes out of it.Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony…. The name of the bow is life, but its work is death. And death is its work, the ultimate result. Death and life are not two either.The name of the bow is life, but its work is death. So death cannot really be the opposite – it must be the lyre. If the name of the bow is life, the name of the lyre must be death. Within these two the fairest harmony of life arises.You are just in the middle between death and life – you are neither. So don’t cling to life and don’t be afraid of death. You are the music between the lyre and the bow. You are the clash, the meeting and the merging, the harmony, and the fairest that is born out of it.Don’t choose! If you choose, you will be wrong. If you choose, you will become attached to one, identified with one. Don’t choose! Let life be the bow, let death be the lyre – and you be the harmony, the hidden harmony. The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.Enough for today.

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The Hidden Harmony 01-11Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

The Hidden Harmony 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Men are as forgetful and heedlessin their waking momentsof what is going on around themas they are during their sleep.Fools, although they hear,are like the deaf;to them the adage appliesthat whenever they are presentthey are absent.One should not act or speakas if he were asleep.The waking have one world in common;sleepers have each a private world of his own.Whatever we see when awake is death,when asleep, dreams.Heraclitus touches the deepest problem of man: he is fast asleep even while awake. You sleep when you sleep, but you also sleep while you are awake. What is the meaning of it? – because this is what Buddha, Jesus, Heraclitus all say. You look wide awake, but that is only an appearance; deep within you the sleep continues. Even right now you are dreaming within; a thousand and one thoughts continue and you are not conscious of what is happening, you are not aware of what you are doing, you are not aware of who you are. You move as if asleep.You must have known someone who sleepwalks; they get out of bed, do this and that, and go back to sleep again. There is a disease called somnambulism. Many people get out of their beds in the night with their eyes open, and move around! They can even find the door. They go to the kitchen, eat something, and return to bed. If you ask them in the morning, they don’t know anything about it. At the most, if they try to remember it, they think they have had a dream where they have woken up and gone to the kitchen. At the most it was a dream; even that is difficult to remember.Many people have committed crimes while asleep. Many murderers when in court say that they don’t remember ever having done such a thing. It is not that they are deceiving the court – no. Now psychoanalysts have found that these people are not being deceitful, they are not being untrue; they are absolutely truthful. They did commit the murder – they committed it when they were fast asleep, as if in a dream. This sleep is deeper than ordinary sleep. This sleep is like being drunk; you can move a little, do a little, be a little aware also – but drunk. You don’t exactly know what is happening. Or what you have done in your past. Can you recollect exactly why you did what you did? What happened to you? Were you alert when it was happening? You fall in love not knowing why; you become angry not knowing why. You find excuses, of course; you rationalize whatever you do – but rationalization is not awareness.Awareness means that whatever is happening in the moment is happening with complete consciousness; you are present there. If you are present when anger is happening, then it cannot happen. It can happen only when you are fast asleep. When you are present, immediately, transformation starts in your being because when you are present, aware, many things are simply not possible. If you are aware, everything that is called sin is not possible. In fact, there is only one sin and that is unawareness.The original word sin means to miss. It doesn’t mean to commit something wrong; it simply means to miss, to be absent. The Hebrew root for the word sin means to miss. It exists in a few English words: misconduct, misbehavior. To miss means not to be there, doing something without being present – this is the only sin. And the only virtue: being fully alert while you are doing something – what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering, Buddha calls being rightly mindful, Krishnamurti calls awareness, Kabir calls surati. To be there! That’s all that is needed, nothing more. You need not change anything, and even if you try, you cannot.You have been trying to change many things in you. Have you succeeded? How many times have you decided not to be angry again? What happened to your decision? ? when the moment comes you are in the same trap again; you become angry and after the anger, you repent again. It becomes a vicious circle; you are angry and you repent, then you are ready to do it again. Remember, even while you are repenting you are not there; that repentance is also part of sin. That’s why nothing happens. You go on trying and trying and you make many decisions and you make many vows, but nothing happens – you remain the same. You are exactly the same as when you were born, not even the slightest change has happened. Not that you haven’t tried, not that you haven’t tried enough – you have tried and tried and tried and you fail because it is not a question of effort. More effort won’t help. It is a question of being alert, not of effort.If you are alert, many things simply drop; you needn’t drop them. This is my definition of sin: in awareness certain things are not possible, they are sins. In awareness only certain things are possible, they are virtues. There is no other definition, there is no other criterion. You cannot fall in love if you are aware, then falling in love is a sin. You can love, but it will not be like a fall, it will be like a rise.Why do we use the term falling in love? ? it is a falling; you are falling, you are not rising. When you are aware, falling is not possible – not even in love. It is not possible, it is simply not possible. With awareness, it is impossible; you rise in love. Rising in love is a totally different phenomenon from falling in love. Falling in love is a dream state. That’s why you can see people who are in love from their eyes. It’s as if they are more asleep than others, intoxicated, dreaming. You can see it in their eyes because their eyes have a sleepiness. People who rise in love are totally different. You can see they are no longer in a dream, they are facing the reality and they are growing through it.When you fall in love you remain a child; when you rise in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. It is not that you love this and you don’t love that, no – you are simply love. Whoever comes near you, you share with them. Whatever is happening, you give your love to it. You touch a rock and you touch it as if you are touching your beloved’s body. You look at the tree and you look as if you are looking at your beloved’s face. It becomes a state of being. Not that you are in love – now you are love. This is rising, this is not falling.Love is beautiful when you rise through it, and love becomes dirty and ugly when you fall through it. Sooner or later you will find that it proves poisonous and becomes a bondage. You have been caught in it, your freedom has been crushed, your wings have been cut; now you are no longer free. Falling in love you become a possession; you possess and you allow somebody to possess you. You become a thing, and you try to convert the other person you have fallen in love with to become a thing.Look at a husband and wife; they have both become like things, they are no longer people. Both are trying to possess each other. Only things can be possessed, never people. How can you possess a person? How can you dominate a person? How can you convert a person into a possession? Impossible! But the husband is trying to possess the wife; the wife is trying the same. There is a clash, both become basically enemies, and become destructive to each other.It happened…Mulla Nasruddin walked into the cemetery’s office and complained to the manager: “I know very well that my wife is buried here in your cemetery, but I can’t find her grave.”The manager checked in his register and asked, “What is her name?”Mulla replied, “Mistress Mulla Nasruddin.”He looked again and said, “There is no Mistress Mulla Nasruddin, but there is a Mulla Nasruddin.” So he said, “We are sorry, it seems something has gone wrong with the register.”Nasruddin said, “Nothing is wrong. Where is the grave of Mulla Nasruddin? – because everything is in my name.” Even the grave of his wife!Possession ? everybody goes on trying to possess, the beloved, the lover. This is no longer love. In fact, when you possess a person, you hate, you destroy, you kill; you are a murderer. Love should give freedom; love is freedom. Love will make the beloved more and more free, will give wings, and open the vast sky. It cannot become a prison, an enclosure. You don’t know that love because that happens only when you are aware; that quality of love comes only when there is awareness. You know a love which is a sin because it comes out of sleep.And this is so for everything you do. Even if you try to do something good, you harm. Look at the do-gooders; they always do harm, they are the most mischievous people in the world. Social reformers, so-called revolutionaries, are the most mischievous people. But it is difficult to see where their mischief lies because they are very good people, they are always doing good to others – that is their way of creating an imprisonment for the other. If you allow them to do something good to you, you will be possessed.They start by massaging your feet, and sooner or later you will find their hands reach your neck; they start at the feet and end at the neck. They are unaware and don’t know what they are doing. They have learned a trick, that if you want to possess someone, do good. They are not even conscious that they have learned this trick. They will do harm because anything that tries to possess the other person, whatever its name or form, is irreligious, is a sin. Your churches, temples, mosques, have all committed sins toward you because they all became possessors, they all became dominators.Every church is against religion because religion is freedom. Why does it happen? Jesus tries to give you freedom, give you wings. What happens, how does this church come in? ? it happens because Jesus lives on a totally different plane of being, the plane of awareness; those who listen to him, those who follow him, live on the plane of sleep. Whatever they hear, interpret, is interpreted through their own dreams – and whatever they create is going to be a sin. Christ gives you religion and people who are fast asleep convert it into a church.It is said that once the devil Satan was sitting under a tree, very sad. A saint was passing by, he looked at Satan and said, “We have heard that you never rest, that you are always doing some mischief somewhere or other. What are you doing here sitting under the tree?” Satan was really depressed, and said, “It seems my work has been taken over by the priests, and I cannot do anything – I am completely unemployed. Sometimes I think of committing suicide because these priests are doing so well.” Priests have done so well because they converted freedom into imprisonment, they converted truth into dogmas. They converted everything from the plane of awareness to the plane of sleep. Try to understand exactly what this sleep is because if you can feel what it is, you have already started to become alert – you are already on the way out of it. What is this sleep? How does it happen? What is the mechanism? What is its modus operandi?The mind is either in the past or in the future. This is the modus operandi. It is never in the present. It cannot be in the present, it is absolutely impossible for the mind to be in the present. When you are in the present, the mind is no longer there because the mind means thinking. How can you think in the present? You can think about the past; it has already become part of the memory, the mind can work it out. You can think about the future; it is not yet there, the mind can dream about it. The mind can do two things. Either it can move into the past; there is space enough to move, the vast space of the past – you can go on and on and on. Or the mind can move into the future; again a vast space, with no end to it – you can imagine and imagine and dream. But how can the mind function in the present? It has no space, the present has no space for the mind to make any movement.The present is just a dividing line, that’s all. It has no space. It divides the past and the future; just a dividing line. You can be in the present, but you cannot think. For thinking, space is needed. Thoughts need space, they are just like things – remember it. Thoughts are subtle things, they are material; thoughts are not spiritual because the dimension of the spiritual starts only when there are no thoughts. Thoughts are material things, very subtle, and every material thing needs space. You cannot think in the present; the moment you start thinking it is already the past.You look at the sun rising and say, “What a beautiful sunrise!” It is already the past. When the sun is rising there is not even space enough to say, “How beautiful!” because when you posit these two words “How beautiful!” the experience has already become the past, the mind already knows it in the memory. But exactly when the sun is rising, exactly when the sun is on the rise, how can you think? What can you think? You can be with the rising sun, but you cannot think. For you there is enough space, but not for thoughts.A beautiful flower appears in the garden and you say, “What a beautiful rose.” Now, you are not with this rose at this moment; it is already a memory. When the flower is there and you are there, both present to each other, how can you think? What can you think? How is thinking possible? There is no space for it. The space is so narrow – in fact there is no space at all – that you and the flower cannot even exist as two because there is not enough space for two, only one can exist.That’s why in a deep presence you are the flower and the flower has become you. You are also a thought – the flower is also a thought in the mind. When there is no thinking, who is the flower and who is the one who is observing? The observer becomes the observed. Suddenly boundaries are lost. Suddenly you have penetrated into the flower and the flower has penetrated into you. Suddenly you are not two – one exists.If you start thinking, you have become two again. If you don’t think, where is the duality? When you exist with the flower, not thinking, it is a dialogue; not a duologue, but a dialogue. When you exist with your lover it is a dialogue, not a duologue because the two are not there. Sitting by the side of your lover, holding the hand of your beloved, you simply exist. You don’t think of the past days; you don’t think of reaching the future, coming to the future – you are here, now. It is so beautiful to be here and now, and so intense; no thought can penetrate this intensity. And the gate is narrow; narrow is the gate of the present. Not even two can enter it together, only one. In the present, thinking and dreaming are not possible because dreaming is nothing but thinking in pictures. Both are things, both are material.When you are in the present without thinking, you are spiritual for the first time. A new dimension opens and that dimension is awareness. And because you have not known that dimension, Heraclitus will say that you are asleep, you are not aware. Awareness means to be in the moment so totally that there is no movement toward the past, no movement toward the future – all movement stops. That doesn’t mean that you become static. A new movement begins, a movement in depth.There are two types of movement. That is the meaning of Jesus’ cross; it shows two movements, a crossroads. One movement is linear: you move in a line, from one thing to another, from one thought to another, from one dream to another; from A you move to B, from B you move to C, from C you move to D. This way you move – in a line, horizontal. This is the movement of time; this is the movement of one who is fast asleep. You can go like a shuttle, back and forth – the line is there. You can come from B to A, or you can go from A to B – the line is there. There is another movement which is in a totally different dimension. That movement is not horizontal, it is vertical. You don’t go from A to B, from B to C; you go from A to a deeper A, from A1 to A2, A3, A4, in depth – or in height.When thinking stops, the new movement starts. Now you fall into depth, in an abyss-like phenomenon. People who are meditating deeply come to that point sooner or later; they become afraid because they feel as if an abyss has opened – a bottomless abyss, making you feel dizzy, and afraid. You would like to cling to the old movement because it was known, and this feels like death. That is the meaning of Jesus’ cross; it is a death. Going from the horizontal to the vertical is death – that is the real death. But it is death only from one side; on the other side it is resurrection. It is dying, to be born; it is dying from one dimension to be born in another. Horizontal you are Jesus, vertical you become Christ.If you move from one thought to another you remain in the world of time. If you move in the moment, not in thought, you move into eternity; you are not static – nothing is static in this world, nothing can be static – but a new movement, a movement without motivation. Remember these words. On the horizon, on the horizontal line, you move because of motivation. You have to achieve something – money, prestige, power, or God, but you have to achieve something; a motivation is there. A motivated movement means sleep.An unmotivated movement means awareness – you move because to move is sheer joy, you move because movement is life, you move because life is energy and energy is movement. You move because energy is delight – not for anything else. There is no goal in it, you are not after some achievement. In fact, you are not going anywhere, you are not going at all – you are simply delighting in the energy. There is no goal outside the movement; movement has its own intrinsic value ? no extrinsic value. A Buddha, a Heraclitus also lives. I am here living, breathing, but a different type of movement ? unmotivated.A few days ago someone was asking me, “Why do you help people in meditation?” I replied, “This is my delight. There is no why to it – I simply enjoy.” Just as a person enjoys planting seeds in the garden, waiting for the flowers; when you flower I enjoy. It is gardening. When someone flowers it is a sheer delight. And I share; there is no goal in it. If you fail, I am not going to be frustrated. If you don’t flower, that too is okay because flowering cannot be forced. You cannot open a bud forcibly – you can, but then you kill it. It may look like a flowering, but it is not.The whole world moves; existence moves into eternity, mind moves in time. Existence is moving into the depth and the height, and mind moves backward and forward. Mind moves horizontally ? that is sleep. If you can move vertically, that is awareness.Be in the moment. Bring your total being in the moment. Don’t allow the past to interfere, and don’t allow the future to come in. The past is no longer there, it is dead. As Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead.” The past is no more! Why are you worried about it? Why do you go on chewing over it again and again? Are you mad? It is no longer there; it is just in your mind, it is just a memory. The future is not yet. What are you doing thinking about the future? How can you think about that which is not yet? What plans can you make about it? Whatever you do about it, it is not going to happen, and you will be frustrated because the whole has its own plan. Why do you try to have your own plans against it?Existence has its own plans, it is wiser than you – the whole has to be wiser than the part. Why are you pretending to be the whole? The whole has its own destiny, its own fulfillment. Why bother about it? Whatever you do will be a sin because you will miss the moment, this moment. If it becomes a habit – as it becomes; if you miss, it becomes a habitual form, and when the future comes again you will miss it because it will not be a future, it will be a present. Yesterday you were thinking about today because then it was tomorrow; now it is today and you are thinking about tomorrow, and when tomorrow comes it will become today – because anything that exists here and now, cannot exist otherwise. If you have a fixed mode of functioning such that your mind always looks at tomorrow, when will you live? Tomorrow never comes. You will go on missing – and this is sin. This is the meaning of the Hebrew root: to sin. The moment the future enters, time enters. You have sinned against existence, you have missed. And this has become a fixed pattern ? like a robot you go on missing.People come to me from all over the world. When they are at home they think about me and get very excited, they read and think and dream. When they come here they start thinking about their homes; the moment they reach here they are already going back! They start thinking about their children, their wives, their jobs, this and that and a thousand and one things. I see the whole foolishness of it. They will return home and again they will think of me. They miss, and this is sin.While you are here with me, be here with me; be totally here with me so that you can learn a new mode of movement, so that you can move into eternity, not in time. Time is the world and eternity is God; the world is horizontal, God is vertical. Both meet at a point – that is where Jesus is crucified. Both meet at a point, the horizontal and the vertical – that point is here and now. From here and now you can go on two journeys: one in the world, in the future; the other into God, into depth. Become more and more aware, become more and more alert and sensitive to the present.What will you do? How can it become possible? You are so fast asleep that you can make that a dream also. You can make that itself a thinking object, a thinking process. You can become so tense about it, and just because of it you cannot be in the present. If you think too much about how to be in the present, this won’t help. If you feel too much guilt… You will sometimes move into the past. It has been such a long routine. And sometimes you will start thinking about the future – immediately you will feel guilty that you have committed a sin again. Don’t become guilty; understand the sin, but don’t become guilty. And this is very, very delicate. If you feel guilty you have missed the whole thing. Now, in a new way, the old pattern starts. Now you feel guilty because you have missed the present. Now you are thinking about the past because that present is no longer present; it is past and you are feeling guilty about it – you are still missing.So remember one thing, whenever you see that you have gone to the past or into the future, don’t create a problem out of it; simply come to the present, not creating any problem about it. It’s okay. Simply bring back your awareness. You will miss millions of times; it is not going to happen right now, immediately. It can happen, but it cannot happen because of you. It is such a long, long, fixed mode of behavior that you cannot change it right now. But don’t worry, God is not in a hurry; eternity can wait eternally.Don’t become tense about it. Whenever you feel you have missed, come back, that’s all. Don’t feel guilty. That’s a trick of the mind ? now it is playing a game again. Don’t repent saying: “I forgot again.” Just when you think about it, come back to whatever you are doing: taking a bath, come back; eating your food, come back; going for a walk, come back. The moment you feel you are not here and now, come back – simply, innocently. Don’t create guilt. If you become guilty you miss the point.There is sin and there is no guilt – but difficult for you. If you feel there is something wrong, you immediately become guilty. The mind is very, very cunning. If you feel guilty, the game has started now; on new ground, but the game is old. People come to me, and say, “We go on forgetting.” They are so sad when they say, “We go on forgetting. We do try, but remember only for a few seconds. We remain alert, self-remembering, and again it is lost. What can we do?” ? nothing can be done. It is not a question of doing at all. What can you do? ? the only thing that can be done is not to create guilt. Simply come back.The more you come back ? simply, remember, not with a very serious face, not with much effort; simply, innocently, not creating a problem out of it because eternity has no problems. All problems exist on the horizontal plane. This problem will also exist on the horizontal plane. The vertical plane knows no problems, it is sheer delight; without any anxiety, anguish, worry, guilt ? nothing. Be simple and come back.It is taken for granted that you will miss many times. Don’t worry about it; that is how it is. You will miss many times, but that is not the point. Don’t pay too much attention to the fact that you have missed many times, pay more attention to the fact that you have regained many times. Remember this, the emphasis should not be that you missed many times, it should be that you regained remembrance many times. Feel happy about it. Of course, your missing is as it should be. You are human, have lived on the horizontal plane for many, many lives, so it is natural. The beauty is that many times you came back. You have done the impossible; feel happy about it!In twenty-four hours, twenty-four thousand times you will miss, but twenty-four thousand times you will regain. Now a new mode will start functioning. So many times you come back home, and by and by a new dimension is breaking in. You will be able to stay in awareness more and more, and you will go back and forth less and less. The span of going back and forth will be smaller and smaller. You will forget less and less, and remember more and more – you are entering the vertical. Suddenly one day, the horizontal disappears. An intensity comes to awareness and the horizontal disappears.That is the meaning behind Shankara, Vedanta, and Hindus calling this world illusory ? because when awareness becomes perfect, this world, this world that you have created out of your mind, simply disappears. Another world becomes revealed to you. Maya disappears, the illusion disappears. The illusion is there because of your sleep, your unconsciousness. It is just like a dream. In the night you move in a dream and the dream is so true. Have you ever thought in a dream, “This is not possible”? The impossible happens in a dream, but you cannot doubt it. In a dream you have such faith, in a dream nobody is skeptical, not even a Bertrand Russell. No! In a dream everybody is like a child, trusting whatever happens. Your wife appears in a dream, and suddenly she becomes a horse. Not for a single moment do you say, “How can this be possible?”Dream is trust, it is faith. You cannot doubt in a dream. Once you start doubting in a dream the rules are broken. Once you doubt, the dream starts disappearing. If even once you remember that it is a dream, suddenly a shock and the dream will shatter and you will be fully awake.This world that you see around you is not the real world. Not that it doesn’t exist. It exists – but you are seeing it through a screen of sleep, an unconsciousness is in between. You look at it, you interpret it in your own way; you are just like a drunkard.It happened…Mulla Nasruddin was running. He was totally drunk and the elevator operator was just going to close the door, but he somehow pushed in. It was overcrowded. Everyone became aware that he was very drunk; his breath smelled. He tried to pretend; he tried to face toward the door, but he couldn’t see anything – his eyes were drunk and sleepy. He was trying to stand somehow, but that wasn’t possible either. He felt very embarrassed because everyone was looking at him and he could feel that they were thinking he was completely drunk.Suddenly, he forgot where he was and said, “You must be wondering why I called this meeting.”Seeing that so many people were around, he thought he had called a meeting and the people were wondering why. By the morning he will be okay. He will laugh as you are laughing.All buddhas laugh when they awaken. Their laughter is like a lion’s roar. They laugh, not as you do, they laugh at the whole cosmic joke. They lived in a dream, in a sleep, intoxicated completely by desire, and they looked at existence through desire. It was not the real existence, they projected their own sleep on it.You take the whole of existence as a screen, and you project your own mind on it and see things which are not there; you don’t see things which are there. The mind has explanations for everything. If you raise a doubt, the mind explains. It creates theories, philosophies, systems, just to feel comfortable and that nothing is wrong. All philosophies exist to make life convenient, so that everything looks okay and nothing is wrong – but while you are asleep everything is wrong.A man came to see me. He was worried about his beautiful daughter. He was so worried and said, “Every morning she feels a little sick, and I have been to all the doctors and they say that nothing is wrong. So what can I do?”I said to him, “Go to Mulla Nasruddin – he is the wise guy around here and he knows everything. I have never heard him say, ‘I don’t know.’ So go.”He went, and I also followed just to see what Nasruddin would say. Nasruddin closed his eyes, contemplated on the problem, opened his eyes and said, “Do you give her milk before she goes to bed at night?”The man replied, “Yes!”Nasruddin said, “Now, I have found the problem. If you give a child milk, and the child turns over the whole night long from right to left, left to right, it creates churning and the milk becomes curd. Then the curd becomes cheese, the cheese becomes butter, the butter becomes fat, the fat becomes sugar, the sugar becomes alcohol – and, of course, in the morning she has a hangover.”This is what all the philosophies are: an explanation of things; an explanation of things which cannot be explained, and pretending to know about something which is not known. But they make life convenient. You can sleep better, they are like tranquilizers. Remember, this is the difference between religion and philosophy. Philosophy is a tranquilizer, religion is a shock; philosophy helps you to sleep well, religion brings you out of sleep. Religion is not a philosophy – it is a technique to bring you out of your unconsciousness. All philosophies are techniques to help you sleep well; they give you dreams, utopias.Religion takes all dreams from you, all utopias. Religion brings you to the truth, and the truth is possible only when you are not dreaming. A dreaming mind cannot see the true. A dreaming mind will convert the truth also into a dream. For example, you set your alarm; you want to get up at four o’clock in the morning because you have to catch a train. Have you ever noticed in the morning when the alarm goes off, your mind creates a dream where you are sitting in a temple and the bells are ringing – everything is explained. The alarm is no longer a problem, it cannot wake you. You have explained it away – immediately! Mind is subtle.Psychoanalysts are very worried as to how it happens ? how the mind creates it immediately, so immediately. It is so difficult. The mind must project it beforehand. How, suddenly, you find yourself in a church or temple where the bells are ringing? The alarm goes off and immediately you have an explanation within the dream. You are trying to avoid the alarm; you don’t want to get up on such a cold winter’s morning. The mind says, “This is not the alarm, this is a temple you are visiting.” With everything explained, you fall asleep again.This is what philosophies have been doing, and that’s why there are so many philosophies – because everyone needs a different explanation. The explanation that helps someone else to go to sleep will not help you. And this is what Heraclitus says in this passage.Now try to understand him. He says:Men are as forgetful and heedlessin their waking momentsof what is going on around themas they are during their sleep.You are not aware of what goes on around you in your sleep, but are you aware of what goes on around you in your waking hours? Much research has been done. Your mind never allows ninety-eight percent of messages coming to you to enter – ninety-eight percent. Only two percent is allowed to enter, and that two percent the mind also interprets. I say something, you hear something else. I say something else, you interpret it in such a way that it doesn’t disturb your sleep. Your mind immediately gives you an interpretation. You find a place in your mind for it and the mind absorbs it; it becomes part of the mind. That’s why you go on missing Buddhas, Christs, Heraclituses, and others. They go on talking to you; they go on saying they have found something, they have experienced something, but when they say it to you, you immediately interpret it. You have your own tricks.Aristotle was very disturbed by Heraclitus. He convinced himself that “This man must have some defect in his character – finished!” You have categorized him because he doesn’t suit you, he disturbs you. Heraclitus must have been very heavy on Aristotle’s mind – because Aristotle moves on the horizontal, he is the master of that, and this man is trying to push you into the abyss. Aristotle moves on the plain ground of logic and this man is trying to push you into the mystery. Some explanation is needed. Aristotle says, “This man has some, biological, physiological, characterological defect. Some defect is there, otherwise, why should he insist on paradox? Why should he insist on mystery? Why should he insist that there exists a harmony between the opposites? Opposites are opposites. There is no harmony. Life is life and death is death. Be clear about it, don’t mix things – this man seems to be a muddler.”Lao Tzu also felt the same and said, “Everyone seems to be wise except me. Everyone seems to be very clever except me – I am a fool!” Lao Tzu is one of the greatest, one of the wisest persons ever born, but he feels that amidst you he is a fool. He says, “Everyone seems to be so clear a thinker, I am muddle-headed.” What Aristotle says to Heraclitus, Lao Tzu says about himself.Lao Tzu says, “When someone listens to my teaching without the mind, he becomes enlightened. If somebody listens to my teaching through the mind, he finds his own explanations – which have nothing to do with me. When someone listens, not listening at all – there are people who listen without listening – when somebody listens as if he is listening without listening, he laughs at my foolishness.” And the third type of mind is the majority. Lao Tzu says, “If the majority doesn’t laugh at you, you must be aware that you must be saying something wrong. If the majority laughs, only then are you saying something true. When the majority thinks you are a fool, only then is there some possibility of your being a wise man; otherwise, there is no possibility.”Heraclitus looks muddle-headed to Aristotle. It will look like that to you too because Aristotle has captured the minds of all the universities and colleges of the whole world. Now everywhere you are taught logic, not mystery. Everywhere you are taught to be rational, not mystic. Everybody is being trained to be clear-cut. If you want to be clear-cut you have to move on the horizontal; there, A is A, B is B, and A is never B. But in the mysterious abyss of the vertical, boundaries meet and merge into each other: man is woman, woman is man; right is wrong, wrong is right; dark is light, light is dark; life is death, death is life. All boundaries meet and merge. Hence, God is a mystery, not a syllogism. Those who give proof for God are simply doing the impossible; no proof can be given for God. Proof exists on the horizontal.That is the meaning of trust; you fall into the abyss, you experience the abyss, and simply disappear in it ? and you know. You know only when the mind is not, never before.Fools, although they hear,are like the deaf;to them the adage appliesthat whenever they are presentthey are absent.Wherever you are present, that is exactly the place where you are absent. You may be somewhere else, but not there where you are. Wherever you are, there you are not.It is said in old Tibetan scriptures, “God comes to you many times, but he never finds you there where you are. He knocks at your door, but the host is not there – he is always somewhere else.” Are you in your house, at your home, or somewhere else? How can God find you? There is no need to go to him, just be at home and he will find you. He is in search of you just as you are in search of him. Just be at home so when he comes he can find you. He comes, he knocks millions of times, waits at the door, but you are never there.Heraclitus says: Fools, although they hear, are like the deaf; to them the adage applies that whenever they are present they are absent. This is the sleep, being absent, not being present to the present moment, being somewhere else.It happened…Mulla Nasruddin was sitting in the coffeehouse talking about his generosity. And while he was talking he was going to extremes as everybody does because he always forgets what he is saying. Someone asked, “Nasruddin, if you are so generous why don’t you ever invite us to your home? You’ve never invited us for a single meal. So what about it?”He was so excited he completely forgot about his wife. So he said, “Come on then, right now!” The nearer he reached home, the more sober he became. He remembered his wife and became afraid – thirty people were coming. Just outside the house he said, “Wait! You all know that I have a wife. You also have wives so you know. Just wait. First let me go and persuade her, then I will call you in.” So he went and disappeared.They waited and waited and waited, and he didn’t come, so they knocked. Nasruddin had told his wife exactly what had happened, that he was talking too much about generosity and he had been caught.His wife said, “But we don’t have enough for thirty people, and nothing is possible at this late hour of the night.”Nasruddin said, “Do one thing, when they knock again simply tell them that Nasruddin is not at home.”So when they knocked the wife went to the door and said, “Nasruddin is not at home.”They replied, “This is surprising because we came with him, and he went in and we have not seen him go out, and we are waiting on the step, thirty of us – he must be in. Go in and find him. He must be hiding somewhere.”His wife went in, and said, “What to do now?”Nasruddin became excited. He said, “Wait!” He went out and said, “What do you mean? He could have gone out by the back door!”This is possible, every day this is happening to you. He forgot himself completely; that’s what happened – in the logic he forgot himself. The logic is right, the argument is right, but what do you mean: “You are waiting at the front door; he could have gone by the back door”? The logic is right, but Nasruddin has completely forgotten that he himself is saying it.You are not present. You are neither in the present to the world, nor to yourself. This is the sleep. Then how can you hear, how can you see, how can you feel? If you are not present here and now, all doors are closed. You are a dead person, you are not alive. That’s why Jesus again and again says to his listeners: “If you have ears, hear me; if you have eyes, see me!”Heraclitus must have found many people who listen, but don’t hear; who see, but can’t see because their homes are completely empty. The master is not at home; the eyes are looking, the ears are hearing, but the master is not present inside. Eyes are just windows; they can’t see unless you see through them. How can a window see? You have to stand at the window, only then can you see. How? It is just a window, it cannot feel. If you are there, it becomes totally different.The whole body is like a house and the mind is traveling, the master is always traveling somewhere else and the house remains empty. Life knocks at your door – you may call it God, or whatever you like, the name doesn’t matter. Call it existence – it knocks at the door, it is already continuously knocking, but you are never found there. This is the sleep.One should not act or speakas if he were asleep.Act, speak, with full awareness and you will find a tremendous change in you. The very fact that you are aware changes your acts. You cannot commit sin. Not that you have to control yourself, no! Control is a poor substitute for awareness, a very poor substitute; it doesn’t help much. If you are aware, you need not control anger; in awareness anger never arises. They cannot exist together; there is no coexistence for them. In awareness jealousy never arises. In awareness many things simply disappear, all the things which are negative.It is just like a light; when light is in your house, how can darkness exist there? It simply escapes. When your house is lit, how can you stumble? How can you knock into the wall? The light is there, you know the door; you simply reach the door, you go out or you go in. When there is darkness you stumble, you grope, you fall. When you are unaware you grope, you stumble, you fall. Anger is nothing but stumbling; jealousy is nothing but groping in dark. All that is wrong is wrong, not because of itself, but because you are living in darkness.If a Jesus wants to be angry, he can be; he can use it. You cannot use it – you are being used by it. If Jesus feels that it will be good and helpful, he can use anything – he is a master. Jesus can be angry without being angry. Many people worked with Gurdjieff and said that he was a terrible man. When he was angry he would be terribly angry, he would look like a murderer, but that was just a game, just a situation to help somebody. Immediately, without even a single moment’s gap, he would look at another person and would smile. He would look again at the same person whom he had been angry with, and he would be angry and terrible looking.It is possible. When you are aware you can use everything. Even poison becomes elixir when you are aware, and when you are asleep even elixir becomes poison – because the whole thing depends on your being alert or not. Acts don’t mean anything. Acts do not matter. You, your awareness, your being conscious, mindful, is what matters. What you do is not the concern.It happened…A thief came to a great Buddhist master, Nagarjuna. The thief had fallen in love with the master because he had never seen such a beautiful person, such infinite grace.He asked Nagarjuna, “Is there also some possibility for my growth? But one thing I must make clear to you. I am a thief. And another thing: I cannot leave it, so please don’t make it a condition. I will do whatever you say, but I cannot stop being a thief. I have tried many times – it never works, so I have stopped making the effort. I have accepted my destiny, that I am going to be a thief and remain a thief, so don’t talk about it. Let it be clear from the very beginning.”Nagarjuna said, “Why are you afraid? Who is going to talk about you being a thief?”The thief replied, “Whenever I go to a monk, to a religious priest or to a saint, they always say, ‘First stop stealing.’”Nagarjuna laughed and said, “You must have gone to thieves; otherwise, why? Why should they be concerned? I am not concerned!”The thief was very happy and said, “Then it is okay. It seems that now I can become a disciple. You are the right master.”Nagarjuna accepted him and said, “Now you can go and do whatever you like. You only have to follow one condition: be aware! Go and break into houses; enter, steal, bring things. Do whatever you like, it is of no concern to me, I am not a thief – but do it with full awareness.”The thief couldn’t understand that he was falling into a trap. He said, “Everything is okay. I will try.”After three weeks he came and said, “You are tricky because if I become aware, I cannot steal. If I steal, awareness disappears. I am in a fix.”Nagarjuna said, “No more talk about your being a thief and stealing. I am not concerned, I am not a thief. Now you decide! If you want awareness, you decide. If you don’t want it, you decide.”The man said, “But now it is difficult. I have tasted it a little, and it is so beautiful – I will leave anything, whatever you say.” The thief continued, “The other night I entered the king’s palace for the first time. I opened the treasure. I could have become the richest man in the world – but you were following me and I had to be aware. Suddenly, when I became aware, there was no motivation, no desire. When I became aware, diamonds looked just like stones, ordinary stones. When I lost awareness the treasure was there. I waited and did this many times. I would become aware and I became like a buddha, and I could not even touch it because the whole thing looked foolish, stupid – just stones, what am I doing? Losing myself just for stones? But then I would lose awareness; they would become beautiful again, the whole illusion. But finally I decided that they were not worth it.”Once you have known awareness, nothing is worth it – you have known the greatest bliss of life. Suddenly, many things simply drop; they become stupid, become foolish. The motivation is not there, the desire is not there, the dreams have fallen. One should not act or speak as if he were asleep. This is the only key.The waking have one world in common;sleepers have each a private world of his own.Dreams are private, absolutely private! No one can enter your dream. You cannot share a dream with your beloved. Husbands and wives sleep in one bed, but dream separately. It is impossible to share a dream because it is nothing – how can you share a nothing? Just like a bubble, it is absolutely nonexistential; you cannot share it, you have to dream alone. That’s why, because of so many sleepers, there exists so many worlds. You have your own world; if you are asleep you live enclosed in your own thoughts, concepts, dreams, desires. Whenever you meet another, two worlds clash; worlds in collision – this is what the situation is. Watch!Look at a husband and wife talking; they are not talking at all. The husband is thinking about the office, the salary; the wife is thinking about her dresses for Christmas. Inside they have their own private worlds, but their private worlds meet somewhere – clash rather – because the wife’s dresses will depend on the husband’s salary and the husband’s salary has to provide for the wife’s dresses.The wife says, “Darling,” but behind the word darling are dresses; she is thinking about them. The darling doesn’t mean that which is written in the dictionary because every time a woman says, “Darling” this is just a facade and the husband immediately becomes afraid. Of course, he does not show it because when someone says, “Darling” you cannot show it. He says, “What is it, dear? How are you?” But he is afraid because he is thinking about his salary, and he knows Christmas is coming and there is danger.Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was saying to him, “What has happened? Lately, even when I cry and weep, and tears roll down my face, you don’t even ask, ‘Why are you weeping?’”Nasruddin replied, “Enough is enough! – it costs too much to ask. I have committed that mistake so many times in the past because those tears are not just tears – they are dresses, a new house, new furniture, a new car; many things are hidden behind those tears. Those tears are just a start.”No dialogue is possible because there are two private worlds inside. Only conflict is possible.Dreams are private, truth is not private. Truth cannot be private – truth cannot be mine or yours, cannot be Christian or Hindu, Indian or Greek. Truth cannot be private. Dreams are private. Remember, whatever is private must belong to the world of dreams. Truth is an open sky, it is for all, it is one.That’s why when Lao Tzu speaks, the language may be different; when Buddha speaks, the language is different; when Heraclitus speaks, the language is different – but they mean the same, they indicate toward the same. They don’t live in a private world. The private world has disappeared with their dreams, desires – with the mind. The mind has a private world, but consciousness has no private worlds. The waking have one world in common, and all those who are waking have one world in common – that is existence. And all those who are asleep and dreaming have their own worlds.Your world has to be dropped; that is the only renunciation I require of you. I don’t say, “Leave your wife.” I don’t say, “Leave your job.” I don’t say, “Leave your money,” “Leave your anything,” no! I simply say, “Leave your private worlds of dreams.” That is sannyas for me. The old sannyas was leaving this world, the visible. One goes to the Himalayas, leaves the wife and children; that is not the point at all. That is not the world to leave. How can you leave it? Even the Himalayas belong to this world. The real world that has to be renounced is the mind, the private dreaming world. If you renounce it, sitting in the market, you are in the Himalayas. If you don’t renounce it, in the Himalayas you will also create a private world around you.How can you escape yourself? Wherever you go you will be with yourself. Wherever you go you will behave in the same way. Situations may be different, but how can you be different? You will be asleep in the Himalayas. What difference does it make whether you sleep in Pune, Boston, London or in the Himalayas? Wherever you are you will be dreaming. Drop dreaming! Become more alert. Suddenly dreams disappear, and with dreams all miseries disappear.Whatever we see when awake is death,when asleep, dreams.This is really beautiful. Whenever you are asleep you see dreams, illusions, mirages; your own creation, your own private world. When you are awake what do you see?Heraclitus says, “When you are awake you see death all around.” Maybe that’s why you don’t want to see. Maybe that’s why you dream and create a cloud of dreams around you, so that you are not required to face the fact of death. But remember, a man becomes religious only when he encounters death, never before. When you encounter death, and see it face to face; when you don’t avoid, dodge, escape, and don’t create a cloud around you; when you face and encounter the fact of death, suddenly you become aware that death is life. The deeper you move into death, the deeper you move in life. Heraclitus says, “Opposites meet and mingle, they are one.”Remember, if you are trying to escape from death, you will also be escaping from life; that’s why you look so dead. This is the paradox: escape death and you remain dead; face, encounter death and you become alive. The moment you face death so deeply, so intensely, that you start feeling that you are dying – not only around, but within also, you feel and touch death – the crisis comes. That is the cross of Jesus, the crisis of dying. At that moment, from one world you die – the world of the horizontal, the world of the mind – and you resurrect in another world.Jesus’ resurrection is not a physical phenomenon. Christians have been unnecessarily creating so many hypotheses around it. It is not a resurrection of this body, it is a resurrection in another dimension of this body. It is a resurrection in another dimension of another body that never dies. This body is temporal, eternal. Jesus resurrects in another world, the world of the truth; the private world has disappeared.In the last moment Jesus says that he is worried, troubled. Even a man like Jesus is worried dying, it has to be so. He cries to God, “What are you doing to me?” He would like to cling to the horizontal, he would like to cling to life – even a man like Jesus.So don’t feel guilty about yourself; you would also like to cling. This is the human in Jesus, and he is more human than Buddha, Mahavira. This is the human. The man comes to face death and he is troubled, and he cries, but he doesn’t go back, he doesn’t fall. He immediately becomes aware of what he is asking. He says, “Thy will be done!” He relaxes, surrenders. The wheel turns immediately – he is no longer in the horizontal; he has entered the vertical, the depth. There he is resurrected into eternity.Die to time so that you are resurrected into eternity. Die to the mind so that you become alive in consciousness. Die to thinking so that you are born into awareness.Heraclitus says: Whatever we see when awake is death… That’s why we live in dreams, sleep, tranquilizers, narcotics, intoxicants – in order not to face the fact. But the fact has to be faced. If you face it, the fact becomes the truth; if you escape, you live in lies. If you face the fact, it becomes the door for the truth. The fact is death; that has to be faced. The truth will be life, eternal life, life in abundance, life which never ends. Death is not death. Life and death are both one, like two wings – this is the hidden harmony.Enough for today.

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The Hidden Harmony 01-11Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

The Hidden Harmony 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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It pertains to all mento know themselvesand to be temperate.To be temperate is the greatest virtue.Wisdom consists in speaking and acting the truth,giving heed to the nature of things.Listening to me but not to the Logos,it is wise to acknowledgethat all things are one.Wisdom is one –to know the intelligence by whichall things are steered through all things.Wisdom is one and unique;it is unwilling and yet willingto be called by the name of Zeus.A few things before we enter these sutras of Heraclitus. First: to know oneself is the most difficult thing. It should not be so; it should be just the opposite, the simplest thing. But for many reasons it is not. It has become so complicated and you have invested so much in self-ignorance that it seems almost impossible to turn back, to return to the source, to encounter oneself.Your whole life, as approved by society, state, church, is based on self-ignorance. You live without knowing yourself because society doesn’t want you to know yourself. It is dangerous for society. A man who knows himself is bound to be rebellious.Knowledge is the greatest rebellion – I mean self-knowledge, not knowledge gathered through scriptures. Not the knowledge found in the universities, but knowledge that happens when you encounter your own being; when you come to yourself in your total nudity, naked; when you see yourself as God sees you, not as society would like to see you; when you see your natural being in its total wild bloom – not a civilized phenomenon, conditioned, cultured, polished.Society is concerned with making a robot out of you because it is helpful ? not a revolutionary. It is easy to dominate a robot; it is almost impossible to dominate a man of self-knowledge. How can you dominate a Jesus? How can you dominate a Buddha or a Heraclitus? He will not yield, he will not follow dictates. He will move through his own being. He will be like the wind, like the clouds; he will move like the rivers. He will be wild – of course beautiful, natural, but dangerous to the false society. He will not fit. Unless we create a natural society in the world, a Buddha is always going to remain a misfit, a Jesus is bound to be crucified.Society wants to dominate; the privileged classes want to dominate, to oppress, to exploit. They would like you to remain completely unaware of yourself. This is the first difficulty. And one has to be born in a society. Parents, teachers, priests are all part of society. Society is everywhere, all around you. How to escape? It seems really impossible. How to find a door back to nature? You are enclosed from every side.The second difficulty comes from your own self because you would also like to oppress, to dominate; you would also like to possess, to be powerful. A man of self-knowledge cannot be made a slave, and he cannot make a slave of anyone else either. You cannot oppress a man of knowledge, and a man of knowledge cannot oppress anyone. He cannot be dominated and he will not dominate. Domination simply disappears from that dimension. You cannot possess him and he will not possess anyone. He will be free and will help others to be free. This is an even deeper difficulty than the first. You can avoid society, but how to avoid your own ego? You are afraid. A man of knowledge simply doesn’t think in terms of possession, domination, power. He is innocent like a child. He would like to live totally free, and he would also like others to live totally free.This man will be a freedom here in your world of slavery. Wouldn’t you not like to be exploited? You will say, “Yes,” you wouldn’t like to be exploited. Wouldn’t you not like to be made a prisoner? You will say “Yes,” you wouldn’t like to be made a prisoner. But would you like the other thing: not to make a prisoner of anyone else, not to dominate, not to oppress and exploit? Not to kill the spirit, or make a person a thing? That is difficult. And remember, if you want to dominate, you will be dominated. If you want to exploit, you will be exploited. If you want someone else to be a slave for you, you will be enslaved. They are both aspects of the same coin. This is the difficulty in self-knowledge; otherwise, self-knowledge should be the simplest thing, the easiest. There shouldn’t be any need to make any effort.Effort is needed for these two things; they are the barriers. Just watch and see these two barriers, and start by dropping your own. First stop dominating, possessing, exploiting, and suddenly you will become capable of getting out of the trap of society.The ego is the problem; that’s why you cannot know yourself. The ego gives you certain false images of yourself, and if you carry those images for a long time, you become afraid. The fear is that if your image falls, your identity will be broken. You create a false face and become afraid; if this false face falls, who will you be? You will go mad. You have invested too much in it. Everyone thinks about himself in such lofty terms, in such false terms; nobody agrees with him, nobody approves, but then your ego thinks that everyone is wrong.I used to know a very old man. He lived almost half a century in the same house in a country town. He never went outside the town, in fact, never went inside the town either. He always remained in the house, a very isolated, introverted type of man. He never married, and remained a permanent bachelor with parents dead, no children, no friends – alone. People thought he was a little eccentric, a little crazy. No one ever came to see him and he never went to see anyone. Suddenly he surprised the whole town and neighborhood; he was moving into the house next door. The neighbors gathered together and asked, “Why?” For half a century he had lived in the same house, why now so suddenly a change?The man said, “Boys, it seems that it is the gypsy in me.”That is his image. Whether you agree or not, that is not the point, but he thinks he is a gypsy. This is how you are all carrying your own images.The first problem arises: if you want to know yourself you have to drop your false images, you have to see yourself as you are – and that is not very beautiful, that is the trouble. That is not very beautiful, that’s why you have created beautiful images – to hide. If you see yourself in total nakedness it is not going to be a very beautiful scene. You will see anger, jealousy, hatred, and millions of wrong things all around you. You think of yourself as a great lover – and there is jealousy, possessiveness, hatred, anger and all sorts of negativities. You think of yourself as a very, very beautiful person – but when you enter into yourself, you encounter ugliness. You turn your back immediately.That’s why for thousands of years buddhas have always been teaching: “Know thyself,” but nobody listens to them. To know oneself seems to be such a difficult thing. Why? – because you have to encounter ugly phenomena. They are there, one has to pass through them. You have a beautiful being within you, but that beautiful being is not on the periphery, it is at the center. To reach the center you have to pass through the periphery. You cannot escape, there is no way to escape, one has to pass through it. You have to pass through all the ugliness, all the negativity, hatred, jealousy, violence, aggression, and if you are ready and mature enough to pass through the periphery, only then will you reach the center, and the scene changes.At the center you are God.At the periphery you are the world – and the world is ugly. At the periphery you are nothing but a miniature society, and the society is ugly. At the periphery you are a Napoleon, a Hitler, a Genghis Khan, a Tamerlane, all the politicians, all the mad people of the world. At the periphery you are a miniature of all that; you are the whole history of aggression, violence, oppression, slavery. Remember, at the periphery you are the history that belongs to this world. Everything is involved; it has to be so because the mind is not your own, it is a social product. The mind carries all the germs, diseases, and ugliness of the past because the mind belongs to the collective. There are certain moments when you can see and watch your own Genghis Khan, your own Hitler. There are certain moments when you can see that you would like to murder, kill and destroy the whole world.You have to be very courageous to pass through the periphery, to be a witness. If you can enter this periphery, this society, the history, at the center you are God himself. There is infinite beauty – but that infinite beauty is untouched by society, it is not the periphery. You are innocent like a newborn baby, fresh as the dewdrop in the morning, uncontaminated. But to reach that, you have to pass through all the ugliness. The whole history of man has to be crossed. You simply cannot avoid it.That’s what you have been doing, and that’s why self-knowledge has become difficult – you want to avoid it. The only way to avoid it is to close your eyes, not to see, and create a private dream against it. Look at yourself as you would like yourself to be – all ideals, utopias, beautiful images. Make a small niche near the periphery – beautiful, decorated – and don’t look at it, just keep your back to it.Heraclitus says “Know thyself!” because that is the only wisdom. You become afraid to come out of your decorated part because just near it is the volcano – it will erupt any moment. So people talk about self-knowledge, they discuss, write, create systems about it, but they never try it. Even those who continuously talk about knowing the self, just talk about it, argue it, discuss it, but in actual fact never try it. Self-knowledge is an existential experience, it is not theory. Theories won’t help. Theories will be just part of your decoration. They will not break the ice. They will not break the periphery. They will not lead you to the center.You listen to what people say; if they say that you are God, you feel very happy; if they say that you are an eternal soul, you feel very, very happy. You also paint, decorate these theories. They are the same trick, escapes – they will not help. If you go around India, everyone knows that everyone is part of God, that everyone is brahman – and look at their lives and the ugliness of it! Look at the lives of the people who talk about God and you won’t find even a particle, not even an atomic part of what they are saying. They are saying it not to convince you, they are saying it to convince themselves. But they remain on the periphery and they are afraid to move.The fear is there and it has to be dropped. Remember, before you attain ultimate bliss you will have to pass through long suffering. Before you attain the infinite, the eternal, you will have to pass through the temporal, the whole history of man. It is inbuilt, it is in every cell of your body, every cell of your mind and brain – you cannot avoid it. The whole past is there with you, it is in you, and has to be passed through. It is a nightmare, it is a very, very long nightmare, millions of years, but one has to pass through it – that is the difficulty.Suffering has to be suffered; that is the meaning of Jesus on the cross. Through suffering he attains the resurrection; through suffering you will attain self-knowledge. So don’t try to avoid it – there is no way to avoid it. The more you avoid it, the more you are losing opportunities. Face it! There is nothing that can be done except to face it. The more you face it, the more it disappears. A moment comes when you are absolutely ready to face it, whatsoever it is – you drop all the images. Even in a single moment of intense alertness, you can reach the center. But in that single moment you will have to suffer the whole past of humanity, the whole history; you will have to suffer all that has happened.You must have heard: it is said that if people drown in the sea or in a river, in a single fragment of a moment they remember their whole past from the very birth, the pangs of birth – in a single moment, a flash, and the whole life passes. This is true. And the same happens when you reach the moment of samadhi, the ultimate death, when the ego dies completely. This happens! But in a single moment you suffer the whole past of humanity, not your own. This is the cross. You suffer the whole past of humanity because now you are transcending humanity. You have to pass through all that humanity has lived. You will have to suffer it. It is tremendous – the anguish is absolute. Only then do you reach the center and bliss becomes possible.Self-knowledge is difficult because you are not ready to pass through any suffering. You think of self-knowledge in terms of tranquilizers; you think self-knowledge is a tranquilizer. People come to me and say, “Give us peace, silence.” If somebody promises to give you silence and peace without suffering, he is befooling you – and you will be caught in the trap very easily because that’s what you would like to have. That is the appeal of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi-type-people in the West. In fact, they are not giving you meditation, they are giving you tranquilizers. A meditation is bound to pass through suffering; it is not a play. You have to move through fire, and only in that fire will your ego drop. Looking at the whole ugliness of it, it drops automatically.Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and others say that there is no need to suffer. They say, “I will give you a technique – just do it for ten minutes in the morning and evening and it will tranquilize your being. You will feel infinite peace and everything will be okay, and in just a few days you will become enlightened.”It is not so easy – it is arduous. Tricks won’t help. Don’t waste your time on tricks. How can you become enlightened by just chanting a mantra for ten minutes? You have passed through history and you have come to a point, here, to this moment; you have passed through millions of years – who will pass back? Meditation means returning to the source. You have come up to this point in time; you will have to go back, you will have to regress, you will have to reach the original point from where the journey started. And you think, just by chanting a mantra for ten minutes in the morning, you will attain it?Who do you think you are befooling? You are befooling yourself. It is not by chanting mantras that you have reached up to now. Humanity has lived, lived in millions of wrong ways – wandered, missed, committed sin, murdered; war, exploitation, oppression, domination. You have been a part of it, you are responsible for it. Just by chanting a mantra for ten minutes you think all responsibility is gone, and you have transcended? You call this chanting transcendental meditation? Who do you think you are befooling?Transcendence is possible, but not through such easy tricks. Transcendence is possible only through the cross. Transcendence is possible only through suffering. If you are ready you can suffer the whole past in a single moment – but it is going to be an intense nightmare. That’s why a master is needed – because you can go completely mad. It is moving through dangerous terrain. Self-knowledge is the greatest thing, and self-knowledge is also the greatest danger. You can miss a step and go mad. That’s why buddhas are not listened to. You also know that this is dangerous. Moving into oneself is dangerous! A master is needed to watch every step; otherwise you will fall into an abyss, get dizzy. The mind will simply crack and it will be difficult to repair it.These are the problems, and this is why man listens to Heraclitus, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Jesus, but never tries. Only a few try it. If you are ready to try it, you have to be aware of what it means. Just a desire to be happy won’t help – a desire to know the truth, not a desire to be happy because a man who wants to be happy will be in search of tranquilizers, narcotics. Meditation will also be a narcotic to him. He wants to sleep well, he doesn’t want to bother about what is happening. He would like to have a private world of his own dreams – of course beautiful dreams, not nightmares. That’s all he wants.A man who is in search of truth does not think in terms of happiness. His happiness or unhappiness is not the point. He must know the true. Even if it is painful, even if it leads to hell, he is ready to pass through it. Wherever it leads, he is ready to go to it.There are only two types of people. One is in search of happiness; he is the worldly type. He may enter a monastery, but this type doesn’t change; there he will also ask for happiness, pleasure, gratification. But now in a different way – through meditation, prayer, God – he is trying to become happy, more and more happy. The second type of person – and only two types exist – is in search of truth. This is the paradox: the one who seeks happiness will never find it because happiness is not possible unless you attain the true. Happiness is just a shadow of truth; it is nothing in itself – it is just a harmony.When you feel one with the truth, everything fits together, falls together. You feel a rhythm and that rhythm is happiness. You cannot seek it directly. Truth has to be sought. Happiness is found when truth is found, but happiness is not the goal. If you seek happiness directly you will be more and more unhappy. At the most, your happiness will be just an intoxicant so that you can forget unhappiness; that’s all that is going to happen. Happiness is just like a drug – it is LSD, marijuana, mescaline.Why has the West come to use drugs? It is a very, very rational process. It has to come to it because searching for happiness one has to reach LSD sooner or later. The same has happened before in India. In the Vedas they reached soma, LSD, because they were seeking happiness; they were not really seekers of truth. They were seeking more and more gratification – they came to soma. Soma is the ultimate drug. Aldous Huxley has named the ultimate drug soma, whenever it was to be found again somewhere in the twenty-first century. Whenever a society, a man, a civilization, seeks happiness, somewhere it has to come to drugs – because happiness is a search for drugs. The search for happiness is a search to forget oneself; that’s what a drug helps you to do. You forget yourself and there is no misery. You are not there, how can there be misery? You are fast asleep.The search for truth is just the opposite dimension; not gratification, pleasure, happiness, but asking, “What is the nature of existence? What is true?” A man who seeks happiness will never find it – at the most he will find forgetfulness. A man who seeks truth will find it because to seek truth he will have to become true himself. To seek truth in existence, first he will have to seek the true in his own being. He will become more and more self-remembering.These are the two paths: self-forgetfulness, the way of the world; and self-remembrance, the way of God. The paradox is that one who seeks happiness never finds it; one who seeks truth and doesn’t bother about happiness has always found it.Heraclitus says, “This is the first thing to be understood: self-knowledge must be the only search, self-knowledge must be the only goal because if without knowing yourself you know everything else, it is meaningless.” You may come to know everything except yourself, but what does it mean? It cannot carry any significance – because if the knower himself is ignorant, what can his knowledge mean? What can his knowledge give? When you yourself remain in darkness you may gather millions of lights around you, but they will not fill you with light. You will remain in darkness in spite of them. You will live in darkness, you will move in darkness. That type of knowledge is science. You know a million and one things, but you don’t know yourself.Science is all knowledge except self-knowledge. Minus self-knowledge, the seeker himself remains in darkness. It is not of much use. Religion is basically self-knowledge. You should be lit within, the darkness should disappear from within, and wherever you move your inner light falls on the path. Wherever you go, whatever you do, everything is illuminated by your inner light. This movement with the light gives you a rhythm, a harmony, which is happiness. You don’t stumble, you don’t clash, and there is no conflict. You move easily, your steps have a dance to them, and everything is a fulfillment. You don’t ask for something extraordinary to happen. You are happy. You are simply happy in your ordinariness. And unless you are happy in your ordinariness, you will never be happy.You are happy just to breathe, just to be; you are happy just to eat, and to go to sleep again. You are happy. Now happiness is not derived from anything – it is you. A man who knows himself is happy not because of any reasons; his happiness is uncaused. It is not a thing that happens to him, it is his whole way of being. He is simply happy. Wherever he moves he takes his happiness with him. If you throw him into hell, he will create a heaven around him; a heaven will enter with him. As you are, ignorant of yourself, if you could be thrown into heaven you would create a hell there because you carry your hell with you. Wherever you go will not make much difference, you will carry your own world around you. That world is within you, your darkness. This inner darkness should disappear – that is what is meant by self-knowledge.The second thing Heraclitus says, “This will become easy to attain if you are aware not to move to the extremes.” Remain in the middle – the golden mean ? what Buddha calls majjhim nikai, the middle way. Remain in the middle, don’t move to the extremes because when you move to the extremes you think you are going to the opposite, but the opposite is not exactly the opposite, it is a complementary whole. That is his whole teaching.Watch people and watch yourself. One person indulges in sex too much; indulgence brings boredom, excitement is lost, he is simply bored. He starts thinking of celibacy because he is finished with indulgence. Now he is not interested in sex at all; he would like to become a monk, he would like to move to a monastery, take a vow of brahmacharya. This is going to the extreme; this is again indulgence. The extreme is indulgence. Sex is not indulgence, the extreme is indulgence. There is only one indulgence: to indulge in the extreme. He indulged in one extreme, now he is moving to the other; that too is indulgence. Sooner or later he will be fed up. Catholic monks are fed up now, so they are getting married. They have done too much. One must know where to stop, and the middle is the way.If you can remain in the middle, the mind disappears – because the mind lives in extremes. You eat too much, then you fast and go on fasting. The first was stupid; this too is stupid. The body doesn’t need too much food and doesn’t need fasting either. It needs just a midpoint; it needs the right quantity of food. First you eat too much, you fill the body too much, and it becomes a burden. To carry it becomes a burden for you; it is not a bliss to be in the body. You move to the other extreme. Now you fast; that too is destructive. Why can’t you be in the middle? Why can’t you eat the right quantity of food and the right type of food? Why can’t you remain in the middle? If you remain in the middle, the mind disappears.The mind exists with the extreme because the mind has to think again and again. When you eat too much, you think about fasting; when you fast, you think about food. But when you are just in the middle, balanced, what is there to think about? A man who is in the middle has nothing to think of. He is hungry, he eats – finished! He is sleepy, he sleeps – finished! What is there to think about? But you don’t sleep, and you think about sleeping; sleeping becomes a cerebral phenomenon, the mind enters. You don’t eat, or you eat too much, you have to think about it; it goes into the mind. Either you indulge in sex too much, or you become a brahmachari. In both cases it becomes cerebral. Sex enters the mind, and the mind goes on thinking around and around. Thinking exists because of extremes.Whenever you are simply in the middle, there is no point in thinking; there is nothing to think. In the middle, thinking disappears. When you are really harmonious you have attained a rhythm. You fulfill the needs; you are neither a slave nor an enemy to them. You are neither an indulgent one nor one who is ascetic. You simply remain in the middle. Everything becomes peaceful. Heraclitus calls this, “Being temperate, moderate, balanced.”Balance has to be gained in everything. Through balance you will come nearer to truth because truth is the ultimate balance. When you are balanced, suddenly the doors open.Now try to understand these sutras:It pertains to all mento know themselvesand to be temperate.To be temperate is the way to know oneself. Watch your mind and you will always see it insists on the extreme; it enjoys the extreme, it indulges in the extreme. When you are just in the middle, the mind is unemployed, unoccupied.Somebody asked a Zen master, “What is your way?”He replied, “When I feel hungry, I eat; when I feel sleepy, I go to sleep – this is my way. I never eat when I am not hungry, and I never fast when I am hungry – this is my way.”The man said, “But this doesn’t seem much of a way – we all do this.”The master laughed and said, “If you did all this, there would be no need to come to me.”Either you eat too much, or you eat too little. The mind always has a tendency to find causes for being miserable. It is simply wonderful, the mind is simply wonderful – it is so skilled at finding causes to be miserable. It creates all your miseries because in a blissful state the mind will die. It is against all bliss. You are in misery; it will suggest to you that this is not good, do that. It will suggest just the opposite. Be alert; when the mind suggests just the opposite, don’t follow it! Always find the golden mean. Don’t listen to the mind, know where to stop.Lao Tzu has said, “I give you three treasures: one is love; the second is never go to the extreme; the third is be natural.” And he says that everything will take care of itself. Why will everything take care of itself if you follow these simple things?The mind is a perfect expert in creating miseries. A young man came to me and said, “I would like to live just on water.” Why? Why just on water? He is already miserable. He has been eating too much. Now that has become a hell, now he wants to create another hell – because how can you live just on water? That will be another hell, and from that hell you will move to another hell. From hell to hell is the passage of the mind. Somewhere between two hells is heaven, but the mind always bypasses it.Between two hells is heaven, so know where to stop. Just in the middle, stop! Don’t eat too much and don’t fast. But you will not be able to become very egoistic about it because eating too much can be egoistic.Mulla Nasruddin goes on talking about his capacity to eat, and many times I have heard him saying: “I can eat ninety-nine kachoris!”So I said to him, “Why not make it a hundred?”He replied, “What do you think of me? Just because of one kachori, am I a liar. Why should I lie?”Bragging – people brag about how much they can eat, and other people brag about how much they can fast, but the bragging remains the same. Criminals brag, and your so-called saints. Both are in the same boat – because bragging is the boat.I have heard that a criminal entered a prison cell. His cellmate who was already there asked, “How long do you have to be here?” He was an old master.The young, new one said, “Just fifteen years.”His cellmate said, “Then keep your bed near the door. You will be leaving soon. I am sentenced to twenty-five more years.”If you are sentenced for twenty-five years you are a great criminal. But just fifteen? – you are just a beginner, an amateur. Even criminals brag about how much they can do, how much they have done. If they commit one murder, they claim seven. Saints also do the same. What is the difference? In India, saints publish how many days they fasted this year.A man came to me with his wife. In describing her husband his wife said, “He is a very, very generous man. Up to now he has donated almost one lakh rupees.”The man looked at his wife and corrected her. “Not one lakh – one lakh ten thousand.”You give and you don’t give – because if the ego is fulfilled through giving, nothing is being given. The ego cannot share. The ego can never be generous; that is not its nature. The ego always fulfills itself by the opposite. Know this trap well.Heraclitus says:It pertains to all mento know themselvesand to be temperate.To be temperate is the greatest virtue.It really is. I have not come across anything greater than being temperate. There is nothing like it. Why? Why is it the greatest virtue? – because it simply destroys your ego, and the ego is the only sin. Because of the ego you miss the divine. And just being ordinary, in the middle, what can you claim? Can you claim that you eat the right quantity of food? Can you claim that you move into sex exactly in the middle, just right? Can you claim anything from the middle? No, that’s not possible. Indulge in sex and you can claim that even at the age of fifty you can make love thrice a day. Or become a brahmachari, a celibate, and claim that you are a virgin, having never made love to anyone. What can you claim by just being in the middle? In the middle there is nothing to claim. When there is nothing to claim and declare, the ego is not fed. Just be ordinary and in the middle – this is the greatest virtue.To be ordinary is the greatest virtue because when you are just ordinary, with nothing to claim of this world or that, the ego disappears. The ego feeds on imbalance, the ego feeds on extremes. The ego lives on the polarities – in the middle it disappears. In every area, in every direction of life, remember, just stop in the middle and soon you will find the mind has stopped, the ego has stopped. With nothing to claim, it disappears; when it disappears you have become virtuous. Now the door is open for the divine. You meet him in the middle; at the extremes you miss.Wisdom consists in speaking and acting the truth,giving heed to the nature of things.Heraclitus is just like Lao Tzu, exactly the same. He says: Wisdom consists in speaking and acting the truth… Try, because to know the truth is going to be a long journey. Much preparation will be needed. Before the truth can descend on you, you will have to become a vehicle. You will have to be completely empty for the guest to come because only your emptiness can become the host. What to do right now? If you are a seeker of truth, Heraclitus says, “Speak and act truth.” If you speak truth, there is not much to say; you will become more and more silent automatically.It happened…A lady had just left a ladies’ club and the other ladies were talking about her. One said, “She seems to be very sweet, but – yakety-yakety-yak. I couldn’t think how she would stop herself.”Another member said, “But is everything she says true?”“I should say not,” said the third lady, “because that much truth simply doesn’t exist!”If you want to be true you will become silent – because ninety-nine percent of what you talk about is simply untrue; it will drop automatically. There are two types of silence. One that you force upon yourself, which is not really silence. You can cut off your tongue, but that will not be the silence. You can close your mouth, that will not be a true silence because inside ? yakkety-yak. It goes on and on and on. True silence comes if you start talking truth. Only say that which you know is true; otherwise don’t speak. What is left to say? – not much. A silence descends on you which is totally different. It is not a forced silence. It comes spontaneously because there is nothing to say.First, when you have nothing to say, you start being silent with people; you talk less and listen more. By and by, the inside talking also stops because if you cannot speak untruth to other people, how can you go on talking about it inside? The whole thing becomes absurd. Inside you talk too much because that is just a rehearsal for talking outside. If you can listen to people, not talking much, just the truth – that for which you can vouch, that to which you can say, “I am a witness” – a silence will come to you. A silence not forced, a silence not disciplined, a silence that comes naturally.Heraclitus says, “Speak and act the truth, and act only in such a way that it comes out of your feeling of truth.” In the beginning it will be difficult because your whole life depends on lies. In the beginning you will always feel out of step with others, but soon everything settles again in a new pattern, a new gestalt arises.The interim period is going to be difficult. First, watch in how many ways you lie. You smile and you don’t feel like smiling within. It is a lie. Don’t smile because you are being violent to the lips, to the face. If you go on doing it for long you will completely forget the feeling of a smile, what a true smile is. Only small children know; you have completely forgotten what a true smile is. You simply smile; it is a gesture, false. You smile as a polite mannerism. You smile because people expect you to smile. You smile not knowing what you are doing. Why are you forcing your lips? If your smile has become false, what can be true in you? Your tears have also become false. You weep when it is required; otherwise you suppress.Watch in how many millions of ways you have become untrue. You say things you don’t mean. You use words completely unconsciously – then you are trapped by them. You say to someone, “You are beautiful.” It may just have been a mannerism of yours, but you have touched the other person, you have stirred something. The other person may start feeling that you really feel that way. Now expectations arise, and soon frustrations will follow because you had said it just by the way, you never meant it. Now you are in a trap; you have to fulfill the expectation. Now you feel burdened.Be true and you will be less burdened. Be true; don’t create false expectations around you, otherwise you will be in a prison, trapped! Say exactly what you mean and always say, “This I mean in this moment. For the next moment I cannot say anything – because who knows what will happen in the next moment? I love you this moment, but how can I speak for the next moment?”Only an enlightened person can say something about the next moment because he has come to a point where everything is eternal. But how can you speak about the next moment? Your moods change. This moment you feel, “I love,” and this moment you can say, “I will love you forever and ever.” This is true only in this moment; how can you say anything about the next moment? Be alert and make the statement conditional: “This is how I feel only in this moment – nobody knows about the next moment. I cannot promise anything.”All your promises are untrue – how can you promise? A promise means you have attained a crystallized center. How can you keep a promise? You say to a woman, “I will love you forever and ever.” How can you keep this promise? After just a few days you feel the excitement has disappeared, now there is no love – what to do? Now you have to smile falsely. And because of the promise you have to kiss this woman, you have to make love to this woman. Now everything becomes false. You become untrue. Now you feel guilty if you don’t fulfill it. If you fulfill it, it is untrue, you are acting. It cannot make you ecstatic – it will create more anxiety and burdens. It cannot be a fulfillment, it will be a frustration. The more you force yourself to love the woman, the more you will take revenge because this woman has become a millstone around your neck. Now you feel that if she goes away somehow it will be good. If she dies it will be good. Now you will find a way to escape – just because of a promise! A promise that is given in a moment and given for one life is not possible for you. You live in moments. You don’t have an eternal center in you yet, you have just a wheel-like periphery that moves. This is how you are trapped.You cannot love, you cannot laugh, you cannot weep – everything is untrue, and you are in search of truth. No, it is not possible. You have to be true to meet truth, because only the same can meet the same. An untrue person cannot reach the truth; only a true person can reach the truth.Be alert, don’t promise. Just say that this moment it appears so. Of course, it will give you a feeling of helplessness; the ego cannot stand. The ego can say, “I will, forever and ever.” You will feel helpless that you cannot give even this promise ? but it is being true. I know that if even for a single moment you can love another person totally, that will change you; that will give you a taste of truth. But be true. Say what you mean. If you don’t know, if you are confused in a situation, don’t speak – or simply put your confusion out, express it. Before you act, act with full awareness that this is going to give you a truer being. Be authentic.You go on doing millions of things that you don’t want to do. Who is forcing you? You simply drift. Nobody is forcing you to do those things. Why do you do them? ? you are not aware. It is just a chain; you do one thing, then another arises. One thing leads to another and you go on and on. When will you stop? Every moment is the right moment to stop. Just watch and start falling out of the chain of lies that you have created.Of course, you will feel very, very humiliated, humble, helpless. But if that’s true, feel it. When it comes from your heart, weep when you want to. Don’t stop; don’t say, “I am a man, I cannot be a sissy, I cannot behave like a woman.” Don’t say that. Nobody is so totally a man and nobody can be. Man is also woman, woman is also man; both meet and mingle inside. Weep, because if you cannot weep authentically you cannot smile. You will be afraid. When you would like to laugh you will be afraid because tears may start; they are suppressed there so you cannot laugh. When you cannot laugh, you cannot weep; it becomes a vicious circle. When you are angry, be angry and take the consequences – be truly angry.This has been my observation. If you are truly angry, nobody is offended by it – nobody! But your anger is impotent, dead. If you are a father and feel angry with your child, be angry and your child will never feel antagonistic toward you. But when you are angry, you smile, and the child simply detects it because a child is innocent; he has clear eyes, more clarity than you have. He simply detects the falsity – that you are angry and you are smiling. He will never be able to forgive you because you are being untrue. A child never feels so bad about anything as he feels about untruth. Be authentic. If you feel like hitting the child, hit him, but don’t be untrue. And when you feel repentance, ask for forgiveness, and be true in that.A husband who has never said anything in anger to his wife will not be able to love because everything remains false, on the surface. If you cannot bring deep anger out, how can you bring deep love? If you are so afraid of being angry, that shows that you are not confident of love. You are afraid that things may fall apart, the relationship may break up; that’s why you are afraid. But then this relationship is not worth much. If it cannot pass through anger and mature, it is not worth much. Drop it before it becomes a commitment – but be true.You will have to suffer through truth, but that suffering is needed. Through suffering you will mature, your inner being will become seasoned. You will attain a sharpness and clarity that only comes through encounter, that only comes through facing facts. When you are angry, be truly angry so that you can be truly forgiving. When you don’t want to give a thing, simply say, “I don’t want to give it,” but don’t find excuses. Don’t find excuses because you are creating a pattern every moment, and that pattern can become so ingrained that you will have to follow it. Come out of it – and every moment is a right moment.Heraclitus says: Wisdom consists in speaking and acting the truth, giving heed to the nature of things. Look at the nature of things. Watch the natural and drop the artificial. The artificial may look beautiful, but it is not alive. Watch the natural and always move with nature. Never move with the artificial. Civilization is artificial, society is artificial – everything seems to be artificial.I knew a man once, an old, retired professor, a neighbor. People thought that he was a little bit out of his mind, as a retired professor of philosophy is bound to be. But I don’t make judgments, so I listened, and I never really thought much about him. One day, I was just passing by and I had to look twice because he was using a watering can with no bottom. The watering can had no bottom! There was no water in it, and he was making all the gestures of watering his plants. So I said to him, “Hey, what are you doing? Your watering can has no bottom!”He replied, “I know that, but it doesn’t matter because these flowers are artificial.”Your whole life has become artificial – plastic flowers. From a distance they look good, but if you come close they are plastic. Of course, they don’t die so soon. They cannot die, they are plastic flowers, but a thing that cannot die is not alive.A real flower has to pass through millions of hazards. How humble a real flower is, how fragile. In the morning it is there, how fragile! And against this whole world. Storms and clouds come, the rain, animals, children and everything. A fragile flower exists against all this. That is the beauty; by the evening it is gone. You will not find it again, it will no longer be there – but it is alive. In the morning it is there in its total beauty, and by the evening it is faded, gone, dust unto dust – but it was alive. Your plastic flower is dead, that’s why it cannot die. Everything alive will die; only dead things never die.Remember, don’t be afraid of death and don’t be afraid that things may disappear. Untruth never dies. Truth dies millions of times and resurrects again and again. Remember this. Untruth is like a plastic flower, secure. That’s why marriage is secure. A marriage which has been arranged by parents, by society is more secure. Love is fragile like a flower in the morning; by the evening it is gone. Nobody knows how it comes, how it goes. It is mysterious. Marriage is nothing mysterious, it is a calculation. You go to an astrologer, he finds the chart and arranges it. Of course, parents are wiser than you, worldly wise, they have known much. They arrange it all; they look for many things that a lover would never think about – the money, the prestige and millions of things; they think of security. When someone falls in love he cannot think of anything else.Remember, a dead thing never dies – that is the security in it, but it is dead. It is always possible that an alive thing may disappear at any moment; that is the trouble with life. But it is alive, and worth taking all risks for.Be true. There will be many, many troubles, but each trouble will make you more mature. And being true, talking, acting true, you are getting ready for truth to descend. When you attain a certain maturity, suddenly the door opens. There is no other way.Listening to me but not to the Logos,it is wise to acknowledgethat all things are one.Heraclitus says: Listening to me… I would also say, “Listening to me, it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one.” If you listen to the logos ? the logos means: the law, the tao, the rit, the basic; the logos is the ultimate stratum of existence. You don’t know anything about it. You have never penetrated that depth. It is also in you, near the center, but you have lived on the periphery so you don’t know about it. Heraclitus says, “But listening to me” – listening to a Buddha, to Heraclitus, to Lao Tzu – “it is good to acknowledge that all things are one.” This is not your experience yet.Here enters trust, shraddha, faith. Religion cannot exist without trust because you don’t know what the ultimate stratum is. There is no way to prove it, there is no way to argue about it. If you know, you know; if you don’t know, you don’t know. What to do about it? There is only one possibility: to listen to a Heraclitus – not only to what he says, but to listen to his being, what he is. You will come to acknowledge one thing, that one exists in this diversity, in this “too-manyness” of the world. Behind it, one exists.You have been listening to me ? you have listened to me from many, many dimensions. Sometimes on the periphery you feel I am contradictory; if you listen not only to my words but to me, to my presence, you will never feel any contradiction. If you feel, not just think, by and by you will start feeling that whatever I say is the same. Whatever I say, whether through Heraclitus, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, I always say the same thing. The language differs, words differ, but not the logos of it.Listening to me…it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one. When you can listen to the logos itself, you will know; there will be no need to acknowledge it. You will know, and there will be no need to trust. Trust is needed because you don’t know and you need somebody who knows. You need the hand of somebody who knows, who can take you from the known to the unknown, who can take you to the uncharted. Without trust it is not possible; otherwise how will you come with me to the unknown? If you don’t trust me, how can you come with me to the unknown? You will always stick to the boundary of the known. You will say, “Up to here I know that I am safe; beyond this is wilderness. And who are you to take me into the wilderness? Why should I trust you?”At the boundary where known and unknown meet, there is no way except trust. You have to be in a love affair with a master, nothing less than that will do because only love can trust. It has to be a heart-to-heart, depth-to-depth relationship; it has to be intimate.That’s why I go on insisting on sannyas and initiation. Unless you trust me, totally, you will cling to the known, to the mind, your ego –what is the point? You have to take at least one step with me without asking why. Love never asks why because love trusts.A small child has to trust his father; the father takes his hand and the child follows. He’s not worried; wherever the father is going, he goes, happily. He is not worried about what is going to happen. That is trust. If the child stops and says, “Where are you going and where are you leading me? What do you mean by trust, and how can I trust you?” He will immediately stop growing, and there is no possibility of growth. The child has to trust the mother, the father.A master is nothing but a father into the unknown. You are learning to walk again, you are learning to search and seek again, you are moving into something – you don’t know what it is, where you are headed.This is what Heraclitus means:Listening to me…It is wise to acknowledgethat all things are one.Wisdom is one –to know the intelligence by whichall things are steered through all things.Wisdom is one and unique;it is unwilling and yet willingto be called by the name of Zeus.Zeus is the supreme god. Wisdom is both willing and unwilling to be called the supreme god. It is paradoxical and very difficult for the mind to understand.Buddha says, “There is no god” – unwilling. He also says, “No need to worship me, find your own light” – unwilling to declare his wisdom, his consciousness, to be the supreme god. The next moment he says, “Come and surrender to me.” The next moment he contradicts himself. Why is it? – because a man who has reached, arrived, has no ego, so it is difficult for him to claim anything, unwilling. The wisdom is unwilling to declare itself the supreme god, but it is. The ego is not there to claim, but it is so. It is a fact, so it cannot be denied either.So what to do? If a Buddha says, “I am not the supreme god,” he is untrue. If he says, “I am the supreme god,” it gives a tinge of ego. So what is he supposed to do? Either way there is difficulty. If he says, “I am the god,” you may think he is an egoist. If he says, “I am not a god at all,” it is untrue. So sometimes he says, “Yes, I am”; sometimes he says, “I am not.” You have to find the balance between these two. He is both somewhere in between. He is not a god because he is no longer an ego, there is nobody to claim. He is a god precisely because there is no ego, precisely because there is nobody to claim.Wisdom is one and unique; it is unwilling and yet willing to be called by the name of Zeus. Hence, all the contradictions of all the enlightened ones. Whatever they say they have to contradict immediately because they are saying something which is unique, one. The unique and the one cannot be put into any language because language depends on duality. If they say, “I am light,” who will be the darkness? Language depends on the duality; light means not darkness. But a man who has attained is both light and dark together. He is both – all the dualities together – that is the mystery. And because of this mystery Aristotle said, “This man Heraclitus is defective somewhere. Either his mind is defective, or his character because he talks in absurdities.”Arthur Koestler came to the East to watch people who have attained samadhi. He reported back to the West: “They are mad, absurd because they talk absurdities. This moment they say something, the next moment they contradict themselves.”Wisdom is vast, it contains all the opposites together. You need a feeling heart to penetrate this absurdity; that is trust. Trust is the weapon to penetrate the absurdity of an enlightened man – then suddenly everything fits. You suddenly see through all the absurdity to the one, the unique.Enough for today.

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The Hidden Harmony 01-11Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

The Hidden Harmony 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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God is day and night, winter and summer,war and peace, satiety and want.Seawater is at once very pure and very foul:it is drinkable and healthful for fishes,but undrinkable and deadly for men.The nature of day and night are as one.The way up and the way downare one and the same.Even sleepers are workers and collaboratorsin what goes on in the universe.In the circlethe beginning and the end are common.A thousand and one difficulties have arisen because man has always taken God to be person. God is not a person. All the problems that theology deals with are simply futile exercises – the base being that God is taken to be a person.God is not a person and cannot be. Let it go as deep in you as possible because that will become a door, an opening. For those who have been raised as Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, it is particularly difficult to take God as anything else but as a person – that becomes a closing. To think about God as a person is anthropocentric. In the Bible it is said that God created man in his own image, but just the contrary seems to be the case – man has created God in his own image. Men differ, that’s why there are so many gods in the world.When the first Christian missionaries reached Africa, they were in trouble – because they painted God as white and the Devil as black, and the Negroes felt very offended. They wouldn’t listen to them because from the very beginning there was conflict with the image. One missionary simply got the idea and changed the colors. He made God black and the Devil white, and the Negroes were very happy – they could accept it. A Negro is bound to paint his God in his own image, a Chinese in his own, an Indian in his own. We paint God as our own reflection – of course, perfect – but your image cannot be God. You are just a part, a very tiny part, one atom in existence. How can the whole be conceived in the image of the part? The whole transcends the part, the whole is infinitely vast. If you cling to the atom, if you cling to the part, you will miss the whole.God is not to be conceived in your image; rather, on the contrary, you have to drop your image, you have to become imageless. Only then do you become a mirror and the whole reflects in you.As man has been seeking more and more, this has become clearer and clearer – that God as a person creates trouble because you are always in conflict with other Gods. That’s why the Jewish, Hindu Mohammedan, Christian God, all exist. This is sheer nonsense! How can God be Christian, Hindu, or Mohammedan? There are different Gods because Jews have their own idea of God, and Hindus have their own idea, so the conflict is bound to be there. Hindus think that God speaks the Sanskrit language; the English think that he is an English gentleman.It is said that a German and an Englishman were talking. The German said, “We plan in every way, but why are we defeated every time?”The Englishman replied, “You have to be defeated because whenever we start fighting, first we pray to God and he looks after us. You are to be defeated; you can never be victorious.”The German said, “But we also pray.”The Englishman laughed and said, “But who understands German?”To an Englishman, God is an Englishman. To Adolf Hitler he must be Nordic. He has to be because we create our own image.I was just reading a memoir of an army priest. This priest was attached to Montgomery’s wing. One day, when they were ready to attack, it was so cloudy and cold with so much mist that it seemed impossible to move. So the priest has written that Montgomery called him and said, “Pray to God immediately and tell him that we, his soldiers, are on the march and what is he doing? Is he in conspiracy with the enemy? Tell him to stop all this immediately!”The priest was surprised: “A man like Montgomery – what is he talking about?” He said, “But this won’t look good. It doesn’t look good to say to God, ‘What are you doing? Stop this immediately because we are on the move and we are your soldiers.’”The priest felt a little embarrassed, but Montgomery said, “Listen to my order! You are my priest, attached to my army, so whatever I say you have to do. Go and pray immediately!”This happens. It looks absurd and foolish, but this is happening all the time, to everyone, to all people. If you take God as a person this is bound to happen. You start communicating with him as a person. He is not a person. There are millions of atheists because you have taken God to be a person. The atheist is not against God, but he is against your conception of God as a person because the whole concept is foolish. Think about what anguish you must be putting your God in because Germans are praying for victory, the English are praying for victory, and everybody thinks that God is with them, on their side.I have heard…Once Junnaid, a Sufi mystic, dreamed that he saw himself as dead, and the greatest sinner of the town was also dead; both reached God’s door and knocked. The sinner was received and the saint was rejected. He felt very, very hurt. He had always expected that he would be received, welcomed, so what was happening? – just the opposite. He knew this man who was being received with such ceremony. When the ceremony was over and the sinner was sent to his abode, the saint said, “I have to ask God just one question. What are you doing? I have been continuously praying twenty-four hours, day and night, calling your name. Even in my sleep I have been calling your name and chanting!”God replied, “Precisely because of that – you have pestered me so much that now that you have come to heaven I am really afraid of you. What will you do here? On earth, from so far away, for twenty-four hours a day you have not left me a single moment of peace! This man is good, that’s why we are celebrating. He never bored me, never pestered me; he never used my name, never created any trouble for me.”God as a person is just foolish, the whole concept is foolish. He cannot be a person because he has to be every person – how can he be a person himself? He cannot be someone because he is everyone, and he cannot be anywhere because he is everywhere. You cannot define him, and personality is a definition. You cannot limit him, and as a person he becomes limited. Personality is just like a wave that comes and goes, and he is like an ocean. He is immense – he abides. Personalities come and go, they are forms; they are there and then they are no longer there. Forms change; forms change continuously into the opposites, and he is the formless. He cannot be defined, it cannot be said who he is. He is all. The moment you say, “He is all,” the problem of how to communicate arises. There is no need; you cannot communicate with him like a person. You have to communicate with him in a totally different dimension – that dimension is of energy, of consciousness, not of personality. God is energy and absolute awareness. God is bliss, ecstasy; indefinable, unlimited; no beginning, no end; always and always, eternal, timeless, beyond space – because God means the total.The total cannot have a personality – this is the first thing to be understood, very, very deeply; not only intellectually, but as totally as possible because if you conceive, feel, grope toward God as totality, your prayer will be different. Your prayer will not be a foolish prayer, and he cannot be on your side – he is on every side. He is with your enemy as much as with you, and he is as much in the saint as in the sinner – because he is all. He is as much in the dark as in the light. He comprehends all. All opposites meet and mingle and become one in him. Because of the concept of God as a person we have to create a Devil against God because where will you put all the negativity! You have to create someone to throw all the negativity on. Your God then becomes false, your Devil too because negatives and positives exist together, not separately. All that you like you put on God’s side. It is your division. God cannot be divided – he is undivided.The first thing: God is not a person. And remember, you are also not a person. It is ignorance, self-ignorance; that’s why you appear like a person. If you move deeper, soon the personality becomes blurred; a moment comes when you don’t know who you are. You may have noticed many times that if someone wakes you suddenly, you don’t know where you are – whether it is morning or evening, whether it is your house or somewhere else; you may not know what town it is. For a single moment everything is blurred, no time sense, no space sense, and you don’t know who you are. Why does it happen? – it happens because in deep sleep you move toward the center, of course unconsciously, but at the center there is no personality, an impersonal energy exists. If someone suddenly wakes you, you have to move from the center to the periphery in such a rush that there is no time to gather your personality. In a sudden rush you simply lose identity – and this is your reality, this is in fact, who you are.When you are in deep meditation you will become more and more aware of the indefinable, the unlimited. First, it will look like a blurred phenomenon, and you may even become afraid, scared: “What is happening to me? Am I losing my mind? Am I going mad?” If you become afraid you will miss. Don’t worry, it is natural. You are moving to the indefinable from the defined; in between there will be ground where everything will become blurred.That’s why Zen masters have said: “Before one enters the path, rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains. When one enters the path, rivers are no longer rivers, mountains are no longer mountains. When one has achieved the goal, again rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains.” What do they mean? ? they mean that there comes a moment when everything becomes blurred. That is the time a school, a master, will be needed because when everything is blurred you are again like a small child – helpless, not knowing who you are, identity lost, not knowing where you are going, not knowing what is happening; a school is needed. This is the meaning of an ashram, a monastery, where many people exist on many levels and they can help each other. A master exists on the ultimate level – you need not be afraid, you can always look toward him.When your identity is lost the master is your only source of sanity – you will be insane. Many people work alone and many people go mad. If you move in the East, you will find many people who are just hanging ? they have worked without a master; they came to the blurred territory, and now they don’t know where to go. They have forgotten from where they came and now they don’t know where to go. They don’t know who they are. They are absolutely mad. They are better than you, but mad. Now they cannot take any step because who will take the step and where? At this moment a master is needed.One of the greatest works Meher Baba did in his life and it has never been done before – he lived just near Pune and he is one of the greatest masters – he traveled all over India for years, just making contact with such mad people. Not doing anything else, just doing this one thing. He moved from one village to another, making contact with such people who had gone mad, who were on a better ground than you but some help was needed – just a push. Just a push so that again rivers become rivers, mountains become mountains. And they achieve a new identity again.The old identity was with the form, the new identity will be with the formless. The old identity was with the name, the new identity will be with the nameless. The old identity was of this world, the new identity will be of that world. You can hang suspended between the two if there is no school, if there is no master to help you and bring it out. You can enter this wilderness, but coming out will be difficult on your own. Sometimes, accidentally, somebody does come out – that’s not the point – but as a rule it is almost impossible for you to come out.I have seen many mad people. Whenever somebody comes to me and wants to do everything on his own, I feel very much for him because he doesn’t know what he is talking about. This is the problem. I cannot force anything because the more you force the more he will escape. I can simply say, “Okay, do whatever you like” – but I feel deeply because I know where he is unknowingly moving. God is energy, and if you are not prepared it can be destructive. God is such vital, infinite energy, that if your vehicle is not ready you will simply crack. So the question is not just to know God. A deeper question is how to be ready before you can say, “Now you can come,” before you can invite him – because you are so small and he is so vast. It is as if a drop of water is calling the ocean to come in. The ocean can come in any time, but what will happen to the drop? The drop has to attain a capacity, a receptivity so infinite that the ocean drops into the drop and disappears, and the drop is not shattered. That art is the greatest, and that art is religion, Yoga, Tantra, or whatever name you want to give it.Don’t look at God according to your conceptions: Jewish, Christian, Hindu. Drop them! That is clinging to the periphery, to knowledge. You cling to whatever you have been taught and God cannot be taught, nobody can teach him – of course, indicated, shown in subtle and indirect ways, but he cannot be taught. Whatever you know about God is wrong – and I say “whatever” unconditionally. Whatever you know is wrong because that has come from teachings; someone has taught you a conception, a theory, and God is not a conception, not a theory; he is not a hypothesis. It is nothing like that – it is absolutely different.Drop all conceptions, only then are you ready to take the first step. You go to him naked, with no conception, with no clothes about you. You go to him vacant, with no ideas about him in your mind. You go to him empty because that is the only way to go; empty, you become a door, he can enter. Only receptivity is needed, not concepts, not philosophies, doctrines – this is what Heraclitus means. These words are very, very wonderful.Listen:God is day and night, winter and summer,war and peace, satiety and want.Never have such wonderful words been uttered before and never since. God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and want. Many have said many things about God, but no one is comparable to Heraclitus. There have been people who have said, “God is light,” but where do you put the dark? You then have to explain where the dark comes from. Many have said, “God is day. God is sun, light, the source of light,” but from where does the night come? Where does the dark come from ? the Devil, sin? From where? Why have people talked about God as light?Something psychological is involved. Man is afraid of darkness; man feels very good when there is light – it is part of your fear. Why do you call God light? The Koran, the Upanishads, the Bible all say, “God is light.” There has only been a small school – in that small school where Jesus was taught and brought up to be ready to receive the divine – and that small school was known as the Essenes; they were the teachers and masters of Jesus. Only that school says, “God is dark, night.” They never say, “God is light”; they move to the other extreme. They are beautiful people.Try to understand the symbol, light-and-dark. You are not afraid in the light because you can see. Nobody can easily attack you. You can defend, escape, fight or take flight. You can do something, everything is known. Light is the symbol of the known – with the known you don’t feel fear.Darkness is the unknown. Fear arises in the heart, and you don’t know what is happening all around you. Anything is possible and you are indefensible. Light is security, darkness is insecurity. Light looks like life and darkness like death. Afraid, scared – not only psychologically, but also biologically because man has lived for thousands of years in the dark, in the night, in the wild, forest, caves. The night was a problem because wild animals could attack and man was indefensible. So when fire was invented, it became the first god; it became a protection, a security. With the day everything is okay, with the night you don’t know where you are; with the night everything disappears.So man is prone to identify God with light. Light has a few beautiful things about it. It is warm, it is a source of energy – you cannot live without the sun, nothing can exist without the sun. Deep down, all life is solar energy; the energy that comes from the sun. You eat it, you drink it – you live through it. If the sun simply disappears, goes cold, within ten minutes life on this earth will disappear – within ten minutes because it takes ten minutes for the rays to reach us. If the sun dies, the old rays will come for ten minutes, but by the tenth minute new rays will not come, and everything will simply die. We will not even be aware of what is happening; nobody will know that we have died. The whole planet will die – the trees, the animals, the birds, man, everything! Life exists through the sun – it is warm, welcoming.Darkness also has beautiful things about it; it is infinite. Light always has a limit; darkness is limitless. Deep down light is exciting, it excites you; darkness is absolutely unexciting. Light is warm, darkness is cool, cool like death, mysterious. Light comes and goes; darkness remains. That’s why the Essenes called God the dark, the night, because light comes and goes, darkness remains, and is eternal. Light seems to be an episode, it happens. You can arrange for light, but you cannot arrange for darkness; it seems beyond you. You can put the light on and off, but you cannot put the dark on and off. It seems beyond you – it is! Light is manageable. If it is dark you can bring light in, but you cannot bring darkness, you cannot manipulate darkness; it is simply beyond your control. You put your light on, but you know it is momentary. When the fuel is finished the light will go – but darkness is eternal, it is always there. It exists as if without any cause, uncaused; it was always there, it will always be there. So the Essenes chose darkness as the symbol of God, but Heraclitus alone chooses both.To choose one extreme is still logical, rational; reason is working. To choose both together is irrational; reason is simply bewildered. God is day and night – both together, no choice – winter and summer, war and peace… It will be difficult for people like Tolstoy, Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, if God is war and peace. They think God is peace; war is created by men. War is ugly, something the Devil may have invented – God is peace. Tolstoy cannot agree, a Gandhi cannot agree that God is also war. A Hitler also cannot agree that God is peace; God is war. Nietzsche also cannot agree that God is peace; God is war.They are choosers. Heraclitus is not a chooser, he is simply a choiceless awareness. He doesn’t choose, he simply says whatever the case is. He doesn’t bring his own morality into it, he does not bring his own mind into it, he simply reflects; he is a mirror. Gandhi, Tolstoy, Ruskin, are all choosers; they have their own idea to impose on God. They impose the idea of peace, that God is peace; then war is from the Devil. But it is not possible.What is peace without war? Is there any possibility of peace without war? Won’t that peace be simply dead if there is no war? Just think: no war in the world, just peace. What type of peace will it be? ? it will be cold, it will be a dark night, dead. War gives intensity, tone, sharpness, life. But if there is only war and no peace, then too death will happen. If you choose one opposite of the polarity, if you choose one polarity, everything will be dead because life exists between polarities: war and peace; satiety and want; contentment and discontentment; hunger, want, desire, passion, peace, satiety, contentment; the way and the goal. Difficult to comprehend, but this is the truth.It is God who desires in you and it is God who becomes desireless in you. This is total acceptance. It is God who is a passion in you and it is God who becomes enlightenment in you. It is God who is anger in you and it is God who becomes compassion in you. There is nothing to choose! But just look at the fact: if there is nothing to choose and everything is God, your ego simply disappears – because it exists with choosing. If there is nothing to choose and everything is just as it is, nothing can be done and God is both. With the chooser, with the choice, the ego disappears. You accept, you simply accept. When you are hungry and when you are satisfied, both are beautiful.This is difficult for the mind. The mind staggers, feels bewildered, loses ground, feels dizzy – as if you are standing on the edge of an abyss. Why does it happen? – it happens because the mind wants a clear-cut choice: “Either this or that.” Heraclitus says, “Neither this nor that – or both.” Ask Mahavira, Buddha and they will say, “Desire? Leave desire. Become desireless – choose! Become content, deeply content; leave discontent!” Heraclitus penetrates even deeper. He says, “Who is there to leave? Who will leave? God is both!” And if you feel this, that God is both, everything is hallowed, everything becomes holy. Then in hunger also there is a contentment; in desire there is also a desirelessness; in anger there is also compassion. If you haven’t known compassionate anger, anger which is compassion, you have not known life at all. You have missed the greatest climax, if you haven’t known darkness which is also light, coolness which is also warmth.Where opposites meet, ecstasy happens; where opposites meet, the ultimate, the ultimate orgasm with the universe. God is both man and woman, war and peace.Man has been in difficulty because he has always been choosing. Society has always remained lopsided, all societies and civilizations have remained lopsided because everything depends on choice. We have created a society in the world which is male-oriented, war-oriented. The woman has been cut out, she has no contribution to make – she is dark, peace, silence, passivity, compassion, not war; woman is satiety, not desire. Man is desire – the excitement, the adventure, war; always going somewhere, always reaching somewhere, finding something, seeking, searching. Man is the vagabond, woman is the home. But when they both meet – when the vagabond meets the home, where desire and satiety meet, where activity and passivity meet – there arises the greatest harmony, the hidden harmony.We created the male-oriented society, so there is war, and the peace is not true. Our peace is just a gap between two wars; it is not true, it is just a preparation for another war. Go back and look at history ? the gap between the World Wars I and II is not peace. The gap is just the getting ready for another war. It is not real peace, it is just a preparation. If peace is not real, the war will also be unreal.In the past, war was beautiful; now it is ugly because it has no opposite to it. In the past, warriors were beautiful people; now warriors are just ugly. War doesn’t give you anything; otherwise, it is an adventure, it brings you to a peak of existence, you put yourself totally into it. Warriors were beautiful; they encountered death, they went to meet death on the front. Now a warrior is nowhere to be seen – he is hidden behind the tanks, throwing bombs, not knowing who is going to be destroyed. Can you call this man who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima a warrior? What type of warrior is he? He drops the atom bomb, immediately kills one lakh people, not knowing whom he is killing, who the enemy is – small children…I was looking at a picture someone sent me from Japan. A small child is going upstairs to his room where he would study and go to sleep; a very small child, carrying his bag of books and thinking of his homework. First he would do his homework and then go to sleep. He was just on the staircase when the bomb fell. He was totally burned and became just a dot on the wall, still clinging to his bag with the books inside; his mind thinking about the homework, of the next day, tomorrow morning – everything is burned. The man who dropped the bomb was not even aware of who died; he went back home and had a good sleep. Hiding himself, he had done his duty. What type of war is this? It has become ugly. In the old days, to be a warrior was one of the greatest possibilities – bringing your potential to a peak. But now it is nothing, it is just like an ordinary mechanical duty; you push the button and the bomb falls and kills – you are not confronting anybody. War without real peace becomes false. When war is false, how can peace be real?We have been choosing. We have been creating a society according to a male pattern. The man has become the center, the woman has been thrown off center. It is lopsided. Now there are women who think of creating a society according to a woman’s pattern, where man has to be thrown out of the center. That too will be lopsided. God is both male and female; there is no choice. Male and female are opposites: dark and light, life and death. Opposites are there. A hidden harmony has to be sought. Those who come to know the hidden harmony have realized the truth.God is day and night, winter and summer,war and peace, satiety and want.Seawater is at once very pure and very foul:it is drinkable and healthful for fishes,but undrinkable and deadly for men.Everything is good and everything is bad – it depends. War is good sometimes, peace is bad sometimes – it depends. Sometimes peace is nothing but impotence, then it is not good; it may be peace, but it is not good. Sometimes war is nothing but madness, then it is not good. One has to watch and see, without any prejudice. Not every war is bad and not every peace is good; one should not become addicted. For Nietzsche, every war is good; for Gandhi, all times of peace are good – both are addicted. God is both.Heraclitus says: Seawater is at once very pure and very foul… For fish it is life; for you it can be death. So don’t create absolute ideas, remain flexible. Remember, something may be good for you today and not good tomorrow because life goes on changing and you cannot step in the same river twice. Even if you do, you are not the same and yet you are the same. Everything is moving, a flux, so don’t remain fixed. This is one of the diseases of the human mind; you become fixed, you lose flexibility – and flexibility is life.Look at a child, he is flexible; look at an old man, he has become inflexible. The more flexible you are, the more alive and fresh and young. The more inflexible you become, you are dead already. What is flexibility? ? it is to respond to the moment without any preconceived idea; to respond to the moment, not through any preconceived idea – directly, immediately. Immediacy is flexibility. You look at the situation, you become aware, and sensitive to it – and then you act. The action comes through the encounter of the situation and you, not from a past mind.The nature of day and night is one.War and peace are one; and desire and desirelessness are one. The phenomenon is the same: peace is war inactive; war is peace active. The nature of man and woman is one: woman is inactive, passive man; man is active woman. That’s why they attract each other, because if you take them just in themselves, they are halves. If they become one then the whole is created; both meet and become one. That oneness is the search.If you take them apart, as all the religions have done in the past – Catholics, Jainas, Buddhists, have totally separated men and women. All these religions have remained halfhearted; they cannot be total, they cannot accept the whole. Their circle is half, and half a circle is not a circle at all because a circle, to be a circle, must be the whole – half a circle is no circle. That’s why the whole of Christianity turned out to be ugly, Jainism turned out to be ugly, Buddhism turned out to be ugly. You cannot divide, you have to accept the totality.Beauty is of the total and ugliness is of a torn part. Everything total is beautiful, fulfilled – the circle has become complete. The nature of day and night is one. The day itself becomes the night, the night itself turns into day. Can you find the divide between day and night? Can you make a demarcation? There is no demarcation – by and by, day turns into night; night turns into day. It is one wheel. If you see all opposites as a wheel, you will have transcendence. You will no longer be a man and no longer be a woman because many times you turn into a woman and a woman turns into a man. If you watch yourself for twenty-four hours, you can find at which moment you were a woman and at which moment you were a man; you can find when you are passive, when you are active. When you are passive you are a woman, when you are active you are a man – and both are hidden within you.Now psychology accepts that man is bisexual; every man is woman also, and every woman is also man. The difference is only of quantity, degrees, not of quality. If you are a man that means you may be fifty-one percent man and forty-nine percent woman – that is the difference. That’s why it is possible for you to change your sex; it is a difference of degrees. Just a little hormonal change and the sex will change. No need to even change the hormones; if you simply change your psyche the change will come. It happened to Ramakrishna. He tried many paths to reach the divine. Even when he had reached, he still went on trying every path just to see whether every path leads to him.There is a very beautiful path in India; that path is to conceive God as the only male and you become the female, the beloved. Whether you are a man or a woman is not the point. God is the male and you are the female; God is Krishna and everyone is just a beloved. Those who follow this path start behaving like women. They cannot use male clothes, they have to use feminine ones; they sleep with a statue of Krishna. They completely forget whether they are male or female; whatever they are, they become female. Every fourth week, for five days, they act as if their period has come. In the beginning it is just acting but, by and by, changes start happening.It happened to Ramakrishna; he completely became a woman. It has remained a mystery. How is it possible? Menstruation really started! He would bleed for three or four days every month. His breasts became feminine, they grew; his voice changed, it became feminine; he started walking like a woman. He was on that path for six months – he completely became a woman. And this is a mystery because doctors are the witnesses that he started bleeding – the period would come. Just the mind changed the whole body. After he reached through that path and left it, he started trying something else. Even after that, the body remained the same for one year. It took one year to come back, to become a man again.Inside you are both; it is just a question of emphasis. Heraclitus came to realize this:The nature of day and night is one.The way up and the way downare one and the same.Heaven and hell are one, God and the Devil are one because it has to be so: two poles of the same phenomenon.Even sleepers are workers and collaboratorsin what goes on in the universe.Even sleepers are responsible. What does Heraclitus want to say? ? he is saying that responsibility is not individual, karma is not individual; it is total. This is a rare insight. I absolutely agree with him. This is a rare insight because in India they have believed that karma is individual – that is also clinging to the ego. Why? When there is no ego, and you insist that there is no ego, why should karma be individual? If karma is individual, you cannot leave the ego. In fact it will cling in a subtle way: “I have to fulfill my karma and you have to fulfill your karma.” Where do we meet? I will become enlightened, you will remain ignorant. Where do we meet?If Heraclitus’ insight is to be understood, it means that there are no individuals, no islands; man is not an island, we are part of one whole. Even karma is not individual. That has many implications; a vast dimension opens. That means that if someone somewhere murders, I have a part in it. Even if I am asleep – I was sleeping, I don’t know anything about the man, I have never heard of him – and somebody somewhere, in the Himalayas, commits a murder, if we are not individuals I have a part in it, I am also responsible. It is not so easy to throw the responsibility: “I am not committing a murder, I am a saint.”No saint is a saint because every sinner is implied in him. It is foolish to claim: “I am a saint because I am not committing any murder, robbery, sin.” But there are sinners in the world, and if we are one part, one vast continent, not islands but connected, then how can you commit a sin without me? No, it is not possible. How can I become enlightened without you also becoming enlightened? No, that is not possible. It means that whenever a sin is committed, the whole is involved. Whenever there is a phenomenon like enlightenment, the whole is involved.That’s why whenever a man becomes enlightened, immediately many follow in his wake and become enlightened because he creates a possibility for the whole. It is just like this: if my head aches, it is not only the head that is ill, my whole organism becomes ill – my legs, my heart, my hand also feels it because I am one. It may be focused in the head, that’s okay, but the whole body feels ill. A buddha becomes enlightened – it is focused there, that’s all, because no individual is there. It is just a focusing, but he will vibrate all over. Existence is just like a spider’s web. You touch the web from anywhere and the whole vibrates. Somewhere the touch is focused, that’s right, but the whole vibrates. That’s the meaning, and you have to understand it. Whenever you do something, it is not only you who is involved – the whole is involved. Your responsibility is great. It is not only that you have to be finished with your own karma; the whole history of the world is your biography.Even while asleep I am collaborating, cooperating, so each step has to be very, very responsible and alert. If you commit a sin it is the whole that you drag into the sin, not only you because you are not separate. If you meditate, become aware, and feel blissful, it is the whole that you are taking toward a peak. You may be focused, but the whole is always involved.Remember, whatever you do, God is doing it; whatever you are, God is that; whatever you will become, God will be becoming. You are not alone, you are the destiny of the whole.Even sleepers are workers and collaboratorsin what goes on in the universe.In the circlethe beginning and the end are common.If you make a circle, the end and beginning meet – only then is the circle complete. If you become a circle, whole, total, you will meet the beginning and the end. You will be the very source and the very climax of the world. You will be both the alpha and the omega. Unless you become that, something is incomplete; when something is incomplete you will remain miserable. The only misery that I know is being incomplete. The whole being tends toward being complete, needs to be complete; the incomplete becomes a torture. The incompletion is the only problem. When you become complete, the end and the beginning meet in you. God as the source and God as the ultimate flowering meet in you.Ponder over these small fragments. Each fragment can become a vast contemplation, and each fragment can give you an insight into yourself and into the reality. These are not philosophical statements, these are Heraclitus’ insights – he knows, he has come to see. He is not theorizing; he has touched the reality, penetrated it. Each fragment is complete in itself, it is not a system. These fragments are like gems, individually cut; every gem is complete in itself. You simply penetrate one fragment, and through that one fragment you can become totally different – that one fragment can become the door for the infinite.Meditate, ponder over what Heraclitus is saying. He can have a tremendous impact on you. He can become a transformation for you.Enough for today.

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The Hidden Harmony 01-11Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

The Hidden Harmony 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Let us not make arbitrary conjecturesabout the greatest matters.Much learning does not teach understanding.Seekers after golddig up much earth and find little.You could not discover the limits of the souleven if you traveled every road to do so –such is the depth of its meaning.The whole of philosophy is nothing but arbitrary conjectures; if you want to avoid real knowledge, if you want to avoid the existential, there is nothing like philosophy. Escape into philosophy and you can avoid all, all that creates problems. Philosophy is a cheap solution. You simply theorize ? without entering, without encountering reality. And theories are nothing but words, arguments, rationalizations; explanations are nothing but tricks. Nothing is solved because you remain the same.A philosopher is the most deceived person in the world because he thinks he knows without knowing anything at all. Heraclitus has laughed about Pythagoras, one of the greatest philosophers the world has ever known. Many times Heraclitus says, “If by philosophizing someone could become a knower, Pythagoras would have been the first knower in the world.” Pythagoras traveled all over the known world in those days. He even came to India; he lived in Egypt, he traveled far and wide; he collected much knowledge.Pythagoras was a contemporary of Heraclitus and he is more known than him. Pythagoras is a milestone in the history of philosophy. He collected and knew much, but without knowing anything at all. What did he do? ? he gathered knowledge through scriptures, teachers, schools, ashrams, secret societies. When you gather knowledge it becomes part of your memory; you remain unaffected. Your heart is not touched, your being is not even aware of what you have collected in your memory. Unless your being is touched and transformed, knowledge is ignorance and more dangerous than ordinary ignorance – because an ordinary ignorant person knows that he is ignorant, and a philosopher thinks that he knows. Once you become addicted to knowledge you will think that your knowledge is knowing. Of course, you know so much, but deep down nothing has been known, nothing has changed; you have not evolved to a higher plane of being. Real knowledge consists in attaining higher levels of being, higher planes of being – not more knowledge, but more being.The real way is to be more, not to know more.The false way is to know more, not to be more. Philosophers talk about things. They don’t even have a glimpse of God, moksha, liberation, other worlds, heaven and hell. Not only do they talk about it, they talk very authoritatively – but they cannot deceive. They are deceiving nobody except themselves.It is said that one day, while Mulla Nasruddin was walking through a cemetery, he found a grave of the philosopher of the town who had died just a few days before. On the grave it was written: “I am sleeping, I am not dead.”Mulla laughed out loud and said, “You are deceiving yourself and nobody else!”A philosopher continuously deceives himself. Instead of knowing he depends on information. When knowledge is attained existentially, it is authentic. For example, you can collect much knowledge about love without ever falling in love. Libraries are filled with such knowledge; you can go there and collect all that has ever been said about love ? but about love is not love, about God is not God. About love means that you go round and round, round and round, never penetrating the center. To love is totally different.You can theorize about what love is, you can conclude about the nature of love, but if you have not fallen in love, what use is this knowledge? What do you gain out of it? What will you find through it? A deception is possible. Knowing about love, you may start believing that you know love, and if this happens you have closed the door to falling in love. To fall in love is dangerous. To know about love is clever and cunning. To fall in love means to change yourself; to fall in love means to encounter millions of difficulties because to interact with a living person is to move into the unknown. Nobody knows what is going to happen in the next moment. You are thrown out of your enclosure, you are under the open sky and every moment there will be new problems to be solved, new anxieties to be got over. It has to be so because problems and anxieties are the steps. If you take those steps, you grow; if you become afraid and escape, you remain juvenile.Love is an opportunity to grow, but growth is always painful because something has to be destroyed before you can create something. The past has to be destroyed before a new future is born. Every growth is like the pain a mother goes through when she gives birth to a child. Every growth means you are continuously giving birth to yourself; every moment the child is born. It is a continuous process, never ending; there is no stop to it. You can rest for a while, but the journey is endless. You have to give birth continuously to yourself, and every moment there will be pain. But if you can see that out of pain comes a new life, if you accept it ? not only accept but welcome it ? it is beautiful because it is through it that one grows. There is no other way to grow.Love will give you pain, love will make you suffer, because through love one grows. There has never been any growth without suffering. That is the meaning of the cross: Jesus suffers, and suffers totally. When he suffers totally he is reborn totally, resurrected. He is no longer a man, he becomes a god. He loved humanity so deeply that the love toward humanity became the cross.If you are afraid to love a single individual, how will you grow? You can trick your mind – you can go to the libraries, collect information about love and lovers; you can know much without knowing anything at all. And this happens in every dimension of life. This is how you deceive whenever great matters are concerned. To pray is difficult; to become a priest is easy. A priest is a man who has collected all the knowledge about prayer. But to pray is difficult; it is like death – because unless you die how can you invite the divine to enter you? Unless you become empty, how can he come into you?Søren Kierkegaard has said, “In the beginning, when I started to pray, I used to talk a lot to God. By and by, I came to understand the foolishness of what I was doing. I was talking – how can talking be prayer? Prayer can be only a deep listening, not a talking. You have to be silent so God can be heard. You have to be so silent that the silent and still word of God can penetrate you. In that silence the divine is revealed.” Prayer is not talking, it is a listening – alert, passive, open, ready, ready like a womb. Prayer is feminine and a priest is a male phenomenon. A priest is aggressive; he is doing something. Prayer is not a doing at all – it is simply being receptive, it is simply being open. A door is open and you are waiting. It is infinite patience and waiting. A priest is aggressive. Priesthood is an art, you can learn it. Prayer is not an art, you cannot learn it anywhere. You can learn it only in life. No school, no university exists that can teach you prayer – only life.You move in life and you suffer; by and by you grow and feel your total helplessness. By and by you feel that all egoistic claims are foolish – because who are you? Being tossed from there to here, from here to there; just drifting, drifting wood on the sea ? who are you? When you feel, “I am nobody,” the first seed of prayer has entered you. When you feel that you are helpless, and cannot do anything because you have been doing and doing for so long and nothing happens except misery ? that nothing happens through your effort ? you become effortless. In that moment of helplessness the prayer takes a second step. Not that in your helplessness you start demanding from God: “Do this for me because I cannot do it” – no! If you are really helpless you cannot even demand and desire because you come to realize that whatever you say will be wrong, whatever you ask will be wrong. You realize that you are wrong so all that comes through you will go wrong. Then you will say, “Thy will be done… Don’t listen to me, just do whatever you would like to do, and I am ready to follow.” This is prayer – but not priesthood.You can be trained as a priest; there are colleges which train priests. Every gesture of prayer is taught: how to sit, how to bow down, what words to use and what words not to use.Leo Tolstoy has written a small parable. A man came to a priest, the greatest priest in Russia, and said, “I know three saints. They live on an island and they have attained God.”The priest replied, “How can that happen? I am the high priest of the whole country. Without knowing me, without my knowing of the phenomenon, how is it possible that three people have attained God? I will go and see them.”He went in a boat and reached the island. Those three simple people were sitting under a tree and saying their prayers. He listened to their prayer, laughed loudly and said, “You fools! Where have you learned this prayer? Even in my life I have never heard such nonsense, and I am the greatest priest of this country. What type of prayer is this?”All three started trembling in fear and said, “Forgive us! We didn’t know, we have never learned. We have created this prayer ourselves.” The prayer was simple. They said, “We are three” – and Christians believe in the trinity, so they said – “We have made a prayer: ‘We are three, you are also three, have mercy on us!’ We have made it ourselves: ‘We are three, you are three have mercy on us!’ We do this continuously, but we don’t know whether this is right or wrong.”The priest said, “This is absolutely wrong. I will teach you the correct, authorized version.” It was a long prayer of the church. Those three people listened, trembling. The priest was very happy. He went back thinking that he had done a virtuous deed, really good work; he had converted three pagans to Christianity. “These fools! They have become famous. Many people come to their darshan, touch their feet and worship them!”As he was returning, feeling very happy that he had done something, suddenly he saw what looked like a storm coming on the lake. He became afraid. Then he looked back; those three saints were coming toward him, running on the water. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The three saints came to him and said, “Can you tell us the prayer once more please because we have forgotten it! It is so long and we are simple folk, uneducated. Just once more?”Leo Tolstoy writes that it is said the priest fell at their feet and said, “Forgive me! I have committed a sin. You go on in your own way. Your prayer is right because it has come out of your heart. My prayer is useless because it has come out of my learning. Don’t listen to me. Simply go and carry on doing whatever you were doing.”Prayer cannot be learned. You have to pass through life with open eyes, with an understanding heart, and you will come to prayer. The prayer will be yours. It will come out of your heart, it will pour out of your heart. Words don’t mean much – it is the heart that is behind them. You can learn much through the mind, and can completely forget the heart because the heart grows through experience, and the mind grows through thinking. And thinking is just dead. There is no growth through thinking. You can go round and round in the mind. The mind is just a computer, a biological computer; it collects information. A computer can do the same as the mind, even better. But the heart is not a computer. The heart is totally different from the mind. It doesn’t collect, it has no memory. It simply lives moment to moment; it responds to the alive moment in an alive way.I knew a person, a colleague of mine at a university. He was ill and there was always something or other wrong with him. So I said to him, “Why don’t you go to a doctor? Why don’t you ask a doctor about the problems with your body? You are always complaining about this and that.” So he went.The next day he came to see me and said, “The doctor says that I will have to give up half my sexual life.”I was surprised and said, “So what have you decided?”He said, “Yes, I have to follow his advice.”I asked, “Which half – talking or thinking?”I knew the man, he had no sexual life, but talked and thought about it. There are people who have no religious life. They talk and they think about it, but they have no religious life. If you listen to their talk, you may feel that they are religious. Religion is not something concerned with thinking and talking – religion is something concerned with living. Either you live it or you don’t. It is a way of life, not a philosophy; not theories about great matters, but a deep relatedness with whatever life means.Watch your mind, how it exploits opportunities when you could have become religious. You see a flower and you start thinking about it, you start talking about it – you don’t live the moment. The flower is there opening its petals – a tremendously beautiful phenomenon, a miracle.Scientists say that life is a miracle; there is no reason why it should be. Of millions and millions of planets and stars, life has existed only on this small tiny earth, and that, too, only for a few thousand years. Nobody knows why, nobody knows how long it will exist; nobody knows the goal, the destiny of it, the source. At the most, scientists say that this is simply a miracle, an accident. Nothing can be said. A flower is a miracle because a flower is alive. In this dead universe – millions of planets, millions of stars, just rocks and rocks and rocks, infinitely rocky – a small seed has become a plant and the plant is celebrating. A flower has come up and you simply start thinking, talking about it. You say, “How beautiful!” and you miss the beauty because if it is really beautiful you will become silent. Whenever you encounter something tremendous you are in such a mysterious amazement and wonder, how can you speak? It’s profane. In that moment, speaking is just foolish – you are missing.You simply remain silent, you drink, you eat the moment; you allow the flower to spread within you. In a subtle way the duality of subject and object is lost. You are no longer the subject and the flower is no longer the object; the boundaries meet and melt. Suddenly, the flower is within you and you are in the flower because life is one. You are also a flower; consciousness is a flowering. That’s why Hindus have always symbolized it as a lotus; a flowering of a flower. A flower is also a consciousness, alive. Meet the flower, don’t start talking and thinking. Now you know what a flower is. You may not be able to say what you know, you may not be able to create a theory about your knowing. It is difficult – when you know, it is very difficult to create a theory around it. It is so vast, experience is so vast, and theories look so narrow. You may not be able to philosophize, but that is not the point – you know, that is the point.This point is the crossroads where philosophers and religious people separate from each other. Philosophers go on talking and thinking, and religious people go on deepening their experience – a moment comes when they are completely lost. A philosopher finally becomes just an ego, and a religious person is simply lost. You cannot find where he is. If you understand this, these fragments will become very, very meaningful – they are.Let us not make arbitrary conjecturesabout the greatest matters.What can your mind do? Such a small and tiny thing.It is said that one day Aristotle was walking on the beach near the sea, and saw a man who was bringing water from the sea in a teaspoon and throwing it in a small hole he had dug near the bank. Aristotle was worried about his own problems. He didn’t bother much about it – once or twice, he came near and watched the man. But the man was so absorbed that Aristotle became curious: “What is he doing?” He could not contain himself; the man was absolutely absorbed. He would go to the sea, fill his teaspoon, bring the water, put it in the hole, and go again. Finally Aristotle said, “Wait! I don’t want to disturb you, but what are you doing? You have made me tremendously curious.”The man replied, “I am going to fill this hole with the whole ocean.”Aristotle, even Aristotle, laughed and said, “You’re foolish! This is not going to happen. You are simply mad and wasting your life! Just look at the vastness of the ocean and the smallness of your hole. And you are going to empty the ocean into this hole with a teaspoon? You are simply crazy! Go home and take a rest.”The man laughed even louder than Aristotle and said, “Yes, I’ll go because my work is done.”Aristotle said, “What do you mean?”He replied, “The same as you’re doing – even more foolish. Look at your head; it is smaller than my hole. Look at the divine, at existence; it is vaster than this ocean. Look at your thoughts – are they bigger than my teaspoon?” The man left, laughing loudly. It shocked Aristotle.Nobody knows whether this happened or not because Aristotle remained the same. I suspect that this story may have been invented by Heraclitus. Or it is even possible that this man may have been Heraclitus – I suspect that too.What can the mind do? When you think of it, it just looks absurd. How can you understand such a vastness through the head? The whole effort seems to be futile. Drop the head and then look! You are also vast when you don’t look through the head. It is only because you are looking through the head that you have become small. It is only because of the narrowness of the head that you are also narrow. Throw this head away! Just look at existence without the head. That means, without thinking, being fully alert with not a single thought in the mind. Not theorizing, but living.Let us not make arbitrary conjectures… Our conjectures are all arbitrary. What can you say? Somebody asks, “Is there God?” What will you say? If you say yes, that too is a conjecture – have you known? If you say no, that too is a conjecture – have you known? How can you say anything? If you say yes, you are wrong. If you say no, you are wrong.That’s why buddhas have remained silent. If you ask Buddha about God he doesn’t say anything. He simply remains silent, as if you have not asked anything. He never says a single word about God. He knows the stupidity of the question. He knows that if you answer a stupid question, you also are stupid. He remains absolutely silent, neither saying yes or no because all are conjectures. What can you say? Christian theologians look foolish before a buddha. They even try to prove, they even give proof that God is. They give logical grounds that God is. But does God need logical support from you? Does the whole need any proof from you? Are you the judge? What can you prove? Whatever you prove can be disproved by the same mind because logic is a double-edged sword – you can prove, you can disprove. Logic is not a beloved. Logic is a prostitute. Whoever pays, logic works for him.I knew a man – he was a lawyer, a very great, world famous authority on law, but a very forgetful man, very absent minded. It happened once in a Privy Council case in London where he was fighting the case for an Indian maharaja. It was a big case. He forgot – and for one hour he argued against his own client. Even the judge became worried. The advocate of the opposite party couldn’t believe what was happening: “Now what am I going to do?” Because this man was making all the arguments that he had prepared. The whole thing was topsy-turvy, and the whole court couldn’t believe what was happening.The man was such an authority that nobody dared to interrupt him; even his own assistant tried many times to get his attention by pulling his coat to tell him what he was doing. When he finished his assistant whispered in his ear, “What have you done? You have completely destroyed the case. We are not against this man – we are for him!”This lawyer said to the judge, “My lord, these are the arguments which can be given against my client. Now I will contradict them.” And he started contradicting, and he won the case.Logic is a prostitute. You can argue for God, and the same argument can be used against God. For example, all the religions of the world, all the priests, bishops, popes, theologians, have used as their basic proof, as the first proof in their argument for God, that everything needs a creator: “If you see furniture, you know that some carpenter has made it. If you see a painting, some painter is bound to have painted it. How can a painting exist without a painter? Such a vast creation, running so systematically, following such a disciplined course, needs a creator. Creation presupposes a creator.”Now, listen to the atheist. He says: “If this is true, who created the creator? Because if nothing can be without a creator, if the painting cannot be without the painter, who created the painter? If you say that the painter is uncreated, you are foolish because if the painting – such a small thing like a painting – cannot be without a creator, how can the painter be without a creator?”Your own logic goes against you. And if you say, “Yes, God is created by another God,” there is an infinite regress ? again, again and again. A-God is created by B-God; B-God is created by C-God – and it is infinite. Finally the question will remain the same; it has not been answered. Who created the Z-God? The same question remains. Logic answers nothing. The same argument can go for, and the same can go against.Heraclitus says: Let us not make arbitrary conjectures – don’t make any conjectures, all theories are conjectures – about the greatest matters. It is better not to make any conjecture.Much learning does not teach understanding.You can learn much about these conjectures, which are all arbitrary, and you can become a great pundit, you can become a great knower. In the first place all are conjectures, in the second place you accumulate all that rubbish and you become a great scholar. People will respect you and will think that you know – but do you know? Talking about God, proving for or against, do you come to any conclusion?It is said that Mulla Nasruddin used to work as a ferryman; he used to run a ferryboat. One day he was ferrying a priest to the other shore, who, just in the middle, asked Nasruddin, “Have you ever learned anything, Nasruddin?”He replied, “I am ignorant, I don’t know anything. I have never been to school.”The priest said, “Then half your life is almost wasted because what is a man without learning?”Nasruddin didn’t say anything. A storm arose and the boat was sinking and he said to the priest, “Oh, great pundit, have you ever learned to swim?”The man replied, “No, never, I don’t know how.”The Mulla said, “Then your whole life is wasted because I’m going!”Learning cannot become swimming. And existence needs experience. Learning cannot become knowing. Knowing is something you have experienced and have come to know. Knowing is always original, learning is always borrowed. Others may have known, may not have known; you cannot decide – you simply believe. Remember, belief won’t help; it is part of learning. Trust, faith, is totally different. You have tasted something, trust comes. When you haven’t tasted, trust isn’t there, there is only a superficially enforced belief. You believe; belief is borrowed, dead. The more you believe, the more dead you will become. Trust is totally different. It is not belief, it is not disbelief. It has nothing to do with belief or disbelief or with the mind. People say, “We believe in God.” There are people who say, “We don’t believe.”A man came to Sri Aurobindo and asked, “Do you believe in God?”Sri Aurobindo replied, “No.”The man couldn’t believe his own ears because he had come from a very, very faraway country to ask this question, and he thought that Aurobindo must believe in God – and he says, “No.”The man said, “What are you saying? I cannot believe my own ears and I have come from so far just to listen to a man who knows.”Aurobindo replied, “But I have not said anything about knowing. I don’t believe, I know.”Belief is a poor substitute for knowing, really no substitute at all. You don’t believe in the sun – you know. I am here; you don’t believe in me, you know. You are sitting there; you don’t believe that you are there, you know. You believe in God, you don’t know.Ignorance can either become belief or can become disbelief, but ignorance remains ignorance. Knowing is needed. And know one subtle distinction: I don’t use the word knowledge, I use the word knowing because knowing is a process, knowledge is already ended. Knowledge is like a thing – finished. You can possess it, it is in your fist; you can manipulate it, it is complete. Knowing is a process, a river; it goes on and on and on. You can never possess it; you cannot say that it is finished. Existence is eternal, how can knowing be finished? How can you come to a point where you can say, “Now I have known all”? Such a point never comes.The more you know, the more doors open. The more you flow, the more mysteries are ready to be revealed to you. The more you know, the more you become capable of knowing – and there is no end to it. That’s why I use the word knowing, not knowledge. Knowledge is a dead thing, it is past, already gone to the grave. Knowing is always in the present; it is ongoing, it is river-like. Heraclitus will agree with me. He will agree with knowing ? knowledge, no.Knowledge is a finished product, knowing is raw. It is always in the making, it is always becoming. It is always changing, flowing, taking new shapes, forms, and you cannot finish it because you are part of it. Who can finish it? You can become knowing, but you can never become a knower.The same is true of love, prayer, meditation, and of all great matters. In fact, to use the word love is not good – loving gives the sense of process. To use the word prayer is not good, prayer is dead – praying gives the sense of a flow, of movement, of aliveness. Experience is not good – experiencing. Meditation is not good; language always gives the sense of dead things, and life is not dead. Even if you go to the river and say, “The river is,” even for the river you say “is” – the river is never “is.” The river is always moving, becoming.Nothing is, everything flows. Everything takes new shapes, forms, names, and everything flows one into another. Experiencing, knowing, loving, praying, meditating – remember, life is a process, it is not a thing. It is a movement from one eternity to another. It is always in the middle; you are always in the middle. It is a never ending, alive movement.Learning can give you dead products, only life can give you processes. You cannot possess anything in life, you cannot even possess yourself. If you have a possessive mind you will become a knower; hence the insistence on nonpossessiveness, on a nonpossessive mind. Don’t possess anything. Don’t possess even your child, he is not a thing. Don’t possess your beloved, she is not a thing. Don’t possess anything – you cannot! If you possess, you will kill, destroy. The same happens with learning; we want to possess.People come to me and say, “We would like to know God.” But why would you like to know God? ? you want to become a knower; you would also like to possess him. You would like to put him on display, to show that not only do you possess furniture, a car and a house, but also God: “It is here, you can come and see. I have caught hold of him.” You would also like to make God a commodity – you have made it already.No, you cannot possess. Knowing cannot be possessed. Learning can be possessed. Knowing cannot be taught, you have to grow into it. It is not secure because who can be secure with a process? It is never safe; who can be safe with a process? There is security only with dead things. It is always dangerous because you are always moving from the known to the unknown, from the light to the dark, from the day to the night. You are always moving from life to death. If you can find the secret hidden harmony that transcends both, moves within both and yet transcends both, you have come to know the truth.That is what Heraclitus means about the greatest matters: Much learning does not teach understanding. Have you seen people who know so much, but act in a foolish way? It almost always happens: a man who knows too much becomes less and less aware. He acts through his knowledge, not through the real situation. He becomes foolish, he behaves in a foolish way because to behave in a wise way needs response, and he always acts from the dead past. He always acts from a readiness, preparedness. He is never unprepared.I have heard…A great professor of philosophy was studying in his room. His wife came to him, very, very excited, and said, “What are you doing? Have you seen the newspaper? It says that you have died!”The professor, without even looking at the wife or the newspaper, said, “We shouldn’t forget to send flowers” – because whenever someone dies, flowers have to be sent – that’s all. He hadn’t listened.You cannot surprise a man of knowledge, no. He already knows. You cannot amaze him, he has lost that dimension of wonder. He is no longer a child; he knows, he knows everything.I have heard…I cannot vouch for it because I have only heard – a friend was telling me that he was sitting with Mulla Nasruddin and they were talking about many things and enjoying themselves. Suddenly Mulla Nasruddin’s dog came in and said, “Has anyone seen today’s newspaper?” The friend was simply shocked, he couldn’t believe it!Mulla gave the dog the newspaper, and when the dog left the friend collected his wits again and said, “It is a miracle – this dog reads?”Mulla replied, “Don’t be fooled by him. He simply looks at the cartoons.”There are people who have no sense of wonder and mystery. They cannot be amazed, you cannot surprise them. What happens? ? they’re always ready. They know, and when you know, how can you wonder? A child wonders. And that is the meaning of Jesus’ saying: “Unless you become like children, you will not enter my kingdom of God.” Why? – because wonder is the door and only an innocent heart wonders. If you can get an innocent heart, you wonder; everything gives you a surprise. A butterfly ? it is such a mystery!Chuang Tzu was sitting under a tree and two or three butterflies were chasing each other. He wrote a small poem and said: “It seems to me that these butterflies are flowers – the flowers that once fell to the ground have come back, and now are back on the tree.” Flowers fall to the ground and disappear. Chuang Tzu says, “They have come now as butterflies back to the tree.” This man will enter the kingdom of God, not you. If somebody asks anything about a butterfly, you will immediately open a book and you can repeat everything that is written there about the butterfly, but do you think all that can be said is the total? And all that has been said, has all been said in it? Is there not something which has remained unsaid and which will remain always unsaid and which will never be possible for anybody to say? If you think that nothing remains unsaid, how can you be amazed? You have lost the sense of wonder.This century knows more than any other century, and this century is further away from God than any other century ever was – piled up knowledge, libraries that go on growing bigger and bigger, and everybody knows so much. Even small children, we force them to know – not toward knowing, not that their wonder should grow, that they should become more and more mysterious; that they should feel the mystery more inside, outside; that they should be touched by flowers and butterflies and stones. No. We fill their minds with knowledge.Heraclitus says:Seekers after golddig up much earth and find little.These knowers, pundits, dig up much earth, but find little. They remove a whole mountain and a mouse comes out. What do they attain? They are like diggers after gold; so much effort, and whatever they achieve simply seems valuable. That’s why he uses the word gold because what value does gold have? In fact, what value? The value that you give to it is just a convention. It is we who give gold value, it is not the gold which has an intrinsic value. If man were not here, do you think there would be any value to gold? Animals don’t bother, birds don’t think about it. If you put gold before a dog, and a bone, he will choose the bone; he doesn’t bother about your gold. What value has gold? Has it any intrinsic value? ? no value, just the social projection. If you think it valuable, it becomes valuable. Whatever you think is valuable, becomes valuable. Diggers searching for gold dig up much earth and find little. This is what happens to those who are digging for knowledge, not experience; digging for truth, not for life ? and life is truth! And whatever truth you can dig out of theories and knowledge is dead.You could not discover the limits of the souleven if you traveled every road to do so –such is the depth of its meaning.Try to understand three words. One word is the known, that which we already know; another word is, the unknown, that which we don’t know yet, but there is every possibility we will know. Science divides existence into these two words: the known and the unknown. The known we have known, and the unknown we will know; just time is needed. Religion divides this world into three words, not two: the known, the unknown and the unknowable.You cannot exhaust the unknowable. The unknown will become known, the known may become again unknown. It has happened many times. Many things have been known and then they became unknown because society became uninterested in them. Many times it has happened. If you go back and ask people who work deeply into the past, they say almost all that we know has been known some time before and then forgotten.Columbus was not the first man to discover America; many people before him discovered it, and America was lost again. In the Mahabharata, one of the oldest Indian scriptures – at least five thousand years old, more is possible – there is mention of Mexico. Arjuna had many wives, one was a Mexican. In many other scriptures of the world America is mentioned. Columbus was not the first to discover it – he rediscovered it. There is mention of airplanes in many scriptures of the world; this is not the first time that we have discovered the airplane. We discovered it and we became uninterested in it; it was lost. I haven’t come to know anything that has been discovered for the first time. Everything has been discovered and lost. It depends on the society; if the society takes an interest, it is okay; otherwise it is lost.The known will become unknown, the unknown will become known. But there is a third dimension: the unknowable. Science doesn’t believe in the unknowable. Science says, “The unknowable is nothing but the unknown.” Religion says, “It is a totally different dimension, and that which will always remain unknown” – because its intrinsic nature is such that the mind cannot cope with it. The vast, the infinite, the endless, the beginningless, the total – the total cannot be comprehended in any way by the part because how can the part comprehend the total? How can the mind comprehend that from which the mind arises? How can the mind know that to which the mind goes back? It is impossible! It is simply impossible. How can we know that from which we come? We are just like waves and how can a wave comprehend the whole ocean? It can claim because the ocean never refutes anything – it simply laughs. It is just like a child claiming something before the parents, and they laugh. The incomprehensible is there – the unknowable is there.Heraclitus says: You could not discover the limits of the soul even if you traveled every road to do so – such is the depth of its meaning. How can you know yourself? Every religion says: “Know thyself!” But how can you really know yourself? Who will be the knower and who will be the known? Because knowledge depends on a division. I can know you, you can know me because I become an object and you become the knower – but how can you know yourself? If you try to know, that which you will know will not be yourself. The knower will always recede; knowledge will always be bracketed as an object and you will be bracketed as a subject.For example, you can know about the body. That’s why all knowers have said that you are not the body – because we can know it. You can know the mind. That is why those who know say, “You are not the mind” – because the mind becomes the object and you are the knower. You recede, and go on receding; you are a subtle transcendence. You transcend whatever you know, immediately. The moment it has become known you are separate from it. If you say, “I have known myself,” what do you mean? Who has known whom? Is this the known you or the knower you? If you are the knower, you still remain unknown. Self-knowledge is impossible.But why has “Know thyself” always been said? It has been said because only through the effort to know oneself will you come to the dimension of the unknowable. It has been insisted: “Know thyself.” Not that you can know, don’t be deceived. Nobody has ever known, nobody will ever know. All those who have known knew this – that the great, the vast, the ultimate, remains unknowable.The insistence is there: “Know thyself!” I also insist: “Know thyself!” Just to bring you to a point where you suddenly become aware that this is the gate for the unknowable. Just by making the effort to know yourself you will come to know the unknowable. And I don’t mean when I say that you will come to know the unknowable that you will know it. No! You will enter it. It is never a knowledge, it is a jump. You take a jump into the sea and you are lost. Not that you know it – you become it. Of course, in a very, very subtle way you know, and at the same time you don’t know.That’s why Heraclitus looks paradoxical, looks defective, looks a little mad. But such is the nature of things, such is the depth of things, such is the deeper meaning of things. Nothing can be done. Hence, it happens that if you move into the unknowable without getting ready to take it, you can become mad. It is such a paradox that you cannot make head nor tail of it. It is such a depth that you never come to the bottom of it. It is such an infinity that the more you enter it the more you are lost. You can never possess it, you can only be possessed.God cannot be possessed, you can only allow him to possess you. That’s all that can be done. That’s why it is a surrender. You allow him to possess, you are ready to be possessed. And for this readiness you have to be ready to lose your rationality, reason, because it is sheer madness. Nothing is clear, everything becomes confused and blurred. It looks blurred and confused because you have been trying to make clarity out of it. It is not possible. Life comprehends all that is paradoxical. You could not discover the limits of the soul even if you traveled every road to do so – such is the depth of its meaning.You can travel all the paths, but you will never reach the goal. All the paths combine and you will never reach the goal. Why? – because life has no goal. It is a celebration. It has no purpose, it is not going anywhere. It is simply enjoying the going, not going anywhere. It is a play, it is a game. Don’t be serious about it, otherwise you will miss it. Be sincere, but not serious. Sincerity is something else, seriousness is something else. If you are serious you are thinking in terms of goals, means and ends, ways and achievement; you are ambitious. Seriousness is ambition and a disease. You may have turned your attention from this world, but your ambitious mind is now thinking about the other. Seriousness is not religious. A serious man will automatically become a philosophic man; he will start thinking. Seriousness is of the head. That’s why a serious person, a thinker, becomes a long face. He cannot even laugh, smile, or play because he is always thinking: “What is to be achieved through it?” He turns life into a means, when life itself is the goal.A sincere person is totally different. Sincerity is of the heart. He is true, but not serious. He is seeking, but not as a goal. He is seeking it just like a child seeks things; if he finds it, okay, if he doesn’t find, it is also okay. A child runs after a dog and as he runs, he finds a butterfly; he changes. He starts running after the butterfly, a flower catches his eye, and he has forgotten the butterfly and the flower takes his total attention. He is not serious, but very sincere. Whatever takes his mind he is totally with it – that is sincerity. Now he has forgotten the butterfly and the dog, and the flower is everything. When you can pay your total attention to something, it is sincerity. When you are paying your attention only as a means, you are cunning. You really want to reach the goal, and this is only a means. You are exploiting; you are exploiting the path to reach the goal. For the child, the path is the goal. For the religious person, the path is also the goal. Wherever I am, it is the goal. Whatever I am, it is the goal. At this moment, my whole life converges upon me; there is nowhere else to go. One has just to celebrate this moment in totality.This is what a religious being is; unworried, just going for a morning walk, not going anywhere. It is different. You walk on the same path when you go to your office, you walk on the same path when you go for your morning walk – the path is the same, the house is the same, everything is the same; you are the same, your legs are the same; when you go for a morning walk everything is different. A religious person is just on the way for a morning walk, and a nonreligious person is going somewhere, to the office, to the shop – a goal is there. The worldly man is goal oriented; whatever the goal, even God. A non-worldly man is not goal oriented. A non-worldly man lives here and now, everything converges here and now. And this here and now becomes infinite. You travel on all the paths to it, but still it remains unreachable. That is also the beauty. If we could reach, everything would be lost. If we could know ourselves, what then? You would simply be bored by yourself. No, that boredom never comes because it is an ongoing process, infinite, from one infinity to another.Remember these words – not in the mind, let them go deeper and settle in the heart:Let us not make arbitrary conjecturesabout the greatest matters.Much learning does not teach understanding.Seekers after golddig up much earth and find little.You could not discover the limits of the souleven if you traveled every road to do so –such is the depth of its meaning.Enough for today.

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The Hidden Harmony 01-11Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

The Hidden Harmony 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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When some visitorsunexpectedly found Heraclituswarming himself by the cooking fire,he said to them:Here, too, are the gods.I have searched myself.Time is a childmoving counters in a game;the royal power is a child’s.Bigotry is the sacred disease.There are two ways to seek the true: one is to borrow knowledge, the other is to seek yourself. Of course borrowing is easy, but whatever you borrow is never yours, and that which is not yours cannot be true. This condition must be fulfilled; truth must be yours.I may have known truth, but I cannot transfer it to you. In the very act of transferring it becomes a lie. That is the nature of truth. So nobody can give it to you, you cannot borrow it, you cannot steal it, you cannot purchase it – you have to know it. And unless you know, your knowledge is not a knowing – it is a hiding place for your ignorance. You are deceiving yourself, you are completely misguided.The first thing to remember is that truth is a lived phenomenon. Who can live for you? You have to live for yourself, nobody can be a substitute. Who can love for you? ? servants cannot do that, friends cannot be of any help; you have to love. Jean-Paul Sartre says somewhere, “Sooner or later a time will come when people will engage servants to love for them.” Of course, rich people are already on the way. Sooner or later those who can afford it will not bother themselves. Why bother when a servant can do it? You can find a beautiful, good servant, and he can love for you. You have other more important things to do – love can be left to servants.Mulla Nasruddin once told me, “I am very interested in my wife’s happiness.”I asked, “What are you doing?”He replied, “I have hired a private detective to search for the reasons.”But can anyone else love for you? ? no, it’s not possible. You cannot be alive by proxy, you cannot love by proxy – and you cannot reach truth by proxy. That is the very nature of things. There is no way to be cunning and clever about it. Man has tried: “There is one who knows; we can get it from him, we can borrow it.” But truth has to be lived. It is not something outside, it is an inner growth. It is not a thing, it is not an object; it is your subjectivity.Truth is subjectivity, so how can you get it from anyone else ? from scriptures, Vedas, Korans, Bibles? No, Jesus is not of much help, neither is Buddha. You have to go through it, there is no shortcut. You have to travel, suffer. Many times you will fall, you will err, you will go astray – that’s how it is. Come back again and again; start the search again and again. Many times the path is lost. Many times you move in a circle and come back to the same point again and again. There seems to be no progress – but go on searching. Go on searching and don’t feel hopeless and dejected. Keep the hope; that is the quality of a seeker.A seeker trusts, hopes; he can wait, he can wait infinitely. He has patience and he goes on seeking. Not that every step leads to the goal, sometimes he is moving in just the opposite direction. But even moving in the opposite direction one learns; even erring is a part of learning. Nobody can learn if they are very afraid of making an error. If one is very afraid of going astray, there is no possibility of traveling. This is why the mind says, “Ask the awakened, those who know – gather from them.” But then it is secondhand, and there is no such thing as a secondhand truth, it is simply a lie. A secondhand truth is a lie. A truth, has to be firsthand, original. It has to be fresh, you have to reach it – it is always virgin.Heraclitus says:I have searched myself.He is saying, “I am not saying something that I have heard – I have searched myself. It is not something that I have learned, it is something I have grown myself. It is a growth, it is a subjectivity – it is my own experience.” When it is your experience, it transforms you.Jesus says, “Truth liberates.” But you know many truths and they have not liberated you. On the contrary, they have become bondages, they are the fetters around you. Truth liberates, lies become a prison.That’s why Heraclitus says:Bigotry is the sacred disease.A man who knows himself is never bigoted, he is never a sectarian; he is never obsessed by a theory. He never makes any claim that only he is true because when one knows the truth, one also knows that the truth is multifaceted, and one knows that there are millions of ways of looking at it. Whenever someone comes near, whatever he sees is individual. It has never been so before, it will never be that way again – because this individual has never been there, and this individual is totally unique. So every vision, every encounter of truth is unique. It cannot be compared.A man who has known himself also knows that there are millions of paths, millions of faces of the truth. How can he be bigoted? How can he say, “Only my truth is true, and only my god is God; your god is a false god”? This is the language of one whose truth is borrowed. You see millions of religious people all over the world claiming truth. They haven’t come to know, they have not searched themselves; otherwise how can they miss? How can they miss the multifaceted experience, the phenomenon of truth? How can they say, “Only my truth” because when one comes to know that there is no “I,” how can one claim? How is bigotry possible?A really religious man has no claim. He accommodates, he does not tolerate. When you say “I tolerate,” there is intolerance. He does not say, “I am a Christian, you are a Hindu. Yes, I am a man of tolerance, I tolerate. You may also be true; I am true, you may also be true. I tolerate you.” But tolerance always hides intolerance; the very word is intolerant. So whenever a person says, “I am tolerant,” be aware that he is intolerant, he is hiding. What do you mean by your tolerance? ? you think you are somewhere higher and you are tolerating those who are lower, pitying them. Or, at the most, a Christian will say, “Yes, there are many ways, but my way is the best. Yes, people have also reached by other ways, but mine is the super highway.” That, too, is intolerance. Why claim this? Why this “I”? Why this ego?That’s why religions became so quarrelsome. They have murdered, killed, and have committed all sorts of sins. They are here to liberate man, and they are here to take man beyond all sins, yet they have committed all the sins. Religions have killed more than anyone else, and they have created more misery, strife, struggle and conflict than anything else on this earth. This earth is ugly because of so many churches, temples, mosques. They have not united man, they have divided. They have not made humanity one. They talk about love, but they have created hate. They talk about peace, but have created all sorts of causes for violence to exist. They feed violence and they talk about peace. Why? ? the reason is not religion; the reason is bigotry.Heraclitus says: Bigotry is the sacred disease. Diseases are bad, and when they are sacred they are worse of course. When a disease looks as though it is sacred, you think it is the ultimate in health. Whenever someone claims, “I am the only truth,” that claim can be made in very subtle ways. These mad people have even forced their gods to say things which look absurd. Mohammedans state, “God says, ‘I am the only God, and Mohammed is the only prophet.’” What do you mean? Is God exhausted in Mohammed? Then God is very poor. What about Mahavira, Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Lao Tzu, Heraclitus? What about all of you who are someday or other going to become prophets? What about the whole? Mohammed is beautiful, but Mohammedans claim that he is the only prophet and ugliness enters. Jesus is wonderful, but Christians say that he is the only begotten son. Why the only begotten son? Then what are all of you – bastards? If he is the only begotten son, what is this whole existence? From where do you come if he comes from God? Who is your father?No, God is infinitely potential. Millions of Jesuses can come from him and he remains the same, he is not exhausted – that is the meaning of omnipotent. If he has only one son, he seems to be impotent rather than omnipotent. He goes on creating and the creativity never ends – that is the infinity. But Christians claim that Jesus is the only son. Why do they claim this? ? so they can claim their book is the only book. The word bible means the book. They have not named it because for them this is the only book, all else is rubbish. What about the Upanishads? What about the sayings of Buddha? What about Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching? Why should the Bible be the only book? It is beautiful, but when it becomes the only book it has become ill.When you claim that your truth is the whole and all, this is the sacred disease and the ego has entered. Truth needs no claim. It’s simply there in all its beauty; you can see it but it has no claim on you. In fact, truth never tries to convert anybody. It helps, it loves you, it would like you to be transformed, but there is no effort to convert. But Hindus try to make Christians Hindus, Christians try to make Hindus Christians. Why all this effort? – because they believe that they have the sole key, the only key; everyone else is going to hell. When people start converting they make the thing very narrow. The way is infinite because it leads to infinity.When the goal is infinite, how can the way be so narrow? In fact, whenever a man is religious he is not Christian, Hindu, nor Mohammedan. That’s what I am trying to help you to be, not Christian, Hindus, nor Mohammedan. Why can’t you simply be? What is the need to carry the label of a sect? If you feel good, if you love Jesus, it is very beautiful. If you love Buddha, it is good – but why become bigoted? Why become prejudiced? Your love is beautiful and if it helps you, it is good – move accordingly. There are millions of people who move in different ways. Let them move, help them; wherever they are going, help them. Help them to move in their own ways, let them do their own thing. Don’t force them and don’t try to convert them. If they look at you and feel something and want to change their path, it is up to them. That’s why Heraclitus is completely forgotten because he never created a sect around him. He had followers, but he never created a sect and he never claimed anything. He never said, “This is the only truth.”When somebody says, “This is the only truth,” why does this appeal? ? you are very uncertain and confused, so when somebody claims that his is the only truth, you think that he must know, otherwise how can he claim? The claim becomes a subtle influence, he looks authoritative. But remember, a man of knowledge, a man of understanding, is always hesitant. He is not so authoritative because he sees the truth and feels it cannot be expressed – he hesitates. You will find poetry in his words, but you will not find statements. He has a subtle aroma around him which gives you a feeling of certainty, but that certainty doesn’t come from his statements. His statements are always hesitant; before he says anything he hesitates – because he knows that whatever is said cannot be the truth, and he knows that whatever he is trying to do is a dangerous thing. It is hazardous because words destroy, and when you hear the words you will give your own meaning to them.A man of understanding hesitates. He doesn’t know what will happen to his words; what your actions will be is unknown, and each single word can become very, very meaningful to you, or a meaningful effort on your part. He hesitates, he watches you; he looks around and tries to find the center of your being, and then says something. So that it never becomes a misunderstanding and misguides you, so that if his words help, it is okay and don’t prove harmful to you – he hesitates. But a man of borrowed knowledge never hesitates. He is very, very certain. Just listen to Christian missionaries; they seem to be so certain that their certainty says that they are stupid. Why this certainty? They don’t know anything, they have been trained – trained for everything.I used to visit a Christian theological college, and used to watch how they prepare priests and ministers. I was amazed – the whole thing seems to be so stupid. They even practice gestures; how to stand at the pulpit, what to say, how to say it; when to raise your voice, when to whisper; how to exactly raise your hand – everything is trained. They look like actors. They don’t know anything, but they never hesitate because they have been trained. Training, discipline, learning cannot make you religious. You can become an actor, and may even become a very skilled one. You may become so skilled that not only do you deceive others, but you deceive yourself also.If you ask psychoanalysts they have an answer: “A man who feels hesitant within, always creates a certainty outside.” He is afraid of his own inner uncertainty, so he clings to certain statements. A man who is certain within doesn’t bother; he can hesitate, he can afford to hesitate, there is no fear. He can say, “Perhaps”; there is no need to be certain. He can say, “God is summer and winter; night and day; satiety and hunger; he is both rest and restlessness” – he can be paradoxical. The paradox is used just to give you a feeling that the man is not claiming anything, he is simply trying to say the fact. If the fact is complex, let it be so. If the fact is contradictory, let the statement also be contradictory – let it be a true reflection. You cannot ask a man of learning to be so paradoxical: God is summer and winter – no. He is absolutely certain of what God is. He is day, never night; he is light, never darkness; he is good, never bad; he is peace, never war. When God is both war and peace, where are you? You become uncertain, you hesitate.Heraclitus says: I have searched myself. That’s why he is so paradoxical, and always looks for the paradox. If a man has searched himself he will always find it because what can he do? If existence is paradoxical, what can he do? He has to represent it as it is. But go to a missionary – he has never searched. He has learned much, he can quote scriptures. In fact, he cannot do anything other than quote scriptures. And you know very well that the Devil is very skilled in quoting scriptures – he is the perfect missionary.When some visitorsunexpectedly found Heraclituswarming himself by the cooking fire,he said to them:Here, too, are the gods.Heraclitus never went to a temple because if you are a man of perception, if your eyes are open, and you can hear and feel, what’s the need to go to a temple? The gods are also here. God is not a person, he is all that is the case; he is existence.Just imagine the picture: Heraclitus sitting by the fireside, warming himself; the crackling of the wood, the flames rising toward heaven, the warmth. It must have been a cold winter night – some visitors arrive unexpectedly and ask, “What are you doing?”He replies, “Here also are gods.” What he is saying is that the fire becomes a divine phenomenon and this warming yourself is a prayer.It reminds me of a Zen Master, Ikkyu. He was traveling and stayed in a temple overnight. The night was very, very cold, so he made a fire. Not finding any wood, he took a wooden statue of Buddha from the temple and burned it. The priest was fast asleep; the noise, the fire, and Ikkyu moving about woke him up. He opened his eyes and looked, and looked again – he was aghast, he couldn’t believe it; Ikkyu was a Buddhist monk, and not only a monk but a very famous master. He jumped out of his bed, came running and said, “What are you doing? You have burned a Buddha!”Ikkyu took out a small piece of wood and searched in the ashes for the Buddha – the statue was almost gone, nothing was left.The priest said, “What are you looking for? It’s no longer there.”Ikkyu replied, “I am searching for the bones – Buddha must have bones.”The priest laughed and said, “Now I am completely certain you are mad. How can a wooden Buddha have bones?”Ikkyu said, “Then bring the other two Buddhas because the night is still long and very cold, and the buddha within me needs a little warmth. Don’t worry, these Buddhas are just wooden. Inside here are bones and a real buddha; this buddha needs a little warmth. These Buddhas are no good anyway, they have no bones, so don’t worry.”The priest threw him out of the temple. The night was very cold, but there are people who will worship a wooden Buddha and throw out a real buddha. In the morning the priest looked around to see what had happened to Ikkyu; he was sitting just outside the temple near a milestone – worshipping it. The sun was rising, it was a beautiful morning and he had found a few flowers from somewhere. He had put the flowers on the milestone and he was worshipping. The priest came running and said, “What are you doing? You are really completely mad! During the night you burned a Buddha and now you are worshipping a milestone.”Ikkyu said, “Here, also, is a god.”Heraclitus: Here, too, are gods.If you can feel, every moment is divine and everything is divine, and all that exists is holy. If you cannot feel, go to the temples, go to the mosques and churches, but you will not find anything there either – because it is you who need a transformation, it is not the situation that needs change. The situation remains the same; in the temple, outside the temple, God is everywhere. It is you who cannot see and so you change places; from your house you go to the temple in search of God.You need an inner transformation. The change in the situation won’t help. You need a psychological reorientation. You need a totally new way of looking at things, and suddenly the whole world becomes the temple; there is nothing else.Fire became the symbol for Heraclitus; fire is really a beautiful symbol. Heraclitus says, “Fire is the basic substance of life.” It is! Now physicists agree with Heraclitus. They agree that electricity is the base of all existence, and that everything is nothing but modes of electricity. Heraclitus says, “It is fire.” What’s the difference? Fire is a much more beautiful word than electricity. Fire gives a sense of more aliveness than electricity, and it is wilder than electricity.When you say, “Electricity is the base,” it looks as if the universe is somehow mechanical because electricity has become associated with a mechanism, and God looks like an engineer – but electricity is fire.Hindus have called this basic element prana, vitality – but vitality is fire. When you are vital, alive, you are fiery, aflame. Henri Bergson has called the base of all, élan vital, just like prana. Those who have been seeking come near fire somehow or other. Deep down this existence is fire. Fire is life. And Zarathustra made fire the supreme-most god; he is right. He must have agreed with Heraclitus – they were contemporaries. Fire became the supreme god for the followers of Zarathustra.Fire has many deep things in it. You will have to understand the phenomenon of fire, the symbol, because it is a way of speaking, it is a metaphor. Heraclitus wants to indicate something deep when he says, “Fire is the substratum.” On a winter’s night just sit by the side of a fire and watch, just feel it, the warmth. Death is cold, life is warmth. A dead body is cold, a live body is warm – and you have to continuously maintain a certain warmth. There exists in man an inner mechanism to always keep the warmth within at a certain limit because life is possible only between those certain degrees. Human life exists between ninety-five and one hundred and ten degrees, just between those fifteen degrees. There are other lives which exist at other temperatures, but human life has a span of just fifteen degrees.Mulla Nasruddin was very, very ill, with a high fever. The doctor took his temperature and said, “One hundred and five.”Mulla opened his eyes and asked, “What is the world record?” – because the ego always thinks in terms of world records. He was thinking, “Maybe I couldn’t beat anyone in any other way, but maybe I can break the world record in fever.”Beyond one hundred and ten there is no record because the man simply disappears, you cannot absorb so much fire. Below ninety-five you disappear, so cold that death settles in.That’s why we say, “A warm welcome,” not, “A cold welcome.” Warm love, not cold love – because cold symbolizes death, warmth symbolizes life. The sun is the source, solar energy is fire. Just watch, in the evening everything becomes sad. Trees, birds become completely silent; no song, all their songs disappear. Flowers close and the whole earth waits for the morning. In the morning, the sun has not risen yet and the earth starts becoming ready to welcome it. The birds start singing even before the sun has arisen – that is a welcome sign. Flowers start flowering again; everything becomes alive again, movement enters.Fire is a very, very meaningful symbol in other ways. If you watch fire you will see a continuous upward movement. Water flows downward, fire flows upward – that’s why the Hindus talk about “the fire of kundalini.” When you rise upward you are not like water, you are like a flame of fire. When your inner being changes, you feel a flame going upward; even water, when in contact with fire, starts evaporating upward.In a very, very old Tibetan scripture it is said that a master is like fire and the disciple is like water. If the disciple comes in deep contact with the master, the quality of the disciple changes – it becomes the quality of fire, just like heated water evaporates. Water without fire moves downward. With fire immediately a change comes in. Beyond one hundred degrees the fire has made the water ready to move upward; the dimension changes.Fire always moves upward. Even if you hold a lamp upside down the flame will go upward, it cannot go downward. Fire is an effort to reach the highest peak, the omega point. Another thing, if you watch a flame, you can only see it for a few split seconds, then it disappears. The higher you go, the more you disappear; the lower you go, the more you become solid. Watch water, if it goes on getting lower and lower and colder and colder, it becomes frozen, it becomes ice. It is like stone, all movement stops – it is dead. When water is frozen, it is dead, it is no longer alive. You will have to melt it through fire and movement will appear again. You will have to heat it so much that it comes to a hundred degree point and will move upward.So there are three stages. No movement, that is when you are frozen; a downward movement, that is when you are like water. The first stage like ice, the second like water ? the third is when you evaporate, you move upward. Almost all three stages exist simultaneously in you. Some part of you is like fire, moving upward, a very small part, very tiny ? that’s why you’ve come to me, otherwise there would be no need.Why have you come to me? ? you must have a tiny part which moves upward, and that tiny part feels as though it is being pulled down by your whole being; that is the anguish. You know that something in you goes toward the divine. In some moments you feel like a bird and you can simply fly, but only in some moments. Even in those moments the greater part of you is hanging like stone; one part hangs like stone. Almost ninety percent of you is like ice. Nine percent of you moves like water, downward. In sex, in anger, in hatred, you move downward – but at least it is better to move downward than not move at all. That’s why, if I feel a very frozen being in you, I tell you to fall in love, move toward sex because at least it will melt you. Of course you will not be flying upward, you will move downward, but at least movement is good. And once there is movement, the direction can be changed, the dimension can be changed. But frozen? Just go and look in the monasteries if you want to see perfect examples of frozen ice.Go to the Catholic or Jaina monasteries. There you will find perfect frozen ice cubes, no men – because they are against sex, against food, against everything. They are just negative, they have been negating. By and by, if you negate, your life loses fire because fire is a positive force. If you negate, you become cold. Negativity is a method of suicide. By and by, you die; you are frozen and kill yourself in fragments. But this is no achievement, in fact it is a downward step.I say to people, “If you are frozen, move toward sex; that will help.” Of course, it is not going to lead you toward the ultimate, but one thing will happen: you will start moving. Your bioenergy starts moving when you love a person, and feel for some other person. That’s why you feel very excited in sex; fire has begun to function, and when you make love, your body temperature rises. Love is like fever, a temporary fever created by your mind. That’s why after love you relax deeply, you have a flow. If you attain a sexual orgasm, a complete flow happens, your bioenergy is moving. Those people who cannot have deep orgasms are difficult people, for meditation also – because they cannot move, so how can they move upward?The first thing is movement. The second thing is to turn the movement upward. Many people cannot move, they are afraid, they are frozen. You can see their bodies clearly as frozen phenomena. If you touch them, you will feel that their bodies are cold. You shake hands with them and it feels like you are shaking hands with the dead branch of a tree, no movement. You take their hands in yours and feel that no energy is being transmitted. Their hand is there, feeling just like a dead branch. It doesn’t give and doesn’t receive; it doesn’t communicate. Watch people, just by their walking, their faces, their movements, you can see whether they are orgasmic or not.The first thing for a master to know about you is whether you are orgasmic or not. If you are orgasmic, if your whole body vibrates when you make love, and the vibrating phenomenon is so deep that you are no more for a single second; of course you become just a flow, energy moves like a flood from head to toe and there are no blocks of ice within you, everything melts. After making love you fall asleep like a child because the energy has moved. You have played long, you are tired, but this tiredness is very nice. This tiredness is relaxation, now you can relax – and the body feels alive. Hence the appeal of sex – because it is really your body trying to find a way to be orgasmic, to be river like, not frozen.When you are frozen you cannot relate. When you are frozen you are closed within yourself, you make an imprisonment – and from this imprisonment there is no way to God. You will have to melt. And before you reach the divine, before you can relate to the divine, you will have to relate to other people in this world. When you relate to other people – when you love, care – your body melts, it flows. Another step can be taken when it flows.When the energy is flowing, it is very simple to heat the body in certain inner ways. All meditations are methods to give you heat, more heat than sex can give. Meditations, particularly those we are doing here, are all to create fire within you. Through breathing, fast chaotic breathing, fire is created because breathing brings more and more oxygen, and with more oxygen, more fire happens; without oxygen, there is no fire. When a flame burns, it burns because of oxygen. If there is no oxygen, the fire will subside automatically. More oxygen has to be brought to your body because you are too frozen. You are not alive enough, you are not warm enough.People come to me, particularly the frozen ones, and say, “We don’t like this dynamic meditation.” They don’t like it because they are frozen and they have too much invested in their frozenness. They don’t love, but they think they are brahmacharis, celibates – they are simply frozen, ice cubes. There is no movement in their lives, but they think they are detached. Of course, there is a detachment that comes when you flow upward, but that is totally different. There is a detachment that happens when you don’t flow at all. Of course a dead man is detached, a dead man is celibate – a dead man is completely dead. You can be detached like a dead man; that is what has happened in all the monasteries of the whole world. You can be detached in a totally different way, a qualitatively, diametrically opposite way. That is when you become so alive that the fire comes to a point where the water doesn’t flow downward, it starts flowing upward.More fire has to be created within you; you should become a furnace. Absorb more oxygen, make more effort, and allow the body as much movement as possible ? bring energy, throbbing energy. It is there – you just have to make it throbbing. Live like a flame burning from both ends. Only then, suddenly one day, you find that your energy is flowing upward, that you have become a flame. You can see yourself up to a certain extent, and you are no more. Suddenly, you disappear into the cosmos; you have become one with the divine. This is the symbol of fire – you can only see it for a few seconds and it disappears.A buddha is continuously disappearing. Look at me, if you can see, you will see that I am continuously disappearing. You can see up to a certain extent. That’s why the aura is seen around a man who is awakened. That aura is nothing but a disappearing fire, a continuously disappearing fire. Up to a certain extent you can see it, hence the aura. Beyond that aura there is nothing, it disappears.Heraclitus is very, very right in finding the symbol. It is not a philosophical statement, but in Greek histories of philosophy they think Heraclitus is proposing, like others – Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and other Greek philosophers ? an element. There are four elements: earth, water, fire, air, so there have been philosophers who proposed that earth is the basic element; somebody else proposed that water is the basic element; somebody else fire; somebody else air. Heraclitus proposes that fire is the basic element, but he should not be understood in the way that Thales is understood, no. It is not a statement. It is not a statement about a philosophical theme or theory; he is not proposing any doctrine. He is a poet, not a philosopher at all. He is giving a symbol, and the symbol means much more than the word fire.Watch fire outside, watch fire inside, and become as much of a flame as possible.That’s why Heraclitus says:When some visitorsunexpectedly found Heraclituswarming himself by the cooking fire,he said to them:Here, too, are the gods.I have searched myself.And I am not just saying this because others have said – I have known myself.He says:Time is a childmoving counters in a game;the royal power is a child’s.The royal power is a child’s, and time is a child moving counters in a game… The whole concept of leela, play, he condenses in just a few sentences. Life is like a play – don’t make it a business, otherwise you will miss it. You miss it because you make a business out of it and it is a play. Play well, but don’t think in terms of achieving something out of it. Just be like a child; he plays, he is not worried about what he achieves out of it. Small children, even if they are defeated in a game, jump and feel very happy. Failure is not a failure if it is a play; defeat is not a defeat if it is a play. Otherwise, if it is a business, even victory is a defeat. Ask the Napoleons, Alexanders; even victory is defeat. What do you find finally after victory? ? you are victorious and nothing has been achieved. You longed so much for this goal and now you have reached it – you simply feel frustrated and your whole life is lost. Remember, if you are after goals your life will be lost because life has no goal. It is a purposeless play. It is not going anywhere, it is simply enjoying itself.This is the most difficult thing to understand because the mind is mathematical. It says, “What is the meaning of it, what is the purpose?” There is no purpose and no meaning. Then the mind immediately says, “If there is no meaning why live, why not commit suicide?” But see this: if there is meaning, the whole thing will become ugly and it will be like a business. If there is purpose, all life will lose the poetry.The poetry is there because there is no purpose. Why does the rose flower? Ask the rose, it will say, “I don’t know – but flowering is so beautiful, what is the need to know? Flowering in itself, intrinsically, is so beautiful.” Ask a bird, “Why do you sing?” and he will be simply puzzled at what such nonsense questions you ask. Singing is so beautiful, it is such a benediction – why raise the question? But the mind looks for the goal, the mind is an achiever. It cannot simply enjoy. There must be something to be achieved in the future, some goal to be reached, then the mind feels good. If there is nothing to be achieved, it flops. But that is what the whole effort is – let it flop! There is no purpose, there is no goal.This moment, the whole of existence is celebrating – all except you. Why not participate? Why not be like a flower, purposelessly flowering? Why not be like a river, meaninglessly flowing? Why not be like the ocean, roaring, just enjoying?This is what Heraclitus says:Time is a child moving counters in a game; the royal power is a child’s. Every child is a king. Just watch a child – every child is simply a king, an emperor. Look at his movement; even if the child is naked, no emperor can compete with him. Why is a child so beautiful? Without any exception every child is beautiful. What is the beauty of a child? ? he is still uncontaminated by the mind, which seeks purpose, meaning, a goal. He simply plays, he doesn’t bother about the next day.A small child arrived home. His mother was very angry and said, “I have heard from some neighborhood children that you threw mud in a small girl’s mouth and you have been punished – you had to stand outside the class the whole day!”He replied, “Yes.”His mother was horrified and said, “Why did you throw that mud?”The small child shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, the mouth was open.”The why is meaningless. It is enough in itself; he had mud in his hand and the mouth was open, so what to do? It simply happened.We are asking why. Why is irrelevant for a child – it is how it happened! The mouth was open and he had the mud. He did not do it really. We wrongly punish him, he did not do it – it happened, it simply happened this way. It was a coincidence that the girl was standing with an open mouth. He didn’t mean anything, he didn’t mean any harm, he didn’t mean any insult. He simply welcomed the opportunity, he enjoyed it. But we ask why.An abyss exists between a child and a grown-up; they are poles apart. The child cannot understand what the adults are saying because he lives in a totally different dimension – the dimension of play. The adults cannot understand what the child is doing because the adult is a businessman; he lives in the world of whys, reasons, causes. They never meet, they cannot, and there is no possibility of understanding unless the adult becomes a child again. Only a saint, a real sage, can understand a child because he is also a child. He can understand.I was reading a small child’s diary. On the twenty-fifth of December it is written: “Got an air-gun from Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe is the greatest uncle in the world. There has never been such an uncle and never will be, etcetera, etcetera. But it is raining and I can’t go out. I would like to go and hunt immediately.”26th December: “It is still raining, and I am feeling very, very restless.”27th December: “It is still raining, and I am frustrated and feeling very aggressive and violent.”28th December: “It is still raining – shot Uncle Joe.”This is a child’s world. He moves without any purpose, playing. Playing in itself is enough. If you become a child again, you have achieved all. If you cannot become a child again, you have missed all. A sage is a twice-born child. First-born children are not real children because they will have to grow up. The second birth is the real birth because when somebody is twice-born he has given birth to himself. It is a transformation, he has become a child again. He does not ask for reasons, the why and wherefore, he simply lives. Whatever the moment presents, he moves with it; he has no plans, he has no projections. He lives without demanding anything, and that is the only way to live; otherwise, you simply appear to be living, you are not alive. For a child there is nothing bad, nothing good, there is no God, no Devil; a child accepts everything. Again, a sage accepts everything. That’s why he can say, “God is winter and summer, peace and war; he is the Devil and the good – both.” For a sage, again all morality disappears, all distinctions fall away; everything is holy and every place is sacred.I was staying with a Christian family. The mother was talking to her child and was saying, “This is not good, you needn’t pray so loudly – you almost shout. Prayers don’t have to be shouted. God can hear you, you need not shout so much.”The child said, “But it says, ‘Hollered be thy name!’” A child lives somewhere else.The mother was very, very angry. I said to her: “Don’t disturb him, it is too soon to disturb his childhood. Let him follow his own way of praying – he is enjoying it, and that enjoyment is the real thing, not the form. He jumps and hollers the name of God, and it is beautiful! Why are you teaching him otherwise? This is the way it should be; if you enjoy, it becomes a prayer. If you don’t enjoy, if it becomes a discipline someone else is forcing on you, you feel imprisoned. Let him holler, let him jump – I can be a witness to him; God hears him. The point is not whether he hollers or not, but whether he enjoys.”A man who can be blissful need not pray – prayer is a poor substitute. A man who is blissful need not meditate. A man who is blissful can live the moment blissfully, and has done all that can be done. Everything is holy and sacred. You can eat your food in such a way that it becomes prayer. You can love a man in such a way that it becomes prayer. You can dig a hole in the garden in such a way that it becomes prayer. Prayer is not a formal thing – it is the quality of prayerfulness that you bring to something.…the royal power is a child’s. Why? – because the royal power means innocence. God comes to you when you are innocent. When you are cunning the door is closed. Never destroy anyone’s innocence, never create doubts in someone who is innocent because innocence is the royal power. Never create doubt in anyone because once trust is destroyed and innocence is broken, it is very, very difficult – it is just like a broken mirror.This is the problem for a master; you are all like broken mirrors because somewhere on the path of life your trust has been destroyed. You cannot believe, you have been raised to doubt; you have a very cultivated, sophisticated doubting mind. This is the problem. Nothing can happen to you – not God, no! – unless a trust is created again. You are like a broken mirror, and you insist on being a broken mirror. You think that to doubt is some great thing that you have – that is your poverty.A child’s heart is the royal power. And the power comes to you with innocence. When I say trust, and when all the masters of the world say trust, they mean, become innocent. But you insist on doubting, and you argue and rationalize first. You insist that you should be convinced about something first, then you will take a step – and that is the very problem, that’s precisely the problem. Everything becomes possible if you can take one trusting step in darkness. But you cannot take that one step. And look, what have you achieved through doubting, where have you reached with this broken mirror? You have become addicted to it because it has remained with you so long.Mulla Nasruddin was teaching his son the ways of the world – a small child, a beautiful child – and he told him to go up a ladder. The child followed. He always liked to climb, and he was surprised because Mulla was always saying, “Don’t climb the tree, don’t climb the ladder,” so why now? But he was very happy.He climbed, reached the top, and Mulla, standing at the bottom, said, “Now jump.” The child hesitated a little, but the Mulla said, “I am your father, why are you worried? Jump!”The child jumped and Mulla moved away. He fell to the ground, started crying and weeping, and said, “What have you done to me?”Mulla replied, “Now remember, don’t believe anyone, not even your father. This is the way of the world and I am making you ready for it. Don’t believe anyone, not even if he is your father. You have learned a good lesson. Don’t trust!”This is how every father, mother, teacher, schools, universities, are preparing you. Don’t trust anyone because someone may be dishonest; he may be a fraud, he may deceive you. But this is the problem; even if the whole world deceives you, you will not lose anything. But if you doubt, you will lose everything. Doubt is the real deceiver because ultimately you will miss God. God comes through the door of innocence. Can you trust anything in your life? If you search you will find no one, nothing you can trust.It happened…A man came to a very great mystic, Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna asked him, “Do you love anyone, do you trust anyone?”The man replied, “I don’t trust anyone and I don’t love anyone – except my cow.”Nagarjuna said, “That will do. Believe completely that your cow is God. Love her, trust her, feed her, care about her, and after three months come back to me.”But the man said, “How can it happen, just loving and trusting the cow?”Nagarjuna replied, “Don’t worry. After three months come back to me.”The man came back completely transformed. He said, “You have done a miracle! I cannot yet believe it, but it has happened; just trusting, loving and caring for the cow, I have experienced something which has made me a completely different man. I am reborn! But how could it happen – just trusting a cow?”Nagarjuna said, “It is not a question of trusting a cow, it is a question of trusting.”If you can trust even a small thing, the door widens. When you have tasted trust, you become more capable of trust. When you taste more, you become more and more capable, and you can take the ultimate jump. Time is a child moving counters in a game; the royal power is a child’s.Heraclitus has no mathematical theory about time. He says about time that it is just like a child moving counters in a game; they move day and night. Heraclitus does not believe that time is going somewhere. It is moving, it is moving in a circle. It is not linear, it is like a wheel. This is something to be understood. All scientists think that time is linear, that it is moving in a line; all the knowers of the inner say that it is a wheel – it is not linear, it is circular. There seems to be some reason for it. Scientists cannot see the whole, they see just a part. The scientific mind is a specific mind, specialized. The scientist can see only a part, and he also divides the part to see an even smaller part. He goes on dividing – the scientist cannot see the whole. The very discipline of science makes him capable of seeing the part more clearly. He goes on seeing more and more clearly, but less and less. His vision becomes clear and penetrating, but his object becomes smaller and smaller. He comes to the atom, the smallest; in time he also comes to the moment, the smallest.If you see a small sector of a circle it will look like a line, but the circle is vast – just like on the earth. We are sitting here, and if we draw a line and think it is a straight, you are wrong – because on a circular earth, how can you draw a straight line? If you go on drawing that line, if you continue it, it will become a circle, it will encompass the whole earth. So all straight lines are just parts, fragments of a vast, big circle.Science cannot see the whole and that is why time seems to be linear. Religion sees the whole. Science misses the forest, it looks at the tree; religion misses the tree, and looks at the forest. When you look at the whole, everything is circular. All movement is circular, and time is also a circular movement. It is a game, not going anywhere, just moving. If you can see that time is not going anywhere, but moving in a circle, the whole tension of the mind to reach somewhere drops. Then to reach somewhere in the future becomes useless, meaningless – you start enjoying the moment.Life is not an effort to attain, it is a celebration.Bigotry is the sacred disease. Even this you should not make into a theory because the moment you make a theory and say, “This is right,” you will start converting people. The moment you say, “This is right,” your ego has taken it. Now it is not a question of this being right – you are right. How can you be wrong? The sacred disease enters. Remember, whatever I say, don’t make it a claim. Whatever I say, don’t make it a belief, don’t become closed by it. Whatever I say, the opposite is also true, remember – because if you say the opposite is wrong, you will become bigoted. Bigotry enters.If I say that God is winter, then he is also summer. There are moments when I say that God is winter because that will be helpful. There are moments when I say that God is summer because that will be helpful. To some I say that God is winter, and to some I say that God is summer – don’t create a theory around it. I am also a poet. You needn’t believe in what I say, you simply have to be something that I say. Let it become a transformation, not a theory in you. Don’t make a sect out of it; make a life out of it, live it! If you live it, you will also help others to live it.Only through living do you help; not through talking, not through converting, not through going around and making people more enlightened, no! This is a very subtle mischief. Be enlightened and you will have a light within you and people will come and drink out of it; there is no need to go out of the way. If someone is following his own way, don’t try to pull him out of it. Who knows? That way may be exactly right for him. It may look wrong to you, but who are you to decide? Don’t decide and don’t judge because: bigotry is the sacred disease. Whenever a person becomes religious, this disease is possible. Whenever one becomes religious one becomes vulnerable to this disease, bigotry. It is very difficult to find a religious man who is not bigoted.It happened…I saw Mulla Nasruddin drinking in a bar and asked, “Nasruddin, what are you doing? Just yesterday you told me that you have stopped all drinking and have become an absolute teetotaler, so what are you doing?”Nasruddin replied, “Yes I am an absolute teetotaler – but not a bigoted one.”Whatever you are, remain flexible. Remain moving and flowing and don’t create a fixed frame around you. Sometimes one has to go out of the discipline. Life is bigger than your discipline and sometimes one has to go completely against one’s own rules – because God is both summer and winter.Don’t be a victim of bigotry. Be religious, but don’t be a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. Let the whole earth be your church, let the whole of existence be your temple. When the whole God is available, why be satisfied with a fragment? Why say Christian, why say Hindu? When you can be a human being, why choose labels? Drop all labels and drop all beliefs. Trust. Trust is totally different from belief. Trust life wherever it leads. Move with it, and help others to move in their own way. Do your thing and let others do theirs. Remain open.If you can remain open, helping, caring, not forcing things on others, you will see that people have started drinking out of you, that people are being helped by you. Don’t go directly to serve them because service, compassion, love, care, are all indirect. Don’t jump on them, and don’t force them toward heaven because that violence has been the misery of the whole past. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans have been fighting, killing each other because of that violence. Enough of it, there is no need of it now!Now the earth has become one. The whole globe has become just like a small village. Let humanity also become one – one in the search, not in the beliefs. One ? because everything is divine.Always remember Heraclitus: Here, too, are the gods. I have searched myself. And: …the royal power is a child’s. Bigotry is the sacred disease.Enough for today.

