Osho

The Language of Existence

Talks on Zen

Talks given from 29/08/88 pm to 07/09/88 pm

English Discourse series

9 Chapters

Year published: 1989

1

Remember, remember!

2

2

Go like an arrow

15

3

Seek nothing outside

26

4

Beyond life-and-death

38

5

The gateway of the buddhas

50

6

Be a rare person

63

7

Now you have it

77

8

Please, settle for no-self

91

9

Lovers of tao

105

Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

1

Remember, remember!

29 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

DAIO ONCE SAID TO A MONK: THE PEAK EXPERIENCE, THE FINAL ACT -- AS

SOON AS YOU TRY TO PURSUE IT IN THOUGHT, THERE ARE WHITE CLOUDS

FOR A THOUSAND MILES. BUT EVEN IF YOU GO BACK UPON SEEING THE

MONASTERY FLAGPOLE AT A DISTANCE, OR HEAD OFF FREELY UPON SEEING

A BECKONING HAND, THIS IS STILL ONLY HALF THE ISSUE; IT IS NOT YET THE

STRATEGIC ACTION OF THE WHOLE CAPABILITY.

YOU HAVE TRAVELED AND STUDIED VARIOUS PLACES AND SPENT A LONG

TIME IN MONASTERIES. DON'T STICK TO THE RUTS IN THE ROAD OF THE

ANCIENTS -- YOU MUST TRAVEL A LIVING ROAD ON YOUR OWN.

EAST, WEST, FOOT UP, FOOT DOWN, USING IT DIRECTLY -- ONLY THEN WILL

YOU KNOW THAT THE PEAK EXPERIENCE ILLUMINES THE HEAVENS AND

COVERS THE EARTH, ILLUMINES THE PAST AND FLASHES THROUGH THE

PRESENT. THIS IS YOUR OWN PLACE TO SETTLE AND LIVE. WHEN I SAY THIS, I AM ONLY USING WATER TO OFFER FLOWERS, NEVER ADDING ANYTHING

EXTRA.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION DAIO SAID TO A ZEN NUN, "AT THE TOP OF THE

HUNDRED-FOOT POLE, GO FORWARD."

THE NUN REPLIED, "AT THE TOP OF THE HUNDRED-FOOT POLE, THERE IS NO

PLACE TO GO."

DAIO SAID, "WHERE THERE IS NO PLACE TO STEP, GO A HUNDRED

THOUSAND STEPS FARTHER -- ONLY THEN WILL YOU BE ABLE TO WALK

ALONE IN THE RED SKIES, PERVADING THE UNIVERSE AS YOUR WHOLE

BODY."

THE NUN AGREED AND DAIO CONTINUED: "THAT'S ALL. NOW YOU WANT

TO RETURN TO YOUR OLD CAPITAL AND HAVE COME WITH INCENSE IN YOUR

SLEEVE TO ASK FOR A SAYING. I ONCE MADE A VERSE OF PRAISE ON THE

MASTER OF IKUSAN, SO I WILL WRITE THAT:

"'ATOP THE POLE, WALK ON BY THE ORDINARY ROUTE. IT IS MOST

PAINFUL, WHEN TAKING A TUMBLE IN A VALLEY. EARTH, MOUNTAINS, AND

RIVERS CANNOT HOLD YOU UP, AND SPACE SUPPRESSES LAUGHTER, FILLING

A DONKEY'S CHEEKS.'

"I ASK YOU, ZEN NUN," CONTINUED DAIO, "TO BRING THIS UP AND LOOK AT

IT TIME AND AGAIN: HOW TO GO FORWARD FROM ATOP THE POLE?

SUDDENLY, WHEN THE TIME COMES, YOU CAN GO FORWARD A STEP, AND

SPACE WILL SURELY SWALLOW A LAUGH. REMEMBER, REMEMBER."

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Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

Maneesha, before I discuss these very significant statements, I have to inaugurate Avirbhava's Museum of Gods. She has brought a few great gods, but before she brings her gods before you I have to say something about them.

"Octopus: On the island of Corfu in the Greek archipelago, the octopus was worshipped as an incarnation of one of the Greek gods.

Known as the most evil of the sea animals, the innocent octopus acquired the name

'devil-fish' by fearful ancient fishermen."

The second is, "Crocodile: Among the southern Bantus of Africa, the crocodile is considered sacrosanct.

The Egyptian god Sebek was believed to take the shape of a crocodile; sometimes he was represented as wholly animal, sometimes only with a crocodile head. Offerings of cake, meat, and honey wine were made to the sacred crocodiles, some of which were tamed by priests.

Oracles were drawn from the crocodiles' behavior, and they were embalmed at death."

And the third is, "Lobster: The lobster was generally considered sacred among the ancient Greeks.

In New Caledonia, the crab goddess, or demon, is known to have a sacred grove. On the trees in her grove are hung little packets of food for her. She is the enemy of married people, and is known to cause elephantiasis.

Even today, the lobster is worshipped in the Isa district fishing villages of Japan. Huge replicas are paraded through the towns during their festivals."

Before I ask Avirbhava to bring her newly acquired gods, I have heard a joke about an octopus:

Klopski is overjoyed with his new pet octopus, Clyde. The magnificent creature drinks vodka like a fish, but also can play any musical instrument in the world.

One evening, after polishing off a few bottles of vodka together, Clyde and Klopski go out to the Jumpin' Jellyfish Jazz Club.

Klopski shouts, "Hey, everybody! I will bet anyone here that my octopus can play anything anyone gives him."

Laughter fills the bar. Then Benny the banjo player says, "Okay, I bet you fifty dollars he can't play my banjo."

Klopski nods enthusiastically, swallows back a shot of vodka and gives one to Clyde. The octopus swallows his drink and crawls onto the stage, grabbing not one but two banjos on the way.

As he plays "God Save The Queen," he sneaks out a free tentacle and snatches another glass of vodka.

"Hey, man," yells Pete the piano player, "that is cool. But I will bet you a hundred bucks he can't play my grand piano."

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Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

"Right!" yells Klopski, swallowing his vodka, and pouring one for the octopus. Clyde knocks back the vodka and jumps on the piano. Waving all his arms about wildly, Clyde plays the Polish national anthem stylishly.

"That is fine," comes a shout from the corner, "but I will bet you five hundred dollars he will never be able to play this!" It is Hamish MacTavish, and be brings a big, old Scottish bagpipe up to Klopski.

"Okay," says Klopski. But before Klopski can touch it, Clyde leaps on the bagpipe, squeezing and tangling his arms all over it. Then the octopus and the bagpipe fall onto the floor in a knotted heap, making only a pitiful gasping sound.

Losing the bet, an enraged Klopski grabs the octopus, holds him up in the air and cries,

"What the hell went wrong with you?"

"Well," grins the octopus, drunkenly, "she looked so beautiful, but I just couldn't get her cotton panties off!"

Now, Avirbhava, come on.

(A GREY VELVETY OCTOPUS APPEARS IN FRONT OF THE PODIUM, HOLDING

BETWEEN HIS TENTACLES A FLUTE, PLAYING THE BEATLES TUNE "IN AN

OCTOPUS' GARDEN", AND DANCING UP AND DOWN IN FRONT OF THE MASTER.) So let him settle on the Stonehead, now ...

(BUT THE OCTOPUS LANDS ON NIRVANO'S HEAD INSTEAD. MEANWHILE, A LARGE CROCODILE IS INCHING ALONG THE PODIUM, WHILE A RED, CUDDLY

LOBSTER IS DANCING IN THE AIR. FINALLY, THE OCTOPUS GETS TO HIS

DESTINATION -- STONEHEAD'S HEAD. THE MASTER IS CHUCKLING AND

ENJOYING THE SHOW TREMENDOUSLY, AS WELL AS THE ASSEMBLY, WHICH IS

SIMPLY DROWNING IN AN OCEAN OF LAUGHTER.)

Great, Avirbhava! Take your gods away.

DAIO ONCE SAID TO A MONK:

THE PEAK EXPERIENCE, THE FINAL ACT -- AS SOON AS YOU TRY TO PURSUE

IT IN THOUGHT, THERE ARE WHITE CLOUDS FOR A THOUSAND MILES. BUT

EVEN IF YOU GO BACK UPON SEEING THE MONASTERY FLAGPOLE AT A DISTANCE, OR HEAD OFF FREELY UPON SEEING A BECKONING HAND, THIS IS

STILL ONLY HALF THE ISSUE; IT IS NOT YET THE STRATEGIC ACTION OF THE

WHOLE CAPABILITY.

YOU HAVE TRAVELED AND STUDIED VARIOUS PLACES AND SPENT A LONG

TIME IN MONASTERIES. DON'T STICK TO THE RUTS IN THE ROAD OF THE

ANCIENTS -- YOU MUST TRAVEL A LIVING ROAD ON YOUR OWN.

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Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

THIS CAN BE CALLED ONE OF THE VERY FUNDAMENTALS OF ZEN: DON'T

STICK TO THE RUTS IN THE ROADS OF THE ANCIENTS -- YOU MUST TRAVEL A LIVING ROAD ON YOUR OWN.

The fact is, you cannot travel on anybody's road because that road will never lead you to yourself. It will lead you to somebody else, whose road it is. Never be a follower; always be a path finder. And the path in the unknown reality of your inner world is made by walking into the unknown, without any road prepared by others for you.

All the religions are doing that: they are preparing roads for millions of people --

highways, super highways. There are six hundred million Catholics walking on one road.

They are not going to reach anywhere; not a single one of them has reached even to the state of Jesus Christ. And nobody even thinks about it. Six hundred million Catholics for eighteen hundred years following a certain road persistently, and they have not produced a single Jesus worth the name. It is not their fault, it is our whole mental makeup. We have been told that we have to walk on paths which are prepared. But this is a different path.

All paths that go outwards are prepared beforehand. You can go to the north, you can go to the south; you can go anywhere, the road is ready. But to go inside, no road is ready, you will have to create it by walking. It will remain always an individual pathway. Nobody else will ever walk on it and nobody else should ever walk on it, because that will lead him into a hypocrisy. He will become someone else that he is not. It is a very important message: DON'T STICK TO THE RUTS IN THE ROAD OF THE ANCIENTS.

All the religions emphasize the opposite; all the religions try to prove that they are the most ancient -- to be an ancient religion is a great value. The reality is, the more ancient a religion is, the more rotten it is bound to be. The more ancient, the farther away from you.

There is no question of following any ancient way. You should not follow even a modern way, because all ways that are created by others may only be suitable for them.

This is a great challenge of existence, that you have to create your own path to your own temple. No help is possible, and it is the grandeur of humanity, a tremendous dignity, that you can follow only your own path.

All religions are leading people wrongly; they are destroying people, making them into sheep. An authentic religion will make a man into a lion who walks alone, who never walks in a crowd. The crowd never suits him, because with the crowd you have always to compromise.

With the crowd you have always to listen to others: their criticism, their appraisal, their conceptions of right and wrong, their values of good and bad.

In the crowd you cannot remain natural. The crowd is a very unnatural environment.

Unless you are very aware, the crowd is going to crush you into dust. It is because of this that you don't find many buddhas in the world. A buddha has to fight inch by inch for his individuality. He has not to give way to the crowd, whatever the cost. Unless such an uncompromising attitude remains constantly in you, you cannot remain unaffected by the crowd in which you live.

And unfortunately everybody is born in a crowd -- the parents, the teachers, the neighbors.

Nobody is fortunate enough to be born alone, so that is out of the question. You are born in the society, in the crowd. Unless you can keep your intelligence clean of the pollution that will Osho - The Language of Existence

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Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

be surrounding you from every side, sooner or later you will become somebody else, somebody who nature had never intended you to be.

Remember constantly that you have your own destiny, just as everybody else has his own destiny. Unless you become the flower, the seeds of which you have been carrying within you, you will not feel blissfulness, fulfillment, contentment, you will not be able to dance in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. You can be in paradise only as an individual, if you have followed the path that you create by walking in. There are no ready-made pathways.

When you enter in, you enter into pure space -- not a road; there are not even footprints.

Buddha used to say that the inner world is just like the sky. The birds fly but they don't leave their footprints. Nobody can follow their footprints because in the sky their footprints are not; as they have flown away, their footprints have dissolved.

The inner sky remains always pure, just waiting for you, because nobody can get inside you. He is saying:

YOU MUST TRAVEL A LIVING ROAD ON YOUR OWN. EAST, WEST, FOOT UP, FOOT DOWN, USING IT DIRECTLY -- ONLY THEN WILL YOU KNOW THAT THE

PEAK EXPERIENCE ILLUMINES THE HEAVENS AND COVERS THE EARTH, ILLUMINES THE PAST AND FLASHES THROUGH THE PRESENT. THIS IS YOUR

OWN PLACE TO SETTLE AND LIVE.

Following your own path, not imitating anybody, you are bound to reach the space where you will feel you have arrived at the home, where you can settle for eternity.

WHEN I SAY THIS I AM ONLY USING WATER TO OFFER FLOWERS, NEVER

ADDING ANYTHING EXTRA.

He is perfectly aware that people may start following him. Such is the stupidity of humanity. To the man who is saying, "Never follow anybody," they say, "Okay." But their okay means, "Now we are going to follow you." When the person is saying, "Never follow anybody," he is included in that "anybody." Then why is he speaking, what is he doing? He says:

I AM ONLY USING WATER TO OFFER FLOWERS, NEVER ADDING ANYTHING

EXTRA.

I am saying the very essential, not adding anything extra, just like watering flowers.

Such a simple thing ... following yourself is such a simple thing. The flowers will start blossoming, you just go on watering them, nourishing them with your attention, with your love, with your silence, with your celebration, with your laughter. Just don't add anything extra from other sources, from scriptures, from great teachers, from buddhas. Nobody is to be included on your path. Your path has to be absolutely pure and virgin.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION DAIO SAID TO A ZEN NUN, "AT THE TOP OF THE

HUNDRED-FOOT POLE, GO FORWARD."

It will look a very absurd statement.

AT THE TOP OF THE HUNDRED-FOOT POLE, GO FORWARD.

You will think that man is mad. There is no way to go anywhere, you will cling to the pole. But going inside is just like this, as if you are standing on a hundred-foot-long pole. And Osho - The Language of Existence

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Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

when you go in there is no road, just pure inner sky. It is a jump into the unknown, but a jump of tremendous beauty.

You may have heard, or you may not have heard ... On the China Wall that surrounds the whole of China -- it is the biggest wall in the world ... It took one thousand years to build; it is almost a mountain. And it is so wide that you can drive a car on it, and as high as sixty feet, seventy feet, eighty feet -- as the terrain allows. It was built against the Mongol attackers, to prevent them from entering China. And of course they were absolutely unable -- a hundred-foot wall standing between Mongolia and China.

China had suffered so much from the Mongols that it took on this tremendous task --

almost inhuman. It took one thousand years to make the wall, and millions of people were engaged in the work. But it had to be done because great Mongols like Genghis Khan ... he alone killed forty million people. Killing was their joy. His son killed thirty million people; another Mongol, Tamerlane, again killed forty million people. The successor of Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, is thought to have killed more than any of his forefathers, but there are no records available. The whole of China must have become so threatened by these monsters --

murderers for no reason, just for the simple joy they would burn a whole city alive -- that they made this China Wall.

A fictitious story is connected with the China Wall. There is a place in the China Wall where it is said that if you stand there and look at the other side, you simply give a good laughter and jump, you never return. Many people tried but they simply laughed and jumped.

And it is one hundred feet high, a mountainous terrain. The fiction became so much of a reality that the government had to put soldiers there to prevent people from looking from that place. Nobody could explain it. What happens? Why do they simply laugh? What do they see?

And then without saying anything to anybody, they simply jump.

I don't think it is a historical fact but I understand it as mythological, and a very beautiful phenomenon. When you look in, you are looking into a tremendous nothingness. And all that the mystics have done is, they have given a laugh and jumped. They have simply said goodbye and jumped.

It is so enchanting, so magnetically pulling; the gravitation is so much that once you look in, you cannot resist taking the jump. It is risky, it is dangerous, you may be lost. But on the contrary, you find yourself for the first time. You were lost before; hence the laughter. And now you have come home, which was just looking inwards, and everything that you ever wanted is fulfilled. You have entered the lotus paradise.