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The Hidden Harmony 01-11Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

The Hidden Harmony 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A drunken man has to be led by a young boy,whom he follows stumblingand not knowing whither he goes,for his soul is moist.Souls take pleasure in becoming moist.A dry soul is wisest and best.Just as I said yesterday, human consciousness can follow two ways: one way is that of water, flowing downward; the other is that of fire, moving upward. Water and fire are symbols, but very meaningful.When you flow downward you become more and more unconscious. When you flow upward you become more and more conscious. Upwardness is consciousness; downwardness is unconsciousness.Heraclitus calls the downward flow of consciousness the state of moisture, and the upward rise of consciousness the state of dryness. Moisture and dryness depend on fire and water. He says the spirit, the human mind: …takes pleasure in being moist.All pleasure is downward. Wherever you are seeking pleasure, you will go downward because pleasure means being unconscious. Pleasure means being in a certain state where you don’t know any anxiety – not that the anxieties have disappeared, but you are unconscious. The world remains the same; the anxieties are there waiting for you, increasing not decreasing, because as time moves they will increase. Your problems remain the same and even become more complicated. While you are unconscious, everything is growing; it doesn’t wait for your consciousness to be there. Your misery is growing, your anguish is growing; it is waiting for you. You are unconscious so you are not aware. Whenever you come to consciousness again, you will have to face all the problems you had escaped from.Pleasure is escape; that’s why pleasure is not worth it. In fact it is not pleasure, it is a sort of suicide. You escape from the problems, you turn your back on them, but this is no way to solve them. You will have to come back because once you have become conscious, unconsciousness cannot be a permanent state of affairs. You can dive into unconsciousness, but how long can you remain underwater? ? for a second, and then you are back again on the surface. You cannot remain unconscious for long. Anything in which you become unconscious, in which you momentarily lose all your worries or forget about them ? alcohol, drugs, sex – is a forgetfulness, but forgetfulness cannot be a permanent state.So this is not helping in any way, pleasure doesn’t help. You have to come back again and again, and it becomes a vicious circle. When you come back and find the anguish, the anxiety, all the problems there waiting – rather, they have increased – you become afraid, you become nervous. Your whole being becomes a state of fear; it trembles and you have to escape again and again. The more you escape, the more the problems increase. The more problems you face, the more alcohol is needed. And the quantity of the intoxicant has to be continuously increased because you become attuned to it. You take a certain amount of a drug; the first day you feel unconscious. After a few days you are not unconscious; you are still conscious, the worries are still there knocking at the door, you can hear them – you need a greater quantity. The greater quantity will also become less. You can move to a point ? in India they have tried; there are a few sects which have been working through alcohol, drugs, such as marijuana, mescaline. In the West it is a new phenomenon; that’s why the West is so worried about it. In the East it is one of the oldest things.A particular sect of Tantrikas have been working through drugs, finding a way to attain consciousness through using them. By and by, they have found that you become so attuned that nothing can make you unconscious. They have poisonous snakes – just a bite and an ordinary man will die. When a drug no longer affects them, they take a snake and let it bite their tongue. Ordinarily a man will die immediately. They do it just to seek unconsciousness through the most poisonous thing – even that doesn’t affect them. A time comes when the man is completely beyond the world of drugs; you cannot make him unconscious, nothing helps. If this man bites you, you will die immediately. His whole body is poisonous.In ancient Indian history, there is reference to a particular female spy. Every king trained beautiful girls in such a way that from their very childhood their whole body became poisonous. They were known as vishkanya, poisonous girls – very beautiful. The king would send those girls to his enemies, to the enemy king, and they were so beautiful that he was bound to be attracted. Once they kissed the king, he was dead. They were absolutely poisonous; their kiss was enough – no need even to bite.A moment comes when no drug helps. These Tantrikas have been working through drugs toward awareness. When no drug affects you, you are already integrated, and now you can move toward the height without any fear of falling because you cannot be made unconscious, you have crystallized your consciousness. Ordinarily one is not working through drugs for consciousness; the path is very dangerous. Ordinarily one is seeking unconsciousness, a little forgetfulness in this world of worries, anguish, anxiety; one wants to forget this world which looks like a hell. All your pleasures are just forgetfulness.Heraclitus says, “This is a moist state of consciousness.” The word is beautiful – he calls these souls, moist. He says, “Souls enjoy pleasure.” Why? – because pleasure is a downward drift. No effort is needed; you don’t have to do anything, you simply sink downward. It is downhill; you can easily run. No effort is needed, the very pull of gravity helps you down. Moving upward is difficult; that’s why you seek pleasure, you never seek bliss. Bliss is upward, pleasure is downward.Pleasure is forgetfulness, bliss is remembrance.Gurdjieff says that the only technique to become integrated is self-remembrance, and all the masters of the world have been insisting on being more and more conscious. The more conscious you become, the more a certain dryness happens inside. Literally, you become more and more dry, more and more aware, more and more conscious and alert. You become more and more dry because awareness is fire.Listen to these words and try to understand them. They will be a great help on the path you are following.A drunken man has to be led by a young boy,whom he follows stumblingand not knowing whither he goes,for his soul is moist.Imagine the picture, visualize it: A drunken man has to be led by a young boy, whom he follows stumbling and not knowing whither he goes, for his soul is moist. This is very symbolic. When you are drunk, you fall back, you regress, you become a small boy again – this regression is not growth. You have to become like a small boy, not by regressing but by growing ahead, growing forward, growing upward. You have to become like a boy, not by falling back, but by going forward. Falling back you will become juvenile; falling back you will not gain, you will lose; falling back, the whole system inside becomes crippled. On the outside you look like an adult, and on the inside you are just like a small boy; not a child, but childish; not innocent, but very, very cunning. The cunningness is so deep that you are not cunning with others – you are playing tricks with yourself, with your own consciousness, with your own future; you are playing cunning tricks with your own possibilities. You are falling back, regressing.You carry all the stages that you have passed. Once you were in the womb. A part of you still remains in that state because you cannot throw things off. You simply grow and all that has become the past becomes your foundation. Everything exists in you, not only from this life, but from other lives; not only from human lives, but from animal, vegetable lives. Everything exists, nothing is lost. You carry everything of the past – you are your past. The whole past is there and you can regress any moment. It is just like a ladder; you can go back. When you are drunk you go back. You will become not only like a child, you can also become like a vegetable. Just look at a drunk lying in the gutter; he doesn’t look human at all. He has regressed, he is vegetating; you can’t even say that he is alive. How can you say this man is human? What humanity is he showing right now? What is the difference between him and a tree? The only difference is that the tree is in a better state because at least the tree is not drunk. This man has fallen back, he has become like a tree.You can be so drugged; in the West they use the word stoned. It is very good – you become like a stone. That is the last thing. You are not even a vegetable. You are rocklike, all possibilities lost. You have come to the last step of the ladder, to the very bottom. You have regressed millions of years – that can be done in seconds. You become helpless, helpless in a negative way, an imbecile. You behave like an idiot, you don’t know what you are doing. In fact, you are not; you are absent, your presence is lost. Now inside, no center exists. This is the state of moisture: no center. You have become water, no center, and the water is overflowing everywhere – without any direction, without any inner integrity. If you die in this moment, you will not even be aware that you are dead. You will not know whatever happens in this moment. You are not. This is an absent state of mind. You have fallen down completely, you have reached to the bottom.This is easy, and souls enjoy it because anything that is easy you enjoy. No effort is needed. You don’t have to follow a path, you don’t have to do anything on your part. You needn’t worry, you needn’t think – you simply drop. In fact, this is dropping out. You have dropped out of the whole effort of evolution. You are no longer a part of a growing existence, you are no longer part of the constantly evolving divinity. You have lost all. This is the worst state possible. This happens not only through intoxicants, this happens through many things. So that, too, has to be remembered. You may not be taking any intoxicant, you may not be on drugs, but there are many subtle drugs – any “trip” can become a drug.You may be continuously chanting a mantra; not with awareness, just chanting it. If you continuously chant a mantra without awareness, it becomes alcoholic, it gives you unconsciousness. You will feel much pleasure, but no bliss. You are falling back. In India, that too has been used for thousands of years, and thousands of people have been continuously chanting mantras. If you look at them, you will find them also stoned – through chanting mantras they have become unconscious. Of course, they don’t have any worries because to have worries you need awareness. They are happy, but their happiness is like death – stale, stony. Their happiness is not like a flower blossoming; their happiness is a stagnant pool, not like a river flowing. They are not moving at all, the whole inner movement has ceased.I talked to you about two types of movement, one vertical, the other horizontal. They have stopped the horizontal movement, but they have not started the vertical movement. They are as if dead, buried alive in their own bodies; their bodies have become graves. You can find many of them near Tibet, in the Himalayas. You will find many people just sitting chanting. The continuous chanting has created such boredom within them that they have become numb, they have lost all sensitivity. They are not more alive because of it, they are less alive. They have become so numb that they can lie on a bed of nails – because they have shrunken inside and have no sensitivity in their body. This is a deeper intoxicant than any alcohol ever invented. Because they are the masters of their own alcohol, they can create it inside.If you chant a word continuously without awareness, you regress. If you chant, it has to be done with awareness; you remain a witness. If you are chanting, “Om, om, om,” you have to remain a witness to it. The chanting should be done by the body and you should remain a witness. If the witness is lost, the chanting is alcoholic – it has become an intoxicant. There are other ways too. A politician is on a drug trip: power, prestige, is alcoholic. So whenever someone reaches power, he is no longer in his senses. Power corrupts and corrupts absolutely because power is a drug. When you are powerful you are no longer in your consciousness. You start doing things you would never have imagined. You yourself cannot believe that you can do such things.Read about Adolf Hitler and his life ? what he did. He never smoked, was against alcohol – he was a perfect sannyasin! He would get up early in the morning, go to sleep early at night; no smoking, no drinking; a vegetarian, not a meat-eater. And what he did! Such a perfect Jaina you cannot find anywhere, and what he did! He was taking the greatest drug. That’s why there was no need to smoke cigarettes – they are nothing. There was no need to drink because he was already drunk with power.Those who watched Adolf Hitler said that when he started to talk, soon everyone felt that a transfiguration had come. When he started he was Adolf Hitler. By and by, he would become completely unconscious, as if mesmerized by his own talking; his eyes no longer showing any aliveness, as if he was not there, as if someone else had taken possession – possessed! His possession, his alcoholic state, his “moisture,” would immediately infect others. He could create madness very easily. He was so neurotic, and such a charismatic neurotic, that whoever came near him would become neurotic; he was a magnetically neurotic man. His own alcohol was overflowing, and people would become intoxicated – that’s how he led the whole German race toward suicide.Power is a drug, the greatest drug the world has ever known. This is beautiful because politicians are always against drugs and they are the greatest drug takers, on the greatest drug trip! You can also make your own private drugs. Take wealth; just look what happens when a person becomes rich – he is no longer there, completely absent! He does a lot, he works hard, but he doesn’t know what he is doing. He is completely unconscious. And private drugs: you can become a painter, a poet, and that can become your trip. Anything in which you forget yourself, in which you lose consciousness, in which you become so identified – anything you are doing where the witnessing is lost ? is a drug. And Heraclitus calls this the moist state:Souls take pleasure in becoming moist.No effort is needed, no strain, no facing reality. You simply hide. You hide, you escape, close your eyes, just like an ostrich. When your eyes are closed, you cannot see anything. You are happy; all this is what you call happiness. This happiness cannot last – it is momentary.When you fall in love with someone, you feel very, very happy. This is a drug; a drug your hormones create within your body, a biological drug. Nature has to use it because nature cannot rely on you. Just think, if there is nothing like love, the world will cease – because sex is so ridiculous. If there is no love, sex seems to be just ridiculous! Who will want to experience sex if no intoxicant involved?Love is just a bait. The real desire of nature is to reproduce. But you cannot be relied upon; if you don’t fall in love, you will not reproduce. You fall in love – nature is playing a trick. Nature is giving a drug and releasing it into your body. It has glands in the body where it releases the drug. It is a natural, biological, hormonal drug. That’s why whenever someone is in love, look at him, he walks differently. He is no longer here – completely absent, lives in the imagination, the desire, the dream, and does not live in reality. He has unknowingly drugged himself. After a few days, when the love is gone – because no drug can last forever – by the time the honeymoon is over, it is also over. You start facing reality and there is trouble because whatever you promised, you promised when you were not conscious. Now you have to fulfill promises given in a moist state, given in a state of unconsciousness. Now you have to fulfill those promises; now the burden grows. Why does every love affair become ugly in the end? Why does every marriage end up on the rocks? – because it is not a conscious phenomenon. If you love consciously love can be eternal because with consciousness everything is eternal. With unconsciousness everything is momentary.If you love consciously and are not a victim of biological tricks, not a victim of nature, but a conscious love, you don’t fall in love, you rise in love. Love itself becomes an integrating force, not a disintegration. Love itself becomes an awareness; you become more and more aware in relationship. You care for the other, you don’t use the other. You care and share, you don’t possess. You liberate the other, and through the other’s liberation you liberate yourself. You become two partners in an ultimate journey. You help each other because there are pitfalls; the path is long and the journey is eternal. It is very good to be with someone who can share every anguish, every pain, suffering, bliss, every moment of silence; with whom you can communicate and say what is happening to you. Someone whom you can rely on to be helpful whatever happens to you, who will love you in whatever situation you are in – good or bad, angry or happy, sad or blissful. You need not hide anything with someone you love; you can remain open and vulnerable. Whatever the situation the love is unconditional; it doesn’t depend on conditions.A conscious love is a totally different phenomenon. It happens rarely, but whenever it does happen it is one of the most beautiful things that is possible in this world.Ordinarily your love is just a drug. I witness it every day. A couple come and say that they are deeply in love, a week passes and they come again – they say everything is falling apart. Just a week! Just a week before you could not have imagined it – their eyes, their faces were radiant with love, their bodies were filled with something unknown; they were intoxicated. Just in a week, everything is finished! What type of love is this? ? it is not love at all. You have been doped by nature; nature has played a trick on you.Nature wants you to move into sex. It creates a dream world around it because sex in itself is ugly. It is really ridiculous! Just think, you are in a sexual relationship with someone without love. It is simply ugly. That’s why prostitutes are ugly. However beautiful their bodies, they cannot be beautiful because the very act, without love, makes their whole life ugly, dirty. You can tolerate sex only because of love. Sex looks beautiful because of love; otherwise, the postures, the gestures of sex, are all ridiculous. But when you are drugged you are not aware of what is happening. When you are drugged you never look at yourself. The whole world looks ridiculous, not you.It happened…Mulla Nasruddin went to be psychoanalyzed. When he went in to see the psychoanalyst, he was asked a few questions; just a test to know what type of person he is. He drew a line and asked Nasruddin, “What does it remind you of?”Nasruddin replied, “Of course, a beautiful woman!” A line! The psychiatrist was a little puzzled.He drew a circle and asked, “What does this remind you of?”Nasruddin replied, “Of course, a beautiful woman in the nude.”He drew a triangle and Nasruddin closed his eyes and said, “No, no, no, don’t do this!”The psychoanalyst asked, “But what does it remind you of?”He replied, “This woman is doing something very nasty.”So the psychoanalyst said, “You seem to be very preoccupied with sex.”Nasruddin said: “What! Me? I am preoccupied with sex – or you? Who is drawing these nasty figures on the paper? You or me?”You can see the whole world, but you cannot see yourself. This is the state of moisture: when you are completely unaware, oblivious of who you are, what you are doing, why are doing it.When you start meditating you become very, very confused in the beginning because for the first time you become aware of what you are doing. Why are you doing it? And for what reason? You were not aware before. You feel very confused because for the first time your eyes are opening toward reality. By and by, if you don’t escape you feel that you are cracking – not only confused, you are going mad! You have always been mad, but you were not aware. Now you are becoming aware and the madness has to be faced. If you don’t face it, you cannot grow. Escape is not growth and all dimensions of intoxicants are escapes. When you are in an unconscious state, you may believe that you are doing something meaningful, but that is a sheer belief, ungrounded. When you become conscious, you come to know that what you have been doing is simply nonsense. It has not led anywhere. Whatever you believed you were just befooling yourself.I have heard…Mulla Nasruddin knocked at the door of a tavern at three o’clock in the morning. The owner of the tavern looked down from an upstairs window, very angry of course, and said, “Go away, whoever you are! This is not the time and you can’t get a drink.”Nasruddin replied, “Who has come to get a drink? I am here to get my crutches. I forgot them at closing time, and as you and the whole world knows, I cannot walk without them. Now I have to return home so give my crutches back!”He has always walked on crutches, not knowing that he can walk without them – believing only in them. Unconscious, he had left the crutches in the tavern, and he had been wandering around the town the whole night. Now, as he is returning to consciousness, he asks for his crutches back because as he says, “The whole world knows that I cannot walk without crutches.”Your beliefs are your crutches. You cannot walk without them, you cannot live without them. You cannot think of how you will be without your beliefs – they are your crutches. When you become aware, you simply cannot think of how you existed in such a state of affairs for so long.But in a moist state of mind, things happen. You are not in control of anything. They just go on happening and you go on reacting. A woman laughs at you, and you are in love. You start talking to her and appreciating her, and because you appreciate her, she starts falling in love with you. Now the hormones have started functioning. Now you are on a drug trip. Soon you will become aware and you will have to come out of it. When you come out of it again, it is painful. You cannot tolerate the pain, it is too much, intolerable. Sooner or later, just to console yourself, to intoxicate yourself again, you will find another woman. And the same circle goes on being repeated. A man who is drugged can believe anything.I once asked Mulla Nasruddin, “Is your new relationship with the banker’s daughter growing?” I know the banker and I know the daughter, and it seems to be a difficult relationship, almost impossible. But Nasruddin beamed very happily.He replied, “Yes, recently there are signs, hints, indications. Things are falling in line.”So I asked, “What has happened? Has she started smiling at you or something?”He said, “No, not exactly that – but last night she said, ‘I am saying no to you for the last time!’”When one is drugged, one has one’s own interpretations. “I am saying no to you for the last time!” When you are not conscious you don’t know what yes means, what no means. You don’t know anything, you simply drift. This drifting state is the state of moisture.A drunken man has to be led by a young boy, whom he follows stumbling and not knowing whither he goes, for his soul is moist. Souls take pleasure in becoming moist. You all take pleasure in becoming moist because that is the easiest thing to do. That’s the only pleasure in it – the easiest. You needn’t do anything, you simply leave yourself and drift. You fall toward the earth and gravitation pulls you down. And you feel very, very happy because no strain, no effort – nothing!People come to me and say that they cannot get up early in the morning for the meditation. Even that much effort is too much for you. If you cannot get up early in the morning to meditate, what else can you do? What else do you think you can do? You don’t want to make any effort – but your demands are very high. Even a man who cannot get up early in the morning to meditate asks, “How is peace of mind possible?” and, “How will I come to know God?” and, “Help me! I don’t want to come again to this world.” But nobody comes to this world. If you live in a drifting way, if you always live falling downward – choosing the easiest, the path of least resistance, the path of no challenge, no struggle, nothing, just falling, living on the gravitation – you need not make any effort to come. There is no need to come, you will be coming because this is how one comes into this world; a moist state of mind will always revolve around this world. Only a dry soul can fly toward the sky because there is no effect of gravitation on a dry soul; the downward pull doesn’t exist for a dry soul. What is the meaning of being dry? ? the meaning is, keep alert. Whatever you do, do it knowingly – whatever! I don’t say, “Don’t do this and don’t do that.” Whatever you do, be simply more alert. By and by, every act helps you to become more and more dry, and a detachedness comes to you. With alertness you automatically become detached.You love a person, but still it is not an attachment. You love a person, you care, you share your being, you give everything, but still it is not an attachment. It is very, very detached. When there is a detached love, there is nothing like that – it is the most beautiful flowering. Love and detached; it means it comprehends both the polarities. It is paradoxical. You can be detached without love, or you can be in love without detachment. That’s easy, to choose one extreme, one polarity. To choose both the polarities together – detached and in love ? what does it mean? It means you are alert. Doing whatever needs to be done, but remaining alert, you are detached. You can live in this world without being a part of it. You can be in the world and the world will not be in you.This dryness comes as you more and more close the ways of falling asleep, you close the doors of falling downward, you close the doors of pleasure – you don’t seek pleasure. Remember, happiness is not pleasure. Happiness is a different phenomenon – it is a state of being.Pleasure is forgetfulness, happiness is remembrance.When remembrance becomes absolute, when remembrance is so absolute that there is no possibility of falling down from it, bliss arises. Between bliss and pleasure is happiness.Don’t ask for pleasure because if you ask for it, you will become a victim of the downward drift, the gravitation. Look at a person who is addicted to food; when he eats, just watch him. You will see that he is completely unconscious – because how many times, millions of times, has he decided not to eat too much? When he eats again, he forgets or rationalizes: “Just one more time ? next time I’m not going to eat so much.”Mulla Nasruddin was dieting and the doctor had said, “Now, this is the last time. If you don’t listen to me you can be certain that you will have to leave the body. You are going to die because your heart cannot carry the burden anymore.” He had had two heart attacks already.The next day he was eating as much as four men would find more than enough. Suddenly, he looked at his wife and said, “What are you doing, sitting there? You don’t have even that much will to stop me from going off my diet!”The wife – even for that she is responsible; she doesn’t have that much willpower to stop him!Nobody can stop you. Nobody’s will can be of any help to you. Rather, on the contrary, it can be destructive. If someone stops you too often, you start going against it, you react. The upward flow cannot be forced by anybody. This is a very subtle and delicate phenomenon to be understood; if people carry on trying to make you good from all sides, they will force you downward because your ego will feel a resistance. This is very delicate because those who want to help you toward the height cannot force you, they can only persuade you. This is all that I am doing. Sometimes I even see that this can be stopped, but I cannot stop it. I see that you are taking a step downward. I can talk to you, I can make you aware and say, “Stop and much will happen,” but that cannot be said because if I say too much, I will help you to go downward. You will take the step even sooner – because your ego will come in. I can only persuade you. I can divert your mind. I can give you something to play with so that you forget that you were going to take a step there – your mind is diverted. But I cannot say, “No, don’t take that step.” If I say, “No,” it is almost certain that you will take that step.This is the problem. A master has to persuade you. This has become more and more difficult in the modern world. In the old days it was easier because people were taught to be obedient, now they are taught to be rebellious. In the old days people were taught to be disciplined, now they are taught to be undisciplined. To be undisciplined now is something very meaningful; to be disciplined now is just to be part of the establishment. To be disciplined is to be square, to be undisciplined is to be a revolutionary.In the old days it was simple because the master could have said, “No,” and he could have relied on it that the no would do. A simple no can save you many lives of unnecessary struggle. But now it is impossible, now it is difficult. You have to be persuaded in such an indirect way that you never feel that you are being persuaded. You have to be diverted in such a subtle way that you don’t become aware that you are being led somewhere. Even if you become aware that somebody is guiding you, you resist – you do just the opposite. This creates a very new phenomenon in the world, this is something new in the modern age. That’s why to achieve the ultimate has become more and more difficult – an unnecessary wastage of energy. I can see, I am seeing, that you are taking a step in the dark, that you will fall down, will be crippled, but even then I cannot say, “Don’t take that step,” because you won’t listen. If I say no you will feel more attracted toward it.That’s how Adam fell. God said, “No, don’t eat the fruit of this tree!” And he had to. He fell because God said no. Now, if God creates another Garden of Eden, he is not going to commit that mistake again. On the contrary, it will be good to say, “Only eat the fruit of this tree, and all other trees are prohibited.” Then Adam will not be tempted, he will not go toward that tree. The modern Adam particularly is in an absolutely chaotic state of consciousness – much too moist, falling like a dead weight, falling continuously toward the valley, the downward flow. Of course, pulling upward will need effort.Souls take pleasure in becoming moist.A dry soul is wisest and best.The whole of wisdom consists in becoming a dry soul. But try to understand that dry doesn’t mean that you become insensitive; dry doesn’t mean that you become uncaring; dry doesn’t mean that you become aloof, indifferent – no. Dry simply means that you become aware. You care, you have a deep concern, but this concern never becomes an anxiety. You care. You do for others as much as you can – for your wife, friend, daughter, son, your husband, father, mother. Whatever you can do, you do totally. That’s all. Whatever happens, you accept it. There is no frustration. If you do everything possible, what is the frustration? There is no frustration. You don’t feel worried that you should have done this or that. No, you have done everything – it is finished! You come clean out of every relationship, not dirty.But ordinarily, if the soul is moist, after every relationship you come out dirty. The relationship doesn’t cleanse you, it makes you dirty. It is not really the relationship that makes you dirty, it is your moisture. It is just like when you go for a walk and your clothes get wet – when you return you will be very, very dirty because the dirt will cling; not because the road was dirty but because your clothes were wet. The same happens inside; if your soul is moist, whatever you do, you come out of it dirty because all dirt clings to it. If you are dry nothing clings. The dust is blowing about, but it cannot cling to you. Buddha lives in the same world as you do, but every day you feel that you are becoming dirty. Buddha remains fresh, as if he has just taken a bath, clean. The cleanliness depends on dryness, and dryness comes the more you become aware.When you are aware, you become like a flame inside. The flame goes on burning; even when you are asleep, the flame burns. Ordinarily, even when you are awake, you sleepwalk. But when the flame is burning and you are alert, alert to every moment, alert to the whole of what is happening all around; alert – not in a concentrative way because if you concentrate you become alert to one point and you become unconscious of the whole thing. Just alert, an opening, all doors open, all dimensions open, you are simply alert, even while sleeping the doors remain open and the fresh air goes on flowing. Deep down a flame burns in you and that flame dries all moisture, all unconsciousness. This is the meaning of being enlightened; not achieving some god – there is none, no somebody waiting for you. Rather, it is becoming a god oneself because when you are aware, you are a god; when you are perfectly aware, you are a perfect god. God is the absolute dry state of being.And if you become even a little dry – A dry soul is wisest and best – you start becoming wiser because all foolishness consists in being unconscious.There was a case against Mulla Nasruddin in the court, and the magistrate said, “What? You ? again? I wasn’t expecting you this time. First you came for a parking offence, then for fast driving, then for faulty brakes, then for faulty night lights, then for drunken driving. Now what have you come for? Because last time I revoked your driving license!”Nasruddin looked shamefacedly at the ground and said, “Jaywalking, your honor.”A car isn’t needed. If everything is taken from you so that now you think, “I am unconscious because of this,” that won’t help – then you will be found jaywalking. You will do something else because you will remain the same. People think that they are entangled in the world because of their wives. They leave their wives and escape to the Himalayas – but this is just revoking the license. It won’t help because you cannot escape from yourself. You will remain the same in the Himalayas and you will create the same situation again. Your wife was there because of you. You will find another one, you will find something else, and the same problem will arise. A dry soul is needed. That is the Himalaya: the dryness, the alertness.Whatever you do, make it a point not to do it in a sleepy way. Watch every act, thought, feeling. Watch and move. Every moment is very precious – don’t waste it in sleepiness. If you use every moment as an opportunity to become more conscious, by and by consciousness grows. Suddenly, one day, you find that the light is burning inside. If you work hard toward it, suddenly one morning you rise a completely new man – dry, unattached; loving, but not in any way involved; remaining in the world and yet a watcher on the hills. This is the paradox that has to be fulfilled: remaining in the world and yet watching from the hills; simultaneously being in the world and not being in it. This is the wisest and the best soul. You have the potentiality. Just as every seed can become a tree, you can become a Buddha, a Heraclitus, a Jesus. But you have to work hard for it. A lukewarm effort won’t do. You have to boil completely; one hundred degree heat and evaporation happens.Water is moist, flows downward. Heat is dry – with heat even water flows upward. With the flame of awareness even all that you have been thinking is wrong will become right. Love seems to be an entanglement, an imprisonment; with awareness that becomes a liberty, a freedom. Anger without consciousness is a destructive force, a suicidal force. It hurts you, by and by it kills you; it is a poison. With awareness the same energy is transfigured, becomes compassion. The same radiance comes to your face, but not in anger – in compassion. The same blood flows, the same chemistry happens in the body, but a new foreign element has entered and the whole chemistry changes.That is how base metals are transformed into gold. With unconsciousness you are a base metal, with consciousness you will become gold, you are transformed. Just the fire of awareness is needed. You lack nothing else, everything is there. With the fire of awareness a new arrangement happens. You lack nothing, remember; you have everything that a buddha needs. Just one thing is missing – and that, too, is fast asleep within you. You just have to awaken it; just some effort to awaken, some effort to become more alert.Remember, effort will be needed right now. Heraclitus believes in effort. Zen masters believe in no effort, Heraclitus believes in effort – but no effort is also an effort deep down because you have to attain the state of no effort.In the West, much misunderstanding exists about Zen masters because they talk of no effort. But you see, a man has to be with a Zen master working hard for twenty years to achieve no effort. With Heraclitus effort is the base, and if you make real effort, automatically the no-effort follows. When you have done all, you become skilled in it. You become so skilled that there is no need to do it – it happens. If you try toward awareness, by and by there simply is no need to do anything about it – it is there, it is just like breathing. But as you are, Heraclitus will be more helpful than Zen masters. Zen masters came at the culmination of the Buddhist school. One thousand years of hard effort and the Zen masters flowered. Zen masters are just at the end of a long effort, of a long journey. The plant is absolutely ready and it flowers. There is no effort in flowering. What do you do? Nothing is needed; the tree is ready and it flowers by itself. But a long effort is needed to make the tree ready. Ask a gardener how much he has been working. Then you look at the flower and think: “No effort is needed. They come by themselves.”Zen is the culmination of a long effort that started with Buddha. Heraclitus is just the beginning. This is a misfortune; the Greek mind completely missed Heraclitus, couldn’t understand him, and there has never been a culmination – the flowering never happened. The Greek mind follows a totally different path. It never listened to Heraclitus and the flowering never happened. The seeds were lost, they never sprouted. But that’s also why I have chosen Heraclitus – that will make the whole complete. I have been talking about Zen masters, but that can mislead you because that is the end. I must talk about Heraclitus so you can understand the beginning because there has to be a growth from the beginning to the end in you. You have to move from Heraclitus to Basho, from the seed to the flower.Become a dry soul without becoming insensitive. If you become insensitive, you miss. You are simply dry without any awareness. The fire is not converted into awareness; the fire has simply dried you. That won’t help. Life automatically dries many people that way. Look at old people – they are dried. Look at a child – a child is moist. An old man is dry. Life dries all moisture out of him; just the struggle of life and he becomes insensitive, and to protect himself he becomes insulated. That is not the point. You have to be like a child – alive, elegant, graceful, agile – and yet dry like an old man.There is a beautiful story said about Lao Tzu ? that he was already born an old man. He was eighty-two years old when he was born; he lived in his mother’s womb for eighty-two years. This is a beautiful phenomenon! It is said that he was born with gray hair – eighty-two years old, of course he would be! A child and yet not a child; very, very old, completely dry. From his very childhood he was aware. That is the meaning: that he was perfectly aware from the very beginning.It is said about Buddha that when he was born, the first thing he did was to walk seven steps. The first thing! Must have been very old just out of the womb. He was born standing and walked seven steps with perfect awareness. His mother couldn’t believe this. The whole phenomenon was so absurd that it is said that she died simply out of shock. A story is told that whenever a buddha is born to a mother, the mother dies. It is too much, it is unbelievable; you cannot comprehend!But these stories show something. They are not literal truths – they are symbolic, metaphorical. Never ask for history in the East. These people in the East never believed in history. They believe in myth and say that history is useless. What is history? ? just a compilation of newspapers, rubbish; old newspapers, that’s all. They never believed in history, they believed in myth. They say that myth is the essence; history is just on the periphery, just events. Myth is the very essence of all that exists at the center.Be like a child and be like an old man – dry, all desires known, finished; all experiences known, finished; having moved all over the world, reached to yourself, at home at last. Sensitive like a child and dry like an old man. This is all that wisdom is about. This is how one becomes wise.Enough for today.

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The Hidden Harmony 01-11Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

The Hidden Harmony 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Although this Logos is eternally valid,yet men are unable to understand it –not only before hearing it,but even after they have heard it.We should let ourselves be guidedby what is common to all.Yet, although the Logos is common to all,most men live as if each of themhad a private intelligence of his own.Human nature has no real understanding;only the divine nature has it.Man is not rational;only what encompasses him is intelligent.What is divine escapes men’s noticebecause of their incredulity.Although intimately connected with the Logos,men keep setting themselves against it.How can anyone hide from that which never sets?The logos is the logic of the whole, the logic of existence itself; the logos is the ultimate law. It is the same as Lao Tzu calls the Tao, the Upanishads and Vedas have called the rit: the cosmic harmony where opposites meet and disappear, where two become one, where no polarity exists; where all paradoxes are dissolved, all contradictions disappear. What Shankara calls the brahman, Heraclitus calls the logos.The human mind is logical and human logic is based on the polarity. It’s as if you are standing on a bank of a river and cannot see the bank on the other side. Whatever you think about the bank belongs only to the bank you are on, but the river flows with a bank on either side, it cannot flow with just one. The other may be hiding in mist, it may be so far away that you cannot see it, but the other is there. The other bank is not opposite to the bank you are on because deep down in the river they meet. They are one land and they both support the river like two hands or like two wings. The river flows between them and is a harmony of the two. You are standing on only one of the banks and cannot see the other, so you simply believe in the bank you are on. And you create a system which is based on the knowledge of it. When someone talks about the other bank you think he is contradicting you, you think that he is bringing something irrational, mysterious. The other is bound to be opposite because only the tension of the opposites can hold the river. But the oppositeness is not enmity, the oppositeness is a deep friendship; it is the peak of love.This is the problem to be solved. If you can solve this you can understand Heraclitus and understand all those who have become awakened, who have known the other shore. Whatever they say will be contradictory because they have to comprehend both. They have to comprehend both winter and summer, day and night, life and death, love and hate, the peak and the valley.When someone talks about the peak, not referring to the valley at all, his statements will be very rational; you can understand them, they are easy, consistent. When someone talks about the valley, never referring to the peak, he will also be rational. All philosophers are rational; you can understand them very easily. To understand them you need a little learning and training, that’s all, a discipline. But all the mystics are difficult to comprehend. In fact, the more you try to understand them, the more they become mysterious because they talk about the peak and the valley together. They would like to talk about the valley and the peak simultaneously.It is said in the Upanishads, “He is far and near.” What type of statement is this? Either he is far or he is near. The seer immediately says, “He is far” and adds, “He is near.” He is the greatest and he is the smallest. He is the atom and he is the whole. He is within you and without. Heraclitus says, “God is summer and winter.” Summer? It’s okay; you can understand. God is only winter? That too is okay, you can understand. But both summer and winter? You feel dizzy and the mind says, “This statement is contradictory.”Human logic seeks a noncontradictory statement – the logos is contradictory. It uses contradiction just as an architect uses bricks in opposition to make an arch. The opposition gives the tension and the strength, and on that arch you can erect a big building. But if you do not put bricks in opposition to each other – logical, consistent, just like a peak or a valley, this bank or that, not both – the building will fall; the arch cannot be made. It needs the tension of the opposites to create strength. Hence there is man and woman. They are the opposite bricks of life. Their very opposition creates the situation where life can exist. They are the two banks between which the river can flow. But the moment you talk about the peak and the valley together, it becomes incomprehensible. Human logic is consistent. The divine logos is contradictory, yet consistent.Human logic is partial. It tries to understand a part and in trying to understand a part it avoids all that contradicts it. It simply wants to forget all that is contradictory. But the divine is all. It doesn’t choose, everything is involved. It is vast; it is not partial, it is total. That’s the difference between a religious and a philosophical approach. A philosophical approach is logical; that’s why Aristotle says, “Man is a rational being.” And Heraclitus says, “Man is irrational” – because your very reason makes you irrational. The moment you choose the part you have falsified the whole thing. Now this part is only in your mind. In existence this part is always with the opposite, never alone.Human logic says that God is male. There are some believers in God who think that God is female, but the logos must comprehend both. So Hindus have a concept of ardhanarishwar: God is both male and female. That is the true concept from the logos. It looks contradictory. You must have seen statues of Shiva as half man and half woman, half feminine with one breast and half male. That statue looks absurd, but that is the truth. All your statues of God as male or female are irrational. They are not true because how can God be only male; where does the feminine arise from? To whom will the feminine reach? In what source does the feminine exist?You talk about God as a he; that is wrong. There are people who talk about God as a she; that too is wrong. He is he plus she, but the mind cannot understand this and mental understanding is not an understanding at all. You will be able to understand only when you try to understand from your own totality, not just from the mind because inside you these two opposite poles meet. You are also an ardhanarishwar; you are both he and she. You are neither male nor female. If you understand your own totality and if you bring it to the universe, to face the universe, you will be able to comprehend. That’s a mystic vision. That is the logos.So what to do? Ordinarily you are trained to be a man or to be a woman. From the very beginning we say to children, “You are a boy, so behave like one.” To a girl, “You are a girl, so behave like one.” That creates the distinction more and more and the poles are set apart. In a better world we will say to each child, “You are both.” The difference is only of emphasis. “You are neither boy nor girl. You are both.” The difference is only of emphasis. The whole concept of civilization will be different; there will be no question of enmity between man and woman. There will be no problem about who dominates whom. You will be able to see the totality of your being; the totality is beautiful. The part is always ugly.It’s as if you have taken the tree and cut its roots. How long can the tree remain alive? You have taken the tree – the visible; you have cut the roots – the invisible. The tree goes upward and the roots go downward. You have made a consistent thing. You say, “No! How can these two opposite dimensions exist simultaneously? The tree must go upward and if the roots go downward they are two separate things. Cut them!” This is what has happened.Man is a visible tree, woman is like the roots. That’s why all the old teachings say that woman is earth and man is sky. They are together; man is rooted in the woman and the woman is reaching higher and higher through the man. They are one. Hell and heaven are not two, just the same ladder.Heraclitus says, “The way up and the way down are the same.” Hell and heaven cannot be apart. This is the logos: to see the whole ladder. God and the Devil are not two. Theologians will not agree because they will say that you are creating confusion and people will be confused; they will not know who is who. But people are confused and they are confused because of the false logic of the partial human mind. In fact, everything is everything.It happened…Mulla Nasruddin was awarding prizes at a local dog show, but he was very worried about something. He was worried about the way people were dressed. He exclaimed, “Look what’s happening in this world! Look at that person with two puppies. He has cropped hair, is wearing pants and smoking cigarettes. Now I’m at a loss as to whether that is a man or a woman, a boy or a girl.”A bystander replied, “I know she’s a girl because she’s my daughter.”Mulla Nasruddin said, “I am very, very sorry. Had I known that you were her mother, I would not have been so outspoken.”The woman replied, “I’m not her mother, I’m her father.”A meeting of the sexes is now happening. It’s happening in the way people dress, the way they live. That is a very good sign. People are becoming unisex in the way they dress; that’s a very good sign! There is no need to make these distinctions. The reality is a nondistinct whole.Distinctions are being made by the mind and it has created trouble because you are both. If you are fixed on the idea that you are a male, what will you do with the woman inside? She is there. Sometimes she wants to weep and cry, but you cannot weep and cry. You are a man and you have to behave like a man. You don’t listen to nature; you listen to manmade theories that you are a man. Nature has created tear glands in the eyes and if nature intended that a man should never weep and cry, why create them? If nature intended that a man should not feel, why give him a heart?A man feels as much as a woman. He suppresses his femininity and goes on suppressing it; that creates an inner conflict. Rather than using the opposite polarities to flow – rather than using the two opposite polarities as a tension, which creates aliveness – you suppress the polarity, which deadens and kills your sensitivity. If a man is not also a woman, one half is crippled, one half of his being is suppressed. And that suppressed being will take revenge. Sooner or later he will go mad because the suppressed part will throw off the dominating part.Politics is not only outside; politicians have created politics within you. They have created a rift, they have made you fight yourself. And a woman is continuously suppressing the male part. It erupts. It comes up again and again because it is there. Rather than creating a harmony with these two opposite notes, you have been warring, you have been fighting, struggling. The situation would have been beautiful if you could have created a harmony; then a higher quality of being would have arisen within you. Remember, all growth is dialectical.This word dialectical has to be understood; it is against rational. Reason is a linear process, from one step to another, but the plane remains the same; from A to B, but the plane remains the same. That’s why reason is very, very boring. It has no qualities of the opposite; that’s why it becomes boring.Just watch: twenty men are sitting together and suddenly a woman enters. Immediately the atmosphere changes. Those twenty men were feeling a little bored; all those men together are bound to feel bored – unless they are homosexuals. If they are healthy they are bound to feel bored. A woman enters and immediately the atmosphere changes. You can see it on their faces; they start smiling, become more polite and don’t use ugly words. They behave themselves. A woman enters and everything changes. A subtle phenomenon happens inside: the entry of the woman becomes an even deeper entry inside of them, of their inner woman. They become whole. For a moment they are no longer parts. Look at twenty women sitting, chattering together, a man enters and immediately a change happens.If there is only one, the same quality continues; it becomes a boring process. Dialectics means movement through the opposite. Dialectics is: thesis, antithesis, synthesis; one thing against another, a challenge, a tension. Through that tension and challenge a third reality arises, synthesis. The synthesis is always better; it goes on a higher plane.Reason moves horizontally, dialectics moves vertically.If you have no enemy and your life is such that you are not opposed to anything, you will lose all salt from your life. If you are not opposed to anything, you will be tasteless, you will be like a dead stone; not like a flower because movement, energy, challenge, comes from the opposite and you grow. When a man meets a woman a dialectical process starts. That’s why love is so very beautiful and a great growth situation. To be related to the other is to be constantly in a challenging situation. To be only related to oneself is boredom – no opposite.One can move alone if you can find the opposite in your own inner being. That is the meaning of when a man becomes total within and doesn’t need a woman. When a woman becomes total within she doesn’t need a man. A moment comes when a Buddha moves alone, a Mahavira moves alone. There is no need of the other. Not that the woman is bad, but now they have found their inner feminine part, now the dialectics has entered their own being and there is no need to create it outside. Now, inside, there is a continuous thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Now they grow alone, but they also use the same dialectics.The whole of life is dialectical. The logos is dialectical and reason is a process of the same. You can think of it in these terms. Dialectics is heterosexual; reason, rationality, is homosexual. Rationality is homosexual. That’s why homosexuality is growing in the West because the West has accepted Aristotle, reason. Heraclitus is heterosexual. He will include the opposite. If you listen to reason you will be homosexual. If you listen to reason, the whole quality that comes from the opposite, the tension, will be lost. When it is lost, life becomes boredom. When it is lost, life loses the zest, the enthusiasm, hope, possibilities. Everything is lost because every possibility is opened by the opposite.When you fall in love for the first time, you meet the opposite. It is as if you have immediately got wings and can fly; poetry arises in your heart. What is happening? ? the opposite has created something in you. Silence alone is not very beautiful; sound alone is not very beautiful, but the meeting of sound and silence is very, very beautiful – that is music.The meeting of silence and sound is music.Watch what is happening when someone is playing an instrument, a sitar or a piano. What is he doing? ? he is doing a dialectical process. He creates sound and between two sounds he gives a valley, a silence. The greater the peak, the deeper the valley will be. He creates sound, he creates a peak; he moves higher and higher and higher and brings a climax and suddenly ? the gap, the silence.You don’t have a musical ear if you listen only to sound and miss the silence between two sounds. When you listen to the sound and the silence, the peak and the valley together, you encounter a new phenomenon. Every peak creates the valley, every valley creates the peak. They move like yin and yang, they move in a circle. Then there is music, there is the hidden harmony.The logos is dialectical, it is heterosexual. God creates the world because the other is needed. He alone cannot be, the world alone cannot be. If you listen only to the world you will not come to know the inner music of existence; being fed up with the world, you can leave it and only listen to God, but again you miss the harmony. When you listen to the world and God together; when the world becomes the opposite pole; when the world becomes one bank and God the other bank and the river flows – it flows tremendously, it flows beautifully and you hear the harmony. One who hears the harmony between this world and God is a sannyasin.One who leaves this world and moves to the other extreme is logical, rational, but not dialectical. Go and watch people in shops, in markets; they are dull because they are only of this world. Somehow they are working, pulling and dragging because they are there. So what to do? They are doing something. But you cannot hear the music in them. The opposite: the prayer, the meditation, the silence is not there. That’s why the marketplace has become simply sound; it is a chaos.Go to the Himalayas, go to the monasteries; the same shopkeepers who have left the world are sitting there. They, too, have no life; they are dull, dirt collecting on them, dead. You will find dead people in the shops, in the temples and monasteries. They are the same people, they have just moved to the other extreme. Harmony is missing in the market and in the monastery.A man who is harmonious is complex, his simplicity is very, very complex because in his simplicity, the opposite is involved. He has deep compassion, but he can also be angry. He is absolutely detached, but he can also love; he loves and remains detached. In him, the valley and the peak meet. In him, sound and silence meet. If you have a musical ear and a heart, you will see the harmony in such a person. Such a person is rare because he himself has become a logos. Krishna, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Heraclitus, Jesus all live in the logos; they are miniature logoi. The working of their beings is the same as existence; existence mirrors the same in their beings. They don’t reject anything, they use everything.A man who rejects anything does not know what he is doing. If a man rejects sound he will reject silence too because they exist together. Have you ever known silence without sound? Silence has its own sound. When the night is completely silent, with no traffic, no one moving around, everyone asleep; just watch and listen and you will find that the night has its own sound – very subtle, but its own sound. When one goes deeper inside, to the inner night, where all the sounds of the day have stopped, a sound is heard there too. Hindus have called it aumkar, the sound of the ultimate, om. It is heard. It is there. When the ultimate silence descends on you, the ultimate sound also descends on you – immediately! They are together, they cannot be apart. Silence and sound are two aspects of the same coin. Yes, God is silence and sound. This is the logos.Now try to follow this sutra. This is very, very meaningful.Although this Logos is eternally valid,yet men are unable to understand it –not only before hearing it,but even after they have heard it.This is not a question of hearing or not hearing. It is a question of inner growth. I can talk to you about the logos, I can try to explain it to you; you may even have an intellectual glimpse of it, but that will not give you understanding. It is just like talking to a small child about sex. You can talk, you can bring in all your Freuds and Wilhelm Reichs and the child may even listen, but can a child understand it? If the child is very intelligent he will understand intellectually, but to understand sex a biological growth is needed, a certain maturity of the glands and hormones is needed. To understand sex the child must come to the point where he desires it; only then can he understand, otherwise not.I was walking down a street and two small children were walking in front of me. One must have been seven and the other about eight. The smaller one was telling the elder, “I walk to school with a girl. I have carried her bag and books seven times and brought her ice cream three times. Do you think I should kiss her now or not?”The other pondered over it and said, “As I see it, you have already done enough for her. No need to do anything more.”For a child, this is exactly the thing! You cannot talk about sex to a child. First the sexual desire needs to arise; the child should become sexual first. That is also the problem with religion. You cannot talk to anybody unless the desire arises.Religion is just like sex. Sex is the desire to meet the opposite on the level of the body, religion is the desire to meet the opposite on the level of being. It is a desire. It is a thirst. Only when it arises can it be talked about. You may bring intellectual questions; that doesn’t mean anything. You may ask whether God exists or not; that is not the point. Are you thirsty? Has the desire arisen to meet the opposite on the level of being; not on the level of body nor of mind, but at the level of being, your totality? Are you ready for that jump? Then understanding is possible.That’s why Heraclitus says: Although this Logos is eternally valid… The logos is present everywhere: in the trees, the stones, the sky, everywhere. The logos is present in you and all around you because the whole of life is working through the opposite. It is dialectical, it gets enrichment through the opposite. It moves through the antithesis and moves higher to the synthesis, then again the synthesis becomes the thesis. Again the antithesis is created and again a higher synthesis. Life goes on moving that way. It is that way everywhere. It is valid because it is not an argument; it is the way existence is.Remember, Heraclitus is not arguing, he is simply making a statement. I’m also not arguing, I’m simply making a statement of fact. It is how things are. That’s why he says, “I have searched…” And he has found this dialectic, a dialectical process of existence. This is the deepest insight. It is valid. No question of arguing about it. It is the way existence exists. …yet men are unable to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it. Hearing won’t help. Unless you change, unless you become open to the inside, unless you not only try to follow intellectually, understand intellectually, but feel it, exist through it, to imbibe it like food and digest it so that it flows in your bones, it becomes part of your existence ? only then. These are not theories; you need an inner growth before you can understand it.We should let ourselves be guidedby what is common to all.If you cannot understand before hearing it and you cannot understand after hearing it, what is to be done? Heraclitus makes a very beautiful suggestion. It can become really helpful to you. He says:We should let ourselves be guidedby what is common to all.Yet, although the Logos is common to all,most men live as if each of themhad a private intelligence of his own.The logos is common to all; it is the common ground, the common continent. You follow your own intelligence and think of yourselves as islands, separate from everybody. Private intelligence is foolishness; that is the only foolishness possible, the greatest stupidity. Existence is total; intelligence too. It is of the whole, so you should look to the common.That is what Zen masters say. They say, “Become ordinary, become common. Don’t try to become extraordinary.” The more common you become, the more ordinary; the more capable of understanding the logos. Don’t try to be very extraordinary, exceptional because the more you try the more you will become like an island, closed, caved-in upon yourself. You are losing your moorings in existence. You are cutting your roots, becoming uprooted. That has happened in the West ? a feeling of uprootedness. Nobody knows where his roots are. When you feel uprooted, you become an egoist and exist as a self-sufficient entity. And that is not possible!Existence is interrelated, we move into each other. When I am talking to you, what am I doing? ? I am continuously moving in you. When you are listening to me, you are allowing and giving me a door. You breathe and existence enters you; you open your eyes and the sun enters you. Every moment, in twenty-four hours, you are a crossroad. Millions of points, millions of lines meet in you. You are not separate. Just think, can you exist separately? Can you exist totally insulated? You will die within seconds. You are a porous being; existence comes and moves through you. You are just like a room; air flows in, the sun comes and goes continuously and that’s why the room remains clean and fresh. If you are closed you will be dead. The more open you are, the more existence will flow through you; the more existence flows, the more you will be able to understand the logos.You are not; the whole is. You are a false entity. Hence, the insistence on surrender from all the awakened ones. Don’t fight with existence because you don’t know what you are doing, with whom you are fighting. How can you fight with existence? It’s as if a wave is fighting with the ocean, a leaf is fighting the tree. It is foolish! Don’t try to move upstream; that will simply exhaust you. You will be tired and you will feel frustrated because you cannot succeed.When you are against existence, there is no success. That’s why you and everyone else are such failures. Ask successful people; they are all failures. Deep down, they have missed. Ask your Napoleons, Hitlers, Rothschilds – they have all failed; they are failures. What have they attained? They fought, tried to move upstream, wanted to become extraordinary in some way or other and simply destroyed themselves. To try to become extraordinary is suicidal; it is a gradual suicide, a slow poisoning of the whole system. Surrender to existence, flow with it, wherever it goes – willy-nilly, wherever it goes.This word willy-nilly is good. Willy means whether it goes according to your will or not; nilly means whether it negates you or not. Willy means will, and nilly means against the will. Willy-nilly, wherever it goes, you surrender, you float with it. Swimming, even swimming, is not needed.Why have a private goal of your own? Why not move with the destiny of the whole? Why are you so worried about achieving something on your own? How can you achieve it? ? you cannot; this is simply not possible. Only the whole has a destiny, not you. Only the whole is going somewhere, not you. If you can surrender to the whole, everything is achieved because you become the whole and the whole’s destiny becomes your destiny. The goal of the whole is your goal. The goal is not somewhere else; the whole is happy right now, the whole is blissful right now. Only you are worried. Only you are worried because you are not flowing with the river. You are trying to cut small corners. Who are you and how do you think it can be possible? You will simply fail.Man always fails, only God succeeds.Listen: We should let ourselves be guided by what is common to all. Look to the commonness of things and find the common. The more common, the truer; the more exceptional, the more false. Be ordinary and you are nearer the ground, you are nearer the truth. If you can be absolutely ordinary, what else is needed? Every moment becomes such a benediction. What is the problem when you are absolutely ordinary? You eat and eating is a sacrament. You sleep and sleeping is a sacrament. You walk in the sun, what more do you need? You breathe; what else is needed to be happy? You love; what more are you asking? Everything is already given; you are just trying to be exceptional. Follow the rule, the common and don’t try to be the exception, otherwise you will be in misery.Hell is for all the extraordinary people. They may be in politics, in art, literature. Hell is for all geniuses wherever they are; for all extraordinary people, all egoists. Ego is hell, it gives you suffering because you start unnecessarily conflicting with everything. You are never at ease and unease becomes your lifestyle; with the ego you will always feel unease. Ego is a discomfort; it is the nail in the shoe that continuously pinches, but you want to be extraordinary.Then…I was sitting with Mulla Nasruddin and his wife passed by and went out of the door. He said, “Look! There goes a great woman.”I said, “What do you mean by ‘great’?”He replied, “She is trying to wear a size four shoe on her size six feet. There goes an extraordinary woman!”She is suffering, but trying to be exceptional.In the past in China millions of women used iron shoes to make their feet small, so they would look extraordinary. These women suffered a long time, their whole life and became almost crippled. In China long feet belonged to laborers, the poor, not the rich. It seems life belongs to the poor, not to rich people. So the higher the status of the woman, the queen being the highest, for thousands of years the queens of China were not even able to walk because they had such small feet. It was impossible because feet are always in the right proportion to the body. You cannot have small feet because nature knows better than you. But they were trying to improve upon nature. They suffered a long time. The whole misery of man can be reduced to a single law: if you try to be exceptional you will suffer. Nothing will satisfy you; you will find discontent everywhere.Mulla Nasruddin was ill and admitted to hospital. There he created a hell all around himself because you cannot find a greater complaint-maker than Mulla Nasruddin; he is simply a continuous complaint. The whole hospital was troubled – the nurses, the doctors. Just to get rid of him, they treated him as carefully as possible so he would quickly be okay and leave. He recovered and the day came for him to be discharged, but again he complained. The doctor heard his noise and asked the nurse, “Now, what is he complaining about? There is nothing to complain about. He’s leaving today.”The nurse said, “Now he is saying, ‘How can I be cured before the medicines are finished? There must be something wrong.’”This type of mind comes automatically to an egoist. He is always searching, finding something wrong. When you search, you will find and you will find more than you ask. This is the trouble in the world; whatever you try to find you will find. If you are trying to find something wrong – and the ego always tries to find the wrong because an ego needs continuous discomfort, it exists in discomfort. When everything is okay the ego disappears. Chuang Tzu says, “When the shoe fits, the body is forgotten, the feet are forgotten.” When everything is forgotten, how can you cling to the ego? The ego needs your shoe to continue pinching you so that you can remember who you are. That’s why an egoist cannot love, cannot meditate or pray because if he really prays, everything fits and the ego disappears. The ego means self-consciousness. When something is wrong, only then is there self-consciousness. When everything is right, there is no self-consciousness.Look to the common, watch out for the common and don’t try to be exceptional. But we want to be exceptional. People come to me and if I say to them, “Sit silently and don’t be bothered so much about meditation and prayer; by and by it will grow.” They reply, “But, by just sitting?” They need something exceptional. If I say to them, “Stand on your head,” it’s okay.That’s why all over the world, teachers who instruct people to stand on their heads are flourishing; something difficult, uncomfortable, appeals. People try ridiculous postures in the name of Yoga. Simply ridiculous! The more ridiculous, the better; the more difficult, so that you cannot do them, then the ego gets a challenge. So do them! Make absurd postures and think that you are doing something great. Life is simply great. There is no need to improve upon it. If nature wanted you to sit or stand on your head, you would have been created that way. Listen to nature, follow it and don’t create any conflict with it; just follow it and soon you will attain a deep silence which comes when one becomes ordinary.Just a few days ago – in India it is a constant problem – a young man came and asked, “Should I get married or not?”I replied, “Just be ordinary. Why not get married?”He wasn’t willing because not marrying is something exceptional. Marrying is ordinary, becoming a householder and having children is so ordinary. He said, “But all great men have remained unmarried.”I said to him, “If you want to be great, go somewhere else. To me that is a disease. If you want to be ordinary, only then come to me. Do whatever your nature and whatever your inner feeling wants.” Then I said to him, “Just look inside. Close your eyes and tell me what you would like.”He replied, “Of course I would like to marry, but that looks so ordinary; wasting your life in ordinary things.”But the whole of life consists of ordinary things. Greatness is not in things, greatness is in the quality that you bring to your life, to ordinary things.Just look at Jesus having supper with his friends. He looks more ordinary than a Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree. But the gesture of being ordinary is so beautiful; drinking, eating with friends is so beautiful that nobody can be so beautiful just sitting under a bodhi tree. Jesus has a quality of being just ordinary.Buddha remained a king even under the bodhi tree. He was born exceptional, extraordinary; he lived and was brought up as a prince. That became his structure. Even under the bodhi tree he is not a beggar. If you go near him you can feel it. You can miss a Jesus if you meet him on the road; you cannot miss Buddha. But I say to you, “Jesus is nearer the logos.”It happened that way to Buddha because that was the way he was brought up; his past was just that way. But how many people can be born as princes and how many people can be taught that way? Jesus is more human. In all his humanity he is divine because this ordinariness is to follow the common.Jainas and Buddhists come to me and say, “This Jesus drinks and eats like ordinary people; he stays with ordinary people. How can you say that he is of the same stature as Buddha and Mahavira?” I can tell you that he is exactly how one should be. Mahavira and Buddha may be exceptional, but not everybody can be exceptional and there is no need to be. It may have been natural for them, so it’s okay if they followed their nature. But millions and millions of people cannot sit under bodhi trees doing nothing. They will have to move, to work and do ordinary things in the world.If there is no way to reach the logos ordinarily, it will remain only for a chosen few. That doesn’t look just; the whole existence seeming to favor only a few. Remember, if existence favors only a few, if it is partial, what’s the need to give you birth? No, nature never favors anyone; it is for all, for all those who are ready to partake. If you are ready to participate, then bliss is for all. Jesus is a carpenter’s son, a poor man. For millions of people that’s how it should be. Someone is a carpenter’s son, someone is a goldsmith’s son and someone is a shoemaker’s son. This is how life is! We have lived according to the exceptional people too much and because of that so much misery has been unnecessarily created.Live ordinarily, find the common and don’t try to be uncommon; otherwise, with the very effort you will cut your roots from the logos. The logos is common to all, yet most men live as if each of them had a private intelligence of his own. If you live according to the common, if you follow the common and don’t try to become an individual, you will be nearer the logos and you will be able to understand it.This is the paradox: those who try to be exceptional individuals miss; they miss all individuality and extraordinariness. Those who remain with the ordinary ? with such an ordinariness that there is nothing to claim about it and who never strive to be individuals ? attain the greatest individuality this existence can offer you. Those who remain ordinary become most extraordinary and that extraordinariness comes as a gift. It is nothing on your part, you have not been striving for it. Human nature has no real understanding; only the divine nature has it. Yes, it is as it should be.We come from the whole, we go back to the whole. Unknown we come, unknown we go ? not knowing from where we are coming, not knowing to what we are going. The whole process is mysterious. How can you have a private intelligence? This is a little difficult and has to be understood very deeply. It is one of the most important points that Heraclitus has given. Consciousness is also common. Just as fish exist in the ocean, the common ocean, we exist in a common consciousness. Your consciousness and my consciousness are not two; just two centers of the same. All around you is consciousness. We are all forms, but within the forms flows the same, the one. That’s why sometimes you also feel a common ground.Someone is sad; he hasn’t said a single thing to you. You are sitting next to him and suddenly you feel sadness spreading through you. Someone is happy, just happy, not saying anything to you and suddenly you feel happiness entering you. If twenty people are sitting happily together and you put a sad man amongst them, within minutes he will feel a change; his climate will change. Amongst sad people you become sad; amongst long faces you become a long face. Amongst happy people you become happy. That’s why if you enjoy playing with children you become a child again. You may be playing with a child and suddenly you forget all your worries and the world; you become like a child. It is very refreshing. How does it happen? ? it happens because consciousness is a common phenomenon. When you play with a child you have to become a child because you meet the child on common ground.In the East, because of this, they have insisted that just being near the master, just being near an awakened one and being in the presence, is very, very valuable. In the West they cannot understand this: “What do you mean, ‘in the presence’?” In the East they say: “We are going for darshan.” Darshan means just to see the master; nothing to ask, just being in the presence. They have a certain word for this being in the presence, satsang: being near the truth. If you sit silently with a master, sooner or later you dissolve into each other. The consciousnesses meet. The master enters you, you enter the master. Just simply being near the master, not doing anything, not even making any effort ? one day you can attain. That too is possible, but you have to be very, very open. You can attain, just sitting silently, relaxing, not doing and not creating any barriers. Many have attained because consciousness is the ocean and we are the fish in it. Everything affects everyone else.Whatever happens in this existence affects everyone else. Not only now; whatever has happened in the past is affecting us also. Not only that; whatever is going to happen in the future is also affecting us because the whole of existence culminates at this moment. Past, future, present, all culminate, converge.There is no possibility of a private intelligence. Those people we call very, very talented, geniuses, they also feel it. Ask Einstein or Madame Curie, they also feel it. Einstein says that whatever he discovered, he discovered in moments when he was not, when something suddenly possessed him – the total consciousness. Ask the poets; they say that whenever something happens, they are not. They become a vehicle; the common consciousness possesses them.Madame Curie received the Nobel Prize. It should have been given to the common ground. She was making so much effort to find a solution to a particular mathematical problem and she couldn’t find the way. She struggled and struggled for two years and one night, tired, she fell asleep. Something happened in her sleep; in sleep you are more open, you are not an egoist, you are a nobody and you don’t cling to the identity. That’s why in the morning you feel fresh again, younger, rejuvenated because you have been into the common ground. You moved into consciousness, the ocean. You were not clinging to the private intelligence. For a few seconds you dropped into the whole and the whole revived you, refreshed you.During the night something happened to Madame Curie; she got up, went to her table and wrote down the solution to what she had been working on for years. She slept again and in the morning she had completely forgotten what had happened in the night. She took a bath, ate her breakfast, did everything and went to the table. She was simply amazed. The solution was there! But who had done it? There was no one else there. Only she was in the room. The servant had come in and couldn’t have done it. She had been working hard. “What’s happening?” She looked again in more detail. It was her own handwriting! A little different because in the night, in sleep… She closed her eyes and tried to remember what had happened. She saw the whole thing like a dream; she had something, so she got up and wrote it down.You unnecessarily claim that common consciousness is yours. It has never been yours. It is always floating. It is all around you. Become more porous, become more allowing, a deep let-go because only the whole can understand the whole. How can the part understand the whole? How can an atomic part understand the whole? The whole can flow through the part and if the part allows it… That’s what meditation is all about, allowing the whole to flow and you disappear completely from the scene ? suddenly you have become the whole.Human nature has no real understanding;only the divine nature has it.Man is not rational;only what encompasses him is intelligent.Not you, but the ocean around you, what encompasses. Not you, but what surrounds you, what is within and without you. Not you because “you” is just a fallacy.Man is not rational;only what encompasses him is intelligent.What is divine escapes men’s noticebecause of their incredulity.You doubt, you cannot believe, cannot trust and that’s why what is divine escapes men’s notice because of their incredulity. There is only one barrier and that is doubt. There is only one gate and that is trust. If you trust nature, everything falls into its right place. If you distrust nature, everything is disturbed.Why is it so difficult to be natural? ? there is only one difficulty. If you are natural you cannot be somebody. There is no other difficulty. Sex arises, you follow it; then brahmacharya, celibacy, becomes a fight against nature. You are hungry, you eat; fasting becomes a conflict with nature. When you don’t feel hungry, you force yourself to eat; that is also fighting with nature. You go against nature when you don’t feel like making love and you carry on doing it because the wife needs, because society says, this and that. Nature means just following the inner being, whatever it feels, without any imposition from your ego. It will destroy and shatter your ego.Live like an animal with only one difference; be alert. That’s all. Live like an animal with only one difference; be aware. Don’t fight with nature; just be a witness and allow it. Wherever it leads, is good. All your goals projected from the mind are false. Whatever you do, you won’t succeed. Finally, nature succeeds because only the whole can succeed. So why move unnecessarily into a fight in the beginning? I see people fighting in millions of ways; they change extremes, but they fight.In the past, in the East and also in the West, people were fighting against sex. They said that there is something wrong in sex because in sex you become natural like an animal and all the preachers have been saying that you should not be like an animal. What is wrong in being animal? Look at the birds, look at the animals; go to the forest and see them! Don’t go to the zoo because there you will not see real animals; they are corrupted by human beings. Go to the wild.What is wrong with animals? They look so beautiful, nothing is ugly around them. All the moralists, all the so-called religious people, have been teaching you: “Don’t be an animal!” And your ego feels that this is a good goal. How can you be an animal? Sex brings total animality to you. In sex you feel so absolutely animal. You don’t feel like that in anything else because everything else you have changed, polished. You have painted, cultured, cultivated everything – everything! You eat, but you have made such a ritual out of eating and everything around it, that it doesn’t seem to be at all related with hunger. What you eat is not nutritious; it is a show, a facade. Everything is false, plastic flowers all around. But when you move in love, when you make love to a woman or to a man, you become absolutely animal.You have tried to hide that too. That’s why man makes love at night. Only man makes love at night; otherwise, animals make love in the day. If you make love in the day, it will be deeper because when the sun is in the atmosphere you are more vital. The night is for rest, but man makes love at night because animals make love in the day and he has to make a distinction. What type of egoist effort is this? In the dark, not even with the light on because in the dark you don’t have to face the reality that you are behaving like animals. You don’t make any sound while making love. In fact, you make love as if something has to be done and finished as soon as possible; within seconds it is finished. You have been taught to be against it. Your ego feels good.Now, in the West, the wheel has turned a complete circle. Since Freud and Wilhelm Reich, sex has been taught more and more. Now, a new thing is happening in the West; if you don’t make love one day, you feel guilty. It seems you have to feel guilty whatever you do. Before you were making love and feeling guilty. “Why do you make love? Why this animality? When will you transcend this? When will the day come when you will not need it?” Now in the West, if one day you don’t feel like making love because you feel tired, you feel guilty and feel that you are doing something wrong; you feel you have to do it. You have to do something, you cannot allow nature to make its own course. They are both the same to me, there is no difference.In the past, women were not allowed to have an orgasm because how can a woman, so pure, have an orgasm? A woman is a goddess; she should behave like one. So in the past women were simply tolerating sex, just lying like dead bodies, corpses. Even if you make love to a corpse, the corpse will move a little, but not women – goddesses! They are so pure and innocent in nature, they don’t know what is happening; it is just the man who is dragging them into it. So they would lie down with closed eyes because even if a woman leaves her eyes open, that seems like she is curious, interested. Now, in the West, they have created the opposite. If a woman cannot achieve orgasm it is a problem, something is wrong. Now it is a sin not to achieve orgasm. Before, it was a sin to achieve orgasm.In the past, in the East and in the West, women completely forgot that they could achieve orgasm. They completely forgot that a beautiful ecstasy is possible through sex; if you don’t move and if nature is allowed and movement is allowed while making love, lovers will go completely wild. They will scream, make noises, go mad; that is so animal-like. They will be so ecstatic. If you can be ecstatic in love, soon that ecstasy will open a door for a higher ecstasy. You transcend and the real brahmacharya happens. That is not anything you can force on yourself; that happens through nature itself.If one follows nature, one reaches.There is no need for you to make any arrangements for the ultimate goal to happen; nature has already made everything. You are a seed and if you allow nature, the whole blueprint exists in you. It is just like a seed: we sow the seed in the ground and it has the whole blueprint, the whole architecture of the tree. Every leaf that will be produced in the future, every flower that will bloom in the future. The seed has every blueprint in it – only nature has to be allowed.You have to water it, take care of it; you have to give it good soil and fertilizers – finished! You need not do anything. You need not teach the seed to behave, do this or that or never say to it, “Never do this, otherwise you will never be a tree.” If you teach seeds, trees will not exist in the world because the seeds will go completely mad not knowing what to do. Seeds depend on the universal consciousness, not on a private intelligence.Man has the blueprint to be a god, just to be a god, nothing less. Man is the seed of God because human consciousness is just the beginning. It has to grow and grow and come to a point where it becomes universal. Nothing is needed on your part. In fact, no discipline, creed, dogma, religion. Nature is enough. You simply have to allow it. You have to be receptive to it and move in trust because you can move only in trust.If the seed asks, “What is the guarantee that if I leave my shell, which covers me and protects me, that I will grow into a tree? What is the guarantee? And if there is no guarantee I will cling to my shell.” Then what will happen? If the bird in the egg says, “How can I get out? Who is there to give me a guarantee that it will be a better world than I am already in?” What will happen? The shell is a security, it protects. The bird is beautifully protected in the egg, but this is not life. It is like death; of course completely protected, but protected in a grave. Who can give you the guarantee? ? there is no one to give you a guarantee; you have to trust.The seed trusts and dissolves in the earth. It sprouts into a beautiful tree, flowers, enjoys existence and becomes ecstatic. The bird comes out of the egg, leaves the known for the unknown, takes wing and moves into the vast sky. Nobody knows what is going to happen. With no goal in view, with no purpose or plan, it just takes wing, feels ecstatic on the winds, moves, goes to the farthest corner of the sky and moves into the unknown.That is how it is also going to happen to you. You are a seed, you are an egg; you are a possibility. Heraclitus hits it exactly right and comes to the exact point where you miss. What is divine escapes men’s notice because of their incredulity. Because you doubt, you miss. Trust and you can reach. Nothing else is needed; just trust, so that nature can unfold.Although intimately connected with the Logos,men keep setting themselves against it.How can anyone hide from that which never sets?Existence is always, always and always. It never sets. How can you hide from it? It lasts forever and ever. How can you fight it? What you are doing is simply ridiculous, absurd. It is stupid to fight. The only wisdom consists in a let-go, surrender. All that is beautiful starts happening. It is a happening, it is not a doing.You can create barriers, but you cannot bring it. You can escape from it, you can close your eyes to it, but you cannot create it. It is already there, it is already the case. Only you are missing it because you are sitting with closed eyes ? the doubt closing your eyes, closing your heart – as if you are asleep, intoxicated in doubt.Karl Marx has said, “Religion is the opium for the masses.” Exactly the opposite is the case. Doubt is the opium, not religion. Through doubt you miss the truth. Through trust you allow it to reach you and you allow yourself to reach it.Meditate more and more on trust. Imbibe the feeling of trust. Vibrate with a trusting heart. Sing, dance, pray with a trusting heart and soon you will see that only trust pays finally. Doubt can kill. It is negative, it cannot give you life.Doubt is death. Trust is life.As the trust grows more and more, the more abundant life becomes available to you.Enough for today.

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The Hidden Harmony 01-11Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

The Hidden Harmony 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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This universe,which is the same for all,has not been made by any god or man,but it has always been, is, and will be –an ever-living fire,kindling itself by regular measuresand going out by regular measures.The phases of fire are craving and satiety.The sun is new each day.There is no God as a separate creator of the world. There cannot be because the creation, the creator and the creativity are the same; they are not separate. Existence is one, so how can the creator and the created be separate? Existence itself is divine. There is no creator creating it; it itself is the creator, it itself is the creativity.Heraclitus is a non-dualist. All those who have known are bound to know that duality exists because of the mind; the mind cannot see the one, it can only see the two. The moment it perceives anything, it divides. With the mind, the other is necessary. If it sees creation, it immediately thinks of the creator because how is creation possible without a creator? But if you encounter the creator with this mind, it will see that there must be some other creator; otherwise how can this creator be?Mind is an infinite regress; it goes on and on dividing. That’s why the mind never reaches any conclusive state. Philosophy believes in the mind; that’s why philosophy never reaches any conclusion. One has to see the totality without bringing the mind in because the mind is the factor of duality; it divides. Division is the nature of mind. If you say “day” the mind immediately brings night because how can the day be without the night? If you say “love” the mind brings hate because how can love be without hate? If you bring life, the mind brings death because how can life be without death? But life and death are one. One phenomenon, one energy. Life is the manifestation of that energy and death is again relaxation. Life is coming to a form, death is moving into the formless again. The end and the beginning meet. Life is not separate from death, death is not separate from life; they meet and mingle. Even to say that they meet is not right because the mind immediately comes in and says that if there is a meeting there must be two. It is not a meeting, it is one phenomenon.Heraclitus says desire and satiety are two phases of fire. You feel hungry, you eat and you feel satisfied. Have you ever noticed that hunger and satiety are one? They have to be one because the same thing, food, changes both. Food becomes a bridge between hunger and satiety, desire and desirelessness. If they are really separate they cannot be bridged. If they are really different there is no possibility of any bridge. Hunger will remain hunger and satiety will remain satiety. Where and how will they meet? But they meet. The mind thinks hunger is against satiety. Just try to understand it. Move a little deeper in it. The mind says that hunger is different from satiety, but when you are satisfied again a circle has started which will bring hunger; when you are hungry a circle has started which will bring satiety. Are they two or just a single phenomenon? When you eat, hunger disappears, but the moment hunger disappears a new circle starts.A new morning is a beginning of the evening. A new birth is a beginning of death. You cannot see so far away. Every morning you become hungry, you eat and you become satisfied. In the evening you are hungry again; you eat and achieve satiety and never see that they are both one. One helps to bring the other. Can you be satisfied if you are never hungry? Is there a possibility of satiety if you are never hungry? If you are never hungry, don’t think that you will be in a state of satiety; the satiety cannot come without hunger. If there is no morning, don’t think that there will always and always be evening. There will be no evening at all. If there is no death, don’t think that there will be life eternal; there will be no life at all because death creates the situation, sets an energy phenomenon. Every life brings death, every death brings life again.To the mind, these appear as two because the mind cannot see through opposites. When you don’t see from the mind, from the logical standpoint; when you simply look into the phenomenon itself, the totality of it, the two disappears and only one remains.That is the thing with God as creator and the universe as his creation. Not only are ordinary people deceived by the mind, great theologians are also deceived by it. They say, “God created the world.” This statement is juvenile, it is childish. Nobody has created existence; it is, it is simply there because if you bring in creation, millions of problems arise. That’s why theology brings more problems and no solution. They create a theory, a hypothesis, to solve many problems. Nothing is solved. On the contrary, new questions arise around the hypothesis. They tried to solve the problem of existence by bringing God in, that he created it. They created millions of problems and have not been able to solve them. Once you start on the wrong track you go on missing because one thing leads to another. There is a relatedness; if one thing is wrong, it will lead to another wrong proposition. Unless you start from the very beginning toward the truth, you will never reach because the beginning is the end.Theology brings in God to solve a few problems because there are problems such as, “Who created the world?” The curiosity arises and says, “Such a beautiful phenomenon! Who created it?” The mind has an itching sensation that it should be answered. “Who created it?” The first thing is to ask whether the question is right. Never raise a question without asking first if the question is relevant. What’s the criterion for a question being relevant? If a question is such that whatever answer is given, the same question can be raised again, the question is irrelevant, it is not right.You ask, “Who created the world?”Someone replies, “God.”You can ask the same question again, “Who created God?” The question hasn’t changed, not a bit. The same question is still relevant. So someone replies, “God A created the world,”You ask, “Who created God A?”He says, “God B created God A,”You ask, “Who created God B?”He says, “God C created God B.”The question remains the same so all the answers are false. If the question isn’t changing a little bit, you are not progressing toward truth at all. If all the answers to a question are false, please meditate on the question again. The very basis of the question itself must be wrong; otherwise how can all the answers be wrong? At least one answer must be true, but no answer has proved to be true. Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians have all provided answers, but the question remains. Thousands of years working on the question, “Who created the world?” and not a single answer has been given which satisfied. This means that at the very base, from the very beginning, you have taken the wrong line of research, the wrong attitude. So the first thing is to question the question itself, whether it is relevant.Who created existence? This question is irrelevant for many reasons because then the question is possible, “Why did he create it? What was the need? Why couldn’t he live without creating it? What desire possessed him? And if God created this universe, why is there so much misery and suffering which cannot be accounted for?”Why is a child born crippled, blind, ill? If God is the creator, can’t he correct the pattern of the world? Or is your God a little neurotic, enjoys suffering? A sadist, who enjoys this torture? Millions of people dying in a war, being killed, thrown into the fire and gas chambers; he is the creator and he is simply not worried! He can’t even stop a Hitler unnecessarily killing millions of Jews, for no reason at all. What type of creator is this? If God created the world, he must be a Devil because the world doesn’t seem so good. It cannot come out of good and seems to be inconsistent with good. God means “the good” and this world doesn’t show any sign of goodness; just exploitation, violence, war, killing, misery, anguish, tension, madness. What is the reason of this creation? If God is responsible, he is the greatest criminal.These problems arise and theologians cannot solve them. They have to create more false theories. They say that there is a Devil and it is his work; they fall into their own trap. First they create the God that created the world and then they have to create a Devil because they cannot explain the world through goodness. The world looks so evil that they have to create a Devil. Then the question arises, “Who created the Devil?” They go on and on and get into such a desertlike effort which leads nowhere. Nobody reads their big volumes on theology – nobody! When you start you reach nowhere and they go on and on and on. It seems like a broken gramophone record; they go on repeating the same thing, you go on asking the same question and they go on round and round. All theology is beating about the bush. Not a single problem has been solved. Theology is the most useless effort that man has ever made. It starts with, “God created the world.”Men like Heraclitus, Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, don’t talk about these things. They simply say, “Existence is God. Nobody has created it. No creator is responsible for it, so don’t raise unnecessary questions. And don’t unnecessarily waste your time in answering.” Existence is and God is not separate from it. God is existence, the totality, not a separate being, a person – the totality. It comes out of its own and dissolves.Heraclitus says, “It is fire.” Fire is a beautiful symbol. It gives you a very dynamic energy and indicates that existence is a dynamic, dialectical energy; it moves on its own. When you say “energy” it means something. When you say “God” you have moved into something which will not lead anywhere.Energy is truth.You can feel it here and now. You are energy, the birds singing in the trees are energy, the trees reaching toward the sky are energy; the stars moving, the sun rising every day. Everything is energy. Energy is neither good nor bad. It is always neutral. So there is no need to create a Devil, no need to explain anything; energy is neutral.If you are miserable, it is because of you, not because of a God or a Devil. If you are miserable, you are behaving wrongly with the energy. If you move with the energy, you will be happy and blissful. If you move against it, it is you who are responsible. Remember, if there is no God, you are responsible for whatever happens. If you are responsible there is a possibility to transform oneself. If God is responsible, how are you going to transform yourself? God seems to be a trick of the mind to throw responsibility on someone else because the mind is always throwing the responsibility on someone else. Whatever happens, you always throw the responsibility on someone else. If someone has insulted you and you are angry; he has created the anger not you. If you are sad, someone else is making you sad and unhappy. If you are frustrated, someone is blocking your way. Always someone else is responsible, never you. This is the attitude of the mind: to make someone else responsible and you are freed of the responsibility. This is why you are miserable.The responsibility is yours. If you take it as yours, you can do something about it. What can you do if it is someone else’s? If others create the sadness, you will always remain sad because what can you do about it? There are millions of people all around and if they make you frustrated then nothing can be done. You will remain frustrated and this is your destiny because how can you change others?If you are responsible, you become a master immediately. Now you can do something. You can change yourself and your attitudes. You can look toward the world with a different attitude and if you feel miserable, somewhere you are a misfit in the total energy system. That’s all that sin means: you are a misfit, not knowing how to move in this total energy system. The energy system is neutral. If you follow it you will be happy. If you don’t follow it, you will be miserable. This is the logos, the rit, the Tao.For example, if you are feeling thirsty and you don’t drink water, you will be miserable because in this energy system water gives you satiety and the thirst disappears. If you are feeling cold, you move near a fire because in this energy system the fire is the source of all warmth, heat. If you move away from a fire when you feel cold, you will be miserable. Nobody is responsible. If you feel thirsty, hot and move near a fire, you will be in hell!I have heard…A man, a great sinner, died. Everybody knew that he was going to hell. It was so certain, obvious, no question about it. He was a great sinner, but also a very great leader. He was a very rich man because sin can be very successful; it pays in this world.Thousands were following him; everyone being fully aware that he was going to hell, but he was still a very powerful man. As the procession was heading toward the cemetery, by accident a truck loaded with coal came on the road and started following the procession. The truck was taking its own route, but it collided with the procession.Mulla Nasruddin, who was in the procession, exclaimed, “I was absolutely certain that this man was going to hell. But I could never have imagined that he had to provide his own coal!”Hell is fire, hot. But I tell you that you are providing your own coal. This is how things are; if you move against nature you will be in misery. Misery means moving against nature and if you understand it, misery is a good indication. It shows that somewhere you are going wrong, that’s all. Put things right! Misery is a help. Anguish, anxiety, tension, are indications that somewhere, something is going wrong. You are not with the total. Somewhere you have started your own private movement and you will be in misery. Heraclitus says, “Private intelligence is false.” Intelligence is with the whole. Don’t be too clever. You cannot be intelligent on your own. If you move with existence you will be intelligent, you will have a clarity of perception, you will be wise. If you move on your own you will be a fool.An idiot is a person who is completely closed within himself, caved-in. He has no contact with the total energy system. That is his idiocy. A wise man is one who is not closed at all; the air flows through him, the cosmos flows through him. He has no barriers, no closed doors. He has no privacy of his being. He is porous. Whenever he feels miserable, he immediately makes use of the indication and puts himself right. It is a symptom. It is just like an illness where you are not behaving naturally with your body and some illness erupts. That illness is a friend. It is saying, “Behave, change your ways! Somewhere you are going against nature.” If you don’t eat for three or four days, feel dizzy, hungry, you feel sad. The whole body needs energy, so it is saying to you, “Eat some food!” Always remember, energy is neutral, so the whole quality of your being depends on you. You can be happy or unhappy; it is up to you. No one else is responsible.When you feel hungry, eat; when you feel thirsty, drink; when you feel sleepy, sleep. Don’t force nature. For a little while you can force it because that much freedom is possible. If you want to fast, you can for a few days, but each day you will become weaker and weaker and weaker; each day you will be in more and more misery. If you don’t want to breathe, you can stop breathing for a few seconds, but only for a few seconds; that much freedom is possible. That’s not very much and if you don’t breathe well, soon you will feel that you are choking, having a dying sensation.All misery exists as an indication to you that somewhere you have gone wrong, gone off the track. Come back immediately! If you start listening to the body, to nature, to your inner being, you will be more and more happy. Become a good listener to nature. Listen to the logos. Listen to those who have awakened to the logos and you will always find them natural. They don’t force anything, they don’t push the river. They simply flow with it; that is their blissfulness. There’s no God responsible.We create God out of our own fear and necessity. We feel so helpless in our misery, so powerless, so impotent in our pain, that we create a God out of this fear. One to whom we can pray, to whom we can say, “Don’t give me so much trouble.” A God who we can praise and feel that if we praise him, he will become more and more favorable toward us. Do you think God can become prejudiced? If you pray, do you think he will be on your side? Or if you don’t pray, he will not be on your side?A small child was being told by his parents, “If you don’t behave, God will punish you.” In the past the child had always been put right; whenever he was not behaving well, or doing something which the parents thought was not good and they had used this trick, “God will punish you; he will be angry.” And this had always helped.This time the child laughed and said, “I’m not worried about God because he doesn’t know me at all.”They said, “This is something new! You never said this before. Why do you think he doesn’t know you?”The child replied, “For two weeks I haven’t prayed and nothing has happened. So either he thinks I’m dead, or he has completely forgotten me. So now there’s no need to be worried about it. Now I am free! Otherwise, two weeks and no sign from him?”We have created God out of our need. God has not created you, you have created God. It is your need because you are helpless and you project everything that you miss on him. If you are powerless, you say that he is omnipotent. If you are ignorant, you say that he is all- knowing. If you are blind and move about and grope in the darkness, you say that he is omniscient. This is a trick of the mind. Whatever you miss in yourself you project on him and think the balance is recovered by saying, “Now I can pray to this omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being and he will help me.”These are tricks. You can be helped only by yourself. Of course, nature will be with you if you are with nature. No other prayer will do. This is the only prayer. To me, prayer is a feeling, a flowing with nature. If you want to talk, talk, but remember, your talking is not going to affect existence. It will affect you and that may be good, but prayer is not going to change God’s mind. It may change you, but if it is not changing you then it is a trick. You can go on praying for years, but if it doesn’t change you, drop it, throw it away; it is rubbish. Don’t carry it any more. Prayer is not going to change God. You think that if you pray, God’s mind will change; he will be more favorable, he will be tipped a little toward your side. There is nobody listening to you. This vast sky cannot listen. This vast sky can be with you if you are with it; there is no other way to pray.I also suggest you pray, but praying should be just an energy phenomenon; not a devotee and God phenomenon, but an energy phenomenon. You simply become silent, you simply open yourself. You raise both your hands toward the sky, palms uppermost, head up, just feeling existence flowing in you. As the energy, or prana, flows down your arms, you will feel a gentle tremor. Be like a leaf in a breeze, trembling. Allow it, help it. Let your whole body vibrate with energy and just let whatever happens happen. You will again feel a flowing with the earth. Earth and heaven, above and below, yin and yang, male and female; you float, you mix, you drop yourself completely. You are not. You become one ? merge. After two to three minutes, or whenever you feel completely filled, bow down to the earth and kiss it. You simply become a vehicle and allow the divine energy to unite with that of the earth.These two stages should be repeated six more times so that each chakra can become unblocked. You can do it more times, but if you do less you will feel restless and unable to sleep. The best time to do this prayer is at night, in a darkened room, going to sleep immediately afterward; or it can be done in the morning, but it must be followed by fifteen minutes’ rest. This rest is necessary, otherwise you will feel as if you are drunk, in a stupor.This merging with energy is prayer. It changes you. When you change, the whole of existence changes because with your attitude the whole of existence changes for you. Not that existence changes –existence remains the same – but now you are flowing with it and there is no antagonism. There is no fight, no struggle; you are surrendered to it. Otherwise, all things are tricks ? and man goes on inventing.I have heard…A rabbi came to a village on his horse. He was on his way to some other town and was very tired. He wanted a little rest, so he went into an inn leaving his horse under a tree with some hay to eat and to rest on. Mulla Nasruddin was sitting under another tree, drunk. The horse was beautiful and he came closer just to have a look. As he was standing near looking, a horse dealer passed by. The horse was a rare thing, really beautiful. He asked Nasruddin, “Is it your horse?”Drunk, and feeling very good that such a beautiful horse could belong to him, he replied, “Yes.”One thing led to another and the man said to him, “I would like to buy it. How much would you take for it?”Now Nasruddin was caught. He simply asked an impossible price so there would be no problem. He answered, “Two thousand rupees.”The horse was not worth more than five hundred rupees, so nobody was going to pay two thousand rupees; the matter would be settled. But as it happened the man said, “Okay, take these two thousand rupees.”Now, he was in trouble, but two thousand rupees! He thought to himself, “The rabbi is inside and he doesn’t know. Why not take these two thousand rupees? There is no problem, nobody is looking.” So he said, “Okay.” He took the two thousand rupees and the dealer took the horse.The moment the horse was gone the rabbi came out. Nasruddin was puzzled as what to do now. He had two thousand rupees and was so drunk he couldn’t even run away. He started working it out inside his head and found a solution. He leaned down on all fours as if he was a horse and put some hay in his mouth. The rabbi couldn’t believe what had happened. He said, “What are you doing? Are you mad?”Nasruddin replied, “First, listen to my story.” His mind was working fast. He had become a theologian; he was working out one answer, then another question and he had stepped into his own trap. He said, “Twenty years ago, I was a young man and committed a sin with a woman. What did God do? He was so angry that he punished me and made me into a horse; your horse, rabbi. For twenty years I served you, but it seems now the punishment is over and I am again restored to being a man.”The rabbi started trembling, seeing that a sinner had been punished. And who is not a sinner? The rabbi himself had sinned, with many women, so he started trembling seeing this phenomenon. He fell on his knees and started praying. There was a practical problem to be solved. He said, “It’s okay, but I have to go to the other town, so what to do now?”Nasruddin made a suggestion, “The market is not very far; you can go and find a horse.”So the rabbi went to the market. There was his own horse standing at the horse dealer’s! He started trembling again. He went near the horse’s ear, and said, “What, Nasruddin! So soon again?”The mind goes on and on playing tricks: creating a God, praying, being punished, being sent to hell and heaven; the whole thing being just the imagination. There is no God, no hell, no heaven; only you are there and existence ? energy, infinite energy. If you are with it, it is with you. This is the state of a Buddha, a Heraclitus: totally with the total. There’s no problem. One is not there, really, to create problems. There is bliss. When you are not, there is bliss. Otherwise, you will be in trouble if you are fighting against it, moving away from it; doing things on your own, using your private intelligence, behaving like an island. Whatever explanations and rationalizations you create are futile, just imagination.All your churches, temples and mosques stand on man’s fertile imagination. All your gods, statues, your prayers are creations of your imagination. You have created them because you are miserable. This won’t help. Your temples, mosques, churches – no! Your popes, priests, rabbis – no! They can’t help. They are exploiting your imagination. It is a good business. You have to drop imagining. You have to feel that misery comes when you are out of step with nature and happiness comes when you are not out of step.Hell is being out of step with the logos. Heaven is being in step with the logos. That is the hidden harmony. If you can find it, you become blissful. If you cannot find it, you are miserable. Nobody else is responsible.You have to seek and find. There is no God, but everybody is divine. The whole of existence is divine, godly, but there is no God. So don’t waste your time and don’t look upward for someone to help you. Help will come, but there is no one to give it to you; you have to take it. But this seems to be arduous, difficult because you have to change yourself. To be in step with nature you will need a radical transformation. To avoid that radical transformation, you create every type of explanation.Now try to enter these beautiful lines.This universe,which is the same for all,has not been made by any god or man,but it has always been, is, and will be –an ever-living fire,kindling itself by regular measuresand going out by regular measures.Evolution and involution; things coming to a peak and disappearing in a valley; waves rising to touch the sky and moving back to the depth of the ocean in regular measures.Heraclitus says, “The world is energy, existence is fire. In regular measures it manifests and unmanifests itself.” Just like day and night; during the day, awake you work and in the night you rest. So there are periods when existence is in the day and there are periods when existence moves into the night; creation and uncreation, evolution and involution, day and night, summer and winter, life and death.This is a creation period. Soon there will be a decreation period. Hindus call that pralaya, when everything disappears. Hindus have a beautiful theory for it. Heraclitus would have nodded assent. Hindus say that the Brahma, the creator, has his own day; a twenty-four hour day, a twenty-four hour circle; a twelve-hour day and a twelve-hour night. His twelve-hour day is our creation; millions and millions of years, eons and eons of time. Then comes the night of Brahma, where everything disappears, sleeps, rests – tired, of course. To rejuvenate itself, to come back, it goes into nonexistence. Existence is the day, nonexistence is the night. In a regular measure, for the same time, existence disappears, energy rests. When it has rested, the day comes again; the sun rises and things appear again, everything starts again. It is a circle. Half the circle is of manifestation and half is unmanifestation.Just like a tree grows and grows and grows and dies, but it does not die completely. It collects itself into seeds, becomes unmanifest, moves into the subtle. Seeds fall down onto the ground, the tree disappears, but in the right season the seeds will sprout again and the whole tree will come again. It happens, not because there is some controller, a God or a man or somebody; there is nobody. Energy itself is enough. It needs no control, it needs no one there. Energy has its own intrinsic discipline. This seems to be exactly right because if you watch you will feel this is how it happens. You feel hungry, you eat and hunger disappears. Where’s the hunger gone? ? it has become unmanifest, moved to the seeds, to the subtle. It is not on the periphery; it has gone to the center again. After a few hours you feel hungry again, the hunger has returned. You eat, hunger disappears. Where does it go? If it disappears completely, it cannot come back. It comes again and again and again, in the same measure.During the day you are awake. Where has the sleep gone? ? it has moved to the seeds, become subtle; it is there inside you watching for the right time to become manifest. By the night it becomes manifest again, so where does your day disappear? While asleep, have you ever noticed where the whole world of the day has gone? The market, the politics, the identity, everything disappears; you have gone to the seeds. In the morning the sun rises and you rise again. From where do you come? ? from the unmanifest to the manifest again. It is a centrifugal and centripetal movement. The lotus closes and opens, in a regular measure.This is an energy phenomenon; no personality in it, it is impersonal. It is beautiful impersonal; if it is personal it will become ugly. All religions have become ugly because they make it personal, they create a person in it. That person is just an imaginary phenomenon you have created. That’s why thousands of gods exist and everybody has his own notion about God. When you have a notion about God, others’ notions look wrong; there is conflict, argument. Your notion of God cannot be right because you are not right. A person who is right needs no God.Look at Buddha, Heraclitus, they don’t need any God. H. G. Wells has written about Buddha stating, “He is the most godless and yet the most godly man.” Can you find a man more godly or more godless than Buddha? He never talks about God because he doesn’t project. He has no fear inside to create a projection; he is fearless. God disappears; your fear is the cause. When God disappears, this whole existence is for you to enjoy and celebrate. Energy is delight. Blake has said that energy is delight.When there is no God, you are free, totally free. With a God up there manipulating, you can never be free; you can only be puppets with all the strings in his hand. All religious people become puppets because someone else is responsible for everything.A really religious person is totally free.Religiousness is freedom. With God, there can be no freedom. How can there be freedom if there is a creator? And he seems a little crazy. Any moment he can change his mind and say, “Okay, disappear!” Just as it is said in the Bible, “Let there be light” and light was born. Any moment he can say, “Let there be no light.” Then what happens? Does light disappear? You must simply be puppets. It seems that he is playing chess and you are on the chessboard, so whatever he wants to make of you he can. The whole thing looks ugly.If there is no freedom, there cannot be any consciousness because consciousness grows with more freedom. Total freedom is possible only if there is no person controlling, manipulating; no boss in existence. Only then is there freedom. But freedom makes you afraid. You don’t want to be free. You want to be slaves; that’s why you create God. If there is no God ? the communists for example, tried a religion without a God. But man is so afraid, he cannot live without gods; so communism has created its own gods. Lenin has become a god; now they worship him. Now Lenin is no ordinary mortal; he is a god. You cannot escape because you are afraid.Only a man who is totally unafraid, fearless ? one who has come to terms with existence, one who has understood that to be with existence and to flow with it is to be blissful ? can live without God. Only this man can live without any person being projected on existence, can live without imagination – can live with truth. It is hard to live with truth. It is very easy to live with lies. That’s why you create lies around you. Ninety-nine percent of the things around you are lies. But you feel cozy, comfortable with them; they are comfortable lies. Truth is uncomfortable because it requires a radical change. This is the most radical change that can happen to a man – that he lives without God. If you can live without God, you become a god, you become godly. If you go on imagining a God, you remain a slave. With a boss overhead you will be a slave. When the boss is no longer there, you yourself have become a god.I say to you, “There is no God.” Everybody is God, everything is godly. There is no person controlling because the whole existence would be ugly, a slavery, a great concentration camp; it would be a prison. No God, life is freedom. You can choose! If you want to be miserable, be miserable; that’s your choice. If you want to be happy, be happy; that’s your choice. If you feel happy being miserable, it’s okay. There are people who feel very, very happy being miserable because through their misery they attract compassion. Through their misery they ask for sympathy; through their misery, they are begging for love.But who can love a miserable person? Unless one is a buddha, it is impossible to love any miserable person. You are on a suicidal path. If you are asking for love through being miserable, you can get a little sympathy, but not love. That little sympathy will be given to you very grudgingly because who is ready to give love to a miserable person? He himself is in need, he himself is miserable. That’s why people talk so much about their miseries. Listen to their conversation, ninety-nine percent is about their miseries; they magnify their miseries, make them look as great as possible. It’s not possible because you are so tiny you cannot carry such big miseries; you are asking for sympathy.Man is afraid of freedom. There is a deep-rooted fear of freedom because with freedom comes insecurity; with freedom comes the unknown, with freedom you don’t know beforehand what is going to happen. With a God and a destiny everything is certain. You can ask an astrologer or a palmist and they can tell you about your future. With no God, there is no destiny. The astrologers are useless. Nothing can be said about the future. The future remains an open situation – nothing fixed, everything flexible and fluid. With freedom you become a fluidity. With God bossing you, you are secure; somebody is looking after you and he knows better what to do and what not to do.In this sense, Heraclitus’s insight is deeper than Jesus. In this sense, Heraclitus comes through better than Jesus or Mohammed; his insight is exactly as deep as Zarathustra, Buddha, Mahavira because Jesus goes on talking in terms of God, creation, father, son. Maybe he has to talk in those terms because of the juvenile attitude of the Jews and the people around him. Heraclitus doesn’t bother about you; he says exactly what is true. He doesn’t bother whether you understand or not; he simply states the truth. If you want to understand, you have to grow. He will not come down to you, you will have to go to him.This is exactly my attitude. I say exactly what I feel. If you want to understand me you have to grow toward me. I’m not going to come down and talk to you on your terms because that never helps. Jesus did that and missed the whole thing and Christianity was born, which is nothing but a new edition of the Jewish religion, nothing new. Jews modified a little here and there, nothing new because Jesus used the whole Jewish terminology. How can you create a new world out of the old? He compromised; Jesus never thought that there was going to be a new religion. He remained a Jew, died a Jew; he was never a Christian. He never imagined that there was going to be something new; he lived in the fold. He used past, rotten words; hence the ugly face of Christianity.Heraclitus is absolutely fresh. That’s why the Greek mind couldn’t understand him at all; he has no roots in the past.When I am dead, where will you put me? You will not find any roots for me in India. I was born a Jaina, but you will not find any roots in Jainism for me; simply, you cannot find any roots. If you say exactly what you have understood, what you have realized, there are no roots because truth has no roots in society; it has roots in existence, but not in society. That’s why a man like Heraclitus becomes puzzling and even a genius like Aristotle says, “Heraclitus is absurd. He creates puzzles and philosophy is to solve something, not to create puzzles.”He is not creating any puzzle. He looks puzzling because he is stating a fresh phenomenon that he has encountered. He is not using old, used, secondhand terms for it. He says: This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it has always been, is, and will be – an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.This energy has its own intrinsic system. It is a cosmos not a chaos, and without a boss. Energy plus freedom and yet there is a discipline. That discipline is the inner harmony, the hidden harmony. No boss and yet there is no chaos; no one managing and yet everything is managed so beautifully; you cannot improve upon it. This is the hidden harmony. If there is a manager, you can be certain that the things he manages will go wrong here and there. It is such a beautiful cosmos because there is no manager in it.This will be difficult to understand. Religious people say, “How can this world become a cosmos if there is nobody in control? Without a controller everything will fall apart!” Heraclitus says, “Exactly, precisely because there is no controller, things cannot fall apart.” When you control, you mismanage. You cannot find greater mismanagers than managers; they mismanage. That’s what Lao Tzu says. He says, “When there were no rulers everything was beautiful; when there was no law there was no crime and when there were no wise men there were no fools.” Things moved in their cosmic beauty. The rulers entered and said that rules are needed. With rules, misrule entered because the opposite is always there. Wise men came and said that man must be disciplined; man became rebellious and everything went wrong. More and more laws were introduced and man became more and more criminal.This is what Heraclitus says: “Precisely, if there is no one in control, how can things go out of control?” Energy itself has an intrinsic, inner guide. Listen to this concerning your life also. If you are guided by your insight, if you listen to your heart, there will be no need for any discipline. You move completely in trust and everything will be good. But because you cannot listen to your own heart you have to listen to the many manipulators who go on manipulating. They say, “Do this!” and “Don’t do this!” You are confused, you don’t know what to do. One religion teaches one thing, another one something else. One morality says that this is moral, another morality says that this is immoral. You are simply confused and cannot find your own heart from where the intrinsic, the natural, the spontaneous guide comes. The more you have been taught, the more confused you have become.Heraclitus says, “Everything moves by an inner harmony.” Who is controlling these trees? Who teaches them that now it’s the right time to produce their flowers? Who says to the clouds that the time is coming near and you have to shower and bring the rain? ? nobody. Remember, if there is someone, things will go wrong because how can such a vast thing be managed? Even if there were a God, he would probably have cracked up by now! Just think of the immensity, the tremendousness, the vastness of things. Yes, God would have already cracked up long ago, gone mad and simply disappeared from the world, or the world would have fallen apart. It can remain a cosmos only because the harmony is not being forced from above; it grows from within.There are two types of discipline. One that is forced from without where someone says “Do this!” The other that comes from within. You feel what will be natural; you feel where your being is flowing and move with your feeling and an inner discipline enters. Outer discipline is a deception and creates confusion and a rift in you. The inner and outer are opposed, they become antagonistic.Just a few days ago, a man came to me and said – as all religious people will agree: “Again and again I’m a victim of outer things, again and again I forget the inner.”I asked him, “What do you mean? Please give me a concrete example.”He replied, “Well for example, my inner knows that I should remain faithful to my wife, but I fall in love with other women again and again.”So I had to tell him, “You seem to be confused. You don’t know which is the inner and which is the outer. Your wife is the outer and you think that is the inner. Do you love your wife?”He said, “Of course not. If I was in love with her, why would I fall for other women?”The wife is the outer; forced by society, by your own ego, by pretensions you would like to keep an image of in society ? that you are a good husband. This is the outer and he is saying that this is the inner. When you fall in love with another woman – whom nobody is forcing you to do, on the contrary, everybody is preventing you – that is inner! But society has confused you completely, it has made you disoriented. It says that the outer is the inner; it has deceived you completely. It says that the inner is the outer.You go on a fast and you think that this is the inner voice; this is your religion, your scriptures, your priests. Your inner says, “You are hungry, eat!” You think that this is the outer, the Devil tempting you. What foolishness! The priest has tempted you to fast. The Devil is not there! The priests are the only devilish forces in the world. Hunger comes, this is the inner. The whole body, every cell of it says, “Eat!” You say, “This is the outer. Someone, some evil force is tempting me” or “This is desire, this is the body and the body is the enemy; my soul is on a fast.”Your soul, on a fast? The soul never needs any food, so how can it go on a fast? You are forcing your poor body. There is also a natural fast; it happens in animals. There’s no preacher, no priest teaching them, but it happens. If you watch a dog, if he is not feeling well he won’t eat – this is the inner. A dog’s fast is inner. What absurdity! A man’s fast is almost always outer. Only a dog can fast inwardly because he is still in contact with nature, you are not.No animal can be forced to eat when its body is ill. If you force him to eat he will vomit. This is beautiful. The body doesn’t need it; it is ill. The whole energy is needed for the body to cure itself; that energy will be diverted if you eat because the energy will be needed to digest food. It will be a burden. When the body is not in good condition, the whole energy is needed for the body to cure itself and if food is forced into it, that will be a division. Now the whole of the energy will move toward curing, but it will be prevented because first the food has to be digested.If during your illness you simply listen inward and don’t eat, that’s beautiful. Sometimes you don’t feel hungry, so don’t eat. But don’t take a vow that you will fast for a few days because who knows? In the evening you may feel hungry. Move with nature. When nature wants you to fast, fast. When nature wants you to eat, eat.The inner has to be found because society has completely confused you. There is a vast confusion about what is inner and what is outer. Almost always, whatever you think is the outer is likely to be the inner and whatever you think is the inner is bound to be the outer because priests have done that. They are the destructive forces.To me, there is only one religion and that is to find the inner voice, the inner guide. The person who helps you to find your inner guide is the master. He helps you not to give yourself an outer discipline, he simply helps you to find the inner harmony which gives discipline. That discipline has a grace because it is not forced; that discipline has a beauty of its own because it is always fresh. You cannot go astray because you cannot revolt with that discipline. It is you, your very innermost core. The same thing is happening on a vaster scale in the whole cosmos.The phases of fire are craving and satiety.The fire has two phases. First craving, when you are hungry. Hindus call it jatharagni, the fire of hunger. If you are really hungry your stomach feels really fiery. Because you are in such a bad shape, you don’t know when you’re hungry and when you’re not. Every day, you eat at one o’clock and you feel hungry at one o’clock every day. That hunger is psychological; you won’t feel any fire in the stomach because that is just according to the clock. The clock says that it’s one o’clock and the mind says that now the time has come to be hungry. Immediately you feel hungry; this is a projection. This is a false hunger. If you wait for half an hour, it will disappear automatically. How can real hunger disappear so easily? The real hunger will grow more and more. The fire will become more and more of a fire in the stomach. You will start feeling pain there, a burning sensation all over the body. You will feel feverish. The body needs satiety, the body is demanding; energy is needed. But if it is a false hunger, it will disappear. When the clock has moved to two o’clock, the hunger disappears.Watch! When you feel really hungry, eat. Watch! When you feel really sleepy, sleep. It will take a few months to settle because the whole of civilization, culture, society, education, have all helped to push you from the right path. The right path is always natural – the logos. The phases of fire are craving and satiety. These are the two phases of fire, the inner biofire, the bioenergy. You feel hungry, you eat and you feel satisfied. That satisfaction is also a phase of fire. The fire has subsided, now there are no flames; it has disappeared. It is a pralaya, a de-creation, an involution. The other phase comes again. The circle moves, the wheel moves; the hunger phase comes again and again satiety. You feel sexual, lust, then satiety. You feel love and satiety.You cannot love for the whole twenty-four hours because the fire has two phases. Husbands and wives try to do the impossible. They want to love each other twenty-four hours of the day and everything goes astray. You cannot because you cannot eat twenty-four hours of the day. Love is food. Can you eat for twenty-four hours? You have to give gaps so that the food is absorbed and with the energy used, the body becomes hungry again. How can you love for twenty-four hours? If you try the impossible, you will be in bad shape. The more you force it, the more everything will become false.That’s why husbands and wives lose the whole beauty of love. Everything becomes false and forced. When they were lovers everything was beautiful because sometimes they would meet and there would be a hunger and it would need satiety. Sometimes they would have to wait for the day to pass, the lover would be coming and there would be a hunger. When there is deep hunger, love is deeply satisfied. When husbands and wives cling to each other for twenty-four hours, hang around each other like shadows, there is no hunger. Of course, there is no satiety. The whole beauty disappears. Remember, if you love a person, let the person be alone so that the hunger arises. One has to, otherwise the love will be according to the clock.One day Mulla Nasruddin came home and found his greatest friend kissing his wife. He said, “What! I cannot believe my eyes. I have to, but why you?”A husband cannot believe it because love becomes a duty. When love becomes a duty it is already dead; it is an outer enforcement, the inner thing is lost. Love is a hunger, not a duty. It has a satiety phase. When love is satisfied you feel absolutely blissful; everything is okay and you can bless the whole existence and be blessed by it. Everything is simply wonderful, but it has to be through hunger.Heraclitus is saying that man is a miniature of the whole cosmos. The same is true of the whole. The whole passes through two phases. When the whole is in hunger, there is much activity and creation. Things grow, manifestation comes in, trees flower, people love, children are born; everything is a dynamic activity. Satisfied, existence moves into a satiety phase and everything disappears. No trees, earth, stars, sun; the fire is resting.The sun is new each day.And this is one of the most penetrating maxims of Heraclitus. The sun is new each day. Hunger is new each day. Love is new each day. Life is new each day. To say “each day” is not good. Each movement, gesture, moment, everything is new. So where does the old come from? Why do you get bored? If everything is so new and you cannot step in the same river twice and cannot see the same sunrise again; if everything is so new and fresh, why do you become dead and bored? – because you don’t live out of the inner harmony. You live out of the mind. The mind is old.Each sun, each morning, each hunger, each satiety is new; the mind is old. The mind is the past, the mind is the accumulated memory. If you look through the mind, it gives a deadness and oldness to everything; everything looks dusty, dirty. It is because of the mind. Put aside the mind, put aside memories. If you can put aside memories, your wife is new every day because it is only because of memories that you think that you have lived with this woman thirty years and you know her well. Who knows? Nobody ever knows. We remain strangers, strangers eternally. How can you know a person? A thing can be known, not a person, because a thing can be exhausted. Now scientists say that even things cannot be known because they cannot be exhausted either.How can you know a person? A person is freedom. Each moment he changes. If you cannot step twice in a river, how can you encounter the same person again? If rivers are changing, the consciousness, the stream of consciousness, cannot be old. If you put aside the mind, if you don’t look with old eyes, your wife becomes new, every gesture is new. There is a continuous excitement in your life, a continuous aliveness. This day you will feel hungry; that hunger is new. This day, when you eat again the food is new because nothing can be old in existence. Existence has no past. The past is part of the mind.Existence is always in the present, new, fresh, always moving, a dynamic force, a dialectical movement; it flows like a river. If this insight happens to you, you will never be bored. Boredom is the greatest disease; it kills deeply, it is a slow poisoning. By and by, you are so bored that you become a dead weight on yourself. The whole poetry of life disappears where no flowers flower and no birds sing. You are already entombed, you have entered your grave. It is said that people die nearabout thirty and are buried nearabout seventy. Even thirty seems too long; this proverb must be from the ancient days. Now that’s not true; it’s nearabout twenty. Even that seems to be too late. Young people come to me, still young, just eighteen or twenty and say, “We feel bored.” They have become old already. You have taught them, you have already conditioned their minds. They are already dying. Before even being young they are dying.Remember, youth is a quality of being.If you can look at the world without the mind you will remain young forever and ever. Even in your death you will be young, excited that death is approaching. A great, exciting, adventure; a culmination. Now a door opens to the infinity. Hunger has passed, now comes satiety. Now you are moving into rest. You will be a seed and the seed will rest and sleep for many, many years. You will sprout again, open your eyes again; it is never the same.Nothing is ever the same. Everything goes on changing. Only the mind is old and dead. To be capable of looking at life without the mind is meditation.Enough for today.

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The Hidden Harmony 01-11Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

The Hidden Harmony 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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It would not be betterif things happened to menjust as they wish.Unless you expect the unexpectedyou will never find the truth,for it is hard to discoverand hard to attain.Nature loves to hide.The Lord whose oracle is at Delphineither speaks nor conceals –but gives signs.Existence has no language and if you depend on language there can be no communication with it. It is a mystery, you cannot interpret it. If you interpret, you miss. Existence can be lived, but not thought about. It is more like poetry, less like philosophy. It is a sign, it is a door. It shows, but says nothing. That’s why you cannot approach existence through the mind. If you think about it ? and you can go on thinking and thinking about it ? you will never reach it because it’s precisely thinking that’s the barrier.If you look, see, feel, touch you will be nearer. But don’t think. The moment thinking enters, you are thrown off the track; you live in a private world. Thinking is a private world; it belongs to you. You are enclosed, encapsulated, imprisoned within yourself. With nonthinking, you are no more, you are no longer enclosed; with nonthinking, you open, you become porous. Existence flows in you and you flow in existence.The tendency of the mind is to interpret; before you see something you have already interpreted it. You hear me; even before I have said anything you are already thinking about it. That’s how listening becomes impossible. You will have to learn to listen. Listening means you are open, vulnerable, receptive, but you are not in any way thinking. Thinking is a positive action. Listening is passivity; you become like a valley and receive, you become like a womb and receive. If you can listen, nature speaks, but it is not a language. Nature doesn’t use words. What does nature use? Heraclitus says it uses signs. A flower is there, what is the sign? It isn’t saying anything, but can you really say it’s not saying anything? It is saying much, but it is not using any words – a wordless message.To hear the wordless you will have to become wordless because only the same can hear the same, only the same can relate to the same. Sitting next to a flower, don’t be a man, be a flower. Sitting next to a tree, don’t be a man, be a tree. Bathing in a river, don’t be a man, be a river. Millions of signs are given to you. It is not a communication, it is a communion. Nature speaks in thousands of tongues, but not in language. It speaks through millions of directions, but you cannot consult a dictionary about it and you cannot ask a philosopher what it means. The moment you start thinking about what it means you are already on the path of going astray.A very learned man, a critic, came to visit Picasso. He looked at Picasso’s paintings and said, “They look beautiful, but what do they mean?” There was a painting just in front of where they were standing and the critic said, “For example this painting. What does it mean?” Picasso shrugged his shoulders and replied, “Look outside the window. What does this tree mean? What’s the meaning of this bird who is singing? What is the meaning of the sun rising? If this whole exists without any meaning, why can’t my painting?”Why do you ask what it means? ? you want to interpret it. You want to give it a linguistic pattern. You want to communicate, not commune. No, it doesn’t mean anything. It is there in its total glory. It has a meaning, but it doesn’t mean anything. The meaning is existential. Look, watch, feel, move into it; allow it to move into you, but don’t ask questions. If you want to ask questions, go to a university; you cannot enter the universe. If you want to enter the universe, don’t ask because there is no one to reply to you. You will have a totally different quality of being; only then will you be in contact with it.It is reported that a Zen master was doing a painting in the king’s palace – a very rare phenomenon, unbelievable; the mind boggles. Again and again the king asked, “Is it complete yet?”The Zen master would reply, “Wait a little longer, wait a little longer.”Years passed and the king said, “It’s taking too long. Won’t you even allow me to enter the room” ? the Zen master would always lock the room and then paint – “I am getting old and becoming more and more excited about what you’re doing inside the room. Isn’t the painting ready yet?”The master replied, “The painting is ready, but I am watching and waiting for you; you are not ready. The painting was ready long ago, but that is not the point. Unless you are ready, to whom will I show it?”Existence is always there at every moment, waiting, ready. It is forever waiting at every turn of the road, just at the corner. It is an infinite patience, waiting, but you are not ready.It is said that the king was ready and the painter said, “Okay, the time has come.”They entered the room; no one else was allowed inside. The painting was really wonderful. It was difficult to say that it was a painting; it looked real. The master’s painting was of hills and valleys. They looked almost three-dimensional, as if they existed. Next to the hills was a small path leading somewhere inside. Now comes the most difficult part of the story. The king asked, “Where does this road lead?”The master replied, “I haven’t traveled on this road yet, but wait, I will go and take a look.” He started walking on the path, disappeared beyond the hills and never came back.This is what a mystery means ? it says many things without saying anything. If you move into nature to find where it leads, don’t stand outside it and ask because then nothing can be done; you have to move into it. If you move you will never come back because with the very movement into existence you are losing your ego, you are disappearing. You will reach the goal, but you will never come back to relate the story. The Zen master never came back. Nobody comes back. Nobody can come back because the more existential you become, the more you are lost.Existence opens millions of doors for you, but you stand outside wanting to know something about it from the outside. There is no outside in nature. I would like to repeat these words: there is no outside in nature, everything is inside.How can anything exist outside nature? The whole is the inner. The mind is trying the impossible; it is trying to stand outside, to watch, to see what it means. No, you have to participate. You have to move in it, become one and disperse like a cloud – whereabouts unknown.Now listen to these words of Heraclitus:It would not be betterif things happened to menjust as they wish.Why? Why wouldn’t it be better? – because whatever you wish will be wrong because you are wrong! How can you wish, or desire, something to be right? To desire something right, you have to be right in the first place. Out of ignorance, whatever is desired will lead you to a deeper and deeper hell because a desire is part of you, it comes out of you. How can anything else come? All that comes will be you. That’s why, more and more, your desires create problems. The more you desire, the more problems you create. The more you achieve your desires, the more you are in difficulty. There is no going back, you have to go on and on and on. Hence the insistence of all the knowers that to meet existence, the first point is to become desireless.Nothing is wrong in desiring; desiring in itself is beautiful – if a Buddha desires. But you desiring: how can you desire something which will lead you toward bliss? No, because desire comes out of you, it is part of you, it is a continuity. If you are wrong, the desire is going to be wrong. You will repeat it again and again; of course, in different situations, in different worlds, on different planets, in different lives, but your desires will repeat. Your desires cannot transform you. That’s why I say to people, “If you want to take sannyas, if you want to take a jump into the unknown, don’t think about it. Leave it to me!” Why the emphasis on leaving it to me? ? just so you don’t desire it. Let it be something which has not come from you because whatever comes out of you, will be you; modified, colored in different ways, but it will be you.If you are a businessman and desire moksha, it will be a business; it cannot be otherwise. Of course, you will be looking for profit in the other world, but whatever comes out of your mind will be out of your past. A break is needed, a complete rift is needed; a rift which is unbridgeable. That is the meaning of going to a master and surrendering. What do you surrender? ? you surrender your desiring. What else can you surrender? You haven’t got anything else.You say, “Now I won’t desire. Now you say something to me and I will do it.” You are allowing something else to enter your past. If you say, “Yes, I’m convinced. I’m ready to take sannyas,” the sannyas will be futile. If sannyas happens out of your conviction, it is meaningless. But this is the trouble. You would like to be convinced first; you would like to argue about it first. Your mind would like to have it settled.People come to me and say, “How can we take the jump, unless the desire comes?” This is precisely the problem. You have been continuously desiring for many lives. It leads nowhere, it cannot. Can you see the point? You are wrong, you desire; the desire goes wrong. You are wrong, you believe; the belief goes wrong. Have you heard about King Midas? Whatever he touched became gold. Whatever you touch, even if it is gold, is immediately turned into dust. The question is not of a right or wrong desire, the question is of a right being or a wrong being. The question is not of a right act or a wrong act. There are no right or wrong acts, there are no right or wrong desires. There is only a desiring being. If it is ignorant, whatever comes out of it is going to be wrong. If the desiring being is not ignorant, something totally different is born out of him.Remember, being matters and only being matters – nothing else. It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish. Stop wishing! You have been living in hell because you have been wishing. Stop desiring! Stop desiring and the doors are open. Desiring brings your mind into existence. Try to understand the nature of desire. Desiring means projecting your past into the future and the future is unknown; whatever you ask will be from the past. All desiring will just repeat the past again and again. How can you desire the unknown? How can you desire anything in the future? You don’t know it; the future is the unknown, the past is the known. If you desire, it will be from the past.Mulla Nasruddin was on his deathbed. Someone asked him, “If you were born again, would you like to make any changes or would you like to live the same life again?”Mulla brooded for a long while, opened his eyes and replied, “One change. I’ve always wanted to part my hair in the middle; that’s the only change. I’ve always parted my hair on the right and I always wanted to part it in the middle. Otherwise, everything would be repeated as it is.”It looks stupid, but this is how it is. If you think about it and another chance is given to you, what will you do? All the changes that you will want to make will not be more than what Mulla is asking; they will be just the parting of the hair in the middle. You would like to have another woman, but what difference would it make? You would like another profession, but what difference would it make? It will not be more than parting the hair in the middle.You can’t ask from the past and the future is unknown. You go on asking from the past and move in a vicious circle. That circle is the world, the samsara; the coming and going, being born and dying again. You do the same again and again. Not a single basic change! There cannot be because whatever you think, you do out of the known. The known is your past. What to do? ? don’t desire. Let the future come without you desiring it. The future will come, it need not be desired. It is already coming. You need not force your projections on it. Be passive, don’t be active about it. Let it come. Don’t ask anything about it; that’s the meaning of desirelessness. It is not moving from the world, not renouncing it and going to the Himalayas; all those things are immature.Leaving, renouncing, means not desiring; waiting without any desire. Just waiting, “Whatever happens we will be a witness to it.” If you can wait without desiring, everything will happen to you. It happens from the totality, from the whole, from God itself. If you ask, desire, it will happen, but it will happen out of you. You move within yourself, enclosed, never allowing existence to happen to you. It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.Heraclitus says, “It is good that things don’t happen as you wish them.” That is the only possibility of your awakening. That’s why he says, “It is good.” If every desire is fulfilled, you will be completely in a coma because there will be no disturbance. You wanted riches and they are there. You wanted beautiful women and they are there. You wanted success and success is there. You wanted a ladder to reach to heaven and the ladder is there. You will be in a coma, you will be in a dream. If everything is fulfilled, you will never try to seek the truth, there will be no gap for you; only misery, dukkha, unhappiness. The hell that you create around you helps you to awaken. It shocks you toward waking.In Hindu mythology they say that in heaven, where the gods exist, every wish is fulfilled immediately, with no time gap. In the Hindu conception of heaven, there are wish-fulfilling trees, kalpatarus. You just sit under them and wish anything and without any time gap your wish is there. Not a single moment is lost. You ask for a beautiful woman and there she is. But these gods must be living in a dream, they must be living in a drugged, stoned state.Hindus say that from heaven there is no way toward truth. This is very beautiful. They say that if a god wishes to be liberated completely, he will have to come to earth. Why? – because in heaven there is no unhappiness, there is no misery to wake anyone up. It is a long peaceful sleep where dreams are continuously fulfilled. When every dream is fulfilled, why should you open your eyes? Even gods have to come to earth; only then can they be liberated. This is a rare conception. Christians don’t have that type of conception; their heaven is the last thing. But Hindus say that it is not the last thing. It is just a beautiful, good, very long, dream state; it can last for thousands of years, but it is a dream state. If the gods are to be liberated they have to fall back to earth. Why to earth? – because on earth there is misery, pain, anguish; only anguish is needed, only that can shock you out of your slumber.Heraclitus is right: It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish. Something or other always goes wrong. That’s beautiful! If nothing goes wrong, if everything is as it is, is as you would like it to be, then who wants truth? Who seeks existence? Who wants freedom, total freedom, moksha? ? nobody!Through using drugs, man is trying to be like the gods in the Hindu heaven. You take marijuana, hashish, or LSD and you are in a dream state, a beautiful dream state; you are under a wish-fulfilling tree. Drugs are against truth because truth needs an awakening. An awakening from the past, an awakening from the dreams, an awakening from your desires. To see the whole fallacy that you have created around you and to drop it. To drop it without any effort; just to see that it is wrong and to drop it.Remember, if you make so much effort to drop it, the very effort makes you ugly. Really, understanding needs no effort. You understand a thing, you see the reality and drop it. Can’t you see that you are miserable because of your desires? Is it something to be argued, something to be convinced of? Can’t you see? It is so clear that you have created a hell out of desires; then why make an effort? In a sheer, intense moment of understanding, why not drop it immediately? If you can drop it immediately, you will have a beauty, a grace.This grace you will not find in so-called monks. All over the world, you will not find this grace in Catholic, Hindu, Jaina monks because they are trying to drop it. The very effort to drop it shows that they are still clinging; otherwise, why make any effort? They would like to stop desiring, but this is again a desiring. That’s why there is effort. They cling and they would like to drop it. They haven’t come to a moment of understanding, a moment of truth.My whole effort with you is to bring you to a moment of understanding where effort is useless. The understanding is so intense, so fiery, that everything simply burns. You see and your very seeing becomes the dropping.This is possible; it has happened to me, it can happen to you. I am in no way exceptional, just an ordinary man. If it happens to an ordinary man like me, why not to you? Just make an intense search toward understanding. Understanding is transformation, mutation, a revelation. Understanding liberates.Listen to these words:It would not be betterif things happened to menjust as they wish.Unless you expect the unexpectedyou will never find the truth,for it is hard to discoverand hard to attain.Let these words enter your heart: Unless you expect the unexpected, you will never find the truth… Truth cannot be your expectation. Whatever you expect will be a lie. Whatever you expect will be a projection. Whatever you expect will be a part of your mind. No, truth cannot be expected. It takes you unawares. In fact, it comes when you were not even waiting for it. It is a sudden enlightenment.Expectation means your known projecting itself into the future, into the unknown. That’s why I say that if you are a Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or a Jaina, you will miss because what does it mean to be a Christian? ? it means a Christian expectation. It means a god seen through Christian eyes. It means a conception, a philosophy. What does it mean to be a Hindu? ? it means a system of belief. It gives an expectation. You expect a god, you expect the truth. The truth will be like this, the god will be like this; the face, the figure, the form, the name you expect.Your expectation is the barrier because God is the unexpected, the truth is the unexpected. It has never been theorized about, it has never been brought into language; it cannot be forced into words. Nobody has ever been able to and nobody ever will. It remains the unexpected. It is a stranger. Whenever God knocks at your door, you will not find a familiar face, no. It is the unfamiliar, the stranger. You never thought about it, you never heard about it, you never read about it. Just the stranger. If you cannot accept the stranger and ask for the familiar ? truth is not for you.Truth is a stranger.It comes without giving any intimation that it is coming. It comes when you are not expecting, not waiting for it. Remember this, people meditate and meditate and meditate – that’s a must – but truth never happens in meditation. It happens outside. But meditation helps; it makes you alert, it makes you watchful, it makes you more aware and conscious. Suddenly somewhere, it happens in such unexpected moments, you cannot believe why God chooses such unexpected moments.A nun is carrying water; the bamboo breaks, the earthen pot falls on the ground and the water runs out ? suddenly she is awakened. What happened? For forty, fifty years she was meditating and it never knocked. Meditation means you are expecting, you are watching out for something that is going to happen. Your mind is there, very, very, very subtly working; you may not even be able to detect where it is. You may think that now everything is silent, no thoughts, but this is also a thought. You feel absolute silence, but even this feeling that now there is absolute silence, now soon the door is going to open; this is a thought. When you become absolutely silent, even the thought that I am silent is not there. If it is there, that means you mustn’t be meditating. This is the paradox: meditate as much as you can to bring a moment of a non-meditative meditation.That happened to that nun. Carrying water, she was not worried about God; the bamboo was old and she was worried about the bamboo. She was holding it this way and that way, worried that it may break any moment. It was an earthen pot and it would break! She wasn’t at all at the door and the door was open because she had meditated for forty years. So the door was open and she was not there at all. Suddenly the bamboo breaks, the pot falls, breaks and the water runs out. It is a shock! For a moment even this worry dissolves. Now whatever was going to happen has happened. Now she is in a non-meditative moment – God is there. It happened.It has always happened that way; in such moments one never expects it. When you expect, you miss because you are there in your expectation. When you don’t expect it, it happens because you are not there, nobody is there. When your house is totally empty, so empty that you are not even aware that, “I am empty.” That will be enough of a disturbance and when even emptiness is thrown out, he comes.Unless you expect the unexpected… Drop all your notions about God. All notions are false. You may have heard Hindus say that Christian notions are false and Christians say that Hindu notions are false. Jainas say that Christians and Hindus are false, Buddhists say Jainas, Hindus, Christians are false. I say that all notions are false. Not that my notion is right – no! Notion as such is false because it makes a theory out of the unknown, which is not possible. Without any exception, all theories are false. They are absolutely, categorically false – mine included ? because the unexpected remains the unexpected.Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find the truth, for it is hard to discover and hard to attain. In fact, it is not hard to attain and not hard to discover. It is because of you that it is hard because how to put this mind aside? The mind is subtle; even when you put it aside it remains. The mind says, “Okay, I will not be here,” but this is also the mind. The mind says, “Now, let God knock at the door. I am not,” but this is also the mind. The mind says, “I will meditate; I will drop all thoughts.” And then says, “Look! I have dropped all thoughts. Look! I am empty.” This is also the mind and this is the problem; whatever you do the mind stands there.See the point; no effort will help. Just see the point that the mind exists through claims. See the point! Why do I say, “See the point?” – because if you see the point there is no claim. If you don’t see the point, the mind can claim, “I am here without any claim.” See the point! Emptiness is needed, not the claim, “I am empty.” Awareness is needed, not the claim, “I am awareness.” Wherever the “I” comes in, you have entered the dark night of the mind. When the “I” is not there, it is light, everything is clear; a clarity, a perception, infinite. You can see far and wide, you can see the whole.The only thing that can be done is to watch the trickiness of the mind. Don’t try to do the opposite. For example, your mind is filled with thoughts. Don’t try to fight with them because this fighter is the mind. If you fight, the mind will claim the opposite. He will say, “Look! I have dropped all thoughts. Now, where is your God? Where is enlightenment?”Don’t do the opposite, don’t create a fight because with the fight comes the claim. Simply watch and relax. Simply watch and enjoy the trickiness of the mind. Just enjoy it; how it comes again and again. So beautiful, deceptive, elusive. Hindus have always said that it is just like the tail of the dog; you can keep it straight for twelve years or so, but the moment you stop the effort, it is crooked again.One day, a small child was talking to me and said, “We are trying so hard to straighten out a friend because he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus.” Some days later he said, “After seven days of trying, he has yielded and said, ‘Okay, I believe.’” The next day the boy came again and said, “Now we need even more effort.”So I asked, “What’s the matter? Just the other day you said you had straightened him out. Why do you need more effort?”He replied, “He is crooked again. We straightened him out, but he has become crooked again and again.”This is the nature of the mind. You cannot do anything about it because this is the nature of the mind. Understand it, that’s all. Understanding is enough. Otherwise it is a hard thing to attain. You can go on and on and the mind will go with you like a shadow; whatever you claim will be the mind’s claim. That’s why all the knowers have said, “Those who claim that they have known, have not known. Those who say that they have achieved, have not achieved.” Why? – because the very claim is dangerous.Unless you expect the unexpectedyou will never find the truth,for it is hard to discoverand hard to attain.Nature loves to hide.It is a game of hide-and-seek. It is beautiful as it is. Nature is not on the surface, it is hidden in the center. Nature is like the roots of the trees, deep underground; the most essential is hidden. Never think that the tree is the most essential. The tree is just the periphery where the flowers, leaves, and fruits appear; it is the periphery. The real tree exists underground in the dark. It is hidden in the dark womb of the earth. You can cut down the tree and a new one will come. Cut the roots and everything disappears.You are not on the surface of your skin; that is the periphery. You are deep, hidden underground. God is not on the surface. Science goes on learning more and more about the surface, learning more and more about the skin. However deep science goes, it never really goes that deep because it learns from the outside. You can only learn about the skin from the outside. The real is hidden on the inside, in the innermost shrine. It is hidden in the innermost shrine of you also. You live on the periphery, you miss it. Existence has a center; that center is hidden.Nature loves to hide. Why? Why does nature love to hide? – because it is a game. You must have played hide-and-seek when you were young. For Heraclitus, existence is a game; it is a leela, a play. It hides and it is beautiful; you have to discover it. With the very effort to discover, you grow.There are two types of people. The first type I call non-discoverers; they remain on the periphery. The second type I call discoverers; they move toward the center. People who live on the periphery are the worldly people. The market, politics, success, achievement is the periphery. They are non-discoverers, non-adventurers. Even if they go to the moon, it is not an adventure because they remain on the periphery. The real adventure is religious. It is to move to the very center of being. First you have to move in yourself because you are a miniature world. You move to your center and from that center you have the first glimpse of how things are.The real is hidden.On the periphery are waves, on the periphery are dreams; being on the periphery is just a show. Deep inside, in the innermost core of existence, is the hidden one. That’s what Heraclitus calls, “the hidden harmony.”Move toward the being, the center, the very ground. Always seek the roots. Don’t be befooled by the foliage. But you are befooled by the foliage. If a woman is beautiful on the surface, you fall in love; you have fallen in love with the foliage. But the woman may not be beautiful inside; she may be absolutely ugly. You are trapped. There is an inner grace when the light burns inside; when the light comes to the periphery, you cannot see from where it is coming. You can see a beautiful woman and yet ugly. You can see just the opposite happening: an ugly woman and yet beautiful. When an ugly woman is beautiful, you cannot find the source, you cannot find where it is coming from because on the surface the skin, structure, physiology, is not attractive, but something inner attracts you. When it happens that the woman is beautiful on the surface and also in the inner being, it is very mysterious. Charisma happens. Sometimes you feel a charisma around a particular person. Charisma means that now there is some hidden harmony between the surface and the center; the personality has a magnetism, something of the divine.This meeting of the periphery with the center is a hidden harmony.Nature loves to hide. Why? – because only through hiding can the play go on and on; otherwise, the play will stop. The game continues, it is an eternal game.Remember, even if you have found, the game continues, but the game has a different quality. Never think for a moment that when you have found the innermost core, the game stops. No, the game continues. Now, knowingly, many times you move away from the hidden center; knowingly you give nature a chance to hide again, but now it is knowingly. It is just like two children playing and one knows where the other is hiding. He runs around and around everywhere, searching, just to give the game a quality. He knows where you are hiding, he can simply go and catch you, but he will go around and around.Buddhas continue to play, but the game changes. Now they know there is no anxiety. Now there is no desire, nothing to be achieved. Now it is a simple game. There is no goal to it; it continues.So there are two possibilities. One is an ignorant game; that is what is happening to you. You take the game very seriously because you are ignorant. Seriousness becomes a disease. You become sad about it. People come to me. They are very serious and feel frustrated because when they meditate they are not attaining anything. I say, “Don’t be frustrated because that is the whole point to be understood – it is a game! There is no hurry to finish it. It is not a business. Let it go on as long as possible. Why be in such a hurry? Why be so tense? There is no hurry; infinity and eternal time is there. You will always be there and the game will always be there; it has always been there and will always be there.”Take it easily! Take it easy! Any moment it can be discovered; it is always by the side. Why be in such a hurry? Relax. If you can relax, you reach the center sooner. If you are in a hurry, you remain on the surface because a hurried, tense state of mind cannot move to the deeper realms of being. Only patience helps you to settle to the bottom, to the very bottom. Nature loves to hide. It is beautiful that nature loves to hide. Nature is not an exhibitionist. The expression of the foliage is just a way to hide. God is hiding in a flower, in a subtle way. If you simply see the flower, you miss.The English poet, Tennyson, has said and said absolutely rightly, “If I can understand a flower in its totality, I will understand God.” He is right. If you can understand a pebble on the shore in its totality, you will understand God because these are all hiding places. A flower is a hiding place; a pebble is also a hiding place. He is hiding everywhere, in millions of forms. Wherever you are, he is there in all forms around you. Any form can become a door. Once you have the readiness to enter, once you are not expecting it, once you are not desiring it, once you are not asking for something, projecting something ? suddenly the door is open.The Lord whose oracle is at Delphineither speaks nor conceals –but gives signs.At Delphi there is an old Greek shrine and people used to go there to ask a question. The oracle never said anything, it simply gave signs. Heraclitus is using that as a parable. He says, “God, the total, the whole, never speaks in terms of yes or no; he simply gives signs.” He is poetic. He gives you symbols. Don’t try to interpret them. If you interpret, you will miss. Just watch and let the sign go deeper in you and be imprinted on the heart. Don’t try to find the meaning immediately because who will find the meaning? If you find the meaning, it will be your meaning. Just let the sign, the symbol, be imprinted on your heart and someday life will reveal the meaning. You simply live with it, you simply let it be there.For example, you come to me and ask, “How is my meditation going?” You ask me, I smile; I have given you a sign. Now what will you do about it? ? you can interpret it. That is the first tendency of the mind. You will think, “Okay, he smiles; that means I am achieving something. He says ‘Yes’ so everything is okay. I am on the right path.” Your ego feels fulfilled. This will be the interpretation if you are in a positive mood. If you are in a negative mood, you will think, “He smiles; he doesn’t say ‘Yes.’ He was polite. I am going nowhere.”Either way, you missed because if there was a yes to be said, I would have said it. I would not have put you in so much trouble finding the interpretation. If there was a yes to be said, I would have said it. If there was a no to be said, I would have said it. But I have simply smiled. I have neither said yes nor no. In fact, I haven’t said anything; I have given you a sign. Don’t interpret it. Let this smile move deeper in your heart. Let this smile be there. Remember it sometimes and put it back in your heart. Let it dissolve in you, don’t try to find the meaning; this will help your meditation. Suddenly, one day, in a deep meditative state, you will start smiling the same way I smiled because that moment will be the moment of understanding. You laugh because you will know what the meaning was.Life is subtle. Yes and no cannot be used. Life is so subtle that if you say yes you falsify it, if you say no you falsify it. Language is very poor. It knows only two things: yes or no. Life is very rich; it knows infinite postures, positions, infinite gradations between yes and no. It is a spectrum of many, many millions of colors. Yes and no are very poor; you say nothing. Yes and no means you have divided life into black and white; life has millions of colors, it is a rainbow.In fact black and white are not colors. All colors exist, except black and white. You must understand this; black is the absence of all colors, it is not a color. When there is no color present, the emptiness is blackness. It is not a color in itself. That’s why you don’t find black in nature. It is not much; it is an absence. White is not a color either, it is a mixture of all colors. If you mix all the colors it becomes white. It is not a color. White is one pole, black is the other. The presence of all colors is white, the absence of all colors is black. Between these two polarities real colors exist: green, red, yellow and all the shades of them, millions of shades.When I smile, I am not saying black or white, yes or no. I am giving you a color in the spectrum, a real color. Don’t try to interpret it because if you do, you will say that it is either black or white and it is neither. It is somewhere in between and it is so subtle that words cannot express it. If words could express it, I would have given you a word. I wouldn’t unnecessarily put you in trouble.You come to me and say something and I don’t answer. Sometimes you come to see me and I don’t even ask; I simply forget about you. I ask others and simply drop you out of the count. You will interpret it. Why? ? don’t interpret. Just let this gesture be deep in you. Someday, in a very, very meditative mood, the meaning will flower. I am sowing seeds in you, not giving you words and theories.When I am gone, please remember me as a poet, not as a philosopher. Poetry has to be understood in a different way; you have to love poetry, not interpret it. You have to repeat the poetry many times so it mixes with your blood, your bones, with your very marrow. You have to chant poetry many times so that you can feel all the nuances and subtle shades of it. You have to simply sit and let the poetry move within you so it becomes a live force. You digest it and forget about it; it moves deeper and deeper and deeper and changes you.Let me be remembered as a poet. Of course, I am not writing poetry in words. I am writing poetry in a more alive medium – in you. That’s what the whole of existence is doing.Heraclitus says: The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals – but gives signs. A sign is not to be interpreted. A sign is to be lived through. The temptation of your mind is to interpret. Don’t be tempted by the mind. Just say to it, “This is not your field, this is not for you. You play with other things. Let this go deeper in my being.” That’s what I’m doing while I’m talking to you.I am not talking to your minds; I am talking to you as beings, as luminous beings; as gods incarnate, as possibilities, as infinite potentialities. I am talking to your future, not to your past. Your past is rubbish, throw it away! Don’t carry it. I am talking to your future; the unexpected, the unknown. By and by, you will become capable of listening to this music; the music of the unknown, the music in which all the opposites disappear and a hidden harmony arises.Yes, nature loves to hide because nature is a mystery. It is not a question, it is not a puzzle to be solved. It is a mystery to be lived, enjoyed, celebrated.Enough for today.

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The Hidden Harmony 01-11Category: WESTERN MYSTICS

The Hidden Harmony 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Into the same rivers we step and do not step.You cannot step twice in the same river.Everything flows and nothing abides.Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool.The moist dries, the parched becomes moist.It is by disease that health is pleasant;by evil that good is pleasant,by hunger, satiety; by weariness, rest.It is one and the same thing to be living or dead,awake or asleep, young or old.The former aspect in each case becomes the latter,and the latter again the former,by sudden unexpected reversal.It throws apartand then brings together again.All things come in their due seasons.Into the same rivers we step and do not step.Remember, the appearance and only the appearance remains the same. Otherwise, everything changes and flows. Here is the basic difference between the ordinary religious and the really religious conception. Hindus say, “That which changes is the appearance, the maya; that which never changes, is permanent, is brahman.” Heraclitus says just the opposite. He says, “That which appears permanent is the appearance, the maya and that which changes is the brahman.” Buddha’s understanding is the same. He says, “Change is the only permanence, the only eternal phenomenon. Only change abides, nothing else.” My feeling is the same.In search of a permanent truth you are searching for nothing but your own ego. In search of a permanent God, what are you seeking? ? you are seeking permanence in some way or other. You would like to abide so that if this world changes there is nothing to worry about. Your mind says, “Seek the divine and there will be no change and you will live forever and ever.”The ordinary religious conception – Hindu, Jewish or Christian – is basically an ego trip. Why do you say that change is appearance? – because you are afraid of change. Change looks like death. You would like something absolutely permanent to stand upon. You would like a house that will be always and always there. You cannot find a house that abides in this world. You cannot find any relationship that abides in this world. You project a relationship with God because God abides and with God you will abide. This search, this desire, this seeking to abide forever ? this is the problem! Why do you want to be? Why not, not be? Why are you so afraid of not being? If you are afraid of nonbeing, nothingness, emptiness, death, you cannot know truth. One knows the true when one is ready to drop oneself utterly and totally.That’s why Buddha says, “There is no soul. You are not a self, not an atma. You are an anatta, a no-self. There is nothing permanent in you, nothing substantial; you are a flow, a river.” Why does Buddha insist on a no-self? ? he insists because if you accept nonbeing, if you accept nothingness, there is no fear of death and you can drop yourself completely. When you drop yourself completely, the vision arises; you are capable of knowing. You cannot know with your ego. Only in an egolessness, in a deep abyss, in the absence of the ego, does the perception happen; you become a mirror. With the ego you will always interpret, you cannot know the truth. With the ego you will always be there interpreting in subtle ways and your interpretation is not the truth. You are the medium of all falsification. Through you everything becomes false. When you are not there, the true reflects.Somehow, you have to come to an understanding; the understanding of the no-self, of a changeless flux. No substance as such; just a river flowing and flowing. You are a mirror, a clarity. There is nobody to disturb, to interpret and nobody to distract. Existence mirrors in you as it is. That mirroring of existence as it is, is the truth.Another thing; if you want to abide forever, you have not lived the moment. One who has lived his life truly, authentically, one who has enjoyed it, is always ready to die, is always ready to leave. One who has not enjoyed and celebrated, one who has not lived the moment, the life, is always afraid to leave because he thinks that the time has come to leave and he is yet unfulfilled. The fear of death is not the fear of death, it is a fear of remaining unfulfilled. You are going to die and you couldn’t experience anything at all through life; no maturity, no growth, no flowering. Empty-handed you came, empty-handed you are going. This is the fear!One who has lived is always ready to die. His readiness is not a forced attitude. His readiness is just like a flower. When the flower has flowered and has sent its perfume to the infinite corners of existence; when it has enjoyed the moment, lived it, danced through the breeze, risen against the wind, looked at the sky, watched the sunrise, lived it. A fulfillment comes by the evening and the flower is ready to drop to the earth, to go back, to rest. It is always beautiful; when you have lived, rest is beautiful. It is the thing! The flower simply drops to the earth and goes to sleep. There is no tension, no anguish, no crying, no effort to cling.You cling to life because your life is unfulfilled. You have not risen against a strong wind. You have not known the morning and the evening has come. You have never been young and old age is knocking at the door. You never loved and death is coming. This unfulfilled state and the coming of death creates the fear.Buddha says, “If you have lived you will always be ready to die.” That readiness will not be something forced upon you. It will be the thing, it will be a natural thing. As you are born, you die. As you come, you go. This is the wheel of existence. You lived the being part, now you will live the nonbeing part. You existed, now you will not exist. You rose, you manifested, now you will move into the unmanifested. You were visible, embodied, now you will move without the body to the invisible. You had your day; now you will take rest in the night. What is wrong in it?The search for the permanent shows that you remain unfulfilled. The search to have a permanent self is a clinging. You know that death is there, so what to do? The body will disintegrate, disappear; now you have hopes that some permanent self will be there which will go on and on and on. Remember, those who are afraid always believe in the eternal soul.Look at this country; everyone believes that the soul is eternal, but you cannot find a more cowardly country in the world. It is not accidental. Why are Indians so cowardly? In fact, if they know that the soul is never going to die they should be the bravest because death doesn’t exist! They go on talking about the deathless and if you watch their life they are more afraid of death than anyone else. Otherwise, how can you explain the one thousand years of slavery in this country? Very small races; England is no bigger than a small province of India. Only three crore people were able to dominate a country of fifty crore. It seems simply impossible. How did it happen? – it happened because the country is cowardly. They cannot fight, they are afraid of death. They talk about the deathless. This is not accidental, there is a reasoning behind it.Whenever someone talks about the deathless too much, it means he is afraid of death, he is a coward. India has not lived because of the priests. India has not lived life because of the priests. They have been teaching people to renounce, so everyone is ready to renounce before he has lived; then the fear comes in. If you have lived, lived to your total capacity, to the optimum, the fear of death disappears. Only then does the fear of death disappear, never before it. If you renounce life, if you don’t love, if you don’t eat, if you don’t enjoy and dance; if you simply renounce and condemn and say, “This is all materialistic. I am against it.” Who is this “I” who says that I am against it? ? this is the ego.You cannot find greater egoists than so-called spiritualists. They are always condemning the materialist. They are always saying, “What! You are wasting your life. Your religion is eat, drink and be merry. You are a burden on the earth. You have to be thrown into hell.” Who is condemning? What is wrong in eating, drinking and being merry? What is wrong in it? That is the first part of life. It should be so. You should eat, drink and be merry. You should celebrate. Only then, when you have celebrated to the optimum, are you ready to go, ready to leave with no grudge, with no complaint. You lived the day, now the night has come. The day was so beautiful. You rose with the waves in the sky and did whatever the moment demanded; then the rest and going back to the earth is beautiful.India has been renouncing and a religion that renounces is false. A religion that makes you capable of celebrating to the optimum is the true religion. This is the beauty. If you live life, a renunciation comes automatically. It happens; that is the nature. If you eat well, satiety comes. If you drink well, thirst disappears. If you lived well, clinging to life disappears. It has to be so. This is the law, the logos. If you have not lived well, you will always cling and you will always dream about how to live. If you have renounced this life you have to project another one. You need a permanent self, otherwise what will you do? You missed this life and there is no other life? You need a permanent self. You have to believe and console yourself that okay, the body dies, but the self never dies.If you listen to Buddha, Heraclitus and to me, the self dies even before the body does because the self is of a more dreamy stuff than the body. The body is more substantial; it takes at least seventy years to die and the self dies every moment. In the morning, watch, you have one self, by the afternoon another. In the morning you were happy, it was a different self; by the afternoon it has gone, already gone. Yes, Heraclitus is right: Into the same rivers we step and do not step. It simply appears that in the afternoon you are the same self. It simply appears. Where is the self in the morning when you were so happy and sang with the birds and danced with the rising sun? Where is that self? By the afternoon you are already sad; the evening has already descended on you. In the middle of the afternoon, it has already become night; you are sad. Is this the same self? When you hate and when you love, do you think it is the same self? When you are depressed and when you reach a peak of joy, is this the same self? ? it is not, it simply appears to be. It appears the same, just like if you go to the Ganges; it appears the same Ganges in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, but it is not. It is constantly flowing.Heraclitus loves the symbol of the river, Buddha loves the symbol of the flame. That symbol of the flame is even more subtle. The flame appears to be the same, but it is not. Every moment it is disappearing; the old is going and the new is coming. Buddha says that in the evening you light a candle and in the morning you blow it out, but never think that it is the same candle. It cannot be. The whole night it was burning, burning, burning. The whole night the flame disappeared and disappeared and disappeared and a new flame was constantly being supplied. The difference between the two flames – the old going out and the new coming in, the gap – is so subtle that you cannot see it.Buddha says, “The self that is born will not die. It has died already. The man you were born as and the man you will be when you die are not the same. It is the same continuum, but not the same thing.” The flame in the evening and the flame in the morning constitute the same continuum, the same series of flames, but not the same self. The Ganges looks the same; it is not the same. Everything is changing; the nature of reality is change.Permanence is illusion; this is a deeper insight than the Hindus’. This is the deepest ever attained because the mind would like to have a permanent home, to have a permanent standing ground, to have permanent roots. Permanence is false; it appears because of the sameness of things. Your face remains the same in the evening and the morning, so we think you are the same person. You were here yesterday and the day before yesterday; your face appears to be the same, but are you the same? When you came to see me this morning you were different, you have already changed. When you leave you will not be the same person because you listened to me and something else has entered in you. Your self has already changed; new rivers falling into the Ganges, new rivulets, new streams. I have fallen into you. How can you be the same again? There is no way. You will never be the same. Every moment millions of streams are falling into your consciousness. You walk on the roadside and a flower smiles; the flower is changing you. A cold breeze comes and gives you a cool bath; the breeze is changing you. The sun rises and you feel a warmth; the sun is changing you. Every moment, everything is changing; there is no permanent thing.What will happen if you understand this? ? if you can understand this, this becomes the greatest situation in which to drop the ego. When everything is changing, why cling? Even with your clinging you cannot make change stop. You cannot stop the river. It flows. Stopping is not possible and because we like to stop things, to make them permanent, we create a hell around us. Nothing can be stopped. I love you this morning; who knows what will happen tomorrow morning? You would like the love to stop ? as it was this morning, make it tomorrow too. If you cling and stop, you are dead. Tomorrow morning no one knows – the unknown, the unexpected.You can only expect if things are permanent. If nothing is permanent, expectation drops. When there is no expectation because things are moving and moving, how can you be frustrated? If you expect, there is frustration. If you don’t expect, there is no frustration. You expect because you think that things are permanent. Nothing is permanent. Into the same rivers we step and do not step. Just the appearance is the same – of the river and of you also.You cannot step twice in the same river.You cannot because the river will never be the same again. You also will never be the same again. That’s why each moment is unique, incomparable. It has never been before and will never be again. This is beautiful. It is not a repetition, it is absolutely fresh. You will miss this freshness if you have a clinging, possessive mind and are seeking something permanent. Just try to think: if you have a permanent self, that self will be like a rock. Even rocks change. But the self cannot be like a flower. If you have a permanent self and if things have a permanent self, a substratum, the whole existence will be a boredom; it cannot be a celebration. Celebration is possible if each moment brings you something new.If each moment brings you something from the unknown, if each moment is a penetration of the unknown into the known, then life is an excitement, without expectation. Life is a constant movement into the unknown. Nothing can frustrate you, because in the first place, you never expected that anything was going to be the same forever.Why is there so much frustration in the world? – because everybody is expecting permanence. Permanence is not the nature of things. Nothing can be done about it. You have to grow and drop the idea of permanence. You have to grow and become a flow. Don’t be like solid rocks; be like fragile flowers. Your brahman is just a solid rock. The absolute of Hegel and Shankara is a solid rock. But the nirvana of Buddha, the understanding of Heraclitus, is like a fragile flower, changing. Enjoy it while it lasts and don’t ask for more.You are in love; celebrate while it is there! Don’t start making arrangements so that it will always be there; otherwise in making the arrangements you will miss the moment. By the time the arrangements are ready, the flower is dead. By the time you are ready to enjoy, the moment has already gone. Nobody can bring it back, there is no going back. The river is onward and onward flowing and you are being thrown to new shores every moment.This is the problem, the anxiety, the anguish of man; that the mind thinks of the shores that are no more. The mind wants to project the shores that are no more into the future and every moment the river is reaching to unknown, unexpected, new shores. This is beautiful. If your wish is fulfilled, you will make your whole life ugly.Just think, Hindus, Jainas, have a conception of moksha; a state of consciousness where nothing changes. Just think for a moment: nothing changes and people who have become enlightened, according to Jainas and Hindus, will remain in that absolutely permanent moksha, with nothing changing, nothing at all. That will be absolute boredom. You cannot improve on it. That will be absolute. You cannot think of a more boring situation. God sitting there and you sitting there and nothing changing, even nothing to say. One moment will look like eternity; so boring. No, for Heraclitus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, the soul of existence is change. Change beautifies everything.You would like a woman to always remain young and the same. If it really happens you will be bored. If it really happens that a young woman, by some biological device, or some trick of science can remain young ? it is possible! Man is so foolish that sooner or later it will be possible that you may find some biological trick, inject some hormones in the body and a person remains at the same age. A girl of twenty remains twenty and twenty and twenty. Can you love this girl? It will be a plastic girl. It will remain the same, but there will be no changing seasons: no summer, winter, spring, fall. The woman will be dead! You cannot love such a woman; it will be a nightmare. You will want to escape from her to the far corners of the world.Seasons are beautiful and through seasons every moment becomes new. Every moment a new mood, a new nuance of being; every moment new eyes and a new face. Who has told you that an old woman is ugly? The old woman will be ugly if she is still trying to look young; then she will be ugly. Her face painted with lipstick and this and that, she will be ugly. But if an old woman accepts old age as natural, as it should be, you cannot find a more beautiful face than an old wrinkled face. Wrinkled through many seasons, seasoned; many experiences, mature, grown-up.An old person becomes beautiful if he has lived life. This same man is ugly if he hasn’t lived and wants to cling to some past moment which is no longer there. Youth has passed and he is still trying to show that he is young. But when sex has passed ? and should have passed if you have lived ? and you are still seeking things which are good in their season, which are beautiful in certain moments of life… But an old man falling in love is ridiculous! He is as ridiculous as a young man not falling in love; out of season, out of step with life.That’s why the phrase “dirty old man” is used. The saying is good. Whenever an old man thinks about sex, it is dirty; it shows that he has not grown. Sex was good at its own stage, but an old man should now be getting ready to leave, should now be ready to die, should now be making arrangements because soon his ship will be ready and he will be leaving for the unknown shore. He should make arrangements for it now and he is behaving like a young man or a child. Nothing is uglier than pretending to be something which has passed ? living in the past. He is mad!Everything is beautiful at its moment and everything has a moment for it. Never be out of step. That’s what I call being religious – never to be out of step. Be true to the moment; when young, be young; when old, be old. Don’t get mixed up, otherwise you will be in a mess and being in a mess is ugly. There is no need to do anything on your part; you simply have to follow nature. Whatever you do goes wrong. Doing itself is wrong ? just simply flowing.Into the same rivers we step and do not step. You cannot step twice in the same river. If you are old, you cannot be young again. If you are a youth, you cannot be a child again. If you are a youth and trying to be a child, you are retarded. That shows only one thing; that when you were a child you missed it; hence the feeling is still hanging around. Even old people desire their childhood again. They miss their whole life because they missed the first step. When they were children they must have been thinking of becoming young men and women, becoming big, powerful; being like daddy, being like all the big people around. When they were children, they must have thought about it. They missed their childhood and in the end they are asking for their childhood again. They speak and write poetry stating that their childhood was beautiful, it was a paradise.These people have missed. When you miss paradise you talk about it. When you have lived it, there is nothing to say about it. If you lived your childhood paradise, your youth will be a beautiful phenomenon. It will be based on the paradise that you lived in your childhood. It will have a grace, a beauty. When you have lived your youth, your old age becomes the peak, the Gourishankar, the Everest. White hair on an old head is just like snow on a great peak. With everything gone and everything changed, all rivers tasted, all shores known, you can rest. For the first time there is no restlessness. You can be yourself. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do. You can relax!If an old man cannot relax, that means he has not lived life. If you cannot relax, how can you die? Those who cannot die create the desire for a permanent self, for a permanent God. Know well: only change is God. Change is the only permanence in the world. And only change is eternal. Everything else changes except change, only change is the exception; otherwise, everything is changing.Everything flows and nothing abides.Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.You should be ready! This is what I call meditation; you should be ready. When something goes, you should be ready. You should let it go. You should not complain, you should not create a scene. When something goes, it goes.You loved a woman, you loved a man and the moment comes to part. This moment shows the real man. If you complain, are reluctant, not willing, angry, violent, destructive, then you have not loved that person at all. If you have loved that person, parting will be a beautiful phenomenon. You will be grateful. If you loved the person and the time has come to part, you can say good-bye with your total heart. You will be grateful. But you never loved. You were thinking about it, you were doing everything, but never loving. Now the parting moment has come and you cannot give a beautiful good-bye because you realize that you missed the point, you missed the time; you never loved and this man, this woman, is leaving. You become angry, violent, aggressive.The parting moment shows everything because it is the culmination. You then complain about this woman for your whole life, claiming that she destroyed your life. You go on and on complaining, but always carrying a wound. A love should make you flower, but as I see it happening all over the world, all around ? it always gives you a wound.While someone is with you, love, because nobody knows the next step, when the parting comes. If you really love a person, you will part beautifully. If you loved life, you will part with life beautifully. You will be thankful. Your last words, leaving this shore to the other, will be of gratitude. Life gave you so much and so many experiences. Life made you whatever you are. There were miseries, but blessings also. There was suffering, but happiness also. If you have lived both, you will know that the suffering exists to make you blissful. The night exists to give you a new day. It is a gestalt because bliss cannot exist without suffering, hence suffering exists.You will be grateful, not only to the blissful moments but to the moments of suffering because without them the blissful moments cannot exist. You will be grateful to life in its totality. There will be no choice because a man who has passed through life and grown and has known life in its suffering, in its bliss, will come to know what Heraclitus says: “God is winter and summer, life and death, day and night, suffering and bliss!”You will then not say that suffering is wrong. If someone says that suffering is wrong, he has not grown. You will not say that you would only like the blissful moments and not like the suffering ones. If you do, you are childish, you are juvenile. You are asking for the impossible. You are asking for the hills, the peaks, without the valleys. You are simply stupid. It is not possible; it is not in the nature of things. The valley has to exist with the peak. The greater the peak, the deeper the valley. One who understands this is happy with both.There are moments when you would like to come down to the valley from the peak because the valley gives you a rest. The peak is good; it is excitement, it is a climax. After the excitement and climax one feels tired; the valley is there – to move into the darkness of the valley, to rest and be completely forgotten, as if you don’t exist. Suffering and bliss are both beautiful. If someone says, “I choose only bliss and I don’t choose suffering,” he is juvenile, he has still not known what reality is.Everything flows and nothing abides.Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool.The moist dries, the parched becomes moist.It is by disease that health is pleasant;by evil that good is pleasant;by hunger, satiety; by weariness, rest.Don’t choose! If you do you will fall in the trap. Remain choiceless and let life flow in its totality. Half is not possible. That is the absurdity, but the mind clings. It wants half. You would like to be loved, you wouldn’t like to be hated, but lovers also hate. With love, hate enters. If the lover cannot hate, he cannot love. Love means coming together, hate means going away. It is a rhythm. You come together – a peak; you part and move to your own individualities. This is what the moment of hate means. This creates you again, it makes you ready to come together again. Life is a rhythm. It is just a centrifugal and centripetal rhythm. Everything falls apart and comes together, falls apart and comes together.It happened…In a Mohammedan country, a king was in love with a woman. The woman was in love with someone else; she was in love with a slave, a slave of the king himself. This was very difficult for the king to understand; that the woman doesn’t pay any attention to him and he is the king. And she is after a slave who is nothing! The king could kill the man immediately, he is just like dirt! But this is how it happens. Life is mysterious. You cannot be mathematical about it. Nobody knows. You may be a king, but you cannot force love. He may be a slave, but love will make a king out of him. Nobody knows. Life is mysterious. It is not arithmetical, it is not economics.The king tried and tried, but the more he tried the more he failed. He became very, very angry. He was really in love with the woman so he was afraid to kill the slave. He could have killed him; just a word was enough. He was afraid the woman might be hurt. He really loved the woman, so this became more problematic. What to do? She may be hurt, she may commit suicide ? she was so mad. So he asked a wise man. That wise man must have been like a Heraclitus. All wise men are like Heraclitus; Heraclitus is the superb wise man. The wise man said, “What you have been doing is wrong.” The king had been trying to keep them separate in every way possible. He continued, “This is wrong. The more you keep them apart, the more they will want to be together. Keep them together and soon they’ll be finished. Keep them together in such a way that they cannot separate.”The king said, “How do I do that?”The wise man replied, “Bring both of them together; chain them, bind them together and force them to make love. Don’t allow them to separate.” So this was done. They were chained to a pillar, making love to each other naked. If you are chained to a woman or with a man, how long can you love that woman or that man? That’s why love disappears in marriage. You are chained, in a bondage; you cannot escape. That was the experiment.After a few minutes they started hating each other. After a few hours they dirtied each other’s bodies because bowels have to move, urine has to be got rid of; you cannot wait. What to do? For a few hours they contained themselves because they felt that would not be a good thing to happen.There comes a point beyond which you cannot do anything. The bowels moved, the bladder emptied itself; they dirtied each other and they hated each other even more. They closed their eyes, they did not want to see each other. All this, for twenty-four hours – a marathon! After twenty-four hours they were released. It is said that they never saw each other’s faces again. They both escaped the moment they were released from the palace. They escaped in different directions; they never saw each other’s faces again.The whole thing became so ugly. Marriages become ugly because they follow this principle of that wise man. There should be a rhythm of coming together and parting, being together and being alone. If you can come together freely and move away again, that’s how hunger and satiety are created. If you go on eating for twenty-four hours a day, there will be no hunger and no satiety. You eat and then you fast. The English word for the morning meal, breakfast, is good. It means breaking the fast; the whole night you fasted. You have to fast if you want to enjoy food. This is the hidden harmony of opposites.Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool. The moist dries, the parched becomes moist. It is by disease that health is pleasant… Sometimes, it is very, very good to be ill. There is nothing wrong in it. A healthy person is bound to fall ill at some time. You have different conceptions. You think a healthy person should never be ill; that is absolutely foolish. It is not possible. Only a dead person is never ill. A healthy person has to be ill sometimes. Through illness he attains health again and that health is fresh. Passing through illness, passing through the opposite, it becomes new again. Have you ever noticed? After a long fever, as you are getting well again, you have a freshness, a virginity; the whole body seems to be rejuvenated.If you remain continuously healthy for seventy years, your health will be like an illness, a death because it was never rejuvenated, never made fresh. The opposite always gives freshness. It will be stale if you are never ill; your health will become like a burden. Sometimes falling ill is beautiful. I am not saying to remain in bed forever; that too would be bad. Always being ill is bad. Anything that becomes a permanent thing is bad. Anything that moves and flows into the other is good, it is alive.Aristotle called Heraclitus a little defective because of such statements. He thought him defective in character, in his physiology, even biologically defective because who would say that illness is good? Aristotle is logical. He says that health is good, illness is bad; one has to avoid illness and if you can avoid it completely, that will be the best thing. That’s what science is doing: trying to remove illness completely from all over the world. It follows Aristotle. But I say to you: the more science tries to avoid illness, the more new diseases arise.There are many new diseases which were never present in the world before. If you close one door to illness, nature has to open another immediately because without illness, health is not possible; you are doing a foolish thing. You close one door; now no more malaria, no more plague and two doors have to be opened somewhere else. And if you are mad about closing doors – and science is closing all the doors – more dangerous diseases will arise because if you close a million doors of illnesses, nature has to open a very, very great door so that it balances the millions of doors. Cancer enters.You cure diseases and you create incurable diseases. Cancer is a new phenomenon; it was never before in the world – and it is incurable. Why is it incurable? – because nature is defending its law. You go on curing every disease so something incurable has to be created, otherwise man will be dead. Without illness nobody will be healthy. And this is going to happen. It seems that someday cancer will be cured and nature will immediately create something more incurable.Remember, in this fight, science cannot win and should not win. Nature should always be the winner. Nature is wiser than all your scientists put together.Look, go to a primitive community where no medicine exists, where there are no doctors, no science to cure them. They are less ill and healthier. Illness is common, but not incurable. There are a few primitive communities still alive which don’t believe in medicine at all. They don’t really do anything, in fact, whatever they do is just to console the patient. Mantras, magical tricks; they are not medicines. They are just to help the patient pass the time because nature cures itself. It is said that if you take a medicine for a common cold, it will be cured in seven days; if you don’t take anything, in a week.Nature cures itself. In fact, nature cures. One has to give it time; patience is needed. The English word for an ill person, patient, is beautiful. It means patience is needed; one has to wait. In fact, the function of the doctor is to help the patient to be patient. By giving medicine he is consoled. He thinks that now something is being done and soon he will be cured. He is helped in waiting. The doctor cannot do anything else.That’s why so many “pathies” work – homeopathy, allopathy, Ayurveda. Thousands of pathies work; even naturopathy works. Naturopathy means not doing anything, or doing something which is actually nothing. That’s why even Satya Sai Baba succeeds. Consolation is needed and the work is done by nature itself.Heraclitus is not defective, Aristotle is defective. Something is lacking in Aristotle’s physiology and biology. The whole Western mind has followed Aristotle. If you go to the very logical end, which is to make the human body completely healthy, without any disease; the logical end will be to have plastic parts. This natural heart is bound to be ill sometimes, tired, wearied, needs a rest. A plastic heart needs no rest; it is never tired. If something goes wrong you can simply change the part. You can go to the garage and change the part, you can even carry spare parts with you. Sooner or later, the whole body – if Aristotle succeeds to the very logical end and Heraclitus is not listened to and not taken back into the human consciousness ? will be a plastic body with spare parts; not blood flowing in the veins, but some chemical which can be immediately pumped out and refilled.What type of man will that be? Of course no illness, but no health either. Imagine that type of man as yourself, with all things plastic. Plastic kidneys, heart, skin and you being totally plastic inside; plastic everything. Will you be healthy? Will you ever be able to feel well-being? No, you will not be ill, that’s right. The mosquitoes will not affect you; you can meditate without being disturbed, they cannot bite you. You will be enclosed in a shell and completely cut off from nature. No need to breathe because the whole thing can be run by a battery. Just imagine yourself completely encapsulated in a mechanical phenomenon. Will you ever be healthy? You will never be ill, that’s right, but you will never be healthy either. Whenever you fall in love, you will not be able to put your hand on your heart because there is nothing but plastic. This will happen if Heraclitus is not listened to.Aristotle is defective, not Heraclitus. Aristotle is wrong, not Heraclitus. It is by disease that health is pleasant; by evil that good is pleasant… He becomes more and more difficult. We can even agree, reluctantly, that okay, without illness there will be no health, but then he says that it is by evil that good is pleasant, by the Devil that God is pleasant, by the sinners that saints are so beautiful. If sinners disappear, the saints disappear. If there really is a saint, he is bound to be a sinner also. There are only two possibilities to do this. One is that I become a saint and you become a sinner. This is what religions have done. Just a division of labor. You do the work of the sinner and I do the work of a saint. But in a better world, in a more logos-oriented world – not logical – is it good to force someone else to be a sinner and force myself to be a saint? Is it good to be a saint at somebody else’s cost? ? no, it is not. In a better world the saint will also be the sinner. Of course, that’s right, he will sin in a very saintly way, but this becomes more and more difficult. He will be like Gurdjieff, a sinner and a saint.Gurdjieff is a turning point in the history of human consciousness. After Gurdjieff, the concept of a saint should be completely different; it can never be the same, be the old. Gurdjieff stands at a crisis point from where a new saint is to arise. That’s why Gurdjieff was very misunderstood because the concepts were that a saint should be a saint and he was both. It was difficult to understand how a man can be both. Either you are a saint or you are a sinner.Many rumors have been going around about Gurdjieff. Some think that he was the most devilish person possible, a devil’s agent; some think he was the greatest sage ever born. He was both and both rumors are true, but both are wrong also. Followers think that he was a sage and they try to hide the sinner part because they also cannot comprehend how he could be both. So they simply say that it’s a rumor; that these people don’t understand who they are talking about. There are people who are against him and cannot believe his sage part because they say that how can such a sinner be a sage? Impossible! Both cannot exist in one man. This is the whole point ? they do both exist in one man.You can do only one thing; you can suppress one and pretend the other. You can suppress one in the unconscious and the other you can bring to the surface, but your saint will be skin-deep and your sinner will be very, very deep in the roots. Or you can do just the opposite; you can bring the sinner to the surface, to the skin and suppress the saint. That’s what the criminals are doing. One possibility is that you suppress your sinner, but that sinner will affect somebody somewhere because we are one.Heraclitus says, “Private intelligence is false.” We are one. Consciousness is a community, we exist in one net. If I suppress my sinner, somewhere at some weaker point the sinner will pop up. Rama is a saint; Ravana pops up as the sinner. They are both together, one phenomenon. Jesus is a saint; Judas, the disciple who loved him the most, becomes the sinner. Saints are responsible for sinners and sinners help saints to be saints.This is not good. If I suppress something in my consciousness so deeply that it moves into the collective unconscious… This is how the mind is: the conscious mind is just the first layer which looks private, appears private. There is a deeper layer of unconsciousness; that, too, has a certain flavor of privacy because it is so near the conscious mind. There is a third layer of collective unconsciousness which is not private at all, which is public, which is in fact universal.So if I suppress something, first it goes into my unconscious and creates trouble for me. If I suppress it even more deeply and go on suppressing it ? if I use methods and tricks to suppress it so much that it simply drops from my unconscious and moves into the collective unconscious, then somewhere, someone, a weak person will get it. If I force it too much, it has to pop to the surface, somewhere. Then I am Rama and somebody becomes a Ravana; I am a Christ and someone becomes a Judas.Just the other day a sannyasin wrote me a letter saying, “You are Christ and I am a Judas.” I can tell him that that is not possible because I am both. With Christ it was possible, not with me. I don’t allow that possibility.What type of saint do I have in my mind? ? a saint who doesn’t suppress the opposite, but uses it; who is not against anything, but makes a new arrangement of things. In his greater harmony even evil becomes good. In that harmony, he uses even discarded parts. It is a great art to be both together. It is the greatest art because you have to seek the hidden harmony between the opposites – you are neither this nor that, but both. Even poison can be used as elixir, but you have to be very, very careful. Much awareness is needed to use poison as elixir, to use evil as good, to use the Devil as God. This is also what Heraclitus means by the hidden harmony. He says:…by evil that good is pleasant;by hunger, satiety; by weariness, rest.It is one and the same thing…The good and the bad, the illness and health, the sinner and the saint.It is one and the same thing to be living or dead,awake or asleep, young or old.The former aspect in each case becomes the latter,and the latter again the former,by sudden unexpected reversal.It is a wheel – yin and yang, good and bad, male and female, day and night, summer and winter. It is a wheel; everything moves into the other and comes back to itself again. It is an eternal recurrence.It throws apartand then brings together again.We have met before, now we are meeting again. We have met before! Nature …throws apart, then brings together again. That is the meaning of the first fragment: Into the same rivers we step and do not step. We are meeting again, but we are not the same. We have met before. This idea caught hold of one of the greatest geniuses of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche. It possessed him so totally that he became completely mad – the idea of recurrence, eternal recurrence. He says that everything has happened before, is happening again, will happen again; not exactly the same, but still the same. It looks very weird if you think about it. You have also listened before to me many times and you are listening again. It looks very weird, strange; you feel uncomfortable with the very idea. It is so because nature brings people together and parts them, just to bring them together again.No departure is ultimate. No coming together is final. Coming together is just a preparation for parting. Parting is just a preparation for coming together again. It is beautiful! It is beautiful.Into the same rivers we step and do not step.It throws apartand then brings together again.All things come in their due seasons.This is the peak of Heraclitus’ consciousness. Let it go deep in you. Let it circulate in your blood and in your heart. Let it become a beat. All things come in their due seasons. Many things are implied here. One is that you need not make so much effort. Making much effort may be a barrier because nothing can come before its season. All things come in their due seasons. Too much effort can be dangerous. Too much effort may be an effort to bring things when the season is not ripe. That doesn’t mean don’t make any effort because if you don’t make any effort, they may not come even in their due season.Just the right amount of effort is needed. What does a farmer do? ? he watches the seasons in the sky; now is the time to sow. He sows; never before it, never after it. A farmer simply watches for the right moment, then he sows; he waits, he sings. In the night he sleeps, watches and waits. Whatever is to be done, he does it, but there is no hurry. That’s why countries which have lived long with agriculture are never in a hurry. Countries which have become technological are always in a hurry because with technology you can bring things without their season. Countries which are agriculturist and have remained agriculturist for thousands of years, are never in a hurry; they are not time conscious.That’s why every day it happens in India that somebody says, “I will be coming at five” and never comes. Or he says, “I will be coming at five sharp” and comes in the night at ten. You cannot believe what type of… No time consciousness really.A farmer doesn’t divide the day in hours. He says, “I will be coming in the evening.” The evening can mean anything – four o’clock, six o’clock, eight o’clock. He says, “I will come in the morning.” The morning can mean anything – he may come at four o’clock in the morning or ten o’clock in the morning. He doesn’t divide it by hours. He cannot. He cannot because he has to live by the seasons. The year is divided not in months but in seasons – summer, winter – and he has to wait. He cannot be in a hurry.What can you do with seeds? They don’t listen. You cannot send them to school, you cannot teach them. They’re not bothered, they are not in any hurry; they simply wait in the earth. When the time comes, they sprout and grow on their own. They don’t bother about you, if you are in a hurry or not, or whether something can be done. You cannot persuade them, you cannot talk to them; they take their own time. A farmer becomes a deep awaiting.Become like a farmer. If you are sowing seeds of enlightenment, understanding, meditation, be like a farmer, not like a technician. Don’t be in a hurry. Nothing can be done about it. Whatever can be done, you do and wait. Don’t do too much. Doing too much may become a subtle undoing. Your very effort may become a barrier. All things come in their due seasons. Don’t ask for the result. They come in their due season. If it happens today it is okay. If it doesn’t happen, a man of understanding, intelligence, clarity, knows that the time is not ripe. When the time is ripe, it will happen. He waits; he is not childish.Childishness consists of asking for things immediately. If a child wants a toy in the middle of the night, he wants it immediately. He cannot understand or follow that one has to wait for the morning to come; shops are closed. He thinks these are just excuses. He wants it immediately, right now. He thinks that these are tricks to divert his mind. What is the relevance of it being midnight and the shops not being open? Why are the shops not open at midnight? What is wrong with midnight? He knows that by the morning he will have forgotten the whole thing. These people are tricky; if he goes to sleep, by the morning he will have forgotten. He wants it immediately.A country which is juvenile, a civilization which is juvenile and childish, also wants everything immediately – instant coffee, instant love, instant meditation. That’s what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is doing; instant, right now. Do ten minutes and within fifteen days you are enlightened ? looks foolish.No, nature doesn’t follow you or your demands. Nature follows its own course. This is the meaning. All things come in their due seasons. Wait. Make the effort and wait. Don’t ask for the result to come immediately. If you ask, your very asking will delay the phenomenon more and more. If you can wait patiently, passively, still alert, watching, just like a farmer, you will attain it. If you are in a hurry you will miss. If you are very time conscious, you cannot move into meditation because meditation is timelessness. Always remember, it will happen whenever you are ready. The readiness comes in its due season.A young man came to me and said, “I am very, very tense.” A young man has to be tense. He continued, “I would like to be detached.” But this is asking for something out of season. A young man has to be attached. Unless you suffer attachment you can never grow toward detachment. If you force detachment you will make a mess of your life because when the time was right for attachment you missed it. You tried to pretend and forced it. When you are old and the time for detachment comes, the suppressed part is still hanging around you like a haze. You see that death is nearing and you become afraid. The suppressed part says, “When will there be a time for me? I wanted to love, I wanted to be attached, I wanted to be involved and committed to some relationship. Now there is no time!” The suppressed part forces itself up and an old man becomes foolish; he starts asking for relationships. He has missed everything. He has missed all the seasons. Remember, be in step with the season.When it is time to be tense, be tense. What is wrong in it? If you are not tense, how will you be able to rest? If you are not angry, how will you be compassionate? If you don’t fall in love, how will you rise out of it? Everything in its due season. It comes by itself. It has always been so and it will always be so. Existence is vast and you cannot force your own ways on it. You have to watch where it’s going and you have to follow.This is the difference between an ignorant man and a wise man. An ignorant man is always pushing the river according to his idea. A wise man has no ideas of his own. He is simply watching where nature flows; he flows with it. He has no ego to push; he has no conflict with nature. He is not trying to conquer nature. He understands the foolishness of it; that it cannot be conquered. How can the part conquer the whole? No, he surrenders, he becomes a shadow. He moves wherever nature moves. He is like a white cloud moving in the sky, not knowing where he is going, but unworried because wherever the winds take him, that will be the goal. The goal is not a fixed phenomenon. Wherever nature leads you, if you allow it, if you remain in a let-go, wherever it leads will be blissful.Everywhere is the goal, you only have to allow it. Every moment is the peak, you only have to allow it. Just allowing. Let go, surrender and you can rest assured. All things come in their due seasons.Enough for today.

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The Heart Sutra 01-10Category: BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS

The Heart Sutra 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy!Avalokita, the holy lord and bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the wisdom which has gone beyond. He looked down from on high, he beheld but five heaps, and he saw that in their own being they were empty.I salute the buddha within you. You may not be aware of it, you may not have ever dreamed about it – that you are a buddha, that nobody can be anything else, that buddhahood is the very essential core of your being, that it is not something to happen in the future, that it has happened already. It is the very source you come from; it is the source and the goal too. It is from buddhahood that we move, and it is to buddhahood that we move. This one word, buddhahood, contains all – the full circle of life, from the alpha to the omega.But you are fast asleep, you don’t know who you are. Not that you have to become a buddha, but only that you have to recognize it, that you have to return to your own source, that you have to look within yourself. A confrontation with yourself will reveal your buddhahood. The day one comes to see oneself, the whole of existence becomes enlightened. It is not that a person becomes enlightened – how can a person become enlightened? The very idea of being a person is part of the unenlightened mind. It is not that I have become enlightened; the “I” has to be dropped before one can become enlightened, so how can I become enlightened? That is absurdity. The day I became enlightened the whole of existence became enlightened. Since that moment I have not seen anything other than buddhas – in many forms, with many names, with a thousand and one problems, but buddhas still.So I salute the buddha within you.I am immensely glad that so many buddhas have gathered here. The very fact of your coming here to me is the beginning of the recognition. The respect in your heart for me, the love in your heart for me, is respect and love for your own buddhahood. The trust in me is not a trust in something extrinsic to you, the trust in me is self-trust. By trusting me, you will learn to trust yourself. By coming close to me, you will come close to yourself. Only a recognition has to be attained. The diamond is there – you have forgotten about it, or you have never remembered it from the very beginning.There is a very famous saying of Emerson: “Man is a God in ruins.” I agree and I disagree. The insight has some truth in it – man is not as he should be. The insight is there but a little upside down. Man is not God in ruins, man is God in the making; man is a budding buddha. The bud is there, it can bloom any moment: just a little effort, just a little help is needed. And the help is not going to cause it – it is already there! Your effort is only going to reveal it to you, help to unfold what is there, hidden. It is a discovery, but the truth is already there. The truth is eternal.Listen to these sutras because these are the most important sutras in the great Buddhist literature. Hence they are called the Heart Sutra; it is the very heart of the Buddhist message.But I would like to begin from the very beginning. From this point only does Buddhism become relevant: let it be there in your heart that you are a buddha. I know it may look presumptuous, it may look very hypothetical; you cannot trust it totally. That is natural, I understand it. Let it be there, but as a seed. Around that fact many things will start happening, and only around that fact will you be able to understand these sutras. They are immensely powerful – very small, very condensed, seedlike. But with this soil, with the vision in the mind that you are a buddha, that you are a budding buddha, that you are potentially capable of becoming one, that nothing is lacking, all is ready, things just have to be put in the right order, that a little more awareness is needed, a little more consciousness is needed… The treasure is there; you have to bring a small lamp inside your house. Once the darkness disappears you will no longer be a beggar, you will be a buddha; you will be a sovereign, an emperor. This whole kingdom is yours and it is just for the asking; you have just to claim it.But you cannot claim it if you believe that you are a beggar. You cannot claim it, you cannot even dream about claiming if you think that you are a beggar. This idea that you are a beggar, that you are ignorant, that you are a sinner, has been preached from so many pulpits down the ages that it has become a deep hypnosis in you. This hypnosis has to be broken. To break it, I start with: I salute the buddha within you.To me, you are buddhas. All your efforts to become enlightened are ridiculous if you don’t accept this basic fact. This has to become a tacit understanding, that you are it! This is the right beginning, otherwise you go astray. This is the right beginning. Start with this vision, and don’t be worried that this may create some kind of ego: “I am a buddha.” Don’t be worried, because the whole process of the Heart Sutra will make it clear to you that the ego is the only thing that doesn’t exist – the only thing that doesn’t exist! Everything else is real.There have been teachers who say the world is illusory and the soul is existential – the “I” is true and all else is illusory, maya. Buddha says just the reverse: he sees only the “I” is untrue and everything else is real. And I agree with Buddha more than with the other standpoint. Buddha’s insight is very penetrating, the most penetrating. Nobody has ever penetrated those realms, depths and heights of reality.But start with the idea, with this climate around you, with this vision. Let it be declared to every cell of your body and every thought of your mind; let it be declared to every nook and corner of your existence: “I am a buddha!” And don’t be worried about the “I,” we will take care of it.“I” and buddhahood cannot exist together. Once the buddhahood becomes revealed the “I” disappears, just like darkness disappears when you bring a light in.Before entering the sutras, it will be helpful to understand a little framework, a little structure.The ancient Buddhist scriptures talk about seven temples. Just as Sufis talk about seven valleys, and Hindus talk about seven chakras, the Buddhists talk about seven temples.The first temple is the physical, the second temple is psychosomatic, the third temple is psychological, the fourth temple is psycho-spiritual, the fifth temple is spiritual, the sixth temple is spirituo-transcendental, and the seventh temple and the ultimate – the temple of temples – is the transcendental.The sutras belong to the seventh. These are declarations of someone who has entered the seventh temple, the transcendental, the absolute. That is the meaning of the Sanskrit word, pragyaparamita – the wisdom of the beyond, from the beyond, in the beyond; the wisdom that comes only when you have transcended all kinds of identifications – lower or higher, this worldly or that worldly; when you have transcended all kinds of identifications, when you are not identified at all, when there is only a pure flame of awareness left with no smoke around it. That’s why Buddhists worship this small book, this very, very small book; and they have called it the Heart Sutra – the very heart of religion, the very core.The first temple, the physical, can correspond to the Hindu map with the muladhar chakra; the second, the psychosomatic, with svadisthan chakra; the third, the psychological, with manipura; the fourth, the psycho-spiritual, with anahatta; the fifth, the spiritual, with vishudha; the sixth, the spirituo-transcendental, with agya; and the seventh, the transcendental, with sahasrar. Sahasrar means the one-thousand-petaled lotus. That is the symbol of the ultimate flowering: nothing has remained hidden, all has become unhidden, manifest. The thousand-petaled lotus has opened and the whole sky is filled with its fragrance, its beauty, its benediction.In the modern world, a great work has started in search of the innermost core of the human being. It will be good to understand how far modern efforts lead us.Pavlov, B. F. Skinner and the other behaviorists, go on circling around the physical, the muladhar. They think man is only the body. They get so involved in the first temple, they get so involved with the physical that they forget everything else. These people are trying to explain man only through the physical, the material. This attitude becomes a hindrance because they are not open. When from the very beginning you deny that there is anything other than the body, then you deny the exploration itself. This becomes a prejudice. A Communist, a Marxist, a behaviorist, an atheist – people who believe that man is only the body – their very belief closes the doors to higher realities. They become blind. And the physical is there, the physical is the most apparent; it needs no proof. The physical body is there, you need not prove it. Because it need not be proved, it becomes the only reality. That is nonsense. Then man loses all dignity. If there is nothing to grow in or to grow toward, there cannot be any dignity in life. Then man becomes a thing. Then you are not an opening, then nothing more is going to happen to you – you are a body: you will eat and you will defecate, and you will eat and you will make love and produce children, and this will go on and on, and one day you will die. A mechanical repetition of the mundane, the trivia – how can there be any significance, any meaning, any poetry? How can there be any dance?Skinner has written a book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. It should be called Below Freedom and Dignity, not Beyond. It is below, it is the lowest standpoint about man, the ugliest. There is nothing wrong with the body, remember. I am not against the body, it is a beautiful temple. The ugliness enters when you think it is all.Man can be conceived of as a ladder with seven rungs, and you become identified with the first rung. Then you are not going anywhere. And the ladder is there, and the ladder bridges this world and the other; the ladder bridges matter with godliness. The first rung is perfectly good if it is used in relationship to the whole ladder. If it functions as a first step it is immensely beautiful: one should be thankful to the body. But if you start worshipping the first rung and you forget the remaining six, you forget that the whole ladder exists and you become closed, confined to the first rung, then it is no longer a rung at all – because a rung is a rung only when it is part of a ladder. If it is no longer a rung then you are stuck with it. Hence, people who are materialistic are always stuck, they always feel something is missing, they don’t feel they are going anywhere. They move in rounds, in circles, and they come again and again to the same point. They become tired and bored. They start contemplating how to commit suicide. And their whole effort in life is to find some sensations, so something new can happen. But what “new” can happen? All the things that we go on being occupied with are nothing but toys to play with.Think of these words of Frank Sheed: “The soul of man is crying for purpose or meaning. And the scientist says, ‘Here is a telephone.’ Or, ‘Look! Television!’ – exactly as one tries to distract a baby crying for its mother by offering it sugar sticks and making funny faces at it. The leaping stream of invention has served extraordinarily well to keep man occupied, to keep him from remembering that which is troubling him.”All that the modern world has provided you with is nothing but sugar sticks, toys to play with – and you were crying for your mother, you were crying for love, and you were crying for consciousness, and you were crying for some significance in life. And they say, “Look! The telephone. Look! The television. Look! We have brought so many beautiful things for you.” And you play around a little bit; again you become fed up, again you are bored, and again they go on searching for new toys for you to play with.This state of affairs is ridiculous. It is so absurd that it seems almost inconceivable how we go on living in it. We are caught at the first rung.Remember that you are in the body, but you are not the body; let that be a continuous awareness in you. You live in the body, and the body is a beautiful abode. Remember, I am not for a single moment hinting that you become anti-body, that you start denying the body as the so-called spiritualists have done down the ages. The materialists go on thinking that the body is all that is, and there are people who move to the opposite extreme, and they start saying that the body is illusory, the body is not: “Destroy the body so the illusion is destroyed, and you can become really real.”This other extreme is a reaction. The materialist creates his own reaction in the spiritualist, but they are partners in the same business; they are not very different people. The body is beautiful, the body is real, the body has to be lived, the body has to be loved. The body is a great gift of existence. Not for a single moment be against it, and not for a single moment think that you are only it. You are far bigger. Use the body as a jumping board.The second temple is: psychosomatic, svadisthan. Freudian psychoanalysis functions there. It goes a little higher than Skinner and Pavlov. Freud enters the mysteries of the psychological a little bit more. He’s not just a behaviorist, but he never goes beyond dreams. He goes on analyzing dreams.The dream exists as an illusion in you. It is indicative, it is symbolic, it has a message from the unconscious to be revealed to the conscious. But there is no point in just getting caught in it. Use the dream, but don’t become the dream. You are not the dream.And there is no need to make so much fuss about it, as Freudians do. Their whole effort seems to be moving in the dimension of the dream world. Take note of it, take a very, very clear standpoint about it, understand its message; and there is really no need to go to anybody else for your dream analysis. If you cannot analyze your dream, nobody else can, because your dream is your dream. And your dream is so personal that nobody else can dream the way you dream. Nobody has ever dreamed the way you dream, nobody will ever dream the way you dream; nobody can explain it to you. His interpretation will be his interpretation. Only you can look into it. And in fact there is no need to analyze a dream: look at the dream in its totality, with clarity, with alertness, and you will see the message. It is so loud! There is no need to go for psychoanalysis for three, four, five, seven years.A person who is dreaming every night, and in the day is going to the psychoanalyst to be analyzed, becomes by and by surrounded by dreamy-stuff. Just as the first becomes too obsessed with the muladhara, the physical, the second becomes too obsessed with the sexual – because the second, the realm of psychosomatic reality, is sex. The second starts interpreting everything in terms of sex. Whatsoever you do, go to the Freudian and he will reduce it to sex. Nothing higher exists for him. He lives in the mud, he does not believe in the lotus. Bring a lotus flower to him, he will look at it and reduce it to the mud. He will say, “This is nothing, this is just dirty mud. Has it not come out of dirty mud? If it has come out of dirty mud then it has to be dirty mud.” Reduce everything to its cause, and that is the real.Then every poem is reduced to sex, everything beautiful is reduced to sex and perversion and repression. Michelangelo is a great artist? Then his art has to be reduced to some sexuality. And Freudians go to absurd lengths. They say all the great works of art by Michelangelo or Goethe or Byron which bring great joy to millions of people, are nothing but repressed sex – maybe Goethe was going to masturbate and was stopped.Millions of people are stopped from masturbation, but they don’t become Goethes. It is absurd. But Freud is the master of the world of the toilet. He lives there, that is his temple. Art becomes pathology, poetry becomes pathology, everything becomes perversion. If Freudian analysis succeeds, then there will be no Kalidas, no Shakespeare, no Michelangelo, no Mozart, no Wagner, because everybody will be normal. These are abnormal people, these people are psychologically ill, according to Freud. The greatest are reduced to the lowest. Buddha is ill, according to Freud, because whatsoever he is talking about is nothing but repressed sex.This approach reduces human greatness to ugliness. Beware of it. Buddha is not ill; in fact, Freud is ill. The silence of Buddha, the joy of Buddha, the celebration of Buddha is not ill, it is the full flowering of well-being.But to Freud the normal person is one who has never sang a song, who has never danced, who has never celebrated, never prayed, never meditated, never done anything creative, is just normal: goes to the office, comes home, eats, drinks, sleeps, and dies; leaves not a trace behind of his creativity, leaves not a single signature anywhere. This normal man seems to be very mediocre, dull, and dead. There is a suspicion about Freud that because he himself could not create – he was an uncreative person – he was condemning creativity itself as pathology. There is every possibility that he was a mediocre person. It is his mediocreness which feels offended by all the great people of the world.The mediocre mind is trying to reduce all greatness. The mediocre mind cannot accept that there can be any greater being than him. That hurts. This whole psychoanalysis and its interpretation of human life is revenge by the mediocre. Beware of it. It is better than the first, yes, a little ahead of the first, but one has to go, and go on going, beyond and beyond.The third is psychological. Adler lives in the world of the psychological, the will to power; at least something – very egoistic, but at least something; a little more open than Freud. But the problem is, just like Freud reduces everything to sex, Adler reduces everything to the inferiority complex. People try to become great because they feel inferior. A person trying to become enlightened is a person who is feeling inferior, and a person trying to become enlightened is a person who is on a power trip.This is utterly wrong, because we have seen people – a Buddha, a Christ, a Krishna – who are so utterly surrendered that their trip cannot be called a power trip. And when Buddha blooms he has no ideas of superiority, not at all. He bows down to the whole of existence. He has not that idea of holier-than-thou, not at all. Everything is holy, even the dust is divine. No, he is not thinking himself superior, and he was not striving to become superior. He was not feeling inferior at all. He was born a king; there was no question of inferiority. He was at the top from the very beginning, there was no question of inferiority. He was the richest man in his country, the most powerful man in his country: there was no more power to be attained, no more riches to be attained. He was one of the most beautiful men ever born on this earth, he had one of the most beautiful women as his beloved. All was available to him.But Adler would go on searching for some inferiority because he could not believe that a man could have any goal other than the ego. It is better – better than Freud, a little higher. Ego is a little higher than sex; not much higher, but a little.The fourth is psycho-spiritual, anahatta, the heart center. Jung, Assagioli and others penetrate that realm. They go higher than Pavlov, Freud and Adler, they open more possibilities. They accept the world of the irrational, the unconscious: they don’t confine themselves to reason. They are more reasonable people – they accept “irreason” too. The irrational is not denied but accepted. This is where modern psychology stops – at the fourth rung. And the fourth rung is just in the middle of the whole ladder: three rungs on this side and three rungs on that side.Modern psychology is not yet a complete science. It is hanging in the middle. It is very shaky, not certain about anything. It is more hypothetical than experiential. It is still struggling to be.The fifth is spiritual: Islam, Hinduism, Christianity – the mass-organized religions remain stuck with the fifth. They don’t go beyond the spiritual. All the organized religions, the churches, remain there.The sixth is the spirituo-transcendental – yoga and other methods. All over the world, down the ages, many methods have been developed which are less like a church organization, which are not dogmatic but are more experiential. You have to do something with your body and mind; you have to create a certain harmony within yourself so that you can ride on that harmony, you can ride on that cloud of harmony and go far away from your ordinary reality. Yoga can comprehend all that; that is the sixth.And the seventh is transcendental: Tantra, Tao, Zen. Buddha’s attitude is of the seventh – pragyaparamita. It means wisdom that is transcendental, wisdom that comes to you only when all the bodies have been crossed and you have become just a pure awareness, just a witness, pure subjectivity.Unless man reaches the transcendental, he will have to be provided with toys, sugar sticks. He will have to be provided with false meanings.Just the other day I came across an American car advertisement. On top of a beautiful car it says: “Something to believe in.” Man has never fallen so low. Something to believe in! You believe in a car? Yes, people believe – people believe in their houses, people believe in their cars, people believe in their bank balances. If you look around you will be surprised – God has disappeared, but belief has not disappeared. God is no longer there: now there is a Cadillac or a Lincoln! God has disappeared but man has created new gods – Stalin, Mao. God has disappeared and man has created new gods – movie stars.This is for the first time in the history of human consciousness that man has fallen so low. And even if sometimes you remember God, it is just an empty word. Maybe when you are in pain, maybe when you are frustrated, then you use God – as if God is aspirin. That’s what the so-called religions have made you believe: they say, “Take God three times a day and you won’t feel any pain!” So whenever you are in pain you remember God. God is not an aspirin, God is not a painkiller.A few people remember God habitually, a few others remember God professionally. A priest remembers professionally. He has nothing to do with God, he is paid for it. He has become proficient. A few people remember habitually, a few professionally, but nobody seems to remember God in deep love. A few people invoke his name when they are miserable; nobody remembers him when they are in joy, celebrating. And that is the right moment to remember – because only when you are joyous, immensely joyous, are you close to God. When you are in misery you are far away, when you are in misery you are closed. When you are happy you are open, flowing; you can hold God’s hand.So you remember habitually because you have been taught from very childhood – it has become a kind of habit, like smoking. If you smoke you don’t enjoy it much; if you don’t smoke you feel you are missing something. If you remember God every morning, every evening, nothing is attained because the remembrance is not of the heart – just verbal, mental, mechanical. But if you don’t remember you start feeling something is missing. It has become a ritual. Beware of making God a ritual, and beware of becoming professional about it.I have heard a very famous story:The story is about a great yogi, very famous, who was promised by a king that if he could go into deep samadhi and remain under the earth for one year, the king would give him the best horse in the kingdom as a reward. The king knew that the yogi had a soft heart for horses, he was a great lover of horses.The yogi agreed; he was buried alive for a year. But in the course of the year the kingdom was overthrown and nobody remembered to dig up the yogi.About ten years later someone remembered: “What happened to the yogi?” The king sent a few people to find out. The yogi was dug up; he was still in his deep trance. A previously agreed to mantra was whispered in his ear and he was roused, and the first thing he said was, “Where is my horse?”Ten years of remaining in silence underneath the earth, but the mind has not changed at all – “Where is my horse?” Was this man really in trance, in samadhi? Was he thinking about God? He must have been thinking about the horse. But he was professionally proficient, skillful. He must have learned a technique to stop the breathing and to go into a kind of death – but it was technical.Remaining ten years in such deep silence, and the mind has not changed a little bit! It is exactly the same as if these ten years had not passed by. If you technically remember God, if you professionally remember God, habitually, mechanically remember God, then nothing is going to happen. All is possible, but all possibilities go through the heart. Hence the name of this scripture: the Heart Sutra.Unless you do something with great love, with great involvement, with great commitment, with sincerity, with authenticity, with your total being, nothing is going to happen.For some people religion is like an artificial limb: it has neither warmth nor life. And although it helps them to stumble along, it never becomes part of them; it must be strapped on each day.Remember, this has happened to millions of people on the earth, this can happen to you too. Don’t create an artificial limb, let real limbs grow in you. Only then will your life have a warmth, only then will your life have joy – not a false smile on the lips, not a pseudo kind of happiness that you pretend to, not a mask, but in reality. Ordinarily you go on wearing things: somebody wears a beautiful smile, somebody wears a very compassionate face, somebody wears a very, very loving personality – but these are like clothes that you put on. Deep down you remain the same.These sutras can become a revolution.The first thing, the beginning, is always the question, “Who am I?” And one has to go on asking. When first you ask, “Who am I?” the muladhar will answer, “You are a body! What nonsense! There is no need to ask, you know it already.” Then the second will say, “You are sexuality.” Then the third will say, “You are a power trip, an ego” – and so on and so forth.Remember, you have to stop only when there is no answer coming, not before. If some answer is coming: “You are this, you are this,” then know well that some center is providing you with an answer. When all the six centers have been crossed and all their answers canceled, you go on asking, “Who am I?” and no answer comes from anywhere, it is utter silence. Your question resounds in yourself: “Who am I?” and there is silence, no answer arises from anywhere, from any corner. You are absolutely present, absolutely silent, and there is not even a vibration. “Who am I?” – and only silence. Then a miracle happens: you cannot even formulate the question. Answers have become absurd; then finally the question also becomes absurd. First answers disappear, then the question also disappears – because they can live only together. They are like two sides of a coin – if one side has gone, the other cannot be retained. First answers disappear, then the question disappears. And with the disappearance of question and answer, you come to realize: that is transcendental. You know, yet you cannot say; you know, yet you cannot be articulate about it. You know from your very being who you are, but it cannot be verbalized. It is life-knowledge; it is not scriptural, it is not borrowed, it is not from others. It has arisen in you.And with this arising, you are a buddha. And then you start laughing because you come to know that you have been a buddha from the very beginning; you had just never looked so deep. You were running around and around outside your being, you had never come home.The philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, was walking down a lonely street. Buried in thought, he accidentally bumped into another pedestrian. Angered by the jolt and the apparent unconcern of the philosopher, the pedestrian shouted, “Well! Who do you think you are?”Still lost in thought the philosopher said, “Who am I? How I wish I knew.”Nobody knows. Knowing this – I don’t know who I am – the journey starts.The first sutra:Homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy!This is an invocation. All Indian scriptures start with an invocation for a certain reason. This is not so in other countries and in other languages; this is not so in Greece. The Indian understanding is that we are hollow bamboos, only the infinite flows through us. The infinite has to be invoked; we become just instruments to it. We invoke it, we call it forth to flow through us. That’s why nobody knows who wrote this Heart Sutra. It has not been signed because the person who wrote it didn’t believe that he was the author of it. He was just instrumental. He was just like a steno; the dictation was from beyond. It was dictated to him, he has faithfully written it, but he is not the author of it – at the most, just the writer.Homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy! This is the invocation, a few words, but every word is very, very pregnant with meaning.Homage to the perfection of wisdom… “Perfection of wisdom” is the translation of pragyaparamita. Pragya means wisdom. Remember, it does not mean knowledge. Knowledge is that which comes through the mind, knowledge is that which comes from the outside. Knowledge is never original. It can’t be original, by its very nature; it is borrowed. Wisdom is your original vision: it does not come from the outside, it grows in you. It is not like an artificial plastic flower that you go to the market and purchase. It is a real rose that grows on the tree, through the tree. It is the song of the tree. It comes from its innermost core; it arises from its depth. One day it is unexpressed, another day it is expressed; one day it was unmanifest, another day it has become manifest.Pragya means wisdom, but in the English language even wisdom has a different connotation. In English, knowledge means without experience: you go to the university, you gather knowledge. Wisdom means you go to life and you gather experience. So a young man can be knowledgeable but never wise, because wisdom needs time. A young man can have degrees: he can be a PhD or a DLitt – that is not difficult – but only an old man can be wise. Wisdom means knowledge gathered through one’s own experience, but it is still from the outside.Pragya is neither knowledge nor wisdom as ordinarily understood. It is a flowering within – not through experience, not through others, not through life and life’s encounters, no, but just by going within in utter silence, and allowing that which is hidden there to explode. You are carrying wisdom as a seed within you; it just needs the right soil so that it can sprout. Wisdom is always original. It is always yours, and only yours.But remember again, when I say “yours” I don’t mean that there is any ego involved in it. It is yours in the sense that it comes out of your self-nature, but it has no claim to the ego – because again ego is part of the mind, not of your inner silence. Paramita means of the beyond, from the beyond, beyond time and space; when you move to a state where time disappears, when you move to an inner place where space disappears, when you don’t know where you are and when, when both references have disappeared. Time is outside you, so is space outside you. There is a crossing point within you where time disappears.Somebody asked Jesus, “Tell us something about the kingdom of God. What will be special there?” Jesus is reported to have said, “There will be time no longer.” There is eternity, a timeless moment. That is the beyond – a spaceless space and a timeless moment. You are no longer confined, so you cannot say where you are.Now look at me: I cannot say I am here, because I am there too. And I cannot say I am in India, because I am in China too. And I cannot say that I am on this planet, because I am not. When the ego disappears you are simply one with the whole. You are everywhere and nowhere. You don’t exist as a separate entity, you are dissolved.Look! In the morning, on a beautiful leaf, there is a dewdrop shining in the morning sun, utterly beautiful. And then it starts slipping, and it slips into the ocean. It was there on the leaf: there was time and space, it had a definition, a personality of its own. Now once it has dropped into the ocean you cannot find it anywhere – not because it has become nonexistential, no. Now it is everywhere; that’s why you cannot find it anywhere. You cannot locate it because the whole ocean has become its location. Now it doesn’t exist separately.When you don’t exist in separation from the whole, there arises pragyaparamita, the wisdom that is perfect, the wisdom that is from the beyond.Homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy! A beautiful provocation. It says: my homage is to the wisdom that comes when you move into the beyond. And it is lovely, and it is holy – holy because you have become one with the whole; lovely because the ego that created all kinds of ugliness in your life is no more.Satyam, shivam, sundaram: it is true, it is good, it is beautiful. These are the three qualities.Homage to the perfection of wisdom… Truth… That’s what truth is: the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the beautiful, the holy, the good.Why is it called holy? – because buddhas are born out of it. It is the womb of the buddhas. You become a buddha the moment you partake of this perfection of wisdom. You become a buddha when the dewdrop disappears into the ocean, loses separation, is no longer struggling against the whole, is surrendered, is with the whole, no longer against it. Hence my insistence to be with nature, never against it. Never try to overcome it, never try to conquer it, never try to defeat it. If you try to defeat it, you are doomed to failure because the part cannot defeat the whole – and that’s what everybody is trying to do. Hence there is so much frustration, because everybody seems to be a failure. Everybody is trying to conquer the whole, trying to push the river. Naturally you become tired one day, exhausted – you have a very limited source of energy; the river is vast. One day it takes you, but you give in, in frustration.If you can give in joyfully, it becomes surrender. Then it is no longer defeat, it is a victory. You win only with existence, never against existence. And remember, existence is not trying to defeat you. Your defeat is self-generated. You are defeated because you fight. If you want to be defeated, fight; if you want to win, surrender. This is the paradox: those who are ready to give in become the winners. The losers are the only winners in this game. Try to win and your defeat is absolutely certain – it is only a question of time, of when, but it is certain it is going to happen.It is holy because you are one with the whole. You throb with it, you dance with it, you sing with it. You are like a leaf in the wind: the leaf simply dances with the wind, it has no will of its own. This will-lessness is what I call sannyas, what the sutra calls holy.The Sanskrit word for holy is bhagavati. That is even more important to be understood than the word holy, because the word holy may carry some Christian connotation to it. Bhagavati is feminine for bhagavan. First, the sutra does not use the word bhagavan, it uses bhagavati, the feminine – because the source of all is feminine, not masculine. It is yin, not yang, it is a mother, not a father.The Christian concept of God as the father is not so beautiful. It is nothing but male ego. The male ego cannot think that God can be a “she”; the male ego wants God to be a “he.” And you see the whole Christian trinity: all three are men, woman is not included there – God the father, and Christ the son, and the Holy Ghost. It is an all-male club. And remember well that the feminine is far more fundamental in life than the man, because only the woman has a womb; only the woman can give birth to life, to new life. It comes through the feminine.Why does it come through the feminine? It is not just accidental. It comes through the feminine because only the feminine can allow it to come – because the feminine is receptive. The masculine is aggressive; the feminine can receive, absorb, can become a passage.The Sanskrit sutra says bhagavati, not bhagavan. It is of immense importance. That perfect wisdom out of which all the buddhas come is a feminine element, a mother. The womb has to be a mother. Once you think of God as the father, you don’t seem to understand what you are doing. The father is an unnatural institution. The father does not exist in nature. The father has existed only for a few thousand years; it is a human institution. The mother exists everywhere, the mother is natural.The father came into the world because of private property. The father is part of economics, not of nature. And once private property disappears – if it ever disappears – the father will disappear. The mother will remain there always and always. We cannot conceive of a world without the mother, we can conceive of a world without the father very easily. And the very idea is aggressive. Have you not seen? Only Germans call their country the “fatherland,” every other country calls it the “motherland.” These are dangerous people! “Motherland” is okay. By calling your country the “fatherland” you are starting something dangerous, you are putting something dangerous on foot. Sooner or later the aggression will come, the war will come. The seed is there.All the religions that have thought of God as the father have been aggressive religions. Christianity is aggressive, so is Islam. And you know perfectly well that the Jewish God is a very angry and arrogant God. The Jewish God declares: “If you are not for me, then you are against me, and I will destroy you. And I am a very jealous God; only worship me!” The people who have thought of God as the mother have been nonviolent people.Buddhists have never fought a war in the name of religion. They have never tried to convert a single human being by any force, by coercion of whatsoever sort. Mohammedans have tried to convert people with the sword, against their will, against their conscience, against their consciousness. Christians have tried to manipulate people to become Christians in all kinds of ways – sometimes through the sword, sometimes through bread, sometimes through other persuasions. Buddhism is the only religion that has not converted a single human being against his conscience. Only Buddhism is a nonviolent religion, because the concept of the ultimate reality is feminine.Homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy! Remember, truth is beautiful. Truth is beauty because truth is a benediction. Truth cannot be ugly, and the ugly cannot be true; the ugly is illusory.When you see an ugly person, don’t be deceived by his ugliness; search a little deeper and you will find a beautiful person hidden there. Don’t be deceived by ugliness. Ugliness is in your interpretation. Life is beautiful, truth is beautiful, existence is beautiful – it knows no ugliness.It is lovely, it is feminine, and it is holy. But remember, what is meant by holy is not what is ordinarily meant – as if it is otherworldly, as if it is sacred against the mundane and the profane, no. All is holy. There is nothing which can be called mundane or profane. All is sacred because all is suffused with one.There are buddhas and buddhas! – buddha-trees and buddha-dogs and buddha-birds and buddha-men and buddha-women – but all are buddhas. All are on the way. Man is not God in ruins, man is God in the making, on the way.The second sutra:Avalokita, the holy lord and bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the wisdom which has gone beyond.He looked down from on high, he beheld but five heaps, and he saw that in their own being they were empty.Avalokita is a name of Buddha. Literally it means one who looks from above – avalokita – one who looks from above, one who stands at the seventh center, sahasrar, the transcendental, and looks from there. Naturally, whatsoever you see is contaminated by your standpoint, is contaminated by the space you are in.If a man who lives at the first rung – the physical body – looks at anything, he looks from that standpoint. A man who lives at the physical only looks at your body when he looks at you, he cannot look at more than that, he cannot see more than that. Your vision of things depends on from where you are looking.A man who is sexually disturbed, sexually involved in fantasies, only looks from that standpoint. A man who is hungry looks from that standpoint. Watch in your own self. You look at things, and each time you look at things they appear different because you are different. In the morning the world looks a little more beautiful than in the evening. In the morning you are fresh, and in the morning you have come from a depth of great sleep, the deep sleep, the dreamless sleep. You have tasted something of the transcendental, although unconsciously. So in the morning everything looks beautiful. People are more compassionate, more loving; people are purer in the morning, people are more innocent in the morning. By the time evening arrives, those same people will become more corrupted, more cunning, clever, manipulating, ugly, violent, deceiving. They are the same people, but in the morning they were very close to the transcendental. By the evening they have lived in the mundane, in the worldly, in the physical too much, and they have become focused there.The man of perfection is one who can move through all these seven chakras easily – that is the man of freedom – who is not fixed at any point, who is like a dial: you can adjust it to any vision. That is what is called a mukta, one who is really free. He can move in all the dimensions and yet remain untouched by them. His purity is never lost, his purity remains of the transcendental.Buddha can come and touch your body and heal your body. He can become a body, but that is his freedom. He can become a mind and he can talk to you and explain things to you, but he is never the mind. He comes and stands behind the mind, uses it, just as you drive your car – you never become the car. He uses all these rungs, he is the whole ladder. But his ultimate standpoint remains the transcendental. That is his nature.Avalokita means one who looks from the beyond at the world.Avalokita, the holy lord and bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the wisdom which has gone beyond. The sutra says this state of beyondness is not a static thing. It is a movement, it is a process, riverlike. It is not a noun, it is a verb. It goes on unfolding. That’s why Hindus call it the one-thousand-petaled lotus: “one thousand” simply means infinite, it is symbolic of infinity. Petals upon petals, petals upon petals go on opening, to no end. The journey begins but never ends. It is eternal pilgrimage.Avalokita, the holy lord and bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the wisdom which has gone beyond. He was flowing like a river into the world of the beyond. He is called the holy lord and bodhisattva. Again the Sanskrit word has to be remembered. The Sanskrit word is iswara, which is translated as “holy lord.” Iswara means one who has become absolutely rich from his own riches, whose riches are of his own nature; nobody can take them away, nobody can steal them, they cannot be lost. All the riches that you have can be lost, can be stolen, will be lost – one day death will come and will take everything away. When somebody has come to the inner diamond that is his own being, death cannot take it away. Death is irrelevant to it. It cannot be stolen, it cannot be lost. Then one has become iswara, then one has become a holy lord. Then one has become bhagavan.The word bhagavan simply means “the blessed one.” Then one has become the blessed one. Now his blessing is eternally his; it depends on nothing, it is independent. It is not caused by anything so it cannot be taken away. It is uncaused, it is one’s intrinsic nature.And he is called bodhisattva. Bodhisattva is a very beautiful concept in Buddhism. It means one who has become a buddha, but is still holding himself in the world of time and space – to help others. Bodhisattva means “essentially a buddha,” is just ready to drop and disappear, is ready to go into nirvana. Nothing remains to be solved, all his problems are solved. There is no need for him to be here, but he is still here. There is nothing else to be learned here, but he is still here. And he is keeping himself in body-form, in mind-form – he is keeping the whole ladder. He has gone beyond, but he is keeping the whole ladder – to help, out of compassion.A story is told that Buddha reached the doors of the ultimate, nirvana. The doors were opened, the angels were dancing and singing to receive him – because it rarely happens that a human being becomes a buddha, in millions of years. The doors open, and that day is naturally a great day of celebration. All the ancient buddhas had gathered, and there was great rejoicing, and flowers were showering, and music was played, and everything was decorated – it was a day of celebration.But Buddha did not enter the door. The ancient buddhas, all with folded hands, asked him, requested him to come in: “Why are you standing outside?” And Buddha is reported to have said, “Unless all others who are coming behind me enter, I am not going to enter. I will keep myself outside, because once I come in then I disappear. Then I will not be of any help to these people. I see millions of people stumbling and groping in the dark. I have myself been groping the same way for millions of lives. I would like to give them my hand. Please close the door. When everybody has come, I myself will knock, then you can receive me.”A beautiful story. This is called the state of bodhisattva: one who is ready to disappear but still is holding – in body, in mind, in the world, in time and space – to help others.Buddha says: “Meditation is enough to solve your problems, but something is missing in it – compassion.” If compassion is also there, then you can help others solve their problems. He says: “Meditation is pure gold; it has a perfection of its own. But if there is compassion then the gold has a fragrance too – then a higher perfection, then a new kind of perfection, gold with fragrance.” Gold is enough unto itself – very valuable – but with compassion, meditation has a fragrance.Compassion keeps a buddha remaining a bodhisattva, just on the borderline. Yes, for a few days, a few years, one can hold, but not for long – because by and by things start disappearing on their own. When you are not attached with the body, you become dislocated from there. You can come sometimes, with effort. You can use the body, with effort, but you are no longer settled there. When you are no longer in the mind you can use it sometimes, but it no longer functions as well as it used to function before. You are no longer flowing in it. When you are not using it, it is lying there: it is a mechanism, it starts gathering rust.When a man has reached the seventh, for a few days, for a few years, he can use the six rungs. He can go back and use them, but by and by they start breaking. By and by, they start dying. A bodhisattva can be here for only one life, at the most. Then he has to disappear, because the mechanism disappears.But all those who have attained have tried, as far as they can, to use the bodymind to help those who are in body and mind, to help those who can understand only the language of the body and the mind, to help the disciples.Avalokita, the holy lord and bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the wisdom which has gone beyond. He looked down from on high, he beheld but five heaps, and he saw that in their own being they were empty. When you look from that point… For example, I was just telling you that I salute the buddha in you. That is one vision from the beyond: that I see you as potential buddhas. And another vision is just that I see you as empty shells.What you think you are is nothing but an empty shell. Somebody thinks he is a man; that is an empty idea. Consciousness is neither male nor female. Somebody thinks he has a very beautiful body, he is beautiful, strong, this and that – that is an empty idea, just ego deceiving you. Somebody thinks he knows much – that is just meaningless. His mechanism has accumulated memories and he is deceived by the memories. These are all empty things.So when seeing from the transcendental, on the one side I see you as budding buddhas, on another side I see you just as empty shells.Buddha has said that man consists of five elements, five skandhas, which are all empty. And because of the combination of the five, a by-product arises called the ego, the self. It is just like a clock functioning: it goes on ticking. You can listen and the tick is there; you can open the clock, you can separate all the parts to find where the tick is coming from. Where is the tick? You will not find it anywhere. The tick is a by-product. It is just a combination of a few things. A few things functioning together were creating a tick.That’s what your “I” is – five elements functioning together creating the tick called “I.” But it is empty, it has nothing in it. If you go and search for something substantial in it, you will not find anything.This is one of the Buddha’s deepest intuitions, insights: that life is empty, that life as we know it is empty. And life is full too, but we don’t know anything about it. From this emptiness you have to move toward a fullness, but that fullness is inconceivable right now – because that fullness from this state will look only empty. From that state your fullness looks empty – a king looks like a beggar; a man of knowledge, a knowledgeable man, looks stupid, ignorant.A small story:A certain holy man accepted a pupil and said to him, “It would be a good thing if you tried to write down all you understand about the religious life and what has brought you to it.”The pupil went away and began to write. A year later he came back to the master and said, “I have worked very hard on this, and though it is far from complete, these are the main reasons for my struggle.”The master read the work, which was many thousands of words, and then said to the young man, “It is admirably reasoned and clearly stated, but it is somewhat long. Try to shorten it a little.” So the novice went away and after five years he came back with a mere hundred pages.The master smiled, and after he had read it he said, “Now you are truly approaching the heart of the matter. Your thoughts have clarity and strength. But it is still a little long; try to condense it, my son.”The novice went away sadly, for he had labored hard to reach the essence. But after ten years he came back, and bowing low before the master offered him just five pages and said, “This is the kernel of my faith, the core of my life, and I ask your blessings for having brought me to it.”The master read it slowly and carefully: “It is truly marvelous,” he said, “in its simplicity and beauty, but it is not yet perfect. Try to reach a final clarification.”And when the master had reached the time appointed and was preparing for his end, his pupil returned to him again, and kneeling before him to receive his blessings handed him a single sheet of paper on which was written nothing.Then the master placed his hands on the head of his friend and said, “Now… Now you have understood.”From that transcendental vision, what you have is empty. From your vision, your neurotic vision, what I have is empty.Buddha looks empty – just pure emptiness – to you. Because of your ideas, because of your clinging, because of your possessiveness about things, Buddha looks empty. Buddha is full: you are empty. And his vision is absolute; your vision is very relative.The sutra says:Avolokita, the holy lord and bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the wisdom which has gone beyond.He looked down from on high, he beheld but five heaps, and he saw that in their own being they were empty.Emptiness is the key to Buddhism – shunyata. We will be going into it more and more as we enter the deeper realms of the Heart Sutra.Meditate over these sutras – meditate with love, with sympathy, not with logic and reasoning. If you go to these sutras with logic and reasoning, you will kill their spirit. Don’t dissect them. Try to understand them as they are, and don’t bring your mind – your mind will be an interference.If you can look at these sutras without your mind, great clarity is going to happen to you.Enough for today.