This statement -- AT THE TOP OF THE HUNDRED-FOOT POLE, GO FORWARD -- is not concerned with an actual pole. It is concerned with your hundred-foot-long ego. That is your pole, where you are standing.

Look within and take a jump!

Then go forward.

THE NUN REPLIED, "AT THE TOP OF THE HUNDRED-FOOT POLE, THERE IS NO

PLACE TO GO."

DAIO SAID, "WHERE THERE IS NO PLACE TO STEP, GO A HUNDRED

THOUSAND STEPS FARTHER -- ONLY THEN WILL YOU BE ABLE TO WALK

ALONE IN THE RED SKIES, PERVADING THE UNIVERSE AS YOUR WHOLE

BODY."

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Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

Zen has a language of its own. It is simple, but because we are complicated we cannot understand the simple language. A hundred-foot-long pole ... you would never have thought that it could be representative of the ego.

Once you see the metaphor, it becomes very clear that everybody is standing on a very long pole. And people are trying to get on longer poles. When Henry Ford was dying, before his death he was asked, "What have you learned in your whole life? Because you became the world's greatest rich man -- from poverty to riches."

Henry Ford said, "Don't remind me. I have learned only one thing: climbing poles. And when you have climbed the pole, you look so awkward, so stupid. Fortunately you are alone there sitting on your pole. I have learned the art of climbing poles, that has been my whole life. I have not learned anything. I am dying without having learned anything from life."

But Daio's interpretation:

WHERE THERE IS NO PLACE TO STEP ...

'Place' is always outside. Inside there is no place, there is only space. And you should understand the difference between place and space.

You are sitting here. The place you are sitting in is one thing and the space that you are within is another. It is nothing material, so there is no question of falling. There is no fear of falling into a ditch. There is no place of any kind, just pure silence and spaciousness. Where there is no place to step, that is the real place from where to begin the journey.

Howsoever absurd, he has said a great truth.

GO A HUNDRED THOUSAND STEPS FURTHER --

ONLY THEN WILL YOU BE ABLE TO WALK ALONE

IN THE RED SKIES, PERVADING THE UNIVERSE

AS YOUR WHOLE BODY.

THE NUN AGREED AND DAIO CONTINUED: "THAT'S ALL. NOW YOU WANT

TO RETURN TO YOUR OLD CAPITAL AND HAVE COME WITH INCENSE IN YOUR

SLEEVE TO ASK FOR A SAYING. I ONCE MADE A VERSE OF PRAISE ON THE

MASTER OF IKUSAN, SO I WILL WRITE THAT:

'ATOP THE POLE, WALK ON BY THE ORDINARY ROUTE. IT IS MOST PAINFUL, WHEN TAKING A TUMBLE IN A VALLEY. EARTH, MOUNTAINS, AND RIVERS

CANNOT HOLD YOU UP, AND SPACE SUPPRESSES LAUGHTER, FILLING A DONKEY'S CHEEKS.'"

Once you have taken the jump into the inner space, everything is easy. Before taking the jump everything is difficult. You have never thought that you have any interiority, you have never thought that there is any space inside.

When I say "your interiority" I don't mean your bones and your heart and your brain. These are all outside coverings of your inside nothingness. When you detach yourself from your body and mind and heart, you find that place from where the journey begins. That is the true pilgrimage, the only pilgrimage that is of any worth. All others are unnecessarily running here and there, not knowing where they are going.

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Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

I have heard ... Once George Bernard Shaw was caught in a railway train without a ticket.

He had purchased a ticket, but where had he put it? He had much luggage. He must have been like Avirbhava -- she travels with twelve suitcases! So he looked into this suitcase, into that suitcase. The whole compartment was filled with his clothes and things and books, and the ticket collector finally said in desperation, "I know you, everybody knows you. I cannot conceive that you are traveling without a ticket. It must have got lost -- you have so much luggage. Don't be worried, I will not come again, and I will give the message to the other ticket collectors on the train not to bother you."

George Bernard Shaw shouted at him, "You idiot! You think I am taking all this trouble for you? The problem is not the ticket, the problem is that without the ticket I don't know where I am going. The train is going so fast and I don't know which station I am to get out at.

And why are you standing here like an idiot? Just do your work and let me find my ticket!" He was a world famous man, but he was a man with a very bad memory.

A similar story is told about Mulla Nasruddin, but juicier. The ticket collector comes, and Mulla Nasruddin looks into everything -- his bags, his pockets. The ticket collector is standing there and he says, "You have looked in every pocket, but you don't look in the left-side pocket of your coat."

Mulla Nasruddin said, "Don't interfere in my work. Never mention that pocket!"

He said, "You are strange. I am simply helping you because you cannot find the ticket.

Perhaps ... why are you leaving out that pocket?"

Mulla Nasruddin said, "That is my only hope. If the ticket is not in the left pocket, I am finished. So first I will look into everything else. Only as the last resort may I touch that pocket. That is my last hope, don't destroy it."

"I ASK YOU, ZEN NUN," CONTINUED DAIO, "TO BRING THIS UP AND LOOK AT

IT TIME AND AGAIN: HOW TO GO FORWARD FROM ATOP THE POLE?"

I give you this poem. Remember, that this is my message: that you have to leave the place and enter into space.

"SUDDENLY, WHEN THE TIME COMES, YOU CAN GO FORWARD A STEP, AND

SPACE WILL SURELY SWALLOW A LAUGH. REMEMBER, REMEMBER."

Don't be afraid of laughing. Just take a step from place into space, have a good laugh and just go on. We are doing that every day -- not one laugh but many laughs.

(A LOUD LAUGH IS HEARD FROM SARDAR GURUDAYAL SINGH.) Sardar Gurudayal Singh, wherever this caravan is going you will be needed. Without you life will not be so juicy.

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Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

A haiku by Sodo:

AFTER THE MOON-VIEWING,

MY SHADOW WALKING HOME

ALONG WITH ME.

AFTER THE MOON-VIEWING ... A full moon -- that has become traditional in Zen. On the full-moon night the Zen seekers don't sleep, they walk into the mountains where the moon has made waterfalls look as if silver is falling, where the moon has made the whole surroundings a dream.

Sodo says, AFTER THE MOON-VIEWING ... This is called moon-viewing; it is a tremendously aesthetic experience.

MY SHADOW WALKING HOME

ALONG WITH ME.

Such silence. Nobody is with me, just my shadow walking along with me. After seeing this whole beautiful world, when you enter into your home nobody will be with you, not even your shadow. Your aloneness will be total.

Every meditation is a preparation for enjoying the aloneness which is our nature.

Issa wrote:

NOT YET HAVING BECOME A BUDDHA,

THIS ANCIENT PINE TREE,

IDLY DREAMING.

According to those who have awakened, everything is full of buddhahood. Buddhahood is just the nature of existence. Issa's haiku is saying: NOT YET HAVING BECOME A BUDDHA,

THIS ANCIENT PINE TREE,

Although it is ancient, it has not yet become a buddha.

IDLY DREAMING.

It is still dreaming. Someday it may wake up. This can be said about everybody. We are all unconscious of our ultimate reality, and we go on dreaming, we go on sleeping, we go on desiring, we go on longing for this and that, not knowing that the greatest treasure is within our awakening.

There is no more than becoming a buddha. You have come to the highest peak of consciousness.

Consciousness is the only wealth.

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Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS THE ONE, MOST SIGNIFICANT ATTRIBUTE A SANNYASIN OF YOURS NEEDS?

My sannyasins don't need, Maneesha, any attribute. My perception of sannyas is to be just yourself. If I say any attribute, I am imposing that attribute on my sannyasins. My sannyas is absolute freedom. With freedom of course a great responsibility comes, but that is not my business.

There is a special event happening in the streets of Jerusalem, and there is great excitement throughout the city. Pontius and Mrs. Pilate are standing on the balcony of the palace, waving to the crowds below. They are watching as Jesus and the procession following him slowly make their way through the streets towards Crucifix Hill.

Suddenly, Jesus stumbles and he and his cross crash to the ground. The procession grinds to a standstill. Slowly, Jesus gets back on his feet, picks up the cross, and carries on.

"Pontius, did you see that?" remarks Mrs. Pilate, out of the corner of her mouth, as she continues waving with a smile plastered on her face.

"Yes, dear," replies Pontius, "I'm afraid he did it again."

"Well, I really don't care who he is," remarks Mrs. Pilate. "If he drops his cross one more time, he is out of the parade!"

In the small hours of the morning, Paddy is crawling along the street on his hands and knees. Suddenly, he notices a large pair of boots in front of him, and looking up, he sees the outline of Police Officer O'Leary.

"What is going on here?" asks the cop.

"I'm just looking for a ten-dollar bill," mumbles Paddy.

"Oh!" says O'Leary, "are you sure you lost it here?"

"Well," slobbers Paddy, "I didn't say I had lost one. I'm just looking."

Luigi gets home to Italy from his holiday in California. He is very depressed, and his friend Alfonso asks him, "What's the matter? You no like-a California?"

"Mama mia!" replies Luigi. "What a nightmare! I go-a to California and stay at the Pope and Pasta Hotel in Palm Springs. In the morning, I go-a to breakfast. I tell-a the waiter, 'I want two pissis of toast.' He bring-a me only one piss.

"I say, 'I want-a two piss.' He say, 'Go to the bathroom.' I say, 'You no understand. I wanna piss on the plate.' He say, 'You no piss on the plate, you son-of-a-bitch!'

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Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

"Later, I have-a lunch. The waitress brings me a knife and a spoon, but no fock. I tell her, 'I wanna fock.' She tell me, 'Everyone wanna fock.' I say, 'You no understand, I wanna fock on the table.' She say, 'You no gonna fock on the table, you son-of-a-bitch!'

"So I go-a back to my hotel room, and there are no shits on my bed. I call-a the manager and tell him, 'I wanna shit.' He say, 'Go to the bathroom.' I say, 'You no understand, I wanna shit on my bed.' He say, 'You no gonna shit on the bed, you son-of-a-bitch!'

"So, I'm-a finished. I go-a to check out, and the man at the desk say, 'Happy holidays, and peace on you.'

"I say, 'Piss on you too, you son-of-a-bitch, I go-a home!'"

Now is the time. The air is clean, you have laughed and you are ready.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent, close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

No movement.

Gather yourself in.

Just like an arrow, move deeper and deeper

within yourself.

Soon you will reach the one-hundred-foot pole

from where begins the journey into space.

Take a jump without looking back.

It is our space, it is our origin.

You are blessed.

This evening is blessed by your being a buddha,

just a pure awareness.

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This awareness is your very nature;

you can forget it but you cannot lose it.

It cannot be stolen. It is your very center.

To make it clear, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax, but go on entering

deeper and deeper into yourself.

The body remains far away, miles away,

the mind remains miles away.

You are just a silent watchfulness,

a peace that passeth understanding,

a bliss that no word can express.

An experience of eternity and immortality

which will bring you a great feeling

of dance, rejoicings, songs.

Even your silence will become a song

and your no-movement will become a dance.

Those who have known this source

have become pure love, compassion, consciousness, purity.

This is your ultimate nature.

Life is only a school to bring you to this ultimate nature. Those who remain unfortunately unaware of this grandeur of your being, this Everest of your consciousness, are really pitiable.

Feel this moment and the silence of it because you have to carry it with you twenty-four hours.

On this path there is no specific period for meditation. The whole life has to become meditation. Sitting, standing, walking; waking, sleeping, meditation continues just like a thread in a garland of flowers. It does not show up but it is there, the connecting link of each flower.

All your actions, gestures, are just like flowers, but a consciousness should run through all of them. Only then the garland is a garland; otherwise it is just a heap of flowers.

Let your life be a garland with a consciousness connecting every action, every movement, every mood, and it will bring a total transformation. You will be a new man.

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Chapter 1 - Remember, remember!

Each meditation will take away something false from you and will bring some new, fresh quality.

Slowly slowly a day comes when your whole life becomes the life of a buddha.

It is not far away,

it is always within your reach.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back. But bring with you

the silence, the experience.

Sit down for a few minutes like a buddha.

This is your nature.

As Daio said, REMEMBER, REMEMBER!

He was referring to this experience of meditation: REMEMBER, REMEMBER!

In twenty-four hours,

whatever you are doing it does not matter,

your remembrance should remain a continuity.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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2

Go like an arrow

30 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

HAKUIN SAID:

THE STUDY OF ZEN IS LIKE DRILLING WOOD TO GET FIRE. THE WISEST

COURSE IS TO FORGE STRAIGHT AHEAD WITHOUT STOPPING. IF YOU REST AT

THE FIRST SIGN OF HEAT, AND THEN AGAIN AS SOON AS THE FIRST WISP OF

SMOKE ARISES, EVEN THOUGH YOU DRILL FOR THREE ASAMKHYEYE KALPAS, YOU WILL NEVER SEE A SPARK OF FIRE.

MY NATIVE PLACE IS CLOSE TO THE SEASHORE, BARELY A FEW HUNDRED

PACES FROM THE BEACH. SUPPOSE A MAN OF MY VILLAGE IS CONCERNED

BECAUSE HE DOES NOT KNOW THE FLAVOR OF SEA WATER, AND WANTS TO

GO AND TASTE IT FOR HIMSELF. IF HE TURNS BACK AFTER HAVING TAKEN

ONLY A FEW STEPS, OR EVEN IF HE RETURNS AFTER HAVING TAKEN A HUNDRED STEPS, IN EITHER CASE WHEN WILL HE EVER KNOW THE OCEAN'S

BITTER, SALTY TASTE?

BUT, THOUGH A MAN COMES FROM AS FAR AS THE MOUNTAINS OF KOSHU

OR SHINSHU, HIDA OR MINO, IF HE GOES STRAIGHT AHEAD WITHOUT

STOPPING, WITHIN A FEW DAYS HE WILL REACH THE SHORE, AND, THE

MOMENT HE DIPS THE TIP OF ONE FINGER INTO THE SEA AND LICKS IT, HE

WILL INSTANTLY KNOW THE TASTE OF THE WATERS OF THE DISTANT OCEANS

AND THE NEARBY SEAS, OF THE SOUTHERN BEACHES AND THE NORTHERN

SHORES, IN FACT OF ALL THE SEA WATER IN THE WORLD.

Maneesha, Hakuin is one of the most respected Zen masters. His respect is because of his ability to express the inexpressible, to create devices that somehow can manage to give you a glimpse of the unknown. He is basically concerned with the method. If a right method is used in the right time and ripe time, it is not going to fail. If you are on the right way, it may take some time to reach, but you will reach. The whole question before Hakuin is: the right way, the right method, the right beginning.

It was Gautam Buddha's habitual way of expression. All the great qualities that he has called for in an experienced, self-realized man, all begin with the word 'right'. For example, he will not say simply samadhi. He will say samma samadhi. Samadhi can go wrong, people can mistake similar experiences for samadhi and get lost.

That's what happened to Aldous Huxley when he took LSD. He was a man of tremendous knowledge, particularly of the East, and most of the saints of the East he knew well. He immediately said that, "The experience of LSD is samadhi, the same experience that Patanjali has described, the ultimate phenomenon."

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This gives a clear illustration that Buddha was right not to use simply the word samadhi. It is dangerous. You can find something else and think it is samadhi; there are similar phenomena. There are people who have become addicted to opium, or hashish, or marijuana.

And these drugs have been used for centuries, from the very beginning of man. It is nothing new.

The reason why they became addicted is because the drugs gave them a glimpse of something ... how things should be. They are temporary glimpses, and they are produced by chemicals so they don't go beyond the mind. But mind gets a glimpse, just as the lake reflects the faraway moon. And the experience is so beautiful that not to repeat it again and again becomes impossible.

All the societies have been fighting against drugs but the fight has not been successful. It will never succeed the way the society is. It can succeed only if you give people the right experience of samma samadhi -- 'samma samadhi' means right samadhi -- so that they can make a differentiation, a discrimination between what is right and what is wrong. Those who have known their buddha-nature are not addicted to drugs, do not need drugs for their experience. Their experience is not caused by any chemicals; their experience is caused by turning their whole energy in towards the center of their being. That has nothing to do with chemicals. But chemicals can give you an illusion, something very similar.