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The Heart Sutra 01-10Category: BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS

The Heart Sutra 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Sometimes while just sitting, the question comes up in the mind: What is truth? But by the time I come here I realize that I am not capable to ask. But may I ask what happens in those moments when the question arises so strongly that had you been nearby I would have asked it. Or if you had not replied, I would have caught hold of your beard or collar and asked, “What is truth, Osho?”That is the most important question that can arise in anybody’s mind, but there is no answer for it. The most important question, the ultimate question, cannot have any answer; that’s why it is ultimate.When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus remained silent. Not only that, the story says that when Pontius Pilate asked the question, “What is truth?” he did not wait to listen for the answer. He left the room and went away. This is very strange. Pontius Pilate also thinks that there cannot be an answer for it, so he didn’t wait for the answer. Jesus remained silent because he also knows it cannot be answered.But these two understandings are not the same, because these two persons are diametrically opposite. Pontius Pilate thinks that it cannot be answered because there is no truth; how can you answer it? That is the logical mind, the Roman mind. Jesus remains silent not because there is no truth, but because the truth is so vast, it is not definable. The truth is so huge, enormous, it cannot be confined in a word, it cannot be reduced to language. It is there. One can be it, but one cannot say it.For two different reasons they behaved almost in the same way: Pontius didn’t wait to hear the answer, he already knew that there is no truth. Jesus remains silent because he knows truth, and knows that it cannot be said.Chidvilas has asked this question. The question is absolutely significant. There is no question higher than that, because there is no religion higher than truth. It has to be understood; the question has to be analyzed. Analyzing the question, trying to understand the question itself, you may have an insight into what truth is. I will not answer it, I cannot answer it; nobody can answer it. But we can go deep into the question. Going deep into the question, the question will start disappearing. When the question has disappeared you will find the answer at the very core of your heart – you are truth, so how can you miss it? Maybe you have forgotten about it, maybe you have lost track of it, maybe you have forgotten how to enter into your own being, into your own truth.Truth is not a hypothesis, truth is not a dogma. Truth is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. Truth is neither mine nor yours. Truth belongs to nobody, but everybody belongs to truth. Truth means that which is: that is exactly the meaning of the word. It comes from a Latin root, verus. Verus means: that which is. In English there are a few words which are derivations of the Latin root verus: was, were – they come from verus. In German, war – that comes from verus. Verus means that which is, uninterpreted. Once the interpretation comes in, then what you know is reality, not truth. That is the difference between truth and reality. Reality is truth interpreted.So the moment you answer the question, “What is truth?” it becomes reality; it is no longer truth. Interpretation has entered it, the mind has colored it. And realities are as many as there are minds; there are multi-realities. Truth is one because truth is known only when the mind is not there. It is mind that keeps you separate from me, separate from others, separate from existence. If you look through the mind, then the mind will give you a picture of truth. That will be only a picture, a photograph of that which is. And of course, the photograph depends on the camera, on the film used, on the chemicals, on how it has been developed, how it has been printed, who has done it. A thousand and one other things enter in; it becomes reality.The word reality is also beautiful to understand. It comes from the root, res; it means thing or things. Truth is not a thing. Once interpreted, once the mind has grabbed it, defined it, demarked it, it becomes a thing.When you fall in love with a woman there is some truth – if you have fallen absolutely unaware, if you have not “done” it in any way, if you have not acted, managed, if you have not even thought about it. Suddenly you see a woman, you look into her eyes, she looks into your eyes, and something clicks. You are not the doer of it, you are simply possessed by it, you simply fall into it. It has nothing to do with you. Your ego is not involved, at least not in the very, very beginning, when love is virgin. In that moment there is truth, but there is no interpretation. That’s why love remains indefinable.Soon the mind comes in, starts managing things, takes possession of you. You start thinking about the girl as your girlfriend, you start thinking of how to get married, you start thinking about the woman as your wife. Now these are things; the girlfriend, the wife – these are things. The truth is no longer there, it has receded. Now things are becoming more important. The definable is more secure, the indefinable is insecure. You have started killing, poisoning the truth. Sooner or later there will be a wife and a husband, two things. But the beauty is gone, the joy has disappeared, the honeymoon is over.The honeymoon is over at that exact moment when truth becomes reality, when love becomes a relationship. The honeymoon is very short, unfortunately – I’m not talking about the honeymoon that you take. The honeymoon is very short. Maybe for a single moment it was there, but the purity of it, the crystal purity of it, the divinity of it, the beyondness of it – it is from eternity, it is not of time. It is not part of this mundane world, it is like a ray coming into a dark hole. It comes from the transcendental. It is absolutely appropriate to call love God, because love is truth. The closest that you come to truth in ordinary life is love.Chidvilas asks: “What is truth?”Asking has to disappear; only then do you know.If you ask, “What is truth?” what are you asking? If I say A is truth, B is truth, C is truth, will that be the answer? If I say A is truth, then certainly A cannot be the truth: it is something else that I am using as synonymous with truth. If it is absolutely synonymous, then it will be a tautology. Then I can say, “Truth is truth,” but that is silly, meaningless. Nothing is solved by it. If it is exactly the same, if A is truth, then it will mean truth is truth. If A is different, is not exactly truth, then I am falsifying. Then to say A is truth will be only approximate. And remember, there cannot be anything approximate. Either truth is or it is not. So I cannot say A is truth.I cannot even say, “God is truth,” because if God is truth then it is a tautology – “Truth is truth.” Then I’m not saying anything. If God is different from truth, then I am saying something, but then I am saying something wrong. Then God is different, then how can he be truth? If I say it is approximate, linguistically it looks all right, but it is not right. “Approximately” means some lie is there, something false is there. Otherwise, why is it not a hundred percent truth? If it is ninety-nine percent truth, then something is there which is not true. And truth and untruth cannot exist together, just as darkness and light cannot exist together – because darkness is nothing but absence. Absence and presence cannot exist together, truth and untruth cannot exist together. Untruth is nothing but the absence of truth.So no answer is possible, hence Jesus remained silent. But if you look at it with deep sympathy, if you look into the silence of Jesus, you will have an answer. Silence is the answer. Jesus is saying, “Be silent, as I am silent, and you will know” – not saying it in words. It is a gesture, it is very, very Zen-like. In that moment when Jesus remained silent, he comes very close to the Zen approach, to the Buddhist approach. He is a buddha in that moment. Buddha never answered these questions. He had eleven questions listed: wherever he would move his disciples would go around and declare to people, “Never ask these eleven questions of Buddha” – questions which are fundamental, questions which are really significant. You could ask anything else, and Buddha was always ready to answer. But don’t ask the fundamental, because the fundamental can only be experienced. And truth is the most fundamental; the very substance of existence is what truth is.Go into the question. The question is significant, it is arising in your heart: “What is truth?” – a desire to know that which is, is arising. Don’t push it aside, go into it. Chidvilas, whenever it happens again, close your eyes, go into the question. Let the question become very, very focused – “What…is…truth?” Let there arise a great concentration. Forget everything, as if your whole life depends on this simple question, “What is truth?” Let it become a matter of life and death. And don’t try to answer it, because you don’t know the answer.Answers may come – the mind always tries to supply answers – but see the fact that you don’t know, that’s why you are asking. So how can your mind supply you an answer? The mind knows not, so tell the mind, “Keep quiet.” If you know, then there is no need for the question. You don’t know, hence the question.So don’t be befooled by the mind’s toys. It supplies toys: it says, “Look, it is written in the Bible. Look, it is written in the Upanishads. This is the answer. Look, this is written by Lao Tzu, this is the answer.” The mind can throw all kinds of scriptures at you: the mind can quote, the mind can supply from the memory. You have heard many things, you have read many things; the mind carries all those memories. It can repeat in a mechanical way. But look into this phenomenon: the mind knows not, and all that mind repeats is borrowed. And the borrowed cannot help.It happened at a railway crossing. The gates were closed, a train was to pass, and a man was sitting in his car, waiting for the train to pass, reading a book. A drunkard who was sitting just by the side of the gate came close, knocked on the air-conditioned car’s window. The man opened the window and said, “What can I do for you? Do you need any help?”And the bum said, “Yes, for two days I have not eaten anything at all. Can you give me two rupees? That will be enough for me, just two rupees.”The man laughed and said, “Never borrow and never lend money,” and showed the book to the bum and said, “Shakespeare – Shakespeare says so. Look.”The bum pulled out of his pocket a very dirty paperback and said to the man, “You sonofabitch – D. H. Lawrence.”Beware of the mind. The mind goes on quoting, the mind knows all without knowing at all. The mind is a pretender. See into this phenomenon: this I call insight. It is not a question of thinking. If you think about it, it is again the mind. You have to see through and through. You have to look deeply into the very phenomenon, the functioning of the mind, how the mind functions. It borrows from here and there, it goes on borrowing and accumulating. It is a hoarder, a hoarder of knowledge. Mind becomes very knowledgeable, and then whenever you ask a question which is really important the mind gives a very unimportant answer to it – futile, superficial, rubbish.A man bought a parrot from a pet shop. The shop-owner assured him the bird would learn to say hello within half an hour. Back home he spent an hour “helloing” to the parrot, but not a word from the bird.As he was turning away in sheer despair, the bird said, “Number engaged.”A parrot is a parrot. He must have heard it in the pet shop. And this man was going on and on, “Hello, hello, hello,” and the bird was listening, and waiting for him to stop. Then he could say, “Number engaged!”You can go on asking the mind, “What is truth, what is truth, what is truth?” And the moment you stop, the mind will immediately say, “Number engaged” or something. The mind will give you an answer. Beware of the mind.The mind is the Devil, there is no other Devil. And it is your mind. This insight has to be developed – of looking through and through. Cut the mind in two with a sharp blow of the sword. That sword is awareness. Cut the mind in two and go through it, go beyond it! And if you can go beyond the mind, through the mind, and a moment of no-mind arises in you, there is the answer – not a verbal answer, not a scripture quoted, not in quotation marks, but authentically yours, an experience. Truth is an existential experience.The question is immensely significant, but you will have to be very respectful toward the question. Don’t be in a hurry to find an answer, otherwise some rubbish will kill the question. Don’t allow your mind to kill the question. And the way of the mind to kill the question is to supply answers, unlived, unexperienced.You are truth! But it can happen only in utter silence, when not a single thought moves, when the mind has nothing to say, when not a single ripple is in your consciousness. When there is no ripple in your consciousness, your consciousness remains undistorted. When there is a ripple, there is a distortion.Just go to a lake. Standing on the bank, look down at your reflection. If there are waves, ripples on the lake, and wind is blowing, your reflection is shaky. You cannot figure out what is what – where is your nose and where are your eyes – you can only guess. But the lake is silent and the wind is not blowing and there is not a single ripple on the surface; suddenly you are there. In absolute perfection, the reflection is there. The lake becomes a mirror.Whenever there is a thought moving in your consciousness it distorts. And there are many thoughts, millions of thoughts, continuously rushing, and it is always rush-hour. Twenty-four hours a day it is rush-hour, and the traffic goes on and on, and each thought is associated with thousands of other thoughts. They are all holding hands and linked together and interlinked, and the whole crowd is rushing around you. How can you know what truth is? Get out of this crowd.That’s what meditation is, that’s what meditation is all about: a consciousness without mind, a consciousness without thoughts, a consciousness without any wavering – an unwavering consciousness. Then it is there in all its beauty and benediction. Then truth is there – call it God, call it nirvana, or whatsoever you like to call it. It is there, and it is there as an experience. You are in it and it is in you.Use this question. Make it more penetrating. Make it so penetrating; put everything at stake so that the mind cannot befool you with its superficial answers. Once the mind disappears, once the mind is no longer playing its old tricks, you will know what truth is. You will know it in silence. You will know it in thoughtless awareness.The second question:Osho,My surrender is goal-oriented. I'm surrendering in order to win freedom, so it is not real surrender at all. I'm watching it, but the problem is: it is always “I” who is watching. Therefore every realization out of that watching is a reinforcement of the ego. I feel tricked by my ego.You have not understood what surrender is. The first thing to remember about surrender is: you cannot do it, it is not a doing. You can prevent it from happening, but you cannot manage it to happen. Your power about surrender is only negative: you can prevent it, but you cannot bring it.Surrender is not something that you can do. If you do it, it is not surrender, because the doer is there. Surrender is a great understanding that, “I am not.” Surrender is an insight that the ego exists not, that, “I am not separate.” Surrender is not an act but an understanding.In the first place you are false, the separation is false. Not for a single moment can you exist separate from the universe. The tree cannot exist if uprooted from the earth. The tree cannot exist if the sun disappears tomorrow. The tree cannot exist if no water is coming to its roots. The tree cannot exist if it cannot breathe. The tree is rooted in all the five elements – what Buddhists call skandhas, the five groups we were talking about the other day. Avalokita… When Buddha came to the transcendental vision, when he passed through all the stages, when he passed through all the rungs of the ladder and came to the seventh – from there he looked down, looked back. What did he see? He saw only five heaps with nothing substantial in them, just emptiness, shunyata.The tree cannot exist if these five elements are not constantly pouring energy into it. The tree is just a combination of these five elements. If the tree starts thinking, “I am,” then there is going to be misery for the tree. The tree will create a hell for itself. But trees are not so foolish, they don’t carry any mind. They are there, and if tomorrow they disappear, they simply disappear. They don’t cling; there is nobody to cling. The tree is constantly surrendered to existence. Surrendered means it is never separate, it has not come to that stupid idea of the ego. And so are the birds, so are the mountains, so are the stars. It is only man who has turned his great opportunity of being conscious into being self-conscious. Man has consciousness. If consciousness grows, it can bring you the greatest bliss possible. But if something goes wrong and consciousness turns sour and becomes self-consciousness, then it creates hell, then it creates misery. Both alternatives are always open; it is for you to choose.The first thing to be understood about ego is that it exists not. Nobody exists in separation. You are as much one with the universe as I am, as Buddha is, as Jesus is. I know it, you don’t know it; the difference is only of recognition. The difference is not existential, not at all! So you have to look into this stupid idea of separation. Now if you start trying to surrender you are still carrying the idea of separation. Now you are thinking, “I will surrender, now I am going to surrender” – but you think you are.Looking into the very idea of separation, one day you find that you are not separate, so how can you surrender? There is nobody to surrender! There has never been anybody to surrender. The surrenderer is not there, not at all – never found anywhere. If you go into yourself you will not find the surrenderer anywhere. In that moment is surrender. When the surrenderer is not found, in that moment is surrender. You cannot do it. If you do it, it is a false thing. Out of falsity only falsity arises. You are false, so whatsoever you do will be false, more false. And one falsity leads to another, and so on and so forth. And the fundamental falsity is the ego, the idea, “I am separate.”You say: “My surrender is goal-oriented.” The ego is always goal-oriented. It is always greedy, it is always grabbing. It is always searching for more and more and more; it lives in the more. If you have money it wants to have more money; if you have a house it wants to have a bigger house; if you have a woman it wants to have a more beautiful woman, but it always wants more. The ego is constantly hungry. It lives in the future and in the past. In the past it lives as a hoarder – “I have this and this and this.” It gets a great satisfaction: “I have got something” – power, prestige, money. It gives a kind of reality to it. It gives the notion: “When I have these things, I must be there.” And it lives in the future with the idea of more. It lives as memory and as desire.What is a goal? A desire: “I have to reach there, I have to be that, I have to attain.” The ego does not live, cannot live in the present, because the present is real and the ego is false – they never meet. The past is false, it is no more. Once it was, but when it was present, ego was not there. Once it has disappeared, is no longer existential, ego starts grabbing it, accumulating it. It grabs and accumulates dead things. The ego is a graveyard: it collects corpses, dead bones.Or, it lives in the future. The future is not yet – it is imagination, fantasy, dream. Ego can live with that too, very easily; falsities go together perfectly well, smoothly well. Bring anything existential and the ego disappears. Hence the insistence of being in the present, being herenow, just this moment. If you are intelligent there is no need to think about what I am saying; you can simply see into it this very moment! Where is the ego? There is silence, and there is no past, and there is no future, only this moment – and this dog barking… This moment, and you are not. Let this moment be, and you are not. And there is immense silence, there is profound silence, within and without. And then there is no need to surrender because you know you are not. Knowing that you are not is surrender.It is not a question of surrendering to me, it is not a question of surrendering to existence. It is not a question of surrendering at all. Surrendering is an insight, an understanding that, “I am not.” Seeing, “I am not, I am a nothingness, emptiness,” surrender grows. The flower of surrender grows on the tree of emptiness. It cannot be goal-oriented.The ego is goal-oriented. The ego is hankering for the future. It can hanker even for the other life, it can hanker for heaven, it can hanker for nirvana. It doesn’t matter what it hankers for – hankering is what it is, desiring is what it is, projecting into the future is what it is.See it! See into it! I’m not saying think about it. If you think about it you miss. Thinking again means past and future. Have a look into it – avalokita! – look into it. The English word look comes from the same root as avalokita. Look into it, and do it right now. Don’t say to yourself, “Okay, I will go home and do it.” The ego has entered, the goal has come, the future has entered. Whenever time enters you are falling into that falsity of separation.Let it be here, this very moment. And then you suddenly see you are, and you are not going anywhere, and you are not coming from anywhere. You have always been here. Here is the only time, the only space. Now is the only existence. In that now, there is surrender.“My surrender is goal-oriented,” you say; “I’m surrendering in order to win freedom…” But you are free! You have never been unfree. You are free, but again there is the same problem: you want to be free, but you don’t understand that you can be free only when you are free from yourself – there is no other freedom. When you think about freedom, you think as if you will be there and free. You will not be there; there will be freedom. Freedom means freedom from the self, not freedom of the self. The moment the prison disappears the prisoner also disappears, because the prisoner is the prison! The moment you come out of the prison, you also are not. There is pure sky, pure space. That pure space is called nirvana, moksha, liberation.Try to understand rather than trying to achieve.“I am surrendering in order to win freedom…” Then you are using surrender as a means, and surrender is the goal, is the end unto itself. When I say surrender is the goal, I’m not saying that surrender has to be achieved somewhere in the future. I’m saying that surrender is not a means, it is an end unto itself. It is not that surrender brings freedom, surrender is freedom! They are synonymous, they mean the same thing. You are looking at the same thing from two different angles.“…so it is not real surrender at all.” It is neither real nor unreal. It is not surrender at all. It is not even unreal.“I am watching it, but the problem is it is always “I” who is watching. Therefore every realization out of that watching is a reinforcement of the ego. I feel tricked by my ego.” Who is this “I” you are talking about who feels tricked by the ego? It is the ego itself. The ego is such that it can divide itself into fragments, into parts, and then the game starts. You are the chaser and you are the chased.It is like a dog trying to catch hold of its own tail, and it goes on jumping. And you look and you see the absurdity of it – but you see the absurdity, the dog cannot see it. The more he finds it is difficult to catch hold of the tail, the more he becomes crazy, the more he jumps. And the faster and the bigger the jump, the more the tail jumps faster and bigger also. And the dog cannot conceive what is happening: he’s such a great catcher of everything, and this ordinary tail, and he cannot catch hold of it?This is what is happening to you. It is “I” who is trying to catch, and who is the catcher and the caught both. See the ridiculousness of it, and in that very seeing be free of it.There is not a thing to be done – not a thing, I say, because you are already that which you want to become. You are buddhas, you have never been otherwise. Seeing is enough.When you say, “I am watching…” it is again the “I.” Watching, the “I” will be created again, because watching is again an act, there is effort involved. You are watching – then who is watching? Relax. In relaxation – when there is nothing to be watched and nobody as a watcher, when you are not divided into a duality – there arises a different quality of witnessing. It is not a watching, it is just passive awareness; passive, I say – remember. It has nothing aggressive in it. Watching is very aggressive: effort is needed, you have to be tense. But be non-tense, relaxed. Just be there. In that consciousness when you are simply there, sitting doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.That is the whole Buddhist approach: that anything that you do will create and enhance the doer – watching also, thinking also, surrendering also. Anything that you do will create the trap. Nothing is needed to be done on your part. Just be, and let things happen. Don’t try to manage, don’t try to manipulate. Let the breeze pass, let the sunrays come, let life dance, and let death come and have its dance in you too.This is my meaning of sannyas: it is not something that you do, but when you drop all doing and see the absurdity of doing. Who are you to do? You are just a wave in this ocean. One day you are, another day you will disappear; the ocean continues. Why should you be so worried? You come, you disappear. Meanwhile, for this small interval, you become worried and tense, and you take all the burdens on your shoulders, and you carry rocks on your heart – for no reason at all.You are free this very moment!I declare you enlightened in this very moment. But you don’t trust me. You say, “That’s right, Osho, but just tell us how to become enlightened.” That becoming, that achieving, that desiring, goes on jumping on every object that you can find. Sometimes it is money, sometimes it is godliness. Sometimes it is power, sometimes it is meditation – but any object, and you start grabbing it. Non-grabbing is the way to live the real life, the true life, non-grasping, non-possessing.Let things happen, let life be a happening, and there is joy, there is rejoicing – because then there is no frustration, ever, because you had never expected anything in the first place. Whatsoever comes is good, is welcome. There is no failure, no success. That game of failure and success has been dropped. The sun comes in the morning and wakes you, and the moon comes in the evening and sings a lullaby and you go to sleep. Hunger comes and you eat, and so on and so forth. That’s what Zen masters mean when they say: “When hungry, eat, when sleepy, sleep, and there is nothing else to do.”I’m not teaching you inaction. I’m not saying don’t go and work, I’m not saying don’t earn your bread, I’m not saying renounce the world and depend on others and become exploiters; no, not at all. But don’t be a doer. Yes, when you are hungry you have to eat, and when you have to eat you have to earn the bread – but there is nobody doing it. It is hunger itself that is working; there is nobody else doing it. It is thirst itself that is taking you toward the well or toward the river. It is thirst itself moving; there is nobody who is thirsty. Drop nouns and pronouns in your life and let verbs live.Buddha says: “The truth is that when you see a dancer, there is no dancer but only a dance. When you see a river, there is no river but only rivering. When you see a tree, there is no tree but only treeing. When you see a smile, there is nobody who is smiling, there is only smile, smiling. When you see love, there is nobody who is a lover but only loving. Life is a process.”But we are accustomed to thinking in terms of static nouns. That creates trouble. And there is nothing static – all is flux and flowing. Flow with it, flow with this river, and never be a doer. Even when you are doing don’t be a doer. There is doing but there is no doer. Once this insight settles in you there is nothing else.Enlightenment is not something like a goal that has to be attained. It is the very ordinary life, this simple life that surrounds you. But when you are not struggling, this ordinary life becomes extraordinarily beautiful. Then trees are greener, then birds sing in richer tones, then everything that is happening around is precious. Then ordinary pebbles are diamonds.Accept this simple, ordinary life. Just drop the doer. And when I say drop the doer, don’t become a dropper! Seeing into the reality of it, it disappears.The third question:Osho,Is there a difference between the shunyavada of Nagarjuna and avyakritopadesh, the unspoken and the undefinable teaching of Lord Buddha?There is no difference at all. If a difference appears to be there, that is only because of the formulation. Nagarjuna is a great philosopher, one of the greatest of the world. Only a few people in the world, very few, have that quality of penetration that Nagarjuna has. So, his way of talking is very philosophical, logical, absolutely logical. Buddha is a mystic, not a philosopher. His way of saying things is more poetic than philosophical. The approach is different, but Nagarjuna is saying exactly the same thing as Buddha. Their formulation is certainly different, but what they are saying has to be understood.You ask, “Is there any difference between shunyavada…” Shunyavada means the theory, the philosophy of nothingness. In English there is no word which can be equivalent, appropriately equivalent, to shunya. Shunya means emptiness; but not negative, a very positive emptiness. It means nothingness, but it does not mean simply nothingness; it means no-thing-ness. Shunya means void, void of everything. But the void itself is there, with utter presence, so it is not just void. It is like the sky which is empty, which is pure space, but which is. Everything comes in it and goes, and it remains.Shunya is like the sky – pure presence. You cannot touch it although you live in it. You cannot see it although you can never be without it. You exist in it; just as the fish exists in the ocean, you exist in space, in shunya. Shunyavada means that everything arises out of no-thing.Just a few minutes ago I was telling you the difference between truth and reality. Reality means the world of things, and truth means the world of no-thing, nothing – shunya. All things arise out of nothing and dissolve back into nothing.In the Upanishads there is a story:Svetaketu has come from his master’s house, back to his parents. He has learned all. His father, Uddalaka, a great philosopher, looks at him and says, “Svetaketu, go outside and bring a fruit from yonder tree.”He goes out, brings a fruit. And the father says, “Break it. What do you see in it?” There are many seeds in it. And the father says, “Take one seed and break it. What do you see in it?”And he says, “Nothing.”And the father says, “Everything arises out of this nothing. This big tree, so big that one thousand bullock carts can rest underneath it, has arisen out of just a seed. And you break the seed and you find nothing there. This is the mystery of life – everything arises out of nothing. And one day the tree disappears, and you don’t know where; you cannot find it anywhere.”So does man: we arise out of nothing, and we are nothing, and we disappear into nothing. This is shunyavada.And what is Buddha’s avyakritopadesh, the unspoken and the undefinable teaching? It is the same. He never made it so philosophically clear as Nagarjuna has made it. That’s why he has never spoken about it. That’s why he says it is indefinable; it cannot be brought to the level of language. He has kept silent about it.You know the Flower Sermon?One day Buddha comes with a lotus flower in his hand and sits silently, saying nothing. And the ten thousand disciples are there, the ten thousand bhikkus are there, and they are waiting for him to say something, and he goes on looking at the lotus flower. There is great silence, and then there is great restlessness too. People start becoming fidgety – “What is he doing? He has never done that before.”And then one disciple, Mahakashyapa, smiles.Buddha calls Mahakashyapa, gives him the lotus flower, and says to the assembly, “What can be said I have said to you, and what cannot be said I have given to Mahakashyapa.”This is avyakritopadesh, this is the indefinable message. This is the origin of Zen Buddhism, the transmission. Something was transmitted by Buddha to Mahakashyapa, something which is nothing; on the visible plane nothing – no word, no scripture, no theory – but something has been transmitted. What?The Zen monks have been meditating on this for two thousand five hundred years: “What? What was transmitted? What exactly was given?” In fact, nothing has been given from Buddha to Mahakashyapa; Mahakashyapa has certainly understood something. He understood the silence, he understood the penetrating silence. He understood that moment of clarity, that moment of utter thoughtlessness. He became one, in that moment, with Buddha. That’s what surrender is. Not that he was doing it: Buddha was silent and he was silent, and the silences met, and the two silences dissolved into each other. And two silences cannot remain separate, remember, because a silence has no boundary, a silence is unbounded, a silence is simply open, open from all sides. In that great assembly of ten thousand monks there were two silences that day – Buddha and Mahakashyapa. The others remained outside. Mahakashyapa and Buddha met: that’s why he smiled – because that was the greatest sermon that Buddha had ever preached. Not saying a single thing and he had said all, all that could be said – and all that could not be said, that too.Mahakashyapa understood and laughed. In that laughter Mahakashyapa disappeared totally, became a buddha. The flame from the lamp of Buddha jumped into Mahakashyapa. That is called the “transmission beyond scriptures” – the Flower Sermon. It is unique in the history of human consciousness. That is what is called avyakritopadesh: the unspoken word, the unuttered word.Silence became so substantial, so solid; silence became so real, so existential; silence became tangible in that moment. Buddha was a nothing, Mahakashyapa also understood what it means to be a nothing, to be utterly empty.There is no difference between Nagarjuna’s shunyavada and Buddha’s unuttered message. Nagarjuna is one of the greatest disciples of Buddha, and one of the most penetrating intellects ever. Only very few people – once in a while, a Socrates, a Shankara – can be compared with Nagarjuna. He was very, very intelligent. The uttermost that the intellect can do is to commit suicide; the greatest thing, the greatest crescendo that can come to the intellect is to go beyond itself – that’s what Nagarjuna has done. He has passed through all the realms of intellect, and beyond.The logical positivists say that nothing is merely an abstraction. In the various instances of negative assertions – for example: this is not sweet, I am not healthy, I was not there, he did not like me, etcetera, etcetera – negation has no substance of its own. This is what the logical positivists say. Buddha does not agree, Nagarjuna does not agree. Martin Heidegger, one of the most penetrating intellects of the modern age, does not agree.Heidegger says there is an actual experience of nothing. It is not just something created by language; there is an actual experience of nothing. It is inseparably bound up with being. The experience that attests to this is that of dread. Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, also asks, “What effect does nothing produce?” and answers, “It begets dread.”Nothing is an actual experience. Either you can experience it in deep meditation, or when death comes. Death and meditation are the two possibilities of experiencing it. Yes, sometimes you can experience it in love too. If you dissolve into somebody in deep love you can experience a kind of nothingness. That’s why people are afraid of love – they go only so far, then panic arises, then they are frightened. That’s why very few people have remained orgasmic – because orgasm gives you an experience of nothingness. You disappear, you melt into something and you don’t know what it is. You go into the indefinable, avyakrit. You go beyond the social. You go into some unity where separation is no longer valid, where ego does not exist. And it is frightening, because it is deathlike.So it is an experience, either in love, which people have learned to avoid – so many go on hankering for love, and go on destroying all possibilities for it because of the fear of nothingness – or, in deep meditation when thought stops. You simply see there is nothing inside, but that nothing has a presence; it is not simply absence of thought, it is presence of something unknown, mysterious, something very huge. Or, you can experience it in death, if you are alert. People ordinarily die in unconsciousness. Because of the fear of nothingness they become unconscious. If you die consciously… And you can die consciously only if you accept the phenomenon of death, and for that one has to learn, prepare for the whole life. One first has to love to be ready to die, and one has to meditate to be ready to die. Only a man who has loved and meditated will be able to die consciously. And once you die consciously then there is no need for you to come back, because you have learned the lesson of life. Then you disappear into the whole; that is nirvana.The logical positivists look very logical, but they miss something – because reality is far more than logic. In ordinary experience we come only to what they say: this chair is here, this will be removed, then you will say there is no chair there. It simply indicates absence – the chair has been removed. These are ordinary instances of nothingness: there was once a house and then it has been dismantled, it is no longer there. It is only an absence.But there are nothingnesses deep inside your being, at the very core. At the very core of life, death exists. Death is the center of the cyclone. In love you come close to that, in meditation you come close to that, in physical death also you come close to that. In deep sleep, when dreams disappear, you come close to it. It is very life-giving, it is life-enhancing. A man who cannot sleep deeply will become ill, because it is only in deep sleep, when he dies into his deepest depth, that he regains life, energy, vitality. In the morning he is again fresh and full of zest, gusto – vibrant, again vibrant.Learn to die! That is the greatest art to be learned, the greatest skill there is.Heidegger’s standpoint comes very close to Buddha’s, and his language is very modern, that’s why I’m quoting him. He says: “Every being, so far as it is a being, is made out of nothing.” There is a parallel Christian doctrine too – very neglected, because Christian theologicians cannot manage it, it is too much. The doctrine is creatio ex nihilo: the creation is out of nothing.If you ask the modern physicist he will agree with Buddha: as you go deeper into matter, things start disappearing. A moment comes, when the atom is divided, that thing-hood completely disappears. Then there are electrons, but they are not things anymore, they are no-things. It is very difficult to understand. But physics, modern physics, has come very close to metaphysics – because it is coming closer and closer to reality every day. It is approaching through matter, but coming to nothing. You know matter no longer exists in modern physics. Matter is just an illusion: it only appears, it is not there. The solidity of it, the substantiality of it, is all illusion; nothing is substantial, all is flux and energy. Matter is nothing but energy. And when you go deeper into energy, energy is not a thing, it is a no-thing.Death is the point at which knowledge fails, and we become open to being – that has been the Buddhist experience down the ages. Buddha used to send his disciples, when somebody had died, to see the body burning on the funeral pyre: “Meditate there, meditate on the nothingness of life.” Death is the point at which knowledge fails, and when knowledge fails, mind fails. And when mind fails, there is a possibility of truth penetrating you.But people don’t know. When somebody dies you don’t know what to do, you are very embarrassed. When somebody dies it is a great moment to meditate.I always think that each city needs a Death Center. When somebody is dying and his death is very, very imminent he should be moved to the Death Center. It should be a small temple where people who can go deep in meditation should sit around him, should help him to die, and should participate in his being when he disappears into nothing. When somebody disappears into nothing great energy is released. The energy that was there, surrounding him, is released. If you are in a silent space around him, you will go on a great trip. No psychedelic can take you there. The man is naturally releasing great energy; if you can absorb that energy, you will also kind of die with him. And you will see the ultimate – the source and the goal, the beginning and the end.“Man is the being by whom nothing comes into the world,” says Jean-Paul Sartre. “Consciousness is not this or that object, it is not any object at all; but surely it is itself? No,” says Sartre, “that is precisely what it is not. Consciousness is never identical with itself. Thus, when I reflect upon myself, the self that is reflected is other than the self that reflects. When I try to state what I am, I fail, because while I am speaking, what I am talking about slips away into the past and becomes what I was. I am my past and my future, and yet I am not. I have been the one, and I shall be the other. But in the present, there is nothingness.”If somebody asks you, “Who are you?” what are you going to say? Either you can answer out of the past, which is no more, or you can answer out of the future, which you are not yet. But who are you right in this moment? A nobody, a nothingness. This nothingness is the very core, the heart – the heart of your being.Death is not the ax that cuts down the tree of life, it is the fruit that grows on it. Death is the very substance you are made of. Nothingness is your very being. Attain to this nothingness either through love or meditation, and go on having glimpses of it. This is what Nagarjuna means by shunya. This is what Buddha transferred that day when he delivered the Flower Sermon. This is what Mahakashyapa understood when he laughed. He saw nothingness, and the purity of it, the innocence of it, the primal innocence of it, the radiance of it, the immortality of it – because nothingness cannot die. Things die; nothingness is immortal, eternal.If you are identified with anything, you will suffer death. But if you know that you are death, how can you suffer death? Then nothing can destroy you; nothingness is indestructible.A Buddhist parable narrates that the king of hell asked a newly arrived spirit whether during life he had met the three heavenly messengers. And when he answered, “No, my Lord, I did not,” he asked whether he had ever seen an old man bent with age, or a poor and friendless sick man, or a dead man?Buddhists call these three “the messengers of God”: old age, sickness, death – three messengers of God. Why? – because only through these experiences in life do you become aware of death. And if you become aware of death and you start learning how to go into it, how to welcome it, how to receive it, you are released from the bondage, from the wheel of life and death.Heidegger says, and so does Søren Kierkegaard, that nothingness creates dread. That is only half of the story – it creates dread because these two people are just philosophers.If you ask Buddha, Mahakashyapa, Nagarjuna, if you ask me, death looked at only partially creates dread; looked at absolutely, totally, it frees you from all dread, from all anguish, from all anxiety, it frees you from samsara. If you look partly then it creates fear that you are going to die, that you will become a nothing, that soon you will disappear. And naturally you feel nervous, shaken, uprooted. If you look at death totally, then you know you are death, you are made of it. So nothing is going to disappear, nothing is going to remain. Only nothingness is.Buddhism is not a pessimistic religion as has been thought by many people. Buddhism is the way to get rid of both optimism and pessimism, to get rid of duality.Start meditating on death. And whenever you feel death close by, go into it through the door of love, through the door of meditation, through the door of a man dying. And if some day you are dying – and the day is going to come one day – receive it in joy, benediction. If you can receive death in joy and benediction, you will attain to the greatest peak, because death is the crescendo of life. Hidden in it is the greatest orgasm, because hidden in it is the greatest freedom.Death is making love to existence, or existence making love to you. Death is cosmic, total orgasm. So drop all ideas that you carry about death – they are dangerous. They make you antagonistic to the greatest experience that you need to have. If you miss death you will be born again. Unless you have learned how to die, you will go on being born again and again and again. This is the wheel, samsara, the world. Once you have known the greatest orgasm, then there is no need; you disappear, and you remain in that orgasm forever. You don’t remain like you, you don’t remain as an entity, you don’t remain defined, identified with anything. You remain as the whole, not as the part.This is Nagarjuna’s shunyavada, and this is Buddha’s unspoken message, the unspoken word. They are both the same.The last question:Osho,I am afraid of taking sannyas, although I am immensely attracted. I am afraid because of my husband. I don't think he will be able to understand it.You are not very respectful toward your husband. Do you think he’s stupid or something? Why should he not be able to understand it? If he loves you, he will understand it. Love is understanding. If he does not love you, then whether you take sannyas or not, he’s not going to understand you.The second thing: if he does not understand your sannyas, it is his problem. You have to live your life. Never compromise, otherwise you will miss much. Never compromise! If you feel like becoming a sannyasin, become a sannyasin. Take the risk. If he loves you there is no problem, he will understand – because love gives freedom. If he does not love you then there will be difficulty because he will feel you are getting out of his possession, you are becoming independent, you are trying to be yourself. But to bow down to such expectations is suicidal. That is his problem. You have to live your life, he has to live his life. Nobody should try to impose things on the other.But my feeling is that you must also be imposing things on him, that’s why you are afraid. If you are not imposing anything on him, you can be independent. But it is a mutual arrangement: people are slaves to each other, and whenever you make a slave of somebody, remember, you are making somebody your master too. It is a mutual arrangement. You must be trying to manipulate your husband, you must be trying to force things upon him, you must be making him a cripple. Now you want to be independent, and deep down you are afraid that if you become independent, he will assert his independence too. Then he would like to go his own way, and that you cannot afford. That is the real fear.But if you don’t do something that you like, that you wanted to do, that you wanted to be, you will never be able to forgive him. And you will take revenge, and you will be angry, and you will be in a rage – because you will constantly think you wanted to become a sannyasin, and it is only because of this man that you did not. You will feel caged, imprisoned. Nobody likes being imprisoned. Then one hates the person who is the cause of your imprisonment, then one tries to take revenge in subtle ways. That will destroy your marriage.Never create such a situation in which you cannot forgive the other. Only two independent persons can forgive each other. Slaves cannot forgive. And who knows, it may help him too, in some way.I was reading an anecdote the other day:Two explorers met in the wilds of the Amazon. The following exchange took place:First explorer: “I came out here because the urge to wander is in my blood. Civilization sickens me. I like to see nature in its primitive form. I would like to plant my footprints where no human being has ever gone before. How about you? Why did you come out here?”Second explorer: “My wife has become Osho’s sannyasin, and she is doing Dynamic Meditation in the morning and Kundalini in the evening – that’s why!”But good! If your husband goes to the Amazon and becomes an explorer, this is giving him a good opportunity to do something.Enough for today.

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The Heart Sutra 01-10Category: BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS

The Heart Sutra 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Here, O Sariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form; the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness.Here, O Sariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness; they are not produced or stopped, not defiled or immaculate, not deficient or complete.Knowledge is the curse, the calamity, the cancer. It is through knowledge that man becomes divided from the whole. Knowledge creates the distance.You come across a wildflower in the mountains, you don’t know what it is; your mind has nothing to say about it, the mind is silent. You look at the flower, you see the flower, but no knowledge arises in you – there is wonder, there is mystery. The flower is there, you are there. Through wonder you are not separate, you are bridged.If you know that it is a rose or a marigold, or something else, that very knowing disconnects you. The flower is there, you are here, but there is no bridge – you know! Knowledge creates distance. The more you know the bigger the distance; the less you know the less the distance. And if you are in a moment of not knowing, there is no distance, you are bridged.You fall in love with a woman or a man – the day you fall in love there is no distance. There is only wonder, a thrill, an excitement, an ecstasy – but no knowledge. You don’t know who this woman is. Without knowledge, there is nothing to divide you; hence the beauty of those first moments of love. You have lived with the woman for only twenty-four hours; knowledge has arisen. Now you have some ideas about the woman: you know who she is, there is an image. Twenty-four hours have created a past. Those twenty-four hours have left marks on the mind: you look at the same woman, there is no longer the same mystery. You are coming down the hill, that peak is lost.To understand this is to understand much. To understand that knowledge divides, knowledge creates distance, is to understand the very secret of meditation. Meditation is a state of not knowing. Meditation is pure space, undisturbed by knowledge. Yes, the biblical story is true – that man has fallen through knowledge, by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. No other scripture of the world surpasses that. That parable is the last word; no other parable has reached to that height and insight.It looks so illogical that man has fallen through knowledge. It looks illogical because logic is part of knowledge. Logic is all in support of knowledge. It looks illogical, because logic is the root cause of man’s fall. A man who is absolutely logical, absolutely sane, always sane, never allows any illogic in his life is a madman. Sanity needs to be balanced by insanity; logic needs to be balanced by illogic. The opposites meet and balance. A man who is just rational is unreasonable – he will miss much. In fact he will go on missing all that is beautiful and all that is true. He will collect trivia, his life will be a mundane life. He will be the worldly man.That biblical parable has immense insight. Why has man fallen through knowledge? – because knowledge creates distance, because knowledge creates “I” and “thou,” because knowledge creates subject and object, the knower and the known, the observer and the observed. Knowledge is basically schizophrenic; it creates a split. And then there is no way to bridge it. That’s why the more knowledgeable man has become, the less religious he is. The more educated a man, the less the possibility is for him to approach godliness.Jesus is right when he says, “Only children will be able to enter into my kingdom.” Only children… What is that quality that a child has and you have lost? The child has the quality of non-knowledge, innocence. He looks with wonder, his eyes are absolutely clear. He looks deep, but he has no prejudices, no judgments, no a priori ideas. He does not project, hence he comes to know that which is.The other day we were talking about the distinction between reality and truth. The child knows the truth, you know only the reality. The reality is that which you have created around yourself – projecting, desiring, thinking. The reality is your interpretation of truth. Truth is simply that which is; reality is that which you have come to understand – it is your idea of the truth. Reality consists of things, all separate. Truth consists of only one cosmic energy. Truth consists of oneness, reality consists of “many-ness.” Reality is a crowd, truth is integration.Before we enter into the sutras, this has to become the foundation: that knowledge is a curse. J. Krishnamurti has said, “To negate is silence.” To negate what? – to negate knowledge, to negate mind, to negate this constant occupation inside you; to create an unoccupied space. When you are unoccupied you are in tune with the whole. When you are occupied you have fallen out of tune. Hence, whenever it happens that you can attain a moment of silence, there is immense joy. In that moment life has significance, in that moment life has a grandeur beyond words. In that moment life is a dance. In that moment if even death comes it will be a dance and a celebration, because that moment knows nothing but joy. That moment is joyous, it is blissful.Knowledge has to be negated – but not because I am saying so or because J. Krishnamurti says so or because Gautam Buddha has said so. If you negate because I am saying so, then you will negate your knowledge, and whatsoever I am saying will become your knowledge in its place; you will substitute it. The negation has not to come from the mind, otherwise the mind is very tricky. Then whatsoever I say becomes your knowledge, you start clinging to it. You throw away your old idols and you replace them with new ones. But it is the same game played with new words, new ideas, new thoughts.Then how to negate knowledge? Not by other knowledge: just seeing the fact that knowledge creates distance, just seeing this fact intensely, totally, is enough. Not that you have to replace it with something else; that intensity is fire, that intensity will reduce your knowledge to ashes. That intensity is enough. That intensity is what is known as “insight.” Insight will burn your knowledge, and it will not be replaced by other knowledge. Then there is emptiness, shunyata. Then there is nothingness, because then there is no content; there is undisturbed, undistorted truth.You have to see what I am saying, you are not to learn what I am saying. Here, sitting with me every day, listening to me, don’t start collecting knowledge. Here, listening to me, don’t start hoarding. Listening to me should be an experiment in insight. You should listen with intensity, with totality, with as much awareness as is possible for you. In that very awareness you will see a point, and that very seeing is transformation. Not that you have to do something else afterward; the seeing itself brings mutation. If some effort is needed, that simply shows you missed. If you come tomorrow and ask me, “I have understood that knowledge is the curse, that knowledge creates distance. Now, how do I drop it?” – then you missed. If the “how” arises, then you missed. The “how” cannot arise, because the “how” is asking for more knowledge. The “how” is asking for methods, techniques: “What should be done?” And insight is enough; it need not be helped by any efforts. Its fire is more than enough to burn all knowledge that you carry within you. Just see the point.Listening to me, go with me. Listening to me, hold my hand and move into the spaces that I’m trying for you to move into. And see what I am saying, don’t argue. Don’t say yes, don’t say no. Don’t agree, don’t disagree. Just be with me in this moment – and suddenly the insight is there. If you are listening attentively… And by attention I don’t mean concentration; by attention I simply mean you are listening with awareness, not with a dull mind; you are listening with intelligence, with aliveness, with openness. You are here, now, with me. That’s what I mean by attention: you are nowhere else. You are not comparing in the mind what I am saying with your old thoughts. You are not comparing at all, you are not judging. You are not there judging inside, within you, whether what I am saying is right or not, or how much is right.Just the other day I was talking to a seeker. He has the quality of a seeker but is burdened by knowledge. While I was talking to him his eyes became full of tears. His heart was just going to open, and in that very moment the mind jumped in and destroyed the whole beauty of it. He was just moving toward the heart and opening, but immediately his mind came in. Those tears that were just on the verge of dropping, disappeared. His eyes became dry. What had happened? – I said something with which he could not agree. He was agreeing with me, up to a certain point. Then I said something which goes against his Jewish background, which goes against the Kabbala, and immediately the whole energy changed. He said, “Everything is right. Whatsoever you are saying is right, but this one thing: that God has no purpose, that existence exists purposelessly – with this I cannot agree, because the Kabbala says just the opposite: that life has purpose, that God is purposive, that he is leading us toward a certain destiny, that there is a destination.”He may not have even looked at it this way – that he missed in that moment because comparison came in. What does the Kabbala have to do with me? When you are with me, put away all your knowledge of the Kabbala, of Yoga, of Tantra, of this and that. When you are with me, be with me. If you are totally with me… And I am not saying that you are agreeing with me, remember. I am not saying that you are agreeing with me: there is no question of agreement or disagreement.When you see a roseflower, do you agree with it or disagree with it? When you see the sunrise, do you agree or do you disagree? When you see the moon in the night, you simply see it! Either you see it or you don’t see it, but there is no question of agreement or disagreement.Be with me that way; that is the way of being with a master. Just be with me. I’m not trying to convince you about anything. I’m not trying to convert you to some theory, philosophy, dogma, to some church, no! I’m simply sharing what has happened to me, and in that very sharing, if you participate, it can happen to you too. It is infectious. Insight transforms.When I am saying knowledge is a curse you can agree or disagree – and you have missed! Just listen to it, just see into it, go into the whole process of knowledge. You see how knowledge creates distance, how knowledge becomes a barrier, how knowledge stands in between, how knowledge goes on increasing and the distance goes on increasing, how innocence is lost through knowledge, how wonder is destroyed, crippled, murdered through knowledge, how life becomes a dull and boring affair through knowledge. Mystery is lost, and with the mystery godliness is lost.Mystery disappears because you start having the idea that you know. When you know, how can there be mystery? Mystery is possible only when you don’t know.Remember, man has not known a thing! All that we have gathered is just rubbish. The ultimate remains beyond grasp. What we have gathered are only facts, truth remains untouched by our efforts. And that is the experience not only of Buddha, Krishna, Krishnamurti and Ramana; that is the experience even of Edison, Newton, Albert Einstein. That is the experience of poets, painters, dancers. All the great intelligences of the world – they may be mystics, they may be poets, they may be scientists – are in absolute agreement about one thing: that the more we know, the more we understand that life is an absolute mystery. Our knowledge does not destroy its mystery. It is only stupid people who think that because they know a little bit, now there is no more mystery in life. It is only the mediocre mind that becomes too attached to knowledge; the intelligent mind remains above knowledge. He uses it, certainly uses it – it is useful, it is utilitarian – but knows perfectly well that all that is true is hidden, remains hidden. We can go on knowing and knowing, but existence remains unexhausted.Listen with insight, attention, totality, and in that very vision you will see something, and that seeing changes you. Don’t ask how.That is the meaning when Krishnamurti says, “To negate is silence.” Insight negates. And when something is negated and nothing is posited instead, something has been destroyed and nothing has been put, replaced in its place, there is silence – because there is space. There is silence because the old has been thrown and the new has not been brought in. That silence Buddha calls shunyata. That silence is emptiness, nothingness. And only that nothingness can operate in the world of truth.Thought cannot operate there. Thought works only in the world of things, because thought is also a thing – subtle, but it is also material. That’s why thought can be recorded, that’s why thought can be relayed, conveyed. I can throw a thought at you; you can hold it, you can have it. It can be taken and given, it is transferable, because it is a thing. It is a material phenomenon.Emptiness cannot be given, emptiness cannot be thrown at you. You can participate in it, you can move into it, but nobody can give it to you. It is nontransferable. And only emptiness operates in the world of truth. Truth is known only when mind is not. To know truth mind has to cease, it has to go out of functioning. It has to be quiet, still, unmoving.Thought cannot operate in truth, but truth can operate through thoughts. You cannot attain to truth by thinking, but when you have attained it you can use thinking in its service. That’s what I am doing, that’s what Buddha has done, that’s what all the masters have done.What I am saying is a thought, but behind this thought is emptiness. That emptiness has not been produced by thought, that emptiness is beyond thought. Thought cannot touch it, thought cannot even look at it.Have you observed one phenomenon? – that you cannot think about emptiness, you cannot make emptiness a thought. You cannot think about it, it is unthinkable. If you can think about it, it will not be emptiness at all. Thought has to go for emptiness to come; they never meet. Once emptiness has come, it can use all kinds of devices to express itself.Insight is a state of no-thought. Whenever you see something, you always see when there is no thought. Here also, listening to me, being with me, sometimes you see. But those moments are gaps, intervals. One thought has gone, another has not come, and there is a gap; and in that gap something strikes, something starts vibrating. It is like somebody playing on a drum: the drum is empty inside, that’s why it can be played upon. That emptiness vibrates. That beautiful sound that comes out is produced out of emptiness. When you are, without a thought, then something is possible, immediately possible. Then you can see what I am saying. Then it will not be just a word heard, then it will become an intuition, an insight, a vision. You have looked into it, you have shared it with me.Insight is a state of non-thinking, no-thought. It is a gap, an interval in the process of thought, and in that gap is the glimpse, the truth.The English word empty comes from a root which means at leisure, unoccupied. It is a beautiful word if you go to the root. The root is very pregnant: it means at leisure, unoccupied. Whenever you are unoccupied, at leisure, you are empty. And remember, the proverb that says that the empty mind is the Devil’s workshop is just nonsense. Just the opposite is the truth: the occupied mind is the Devil’s workshop. The empty mind is God’s workshop, not the Devil’s. But you have to understand what I mean by “empty”– at leisure, relaxed, non-tense, not moving, not desiring, not going anywhere, just being here, utterly here. An empty mind is a pure presence. And all is possible in that pure presence, because the whole existence comes out of that pure presence.These trees grow out of that pure presence, these stars are born out of this pure presence; we are here – all the buddhas have come out of this pure presence. In that pure presence you are in God, you are God. Occupied, you fall; occupied, you have to be expelled from the Garden of Eden. Unoccupied you are back in the garden, unoccupied you are back at home.When the mind is not occupied by reality, by things, by thoughts, then there is that which is. And that which is, is the truth. Only in emptiness is there a meeting, merging. Only in emptiness do you open to truth and truth enters in you. Only in emptiness do you become pregnant with truth.These are the three states of the mind. The first is content and consciousness. You always have contents in the mind – a thought moving, a desire arising, anger, greed, ambition. You always have some content in the mind; the mind is never unoccupied. The traffic goes on, day-in, day-out. While awake it is there, while asleep it is there. While awake you call it thinking, while asleep you call it dreaming – it is the same process. Dreaming is a little more primitive, that’s all – because it thinks in pictures. It does not use concepts, it uses pictures. It is more primitive; like small children think in pictures. So in small children’s books you have to make big pictures, colorful, because they think through pictures. Through pictures they will learn words. By and by those pictures become smaller and smaller, and then they disappear.The primitive man also thinks in pictures. The ancientmost languages are pictorial languages. Chinese is a pictorial language: it has no alphabet. It is the ancientmost language. In the night you again become primitive, you forget your sophistication of the day and you start thinking in pictures – but it is the same.The psychoanalyst’s insight is valuable – that he looks into your dreams. Then there is more truth, because you are more primitive; you are not trying to deceive anybody, you are more authentic. In the day you have a personality around you which hides you – layers upon layers of personality. It is very difficult to find the true man. You will have to dig deep, and it hurts, and the man will resist. But in the night, just as you put your clothes away, you put your personality away too. It is not needed because you will not be communicating with anybody, you will be alone in your bed. And you will not be in the world, you will be absolutely in your private realm. There is no need to hide and no need to pretend. That’s why the psychoanalyst tries to go into your dreams, because they show much more clearly who you are. But it is the same game played in different languages; the game is not different. This is the ordinary state of the mind: mind and content, consciousness plus content.The second state of the mind is consciousness without content; that’s what meditation is. You are fully alert, and there is a gap, an interval. No thought is encountered, there is no thought before you. You are not asleep, you are awake – but there is no thought. This is meditation. The first state is called mind, the second state is called meditation.And then there is a third state. When the content has disappeared, the object has disappeared, the subject cannot remain for long – because they exist together. They produced each other. When the subject is alone it can only hang around a little while more, just out of the momentum of the past. Without the content the consciousness cannot be there long; it will not be needed, because a consciousness is always a consciousness about something. When you say “conscious,” it can be asked “About what?” You say, “I am conscious of…” That object is needed, it is a must for the subject to exist. Once the object has disappeared, soon the subject will also disappear. First go the contents, then consciousness disappears.Then the third state is called samadhi – no content, no consciousness. But remember, this no-content, no-consciousness, is not a state of unconsciousness. It is a state of superconsciousness, of transcendental consciousness. Consciousness now is only conscious of itself. Consciousness has turned upon itself; the circle is complete. You have come home. This is the third state, samadhi; and this third state is what Buddha means by shunyata.First drop the content – you become half-empty; then drop consciousness – you become fully empty. And this full-emptiness is the most beautiful thing that can happen, the greatest benediction.In this nothingness, in this emptiness, in this selflessness, in this shunyata, there is complete security and stability. You will be surprised to know about this complete security and stability when you are not. All fears disappear – because what is the basic fear? The basic fear is the fear of death. All other fears are just reflections of the basic fear. All other fears can be reduced to one fear: the fear of death, the fear: “One day I may have to disappear, one day I may have to die. I am, and the day is coming when I will not be” – that frightens, that is the fear.To avoid that fear we start moving in such a way so that we can live as long as possible. And we try to secure our lives – we start compromising, we start becoming more and more secure, safe, because of the fear. We become paralyzed, because the more secure you are, the safer you are, the less alive you will be.Life exists in challenges, life exists in crises, life needs insecurity. It grows in the soil of insecurity. Whenever you are insecure, you will find yourself more alive, more alert. That’s why rich people become dull: a kind of stupidity and a kind of stupor surrounds them. They are so secure, there is no challenge. They are so secure, they need not be intelligent. They are so secure – for what do they need intelligence? Intelligence is needed when there is challenge, intelligence is provoked by challenge.So because of the fear of death we strive for security, for a bank balance, for insurance, for marriage, for a settled life, for a home; we become part of a country, we join a political party, we join a religious church – we become Hindus, Christians, Mohammedans. These are all ways to find security. These are all ways to find some place to belong to – a country, a church. Because of this fear politicians and priests go on exploiting you. If you are not in any fear, no politician, no priest can exploit you. It is only out of fear that he can exploit because he can provide – at least he can promise – that this will make you secure: “This will be your security. I can guarantee it.” The goods may never be delivered – that’s another thing – but the promise… And the promise keeps people exploited, oppressed. The promise keeps people in bondage.Once you have known the inner emptiness, there is no fear because death has already happened. In that emptiness it has happened. In that emptiness you have disappeared. How can you be afraid anymore? About what? About whom? And who can be afraid? In this emptiness all fear disappears because death has already happened. Now there is no longer any death possible. You feel a kind of deathlessness, timelessness. Eternity has arrived. Now you don’t look for security; there is no need.This is the state of a sannyasin. This is the state where a man need not be a part of a country, need not be a part of a church, or stupid things like that.It is only when you have become nothing that you can be yourself.It looks paradoxical. You need not compromise, because it is out of fear and greed that one compromises. And you can live in rebellion because there is nothing to lose. You can become a rebellion; there is nothing to fear. Nobody can kill you, you have already done that yourself. Nobody can take anything away from you; you have dropped all that which can be taken away from you. Now you are in nothingness, you are a nothingness. Hence the paradoxical phenomenon: that in this nothingness arises a great security, a great safety, a stability – because there is no more death possible.With death, time disappears. With death all the problems that are created by death and by time disappear. In the wake of all these disappearances, what is left is a pure sky. This pure sky is samadhi, nirvana. Buddha is talking about this.These sutras have been addressed to one of Buddha’s greatest disciples, Sariputra. Why to Sariputra?The first day I told you that there are seven planes, seven rungs of the ladder. The seventh is the transcendental: Zen, Tantra, Tao. The sixth is the spirituo-transcendental: Yoga. Up to the sixth, method remains important, “how” remains important. Up to the sixth, discipline remains important, ritual remains important, techniques remain important. Only when you reach to the seventh do you see that to be, nothing is needed.Sariputra is addressed in these sutras because Sariputra was at the sixth center, the sixth rung. He was one of the greatest disciples of Buddha. Buddha had eighty great disciples; Sariputra is one of the chief among those eighty. He was the most knowledgeable man around Buddha. He was the greatest scholar and pundit around Buddha. When he had come to Buddha, he himself had five thousand disciples.When he had come to Buddha for the first time he had come to argue, to debate with and defeat Buddha. He had come with his five thousand disciples – to impress. And when he stood before Buddha, Buddha laughed:Buddha said to him, “Sariputra, you know much, but you do not know at all. I can see you have accumulated great knowledge, but you are empty. You have come to discuss and debate and to defeat me, but if you really want to discuss with me, you will have to wait at least one year.”Sariputra said, “One year? For what?”Buddha said, “You will have to remain silent for one year; that will be the price to be paid. If you can remain silent for one year then you can discuss with me, because what I am going to say to you will come out of silence. You need a little experience of it. And I see, Sariputra, you have not even tasted a single moment of silence. You are so full of knowledge, your head is heavy. I feel compassion for you, Sariputra. You have been carrying such a load for many lives. You are not a brahmin only in this life, Sariputra, you have been a brahmin for many lives. And for many lives you have carried the Vedas and the scriptures. It has been your style for many lives.“But I see a possibility. You are knowledgeable, but yet the promise is there. You are knowledgeable, but your knowledge has not completely blocked your being; there are a few windows still left. I would like, for one year, to clean those windows, and then there is a possibility of our meeting and talking and being. Be here for one year.”This was strange. Sariputra had been traveling all over the country, defeating people. That was one of the things in India: knowledgeable people used to travel all over the country and defeat others in great debates and discussions, marathon debates. And that was thought to be one of the greatest things to do. If somebody had become victorious all over the country and he had defeated all the scholars, that was a great ego satisfaction. That man was thought to be bigger than kings, emperors. That man was thought to be greater than the rich people.Sariputra was traveling. And naturally, you cannot declare yourself the victorious one if you have not defeated Buddha. So he had come for that. So he said, “Okay, if I have to wait for one year, I will wait.” And for one year he was sitting there in silence with Buddha. In one year, the silence settled in him.And after one year Buddha asked him, “Now we can discuss and you can defeat me, Sariputra. I will be immensely happy to be defeated by you.”And Sariputra laughed and touched Buddha’s feet and said, “Initiate me. In this one year’s silence, listening to you, there have been a few moments when the insight has happened to me. Although I had come as the antagonist, I thought, ‘While I am here sitting for one year, why not listen to this man, to what he is saying?’ So out of curiosity I started listening. But sometimes those moments came and you penetrated me, and you touched my heart, and you played on my inner organ, and I have heard the music. You have defeated me without defeating me.”Sariputra became Buddha’s disciple, and his five thousand disciples also became Buddha’s disciples. Sariputra was one of the very well-known scholars of those days. These sutras are addressed to Sariputra.Here, O Sariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form; the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness.Here, O Sariputra… What does Buddha mean by “here”? He means his space. He says, “From the vision of my world, from the transcendental standpoint, the space where I exist and the eternity where I exist…”Here, O Sariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form… This is one of the most important assertions. The whole Buddhist approach depends on this: that the manifest is the unmanifest; that the form is nothing but the form of emptiness itself, and the emptiness is also nothing but the form, the possibility of the form. The statement is illogical and obviously appears to be nonsense. How can form be emptiness? They are opposites. How can emptiness be form? They are polarities.One thing has to be understood before we can enter into the sutra rightly: Buddha is not logical, Buddha is dialectical.There are two approaches toward reality: one is logical. Of that approach, Aristotle is the father in the West. It simply moves in a line, a clear-cut line. It never allows the opposite; the opposite has to be discarded. This approach says A is A and never not A. A cannot be not A. This is the formulation of Aristotelian logic – and it looks perfectly right, because we have all been brought up with that logic in the schools, colleges, universities. The world is dominated by Aristotle: A is A and never not A.The second approach toward reality is dialectical. In the West that approach is associated with the names of Heraclitus, Hegel. The dialectical process says: life moves through polarities, through opposites – just as a river flows through two banks which oppose each other, but those opposing banks keep the river flowing between them. This is more existential. Electricity has two poles, positive and negative. If Aristotle’s logic is of existence, then electricity is very, very illogical. Then existence itself is illogical, because it produces new life out of the meeting of a man and a woman, which are opposites – yin and yang, male and female. If existence followed an Aristotelian logic, a linear logic, then homosexuality would have been the norm and heterosexuality would have been perversion. Then man would love man and woman would love woman. Then opposites could not meet.But existence is dialectical. Everywhere, opposites are meeting. In you, birth and death are meeting. Everywhere, opposites are meeting – day and night, summer and winter. The thorn and the flower, they are meeting; they are on the same branch, they come out of the same source. Man and woman, youth and old age, beauty and ugliness, body and soul, the world and godliness – all are opposites. This is a symphony of the opposites. Opposites are not only meeting but creating a great symphony – only opposites can create a symphony. Otherwise life would be a monotony, not a symphony. Life would be a boredom. If there were only one note continuously being repeated, it would be bound to create boredom. There are opposite notes: thesis meeting with the antithesis, creating a synthesis; and in its own turn, synthesis again becomes a thesis, creates an antithesis, and a higher synthesis evolves. That’s how life moves.This approach of Buddha’s is dialectical, and it is more existential, more true, more valid.A man loves a woman, a woman loves a man – then something else has to be understood too. Now biologists say, and psychologists agree, that man is not only man, he is woman too. And woman is not simply woman, she is man too. So when a man and a woman meet, there are not two persons meeting but four persons meeting. The man is meeting with the woman, but the man has a hidden woman in himself; so has the woman a hidden man in herself; they are also meeting. The meeting is on double planes. It is more intricate, more complex, more intertwined. A man is both man and woman. Why? – because he comes out of both. Something has been contributed to you by your father and something has been contributed to you by your mother, whosoever you are. A man flows in your blood and a woman too. You have to be both because you are the meeting of the polar opposites. You are a synthesis! It is impossible to deny one and just be the other. That’s what has been done.Aristotle has been followed literally, in every way, and that has created many problems for man – and such problems which seem to be unsolvable if Aristotle is to be followed. A man has been taught to be just a man: never to show any feminine traits, never to show any softness of the heart, never to show any receptivity, always be aggressive. Man has been taught never to cry, never weep – because tears are feminine. Women have been taught never to be in any way like the male: never to show aggression, never show expression, to always remain passive, receptive. This is against reality, and this has crippled both. In a better world, with better understanding, a man will be both, a woman will be both – because sometimes a man needs to be a woman. There are moments when he needs to be soft – tender moments, love-moments. And there are moments when a woman needs to be expressive and aggressive – in anger, in defense, in rebellion. If a woman is simply passive, then she will automatically turn into a slave. A passive woman is bound to become a slave – that’s what happened down the ages. And an aggressive man, emphatically aggressive and never tender, is bound to create wars, neurosis in the world, violence.Man has been fighting, continuously fighting; it seems that man exists on the earth just to fight. In three thousand years there have been five thousand wars! War continues somewhere or other, the earth is never whole and healthy without war. There is never a moment without war. Either it is in Korea, or it is in Vietnam, or it is in Israel, or India, Pakistan, or in Bangladesh; somewhere the massacre has to continue. Man has to kill. To remain man, he has to kill. Seventy-five percent of energy is put into war effort, into creating more bombs, hydrogen bombs, neutron bombs, and so on and so forth. It seems that man’s whole purpose here on earth is war. The war heroes are respected the most. The war politicians become the great names in history: Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong – these names are going to remain. Why? – because they fought great wars, they destroyed. Whether in aggression or in defense is not the point, but these were the warmongers. And nobody ever knows who was aggressive – whether Germany was aggressive or not depends on who writes the history. Whosoever wins will write the history, and he will prove the other was the aggressor. History would be totally different if Adolf Hitler had been victorious. Yes, the Nuremberg trials would have been there, but the Americans and English and French generals and politicians would have been on trial. And history would have been written by Germans; naturally they would have a different vision.Nobody knows what is true. One thing is certain: that man puts his whole energy into war effort. The reason? – the reason is that man has been taught to be just man, his woman has been denied. So no man is whole. And so is the case with woman – no woman is whole. She has been denied her male part. When she was a small child she could not fight with boys, she could not climb the trees; she had to play with dolls, she had to “play house.” This is a very, very distorted vision.Man is both, so is woman – and both are needed to create a real, harmonious human being. Existence is dialectical; and opposites are not only opposites, they are complementaries too.Buddha says: “Here O Sariputra… In my world, Sariputra, in my space, in my time, Sariputra, at the seventh rung of the ladder, in this state of no-mind, in this state of samadhi, in this state of nirvana, enlightenment …form is emptiness… Man is woman and woman is man, and life is death and death is life. Opposites are not opposites, Sariputra; they are interpenetrating each other, they exist through each other.” To show this basic insight Buddha says: “Form is formlessness, and formlessness is form; the unmanifest becomes manifest, and the manifest again becomes unmanifest. They are not different, Sariputra, they are one.” The duality is only apparent. Deep down it is all one.…emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form; the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness. “The whole of life and the whole existence consists of polar opposites, but only on the surface are they different. These opposites are like my two hands: I can oppose them with each other, I can even manage a kind of conflict, a fight between them. But my left hand and my right hand are both my hands. Within me, they are one. That is exactly the case.”Why is Buddha saying this thing to Sariputra? – because if you understand this your worries will disappear. Then there is no worry. Life is death, death is life. To be is a way toward not to be, and not to be is a way toward to be. It is the same game. Then there is no fear, then there is no problem. With this insight a great acceptance arises.Here, O Sariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness; they are not produced or stopped, not defiled or immaculate, not deficient or complete.Buddha says: “All dharmas are full of emptiness.” That nothingness exists at everything’s core: that nothingness exists in a tree, that nothingness exists in a rock, that nothingness exists in a star.Now scientists will agree: they say that when a star collapses it becomes a black hole, nothingness. But that nothingness is not just nothingness; it is immensely powerful, it is very full, overflowing.The concept, the hypothesis of a black hole, is of immense value in understanding Buddha. A star exists for millions and trillions of years, but one day it has to die. Everything that is born has to die. Man exists for seventy years, then what happens? Exhausted, tired, he disappears, he falls back into the original unity. So it is going to happen to everything sooner or later. The Himalayas will disappear one day, so too will this earth disappear one day, so will this sun disappear one day.But when a great star disappears, to where will it disappear? It collapses within itself. It is such a big mass; it collapses. Just as if a man walking – an old man – falls on the street and collapses, if you leave the man there, sooner or later his body will disappear, disintegrate into the mud, into the earth. If you leave it there for many years, then the bones will also disappear into dust. The man was there one day, walking, living, loving, fighting, and now all has disappeared into a black hole. So it happens with a star: when a star collapses into itself it becomes a black hole. Why is it called a black hole? – because now there is no mass, there is only pure emptiness, what Buddha calls shunyata. And the shunyata, the pure emptiness, is so powerful that if you come under the impact of it, near it, in its vicinity, you will be pulled, pulled into the emptiness, and you will also collapse and disappear.For space travel this is going to be a future problem, because there are many stars which have become black holes. And you cannot see it because it is nothing, it is just absence. You cannot see it, and you can come across it. If a spaceship comes near it, under its gravitation it will simply be pulled in. Then there is no way to get out of it, it is impossible to find a way to get out of it. The pull is so big it will be simply pulled in, and it will disappear and collapse. And you will never hear about the spaceship, where it went, what happened to it, what happened to the space travelers.This black hole is very, very like Buddha’s concept of emptiness. All forms collapse and disappear into blackness, and then when they have rested for a long time, they bubble up – again a star is born. This goes on: life and death, life and death – this goes on. This is the way existence moves.First it becomes manifest, then becomes tired, goes into unmanifestation, then again revives its energy through rest, relaxation, again becomes manifest. The whole day you work, you become tired; in the night you disappear in your sleep into a black hole. You put your lights out, you slip under your blanket, you close your eyes; then within moments consciousness is gone. You have collapsed withinward. There are moments when even dreams are no longer there; then sleep is the deepest. In that deep sleep you are in a black hole, you are dead. For the time being you are in death, resting in death. And then in the morning you are back again, full of juice and gusto and life, again rejuvenated. If you have a really good, deep sleep without dreams, the morning is so fresh, so vital, so radiant, you are again young. If you know how to sleep deeply, you know how to revive yourself again and again. By the evening again you are collapsing, tired, exhausted by the day’s activities.The same happens to everything. Man is a miniature of the whole existence. What happens to man happens to the whole existence on a bigger scale, that’s all. Every night you disappear into nothingness, every morning you come into form. Form, no-form, form, no-form; this is how life moves, these are the two steps.Here, O Sariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness; they are not produced or stopped… And Buddha is saying nothing has to be done, only understanding is needed. This is a radical statement. It can transform your whole life if you can see it as an insight.…they are not produced or stopped… Nobody is producing these forms, and nobody is stopping these forms. Buddha does not believe in a God as manipulator, as a controller, as a creator, no. That would be a duality, an unnecessary hypothesis. Buddha says it is happening on its own; it is natural, nobody is doing it. It is not that, as it says in the Bible, first God thinks “Let there be light,” so there is light. And then one day he says “Now, let there be no light,” and the light disappears. Why bring this God in? And why give him such ugly work? And he will have to do it forever and forever: “Let there be light, let there be no light, let there be light… Now let this man be there, now let him die” – just think of him and his boredom! Buddha relieves him, he says it is unnecessary.It is just natural. Trees bring seeds, then seeds bring trees, and trees again bring seeds. What is a seed? The disappearance of the tree; the tree has moved into no-form. You can carry a seed in your pocket, you can carry a thousand seeds in your pocket, but you cannot carry a thousand trees in your pocket. The trees have form, bulk, mass; the seed has nothing. And if you look into the seed you will find nothing. If you had not seen, not known that a seed becomes a tree, and somebody gives you a seed and says, “Look, this seed is very, very magical – it can become a big tree, and there will be many fruits for many years, and great foliage and flowers and greenery, and birds will come and make nests there,” you will say, “What are you talking about? Out of this small pebble? Do you think I am stupid or something? How can it happen? It can’t happen.”But you know it happens, that’s why you don’t take any note of it. A miracle is happening. The small seed is carrying the whole blueprint of the tree, of the leaves – the shape and the size and the number – and the branches, and the form of the branches, and the length and the height of the tree, and the life, and how many fruits and how many flowers will come out of it, and how many seeds finally this one seed is going to produce. Scientists say that even a single seed is enough to make the whole earth green. It has immense potentiality. Not only the whole earth – one single seed can fill all the planets with greenery, because one seed can produce millions of seeds, then each seed will produce millions, and so on and so forth. The whole existence can become green out of a single seed. That nothingness is very potential, very powerful, immense, enormous, vast!Buddha says nobody is producing it and nobody is stopping it. Buddha says there is no need to go to a temple and to pray and tell God, “Do this, don’t do that” – there is nobody.And what is his message? He says, “Accept it. It is so. It is in the nature of things. It is just natural, things come and go.”In this acceptance, in this tathata, in this suchness, all worries disappear; you are freed from worries. Then there is no problem. And nothing can be stopped, and nothing can be changed, and nothing can be produced. Things are as they are and things will be as they will be, so there is nothing for you to do. You can just watch these things happening. You can participate in these things. Be. In that being there is silence, in that being there is joy. That being is freedom.These are:…not defiled or immaculate… This existence is neither impure nor pure. There is nobody who is a sinner and nobody who is a saint.Buddha’s insight is utterly revolutionary: he says nothing can be impure and nothing can be pure; things are just as they are. It is all mind games that we play around, and we create the idea of purity – and then comes impurity. We create the idea of the saint – and then in comes the sinner.You want sinners to disappear? They can disappear only when your saints have disappeared, not before that. They exist together. You want immorality to disappear? – then morality has to go. It is morality that creates immorality. It is the moral ideals that create condemnation for a few people who cannot follow them, who cannot go with them. And you can make anything immoral – just create an idea: this is moral. You can make a holy cow out of anything, and then it becomes a problem.Buddha says nothing is ever defiled and nothing is ever immaculate. Purity, impurity are mind attitudes. Can you tell about a tree whether it is moral or immoral? Can you say about an animal that he’s a sinner or a saint? Try to see this ultimate vision: there is no sinner, no saint, nothing moral, nothing immoral. In this acceptance, where is the possibility of worrying? There is nothing to improve either! And there is no goal, because there is no value. This journey is a journey without any goal. It is a pure journey; it is a play, a leela. And there is nobody behind it, doing it. All is happening, and there is nobody doing it. If the doer is there then the problem arises – then pray to the doer, then persuade the doer, then become friends with the doer. Then you will be benefitted, and those who are not friends with the doer will be deprived – they will suffer in hell. That’s what Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans think. Mohammedans think those who are Mohammedans are going to heaven and those who are not, poor fellows, they are going to hell. And the same is the case with Christians and Hindus: the Hindus think those who are not Hindus have no chance; the Christians think those who don’t come through the church, those who don’t pass through the church, are going to suffer eternal hell: not limited, unlimitedly, forever.Buddha says there is no sinner, no saint; nothing is pure, nothing is impure, things are as they are. Just try to persuade a tree, ask the tree, “Why are you green? Why are you not red?”And if the tree listens to you, she will become neurotic – “Why am I not red? Why? Really, the question is relevant. Why am I green?” Condemn the green and praise the red, and sooner or later you will find the tree on some psychiatrist’s couch being analyzed, helped. First you create the problem, and then comes the savior. It is a beautiful business.Buddha cuts the very root. He says you are the way you are. There is nothing to improve, nowhere to go. And this is my whole approach too: you are as perfect as you can be, more is not possible. The “more” will only create trouble for you. The idea of “more” will drive you mad. Accept nature, live naturally, simply, spontaneously, moment-to-moment, and there is holiness – because you are whole, not because you have become a saint.…not defiled or immaculate, not deficient or complete. Nothing is complete and nothing is incomplete; these values are meaningless. Says Buddha: “Here, O Sariputra, where I exist, nothing is good, nothing is bad. Here, where I exist, samsara and nirvana are the same. There is no distinction between this world and that world. There is no distinction between the profane and the sacred. Here, where I exist, all distinctions have disappeared, because distinctions are made by thought. When thought disappears, distinctions disappear.”Sinners are created by thought, and saints are created by thought. Good and bad are created by thought. It is thought that makes distinctions. Buddha says: “When knowledge disappears, thought disappears. There is no duality. It is all oneness.”There is a famous saying of Sosan:In the higher realms of true suchnessthere is neither self nor other than self.When direct identification is sought,we can only say “not two.”One in all, all in one:if this is realized,no more worry about your not being perfect.One in all, all in one; if this is realized, no more worry about your not being perfect. There is no perfection, no imperfection. See it, and see it right now! Don’t come later on and ask me how to do it. There is no “how” either. “How” brings knowledge, and knowledge is the curse.Without the distorting media of thought you fall into unity with the whole. Without thought functioning between you and the real, all distances disappear, you are bridged. And that’s what man is constantly hankering for. You are feeling uprooted, uprooted from the whole. That is your misery. And you are uprooted because of this distorting media of thought. Drop this distorting media of thought, drop these mediums, look into reality as it is, with no idea in your mind, with no idea of how it should be. Look with innocence. Look with not-knowing and all worries disappear. In that disappearing of the worries you become a buddha.You are a buddha! But you are missing because you are carrying distorting mediums around you. You have perfect eyes and you are wearing glasses. Those glasses are distorting, they are coloring, they are making things as they are not. Throw away the glasses! That’s what it means when we say “Throw away the mind.” Negate the mind and there is silence – and in that silence you are divine. You have never been anything else, you have always been that. But the recognition comes back, the realization comes back. You suddenly see the point: you were trying to put legs on a snake. There was no need in the first place – the snake is perfectly perfect! Without legs, he moves perfectly. Just out of compassion you were trying to put legs on it. If you succeed you will kill the snake. It is fortunate that you can never succeed.You are trying to become knowledgeable and that’s why you are losing your perception, your knowing, your capacity to see. That’s what I mean by “putting legs on a snake.” Knowing is your nature. There is no need to have knowledge to know. In fact, knowledge is the hindrance, knowledge is the curse.Negate knowledge and be – and you are a buddha, and you have always been a buddha.Enough for today.

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The Heart Sutra 01-10Category: BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS

The Heart Sutra 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I come from a family where there are four suicides on the maternal side, including my grandmother. How does this affect one's death? What helps to overcome this perversion of death which runs as a theme through the family?The phenomenon of death is one of the most mysterious and so is the phenomenon of suicide. Don’t decide from the surface what suicide is. It can be many things. My own understanding is that people who commit suicide are the most sensitive people in the world, very intelligent. Because of their sensitivity, because of their intelligence, they find it difficult to cope with this neurotic world.The society is neurotic. It exists on neurotic foundations. Its whole history is a history of madness, of violence, war, destruction. Somebody says, “My country is the greatest country in the world” – now this is neurosis. Somebody says, “My religion is the greatest and the highest religion in the world” – now this is neurosis. And this neurosis has gone to the very blood and to the bones, and people have become very, very dull, insensitive. They had to become, otherwise life would be impossible.You have to become insensitive to cope with this dull life around you; otherwise you start falling out of tune. If you start falling out of tune with the society, the society declares you mad. The society is mad, but if you are not in adjustment with it, it declares you mad. So you either have to go mad, or you have to find a way out of the society; that’s what suicide is. Life becomes intolerable. It seems impossible to cope with so many people around you – and they are all insane. What will you do if you are thrown into an insane asylum?It happened to one of my friends:He was in a mental asylum, put there by the court for nine months. After six months – he was mad, so he could do it – he found a big bottle of phenol in the bathroom and he drank it. For fifteen days he suffered diarrhea and vomiting, and because of that diarrhea and vomiting he came back into the world. His system was purified, the poison disappeared. He was telling me that those next three months were the most difficult – “The first six months were beautiful because I was mad, and everybody was also mad. Things were going simply beautifully, there was no problem. I was in tune with the whole madness around me.”When he drank phenol, and those fifteen days of diarrhea and vomiting, somehow by an accident his system got purified, his stomach got purified. He could not eat for those fifteen days – the vomiting was too much – so he had to fast. He rested in bed for fifteen days. That rest, that fasting, that purifying helped – it was an accident – and he became sane. He went to the doctors, told them “I have become sane”; they all laughed.They said, “Everybody says so.” The more he insisted, the more they insisted: “You are mad, because every madman says so. Simply go and do your work. You cannot be released before the court’s order.”“Those three months were impossible,” he said, “nightmarish!” Many times he thought about suicide. But he is a man of strong will. And it was only a question of three months, he could wait. It was intolerable! – somebody was pulling his hair, somebody was pulling his leg, somebody would simply jump upon him. All that had been going on for six months, but he had also been part in it. He was also doing the same things; he was a perfect member of that mad society. But for three months it was impossible because he was sane and everybody was insane.In this neurotic world, if you are sane, sensitive, intelligent, either you have to go mad, or you have to commit suicide – or you have to become a sannyasin. What else is there?The question is from Jane Ferber; she is Bodhicitta’s wife. She has come to me in the right time. She can become a sannyasin and avoid suicide.In the East suicide does not exist so much, because sannyas is an alternative. You can respectfully drop out; the East accepts it. You can start doing your own thing; the East has respect for it. Hence, the difference between India and America is of times five: for one Indian committing suicide, five Americans commit suicide. And the phenomenon of suicide is a growing phenomenon in America. Intelligence is growing, sensitivity is growing, and the society is dull. The society does not provide an intelligent world – then what to do? Just go on suffering unnecessarily?Then one starts thinking, “Why not drop it all? Why not finish it? Why not give the ticket back to God?” In America, if sannyas becomes a great movement, the rate of suicide will start falling, because people will have a far better and more creative alternative of dropping out. Have you seen that hippies don’t commit suicide? It is the square world, the conventional world where suicide is more prevalent. The hippie has dropped out. He is a kind of sannyasin – not yet fully alert to what he is doing but on the right way; moving, groping, but in the right direction. The hippie is the beginning of sannyas. The hippie is saying, “I don’t want to be a part of this rotten game, I don’t want to be a part of this political game. I see things, and I would like to live my own life. I don’t want to become anybody’s slave. I don’t want to be killed on any war front. I don’t want to fight – there are far more beautiful things to do.”But for millions there is nothing; the society has taken away all possibilities for their growth. They are stuck. People commit suicide because they are feeling stuck and they don’t see any way out. They come to a cul-de-sac, and the more intelligent you are, the sooner you will come to that cul-de-sac, that impasse. Then what are you supposed to do? The society does not give you any alternative; the society does not allow an alternative society.Sannyas is an alternative society. It looks strange that in India the suicide rate is the lowest in the world. Logically it should be the highest, because people are suffering, people are miserable, starving. But this strange phenomenon happens everywhere: poor people don’t commit suicide. They have nothing to live for, they have nothing to die for. Because they are starved they are occupied with their food, shelter, money, things like that. They cannot afford to think about suicide, they are not yet that affluent. America has everything, India has nothing.Just the other day I was reading where somebody has written: “Americans have a smiling Jimmy Carter, Johnny Cash and Bob Hope. And Indians have a dry, dull, dead Morarji Desai, no cash, and very little hope.”But still people don’t commit suicide: they go on living, they enjoy life. Even beggars are thrilled, excited. There is nothing to be excited about, but they are hoping.Why is it happening so much in America? – the ordinary problems of life have disappeared, the mind is free to rise higher than the ordinary consciousness. The mind can rise beyond body, beyond mind itself. The consciousness is ready to take wings and the society does not allow it. Out of ten suicides, about nine are sensitive people. Seeing the meaninglessness of life, seeing the indignity that life imposes, seeing the compromises that one has to make for nothing, seeing all the taciturnity, looking around and seeing this – “a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing” – they decide to get rid of the body. If they could have wings in the body, they would not decide so.Suicide has another significance too; it has to be understood. In life everything seems to be common, imitative. You can’t have a car that others don’t have. Millions of people have the same car as you have. Millions of people are living the same life as you are living, watching the same film, the same movie, the same TV as you are, reading the same newspaper as you do. Life is too common, nothing unique is left for you to do, to be. Suicide seems to be a unique phenomenon: only you can die for yourself, nobody else can die for you. Your death will be your death, nobody else’s. Death is unique!Look at the phenomenon: death is unique – it defines you as an individual, it gives you individuality. The society has taken your individuality; you are just a cog in the wheel, replaceable. If you die nobody will miss you, you will be replaced. If you are a professor in the university, another will be the professor in the university. Even if you are the president of a country, another will be the president of the country – immediately, the moment you are no longer. You are replaceable.This hurts – that your worth is not much, that you will not be missed, that one day you will disappear and soon those people who will remember you will also disappear. Then, it will be almost as if you had never been. Just think of that day. You will disappear. Yes, for a few days people will remember: your lover will remember you, your children will remember you, maybe a few friends. By and by, their memory will become pale, faint, will start disappearing. But maybe while those people with whom you had a certain kind of intimacy are alive, you may be remembered once in a while. But once they are also gone, then you simply disappear, as if you had never been here. Then there is no difference whether you have been here or have not been here.Life does not give you unique respect. It is very humiliating. It drives you into such a hole where you are just a cog in the wheel, a part in the vast mechanism. It makes you anonymous.Death, at least, is unique. And suicide is more unique than death. Why? – because death comes, and suicide is something that you do. Death is beyond you: when it will come, it will come. But death you can manage, you are not a victim. Suicide you can manage. With death you will be a victim, with suicide you will be in control. Birth has already happened – now you cannot do anything about it, and you had not done anything before you were born – it was an accident.There are three things in life which are vital: birth, love, and death. Birth has happened; there is nothing to do about it. You were not even asked whether you wanted to be born or not. You were a victim. Love also happens; you cannot do anything about it, you are helpless. One day you fall in love with somebody, you cannot do anything about it. If you want to fall in love with somebody you cannot manage, it is impossible. And when you fall in love with somebody, if you don’t want – if you want to pull yourself away – that too seems to be difficult. Birth is a happening, so is love. Now only death is left about which something can be done: you can be a victim or you can decide on your own.A suicide is one who decides, who says, “Let me at least do one thing in this existence where I was almost accidental: I will commit suicide. At least there is one thing I can do!” Birth is impossible to do; love cannot be created if it is not there; but death… Death has an alternative. Either you can be a victim or you can be decisive.This society has taken all dignity from you. That’s why people commit suicide – because committing suicide will give them a sort of dignity. They can say to existence, “I have renounced your world and your life. It was not worth anything!” The people who commit suicide are almost always more sensitive than the others who go on dragging, living. And I’m not saying to commit suicide, I am saying there is a higher possibility. Each moment of life can be so beautiful, individual, non-imitative, non-repetitive. Each moment can be so precious! Then there is no need to commit suicide. Each moment can bring such blessing, and each moment can define you as unique – because you are unique! Never before has there been a person like you, and never again will there be.But the society forces you to become part of a big army. The society never likes a person who goes his own way. The society wants you to be part of the crowd: be a Hindu, be a Christian, be a Jew, be an American, be an Indian – but be part of a crowd; any crowd, but be part of a crowd. Never be yourself. And those people who want to be themselves are the salt of the earth. They are the most valuable people on the earth. The earth has a little dignity and fragrance because of these people. Then they commit suicide.Sannyas and suicide are alternatives. This is my experience: you can become a sannyasin only when you have come to the point where, if not sannyas, then suicide. Sannyas means, “I will try to become an individual while alive! I will live my life in my own way. I will not be dictated to, dominated. I will not function like a mechanism, like a robot. I will not have any ideals, and I will not have any goals. I will live in the moment, and I will live on the spur of the moment. I will be spontaneous, and I will risk all for it!”Sannyas is a risk.Jane, I would like to say to you: I have looked into your eyes; the possibility of suicide is there too. But I don’t think you will have to commit suicide – sannyas will do! You are more fortunate than the four people in your family who committed suicide. In fact, every intelligent person has the capacity to commit suicide, only idiots never commit. Have you ever heard of any idiot committing suicide? He does not care about life; why should he commit suicide? Only a rare intelligence starts feeling the need to do something, because life as it is lived is not worth living. So, either do something and change your life – give it a new shape, a new direction, a new dimension – or why go on carrying this nightmarish burden, day-in day-out, year-in year-out? And it will continue… Medical science is helping you to continue it even longer – a hundred years, a hundred and twenty years. And now those people are saying that a man can easily live to nearabout three hundred years. Just think, if people have to live for three hundred years the suicide rate would go very high – because then even mediocre minds would start thinking that it is pointless.Intelligence means seeing deeply into things. Has your life any point? Has your life any joy? Has your life any poetry in it? Has your life any creativity in it? Do you feel grateful that you are here? Do you feel grateful that you were born? Can you thank existence? Can you say with your whole heart that it is a blessing? If you cannot, then why do you go on living? Either make your life a blessing – or why go on burdening this earth? Disappear. Somebody else may occupy your space and may do better. This idea comes to the intelligent mind naturally. It is a very, very natural idea when you are intelligent. Intelligent people commit suicide. And those who are even more intelligent than the intelligent people take sannyas. They start creating a meaning, they start creating a significance, they start living. Why miss this opportunity?Heidegger has said: “Death isolates me and makes of me an individual.” It is my death, not that of the multitude to which I belong. Each of us dies his own death; death cannot be repeated. I can take an examination twice, or thrice; compare my second marriage with my first, and so on and so forth. I die only once. I can get married as many times as I like, I can change my jobs as many times as I like, I can change my town as many times as I like, but I die only once. Death is so challenging because it is at once certain and uncertain. That it will come is certain, when it will do so is uncertain.Hence there is great curiosity about death, about what it is. One wants to know about it. And there is nothing morbid about this contemplation of death. Accusations of that kind are merely the device of the impersonal “they” – the crowd – to prevent one escaping its tyranny and becoming an individual. What is necessary is to see our life as being toward death. Once this point has been reached, there is a possibility of deliverance from the banality of everyday life and its servitude to anonymous powers. He who has so confronted his death is stabbed awake thereby. He perceives himself now as an individual distinct from the mass, and is prepared to take over responsibility for his own life. In this way, we decide for authentic against inauthentic existence. We emerge from the mass and become ourselves at last.Even to contemplate death gives you an individuality, a form, a shape, a definition – because it is your death. It is the only thing left in the world that is unique. And when you think about suicide it becomes even more personal; it is your decision.Remember, I am not saying that you should go and commit suicide. I am saying that your life, as it is, is leading you toward suicide. Change it.And contemplate death. It can come any moment, so don’t think that it is morbid to think about death. It is not, because death is the culmination of life, the very crescendo of life. You have to take note of it. It is coming – whether you commit suicide or it comes… But it is coming. It has to happen. You have to prepare for it, and the only way to prepare for death – the right way – is not to commit suicide; the right way is to die each moment to the past. That’s the right way. That’s what a sannyasin is supposed to do: die each moment to the past, never carry the past for a single moment. Each moment, die to the past and be born in the present. That will keep you fresh, young, vibrant, radiant; that will keep you alive, throbbing, excited, ecstatic.A man who knows how to die each moment to the past knows how to die, and that is the greatest skill and art. So when death comes to such a man, he dances with it, he embraces it! – it is a friend, it is not the enemy. It is existence coming to you in the form of death. It is total relaxation into existence. It is again becoming the whole, again becoming one with the whole.So don’t call this perversion. You say: “I come from a family where there are four suicides on the maternal side, including my grandmother.” Don’t condemn those poor people, and don’t think for a single moment that they were perverts.“How does this affect one’s death? What helps to overcome this perversion of death which runs as a theme through the family?” Don’t call it a perversion; it is not. Those people were simply victims. They could not cope with the neurotic society, and they decided to disappear into the unknown. Have compassion for them, don’t condemn. Don’t abuse them, don’t use names – don’t call it a perversion or anything like that. Have compassion for them and love for them.There is no need to follow them, but feel for them. They must have suffered a lot. One does not decide very easily to drop life: they must have suffered intensely, they must have seen the hell of life. One never decides easily for death, because to survive is a natural instinct. One goes on surviving in all kinds of situations and conditions. One goes on compromising – just to survive. When somebody drops his life it simply shows it is beyond his capacity to compromise; the demand is too much. The demand is so much that it is not worth it; only then does one decide to commit suicide. Have compassion for those people.If you feel that something is wrong then something is wrong in the society, not in those people. The society is perverted! In a primitive society nobody commits suicide. I have been to primitive tribes in India: for centuries they have not known of anybody committing suicide. They don’t have any record of anybody ever having committed suicide. Why? The society is natural, the society is not perverted. It does not drive people to unnatural things. The society is accepting. It allows everybody his way, his choice to live his life. That is everybody’s right. Even if somebody goes mad, the society accepts it; it is his right to go mad. There is no condemnation. In fact, in a primitive society, mad people are respected like mystics – and they have a kind of mystery around them. If you look into a madman’s eyes and into the eyes of a mystic, there is some similarity – something vast, something undefined, something nebulous, something like a chaos out of which stars are born. The mystic and the madman have some similarity.All madmen may not be mystics, but all mystics are mad. By “mad” I mean they have gone beyond mind. The madman may have fallen below mind, and the mystic may have gone beyond mind, but one thing is similar – both are not in their minds. In a primitive society even the madman is respected, tremendously respected. If he decides to be mad, that’s okay. Society takes care of his food, of his shelter. Society loves him, loves his madness. Society has no fixed rule; then nobody commits suicide because freedom remains intact.When society demands slavery and goes on destroying your freedom and crippling you from every side and paralyzing your soul and deadening your heart, one comes to feel it is better to die than to compromise.Don’t call them perverts. Have compassion for them; they suffered a lot, they were victims. And try to understand what happened to them; that will give you an insight into your own life. There is no need to repeat it, because I give you an opportunity to be yourself. I open a door for you. If you are understanding you will see the point of it, but if you are not understanding then it is difficult. I can go on shouting and you will hear only that which you can hear, and you will hear only that which you want to hear – that which you want to hear.A psychologist friend has come: he has written a long question. He says: “Why do you go on saying drop the ego? Nobody has ever been able to drop the ego.” Now how does he know that nobody has ever been able to drop the ego? He says it has not succeeded. How do you know? It has succeeded, although it has succeeded only with very rare and few people. But it has succeeded, and it has succeeded only with rare people because only those rare people allowed it to succeed. It can succeed with everybody, but people don’t allow it to succeed. They are not ready to lose their egos.He is a psychologist, and he says, “Osho, I see in you too a great ego.” As a psychologist he says, “I see a great ego in you.” Then you have not seen me at all. Then you have seen something which is your projection. The ego goes on projecting itself. The ego goes on creating its own reality around itself, its own reflections.Now, if you can see so deeply into me why have you come here? You can see deeply into yourself; if you have such great insight, what is the point in coming here? – it is pointless. And if you have decided already that the ego cannot be dropped, that it is not possible, then you have taken a decision without even trying.I am not saying the ego can be dropped. I am saying the ego exists not. How can you drop something which doesn’t exist? And Buddha has not said that the ego has to be dropped, he is saying the ego has to be only looked into – and you don’t find it, hence it disappears.What can you do then – when you go inside your being and you don’t find any ego, you find silence there: no self dominating, no center like an ego there? Dropping the ego does not mean that you have to drop it. Dropping the ego is only a metaphor. It simply means that when you go in, you look in and you don’t find anything, the ego disappears. In fact, even to say “disappears” is not right, because it was not there in the first place. It is a misunderstanding.Now, rather than going into yourself you are looking at me. And you think you have looked into me! And because you are a psychoanalyst or a psychologist, then you decide. Your decision will become a barrier, because the ego does not exist in me. And I would like to declare: the ego does not exist in you! Even to this psychologist friend I will say: the ego does not exist in him. The ego exists not. It is a nonexistential idea, just an idea.It is like when you see a rope in the dark and you think it is a snake, and you start running, and you are out of breath, and you stumble upon a rock and you get a fracture, and by the morning you come to know that it was only a rope. But it worked tremendously! The snake was not there, but it affected your reality. A misunderstanding is as real as understanding. It is not true, but it is real. That is the difference between reality and truth. A snake seen in a rope is real, because its results, its consequences are going to be real. If you have a weak heart it can be very dangerous seeing a snake in a rope: you can run so fast that you can have heart failure. It can affect your whole life. And it looks so ridiculous; it was just a rope.What I am saying, or what Buddha is saying is: just take a lamp and go inside. Have a good look at whether the snake exists or not. Buddha has found it does not exist in him. I have found it does not exist in me. And the day I found it does not exist in me, I looked around into everybody’s eyes and I have never found it. It is an unfounded idea. It is a dream.But if you are too full of the dream, you can even project it on me and I cannot do anything about it. If you project, you project. It is as if you are wearing glasses, colored glasses, green glasses, and the whole world looks green. And you come to me and you say, “Osho, you are wearing a green robe.” What can I do? I can only say, “Just take off your glasses.” And you say, “Nobody has ever been able to take off his glasses. It has never happened!” Then it is difficult.But it is not a problem for me; it is going to be a problem for you. I feel sorry for you, because if this is your idea then you will suffer your whole life – because ego creates suffering. An unreal idea, thought to be real, creates suffering. What is suffering really? Suffering is when you have some ideas which don’t correlate with the truth. Then there is suffering.For example, you think stones are food and you eat them; then you suffer, then you have a great stomachache. But if it is real food then you don’t suffer, then you are satisfied. Suffering is created by ideas which don’t go with reality; bliss is created when you have ideas which go with reality. Bliss is a coherence between you and the truth; suffering is a dichotomy, a division between you and the truth. When you are not moving with truth you are in hell; when you are moving with truth you are in heaven – that’s all. And that is the whole thing to be understood.Now this man comes from faraway America. Listening to my tapes, he started feeling for me. He has come here, but if this is his way of looking at things he will miss. And remember, it is not a problem for me. If you think I am a great egoist, thank you – it is not a problem for me. This is your idea, and you are perfectly entitled to have ideas. But if you are so certain about it, what is going to happen?He says, “I have been to many holy saints of many religions, and they were all egoists.” You must be wearing the same glasses everywhere. You go on creating your own reality, which is not true. That’s why Buddha insists so much on nothingness, on no-mind – because when the mind has no thoughts you cannot project anything. Then you have to see that which is. When you don’t have any ideas, when you are simply empty, a mirror mirroring, then whatsoever comes in front of you is mirrored. And it is mirrored as it is. But if you have ideas, then you distort. Thoughts are the media for distortion.If you can see ego in me, you are really doing a miracle. But it is possible… And you can enjoy. But it is only you who will be harmed by your idea, nobody else. If this idea persists, then there will be no possibility of being bridged with me. At least for these few days that you are here, put your ideas aside. And one thing is certain: your psychology has not helped you, otherwise you would not need to be here at all.Just the other day he was sitting in front of me and talking about his problems. And sometimes I wonder… He has so many problems, and he is a group leader. What will he be doing with people? What kind of help can come from him? And he has such a fat body and he cannot even change that; and he goes on stuffing himself. And these were his problems. And he was so afraid that he was insisting again and again to Laxmi that he needed a private interview, because, “I cannot say things before people.” Why? People will be seeing that you are fat. It doesn’t matter whether you say it or not. Everybody has eyes and they can see that you are fat, and that you go on stuffing. How will you avoid the cafeteria people? They will know.He wanted to have a private interview so that he could tell his problems, and the problem was fatness – “I go on eating and I cannot stop; what should I do?” Your psychology has not even been of that much help, and you think your psychology is capable of knowing me, of seeing me? Don’t be deceived by your own games.And you have not been to any holy men. I am not saying that they were not holy; I am simply saying that you may have been there, but you have not been with them. If you cannot be with me, how can you be with them? You have not been with any holy man. Wherever you went, you went with your psychology, with all the knowledge that you have gathered around yourself. And it is of no use to you. It is worthless! You go on advising people. You will create the same kinds of traumas, complexes, in other people too. A therapist can be of help only when his advice is not only for others, but when his advice is his life, when he has lived it and has seen its truth.You say that the teaching of the ages to drop the ego, drop the mind, has not worked. It has worked. It has worked for me; that’s why I say it has worked. I know it has not worked for you. But there is nothing wrong in the teaching, something is wrong in you; that’s why it is not working in you. It has worked in millions of people. And sometimes it happens that your neighbor may be an enlightened being and you may not be able to see.It happened…A seeker came from America. He had heard there was a great Sufi mystic in Dhaka, in Bangladesh, so he came rushing – as Americans come. He came rushing: he simply jumped on Dhaka! He caught hold of a taxi driver and said, “Take me to this mystic!”The taxi driver laughed. He said, “You are really interested? Then you have found the right man. If you had asked any other taxi driver, nobody would have known. I know this man. I have lived with this man for almost fifty years.”“Fifty years? How old is he?” the American asked.The taxi driver said, “He is also fifty years old.”He thought, “This man seems to be crazy!” He tried other taxi drivers, but nobody knew the man so he had to come back to this crazy man.He said, “I had told you that nobody knows him. Come with me and I will take you.” And he took him – and Dhaka is an old city and small streets and tiny – and he went zigzag here and there, for hours. And the American was feeling very happy, because the goal was coming closer and closer and closer. After three, four hours, they stopped before a small house, a very poor man’s house. And the taxi driver said, “Wait, and I will arrange for the master.”Then a woman came and she said, “The master is waiting for you.” And the man went in, and the taxi driver was sitting there.And he said, “Come on, my son, what do you have to ask?”The American could not believe it. He said, “You are the master?”He said, “I am the master, and I have lived with this man for fifty years; nobody else knows about it.” And it turned out that he was the master.But you have your ideas: “How can a taxi driver be a master?” Just think of me as a taxi driver. You will not believe – will you? Will this psychologist friend believe? It will be impossible.You have ideas. Because of your ideas you go on missing many things that are around. The earth is never empty of masters. There are people everywhere, but you can’t see! And when you want to see them you go to the Vatican because you have some idea that the pope must be enlightened. In fact, how can an enlightened person be a pope? No enlightened person will agree to that nonsense. He may prefer to be a taxi driver.Please drop your ideas while you are here, for these few days. Open yourself, don’t be prejudiced from the very beginning: “This has never happened.” This has happened! It has happened in me. Just look into my eyes, just feel me, and this can happen in you. There is nothing that is hindering it except these ideas, this knowledge. That’s why I say knowledge is a curse. Get rid of your knowledge and you will get rid of your pathology.The second question:Osho,I am a weakling. Yet I have the feeling that I can, for the first time, relax into my weakness here. Must I be strong and courageous?There is no must here. All shoulds, musts, oughts, have to be dropped. Only then do you become a natural being.And what is wrong in being weak? Everybody is weak. How can the part be strong? – the part has to be weak. And we are tiny parts, drops in this vast ocean. How can we be strong? – strong against whom, strong for what? Yes, you have been taught, I know, to be strong, because you have been taught to be violent, aggressive, warring. You have been taught to be strong because you have been taught to be competitive, ambitious, egoistic. You have been taught all kinds of aggressiveness because you have been brought up to rape others, to rape nature. You have not been brought up to love.Here, the message is love – so what do you need strength for? The message here is surrender. The message here is acceptance, total acceptance of whatsoever is the case.Weakness is beautiful. Relax into it, accept it, enjoy it. It has its own beauties, its own joys.“I am a weakling…” Please, don’t even use that word weakling, because it has a condemnatory note in it. Say “I am a part,” and the part is bound to be helpless. In itself the part is bound to be impotent. The part is potent only with the whole. Your strength is in being with truth; there is no other strength. Truth is strong, we are weak. Existence is strong, we are weak. With it we are also strong; against it, without it, we are weak. Fight the river, try to go upstream and you will be proved a weakling. Float with the river and go downstream – don’t even swim, be in a let-go and let the river take you wherever it is going – and then there is no weakness. When the idea of being strong is dropped there is no weakness left. They both disappear together. And then, suddenly, you are neither weak nor strong. In fact, you are not; existence is – neither weak nor strong.You say: “Yet I have the feeling that I can for the first time relax into my weakness here.” A good feeling; don’t lose track of it! A right feeling: relax – that’s my whole teaching. Relax into your being, whoever you are. Don’t impose any ideals. Don’t drive yourself crazy; there is no need. Be – drop becoming. We are not going anywhere, we are just being here. And this moment is so beautiful, is such a benediction; don’t bring any future into it, otherwise you will destroy it. Future is poisonous. Relax and enjoy. If I can help you to relax and enjoy, my work is done. If I can help you to drop your ideals, ideas about how you should be and how you should not be, if I can take away all the commandments that have been given to you, then my work is done. And when you are without any commandments, and when you live on the spur of the moment – natural, spontaneous, simple, ordinary – there is great celebration, you have arrived home.Now don’t bring it again: “Must I be strong and courageous?” For what? In fact it is weakness that wants to be strong. Try to understand it; it is a little bit complex but let us go into it. It is weakness that wants to be strong, it is inferiority that wants to be superior, it is ignorance that wants to be knowledgeable – so that it can hide in knowledge, so that you can hide your weakness in your so-called power. Out of inferiority comes the desire to be superior. That is the whole substratum of politics in the world, power-politics. It is only inferior people who become politicians: they have a power urge, because they know they are inferior. If they don’t become the president of a country or the prime minister of a country, they cannot prove themselves to others. In themselves they feel weak; they drive themselves to power.But how, by becoming a president, can you be powerful? Deep down you will know that your weakness is there. In fact it will be felt more, even more than before, because now there will be a contrast. On the outside there will be power, and in the inside there will be weakness – more clear, like a silver lining in a black cloud. That’s what happens: inside you feel poor and you start grabbing, you become greedy, you start possessing things, and you go on and on and on, and there is no end to it. And your whole life is wasted in things, in accumulation.But the more you accumulate, the more penetratingly you feel the inner poverty. Against the riches it can be seen very easily. When you see this – that weakness tries to become strong – it is absurd. How can weakness become strong? Seeing it, you don’t want to become strong. And when you don’t want to become strong, weakness cannot stay in you. It can stay only with the idea of strength – they are together, like negative-positive poles of electricity. They exist together. If you drop this ambition to be strong, one day suddenly you will find weakness has also disappeared. It cannot keep a hold in you. If you drop the idea of being rich, how can you go on thinking yourself poor? How will you compare, and how will you judge that you are poor? Against what? There will be no possibility to measure your poverty. Dropping the idea of richness, of being rich, one day poverty disappears.When you don’t hanker for knowledge and you drop knowledgeability, how can you remain ignorant? When knowledge disappears, in the wake of it, like its shadow, ignorance disappears. Then a man is wise. Wisdom is not knowledge; wisdom is the absence of both knowledge and ignorance.These are three possibilities: you can be ignorant, you can be ignorant and knowledgeable, and you can be without ignorance and knowledge. The third possibility is what wisdom is. That’s what Buddha calls prajnaparamita – the wisdom beyond, the transcendental wisdom. It is not knowledge.First, drop this desire for strength, and watch. One day you will be surprised, you will start dancing: the weakness has disappeared. They are two aspects of the same coin: they live together, they go together. Once you have penetrated to this fact in your being, there is a great transformation.The third question:Osho,Why and how are people coming to you from the four corners of the earth?If one tells the truth, he’s sure to be found out sooner or later – that’s why.If you have uttered the truth, it is impossible for people not to come. They are hankering for it, they are thirsty for it, they are hungry for it; and they have remained hungry for many lives. Once a ripple of truth arises anywhere, a song, something starts happening in the unconscious of those who are hungry. They may be anywhere on the planet. We are connected in the unconscious; in the deepest realm of our being we are one. If one man becomes a buddha, then everybody’s unconscious is thrilled. You may not know consciously, but everybody’s unconscious is thrilled. It is like a spider’s web: you touch it from anywhere and the whole web starts trembling. We are one in our base. We are like a solid strong tree, standing solitary in the field – big, huge, with great foliage. Leaves are millions, branches are many, but it all depends on a solid trunk, and they all are rooted in one soil. If one leaf turns enlightened, the whole tree will know it unconsciously: “Something has happened.”Those who are consciously searching for truth will be the first to start moving. The unconscious will have the ripples.A friend has just written: he was sitting somewhere in California… And it can happen more easily in California than anywhere else. California is the future; the most potential consciousness is happening there. California is the most vulnerable, so it can happen only in California. It cannot happen in Russia – things are very dull and dead.A friend went to visit a woman. They were eating and drinking, and suddenly he looked into the eyes of the woman and there was immense power. Maybe the alcohol, the drinking, the music, the aloneness of these two persons, the loving atmosphere, triggered something. He saw immense power in the eyes of the woman, and he got caught in those eyes, almost magnetized, hypnotized. And he started looking, and when he started looking the woman started swaying, something started moving, something in the unconscious. And after a few minutes the woman started saying, “Rauneesh, Rauneesh, Rauneesh” – and she had not known me at all, had not ever heard about me. When she came back, the man said, “You were repeating a certain name – Rauneesh – it seems to be very strange. I have never heard it.”And the woman said, “I have never heard it. I don’t know.” They both went to a bookstall to search for the name. Of course, it was not Rauneesh, it was Rajneesh. And he looked into my books, and that’s what he had been searching for, for many, many years. Next month he will be coming here. Now how does it happen? Something in the depth of the woman…It is easier for a woman to receive messages, because she is closer to the unconscious than man. Man has gone far away from the unconscious. He has become too much hung up in the head, in the conscious. The woman still lives by hunches. Something started stirring in her unconscious with the man looking into her eyes. And the man is a conscious searcher; the woman is not. The woman had never been looking for a master. She is not coming. She must have explained it away as just a coincidence or something. She has never been interested in any search, but her unconscious was more receptive. Being a woman, and then alcohol, and this man looking immensely magnetized by her eyes – all these things worked, something surfaced. And this man’s conscious was looking. Hearing this word he was hooked. He got hooked with the word; he could not forget it. He had to go to the bookstalls to find out, to the library, here and there, ask friends what this word was.It is not a miracle. It is a simple process of how things happen.You ask me: “How and why are people coming to you from the four corners of the earth?” Distance is not the question; search, hunger, thirst is the question. If somebody is in search, sooner or later he will come to know about me – sometimes accidentally – and he will start having a pull toward me. Millions are searching, and the more people there are around me, and the more people start getting deeper into their beings, the more will become the pull of this place. Then it will not be only I pulling them, not only I stirring their depths – the whole place here will start pulling. It can become a magnetic center.It depends on you, on how far you start moving into your being, how far you fall in tune with me, how deep your surrender is.The last question:Osho,What to do with fear? I am feeling very tired being led around by it. Can it be mastered or killed? How?It cannot be killed, it cannot be mastered, it can only be understood. Understanding is the key word here. And only understanding brings mutation, nothing else. If you try to master your fear it will remain repressed, it will go deep into you. It will not help, it will complicate things. It is surfacing, you can repress it – that’s what mastery is. You can repress it; you can repress it so deeply that it disappears from your consciousness completely. Then you will never be aware of it, but it will be there in the basement, and it will have a pull. It will manage, it will manipulate you, but it will manipulate you in such an indirect way that you will not become aware of it. But then the danger has gone deeper. Now you cannot even understand it.So fear has not to be mastered, it has not to be killed. It cannot be killed either, because fear contains a kind of energy and no energy can be destroyed. Have you seen that in fear you can have immense energy? – just as you can have in anger; they are both two aspects of the same energy phenomenon. Anger is aggressive and fear is nonaggressive, passive. Fear is anger in a negative state; anger is fear in a positive state. When you are angry have you not seen how powerful you become, how great an energy you have? You can throw a big rock when you are angry; ordinarily you cannot even shake it. You become thrice, four times bigger when you are angry. You can do certain things you cannot do without anger.Or, in fear, you can run so fast that even an Olympic runner will feel jealous. Fear creates energy; fear is energy, and energy cannot be destroyed. Not a single iota of energy can be destroyed from existence. This has to be remembered constantly, otherwise you will do something wrong. You cannot destroy anything, you can only change its form. You cannot destroy a small pebble; a small atom of sand cannot be destroyed, it will only change its form. You cannot destroy a drop of water. You can turn it into ice, you can evaporate it, but it will remain. It will remain somewhere, it cannot go out of existence.You cannot destroy fear, either. Down the ages people have been trying to destroy fear, trying to destroy anger, trying to destroy sex, trying to destroy greed, this and that. The whole world has been continuously working, and what is the result? Man has become a mess. Nothing is destroyed, all is there; only things have become confused. There is no need to destroy anything because nothing can be destroyed in the first place.Then what has to be done? You have to understand fear. What is fear? How does it arise? From where does it come? What is its message? Look into it – and without any judgment; only then will you understand. If you already have an idea that fear is wrong, that it should not be – “I should not be afraid” – then you cannot look. How can you confront fear? How can you look into the eyes of fear when you have already decided that it is your enemy? Nobody looks into the eyes of the enemy. If you think it is something wrong you will try to bypass it, avoid it, neglect it. You will try not to come across it, but it will remain. This is not going to help.First drop all condemnation, judgment, evaluation. Fear is a reality. It has to be faced, it has to be understood. And only through understanding can it be transformed. In fact, it is transformed through understanding. There is no need to do anything else; understanding transforms it.What is fear? First: fear is always around some desire. You want to become a famous man, the most famous man in the world – then there is fear. What if you cannot make it? – fear comes. Now fear comes as a by-product of desire: you want to become the richest man in the world. What if you don’t succeed? You start trembling; fear comes. You possess a woman: you are afraid that tomorrow you may not be able to possess, she may go to somebody else. She is still alive, she can go. Only dead women won’t go; she is still alive. You can possess only a corpse – then there is no fear, the corpse will be there. You can possess furniture, then there is no fear. But when you try to possess a human being fear comes. Who knows, yesterday she was not yours, today she is yours. Who knows – tomorrow she will be somebody else’s. Fear arises. Fear is arising out of the desire to possess, it is a by-product; because you want to possess, hence the fear. If you don’t want to possess, then there is no fear. If you don’t have the desire that you would like to be this and that in the future, then there is no fear. If you don’t want to go to heaven then there is no fear, then the priest cannot make you afraid. If you don’t want to go anywhere then nobody can make you afraid.If you start living in the moment, fear disappears. Fear comes through desire. So basically, desire creates fear.Look into it. Whenever there is fear, see from where it is coming – what desire is creating it – and then see the futility of it. How can you possess a woman or a man? It is such a silly, stupid idea. Only things can be possessed, not persons.A person is a freedom. A person is beautiful because of freedom. The bird is beautiful on the wing in the sky: you encage it – it is no longer the same bird, remember. It looks like it, but it is no longer the same bird. Where is the sky? Where is the sun? Where are those winds? Where are those clouds? Where is that freedom on the wing? All have disappeared. This is not the same bird.You love a woman because she is a freedom. Then you encage her: then you go to the law court and you get married, and you make a beautiful, maybe a golden, cage around her, studded with diamonds, but she is no longer the same woman. And now fear comes. You are afraid, afraid because the woman may not like this cage. She may hanker for freedom again. And freedom is an ultimate value, one cannot drop it.Man consists of freedom, consciousness consists of freedom. So sooner or later the woman will start feeling bored, fed up. She will start looking for somebody else. You are afraid. Your fear is coming because you want to possess – but why in the first place do you want to possess? Be nonpossessive, and then there is no fear. And when there is no fear, much of your energy that gets involved, caught up, locked up in fear, is available, and that energy can become your creativity. It can become a dance, a celebration.You are afraid to die? Buddha says: “You cannot die, because in the first place, you are not.” How can you die? Look into your being, go deep into it. See, who is there to die? – and you will not find any ego there. Then there is no possibility of death. Only the idea of ego creates the fear of death. When there is no ego there is no death. You are utter silence, deathlessness, eternity – not as you, but as an open sky, uncontaminated by any idea of “I,” of self – unbounded, undefined. Then there is no fear.Fear comes because there are other things. You will have to look into those things, and looking into them will start changing things.So please don’t ask how it can be mastered or killed. It is not to be mastered, it is not to be killed. It cannot be mastered and it cannot be killed; it can only be understood. Let understanding be your only law.Enough for today.

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The Heart Sutra 01-10Category: BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS

The Heart Sutra 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Therefore, O Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; no forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind; no sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to: No mind-consciousness element; there is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to: there is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. There is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.Nothingness is the fragrance of the beyond. It is the opening of the heart to the transcendental. It is the unfoldment of the one-thousand-petaled lotus. It is man’s destiny. Man is complete only when he has come to this fragrance, when he has come to this absolute nothingness inside his being, when this nothingness has spread all over him, when he is just a pure sky, unclouded.This nothingness is what Buddha calls nirvana. First we have to understand what this nothingness actually is, because it is not just empty – it is full, it is overflowing. Never for a single moment think that nothingness is a negative state, an absence, no. Nothingness is simply no-thingness. Things disappear, only the ultimate substance remains. Forms disappear, only the formless remains. Definitions disappear, the undefined remains.So nothingness is not as if there is nothing. It simply means there is no possibility of defining what is there. It is as if you move all the furniture from your house outside. Somebody comes in and he says, “Now, here is nothing.” He had seen the furniture before; now the furniture is missing and he says, “Here there is no longer anything. Nothing is.” His statement is valid only to a certain extent. In fact, when you remove the furniture, you simply remove obstructions in the space of the house. Now pure space exists, now nothing obstructs. Now there is no cloud roaming in the sky; it is just a sky. It is not just nothing, it is purity. It is not only absence, it is a presence.Have you ever been in an absolutely empty house? You will find that emptiness has a presence; it is very tangible, you can almost touch it. That’s the beauty of a temple or a church or a mosque – pure nothing, just empty. When you go into a temple, what surrounds you is nothingness. It is empty of everything, but not just empty. In that emptiness something is present – but only present for those who can feel it, who are sensitive enough to feel it, who are aware enough to see it.Those who can see only things will say, “What is there? Nothing.” Those who can see nothing will say, “All is here, because nothing is here.”The identity of “yes” and “no” is the secret of nothingness. Let me repeat it; it is very basic to Buddha’s approach: nothingness is not identical with no, nothingness is the identity of yes and no, where polarities are no longer polarities, where opposites are no longer opposites.When you make love to a woman or to a man, the point of orgasm is the point of nothingness. At that moment the woman is no longer a woman and the man is no longer a man. Those forms have disappeared. That polarity between man and woman is no longer there, that tension is no longer there; it is utterly relaxed. They have both melted into each other. They have unformed themselves, they have gone into a state which cannot be defined. The man cannot say “I,” the woman cannot say “I”; they are no longer “I’s,” they are no longer egos – because egos are always in conflict, the ego exists through conflict, it cannot exist without conflict. In that moment of orgasm there are no longer any egos. Hence the beauty of it, hence the ecstasy of it, hence the samadhi-like quality of it.It happens only for a moment but even that moment, a single moment of it, is more valuable than your whole life – because in that moment you come closest to the truth. Man and woman are no longer separate; this is a polarity. Yin and yang, positive and negative, day and night, summer and winter, life and death – these are polarities. When yes and no meet, when opposites meet and are no longer opposites, when they go into each other and dissolve into each other, there is orgasm. Orgasm is the meeting of yes and no. It is not identical with no; it is beyond both yes and no.In a sense it is beyond both; in a sense it is both together, simultaneously. The merger of the negative and the positive is the definition of nothingness. And that is the definition of orgasm too, and that is the definition of samadhi too. Let it be remembered.The identity of yes and no is the secret of emptiness, nothingness, nirvana. Emptiness is not just empty; it is a presence, a very solid presence. It does not exclude its opposites; it includes it, it is full of it. It is a full emptiness, it is an overflowing emptiness. It is alive, abundantly alive, tremendously alive. So never for a single moment let dictionaries deceive you, otherwise you will misunderstand Buddha.If you go to the dictionary and look for the meaning of nothingness, you will miss Buddha. The dictionary only defines the ordinary nothingness, the ordinary emptiness. Buddha is talking about something very extraordinary. If you want to know it you will have to go into life, into some situation where yes and no meet – then you will know it. Where the body and the soul meet, when the world and godliness meet, where opposites are no longer opposites – only then will you have a taste of it. The taste of it is the taste of Tao, of Zen, of Hasidism, of Yoga.The word yoga is also meaningful. It means coming together. When a man and woman meet, it is a yoga: they come together, they really come close, they start overlapping and then they disappear into each other. Then they don’t have centers any more. The conflict of the opposites has disappeared and there is utter relaxation.This relaxation happens only momentarily between a man and a woman. But this relaxation can happen with the total, with the whole, in a nontemporal way. It can happen in an eternal way. In love you have only a drop of its ecstasy. In ecstasy you have the whole ocean of love.This nothingness can be achieved only if there are no thought-clouds in you. Those are the clouds that are hampering your inner space, obstructing your inner space. Have you watched the sky? In summer it is so clean and clear, so crystal clear – not a speck of a cloud. And then come the rains, and thousands of clouds come, and the whole earth is surrounded with clouds. The sun disappears, the sky is no longer available. This is the state of the mind: the mind is constantly clouded. It is the rainy season of your consciousness; the sun is no longer available, the light is hidden, hindered, and the purity of space and the freedom of space are no longer available. Everywhere you find yourself defined by the clouds.When you say, “I am a Hindu,” what are you saying? You are getting caught by a cloud, the thought that you are a Hindu. When you say, “I am a Mohammedan” – or a Christian or a Jaina – what are you saying? You are becoming identified with a thought-cloud, you are losing your purity. That’s why I say a religious man is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian – he cannot be. He’s a summertime of consciousness, he has no clouds: the sun is there, bright, unhindered, and there is infinite space around him, there is silence around him. You will not find the vibe of the cloudy consciousness.When you say, “I am a Communist,” what are you saying? You are saying that you have been reading Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao; that you have become too attached to Das Kapital; that you have become identified with the idea of class struggle – the poor and the rich and the conflict; that you have become too attracted, hypnotized by a dream, an utopia: that someday in the future a classless society can be created; that you have become too obsessed with this utopia and you are ready to do anything for it. Even if you have to kill millions of people you are ready – for their own sakes, for their own good. This is a cloudy state.When you say “I am an Indian,” it is again the same. When you say “I am a Chinese,” it is again the same. If you really want to be religious you will have to slowly, slowly drop these identities. No idea should ever possess you. No book should be your Bible. No Veda should define you, no Gita should confine you. You should not allow any philosophy, theology, dogma, theory, hypothesis to overcrowd you. You should not allow any smoke around your flame of consciousness. Only then are you religious.If you ask a religious man who he is he can only say, “I am a nothingness,” because nothingness is not an idea, it is not a theory. It simply indicates a state of purity.Remember, perception has nothing to do with knowledge. In fact, when you perceive through knowledge you don’t perceive rightly. All knowledge creates projections. Knowledge is a bias, knowledge is a prejudice. Knowledge is conclusion – you have concluded even before you have gone into it.For example, if you come to me with a conclusion already in your mind – it may be for me, it may be against me, that doesn’t matter – if you come to me with a conclusion then you come with a cloud. Then you will go on looking at me through your cloud, and naturally your cloud will throw shadows on me. If you have come with the idea, “This is the right man,” then you will find something which goes on supporting your idea. If you have come with the idea, “This is a wrong man, dangerous, evil,” then you will go on finding something which supports your idea.Whatsoever idea you bring is self-perpetuating, it goes on finding proofs for itself. And the man who has come with a prejudice will go with his prejudice strengthened. In fact, he has never come to me.To come to me one needs to be unclouded, with no prejudice for or against, with no a priori judgment. You just come to see what is there, you don’t bring any opinion. You have heard many things but you don’t believe any. You simply come to see with your own eyes, you come to feel with your own heart. That is the quality of a religious man.If you want to know truth you will have to drop all kinds of knowledge that you have gathered down the ages, in many, many lives. Whenever somebody comes to truth with knowledge he cannot see it, he is blind. Knowledge blinds you. If you want to have clear eyes, drop knowledge. Perception has nothing to do with knowledge.Truth and knowledge don’t go together. Knowledge cannot contain the immensity of life and existence. Knowledge is so tiny, so small, and existence is so vast, so enormous – how can it contain existence? It cannot. And if you force existence into your patterns of knowledge you will destroy the beauty of it and you will destroy the truth of it. Once existence is converted into knowledge it is no longer existence. It is as if a person is carrying a map of India and thinks that he is carrying India. No map can contain India.The picture of the moon is not the moon. The word God is not God; the word love is not love either. No word can contain the mysteries of life. And knowledge is nothing but words and words and words. Knowledge is a great illusion. That’s why Buddha says: “Allow nothingness to settle in you.”Nothingness means a state of not-knowing, a state where no cloud floats in your consciousness. When your consciousness is unclouded, then you are nothing. Nothing goes perfectly well with truth – only nothing goes perfectly well with truth. Knowledge cannot contain the mystery of being; knowledge is against the mysterious. “The mysterious” means that which is not known, that which cannot be known, that which is basically, intrinsically, essentially unknowable – not only unknown, but unknowable. How can the unknowable be reduced to knowledge? Knowledge goes on collecting pebbles on the shore and goes on missing the diamonds. Knowledge is mediocre, borrowed, never authentic, never original. To know truth you need an insight, original insight. You need eyes which can see through and through; you need transparent vision.So only when the mind is entirely naked of knowledge, empty of knowledge, does it come to know. When there is no knowledge, there is knowledge, because when there is no knowledge there is knowing. When the mind is entirely naked of knowledge, nude, silent, non-functioning; when the mind is in waiting, with no idea for what, just a pure waiting, expectant but not knowing for what, waiting for the guest but with no idea, waiting for the knock of the guest with an open door but with no idea who this guest is… How can you know it beforehand?If you carry a blueprint of God you will go on missing God – because you have not known him before. Yes, others have known, but whatsoever they have said are only maps. I can give you only a map. All knowledge is a map. Don’t start worshipping the map, don’t start creating a temple around the map. That’s how temples have been created. One temple is devoted to the Vedas, another to the Bible, another to the Koran – these are maps! These are not the real country, they are only charts. When I say something to you, I have to use words. Words reach you, you jump upon the words, you start hoarding the words – the mind is a great hoarder – and then you start thinking that you know.This is not the way to know. The way to know is to discard all knowledge. And discard it in a single blow! Don’t go slowly, gradually. If you see the point it can happen in this very moment. In fact, to see the point is to let it happen. You need not do anything in particular, you need not even drop knowledge. Just seeing the point – that knowledge cannot make you a knower, in fact it will hinder you – the revolution. Seeing this – the transformation.So when the mind is naked, is silent, is nonfunctioning, is in utter waiting, then there comes truth. Then there is truth. It need not come from anywhere, it has always been there. But you were so full of knowledge, hence you went on missing it.Nothingness can know truth because in nothingness intelligence functions totally. Only in nothingness does intelligence function totally. That’s why – you see the miracle! – children are so intelligent and old people, by and by, become so dull. Children learn things so fast! The older you become, the more difficult it becomes to learn. If you are old and you want to learn Chinese, you will take thirty years; and a child learns within two or three years.Now scientists say that a child can learn at least four languages very easily if he is just exposed to four languages – very easily! This is the minimum. The maximum has not yet been decided: how many languages a child can learn together if he’s exposed to them. It happens: if the family is multilingual it happens very easily. If the town is multilingual it happens very easily. In Mumbai it happens easily: the child will learn Hindi, English, Marathi, Gujarati, very easily. The child needs only to be exposed. He is so intelligent that he immediately sees the point of it and learns it. The older you become, the more difficult.It is very difficult, they say, to teach an old dog new tricks. It need not be so. If you remain a nothingness, then it need not be so – because then you remain a child your whole life.Socrates is a child even when he is dying, because he is still vulnerable, open, ready to learn; ready to learn even from death. When he is lying on the bed and the poison is being prepared – at six o’clock he will be given the poison, as the sun will be setting – he is so excited, like a child. His disciples are crying and weeping, and he is so excited. He gets up again and again and goes out to inquire of the man who is preparing the poison: “How long will it take?” – his eyes are so curious. And the man is going to die! – this is no time to be so curious. The man is going to have his last breath within minutes, and he is so excited, so ecstatic. One disciple asks, “For what are you getting so excited? You are going to die!” And Socrates says, “I have known life, and I have learned much from life. Now I would like to know death and learn from death. That’s why I’m excited.”Even death becomes a great experience to one who is innocent. Socrates is innocent. The West has not produced another man comparable to Socrates. Socrates is the Buddha of the West.You can always remain capable of learning if you remain a child. What creates dullness in you, stupidity, mediocrity? Knowledge. You accumulate knowledge; you become less and less capable of knowing.Renounce knowledge. I teach you renunciation of knowledge. I don’t teach you renunciation of the world; that is stupid, foolish, meaningless. I teach you renunciation of knowledge. And a strange thing happens…I have come across people who have renounced the world. In the Himalayas I met a Hindu fakir – very old, he must have been ninety years old or even more. For seventy years he had been a sannyasin, for seventy years he had lived outside society. He had renounced society, he had not been back to the plains for seventy years. When he was just a young man of twenty he went to the Himalayas, and he had not gone back to the country again. He had never been in a crowd again, but he was still a Hindu. He still thought of himself as a Hindu.I told him, “You renounce society but you have not renounced your knowledge, and the knowledge was given by the society. You are still a Hindu. You are still in the crowd – because to be a Hindu is to be in a crowd. You are still not an individual; you have not become a nothing yet.”The old man understood. He started crying. He said “Nobody has said this to me.”You can renounce the society, you can renounce wealth, you can renounce the wife, the children, the husband, the family, the parents – it is easy, nothing much in it. The real thing is to renounce knowledge. These things are outside you, you can escape from them – but where and how will you escape from something that is inside you, that is clinging there? That will go with you. You can go to a Himalayan cave and you remain a Hindu, you remain a Mohammedan, you remain a Christian. Then you will not be able to see the beauty and truth of the Himalayas. You will not be able to see that virginity of the Himalayas. A Hindu cannot see it, a Hindu is blind.To be a Hindu means to be blind; to be a Mohammedan means to be blind. You may use different instruments to become blind, that doesn’t matter. One is blind because of the Koran, another is blind because of the Bhagavad Gita, and somebody else is blind because of the Bible – but eyes are full of knowledge.Buddha says: “Nothingness allows intelligence to function.”The word buddha comes from buddhi – it means intelligence: when you are a nothing, when nothing confines you, when nothing defines you, when nothing contains you, when you are just an openness, then there is intelligence. Why? – because when you are nothing fear disappears, and when fear disappears you function intelligently. If fear is there you cannot function intelligently. Fear cripples you, paralyzes you.You go on doing things because of fear; that’s why you cannot become a buddha, which is your birthright. You are virtuous because of fear, you go to the temple because of fear, you follow a certain ritual because of fear, you pray to God because of fear. And a man who lives through fear cannot be intelligent. Fear is poison to intelligence. How can you be intelligent if there is fear? The fear will go on pulling you in different ways. It will not allow you to be courageous, it will not allow you to step into the unknown, it will not allow you to become an adventurer, it will not allow you to leave the fold, the crowd. It will not allow you to become independent, free; it will keep you a slave. And we are slaves in so many ways. Our slavery is multidimensional: politically, spiritually, religiously, we are slaves in every way, and the fear is the root cause of it.You don’t know whether God exists or not, and still you pray? This is very unintelligent, this is foolish. To whom are you praying? You don’t know whether God is or not. You don’t have any trust, because how can you have any trust? – you have not known yet. So just out of fear you go on clinging to the idea of God. Have you seen it? – when there is much fear you remember God more. When somebody is dying, you start remembering.I have known a follower of J. Krishnamurti. He is a very renowned scholar, known all over the country. And for at least forty years he has been a Krishnamurti follower, so he does not believe in God, he does not believe in meditation, he does not believe in prayer.Then one day it happened that he fell ill, he had a heart attack. By chance I was in the same town. His son phoned me and said, “My father is in a very dangerous situation. If you can come it will be a great solace to him. These may be his last moments.”So I rushed. When I went into the room, he was lying down on the bed with closed eyes chanting, “Rama, Rama, Rama.”I could not believe it! For forty years he had been saying, “There is no God, and I don’t believe…” And what happened to this old man? I shook him up and asked, “What are you doing?”He said, “Don’t disturb me. Let me do what I want to do.”But I said, “This is so much against Krishnamurti.”He said, “Forget about Krishnamurti! I am dying and you are talking about Krishnamurti!”“But what about your forty years, wasted? And you had never believed that a japa – a chant – could help, or a prayer could help.”He said, “Yes, that’s true. I had never believed, but now I am facing death. There is great fear in me. Maybe – who knows – God is, and within minutes I will be encountering him. If he is not, then there is no problem; nothing is lost by my repeating, ‘Rama, Rama.’ If he is, something is gained. At least I can say to him, ‘At the last moment I had remembered you.’”Have you seen it? – whenever you are in misery you start remembering God more. When you are in danger you remember God. When you are happy and everything is going smoothly, you forget all about God. Your God is nothing but your fear projected.Buddha says: “Out of fear there is no possibility of intelligence.” And fear is there for a very fundamental reason – because you think you are. That’s why there is fear. The ego brings fear as a shadow. The ego itself is illusory, but the illusion casts a big shadow on your life. Because you think “I am,” hence there is fear: “Maybe if I do something wrong I will be thrown in hell, then I will suffer.” If you think “I am,” then naturally you think to make some provisions for the future life, for the other world – do something good, accumulate a little punya.You know, the name of this town – Pune – comes from punya, virtue. Accumulate a little virtue, accumulate something in your account, in your bank balance so you can show God: “Look, I have been a really good boy. I have done these things: fasted so many days, have never looked at anybody’s woman with any evil eye, have never been a thief, have donated so much money to this temple and to that church. I was always behaving as I was expected to behave.” One starts accumulating virtue just in case it is needed in the other world.But this is out of fear. Your good people, your bad people are all living out of fear. An intelligent person lives without fear. But to live without fear you will have to see into the fact of your ego. If there is no ego, if “I am not,” then where can fear exist? Then, “I cannot be thrown into hell because I am not in the first place, and I cannot be rewarded in heaven because I am not in the first place. I am not, only God is, so how can I be a sinner or a saint? If only God is, then what is there for me to fear? I am not born, because I am not in the first place; and I will not die, because I am not in the first place. So there is no birth, no death. I am not separate, I am one with this existence. As a wave I may disappear, but as the ocean I will live. And the ocean is the reality, the wave is just arbitrary.”Nothingness knows no fear, no greed, no ambition, no violence. Nothingness knows no mediocrity, no stupidity, no idiocy. Nothingness knows no hell, no heaven. And because there is no fear, there is intelligence.This is one of the greatest statements to be remembered: intelligence is when fear is not. Then action has a totally different quality to it. When you act out of your nothingness the action has a totally different quality to it. It is divine, it is godly. Why? – because when you act out of nothingness it is not a reaction, when you act out of nothingness it is not a plan, when you act out of nothingness it is not rehearsed. When you act out of nothingness it is spontaneous, then you live moment to moment. You are a nothingness: a situation arises and you respond to it. If you are an ego you never respond, you always react.Let it be explained to you. When you are an ego you always react. For example, if you think you are a very, very good man, you think you are a saint, and then something happens – somebody insults you – now, will you be responding to this insult or reacting? If you think you are a saint you will think thrice about how to react, what to do so you can save your sainthood too; otherwise this man can destroy it just by insulting you. You cannot be spontaneous, you have to look back, you have to ponder over it. And time is passing. It may even be a single moment, but time is passing. It cannot be spontaneous, it cannot be in the moment. And you act out of the past. You think, “This is too much. If I become angry” – and anger is coming – “if I become angry my sainthood will be lost. That is too much to pay for this.” You start smiling. To save your sainthood you smile.This smile is false; it is not coming from you, it is not coming from your heart. It is just there, painted on the lips. It is pseudo. You are not smiling, it is only your mask that is smiling. You are deceiving. You are a hypocrite. You are pseudo. You are phony. But you have saved your sainthood: you acted out of the past, out of your particular image and idea of your being. This was a reaction.The man of spontaneity does not react, he responds. What is the difference? He just allows the situation to function over him, and he allows the response to come out, whatsoever it is.The man who lives out of the past is predictable, and the man who lives moment to moment is unpredictable. And to be predictable is to be a thing. To be unpredictable is to be freedom – that is the dignity of man. The day you are unpredictable… Nobody knows, not even you; remember, not even you… If you already know what you will do, then it is no longer response. You are already ready, it is rehearsed.For example, you are going for an interview. You rehearse: you think what is going to be asked and how you are going to answer it. It happens every day, it is so clear-cut.Every evening I see people – both kinds of people are there: when somebody has come here readymade, has thought over what he is going to say to me, has prepared it already; the script is ready, he has just to replay it, he has decided everything about what he is going to ask. And I can see the difficulty of the person, because when he comes in front of me, when he sits by the side of me, it is a different situation. A change starts happening. The climate, the presence, his love for me, my love for him, others’ presence, the trust that is there very tangibly, the love that is flowing, a meditative state – and it is absolutely different than he had been thinking before. Now whatsoever he has prepared looks irrelevant; it does not fit. He becomes fidgety, restless – “What to do?” And he does not know how to act spontaneously, how to act out of this situation.He comes in front of me but I see the phoniness of it. His question does not come from his heart. It is just from the throat, it has no depth. His voice has no depth. He himself is not certain whether he wants to ask it anymore or not, but he has prepared it, maybe for days. So the mind goes on saying, “Ask it. You have prepared it.” And he sees the irrelevance of it. Maybe it has already been answered. Maybe in answering somebody else I have answered it. Maybe the very situation is such that his mind has changed and it is no longer meaningful.But he acts out of the past: that is reacting. It will look awkward. He feels embarrassed if he has nothing to ask. And he cannot cry because he is a phony person, and he cannot simply say, “Hello,” and he cannot say, “I would like just to sit in front of you for one minute, and I have nothing to say.” He cannot act out of this moment. He cannot be herenow; he feels embarrassed. He has to ask, otherwise what will people think? – “Then why, in the first place, had you asked for darshan if you had nothing to ask?” So he asks. He is no longer behind it. It is a rotten old question which no longer has meaning – but he asks.Sometimes – you may have seen – to a few people I go on answering and take a long time, and to a few people I answer in a very short way. Whenever I see that somebody is phony, his question is phony, is a prepared question, then it is meaningless to answer him. Just out of respect for him I talk a little bit to him, but I am no longer interested. And the phony questioner is also not interested in what I am saying – because he is no longer interested even in his question, so how can he be interested in the answer?But there are other people… By and by the phoniness disappears and sannyasins become more and more true, authentic. Then somebody simply sits there and laughs. That’s what is coming in that moment. He does not feel embarrassed, he does not feel that it is out of place. It is not. The prepared script is out of place.Facing a nothingness, you have to be nothing. Only then can there be a meeting, because only similars can meet. Then there is great joy, then there is great beauty. Then there is dialogue. Maybe not a single word is uttered, but there is dialogue. Sometimes somebody comes and simply sits and starts swaying, closes his eyes, goes inward – that is the way to come toward me. He goes inside himself and simply jumps into me and allows me to jump into him, or simply touches my feet, or simply looks into my eyes. Or sometimes a great question also arises, but it is in the moment – then it is true, then it has immense power, then it comes from your very deepest core. It has relevance.When you act out of nothingness, you respond; it is no longer a reaction. It has truth, it has validity in it, authenticity. It is existential. It is immediate, spontaneous, simple, innocent. And this action does not create any karma.Remember, the word karma means action, a particular action. Not all actions create karma, remember. Buddha lived after his enlightenment for forty-two years. He was not sitting all the time under the bodhi tree doing nothing. He did a thousand and one things, but karma was not created. He acted but it was no longer reaction, it was response.If you respond out of nothingness it leaves no residue, it leaves no traces on you, karma is not created. You remain free. You go on acting and you remain free. It is as if a bird flies into the sky, leaving no traces, no footprints. The man who lives in the sky of nothingness leaves no footprints, leaves no karma, no residue. His act is total. And when the act is total, it is finished, it is complete. A complete act does not hang around you like a cloud; only incomplete acts hang around you.Somebody insulted you – you wanted to hit him but you didn’t. You saved your sainthood, you smiled and blessed the man and went home. Now it is going to be difficult: now the whole night you will dream that you are hitting the man. You may even kill him in your dreams. For years it will hang around you; it is incomplete. Anything incomplete is dangerous. When you are phony everything becomes incomplete. You love a woman but not enough to make it complete. Even while making love you are not entirely there; maybe you are still rehearsing. Maybe you have been reading sex manuals which are available. Maybe you have been reading Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra, or Masters and Johnson or the Kinsey Report, and you have been learning how to make love. And you are ready, knowledgeable! Now this woman is just an opportunity to practice your knowledge. So you are practicing your knowledge, but it is going to be incomplete because you are not in it. And then it is unsatisfying, then you feel frustrated – and the cause is your knowledge.Love is not something to be practiced. Life need not be practiced; life has to be lived, in utter innocence. Life is not a drama – you need not prepare, you need not go into a rehearsal for it. Let it come as it comes, and be spontaneous.But how can you be spontaneous if the ego is there? Ego is a great actor, ego is a great politician; ego goes on manipulating you. The ego says, “If you really want to act in a polished way preparation is needed. If you really want to act in a cultured way you have to rehearse it.” The ego is a performer, and because of this performer you go on missing the joy, the celebration, the blessing of life.Buddha says: “When action comes out of nothing it creates no karma.” Then it is so total that its very totality… The circle is complete and finished. You never look backward. Why do you go on looking backward? – because there are things incomplete. Whenever something is complete you don’t look back. It is finished. The full point has been achieved, there is nothing more to do about it. Act out of nothingness and your action is total, and the total action leaves no memory – no psychological memory, I mean. The memory is left in the brain, but there is no psychological hang-up. And a man who has no hang-ups is my definition of a sannyasin.When an act is utterly complete, you are free of it. When an act is total, you slip out of it – like a snake slips out of the old skin and the old skin is left behind. Only incomplete acts become karma, remember it. But to have a complete act, it has to come out of nothingness.There are three levels of awareness: awareness of the self, awareness of the world, and awareness of the intervening fantasy between the self and the world. Fritz Perls called this intermediate level the DMZ – demilitarized zone – and it functions to keep us from being totally in touch with ourselves and with our world. The DMZ contains our prejudices, the prejudgments through which we view the world and other people and ourselves. If we look at the world through our biases, we cannot see the truth of it. We cannot see that which is. We create an illusion; that’s what Hindus call maya.If we look outside with judgments, a priori prejudices, then we create a world of our own, which is maya, illusion, a projection. If we look at ourselves through these judgments and knowledge and opinions, we create another illusion – the ego. Then we cannot see what reality is there inside us. We cannot see what is out there, and we cannot see what is in here. When the outside is missed we create illusion, maya; when the inside is missed we create the ego, ahankar. And both of these things happen through the DMZ – the demilitarized zone.Gurdjieff used to call this zone the “zone of the buffers.” DMZ is a beautiful name for it. The bigger the DMZ is, the more pathological the person is, the more neurotic. The smaller the DMZ is, the healthier, psychologically sane a person is. And when the DMZ completely disappears and there is no thought intervening between you and the world – not a single thought – that’s what Buddha means by nothingness. Then the person is utterly sane, holy, whole.Before we enter the sutra, a few things about this ego. The illusion of the self has to be understood.The first thing: the ego is not a reality, it is just an idea. You don’t come with it when you come into the world, you don’t bring it with you. It is not part of your being. When a child is born he does not bring the ego into the world. The ego is something that he learns, it is not part of genetics.Gordon Alport calls the self proprium, and it can be defined by considering the adjective form propriate, as in the word appropriate. Proprium refers to something that belongs to or is unique to a person. The self is created because each nothingness is unique, each nothingness has its own way of flowering. Because of this uniqueness there is the possibility of creating an ego.I love in my way, you love in your own way. I behave in my way, you behave in your own way. There is a difference between people, but only a difference in ways. The roseflower flowers in one way and the marigold in another, but both flower. The flowering is the same, the nothingness is the same. But each nothingness functions in a unique way. Because of this there is a possibility to create the ego.There are seven doors from where the ego enters, seven doors from where we learn the ego. Those doors have to be understood, because if you understand them you will be able to drop the ego – because those doors, understood perfectly well, can be closed. Then the ego is no longer created. Seen rightly, understood perfectly well – that the ego is just a shadow – it starts disappearing on its own.The first door Alport calls “the bodily self.” We are not born with a sense of self. The child in the mother’s womb has no sense of the self. He is one with the mother; he is utterly one, joined, bridged with the mother. The mother is his whole existence, his cosmos. He does not know that he is separate. The separation comes when the child comes out of the womb, when his bridge with the mother is cut and the child has to breathe on his own. In fact, the breathing is not something that the child is going to do. How can he do? He cannot even breathe yet, so he is not yet there. The breathing happens. It is not that the child is doing it, it is a happening. It comes out of nothingness: the child starts breathing. Those few seconds are very, very valuable, critical, dangerous. The parents, the doctor, the nurses who are looking after the birth are all in a great waiting: whether the child is going to breathe or not.The child cannot be forced, the child cannot be persuaded, and the child cannot do anything on its own. If it is going to happen, it is going to happen. It may not happen, it may happen. Sometimes children never breathe, then we think they are born dead.It is miraculous how the child breathes the first breath: he has never done it before, he cannot be prepared for it. He does not know that the mechanism to breathe exists. The lungs have not functioned ever before, but the breath comes and the miracle starts. But the breath is coming out of nothingness, remember. Later on you will start saying, “I am breathing.” That is absurd. You are not breathing: breathing is happening. Don’t create the idea of “I,” don’t say, “I am breathing.” Nobody is breathing. It is not within your capacity to do or not to do.You can try: stop breathing for a few seconds and you will know that it is also difficult to stop. Within seconds a great rush comes from nowhere and you start breathing again. Or stop the breathing outside; try for a few seconds and suddenly you see a great rush. It is beyond you. The breathing wants to come in.It is “nothing” that is breathing in you, or you can call it God – it makes no difference, it is the same. Nothing or God, they mean the same. Nothing in Buddhism means exactly what God means in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism. God is a nothing.We are not born with a sense of self. It is not part of our genetic endowment. The infant is not able to distinguish between self and the world around it. Even when the child has started breathing, it takes months for him to become aware that there is a distinction between his inside and the outside. Gradually, through increasingly complex learning and perceptual experiences, a vague distinction develops between something “in me” and other things “out there.”This is the first door from which the ego enters: the distinction that there is something “in me.” For example: the child feels hunger, he can feel it coming from inside. And then the mother slaps the child, and he can feel it is coming from the outside. Now a distinction is bound to be felt by and by, that there are things which come from inside, and there are things which come from outside. When the mother smiles he can see the smile is coming from there, and then he responds, he smiles. Now he can feel the smile is coming from within, somewhere inside. The idea of inside and outside arises. This is the first experience of the ego.In fact there is no distinction between the outside and the inside. The inside is part of the outside and the outside is part of the inside. The sky inside your house and the sky outside your house are not two skies, remember; they are one sky. And so is it the case with you there and me here. We are not two; we are two aspects of the same energy, two aspects of the same coin. But the child starts learning the ways of the ego.The second door is self-identity. The child learns its name, realizes that the reflection in the mirror today is of the same person as the one seen yesterday, and believes that the sense of me or self persists in the face of changing experiences. The child goes on knowing that everything changes. Sometimes he is hungry, sometimes he is not hungry; sometimes he is sleepy and sometimes he is awake; and sometimes he is angry, and sometimes he is loving – things go on changing. One day it is a beautiful day, another day it is dark and dismal. But he stands before the mirror…Have you watched a small baby sitting before a mirror? He tries to catch hold of the child inside the mirror because he thinks the child is “there outside.” If he cannot catch hold, then he goes around and looks at the back of the mirror – maybe the child is hiding there? But by and by he starts knowing that it is he who is reflected. And then he starts feeling a kind of continuity: yesterday it was the same face, today it is also the same face in the mirror. When children look for the first time into the mirror they become fascinated with the mirror. They don’t leave it. They go again and again to the bathroom to look at who they are.Everything goes on changing. One thing seems to be unchanging: the self-image. The ego has another door from where it is entering: the self-image.The third door is self-esteem. This is concerned with the child’s feeling of pride as a result of learning to do a thing on its own: doing, exploring, making. When a child learns anything – for example he has learned a word, daddy; then he goes on saying, “Daddy, daddy,” the whole day. He does not miss a single opportunity when he can use the word. When the child starts learning to walk, he tries the whole day. He falls again and again, he stumbles, he is hurt, but again he stands – because it gives pride: “I can also do something! I can walk! I can talk! I can carry things from here to there!”The parents are very worried because the child is a disturbance. He starts carrying things. They can’t understand: “Why? For what? Why have you taken that book from there?” The child is not interested in the book at all. It is all nonsense for him. He cannot conceive why you go on looking in this thing continuously – “What are you searching for there?” But his interest is different: he can carry a thing.The child starts killing animals. An ant, and he will immediately jump on it and kill it. He can do something! He is enjoying doing; he can become very destructive. If he finds a clock, he will open it – he wants to know what is inside. He becomes an explorer, an inquirer.He enjoys doing things because that gives a third door to his ego: he feels proud, he can do. He can sing a song, then he is ready to sing the song to anybody. If any guest comes he is present, waiting for somebody to give a hint so he can sing the song. Or he can dance, or he can do a mime, or something! Whatsoever it is, he wants to do something to show that he is not just helpless, that he can also do. This doing brings ego in.The fourth is self-extension, belonging, possession. The child speaks of my house, my father, my mother, my school. He starts increasing the field of “mine.” Mine becomes his key word. If you take his toy – he is not much interested in the toy; he is more interested in, “The toy is mine, you cannot take it!” Remember, he is not much interested in the toy. When nobody is interested he will throw the toy in the corner and will escape to play outside. But once somebody wants to take it, he does not want to give it. It is his – “mine.”“Mine” gives a sense of “me”; “me” creates “I.” And remember, these doors are not only for children, they remain that way your whole life. When you say my house, you are being childish. When you say my wife, you are being childish. When you say my religion, you are being childish. When a Hindu starts fighting with a Mohammedan about religion, they are children. They don’t know what they are doing. They have not really become mature and grown up. Children are constantly arguing, “My daddy is the greatest daddy in the world!” And so the priests go on fighting, “My concept of God is the best, the most powerful, the real! Others are just so-so.”These are very childish attitudes, but they linger around you for your whole life. You are very interested in your name. When I change people’s names, a few people are very stubborn; they don’t want it. A few people write letters to me: “I want to take sannyas, but please, don’t change my name.” Why? My name! It seems to be something like a great wealth. And there is nothing in the name. But for thirty years, forty years, your ego has survived with that name. It is very difficult for the ego to close a door. That’s why the name is changed: so that you can see that the name is arbitrary, it can be changed any day. And that’s why I change your name without any fuss about it.In other religions the name is also changed. If you become a Jaina monk they will make much fuss about it – a great procession and celebration; somebody is becoming a monk! Now he will become very attached to this new name. So much celebration and so much festivity, and so much honor and respect; so much fuss about it, then the whole point is lost. I simply change it as a matter of fact, just to give you an idea that it is nothing; it is arbitrary, it can be changed very easily. You can be called A, you can be called B, you can be called C – it doesn’t matter. In fact you are nameless; that’s why it doesn’t matter. Any name will do, it is only utilitarian.The fifth door is self-image. This refers to how the child sees himself. Through interaction with parents, through praise and punishments, he learns to have a certain image of himself – good or bad.The child is always looking at how the parents react to him. If he is doing a certain thing, do they praise it or do they punish him? If he feels punished he thinks, “I have done something wrong. I am bad.” If he does something good and is praised, he thinks, “I am good, I am appreciated.” He starts trying to do more and more good, so that he is appreciated. Or, if the parents are really very difficult and impossible people, and their demands are such that the child cannot fulfill them, then he takes the other route, he starts doing all that they call “bad.” He reacts and rebels.These are the two ways – the door is the same: either you praise him and he feels good that he is somebody; or if you don’t praise him easily then he says, “Okay, then I will show you.” Then too he will make his presence felt. He will start destroying things, he will start smoking, he will start doing things which you don’t like. And he will say, “Now you see? You have to take note of me; you have to notice me. You have to know that I am somebody and I am here, and you cannot just neglect me.” The good guy and the bad guy are born this way, the saint and the sinner.The sixth is self as reason. The child learns the ways of reason, logic, argument. He learns that he can solve problems. Reason becomes a great support to his self – that’s why people argue. That’s why educated people think that they are somebodies. Uneducated? – you feel a little embarrassed. You have a great degree – you are a PhD or a DLitt – and you go on showing, exhibiting your certificate: you are a gold medalist, you have topped the university, and this and that. Why? – because you are showing that you have become a rational being, well-educated, educated in the best of universities, educated by the best of professors: “I can argue better than anybody else.” Reason becomes a great support.And the seventh is propriate striving, life-goal, ambition, becoming: what and who one is through what or who one wants to become. Future concern, dreams and long-range goals appear – the last stage of the ego. Then one starts thinking about what to do in the world to leave a mark in history, to leave a signature here on the sands of time. To become a poet? To become a politician? To become a mahatma? To do this or to do that? Life is running fast, slipping fast, and one has to do something, otherwise soon one will become nothing and nobody will ever know that you had existed. One wants to become an Alexander or a Napoleon. If it is possible, one wants to become a good guy, famous, well-known, a saint, a mahatma.If it is not possible, then too one wants to become somebody. Many murderers have confessed in the courts that they had not murdered somebody because they were interested in murdering him, but they just wanted their names on the front page of the newspapers.A man murdered somebody from behind. He came and stabbed him, and he had not even seen the man before. He was absolutely unknown to him; they were not acquainted, there was no friendship, no enmity. He had never met him. And this time also, he had not seen the face of the man whom he had murdered. He had not seen him, he simply murdered him from behind. The man was sitting on the beach looking at the waves, and this man came and killed him.The court was puzzled, but the man said, “I was not interested in the man whom I killed. He was irrelevant, anybody would have done. I had gone there to kill somebody. If this man had not been there, then somebody else…” But why? And he said, “Because I wanted my photo and my name on the front page of the newspapers. My desire is fulfilled. I am talked about all over the country, I am happy. Now I am ready to die. If you sentence me to death I can die happily: I was known, I was famous.”If you cannot become famous, you try to become notorious. If you cannot become Mahatma Gandhi, you would like to become Adolf Hitler – but nobody wants to remain a nobody.These are the seven doors through which the illusion of the ego strengthens, becomes stronger and stronger. And these are the seven doors – if you understand – through which the ego has to be sent out again. Slowly, slowly from each door you have to look deep into your ego and say goodbye to it. Then nothingness arises.The sutra:Therefore, O Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; no forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind; no sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to: No mind-consciousness element; there is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to: There is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. There is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment.A tremendously revolutionary statement.Therefore, O Sariputra…First we have to understand the word therefore. Therefore is perfectly relevant in a syllogism, in a logical argument. There has been no argument preceding it, and Buddha says: Therefore, O Sariputra…Scholars have been very worried about why he uses therefore. Therefore is part of a syllogism: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is a mortal. It is part of logic. But there has been no proposition, no argumentation, and suddenly Buddha says: Therefore… Why?The scholars cannot understand it, because there had been no argument on the surface. But there has been a dialogue between the eyes of Buddha and Sariputra. There has arisen an understanding. Listening to Buddha talking about emptiness, nothingness, Sariputra has risen to that level of nothingness.It can arise in you here, you can feel it, its wings fluttering around you.Looking into his eyes Buddha feels, sees that Sariputra has understood: now the argument can go further. On the surface there has been no argument. There has been no debate, discussion, but there has been a dialogue. The dialogue is between these two energies: Buddha and Sariputra. There has been a unity, they have been bridged. In that bridge, in that moment of bridging, Sariputra has looked into Buddha’s emptiness. Now Buddha says to Sariputra, “Therefore… You have looked, Sariputra, now I can go further into it, into more detail. Now I can say a few things to you which would not have been possible before.”Therefore, O Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception…Because there is nobody to feel, so how can there be feeling? When the ego is not there, there is no feeling, no knowledge, no perception. No form arises because the sky is completely cloudless. You can see a form in a cloud. Have you not seen sometimes? – a cloud looks just like an elephant, and then it changes into a horse and then into something else, and it goes on changing. It takes so many forms.But have you ever seen any form arising in the pure sky? No form ever arises.…there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse…And when there is nobody inside, how can impulse arise? How can desire arise?…nor consciousness…When there is no content, when there is no object, the subject also disappears. That consciousness which is always of the object is no longer found there.…no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind…Buddha says, “Everything disappears into that nothingness, Sariputra. And now you can understand, Sariputra; therefore I am saying it. You have seen it. You have looked into me. You have been on the very verge of it. You have peeped into the abyss, the eternal, the abysmal depth.”…no forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables…no sight-organ element, and so forth… No mind-consciousness element…When you are in that state you cannot even say “I am in this state of nothingness” because if you say this you have come back.…until we come to…If you say, “I have experienced nothingness,” that means you have come back to the world of form. The mind has started functioning again. In that moment you are not separate from nothingness, so how can you say, “I am experiencing nothingness?” Nothingness is not like an object: it is not separate from you, you are not separate from it. The observer is the observed there; the object is the subject there. The duality has disappeared.…there is no ignorance……Buddha says. There is no knowledge, there is no ignorance either, because ignorance can only be when you think in terms of knowledge. It is comparison with knowledge. When you call a man ignorant what do you mean? You are comparing him with somebody who is knowledgeable. But there is no knowledge so there cannot be any ignorance.…there is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance…And Buddha says: “Remember, I am not saying that ignorance disappears. Ignorance has never been there; it was a shadow of knowledge, it was a shadow of the mind addicted to knowledge.”When you bring a light into a dark room, what do you say? – that the darkness disappears, goes out from the room, escapes from the room, runs away? No, you cannot say that – because darkness does not exist in the first place. How can it go out? Light comes and darkness is not found, because darkness was just the absence of light.So there is no ignorance, and no extinction of ignorance. There is no knowledge and there is no non-knowledge. One simply is innocent of all – knowledge, ignorance; just innocent, virgin. To be free of knowledge and to be free of ignorance is to be virgin, to be pure.…there is no decay and death……Because there is nobody to die. And remember, there is no extinction of decay and death. And Buddha is not saying that death disappears, because death has never been there in the first place. To say that death has disappeared would be wrong. Buddha is very, very perfect in his assertion, very careful. He has not uttered a single word which can be refuted by anybody who knows reality. He has not compromised. He has not compromised with the listener. He has said the most perfect thing that can possibly be said.There is no suffering…Now he comes to the ultimate revolutionary statement.You must have heard about the four noble truths of Buddha. The first noble truth is suffering: that everybody is suffering, that the whole existence is dukkha, suffering, pain, misery, agony.And the second noble truth is: its origination is in craving – tanha, desire. Suffering exists: the first noble truth – arya satya; the second noble truth is that suffering has a cause and the cause is in desire. We suffer because we desire.And the third noble truth is: this desiring can be stopped. It is possible – nirodha; it can be stopped. By looking deep into desiring it can be stopped, and when desiring stops suffering disappears. And the fourth noble truth is: there is an eightfold path that leads to the stoppage, nirodha, of desiring, and consequently of suffering.This is Buddhism’s most fundamental philosophy, and in this statement Buddha denies that too! He says:There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, and no path.Nobody has ever stated such a revolutionary thing. Buddha reaches the uttermost peak of revolution; everybody else falls short.Now, scholars have always been worried that this is contradictory. Buddha teaches that there is suffering, and then one day he says, “There is no suffering.” He teaches that there is a cause for why suffering is, and then one day he says, “There is no origination.” He teaches that there is a possibility – nirodha – that it can be stopped, and one day he says, “There is no stopping.” And he says – and the whole of Buddhism depends on that saying – that there is an eightfold path, astangik marga: right vision, right exercise, right meditation, right samadhi, and so on and so forth; the eight-limbed path which leads you to the ultimate truth. And now one day he says, “There is no path. The reality is a pathless reality.” Why this contradiction? The first statement is made to those who do not know that they are not. The first statements are made to ordinary people, full of ego. This statement is made to Sariputra in a particular space, in a particular state.Therefore, O Sariputra… Now I can say this to you. I could not have said it before, you were not ready. Now you have looked into me, and looking into me you have seen what nothingness is. You have had a taste of it. Therefore, Sariputra: Tasmat, Sariputra! Now it is possible to say to you that there is no suffering, that it is a dream; people are suffering in dream. And there is no causation – people are desiring in a dream. And there is no stopping – people are exercising, doing methods, meditating, Yoga, etcetera, in a dream. And the whole path exists in the dream. Now it can be said to you because you are awake, Sariputra. Your eyes are opened; now you see the ego does not exist.And to get out of the ego is to get out of sleep. To get out of the ego is to get out of darkness. To get out of the ego is to be free. In that freedom it can be said that there is no path. It is like a dream.In dream you are suffering, and when you are suffering in a dream, it is so real. And you are searching: “Why am I suffering?” And then you come across a great sage – in the dream – and the sage says, “You are suffering because you are desiring. You are so much infatuated with money; that’s why you are suffering. Drop this desire and the suffering will disappear.” You understand it, it is very logical. You know it, you have experienced it yourself that whenever you desire, suffering comes. The more desire is there, the more suffering. The greater the desire, the bigger the suffering. You understand it. Then you ask, “Then how to stop it?” And the great sage says, “Stand on your head, do Yoga, do chaotic meditation, do Kundalini, do Nadabrahma, do encounter group and do Leela and do Primal Therapy and all.” The great sage says, “Do these things; these will help. You will become more understanding of your desire, and you will be able to drop the desire.”So the sage gives you a well-formulated eightfold path. He says, “This is the way.” One day, when you are really awake… And remember, these things help you to awaken. Now even if you stand on your head in a dream there is a possibility your dream will be broken. Try! Try tonight! When you are in a dream, just stand on your head in the dream, and suddenly you will see that you are awake. Do Kundalini in a dream – you will be awake. And if you are not, at least your husband will be awake, the neighbors will be awake, something is going to happen.All methods are just to wake you. But when you are awake…Therefore, Sariputra…And now Buddha can say this to Sariputra; he is awake. He can say, “Now I can tell you the truth – that nobody exists, neither the disciple nor the master, nor the dream, nor the suffering, nor the sage, nor the cause, nor the stopping. There is no path.”This is the ultimate statement of truth.But this can be made only at the highest stage, at the seventh rung of the ladder. Sariputra reached to that rung on this day. That’s why “Therefore – tasmat – Sariputra.”Enough for today.

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The Heart Sutra 01-10Category: BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS

The Heart Sutra 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,What is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness of a buddha?There is a similarity and there is a difference. Essentially the child is a buddha, but his buddhahood, his innocence, is natural, not earned. His innocence is a kind of ignorance, not a realization. His innocence is unconscious – he is not aware of it, he is not mindful of it, he has not taken any note of it. It is there but he is oblivious. He is going to lose it. He has to lose it. Paradise will be lost sooner or later; he is on the way toward it. Every child has to go through all kinds of corruption, impurity – the world.The child’s innocence is the innocence of Adam before he was expelled from the Garden of Eden, before he had tasted the fruit of knowledge, before he became conscious. It is animal-like. Look into the eyes of any animal – a cow, a dog – and there is purity, the same purity that exists in the eyes of a buddha, but with one difference.The difference is vast too: a buddha has come back home; the animal has not yet left home. The child is still in the Garden of Eden, is still in paradise. He will have to lose it because to gain one has to lose. Buddha has come back home – the whole circle. He went away, he was lost, he went astray, he went deep into darkness and sin and misery and hell. Those experiences are part of maturity and growth. Without them you don’t have any backbone, you are spineless. Without them your innocence is very fragile; it cannot stand against the winds, it cannot bear storms. It is very weak, it cannot survive. It has to go through the fire of life – a thousand and one mistakes committed, a thousand and one times you fall, and you get back on your feet again. All those experiences slowly, slowly ripen you, make you mature; you become a grownup.Buddha’s innocence is that of a mature person, utterly mature. Childhood is nature unconscious; buddhahood is nature conscious. The childhood is a circumference with no idea of the center. The buddha is also a circumference, but rooted in the center, centered. Childhood is unconscious anonymity; buddhahood is conscious anonymity. Both are nameless, both are formless, but the child has not yet known the form and the misery of it. It is like you have never been in a prison, so you don’t know what freedom is. Then you have been in the prison for many years, or many lives, and then one day you are released… You come out of the prison doors dancing, ecstatic! And you will be surprised that the people who are already outside, walking on the street, going to their work, to the office, to the factory, are not enjoying their freedom at all – they are oblivious, they don’t know that they are free. How can they know? They don’t know the contrast because they have never been in prison; the background is missing.It is as if you write with a white chalk on a white wall – nobody will ever be able to read it. What to say about anybody else – even you will not be able to read what you have written.I have heard a famous anecdote about Mulla Nasruddin:In his village he was the only man who could write, so people used to come if they wanted to write a letter or a document, or anything. He was the only man who could write. One day a man came. Nasruddin wrote the letter, whatsoever the man dictated – and it was a long letter – and the man said, “Please read it now because I want to be sure that everything has been written and I have not forgotten anything, and you have not messed up anything.”Mulla said, “Now, this is difficult. I know how to write but I don’t know how to read. And moreover, the letter is not addressed to me so it will be illegal to read it too.”And the villager was convinced, the idea was perfectly right, and the villager said, “Right you are – it is not addressed to you.”If you write on a white wall even you yourself will not be able to read it, but if you write on a blackboard it comes loud and clear – you can read it. The contrast is needed. The child has no contrast; he is a silver lining without the black cloud. Buddha is a silver lining in the black cloud.In the day there are stars in the sky; they don’t go anywhere – they can’t go so fast, they can’t disappear. They are already there, the whole day they are there, but in the night you can see them because of darkness. As the sun sets they start to appear. As the sun goes deeper and deeper below the horizon, more and more stars bubble up. They have been there the whole day, but because the darkness was missing it was difficult to see them.A child has innocence but no background. You cannot see it, you cannot read it; it is not very loud. A buddha has lived his life, has done all that is needed – good and bad – has touched this polarity and that, has been a sinner and a saint. Remember, a buddha is not just a saint; he has been a sinner and he has been a saint. And buddhahood is beyond both. Now he has come back home.That’s why Buddha said in yesterday’s sutra: Na jhanam, na praptir na-apraptih – “There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. There is no cognition, no knowledge, no attainment, and no non-attainment.” When Buddha became awakened he was asked, “What have you attained?” And he laughed, and he said, “I have not attained anything – I have only discovered what has always been the case. I have simply come back home. I have claimed that which was always mine and was with me. So there is no attainment as such, I have simply recognized it.” It is not a discovery, it is a rediscovery. And when you become a buddha you will see the point – nothing is gained by becoming a buddha. Suddenly you see that this is your nature. But to recognize this nature you have to go astray, you have to go deep into the turmoil of the world. You have to enter into all kinds of muddy places and spaces just to see your utter cleanliness, your utter purity.The other day I told you about the seven doors – of how the ego is formed, how the illusion of the ego is strengthened. It will be helpful to go deeply into a few things about it.These seven doors of the ego are not very clear-cut and separate from each other; they overlap. And it is very rare to find a person who has attained to his ego from all seven doors. If a person has attained the ego from all seven doors he has become a perfect ego. And only a perfect ego has the capacity to disappear, not an imperfect ego. When the fruit is ripe it falls; when the fruit is unripe it clings. If you are still clinging to the ego, remember, the fruit is not ripe; hence the clinging. If the fruit is ripe, it falls to the ground and disappears. So is the case with the ego.Now a paradox: only a really evolved ego can surrender. Ordinarily you think that an egoist cannot surrender. That is not my observation, and not the observation of buddhas down the ages. Only a perfect egoist can surrender because only he knows the misery of the ego, only he has the strength to surrender. He has known all the possibilities of the ego and has gone into immense frustration. He has suffered a lot, and he knows enough is enough, and he wants any excuse to surrender it. The excuse may be godliness, the excuse may be a master, or any excuse, but he wants to surrender it. The burden is too much and he has been carrying it for long.People who have not developed their egos can surrender, but their surrender will not be perfect, it will not be total. Something deep inside will go on clinging, something deep inside will still go on hoping: “Maybe there is something in the ego. Why are you surrendering?”In the East, the ego has not been developed well. Because of the teaching of egolessness, a misunderstanding arose that if the ego has to be surrendered, then why develop it, for what? A simple logic: if it has to be renounced one day, then why bother? Then why make so much effort to create it? It has to be dropped! So the East has not bothered much in developing the ego. And the Eastern mind finds it very easy to bow down to anybody. It finds it very easy, it is always ready to surrender. But the surrender is basically impossible, because you don’t yet have an ego to surrender.You will be surprised: all the great buddhas in the East have been kshatriyas, from the warrior race – Buddha, Mahavira, Parshwanath, Neminath. All the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas belong to the warrior race, and all the avatars of the Hindus belonged to the kshatriya race – Rama, Krishna – except one, Parashuram, who was, accidentally it seems, born to a brahmin family, because you cannot find a greater warrior than him. It must have been an accident – his whole life was a continuous war.It is a surprise when you come to know that not a single brahmin has ever been declared a buddha, an avatar, a tirthankara. Why? The brahmin is humble; from the very beginning he has been brought up in humbleness, for humbleness. Egolessness has been taught to him from the very beginning, so the ego is not ripe, and unripe egos cling.In the East people have very, very fragmentary egos, and they think it is easy to surrender. They are always ready to surrender to anybody. A drop of a hat and they are ready to surrender – but their surrender never goes very deep, it remains superficial.Just the opposite is the case in the West: people who come from the West have very, very strong and developed egos. Because the whole Western education is to create an evolved, well-defined, well-cultured, sophisticated ego, they think it is very difficult to surrender. They have not even heard the word surrender. The very idea looks ugly, humiliating. But the paradox is that when a Western man or woman surrenders, the surrender goes really deep. It goes to the very core of his being or her being, because the ego is very evolved. The ego is evolved; that’s why you think it is very difficult to surrender. But if surrender happens it goes to the very core, it is absolute. In the East people think surrender is very easy, but the ego is not so evolved so it never goes very deep.A buddha is one who has gone into the experiences of life, the fire of life, the hell of life, and has ripened his ego to its ultimate possibility, to the very maximum. And in that moment the ego falls and disappears. Again you are a child; it is a rebirth, it is a resurrection. First you have to be on the cross of the ego, you have to suffer the cross of the ego, and you have to carry the cross on your own shoulders – and to the very end. Ego has to be learned; only then can you unlearn it. And then there is great joy. When you are free from the prison you have a dance, a celebration in your being. You cannot believe why people who are out of prison are going so dead and dull and dragging themselves. Why are they not dancing? Why are they not celebrating? They cannot: they have not known the misery of the prison.These seven doors have to be used before you can become a buddha. You have to go to the darkest realm of life, to the dark night of the soul, to come back to the dawn when the morning rises again, the sun rises again, and all is light. But it rarely happens that you have a fully developed ego.If you understand me, then the whole structure of education should be paradoxical: first they should teach you the ego – that should be the first part of education, the half of it; and they should then teach you egolessness, how to drop it – that will be the latter half. People enter from one door or two doors or three doors, and get caught up in a certain fragmentary ego.The first, I said, is the bodily self. The child starts learning slowly, slowly: it takes nearabout fifteen months for the child to learn that he is separate, that there is something inside him and something outside. He learns that he has a body separate from other bodies. But a few people remain clinging to that very, very fragmentary ego for their whole lives. These are the people who are known as materialists, Communists, Marxists. The people who believe that the body is all – that there is nothing more than the body inside you; that the body is your whole existence; that there is no consciousness separate from the body, above the body; that consciousness is just a chemical phenomenon happening in the body; that you are not separate from the body and when the body dies you die, and all disappears, dust unto dust; there is no divinity in you – they reduce man to matter.These are the people who remain clinging to the first door; their mental age seems to be only fifteen months. The very, very rudimentary and primitive ego remains materialist. These people remain hung up with two things: sex and food. But remember, when I say materialist, Communist, Marxist, I do not mean that this completes the list. Somebody may be a spiritualist and may still be clinging to the first.For example, Mahatma Gandhi: if you read his autobiography – he calls his autobiography My Experiments with Truth but if you go on reading his autobiography you will find the name is not right; he should have given it the name My Experiments with Food and Sex. Truth is nowhere to be found. He is continuously worried about food: what to eat, what not to eat. His whole worry seems to be about food, and then about sex: how to become a celibate – this runs as a theme, this is the undercurrent. Continuously, day and night, he is thinking about food and sex – one has to get free. Now, he is not a materialist: he believes in the soul, he believes in God. In fact, because he believes in God he is thinking so much about food – because if he eats something wrong and commits a sin, then he will be far away from God. He talks about God but thinks about food.That is not only so with him, it is so with all the Jaina monks. He was under much impact from Jaina monks. He was born in Gujarat; Gujarat is basically Jaina, Jainism has the greatest impact on Gujarat. Even Hindus are more like Jainas in Gujarat than like Hindus. Gandhi is ninety percent a Jaina – born in a Hindu family, but his mind is conditioned by Jaina monks. They think continuously about food.Then the second idea arises, of sex: how to get rid of sex. For his whole life, to the very end, he was concerned about how to get rid of sex. In the last year of his life he was experimenting with nude girls and sleeping with them, just to test himself; because he was feeling that death was coming close, he had to test himself to see whether there was still lust in him.The country was burning, people were being killed: Mohammedans were killing Hindus, Hindus were killing Mohammedans; the whole country was on fire. And he was in the very middle of it in Novakali, but his concern was sex. He was sleeping with girls, nude girls; he was testing himself, testing whether his brahmacharya, his celibacy, was perfect or not.But why this suspicion? – because of long repression. He had repressed his whole life. Now, in the very end, he had become afraid because at that age he was still dreaming about sex. So he was very suspicious: would he be able to face his God? Now, he is a spiritualist, but I will call him a materialist, and a very primitive materialist. His concern is food and sex.Whether you are for it or against it doesn’t matter; your concern shows where your ego is hanging. And I will include the capitalist in it also: his whole concern is how to gather money, hoard money because money has power over matter. You can purchase any material thing through money. You cannot purchase anything spiritual, you cannot purchase anything that has any intrinsic value; you can purchase only things. If you want to purchase love, you cannot purchase it; but you can purchase sex. Sex is the material part of love. Through money, matter can be purchased, possessed.Now you will be surprised: I include both the Communist and the capitalist in the same category, and they are enemies, just as I include Charvaka and Mahatma Gandhi in the same category, and they are enemies. They are enemies, but their concern is the same. The capitalist is trying to hoard money, the Communist is against it. He wants that nobody should be allowed to hoard money except the state. But his concern is also money, he is also continuously thinking about money. It is not an accident that Marx had given the name Das Kapital to his great book on Communism – The Capital. That is the Communist Bible, but the name is The Capital. That is their concern: how to not allow anybody to hoard money so the state can hoard, and how to possess the state – so, in fact, basically, ultimately, you hoard the money.Once I heard that Mulla Nasruddin had become a Communist. I know him and I was a little puzzled. This was a miracle! I know his possessiveness. So I asked him, “Mulla, do you know what Communism means?”He said, “I know.”I said, “Do you know that if you have two cars and somebody hasn’t a car, you will have to give one car?”He said, “I am perfectly willing to give.”I said, “If you have two houses and somebody is without a house you will have to give one house?”He said, “I am perfectly ready, right now.”And I said, “If you have two donkeys you will have to give one donkey to somebody else who has not?”He said, “There I disagree. I cannot give, I cannot do that!”But I said, “Why? – because it is the same logic, the same corollary.”He said, “No, it is not the same – I have two donkeys, I don’t have two cars.”The Communist mind is basically a capitalist mind, the capitalist mind is basically a Communist mind. They are partners in the same game – the game’s name is The Capital, Das Kapital.Many people, millions of people, only evolve this primitive ego, very rudimentary. If you have this ego it is very difficult to surrender; it is very unripe.The second door I call self-identity. The child starts growing an idea of who he is. Looking in the mirror, he finds the same face. Every morning, getting up from the bed, he runs to the bathroom, looks, and he says, “Yes, it is I. The sleep has not disturbed anything.” He starts having the idea of a continuous self.Those people who become too involved with this door, get hooked with this door, are the so-called spiritualists who think that they are going into paradise, heaven, moksha, but that they will be there. When you think about heaven, you certainly think of yourself that as you are here, you will be there too. Maybe the body will not be there, but your inner continuity will remain. That is absurd! That liberation, that ultimate liberation happens only when the self is dissolved and all identity is dissolved. You become an emptiness.Therefore, O Sariputra… in nothingness there is no form, or …form is emptiness and emptiness is form… There is no knowledge because there is no knower; there is not even vigyan, no consciousness, because there is nothing to be conscious about and nobody to be conscious about it. All disappears.That idea that the child has of self-continuity is carried by the spiritualists. They go on searching: from where does the soul enter into the body, from where does the soul go out of the body, what form does the soul have, planchettes and mediums, things like that – all rubbish and nonsense. The self has no form. It is pure nothingness, it is vast sky without any clouds in it. It is a thoughtless silence, unconfined, uncontained by anything.That idea of a permanent soul, the idea of a self, continues to play games in your mind. Even if the body dies, you want to be certain: “I will live.” Many people used to come to Buddha… Because this country has been dominated by this second kind of ego, people believe in the permanent soul, eternal soul, atman, they would come to Buddha again and again and ask, “When I die, will something remain or not?” And Buddha would laugh and he would say, “There is nothing right now, so why bother about death? There has never been anything from the very beginning.” This was inconceivable to the Indian mind.The Indian mind is predominantly hooked with the second type of ego. That’s why Buddhism could not survive in India. Within five hundred years, Buddhism disappeared. It found better roots in China because of Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu had created really a beautiful field for Buddhism there. The climate was ready; it was as if somebody had prepared the ground, only the seed was needed. And when the seed reached China it grew into a great tree. But it disappeared from India. Lao Tzu had no idea of any permanent self, and in China people have not bothered much about it.There are these three cultures in the world: one culture, called the materialist – very predominant in the West; another culture, called the spiritualist – very predominant in India; and China has a third kind of culture, neither materialist nor spiritualist. It is Taoist: live the moment and don’t bother for the future, because to bother about heaven and hell and paradise and moksha is basically to be continuously concerned about yourself. It is very selfish, it is very self-centered. According to Lao Tzu, according to Buddha too, and according to me also, a person who is trying to reach heaven is a very, very self-centered person, very selfish. And he does not know a thing about his own inner being – there is no self.The third door was self-esteem: the child learns to do things and enjoys doing them. A few people get hooked there: they become technicians, they become performers, actors, they become politicians, they become the showmen. The basic theme is the doer; they want to show the world that they can do something. If the world allows them some creativity, good; if it does not allow them creativity, they become destructive.Did you know that Adolf Hitler wanted to enter an art school? He wanted to become a painter, that was his idea. Because he was refused, because he was not a painter, because he could not pass the entrance examination in art school – that rejection was very hard for him to accept – his creativity turned sour. He became destructive. But basically he wanted to become a painter, he wanted to do something. Because he was not found capable of doing it, as revenge, he started being destructive.The criminal and the politician are not very far away, they are cousin-brothers. If the criminal is given the right opportunity he will become a politician, and if the politician is not given the right opportunity to have his say, he will become a criminal. They are border cases. Any moment, the politician can become a criminal and the criminal can become a politician. And this has been happening down the ages, but we don’t yet have that insight to see into things.The fourth door was self-extension. The word mine is the key word there. One has to extend oneself by accumulating money, by accumulating power, by becoming bigger and bigger and bigger: the patriot who says, “This is my country, and this is the greatest country in the world.” You can ask the Indian patriot: he goes on shouting from every nook and corner that this is punya bhumi – this is the land of virtue, the purest land in the world.Once a so-called saint came to me, a Hindu monk, and he said, “Don’t you believe that this is the only country where so many buddhas were born, so many avatars, so many tirthankaras – Rama, Krishna and others. Why? – because this is the most virtuous land.”I told him, “The fact is just the opposite: if in the neighborhood you see that in somebody’s house a doctor comes every day – sometimes a vaidya, a physician, a hakim, an acupuncturist, and the naturopath, and this and that – what do you understand by it?”He said, “Simple! That that family is ill.”That is the case with India: so many buddhas needed, the country seems to be utterly ill and pathological. So many healers, so many physicians… Buddha has said, “I am a physician.” And you know that Krishna has said, “Whenever there is darkness in the world, and whenever there is sin in the world, and whenever the law of the cosmos is disturbed, I will come back.” So why had he come that time? It must have been for the same reason. And why so many times to India?But the patriot is arrogant, aggressive, egoistic. He goes on declaring, “My country is special, my religion is special, my church is special, my book is special, my guru is special” – and everything is nothing. This is just ego claiming.A few people get hooked with this “mine” – the dogmatist, the patriot, the Hindu, the Christian, the Mohammedan.The fifth door is self-image. The child starts looking into things, experiences. When the parents feel good with the child, he thinks, “I am good.” When they pat him he feels, “I am good.” When they look with anger, they shout at him and they say, “Don’t do that!” he feels, “Something is wrong in me.” He recoils.A small child was asked in school on the first day he entered, “What is your name?”He said, “Johnny Don’t.”The teacher was puzzled. He said, “Johnny Don’t? I never heard of such a name!”He said, “Whenever, whatsoever I am doing, this is my name – my mother shouts, ‘Johnny don’t!’ My father shouts, ‘Johnny don’t!’ So I think this is my name. ‘Don’t’ is always there. What I am doing is irrelevant.”The fifth is the door from where morals enter: you become a moralist; you start feeling very good, “holier than thou.” Or, in frustration, in resistance, in struggle, you become an immoralist and you start fighting with the whole world, to show the whole world.Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, has written about one of his experiences that proved very fundamental to his life’s effort. He was a psychoanalyst practicing in Africa. The practice was very good because he was the only psychoanalyst there. He had a big car, a big bungalow with a garden, a swimming pool – and everything that a mediocre mind wants to have, the middle-class luxuries. And then he went to Vienna to attend a world psychoanalyst’s conference. Of course, he was a successful man in Africa, so he was thinking that Freud would receive him, there would be great welcome. Freud was the father-figure for the psychoanalysts, so he wanted to be patted by Freud.He had written a paper and had worked for months on it, because he wanted Freud to know who he was. He read the paper; there was no response. Freud was very cold, other psychoanalysts were very cold. His paper was almost unnoticed, uncommented on. He felt very shocked, depressed, but still he was hoping that he would go to see Freud, and then something might happen. And he went to see Freud. He was just on the steps, had not even entered the door, and Freud was standing there. And he said to Freud, just to impress him, “I have come from thousands of miles.” And rather than welcoming him, Freud said, “And when are you going back?” That hurt him very much: “This is the welcome? – ‘When are you going back?’” And that was the whole interview – finished! He turned away, continuously repeating, like a mantra in his head: “I will show you, I will show you, I will show you!” And he tried to show him: he created the greatest movement against psychoanalysis – gestalt.This is a childish reaction. Either the child is accepted – then he feels good, then he is ready to do anything the parents want; or, if again and again he is frustrated, then he starts thinking in terms of, “There is no possibility that I can receive their love, but still I need their attention. If I cannot get their attention the right way, I will get their attention the wrong way. Now I will smoke, I will masturbate, I will do harm to myself and to others, and I will do all kinds of things that they say ‘Don’t do,’ but I will keep them occupied with me. I will show them.”This is the fifth door, the self-image. Sinner and saint are hooked there. Heaven and hell are the ideas of people who are hooked there. Millions of people are hooked. They are continuously afraid of hell and continuously greedy for heaven. They want to be patted by God, and they want God to say to them, “You are good, my son. I am happy with you.” They go on sacrificing their lives just to be patted by some fantasy somewhere beyond life and death. They go on doing a thousand and one tortures to themselves just in order that God can say, “Yes, you sacrificed yourself for me.”It seems as if God is a masochist or a sadist, or something like that. People torture themselves with the idea that they will be making God happy. What do you mean by this? You fast and you think God will be very happy with you? You starve yourself and you think God will be very happy with you? Is he a sadist? Does he enjoy torturing people? And that is what saints, so-called saints, have been doing: torturing themselves and looking at the sky. Sooner or later God will say, “Good boy, you have done well. Now come and enjoy the heavenly pleasures. Come here! Wine flows here in rivers, and roads are of gold, and palaces are made of diamonds. And the women here never age, they remain stuck at sixteen. Come here! You have done enough, you have earned, now you can enjoy!” The whole idea behind sacrifice is this. It is a foolish idea, because all ego ideas are foolish.The sixth is the self as reason. It comes through education, experience, reading, learning, listening: you start accumulating ideas, then you start creating systems out of ideas, consistent wholes, philosophies. This is where the philosophers, the scientists, the thinkers, the intellectuals, the rationalists are hooked. This is becoming more and more sophisticated: from the first, the sixth is very sophisticated.The seventh is propriate striving: the artist, the mystic, the utopian, the dreamer – they are hooked there. They are always trying to create a utopia in the world. The word utopia is very beautiful: it means that which never comes. It is always coming but it never comes; it is always there but never here. But there are moon-gazers who go on looking for the faraway, the distant, and they are always moving in imagination. All the egos of the great poets, imaginative people are involved in becoming. There is somebody who wants to become God; he is a mystic.Remember, becoming is the key word on the seventh, and the seventh is the last of the ego. The most mature ego comes there. That’s why you will feel, you will see a poet – he may not have anything, he may be a beggar, but in his eyes, on his nose, you will see a great ego. The mystic may have renounced the whole world and may be sitting in a Himalayan cage, in a Himalayan cave. You go there and look at him: he may be sitting there naked – but such a subtle ego, such a refined ego. He may even touch your feet, but he is showing, “Look how humble I am!”There are seven doors. When the ego is perfect, all these seven doors have been crossed; then that mature ego drops on its own accord. The child is before these seven egos, and the buddha is after these seven egos. It is a complete circle.You ask me: “What is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness of a buddha?” This is the difference. Buddha has moved into all these seven egos – seen them, looked into them, found that they are illusory, and has come back home, has become a child again. That’s what Jesus means when he says, “Unless you become like small children, you will not enter into my kingdom of God.”The second question:Osho,I am just curious. Have you read the book Zorba the Greek by Kazantzakis? I love it so much. Is not Zorba exactly the way you want us to be? At least that is how I understand your teaching.I have been Zorba the Greek for many lives. I need not read the book; that is my autobiography. And that’s what I would like you to be.Take life joyfully, take life easily, take life relaxedly, don’t create unnecessary problems. Ninety-nine percent of your problems are created by you because you take life seriously. Seriousness is the root cause of problems. Be playful, and you will not miss anything – because life is God. Forget about God; just be alive, be abundantly alive. Live each moment as if this is the last moment. Live it intensely; let your torch burn from both sides together. Even if it is only for one moment, that is enough. One moment of intense totality is enough to give you the taste of God. You can live in a lukewarm way, the bourgeois way, the middle-class way. You can go on living, dragging yourself for millions of years – you will only collect dust from the roads and nothing else. One moment of clarity, totality, spontaneity, and you burn like a flame. Just one moment is enough. One moment will make you eternal; you will enter from that moment into eternity. That’s my whole message for my sannyasins: live it in such way that you need not repent, ever.A friend has sent me a newspaper cutting:An old woman, eighty-five years old, was asked by a journalist that if she had to live again, how would she live?The old woman said – there is a great insight in it, remember it – “If I had my life to live over, I would dare to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would take more trips. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I would have fewer imaginary ones.“You see, I am one of those people who lived sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I have had my moments, and if I had it to do over again I would have more of them. In fact, I would try to have nothing else – just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I have been one of those persons who never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again I would travel lighter than I have.“If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring, and stay that way later into the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.”And that’s my vision of a sannyasin too. Live this moment as totally as possible. Don’t be too sane, because too much sanity leads to insanity. Let a little craziness exist in you. That gives zest to life, that makes life juicy. Let a little irrationality always be there. That makes you capable of playing, being playful; that helps you to relax. A sane person is utterly hung up in the head, he cannot get down from there. He lives upstairs. Live all over the place, this is your house! Upstairs, good, the ground floor, perfectly good – and the basement is beautiful too. Live all over the place, this is your house. And don’t wait for next time, I would like to tell this old woman, because the next time never comes.Not that you will not be born again; you will be born again, but then you will forget. Then you will start again from ABC. This old woman has been here before. She must have been here millions of times before. And I can say to you that each time, nearabout the age of eighty-five, she would have decided the same way: “Next time I’m going to do it differently.” But next time you don’t remember – that’s the problem. You lose all memory of the past life. Then again you start from ABC and the same thing happens.So I would not say to you to wait for the next time. Take hold of this moment! This is the only time there is, there is no other time. Even if you are eighty-five you can start living. And what is there to lose when you are eighty-five? If you go barefoot on the beach in the spring, if you collect daisies – even if you die in that, nothing is wrong. To die barefoot on the beach is the right way to die. To die collecting daisies is the right way to die. Whether you are eighty-five or fifteen doesn’t matter. Take hold of this moment. Be a Zorba.You ask: “I am just curious. Have you read the book Zorba the Greek? I love it so much.” Only loving it won’t help. Be it! Sometimes it happens that you love the opposite of what you are. You enjoy the opposite of what you are because it releases fantasies in you. It gives you a vision of how you would like to be: that’s the appeal of a Zorba.But loving the book will not help. That’s what people have been doing down the ages. People love the Bible, and don’t become Jesus, and they love the Heart Sutra – they repeat it, they chant it every day. Millions of people in the East repeat the Heart Sutra five times a day: in China, in Japan, in Korea, in Vietnam they go on repeating it. It is a small sutra; it can be repeated within minutes. They love it, but they don’t become it!Be a Zorba. Remember, loving books is not going to help, only being helps.“I love it so much. Is not Zorba exactly the way you want us to be?” Not exactly, because I would not like many Zorbas in the world. Not exactly, because that would be ugly and monotonous and boring. Be a Zorba in your own way – not exactly.Never try to imitate anybody, never be an imitator; that is suicide. Then you will never be able to enjoy. You will always remain a carbon copy, you will never be the original. And all that happens in life – truth, beauty, good, liberation, meditation, love – happens to the original, never to the carbon copy. Beware – not exactly; that is dangerous. If you simply start following Zorba and start doing things as he is doing them you will get into trouble. That’s how people have done it.Look at the Christians, look at the Hindus: they have been trying to do it exactly. Nobody can be a Buddha again. Existence does not permit any repetition. Existence does not allow secondhand people, it loves firsthand people. It loved Buddha. It loved so much that it is finished. Now there is no need for Buddha. It would not be a love affair anymore. It would be like going to the same movie that you have seen before, it would be like reading the same book that you have read many times before. Existence is not dull and stupid, it never allows anybody to repeat anybody else: Christ only once, Buddha only once – and so are you only once! And you are alone, there is nobody else like you. Only you are you. This I call reverence for life. This is really self-respect.Learn from Zorba, learn the secret, but never try to imitate. Learn the climate, appreciate, go into it, sympathize with it, participate with Zorba, and then go on your own. Then be yourself.The third question:Osho,Will you please speak about what is common between prayer and meditation, and also the difference between them?The question is from Mark Nevejan.P.S. You don't know me because I have not yet met you personally. Arup knows me a little bit.Arup does not know herself, how can she know you? – not even a little bit! You have not met me, that is true. But I know you, because I know myself. The day I came to know myself, I have come to know everybody because it is the same nothingness flowering in different ways.I know you, Mark. You may not know me. How can you know me? – you don’t know yourself. But I know you. I may not know your form, but I know you – and you are not the form.Therefore, O Sariputra… Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. I know the truth in you; I may not know the personality around you. That’s why I can help you – because I know you. That’s why I can take you to the beyond – because I know you. If I don’t know you I cannot take you beyond.And you ask: “Will you please speak about what is common between prayer and meditation, and also the difference between them?” I was just going to speak about it yesterday, but there were so many questions and I could not answer you.Mark has written another question today:Dear Summertime of Consciousness and Freedom,The other day I asked you a question about what is common and different in prayer and meditation. In the meantime, I have been reading in your book I Am the Gate, and found the answer. Thank you for the response.Dutch Cloudy Sky called Mark Nevejan.You will not be called Mark Nevejan for long! I think it is going to be today, because I don’t wait for tomorrow. I will find you a beautiful name. It will not be cloudy; it will not be a cloudy Dutch sky. It will be an Indian summer sky with no clouds.It will happen many times that you ask a question, and if you look for it, you will find it. Patience is needed, because when I’m answering others’ questions, they are yours too. Just patience is needed. When I answer one question, I answer many: the asked ones and the unasked ones, and the ones that will be asked in the future, and the ones that will never be asked.Good, Mark, that you waited one day and didn’t get angry. A few people get very angry. They write me angry letters: “I have been asking questions and you don’t answer me.” They are not listening to me, they are only searching for their question. That is their ego, the question is not important – “My question has to be answered.” And whenever I see that somebody has asked a question in which “my” is more important, I never answer.Mukta is sitting there. She goes on writing questions and questions again and again: “Osho, why do you never answer my questions?” The day she drops her “my,” she will start finding answers.I am continuously answering! But when you are too attached with your question, and you are simply waiting for when your question is being answered, you will miss all the answers that have been showering on you. It happens many times that when I answer a question, the questioner himself cannot receive it but others receive it more easily, because they are not worried, it is not their question, so they are sitting silently. They are not excited about it, they are not tense about it, it is nothing personal. They can relax and enjoy the answer. When it is your question you are tense and you are afraid. And I never miss a chance – if I can hit you, I hit!The fourth question:Osho,I have heard you say repeatedly that we should remain in the world, in the marketplace. Yet most of the people I meet here are planning to live with you in Gujarat, only returning to the West to gather enough money to do so. A large community is being planned. Please comment.You emphasize the importance of being with a living master, but that after a connection is made you are always with us. Why does everyone want to live in your community instead of staying in the world? It certainly would be wonderful, but what about the marketplace?It is going to be the greatest marketplace that you have ever seen. Don’t be worried about that! It is going to be the very world – more intense, of course, than you can find it anywhere; more chaotic of course. And nobody is planning it, remember, it is coming up of out nothing. Therefore, O Sariputra…!The fifth question:Osho,What chance is there for your ideal society in the face of the politicians and the priests and the vested interests of capital?First, I am not interested in any ideal society. For that matter, I am not even interested in any ideal individual. The word ideal is a dirty word to me. I have no ideals. Ideals have driven you mad. It is ideals that have made this whole earth a big madhouse.An ideal means you are not that which you should be. It creates tension, anxiety, anguish. It divides you, it makes you schizophrenic. And an ideal is in the future and you are here. How can you live unless you are the ideal? First be the ideal, then start living – and that never happens. That cannot happen in the very nature of things. Ideals are impossible; that’s why they are ideals. They drive you crazy and make you insane. And condemnation arises, because you always fall short of the ideal. Guilt is created. In fact, that is what the priests and the politicians have been doing – they want to create guilt in you. To create guilt they use ideals; that is the simple mechanism. First give an ideal, then guilt comes automatically.I say to you that two eyes are not enough, you need three eyes; open your third eye! Read Lobsang Rampa – open your third eye! And now you try hard, this way and that, and you stand on your head, and you do a mantra – and the third eye does not open. Now you start feeling guilty: something is missing, you are not the right person. You become depressed. You rub the third eye hard, and it doesn’t open.Beware of all this nonsense. These two eyes are beautiful. And if you have only one eye, that is perfect. Because Jesus says, “When two eyes become one, then the whole body is full of light.” But I’m not saying that you should try to make one eye out of two. Just accept yourself as you are. God has made you perfect, he has not left anything incomplete in you. And if you feel incompletion is there, then that is part of perfection. You are perfectly imperfect. God knows better: that only in imperfection is there growth, only in imperfection is there flow, only in imperfection is something possible. If you were just perfect you would be dead like a rock. Then there would be nothing happening, then nothing could happen. If you understand me, I would like to tell you: God is also perfectly imperfect, otherwise he would have been dead long ago. He would not have waited for Friedrich Nietzsche to declare that God is dead.What would this God be doing if he were perfect? Then he could not do anything, then he could not have any freedom to do. He could not grow; there would be nowhere to go. He would be simply stuck there. He could not even commit suicide, because when you are perfect you don’t do things like that.Accept yourself as you are.I am not interested in any ideal society, not at all. I am not interested even in ideal individuals. I am not interested in idealism at all!To me the society does not exist, there are only individuals. The society is just a functioning structure, utilitarian. You cannot come across society. Have you ever come across society? Have you ever come across humanity? Have you ever come across Hinduism, Islam? No, you always come across the individual, the concrete, the solid individual.But people have been thinking how to improve society, how to make an ideal society. And these people have proved calamities. They have been a great mischief. Because of their ideal society they have destroyed people’s respect for themselves, and they have created guilt in everybody. Everybody is guilty, nobody seems to be happy the way he is. You can create guilt for anything, and once guilt is created, you become powerful. The person who creates guilt in you becomes powerful over you – remember this strategy – because then only can he redeem you of guilt. Then you have to go to him. The priest first creates guilt, then you have to go to the church. Then you have to go and confess, “I have committed this sin,” and he forgives you in the name of God. First in the name of God he created guilt, then he forgives you in the name of God.Listen to this story:Calvin was caught committing a grave sin by his mother, and immediately was sent to confession.“Father,” said Calvin, “I played with myself.”“Why did you do that?” the priest was really angry and shouted.“I had nothing better to do,” said Calvin.“For penance, do five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys.”A week later Calvin’s mother caught him again, and once more he was sent to confession.“Father, I played with myself.”“Why did you do that?”“I had nothing better to do,” said Calvin.“For penance, do ten Our Fathers and five Hail Marys.”The following week, Calvin was guilty again. “Back you go,” said his mother. “And take this chocolate cake for the good Father.”While waiting on a long line Calvin finished the cake. In the confessional he said, “Father, Mom sent you a chocolate cake, but I ate it all up while I was waiting.”“Why did you do that?” asked the priest.“I had nothing better to do.”“Why didn’t you play with yourself then?”The priest is not interested in what you are doing; he has his vested interest – his chocolate cake. And then you can go to hell! Then you do whatsoever you want, but where is the chocolate cake?They create guilt, then they forgive you in the name of God. They make you sinners and then they say, “Now come to Christ, he is the savior.” Nobody is there who can save you, because in the first place you have not committed any sin. You need not be saved.This is the message of Buddha: you are already there. You are already saved. The savior need not come, you are not guilty. There is no suffering, Sariputra, no origination of suffering, no stopping of it, and there is no path to it. It is not attained, it is not non-attained. It is already the case, it is your very nature.I am not interested in any ideal society. Please drop that dream; it has created great nightmares in the world. Remember, nothing can happen now politically. Politics is dead. Whether you vote right or left, do it without illusions. It is necessary to renounce the idea that any system can be a savior. No system can be a savior – Communism, Fascism, Gandhism. No society can save you, and no society can be an ideal society. And there is no savior – Christ, Krishna or Rama. You have just to drop that nonsense that you are carrying about guilt and your being a sinner.Put your whole energy into living; withdraw your energy from guilt. Put your energy into dancing, celebrating. And then you are ideal, here and now – not that you have to become ideal.Ideology, as such, has lost its truth. In fact it was never there in the first place. And the power to persuade is also gone. Few serious minds believe any longer that one can set down blueprints, and through social engineering bring about a new utopia of social harmony. We are living in the age of utter freedom. We have come of age. Humanity is no longer childish, it is more mature. We are living in a very Socratic period, because people are asking all the important questions of life. Don’t start hankering and longing for some future ideal, idea, perfection. Drop all ideals and live herenow.My commune is not going to be an ideal society. My commune is going to be a herenow commune.Enough for today.