Hakuin has adopted Buddha's habit. Buddha never spoke about anything without adding the word 'right' first, because his understanding was -- and he is correct -- that everything can go wrong if you get caught up with something similar which is illusory. And you cannot make the distinction because you don't know the real. Unless you know the real, how can you expect to make a discrimination between the unreal and the real?

It was a great contribution of Gautam Buddha that he would talk about all the qualities using the word 'right' first. Samma means right. Because everything can be taken for granted as right if you don't have any experience of it. Then any illusion, any hallucination ... and these hallucinations will drag you through life after life.

A man like Aldous Huxley, one of the most intelligent men of this century, got caught into it. He became addicted to LSD and he preached that what he was experiencing was the same as what Buddha experienced and Kabir experienced. This is definitely going beyond the limitations. Aldous Huxley has no way to know what Kabir experienced, he has no way to know what Buddha experienced. Buddha's experience was not dependent on any LSD, it was an inner experience dependent only on his own consciousness.

LSD gives you unconsciousness, not consciousness. If you are in a good mood LSD can give you paradise; LSD is simply a magnifying glass. If you are in a good mood, a loving mood, and you take LSD, you feel the whole world is filled with love. You will even touch your chair with a loving hand. All around everything will be beautiful, nothing will be wrong.

But it lasts only for a few hours and when you wake up, you wake up in a far worse world than the one you had been in before you took the LSD, because you have seen something beautiful and now you see an ordinary world which has lost its luster. You have seen in LSD

rainbows all around; suddenly they have all disappeared. You have seen people having auras and now they are just so ordinary. But even to imagine that they had an aura looks stupid.

But Buddha or Kabir, once they become enlightened ... this enlightenment is not something that has to be renewed every year like a license. Once it has happened, it has happened. It may become bigger and more mature, but there is no way of going back. That is Osho - The Language of Existence

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the criterion of whether you are hallucinating through drugs or you are authentically meditating.

The word 'right' has to be understood. Many people have been worried about why Buddha continually uses the word right about every quality. They are not aware that for every real quality there is a phony quality available -- "made in U.S.A." That phony quality is cheap, but it serves only for a few hours, and then you are caught in it because it is so beautiful -- again and again ... And every time you take it, you have to take it in a bigger dose because your body becomes immune. A moment comes when no LSD can make any difference; your body has become completely immune.

India is far more experienced with drugs because for ten thousand years at least it has been trying to use all kinds of drugs and poisons to create a cheap imitation of the ultimate experience. They have gone even to the point ... even today there are monasteries in Ladakh where they keep cobra snakes.

When a person becomes so accustomed to all the drugs that no drug helps anymore, then the last thing is a cobra bite. The cobra bites on his tongue, then he feels a little samadhi.

Otherwise a cobra bite usually means the end. And you will be surprised: there are cases of the cobra dying, because the man is so full of poison.

It has been used in India for centuries. Each great king used to raise a beautiful girl, and from her very childhood she was given poison -- from smaller doses to bigger doses. It made her so immune that she was able to absorb any dose of poison without falling unconscious.

And the final stage was, when she became a young girl, blossomed in her youth, she could be sent to the enemy king. There was no difficulty in it, she had just to move to the other capital and the king himself would become interested in her. Those girls were chosen from thousands of beautiful girls; they were unique specimens. Immediately the king would become aware that there was a beautiful girl he had never seen before, and just a kiss from that girl was enough to kill the man.

It is good that nowadays you don't find such trained and disciplined girls. They were available at the time of Gautam Buddha. And it was not something that you use one time and then throw away, in the American way. They would kill the king and they would come home ready to be sent somewhere else, because nobody could think that the kiss of the girl had killed the king.

Aldous Huxley and his colleagues are not aware of the whole history of drugs. And why was the girl ready to take it? It gave such a good feeling, such a joyful feeling. She was not thinking about what she was being prepared for, but she was floating in a euphoria.

Buddha is right when he says samma samadhi. He will not accept Aldous Huxley's samadhi as a right samadhi. It is an illusion.

But I wonder that nobody has criticized Aldous Huxley. All the governments are against drugs; obviously they should criticize Aldous Huxley first. But they don't have either the intelligence or the experience. That man at least had the experience of the illusory -- the governments don't have the experience even of the illusory. But down the ages, although every government has been against drugs, this has not made any change. No prohibition ever makes any change; on the contrary it increases your interest in the things prohibited.

I am against all prohibition. My own understanding is that if LSD can give some glimpse of samadhi, then all its bad aftereffects should be removed, because it is a chemical and it is in Osho - The Language of Existence

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our hands. Those bad aftereffects are the problem. They should be removed and an LSD

number two should be made -- clean, taken in complete awareness that it is going to give you only a glimpse. Its addictiveness can be taken out, and when you know it is going to give you only a glimpse there is no harm. It may lead you to the search for the real.

Rather than prohibiting the drugs, what is needed is to produce drugs which lead people to samadhi, which give an indication: if a chemical drug can be such a blessing, what will the real thing be? It is just a dewdrop in comparison with the real oceanic feeling, the oceanic ecstasy.

But nobody listens to any right approach. Thousands of people are unnecessarily in the jails. The number may be millions, not thousands, and most of them are underage; even six-year-olds have been found taking drugs. Nobody has suggested any solution for it.

And once a boy or girl, whatever their age, takes the drug, they cannot forget the experience. Everything else becomes just rotten; the mind continuously hankers for the drug.

It is the duty of the governments of the whole world, through their chemical drug research, to produce drugs which are not harmful, which are not addictive. Any bad aftereffects have been removed, and only that part which gives a joyous feeling, a desire to dance and a desire to find something real is left, because that feeling will disappear within hours.

These drugs can be used in a right way. Everything can be used in a right way and everything can be used in a wrong way, but it is still the same thing.

Hakuin said to his disciples:

THE STUDY OF ZEN IS LIKE DRILLING WOOD TO GET FIRE.

An old, ancient method.

THE WISEST COURSE IS TO FORGE STRAIGHT AHEAD WITHOUT STOPPING. IF

YOU REST AT THE FIRST SIGN OF HEAT AND THEN AGAIN AS SOON AS THE

FIRST WISP OF SMOKE ARISES, EVEN THOUGH YOU DRILL FOR THREE

ASAMKHYEYE KALPAS ...

Asamk means innumerable, and kalpas means yugas, or ages. If you drill for asamk, for innumerable ages, you will never find a spark of fire.

What he is saying is that there are things which have to be done fast. If you do them slowly, at the most you may create smoke but not fire. To create fire you have to drill hard and without resting. If, seeing that the wood is becoming hot, you say, "Let us rest a little," the wood will become cool again. If, seeing that the wood is smoking, you say, "Now the fire is not far away we can rest a little," the smoke will disappear, the wood will become cool again.

The fire is hidden in the wood but you have to be very continuous until you find the spark, the flame jumping up from the wood.

This is a very good example for meditators. You go a little while and then you say, "I have to go tomorrow again, what is the hurry? It is enough, now rest -- and if finally everybody has to become a buddha, what does it matter whether it is Sunday or Saturday? There are only seven days; some day I will become a buddha." But if you think in terms of going slowly, in a lousy way, taking rests, you will never reach.

Although the path is very short, it is short only for those who go like an arrow. The arrow does not stop on the way, there are no stations for the arrow. It does not rest a little while in Osho - The Language of Existence

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the air and then go again, it simply goes straight without halting on the way. And that should be remembered by every meditator.

I have been using the word 'arrow' purposely so that you can understand that going into yourself is not a morning walk -- that you can return from anywhere. It is not something that you can do in parts; you have to do it one day in a single quantum leap. Whenever you decide, then don't look back, just go ahead.

Certainly it needs guts and courage because you are moving in a dark and unknown space.

You don't have with you even a lamp -- no companion, you don't have any map. And meditation demands that you go with the speed of light, so fast that the journey of thousands of lives is completed in a single moment.

Hakuin says:

MY NATIVE PLACE IS CLOSE TO THE SEASHORE, BARELY A FEW HUNDRED

PACES FROM THE BEACH. SUPPOSE A MAN OF MY VILLAGE IS CONCERNED

BECAUSE HE DOES NOT KNOW THE FLAVOR OF SEA, AND WANTS TO GO AND

TASTE IT FOR HIMSELF. IF HE TURNS BACK AFTER HAVING TAKEN ONLY A FEW STEPS, OR EVEN IF HE RETURNS AFTER HAVING TAKEN A HUNDRED

STEPS, IN EITHER CASE WHEN WILL HE EVER KNOW THE OCEAN'S BITTER, SALTY TASTE?

You have to go to the ocean; one hundred feet or two hundred feet, that is not the question.

You have to go all the way.

BUT, THOUGH A MAN COMES FROM AS FAR AS THE MOUNTAINS OF KOSHU

OR SHINSHU, HIDA OR MINO, IF HE GOES STRAIGHT AHEAD WITHOUT

STOPPING, WITHIN A FEW DAYS HE WILL REACH THE SHORE, AND, THE

MOMENT HE DIPS THE TIP OF ONE FINGER INTO THE SEA AND LICKS IT, HE

WILL INSTANTLY KNOW THE TASTE OF THE WATERS OF THE DISTANT OCEANS

AND THE NEARBY SEAS, AND OF THE SOUTHERN BEACHES AND THE

NORTHERN SHORES, IN FACT OF ALL THE SEA WATER IN THE WORLD.

But the question is of going to the sea, not just going in a lukewarm way: "Today a few steps and then we will see tomorrow." But tomorrow you will have to take these few steps again. And if this becomes your habit -- "A few steps today and then we will see tomorrow" --

if this becomes your pattern then you will never reach. Always you will be going on those few steps, and then the decision that, "It is enough, now we will see tomorrow."

For the meditator there is no tomorrow.

Future is not the concern of meditation. Future is the concern of the mind; mind cannot live without future. If suddenly all future disappears, mind will be at a loss what to do. Future is the space in which mind goes on weaving imaginations, projects, ideas: what one is going to become, what one is going to achieve. All ambitions are laid out in the future. But if the future completely disappears -- suddenly you come to the point where you see that there is no future -- either your heart will stop or you will run away backwards, thinking that at least the past will be there. But the past is not there.

The past and the future both are in your mind.

Existentially there is only this moment.

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So when you meditate today, do it as if this is the last day. You may not have any chance to meditate again, so go all the way to the seashore. And once you have got the taste of your being -- the rejoicing, the dancing, the blessing, the ecstasy -- then there is no problem, you know the way. It is not far, it is just within you, just a few inches away from your mind. But once you have to know it. Just once you have to know it, then there is no problem. Then you cannot forget it, then you cannot go away against it; then it becomes your very life. And when meditation becomes one's very life, there is nothing more in this existence to make you richer, to make you more of a splendor. The secret is hidden within you.

A Zen poet wrote:

WITH A PIERCED NET -- a net with holes.

WITH A PIERCED NET

I'VE CAUGHT

ALL THE BUTTERFLIES

OF THE UNIVERSE.

He is not talking about butterflies; neither is he talking about a pierced net. He is talking about your mind, which is certainly pierced -- so many holes, so many loopholes, so many stitches here and there, so many cracks. But the poet is saying, don't be worried: WITH A PIERCED NET

I'VE CAUGHT

ALL THE BUTTERFLIES

OF THE UNIVERSE.

Just know the secret. And the secret is to go beyond the pierced net. Be a master of your mind, then even a pierced net is capable of catching all the butterflies of the world. Right now your mind catches nothing. From all the holes and loopholes everything goes on leaking out.

Have you seen that you are leaking continuously? I don't think ... but now you will see.

Basho says, sitting silently ... It is right, but he does not know that when you sit silently it is not necessarily true that the grass grows by itself. What seems to be more likely is that the mind leaks by itself. Basho's experience is a great experience, but this is a very simple experiment that you can do. Just sitting in your room with closed eyes, see: thoughts are rushing this way and that way, everything is leaking.

When I say go beyond the mind, I mean go beyond all this leaking so that you can find something solid to stand upon. Before you take the jump, you need to find a spot at least to stand on, from which to jump into the darkness, into the unknown territory of your own being.

Buddha is reported to have said that everything that is great is bitter in the beginning and very sweet in the end -- and vice versa. That which is very sweet in the beginning, for example a honeymoon, is very bitter in the end. Meditation may be entering into darkness, unknown territory, but it ends up in self-illumination, in a great explosion of light. And once the explosion has happened, you remain the buddha forever; you cannot go back. The mind has Osho - The Language of Existence

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gone, just as a shadow disappears. You function now from no-mind, and any action from no-mind is good, is a blessing to the world.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

HAKUIN SAID, "THE WISEST COURSE IS TO FORGE STRAIGHT AHEAD

WITHOUT STOPPING." BUT IF WE KNEW WHERE STRAIGHT AHEAD WAS, WOULD WE NEED TO WALK IT?

It is just a way of saying it. There is no problem in it when Hakuin says, THE WISEST

COURSE IS TO FORGE STRAIGHT AHEAD. He is talking to the disciples, not to the students; he is talking to the meditators.

When I say to you, go straight in, you don't ask me, "Where is this 'in'?" You don't consult an encyclopedia or a map of the world -- where is this 'in'? You understand, you know perfectly well where it is, just you have not gone that way before.

So, Maneesha, you know perfectly well where you have to go. Just go straight ahead.

Walking will not do, not even running. That's why I have used the word 'arrow' -- with the speed of light. I have used the words 'quantum leap'. One moment you were not a buddha and another moment you are a buddha -- so fast.

There is no distance between you and your buddhahood, only a misunderstanding. It is something like, two plus two is four but by some mistake you have been calculating that two plus two is five, and I tell you that this is a mistake: two plus two is not five, it is four. Do you think you will have to do something? Immediately you see the point.

It is said that psychotics are ones who think two plus two is certainly five. They are very fundamentalist. All fundamentalists are psychotics. They know everything -- where God is ...

They know that the Holy Ghost committed a crime, and rather than hanging God on the cross, the Jews hung the poor boy Jesus -- it was not his fault.

The Holy Ghost and God are not separate. The Holy Ghost seems to be God's personality, his mask. Not to say directly that God committed adultery, and with a poor virgin, Mary, they say that the Holy Ghost did it. And the poor boy who was born out of this criminal act, they crucified. They should have crucified God, but the difficulty is ... In fact everybody would like to crucify God, but where to find him? They found the only begotten son, so they said, "It is near enough. Crucify this fellow at least."

The psychotics cannot be convinced that two plus two is not five; the neurotics are those who think that perhaps two plus two is four, but they are very uncertain of it, very worried: why is it four? Why is it not five? With five they were perfectly at ease. This is the way psychologists find out who is a psychotic and who is a neurotic.

You cannot remove the psychotic from his position, whatever position he has taken. The neurotic you can remove, but he will remain always worried: "This seems to be right, but who knows? Perhaps I was right before, because then I was at ease. Here, with two plus two making four it creates such an anxiety."

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There is no distance between you and your ultimate reality. Just an about turn ... just, rather than looking outwards, close your eyes and look in. In a single instance, when you have forgotten the outside world completely -- the past, the future, everything -- and you remain only in this moment, looking inwards, the happening, the transformation, the arrival of the buddha ...

Question 2

Maneesha is also asking:

IS NOT OUR UNCERTAINTY, OUR GROPING, BECAUSE WE HAVE TO

DISCOVER FOR OURSELVES WHAT IS STRAIGHT AHEAD AND WHAT IS GOING

OFF TRACK?

If you look in you cannot go off track, because there are no tracks. There are not two ways even. It is the outside world where if you don't know, naturally you will have to grope around.

In the inside world you don't even have hands with which to grope. The inside world is a pure seeing.

In this country we have called this seeing darshan. Darshan means just seeing. And that does everything, you don't have to do anything else.

Before you do the seeing, a little laughing. That's why you have not done it before.

Pope the Polack is visiting the optician.

"I keep seeing spots in front of my eyes," complains the Polack pope.

"Really?" replies the optician, putting a new pair of glasses on the pope's nose. "There!

How's that?"

"Wow! That's great," replies Pope the Polack. "Now I can see the spots much clearer."

Luigi is sitting with his teenage son, Spagnoli.

"What-a do you want-a for your birthday, my son?" Luigi proudly asks his son.

"I wanna watch," says the son.

"Okay," shrugs Luigi. "It is-a okay with me if it is okay with-a your mother."

Get it? Otherwise in the middle of the night you will get it!

(WAVES OF INCREASING LAUGHTER ARE ROLLING THROUGH BUDDHA HALL AS MORE AND MORE DISCIPLES ARE GETTING IT.) Do you see? Somebody got it!

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One morning, Miss Goodbody, the fifth grade teacher, asks the class what the best kind of business is.

"Real estate," says little Ernie, "because everybody needs somewhere to live, and houses always increase in value."

"Oil!" exclaims little Albert, "because cars always need petrol."

"No," says little Peggy Sue, from the back of the room. "The best business in the world is prostitution."

"What!" cries Miss Goodbody, shocked. "Peggy Sue, how can you say such a thing?"

"Easy," replies Peggy Sue, "because it is the only business where you have it, you sell it, and you still have it."

Three women arrive at the Pearly Gates. Betty and Margaret are English girls, and Lolita is Italian. Saint Peter looks the women over very carefully. Then he turns to Betty and says,

"Have you been a pure and honest woman?"

"My good man," replies Betty, "I am English. I have been honest and clean my whole life."

"Okay, okay," says Peter, checking his list. "Follow that angel to the pink room."

Then Peter turns to Margaret. "And have you been a pure, forthright woman?"

"Oh Peter," replies Margaret, "I have been as pure as the driven snow."

"Okay," says Peter, checking his list, "follow that angel to the pink room."

Then he turns to Lolita. "And have you been honest and pure?"

"I never did-a no harm to anyone," replies Lolita. "I could-a say I was honest. I loved love.

And I was-a pure. I loved loving purely for love, and only for love."

"Okay," says Peter, dropping his list, "follow me to my room!"

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent, close your eyes.

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Feel your body to be completely frozen.

Now look inwards.

Collect all your life energy just like an arrow and without stopping anywhere go straight forward to the center of your being.

This moment you are the buddha.

This moment you are the glory of being.

This moment all that is yours

will be revealed to you,

all the secrets, all the miracles.

The greatest miracle is that as you go deeper darkness disappears and a totally different kind of light, a light without source, illuminates your being. And you have an absolute feeling of immortality, of eternity.

To make it clear, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Forget your bodies -- you are not your body.

And forget your mind -- you are not your mind.

You are the watcher of both.

The body is lying there, the mind may be chattering -- you are watching. You have always been a watcher, unscratched by any thought, any desire, any action. Your purity is eternal.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back.

But come back with your experience,

come back with the light that you have seen.

Come back with the joy, with the blissfulness,

the pure space in which you have moved.

Sit down for a few seconds, just as a buddha.

Utterly silent, immensely contented,

knowing nothing but full of wonder,

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desiring nothing but full of love.

This is your truth.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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3

Seek nothing outside

1 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

FOLLOWERS OF THE TAO, SAID RINZAI, THIS MOUNTAIN MONK'S VIEW

DOES NOT DIFFER FROM THAT OF SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA. IN ALL THE VARIETY

OF OUR DAILY ACTIVITIES, IS THERE ANYTHING LACKING? THE SPIRITUAL

LIGHT MANIFESTING THROUGH THE SIX SENSES HAS NEVER BEEN

INTERRUPTED. HE WHO IS ABLE TO PERCEIVE IT IN THIS MANNER CAN BE AN

UNCONCERNED MAN FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE.

VIRTUOUS ONES, THERE IS NO PEACE IN THE THREE WORLDS WHICH ARE

LIKE A HOUSE ON FIRE. IT IS NOT A PLACE FOR A LONG STAY BECAUSE THE

MURDEROUS DEMON OF IMPERMANENCE WILL, IN AN INSTANT, MAKE NO

CHOICE BETWEEN THE NOBLE AND THE HUMBLE, AND BETWEEN THE OLD

AND THE YOUNG. IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO DIFFER FROM THE PATRIARCH

AND THE BUDDHA, IT WILL SUFFICE FOR YOU TO SEEK NOTHING OUTSIDE.

IF, IN THE TIME OF A THOUGHT, YOUR PURE AND CLEAN NO-MIND SHINES, THIS IS YOUR OWN DHARMAKAYA BUDDHA. IF, IN THE TIME OF A THOUGHT, YOUR PASSIONLESS NO-MIND SHINES, THIS IS YOUR OWN SAMBHOGAKAYA BUDDHA. IF, IN THE TIME OF A THOUGHT, YOUR NON-DIFFERENTIATING

NO-MIND SHINES, THIS IS YOUR OWN NIRMANAKAYA BUDDHA.

THIS THREEFOLD BODY IS THE ONE WHO IS NOW LISTENING TO MY

EXPOUNDING OF THE DHARMA. THIS CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED IF NOTHING IS

SOUGHT FROM WITHOUT.

Maneesha, I have to say something about my absence yesterday before I can enter into the discussion of Rinzai's statements. I could not come yesterday because Anando took all my clothes to some dry cleaner. First I thought the dry cleaner must be in Poona, but by the end of the evening it became clear that the dry cleaner was in Bombay. And in the night she phoned to say that she was going to Switzerland, with all the twelve suitcases of Avirbhava full of my clothes for dry cleaning!

Somehow she had to be persuaded to come back, because without clothes the government will have immediate reason to arrest me. Fortunately she has returned from Bombay. The whole credit of my being here today goes to her.

FOLLOWERS OF THE TAO, SAID RINZAI, THIS MOUNTAIN MONK'S VIEW

DOES NOT DIFFER FROM THAT OF SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.

In fact he is saying that not only are his thoughts actually the same as Gautam Buddha's, all the buddhas, past and present and future, have the same insight, the same illumination. But he can say only about himself for the simple reason that this is his actual experience. Since the Osho - The Language of Existence

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moment when his buddhahood became known to him, he has been watching that every action, every activity, every response is exactly that of Sakyamuni Gautam Buddha.

IN ALL THE VARIETY OF OUR DAILY ACTIVITIES, IS THEIR ANYTHING

LACKING? THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT MANIFESTING THROUGH THE SIX SENSES ...

The six senses have to be noted down. Ordinarily we talk only of five senses; the sixth is dormant. The moment you turn in, the sixth sense starts working. Hence when the Buddhists talk about six senses it amazes people -- where is the sixth sense? It is not visible, it is when you close your eyes: suddenly you see a new sense penetrating in your interiority which you have never known before. It has always been there, but you have never turned inwards. So Buddha always talks about six senses.

THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT MANIFESTING THROUGH THE SIX SENSES HAS NEVER

BEEN INTERRUPTED.

Now it should be made seven senses, for the simple reason ... Up until this century physiologists were not aware that in your ear there are two senses, not one. One is the sense of hearing and the other is the sense of balance. The drunkard wavers, wobbles as he walks, for the simple reason that the alcohol affects the sense of balance. He wants to put his foot in one place, and it goes to another. This sense that is hidden in the ear has never been mentioned in the past, because it is not as manifest as eyes, ears or hands. The poor drunkard suffers because of the sixth sense.

So I would like to change the order. The seventh sense is the buddha-sense, the buddha-eye. The sixth you all have. Somebody hits on your ear, and suddenly you feel the whole world moving -- that is the sixth sense.

A drunkard is trying hard to open the lock of his door. His wife had got tired of him; he won't listen, he will come home whenever he feels like it -- in the middle of the night ... So she said, "You keep the key and you silently open the door, go into the room, and sleep. And don't disturb me!"

He was in great trouble, and a policeman on the street was watching the difficulty of the poor man. He could not manage to enter the key into the lock; both his hands were wobbling.

You need a little balance to make the lock stand still, and you need also balance for your other hand which is holding the key.

The policeman, feeling for the old man, came by and asked him, "Can I help you?" He said, "You have to. Just hold my house while I open the door. Everything is trembling, it seems there is an earthquake going on." The policeman laughed, and he said, "This idea never entered in my mind."

At that very moment the wife, hearing some noise, opened the window on the second story and asked, "What is the matter? Is the key not working? Shall I throw down another key?" The man said, "The key is perfectly okay, you just send another lock so that I can open it."

Just, everything loses its sense of balance. One starts not only walking wobbly, one starts seeing things which are not there, avoiding things which are not there, and staggering against things which are there. There is a confusion. To follow a drunkard from the pub to his house is a great experience. How many great things happen on the way, you cannot believe.

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So I would like for you to remember that there are seven senses. The sixth, that Rinzai says is the buddha-sense, I would like to call the seventh. About the sixth Rinzai is as traditional, conventional, as everybody else. It was not his fault, it was never thought that there needs to be a sense of balance. It was only the discovery of the deeper structure of the ear that made it clear to us that we have a certain sense of balance, too. From all these senses, Rinzai is saying, constantly a certain light is radiating.

HE WHO IS ABLE TO PERCEIVE IT, IN THIS MANNER, CAN BE AN

UNCONCERNED MAN FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE.

VIRTUOUS ONES, THERE IS NO PEACE IN THE THREE WORLDS WHICH ARE

LIKE A HOUSE ON FIRE.

This is the experience of all the buddhas. There is no peace anywhere. Everything is as if it is on fire, and all that you need to do is to jump out of this fire. Your jealousy is fire, your anger is fire, your fear is fire, your love is fire -- all that you are living is nothing but a house on fire. Every moment there is anxiety, every moment there is anguish.

VIRTUOUS ONES, THERE IS NO PEACE IN THE THREE WORLDS WHICH ARE

LIKE A HOUSE ON FIRE. IT IS NOT A PLACE FOR A LONG STAY BECAUSE THE

MURDEROUS DEMON OF IMPERMANENCE WILL, IN AN INSTANT, MAKE NO

CHOICE BETWEEN THE NOBLE AND THE HUMBLE, AND BETWEEN THE OLD

AND THE YOUNG. IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO DIFFER FROM THE PATRIARCH

AND THE BUDDHA, IT WILL SUFFICE FOR YOU TO SEEK NOTHING OUTSIDE.

That is the essence of the message: nothing to seek outside. Seeking for something outside is entering into a house which is on fire. However much you try ... You may even become comfortable in an uncomfortable situation, just by saying to yourself, "This is what life is."

But this is not so. You may settle with your sadness, your misery -- everybody has settled with things believing that, what else can one do? Anger comes, love comes, hate comes, and they all possess you like demons.

The only way to avoid this vicious circle -- from one prison to another prison, from one fire to another fire -- the only way is to seek nothing outside and turn inwards. There is no seeking inwards, you simply find. Outside you seek and you never find anything; inside you do not seek, it is already there.

IF, IN THE TIME OF A THOUGHT, YOUR PURE AND CLEAN NO-MIND SHINES, THIS IS YOUR OWN DHARMAKAYA BUDDHA.

Buddha has made categories. Dharmakaya means the body of religiousness. If in the time of a thought, your mind is clear, clean, no-mind shines, this is your dharmakaya Buddha. You are entering into a realm of your inner space which can be said to be the very body of religiousness.

IF, IN THE TIME OF A THOUGHT, YOUR PASSIONLESS NO-MIND SHINES, THIS

IS YOUR OWN SAMBHOGAKAYA BUDDHA.

No-mind shining itself is meditation. That's what is called samadhi. Buddha has called it sambhogakaya -- the body of blissfulness.

IF IN THE TIME OF A THOUGHT, YOUR NON-DIFFERENTIATING NO-MIND

SHINES, THIS IS YOUR OWN NIRMANAKAYA BUDDHA.

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Perhaps Buddha is the only person in the past who has given any credit to creativeness.

Nirmanakaya means the body of creativeness. Nirman means creativeness.

If no-mind shines without any differentiating, your whole energy itself spontaneously starts creating. It does not matter what it creates; you may be a potter, or you may be a musician, or you may be a poet. Whoever you are and whatever you are doing -- you may be just a housewife -- your work will take the quality of creativeness. Your work will take the quality of love, of silence, of peace.

THIS THREEFOLD BODY IS THE ONE WHO IS NOW LISTENING TO MY

EXPOUNDING OF THE DHARMA.

Rinzai says, "You are all these three bodies, although you are not aware of them. You are aware of only one body, the skin body, which is just a skeleton. Hidden behind it are treasures." Buddha has divided them into three: Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya.

THIS THREEFOLD BODY IS THE ONE WHO IS NOW LISTENING TO MY

EXPOUNDING OF THE DHARMA. THIS CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED IF NOTHING IS

SOUGHT FROM WITHOUT.

If you do not seek anything from without, you are complete, you are entire, you are perfect.

The moment you start desiring something from outside, trouble starts. You have already descended from the throne of an emperor and become a beggar. And once you are a beggar, it will be very difficult to find the throne again.

The world is vast and desires take you far away. Whole lives are devoted to fulfill childish desires.

One of the richest men of his time, in 1940 ... I was a small child and my father was sick, so I was with my father in the hospital. This rich man, Sir Seth Hukumchand, had created a really great hospital in Indore. He used to come, and by chance we became friends. He was an old man but he used to come every day and I used to wait for him at the gate. I asked him,

"You have so much ..." Almost three-fourths of the houses of Indore were his property. And Indore is the next most beautiful and rich place to Bombay.

He said, "You are asking a strange question. Nobody ever asked me."

I had asked him, "Why are you still creating new industries, creating new palaces? And you are becoming old. How is all this going to be of any help at the time of death?"

He said, "I know, everything will remain here and I will be gone. But just a desire to be the most successful, rich man in the country keeps driving me. For no other reason, just that everything I have must be the best."

He has the only Rolls Royce in the whole world made of solid gold. It was never driven, it was just for show, standing in front of his beautiful palace. He has the best horses in the world that you can imagine. I have never seen such beautiful horses. He had a whole palace filled with all kinds of exotic things. And the reason was that he wanted to be the only owner of a certain thing. It was his absolute condition: whenever he purchases a thing, that thing should not be produced again; he should be the only owner. And he was ready to pay any money for it.

His only desire was -- because Indore in those days was a state -- to purchase all the houses in the state, even the palace of the king. And he almost succeeded -- seventy-five percent of the houses of Indore belonged to him. Even the king had to borrow money from Osho - The Language of Existence

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him, and he was giving to him very generously in order to finally settle that the whole of Indore ..."He may be the king but it is my property."

I asked him, "What will it do to you? What peace will it bring? You are always anxious, tense, coming to the hospital, asking the psychiatrist about your troubles. These houses cannot solve your troubles and this money cannot solve your troubles."

And finally a time came when he captured all the gold of India, he became the gold king of India. He purchased all the gold, wherever it was possible. And once you have all the gold in your hands, you have the whole country in your hands. If you start selling it, the prices will go down. He kept the whole market dependent on him just because he was holding the gold.

And I asked him, "What enjoyment are you getting out of it?"

He said, "I don't know, just there is a tremendous desire to be the richest, to be the most powerful."

The inward journey begins only when you understand it clearly that anything outside is not going to give you contentment.

Takuan wrote:

INVITED BY OUR PARENTS,

WE CAME HERE

AS TEMPORARY GUESTS,

AND WITHOUT REMAINING MIND,

WE GO BACK TO OUR NATIVE PLACE.

In a small haiku he is describing the whole of life. A child comes invited by the parents as a guest in the world, stays here some time, and again moves into the unknown universality, just as a wave arises and disappears in the ocean. This much is our so-called life.

If you understand it, you become humble, you become utterly peaceful. You know that you are just a guest here; there is no need to possess anything, there is no need to cling to anything.

Everything will be left behind and you will be gone. The tidal wave of death will be coming and will clean the shore of all the signatures that you have been making.

Hotei, another Zen master's haiku:

MAITREYA! MAITREYA!

FOREVER DIVIDING HIMSELF,

HE IS HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE --

YET SCARCELY NOTICED.

This haiku is particularly important for us, because Maitreya is lying here. Hotei was not aware where Maitreya is. He used to sit here in the front row, and he has been missed. I can provoke him ...

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(SARDARJI GIVES A LOUD BELLY LAUGH FROM THE BACK OF THE HALL.) You see, Sardar Gurudayal Singh ... he will have to go and provoke him, that is the problem. Because Maitreya won't listen to anybody, he will have to be dragged out. And once in a while he comes, still knocks on doors in Lao Tzu House. For a few days Anando was very much terrified because he was knocking on her door every night. He used to be her neighbor.

He is being missed tremendously, but anyway he is here in the trees, in the air.

MAITREYA! MAITREYA!