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The Heart Sutra 01-10Category: BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS

The Heart Sutra 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to nirvana.All those who appear as buddhas in the three periods of time fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect enlightenment because they have relied on the perfection of wisdom.What is meditation? This whole Heart Sutra is about the innermost core of meditation. Let us go into it.The first thing: meditation is not concentration. In concentration there is a self concentrating and there is an object being concentrated upon. There is duality. In meditation there is nobody inside and nothing outside. It is not concentration. There is no division between the in and the out. The in goes on flowing into the out, the out goes on flowing into the in. The demarcation, the boundary, the border, no longer exists. The in is out, the out is in; it is a nondual consciousness.Concentration is a dual consciousness: that’s why concentration creates tiredness; that’s why when you concentrate you feel exhausted. And you cannot concentrate for twenty-four hours, you will have to take holidays to rest. Concentration can never become your nature. Meditation does not tire, meditation does not exhaust you. Meditation can become a twenty-four hour thing – day in, day out, year in, year out. It can become eternity. It is relaxation itself.Concentration is an act, a willed act. Meditation is a state of no will, a state of inaction. It is relaxation. One has simply dropped into one’s own being, and that being is the same as the being of all. In concentration there is a plan, a projection, an idea. In concentration the mind functions out of a conclusion: you are doing something. Concentration comes out of the past.In meditation there is no conclusion behind it. You are not doing anything in particular, you are simply being. It has no past to it, it is uncontaminated by the past. It has no future to it, it is pure of all future. It is what Lao Tzu has called wei-wu-wei, action through inaction. This is what Zen masters have been saying: “Sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.” Remember, “by itself” – nothing is being done. You are not pulling the grass upward; the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. That state – when you allow life to go on its own way, when you don’t want to direct it, when you don’t want to give any control to it, when you are not manipulating, when you are not enforcing any discipline on it – that state of pure undisciplined spontaneity is what meditation is.Meditation is in the present, pure present. Meditation is immediacy. You cannot meditate, but you can be in meditation; you cannot be in concentration, but you can concentrate. Concentration is human, meditation is divine.Concentration has a center in you; it comes from that center. Concentration has a self in you. In fact the man who concentrates much starts gathering a very strong self. He starts becoming more and more powerful, he starts becoming more and more of an integrated will. He will look more collected, more one piece.The man of meditation does not become powerful: he becomes silent, he becomes peaceful. Power is created out of conflict; all power is out of friction. Out of friction comes electricity. You can create electricity out of water: when the river falls from a mountainside there is friction between the river and the rocks, and the friction creates energy. That’s why people who are seeking power are always fighting. Fight creates energy. It is always through friction that energy is created, power is created. The world goes into war again and again because the world is too dominated by the idea of power. You cannot be powerful without fighting.Meditation brings peace. Peace has its own power, but that is an altogether different phenomenon. The power that is created out of friction is violent, aggressive, male. The power – I am using the word because there is no other word – the power that comes out of peace, is feminine. It has a grace to it. It is passive power, it is receptivity, it is openness. It is not out of friction; that’s why it is not violent.Buddha is powerful, powerful in his peace, in his silence. He is as powerful as a roseflower, he’s not powerful like an atom bomb. He’s as powerful as the smile of a child – very fragile, very vulnerable; but he’s not as powerful as a sword. He is as powerful as a small earthen lamp, the small flame burning bright in the dark night. It is a totally different dimension of power. This power is what we call divine power. It is out of non-friction.Concentration is a friction: you fight with your own mind. You try to focus the mind in a certain way, toward a certain idea, toward a certain object. You force it, you bring it back again and again. It tries to escape, it runs away, it goes astray, it starts thinking of a thousand and one things, and you bring it again and you force it. You go into a self-fight. Certainly power is created; that power is as harmful as any other power, that power is as dangerous as any other power. That power will again be used to harm somebody, because the power that comes out of friction is violence. Something out of violence is going to be violent, it is going to be destructive. The power that comes out of peace, non-friction, non-fight, non-manipulation, is the power of a roseflower, the power of a small lamp, the power of a child smiling, the power of a woman weeping, the power that is in tears and in the dewdrops. It is immense but not heavy; it is infinite but not violent.Concentration will make you a man of will. Meditation will make you an emptiness. That’s what Buddha is saying to Sariputra. Prajnaparamita exactly means meditation, the wisdom of the beyond.You cannot bring it but you can be open to it. You need not do anything to bring it into the world – you cannot bring it; it is beyond you. You have to disappear for it to come. The mind has to cease for meditation to be. Concentration is mind effort; meditation is a state of no-mind. Meditation is pure awareness, meditation has no motive in it.Meditation is the tree that grows without a seed: that is the miracle of meditation, the magic, the mystery. Concentration has a seed in it: you concentrate for a certain purpose, there is motive, it is motivated. Meditation has no motive. Then why should one meditate if there is no motive?Meditation comes into existence only when you have looked into all motives and found them lacking, when you have gone through the whole round of motives and you have seen the falsity of it. You have seen that motives lead nowhere, that you go on moving in circles; you remain the same. The motives go on and on leading you, driving you, almost driving you mad, creating new desires, but nothing is ever achieved. The hands remain as empty as ever. When this has been seen, when you have looked into your life and seen all your motives failing…No motive has ever succeeded, no motive has ever brought any blessing to anybody. The motives only promise; the goods are never delivered. One motive fails and another motive comes in and promises you again and you are deceived again. Being deceived again and again by motives, one day you suddenly become aware – suddenly you see into it, and that very seeing is the beginning of meditation. It has no seed in it, it has no motive in it. If you are meditating for something, then you are concentrating, not meditating. Then you are still in the world – your mind is still interested in cheap things, in trivia. Then you are worldly. Even if you are meditating to attain to godliness, you are worldly. Even if you are meditating to attain to nirvana, you are worldly – because meditation has no goal.Meditation is an insight that all goals are false. Meditation is an understanding that desires don’t lead anywhere. Seeing that… And this is not a belief that you can get from me or from Buddha or from Jesus. This is not knowledge; you will have to see it. You can see it right now! You have lived, you have seen many motives, you have been in turmoil, you have thought about what to do, what not to do, and you have done many things. Where has it all led you? Just see into it! I’m not saying agree with me, I’m not saying believe in me. I’m simply making you alert to a fact that you have been neglecting. This is not a theory, this is a simple statement of a very simple fact. Maybe because it is so simple, that’s why you go on without looking at it. Mind is always interested in complexities, because something can be done with a complex thing. You cannot do anything with a simple phenomenon.The simple is overlooked, the simple is neglected, the simple is ignored. The simple is so obvious you never look into it. You go on searching for complexities – the complexity has a challenge in it. The complexity of a phenomenon, of a problem, of a situation, gives you a challenge. In that challenge comes energy, friction, conflict: you have to solve this problem, you have to prove that you can solve this problem. When a problem is there you are thrilled by the excitement, that there is a possibility to prove something. But what I am stating is a simple fact, it is not a problem. It gives you no challenge, it is simply there. You can look at it or you can avoid it. And it doesn’t shout; it is so simple. You cannot even call it a still, small voice within you; it does not even whisper. It is simply there – you can look, you may not look.See it! And when I say, “See it,” see it right now, immediately. There is no need to wait. And be quick when I say, “See it”! Do see it, but quickly, because if you start thinking, if you don’t see it quickly, immediately, in that split second the mind comes in and the mind starts brooding, and the mind starts bringing thoughts, and the mind starts bringing prejudices. And you are in a philosophical state – many thoughts. Then you have to choose what is right and what is wrong, and speculation has started. You missed the existential moment.The existential moment is right now. Just have a look, and that is meditation – that look is a meditation. Just seeing the facticity of a certain thing, of a certain state, is meditation. Meditation has no motive, hence there is no center to it. And because there is no motive and no center, there is no self in it. You don’t function from a center in meditation, you act out of nothingness. The response out of nothingness is what meditation is all about.Mind concentrates: it acts out of the past. Meditation acts in the present, out of the present. It is a pure response to the present, it is not reaction. It acts not out of conclusions, it acts seeing the existential.Watch in your life: there is a great difference when you act out of conclusions. You see a man, you feel attracted – a beautiful man, looks very good, looks innocent. His eyes are beautiful, the vibe is beautiful. But then the man introduces himself and he says, “I am a Jew” – and you are a Christian. Something immediately clicks and there is distance: now the man is no longer innocent, the man is no longer beautiful. You have certain ideas about Jews. Or, he is a Christian and you are a Jew; you have certain ideas about Christians – what Christianity has done to Jews in the past, what other Christians have done to Jews, how they have tortured Jews down the ages…and suddenly he is a Christian – and something immediately changes.This is acting out of conclusions, prejudices, not looking at this man – because this man may not be the man that you think a Jew has to be: each Jew is a different kind of man, each Hindu is a different kind of man, so is each Mohammedan. You cannot act out of prejudices. You cannot act by categorizing people. You cannot pigeonhole people; nobody can be pigeonholed. You may have been deceived by a hundred Communists, and when you meet the hundred and first Communist, don’t go on believing in the category that you have made in your mind: that Communists are deceptive – or anything. This may be a different type of man, because no two persons are alike.Whenever you act out of conclusions, it is mind. When you look into the present and you don’t allow any idea to obstruct the reality, to obstruct the fact, you just look into the fact and act out of that look, that is meditation.Meditation is not something you do in the morning and you are finished with it, meditation is something that you have to go on living every moment of your life. Walking, sleeping, sitting, talking, listening – it has to become a kind of climate. A relaxed person remains in it. A person who goes on dropping the past remains meditative. Never act out of conclusions; those conclusions are your conditionings, your prejudices, your desires, your fears, and all the rest of it. In short, you are there!You means your past. You means all your experiences of the past. Don’t allow the dead to overrule the living, don’t allow the past to influence the present, don’t allow death to overpower your life – that’s what meditation is. In short, in meditation you are not there. The dead is not controlling the living.Meditation is a kind of experience which gives you a totally different quality to live your life. Then you don’t live like a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, Indian or German; you simply live as consciousness. When you live in the moment and there is nothing interfering, attention is total because there is no distraction – distractions come from the past and the future. When attention is total the act is total. It leaves no residue. It goes on freeing you, it never creates cages for you, it never imprisons you. And that is the ultimate goal of Buddha; that’s what he calls nirvana.Nirvana means freedom – utterly, absolute, unobstructed. You become an open sky. There is no border to it, it is infinite. It is simply there. And then there is nothingness all around you, within and without. Nothingness is the function of a meditative state of consciousness. And in that nothingness is benediction. That nothingness itself is the benediction.Now the sutras:Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to nirvana.Remember, that “therefore” is always an indication that Buddha is going on looking into Sariputra’s nothingness – as he goes on feeling that his energies are relaxing, that his energies are no longer in turmoil, that he is not brooding but listening, that he is not thinking but is just there with Buddha, present, open, available. That “therefore” indicates to that unfoldment of Sariputra’s being. Buddha is seeing more and more petals are opening so he can go a step further, so he can take Sariputra a little deeper. Sariputra is available.This “therefore” is not logical, this “therefore” is existential. Looking into Buddha, Sariputra is unfolding. And looking into Sariputra, Buddha is ready to take him a little further toward the beyond. Each statement is going deeper and higher.Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. Each single word has to be meditated upon – not concentrated on, mind you, but meditated upon; listened to, looked into, not contemplated, not thought about. These things are higher than thought, bigger than thought. Thought is silly in these realms.First he says: …it is because of his non-attainmentness… Meditation cannot be attained, because meditation cannot have a motive. When you attain something you attain through a motive. When you attain something you always have to work for the future and plan for the future. You cannot attain anything right now – except meditation. Let me repeat it: you cannot attain anything right now, except meditation. Why? If you want money you cannot attain it right now, you will have to work hard for it; legally, illegally, but you will have to work for it.There are slow ways, you may become a businessman; and there are faster ways, you may become a politician – but you will have to do something. Slow or fast, but time will be needed. Time is a must. Without time you cannot attain money. If there is no time, how can you attain in this very moment? Even if you want to rob a neighbor, even if you want to pick the pocket of the person who is sitting by your side, that will take time. Time is a must. If you want to become famous, time will be needed. If you want to become politically powerful, time will be needed.Only meditation can be attained right now, this very moment, instantaneously. Why? – because it is your nature. Why? – because it is already there. You have not claimed it, that’s right; but it remains there, unclaimed. You can claim it right now. Not even a single moment has to be lost.…it is because of his non-attainmentness… Nirvana is nothing but meditation come to a full circle. God is nothing but the bud of meditation become a flower.These are not attainments, these are your very realities. You can go on overlooking them for ages, neglecting them for ages, but you cannot lose them; they are there, just sitting inside you. Any day you close your eyes and look you will start laughing. You have been searching for this blessing, and searching in wrong places. You were searching for this security that comes out of nothingness, but you were searching in money, bank balances, this and that. And it never happened through that. It cannot happen through that. Nothing outside you can make your life secure. The outside is insecure; how can it make your life secure? The government cannot make your life secure because the government itself is insecure – a revolution may be coming. The bank cannot make your life secure because the bank may go bankrupt. Only banks can go bankrupt, what else? The woman that you love cannot make your life secure – she may fall in love with somebody else. The man that you love cannot make your life secure – he may die.All these things remain there. So the more you have securities outside the more insecure you become, because then you are afraid of the bank going bankrupt. If you don’t have any account you don’t care; let it go bankrupt any day. But if you have a bank account there then you are worried. Then you have attained to one more insecurity: the possibility of the bank going bankrupt. Now you cannot sleep because you go on thinking about what is going to happen.If you have put your trust in anything outside, it creates more insecurity. That’s why the richer a person becomes, the more insecure. And I am not in favor of poverty, remember. I am not saying be poor. Poverty has nothing holy in it. And I am not saying that the poor person is secure; he has his insecurities. The rich man has his insecurities; of course the rich man’s insecurities are more complex and the poor man’s insecurities are simple, but the insecurities are there. And I’m not saying that to be poor is something very special, or that to be poor is something very important and significant, or that you can brag that you are poor.To be poor has nothing to do with spirituality. Neither has being rich anything to do with spirituality. Those are irrelevant facts. The poor also looks outside as much as the rich. Maybe the poor has only a bullock cart and the rich has a Cadillac, but that doesn’t matter. The bullock cart is as much outside as the Cadillac; both look outside. The rich may have many bank accounts, and the poor may have just a small purse or may have a little money saved, but that doesn’t matter – both look outside.Security is on the inward path, because there you come to know that there is nobody to die, that there is nobody to suffer, that there is nothing that can happen, that there is pure sky. Clouds come and go, and the sky abides. Lives come and go, forms come and go, but the nothingness abides.This nothingness is already there. That’s why Buddha says it can be attained only when you understand that it is nonattainable. It can be attained only when you understand the basic fact: that it is already there, that it is already the case.This emptiness that is there is not in any way to be evolved, developed. It is fully there. Hence it can be attained in a single moment. Buddha calls it “full emptiness,” because emptiness can only be full if it is there. If it is not full, that means something other than the emptiness is also there, and that something else will hamper, obstruct, and that something else will create a duality, and that something else will create a friction, and that something else will create tension, and that something else will create anxiety – you cannot be at ease with “something else.”Emptiness is there only when it is full, when all obstructions have been dropped, when you don’t have anything inside, when nobody is there to be an observer to it. Buddha says: “This emptiness is not even an experience, because if you experience it that means you were there to experience it.” It is you, so you cannot experience it. You can experience only something that is not you. Experience means duality – the observer and the observed, the knower and the known, the subject and the object, the seer and the seen. But there is only emptiness, nobody to see it, nobody to be seen, nothing as an object, nothing as a subject. This nondual emptiness is full. It is utterly full. Its fullness cannot be refined, its fullness cannot be added to. Nothing can be taken out of it because there is nothing, and nothing can be added to it; it is utterly full.“Full emptiness” is not an experience, because there is no experiencer in it. Hence, Buddha says: “Spirituality is not an experience. God cannot be experienced.” Those who say, “I have experienced God,” either don’t understand what they are saying or they are using a very, very inadequate language. You cannot experience God. In that experience you are not found. The experience is there, but the experiencer is not there – so you cannot claim it as an experience. So, whenever somebody asked Buddha, “Have you experienced God?” he kept quiet; he did not say a single word. He immediately changed the subject, he started talking about something else.Whenever it was asked, his whole life, he consistently remained silent. Many people thought that he had not experienced God; that’s why he kept quiet. But he’s the only person who has not said anything – negative or positive. And it is not because he has not experienced. He has experienced, but it cannot be talked of as an experience; that’s why he keeps quiet. That’s why Jesus remained silent when Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?”J. Krishnamurti makes a very subtle distinction between experience and experiencing, and that is a beautiful distinction: he says, “It is an experiencing, not an experience.” It is a process, not a thing. It is alive, not dead. It is ongoing, not finished. You enter into God, and then it is an ongoing phenomenon: it goes on and on and on for eternity; you never come out of it. It is an experiencing, an alive process – like a river, like a flower opening and opening and opening, and going on opening. And there never comes any end to it.To say that one has experienced God is stupid, cheap and silly. To say that one has attained moksha, nirvana, truth, is not very meaningful, because these are things which cannot be categorized as attainments.So Buddha says: Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness… When the mind has come to a stop and is no longer interested in attaining anything, then it attains buddhahood. When the mind has come to a full stop and is not going anywhere, it starts going inward, it starts falling into one’s own being, that abysmal abyss. Full emptiness is attained by a non-attainmentness. So don’t become achievers, don’t start thinking in terms of achievement – that you have to achieve this and that, that you have to attain godliness. These are games; the mind is again deceiving you. The name of the game changes but the game, the subtle game, remains the same.…that a bodhisattva attains through non-attainmentness, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom… This is a very, very significant statement. Buddha says: “One should rely on nothing whatsoever.” Now this is against the ordinary Buddhist religion, because the ordinary Buddhist religion has three fundamental refuges: Buddham sharanam gachchhami, sangam sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam gachchhami. When the disciple comes to Buddha, he bows down to him, surrenders to him and says, “I take refuge in the Buddha – buddham sharanam gachchhami.” “I take refuge in the community of the Buddha – sangam sharanam gachchhami.” “I take refuge in the law taught by the Buddha – dhammam sharanam gachchhami.” And Buddha says here that one should not rely on anything; there is no refuge, nowhere any shelter.This Heart Sutra has been called the soul of Buddhism, and the church of Buddha has been called the body. Those three refuges are for the very ordinary mind which is in search of some shelter, some prop, some support. These statements are for the highest soul – one who has come to the sixth, and is just hanging between the sixth and the seventh, just a little push…Therefore, O Sariputra… It has been said that the first sermon of Buddha, which is called the Sermon of the Turning of the Wheel of Religion, Dhamma Chakrapravatan Sutra – that was his first sermon, near Varanasi – created the so-called ordinary religion, for the ordinary masses. In that sermon he declares, “Come and take refuge in Buddha; come and take refuge in the law taught by the Buddha; come and take refuge in the community, in the commune of the Buddha.”After twenty years he declares this second dispensation. He took twenty years to bring a few people to the highest possibility. This is called the second most important sermon. The first was in Saranath, near Varanasi, when he told people, “Come and take refuge in me. I have attained! Come and take refuge in me. I have reached! Come and partake of me. I have arrived! Come and follow me.” That was for the ordinary mind; it is natural. Buddha could not have declared the Heart Sutra; the masses would not have been able to understand.Then he worked for twenty years with his disciples. Now Sariputra is coming very close. Because of that closeness, he says:Therefore, O Sariputra… “Now I can say it to you. I can say to you that having relied on the perfection of wisdom…” Only on one thing does one have to rely, and that is meditation. Only on one thing does one have to rely, and that is awareness, attentiveness. Only on one thing does one have to rely, that is one’s own inner source, being. Everything else has to be dropped, all refuges.Through having relied on nothing but the perfection of meditation, what one has to do is not to rely on anything, worldly or otherwise, to let it all go, to give the resulting emptiness a free run, unobstructed by any for-or-against attitude, to stop relying on anything, to seek nowhere any refuge or support – that is the real renunciation.Our separate self is a spurious reality which can maintain itself only by finding supports or props on which to lean or rely. To go for refuge to the three treasures is the central act of the Buddhist religion – refuge in the Buddha, refuge in the sangha, refuge in the dhamma. Here Buddha refutes that. It is not contradictory. He simply says that which you can understand. In my assertions you will find a thousand and one contradictions, because they have been in reference to different people. The more you will grow, different assertions will be made by me because my assertions are a response to you. I am not talking to the walls. I am talking to you, and I can give only that much which you can receive. The higher your consciousness, the deeper your consciousness, different things will be stated by me.Naturally, those different statements will be very contradictory. If one goes for a logical consistency, he will not find any. You cannot find any logical consistency in Buddha’s statements. That’s why, the day Buddha died, Buddhism was divided into thirty-six schools. The exact day he died, and the disciples were divided into thirty-six schools.What happened? – because he had been making so many statements to different people, because of their different consciousness and understanding, they all started quarreling and fighting. They said, “This has been said to me by Buddha!” Just think: the first five disciples, to whom he had said, “I have attained, now come to me and I will take you there”… If those first disciples met Sariputra and Sariputra said, “It is attained through a kind of non-attainmentness. One who declares that he has attained is wrong, because it cannot be attained,” what would those first disciples have said? They would have said, “What are you talking about? We are the oldest disciples, the seniormost, and this was the first statement that Buddha has made to us: ‘I have attained!’ In fact we would have never followed him if he had not declared that. Because he declared it, we followed him. Our motive was clear: that he had attained, we also wanted to attain; that’s why we followed him. And he said to us, ‘I am your refuge. Come and take refuge in me. Let me be your shelter.’ And what nonsense are you talking about? Buddha could not have said this. You must have misunderstood. Something has gone wrong, or you have fabricated it.”Now this statement, this Heart Sutra, was made in privacy. It was said to Sariputra, it was specifically addressed to Sariputra. It is like a letter. Sariputra cannot produce any proofs, because in those days tape recorders were not in existence. He can simply say, he can take an oath: “I am not saying anything untrue. Buddha has said to me, ‘Rely only on your meditation and nothing else.’”The mind that relies on something else is the spurious self, the ego. The ego cannot exist without props, it wants props. Something has to support it. Once all props have been removed, the ego falls to the ground and disappears. But only when the ego falls to the ground does that consciousness arise in you which is eternal, which is timeless, deathless.Here, Buddha says: “There is no refuge, Sariputra. There is no remedy, Sariputra. There is nothing and nowhere to go. You are already there.”If you reach into this full-emptiness unprepared, it will give you a great trembling. If you are thrown into it by somebody… For example, sometimes people come to me with deep love and respect; they say, “Osho, why don’t you push me a little harder?” If you are not ready for it and you are pushed into it, it is not going to help. It may hinder your progress for many lives to come. Once you have gone into that nothingness unprepared you will be so shocked, so frightened, so scared to death, that never again, for at least a few lives, will you come to any person who talks about nothingness, who talks about godliness. You will avoid. That fear will become a seed in you.No, you cannot be pushed unprepared. You can be pushed only slowly, slowly, only in the same proportion as you are prepared.Have you heard the famous statement of Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, the founder of modern existentialism? He says, “Man is a trembling, constant trembling.” Why? – because death is there. Why? – because the fear is there: “One day I may not be.”This is true about the ordinary mind: everybody is trembling. The problem is always, “To be or not to be.” Death is always hanging there. You cannot conceive of yourself disappearing into nothingness; it hurts, it frightens. And if you look deep inside yourself, you will find yourself trembling with the idea of being nothing. You want to be, you want to remain, you want to persist. You want to persist forever. That’s why people who don’t know anything about their inner being go on believing that the soul is immortal; not because they know, but because of fear. Because of that trembling they have to believe that the soul is immortal. That is a kind of wish fulfillment.So any idiot who is talking about the immortality of the soul will appeal to you. You will get hooked. Not that you have understood what he is saying – he may not have understood himself – but it will be very appealing. In India people believe in the immortality of the soul, and you cannot find more cowardly people anywhere else. For one thousand years they remained slaves, slaves to very small countries. Anybody who came to India conquered it with no difficulty at all. It was so simple. And these are the people who believe in the immortality of the soul. In fact, a country that believes in the immortality of the soul cannot be conquered at all, because nobody will be afraid to die. How can you conquer a person who is not afraid to die? They would have all died, but they would not have yielded to any kind of submission, they could not have yielded to any conqueror. But for one thousand years, India remained a slave. It remained a slave very easily.England is a very small country, there are a few districts in India which are bigger. England could rule over this big country easily; it was not difficult. Why? And these people believed that the soul is immortal! But the belief is not their experience, the belief is out of fear. Then everything is explained. These are cowardly people, afraid, afraid to die; hence they cling to the idea that the soul is immortal. Not that they know, not that they have experienced; they have never experienced anything like that, they have only experienced the death that surrounds. They are so afraid because of death. So on the one hand they go on believing in the immortality of the soul; on the other hand, anybody can torture them and they are ready to submit and touch the feet.It is out of fear that man believes in immortality. It is out of fear that man believes in God. It is out of trembling. Søren Kierkegaard is right about the ordinary mind.Another existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, says: “Man is condemned to be free.” Why “condemned”? Why this ugly word condemned? Freedom – is it a kind of condemnation? Yes, for the ordinary mind it is, because freedom means danger. Freedom means you cannot rely on anything, you have to rely only on yourself. Freedom means all props have been taken away, all supports disappear. Freedom basically means nothingness. You are free only when you are nothing.Listen to what Sartre says: “Man, as freedom, becomes anguish.” Anguish? Out of freedom? Yes, if you are not ready for it, if you are not prepared to go into it, it is anguish. Nobody wants to be free, notwithstanding what people go on saying. Nobody wants to be free. People want to be slaves because in slavery the responsibility can be thrown on somebody else. You are never responsible, you are just a slave: what can you do? You did only that which was ordered.But when you are free, you are afraid. Responsibility arises. Each act, and you feel responsible: if you do this, this may happen; or if you do the other thing, then something else may happen. Then choice is yours, and choice creates trembling. And Jean-Paul Sartre is right about the ordinary mind: freedom creates anguish.He says, “Man is condemned to be free,” because freedom creates dread. It is dreadful freedom. Nothing can guarantee me against myself when I am free. There is no value given to me in which I can take shelter. I have to create those values myself. I decide the meaning of myself and my universe, alone, unjustifiable, and without excuse. I am one unveiling of freedom, you are another. My freedom is a constant unveiling of my being, so is yours. Our uniqueness consists in the fact that each of us does this in his own way.But Sartre thinks freedom creates anguish, and freedom is a kind of condemnation, a curse. And Kierkegaard says, “Man is a constant trembling.” And Buddha wants you to go into this freedom, into this nothingness. Naturally, you have to be prepared for it.Sariputra is ready now.Therefore, O Sariputra,it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva,through having relied on the perfection of wisdom,dwells without thought-coverings.In the absence of thought-coveringshe has not been made to tremble,he has overcome what can upset,and in the end he attains to nirvana.…he has overcome what can upset… and he has no trembling in this nothingness.It looks almost impossible to the ordinary mind: how can you remain without trembling when you are disappearing? When you are melting into the unknown how can you remain unscared? How can you manage not to escape? How can you manage not to start finding props and shelters and supports so that you can again create that feeling of being the ego, the self?That’s why Buddha had to wait for twenty years. And then, too, he stated this truth to Sariputra in a personal dialogue, not as a public sermon. And if people did not believe Sariputra, they are also right because Buddha had been saying something else to them.Remember this about me! Remember this: my statements are contradictory because they are made to different people, they are made to different consciousnesses. And the more you grow, the more I will be contradictory; the more I will have to refute what I have said before because it will no longer be relevant to you. With your growing consciousness I will have to respond in a different way. Each turn in your consciousness will be a turn in my statements. And when I am gone don’t create thirty-six schools – because thirty-six won’t do!Nothingness brings freedom. Freedom from the self is the ultimate freedom. There is no freedom higher than that. Nothingness is freedom. And it is not anguish, as Jean-Paul Sartre says, and it is not trembling, as Kierkegaard says. It is benediction, it is the ultimate bliss. It is not trembling because there is nobody to tremble.Meditation prepares you for that, because as you enter into meditation you find less and less of yourself every day. And the less you find yourself, in the same proportion grow your blessings, your benediction, your blissfulness. Slowly, slowly, you learn the mathematics of the inner world – that the more you are, the more in hell; the less you are, the more in heaven. The day you are not, it is nirvana; the ultimate home has arrived. You have come full circle, you have become a child again. There is no self any more.Remember, freedom does not mean the freedom of the self. Freedom means: freedom from the self. To Sartre it means “freedom of the self.” That’s why it feels like a condemnation; the self remains. It becomes free, but it remains and that’s why there is fear.If freedom is such that the self has disappeared in it, and there is only freedom and nobody free, then who can tremble, and who can feel the anguish, and who can feel condemned? Then there is no question of choice; that freedom acts on its own. One acts out of choicelessness, and there is no responsibility left – because there is nobody who can feel any responsibility. Nothingness acts. Wei-wu-wei – non-action acts. It is a response between the inner nothingness and the outer nothingness, and there is nothing obstructing.…it is because of his non-attainmentness that a bodhisattva, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom – alone – dwells without thought-coverings. Now there is no thought-covering. And thought-covering is the barrier that divides you from the outer nothingness. That’s what I was saying last night to Neelamber, the ex-Mark that I talked about yesterday.Yesterday evening he entered into sannyas; he became Neelamber. Neelamber means blue sky. What is dividing the outer sky from the inner sky? Your thought-coverings. Those are the clothes that don’t allow your nudity to be in touch with the sky, your nude being to be bridged with the sky. The thought that you are a Hindu, the thought that you are a Christian, the thought that you are a Communist or a Fascist, divides. The thought that you are beautiful or ugly divides. The thought that you are intelligent or unintelligent divides. Any kind of thought – and the division. And you have millions of thoughts. You will have to peel yourself like you peel an onion, covering after covering. You peel one cover, another layer is there; peel it, another layer is there. And naturally when you peel an onion tears come to the eyes; it is painful. When you start uncovering your being, it is more painful. It is not like taking your clothes off, it is like taking your skin off.But if you go on peeling, one day you come to when the whole onion has disappeared and only nothingness is left in your hands. That nothingness is bliss.Buddha says a bodhisattva …dwells without thought-coverings. He is here, but he is nobody; he is here, but he has no ideas; he is here, but he has no thoughts. Not that he cannot use thoughts: I go on using thoughts continuously. I am talking to you right now, I have to use the mind and thoughts – but they don’t cover me. They are by the side. Whenever I need, I use them. Whenever I am not using them, they are not there – my inner sky and the outer sky are one. And even while I am using them I know that they cannot divide me. They are instrumental, you can use them, but you are not in any way covered by them.…dwells without thought-coverings. Buddha says there are three kinds of thought-coverings. The first is karma averna – incomplete acts. Untotal acts cover your being. Each act wants to be completed. There is an intrinsic urge in everything to complete itself. Whenever you allow some act to hang around you incomplete, it covers you: karma averna, karma that covers you.The second is klesas averna. Greed, hate, jealousy and things like that: they are called klesas, impurities; they cover you.Have you seen it? An angry person remains almost always angry – sometimes less, sometimes more, but angry all the same. He is ready to jump upon anything. He is ready, with any excuse, to go into rage. He is boiling within. And so is the jealous person: the jealous person goes on searching to find something about which he or she can be jealous. The jealous wife goes on looking in the pockets of the husband to see if she can find something, in his letters, in his files to see if she can find something.Whenever Mulla Nasruddin comes home there is a fight, for something or the other. His wife is such a great searcher that she always finds something or other. A phone number in his diary, and she becomes suspicious. A hair on his coat, and she goes into a great investigation – where has this hair come from?One day she could not find anything, not even a hair. Mulla had done everything that day; she still started crying and weeping.And Mulla said, “Now what is the matter? Not even a single hair have you been able to find on my coat…?”She said, “That’s why I’m crying. So now you have started going with bald women!”It is very difficult, really, to find a bald woman, but that is the mind of a jealous person. These are coverings. Buddha calls them klesas, impurities; the egoist is always in search of something to either brag about or to feel hurt about. The possessive person is always in search of finding something so that he can show his possessiveness, or in finding something negative so that he can fight for it.People go on – and I’m not talking about others, I am talking about you. Just watch your mind, watch what you go on searching for. Watch your mind for twenty-four hours and you will come across all these coverings, avarnas.There are either incomplete acts, or impurities; or, the third is called ghaya avarnas – beliefs, opinions, ideologies, knowledge coverings. They don’t allow you to know, they don’t give you enough space to see. These three coverings have to be dropped.When these three coverings are dropped, then one dwells in nothingness. That word dwelling is also to be understood.Buddha says: “He dwells in nothingness.” It is his home, nothingness is his home. He dwells in it, it is a dwelling. He loves it, he is utterly in tune with it. It is not alien, he does not feel like an outsider there. And he does not feel like he’s staying in a hotel and tomorrow he will have to leave it. It is his dwelling. When thought-coverings have been dropped, nothingness is your home. You are in utter harmony with it.Kierkegaard and Sartre have never been there. They have only speculated about it. They only think about it, about how it will be. That’s why Kierkegaard feels trembling. He simply thinks, as you think…Just think how it will be when you die, and you will be put on a funeral pyre, and you will be finished forever. And then you will not be able to see these beautiful trees, these beautiful people, and you will not laugh again, and you will not love again, and you will not see the stars. And the world will continue, and you will not be here at all. Can’t you feel a shivering? Can’t you feel a trembling? All will continue – the birds will sing and the sun will rise and the oceans will roar and some eagle will go on and on flying higher and higher, and the flowers will be there and their fragrance, and the fragrance of the wet earth – all that will be there. And suddenly one day you will not be, and your body will be dead. This beautiful body that you have been living with and you have been taking so much care of: it was ill and you were disturbed and one day it will be so useless that the people who had loved it, the same people, will take it to a funeral pyre and set it on fire. Just visualize it. Speculate, and trembling comes.Kierkegaard must have speculated about it. He must have been a very fear-oriented person. A story is told about him that he was a rich man’s son: the father died; he had left Kierkegaard enough money so he never worked, he continuously contemplated. He could easily afford it; there was nothing to do. He had enough money in the bank. The first day of every month he would go to the bank – that was his whole work – to take some money. And then he would live and meditate. In his sense of meditation it means contemplation, brooding, thinking. That’s what the English word meditation means. It is not a right translation for dhyana.When people come to me and I tell them to meditate they say, “On what?” The English word means meditating upon something, some object. The Indian word dhyana means being in it, not meditating on something. It is a state, not an activity.So he would contemplate and think, and brood and philosophize. It is said that he fell in love with a beautiful woman, but could not decide to marry or not to marry. The very phenomenon of love became a trembling in him. For three years he brooded over it, and finally he decided not to marry. And he was in love. His whole life he could not forget the woman, his whole life he felt miserable for the woman. The woman was in love, he was in love; still he decided not to marry. Why? – because the very idea of love created trembling in him.Love is a kind of death. If you really love a person you die in him, you disappear in him.When you make love… I have to use this word make – it is not right, but no language is really right. So remember, I have to use words with all their limitations. Love cannot be made. “Making love” is a wrong expression: it happens. But when it happens, when you are in a loving space with somebody, fear comes because you are disappearing. That’s why very, very many people, millions of people, never attain to orgasm, because orgasm is a death.And Kierkegaard was so much in love that he became afraid that he may lose himself in this woman. That fear was too much. He dropped the idea. He refused, he would not marry; he suffered for his whole life – that he accepted – but because of fear… He was a fear-oriented person.He lived perfectly well, doing nothing, just philosophizing. And there is a very strange anecdote of the day he died. He died when he was coming from the bank. It was the first day of some month; he was coming from the bank, taking his money, but this was the last money. He died on the road. It is thought that he died out of fear, because now no more money was left in the bank. He was perfectly healthy, he was not ill, there was no reason for him to die so suddenly. But coming from the bank – and the bank manager had said, “This is the last; your money is finished” – he could not reach his home. He died on the road.He could not have experienced the nothingness Buddha is talking about. He must have only thought about it – hence, the fear. And Jean-Paul Sartre also has not been in that space called meditation. He is not a meditator; he is again a thinker, and utterly Western. He has not known the Eastern way to go in. Hence freedom looks like a condemnation, and freedom looks like anguish.The truth is just the opposite. If you go into freedom, into nothingness, there is bliss. If you go into that utter death called love, there is satori, samadhi. Buddha says: “He dwells in that nothingness, it is his house.” It is not anguish, it is not trembling, it is not a condemnation. He dwells there. It is his home.…he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to nirvana. Buddha does not say anything else. He says: “Go into this state of nothingness, then nirvana is a natural outcome. In the end it comes on its own accord.” You need not worry about it; you cannot do anything about it in the first place. You just go into this nothingness, and then nothingness starts growing, growing, becomes vaster and vaster, and one day becomes your whole existence. Then there is nirvana – you have ceased to be. You have disappeared into the universe.Somebody asked Buddha, “When you are gone and you will never be coming into the body again, what will happen to you?”And he said, “I will disappear into existence. If you taste existence, you will taste me.”And yes, that is true: if you taste existence you will taste all the buddhas – Krishna, Christ, Buddha, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Kabir, Nanak. You will taste all the buddhas. The day you enter into that nothingness, you will be welcomed by all the buddhas. The whole existence is throbbing with buddhahood because so many buddhas have disappeared into it. They have raised the very level of existence.You are fortunate, because before you so many buddhas have entered into existence. When you go there, you will not be unwelcome.All those who appear as buddhasin the three periods of timefully awake to the utmost, right and perfect enlightenmentbecause they have relied on the perfection of wisdom.The only refuge is the perfection of wisdom, the perfection of meditation. In the past it has been so, in the present it is so, in the future it will be so. Anybody who becomes a buddha becomes one through meditation. Take refuge in meditation. Take refuge in nothingness.Enough for today.

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The Heart Sutra 01-10Category: BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS

The Heart Sutra 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Can the intellect be a door to enlightenment, or is enlightenment only achieved through surrender?Enlightenment is always through surrender, but surrender is achieved through intelligence. Only idiots cannot surrender. To surrender you need great intelligence. To see the point of surrender is the climax of insight; to see the point that you are not separate from existence is the highest that intelligence can give to you.There is no conflict between intelligence and surrender. Surrender is through intelligence, although when you surrender intelligence is also surrendered. Through surrender intellect commits a suicide. Seeing the futility of itself, seeing the absurdity of itself, seeing the anguish that it creates, it disappears. But it happens through intelligence. And especially with Buddha, the path is of intelligence. The very word buddha means awakened intelligence.In the Heart Sutra one-fourth of the words used mean intelligence. The word buddha means awake, bodhi means awakening, sambodhi means perfect awakening, abhisambuddha means the fully awake, bodhisattva means ready to become fully awake. All go back to the same root, budh, which means intelligence. The word buddhi, intellect, also comes from the same root. The root budh has many dimensions to it. There is no single English word that can translate it; it has many implications. It is very fluid and poetic. In no other language does any word like budh exist, with so many meanings. There are at least five meanings to the word budh.The first is to awake, to wake oneself up, and to awaken others, to be awake. As such, it is opposed to being asleep, in the slumber of delusion from which the enlightened awakens as from a dream. That is the first meaning of intelligence, budh: to create an awakening in you.Ordinarily man is asleep. Even while you think you are awake, you are not. Walking on the road, you are fully awake – in your mind. But looked at from the vision of a buddha, you are fast asleep, because a thousand and one dreams and thoughts are clamoring inside you. Your inner light is very clouded. It is a kind of sleep. Yes, your eyes are open, obviously, but people can walk in a dream, in sleep, with eyes open. And Buddha says: “You are also walking in sleep, with eyes open.”But your inner eye is not open. You don’t know yet who you are; you have not looked into your own reality. You are not awake. A mind full of thoughts is not awake, cannot be awake. Only a mind which has dropped thoughts and thinking, which has dispersed the clouds around it – and the sun is burning bright, and the sky is utterly empty of clouds – is the mind which has intelligence, which is awake.Intelligence is the capacity to be in the present. The more you are in the past or are in the future, the less intelligent you are. Intelligence is the capacity to be here-now, to be in this moment and nowhere else. Then you are awake.For example, you are sitting in a house and the house suddenly catches fire; your life is in danger. Then for a moment you will be awake. In that moment you will not think many thoughts. In that moment you forget your whole past. In that moment you will not be clamored at by your psychological memories – that you had loved a woman thirty years earlier, and boy, it was fantastic! Or, the other day you had been to the Chinese restaurant, and still the taste lingers on, and the aroma and the smell of the freshly cooked food. You will not be in those thoughts. No, when your house is on fire you cannot afford this kind of thinking. Suddenly you will rush to this moment: the house is on fire and your life is at stake. You will not dream about the future, about what you are going to do tomorrow. Tomorrow is no longer relevant, yesterday is no longer relevant, even today is no longer relevant! – only this moment, this split moment. That is the first meaning of budh: intelligence.And then there are great insights. A man who wants to be really awake, wants to be really a buddha, has to live each moment in such intensity as you live only rarely, rarely, in some danger.The first meaning is opposite to sleep. And naturally, you can see reality only when you are not asleep. You can face it, you can look into the eyes of truth – or call it godliness – only when you are awake. Do you understand the point of intensity, the point of being on fire? Utterly awake, there is insight; that insight brings freedom, that insight brings truth.The second meaning of budh is to recognize: to become aware of, acquainted with, to notice, give heed to. And so a buddha is one who has recognized the false as the false, and has his eyes opened to the true as the true. To see the false as the false is the beginning of understanding what truth is. Only when you see the false as the false can you see what truth is. You cannot go on living in illusions, you cannot go on living in your beliefs, you cannot go on living in your prejudices if you want to know truth. The false has to be recognized as false. That is the second meaning of budh: recognition of the false as false, of the untrue as untrue.For example, you have believed in God; you were born a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. You have been taught that God exists, you have been made afraid of God: that if you don’t believe you will suffer, that you will be punished, that God is very ferocious, that God will never forgive you. The Jewish God says, “I am a very jealous God. Worship only me and nobody else!” The Mohammedan God also says the same thing: “There is only one God, and no other God; and there is only one prophet of God, Mohammed, and there is no other prophet.”This conditioning can go so deep in you that it can go on lingering even if you start disbelieving in God.Just the other day Mulla Nasruddin was here, and I asked him, “Mulla Nasruddin, since you have turned into a Communist, you have become a comrade, what about God?”He said, “There is no God! – and Mohammed is the only prophet.”A conditioning can go so deep: Mohammed remains the prophet.You have been brought up to believe in God, and you have believed. This is a belief. Whether God exists or not has nothing to do with your belief. Truth has nothing to do with your belief. Whether you believe or not makes no difference to truth. But if you believe in God you will go on seeing – at least, thinking – that you see God. If you don’t believe in God, that disbelief in God will prevent you from knowing. All beliefs prevent, because they become prejudices around you, they become thought-coverings – what Buddha calls avarnas.The man of intelligence does not believe in anything, and does not disbelieve in anything. The man of intelligence is simply open to recognizing whatsoever is the case. If God is there he will recognize – but not according to his belief; he has no belief. Only in a nonbelieving, nondisbelieving intelligence can truth appear. When you already believe you don’t allow truth any space to come to you. Your prejudice is enthroned, already enthroned. You cannot see something which goes against your belief; you will become afraid, you will become shaky, you will start trembling. You have put so much into your belief – so much life, so much time, so many prayers, five prayers every day. For fifty years a man has been devoted to his belief; now how can he suddenly recognize the fact that there is no God? A man has put his whole life into Communism, believing that there is no God; how can he come to see if God is there? He will go on avoiding.I’m not saying anything about whether God is or is not. What I am saying is something concerned with you, not with God. A mind, a clear mind, is needed, an intelligence is needed which does not cling to any belief. Then you are like a mirror: you reflect that which is, you don’t distort it. That is the second meaning of budh.An intelligent person is neither a Communist nor a Catholic. An intelligent person does not believe, does not disbelieve. That is not his way. He looks into life, and whatsoever is there he is ready to see it. He has no barriers to his vision; his vision is transparent. Only those few people attain to truth.The third meaning of the root budh, intelligence, is to know, to understand. The Buddha knows that which is; he understands that which is, and in that very understanding is free from all bondage: to know in the sense of to understand, not in the sense of knowledgeability. Buddha is not knowledgeable. An intelligent person does not care much about information and knowledge. An intelligent person cares much more for the capacity to know. His real authentic interest is in knowing, not in knowledge.Knowing gives you understanding; knowledge only gives you a feeling of understanding without giving you real understanding. Knowledge is a pseudo-coin, it is deceptive. It only gives you a feeling that you know, and you don’t know at all. You can go on accumulating knowledge as much as you want, you can go on hoarding, you can become very, very knowledgeable. You can write books, you can have degrees, you can have PhD’s, DLitt’s, and still you remain the same ignorant, stupid person you have always been. Those degrees don’t change you; they can’t change you. In fact your stupidity becomes stronger: it has degrees now! It can prove itself through certificates. It cannot prove through life, but it can prove through the certificates. It cannot prove in any other way, but it will carry degrees, certificates, recognitions from the society; people think you know, and you also think you know.Have you not seen this? The people who are thought to be very knowledgeable are as ignorant as anybody, sometimes more ignorant. It is very rare to find intelligent people in the academic world, very rare. I have been in the academic world, and I say it through my experience. I have seen intelligent farmers, I have not seen intelligent professors. I have seen intelligent woodcutters, I have not seen intelligent professors. Why? What has gone wrong with these people?One thing has gone wrong: they can depend on knowledge. They need not become knowers, they can depend on knowledge. They have found a secondhand way. The firsthand way needs courage. The firsthand way, knowing, only few people can afford – the adventurers, people who go beyond the ordinary path where crowds move, people who take small footpaths into the jungle of the unknowable. The danger is they may get lost. The risk is high.When you can get secondhand knowledge, why bother? You can just sit in your chair. You can go to the library or to the university, you can collect information. You can make a big pile of information and sit on top of it. Through knowledge your memory becomes bigger and bigger, but your intelligence does not become bigger. Sometimes it happens when you don’t know much, when you are not very knowledgeable, that you will have to be intelligent in some moments.I have heard…A woman bought a tin of fruit but she could not open the tin. She did not know how to. So she rushed to her study to look in the cookbook. By the time she looked in the book and found out the page and the reference, and came rushing back ready to open the tin, the servant had already opened it.She asked, “But how did you do it?”The servant said, “Madam, when you can’t read, you have to use your mind.”Yes, that’s how it happens. That’s why farmers, gardeners, woodcutters, are more intelligent, have a kind of freshness around them. They can’t read, so they have to use their minds. One has to live and one has to use one’s mind.The third meaning of budh is to know, in the sense of understanding. The Buddha has seen that which is. He understands that which is, and in that very understanding is free from all bondage. What does it mean? It means you are afraid.For example, these Heart Sutra talks are making many people feel fear. Many people have sent their messages: “Osho, no more! You make us afraid of nothingness and death.” Prageet is very afraid. Vidya is very afraid, and many more. Why? You don’t want to get rid of fear? If you want to get rid of fear you will have to understand fear. You want to avoid the fact that the fear is there, the fear of death is there.Now Prageet, on the surface, looks a strong man – a Rolfer – but deep down he’s very afraid of death; he is one of the most afraid persons around here. Maybe that’s why on the surface he has taken the stance of strength, power, a bully. That’s what a Rolfer is!I have heard that recently the Devil in hell is appointing Rolfers: they torture people for their own sakes, and they torture very technically.If you are afraid inside, you will have to create something strong around you, like a hard shell, so nobody comes to know that you are afraid. And that is not the only point – you also will not know that you are afraid because of that hard shell. It will protect you from others, it will protect you from your own understanding.An intelligent person does not escape from any fact. If it is fear he will go into it – because the way out is to go through. If he feels fear and trembling arising in him, he will leave everything aside: first this fear has to be gone through. He will go into it, he will try to understand. He will not try: “How not to be afraid?” He will not ask that question. He will simply ask one question: “What is this fear? It is there, it is part of me, it is my reality. I have to go into it, I have to understand it. If I don’t understand it then a part of me will always remain unknown to me. And how am I going to know who I am if I go on avoiding parts? I will not understand fear, I will not understand death, I will not understand anger, I will not understand my hatred, I will not understand my jealousy, I will not understand this and that.” Then how are you going to know yourself?All these things are you! This is your being. You have to go into everything that is there, every nook and corner. You have to explore fear. Even if you are trembling it is nothing to be worried about: tremble, but go in. It is far better to tremble than to escape, because once you escape, that part will remain unknown to you, and you will become more and more afraid to look at it because that fear will go on accumulating. It will become bigger and bigger if you don’t go into it right now, this moment. Tomorrow it will have lived twenty-four hours more. Beware! – it will have got more roots in you, it will have bigger foliage, it will become stronger; and then it will be more difficult to tackle. It is better to go right now, it is already late.And if you go into it and you see it… Seeing means without prejudice. Seeing means that you don’t condemn fear as bad from the very beginning. Who knows? – it is not bad. Who knows that it is? The explorer has to remain open to all the possibilities; he cannot afford a closed mind. A closed mind and exploration don’t go together. He will go into it. If it brings suffering and pain, he will suffer the pain but he will go into it. Trembling, hesitant, but he will go into it: “It is my territory, I have to know what it is. Maybe it is carrying some treasure for me? Maybe the fear is only there to protect the treasure.”That’s my experience, that’s my understanding: if you go deep into your fear you will find love. That’s why it happens that when you are in love, fear disappears. And when you are afraid you cannot be in love. What does this mean? A simple arithmetic – fear and love don’t exist together. That means it must be the same energy that becomes fear; then there is nothing left to become love. It becomes love; then there is nothing left to become fear.Go into fear, Prageet, Vidya, and all others who are feeling afraid. Go into it, and you will find a great treasure. Hidden behind fear is love, and hidden behind anger is compassion, and hidden behind sex is samadhi.Go into each negative thing and you will find the positive. And knowing the negative and the positive, the third, the ultimate happens – the transcendental. That is the meaning of understanding, budh, intelligence.The fourth meaning is to be enlightened and to enlighten. Buddha is the light, he has become the light. And since he’s the light and he has become the light, he shows the light to others too, naturally, obviously. He is illumination. His darkness has disappeared, his inner flame is burning bright. Smokeless is his flame. This meaning is opposite to darkness and the corresponding blindness and ignorance. This is the fourth meaning: to become light, to become enlightened.Ordinarily you are darkness, a continent of darkness, a dark continent, unexplored. Man is a little strange: he goes on exploring the Himalayas, he goes on exploring the Pacific, he goes on reaching for the moon and Mars; there is just one thing he never tries: exploring his inner being. Man has landed on the moon, and man has not landed yet in his own being. This is strange. Maybe landing on the moon is just an escape, going to Everest is just an escape. Maybe he does not want to go inside, because he’s very afraid. He substitutes with some other explorations to feel good, otherwise you will have to feel very, very guilty. You start climbing a mountain and you feel good, and the greatest mountain is within you and is yet unclimbed. You start going, diving deep into the Pacific, and the greatest Pacific is within you, and uncharted, unmapped. And you start going to the moon – what foolishness! You are wasting your energy in going to the moon, and the real moon is within you – because the real light is within you.The intelligent person will go inward first. Before going anywhere else he will go into his own being; that is the first thing, and it should have the first preference. Only when you have known yourself can you go anywhere else. Then wherever you go you will carry a blissfulness around you, a peace, a silence, a celebration.So the fourth meaning is to be enlightened.Intelligence is the spark. Helped, cooperated with, it can become the fire, and the light, and the warmth. It can become light, it can become life, it can become love: those are all included in the word enlightenment. An enlightened person has no dark corners in his being. All is like the morning – the sun is on the horizon; the darkness of the night and the dismalness of the night have disappeared, and the shadows of the night have disappeared. The earth is again awake. To be a buddha is to attain to a morning, a dawn within you. That is the function of intelligence, the ultimate function.And the fifth meaning of budh is to fathom. A depth is there in you, a bottomless depth, which has to be fathomed. Or, the fifth meaning can be to penetrate, to drop all that obstructs and penetrate to the very core of your being, the heart. That’s why this sutra is called the Heart Sutra, Prajnaparamita Hridayam Sutra – to penetrate.People try to penetrate many things in life. Your urge, your great desire for sex is nothing but a kind of penetration. But that is a penetration into the other. The same penetration has to happen into your own being: you have to penetrate yourself. If you penetrate somebody else it can give you a momentary glimpse, but if you penetrate yourself you can attain to the universal cosmic orgasm that remains and remains and remains.A man meets an outer woman, and a woman meets an outer man: this is a very superficial meeting – yet meaningful, yet it brings moments of joy. When the inner woman meets the inner man… And you are carrying both inside you: a part of you is feminine, a part of you is masculine. Whether you are man or woman does not matter; everybody is bisexual.The fifth meaning of the root budh means penetration. When your inner man penetrates your inner woman there is a meeting; you become whole, you become one. And then all desires for the outer disappear. In that desirelessness is freedom, is nirvana.The path of Buddha is the path of budh. Remember that “buddha” is not the name of Gautama the Buddha, buddha is the state that he has attained. His name was Gautam Siddhartha. Then one day he became a buddha, one day his bodhi, his intelligence bloomed.Buddha means exactly what Christ means. Jesus’ name is not Christ: that is the ultimate flowering that happened to him. So is it with Buddha. There have been many buddhas other than Gautam Siddartha.Everybody has the capacity for budh. But budh, that capacity to see, is just like a seed in you – if it sprouts, becomes a big tree, blooms, starts dancing in the sky, starts whispering to the stars, you are a buddha.The path of Buddha is the path of intelligence. It is not an emotional path, no, not at all. Not that emotional people cannot reach; there are other paths for them – the path of devotion, Bhakti yoga. Buddha’s path is pure Gyan yoga, the path of knowing. Buddha’s path is the path of meditation, not of love.And just like budh, there is another root, gya, at the basis of gyanam. Gyanam means cognition, knowing. And the word prajna, which means wisdom – prajnaparamita – the wisdom of the beyond; or sangya, which means perception, sensitivity; or vigyanam which means consciousness, these roots come from gya. Gya means to know.You will find these words repeated so many times in the sutra – not only in this sutra, but in all the sutras of the Buddha. You will find a few more words, repeated very often, and those words are ved – ved means to know; from ved comes the Hindu word veda – or man, which means mind; manan which means minding; or chit, which means consciousness; chaitanya, which again means consciousness. These words are almost like paved stones on the Buddha Way. His path is that of intelligence.One thing more to be remembered: the sutra, it is true, points to something that lies far beyond the intellect. But the way to get to that is to follow the intellect as far as it will take you.The intellect has to be used, not discarded; has to be transcended, not discarded. It can be transcended only when you have reached to the uppermost rung of the ladder. You have to go on growing in intelligence. Then a moment comes when intelligence has done all that it can do. In that moment say goodbye to intelligence. It has helped you a long way, it has brought you far enough, it has been a good vehicle. It has been a boat you crossed with: you have reached the other shore, then you leave the boat. Then you don’t carry the boat on your head; that would be foolish.Buddha’s path goes through intelligence but goes beyond it. A moment comes when intelligence has given you all that it can give, then it is no longer needed. Then finally you drop it too, its work is finished. The disease is gone, now the medicine has to go too. And when you are free of the disease and the medicine too, only then are you free. Sometimes it happens that the disease is gone, and now you have become addicted to the medicine. This is not freedom.A thorn is in your foot and is hurting. You take another thorn so that the thorn in your foot can be taken out with the help of the other. When you have taken the thorn out you throw both away; you don’t save the one that has been helpful. It is now meaningless. The work of intelligence is to help you to become aware of your being. Once that work has happened and your being is there, now there is no need for this instrument. You can say goodbye, you can say thank you.Buddha’s path is the path of intelligence, pure intelligence, although it goes beyond it.The second question:Osho,Is it true that one has to go through hell?You need not go through hell because you are already there. Where else will you find hell? This is your ordinary state – hell. Don’t think that hell is somewhere deep down below the earth. Hell is you. You, unaware, is what hell is. You, functioning unintelligently, that’s what hell is. And because so many people are functioning unintelligently the world is always in anguish – so many neurotic people on the earth. Unless you are enlightened you remain neurotic, more or less. So many destructive people – because creativity is possible only when your intelligence is awakened.Creativity is a function of intelligence. Stupid people can only be destructive. And that’s what goes on: people go on preparing for more and more destruction. That’s what your scientists do, that’s what your politicians do.I have heard a beautiful story:After the Second World War, God was very puzzled. He could not believe his own eyes. Seeing Hiroshima, Nagasaki – he could not believe that he had created this kind of man. He started to think again, as if he had committed a mistake: he should have stopped with animals, he should not have created Adam and Eve because man was becoming so destructive.To give a last chance he called three representatives from the world, one Russian, one American, one English. Those were the powerful people after the Second World War. He asked the Russian, “Why do you go on preparing for more and more destruction? If you need something, just ask me, and I will fulfill it immediately. But no more destruction.”The Russian looked very arrogantly at God and said, “Listen, first we don’t believe that you are! We have our own trinity: Marx, Lenin, Stalin” – a very unholy trinity, but Communists have that trinity. “We believe in them, we don’t believe in you. But if you want us to believe in you, you will have to give us proof.”“What is the proof?” God asked.And the Russian said, “Destroy America, destroy it absolutely! Not a trace of this disease called America should be left behind. Then we will worship you, then our churches will start praying again, our temples will open. We will make new shrines for you.”God was very shocked: the very idea of destroying the whole of America!Seeing him silent, the Russian said, “And if you cannot do it, don’t be worried. We are going to do it anyway. It will take a little longer for us, but we are going to do it. You don’t need to look so sad. If you cannot do it, just say you cannot do it.”God looked at the American and said, “What’s your desire? What do you want?”He said, “Nothing much, a very simple desire – that there should be no place for the Soviet Union on the map. We don’t want to see the U.S.S.R. on the map. Not much, just remove… Everything is okay; it is just this U.S.S.R. that hurts. It hurts very much, it drives us crazy, and we will do anything to remove it. And if you don’t do anything, with your blessings we are going to do it!”Now God was even more puzzled and confused. It was okay from the Russian representative, because they don’t believe in God. It’s okay. But America? America believes in God, so there seems to be no difference between the believer and the nonbeliever, between the capitalist and the Communist, between the dictatorial and the democratic. There seems to be no essential difference, their desire is the same. He was thinking the English representative may be more human, understanding; at least he would be gentlemanly – and he was!God asked him, “What is your desire? What do you want?”The Englishman said, “We don’t have any desire. Fulfill the desires of both of these simultaneously, and our desire is fulfilled!”But this is how man has existed, down the ages: much more interested in destruction, destroying the other, than in living oneself, than in enjoying life. Man seems to be death-obsessed: wherever man moves he brings death, destruction.This neurotic society exists because individuals are neurotic. This world is ugly because you are ugly! You contribute your ugliness to this world. And everybody goes on pooling ugliness, neuroses, and the world becomes more and more of a hell. You need not go anywhere else; this is the only hell there is.But you can come out of it. By understanding how your mind is helping to create this hell, you can withdraw. And a single person withdrawing himself from creating this hell, non-cooperating, rebellious, becomes a great source of bringing heaven on the earth, becomes a gateway.You need not go to hell, you are already there. You need to go to heaven now. And in fact when I say you need to go to heaven, what I mean exactly is that heaven needs to come to you. Be open to heaven. Let all your destructive energies be offered to creativity, let your darkness become a light, let your awareness become meditative, and you will become a door to God, and God can come through you into the world again.That is the meaning of the Christian parable that Jesus is born to a woman, Mary, who is a virgin. This is a parable – significant, it has great meaning in it. But foolish people try to say that she was really physically a virgin. That is nonsense. But she was virgin: she was pure, utterly pure. She was heaven on the earth – only then could Jesus enter through her, only then could God extend his hand into the world.Become a vehicle: let God play some instrument through you – a veena, a sitar. Let God play a song through you; you become his flute, a hollow bamboo. And that’s what I have been telling you all these days: if you become a nothingness, you will be a hollow bamboo. You can become a flute, and God’s song can descend unto the earth. It is needed very much. If even a little health is possible through you in this mad world… It is needed very much, it is needed urgently.The third question:Osho,You said the other day that if you were a cab driver nobody would be able to recognize you. I don't agree. At least I for one would recognize you.Madam, I don’t believe you. You don’t know enough about yourself. I appreciate your love for me, but I cannot say that you would be able to recognize me.I will tell you a real story:I used to stay with a family in a certain city in India for many years, a very rich family, millionaires. He was very respectful to me, he was a follower. When I used to go to his town he would touch my feet as many times as possible – at least four, five times every day.Then after seven, eight years, he wanted to come to visit the place where I used to stay in Jabalpur. He came. Just to puzzle him, just to confuse him, I went to receive him at the station. That he had not expected, that I would come to receive him at the station.He used to fall at my feet. That day he touched my feet, but halfheartedly – because a great ego arose in him: that I have come to receive him. He used to come to receive me for seven years and each year at least three or four times I used to visit his town. He had not expected this; he had expected that somebody would be there to take him to me. But that I myself would come to receive him? – that was not even in his dreams. He must have argued inside: “I am somebody, a millionaire…” That day he bowed down, but very halfheartedly. How can you bow down to somebody who has come to receive you at the station, with great respect?We came out of the station, and when he saw that I was going to drive him back home, then all his respect disappeared. Then he started talking like a friend. The millionaire became very “famil-lionaire”! And after three days, when he left – I had gone to say goodbye, to give him a send-off – he did not touch my feet.And the family that I used to live with all knew that I was playing a joke on him, and the poor fellow had got hooked in it. They all laughed when the train left. I said “Wait. Next time, let him come; he will expect me to touch his feet. And it will be no wonder if he forces me to touch his feet.”That’s how things go, that’s how mind functions. You recognize me, you love me, but you don’t know your own mind. And in that experiment I lost one of my millionaire followers. I have been losing many followers that way, but I go on experimenting.The fourth question:Osho,Why is it so hard for me to surrender to a man?Then don’t surrender. Why unnecessarily create trouble for yourself? Who is telling you to surrender to a man in the first place? Don’t surrender. Why do you start taking unnecessary troubles on your head? If you don’t feel like surrendering, don’t surrender.Just the other day a woman asked me, wrote a letter saying, “I have come here, but I don’t feel that this place is for me. What should I do?” Go away! Get lost! Why bother?She also has asked, “Should I listen to my heart, or should I trust you?” Listen to your heart, lady, and get lost as fast as you can. How can you trust me against your heart? Who will trust me? The heart trusts: if the heart is against, who is going to trust me? And why are you creating such a division in yourself? You will go schizophrenic, one part trying to surrender and forcing, and another part wanting to go. Either be here totally or go. If you can’t surrender, don’t surrender. Nobody is interested in your surrender.Surrender cannot be done, you cannot force it. It comes when it comes. If you can’t surrender to a man, that means you can’t love a man. Out of love surrender comes naturally. If there is no love, surrender cannot be managed. Forget about it.Maybe the questioner is a lesbian: perfectly good, surrender to a woman! At least surrender to somebody that you can surrender to. Maybe through that surrender you will learn to surrender to a man too. That’s how one learns.Each child is auto-sexual when born: he loves only himself, he cannot love anybody else. Then the child becomes homosexual: he loves somebody like him, he cannot love the opposite. Then, still growing, he becomes heterosexual: now he can love the opposite. That’s what Jesus says: “Love your enemy” – enemy means the woman. Enemy means the opposite; that is the highest in love. Then a moment comes when sex disappears, the person becomes asexual. But that is the highest point, and it can be reached only through these stages. Maybe the questioner is hooked somewhere in homosexuality. Nothing is wrong. Wherever you are, in whatsoever stage you are, be loving, be surrendering. Out of that stage the other stage will come, will grow on its own accord. Don’t force it.I am not here to make you feel guilty; I am not here to create any kind of rift in your being. I’m all for relaxation, because only through relaxation will you come to know who you are. So whatsoever is easy, go into it. Don’t be a masochist and don’t try to create troubles for yourself. Move happily, in a relaxed way. And whatsoever is easy for you right now, go on doing it. Through it something better will happen, but only through it. You cannot suddenly jump out of it.The fifth question:Osho,What is the point of the physical universe if man's destiny is ultimately to transcend it?That is the point: otherwise, how will you transcend? The universe is needed to transcend. The misery is needed to transcend, the darkness is needed to transcend, the ego is needed to transcend – because only when you transcend is there joy, benediction.I understand your question. It is a very ancient question, asked again and again and again because it puzzles the mind. If God has created the world, then why has he created misery in it? He could have given you bliss as a gift. Then why has he created ignorance? Is he not potent enough to create enlightened beings from the very beginning?He is, and that’s what he is doing. But even God is not potent enough to make impossibles happen. Only the possible is possible. You can only know what health is when you are capable of being ill; otherwise you cannot know it. You can only know light when you know what darkness is. You can know relaxation only when you know what tension is, you can know freedom only when you know what bondage is – they go in pairs. Even God is not potent enough to simply give you freedom. With freedom, in the same package, comes bondage. And you have to go through bondage to have the taste of freedom. It is just as if you are not hungry, so you cannot enjoy food.What you are asking is: “What is the need for hunger? Why can we not go on eating without hunger?” Hunger creates the pain, hunger creates the need, and then you eat and there is joy. Without hunger there will be no joy. You can ask the very, very rich people who have lost their hunger: they don’t enjoy their food, they cannot. It is the intensity of hunger that brings joy. That’s why once you have eaten, for six, seven, eight hours you have to fast to enjoy food again.Existence is dialectical: darkness–light, life–death, summer–winter, youth–old age; they all go together.You ask: “What is the point of the physical universe if men’s destiny is ultimately to transcend it?” Precisely, that is the point. The universe is created for you to transcend. Otherwise, you will never know what transcendence is. You can remain blissful, but you will not know what bliss is. And to remain blissful without knowing what bliss is, is not worth it. And the knowing is possible only through the opposite – that’s why.The sixth question:Osho,Everybody is, of course, getting whatever they get, and not getting what they don't get. And the line between getting that you are getting it, and not getting that you are getting it, seems to be rather thin. Is getting what you get different from getting it? Having asked that, I realize in a sense it is, of course, different, because the word is ambiguous. Get means to both receive and to understand. Blah, blah, blah… Please clarify.You seem to be an EST-hole. Blah, blah, blah…The seventh question:Osho,Why should I take sannyas?Because tomorrow you may not be. The next moment you may not be. And sannyas is nothing but a vision of living this moment utterly, totally, absolutely.Sannyas simply means, “I will not postpone life anymore.” Sannyas simply means, “I will not live in dreams anymore, I will take hold of this moment and squeeze the whole juice out of it right now.” That’s what sannyas is: it is a way of intense living, of sensitive living.And remember, life is very accidental. One never knows.Listen to this story:A salesman came home unexpectedly one day, and the first words he said when he came in the door were, “Where is he? I know he is here! I can feel it in my bones!”His wife, who was cleaning the dishes at the time said, “Who are you looking for?”Salesman: “Don’t give me that. You know who I am looking for, and I will find him!”He looked in the closet, under the bed, and in the attic. He happened to glance out of the second floor apartment window and saw a young light-haired man get into a red convertible.“There he is!” he said, and grabbed the refrigerator and rolled it to the window and pushed it out. He crushed the fellow in the car and died of a heart attack himself.Saint Peter: “What happened to you, young man?”Young man: “I got crushed to death by a fridge.”Saint Peter: “And you?”Salesman: “While pushing a fridge through a window I died of a heart attack.”Saint Peter to the third man: “What did you die of?”Third man: “Well, I was sitting in this fridge, minding my own business, and…”Life is very accidental! One never knows from where the fridge will come. Somebody may be sitting in it, minding his own business… That’s why I say become a sannyasin: this is the only moment to live, and there is no other moment.Enough for today.

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The Heart Sutra 01-10Category: BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS

The Heart Sutra 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Therefore one should know the prajnaparamita as the great spell, the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth – for what could go wrong? By the prajnaparamita has this spell been delivered. It runs like this: Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all-hail! This completes the heart of perfect wisdom.Teilhard de Chardin divides human evolution into four stages. The first he calls geosphere, the second, biosphere, the third, noosphere, and the fourth, Christosphere. These four stages are immensely significant. They have to be understood. Understanding them will help you to understand the climax of the Heart Sutra.The geosphere is the state of consciousness which is absolutely asleep, the state of matter. Matter is consciousness asleep. Matter is not against consciousness, matter is a state of consciousness asleep, not yet awakened. A rock is a sleeping buddha; one day or other the rock is going to become a buddha. It may take millions of years; that doesn’t matter. The difference will be only of time, and time does not matter much in this eternity. That’s why in the East we have been making statues out of stone – it’s very symbolic: the rock and the buddha are bridged through a stone statue. The rock is the lowest and buddha is the highest. The stone statue says that even in stone is hidden a buddha. The stone statue says that buddha is nothing but the rock come to manifestation; the rock has expressed its whole potential.This is the first stage: geosphere. It is matter, it is unconsciousness, it is sleep, it is pre-life. In this state there is no freedom, because freedom enters through consciousness. In this state there is only cause and effect. The law is absolute. Not even an accident is possible. Freedom is not known. Freedom enters only as a shadow of consciousness; the more conscious you become, the more free. Hence Buddha is called a mukta: utterly free. The rock is utterly in bondage, fettered from everywhere, from all sides, in all dimensions. The rock is soul in imprisonment, Buddha is the soul on wings. There are no longer any chains, any bondages, any imprisonments; no walls surround Buddha. He has no borders to his being. His being is as vast as existence itself. He is one with the whole.But in the world of the geosphere, cause and effect is the only dhamma, the only law, the only Tao. Science is still confined to the geosphere, because it still goes on thinking in terms of cause and effect. Modern science is a very rudimentary science, very primitive, because it cannot conceive of anything more than matter. Its conception is very limited, and hence it is creating more misery than it solves. Its vision is so finite, its vision is so tiny, small, that it cannot reconcile itself with the totality of existence. It is looking from a tiny hole and thinks that’s all. Science is still confined to the geosphere. Science is still in bondage, it does not yet have wings. It will get wings only when it starts moving beyond cause and effect.Yes, little sparks are there. The nuclear physicist is entering into the world which is beyond cause and effect, crossing the boundary. Hence, the principle of uncertainty is arising, arising with great force. Cause and effect is the principle of certainty: you do this, and this is bound to happen. You heat the water to a hundred degrees and the water evaporates – that’s cause and effect. The water has no freedom. It cannot say, “Today I am not in the mood, and I am not going to evaporate at a hundred degrees. I simply say no!” It cannot say that; it cannot resist, it cannot fight against the law. It is very law-abiding, very obedient. Some other day, when the water is feeling very happy, it cannot say, “You need not bother too much. I am going to evaporate at fifty degrees. I am going to oblige you.” No, that is not possible.The old physics, the old science, had no glimpse about the principle of uncertainty. The principle of uncertainty means the principle of freedom. Now, little glimpses are happening. Now they are not as certain as they used to be. Now they see that at the deepest, in matter too, there is a certain quality of freedom. It is very difficult to say whether the electron is a particle or a wave: it behaves both ways, sometimes this way, sometimes that way. And there is no way to predict it. It is a quanta. And not only that, its freedom is such that sometimes it behaves simultaneously like a wave and like a particle. That is utterly impossible for the old scientist even to conceive or understand. Aristotle would not be able to understand it, Newton would not be able to understand it. That is impossible to see. That is saying that something is behaving like a line and a dot simultaneously; it is illogical. How can something behave like a dot and a line? Either it is a line or it is a dot.But now the physicist is starting to have glimpses of the innermost core of matter. In a very, very roundabout way they are stumbling on one of the greatest factors of life: freedom. But in the geosphere it doesn’t exist. It is sushupti.The word sushupti means absolute sleep – not even a dream stirs. The rocks are not even dreaming, they cannot dream. To dream they will have to be a little more conscious. The rock is simply there. It has no personality, it has no soul – at least not in actuality. It cannot even dream; its sleep is undisturbed. Day, night, year-in, year-out, it goes on sleeping. For millennia it has slept, and for millennia it will sleep. Not even a dream disturbs it.In Yoga we divide consciousness into four stages. They are very, very relevant to de Chardin’s division. The first is sushupti, deep sleep. The geosphere corresponds to that. The geosphere is more like death than like life. That’s why matter appears to be dead. It is not. It is waiting for its life to grow, it is like a seed. It appears dead: it is waiting for its right moment to explode into life. But right now it is dead; there is no mind.Remember, in the last stage also there will be no mind again. A buddha is in a state of no-mind, and a rock is also in the state of no-mind. Hence the significance of a stone statue: the meeting of two polarities. The rock being in a state of no-mind means the rock is still below mind. A buddha is in a state of no-mind: that means the buddha has gone beyond mind. There is a similarity, just as there is a similarity between a child and a saint. The child is below mind, the saint is beyond mind. The rock will have to go through all the turmoil of life that the buddha has passed through. He has gone and gone and gone, and gone beyond, utterly beyond. But there is a similarity: he again exists in a state of no-mind. He has become so fully conscious that the mind is not needed. The rock is so unconscious that the mind cannot exist. In the rock the unconsciousness is absolute, hence the mind is not possible. In the buddha the consciousness is absolute and the mind is not needed. Let me explain it to you; it is one of the most important things to learn, to understand.Mind is needed only because you are not really conscious. If you are really conscious, then there is insight, there is no thinking. Then you act out of insight, you don’t act out of your mind. Then mind is not needed. When you see a thing as true, that very seeing becomes your action.For example, you are in a house and the house is on fire. You see it – it is not a thinking. You simply see it, and you jump out of the house. You don’t wait, you don’t ponder, you don’t brood over it. You don’t inquire, you don’t consult books, you don’t go to ask somebody’s advice about what to do.You are coming from an evening walk, and just on the road you come across a snake. You jump! Before any thinking enters, you jump. It is not out of thinking that you jump, it is out of insight. Great danger is there; the very danger makes you alive, intense, conscious, and you take the jump out of consciousness. It is a no-mind jump.But these moments are rare in your life because you are not yet ready to live your consciousness intensely and totally. For a buddha, that is his normal way. He lives so totally that the mind is never needed, never consulted.The first sphere, the geosphere, is a no-mind sphere. There is no self, obviously, because without the mind the self cannot exist. Again, in the fourth, there will be no self – because without the mind how can the self exist? The mind needs to function out of a center, hence it creates the ego, the self. The mind has to keep itself in control, the mind has to keep itself in a certain pattern, order. It has to hold itself. To hold itself it creates a center, because only through the center can it keep control. Without a center it will not be able to keep control. So once the mind comes in, ego is on the way. Sooner or later the mind will need the ego. Without the ego the mind will not be able to function. Otherwise who will control, who will manage, who will manipulate, who will plan, who will dream, who will project? And who will be there to be referred to as a constant thing? – because the mind goes on changing. One thought after another: it is a procession of thoughts. You will be lost if you don’t have any ego; you will not know who you are, and where you are going, and for what.In the geosphere there is no mind, no self, and no time. It is below time. Time has not entered yet. The rock knows no past, no present, no future. And so is the case with a buddha. He also is beyond time. He knows no past, no present, no future. He lives in eternity. In fact that is the real meaning of being in the present. Being in the present does not mean that space which is between past and future. In the dictionary that is the meaning given: the space between past and future is called the present. But that is not the present. What kind of present is this? It is already becoming past; it is going out of existence. This moment, if you call it the present, the moment you have called it the present it is already gone into the past; it is no longer the present. And the moment that you were calling future – the moment you called it future it has become the present and is moving toward becoming the past. This present is not a real present. The present that is between past and future is just part of past and future, of the time procession.The present that I talk about, the now that I talk about, or Buddha talks about, or Christ when he says, “Don’t think of the morrow. See the lilies in the field – they toil not, they spin not, and look how beautiful they are. How incredibly beautiful! Even Solomon was not so beautiful arrayed in all his glory. Look at the lilies of the field”… Those lilies are living in a kind of nowness; they don’t know the past, they don’t know the future.The buddha knows no past, no future, and no present. He knows no division. That’s the state of eternity. Then the now is absolutely there. There is only now, and only here, and nothing else. But the rock is also in that state – unconscious, of course.The second sphere is the biosphere. It means life, pre-consciousness. The first sphere was matter, the second sphere is life: trees, animals, birds. The rock cannot move, the rock has no life anywhere, no life visible anywhere. The tree has more life, the animal still more, the bird still more. The tree is rooted in the ground, cannot move much. It moves a little bit, sways, but cannot move much; it does not have that much freedom. A little freedom is certainly there, but the animal has more freedom. He can move, he can choose a little more freedom: where to go, what to do. The bird has even a little more freedom: it can fly. This is the sphere called the biosphere, the life sphere. It is pre-consciousness; just rudimentary consciousness is coming into being. The rock was absolutely unconscious. You cannot say the tree is so absolutely unconscious. Yes, it is un-conscious, but something of the consciousness is filtering in, a ray of consciousness is coming in. And the animal is a little more conscious.The first state corresponds with Patanjali’s sushupti: deep, deep sleep. The second state corresponds with Patanjali’s swabana: the dream state. Consciousness is coming like a dream. Yes, dogs dream. You can see – you can watch a dog asleep and you will see he is dreaming. In a dream sometimes he will try to catch flies. And sometimes you will see he is sad, and sometimes you will see he looks happy. Watch a cat, and sometimes she is jumping on a mouse in her dream, and you can see what she is doing in the dream: eating the mouse, cleaning her mustache. You can watch the cat; dream has entered, things are happening in the world of consciousness. Consciousness is surfacing. Cause and effect is still predominant, but not so much as in a rock. A little freedom becomes possible, and hence accidents start happening. The animal has a little bit of freedom. He can choose a few things, he can be temperamental: he can be in a good mood and be friendly toward you; he can be in a bad mood and will not be friendly toward you. A little bit of decision has come into his being, but a very little bit, just the beginning. The self is not yet integrated. It is a very loose self, hodgepodge, but it is coming up. The structure is taking shape, the form is arising.The animal is past-oriented; it lives out of the past. The animal has no idea of the future: it cannot plan for the future, it cannot think ahead. Even if sometimes it thinks ahead, that is very, very fragmentary. For example when the animal is feeling hungry it can think ahead, a few hours ahead – that he will get food. He has to wait. But the animal cannot think about one month, two months, three months into the future. The animal cannot conceive of years; it has no calendar, no time concept. It is past-oriented. Whatsoever has been happening in the past it expects to happen in the future too. Its future is more or less the same as the past; it is a repetition. It is past-dominated. Time is entering through the past, self is entering through the past.The third sphere is the noosphere; mind, self-consciousness arises. The first was unconsciousness, the second was pre-consciousness, the third is self-consciousness. Consciousness comes, but there is a calamity with it – the self. It cannot come otherwise; the self is a necessary evil. Consciousness comes with the idea of “I.” Reflection starts, thinking starts, personality comes into existence. And with mind comes future orientation: man lives in the future, animals live in the past.Developed societies live in the future, undeveloped societies live in the past. Primitive people still live in the past. Only civilized people live in the future. To live in the future is a higher state than to live in the past. Young people live in the future, old people start living in the past. Young people are more alive than old people. New countries, new cultures, live in the future. For example, America lives in the future, India lives in the past. India goes on carrying five thousand, ten thousand years of past. It is such a burden, it is so difficult to carry it, it is crushing, but one goes on carrying it. It is the heritage, and one is very proud of the past.To be proud of the past is simply an uncivilized state. One has to reach into the future, one has to grope into the future. The past is no longer, the future is going to be – one has to prepare for it.You can watch it in many ways. The Indian mind is thrilled only by past events. Still, people go on playing the drama of Rama every year, and they are very thrilled. Thousands of years have passed and they have been playing the same drama again and again and again, and again they will play it. And they are very thrilled. They were not so thrilled when the first man walked on the moon; they were not so thrilled as they were and have always been thrilled by the drama of Rama. They know the story, they have seen it many times, but it is their heritage; they are very proud of it.You will be surprised to know that there are Hindu mahatmas and Jaina mahatmas in India who have been trying to prove that man has not walked on the moon, that the Americans were deceiving. Why? – because the moon is a god. How can you walk on the moon? And there are people who listen to them and follow them.A Jaina monk came to see me once in Gujarat and he said, “Support me – and I have got thousands of followers!” And he did have. And the whole thing, the theme of his life, was that the Americans have been deceiving, that those photographs are all photographic tricks that have been produced, that those rocks that have been brought from the moon have been brought from Siberia or from somewhere on the planet. Nobody has ever gone and nobody can ever go to the moon, because in the Jaina shastras, in the Jaina scriptures, it is written that the moon is a god. How can you walk on God? This is past-orientation. This is very deadening. That’s why India cannot grow, it cannot evolve, it cannot progress. It is stuck with the past.With the noosphere, with mind, self-consciousness, reflection, thought, personality, future-orientation comes into being. And the more you start preparing for the future, of course the more anxious you become. So Americans are the tensest people, restless. Indians are very restful, so restful that they don’t have any efficiency at all. Do you know that when Indians change an electric bulb, three Indians are needed? – one to hold the bulb and two to turn the ladder. Very restful people, relaxed; they don’t suffer from any anxiety, they don’t know what anxiety really is.Anxiety enters with the future, because you have to plan. You cannot just go on repeating the old ways of your life. And when you do something new there is a possibility of a mistake, more possibility of a mistake. The more you try the new, the more anxious you become. That’s why, psychologically, America is the most disturbed country, India the most undisturbed.Animals don’t have anxiety. To live in the past is a lower state of mind – of course more comfortable, more convenient. And the Hindu mahatmas go on saying to the world, “Look how peaceful we are. No neurosis exists. Even if we starve, we starve very, very silently. Even if we die, we die very, very acceptingly. And you are going mad!”But remember, progress comes through anxiety. With progress there is anxiety, there is trembling – of going wrong, of doing something wrong, of missing the point. With the past there is no problem: you go on repeating it. It is a settled past, the ways of it are perfectly known. You have traveled on them, your parents have traveled on them, and so on and so forth, backward to Adam and Eve. Everybody has done it; there is no possibility of going wrong. With something new, anxiety, fear, fear of failure enters.This third sphere, the noosphere, is the sphere of anxiety, tension. If you have to choose between the second and the third, choose the third, don’t choose the second. Although there is no need to choose between the third and the second, you can choose between the third and the fourth; then choose the fourth. Always choose the higher.Remember, when I condemn the Indian mind, I am not condemning Buddha and I am not condemning Krishna. They have chosen the fourth: they are also at rest, they are also relaxed but their relaxation comes from dropping time itself, not by living in the past. They are utterly relaxed, they have no anxiety, no neurosis. Their mind is a calm, rippleless lake – but not by choosing the second but by choosing the fourth; not by remaining below mind but by going beyond mind. But that’s how things go.People in India have seen Buddha, and they have seen the silence, and they have seen the benediction of the man, and they have seen the grace, and they have seen that life can be lived in such relaxation. Why not live such a life? But they have not made any effort to go to the fourth stage. On the contrary, they relapsed from the third and settled in the second stage. It gives something like Buddha’s silence; but it is “something like,” it is not exactly that. It is always easier to settle in the past and become more convenient and comfortable. Buddha has not settled with the past; he has not even settled with the future. He has not settled with time itself: he has dropped time, he has dropped the mind that creates time. He has dropped the ego that creates anxiety.Indians have chosen to drop the future because it seems to create anxiety: “Future creates anxiety? You can drop the future.” Then you will slip back, you will relapse into the previous state. Drop the ego, and then you go beyond.The third sphere is like what Patanjali calls wakefulness. The first is sleep, the second is dream, the third is wakefulness – your wakefulness of course, not the wakefulness of a buddha. Your so-called wakefulness: eyes are open but dreams are roaming inside you; the eyes are open but sleep is there inside you. You are full of sleep even when you are awake. This is the third state. And it is always helpful: if you become tired of the day, you fall into a dream, it gives you relaxation. Then you fall into deep sleep; it gives you even more relaxation. In the morning you are again fresh. You fall backward to become restful because that is what you know already, and it is there in your system; you can go into it.The fourth state has to be created; it is not in your system. It is your potential but you have never been in it before. It is arduous, it is going upstream, uphill. The fourth state is the Christosphere – you can call it the Buddha-sphere, it means the same thing; you can call it the Krishna-sphere, it means the same. With the third state there is kind of freedom, a pseudo-freedom, the freedom known as choice. This has to be understood, it is of great importance.At the third stage you simply have a pseudo kind of freedom, and that freedom is the freedom of choice. For example, you say, “My country is religiously free.” That means you can choose: you can go to a church or to a temple, and the country and its law will not create any trouble for you. You can become a Mohammedan or a Hindu or a Christian: you can choose. “The country is free” means you can choose your life, where you want to live, what you want to do, what you want to say. The choice of expression, the freedom of expression is there. This is what is thought to be freedom: that you can say whatsoever you like, that you can do whatsoever you like, that you can choose any religious or political style. You can be a Communist, you can be a fascist, you can be a liberal, you can be a democrat, and all that nonsense. You can choose. It is only a pseudo-freedom. Why do I call it pseudo freedom? – because a mind which is full of thoughts cannot be free.If you have lived for fifty years and your mind has been conditioned by your parents and the teachers and the society, do you think you can choose? You will choose out of your conditioning. How is it going to be a choice? First, you have been conditioned.It is like when you hypnotize somebody. You can take somebody to Santosh, our hypnotist, and he can hypnotize him and tell him, “Tomorrow morning you will go to the market and you will purchase a certain kind of a cigarette, a certain brand.” He can suggest this to that person in deep hypnosis. Tomorrow morning he will get up and he will not have any idea that he is going to purchase a certain brand of cigarettes in the market, because the conditioning has entered the unconscious, has been put into the unconscious. His conscious mind is unaware. He will not even have any idea of why he is going to the market. But he will find some rationalization: he will say, “Let us go shopping today.” Why today? Why not tomorrow? Why not the day after tomorrow? Why today? He will say, “This is my freedom. Whenever I want to go I will go. Who are you to prevent me? This is my freedom.” And he’s unaware, completely unaware that this is not freedom at all.He will go to the market with the idea that he is free, and he may not even think for a single moment that he’s going to purchase a certain brand of cigarettes. Then suddenly he comes across a shop and he says to himself, “Why not purchase a packet of cigarettes? You have not smoked for so long.” He is thinking that he is thinking it! And he goes to the shop and he says, “Give me this brand of cigarettes, 555.” And if you ask him, “Why not Panama? Why not Wills? Why not Berkeley?” he will say, “This is my choice. I am free to choose!” And he will purchase 555, and he remains free – at least according his idea. He’s not free, he has been conditioned.You have been conditioned as a Hindu, a Christian, as a Mohammedan, as an Indian, as a Chinese, as a German. How can you be free? You have been conditioned by your parents, by your society, by your neighborhood, by your school, college, university. How can you be free? Your freedom is pseudo. It is bogus: it only gives you the feeling of freedom and makes you happy; otherwise there is no freedom in it. When you go to church are you going out of your freedom? When you go to the Hindu temple are you going out of your freedom? Look into it and you will find it is not out of freedom; you were born in a Hindu family.Sometimes it can happen – you were born in a Christian family and still you want to go to a Hindu temple. That too is a conditioning – a different kind. Maybe your parents were too Christian, too much, and you could not absorb that much nonsense. There is a limit. You became antagonistic, you started rebelling against it; you became a reactionary. They used to pull you to the church. And they were powerful, and you were a small child, and you could not do anything; you were helpless. But you were always thinking, “I will show you.” The day you became powerful you stopped going to church.Now this idea, “I will show you,” has been implanted by their obsession with the church. It is again hypnosis – in the reverse order, but it is still hypnosis. You are reacting, you are not free. If you want to go to church you will not be able to go, you will find yourself pulling away. You will not go because this is the church your parents used to take you to. You cannot go to this church; you will become a Hindu. You will start doing things which your parents had never wanted you to do just to show them. This is reaction. The first is obedience, the second is disobedience, but there is no freedom in either.One thing more: it is not only a question of conditioning that you are not free. When you choose between two things, maybe nobody has conditioned you about those two things; there are millions of things for which you have not been conditioned at all. When you choose between two things your choice is out of confusion, and out of confusion there can be no freedom. You want to marry this girl or that; how are you going to choose? You are confused.Every day I receive letters from people: “I am torn apart between two women. What should I do? This woman is beautiful bodily, in proportion, has very, very beautiful eyes, a kind of charm; the body is vibrant, radiant, alive but psychologically she is very ugly. The other woman is psychologically beautiful, but physically ugly. Now, what to do?” And you are torn apart.I have heard about a man who was thinking to marry. He was in love with a woman, but she was very poor. She was beautiful, but she was very poor. And another woman was in love with him who was very rich but very ugly. But one thing was beautiful in her too – her sound, her voice. She was a great singer.Now he was torn apart. The beautiful woman had not that voice, that singing voice; and he was a lover of music. She had a beautiful face, but form was not so important to him as voice. And then he was poor, and he wanted a woman who would bring much money with her so there would be security; he could go into his music totally, wholeheartedly, so he need not worry about money and things like that. He wanted to devote his whole life to music. That woman had two things: the money and a beautiful voice but she was utterly ugly. It was very difficult to look at her, her face was repulsive. The poor woman was beautiful, but her voice was ordinary and she had no money. So if he chose that woman he would have to drop his love affair with music. He would have to become a clerk in some stupid office, or a teacher or something. And then he would not be able to devote himself to music. Music needs total devotion, music is a very jealous mistress – it does not allow you to go anywhere, it wants to absorb you utterly, totally. So he was torn part. And finally his love for music won, and he married the ugly woman.He came home, they went to sleep. The dark nights were okay because he was not looking at the woman, so there was no problem. But in the morning, when the sunrays filtered in and he was awake, and he looked at the face of the woman, it was so repulsive. He shook the woman hard and said, “Sing! Sing immediately! Sing immediately!” – just to protect himself from that ugliness.People write to me: “We are torn apart between two women, or between two men. What should we do?” This confusion arises because you are motivated. There is a motivation: money, music, security. There is no love; that’s why you are torn apart. If love is there, intense love is there, passionate love is there, then there would be no choice. That passion itself would decide. You would not be choosing, you would not be torn apart. But people are not that intelligent and not that intense. They live very lukewarm, so-so; they don’t live intensely; their lives have no fire.Real freedom happens only when your life becomes so total in each moment that there is no need to decide; that totality decides. Do you follow me? – the totality itself decides. You are not facing two alternatives: whether to marry this woman or that. Your heart is totally with one. There is no motive so you are not divided, and there is no confusion. If you decide out of confusion you will create conflict. Confusion will take you into deeper confusion. Never decide out of confusion.That’s why Krishnamurti goes on talking about choicelessness. Choicelessness is freedom. You don’t choose, you simply become totally intense. You just become absolutely alert, aware, attentive.For example, you are listening to me: you can listen in a lukewarm way – half asleep, half awake, yawning, thinking a thousand and one things, planning, last night still hanging around you, hangovers of a thousand and one types – and you are listening too. Then there is a question of whether I am telling the truth or not. If you are passionately listening, if you are utterly herenow, that very passion will decide. In that intensity you will know what truth is. If I say something which is true, it will immediately strike in your heart because you will be so intelligent, how can you miss it? Your intelligence will be so alert, how can you miss it? And if there is something which is not true, you will see it immediately. The vision will come, immediate. There will be no decision on your part: “Should I follow this man or not?” That is out of confusion. You have not listened, you have not seen me.See the point of it. With truth you need not agree or disagree. The truth has to be heard totally, with sensitivity, that’s all. And that very sensitivity decides. You see, you immediately feel the truth of it. In that very feeling you have moved into truth – not that you agreed or disagreed; not that you were convinced by me, converted by me. I’m not converting anybody; truth converts. Truth is not a belief, and truth is not an argument; truth is a presence. If you are present you will feel it. If you are not present you will not feel it.So on the third stage, the noosphere, there is pseudo-freedom. Out of confusion, you decide; hence confusion goes on growing. Confusion brings conflict, because there are always two sides in you: to do this or to do that, to be or not to be. And whatsoever you decide, the other side will remain there and wait for its time to take revenge. Freedom happens only at the fourth stage.The Christosphere is the fourth. With the Christosphere, no-mind comes into existence – the no-mind of a Buddha, of a Christ, not of a rock. With the fourth comes consciousness, without a center, with no self in it; just pure consciousness with no border to it, infinite consciousness. Then you can’t say “I am conscious.” There is no “I” to it, it is just consciousness. It has no name and no form. It is nothingness, it is emptiness. With this consciousness, thinking is not needed; insight starts functioning, intuition starts functioning.Intellect lives on tuition; others have to teach you, that’s what tuition is. Nobody has to teach you intuition: it comes from within, it grows out of you, it is a flowering of your being. This is the quality of consciousness called meditation, intuition, insight, consciousness without a center, timelessness; or you can call it the now, the present. But remember, it is not the present between past and future; it is the present in which past and future have both dissolved.De Chardin calls it “the omega point,” Buddha calls it nirvana, Jainas call it moksha, Christ calls it “God the Father.” These are different names. This whole sutra is concerned with from the third to the fourth, from the noosphere to the Christosphere, from intellect to intelligence, from self-consciousness to no self-consciousness. The third is like waking, ordinary waking, and the fourth is what Patanjali calls turiya, “the fourth.” He has not given it any name, and that seems to be very beautiful. Call it “Christosphere,” and it looks Christian; call it “Krishnasphere,” and it looks Hindu; call it Buddhasphere, and it looks Buddhist. Patanjali is very, very pure; he simply calls it “the fourth.” That contains everything. He has not given it a particular name. He gives names to three because they have forms, and wherever form is, names are relevant. The formless cannot have any name – turiya, “the fourth.”This whole Prajnaparamita Sutra is from the third to the fourth. Sariputra is at the peak of the third: the noosphere – reflection, thinking, self-consciousness. He has traveled to the uttermost into the third, he has reached the maximum of it. There is no more to it. He’s standing on the boundary line.Therefore, O Sariputra… Buddha is standing beyond the boundary and calling Sariputra forth: “Come, come, and yet come.” The whole sutra is condensed today in this last sutra. All of the sutras, up to now, were just preparation for this last peak.Tasmaj jnatavyam: prajnaparamita maha-mantro maha-vidyamantro “nuttara-mantro” samasama-mantrah…Therefore one should know…Tasmaj jnatavyam… Therefore the only thing worth knowing is this. This is the conclusion of this whole beautiful dialogue. The dialogue is between two energies, Buddha and Sariputra, because Sariputra has not said a single word. This is a far superior dialogue than exists between Arjuna and Krishna in the Gita, because Arjuna says something. It is verbal. Arjuna is more like a student than like a disciple. He becomes a disciple only at the very end. When he becomes the disciple, Krishna becomes the master. If the disciple is not a disciple, how can the master be a master? If the disciple is just a student, then the master is just a teacher.Where the Gita ends, that is the point where this Prajnaparamita Sutra starts. Sariputra is a disciple: utterly silent, has not uttered a single word, has not even asked a question – not verbally. He’s a guest, not a questioner. His whole being is asking, not his mind. He’s not verbalizing; his existence is a question mark. He’s standing before Buddha, his whole being thirsty, on fire, afire. Seeing his state Buddha goes on saying things on his own. Not that the disciple has to ask; the master knows when the disciple needs. The master knows far better than the disciple himself what his need is. The disciple has to wait. Maybe Sariputra has waited for many years, for almost twenty years, for this moment: when the master would see the need, when the master would feel his hunger and thirst, when he would be worthy of receiving a gift from the master. That day has come, that fortunate moment has arrived.Tasmaj jnatavyam… Buddha says, “Therefore, O Sariputra, this is the only thing that is worth knowing.” And now he condenses his whole message into a few small words, into a small sentence, into a mantra, into a maxim, into a formula. This is the greatest mantra, because Buddha has contained in it all that is needed for the whole journey. He has put everything into this small, this very small formula.Therefore – the only thing worth knowing is – the prajnaparamitaas the great spell, the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled spell…Buddha praises it like anything; he goes through all the superlatives possible. He says, “This is the great spell!” Spell, mantra, means a magic formula. What a mantra is has to be understood. A mantra is a very, very special thing to be understood. It is a spell, a magic formula. It implies the phenomenon that whatsoever you have is not really there, and whatsoever you think you do not have, is there! A magic formula is needed. Your problem is not real – that’s why a magic formula is needed.For example, a parable:It happened…A man was very afraid of ghosts. Unfortunately he had to pass the cemetery every day, coming and going. And sometimes he was late, and he had to pass the cemetery in the night. His house was behind the cemetery, and very close to it. And he was so afraid of ghosts that his life was a constant torture. He could not sleep: the whole night he was disturbed by the ghosts. Sometimes they were knocking on the doors, and sometimes moving inside the house, and he could hear their footsteps and their whisperings. Sometimes they would come very close to him and he could even feel their breath. He was in a constant hell.He went to a master, and the master said, “This is nothing. You have come to the right person” – just like I say to you – “Take this mantra. It is enough, and you need not be worried. Just put this mantra in a small golden box and carry the box always. You can hang it around your neck.”It is just like the locket: it is a mantra; or it is like the magic box that I give to sannyasins who are going far away from me. It is a magic box, it is a mantra.The master said, “Keep this mantra. You need not even repeat it; it is so potent that it need not be repeated. You just keep it in the box. Keep the box with you and no ghost will ever trouble you.” And it really happened: that day he passed through the cemetery almost as if he was going for a morning walk. Never before had it been so easy. He used to run; he used to scream and shout, and he had to sing songs while passing. That day he walked very slowly with the box in his hand, and it really worked! No ghosts. He was even standing in the middle of the cemetery, waiting for somebody to come, and no ghost turned up. It was utter silence.Then he went home. He put the box underneath his pillow. That night nobody knocked on the door, nobody whispered, nobody came close to him. That was the first time in his whole life that he slept well. It was a great mantra. But then he became too attached to the box. He could not leave it anywhere, he had to carry it everywhere the whole day.People started asking, “Why do you go on carrying this box?”And he said, “This is my safety, my security.”He became so afraid that now if some day this box was lost, “I will be in great trouble, and those ghosts will take great revenge!” Eating – and he had his box. And in the toilet – he had his box. Making love to his woman – and he had his box. He was going crazy! And now the fear was too much: if it is stolen, if somebody plays a trick or if he loses it somewhere, or if something happens to the box, then what? “Then for months those ghosts are hankering to create trouble for me! They will jump upon me from everywhere, and they will kill me!”The master inquired one day about how things were going.He said, “Everything is good. Everything is perfectly good, but now I am being tortured by my own fears. Again I cannot sleep. The whole night I have to see whether the box is still there. Again and again I have to wake myself up and search for the box. And if sometimes it slips here and there in the bed and I cannot find it, it is so frightening! I get so scared!”The master said, “Now I will give you another mantra. Throw away the box.”The man asked, “Then how am I going to protect myself from the ghosts?”The master said, “They are not there. This box is just nonsense. Those ghosts are not there; that’s why this box has worked. Those ghosts are only in your imagination. If they were really there they would not be afraid of the box. It is just your idea, those ghosts were your idea. Now you have got a better idea, because you have got a master. And the master has given you a box, a magic spell. Now be more understanding: the ghosts are not there, that’s why this box has helped. Now there is no need to get so obsessed with the box. Throw it away!”A mantra is a spell to take away things which are not really there. For example, a mantra will help you to drop the ego. The ego is a ghost, just an idea. That’s why I say to you that I am here to take away things which are not really with you, and to give you things which are really there. I am here to give you that which you already have, and I have to take away that which you never had but which you think that you have. Your miseries, your hurts, your ambitions, your jealousies, your fears, greeds, hatreds, attachments – those are all ghosts.A mantra is just a trick, a strategy to help you drop your ghosts. Once you have dropped those ghosts then the mantra has to be dropped too. One need not carry the mantra anymore the moment he feels the ghosts have disappeared. And then you will laugh at the whole absurdity: the ghosts were false and the mantra was false – but it helped.It happened…A man got the idea in a dream that a snake had entered his mouth, and that it was there in his stomach. And he would feel the movement of the snake. You know such snakes; everybody knows. And he became very disturbed. He went to the doctors and was X-rayed, but… He would say, “It is there, even if the X-ray is not showing it. It doesn’t matter. I am suffering, my suffering is real.”Then he went to a Sufi master. Somebody had said, “Go to a Sufi master. Only a master can help with this. Doctors won’t be of much help. They treat real diseases; masters treat unreal diseases. Go to a master.”So he went, and the master said, “Right, I will do something. Tomorrow morning it will come out.”The next morning the master arranged it: he found a snake, gave it to the man’s wife and said, “Make arrangements so when the man wakes up in the morning he finds the snake crawling out of the bed.”And the man shrieked, and he screamed and jumped. And he said, “Here! Here it is! That snake! And those foolish doctors: they were saying that there is no snake, nothing. And here it is!” But since that day the problem disappeared.This was a mantra. The problem was not really actual.All your problems are your creations. A mantra is a strategy to take away your illusions, and when the illusions are taken away, that which remains behind is the truth. The mantra only takes the false. It cannot give you the real, it can only take the false. But that’s enough. Once the false is taken, once the false is understood as false, the truth arises. And truth liberates. Truth is liberation.Buddha says:…the prajnaparamita as the great spell, the spell of great knowledge,the utmost spell, the unequalled spell – sarva-duhkha prasamanah – allayer of all suffering.Buddha says this small mantra is so potential, it is enough for all your suffering. Just this mantra will do, will take you to the farther shore.…satyam amithyatvat.…in truth – for what could go wrong?Buddha says it will only show you the false as the false. And when you know the truth, then what can go wrong? Then nothing can go wrong – satyam amithyatvat.This word amithya comes from a root mithya. Mithya means false, amithya means not false. The word mithya exists in the English word myth. Myth means the false. Myth comes from the same root, mithya. A myth is that which appears but is not real.The same root, mithya also exists in another English word, miss, as in “to miss.” Misunderstanding – that “mis” comes from mithya. Or when we say, “He missed,” that “to miss” also comes from mithya.Truth is that which we go on missing. We go on missing because we go on clinging to the false. We miss the truth because we cling to the false. If we drop the false there is no missing at all. And that is the root meaning of the word sin too. Sin means to miss, to miss the target. Whenever you cling to the false you commit a sin, because clinging to it, you miss the truth.You cling to the idea of God and that is false. All ideas are false. You cling to a certain idea of God and that is your barrier. Buddha says this mantra will take all your barriers; it will give you only nothingness. In nothingness, truth arises, because there is nothing to obstruct. Nothingness means nothing to obstruct anymore, all false ideas have been dropped on the way. You are just empty, you are just receptive, open; you come nude, naked, empty, to truth – that is the only way to come to it. Then nothing can go wrong.…prajnaparamitayam ukto mantrah…By the prajnaparamita has this spell been delivered.And Buddha says, “I have given the last, the ultimate in it. There is no more to it, and there is no more possibility to improve upon it.”And I also say to you that there is no more possibility to improve upon it. “Nothing” is the greatest mantra. If you can enter into nothingness, then nothing else is needed. And that is the whole message of the Prajnaparamita Sutra.…tadyatha…It runs like this…Now Buddha condenses the whole scripture, the whole dialogue, the whole message into a few words.…tadyatha…It runs like this……gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.…Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. O, what an awakening, all hail!Buddha uses gone four times. These are the four things that he uses gone for: the geosphere, the biosphere, the noosphere, the Christosphere. Gone from matter: gone from the body, gone from the visible, the tangible. He again uses gone a second time: gone from life, the so-called wheel of life and death. The third time he uses gone: now gone beyond mind, thought, thinking, self, ego. Gone altogether beyond – now he uses it a fourth time – even gone beyond the beyond, the Christosphere. Now he has entered into the uncreated.Life has moved a full circle. This is the omega point, and this is the alpha too. This is the symbol you must have seen in many books, in many temples, in old monasteries: the symbol of the snake holding its own tail in its mouth.…Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether… You have come back home. O, what an awakening… What satori! What samadhi! This is awakening, the buddhahood.All-hail! …Alleluia! You can ask Aneeta: she goes on singing “Alleluia.” This is the alleluia. This is the state of alleluia: when all is gone, when all has disappeared and only pure nothingness is left behind. This is the benediction – alleluia! This is the ecstasy everybody is searching for. Rightly or wrongly, but everybody is searching for this ecstasy.You are a buddha, and you are not yet a buddha: that’s the dilemma, that’s the paradox. You are meant to be a buddha but you are missing. This sutra bridges you, this sutra helps you to become that which you are destined to become. This sutra helps you to fulfill your being. Remember, this sutra is not just to be repeated as it has been done down the centuries in China, Korea, Thailand, Japan, Ceylon. They go on repeating: “Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.” That repetition is not going to help.This mantra is not just to be repeated. It has to be understood, it has to become your being. Go on moving beyond every name and form, go on moving beyond every identity, go on moving away from every limitation. Go on becoming bigger and bigger, huge, enormous. Even the sky is not your limit. Go on…Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha. Svaha is the expression of the ultimate ecstasy. It does not mean anything; it is just exactly like alleluia. It is a great exclamation of joy. The benediction has happened; you are fulfilled, utterly fulfilled. But this sutra is not just to be repeated, remember. Buddha has condensed it into few words so that you can remember it. In these few words he has put the whole message, his whole life’s message.You are a buddha, and unless you recognize it as that, you will suffer. This sutra declares you to be a buddha. That’s why I started these discourses by saluting the buddha in you. I declare you to be buddhas! Recognize it!The word recognition is beautiful. It means: just turn back and look. Respect yourself. The word respect is also good: it means respect, look again. That’s what Jesus means when he says “Repent!” The original Aramaic word means return; it has nothing to do with Christian repentance. Repent means return: a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. Patanjali calls it pratiyahar: go in, withdraw inward. And Mahavira calls it pratikrama: don’t go out, come in, come home.The gap between the unreal you and the real you is obviously a false gap, because you are the real you all the time – just dreaming, thinking that you are somebody else. Drop that. Just look at who you are. And don’t be deceived by beliefs and ideologies and scriptures and knowledge. Drop all! Drop it unconditionally! Unload all the furniture that you are carrying in your being. Just make an empty room there, and that empty room will reveal the truth to you. In that recognition, svaha, alleluia! Great ecstasy bursts forth in song, in dance, in silence, in creativity.One never knows what is going to happen. How that ecstasy will be expressed by you, one never knows; everybody is going to express it in his own way – Jesus in his way, Buddha in his, Meera in hers. Everybody expresses it in his own way. Somebody becomes utterly silent: silence is his song. Somebody starts singing: a Meera, a Chaitanya, singing is their silence. Somebody dances: not knowing how to say it, goes into a crazy dance; that’s his way. Somebody may paint, somebody may compose music, somebody may sculpt, or somebody will do something else. There are going to be as many expressions as there are people. So never imitate; just watch for your own expression to take possession of you. Let your svaha, your alleluia, be yours, authentically yours. And that happens when you are a nothingness.Nothingness is the taste of this whole sutra. Become nothing and you will be all. Only the losers can be the winners in this game. Lose all and you will have all. Cling, possess, and you will lose all.Buddha is known as Mantra Adipatti, bestower of spells; master of spells, Mahaguru – but not in the sense that the word has fallen to and become a dirty thing. In modern times guru has become a four letter dirty word – not in that sense. Krishnamurti says that he’s allergic to gurus. It is true.Buddha is really a mahaguru. The word guru means heavy with heaven, heavy with joy, heavy with ecstasy, heavy with svaha; heavy like a cloud full of rain, ready to shower on anybody who is thirsty, ready to share. Guru means heavy, heavy with heaven.Guru also means one who destroys the darkness of others. I’m not talking about so-called gurus who go on roaming around the world. They don’t destroy your darkness; they impose their darkness upon you, they impose their ignorance upon you. And these gurus are mushrooming like anything. You can find them everywhere: one Muktananda mushrooming here, another Maharishi Mahesh Yogi mushrooming there; they are mushrooming everywhere.A guru is one who makes you free. A guru is one who delivers you freedom. A guru is one who liberates you. Buddha is one of the mahagurus. His message is the greatest that has ever been delivered to man. And this sutra is one of the greatest expressions of Buddha. He has talked for forty-two years, and he has said many things, but nothing compared to this. This is unique. You are fortunate that you have been here to listen to it and to meditate upon it. Now be even more fortunate – become it.Enough for today.

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The Heart Sutra 01-10Category: BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST MASTERS

The Heart Sutra 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,What are the qualities of a sannyasin?It is very difficult to define a sannyasin, and more so if you are going to define my sannyasins.Sannyas is basically a rebellion about all structures, hence the difficulty of defining. Sannyas is a way of living life unstructuredly. Sannyas is to have a character which is characterless. By “characterless” I mean you no longer depend on the past. Character means the past, the way you have lived in the past, the way you have become habituated to living: your character is all your habits and conditionings and beliefs and your experiences. A sannyasin is one who no longer lives in the past or through the past; who lives in the moment, hence, is unpredictable.A man of character is predictable; a sannyasin is unpredictable because a sannyasin is freedom. A sannyasin is not only free, he is freedom. It is living rebellion. But still, I will try; a few hints can be given, not exact definitions, a few indications, fingers pointing to the moon. Don’t get caught with the fingers. The fingers don’t define the moon, they only indicate. The fingers have nothing to do with the moon. They may be long, they may be short, they may be artistic, they may be ugly, they may be white, they may be black, they may be healthy, they may be ill – that doesn’t matter. They simply indicate. Forget the finger and look at the moon.What I am going to give is not a definition; that is not possible in this case. And, in fact, a definition is never possible about anything that is alive. A definition is possible only about something which is dead, which no longer grows, which no longer blooms, which has no more possibility, potentiality, which is exhausted and spent. Then a definition is possible. You can define a dead man, you cannot define an alive man.Life basically means that the new is still possible.So these are not definitions. The old sannyasin has a definition, very clear-cut; that’s why he is dead. I call my sannyas “neosannyas” for this particular reason: my sannyas is an opening, a journey, a dance, a love affair with the unknown, a romance with existence itself, in search of an orgasmic relationship with the whole. Everything else has failed in the world. Everything that was defined, that was clear-cut, that was logical, has failed. Religions have failed, politics have failed, ideologies have failed – and they were very clear-cut. They were blueprints for the future of man. They have all failed. All programs have failed.Sannyas is not a program anymore. It is exploration, not a program. When you become a sannyasin I initiate you into freedom, and into nothing else. It is great responsibility to be free, because then you have nothing to lean upon. Except your own inner being, your own consciousness, you have nothing as a prop, as a support. I take all your props and supports away; I leave you alone, I leave you utterly alone. In that aloneness: the flower of sannyas. That aloneness blooms on its own accord into the flower of sannyas.Sannyas is characterlessness. It has no morality; it is not immoral, it is amoral. Or, it has a higher morality that never comes from the outside but comes from within. It does not allow any imposition from the outside, because all impositions from the outside convert you into serfs, into slaves. And my effort is to give you dignity, glory. My effort here is to give you splendor.All other efforts have failed. It was inevitable, because the failure was built-in. They were all structure-oriented, and every kind of structure becomes heavy on the heart of man, sooner or later. Every structure becomes a prison, and one day or other you have to rebel against it. Have you not observed it down through history? – each revolution in its own turn becomes repressive. In Russia it happened, in China it happened. After every revolution, the revolutionary becomes antirevolutionary. Once he comes into power he has his own structure to impose upon society. And once he starts imposing his structure, slavery changes into a new kind of slavery, but never into freedom. All revolutions have failed.This is not revolution, this is rebellion. Revolution is social, collective; rebellion is individual. We are not interested in giving any structure to society. Enough of structures! Let all structures go. We want individuals in the world – moving freely, moving consciously, of course. And their responsibility comes through their own consciousness. They behave rightly not because they are trying to follow certain commandments; they behave rightly, they behave accurately, because they care.Do you know, this word accurate comes from care? The word accurate in its root means “to care about.” When you care about something you are accurate. If you care about somebody, you are accurate in your relationship.A sannyasin is one who cares about himself, and naturally cares about everybody else – because you cannot be happy alone. You can only be happy in a happy world, in a happy climate. If everybody is crying and weeping and is in misery, it is very, very difficult for you to be happy. So, one who cares about happiness, about his own happiness, becomes careful about everybody else’s happiness – because happiness happens only in a happy climate. But this care is not because of any dogma. It is there because you love, and the first love, naturally, is the love for yourself. Then other loves follow.Other efforts have failed because they were mind-oriented. They were based in the thinking process, they were conclusions of the mind. Sannyas is not a conclusion of the mind. Sannyas is not thought-oriented; it has no roots in thinking. Sannyas is insightfulness; it is meditation, not mind. It is rooted in joy, not in thought. It is rooted in celebration, not in thinking. It is rooted in that awareness where thoughts are not found. It is not a choice: it is not a choice between two thoughts, it is the dropping of all thoughts. It is living out of nothingness.Therefore, O Sariputra, form is nothingness, nothingness is form. Sannyas is what we were talking about the other day – svaha, alleluia! It is joy in being.Now how can you define joy in being? It cannot be defined, because each one’s joy in being is going to be different. My joy in being is going to be different from your joy in being. The joy will be the same, the taste of it will be the same, but the flowering is going to be different. A lotus flowers, a rose flowers, a marigold flowers – they all flower, and the process of flowering is the same but the marigold flowers in his own way, and the rose in his, and the lotus in his. Their colors are different, their expressions are different, although the spirit is the same. And when they bloom, and when they can whisper to the winds, and when they can share their fragrance to the sky, they are all joyous.Each sannyasin will be a totally unique person. I am not interested in the society. I am not interested in the collectivity. My interest is absolutely in individuals – in you!Meditation can succeed where mind has failed, because meditation is a radical revolution in your being – not the revolution that changes the government, not the revolution that changes the economy, but the revolution that changes your consciousness, that transforms you from the noosphere to the Christosphere, that changes you from a sleepy person into an awakened soul. And when you are awakened, all that you do is good.That’s my definition of “good” and “virtue”: the action of an awakened person is virtue, and the action of an unawakened person is sin. There is no other definition of sin and virtue. It depends on the person – his consciousness, the quality that he brings to the act. So sometimes it can happen that an act may be virtuous and the same act may be sinful: the acts may apparently be the same, but the people behind the acts can be different.For example, Jesus entered the temple of Jerusalem with a whip in his hand to throw out the moneychangers. He upset their money-changing boards. Alone, single-handedly, he threw all the moneychangers out of the temple. It looks very violent – Jesus with a whip, throwing people out of the temple. But he was not violent. Lenin doing the same thing will be violent, and the act will be sinful. Jesus doing the same act is virtuous. He is acting out of love; he cares. He cares about these moneychangers too! It is out of his care, concern, love, awareness, that he is acting. He is acting drastically because only that will give them a shock and will create a situation in which some change is possible.The act can be the same, but if a person is awake the quality of the act changes.A sannyasin is a person who lives more and more in alertness. And the more there are people who exist through awareness, the better the world that will be created. Civilization has not yet happened.It is said that somebody asked the Prince of Wales, “What do you think about civilization?” And the Prince of Wales is reported to have said, “It is a good idea. Somebody needs to try it. It has not happened yet.”Sannyas is just a beginning, a seed of a totally different kind of world where people are free to be themselves, where people are not constrained, crippled, paralyzed, where people are not repressed, made to feel guilty, where joy is accepted, where cheerfulness is the rule, where seriousness has disappeared, where a nonserious sincerity, a playfulness has entered. These can be the indications, the fingers pointing to the moon.First: an openness to experience. People are ordinarily closed; they are not open to experience. Before they experience anything they already have prejudices about it. They don’t want to experiment, they don’t want to explore. This is sheer stupidity!A man comes and wants to meditate, and if I tell him to go and dance, he asks, “What will be the outcome of dancing? How can meditation come out of dancing?” I ask him, “Have you ever danced?” He says, “No, never.” Now this is a closed mind. An open mind will say, “Okay. I will go into it and see. Maybe through dancing it can happen.” He will have an open mind to go into it, with no prejudice. This man who asks, “How can meditation happen out of dance?” even if he is persuaded to go into meditation, he will carry this idea in his head: “How can meditation happen out of dance?” It is not going to happen to him. And when it does not happen, his whole prejudice will be strengthened. And it has not happened because of the prejudice.This is the vicious circle of the closed mind. He comes full of ideas, he comes readymade. He is not available to new facts, and the world is continuously bombarded with new facts. The world goes on changing and the closed mind remains stuck in the past. And the world goes on changing, and every moment something new descends into the world. Existence goes on painting the world anew again and again and again, and you go on carrying your old, dead ideologies in your heads.So the first quality of a sannyasin is an openness to experience. He will not decide before he has experienced. He will never decide before he has experienced. He will not have any belief systems. He will not say, “This is so because the Bible says it.” He will not say, “This is so because Buddha says it.” He will not say, “This is so because it is written in the Vedas.” He will say, “I am ready to go into it and see whether it is so or not.”Buddha’s departing message to his disciples was this: “Remember” – and he was repeating this for his whole life, again and again, the last message also was this – “Remember, don’t believe in anything because I have said it. Never believe anything unless you have experienced it.”A sannyasin will not carry many beliefs; in fact, none. He will carry only his own experiences. And the beauty of experience is that the experience is always open, because further exploration is possible. Belief is always closed; it comes to a full point. Belief is always finished. Experience is never finished, it remains unfinished. While you are living, how can your experience be finished? Your experience is growing, it is changing, it is moving. It is continuously moving from the known into the unknown and from the unknown into the unknowable. And remember, experience has a beauty because it is unfinished. Some of the greatest songs are those which are unfinished. Some of the greatest books are those which are unfinished. Some of the greatest music is that which unfinished. The unfinished has a beauty.I have heard a Zen parable:A king went to a Zen master to learn gardening. The master taught him for three years, and the king had a beautiful, big garden – thousands of gardeners were employed there – and whatsoever the master would say, the king would go and experiment in his garden. After three years the garden was absolutely ready, and the king invited the master to come and see the garden. The king was very nervous because the master was strict: “Will he appreciate?” This was going to be a kind of examination: “Will he say, ‘Yes, you have understood me’?”Every care was taken. The garden was so beautifully complete; nothing was missing. Only then did the king bring the master to see it. But the master was sad from the very beginning. He looked around, he moved in the garden from this side to that, he became more and more serious. The king became very frightened. He had never seen him so serious: “Why does he look so sad? Is there something so wrong?”Again and again the master was shaking his head, and saying inside “No.”The king asked, “What is the matter, sir? What is wrong? Why don’t you say? You are becoming so serious and sad, and you shake your head in negation. Why? What is wrong? I don’t see anything wrong? This is what you have been telling me, and I have practiced it in this garden.”The master said, “It is so finished that it is dead. It is so complete; that’s why I am nodding my head and I am saying no. It has to remain unfinished. Where are the dead leaves? Where are the dry leaves? I don’t see a single dry leaf!” All the dry leaves were removed – on the paths there were no dry leaves; in the trees there were no dry leaves, no old leaves which had become yellow. “Where are those leaves?”The king said, “I have told my gardeners to remove everything. Make it as absolute as possible.”And the master said, “That’s why it looks so dull, so manmade. God’s things are never finished.” And the master rushed out, outside the garden. All the dry leaves were heaped: he brought a few dry leaves in a bucket, threw them to the winds, and the wind took them and started playing with the dry leaves, and they started moving on the paths. He was delighted, and he said, “Look, how alive it looks!” Sound had entered with the dry leaves – the music of the dry leaves, the wind playing with the dry leaves. Now the garden had a whisper; otherwise it was dull and dead like a cemetery. That silence was not alive.I love this story.The master said, “It is so complete, that’s why it is wrong.”Just the other night Savita was here. She was telling me that she is writing a novel, and she is very puzzled about what to do. It has come to a point where it can be finished, but the possibility is that it can be lengthened; it is not yet complete. I told her, “Finish it. Finish it while it is unfinished, then it has something mysterious around it: that unfinishedness. And I told her, “If your main character still wants to do something, let him become a sannyasin. And then things are beyond your capacity. Then what can you do? Then it comes to a finish, and yet things go on growing.”No story can be beautiful if it is utterly finished. It will be utterly dead. Experience always remains open – that means unfinished. Belief is always complete and finished. The first quality is an openness to experience.Mind is all your beliefs collected together. Openness means no-mind; openness means you put your mind aside and you are ready to look into life again and again in a new way, not with the old eyes. The mind gives you the old eyes, it gives you again ideas: “Look through this.” But then the thing becomes colored; then you don’t look at it, then you project an idea upon it. Then the truth becomes a screen on which you go on projecting. Look through no-mind, look through nothingness: shunyata. When you look through no-mind your perception is efficient, because then you see that which is. And truth liberates. Everything else creates a bondage, only truth liberates.In those moments of no-mind, truth starts filtering into you like light. The more you enjoy this light, this truth, the more you become capable and courageous to drop your mind. Sooner or later a day comes when you look and you don’t have any mind. You are not looking for anything, you are simply looking. Your look is pure. In that moment you become avalokita, one who looks with pure eyes. That is one of the names of Buddha – Avalokita: he looks with no ideas, he simply looks.Once it happened that a man spat on Buddha’s face. He wiped his face and asked the man, “Have you anything more to say?”His disciples were very shocked and angry. His chief disciple, Ananda, said to him, “This is too much! We cannot do anything because you are here; otherwise we would have killed this man. This man has spat on you, and you are asking, ‘Have you anything more to say?’”Buddha said, “Yes, because this spitting is a way of saying something. Maybe the man is so angry that words are not adequate; that’s why he has spat.” When words are not adequate, what do you do? You smile, you cry, tears come, you hug, you slap; you do something. If there is too much anger what will you do? You cannot find a strong enough, violent enough word. What will you do? – you spit.Now this is Buddha’s vision – without mind. He looks into the man: “What is the matter? Why is he spitting on me?” He’s not involved in it at all. He does not bring his past experiences or ideas that spitting is bad, that this is insulting and humiliating. No idea interferes. He simply looks into the reality of this man who is spitting on him. He’s utterly concerned: “Why? This man must be in trouble, a linguistic trouble. He wants to say something but he does not have the right words to do it. Hence, awkwardly, he is spitting.”Buddha said, “That’s why I’m asking if you have anything more to say.” The man himself was shocked because this was not his expectation. He had come to humiliate Buddha, but Buddha was not humiliated. Buddha’s compassion was showering on the man. He could not sleep that night. Again and again he thought about it. It was so difficult for him to absorb it: “What kind of man is this? What manner of man is this? I spit, and he simply asks – and with tremendous love – ‘Have you anything more to say?’”In the early morning he went back, fell at Buddha’s feet and said, “Sir, excuse me, forgive me. I could not sleep the whole night.”Buddha laughed, and he said, “You fool! Why? I slept perfectly well. Why should you get so disturbed about such a small thing? It has not hurt me. You see my face is as it was before. Why did you get so worried?”The man said, “I have come to become your disciple. Initiate me. I want to be with you. I have seen something unique, superhuman. But first, forgive me.”Buddha said, “This is nonsense. How can I forgive you? – because I have not even taken any note of it. I was not angry, so how can I forgive you?” Twenty-four hours had passed, and they were sitting on the bank of the Ganges. And Buddha said, “Look at how much water has passed down the Ganges in twenty-four hours: that much life has passed in you, that much life has passed in me. It is no longer the same Ganges. I am not the same man. In fact, you had never spat on me, it was somebody else; twenty-four hours have passed. And you are not the same man who had spat, so who can forgive whom? Let the gone be gone.”This is the vision of no-mind. It can work miracles. The sannyasin lives an openness to everything.The second quality is existential living. He does not live out of ideas: that one should be like this, one should be like that, one should behave in this way, one should not behave in this way. He does not live out of ideas, he is responsive to existence. He responds with his total heart, whatsoever is the case. His being is here-now. Spontaneity, simplicity, naturalness – these are his qualities.He does not live a readymade life. He does not carry maps – how to live, how not to live. He allows life; wherever it leads he goes with it. A sannyasin is not a swimmer, and he does not try to go upstream. He goes with the whole, he flows with the stream. He flows so totally with the stream that by and by he is no longer separate from the stream, he becomes the stream. That’s what Buddha calls srotapanna: one who has entered the stream. That is the beginning of Buddha’s sannyas too – one who has entered the stream, one who has come to relax in existence. He does not carry valuations, he’s not judgmental.Existential living means each moment has to decide on its own. Life is atomic; you don’t decide beforehand, you don’t rehearse, you don’t prepare how to live. Each moment comes, brings a situation; you are there to respond to it, you respond. Ordinarily people live a very strange kind of life. If you are going to give an interview, you prepare, you think what is going to be asked and how you are going to answer it, how you are going to sit and how you are going to stand. Everything becomes phony because it is rehearsed. And then what happens? When you go with such a rehearsal, you are never totally there. Something is being asked and you are searching in your memory, because you are carrying a prepared answer – whether that will suit with it or not, whether this will do or not. You go on missing the point. You are not totally there; you cannot be totally there, you are involved in the memory.And then the next thing happens: when you are coming out then you start thinking, “I should have answered this way.” This is called “the staircase wit”: when you are coming down the staircase, and you start thinking, “I should have answered this, I should have said this.” You become very wise again. Before you are wise, after you are wise; in the middle you are otherwise! And in the middle is life. Existence is there.The third quality of a sannyasin is a trust in one’s own organism. People trust others, the sannyasin trusts his own organism. Body, mind, soul, all are included. If he feels like loving he flows in love. If he does not feel like loving he says “Sorry,” but he never pretends.A non-sannyasin goes on pretending. His life is a life lived through masks. He comes home, he hugs the wife, and he does not want to hug her. He says, “I love you,” and those words sound so phony because they are not coming from the heart. They are coming from Dale Carnegie. He has been reading How to Win Friends and Influence People and that kind of nonsense. And he is full of that nonsense, and he carries it and he practices it. His whole life becomes a false, pseudo life, a parody. And he is never satisfied, naturally; he cannot be, because satisfaction comes only out of authentic living. If you are not feeling loving you have to say so; there is no need to pretend. If you are feeling angry you have to say so. You have to be true to your organism, you have to trust your organism. And you will be surprised: the more you trust, the more the organism’s wisdom becomes very, very clear to you.Your body has its own wisdom; it carries the wisdom of the centuries in its cells. Your body is feeling hungry and you are on a fast because your religion says that this day you have to fast – and your body is feeling hungry. You don’t trust your organism, you trust a dead scripture, because in some book somebody has written that this day you have to go on a fast, so you go on a fast. Listen to your body. Yes, there are days when the body says, “Go on a fast!” – then go. But there is no need to listen to the scriptures. The man who wrote that scripture has not written it with you in his mind at all. He could not have conceived of you. You were not present to him, he was not writing about you. It is as if you fall ill and you go to a dead doctor’s house and look into his prescriptions, and find a prescription and start following the prescription. That prescription was made for somebody else, for some other disease, in some other situation.Remember to trust your own organism. When you feel that the body is saying don’t eat, stop immediately. When the body is saying eat, then don’t bother whether the scriptures say to fast or not. If your body says eat three times a day, perfectly good. If it says eat one time a day, perfectly good. Start learning to listen to your body, because it is your body. You are in it; you have to respect it, and you have to trust it. It is your temple; it is sacrilegious to impose things on your body. For no other motive should anything be imposed. And this will not only teach you trust in your body, this will teach you, by and by, a trust in existence too – because your body is part of existence. Then your trust will grow, and you will trust the trees and the stars and the moon and the sun and the oceans: you will trust people. But the beginning of the trust has to be trust in your own organism. Trust your heart.Now somebody has asked a question: he has decided to live with his wife because he thinks that to live with one’s wife and never leave her, never separate, and never make love to another woman, is a great spiritual quality. For some it may be, maybe not so for others. It depends.Now the questioner says, “I have decided this, and there are problems. I feel attracted to other women: I feel guilty. And I don’t feel attracted toward my wife – then too I feel guilty. I don’t want to make love to my wife because the desire does not arise. But I have to make love to my wife to satisfy her. If I make love to her, then I feel guilty about myself, that I am being untrue to myself. And it looks like a dragging affair.”When you don’t want to make love, then love is the ugliest thing in the world. Only the most beautiful can be the most ugly. Love is one of the most beautiful experiences, but only when you are flowing in it, when it is spontaneous, when it is passionate, when you are full of it, overpowered by it, possessed by it, drunk with it, absorbed in it – only then. Then it takes you to the highest peak of joy. But if you are not possessed in it, and you are not even feeling any love for your wife or your husband, and you are making it… Then the English expression is right: making love. Then you are making it, it is not happening. It is ugly, it is prostitution. To whom you are doing it is not the point; it is prostitution. It is criminal. And this is not going to make you spiritual in any way. You will only become sexually repressed, that’s all. If you make love you will feel guilty, if you don’t make love you will feel guilty.Now this man has an idea of how a husband and wife should be. Now the wife must be suffering also. Both are hooked, both are bored with each other, both want to get rid of each other but cannot because they don’t trust their organism. If your organisms are saying, “Be together, grow together, flow together”; if your organism is feeling happy and thrilled and excited and there is ecstasy, go with the woman one life, two lives, three lives, as many lives as you want be together, and you will be coming closer and closer to godliness. And your intimacy will have a quality of spirituality.But not this kind of intimacy. A forced intimacy will make you more and more unspiritual, and your mind will start, naturally, seeking some ways: your mind will become more and more obsessed with sex. And when there is too much obsession, how can you grow in spirituality?Listen to the organism, and be courageous enough to do that which your organism says. I’m not saying to separate from your wife. But if that has to come, that has to come. And it will be good for you both. At least that much you owe to your wife. If you care at all about the wife, and you don’t love her anymore, then you have to say so. In deep sadness: the parting will be sad, but what can be done? You are helpless. You will not part in anger, you will not part with a grudge and complaint. You will part with immense helplessness in your heart. You wanted to be with her, but your organism is saying no. What can you do? You can force your organism, and the organism can go there, and go on continuing in the relationship, but there will be no joy. And without joy how can you be in a relationship? Then the marriage is false; legal, but otherwise false.A sannyasin is one who trusts in his own organism, and that trust helps him to relax into his being, and helps him to relax into the totality of existence. It brings a general acceptance of oneself and others. It gives a kind of rootedness, centering. And then there is great strength and power, because you are centered in your own body, in your own being. You have roots in the soil. Otherwise you see people uprooted, like trees that have been pulled up from the soil. They are simply dying, they are not living. That’s why there is not much joy in life. You don’t see the quality of laughter; the celebration is missing. And even if people celebrate, that too is false.For example, it is the birthday of Krishna and people celebrate. How can you celebrate Krishna’s birthday? You have not even celebrated your own birthday. And how are you concerned with somebody who was born five thousand years ago; how can you celebrate it? It is all phony. How can you celebrate Jesus Christ’s birthday? It is impossible. You have not celebrated the God that has come to you, that is inside you. How can you celebrate some other God who was born in a stable two thousand years ago?In your very body, in your very being, this very moment, godliness is there and you have not celebrated it. You cannot celebrate. Celebration has to happen first in your own home, at close quarters. Then it becomes a great tidal wave and spreads all over existence.The fourth is a sense of freedom. The sannyasin is not only free, he is freedom. He always lives in a free way. Freedom does not mean licentiousness. Licentiousness is not freedom, licentiousness is just a reaction against slavery; so you move to the other extreme. Freedom is not the other extreme, it is not reaction. Freedom is an insight: “I have to be free, if I have to be at all. There is no other way to be. If I am too possessed by the church, by Hinduism, by Christianity by Mohammedanism, then I cannot be. Then they will go on creating boundaries around me. They go on forcing me into myself like a crippled being. I have to be free. I have to take this risk of being free. I have to take this danger.”Freedom is not very convenient, is not very comfortable. It is risky. A sannyasin takes that risk. It does not mean that he goes on fighting with each and everybody. It does not mean that when the law says to keep to the right or keep to the left, he goes against it, no. He does not bother about trivia. If the law says keep to the left, he keeps to the left because it is not a slavery. But about important, essential things… If the father says, “Get married to this woman because she is rich and much money will come,” he will say, “No. How can I marry a woman when I am not in love with her? That would be disrespectful to the woman.” If the father says, “Go to church every Sunday because you are born in a Christian home,” he will say, “I will go to church if I feel, I will not go because you say so.” Birth is accidental; it does not matter much. The church is very essential: “If I feel like it, I will go.”I’m not saying don’t go to church, but go only when your feeling has arisen for it. Then there will be a communion. Otherwise, no need to go.About essential things the sannyasin will always keep his freedom intact. And because he respects freedom, he will respect others’ freedom too. He will never interfere with anybody’s freedom, whosoever that other is. If your wife has fallen in love with somebody you feel hurt, you will cry tears of sadness, but that is your problem. You will not interfere with her. You will not say, “Stop it because I am suffering!” You will say, “This is your freedom. If I suffer, that is my problem. I have to tackle it, I have to face it. If I feel jealous, I have to get rid of my jealousy. But you go on your own. Although it hurts me, although I would have liked that you had not gone with anybody, that is my problem. I cannot trespass your freedom.”Love respects so much that it gives freedom. And if love is not giving freedom it is not love, it is something else.A sannyasin is immensely respectful about his own freedom, very careful about his own freedom, and so is he about other’s freedom too. This sense of freedom gives him an individuality; he is not just a part of the mass mind. He has a certain uniqueness – his way of life, his style, his climate, his individuality. He exists in his own way, he loves his own song. He has a sense of identity: he knows who he is, he goes on deepening his feeling for who he is, and he never compromises.Independence, rebellion – remember, not revolution but rebellion – is the quality of a sannyasin. And there is a great difference. Revolution is not very revolutionary. Revolution also goes on functioning in the same structure.For example, in India, for centuries the untouchables, the lowest caste has not been allowed into temples. The brahmins have never allowed them to enter the temple: “The temple will become dirty if they come in.” For centuries in India the untouchables have not gone into the temple. This is ugly. Then came Mahatma Gandhi: he tried hard, he struggled hard. He wanted the untouchables to be allowed into the temples; his whole life was a struggle for it. It is revolutionary but not rebellious. Why revolutionary? Then what is rebellion?Somebody asked J. Krishnamurti about Gandhi’s struggle for the untouchables to be permitted into the temples. And do you know what J. Krishnamurti said? He said, “But God is not in the temples.” This is rebellion.Gandhi’s approach is revolutionary, but he also believes that God is in the temples as much as the brahmins do. The structure is the same. He believes it is very, very important for people to go into temples; if they don’t go into the temples they will miss God. That is the idea of the brahmin, that is the idea of the society that has repressed the untouchables from entering, prohibited them from entering. The idea is the same: that God lives in the temples, and those who are going to get into the temples will come close to God, of course. And those who are not allowed will miss. Gandhi is revolutionary, but revolution believes in the same structure. It is a reaction.J. Krishnamurti is rebellious. He says, “But God is not in the temples, so why bother? Neither brahmins are getting it there, nor will the untouchables get it. Why bother? It is stupid.” All revolutions are reactionary, reactions to a certain pattern. Whenever you react it is not much of a revolution because you believe in the same pattern. Of course you go against it, but you believe. The deep down substratum is the same.Gandhi is thinking that brahmins are enjoying very much; they are getting God so much. And the untouchables? – they are deprived. But he has not looked at the brahmins: down the centuries they have been worshipping in the temples and they have got nothing. Now this is foolish! Those who are inside the temple have got nothing, so why bother? And why bring people in who are not inside? It makes no sense.A sannyasin is rebellious. By rebellion I mean his vision is utterly different. He does not function in the same logic, in the same structure, in the same pattern. He is not against the pattern – because if you are against a certain pattern you will have to create another pattern to fight with it. And patterns are all alike. A sannyasin is one who has simply slipped out. He’s not against the pattern, he has understood the stupidity of all patterns. He has looked into the foolishness of all patterns and he has slipped out. He is rebellious.The fifth is creativity. The old sannyas was very uncreative. It was thought that somebody becomes a sannyasin and goes to a Himalayan cave and sits there, and that was perfectly all right. Nothing more was needed. You can go and see the Jaina monks: they are sitting in their temples, doing nothing – absolutely uncreative, dull and stupid looking, with no flame of intelligence at all. And people are worshipping and touching their feet. Ask, “Why are you touching his feet?” and they say, “This man has renounced the world” as if renouncing the world is in itself a value. “What has he done?” and they will say, “He has fasted. He fasts for months together,” as if not eating is a value in itself.But don’t ask what he has painted, what beauty he has created in the world, what poem he has composed, what song he has brought into existence, what music, what dance, what invention – what is his creation? They will say, “What are you talking about? He is a sannyasin!” He simply sits in the temple and allows people to touch his feet, that’s all. And there are so many people sitting like this in India.My conception of a sannyasin is that his energy will be creative, that he will bring a little more beauty into the world, that he will bring a little more joy into the world, that he will find new ways to get into dance, singing, music, that he will bring some beautiful poems. He will create something, he will not be uncreative. The days of uncreative sannyas are over. The new sannyasin can exist only if he is creative.He should contribute something. Remaining uncreative is almost a sin, because you exist and you don’t contribute. You eat, you occupy space, and you don’t contribute anything. My sannyasins have to be creators. When you are in deep creativity you are close to godliness. That’s what prayer really is, that’s what meditation is. God is the creator, and if you are not creators you will be far away from godliness. God knows only one language, the language of creativity. That’s why when you compose music, when you are utterly lost in it, something of the divine starts filtering out of your being. That is the joy of creativity, that’s the ecstasy – svaha!The sixth is a sense of humor, laughter, playfulness, nonserious sincerity. The old sannyas was unlaughing, dead, dull. The new sannyasin has to bring more and more laughter to his being. He has to be a laughing sannyasin, because your laughter is your relaxation, and your laughter can create situations for others also to relax. The temple should be full of joy and laughter and dance. It should not be like a Christian church. The church looks so cemetery-like. And with the cross there it seems to be almost a worship of death, a little morbid. You cannot laugh in a church. A belly-laugh would not be allowed; people would think you are crazy or something. When people enter a church they become serious, stiff, long faces.To me, laughter is a religious quality, very essential. It has to be part of the inner world of a sannyasin: a sense of humor.The seventh is meditativeness, aloneness, the mystical peak experiences that happen when you are alone, when you are absolutely alone inside yourself. Sannyas makes you alone; not lonely, but alone; not solitary, but it gives you a solitude. You can be happy alone, you are no longer dependent on others. You can sit alone in your room and you can be utterly happy. There is no need to go to a club, there is no need to always have friends around you, there is no need to go to a movie. You can close your eyes and you can fall into inner blissfulness: that’s what meditativeness is all about.The eighth is love, relatedness, relationship. Remember, you can relate only when you have learned how to be alone, never before it. Only two individuals can relate. Only two freedoms can come close and embrace each other. Only two nothingnesses can penetrate into each other and melt into each other. If you are not capable of being alone, your relationship is false. It is just a trick to avoid your loneliness, nothing else.That’s what millions of people are doing. Their love is nothing but their incapacity to be alone. So they move with somebody, they hold hands, they pretend that they love, but deep down the only problem is that they cannot be alone. So they need somebody to hang around, they need somebody to hold onto, they need somebody to lean upon. And the other is also using them in the same way, because the other can also not be alone, is incapable. He or she also finds you instrumental as a help to escape from himself.So two persons that you say are in love are more or less in hate with themselves. And because of that hate, they are escaping. The other helps them to escape, so they become dependent on the other, they become addicted to the other. You cannot live without your wife, you cannot live without your husband because you are addicted. But a sannyasin is one…That’s why I say the seventh quality is aloneness, and the eighth quality is love-relationship. These are the two possibilities: you can be happy alone and you can be happy together too. These are two kinds of ecstasies possible for humanity. You can move into samadhi when alone and you can move into samadhi when together with somebody, in deep love. And there are two kinds of people: the extroverts will find it easier to have their peak through the other, and the introverts will find it easier to have their greatest peak while alone. But the other is not antagonistic; they can both move together. One will be bigger, and that will be the decisive factor whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. The path of Buddha is the path of the introvert; it talks only about meditation. The path of Christ is extrovert; it talks about love.My sannyasin has to be a synthesis of both. An emphasis will be there: somebody will be emphatically more in tune with himself than with others, and somebody will be just the opposite – more in tune with somebody else. But there is no need to get hooked into one kind of experience. Both experiences can remain available.The ninth is transcendence, Tao, no ego, no-mind, nobodiness, nothingness, in tune with the whole.That is the whole message of Prajnaparamita Sutra, the Heart Sutra: gate gate paragate: gone, gone, gone beyond. Parasamgate bodhi svaha: gone altogether beyond. What ecstasy! Alleluia!Transcendence is the last and the highest quality of a sannyasin.But these are only indications, these are not definitions. Take them in a very liquid way. Don’t start taking what I have said in a rigid way. Very liquid, in a vague kind of vision, in a twilight vision – not like when there is a full sun in the sky. Then things are very defined. In a twilight, when the sun has gone down and the night has not yet descended, it is both, just in the middle, the interval. Take whatsoever I have said to you in that kind of way. Remain liquid, flowing. Never create any rigidity around you. Never become definable.The second question:Osho,If you were a cab driver, would I really not recognize you? Firstly, instead of taking me straight down to MG Road, you would drive me nuts for one and a half hours. Secondly, you would refuse to accept the fare and instead demand my life. Thirdly, while leaving me in total distress, you would drive off with a heavenly smile and light your sign: “Enough for today.” Could I still miss this cab-driver? Then I had better go by foot.The question is from Adi. Adi is so crazy that I cannot be very certain whether he would be able to recognize me or not. He may! Crazy people are crazy people. About crazy people you cannot be so certain. Yes Adi, it is possible: you may recognize me even as a cab driver.And you say, “Firstly, instead of taking me straight down to MG Road, you would drive me nuts for one and a half hours.” That’s true. Help me to drive you nuts because your sanity is of no worth. Your sanity is just like a rock on your heart. Let me remove it from you. It is a kind of surgery: it hurts, it pains. You would like to cling to the rock. You would like to go straight to MG Road. But my whole approach is that there is nowhere to go, no MG Road. There is no goal in life; life is a journey without destination. So I have to take you zigzag, on and on and on, till you are really tired and you say, “Enough! Enough for today!”“Secondly, you would refuse to accept the fare and instead demand my life.” That too is right, Adi. Less than that won’t do. Less than that is worthless. That’s my whole teaching: that you have nothing to lose except everything!“Thirdly, while leaving me in total distress, you would drive off with a heavenly smile, and light your sign: ‘Enough for today’!” That depends on you. You can participate with me in my “heavenly smile.” Courage is needed. You have invested so much in your distress that you go on keeping it. But remember, the more you keep it, the more the investment goes on becoming bigger and bigger every day. Drop it! Today it is easier: tomorrow it will be more difficult, because you will have invested twenty-four hours more into it. Drop it as quickly as possible. Don’t postpone, because all postponement is dangerous. While you go on postponing, your distress goes on becoming stronger and goes on spreading its roots into your being.I know why you are clinging to your distress – because your idea is that, “Something is better than nothing.” And my whole approach is: nothing is godliness. You go on holding your distress because it gives you a feeling that you have something, at least something – maybe it is distress, anxiety, misery, but something, at least something: “I am not empty.” You are so afraid of emptiness, and it is only emptiness that godliness comes through.Let me help you to become nothingnesses. And then there comes that heavenly smile; it comes out of nothingness. When inside you is nothingness, you will have a smile all over you. It is not only on the lips, it is all over you. It is the smile of nothingness.See that you are carrying a great load of distress, and see that you are carrying it. And see that you are responsible for carrying or for not carrying: you can drop it this very moment. Dropping it is what sannyas is all about.I will have to say about Adi: I’m afraid he would recognize me even if I were a cab driver. Maybe he would recognize me far better than he recognizes me now. He is just crazy.There are many more people who will recognize me anyway, anywhere. Only those are the people who are with me – who will recognize me anywhere.Jesus died. His body was kept in a cave after crucifixion. Mary Magdalene went to see him on the third day, and the body was not there. So she looked around to inquire, and she saw a gardener working outside. So she went to the gardener and asked, “Have you seen where Jesus’ body has been removed to?”The gardener started laughing, and he said, “Can’t you recognize me?” He was Jesus himself, resurrected. When Jesus spoke, then, only then, did Magdalene recognize him. But she was a woman. She did well – not perfectly well, because first she thought that he was a gardener. But still, immediately, the moment he uttered a single word and she looked into his eyes, she recognized him.But then Jesus went in search of his other disciples. He met two disciples on the way – they were going to another town, and they were talking continuously of what had happened to their master: he had been crucified, and what the repercussions of it were going to be, and no miracle had happened, and they were waiting for the miracle… And Jesus walked with them, and they were talking to Jesus also, thinking that he was a stranger. For four miles they walked together and they could not recognize Jesus, and he talked and they could not recognize him. They never looked at him. Then they sat in a restaurant to eat, and the moment Jesus broke his bread, then they recognized him because the way he used to break his bread was simply his, unique. That gesture was his; nobody could have imitated it: with such respect, reverence, with such prayer, as if bread was God. Then they recognized him, but it took a long time. For four miles they walked, for four miles they talked, and they could not recognize him.Many are here who will recognize me in any form. But many are here also who have not even recognized me in this form. It depends on you. If you are carrying certain conceptions then it is very difficult.Somebody has written to me that he is a follower of Sri Aurobindo; he is puzzled, and he wants to choose. And he cannot choose whether he should remain with Aurobindo or with me. And he tells me, “You decide.”How can I decide this? And if I decide it will be wrong. You will have to look into it. I’m not saying to choose, I’m saying look into it. If you have really loved Sri Aurobindo, then what is the point of coming here? If it has happened through him, it has happened; there is no need to come here. If it has not happened and you have come to me, then say goodbye to him. But people are very clever: they want to ride both horses. You will be in trouble.This is happening every day. People come to me and they are hooked somewhere else. If they are hooked somewhere, then their eyes are not ready to see me. Now this man says, “If you can say that Sri Aurobindo himself has sent me to you, it will be very easy for me to accept you” – through Aurobindo. Now, I have to tell this lie. Why should Aurobindo send you to me? And why do I have to tell you this? – so that somehow you can make a compromise, so you can say, “Good, so it is Aurobindo’s will. So I am not going against Aurobindo.” How cowardly you are! How afraid to lose hold of anything! If something has happened, I’m not saying lose hold of it: go, this is not the place for you. If nothing has happened then forget all about Sri Aurobindo; only then can you be with me. And for this, choice is not needed, but insight. Just see inside!And the last question:Osho,When I came yesterday evening to my hotel room, there was a little lizard on my pillow.You are fortunate that it was not a beautiful frog, because beautiful frogs have the tendency to turn in the night into ugly princes. A lizard is very innocent; don’t be worried.And the really, really last one:Osho,I am now sixty-five years old and yet I continuously think about sex. What is wrong with me?Nothing is wrong that you are still alive, that you are still young! Only one thing seems to be wrong: that you think something is wrong with sex. Nothing is wrong with the sex itself. But you must have been repressing, otherwise you would have gone beyond it. Now don’t wait anymore: finish it. Go into it! Otherwise in your grave you will turn and toss and think about sex.You are still alive; something can be done. And don’t feel guilty. There is nothing in it to feel guilty about; it is a beautiful energy. It can become the passage, the vehicle to godliness. Yes, it has been condemned down the ages, but there is no need to believe in those condemnations. It has been a conditioning in you that it is wrong, but you can drop the conditioning. You can again become fresh, and you can start moving into it. And don’t be worried that you are sixty-five years old.A rabbi, a priest, and a minister – three elderly clerics – were having tea together one afternoon, and the conversation turned to their most embarrassing moments. When it came to the rabbi’s turn he explained how his mother had caught him looking through a crack in the bathroom door while the maid was taking a bath.The other two chuckled. “Yes,” said the priest, “we certainly got up to some tricks in our youth.”“What are you talking about?” said the rabbi. “This was yesterday!”Don’t be too worried. You have repressed enough. Now go into it. Accept it as a gift of existence, otherwise repression leads to perversions.Meditate over this small story:There is this old Italian, see, who runs a pasta factory, and his three daughters work for him. One day they are all sitting around making the pasta, and he says to the eldest, “Agnes-a, eef-a you were not here making the ravioli and the spaghetti, who-a in all-a the world-a you would like-a to be-a?”“Oh Papa, I would like-a to be-a Sophia Loren-a. She ees so beautiful! All-a the men are after her.”“Very good-a,” says the father. “And you, Maria, tell-a your Papa, eef you were not-a here, een steenking old Napoli, making the spaghetti, who-a in all-a the world-a you would like-a to be?”“I would like-a to be-a Gina Lollobrigida. She ees so beautiful! All-a the men are after her. She has-a the Alfa Romeo and-a the Cadillac!”“Very good-a,” says the father. Then he says, turning to the youngest, “Lucia! Bella! Tell-a your Papa, eef-a you were not-a here-a up to your elbows een the raviolis, who-a in all-a the world-a you would like-a to be-a?”“I would like to be Veectoria Pepeleena!”“What?!” cries the father. “Who een the hell-a ees Veectoria Pepeleena?”She pulls a newspaper cutting out of her bra and shows it to him: Victoria Pipeline to be Laid by 400 Men in Two Weeks.Enough for today.

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Hsin Hsin Ming 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hsin Hsin Ming 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The Master Sosan said:The great way is not difficultfor those who have no preferences.When love and hate are both absenteverything becomes clear and undisguised.Make the smallest distinction, however,and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.If you wish to see the truththen hold no opinion for or against….The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikesis the disease of the mind.We will be entering the beautiful world of a Zen master’s no-mind. Sosan is the third Zen patriarch. Nothing much is known about him – this is as it should be, because history records only violence. History does not record silence, it cannot record it. All records are of disturbance. Whenever someone becomes really silent, he disappears from all records, he is no longer a part of our madness. So it is as it should be.Sosan remained a wandering monk his whole life. He never stayed anywhere; he was always passing, going, moving. He was a river; he was not a pond, static. He was a constant movement. That is the meaning of Buddha’s wanderers: not only in the outside world but in the inside world also they should be homeless – because whenever you make a home you become attached to it. They should remain rootless; there is no home for them except this whole universe.Even when it was recognized that Sosan had become enlightened, he continued his old beggar’s way. And nothing was special about him. He was an ordinary man, the man of Tao.One thing I would like to say, and you have to remember it: Zen is a crossbreeding. And just as more beautiful flowers can come out of crossbreeding, and more beautiful children are born out of crossbreeding, the same has happened with Zen.Zen is a crossbreeding between Buddha’s thought and Lao Tzu’s thought. It is a great meeting, the greatest that ever took place. That’s why Zen is more beautiful than Buddha’s thought and more beautiful than Lao Tzu’s thought. It is a rare flowering of the highest peaks and the meeting of those peaks. Zen is neither Buddhist nor Taoist, but it carries both within it.India is a little too serious about religion – a long past, a long weight on the mind of India, and religion has become serious. Lao Tzu remained a laughingstock: Lao Tzu is known as the old fool. He is not serious at all; you cannot find a more non-serious man.Then Buddha’s thought and Lao Tzu’s thought met, India and China met, and Zen was born. And this Sosan was just near the original source when Zen was coming out of the womb. He carries the fundamental.His biography is not relevant at all, because whenever a man becomes enlightened he has no biography. He is no longer the form, so when he was born and when he died are irrelevant facts. That’s why in the East we have never bothered about biographies, historical facts. That obsession has never been here. That obsession has now come from the West; then people become more interested in irrelevant things. When a Sosan is born, what difference does it make – this year or that? When he dies, how is it important?Sosan is important, not his entry into this world and the body, not his departure. Arrivals and departures are irrelevant. The only relevance is in the being.And these are the only words Sosan uttered. Remember, they are not words, because they come out of a mind which has gone beyond words. They are not speculations, they are authentic experiences. Whatsoever he says, he knows.He is not a man of knowledge, he is a wise man. He has penetrated the mystery, and whatsoever he brings is very significant. It can transform you completely, totally. If you listen to him the very listening can become a transformation, because whatsoever he is saying is the purest gold.But then it is difficult too, because the distance is very, very great between you and him: you are a mind and he is a no-mind. Even if he uses words he is saying something in silence; you, even if you remain silent, go on chattering within.It happened…There was a case against Mulla Nasruddin in the court. The court could not prove much. He was charged with polygamy, having many wives. Everybody knew about it, but nobody could prove it.The lawyer said to Nasruddin, “You remain silent, that’s all. If you utter a single word you will be caught. So simply keep quiet and I will see to the matter.”Mulla Nasruddin remained silent – deep down boiling, in turmoil, wanting to interrupt many times, but somehow managing and controlling himself. Outwardly he looked like a buddha, inside a madman. The court couldn’t find anything against him. Even though the magistrate knew that this man had many wives in the town, when there was no proof what could he do? So the magistrate had to release him.He said, “Mulla Nasruddin, you are released. Now you can go home.”Mulla Nasruddin looked puzzled and said, “Er – Your Honor, which home?”He had many homes because he had many wives in the town.A single word from you will show the mind inside; a single word and your whole being is exposed. Not even a word is needed: just a gesture and your chattering mind will be there. Even if you are silent, your silence will not reveal anything other than the chattering monkey within.When a Sosan speaks, he speaks on a totally different plane. He is not interested in speaking; he is not interested in influencing anybody; he is not trying to convince you about some theory or philosophy or “ism.” No, when he speaks his silence blooms. When he speaks he is saying that which he has come to know and would like to share with you. It is not to convince you, remember – it is just to share with you. And if you can understand a single word of his, you will feel a tremendous silence being released within you.We will be talking about Sosan and his words. If you listen attentively, suddenly you will feel a release of silence within you. These words are atomic, they are full of energy. Whenever a person who has attained says something, the word is a seed and for millions of years the word will remain a seed and will seek a heart.If you are ready, ready to become the soil, then these words, these tremendously powerful words of Sosan – they are still alive, they are seeds – they will enter in your heart if you allow, and you will be totally different through them.Don’t listen to them from the mind, because the mind carries no meaning about them; the mind is absolutely impotent to understand them. They don’t come from the mind, they cannot be understood by the mind. They come from a no-mind. They can be understood only by a state of no-mind.So while listening here don’t try to interpret. Don’t listen to the words but to the gaps between the lines, not to what he says but to what he means – the significance. Let that significance hover around you like a fragrance. Silently it will enter you; you will become pregnant. But don’t interpret. Don’t say “He means this or that,” because that interpretation will be yours.Once it happened…Mulla Nasruddin was coming back, completely drunk, in the wee hours of the morning. As he was passing by a cemetery he looked at the signboard. On it was written in big letters, capital letters: ring for the caretaker – and that’s what he did.Of course, so early in the morning, the caretaker was disturbed. He came out, staggering, angry, and when he looked at Nasruddin, absolutely drunk, he became even more angry.He asked, “Why? Why did you ring? Why did you ring for me? What is the matter? What do you want?”Nasruddin looked at him for one minute, silently, then looked at the signboard and said, “I want to know why you can’t ring that damn bell yourself!”It was written: ring for the caretaker. Now how to interpret it? It depends on you.Don’t interpret – listen. And when you interpret you can’t listen, because the consciousness cannot do two opposite things simultaneously. If you start thinking, listening stops. Just listen as you listen to music – a different quality of listening because you don’t interpret. There is no meaning in the sounds.This is also music. This Sosan is a musician, not a philosopher. This Sosan is not saying words, he is saying more – more than the words. They have a significance, but they don’t have any meaning. They are like musical sounds.You go and sit near a waterfall. You listen to it, but do you interpret what the waterfall says? It says nothing, still it says. It says much, much that cannot be said.What do you do near a waterfall? You listen, you become silent and quiet, you absorb. You allow the waterfall to go deeper and deeper within you. Then everything becomes quiet and silent within. You become a temple – the unknown enters through the waterfall.What do you do when you listen to the songs of the birds, or wind passing through the trees, or dry leaves being blown by the breeze? What do you do? You simply listen.This Sosan is not a philosopher, he is not a theologian, he is not a priest. He does not want to sell an idea to you, he is not interested in ideas. He is not there to convince you, he is simply blooming. He is a waterfall, or he is a wind blowing through the trees, or he is just a song of the birds – no meaning, but much significance. You have to absorb that significance, only then will you be able to understand.So listen, but don’t think. And then it is possible for much to happen within you, because I tell you: this man – this Sosan about whom nothing much is known – was a man of power, a man who has come to know. And when he says something he carries something of the unknown to the world of the known. With him enters the divine, a ray of light into the darkness of your mind.Before we enter into his words, remember the significance of the words, not the meaning; the music, the melody, not the meaning; the sound of his soundless mind, his heart, not his thinking. You have to listen to his being, the waterfall.How to listen? Just be silent. Don’t bring your mind in. Don’t start thinking, “What is he saying?” Just listen without deciding this way or that, without saying whether he is right or wrong, whether you are convinced or not. He does not bother about your conviction, you also need not bother about it. Simply listen and delight. Such persons like Sosan are to be delighted in; they are natural phenomena.A beautiful rock – what do you do with it? You delight in it. You touch it, you go around it, you feel it, the moss on it. What do you do with clouds moving in the sky? You dance on the earth, you look at them, or you just keep quiet and lie down on the ground and look at them and let them float. And they fill you. Not only the outer sky – by and by, the more you become silent, they fill your inner sky also. Suddenly you are not there, only clouds are moving, in and out. The division is dropped, the boundary is no longer there. You have become the sky and the sky has become you.Treat Sosan as a natural phenomenon. He is not a man. He is godliness, he is Tao, he is a buddha.Before we try to move into his significance, a few things have to be understood. They will give you a push.Mind is a disease. This is a basic truth the East has discovered. The West says mind can become ill, can be healthy. Western psychology depends on this: the mind can be healthy or ill. But the East says mind as such is the disease, it cannot be healthy. No psychiatry will help, at the most you can make it normally ill.So there are two types of illness with mind: normally ill – that means you have the same illness as others around you; or abnormally ill – that means you are something unique. Your disease is not ordinary, exceptional. Your disease is individual, not of the crowd; that’s the only difference. Normally ill or abnormally ill, but mind cannot be healthy. Why?The East says the very nature of mind is such that it will remain unhealthy. The word health is beautiful. It comes from the same root as the word whole. Health, healing, whole, holy – they all come from the same root.The mind cannot be healthy because it can never be whole. Mind is always divided; division is its base. If it cannot be whole, how can it be healthy? And if it cannot be healthy, how can it be holy? All minds are profane. There is nothing like a holy mind. A holy man lives without the mind because he lives without division.Mind is the disease. And what is the name of that disease? Aristotle is the name, or if you really want to make it look like a disease then you can coin a word: aristotilitis. Then it looks exactly like a disease. Why is Aristotle the disease? Because Aristotle says, “Either this or that. Choose!” And choice is the function of the mind; mind cannot be choiceless.Choose and you are in the trap, because whenever you choose, you have chosen something against something else. If you are for something, you must be against something; you cannot be only for, you cannot be only against. When the “for” enters, the “against” follows as a shadow. When the “against” is there, the “for” must be there – hidden or not hidden.When you choose, you divide. Then you say, “This is good, that is wrong.” And life is a unity. Existence remains undivided, existence remains in a deep unison. It is oneness. If you say, “This is beautiful and that is ugly,” mind has entered, because life is both together. And the beautiful becomes ugly, and the ugly goes on becoming beautiful. There is no boundary, there are no watertight compartments. Life goes on flowing from this to that.Mind has fixed compartments. Fixedness is the nature of mind and fluidity is the nature of life. That’s why mind is obsession; it is always fixed, it has a solidness about it. And life is not solid; it is fluid, flexible, it goes on moving to the opposite.Something is alive this moment, the next moment it is dead. Someone was young this moment, the next moment he has become old. The eyes were so beautiful, now they are no longer there – just ruins. The face was so rose-like, now nothing is there – not even a ghost of the past. Beautiful becomes ugly, life becomes death, and death goes on taking new birth.What to do with life? You cannot choose. If you want to be with life, with the whole, you have to be choiceless.Mind is a choice. Aristotle made it the base of his logic and philosophy. You cannot find a man more distant from Sosan than Aristotle, because Sosan says, “Neither this nor that – don’t choose.” Sosan says, “Be choiceless.” Sosan says, “Don’t make distinctions!” The moment you make a distinction, the moment choice enters, you are already divided, fragmentary; you have become ill, you are not whole.Remember, if you ask a Christian who does not really belong to Jesus, who basically belongs to Aristotle… Christianity is more Aristotle-based than Christ-based. Jesus was more like Sosan. He says, “Don’t judge. Judge ye not!” He says, “Don’t make any choice. Don’t say, ‘This is good and that is bad!’ That is not your concern. Let the whole decide. Don’t be a judge.” But Christianity is not really Jesus-oriented. The founders of Christianity were more Aristotelian than Christian.You cannot make a church out of Sosan or Jesus. How can you make a church if you remain choiceless? A church has to be for something and against something; it has to be for God and against the Devil. And in life God and the Devil are not two, they are one. The Devil is one face and God is another face of the same energy – they are not two.Sometimes he comes as a Devil and sometimes he comes as a God. And if you can go deep and look, you will find they are the same. Sometimes he comes as a thief and sometimes he comes as a virtuous man. Sometimes you will find him in respectable quarters and sometimes with those who are not respected but condemned. He moves, he is a movement. And no shore is too distant for him to reach, nobody is beyond him – he moves in everybody.Jesus makes no distinctions, but Christianity makes distinctions because a religion has to – a religion has to become a morality. And once a religion becomes a morality it is no longer a religion. Religion is the greatest daring possible. It takes the greatest courage to be choiceless, because the mind says, “Choose!” The mind says, “Say something! This is wrong, that is good. This is beautiful, this is ugly. I love this, I hate that.” Mind says, “Choose!” Mind has a temptation to divide. Once you divide, mind is at ease. If you don’t divide, if you say, “I’m not going to say anything. I’m not going to judge,” mind feels as if it is on its deathbed.Aristotle says A is A and cannot be not A – the opposites cannot meet. Sosan says there are no opposites – they are already meeting, they have always been meeting. This is one of the most fundamental truths to be realized, that opposites are not opposites. It is you who say they are opposites, otherwise they are not opposites. Look existentially and you will feel they are the same energy.You love a person… One woman came to me and she said, “For ten years I have been married to a person and we never quarreled. And now suddenly, what happened? He has left me.”Now, she thinks that if they never quarreled it shows they were in deep love. This is foolish, but this is Aristotelian: the woman is absolutely logical.She said, “We have been married for ten years. We never quarreled, we were never angry at each other.” She is saying, “We were in such deep love that we never fought about anything. There was not even a single moment of conflict. And now, what happened? Suddenly he has left me! Has he gone mad? Our love was so deep.” She is wrong.If love is deep then there are bound to be some quarrels. Sometimes you will fight. And the fight is not going to break the love, it enriches it. If love is there, it will be enriched by fighting; if love is not there, then you part, you separate. Ten years is a long time – even twenty-four hours is too long to be constantly in one state of mind, because mind moves to the opposite.You love a person; sometimes you feel angry. Really, you feel angry only because you love. Sometimes you hate! Sometimes you would like to sacrifice yourself for your lover, and sometimes you would like to kill the lover. And both are you.If you have not quarreled for ten years it means there was no love at all. It means it was not a relationship. And you were so afraid that any anger, any conflict, any slight thing could break down the whole thing. You were so afraid you never quarreled. You never believed that the love could go deeper than the quarrel, that the quarrel would be momentary and after the quarrel you would fall into each other’s arms more deeply. No, you never trusted that. That’s why you managed not to fight. And it is not something to be surprised about, that the man has left. I said, “I am surprised that he remained with you for ten years. Why?”One man came to me and he said, “Something has gone wrong with my son. I have known him for twenty years – he was always obedient. Such a good boy you cannot find anywhere. He never disobeyed, he never went against me. And now suddenly he has become a hippie. Now suddenly he doesn’t listen. He looks at me as if I am not his father at all. He looks at me as if I am a stranger. And for twenty years he was so obedient. What has happened to my son?”Nothing has happened. This is what was to be expected, because if a son really loves his father he disobeys also. Whom else should he disobey? If a son really loves his father and trusts him, sometimes he goes away also – because he knows the relationship is so deep that by disobeying it is not going to be broken. Rather, on the contrary, it will be enriched. The opposite enriches.Really, the opposite is not opposite. It is just a rhythm, a rhythm of the same; you obey and then you disobey – it is a rhythm. Otherwise, you just going on obeying, obeying, and everything becomes monotonous and dead. Monotony is the nature of death, because the opposite is not there.Life is alive. The opposite is there, a rhythm is there. You move, you come back; you depart, you arrive; you disobey, then you obey also; you love and you hate. This is life, but not logic. Logic says if you love you cannot hate. If you love, how can you be angry? If you love in this way then you love in a monotonous way, the same pitch. But then you will become tense, then it is impossible to relax.Logic believes in linear phenomena: you move in one line. Life believes in circles: the same line goes up, comes down, becomes a circle.You must have seen the Chinese circle of yin and yang. That is how life is: opposites meeting. That circle of yin and yang is half white, half black. In the white there is a black spot, and in the black there is a white spot. The white is moving into the black, and the black is moving into the white – it is a circle. The woman moving into the man, the man moving into the woman – this is life. And if you observe minutely, you will see it within you.A man is not a man twenty-four hours a day, he cannot be – sometimes he is a woman. A woman is not a woman twenty-four hours a day – sometimes she is a man also. They move to the opposite. When a woman is angry she is no longer a woman; she becomes more aggressive than any man and she is more dangerous than any man, because her manhood is purer and never used. So whenever she uses it, it has a sharpness no man can compete with. It is just like soil which has not been used for many, many years; then you throw the seeds – and a bumper crop!A woman sometimes becomes a man, but when she becomes one, then no man can compete. Then she is very dangerous; then it is better for the man to submit. And that’s what all men do – they become submissive, they surrender, because immediately the man has to become the woman, otherwise there will be trouble. Two swords in one seat – there will be trouble. If the woman has become the man, if she has changed role, immediately the man becomes the woman. Now everything is re-established. Again the circle is complete.And whenever a man becomes submissive and surrenders, that surrender has a purity no woman can compete with – because ordinarily he is never in that posture, in that game. Ordinarily he stands and fights. Ordinarily he is a will, not surrender. But whenever he surrenders it has an innocence that no woman can compete with. Look at a man in love – he becomes just a small child.But this is how life moves. And if you understand it then you are not worried at all. Then you know: the lover has departed, he will come back; the beloved is angry, she will love. Then you have patience. With Aristotle you cannot have any patience, because if a lover has departed, he has departed on a linear journey – no coming back, it is not a circle. But in the East we believe in the circle; in the West they believe in the line.The Western mind is linear, the Eastern mind is circular. So in the East a lover can wait. He knows that the woman who has now left him will come back. She is already on the way, she must be already repenting, she must have already repented, she must be coming; sooner or later she will knock at the door. Just wait, because the opposite is always there.And whenever a woman comes back after anger, then love again is fresh. Now it is not repetition. The gap of anger destroyed the past. Now she is again a young girl, a virgin girl. Again she falls in love – everything becomes fresh.If you understand this, then you are not against anything. You know even anger is beautiful, even a quarrel here and there gives tone to life. And everything helps the richness. Then you accept, then deep in acceptance you are patient, then there is no impatience and no hurry. Then you can wait and pray and hope and dream.Otherwise, if life is linear, as Aristotle thinks or – as Western thinking has moved from Aristotle to Bertrand Russell – as Bertrand Russell thinks, then life has much impatience. Nobody is going to come back; then you are always trembling, afraid, and then you become suppressive. Then you may stay with a woman for ten years or for ten lives, but that staying is with a stranger. You are controlling yourself, she is controlling herself, and there is no meeting. Life is not logic. Logic is just a part – of course, very clean-cut, categorized, compartmentalized, divided – but life is messy. But what to do? It is so. It is not so compartmentalized, so clear-cut, divided. It is a chaos. But logic is dead and life is alive, so the question is whether to choose consistency or to choose life.If you are too much for consistency you will become dead, and deader and deader, because consistency is possible only if you drop the opposite completely. Then you love and only love and only love and are never angry, never hate, never fight. You obey, only obey – never disobedience, never rebellion, never going away. But then everything becomes stale, then the relationship becomes poisonous – then it kills.This Sosan is not for logic, he is for life. Now, try to understand the significance of his words.Says Sosan:The great way is not difficultfor those who have no preferences.When love and hate are both absenteverything becomes clear and undisguised.Make the smallest distinction, however,and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.If you wish to see the truththen hold no opinion for or against….The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikesis the disease of the mind.Just like Chuang Tzu: “Easy is right.”The great way is not difficult…If it appears difficult, it is you who make it difficult. The great way is easy.How can it be difficult? Even trees follow it, rivers follow it, rocks follow it. How can it be difficult? Even birds fly in it and fish swim in it. How can it be difficult? Man makes it difficult, mind makes it difficult – and the trick to make any easy thing difficult is to choose, to make a distinction.Love is easy, hate is easy, but you choose. You say, “I will only love, I will not hate.” Now everything has become difficult. Now you cannot even love! To breathe in is easy, to breathe out is easy. You choose; you say, “I will only breathe in, I will not breathe out.” Now everything has become difficult.The mind can say, “Why breathe out? Breath is life. Simple arithmetic: go on breathing in, don’t breathe out and you will become more and more alive. More and more life will be accumulated. You will become a great treasure of life. Only breathe in, don’t breathe out because breathing out is death.”Remember, the first thing a child has to do when he is born is to breathe in. And the last thing when a man dies will be to breathe out. Life begins with breathing in and death begins with breathing out. Each moment when you breathe in you are reborn; each moment when you breathe out you are dead, because breath is life. That’s why Hindus have called it prana: prana means life. Breath is life.It is simple logic, simple arithmetic. There is not much trouble, you can make it plain: breathe in more and more and don’t breathe out, then you will never die. If you breathe out you will have to die. And if you do it too much you will die soon! Arithmetic – simple, easy, appears easy. So what is a logician supposed to do? A logician will only breathe in, never breathe out.Love is breathing out, hate is breathing in.So what to do? Life is easy if you don’t decide, because then you know breathing in and breathing out are not two opposite things; they are two parts of one process. And those two parts are organic parts, you cannot divide them. And if you don’t breathe out? The logic is wrong. You will not be alive; you will be simply, immediately dead.Try – just breathe in and don’t breathe out. You will understand. You will become very, very tense. The whole being would like to breathe out because this is going to be death. If you choose, you will be in difficulty. If you don’t choose, everything is easy. Easy is right.If man is in difficulty it is because of too many teachers who have poisoned his mind, who have been teaching him: “Choose this! Don’t do this, do that!” Their do’s and don’ts have killed you. And they look logical. If you go to argue with them they will win the argument. Logic will help them: “Look! It is so simple: why breathe out if it is death?”And this has happened not only with breathing, or even with breathing. There are schools of Yoga which say that your life is counted through breath; your life is counted not in years but in breaths – so breathe slowly. If you take twelve breaths in one minute you will die soon; take six, or three, then you will live long.Nobody has succeeded, but people go on trying: breathe slowly. Why? – because if you breathe slowly the breath will be going out less and less, so less death will happen to you, or, the longer you will be able to live. The only thing that will happen will be that your zest for life will be lost. It will not be lengthened, but it may appear long.It is said that married people live longer than bachelors, so somebody asked Nasruddin, “Is it true, Nasruddin?”Nasruddin said, “It appears so. A married man does not live longer, but it appears that he has been living longer.” – because when there is much trouble time seems longer, when there is no trouble time seems shorter.These so-called yogis who go on breathing less and less, and slower, only slow down the process of life. They are less alive, that’s all. They will not be alive longer, but less alive. They are not living fully; their candle is not burning perfectly. The zest, the enthusiasm, the dance is lost. They drag themselves, that’s all.And this has happened with sex, because people think with sex death enters. And they are right, because sex energy gives birth to life – so the more sex energy moves out, the more life is moving out. Logical, absolutely Aristotelian, but foolish. And you cannot find greater fools than logicians. It is logical that life-energy comes from sex – a child is born because of sex, so sex is the source of life – so keep it in. Don’t allow it to go out, otherwise you will be dead. So the whole world has become afraid.But it is the same, just like keeping the breath in: then the whole being wants to throw it out. So your so-called brahmacharis, celibates, who try to keep the sex energy in, the semen in, the whole body wants to throw it out. Their whole life becomes sexual – their minds become sexual, they dream of sex, they think of sex. Sex becomes their obsession because they are trying to do something, logical of course, but not true to life. And they don’t live long, they die soon.This is a new finding, a new research: that a man lives longer if he prolongs his love life as much as possible. If a man can make love at eighty years of age he will live longer. Why? – because the more you breathe out, the more you breathe in. So exactly, if you want more life, breathe out more so you create a vacuum inside and more breath comes in. Don’t think about breathing in; simply exhale as much as you can and your whole being will inhale. Love more – that is breathing out – and your body will gather energy from the whole cosmos. You create the vacuum and the energy comes.It is just like this in every process of life. You eat, but then you become a miser, you become constipated. The logic is right: don’t breathe out. Constipation is choosing breathing in, and being against breathing out. Almost every civilized person is constipated; you can measure civilization through constipation. The more constipated a country the more civilized, because the more logical. Why breathe out? Just go on breathing in. Food is energy. Why throw it out? You may not be aware but this is the unconscious getting logical and Aristotelian.But life is a balance between throwing out and inviting in. You are just a passage. Share, give, and more will be given to you. Be a miser, don’t give, and less will be given to you because you don’t need it.Remember, and watch your life processes. If you are really interested in ultimately understanding enlightenment, remember to give so that more is given to you, whatsoever it is. Breathe out, exhale more. That is what sharing means, giving means.A gift is giving your energies, so more is given to you. But the mind says… It has its own logic, and Sosan calls that logic “the disease.”The great way is not difficult… You make it difficult, you are difficult. The great way is easy……for those who have no preferences.Don’t prefer – just allow life to move. You don’t say to life, “Move this way, go to the north, or go to the south.” You don’t say this – you simply flow with life. You don’t fight against the current, you become one with the current …for those who have no preferences.The great way is easy …for those who have no preferences. And you have preferences – about everything! You bring your mind in about everything. You say, “I like, I don’t like. I prefer this, I don’t prefer that.”When love and hate are both absent…When you have no preferences, all “for” and “against” attitudes are absent, both love and hate are absent. You neither like something nor dislike something, you simply allow everything to happen.…everything becomes clear and undisguised.Make the smallest distinction, however,and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.But your mind will say, “You will become an animal if you don’t prefer. If you don’t choose then what will be the difference between you and a tree?” There will be a difference, a great difference, but not the difference which brings the mind in – a difference which comes through awareness. The tree is choiceless, unconscious; you will be choiceless, conscious. That is what choiceless awareness means and that is the greatest distinction: you will be aware that you are not choosing.And this awareness gives such profound peace. You become a Buddha, you become a Sosan, a Chuang Tzu. The tree cannot become a Chuang Tzu. Chuang Tzu is like the tree, and plus he is like the tree as far as choice is concerned; he is absolutely unlike the tree as far as awareness is concerned. He is fully aware that he is not choosing.When love and hate are both absent… Love and hate both give color to your eyes and then you cannot see clearly. If you love a person, you start seeing things which are not there. No woman is as beautiful as you think when you love her, because you project. You have a dream girl in the mind and that dream girl is projected. Somehow the real girl functions only as a screen.That’s why every love comes to a frustrating point sooner or later, because how can the girl go on playing the screen? She is a real person; she will assert, she will say, “I am not a screen!” How long can she go on fitting in with your projection? Sooner or later you feel they don’t fit. In the beginning she yielded, in the beginning you yielded. You were a projection screen for her; she was a projection screen for you.Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was saying to him – I overheard it – she was saying, “You don’t love me as much as you loved me before, when you were courting me.”Mulla Nasruddin said, “Darling, don’t pay much attention to those things – they were just campaign propaganda. I forgot what you said, you forgot what I said. Now let us be real.”Nobody can play a screen for you forever because it is uncomfortable. How can somebody adjust to your dream? He has his own reality, and the reality asserts.If you love a person, you project things which are not there. If you hate a person, again you project things which are not there. In love the person becomes a god, in hate the person becomes a devil – and the person is neither god nor devil. The person is simply himself or herself. These devils and gods are projections. If you love, you cannot see clearly. If you hate, you cannot see clearly.When there is no liking, no disliking, your eyes are clear, you have a clarity. Then you see the other as he is or as she is. And when you have a clarity of consciousness the whole existence reveals its reality to you. That reality is godliness, that reality is truth.What does it mean? A man like Sosan will not love? His love will have a totally different quality; it will not be like yours. He will love, but his love will not be a choice. He will love, but his love will not be a projection. He will love, but his love will not be a love for his own dream. He will love the real. That love toward the real is compassion.He will not project this way or that. He will not see a god in you or a devil. He will simply see you and he will share because he has enough – and the more you share, the more it grows. He will share his ecstasy with you.When you love, you project. You love not to give; you love to take, you love to exploit. When you love a person you start trying to fix the person according to you, according to your ideas. Every husband is doing that, every wife is doing that, every friend. They go on trying to change the other, the real, and the real cannot be changed – you will only get frustrated.The real cannot be changed, only your dream will be shattered and then you feel hurt. You don’t listen to reality. Nobody is here to fulfill your dream. Everybody is here to fulfill his own destiny, his own reality.A man like Sosan loves, but his love is not an exploitation. He loves because he has got too much, he is overflowing. He is not creating a dream around anybody. He shares with whomsoever comes on his path. His sharing is unconditional, and he does not expect a thing from you. If love expects then there will be frustration. If love expects then there will be unfulfillment. If love expects there is going to be misery and madness.“No,” says Sosan, “neither love nor hate. You simply look at the reality of the other.” This is Buddha’s love: to see the reality of the other, to see the other as he is, just to see the reality – not to project, not to dream, not to create an image, not to try to fix the other according to your image. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised.Mind has to love and hate, and mind has to go on continuously fighting between these two. If you don’t love and don’t hate, you go beyond mind. Where is the mind then within you? When choice disappears, mind disappears. Even if you say, “I would like to be silent,” you will never be silent because you have a preference. This is the problem.People come to me and they say, “I would like to be silent, I don’t want these tensions any more.” I feel sorry for them – sorry because what they are saying is stupid. If you don’t want tensions any more you will create new ones, because this not-wanting is going to create a new tension. And if you want silence too much, if you are after it too much, your silence itself will become a tension. Now you will be more disturbed because of it.What is silence? It is a deep understanding, understanding of the phenomenon that if you prefer, you will be tense. Even if you prefer silence, you will be tense.Understand, feel it – whenever you prefer, you become tense; whenever you don’t prefer, there is no tension, you are relaxed. And when you are relaxed your eyes have a clarity; they are not crowded with clouds and dreams. No thoughts move in the mind; you can see through. And when you can see the true, it liberates. Truth liberates.Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. The smallest distinction, the slightest choice, and you are divided. Then you have a hell and a heaven, and between these two you will be crushed.If you wish to see the truththen hold no opinion for or against….Move without opinion. Move naked, with no clothes, with no opinions about truth, because truth abhors all opinions. Drop all your philosophies, theories, doctrines, scriptures. Drop all rubbish! Go silent, unchoosing, your eyes just ready to see what is, not in any way hoping to see some of your wishes fulfilled. Don’t carry wishes. It is said the path of hell is completely filled with wishes – good wishes, hopes, dreams, rainbows, ideals. The path of heaven is absolutely empty.Drop all the burdens! The higher you want to reach, the less burdened you must be. If you go to the Himalayas you have to unburden yourself completely. Finally, when you reach Gourishankar, Mt Everest, you have to drop everything. You have to go completely naked because the higher you move, the more weightless you need to be. And opinions are weights on you. They are not wings, they are like paperweights; opinionless, without any preference: If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinion for or against….Don’t be a theist and don’t be an atheist if you really want to know what truth is. Don’t say “There is God,” don’t say “There is not,” because whatsoever you say will become a deep desire. And whatsoever is hidden there in the desire you will project.If you want to see God as a Krishna with a flute on his lips, someday you will see him – not because Krishna is there, only because you had a seed of desire that you projected on the screen of the world. If you want to see Jesus crucified, you will see.Whatsoever you want will be projected, but it is just a dream world; you are not coming nearer to the truth. Become seedless within: no opinion, no thought for or against, no philosophy. You simply go to see that which is. You don’t carry any mind. You go mindless.If you wish to see the truththen hold no opinion for or against….The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikesis the disease of the mind.This is …the disease of the mind: what one likes and what one does not like, for and against. Why is the mind divided? Why can’t you be one? You would like, you wish to be one, but you go on watering the divisions, the preferences, likes and dislikes.Just the other day a woman came and she said, “Bless me, I would like your blessings.”But I saw she was troubled, worried, so I asked, “What is the matter?”She said, “But I am already initiated by another master.”A struggle – she wants my blessings but the mind says that I am not her master. She has another master, so what to do? I told her to drop both. It will be easier if I say to her, “Drop the old. Choose me.” It will be easier because then the mind can go on functioning, but the trouble will remain the same. The name of the disease will change, but the disease will remain the same. Again, somewhere else, the same doubt will arise, the same wavering.But if I say, “Drop both,” because that is the only way to reach to a master, when you don’t have any preference this way or that… You simply come empty. You simply come without an opinion. You simply come vacant, receptive. Only then do you come to a master! There is no other way. And if the master is going to become the door to the truth, this is going to be so, because this is the preparation, this is the initiation.A master is to help you to become opinionless, mindless. If the master himself becomes your choice then he will be a barrier. Then you have again chosen, again the mind has been used. And the more you use the mind, the more it is strengthened, the stronger it becomes. Don’t use it.It is difficult because you will say, “What will happen to our love? What will happen to our belonging? What will happen to our beliefs? What will happen to our religion, church and temple?” They are your burdens. Be freed of them, and let them be freed of you. They are keeping you here, rooted, and truth would want you to be liberated. Liberated you reach, with wings you reach, weightless you reach.Says Sosan: The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.How to overcome it? Is there any way to overcome it? No, there is no way. One has simply to understand it. One has simply to look at the facticity of it. One has just to close one’s eyes and look at one’s own life – watch it – and you will feel the truth of Sosan. And when you feel the truth, the disease drops. There is no medicine for it, because if medicine is given to you, you will start liking the medicine. Then the disease will be forgotten but the medicine will be liked, and then the medicine becomes a disease.No, Sosan is not going to give you any medicine, any method. He is not going to suggest to you what to do. He is simply going to insist again and again and again, a thousand and one times, that you understand how you have created this whole mess around you, how you are in such misery. Nobody else has created it; it is your mind’s disease of preference, of choosing.Don’t choose. Accept life as it is in its totality. You must look at the total: life and death together, love and hate together, happiness and unhappiness together; agony and ecstasy together. If you look at them together, then what is there to choose? If you see they are one, then from where can choice enter? If you see agony is nothing but ecstasy, ecstasy nothing but agony; if you can see happiness is nothing but unhappiness; love is nothing but hate, hate is nothing but love – then where to choose? How to choose? Then choice drops.You are not dropping it. If you drop it, that will become a choice – this is the paradox. You are not supposed to drop it, because if you drop it that means you have chosen for and against. Now your choice is for totality. You are for totality and against division, but the disease has entered. It is subtle.You simply understand, and the very understanding becomes the dropping. You never drop it. You simply laugh, and you ask for a cup of tea.Enough for today.