HE IS HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE --

YET SCARCELY NOTICED.

Maitreya is Buddha's other name. 'The friend' is the meaning of the word 'maitreya'.

Question 1

A question by Maneesha:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT NIRVANA, OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT OUR MINDS

DO NOT KNOW, IT IS EASY ENOUGH TO LISTEN WITHOUT THE MIND -- JUST

ALLOWING YOUR WORDS TO FILTER THROUGH OUR CONSCIOUSNESS, TO USE

YOUR WORDS TO MEDITATE. HOWEVER, WHEN YOU SPEAK ON AN ISSUE THAT

MIGHT AFFECT OUR DAILY LIFE, IT IS MORE DIFFICULT TO LISTEN WITHOUT

ENGAGING THE MIND.

FOR EXAMPLE, APPARENTLY, THE OTHER NIGHT SOME OF US HEARD YOU

ENDORSE DRUGS; SOME OF US HEARD YOU SAY THEY WERE OF NO HELP FOR

SEEKERS.

IF WE USE OUR MIND AT ALL IN LISTENING TO YOU, HAVE WE MISSED THE

POINT OF SITTING HERE?

Maneesha, your question is significant because it may be the question of many, and it arises because you are not listening. What I said the other night was neither that I want any kind of drugs, nor that I don't want them. What I said was a third thing: I said that for centuries humanity has struggled to stop drugs, but has failed. The only way to get rid of drugs is to purify drugs. And it is possible because they are chemical -- we can change their composition. And we can make them so useful that they don't destroy or harm anybody, but just give him a restful, peaceful moment to look beyond his ordinary life. That may help him to inquire more deeply, that small incident may become a search for meditation.

Unless drugs can be used as a step towards meditation they are dangerous. As they are today they are all dangerous, and no government has been able to prevent them. All kinds of measures ... millions of people are in jail -- particularly young people, who have been utterly destroyed by those drugs. And a simple solution ... I have always wondered why the people who are in power always go for something that is impossible and don't try that which is very Osho - The Language of Existence

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simple. The simplest thing is that no factories should produce any drug that destroys anything in people's minds. The drug should be a nourishment and creative of an urge towards meditation. But nobody has even proposed that.

The situation is the same with all our difficulties. Those who are in power are in power only because most of the humanity is sick. Either they are sick because of undernourishment, or they are sick because of wrong nourishment. Either they are suffering from drugs, or they are suffering from anxieties and other anguishes.

It seems the elite, the powerful, want people to remain as they are. Nobody wants that everybody should become a buddha. And every opportunity should be provided -- by education, by parents, by neighbors -- every opportunity to help the person to meditate.

My understanding is that there is nothing in the world to be denied. I am absolutely in affirmation of everything, because even poison can be used to cure something. So nothing has to be denied, only you have to find how to use it in an affirmative way so that life becomes richer. Now, you say a few people heard that I endorse drugs. In a way, yes; however, not the drugs that are available, but the drugs that can be created, which will not be the same as marijuana or hashish or LSD. They will have a different composition of chemicals, helping your body and mind in all the possible ways. So they heard rightly, but they may interpret it wrongly.

They may think, "My god, I have been thinking Osho is against drugs." And they may have rushed after the meeting, thinking, "Enough of the buddha, now find someone who is selling all kinds of drugs." But they misinterpreted me, they did injustice to me. I am not for these drugs.

And you say, "Some of us heard you say they were of no use for seekers." That was also wrong. As they are, they are of no use for seekers, they are hindrances. But it is in our hands to change them.

Man can reach to the moon, and he cannot transform a drug with its negative, harmful aspects to have life affirmative, life enhancing qualities. It is simply a surprise. Nobody is trying in that direction just because the religious leaders are afraid: if people become satisfied with drugs, who is going to go to the church? Who is going to go to the temples? People will simply be enjoying drugs, and without any bad effects so you cannot even speak against them.

The governments will be afraid of such drugs, because soldiers will be taking them and then you cannot convince them that they have to go to war. They will become so peaceful.

They have to be kept in such a state that they are ready any moment to kill anybody. But if such drugs are available then there will be such peace in the soldiers. The general may order,

"Turn left!" and nobody will turn left.

I have told you the story of the professor in the second world war who was enrolled because more soldiers were needed, and from every profession. He was a professor of philosophy. He said again and again, "I am not the type one needs to become a soldier. I am a professor of philosophy," but nobody heard him -- everybody was finding excuses not to go to the front. He was forced.

The first day he stood in line at the morning parade and the orders were given: "Turn left, turn right. Go forward, come back." He remained standing.

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The general came to him and asked, "What is the matter, man? Why don't you do what you are told?"

He said, "What is the point? Finally everybody has to come here where I am standing. All this exercise ... can you tell me the point of it, where they are going? Because finally they fall in, in the line. So I am already standing here. Nothing new is going to happen out of this left and right -- I am watching."

The general said, "You are a very strange person. Who has recruited you into the army?"

He said, "I have said beforehand that I am not the type. All these idiots -- you included -- are unnecessarily doing things. I don't see any enemy here."

So he was taken to the man who had brought him -- he was the manager of the mess. He was asked, "What to do with this man? He does not listen to the orders; on the contrary, he argues. And he is dangerous because others laugh, and his arguments may spread around, others may start saying the same things. He is a very dangerous person; I don't want him in my regiment. He called me an idiot before everybody else. And in fact I cannot refute him, it is idiotic. So he was right, but I cannot have him, you put him to some other work."

The manager said, "I will put him in the mess."

There was a pile of peas, and he told him, "Sit down and sort out the peas -- the bigger ones on this side, and the smaller ones on this side." He said, "At least this I can do."

After one hour when the manager came, nothing had happened. The professor was simply sitting there, almost meditating. The manager said, "My god, what happened? You have not done anything, you have not even touched a single pea."

He said, "I am a man who never takes a single step without comprehending all the implications."

The manager had never heard the word 'implications'. He said, "Implications? It was such a simple task."

He said, "It is not simple. You don't understand the theory of relativity."

The manager said, "We don't need Albert Einstein here. Anybody can do that -- bigger ones on one side, smaller ones on the other side."

The professor said, "And what about those which are in the middle? That is the problem I've been meditating on -- where to put them? They have no place, and you never told me where to put the middle ones. And this is a very complicated problem because some are bigger, some are smaller, some are even smaller, and some are even smaller than that. If I do it accurately then I will have to make a line out of the peas, which will go for miles. If you want me to do that I can do it, but I don't see in what way it serves the country.

"I thought you were a sensible man, but it seems the whole company here is of idiots. The first idiot was saying, 'Left, right!' And you are telling me to do a thing that is almost impossible. The line will go for miles, and who will take care? -- I will be going with the line.

So without comprehending all the implications, I cannot touch anything. I had told you beforehand that my profession is philosophy."

It is a trouble. Either you hear and then interpret it wrongly, or you don't hear and then you think that drugs cannot help. Both are wrong, because both are thinking of the present day Osho - The Language of Existence

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drugs. And I am saying that something that has not been solved for centuries and has disturbed millions of people's lives ... It is time that somebody points out to the scientists and to the governments of the world that they are unnecessarily torturing millions of people in jails. The simple thing will be to change the composition of the drugs and make the drugs healthier.

But the trouble is, the government is interested in violent people, not silent people. And the priest is interested in tense, anxiety ridden, miserable people. Otherwise, who is going to pray for whom? This is the basic reason why nothing has been done; otherwise it is a simple matter, nothing can be more simple. And the same is the situation with other matters.

And, Maneesha, I understand that you can listen about nirvana or anything else that your minds do not know. Do you want me to talk only about things which you don't know? That will simply mean that I do not talk. Because in fact I have talked so much about nirvana that you know about it already as much as you know about drugs -- perhaps more about nirvana than about drugs.

And don't you want me to talk about your practical life? You simply want me to talk about things you have nothing to do with -- just have an entertainment and move towards the canteen.

No, I will talk about your practical life and I will talk about the beyond together, because half is not possible. If you only talk about the beyond then your actual life remains the same and the beyond cannot be reached; it can never become your experience.

I have to talk about the beyond so that slowly, slowly it sinks into every fiber of your being. And I have to talk about your practical life so that you can start changing that according to your life beyond. They have to become one. But right now nirvana has no meaning to you --

it is just a word.

People like to talk about things which make no difference in their life. But I am not interested in that kind of gathering. If you are not interested in transforming your life, you are wasting your time here unnecessarily.

Your practical life and your life beyond are one single whole; they both have to be discussed. And you have to learn not to interpret, but to listen clearly to what I am saying.

Question 2

Maneesha has asked another question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

SOMETIMES DURING MEDITATION THERE IS THE SENSATION OF

CONSCIOUSNESS ARISING AND EXPANDING. IS THAT THE SAME PHENOMENON

THAT IS INVOLVED IN WATCHING?

Maneesha, watching is the highest point. What arises in meditation is the beginning, it is just a dewdrop. When you will go farther and farther and farther and reach the ocean, then you will know the tremendous vastness and greatness and grandeur of watchfulness. Meditation is only a technique; watchfulness is your nature.

Meditation is a way to reach to watchfulness.

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Now, something serious ...

Maggie Muldoon finally decides to go to see that infamous shrink, Doctor Feelgood.

"Doc," says Maggie, "my husband is unbearable. He drinks three bottles of whiskey a day, smokes five packs of cigarettes, and screams at me all day and all night to 'do this!' and 'do that!' He pushes me around, and he can't keep a job."

"Well," says Feelgood, putting down his notepad, "if he's as bad as all that, why on earth did you have fifteen children by him?"

"I was hoping," replies Maggie, "to lose him in the crowd."

Kowalski is brought to court for stealing a frozen chicken from the local supermarket.

Boris Babblebrain, the young lawyer, puts up an amazing defense for Kowalski and the Polack is found "not guilty".

"You are discharged," says Judge Rumcake. But Kowalski does not move, he only looks back, blankly.

"The judge says you can go," says Babblebrain, waving his arms at Kowalski and the door.

Suddenly, Kowalski's face lights up and he smiles at the judge. "Thank you, your honor,"

Kowalski says. "And does that mean I can keep the chicken?"

Polly gets religion -- it happens in Christianity; a few people get religion -- and when she leaves her profession in a whorehouse she starts a new life with Christ's Salvation Army. One night she is beating a drum on a street corner.

"I used to lay in the arms of men!" shouts Polly. "Boom!" goes the drum.

"White men!" shouts Polly. "Boom!"

"Black men!" shouts Polly. "Boom! Boom!"

"Chinamen!" shouts Polly. "Boom! Boom! Boom!"

"I used to lay in the arms of the devil himself!" she shouts. "Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"

"That's right, sister. Hallelujah!" comes a voice from the back of the crowd. "Screw them all!"

But this is a common phenomenon, when people get religion. It is a great contribution of Christianity to the world -- they get religion and also a drum! So they shout their sins and beat the drum to attract the attention of people, so they also can have religion. But it is such a stupid thing. Religion is not something that one gets -- one has it, nobody can give it to you. It is your very being.

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Now, Nivedano ... Boom!

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent. Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

Look inwards.

This is the way to your innermost being.

As your look centers,

you become slowly aware of your real nature.

The real nature we have called the buddha.

In this moment you are all buddhas.

And this moment can be carried all around the day. Not as a tension, not as a thought, but just as a fragrance, as a remembrance, an undercurrent. It will show in your practical life.

The buddha is your beyond. It will show in your actions, in your responses, in everything that you do -- the buddha will be present.

And this is the greatest experience in the world, to have buddha present twenty-four hours inside you, like a burning torch radiating light all around, filling you with a deep contentment, making you aware of all the blessings of life that are continuously showered on you, but you have been blind.

To make it more sharp and clear, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax, let go.

You are just a watcher.

The mind is there, the body is there,

but you are not the body,

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neither are you the mind.

You are simply a watcher.

Just watching, you become more and more centered.

Just watching, you come closer and closer

to the universal center.

Just watching, and you have got it:

the eternity of it,

the immortality of it,

the tremendous rejoicing of it.

A man who has experienced buddha within himself, his whole life becomes a festival,

a festival of lights.

Each moment a ceremony,

each moment a dance,

each moment thousands of flowers

blossom in the consciousness.

The deeper the watcher goes,

the more hidden treasures open their doors.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back. But come back as a buddha,

remembering the space in which you have been.

Bring that joy with you,

that peace, that silence, all those flowers.

Sit for a few seconds just like a buddha.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the meeting of the buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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4

Beyond life-and-death

2 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

BUKKO SAID:

THE WAY OUT OF LIFE-AND-DEATH IS NOT SOME SPECIAL TECHNIQUE; THE

ESSENTIAL THING IS TO SEE THROUGH TO THE ROOT OF LIFE-AND-DEATH.

THAT ROOT IS NOT SOMETHING THAT FELL FROM HEAVEN OR SPRANG UP

FROM EARTH. IT IS AT THE CENTER OF THE FUNCTIONING OF EVERY MAN, LIVING WITH HIS LIFE, DYING WITH HIS DEATH, BECOMING A BUDDHA, MAKING A PATRIARCH. THESE ARE ALL IN DEPENDENCE OF IT, AND ONE WHO

GOES INTO ZEN HAS TO PIERCE AND BREAK THROUGH TO THIS THING.

WHAT IS CALLED ZEN SITTING IS NOT SOME SORT OF OPERATION TO BE

PERFORMED, AND TO TAKE IT SO IS WRONG. IN OUR LINE, IT IS SIMPLY

REALIZING WHAT ONE'S OWN TRUE HEART REALLY IS, AND IT IS NECESSARY

TO PLEDGE ONESELF TO THE TRUE HEART.

GOING INTO ZEN IS SEEING ONE'S ORIGINAL NATURE, AND THE MAIN THING

IS TO MAKE OUT WHAT ONE WAS BEFORE EVEN FATHER OR MOTHER WERE

BORN. FOR THIS, ONE MUST CONCENTRATE ONE'S FEELING AND PURIFY IT, THEN, ELIMINATING ALL THAT WEIGHS ON ONE'S THOUGHT AND FEELING, ONE MUST GO TO GRASP THE SELF.

WE ARE SAYING THAT THE SELF SEEKS TO GRASP THE SELF, BUT IN FACT IT

IS ALREADY THE SELF, SO WHY SHOULD IT GO TO GRASP THE SELF?

IT IS BECAUSE IN THE MASS OF KNOWINGS AND PERCEIVINGS AND

JUDGMENTS, THE TRUE SELF IS ALWAYS SO WRAPPED UP IN THE

DISTINCTIONS AND EXCLUSIVITIES THAT IT DOES NOT EMERGE TO SHOW

ITSELF AS IT IS.

Maneesha, in the world of Zen, Bukko is something like George Gurdjieff. When George Gurdjieff for the first time said, "You all don't have souls. Unless you achieve a crystallization of your being, you will live and die just as a signature on the sand; winds will come and you will be forgotten. There will not be left a single trace of you," it shocked the whole spiritual world, because all the religions and all the spiritual traditions at least agree on one thing, that the soul is immortal. You have it whether you know it or not and it can never die.

Death happens to the body, not to the soul. It is simply a separation from the body and a movement into a new body. But the journey of the soul is eternal: body to body, species to species. Finally it achieves its nature, matures, and it is revealed to it that it is the buddha.

That has been a common understanding around the whole world for centuries.

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Gurdjieff was alive just fifty years ago. He made a point of it that not everybody has a soul, the soul has to be earned. This was a very new idea, that you have to deserve it.

Ordinarily you are just an empty bottle; inside there is nothing. You have to earn, you have to be worthy, you have to gather your consciousness in such a crystallized way that it can pass through death without dying.

So according to George Gurdjieff, only a few people live eternally, most people are just experimental. They are born, they do all kinds of stupid things, and the final stupidity -- they die. But they don't leave even a trace in the world of eternity. Only very few people, like Gautam Buddha, achieve to the eternal. And because of these few people, the fallacy has come into being that everybody has an eternal being: Buddha achieved it, Mahavira achieved it, Bukko achieved it. Gurdjieff's logic was, because these few have achieved it, people think everybody else has it -- just he has not discovered it.