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Hsin Hsin Ming 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hsin Hsin Ming 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sosan continues:When the deep meaning of things is not understoodthe mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.The way is perfect, like vast spacewhen nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or rejectthat we do not see the true nature of things.Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,nor in inner feelings of emptiness.Be serene without striving for activity in the oneness of thingsand such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.When you try to stop activity to achieve passivityyour very effort fills you with activity.As long as you remain in one extreme or the otheryou will never know oneness.Those who do not live in the single wayfail in both activity and passivity,assertion and denial.A few things before we enter this sutra of Sosan. In the West, just a few years back, there was a French hypnotist, Emile Coué; he happened to rediscover one of the basic laws of the human mind. He called it “the law of reverse effect” – that is one of the oldest sutras in Taoist and Zen thinking. Sosan is talking about this law. Try to understand this law, then his sayings will be simple to understand.For example, if you don’t feel sleepy what will you do? You will try to get to sleep – you will make efforts, you will do this and that, but whatsoever you do will bring just the reverse; just that which you need will not come. Just the opposite will happen because any activity, any effort, is against sleep.Sleep is a relaxation. You cannot bring it, you cannot do anything for it to happen. You cannot force it, you cannot will it – it is not a part of your will at all. It is moving into the unconscious, and your will is just a fragment of the conscious.When you move into the unconscious, toward the depth, that fragment which is consciousness, that fragment which is will, is left on the surface. You cannot take your surface to the depth, you cannot take your circumference to the center. So when you make efforts to go to sleep, it is a self-destructive thing. You are doing something which will become just the opposite – you will become more awake. The only way to enter into sleep is not to do anything. If it is not coming, it is not coming. Wait, don’t do anything! Otherwise you will push it further away and a distance will be created. Just wait on the pillow, put off the light, close your eyes, relax and wait. Whenever it comes, it comes. You cannot bring it by any act of your will – will is against the unconscious.And this happens in many things in life: just the opposite comes out of it. If you want to be silent, what will you do? – because silence is just like sleep, you cannot force it. You can allow it to happen, it is a let-go, but there is no way to work it out. What will you do if you want to be silent? If you do anything you will be less silent than ever.If you want to be quiet, what will you do? – because quietness means non-doing. You simply float, you simply relax. And when I say simply relax, I mean simply. No method is to be used for relaxation, because method means again you are doing something.There is a book; the title of it is You Must Relax! And “must” is just against relaxation; the “must” should not be brought in, otherwise you will become more tense.This law was rediscovered by Emile Coué, and he said, “Let things happen, don’t force them.” There are things which can be forced – all that belongs to the conscious mind can be forced. But there are things which cannot be forced. All that belongs to the unconscious, to your depth, cannot be forced.It happens many times: you are trying to remember a name or a face and it is not coming, but still you feel it is just on the tip of your tongue. The feeling is so deep that you feel it is going to come and you try to bring it. And the more you try, the more it is not coming. You even become suspicious whether the feeling is true or not. But you feel…Your whole being says it is there, just on the tip of your tongue. But why is it not coming if it is on the tip of your tongue? It will not come. Do whatsoever you want to do, it will not come.Then you get frustrated, then you feel hopeless, then you drop the whole project. You go in the garden, you start working in the garden, or you start reading the newspaper, or you put on the radio and listen to music – and suddenly it pops up. What happened?It belonged to the unconscious, it was deep in you. And the more you tried, the narrower you became; and the more you tried, the more the unconscious was disturbed. It became a chaos, then everything became unsettled. It was there just on the tip, but because you were too active to bring it out: you were using will, and will cannot bring anything out of your depth. Only surrender brings it, only when you let go.So when you went into the park or into the garden, started reading the newspaper, digging a hole in the earth, listening to the music, you forgot about the whole project; suddenly it was there. This is the law of reverse effect. With the unconscious, remember, will is of no use – not only of no use, it is also dangerous, harmful.Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Bodhidharma, Sosan are the masters of this law of reverse effect. And this is the difference between Yoga and Zen. Yoga makes every effort and Zen makes no effort, and Zen is truer than any Yoga. But Yoga appeals, because as far as you are concerned doing is easy – howsoever hard, but doing is easy.Non-doing is difficult. If someone says, “Don’t do anything,” you are at a loss. You again ask, “What to do?” If someone says, “Don’t do anything,” that is the most difficult thing for you. It should not be so if you understand.Non-doing does not require any qualification. Doing may require qualification, doing may require practice. Non-doing requires no practice. That’s why Zen says enlightenment can happen in a single moment – because it is not a question of how to bring it, it is a question of how to allow it. It is just like sleep: you relax and it is there, you relax and it pops up. It is struggling within your heart to come up. You are not allowing it because you have too much activity on the surface.Have you ever noticed the fact that almost ninety percent of children are born in the night, not in the day? Why? It should be fifty-fifty. Why do they choose the night more? And ninety percent! – because the mother is unconscious, in a let-go. She is sleeping and the child can come out easily.If she is aware, she will make effort and the law of reverse effect will be there. When the mother is awake, she will make every effort so that she goes beyond the pain and the thing is finished, the child is born. And every effort is a barrier; she is putting up hindrances. The more she tries, the narrower becomes the passage, and the child cannot come out.In primitive societies mothers have no pain when they give birth to a child, none at all, no pain. And this is a miracle. When for the first time Western medical science discovered this – that there are still primitive societies where the mothers have no pain at all – they could not believe it. How is it possible?Then many experiments were tried, many research projects, and it was found that it is because they are unconscious. They live like wild animals; there is no fight, no struggle, no forcing. They don’t will anything, they simply float. They are primitive, they don’t have a very conscious mind. The more civilized, the more you have a conscious mind. The more civilized, the more your will is trained, and your unconscious goes further and further, deeper, and there exists a gap.If something is to be done, howsoever difficult, you can find the know-how, how to do it. You can learn the technique; there are experts, you can be trained. But in Zen nobody can be trained. In existence there are no experts and no authorities – cannot be, because it is not a question of know-how, it is a question of relaxing into your being; not doing. The greatest thing will happen to you only when you are not there. And if you are doing something you are bound to be there.Sleep comes when you are not there. Enlightenment also follows the same rule – it comes when you are not there. But when you are doing, how will you be absent at the same time? If you are doing something you will be there. Action feeds the ego. When you are not doing anything the ego cannot be fed. It simply disappears, it dies, it is not there. And when the ego is not there, the light descends.So whatsoever you are doing willfully will be the barrier. In my meditations here, do them, but not willfully. Don’t force them; rather, let them happen. You float in them, you abandon yourself in them. Be absorbed, but not willfully. Don’t manipulate, because when you manipulate you are divided, you become two: the manipulator and the manipulated. Once you are two, heaven and hell are created immediately; then there is vast distance between you and the truth. Don’t manipulate, allow things to happen.If you are doing the Kundalini Meditation, allow the shaking – don’t do it! Stand silently, feel it coming, and when your body starts a little trembling, help it, but don’t do it! Enjoy it, feel blissful about it, allow it, receive it, welcome it, but don’t will it.If you force, it will become an exercise, a bodily physical exercise. Then the shaking will be there, but just on the surface. It will not penetrate you. You will remain solid, stone-like, rock-like within. You will remain the manipulator, the doer, and the body will only be following. The body is not the question, you are the question.When I say shake, I mean your solidity, your rock-like being should shake to the very foundations so it becomes liquid, fluid, melts, flows. And when the rock-like being becomes liquid your body will follow. Then there is no shaker, only shaking; then nobody is doing it, it is simply happening. Then the doer is not.Enjoy it, but don’t will it. And remember, whenever you will a thing you cannot enjoy it. They are reverse, opposites; they never meet. If you will a thing you cannot enjoy it, if you enjoy it you cannot will it.For example, you can will your love. You can do it according to the manuals, but then you will not enjoy it. If you enjoy it you will have to throw away all manuals, all Kinseys and Masters and Johnsons; you will have to throw them all away. You have to forget completely about all that you have learned about love. In the beginning you will be at a loss, because there are no guidelines, no maps. How to start?Just wait, and let your inner energy move, and follow that energy wherever it leads. It may take a little time, but when love comes it overtakes you. You are no longer there. Love is there but there is no lover. Love happens as an energy, but it has no ego within it. Then it is tremendous, then it is a great release. And then love becomes an ecstasy, and you know something that has been known to those who have come to the divine. You know a fragment of it, a drop of the ocean. You know a ray – and then the taste comes to you.Meditation, godliness, enlightenment, nirvana, they all came into being through love, because through love a glimpse was achieved. And when the glimpse was there, daring souls went on an adventure to find the source from where this glimpse comes. Through love, God has been discovered. That’s why Jesus goes on saying, whenever somebody asks, “What is God?” he says, “God is love,” because through love the first glimpse comes.But the process is the same: you cannot will love. If you will, the whole beauty is lost, the whole thing becomes mechanical. You go through the whole ritual, but nothing happens. There is no ecstasy – it is something to be done and be finished. It never reaches to your center, it never shakes your foundations, it never becomes an inner dance. It is not a throbbing of your being, it is just an act on the periphery.Remember, love cannot be willed, and neither can meditation.Throw all knowledge, because knowledge is needed only when you have to do something. When you don’t have to do anything, what knowledge is needed? You don’t need any knowledge. You need just to have a feel, a knack – how to drop, how not to be. And when I say “how” I don’t mean technically, when I say “how” I don’t mean that you have to know a technique. You have simply to search for it.I will suggest two things which will be helpful. One is sleep: try to find out how sleep happens, how you fall into sleep. You may have a ritual but that ritual is not creating sleep, it helps. Everybody has a ritual. Small children have their rituals, a particular posture. Every child has his own posture, he may take his thumb in his mouth. It does not give you sleep, but it helps for that child – he has found his own ritual. If you follow that child you will not fall into sleep.And the same is the case with all techniques of meditation – everybody finds his own ritual. It helps because it gives you a climate. You put off the light, you have a certain incense burning in the room, you have a certain type of pillow, a certain height, softness. You have a certain type of rug, you have a certain posture. This all helps, but this is not the cause of it. If somebody else follows it, this may become a hindrance. One has to find one’s own ritual.A ritual is simply to help you to be at ease and wait. And when you are at ease and waiting, the thing happens. Just like sleep godliness comes to you, just like godliness love comes to you. You cannot will it, you cannot force it.And your whole life has become a problem because you have learned too much how to do things. You have become very efficient in mechanical things because they can be done, but you have become absolutely inefficient in human things, because they cannot be learned and they cannot be technically done; you cannot become efficiency experts in them.Whenever there is a mechanical thing to do there can be a training place for it, but consciousness cannot be trained. And you go after gurus, this and that, to find some technique, some mantra, so that you become enlightened. There is no mantra which can make you enlightened.This is the mantra: Sosan says that you will have to become more understanding: less will, more let-go; less effort, more effortlessness; less doing of the conscious, more swimming in the unconscious.Now try to understand the sutra:When the deep meaning of things is not understoodthe mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.If you understand, there will be peace. If you don’t understand, there will be disturbance, tension and anguish. Whenever somebody is in anguish it shows he has not understood the thing, the deeper meaning of things.And you go on accusing others, that because of them you are in anguish. Nobody here is in anguish because of others. You are in anguish because of your nonunderstanding or your misunderstanding.For example, somebody came to me – a husband, a father of five children – and he said that he was very much disturbed because his wife goes on quarreling, tries to dominate him and the children don’t listen to him. “Their mother has become too influential and the children listen to her, they don’t listen to me. I am nobody and I am in much anguish. Do something for me. Through your grace let my wife become a little more understanding.”I said, “That’s impossible. Through my grace or through anybody’s grace, the other cannot be made more understanding. You can be. And when you ask for the other’s understanding you miss the whole point. Why does the wife look dominating? She looks dominating because you are also struggling for domination. If you are not struggling for domination she will not look dominating. It is a struggle, because you are after the same goal. And what is wrong if the children follow the mother? But you would like the children to follow you, hence the struggle.”Try to understand! Everybody is trying to dominate. That is the nature of the ego, to make every effort to dominate the other. Whether the other is husband, wife, or children or friends, makes no difference – but to dominate, to find ways and means to dominate.And if everybody is trying to dominate and you are also trying to dominate, there will be struggle. The struggle is not because others are trying to dominate, the struggle is because you are not trying to understand how the ego functions.Drop out of it! The others cannot be changed, and you will be unnecessarily wasting your life if you try to change the others. That is their problem. They will suffer if they are not understanding, why should you suffer? Simply understand that everybody is trying to dominate. “I drop out of it, I will not try to dominate.” Your struggle disappears. And a very beautiful thing happens.If you don’t try to dominate, the wife starts feeling foolish, and by and by she starts looking silly to herself – because the other is no longer there to fight. When you fight you strengthen the other’s ego, and this is a vicious circle.When you don’t fight then the other feels he is fighting alone, in a vacuum: fighting with the wind or fighting with a ghost, but not fighting with anybody. And then you give an opportunity for the other also to see, to understand. Then the wife cannot throw the responsibility on you, she has to carry her own responsibility.The same is the problem with everybody because human nature functions similarly, more or less; the differences are only of degrees. If you try to understand, you become a dropout. Not that you drop out of the society, not that you become a hippie and go and make a commune – that is not the point. Psychologically you are no longer in these trips of the ego; domination, aggression, violence, anger. You are no longer part of it. And then a distance is created, a detachedness. Now you can look at things and you can laugh. How foolish man is! And you can laugh. How ridiculous you have always been!It is said about Rinzai that when he got up in the morning he would laugh a belly laugh so loud that the whole monastery – five hundred sannyasins were there – would hear it. In the evening when he went to sleep, he would again have a belly laugh.Many people asked why, but he would simply laugh and he would not answer. When he was dying somebody asked, “One thing: tell us why you were laughing every day, morning and evening, the whole of your life? Nobody knows, and whenever we asked you laughed again. This is the only mystery. Please reveal it before you leave the body.”Rinzai said, “I laughed because of the foolishness of the world. In the morning I laughed because now again I was entering the world and everybody around was a fool. And in the evening I laughed that one day passed so well!”You will laugh, you will not be in anguish. The whole thing is so ridiculous all around, but you cannot see it because you are a part of it. You are so much involved in it you cannot see it. The ridiculousness cannot be known unless you gain a distance, a detachedness.Says Sosan: When the deep meaning of things is not understood the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail. And you gain nothing, you reach nowhere, you simply get disturbed. Where have you reached? What have you gained by your anxiety, tension, disturbedness? What are you? Where are you moving? Nothing is gained. Even if something is gained… It may seem that through your being disturbed you are gaining something. You are not gaining something. On the contrary, you are losing. You are losing the precious moments which can become blissful, the precious time, energy, life, in which you could have flowered. And you cannot flower.But you always think – this is the ignorant point of view – you always think, “The whole world is wrong, and if I could change everybody then I would be happy.” You will never be happy, you cannot be happy. This is the base of unhappiness. Once you understand that it is not for you to change the whole world, the only thing that you can do is to change yourself…Bayazid, a Sufi mystic, has written in his autobiography, “When I was young I thought and I said to God, and in all my prayers this was the base: ‘Give me energy so that I can change the whole world.’ Everybody looked wrong to me. I was a revolutionary and I wanted to change the face of the earth.“When I became a little more mature I started praying: ‘This seems to be too much. Life is going out of my hands – almost half of my life is gone and I have not changed a single person, and the whole world is too much.’ So I said to God, ‘My family will be enough. Let me change my family.’“And when I became old,” says Bayazid, “I realized that even the family is too much, and who am I to change them? Then I realized that if I can change myself that will be enough, more than enough. I prayed to God, ‘Now I have come to the right point. At least allow me to do this: I would like to change myself.’“God replied, ‘Now there is no time left. This you should have asked in the beginning, then there was a possibility.’”This, everybody asks in the end. One who asks in the beginning, he has understood the nature of things. He understands that even to change oneself is not an easy thing. You are a whole world within you; you carry the whole world. All that exists, exists within you. You are a whole universe, not a small thing – if this change can happen you have attained. Otherwise:When the deep meaning of things is not understood,the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.The way is perfect, like vast spacewhere nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or rejectthat we do not see the true nature of things.The way is perfect, like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Everything is as it should be, you just have to settle in it; only you are unsettled. Everything is as it should be. Nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.Can you think of a better universe than this? If you are wise, you cannot; if you are a fool you can. Nothing can be better than this, as it is. The only problem is you are not settled in it. Be settled in it and: The way is perfect, like vast space, and nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Everything is balanced. Only you are the problem; the world is not the problem at all.This is the difference between a political mind and a religious mind, and you are all political minds. A political mind thinks, “I am absolutely okay, everything else is wrong.” So he starts to change the world – a Lenin, a Gandhi, a Hitler, a Mao.The political mind thinks, “Everything is wrong. If everything is settled then it will be beautiful.”A religious mind thinks, “Only I am not settled. Otherwise, everything is as perfect as it can be.”Perfect is the way like vast space: …nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Everything is as it should be, absolutely balanced. Only you are wavering, only you don’t know where to go, only you are divided. Just think: if man disappears from the earth, the world will be absolutely perfect, absolutely beautiful – there will be no problems.Problems come with man, because man’s way of looking at things can go wrong – because man has a consciousness, and that consciousness creates trouble. Because you can be conscious you can divide things. Because you can be conscious you can say, “This is right and that is wrong.” Because you can be conscious you can say, “This is ugly and that is beautiful.”This consciousness is not enough. If it becomes more, if it becomes a circle, perfect consciousness, then again everything is settled.Nietzsche has said – and he has many insights to reveal – he has said that man is a bridge, he is not a being. He is a bridge, something to go beyond. You cannot make a house on the bridge. That’s what Jesus says: “Go through it. Don’t make a house on it, it is just a bridge.” Nietzsche’s sentence is: “Man is just a bridge between two eternities, the eternity of nature and the eternity of God.”Everything is okay in nature, everything is okay in God. Man is a bridge, he is just in the middle, half nature, half God – that is the trouble. Divided, the past belongs to nature, the future belongs to God. Tense, like a rope stretched between two eternities, sometimes moving toward nature, sometimes moving toward God, sometimes this way, sometimes that way; a constant trembling and wavering, unsettled.Become settled, and either way will do. Chuang Tzu is in favor of being settled again in nature. If you settle in nature you become like gods, you become gods. Buddha is in favor of moving ahead and becoming godliness, then you will be settled. Either go back or go to the very end, but don’t stay on the bridge.And this is the thing to be understood – one of the very significant things, one of the foundations – that whether you go back or you go ahead, you reach the same goal. The question is not of backward or forward, the question is not to be on the bridge.Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, they say to fall back into nature, Tao. Shankara, Buddha, Jesus, they say to go ahead, pass through the bridge, reach the divine. This will look very paradoxical, but it is not – because both banks are the same, because this bridge is a circle.Whether you go back or you go forward you reach the same goal, the same point of being at ease, whatsoever you choose. If you feel that let-go is impossible for you, then follow Patanjali: effort, will, striving, seeking. Then you will move forward. If you feel that you can understand the law of reverse effect, not only understand, but let it happen within you, then follow Sosan, Chuang Tzu: fall back. But don’t remain where you are; you will be divided on the bridge. You cannot be at ease there, you cannot make your home there. The bridge is not a place to make a home. It is not a goal, it is just something to be passed.Nietzsche says man is something to be transcended, man is not a being. Animals have being, God has being, man has no being yet. He is just a transition, a transitory stage, a passing from one perfection to another. In between, he is divided.Sosan says fall back, and if you ask me I will say Sosan is easier than Patanjali. The same will happen in the end. Much effort will bring you to effortlessness, no-effort also will bring you to effortlessness – because effort can never be the goal, effort can only be the means. You cannot go on making effort forever and forever. You make effort to reach a state of effortlessness.With Patanjali, effort is the path, effortlessness is the goal; effort is the means, effortlessness is the end. With Sosan effortlessness is the means, effortlessness is the goal. With Sosan the first step is the last step; with Sosan there is no distinction between means and goals. But with Patanjali there is – you have to make many steps.So with Patanjali the enlightenment will be gradual. With Sosan the enlightenment can be instantaneous, in this very moment – it can be sudden. If you can understand Sosan then there is nothing more beautiful than that. But if you cannot understand, then Patanjali is the only way.The way is perfect, like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things. Because we accept or reject, that’s why we cannot see the true nature. Then you bring your ideas, opinions, prejudices, and then you color everything. Otherwise everything is perfect. You have just to look. Pure… A look without any ideas, a look without any rejection. Acceptance… A pure look, as if your eyes don’t have a mind behind them, as if your eyes are just mirrors: they don’t say, “Beautiful. Ugly.” A mirror simply mirrors whosoever comes before it, it has no judgment.If your eyes have no mind behind them, they just mirror. They simply look. They don’t say, “This is good and that is bad” – they don’t condemn, they don’t appreciate. Then everything is as clear as it can be, nothing is to be done. This clarity, these eyes without opinions and prejudices – and you have become enlightened.Then there is no problem to be solved. Then life is no longer a riddle. It is a mystery to be lived, enjoyed, a dance to be danced. Then you are not in any conflict with it, then you are not doing anything here. Then you are simply enjoying, then you are blissful.This is what heaven means: where you are not expected to do anything, where you don’t try to earn bliss – where bliss is natural, where it showers on you. This can happen here and now. It has happened to Sosan, it has happened to me, it can happen to you. If it can happen to one, it can happen to all.Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,nor in inner feelings of emptiness.Be serene, without striving activity in the oneness of thingsand such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.Don’t divide the outer from the inner. Sosan says, “Don’t say, ‘I am interested in the outer.’” There are two types of people, and both will be in misery. C. G. Jung divides humanity into two types: one he calls extroverts, the other he calls introverts. Extroverts are interested in the outer. They are active people, worldly – after wealth, prestige, position, power. They become politicians, they become social reformers, they become great leaders, great industrialists. They are interested in things, the outer world; they are not interested in themselves.Then there are introverts. They are not very active people. If they have to do something they will do, otherwise they have no inclination to do. They would like to remain with closed eyes. They become poets, mystics, meditators, contemplatives. They are not interested in the world, they are interested only in themselves; they close their eyes and they introvert their energies. But Sosan says these both are wrong because they are divided.A person who is an extrovert will always feel inside that something is lacking. He may become a very powerful man: deep inside he will feel he is impotent, powerless. Outwardly he may accumulate much wealth, inwardly he will feel poor. He may be a great success in the world; deep down, if you inquire, he knows he has been a failure. He is imbalanced, he has paid too much attention to the outer. He has moved in one extreme, and whenever there is extreme there is imbalance.And the person who has been the poet, a contemplative, a mystic, who has always remained within himself, will always feel something is lacking because he is not rich in the outer world. And the outer world is also beautiful: flowers are there, and stars, and the sun rises there, and rivers flow and waterfalls sing. He is poor because he has been denying the whole universe; unnecessarily, he has lived in his own cave when he could have moved and known the many mysteries, the million mysteries around. He has remained a closed man, enclosed in himself, imprisoned. These two are the extremes.Avoid extremes. Don’t make a distinction between outer and inner, and don’t become one of Jung’s types, either extrovert or introvert.Sosan says: Be flowing, balancing. Outer and inner are just like the right and left leg. Why choose one? If you choose one, all movement stops. They are like two eyes: if you choose one then you will be able to see, but your vision is not three dimensional anymore, the depth is lost. You have two ears: you can use one, you can be addicted to the idea that you are a left ear type or a right ear type, but then you lose. Then half the world is closed to you.The inner and outer are just like two eyes, two ears, two legs – why choose? Why not use both choicelessly? And why divide? – because you are one! The left leg and the right leg only appear to be two. You flow within both – the same energy, the same being. You look through both your eyes. Why not use inner and outer and give them a balance? Why move to the extreme?Remember, not only have people moved to the extreme, societies have also moved to the extreme. The East has remained introvert, hence the poverty. Who is responsible for it? Millions of men, dying every day. And those who are alive, they are also not alive – they are half starved. Who is responsible for this? – the introverts, the mystics, the poets, who talked too much of the inner and who condemned the outer, who said, “Outside is not for us”; who said, “Outside is wrong”; who said, “The outer world is something to be condemned. Live in the inner.” They raised the inner higher than the outer and the balance was lost.The East has created introverts, but the outer beauty is lost. You see dirtiness all over in the East. I know how difficult it is for a Western man to come and live in the dirtiness of India. It is dirty – who is responsible? Why so much dirtiness? Why so much disease? Why so much ill health, starvation? – because the outer was neglected.We were interested in purifying the inner, so: “Why bother about the outer dirtiness? Let it be. It is material, nothing to worry about. We are interested in the inner purity. Why bother about the body? Why bother about others?”The result is that the East is one sort of imbalance. And the West is another sort: they are extroverts. They have created much wealth never created before, much cleanliness outside, better clothes – emperors may feel envious – better food, better hygienic conditions, beautiful surroundings, everything, but extrovert. And the inner being is poor, the inner being is empty.So the East goes on teaching the West about the inner being. Eastern gurus go on teaching the West how to meditate, and Western gurus go on teaching the East how to be better engineers, how to be better electricians, how to be better city planners, how to create more wealth, how to advance technologically, how to raise the standard of living. So if you have to learn medicine you have to go to the West; if you have to learn meditation you have to come to the East.But both are extremes and both are dangerous. Extremes are always dangerous. And the danger is that the wheel can turn, and the East can become materialist and the West can become spiritualist. There is every possibility that this is going to happen, because now the East is turning communist – that is the extreme of materialism – and the West is becoming too much spiritualist. The danger is there: the wheel may turn, because you are fed up with the outside world you want to move inside, you need an inner trip.You may go on the inner trip. Look at the hippies; they are the future of the West. They are against technology – the same type, the introvert type that has devastated the whole East, that has been catastrophic to the East. They are against technology, they are against outside cleanliness. You cannot find more dirty people than hippies; they will not take a bath, they will not change their clothes. They say these are outside things, they are on the inner trip. They are interested in meditation, but they are not interested in sanitation. No! The same foolishness, the same extreme, the same opposite. It is appealing, because when you have lived on one extreme the mind says, “Now move to the other because this has not been fulfilling. This extreme has failed, so move to the opposite.” But remember, it is easy to move from one extreme to another, but extremes never fulfill. Look at the East: the inner extreme has also not been a fulfillment, it has also been a failure. It is not a question of outer and inner, it is a question of balance. Balance succeeds, imbalance fails.And outer and inner are not two. Where does outer end and inner start? Can you demark, can you make a boundary? Can you say, “Here the outer ends and the inner starts?” Where? They are not divided. Those divisions are of the mind. Inner and outer are one: the outer is just the inner extended, the inner is just the outer penetrating. They are one – two hands, two legs, two eyes of one being.Is the outer, outside of existence? It cannot be, because nothing can be outer to existence, nothing can be out of it. The whole must include the outer and the whole must include the inner. For the whole there is nothing like outer and nothing like inner. This is what Sosan says. He says: Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, nor in inner feelings of emptiness. Be serene without striving activity in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.People come to me – and mind is so cunning – they come to me and they say, “We would like to take sannyas but we want inner sannyas, not outer. We will not change clothes.” And they say, “Why outer? Let it be just inner!” They don’t know what they are saying. Where does the inner start?When you eat food you never say, “Let it be inner.” When you are thirsty and you drink water, you never say, “Let it be inner. Thirst is inner, so why take outer water?” But where does the water end and where does the thirst start? – because if you take water the thirst disappears, so it means there is a meeting. Somewhere the outer water meets the inner thirst, otherwise how can it disappear?You feel hungry and you take food. Food is outer, hunger is inner; for inner hunger why take outer food? Why be foolish? Take something inner. But there is no inner food. Hunger is inner, food is outer, but somewhere the food goes in. It changes territory: it becomes your blood, it becomes your bones. It becomes the very stuff your mind is made of, it becomes your thinking.Food becomes your thought. And if food becomes your thought, remember, food will also become your no-thought. Food becomes your mind, food becomes your meditation. Without mind can you meditate? Without mind how will you become no-mind? Without thinking how will you drop thinking? Mind is very subtle food, no-mind is the subtlest food – but there is no division.So when you want to take sannyas, even the color transcends territory. It starts from the outer and by and by penetrates into the deeper. It colors your very being; even the clothing touches your soul. It has to be so because outer and inner are not two, they are one. A simple gesture – it looks outer, goes to the very being, and it comes from there. Remember, don’t play games and don’t divide existence. It is undivided.When you love a person you would like to hug the body. You will not say, “I love you, but I love you in the inner.” There was a fat girl here, very very fat. She told me, “I have got only one boyfriend and he also says, ‘I love only your spirit, not your body.’”She felt very hurt, because when you say to a person, “I only love your soul, not your body,” what does it mean? When you love a person you love totally, you cannot make divisions. This is a cunning trick. That boy does not really love the girl, he is playing a game. He wants to say, “I don’t love,” but he cannot say that.If you don’t want to take sannyas, don’t take it! But don’t play games, don’t be cunning, don’t try to be clever. Don’t say, “This is outer and I would like something inner.”In existence, the outer meets the inner, the inner meets the outer; they are two wings of one being. And no bird can fly with one wing, and no being can grow with one wing – you need both. This world needs godliness as much as godliness needs this world. This world cannot exist without godliness; godliness also cannot exist without this world.I love one rabbi – his name is Baal Shem, a Jewish mystic, one of the few enlightened Jews. He used to say in every prayer, “Remember, as much as I need you, you also need me. Without Baal Shem, where will you be?” He used to say to God, “I need you, you also need me. Without Baal Shem, where will you be? Who will pray?”Remember that. He knows something, he is right. The inner needs the outer, because the outer is nothing but the inner extended. The outer needs the inner, because the inner is nothing but the center of the periphery.Can there be a center without a periphery? Can there be a periphery without a center? It is impossible. How can you have a center without a circumference? If you have a center, if you call it a center, that very moment a circumference comes in. How can you have a circumference if there is no center? It may not be visible but it is there, otherwise the circumference cannot be there. Then, if you look rightly and deeply, the circumference is nothing but the center extended, and the center is nothing but the circumference in seed, condensed, concentrated, in essence.Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,nor in inner feelings of emptiness.Be serene without striving for activity in the oneness of thingsand such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.When you try to stop activity to achieve passivityyour very effort fills you with activity.This is the law of reverse effect.When you try to stop activity to achieve passivityyour very effort fills you with activity.As long as you remain in one extreme or the otheryou will never know oneness.Those who do not live in the single wayfail in both activity and passivity,assertion and denial.Don’t try to be passive because effort belongs to activity. Nobody can try to be passive. Then what to do? – be totally active, and then passivity comes. It follows like a shadow, it has to come. Think perfectly and then no-thinking comes. You cannot drop thinking. Nothing can be dropped which is incomplete, only the perfect can be dropped. In fact, the perfect drops itself automatically.Be active. The activity itself creates the situation in which passivity happens. If you have been active the whole day, totally active whatsoever you were doing – digging a hole in the garden or working in a factory or in a shop or teaching in a school. Whatsoever you are doing, do it totally, and when the evening comes and the sun sets you will have a passivity descending upon you. That passivity is beautiful, it is as beautiful as activity. Nothing to choose! Both are beautiful and both are needed.Don’t try to be passive. How can you try to be passive? You can sit like a buddha, but that passivity will just be skin deep. Deep down you will be in a turmoil, you will be boiling, a volcano – you can erupt at any moment. You can force the body to sit silently – how will you force the being? The being goes on and on and on. That’s why you cannot stop thinking. People sit in zazen for years, twenty years, twenty-five years, sitting for six hours, continuously just trying to make the mind silent, and it goes on working, goes on working, goes on working.Hence my emphasis on active meditations. That’s a balance. First, be active so totally that passivity follows automatically. When you have been active and the whole energy has moved, you would like to rest. If you have not been active, how can rest follow?Logic will say something absolutely different. Logic will say, “Practice rest the whole day, so in the night you can rest beautifully.”Mulla Nasruddin went to his doctor. Coughing, he entered. The doctor said, “Still coughing? But it seems better.”Nasruddin said, “It has to, because the whole night I practiced it.”If the whole day you practice rest, don’t expect any sleep in the night. Practicing rest will not bring more rest; practicing rest will bring activity. Then lying on your bed you will think, and move from this side to that. You will be doing exercises the whole night. And if you force your body then the mind will have to substitute, then the mind will go on in nightmares.No, a wise man balances, and he knows life balances itself. If you do one – but totally, so nothing is left, the whole energy has enjoyed activity – then rest is automatic, then rest follows. And when you enjoy rest then activity follows, because when you rest you gain energy, you become rejuvenated. Then the whole body is filled, flooded with energy. Now, again you have to share it, and in activity you have to release it. Again you will be filled.It is just like clouds: they have to rain, again they will be filled – the ocean is there to fill them. They have to rain, again they will be filled. The river has to pour itself into the ocean, it will be filled again. The more it pours, the more it will be filled.Sosan says: Be active totally, then you will be able to be passive totally. Then both the extremes meet and a subtle balance is achieved. That subtle balance is samyaktva, that subtle balance is tranquility. That subtle balance is the highest peace possible, the peak, the climax, the crescendo, because when two things balance – outer and inner, activity and passivity – suddenly you transcend them both. When they both balance you are no longer this, no longer that. Suddenly you are a third force – the onlooker, the witness. But you cannot strive for it.When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity your very effort fills you with activity. As long as you remain in one extreme or the other you will never know oneness. Transcend extremes. Don’t be a worldly man and don’t be a so-called spiritual man. Don’t be a theist, don’t be an atheist. Don’t be mad for outer wealth and don’t be obsessed with inner tranquility. Balance – balance should be the motto.Those who do not live in the single way fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial. And this is the result: those who choose extremes fail in both, because if you go on being active and active and active, and no passivity is allowed, from where are you going to revitalize yourself? You will become an empty shell, impotent, powerless, poor.That happens to so-called successful people in the world: politicians, presidents, prime ministers. By the time they have achieved, they have lost everything. They are no longer there. Success is there, but in the bargain they have sold themselves, they are no longer there. And the same happens to those who choose the inner, the introverts: by the time they reach inside, they find only turmoil all around.If you choose the extreme, you will fail in both. If you don’t choose, you will succeed in both. Balance succeeds, extremes fail. This balance is called by Buddha the middle path, majjhim nikaya; by Confucius, “the golden mean.”Just be in the middle. This is the greatest skill and art, just to be in the middle, not choosing, not moving left, not moving right. Don’t be a leftist and don’t be a rightist – just be exactly in the middle.If you are exactly in the middle you transcend the world. Then you are no longer a man, no longer a woman. That’s what Jesus says. Then you are no longer a materialist, no longer a spiritualist. Then no longer are you alive, no longer will you be dead.Neither this nor that – the bridge is passed over. You have reached the goal. And the goal is not somewhere in the future, it is here between two extremes. Neither hate nor love.Always remember, wherever you find two extremes, don’t choose. Just try to find a balance in between. It will be difficult in the beginning just because of the old habit.It happened…Mulla Nasruddin was ill and he was hospitalized. After just a few minutes somebody knocked on the door and a snappy little woman entered.She said, “I am your doctor. Undress, I have come to examine you.”Mulla asked, “Do you mean completely?”The doctor said, “Yes, that’s what I mean.”So he undressed. The woman checked, examined him. Then she said, “Now you can get into bed. Do you have any questions?”Mulla Nasruddin said, “Only one: why did you bother to knock?”The woman said, “Just old habit.”Even in your gestures, old habits persist. Habits are easy to follow because you need not be aware – they go on, on their own. Awareness is difficult because it has never been a habit for you.You choose easily: you condemn, appreciate easily; you reject, accept easily. You say, “This is good, that is wrong” easily, because this has become a habit: for millions of lives, you have always been choosing. This is just a robot-like phenomenon.Without any awareness, the moment you see something, you have decided and judged. A flower is there: you look and you say, “Beautiful,” or, “Not beautiful.” Immediate judgment comes; with the perception, judgment comes. Then you will never be able to remain in the middle.Somebody came to Chuang Tzu and he talked about a man in town and said, “He is a sinner, a very bad man, a thief,” and condemned him in many, many ways.Chuang Tzu listened and said, “But he plays the flute beautifully.”Then came another man, and the first was sitting there, and the other said, “This man in the town is really a beautiful flute player.”Chuang Tzu said, “But he is a thief.”Both were present, so they said, “What do you mean?”Chuang Tzu said, “Just balancing. And who am I to judge? – he is a thief, he is a good flute player. For me there is no rejection, no acceptance. For me there is no choice. He is whatsoever he is. Who am I to judge or choose this extreme or that? For me he is neither good nor bad. He is himself and that is his business. Who am I here to say anything? I had to say something just to balance you both.”It is difficult not to choose, but try, and in everything. When you feel hate, try to move to the middle. When you feel love, try to move to the middle. Whatsoever you feel, try to move to the middle. And you will be surprised that there is a point between every two extremes where both cease to exist – when neither do you feel hate nor do you feel love. This is what Buddha called upeksha, indifference.Indifference is not the right word: upeksha means such a middle point from where you are neither this nor that. You cannot say, “I love,” you cannot say, “I hate.” You simply cannot say anything, you are simply in the middle. You are not identified. A transcendence happens, and transcendence is the flowering. That is the maturity to be attained, that is the goal.Enough for today.

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Hsin Hsin Ming 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hsin Hsin Ming 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sosan said:To deny the reality of thingsis to miss their reality;to assert the emptiness of thingsis to miss their reality.The more you talk and think about it,the further astray you wander from the truth.Stop talking and thinking,and there is nothing you will not be able to know.The reality is always there, waiting just near your heart, near your eyes, near your hands. You can touch it, you can feel it, you can live it – but you cannot think it. Seeing is possible, feeling is possible, touching is possible, but thinking is not possible.Try to understand the nature of thinking. Thinking is always about, it is never direct. You can see the reality but you will have to think about it, and about is the trap, because whenever you “think about” you have moved away. “About” means indirect. “About” means you will not see this flower here and now, you will think about it, and the “about” will become a barrier. Through that “about” you will never reach to this flower.Seeing is direct, touching is direct, thinking is indirect. That’s why thinking misses. A lover can know the reality, even a dancer can know it, a singer can feel it, but a thinker goes on missing it.I have heard about one Jewish philosopher. He was an ordinary peasant but very philosophical. His name was Yossel. He would think about everything, as philosophers do. It was very difficult for him to do anything because thinking would take all his time, and by the time he was ready the opportunity was lost.Once he went to the market, to a nearby village, to sell his wheat. He told his wife, “As soon as I am able to sell the wheat, I will immediately send you a telegram.”He sold the wheat with much profit so he wrote a telegram, went to the post office, filled in the form – and then started thinking about it.He wrote: “Wheat sold profitably. Coming tomorrow. Love and kisses, Yossel.”Then he started thinking and he thought, “My wife will think I have gone mad. Why “profitably”? Am I going to sell my wheat at a loss?” So he crossed out the word profitably. Then he became more concerned, because if he could miss and write a wrong word he may have made other errors also. So he looked, started thinking about each word.Then he said, “Why ‘coming tomorrow’? Am I going to come next month, or next year? My wife knows that I will come as soon as the wheat is sold.” So he crossed out the words coming tomorrow.Then he thought, “My wife already knows that I have come to sell the wheat, so why write, ‘sold wheat’?” He crossed that out too.And then he started laughing. He said, “I am writing to my own wife. Why should I write ‘love and kisses’? Am I writing to somebody else’s wife? And is it her birthday or Yom Kippur or something?” He crossed that out too.Now only his name remained: Yossel. He said to himself, “Yossel, have you gone mad? Your wife already knows your name.” So he tore up the telegram, happy that he had saved much money and foolishness.But this is how it happens: if you go on thinking “about” you miss the whole of life – everything is crossed out by and by. In the end you are also crossed out: not only is the word crossed out, you are also in the end crossed out. Thinking becomes like smoke; everything moves into it and everything is finished. And action becomes impossible – even to send a telegram is not possible. Action becomes impossible because action is direct and thinking is indirect. They never meet.This is the problem in the world: people who think never act; and people who don’t think go on acting. The world is in misery. People who are fools go on acting because they never think, they jump into everything. Hitlers and Napoleons and Maos go on doing things, and wise people, the so-called thinkers – Aristotle, or Kant, or Hegel –go on thinking, they never do anything.The problem for a man who is seeking reality is how to stop the vicious circle of thinking, yet be aware – because fools also don’t think, but they are not aware. Be aware: the energy that moves into thinking should become awareness. Consciousness that goes on in a vicious circle with thinking should be retained, purified. Thinking should stop; the whirling of consciousness should stop, but not consciousness. Consciousness should become more crystallized. And action should be there, action should not stop.Awareness plus action, and you will attain reality immediately. And not only you – you will create a situation in which others can also attain reality. You will become a milieu, a climate around which things will start happening. That’s what happened with a Buddha, with a Sosan, with a Chuang Tzu.Remember: action is good, thinking is a vicious circle; it never leads anywhere. So thinking has to stop but not action. There are people who will go on thinking: action will stop. That’s how it happens when a person renounces life, moves to the forest or the Himalayas. He renounces action, not thinking. He renounces the world where action was needed. He is renouncing reality itself, because through action you come in contact with reality. Seeing is action, moving is action, dancing is action, painting is action. Whatsoever you do, you come in contact with reality. You have to become more and more sensitive in your doing. Doing is not to be renounced.Action should be totally there, because that is the passage through which you move into reality, and reality moves into you. Try to understand, because this is very basic – basic to me: renounce thinking, don’t renounce action.There are people who go on thinking, and there are people who go on renouncing action. But in the Himalayas what will they do? Then not moving into action, the whole energy will move into thinking. They will become great philosophers. But philosophy is a fool’s land: you live in words, not in realities. Love disappears, only the word love is retained. God disappears – because he was there in the fields, in the market, in the world – but the word God is retained. Actions disappear, only concepts are carried. Your head becomes your whole being.Avoid this. Never renounce action, only renounce thinking. But if you renounce thinking there is a possibility you may become unconscious – or you may become a fool. You may start doing anything whatsoever, because now you don’t know what to do, and you don’t think. You may go crazy. Thinking is to be renounced, but you are not to become more unaware, more unconscious. You have to become more conscious.This is the whole art of meditation: how to be deep in action, how to renounce thinking, and how to convert the energy that was moving into thinking, into awareness. It is going to be very delicate and subtle, because if you miss a step you fall into infinite ignorance.It is easy to drop thinking, but then you go to sleep. Every day in deep sleep it happens: you renounce, thinking stops – but then you are no longer there, consciousness drops. Your consciousness has become too attached, associated with thinking, so whenever thinking stops you fall into a coma.And this is the problem. One has to renounce thinking and not fall into a coma, because the coma will not lead you to reality. If you fall unconscious you are not going into reality, you are simply fast asleep: the conscious has merged into the unconscious. Just the reverse has to be attained: the unconscious merges into the conscious. If the conscious falls into the unconscious you fall into a coma, and if the unconscious falls into the conscious and becomes conscious itself, you become enlightened, you become a Buddha, a Sosan.And it is very easy to help the conscious fall down into the unconscious, because it is a very small fragment. One tenth of your being is conscious, nine tenths of your being is unconscious. Just a small fragment has become conscious, and that too is always wavering. Any moment it can fall, it is very easy.That’s how it happens in intoxication: you take alcohol, the conscious falls into the unconscious. Hence, the appeal of alcohol in all the ages and all the climates and in all the countries. And this is what happens when you take a drug: the conscious falls into the unconscious.It is beautiful because thinking stops. Sleep is beautiful and you have many, many dreams. And if you are a good dreamer then a drug will give you beautiful dreams – fantastic, more colorful than any dream can be, more luminous. You move into paradise, into a dreamland, but you are not moving into reality.LSD, marijuana, mescaline, or any drug, gives you only a good sleep, and in that good sleep you dream. Those dreams are colorful, and your life is so poor and your life is such a misery that you would even like to live those dreams rather than live in this miserable life. You would choose – if that was the only choice – to live in a beautiful dream rather than to live in this miserable life. This life is like a nightmare. Even if a drug is only going to give you a luminous dream, colorful, three-dimensional, why not take it? – because what is there in this life? Because life is in such a mess, you choose dreams.Drugs, alcohol, or other sorts of intoxicants have always been used by religious people, but through them you never move into reality. Through them you fall into a torpor, into a coma, and in that coma you can have dreams.And if you have been thinking too much about God, you can see God, because you can project your own dreams. Dreams can be directed and guided. If you have been thinking too much of Christ, then while under the influence of a drug Christ will appear to you. This is your own mind playing games. If you have been too much attached to Krishna then he will be standing there with his flute on his lips, singing and dancing. If a Hindu, a devotee of Krishna, takes LSD he will see Krishna, and a Christian will see Jesus, and a Buddhist will see Buddha – but these are mind projections.Reality is miserable, but don’t hanker after dreams, because if you hanker after dreams then there is only one way: how to help the conscious become unconscious again. A small part has come up out of unconsciousness, and that is the beauty of a human being; agony and ecstasy both, but that is the beauty of a human being – that he has become an island in a vast unconscious. This island has to grow higher and higher so it becomes a continent. Through drugs it will again go underwater, you will live again the life of an animal or a tree: beautiful in themselves but not worthy of you, because you are losing so much. And you could have attained reality; that island could have become a continent.But not only drugs – there are other subtle means also to help the conscious become unconscious. Through music it can be done, through chanting it can be done. If you repeat a mantra continuously you will fall asleep, because anything monotonous brings a coma.They are subtle means, not like drugs on the surface. In every temple, church, it is going on – and temples and churches are against drugs, and they don’t know what they are doing. They are also using subtle drugs, not so crude as LSD or marijuana but still drugs – because when you chant a certain word continuously it gives you sleep, it cannot give you anything else. You relax. The very chanting gives you a deep boredom. The same word “Ram, Ram, Ram,” you go on, you go on, you go on. What will you do? Because mind remains alert only if something new is happening, otherwise mind goes to sleep. If something new is happening then mind is alert. If nothing new is happening, only, “Ram, Ram, Ram,” a chanting, and you know that again and again it will happen, infinitely, the mind starts feeling sleepy.Every mother knows this: whenever a child is not going to sleep she will repeat a line of a song, very simple, two, three words, and she will repeat the same again and again, a lullaby. It becomes a mantra and the child goes to sleep. And the mind is the same – whether you are a child or an old man makes no difference – the mind goes into sleep through lullabies, but the process is the same.Thinking has to be stopped, but not by becoming unconscious. Thinking has to be stopped by becoming more conscious, alert, aware, so the energy that is moving in thinking moves into consciousness, and a witnessing arises in you. So remember, not through chanting, but through becoming a witness to the thought process – looking at it, watching it, a watcher on the hills, looking, seeing.If you deeply see and penetrate the words, they start disappearing. A gap comes, an interval. Clouds disappear and the blue sky is seen. You are alert, sensitive, not in a coma. More unconsciousness has been drawn into consciousness; your flame is bigger, more vital, and you can see more, you can touch more, you can smell more. And your action takes on a new quality, the quality of divineness.Whenever a buddha touches you, the touch is different. You also touch, you also feel differences sometimes. You touch a man just casually, and then you don’t move through the hand. Then the hand is dead, closed; you simply say hello with a dead hand. You can feel it, that the hand has been given but yet not given. It was diplomatic. The hand was not alive, not warm, not meeting and merging with you. Sometimes, when in love the hand is given, it is a merging, energy flows through it, it is an opening. Through the hand the being comes to meet you. It is warm, it is alive, it trusts you.When a buddha touches you it is absolutely different, the quality has changed – because whenever the consciousness is total, absolute, every action becomes total. When he touches, he becomes just the touch. He is nothing any more. His whole being is the touch, he flows into it. He is nowhere else, he is in the touch.At that moment he is no longer the eyes, he is no longer the ears; at that moment his whole being is transformed into touch. He becomes a total touch, and you will feel that you are illuminated through his touch – an energy has moved into you. If you were not ready you may even be shocked. If you were ready then you will rejoice, you will be delighted in it.When a buddha looks at you he becomes just the eyes, otherwise is not possible, because he is not divided within. When you look, you look and you do many other things also. Thinking goes on, you go on, divided. Your eyes are not total.When a buddha looks at you his eyes are total. They will be like a burning sun. They will penetrate you, they will make a hole within your being, they will go directly to your heart. You will never be the same again – if you allow it. Otherwise, you can remain closed and he cannot penetrate you. Even if he touches, he touches a dead corpse – you can remain closed.Whenever there is consciousness and action, consciousness and action become a totality.Now try to follow these words, they are very beautiful.To deny the reality of thingsis to miss their reality;to assert the emptiness of thingsis to miss their reality.To deny the reality of things… There have been philosophers who have been denying the reality of things. Look, we can do the same thing in two ways.There is a beautiful story: once it happened…Akbar, the great Moghul emperor, drew a line on the wall, and he told his wise men not to touch it and yet make it smaller. They were puzzled and they thought, “It is impossible!”Then one of his wise men, Birbal, drew another line near it, a bigger one, without touching the first line. When the bigger line was drawn the first line became smaller.If you draw a small line then the first line will become bigger, so there are two ways. Either you make your being bigger – then the world becomes smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller; a moment comes when your being becomes the total, the brahman, the world disappears, then there is no more world. Then there is another way, and the other is just a trick: you go on saying the world is illusory, maya, it is not there. You go on denying the reality of the world and go on convincing yourself that it is not, it is not, it is unreal, it is a dream-thing. So you convince yourself the world is a dream: you feel that now you are real but that feeling is not true. It is a deception.Philosophy always does this: it goes on saying the world is not real. Go to the Vedantins: it happened differently to Shankara. Shankara realized his being, he became the infinite; then the world disappeared because there cannot be two infinites. If you become infinite, the world disappears. It is absorbed because two infinites are not possible, only one infinite is possible.Shankara became the infinite, the brahman, the absolute; then he could say the world is illusory, and he was right. But this was not a philosophical statement, it was a religious feeling. He felt it, that the world is not. But then the followers took the song and they have been singing it for one thousand years. They say the world is illusory, it is maya, it is not there, it only appears.You can come to a belief through philosophy that, yes, you can go on crossing out, you can convince yourself that it is not there, you can try to find proofs and arguments that it is illusory. And if you can convince your mind that it is illusory, you will have a feeling, false feeling, that you have become the brahman.You must become the brahman, then the world becomes illusory, not the other way. How will you become the brahman if the world becomes illusory? And it cannot become illusory because it is only a conception; you think.Vedantins go on saying the world is illusory, but look at them. Throw a stone at them and they will get angry, they will start fighting with you. The world is not illusory; they just have a concept, a philosophy. And philosophers can be very cunning.It happened once…A follower of Nagarjuna… Nagarjuna was one of the greatest mystics India has given birth to. He realized his infinite being – the world dissolved. Then followers came, and followers are always carbon copies, are bound to be unless they try to penetrate the reality themselves and don’t take their master’s word on trust.The master’s word simply inspires, provokes, helps, but it should not be taken on trust, otherwise it will become a philosophy. You have to realize it. And when you realize, only then can you say, “Yes, the master was true.” How could you say it before? But it is easy to nod your head philosophically: “Yes.”Followers came, and one of the followers – who was a great philosopher, a very argumentative man – proved in many ways that the world was not real.The king of the country called him, because his name reached the court, and the king said, “Really, you think that the world is unreal? Think twice, because I am a dangerous man. And I am not a man of words, I am a man of action. I will do something which will prove that the world is not unreal. So think twice.”The man said, “There is no question of thinking twice. I have thought millions of times and I have every proof that the world is unreal.”But even the philosopher was not aware of what the king was going to do. He had a mad elephant. So the mad elephant was brought into the courtyard, and this philosopher was also thrown into the courtyard. He started screaming and running, with the mad elephant behind him. The mad elephant caught hold of him. At that moment he started saying to the king, “Save me! The elephant is real. I withdraw my statement!”He was saved. Again the king called him, when he came to his senses – because he was trembling and perspiring and bruised all over and bleeding in many places. The king said, “Now what do you say?”He replied, “The world is unreal.”The king said, “What do you mean? At the moment when the elephant was just going to kill you, then you said that the world is real. Now you change again?”The philosopher said, “The elephant, the man, the assertion, all are unreal. The elephant, the madness of the elephant, the man you are seeing before you, the man who asserted that the world is real – all are unreal.”The king said, “Then I will call that mad elephant again.”And the philosopher said, “Then the same will happen again: I will say it is real. But again, what can I do?”Philosophy can be very cunning. You can go on playing games with yourself and you can convince yourself that the world is unreal. But what is the need to prove and to convince? The need comes because you don’t know. When you know, there is no question of convincing, of proving, of arguing. Philosophy is a substitute for knowledge. If you know, then there is no need for philosophy. If you don’t know, then there is a need, because knowledge gained through philosophy appears like real knowledge.It is not a question of proving that the world is unreal. This sutra says: To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality… And their reality is godliness, their reality is truth. The tree is there: if you deny the reality of the tree you have denied the divine within it, the truth within it. The tree is just a fact; a fact is just a covering of the truth. The bird is another fact, but the truth is the same. Sometimes the truth appears as a bird, sometimes as a tree, sometimes as a rock, sometimes as a man. These are all forms.Facts are forms, but in every fact, if you go deeper, is the truth. If you deny all forms you have denied the formless within. If you say nothing is real, then how can the divine, how can God be real? If you say this world is illusory, then how can the creator of an illusory world be real? And how can a real God create an unreal world? It is impossible, because out of reality comes reality; out of unreality comes unreality. A real God cannot create an unreal world. And if the world is unreal, the creator is also unreal. If you deny the facticity, then you deny the truth.Says the sutra of Sosan: To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality – and that reality is truth – to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality, again.If you say that things are, but they are empty, that too is a philosophical standpoint – a little better than the first. The first says the whole world is unreal, it is not, it is non-existential; it is only in your mind, it is nowhere else; it is a mind-projection, it is a thought, it is like a dream.The other philosophy, which is a little better, says things are, but they are empty. They don’t carry any self within them, they are not substantial. They are dead, empty within. They are nothing but combinations; no self is there. The tree is there, but only as a combination; the tree has got no self, no atman. If you take the combinations apart then there will be no one left. It is just like a mechanism: if you take all the parts of the machine apart, nothing is left behind.That too is not true, because a tree exists not as a compound but as a being. Even a rock has its own being; when you become sensitive and alert you will see that even a rock has its moods. Sometimes it is happy and then you can feel the happiness of the rock; sometimes it is unhappy and then you can feel the unhappiness of the rock; and sometimes it is singing and you can hear the song.But you need so much sensitivity, because right now you cannot hear the song of a buddha – how can you hear the song of a rock? You are deaf and blind, you are insensitive and dull.You are not conscious. Your consciousness is such a small fragment that it is exhausted in day-to-day affairs, in day-to-day routine. You are conscious enough to reach to the office and come back home without any accident on the way; you are that much conscious. But you cannot feel the rock, you cannot feel the tree.Now scientists are discovering that the trees have so much sensitivity that you cannot imagine. Trees welcome people if they are friendly, and they become closed if they are inimical. If the gardener comes, goes on pruning and cutting, the tree becomes closed. Even before the gardener has come… He enters the compound and the whole garden is closed, because the enemy is coming.One scientist who was working very deeply, became alert that not only actions, trees become aware even of your thoughts. He was doing an experiment on a plant: the plant was wired to subtle instruments to make sure of what was happening inside it. And he thought, “If at this moment I suddenly cut the plant in half, what will happen?” and the needle on the instrument started wavering fast – the plant had received the thought.Then he tried many experiments. He had not cut the plant, he had not harmed it – just the idea! And whenever the idea was there, the needle would show that the plant was very much worried and angry. And not only this: if you cut a plant, the neighboring plants will also show sadness, worry, anger, anxiety. Now there are instruments which can show what is happening inside the plant, and sooner or later there will be instruments which will show what is happening inside a rock.Everything is alive, no thing is empty. Everything is filled with consciousness, different types of consciousness – that’s why you cannot penetrate them. It is difficult because of the different languages of consciousness. A tree has a different type of consciousness, a rock altogether different. It is difficult to communicate with them because languages differ, but if you become more alert, aware, and you are not filled with thoughts in the mind, then you can even approach a rock. Nothing is empty, everything has a self of its own.Hindus have always been aware that everything has a god within. That’s why they can worship a river, they can worship a tree, because they say, “This god of the tree, god of the river, god of the rock.” Everything in the world is full of godliness, nothing is empty.Once you say that things are empty, you again miss their reality. But why do philosophers try to prove that things are not, or things are empty? They are trying because if it can be proved that things are empty, then you are full – relatively, you will become fuller. With emptiness all around, you become full.But this is a false way. Become full! This relative trick won’t help. When you become full with love, awareness, meditation, then you will not see that the world is empty. In fact, because you are empty, everything looks empty. Because you look with empty eyes, everything becomes empty – you bring your self to the things.If you have no love, then you will see that there is no love in the world. If you have a heart which beats with love, you will feel the beat everywhere, all around – in the breeze passing through the trees, in the river flowing toward the ocean. You will feel love everywhere! You will be able to feel it. You can feel only that which you have, nothing else can be felt.Philosophy is a trick to feel relatively. And we all become victims of this, because we are all experts in that trick. That’s why if somebody says that your neighbor is an evil man, immoral, you immediately believe it – because if he is evil and immoral you become suddenly moral and good. If somebody says your neighbor is a very moral, saintly, sagely man, you can’t believe it. You say, “Bring proofs! What proofs have you got? On what grounds are you saying that? I know him well, he is my neighbor. He is nothing like that.” Why?Whenever somebody says something against somebody, you believe it immediately, you never question it. That’s why gossip goes on so much. But whenever somebody says something in favor of somebody, you immediately are on guard. Why? – because if he is so good, you suddenly become bad. If there is a sage then who are you? You are a fool. And if there is a saint you are a sinner. You may not be conscious of the trick, but this is how the game goes on.There are two ways: either you become a saint or you prove that everybody is a sinner. Philosophy goes on doing that trick. Whatsoever you want to be, you deny to the world. But that won’t help. You are deceiving nobody except yourself.This sutra of Sosan says:To deny the reality of thingsis to miss their reality;to assert the emptiness of thingsis again to miss their reality.The more you talk and think about it,the further astray you wander from the truth.Thinking is a wandering away, going astray. Whenever you think about anything, immediately you have started going away. I am here, you can be with me – but if you start thinking about me you are on a journey going on and on, and the more you get into thinking the further away you will be. Thinking is a way to escape from reality; it gives you an inner direction, it makes you a path in your mind and you move on it.A thinker is never here and now, he is never in the present, he is always somewhere else. A meditator is always here and now, he is nowhere else. That’s why thinking is the only barrier in meditation. You have to become aware, and by and by, the more you become aware, the more you stop cooperating with thinking.I bring a rose to you and you start thinking. Immediately the mind says, “Beautiful! I have never seen such a beautiful rose!” Or, “I have seen a few other roses also just like this,” and you go on. And then your mind can raise the question, “What is beauty?” Nobody knows, nobody has come to any conclusion.One of the great British philosophers of this century, G.E. Moore, has written a book, Principia Ethica, one of the best logical attempts to define what is good. And after two or three hundred pages of compact logical reasoning, he says that it is difficult to define what is good. In the end he says it is indefinable – but after two or three hundred pages of argument!One of the keenest minds goes on trying and trying and trying, from this way and that; from this door and that he knocks and knocks, and he comes to the conclusion that good is indefinable – why? He says it is a simple quality, just like yellow. How do you define yellow? What will you say if somebody asks, “What is yellow?” You will say, “Yellow is yellow.” How will you define it?A rose is a rose is a rose. How are you going to define it? If you say it is beautiful, do you know what beauty is? Has anybody ever defined it? No, they say beauty is indefinable. If you compare it with other roses, do you know that everything is incomparable? How can you compare it with other roses? This rose is just this rose, it is no other rose. Why do you bring other roses in?And when you bring in other roses your mind is cluttered; then you have many things in the mind and they will become a barrier, and this rose will not be able to approach you. And here was something real – it could have penetrated you, its fragrance could have penetrated you. The rose was ready to knock at your heart, but you started thinking about it. And by the time you come back the rose will not be here, because the rose will not wait – it will have faded. It had a message, it brought something of the unknown with it. But that unknown is delicate, it cannot continue for ever and ever.It brought something from the beyond – every rose brings it. Every morning it comes, knocks at your door, but you are great thinkers. Something of the unknown, of the divine, something beyond time penetrates into time through a rose. But if you think, you miss, because in thinking you go astray, you have already gone away.A philosopher thinks about a rose. A poet feels about a rose. And if you have to decide, decide always in favor of a poet. He touches reality better than a philosopher. And a mystic neither thinks nor feels – he simply remains in the presence of the rose. Because feeling also is going away – not so far as thinking, but feeling is also going away, because feeling is also a subtle activity.A mystic simply remains in the presence of the rose: no activity, no thinking, no feeling, neither heart nor head. He is simply there with the rose. This, Hindus call satsang. Whenever there is a rose of man – a buddha, a master – you simply remain with him. You don’t think, you don’t feel. You simply remain with him, simply with him – you exist with him. This Hindus call satsang: to be with truth. The word satsang means to be in the presence of truth.A rose is there – be with it. Don’t create any activity, subtle or gross. Thinking is a very gross activity, feeling is a subtle activity – but you know feeling can change into thinking, thinking can change into feeling. They are convertible, they are not very far away from each other. Feeling is thinking on the way, maybe the seed, or just sprouting, and thinking is the tree, but the process is not different. Heart and head are not very far apart. Things start in the heart and immediately, before you become aware, they have reached to the head.Just being with, then everything is revealed, then all the doors are open. There are no questions, no answers. You have simply become one with reality. Thinking – and you are separate. Feeling – not so separate but yet separate, joined together but yet separate.Neither thinking nor feeling, just being with, and suddenly you are not there and the world is not there. The one, the brahman, is revealed. You and the world, both have become one. The infinite is there, the formless is there – and that is the truth.Truth is not a philosophical conclusion, it is an existential experience. It is neither thought nor feeling, it is existential – with your total being you are with it.When a drop of water falls into the ocean, whether it falls with the head or with the heart, it falls totally – heart, head, everything; good, bad, everything; saint, sinner, everything. It falls completely.Neither saints can know the divine, because they are too good and their goodness becomes the barrier; nor sinners, because they think they are too bad and their too-badness becomes the barrier. One who is neither a saint nor a sinner, neither this nor that, one who has not chosen anything, one who does not claim anything, that “I am this or that,” who simply remains in the presence, can know the divine.And you need not go to the Himalayas, because you can remain with a rock and the thing will happen: you need not go to the temple. You can remain with a tree and the thing will happen. You need not even go to the tree: you can remain with yourself and the thing will happen, because it is everywhere. Every atom vibrates with it, every atom celebrates it. Everything is nothing but it.The more you talk and think about it,the further astray you wander from the truth.Stop talking and thinking,and there is nothing you will not be able to know.No-thinking is the door. No-word is the gate. No-mind is the way.How to achieve this? What will you do to achieve this? Just listening to it won’t help, because mind is so clever. The mind will start thinking about it, what Sosan is saying; the mind will start thinking and spinning theories around it. The mind will say, “Yes, it seems right.” But the mind will say, “It seems right,” and you have gone astray. The mind will say, “No, it seems difficult, impossible. How can you stop thinking?” and you have gone astray.Listen to the mind and you are never near the truth. Listen to the mind and you are always on the journey.I have heard about a woman who was a philosopher, a thinker, had written many books, was very well known. And then she suddenly declared to her friends that she was going to get married.Never had any rumor been heard about her love affairs, because people who think never love. Nobody ever thought that she was going to marry, so they were surprised.They said, “Who is this man?”So she told the name – they were even more surprised. They said, “What do you see in that man?”A very ordinary man – and this woman was well known. She was a professor in a university, had written many books, her name was known all over the country. “To this man? Why, what have you seen in him?”She said, “One good thing – he is a traveling salesman. He will never be here, he will always be traveling.” Thinkers are always married to traveling salesmen. “He will never be here and I will be free to think and do my things.”Being married to the mind is being married to a salesman, a traveling salesman who is always on a journey. And because of this mind which is always on a journey, you can never be in touch with the real. You eat but you miss eating. The flavor, the taste, the smell – you miss it. You simply go on throwing things inside. It is ugly! But why do you miss? Because the mind goes on thinking; you are thinking of a thousand and one things while you are eating.Says Rinzai, “When I eat, I only eat, and when I sleep, I only sleep.”Somebody said, “But nothing is special in that, everybody is doing it.”Rinzai laughed and said, “If everybody is doing it, everybody is a buddha. Then everybody is enlightened.”Eating, simply eat. Be with it. Walking, simply walk, be there. Don’t go ahead, don’t jump here and there. Mind always goes ahead or lags behind. Remain with the moment.In the beginning it will be very difficult to remain with the moment. And sometimes the moment may not be very happy. You are angry, then the mind starts thinking of repentance or tries to do something so that the anger never happens again. Sometimes you are sad; you put on the radio or the TV, you start reading a book, because you would not like to be sad. You want to divert the mind. And because miserable moments are more than happy moments, it becomes a constant habit. And when it is fixed, even when happiness comes you are not found at home, you are somewhere else.Make it a point: whatsoever – sadness, anger, whatsoever; depression, unhappiness – be with it. And you will suddenly become surprised that if you remain with sadness, sadness changes into a beautiful thing, sadness becomes a depth. If you remain with anger, not thinking about, just being with it, anger is transformed – it becomes forgiveness. If you remain with sex, sex takes on a different quality – it becomes love.If you start living with the moment you will see your “being with” is a miracle, it has a magic to it. Happiness will become deeper. Ordinarily your happiness is just on the surface: deep down you carry millions of things; it is just on the surface. If you remain with it, it will become deeper and deeper and deeper. If you start living with it, everything is transformed because you bring a new quality of being, of awareness, of witnessing. Don’t fight against sadness and don’t hanker for happiness, because that is going away, astray.Have you observed? – if you go for a holiday to the Himalayas or to Switzerland, for months you plan to arrive there, and the moment you arrive your mind has started already to plan when to depart, how to go back home. Look! For months you plan how to arrive and when you arrive – or even before you arrive, just on the way – your mind has started to go back: “How to depart?” Your every arrival is just the beginning of a departure. And you are never there because you cannot be there. Again, back home you will start thinking. Back home you will start thinking about what happened in the Himalayas, what beautiful experiences you went through – and you were never there. It is as if you have read about them, it is as if somebody else has told you. You look at the memory as if the memory functions on its own; it takes photographs and becomes an album. Back home you will open the album and see, and you will say to friends, “Beautiful!” And you will start planning – again next year you are going to the Himalayas.Mind is never where you are: awareness is always there where you are. Drop more and more mind, and minding, and become more and more aware and alert. Bring yourself together in the moment.It is difficult in the beginning. Mind, because of the old habit, will go away again and again. Bring it back. No need to fight; simply call it back: “Come.” Again it will go, within seconds it will not be there. Call it back again.And by and by, when you start enjoying this moment – the eternal now, the only time that there is, the only existence that there is, the only life that there is – when you start enjoying it, the mind will be coming to it more and more; it will be going less and less.Then a tuning happens. Suddenly you are here, at home, and the reality is revealed. The reality was always there, you were not there. It is not the truth which has to be sought, it is you who have to be brought home.Enough for today.

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Hsin Hsin Ming 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hsin Hsin Ming 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sosan said:To return to the root is to find the meaning,but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.At the moment of inner enlightenmentthere is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.The changes that appear to occur in the empty worldwe call real only because of our ignorance.Do not search for truth;only cease to hold opinions.Do not remain in the dualistic state;avoid such pursuits carefully.If there is a traceof this and that, of right and wrong,the mind-essence will be lost in confusion.Although all dualities come from the one,do not be attached even to this one.When mind exists undisturbed in the way,nothing in the world can offend,and when a thing can no longer offend,it ceases to exist in the old way.When no discriminating thoughts arise,the old mind ceases to exist.The nature of consciousness is to be just a mirror. The mirror has no choice of its own. Whatsoever comes in front of it is reflected, good or bad, beautiful or ugly – whatsoever. The mirror does not prefer, it does not judge, it has no condemnation. The nature of consciousness, at the source, is just mirror-like.A child is born; he reflects whatsoever comes before him. He does not say anything, he does not interpret. The moment interpretation enters, the mirror has lost its mirror-likeness. Now it is no longer pure. Now it is filled with opinions, disturbed, many fragments, divided, split. It has become schizophrenic. When the consciousness is divided, not mirror-like, it becomes the mind. Mind is a broken mirror.In the root, mind is consciousness. If you stop making discrimination, if you stop making dual division – choosing this against that, liking this, disliking that – if you drop out of these divisions, the mind again becomes a mirror, a pure consciousness.So the whole effort for a seeker is how to drop opinions, philosophies, preferences, judgments, choices. And this should not become a choice in itself – that’s the problem.So try to understand the basic problem, otherwise you can make this a choice: “I will not choose, I will remain choiceless. Now choice is not for me, now I am for choiceless awareness.” This has again become the same thing – you have chosen. Now you are against choice and for choicelessness. You have missed. Nobody can be for choicelessness, because “the being for” is choice. So what is to be done? Simple understanding is needed, nothing is to be done. The ultimate is achieved not through effort but through understanding.No effort will lead you toward that, because effort will always be from the dual mind. Then you dislike the world and you like God; then bondage is not your preference, freedom is your preference; then you seek moksha, the ultimate liberation. But again the mind has entered, and the mind goes on entering. And you cannot do anything – you have to simply be alert to the whole situation.If you are alert, in a sudden illumination the mind falls. Suddenly you are one with the mirror-like consciousness; you have fallen to your base, to your root. And when you have fallen deep within to the root, the whole existence falls to the root.Existence appears to you as you are. This is one of the fundamental laws. Whatsoever you see depends on from where you see. If you are a mind, divided, then the whole of life is divided. Existence reaches your being. If you have a mind, split, then the whole world will be seen as split, then day is against night. They are not, because the day turns into night, the night turns into day: they make a complete circle. They are not against, they are complementaries. Without the night there cannot be any day, and without the day there cannot exist any night. So they cannot be opposites; deep down they are one.Life and death appear as opposites because you are divided. Otherwise life becomes death, death becomes life: you are born, and that very day you have started to die, and the moment you die a new life has come into being. It is a circle, the yin and yang circle of the Chinese.That circle has to be remembered again and again. It is one of the most basic symbols ever discovered. No other symbol can be compared to it – the cross, the swastika, the om – no, no comparison with the Chinese yin and yang, because yin and yang comprehends the whole oppositeness of existence: the dark night and the bright day, life and death, love and hate.All opposites are together in existence. Inside, you are divided; outside, they are divided. When you fall to your source and you become one, the whole existence suddenly falls into line and becomes one. When you are one, the brahman appears, the ultimate appears –because to the one only one can appear; to the two, the two; to the many, the many. And you are many, you are a crowd – not even two. You have many, many selves within you.Gurdjieff used to say that you are a house where nobody knows who the host is. Many people are there, everybody is a guest – but because nobody knows who the host is, everybody thinks he is the host. So whosoever becomes powerful in any moment plays the role of the host.When anger becomes powerful, anger becomes the host. When love becomes powerful, love becomes the host. When jealousy becomes powerful, jealousy becomes the host. But it is a constant fight, because many are the guests and everybody would like to be the host, the owner of the house. And nobody knows who the owner is. Either the owner has gone for a long journey and has not come back, or the owner is fast asleep.Your self is fast asleep. Hence the insistence of all Jesuses, Krishnas, Buddhas: “Awake!” Jesus goes on using the word awake many, many times: “Awake, watch, be alert.” Buddha goes on saying, “Become more conscious.”The meaning is one: that if you become aware the host will appear. And the moment – and this is the beauty of it – the host appears, the guests disappear. The moment the master comes into being, the servants simply fall into line and they become servants. They don’t claim that they are the masters.So the real problem is not to fight with anger, jealousy, hate. The real problem is to bring the master, make him aware. Once he is aware everything is set right. But this awareness is possible only if you fall to the source.Mind is bound to remain divided. The very nature of the mind is such, it cannot become one. Try to understand the nature of the mind, then these sutras of Sosan will become clear, transparent.The nature of the mind is to look at a thing in such a way that the opposite has to be brought in. Without the opposite the mind cannot understand. If I ask, “What is light?” how will the mind understand? Immediately darkness has to be brought in.If you go to the dictionary, the dictionary is a vicious circle. If you look for what light is, the dictionary says: that which is not darkness. To define light, darkness has to be brought in. What nonsense! And when you go to the definition of darkness, you will be surprised – then light has to be brought in. What is darkness? – then they say: that which is not light.You have not defined either, because both remain indefinable. And from one indefinable how can you define the other which is undefined? The whole game of the dictionary is that you never look at the whole thing.If you ask linguists, “What is mind?” they say, “Not matter,” and, “What is matter?” they say, “Not mind.” Neither is defined. How can one undefined term define something? If I ask you where you live you say, “I am a neighbor of A.” And if I ask you where this A lives, you say, “He is my neighbor.” How am I to find the place where you live? Because neither is A defined nor are you; A lives near B and B lives near A. But this is how things go on.Mind cannot understand anything unless the opposite is brought in, because through contrast mind becomes capable of seeing. Life cannot be understood if there is no death, and happiness is impossible to feel if there is no unhappiness. How will you feel healthy if you have never known illness? You may be healthy but you cannot feel it. To be healthy is possible without illness, but the mind cannot check it, the mind cannot know it: you have to fall ill.For the mind, to be a saint one needs to be a sinner first, and to be healthy you have to be ill, and to be in love you have to hate. If you love and there is no hate you will not be able to know, your mind will not in any way detect it. And nobody else will be able to know it.That is the problem with a Buddha or a Jesus. Buddha is full of love, but we cannot detect his love – he has no contrasting background, no hate. We have never seen hate in his eyes, and we have never seen anger in his eyes. How can we know that he loves? His love becomes incomprehensible.For the mind, anything is comprehensible if the opposite is brought in. But the moment you bring the opposite you falsify existence, because in existence there is nothing like “opposite.”Mind moves through the opposite and existence is unitary. Existence is advaita, existence is non-dual – there is no problem. Where is the boundary of the day, when the day stops, ceases to be, and the night starts? Is there a gap between the two? Only if there is a gap, then the boundary is possible. But there is no boundary! The day simply melts into the night, it merges into the night, and the night again merges into the day. Life is one, existence is one – mind is dual.So if you go on choosing you will never come to the source. Then you will cling to life and you will be afraid of death. Then you will cling to love and you will be afraid of hate. Then you will cling to the good and you will be afraid of the bad. Then you will cling to God and you will be afraid of the Devil.Life is one. God, Devil – one. There is no division where God ends and where the Devil begins; there cannot be. In life, Ram and Ravan are one, but for the mind they are enemies, they are fighting. For the mind everything is a conflict, it is a war.And if you choose, then you remain part of the game. And how not to choose is the whole art of religion: how to drop into a choicelessness.But remember, don’t choose choicelessness! Otherwise, listening to me or to Sosan or Krishnamurti, you will become enchanted by the word choicelessness. Your mind will say, “This is very good. Then ecstasy is possible and much bliss will happen to me if I become choicelessness. Then the door of the mysteries of life will be opened.” The mind feels greedy. The mind says, “Okay, so I will choose choicelessness.” The door is closed. Only the label is changed, but you have fallen victim to the old trick.Now try to understand these sutras. They are some of the best ever uttered by any man on the whole of the earth.To return to the root is to find the meaning,but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.To return to the root is to find the meaning… What is the purpose of this whole play of existence? What is the meaning of all these trees growing, and human beings, and animals, and birds? What is the meaning of this earth and this heaven? What is the meaning of this whole? Where will you find the meaning?For the mind the meaning must be in the end – where this existence is moving to must be the meaning, the destination. For the mind the meaning must be somewhere in the destination: where we are going.And this sutra of Sosan says: To return to the root is to find the meaning – not in the future, not in desire and destination, not somewhere else, but to the root. Not in the end but in the beginning.Try to understand. Many things have to be understood. First, if there is any meaning it must be in the seed – maybe hidden, not visible, but it must be in the seed, because nothing can come which is not in the seed. Nothing can come out of emptiness.Even if there is a destination it must be hidden in the seed, just like a flower hidden in the seed – the flower is the meaning of the tree. When it flowers it is ecstatic, when it blooms it sings and dances. It has attained, it is happy, it is delighted, it is not lacking anything anymore. The flower is just a delight, the dance of the tree: “I have attained!”But those flowers must have been somewhere in the seed, otherwise how can they happen? The end must be in the beginning; the omega must be hidden in the alpha. Jesus says, “I am the beginning and the end. I am the alpha and the omega.”The beginning is the end, because the end may not be revealed right now but it must be there. And when it is in the seed, you need not wait for the future to come, for the flower to happen. You can penetrate the beginning right now, because here it is. The seed, remember, is not in the past. The seed is always here and now in the present, because the whole past is in the present.Of course, the whole future is also in the present, but the future has not happened and the past has happened already, the beginning has happened already. Penetrate the beginning, move to the roots and to the source, and the meaning will be revealed.And you carry the seed right now within you – the seed of all meaning, of all possibilities, of all doors that can open and all mysteries that can happen. You carry the seed! But if you wait for the future then it may not ever come, because the future is infinite and waiting will be losing life, time and energy.And if waiting becomes a habit the flower may flower and you may not be able to see. Because you have become accustomed to looking to the future, your eyes have become fixed. They cannot look at the near and the close, they can always look to the far and distant.If for many lives you have been looking in the future for the meaning, and the flower flowers, you will not be able to see it – because seeing does not depend on the flower, the seeing depends on your penetrating eyes. And you don’t have any penetrating eyes. Otherwise, the beginning is always there, the seed is always there; you could have looked into it.If you look to the future and wait for the meaning to be revealed somewhere, then sooner or later you will feel life is meaningless. That is what is happening in the West, because philosophy was continuously thinking that the goal is somewhere in the future.It looks absurd to think that the goal is in the beginning. It looks contradictory, because how can the goal be in the beginning? So the mind says the goal must be somewhere ahead, because mind lives through desire, moves through desire. Motivation has to be there in the future. And now, thinking in terms of the future for two thousand years continuously, the Western mind thinks that there is no meaning because the future has not arrived.The future never arrives! It cannot arrive by its very nature; it remains always unarrived. It is arriving but it never arrives. It is just like the tomorrow which never comes. Whenever it comes it is always today, whenever it comes it is always the present.Future never comes, cannot come. Its very nature is like hope, a dream – illusory. It appears as if it is coming, just like the horizon; it never reaches. Then, waiting and waiting, you feel meaningless. The whole Western-thinking mind today feels life is meaningless, absurd. And if you feel life is meaningless, absurd, then suicide remains the only way to get out of it.One of the great Western thinkers of this century, Marcel, has written that suicide is the only solution. If you see that life is meaningless, then what is left? Then why go on dragging? Why live at all?If there is no meaning and you are moving in a rut… Every day you get up, go to work, earn a little money, sleep in the night, dream, again in the morning… The wheel goes on moving and you reach nowhere. In the end is death, so why wait? Why not commit suicide? Why not destroy this meaningless thing? And why be so worried and so burdened and in so much anxiety and anguish for something which is meaningless? It is a logical conclusion.If you look in the future you will come to understand that there is no meaning. But if you really want the meaning, then the way is to look in the seed – and the seed is here and now. But the mind likes to look in the future; it is easier. To look in the seed is difficult. That is the whole sadhana, that is the whole arduous effort: to look in the seed – because if you want to look into the seed you will need a different quality of vision. You will need a third eye, because these ordinary eyes can look only up to the shell. But the invisible which is hidden behind, the secret – these eyes cannot go so deep.A different quality of eyes is needed which can penetrate and look right now into what the seed is carrying. If you look outside you cannot penetrate, because your eyes will meet the bodies, the shells of the seeds. If you really want to look in the seed, look within, because then the shell is no longer a problem – inside you are also a seed.You belong to this existence, you have come out of it. This existence has a blueprint in you, this existence is trying to fulfill some destiny through you. Look within, because then the shell is no more a problem. You need not penetrate the shell, you are already in. This is what meditation is: to look within the seed, within oneself. There, meaning flowers, it flowers immediately. It has always been there – it only needed your attention. You have neglected it, you have been indifferent to it. You have been engaged, occupied, in other things; and you have been standing with your back toward yourself.And the meaning waits, and the purpose of the whole life remains hidden, and the blessing and the grace just goes on waiting and waiting for you to turn.The Christian word conversion means turning. It does not mean making a Hindu a Christian or a Mohammedan a Christian – it means making a consciousness turn within.To return to the root is to find the meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source. Outside there are only appearances. You cannot know what is outside because through the senses you can touch only the appearance. I cannot see you. I can see only your body – not even the whole body but just the surface, just the surface of the skin is seen. I don’t know whether you are there or not. Maybe you are just an automaton, a robot – who knows?A robot is possible; now, more so. A robot can be made. And if a robot is there you cannot judge from the outside, because he will blink his eyes, he will even answer: if you say, “Hello!” he will say, “Hello, how are you?” How do you know that he is not a robot? On the surface he is just like any man, no different.He talks, and he will talk intelligently – sometimes even more intelligently than you because he is fed completely. His information is accurate; he knows much, he can know more than you. They say a single small computer can know as much as five hundred scientists can know in five hundred lives. A robot can carry a computer inside the mind, of course, battery-run. You ask and he answers, and his answers are not as fallible as your answers. And he will never be a fool, he will always be a wise man.How to judge who is inside? You cannot penetrate. You can just go about and about, around and around. You can touch the surface.Only in yourself can you go within. Only there can you be certain of consciousness – nowhere else. This whole world may be just a dream. Who knows? I can dream you sitting here and me talking to you. You can dream that you are sitting here and listening to me. Have you any criterion to prove that this is not a dream? There is no way.Up till now nobody has been able to prove that this is not a dream, because in a dream also things appear so real – even more real than when you are awake, because in waking sometimes a doubt enters in the mind whether it is real or not. But in a dream a doubt never enters the mind; in a dream you always take things as if they are real.It is said of Chuang Tzu…One day, in the morning, he started crying and weeping. His disciples gathered and they asked, “Master, what are you doing? What has happened to you?”Chuang Tzu said, “I am in a fix. Last night I dreamed that I had become a butterfly.”The disciples said, “But what is there to weep and cry and be so sad about? Everybody dreams of many things! Nothing is wrong with being a butterfly in a dream.”Chuang Tzu said, “That is not the problem. Now I am worried, now a doubt has arisen and I don’t know now how to reach a conclusion. In the night Chuang Tzu dreamed that he had become a butterfly. Now the doubt has come: it may be that now the butterfly is dreaming that she has become a Chuang Tzu.”And who is to decide, and how? If in the dream a Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly, then why not the other way: a butterfly sitting on a flower may be dreaming that she has become a Buddha.There is no problem, the thing is simple. Chuang Tzu has raised a beautiful and basic problem: how can you be certain of the outside, that it is not a dream? There have been many philosophies which tried to prove that the whole world is a dream. Nobody believes in those philosophies, but nobody has been able to refute them either.Berkeley, in the West, has proved that the whole existence is a dream. Nobody believes in him, not even he himself really believes in it, because his whole life shows that he doesn’t believe it is a dream. If you insult him he gets angry. If you throw a stone at him he tries to avoid it. If you hit him he runs to the doctor because blood flows out of him.This is how Dr. Johnson tried to refute Berkeley’s theory:They were friends, and walking one day Berkeley said, “Now I have proved it, that the whole life is a dream, and I feel that nobody can disprove it.”And yes, he was right. Up to now nobody has been able to refute it – it is impossible to refute! How to refute it?Dr. Johnson bent down, took a stone and threw the stone at Berkeley’s feet. He screamed. Dr. Johnson said, “This stone is real.”Berkeley laughed and he said, “That cannot refute my philosophy, because my scream may be just a dream you have dreamed. This blood flowing out of my leg – how can you prove this is real and not a dream?”…because if you are hit in a dream also, blood will come out. And in dream also, you have screamed many times. In a dream also, when it is a nightmare, you perspire and you tremble and your heartbeat goes fast and crazy, and even if the dream is broken it takes a few minutes to settle. You know the dream is broken, you have become awake, and you know it was a dream, but still the heart goes on throbbing and the fear still lingers and the perspiration on the forehead is there.It can happen in a dream, there is no way to disprove it. Outside, at the most, we can say there are appearances. The thing in itself cannot be known that way.There is only one reality of which you can be absolutely certain, and that is the reality within. You can move within. You can be certain only of yourself, nothing else. But once you penetrate this certainty, you are.Remember, even in a dream, you are. You may have become a butterfly, but you are. Even for a dream to exist, you at least are needed. Everything may be dream but you are not, because without you even a dream cannot exist. Consciousness is needed even to dream.You can prove everything is a dream, but you cannot prove that the dreamer is a dream – because the dreamer has to be real, otherwise dreams cannot exist. Only one thing is certain and that is you. Only one thing is absolutely certain and that is your reality within. Conversion means moving from an uncertain world, the world of the appearances, to the world of reality.And once you know that inner certainty and you are grounded, once you know that you are, then from that certainty the vision changes, the quality changes. Then you look at the outside world and a different world is revealed – that world is godliness.When you are rooted in a certain reality, absolutely certain, then your look has a different quality: then there is trust. Now you can look, and the whole world changes. Then there are no appearances, but reality, that which is really real.What is that which is really real? It is not these forms. Forms change, but that which moves through the forms is unchanging.You were a child, then you were young, then you have become old – the form has been continuously changing. Every moment your body is changing, the form is changing; but if you look within, you have remained the same.You were a small, atomic cell in your mother’s womb, not even visible to the naked eye; then a small child; then a young man filled with many dreams, desires; and then, frustrated, dejected, a failure, an old man. But if you look within, everything has remained the same. The consciousness never changes.If you look within you will be surprised: you cannot feel how old you are, because there is no age to consciousness. If you close your eyes you cannot say you are twenty or forty or sixty, because age belongs to the body, to the shell. Your reality is ageless; it has never been born and it is not going to die.Once you are centered in this eternal, non-changing, unmoving absolute, then your quality changes. Then you can look, then you have become a mirror. In that mirror the reality is mirrored. But first you have to become a mirror. You are waving, shaking so much you cannot mirror anything – you distort. Mind distorts the reality and consciousness reveals it.To return to the root is to find the meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source. If you go on pursuing appearances you will miss the source because appearances are outside. Sometimes you are after wealth, sometimes you are after a woman or a man, sometimes you are after prestige and power; and you go on pursuing appearances. And this whole time you are missing yourself, and this whole time you are living in a dream.If you miss the source you miss all. You may attain many things in the outside world, but in the end you will find you have not attained anything. You have missed the one which carries all meaning.Dying, you may be dying a very rich man, but you will die a poor man inside, a beggar. Dying, you may be very powerful, you may be a great president of a country, or a prime minister, but deep down you will know that you are impotent. Death will prove that your power was just an appearance; your power is powerless, helpless before death. Only that is power which goes beyond death – all else is impotence. You may believe in it for a time, but death will bring the truth to you.Always remember that death is coming, and death is the criterion: whatsoever death disproves is disproved, whatsoever death approves is approved. Whatsoever can go beyond death, whatsoever is more powerful than death, is the reality. The real cannot die; the unreal dies a thousand and one deaths.At the moment of inner enlightenmentthere is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.Only when the enlightenment happens, when you are filled with the inner light… The light is there but you are throwing it outside. It moves with your desire. Desire is the focus, light goes on moving.If you are too much addicted to wealth your whole being focuses on wealth; then you only see money, nothing else. Even if you meet a person you don’t see the person, you see the money. If the person is poor, simply no trace is left on your mind; if he is rich, then a trace is left. If he is very, very rich then you remember him, then a memory is formed.If you are after power and you meet a Hitler, or a Stalin, a Mao, then you are meeting a person, but the person is secondary. When Nixon is no longer a president you will not be able to see him; he may pass by you but he is no longer a person.You see whatsoever you desire. Your desire is your vision, and your light focuses always on your desire. When this light turns, is converted, moves withinward, there is illumination. Then you are filled with light. You become a house with a lamp, you are no more dark inside.At the moment of inner enlightenment there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness: and suddenly you go beyond appearance and emptiness. Then nothing is just the appearance and nothing is empty – everything is filled with the divine. Everything is full, overflowing with the divine – every tree, every river, every ocean – overflowing with the divine. Then God is everywhere. You may call it truth, or whatsoever you like, but the real is everywhere.When you are real, the world is real; when you are living in unreal desires, you create a world of appearances. Whatsoever you are is your world. And there are as many worlds as there are people because everybody lives in his own world, everybody creates his own world around him. That’s your projection and creation.The changes that appear to occur in the empty worldwe call real only because of our ignorance.The changes that appear to occur in the empty world we call real only because of our ignorance. You say somebody is old; you call oldness real because you don’t know what real is. Otherwise nobody is young and nobody is old and nobody is a child. The inner is ageless, only the outer form changes.My clothes are old. Will you call me old because my clothes are old? My clothes are new, brand new, just from the tailor. Will you call me young because my clothes are young? The body is nothing but clothes. You call somebody old, and somebody young, and somebody a child because of the body? – because of the form that is changing constantly? Those who have known, say the reality is immovable, unmoving, it cannot move. The clothes go on changing.Ramakrishna died. Just before his death, when the doctor said, “Now he cannot survive.”Ramakrishna’s wife, Sharda, started crying. And these are Ramakrishna’s last words: he said, “Don’t cry, because I am not going to die. What the doctors are saying applies only to the clothes.”He died of cancer, and Ramakrishna said, “As far as I know there is no cancer in me. The cancer applies only to the clothes. So remember, when doctors say that I am dead don’t believe them, believe me – I will live.”And Sharda was the only widow in India, in the whole history of India, who never became widowed – because Indian widows, when their husbands are dead, have to change their way of life, their very style. They cannot use colored clothes, because color has gone from their life. They cannot use ornaments because, “For whom?”But Sharda continued the same as she was when Ramakrishna was alive. And people thought she had gone crazy, and they would come and say, “Now throw off your ornaments, particularly the bangles. Break them! You are a widow.”And she would laugh and say, “Should I believe you or Ramakrishna? – because he said, ‘Only clothes are going to die, not I.’ And I was married to him, not to his clothes. So should I listen to you or should I listen to Ramakrishna?”She listened to Ramakrishna and she remained married to the very last. And she lived in such ecstasy, because this listening transformed her. She became aware of a fact – that the body is not the real.She continued her old way of life. It will look crazy, because in this world of mad people where clothes are thought to be real, somebody behaving in such a contradictory way is bound to look crazy.She would prepare the bed every night and she would go to Ramakrishna’s room and say, “Paramahansadev, come now, it is time for you to go to sleep” – and there was nobody! And she would prepare food, singing, as happily as she had always been doing. Then she would go and call Ramakrishna: “Come, Paramahansadev, your food is ready.”She must have known something. And this was not for one day but for many years. Just this simple message from Ramakrishna, “Only clothes are going to die, not I,” transformed her into a holy woman. She became, in her own right, an enlightened person.The changes that appear to occur in the empty worldwe call real only because of our ignorance.Do not search for the truth;only cease to hold opinions.This is a beeja mantra, a very, very deep message: Do not search for the truth; only cease to hold opinions. How can you search for the truth? You are untrue! How can you go searching for the divine? How can you go searching for the truth? How can you search? What will you do? At the most, your mind will play tricks. At the most you will project a truth, you will imagine a truth, you will dream a truth. That’s why Hindus go on seeing Krishna when they reach to the divine, and Christians go on seeing Jesus when they reach to the truth.But truth is neither Hindu nor Christian, truth is neither Krishna nor Christ. These are the forms, clothes! And if clothes are still coming, that shows that you are filled with your opinions – Christian, Hindu – and you are projecting.Sosan says: Do not search for the truth… You cannot search. How can you? You are not ready, because the mind is there. Who will search? All seeking belongs to mind, every search comes out of the mind. Consciousness never seeks, never searches; consciousness simply is. It is being, it is not a desire.Search is a desire. You searched in the world for wealth, power, prestige, and you failed. Now you search for God and truth, but you remain the same. Nothing has changed, only words have changed. Before it was “power,” now it is “God” – but you remain the same seeker.The truth cannot be sought. On the contrary, when all seeking stops the truth knocks at your door; when the seeker is no longer truth comes to you. When you cease all desires, when you have no motivation to go anywhere, suddenly you find you are illuminated. Suddenly you find you are the very temple you were seeking. Suddenly you come to realize you are Krishna, you are Jesus. No vision comes to you – you are the source of all, you are the very reality.Do not search for the truth; only cease to hold opinions. Don’t hold opinions – Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina. Don’t hold opinions. Don’t carry scriptures, otherwise you may become a man of knowledge but you will never be a wise man. You may become filled with much knowledge and information, but everything will be borrowed and dead. Opinion is not truth, cannot be. Opinion is from the mind and truth is not from the mind – truth happens when the mind is no longer there. Opinion is the known and truth is the unknown. When the known ceases, the unknown comes to you. When there is no known around, the unknown is there.With the mind you cannot reach. That is the only thing to be renounced: the mind, the opinion, the Christian, the Hindu, the Gita, the Bible, the Koran. You cannot carry knowledge because knowledge belongs to the mind, not to consciousness.Look at the difference. I told you consciousness is just like a mirror: whatsoever comes before it, it is mirrored without any prejudice. The mirror will not say, “This woman is beautiful, I would like to mirror her. And this woman I don’t like; I am not going to mirror her, she is ugly.” No, the mirror has no opinion. The mirror simply mirrors – it is its nature.But then there is a photographic plate. It also mirrors but it mirrors only once, then it clings to the reflection. A photographic plate hidden behind a camera also mirrors, but only once. Mind is just like a photographic plate: it mirrors, then it clings to the reflection. Then it carries the dead information; then always and always it will carry the same information.A mirror mirrors and again is empty; again it is ready to receive. A mirror is always fresh to receive because it never clings. A mirror has no opinion. Mind has opinions, opinions and opinions, and through this thick wall of opinions you will never be able to reach truth.Truth is there. It is not a theory, it is a reality: it has to be experienced. You cannot think about it, you cannot philosophize about it. The more you philosophize, the more you will miss. Sinners may sometimes have glimpses, but never doctors of philosophy.Says Sosan:Do not search for the truth;only cease to hold opinions.Do not remain in the dualistic state;avoid such pursuits carefully.If there is a traceof this and that, of right and wrong,the mind-essence will be lost in confusion.Difficult: you can even understand to drop information, but deeper, deeper than ordinary information, is your conscience of good and bad. You can think, “Okay, I am no longer a Christian, no longer a Hindu.” But the morality, the good and bad? Do you think morality is not Christian and Hindu?Morality is humanistic; even an atheist remains a moralist. He does not belong to any religion but he also thinks in terms of good and bad – and this is one of the deepest problems to be solved by a seeker. An authentic seeker has to drop all concepts, good and bad.I have heard…A few people were traveling in a small boat. Suddenly the ocean went mad and it appeared that the boat was going to sink at any moment. Everybody fell on his knees and started praying.In the boat there was a well-known saint, and also a well-known sinner. The sinner also fell on his knees and said, “My Lord! Save us!”The saint came near to him and said, “Not so loudly. If he comes to know about you, that you are also here, then none of us is going to be saved. Then we are all going to be drowned. Not so loud!”But can a saint be a saint if he can see a sinner in somebody? Can a saint really, authentically be a saint if he thinks that the other is the sinner? He may be a great moralist, but he clings to the good and still has condemnation for the other.A religious man has no condemnation; he simply accepts. A religious man is so humble, how can he say, “I am a saint and you are a sinner”? A religious man simply drops all categories of good and bad.Sosan says: Do not remain in the dualistic state; avoid such pursuits carefully. If there is a trace of this and that, of right and wrong, the mind-essence will be lost in confusion.And think, you know it through experience also… If you think too much about being good, what will you do? – the bad will remain there, you will suppress it. On the surface you will become polished; deep down there will be turmoil. On the surface you will be a saint; deeply hidden will be the sinner.And the same happens to a sinner: on the surface he is a sinner but deep inside he also hankers for saintliness. He also thinks, “This is bad, I am going to drop it.” He also tries to show that he is not a sinner.Both remain divided. The difference is not of division, the difference is only of what is on the surface and what is hidden.A saint goes on dreaming about sin; he goes on dreaming about all those bad things he has suppressed. It is a strange phenomenon that if you look at the dreams of the saints you will always find them as sinners, and if you look at the dreams of sinners you will always find them as saints.Sinners always dream of being saints and saints always dream of becoming sinners, because the repressed comes into the dreams, the unconscious reveals itself in the dreams. But the division remains, and if you are divided you cannot fall to the source.It is just like this: there is a tree, a big tree of a million branches. The branches are divided. If you cling to the branches how can you go to the roots? The deeper you move the fewer branches will be there; the lower you move, many-ness disappears and you come to the one undivided trunk – all branches in it, but itself undivided. Everything comes out of it, the many comes out of the one, but the one remains one. And you have to fall to the one. And that is the root, the source.Although all dualities come from the one,do not be attached even to this one.…all dualities come from the one, do not be attached even to this one. Don’t make this a theory and be attached to it and start fighting if somebody says, “No!” This is how it has happened in India.There is a school of non-dualists, Shankara and his school. He goes on arguing and fighting and creating proofs and philosophizing that only the one exists, the non-dual. If somebody says the dual exists he is ready to argue. And the dualist goes on saying, “How can the one exist?” The one cannot exist, because the other is needed for the one to exist.”Can you make an arithmetic out of one digit? Ten are not needed, but two is a must. Einstein worked it out and he tried to use only two digits in arithmetic, one and two: one, two, then comes ten, eleven, twelve, then comes twenty. It goes this way, but it will do; no need for nine digits or ten digits – but you cannot work with only one.Dualists say that existence is impossible with one; even a river needs two banks to flow. Man and woman are needed to give birth to a child; life and death are needed as the two banks for life to flow between. One will be so monotonous – how can life come out of one? They go on saying two. And those who say one, non-dual, they go on fighting with dualists.Sosan says if you have really understood that everything comes out of one, then don’t cling even to this, because clinging shows that you are for something and against something. If you say, “I am a non-dualist,” you have lost the point – because if there is only one, how can you be a dualist or a non-dualist? And what do you mean by non-dualism? If there is no duality, what do you mean by non-dualism? Keep silence!A real non-dualist cannot assert. He cannot say, “I believe in this,” because belief always implies the opposite. If I say, “I believe in this,” then it is implied that I don’t believe in that. Then two are created.Says Sosan – he is really a non-dualist – he says:Although all dualities come from the one,do not be attached even to this one.When mind exists undisturbed in the way,nothing in the world can offend,and when a thing can no longer offend,it ceases to exist in the old way.This is very beautiful, try to remember it: When mind exists undisturbed in the way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way.Somebody insults you. If you really exist undisturbed you cannot be insulted; he may try, but you cannot be insulted. He may do everything to insult you, but you will not take the insult. And unless you take it he is a failure.It happened…A psychoanalyst was going for a morning walk with his friend. A man who was a patient of this psychoanalyst, a crazy man, came running and hit the psychoanalyst hard in the back. The psychoanalyst staggered, fell on the ground and the man ran away. He gathered himself together and again started on his walk.The friend was surprised. He said, “Aren’t you going to do something? Something has to be done, it is a must! This man is a madman!”The psychoanalyst said, “This is his problem.”He is right, because: “This hitting is his problem, not mine. Why should I be disturbed?” He is right, because if somebody is angry it is his problem; if he is insulting it is his problem; if he is abusing it is his problem. If you are undisturbed, you are undisturbed. But you immediately get disturbed – that means his anger and insult is just an excuse. You were already boiling within, just waiting for some excuse to come your way.Says Sosan: When mind exists undisturbed – and when you fall to the source it is undisturbed – in the way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way. And the quality changes with the attitude. If somebody insults you, it looks like an insult because you get insulted. If you don’t get insulted, it will not look like an insult. How can it look like an insult if you are not insulted?Somebody is angry – you feel it as anger because you get disturbed. If you are not disturbed you cannot feel it as anger. The quality changes because your interpretation changes, because you are different. Somebody hates you – you feel it as hate, because you are disturbed. If you are not disturbed and somebody hates you, will you call it hate? How can you call it hate? The old name won’t do; the old mind is not there.You may even feel compassion, you may feel pity. You may feel, “What has happened to this man? How much he is suffering, and unnecessarily, and to no avail!” You may even help this man to come out of it, because when somebody is angry he is poisoning his own body, poisoning his own being – he is ill. You will help him to come out of it. If somebody has a cancer, you don’t start fighting with him. You help him, you serve him, you take him to the hospital.For a buddha – for a man like Sosan – when you are angry your mind has a cancer; compassion is needed, you need much help. And if the world becomes a little more enlightened whenever somebody is angry all the family, the friends, will hospitalize the man. He needs hospitalization. It is foolish to fight with him and to be angry with him. It is absolutely foolish and absurd because he is already ill, and you all are against him – how are you going to help?With physical illness we have compassion, with mental illness we don’t have compassion – because if someone is physically ill we don’t take it as offending to us. When somebody is mentally ill, we think he is mentally ill because of us. Because you are also ill, hence this attitude.Once you are undisturbed everything changes because your attitude changes. You are different, the whole world is different: …it ceases to exist in the old way.When no discriminating thoughts arise,the old mind ceases to exist.Discrimination – this is good, that is bad, this I like, that I don’t like – this discrimination is the very base of your mind. If discrimination disappears the mind falls into an abyss. You will reach to your source. And that source carries all meaning, all ecstasies, all blessings.Enough for today.

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Hsin Hsin Ming 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hsin Hsin Ming 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sosan said:When thought objects vanish,the thinking subject vanishes,as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.Things are objects because of the subject; the mind is such because of things.Understand the relativity of these twothe basic and the reality: the unity of emptiness.In this emptiness the two are indistinguishableand each contains in itself the whole world.If you do not discriminate between coarse and fineyou will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.The world is there because of you – you create it, you are a creator. Every single being creates a world around himself, it depends on his mind. The mind may be illusory, but it is creative – it creates dreams. And it is up to you to create a hell or heaven.If you leave this world, you will not be able to leave it. Wherever you go you will create the same world again because the world is constantly coming out of you, just as leaves are coming out of a tree.You don’t live in the same world – you cannot, because you don’t have similar minds. Just by the side of you somebody may be living in heaven, and you may be living in hell – and you feel that you are living in the same world? How can you live in the same world when minds differ?So the first thing to be understood is that you cannot leave the world unless the mind disappears. They are related, they depend on each other, they make a vicious circle. If the mind is there… And a mind is always a particular mind. When the mind is no longer a particular mind, it becomes a Mind with a capital M: it is no longer mind, it has become consciousness. A mind is always a particular mind and it carries a particular aroma around it – that is your world.The mind creates the world and then the world creates the mind, helps the mind to remain the same. This is the vicious circle. But the source is in the mind; the world is just a by-product. The mind is substantial; the world is just the shadow of it. And you cannot destroy the shadow, but everybody tries to destroy it.If this wife doesn’t suit you, you think another wife will. You are trying to change the world, and you are the same. You will just turn the next wife into an exact replica of the old. You will create the wife again, because the wife will be just a screen.And you will be surprised: people who have married many times, their experience is really strange. A person who has been married ten times recognizes the fact: “How does it happen? – in such a wide and big world I always stumble upon the same type of woman? Even by accident it seems impossible! Again and again!”The problem is not the woman, the problem is the mind. The mind is again attracted to the same type of woman, again creates the same relationship, again finds the same mess and the same hell.And the same happens in everything you do. Do you think you will live happily in a palace? You are wrong. Who is going to live in the palace? You will live there. If you are not happy in your hut, you will not be happy in your palace. Who will live in the palace? Palaces don’t exist outside you.If you can live happily in a hut, you can live happily in a palace, because you create the world around you. Otherwise, as the hut pinches you the palace will pinch – even more so because it is a bigger thing. It will be a hell, just the same – more decorated, but a decorated hell is not a heaven. And even if you are forcibly thrown into heaven you will try to find an exit, or you will create your hell there.I have heard about one man, a great businessman, a dress manufacturer. He died. Somehow, by some technical mistake, he entered heaven. He met his old partner there. The old partner was as sad as he was on this earth. So the businessman said, “What does it mean? You are in heaven, and so unhappy?”The partner said, “It is okay, but personally I prefer Miami.”And the other also came to the same conclusion within days. They again became partners there, and they wanted to start a business firm to manufacture dresses.The same is going to happen wherever you go, because you are the world. You create a world around you, then the world helps the mind which has created it. The son helps the father, the son helps the mother, your shadow helps the substance – then the mind is strengthened more, then again you create the same world on the same lines. From where to start a transformation? How to change?If you look, the first look will say to change the world, because it is so apparent around you. Change it! And that’s what you have been doing for many lives: continuously changing the world, changing this and that, changing houses, bodies, wives, husbands, friends – changing, but never looking at the fact that you remain the same, so how can you change the world?That’s why a false tradition of renunciation came into existence all over the world. Escape from the house and go to the monastery. Escape from the market, go to the Himalayas. Escape from the world! You can easily go to the Himalayas, but how can you escape from yourself? You will create the same world there – the same! It may be a miniature world, it may not be so vast, but you will do the same. You are the same – how can you do anything else?Deeper insight reveals this: change the mind, then the world changes. Then wherever you are, a different world is revealed. You go deeper, and then you understand that if you really want to be without the world around you – because howsoever beautiful the world is, sooner or later it will become a boredom and you will be fed up. Even if it is heaven you will start longing for hell, because the mind needs change. It cannot live in the eternal, it cannot live in the non-changing, because the mind hankers for some new curiosity, some new sensation, some new excitement. It is not possible for the mind to stop time and to timelessly remain.That’s why the mind cannot live in the now, the here, because now is not a part of time. The now never changes, it is eternal. You cannot say it is unchanging, that it is permanent, that it is eternal. It is simply as it is. Nothing happens there. It is emptiness.Buddha has called it shunyata – absolutely empty. Nothing happens there, nobody comes, nobody goes. There is nobody, because if somebody is there then something or other will happen.Mind cannot live in the eternal now. Mind wants change and goes on hoping, and goes on hoping against all hope. The whole situation is hopeless, but mind goes on hoping.I have heard…Mulla Nasruddin remained unemployed for many, many years because he wanted to be an actor and he had no talent. But every day, religiously, he would go to the agent. Hopefully, he would knock at the door, enter the office and inquire, “Has something happened? Am I booked somewhere?”And the agent would always say the same: “I cannot do anything, nothing is possible.”Days passed, weeks passed, then years passed and the Mulla’s knocking became a routine. Whatsoever the season, the climate, good or bad, one thing was certain for the agent – that Mulla would come. And he would again ask hopefully, and the man would again say the same thing: “Nasruddin, I cannot do anything, nothing is possible.”Then one day the knock was different, a little sad. And when Mulla came in, even the agent was surprised: “Why is he so sad?”Mulla said, “Listen, for two weeks don’t book me anywhere because I’m going for a vacation.”This is how mind functions – goes on hoping, not for many years, but for many lives! You knock on the same door with the same inquiry and desire, and it is always no. What have you gained through mind except no’s?Yes has never come that way; it cannot come. Mind is a futile effort. It is desert-like, nothing grows on it, nothing can grow. But it goes on hoping. Even a desert dreams, and dreams of beautiful gardens, rivers flowing, brooks and waterfalls. Even a desert dreams, and that is the dream of the mind.One has to be alert. There is no need to waste any more time – no need to knock on the agent’s door. You have lived enough with the mind. You have achieved nothing through it. Is it not the right time to be alert and aware?Of course you have gathered many miseries and many hells – if you call them achievements then it is okay – anguish, frustration. And wherever you move with the mind something goes wrong, because mind is the mechanism of the wrong. You look, something goes wrong.Mulla Nasruddin’s son was entered into the school. The teacher was talking about geography and she talked and explained the shape of the earth and everything. And then she asked Mulla Nasruddin’s son, “What is the shape of the earth?”He remained silent, so just to provoke his answer she said, “Is it flat?”The son said, “No.”She became more hopeful; she said, “Then is it a globe, round-shaped?”Nasruddin’s son said, “No.”Then she was surprised. She said, “The possibilities are only two: either it is flat or it is global, and you say no to both. So what is your idea?”The son said, “My Dad said it is crooked!”For the mind everything is crooked; not because everything is crooked – the way the mind looks, anything that penetrates the medium of the mind becomes crooked. Just as you put a straight thing into water, a straight staff, and suddenly you see the medium of the water has done something; it is no longer straight. You bring it out of the water, it is again straight. Put it in again, and you know that the staff remains straight even in water, but your eyes still say that it is not straight. A hundred times you can bring it out and put it in. Even if you know well that the staff remains straight, the medium will again give you the false information that it is no longer straight.You have known many, many times that the misery is created by the mind, but again you fall a victim. Mind creates misery; it cannot create anything else because it cannot encounter reality. It can only dream – that is the only capacity for the mind. It can only dream. And dreams cannot fulfill, because whenever they come against the reality they are shattered.You live in a house of glass: you cannot face reality. Whenever reality comes your house is shattered, and many houses you have lived in have been shattered. You carry their ruins in the mind, the anguish that resulted, and that has made you very sour, very bitter.Taste anybody and you will taste bitterness. And that is the experience of others about you also: everybody tastes bitter. Come closer and everything goes bitter; remain distant, everything looks beautiful. Come closer, everything goes bitter – because when you come closer, minds penetrate each other and everything is crooked, then nothing is straight.This has to be realized as your experience, not as a theory from me or Sosan. Sosan can’t help, neither can I. It must become your own experienced phenomenon. Experienced, it becomes a truth – and then many things start changing, then you drop the mind.And when the mind drops, all worlds disappear. When the mind drops, objects disappear; then they are no longer objects. Then you don’t know where you end and where things start. Then there are no boundaries – boundaries disappear.In the beginning you feel as if everything has gone blurred, but by and by you settle in the new phenomenon, which is of no-mind. Then there are stars, but they are part of you, no longer objects. There are flowers and trees, but they flower in you, no longer outside. Then you live with the totality.The barrier is broken – the barrier was your mind. Then for the first time there is no world, because “world” means the totality of objects. For the first time there is a universe, and universe means one. Remember the word uni. This you wrongly call a “universe”. Don’t call it a “universe”: for you it is a “multiverse” – many worlds, no longer one. It is not yet.But when the mind drops, worlds disappear. There are no objects. Boundaries mingle and meet into each other. The tree becomes the rock, the rock becomes the sun, the sun becomes the star, the star becomes the woman you love, and everything is meeting and mingling into each other. And you are not there, separate. You are in it throbbing at the very heart, pulsating. Then it is a universe.Mind drops, objects disappear – the source of dream has disappeared. What have you been doing? You have been trying to get a better dream, of course to no avail. But the whole effort of the mind is to get a better dream. Don’t think that mind can give you a better dream – a dream is a dream. Even if better, it will not be a satisfactory thing, it cannot give you a deep contentment. A dream is a dream!If you are feeling thirsty you need real water, not dream water. If you are hungry you need real, substantial bread, not dream bread. For a few moments you may be able to deceive yourself, but for how long?Every night it happens: you are hungry, the mind creates a dream – you are eating, you are eating delicious things. For a few minutes it is okay, even for a few hours it is okay, but for how long? Can you stay in this dream forever and ever?It helps sleep, you don’t get disturbed. Otherwise hunger will disturb you, you will have to get up and go to the fridge. It helps: feeling that you are eating, you can go on sleeping; there is no need to go anywhere. But by the morning you will know that your mind deceived you.Your whole life is just like a dream, and you are substituting dream objects for the reality. So every day everything is shattered, every day you are shocked into reality, because the reality goes on bumping from here and there. You cannot avoid it! A dream is a very fragile thing; reality goes on bumping and breaking in.And it is good, it is for your good, that reality breaks your dreams, shatters them to pieces. But you again start collecting those pieces and creating other dreams. Drop it! You have done that enough. Nothing has been achieved. Now, no more of it!Once you understand that dreaming has to be stopped the world of objects disappears. The world will be there, but not of objects. Then everything becomes alive, everything becomes subjective.That is the meaning of religious people who say that everything is God. What are they saying? God is just a metaphor. There is nobody sitting somewhere in heaven, controlling, managing, engineering. God is just a metaphor – the metaphor that the things in the world are not like things, they are persons. Deep inside a subjectivity is there. Everything is alive and throbbing. And this throbbing is not a fragmented process, this throbbing is a whole throbbing.Of course you feel the beat of the heart near the heart, at the heart. But you think it is only in the heart? Then you are wrong – the whole body is throbbing. The heart only indicates, the whole body is throbbing. That’s why when the heart stops the body is dead. It was not really the heart that was throbbing, the whole body was throbbing through the heart; the heart was just an indicator.You are throbbing, but the whole is throbbing through you – you are just an indicator, a heart. The universe throbs and beats through you. You are not, the universe is.And the universe is not a totality of objects, it is a subjectivity. It exists as a person. It is alive, conscious. It is not a mechanical arrangement, it is an organic unity.Now try to understand these words of Sosan:When thought objects vanish,the thinking-subject vanishes,as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.Things are objects because of the subject;the mind is such because of things.Things are there around you because of you. You attract them. If you feel hell around you, it is you who has attracted it. Don’t be angry about it and don’t start fighting with it; it is useless. You attracted, you invited – you have done it! And now your desires are fulfilled: whatsoever you needed is around you. And then you start fighting and getting angry. You have succeeded!Remember always that whatsoever is happening around you is rooted in the mind. Mind is always the cause. It is the projector, and outside there are only screens – you project yourself. If you feel it is ugly then change the mind. If you feel whatsoever comes from the mind is hellish and nightmarish, then drop the mind. Work with the mind, don’t work with the screen; don’t go on painting it and changing it. Work with the mind.But there is one problem, because you think you are the mind. So how can you drop it? So you feel you can drop everything, change everything, repaint, redecorate, rearrange, but how can you drop yourself. That is the root of all trouble.You are not the mind, you are beyond mind. You have become identified, that’s true, but you are not the mind.And this is the purpose of meditation: to give you small glimpses that you are not the mind. If even for a few moments the mind stops, you are still there! On the contrary, you are more, overflowing with being. When the mind stops it is as if a drainage which was continuously draining you has stopped. Suddenly you are overflowing with energy. You feel more!If even for a single moment you become aware that the mind is not there but “I am,” you have reached a deep core of truth. Then it will be easy to drop the mind. You are not the mind, otherwise how can you drop yourself? The identification has to be dropped first, then the mind can be dropped.The whole Gurdjieff method is how to get unidentified. Next time a desire comes, look at it. Say within yourself, “Okay, I will watch where this mind is moving.” And you will feel a distance, you are looking at it. Who is this looker, the spectator? And the desire moves and creates dreams.Sometimes you may forget, sometimes you may become one with the desire. Pull yourself together again, look at the desire again: the desire is moving on its own. It is as if a cloud has entered, a thought has come into the sky of your being. Just look at it, watch it. And remember, if you can be unidentified even for a fragment of a second – the desire is there and you are here, and there is a distance – suddenly there is illumination, a light has happened to you.Now you know that the mind works on its own, it is a mechanism. You can drop it! You may not use it, you may use it; you are the master. Now the slave, the mechanism, is put in its place; it is no longer the master. Then dropping is possible. When you are different from it, only then is dropping possible.Meditation, witnessing, silently sitting and looking at the mind, will be of much help. Not forcing, simply sitting and looking. Not doing much, just watching as one watches birds flying in the sky. Just lying down on the ground and watching, nothing to do, indifferent… Not your concern really, where they are going; they are going on their own.Remember, thoughts are also just like birds: they are moving on their own. And sometimes it happens that the thoughts of the people who are around you enter into your sky, your thoughts go on entering into their sky. That’s why sometimes you feel that with some man you suddenly become sad; with some other man you suddenly feel an upsurge of energy and happiness and delight. Just looking at somebody, being near him, something changes in your mood.It happens even with places. You go into a house and suddenly a gloom settles on you. You go into another house, and suddenly you feel light, as if wings have come to you, you can fly, you are weightless. You enter a crowd and you are no longer yourself, something has changed. You enter another crowd, again something has changed.This is the base of satsang: being with a master who has no thoughts. Just being with him, sometimes his no-thought, his no-mind, will knock at your door. In some moments it cannot be manipulated, one has to wait, one has just to pray and wait and watch. It cannot be forced because it is not a thought. A thought is a thing, it can be thrown at you. No-thought is not a thing, it cannot be thrown.A thought has its own movement and propulsion. Whenever you are near a person who has too many thoughts, he will fill you with his thoughts. Just being near he will go on pouring his mind into you – whether he speaks or not, that is not the point. Continuously, thoughts, like sparks, are falling from his head all around – you catch them.And sometimes you are even aware that this is not your thought. But when it comes you become filled with it, you become identified even with that. This is not your anger; somebody else was angry and you felt something within you. Somebody was hateful and the hate hit you. Everything is infectious, and mind is the most infectious disease in the world. No flu can compete with it, it goes on infecting people all around.If you can see, you can see sparks just falling from the head of a person. They have different colors. That’s why so many mystics became aware of auras, because if a gloomy person comes he brings a gloomy aura. You can see it if your eyes are clear. You can see when a happy person comes around you. Even if you have not seen him – he is coming from behind you, you have not seen him – but suddenly you feel something happy is happening around.Thoughts are not your own, they are not you. When you die your thoughts are scattered all around. It has happened, and next time you go near a dying man, watch – it is an experience in itself. When a man is dying, just sit and watch what happens to your mind. You will be surprised; thoughts which have never been there, thoughts you are not accustomed to, thoughts which are unknown, suddenly bubble up in you – pop! The man is dying and he is throwing his thoughts all around, like a dying tree throwing its seeds. It is in a panic; before the tree dies it should throw seeds so other trees come up.Never go near a man who is dying if you are not aware, because then the dead will influence you. Basically, never be near a man where you feel gloomy, sad, unless you are aware. If you are aware then there is no problem. Then the gloom comes and passes; you never get identified with it. Have you ever felt, going in a church, people praying – you feel immediately different. So much prayer, even not very real, just a Sunday prayer, but still they are doing it, even for a few moments the windows open – they are different. A fire catches you, you feel sudden changes within you.Be aware! And then see how thoughts enter in the mind, how you get identified and become one with them. And they are moving so fast, the speed is so great, because there is nothing more speedy than thought. It is not possible to create anything more speedy than thought. It takes no time to reach anywhere. It jumps from one infinity to another; space doesn’t exist for it.Thoughts are there, moving with speed. Because of the speed you cannot see two thoughts separately. Sit, close your eyes, slow down all processes of the body. Breathing slows, heartbeat slows, blood pressure slows. Slow down everything, relax, because if everything slows, thought has to slow down, because it is a compact whole. When everything is slow, thought has to get slow.That’s why in deep sleep thought stops, because everything is so slow and thought is so speedy a thing that there comes a breaking – the process cannot continue. The man is so slow and thought is so speedy, they cannot get together. Thought disappears. In deep sleep, only for a few hours, two hours at the most in the night, thought stops, because you are completely relaxed.Relax and just watch: as the thought process slows you will be able to see gaps. Between two thoughts there is an interval – in that interval is consciousness. Between two clouds there is an interval – in that interval is the blue sky.Slow down the thought process and look in the intervals, and pay more attention to the intervals than to the clouds. Shift the attention, change the gestalt. Don’t look at the figure, look at the background.If I put a blackboard, a big blackboard the size of this wall here, and mark it with a white point and ask you what you see, the possibility is that ninety-nine percent of you will not see the blackboard, you will see the white dot – because we see the figure, not the background.Such a big blackboard, but if I ask you, “What do you see there?” you will say, “I see a little white spot.” Such a big blackboard is not seen and only a little white spot, which is almost invisible, is seen? Why? – because this is the fixed pattern of the mind: to look at the figure, not at the background; to look at the cloud, not at the sky; to look at the thought, not at the consciousness.This gestalt has to be changed. Pay more attention to the background and less attention to the figure. You will be nearer reality. In meditation this has to be done continuously. The mind, because of old habit, will look at the figure. Just shift again: look at the background.You are here, I am here. We can look at each other in two ways. I can look at the background: in the background are the trees, plants, greenery, the sky – the vast universe is your background. Or I can look at you, you are the figure. But mind always looks at the figure.That’s why it happens if you go to a person like Sosan, Jesus or Buddha, you feel that their eyes are not looking at you. You are just the figure and they are looking at the background. Their gestalt is different. You may feel that their eyes are cold because they are not paying attention to you. You are just a cloud.People like Buddha, when they look, you are there, but just as a small part of the background. And vast is the background, and you are just a dot. But you would like somebody to look at you, at the small dot, as if you are the universe, as if nothing exists beyond you.Buddha’s love will look cold. You need a hot love, eyes which look at you and forget the whole: that is not possible for a Buddha. You have your place, but you are still a small dot. Howsoever beautiful, you are just part of a vast background – the whole attention cannot be given to you.That’s why the ego feels very much hurt near a Buddha, because the ego wants the whole attention: “Look at me, I am the center of the world.” But you are not the center of the world. Really, there is no center in the world, because the center is possible only if the world is limited. If it is a finite circle then the center is possible – and it is an infinite circle.It is absurd to think of a center. There is no center in the world; the world exists without any center. And it is beautiful. That’s why everybody can think, “I am the center.” If there is a center then it is impossible.That’s why Mohammedans and Christians and Jews will not allow Hindu assertions of “I am God – Aham brahmasmi.” They say, “This is heresy. What are you saying? Only God is the center;. nobody else is the center.” But Hindus can playfully assert “I am God,” because they say there is no center, or everybody is the center.But when you ask that the whole attention should come to you, this is the mind, the old habit of the mind to not look at the background, to just look at the figure.In meditation you have to shift from the figure to the background, from the star to the sky. The more this shift happens, the more you will feel you are not the mind, the more you will feel it can be dropped easily.It is just like dropping a dress. You have made it so tight that it feels like a skin – it is not. It is just like a dress; you can drop it easily. But one has to understand that one is the background, not the figure. And when this mind drops, says Sosan, then the objective world simply vanishes.What does he mean? Does he mean that if you are in deep meditation, if you have reached the goal of no-mind, then these trees will disappear, vanish? Then this house will no longer be here? Then you will not be sitting here? If I have attained, will this chair I am sitting on vanish?No, objects disappear as objects; not this chair, not that tree – they remain, but they are no longer limited. Now they have no boundaries. Then this chair is meeting with the sun and with the sky, then the figure and the background have become one. There is no figure separate from the background, their identities are lost. And they are no longer objects, because you are no longer a subject there.Krishnamurti goes on saying something very beautiful: that in deep meditation the observer becomes the observed. This is true, but you will feel that this looks absurd. If you are looking at a flower, does Krishnamurti mean that you become the flower? Then how will you get back home? And somebody may pluck you and you will be in trouble.“The observer becomes the observed” – does it mean that you become the flower? No, but still, in a sense, yes. You don’t become the flower in the sense that you can be plucked and somebody can carry you and you are no longer a man. No, not in that sense. But when there is no mind, there is no boundary to you which separates you from the flower, no boundary to the flower which separates it from you. You have both become a subjective pool, you are merging and meeting. You remain you, the flower remains the flower; nobody can mistakenly pluck you, but there is a merging.It happens in your life, sometimes only a few moments when you love a person. That too is rare because man’s mind never leaves him, even in love. It goes on creating its own nonsense, creating its own world. And the lover is no longer allowed such closeness that he reaches to the background. The figure, the ego, always stands in between. But a few times it happens.Of course, it must be happening in spite of you. It is so natural that even if you have made all the arrangements, sometimes the reality bumps into you. In spite of all your arrangements, of all your dreams, sometimes it penetrates you, sometimes you are not on guard. Sometimes you forget, or you are so much occupied in a certain thing that a window opens and you are not looking at that window and reality enters in.For a few moments, in love, this happens; when the observer has become the observed. This is a beautiful meditation: if you love a person then sit with the person and look into each other’s eyes – not thinking anything, not thinking who he is, not creating a thinking process, just looking into each other’s eyes.There may be a few glimpses when the observer will become the observed, when you will be lost and you will not know who you are – whether you have become the beloved or the beloved has become you. Eyes are beautiful doors to enter into each other.And why do I say only in love it is possible? – because only in love are you not on guard. You relax, you are not afraid of the other, you can be vulnerable, you can afford it. Otherwise you are always on guard because you don’t know what the other will do, you don’t know whether he will hurt you. And if you are not on guard the hurt can go very deep.In love you can look into each other’s eyes. There will be some glimpses when the background and the figure dissolve into each other. You will be shaken to your very foundations. Suddenly you will have a glimpse: you are not, still you are. Somewhere deep there has been a meeting.This happens to a real meditator with the universe itself – not that he becomes a tree, but still he becomes a tree. When he is with a tree, there are no boundaries. And when he becomes tuned to this no-boundary land, then he moves without boundaries.This is the meaning of Sosan. When the mind disappears, objects vanish. When the objects vanish, you vanish, the ego vanishes. They are related.Understand the relativity of these twoand the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness. You exist because of your objects around you. Your boundary exists because of the boundaries of other things around you. When their boundaries are lost, your boundary is lost; you are relative to each other, you are together.Your mind and your objects outside are joined together, they have a bridge. If the one bank disappears the bridge falls. And with the bridge the other bank also disappears, because there is no possibility for one bank to exist without the other. This is the meaning of relativity.And then there is a unity – the unity of emptiness. You are empty and the flower is empty, because when there is no boundary to the flower, then how can there be a center? This is one of the deepest realizations of Buddha, and only Buddhists have asserted this so beautifully. They say there is no atma, no self.And this was very much misunderstood, because Hindus say that their whole religion is based on atma, the self, the supreme self. And Buddha says, “When there is no boundary, how can the self exist?” When there is no boundary and the mind has become totally silent, how can the “I” exist? Because the “I” is a noise. How can you say “I am” when the whole is? When the figure and the background have become one, how can you say “I am”?This is the emptiness of Buddha, anatta. This word is beautiful – anatta, no-selfness. You are no more and still you are. Really, for the first time you are as the whole, but not as the individual, not as the defined, demarcated, fenced. You are as the whole, but you are not as an individual, as a marked, defined separateness. You are no longer an island, you are the vast expanse of emptiness.And the same is with the flower, and the same is with the tree, and the same is with the bird and with the animal, and the same is with the rock, stars and the sun. When your self disappears, the self disappears from everywhere, because it was your self reflected, it was your self resounded by the universe, it was your madness reflected. Now it is no longer there.Sosan is saying that when there is emptiness there is unity. If you are, how can there be any unity? Your very being separate creates the disunity.Mohammedans say that they love Hindus, they are brothers; Christians say they love Jews, they are brothers. Everybody is a brother, but how can you be a brother when you are a Christian? How can you be a brother when you are a Hindu? Your demarcation, your boundary, carries the enmity in it. At the most you can tolerate the other, but you cannot be one with the other. And just saying “brother” doesn’t help, because nobody can fight as dangerously as brothers.Saying that I am a Hindu, I am making myself separate from the whole. Saying that I am powerful, I am separating myself from the universe. Saying that I am extraordinary, I am separating myself from the universe. This is what Chuang Tzu says: Be just the ordinary. That means don’t separate in any way, don’t make clear-cut definitions about yourself. Live with liquid boundaries, which are always ready to meet and melt.Understand the relativity of these twoand the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.In this emptiness the two are indistinguishable…They cannot be distinguished, they cannot be felt as separate – separate from the other. They are separate, but this separateness is totally different. You can distinguish, but this separateness is not of the ego.It is just like a wave in the ocean: you can distinguish, the wave is the wave, not the ocean – still it is the ocean. The wave cannot exist without the ocean. The ocean is waving in it, the ocean is pulsating in it. It is separate as a form, and still not separate as existence. You remain separate, and still you are not separate. This is the most fundamental paradox a man comes to experience when he experiences no-selfness, anatta.…and each contains in itself the whole world.Not separate, you don’t lose anything, you gain the whole. And you are always afraid of losing. You always think, “If I lose myself then I am no longer. What am I going to gain?” You lose, and you gain the whole. And you lose nothing but your misery, your anxiety, anguish. What have you got to lose? You don’t have anything to lose – only your suffering, your bondage.…and each contains in itself the whole world. When you lose, you become the whole world: all is yours. You are beggars because of yourselves; you can be emperors. Mind is the begging bowl.I have heard a Sufi story; it is one of the oldest Sufi teachings…A beggar came to an emperor’s palace. The emperor was just in the garden so he heard the beggar. The man at the gate was going to give something, but the beggar said, “I have one condition. I always take from the master, never from servants.”The emperor heard. He was taking a walk so he came to look at this beggar, because beggars don’t have conditions. If you are a beggar how can you have conditions? “Seems to be a rare beggar.” So he came to look – and he was a rare beggar. The emperor had never seen such an emperor-like man before. He was nothing; this man had some glory around him, a grace. His dress was tattered, almost naked, but the begging bowl was very, very precious.The emperor said, “Why this condition?”The beggar said, “Because servants are themselves beggars and I don’t want to be rude to anybody. Only masters can give. How can servants give? So if you are ready, you can give and I will accept it. But then too I have a condition, and that is: my begging bowl has to be completely filled.”A small begging bowl! The emperor started laughing. He said, “You seem to be mad. Do you think I cannot fill your begging bowl?” And then he ordered his ministers to bring precious stones, incomparable, unique, and fill the begging bowl with them.But they got into a difficulty because the more they filled the begging bowl, the stones would fall in it and they would not even make a sound, they would simply disappear. And the begging bowl remained empty.Then the emperor was in a fix, his whole ego was at stake. He, a great emperor who ruled the whole earth, could not fill a begging bowl! He ordered, “Bring everything, but this begging bowl has to be filled.”His treasures… For days together all his treasuries were emptied, but the begging bowl remained empty. There was no more left. The emperor had become a beggar, all was lost. The emperor fell at the beggar’s feet and said, “Now I am also a beggar and I beg only one thing. Tell me the secret of this bowl, it seems to be magical!”The beggar said, “Nothing, it is made of the human mind, nothing magical.”Every human mind is just this begging bowl: you go on filling it, it remains empty. You throw the whole world, worlds together, and they simply disappear without making any sound. You go on giving and it is always begging.Give love, and the begging bowl is there, your love has disappeared. Give your whole life, and the begging bowl is there, looking at you with complaining eyes. “You have not given anything. I am still empty.” And the only proof that you can give is if the begging bowl is full – and it is never full. Of course, the logic is clear: you have not given.You have achieved many, many things – they have all disappeared into the begging bowl. The mind is a self-suicidal process. Before the mind disappears, you will remain a beggar. Whatsoever you can gain will be in vain; you will remain empty.And if you dissolve this mind, through emptiness you become filled for the first time. You are no more, but you have become the whole. If you are, you will remain a beggar. If you are not, you become the emperor.That’s why in India we have been calling beggars “swamis.” Swami means a master, an emperor. You cannot find a better word for sannyasins. When I was thinking what name to give, to the new sannyasins, I couldn’t improve on it. Swami seems to be the best. It means one who has thrown himself off so completely that he is no more; he has become the whole world, the master of all. Otherwise even emperors remain beggars; they go on desiring, asking and suffering.If you do not discriminate between coarse and fineyou will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.If you don’t distinguish between coarse and fine, good and bad, beauty and ugliness, this and that – if you don’t distinguish, if you don’t discriminate, you simply accept the whole as it is. You don’t put your mind in it, you don’t become a judge. You simply say, “It is so.”The thorn is there, you say, “It is so,” the rose is there, you say, “It is so”; a saint is there, you say, “It is so,” a sinner is there, you say, “It is so”. And the whole knows; nobody else can know why a sinner exists. There must be some reason, but that is a mystery for the whole, not for you to bother about.The whole gives birth to saints and sinners, thorns and roses – only the whole knows why. You simply fall into the whole and you don’t make any discriminations. You will also know why, but only when you have become the whole.The mystery is solved when you have become the mystery itself. You cannot solve it remaining yourself. If you remain yourself you will become a great philosopher. You will have many answers and no answer; you will have many theories but no truth. But if you become the mystery itself, you will know. But that knowledge is so delicate it cannot be put into words. That knowledge is so paradoxical it defies all language. That knowledge is so contradictory because opposites lose boundaries, they become one. No word can say it.The figure means the word and the background means the silence. In that knowledge the figure and the background have become one, the silence and the word have become one. How can you say it? But still it has to be said because there are many who are thirsty for it. Even hearing about it, it may be that somebody’s heart starts on a journey. That’s why Sosan is saying these things.Sosan knows they cannot be said, because whenever you say it you have to make discrimination. Whenever you say something you have to choose a word. Whenever you have to say something, you prefer this to that and the mind enters.But nobody has tried better than Sosan. He is incomparable. You cannot find another man who has put that silence into words so beautifully. Even a Buddha will feel jealous. This Sosan is really a master – a master of silence and a master of words. He has put something into this world which doesn’t belong to this world. He has penetrated with words a deep silence of his experience.Listen to his words – not only listen, imbibe. Let them melt into your heart. Don’t memorize them. Let them move into your bloodstream and become your blood and bones. Imbibe, eat them, digest them, and forget them. And they have tremendous power to transform.Enough for today.

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Hsin Hsin Ming 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hsin Hsin Ming 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sosan said:To live in the great wayis neither easy nor difficult,but those with limited viewsare fearful and irresolute:the faster they hurry, the slower they go,and clinging cannot be limited;even to be attached to the idea of enlightenmentis to go astray.Just let things be in their own wayand there will be neither coming nor going.Obey the nature of things (your own nature),and you will walk freely and undisturbed.When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden,for everything is murky and unclear,and the burdensome practice of judgingbrings annoyance and wearinessWhat benefit can be derivedfrom distinctions and separations?If you wish to move in the one waydo not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.Indeed, to accept them fullyis identical with true enlightenment.The wise man strives to no goalsbut the foolish man fetters himself.There is one dharma, truth, law, not many;distinctions arisefrom the clinging needs of the ignorant.To seek mind with the discriminating mindis the greatest of all mistakes.There are many beautiful things in this sutra. And for the seeker, not only beautiful but foundational and essential also – because Sosan is not a poet, he is a seer. Whatsoever he says carries the poetry of the infinite, but that is not to the point. Whenever an enlightened person speaks, whatsoever he speaks is poetry, and beautiful. Just the way he is, whatsoever comes out of him resounds, carries him, the fragrance. But that is not to the point. Don’t be lost in the poetry, because poetry belongs to the form and the truth is formless.The way Sosan says things is beautiful and poetic, but remember, don’t be lost in his poetry. Don’t be lost in the poetry of the Upanishads, of the Gita, of the sayings of Jesus. In itself the form is beautiful but that is not to the point. Move into what the content is, not the container.For the seeker the content is essential, and to understand the content is to become it – because there is no truth beyond understanding. In fact, understanding itself is the truth. To say that through understanding you will reach truth is wrong, because there is no truth apart from understanding.Understanding is the very truth. You understand, you have become the truth. Truth is not somewhere waiting for you to happen; it is through your understanding that it will be revealed – revealed within you.These instructions of Sosan are for the seeker, and every word is very, very meaningful.To live in the great wayis neither easy nor difficult…Whenever there is a goal it can be either easy or difficult. It depends where you are, how much distance between you and the goal, whether there is a highway or you have just to travel along a hilly track. Is the road mapped, marked, or do you have to find your own way?If there is a goal it will be either easy or difficult. It depends on whether you have traveled on the path before, also. Is the way known? – it will be easy. If the way is unknown it will be difficult. Are you a good traveler? – your physical condition, your mental condition, will make it either easy or difficult.But truth is not a goal at all, so how can it be easy or difficult?There are people who say truth is very, very difficult. They are saying something which is absolutely ignorant. There is an opposite school which says, “Truth is easy – there is no problem. Just understand and it is easy.” They are also saying something which is not right. And both things can be understood by the mind. Difficult? – the mind can find techniques and ways and means, and it can be made easy.Three thousand years ago traveling was difficult. Now it is almost as easy as anything: you simply enter an airplane and do nothing, just rest. And by the time you have taken your tea, you have reached. If the goal is difficult it can be made easy.That’s what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi goes on teaching in the West: that he has found a jet-speed technique. If the goal is difficult then, of course, if you travel by a bullock-cart it will be very, very difficult, and if you travel by a jet it will be easy.But is there a goal? That is the crux of the matter. If there is a goal somewhere, distant, then there are possibilities of making easier ways, means, vehicles. But is there a goal?Sosan says there is not a goal, so how can it be difficult or easy? And if there is not a goal, how can there be a way to it? And if there is no goal, how can there be methods and techniques to reach it? Impossible! He says it is neither easy nor difficult, because there is not a goal at all: To live in the great way is neither easy nor difficult…Then what is this great way? This great way is your nature – you are already it! That’s why it is not a goal. It is not going to be something in the future. No time is needed for it to happen. You have always been in it, it is already the case. You are at the goal, you exist in the goal. You cannot exist out of it, there is no possibility of going out of it. Howsoever much you wander you cannot go out of it. Wherever you go you will carry your Tao within you. It is your intrinsic nature. It is not dispensable, you cannot put it aside and forget it. You are already there because here is that “there.” You need not look in the future, you simply be here and you find it.Seek and you will miss. Don’t seek, just be, and it is there. And you will laugh because it has always been there – just because of your seeking you were missing it. Just because you were so much in a hurry you couldn’t see within.To live in the great wayis neither easy nor difficult,but those with limited viewsare fearful and irresolute:the faster they hurry, the slower they go,and clinging cannot be limited;even to be attached to the idea of enlightenmentis to go astray.Just let things be in their own wayand there will be neither coming nor going.You are the way and you are the goal, and there is no distance between you and the goal. You are the seeker and you are the sought; there is no distance between the seeker and the sought. You are the worshipper and you are the worshipped. You are the disciple and you are the master. You are the means and you are the end: this is the great way.It has always been available to you. This very moment you are in it. Awake, and you are in it. Go to sleep, you remain in it, but because you are asleep you cannot see it. And then you start seeking.You are like a drunkard seeking your own home, asking for something that is just in front of your eyes. But the eyes are not clear – they are filled with opinions, distinctions, they are filled with words and theories. That’s why your vision is blurred, otherwise whatsoever you are seeking is just in front of you.Hindus have a method of looking at the tip of the nose: just sit silently and look at the tip of the nose and do nothing. People laugh because: “What foolishness! What will happen out of it?” But the meaning is missed. Hindus are saying it is just in front of you, just like the tip of your nose. Be silent and look at the tip of your nose and don’t get entangled in any thinking. And suddenly it is there – just like the tip of the nose, always in front of you.And this is the beauty of the tip of your nose: wherever you move it is always in front of you. You go right, it is there; you go wrong, it is there. Be a sinner, it is in front; be a saint, it is in front. Whatsoever you do – stand in a reverse posture, in shirshasan – it is there in front of you. Fall asleep, it is there; be awake, it is there.This is the meaning of looking at the tip of the nose, because whatsoever you do, you cannot put it anywhere else than in the front. The moment you move, it has already moved. Just looking at the tip of your nose you will understand that the truth is just in front of you. Wherever you move, it moves with you; wherever you go, it goes with you. You cannot miss it, so there is no question of finding it. To understand that you have not missed it, look. Ordinarily you never look at the tip of your nose, because you are looking at other things, you are interested in other things. You never look at the tip of your nose.Hindus have another beautiful theory. They say when a person starts to see the tip of his nose, his death is near; within six months he will die. When a person starts seeing it without trying to see it – whatsoever he is doing he goes on seeing the tip of his nose – within six months he will die.It has something in it, because you become aware of the tip of your nose only when all your desires, all objects of desire, have become futile. You have no energy to move in desires, death is coming near. You are so energyless, all vitality has ebbed. You cannot move your eyes, you cannot run after desires and goals, life is ebbing. In the last moment nothing remains except to look at the tip of the nose. This is one meaning.Another meaning, and greater, is that: whenever a person can look at the tip of his nose, he will die to this world. A new birth, because he has looked in front of himself with clarity. This world disappears, this life disappears. He is dead as far as his old being was concerned. He is a new being, it is a rebirth. Now there is no coming and no going.He has attained – just by looking at the tip of the nose? Yes, because the whole question is: how to look in front and not sideways –because the truth is in front of you, it cannot be otherwise. It is neither easy nor difficult.It is not a question of effort, so how can it be easy or difficult? It is a question of awakening, not a question of effort. It is not a question of doing something. Doing, you will lose it, because you will become engrossed in doing. If you do something, it will be easy or difficult.It is a question of non-doing. How can non-doing be easy or difficult? Non-doing is completely beyond the world of doing. It is just being! How can being be difficult or easy? Being simply is. That is the great way. The whole effort is to come to know and see the tip of your nose, just to look with clear eyes in front of you.…but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go… It looks contradictory but it is happening to everybody. This is what has happened to you. The faster you go, the slower you are. Why? – because you go without looking in front, and the goal is there! The faster you move, the faster you are going astray.If somebody looks at your speed you are fast, but if somebody looks at what you are missing, you are slower. The faster you go, the slower. Don’t go anywhere! Just be here – and immediately you reach. No space is to be traveled and no time to be transcended. Just be here. Make now and here your only mantra, and you don’t need anything else. Be now, and here. Don’t go anywhere, fast or slow.It happened…A small boy came to school very, very late. He was always coming late. The teacher was very angry and she said, “Again? Again you are late and even more late than yesterday! And I have been telling you again and again. You don’t listen!”The boy said, “But there was great difficulty. It is raining outside you see, and the road is so slippery with mud that I would move one foot toward the school, and I would slip two backward. It is so slippery that the faster I tried to move, the slower I was reaching. In fact I was going in the opposite direction: one foot ahead and two feet thrown back.”The teacher said, “You are very clever, but then how did you reach?”The boy said, “I just started walking toward my home, that’s how.”You are also on a slippery road where the faster you go, the slower is the speed – because you are going away. If somebody looks at the goal, then you are going astray. Your speed is dangerous, it is against the goal, because no speed is needed. You have simply to just stop and look.People come to me and they ask, “When will we get enlightenment? When?” If I say, “Now,” they can’t believe me. And I tell you, now. If you miss this now, then another now – but always now. There is no other time.Whenever it happens it will happen in the now, and whenever it happens it will happen in the here. Here and now are not two words, just like time and space are not two words. Einstein used a new term: “spatiotime.” He made one word out of two, spatiotime, because he found scientifically that time is nothing but the fourth dimension of space, so no need to use two words.And here and now are also not two words. Thousands of years before Einstein, mystics like Sosan were aware of that. It is “now-here.” These two words are to be joined, they are one, because now is nothing but a dimension of here – the fourth dimension. Now-here is one word.And whenever it happens it will happen in the now-here. It can happen just now, no need to wait! But you are irresolute and fearful – that creates the problem.What is the meaning of being fearful? What is the situation inside when you are fearful? – you want it, and you also don’t want it. This is the situation of a fearful mind: he wants to go and he doesn’t want to go because he is afraid. He would like to but he is not certain, irresolute.Jesus always used the word fear, many times, against faith. He never used disbelief, distrust against faith; he would always use the word fear against faith. He said those who are not afraid, they become faithful, because faith is resolution. Faith is a decision, a total decision. You move totally in it, it is a trust, with nothing to be held back, unconditional. It cannot be taken back. If you have moved totally, who will take it back?Faith is absolute. If you go into it, you go into it. You cannot come out of it – who will come out of it? There is nobody standing behind who can pull you back. It is a jump into the abyss, and Jesus is exactly right to make fear the antonym of faith. Nobody has ever done that. But he is absolutely right, because he is not concerned with the outer language, he is concerned with the language of the inner being.It is fear which does not allow you to move into faith. It is not disbelief, remember; it is not disbelief which hinders your moving into faith, it is fear.Of course you rationalize your disbelief, your fear. You hide it in words and you say, “I am skeptical, I am doubtful. How can I move unless I am totally convinced?” But look deep down within yourself and you will find fear.Fear means half of you wants to go and half does not want to go. Half is allured by the unknown, has heard the call, the invocation; and half is afraid of the unknown, clinging to the known. Because the known is known, there is no fear in it.You do something; that something has become known. Now if you want to move into a new job, into a new pattern of life, new habits, new style, half of you clings to the known, saying, “Don’t move! Who knows, it may be worse than this. And once you are gone you cannot come back.” So, half says, “Cling!”This half belongs to the past, because the past is known, the memory. And the other half always is excited, feels the call to move on the unknown path through the uncharted – because something new will become ecstatic.This is the fear. You are divided. Fear divides you, and if you are divided there is irresolution. You take one step toward the unknown, the other step remains in the past, in the grave of the past. And then you are stuck, because nobody can move with one step, with one leg, one foot – nobody can move. You have to take both your wings into it, both your parts into it. Only then can you move.Irresolute, and you are stuck – and everybody is stuck. That is the problem, that is the anxiety. Stuck, and you cannot move, and life goes on flowing, and you have become rock-like, blocked, a prisoner of the past. …but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go…Their whole life is contradictory. They do something with one hand and immediately they undo it with the other – irresolute. You love a person on the one hand, you hate on the other. You create love on the one hand, on the other you sow the seeds of hatred. And you never see what you are doing.Just last night I was talking with someone about a hidden monastery in Bokhara. Gurdjieff lived in that monastery for at least six years. He learned many techniques from that Sufi school. One of their techniques is still used in that monastery.The technique is very beautiful. Whenever a person enters the monastery, becomes a disciple, he is given a plaque, a sign. On one side is written: “I am negative, please don’t take me seriously” – if I say something wrong I am not really saying it to you. Because I am negative, and I am filled with hatred, anger, depression. And if I do something, that is because of my negativity, not because you are wrong.On the other side of the plaque is written: “I am positive, I am loving, affectionate, please don’t take me seriously” – if I say you are beautiful, I am not saying anything about you – I am feeling high.And whenever a person feels that the mood is changing he changes his plaque; he puts the right side up, whatsoever he is. And many things happen through it, because nobody takes him seriously. People laugh because he is negative.If somebody is feeling nauseous and vomits, okay! He is not vomiting on you, he is not throwing anything on you. He is throwing something, something that is disturbing him. And only when this division stops and the disciple comes to the master and says, “I am neither. Now I am neither negative nor positive, everything has subsided and both my wings have become one, now I am one,” only then is the plaque taken away.The moment that plaque is taken away is the moment of enlightenment. Then you are whole. Otherwise, you are always contradicting yourself and then you feel misery and anguish and you think, “What is happening to me?” Nothing is happening to you! With one hand you do something good, with the other you immediately do something bad – immediately, to destroy the other side that has gone ahead, because you are irresolute, you are divided.One part of you clings to the old habits, another part wants to move into the unknown. One part wants to cling to the world, another part wants to become a bird and go into the unknown sky of divinity, or the very divineness of existence. Then you are stuck.Try to see this. It is difficult because you have never tried to see it, otherwise it is not difficult at all. It is neither difficult nor easy. Just see what you are doing with yourself and with others.Whatsoever you do half-heartedly will bring you misery. Stuck, you will fall and fall into hell. Hell is a place where people are stuck, and heaven is a place where everybody is moving, not frozen. Hell is a place where there is no freedom, heaven is freedom.Hindus have called the ultimate state moksha, absolute freedom. Nobody is stuck anywhere: floating like a free river, a bird on the wing, infinite sky all around, not tethered to anything.…but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go, and clinging cannot be limited… And remember, whenever you cling, clinging as such is the problem; it is not a question of what you cling to. So Sosan says “clinging is not limited” – not limited to this world, to this body, senses, enjoyments. You can cling to enlightenment, you can cling to God. You can cling to love, you can cling to meditation and prayer. And, clinging, you are stuck again.Don’t cling to anything, remain free and moving. The more moving, the nearer you are to yourself. When you are completely moving, nowhere stuck in your energy, truth knocks at the door. It has always been knocking, but you were stuck and you couldn’t hear it. It is just in front of you, at the very tip of your nose.…even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray. Then that becomes the problem. If you become too attached – “I have to attain enlightenment” – then this will become your problem. Enlightenment is never attained, it happens. It is not an attainment, and the achieving mind never attains it.You may be trying to attain power in this world, then you start trying to attain power in that world. First you want to attain wealth in this world, then you try to attain wealth in that world – but you remain the same, and the mind and the functioning and the whole scheme remains the same. Attain! Reach! – this is the ego trip. The achieving mind is the ego.And one who reaches is one who is not trying to achieve, who is simply happy wherever he is, who is simply blissful whatsoever he is. He has no goal. He is not going anywhere. He moves, but his movement is not for a goal. He moves out of his energy, not for a goal – his movement is not motivated.Of course, he reaches the goal – that’s another thing, and beside the point. A river moves from the Himalayas; she is not moving toward the sea, she does not know the sea, where it is, she is not bothered about the sea. The very song of moving in the Himalayas is so beautiful, passing through the valleys, to the peaks, passing through the trees, then coming down to the plains, to people. The very movement is beautiful! And every moment the movement is beautiful, because it is life.The river is not even aware there is a goal or there is a sea; that is not the concern. And if a river becomes too much concerned, then she will be just in the same mess as you are. Then she will stop everywhere and ask where to go: “Where is the right path?” And she will be afraid whether north will lead, or south, or the east or the west – where to go?And remember, the ocean is everywhere. Whether you move north or east or west makes no difference. The ocean is everywhere, the ocean is all around. It is always in front of you; wherever you move, it makes no difference.Don’t ask for the path, ask how to be more moving. Don’t ask for the goal, it is not there somewhere fixed. Wherever you move, move dancing. You will reach to the ocean – that happens. It happens to small rivers, it happens to big rivers, they all reach. A small stream – you cannot conceive how this small stream will reach to the ocean, but it will reach.There is no problem of small or big. Existence is infinitely graceful to everybody; small or big makes no difference. Small trees flower, big trees flower. Flowering is the thing! And when a small tree flowers it is not less happy than when a big tree flowers; the happiness is exactly the same. The happiness is not a question of size, it is not a question of quantity. It is a quality of your being. A small river also dances and reaches, a big river also dances and reaches.You are all like rivers, you will all reach to the ocean. But don’t make it a goal; otherwise, the faster you go, the slower you are moving.And the more you want to reach, the more you are stuck, because the more you become afraid. The fear of missing the goal grips hold of you, the fear of not reaching cripples you, the fear of going wrong paralyzes you. If there is no goal, there is no fear.Remember, fear is goal-oriented. If you are not going anywhere, what is the fear? You cannot miss, you cannot be a failure, so what is the fear? Fear means the possibility of being a failure. From where does this possibility of being a failure enter? It enters from the goal orientation – you are always looking for the goal.People come to me and they say, “We have been meditating for three months. Nothing has happened.” Nothing is going to happen, because you are waiting for it. You cannot even wait for the happening, because even waiting becomes an inner effort. You are looking.You relax! When you are no longer there, it happens. It will never happen to you; it will happen only when the boat is empty, when the house is empty. When you dance but there is no dancer, when you observe but there is no observer, when you love and there is no lover, it happens. When you walk and there is no walker inside, it happens.Don’t wait, don’t make any effort, don’t make a goal, or even enlightenment will become a bondage. It has become so to many, many people in the East. Millions of people take sannyas – they become Buddhist bhikkus, Hindu sannyasins – they move to the monasteries, and they are stuck there.They come to me and they are just like anybody else in the world. Somebody is stuck in the market, they are stuck in the monastery; that is the only difference. Somebody is a failure in the market, they are a failure in the monastery. But they never look. Why are you a failure? You create your failure yourself: if you are asking for the goal, you will be a failure.In the ultimate, the goal-oriented mind is a hindrance, the greatest hindrance. Simply be; the ultimate will come. Let it be the ultimate’s decision and problem, not yours. Leave it to him, he knows more. Let it be God’s problem, let him worry about it. Don’t worry –simply enjoy life as it moves, while it lasts. Dance and sing and be ecstatic, and let God worry. Why are you worried?Simply be unworried. And don’t be an achiever, because to be an achiever is to create the greatest tension that can happen to the human mind. Then you cannot look herenow, then you are looking far away, distant, in the future; there is the goal, the utopia, the golden city, Shambala – there. And you have to reach, so you run. Where are you going? From whom are you running? For what are you running? Shambala is herenow, the utopia has already happened.Jesus said to his disciples, “For whom are you waiting? I am here!” Even his disciples were asking, “When will the messiah come? When?” – because the Jews were waiting for centuries for the messiah’s coming and when he came they were not ready to welcome him. They are still waiting. And Jesus has come and they are still waiting. And even when Jesus was not there, many other Jesuses were there, and they have always been coming.God is always overflowing. Sometimes it is a Mohammed, sometimes it is a Jesus, sometimes it is a Buddha, sometimes it is a Sosan, a Chuang Tzu. He is overflowing, he is continuously falling, he cannot do anything about it! He is not a miser.But Christians say he has got only one son. Is he impotent? Did he become impotent after Jesus was born? This seems absurd – “the only begotten son.” That is not possible, otherwise your God is not a God – of no worth.A painter goes on painting, and always transcending himself.Somebody asked Van Gogh, “Which of your paintings is the best?”He said, “This which I am painting now.”A few days afterward the man again asked. Van Gogh said, “I have told you. This!” and he was painting another painting. “This which I am painting now is the best.”God is an overflowing, infinite overflowing. When Mohammed comes, Mohammed is the best; when Buddha comes, Buddha is the best. Really, he never creates anything second-hand. He always creates the best, incomparable.But people go on waiting. They miss the messenger at the door because their eyes are not there, their eyes are moving in some utopia, somewhere else. They are not there, they are not at home. God comes to you many times, and returns because you are not there. You are never wherever you are. And he knocks there, but you are not there.Let it be his worry, don’t you be worried – simply remain unworried. And these are the two situations: either you are worried or you are ecstatic, and both cannot exist together. If you are ecstatic, you are madly ecstatic. If you are worried, you are madly worried. There are two types of madmen: a madness that comes out of worries and a madness that comes out of being, overflowing being.The choice is yours. Either you will be a worried madman, on the couch of some psychiatrist, or you can become a madman of godliness, like a St. Francis or Sosan. Then your whole life becomes a dance, an infinite ecstasy, a blessing that goes on and on, and increases, increases, goes on increasing. There is no end to it. It begins, it never ends.Just let things be in their own way and there will be neither coming nor going. Infinite grace is there; no coming, no going. Infinite silence; no coming, no going. But just let things be in their own way –don’t come in the way, don’t try to change anything.This is very difficult for the mind to understand, because mind enjoys changing: if you are a sinner, how to become a saint; if you are ugly, how to become beautiful; if you are bad, how to become good.The mind goes on changing, trying to change, and the mind appeals because it seems, “Yes, you can be better, so try to change.” And then you cannot get better, then you are stuck – because you are already better! The only thing is how to stop worrying and how to start living. Be one who lives, just let things be in their own way.Accept! Who are you to worry? You were born – nobody asked you whether you wanted to be born or not. Otherwise, you would have been stuck there, because you cannot decide anything. You are irresolute.If you were asked, if God was there to ask you – he never made that mistake because he knows that you would be stuck there, for infinity – you would not be able to decide whether to be born or not. He suddenly threw you in without asking your permission, otherwise you would not be here. And if he asks again about your death, you will be stuck. He never asks, he simply takes you away. He knows you well: you cannot decide.If he comes and asks, “When do you want to die?” will you be able to decide? Saturday morning? Sunday? No! There are only seven days, and you will not be able to decide. He has to come without asking you.When life happens without you – birth happens, death happens, love happens without you – then why should you be worried? Whosoever is the source, if he can give you birth, if he can give you death, if he can create and uncreate, then let all the worries be his. You enjoy, while you are. And if you can enjoy while you are, suddenly you know: this is the source. You have touched infinite life.Jesus says, “I am here to teach you life abundant, infinitely rich.” And the way is to let things be. You don’t come into it, you don’t come in your own way. Let your Tao flow, let your nature move, wherever it goes!Obey the nature of things (your own nature),and you will walk freely and undisturbed.When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden,for everything is murky and unclear,and the burdensome practice of judgingbrings annoyance and weariness.What benefit can be derivedfrom distinctions and separations?When you are filled with thoughts the mind is blurred, your vision is not clear. But what to do? Thoughts are there. Let them be there. You be unconcerned! Let them be there –don’t get involved with them. They move on their own, let them move. Why should you get involved and disturb them? They flow like a stream – let them flow. You sit on the bank and rest.You say to your thoughts, “Okay, if clouds are in the sky, and trees and rivers and oceans on the earth, then why not thoughts in the mind?” Accept them. Okay! If you accept and say okay, you will feel a sudden change, because your energy is needed for them to move.And if you are unconcerned, by and by the energy withdraws itself. They become less and less. Then a moment comes when thoughts come only when they are needed. Thoughts are not a burden. Unneeded thoughts are a burden, they create your blurred vision. The blurriness comes because of unnecessary thoughts.When you want to move you use your legs, when you want to think you use your thoughts, when you want to communicate you use your mind. But when you are sitting under a tree, why go on moving your legs? You will look mad. But your mind goes on moving.Mind is a function, and a function is useful at the right time. When it is needed the mind starts functioning. I am talking to you: the mind is functioning, otherwise how can I talk to you? Sosan saying something, how can he say it if there is no mind? But the moment I have stopped talking the function is off, then there is no mind – just as there are no legs, because when they are not moving they are not there.When you feel hungry you eat. When you want to communicate you use thoughts. When there is no hunger you don’t go on eating. But there are people who go on chewing gum, who go on smoking; so gum and smoke are just substitutes for food. They would like to eat continuously, but it is impossible because the body will not tolerate it, so they have to do something with the mouth. They will chew gum or they will chew pan, smoke, or do something.Or, if they cannot do anything – for example, in the past women all over the world were never allowed to do these stupidities that men are allowed. They were not allowed to smoke, they were not allowed to chew gum or things like that; they were not good and graceful. So what did they do? They started talking. That’s why girls talk more, because a substitute is needed. The mouth must go on: they start talking.You cannot find two women sitting and not talking with each other – unless they are English women, who are not women at all. So much has been suppressed in them, they have become just like zombies. Otherwise women go on chattering; just like birds in the trees, they go on chattering. Just the other day a few women were working here in the garden. The whole day they chattered – the whole day! It cannot be purposeful because there is nothing, but they chattered – the mouth just wants to eat continuously.You see people sitting in a theater. They will go on moving their legs. Why are they sitting there? They should go out and walk! They are doing both. They cannot sit silently. And this is what is happening to your mind.Mind is good in itself. Everything is good in itself, in its place. Then everything fits. The shoe fits perfectly when everything is in its place. When mind is needed, use it; when it is not needed, put it aside. You remain the master and everything is a function.But the mind has taken over. Whatsoever you are doing, it goes on and on – as if you cannot turn your radio off, the knob is broken. It remains on and on. You are sleeping and the radio goes on and on. You are resting, you are eating, you are making love, and the radio goes on and on. And you have to continuously tolerate it. By and by, you become oblivious to the fact that the radio remains on; you simply don’t listen.That’s what has happened to your mind. It goes on and on and on; you don’t know where the knob is to turn it off. So you don’t listen, you simply tolerate it, neglect it. You have taken it for granted, as if it is going to be so.This is not so, otherwise a buddha cannot happen. And when I say this, I say it through my own experience: it is not so. The knob can be replaced. That is all that meditations do. They don’t lead you to enlightenment, they simply replace a knob that is not there, or broken, or stuck, or it is still there, but you don’t know how to use it.Meditation is a technique, and the technique can help only some function, not your being. So no meditation leads you to being directly, it simply fixes your functions. The shoe fits perfectly and you are enlightened.Chuang Tzu is right: “When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten.” When every function fits, the body is forgotten; when every function fits, this world of appearances is no more. You are enlightened! Suddenly everything is illuminated as it is.If you wish to move in the one waydo not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.This is beautiful. He says: …do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.There are two types of people. One type goes on fighting with the senses: how to kill the body, how not to enjoy through the body, not to fall in love, not to eat with taste. They go on fighting with their senses, they become great ascetics. Basically they are masochists, they enjoy crippling themselves. But society pays them respect, and the respect becomes an allurement.They are thought to be great men because they are not concerned with the senses. And they cannot be great, because the senses are the doors to meet the infinite that surrounds you. The senses are the doors; from those doors the infinite enters you and you enter the infinite.They go on closing their doors. Then their houses, their bodies, become prisons, and they suffer. And the more they suffer, the more they are respected and worshipped because people think they have done something miraculous, they have gone beyond the body.There is no need to go beyond the body. The only thing is: the body should function rightly, perfectly. It is an art, it is not austerity. It is not an austerity; you are not to fight with it, you are simply to understand it. And the body is so wise, wiser than your mind, remember, because the body has existed longer than the mind. The mind is a very new arrival, just a child.The body is very ancient, very, very ancient –because you moved once as a rock; the body was there, the mind was fast asleep. Then you became a tree; the body was there, with all its greenery and flowers. The mind was fast asleep still, not so asleep as in the rock but still asleep. You became an animal, a tiger; the body was so alive with energy, but the mind was not functioning. You became a bird, you became a man. The body has been functioning for millions of years.The body has accumulated much wisdom, the body is very wise. So if you eat too much the body says, “Stop!” The mind is not so wise. The mind says, “The taste is beautiful – a little more.” And if you listen to the mind, then the mind becomes destructive to the body, this way or that. If you listen to the mind, first it will say “Go on eating,” because mind is foolish, a child. He does not know what he is saying. He is a new arrival, he has no learning in him. He is not wise, he is yet a fool. Listen to the body. When the body says, “Hungry,” eat. When the body says, “Stop,” stop.If you listen to the mind, it is as if a small child is leading an old man – they both will fall in a pit. And if you listen to the mind then first you will be too much in the senses, and then you will get fed up. And every sense will bring you misery, and every sense will bring you more anxiety, conflict, pain.If you eat too much there will be pain and there will be vomiting, and the whole body is disturbed. Then the mind says, “Eating is bad, so go on a fast.” And a fast is also dangerous. If you listen to the body it will never overeat, it will never undereat – it will simply follow the Tao.A few scientists have been working on this problem and they have discovered a very beautiful phenomenon: small children eat whenever they feel hungry, they go to sleep whenever they feel that sleep is coming – they listen to their bodies. But parents disturb them, they go on forcing: it is dinner time, or lunchtime, or this and that, or bedtime – go! They don’t allow their bodies.So one experimenter tried leaving children on their own. He was working with twenty-five children. They were not forced to go to sleep, they were not forced to get up. They were not forced at all for six months. And a very deep understanding came.They slept well. They had less dreams, no nightmares, because nightmares were coming through the parents who were forcing them. They ate well, but never too much – never less than necessary, never more than necessary. They enjoyed eating and sometimes they would not eat at all. When the body was not feeling to, they would not eat, and they never fell ill because of eating.And one more thing which no one ever suspected came to be understood, and that was miraculous. Only Sosan can understand, or Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu, because they are the masters of Tao. This was such a discovery! They came to understand that if a child was ill, then he would not eat particular foods. Then they tried to understand why he was not eating those foods. The foods were analyzed and it was found that for that disease, those foods were dangerous. How did the child decide? – just the body.And when the child was growing, he would eat more of whatsoever was needed for his growth. Then they analyzed and they found that these ingredients are helpful. And the food would change, because the needs changed. One day a child would eat something and the same child the next day would not eat it. And the scientists felt that there is a body-wisdom.If you allow the body to have its say, you are moving on the right path, the great way. And this is so not only with food, this is so with the whole life. Your sex goes wrong because of the mind, your stomach goes wrong because of your mind. You interfere with the body. Don’t interfere! Even if you can do it for three months, don’t interfere. And suddenly you will become so healthy, and a well-being will descend on you. Everything feels okay, the shoe fits. But the mind is the problem.The mind has its own function; that is, how to relate with others, how to move in this world where so many persons are living, how to drive a car, how to follow the rules and regulations of the traffic, how not to create danger for others or for yourself, how to look ahead and plan. The mind is just like a radar, it looks ahead – where to move, how to move – but the base remains the body.Those people who are against the body and cripple their senses will miss their enlightenment for a longer period than those people who listen to their senses and follow their advice.If you listen to the senses you become simple. Of course nobody is going to pay you respect because they will say, “This man is a sensual man.” And a sensual man is more alive than a non-sensual man. But nobody is interested in life; everybody is interested in a dead thing to be worshipped.Don’t ask for any respect from people, otherwise you will go astray. And a moment comes when everybody can respect you, but you cannot respect yourself because you are completely astray. Nothing fits, everything goes wrong.Listen to the body – because you are here to enjoy this moment that has been given to you, this graceful moment, this beatitude that has happened to you. You are alive, conscious, and such a vast world!The human being is a miracle on this small planet – very, very small, tiny! The sun is over a million times bigger than this earth, and this sun is mediocre. There are suns millions of times bigger than this, and there are millions of suns and millions of worlds and universes. And up to now it seems, as far as science goes, that life and consciousness has happened only on this earth. This earth is blessed.You don’t know what you have attained. If you feel what you have attained, you will be simply grateful and you will not ask for anything more. You could have been a rock and you could not have done anything about it. You are a man – and you are suffering, and you are worried, and you are missing the whole point. Enjoy this moment because it may not come again.That is what Hindus mean: they say you can become a rock again. If you don’t enjoy and don’t grow in it, you will fall. You can become an animal again. This is the meaning: remember always that this climax of consciousness is such a peak – if you don’t enjoy and become integrated in it, you will fall.Gurdjieff used to say that you have got no soul yet; life is just an opportunity to attain it, to become a soul. Don’t go on wasting time and energy, because if you die uncrystallized you simply disappear. And who knows when the opportunity will happen again – or not? Nobody can know, there is nobody who can say anything about it.This much can be said: that this moment the opportunity is there for you. If you enjoy it, it becomes more crystallized – if you feel ecstatic about it and grateful. Remember, to be grateful nothing more is needed. All that you have is too much, it is too much to be grateful and thankful for. Don’t ask more from the existence. Simply enjoy that which is given to you. And the more you enjoy, the more will be given to you.Jesus says a very paradoxical sentence: “If you have more, more will be given to you, and if you have not anything, even that which you have will be taken away from you.” Seems to be very anti-communist. Seems to be absurd. What type of mathematics is this? “The more you have, the more will be given to you; and if you don’t have anything, even that which you have will be taken away from you!” Seems to be for rich men and against poor.It is not concerned with ordinary economics – it is the ultimate economics of life. Only those who have will get more, because the more they enjoy it the more it grows. Life grows through enjoyment. Joy is the sutra.Be joyful, grateful, whatsoever you have. Whatsoever! Be ecstatic about it, and more opening. And more falls upon you, you become capable of being given more blessings. One who is not grateful will lose whatsoever he has. One who is grateful, the whole existence helps him to grow more, because he is worthy and he is realizing what he has got.Be more loving, and more love will come to you. Be more peaceful, and more peace will come to you. Give more, and you will have more to give. Share, and your being increases.But you never give, you never love, you never share. In fact you are not even aware that you have got anything. You are simply waiting that something is going to happen somewhere. It has already happened! Just look at it – you carry the treasure. And you never give because you don’t know it has happened to you, and you don’t know that giving will become a growth.It happened in a Jewish community: a saint was dying. He was a poor man, but very, very rich, rich in his being, rich in his ecstasy. He was a mystic.And the whole community was concerned. All types of doctors were called but nothing could be done, and death was coming nearer and nearer every moment. Then the whole community gathered to do the last thing – to pray. But it seemed even that was not working.So the rabbi said, “Now we can do only one thing, and God will not be helpful unless we do that. We should share our life. So you donate a few days, a few years from your life to this dying saint.” So everybody came forward; people loved him.One man said, “Five years,” another man said, “One year.” Somebody said, “One month,” Somebody even said, “One day.” One miser said, “One minute.” But even that – even that, think, don’t laugh – even one minute of life is not a small thing, not a petty thing. When you are dying, you will miss even that one minute.Then Mulla Nasruddin, who was also there, came forward. He was not a Jew but he also loved that mystic. And he said, “Twenty years!”Nobody could believe it. One Jew who was sitting just behind him pulled his leg and said, “What are you doing, Nasruddin? Have you gone crazy? Twenty years! What do you mean? Too much! Are you mad? And you are not even a Jew!”Nasruddin said, “From my wife’s life!”Nobody is ready to share anything. And unless you share you will not receive more, because you don’t become capable of it. You are not worthy of it. Demand, and you will lose; give and you will get.This life, as it is, is already too much. Be ecstatic about it, about small things. Even food should become a sacrament. Even shaking hands should become prayerfulness, it should be a giving. Even being with people should become a deep bliss – because what has happened to you has not happened anywhere else.Says Sosan: If you wish to move in the one way do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas. Don’t dislike the world of senses, and don’t dislike the world of ideas, because they too are beautiful in their own right. If you don’t get involved with it, what is wrong with an idea? It is a beautiful flower. Mind is good if it is in its place.Gurdjieff has a teaching – and very relevant to the modern man – that all your centers are mixed up. Their purity is lost; everything interferes with everything else. And he is right. When you make love, mind is not needed, but mind goes on functioning. Really, you make love through the mind, not through the sex center.Sex is not bad, sex is beautiful in its own right – a flowering, a deep sharing, a deep meeting of two persons. But the mind goes on interfering. Then it is ugly, because this mind is a disturbance. Then the sex center will take its own revenge. You are studying Gita, Koran, Bible, and sex goes on coming into the mind, you go on thinking about sex. It has to be so, because you disturbed the sex center, so when will the revenge be taken?Look at your advertisements. If you have to sell anything, first you have to make it sex-appealing. Whether you sell a car – you have to put a naked woman with it, or toothpaste – you have to find a naked woman. Anything! As if toothpaste is not the real thing, the real thing is the naked woman, the sex. You sell soap, and you have to add a beautiful naked body.I have heard…An Italian model, a woman who worked for many years as a model for soap advertisements, was once asked, when she became old and nobody bothered, “What type of soap do you really use?”She said, “None, because every soap is destructive to the softness of the skin. I simply use wet wool on my body, that’s why it is so beautiful! But I have helped to advertise all types of soaps, and they are selling.”When Mulla Nasruddin became a hundred years old I asked him, “Nasruddin, what is the secret of your long life?”He said, “Wait! Within seven days everything will be settled, then I can say.”I asked, “What is the matter? What is to be settled?”He said, “Many companies are after me, so my lawyer is settling things – which vitamin helped, which food. Right now I don’t know, but it will be settled within a week and then everybody will know.”Ideas are beautiful in themselves; nothing is wrong. Everything is good if it is in its right place, everything becomes wrong if it is put in a wrong place – then it never fits.And that is the matter with you: everything is wrong. When you make love, the mind comes in. When you meditate, the sex comes in. When you eat, the mind comes in. When you go to sleep, the food comes in. All centers are mixed, in a chaos.Let every center be pure, and let every center function in its own right, in its own time. It has its own time and its mood and its season: don’t allow it to move into others.And start from the mind because that is the great disturber, the great noise-creator, and it moves in everybody’s territory, and it wants to dominate everything. Remove that domination. Every sense should be pure and enjoyed in its own right. There is no need for the mind to come in.Then when you enjoy mind, no center will interfere. Then it will not be a problem, because all other centers are innocent. Your mind is cunning – and you listen to the cunning one, and you never listen to the innocent senses. Mind is clever, calculating. All other senses are just innocent and they cannot fight with the mind because mind is a great politician, and those senses are simple people. Sex is simple and mind goes on condemning. The sex center cannot do anything else than this, that the energy moves into wrong channels.Enjoy every sense in its own right, and when you are enjoying it, become it – so no energy is left to move anywhere else, the whole energy moves into it. There is no mind at that time, no body at that time; you become the sex energy. When you are hungry become the hunger, and eat as if every cell of your body is hungry and absorbing the food, and let it enjoy.And when you want to think, then sit under a tree, close your eyes – enjoy thoughts. Nothing is wrong with thoughts. Enjoy them as a flowering, a beautiful flowering, a great poetry in its own right. Then a clarity comes, then your waters are not murky, then the mud settles and you can see through things.If you wish to move in the one waydo not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.Indeed, to accept them fullyis identical with true enlightenment.If you can accept fully whatsoever you are, this is enlightenment. Don’t think that when you become enlightened you will see lights and visions – all nonsense! That happens on the path, but it is just a part of the mind, nothing of the ultimate. All your lights and experiences come through the mind.Energy moves in the body; subtle senses are hidden there. They become active and you can feel many things. Nothing is wrong in them, enjoy, but don’t think that is enlightenment.Enlightenment happens only in that moment when there is no complaint in you, when you are not going anywhere, not desiring, not condemning, not judging. You simply exist and with total acceptance. This moment there is enlightenment.Enlightenment is a very ordinary thing. It is nothing extraordinary, it is nothing special – because the special is the search of the ego. It is just ordinary! There is no demand, no hankering for anything, no clinging. Simply, you are, and you are happy – happy without any cause.Remember this. This is the difference between happiness and bliss. Your happiness is caused. Sometimes a friend has come and you are happy. How long are you going to be happy with the friend? A few moments – and then you will be happy when he leaves. What type of happiness is this? It is caused, and the cause disappears. Sooner or later you become fed up and it disappears. Bliss is uncaused happiness. Simply as you are, you are happy. There is nothing to say about why you are happy.Look at the whole thing. You never think why you are miserable – you are simply miserable. Whenever you are happy you start looking, “Why am I happy?” Misery seems to be natural; happiness seems to be something unnatural happening sometimes. Misery is your state and happiness is your hankering.An enlightened person is simply happy, just as you are simply miserable. Simply happy! And is never miserable. Even sometimes when the shoe pinches, he simply puts it right. It is not misery, it is simply physical pain – a discomfort, but not misery. He simply puts the feet right – he changes the shoes, or he walks without shoes.Discomfort can happen to an enlightened man, but never misery – because how can misery happen? When there is no cause for his blissfulness, misery is impossible. Uncaused, you cannot destroy it. Uncaused, how can you take it away? Uncaused, there is no opposite to it. This is ananda.Hindus have a word, ananda: ecstatic bliss, uncaused bliss, for no reason and for no rhyme. That’s why whenever someone is blissful the world will think he is mad. They will ask, “Why are you so blissful? Why are you laughing?” as if laughing is a crime. And if you say, “I am just laughing. It is so good to laugh.” They cannot understand. For their laughter also, tension is needed – and this is the base of all jokes.Why do you laugh when a joke is told? What happens within you? What does the joke do? It creates a tension. The story goes on, and you become more and more tense inside, and you cannot imagine what is going to happen. Then suddenly there is a turn, and the happening is such that you never expected that this would happen.If you can expect it, that means if you know the joke, there will be no laughter. You will simply say the joke falls flat, because tension is not created. When you don’t know the joke, the tension is created; you are waiting, you become watchful – what is going to happen? And then the whole thing turns in such a way that you could not expect. The tension is released, you laugh. That laughter is a caused tension release.Why does sex give you pleasure? – because it is a tension. You eat, you breathe, energy is created, and life is always giving you more than you need. Life is abundance, life is a luxury, perfect luxury. It is not concerned with your needs, it always gives you more than you need.That extra energy accumulates in the body – that is what sex energy is. When it accumulates you get a tension in the body. Now the tension arises and then you have to release it. When the tension is released you feel happy, relaxed; you can go to sleep.But the trick is in the tension. So if you make love too much and the tension is not created, everything goes flat – the joke goes flat, there is no happiness. If you make love too much, you will be fed up with it, because it depends not on love, it depends on a built-up tension.If you make love an everyday affair the energy is not overflowing. Then after lovemaking, rather than happy you will feel miserable, frustrated. Orgasm cannot happen because orgasm needs more energy than the body needs. It is overflowing, so the whole body throbs in it.Remember, in repressive societies people enjoyed sex more, because even to meet with one’s own wife was such a difficult thing. It was almost impossible to meet another’s wife – there were so many hurdles to be crossed to meet one’s own wife!In India you couldn’t see your wife in daylight. Such a big family, a hundred people living together, sleeping together. Sometimes, even with your wife, you had to make arrangements to make love. It was beautiful, beautiful in a way, because tension was so high that there was a peak, and then there was a valley of relaxation.In the West sex has become absolutely flat. Now nobody enjoys sex in the West – there is too much of it. Before the buildup you throw away the energy. In your whole life this is the way happiness happens: create tension, then relax it.Bliss is not the same. It is uncaused. It is not a tension and release, is not concerned with tension and release at all – it is simply the happiness that comes when you feel good with existence, when you feel you accept. When you feel that you accept, you suddenly feel the whole existence accepts you. Then you can bless the whole, and the whole blesses you. It is uncaused. It cannot be taken away. You cannot make me miserable. You can, at the most, make me uncomfortable, that’s all.There exists no opposite to bliss, ananda. It is absolutely uncaused. That’s why it can be eternal. Because a caused thing cannot be eternal – when the cause disappears, the effect will disappear.Indeed, to accept them fullyis identical with true enlightenment.The wise man strives to no goalsbut the foolish man fetters himself.All your goals become fetters to you, they become imprisonments, you are caged in them. And then you suffer, and then you ask, “How to be free?” Be free of the goals and you will be free! There is nothing else to be done. Don’t create a goal, then there is no imprisonment.There is one dharma, truth, law, not many;distinctions arisefrom the clinging needs of the ignorant.To seek mind with the discriminating mindis the greatest of all mistakes.What are you doing when you create a goal? Who creates the goal? The mind makes it, and then the mind seeks a way to reach it. Then the mind invents techniques, methods, ways. And then you follow those ways and methods. What are you doing? – you are following mind, you are moving in a circle.The goal is created by the mind, the means are created by the mind, and the mind leads you. How can you reach to no-mind with the mind?And mind is tense, because mind cannot be relaxed. It depends on the opposites. It is bound to remain moving into the extremes. It can condemn, it can appreciate, but it cannot accept totally. And the totality is the goal – it can come only through acceptance.Mind cannot accept; it can deny. And when it denies it feels very good, because of the ego: you are the denier. When it accepts, the ego feels very bad – because when there is no denial, no fight, no conflict, nowhere to go, then what will you do? As if to just be here and now is useless. Somewhere else bliss is happening, and what are you doing here?I have heard…Once two bums were resting under a tree. The scene was peaceful and beautiful. A brook was bubbling just by the side and a beautiful cold breeze was blowing. One of the bums said to the other, “Right this moment, if a guy had fifty thousand dollars, I would not change places with him.”The other asked, “And if he has one hundred thousand dollars, then?”The first said, “Not even then.”The second still went on talking and asked, “Suppose he has one million dollars?”Then the first got excited. He sat up and he said, “Now it is different. You are talking real dough!”This is how the mind goes: imagination, dream – and the dream becomes the real dough. Nobody is there, but now excitement is there.Think something and soon you get excited. Even a picture of a nude woman and you get excited; hence so much pornography in the world. It is just a picture – lines and color on the paper, nothing else. There is nobody, and you know it well, but you will hide this picture from others, and when you are alone you will meditate on it. What are you doing? – real dough.Mind is just imagination, but you get excited. And once you get excited, the mind has sold you something. And then you will remain miserable, because the mind can sell the idea but can never supply the stuff. That is the problem: it has no stuff to supply. It can sell you the idea – a good salesman, but nothing to supply. And by the time you reach and you ask, he will supply you with something else.I have heard…One salesman came back to his boss and said, “I am in a difficulty. That land we sold, now it is a problem. The man goes on phoning me, because the whole land is covered under six feet of water. And he says, ‘What type of land have you given? And how is a building to be erected?’ So what should I do? Should I give him the money back and cancel the whole thing?”The boss said, “What type of salesman are you? Take two motorboats and sell them to the man!”A salesman has to go on selling things. If this has not worked, then something else. And if the man got excited the first time, why not the next time? You only need tricks.Mind goes on selling you ideas of the future. It cannot supply you because the future never comes. And whenever it comes it is always going to be the present. The supply is in the present, and the salesman talks about the future. The supply is here, and mind thinks in terms of hope, dream, imagination.Accept the reality as you are and the world is. Don’t try to change anything – and there is enlightenment. And then everything changes, because now you are no longer the same. If you change something, nothing will change. If you accept, everything is transformed. It becomes luminous with an unknown light. Suddenly a music is heard which you have never heard before, a beauty revealed which was hidden. A door opens, darkness disappears, a sun has risen.But it happens only when you are at ease with yourself. It is a happening, it is not a result of your efforts. And don’t feel unhappy, because if it is not a result then what can you do? Feel happy because it is not a question of your effort. You can attain it this very moment. There is no need to postpone it.Understanding is acceptance. Acceptance is enlightenment. Buddhists – and this Sosan is a Buddhist, a follower of Buddha – have a particular word for acceptance. They call it tathata. It means no complaint, it means no condemnation, it means no appreciation. It means simply “as things are, they are”; such is the way – suchness.And one lives in suchness. Whatsoever happens, one is ready to let it happen. Wherever life goes, one goes with it. Whatsoever happens is good. You don’t create a conflict, you are with it. You float, you don’t swim – and you never swim against the stream. You simply float with the stream, and by and by you don’t know who is who, what is what, who is the stream and who is the one who has become part of the stream. You become the stream. This is enlightenment.Enough for today.