Gurdjieff was not ready to agree on only discovering, because discovery means it already exists -- you have just to pull back the curtains. Gurdjieff used a word never before used in spiritual experience, and that was 'crystallization'. You have this small life and this small consciousness. You can make it so concentrated, so hard, like a diamond, that it can pass through fire without being burned. But unless you do it, don't hope.

Have you ever observed that coal has the same chemical elements as a diamond? There is no chemical difference between diamonds and coal, but coal has no value. What has happened to the diamond? How has it become the diamond? A piece of coal, for millions of years, under tremendous pressure, becomes crystallized, and because the heat has been tremendous, now no fire can burn it. It is the hardest thing in the world. Crystallization means a coal becoming a diamond.

I am prefacing Bukko's statement with Gurdjieff. Perhaps Gurdjieff was not aware of Bukko at all. He traveled in India, he traveled up to Tibet, but he never went to Japan or China. He gathered from Mohammedan mystics, Hindu mystics and Tibetan mystics many secrets of crystallization. I don't think he even heard the name of Bukko; otherwise he would have found at least one person who agrees with him. Bukko's idea is also the same. The terminology is almost similar but being in a Buddhist world he uses different words. But the sense and the fragrance can be caught by anyone who is acquainted with Gurdjieff.

I would like you to understand Bukko as a predecessor of George Gurdjieff; George Gurdjieff is not alone. And they have a point. I don't agree with either of them but I certainly appreciate their idea -- their idea is a device. To say to you that, "You are just empty, without any soul, unless you earn it," is very necessary for sleeping people, for unconscious people, for their awakening. Even if you are fast asleep and the idea suddenly occurs to you that "I am empty," you will jump out of the bed and try to look: What is the meaning of my life? Who am I?

I have told you Mulla Nasruddin's famous anecdote ... He had come to Kaaba for a great fair that happens every year -- millions of Mohammedans go to the stone of Kaaba to worship it. There was so much crowd; every caravanserai, every hotel, every possible place was completely filled. He went around ... finally he collapsed before a hotel manager.

He said, "I will die. The whole day I have been searching for somewhere to stay and I have not been able to find a place. You have to help me; otherwise my death will be on your head."

The manager said, "It is very difficult. Every room is full, just ... I am a little concerned but I will tell you one thing. One room has two beds, and one bed is unoccupied. The other fellow Osho - The Language of Existence

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is fast asleep, so if you can silently go to sleep without disturbing the other fellow -- because it is against the laws of the hotel -- I can allow you. And in the early morning you will have to leave."

He said, "I am absolutely willing." Feeling a great relief, he went into the room. But Mulla was Mulla -- his nature ... He could not resist to say at least good night to the other fellow.

The other fellow was dead. That's why the manager had said, "Silently you go to sleep --

don't disturb the other fellow. He is fast asleep." But when he did not answer good night, Mulla pushed him from this side and that side, and finally tried to open his eyes. And when he saw that that man was dead, he freaked out.

The whole hotel gathered and the manager said, "I was afraid of this -- and you did this.

What was the need for you? You had a bed, you simply should have gone to sleep. What were you doing with that fellow? He is fast asleep."

Mulla said, "Fast asleep? My God, I cannot sleep in this room. He is dead!"

But the manager was a mystic, and he said, "You only think that you are alive. He also thinks he is alive. I have tried the whole day to persuade him that 'You are not alive,' but he does not listen. Now, you think you are alive -- do you have any proof that you are alive?"

Mulla said, "Never in my life has anybody asked for proof of my life, and I don't know whether really I am alive or just fast asleep like that fellow, only speaking in sleep. Many people speak in sleep, have great dialogues."

According to George Gurdjieff, this is your situation. You sleep, you wake up in the morning, you do everything according to a routine, but is there really a soul in you? Do you think you will be able to pass through the funeral pyre? Is there anything in you that you have touched, felt, experienced, that will not be burned?

Perhaps you have never thought about it. You have simply believed the idea of all religions that everybody has a soul, an immortal soul. It is a good idea, that you will be here always, enjoying different ways of being: sometimes a tiger, and sometimes an elephant, and sometimes a man -- but you will be here. That idea has gone so deep in man's mind that he does not feel the necessity to discover it; there is no need.

To create the need Gurdjieff and Bukko both insisted that as you are, you are really empty.

You can be filled with fulfillment and contentment, with tremendous joy and celebration, but you will have to do something.

BUKKO SAID:

THE WAY OUT OF LIFE-AND-DEATH IS NOT SOME SPECIAL TECHNIQUE.

To go beyond life-and-death there is no certain technique. The essential thing is to see through to the root of life-and-death. Do you know you have roots? You know perfectly well any tree uprooted is going to die. Roots are hidden underneath the ground. Just because you don't have roots in the ground, because you walk here and there ...

Have you heard about trees in Africa which walk? Not very fast, no traffic rule is needed, but they go on moving towards the sources where more water is available. What will you say

-- their roots are their legs? Nothing can exist without roots.

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In the same part of Africa where trees move -- sometimes miles from their place -- another kind of tree also exists: the cannibal tree. It has big leaves and a very intoxicating fragrance so that any bird that comes close is bound to have a little desire to experience it. And the flower is so full of juice that it is irresistible. It has not yet been heard of that any bird has renounced and passed beyond the tree; no bird can do that. The bird simply sits on the flower, drinking.

While the bird is drinking the juice, the flower closes and crushes the bird.

Rather than the bird drinking the tree, the tree drinks the bird. And as the bird is completely squeezed out, the flower opens again, throwing the dead body outside, waiting for somebody else. Its flowers are very big -- even a human being can be caught in them -- and very strong, very muscular.

It has eaten a few human beings! Ordinarily it does not happen because those flowers open too high up ... unless some fellow like Mulla Nasruddin climbs the tree and tries to look inside the flower -- what is happening there? But it will eat birds of any kind, any size. Once in a while if some accident happens -- perhaps in a high wind the tree has fallen and a man is passing by ... You cannot go away without having a closer look, because so much fragrance you have never smelt, and it is so intoxicating, alcoholic. When you come close the flower gives you a good hug, but then you cannot get out of the hug. He sucks all your blood and leaves you just as an empty shell. Have you ever thought that you are an empty shell?

But Bukko and Gurdjieff both insist ... although they know everybody has the potentiality of becoming a buddha. But that does not mean that you can simply remain believing it. You have to be awakened, and you cannot be awakened unless you are really shocked. This is their way of shocking people into awakening.

Once you start looking inwards, you will find your roots. Those roots are not in the earth and those roots are not in heaven. Those roots are in your own being, connected with the universal being. Neither can you see your own being, nor can you see the universal being. But once you feel your roots, you have come to a place from where you can take the jump into the universal life.

Then fire does not matter. Then you are beyond ordinary material things. Then no sword can cut you and no fire can burn you. Now there is no life and no death, but a totally new phenomenon which is beyond.

The other ordinary fallacy is that by being spiritual you will overcome death. But you don't understand that you can overcome death only if you overcome life also. They are both part of one coin, two sides; you cannot have a coin which has only one side. The moment you transcend death, in the same moment you transcend life. Then what remains? All that we know is our mundane life ... and then one day people are carrying you towards the burning ghat. We don't know anything at all beyond life-and-death.

Bukko's approach is:

THE WAY OUT OF LIFE-AND-DEATH IS NOT SOME SPECIAL TECHNIQUE; THE

ESSENTIAL THING IS TO SEE THROUGH TO THE ROOT OF LIFE-AND-DEATH.

From where this life is arising, from the same place death will arise. To be more accurate, life and death both are walking together. They are two wings, or two legs -- side by side.

Every day you live, every day you die. It is not that after seventy years, one day suddenly you die. It is not possible so suddenly, for no reason -- just lying in your bed and you die. And Osho - The Language of Existence

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what have you been doing for seventy years? Seventy years' training of life ends in a single moment? No, the more accurate account is that you start dying the day you are born.

Every day you are living and dying, living and dying; both processes are together. At a certain point in the journey -- seventy years, eighty years, ninety years -- the energy that was carrying you is finished. The roots no longer support you, the roots no longer nourish you; you shrink, you close your eyes and you die.

All the meditations are in fact in the search for the roots from where the life has arisen and to where the life goes back -- to where? If we can find the roots, we can find from where it is getting its nourishment. And to know the universal life as your nourishment, you have gone beyond life-and-death. This is the authentic Zen experience.

THAT ROOT IS NOT SOMETHING THAT FELL FROM HEAVEN OR SPRANG UP

FROM EARTH. IT IS AT THE CENTER OF THE FUNCTIONING OF EVERY MAN, LIVING WITH HIS LIFE, DYING WITH HIS DEATH, BECOMING A BUDDHA, MAKING A PATRIARCH.

Whatever you do, at the center of your being is the root that is connecting you with the universal life source.

THESE ARE ALL IN DEPENDENCE OF IT, AND ONE WHO GOES INTO ZEN HAS

TO PIERCE AND BREAK THROUGH THIS THING.

WHAT IS CALLED ZEN SITTING IS NOT SOME SORT OF OPERATION TO BE

PERFORMED, AND TO TAKE IT SO IS WRONG. IN OUR LINE, IT IS SIMPLY

REALIZING WHAT ONE'S OWN TRUE HEART REALLY IS, AND IT IS NECESSARY

TO PLEDGE ONESELF TO THE TRUE HEART.

GOING INTO ZEN IS SEEING ONE'S ORIGINAL NATURE, AND THE MAIN THING

IS TO MAKE OUT WHAT ONE WAS BEFORE EVEN FATHER OR MOTHER WERE

BORN. FOR THIS ONE MUST CONCENTRATE ONE'S FEELING AND PURIFY IT, THEN, ELIMINATING ALL THAT WEIGHS ON ONE'S THOUGHT AND FEELING, ONE MUST GO TO GRASP THE SELF.

WE ARE SAYING THAT THE SELF SEEKS TO GRASP THE SELF, BUT IN FACT IT

IS ALREADY THE SELF, SO WHY SHOULD IT GO TO GRASP THE SELF?

IT IS BECAUSE IN THE MASS OF KNOWINGS AND PERCEIVINGS AND

JUDGMENTS, THE TRUE SELF IS ALWAYS SO WRAPPED UP IN THE

DISTINCTIONS AND EXCLUSIVITIES THAT IT DOES NOT EMERGE TO SHOW

ITSELF AS IT IS.

Bukko's way is very special in the lineage of Zen masters. He ends up in the same place but he follows a very different route.

He is saying: first you have to encounter your heart, the very center of your being. And as you encounter it, hold on to it. The holding of your own self is necessary because so many judgments, imaginations, theories, rationalizations have been forced upon you. They drag you away from yourself; otherwise every child is born with a pure self. Just turning his eyes in, he will encounter himself, there is no need to grab. But for you, you are lost in a crowd of many conceptions, many ideas about the self -- what it is, how it functions, whether it is or not.

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So the first thing is to find the center of your functionings. One thing is certain, that you are functioning: speaking, talking, walking, breathing. One thing is certain -- you are functioning, so we are not moving from any theoretical point.

That is the contribution of Bukko and Gurdjieff both: they always move from a real point, not a point of belief. The only thing that you know about is that you are a functioning mechanism. Your mind thinks, your heart falls in love, you feel hungry, you drink water when you feel thirsty. All that you know about you is so many functions. These are not theorizations; it is not a question of being a Hindu or being a Mohammedan. When you are thirsty, whoever you are, water is needed to quench the thirst. You cannot say, "I am a Catholic -- how can water quench my thirst if it is quenching the thirst of the Protestant?"

The actual functioning should be your starting point. Then just look inwards to find the center -- from where these functions are arising. From where you become hungry, from where arises the thirst. Where is the point from where the breathing arises? Just choose these functions, any function. For example, Buddha has chosen breathing; it is one of the functions.

From where does it arise? When you breathe, just watch. But breathe fully, because nobody breathes fully.

You will be surprised that our breathing reaches only to thirty percent. Seventy percent of our lungs are full of carbon dioxide; they never breathe. Only when you are running or doing some gymnastics do you start breathing more. To breathe one hundred percent without running, just sitting and taking in the breath, in silence, to its deepest source, you will find the roots not only of breathing, but of hunger, of thirst, of intelligence, of everything.

When I say "Go to the center" that's what I mean. Every day we "go in" in meditation.

People think that just by closing the eyes you are in. If you were just-born, certainly you would be in. But there is so much garbage, so many scriptures and so many scholars standing in between you and your real self that before you go anywhere they will say, "Where are you going? I have the answer. There is no need to torture yourself. Just say, 'I am the immortal self' and you will be back home. Why bother unnecessarily? Aham brahmasmi -- I am the ultimate."

I have asked many Hindu sannyasins, "Have you really experienced it -- aham brahmasmi

-- or just read it in a scripture?" If they are alone, without their disciples, they will say, "To be true, we have not reached to that point yet, but someday we will reach. At least we have understood the scripture." It is just scripture. It is not your experience. All religions have managed to turn humanity into parrots.

A bishop used to have a parrot -- a very unique specimen. He used to give the whole Sermon on the Mount. And everybody was surprised about his authority, accuracy. The parrot died and the bishop was very sad. He went to every pet shop, and finally at one shop the man said, "I have the right parrot for you, come within. It is very special." The parrot was very beautiful, and the man described him: "Do you see around one of the legs of the parrot a small thread, and around the other leg another small thread?"

The bishop looked and he said, "Yes."

He said, "If you pull one thread he will immediately give you the Sermon on the Mount."

The bishop said, "That's what I have been looking for. And what about the other leg?"

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He said, "If you pull the other leg he will give you a lecture on the Koran. He has been trained for both religions, so anybody can purchase him, either a Mohammedan or a Christian."

The bishop said, "This is even better -- just for a change ..." But the bishop said, "I have an inquiry. If I pull both threads together, what will happen?"

The parrot said, "You idiot! I will fall flat on the ground. What will happen? This way you must have killed your last parrot. I refuse to go with this man."

The owner of the pet shop said, "You have disturbed my parrot -- he is a very intelligent person, and you asked such an unintelligent question. If you pull both legs, obviously he will fall."

All the religions have converted everybody into a parrot. And people are perfectly satisfied with being parrots; it is so easy, so simple. But the experience needs tremendous energy to inquire, a great love to find out who you are, where are your roots.

Our effort here is not to create parrots. That is being done in every church, in every synagogue, in every temple, in every mosque. Our effort is to bring you to your own roots, because from those roots, slowly slowly you can sink deeper into the universal, into the ultimate. There is no other way.

It is not a technique, it is simply grabbing your original roots, from where you are coming.

Naturally you have to dig deep -- and without any fear because nothing can be taken from you.

The day you were born your destiny was decided, that you will die. Between birth and death, whatever you do is of no meaning.

Only one thing can be meaningful: if you can find the roots of birth and death. Then you can sit silently like a buddha, in utter peace, with no fear, in great ecstasy.

Tokken wrote:

SEVENTY-SIX YEARS,

UNBORN, UNDYING:

CLOUDS BREAK UP,

MOON SAILS ON.

Zen has such a beautiful way of saying things.

SEVENTY-SIX YEARS,

UNBORN, UNDYING:

CLOUDS BREAK UP,

MOON SAILS ON.

He is giving you the idea how you have been moving. Clouds are there but the moon goes on moving. Once you have got hold of the moon, it does not matter whether clouds are there or not -- they don't leave their marks on the moon.

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Issa wrote, on the death of his child:

THIS DEWDROP WORLD --

IT MAY BE A DEWDROP,

AND YET ... AND YET ...

He loved his child very much -- the mother had died. He loved his small child and that child also died. On his death he wrote this small haiku ... not saying much, still it says much.

THIS DEWDROP WORLD -- IT MAY BE A DEWDROP.

Agreed, it is a dewdrop -- and particularly this small child.

AND YET ... AND YET ...

Yet a love arises. Yet one feels for it.

Zen is not against the world. On the contrary, it makes your dewdrop love into an oceanic love. It is absolutely for reality -- it is not an escape. It is a tremendous indulgence into the very roots of your being. And the man who knows his roots, only he lives. Others only pretend; others are simply actors acting somebody else's role.

A man who is original is not acting anybody's role, he is himself. And his authority does not come from anybody, it comes from the universe itself.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

I AM SERIOUSLY CONCERNED: LAST NIGHT WHEN YOU WERE SPEAKING OF

THE SENSES, AS TRADITIONALLY CLASSIFIED, YOU DID NOT MENTION THE

EIGHTH SENSE, THE SENSE OF HUMOR. WHAT HAPPENED?

I thought you would understand it without saying. All that we are doing here is practicing the sense of humor -- that's why I left it out of the count. But if you want, it can be counted in, because certainly only man has the sense of humor. No buffalo laughs -- and if you find a buffalo laughing you will run so fast. You will lose all control over yourself if suddenly your horse starts laughing!

The whole world is silent as far as laughter is concerned -- only man laughs. Man can laugh because he has a small consciousness. As the consciousness grows deeper, his humor also becomes deeper. At the ultimate peak, everything becomes a hilarious festival, a carnival.

Something about the sense of humor ...

Captain Kurtski, the pilot, turns on the public address system.

"We will be landing at Moscow airport in three hours' time. We hope you have had a pleasant trip. Thank you for flying Polack Airlines."

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Then, forgetting to turn off the loudspeaker, he turns to co-pilot Cliffski.

"Take over, Cliffski," says Kurtski, his voice booming through the plane. "I'm going for a cup of coffee, and then I'm going to take that new stewardess, Gertie, and give her all my hot Polish machinery."

Gertie, the stewardess, hears this in the main cabin of the plane. She dashes towards the cockpit to tell Kurtski to shut up. On the way, she trips and nearly falls over, next to a little old lady.

"Don't be in such a hurry, dearie," says the little old lady. "Let him finish his coffee at least."

Paddy is feeling sad as he orders his tenth beer at the Loony Licker Pub.

"What's wrong, Paddy?" asks Igor, the bartender.

"I lost my dog," sobs Paddy.

"Why don't you put an advertisement in the newspaper?" suggests Igor.

"It is no good," moans Paddy. "My dog can't read."

Old lady Gilda runs the town drugstore with her sister, Maggie. One day, a large stranger comes to town and is feeling very horny. But the town is very quiet, and he cannot find anyone to help him relieve his hormonal harassment. So he decides to go to the pharmacy to get something to take for it. When he walks in he sees old lady Gilda at the counter.

"Excuse me," says the stranger, slightly embarrassed, "but I would like to see the boss."

"Well," says Gilda, "I am the boss."

"Oh," stammers the stranger, "then I would like to see a man clerk."

"Sorry," says Gilda casually, "we ain't got no man clerk. But you can tell me what you want, I won't be embarrassed."

"Okay," says the stranger. "I have got an awful erection. What can you give me for it?"

"Just a minute," says Gilda, and she goes back inside the store.

Five minutes later she returns.

"I have just been talking with my sister, Maggie, who makes up the prescriptions," says Gilda, smiling, "and we decided the best we can give you is the whole store and two hundred dollars."

You get it?

No, even Sardar Gurudayal Singh is silent. Late in the night think of it again. Then you will know what the sense of humor is.

It is training time at Camp Killjoy and the American General, Lard Peckerhead, is hosting a training camp for a group of Russian and Polack soldiers.

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General Popov, the Russian officer, and Field Marshal Dogski, the Polack, are discussing courage with General Peckerhead.

"Let me demonstrate real courage," barks the Russian officer. "Climb up that telephone pole," he commands one of his men, "and jump straight down." The soldier obeys immediately, and is carried away by the medical team.

Not to be out-done, the American general yells, "I'll show you courage! Climb that telephone pole and jump down backwards," he screams at his soldier. The man does and is also carried away, broken and battered, by the medical team.

"That's nothing," says Field Marshal Dogski, the Polack. "Watch this. Hey, Klopski!

Climb that telephone pole, jump off, do a double-flip, and land on your head."

The soldier looks at the general, then yells back, "Fuck you, you stupid bastard!"

"You see, gentlemen?" replies Dogski, proudly. "Now, that is courage!"

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent. Close your eyes.

Feel the body to be completely frozen.

Look inwards ... to the very roots of your being.

Deeper ... and deeper,

as if you are digging a hole in the earth.

To reach to the roots is to discover the buddha within you, the eternal principal of life. A little more ... a little more ...

Sometimes one returns from only one step away -- if he had taken one step more, he would have found the roots. So until you find the roots go on digging -- they are there.

One thing is absolutely certain, that you have roots in existence. It is only a question of digging deep enough to find them. And you are prepared to reach to the roots and to reach the universal nourishment which is our eternal life.

Only once you have experienced this can you say, aham brahmasmi, I am the divine.

Before this experience you are just an emptiness.

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With this experience life becomes a fulfillment, a great benediction.

Now, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax ... let go, just be a watcher.

The body is lying there, the mind is lying there ...

You are not the mind, you are not the body,

you are just the watcher.

This watcher is another name for your roots. This watcher is the original man, the buddha.

Let it sink into every fiber of your being, drink it deeply. It is the greatest moment in life -- to drink the divine.

What a beautiful evening ... so many drunkards, and such a great silence ... and the rain drops creating a song of their own, the coolness of the wind making your experience richer.

In this moment you are all one consciousness. It is no more a crowd of people, it is just one consciousness,

one divine being pervading all of you.

It is just an atmosphere,

an ocean in which you all have drowned.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back ... but come back as a buddha.

Come back slowly, peacefully, gracefully,

collecting the experience ...

You have to carry this experience in your day-to-day life. Sit down for a few moments, remembering that you are a buddha. It is no more parrot talk, it is your experience -- you have been to the ocean yourself.

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With deep authority sit down as a buddha.

Slowly slowly it becomes

your normal, natural heartbeat.

The rains have come to rejoice with you,

and to celebrate with you.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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5

The gateway of the buddhas

3 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

TOREI SAID:

IF YOU WANT TO BE FREE FROM THIS WORLD OF SUFFERING, FIRST YOU

MUST CONTEMPLATE IMPERMANENCE.

THOSE WHO ARE BORN MUST INEVITABLY DIE. EVEN THE YOUNG ARE NOT

EXEMPT; EVEN THE STRONG ARE IN DANGER. EVEN A LONG LIFE DOES NOT

LAST MORE THAN EIGHTY YEARS OR SO. IF YOU DON'T ANNIHILATE THE

NATURE OF AFFLICTIONS SOMEHOW, AND ARRIVE ON THE PATH OF

LIBERATION, EVEN IF YOU ASCEND TO THE RANK OF SOVEREIGN OF A NATION, GREAT MINISTER, DEITY, SPIRIT, OR WIZARD, IT IS STILL

EVANESCENT AS LIGHTNING AND MORNING DEW, LASTING ONLY FOR A WHILE.

WHEN CONDITIONS MEET, EVERYTHING SURELY SEEMS TO EXIST; BUT

WHEN THE CONDITIONS DISINTEGRATE -- EMPTINESS. THIS BODY IS GAINED

THROUGH THE RELATIONSHIP OF FATHER AND MOTHER, AND COMES FROM

THEIR CONDITIONS. SOLIDITY BECOMES SKIN, FLESH, LIGAMENT, AND BONE; FLUIDITY BECOMES SPITTLE, TEARS, PUS, AND BLOOD; HEAT BECOMES

WARMTH AND FLEXIBILITY; AIR BECOMES BREATH AND MOVEMENT.

WHEN THESE FOUR CONDITIONS SUDDENLY ARE EXHAUSTED, THE BODY

GETS COLD AND THE BREATH STOPS -- THERE IS NOTHING CALLED "ME." AT

THAT TIME THIS BODY IS REALLY NOT OUR OWN; IT IS ONLY A TEMPORARY

INN. HOW CAN WE BE SO GREEDILY ATTACHED TO THIS TEMPORARY INN

THAT WE IGNORE ETERNITY?

CONTEMPLATING THESE FOUR TRANSCENDENCES -- IMPERMANENCE, SUFFERING, EMPTINESS, SELFLESSNESS -- SEEKING THE WAY OF

ENLIGHTENMENT IS CALLED, "THE TEACHING OF FOUR REALITIES FOR

DISCIPLES." THIS IS THE ESSENTIAL GATEWAY TO BEGINNING ENTRY INTO

THE WAY FOR ALL ENLIGHTENED ONES.

Maneesha, before I discuss Torei's serious things, I have to introduce a few new animal gods into Avirbhava's Museum of Gods. Before I call her, I will have to tell you something about these gods.

"Sheep: The male sheep is known as a ram and has been a symbol of numerous gods.

Osiris and Ammon-Ra of Egypt were both worshipped as rams. The ram was sacrificed each year in Egypt. It was skinned and the skin placed over an image of the god, recalling the time when Ammon-Ra was incarnated in the form of a ram.

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Apes: In ancient Egypt, apes were considered sacred and were preserved by embalming them at death.

Mouse: One of the greatest of the Greek gods, Apollo, was known to take the form of a mouse in his role as sender of the plague. Apollo, the sun god, would incarnate as mice and rats to dispel the forces of night.

Horse: In Hinduism, the tenth incarnation of Vishnu is a white horse, Kalki. It has not yet happened. Nine incarnations have happened; the tenth is awaited. The tenth will be called Kalki. It will be a white horse, who is to come to judge the world at the end of this yuga, the fourth and the last cycle of one million, eight hundred thousand years in the Hindu concept of the world. He will destroy the wicked, reward the good, and enable Vishnu to create a new world."

It seems the time for Kalki is coming near. Beware of the white horse!

"Bull: In ancient Persia, the bull was worshipped as the god who caused the grass to grow.

In Greece, the great god Zeus used the guise of a bull to seduce Europa, hoping thereby that his animal transformation would elude his ever-watchful wife, Hera, from detecting his adultery. The followers of Dionysius would kill a bull during midsummer festivals in honor of the great god Zeus."

This Museum of Gods is not just a museum, it shows how human mind has remained retarded. Rather than bringing consciousness to its heights, man has been worshipping all kinds of animals. Even the future, the final incarnation of God in Hinduism, Kalki, is going to be a white horse -- not a man, not a buddha. It shows the retardedness, the primitiveness of our intelligence. This museum will be a symbol to the whole world to remind them: "This is what your forefathers have been doing, what you are doing. And you call it religion!"

Before I ask Avirbhava to bring her new acquisitions, two little jokes about these gods.

Late one night, Satan the devil and his partner, Lucifer the monkey, knock on the door of Pope the Polack's Vatican apartment. The Polack pope comes to the door with an arm around his best friend, Simon the sheep.

"Good evening, your phoniness," says the devil, grinning cheekily and fondling his forked tail. "My friend and I were wondering, do you have any midget nuns in your apartment?"

"Certainly not!" snaps back the pope, trying to slam the door.

"Well then, Holy Father," chuckles the devil, licking the flames of his lips and jamming his pitchfork in the doorway, "do you have any midget nuns living in the Vatican?"

"I don't know of any," cries the frightened Pope the Polack.

"Perhaps," giggles Lucifer, the monkey, swinging from Satan's pitchfork, "you know of any midget nuns living anywhere?"

"I cannot say," shouts Pope the Polack, infuriated, "that I know of any midget nuns anywhere at all!" And he grabs Simon the sheep's crucifix, and waves it wildly under the devil's nose.

The devil picks up the monkey by the shoulders, lifts him in the air, and shakes him hard.

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"You see, you idiot!" shouts Satan. "I told you you fucked a penguin!"

Pope the Polack goes for a summer retreat into the mountains of Italy. He lives in a little stone cottage, and the only companions he has are a flock of sheep.

After a few days without any company, the Polack pope becomes crazy for sex, and he chooses one of the horned sheep as a partner.

He takes off his gown and puts his machinery into the sheep. But while he is in action with the poor animal, it suddenly starts to run. Pope the Polack, with his underwear down around his ankles, is unable to do anything but hold on to the sheep's horns.

They race down the mountainside together, past a field where Grandma Pickle is picking daisies. Grandma is a little short-sighted, but looks up in amazement as the sheep and the Polack pope go racing past.

"My god!" she mutters to herself. "No money to buy pants, but he is driving a white motorbike!"

Now, Avirbhava, bring your gods.

(THE MASTER LAUGHINGLY BECKONS AVIRBHAVA FORWARD. AVIRBHAVA COMES FORWARD WITH A BULL DRESSED AS THE POPE, WHILE

SIMULTANEOUSLY SHEEP AND MICE START DANCING IN FRONT OF THE

MASTER ON A STRING, AND AN APE IS BOUNCING UP AND DOWN WILDLY ON A PIECE OF ELASTIC.)

Great!

(AVIRBHAVA ASSISTS THE LITTLE POPE IN KISSING THE MASTER'S FEET, WHILE A LIVE RECORDING OF THE POPE'S SERMON BOOMS OVER THE

LOUDSPEAKERS.)

Great, Avirbhava!

(THERE IS GENERAL HILARITY WITH THE MICE SQUEAKING, THE APE

GROWLING, ETC. BY THIS TIME THE MASTER IS REALLY ENJOYING IT!) That's good!

Now the serious matter ...

Torei is not a master but he is certainly a great teacher. And I have chosen him so that you can make a clear-cut distinction between the greatest teacher and the smallest master.

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scriptures, may have great interpretations, but he remains a parrot. What he says he does not know; his saying is dependent on his learning, studying, but not on his experience, not on his existential approach to his own being.

Torei is a good example of a great teacher. But such teachers can deceive humanity -- they have been deceiving, because they talk beautifully. Their words are the same as the words of the masters -- sometimes more refined, more cultivated, more cultured -- but still they are empty. Once in a while they may quote a sentence which has significance; not because of them, but because that sentence has come from some great living master. They have been great collectors, but as far as their own reality is concerned they are as ignorant as one can be.

TOREI SAID:

IF YOU WANT TO BE FREE FROM THIS WORLD OF SUFFERING, FIRST YOU

MUST CONTEMPLATE IMPERMANENCE.

I have told you these words: concentration, contemplation, meditation. The fourth, which is missing in the English language, is dhyana, or Zen in Japanese.

Contemplation is the way of the philosopher. He thinks it over. It is not beyond mind, it is within mind. He may be very sophisticated, his words may be arranged beautifully, but he cannot understand what meditation is; he can only understand contemplation. The very word

'contemplation' means thinking about higher things. But if you don't know those things, what can you think about?

Contemplation is one of the most empty words. If you know, you know; there is no need to contemplate. If you don't know, how can you contemplate? What are you going to contemplate? What is going to be your subject matter? You are simply groping in darkness and calling it contemplation.

He certainly is acquainted with the scriptures, very well acquainted, but he is committing the same mistake millions of teachers around the world have committed. First: IF YOU WANT TO BE FREE FROM THIS WORLD OF SUFFERING ...

Can you find a person who does not want to be free from suffering? There is no question about it. Everybody wants to get rid of suffering, misery.

The way that Torei

suggests is, FIRST YOU MUST CONTEMPLATE

IMPERMANENCE. It won't help. You can think everything is impermanent: birth is impermanent, youth is impermanent, wealth is impermanent; life itself is running out.

Everything is impermanent. That does not mean it will take you out of suffering. It simply makes you more aware that while there is time, enjoy as much as you can, because time is passing and death is not far away.

Strangely enough, the same argument is given by Charvakas, the Indian atheists. They say,

"Everything is fleeting, so don't waste time in temples, in rituals, just eat, drink and be merry.

And if you don't have money, borrow money, because after death everyone is finished, nobody is going to ask for his money back. After death, in the graveyard everybody sleeps soundly.

The man who borrowed the money and the man who gave the money both are dead. So don't miss a single moment. Enjoy it, even if it is to be enjoyed on borrowed money."

The statement in Sanskrit is very beautiful. The statement says, no one who has gone beyond death has ever come back. This is enough proof, more than enough, that death is the Osho - The Language of Existence

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end. And if death is the end, then why be worried about small things? It may be your own pocket or somebody else's pocket, it does not matter. Death will not differentiate between the sinner and the saint. There is no one to make the judgment.

RINAM KRITVA GHRITAM PIBET. Even if you have to borrow money, borrow it, but drink refined butter. Don't be worried about tomorrow.

It was a great school, not only in India but in Greece also. These were the two countries at that time which were touching the peaks of civilization. In Greece there was a great man, Epicurus, and he still has a small following. But generally, the whole Western world is Epicurian; they may know, they may not know.