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Hsin Hsin Ming 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hsin Hsin Ming 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sosan said:Rest and unrest derive from illusion;with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.All dualities come from ignorant inference.They are like dreams or flowers in air:foolish to try to grasp them.Gain and loss, right and wrong:such thoughts must finally be abolished at once.If the eye never sleeps,all dreams will naturally cease.If the mind makes no discriminations,the ten thousand thingsare as they are, of single essence.To understand the mystery of this one-essenceis to be released from all entanglements.When all things are seen equally,the timeless self-essence is reached.No comparisons or analogies are possiblein this causeless, relationless state.Mind has only one capacity and that is to dream. And this dreaming continues even while you are awake. That’s the reason Sosan or Jesus won’t believe that you are ever awake, because dreaming has one quality: that it can happen only in sleep.These two things have to be understood first: mind is the source of all dreaming, but dreaming can happen only in sleep. And if you are dreaming twenty-four hours a day, one thing is absolutely certain: that you are fast asleep. Close the eyes any moment and the dream is there; it continues as an undercurrent. Even while you are engaged, for all outward purposes you seem to be awake but deep down a current of dreaming goes on and on and on.Any moment, close the eyes and it is there. It is not interrupted by your occupations. You walk on the street, you drive the car, you work in a factory, in the office – it continues. You go to sleep, then you can feel it more because, unoccupied, the whole attention comes to the mind.It is just like the stars. In the day you cannot see stars in the sky. They are there, because where can they go? But because of the light of the sun you cannot see them. If you go in a deep well, two hundred feet down, from there you can see stars in the sky even in the day. They are there, but because of so much light you cannot see them. Darkness is needed for them to be revealed.The same happens with dreaming: dreams are there in the day also, but darkness is needed so that you can see them. It is just like when you go to a theater: if the doors are open the film may continue, but you cannot see it. Close the doors, make the room dark, and you can see it.Dreaming is your continuity, and unless this continuity is broken you cannot know what truth is. The question is not whether truth is very far away or near, the question is whether the mind is in a dream or not.So the basic problem is not how to seek the truth; you cannot seek with a dreaming mind, because whatsoever will come before you, your dreams will be imposed on it. Your dreams will be projected on it, you will interpret it. You will not be able to see as it is. You will see according to your dreams, you will falsify it. Truth is there, because only truth can be. Untruth cannot be.So another thing before we enter the sutra: Shankara has divided reality into three categories, and those categories are beautiful to understand. One category is the category of the truth: that which is. In fact nothing else is possible; only truth is and only truth can be.The second category is of that which is untruth, which cannot be. There is no possibility of its being, because how can untruth be? For being, truth is needed. So untruth is non-being, truth is being. Then Shankara finds a third category that he calls dreaming, appearance, illusion, maya: that which appears to be but is not.So there are three categories. Truth, that which is. If your eyes are clear, unclouded, if the mind is not dreaming, then there is only one category, truth. But if your mind is dreaming then two other categories come into existence. Dream is, in a certain sense, because you dream it; and it is not, in a certain different sense, because it corresponds to no reality. You dream in the night that you have become a king; in the morning you find you are just the same beggar. The dream was false, but the dream was, so it has a quality of truth about it because it happened. And in those moments when it was happening you completely believed in its truth, otherwise it would have stopped immediately.If you become aware “I am dreaming and this is false,” the dream is broken, you are awake already. The dream existed for a few hours; it had one quality of truth, that it existed. But it is not true because in the morning you find it was not. It was just a thought, a wave in the air, a flower in the sky – appeared to be true but was untrue.Truth is being, untruth is non-being, and between the two there is a world of dreaming – it carries the qualities of both. And mind is the source of dreaming, so mind is illusory. Mind is the source of all maya.You may be thinking that if you leave the world and go to the Himalayas you will attain to truth. You are wrong – because your house is not maya, your wife is not maya, your children. No, your mind is maya. And how can you leave the mind here and go to the Himalayas? The mind is within you. If you can drop it, you can drop it anywhere. If you cannot drop it, you cannot drop it whether you go to the Himalayas or not.The wife, the children, the house, the world, are called maya, illusion, in a secondary sense – because the wife exists, she has a being. She is brahman in her own right, she is truth – not as a wife, but as a soul.Your mind interprets her as a wife: “She is my wife.” Then a dream is created. She is there, absolutely true, you are here, absolutely true – and between the two a dream happens. You call her your wife, she calls you her husband. Now a dream exists between the two, and dreams always become nightmares. So all relationships ultimately become nightmares, because you cannot tolerate an illusion very long. An illusion is temporary; sooner or later it has to disappear. It cannot be eternal, it cannot be permanent.You love a woman, a dream is created – but how long can you dream? By the time the honeymoon is finished the dream is gone – even before. Then what will you do? Then you will pretend, because now you are a slave of your own promises.You will pretend that you still love, you will pretend that, “You are still beautiful,” you will pretend that, “There exists no person like you.” But now everything is a pretension. And when you pretend and the dream is broken, and you still carry the dream, it becomes a burden, nightmarish. That’s why you live in such suffering.The suffering is nothing but broken dreams, broken rainbows, broken illusions, appearances. And you have so much invested in them you cannot look at the truth: that from the very beginning they were dreams.Rather than looking at the truth you will throw the responsibility on the other. You will say, “This wife has deceived me. She was not as good as she appeared. She deceived me, she didn’t reveal her true reality.” And you will not see that that is not the point at all. You were creating a dream around her, and because of that dream you couldn’t see the reality. She was also creating a dream around you.So whenever two persons fall in love there are not two persons, there are four: one the lover, another the beloved, and between these two, the beloved that is a creation of the mind of the lover, and the lover that is a creation of the mind of the beloved. These two are dreams, and these two go on moving in you.Sooner or later, when the dream is broken, you are two, not four. Whenever you are two there will be difficulty. Then you would like to throw the responsibility on the other: “It is because of the other.” You have missed the point again. That means you will create the same dream around another woman because you will think, “This woman is not going to deceive me, and now I am also more clever.”But mind is never clever. The essence of mind is foolishness, so mind can never be clever. It can be cunning, cunning in its foolishness, but it can never be wise. That is not its nature, because wisdom happens only when dreaming leaves. So if dreaming is the basic reality of the mind, then it can never be wise.A Buddha is wise because now there is no mind. A Sosan is wise because now he lives in no-mind, now all dreams have stopped. He looks at things as they are. You never look at things as they are; you mix with your illusions. And you are so afraid to look straight because you know, unconsciously, deep down somewhere you know, that things are not as you look at them.But you think if you look at the reality of things it will be too much, too heavy – you may not be able to stand it. You mix it with dreams just to make it a little sweeter. You think it is bitter so you coat it with sugar. You coat a person in dreams and you feel the person has become sweet? No, you are simply deceiving yourself, nobody else. Hence, so much misery.It is out of your dreams that the misery has happened, and one has to be aware of this phenomenon. Don’t throw responsibility on the other, otherwise you will create other dreams: see that it is you who are projecting. But it is difficult to see.In a theater, in a cinema hall, you look at the screen, you never look at the back – the projector is at the back. The film is not really there on the screen; on the screen it is just a projection of shadow and light. The film exists just at the back, but you never look at that. And the projector is there.Your mind is at the back of the whole thing, and the mind is the projector. But you always look at the other because the other is the screen.When you are in love the person seems beautiful, no comparison. When you hate, the same person seems the ugliest, and you never become aware of how the same person can be the ugliest and the same person can be the most beautiful.When you are in love the same person is a flower, a rose, a rose garden with no thorns. When you dislike, when you hate, the flowers disappear. There are only thorns, no longer a garden – the ugliest, the dirtiest, you would not like even to see. And you never become aware of what you are doing. How can roses disappear so soon, in a single minute? Not even a gap of a single minute is needed. This moment you are in love and the next moment you are in hate; the same person, the same screen, and the whole story changes.Just watch and you will be able to see that this person is not the point: you are projecting something. When you project love the person looks lovely, when you project hate the person looks ugly. The person is not; you have not seen the real person at all. You cannot see the reality through the eyes of the mind.If you really want to know what the truth is, scriptures won’t help. Neither will going to the Himalayas be of any help. Only one thing can help: start looking at things without the mind. Look at the flower and don’t allow the mind to say anything. Just look at it. It is difficult because of an old habit of interpreting. You go on interpreting, and interpretations differ. Interpretations depend on the mind.Mulla Nasruddin asked the court for a divorce. He said to the judge, “Now it is impossible. Every day I come back home and I find my wife is hiding some man or other in the closet.”Even the judge was shocked and he said, “Every day?”Nasruddin said, “Every day! And not the same person either – every day a new person.”Just to console Nasruddin the judge said, “Then you must be very much hurt. You come home tired and you think the wife must be waiting for you, to receive and welcome and be loving. And you come home and you find a new man is hiding in the closet every day. It is very bad.”Nasruddin said, “Yes, I feel very hurt – because I never have any room to hang my clothes.”How you interpret things depends on your mind.Then Nasruddin deserted his wife and ran away. He was caught, again brought to the court. The judge said, “You are a deserter and you have to be punished.”Nasruddin said, “Wait! Before you decide you must see my wife. If you see my wife you will never say that I am a deserter. You will simply say, ‘Nasruddin, you are a coward!’ And that I accept. I am not a deserter, simply a coward. But first look at my wife.”How you look at things depends on you, not on things. Unless you come to a point where you drop the interpreting mind and look directly, look immediately, mind is your mediator. It brings you things distorted, it brings you things mixed with interpretations. They are not pure.So the only way to reach to truth is: how to learn to be immediate in your vision, how to drop the help of the mind. This agency of the mind is the problem, because mind can create only dreams. But mind can create beautiful dreams, and you can get so excited. Through your excitement the dream starts looking like reality.If you are too excited then you are intoxicated, then you are not in your senses. Then whatsoever you see is just your projection. And there are as many worlds as there are minds, because every mind lives in its own world. You can laugh at others’ foolishnesses, but unless you start laughing at your own you will not be able to become a man of Tao, the man of nature, the man of truth. So what to do?Try in small things not to bring the mind in. You look at a flower –simply look. Don’t say, “Beautiful! Ugly!” Don’t say anything. Don’t bring words, don’t verbalize. Simply look. The mind will feel uncomfortable, uneasy. The mind would like to say something. Simply say to the mind, “Be silent! Let me see. I will just look.”In the beginning it will be difficult, but start with things in which you are not too much involved. It will be difficult to look at your wife without bringing words in. You are too much involved, too much emotionally attached. Angry or in love, but too much involved.Look at things which are neutral – a rock, a flower, a tree, the sun rising, a bird in flight, a cloud moving in the sky. Just look at things with which you are not much involved, with which you can remain detached, with which you can remain indifferent. Start from neutral things and only then move toward emotionally loaded situations.People start from the loaded situations; they fail, because it is almost impossible. Either you love your wife or you hate, there is no in-between. If you love you are mad, if you hate you are mad – and both ways the words will come. It is almost impossible not to allow the words, difficult because of so much practice in continuously saying something.One day I was at Mulla Nasruddin’s house in the morning. They were having tea when I arrived. The wife said, “Darling, in the night while you were asleep, you were saying many nasty things about me.”Nasruddin looked at me and said, “Who says I was asleep? I cannot say things while awake, that’s why I was pretending to sleep.”Even in sleep, or awake, when you are emotionally too much involved, it is difficult to put the mind aside. It will come in. So look at unloaded situations first. When you have the feeling that, yes, you can look at certain things without the mind coming in, then try with loaded relationships.By and by one becomes efficient. It is just like swimming: in the beginning you feel afraid and in the beginning you cannot believe how you will survive. And you have been working with the mind so long you cannot think that without the mind you can exist for a single moment. But try!And the more you put the mind aside, the more light will happen to you, because when there are no dreams, doors are open, windows are open, and the sky reaches to you, and the sun rises and it comes to the very heart, the light reaches you. You become more and more filled with truth as you are less and less filled with dreaming.And if while you are awake dreaming stops, by and by when you are asleep dreaming will stop there also, because it can exist only as a continuous circle. If it is broken anywhere, by and by the whole house disappears. You take out one brick and the whole house is already on the way toward being a ruin.If during the day you can look at things without dreaming, then in the night less and less dreams will be there, because your night is nothing but a reflection of the day, a continuity of the same. When the day is different the night is different. When you are awake, and by “awake” is meant when you are not dreaming, not that you are sitting with open eyes…Jesus goes on saying to his disciples, “Be awake!” Were they always sleeping before him? – because he is saying every day, “Be awake!” Buddha was teaching his disciples every day, “Be awake!” Why? They were with open eyes, as alert as you are, but Buddha and Jesus go on saying, “Be awake!” They mean, “Don’t dream, just be here. Don’t go anywhere else.” In the memories, in the past, and you dream; in the future, in imagination, and you dream. Be herenow – only then is there no dream.In the present there is no dream. In the present there is no mind. In the present you are there and the truth is there. And then there is no gap between you and truth – because both are true and there is no boundary. You melt into truth and truth melts into you. You become brahman, brahman becomes you. Dreaming is creating a fence around you, very invisible but subtle, powerful.Now, try to enter this sutra:Rest and unrest derive from illusion;with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.Why do you like and why do you dislike? How does it happen that you like a certain thing and you dislike a certain thing? How does this division happen?Have you ever penetrated the mechanism of liking and disliking? It is worth trying to penetrate it. You say, “I like this person and I don’t like that.” Why? And suddenly one day you don’t like this person and you have started to like that. Why? What is the mechanism? Why do you like a person?You like a person if he allows you to strengthen your ego. If he becomes a screen and helps you to dream, you like the person. You like the person if he adjusts to your dreaming. You dislike a person if he is a maladjustment to your dreaming, if he does not allow you to dream. Rather, on the contrary, he disturbs. He does not fit, he does not play the role of a screen. He is not passive, he becomes active – you dislike him. You like a passive screen, so whatsoever you dream the other simply helps it.Ouspensky, Gurdjieff’s greatest disciple, has dedicated his book In Search of the Miraculous to his master with these words: “To the person who destroyed all my dreams.” But you will not like a person who destroys all your dreams. Even Ouspensky had to leave Gurdjieff, and in the last years he never came again to see him. He started working on his own. In the end he died an enemy of Gurdjieff’s.Even a person of Ouspensky’s alertness, who could feel that this man destroys the dreams, had to leave. You may feel… But when somebody really goes on destroying and destroying you feel that this man is an enemy.A real master will always look like an enemy, and this is the criterion. A false master will always help you to dream; he will never disturb your dreaming. Rather, on the contrary, he will give you consolations, tranquilizers. He will console you, soothe you. His teaching will be just like a beautiful lullaby. He will sing around you so you can sleep well, that’s all.But a real master is dangerous. To move near him is full of danger. You are moving at your own risk, because he cannot allow you to dream and he cannot help your dreaming, because then the whole purpose is lost.He will destroy your dreams. And dreams are very close to your heart. You think your dreams are your heart, and when dreams are destroyed you feel you are being destroyed. It is just as if someone is murdering you. Hindus have been aware of this, so they say a real master is like death.When you go to a master you are going to death. You will have to die, only because unless you die you cannot be reborn. When your dreams are destroyed, truth comes into existence, truth becomes revealed.You like a person because he helps your ego. You like a girl because she says you are the perfect man.I once overheard two young lovers. They were sitting near the sea and big waves were rolling. And the boy said, “Roll on, beautiful waves. Roll on, bigger and bigger and bigger.” And they became bigger and bigger and bigger.And the girl said, “Wonderful! The sea obeys you.”You will like this person. And if somebody helps your ego, you are ready to help his or her ego in the bargain.You like a person when everything fits. It is a mutual arrangement. The moment the person starts on his own, or something does not fit, or the person is adamant, or the person has started to dominate, or the person starts to possess, or the person starts to hurt your ego…And that is going to happen, because that person likes you not because your ego is strengthened – that person likes you because her or his ego is strengthened. He likes you because of his own self, ego, and you like because your self is strengthened. Your purposes are different. So this type of arrangement cannot go on forever. And your purposes are not only different, they are antagonistic, because only one can be the master and both are trying to be the master.In the beginning they will be very sweet because the territory is unknown. By and by, as things settle, they will become more and more adamant, possessive, dominating, more and more aggressive to the other. And then you start disliking. You hate a person who in any way tries to bring your superiority down. You love a person who makes you superior.Ego continuously suffers from an inferiority complex. Because of this a man would like to love this woman, that woman, thousands of women. He may become a Don Juan, because every time the woman helps only in the beginning. It is a strategy, a feminine strategy. Only in the beginning, the woman helps you. By the time she feels now you cannot go away, you are caught, she starts dominating you.You would like to conquer many women, but just in the beginning. You see, all love affairs are beautiful in the beginning. It is very difficult, rare, to find a love affair beautiful in the end. And if you can find something, then you know this affair has really been a love affair.The end will prove it, not the beginning, because in the beginning all love affairs are beautiful, but just in the beginning – because both are diplomatic, both are showing their beautiful faces to the other, alluring, just a part of salesmanship. But when the stuff is sold then faces change, then the real thing comes up, then the aggressive ego starts working. That is the real thing that comes in the end.The real thing always comes in the end, never in the beginning, because in the beginning both are trying to move nearer and closer. Once close, when everything is taken for granted, then the real thing will erupt.Why do you like a person? Why do you like a thing? Leave persons aside – why do you like a thing? Even things help your ego. If your neighbor purchases a bigger car you have to purchase a bigger car, because it is not a question of the car. The smaller may be more comfortable, more suitable for the modern traffic; there is less trouble with a smaller car. The bigger car is more trouble, costly, you cannot even afford it – but if the neighbor has purchased a big car you have to purchase a big car. You like it. Why do you like it? All your liking comes out of the ego: the bigger car has prestige.It happened…Once Mulla Nasruddin’s boss asked him to come into his office and he was very angry. He put him on the carpet and said, “Nasruddin, this is too much! I understand that yesterday night, after the office party, you took a wheelbarrow and went with the wheelbarrow on the main street of the town. Don’t you realize that in such ways the prestige of the company will be lost?”Nasruddin said, “I didn’t pay a single thought to it, because you were standing in the wheelbarrow. We were both drunk, so I thought there was no question of any prestige – even the boss is there in the wheelbarrow – so I just went around the main street. Everybody was happy, and the people enjoyed it so much.”Prestige – you forget prestige only when you are intoxicated, then you do things which are foolish. But this is beautiful to understand. Then prestige must be something like alcohol, because only when you are under intoxication do you forget it. Otherwise you are always on the lookout for prestige, respect, respectability.You like a thing because it gives prestige. You like a house because it gives you prestige. It may not be convenient, may not be comfortable. Look at the modern furniture – not comfortable at all, but who would like to have old furniture in the house? Modern is better, more uncomfortable than the old, but it is modern. It gives prestige. Whatsoever gives prestige is alcoholic, it gives you an intoxication. You feel you are powerful.But why this hankering after power? And remember, if you are hankering after power then you will never reach to the truth. Sometimes you also knock at the door of God for power – but then you knock at the wrong door. Only those who have become absolutely aware that power, the search for power, is mad, it is a madness, can reach that door.You like and dislike according to the ego. If there is no ego, where will likes and dislikes be? They will simply disappear. You won’t have that dividing mind that always likes and dislikes and creates alternatives, when you are at ease with yourself. And the ego is never at ease with itself. It is a constant disturbance, because an ego has to look all around and there are millions of people.Somebody else buys a bigger car, then what to do? Somebody goes and finds a more beautiful wife, then what to do? Somebody is more healthy than you, then what to do? Somebody has more beautiful eyes than you, then what to do? Somebody is more intelligent, more cunning, has more money. And there are millions of people all around you, and you are in competition with everybody. You will go mad! This is impossible. You can never come to a moment when you can feel contented. How is that moment possible? Even emperors?I have heard, once it happened…Alexander was trying to reach a picture on the wall. The picture was not hanging rightly so he wanted to fix it, but he couldn’t reach it because Alexander was a small man, just five-five. His bodyguard was almost seven feet tall; he immediately reached it and fixed the frame. But Alexander was hurt, very much hurt.The bodyguard said, “Sir, whenever you want to do such a thing just tell me. I am a bigger man than you.”Alexander said, “Bigger? No! Taller, but bigger? No!”And whenever Alexander would see others taller than him – and he had to see because many soldiers were taller than him – he would feel very much offended.You can have the whole world, but a beggar can be taller than you and then the whole world is lost, you are nothing. You may become the emperor, but a beggar can sing better than you. You cannot possess all and everything. Whatsoever you possess will not give you contentment. The mind, the ego, will always feel unfulfilled.Liking and disliking is because of the ego, and ego suffers much. When there is no ego it is not a question of liking and disliking. You move in this world like a breeze. You don’t choose “I am going north,” you don’t have any liking, disliking. Wherever nature takes you, you are in a let-go. If nature flows toward the north, the wind blows toward the north. If nature changes and starts blowing toward the south, the wind blows toward the south. It has no choice of its own.A man of Tao has no choice of his own. Wherever the river takes him, he goes with it. He never pushes the river, he never fights with it. He has no choice, he has no likes and dislikes. You may even feel that he has likes and dislikes because you cannot understand. You may feel that this cloud is moving toward the north: you can interpret that this cloud is moving toward the north because it has a choice, it has chosen to move north. But you are wrong; the cloud has no choice. He is not bound to go anywhere, he has no destiny. He is simply moving because the whole nature is going that way. He has not chosen it. The choice remains with the whole; the liking, disliking, remains with the whole – that is not his business at all. He is unworried. And wherever the cloud reaches is the goal. There is no goal, predetermined; wherever he reaches is the goal. Then there is contentment wherever you are.But the mind will go on interpreting according to its own laws. If you come to a buddha, you will feel that he also likes and dislikes and you will be wrong, because you will interpret him according to your mind. Sometimes he will be going north and you will say he must have chosen, otherwise why? Why going north? Sometimes he will pay attention to one person more than you; you will think he must have chosen: “Why? Otherwise why is he not paying the same attention to me?” And I tell you: he has not chosen, it is just the whole that decides. He is no longer a deciding factor, he is just like a cloud.If he is paying more attention to another person, that simply means that attention moves that way as a cloud. That person may be in more need, that person may be more empty and attracts attention more – just like if you dig a hole in the earth, the hole will attract water toward it, because water flows downward. If that person is more meditative, a buddha will pay more attention – but remember, he is not paying it, it has been attracted. It is a simple natural phenomenon. It is not his choice or like and dislike.Buddha gave a silent message to Mahakashyapa. He gave a flower, and then somebody asked, “But why to Mahakashyapa? Why not to others?” – because there were others and some more respected disciples. Sariputra was there, and he was one of the greatest chief disciples, very well known all over the country. In his own right he was a master. When he had come to surrender to Buddha he had five hundred disciples with him. They all surrendered because their master surrendered. And he was a well known scholar. Why not to Sariputra?Why not to Ananda, who had lived for forty years just like a shadow, serving Buddha in every way just like a servant, and who was a brother to Buddha, belonged to the same royal family? Why not to Ananda? Why not to Modgalayan, who was another great scholar and thousands of people respected him?And why to Mahakashyapa who was not known at all, who was an unknown entity? Nobody ever thought about him and nobody knows anything other than this incident – that Buddha came one morning with a flower and stood silently, sat silently looking at the flower and would not speak. People became fidgety and restless because they had come to listen to the sermon. And then Mahakashyapa laughed and Buddha called him and gave him the flower and said to the assembly, “All that can be said I have given to you, and that which cannot be said I give it to Mahakashyapa.”This is the only incident known about Mahakashyapa. Before it he was nobody, after it nothing is reported about him. Why to Mahakashyapa?It is not a choice, because if it were a choice then Sariputra would have got it. It is not a like, because if it were a question of liking then Ananda would have got it. Buddha said there was no alternative. Mahakashyapa was the only one who could receive it, he was the only one who was silent and who understood.Buddha is reported to have said, “Even if he had not laughed I would have gone to him and given it to him, because he was the only one vacant, empty, here in the whole assembly. There are great scholars but they are filled with their scholarship. Ananda is there, but he is filled with too much affection and attachment toward me. This Mahakashyapa is simply empty – an empty house, he has disappeared.”He attracted the cloud. But look at the disciples’ attitude; they must have thought that there must be something. “Why is Buddha so much attached to Mahakashyapa? Why didn’t he give that which cannot be given in words to us? Why should he make Mahakashyapa the greatest?”But remember, a man of Tao, a man of enlightenment, simply floats like a cloud. He has no liking, no disliking, because those all belong to the dreaming mind, to the dreaming ego.Rest and unrest derive from illusion;with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.All dualities come from ignorant inference.They are like dreams or flowers in air:foolish to try to grasp them.Gain and loss, right and wrong:such thoughts must finally be abolished at once.This phrase “at once” has to be remembered. Let it penetrate deeply, because things can be done in two ways: gradually, or at once. If you do them gradually you will never be able to do them, because if you do them gradually they linger.For example, you are angry and you are worried about your anger. It has become an old habit and you say, “By and by, gradually, I will leave it.” How can you leave it by and by and gradually? Because in the meanwhile you will practice it, and the more you practice the more ingrained it becomes. You say time is needed. So what will you do?At the most you can make it more refined and cultivated. Nobody may be able to know about your anger, you can hide it. But what will you do with time? If you have understood that it is wrong, then why say gradually? Why not at once? If it has been understood that something is wrong, why take time? And if you have not understood, then without understanding how will you do it gradually? And meanwhile anger will come and you will get more and more into the habit.At the most you can modify, but a modified anger will not be no anger, it will still be anger. You can modify in subtle ways – it will be there. It may even start becoming just the opposite, but it will be there. Nobody may be able to detect it but you will always be aware it is there.No, understanding is always at once. Either you understand or you don’t understand. If you don’t understand then how can you leave anything? If you understand then why gradually? If you understand, right now, immediately you drop it.A man came to Buddha once with flowers in his hands. Buddha looked at the flowers and he said, “Drop it!”So he dropped the flowers in the left hand. He thought, “Maybe it is wrong to bring flowers in the left hand to Buddha” – because the left hand is thought to be wrong. Right is right and left is wrong, and you don’t give with the left hand. So he dropped them, feeling guilty.Buddha laughed and said, “Drop it!” So he had to drop them from the right hand also, but then he was puzzled.And when both hands were empty Buddha laughed loudly and said, “Drop it!” Now there was nothing to drop. So he looked here and there – what to do?Ananda said, “Buddha never meant to drop the flowers. The one who has brought the flowers has to be dropped. By dropping flowers nothing will happen. Why not drop yourself?”The man understood and dropped at Buddha’s feet. He never went back to his palace.His prime minister came and he said, “What are you doing? Even if you want to renounce, give it a little time so everything settles. Come back. Your wife, your children and the whole kingdom and the affairs – give us a little time. Even if you decide to renounce, why in such a hurry?”The man said, “When you understand, it is always at once. If you don’t understand, it is always postponed.”Only ignorance postpones, and ignorance plays a very great trick by postponing. Then you feel you have understood, but how can you do it at once? You will do it by and by – this is the trick of not doing it ever. This is the trick: “I will do it tomorrow.”See: when you are angry you do it immediately, but if you feel loving you postpone it. If you want to give a gift to somebody you postpone, but if you want to be angry you do it immediately – because you know well that if you postpone, things will never be done. Postponement is a trick. So deep down you know now there is no need to do it, and on the surface you can go on believing, “I am going to do it.” So you deceive yourself.Says Sosan: …such thoughts must finally be abolished at once. Don’t give time! If something is wrong, see through it, and drop it. Really there is no need to drop it. If you can see through it, and you feel that it is wrong, it will drop automatically. You will not be able to carry it.You carry it because you are not convinced that it is wrong. If you are not convinced it is better to say, “I am not convinced that it is wrong, that’s why I will carry it.” At least you will be honest, and honesty is good. Don’t be dishonest.People come to me, they say, “Yes, I know that greed is bad, but by and by…” But how has anybody ever thrown greed by and by? Meanwhile it goes on getting deeper roots in you. And why say greed is bad if you cannot drop it immediately, right now? Say, “I don’t feel it is bad, I feel it is good. When I feel it is wrong, I will drop it.” At least you are honest and sincere, and a sincere man will reach understanding. An insincere man can never reach understanding.You all say anger is bad – then why carry it? Who is forcing you to carry it? Knowledge is transformation. If you really know that anger is bad, then you will not carry it for a single moment. At once you drop it. It is sudden, it happens in no time, not even a single moment is lost. But you are cunning: you think that you know, and you don’t know. You want to believe that you know and you want to believe that you are trying, by and by, to change yourself. You will never be transformed.Transformation is never gradual, it is always at once.There is a Jaina story:A man came home tired after the whole day’s work. His wife was giving him a bath – it is an old story, now no wife gives a bath to the husband. His wife was giving him a bath, and while pouring water on his body and cooling his tired limbs, she talked and she said, “My brother has become a follower of Mahavira, and he is thinking to renounce the world.”The man laughed and said, “Thinking? – then he will never leave the world!”The wife felt hurt, because it was a question of her brother. She said, “What do you mean? And I have never seen you going to Mahavira or to Buddha or anybody, and you think you understand? He is a great scholar and he understands what Mahavira says. And he meditates, worships, and he is a religious man. And you? I don’t see any religiousness in you. I have never seen you praying or meditating. And you have the courage and you dare to say such a thing – that he will never renounce?”The man stood – he was naked, taking his bath – came out of the bath, went onto the street. The wife cried, “Are you crazy? What are you doing?”He said, “I have renounced.”He never came back. This is the man – he understood. He never prepared for it, nobody ever knew about him that he was a religious man, but this quality. He reached to Mahavira, he surrendered himself, he became a naked fakir.The wife came, weeping and crying. Even the wife’s brother came to convince him that, “There is no hurry. Look at me. I have been thinking for twenty years. And you are a madman – is this a way to renounce?”The man said, “I don’t dither, is there any other way? For twenty years you have been thinking, for twenty lives you will continue thinking. And whenever you renounce you will renounce this way, because this is the only way – at once.”You see a thing clearly and it happens. The question is of clarity. An immediate look into the nature of things, then there is no question of changing somewhere in the future. No one changes in the future – transformation is always here and now. This moment is the only moment something can happen. There is no other moment.If the eye never sleeps,all dreams will naturally cease.If the mind makes no discriminations,the ten thousand thingsare as they are, of single essence.If the eye never sleeps… These two eyes will have to sleep because they are part of the body, and the body is not an eternal energy. It is a compound, it is not an elementary force. Many things combine in it. It is a mechanical device, a bio-mechanism. It depends on being fed continuous energy: food, water, air. Energy is created, fuel is created and the body runs – it is a mechanism. Your eyes will get tired because every machine gets tired.You may be surprised to know that there has been a very great discovery in recent years that machines have to rest. Machines! You would never think it. Why machines? They don’t need any rest. You drive a car for twenty hours, thirty hours; the car needs a rest. You will be puzzled. Why? A car is not a mind, a car is not consciousness. Why rest? If everything is functioning okay then you can go on and on, just go on fueling the car.You are wrong. Now there are methods to judge when the car is tired. And the car is tired because every mechanism is bound to get tired. If you leave the car in the garage for a few hours, there are devices which will show when the car is ready to move again.Every mechanism needs rest. Not only your body – every mechanism needs rest, then it revives again. Only consciousness needs no rest, because it is not a mechanism. It needs no fuel. It is perpetual energy, it is eternal energy, it is uncaused energy. It is there, always.That’s why Sosan uses a singular word: If the eye never sleeps… Otherwise he would say, “if the eyes.” It is the third eye he is talking about. Even when your body sleeps, have you watched? – watch a little, you will be able to know – something in you keeps awake. Even while you are fast asleep, something, you may not be exactly clear what it is, but a point somewhere within you remains a witness.That’s why in the morning you can say, “Last night it was a beautiful sleep.” If you are really asleep, who knows? How can you know, because you were fast asleep? Who watched it to say in the morning that it was deep and beautiful and without dreams? Some days you say it was disturbed, “Dreams and dreams and dreams and I couldn’t sleep well.” Who knows? – somebody continuously watches.This is the third eye, which remains always open – not even any blinking, it always remains unblinking. It has no eyelid, it never closes. This third eye is just a symbolic thing. “Third eye” means that in you there is an eternal vision, an eternal vigilance, an eternal witness who never sleeps. And because it never sleeps, it never dreams, because dreaming is part of sleep. That third eye can see the truth, because there is no sleep and no dreaming.You have to seek and search for that point within you which never sleeps. This is the whole search, the whole effort of a seeker. Truth is not somewhere outside. The whole question is how to seek that point within you which is never asleep, which is never unconscious, which is always alert, aware. That is the ray of godliness within you.And once you seek it, the ray of constant watchfulness, from that ray you can travel to the very source. That source is existence. If you can catch hold of one ray, you can reach to the sun, to the very source. You just have to travel – that becomes your way and path.Finding a witness within, you have found the path. Now become more and more and more and more that awareness. Allow all your energy to move into that awareness. And the more you become aware, the less dreaming.A moment comes, suddenly you are only the witness, the mind has disappeared. The whole energy of the mind has been dissolved into the third eye. Two eyes have disappeared, now you are just a witness. This witnessing self is the point from where the world disappears and the divine is revealed.If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease. If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence. And when you are one: remember, right now you have two eyes; even your vision is dual. Jesus says to his disciples, “If you become one eye everything will be set right.”In the body everything is two: two eyes, two ears, two hands, two legs, two kidneys – everything is two because the body is a dualism. Only one thing in you exists as one, and that is the witnessing eye. That is not part of the body because in the body there are always two. Everything is two, divided. The body exists as a polarity between two.Even your minds are two: you have a different left brain and right brain, and they are divided. If their bridge is broken, and sometimes it happens, then a split personality happens. Somebody falls from a train and the bridge between the right and left brain is broken – and it is a very delicate bridge. Then the person becomes two, then he is no longer one. Then sometimes he is A or sometimes he is B, or sometimes he is both. And you cannot understand what he is doing, what is happening. He is split.Right-handed persons develop their left brain; left-handed persons develop their right brain. So if a left-handed person is forced to do things with the right hand he will be in unnecessary trouble, because his left brain is not developed at all. So he will write… You try. A few of you must be left-handed because ten percent of people are left-handed, whether they know it or not.Because of the domination of right-handed people in the world, because they are ninety percent, many children are continually forced to write with the right hand. They unnecessarily suffer; they will remain imbeciles their whole lives just because they were forced. They cannot compete with the right-handed people. Their left brain is not functioning well, and if they work with it they will be in difficulty.If you are a right-handed person, try to write with the left hand. You will write like a small child. Why? – because that part is just like a small child, it is undeveloped.Even the brain is divided, everything is divided in the body. The only thing which is one is the third eye – the witnessing. It is one. If you want to be one within you, seek the point of witnessing consciousness. While walking, watch. While eating, watch. While going to sleep, fall asleep watching what is happening.Sooner or later, one day you will suddenly realize that the body has fallen asleep but you are still watching. The body is moving into sleep, by and by, and by and by, going almost dead, and you are still watching. Then you will see the mind dreams dropping, falling, disappearing. You are still watching – and suddenly you are illuminated. You have achieved the witnessing.With witnessing dreams disappear, and with dreams all illusions, the maya. And then you see that everything belongs to the one essence. The trees may be different, the form, but the formless within them is the one. The rock is one with the tree, the tree is one with the star, the star is one with you. Everything is joined together.Right now you see only forms, because with the mind only forms can be seen. With the no-mind the formless can be seen. When you see the formless then the whole world is just like an ocean, and all the forms are just waves. In all the waves the ocean is waving – the one.Right now everything is many. It is not that things are many, it is because you are divided within. That’s why things look many. It is just as if you break a mirror – many fragments. Then each fragment will mirror and you will see many faces. You are standing there, you are one, but the mirror is broken – you see many faces.I have heard one old story:A king made a palace. The whole palace was made of small mirrors, millions of mirrors. You enter the palace and you see yourself reflected in a million ways, millions of faces all around you. You are one, but the mirrors are many.Once it happened, a dog entered the palace and got into much difficulty because he looked and he became scared. He started barking, so all the million dogs all around started barking. He thought, “Now there is no escape. And it is not a question of one enemy – millions of dogs, and all dangerous!” He jumped over them, he started fighting with them. He crashed against the wall and died.This is what has happened to you, this is what is happening to everybody. The truth is one, but the mind has many fragments. Everything becomes divided and then you become afraid – enemies are all over. Then you bark, then you start fighting, you become aggressive, you start trying to defend yourself – unnecessarily, because there is nobody who is attacking you. You become paranoid. And then you crash your being against your own illusion and you die.You live in suffering, you die in suffering. Become one within and suddenly everything outside becomes one. As you are, so is the universe – divided you, divided universe; undivided you, undivided universe.…the ten thousand thingsare as they are, of single essence.To understand the mystery of this one-essenceis to be released from all entanglements.When all things are seen equally,the timeless self-essence is reached.No comparisons or analogies are possiblein this causeless, relationless state.That’s why nothing can be said about this ultimate illumination – because it is one and words exist for duality. You can say something, but whatsoever you say will not be the right thing, because it is a different level, a different dimension.Christmas was coming near, and a tycoon, a very rich man, asked his son, “What would you like for a Christmas present, a gift for you?”The boy said, “A baby brother.”The tycoon said, “But that doesn’t give me enough time. Only two weeks are left.”So the boy said, “So what of it? Can’t you put more men on the job?”…because he was always listening – if there was a job to be done, then more men were put on. “So why, what is the trouble? Can’t you put more men on the job?” And it is difficult to tell this child that what he is saying is wrong – he is absolutely logical.You know the world of the many. The child knows the world of the jobs around the house, every day it is happening. And a rich father is always putting many men on the job and finishing everything within moments. He knows that language, but he does not know the mystery of how a life enters into the world. “Put more men on the job!” He is logical and it is difficult to make him understand unless he grows, grows in understanding.You know the language of duality, the language of this world. It is impossible to tell anything to you about the one essence. Whatsoever is said will be understood wrongly, misunderstood – unless you grow. This is the whole problem.Many times people come to me and they ask questions. Their questions are relevant but I can’t answer, because the answer can only be possible when they grow. And they think, “You ask and an answer must be there, readymade.” They think, “If you can ask and articulate a question it is enough – now give the answer!”But there are answers which can be given to you only when you grow. And this is the problem: when you grow there is no need to give them to you, you simply understand. When this child grows, is there any need for us to tell him that he was foolish? He will laugh, he will say, “Yes, I understand. It is not a question of putting more men on the job. It is not a job at all.”When you grow you understand, but you ask when you are like children. And you think that your question is right, an answer should be given. Nothing of the truth can be said to you, and all that is said is always nearabout, approximate. And remember, there is nothing like approximate truth. Either it is true or untrue. So whatsoever is said is meaningless. When you know you will laugh. But there is no other way, nothing else can be done.So, all sayings of Sosan or Buddha or anybody are just to allure you toward a growth. What they say is not very important. If you become interested and start growing and moving in a dimension which you don’t know anything about, that is the point.To understand the mystery of this one-essence is to be released from all entanglements. When all things are seen equally, the timeless self-essence is reached. No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state. There is no cause to the ultimate, because from where will the cause come? The ultimate is the whole. The ultimate is not related, because to whom will it be related? It is alone.So what to do? How to say? If something is related, something can be said about it; if something is caused, then something can be said about it, because at least two enter. Language becomes possible if the two is there. If only one is there all language becomes absolutely absurd.What to do about this uncaused one? Only one thing can be done and that is: find within you something which is uncaused. Find something within you which is one, and you are on the right path.Don’t bother about philosophies, don’t go on moving into arguments of this type and that. There are millions of arguments and every argument becomes an entanglement, and every philosophy becomes a new bondage. Don’t bother about philosophies, doctrines, scriptures.Simply do one thing and that is: find something which is uncaused within you, and find something which is one within you – and that is the same, because only the one can be uncaused.And once you have a small glimpse within you of the uncaused, of the one, you have found the track. Now the goal is not very far away. And now you need not do anything. Now, like gravitation, the goal will pull you; now, like a magnet, you will be pulled toward it. Now you have entered the arena from where the magnet can work. You need only do one thing – enter it. Then the center will pull you, then no effort is needed.The whole effort is how to come in contact with your own life-energy. The contact is lost and broken. You are just near, but just near is also a distance. A small turning, just a looking back, and things start changing.When they happen you will laugh: “Why was it so hard?” But if they are not happening it is difficult. Why do these people like Sosan go on saying right now, at once, immediately it can happen? Try to find one uncaused thing within you. How will you do it? Try with me – find one thing which remains unchanging within you.In the morning you get up, the whole day you work – millions of occupations, meetings, relationships. Everything changes, many moods come and go; sometimes you feel angry, sometimes you feel happy, sometimes you feel sad and sometimes very joyful, and sometimes negative and sometimes positive.Everything changes – just like the weather, everything changes. In the day you are awake, in the night you have to go to sleep. In the day you think, in the night you dream. Everything goes on like a flux. Find one thing in this whole flux which remains the same, that is witnessing.In the night you witness dreams; dreams change but the witnesser, the witnessing remains the same. In the day you witness moods: sadness, anger, happiness. Moods change but the witnessing remains the same. Healthy, you witness health; unhealthy, you witness illness. Rich, you witness wealth; poor, you witness poverty. One thing continuously remains the same and that is witnessing. And everything else is caused. This witnessing is not caused.Somebody says something, appreciates you, you feel happy – it is caused. A friend comes to see you and you feel happy – it is caused. Somebody says something, insults you, you feel unhappy – it is caused. The weather is not good, you feel sad and depressed – it is caused. The weather is sunny, you feel good, vibrating, moving, active – it is caused. If in the day you have not eaten, in the night you dream that you are eating delicious things – it is caused.Look at things which happen to you. Are they caused? If they are caused don’t bother much about them; they belong to the world of the illusion. You are in search of the uncaused. Witnessing, you will find, is the only uncaused thing. It is not caused, nobody causes it.That’s why buddhas say that a master can only show you the way. He cannot cause any transformation, because the whole thing is to seek the uncaused, so how can a master cause it? Nobody can cause it. He can simply show you the way – you have to travel it.No buddha can transform you. If a buddha can transform you that will also be a part of the illusory world, because again you are caused. If you come to me and you feel happy, that feeling is caused. If you go away from me and you feel unhappy, that feeling is caused.Just look: happiness, unhappiness, sadness, joy come and go, they are weathers around you. The witnessing remains the very center, uncaused, unchanging, one. Seek that within you and then everything becomes clear. When you are clear within, everything is transparent. The truth is everywhere around you, only you have to become one.Enough for today.

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Hsin Hsin Ming 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hsin Hsin Ming 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sosan said:Consider movement stationaryand the stationary in motion,and both the state of movement and the state of rest disappear.When such dualities cease to existOneness itself cannot exist.To this ultimate finalityno law or description applies.For the unified mind in accord with the wayall self-centered striving ceases.Doubts and irresolutions vanishand life in true faith is possible.With a single stroke we are freed from bondage;nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.All is empty, clear, self-illuminating,with no exertion of the mind’s power.Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imaginationare of no value.The first sutra:Consider movement stationaryand the stationary in motion,and both the state of movement and the state of rest disappear.This is one of the most basic things. Try to understand as deeply as possible. The mind can see only one pole, and reality is two poles, two opposite poles together. The mind can see one extreme; in the one extreme the other is hidden, but the mind cannot penetrate it. And unless you see both the opposites together you will never be able to see what is, and whatsoever you see will be false, because it will be half.Remember, the truth can only be the whole. If it is half it is even more dangerous than lies, because a half-truth carries the sense of being true and it is not true. You are deceived by it. To know the truth is to know the whole in everything.For example, you see movement, something is moving – but is movement possible without something hidden inside which is not moving? Movement is impossible without something unmoving within it.A wheel moves, but the center of the wheel remains unmoving; it moves on that unmoving center. If you see only the wheel you have seen the half, and the half is very dangerous. And if, in your mind, you make the half the whole, then you have fallen into the illusory world of concepts.You love a person; you never see that hate is hidden within your love. It is there; whether you like it or not is not the question. Whenever you love, hate is present – the opposite pole – because love cannot exist without hate. It is not a question of your liking. It is so.Love cannot exist without hate. You love the person and the same person you hate, but the mind can see only one. When mind sees love, it ceases to see the hate; when hate comes up, when the mind is clinging to hate, it ceases to see love. And if you want to go beyond mind, you have to see both together – both the extremes, both the opposites.It is just like the pendulum of a clock. The pendulum goes to the right; all that is visible is that the pendulum is going to the right. But there is something invisible also, and that is that while the pendulum is moving toward the right it is gaining momentum to go to the left. That is not so visible, but soon you will see it.Once it has touched the extreme the pendulum starts moving to the opposite polarity, it goes to the left. And it goes to the left to the same extent as it went to the right. While moving to the left, again you can be deceived. You will see it is moving to the left, but already deep within it is gathering energy to move to the right.While you love you are gathering energy to hate; while you hate you are gathering energy to love. While you are alive you are gathering energy to die, and when you are dead you will gather energy to be reborn.If you see only life then you will miss. See death hidden everywhere in life! And if you can see that death is hiding in life, then you can see the reverse also: that in death life is hidden. Then both the polarities disappear. When you see them in their togetherness, simultaneously, with that your mind also disappears. Why? – because mind can only be partial, it can never be whole.What will you do if you see hate hidden in love? If you see love hidden in hate, what will you choose then? Choice will become impossible, because if you see, “I choose love,” you also see that you are choosing hate. And how can a lover choose hate?You can choose because the hate is not apparent to you. You had chosen love, and then you think by some accident hate has happened. But the moment you choose love, you have chosen hate. The moment you cling to life, you are clinging to death. Nobody wants to die – then don’t cling to life, because life is leading toward death.Life exists in polarities and mind exists in one part of the polarity; that’s why mind is false. And mind tries to make that one part the whole. Mind says, “l love this man or this woman and I simply love. How can I hate this woman? When I love, I love; hate is impossible.”Mind appears logical but it is wrong. If you love, hate is possible; hate is possible only if you love. You cannot hate a person without loving him; you cannot make an enemy without making him first your friend. They go together, they are just like two aspects of a coin. You look at one aspect, the other is hidden behind – but the other is there, always waiting. And the more you move to the left, the more you are getting ready to move to the right.What will happen if the mind can see both together? – mind is not possible, because then the whole thing becomes so absurd, illogical. Mind can live only in a logical frame, clear-cut, the opposite denied. You say, “This is my friend and that is my enemy.” You can never say, “This is my friend and my enemy.” If you say it things become illogical. And if you allow illogical things to enter they shatter mind completely – mind drops.When you look at the absurdity of life, of the way life moves through contradictions, the way life lives through opposites, you have to drop the mind. The mind needs clear-cut demarcations and life has none. You cannot find anything more absurd than life, than existence. Absurd is the word for it, if you look at both the polarities together.You meet – you meet only to depart. You like a person – you like a person only to dislike. You are happy – you are happy only to sow the seeds for unhappiness. Can you conceive of a more absurd situation? If you want happiness, you have already wanted unhappiness; now you will be in a continuous anguish.What to do? Nothing is left for the mind to do. The mind simply disappears. And when mind disappears then life does not look absurd, then life becomes a mystery.This has to be understood, because life looks absurd because of the over-logicalness of the mind; life looks wild because you have lived in a man-made garden too long. You move into the forest and it looks wild, but it looks wild because of comparison. Once you understand that life is so, life is such that the opposite is always involved…Love a person and hate will come. Make a friend and an enemy is born. Be happy and somewhere, from the back door, unhappiness is entering. Enjoy the moment and immediately you will weep and cry. Laugh, and just behind the laughter are tears, waiting to pop up. What to do then? There is nothing left to be done. This is how things are.And Sosan says: Consider movement stationary… That’s what he is saying. He is saying when you see something moving, remember, something inside is stationary. And all movement will lead to the stationary. Where will it go? You run, you walk, you move. Where are you going? – just to rest somewhere, just to sit somewhere. You are running just to rest somewhere. So running reaches to rest, movement to a state of being stationary.And that stationary is already there. Run and see: something inside you is not running, it cannot run. Your consciousness remains stationary. You may move all over the world; something within you never moves, cannot move – and all movement depends on that immovable center. You get involved in all sorts of situations, emotions, but something in you remains uncommitted, uninvolved. And a whole life of involvements is possible because of that non-involving element.You love a person, you love as much as you can, but deep down something remains aloof, detached. It has to be so, otherwise you will be lost. Something remains detached even in attachment. And the greater the attachment, the greater will be the feeling of the detached point within you, because without the opposite nothing can exist. Things exist by way of opposites.Consider movement stationary and the stationary in motion… And when you see something stationary, don’t be befooled – it is stationary but something is already moving. Now scientists say that everything is moving, even this stationary wall, the rock. They are moving so fast, their atoms are moving so fast, that you cannot see the movement. That’s why they look stationary.The movement is so fast, just the same speed as a light ray moves. A light ray moves one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles in one second. This is the movement of an atom. It moves in a circle. It is going so madly fast it looks static.Nothing is static and nothing is absolutely moving. Everything is both – something moving, something static – and the static remains the base of all movement. When you see something static don’t be befooled; look inside and somewhere you will find the movement already happening. If you see something moving, look for the stationary. You will always find it there, it is absolutely certain, because one extreme cannot exist alone.If I give you a staff and tell you that this staff has only one extreme, there is no other extreme, you will say it is impossible. If it has one extreme then the other must be there, maybe hidden. But it is impossible that a staff should have only one extreme. The other must be there; if there is a beginning the end must be there.This is what Buddha goes on saying: “If you are born, death must be there. Everything that is born has to die.” Because one end is the beginning, then where is the other end, the other end of the staff? It has to be there. Everything born has to die, everything made will be unmade, everything joined will fall apart, every meeting is a departure, every arrival is a departure.Look at both simultaneously and immediately the mind disappears. You may feel a little dizzy, because the mind has lived with logical demarcations, logical clarity. When all distinctions disappear, even the opposite is hidden in everything, mind feels dizzy.Allow that dizziness, let it happen. Soon the dizziness will go and you will settle into a new wisdom, a new knowing, a new vision of reality.This new vision of reality is the whole, and with this whole you are empty. There is no opinion about it; now you know every opinion is going to be false.Somebody asked Mahavira, “Is there God?”And Mahavira said, “Yes, no. Yes and no both.”The man was puzzled. He said, “I don’t follow. Either you say yes or you say no, but don’t say everything together.”Mahavira said, “These are only three standpoints. If you want to listen to the whole thing, I have seven standpoints about everything.”And Mahavira has! First he says yes – one standpoint – not the truth, one aspect. Then he says no – not the truth, another aspect. Then he says yes and no both – the third aspect. Then he says yes and no, both not – the fourth aspect. Then he says yes plus yes and no both – the fifth aspect. No plus yes and no both – the sixth aspect. No plus yes and plus both not – the seventh aspect.He says there are seven aspects and then the thing is whole. And he is right, but the mind feels dizzy. But that is your problem, not his problem. He is right, because he says whenever you say yes, it is half. In a certain sense a thing is, but in a certain sense it is already on the way to being non-existential.You say, “This child, is he alive or dead?” He is alive, yes. But Mahavira says he is already on the path to die. He will die and the death is certain, so let it be implied in the statement; otherwise the statement will be half, and untrue.So Mahavira says, “Yes, in a sense this child is alive – and no, in a sense, because this child is going to die” – not only going to die, in fact he is already dead because he is alive. The death is hidden there, it is part of him. And that’s why he says it is better to say the third: he is both.But how can a child be both dead and alive? – because death negates life, life negates death. That’s why Mahavira says let there be a fourth standpoint also: he is both not. This is how he goes, and by the time he has finished his seven-fold statement, you are even more puzzled than you were before you asked him. But that is your problem. He says drop the mind because mind cannot look at the whole, it can look only at the aspects.Have you ever observed? If I give you a small pebble, can you see the whole small pebble? Whenever you look you see only one aspect, the other is hidden. If you look at the other then the first part is again hidden. Even with a small pebble that you can put on your palm, you cannot see the whole.The mind cannot see anything whole. I am looking at you but your back is hidden. You are looking at me; my face you see but not my back. And you have never seen me whole, because when you see my back you will not see my face.There is no possibility for the mind to see anything whole. It can see only half, the other half is inferred. It is an inference, taken for granted that it must be there, because how can the face be if there is no back? So we infer that the back may be there, must be there.But if you can look at both the things together, dizziness is bound to happen. If you can tolerate it and pass through it, then comes clarity, then all clouds disappear. In dervish dancing the whole point is to give the mind a dizziness. There are many ways. Mahavira used a very logical device: seven-fold logic. That is just like dervish dancing; it gives you a dizziness.Those who are very intellectual, for them Mahavira’s method is very beautiful. It gives a dizziness and everything becomes topsy-turvy, and you cannot really say anything – you have to become silent. Whatsoever you say looks absurd and you have to go on immediately denying it. And by the time you have stated everything, nothing is stated, because every statement contradicted the other.This seven-fold logic of Mahavira is just like dervish dancing of the mind, it gives you dizziness. Dervish dancing is a physical method to give the mind a dizziness and this is a mental method to give the mind a dizziness.If you dance fast, move fast, whirl fast, you suddenly feel a dizziness, a nausea, as if the mind is disappearing. If you continue, for a few days dizziness will be there and then it will settle. The moment dizziness has gone you will find the mind has gone, because there is nobody to feel dizzy. And then a clarity comes. Then you look at things without the mind. Without the mind the whole is revealed – and with the whole, the transformation.When such dualities cease to existoneness itself cannot exist.And remember, when we use the word oneness, that too is part of duality. If there is no duality how can there be oneness? That’s why Hindus never use oneness. If you ask Shankara, “What is the nature of existence?” he says, “Non-dual, advaita, not two.”He will never say one, because how can you say one? If there is only one, how can you say one? One needs two to be meaningful. If there is no possibility of the second, of the two, then what is the use of saying that it is one? Shankara says, “At the most, I can say not two, but I cannot say positively one. I can say what the reality is not: it is not two. I cannot say what it is, because meaning, words, all become useless.”When such dualities cease to exist… When you cannot see love apart from hate, what meaning will you give to love? Dictionaries cannot be written by Sosan. If somebody tells me to write a dictionary, I cannot do that. It is impossible, because what meaning will I give to love? Dictionaries are possible only if love and hate are different, not only different but opposite. So you can write: love is not hate. When you have to define hate, you can say: not love.But what will Sosan do? If you ask him “What is love?” how should he define love? – because love is hate too. How will he define life? – because life is death too. How will he define a child? – because a child is an old man too. How will he define beauty? – because beauty is ugliness too. Boundaries disappear, then you cannot define anything because definition needs boundaries, and definition depends on the opposite; all definitions depend on the opposite.If we say what a man is, we can say: not a woman – and it is defined. But if you look at Sosan and understand him, every man is a woman, every woman is a man. This is how things are. Now psychologists have also discovered that fact that man and woman are bisexual. Every man has a woman hidden within, and every woman has a man hidden within her – they are there. No woman is simply a woman, cannot be. In this existence nothing can be without the opposite. And no man can be without a woman, the woman is there.You are born out of two parents: one was man, one was woman. You carry both within you, half-half. This has to be so, there is no other way to be born. You are not only born out of a woman, otherwise you would have been only woman. You are not only born out of the father, otherwise you would have been only man. You are born out of a duality, man and woman. They both contribute, you are both.That creates trouble, because when the mind thinks about a woman, it always thinks in terms of the feminine. But you don’t know then… If a woman becomes ferocious, she is more ferocious than any man; if she is angry, no man can compete with her; if she hates, no man can hate like her.Why? – because her woman is tired, on the surface, and her man is always at rest and is more full of energy. So whenever she is angry, she is more angry because the man starts functioning, and that man is at rest. And whenever a man surrenders or becomes very loving he is more feminine than any woman, because then the woman that is always at rest and hidden behind, and always fresh and young, comes up.Look at Hindu deities. They have the right thing, they have understood the duality very well. You must have seen pictures of Kali, the Mother. She is a very ferocious woman with skulls around her neck, blood and a head in one hand, and many hands holding weapons to kill. She is the consort of Shiva, and Shiva is lying down and she is standing on his chest.When for the first time Westerners started to think about this symbol, they were puzzled: “Why? And why do you call this woman “mother”? She looks like death!” But Hindus say that the mother also has death in her, because she gives birth, then who will give you death, the opposite? The mother gives you birth, then she will give you death also. This has to be so.Kali, the Mother, is both dangerous, destructive and creative. She is the mother, the creative force, and she is also death, the destructive force. She loves Shiva but she is standing on his chest as if ready to kill.But this is the nature of life. Love kills, birth becomes death, beauty disappears, ugliness comes in. Everything fades into the opposite, melts into the opposite. All logic looks futile and the mind gets dizzy.When such dualities cease to exist… And when you see through all of them, they simply cease to exist – because love is hate. The right word will be lovehate – one word, not two words. The right thing will be lifedeath – one word, not two words. The right word will be manwoman, womanman – not two words, one, together.But then oneness also disappears, ceases to exist. Then what is the use of saying that life is one? Two disappear; in the wake one disappears also.That’s why Sosan and all followers of Buddha insist that when you come to realize truth, it is neither one nor two, it is emptiness. Now you can understand why they say shunyata, emptiness. Everything disappears, because when the two disappear, the one disappears – then what is left? Nothing is left, or, only nothing is left. This nothingness is the ultimate peak of enlightenment, when you see everything empty, when everything becomes empty.To this ultimate finalityno law or description applies.For the unified mind in accord with the wayall self-centered striving ceases.What will you try to achieve in this emptiness? Where is the goal and who is the seeker and who is the sought? There is no goal to be achieved, there is no one who can achieve. And all striving ceases.This is the peace of Buddha, the total silence – because there is nothing to achieve, no one to achieve, nowhere to go, no one to go, everything empty. Suddenly the whole striving disappears. You are not going anywhere. You start laughing, you start enjoying this emptiness. Then there is no barrier to your enjoyment, then the bliss goes on falling on you.If existence is felt as empty, then nobody can disturb your bliss because there is nobody to disturb it. It is you – because of your duality you get disturbed. You fall in love, and then hate comes and the hate disturbs. You want to be beautiful, and then ugliness enters and then ugliness disturbs. You want to be alive forever and forever, and then death knocks at the door and death disturbs.If you can see the opposite is hidden, suddenly you don’t ask for anything, you don’t seek anything, because you know whatsoever you ask for, the opposite will come. If you ask for prestige, respect, insults will be coming from everywhere; if you ask for flowers, thorns will fall on you; if you want to be known, you will be forgotten; if you want to reach to the throne, you will be thrown out completely.Whatsoever you ask, the opposite will be given to you. Then what is the meaning of asking, then why ask for anything? Desires will be fulfilled, but by the time they are fulfilled, you will be surprised – the opposite has come into your hands. You will achieve goals, but by the time you achieve them you will cry and weep, because the opposite is hidden in the goal. You will reach wherever you want to reach, but the very reaching will become the frustration.…all self-centered striving ceases… when this emptiness is seen as empty. What is there to strive for? The achieving mind falls, disappears into the dust.Doubts and irresolutions vanishand life in true faith is possible.This is the difference. These sayings of Sosan are called in Chinese The Book of True Faith. It is very difficult for Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, to understand what type of true faith this is. Try to understand; it is the deepest understanding of faith.Ordinarily what is taught in churches, temples – what Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, talk about – is not faith, but belief: believe in a God. But how can you believe? – because every belief carries its own doubt. That’s why you insist “I absolutely believe!”When you say “I absolutely believe,” really, what are you saying? Why this “absolute,” why this emphasis? It shows that a doubt is hidden somewhere, and you are hiding it with the word absolute, with the word total – with the emphasis. Whom are you going to deceive? You are deceiving yourself. The emphasis shows that the opposite is hidden somewhere.When you say to someone, “I love you and only you,” a doubt is hidden. Why “only you”? Why do you say it? Why do you want to emphasize it? The possibility of loving somebody else is hidden there, so you emphasize to hide that possibility. If you don’t hide it, it may become apparent, it may come up, it may surface. Then what to do? Just make every arrangement to hide it.Why do you say, “I am a true believer”? Can there be an untrue believer also? What is this true belief? True belief means you have hidden the doubt so completely that nobody will be able to know, but you know it well. And that’s why believers don’t like to listen to things which go against their beliefs. They become deaf because they are always afraid. You are afraid of the other, of what he is going to say; you are afraid he may touch the hidden doubt and the doubt may uncoil.So ordinary religious people won’t like to listen to an atheist. They will say, “No, he may destroy the faith.” But can faith be destroyed? And if faith can be destroyed, then is it worth clinging to? If faith also can be destroyed, then what type of faith is it? But it can be destroyed because doubt is there; the doubt is already eroding it.This happens every day. Believers become disbelievers, disbelievers become believers – they change, easily convertible. Why? – because the other is there, hidden. Belief carries doubt; as love carries hate, life carries death, belief carries doubt. Then what is faith?Sosan has really an understanding of what faith is. Faith happens only when the duality has fallen; it is not a belief against doubt. When belief and doubts have both disappeared, then something happens which is faith, which is trust. Not trust in a God, because there is no duality, you and God. Not that you trust, because you are no longer there – because if you are there then others will be there. Everything empty, and the trust flowers; the emptiness becomes the very flowering of trust.The Buddhist word shraddha – faith, trust – is very, very different. The meaning is absolutely different from that which the word belief carries. Nobody to believe, nobody to be believed in; all dualities have fallen, then trust. Then what can you do? You cannot doubt, you cannot believe – what can you do? You simply trust and flow into the flow. You move with life, you rest with life.If life brings birth, you trust in birth – you don’t hanker. If life brings death, you trust in death – you don’t say, “This is not good.” If life brings flowers, okay; if life brings thorns, okay. If life gives, it is good; if life takes away, it is good. This is trust. So you don’t ask, “Give us eternal life,” because you know you will get eternal death.Have you ever observed that in the whole world only Christians have been praying for eternal life? Only Christians pray, “Lord, give us eternal life,” and only Christians have a hell which is eternal! It has to be the opposite. No other religion has an eternal hell. They have hells, but temporary ones. How can punishment be eternal? When the prize is temporary how can the punishment be eternal? When you never get anything eternal in life, how can you be punished eternally for it? Seems unjust.But Christianity demands, prays for eternal life. Then you have to make the balance: eternal hell. Once you sin and are thrown into hell you will never be able to come out of it. You will be there forever and forever. This has to be so, because you demanded eternal life.Buddhist trust means a deep understanding of the fact that whatsoever you demand will go wrong. Try to understand it. I will repeat: whatsoever you desire will go wrong.Understanding this, desiring disappears. When desiring disappears there is trust! Trust means moving with life without any expectations, desires, demands of your own. Not asking, not complaining, whatsoever happens, accepting it.And remember, this is not something that you are doing. If you are doing it, then there is rejection. If you say, “Yes, I will accept,” you have rejected. If you say, “Whatsoever happens I will accept,” there is a deep rejection behind it. You really don’t accept. You are accepting only because you feel helpless, because nothing can be done, so what to do? – accept. But the acceptance has a deep depression in it, a rejection. If it had been possible to reject, you would have chosen rejection. Then it is not trust.Simply seeing the reality, that the opposite is implied everywhere, Sosan says trust happens. It is not that you say, “I accept.” It is not in any helplessness that you accept. It is simply the nature of life that the opposite is implied. Looking at the fact, truth, deep inside you, gives you trust. Looking at the fact, faith happens.If I see that I am born, then the fact is there that I will die. This is a simple fact. I don’t accept it because there is no rejection; I simply trust. When I trusted being born, life gave me birth, and I trusted; life will give me death, and I trust. If birth has been so beautiful, why not death? And who are you to decide? If birth has given you so much, why not death?The unknown is always there. Trust means going into the unknown, not making any demands. Then you cannot be miserable, then bliss goes on showering on you. How can you be miserable if you don’t demand? Who can make you miserable if you don’t demand? Life seems to be miserable because whatsoever you demand, life seems to be going toward just the opposite. Life will become bliss if you don’t demand; whatsoever happens is beautiful. Whatsoever happens is beautiful – you simply move with it.Chuang Tzu is right: “Easy is right,” and “When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten.” And when you fit so deeply with life, doubts, disbeliefs disappear. This fitting of the shoe is trust. A faith arises which is not a belief. A faith arises which does not need any God to be believed in.That’s why Buddhists don’t talk about God. Buddhism reached really the deepest core of religion, and people like Sosan are rare. Their understanding is perfect, total. The whole has come into their understanding. They don’t need a God because they say, “Why a God? Is not existence enough? Why personify it? And whatsoever you make will be just like you – it will be a projection. So all Gods are projections.”Hindus make a God: look at the God, it is just a projection of the Hindu physiology – the nose, the eyes, the height, everything. Look at a Japanese God, look at a Negro God, and you can see that these are just projections of our own minds. If horses had their Gods they could not be men, they would be horses. Can you think of a horse having a God like a man? Impossible! Horses will have horses as their Gods. If trees have their Gods they will be trees.What are your Gods? – your projections. And why do you project? – because you want to be protected. Without a God you feel lonely, alone, empty; you want someone to help you. With this asking for help, you are creating misery for yourself. Now the opposite will happen. Every moment you will feel God is not listening, and you are praying and crying and he is not listening. And every moment you will feel you have done everything and you have not been given that which is due to you.Saints, so-called saints, always have complaints because they have renounced the world and yet bliss has not happened. They are celibate, but yet flowers have not fallen on them. And they have done this and that, they have a long list, and they have done many things, and yet God is as far away as ever. They don’t trust, they are still making a fight with life. They don’t allow life to happen in its own way. They have their own ideas to enforce on life – that is distrust.Distrust means you have some ideas to enforce. You think yourself wiser than life itself. That is distrust, that is disbelief. You want to impose yourself. Go even to the churches, synagogues, and see people praying to God. What are they saying? They are giving advice. They are saying, “Don’t do this, this is wrong. My son is ill, make him healthy.”In the first place, if you really trust, then he makes your son ill – so trust it! Why go complaining and praying? Do you think you can improve upon him? All prayers mean praying to God: “Please don’t make two and two become four. Whatsoever is happening, whatsoever is natural, don’t let it happen.” You have some ideas to suggest, some advice – this is not trust.Trust means: “I am no one and I go wherever life leads me, wherever – into the unknown, into the dark, death or life. Wherever it leads, I am ready. I am always ready and I fit.” But when can you fit? You can fit only when duality ceases; when you can see, and that very seeing becomes stopping – the stopping of desire, demand.For the unified mind in accord with the wayall self-centered striving ceases.Doubts and irresolutions vanishand life in true faith becomes possible.With a single stroke we are freed from bondage…With a single stroke we are freed from bondage… It is not a gradual affair. It is not that, by and by, you reach to the truth, it is not a question of degrees. By a single stroke, when you see the truth, in a single moment you are freed of all bondage.It is not a question of making effort, because whatsoever you do, you will do with the mind, and mind is the cause of all misery. And whatsoever you do with the mind will strengthen the mind more. Whatsoever you do with the mind will be a striving. And whatsoever you do with the mind will be a choice from two opposite poles. You will be getting more entangled.So the question is not what to do, the question is how to see. The question is not of changing your character, the question is not to become more good, to become more saintly, to be less a sinner – no, that is not the question. The question is: how to see without mind, how to see without choice. The question is not concerned with doing and action, the question is concerned with the quality of awareness.That’s why in the East we have been emphasizing meditation, and in the West they have been emphasizing morality. When for the first time the Upanishads were translated into Western languages, the scholars were puzzled because they didn’t have anything like the Ten Commandments in the Upanishads – ”Don’t do this, do that” – nothing was there. They were puzzled. How are these Upanishads religious scriptures? – because religion means a morality, religion means, “Don’t do this and do that,” it is a doing. And the Upanishads don’t talk about what to do, they only talk about how to be, what to be.How to be more alert and aware, that’s the only question: how to be so aware that you can see through, and opposites become one and dualities cease. In a deep penetration of awareness, sinners disappear, saints also, because they both belong to the duality. God dies and the Devil also, because they also belong to the duality – the mind created them.And Christianity has remained continuously in a deep turmoil, because how to make arrangements with both the Devil and God? It is really a problem. In the first place, how does this Devil come in? If you say God created him then the responsibility goes to God himself. And what will happen in the end? Who is going to win? If you say God is going to win, finally, then why this whole nonsense on the way, on the road? If God is going to win finally, why not now?And if you say there can be no final winning, victory, the conflict will continue, then the Devil becomes as powerful as God. And who knows? – he may win in the end. And if he wins then what will happen to all of your saints? Then sinners will be happy and saints will be thrown into hell. But the whole thing arises because of the dual mind.The mind cannot see that God and the Devil are one. They are! The Devil is just the opposite: the other extreme, the hate, the death. So you say God is love and the Devil is hate, God is compassion and the Devil is violence, and God is light and the Devil is darkness. What foolishness! – because darkness and light are two aspects of one energy. Good and bad also; right and wrong, moral and immoral, are each two polarities of one phenomenon. And that one phenomenon is existence.Sosan will not call it God, because if you call it God you deny the Devil – it is God plus the Devil. Existence is both night and day, morning and evening both, happiness, unhappiness – all. It is together. And when you see this, heaven and hell both together, then where is the choice? And what is the point of choosing anything or asking for anything?All demands cease. Faith arises. Trust happens in the emptiness of truth. Where duality ceases, where you cannot even say one is, an unknown phenomenon flowers, which is trust.Something blooms which is the most beautiful, the most precious; and that is the flower of trust.With a single stroke we are freed from bondage;nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.All is empty, clear, self-illuminating,with no exertion of the mind’s power.Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imaginationare of no value.Then one lives, only lives. One breathes, only breathes. No imagination, no thought, no mind – they are all of no value. You trust existence, and when you trust existence, existence trusts you. This meeting of trust is the ultimate bliss, the ecstasy, samadhi.So what to do about it? It is not a question of doing, nothing can be done. You have to see, you have to observe life; become an observer, look in everything. Next time you feel love, just don’t be befooled by it. Love, but look inside – there is hate waiting. And watch. And suddenly there will be an illumination. You will be able to see this love is just nothing but the first step of the hate.Then what is there to choose? Then why ask, “God, give us more love”? – because more hate will be coming. So what will you do? You will float in love and you will know hate is coming. Neither will you cling to love, because clinging means you are fighting against hate. And you know, as night comes after the day, after love the hate will be coming. Then what will happen? Neither will you cling to love nor will you hate hate.And when you are in such a balance, in such a tranquility, where you don’t demand love, where you don’t want to be away from hate, where you don’t cling to anything, and nothing clings to you, suddenly you neither love nor hate. Suddenly, in one stroke, the duality is broken from anywhere.Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, “Find out your chief characteristic.” It is good. Find out what is your chief characteristic – fear? hate? love? greed? sex? What is your chief characteristic? Just watch and see, and work on that chief characteristic, and try to see the opposites together.If it is love, then see love and hate together. If you can see, they negate each other. Suddenly you are empty – there is neither love nor hate. They can be only one at a time. Both together, they negate each other. Suddenly they are both not there – only you are left alone, in your total aloneness. Nothing is there, not a trace of anything. This is the emptiness, the shunyata that Sosan is talking about.And if you can see this in one duality, you can see it in all. That is not a big problem: once you have seen it in one duality, love-hate, you have seen it all over. The same is everywhere. A totally different quality of being will come into existence.Trust. It is not something to believe in, a doctrine, it has nothing to do with any God, any Christ, Krishna, Mohammed, any Koran, Bible, Gita. No, it has something to do with your awareness. Fully alert, seeing through, you become free – and at one stroke. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value.Don’t think over it, try to see it in life. It will be painful, because when you are feeling love you don’t want to think about hate at all. You are really afraid that if you think of hate, then this whole ecstasy of love will disappear. When you are alive you don’t want to think about death at all, because you are afraid that if you think too much about death then you will not be able to enjoy life.But your fear is, in a way, right. If you really become aware of death, you will not be able to enjoy life the way you are enjoying it. It is not much of an enjoyment also. It is not – it is just a misery. You will not be able to enjoy this way. And this way it is not an enjoyment at all, remember.If you think of hate while making love, you will not be able to enjoy it the way you have been enjoying it. But is it really an enjoyment or just an obsession? Have you really enjoyed love? If you had enjoyed then you would have flowered, then you would have a different fragrance – and it is not there. Then you would have a different illumination of being, and it is not there. You are empty, poor, deep within – dark, no flame. So what type of enjoyment has this love and life and everything been? No, you have been just deceiving.Your love is nothing but an intoxicant, a drug: for a few moments you fall into it and forget. Then comes hate and then you are in misery. And again, because you are in misery, you seek love, and your love is nothing but again falling into a deep sleep. This has been your pattern. All that you call happiness is nothing but falling into sleep. Wherever you feel a good sleep, you see it as being happy.What is a happy man in your mind? He is a man who is not troubled by things. That’s why there is so much appeal in alcohol, in drugs, because then worries are forgotten. What is your love? It seems to be a biological in-built process of drugging yourself. And it is chemical; chemicals of the body are released, so the balance of the chemicals is changed. It is not much different from marijuana or LSD, because the basic thing is the change of chemicals in the body.Love changes; a fast also changes: the chemicals of the body lose their old pattern. In that new pattern, for a few moments you feel good. Again the hate comes, again the world enters, and the worries, and you are again in the wheel. This you have been doing for many, many lives.Now try something Sosan is saying, and this is what all buddhas have said. Look while you are in love, while you are making love – don’t be afraid – look how it is turning into hate. While you are alive, look how it is going into death – each breath and you are moving into death. Every moment of time slips away, and death is coming nearer and nearer. Look how your youth is becoming old age. Look to the opposite!Courage is needed, because the old pattern will not be helped; it will be destroyed by it. But once you can see hate in love, you will attain to a tranquility which is beyond both. If you can see both life and death together, you transcend. In a single stroke you transcend. In a single stroke you are out of bondage, you are a free soul for the first time – you are freedom itself. That’s why we call this ultimate state moksha, freedom.Nothing is to be done. You have to become more aware in your doings, become more conscious. That is the only meditation: become more alert. In a sharp moment of awareness, the awareness becomes a weapon, and in a single stroke all bondage is broken.Enough for today.

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Hsin Hsin Ming 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hsin Hsin Ming 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sosan said:In this world of suchnessthere is neither self nor other-than-self.To come directly into harmony with this realityjust simply say when doubts arise, “Not two.”In this “not two” nothing is separate,nothing is excluded.No matter when or where,enlightenment means entering this truth.And this truth is beyond extension ordiminution in time or space;in it a single thought is ten thousand years.First, try to understand the word suchness. Buddha depends on that word very much. In Buddha’s own language it is tathata, suchness. The whole Buddhist meditation consists of living in this word, living with this word so deeply that the word disappears and you become the suchness.For example, you are ill. The attitude of suchness is: accept it and say to yourself, “Such is the way of the body,” or, “Such are things.” Don’t create a fight, don’t start struggling. You have a headache – accept it, such is the nature of things. Suddenly there is a change because when this attitude comes in, a change follows just like a shadow. If you can accept your headache, the headache disappears.Try it. If you accept an illness it starts dispersing. Why does it happen? It happens because whenever you are fighting, your energy is divided: half the energy moving into illness, the headache, and half the energy fighting the headache – a rift, a gap and the fight. Really, this fight is a deeper headache.Once you accept, once you don’t complain, once you don’t fight, the energy has become one within. The rift is bridged. And so much energy is released because now there is no conflict – the release of energy itself becomes a healing force. Healing doesn’t come from outside. All that medicines can do is to help the body to bring its own healing force into action. All that a doctor can do is just to help you to find your own healing power. Health cannot be forced from outside, it is your energy flowering.This word suchness can work so deeply that with physical illness, with mental illness and finally with spiritual illness – this is a secret method – they all dissolve. But start from the body, because that is the lowest layer. If you succeed there, then higher levels can be tried. If you fail there, then it will be difficult for you to move higher.Something is wrong in the body: relax and accept it, and simply say inside – not only in words but feel it deeply – that such is the nature of things. A body is a compound, so many things are combined in it. The body is born, it is prone to death. And it is a mechanism, and complex; there is every possibility of something or other going wrong.Accept it, and don’t get identified. When you accept you remain above, you remain beyond. When you fight you come to the same level. Acceptance is transcendence. When you accept, you are on a hill, the body is left behind. You say, “Yes, such is the nature. Things born will have to die. And if things born have to die, they will be ill sometimes. Nothing to be worried about too much” – as if it is not happening to you, just happening in the world of the things.This is the beauty: that when you are not fighting, you transcend. You are no longer on the same level. And this transcendence becomes a healing force. Suddenly the body starts changing. And the same happens to mental worries, tensions, anxieties, anguish. You are worried about a certain thing. What is the worry? You cannot accept the fact, that’s the worry. You would like it in some way different from how it is happening. You are worried because you have some ideas to enforce on nature.For example, you are getting old. You are worried. You would like to remain young forever – this is the worry. You love your wife, you depend on her and she is thinking to leave, or of moving with another man, and you are worried – worried because what will happen to you? You depend on her so much, you feel so much security with her. When she is gone there will be no security. She has not only been a wife to you, she has been also a mother, a shelter; you can come and hide against the whole world. You can rely on her, she will be there. Even if the whole world is against you, she will not be against you, she is a consolation. Now she is leaving, what will happen to you? Suddenly you are in a panic, worried.What are you saying? What are you saying by your worry? You are saying you cannot accept this happening, this should not be so. You expected it to be otherwise, just the contrary: you wanted this wife to be yours for ever and ever, and now she is leaving. But what can you do?When love disappears what can you do? There is no way; you cannot force love, you cannot force this wife to remain with you. Yes, you can force – that’s what everybody is doing – you can force. The dead body will be there, but the living spirit will have left. Then that will be a tension in you.Against nature, nothing can be done. Love was a flowering, now the flower has faded. The breeze has come into your house, now it has moved into another. Such is the way of things, they go on moving and changing.The world of things is a flux, nothing is permanent there. Don’t expect! If you expect permanency in the world where everything is impermanent, you will create worry. You would like this love to be forever. Nothing can be forever in this world – all that belongs to this world is momentary. This is the nature of things, suchness, tathata.So you know now the love has disappeared. It gives you sadness – okay, accept the sadness. You feel trembling – accept the trembling, don’t suppress it. You feel like crying, cry. Accept it! Don’t force it, don’t make a face, don’t pretend that you are not worried, because that won’t help. If you are worried you are worried; if the wife is leaving she is leaving; if the love is no longer, it is no longer. You cannot fight the facticity, you have to accept it.And if you accept it gradually, then you will be continuously in pain and suffering. If you accept it without any complaint, not in helplessness but in understanding, it becomes suchness. Then you are no longer worried, then there is no problem – because the problem was arising not because of the fact, but because you couldn’t accept it the way it was happening. You wanted it to follow you.Remember, life is not going to follow you, you have to follow life – grudgingly, happily, that’s your choice. If you follow grudgingly you will be in suffering. If you follow happily you become a buddha, your life becomes an ecstasy.Buddha also has to die – things won’t change – but he dies in a different way. He dies so happily, as if there is no death. He simply disappears, because he says a thing which is born is going to die. Birth implies death, so it is okay, nothing can be done about it.You can be miserable and die: then you miss the point, the beauty that death can give to you, the grace that happens in the last moment, the illumination that happens when body and soul part. You will miss that because you are so much worried, and you are so much clinging to the past and to the body that your eyes are closed. You cannot see what is happening because you cannot accept it, so you close your eyes, you close your whole being. You die. You will die many times, and you will go on missing the point of it.Death is beautiful if you can accept, if you can open the door with a welcoming heart, a warm reception: “Yes, because if I am born I am to die. So the day has come, the circle becomes complete.” You receive death as a guest, a welcome guest, and the quality of the phenomenon changes immediately.Suddenly you are deathless: the body is dying, you are not dying. You can see now: only the clothes are dropping, not you; only the cover, the container, not the content. The consciousness remains in its illumination – more so because in life many were the covers on it, in death it is naked. And when consciousness is in total nakedness it has a splendor of its own; it is the most beautiful thing in the world.But for that, an attitude of suchness has to be imbibed. When I say imbibed, I mean imbibed – not just a mental thought, not the philosophy of suchness, but your whole way of life becomes suchness. You don’t even think about it, it simply becomes natural.You eat in suchness, you sleep in suchness, you breathe in suchness, you love in suchness, you weep in suchness. It becomes your very style; you need not bother about it, you need not think about it, it is the way you are. That is what I mean by the word imbibe. You imbibe it, you digest it, it flows in your blood, it goes deep in your bones, it reaches to the very beat of your heart. You accept.Remember, the word accept is not very good. It is loaded – because of you, not because of the word – because you accept only when you feel helpless. You accept grudgingly, you accept half-heartedly. You accept only when you cannot do anything, but deep down you still wish… You would have been happy if it had been otherwise. You accept like a beggar, not like a king, and the difference is great.If the wife leaves or the husband leaves, finally you come to accept it. What can be done? You weep and cry and many nights you brood and worry, and many nightmares around you and suffering… And then what to do? Time heals, not understanding. Time – and remember, time is needed only because you are not understanding, otherwise instant healing happens.Time is needed because you are not understanding. So, by and by – six months, eight months, a year – things become dim, in the memory they are lost, covered with much dust. And a gap comes of one year; by and by you forget.Still, sometimes the wound hurts. Sometimes a woman passes on the road and suddenly you remember. Some similarity, the way she walks, and the wife is remembered, and the wound. Then you fall in love with someone, then more dust gathers, then you remember less. But even with a new woman, sometimes the way she looks – and your wife. The way she sings in the bathroom, and the memory. And the wound is there, green.It hurts because you carry the past. You carry everything, that’s why you are so much burdened. You carry everything! You were a child; the child is still there, you are carrying it. You were a young man; the young man is still there with all his wounds, experiences, stupidities – he is there. You carry your whole past, layers upon layers, everything is there. That’s why you sometimes regress.If something happens and you feel helpless, you start crying like a child. You have regressed in time, the child has taken over. The child is more efficient in weeping than you, so the child comes in and takes over, you start crying and weeping. You can even start kicking just like a child in a tantrum – but everything is there.Why is such a load carried? – because you never really accepted anything. Listen: if you accept anything it simply never becomes a load; then the wound is not carried. You accepted the phenomenon: there is nothing to carry from it, you are out of it. Through acceptance you are out of it. Through half-helpless acceptance it is carried.Remember one thing: anything incomplete is carried by the mind forever and forever; anything complete is dropped – because mind has a tendency to carry the incomplete things in the hope that someday there may be an opportunity to complete them. You are still waiting for the wife to come, or for the husband, or you are still waiting for the days that have gone. You have not transcended the past.And because of a too-much-loaded past, you cannot live in the present. Your present is a mess because of the past, and your future is also going to be the same, because the past will become more and more heavy. Every day it is becoming heavier and heavier.When you really accept, in that attitude of suchness there is no grudge, you are not helpless. You simply understand that this is the nature of things. For example, if I want to go out of this room I will go out through the door, not through the wall, because to enter through the wall will be just hitting my head against it; it is simply foolish. This is the nature of the wall, to hinder, so you don’t try to pass through it! This is the nature of the door: that you pass through it. Because the door is empty, you can pass through it.When a buddha accepts, he accepts things like wall and door. He passes through the door; he says that is the only way. First you try to pass through the wall, and you wound yourself in many millions of ways. And when you cannot get out – crushed, defeated, depressed, fallen – then you crawl toward the door. You could have gone through the door in the first place. Why did you try and start fighting with the wall?If you can look at things with a clarity, you simply don’t do things like this – trying to make a door out of a wall. If love disappears, it has disappeared! Now there is a wall: don’t try to go through it. Now the door is no longer there; the heart is no longer there, the heart has opened to somebody else. And you are not alone here; there are others also.The door is no longer for you, it has become a wall. Don’t try, and don’t knock your head on it. You will be wounded unnecessarily. And wounded, defeated, even the door will not be such a beautiful thing to pass through.Simply look at things. If something is natural, don’t try to force any unnatural thing on it. Choose the door – be out of it. Every day you are doing the foolishness of passing through the wall. Then you become tense, and then you feel continuous confusion. Anguish becomes your very life, the core of it – and then you ask for a meditation.But why in the first place? Why not look at the facts as they are? Why can’t you look at the facts? – because your wishes are too much there. You go on hoping against all hope. That’s why you have become so hopeless a case.Just look: whenever there is a situation, don’t desire anything, because desire will lead you astray. Don’t wish and don’t imagine. Simply look at the fact with your total consciousness available and suddenly a door opens and you never move through the wall, you move through the door, unscratched. Then you remain unloaded.Remember, suchness is an understanding, not a helpless fate. That’s the difference. There are people who believe in fate, destiny. They say, “What can you do? God has willed it in such a way. My young child has died, so it is God’s will and this is my fate. It was written, it was going to happen.” But deep down there is rejection. These are just tricks to polish the rejection. Do you know God? Do you know fate? Do you know it was written? No, these are rationalizations, how you console yourself.The attitude of suchness is not a fatalist attitude. It does not bring in a God, or a fate, or a destiny – nothing. It says: simply look at things. Simply look at the facticity of things, understand, and there is a door, there is always a door. You transcend.Suchness means acceptance with a total, welcoming heart, not in helplessness.In this world of suchnessthere is neither self nor other-than-self.And once you merge – you are merged into a suchness, in tathata, in understanding – there is no one as you and there is no one as other-than-you, no self, no other-than-self. In a suchness, in a deep understanding of the nature of things, boundaries disappear.Mulla Nasruddin was ill. The doctor examined him and said, “Fine, Nasruddin, very fine. You are improving, you are doing well, everything is almost okay. Just a little thing has remained: your floating kidney is not yet right. But I don’t worry a bit about it.”Nasruddin looked at the doctor and said, “Do you think if your floating kidney was not alright that I would worry about it?”The mind always divides: the other and I. And the moment you divide I and the other, the other becomes the enemy, the other cannot be a friend. This is one of the basic things to be deeply understood, you need a penetration into it: the other cannot be the friend, the other is the enemy. In his very being “the other,” he is your enemy. Some are more inimical, some less, but the other remains the enemy.Who is a friend? – the least of the enemies, really, nothing else. The friend is one who is least inimical toward you and the enemy is one who is least friendly toward you, but they stand in a queue. The friend stands nearer, the enemy further away, but they are all enemies. The other cannot be a friend. It is impossible, because with the other there is bound to be competition, jealousy, struggle.You are fighting with friends also – of course, fighting in a friendly way. You are competing with friends also, because your ambitions are the same as theirs. You want to attain prestige, power; they also want to attain prestige and power. You would like to have a big empire around you, they also. You are fighting for the same, and only a few can have it.It is impossible to have friends in the world. Buddha has friends, you have enemies. Buddha cannot have an enemy, you cannot have a friend. Why does Buddha have friends? – because the other has disappeared, now there is nobody who is other than him.And when this “other” disappears the “I” also has to disappear, because they are two poles of one phenomenon. Here inside exists the ego, and there outside exists the other – two poles of one phenomenon. If one pole disappears, if “you” disappears, “I” disappears with it; if “I” disappears, “you” disappears.You cannot make the other disappear, you can only make yourself disappear. If you disappear there is no other; when the I is dropped there is no thou. That’s the only way.But we try, we try just the opposite – we try to kill the “you”. The you cannot be killed, the you cannot be possessed, dominated. The you will remain a rebellion, because the you is in an effort to kill you. You are both fighting for the same ego – he for his, you for yours.The whole politics of the world is how to kill the you so that only I is left and everything is at peace – because when there is nobody else, you alone are there, everything will be at peace. But this has never happened and will never happen. How can you kill the other? How can you destroy the other? The other is vast, the whole universe is the other.Religion works through a different dimension: it tries to drop the I. And once the I is dropped there is no other, the other disappears. That’s why you cling to your complaints and grudges – because they help the I to be there. If the shoe pinches, then the I can exist more easily. If the shoe is not pinching, the foot is forgotten; then the I disappears.People cling to their diseases, they cling to their complaints, they cling to all that pinches. And they go on saying, “These are wounds and we would like them to be healed.” But deep down they go on making the wounds, because if all the wounds are healed they will not be there.Just watch people: they cling to their illness. They talk about it as if it is something worth talking about. People talk about illness, about their negative moods, more than about anything else. Listen to them, and you will see that they are enjoying talking about it.Every evening I have to listen. For many years I have been listening. Look at their faces – they are enjoying it! They are martyrs; their illness, their anger, their hatred, their this problem and that, their greed, ambition. And just see, the whole thing is simply crazy – because they are asking to get rid of those things, but look at their faces, they are enjoying it. And if they are really gone, what will they enjoy then? If all their illnesses disappear and they are completely whole and healthy, there will be nothing for them to talk about!People go to psychiatrists and then they go on talking about it, that they have visited this psychiatrist and that, they have been to this master and that. Really, they enjoy saying, “All, everybody, has failed with me. I am still the same, nobody has been able to change me.” They enjoy this, as if they are succeeding because they are proving every psychiatrist a failure. All “pathies” have become failures.I have heard about one man who was a hypochondriac, continuously talking about his illnesses. Nobody believed him, because he was checked and examined in every possible way and nothing was wrong. But every day he would run to the doctor – he was in serious difficulty.Then, by and by, the doctor became aware: “Whatsoever he hears – if on the TV there is an advertisement about some medicine and talk about some illness – immediately that illness comes to him. If he reads about any illness in a magazine, immediately, the next day, he is there at the doctor’s office – ill, completely ill. And he imitates all the symptoms.”The doctor said once to him, “Don’t you bother me too much, because I read the same magazines you read and I listen to the same TV program you listen to. And just the next day you are here with the disease.”The man said, “What do you think? Are you the only doctor in town?”He stopped coming to this doctor, but he would not stop his madness about illness.Then he died, as everybody has to die. Before his death he told his wife to write a few words on a marble stone on his grave. They are still written there. In big letters on his gravestone it is written: “Now do you believe that I was right?”People feel so happy about their misery. I also feel sometimes that if all their misery disappears, what will they do? They will be so unoccupied they will simply commit suicide. And this has been my observation: you help them come out of one, the next day they are present there with something else. You help them to come out of that, they are again ready, as if there is a deep clinging to misery. They are getting something out of it, it is an investment – and it is paying.What is the investment? The investment is that when the shoe is not fitting, you feel more that you are. When the shoe fits completely, you simply relax. If the shoe fits completely, not only is the foot forgotten, the I disappears. There cannot be any I with a blissful consciousness – impossible!Only with a miserable mind can the I exist; the I is nothing but a combination of all your miseries. So if you are really ready to drop the I, only then will your miseries disappear. Otherwise you will go on creating new miseries. Nobody can help you because you are on a path which is self-destructive, self-defeating.So next time, whenever you come to me with any problem, just first inquire inside whether you would like it to be solved, because be aware – I can solve it. Are you really interested in solving it or just talking about it? You feel good talking about it.Go inward and inquire, and you will feel: all your miseries exist because you support them. Without your support nothing can exist. Because you give it energy, then it exists. If you don’t give it energy it cannot exist. And who is forcing you to give it energy? Even when you are sad, energy is needed, because without energy you cannot be sad.To make the phenomenon of sadness happen, you have to give energy. That’s why after sadness you feel so dissipated, drained. What happened? – because in depression you were not doing anything, you were simply sad. So why do you feel so much dissipated and drained? You should have come out of sadness full of energy – but no.Remember, all negative emotions need energy, they drain you. And all positive emotions and positive attitudes are dynamos of energy; they create more energy, they never drain you.If you are happy, suddenly the whole world flows toward you with energy, the whole world laughs with you. And people are right in their proverbs if they say: “When you laugh, the whole world laughs with you. When you weep, you weep alone.” It is true, it is absolutely true.When you are positive the whole existence goes on giving you more, because when you are happy the whole existence is happy with you. You are not a burden, you are a flower; you are not a rock, you are a bird. The whole existence feels happy about you.When you are like a rock, sitting dead with your sadness, nursing your sadness, nobody is with you. Nobody can be with you. There simply comes a gap between you and life. Then whatsoever you are doing, you have to depend on your energy source. It will be dissipated; you are wasting your energy you are being drained by your own nonsense.But one thing is there: that when you are sad and negative you will feel more ego. When you are happy, blissful, ecstatic, you will not feel the ego. When you are happy and ecstatic there is no I, and the other disappears. You are bridged with existence, not broken apart; you are together.When you are sad, angry, greedy, moving just within yourself and enjoying your wounds and seeing them again and again, playing with your wounds, trying to be a martyr, there is a gap between you and existence. You are left alone, and there you will feel I. And when you feel I, the whole existence becomes inimical to you. Not that it becomes inimical because of your I – it appears to be inimical. And if you see that everybody is the enemy, you will behave in such a way that everybody has to be the enemy.In this world of suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self. When you accept nature and dissolve into it, you move with it. You don’t have any steps of your own, you don’t have any dance of your own, you don’t have even a small song to sing of our own – the whole’s song is your song, the whole’s dance is your dance. You are no longer apart.You don’t feel “I am”; you simply feel “The whole is. I am just a wave, coming and going, arrival and departure, being and non-being. I come and go, the whole remains. And I exist because of the whole, the whole exists through me.”Sometimes it takes forms, sometimes it becomes formless; both are beautiful. Sometimes it arises in a body, sometimes it disappears from the body. It has to be so because life is a rhythm. Sometimes you have to be in the form, then you have to rest from the form. Sometimes you have to be active and moving, a wave, and sometimes you go to the depth and rest, unmoving. Life is a rhythm.Death is not the enemy. It is just a change of the rhythm, moving to the other. Soon you will be born – alive, younger, fresher. Death is a necessity. You are not dying in death; only all the dust that has gathered around you has to be washed. That is the only way to be rejuvenated. Not only Jesus is resurrected, everything is resurrected in existence.Just now the almond tree outside has dropped all his old leaves, now new leaves have replaced them. This is the way! If the tree clings to the old leaves then it will never be new, and then it will get rotten. Why create a conflict? The old disappears just for the new to come. It gives place, it makes space, room, for the new to come. And the new will always be coming and the old will always be going.You don’t die. Only the old leaf drops, just to make room for the new. Here you die, there you are born; here you disappear, there you appear. From the form to the formless, from the formless to the form; from the body to the no-body, from the no-body to the body; movement, rest, rest, movement – this is the rhythm. If you look at the rhythm you are not worried about anything. You trust.In this world of suchness… In the world of trust: …there is neither self nor other-than-self. Then you are not there, neither is there any thou. Both have disappeared, both have become a rhythm of one. That one exists, that one is the reality, the truth.To come directly into harmony with this realityjust simply say when doubts arise, “Not two.”This is one of the oldest mantras. Whenever doubts arise, whenever you feel divided, whenever you see that a duality is coming into being, simply say inside: “Not two” – but say it with awareness, don’t repeat it in a mechanical way.This is the problem with all mantras; really, this is the problem with everything. You can do it mechanically, then you miss the point; you do everything and you still miss. Or you can do it with full awareness, intelligence, understanding, and then the thing happens.Whenever you feel love arising say, “Not two.” Otherwise the hate is waiting there – they are one. When you feel hate arising say, “Not two.” Whenever you feel a clinging toward life say, “Not two.” Whenever you feel a fear of death say, “Not two, only one is.”And this saying should be your understanding; it should be filled with intelligence, penetrating clarity. And suddenly you will feel a relaxation within. The moment you say, “Not two” – if you are saying it understandingly, not repeating in a mechanical way – you will suddenly feel the illumination.Somebody has insulted you and you feel insulted. Simply remember and say, “Not two.” Because the one who insults and the one who is insulted are one. So why be worried? That man has not done anything to you, he has done to himself – because only one exists.It happened…In 1857 there was a rebellion in India against the British. One night a sannyasin was passing just through the street, but he was not aware that it was a military camp. So he was caught. And he had remained in silence for thirty years.When the police caught him and the Britishers asked him, “Why are you walking here? This is a prohibited area. Without permission you cannot come in,” he simply stood there because he couldn’t speak. For thirty years he had not spoken, so what to do? And he did not write, he did not use any communication.They thought, “This man is trying to deceive.” And he was not a foolish-looking man, he was very intelligent. The quality of his eyes, the way he was standing, he was a beautiful man. He was not a fool or an idiot.So they told him, “Tell us, otherwise we will shoot you.” But he stood the same. So they thought, “He must be a spy and just moving in orange; he is trying to find something in the camp, that’s why he is silent.”So they said, “Speak, otherwise we will kill you.”But he stood, so they killed him.He had taken the vow thirty years before that only once would he speak in his life. So when he was killed, and the British soldier with his spear killed him, when the spear reached his heart, he only uttered one word. It is the base, the very base of Eastern understanding and wisdom; it is a word from the Upanishads. He said, “Tattvamasi” – that art thou – and died!You are also that: the one. The killer and the killed are one, so why be worried? So why take standpoints? Why not merge in the other? Because the other is also me, and the other and me are also that. Only one exists.Nobody could understand what he was saying because he uttered the word in Sanskrit: tattvamasi. But the quality of the dying man was such that even the killers, the murderers, became aware that they had done something wrong – because they had never seen a spy dying in such a way. A spy is just a spy! And the bliss and the energy that was released when this man died was tremendous. Everybody felt it in the camp, as if there had suddenly been lightning.Thirty years’ silence, and if then you speak a word it has to be so. So much energy, thirty years’ silence in that one word, tattvamasi, it becomes atomic, it explodes!Everybody in the camp, even people who were sleeping in their tents, felt that something had happened. But now it was too late.Then they went in search of a brahmin scholar to find out what he had said. There they found that he had said the ultimate: That art thou, tattvamasi, only one is.Whenever you are faced with a confusion, with doubt, with division, conflict, whenever you are just going to choose something, remember, “Not two.” Make it a deep mantra, resounding within your being continuously. But remember, it has to be done with understanding, awareness, consciously. Otherwise you can go on saying, “Not two, not two, not two,” and you go on doing the two. And they become two separate things, they never meet.This is what I mean when I say mechanical. Mechanical means: on one layer you go on saying beautiful things and on another layer you go on doing ugly things. On one layer you say everyone is divine and on the other you remain the I, the ego, fighting, violent, aggressive.And aggression is not only in war: it is not only that when you kill a person, then it is aggression. Aggression is so subtle: it is there in your gestures. You look, and if you are divided with I and thou, your look is violent.I have heard once it happened…A prisoner was brought to the warden of the prison, and that prisoner was an ideal one. For five years there had been no complaint against him, and the prison authorities were thinking now to make him free. He was a murderer and he was in prison for his whole life, but for five years he had been such a good prisoner, the model, and every year he was given the prize for the best prisoner. But suddenly he jumped on his cellmate and beat him hard, so he was called to the warden.Even the warden was surprised. He asked, “What has happened? – because for five years we have been watching you. I have never in my life seen such a good, silent, well-behaved prisoner as you, and we were thinking to make you free. And suddenly, what has happened? Why did you jump on your cellmate? Why did you start beating him?”The man stood there with his head hung, very ashamed. And then he said, “It happened because my cellmate tore off the leaf from the calendar, and it was my turn.”They had a calendar in the cell and that was the only thing that they could do, the only action that was allowed to them. So they had divided it: one day one would tear off the leaf, another day the other. And this man said, “Today was my turn, and he tore off the leaf.”If you are violent, even this can become a problem. And he beat the cellmate so hard that he would have killed him, just with his bare hands, and the problem was a very simple one. But you don’t understand if you really think it is a simple one – it is not. Living in a cell for five years, not doing anything, one accumulates so much aggression that even this small thing can become too big.And this is happening to you all. Whenever you jump on your friend, your wife, your husband, whenever you get angry – have you ever thought about it? – that the matter is really such a small thing, just tearing off a leaf from the calendar. Out of all proportion your accumulated anger and aggression come out.Whenever it happens, repeat, not mechanically but consciously, “Not two,” and you will feel a sudden relaxation deep inside the heart. Say “Not two” and there is no choice, there is nothing to choose, like and dislike. Then everything is okay, and you can bless everything. Then wherever life leads, you go. You trust life.If you say “Two,” then you don’t trust. Trust is possible only if I and the whole are one, otherwise how is trust possible? Trust is not an intellectual standpoint, attitude. It is a total response to the feeling that only one exists, not two. Make this your mantra, learn this from Sosan.As many times as you feel doubt coming, confusion, division, conflict, repeat it very silently and deeply. First become conscious of the conflict, then repeat silently, “Not two,” and see what happens. The conflict disappears! Even if for a single moment it disappears, it is a great phenomenon, you are at ease. Suddenly there is no enemy in the world, suddenly everything is one. It is a family, and the whole is blissful with you.In this “not two” nothing is separate,nothing is excluded.No matter when or where,enlightenment means entering this truth.The truth of not two; enlightenment means entering this truth of not two. Go on tasting it as much as you can, go on feeling it as much as you can. Twenty-four hours a day there are opportunities, opportunities and opportunities, infinite opportunities. No need to miss them.At every opportunity, whenever you feel some tension inside, say, “Not two” and relax the whole body. And look within at what is happening when you say, “Not two”. No mantra can be so deep as this. But this is not like repeating “Om, Ram.” This is not like when you repeat “Ram, Ram, Ram,” no.Whenever there is an opportunity of division, whenever you feel now you will be divided, now you are on the verge of choice, choosing this against that, liking this against that, whenever you feel the opportunity is coming and a tension is arising, whenever you feel a build-up of tension, suddenly say, “Not two” – and the tension will relax, and the energy will be reabsorbed. That reabsorbed energy becomes bliss.There are two ways one can work with inner energy. One is: whenever the tension arises, relieve it. That’s how sex works. It is a safety measure, because energy can accumulate so much that you can simply explode, you can die of it. So just to be safe, nature has made an automatic arrangement in the body: whenever the energy is too much you start feeling sexual.What happens? There is a center that Hindus have been calling the third eye. Whenever energy reaches the third eye… Whenever it is too much and you are filled with it, it hits on the third eye. You start feeling something has to be done. This third eye Hindus have called the agya chakra, the center of order, of ordering, the office from where the body receives the orders.Whenever the energy is filled up to the third-eye center, immediately the body feels to do something. If you don’t do anything you will feel suffocated. You will feel as if you are in a tunnel and you would like to get out of it, you will feel narrowed. Something has to be done immediately.Nature has made a built-in process: immediately the third-eye center hits the sex center, they are joined, and you start feeling sexual. The feeling of sexuality is just the arrangement to release the energy. You make love, energy is thrown out, you feel relaxed, relieved. This is one way of using your energy – you feel happiness through relief.There is another way of using energy. That is: whenever energy becomes too much, not to relieve it but simply to say, “Not two. I am one with the universe. Where to relieve it? With whom to make love? Where to throw it? There is nowhere to throw it, I am one with the universe.” Whenever the energy is felt too much, simply say, “Not two,” and remain relaxed.If you don’t throw it out from the third eye, it starts rising higher than the third. And then there is the last, the seventh center in the head, which Hindus have called sahasrar: one-thousand-petaled lotus. When the energy reaches to the sahasrar there is bliss, when the energy reaches to the sex center there is happiness.Happiness can be only momentary because relief can be only momentary. Relieved, finished – you cannot go on relieving. A tension is relieved, then the energy is gone. But bliss can be eternal, because energy is not relieved but reabsorbed. But the center of relief is sex, the first center, and the center of reabsorbing the energy is the seventh, the last.And remember, they are the two ends of one energy phenomenon: on one end is sex, on the other end is sahasrar. From one end energy is simply relieved; you feel at ease because now the energy is not there to do anything – you go to sleep. That’s why sex helps sleep, and people use it as a tranquilizer, as a sleeping pill.If you move to the other extreme where energy is reabsorbed – because there is no one else to throw it on anywhere, you are the whole – then the one-thousand-petaled lotus opens. “One thousand” is just to say that it is infinite-petaled; an infinite-petaled lotus opens, and it goes on opening and opening and opening. There is no end to it, because energy goes on moving into it, reabsorbed. Then there is bliss, and bliss can be eternal.One has to reach from sex to superconsciousness. This one-thousand-petaled lotus is the center of superconsciousness. So whenever you again feel sexual say, “Not two.” Understanding, conscious, alert, say, “Not two,” and rest. Don’t become fidgety and excited. Rest and say, “Not two.”And suddenly you will feel that something is happening in the head: the energy that used to fall downward is moving upward. And once it touches the seventh center it is transformed, reabsorbed. Then you become more and more energy, and energy is delight, energy is ecstasy. Then there is no need to relieve it, because now you are the oceanic self, infinite. You can absorb the infinite, you can absorb the whole, and there will still be space left.This body is narrow. Your consciousness is not narrow, your consciousness is as vast as the sky. In this body you cannot carry much, this body is just a small cup; a little more energy and the cup overflows. Your sex is an overflowing of the cup, the narrow body.But when the sahasrar opens, a thousand-petaled lotus in your head, and it goes on opening and opening and opening, there is no end to it. If the whole is poured into you, still there is infinite space left. It is said that a buddha is greater than the universe: this is the meaning of it. His body is not greater than the universe, of course, obviously, but a buddha is greater than the universe because the lotus has opened. Now this universe is nothing; millions of universes can fall into it and be reabsorbed. It can go on growing.It is perfect and still goes on growing. This is the paradox, because we think a perfection cannot grow. Perfection also grows; it grows to be more perfect and more perfect and more perfect. It goes on growing because it is infinite.This is the emptiness Buddha is talking about, shunyata. When you are empty the whole falls into you and still infinity is left. More space is there, more universes can come into you and fall into you.In this “not two” nothing is separate,nothing is excluded.No matter when or where,enlightenment means entering this truth.And this truth is beyond extension ordiminution in time or space……this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space… For this truth, time and space do not exist. It has gone beyond. It is not surrounded by anything now – time or space. It is greater than space, bigger than time.…in it a single thought is ten thousand years.This is just a way of saying that in it a single moment is eternity. A buddha does not live in time, does not live in space. His body moves, we can see his body, but the body is not the buddha. The buddha is the consciousness that we cannot see. His body is born and dies; his consciousness is never born, never dies. But we cannot see that consciousness, and that consciousness is the buddha.This enlightened consciousness is the very root of our whole existence – and not only the root, but the flowering of it also. Time and space both exist in this consciousness, and this consciousness does not exist in time and space. You cannot say where this consciousness is – “where” is irrelevant. It is everywhere! Rather, on the contrary, it will be better to say that everywhere is in it.We cannot say at which moment of time this enlightened consciousness exists. No, that is not possible to say. We can say only that all time exists in this consciousness. This consciousness is bigger, and it has to be so. Why does it have to be so?You look at the sky: the sky is vast. But the looker, the witness, is vaster, otherwise how can you look at the sky? Your awareness must be vaster than the sky, otherwise how can you look at it? The seer must be greater than the seen, that is the only way.You can watch time, you can say, “This is morning and now this is afternoon and now this is evening. And one minute has passed and one year has passed and one age has passed.” This watcher, this consciousness, must be bigger than time, otherwise how can it watch? The watcher must be greater than the watched. You can see space, you can see time – then this seer within you is greater than both.Once enlightenment happens, everything is in you. All stars move in you, the worlds arise out of you and dissolve in you – because you are the whole.Enough for today.

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Hsin Hsin Ming 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hsin Hsin Ming 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sosan said:Emptiness here, emptiness there,but the infinite universe standsalways before your eyes.Infinitely large and infinitely small;no difference, for definitions have vanishedand no boundaries are seen.So too with being and non-being.Don’t waste time in doubts and argumentsthat have nothing to do with this.One thing, all things:move among and intermingle,without distinction.To live in this realizationis to be without anxiety about non-perfection.To live in this faith is the road to non-duality,Because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.Words!The way is beyond language,for in it there isno yesterday,no tomorrow,no today.Man is lost because of words, symbols, language. You are not lost in reality, you are lost in a linguistic dream – because reality is always there in front of you, but you are not always there in front of reality. You are somewhere else, always somewhere else, because you are a mind and a mind means something gone astray.A mind means: now you are not looking at that which is, you are thinking about it. The “about” is the problem, the “about” is the way to miss reality. Philosophy is the way to miss reality. The moment you think about it, the target will never be reached.What is thinking? – it is a substitute. If you know love, you never think about it. There is no need to think about it. If you don’t know love, you think about it – really, you don’t think about anything else. How can you know love through thinking? – because it is an existential experience. It is not a theory, it is not speculative. To know it, you have to be it.Why does mind think about things which are not experienced? – because this is a substitute; the whole being feels the need, so what to do? Just thinking about it you feel a little at ease, as if something is happening, as if you are experiencing. It happens in the dream, it happens while you are awake – because the mind remains the same whether you are asleep or awake.All dreams are substitutes and all thinking also, because thinking is dreaming while awake, dreaming is thinking while asleep. They are not qualitatively different, they are the same process. If you can understand dreaming, you will be able to understand thinking.Dreaming is more primitive, hence more simple. Thinking is more complicated, more evolved, hence more difficult to penetrate. And whenever you want to penetrate a thing, it is better to penetrate from the simplest form of it.If you have not eaten in the day, in the night you will have dreams about food: you are being invited by the king, you are eating delicious foods. If you are starving for sex, you will have a sexual dream. If you are starving for power and prestige, you will have a substitute dream for it: that you have become an Alexander or a Napoleon or a Hitler, you dominate the whole world.Dreaming is always about that which is lacking while you are awake; that which you have missed in the day comes in the dream. If you don’t miss anything in the day, dreaming will disappear. A man who is totally content will not dream. That’s why buddhas never dream. They cannot dream even if they want, because everything is complete and finished, nothing remains hanging on the mind.A dream is a hangover: something incomplete goes on trying to be complete. And desires are such that you can never complete them. They go on growing and become bigger and bigger. Whatsoever you do, something is always lacking. Who will fulfill that hole? Dreams fulfill that hole.You fasted, a hole is created in you. It is uncomfortable to carry that hole, so in the night, in dreams, you eat. The mind has deceived you, the eating has not been real. It cannot become blood in you; you cannot digest a dream, you cannot live on it. So what is it going to do? One thing: it can help a good sleep, it is a sleep-support.If there is no dream and you have incomplete desires, you will be absolutely unable to sleep: sleep will be broken many times. You are hungry, how can you sleep? But the dream gives you a false solution: “You have eaten, eaten delicious foods, now go to sleep.”And you believe it, because there is no way to know whether it is true or false. And you are so fast asleep, so unconscious, how can you know whether it is true or false? – because the truth about anything can be known only by awareness, and you are not aware. And then, moreover, the dream is beautiful, it fulfills a deep need. So why bother about it? Why try to find out whether it is true or not?Whenever you are happy you never try to find out whether it is true or not. You would like it to be true, it is a wish fulfillment. And it is dangerous to try to think about it – it may prove untrue, then what to do? So it is better not to open the eyes. The dream is beautiful, the sleep is good. Why not rest?In the night if you feel an urge to go to the toilet, immediately there is a dream: you are in the toilet. This is how the dream protects the sleep, otherwise you will have to go. The bladder is full and it is becoming uncomfortable; you will have to go to the toilet.But the dream protects, the dream says, “Yes, this is the toilet, you have unloaded yourself. Now go to sleep.” The bladder remains full, the discomfort remains full, but the dream gives a comfortable coating, it makes it easier to tolerate. In reality the situation remains the same, but the dream gives you a false illusion that the reality has changed.So what is the deep meaning of dreaming? The deep meaning is that reality as such is so harsh, you cannot tolerate it. Reality as such, naked, is too much, you are not ready to bear it. The dream fills the gap; it gives you a reality you can tolerate. Reality is given to you by the mind in such a way that you can adjust to it.The more you grow, the less dreaming there will be, because there will be no problem of being adjusted. The more you grow, the less dreams. If you grow perfectly in awareness dreaming stops because, perfectly aware, you don’t want to change reality. You simply become one with it. You don’t fight with it because, perfectly aware, you come to realize that the real cannot be changed. All that can be changed is your attitude, your mind – the real will remain the same.You cannot change reality, you can change only this false process of mind. Ordinarily we are trying to change reality so that reality adjusts to us. A religious person is one who has dropped out of that foolish effort. Now he is not trying to change reality to fit him because that is nonsense. The whole cannot fit to the part, and the whole cannot in any way follow the part; the part has to follow the whole.My hand has to follow my organic body, my whole body; my body cannot follow the hand, it is impossible. The part is minute, atomic. Who are you before this vast reality? How are you going to adjust this reality to you?This is the ego which says, “Go on making effort – some day or other reality will have to adjust to you.” Then you become burdened with anxiety, because this is not going to happen. This cannot happen in the very nature of things: a drop trying to change the ocean, a drop trying to influence the ocean according to his ideas?What is your mind? Not even a drop in this vast ocean! And what are you trying? – you are trying to make reality follow you. Truth should become a shadow to you. This is the foolishness of all worldly men, all those who think they are materialists.Then what is a religious man, what is a religious mind? A religious man is one who comes to understand that this is absolutely impossible, you are knocking against an impossible wall. The door is not possible there – you will only be hurt, you will only be in anguish, you will only feel frustrated, you will only become a failure. Nothing else is possible. That happens to every ego in the end. Wounded, hurt, frustrated, worried – this happens to every ego in the end. Ego suffers, ego is always crucified – crucified because of its own foolishness.When understanding dawns, when you can look and see the fact that you are just a part, an infinitely small part of an infinitely vast universe, you simply don’t try to be foolish. You stop fooling around. Rather, on the contrary, you start a new journey: you try to adjust yourself to reality. When you start trying to adjust yourself to reality, by and by dreaming stops – because this is possible, this is the only possibility that can happen, and it happens. When it happens, dreaming stops.When you are trying to change reality according to you, you will become a thinker, because you will have to devise means and ways, artifices, to force reality to adjust to you. You may become a great scientist, you may become a great mathematician, a great philosopher, but you will be in anxiety and anguish.You will not become a dancing Meera or a silent Buddha or an ecstatic Sosan, no, because their whole approach is diametrically opposite. They adjust to the universe, they become one with it, they flow with it, they become just shadows in it. They don’t fight, they don’t have any conflict or argument with existence. They simply say yes to all that is. They are not no-sayers, they are yea-sayers.That is the meaning of being religious: be a yea-sayer. It is not a question of whether you believe in God or not. Buddha never believed in any God, but he is a religious man because he is a yea-sayer. It doesn’t matter to whom you say the yes: you say the yes – that changes the whole thing.Whether you say it to a god with four heads or four hundred heads, with two hands or one thousand hands, whether you say it to a Hindu, Christian or Mohammedan god, or whether you say it to nature or to fate, destiny, it makes no difference. To whom you address it is not the point. If you say yes, a total yes on your part, you become religious.If you say no, that means you will continue the struggle. You will fight the current, you will move against the river. You think that you are wiser than the Tao, you think you are greater than existence. Then of course, naturally, obviously, you will be frustrated because that is not the case.The moment you say yes, your life starts flowering in a new dimension. The dimension of the yes is the dimension of religion. The dimension of the no is the dimension of politics, science and everything else.A mystic is one who flows with the river, he does not push it. He does not even swim in it, because swimming also is a fight – he simply floats. He has no goals to reach, because how can you determine a goal? Who are you? How can you fix a goal?When you let go into the river, the river moves; you move with it. The goal of the river is your goal. You don’t even bother where it is – wherever it is. You have learned a great secret of saying yes. In fact, now wherever you are, you are at the goal because yes is the goal. It is not a question of where you reach; wherever you are, you say yes and it is the goal.And if you are addicted to the no, wherever you are it will be a journey, it will never be a goal. Wherever you reach, your no will reach with you. Even if you enter heaven, the no will reach with you. Where will you leave it?If you meet the ultimate force as you are right now, you will say no, because you are trained in it. How can you suddenly say yes? Even if you encounter God you will say no. You will find many faults, because for the no-saying mind, nothing can be perfect – nothing can be perfect. And for the yea-saying mind, nothing is imperfect. Even imperfection has its own perfection for a yes-saying mind.It will look contradictory: he will say, “How beautifully imperfect! How perfectly imperfect!” Even in chaos there is cosmos for him. And even in matter, the yes penetrates deeply and finds the divine. Then every rock is full of the divine, it is everywhere.One who can say yes will find him everywhere; and one who can only say no will not find him anywhere. It depends on you, it doesn’t depend on him.One understanding which brings transformation is: don’t fight with the whole. The whole effort is absurd. And the whole will not suffer because of it, because the whole is not fighting with you. Even if it seems to you that the whole is fighting you and trying to crush you and be victorious, you are wrong. If you fight against it, your own fight is reflected. The whole is not fighting with you, he has not even thought about you to fight with. It is your own mind reflected, and the whole resounds. Whatsoever you do is reflected, it is a mirror.If you go in a fighting mood, you will see that the whole around you is trying to crush you. Try to swim upstream: the whole river seems to be forcing you downward, as if the whole river exists there just to defeat you. But is the river there just to defeat you? The river may not know anything about you. And when you were not there, then too it was flowing the same way. And when you will not be there, it will continue flowing the same way. It is not flowing that way because of you. And if you feel it is against you, it is because of you – you are trying to go upstream.Once it happened…Mulla Nasruddin’s wife fell into a flooded river. The neighbors came running to him and they said, “Your wife has fallen in the river, and the river is in flood and flowing fast. Come soon!”Nasruddin ran to the river, jumped into the river – started swimming upstream. The people who were surrounding and standing there and watching, they said, “What are you doing, Nasruddin?”Nasruddin said, “I know my wife very well – she always tries to go upstream. She cannot go downward, that’s impossible. You may know the river, I know my wife. So don’t try to…”There are people who always go upstream, everywhere they are. And because of their own effort they feel the river is crushing them, fighting, trying to defeat and be victorious.The whole is not against you, cannot be – the whole is your mother. You come from the whole, you will dissolve in the whole. How can the whole be against you? It simply loves you. Whether you go upstream or downstream, it makes no difference to the whole – but the whole cannot flow upstream, just because of love.And remember, if it flows upstream you will start going against it because that is not the point. Your no-saying mind – because the ego gathers strength through no. The more you say no, the more ego feels powerful; the more you say yes, the more ego drops. That’s why it is very difficult to say yes to anything, even ordinary things.The child wants to play outside and he asks his father, “Can I go and play outside?” “No!” What is the point of it? Why does no come easy? Why is yes difficult? – because when you fight you feel you are. Otherwise, everything fits so beautifully, you cannot feel you are.If you say yes, you are not there. When a real yes is said, you are absent. How can you feel? You can feel only against, and then you feel powerful. No gives you power. And how can no give you power? Because, saying no, you are cut from the source of all power: it is a false feeling, it is a disease, it is illness. Say yes, and a transformation starts happening.Ordinarily you say no unless you have to say yes. Whenever you say yes, you don’t feel very good – as if defeated, as if helpless. Whenever you say no, you feel good: you are victorious, you have put someone again in his place, you have said no, you are more powerful. No is violent, no is aggressive. Yes is prayerful, yes is prayerfulness.No need to go to the church and the mosque and the temple – life is a big enough temple. You simply start saying yes, and everywhere you will feel prayerful because everywhere the ego will be absent. And when the ego is not there, the whole suddenly flows in you. You are not closed, you are open. Then a new breeze from the whole comes, a new surge of energy enters you. Then you are renewed moment to moment.So the first thing: the mind substitutes by thinking and dreaming, but it can never become the real. It remains an imitation. It may look like the real but it is not – it cannot be. How can a symbol, a linguistic symbol, be the real?You are hungry and I go on talking about bread. You are thirsty and I go on talking about water – not only talking, but I give you the best scientific formula for it. Or I give you the clear-cut definition, or I tell you, “Don’t worry, water means H20. Just go on repeating ‘H20, H20.’ Make it a mantra, a transcendental meditation, a TM: ‘H20, H20, H20,’ and everything will happen to you. The thirst will be gone because this is the formula.”H20 may be the formula, but your thirst won’t listen to it. This is what is happening all over the world. Go on repeating, “Aum, aum, aum.” Aum is also a formula, just like H20, because Hindus discovered that three sounds – A, U, M – are the root sounds, so aum comprehends all sounds possible. So what is the need of any other mantra? You simply repeat aum, aum, and the whole range of sounds is repeated, the root. So if you have the root, go on repeating it; soon flowers will follow.Neither H20 nor aum nor anything like that will be of much help, because who will repeat it? – the mind will repeat it. And reality is there surrounding you; there is no need to repeat it, no need even to think about it. Just look, just open your eyes and see: it is everywhere! It is a miracle how you have missed it. When you attain it, it is not a miracle.Remember, I never say that Buddha is a miracle or Sosan is a miracle – you are the miracle! – because whatsoever they have attained is such a simple thing it should be attained by everyone. What is there mysterious to talk about? A buddha has seen reality, and reality is just in front of you. Why call the attainment such a big phenomenon, such a great happening? Nothing! It is simple!The reality is as much before you as before a buddha or before a buffalo. The miracle is you – how you have missed it, and how you go on missing it. Really, you must have devised such a technique, and so perfect, that for lives together you go on missing. And reality cannot do anything; it is just in front of you and you go on missing. What is the trick? How do you attain it? How do you do this magic?The magic is “about”. This word about is the magic. A flower is there, you start thinking about the flower – the flower is no longer there, the mind is diverted by the words. Then a film comes around you, between you and the flower. Then everything is murky and muddled, then the word becomes more important than the real, then the symbol becomes more important than that which is symbolized.What is Allah? – a word. What is brahman? – a word. What is God? – a word. And Hindus and Christians and Mohammedans go on fighting about the word, and nobody bothers that all three words symbolize the same. The symbol becomes more important.If you say something against Allah, then the Mohammedan will immediately be ready to fight and kill you or be killed. But the Hindu will go on laughing because it is being said against Allah, it is good. But say the same thing against brahman, then he brings his sword out, now it cannot be tolerated. What foolishness! Because Allah, or Brahma, or God… There are three thousand languages, so there are three thousand words for God.The symbolized is less important than the symbol. The rose is not important, the word rose is. And man has become so word-addicted, so intoxicated with the word, that the word can create reactions. Somebody says “lemon,” and your mouth starts watering. This is word-addiction. Even the lemon may not be so effective: a lemon may be lying on the table and your mouth may not water. But somebody says “lemon,” and the mouth starts watering. The word has become more important than the real – this is the trick – and unless you drop this word-addiction you will never be able to encounter reality. There is no other barrier.Be absolutely without language and suddenly it is there – it has always been there. Suddenly your eyes are clear; you attain to clarity and everything becomes illuminated. The whole effort of all meditations is just how to drop out of language. Dropping out of society won’t help, because basically society is nothing but language.That’s why animal societies are not in existence, because there is no language. Just think: if you couldn’t speak, if you had no language, how would society exist? Impossible! Who would be your wife? Who would be your husband? Who would be your mother and who would be your father?No boundaries are possible without language. That’s why with animals no society exists. And if a society exists, for example with ants and bees, then you can suspect that language must be there. And now scientists have worked it out that bees have language – a very small language of four words, but they have one. Ants must have a language because their society is so organized, it cannot exist without language.Society exists because of language. The moment you drop out of language, the society disappears. No need to go to the Himalayas, because if you carry your language you may be alone outwardly, but inwardly the society will be there. You will be talking with friends, making love to your wife or others’ wives, selling, purchasing. You will continue whatsoever you were doing here.There is only one Himalaya, and that is a state of inner consciousness where language does not exist. And this is possible – because language is a training, it is not your nature. You were born without language. Language has been given to you, you have not brought it by nature. It is not natural, it is a social by-product.Be happy because there lies the possibility of getting out of it. If you had brought it from the very birth, then there would be no way of getting out of it. But then there would be no need, because then it would be a part of Tao. It is not a part of Tao, it is man-created. It is utilitarian, it has a purpose; society cannot exist without language.The individual need not be a part of society twenty-four hours a day. If even for a few minutes, if you become no part of the society, suddenly you merge with the whole and become part of Tao. And you should be flexible. When you need to move in society you should use language; when you need not move into society you should drop language. Language should be used as a function, as a mechanism. You should not be obsessed with it, that’s the whole point.Even Sosan uses language. I am using language because I want to convey something to you. But when you are not there, then simply I am not in language. When I have to speak I use language; when you are not there I am without language, then inside no words are moving. When I communicate I become a part of society. When I am not communicating I become a part of Tao, part of the universe, part of nature, or God – whatsoever name you want to give it, you can give.With existence, silence is communication; with man, language is communication. If you want to communicate with existence, be silent; if you want to communicate with man, talk, don’t be silent.If you sit silently with some friend you will feel awkward, and the friend will also feel awkward. He will think something has gone wrong, he will ask, “What is the matter? Why are you not speaking? Are you sad or something, depressed or something? Has something gone wrong?” If a husband sits silently, the wife suddenly starts creating trouble: “Why are you silent? Why are you not talking to me?” If the wife goes suddenly silent there is trouble.Why is there this need to talk with somebody? – because if you don’t talk it means you are alone, you don’t accept that somebody is there. When you don’t talk the other cannot exist for you, you are alone. The other becomes aware that you are indifferent toward him or her. So people go on talking. When they don’t want to talk, nothing to communicate, nothing to say, they talk about the weather, or about something, anything will do, but talk, because without talking the other may feel hurt. And this is impolite, to be silent with someone. But with existence just the opposite is the case: with nature, if you talk you will miss.Talking with nature means you are indifferent to that reality which is in front of you. Only silence is needed there. You bring silence into the world when you are born. Language is given; it is a gift, a training of society. It is useful, a device, an artifice; but silence you bring into the world with you. Attain to that silence again, that’s all: be a child again. The whole thing comes to this, you can conclude – all the buddhas come to this conclusion – that you have to become a part of nature again.That doesn’t necessarily mean going against society; it only means going beyond society, not against. When you were born… The first moment of your birth must become your last moment of life. Your death must be like birth again, you must be a child again, reborn.Jesus says, “Unless you are reborn you cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Be like small children.” What does he mean? – he means just be natural. All that society gives you is good, but don’t be confined in it otherwise it will become a bondage. Be again the infinite. Society cannot be infinite; it has to be a narrow tunnel, it has to be, by its nature.And the second thing to remember before we enter this sutra: if you are silent then you are not, because only disturbance is felt. Have you ever felt silence? Who will feel it? – because if you feel, then a little disturbance is there.It happened…One of the disciples of Bodhidharma came to him, and Bodhidharma had told him, “Become completely empty and silent, only then come to me.”The disciple worked for years: then he became empty, silent. Then he came to Bodhidharma and said, “Now, master, I have come, and you had told me, ‘Be silent and empty.’ Now I have become silent and empty.”Bodhidharma said to him, “Go out and throw out this emptiness and silence also.”Because if you can feel it, then it is not total, a division exists. The one who feels is not yet silent. Silence may be in the milieu, around, but the feeler is still not silent, otherwise who will feel?When you are really silent you are not even silent, because silence is just the opposite of noise. When there is no noise, how can silence be there? When noise disappears the opposite also disappears. Then you cannot even say, “I am silent.” Say, and you miss. That’s why the Upanishads say: One who says, “I have known,” has not known. Socrates says that when one becomes wise, he knows only ignorance and nothing else.When you become silent you don’t know what is what. Everything merges into everything else, because you are not there. You are just part of noise; the I is the noisiest thing in the world. No jet plane can create so much noise as the I creates! It is the greatest disturber in this world, and everything else is just a by-product of it. The I creates the most noisy phenomena.When you are silent you are not. Who will feel? When you are empty, you cannot feel “I am empty”; otherwise you are still there to feel and the house is filled, it is not empty. When you are really empty, you are empty of yourself. When the noise ceases, you also cease. Then reality is in front of you, it is all around. It is inside, outside, it is everywhere, because only reality can be.With the I, all dreams disappear, because with the I all desires disappear. If there is no desire, how can there be an incomplete desire which has to be completed by a dream? Only emptiness can be perfect. This is the meaning of Sosan.Now try to enter the sutra:Emptiness here, emptiness there,but the infinite universe standsalways before your eyes.Infinitely large and infinitely small;no difference, for definitions have vanishedand no boundaries are seen.So too with being and non-being.Don’t waste time in doubts and argumentsthat have nothing to do with this.Emptiness here… means emptiness within; …emptiness there… means emptiness without. And can there be two emptinesses? That is impossible. Two emptinesses are not possible, because how will you demark them from each other? Two emptinesses by their very nature will become one. The inside and the outside is a division of mind; when mind disappears, this division disappears.Emptiness here, emptiness there… Really, to say here and there is also not good, not exactly right. But that is a problem; in words nothing can be put exactly right, they distort. Sosan knows, because now there can be no here and no there. They are old demarcations. Within and without are old demarcations, now and then are old demarcations, and without language they disappear.It happened…A man came to Bokuju and said to him, “I am in a hurry and I will not be able to stay long with you. Just passing by on the road I thought it would be good to come and listen to just a word. I don’t need much. Simply say one word to indicate truth and I will carry it in my heart.”Bokuju said, “Don’t force me, because even one word is enough for the truth to disappear. And whether you are in a hurry or not, I cannot say anything. Only carry this: you asked Bokuju and he said, ‘I cannot say anything.’ Only remember this.”The man said, “This is not very much and it won’t help me. Say a little, just a word – I don’t ask much.”Bokuju said, “Even a word is enough to destroy the whole. Just look at me and carry me within you.”But the man could not look because it is difficult – you don’t know how to look – otherwise there was no need to go to Bokuju.You cannot look in front. The tip of your nose is the most difficult thing to look at. Sideways it is okay; you go left and you go right, but never in the middle. So there are leftist madmen and rightist madmen, but you cannot find a middleman who is not mad. Move to any extreme and you go mad, remain in the middle and you become enlightened – but nobody remains in the middle. In the middle you encounter reality.Words are bound to say half, a word cannot say the full thing. If you say “God is,” then you deny “God is not” – and he is both. If you say “Life is,” you deny death – and life is death also. If you say anything it is going to be half, and a half-truth is more dangerous than a total lie – because of that halfness it carries a fragrance of truth and you can be deceived by it.All sects are based on half-truths; that’s why they are dangerous. All cults are dangerous because they are based on half-truths. And otherwise is not possible, because a cult, a creed, a sect, is necessarily based on words. Buddhism is not based on Buddha, it is based on what Buddha said. And what Buddha said is half, because the whole cannot be said. Nothing can be done about it.Or you try to say the whole, then nothing is said. If you say, “Life is both life and death,” what are you saying? If you say, “God is both Devil and God,” what are you saying? You are talking paradoxes, you are not clear-cut, and people will think you have gone mad. How can God be both good and bad? And how can life be both death and life? Death must be opposite to life.Emptiness here, emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes. Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference… Because if something is infinitely large and something is infinitely small, there cannot be any difference because of the question of infiniteness. If you go down, dividing, analyzing, you will reach to the infinitely small. Science has reached to the infinitely small, the electron. Now everything has disappeared, nothing can be seen. The electron has not been seen, nobody can see it. Then why do they say the electron is?Physics has become almost metaphysics, and physical statements, statements of the physicists, look almost philosophical, mystical, because they say, “We cannot see the electron, we can only observe the consequences. We can see the effects but not the cause. We infer that the electron must be there, because how, if the electron is not there, can these effects be there?”This is what mystics have always been saying. They say, “We cannot see God but we can see this creation. And God is the cause and this creation is the effect. We cannot see God but we see the creation – he must be there, otherwise how is this creation possible?”If you listen to my voice and you cannot see me, you will have to infer that I must be somewhere, otherwise how can you listen to my voice? The effect is seen but the cause is not seen. Science has reached to the infinitely small, and the small has disappeared completely – because it has become so small, so small, so small, so subtle, that now you cannot catch it.Religion reaches to the infinitely great. It becomes so great, so great, so vast, that you cannot see its boundaries. It becomes so vast you cannot catch it, you cannot cling to it, you cannot demark it. The infinitely small cannot be seen, it becomes invisible; and the infinitely great also cannot be seen, it becomes invisible.Then Sosan says a beautiful thing: they are both the same because they both are infinite. And the infinite, whether small or great makes no difference, they are the same. Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen. So too with being and non-being.When you are totally empty, with no ego, with nobody inside the house, are you a being or a non-being? Are you or are you not? Nothing can be said.People used to ask Buddha again and again, “What happens when one becomes a buddha? Is he, or is he not? Does the soul exist or not? What will happen when Buddha leaves the body? Where will he be? Will he be somewhere or not?”And Buddha says, “These questions, you don’t ask. You simply become a buddha and see, because whatsoever I say will be wrong.” And he always avoided the temptation of answering such questions. Don’t waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this.Reality does not depend on your arguments. Whether you prove this way or that is irrelevant – the reality is there. It has been there before you, it will be there after you. It does not depend on your mind; on the contrary, your mind depends on it. It does not need any proof or disproof. It exists on its own. You cannot prove it, you cannot disprove it.But people go on arguing whether God exists or not. Thousands of books are published every year on whether God exists or not. All foolish! Those who say yes and prove, and those who say no and prove, are both in the same boat – the boat of proof, argument, logic.And if there is a God, he must be laughing. Does he need your argument? What are you saying? You are saying that if he is there, then his being depends on whether you prove him or not. Whatsoever you do – prove or disprove – do you think that his being depends on your arguments?Existence is there without anybody’s argument. No witness is being called, and there is no court which is going to decide. How can you judge? And who is the judge? And arguments have been going on continuously; for millions of years people have argued this way and that. There are atheists who go on and nobody can convince them; there are theists and they go on and nobody can unconvince them. Theists and atheists both argue and no argument proves to be the final thing, the problem remains the same.Sosan says all arguments are irrelevant: theist, atheist both; for, against both. You are doing a foolish thing, because reality is there, it does not need any proof. It is already there, it has always been there, it will be always there.The truth means “that which is.” Arguing, you simply waste your energy and time. Rather, enjoy it. Rather, merge in it. Rather, delight in it. Rather, live it! And if you live, you start carrying the flavor of reality around you. If you live it and delight in it, something of the vast, something of the infinite, starts being expressed by your finite existence. By and by your boundaries also dissolve, by and by you are lost. The drop drops into the ocean and becomes the ocean.Don’t waste time in arguing. Philosophers are fools, and more dangerous fools than ordinary fools, because ordinary fools are simply fools and philosophers think they are wise. And they go on! I look at a Hegel or a Kant – their whole life they go on arguing and they never reach anywhere.It happened…A girl proposed to Immanuel Kant, she wanted to marry him. He said, “Yes, I will think about it.”A thinker, a great thinker and a great logician, how can he take a step? Even if it is love he has to think about it first. And it is said he thought and thought and thought. Then he gathered all the arguments for and against – because there are people who are against love, there are people who are for love, there are people who are against marriage, people who are for marriage, and they have argued. So he accumulated all the data about marriage, love, for, against. It is said that he accumulated three hundred arguments for and against marriage. He got very much confused. What to do? How to decide?Then he tried and tried, and then he could find one argument more in favor of marriage. And the argument was this: that if there is a possibility, two alternatives which look equal, then always choose that alternative which will give you more experience. Marriage or no marriage: – if all arguments are equal, – then no marriage he already knew, because he was a bachelor. Then it was better to go into the marriage, because at least it was something new. When all the arguments are equal, then how to decide? So move and know about marriage by experience.So he went and knocked at the door of the girl. The father opened the door and Immanuel Kant said, “I have decided. Where is your daughter?”The father said, “It is too late – she is a mother of three children.”…because twenty years had passed, and women are not so foolish as to wait so long. They are always wiser, instinctively wiser. That’s why women have not made great philosophers. They are not so foolish, they are more instinctive, more intuitive, nearer nature, more interested in living rather than in arguing.That’s why to men, women always appear concerned with small things, not with great problems, very small things: dress, ornaments. But see: they are concerned with small things because life consists of small things. Great problems are only in the mind, not in life. Whether you decide God exists or not makes no difference. You have to eat twice a day, you have to cover up when it is too cold and you have to move into the shade when it is too hot – whether you decide God exists or not makes no difference. Life consists of small things. And if life consists of small things then small things are not small – because life consists of them, they are vital.Don’t waste time in doubts and argumentsthat have nothing to do with this.One thing, all things:move among and intermingle,without distinction.To live in this realizationis to be without anxiety about non-perfection.To live in this faith is the road to non-duality.Because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.Very, very significant words, and more significant if you can look beyond the words.One thing, all things:move among and intermingle…Life is an organic unity. Nothing is divided, everything is one. If you think it is divided, divisions are mind enforced. Otherwise everything intermingles, melts, merges into the other. It is happening all the time. You don’t see it because you have become completely blind with words.You eat a fruit; the fruit becomes your blood. The tree has mingled in you, the boundary is lost. And this fruit may have remained in many people’s blood before, many animals, many plants, many rocks. This energy that is the fruit has been there always in existence – melting, merging, emerging, moving from this to that, passing all boundaries.Just watch any phenomenon. The fruit on the tree, what is it doing? Scientists say that the fruit is doing a miracle. It is transforming the earth, it is transforming the sunrays, it is transforming water. It is a miracle, because you cannot eat earth, you cannot eat sunrays directly. This fruit, an apple, is doing a miracle. It is transforming everything and making it so that you can absorb it and it becomes your blood.And this energy has been moving because it has always been there. The whole of the energy remains the same, because there is nowhere else to go, so the energy cannot be less or more. Nothing is added to the universe, and nothing can be deleted. Where will you take it away? The whole remains the same.Some day the fruit was just in the earth, you could not have eaten it. The fruit was in the sun, the vitamin D was in the sun. Now the fruit has absorbed it, now the earth has transformed – a miracle is happening! Why go to a magician to see a miracle? It is happening: the dirt has changed into delicious food.And you eat it, it becomes your blood. Your blood is churning continuously, it creates semen. Now a seed is born, it becomes a small child. Now the fruit, the apple, has moved to the child. Where are the boundaries? The tree moves in you, the sun moves in the tree, the ocean moves into the tree, you move in the child and this goes on.Everything is moving. The breath that is within you will be in me a little later. And the breath is life, so your life and my life cannot be different, because the same breath you breathe, I breathe. I exhale, you inhale it; you exhale, I inhale it.Your heart and my heart cannot be very different. They are breathing and beating with the same ocean of vitality that is around. I call this my breath, but by the time I have called it, it is no longer mine – it has moved, it has changed the house, now it is somebody else’s breath. What you call your life is not yours. It is nobody’s, or it is everybody’s.When somebody looks at reality, then he sees that the whole is an organic unity. The sun is working for you, the ocean is working for you, the stars are working for you. The people milling around the world are working for you and you are working for them. You will die and worms will eat your body, you will become their food.You are getting ready, ripe, to die, to become food for somebody else. And this has to be so – because you have made so many things your food, finally you have to become their food. Everything is food for somebody else. It is a chain, and you want to cling to life. And the apple, it also wants to cling to the life; and the wheat, wheat also wants to remain itself. Then life will cease.Life lives through death. You die here, somebody becomes alive there; I exhale, somebody inhales. Just like a rhythmic exhalation, inhalation is life and death. Life is inhalation, death is exhalation.When you are ripe you will fall down on the earth. Then the worms will eat you and the birds of prey will come and they will enjoy you. You enjoyed many foods, now you will be enjoyed in turn. Everything melts, meets, merges. So why be worried? This is going to happen, this is already happening. Only the whole lives; individuals are false. Only the ultimate lives; all else is just waves in it, they come and they go.When one sees reality just in front of the nose, suddenly there is no problem, no anxiety, because the whole goes on living whether you live or not. Your death is not a problem then, your life is also not a problem then. You will live in the whole in many, many millions of ways.Sometimes you will be a fruit, that is the meaning of the Hindu concept of millions of yonis. Sometimes you were an animal and sometimes you were an insect and sometimes you were a tree and sometimes you were a rock – and life goes on.So you are nobody, in a sense, and you are everybody in another sense. You are empty in one sense and you are full in another sense. You are not in one sense, and you are the all in another sense – because you are not separate.Separation brings anxiety. If you are anxious, in anguish, that means you are thinking you are separate – you are unnecessarily creating problems for yourself. There is no need, because the whole goes on living; the whole never dies, it cannot die. Only parts die, but that death is not really a death, it is a rebirth. Here you die, there you are born.One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. Then why be worried about perfection? That too is an egoistic goal. This is to be understood very deeply, because even religious people try to be perfect. But who are you to be perfect? Only the whole can be perfect, you can never be perfect. How can you be perfect? Even a Buddha has to fall ill, he has to die. You cannot be perfect! The very goal of perfection is an ego trip. The whole is already perfect, you need not be worried about it – and in the whole you are also perfect.Two words have to be understood: one is perfection, another is wholeness. A real religious person is concerned with wholeness, never with perfection, and a pseudo religious person is concerned with perfection, never with wholeness.Wholeness means, “I am not, the whole is.” And it is perfect, because how can it be otherwise? There is no comparison, there is nobody else. But if you are thinking in terms of perfection, morality, ideals, character, you have to be perfect; then you will go mad.All perfectionists go mad. That is their ultimate, final end because as a separate unit you will remain imperfect, you cannot be perfect. How can you be perfect? – because your energy comes from the whole, it goes to the whole; you are not. A wave has to remain a wave, it cannot become the ocean. And if it tries too hard, it will go mad.That’s why in the world of religion you see the most egoistic people possible, because they are trying to be perfect about everything. They insist on perfection. They cannot be relaxed, they will always be tense. And always something will be wrong and they have to put it right – and they will always remain in anxiety. Go to the madhouses, and there you will find ninety percent perfectionists.A man of understanding remains relaxed. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care. No, he cares but he knows the limitations. He cares, but he knows that he is just a part. He never thinks himself to be the whole, so he is never worried.He enjoys whatsoever he is doing, knowing well that it is going to remain imperfect, it cannot be perfect. But he enjoys doing it, and by enjoying it, whatsoever perfection is possible happens without creating any worry in him. He loves it, knowing well that it is not going to be the absolute thing. It cannot be; something will remain incomplete, it is the nature of things.That’s why in the East we have always believed – and believed in a very true thing – that whenever somebody becomes perfect he is not born again, he disappears from this world. He has to, because in this world only imperfection is possible. He no longer fits here, he is not needed, he dissolves into the whole.Even a Buddha to the very last moment of his life remains imperfect, but not worried about it. That’s why Buddhists have two terms for nirvana. The ultimate enlightenment they call mahaparinirvana, and enlightenment they call nirvana. Nirvana means a Buddha is in the body. He has attained to illumination, he has become a knower, but he is still in the body, the body of imperfection. He is still in the world of imperfect parts. This is nirvana, enlightenment.Then when he leaves the body, when he simply disappears into the ultimate emptiness, it is mahaparinirvana, it is the great enlightenment. Now imperfection disappears, now there is no individuality, now he is whole. Only the whole can be perfect. Now Buddha can be perfect, because now he has dissolved into the whole, he is oceanic.So remember this well, because all perfectionism is an egoistic effort, you go mad after everything. Try to do it as well as you can, but don’t be crazy about it; do as well as you can and accept the limitation. The limitation is going to be there, even about your character, morality, everything!Even a saint has to give a little space for the sinner, because where will the sinner go? So it is possible, ninety-nine percent a saint, but one percent of the sinner will be there. And the reverse happens: you can become a ninety-nine percent sinner but one percent of the saint will be there. It has to be so, because where will you leave the other? You can force it to the very extreme, but the one percent of the other will remain there. And if you go mad about it, it is not going to help.A man of understanding accepts limitations. He accepts the possibilities, that which is possible. He knows the impossible, he never tries for the impossible. He relaxes and enjoys the possible. And the more he enjoys, the more perfection comes to his life. But it is no longer a worry, it is graceful – and this is the difference.If you come to a really religious man you will feel a grace around him, effortless. He has not done anything to himself, he has simply relaxed into the ultimate, and you feel the effortlessness around him.If you come to a person who is a perfectionist, a pseudo religious man, then everything you see will be man-made, there will be no grace. Everything clear-cut, every movement calculated, cunning. Everything he is doing is a discipline, not a spontaneity. He lives in a code; his own code becomes his imprisonment. He cannot laugh, he cannot be a child, he cannot be a flower. Whatsoever he is, he has put so much effort into it that everything has become tense and gone wrong. It is not a spontaneous flow.And this should be the criterion – if you move toward a master this should be the criterion – that he is a spontaneous flow. Only then can he help you to become a spontaneous flow on your own part. If he is an enforced perfectionist he will cripple you, he will kill you completely. He will cut you in many ways, and by the time he thinks you are perfect, you are dead.Only a dead thing can be perfect. A living thing is bound to remain imperfect, remember this.To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. One simply lives! One lives totally, one lives wholly, and doesn’t bother about the consequence, what happens. To live in this faith… And this is faith for Sosan, and this is faith for me also. This is trust.A perfectionist never trusts because he is always looking for the faults. He never trusts anything. Even if you present him a rose he will immediately find the imperfections. He will not look at the rose, he will look at the imperfections. His eye is that of logic, not of love. He is always doubtful; he cannot trust anybody, because he cannot trust himself.You go to your so-called saints – they cannot trust themselves. They are afraid because whatsoever they have enforced is enforced, it is not natural, and they know if they relax then things will go wrong. If a beautiful woman comes to a saint, you can see that he has become fidgety, uneasy. It may not be on the surface, but if you watch deeply you can feel it, because he has enforced brahmacharya, celibacy, and that woman is a danger. He cannot allow this woman to be there for long, because then his own distrust about himself will come up.A man who has not trusted his own life-energy cannot trust anybody. He is an enemy of man, a poisoner. And poisoners are very articulate – they have to be, because they have to be argumentative and defend themselves, and they have to depend on their own mind.And these poisoners have done such a deep harm, such a wound to the whole humanity, that it is impossible to think how humanity can come out of it. They have poisoned everything: “This is bad, that is bad, this is sin, that is guilt.” And they have created such a mess around you that whatsoever you do you will feel guilty. If you don’t do, you will feel guilty because of nature.If you love you have fallen; if you don’t love you go on feeling a deep urge to love. It comes from nature, nothing is wrong in it. It is as natural as hunger and thirst, and as beautiful as hunger and thirst. But your saints would like you to be just plastic men – no hunger, no thirst, no love – then you are perfect.If your whole mechanism is made of plastic then it will be easy. And scientists are thinking on those lines, to make the whole mechanism plastic. Then you don’t need any food, you don’t need any love, you don’t need anything. You become a machine, you are a robot. Sometimes, when something goes wrong, you can be sent to the workshop. And every day you can go to the filling station, and they can put some petrol in you and everything is okay. Then you will be a perfectionist, then you will be perfect.But as life is, life is delicate; it is not plastic, it is very delicate. You don’t have wires, you have nerves. And the balance is always moving. Nothing is certain, and everything goes on melting and merging into the other. That’s why you are alive.A man of understanding is not bothered, he is not anxious about non-perfection. He doesn’t think in terms of perfection at all; he only lives the moment as wholly as possible, as totally as possible. And the more he lives totally, the more he becomes capable to live it.A day comes: he simply lives without forcing any ideals, without thinking any concepts, without making any rules and regulations about his life. He simply lives and enjoys and delights.To live in this faith is the road to non-duality… And this is faith… Because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind. And deep inside, if you have a trusting mind, the non-dual will be in front of you. Deep down if you have doubts, then theories, thinking, words, philosophies, doctrines will be there, and in front you will be completely blind. You will not be able to see the close, you will be able to only think of the distant. Inside trust, outside reality. Inside trust, outside truth. Trust and truth meet – and there is no other meeting.Because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.Words!The way is beyond language,for in it there isno yesterday,no tomorrow,no today.The last thing: Sosan is saying that language is possible if time is; language is the same gestalt as time. That’s why language has three tenses: past, present, future – just like time: past, present, future. Language is time, is divided into the same categories as time. And life is beyond. Life is not past. Where is past? You cannot find it anywhere.I have heard that once it happened…A man had come to look in a great museum. The man was very rich, so the best guide was given to him. The man looked at one head and he asked, “Who is this?”The guide really didn’t know, so he said, “It is the head of Napoleon.”Then a small head, and again the man asked. And the guide was so excited with this rich man, and so afraid, that he got messed up inside and he said, “This is also Napoleon’s head.”So the rich man said, “What do you mean? Two heads?”Then the guide was in difficulty, and some answer had to be given. So he said, “Yes, this is his childhood head and that is his old-age head.”If the past exists, then a childhood head will be there, then many heads will be there; when you die you will leave millions of heads behind. But you leave only one head, not millions of heads. The past disappears; the past is nowhere, just in the memory. Where is the future? The future is nowhere, just in imagination. The past is that which is not now and the future is that which is not yet. That’s why mystics have always said: Only the present is. But Sosan goes a step ahead and he says: …no yesterday no tomorrow no today.Not even the present is. What does he mean? – because he is right, absolutely right. If there is no past and no future, then how can the present exist? Because the present exists only between the past and future.What is the present? – a passage. From the past you move to the future; in that movement, just for a single moment, is the present. What is the present? It is just a passage from the past to the future, it is a door from this room to that. But if neither this room exists, nor that, then how can the door exist? It is a bridge between past and future. And if both the banks are not, how can the bridge exist?Sosan is right. Sosan says: neither past, nor future, nor present. He is saying there is no time. And the whole language depends on time, past, future, present. Language is a creation of the mind, time is also a creation of the mind.When you drop language, time disappears. When you drop thinking, there is no past, no present, no future. You go beyond time, there is no time. When there is no time, there is eternity. When there is no time, you have moved into the world of the eternal.The truth is eternal.And all that you have got are temporal reflections of the truth. It is just like a moon has arisen in the sky, it is a full-moon night, and you look deep into the lake and the moon is there. This moon is all that you have – the moon in the lake.The mind mirrors; all truths that you have are mirrored by mind, they are reflections.What is Sosan saying? Sosan is saying: forget this lake – because this is a mirror. Look beyond, only then will you be able to see the real moon; and it is there.But you are too much identified with the lake, with the mirroring mind. Drop the mind and suddenly everything that you were missing fits, everything that you were seeking happens, everything that you always dreamed and desired is there. Everything is fulfilled.The whole message is how to drop out of the mind, language and time.Enough for today.

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Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When Hyakujo first arrived at Chiang-si to pay his respects to Ma Tzu, Ma Tzu inquired, “From where have you come?”“From the Great Cloud Monastery at Yueh Chou,” answered Hyakujo.“And what do you hope to gain by coming here?” asked Ma Tzu.Hyakujo replied, “I have come seeking the buddha-dharma.”To this Ma Tzu replied, “Instead of looking to the treasure house which is your very own, you have left home and gone wandering far away. What for? I have absolutely nothing here at all. What is this buddha-dharma that you seek?”Whereupon Hyakujo prostrated himself and asked, “Please tell me to what you alluded when you spoke of a treasure house of my very own.”Ma Tzu replied, “That which asked the question is your treasure house. It contains absolutely everything you need and lacks nothing at all. It is there for you to use freely, so why this vain search for something outside yourself?”No sooner were these words spoken than Hyakujo received a great illumination and recognized his own no-mind. Beside himself with joy, he bowed in deep gratitude.Hyakujo spent the next six years in attendance upon Ma Tzu. But as Tao-chih, his first teacher, was growing old, he wanted to return to look after him.Before Hyakujo left Ma Tzu, he went to pay his final tribute to him.Seeing him coming, Ma Tzu raised his horse whisk straight up. Hyakujo asked, “Are you in the use of it, or apart from the use?”Ma Tzu hung the horse whisk on the corner of his chair. After a minute or so, he asked Hyakujo, “Hence forward, how do you open those two leaves of your mouth to work for others?”At this, Hyakujo took the horse whisk and raised it straight up.Ma Tzu said, “Are you in the use of it, or apart from it?”Hyakujo hung the horse whisk on the corner of the chair.Just at that moment, a great roar, like hundreds of thunderbolts falling, rained on Hyakujo’s head. Ma Tzu had given a shout which, it is said, deafened Hyakujo for three days.Maneesha, before I speak on the sutras of Hyakujo, I have to say a few words as a preface.Hyakujo was the direct heir of Ma Tzu and became most well known for his establishment of the first truly Zen monasteries and his treatise on sudden enlightenment.To understand Hyakujo, the first thing is to understand that enlightenment can only be sudden. The preparation can be gradual, but the illumination is going to be sudden. You can prepare the ground for the seeds, but the sprouts will come suddenly one day in the morning; they don’t come gradually. Existence believes in suddenness. Nothing is gradual here, although everything appears to be gradual; that is our illusion.In the past science used to think that everything was gradual: a child gradually becomes young; the young man gradually is becoming older…. Now, we know that is not the case because of Albert Einstein and his discoveries about atomic energy. He himself was puzzled when he saw for the first time that the particles of an atom don’t go from one place to another place the way you go from your house to the market. They simply jump. And their jump is so tremendous that Einstein had to find a new word for it: quanta, the quantum jump. It means that the particle was in one place, A, and then suddenly you see it in another place, B. The path between has never been traveled.A strange jump that you cannot see the particle between the two points. That gave him an idea that in existence everything is jumping, and because the jump is so subtle, you cannot see it.Every moment you are jumping towards old age. It is not a gradual thing. It is happening every moment that you are growing older, and there is no way that you can find to rest in between the jumps. The jumps are so close, but you can prepare – and particularly for enlightenment, which is the ultimate quantum leap. You can meditate; you can go as deep as you can; you can find your center. And the moment you find your center, suddenly, there will be a jump as if out of nowhere the buddha has appeared – a buddha of pure flames.This appearance is not going to be gradual, not partial. Hyakujo’s great contribution was the sudden enlightenment, because it is so illogical. If you go from here to the market, you have to go – not like the monkey god of Hindus, flying in the sky, carrying a mountain, jumping from one mountain to another mountain…You will have to go step by step. You will have to move gradually. You cannot simply disappear from Buddha Auditorium and find yourself in the M.G Road marketplace.In our actual life we never come across anything sudden: you never see the bud of a rose suddenly becoming a flower; it opens gradually. In the morning it was a bud, in the evening it becomes the flower. Because of the continuous experience of gradualness, the major masters of Zen belonged to the gradual school. To them it was absolutely absurd that you can become a buddha instantaneously, just now.Everything needs time. If you want to prepare a house, a garden, a painting, a poem, it will take time. There is only one thing that does not take time, because it is beyond time, that is your buddhahood. You simply jump out of time and you find yourself as you have been always and will be always – your intrinsic nature.Hyakujo introduced another thing: Zen monasteries. Before him there were Zen temples – small groups of people living in those temples, meditating, reading scriptures. But he introduced a new thing, the monastery, where people were absolutely devoted to a single-pointed goal: to become the buddha. No scriptures, no rituals…the whole energy has to be poured into a single direction: to discovering your intrinsic nature. And why monasteries? When there are thousands of people together, going into the unknown, it is easier for you, because you know that although you are going alone into your own space, thousands of others are also going into the same space on their own. You are not absolutely alone. Secondly, a monastery creates a certain atmosphere. That was the greatest contribution of Hyakujo.A monastery is a climate. Its every fiber, every wave…every leaf of the trees is soaked with only one longing: a great urgency to become the buddha. And when ten thousand people, for years, continuously go on working, it creates an energy field. In that energy field you can be caught and you can easily slip out of your mind. Alone, it is a little difficult. Alone it can happen, it has happened too, but that is not the rule.Hyakujo’s great insight of introducing monasteries, simply means introducing an energy field which is not visible to you. When ten thousand sannyasins here enter into their inner being, in a way they are alone, but in a way ten thousand people are with them. The experiment is not being done in their cells alone, but in the open, under the sky, with thousands of other people on the same track, creating vibrations, ripples of energy.Not to become a buddha in such a climate, you would have to struggle against the whole energy field, you would have to swim upstream. But if you want to become a buddha, you simply go with the stream. A deep let-go is possible in that atmosphere. Hyakujo introduced a very scientific concept of monasteries.Born in 724, Hyakujo was also known as Pai Chang. As a young boy Hyakujo was taken to a temple by his mother, and upon entering, she bowed to the Buddhist statue. Pointing to the statue, Hyakujo asked his mother, “What is that?”His mother replied, “That is a buddha.”Hyakujo said, “He looks like a man. I want to become a buddha afterwards.”This small incident of his childhood has great implications. Buddha never wanted to be in any way extraordinary or special for the simple reason that if he was special and extraordinary, that would discourage people to become buddhas because they know they are ordinary, they are not special; they are not incarnations of God, they don’t have divine miraculous powers. They cannot walk on water; they cannot bring a dead Lazarus back to life…Just look at Jesus and Buddha and you will find that Buddha is absolutely ordinary, simple, humble; he can mix with the crowd. Jesus will stand far away…because you cannot walk on water.I have heard, only once, that a bishop had come to the holy land of Israel. He had two friends, two old rabbis, and he asked them to take him to all the holy places which were visited by Jesus. So finally, they went to Lake Galilee where Jesus had walked on water. They took a boat to show him the exact place where he had walked. The bishop said to the rabbis, “Jesus was a Jew, your last prophet and our first founder. Can you also walk on water?”The rabbi said, “Easy.”The bishop could not believe it. He said, “I want to see.”So one rabbi got out from the left side of the boat and walked on water for a few feet and came back. The bishop could not even blink his eyes when he saw the man walking on water. He said, “We used to think that it was only Jesus, but it seems to be a Jewish quality.”The old rabbis said to the bishop, “We don’t follow Jesus and we don’t accept him as our prophet. We have crucified him for the crime of being a fraud, propounding himself to be our last prophet. But you are a follower of Jesus, so just take the name of Jesus and you try walking on the water.”Now it was a great challenge….But the bishop was sitting on the right side, so he got out from the right side and went down into the water and started shouting, “Help! Help!”Those two rabbis took him out, and the older rabbi asked the younger, “Shall we tell this idiot what the secret is?”The secret was that there were stones in the water, just below the water, but they were on the left side, not on the right side. Jesus must have walked on those stones – there is no question about it.I have heard that an American Christian, a very rich man but very miserly, went to Israel. And every visitor is bound to go to Lake Galilee which is the holiest place – where Jesus lived for most of his life. And he asked the boatman, “How much will it cost to take me to the place where Jesus walked on water?”He said, “It will cost ten dollars.”The American said, “That explains everything about how Jesus walked on water. Ten dollars? Forget about it. I am not in a mood to walk on water.”You will not find in Buddha anything that is not possible for you. He is as human a being as you are. He does not proclaim himself to be anything special. That is his grandeur. That is his greatness.In this incident, Hyakujo is asking his mother, pointing to the statue of Buddha, “What is that?”The mother said, “That is a buddha.”Hyakujo said, “He looks like a man.”He never tried to look like anything else, he simply wanted to look like man so that every man can be encouraged – that you don’t have to walk on water, you don’t have to turn water into whiskey….You can be a buddha without any difficulty because it is your inner nature. It does not depend on miracles. Religion is not magic. It is a very simple and humble effort to search within yourself for the deepest point where you are joined with the universe. That joining point is the buddha.Hyakujo said, even though he was a small child, “He looks like a man. I want to become a buddha afterwards. If this man could become a buddha, I am also a man. Right now I am too small, but later on, I am going to become a buddha.”Hyakujo became a monk afterwards, when he was twenty years old. He joined a monastery at Yueh Chou, and his first master was called Tao-chih. Tao-chih gave him his first spiritual name which was Hui Hai meaning, Ocean of Wisdom.Hyakujo was not a monk for long before he heard about the great Master Ma Tzu, and went to him at Chiang-si.Maneesha has asked:Osho,When Hyakujo first arrived at Chiang-si to pay his respects to Ma Tzu, Ma Tzu inquired, “From where have you come?”These are Zen questions. They don’t mean what they appear to mean. When he says, “From where have you come?” he means: From where in the eternity have you come here? Are you aware of your eternal nature? – that you are coming here from utter emptiness?But Hyakujo could not understand at that point. He simply thought that Ma Tzu was asking an ordinary question.“From the Great Cloud Monastery at Yueh Chou,” answered Hyakujo.“And what do you hope to gain by coming here?” asked Ma Tzu.Hyakujo replied, “I have come seeking the buddha-dharma.”To this Ma Tzu replied, “Instead of looking to the treasure house which is your very own, you have left home and gone wandering far away. What for? I have absolutely nothing here at all. What is this buddha-dharma that you seek?”Whereupon Hyakujo prostrated himself and asked, “Please tell me to what you alluded when you spoke of a treasure house of my very own.”Now he has asked the right question.Ma Tzu replied, “That which asked the question is your treasure house.”Your consciousness, your being – who asked the question? Don’t look for the answer. Look from where the question is coming, then you will have to look inside. The question is coming from your innermost core.“That which asked the question is your treasure house. It contains absolutely everything you need and lacks nothing at all. It is there for you to use freely, so why this vain search for something outside yourself?”No sooner were these words spoken than Hyakujo received a great illumination and recognized his own no-mind. Beside himself with joy, he bowed in deep gratitude.Hyakujo spent the next six years in attendance upon Ma Tzu…This has stopped happening in the world because we have forgotten the language of suddenness. We believe only in gradual growth. Suddenness seems to be irrational, illogical, impossible but it is true about everything. If you want anything, it will be gradual. There is only one exception; that is you. You are already there. So it is only a question of just turning your eyes in, just looking inwards with absolute urgency and in a single moment everything is transformed.When Ma Tzu told him, “That which asked the question is your treasure house,” he must have immediately looked within – from where the question had arisen. It contains absolutely everything you need and lacks nothing. It is there for you to use freely, so why this vain search for something outside yourself?Just as he went down from where the question had arisen, he must have reached to the great illumination instantly. Nowadays people ask a question to get an answer. About everything else it is okay, but about yourself, never ask a question. Rather, look within from where the question is arising, and in a single moment, the great enlightenment is possible.No sooner were these words spoken than Hyakujo received a great illumination and recognized his own no-mind. Beside himself with joy, he bowed in deep gratitude.Hyakujo spent the next six years in attendance upon Ma Tzu. But as Tao-chih, his first teacher, was growing old, he wanted to return to look after him.Before Hyakujo left Ma Tzu, he went to pay his final tribute to him.Seeing him coming, Ma Tzu raised his horse whisk straight up. Hyakujo asked, “Are you in the use of it, or apart from the use?”Ma Tzu hung the horse whisk on the corner of his chair. After a minute or so, he asked Hyakujo, “Hence forward, how do you open those two leaves of your mouth to work for others?”At this, Hyakujo took the horse whisk and raised it straight up.Ma Tzu said, “Are you in the use of it, or apart from it?”Hyakujo hung the horse whisk on the corner of the chair.Just at that moment, a great roar, like hundreds of thunderbolts falling, rained on Hyakujo’s head. Ma Tzu had given him a shout which, it is said, deafened him for three days.For three days he could not hear anything else. What has transpired in this dialogue when Ma Tzu asked, Are you in the use of it, or apart from it? The same question both have asked each other. First Hyakujo has asked, and the meaning should be understood clearly. The meaning is: are you a witness while you are using it? or do you become one with it and forget your witnessing?When Ma Tzu asked, Hyakujo did the same, exactly as Ma Tzu has done. He hung the horse whisk on the corner of the chair showing that “I am also a witness; I am no longer the horse whisk. I am no object, I am always a subject and a witness.”Satisfied, Hyakujo gave a tremendous roar of joy that a disciple had ripened, that a disciple had arrived home, that a disciple’s blindness had disappeared. But the roar was such…like hundreds of thunderbolts falling, rained on Hyakujo’s head. Ma Tzu had given a shout which, it is said, deafened Hyakujo for three days.This was a great roar of tremendous joy, of welcoming Hyakujo, that “after all, you have arrived.”A haiku by Basho:I clap my handsand with the echoesit begins the dawn – the summer moon.Basho is one of the greatest poets of the world, but he has written only haikus – very symbolic but very miraculous, very simple but very mysterious. They are all to be understood through visualization, because Zen does not believe in words. Visualize and perhaps you may have some understanding. “I clap my hands and with the echoes” – in the mountains – “it begins the dawn – the summer moon.”The summer moon is still hanging and the sun is going to rise. And I have clapped my hands, and the echoes are still resounding in the mountains. It is just a painting in words. A haiku has to be understood – a painting in words, not only a poetry in words – and it has to be visualized. Just visualize yourself surrounded by mountains. And you…(Osho claps his hands.)…clap your hands. The mountains go on echoing and the summer moon is still there and the dawn has come. The sun will be arising soon.Why should he write these small haikus? He used to live by the side of a lake surrounded by mountains, meditating in utter silence. Once in a while he would open his eyes and whatever he would see, he would note down. These haikus are not out of the mind. These haikus are reflections in a mirror, in a no-mind. In a silent heart the summer moon, the dawn very close and he claps his hands, and all the mountains resound with echoes.A meditator, according to Basho, will go on searching deep within himself, but that does not mean that he should lose contact with the outside world. Once in a while he should open his eyes. With all his emptiness he should mirror the outside world. Those reflections are collected in these haikus. They don’t mean anything, they simply depict a picture.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Many disciples have dedicated books to their master out of love and gratitude. But characteristically, you have turned tradition on its head by dedicating two of your discourse series to specific disciples.Has any master loved his disciples as much as you seem to love us?Maneesha, when I see you all, I don’t see you the way you see yourself. I simply see possible buddhas. No master has dedicated his books to his disciples, because no master has that clarity which can see the future in the present, which can see the rose in the seed. I can see. So when I introduce you as buddhas, it is not symbolic, I mean it. It is not only love, but also respect. My own understanding is: unless a master respects the disciple, he does not deserve respect from the disciple. It is a communication, it is a give-and-take, it is a communion.I am going to dedicate many books because I don’t have anything else. I have just my words, my experiences, my silences, my songs to dedicate to all those disciples who are keeping me alive. Without you I won’t wake up next morning – because what will I do? I don’t have anything else to do in the world. I have done everything long ago; in fact, I have overdone.Now my life is in your hands. If you want me to be here, I can go on postponing the date of my departure. But the day I see that there is no need for me to postpone anymore, I will tell you to be ready for a great ceremony. But I feel right now, my garden is just a nursery.The buddhas are getting ready to wake up. A few have looked with one eye open, a few have looked with both eyes open, but have taken another turn and pulled their blanket over themselves. It is a question of struggle between me and you. How long are you going to remain hidden in your blanket? Sooner or later you will get tired. You cannot escape me, you have to become a buddha. Once you are a buddha, you are absolutely free to go around the world taking the fire, spreading it to all the nooks and corners of the world.My existence has no purpose other than this, that the world should have as many buddhas as quickly as possible before the politicians manage to commit a global suicide. Only a large number of buddhas around the world can create the atmosphere of peace and love and compassion, where war becomes absolutely irrelevant. I am in a special situation that no other buddha ever has been.This book is dedicated to Anando in spite of her reluctance. She has behaved very unconsciously for these two days. First, I am always worried about it that Maneesha is not allowed to take a holiday, migraine or no migraine, because if she is absent even for one evening – and I know she has this trouble of migraine for years – somebody else has to take her place. But just to take her place for one day is dangerous. The taste of it, and then one starts thinking, “Why should I not continue?” It is almost as if you are made the king for one day. It will be difficult for your whole life.So first she freaked out because I still addressed Maneesha, care of Anando. I could see her face and I could see her response. She did not like it, she wanted to be addressed directly. But I knew it was better to be “care of,” because tomorrow she would be gone. The same trouble happened with Vimal. For a few days he was sitting with almost tears in his eyes. Once he has tasted the joy of asking me the questions, and then he has to give back the place, his kingdom is taken away. Now he has come back to his right mind. I did not want to disturb him again. That’s why I ask Anando.And I have my own ways of working. In every way I try to find out some secret which needs to be revealed to the person. Anando may not be aware that she is never nice to anybody who is nice to her. She becomes nasty. It is her wrong upbringing from her childhood that she has carried. Secondly, she is never happy to receive anything. It needs courage. Perhaps you may not be aware. One loves to give, because by giving you are higher, but one has to learn to receive. At least when you are sitting at the feet of your master, you have to learn to receive. It hurts the ego that you are on the receiving end, not on the giving end.I wanted to see how she would receive it. She missed the point. First she freaked out about Maneesha’s question, because she thought that Maneesha had indicated in it, that the horse came a little early and disturbed my speech. Because she was one half of the horse, she thought Maneesha was trying to raise the question again before the whole assembly, although there was no question of Maneesha raising it.Maneesha was asking something else. She was trying to inquire about me, what my response was to this suddenness. That’s why Avirbhava was not disturbed. She was the main part of the horse; Anando was just the back part. Avirbhava proved to be more alert and conscious, seeing that the question did not have anything to do with the coming in early. In fact the early coming was very good: it surprised everybody except me. But I am crazy anyway.Nothing surprises me….For thirty-five years continuously I have been looking for something to surprise me. Nothing surprises me. Even when a man a few years ago threw a knife at me, it did not surprise me. I just looked at the knife and I continued what I was doing. The man must have been surprised. I did not even report the case. I did not go to the court. The court had to send their representative just to ask me had such a thing happened?I said, “It was not much, just a rotten old knife, and it has not hurt anybody. So fundamentally, nothing has happened, except the sound of the knife falling on the ground. Do you call it a crime?”The man said, “You are strange. The police are putting the case before the court, and I have come here as a representative of the court because you refused to come.”I said, “In any case I would not be there. If the knife had killed me, I would not be there in the court. Now that the knife has not killed me, why should I be in the court?”The man said, “What am I to say to the court?”I said, “You just write down – I will sign it – that this case really happened: A man threw a knife; I heard the noise. For a moment I stopped speaking so that the hassle with the man and the police officers stopped. They took him away. I continued my work.”The horse coming as a surprise to everybody – I really enjoyed it. The real Kalki, the Hindu white horse which is going to come within twelve years, the coming twelve years – any time – will not give a warning to you. It will come as suddenly as Avirbhava’s horse came. So it was absolutely proper – but Anando was hurt.But I can understand Avirbhava’s hurry. You should just imagine somebody inside a horse – one wants to get out as quickly as possible. And now she is going to bring elephants and crocodiles…and she will have to be inside them! Obviously she was in a hurry because the horse might have broken in the middle. So as quickly as possible…It was a perfect performance.Anando was not exactly disturbed by it; that was a very superficial thing. She was disturbed because I called Maneesha a better reporter, a better recorder than Ramakrishna had in Swami Vivekananda, or Socrates had in Plato. She became hurt because she is doing so much work. She is working hard on all the new books and their publication. She is in charge of the whole of publications and all of the construction that is going on in the ashram. Obviously she thought that Maneesha has been praised – and a subtle jealousy, and the female mind…I wanted them to be exposed.And the next day when I said that this new series was going to be dedicated to her, Anando freaked out even more – so much so that she is suffering from a fever which is absolutely psychological, emotional. She was absolutely okay when she was sitting here, and just as she reached her room, she declared that she had a great cold coming. And immediately, because that is the time she comes to see me – when I am taking my supper, she comes to see me – she did not come. She really wanted to avoid me because I have seen something which she was hiding. Not only did she not come to me, but she even removed herself from Lao Tzu House to Krishna House, with an excuse that she was getting a cold. She phoned Nirvano to say that she was getting suspicious, and that by dedicating the new series to her, “Osho is trying to blackmail me.”This way you can see the difference between the disciples that Ma Tzu and Hyakujo had. Even if they were hit on their heads, they would bow down and touch the feet of the master. So much has changed in the world of consciousness. Man has fallen so low. For what should I blackmail? But just anger, the anger of being “care of,” that anger became almost hysterical. Now whatever she is saying…again and again she has been phoning Nirvano asking, “What has Osho said about me?” I have not said anything. I waited for this question from Maneesha. I cannot take my word back.You remember Ma Tzu – he wouldn’t remove his legs from the track. He allowed the disciple to run the cart over him and hurt his legs, but he would not move from this position. This book will be dedicated to Anando with the words, “In spite of herself.” And I will be dedicating more books. I would love to dedicate books to all of you.If time permits and existence allows, each buddha is going to have a book in his name as a respect and love from the master.Now it is Anando’s time.Farmer O’Leary has two prize cows, Daisy and Buttercup.One day, he borrows the neighbors’ bull and puts it into the field with the cows. The bull does not show much interest in the cows – seems to be a swami! – and soon Farmer O’Leary gets bored and goes off for his lunch.That afternoon, Father Fumble, the village priest, comes to the farmhouse for tea, so Farmer O’Leary calls his farmhand, Sean, and tells him to go out to the field and watch the bull. Sean is to let him know if the bull shows any interest in Daisy and Buttercup.Mrs. O’Leary is just pouring Father Fumble a second cup of tea, when Sean comes bursting into the room and shouts, “The bull is screwing Daisy!”Father Fumble almost chokes, and Farmer O’Leary drags Sean angrily into the kitchen.“Listen here, you idiot!” snaps O’Leary. “You can’t use language like that in front of the priest! Next time, say something like, ‘The bull has surprised Daisy.’ Now, get back outside!”Ten minutes later, Sean comes bursting into the room in a high state of excitement.“Farmer O’Leary!” he stammers. “The bull, er…the bull’s, ah….!” But he cannot finish his sentence.“Do you mean,” says O’Leary, with a knowing look, “that the bull has surprised Buttercup?”“I’ll say he has surprised Buttercup!” shouts Sean. “He is screwing Daisy again!”Paddy has been training his horse, Kalki, for the big race. He has been giving it lots of exercise and plenty of good food, but on the day of the race, Paddy is still worried that Kalki will not run fast enough.Just before the horses go to the start, Paddy quietly gives Kalki a couple of pep pills. Father Murphy, who has been watching this, goes up to Paddy.“I hope you are not giving your horse any illegal drugs?” says the old priest.“Certainly not, Father, I was just giving him a vitamin C,” says Paddy, popping one of the pills into his own mouth. “Here, try one yourself.”Father Murphy swallows one of the pep pills, thinking that it is a vitamin, and walks off, apparently satisfied.Paddy turns to Seamus, who is going to ride Kalki in the race.“Don’t worry, Seamus, you are going to win for sure!” says Paddy, confidently. “Nothing can pass you in this race, except me or Father Murphy!”George Grope is fifty years old, and has spent the best years of his life with a woman whose constant nagging and criticism has driven him mad.Now, in poor health, and with his business on the verge of collapse, he makes up his mind. He goes to the dining room, gets up on a chair, fastens his tie around the chandelier, and is just about to end it all. At that moment his wife enters the room.“George!” she cries in shock at the scene before her. “You idiot! That is your best tie!”Chester Cheese is walking through the forest one day, with his teenage kid, Charlie.They are enjoying the stroll very much, when suddenly Charlie sees a pair of black satin panties lying on the path.“Hey, Dad,” exclaims Charlie. “Look! A young girl’s panties!”“Well, son,” says Chester, in a fatherly voice. “I’d say those probably belong to an older woman, not a young girl.”“Come on, Dad,” replies Charlie. “For sure these are a young girl’s panties!”“I don’t think so, Charlie,” says Chester, stiffly.Just then Father Finger walks up.“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he says. “But I couldn’t help overhearing your discussion. Perhaps I can settle the matter for you.”Then Father Finger raises his eyebrows, takes the panties, examines them closely, this way and that way.“Well,” says Father Finger, popping the panties into his pocket, “I don’t know which of you is right, but I do know one thing. She is not a member of my church!”Okay, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inward with tremendous urgency as if this is the last moment of your life. Only with this urgency can you reach to the source of your life. And at the source of your life you are a buddha. From there on, opens the whole universe, your own space, unlimited.The buddha is the door.You have to go beyond it.But first reach to the door…deeper and deeper….This is a beautiful evening. The rain has stopped just to give you absolute silence. And the silence of ten thousand buddhas is a tremendous energy field. Don’t miss this moment.To make it clear, Anando…(Drumbeat)Just watch your body, your mind, separate from you. You are the watcher. In this witnessing you become the buddha. You have always been the buddha. You discover it. So much dust has gathered on it. Remove the dust. Let it become a pure mirror. This is your ultimate nature.The evening has become more juicy and more beautiful. The time has stopped – you are floating in space like a cloud in absolute freedom.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, silently, peacefully, with a grace and sit down like a buddha just for a few moments recollecting the experience.You have to live this experience for your whole twenty-four hours, just like breathing – doing anything you go on continuously breathing. This remembrance of being a buddha has to become just like an undercurrent. It is always there whether you are sitting, walking, waking or sleeping – in action, in inaction, in speaking, in silence, but one thing remains continuously in you – the remembrance of your ultimate nature.Before the celebration I have to remind Nivedano that I called Anando. That is the name of your drum.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,On one occasion Hyakujo said, “If we are attached to a viewpoint that we are naturally the buddhas and that we are in Zen Buddhism because we are originally pure and enlightened, we are among non-Buddhists who deny causality.”At another time a Vinaya master named Yuan once came to Hyakujo and asked, “Do you make efforts in your practice of the Tao, master?”Hyakujo replied, “Yes, I do. When hungry, I eat; when tired, I sleep.”Yuan asked, “And does everybody make the same efforts as you do, master?”Hyakujo answered, “Not in the same way. When they are eating, they think of a hundred kinds of necessities, and when they are going to sleep they ponder over affairs of a thousand different kinds. That is how they differ from me.”At this, the Vinaya master was silenced.On another occasion, the venerable Tao Kuang asked Hyakujo, “Master, what mental processes do you employ in pursuing the Tao?”Hyakujo answered, “I have no mental processes that would be of use, and no Tao to follow.”Tao Kuang asked, “If both those statements are true, why is it that every day you convene gatherings during which you urge others to learn how to follow the Tao by means of Zen?”Hyakujo said, “This old monk does not possess even a dot of ground in which to stick an awl.”“Why, master, you are lying to my face!” exclaimed Tao Kuang.Hyakujo replied, “How can this old monk, being without tongue to urge people, tell a lie?”“I do not understand the way the venerable Zen master talks,” said Tao Kuang.Whereupon Hyakujo said, “Nor does this old monk understand himself.”Maneesha, this series of talks is entitled The Great Pearl, Hyakujo, With The Haikus Of Basho. Hyakujo is immensely expressive and knows what he is doing and how to bring people to the unknowable.Basho never wrote prose. Basho is one of the greatest poets in the world. His greatness is not in his poetry – there are far greater poets as far as the composition of poetry is concerned. His greatness is that his poetry is not just verbiage, is not just putting words together according to a certain pattern, his poetry is an experience.I have put them together because Hyakujo never wrote any poetry. His approach is very prose and direct, and the haikus supplement what is missing in the prose. Basho expressed himself very graphically. His experiences are more paintings than poetry. And his understanding is – and I agree with him – that where prose fails, poetry may succeed. Poetry has a more feminine way, more subtle, more graceful, entering into the heart.Prose directly enters into the head and immediately becomes a concern of logic and reason. Poetry has a different root, a different path. You don’t bring in rationalization as far as poetry is concerned. Something else becomes stirred in you, something deeper than the mind. Poetry cannot be a logical statement. It is an existential statement – what Basho himself has seen he has tried to put into words. Hence I have put together two great masters.The name, The Great Pearl is Hyakujo’s old name in Chinese. His childhood name was Chu, and Chu means pearl. Both are Himalayan peaks, and together they are going to create a tremendous harmony. What prose can say in a very straightforward way, poetry cannot say in that straightforward manner. But there is much that is left out. Poetry can pick up that which is left out because it has no obligation to any logic, no obligation to any grammar, no obligation to any formulation. It has a certain freedom which prose has not, so it can say things that prose will become embarrassed to say. The Great Pearl applies to both. They both are the most beautiful Zen masters.Before I discuss Hyakujo’s and Basho’s sutras…Yesterday I introduced you with a biographical note on Hyakujo. Today I want to introduce you with the biography of Basho.The Japanese haiku poet, Basho, was born in 1644, the son of a samurai in the service of the lord of Ueno castle. As a young boy, Basho became the page and study companion of the nobleman’s eldest son, and together they learned, among other skills, the art of making verse.On the death of his master, Basho went to Edo – now Tokyo – where he studied verse under Kigin. He then became a disciple of the Zen master, Buccho.Basho’s fame as a master poet spread. He began to attract disciples of his own.Journeying became Basho’s life-style, providing him with a chance to observe and write of nature, with which he felt such a deep affinity.He once wrote, “All who achieve greatness in art possess one thing in common: they are one with nature. Whatever such a mind sees is a flower, and whatever such a mind dreams of is the moon. It is only a barbarous mind that sees other things then flowers, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon.”The flower and the moon are only symbolic. What he is intending to say is that the really silent mind can only see the greatest in existence, the most beautiful, the most truthful. He can see only flowers and moons. In his status, in his height, he cannot see the mean and ugly things of which the human mind is so filled up. He calls this mind, which has not known the experience of emptiness, a barbarous mind – a beautiful definition of a barbarous mind.The mind of a buddha will only see flowers all around. The mind of a buddha reclining will see the moon and the stars and all that is beautiful in the darkness of the night. Whether it is morning or evening, it does not matter, the no-mind only reflects the most precious, and the so-called mind that we have is only concerned with the ugliest – it is barbarous.When Hyakujo returned to Yueh Chou, he lived a retired life, concealing his abilities and outwardly appearing somewhat mad. It was at this time that he composed his shastra, called, “A Treatise Setting Forth the Essential Gateway to Truth by Means of Instantaneous Awakening.”Later, this book was stolen and brought to the Yangtze region and shown to Ma Tzu. After reading it carefully, Ma Tzu declared to his disciples: “In Yueh Chou there is now a great pearl. Its luster penetrates everywhere freely and without obstruction.”Ma Tzu was making a pun on Hyakujo’s original surname of Chu. Hyakujo was Ma Tzu’s disciple and finally his successor.Maneesha has asked these sutras for today:Osho,On one occasion Hyakujo said, “If we are attached to a viewpoint that we are naturally the buddhas and that we are in Zen Buddhism because we are originally pure and enlightened, we are among non-Buddhists who deny causality.”Now, this is something to be understood and it is one of the most debated subject matters for centuries: if enlightenment is sudden, that means there is no cause to it. It can be sudden only if it has no causality. If it has any cause, first the cause has to be produced, then enlightenment will follow.Science believes in causality. You provide all the necessary causes, and this will be the inevitable outcome. But Zen, in the sense of sudden enlightenment, drops the idea of causality. There is no cause that leads to enlightenment – and Hyakujo is making it clear. If no cause, no causality, leads to enlightenment, the reason is that enlightenment is not an effect; cause and effect are joined together. Enlightenment is not an effect of any cause; it is already there. The effect is in the future.That which is already there, needs no cause. It needs only a turning of your vision. That is not a cause. It needs only a remembrance. That is not a cause. What is already there, in this very moment, requires no causality. Causality produces something. It is already perfectly present; nothing has to be added. All that is needed is to wake up and see.Seeing is not a causality, you have to understand it. That’s why no method, no device can be said to be absolutely certain to lead you to enlightenment. All that it can do, is to trigger a certain process in you so that you start looking inwards. It can produce the looking inwards, but it cannot produce your enlightenment. If you honestly and urgently look inwards, the buddha is there. Your enlightenment explodes in thousands of ways; it has been just waiting for your eyes.All Zen masters have been talking about methods, about devices. The reason is that there is no way to introduce you to your own buddha, your own nature. It is so deep down inside you, it cannot be made objective. It cannot be said, “Look, this is your nature. Say hello to it. Get introduced.” Nobody can introduce you to your own nature. Hence, all these devices which are in a way lies, are desperate efforts of the masters somehow to force you to look inwards. Then everything will happen on its own accord.…a Vinaya master– Vinaya is the whole Buddhist scripture –Named Yuan once came to Hyakujo and asked, “Do you make efforts in your practice of the Tao, master?”Hyakujo replied, “Yes, I do. When hungry, I eat; when tired, I sleep.”Such a great and beautiful statement contains so much, oceans of meaning.Yes, I do, says Hyakujo. When hungry, I eat; when tired, I sleep. He is saying, “I simply go with nature. I am no more, only nature is: tired, it goes to sleep; hungry, it eats. Neither do I interfere nor do I make any effort in the sense ‘effort’ is understood.”Yuan asked a necessary question,“And does everybody make the same efforts as you do, master?”Hyakujo answered, “Not in the same way. When they are eating, they think of a hundred kinds of necessities, and when they are going to sleep they ponder over affairs of a thousand different kinds. That is how they differ from me.”A clear-cut differentiation. If you can understand this, you will understand the difference between a buddha, who looks almost human, and other human beings. Their actions are the same: the buddha eats when he is hungry, he sleeps when he feels tired; so you do. On the surface there seems to be no difference. The difference is inside: when the buddha is eating, he is simply eating; there are no other thoughts in the sky of his mind. His whole attention, his whole awareness, is just concerned with the act in the present – eating. When he is asleep, he is simply asleep. He does not dream, he does not wander here and there with a thousand anxieties and problems; he has none. Asleep, he is simply asleep.Modern psychoanalysis has to come to an understanding. They have not yet dared. They have only been studying what Hyakujo calls the barbarous mind. All their conclusions and their whole science will remain absolutely incomplete unless they explore the mind of a buddha. That will bring a tremendous revolution in the whole psychoanalytical movement, because on the surface the buddha is exactly the same as you are. But you can see the point: while you are eating, you are thinking a thousand and one thoughts; while you are sleeping, you are dreaming of faraway lands, or maybe repressed desires.It is sad that even while you are making such a deep and intimate act as love, you are not loving the woman you are making love to, you are thinking of Sophia Loren. And don’t think that it is only you who is thinking of Sophia Loren, the woman you are making love to, is thinking of Mohammed Ali. On every bed there are four fellows. This is the barbarous mind: never in the moment, always going astray.Hyakujo put the difference with the enlightened man very clearly: when hungry, eat; when tired, sleep. Don’t do anything else. Always remain contained in the moment, contained in the act. Raising hands, just raise your hand; don’t think of anything else. Sitting, just sit; walking, just walk. Every act should be so concentrated that it does not allow other thoughts to enter in.A simple understanding of this can make one a buddha, because this will bring your whole consciousness together to such a point that it becomes almost an arrow. And whenever your consciousness becomes an arrow, it starts moving towards the origin of your life. All devices are just to make your consciousness an arrow and with an urgency, so that it moves. You are not far away. It is just a small journey, but it takes people millions of lives to fulfill it because they never move even an inch inwards.…and when these barbarous minds are going to sleep, they ponder over affairs of a thousand different kinds. That’s how they differ from me.At this the Vinaya master was silenced.He was only a scholar, he had no idea of the inner world. He has absolute control of the outer objective, philosophical concepts, but he has no idea at all from where his life arises, from where his consciousness arises, where the roots of his very being are. He was completely silenced by the master. He could not utter a single word, but he could not become enlightened either. He could not ask anything more, he could not answer the master. He simply became silent, knowing that he was entering in an unknown territory. He knows the shastras, the scriptures perfectly well, but he does not know anything about this “eating, eat; walking, walk; sitting, sit.”This is the problem with the scholars: they go on missing the authentic master. They come to understand, but they come to understand the word not the experience. At this the Vinaya master was silenced.On another occasion, the venerable Tao Kuang asked Hyakujo, “Master, what mental processes do you employ in pursuing the Tao?”Hyakujo answered, “I have no mental processes that would be of use, and no Tao to follow.”This is the ultimate statement of a witness. There are no mental processes. He has left the mind far behind, and there is no goal of Tao, or Dhamma. He himself is the goal; he is the buddha. He is Tao, he is Dhamma; he is the truth itself. Now, there is no question of any mental processes or any goal of Tao.Tao Kuang asked, “If both those statements are true, why is it that every day you convene gatherings during which you urge others to learn how to follow the Tao by means of Zen?”That is the way intellectuals function. He has not understood Hyakujo’s great statement, he has simply analyzed it and found that there is a contradiction. But this man says there is no mental process that would be of any use, and there is no Tao to follow. If this is true, then why does this man go on teaching great assemblies. You have to see how intellectuals function and how they miss.He asked him, “If both those statements are true, as you say, why is it that every day you convene gatherings during which you urge others to learn how to follow the Tao by means of Zen?”That can be asked of any master. Even the master himself is very much concerned.I have told you that Gautam Buddha did not speak for seven days after his enlightenment. When asked, he said, “I have been pondering for seven days whether to speak or not, and I cannot find any reason to speak. There are no means that I can teach to people that will lead them inevitably to enlightenment. There is no goal to be achieved so people can be shown the path.“People want some understanding about what discipline is to be followed – what cause is going to produce buddhahood. There is no cause. So, all these seven days I have been thinking that whatever I say will not be exactly true. Should I say it or keep quiet? To be silent seems to be more honest and more truthful but a little unkind – unkind to those who are still staggering in darkness, unkind to those who are very close to the source. Just a little help, a little push, may make them buddhas.”But it is not so easy. If you push somebody he becomes angry. Your push is not necessarily going to be understood as a compassion. The person may become more ugly than he was by your push. He may become more barbarous. He may stand up to fight with you asking, “Why did you push me? Why did you say this? Why did you expose me?” The work of the master is not just full of roses. It is one of the most delicate works of art to help a man become a buddha. A slight mistake and everything is spoiled. And the problem is not the master, the problem is the disciple. How the disciple is going to take your word is not within your control.So Buddha said, “I am thinking not to speak at all. Those who are capable of becoming buddhas will become buddhas – a little late perhaps – and those who are too much involved in darkness and mundane activities are not going to listen to me. They will simply waste my time and will be angry at me that I am wasting their time.”But the people who were urging him said, “You are ninety-nine point nine percent right, but please think of the point one percent. You may fail with ninety-nine point nine percent of the people, but you may succeed in helping one person out of one hundred to become a buddha. This is such a great event that those failures can be simply forgotten – they don’t matter. Anyway they were not going to become buddhas; you need not be worried about them. But think of that point one percent. You will be very unkind to those who are just on the periphery. A little push, a little kindly word that gives them a sense of urgency; a little look in their eyes that gives them the depth that they also contain; a little touch of love, the warmth of a buddha, just his gesture…”And Buddha agreed. His agreement is one of the greatest agreements that has been made in human history. He could have disagreed. There was no way to force him, but then something great would have been completely forgotten. At least it is remembered here and there. Some people still become buddhas, still reach to the same heights, because they know somebody has already traveled the path. “If one man is capable of becoming a buddha, then there is no reason why I cannot become a buddha.” This gives great courage, and great encouragement.But the intellectual mind, not understanding the inner process of enlightenment, noncausal, nonlogical, immediately jumps to the conclusion that there is a contradiction. Here you are saying that there are no mental processes which are of any use. By your mind you cannot reach buddhahood, you will have to drop the mind, so what is the use of mental processes? Mind as a whole entity has to be pushed aside so that you can see clearly and directly, without any thoughts gathering in front of your eyes. There is no goal. The moment you find utter silence and a deep understanding of yourself, your roots, you simply have a laugh – just a laugh that “I have been searching for the person who is hiding behind me, inside me, at my very center.”But he immediately asked, “There is a contradiction because you teach people to meditate, you teach people certain devices. What is the point?”Hyakujo said, “This old monk does not possess even a dot of ground in which to stick an awl.”He is saying that he does not possess any mind to answer and satisfy your contradiction.“Why, master, you are lying to my face!” exclaimed Tao Kuang.That is an eternal problem: the master has to lie. And if you think only of his lying, you will never understand that he was lying out of compassion, and that those lies were just preparing a ground for you to take a jump in.I will tell you an old story….A king was very much interested in a young man who always remained underneath a tree, sitting silently. Every night the king passed around the city in disguise to see whether everything was right or not. He always found that young man sitting like a statue, without any movement.Finally, he could not contain his curiosity. He stopped his horse and he said, “Young man, forgive me for disturbing your meditation.”The young man opened his eyes and he said, “There is no need for any apology because I am not meditating, I am meditation – nobody can disturb it. But whatever your curiosity is, please fulfill it.”The king said, “I would love you to come to my palace. I will take care of you. There is no need to sit under this tree. Seeing you so silently, like the ancient story of Buddha, I have fallen in love with your silence, your gestures, your utter undisturbance. I invite you to come with me to my palace. I am the king.”This is how the barbarous mind functions. The king asks the young man to come to his palace – inviting him – but deep down his unconscious wants him not to accept his invitation because that will mean he is still desirous of luxuries and palaces.But that young man simply stood up, and he said, “I am coming.”Immediately the whole scene changed. The mind of the king was thinking, “What have I done? This man is still interested in the luxuries of a palace, being the guest of a king. This is not a great saint.” This is the old idea of the saint, that he should be as uncomfortable as possible. Discomfort is religion. Sick, hungry, torturing oneself in thousands of ways…and then you become a great saint. This fellow has suddenly fallen from his sainthood, in the mind of the king. But now it was too late. He could not take his word back; it would be to ungentlemanly.But the young man was watching everything. He didn’t say anything. The king provided for him in the best part of the palace, servants, young girls to look after him – and he accepted everything. With each acceptance he was falling down in the scale of saintliness: what kind of saint was he? He accepted a beautiful king-size bed. He accepted all the delicacies of the palace.The king said, “My God. What kind of a stupid person am I? This man has deceived me. It seems like he tricked me. Just sitting there every night, he knew I passed at that time, sitting silently like a buddha, he knew that I would be caught – and he caught me. And now it is very difficult either to swallow him or to spit him out. He is inside the palace.”But how long can you carry such a state of mind?After six months, one day early in the morning when they were taking a walk together in the gardens, the king said to him, “One question has been continuously harassing me and I want to get rid of it. Because of it, for six months I have not slept well.”The young man said, “You can ask any question.”The king said, “It hurts me to ask, but I want to know what the difference is between me and you. You live in the palace, you enjoy all the luxuries…what is the difference between me and you?”The young man said, “I knew that this question was going to arise one day. In fact, it arose the same moment I stood up to follow you. You are not a very courageous man. You should have asked immediately. Why waste six months, and for six months unnecessarily disturbing your sleep. I can answer your question but not here. You have to come with me outside the boundary of your kingdom.”It was not far away. Just a few miles away was the river, the boundary of his kingdom.The king said, “What is the need to go there? You can answer me here.”He said, “No. There is a need.”Both went past the river. Standing on the other shore, the young man said, “My answer is that I am going ahead. Are you coming with me?”He said, “How can I come with you? I have a palace, I have a kingdom, I have my wife, my children…I have thousands of worries and problems to solve. How can I come with you?”The young man said, “Do you see the difference? I am going. I don’t have any palace, I don’t have any wife, I don’t have any problems. I was as happy under my tree as I have been happy in your palace – not a bit more or a bit less. My awareness is the same whether I am in a palace or in a forest.”The king felt very sad at his ugly mind, that he thought such an ugly thing. He touched his feet and he said, “Forgive me even to think this. In my own eyes I have fallen.”The young man said, “No. Don’t do it. Seeing your tears and you touching my feet I have no difficulty, I can come back, but you will still start thinking, ‘My God. Has he deceived me again?’ I have no difficulty but so as not to be uncompassionate towards you, I will not come. Just let me go. The whole world is there and I don’t need much, just a tree to sit underneath. It does not matter to me at all.”Now the king became more insistent, “No, come back, otherwise I will be worried and hurt and wounded, thinking, ‘What have I done?’”The man said, “You are putting me in difficulty. I am telling you I can come, but remember, you will again start thinking, ‘What is the difference?’”The barbarous mind only thinks of the meanness, of the mediocrities. He does not have any heights to look at.Hyakujo replied, “How can this old monk, being without tongue to urge people, tell a lie?”Now the intellectual must have become even more suspicious. The old monk Hyakujo says, “How can this old monk, being without tongue…” Now this is apparently a lie: “…without tongue to urge people, tell a lie?” – but he is perfectly right. These are the worlds beyond our ordinary, mediocre lives. A man of enlightenment does not speak, he simply allows existence to speak through him. He does not see, he allows the buddha inside him to see through his eyes.That’s why, once in a while, somebody receptive enough can look into the eyes of the master, the eyes of a buddha. He has no tongue of his own anymore. He has given everything to existence. He is no longer in possession of the tongue, of the eyes, of the hands. Now, whatever existence wants to do with him, he simply goes with it. His whole life is just a let-go. But the intellectual will not understand. Now it is absolutely making a lie even more clear: “I don’t have any tongue” – and he is speaking. He is saying, “How can I lie without a tongue?”The problem for a master is that if he speaks, he defiles the truth. However he tries, he cannot bring the truth into words. Just a little fragrance maybe, only for those who are intelligent enough to feel the difference. The same words are being used by a master as are being used by you, but the master’s words are not empty, your words are empty. When you say to someone, “I love you,” you don’t mean it. Perhaps it is a social custom. When a master says, “I love you,” his love is not an empty word.But you need to have great intelligence to figure out the fragrance that is carried by the words or the actions. And remember, to be intellectual does not mean to be intelligent. The intellectual is a great scholar; he has much knowledge, but he may not be intelligent. And a man who knows nothing, a farmer or a woodcutter or a fisherman, may have intelligence. He will not have intellect – he does not know anything about the intellectual world – but in his functioning.When the Soviet Union emerged from the revolution… The capital during the czars’ rule was Petrograd, it was not Moscow. Petrograd was named after Peter, one of the czars. Because of this association, communists changed the capital to Moscow. But before changing it – it took years – they had to function in Petrograd.Just in front of the palace of the czar there was a huge rock that prevented anybody, any vehicle, to pass in front. It was considerately kept there so that nobody passed and disturbed the czar. You could go on any other street but you could not move on the street in front of the palace. The rock was so huge that the communists were worried about what to do with it. It had to be removed, but its largeness prevented all removal. They called architects and engineers and they all thought about many ways, either to cut it into pieces – but that too was not easy…They were all worried and there was no solution coming out.An old farmer was just leaning on his staff, standing there, watching with all these great engineers, architects, politicians, and when he saw that they were not able to find any solution, he said, “I am just a farmer and I don’t know anything. I don’t know what engineering is, and what architecture is. I have just heard these words here, but as I understand, you want to remove this rock. It is a very simple thing.”Lenin himself asked, “You say it is a very simple thing? Please tell us what your idea is.”He said, “There is no idea. There is no need to remove the rock. Just dig around the rock and go on digging and taking out the mud from underneath the rock, and then finally force the rock down so it becomes part of the road.”It was so simple, so intelligent, that all those architects and engineers were at a loss because they were thinking in conceptual terms from their books, their university degrees, and this poor man had nothing but a practical intelligence.He said, “It is such a small thing. Just dig around the rock, then pull out as much mud as you can from underneath the rock and then force it down. It will settle in the hole and be a part of the road. And it is such a beautiful rock, it should not be removed. It will make such a beautiful part of the road in front of the palace.”The farmer’s instructions were exactly followed and the rock is still there in front of Petrograd’s palace.Intelligence is a clarity, intellectuality is a borrowed knowledge. The intelligent person would not have said this to the master: “You are lying to my face! You tell people about devices and means, and to me you are saying there are no means and no devices, and that there is no goal either.”He could not rise to the height, and he could not understand the difficulty of a master, that he has to bring something from the high peaks of experience to the marketplace. He has to use the same words, and he has in some way to create an urge, a longing. The very urge and longing is not there. Have you ever thought in your dreams that you want to become a buddha? Have you ever wondered where the source of your life is?The master has to make goals which are not goals for you. He has to tell you that it is a great pilgrimage, that to find the truth you have to travel very far and you have to discipline and cultivate yourself, because the human mind is interested only in the difficult, it is not interested in the obvious and the simple. There are reasons why it is not interested in the obvious and the simple: the simple does not satisfy your ego. You will not go into the street shouting, “I have just peeled a banana! I need my photograph in the newspaper. The first man has peeled a banana.” People will laugh at you that you are mad – you are yourself a banana.Small things, but when somebody goes to the top of Everest, the whole world becomes interested. All the news media declare that the first man has reached the top of Everest. The difficult is attractive because it gives you the ego. The simple is unattractive because you cannot claim any ego on its part. The master has to make a goal of buddhahood although he knows you are the buddha. But he knows perfectly well that even if he tells you that you are the buddha, you are not going to trust him. I tell you every day, “You are the buddha.” Have you ever trusted me?Anando, in her anger, sent a message to me that she is suspicious. Suspicious of what – suspicious certainly about my provoking you to be a buddha. I don’t have anything else to do here. Suspicious about what? You are suspicious about your own potential and I have to hammer on your head continuously. So, for this series, I have given the name Anando to Nivedano’s drum. So he goes on hitting every day until she comes to her senses. Suspicious? But that is not only her problem, it is the problem of every intellectual – Anando is a law graduate.“I do not understand the way the venerable Zen master talks,” said Tao Kung.You are speaking and you say that you don’t have a tongue. You go on teaching about devices and goals, and you say there are no mental activities of any use, and there is no goal either.Whereupon Hyakujo said, “Nor does this old monk understand himself.”He accepted that he does not even understand himself. “Only existence knows what he is using me for. I am absolutely available to existence. If he wants to lie through me, I will lie. If he wants something else to be done through me, I will do it. I have completely dropped myself into the hands of the cosmos.”Hyakujo is saying something of tremendous importance: a master is absolutely absent as far as his individuality is concerned; he is absolutely present as far as his cosmic experience is concerned. And you need to have some intelligence, some heart, to understand it.A haiku by Basho….Mad with poetry,I stride like Chikusaiinto the wind.“Mad with poetry…” If you are not mad, your poetry will be very poor. Poetry which is sane will be ordinary, prosaic, just a composition of words without any essential meaning running through it. To be a poet is in a certain sense to be mad.Mad with poetry,I stride like Chikusaiinto the wind.It has not been recognized by the religions of the world. I want to make it an absolute discontinuity with the past in the sense that I don’t consider the older saints to be authentically religious. They can be divided in two categories – either they are masochists who enjoy torturing themselves, or they are sadists who enjoy teaching people to torture themselves, who enjoy others torturing. And it is possible that one man may be both – he may enjoy torturing himself and he may enjoy torturing others.Most of the saints belong to the psychologically sick people, and the real religious people have not been taken in account. They are the poets, the dancers, the painters, the musicians, the sculptors. All kinds of creative people are the truly religious people, but no religion accepts them as religious because these people are functioning according to their nature, not according to any scripture. These people are almost part of the universe.One very rich woman asked Picasso, a great painter of our times, “You have never done portrait. You have done so many beautiful paintings, but no portrait. My only desire is to have a portrait of myself made by you. And don’t think about money. You say it and it will be given.” The woman was super rich.Picasso wanted to tolerate her but he could not tolerate the money. He was in immense need of money. Just for his paintings he needed money, but he did not want to make a portrait, knowing perfectly well that when he started painting he forgot himself, so that what came out may not look like this woman. So he said to her, “Listen…ten million dollars.”She said, “Okay. Start the work.”He said, “My God. I asked for ten million so as not to get involved in this work. I have to explain to you that when I start painting, I forget myself. The colors catch me so hard, their beauty becomes so immense, that I don’t know what I am doing; the painting starts painting itself. That’s why I have never done a portrait, but if you insist, I will make an effort – and I cannot lose ten million dollars. But you have to make me a promise: you cannot criticize my painting on any point.”She said, “Agreed.”The painting was done. The woman could not understand what had happened. She could not find where she was in the painting at all. It was a beautiful painting – great colors, very psychedelic, but it was not a portrait. And she had agreed not to criticize so she said, “I am not criticizing, but I just want to know where my nose is, so from that point I can figure out where I am.”Picasso said, “This is the difficulty. I had told you beforehand that when I paint, I forget. Now I don’t know where your nose is. You take the painting and meditate over it. Sometime you may find that this is your nose, and then figure out…around it there may be some eyes, a mouth.”The woman said, “This is a strange kind of portrait that I have to figure out where my nose is.”Once it happened, a rich man came and he wanted, “Picasso, two paintings, immediately.” Picasso had only one painting ready so he went in and cut the painting in two.The girlfriend who used to be with Picasso, said, “What are you doing?”He said, “I cannot miss that customer. He is a rich man and he wants two paintings. I will make two paintings immediately. Anyway nobody can discover what the painting is, whether it is together or in two parts.” He made two paintings, and he sold two paintings.Those who have purchased his paintings, even in great museums, find it difficult to know how to hang them – which way up…which way down…. You can hang them any way. They are beautiful, but you cannot make any sense of that beauty.And another haiku by Basho:For his morning teaa monk sits down in utter silence –confronted by chrysanthemums.“For his morning tea a monk sits down in utter silence…” Tea has become associated with Bodhidharma, who introduced Zen into China. He loved tea, and strangely, it helps you to be awake; otherwise, sitting silently, one tends to fall asleep. So tea has become a special Zen thing. He is just depicting a picture. Under the tree of chrysanthemums, a monk sits in utter silence for his morning tea. Nothing is said – just a silent monk waiting for his tea.These haikus are, as I have said to you, paintings in words.A question by Maneesha:Osho,I would be dishonest if I did not say I also have been jealous, I have not always received from you with grace; I have wanted to be your favorite girl. I don't think I have acted on those feelings, but perhaps I have done in subtle ways.It is not that I only became aware of all this last night, or that by your pointing out certain things about Anando meant the rest of us were free of those same things. I know we all have the same failings. I know, you know, but I just needed to say all this to you – for my sake, if you will allow me, or for the record.Maneesha, this has to be very clearly understood: that whatever I am saying to one person, everybody has to look within himself to see whether that is applicable to him also. I cannot talk to each of you differently; it is an impossibility. Every person to me is symbolic. What I said about Anando is just symbolic – you all have to ponder over it. Perhaps the same tendencies, the same unconscious feelings, jealousies, greed, ambitions may be hiding in you. Most probably they are. Before enlightenment you all have this barbarous mind. Anando is not an exception, nor are you an exception, Maneesha – and it is perfectly okay.What is needed is an awareness that these things are within you. Nothing has to be done. Just watch them and they will wash out. But what do people do? – they do something to the contrary. They repress them, they pretend that “others may have jealousies we don’t have.” They pretend that “others may have anger we don’t have.” They go on repressing all their ugliness in the unconsciousness. This is not going to be helpful in your awakening. These unconscious repressed desires, feelings, attitudes, are all going to become a hindrance to your enlightenment.My effort, in different ways – answering your question, or telling a joke, or talking about strange sutras of strange people – is simply to help you face your own repressed mind. Once you encounter it, then the only secret to be learned, which I teach every time, is to witness them. Don’t do anything. Don’t condemn them, otherwise they will immediately go deeper into the darkness of your unconscious mind. Don’t condemn them, don’t appreciate them, otherwise they will become attached to your conscious mind. Don’t make any judgment for or against.Just witness, as if you have nothing to do with them. Witnessing is the greatest device that has been found by the whole of the past enlightened people. It cuts through all rubbish just like a sharp sword: don’t get identified; just remain aloof and watch. Anger is there, take note of it and just watch how it arises, how it spreads like a mushroom, how it covers you like a blinding force; how it starts making decisions for you, how you start acting according to it.Just watch, and you will be surprised that it cannot do anything. As it arises, it will not even go to the point of becoming a mushroom because it can become a mushroom only by nourishment. By watching it you have cut the very nourishment. It will arise as a crippled anger which cannot stand up even, and soon it will disperse like mist. It has no reality except your identification.It is good of you, Maneesha, that you have taken note of it. Anando is also calming down. Here you are to become buddhas, not stupid buddhas, because such a thing has never existed in the world – a stupid buddha.Now it is Anando’s time….Princess Diana and Princess Fergie are the wives of Prince Charles and Prince Andrew of England.Soon after Fergie has arrived to live in the palace, Diana offers to take her on a bicycle tour of the London sights. Fergie is delighted and they set off, pedaling through the palace gates.Diana knows all the shortcuts through the London traffic, and soon the two princesses are bouncing along on their bicycles over the cobblestones in the small back streets.“Wow! Di!” cries Fergie, giggling and squealing, her ample body vibrating like jelly, “I have never come this way before!”“Really?” says Di, “I guess it must be the cobblestones!”Big Leroy, the black American football player, and Rabbi Sapperstein, the Jew, are riding in a train together.It is a hot, sunny day, and there are many flies, lazily buzzing around the compartment. Suddenly, a fly lands on the Rabbi’s sleeve and he brushes it off in disgust.A few moments later another fly lands, but this time on Big Leroy’s leg. The giant football star moves like lightning, and grabs the fly between two of his huge black fingers.Leroy then slowly pulls off both the fly’s wings and pops it into his mouth, chewing it contentedly.Soon afterwards, a fly lands on the Jew’s sleeve again. But this time, instead of brushing it off, the rabbi grabs it between two of his long, bony fingers.He then slowly removes both of its wings, leans over to Leroy, and says, “Wanna buy a fly?”Kowalski is out for a drive in the countryside in his new Chevrolet car. He stops on the top of a hill and gets out to admire the view.It is a beautiful, peaceful scene, with a black horse and a white horse chomping grass in the field nearby.Satisfied and breathing a deep sigh, Kowalski gets back into his Chevy, but the car will not start.He gets out, walks around to the front of the car, opens the hood and looks in dismay at the engine.He is wondering what to do when the white horse trots up, leans over the fence, sticks his head under the hood, and says in a deep voice, “Your spark plugs need cleaning!”Kowalski is shocked and terrified, and runs off to the nearby farmhouse. He sees the farmer in the yard, and rushes up to him.“My car has broken down,” stammers Kowalski, “and one of your horses told me to clean the spark plugs!”“Really?” replies the farmer. “Was it the black horse or the white one?”“The white one,” gasps Kowalski.“Pity,” says the farmer. “The white one does not know a thing about cars!”Doctor Braino is a world-famous shrink who specialized in secretly treating neurotic American politicians. It is a hopeless job, but he carries on anyway.One day, Senator Donald Dickteen, the thirty-five-year-old Republican Fundamentalist Christian Reagan-lover is sitting nervously in Dr. Braino’s office.“What can I do for you?” Braino asks Donald.Donald looks around to make sure no one can hear him. Then, in a quiet voice he says, “Doc, I’m not having any luck with women. I try to be cool…I try to be real hip cat, but I’m afraid that I’m a premature ejaculator…I always come too soon.”“Well,” says Braino, studying Donald closely, “when does this usually occur with the woman?”“Well,” says Donald, looking around, “Usually between ‘Hello,’ and ‘What is your sun sign?’”Anando…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen. Now look inwards with great urgency, as if this is the last moment of your life.Deeper and deeper…Collect your whole consciousness as an arrow and go in search for your very source of life. There you will find the buddha.Sitting silently, this is your real being. This moment you all have become buddhas.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Watch your body as separate from you. Watch your mind as separate from you. You are just a witness, just a mirror reflecting all that is around you. A buddha is nothing but a mirror. From this point, of being a buddha, a witness, you can take another jump and dissolve yourself into the oceanic consciousness. Just within two steps, the journey is complete.Thousands of flowers are showering on you. A deep silence, an immense space utterly empty but full of great potentialities. In this space you will find the truth, the meaning of life, the beauty of everything in existence, and the goodness of every being. Those who have come to this point will carry it around the clock, just hiding it behind their heartbeats.So act like a buddha: eat when you are hungry, but don’t think of anything else. When you are tired, go to sleep, but don’t ponder about a thousand worries. Each moment should be given your total consciousness – and you have come home.It is so peaceful, it is so blissful. This evening was already beautiful, but ten thousand buddhas make it a miracle, a magic moment. If you are intelligent enough, you can make this moment a transformation of your whole life.Now, gather all the flowers, the fragrance of this moment – you have to bring it back.Collect all the great pearls.You are at the very source of everything.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come back as a buddha, witnessing silently. Get up, sit down for a few moments, recollecting the space you have traveled, recollecting the experience that you have encountered. This has to become your very life-style.Not for a single moment be suspicious about your buddhahood.Your buddhahood is your nature, act accordingly. The more you act accordingly, the more is the possibility of a growing trust in your being a buddha. The more intelligent can instantly pass through the transformation. The old self dies away, and a totally fresh new being is born – innocent, pure.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The question was asked of Hyakujo: “There is a sutra which says that not to perceive anything in terms of being or non-being is true deliverance. What does that mean?” Hyakujo responded:“When we attain to purity of mind, that is something which can be said to exist. When this happens, our remaining free from any thought of achievement is called not perceiving anything as existent. Reaching the state in which no thoughts arise or persist, yet without being conscious of their absence, is called not perceiving anything as non-existent.“The Surangama sutra says, perceptions employed as a base for building up possible concepts are the origin of all ignorance. Perception that there is nothing to perceive – that is nirvana, also known as deliverance.”A question was asked, “What is the meaning of the phrase ‘nothing to perceive’?”Hyakujo replied: “Being able to behold men, women and all the various sorts of appearances while remaining as free from love or hate as if they were actually not seen at all – that is what is meant by ‘nothing to perceive.’”Then he was asked: “That which occurs when we are confronted by all sorts of shapes and forms is called perception. Can we speak of perception taking place when nothing confronts us?”“Yes,” replied Hyakujo.“When something confronts us, it follows that we perceive it,” continued the question, “but how can there be perception when we are confronted by nothing at all?”Hyakujo answered by saying: “We are not talking of that perception which is independent of there being an object or not. How can that be?”“The nature of perception being eternal, we go on perceiving whether objects are present or not. Thereby we come to understand that, whereas objects naturally appear and disappear, the nature of perception does neither of those things. It is the same with all your other senses too,” concluded Hyakujo.Maneesha, before I discuss the sutras of Hyakujo and the haikus of Basho, I have to settle this great matter about Anando. I call it the great matter, because to me you all are buddhas. You may know it, you may not know it, but in my vision, I perceive you in your perfection. I want and hope that one day, you will also be able to see clearly your buddhahood, because that is the only solution out of the troubles of the mind.A famous American Jewish writer, Joshua Liebman, has written a book, Peace Of Mind. The very title is wrong. Mind can never be at peace. Peace is something beyond mind. Mind is the problem. You can change problems, but that will not help. You have to go beyond mind.I wrote a letter to Joshua Liebman: “Your very title is wrong, your very attitude is wrong. You don’t know a simple fact about the inner world: mind is the cause of all trouble; only no-mind can be at peace, because in a state of no-mind you have gone beyond the clouds into the open sky, where problems don’t exist.”The mind is a small accumulation of thousands of years of problems. You are still carrying them, and they are just waiting for some situation to surface. Even you are surprised, “From where has this problem surfaced?”You were not aware that ninety percent of your mind is in darkness. Only a small fragment – ten percent – has become a little awake. He knows nothing about what is going on in the depths of the ninety percent. And from that unconscious, anything can surface to the conscious. Just a certain situation is needed to trigger it off. It may remain dormant for years, for lives, and it may become suddenly the greatest problem in your life.This is not only a question for Anando, it is a question for everyone who has a mind. Only those who have not a mind, and function directly and straightforward without bringing any thoughts in between, who rather than thinking simply reflect – they don’t have any problems. We have called such people buddhas.You all have the potential of having mind or no-mind. You can have both: when you need to work with the objective reality you can use the mind – it is extrovert; when you are working towards the inner world, and the treasure house of your being, you have to use the no-mind.The problem arises that you are accustomed to using the mind, because you are accustomed to the outside world. So when you start working for the inner, you still continue functioning with the mind. That is not the area of functioning for the mind.The mind can only be objective, it can never be subjective. And the moment you try to make it subjective, you will get into tremendous anguish, strange anxieties. The whole of the unconscious mind will start arising in flames within you. It is a great struggle of the mind that it does not want you ever to explore the inner, it wants you to remain engaged with something outside. Then it is perfectly happy.Turning in simply means a death to the mind.Turning in means the mind will have to be put aside, with all its knowledge, its problems, its anxieties, its anguishes. Of course, the mind has been in power for four million years, it cannot easily give way, so it creates any kind of disturbances that can prevent you from entering into your own being and finding the buddha.Anando has written:Osho,I am sorry. I must be the most stubborn and stupid disciple of all time. I am not even sure I can be called a disciple after my behavior.I feel terrible that I forced you to hit me so hard, but I saw that my layers of pride and my stupid defenses of independence from love were so old and so thick, that I needed something drastic.I still don't know what you did, except that boy, did it hurt. Now I understand why the truth is so unpopular.But in spite of my worst efforts, you, with your love, have managed a miracle again. I feel healed and so grateful.Thank you sounds so inadequate, but I say from the depth of my being: I wash your feet with my tears of gratitude.Anando.Anando, you have done perfectly well. It was something troublesome in you that you have dropped in this crisis. This crisis was painful – every crisis is – but few crises bring a new approach, a new attitude, a new being in you. And this crisis has brought a new dawn to your life.People don’t understand at all that they are afraid of love. People think they are very loving, but their unconscious is very afraid of love. Love means merging, and that seems to the mind as if you are losing your independence, your individuality.In ordinary love affairs it is true to some extent. That is the whole struggle between lovers, continuously fighting. It is not certain things that they are fighting about – any excuse and they are fighting. Their fight is to survive as an individual. This flood of love creates great fear in them.But this is about the ordinary love affairs. What to say about the great love affair between the disciple and the master? It is a very tidal wave, but the difference is that the tidal wave will not take away your independence. In fact, you don’t have independence right now, it is just a vague idea. You don’t know freedom, you don’t know independence.With the tidal wave of a master’s love, all that is slave in you will be drowned. You will come out fresh, more independent, more individual, and yet, more grateful, more peaceful, more graceful.That’s what has happened to you, Anando, you have come back home. You have gone a little astray, but with me it is very difficult to go astray. I give you as much rope as you want – I give you the whole rope – and then you come back with that whole load of rope.You proved to be an authentic disciple. And what you are saying is not simply words, it is your very heart.When I hit someone, remember always, I hit myself more deeply. I can understand that you are healed, because my pain has disappeared, and I can feel your gratefulness. Not only was I feeling the pain through which you were going, the whole assembly was sad.I would like Anando to bow down to all the buddhas here – they were all sad for all these days that you were in deep pain. Fighting with it, you have come victorious.It is not enough to be grateful to me, you have to be grateful to all the buddhas who are working here together in search of a lost treasure, a lost golden climate. It is not an organization of buddhas – buddhas don’t organize – it is simply a meeting of brothers and sisters in a deep love. They are all moving towards the same center of their being, and the universal being.Anando, come in front and bow down to the whole assembly. This will be a record for the future.(Anando walks to the front of the assembly and stands in front of everyone in namaste. Osho tells her to bow down. She simply stands and bows, and in response, before she returns to her place, everyone bows down.)Now, the biographical note:The Great Pearl’s treatise on sudden enlightenment was written before he actually had any disciples – in the period described as “when he lived a retired life, concealing his abilities and outwardly appearing somewhat mad.” Even though the book is written in the style of a dialogue, Hyakujo composed the questions as well as the answers himself so that he could explain his points in the manner he wished.The sutra:Osho,The question was asked of Hyakujo: “There is a sutra which says that not to perceive anything in terms of being or non-being is true deliverance…”“There is a sutra which says that not to perceive anything in terms of being or non-being is true deliverance. What does that mean?”Hyakujo responded: “When we attain to purity of mind, that is something which can be said to exist. When this happens, our remaining free from any thought of achievement is called not perceiving anything as existent. Reaching the state in which no thoughts arise or persist, yet without being conscious of their absence, is called not perceiving anything as non-existent.“The Surangama sutra says, perceptions employed as a base for building up possible concepts are the origin of all ignorance. Perception that there is nothing to perceive – that is nirvana, also known as deliverance.”A question was asked, “What is the meaning of the phrase ‘nothing to perceive’?”Hyakujo, even before becoming a master, has already become enlightened. It is not necessary for every enlightened being to become a master. Most of the enlightened beings have remained silent, for the simple reason, that to say the truth is to annoy the whole world. And not to say the truth, one feels like one has betrayed oneself.The situation of an enlightened man is a very difficult situation. He has all the blessings, and all the joys, but there is a problem: he cannot communicate it to those who are moving in darkness, in blindness. And the trouble is, with enlightenment arises great compassion and love spontaneously. So the enlightened person tries to help in every possible way, creates devices, even tells lies to help you to come to the truth.Very few enlightened people are articulate, because that is a totally different expertise. So they remain silent, although their silence becomes heavy on them. They become sad because they cannot communicate. They know the truth, and that somebody is searching for it, but they cannot even indicate the way. They feel helpless.A few people who became enlightened remained silent for a few years, just pondering over the problem of communion. That was the case with Hyakujo. He became enlightened, and waited for the right moment when he had found the right words, the right devices which can help somebody.He wrote these sutras after his enlightenment, but before his becoming a master. He himself asked the question. It is a preparation for himself – the homework. He asked the question and he himself answers it, trying to see whether he will be able to answer the questions which are bound to arise when he declares his enlightenment.One of the most difficult things is: what is nirvana? The word nirvana has a very special meaning to it. No other religion in the world has ever dared to think of such a thing. Nirvana literally means blowing away the flame. You have a candle, you blow away the flame – now where you can find that flame again? Is it possible to find that flame again in this vast universe? It has gone into the oceanic existence, become one with it. There is no way to find it.Buddha used “nirvana” as the ultimate state when your individual consciousness disappears into the universal consciousness. It is just like blowing away a flame. No more will you be heard; no more will you be; only existence will be there. You will walk, and it will be existence who will be walking within you. You will talk, and it will be existence who will be talking through you. You will become just a hollow bamboo, and existence can make a flute out of you.The words or the silences are all coming from the cosmic sources. The enlightened masters have danced, have sung, have written poetries, have done all kinds of creative work, but not as themselves. They are allowing existence to use them as instruments of the cosmic soul. They will not do anything on their own.I am reminded of an English poet, Coleridge….After his death, forty thousand incomplete poems were found in his house. His friends were aware all his life, and they insisted, “Why don’t you complete a poem which is so beautiful? Just two lines more and it will be completed – or sometimes one line more and it will be completed.”But according to me, Coleridge was authentically a mystic poet. He simply said, “I never write anything, I only allow existence. At this point existence stopped, what can I do? I cannot manage to complete the poem. If existence wants to complete it some day, it will be completed; if not, it is not my concern.”He completed only seven poems, but even seven poems have made him one of the greatest poets that has ever lived on the earth. His poems give the sense that they are coming from beyond. He is just a receiving center, he is not a composer, he is not writing them. He is just in the hands of existence…perhaps a fountain pen, but the hands are cosmic.He was courageous enough. It needed immense courage to see thousands of poems gathering which could be completed – and he was capable of completing them. But he tried a few times and he found out that the one line he composed was dead, and the other lines which had flown through him, had a life of their own – they had a heartbeat.Nirvana is disappearance into the ultimate. Even while living, you start living in the hands of the ultimate. The ultimate is our freedom, the ultimate is our independence.Anando has raised a question about independence in her letter. There are independences and there are great differences between them. One independence is from others – you are independent from others. That is a very small independence that does not carry much meaning. Another independence is, you are independent from yourself. That is the great freedom, the ultimate freedom – you are no more.As long as you are, there is a certain slavery to circumstances, to the body, to the mind, to the society. You cannot be absolutely independent as long as you are.Nirvana is absolute freedom.Now there is no one who can be enslaved.The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean.These sutras are good enough to make Hyakujo a master – and finally he became a master. He did not revise these sutras. He continued his whole life on the same line.The first sutra says that…not to perceive anything in terms of being or non-being is true deliverance.Everything that you can see is just a reflection of the moon in the river. If somebody asks you if the reflection of the moon in the lake has a being, or if it is a non-being, what are you going to say? Neither is it a being, nor is it a non-being, it is just a reflection in the mirror. So whatever you see with your eyes, your eyes are just mirrors. Whatever you see around in the world outside, you are simply reflecting them, you are not seeing them. And all your reflections neither can be called beings nor non-beings. What are they? – just reflections. Your eyes are just mirrors.You don’t have any way to find out that what you are seeing is really there. All your senses can deceive you, and there is no way to judge whether you have seen something which is a mirage or real water.There is a great Christian college in Allahabad….I was invited to give some lectures there. It is just on the bank of the great Ganges, in a very beautiful place.I was sitting by the side of the riverbank with a friend who was a professor in the Christian college, and the friend became very excited.I said, “What is the matter?”Far away there was a very beautiful woman taking a bath in the river, but her back was towards us. So I said, “What is the problem? Let her take the bath.”He said, “The problem is, I want to see her face.”I said, “You can go and look at her face.”He went with great excitement, and came back so disappointed because it was not a woman at all. It was a Hindu monk with long hair. When he saw the monk he said, “My God, I was just about to fall in love.”I said, “Before falling in love, at least you should encounter the person from the front side. From the back side…And are you certain that he is a monk and not a woman?”He said, “You are creating doubt in me. For a moment I was also doubtful because he is beautiful. Now I will have to go back again.”I said, “Leave it. You know now that he is a monk.”He said, “No. You have created the doubt, and I don’t want to live with this doubt. He may really be a woman, because I did not see any beard or mustache. Who knows? My conclusion that he is a monk is dependent only on his orange clothes, but that is not a decisive point because a Hindu nun will also use orange clothes.”He said, “I will have to go.”He went again. Even the monk became surprised as to why this man was coming again, and he looked down from this way and that way.The monk said, “What is the matter?”He said, “Nothing is the matter. You just have such beautiful hair that my friend who is sitting there and I got into a discussion about whether you are a man or a woman.”The monk must have been a man of a great sense of humor. He said, “Aha! I don’t know myself. A monk is a monk – he is neither a man nor a woman.”The man became even more disappointed. He said to me, “Now it is very difficult. His body is very shapely, and he himself says that he does not know who he is.”What you can see with your eyes is only a reflection. Hyakujo is saying that all our perceptions are neither beings nor non-beings. They are ephemeral. They are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. Don’t be too much concerned, attached, identified with them. That creates the bondage.Hyakujo himself responded to his question:“When we attain to purity of mind, that is something which can be said to exist. When this happens, our remaining free from any thought of achievement is called not perceiving anything as existent.”Nothing can be called existent, because everything is in a flux. This is a Buddhist attitude, that you cannot refer to anything with a noun or a pronoun. Their approach is really deep. They say, “You say, ‘the river is,’ but the river is constantly flowing.”They are saying exactly what Epicurus and Heraclitus in Greece said: “You cannot step in the same river twice.”When I read Heraclitus for the first time, that you cannot step in the same river twice, I tried. And my conclusion was that if I meet Heraclitus somewhere – not much chance because he was a contemporary of Gautam Buddha, but one never knows, everything is possible in this vast universe – I am going to tell him, “You cannot step in the same river even once. I have tried; you were simply postulating. When you put your feet in the river, the water is flowing. As your foot goes a little deeper, the water is flowing…a little more, and water is flowing. By the time you touch the ground, perhaps so much water has gone – every second it is flowing – that you cannot say that you have stepped in the same river, in the same water.”Gautam Buddha’s very profound approach was, that for mediocre reasons we have made all verbs into nouns. Otherwise a tree should be called treeing; it is continuously growing. At no point you can call it a tree; either it is growing or it is dying. Everything is a process, not a thing – an event, but not a thing. And if everything is a process, you cannot call anything a being. The river is flowing, the water is flowing, the trees are growing, the stars are moving, the earth is moving, you are moving…The whole existence all around is in movement. There is not a single thing in the outside world which is not moving either backwards or forwards. But movement is the reality, that’s why it is called ephemeral. Only one thing is not moving, has never moved, and that is your ultimate center of being. That has remained the same in this whole world going around in circles.The great scientist, Bacon, can be called the father of Western science. He wrote a very great book, Novum Organum, in which he has stated in aphorisms the differences between philosophical attitudes and science. He says in Novum Organum – Novum Organum means a new canon of thought – “If I can find a center in the world which is not moving, I can explain the whole world without any difficulty. But there is no center in the world which is not moving; everything is moving. By the time you have explained it, it is no longer the same.”He was not aware of the inner world. There, there is a center which is unmoving, but he was not a religious man.We are in search of a center inside, and all the mystics, all the buddhas, are in absolute agreement that in the deepest core of your being there is a center which is the only unmoving center in the whole of existence.And strangely enough, that unmoving center is not only yours. At that center we all meet, just like lines drawn from the circumference to the center. You can draw many lines from the circumference to the center. On the circumference they are different lines. As they move closer to the center, they also become closer to each other. When they reach the center, they are one.We are many on the circumference.At the center we are one.And that oneness is the only freedom, because now there is no other to make you a slave. Only you are, and because only you are, you cannot even say that you are. To say that you are, you need others for context. Unless the other is, you cannot be. You need for your I a thou. Without a thou the I cannot exist; linguistically it is impossible.So at the very center only is-ness remains.Neither me nor you, but just a pure existence.“The Surangama sutra says, perceptions employed as a base for building up possible concepts are the origin of all ignorance. Perception that there is nothing to perceive – that is nirvana.”There is nothing to perceive, only you are. Only the mirror is there and nothing to reflect. So deeply are we rooted in one cosmic whole, that there is no other which can be reflected. All around there is nothingness, but this nothingness is very alive. It is not the nothingness of a cemetery, it is the nothingness that you experience every day in meditation – everything becomes absolutely silent. Somebody passing by the side of the road cannot infer that there are ten thousand people.This silence is vibrating, has a heartbeat.This is a small example of the ultimate silence that surrounds the cosmos. It has a heartbeat, it is not simply nothing. It is called nothingness because there is nothing to perceive, no reflection is made. When you go deep inside you, you will see that no reflection is made. A pure mirror without any reflections, a purity without any ripples – this, according to Buddha, is nirvana.A question was asked, “What is the meaning of the phrase ‘nothing to perceive’?”How can you perceive nothing? You can perceive an object, a tree, a moon. You can perceive an object, but how can you perceive nothing? The question is very philosophical, but it is good to face it because some day it may arise in you too, that when you are absolutely silent, just a mirror, nothing to perceive, how do you know? Nothing to perceive – can you perceive nothing? You can perceive no-thing, and that perception of no-thing, gives you the idea of nothingness. There is no-thingness around you, no objects but just a pure space.Have you ever thought about the word object? We call things “objects.” Object simply means that which obstructs, hinders, prevents. It is an objection; you cannot go. It is a barrier. Things are called objects because they prevent you from moving beyond them. They are like walls; they are not like doors. No object, or no thing simply means there is nothing around to “object” you.This is the perception that as far as you can see, there is no thing left. The mirror is pure, unreflective, centered in itself in deep blissfulness.Hyakujo replied:“That which occurs when we are confronted by all sorts of shapes and forms is called perception. Can we speak of perception taking place when nothing confronts us?”“Yes,” replied Hyakujo.“When something confronts us, it follows that we perceive it.”If we can perceive something, it means that when something will be removed, we will perceive nothing.The question continues:“…but how can there be perception when we are confronted by nothing at all?”Hyakujo answered by saying: “We are not talking of that perception which is independent of there being an object or not. How can that be?”“The true nature of perception being eternal, we go on perceiving, whether objects are present or not.”A mirror can exist without reflecting. Just take that case, that a mirror can exist without any reflection. A consciousness can exist without any perception. There is no need, no necessity. The mirror and its mirror quality is not dependent on anything and its reflection. For example, the lake can go on existing whether the moon comes or not. If it comes, it will be reflected; if it does not come, who cares? The lake is perfectly satisfied unto itself, so is the case of the inner lake of consciousness.“Thereby we come to understand that, whereas objects naturally appear and disappear, the nature of perception does neither of those things.”The mirror remains; things come and go. Consciousness remains, awareness remains, witnessing remains; things come and go. Life comes, death comes, your mirror-like witnessing remains eternally. It is the only thing in the whole of existence which never changes.Basho wrote:Autumn eve – please turn to me.I, too, am a stranger.Basho’s haikus have no parallel. All Zen masters have written haikus, but Basho seems to have melted and merged into nature more deeply than anybody else.“Autumn eve – please turn to me. I, too, am a stranger.” Just as you are, he is saying, “Here in this world we are all strangers.”We ordinarily forget the matter, we start taking everybody for granted. Have you ever thought about it? These ten thousand buddhas are all strangers. We make efforts to forget that everybody is a stranger – we make marriages, friendships, we try to introduce each other – just to forget the feeling that everybody is a stranger. It will make us very much frightened, that we are surrounded with strangers. All our families, all our clubs, all our religions, all our nations are only an opportunity to hide the fact that we are all strangers.Zen is an effort to make you fully aware of your strangeness. This will give you freedom from the crowd. This will give you a sense of being yourself, a deep intensity of consciousness that you are surrounded in a strange world where everybody is a stranger.It has many deeper implications. If you can understand the fact that everybody is a stranger, all your expectations will drop. Who are you to expect? A husband expects certain things from the wife. He has forgotten the fact that the wife is a stranger. We have just met on the way, talked a little bit, walked together on the way, and we have forgotten the fact that we are still strangers.We don’t know ourselves, how can we know others? But on the surface, we try to make familiarity, we try to forget the fearsome idea that we are alone. The wife, the children, the Rotary Club…somewhere we want to be associated.We don’t want to stand alone in deep freedom under the sky, and dance under the sun and the rain. No, we simply want a coziness with the crowd, we want to disappear in the crowd – it feels warmer there.It is not without any reason that Jesus could call people sheep, and himself the shepherd – and nobody objected. This is strange: Jesus was crucified, but nobody ever objected to any of his teachings, and nobody ever argued against him.The reality seems to be that people accepted it deep down themselves that they were nothing but sheep, they needed a crowd to surround them, they could not move alone in an unknown territory. Nobody stood up to Jesus, and said to him, “You are insulting humanity. You are humiliating us by being a shepherd and making us sheep.”That nobody objected makes it clear that the people felt he was right, “We need a crowd.”Basho is saying, “Autumn eve – please turn to me.” – you are not the only stranger here – “I, too, am a stranger.”I have heard…An Englishman who got off the train was feeling very dizzy. His wife had come to pick him up from the station. She asked, “What is the matter? You are looking very pale and dizzy.”He said, “It was a difficult situation. Whenever I sit in the opposite direction – the train is going to the East, and I am sitting facing the West – it makes me dizzy.”The wife said, “It is such a small thing, you could have said to anybody, ‘This makes me dizzy, please change the seat.’”He said, “You are right, but we were all strangers. Nobody has introduced me to anybody.”The wife said, “You are an idiot! We are strangers, that is true, but that does not mean that you cannot ask a small thing.”He said, “Next time I will try.”And the next day, he came back even more dizzy.The wife said, “What happened now?”He said, “On the front seat there was nobody, so I could not ask. You need somebody to ask; the seat was empty…”The wife said, “I will not interfere in your matters. You are simply either a philosopher or insane.”Both mean the same.Another haiku by Basho:The crescent moon – the eastern sky is dark,and the sound of a bell.He depicts in words. Without any colors he makes paintings. “The crescent moon – the eastern sky is dark, and the sound of a bell.” You can almost hear the sound of a bell. These are his moments of meditation. When he opens his eyes once in a while, he sees something: “The crescent moon – the eastern sky is dark, and the sound of a bell” – just fragments out of a meditative mind. They don’t say much, they simply depict a situation. Very visual – you can see it, you can hear it. Basho is very earth bound.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Although Basho's haikus are exquisite, they mostly tend to be a bit melancholy.I have always associated enlightenment with levity, if not ecstasy – although is seems that Krishnamurti didn't extract much enjoyment from his enlightenment.Was Basho enlightened?Maneesha, every enlightened being expresses himself in his own unique way. Basho certainly seems to be a little melancholy, but his sadness is not your sadness. Your sadness is a repressed anger. You may not have thought about it. You become sad in a situation where you cannot express your anger.For example, a husband and wife sitting together are always sad for the simple reason that they are angry at each other. The wife thinks, “What kind of idiot have I got?” And the man is thinking, “How to escape from here? Some excuse…”Anger suppressed becomes sadness, but this is not the sadness of Basho. Basho is sad, certainly, and his sadness also has a beauty. Your sadness is ugly. His sadness is about the whole world, it has nothing to do with himself. It is the sadness of a man who knows how easy and how close your buddhahood is – and you are running here and there unnecessarily. The whole world is fighting, violent, angry…All this energy can transform their being into buddhas.Basho’s sadness is out of his compassion, it has nothing to do with anger. But your observation that he seems to be a little sad in his haikus is right. He has to be. He is sad for you. He is sad for all of humanity. He is sad for all those who will follow him, because he knows the truth. It is so close – just within your grasp – and still you don’t raise your hand. That makes him sad. His sadness has a beauty and a splendor.As far as Krishnamurti, he was sad out of anger. But again it was a different anger from your anger. Things are so subtle…. He was angry as to why people could not understand him. He is so clear, so rational, why can people not understand him? He used to beat his head in front of assemblies saying, “You have been listening to me for forty years, fifty years, and I look at your faces and I feel immensely sad.”He suffered for almost fifty years with migraine, with so deep migraines that he has written in his dairies that sometimes he wanted to hit his head against the walls. The migraine had nothing to do with his physiology, it was because he was talking to people, giving interviews, private interviews from morning until night, and nobody was showing the light in their eyes that they had understood him.You cannot blame him for his anger – although that is a very special case. As I have told you, every enlightened person encounters the world in his own unique way. Krishnamurti lived long – ninety years – and even at the last moment, he was angry. At the last moment he said, “I have wasted my whole life running around the world telling people, and they thought that it was an entertainment. I was talking about enlightenment, and they used to gather as if it was a circus.”His anger is out of his compassion, but it is a very strange kind of conversion of compassion. He was so insistent that you should understand what he was saying, and this made him angry.He was against sannyasins, he was against me. He wanted to see me, and sent a message to me. We both were in Bombay.I said, “I don’t think there is any point. I am in absolute disagreement with him, and he is in absolute disagreement with me, so why unnecessarily waste my time and make him angry? He may hit his head on the wall, and unnecessarily I will be blamed for it.”But I used to send my sannyasins to sit in the front row in orange clothes with malas. That was enough! He would come, and as he would look around, he would completely forget what the subject matter was that he was going to talk about. He would immediately start talking against me, and become so angry, saying, “I cannot understand why these sannyasins are sitting in front of me. I am against these robes, I am against sannyas.”And I told my people that when he becomes angry, laugh, don’t bother. That makes him more angry. And my sannyasins were all over the world, wherever he was speaking.My own understanding is, that it was somewhat of a perversion of compassion. You should not be so insistent; you should make available whatever you have. If somebody chooses it, it is his freedom; if somebody does not, it is his freedom. You cannot impose your ideas upon others.Even though the ideas were about freedom, the difficulty was that he was talking about freedom, but he wanted you to agree with his ideas about freedom. He could not see that even this is forcing slavery, a psychological slavery, on people.You can simply share your vision of freedom, and that’s all. It is up to the people. If something rings a bell in their hearts, good; if nothing rings into their hearts, what can you do? You cannot force somebody to freedom. And what kind of freedom will it be, which is forced? – that you are free, under machine guns!You can simply give the idea, and forget all about it. And as far as I am concerned, I consider enlightenment the greatest entertainment. Only the enlightened person can really entertain, enjoy, laugh. What can miserable people do about it?I refused to meet him for the simple reason that I did not want him to be unnecessarily angry. He was sick, old, and he knew as well as I knew, that there is no way to come to an agreement.I am a complete discontinuity with the past idea of entertainment, or the past idea of enlightenment. Krishnamurti was still a very old type, stubborn, and always thought that what he is saying is the only truth. There are many aspects to truth. There are many ways to present it. And all that a man of truth needs is to share his vision lovingly, peacefully, with absolute freedom for anybody who wants to join in his exploration of reality. If somebody does not want to join, it is not right to be angry. Your anger shows that you were expecting that he should join.If you don’t understand me, nothing is wrong. It is your freedom not to understand. I never take note of it whether you understand me or not. I go on, on my way. If somebody likes to be with me, a fellow traveler, as long as it is good…And if he wants to depart at a certain point, it is perfectly his freedom.But my approach and Krishnamurti’s approach are bound to be different, because I had no master in my life. That has given me a totally different space to work from. Because I have never been under a master, I can give you total freedom. I have enjoyed total freedom myself. I have never listened to anybody, I have just lived the way I wanted. And that is my message to you: live the way you want. I can share my understanding with you – you can choose. There is no need for me to be angry.Krishnamurti was forced to become enlightened. For twenty-five years the Theosophical Movement, particularly the president, Annie Besant and one of the spokesmen, Leadbeater, kept him almost imprisoned. He was not allowed to meet ordinary people. Their idea was to present suddenly to the world a world teacher. So they were preparing the ground for a world teacher to come, who would save the whole of mankind. They were spreading books, literature, that “soon the world teacher is to appear.”They were hiding Krishnamurti and five other children – because who knows who will be right at the right time? Four were rejected, one died, and Krishnamurti was chosen to be a world teacher, but he was completely trained for it. Even books were written in his name by Leadbeater. A great book, At The Feet Of The Master, is supposed to have been written by him when he was thirteen years of age – and he himself does not remember! Later on when asked, “Have you written this book?” He said, “I don’t remember.” The reality is, he never wrote that book. That book – and I have looked deeply into Leadbeater’s other books – is in the same style. It is the same man, Leadbeater, who has written that book in the name of J. Krishnamurti. It is to prove to the world that it is not an ordinary human being, but a divine incarnation – that at the age of thirteen he was writing such a great book.The book is certainly great, and Leadbeater was a very articulate writer and well-studied man. He chose J. Krishnamurti and his brother Nityananda just when Krishnamurti was nine years old.Those two boys were playing in the river, near Adyar in Madras, where the headquarters of the Theosophical Movement was. Leadbeater saw those two boys swimming and enjoying in the river, throwing water at each other. And he was certainly a very perceptive man – he could see that something great was possible with these two boys. He found three other boys. They all became great in their own fields.Nityananda died because of too much discipline. He was a very fragile person. They had to wake up at three o’clock, to go through all kinds of rituals, to listen to scriptures, to eat only certain things…One of the great difficulties with Leadbeater was, he was a homosexual. And he abused every child, including J. Krishnamurti. There was a case against Leadbeater in Madras High Court. When the father of these two children – he was a poor man, a poor clerk whose wife had died and so he was in trouble about how to manage these two boys and his office…So when Leadbeater proposed the idea that Annie Besant could adopt them, the father was very happy. Annie Besant was a world-famous woman.He gave the adoption to Annie Besant, but it was discovered by many people that those small children had been sexually abused by Leadbeater. So the man appealed to the high court: “I want my children to be returned me. They are being homosexually abused by Leadbeater.”To avoid the situation, the judge was ready to return the children because there were witnesses of this abuse. Annie Besant, being a very famous British woman, managed to smuggle all those children to England before the court orders were passed. This was easy for her because India was under British rule, and Annie Besant was a powerful woman. So she managed to take the children out of the country.Then when the magistrate’s orders were issued, saying that the children should be returned, the children were not there.She did not put those children, J. Krishnamurti included, into any state school. This was such a guarded phenomenon – in a public school he may have started smoking, he may have started behaving like ordinary students. He was kept almost a prisoner. Private tutors were teaching him, and all kinds of nonsense – religious, scriptural – was forced upon him.All this created a situation in which he revolted.A day was appointed when they were going to declare him as a world teacher, enlightened. In Holland six thousand representatives of the Theosophical Movement gathered from all over the world. And at the last moment, when he was going to declare it, he stood up and said, “I am not a world teacher and I refuse to be the head of any organization.”A special organization, The Star of the East, was created for him, which would work for the world teacher. It was a section of the Theosophical Movement.He carried those wounds his whole life. Those twenty-five years he could not forgive his teachers. It is a very strange case, and a tragic case.So when he was speaking he was not free from his past experiences, he was still fighting against those teachers who had forced him. I don’t think that he was really enlightened. He had the capacity and the intelligence to become enlightened, and he was very close to enlightenment. The only barrier was his hatred, anger, about his masters and their behavior with him. That anger continued as an undercurrent.I love the man. He has contributed great insights to the world, but he himself remained just close to enlightenment. He was not a Gautam Buddha, or a Ma Tzu, or a Hyakujo. I feel sad to say it, because I love him. His insights are very clear, but something was pulling him back, he could not open up in full flower. Something remained hanging around him, around his psychology. He was not a man of absolute freedom, although he talked about it.He was a sincere man, otherwise he would not have refused to be the world teacher. He knew that he was not enlightened and that it would be insincere, dishonest, to declare himself as the world teacher. I love his honesty, but that does not mean I have to say that he was enlightened. Perhaps next life – this life he missed, and he missed because of his teachers.Now, it is Anando time….Loony Larry is wobbling home from the pub along the railway tracks. It is a full moon night, and Larry is well plastered with rum.All of a sudden, he trips over a human leg lying on the tracks. He picks himself up, rubs his eyes in disbelief, and staggers on.A few minutes later, he stumbles over another leg lying on the tracks. Next, he comes across an arm. By now, Loony Larry has become really interested, and when he sees a body, he stops to have a good look at it.Walking around the body, he scratches his chin, and mumbles to himself, “That coat looks rather familiar! I wonder if it is…” But just then, he steps backwards and falls over a head.He stares in drunken shock at the head, recognizing the face of his friend, Harry. Then, Larry sees an ear lying on the ground a few feet away. He crawls over to the ear, picks it up, and shouts into it, “Harry! Harry! Are you all right?”Father Fumble is giving confession one day, when Seamus comes in and tells him that he has been having an affair.“I see,” says Fumble, “but I cannot bless you until you tell me the woman’s name.”“Okay, Father,” replies Seamus. “She’s the most gorgeous blonde you have ever seen – and her name is Pussy Green.”The next Sunday, Father Fumble is getting ready for mass when a stunning blonde in a tiny skirt wiggles down the aisle to the front seats.Father Fumble fumbles for his glasses, slips them on, and takes a good look at her.“Is that Pussy Green?” he whispers to little Albert, the choir boy.Albert looks hard this way and that.“No, Father,” he replies, “I think it is just the reflection from the stained-glass windows.”Pope the Polack arrives at New Delhi airport, on the first leg of his ten-million-dollar Catholic mission to the East.The Polack steps off the plane and immediately falls to his knees weeping, and then kisses the runway.Cardinal Singh, the head of the Indian Catholic church, rushes up to the Polack pope and helps him to his feet.“My goodness, Holy Father!” cries the cardinal. “Why did you do that?”“Well,” says the Polack, wiping his lips, and drying his eyes. “Have you ever flown Air India?”I have been calling Nivedano’s drums, Anando, up to now, to hit her so deep that she goes through the breakthrough. She has gone through it, and it is a joyous and blissful evening for every of you. For this series the drum will still be called Anando, but for other reasons – to welcome her home.Anando…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen. Look inward with great urgency, as if this moment is the last moment of your life. Only with great urgency can you reach to your buddhahood. It is not far away.Just gather all your consciousness into an arrow. It is an unknown path for you – but go ahead! There is no fear.Nobody is ever harmed by reaching to the life source.Deeper and deeper…at the center of your being is the unmoving center of the whole existence. To be it, is to have found the treasure house of all the mysteries and miracles.Just look, without any evaluation, without any judgment.Be a mirror – only reflecting.A witness – just a witness with no idea, no opinion.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Watch, witness. Your body is not you; your mind is not you.You are just a pure witness. This is your buddhahood.The evening was beautiful on its own, but your experience of witnessing has made it tremendously beautiful. Rejoice in the experience, because you have to live it out twenty-four hours of the clock.The experience of being a buddha is not something for a few moments, or a few hours, it is for your whole life. And unless it is for your whole life – all your actions, all your gestures – it is of no worth.You have to become a buddha. It is only a recognition, nothing has to be done. You are already a perfect buddha. Just recognize it, and rejoice in recognizing it. Let it become an undercurrent in all your actions, responses, gestures, waking, sleeping. Let the undercurrent become more and more deep.At this moment, there are not ten thousand buddhas, but only one oceanic buddhahood. You have all merged into a tremendous experience.Collect as many flowers as possible, as much fragrance as possible. Soon you will be coming back from your life source to the circumference. Bring something from your treasure house with you. Don’t come back as you have gone in – come transformed.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, slowly, silently, gracefully, and sit down for few moments, just to recollect the experience.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,One day when Hyakujo was to give his daily discourses to his disciples, he began by saying, “I am no Zen adept. I have not a single thing to offer anyone, so I must not keep you standing here. Go and take a rest.”On another occasion, a group of dharma masters sought an interview and said: “We have some questions to ask. Are you prepared to answer them, master?”Hyakujo replied, “Yes. The moon is reflected in that deep pond; catch it if you like.”The group continued, “What is the buddha really like?”“If that which is facing the limpid pond is not the buddha, what is it?” said Hyakujo.The monks were puzzled by this reply, and after a short while inquired again: “Master, what dharma do you expound in order to liberate others?”Hyakujo responded, “This poor monk has no dharma by which to liberate others.”They exclaimed, “All Zen masters are of the same stuff!”At this, Hyakujo asked them, “What dharmas do you virtuous ones expound for liberating others?”The monks replied, “Oh, we expound the Diamond Sutra.”Hyakujo asked, “How many times have you expounded it?”“More than twenty times,” they answered.Hyakujo continued, “By whom was it spoken?”To this the monks answered indignantly: “Master, you must be joking! Of course you know that it was spoken by the Buddha.”Hyakujo said: “Well, that sutra states: ‘If someone says the Tathagata expounds the dharma, he thereby slanders the Buddha! Such a man will never understand what I mean.’”Hyakujo continued, “Now, if you say that it was not expounded by the Buddha, you will thereby belittle that sutra. Will you virtuous ones please let me see what you have to say to that?”As they made no reply, the master paused awhile before asking his next question, which was: “The diamond sutra says: ‘He who seeks me through outward appearance, or seeks me in sound, treads the heterodox path and cannot perceive the Tathagata.’“Tell me, virtuous one,” said Hyakujo, “who or what is the Tathagata?”One monk replied, “Sir, at this point I find myself utterly deluded.”Hyakujo said: “Having never been illumined, how can you say that you are now deluded?”Then the monk asked, “Will the venerable Zen master expound the dharma to us?”Hyakujo replied, “Though you have expounded the Diamond Sutra over twenty times, you still do not know the Tathagata!”Maneesha, before I discuss the sutras placed before me, I have to introduce a new animal god to Avirbhava’s museum of gods. This god is the fish.Fish have always been associated with all aspects of a mother goddess and with all lunar deities.Although sacred fish are not uncommon, a fish god seems to be a somewhat rare phenomenon. Dagon, the chief god of the ancient Philistines and later the Phoenicians, is represented as half man and half fish. Dagon’s worshippers wore fish skins.There were sacred fish in the temples of Apollo and Aphrodite in Ancient Greece. Xenophon, the Greek historian who was a pupil and friend of Socrates, records that fish were regarded as gods.In Peru sardines are said to have been worshipped in one region, the fish known as skate in another region, and the dogfish in another.In the Christian church, the fish, even today, represents Christ.One of the most prominent roles of the fish, in all mythologies, is that of restorer of life and savior of mankind. The Buddhists call their founder Dag-Po or “Great Fish”; Hebrews designate the same name for the coming Messiah in the Talmud.In India, the fish savior, Matsya, an incarnation of Vishnu, led Manu to safety in the Great Flood, thus saving mankind as well.Avirbhava’s museum of gods represents to you that man has always been humiliated. His dignity in many ways has been destroyed. It was a well-organized conspiracy against humanity. To teach people to worship animals is simply so irrational. But yet, almost all the animals around the world have been worshipped as gods and nobody seems to have objected. People have been put in such great psychological slavery that they have forgotten even to question, to doubt. They have simply accepted whatever conditioning has been given to them in their childhood.Unless you are free from all such stupid conditionings, you won’t be able to recognize the God within you. If you are searching for gods in fishes, in horses, in pigs, how are you going to search for the god within yourself? And that is the only place where you can find the ultimate consciousness. These poor animals are still growing towards that consciousness. They contain the same consciousness, but it is far more deeply asleep.Making man – who is the only conscious animal in the universe – worship far more sleepy animals, is a very dangerous strategy. It means making sleepiness virtually far more superior to awareness. Animals should be loved, should be respected, because somewhere at some time they will also reach to the same consciousness as you. There is a constant evolution going on – but worshipping the animal is dangerous.Loving the animal is absolutely human. Loving the animal shows that you can see the future of these animals’ evolution. Some day they may come to the same point where we are, and some day they may come to the same height as any buddha. Regarding their future, you can be loving and respectful towards them.But the strange phenomenon of worshipping animals means you are lower than the animals. And the thing becomes even more weird. You worship the animals – and you kill them for your food. On the one hand they are gods, and on the other hand game.When a man kills a lion, they call it a game. And when a lion kills a man, they call it a disaster. Why do you change the word? In a game both the parties should be respected equally. For thousand of years man has been hunting without even bothering that he is destroying life. We are part of that same life. It is almost like destroying one’s own hand or one’s own eyes. Those animals are part of the cosmic whole just as we are. But the blindness of man can do both the things together. He can’t see the so obvious contradiction that the worshipped cannot be hunted. And if you are hunting, you know perfectly well, your worship is just phony.Do you think even for a moment that you can go hunting for God? Searching for God is okay, but hunting for God? I have never heard that expression before. But that’s what you have been doing. First you make these animals gods and then you go hunting them. And you don’t see the contradiction. Your consciousness is also very superficial.This museum of gods will provoke great criticism around the world. So many cases are bound to be forced on me, but I love to fight for unpopular causes. Who cares about animals? Who bothers that much to go to the court and to fight for them? I am not only fighting for the animals that they should not be worshipped, but that they should be respected and loved. They are our common brothers and sisters. We share the same existence. We should give them the dignity that belongs to them. And we should not destroy our dignity. But the priests want us not to be dignified. They want us to be as undignified and as great sinners as possible, because that makes them saints, and that makes them mediators between God and you.The fish in the Hindu mythology is the first reincarnation of God. Why does God go on choosing such reincarnations? – and nobody ever thinks about these incarnations. Each incarnation has committed so many crimes that it is out of the question to worship them. They should simply be listed on the criminal records.You cannot believe…One Hindu god, Parasuram…His name became Parasuram because parasu is a special kind of sword, very heavy. In a single blow it takes away the head. Parasuram carried this sword continuously. He killed as many people single-handedly as perhaps anybody has killed. He killed his own mother because of an old suspicious father. The father was suspicious that the mother was having some love affair, and of course, when the father orders…Obedience has been proclaimed a fundamental virtue by all religions. The father ordered Parasuram, “Go immediately and cut the head of that woman.” And it was only a suspicion, no evidence, no witness. It may have been just an idea in his mind. And my feeling is, it was just his mind because he was getting very old, and his wife was very young compared to him.Old people who become inadequate start becoming suspicious about everything. But Parasuram did not even ask, “Let us first investigate the case.” Just because he did not ask the question, but immediately went and cut the mother’s head and brought it to the father’s feet, he is recognized as God’s incarnation – for his great obedience.That was the beginning of his great journey of violence. He was a brahmin, and the suspicion was that the mother was having an affair with a warrior, a kshatriya. Not knowing who the man was, he decided to destroy all the warriors on the earth. Such a strange violent mind: because he does not know who is the right person to be killed, he kills the whole category, millions of warriors, single-handedly. He was a great warrior, there is no question about it.And this happened many times, because there was in those days a very strange tradition in India that Indians themselves never look back. Perhaps they were afraid they may come across something ugly; there is so much ugliness.He killed all the kshatriyas, but he did not kill the women because it was not a question of women. The issue was that some man was having an affair with his mother. So the women were left as widows all over the country. The tradition was that any woman can go to a seer, a saint, ask him to give her a child and the saint cannot refuse. Great saints and great religions! So all these widows went to saints; in fact they had to stand in queue because there were not so many saints as had been created widows by Parasuram. But they all became pregnant by some saint. Perhaps they may have invented saints just to become pregnant.Again young boys started growing and again Parasuram went on another round, killing the small boys. He was determined that he would not leave a single warrior in the world. His world was confined fortunately to India only. Sixteen times he killed the warriors. But this country was full of saints – they were really a kind of bull. Just one bull can manage to make many cows pregnant. You don’t have to have many bulls for many cows. They don’t believe in monogamy – one cow, one bull. One bull is enough for the whole village. Just one saint was also enough. So although Parasuram killed sixteen times, the warriors still continued. He could not delete them from existence.My problem is that Hindus still go on believing that he is an incarnation of God. If these people are an incarnation of God, then who are the criminals? Either animals or criminals, they have chosen strange people…The fish is the first and the horse is the last. The horse has not come yet. That is the last incarnation of God which will end this age, this civilization. So most probably within twelve years you will see a white horse trotting around killing sinners, saving saints.I have been going through all the Hindu puranas and not a single purana even mentions this: that you are giving too much responsibility to a horse – he will judge.All these are ways of taking dignity from man. Before you can make a man a Christian or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, you have to take away his dignity.My effort here is to take away everything that hinders your dignity to grow to its ultimate heights. I want you to be freed from all these gods they are your slavery, all these religions and all these scriptures, they are your slavery. I want you to live in a silent and peaceful freedom of being, in tune with existence, with joy and blissfulness, with gratitude and ecstasy.There is no question of worship at all and there is no question of any gods’ incarnation. In the first place the god does not exist himself. How can he have incarnations? It is just so obviously foolish. Hindus had ten incarnations before Mahavira. Their scriptures before Mahavira mention only ten incarnations, because of the ten fingers – to count more than that was a difficult job. And Hinduism is the most ancient religion. Religion came first; mathematics came centuries later, so ten was the only ultimate number.But Mahavira, just to make the Hindus feel inferior, dropped the idea of ten. Jainism believes in twenty-four tirthankaras. They are equal to incarnations of God. Twenty-four…? – because there are twenty-four hours in the day. Exactly like that there are twenty-four periods of one age – for one period, one incarnation. And so they arrived at the idea of twenty-four.Buddha was the founder of his own religion. He was in a difficulty. So he managed this idea of twenty-four previous lives, just not to be inferior in any sense to Mahavira. Hindus immediately changed their number. After Mahavira all Hindu scriptures talk about twenty-four reincarnations. What happened to the ten incarnations suddenly? God changed his mind? It was a question of comparison. Jainas have twenty-four tirthankaras, buddhas have twenty-four incarnations of Buddha. Hindus looked so poor, with just ten incarnations of God, and so they immediately raised the number. It is just imagination, so you can play with it the way you want. After Buddha and Mahavira all scriptures completely forgot about ten incarnations.I mention this point to show you that it is all imagination. How did ten become twenty-four? It was just because it looked inferior in the marketplace. Everybody has twenty-four and you have only ten. Such a poor god! And because it is all imagination, it is very easy to make it twenty-four. Now all the three religions have twenty-four. Buddha closed his door. He is the last buddha in the line of twenty-four buddhas. Mahavira closed the door. He is the last tirthankara in the line of twenty-four tirthankaras. Hindus had to keep at least one reincarnation still in the future because of their mythology.Their mythology is that God has three heads. The first head is Brahma, who creates the world; the second head is Vishnu, who maintains the world; the third head is Shiva who destroys the world. It is perfect mathematics. And because the world is still there, there has to be one incarnation left to end it. And perhaps in the coming twenty years of this century, whether Kalki comes or not, the world is going down. Between the fish and Kalki lies our whole history.I would like Avirbhava to bring her fish god….(From the right entrance of the podium, two very ornate fish come swimming in. Meanwhile, a huge gray dolphin glides down from the pagoda roof of the podium and wriggles in a very fishy dance in front of Osho. Fish, dolphin, music, laughter… All dive, soar and leap in one explosion of pure joy.)An introductory note for the sutras:Hyakujo was known for his simple words, but he had a thorough knowledge of Buddhism. He was clever and gentle at the same time; there was nothing ostentatious about him.Many disciples began to gather around him, and endless discussions took place with questions and answers following one upon another. Among the most famous of his disciples were Isan and Obaku.The sutra:One day when Hyakujo was to give his daily discourses to his disciples, he began by saying, “I am no Zen adept. I have not a single thing to offer anyone, so I must not keep you standing here. Go and take a rest.”A very strange statement to the disciples who were waiting for his morning sermon, but it has tremendous meaning. First he says, I am no Zen adept…I am no Zen master – meaning that I am no more, so how I can be a Zen master. I am lost into the oceanic consciousness, so how can I claim to be still separate from existence?I am not a Zen adept simply means I have dissolved myself into the existence. I have not kept my identity and my separation. I am no more, only existence is. Secondly: I have not a single thing to offer anyone, so I must not keep you standing here. This is something every master will concede to. The master has nothing to give to the disciple; on the contrary, he has to take much from the disciple. I cannot give you anything, I can only take away your false notions, shadows, your illusions, your personalities and leave behind only that which is authentically yours, purely existential, not borrowed from society. So it can be said that a master takes away everything, leaving only that which cannot be taken away – but he gives nothing. Anything given will again be a borrowed thing.Hyakujo, in a simple statement, made a great point: I have not a single thing to offer anyone, so I must not keep you standing here. Go and take a rest. But in Hyakujo’s system of working, rest was meditation. In fact, if you are not in complete rest, you are not in meditation. Meditation and rest are equivalent. But it was only Hyakujo who used the word rest, that whatever has to be found, has to be found in your rest. Just drop all thoughts, all emotions, all sentiments, all identities. Lie down and witness.This was the meaning in his system of thought of the word rest. If you have come to rest, you are one with existence; there is nothing to separate you. In a simple statement he has given his whole philosophy.On another occasion, a group of dharma masters sought an interview and said: “We have some questions to ask. Are you prepared to answer them, master?”Dharma masters are teachers of religion. In those old days in China and Japan these dharma masters, these teachers used to go around the country teaching people, because the people did not know language, they could not read; language was a very recent invention. And you will be surprised that in the whole world, in the beginning, language was always pictorial, because a child can only understand pictures. That’s why in children’s books you will find big pictures, colored pictures. And by pictures you can teach them that this is a horse, this is a fish…Through pictures you can bring alphabets.In China, in Japan, in the whole Far East, language has not yet moved from the pictorial to the alphabetical. The alphabet began everywhere as pictorial, and then finally, it was found that a pictorial language is a very cumbersome – an unnecessary wastage of time and does not give exact meanings. One picture can be used to mean many things, but because it became an art, calligraphy, people became addicted to calligraphy. Calligraphy is beautiful, but alphabetical languages cannot use calligraphy.So because of calligraphy, the Far East countries remained pictorial. But for anyone who is not born a Chinese or a Japanese, it is very difficult to learn. It takes many years because you have to learn thousands of pictures before you can read even an ordinary newspaper.One of my friends has sent me a picture from Korea. Just a line, and then another line making a cross…. and two dots underneath the first line, the cross. And he said, this means that in one house two women is a crucifixion – that cross; in one house two women is enough – a war, a constant war. But if you have to remember these kinds of pictures, it is going to take years. The alphabet makes it easier. The more modern alphabets have fewer characters; for example, Sanskrit has fifty-two, English has only twenty-six. Everything non-essential has been taken out, so that the thing becomes easier and simpler, direct and clear-cut, giving only one meaning. Old languages, whether pictorial or alphabetical, have a beauty. That beauty is that each word can be used in many ways, with many meanings. It gives great freedom to the poet.For example in Sanskrit the word go means cow, and it also means the ray of the sun; it has twelve meanings in all. The English word go is exactly the Sanskrit word that has entered into English. Why has it taken the meaning of going in English? In Sanskrit it also had the meaning of going, because the cow goes every morning to the field, then goes back home every evening. And in those days the cow was so important for nourishment, for agriculture, that its coming and going became the meaning of the word go.Thirty percent of the words in English are from Sanskrit, but moving from Sanskrit to English, they have become fixed. Now go in English exactly means one word, has one meaning. In Sanskrit it still means twelve words, has twelve meanings. The poet has more freedom with the old languages.Science cannot afford old languages. It needs a very definite meaning, not just a vague idea that can be translated in many ways. This word rest is used strangely by Hyakujo to mean meditation, but very rightly. To be completely at rest, you are no more. If you are, then the rest is not complete. He has given a totally new connotation to the word rest. Just think of it. If you are absolutely at rest, then where are you? Your being can only be separate from existence if it is restless. So he is saying to his disciples: Go and take a rest. Don’t wait for me, I cannot give you anything, I don’t have anything to give to you. And don’t think about me as a Zen master. I am no more. I have allowed myself to be dissolved into the ultimate reality.On another occasion a group of dharma masters sought an interview and said: “We have some questions to ask. Are you prepared to answer them, master?”Hyakujo replied, “Yes. The moon is reflected in that deep pond; catch it if you like.”He said, “Whatever I say will be as far away from truth as is the reflection of the moon from the moon itself. I am ready to answer your questions. But remember, you will have to understand, all my answers are as far away from truth as the reflection of the moon in the deep pond is far away from the real moon. My words are only reflections. Don’t cling to them as if they are the very truth.”The group continued, “What is the buddha really like?”“If that which is facing the limpid pond is not the buddha, what is it?” said Hyakujo.Hyakujo said – they were all looking at the limpid pond for the reflection of the moon – “If those who are looking at the reflection of the moon in the limpid pond, if they are not buddhas, then who can be buddhas? You are witnessing. Just move from the object to the subject – who is looking at the reflection? Or in other words, who is asking the question? If it is not buddha, what is it? This witnessing, this watching, if it is not buddha, then what is it?” said Hyakujo.The monks were puzzled…Everybody will be puzzled if you say that you are a buddha. Just try it on any stranger, “Wait! I think you are a buddha,” and see the response. He will simply freak out, “Are you mad or something? Are you mad or something?” But you are saying the truth. You are revealing his own reality to him.When I call you the buddhas, it is not a metaphor. I really mean it – and you have to drop your suspicions about yourself. You cannot accept the idea of being a buddha, because you know that you smoke cigarettes. Now poor Hasya is trying to drop cigarettes. I have informed her not to drop it because there is no need to go into unnecessary trouble. She was even taking medication to try and overcome the withdrawal symptoms.In my buddhafield just smoking cigarettes cannot disturb your buddha nature. If such a small thing disturbs the buddha nature, it is of no worth. Just think about it…such small things. And these are the things which make you think, “How can I be a buddha?” Your reasons for not being a buddha are simply mediocre: because you have a wife, or because you have a girlfriend…A buddha with a girlfriend is simply inconceivable.Sri Lanka’s ambassador to America wrote to me in a letter, “You should tell your sannyasins to stop calling their discos Zorba The Buddha, because it is very insulting to the Buddhists. And if your sannyasins open such restaurants or discos in Sri Lanka, they will be burned and there will be riots. So I want to warn you.”I wrote him a really nice letter. I told him that if Zorba cannot be the buddha, then nobody can be the buddha. Everybody has to begin from the Zorba. Zorba is the beginning. Buddha is the end. These, my people, who are calling their discos Zorba The Buddha, are saying “We are starting with Zorba, hoping to end up as buddhas.” And I told him, “Remember that Buddha is not the monopoly of the Buddhists. The word buddha simply means the awakened one. It can happen in any religion, to any community, you don’t have the monopoly. And if you want to see buddhas, before going back to Sri Lanka, come to our commune and you will find everywhere buddhas and buddhas…We don’t have any other kind, just one kind, and you will never find such juicy buddhas anywhere – with their girlfriends, smoking cigarettes, going to the disco, having all the fun that existence allows you. Just sitting under a tree with a sad face wondering, ‘What am I doing sitting here? The whole world is enjoying all kinds of things and it is a strange destiny that I am just sitting under the tree all the time.’” He never answered my letter, and he never again wrote.A buddha is not something separate from you, it is your intrinsic being. It is your most essential being. Everything else may have gathered all around it. Much junk has gathered around it, but that does not matter. It does not make any difference to the pure gold of your buddha. It may fall into the dust, it may be covered in mud, but it remains twenty-four carat gold. You are covered with a body, covered with a mind, but that does not make any difference.You are the buddha, but the Buddhist traditional mind will not even accept an umbrella in Buddha’s hand. Even while it is raining, the poor fellow has to sit without an umbrella. Who has ever heard of Buddha having an umbrella? But my approach to the buddha is closer to the approach of Zen, not the Ceylonese or the Burmese Buddhism. The Burmese, the Ceylonese and the Tibetans are more Hinduized. The people who took Buddhism to Burma were traditional orthodox people. And the woman emperor, Ashoka’s daughter, Sanghamitra, who took Buddhism to Ceylon was as orthodox as her father. From its very beginnings Tibetan Buddhism has remained attached to Indian Buddhism.Zen has a speciality; in fact, it should not be called Buddhism. Although it is the very essential message of Buddha, it originated with Mahakashyapa’s laughter. Zen considers Mahakashyapa to be their founder, not Buddha. Buddha is Mahakashyapa’s master, and that is their business.Zen considers Mahakashyapa to be its originator. And Bodhidharma was a disciple of the line that followed Mahakashyapa. That line became a little alienated from the orthodox line because very individual people, freedom lovers joined Zen – all kinds of eccentrics, geniuses, not mediocre fellows who just go to the temple to read the sutras and say the prayers. That is being done by every other religion. Their scriptures may be different, their prayers may be different, their temples may be different, but essentially they are all doing the same thing.Zen has broken new ground. Mahakashyapa did the first thing: he laughed. Buddha never laughed in his life. With his laughter starts a new stream of more joy, of more rejoicing, of more dancing, of more human beings. And when Bodhidharma took Zen to China, it took another turn. It became more eccentric, because Bodhidharma was far more eccentric than Mahakashyapa. He was the strangest fellow, but always to the point. He looked strange. You could not understand him. He was not part of the common crowd.So first, Bodhidharma made it a very special dispensation and then it met with Taoist mystics. This is one of the greatest meetings of two religions where there was no conflict. They simply understood each other’s silence – not even a debate. They looked into each other’s eyes and knew that they were both in the same space.So Zen is a by-product of the meeting of Buddhism and Taoism. It has a different character from both, it is a crossbreed: something of Tao that is essential, and something of Buddha that is essential has created a new phenomenon, Zen. And when it reached China, it took a few centuries to be clear that it was no longer the orthodox Buddhism and no longer the orthodox Taoism, it was something new. Out of the meeting of those two came a strange flower, and this flower has been carried to Japan, where it blossomed to its ultimate peak.The monks were puzzled by this reply, and after a short while inquired again: “Master, what dharma do you expound in order to liberate others?”Surely adequate questions but not in the context of Zen.Hyakujo responded, “This poor monk has no dharma by which to liberate others.”You should have to understand the beauty of these words. This poor monk…does not mean simply that he has no possessions. He is saying, “I am so poor, that even I am not. My poverty is not ordinary poverty. I have lost myself in the cosmos. I am no more.”This poor monk…how can he have any dharma, any teaching by which to liberate others? It is difficult on the surface to understand Zen. But just a more deeper insight into it, and it blossoms into beautiful flowers. The “poor monk” means one who has become part of the universe. He has become so much part of the universe that he himself is the dharma. He cannot have dharma. He cannot have dharma as an object. His very soul radiates the truth, he cannot have it. Because he is no more, only truth radiates in utter silence, in utter nothingness. And the idea of liberating others is absolutely stupid. You cannot liberate anyone. You can liberate only yourself.They exclaimed, “All Zen masters are of the same stuff!”Disappointed they could not understand what this fellow was talking about. They said all Zen masters are of the same stuff; they are all strange fellows. You ask something and they will answer something so far-fetched, that you could have never imagined before.At this, Hyakujo asked them, “What dharmas do you virtuous ones expound for liberating others?”The monks replied, “Oh, we expound the Diamond Sutra.”This is one of the most beautiful sutras of Buddha.Hyakujo asked, “How many times have you expounded it?”It is a very big voluminous scripture. It takes years to finish one reading. Read the sutra, explain it, explain the commentaries made upon it and sometimes commentaries upon commentaries. The Diamond Sutra has in itself a whole library. It itself is a very long scripture. Then there are commentaries, but the commentaries are also so difficult that more commentaries are needed. Sometimes you will find a fifth or sixth commentary, and if you are really teaching, you have to take account of all the commentaries and make your point. Perhaps that may be a new commentary.They answered, “More than twenty times.”Hyakujo continued, “By whom was it spoken?” To this the monks answered indignantly…– obviously angry because they know that Hyakujo at least must know, that The Diamond Sutra was spoken by Gautam Buddha.To this the monks answered indignantly: “Master, you must be joking! Of course you know that it was spoken by the Buddha.” Hyakujo said: “Well, that sutra states…”In The Diamond Sutra itself there are statements which will be very difficult for teachers to understand or make others understand.Hyakujo said: “Well, that sutra states: ‘If someone says the Tathagata expounds the dharma, he thereby slanders the Buddha!’”Tathagata is another name for Buddha, very significant, very meaningful. It comes from the root tathata, suchness, thusness, thisness – always this moment, from everywhere pointing suchness, thisness. Because Buddha devoted his whole life to the present moment, people started calling him Tathagata, the man who teaches tathata.If someone says that the Buddha expounds the dharma, he thereby slanders the Buddha – a very strange statement, but very beautiful and very meaningful. He is saying, that there is no way to expound the truth. You can only make statements pointing to the truth but those statements don’t contain the truth. Just like the finger pointing to the moon, the finger does not contain the moon.So Buddha says that if anybody says that Buddha expounds the dharma, he thereby slanders the Buddha and you, those dharma masters were doing the same thing – teaching, expounding. And even they are saying that Buddha has expounded the truth of The Diamond Sutra. Hyakujo says that such a man will never understand what I mean.It is something like…Lao Tzu wrote a small treatise under compulsion. His first statement makes it clear. He says “Truth cannot be said. And that which can be said, can never be true. Now whatever I say, remember my first statement.” You cannot say the truth. You can only make certain indications, hints, at the most.Hyakujo continued, “Now, if you say that it was not expounded by the Buddha, you will thereby belittle that sutra. Will you virtuous ones please let me see what you have to say to that?”As they made no reply, the master paused awhile before asking his next question, which was: “The diamond sutra says: ‘He who seeks me through outward appearance, or seeks me in sound, treads the heterodox path and cannot perceive the Tathagata.’”“Heterodox” means the path of the people who do not understand Buddha, who go against Buddha. Anybody who says and tries to find, in the Diamond Sutra, the truth, is just like the Heterodox, the opponents – and there were many opponents. India has seen a very strange time. Just in that small state of Bihar – from there Maitreya has come. There were eight teachers in the time of Buddha who all claimed enlightenment, and they all differed on every point. And I have been reading all those people, and my understanding is they were all enlightened. Strange time: in a small state, eight enlightened people continuously moving around and around in the state, teaching conflicting views. But they were all very beautiful people.Six of them have completely been forgotten. Only Buddha and Mahavira have remained in the memories of man. The other six were more eccentric, more intelligent. And they have been forgotten for the simple reason they never made anybody a follower, who was going to carry their teachings, who was going to preserve their scriptures.So only we know their names in the teachings of Buddha where he criticizes them, or in the words of Mahavira where he criticizes them, so we know that these six people were in existence. And they were important enough that Buddha has to criticize them, but we don’t know exactly what was their teaching. Even in the criticism of Buddha he has first to expound their teaching and then criticize it. That small piece that he takes to criticize seems to be so significant that we don’t know in what context it was said, because Buddha is not talking about the context, so his criticism looks right.But I have been trying to find…there is no visible signs of any scriptures left of these people: Ajit Kays Kumberley, Sanjay Belattiputta. But I have been, in my own imagination, creating the whole context in which those sentences will fit, which are condemned by Buddha. But if you put it in that context, Buddha’s criticism does not make any sense. Those people were in their own right as illumined, as awakened, as Gautam Buddha himself. But it does not mean that all awakened people should agree with each other. If they agree, good! But they are free not to agree! Existence is multidimensional, and every teacher can take a certain dimension. And you may not take that dimension at all in account. Then your opinions will be absolutely opposite.But because I am nobody’s follower, and I don’t have any prejudice against or for, I can see that all those eight people were as enlightened as Gautam Buddha although their opinions were different. For example, Sanjay Belattiputta must be a very joyous person and a man of a great sense of humor.Hindus believe in one hell, I told you. Jainas believe in three hells, I have told you. Buddhists believe in seventy-seven hells, I told you. Sanjay Belattiputta heard it and he laughed. He said, “Seventy-seven won’t do because I know there are more categories of sinners than seventy-seven. In fact there are seven hundred seventy-seven hells.” And I know he was joking! He was making a joke that all this nonsense of counting hells.I have remembered, in Agra there used to be a small sect, which is still existent, Radhaswami. And they were in great competition with Taj Mahal. And their idea was to create for their master a greater palace, far more beautiful, than Taj Mahal.Taj Mahal was made by a great emperor. It took thirty years in making; ten thousand people working every day for thirty years continuously. And he was the emperor of the whole of India, Pakistan, and Burma, and Ceylon and Afghanistan included. He has immense riches to pour on ten thousand people. And these then thousand people were the best sculptors, marble craftsmen, brought from all over the world. But a jealousy: in the same city, everybody goes to see the Taj Mahal. From all over the world people come to see it. Naturally, the Radhaswamis became jealous of the point. And they have made; they could not manage to complete the samadhi of their master, because they are not emperors. But they are still working. Their whole sect, whatsoever they earn, goes still into their samadhi. Only one ground floor is ready.I don’t think they will every be able to complete it. Their idea is two floors. On the ground floor will be the samadhi. But the ground floor, they have certainly defeated Taj Mahal. If they had money, they would have made a better, unique miracle than Taj Mahal. All the science of greatness in their ground floor. They have made creepers of marble, flowers of marble, whole plants of marble; creepers moving around the pillars. Sixty years they have been working up to now.Their present master asked me to come to see the samadhi that they are working. I was speaking in Agra. He had come to listen to me. I went with him to see. What I saw there is…they have done their best. Their garden is far more beautiful than Taj Mahal. Their first floor is a miracle in marble. On the first floor they have a map of the whole existence; not only of the world: all the hells, all the heavens, and this world in between. Their heaven has fourteen sections, you can say fourteen heavens.So he asked me that, “What do you think about it?” By the side of the map there are written names of people. In the fifth heaven – as you go higher, you are a higher personality. In the fifth, there is Mohammed, Moses. In the sixth, there is Jesus. In the seventh, there is Kabir, Dadu, Nanak. That way they has put name: on the ninth, Mahavira; on the tenth, Buddha. On the fourteenth, only one man has reached up to now, their founder!He asked me, “What do you think about it?”“I think it is absolutely right!”He said, “People object. A Mohammedan cannot believe that Mohammed is just in the fifth. A Jaina cannot believe that Mahavira is below Buddha. You are the first person who is saying, ‘You are absolutely in agreement.’”I said, “I have to be in agreement because I have reached to the fifteenth! And I know your master. He is in the fourteenth! And he tries hard, but I go on pushing him! As long as I am, he cannot enter into the fifteenth!”He said, “This is a new idea!”I said, “Not a new idea! It is a reality! I go on hitting him because he is continuously trying to move into the fifteenth. And I don’t want to share my place with anybody! Because there is no sixteenth! Otherwise I would have moved in the sixteenth. Fifteenth is absolutely secure. And now your master has become very tired. So he rarely tries because whenever he tries, then for a few days he remains sick – I hit him so hard.”He said, “You should not say such things, in our temple!”I said, “What can I do? I had to say the truth. If you can write these stupid names, according to your desire, what grounds you have, and what measurements, that Buddha is ahead than Mahavira? Or Moses and Mohammed are the lowest? What grounds you have that Jesus is higher than Moses? And Kabir is higher than Jesus? If you can make an imaginary map, I have every right to add something more to it. It is incomplete. Make the fifteenth floor, and reserve it for me.”He said, “I was wrong to bring you here.”I said, “That’s true! It is not only true about you.”Many people feel that it is wrong that they invited me. They were hoping that I will praise whatever idiotic ideas they have.I know Sanjay Belattiputta must have joked about the hells but nothing else has remained. Sanjay Belattiputta was against heaven-followers, so he never created any organized religion. He remained a single, alone, teacher moving around, provoking all the philosophies that were prevalent; criticizing Buddha; criticizing Mahavira. But he never allowed anybody to be a follower.That was his standpoint: that everybody has to liberate himself; all those who claim to liberate others are lying. This much piece I have found in the criticisms of Buddha and Mahavira: that all those who are trying to liberate others are lying. Nobody can liberate anybody.Zen certainly believes that everybody is capable of liberation, but only he can do it, it cannot be done by anybody else.“Tell me, virtuous ones,” said Hyakujo, “Who or what is the Tathagata?”One monk replied, “Sir, at this point I find myself utterly deluded.”And here, Hyakujo makes really a great penetration:“Having never been illumined, how can you say that you are now deluded?”It is a comparison. Having never been a buddha, how can you say that you are not a buddha?That is my approach also. When I say that you are a buddha, you cannot deny it. You don’t know who you are. At least I know who you are. I am simply introducing you to yourself. In spite of everything, you are the buddha! You cannot get out from your buddhahood. It is your very nature.Then the monk asked, “Will the venerable Zen master expound the dharma to us?”Hyakujo replied, “Though you have expounded the Diamond Sutra over twenty times, you still do not know the Tathagata!”Twenty times you have expounded The Diamond Sutra, the greatest sayings of Gautam Buddha, and you don’t know who Tathagata is! You have not yet understood the meaning of tathata which is the very foundation of The Diamond Sutra and all Buddhist scripture.This is the situation of teachers – they are parrots. They don’t understand, but they can repeat exactly whatever they read in the scriptures without understanding the essential meaning. The essential meaning has to be found within yourself, not in the scriptures.A haiku by Basho:Moonlit plum tree –wait,spring will come.In a very indirect way, in a very delicate way, Basho says, “Moonlit plum tree…” Don’t be in a hurry, “Wait, spring will come.” It is metaphoric. It is about you, not about the plum tree. Just wait, everybody has his own spring. If you rightly wait, the spring can come right now. It depends on the depth of your waiting.Another haiku by Basho:Dying cricket –how full oflife, his song.The cricket is dying, but is still singing….Dying cricket –how full oflife, his song.This should be the situation of every alert and aware person. Even dying full of life, full of song – and then there is no death.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Last night, after hearing you speak so lucidly, so beautifully on Hyakujo's somewhat torturous passage, I felt that you are not only working on your disciples, you are transforming the masters of the past too.I recognize that my business here is to find out who I am, but in moments like last night, the question overwhelms me: who is this being we know as Osho?I have asked this question before. You have answered, but the question still remains.Maneesha, the question will remain until you know yourself. No answer is going to satisfy you, but the moment you know yourself, you will know me too. Knowing oneself is knowing all the buddhas – not only me, all the buddhas of the past, of the present, of the future. And knowing yourself, you also know the sleeping buddhas. Then your clarity, your perception will be total.There are only two categories in the world: awakened buddhas and asleep buddhas. The awakened buddhas can understand the two categories, the two layers, the sleeping buddhas cannot understand the second one. They are of course asleep, so they cannot understand the awakened. The awakened can understand them, and the awakened can understand other awakened ones.You are right. When I am speaking on any master, I don’t care a bit whether that master really meant what I am saying. If he did not mean this, he should have meant it. My clarity shows me absolutely what should be the case. So it does not matter on whom I am speaking, I am speaking, in fact, only on myself. There is no other way. Hyakujo can disagree, but it will be very difficult for him to disagree with me.A thousand years have passed. I have gathered more experience in these one thousand years. Hyakujo will have to listen to me. Enlightenment is also a growing process. It is not an event, but a process. Every enlightened person reaches higher into the realms of being. It is not only a time gap, it is also a gap of clarity.I can see much more clearly, much more definitely with all the possible implications which were not available to Hyakujo, because Hyakujo knew nothing about Sigmund Freud, knew nothing about Albert Einstein, knew nothing about Carl Gustav Jung…These people have created such new original approaches to man’s being, although they are all stuck at the mind.But this century we understand mind more than any century before. And if you are a meditator, then you can understand the no-mind also more, because your understanding of the mind and the unconscious layers of the mind is far more accurate and more scientific. The difference is simply between a bullock cart and a Rolls Royce. They belong to the same lineage. A Rolls Royce is the bullock cart refined and refined and refined…then it becomes a Rolls Royce. Hyakujo belongs to the age of bullock carts – a man of tremendous understanding, but don’t hope that he can fix a Rolls Royce. He can only fix a bullock cart perfectly well.So when I am speaking on these people, I cannot remain just confined to their meaning. I have to raise the meaning of their statements to the heights of my consciousness. As far as I am concerned I have never spoken on anybody else other than myself. These are just excuses – Hyakujo or Ma Tzu… These are just excuses so that I can say to you things about humanity which have been forgotten completely. But when I say something, I make it as grand and as great as possible.Now it is Anando time.Before I ask Nivedano, I have to change the dedication of this series again, and I hope I will not have to change it again. Now the dedication will be: Dedicated to Anando who has gone astray and has come back home.Now, Anando,(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Be silent, close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen. Now look inwards with tremendous urgency as if this is the last moment of your life. Gather all your consciousness. It becomes like an arrow reaching to the very center of your being.This center is the only unmoving part in the universe. Everything is changing around it. Only this center remains unchanging. Its only quality is single: that is witnessing. It has no other qualities. It is just a mirror.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, watch the body as separate, the mind as separate. You are just a witness. Dive deep in your witnessing. The buddha is another name of witnessing.The evening was beautiful in itself, but you have given it all your splendor of silence. You have made it more beautiful by your witnessing. It is going to prove a milestone in your life.Just gather all the flowers and the fragrance from this silent space, so that you can bring it from the center to the circumference, so that you can live as a buddha in the ordinary life without any hesitation, without any doubt, without any suspicion.All the buddhas are pointing to only one truth: that every being intrinsically is a buddha. In silent witnessing you come across yourself. Don’t lose the thread.When you come back, bring the buddha with you. This is what Buddha calls suchness. This is why he is called Tathagata. This moment you have all dissolved into an ocean of witnessing.All separation is dropped.You are no more – only existence is.Rejoice in this transformation,Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but bring all the fragrance with you. You have to live it twenty-four hours.Sit silently for a few moments, without any doubt you are the buddha – a living buddha. It is your intrinsic nature.Today everything has gone upside down, but it is a good experience. Every day you used to laugh before being a buddha. Today you have to laugh after being a buddha.Anando, this is your time….Hamish MacTavish goes out fishing in his old row boat.He sits, gently rocking on the waves all day, but doesn’t catch a thing. He is just about to pack up and row back to the shore, when he feels a little nibble on his line. He hauls in the line, but all he has caught is a tiny little silver cod – not even enough for a mouthful.Not wanting to go home empty-handed, Hamish is about to throw the fish into his bag, when it opens its tiny mouth and says, “Stop! I am Dagon, the God of the Cod. And if you save my life, I will grant you three wishes.”Hamish is amazed and can’t believe his luck. He is about to give his first wish when Dagon says, “Stop! Remember, I am a very compassionate god, and whatever you wish for, your worst enemy will get double.”“Okay,” says Hamish. “My first wish is for one million dollars.”“Granted,” replies the God of the cod. “But Paddy Murphy gets two million.”“Okay,” says Hamish. “My second wish is for a hundred beautiful women to look after me.”“Granted,” says Dagon. “But Paddy gets two hundred.”“Okay,” says Hamish. “And for my third wish, I would like you to painlessly remove one of my balls!”Fading American president, Ronald Reagan, and his pal, Pope the Polack, are sunbathing on the beach in the south of France. Suddenly, a beautiful looking girl strolls by and winks at the Polack pope.Nervously, the Polack turns to Ronald for advice.“What should I do?” asks the pope.“Quick,” says Ronnie, his eyes twitching, “wink back!”So Pope the Polack winks back.Then the girl winks again, and smiles a big grin at the Polack.“Jesus Christ!” exclaims the pope, sitting straight up. “Now what do I do?”“Quick, you idiot,” cries the ancient president, “wink and smile back at her!”So Pope the Polack winks and smiles.At this, the girl slowly removes her bikini top, and then seductively takes off her panties, dropping them in the sand.“Wow!” slobbers the pope. “What in God’s name do I do now?”Ronald is shaking with excitement and he says, “Hey, man, just show her your nuts!”“What?” cries the Polack pope, frantically searching his pocket. “I’ve eaten all my nuts!”Ed, the Oregonian rancher, drives into Fossil to buy a new tractor, and wants to get a present for Mabel, his wife.Very nervous, he goes along to the lingerie shop and walks up to the pretty salesgirl.“Can I help you, sir?” asks the girl.Ed points to a bra on a dummy, blushes, and stammers, “I wanna buy one of those things.”“Certainly, sir,” replies the girl. “What size?”“Size?” gasps Ed. “Ah! My God! I don’t know!”“Well,” says the girl, helpfully, “are they like coconuts?”“Oh no!” replies Ed.“Well then, are they like grapefruits?” she asks.“No, not at all,” replies Ed.“Oranges then,” suggests the girl.“No,” replies Ed.“Lemons?” she asks.“Lemons?” repeats Ed. “Ah, no!”“Well then, how about eggs,” suggests the girl.“Eggs…yes, eggs!” says Ed, confidently – “fried eggs!”Can we celebrate?

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Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Once, Hyakujo was out in the fields working alongside his disciples. Just as a certain monk lifted up his hoe, the sound of the dinner drum could be heard.With this, the monk laughed loudly, dropped his hoe and went to the temple.“Wonderful!” exclaimed Hyakujo. “This is the gate to the entering of the Bodhisattva Kannon.”Hyakujo followed after the monk, and arriving at the temple, asked the monk, “What truth did you perceive when you heard the dinner drum?”The monk said, “Just now I was terribly hungry, and when I heard the sound of the drum, I went back and had my meal.”On hearing this, Hyakujo himself laughed.On another occasion, Isan, hearing the wooden gong sounding, rubbed his hands and gave a great laugh.When Hyakujo saw and heard this, he asked Isan the same question as he had asked the other monk in a similar situation, and received a similar response.At another time, a master of the Vinaya sect named Fa Ming remarked, “You Zen masters do a lot of tumbling about in the emptiness of the void.”Hyakujo replied, “On the contrary, venerable sir, it is you who tumble a lot in the emptiness of the void.”The Vinaya master asked, “How can that be?”“The scriptures,” continued Hyakujo, “are just words – mere ink and paper – and everything of that sort is just an empty device. All those words and phrases are based on something people once heard – they are nothing but emptiness. You, venerable sir, cling to the mere letter of the doctrine, so of course you tumble about in the void.”“And do you Zen masters not tumble in the void?” asked the Vinaya master.Hyakujo said, “We do not.”The Vinaya master responded “How not?”At this, Hyakujo said, “All those writings are the products of wisdom, and where wisdom’s mighty function operates, how can there be tumbling about in the void?”Maneesha, before I introduce Hyakujo’s sutras, and their meaning to me, I have to make you all understand that you must act intelligently.Just the other day, because I told Hasya not to unnecessarily struggle with dropping cigarettes – her whole life she has been smoking – many others who had already dropped, they immediately jumped! And many who had never smoked, they started smoking, perhaps thinking that this is a device towards buddhahood.You are all buddhas, but don’t be idiot buddhas.Today the whole place is full of tobacco smell. I don’t want this place to be filled with tobacco smell. It has been so clean, and if you, many of you start smoking, you will bring the smell here. So those who have never smoked, simply stop. Those who have stopped and already were out of the withdrawal symptoms, should not start again.It was specially meant for Hasya and Chitten, who have been going through withdrawal symptoms. When I entered yesterday and looked at Chitten, he was looking so sad, so dead. I wondered what was the matter, because I was not aware that he was also following Hasya. And when I said that Hasya can smoke, and there is no need to be worried…What does it matter if you live two years longer, or two years lesser? You will never know the difference. Nobody will know the difference, that Hasya lived two years less.So except Chitten and Hasya, everybody has to come back. Use your own intelligence.When I told Hasya to smoke, Chitten had a great smile on his face. I wondered what was happening to him, because Hasya’s withdrawal symptoms cannot affect Chitten. Later on I came to know that he was on the same trip. Just hearing that he is free to smoke was enough to bring a great smile to him – he has not smoked yet, but all the withdrawal symptoms disappeared!Don’t be unnecessarily stupid. If necessary, it is okay, but unnecessarily stupid, that is a little too much!And remember, I should never smell tobacco in Buddha Hall. Even Hasya and Chitten, they can smoke wherever they want, but before coming to Buddha Hall they will change their clothes, take a shower and wash their mouths.The cigarette is not a device for buddhahood. It is simply a kindness, not to unnecessarily harass you, but it is not for others to follow. They are already good, there is no need for them to start smoking. It is poison, it is destructive. It cannot destroy your buddhahood, but it shows your unintelligent habits. But if they have been formed a long time ago – for years – it is going to take too much time to throw them away. I will allow you to become a buddha smoking, but this is not the rule, this is only the exception.Still you will look a little foolish, when you become a buddha with your cigarettes. You yourself will think, “What am I doing? Being a buddha…”One man used to come to me nearabout thirty years ago. He wanted somehow to drop his smoking habit.I said, “It is not difficult, it is simply a question of determination, a little will. What the cigarette is giving to you – a certain poison, nicotine – that keeps you feeling a certain well-being for a few minutes, meditation can do for twenty-four hours without any nicotine.”He started meditating, he dropped the cigarettes – not with force. They dropped on their own as his meditation became deeper. Then he wanted to be initiated as a sannyasin.I said, “Have you thought it over?”He said, “I am absolutely ready.”He took sannyas, and the next day he came saying, “You were right. I was going to the market with my wife, and people surrounded us. They started asking me questions: ‘With whose wife are you escaping?’ – because a sannyasin is not supposed to have a wife…”He tried his best to say, “She is my wife!”But they said, “You are a sannyasin.”The poor fellow was in a difficulty, so he mentioned my name.Then they said, “Then it is okay, because with Osho everything is okay. You can go, but it will be better that you get your wife also to become a sannyasin. Then it will be easier, otherwise some other crowd will beat you.”So he brought his wife.I said, “She has no understanding. She has never thought about it, but it has now become necessary.”So she became a sannyasin.The third day they were traveling in the train. They had a small child, and people caught hold of them and stopped the train. They called the police saying, “These sannyasins are trying to escape with somebody’s child.”They tried hard saying, “He is our child – ask him!”They said, “You cannot deceive us this easily, you must have hypnotized him. That poor boy!”So they were taken to the police station. The police officer had heard me, had read me. So he said, “Don’t be worried, I can understand. But the best way will be to let your son also be a sannyasin. Otherwise, anywhere you go you will be in trouble.”So on the third day the child was introduced into sannyas. I said, “How many people are you around? Bring them all together – why harass me every day?”He said, “I am not harassing, I am being harassed. You were right that I should think twice, but I did not think of all these problems, that people would be so angry.”So the child also became a sannyasin.They still come here. They live in Bombay, and some day you may see all the three.Before you start smoking a cigarette, remember: it is going to create unhealthiness in you, in your lungs, and a shorter life. And most importantly, it is taking away your drive, your urgency towards meditation. You relax with your cigarette, then what is the need of the rest that Hyakujo talks about. The nicotine gives a little restfulness. There is no need for any meditation – just more and more cigarettes.I am not a man who is dogmatic in any way, but I will not put you in any discomfort. If you become sad and dull, and you start losing the joy of life, then it is okay, continue with the cigarettes. But remember, the responsibility is now greater on you to get into meditation. Only if in meditation you can get a deeper rest than nicotine can give you, will dropping cigarettes be easy.But two fools are in trouble. Why are other idiots, who are almost out of the trouble, immediately jumping into it? Before withdrawal symptoms, you withdraw from the cigarettes. So anybody who has started, stop immediately. And anybody who has already stopped before, and has overcome the withdrawal symptoms, should not start again.Always interpret whatever I say as my compassion and my love. I don’t want you to be in unnecessarily uncomfortable states. So if I make somebody an exception, it does not mean I am making a rule for everybody.At least in Buddha Hall air, no smoke smell should be here. This you should take as a warning. If I smell tomorrow again the smell, I will immediately go back.Now the introductory note about Hyakujo:As mentioned before, Hyakujo was the originator of the Zen monastery. The duties of the abbot and other officers were carefully defined, and the lives of the monks regulated in detail.In addition, Hyakujo encouraged his monks to work in the fields during the day. This was quite a revolutionary move, as before Hyakujo’s time, monks were not supposed to engage in productive work, but were entirely dependent on gifts from people by which to live.Certainly it was a great revolutionary move, to make sannyasins work in the fields, in the orchards, because for centuries they had not done anything. Society had taken the responsibility to take care of them, but there was a limit.This situation happened in the time of Buddha, when India was one of the richest countries in the world. It was called The Golden Bird. It was not difficult for India, to provide all that was needed for a few thousand sannyasins. Joyfully, people did it. But as times changed, and the whole of the East had fallen into poverty, had been exploited by the West, sucked completely…In Thailand, where one person is a sannyasin in every four persons, the burden has become too much. The Thailand government had to make a law that nobody can take sannyas without a government license. That is to prevent people from taking sannyas.This seems to be very strange. You cannot even be a sannyasin without government permission. Even sannyas is not free anymore, but has become mandatory because a poor country and so many sannyasins…And now it is no longer a joy to contribute to their welfare, to their monasteries. They have become almost a heavy burden on the poor societies.The same is the situation in India, but the Indian government has not taken any step, just because of the fear that if Hindu sannyasins have to take a license from the government, the whole of the Hindu society will go against the present-day rulers. In a vote they will be thrown out.Half of India’s population is undernourished. One fourth of India’s population can manage only one meal a day, and if you see that meal, you will be simply shocked – what a meal! And all the predictions of scientific sources are that by the time of the year two thousand, India will have the biggest starvation problem that has ever happened in history. Fifty million people are predicted to die in that year. That means for every two persons, one person will die. All around there will be corpses.In this situation of poverty you cannot afford sannyasins who are depending on social charity.Hyakujo’s introduction of work and productivity was certainly a great revolutionary step. Society must have opposed him, and the monks must have opposed it because they were enjoying complete free time and all kinds of luxuries.But Hyakujo was a very strong man. In his monastery he managed it that everybody worked. It did not mean that he was taking you away from meditation. The work was not very strict, but very flexible, depending on your intelligence – whatever you could contribute to the monastery. If you could work in the field, or chopping wood, or carrying water – whatever you could do. But the necessary thing was that everything should be done with a meditative mind.Work should be a meditation. Just as you sit for meditation, Buddha introduced walking also as meditation. Then why should working not also be associated with meditation. There is no reason. Only when work and all kinds of movements of your body, are followed by a meditative silence, can you really be a buddha. And certainly a buddha should not be dependent on charity.We cannot understand how great the step was. For centuries monks have enjoyed a complete freedom from any activity, and all their welfare was taken care of by the society.So Hyakujo’s introduction of work was a great step, and had a great clarity about the future as society was becoming more and more poor. Rather than governments making rules – it becomes so ugly, that you have to take a license from the government to become a sannyasin…Sannyas has always been an act of freedom and the government has nothing to do with it, but an intelligent move on the part of sannyasins is needed. Hyakujo has to be heard all over the world.Not only that, Hyakujo was criticized by all conservative Buddhists and monks for his insistence that all that the crops yielded through the labor of his monks should be subject to the assessment of taxes on an equal basis with those of lay people.They were angry at the very idea of sannyasins working. And on top of it, Hyakujo insisted that the same tax system should be applicable to sannyasins’ work and earning as it was for anybody else in the country. Sannyasins should not be given a special place.Naturally he was tremendously opposed, but he was right. And when you oppose right, sooner or later the right wins over.Now in China every sannyasin works, in Japan…And the work has become so creative because it is no longer only an economic consideration. It is an aesthetic expression of your meditativeness, of your joy, of your blessings. Paintings, sculpture, all kinds of things became available by the idea that work and meditation are not opposed, but that meditation can continue underneath. That’s what I am saying to you every day: your buddha should continue underneath in every one of your activities.Hyakujo’s favorite motto was: “One day without working, one day without eating.”If you don’t work one day, then be prepared, next day is a fasting day. Absolutely right! You are working for your liberation. Why should anybody else be taxed for it? Why should anybody support you? You are working for your enlightenment. You will not be able to share it with anybody.So it is absolutely necessary in Hyakujo’s monastery, that if you don’t work, you don’t eat. If you want to eat, then work just a little. That helps for your food, for your clothes and small necessities. You don’t have to become the richest person in the world. You don’t have to accumulate all kinds of unnecessary luxuries, but be comfortable. In a state of uncomfortableness, meditation becomes difficult.He saw that worship and meditation could be part of everyday work and seemingly mundane activities.It is said that the Great Pearl was the creator of the Chinese tea ceremony.Hyakujo himself was the creator of the Chinese tea ceremony. To make tea a meditative ceremony is just symbolic. It shows that any mundane activity can become meditative. Digging a hole in the garden, planting new roses in the garden…you can do it with such tremendous love and compassion, you can do it with the hands of the buddha. There is no contradiction.The tea ceremony is only the beginning. I say unto you: Your every act should be a ceremony.If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion, life itself will be the religion.Now the sutra:Once, Hyakujo was out in the fields working alongside his disciples. Just as a certain monk lifted up his hoe, the sound of the dinner drum could be heard.With this, the monk laughed loudly, dropped his hoe and went to the temple.“Wonderful!” exclaimed Hyakujo. “This is the gate to the entering of the Bodhisattva Kannon.” Hyakujo followed after the monk, and arriving at the temple, asked the monk, “What truth did you perceive when you heard the dinner drum?”The monk said, “Just now I was terribly hungry, and when I heard the sound of the drum, I went back and had my meal.”On hearing this, Hyakujo himself laughed.Simple things…the monk was so deeply engaged, so totally engaged in his work, that he had forgotten completely that it was time for lunch. And as the drum was beaten to call all the monks from the fields and the gardens, he laughed, throwing away his hoe.Hyakujo asked him, “Why did you laugh?”A simple and honest answer: “I laughed at the coincidence. As the drum was beaten, suddenly I felt a great hunger. I laughed at the coincidence.”On hearing this, Hyakujo himself laughed.Hyakujo made Zen very light, very earthly, very honest, sincere.On another occasion, Isan, hearing the wooden gong sounding, rubbed his hands and gave a great laugh.When Hyakujo saw and heard this, he asked Isan the same question as he had asked the other monk in a similar situation, and received a similar response.If you are silent and honest, the response cannot be different. Both have laughed at the coincidence. They were both so totally engaged in their work, they completely forgot themselves. And when you forget yourself, how can you remember your hunger? And when they heard the drum or the gong – a sudden hit and a spontaneous remembering: “I am hungry and this is the time to go to the dining hall.”Both laughed. Hyakujo asked both just to see whether the similar situation would have a similar response from two honest, simple, meditative people.In fact, all buddhas will respond similarly in a situation because of the simple fact that they are in the moment and their action is not through the mind, but instantaneous. They respond, they don’t react. And being empty-hearted, their responses will be just like a mirror – reflecting the situation, whatever is there in front of them.Because both confronted hungriness, they laughed, “This is strange that we got lost so much in the work, that there was not even a sign of hunger. And just the gong…as if the gong created the hunger.”The hunger was there but was waiting, because the consciousness was totally engaged somewhere else. The gong brought the consciousness to the waiting hunger. Hyakujo laughed, seeing the similarity of simple and empty-hearted people.At another time, a master of the Vinaya sect named Fa Ming remarked, “You Zen masters do a lot of tumbling about in the emptiness of the void.”Hyakujo replied, “On the contrary, venerable sir, it is you who tumble a lot in the emptiness of the void.”The Vinaya master asked, “How can that be?”“The scriptures,” continued Hyakujo, “are just words – mere ink and paper – and everything of that sort is just an empty device. All those words and phrases are based on something people once heard – they are nothing but emptiness. You, venerable sir, cling to the mere letter of the doctrine, so of course you tumble about in the void.”Ordinarily, the meditator is thought to be in the emptiness, in the ultimate void. But these forming teachers, who were only scholars of the Vinaya scriptures of Gautam Buddha…The master of the Vinaya sect must have been very skeptical of Zen. It is his skepticism that said, “You Zen masters do a lot of tumbling about in the emptiness of the void.”Scholars always think that meditators are wasting their time just sitting silently doing nothing. Scholars think they are doing great work creating great systems of thought and philosophy, and these meditators simply sit with their closed eyes. To the scholars, the meditators seem to be just lazy people who have found a good name, meditation, just to hide the laziness.So his question was not sincere and honest, it was rather an effort to make a laughingstock of Hyakujo. But it was difficult – it is always difficult. A scholar is not even the dust underneath the feet of a meditator. He knows nothing of the heights of consciousness. Hyakujo did well, he did not felt offended.“On the contrary, venerable sir, it is you who tumble a lot in the emptiness of the void.”This must have come as a shock to the Vinaya master:“How can that be?”“The scriptures,” continued Hyakujo, “are just words – mere ink and paper – and everything of that sort is just an empty device. All those words and phrases are based on something people once heard – they are nothing but emptiness. You, venerable sir, cling to the mere letter of the doctrine, so of course you tumble about in the void.”Facing an enlightened man is a rare experience in the sense, that you cannot make a laughingstock of him.He turned the whole thing on the scholar: “Rather than saying that we Zen people are tumbling in the emptiness and the void, calling it meditation…the truth is that you scholars are tumbling in the emptiness and void. What are your scriptures? Just paper and ink, mere words spoken by somebody, but those words are always empty. The moment they reach to the paper, to the ink, they don’t have life.“You are really tumbling into emptiness. We are not tumbling into emptiness, we are becoming emptiness, and that is a totally different thing. We are enjoying the emptiness, we are finding that emptiness is our nature, that out of this emptiness arises everything – our very life source.”“And do you Zen masters not tumble in the void?” asked the Vinaya master.Hyakujo said, “We do not.”The Vinaya master responded, “How not?”At this, Hyakujo said, “All those writings are the products of wisdom, and where wisdom’s mighty function operates, how can there be tumbling about in the void?”A Zen meditator also reads the scriptures, but his reading cannot be called empty. He brings those words back again to life through his meditativeness, through his own wisdom. Someone has spoken those words out of wisdom, out of enlightenment – a buddha. Only another buddha can bring them to life again. Only another buddha can give meaning to them again.Hyakujo says, “We are not tumbling into emptiness. Even if we are reading the ancient sutras, they are always secondary. We are simply testifying to our meditativeness, looking into the mirrors of the scriptures. For us, scriptures are a kind of reference source. Alone, inside, we don’t know whether we are on the right track or not. Reading about the same track in the scripture, functions in a double way. It makes the scripture alive, and it makes you confident to move along the same path you are doing.”Basho wrote a small haiku:Yellow rose petalsthunder – a waterfall.Remember always, a haiku is a painting in words. Silently Basho must have been meditating and when he opens his eyes saw “yellow rose petals, thunder – a waterfall.”Just the minimum words are used. Haikus are telegrams – not a single unnecessary word. You cannot add into this small haiku another word, nor can you take out a single word. It is exactly in a silent mind that opening the eyes and looking outside: rose petals and a great thunder and a waterfall.Try to understand haikus as paintings in words from great masters of meditation. That is the only way to understand them. Otherwise they are just empty words, unrelated, without any grammar and no care about the language. They don’t say anything. They simply show something: if you are meditating, and out of meditation you open your eyes, whatever you see becomes so beautiful, so poetic, so musical that Zen masters keep a copybook with them. They simply note down a few words.Those words actually represent what they have seen. They don’t elaborate, they don’t make a great poem out of them. These are simply notes of meditators about the beauty of existence of which the non-meditators are absolutely unaware.Maneesha’s question:Osho,It seems that if we are even to begin the journey, we need to feel connected to you. If we are to persevere we need to love you. But once we have something we can define as a relationship with you, you will tell us to drop it.You point out that you are simply a reflection and a reminder of our own inner emptiness; so we begin to explore that. We actually start enjoying, even loving that space. You explain that that too has to be dropped.Then comes the final bombshell: you tell us that in fact we have to be dropped.And that is the hardest thing.What can one do to disappear? Can we only be aware of the ways in which we perpetuate our selves?Maneesha, it is not the hardest thing. It is the most relaxed, and the easiest thing in the world. But it is the easiest thing only, for a man who has gone deep in witnessing.I have told you about a king, Prasenjita. It is a small story of great importance….Buddha was staying outside the capital of Prasenjita, and Prasenjita was going to see the master, to present something to him. He tried to find what would be a suitable thing. He had one great diamond, of which many kings and emperors were jealous, because there was no comparison to that diamond. It was like pure water. Its quality was absolutely one hundred percent. He thought, “This will be the best thing to offer to Gautam Buddha’s feet.”His wife was an older disciple of Buddha. Before she married the king, she was already under the influence and impact of Buddha.She told her husband, “You think this beautiful and most valuable diamond will be the right present for Buddha? I don’t think so. To him it is just a stone, a dead stone. It will be more beautiful to give a lotus flower or a roseflower – something still alive, something of immense beauty and fragrance.”The king said, “Okay, I take the challenge. I will take both, and let us see what Buddha chooses.”So he took both – in one hand the diamond, in the other hand a beautiful lotus flower.First he offered the diamond. Buddha said, “Drop it!”Now, when Buddha says, “Drop it!” before ten thousand surrounding sannyasins, even Prasenjita could not manage…Reluctantly, he dropped it. It was such a valuable a thing.He thought perhaps the wife was right, so he put forward his other hand in which the lotus flower was.Buddha said, “Drop it!”He had not expected this situation, so he dropped the flower also.Now he was standing with empty hands, and Buddha said, “What are you waiting for? Drop it!”He looked all around, because now there was nothing to drop.One old sannyasin of Buddha, Sariputta, said to him, “He did not mean to drop the diamond or the lotus flower: He means to drop you. Drop yourself!”That is the only offering you can bring to a buddha, neither diamonds nor flowers, but your utter egolessness.Maneesha, it is not difficult.And secondly, don’t ask what you have to do to disappear. You don’t have to do anything. If you do something to disappear, you will remain the doer. You will get into a vicious circle. You are trying to disappear, so you have divided yourself in two parts: the one that you want to disappear into and the one that is trying to disappear. You will never succeed.It is not in your hands to disappear. You simply search for the origin of your being, and you will find you have disappeared. It is a finding, not an effort, and hence it cannot be difficult. It can only be the easiest revolution, the greatest spontaneous rebellion. But it cannot be based on your effort.You have to stop making efforts. You have just to be a witness. To be a witness is not an effort, because it is your nature. Do you think a mirror is trying continuously, twenty-four hours to remain a mirror? It is its nature.This empty heart is your mirror. Just find it, and everything else that you always wanted will disappear – your anger, your ego, your very idea of personality. You will enter into a totally new dimension where you are the ocean, not the dewdrop.Now, it is Anando’s time….Pope the Polack feels a little strange, so he walks into Doctor Snuffit’s office and asks the doctor to give him a checkup.After a complete examination, Snuffit tells the papal Polack that he is suffering from “HAGS.”“HAGS!” cries Pope the Polack, in alarm. “What is HAGS?”“It is herpes, AIDS, gonorrhea and syphilis all combined,” replies Snuffit.“Holy Virgin Mary!” shrieks the pope. “Is there any cure for that?”“I don’t think so,” replies Snuffit, “but I am going to put you on a special diet, and put you in a special room for observation.”“What kind of special diet?” asks the Polack pope, trembling.“Pancakes and flatfish,” replies Snuffit.“That’s a bit weird,” says the Polack patient. “Why pancakes and flatfish?”“Well,” explains Snuffit, “they are the only things we can fit under the door!”There is a hell of an argument going on in the bar of the Howling Haggis Hotel.At one end of the bar are sitting Paddy Murphy and Seamus O’Reilly. And standing at the other end of the bar are Hamish MacTavish and Sandy MacPherson.“I tell you,” shouts Paddy, “that Irish whiskey is the strongest stuff you will ever drink!”“That’s not true!” roars back Hamish MacTavish, pounding on the bar.“Everyone knows that Scotch whiskey is the real drink!”Just then, an American tourist and his wife come over to the bar from their table in the corner.“I want to tell you all,” says the American, “that I think that Irish whiskey is the real dynamite. Last week, my wife and I drank a whole bottle of Irish whiskey, got up the next morning and went to church for the early morning mass.”“What is so unusual about that?” asks Hamish, trying to be polite. “Lots of people drink a bottle of whiskey and get up the next day to go to church.”“Yes, I know,” says the American, “but we are Jewish!”Pussy Green comes to Father Fumble for her confession.“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” mumbles Pussy.“How have you sinned?” asks Father Fumble.“Well,” continues Pussy, softly, “I have sinned with my boyfriend.”Fumble presses his ear against the partition and says, “Speak up, my child. Speak louder!”Pussy clears her throat and carries on.“Last night,” she says, “my boyfriend and I went to the pub, and afterwards I brought him home.”“Carry on, my child. Carry on,” urges Fumble, beginning to perspire.“We sat on the sofa,” says Pussy, “and he unbuttoned my blouse.”“And then?” says the priest, wiping the sweat from his hands.“Then he unhooked my bra,” continues Pussy, “and fondled my breasts.”“And then? And then?” gasps Fumble, removing his steamed-up spectacles.“Then he lifted up my skirt,” says Pussy, “and pulled down my panties.”“Then what? Then what?” cries the priest, digging his fingernails into the wooden partition.“Then he pulled out his prick,” says Pussy, “and climbed on top of me.”“And then?” sobs Fumble, “And then?”“And then,” says Pussy, “my mother walked in.”“Ah!” screams the priest. “Shit!”Anando…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Nivedano…Be silent, close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now look inwards with absolute urgency as if this is the last moment of your life.Bring your total consciousness as an arrow, moving towards the center of your being. It is not a long journey from the circumference to the center.Just a little deeper, and you will be entering the very source of your being. The realization of this is called the buddha.First you have to realize the buddha in your whole life – in your actions, in your inactions. But this is not the last step, it is just the last but one.I want you to take a jump from this stepping board into the ultimate oceanic reality. Unless you disappear completely, leaving no trace behind, you cannot be at rest.The buddha is only the door.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Let go of the body and the mind. Only the witnessing remains, which is another name of buddhahood.Rejoice this great moment.Very few people have reached to their own center, even in millions of lives. Hence I say you are fortunate.This evening is blessed.This place is holy. Where ten thousand buddhas are just melting in their consciousness into each other – it has become a lake of consciousness, without any ripples.Gather as much life juice, collect all the wild flowers, before you return back.Slowly, slowly your circumference and center will come closer. And one day, suddenly, the circumference will disappear and only the center will remain. That will be your realization of the buddha. One step more beyond that, and your center also disappears.This nothingness beyond the center is not empty, it is the greatest benediction; it makes you the whole universe.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, all the buddhas, carrying as much experience. Sit down, and recollect the space you have been in.Every day, inch by inch, you have to grow into a buddha.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Once a Taoist, happening to pass by Hyakujo’s monastery, asked, “Is there anything in the world more marvelous than the forces of nature?”Hyakujo replied, “There is.”“And what is that?” the Taoist inquired.Hyakujo said, “The power of comprehending those natural forces.”The visitor asked, “Is cosmic vitality the Tao?”Hyakujo responded, “Cosmic vitality is cosmic vitality. The Tao is the Tao.”The Taoist said, “If so, they must be two different things?”Hyakujo said, “That which knows does not proceed from two different persons.”The exasperated Taoist replied, “What is wrong and what is right?”Hyakujo replied, “Wrong is the mind that attends to externals; right is the mind that brings externals under control.”Maneesha, listening to these dialogues and anecdotes, the more important thing should not be forgotten. This is not a school or a university. You are not here learning any knowledge. You are being transformed, awakened. All these sutras are meant only to wake you up, to catch your attention – which is vibrating continuously, moving around thousands of things – to make it absolutely here is the whole purpose of all these sutras.This is possible only if you are only listening and not interpreting, listening and not making judgments, listening and not saying, “Yes, this is right; no, this is not right…” You don’t have to say anything. That is not the point of the whole process. The point is that you can be just a listener without any judgment. That prepares you for your meditation.Maneesha has brought these dialogues,Once a Taoist…In the first place nobody can be a Taoist. Tao is neither a religion nor a philosophy. It is simply the purest understanding of meditation where everything disappears, including you. Then what remains is Tao. Buddha will call it dhamma; you can call it truth, consciousness, beauty. But all these words denote one oceanic feeling of awareness in which you are not separate from the cosmos. But the difficulty with man is, he makes everything into an “ism.”So when Lao Tzu died, people started making an ism. And his whole life he had been teaching that there is no ism, no philosophy, no theory. You have to drop all these mind activities. You have to attain to a silent and empty space. That is Tao.Nobody can be a Taoist, so from the very beginning, we know that the questions are going to be wrong. Of course you can answer rightly to wrong questions – and that’s what Hyakujo is going to do.Once a Taoist, happening to pass by Hyakujo’s monastery, asked, “Is there anything in the world more marvelous than the forces of nature?”Hyakujo replied, “There is.”But being a follower of a certain dogma, his eyes are as blind as any Hindu, any Mohammedan, any Christian’s eyes are. He could not understand that there could be anything more marvelous than the forces of nature. He is forgetting himself completely. Anybody could have said that the seer is far more marvelous than the seen. The knower is more marvelous than the known, because the known is just an object. The knower shows a different quality of consciousness. He is alive, not only alive, but consciously alive.“And what is that?” the Taoist inquired.Hyakujo said, “The power of comprehending those natural forces.”What I have said to you, the seer, the witness, the watcher – that’s what Hyakujo is calling the power of comprehending the natural forces. That is more marvelous. That is the ultimate splendor.The visitor asked, “Is cosmic vitality the Tao?”Hyakujo responded, “Cosmic vitality is cosmic vitality. The Tao is the Tao.”The Taoist said, “If so, they must be two different things?”Hyakujo said, “That which knows does not proceed from two different persons.”The exasperated Taoist replied, “What is wrong and what is right?”Hyakujo replied, “Wrong is the mind that attends to externals; right is the mind that brings externals under control.”In a more contemporary way a few things have to be noted first. The visitor is not intrinsically concerned, urgently concerned with what he is asking. His questions are scattered, they are not in one sequence. He gets one answer, drops it as if he has understood. But his next question has no relation to the first. If he had understood, there would not have been another question.One question is enough for the man of intelligence. And if the intelligence is ultimate and meditative, not even one question is needed. Nothing is said, and everything is heard in the empty heart of the disciple. But he is not a disciple – just a visitor, a curiosity-monger. People simply go on collecting knowledge from different sources and then they brag as if they know all these things. You can see this – his interest is not at all to understand what he is asking. He asks, “What is more marvelous in existence than natural forces?”Hyakujo’s answer is absolutely perfect: it is the seer who comprehends, who witnesses the existence. Just by the sheer nature of witnessing, it is higher than the witnessed. If he had understood the point, there was no more to ask. But he went on asking. The visitor asked, “Is cosmic vitality the Tao?” Now this has no connection with the first question. This shows that he has collected the answer, is not bothered what it means…just words. And now he will repeat those words to anyone as if they are his own. He is in a hurry to ask another question, and the first is not dissolved yet. With the first dissolving he will also dissolve.On the path there are not answers, simply the disappearing of the questions. What the master says makes the question disappear, makes the question irrelevant, out of context, meaningless. He clears the space, so you can see also the same clarity that is his own. He wants to share his clarity and he removes your questions by answers. He is not interested either in answers or in questions. He answers only just to remove the question. But if a person is not a person on the path of seeking, it does not matter. He may have removed one question to the side…he brings another…. He does not see the point.The visitor asked, “Is cosmic vitality the Tao?” Neither does he know cosmic vitality, nor does he know Tao. This is where intellectuals get lost, in words. Words are a far more thick forest than you can find anywhere else. Apparently it seems to be perfectly right to ask a question, “Is cosmic vitality the ultimate life? The same as the Tao?” But the question is arising out of curiosity, not out of inquiry. It does not matter if you don’t answer. What I mean by urgency is, it matters that we should find our life source, the cosmic vitality.Hyakujo responded, “Cosmic vitality is cosmic vitality. The Tao is the Tao.”Now immediately in any ordinary mind the question will arise: Are they two? Is the path and the goal two? The path is the path; the goal is the goal – but they are not two. The path is only the extension of the goal. The goal is only the end point of the path. Hyakujo is not saying they are two. He is simply saying, the path is the path and the goal is the goal. Don’t make any decisions before you have followed the path. At the end point of the path you will find the goal. And then suddenly, you will realize their absolute oneness.The Taoist said, “If so, they must be two different things?”A very ordinary mediocre mind can say that. In front of a master, one has to think twice what he is asking.Hyakujo said, “That which knows does not proceed from two different persons.”You can follow only one path. There may be many paths – just like a mountain peak, you can climb it from one side or the other side. And there can be a thousand paths moving to the ultimate peak, but as paths they are different from other paths. Some paths may be moving through a desert, and some paths should be moving through lush green trees. As paths they are different, but when they will reach to the end, there will be an explosion of understanding that everything leads to the ultimate.Some take a little more time, some take a little less time; some are arduous, some are very relaxed…it is your choice. Move from anywhere towards your life source. You will reach to the same point that any buddha has ever reached. The ultimate experience is not either yours or mine, it is simply the ultimate experience of all consciousnesses who move towards the inner source.The exasperated Taoist replied…He was exasperated because he could not understand what was being said.“What is wrong and what is right?”He thought it is better to ask a very simple question and then see what this man answers: “What is wrong and what is right?” Nothing can be more simple apparently, but deep down, it is one of the most significant questions.Hyakujo replied, “Wrong is the mind that attends to externals…”The mind in subjugation, the mind in slavery to objects – that is wrong. When you change the whole status, and the mind is no longer under the control of the objective world, but becomes a master in his own right, it is right.Ordinarily we think that right and wrong are judgments – somebody is doing something, and you feel it is not right, or it is right. In our common understanding right and wrong have become parts of our judgmental approach, but to those who know, to those who have arrived, right and wrong have a totally different meaning.Mind can function as a master, mind can function as a slave. Now, ordinarily nobody thinks right and wrong has something to do with this, but basically mind in slavery of the objective world is wrong. Then whatever you do is wrong. And when the mind is freed from objective slavery, it becomes empty. That empty mind becomes a showering – a master. It is no longer a slave. That is the only right. Then out of this situation, whatever arises, out of this space, whatever responses are produced – they are right. So right is not a judgmental question, it is a question of where you are and what your state is: Is your consciousness the master, or is it easily enslaved by anything?I am reminded of a Sufi master, Junnaid…He himself was a very simple man and would not have become world famous except for Al Hillaj Mansoor, his disciple who was crucified. He used to say, the question of right and wrong is the question concerning your consciousness. If you are conscious, then whatever you do, is bound to be right. If you are unconscious, then whatever you do is wrong. The world may appreciate it differently.For example, a man may donate, give to charities and everybody will say, “How nice, how great, how righteous, how virtuous is this man.” If you look into his mind, he is giving to all these charities in order to make a special place in God’s bank, so when he reaches the pearly gates, he should be welcomed with angels, and he will have all the comforts. What he is giving, is nothing compared to what he is exploiting. Perhaps one percent…and he becomes a great virtuous man – and ninety nine percent he is exploiting the same people.Unless one is conscious, absolutely a pillar of consciousness, it is very difficult to do right. Because you are not right, how can the flowers of right arise out of you? So the question to the authentic master changes the whole area. It is not your activity, it is your consciousness. What you do is irrelevant – from where comes the doing? Consciousness or unconsciousness – that is the decisive factor.Zen has brought a totally different outlook. It is not a morality. It does not emphasize your actions. The emphasis is on you. You are doing right things for wrong reasons. That will not make them right. Somebody is afraid of hell, and out of fear, he goes to church every Sunday. It is a bother…listening to the priest, the same Old Testament and the same old garbage which he has listened to so many times. So most of the church goers simply have a good morning sleep in the churches. It is a very religious sleep.A man used to snore in a church….The bishop was worried, he took the man aside and told him, “I am not against sleeping, and sleeping is not an irreligious activity, but snoring is a little too much.”The man asked, “Is snoring irreligious?”He said, “No, I am not saying that snoring is irreligious. I am simply saying that because of your snoring the whole congregation cannot sleep, and that creates many difficult problems. I have only three sermons which I have been giving my whole life. Nobody listens – what is the point? To be original and to find new material…And nobody has ever objected – that is absolute proof that nobody has ever listened. They were all fast asleep. And it is good for me too…unnecessary trouble. And in fact, those three sermons are also not written by me. Those are the three sermons of the previous preacher who has retired. He gave them to me and told me, ‘These are enough. Don’t bother to take much trouble. The whole congregation comes to the church to have a good morning sleep. Just don’t let anybody snore.’“You are the most prominent member of the church. Snoring is killing me. If people start listening, it will not be long…it will be only three weeks, before they will come to know that ‘this fellow has been repeating the same record.’ So please, just for God’s sake, sleep as deep as you can, but don’t snore.”All the religions have been action oriented. Don’t do this, don’t do that – they are all commandments. The question is not of your doing, the question is of your being. Be in a conscious state, then do whatever comes out of your spontaneity – and it is right. If it does not come as a spontaneous conscious response, then even if the whole world says it is good, it is not good. The ultimate criterion is not the action. The ultimate criterion is the origin.The mind is capable of doing both. It can be a slave, as it is to millions of people. Very rarely is the mind completely free from objects, desires, anger, and just a simple empty space, no-mind.So we can say it in this way: if you act through mind, it is wrong; if you act through no-mind, it is right.A haiku by Basho:Birth of art –song of rice planters,chorus from nowhere.If you are utterly silent, then everything that happens in that silence, takes a new color. It becomes the birth of very art. “Song of rice planters” – it is not much of a music. Poor rice planters, just to keep them engaged, they are singing in chorus. But a man of silence, immediately makes or gives a glamour to the ordinary stones. “Song of rice planters, chorus from nowhere.” As far as he is concerned he is utterly silent, so he wonders from where this chorus is coming. The whole existence has become a chorus, a beautiful symphony. Our lives can be lived as music, as poetry, as art…as mystics. Those are the right ways to live our lives. Right, because to live those styles, you will have to find your origin first.Maneesha has asked:Osho,What is the urge to understand?Maneesha, the urge to understand comes from your very nature. The mystery of existence wants you to become a shareholder. The mystery of existence does not want you to stand outside, but to come inside the temple. It is too hot outside, it is perfectly cool inside.The urge to understand is absolutely a part of intelligence. Intelligence wants to know, who is there within me; from where comes my love, my tears, my laughter? One does not want to remain ignorant of his own house.The urge to understand is the only hope for man. If there is no urge to understand, there will not be any mysticism, and there will not be any poetry; there will not be any music, there will not be any dance. There will be only a deep sadness, a suicidal sadness, that what is the point of going on living because the urge to understand, the meaning of life is missing. But fortunately the urge is not something to be learned from somebody else. The urge is there in you. You may have repressed it as much as you want, but in the right season, in the right time, in the right moment, if you encounter a man who knows, suddenly the urge will surface. That is one of the criteria of meeting a master.People have asked me again and again, “How to decide that we have met the master?” If meeting a man, you suddenly feel that you would also like to be in the same space, in the same joy, in the same song, the urge to understand has arisen. This urge makes you a disciple, and a disciple is just the beginning of a master. The disciple is the seed and the master is the flowers.Now it is Anando’s time….Olga Kowalski is chatting to her friend, Rosa, over a cup of coffee.“If you ask me,” says Olga, “the television is a stupid invention.”“Why is that?” asks Rosa, munching on a cookie.“Well,” says Olga, “all it is, is crime – or sex!”“Really?” replies Rosa.“I’m sick of it,” says Olga. “Whenever I switch the TV on at night, all I see is violence!”“Then why don’t you switch it off?” suggests Rosa.“Well if I do that,” replies Olga, “then Kowalski wants to have sex!”Gorgeous Gloria goes to see Robin Meany, the show business agent, and asks him to see her act.Gloria places a large orange on the floor, and then begins to do a sensational strip to music. When she is completely naked and the music reaches its climax, Gloria suddenly sinks to the floor, legs wide apart, on top of the orange. And when she rises again, the orange has disappeared.“That is fantastic!” cries Robin. “A real knockout! I can get you a job in a Paris night club, starting tomorrow.”“No, not Paris,” says Gloria, nervously. So Robin gets her a job in Berlin instead.Two weeks later, Robin calls Gloria on the phone. “Good news!” he says. “I have bookings for you in Hamburg, Rome, Cairo and Paris.”“No! Not Paris,” says Gloria.“What the hell is the matter with Paris, for Christ’s sake,” snaps Robin.“Well, you see,” says Gloria, “in Paris, my mother does the same act with a water melon!”Kowalski and Zabriski are walking down the street in New York, and Zabriski is saying how much he hates Italians.“Greasy wops,” he grumbles, “always making a noise. And talk about stupid…! I wish they would all go back to Italy!”In the middle of this outburst, the two Polacks walk around a corner. They run smack into Old Luigi, who is playing loudly on a violin, with a little monkey dancing beside him.Luigi really looks the part. He is dressed in an old greasy, spaghetti-stained coat. He has a gold earring in one of his ears, and he is playing his violin and singing in Italian at the top of his voice.Kowalski is astonished when he sees Zabriski pull out his purse and put a dollar bill in the little monkey’s outstretched cap.“What did you do that for?” asks Kowalski, when they have walked on. “I thought you hated Italians.”“I do,” admits Zabriski, “but they are so cute when they are young!”Anando…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Be silent…close your eyes…feel your body to be completely frozen…Gather all your consciousness as an arrow in search of the center of your being. Go inwards with no fear – it is your own territory.At the very end of your arrow you will find yourself as a buddha, fully awakened. This is the first step. Once you have become the buddha completely, the second step is to go beyond.Let even the buddha disappear.Only silence and an infinite sky remains.This is your home.You are no more, but you have found the home.The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean.Thousands of flowers blossom.Suddenly from nowhere the music is heard. You find all around you a pulsating life energy, almost in a dance – and you are part of it.Gather as many flowers and fragrances as possible. Gather the awareness that has arisen in you. You have to carry your awareness moment to moment in your daily life, waking or asleep.This is the only transformation I know of which makes the dewdrop the ocean or vice versa – which makes the ocean disappear into the dewdrop.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax.Just watch….The body is not you, the mind is not you.You are simply a witness, no judgment, no evaluation, but a pure silent witnessing like a mirror.This is your buddhahood.There is no greater joy in existence than to be a buddha. There is no greater beauty, no greater grace, no greater blessing than to be a buddha. Here life comes in all its colors – the whole rainbow.The evening was already beautiful, but your witnessing has made it a great splendor, a majestic moment. It has given to it a magical quality. Soon Nivedano will be calling you back. Bring all these qualities with you. Don’t leave them behind.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Slowly gracefully come back, renewed by the process, refreshed by the process.Sit down for a few moments like a buddha. I am using the word like so that you don’t freak out…otherwise you are the buddha.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,On one occasion, Yun Kuang asked Hyakujo, “Master, do you know where you will be reborn?”Hyakujo replied, “We have not died yet, so what is the use of discussing our rebirths? That which knows birth is the unborn. We cannot stray from birth to speak of the unborn. The Patriarch once said, ‘that which undergoes birth is really unborn.’”Yun Kuang asked, “Does this apply even to those who have yet to perceive their own nature?”Hyakujo said, “Your not having perceived your own nature does not imply that you lack that nature. Why so? Because perception itself is that nature…“That which can produce the myriad phenomena of the universe is called the dharma nature, otherwise known as the Dharmakaya.“The patriarch, Asvhaghosha, declared: ‘In speaking of phenomena, we really refer to the minds of sentient beings, for, when mental processes occur, all sorts of phenomena take birth in accordance with them. When mental processes do not occur, phenomena have nothing in which to arise – there are not even names for them.’”Maneesha, these dialogues between Zen masters and their disciples almost appear to be of another world. You will not hear anything alike anywhere else. They lived in a totally different dimension and they talked about things which don’t matter to you. But to them, those things mattered the most. What matters to you, is immaterial to them, as if we belong to two different worlds. Their world is of immense beauty and of great blissfulness. Our world is of anxiety and anguish and angst. It is the world of mortality. We are here only just for a few years. We don’t know from where we have come. We don’t know where we go. We don’t know even who we are.These questions have been put aside by the technological progress of science, and people’s minds have become absolutely materialistic. They have forgotten one thing: their own consciousness.These dialogues are about your own consciousness and its inner secrets. Without experiencing these secrets of your inner life, your life is not much of a life. It is very superficial.The deeper you go inwards, everything in your life starts getting depth – it may be love, it may be creativity, it may be singing, it may be dancing. You can dance very superficially just making the movements of the dance, but you can dance so deeply that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains. When the dance remains, then only is the essential left. All non-essentials have gone. You are also gone. You are a non-essential.Something in you is of the essential, and all these dialogues are in search of that essential – from different angles, different viewpoints. So you must remember never to get confused between your language and the language of these dialogues. It is the same language, but used by very different people, by very different experiences, to be expressed.On one occasion Yun Kuang asked Hyakujo, “Master, do you know where you will be reborn?”Hyakujo replied, “We have not died yet; so what is the use of discussing our rebirths? That which knows birth is unborn.”But very few people are born unconsciously, and very few people die consciously. It is a natural arrangement of anesthesia. Before you die your whole biology releases all that makes you absolutely unconscious. It is the greatest surgery; nature has made a prearrangement for it. Only a very deep meditator, who has reached to samadhi will be able to avoid this poisoning, this oncoming cloud of unconsciousness. He will keep his light alive, his eyes open. Death will come and go. The body will be gone, the mind will be gone, but this essential awareness will enter another womb.Hyakujo is saying, “That which knows birth is the unborn.” That one which knows the death, does not die. How can it die and know death at the same time?One Sufi mystic, Omar Khayyam, has written a great book and became known worldwide. Hundreds of translations have happened, but all are full of misunderstandings. They thought that he was only a poet talking about this world. He was a mystic, and all that he was talking about was symbolic. His book’s name is The Rubaiyat. The rubaiyat is again a very special form of Persian poetry, just like a haiku.In one of his rubaiyat he says to his friends not to be afraid of death for two reasons: if you die, you die. There is nothing to be afraid of. There will be nobody left behind, so there is no question of fear. If it is as the religions say, that you don’t die, then there is no question of being afraid, death does not happen. In either case, fear is irrelevant.If you can die knowingly, that means the element that is passing through the tunnel of death, is separate from death. The life principle is eternal. It takes many forms, thousands of lives to become a man. Up to now nobody has appeared who is a superman.Man, up to now, is the ultimate in the evolution of consciousness, but it is very superficial, very new. Underneath, there is deep unconsciousness. So when you die, that deep unconsciousness over floods your consciousness and you die without knowing what is happening. Everybody knows that you have died except you. And because the death is unconscious, your being born into a womb cannot be conscious.Both the ends have to be the same: if death is conscious, then birth will be conscious. If death is unconscious, then the birth is unconscious. You don’t know anything about from where you are coming because you were not conscious about your birth. You are certainly coming from somewhere.That which knows birth is the unborn. This is a very pregnant sentence. That which knows birth is beyond birth. That which knows death is beyond death. It is only a witness. It goes on only watching – that the old body is gone and the new womb has been made available, that a new body has started growing. In deep hypnosis you can be reminded of your experiences in the nine months of your mother’s womb. Nine months cannot go without any episodes. Your mother may fall down, your mother may be very angry, or very loving….All that goes on in your mother’s mind and body affects the child who is still attached to the mother’s body – everything. Those nine months are of tremendous importance. If the mother can remember that a child is growing in her – she should take care not to do anything, not to act anything that may create a difficulty for the child in his life, because these nine months are the most important period of the whole life of seventy years.This way, two persons will be changed. The mother takes care of the child and is aware that she has not to do anything that will be disadvantageous to the child. She cannot be angry, she cannot be jealous, she cannot be hateful; she cannot do or even think anything wrong. So two persons are being changed. Those nine months are transforming two persons, the child and the mother.If in nine months one woman can remain without jealousy, without anger, without hatred, but with just pure love, compassion, the joy of this nine-month experience will be so much that when the child is born, she is not going to fall back to her old habits.In India we had developed a very scientific process from the very moment of impregnation until the birth of the child, of how the mother has to live, what she has to do. Her life should be of gratitude that God or the universe has given her an opportunity to bring life into existence. Her days and nights should be full of dreams of a buddha. Her child should be a buddha. But he can only be a buddha if seeds are sown. Right now is the time: the soil is soft and the child is absolutely available. Do you see the significance? It will change both the persons, the mother and the child.The child can become conscious only if in his past life he has meditated enough, has created enough meditative energy to fight with the darkness that death brings. One simply is lost in an oblivion and then suddenly finds a new womb and forgets completely about the old body. There is a discontinuity. This darkness, this unconsciousness creates the discontinuity.The East has been working hard to penetrate these barriers. And ten thousand years’ work has not been in vain. Everybody can penetrate to the past life or many past lives. But for that you have to go deeper into your meditation for two reasons: unless you go deeper, you cannot find the door to another life; secondly, you have to be deeper in meditation, because if you find the door of another life, a flood of events will come into the mind.It is hard enough even to carry one life. It will become very clumsy and complex if old memories start harassing you. The implications are such that perhaps the person who is your wife now, was your mother in the past life. Now you will be in a very weird state. How to behave with the woman – as a mother or as your wife? Your life will become a great anxiety. The person who you think is your greatest friend, has been your murderer in the past life. Now how are you going to relate with him? – and you cannot manage to take anybody with you to your past life, so there is no evidence…! The friend will say, “Are you mad? I murdered you? You must have dreamed it. In dreams all kinds of things happen. Forget all about it.” But you cannot forget because you know it was not a dream. It happened in a deep meditation and whenever you go to that point, it always happens. You cannot repeat a dream. You cannot even connect a broken dream.One night Mulla Nasruddin shouted loudly to his wife, “Bring my glasses! Quick!” – in the middle of the night!The wife said, “What are you going to read?”He said, “Don’t discuss. This is not the moment to discuss. Just bring!”So the poor woman brought the glasses. He put the glasses on and he said, “Just go on back to sleep. I saw such a beautiful woman, but because my eyesight is not good, things were a little vague.” He tried hard to see the woman again with glasses on, but he could not manage.Another time again he asked for the glasses….The wife said, “You are going mad. Glasses won’t help your eyesight in dreams. In dreams your eyesight is perfect.”But he said, “It is a question of great importance. Don’t you argue. Just bring my glasses!” And putting his glasses on, he said, “Okay, now come on.”A man was offering him one thousand dollars and he wanted to be sure whether the bill was fake or real. But now neither the man was there, nor that one thousand dollar bill was there. He tried hard this way and that way. And he shouted loudly, “Where have you gone?”You cannot join a broken dream. You cannot repeat a dream on your own. If it repeats by itself, that is a different thing, but you cannot manage to repeat some beautiful dream again and again – not even once.But as far as past lives are concerned, this is the difference: as you go deeper into your meditation, if you want to open the doors, you can, but you have to be aware. You will be flooded with tremendous meaningful memories, and they will be as actual as if they are of this life. They will not be like dreams, that you open your eyes and the dream is gone. They will be as actual as your life, but that creates trouble.If you remember two or three lives, you will be in the same state as the centipede I have told you about….He had been living perfectly well and was going for a morning walk, when a little rabbit asked him, “Uncle, I have to ask a question. I have been resisting so as not to disturb your morning walk, but I cannot resist it anymore.”The centipede said, “Okay, what is your question?”He said, “My question is, how do you manage your hundred legs: which one should come first, which one should come second, which one should come third…? How do you manage one hundred legs together?”He said, “I have never thought about. I am not a philosophical type. You seem to be a philosophical type…but I will try and find out.”He tried and fell immediately over his legs. He was very angry with the rabbit. He said, “Keep your philosophy to yourself. Never ask any centipede…. Everything is being managed on its own, and I have never thought about it. You are a dangerous fellow. You look so nice, but your questions…!”If you know three or four lives, you will be in the same position. You will not be able to move, because these same people were related to you in your past lives in different relationships. Somebody was your child, now he is your father; somebody was your mother, now she is somebody else’s wife…you cannot go to her. Perhaps the neighbor’s wife was your wife. Your mind will be so bombarded. That’s why nature absolutely closes the doors, completely seals them so you don’t know anything about where you are coming from. But those doors can be opened.In India we have a special science for it – jati smaran, remembrance of the past. A certain meditation, certain preparations and you can enter into past lives. But remember that you have to have the stamina and the guts not to get lost. Only in the East has reincarnation been considered. And the three religions which have born in India are the only religions which have an absolute agreement on the point of reincarnation. They differ in their philosophy, theology, on everything, but not on rebirth. It is factual to all of them. They all have come in their meditations to the same place. They cannot deny it.It is an existential fact that you have been before and you will be after your death. The one that was before birth, and the one that will be after death is the same one. Its name is the buddha. Its name is the witness. It never dies and it never is born.The problem to understand is, Hyakujo says: That which knows birth is the unborn – the knower of the birth is the unborn witness. We cannot stray from birth to speak of the unborn – if you have not died with absolute consciousness, you cannot talk about the unborn and the undying. The Patriarch once said, “That which undergoes birth is really unborn.”Confucius, one of the greatest thinkers of the world, was not a religious man. His concern was more civilization, culture, morality, etiquette, ethics. He has influenced the whole of China for these past twenty-five centuries. He is still influencing the Chinese behavior.One day a young follower asked him, “You talk about life, you talk about how to style it, how to refine it, how to make it honest, how to make it truthful, but you never say anything about what will happen after death.”Confucius said, “There is no need to talk about it. It is certain that you will die. Then, lying in your grave for eternity, you can think whatever you want to think. Why bother me? I will be thinking in my grave; you will be thinking in your grave.”He simply laughed about the question, because to get entangled in a question like death or birth, immediately brings you to the point that these things are beyond thinking. You cannot think anything about birth or death. If you really want to know, you will have to drop all thinking, and enter into the empty heart. Only the empty heart knows the eternity of your being.Yun Kuang asked, “Does this apply even to those who have yet to perceive their own nature?”Hyakujo said, “Your not having perceived your own nature does not imply that you lack that nature. Why so? Because perception itself is that nature…Told in a more contemporary way: I have been telling you continuously, you are a buddha. And I know that you are suspicious – you, and a buddha? Your suspicion or your doubt does not make any difference. Your buddhahood remains the same. You can know it – you can ignore it.The English word ignorance to me simply means ignoring your buddha, ignoring your own nature. This nature is absolutely clear, transparent. You can see the whole world reflected in it, just like in a mirror, but you have to be utterly silent, centered. That’s what we are trying to do here.“That which can produce the myriad phenomena of the universe is called the dharma nature; otherwise known as the Dharmakaya.“The patriarch, Ashvaghosha, declared: ‘In speaking of phenomena, we really refer to the minds of sentient beings, for when mental processes occur, all sorts of phenomena take birth in accordance with them; when mental processes do not occur, phenomena have nothing in which to arise – there are not even names for them.’”He is saying that everything is contained in your mind. All that you perceive, all that you name, all that you know is contained in your mind. From all your five senses you go on collecting knowledge. Those five senses are really extensions of your mind. You will be able to understand it very easily. Before this century it was not thought that the sex center is in your mind and not in your genitals. So as you start thinking of sex, immediately the genitals are affected. If we want real celibacy in the world, you don’t have to cut people’s genitals as they used to do in Russia.A certain sect of fanatic Christians used to cut their genitals. Women used to cut their breasts…nothing else to cut, the only protruding thing – and these people were thought to be saints. But they were not aware that by cutting your genitals you will not be a celibate, because the center of your sexuality is in your mind.If we want real celibacy, then we have to cut the nerve in the mind which pulsates and creates sexual dreams in you, sexual fantasies in you. Once it is cut you will not be able to do anything with your genitals. They will hang out dead. However you try, it won’t work. The center of all your activities and all your senses is in the mind. Smelling or your eyes or your hearing…everything is centered within your skull.Mind is your world. If we take out the mind, your whole world disappears.Meditation is an effort that the world you have known through the mind, disappears, and a new perception of no-mind arises in you. What you cannot see with the mind, you can see with the no-mind.Birth and death have no influence on the no-mind. It simply floats away above birth and death. It has seen many births and many deaths. It does not matter to it, it simply goes on reflecting whatsoever is happening. Nothing leaves a trace on your witnessing. I would like to call this witnessing the buddha. It becomes more understandable, closer.A haiku by Basho:Moor:point my horse where birds sing.Basho lived a very natural life by the side of a pond, under an ancient tree where he had a small hut. He was a prince and when his father died, he renounced it. The family was very much in despair and they said, “This is not the point. Your father is dead and you have to take care of his kingdom.”Basho said, “I was waiting for him to die. I wanted to see that everyone dies. Even my father has died. One day I will die and who will take care of this castle and the kingdom? Somebody will take care. Now I cannot remain here, because there is danger of dying any moment. Before I die, I have to know some undying principle as my foundation.”He was a very loving, joyous and a dancing mystic. He is saying, “Moor: point my horse where birds sing.”Let us go to the birds because they are the only people left in the world who are still singing. Man has dropped singing far away. Now only professionals sing. Have you seen in birds any professional singers…professional musicians…? Birds simply sing just out of sheer joy. It does not matter whether it means anything or not. Meaning is not the point; expressing the joy is the point. “Point my horse where birds sing.”He always wanted his haikus to be just spontaneous singing like birds – and he succeeded in it. There is no parallel to the haikus of Basho in the whole history of mankind.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Is there just one reality, and can it be perceived only by no-mind?There are two realities: one that is perceived by the mind, and one that is perceived by the no-mind.For the no-mind, the reality of the mind becomes phenomenal, dreamlike. That’s why people who have attained to buddhahood, will call the world just a dream. But a dream also has its own existence – the buddha also becomes hungry. You cannot eat meditation. You will have something from the world of the mind, something objective to eat, because your hunger is also part of the objective world, your body is part of the objective world. You are standing on the borderline of two worlds: the objective world outside, and the subjective world inside. As you go deeper into the subjective, the outer becomes more and more dreamlike, a faraway echo. But I will not say it is unreal. The people who have said it is unreal simply mean that it has no significance.I was meeting a Jaina monk, and he said, “Everything outside is illusory.”I said, “Can I slap you?”He said, “You are a strange fellow. Why should you slap me?”I said, “You have forgotten that the outside world is just a dream. In a dream can you prevent anybody slapping you? There is certainly a difference between a dream and the outside world. Just tell me that the outside world has a different reality, not the same stuff as dreams are made off, otherwise I will slap you.”He looked all around, but I had come with almost twenty friends, so he saw that the situation was not going to be just philosophical wrestling, it was going to be real wrestling.He said, “For the moment I accept.”I said, “For the moment won’t do. No conditions are allowed. Are you afraid of being slapped?”The problem is, the people who have gone in, the deeper they go in, the farther away the outer reality becomes. But the outer reality has its own existence. Its existence needs a mind, and the inner reality has a far greater and far more majestic existence. For it no-mind is needed. So it is a double-tier world: mind has its world, and no-mind has on top of it a very beautiful, a very majestic world.My effort has been to convince all kinds of people. There are people who deny any inner world – just the objective world is the only reality; all the inner is just dream. And on the other hand there are people who say that everything inner is real, and everything outside is just a dream. But they both agree on one point, that they are denying one reality.I want to accept both realities. How can the inner exist without the outer? And how can the outer exist without the inner? That’s why I started calling sannyasin restaurants and their discos, Zorba the Buddha. Zorba represents the outside reality.Kazantzakis, in his great book, Zorba The Greek has given something of immense value to the world. He has given Zorba. It has become almost a reality, not just a fictitious name. Zorba is happy in mediocre things, in anything – drinking, dancing, loving – a very vibrant, a very alive person.The Church of Greece expelled him from the church because he created Zorba the Greek. Amrito is here from Greece. She has received a letter from Kazantzakis’ wife saying that she would like to be the director of our World Academy. Kazantzakis suffered very much because of the Orthodox Church of Greece.When I say Zorba the Buddha, I am trying to bring the inner and outer closer. There is no need that Zorba should remain only a Zorba. It is perfectly good, but it is not the highest point where consciousness can rise to greater realities, to greater mysteries.Zorba has to become the Buddha.Zorba is the seed of the Buddha.You are all born as zorbas – liking the ordinary things of the world, carrying your buddha inside, ignoring it. But even if you realize the buddha, I will not deny the outside world. I am absolutely scientific in the sense that whatever is true; it may be outer, it may be inner. The inner may be a higher reality; the outer may be a lower reality. But as far as reality is concerned, there are two realities: a reality which is perceived by the mind, and a reality which opens its doors to the no-mind.Now it is Anando time….Old Buffalo Grass, the aging hippie, is bopping down the street puffing away on a couple of reefers. To his amazement, he finds himself standing in front of a barber shop.“Far out!” he says to himself, scratching his big beard. “I haven’t had a haircut for thirty-two years.”So, in a cloud of smoke, he walks in, and sits down in the barber’s chair.“How much is a haircut?” asks Buffalo.The barber looks at the old hippie’s long straggly hair and says, “Ten dollars!”Buffalo’s eyes pop out. “Really?” he says. “And how much for a shave?”“Two dollars,” replies the barber.“Okay,” says Buffalo Grass, pointing to his head, “shave it!”Little Albert goes to stay with his grandparents at their house in the country. Grandpa and Albert decide to go fishing early next morning, and they sleep together in the same bed so that they will not disturb Grandma when they get up.In the middle of the night, Grandpa wakes up, and shakes Little Albert.“Albert!” he cries, excitedly. “Quick! Go and get your grandma. I have got an erection…! My first one for twenty-one years!”“Relax, Grandpa,” says Albert, sleepily, “that’s my prick you are holding!”Little Ernie is at the zoo with his teacher, Miss Goodbody, and the entire class. They are touring around when Ernie sees a deer peacefully grazing on some grass.“Ernie, can you tell us the name of that animal?” asks Miss Goodbody, pointing to the deer.“Well,” says Ernie, “I think it is a…I guess it is a…”“Let me give you a hint,” interrupts Miss Goodbody. “What does your mother call your father every morning?”“Oh, right!” shouts Ernie. “It is an asshole!”Anando…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Be silent.Close your eyes.Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now, with tremendous urgency, look inwards. Gather all your consciousness like an arrow pointing to the center of your being.The center of your being is the target, because at the center of your being you are the buddha.As you reach to the center flowers start showering on you. A new fragrance, a new cool breeze, a new silence – you are entering into another world.The buddha is the last milestone.Once you have reached the buddha, you can take a jump into the beyond. Then words lose meaning. Only a silent, luminous life remains with a music of its own, with no movement – but a great dance.This is the other world beyond the world in which we live. Both are real, but the first world consists of ordinary objects, and the other inner world consists of great mysteries and miracles. You have to learn to be a witness to both. The outer and the inner, both are realities and there is also something more than a reality: that is your witness.Go beyond the outer and the inner both.Go beyond duality, and a grace starts falling over you like rain. In this great moment you are not, only existence is, with all its glories, eternities – unbounded.This is the world the mystic has been working to enter in. Just as the scientist is trying to work in the objective world, the mystic’s work is far greater. First he has to enter the inner, and then he has to transcend both, the inner and the outer. That transcendental is beyond words; nobody has ever said anything about it.To make the transcendental clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax. Just be a witness of the body, of the mind, of anything that is happening.Remain just a mirror.This is your very origin. This is not divided. This is one whole continent. At this moment the ten thousand buddhas are no longer ten thousand – just one nature, one silent flowering, one peaceful watcher.Collect as much joy as possible, as much awareness as possible, because you have to remain a buddha twenty-four hours in a lower kind of reality.But keep the cleanness of your mirror whatever you are doing. Then every act and gesture becomes a prayer, a gratitude. And from all over, blessings go on coming to you. You had not asked for them, you had not even known that they exist. But when the heart is empty, the whole existence becomes immensely compassionate to you.Gather all these flowers, these fragrances. When you come back, come back as a buddha.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, silently, peacefully, gracefully. Sit down for a few moments, collecting the space you have been in, remembering that this is the way you have to be twenty-four hours. Only then you will be capable to know the great existence and its hidden treasure.Can we celebrate?

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Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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OshoA monk asked, “Are words and speech also mind?”Hyakujo replied, “Words and speech are concurrent causes; they are not mind.”The monk continued, “What is this mind which lies beyond words and speech?”“There is no mind beyond words and speech,” responded Hyakujo.The monk said, “If there is no mind beyond words and speech, what is that mind in reality?”Hyakujo said, “Mind is without form and characteristics. It is neither beyond nor not beyond words and speech. It is forever clear and still, and can perform its function freely and without hindrance. The Patriarch said, ‘It is only when the mind is seen to be unreal that the dharma of all minds can be truly understood.’”Maneesha, language has never been used the way Zen uses it – very symbolic, metaphoric, yet indicating to the ultimate reality. Its prose also is poetry. And while listening to these dialogues, you should not be listening only by the ears, your empty heart is needed to receive them. Only then have you welcomed them because they are not mere prose pieces, they are living hearts of great masters.A monk asked, “Are words and speech also mind?”Hyakujo replied, “Words and speech are concurrent causes; they are not mind.”“Concurrent causes” is a logical terminology. It means like the tracks of railway lines. The two rails run side by side for miles together, but they will never meet. They are so close but the distance remains always the same. Because of the distance remaining the same, the meeting is impossible. They are concurrent causes. Mind and words and speech are concurrent causes. That is one of the most fundamental things about Zen. Nobody has said that before.People have always thought that mind means word, speech, thoughts – but that is not true. They are very close, concurrent, so close that you can get the conception that they are one. But when you get deeper into meditation and leave the world of words and speech, you suddenly find there is an empty mind beyond them which is your real mind. To distinguish it, we call it the empty heart. Either to call it no-mind, real-mind, empty heart…they are all synonymous. But ordinarily, you are so close to thinking, emotions, words, that you cannot conceive there is a sky beyond the clouds, that there is a full moon beyond the clouds. You will have to go beyond the clouds to see the moon.The monk continued, “What is this mind which lies beyond words and speech?”Now, anybody of some intelligence will not ask such a question. If anything lies beyond words and speech, you cannot ask such a question. “What is this mind which lies beyond words and speech?” If it is beyond words and speech, how can it be answered?“There is no mind beyond words and speech,” responded Hyakujo.The monk said, “If there is no mind beyond words and speech, what is that mind in reality?”He does not get the idea of the beyond.Hyakujo said, “Mind is without form and characteristics. It is neither beyond nor not beyond words and speech. It is forever clear and still and can perform its function freely and without hindrance. The Patriarch said, ‘It is only when the mind is seen to be unreal that the dharma of all minds can be truly understood.’”The whole dialogue is between two persons who cannot understand each other. The master, Hyakujo, is speaking as authentically as possible about something which cannot be spoken about. Anybody in his place, a man like Ma Tzu, would have beaten the monk to give him a little glimpse beyond the mind.When thoughts stop, when suddenly one hits you, the whole world is in a whirl. Thoughts stop and you are shocked. Even breathing stops: “I was asking a relevant question and what kind of mad master is he? He hits me…” And before you have opened your mind, he hits you again.Once Ma Tzu hit a person sixty-six times….Because he was hit, he was shocked and still started opening his mouth. Again another hit…until he stopped opening his mouth, until he understood that this opening of the mouth is creating the whole trouble.But Ma Tzu was a totally different master, very loving and very compassionate – he had the right to hit.And as the man became silent, Ma Tzu closed his eyes, the man closed his eyes. Nothing was asked, nothing was said, and everything was understood.Those sixty-six hits brought the man to the edge of the mind. He must have been an authentic seeker. He did not bother that his head might be broken…He did not care, but went on insisting for another hit until he found some glimpse that prevented him from speaking.Seeing that he had found some glimpse, and was not going to speak, Ma Tzu closed his eyes. They sat for hours together in silence.In that silence is the transfer, the transmission.The man bowed down, touched the feet of Ma Tzu, and he said, “If there were more people like you, so compassionate to hit sixty-six times, the world would have become enlightened.”It was a totally different atmosphere where the hit was not thought to be an insult, it was thought to be a message. What words cannot say, the hit was saying. The hit was saying: “Keep quiet. Be silent. Be utterly silent.” And the master goes on hitting. He is saying, “Go on digging deeper and deeper. As I hit you from outside, you hit yourself inside until you reach the life source itself.”Hyakujo depended more on simple dialogue. His contribution is that he did not behave like a mad Zen master, he behaved very normally. He has brought Zen from the mountains to the marketplace. Naturally he has to behave according to the manners of the market. So the questions all are stupid. Each question needs a good hit.To answer, what Hyakujo has replied is that they are concurrent causes. They appear to be very close but they are not one. They can go separate ways; there is nothing to hinder them. Mind can remain empty without thoughts because thoughts are not intrinsically part, of the mind. They come and go; you know they go on coming and going. Your mind is simply a caravanserai in which they stay for a while.In your whole life how many thoughts have passed in your mind? Exactly the same as the water that has passed down the Ganges. Every mind is concurrent with a flowing river of thoughts.His answer is so clear that to ask him, “What is this mind which lies beyond words and speech?” is absolutely nonsense. He has said, “It is not mind and there is no relationship between speech, and words, and mind.” They are two separate phenomena running together at close distance but never meeting. Because it is beyond mind and beyond words and speech, a man of understanding would not have asked, “What is this mind…?” because any answer will be words and speech.This mind cannot be spoken. This mind can be felt, this mind can be experienced. If the man had asked how to experience this mind which is beyond words and speech, just that simple difference would have made a great difference. That would have proved that the man is really a man of genius. He understands that something that is beyond words and speech and you are not supposed to ask any question about what it is, because you are forcing the other person to bring something which is beyond speech into speech, beyond words into words.But Hyakujo was very patient, had to be, because he is working in the marketplace not in a Zen monastery, not amongst authentic seekers but amongst casual inquirers. And one sometimes simply wonders and laughs….I have been touring this country for thirty years or more. I have found people…I was going to catch a train. The train stopped for only ten minutes and somebody was holding my hand and saying, “Just tell me, what is truth?”I said, “It will take a little time and I will miss my train. It is not something that I can give you right now. It will need a certain background within you, then only can I indicate to you what is truth. That cannot be done while my train is moving. Just let me go.”I have found people on the streets. They will stop, they will say, “We don’t have much time to meditate but can you just tell us in short what is meditation?” All over the world there are such people who are in a hurry and want the ultimate experience in their hurry, in their haste.This man did not understand what had been said. If he had even been just a little intelligent, he would have stopped. His stopping may have given him a glimpse. But rather than stopping he asked, “What is this mind which is beyond words and speech?” Hyakujo does not act the way he would have acted with a Zen seeker. This is just a curiosity-monger. He answered him,“There is no mind beyond words and speech.”What he is saying is that beyond words and speech there is no mind.No-mind is the empty mind.No-mind is the empty heart.Nothing can be said about it more than this: that it is empty of what you call mind.The monk said, “If there is no mind beyond words and speech, what is that mind in reality?”Now, he goes on being more and more stupid. Everything has been answered. If he is really in search he will ask about how to get into this space you are talking about – what device, what method…But he is not asking about either method or device, he is trying to counter the master with another question:“If there is no mind beyond words and speech, what is that mind in reality?”Hyakujo said, “Mind is without form and characteristics. It is neither beyond nor not beyond words and speech. It is forever clear and still, and can perform its functions clearly and without hindrance. The Patriarch said, ‘It is only when the mind is seen to be unreal that the dharma of all minds can be truly understood.’”It must have been beyond the questioner, but Hyakujo did whatever is possible through language. He said, “Don’t ask about the reality of this mind. It is just a mirror that goes on reflecting all the attributes of existence. It is always clean. You have just never gone close to it.”Hyakujo must have been in a great sadness seeing these people. I myself have talked to millions of people around the world. I used to talk to crowds of fifty thousand people or one hundred thousand people, and I knew that everything was going beyond their heads; they were just sitting there. To get out of the ocean of one thousand people…one hundred thousand people, they would be beaten: “You are disturbing. Sit down.” I used to say to people “If anybody stands up just pull him down.” And people always enjoy such things…! So they always waited for somebody to get up, then it was a virtue to pull him down, hit him one or two slaps – there was no other way.These people loved me, not because they understood what I was saying, but just because of the way I was saying it. They loved my presence but they were not seekers. They had just taken an opportunity.Soon I became tired. It was utterly useless because they were listening with one ear, and from the other ear it was going out – that was the men! Women listen with both the ears, and everything goes out from their mouth. Just a little difference! Have you ever seen two women sitting silently together?The world is so full of gossiping, and you are talking about meditation. It is so juicy to gossip about what is happening in the neighborhood. As far as meditation goes, there is enough time in old age, or even after death. Silently lying down in your grave you can meditate as much as you want. But right now there is so much happening all around – somebody’s wife has escaped, somebody’s husband is cheating his wife….Seeing the situation, that it is almost futile to talk to the crowd, I started gathering a few people. The only way was to drop speaking to the crowds. I would go to a mountain and I would inform people that whoever wanted to come to the mountain for ten days, or seven days, could come and be with me. Naturally, if somebody takes ten days out of his work, he has some interest, it cannot just be curiosity. If he leaves his wife and children and job for ten days, at least he shows a sign that he is not only curious but he really wants to know. That’s how the meditation camps began.But soon I found that meditation camps began creating trouble for me. In Rajasthan, in their assembly, they decided that I should not be allowed into Rajasthan. I had been going to Mount Abu which is in Rajasthan. In Gujarat, at that time, Morarji Desai was the chief minister. He himself proposed to the assembly that my coming to Gujarat should be prohibited. I used to go to Bhavnagar, to Rajkot, to Jamnagar, to Dwarka – and there were a few very beautiful places for camps – Nargol…miles and miles of huge saru trees. The sun never reaches underneath them because on top they are so full of leaves, branches, and they grow very close. And by the side of the sea you can hear the sound of the sea waves and listen – sitting, not together, but scattered in the forest.So it became a trouble that my camps should be stopped everywhere. Now, my camps were not doing any harm to anybody. And in my camps only people were coming who wanted to come. Seeing this happening throughout the world, I have come to the conclusion there is no democracy anywhere.Everywhere there is talk about democracy, freedom of speech, but it is all talk. The moment you find a man who has something to say, you immediately start stopping him. Yes, there is freedom of gossiping but there is no freedom to say the truth. You are free to lie as much as you can. Nobody will prevent you, no government will ever bother about you, but if you start talking about truth…And even more dangerous is to give people a certain direction so they can move into their own realization. This is very dangerous to all the vested interests.I had to remain in Pune and have dropped going anywhere – whoever wants to come here can come. This is my way of finding out the authentic seekers who are not interested in mental gymnastics, but are really dying to know what their life springs are – from where they are coming, to where they are going, what is their reality. They don’t want any verbal answer; they want an experience.Hyakujo must have been very sad. I can say it out of my own experience. Thirty years simply wasted, because out of those crowds which I talked to around the country, rarely does anybody come here. Naturally, they have not heard me, they have not felt me, they have not seen that something absolutely important is possible even in their life. Just a little sense of direction has to be given to them.Those who have been coming here in thousands, from all over the world, are a different category of people. They don’t belong to the crowds. They are seekers and searchers, and they are ready to risk their reputation. People are afraid to come here just to save their reputation. To be even associated with me, and they lose their social status. I am a dangerous man. They also become part of the great dangerousness. Nobody knows what the danger is.Somebody once in a while dares to come in and is shocked why he has missed for so many years. He may even be living in Pune, he may be passing the gate every day, but just to be associated is dangerous because these people in the Buddha Auditorium don’t belong to any religion, don’t belong to any nation, don’t belong to any stupid ideas of inequality. Here nobody is a man or a woman, nobody is rich or poor. Everybody is in the same boat making every effort to reach to the other shore.And the other shore is not far away. It needs only a little meditativeness, a little silence. We are touching the other shore every night. It has to be touched many times before you become acquainted with the new space, the new world. Going to the other shore is not just going to the other shore, you will have to leave all that you are on this shore. Only the essential, vital life principle will go to the other shore. Slowly slowly one learns, and slowly slowly one gathers the eyes to see the beauty of the other shore – the tremendous splendor of which we are completely blind. It is so close that it makes me sad. It has always made the people who have reached the other shore very sad – sad about the people who don’t even think of the other shore. Even in their dreams they are dreaming stupid things.A haiku by Basho:The passing days and monthsare eternal travelers in time.“The passing days and months are eternal travelers in time.”Why did he write this haiku? Anybody who knows nothing of Zen will not be able to find any meaning in it, but for one who knows the context, the context is the witness.This haiku is not saying just anything about the witness, but in fact it is saying everything about the witness. It is just like a mirror. Months and days and years are eternal travelers. They go on passing before us, but we are always here and now. We are not traveling. Our whole existence is here and now, always. It does not matter where your body is.The haiku has meaning only for a meditator. Everything passes on. It is a caravan of stars, of days, of months, of years, of seasons, but you, you simply remain here, silently watching the whole procession.This center that never moves is the center, not only of you, but of the whole existence. The whole existence is moving on this center. Knowing this, you settle. You have found your whole, you relax. All desires disappear, all ambitions disappear. There is nowhere to go and there is nothing to be achieved. Everything is as it should be.In the moment when you experience this – that everything is as it should be – you become a buddha. This is what we call enlightenment.Maneesha has asked:Osho,You won't break our hearts and return to your room, never to venture out again, will you?It is selfish of me, but I continue hoping that we can keep you with us – that Sardarji will keep laughing and Avirbhava will keep screaming; that the sutras will be juicy enough, and that the questions make it clear that we very much still need you here with us.Maneesha, you are asking, “You won’t break our hearts…” I will do. But not in the sense you mean.I will break your hearts in my presence.Your hearts are closed. Their doors have never been open for centuries. So much dust has gathered, so many cobwebs. I am going to break all that so that you can find the emptiness of your heart. But your idea is totally different. You say, “You won’t break our hearts and return to your room, never to venture out again, will you?”Unfortunately I cannot promise that. I would love to give you the promise, but you know I am a contradictory man, so my promise does not make any sense. I cannot promise you anything.I will try my best to go on coming every day, and it is possible only now that such a promise even can be fulfilled, because I don’t think that the world is going to last more than twelve years. Seeing the stupidity of the politicians and the priests and the so-called leaders of the world, it seems to be absolutely certain that they will destroy this planet – they are bent upon it. Everything is being done with tremendous speed to destroy this planet. So perhaps twelve years are not too much. Avirbhava can wait on the gate. Sardar Gurudayal Singh can continue laughing.This time, if you all get ripe, if you all can understand something beyond life and death, then we will all go together – with Avirbhava and all! And it will be really great fun. It is certain, if there is any hell, we are going to it. Avirbhava can scream, sitting on the bonnet of my Rolls Royce; Sardarji can be sitting behind, laughing, and the whole caravan can go and take over Hell because the devil has ruled enough. It needs immediate revolution and change. If we cannot change this world, we will change some world anyway.(At this point there is a moment’s blackout)The devil became worried! One thing is certain that God never created electricity. In no scripture of any religion, is God supposed to have created electricity. Obviously, it is a creation of devil. So, he gave us a signal: “Don’t harass me; go the other way!” He would love that our caravan enters heaven, but we are not interested in heaven with all those dirty saints, old hippies…most of them naked, doing all kinds of distortions of the body. Somebody is standing on the head…and they all have become shrunken, just skeletons. They don’t have anything else to do except play on the harp and sing Hallelujah. My people cannot do that for eternity.You will not find a Gautam Buddha in heaven, or a Ma Tzu, or a Hyakujo, or a Bertrand Russell, or a Jean-Paul Sartre, or Mozart, or Dostoevsky. You will not find a single genius, a single artist, a single mystic – they are all in hell. And they have made hell so beautiful. And our people reaching there with joy and laughter – that is the only thing that is missing. What is the point of going to heaven? The real work is in hell – to transform millions of people who have been forced there for eternity, for small things.Bertrand Russell has written in his autobiography, “I cannot understand the idea of Christianity that sinners will suffer for eternity in hell.” How many sins can you commit to deserve a punishment for eternity? Even if every moment, day and night, you commit this sin and that sin…What are the sins? – drinking a cup of tea, smoking a cigarette, falling in love with a dangerous woman, very nice looking…Never go for the looks, the reality is always different. Great philosophers have been writing about appearance and reality.Russell says, “One day I counted how many sins I had committed, and I also counted the sins that I wanted to commit but the opportunities did not allow me. On both I could get at least four and a half years of jail from a very strict judge, but eternity is too much. And they say God is compassionate!”All the great people of the world, creative in any direction, have been thrown in hell. The stupid and idiotic saints who don’t know anything of creativity, who don’t know anything of meditation, whose whole art is how to torture themselves and others, these people are there, all sick and psychologically mad, in heaven. I have always suspected that God himself must have changed his place to hell! Living with these idiots and not one…Strange people will drive anybody mad. You just think about the saints, what kinds of saints….I saw one saint who had not taken any position other than standing for twelve years. His legs had become like elephant legs. His upper body had shrunk and become very small, and he was holding a bamboo. To keep him entertained, his disciples would go on singing day and night around him. I was passing by the road. Somebody told me that here there was a great saint, so I went to see him.That man was torturing himself, and people were enjoying his torture.I have seen saints dying through will. That means not eating for ninety days. Only after ninety days will your flesh be used up. You will remain just a skeleton. And they are worshipped by thousands of people…. These skeletons – their only quality is that they can torture themselves. There are from different parts of the world, different varieties.Heaven must be a circus. Nobody who is sane can survive there. And the fence is so ancient that it is broken almost everywhere. I have never heard about anybody trespassing over the ancient fence from the side of hell to the side of heaven. Nobody wants to go to heaven. Just to see from the outside, from the broken fence, is enough. So much stupidity is happening there. All the descriptions of heaven are so rotten, so ugly.So don’t be worried, Maneesha. Most probably the whole Buddha Auditorium will shoot directly, as a missile, towards hell. Just cling to each other so nobody is left behind. And twelve years is not a long time. I can keep the promise.Now, it is Anando’s time….Little Albert’s mother cannot bring herself to tell the little boy that his dog, Laddy, has just been run over by a car and killed.When Albert comes home from school she talks of other things for a few minutes, but finally, she says, “Albert, listen. Laddy has been run over and killed by an automobile.”“Oh!” says the boy, and goes out to play, whistling.At dinner, Little Albert asks, “Hey, Mom, where is Laddy?”“Darling,” says his mother, “I told you this afternoon: Laddy has been killed by a car.”Suddenly, Albert bursts into tears.“But Albert,” cries his mother, “when I told you this afternoon, it did not seem to bother you.”“No,” sniffs Albert, “it didn’t – because I thought you said Daddy!”Pope the Polack is giving High Mass in Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. The mass is coming to an end, and the Polack pope is leading the procession out into Saint Peter’s Square to bless the crowd.Suddenly, as the cathedral clock strikes three, the big hand falls off the clock, sails through the air, and lands on the pope’s head with a resounding crack!Pope the Polack falls senseless to the ground, and is rushed to the hospital suffering from concussion.The next morning, throughout the world anxious Catholics wait to buy their morning newspapers to find out the latest news.The Vatican News is first off the press, and carries the banner headline: Pope’s head x-rayed reveals nothing!Max Muldoon is walking in the Oregon hills, when it begins to snow and he goes to a nearby ranch house for shelter. There he meets Ed, the rancher, his pretty young wife and her daughter.“You can stay here the night,” says Ed, “but we have only got one bed. So we will have to sleep next to each other, head to toe.“And I am warning you,” continues Ed, “no funny business!” Then he waves a big six shooter at Max, and puts it under his pillow and falls asleep.In the middle of the night, the daughter, who is lying next to Max, slides her hand up his leg and begins to fondle him.Max points nervously to where the gun is hidden under Ed’s pillow.“Don’t worry,” whispers the daughter, “it is not loaded,” and she pulls Max onto her.Later on, Ed’s wife, who has been watching this, points at the gun, and says softly, “It is not loaded!” And then she climbs over on top of Max.Ed snores on peacefully.A few minutes later, the daughter slides her hand up Max’s leg again.Max points at his prick and says, “It is not loaded!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Be silent.Close your eyes.Feel your body to be completely frozen.Now, collect all your consciousness and look inwards, as deep as you can. Make the consciousness just like an arrow that goes to the target. The target is the center of your being.To be at the being, to the very center of your life, you are also at the very center of the universe. From this silence, from this nothingness, everything arises, all the flowers and all the stars and all the buddhas.To be at this center is to have reached to the last milestone of a long journey of thousands of lives.To be a buddha is the end of the road.Finally, the buddha jumps beyond himself and disappears into the universal energy, and melts just like ice melts.The evening has been so beautiful, and your being silent, sitting like buddhas has made it a great splendor.To deepen the splendor, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, just witnessing your body, your mind and everything. You are just a mirror and nothing else.Rejoice this silence.Rejoice this intensity of peace.Let your every fiber, every cell be filled with the life juice you have entered in.Be completely soaked, drenched, so when you come back, you bring the buddha with you.The buddha has to be in your actions, in your words, in your silences, in your speech.Remember only one thing: you have been a buddha forever. It is not something new, but only a new revelation.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come back with the buddha deep in your empty heart, gracefully, silently.Sit down, just for a few moments of recollection, remembering the path you have been, the space you entered, the tremendous experience of being a buddha. The remembrance should go on echoing in you around the clock.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Hyakujo The Everest of Zen 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,On one occasion, Isan, Goho and Ungan, were all standing together in attendance on Hyakujo.Hyakujo said to Isan, “With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it?”Isan said, “I would ask you to say it.”Hyakujo said, “I could say it, but if I did so, I fear I should have no successors.”Hyakujo turned to Goho. “With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it?” he asked his second disciple.Goho said, “Osho! You should shut up!”Hyakujo said, “In the distant land where no one stirs, I shall shade my eyes with my hand and watch for you.”Then Hyakujo asked Ungan, “With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it?”Ungan said, “Osho, do you have them or not?”Hyakujo said, “My successors will be missing.”Maneesha, this is the last talk on Hyakujo, and the piece that you have chosen is the strangest – a beautiful ending, showing Hyakujo at his peak.On one occasion, Isan, Goho and Ungan, were all standing together in attendance on Hyakujo.These three were the most intimate disciples. One of the three was going to be the successor – so was the rumor. In the thousands of disciples these three were possible successors. And every master, before choosing, asks a question which is in fact a koan which cannot be answered.Hyakujo said to Isan…This was the evening of his life, time to depart from the world. He was in search now for whom to transmit the light that he had carried his whole life. He asked Isan,“With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it?”Two things: first, the it is the ultimate experience. Zen is very particular. There have been gods which are male gods, created by male chauvinists: “How can a god be a woman?” And there have been women goddesses in the primitive tribes, far closer to the idea of the father god than the mother goddess, because the mother gives birth to life. God can be conceived as the whole womb of universe. He creates the world. It seems to be more human to conceive of God as a woman, but the male chauvinist mind won’t allow it. So only in very primitive tribes is there still some idea of mother goddesses. But all over the world, in the so-called civilized societies, the male chauvinist has replaced the mother goddesses and has put father god’s.To avoid this stupid controversy about whether God is a man or a woman, Zen calls the ultimate experience, it – neither he nor she. That comes very close to the point of how God can be male or God can be female. It can only be a neutral life principle which can express itself in thousands of ways in men, in women, in trees, in mountains. Those are all just his expressions. In reality, hidden behind all these expressions, is a pure life principle. It can only be called it.So when Hyakujo asked, “With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it?” Those who are not acquainted with the world of Zen, will be simply surprised, “What are you asking, what is it! In the first place you are asking an impossible thing: ‘With your mouth and lips closed,’ and in the second place you are asking, ‘How would you say it?’ – two mysteries in one question.”Isan said, “I would ask you to say it.”He challenged his masters: “It is impossible, but I will give you a chance. If I cannot say it, I want you to say it. With your lips closed, with your mouth shut, say it.”Hyakujo said, “I could say it, but if I did so, I fear I should have no successors.”What he is saying is, “If I have to say it, then you are not capable of being my successor. I can say it. Neither the lips are needed nor the mouth. Just a good hit and you will know it that I have said it.” Ordinarily Hyakujo was not very much into hitting people. Perhaps this was the first time he had gone so far: “My hit is going to be so great that perhaps you will fall dead. I won’t have any successors. And even if you survive my hit, you would have disqualified yourself. You have not answered. Rather than answering my question, you have questioned me – and this is a test to choose a successor.”Hyakujo turned to Goho. “With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it?” he asked his second disciple.Goho said, “Osho! You should shut up!”It is a little better than the first answer from Isan: “I would ask you to say it.” He is simply accepting his defeat, but hiding it in a circular way rather than saying, “I cannot say it.” Even if he had remained silent without saying it, that would have been far better. But very stupidly he said, “I would ask you…” He was not the master and he was not going to choose his successor. Hyakujo was the master almost on the verge of death.The second disciple Goho did a little better. Goho said, “Osho!” Osho is a very honorable word. There are many respectful words, but the sweetness of Osho, the love, the respect, the gratitude, all are together in it. It is just like Christians using “reverend,” but that is no comparison to it. Just the very sound of Osho – even if we don’t understand Japanese, the very sound is very sweet. He said, “Osho! You should shut up!”It looks very contradictory, on the one hand addressing him with the most honorable word in Japanese, and on the other hand telling him “You should shut up!” but that is how Zen is. It is as sharp as a sword – it cuts hard and straight to the heart – and it is as soft as a lotus leaf. It is both together. It is not right for the disciple to say to the master, “You should shut up!” To avoid the disrespectfulness of his answer, he first addresses the master, Osho! Don’t misunderstand me. I have great respect and love for you, but you are asking nonsense. You should shut up. At the moment of death, have you gone a little senile. Just shut up!Hyakujo said, “In the distant land where no one stirs, I shall shade my eyes with my hand and watch for you.”Beautifully, he has rejected. He is not accepted as a successor because he has not answered the question. But yet he has been very careful. Although he has not answered, he has been very loving, honoring, grateful. Out of this gratitude and love he has earned a special virtue. Hyakujo says,“In the distant land…” Somewhere in the universe, if we meet sometime, “where no one stirs” – where everything is silent, utterly quiet – I shall shade my eyes with my hand and watch for you. He is saying, “You can be my companion, but you cannot be my successor. Somewhere faraway in the distant future at some corner of the universe I will watch for you. You will reach to the goal. Of that I am certain.” But saying this he has rejected him as a successor. His answer was better than Isan’s answer.Then Hyakujo asked Ungan, “With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it?”Ungan said, “Osho, do you have them or not?”It is a little better. With tremendous respect he says, “Osho, what are you asking, do you have it already or not. If you have it, then what is the point of asking. And if you don’t have it, you will not understand it.” But this too is not the answer. Although the second answer is better than the other, Hyakujo sadly said,“My successors will be missing.”I will not have any successor, it seems. You are all well versed, you are all great scholars, you have tremendous love and respect for me, but that is not enough for the successor.What is enough, what is needed is that the successor should be able to say it. His whole life will be devoted to teaching people, to provoking people, to challenging people to get it. If he cannot say it, how can he be a successor?A successor has to be a master. You are all mystics but none of you is capable of being a successor, a master. This will help you to understand. The mystic is one who can experience, but is not articulate enough that through some gestures, some device he can manage to convey it to others. Out of a hundred mystics perhaps one is a master, because the task is immensely difficult. To say it perhaps is the most impossible thing in the world. You can go roundabout, you can bring the person to the experience by creating false devices, but you cannot say it. Those false devices needs a very articulate craftsman – a master who knows that even lies can be used to indicate the truth. Hyakujo said, “Perhaps I will not have any successors.”A little biographical note:All that is known about Hyakujo’s last days is that once, when he was getting rather old and feeble, his monks tried to persuade him not to work, but their words had no effect on him.Fearing for his health, they finally resorted to hiding his working tools from him. But Hyakujo refused to eat, following his own precept of: “a day without work is a day without food.” Finally, his monks returned his tools.Hyakujo died in 814 at the age of 90.He did not choose anyone as a successor. He left it to the assembly to find out a successor. So the assembly of the sannyasins nominated a successor. This nomination is just like nominating a pope; he is not authentically a successor. And nobody even objects to the very idea of how unenlightened people can elect the successor of Jesus Christ, who is the representative of God.Two hundred cardinals come to the Vatican when one pope dies. There is a special place for these two hundred cardinals – small caves in absolute secrecy. Everybody goes into a cave, different caves. Nobody is allowed to talk to each other, or confer with each other about whom to choose. Twenty-four hours are given and everybody meditates. I don’t know how they meditate, because I have not come across any bishop or cardinal…I have met these people and none of them knows how to meditate.What they call meditation is contemplation. They contemplate over who will be the right person out of two hundred. So they write down the name, and after twenty-four hours those names are collected. Whoever is chosen by the majority becomes the pope. Of all these two hundred cardinals none of them is enlightened, so it is simply a political election.As for becoming a successor to a master, it cannot be an election, it can only be a transmission of the lamp. Only the master can choose. But it was a strange situation because the master refused to accept the most intimate three followers. This shows something special about Zen – that it will not choose anything less than the best.I am reminded of another choosing of the successor by Bodhidharma….He had four disciples who were very intimate to him. And all the other disciples thought it was almost certain that out of these four, one was going to become the successor.At the time of departure, Bodhidharma was not dying, he was coming back to the Himalayas. He had gone to China because his master, a woman, had told him to take the message to China. So he traveled for three years to reach China. He remained there for fourteen years until he saw that, “Now a few people are ripe and ready, and I can choose a successor and move back to the Himalayas.”The Himalayas have attracted for centuries and centuries the mystical people. There is some quality of mystic atmosphere in the Himalayas. No other mountains in the world have that quality – the height, the eternal snow that has never melted, the silence that has never been broken, paths that have never been trodden. There are some similarities between the Himalayan peaks and the inner consciousness.Bodhidharma said, “Now I am old enough and sooner or later I will have to die. I don’t want to leave my footprints behind me. I want to disappear into the Himalayan snows without leaving a trace behind. And it is time that I should move, because it will take years to reach again to the deepest part of the Himalayas.” So he collected his disciples and the four disciples he called forth. Everybody knew that these four were the probable candidates.He asked the first one, “What is the essence of my teaching?”The first man said, and very rightly, “The essence of your teaching is meditation.” It is not a question of right and wrong, it is a question of depth and height. The answer is very flat. “Your teaching is meditation.” Any idiot could have said that.Bodhidharma said to him, “Your answer to my question is right but not right enough. You have my skin, at the most. Just sit down.”He asked the second, and he said, “Your essence is to achieve buddhahood.”The master said, “You are right. Meditation finally leads to buddhahood. But that can be said even by a schoolchild. Those who have heard me for fourteen years, can easily say it. You have at the most my bones. Just sit down. You have gone a little deeper than the first. So you have my bones.”He asked the third one and he said, “Your essential teaching is to be silent.”Bodhidharma said, “It is better than the other two answers, but if my teaching is to be silent, why have you spoken? You are breaking my teaching yourself. You have my marrow” – the marrow is the inner side of the bones – “but sit down.”The fourth came forward with tears in his eyes, bowed down to the master, touched his feet, did not say a single word. Bodhidharma said, “You have my very soul. You are my successor. Your tears have said what the others have missed. Your gratitude has said what the others have missed. Your silence has said what the others have missed.”This man was chosen by the master as a successor. This is not an election. This is just finding out how deep the person has gone and whether he has realized truth or not. Only that way in Zen is the successor chosen. Just in some instances where the master has found that nobody is ripe enough – then too it shows such a devotion to truth that he will not choose anybody – will he then leave it to the assembly. “It is better that all together you find out who is going to be the successor. I am not going to commit the mistake of choosing an unenlightened person. You are at least free. You are unenlightened. What else can you do? You can choose an unenlightened person, very scholarly, learned, clever, a good speaker, a convincing logician. You can do that. But I cannot do something in my last moments of life for which I will be forever condemned by the buddhas.”All these popes are elected people.Just by the way, today Prarthana phoned from California. She goes on finding things for me. She was visiting a company which specializes in making bedcovers and pillow covers. The manager asked her, “For whom are you ordering these?”And she said, “For Osho.”The man said, “It is a strange coincidence that Osho and the pope will not agree on anything, but they both are my customers.”He has the best customers around the world, Princess Diana…and he himself enjoyed the idea…. I have to tell Prarthana to find somebody else. I cannot sleep on those sheets on which this idiot pope…. There is no agreement between me and him on anything, not even on bedsheets.Basho wrote the haiku:Only the shellof the cicada left?Did it sing itself out of existence?An old cicada tree, almost dead, no foliage left – and Basho is saying, “Only the shell…” The inner life has left the tree….“Only the shell of the cicada left? Did it sing itself out of existence?”Did it go out of existence singing, dancing? He is indicating to every disciple who is in search of the eternal sources of life that you should go dancing in your death. Only then can you find it. Dancing transforms death into eternal life. Dancing is a very transforming force. It contains your joy, your blissfulness, your peace, your gratitude; your thankfulness to existence that it gave you time to blossom, it gave you great foliage, great flowers. And now that it wants you to return to the source, you should not be sad. That is ungratefulness.You should be in a celebrating mood, in a thankful mood for all that the existence has done for you. Go dancing and in that dancing death becomes a fiction. That dancing transforms even death into a new life, or into eternal life.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Are there any occasions when it is necessary for disciples to protect their master from himself?Maneesha, in fact every day is the occasion to protect the master from himself for the simple reason he has attained whatever was possible to attain in life. Now he is lingering on this shore just for you. As for himself, he has come to the dead end of the street. His life is just for those who love him. There is nothing in the world that he longs for.He may suffer old age, he may suffer sicknesses, just for the sake of the few who love him – that they should become ripe, that they should come to their ultimate flowering.Every day the disciples have to protect the master against himself, because every moment the master feels: What is the point? – it is good to leave the body now. Just your love prevents him. There is nothing else to prevent him. All the threads that were connected with life, all the strings that were keeping him attached to the body-mind structure are finished. His empty heart can only listen to your love. And as long as he can manage…because his body goes on becoming old faster than the ordinary body. The ordinary body follows a natural pattern. The enlightened man has got outside the natural pattern. He starts dying quickly.Most of the enlightened people have died immediately after their enlightenment. Very rare people have survived enlightenment. It is such a shock – thousands of volts. That creates a great gap between consciousness and the body, and it becomes absolutely difficult to live. For the unenlightened it was very simple. There was not a problem at all. The body was too much attached with the soul. The enlightened person lives in a shell of a body – unattached. Any moment he can open his wings and say good-bye to you.Your question is significant, Maneesha. The master’s whole existence is for those who love. If the people he loves let him down, then there is no need for him to go on unnecessarily suffering. Because now the body is a suffering, now every moment it is a dragging. And it becomes more painful because he is capable of leaving all this suffering immediately – just close his eyes and go away. The disciple is responsible, immensely responsible to protect the master against himself.Maneesha’s question may have made you sad, I have to change the subject.It is Anando time….Freddy Feinstein, a Jew from New York, is tired of all the high, fixed prices of clothes in America. A friend tells him that in India, bargaining is a way of life, so Freddy jumps on the next plane.Two days later, he finds himself walking down M.G. Road in the pouring rain. His New York sneakers are soaking wet, so Freddy runs into a shoe shop to buy a new pair of shoes.He is eager to try out his bargaining skills, so when Rajiv, the salesman, asks a hundred rupees for some shoes, Freddy immediately says, “Fifty!”“That’s impossible,” replies Rajiv.“Fifty or nothing!” says Freddy, firmly.So Rajiv consults the manager, who consults the owner, and then comes back and says, “Okay, fifty.”“No!” shouts Freddy. “Twenty rupees!”Again, Rajiv consults the manager who asks the owner.“Okay, twenty,” says Rajiv, when he returns a few minutes later.“No! Five!” shouts Freddy.“Listen,” snaps Rajiv, getting irritated, “just take the shoes and get out!”“No!” shouts Freddy.“No?” asks Rajiv, in surprise, “you don’t want the shoes?”“No!” says Freddy. “I want two pairs!”When a live sex show opens up in a small theater just outside the Vatican, Pope the Polack is furious.He gets together Cardinal Catsass, and a flock of bishops, and they go to watch the show to see if it would be harmful for good Catholics to view it.Coming out of the theater an hour later, Pope the Polack and his crew all agree that it is a terrible, filthy show, and completely unsuitable as entertainment for Catholics.They are marching back to the Vatican, when suddenly Pope the Polack stops in his tracks.“I have to go back!” he cries. “I have forgotten my hat.”“No you haven’t,” points out Cardinal Cats-ass, “it is hanging in your lap!”Sean O’Reilly is driving his horse and cart into town one morning with a load of potatoes, when he has a head-on collision with a truck.Sean makes a claim for damages against the trucking company, for injuries to himself, his horse and cart, his dog and his load of potatoes. The whole claim amounts to a considerable sum of money.But a few weeks later in the high court, when Sean is called to the witness stand, his case does not seem to be going too well.“Isn’t it true,” says Simon Sharkfin, the opposing lawyer, “that while you were lying on the ground at the scene of the accident, someone walked up to you and asked you how you were feeling, and you replied, ‘I’ve never felt better in my life.’”“Yes,” replies Sean, “I remember that.”“Good,” says Sharkfin, “I hope the jury takes note of it.”Then Sean’s own lawyer comes over to Sean and says, “Would you mind telling the court the circumstances you were in when you said, ‘I’ve never felt better in my life’?”“Certainly,” replies Sean. “I was lying there on the ground when a police car drives up and the deputy sheriff gets out. He tells me that my horse is screaming with pain and has two broken legs. He then takes out his gun, points it into the horse’s ear and finishes him off.“He then tells me that my dog is whining with pain and has a broken back. So he sticks his gun into the dog’s ear and finishes him off.“Then he turns to me and says, ‘Now, how are you feeling?’”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)(Drumbeat)Be silent.Close your eyes.Feel your body to be completely frozen. Now look inwards with your total consciousness and with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment.Deeper and deeper…At the deepest is your center. This center joins you with the universal life. And this center is called the buddha, because at this center one becomes so alert, so conscious, so awakened. The buddha is only a symbolic name.This moment you are all buddhas. It is up to you to remain twenty-four hours a buddha, or take here and there a few holidays. But once you have known the beauty, and the joy, and the grandeur, and the splendor of being a buddha, you will not want to go back to the blind valleys, in darkness groping. At this moment you are the light.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax.Just be a witness of the body, of the mind and of everything. This witnessing is the only thing which is eternal in existence. Everything is changing. Just the reflecting witness remains here and now without any change. This is the very center of existence.The evening was beautiful already, but by ten thousand buddhas witnessing, you have made it the richest evening possible.Remember this silence when you come back. Don’t leave it behind. Bring as many flowers and as much fragrance and juice with you as possible. And take care of noting what is the way you reach to the center. The same is the way you come back to the circumference.You have to become very acquainted with the path. It is a small path. Once you have become acquainted, you can go in, any moment, just as you go in the house and out of the house without any difficulty. This is your space, this is your home.So blissful is the moment. So many flowers are showering on you. Let your whole life become the light, the awakening, the buddha.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Collect as much from your life source and come back slowly, gracefully and sit down like a buddha for few a moments remembering where you have been, remembering the path that you followed in and out. And keep this quietness, this beautiful grace in all your actions and gestures, in your words and in your silences.The buddha is your empty heart.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,A circle seems to be complete. I feel myself arriving at a place I had left in my childhood, living an innocent, poetic, ecstatic life. The whole universe was my family. Then – first out of trust, then out of fear – I allowed society to take over. Now all has peeled off. I have walked through the pain, the fear is gone, the ambition is gone. Knowing about this whole journey with open eyes I am sitting under the skydrinking the sweet splendor, day and night. Osho, there seems to be no darkness, no end, sometimes not even me.It rarely happens that one attains his childhood again. It should happen more. It should happen to everybody because without its happening, your life remains incomplete. You go on missing something, something that you had known but you have forgotten – a faded memory, a lost remembrance. The gap is not only a gap, it is a wound. It hurts, because you had brought something with your birth into the world and you have lost it somewhere. It seems impossible to find it in this crowded universe. But unless it happens, your life has been in vain, a misery, a suffering, a futile longing, a meaningless desire, a thirst that you know cannot be quenched.Millions of people are born, live their time, and die, but without knowing why they were born, without knowing why the opportunity of life was given to them. Without even knowing who they are, from where they come and to where they are going, what their destiny is. A life of such meaninglessness is at the most a kind of vegetating: without consciousness, without awareness, without ever knowing the hidden splendor of your being.You are blessed. And remember always to pray to existence that everybody should be blessed in the same way. You say, “A circle seems to be complete.” It is complete – don’t say it seems to be complete. “I feel myself arriving at a place I had left in my childhood, living an innocent, poetic, ecstatic life. The whole universe was my family. Then – first out of trust and then out of fear – I allowed society to take over.”This is the greatest crime that society commits against every child. No other crime can be greater than this. To spoil a child’s trust is to spoil his whole life because trust is so valuable that the moment you lose trust, you also lose your contact with your own being. Trust is the bridge between you and existence. Trust is the purest form of love, and once trust is lost, love also becomes impossible.But every child’s trust is being exploited. He naturally trusts his parents and because of his trust, they go on giving him beliefs which are poisonous, a personality which is false, an ego which will deprive him of his own soul, and beliefs, thoughts, scriptures, which are going to hinder his intelligence, which are going to prevent his search for truth, which are going to make him part of some stupid, organized religion.I call every organized religion stupid because true religion can never be organized. True religion is always individual: it has nothing to do with the crowd. A Jesus can be religious but not the Christians. The Christians are only carbon copies. They have forgotten their own originality, their own individuality.Jesus was not following anybody. He was not imitating anybody. That was his fault, that he did not allow the society to exploit his trust. He did not allow the crowd to reduce him into a false personality. He remained an individual. He risked his life but he did not compromise with the society. It was better to die on the cross than to live as a hypocrite. At least on the cross he was true, authentic – himself. In the crowd, he would have lived, but not his own life. He would have been a cog in the wheel – without any individuality, without any intelligence of his own, without any realization of truth, significance, beauty, and the immense grace of existence.He could have saved his life but in fact, that would have been crucifixion. He accepted being crucified – that was saving his life – fearlessly, trusting in existence, without any anger against the crowd. Even at the last moment on the cross, he was praying for the crowd: “Father, forgive them. They know not what they are doing. They are unconscious people. One cannot expect from unconscious people anything more.”He was only thirty-three; a long life was ahead of him. But this is the beauty of the man, that he sacrificed that long life which would have been meaningless, false, pseudo, for something authentic, real – without any complaint, without any grudge against anybody.First, the parents exploit the child because he cannot even conceive that they will be deceiving him – and it is not that the parents deceive the child intentionally. They are unconscious. They have also been deceived by their parents. Every generation has been corrupting every new generation. The parents don’t know whether God exists or not, but they pretend before the child that God exists; they take him to the church, or to the synagogue, or to the temple. Neither they know nor do their rabbis and their bishops and their priests know. It is a very mad world. Blind people are leading other blind people. Nobody raises the question: where are we going and why?From the very beginning I refused to believe in anything unless I was convinced. Everybody was irritated with me – and I was not doing any harm to anybody. They wanted me to go to the temple. They wanted me to touch the feet of somebody they thought was a saint.I said, “I don’t have any objection. I can touch his feet. I can even touch his head, but at least I must know why I am doing it. What qualities has this man got?”The replies I got were so ridiculous: “Because this man has renounced the world.”I said, “That simply proves this man is a coward. He’s an escapist. If he has renounced the world, then what is he doing here? This too is the world!”“He may have left his house but now he’s staying in somebody else’s house. He has simply renounced his responsibilities. He has left his wife and his children. The children will become beggars, the wife will become a prostitute, and who is responsible for it? This man has become a parasite, because he is not doing anything. His whole job is to let people touch his feet.”My father stopped taking me. But I would follow him and he would say, “Listen, you are not to come with me.”I said, “I am not coming with you. This road does not belong to you! I don’t know where you are going and I don’t even want to know. Neither do you need to be worried about me. It is just coincidence that you happen to be ahead of me and I happen to be behind you.”He would stop. I would stop. He said, “This is not good, creating unnecessary fuss in the marketplace.”I said, “You are creating fuss. I was walking silently. I have not raised a single question. Why have you stopped? And if you can stop without my permission, why can’t I stop without your permission? It is a government road.”Finally I would reach wherever he was going, and as we were coming near the temple, or near the place where some saint was staying, he would start persuading me, “Okay, you have come but keep quiet.”I said, “If I see something stupid, I cannot keep quiet. I need honest answers.”He said, “It seems I will have to stop going to the temple, going to the saints – just because of you!”I said, “It does not matter, I can go without you. And I will create more trouble because these people you are worshipping are the ugliest people I have seen.”The Hindu saints have such big bellies that one has to decide whether the man has the belly or the belly has the man. And these are the people who have renounced the world! I used to ask: “What is the matter with his belly, is he pregnant?”The simple fact is, the people who renounce sex start eating more and more, as a substitute. Food becomes their obsession. These big bellies of Hindu saints are nothing but symbolic of repressed sex. And you are worshipping these psychologically sick people. I don’t see any light in their eyes, I don’t see any grace in their faces. I don’t see any authority in their words. They quote scriptures. Their whole “being” is within inverted commas – they don’t know anything on their own.Gautam Buddha may have known, but to repeat his words does not mean that you are also a knower. Those words can be repeated by a parrot, too. But the parrot cannot become a buddha.I would go with my grandfather to the temples, and I would see people worshipping dead, stone statues – what kind of humanity have we created? Just because somebody has said, “This statue is the statue of God.” Nobody has seen God. No photographer has even taken a single photograph. How have these sculptors managed to make these statues? Just pure imagination.Gautam Buddha died twenty-five centuries ago, and his first statue was made five hundred years after his death. There was not even an eye-witness alive. You will be surprised to know that it was at the time when Alexander the Great came to India, and all of Gautam Buddha’s statues have the face of Alexander the Great! Because Alexander was a beautiful man, young and powerful, he attracted the painters, the sculptors, and he became the prototype for Gautam Buddha, for Mahavira, for the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas. None of them have the Indian face; the face is Greek.But my grandfather would say, “Don’t talk such things. If somebody hears, they will think that I have brought you basically to create trouble.”I said, “You are wrong. You have not brought me, you have come with me. I was coming myself. From where have you got the idea that you have brought me? And unless somebody proves to me that these statues are of Buddha, or Mahavira, why should I be expected to worship them? In fact, they should be removed! They are statues of Alexander the Great, one of the maddest men the world has known – who had the ambition to conquer the whole world.”“These people – Buddha and Mahavira and others – were against ambition, against desire. They renounced their kingdoms, and what a strange fate: instead of their own statues, statues of Alexander are being worshipped in all the temples of India.”But naturally parents are powerful, more knowledgeable, and children are helpless, innocent. You can go on stuffing into their heads any nonsense. By the time they mature, that nonsense will have become so deep-rooted that they will be ready to fight for it, they will be ready to kill for it or be killed for it. What are religious wars? People are fighting about such fictions – “God.” None of them has known God, neither the Christians nor the Mohammedans, but they are fighting that their god is right and your god is wrong.Simplified, they are saying, “We are right. You are wrong.” And that would be far clearer: it is a fight of egos, it is not a religious war. It is not a crusade. Everybody wants to prove his ego to be right, and that can be proved only if he proves that everybody else’s ego is wrong. Then he attains superiority, he becomes higher, holier.So first, it is the simple trust of the child. And second, your observation is absolutely correct. Second, it is fear. Because the parents can punish you, they can deprive you. Teachers can punish you. You have to accept whatever is being said by those who have power of some kind. In this way, everybody has been distracted, derailed from his natural path. And he has moved in a direction which was not meant for him. That’s why there is always anxiety, anguish, and a deep sadness. This sadness is existential: unless you can be your natural self, the spring will never come to you, the flowers will never blossom in your being, love will never grow. You will never know the glory of life and the splendor of consciousness.You say, “Now all has peeled off.” This is my whole work here – just peeling the onions. Peeling to the point where nothing remains – just spaciousness and silence. Because an onion is nothing but layers and layers and layers, and when the final layer is taken off, your hands are empty. In those empty hands descends the whole glory, the whole kingdom of God. You have to be not standing in the way, you have to give way so that God can enter. You have to open the windows and doors so that fresh winds can come in and the life-giving sun rays can dance inside and the room becomes alive.Your beliefs, your traditions, your scriptures, your religions – all are closing your being from all sides. No fresh air, no sun rays, no fragrance coming with the air, no life dancing inside you with the sun rays – how can you be happy? How can you be blissful? You have carved a grave for yourself. Alive, you are living inside the grave. Anybody who is a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Buddhist, is living in a grave. He is no longer alive.It is good that you were courageous enough to drop all the layers of the onion. “I have walked through the pain.” Yes, there is pain because all those beliefs, thoughts, philosophies, have become so much part of you that it is not like taking your clothes off – it is something like taking your skin off. It is painful. But this pain is worth it. It is almost the pain of a surgery, to remove the cancer from your soul. Once you have passed through the pain, the fear is gone, the ambition is gone.Your observation is immensely significant for everybody, because all ambition is out of fear. All ambition is out of an inferiority complex, because you are afraid to be yourself. You want to be somebody else – a president of a country, a prime minister of a country, the richest man. People find different ways because so many people cannot be the president, cannot be the richest, cannot be the prime minister. Then they create a Rotary Club.Man’s stupidity knows no limits. In a Rotary Club, the presidents go in rotation. Everybody becomes the president, everybody’s ambition is fulfilled. But the Rotary Club chooses only the topmost people from every profession. What about others? They create a Lions Club! There are many other clubs. Their whole function is to give you some solace, that you are a president, that you are a secretary, that you are not just nobody.The Hindu shankaracharyas, who are equal to the Christian popes, call themselves “world teachers” – “jagatguru.” I used to live in Raipur. I was surprised that a man in that city called himself jagatguru, the world teacher. And he was not a shankaracharya. Even the shankaracharyas are not jagatguru, because the whole world does not recognize them as masters. Even the pope, who has the greatest number of followers in the world, – seven hundred million people – cannot call himself a world teacher. And this man was living just close to my house. So one day, I went there.He was having a massage session; one of his disciples was massaging him. I asked him, “I heard so much about you; just one problem has been puzzling me. How did you become the world teacher, jagatguru?”He said, “It is a long story.”I said, “Howsoever long it is, tell it.”And it turned out to be the shortest story I have heard! The whole story was that the man who was massaging him was named Jagat. This was his only teacher, and he was his only disciple, so somebody suggested, “Why don’t you call yourself jagatguru?” The idea was really very fulfilling! He started calling himself jagatguru.I said, “This is absolutely logical. In fact, the shankaracharyas are not jagatguru, you are. But you were saying the story is very long – the story is so short, only two persons!”Man is in search of being somebody. He cannot allow himself just to be himself. Just to be himself means nobody.I was a professor in a university, and just near my quarter lived the head of the economics department. I was wondering: he was an Indian but his name was Dr. Gilbert Shaw. This is a strange name, because in India… Gilbert Shaw?Finally, I introduced myself to him. I asked him, “I have just one inquiry, that’s why I have come to you. How come you have got such a strange name, Dr. Gilbert Shaw?”He became serious. I said, “You will have to tell me. Otherwise, I am going to come every day and I will make it known to everybody else in the university: ‘Ask how this man has become Gilbert Shaw.’ So simply tell me.”He became afraid – he said, “Don’t tell anybody because I have been here for two years and nobody has inquired. The reality is, my name used to be Girdhar Sahai. But when I went to London for my PhD, I changed to Gilbert Shaw. And when I came back… It looks more prestigious. Just the name seems to be impressive to people – Gilbert Shaw. Girdhar Sahai… There are so many Girdhar Sahais.” Girdhar is one of the names of Krishna, and Sahai is his caste.Seeing thousands of people, I have come to know such sick minds. Even changing the name, giving it some color so that it looks Western – as if he is the son of George Bernard Shaw, or at least some faraway relative. People want to be somebody. But it is out of fear. The fear is that nobody knows you; whether you exist or not makes no difference to the world. Whether you have been here or not, nobody will remember. People are not interested in living but in being remembered. What use is it to be remembered when you are dead?“Knowing about this whole journey with open eyes I am sitting under the sky drinking the sweet splendor, day and night. Osho, there seems to be no darkness, no end, sometimes not even me.”There is no darkness. Darkness is only less light. Our eyes are not capable, but there are animals, owls, which can see in the night – it is their day. In the morning comes their night, because their eyes are so delicate that they cannot open their eyes in the bright sun rays. So the whole day long, they are in darkness and the whole night they are in light. The difference between darkness and light is only of degree.It is the same as the difference between coldness and heat: the same thermometer can show you how much is the temperature. Is it cold or is it hot? The difference is only of degrees. Wherever you see opposite things, remember: the difference is only of degree. There is no opposition anywhere. There is nothing contradictory. Certainly there is no end, because there is no beginning. Existence has always been there, is there, will be there, and we are part of it. Forms may have changed, but the essential reality remains the same.You say, “Sometimes not even me.” What is happening sometimes will soon become a permanent recognition that you are not. Only existence is. But the first glimpses have started coming to you. You are right, the circle is complete. You are again becoming innocent, full of wonder. This is the rebirth Jesus used to speak of: “Unless you are born again, in this very life, you will not attain the kingdom of God.”Before death comes, everybody has to become a child again. Then there is no death; then you die consciously, knowing perfectly well that only the body, which has become old and useless, is being renewed. You are moving your house.The only problem in attaining your childhood again is that what, because of trust and because of fear, you have accepted from the family, from the society, from the church, from the school – all that has to be dropped. It needs courage. But what you drop is meaningless, and what you gain is so tremendous in its truth, in its beauty, in its joy, that it is worth it to drop everything and become an innocent child again.My definition of sannyas is: the struggle to become a child again. Of course, the second childhood has a great difference from the first childhood: the first childhood was ignorant, and the second childhood is innocent. The demarcation point is very difficult. But once understood, it is simple.The ignorant child looks innocent but he will lose his ignorance soon. He will have to become knowledgeable. As he grows, he will have to attain all kinds of knowledge just to survive in the society. The second childhood comes after you have known everything and known the futility of it and have dropped it. It is not ignorance – it is just a totally different kind of consciousness.It is awareness.You will not fall again into the trap of knowledgeability. The first was only negative; the second is something positive. Ignorance means absence of knowledge. Innocence means the presence of wonder.A young woman is going to marry a Greek man. The night before the wedding, her mother takes her aside. “Now look,” the mother tells her daughter, “Greeks are a little strange. If he ever tells you to turn over, I want you to get out of bed, pack your clothes, and come back home to me.”So the couple gets married and everything is fine for the first two years.Then one night, while they were in bed, the man says to the woman, “Sweetheart, roll over now.”She gets very upset, gets out of bed, puts her clothes on and starts packing her suitcase. As she is ready to leave, the confused man says, “Darling, wait a minute. What is the matter?”Holding her tears back, she says: “My mother told me that you Greek men are strange, and that if you ever told me to roll over I was to get my clothes on, leave you, and go home to her.”“But honey,” says the man, “don’t you want children?”Osho,Again, you invite us to kill the Buddha when we meet him on the path. You said that the master is the last attachment and you want me to drop this too, in order to be totally free. Oh my beloved, the problem is not that I love you too much: I can kill you out of love, with no pain at all. But the real problem is, that I like you too much! I like your eyes, I like your hands, I like your beard, I like your face, your profile. And I like the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you laugh. I like everything about you, Osho – except for your watches, of course. For all my life I've been in search of beauty: I have photographed the most beautiful women and the most beautiful men in the world, but never, never have I come across a being who contains both: the fragile beauty of a woman and the austere grace of a man. How could I possibly kill you, if I like you more than any sunset, any temple, any painting, any poem, any woman, any river, any sculpture; more than anything I have ever seen? And you must know my hidden secret too: for I keep coming back in the body to please my eyes only. How in heaven could I deprive my eyes of the vision of you, of the ultimate grace of form, in this unaesthetic world?Sarjano, your question is not a question. It is a statement. The only thing questionable in it is about my watches. So I can say to you, if you meet me on the way, take away my watch. That will be enough. Moreover, they are not mine. They belong to sannyasins who want me to use them while they are here. And then they can take them back, and they become something precious to them. I don’t own anything – even my robes are not my own. They are also made by sannyasins.I agree with you, I don’t like these cheap watches myself. But where can you find richer people than sannyasins? If you have some idea, either you can inform me or if you can manage, you can bring the right watch, one that you like. You are an Italian Sarjano, so I have a joke especially for you.An Italian ship has been out at sea for months and all the crew is missing the delight of female company. Everyone is becoming more and more irritable. Everyone, except the captain.The crew begins to notice that the captain does not seem to suffer from the same frustrations that they do. So they decide to spy on him and find out his secret. That night, they creep down to his cabin and look through the keyhole. They see him enjoying himself with a beautiful and very lifelike inflatable doll.So when the captain is not in his cabin, they all take turns to go down and enjoy the favors of this magnificent piece of modern engineering.When the ship docks in Amsterdam, the captain goes back to the shop in the red-light district where he bought the doll. “Good morning, captain,” says the attendant. “Are you satisfied with our product?”“Ah, yes,” replies the captain, “She is magnificent! And she is so lifelike that I even got gonorrhea from her.”Osho,Can you say something about the difference in the quality of silence between melting with you, melting with my beloved, and melting alone?Melting with your beloved is the easiest because it is very superficial and very momentary. It is mostly physical. Your mind remains chattering inside and your being remains uninvolved in it. You can call it just a peripheral melting.Melting with your master is more difficult because it is not melting between two peripheries but between two centers. It is melting of two consciousnesses. It is melting of two souls in one organic whole. The ego has to be completely dropped. The mind has to be utterly silent. It is not something momentary. Once you have melted with your master, you have melted. There is no going back.And the third is melting alone. That is the most difficult – almost impossible. Because melting alone, you don’t even have an excuse. Melting with your beloved, there is an excuse – you love her. And melting needs the other. Melting with the master is difficult but not impossible; the other is still there, and you are melting with the consciousness of the other.But alone, what will you be melting into? I am saying it is the most difficult – or perhaps impossible. There is only one possibility and that is, if you know how to melt with the master, you and your master’s consciousness will become one. Then you are alone. Then you cannot say, “We are two.” There is no “I,” there is no “thou.” If you mean by “alone” this state of oneness, then melting is possible. Then melting will be with existence itself.But one should start learning melting with the beloved. One should always learn from the easiest. If you are going to learn swimming, swim in shallow water. Don’t immediately jump into the ocean. When you are capable of melting with your beloved in love, then it is possible for you to melt with the master in trust. Trust is the higher quality of love.If you become capable of melting with the master, then the master becomes a door to the whole existence. Then you can try to melt alone. Then, too, you are not melting alone; it only appears to you that you are melting alone. You are melting into the universe itself. Because existence is not present as the other – as your beloved or the master – it seems you are alone. But you are never alone. Existence is surrounding you from everywhere. You are almost like a fish in the ocean. The ocean is invisible, but you can try to understand it: you are breathing existence every moment, in and out. Every cell of your body is breathing existence in and out. Every pore of your body is inhaling, exhaling.You are eating food, which is your nourishment, without which you are going to die. In the food, you are eating the sun rays, the moon rays, the faraway stars and their effects, the earth – all that is coming into fruit; in anything that you are eating, you are eating existence. You are breathing existence. You are not alone. Because all this is not visible, you can think you are alone.Once you have experienced the joy of melting into the master, heart-to-heart, center-to-center, then this third step is also possible, even though I call it impossible. The impossible also can become possible if you go in the right way – step-by-step.Hence I am not against love between a man and a woman. I want it to be as deep and as total as possible because that will prepare you for the second step, the melting with the master. One who has never been able to melt in love with a woman or with a man, will be incapable of melting with the master. He does not know even the language of melting. He does not know even the most superficial experience of it. So start from the simplest.The master is almost in the middle between you and existence. If you can melt with the master in total trust, in absolute surrender, you will find inside the master there is no one, but pure nothingness, a golden absence. A soundless music. A silence which is not of the graveyard but of a garden.This will prepare you. The master and the merging in him is the greatest discipline in the world. It will prepare you to melt with existence itself. It will give you encouragement and it will give you a small taste. Because the master appears from the outside as an individual but as you melt in him, you find that there is nobody. He was just a window into existence. Now the impossible can become possible. You can melt alone. You can simply close your eyes and melt with existence – with the sun, with the rain, with the wind, with the trees, with the birds. You can simply spread yourself all over existence.There is a difference of quality in all these three silences. There is also some similarity. Two lovers melting have a faraway echo of the ultimate melting with the universe. Melting with the master, you have come very close; the distant sound is no longer distant. And as you melt in existence, you are melting in that distant music itself. So there is a similarity and there is a difference, but the difference is not of quality. The difference is only of degrees.All the religions of the world have been telling humanity that there is a difference of quality, that when you love a woman and when you love a master and when you love God, there are differences of quality. I reject the whole idea, categorically. There is only a difference of degrees. Because the old religions believed in a qualitative difference, they wanted you to renounce the wife, the husband, because unless you renounce, you cannot attain to a different quality of silence.I don’t say to you to renounce anything. I simply say that these are three steps to the same temple. Even the lowest step belongs to the same temple, and is as absolutely necessary as the second step, as the third step. With the third step, you have entered into the temple.Nothing has to be renounced. Everything has to be deepened. Everything has to be experienced as totally and as intensely as possible.A Hollywood movie queen who had been married many times was to get married once again and went to her doctor to ask for a face lift. The doctor was not keen on doing it.“I am sorry madam, you have had it done so many times that I do not think you should have it done again.”“Ah, please doctor, I am getting married again and he is much younger than me. I must look my best at the wedding.”“All right, I will do it but it is definitely the last time!”After the operation she looked in the mirror, “That’s funny, doctor. I never had a dimple before.”“That is not a dimple madam, that is your navel. If I was to lift your face again, you would have to shave.”

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Over the past twelve years since I met you, as flowers of joy and meditation have opened in my heart, I've also been aware of a dark shadow waiting by the side, ready to strangle my growth and imprison me in its cold grip. Sometimes it has been only half-seen, sometimes almost absent. Now, in the last month, it has leaped with colossal force to the front of my consciousness and revealed itself as my jealousy and resentment. I am so jealous and resentful of the people around me whom I see as close to you and more privileged than me. I feel like I'm drowning in this darkness. If I can keep it back in the day, it comes in the night. Please, Osho, kick me out of this space. My own light feels so small and helpless.The shadow is your old personality. It happens to almost all meditators: a point comes when you have to depart from your personality and recover your individuality, your authentic being.But associations are very old. The personality may have been there for many, many lives. To have a divorce from the personality, the personality feels hurt, and for a time it follows you in the hope that you will again get identified with it. But it is only a shadow. It cannot strangle you; it can only give you threats. Don’t be taken in by its threats – tell it to strangle you!Neither can it drown you, but it is making a last effort before it will disappear completely. Up to now it was trying mildly; now it is becoming more and more terrible. It is coming in front of you and giving some meaning to itself. It is creating feelings of jealousy and resentment, which are absolutely absurd. Here, nobody is closer to me than anybody else. There is no question of jealousy, resentment – against whom?I will read your question: “Over the past twelve years since I met you, as flowers of joy and meditation have opened in my heart…” This shadow comes only when there is a fear of its being dropped. The non-meditator never feels it. The non-meditator is totally identified with it; he thinks he is it. But it is only because meditation has opened your heart and flowers of joy have blossomed in your being, that the personality is feeling immensely afraid. The time of its death is very close and it will struggle for survival. Even shadows try to survive.It has been with you for so long that it makes you feel guilty: now that you are being happy and joyous and meditative, you are leaving her! And when you were in misery, in anguish, in anxiety, you used her – naturally there is anger, resentment, jealousy. Those are the old strategies of the ego. They used to work in the past, but now that flowers of meditation have blossomed in your heart, those old strategies cannot work.“I have also been aware of a dark shadow waiting by the side…” It is no one other than your discarded falseness, your discarded hypocrisy, your discarded past identity. “…ready to strangle my growth and imprison me in its cold grip. Sometimes it has been only half-seen, sometimes almost absent. Now in the last month it has leaped with colossal force to the front of my consciousness and revealed itself as my jealousy and resentment. I am so jealous and resentful of the people around me whom I see as close to you and more privileged than me.”The shadow is impressing you. There is nobody who is closer to me than anybody else and there is nobody who is more privileged. You have just to understand a simple thing: one thousand people cannot sleep in my room; otherwise I will have to get out!And not to give anybody the idea that somebody is closer to me, I sleep alone. Nobody sleeps in my room. Naturally, a few people who bring my food will appear to you as being closer to me, but it is only an appearance. Those who love me are equally close to me and equally privileged. It is just functional that a few people will be doing things – somebody will be cleaning my room. Now, one thousand people cleaning my room will make it dirtier. Too many cooks cannot be allowed in the kitchen, otherwise they will kill me.You have to be a little more rational and see that your old identity is putting wrong ideas in your head. If you get impressed by those ideas, then there is a possibility that the old shadow will take back its place. You have to drop jealousy and resentment. Just being my sannyasin, you are so privileged that the whole world can be jealous of you. Just being in meditation, you can create jealousy in others.That’s what happened in the commune in Oregon, in America. Five thousand people being so happy, so blissful, continuously singing and dancing – it made the whole gang of American politicians antagonistic. People started asking them: “These people have nothing but a desert, a vast desert, one hundred twenty-six square miles. In that desert, for forty years nobody had even tried to grow anything.”It had been for sale for forty years, for three generations, and nobody had even bothered to purchase it, at any price. What you are going to do with a desert? Even when our sannyasins purchased it, the topmost real estate agent wrote a letter to me, saying, “Perhaps your people are not aware that a desert cannot support you. You cannot become self-sufficient. There is still time – stop them from purchasing it.”He wrote in the letter, “This is for the first time… I am a real estate agent. My work is to persuade people to purchase things, but I can see that you are getting into great trouble. The fight with the desert will be ongoing, never ending.”But we made even the desert an oasis. The first day I entered the commune, there was not even a single bird anywhere, not a single deer. And that whole part of Oregon is full of deer – but what will they do in the desert?As our people started working and creating reservoirs for water, planting trees, cultivating – within five years so many birds started coming on their own, and the population of deer became so thick. They understood perfectly well that these people are nonviolent.In America, ten days every year are allowed for shooting deer. In those ten days all the deer surrounding the desert would enter the commune. That was a safe place because we did not allow any hunter to enter the commune.Once a deer had come in and found people who were nonviolent, they became so friendly that sometimes they started creating trouble. You would be driving and they would stand just in front of your car. You could go on honking your horn and they would behave just like your wife – they were not going to move. They knew that you would not hurt them, even by hitting them with the car. You had to get out and push them to the side.But the politicians of Oregon became very disturbed, because people who had the same kind of land had lived for centuries in poverty. They could not believe what kind of miracle had happened that we were working so hard, and still we had energy enough in the night to dance and sing and enjoy.My attorney in America, Niren, is here. Just the other day he told me that now the politicians who destroyed the commune illegally, without any reason, are repenting. They are repenting because… The Attorney General of Oregon, Dave Frohnmayer, was the number one enemy of the commune. He was supported by the whole state of Oregon just because he was opposing us, and the stupid fellow could not understand that once we were gone, his support would also be gone. Now he has been defeated.The governor of Oregon, Vic Atiyeh, was also getting support from people because he was against us. As far as I am concerned, I will say they were amateur politicians. They did not understand a small thing: they should have continued harassing us, but not destroyed the commune. The whole of Oregon’s population would have been behind them.Now Atiyeh is gone. These two men destroyed the commune, and the day the commune was destroyed and closed, I told people: “These politicians will repent because they are in power because of us. Once we are gone, their power will be gone too.”Frohnmayer, the Attorney General, was hoping to become governor; there was so much support. Now he is not even the Attorney General. Somebody has defeated him. And when we were there a very competent man – far more educated in law, has many degrees, PhD’s and DLitt’s in law – was defeated by Frohnmayer only on one point: because that man was not against us. He made a political mistake by making a statement: “I don’t see why these people should be harassed. They are not doing any harm to anybody.” That became the cause of his defeat. Against that man, Frohnmayer was nowhere close – the man was an authority on law – but Frohnmayer was victorious in the election. And now they are all gone. It is a very strange world.In Oregon there is a law that if somebody lives there for twenty days, he becomes able to participate in the voting. They were afraid of us, so they changed the law, which for more than a hundred years they had never thought of changing. For that, seventy-five percent of the peoples’ signatures were needed.When we were there, they had collected almost fifty thousand signatures. But as the commune disappeared, nobody was interested in giving them signatures. The campaign had been going very well. But it was going well because of us – that, they could not understand. Once we were not there, people said, “What is the need? The law has been there for years and there has been no trouble and the people you were afraid of are gone.”They were so much afraid – as if we were going to take over Oregon! Because just jokingly I had said, “We are going to take the whole universe. What about Oregon? – I am not interested in small things.”Now those politicians who had become great leaders have fallen back into nobodies. Now they must be repenting, and remembering.Niren said that there is a possibility: “If you want to come back, we can get the commune again because the defeated politicians will support us. Now everybody understands that our presence is necessary for people who are in power to remain in power.”But I said, “Now, to start again in that desert from ABC – I am not interested.”I feel compassion for Frohnmayer, and for Governor Atiyeh – poor fellows. They proved to be retarded, not understanding the ways of politics. I am not a politician but I can see it clearly: in politics you should not destroy your enemy completely. You should go on threatening him – that is enough – because by his presence, there is immense support for you, from all those people who are afraid.It is just a political strategy of your personality, of your old mind – which you are discarding, and getting into a new space, a new consciousness. The old mind will try in every way to imprison you. This is its strategy, to create resentment, jealousy. Once you get caught in jealousy and resentment, soon you will be back in the old prison. This is the last effort. Your old mind is putting everything at stake, so you have to be very alert.Nobody is closer to me than anybody else. There is no need for you to feel resentment against those people who functionally have to be in my house. Or if you want me to start cleaning the house and the bathrooms, taking care of the library, taking care of the garden, I can do that. But then I will not be able to come in the morning to meet you, or in the evening to meet you.In these mornings and evenings, if your heart rejoices with me, you are as close as anyone can be. You can all be as close as existence allows. There is no need to feel resentful about anybody. It only hurts you, not the person to whom you are resentful. Don’t hurt yourself. This shadow is going to disappear; you just have to be a little courageous, intelligent, alert.You are lucky to be here. In the whole world there are five billion people. Out of five billion people, a few people are fortunate to be again in the golden atmosphere of a living master, of a Gautam Buddha.I will tell you a small joke.Marty was walking down the street when he saw his friend and yelled to him, “John, how are you?”John replied, “Don’t call me John. Call me Lucky.”“Why should I call you Lucky?”John proceeded to tell him that he had been standing on the corner of 52nd Street and Third Avenue, when he stepped off the curb just as a two-ton safe fell from the twentieth floor. It landed right where he had been standing an instant earlier.Marty said, “My God, you certainly are lucky! That will be your name from now on.”A few weeks later they bumped into each other again, and Marty said, “Lucky, how are you?”To which came the reply, “Don’t call me Lucky. Call me Lucky Lucky.”Marty said, “Tell me now, why I should call you Lucky Lucky?” and he was told that Lucky had been bumped from a flight to Miami that was later hijacked to Cuba.Marty agreed, “You certainly are Lucky Lucky.”The next time they met, Marty shouted, “Lucky Lucky, how are you?” to which he replied, “Don’t call me Lucky Lucky. Call me Lucky Lucky Lucky.”Marty said, “Why?”Lucky Lucky Lucky said, “Just last week I took my girlfriend to a hotel room for a martini, and we made such a commotion that the chandelier over the bed came down and landed right in her lap.”Marty said, “But what’s so lucky about that?”To which came the reply, “Ten seconds earlier, it would have cut off my head!”You are lucky lucky lucky lucky – four times lucky. Don’t feel jealous, don’t feel resentful.Osho,My mind, the monster, distracts me even when I'm sitting in discourse. It simply takes over and thinks all sorts of silly thoughts. By the time discourse is over, I get the feeling I missed another golden opportunity to be with you, drink from you, tune in with you. This leaves me very, very sad. What can I do?Everybody has cultivated his mind for so long, for centuries – it has deep roots in you. You cannot destroy it in one day – it will take a little time. If you become depressed that you are losing the opportunity, it will take even longer. What is missed is missed.Never look backward. Nothing can be done about it. If you miss a train, the second train will be coming. There is no point in crying and weeping and making a fuss because you have missed the train. One understands that what has happened, has happened: now be more alert so that you don’t miss the second train. Also be alert that you don’t catch the wrong train.I have heard…Three professors were standing on the platform and got involved in a deep philosophical discussion, and then they suddenly realized the train had left. So they ran – two of them managed to enter the last compartment. Only one was left behind, who was standing there with tears in his eyes.A porter was watching all this. He came to the third man and he said, “Many times people miss – I work here – but there is no need to cry. Within half an hour another train will be coming. You can catch that train.”He said, “You don’t understand the situation. Those two fellows had come to see me off! In a hurry they got into the train – and they have taken my luggage too! What am I going to do with the train that is coming? First I have to get the luggage.“And those two must be crying inside the train. They were not going anywhere; they had come just to see me off. But it was all such a hurry, so sudden, that everybody forgot who had come to send off and who was going. We all belong to the university’s philosophy department.”It happens to almost everybody, so take it naturally. You say, “My mind, the monster…” Don’t call it “monster,” because that creates a hate relationship. Just as there are love relationships, there are hate relationships. People are not aware about their hate relationships.I am reminded… In the freedom struggle of India, Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah were arch enemies. Jinnah was asking for a separate country for Mohammedans – Pakistan – and Gandhi was insistent that the country should remain one: “Mohammedans and Hindus and Christians and Jains have always lived together; there is no need for Mohammedans to have a separate country. Why cut the country into parts?”But Jinnah was very stubborn and he said, “Unless you agree to the separation, India will never become free because Mohammedans will not agree to that freedom.”Finally, in 1947, Gandhi had to agree, seeing that either you remain a slave forever or you divide the country: “It is better to divide the country; at least both countries will be independent.” The country was divided and in 1948 Mahatma Gandhi was shot, assassinated – of course by a man from Pune. Pune is a fertile land for murderers.I am telling this because Jinnah was sitting in his garden in Karachi, Pakistan, talking to his secretary about some official work and suddenly a friend came running in and told Jinnah what had happened: “Gandhi has been assassinated!”Nobody had seen tears in the eyes of Jinnah in his whole life. He was a very strong, stubborn, very logical, very rational man. The shock – his friend and his secretary could not believe it. He should be happy, his archenemy was dead – but there were tears.He stood up, went inside the house, and told the friend, “Now I will not live much longer either. Only today I realized how much I was related with Mahatma Gandhi. Without him, the whole world seems to be empty. We have been fighting our whole lives, and I never recognized that this fighting has also created a deep relationship. Without him I am almost half dead. All my joy for living is finished.”Up to that day Jinnah never used to have bodyguards, because he could not believe that Mohammedans, for whom he had been fighting his whole life, could make an attempt on his life.The next day, Karachi was surprised: he had four people with loaded guns around him wherever he went. Somebody asked him what happened, because he used to go alone even to the market. There was no need for even a single bodyguard. He said, “If Hindus can kill Mahatma Gandhi, who has been fighting for them his whole life, what is the difficulty? Mohammedans can kill me.”“I am already half dead, and now I cannot trust Mohammedans. Gandhi, who was loved and worshipped as a great soul, as a mahatma, has been killed by the Hindus. I was never loved as a great soul, as a mahatma. In fact Mohammedans have never thought that I am a proper Mohammedan” – because he never used to do the five prayers every Mohammedan is supposed to do. He never used to go to the mosque. He was a very ultra-modern man.He was never in any way a man who can be considered a Mohammedan. He was educated in the West. He was not interested in the holy Koran – he was just born into a Mohammedan family, that was all. And strangely enough, just within one year, he died. He started dying the same day Gandhi was assassinated.Hate is also a relationship, just as love is a relationship. And psychology is now absolutely certain that the energy of love and hate is not different. It is the same energy: standing upside down it becomes hate, standing right side up it becomes love – it is the same energy. That’s why it is not very difficult for a friend to turn into an enemy, an enemy to turn into a friend.Psychology has become aware of one more very significant thing: that you hate the same person you love. So there is a constant change: in the morning you love, in the afternoon you hate, in the evening you love, in the night you hate – just like a pendulum of a clock, your mind goes on moving between love and hate. Don’t call your mind the “monster” because you are creating a hate relationship. And a relationship is a relationship, whether it is love or hate.Just be a silent watcher.“The mind distracts me even when I am sitting in discourse.” So let it distract; simply watch. Don’t interfere. Don’t try to stop it, because any kind of action on your part is going to give energy to the mind. So whenever you can manage, listen, and whenever mind wanders and takes you away, go easily with the mind. There is no harm.It will look strange to you that I am saying go easily with the mind. Just be watchful – without condemning the mind, without abusing the mind – just be watchful that the mind is going somewhere else. And you are in for a great surprise. It will take a little time, but slowly, slowly the mind will not wander so much. You will have a few gaps to listen to me; then those gaps will become bigger. And because you are not creating any relationship with the mind – of love or hate – you are becoming indifferent to the mind.Gautam Buddha has made it a meditation. He called it upeksha – indifference. Just be indifferent to the mind, and it won’t be a disturbance for long. It is worthwhile to wait and not be in a hurry because the very hurry will make your mind more stubborn. If you want to push it away, it will come back with force. You just let it do whatever it wants to do. It is none of your concern, this way or that. Suddenly a watchfulness arises. It takes a little time.It depends on you, how much indifference you can create toward the mind, how much you can be watchful. The mind will become slowly, slowly rejected. It will stop doing its things, because now nobody is interested. For whom to do the whole circus?Just a few days ago… My sister is here; her son has come. Now he is married and has children. The moment I saw him I remembered. It must have been twenty years ago. They used to live in Kandwa.The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh was also from Kandwa. He wanted to meet me and he invited me to have dinner with him, so my brother-in-law took me in his car. And this boy was very small, he may have been five years old. He also went with us. He was sitting on the front seat by the side of his father; I was in the back seat. My brother-in-law got out of the car and told me, “I will go and look, and make arrangements, and inform him that you are here, so he can come out and welcome you.”It took a long time. The minister was phoning somebody in the capital of Bhopal. The little boy fell asleep and struck his head on the steering wheel. I saw it, I heard it, but I started looking out of the window. He looked at me. I did not give any attention to what had happened. He tried two or three times to look at me: whenever he would look at me, I would look out of the window, so he thought, “It is useless.”When we came back home, after two hours, as he got out of the car he started crying. I said, “What has happened? Why are you crying?”He said, “It happened two hours ago! I had hit my head on the steering wheel. But you are strange: whenever I would look at you for some consolation, you would not look at me. So I thought what is the point of crying? This man will not even say anything, and even if I cry or weep, my father is out. Now we are back and my mother is here. Now I can cry.”“But,” I said, “two hours ago?”But I could see his argument, it was right. If there is nobody to pay attention to you, what is the point of crying? At home everybody is going to pay attention. Then to make a fuss and cry… Although now he is not hurting; it had happened two hours before.Just a few days ago he was here, and I remembered. Now he has a child of the same age.The mind is nourished by your attention, for or against. Just be indifferent; look out of the window.“It simply takes over and thinks all sorts of silly thoughts. By the time discourse is over, I get the feeling I missed another golden opportunity to be with you.” Don’t call them “silly” thoughts. These adjectives are dangerous: “monster” mind, “silly” thoughts. You are taking great interest in it. Maybe you are against it, but the interest is there. Be utterly indifferent. It is a golden key. Slowly, slowly the mind will start remaining silent.Afterward you repent: “I have missed another opportunity.” Never repent about the past because that is again wasting the present. First you wasted the past; now you are wasting the present. If you have wasted the golden opportunity to be with me, now don’t waste the golden opportunity to be with the sun, to be with the moon, to be with the trees. It is the same opportunity. The whole thing boils down to one single point: be silent. And everything becomes a golden opportunity.But you are taking attitudes. You say, “This makes me very, very sad.” You are in a vicious circle. First the mind takes you away; it is a “monster,” all its thoughts are “silly.” And when you are leaving here, you become sad and you start condemning your mind.There is no need to be sad: it is the mind’s nature, and what has gone is gone. What is available herenow, don’t make it sad for that which is dead. On the contrary, make it so joyful that you can take revenge for the past too. Dance and sing so that what has been lost in the past moments is gained in the present. By sadness you cannot gain it, but by being joyous you can gain it. And a few days or a few months are nothing much. In the long, long eternity they are just like small seconds.A Frenchman staying at an English country house for the weekend was attracted to a debutante, and without much difficulty, seduced her. Several months later they met by chance at a very select society ball. He stepped forward with outstretched hand, but she walked straight past him without acknowledgment. As soon as he could, the Frenchman cornered her and said, “Surely you remember me?”“Of course I do young man, but you are not to assume that in England a one-night frolic constitutes an introduction.”In a way she is right. Just a one-night frolic cannot be an introduction. The reality is that you may be living with your wife for thirty or forty years – even then you are strangers, you are not yet introduced to each other.You have lived with the mind for centuries, for many, many lives, yet you are not introduced to it. You don’t know its workings, you don’t know its strategies. The repentance afterward is also part of your mind; the sadness afterward is also part of your mind. So you are moving in a vicious circle: first you miss the opportunity, then you abuse the mind, call the mind names: it is a “monster,” the thoughts are “silly,” then you become sad. This whole game is of the mind.You have to detach yourself and be a witness. Let the mind do whatsoever it is doing, but don’t get identified with it. It is not you. You are pure awareness. You are just awareness.If you can remember only this much… Gautam Buddha used the word sammasati – right remembrance – and the mind will disappear with all its silliness, sadness, monstrosity. A single thing you have to keep: a remembering that “I am not the mind.” You are not to say to yourself, “I am not the mind.” The moment you say it, it becomes part of the mind because language belongs to the mind. You have to remember it without any language, just a feeling: I am not the mind.I am using words because I have to tell you, but you are not to use words. You have just to be aware and remember without using language. The mind will go. It has always happened. You cannot be an exception.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You took my heart and now it is too late; I am enjoying aloneness and laziness so much that sometimes I think there must be something wrong with me. I feel I am at the beginning of a new journey, and there is a question that keeps on coming up: What is the difference between being a watcher, and the feeling of “I am not that”?It is not true that I have taken your heart. You have given it to me. If I had taken it, it would not be too late; because you have given it to me, it is certainly too late! The master takes nothing from the disciple. The disciple gives everything, including himself. The master gives an opportunity for you to give. And it is a joy and a bliss to give your heart. Nothing can be a more precious present, and there is no other way to show your gratitude. But in any case, your heart is gone!You say, “I am enjoying aloneness and laziness so much that sometimes I think there must be something wrong with me.” There is. Enjoying aloneness is perfectly right, but enjoying laziness is not right. Laziness is a negative state. One should be overflowing with energy. One should be at ease, but not lazy. One should be relaxed, but not lazy.Laziness and easiness look so alike that it is very easy to misunderstand which is which. If you are enjoying your aloneness, it cannot be laziness because laziness always feels a certain guilt, a certain feeling: “I am doing something that I should not be doing, I am not participating in existence.” Laziness means you have dropped out of the creativity of the universe – you are standing aside while the universe goes on creating day in, day out.You are misunderstanding laziness for easiness. My whole teaching is: take everything with absolute relaxation, with ease. Whether you are doing something or not is not the point. You must be overflowing with energy even when you are not doing anything. These trees are not doing anything, but they are overflowing with energy. You can see that in their flowers, in their colors, in their greenery, in their freshness, in their absolute naked beauty in the sunlight, in the dark night under the stars.Life is not a tension anywhere except in the mind of humanity. To take life with ease, without any tension, without any hurry – that is not laziness, it is easiness.I am reminded of one of the very learned scholars of Bengal. His name was Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. He was going to be awarded the highest scholarship that the British Empire had in India.But he used to live in a very simple way, and his friends forced him – “It won’t look right standing before the viceroy in the Parliament House, in front of all the members of the parliament and all the other dignitaries. We will make a beautiful dress for you, we will bring good shoes for you.” He was reluctant, but they were insistent, so finally he agreed.But there was uneasiness in his mind; in his heart, there was not total acceptance. To change your style of life just because you are going to receive an award from the hands of the viceroy looked to him like a compromise. It was against his pride.It was going to happen the next day, and he was walking on the sea beach with a disturbed mind: whether to follow the advice of his friends or just to go the way he always lives?At that very moment he saw a man come running. Just in front of him, a very rich Mohammedan was also walking on the beach. The man said to the rich man – which Vidyasagar heard; he was just four feet behind him – “What are you doing here? Your palace is on fire!”The rich man said, “Okay,” and he continued to walk with the same ease, as if nothing had happened.The man who had brought the news said, “Have you heard it or not? Your palace is on fire, everything is burning and there seems to be no way to save anything.”He said, “I have heard; now you go and do whatsoever you can. But first I will finish my evening walk, and then I will come.”Vidyasagar could not believe it. His whole house was on fire – and he had the most beautiful palace, rich, with many antiques. He was a lover of paintings and statues, and his palace was almost like a museum. People used to come to see it, to visit it. Just to go around inside his palace used to take hours because there were so many art treasures to be seen. Everything is on fire, and the man says that he will first finish his evening walk!He continued at the same pace. There was no hurry, there was no tension. Vidyasagar could not believe his own eyes, and the thought arose in him: here is a man who knows how to live in utter ease. Whatever happens in the world is not going to change him even a little bit. And here I am – just for an award from the viceroy, I am going to change my whole lifestyle. They are going to cut my hair, shape it, cut my beard and shape it, and I have agreed! No, I am going to be just as I am.”He thanked the rich man. “You have saved me.”The rich man said, “I don’t understand – how have I saved you?”Vidyasagar explained, “I was going to change my whole dress, shave my beard and cut my hair – to be respectable, to look rich, just to receive an award. And your house… I have been many times to your palace. Your whole life’s collection of great paintings and other art pieces are on fire, and you are not disturbed at all.“That’s why I say you have saved me: I am going tomorrow just the way I am. You have taught me the greatest lesson of my life: that one can take everything easily, one just needs a certain acceptance that whatever is happening is happening, and whatever people can do they are doing. What more can I do?”The man completed his evening walk, and then he went toward his home, but with the same pace. Vidyasagar followed him just to see what else would happen. There was a big crowd; almost everything was burning. All their efforts had failed.The rich man also stood in the crowd, just as others were standing. Others were very tense, in great anxiety, in a great hurry – what to do? how to save it? – and he was standing there, just a witness, as if it were somebody else’s house and somebody else’s art collection that was burning.This is not laziness. This is a tremendous centering of being, such a groundedness that you can take everything at ease. There is no need to think: “…there must be something wrong with me.” Just change that word laziness and everything is right with you. Words mean much.Just a few days ago, I was informed that in the Soviet Union there are many Mohammedan countries. And religion is banned by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Each child is taught atheism from the very beginning. So the Mohammedans have been in trouble – what to do?The month of Ramadan comes, when they fast for thirty days during the day and eat at night. To do it will be a sure indication that you are acting against the government – you are still following a religion. They have simply changed the name; they call it “the month of dieting,” and now there is no problem. Dieting is not prohibited; fasting is prohibited.A Mohammedan is expected by his religion to pray five times a day. And his prayer is such that it looks like an exercise: he bows down, gets up, bows down, touches the earth, gets up again, and inside he is reciting his mantra. Now they are still doing it; now they call it “exercise.” It keeps your body and mind fit – you cannot talk about the soul, just the mind and body. In the Soviet Union the soul does not exist, it is against the policy of the government, but nobody can prevent you from doing exercises. Even if you do them five times a day, it is not a criminal act, and it is not religious. It is good for the body and for the mind.Just changing words: you will see that every word has a certain connotation with it. Laziness has a very negative, condemnatory connotation. But to be at ease is a beautiful phenomenon – relaxed, at home, centered, without any tension and without any anguish. Just because of that word laziness the idea is arising in you: “…there must be something wrong with me.” Nothing is wrong with you.“I feel that I am at the beginning of a new journey and there is a question that keeps on coming up: what is the difference between being a watcher and the feeling, ‘I am not that’?” The difference is great, but very subtle. When you say, “I am not that,” you are not a watcher in that moment. These are the two alternatives: “I am that” – a thought passes in your mind and you say, “I am that.” This is a thought. Or you say, “I am not that.” That too is a thought. Just because it is negative makes no difference. But there is a watcher beyond both: “I am that” and “I am not that” – both are watched by a consciousness which is beyond.The watcher is simply a mirror. It does not say anything, it simply reflects. The watcher knows no language, knows no concepts. It is pure awareness, it is just seeing. Just think of a newly born baby. He will also see the light in the room, the beautiful colors on the walls. He will also see the doctor, the nurses, the father, but he cannot say, “This is light, this is a beautiful color, this is red, this is green, this is the doctor, this is the nurse, this is my dad.” But he is seeing all. He is purely a watcher.He cannot name anything, he cannot verbalize anything. How can he say, “This is red”? He has never known it before, and nobody has told him that it is red. How can he think that it is light? He knows nothing about light or darkness. How can he make a difference between the doctor and the father, and how can he make any difference between men and women? These differences have to be learned.But his eyes are open, and he has the freshest eyes that he will ever have in his life, the best clarity. They are just mirrors, reflecting everything that is around. There is no word, no explanation, no language, no mind. The same is the situation of the watcher. You again become a newly born child.At the innermost core of your being you are always a watcher.So you can say, “I am not that” – the watcher is lost. You have come back to the mind. Only mind speaks in you. Except mind, nothing speaks in you. Your heart does not speak, your being does not speak. Only the mind speaks. Your heart feels, your being knows, but there is nothing to be said.But questions will go on coming. In the mind, questions arise just as new leaves come out of trees. One question disappears, another question comes up. Mind is a factory for producing questions. If no question arises, then the question will be, “What is happening? No question is arising, something must be wrong.”You have to be aware that mind is the question. What form it takes is immaterial. If you go behind the question you will be moving on the path of philosophy. You will find answers, and each answer will bring ten more questions, and this will go on spreading. The philosophical mind never comes to any conclusion. Its whole life it thinks – question after question – and every time it finds some answer. But the moment the answer arises, it brings more questions with it. There is no end to questioning.This is the place where philosophy and authentic mysticism take separate paths. Philosophy goes behind questions, answers, and never reaches any conclusion. Mysticism simply drops the mind because it is nothing but a question-creating mechanism, and moves into silence. And the most amazing thing in life is then, when there is no question, you have found the answer.There may be thousands of questions, but there is only one answer, and that answer is your awareness. It is not in the form of an answer, it is in the form of an experience: suddenly a great silence descends upon you. Everything becomes calm and quiet. Without any words, without any knowledge, there is knowing, knowing that you have arrived home, that now there is nowhere to go.If you look at the history of man: from the very primitive man, the same questions have been asked. Answers have become more and more sophisticated, but no answer destroys the question. The question has an immense capacity to survive all answers: it comes back again in a new form.You ask who created the world. Your organized religions say God created the world, and the mind immediately asks, “Who created God?” – the answer is nullified.If somebody says, “Number one god created the universe; number two god created number one god; number three god created number two god…” that will be ludicrous, because finally the last god will have the same question: Who created him? The question has an immense capacity to survive all your answers, howsoever sophisticated.The path of the mystic is totally different from the path of the philosopher. The mystic does not try to find the answers for the questions. He simply understands one thing: that until he goes beyond mind, questions will continue; no answer can help. But the moment you are beyond the mind, all questions disappear, and in that disappearance you have found the answer – without words, without language, you have become a knower. You have become knowing itself, not knowledge. This state is the state of the watcher.So don’t say, “I am not that.” There are schools which teach that – when you see something in the mind go on saying, “I am not that. I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am not the heart; I am not this, I am not that.” But the watcher is beyond all your negations, just as it is beyond all your positive assertions.Remain silent; don’t say anything. If some thought floats in the mind, let it float, the way you allow a cloud to float in the sky – you don’t start shouting, “I am not that.” Your mind is also a sky, a screen. Things pass. You simply watch.As Adam wandered in the Garden of Eden he noticed two birds in the tree. They were snuggled up together, billing and cooing. Adam called to the Lord, “What are the two birds doing in the tree?”The Lord said, “They are making love, Adam.”A little while later he wandered into the fields and saw a bull and cow going at it. He called to the Lord, “Lord, what is going on with that bull and cow?”The Lord said, “They are making love, Adam.”Adam asked, “How come I don’t have anyone to make love with?”So the Lord said, “We will change that. When you awake tomorrow morning things will be different.”So Adam lay down beneath the olive tree and fell asleep. When he awoke, there was Eve next to him. Adam jumped up, grabbed her hand, and said, “Come with me. Let’s go into the bushes.” And so they went. But a few moments later Adam stumbled out, looking very dejected, and called to the Lord, “Lord, what is a headache?”You cannot end questions. Something or other is going to be there – if nothing else, then a headache. Since Adam asked this – “What is a headache?” – the Lord has disappeared, saying, “This idiot is not going to allow me even to rest. He will be coming again and again – ‘Lord, what is this? Lord, what is that?’” Since then, nobody has known where the Lord is!Don’t create an unnecessary headache for yourself. Just be a silent, relaxed watcher. The headache will disappear – and the head too! And you will find such a freedom and such a spaciousness, as if the whole sky has become available to you.Osho,Someone once told me the saying: “All that you put into the lives of others comes back into your own.” It has been with me ever since, and I feel it to be true. Can you please talk about this? It keeps coming up a lot for me.The saying is true. All that you put into the lives of others comes back into your own, for the simple reason that the other is not so “other” as you think. No man is an island; we are all joined together.On the surface both my hands seem to be separate. But if I hit my right hand with the left hand, do you think the pain is going to be just confined to the right hand? The left hand is not separate. If the right hand suffers, sooner or later the left hand is going to suffer too. It is not possible to hurt someone and remain unhurt, because the other is not as other as he appears. Deep down in the roots we are one. So when you slap somebody’s face, you are slapping your own face.When people like Jesus say, “Love your enemy just as you love yourself,” they are not just teaching ordinary morality. They are stating a very fundamental truth: the enemy is also part of you, as you are part of the enemy. Love the enemy as you love yourself.Gautam Buddha used to say to his disciples, “After each meditation, when you are feeling blissful, full of joy, peace, and silence, shower and share your silence, your peace, your blissfulness with the whole of existence – with men, with women, with trees, with animals, with birds – with all that is, share it.“It is not a question whether someone deserves it or not. The more you share it, the more you will get it. The farther your blessings reach, more and more blessings will shower on you from all directions. Existence always gives you back more than you have given to it.”One man who was a very great admirer of Gautam Buddha raised his hand and said, “There is one question. I can share my blessings, my joy, with the whole existence. Please just allow me one exception: I cannot share with my neighbor. He is so disgusting – the very idea of sharing my joy with him makes me sick.” He said, “Just one exception I am asking. I am ready to share with all the animals, all the insects, all the birds, all the trees, everything – just that one neighbor who is so nasty. You don’t know about it; otherwise you yourself would have said, ‘You can have a few exceptions.’”Buddha said to the man, “You don’t understand what I am saying. First you have to share your joy with your neighbor; only then you will be able to share your joy with the whole of existence. If even your neighbor is not your neighbor, then how can the birds and the animals and the trees be your friends and your neighbors? So you first practice just that exception – forget about the whole universe. If you can succeed in sharing your joy with your neighbor, there is no problem. You are already ready to share your joy with everybody else.”Perhaps in the same situation, Jesus may also have said, “Love your neighbor just as you love yourself.” It looks very strange that he makes these two statements: “Love your enemy just as yourself,” and “Love your neighbor just as yourself.” George Bernard Shaw joked about it and said, “It is because they are not two persons; they are the same person, the enemy and the neighbor. There is no need to make two statements. One statement will do because they are not separate persons.”This is the essential of all religiousness: that we should be able to share unconditionally all that grows in our being, all the flowers and all the fragrance. To be miserly about it is dangerous. In the ordinary world, the economics is that if you give something to someone, that much less will be with you, and if you share everything with everybody, you will be a beggar. But in the higher economics of life, just the opposite law functions: if you hold things to yourself, you will destroy them. They are delicate. They need freedom. They need wings and they need to be allowed to go into the sky.The more you give your love, your compassion, your blessing, your joy, your ecstasy, the more you will find that the whole existence has become so generous to you that streams of love and joy are running toward you from all directions. Once you have known the secret – that by giving you don’t lose, but you get more, a thousandfold more – your whole life structure goes through a transformation.But even in their so-called religious and spiritual life, people are as miserly as they are in the ordinary life. They don’t know that the laws of ordinary life are not applicable to the higher dimensions of being.A famous story about a Zen nun…She had a beautiful golden buddha, a very artistic, aesthetic statue of Buddha, made of pure gold. The nun used to carry the buddha wherever she went. Buddhist monks and nuns have to go on moving for eight months of the year, except the four months of rain. So from one temple, from one monastery to another…She was staying in one of the temples of China – she had gone to travel to Chinese temples and monasteries and that temple has ten thousand statues of Buddha. It is a unique temple in the whole world. Ten thousand statues: almost the whole mountain has been cut into statues and made into a temple; it must have taken centuries to build it. She was staying there.This had been her constant worry: every morning when she worships her golden buddha, she puts flowers, sweets, burns incense – but you cannot depend upon the wind, upon the breeze. The fragrance arising out of the burning incense may not reach the golden buddha’s nose, it may move in any direction.In that temple there were ten thousand other buddhas, and the fragrance was going to other buddhas’ noses. This was intolerable; this was too much. She was feeling very hurt, that her own poor buddha is not getting any incense, and all these vagabonds… “And my buddha is golden and they are just stones. And after all my buddha is my buddha.”This is how the mind functions: it is so possessive, it cannot even see that they are all statues of the same man. Which nose is getting the incense does not matter – it is reaching the Buddha. But “my buddha” – the old possessive mind continues.So she devised a small method: she brought a bamboo, a hollow bamboo, and cut it into a small piece. She would burn the incense, and put the bamboo on top of it. One side will take the incense smoke in, and the other side she will put on the nose of her golden buddha – almost like making him smoke! But that created a problem: her buddha’s nose became black. That disturbed her even more.She asked the high priest of the temple, “What should I do? My poor buddha’s nose has become black.”He asked, “But how did it happen?”She said, “I feel very embarrassed to say, it is my own doing.” And then she explained the whole thing.The priest laughed. He said, “All these are buddhas here. One buddha, ten thousand buddhas – to whom it reaches does not matter. You should not be so miserly, so possessive. Buddha cannot be yours and cannot be mine. The nose of the buddha has become black because of your possessiveness.”The priest said to her, “We are making each other’s faces black because of our possessiveness. If we could give without even thinking to whom it reaches… Because to whomever it reaches, is part of the same existence as we are part of – it reaches to us.”Don’t go on thinking about it as a proverb that is true. You are saying, “It keeps coming up a lot for me.” It is not something to contemplate; it is something to do and to experience. Just make somebody joyful and see – your heart immediately becomes light. Let somebody laugh, and something of the laughter enters in you, becomes part of you. Let somebody be blissful, help somebody to enjoy life more totally, and the reward is immediate. Existence is always cash. It does not depend on checks, drafts – it is always cash. Here, you do something and immediately is the reward or the punishment. Rather than thinking about it, whether it is true or not, try it. It is one of the truest axioms for transforming your life.In giving small things, people think of a thousand things. Just look at the beggars. If you are alone, moving on the road, the beggar will not ask you for anything because he knows you are alone; your respectability is not at risk. He will catch hold of you in the marketplace, where you cannot refuse. If you refuse, everybody will say, “Don’t be so unkind, don’t be so cruel.”Even the beggar knows the psychology: if the man is alone, he will give him a lesson, rather than giving him something: “You seem to be young, you seem to be healthy. You should be working – not begging.”The same man in the society will immediately give, and give more. He will feel resentful, but he wants to impress the people around him that he is a very generous man, and the beggar knows. The beggar also knows that he has befooled you: you have not given to him or to his poverty, you have given to your respectability, to your generosity.People say, “We will give only to worthy people, to deserving people.” These are strategies for not giving. Otherwise who is unworthy? If existence accepts him, and the sun does not deny him light, and the moon does not deny him its beauty, and the roses do not deny him their fragrance… If the existence accepts him, who are you to think whether he is worthy or unworthy?His being alive is enough proof that existence accepts him as he is.Any conditional giving is not a giving at all. Every giving has to be unconditional. And every giving has not to ask even gratitude in response. On the contrary, the giver should feel grateful that his gift has not been refused. Then giving becomes a tremendous ecstasy. This is the way your heart grows, how your consciousness expands, how your darkness disappears, how you become more and more light, closer and closer to the divine.Anything that appeals to you, don’t let it remain in the mind; let it come into your actions. Only the action will give you the proof whether it is right or wrong. Arguments can prove what is wrong as right, what is right as wrong.In Greece, before Socrates, there used to be a great school of thinkers called Sophists. They were strange people. Their ideology was that there is nothing true, nothing untrue, nothing good, nothing bad – it all depends how sharp is your argument. Sophistry was the art of argumentation.These Sophists used to move from town to town in Greece to teach people the art of argumentation. And they were so certain that they used to take half of their fee before, in advance, and they would take the other half after they won your first argument with someone.Zeno, one of the very sharpest minds the world has known, went to be a disciple in the school of Sophists. He deposited half of the fee and said, “The other half I will never give.”The master said, “You will have to give the other half – because how are you going to find out whether you have become really argumentative or not?”He said, “I am not going to argue with anybody. But that is not a question right now. First teach me.”Two years of teaching and the master could see that Zeno was a genius, far ahead of the master himself. His teaching was complete, and the master said, “Now you can go and argue with someone. Challenge anybody, and your victory is sure.”But Zeno said, “I am not going to argue with anybody. Even if somebody says in the day that it is night, I will say, ‘Yes, it is night.’ I am not going to argue because if I win in any argument, then I have to pay the other half of the fee to you. That I am not going to do.”Almost a year passed and he did not argue with anyone. The master even sent many people to provoke him to argumentation, but he would always be willing to accept whatever others said. They would say, “God exists” and he said, “Yes, God exists.” They would say, “God does not exist” and he said, “God does not exist, I am in absolute agreement with you. The question of argument does not arise.”Finally the master, who himself was a great arguer, thought of a strategy: he should bring him to the court, sue him, because he had not paid half of his fee. His idea was, “If I win, he will have to pay the fee. If he wins, then outside the court I will say, ‘Now give me my fee; you have won your first argument.’”But Zeno was also his disciple. He thought, “If he wins, I will tell the court that this was the agreement, that when I won my first argument, then I would pay him. Now I have lost my first argument: according to our agreement he has won the case, but I cannot give him the fee.”“And if by chance I win, I know that outside the court he will say, ‘Give me the fee,’ and I will say, ‘Come inside the court because I cannot go against the law of the country. It will be a contempt of the court; the court has given me victory.’”And that very thing happened. Zeno argued very well. The master wanted him to win, so he argued in such a way that Zeno would win. The court decided that Zeno was victorious.Outside the court the master said, “Now give me my fee.”Zeno said, “Then come inside the court: I will give you the fee if the judge says that I have failed in arguing. I cannot go against the court – that would be a criminal act, a contempt of the court.” And Zeno never paid the half fee.Zeno himself became a great teacher in his own right, but he used to take the full fee in advance! He said, “I cannot commit the same mistake my master committed.”Don’t make life a question of argumentation, or truth a question of arguments, or love a question of arguments, or joy a question of arguments. Live, experience – because that is the only way to know. Argument is not the way to know. Knowing is only through experiencing.A nun dies and goes to heaven. St. Peter says to her, “I’m sure you have led a virtuous life, Sister, but before I can let you into heaven, you must answer one question. The question is: What were Eve’s first words to Adam?”“Boy,” says the nun, “that’s a hard one.”“That’s right!” says St. Peter.Don’t make life a question-answer game. Make it more authentic, and anything that feels right to you, try to experiment with it. There are millions of people who know what is right, millions of people who know what is good, millions of people who know what has to be done. But they just know, they never try to transform their knowing into action, into actuality.Unless your knowledge becomes your actual experience, it is simply a burden and not a freedom. It keeps you loaded with good thoughts, but good thoughts are useless. Unless they grow within you, have roots in your heart, are part of your being, they are simply wasting your time and your life.Don’t be like the crowd that exists on the earth. They all have beautiful theories, beautiful dogmas, great philosophies, magnificent theologies, but all in their heads. They have not tasted anything, and they will die without actually knowing anything. Their whole lives will be simply a long desert where nothing grows, where nothing happens, where nothing is realized.And I say unto you: unless God is realized, your life has been a wastage. That is your capacity, your potential: the realization of the divineness of existence. Just a little taste and your whole life will become full of such glory, such ecstasy, such splendor that you cannot even dream about it.Osho,In nature, spring comes, summer follows, and then autumn and winter. Each time they are different, never the same; but the phenomenon of the spring, summer, autumn, and winter is always coming regularly. The sun always rises in the morning. Osho, are there also basic phenomena in the world of truth which occur regularly? If so, can you please talk about them?It is true about nature: “Spring comes, summer follows, and then autumn and winter. Each time they are different, never the same; but the phenomenon of the spring, summer, autumn, and winter is always coming regularly. The sun always rises in the morning. Osho, are there also basic phenomena in the world of truth which occur regularly?”No. Nature is autonomous, more mechanical than the world of consciousness. In nature there is no freedom, no choice. The sun cannot say, “I am going for a few days’ holiday.” Everything has to move absolutely mechanically. That’s why the sun goes on rising from the east. Otherwise, in millions of years, it must have become tired and bored, and may have thought sometimes to rise from the west, or from the south, or from the north – or not to rise at all. Nature is following a fixed routine. Consciousness is, intrinsically, freedom, so in the world of consciousness there is no regularity.Sometimes it happens at one point of history that there are a dozen enlightened people. For example, it happened at the time of Gautam Buddha. Just at the same time there was Lao Tzu in China, and Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu; in Greece, there were Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus; in India, Mahavira and eight other teachers of the same status. And perhaps in other countries… In Iran there was Zarathustra.That was twenty-five centuries ago. Suddenly a tremendous spring came – so many enlightened people, such a cool breeze, such calmness, such consciousness. The earth was so fragrant that in India we called that age “the golden age.” Never before or after has man reached such a peak of consciousness. And then for centuries it was just a dark night.Then in the Middle Ages, again there was an explosion: Kabir, Dadu, Nanak, Farid, Mansoor, Jalaluddin Rumi, and many others in China and Japan of the same quality of enlightenment. And then again the spring did not come. There seems to be no regularity.On the contrary, there seems to be one thing: that whenever there is one enlightened person, then many peoples’ consciousness is triggered. One person’s enlightenment becomes evidence and proof of your hidden splendor, of which you were not aware. That man’s splendor makes you confident about yourself – because you are also a human being, belonging to the same state of consciousness. He has discovered himself, while you have remained asleep. He has become awakened, while you have not been alert that it is dawn and time to wake up.One thing is certain: whenever one person is there, then in many places, many people – perhaps in faraway places; it does not matter whether those people are close to that person – wherever there are boundary cases, people who are just lightly asleep, a small shaking and they will wake up. So whenever there is one enlightened person, many people around the world start waking up. He triggers a process in the whole universe.But there is no regularity. It is not that in every century there will be so many people enlightened, or every year there will come a season when people will become enlightened. There is no season, no spring for enlightenment. One can become enlightened any time.But if somebody is already enlightened, your enlightenment becomes very easy. He has already broken the ice, he has already made a footpath. All that you need is a little courage to go alone, leaving the crowd behind. The crowd is fast asleep, and I think it will remain asleep forever. Sleep is comfortable, dreams are beautiful – why bother to be awake? Because with awakening comes responsibility, with awakening comes freedom. With awakening, suddenly you find yourself alone with the whole world condemning you.An actual case happened in the beginning of this century…In Mexico, in a faraway part, in the mountains, there lived a small tribe of three hundred people who were all blind. It was very strange. Not a single person had eyes; all were blind.A young scientist heard about the tribe and went there to find out the reason. And then he was even more surprised, because every child was born with eyes – not blind – but within three or four months’ time, he would become blind.The young scientist discovered that there was a fly in that forest, and its bite was making young children blind, and that fly was so common that it was almost impossible to keep your eyesight. But the poison of that fly was able to make a person blind only before he was six months of age. After that he was strong enough, and the fly could not affect his eyes, but six months were enough.So, for six months some babies remained with sight – a few for five months, a few for one month, a few for a few days – but by the sixth month, almost all the babies went blind. The scientist had discovered the fly, he had found the poison, and while he was discovering all of this, he was trying to make people understand that they were blind. They all laughed – because he was such a minority, one man, and they were three hundred, and they all said, “You are hallucinating, you are dreaming. Eyes don’t exist.”While he was working with the tribe, he fell in love with a blind girl. She was so beautiful, but neither she was aware of her beauty, nor anybody else was aware of her beauty. Although she was blind, still the young man fell in love with her, and he proposed to marry her. But the society refused.The society said, “We can allow our daughter to be married to you if you become blind, just as we are blind. We will have to take your eyes out. So you can think it over, and tomorrow you can tell us your decision.”The young man was very much in love with the girl, but still he thought, “This is a strange bargain, to become blind – because these eyes are what has made me aware of her beauty. Losing these eyes, it does not matter whether she is beautiful or not. And I have come here to convince these people that their eyes can be cured because they were born with sight. Just a certain poison has destroyed their vision; perhaps we can find some antidote and they can be able to see again.”Rather than being ready for that, they were not ready to go to the city, out of their mountains. They were asking that the young man should become blind. In the night, he escaped.The crowd is blind. And to have eyes in this crowd is to be condemned, is to be crucified. The greatest crime in the eyes of the crowd is somebody becoming enlightened because that man disturbs your peaceful sleep; he starts trying to wake you up. He starts destroying your superstitions; he starts fighting against your ideologies, which are keeping you asleep; against your beliefs, which are covering your eyes; against all kinds of your religious, social, and political dogmas, which want you to remain as you are because it is in their favor to exploit you, to enslave you.Enlightenment is possible for everybody, but the crowd prevents it. Only a few daring people, courageous of spirit, follow the path alone into the unknown. They need somebody – at least the footprints of somebody, that somebody has gone ahead of them, at least somebody calling from the peaks of consciousness: charaiveti, charaiveti. That was Buddha’s word – keep on going, keep on going. Don’t stop.So once in a while… But the phenomenon is not regular, and cannot be regular. About consciousness, nothing can be mechanical. Everything is spontaneous.Man’s sleep is such that sometimes it is unbelievable. His unconsciousness is such that one wonders how he can go on being so unconscious. Because of this unconsciousness he suffers all kinds of misery, anxiety, fear, slavery, exploitation. He loses all his dignity, all his humanity. He misses all the joys of life, all the songs and all the dances.He goes on doing things which he knows are not right, but he seems to be almost incapable of getting out of the routine. You know anger is not right, you know it is simply torturing yourself for somebody else’s fault. There is no logic in it, and you have suffered so much – but again you will do it.Unconsciousness is very deep. And consciousness is a very small part, so unless you have great courage to use that small part of consciousness to transform the whole of your unconsciousness, it seems almost impossible to become enlightened. But seeing one man becoming enlightened creates a longing in you, a thirst in you, a trust in you that it is possible – a challenge to your sleeping humanity, that you have slept long enough and it is time to know what awakening is. What Gautam Buddha experienced or Socrates experienced is your birthright too.Eunice and Frank were marooned on a small island in the middle of the ocean, the only two survivors of a shipwreck. Eunice was a virgin and a strict Catholic, but after a couple of months, Frank convinced her that they were never going to be rescued. Eunice finally relented and gave up her virginity.After two years, Eunice became so ashamed of what she was doing that she killed herself.A couple of years after she died, Frank became so ashamed of what he was doing that he buried her.How you are going to respond to a situation is unpredictable. In a way that is a privilege, a prerogative of human beings, that they are unpredictable. But in a way it is a very dangerous privilege.Still, it is good that man does not become mechanically enlightened, because then enlightenment will not be your glory but just a season. The season comes and people become enlightened; next year, again, when the season comes, people will become enlightened. But it is not your glory. Your glory is in your effort to attain the ultimate truth. Your glory is to know your being on your own.The only thing in life that is unpredictable is enlightenment. Everything is predictable: when you are young you will fall in love, when you are old, you will die. Almost everything that happens to everybody will happen to you. Enlightenment is the one thing that does not happen to everybody, although everybody is capable – but very few people use the opportunity. Blessed are those who use the golden opportunity of becoming enlightened, because they prove everybody’s birthright and everybody’s ultimate growth, ultimate flowering.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Of my many fears, the one of which I am most aware is that of intimacy. I am like a hit-and-run driver in my relationships with people. Could you speak to me of my fear of intimacy?Everybody is afraid of intimacy. It is another thing whether you are aware of it or not. Intimacy means exposing yourself before a stranger. We are all strangers – nobody knows anybody. We are even strangers to ourselves because we don’t know who we are. Intimacy brings you close to a stranger. You have to drop all your defenses; only then is intimacy possible. And the fear is that if you drop all your defenses, all your masks, who knows what the stranger is going to do with you?We are all hiding a thousand and one things – not only from others but from ourselves – because we have been brought up by a sick humanity with all kinds of repressions, inhibitions, taboos. The fear is that with somebody who is a stranger – and it does not matter, you may have lived with the person for thirty years, forty years; the strangeness never disappears – it feels safer to keep a little defense, a little distance, because somebody can take advantage of your weaknesses, of your frailties, of your vulnerability. Everybody is afraid of intimacy.The problem becomes more complicated because everybody wants intimacy. Everybody wants intimacy because otherwise you are alone in this universe – without a friend, without a lover, without anybody you can trust, without anybody to whom you can open all your wounds. And the wounds cannot heal unless they are open. The more you hide them, the more dangerous they become. They can become cancerous.Intimacy is an essential need on the one hand, so everybody longs for it. But he wants the other person to be intimate, so that the other person drops his defenses, becomes vulnerable, opens all his wounds, drops all his masks and false personality, stands naked as he is. And on the other hand, everybody is afraid of intimacy – with the other person you want to be intimate with, you are not dropping your defenses.This is one of the conflicts between friends, between lovers: nobody wants to drop his defenses and nobody wants to come in utter nudity and sincerity, open – and both need intimacy. Unless you drop all your repressions, inhibitions – which are the gifts of your religions, your cultures, your societies, your parents, your education – you will never be able to be intimate with someone. And you will have to take the initiative.But if you don’t have any repressions, any inhibitions, you don’t have any wounds either. If you have lived a simple, natural life, there will be no fear of intimacy, but tremendous joy – of two flames coming so close that they become almost one flame. The meeting is tremendously gratifying, satisfying, fulfilling. But before you can attempt intimacy, you have to clean your house completely.Only a man of meditation can allow intimacy to happen. He has nothing to hide. All that he was afraid somebody might come to know, he himself has dropped it. He has only a silence and a loving heart.You have to accept yourself in your totality – if you cannot accept yourself in your totality, how can you expect somebody else to accept you? And you have been condemned by everybody, and you have learned only one thing: self-condemnation.You go on hiding it. It is not something beautiful to show to others, you know ugly things are hidden in you; you know evil things are hidden in you; you know animality is hidden in you. Unless you transform your attitude and accept yourself as one of the animals in existence… The word animal is not bad. It simply means alive; it comes from anima. Whoever is alive is an animal.But man has been taught, “You are not animals, animals are far below you. You are human beings.” You have been given a false superiority. The truth is, existence does not believe in the superior and the inferior. To existence, everything is equal – the trees, the birds, the animals, the human beings. In existence, everything is absolutely accepted as it is; there is no condemnation.If you accept your sexuality without any conditions, if you accept that man and every being in the world is fragile… Life is a very thin thread which can break down any moment. Once this is accepted, and you drop false egos – of being Alexander the Great, Mohammed Ali the thrice great – if you simply understand that everybody is beautiful in his ordinariness and everybody has weaknesses… They are part of human nature because you are not made of steel.You are made of a very fragile body. The span of your life is between the temperatures of ninety-eight degrees and one hundred and ten degrees: just twelve degrees of temperature is your whole span of life. Fall below it, and you are dead; go beyond it and you are dead. And the same applies to a thousand and one things in you.One of your most basic needs is to be needed. But nobody wants to accept that “It is my basic need to be needed, to be loved, to be accepted.” We are living in such pretensions, such hypocrisies – that is the reason why intimacy creates fear. You are not what you appear to be. Your appearance is false. You may appear to be a saint, but deep down you are still a weak human being with all the desires and all the longings.The first step is to accept yourself in your totality, in spite of all your traditions, which have driven the whole of humanity insane. Once you have accepted yourself as you are, the fear of intimacy will disappear. You cannot lose respect, you cannot lose your greatness, you cannot lose your ego. You cannot lose your piousness, you cannot lose your saintliness – you have dropped all that yourself. You are just like a small child, utterly innocent. You can open yourself, because inside you are not filled with ugly repressions which have become perversions.You can say everything that you feel authentically and sincerely. And if you are ready to be intimate, you will encourage the other person to also be intimate. Your openness will help the other person also to be open to you. Your unpretentious simplicity will allow the other also to enjoy simplicity, innocence, trust, love, openness.You are encaged within stupid concepts, and the fear is if you become very intimate with somebody, he will become aware of it. But we are fragile beings – the most fragile in the whole existence. The human child is the most fragile child of all the animals. The children of other animals can survive without a mother, without a father, without a family. But the human child will die immediately. So this frailty is not something to be condemned, it is the highest expression of consciousness. A roseflower is going to be fragile; it is not a stone. And there is no need to feel bad about it, that you are a roseflower and not a stone.Only when two persons become intimate are they no longer strangers. And it is a beautiful experience to find that not only you are full of weaknesses but the other, too. Perhaps everybody is full of weaknesses.The higher expression of anything becomes weaker. The roots are very strong, but the flower cannot be so strong. Its beauty is because of its not being strong. In the morning it opens its petals to welcome the sun, dances the whole day in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, and by the evening its petals have started falling. It is gone. Everything that is beautiful, precious, is going to be very momentary.But you want everything to be permanent. You love someone and you promise: “I will love you my whole life.” And you know perfectly well that you cannot even be certain of tomorrow – you are giving a false promise. All that you can say is, “I am in love with you this moment and I will give my totality to you. About the next moment, I know nothing. How can I promise? You have to forgive me.”But lovers are promising all kinds of things which they cannot fulfill. Then frustration comes in, then the distance grows bigger, then fight, conflict, struggle, and a life that was meant to become happier becomes just a long, drawn-out misery.It is good that you are aware of your greatest fear, that it is of intimacy. It can become a great revelation to you, and a revolution, if you look inward and start dropping everything of which you feel ashamed. Accept your nature as it is, not as it should be. I do not teach any “should.” All shoulds make the human mind sick.People should be taught the beauty of isness, the tremendous splendor of nature. These trees don’t know any Ten Commandments, the birds don’t know any holy scriptures. It is only man who has created a problem for himself.Condemning your own nature, you become split, you become schizophrenic – and not just ordinary people, but people of the status of Sigmund Freud, who contributed greatly to humanity about mind. His method was psychoanalysis, that you should be made aware of all that is unconscious in you. And this is a secret: that once something unconscious is brought to the conscious mind, it evaporates. You become cleaner, lighter. As more and more unconscious is unburdened, your consciousness goes on becoming bigger. And as the area of the unconscious shrinks, the territory of the consciousness expands. That is an immense truth.The East has known it for thousands of years, but Sigmund Freud introduced it to the West, not knowing anything of the East and its psychology. It was his individual contribution. But you will be surprised: he was never ready to be psychoanalyzed himself. The founder of psychoanalysis was never psychoanalyzed.His colleagues insisted again and again: “The method that you have given to us – and we all have been psychoanalyzed – why are you insisting that you should not be psychoanalyzed?”He said, “Forget about it.” He was afraid to expose himself. He had become a great genius and exposing himself would bring him down to ordinary humanity. He had the same fears, the same desires, the same repressions.He never talked about his dreams; he only listened to other peoples’ dreams. His colleagues were very surprised – “It will be a great contribution to know about your dreams” – but he never agreed to lie down on the psychoanalyst’s couch and talk about his dreams because his dreams were as ordinary as anybody else’s – that was the fear.A Gautam Buddha would not have feared to go into meditation. That was his contribution – a special kind of meditation. He would not have been afraid of any psychoanalysis, because for the man who meditates, by and by all his dreams disappear. In the day he remains silent in his mind, not the ordinary traffic of thoughts. And in the night he sleeps deeply, because dreams are nothing but unlived thoughts, unlived desires, unlived longings in the day. They are trying to complete themselves, at least in dreams.It will be very difficult for you to find a man who dreams about his wife, or a woman who dreams about her husband. But it will be absolutely common that they dream about their neighbors’ wives and their neighbors’ husbands. The wife is available; he is not suppressing anything as far as his wife is concerned. But the neighbor’s wife is always more beautiful; the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. That which is unapproachable creates a deep desire to acquire it, to possess it. In the day you cannot do it, but in dreams at least, you are free. Freedom of dreaming has not yet been taken away by the governments.It won’t be long – soon they will take it away, because methods are available, already available, so that they can watch when you are dreaming and when you are not dreaming. There is a possibility some day to find a scientific device so that your dream can be projected onto a screen. Just some electrodes will have to be inserted in your head. You will be fast asleep, dreaming joyously, making love to your neighbor’s wife and a whole movie hall will be watching it – and they used to think that this man is a saint!This much you can even see: whenever a person is asleep, watch – if his eyelids are not showing any movement of his eyes inside, then he is not dreaming. If he is dreaming then you can see that his eyes are moving. It is possible to project your dream on a screen. It is also possible to enforce certain dreaming in you. But at least up to now, no constitution even talks about it, that “People are free to dream, it is their birthright.”A Gautam Buddha does not dream. Meditation is a way to go beyond the mind. He lives in utter silence twenty-four hours a day – no ripples on the lake of his consciousness, no thoughts, no dreams. But Sigmund Freud is afraid because he knows what he is dreaming.I have heard about one actual incident. Three great Russian novelists – Chekhov, Gorky, and Tolstoy – were just sitting on a bench in a park and gossiping. They were great friends, all were geniuses, all created such great novels that even today, if you want to count ten great novels of the world, at least five will be from the Russian novelists – before the revolution. After the revolution, they have not created a single novel which has the quality of genius. Now it is under government control. The government is the only publisher; the government scrutinizes, and the people who scrutinize know nothing of art. They are bureaucrats.The police commissioner of Pune said that before my lectures are published, he should scrutinize them – and what does a police commissioner have to do with meditation? But that is happening in the Soviet Union, and because of that, in seventy years’ time after the revolution, they have not been able to produce a single great novel. But before the revolution, Russia was at the top in creativity. These three people are still to be counted as great novelists.Chekhov was telling about the women in his life. Gorky joined; he also said a few things. But Tolstoy remained silent. Tolstoy was a very orthodox religious Christian. You will be surprised to know that Mahatma Gandhi in India accepted three persons as his masters, and one was Tolstoy.He must have been repressing too much. He was one of the richest men in Russia – he belonged to the royal family – but he lived like a poor beggar, because “blessed are the poor and they shall inherit the kingdom of God,” and he was not willing to give up the kingdom of God. It is not simplicity, and it is not desirelessness – it is too much desire. It is too much greed, it is too much instinct for power. He is sacrificing this life and its joys because it is a small life, and then for eternity he will enjoy paradise and the kingdom of God. It is a good bargain, almost like a lottery, and certain.He was living a very celibate life, eating only vegetarian food; he was almost a saint. Naturally, his dreams must have been very ugly, his thoughts must have been very ugly, and when Chekhov and Gorky asked him, “Tolstoy, why are you silent? Say something!” he said, “I cannot say anything about women. I will say something only when one of my feet is in the grave. I will say it, and jump into the grave.”You can understand why he was so much afraid of saying anything – it was boiling within him. Now, you cannot be very intimate with a man like Tolstoy.Intimacy simply means that the doors of the heart are open for you, you are welcome to come in and be a guest. But that is possible only if you have a heart which is not stinking with repressed sexuality, which is not boiling with all kinds of perversions, which is natural – as natural as trees, as innocent as children. Then there is no fear of intimacy.That’s what I am trying to do: to help you unburden your unconscious, unburden your mind, to become ordinary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be just simple and ordinary. Then you can have as many intimate friends, as many intimate relationships as possible, because you are not afraid of anything. You become an open book anybody can read. There is nothing to hide.Every year, a hunting club went up into the Montana hills. The members drew straws to decide who would handle the cooking and also agreed that anyone complaining about the food would automatically replace the unlucky cook.Realizing after a few days that no one was likely to risk speaking up, Sanderson decided on a desperate plan.He found some moose droppings and added two handfuls to the stew that night. There were grimaces around the campfire after the first few mouthfuls, but nobody said anything. Then one member suddenly broke the silence. “Hey,” he exclaimed, “This stuff tastes like moose shit – but it’s good!”He is not complaining. In fact, he is appreciating!You have so many faces. Inside, you think one thing; outside, you express something else. You are not one organic whole. Relax and destroy the split that society has created in you. Say only that which you mean. Act according to your own spontaneity, never bothering about consequences. It is a small life and it should not be spoiled by thinking about consequences here and hereafter.One should live totally, intensely, joyously and just like an open book, available for anybody to read it. Of course you will not make a name in the history books. But what is the point in making a name in the history books? Live, rather than think of being remembered. You will be dead.Millions of people have lived on the earth and we don’t know even their names. Accept that simple fact: that you are here for only a few days and then you will be gone. These few days are not to be wasted in hypocrisy, in fear. These days have to be rejoiced because nobody knows anything about the future. Your heaven and your hell and your God are most probably all hypotheses, unproved. The only thing that is in your hands is your life. Make it as rich as possible.By intimacy, by love, by opening yourself to many people, you become richer. If you can live in deep love, in deep friendship, in deep intimacy with many people, you have lived rightly. And wherever you happen to be, you have learned the art; you will be living there happily too.I am reminded of one English philosopher, Edmund Burke. He was very friendly with the archbishop of England. Whenever Edmund Burke used to deliver a talk in the university, the archbishop used to come and listen to him. It was worth listening – each of his statements was coming with his wholeness, with great authority.But Burke never went to listen to the archbishop on Sundays in the church. The archbishop said, “At least you should come once. I always come to listen to you.”Edmund Burke said, “You come to listen to me because whatever you know is not your knowledge – it is all borrowed, and you are not certain of it. Whatever I say is my experience, and I give every evidence and proof and argument for it. I can stake my life for my statements. You are just a parrot. But because you have asked, I will come the next Sunday.”So the archbishop prepared a really beautiful sermon, thinking that Edmund Burke would be present, so the sermon had to be as great as he could make it. But he was surprised. Edmund Burke was sitting in the first row but there was no emotion on his face. He could not judge whether he liked it, disliked it, agreed with it, or disagreed with it. He was very puzzled.As the sermon ended, Edmund Burke stood up and he said, “I have a question to ask, a very simple question. Your whole sermon was, in a condensed form, that the people who live a virtuous life according to your Christian ideology, and believe in Jesus Christ, will go to heaven after this life. Those who do not believe in Jesus Christ and live the life of a sinner will fall into eternal hell after this life.“My question is,” said Edmund Burke, “that if a person is virtuous but does not believe in Jesus Christ, what will happen? He is good. His life is a life to be praised but he does not believe in Jesus Christ – where is he going to be? Or, a man who believes in Jesus Christ but is a great sinner – where is he going to be? You missed mentioning two very important points; your sermon was half. And I was waiting to see whether you were aware of these two possibilities or not.”The archbishop thought for a moment – the question was really dangerous. If he says the good people are going to heaven whether they believe in Jesus Christ or not, then Jesus Christ and the belief in him become superfluous, nonessential. And if he says those who believe in Jesus Christ – even if they are sinners – will go to heaven, then sin is being approved by the church itself.He was in a very muddled situation. He said, “Your question needs some time for me to think it over. Give me seven days. Next Sunday, I will answer it.”For seven days, he tried all the scriptures, tried this way and that way – but the question was simple, and he was caught in a dilemma. He could not sleep those seven days, because how was he going to face Edmund Burke and his congregation? And whatever he says seems to be wrong: either it goes against Jesus Christ or it goes against a virtuous life. He repented that he ever invited that fellow to come to the church!He went to the church early in the morning, before the congregation came. He still did not have any answer. He thought, “In the early morning, when there is nobody in the church, I will pray to Christ himself to just show me the light, give me the answer. Because not only my prestige is at stake, his prestige is also at stake.”Seven days, continuously worrying, not sleeping – he was bowing down before the statue of Jesus Christ. He fell asleep, and he saw a dream. Naturally, because for seven days only one thing had been in his mind, the dream was also connected with it.He saw himself sitting in a train, and he asked, “Where are we going?”Somebody said, “This train is going to heaven.” He had a great relaxation, and he said, “That’s perfectly good. Perhaps this is Jesus Christ’s doing, so that you can see for yourself who goes to paradise and who does not go.”As he reached the station of paradise, he could not believe – it looked so rotten. He entered paradise. The people he met were almost corpses, walking. He recognized a few saints and he asked them, “I want to ask one question: Where is Gautam Buddha? Because he never believed in Jesus Christ or in God, but he was one of the most moral men you can conceive of.”The saint said, “He is not here.”“Socrates? He was also not a believer in any god, but was a man of great virtue.”“He is also not here.”And he said, “Why does this whole paradise look like a ruin? Saints look like the dead; there seems to be no joy. I used to think that angels go on singing with their harps. I don’t see any angels, any harps, any song, any dance – just a few dull and dead saints are sitting under the trees.”Whomever he asked said, “Don’t bother us. We are tired.”Just an idea came into his mind at that moment that perhaps there is a train going to hell, also. So he rushed back to the station, and the train was standing at the platform, ready to leave for hell. He entered the train, and as hell started coming closer, he was even more puzzled. The wind was fragrant with flowers. There was so much greenery, lush green. The station was so beautiful – he had never thought that a station could be so beautiful. People looked so happy, so joyous. He said, “My god, is there something wrong or what?”He inquired, “Is this really hell?”They said, “It used to be. Before Gautam Buddha, Socrates, Epicurus, Mahavira, Lao Tzu, people like these came here, it used to be hell. But now they have transformed the whole place.”He entered hell and he could not believe – it was sheer joy! The very air was full of blissfulness. There was dancing and there was singing, and he asked somebody, “Where is Gautam Buddha?”They said, “Do you see in the garden, he is watering the roses.”“And where is Socrates?”And they said, “Socrates is working in the field.”“Where is Epicurus?”They said, “He just passed by you. The man who was dancing and playing on the guitar was Epicurus.”At that very moment, the shock was too much – he woke up. He said, “My god! What a dream!”And people had started arriving – particularly Edmund Burke, who was already sitting in the front seat, waiting for the answer.The poor archbishop said, “I have not been able to find the answer. But I have seen a dream which I will describe to you, and you can conclude the answer from the dream.”He described the dream. Edmund Burke said, “Now you conclude also! The conclusion is clear: that wherever good people are, there is paradise. It is not that good people go to paradise – wherever good people are, it becomes paradise. And wherever stupid people and idiots are – they may be great believers in God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Bible, it does not matter – even paradise becomes a ruin. It becomes a hell.”I have loved this incident very much because this is my approach, too. If you are simple, loving, open, intimate, you create a paradise around you. If you are closed, constantly on the defensive, always worried that somebody may come to know your thoughts, your dreams, your perversions – you are living in hell. Hell is within you and so is paradise. They are not geographical places, they are your spiritual spaces.Cleanse yourself. Meditation is nothing but a cleaning of all the rubbish that has gathered in your mind. When the mind is silent and the heart is singing… Just listen to these birds.You will be ready, without any fear but with great joy, to be intimate. And without intimacy, you are alone here amongst strangers. With intimacy you are surrounded by friends, by people who love you. Intimacy is a great experience. One should not miss it.But before you can become unafraid of intimacy, you have to be totally clean of all the garbage that religions have been pouring into you, all the crap that for centuries has been handed over to you. Be finished with it all, and live a life of peace, silence, joy, song, and dance. You will transform; wherever you are, the place will become paradise.Osho,Everybody around is blissing out and this is the first time it is not happening to me. I want to feel you again and get lost. Right now, the connection is like a fragile, thin thread felt in some rare silent moments or shown by my tears. I'm still full of fear and also getting older. You gave me the name Pravira – do I still have a chance this lifetime?The chance to be transformed remains with you to the very last breath of your life. But the problem with you is that you are more concerned that others are being so blissful, that so much is happening to them, and you are comparing. Comparison always brings misery, and misery becomes a great hindrance for anything to happen to you.So the first thing is: if it is happening to many people, drop the old habit of comparing and being jealous. On the contrary, make it a point that “If it is happening to so many people, it is going to happen to me also because they are just like me.” We are all human beings. Nobody is superior and nobody is inferior. If it is not happening to you, you must be creating barriers so it cannot happen. The first barrier is comparison.The second barrier is: you say, “I want to feel you again…” The moment you start desiring something, desperately longing for something, your very desiring and longing become a barrier.It is something to be understood by everybody: when people come to me for the first time, they don’t have any expectations, and things are very easy. Miracles are triggered in their being. But the next time they come to me, they come with expectations. Now the whole psychological set-up has changed. First they had come without any expectations, just available, just to see whether something happens or not. Now they come with a determined desire that it should happen. It has happened before, why is it not happening now?It has happened before because you were in a totally different space. You were not desiring it, it happened in your innocence. Now you are no longer innocent – you are full of desire, full of wanting. With desire and wanting there is comparison on the side: “It is happening to others.” So you are creating misery around yourself.There is no need for comparison, for one thing. You should rejoice that it is happening to so many people. They are also part of us. If it is happening to them, you should join the dance. Rather than being in competition and hiding in a corner with tears because it is happening to everybody, everybody is dancing – who is preventing you? Join the dance!And if you want to cry, let the tears be of joy that so many people are happy. Even if you are not happy, then too, it is something to be rejoiced. Rejoice for others. Drop the idea that it should happen to you again. The moment you drop the idea, it will start happening because you are again innocent.It is something that perhaps almost everybody must have felt: there are times when you remember somebody’s name but you cannot say it. You say, “It is just on the tip of my tongue! I know him, I know his name. I know that I know.” But what is the problem? Then why don’t you say it? You say it is just on the tip of the tongue, just push it out a little! But the more you try, the more difficult it becomes. It can drive you crazy because you know – you know that you know: “It is on the tip of the tongue and my god, what has happened?”But tired with the effort, you go into the garden, start watering the plants and suddenly it is there. When you were trying, it was not there. When you forget all about it and start doing something else, suddenly it is there. There is a deep psychological fact in it: when you are tense and trying hard to remember something, your consciousness becomes very narrow, and in that narrow space, the name that you want to remember… You feel it is there but it is being hindered by many other things, other memories, and the passage has become so narrow that it cannot get out of that passage.Forget about it, start doing something else. Your consciousness relaxes. It becomes wider, the narrowness is gone. And with a wide consciousness, the name can find a way out. With a narrow consciousness, it is very difficult; so many other memories, so many other names are hindering the way.The same happens with blissfulness, silence, peace, joy. You have known it, and because you have known it, you want to know it again. Now it has become a desire, and you are tense that it is not happening and everybody else is enjoying. So you are full of tears, you think something has gone wrong.Nothing has gone wrong; you just have to understand. Drop the desire, so that you are again back in the same space in which it happened before – there was no desire – and join the dance, join the song. Blissfulness is very contagious. If you join the people who are joyous, you will suddenly feel that your own joy, which was asleep, has awakened. And then tears are not wrong – you can dance, you can sing, and you can have tears of joy.But tears of misery, and particularly in this place… You can go to any church whenever you want to be miserable; the churches are basically meant for that. Entering a church you suddenly become sad. You cannot laugh in a church, you cannot dance.Look at poor Jesus, hanging on the cross. Just seeing him and his long, British face, I have always wondered why he was born in Judea. England would have been the right place! I don’t think that he ever laughed in his life, he was so serious.And naturally, you cannot expect a man to laugh when you are crucifying him. Even the sculptors and the painters cannot paint him laughing, otherwise it will look so absurd: “Is it a joke? Is it a real cross?” So he is, poor fellow, keeping his face very serious – in tune with the cross. The whole atmosphere in a church is created by Jesus and his crucifixion.So whenever you want to be miserable – once in a while, one enjoys being miserable, it feels good – go to some Catholic church. Weep and cry – that is allowed. Just don’t laugh in between. Don’t even smile.Because the American government is pressuring the Indian government that sannyasins from other countries should not reach me, I have told my sannyasins, “Wear any colors. The orange clothing was only a device; it has worked. In five years we made the movement international. Now there is no need.”But whenever you apply for a visa, be very serious. Be Catholic! You can even have Jesus Christ on the cross hanging around your neck – they will not suspect that you could be my sannyasin. But if you look joyous, smiling, happy, blissful – feeling great that you are going back to your master – they will prevent you. Just pretend a little bit.You are saying, Pravira, “I am still full of fear, and also getting older.” In getting older, there is no problem – everybody gets older. Since the day you were born, you have been getting older. It is not a new problem.Just understand one thing: getting older is a natural phenomenon. Let it happen – you cannot prevent it. Grow up. That is not natural; that needs your conscious effort to be silent, to be peaceful, to be joyful. Then getting older is one thing, and growing up is a different thing. Getting older is horizontal and growing up is vertical.I have given you the name Pravira. Pravira means one who is very courageous. And the greatest courage in life is to live totally, in spite of all the priests and all the people who want you not to be joyous, not to be living totally.As far as you asking, “Do I still have a chance this lifetime?” I cannot say anything about this lifetime, but I can say you have the chance just now. Why postpone it for the lifetime? Because the older you get, the less is the possibility of dying. Have you ever thought about it? At the age of ninety, very few people die. At the age of a hundred, even fewer people die. At the age of a hundred and twenty, nobody dies. So getting older is not a problem. People die at seventy, seventy-five, and then the number starts getting less and less. By the time they have made the century, then they don’t die. So don’t be worried about getting older. Just be concerned with this moment, and this space that is being made available to you.I still say you are courageous enough to take the jump. Drop your desire, drop your competition. Start singing and dancing, and suddenly you will find the climate has changed. The spring has come to you. But it always comes when you are not asking for it. Existence gives you everything, just don’t ask. It gives only to the emperors, not to the beggars.There are three big-game hunters in the jungle in Africa: an American, an Italian, and a Polish man. Suddenly they are captured by cannibals and brought before the chief.The chief tells them, “By tribal custom, I am required to allow each of you a chance to escape. And I have to give you any weapon of your choice. However, I must warn you: if we catch you, we are going to skin you and make a canoe out of you.”Before they even get a chance to get their breath, the chief points to the American and asks, “You are first. What do you want?”The American says, “I want a gun.”The chief hands him a gun and the American takes off into the jungle. Well, pretty soon the gun runs out of bullets and the natives catch up to him. They shoot him with poison darts and within five minutes they skin him and make a canoe out of him.The chief points to the Italian. “You are next. What do you want?”The Italian says, “I want a horse.”The chief looks at him and says, “Well, that’s not really a weapon but if you want a horse, I will give you a horse.” So the Italian rides off into the jungle. However, he is very quickly surrounded by a thousand natives on all sides. The natives shoot him with poison darts, skin him and make a canoe out of him.Finally, the chief looks at the Polish guy. “What do you want?”The Polish guy says, “I want a fork.”“A fork?” asks the chief. “What do you want a fork for?”“Look,” said the Polish guy, “you said I could have anything I wanted. Now give me a fork, all right?”“Okay, okay,” says the chief, “here is a fork.”Immediately the Polish guy takes the fork and starts stabbing himself all over.The chief stares at him and exclaims, “What are you doing?”The Polish guy laughs at him and says, “You are not going to make a canoe out of me!”Just a little intelligence – and that much intelligence you can find even in a Polack. And I certainly believe that you are not a Polack. You must have more intelligence.Don’t destroy yourself unnecessarily because others are happy, because so much is happening to them. You are tense because something has happened to you before and you want it to happen again. Something much more beautiful will happen to you if you can drop this tension and this desire and this competition.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is it possible that for some, melting with the master comes first, and all else follows? Or are you after all my beloved as well as my master – even though I am not sleeping in your room!? Just with a move of your arms, fire spreads from deep within my body and giggles of pure delight, lightness, and joy follow like ripples in its wake. Sometimes a moment of your silence, or the impact of just a few of your words, carries me straight into infinite space. Osho, I feel that any melting that I have known so far is out of my melting in your love – and that melting with you is easier for me and more possible than melting with any other man has been. I have never melted in a total orgasm with a man, however beloved. Yet you say this has to come first, before any melting with you. Osho, I am scared to expose all this, but tell me: Have I not known any melting at all?The physical world has definite laws without any exception. But the spiritual world has no laws as such, because there are always exceptions. That is part of the freedom of the spiritual area of our being. So whatever I say about the spiritual growth, always remember: there are exceptions because it is a freedom of consciousness.It is freedom from laws, too. When I use the word law in the spiritual realm, I simply mean that, generally, it happens that way. But that does not mean that it only happens that way. What is the first step for one person may not be the first step for another person. What is the second step for one person may not be the second step for another person. Spirituality recognizes your individuality and your uniqueness. In the physical world, there are no exceptions because there is no consciousness and there is no freedom. Trees are not struggling for freedom, the stars are not struggling for freedom – they are not even conscious about the phenomenon. Not even the whole of humanity is striving for spiritual growth. Millions of people are not even aware that there is much more to life than they can ever imagine or can ever dream. They go on living as if they are under a physical, mechanical law.My whole effort here is to break the ice for you, to make a space available for you so that you can see: you have every possibility to go beyond laws, rules, regularities. And no two persons’ spiritual growth is going to be the same, because no two persons are in any way the same. They are all unique individuals. As you become more and more alert, you will also become more and more unique. At the highest peak of consciousness, you are absolutely yourself, alone. There has never been anybody like you before, nor will there be anybody afterward. Existence does not repeat.Many people have wondered why, after twenty-five centuries, millions of Buddhist monks – who have been striving hard, sincerely, honestly – have not been able to produce a single Gautam Buddha. And it is not only true about Gautam Buddha; the same is true about Socrates, the same is true about Kabir, the same is true about Jesus, the same is true about Nanak.You can, at the most, imitate. You can act the role in the drama of life – but it will not be an authentic and existential growth in you, but only a parrotlike repetition. The reason why there has never been another Socrates, another Buddha, another Chuang Tzu, another Kabir, is not that people have not strived.People have strived; millions of people have strived hard. And I want to say to you: it is because of their striving that they missed being themselves. They never became Buddhas, they never became Meeras. They never became Kabir, they never became Nanak. On the contrary, because they were trying to become somebody, they missed becoming what they were destined to be.This whole world would have been tremendously beautiful if we had accepted a simple phenomenon – that each individual is unique. Hence, there can be no organized religions. Religion is of the individual, absolutely private, absolutely personal. It is a dialogue between the individual and existence, without any mediator.You cannot become anybody other than yourself, and there is no need. If you grow and bring your whole potential to become actual, you will produce flowers which have never been known before. You will produce a fragrance for the first and last time, a fragrance of its own kind. You will be a historical phenomenon. Each individual has that capacity, but because all cultures and all teachings are driving people to become somebody else, they are destroying humanity. This whole humanity lives in such misery for the simple reason that nobody is allowed to be himself. Nobody is accepted just as himself and respected. Everybody is being humiliated.You may not have thought of it this way: to tell you to become a Jesus is to humiliate you. It is insulting. To tell you to become a Gautam Buddha is to destroy your dignity, is to take away your pride of being a human being. You are being forced to be carbon copies. When you have the right and the potential to be the original, why should you be a carbon copy? But all the organized religions and your so-called leaders have been misleading you. And because you cannot become yourself, life becomes nothing but misery and anguish.Just think of a rosebush: if the roses are condemned and the rosebush is asked to produce lotuses, you will create insanity in the rosebush! It cannot produce lotuses, it is not in its potential. It is not in its seed, it is not meant to be. But fortunately, there are no priests corrupting the rosebushes, no political leaders, no educationists trying to impose ideals on the rosebushes. That’s why rosebushes are still happy, still have a dance, still bring beautiful flowers of great fragrance. And the rosebush is not jealous at all of any lotus. There is no question of any jealousy. A lotus is a lotus. A marigold is a marigold, and they are all needed.Existence would be very poor if everybody were a Gautam Buddha. Just think for a moment: everybody has become a Jesus Christ, carrying his own cross on his shoulders. Then everything else will stop! You have just to carry your cross all your life. In fact, it will be difficult to find a Judas because he himself will be carrying his own cross. It will be difficult to find the priest to crucify you; you will have to manage it yourself. There will not even be a crowd to see it, because they have to do their work. They have to dig in the ground, put their cross up, and crucify themselves. Perhaps people will make contracts with each other: “You crucify me, help me to arrange my crucifixion, and I will help you with your crucifixion.” Or there may be some agencies that do the work.But it will be a very poor world where everybody is alike. The variety makes it rich, and the variety should be respected. You need not be worried. If things are happening differently to you, it is perfectly right. All I want is that things should be happening. Which step comes first and which step comes last in your journey does not matter.All that matters is that we all reach our home, that our wandering stops, that our anguish and anxiety, our tensions disappear, that we come to the center of our being where we can be utterly relaxed – in joy, in peace, in blissfulness and in great gratitude toward existence. I know no other prayer.All your prayers are false – there is only one prayer which is authentic, and that prayer is when you have arrived home and you feel tremendous gratitude toward existence that it not only gave you life, it gave you love, it gave you meditation. It gave you fellow travelers, it gave you masters, it gave you directions, dimensions to move in, and it gave you the courage and the intelligence. Only gratitude is the right prayer. If you are asking something, you are complaining. It is not prayer.You are asking, “Is it possible that for some, melting with the master comes first – and all else follows?” Yes, it is absolutely possible.You are saying, “I feel that any melting that I have known so far is out of my melting in your love.” The question is not in whose love the melting happens; the important thing is that the melting happens, so that the ego dissolves and you are left alone with your unique consciousness. In melting, your truth does not melt – only the false. So who becomes the excuse is absolutely nonessential and unimportant. What is important is that your ego dissolves. You are, and there is no sense of I-ness.So if it is happening, you need not be worried, need not be concerned that perhaps something is going wrong because you are not following the steps in the sequence I talked about. In the world of consciousness, the deeper you will enter, the more you will be an exception.The problem comes from the mind, which has been conditioned and is always waiting to raise questions to disturb your peace, to disturb your silence. Man has lived in such insanity – and goes on living in the same insanity.Just the other day, I was telling you a joke which I knew was crude; but man is far more crude. The joke was about a Catholic nun and a man who find themselves on an island, shipwrecked. They are the only survivors.For two years, they wait for someone to rescue them, but nobody comes. Then finally, the man persuades the nun, saying: “Forget all about the world. Forget all about your vows of celibacy and this and that. Let us start living, because there is nobody coming to rescue us.”So they started making love. A bit reluctantly, the nun finally agreed. After all, a nun is also a woman. His idea finally entered the heart of the woman, because all your religion is only in the head; it never reaches to your heart. It never reaches to your body, it never reaches to your biology.They were making love for two months and then the woman started feeling very guilty, because her conditioning was such that she has betrayed Jesus Christ, she has betrayed her religion. A nun is a bride of Jesus Christ, and this ugly fellow… But she is stuck with him on this island. She felt so bad about it that she committed suicide.Two months after her death, the man started feeling that what he was doing was very bad. He was making love to the dead woman. He felt so bad, but a man is after all a man, and he was not a religious man. He buried the woman. Out of feeling bad, he buried the woman.One of my friends informed me that it was a very crude joke. And just today, I received a press clipping: in Pakistan, a man has been caught red-handed – he has pulled out a dead woman from the grave and he was making love to her.Now what do you say? And that man is not an exception. It is a fact recorded by history that Cleopatra – perhaps one of the most beautiful women, at least mythologically; but she was a historical person – was raped after she died. She was raped not by one man but by many men. According to custom, for three days, the body had to remain outside the grave. In those three days, she was attacked again and again in the night by a group of people and raped. She was dead.My joke may seem crude to you, but in fact I am trying to tell you actual facts about your inhumanity to other human beings, your barbarousness, your ugliness. In a joke, you think, “It is just a joke.” I am trying my best to make it as less crude as possible, but it is a strange world.Holland has denied me entry on one ground: that I have been speaking against homosexuals, and that hurts the feelings of homosexuals. My entry is refused by the parliament of Holland and the reason is that I have been speaking against homosexuals. One cannot even speak against perversions!Just now, a few governments have stated how many people are suffering from AIDS. Not all the governments of the world – for example, the governments of the East are completely silent, because before you can declare it, you will have to test millions of people. India has a population now of nine hundred million people who would have to be tested.But from those few governments who have given the number of people who are suffering from AIDS, the total is ten million. Their doctors have said that by the end of this century, there will be one hundred million people suffering from AIDS. If ten million people are suffering from AIDS, then what do you think? How many people are involved in homosexuality?When I said for the first time that two-thirds of humanity would die because of AIDS, all the journalists laughed about it. And now the doctors are saying that at least seventy-five percent of people will die because of AIDS. That is a bigger number than I had predicted. My prediction was only two-thirds; that is sixty-six percent. They are talking now of seventy-five percent. But everybody is taking a very hopeful and optimistic attitude – and there are hundreds of other countries which are not exposing themselves, not reporting how many homosexuals they have and how many people are suffering from AIDS.There may be no need of a nuclear war. AIDS may finish the whole humanity. But I was prevented from entering Holland because I have spoken against homosexuality – as if homosexuality is also a religion. Now, religious feelings are hurt; I have been sued again and again in courts because I have been hurting people’s religious feelings. Soon, I think homosexuals will be suing me through the courts. People who are suffering from AIDS will be suing me through the courts, saying, “This man is hurting our feelings.”So rather than saying simple facts and data, I try to indicate the reality through my jokes. Don’t take my jokes nonseriously! You can take everything else that I say nonseriously, but not my jokes. They contain something which cannot be said directly. It will hurt you.Just the other day, American Catholic priests have come up with an idea. I was telling you that Mohammedans in the Soviet Union are calling their fast “dieting” because fasting is against the communist government. Fasting is a religious thing so they have changed it to “dieting.” They are calling their prayers “physical exercises.”But this is nothing compared to what the American Catholic priests have come up with. They have declared, “Celibacy does not prevent us from homosexuality – celibacy includes the idea that we should remain unmarried.” That is the meaning of celibacy according to their spokesman: “Celibacy means that we will remain unmarried. At the most, celibacy means we will not make sexual contacts with women, but there is no idea that celibacy prevents monks and priests from homosexuality.” These are your religious leaders! And you have depended on these religious leaders for centuries to guide you to spirituality.Everywhere Catholic priests have been caught abusing small children. Homosexuality is rampant. In one monastery in Europe, half the monastery is homosexual, so they have divided the monastery in two parts. They have raised a wall: the homosexuals are separate, and those who are backward and don’t understand human freedom… Homosexuality is part of human freedom.A few of my sannyasins have come to me. They belonged, before they came to me, to the women’s liberation movement and they told me, “The women’s liberation movement is very much against you because you have been condemning lesbianism, and you are converting many liberation women into sannyasins.” And their liberation consists in hating men! Rather than being in love with a man, they will be in love with women only. The man has to be boycotted. And if you say anything, it hurts their feelings. They are angry.It seems almost impossible to say anything significant. That’s why I find jokes an indirect way of telling you things, because nobody can sue me in the court for telling a joke. A joke is, after all, a joke.A man decides that he wants to become a monk. So he goes to the monastery and is informed that before he can become a monk, he must pass two tests. “First,” says the head monk, “We will put you in a cell for six months. You will have nothing to eat or drink but bread and water. And each entire day must be spent reading the Bible.”“Then,” he continues, “should you pass the first test, you will be ready for the second test. For this, we put you in a room and take off all your clothes. We then tie a little bell to your male member and then we walk a nude nun through the room. Should that little bell make any sound at all, I am afraid you will be deemed unfit to join the monastery.”So they put him in a cell with nothing but bread and water and he does nothing but read the Bible for six months. At the end of this time, he is once again brought before the head monk.“Are you ready for the second test?” asks the head monk.“I am,” says the man.He is taken into a room and stripped down. They put the little bell on him, then they walk a nude nun through the room.Well, right away his bell starts ringing.The monk says to him, “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you must leave.”“Wait a minute,” says the man. “Are you going to tell me that every priest in this monastery has passed this test?”“Every one,” says the chief monk.“Before I will agree to leave,” says the man in defiance, “I demand proof. I want to see ten monks pass this test.”“All right,” says the head monk. They get ten monks in the room, undress them, line them up, and put bells on them.The nude nun then walks through and there is nothing but dead silence. Except of course for the first man’s bell, which is ringing like crazy. As a matter of fact, it rings so hard that it falls off. When the man bends over to pick it up, all the other ten bells ring.Now there are governments who are making laws against homosexuality, but no government is daring to make celibacy a crime – which is the root cause. Homosexuality is only a symptom. Make celibacy a crime and then homosexuality will disappear on its own accord. But rather than making celibacy a crime, celibacy is still thought to be holy and spiritual. Homosexuality has to be condemned as a crime because of the fear of AIDS. But by declaring anything criminal, have you ever been able to stop it?Your jails go on becoming bigger, their number goes on increasing. Your crimes go on increasing. As your laws increase, your crimes increase more than your laws. And it has been the idea in the past that if you punish a criminal, then other people will be prevented from committing the same crime – which has been found to be psychologically nonsense, because nobody is prevented.In England, in the Middle Ages, they used to beat thieves in the middle of the town, naked – a hundred lashes, two hundred lashes, until they would fall unconscious. Their whole body covered in blood. Thousands of people would come to see it; it was free entertainment. But England’s parliament finally decided to stop it. The reason why they stopped it was that they were punishing a thief and because the crowd was so involved and so concentrated on looking at the man being beaten – naked, blood flowing out from all over his body – there were at least a dozen people who were cutting their pockets! So the whole idea that beating a thief will prevent other people from stealing was absolute nonsense. In fact, they were using the opportunity to cut people’s pockets.You send people to jail. When they enter, they are amateur; when they come out, they have graduated from the university. Your laws and your jails teach the criminals just one thing: that committing a crime is not a crime, but being caught is a crime. So just be more alert, more artful, more articulate so that you are not caught. Jails are perfect universities, where there are very experienced and seasoned criminals who will train you, who have been coming and going from there for their whole life.When I was put in the first jail in America, in that area there were six small cells, each cell for two persons. The man who was the sheriff of the jail had read my books, and was very careful: he took every care that was within his capacity to make my three days in his jail as comfortable as possible. He removed all the people from the cells who were smokers. He brought people chosen from six hundred inmates in the jail into the cells near me – the best people, the most understanding ones, intelligent, educated. He cleaned those six cells because he knew that I am allergic to smells.I inquired of those inmates: “You seem to be very at ease here.” Somebody was very old, sixty years; somebody was fifty. Nobody was below thirty. They all said, “Outside life is difficult, a constant struggle. And because people know we are criminals, employment is difficult. Even our families don’t want us back as they lose respectability because of us. So whenever we are released, we commit a small crime in such a way that we can be caught immediately. So back we are in the jail! And the jail is the perfect place – no worry about employment, food is supplied on time, medical care is available, clothes are available. Everything that is needed is given and all our friends are here. Outside we feel alone.“Our society is totally different, and here we have such experienced criminals, so wise that just to sit with them and learn is a great education. Once a person enters jail, he comes out a seasoned criminal, graduated. He has learned many things that he had never known before and now it becomes more difficult to catch him.”Condemning homosexuality as a crime will drive homosexuals underground. Right now, it is better not to make homosexuality a crime, because people are ready to go for the test. Once it is a crime, people will stop going for the test or they will start bribing the doctor. They may have AIDS and they will bribe the doctors. In that bribe, they are saved and the doctor is also saved because no doctor wants patients suffering from AIDS in his hospital. But then those people are free in the society, spreading the virus – which spreads like wildfire.But I was amazed that a cultured country like Holland should prevent me from having just a tourist visa because I had been speaking against homosexuality and AIDS and celibacy. Man is more barbarous than you ever conceive him to be. And man has done to other men such cruel acts that are unbelievable – and in the name of beautiful words: God, religion, nation, race.My effort here is to make you aware, in every possible way, what kind of humanity we have – and how to transcend it because it is not only outside you, it is also inside you. You have been brought up by this mad society, and they have given all kinds of mad ideas to you.And nobody seems to bother that man’s life can be such a joy, but it is going down the drain every day – from bad to worse. But at least for my people, I would like you to remember: if you can do only one thing, everything else that is ugly will disappear from your life and everything that is beautiful will come on its own. And that simple thing is: learning to be silent, learning to be meditative, being a watcher, being natural and yet alert and conscious of whatever you are doing, of whatever you are thinking.Consciousness and nature – and just be easy and relaxed and you can get rid of this whole madness, in which man is rushing so fast that it seems it won’t take much to destroy life on this planet. Perhaps this is the last century. We may not be able to see life after this century. This beautiful earth will become just a dead graveyard.So remember: whatever I say, don’t think that it is something like an absolute law. I am saying it in a very general way; then you have to adjust it to your individuality. You have to make out of it your own discipline, your own religion, your own path.Osho,Sometimes, remembering you, it feels that your longing for me is much bigger than my longing for you. Sometimes, saying hello to a tree or looking at a mountain or a star, it feels that they are whispering: “Don't forget that we love you.” Am I imagining, or is it true that all existence wants of me is to open myself to all dimensions of its love?Rather than being concerned whether what you are experiencing is imagination or reality, you should enjoy each moment with totality and intensity, not holding anything back. You are not doing that. If you were doing that, the question would not have arisen. I will read your question so that you can understand: “Sometimes, remembering you, it feels that your longing for me is much bigger than my longing for you.”Why should my longing for you be bigger than your longing for me? I don’t have any longing at all – for you, or for anybody else. This idea is arising out of your ego. You want it that way: my longing should be bigger for you than your longing is for me. But you are not aware that this is the game of the ego and you are being befooled by it. I don’t have any longing at all. All that is past, far away. All longings have disappeared. Your longing for me will also disappear, and only then is there a possibility of meeting. Longing is a barrier, desire is a barrier.I don’t have any longing. That does not mean that I am hurting you, don’t misunderstand me. It has nothing to do with you; it is just explaining to you my situation. In my heart, there is no longing. It is completely fulfilled. If I die this very moment, I will die in utter contentment because nothing is left which is incomplete.I have nothing special to do tomorrow. I have not postponed anything. For thirty years continuously I am living in the moment, neither looking backward nor looking forward. Just this very moment is enough. It is so much, so overwhelming that I am absolutely grateful to existence for this moment, and I don’t have time to think about the next moment. When the next moment comes, I will live it.But your ego must be telling you that my longing is bigger than your longing for me. I want your longing also to disappear, so we can meet with each other without any longing, without any desire, without any expectation.The meeting with the master happens only when there is nothing else between them – just a pure meeting of two consciousnesses, of two flames. For no reason at all – just for the sheer joy.You are saying, “Sometimes saying hello to a tree or looking at a mountain or a star, it feels like they are whispering, ‘Don’t forget that we love you.’” Again, your ego seems to be the center. Just as my longing has to be bigger than your longing, even the mountains and the stars and the trees are telling you, “Don’t forget that we love you.” It is not that you love them. Your ego is feeling very nourished.You are asking, “Am I imagining?” This question would not have arisen at all. It arises only when you are imagining. Do you ever think that you are imagining this meeting here? Do you ever think you are imagining these lights here? Do you ever think you are imagining my words, my being, my presence? No, the question arises only when you are imagining.It is certainly imagination that mountains and rivers and trees say to you, “Don’t forget that we love you.” That’s how you distort everything. I have been telling you: love the mountains, love the trees, love the stars, because by loving, your consciousness will expand. But you are doing just the opposite: you are imagining that the whole existence is in need of you. They are all begging you, “Don’t forget us. Without you, what will happen to us? The whole existence will become a widow.” The rivers will cry, the mountains will mourn, the stars will commit suicide.Again, you are saying: “Is it true that all existence wants of me is to open myself to all dimensions of its love?” But you are not saying even once that you have to love existence. Again, you are saying, “Existence wants me to open so that it can love me.” The ways of the ego are very subtle. But howsoever subtle they are, if you are a little alert, a little intelligent, you can catch hold of the ego.You were not here; existence was here and perfectly happy. The stars were not missing you, neither the mountains nor the rivers. And one day, you will not be again and existence will continue its celebration, its dance, its song. It will not miss you. But don’t feel hurt. You have not done anything that you should be missed.Existence misses Gautam Buddha even today, existence misses Socrates even today. The last words of Socrates to the judges were, “When I am gone, then you will miss me. And your names will be remembered only because of me. Otherwise, nobody will remember even your names. But right now, you are deaf and blind.”Love existence so much that certainly when you leave, the whole of existence misses you. But what have you done to be missed? You have been only exploiting existence. You have been only destructive to existence. Do you think you have contributed to the beauty of existence a little bit more?Have you made its music a little deeper? Have you joined in its dance and made it a little juicier? What have you done? Have you added your silence to the silence of existence? Have you raised the consciousness of humanity by raising your consciousness? Then certainly, it will miss you.But to raise your consciousness, you will have to drop this ego and you will have to drop all this imagination and you will have to drop this mind which is playing tricks with you. Mind is so tricky and plays such games, so convincing to you. That’s why the whole humanity goes on living in misery.Two Jews meet on a train. One asks the other if he has the time.No answer.Again he asks. Again, no answer.Eventually, he taps him hard on the knee and almost shouts his question, and the other at last tells him the time.“And why did it take you so long, if I may ask?”“Well, it is like this. We will get talking. We will become friendly. When we get to Vienna, I will ask you to come home with me to have a bite to eat and you will meet my daughter. She is beautiful and you are a nice-looking chap and you will fall in love and you will want to get married and quite frankly, I don’t want a son-in-law who has not got a watch.”Such long-range thinking! But everybody’s mind is doing such things. Beware: imagination is not going to help. Howsoever beautiful it is, it is just a soap bubble.Meditate more. First get in touch with your own being, and only then do you have the right to say hello to the trees. Only then do you know the language of how to talk with the mountains and the clouds and the stars and the rivers – because their language is silence, and unless you know that language, how can you talk with them?In silence, there is no talking involved but still a dialogue happens, a deep understanding without words, a transfer of energy without language. Trees will not say anything and you will not hear anything, but between you and the being of the tree there will be a transfer of energy – not of language. Only then you will know that you have to love if you want love to be showered on you.Yes, mountains can love, rivers can love, trees can love, clouds can love. But before they love you, you have to learn how to love – how to love this whole existence, how to respect life, how to have a reverence for all that is.To me, this is authentic religion: reverence for all that is. And then certainly, you will be showered with flowers which nobody will see, but you will understand, and certainly you will find you are needed. It is one of the greatest joys in existence: to be needed by existence, to know that you are fulfilling something essential by being here. But don’t start with imagination – start with meditation. Begin with meditation, and let your meditation make you so silent that you can join with existence in its eternal silence.There are experiences which are beyond words. Don’t try to imagine those great experiences, because your imagination can become a barrier. The mind is the barrier. Only silence is the bridge, no-mind is the bridge.Osho,What is meant by a spiritual ego? Is spiritual greed one of its symptoms? Is it curable?The spiritual ego is not something different from the ordinary ego. Somebody feels his ego because he has money, somebody feels his ego strengthened because he has political power. Somebody feels ego because he has great respectability. But the ego is the same. Somebody feels that he is spiritual – he’s a great saint, holier than you – that is also the same ego. You can call it “spiritual ego,” but spiritual ego is a contradiction in terms.I have heard a story…There were three monasteries in the mountains. One day, three monks, one from each of the monasteries, met on the road, just by chance.One of them said, “You have beautiful monasteries. But as far as our monastery is concerned, you cannot compete with us in our austerity.”The second said, “We know your monastery; its discipline is arduous, your austerity is great. But nobody can compete with us as far as learning is concerned. Our monastery is full of scholars, great scholars.”Both looked at the third man. He said, “You are both right. One monastery is very perfectionistic in its disciplines, austerities, and the second is certainly full of great scholars. But we are the tops in humbleness.”“Tops in humbleness…” You can see the contradiction. There is no such thing as spiritual ego. Yes, there is such a thing that the ego can exploit any direction of life: it can be religious, it can be spiritual, it can be financial, it can be political. It can be scholarship, it can be beauty, it can be physical strength. The ego is capable of exploiting anything. But spiritual ego is simply an impossibility because spirituality arises in you only when the ego dissolves. Either you are an egoist or you are in the world of the spirit, you can’t be both together. They don’t have any coexistence.You are asking, “Is spiritual greed one of its symptoms?” Any greed – material or spiritual – is simply greed. Greed means you want more and more and more; there never comes a time when this continuous hankering for more, stops. So whether you are in search of more spirituality or more money or more power, it does not matter.But in fact, about spirituality, you should understand that the same contradiction again arises: you become spiritual only when this desire for more and more disappears, when you are utterly satisfied and contented as you are, when there is no “more” goading you, because the “more” creates the future. “More” means tomorrow is needed. For the spiritual person, this moment is more than enough. He is utterly grateful for whatever is allowed to him. His contentment cannot be disturbed by any desire for more.You are asking, “Is it curable?” It is a very strange question. Do you want to get rid of the ego or do you want to cure it? If you want to cure it, then you are in a wrong place. Here, we simply chop the head off! We know only one cure: a simple surgery.What do you mean by “curable”? Do you want your ego to become more healthy? Stronger? More powerful? That will be destructive to your spirituality. That will be against your inner growth. The ego is your enemy, not your friend. The enemy has to be destroyed – completely destroyed. Not to be cured, but killed!

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is going to hold a national debate on the need for separating politics from religion. We would love to hear your vision on this question.Politics is mundane – the politicians are the servants of the people. Religion is sacred – it is the guide for people’s spiritual growth. Certainly, politics is the lowest as far as values are concerned, and religion the highest as far as values are concerned. They are separate.Rajiv Gandhi wants religion not to interfere with politics; I want politics not to interfere with religion. The higher has every right to interfere, but the lower has no right.Religion has been raising human consciousness for centuries. Whatever man is now, whatever little consciousness he has, the whole credit goes to religion. Politics has been a curse, a calamity, and whatever is ugly in humanity, politics is responsible for it.But the problem is that politics has power; religion has only love, peace, and the experience of the divine. Politics can easily interfere with religion, and it has been interfering all along, to such an extent that it has destroyed many religious values which are absolutely necessary for the survival of humanity and life on this earth.Religion has no mundane power like nuclear weapons and atom bombs and guns; its dimension is totally different. Religion is not a will to power; religion is a search for truth, for godliness. And the very search makes the religious man humble, simple, innocent.Politics has all the destructive weapons – religion is absolutely vulnerable. Politics has no heart – religion is pure heart. It is just like a beautiful roseflower: its beauty, its poetry, its dance makes life worth living, gives life meaning and significance. Politics is like a stone, dead, but the stone can destroy the flower and the flower has no defense. Politics is aggressive.Rajiv Gandhi is putting things upside down. He wants religion not to interfere with politics. Politics should have the whole monopoly to enslave humanity, to reduce men to slaves, to destroy their freedom, to destroy their consciousness; to convert them into robots so that the politicians can enjoy the power and the domination.Religion is the only problem for the politicians. It is beyond their reach and beyond their understanding. Religion is the only area where politics should not interfere at all, because religion is the only hope.Politics, for centuries, has been just killing, destroying people – the whole history of politics is the history of criminals, murderers. In three thousand years, politicians have created five thousand wars. It seems that inside the politician, the barbarous instinct is very powerful; its only joy is to destroy, to dominate.Religion creates a problem for it, because religion has given to the world its highest peaks of consciousness – a Gautam Buddha, a Jesus, a Chuang Tzu, a Nanak, a Kabir. These are the very salt of the earth. What has politics given to the world? Genghis Khan? Tamerlane? Nadir Shah? Alexander? Napoleon? Ivan the Terrible? Josef Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Benito Mussolini? Mao Zedong? Ronald Reagan? These are all criminals. Rather than being in power, they should be behind bars; they are inhuman.They are spiritually sick people. The will to power and to dominate arises only in the sick mind. It arises out of the inferiority complex. People who are not suffering from an inferiority complex do not care about power; their whole endeavor is for peace, because the meaning of life can be known only in peace – power is not the way. Peace, silence, gratitude, meditation – these are the basic constituents of religion.Religion cannot be allowed to be dominated by stupid politicians. The situation is as if sick people are trying to dominate the physicians, directing what they should do and what they should not do. Accept it – the sick people are in the majority, but that does not mean that the physician should be dominated by the majority. The physician can heal the wounds, can cure the sicknesses of humanity. Religion is the physician.Politicians have done enough harm, and they are leading the whole humanity toward a global suicide. And still Rajiv Gandhi has the nerve to say that religion should not interfere – when the whole of life on this planet is in danger! Not only man, but the innocent birds and their songs, the silent trees and their flowers – everything that is alive.Politicians have managed to create enough destructive powers to destroy life on the earth; and they are continually piling up more and more nuclear weapons. In fact, three years ago there were enough nuclear weapons to destroy every man seven times, to destroy this whole earth seven times, or to destroy seven earths – although a man dies only once. There is no need to accumulate so much destructive power. The whole of politics depends on lies.Just the other day – I could not believe that any man who is sane can make such a statement – Ronald Reagan made a statement. He was denying before the Senate, continually, that any weapons were being given to a few countries. And now an investigation has shown that he was lying – lying for two years continually. Destructive weapons have been given to poor countries, and not in a small measure – many. Now the facts are there and Ronald Reagan had to make a statement, and the statement he made has made me laugh – so ridiculous.He said, “In my heart, I still know that whatever I said was the truth. But the facts that have been discovered say that it was a lie. I still believe in my heart that I have been speaking the truth.” He is accepting the facts, and still, simultaneously, saying, “I still believe in my heart that whatever I was saying was true, although the facts prove it wrong.”Politicians live on lies; politicians live on promises – but those promises are never fulfilled. They are the most unqualified people in the world. Their only quality is that they can manage to befool the poor masses – or, in poor countries, they can purchase their votes. And once they are in power, they forget completely that they are servants of the people; they start behaving as if they are the masters of the people.What do they know about the inner world of man? What do they know of blissfulness, of godliness? Still, they want religion not to be allowed to interfere with politics. What about them? They should be allowed to interfere with religion? Is the lower going to dominate the higher? Is the mundane going to dominate the sacred? That will be the ultimate misfortune for humanity.As far as I can see, all politicians should be meditators, should know something of the inner world. They should be more conscious, more compassionate, should know the taste of love. They should know the experience of the silence of existence, and the beauty of this planet, and the gifts of existence. And they should learn to be humble and grateful.Religion should be the teacher of all the politicians. Unless politicians have something of religiousness, there is no future for humanity. Religion has to interfere with the politicians. Without religion interfering with the politicians… The politicians are blind, they don’t have eyes; they are deaf. They don’t have a silent mind to listen to the truth.But why is Rajiv Gandhi concerned that religion and politics should be separated? Politics is a small thing. Religion is man’s whole evolution. Politics should be only a minor part of the vastness of religious experience. There is no need for any separation. But the politician, as he is in power, becomes so egoistic that he cannot think of going to those humble, simple, but wise people. The problems go on increasing; the politicians have proven impotent to solve them. But they will not go to the people who can give them direction, who can give them advice because they have the clarity.I am not a politician. I have never voted in my life and I am not going to vote – ever – because what is the point of choosing between two chimpanzees, just because they are holding different flags, just because they have different symbols? But chimpanzees are chimpanzees.They need a deep respect for religion, for religious people, because one thing is certain: religious people are not going to fight the elections – no religious person is going to beg for votes. Basically, he has no desire to fulfill his ego and to cover up his inferiority complex. In his silence, in his peace, in his blissfulness, he has known the ultimate superiority. Now there is nothing more than that, nothing higher than that. He has become a temple; his god is within his being.The politician lives on war, lives on creating riots, lives on disturbance – these are his nourishment. Adolf Hitler has written in his autobiography: “Unless you have enemies, you cannot become a great leader. Even if you don’t have enemies, create the fiction that your country is in danger, because when people are afraid they are ready to become slaves. When people are afraid they are ready to follow politicians.”Although he was an insane person, once in a while he made statements which are very significant. He has said, “The greatest leaders of humanity are born in times of war.” So unless there is a great war, you cannot be a great leader; just to fulfill the desire of being a great leader, you have to kill millions of people. And he is right: in days of peace, people don’t need to follow; people don’t make the leader almost a god, so that his word becomes the law.Politicians try in every way to keep countries afraid. China is gathering nuclear weapons on its boundary with India; Pakistan is gathering armies on its boundary with India – the Indian politicians go on insisting this is so. In Pakistan, they go on insisting that India is gathering armies on its boundary; in China, they go on insisting that India is preparing nuclear weapons. In the parliaments, they go on saying, “We are not creating anything” – but that is an absolute lie. The Chinese leader has to keep the people of China afraid. The Indian leader has to keep the Indian people afraid. The Pakistani leaders have to keep the Pakistani people afraid.In your fear is their power. The more afraid they make you, the more powerful they are. Outside the country they go on creating fictions, and inside the country they also continue: Hindu and Mohammedan riots, riots between Hindi-speaking and non-Hindi-speaking people. They want you to continue fighting for anything – any trivial thing. If you are engaged in fighting, they are in power. If you stop fighting, their power disappears. This is an ugly game.It is one of the duties of religious people to keep themselves above politics and lead the people toward creative values, toward more humanity. In fact, if religions understand one thing – that the whole of humanity is one, and there is no need for any nations – all these pygmy politicians will disappear.But the strangest thing is that politicians go on saying that religion and politics should be separate. Why? Why should truth be separate from politics? Why should love be separate from politics? Why should meditative consciousness be separate from politics? Why should a prayerful heart be separate from politics?Yes, I understand that it should be separate in the sense that it is higher. The politician is in need of psychological treatment and spiritual treatment, and he should go to the religious people for advice. That was the situation in ancient India. We have seen those days; those golden days are still alive in memory. There was a time when kings would go to the forest to pay their respects – to beggars, who had nothing – and to ask for advice.Kings used to touch the feet of those who had realized themselves, because even their blessing is going to transform. Politics is functional; it is utilitarian. But it has no way of transforming man into higher consciousness. And, particularly in reference to India, it has been such an ugly situation. It hurts.Mahatma Gandhi used to say, before freedom, that the first president of India would be a woman – and not only a woman, but she would be a sudra, from the lowest untouchables. But as freedom came, he forgot all the promises that he had been talking about and the power game started again in the old style. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was a brahmin; he was not a woman and he was not a sudra. Again, the brahmin becomes the power, and for forty years, one family of brahmins has been dominating India. They have made it almost their personal dynasty. It is no longer a democracy.Just look at the facts: what was the hold of Mahatma Gandhi over the Indian people? He was pretending to be religious – he was not a religious man – pretending to be a Hindu saint because Hindus were in the majority and they were going to rule the country. That’s why he was insistent that India should remain undivided, because in an undivided India, Hindus will be in power; nobody can take the power from the hands of the Hindus because everybody else is in a minority. Nobody looks at Gandhi’s politics: he was using even religion for ugly ends.Doctor Ambedkar wanted a separate vote for the untouchables, and I am in absolute agreement with him for the simple reason that for five thousand years these people have been oppressed, exploited; their whole dignity as human beings had been destroyed – and they are one-fourth of the Hindu population. They do the ugliest jobs; they should be respected, they should be honored for that. But on the contrary, even their shadow is untouchable. If the shadow of an untouchable falls on you, you have to take a bath immediately to purify yourself.Ambedkar was absolutely right to ask for a separate vote for the untouchables so that they could be certain of having one-fourth of the members in parliament. Otherwise, they will never be able to be in the parliament; they will never be able to change the five-thousand-year-old ugly laws created by Manu.There are great criminals, but Manu seems to top them all. Adolf Hitler was very respectful of Manu; Friedrich Nietzsche was very respectful of Manu – not of Gautam Buddha – and Manu has been a curse to this country. He has taken all humanity from millions of people; they are living like animals.Ambedkar was absolutely logical and right that the sudras should be given a separate vote, but Gandhi started a fast unto death for Ambedkar to take his movement back; otherwise, Gandhi would fast until death. Now this is absolutely illogical. If you convince people by fasting, it does not mean that you are right. It is blackmail, it is threatening: “I will commit suicide if you don’t agree with me.”Naturally, the whole country was pressuring Ambedkar: “Take your movement back; otherwise Gandhi’s death will prove very dangerous to you and to the untouchables. They will be burned alive. Their villages will be burned – the Hindus will take revenge because the untouchables have killed Gandhi.” Ambedkar tried as long as possible, and finally gave up, seeing that perhaps if Gandhi did die… Although this is no argument.If I were in Ambedkar’s place, I would have told Gandhi, “You can die because your death is not an argument. It is as stupid a story as I have heard.”A very ugly man wanted to marry a beautiful girl – and he was the age of the girl’s father. He tried the Gandhian methodology: he took his mattress, lay down in front of the house of the girl and declared a fast unto death unless her father agreed to give his daughter in marriage to him. Now everybody was in sympathy with the poor man: “He is dying. What a great lover! We have only heard about these lovers in stories, and he’s actually a Majnu, a Farhad, a Mahival.”The father was in great distress, the girl was in great fear. The whole day, the house was crowded and they were shouting: “His death will be dangerous for you. The man is not being violent: he is being nonviolent, a religious man, fasting.”Somebody suggested to the father of the girl, “Go to some old Gandhian to find out what to do.”The Gandhian said, “There is no problem. There is one ugly prostitute, very old. You just give her a hundred rupees and she also takes her mattress and lies down by the side of the man, saying, ‘I will fast unto death unless you marry me.’” In the night, the man rolled up his mattress and escaped! These are not arguments.And Ambedkar was forced to take his movement back, and went to Gandhi with a glass of orange juice to break his fast. This is using religion in the service of politics. No religious man can do that.The idea of India remaining whole was also nothing but politics being used in the service of Hindus, so that Mohammedans or Christians or Jainas or Sikhs will never be able to be in power. The Hindus will remain in power – they are in the majority.Jinnah, the man who created Pakistan, was not a religious man at all, but he also used religion. He created the movement for Mohammedans to have a separate country; otherwise they could not be in power, ever. Suddenly he became a great Mohammedan, a great religious man. And in the name of religion, it was all politics: neither Mahatma Gandhi was religious nor Muhammad Ali Jinnah was religious. But both wanted power.Since then, forty years have passed – what have the politicians done to this country? When it became independent, the population was only four hundred million. They have not even been able to prevent the population explosion – which is going to kill the country without any nuclear weapons. Now the population is more than double: nine hundred million people! And by the end of this century, India will have the largest population in the world. Up to now, it has been China, but China is behaving more scientifically and trying to reduce its population. By the end of this century, one in every six men will be Indian.And what are the politicians doing? They are afraid to say anything to the people in favor of birth control, in favor of abortion, because their whole interest is not whether this country survives or dies; their interest is that they don’t want anybody to be hurt. People have their prejudices. The politicians don’t want to touch their prejudices because they need their votes. If they hurt their prejudices, these people are not going to give them their votes.Only a religious man with a clarity of vision, who does not need the votes of the people, can say the truth. Politicians can only say beautiful lies, consoling lies, just to get your votes. The religious man has nothing to get from you; on the contrary, speaking the truth can be dangerous to his life – it has always been so. Whenever truth is spoken, the man who has spoken it has been crucified. Politicians need power, not crucifixion. The world needs more religious people who are ready to say the truth even if it means crucifixion. The religious man is not afraid of being crucified for the simple reason that he knows there is no death. At the most they can destroy his body – but his consciousness, his soul, his god within, will go on living.Religion should have a higher status, and religious people should be listened to. Parliament should continually invite religious people to give them ideas on how to solve the problems of the country, because they themselves seem to be absolutely impotent in solving anything. Problems go on growing. But the ego of the politician wants nobody to be higher than him. But whether you want it or not, the religious person is higher than you. You cannot bring transformation into people’s consciousness – he can.Certainly, religion should not step down from its sacredness into the trivial matters of politics. So I agree with this point: religion and politics should remain separate. The distance is big. Religion is a star in the sky and the politicians are creatures crawling on the earth. They are separate; there is no question that they should be separate. But politicians should remember that they are functioning in mundane matters, and that is not the true goal of humanity.Religious people are making every effort to raise humanity – its consciousness, its love, its compassion – to a point where wars become impossible, where politicians cannot deceive people, where their lies and their promises can be exposed. This is not interfering with politics – this is simply protecting the people from the exploitation of politicians. The separation is already there. Who has given Rajiv Gandhi the idea that religion and politics are not separate?Politics is something that belongs to the gutters. Religion belongs to the open, clean sky – just like a bird on the wing, flying across the sun to reach to the very center of existence. Certainly religious people cannot be participants in politics; but politicians should learn to be humble – their power should not make them blind. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely; and all politicians are corrupted by their power. And what power do they have? Because they can kill you, their power is the power of a butcher – nothing glorious, respectable.The religious man has a totally different quality of power. It is in his presence; it is in his great love and reverence for life; it is in his gratitude to existence. We should not forget that the lower should remain within its own limits. And the wise people of the country should be asked to address the parliament as often as possible on problems which politicians cannot solve, and don’t even have the brains to solve.But Rajiv Gandhi’s intentions are totally different. He wants politics to be the only power dominating everybody, religion included, and that religion follows the dictates of the politicians.I absolutely condemn the idea. Religion cannot follow the dictates of the politicians. Politicians should learn and listen to the advice of the religious people. The problems are so small that any man of intelligence and good will can easily solve them. But the politician does not want to solve them; he only talks about solving them because his power is dependent on how many problems you have. The more problems you have, the more miserable you are, the more powerful he is.To the religious consciousness, the more joyful you are, the more loving, the more rejoicing… He wants your life to be a song and to be a dance. That is the only way we should worship the source of life – with our joy, with our songs, and with our dances.Osho,Before I came to Pune this time, I was just a nobody. But sitting in front of you every day, reading people's questions, a feeling arose of being somebody, and that there was no need for me to ask any questions. But the other night in darshan, when you raised your arms and stopped the music in front of me, you caught this somebody in his mind. Now, instead of feeling fine about being a nobody, I feel like a very stupid somebody. Please will you explain what is happening to me?Vimal, that is the difference between the politician and the religious man. The politician feels he is somebody, and the religious man feels that he is nobody. But to be nobody is to be divine, because you have dropped your ego and you have allowed God to enter you. When you are somebody, you are just an ugly ego, and you have closed the doors for God to enter you – because God and your ego cannot exist together. They are just like darkness and light: you cannot have them both.Either you have light… Then there is no darkness, and that is the state of a nobody. He is spacious, without any tensions, without any anxiety, without any anguish; just a tremendous silence prevails over his heart. There is a song without sound in his being; there is a poetry without any words. Nothing moves, and still everything is dancing.It is good that you have experienced both: now it is up to you to choose. Only fools choose to be somebody – that means you are limiting yourself, encased, imprisoned. Being a nobody means you are as vast as the sky; perhaps even the sky is not the limit.So it has been a good experience for you, and I will keep an eye on you so that you don’t become somebody. I am not very reliable – I can even hit you on your head. Just as I stop the music, if I see somebody is arising in you, I will stop it too – just a good hit on your head.So be careful: remain a nobody. It is so beautiful to be nobody, anonymous, just like a newborn child with no name, no fame, but tremendous innocence, great joy, eyes full of wonder and freshness. To be nobody is an absolute necessity on the path. The moment you become somebody, you become frozen. As you allow yourself to be nobody, the ice starts melting and the river starts flowing – flowing toward the ocean. That is the goal of us all.Just a joke for you, Vimal because when you laugh totally – in those moments – you cannot be somebody. The people who are somebody are very serious; they never laugh, they don’t even smile. Only people who are nobody can enjoy the great blessing of laughter. And I have been watching: when you laugh totally, you are no longer there – only laughter. Every cell of your body has become just a dance.So don’t hold yourself back, because this is not a serious place. It is for the gamblers, for the drunkards, for all kinds of good people who can relax and who can laugh and who can dance, and who don’t care what the world thinks about them. At the most they will think you are mad – so what? Madness is better than politics. You are not going to harm anybody. And mad people are always joyous – nothing in the world to worry about.A man with a poodle goes into a bar. After ordering a drink, he tells the bartender that he would like to buy some cigarettes. But the bartender replies that they have run out.So the man says, “That’s all right, I will just send my dog across the street to get some.” He reaches into his pockets for the money, and discovers that the smallest bill he has is a twenty. He puts it in the dog’s mouth and tells the dog, “Boy, run across the street and get me some cigarettes. And don’t forget to bring the change.” Immediately the poodle runs out the front door.A man sitting at the bar says to the dog’s owner, “Say, that dog is really something!”“Sure,” says the man, “he can do all sorts of stuff. He is an amazing dog.”Just then they hear the loud sound of tires screeching. The man runs out into the street, and sees a car stopped right in front of his dog, which is making love to another poodle, right in the middle of the road.“Hey,” says the man to his dog, “what is going on? You never did anything like this before.”The dog looks up at him and says, “I never had twenty dollars before.”

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Since peace was officially restored to the world at the end of the Second World War, what have the politicians been doing?There has never been any peace. There have been only two periods in history: the period we know as war, and the period we call peace, which is a cover up – in reality it should be called preparation for another war. The whole of history consists only of two things: war, and preparation for war. You are asking me, “Since peace was officially restored to the world at the end of the Second World War, what have the politicians been doing?” The politicians have been doing exactly what they have always been doing: creating more conflict, more unrest, more discrimination, more destructive weapons – and preparing for the Third World War.Once, Albert Einstein was asked, “You, being the scientist who discovered atomic energy, must be able to inform us what is going to happen in the Third World War.”Einstein had tears in his eyes and he said, “Don’t ask me about the Third World War – I do not know anything about it. But if you want to know about the Fourth World War, I can say something.”The journalist who was asking the question was immensely surprised and amazed: the man is not saying anything about the Third World War, and says he knows nothing about it, but he is ready to say something about the Fourth World War? He said excitedly, “Then please tell me about the Fourth World War.”Einstein said, “Only one thing can be said about it – that it is never going to happen.”The Third World War will be the last world war. For this last world war, politicians have been preparing since peace was officially restored after the Second World War.The politician and his game are the ugliest things you can conceive of. We are facing a dark night, and I am reminded of the old saying: “When the night is darkest, the dawn is very close by.” But I hesitate to say that this dark night surrounding us will have any dawn to it.I will just tell you exactly what has been happening since 1945 – and people are kept in absolute ignorance; they are not aware that they are sitting on a volcano which can erupt any moment. They are kept engaged in trivia, and the real problems are kept hidden as if they don’t exist.Since 1945 there have been one hundred and five wars fought in sixty-six countries – all of them in the Third World. One is necessarily tempted to ask, “Why in the Third World?” America and the Soviet Union have both gone so far ahead in developing destructive weapons that the weapons used in the Second World War are out-of-date. For them, they are of no use. They have to be sold somewhere; some market is needed, and the market is possible only if there is war.America goes on giving weapons to Pakistan. Then, naturally, India goes on taking weapons from the Soviet Union. And this has been happening in the Third World: one country purchases out-of-date material from the Soviet Union; then its enemy purchases from America. This is good business.They don’t want these people to stop wars because otherwise where are they going to sell these weapons on which they have spent billions of dollars? These poor countries and their politicians are ready to purchase them, although their people are dying of hunger – but seventy-five percent of their budget goes toward war. On average, each war has lasted three and a half years. So who says peace has been restored? One hundred and five wars in sixty-six countries, each war lasting at least three and a half years – and you call it peace?These wars caused millions of deaths. In the Second World War, there were also millions of deaths. Since the Second World War, which has been a time of peace, sixteen million people have been killed in wars – and still you go on calling it peace?But the politicians are so cunning, and people are so blind that they will not look around at what is happening. They will go on fighting about small things: which district should remain in which state? Belgaum is a district here; should it remain in Maharashtra? Because it is a boundary district between the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra.There are people belonging to both languages, and they have been killing each other continually for three decades – and just a small thing cannot be decided. In fact, nobody wants to decide it. Otherwise, what is the problem? Just a small plebiscite, a vote under neutral observation, and people can decide where they want to be. There is no need to kill each other. But it seems politicians are deeply interested in trouble continuing somewhere or other, so that they are needed.Sixteen million people have been killed, and yet in every school and every college and in every university, they go on repeating, “We are living in a period of peace.” In fact, the Second World War was almost more peaceful!The majority of the wars have been in Asia. It is one of the strategies of the powerful nations and their politicians that they should fight always in some other country; the Soviet Union and America should fight in Afghanistan. So the people of Afghanistan are killed; Afghanistan becomes a graveyard, and America and the Soviet Union both profit from selling weapons. They are sending their experts, their weapons; they are training the Afghanis, and Afghanis are killing other Afghanis. One side has weapons from America, the other side has weapons from the Soviet Union.Nine million civilians have been killed in conventional wars since Hiroshima. In ancient times, civilians were never killed. It is absolutely absurd: if your armies are fighting, the people who are fighting in the army may be killed, but now there seems to be no sensibility, no reasonability – nine million civilians are killed. There may be small children, women, old people – who have nothing to do with the war, who may be reading in their schools, who may be working in their factories, or who may be cooking in their kitchens.Just a few days ago, Ronald Reagan, for no reason at all, attacked Libya – he bombed the civilian parts of Libya. His target was Qaddafi, and because Qaddafi has three houses inside the city, all three of his houses had to be bombed. And in bombing his houses, other houses were burned and bombed. Just now, investigators have come to know that while the bombing was going on, professional killers were searching inside Libya for Qaddafi because it was possible he might not be killed by the bombs, he might not be in his own house.So they were bombing the civilians, and professional killers were searching inside Libya to find Qaddafi. They could only kill Qaddafi’s daughter. And neither Qaddafi nor the Libyans have done anything wrong against them.It is a coincidence that the day England allowed Ronald Reagan to use England as a base for bombing Libya, the parliament of England did not allow me to stay at the airport, in the lounge, for six hours – because I am a dangerous man! And Ronald Reagan is allowed to use England to bomb an innocent country which has done no harm to him.This is as dark a night as humanity has ever faced. The current war budget is around seven hundred billion dollars per year. Every year, fifteen million people die from malnutrition and disease, and every year seven hundred billion dollars are spent on warfare. Every minute, thirty children die for want of food and inexpensive vaccines and every minute, one point three million dollars of public funds is spent on the world’s military budget. It seems we are not interested in life anymore; we have decided to commit suicide. Man has never been in such a suicidal mood – ever, in the whole of history.Two hundred and fifty million children have not received even a basic education. A single nuclear submarine equals the annual education budget for one hundred and sixty million school-age children in twenty-three developing countries. Just one submarine! And there are thousands of submarines moving around the ocean all over the world – both American and Russian – and each submarine has nuclear weapons six times more powerful than all the weapons that were used in the Second World War. They are so costly that we could have provided our children with education and food and nutrition, but our interests are not there. These are the politicians who don’t want to be interfered with, who want absolute control of humanity – nobody above them.The world’s forests are disappearing at the rate of eighteen to twenty million hectares a year – an area half the size of California, and California is one of the biggest states in America. Within the next twenty to thirty years, all the tropical forests will be gone, and the implications are tremendous because these forests are supplying you with oxygen and life. If these forests disappear at the rate they are disappearing, mankind will be at a loss to find enough oxygen – from where?On the other hand, whatever carbon dioxide you exhale, these forests inhale. If the forests are not there… Already there is a very thick layer of carbon dioxide continuously accumulating in the sky, on the boundary where the atmosphere ends. Because of that carbon dioxide, the temperature on the earth is rising. It is already four degrees hotter than it used to be.If all the forests disappear, the temperature will become so high that it will do two things: first, it will become impossible for life to survive; second, all the ice at the north and the south poles, on the Himalayas and the Alps and other mountains, will start melting because of the heat. This will raise all the oceans by forty feet. It will flood all our cities, all our countries; it will drown almost the whole earth – and this is not a flood that is going to recede.But these politicians go on doing it. Just a few months ago I was in Nepal. Nepal is among the poorest countries in the world, but rather than dropping its arrangements for war, it has sold its forests – eternal forests of the Himalayas – to Russia. Russia has cut whole mountainsides and left them dry. And for what? – to create more newspapers.What is the need of so many newspapers? It is almost the same news every day, and now that we have far better media systems, the newspaper is out-of-date – there is radio, there is television. Why do you go on clinging to newspapers and destroying all the forests? – just because all the politicians, presidents, and prime ministers need their pictures on the front page. They need their speeches, which are simply bullshit, to be published – without any consideration of what harm they are doing.During the same period, the world population is expected to increase thirty to forty percent, from five billion to seven billion. This population growth alone will cause requirements for water to double in nearly half the world. Food is another thing. Even water will become difficult, because the requirement will double and we don’t have that much water for drinking.In addition, the United Nations reports say that globally, twenty million hectares a year of farm and grazing land are being reduced to zero productivity. More than one thousand plant and animal species become extinct each year – a rate that is expected to increase. One and a half to two million people in developing countries suffer acute pesticide poisoning annually, and pesticide-related deaths are estimated at ten thousand per year.Officers of India’s planning commission reported recently: “We in India are on the verge of an enormous ecological disaster, with our water reserves drying up. What is happening in Africa is going to happen in India within a few decades.”Your population goes on growing, your land goes on becoming more barren, your water supply is becoming less and less, and because forests have been cut, the rivers that go through Nepal to Bangladesh are creating, every year, such floods as have never been seen before. Thousands of people are dying, thousands of villages simply disappear – because those thick trees were making the rivers flow slowly. Now that there are no trees, the rivers come with such force that the ocean is not ready to absorb that much water so quickly. The water starts returning and that returning water creates the floods in Bangladesh.Neither Indian politicians nor Nepalese politicians are ready to stop cutting the trees. Nobody is interested in human life. Nobody is interested in what should be our priority. A poor country like India has so many newspapers, so many magazines, which are absolutely unnecessary. Newsprint paper does not grow in the fields, does not fall from the sky; you have to cut trees. Trees that have taken one hundred and fifty years, two hundred years to grow, disappear. And what do you gain from your newspapers?Politicians are the real criminals – not the criminals who are in your jails. It would be a far better world if there were an exchange: all the politicians in the jails, and all the criminals in the politicians’ positions – they would prove more human. The politicians go on hiding facts as long as possible, as if by hiding facts you can change anything.Now many countries are not declaring how many homosexuals they have. Families are not declaring that someone who has died, has died from AIDS. They are bribing doctors to get certificates that he has died of a heart attack, or of cancer – because the family is more worried about its respectability, about what people will think: “Somebody has died of AIDS in your family.”But hiding the fact means that a man may have transferred the disease to his wife and if there are children, they may be born with the disease – and nobody will know it and they will go on spreading it all around. The disease is not an ordinary sexual disease – anything that comes out of your body, even your tears, carries the virus. If a child is crying, and just out of kindness and compassion you wipe the child’s tears, there is a danger you may get AIDS. Saliva carries the virus, and the whole of humanity is being kept in darkness: kissing should be stopped now – completely!There is only one small part of humanity – the people who live in Siberia, the Eskimos – they are the only people in the whole of history who have never kissed. When for the first time they saw Christian missionaries kissing, they could not believe it: “How dirty these people are, mixing saliva with each other! Are they human beings or some kind of monster?” Their way is far more scientific and far more hygienic. They don’t kiss to show love – because it can be not love, but death – they rub their noses with each other. That looks very clean – unless you have a cold!The other day it was accepted that ten million people are suffering from AIDS right now, and this is not an exhaustive report because countries like India have no way of knowing – nor the means to know. Only very developed countries have come to know that ten million people are suffering. Perhaps at least one hundred million people are suffering in all these backward countries.For example, in Africa, AIDS is more prevalent than anywhere else. And it was never made known that Africans are not homosexuals, but they have a strange perversion: they make love to women, but not from the front. There are people around the world, in small villages, who even make love to animals – and they have given AIDS to animals! Now animals are spreading that AIDS through their milk, through their meat. Things have gone beyond human control.No doctor wants… Even if he comes to know that his patient has AIDS, he does not want to tell the patient because then the patient will insist, “Treat me!” There is no treatment. So the doctor tries – “You have some other disease” – and sends him to some other expert because to be in contact with the AIDS patient the doctor is in danger, the nurses are in danger. The whole staff is in danger.In one of the reports I saw about jails: thirty percent of the people in jails are homosexuals, and that does not seem to be an exact report. It must be the minimum that jail authorities have accepted – because people who are living in jail for twenty years, thirty years, and cannot come in contact with women, are bound to force homosexuality on each other.The simplest thing would be… There are separate jails for women – why should they be separate? The prisoners should live in a mixed way, with women and men together, and then AIDS and homosexuality can be avoided. But politicians will not say anything about it, simply because of fear. Their whole object is to say only things which people like, only things which don’t go against people’s prejudices, their traditional minds – because they depend on people’s votes.That’s why I said that religious people should always be consulted by the politicians; their advice should be given every possible attention. But Rajiv Gandhi wants that politicians should not be interfered with by religious people. Religious people can be interfered with by politicians – about that, there is no question. This is an unfortunate thing, but it goes on and on, and time is very short.I used to be very hopeful. Still, I go on hoping against hope that perhaps, in a very dangerous situation, man may awaken. But there seems to be a sadness in my heart because I can see that if nothing is done, then this century is going to be our end.And not only our end, but the end of the whole of existence’s dream of creating consciousness. It has been successful only on this planet. There are millions of stars and each star has dozens of planets; only on this small planet has the miracle happened that not only life exists – consciousness exists. Not only consciousness exists, but there are people who have reached the ultimate peak of consciousness: a Gautam Buddha, a Socrates, a Pythagoras, a Chuang Tzu.Life disappearing from this small planet will make the whole universe so poor that it will take millions of years to come again to this state where consciousness can become enlightened. My sadness is not about myself. I am absolutely contented. Death cannot take anything from me. My sadness is about the whole of humanity, because their death will take away the whole opportunity of their becoming enlightened, of their becoming blissful, of their knowing meaning and significance. They lived in darkness – are they going to die in darkness too?I would like my people, at least, not to waste time in postponing their own growth, because politicians are absolutely prepared to destroy each other – to destroy all and everything. Their lust for power has come to a climax. Before they succeed in committing a global suicide, at least you should have known the godliness that exists within you. You should spread your joy and your silence and your laughter to anybody you come in contact with. You cannot give a better gift to your friends, to your acquaintances, to your lovers, to your children.The time is very short and the work is tremendous, but if you have courage, the challenge can be accepted. And don’t depend on politicians; they cannot do anything; they are not even aware of where they have been leading humanity – into what darkness.Osho,I am now gone – good for nothing; sorry to say, don't expect anything from me. Koti koti pranam.I will tell you a small, beautiful story.Just before Ninakawa passed away – he was a great master – the Zen master Ikkyu visited him. “Shall I lead you on?” Ikkyu asked. Ninakawa was dying and Ikkyu asked, “Shall I lead you on?”Ninakawa replied, “I came here alone and I go alone. What help could you be to me?”Ikkyu answered, “If you think you really come and go, that is your delusion. Let me show you the path on which there is no coming and going.” With his words, Ikkyu had revealed the path so clearly that Ninakawa smiled and passed away.Where are you going? You say, “I am gone – good for nothing.” That is true. You have definitively proved that you are good for nothing. Nothing is wrong in it, but where are you going? Because there is nowhere to go! We are always here and always now. Neither we come nor do we go. All coming and all going is only dreaming, so just wash your face with cold water and wake up! You have not gone anywhere – you are just sleeping on your bed.You are saying, “Sorry to say, don’t expect anything from me.” You amaze me! Who has ever expected anything from you, good for nothing? So don’t be worried about it. Just remember one thing that Ikkyu said to Ninakawa: “If you think you really come and go, that is your delusion. Let me show you the path on which there is no coming and no going” – just awakening.A young nun said to her mother superior, “I was out walking in the garden last night and the gardener took me, threw me to the ground, and well, you know… Can you give me penance?”“Go and eat ten lemons,” said the mother superior.“But that won’t cleanse my sins away.”“I know, but it will wipe that contented grin off your face!”So first get up, wash your face, and eat ten lemons! I think that is not too much to ask – you can do that. And if you cannot do it, there are so many people here who will force you to do it – til your grin is gone!And to whom are you saying this koti koti pranam? Koti koti pranam means millions and millions of goodbyes. You are not going anywhere. I am not going anywhere. Stop talking in your dream! Koti koti pranam!Osho,Can you please comment on this beautiful poem by Rumi that I love so much: “Outside, the freezing desert night. This other night inside grows warm, kindling. Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust. We have a soft garden in here. The continents blasted, cities and little towns, everything becomes a scorched blackened ball. The news we hear is full of grief for that future. But the real news inside here is there's no news at all.”The poem by Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi is beautiful, as always. He has spoken only beautiful words. He is one of the most significant poets who are also mystics. That is a rare combination. There are millions of poets in the world and there are a few mystics in the world, but a man who is both is very rare to find.Rumi is a very rare flower. He is as great a poet as he is a mystic. Hence, his poetry is not just poetry, not just a beautiful arrangement of words. It contains immense meaning and indicates toward the ultimate truth. It is not entertainment, it is enlightenment.He is saying:Outside, the freezing desert night.This other night inside grows warm, kindling.The outside is not the real space for you to be. Outside, you are a foreigner; inside, you are at home. Outside, it is a freezing desert night. Inside, it is warm, kindling, cozy.But very few are fortunate enough to move from the outside to the inside. They have completely forgotten that they have a home within themselves; they are searching for it but they are searching in the wrong place. They search their whole lives but always outside; they never stop for a moment and look inward.Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.We have a soft garden in here.Don’t be worried about what happens on the outside. Inside, there is always a garden ready to welcome you.The continents blasted, cities and little towns,everything becomes a scorched, blackened ball.The news we hear is full of grief for that future.These words of Rumi are more significant, meaningful, today, than they were when he wrote them. He wrote them seven hundred years ago, but today it is not only a symbolic thing, it is going to become the reality:The continents blasted, cities and little towns,everything becomes a scorched blackened ball.The news we hear is full of grief for that future.But the real news inside here is there’s no news at all.This last sentence depends on an ancient saying which says: No news is good news. I was born in a very small village where the postman used to come only once a week. People were afraid that he may be bringing a letter for them; they were happy when they found that there was no letter. Once in a while, there was a telegram for someone. Just the rumor that somebody had received a telegram was such a shock in the village that everybody would gather – and only one man was educated enough to read. Everybody was afraid: a telegram? That means some bad news. Otherwise, why should you waste money on a telegram?I learned from my very childhood that no news is good news. People were happy when they received no news from their relatives, from their friends or from anybody. That meant everything was going well.Rumi is saying:The news we hear is full of grief for the future.But the real news inside, is there’s no news at all.Everything is silent and everything is as beautiful, peaceful, blissful as it has always been. There is no change at all; hence, there is no news. Inside it is an eternal ecstasy, forever and forever.I will repeat again that these lines may become true in your lifetime. Before that happens, you must reach within yourself where no news has ever happened, where everything is eternally the same, where the spring never comes and goes but always remains; where flowers have been from the very beginning – if there was any beginning – and are going to remain to the very end, if there is going to be any end. In fact, there is no beginning and no end, and the garden is lush, green, and full of flowers.Before the outside world is destroyed by your politicians, enter your inner world. That’s the only safety left, the only shelter against nuclear weapons, against global suicide, against all these idiots who have so much power to destroy. But you can at least save yourself.I was hopeful, but as the days have passed and I have become more and more acquainted with the stupidity of man… I still hope but just out of old habit; really my heart has accepted the fact that only a few people can be saved. The whole of humanity is determined to destroy itself. And these are the people that if you tell them how they can be saved, they will crucify you. They will stone you to death. Going around the world, I still laugh, but there is a subtle sadness in it. I still dance with you but it is no longer with the same enthusiasm as it was ten years ago.It seems that the higher powers of consciousness are helpless against the lower and ugly powers of politicians. The higher is always fragile, like a roseflower; you can destroy it with a stone. That does not mean that the stone becomes higher than the roseflower; it simply means the stone is unconscious of what it is doing.The crowds are unconscious of what they are doing, and the politicians belong to the crowd. They are their representatives. When blind people are leading other blind people, it is almost impossible to wake them up; because the question is not only that they are asleep – they are blind too.There is not time enough to cure their eyes. There is time enough to wake them but not enough time to cure their eyes. So now I have confined myself completely to my own people. That is my world, because I know those who are with me may be asleep, but they are not blind. They can be awakened.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is religion? What is your opinion on organized religion?Religion is the highest flight of human consciousness – it is the individual search for truth. The inner truth cannot be made an object of common knowledge. Each person has to go within himself; each time, it is a new discovery. It does not matter how many people have attained awakening, realization; the moment you attain it, it will be absolutely fresh – because it cannot be borrowed.The search basically consists of knowing your interiority. You have an outside, and no outside can exist without an inside: the very existence of the outside is proof of an inner world. The inner world consists of three layers: thoughts are the most superficial; feelings are deeper – and then is the being, which is your godliness. To know one’s own godliness, to know one’s own eternity, is the basic search of religion.All your senses lead you outside: eyes open to look outside, ears hear what is happening outside, your hands can touch what is outside. Senses are the doors to go out – and always remember, the door that takes you out can also take you in. It is the same door from which you go out of your home and through which you come back in; just the direction changes.To go out, you need open eyes. To come in, you need closed eyes, all your senses silent. The first encounter is with the mind – but that is not your reality. Although it is inside your skull, it is not you – it is the reflection of the outside. All your thoughts are reflections of the outside.For example, a blind man cannot think about colors because he has not seen colors – hence the reflection is not possible. The blind man cannot even see darkness. Because he has never seen light or darkness outside, there is no possibility of any reflection. The blind man does not know whether there is darkness or there is light – both words are meaningless. If you analyze your thoughts, you will find they are all triggered inside you by outside reality – so they are basically of the outside, reflected in your inner lake of consciousness.But because of these thoughts… They are a tremendous crowd in you; they go on accumulating, they create a China Wall. You have to go beyond your thoughts. Religion knows only one method – there are different names, but the method is one: it is watchfulness, it is witnessing. You simply watch your thoughts, with no judgment, no condemnation, no appreciation – utterly aloof; you just see the process of thoughts passing on the screen of your mind.As your watcher becomes stronger, thoughts become less – in the same proportion. If the watcher is ten percent of your energy, then ninety percent of your energy is wasted in thoughts; if your watcher becomes ninety percent, then only ten percent remains in thoughts. The moment you are one hundred percent a watcher, the mind becomes empty.This whole process is known as meditation. As you pass through the thoughts, you will come to the second layer which is inside you – of feelings, of your heart, which is more subtle. But by now, your watcher is capable even of watching your moods, your sentiments, your emotions, your feelings – howsoever subtle they may be. This same method works in the same way as it worked with the thoughts: soon there will be no sentiments, no feelings, no moods. You have gone beyond the mind, and the heart. Now there is utter silence; nothing moves. This is your being; this is you.The taste of your being is truth. The beauty of your being is the beauty of existence. The silence of your being is the language that existence understands. And just to be settled in being, you have come home. The wandering is finished. The struggle is finished. At ease, you sit silently within yourself. A great hidden splendor is revealed to you: you are not separate from reality, you are one with it. The trees and the moon and the stars and the mountains are all part of one organic unity; you are also part of that organic unity – you become part of God.Religion is man’s highest achievement. Beyond religion, there is nothing – but there is no need either. Your being is so abundant, so overflowing with bliss, silence, peace, understanding, ecstasy, that for the first time, life becomes really a song, a dance, a celebration. Those who do not know religion don’t know celebration.But organized religion is a totally different affair. I have to make it clear to you that authentic religion is always individual. The moment truth is organized, it dies; it becomes a doctrine, a theology, a philosophy – but it is no longer an experience, because the crowd cannot experience. Experience happens only to individuals – separately.It is almost like love. You cannot have organizations of love – so that you need not bother; the organization will take care, the priest will love on your behalf. But that’s what has happened to religion. Each time a man discovers the truth, immediately one of the most cunning parts of humanity, the priests, surround him. They start compiling his words; they start interpreting his words; and they start making it clear to people that if you want to know truth, you have to go via them – they are agents of God. They may call themselves prophets, they may call themselves messengers; they may choose any name, but the reality is they are self-appointed agents of God. They don’t know God, but in the name of God, they exploit humanity.Organized religion is another form of politics. Just as I have always condemned politics as the lowest activity of human beings, the same is my attitude about organized religions. You can see it: the priests and the politicians have always been in conspiracy against humanity. They have been supporting each other. They have divided life between themselves so that your worldly life belongs to the politician, he is the ruler here, and your inner life belongs to the priest, he is the ruler there.One sometimes feels so amazed. It seems unbelievable that even in the twentieth century, the pope could declare, a few months ago, that to communicate with God directly is a sin. You should go through the priest, the right channel – because if people start going directly to God, confessing to God, praying to God, the millions of priests will be unemployed. They don’t do anything; their whole function is to deceive you. Because you don’t understand the language of God, and you are not so evolved, just for some fee – a donation to their church or to their temple – they will do the job for you.All those donations go in the pockets of the priests. They don’t know anything about God, but they are very learned – they can repeat scriptures like parrots. But their inner desire is not for God, not for truth – they are not seekers, they are exploiters.I have heard…A priest bought two parrots and he taught them, with great hardship, beautiful statements of Jesus Christ. Everybody was really amazed – the parrots were so accurate. He also made small beads for them so they were constantly praying, and he also found small Bibles for them; they always kept their Bibles open, and were counting their beads. Although they could not read, they had already crammed everything. The priest would open the page and say, “Twelfth page,” and they would start reading it – not that they were reading; they had memorized it.The priest was very pleased and he felt it would be good to have one more parrot. Rather than learning the Bible and the beads, he could be taught to give whole sermons. He found a parrot, and the pet shop owner said, “Your wish will be fulfilled; this parrot is the most intelligent I have ever seen.”But he was not aware that it was a female parrot. As the parrot was put in the same cage as the other two parrots that were counting their beads and reading the Bible, they both looked at the female parrot, and one parrot said to the other, “George, now drop those beads! Our prayers have been heard.”Your priests are no more than parrots – and their prayers are for power, for prestige, for money. They are politicians in disguise; they are doing politics in the name of God – the politics of numbers. There are now seven hundred million Catholics; naturally the pope is the most powerful religious man in the world.Every religion has been trying to increase its population by different methods. Mohammedans are allowed to marry four women so that they can produce four children per year. And they have been successful: they are the second-largest religion after Christianity.Organized religion is only a contentless, meaningless name; hidden inside is the politics of numbers. You know perfectly well – as the election comes near, your politicians start going to see the shankaracharya. For five years, nobody goes to visit the shankaracharya, but when the election comes near, then the prime minister goes to visit the shankaracharya. He goes for a pilgrimage to the temples, high and deep in the mountains of the Himalayan range. For what? Suddenly, a great religious urge has arisen – which subsides as the election ends.These people need votes; they have to pay respect to the leaders of religions. And a shankaracharya feels great that the prime minister is touching his feet. And the followers of the shankaracharya, the Hindus, feel that “our prime minister is a very religious person.”When the pope comes to India, even the president and the prime minister with his whole cabinet stand in line at the airport to receive him. For what? The third-largest religion in India is now Christianity, and to pay respect to the pope means all the votes of the Christians will be yours.Organized religions – whether it is Christianity or Hinduism or Mohammedanism – have not been seekers of truth. In two thousand years, what truth has organized Christianity added to the statements of Jesus? So what is the need of this organization? It is not increasing religiousness in the world, it is simply repeating what Jesus has said – which is available in books for anybody to read. In twenty-five centuries, how many Buddhists have searched for the truth, or have found the truth? Just a long line of parrots repeating what Gautam Buddha has found.You should remember that Gautam Buddha was not part of any organized religion; neither was Mahavira part of any organized religion, nor was Jesus part of any organized religion – they were individual seekers. Truth has always been found by individuals. That is the privilege of the individual, and his dignity.Organized religions have created wars – just as politicians have done. Their names may be different: politicians fight for socialism, for communism, for fascism, for Nazism, and organized religions have been fighting for God, for love, for their concept of what truth is. Millions of people have been killed in the clashes between Christians and Mohammedans, between Christians and Jews, between Mohammedans and Hindus, between Hindus and Buddhists. Religion has nothing to do with war; it is a search for peace. But organized religions are not interested in peace – they are interested in becoming more and more powerful and dominant.I condemn the organized religions in the same way I condemn the politicians because they are nothing but politics. When I said to you that religious people should be respected, honored – the politicians should go to them for advice – I was not talking about organized religions; I was talking only about religious individuals. A religious individual is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. How can he be? God himself is not Hindu, not Mohammedan, not Christian. And the man who knows something of the divine becomes colored with his divinity, becomes fragrant with godliness. In the ancient East these religious people were our highest flowers, and even kings and emperors used to go to them to touch their feet and to be blessed – to ask their advice on problems which they were unable to solve.If we want the world to remain alive, we have to bring back our ancient childhood days when the religious person had no interest of his own. That’s why his eyes were clear, his heart was pure love, his being was nothing but a blessing. Whomsoever came to him was healed, his problems were solved; he was imparted new insights into rotten old problems.Organized religions should disappear from the world – they should drop this mask of being religious. They are simply politicians, wolves hiding themselves in the skin of sheep. They should come into their true colors; they should be politicians – there is no harm in that. And all the time they are politicians, but they are playing the game in the name of religion.Organized religions don’t have any future. They should drop their disguise and come truly out in front as politicians, and be part of the political world so that we can find the authentic religious individual – who will be very rare. But just a few authentic religious individuals can lead the whole world toward light, toward immortal life, toward ultimate truth.Osho,I have been living in America while you have been traveling around the world. Now I have come here to your mystery school, to enjoy you for a few weeks before I continue my life in the West. Osho, I feel you so strongly inside of me that I don't experience the ache of being physically away from you. I am savoring every moment of being in your presence while I am here, yet I don't feel a longing to stay. Is it possible for the marketplace to actually be my mystery school for now? Is there anything that I can do for you out there? You are the center of the cyclone, Osho. I am so grateful, and I love you.The love between the master and the disciple is not of the physical; hence space makes no difference. You can be far away on another star, but your heart will be still beating with me. That is the only closeness, the real closeness; otherwise, you can be sitting by my side and still you may be wandering somewhere on some other star.I am not interested in your physical body, where it is; I am interested in your being – that it is centered. I am interested in your love – that it reaches as many people as possible.The marketplace is perfectly the right place for anyone who wants to grow spiritually. In the past, the fallacy was to renounce the marketplace and run away to the mountains. But if your mind has not changed, even in the mountains your mind will be thinking of your business, of your wife, of your children. If some traveler comes by, you will be hankering to know what is happening there. If your mind remains the same, it does not matter that you have renounced a palace.I was traveling in the Himalayas and I saw a very beautiful bodhi tree. I was tired, and it was time; I have never in my whole life missed a good two hours’ sleep in the afternoon. It was very cool and the shadow was thick, so I was just going to lie down, and a man came and said, “You cannot lie down here.”I said, “What is the problem?”He said, “This is my tree, and I have been living under this tree for five years.”I said, “You look like a sannyasin.”He said, “I am; I am a Hindu monk.”I said, “You have renounced the world?”He said, “Yes, I have renounced everything.”“But,” I asked, “What about this tree? It is still yours. And the shadow is so big, we can both rest underneath it. I will not disturb you because I will be sleeping, and I don’t snore – unless I decide to.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “If you snore, then I will snore loudly. I cannot snore while I am asleep; so I have to pretend that I am asleep. And I will snore loudly, unless you stop your snoring. If you don’t snore, there is no problem: there is a lot of space here, and I am going on my way after just two hours.“But I must say to you that you have left the world, but the world is still within your heart. The very idea of ‘my tree’ is not different in any way from my kingdom, my palace, my wife. It is not a question of what you are claiming as mine; the question is that you are possessing.”Humanity has to face two problems from the past. People renounce the world, but nothing is renounced. You can leave your house, you can leave your wife, you can leave your friends, you can leave your money – but where will you leave your mind, and how will you leave your mind? If you can leave your mind, then there is no need to go anywhere – then your very house becomes the temple, because the real question is transcending the mind. These monks who left the world lived in a very illusory idea that they were no longer concerned with the world. They missed the chance to grow. Secondly, living in a mountain cave you may not get angry – because anger needs somebody to provoke it. There is nobody to provoke you.I have heard…A man lived for thirty years in the Himalayas, and he had gone there because of his too-angry mind. His mind was so angry that when he was in anger he was almost mad. One day he pushed his wife into the well, and then as he became aware of what he had done, he decided that now he would renounce this world. And for thirty years anger never happened, because there was no wife, no children, no customers, no friends, no enemies – there was nobody. Slowly, slowly his fame spread to the plains: “A man has been living for thirty years in the caves, and we have never seen such a silent man.”There was going to be a great fair, the Kumbha Mela, in Prayag – it happens every twelve years. It is the biggest gathering in the whole world; millions of people come. A few people went to this silent monk and said, “All the great saints and monks are coming to the fair to give their teachings to the people who are going to participate. It is time you came down: you have not come down for thirty years; now you are ripe.” It was very ego-fulfilling, this invitation.He came down to the plains. As he entered the crowd of millions – and they did not know anything about him – somebody stepped on his feet, and all those thirty years disappeared. He grabbed the man by his neck and he said, “You idiot, don’t you see that I am a saint?” It was very difficult to take him away; he was going to kill the man. He was the same man who had killed his wife thirty years before. It was not such a great crime; the crowd was so thick that if somebody stepped on your feet, it was not intentional. But it made him aware of one thing: that even thirty years in the Himalayas had not changed him a little bit.So this is the second problem. Your real test is in the world – whether you are becoming silent or not, whether you are becoming more loving and compassionate or not, whether you are growing spiritually or not. Go to the marketplace, but remember not to get lost in it.Remain a watcher. It is very easy to get lost.You have asked me, “Is there anything that I can do for you out there?” Only one thing I expect from all of you: to be yourself, to discover your inner beauty, your purity of consciousness, your hidden splendor – and spread it to as many people as possible. People are miserable. Help them to laugh a little, to sing a little, to dance a little.I don’t want missionaries. You are not to spread my teachings – I don’t have any anyway – but you have to spread the joy, the blissfulness, the silence that you have felt here. Don’t let it become just a faded memory. You are going to the greatest marketplace in the world, to California. You will have to be very watchful. If you can remain untouched by California and all its stupidities… I have been thinking to call the saints “California-returned.”Just take a joke from me; laugh and help others to laugh.An American traveling in the United Kingdom was riding in a train with an Englishman and an elderly English lady with her pet Pekinese. They had traveled only a short distance when the dog threw up all over the American’s trousers. Instead of apologizing, the English woman fondled her dog and comforted it, saying, “Poor, itsy-bitsy doggy has a little tummy ache.”A few miles later the dog raised its leg and pissed all over the American. Again the English woman consoled her dog, saying, “Poor itsy-bitsy doggy has a cold in the bladder.”A short while later the dog shit all over the Yank’s other things. Exasperated, the American stood up, grabbed the dog and threw it out of the window.At this point the Englishman commented, “You Yanks are a peculiar lot. You speak the wrong language, you live on the wrong side of the ocean, and you, sir, threw the wrong bitch out of the window.”Osho,As the years have gone by since I took sannyas, my love has changed its quality. At first I felt a certain excitement; now there is a deep coolness and I feel relaxed within myself. This is accentuated when I sit in front of you in meditation. As I am writing this, a certain little voice inside bubbles up and says, “Yes, everything is fine.” Osho, is this little voice a figment of my imagination, my mind playing tricks?Yoga Videh, I have been watching you. I have seen you becoming more silent, more peaceful. A certain grace is arising in your eyes and on your face. In the beginning I used to see that it was even difficult for you to sit for two hours – you were tossing and turning. Now all that is past; you sit almost like a marble statue. This shows the inner centering.So whatever you have heard is not a figment of your imagination. I also say to you that yes, everything is fine. But don’t be satisfied with what you have attained. There is much more – infinitely much more. As you go deeper and deeper, you will find more and more treasures, and unless you come to the feeling of immortality, eternity, remember that the journey has not ended.You will come across beautiful spaces which are so enchanting, so magical that one thinks, what more can there be in life? So much bliss, so much benediction – but don’t stop. Everybody has to discover his eternity: “I am part of a life that knows no death.” It is not far away if you go on and on.Whatever happens, be grateful to existence and move on.Charaiveti, charaiveti – this was one of the constant messages of Gautam Buddha. Whenever sannyasins came to relate to him their state of mind, their consciousness, he would always say, “Everything is fine, but charaiveti, charaiveti. Continue, continue going on and on and on, because I know there is much more to be discovered.”Remember the fragrance of the beautiful words of one of the great Zen masters, Ryokan:With no mind, blossoms invite the butterfly.With no mind, the butterfly visits the blossoms.There is no cerebral activity in it. The flowers are not thinking and planning how to invite the butterfly. With no mind, in their silence, is their invitation.With no mind, blossoms invite the butterfly.With no mind, the butterfly visits the blossoms.When the flower blooms, the butterfly comes.When the butterfly comes, the flower blossoms.There is such a synchronicity in existence. You become graceful, the whole existence becomes graceful; you become silent, everything else becomes silent. A song arises in you, and all around the birds start singing; you dance, and you see the whole existence is dancing with you, hand in hand.Says Ryokan,I do not know others, others do not know me.Not knowing each other we naturally follow the way.There is no need of knowledge, because nature has its own wisdom. If you don’t interfere with nature and its wisdom, everything goes as it should go.I do not know others, others do not know me.Not knowing each other we naturally follow the way.Whatever is happening to you Videh, just follow it, very naturally. Don’t be in a hurry, don’t bring your knowledge to improve upon it. Nobody can improve upon nature: when the spring comes, the flowers will come also – and there is no way to bring the spring, and without the spring the flowers won’t come. So go on the way you are moving. It is the right path, the easy path in your naturalness and spontaneity, and you will not be going astray. You will reach to the ultimate ocean where one merges with the eternal life. Knowledge is really a very complicated phenomenon; you have to be like little children.Little William went to his father and said, “Daddy, where did I come from?” The father started to stutter and stammer, but he realized that he had to tell his son the facts of life.“Sit down, Willie,” he said. At great length he described the whole business of creation, beginning with the birds and the bees. Then he went into the most graphic descriptions of human intercourse. He concluded at last, feeling limp and drained. He took a handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his brow: “Okay, Willie, do you understand now?”Willie scratched his head. “Not really, Dad. Henry says he came from New Jersey, but you have not told me where I came from.”His question is of a very innocent character, but the father is a knowledgeable person. He gives a whole discourse on how human beings are produced – and he is perspiring and stuttering and stammering. And the boy must be puzzled: what is going on? He has simply asked a simple question: Where did I come from? Such a complicated journey. And Henry has come from New Jersey.Be natural, be simple, be innocent, and allow nature to guide you – it has never misguided anybody. Knowledge, on the contrary, has never been able to guide anybody to the ultimate goal, the ultimate peak of our experience, of our consciousness, of our blissfulness, of our enlightenment.