Epicurus' whole teaching was that all is matter, and when all matter disintegrates nothing is left behind. So don't bother about any spirituality, and don't bother about any other world --

there is none. There has not been a single witness. It is certainly a tremendous argument, that there is not a single witness of the other world, the paradise. It seems to be all fancy, imagination, wish-fulfillment. What you cannot get here, you project that you will get it after life. It gives a certain consolation.

But what can you contemplate? Even if you contemplate that everything is impermanent, that simply means do it quick, be speedy, things are fast running out of hand; squeeze the juice of every moment without delay. Contemplation can take you into an atheistic worldview.

THOSE WHO ARE BORN MUST INEVITABLY DIE. EVEN THE YOUNG ARE NOT

EXEMPT.

Just because everyone is going to die ... Torei and similar teachers think that it is enough for people to become detached because everything is going to die. The result is just the contrary -- because everything is going to die, be quick before it dies.

A man was brought into a court in France for making love to a woman on the sea beach.

The charge was that he had been making love to a dead woman.

The magistrate asked him, "What do you have to say?"

He said, "I thought she was an English lady."

Man has been told by these teachers:

EVEN THE STRONG ARE IN DANGER. EVEN A LONG LIFE DOES NOT LAST

MORE THAN EIGHTY YEARS OR SO.

The desire is that you will think, "Everything is so changing, what is the point in going after it?" That's what Torei is thinking. But he is absolutely blind to the fact that the more people think things are going to change, the more they increase their speed. Why has humanity been increasing its speed?

I have heard ... A newly-wed couple is rushing in a fresh, new Ferrari. The girl feels afraid because the car is going at one hundred and fifty miles per hour. She is trembling, and she asks the man, "Please at least look at the map."

The man says, "Who bothers about the map! Is it not enough to enjoy the speed itself? We must reach somewhere, it cannot be nowhere. You can consult the map -- I am enjoying the Osho - The Language of Existence

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speed. I don't have any time to waste consulting the map. What is the point? Wherever we reach, we will find a hotel; whether its name is Honeymoon Hotel or not does not matter."

Increasingly, humanity has been interested in speed, more speed. Perhaps you have not taken into consideration the implication. The implication is, do everything as fast and quickly as you can because life is short. But these people like Torei thought that if people contemplate that everything is going to die ... why love this woman if she is going to die? -- if not today then tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Even if she does not die, she will be in a worse position -- she will become old. What is the point in loving a woman who will become old?

A man was telling a woman, "I love you. I love you more than my life."

The woman said, "Really? Will you love me always as you love me now?"

The man contemplated and he said, "There is only one problem. When you become old, will you look like your mother? Then I withdraw my statement. I cannot love your mother --

that much is certain. Will you remain the same?"

Nothing remains the same.

From the point of change there are two roads. One leads to atheism, materialism -- enjoy, there is nothing much to discover. The other road is that because everything is impermanent, try to find something permanent. That is what the masters do -- help the person to find something in himself that is absolutely eternal.

That is the goal of meditation, not of contemplation. But a thinker cannot understand meditation. He cannot understand that you can go out of your mind. How can you jump out of your mind? You are mind. To him you are nothing more than mind. And you can see his statement:

IF YOU DON'T ANNIHILATE THE NATURE OF AFFLICTIONS SOMEHOW, AND

ARRIVE ON THE PATH OF LIBERATION, EVEN IF YOU ASCEND TO THE RANK OF

SOVEREIGN OF A NATION, GREAT MINISTER, DEITY, SPIRIT, OR WIZARD, IT IS

STILL EVANESCENT AS LIGHTNING AND MORNING DEW, LASTING ONLY FOR A WHILE.

WHEN CONDITIONS MEET, EVERYTHING SURELY SEEMS TO EXIST; BUT

WHEN THE CONDITIONS DISINTEGRATE -- EMPTINESS.

You are just a certain combination of conditions. When those conditions meet, you are.

When those conditions disintegrate -- nothingness. A buddha can also say the same thing, but he says it because he knows nothingness is not nothingness, because he knows you have entered into your inner sky -- which looks to the outsider like nothingness.

But when a teacher says this, not knowing anything about it, there is every danger that he will create people who will become materialists. If everything ends then what is the point of being virtuous, what is the point of prayer, what is the point of donations, what is the point of service to the poor? Why waste time? Just enjoy life -- drink, dance, do whatever you want to, because death will come. And it comes to everyone, the saint and the sinner, in a similar way; it does not make any categories.

THIS BODY IS GAINED THROUGH THE RELATIONSHIP OF FATHER AND

MOTHER.

This type of thing can be told only by a teacher. Everybody knows this body is gained through the relationship of father and mother. And then more stupid things he goes on saying: Osho - The Language of Existence

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... AND COMES FROM THEIR CONDITIONS. SOLIDITY BECOMES SKIN.

How can solidity become skin? If I had met this fellow ... I have every respect for his learning but I would put him to task, to turn solidity into skin -- or skin into solidity, that would do.

... FLESH, LIGAMENT, AND BONE; FLUIDITY BECOMES SPITTLE, TEARS, PUS

AND BLOOD; HEAT BECOMES WARMTH AND FLEXIBILITY; AIR BECOMES

BREATH AND MOVEMENT.

Great philosophy! And he is talking as if he is stating some scientific discoveries.

WHEN THESE FOUR CONDITIONS SUDDENLY ARE EXHAUSTED, THE BODY

GETS COLD AND THE BREATH STOPS.

Great contemplation!

THERE IS NOTHING CALLED "ME." AT THAT TIME THIS BODY IS REALLY NOT

OUR OWN; IT IS ONLY A TEMPORARY INN. HOW CAN WE BE SO GREEDILY

ATTACHED TO THIS TEMPORARY INN THAT WE IGNORE ETERNITY?

CONTEMPLATING THESE FOUR TRANSCENDENCES -- IMPERMANENCE, SUFFERING, EMPTINESS, SELFLESSNESS -- SEEKING THE WAY OF

ENLIGHTENMENT IS CALLED, "THE TEACHING OF FOUR REALITIES FOR

DISCIPLES." THIS IS THE ESSENTIAL GATEWAY TO BEGINNING ENTRY INTO

THE WAY FOR ALL ENLIGHTENED ONES.

This is the problem with the learned scholarship. They see that the enlightened one shows in his every action non-attachment, impermanence, because the enlightened one never suffers; in his consciousness he is beyond suffering. The scholar watches all these qualities from the outside and then he creates his great ideology: if you contemplate impermanence, non-attachment, suffering, you will enter into the gateway of the buddhas.

He himself has not entered. These are not the words of a buddha, these are the words of a great teacher who has collected fragments of teachings from here and there. And he is not honest, either -- no scholar is. It is very difficult to find a scholar who will say that what he is saying is not his knowledge. He pretends that what he is saying, he knows, that he is saying it only because he knows.

Every scholar, almost without exception, is a pretender. And because of these pretenders, it becomes very difficult for people to figure out who the authentic masters are. The scholars speak of the gateway of the buddha, they speak about eternity, they speak about emptiness.

Their words are perfectly right, but the men who are speaking them are not right, because these words are borrowed.

Once you borrow a truth it becomes untrue. Truth can arise only within you; it cannot be adopted -- you have to remember this. In life you will meet many people who appear to know so much that you are overwhelmed by their knowledge. But inside there is nothing, no experience.

A great psychologist, head of the department of psychology in Varanasi University ... I was only a student and one of my friends had gone from the college to study in Varanasi. He came into contact with this psychologist, Professor Laljiram Shukla, and the professor became so much interested in him that he married his daughter to the young man.

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The young man was continuously talking about me to him: "You should meet my friend."

Continuously mentioning me, he became obsessed.

He started writing to me saying, "I will pay all the fare and you will stay with me in the university. You come, just be a guest for one week, because I have heard so much about you from my son-in-law that now it is becoming a disturbance in me." So I went.

In the morning, nearabout twenty-five professors of the university had gathered to meet me. The professor of psychology, Laljiram Shukla, was perhaps the only great psychologist in India; people were very respectful about him. We all waited because he was worshipping the monkey god, Hanuman. When his worship was over he came and he greeted me, and he said,

"I have been waiting. How long are you going to stay?"

I said, "That will be decided within ten minutes."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Just sit down. You think you are a psychologist and you worship a monkey! Do you believe in Darwin -- that man is born out of the monkeys? Perhaps you are worshipping your forefathers?"

He said, "This is very insulting."

I said, "That's why I said that just within ten minutes I will decide how long I have to stay here. I can stay here my whole life, but I don't think that even for one hour you will be able to tolerate me."

I questioned him directly. I said to him, "You are worshipping for what? There must be some desire. Some desire perhaps to be the vice-chancellor or to be the education minister or to be the prime minister of India? For what are you worshipping? Because a man who has no desire has no need to worship. Do you think a monkey can manage what you cannot manage?

Why are you putting yourself into such humiliation before a monkey?"

He said, "Don't refer to my god again and again by the name 'monkey'."

I said, "What can I do? He is a monkey. And it is not a question of whether he is your forefather or not. The question is, a psychologist is still primitive. Have you seen God?"

Those professors who had gathered became very uneasy. They had come to see if some discussion will happen which will be profitable to them, but there seemed to be no way to discuss with me. I said, "Non-essentials aside, just remember the monkey god and tell the truth: have you ever seen God?"

He became so angry, he called his son-in-law and told him, "You idiot! You have been harassing me again and again, and now he is disturbing my belief system."

I said, "A man of your understanding should not remain with belief systems. He should have something which he knows, not only believes, and you don't have anything that you know. Or if you know just tell me, we can discuss it. What is the point of discussing something which you don't know?"

The ultimate result was that he told his son-in-law to pack my suitcases and take me immediately to the airport. "I don't want such a man; in seven days he will destroy my whole life's religiousness." And because all the professors came down to say goodbye to me, he was very angry. Later on his son-in-law wrote to me, saying that he was so angry with all the Osho - The Language of Existence

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professors: "You left me alone and you went with him to say goodbye to him. It seems you agree with him."

They said, "There is no question of agreement -- you misbehaved. If you don't know, you should have said, 'I don't know.' That would have been more dignified. You had been inviting him, he had not come on his own; now you have thrown him out of the house. Still, he was not angry, he was just laughing."

I said, "I knew it. That's why I did not give the time, how long I would be there. I know myself."

But later on he felt very guilty. And he also felt, how is he going to face all those twenty-five professors in the university? He wrote to me a letter of apology. I answered him that "There is no question of apology. You have not insulted me, you have only insulted yourself. You have been insulting yourself your whole life -- by your worshipping, by your so-called religiousness, by all kinds of belief systems. And not knowing a single thing. It is good that I accepted your invitation and created a chaos in your mind. Perhaps, seeing the chaos, you will come out of the mind. And that is the world I had come to discuss with you --

the world beyond mind." But for the scholars mind is all.

When all the conditions collapse, Torei is saying, nothing remains. This word 'nothing' has very strange connotations. When a buddha says "nothing" he means no-thing, and when a scholar says "nothing" he simply means emptiness. When a buddha says "nothing" he says there is no-thing anymore: pure space, utter silence ...

We all speak the same language. The master has also to use the same language but he gives new meanings to words, new fragrances to words, new poetry to words. They go dancing into your heart, the same ordinary words, with such extraordinary radiance, penetration. But one has to be a knower himself.

This gathering is not for those who are interested in studying religion. This gathering is only for those who are interested in experiencing what religion is all about. It is an existential, experimental lab. It is as scientific as any science. No question of belief -- you are not asked what you believe. No question of your mind -- whatever kind of mind you have, just put it aside.

You may have a great learned mind; that is perfectly okay, put it aside. You may have a very ordinary mind, uneducated; no matter, just put it by the side of the great scholar's mind.

Mind has no value here. The value arises only when mind is no more there. Then you start growing into a different dimension which can only be called existential.

Before we do our meditation, a few words from some authentic masters.

A haiku by Issa:

LISTEN,

ALL CREEPING THINGS --

THE BELL OF TRANSIENCE.

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Nothing to be done, just listen ... everything is changing. What is the point? The point is that the listener is never changing; the watcher is always there. That is the only permanent thing in existence.

LISTEN -- or watch --

ALL CREEPING THINGS --

THE BELL OF TRANSIENCE.

Now, any scholar can repeat that, there is no problem -- the words are very simple. But Issa KNOWS it.

Sengai says:

WHAT MIND DO YOU PUNCTUATE?

THE PAST, PRESENT, OR FUTURE?

THE CANDLE IS BLOWN OUT,

AND THE DIAMOND TURNS TO ASHES.

He is saying the same thing: WHAT MIND DO YOU PUNCTUATE? The past is no more, the future is not yet, and if there is no past and no future, how can there be any present?

What time ... WHAT MIND DO YOU PUNCTUATE? Neither the mind is there, nor time is there. When mind and time both disappear, THE CANDLE IS BLOWN OUT.

That is exactly the meaning of the word 'nirvana': THE CANDLE IS BLOWN OUT. Now can you find the flame of the candle? Even if you look through the whole universe you will not find it. It has simply become one with the universe. The moment the candle of mind, which is equivalent to the candle of time, is blown out -- utter silence ... Nothing is found, but tremendous peace, a feeling of coming home ...

Question 1

Maneesha has a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

CAN IT HELP TO CONTEMPLATE ON A CONCEPT? IF THE CONCEPT IS JUST

ONE'S INTELLECTUAL UNDERSTANDING, OR SOMEONE ELSE'S INSIGHT, WHAT

IS THE VALUE? AND EVEN IF IT IS OUT OF ONE'S OWN INSIGHT, WHAT IS THE

POINT? -- IF YOU HAVE KNOWN IT, YOU HAVE KNOWN IT.

Maneesha, this not a question -- this is the answer. There is nothing to contemplate and there is nobody to contemplate. When you disappear with all your mind and not even a trace remains behind, just a pure sky ... you have found. I will not say what, because the moment you say what you have found you defile it. It is inexpressible ecstasy.

Thousands of buddhas have tried to bring it down to words; nobody has succeeded. It is just not in the nature of things that the ultimate ecstasy can be brought into words.

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Before we enter into, not contemplation, but meditation, I don't want you to be serious. I am so against seriousness -- it is a spiritual sickness. Laughter is spiritual health. And laughter is very unburdening. While you laugh, you can put your mind aside very easily. For a man who cannot laugh the doors of the buddha are closed.

To me, laughter is one of the greatest values. No religion has ever thought about it. They have always been insisting on seriousness, and because of their insistence the whole world is psychologically sick.

"Hey, listen to this, man!" says Starlight Butterfly, the aging hippy, passing a reefer to his friend, Golden Buffalo-Grass.

"These guys at Ectoplasm Arcade are offering Astral Projection Tours."

"Really?" says Golden Buffalo-Grass, puffing madly. "What does it say?"

"It says," replies Butterfly, "if you are an average occult freak off the street, you are probably pretty good at popping out of your body and staring at yourself. Like acid, man --

you only do it so many times, then you get bored.

"Wouldn't it be great if you could put your ability to some greater use than just hanging out in Nowhere's-Ville? How about a trip to the divine Deep-Space Disco, or the Big Dipper Dance Hall?"

Coughing on his reefer, Butterfly reads on, "Now we introduce Astral Projection Tours.

We get you to those far-out scenes where the physical body just can't make it. Pop out of your skinbag, and cruise to outta-sight places and meet strange beings.

"Astral Projection Tours offers individual or group tours to the seven hells of Horowitz.

Experience the mindless wanderings of Baba Rum-Raisin and space out for fun on Allah-Hoo Bandstand! -- all for only twenty dollars."

"Wow, man! This is cool," shouts Buffalo-Grass, lighting another reefer. "This sounds far-out. I'm packing right now. I'm gonna drop my body and tune into the Cosmos!"

"Hey, man!" shouts Butterfly, in a cloud of smoke, "where are you going?"

"Going? I'm halfway there!" shouts Buffalo-Grass, swallowing his reefer and standing on his head. "I'm gonna take my astral ass and jog with Jesus, mule ride with Mohammed, and go bowling with Buddha!"

Big black Leroy is trying to get religion, so he goes to a Holy Rollers meeting in a small southern Mississippi town.

Sister Sara, a beautiful and shapely black girl, suddenly leaps to her feet and shouts,

"Praise be to the Lord! Last night I was in the arms of Satan, and tonight I will be in the arms of Saint Peter!"

"Sister," says Leroy quietly as the girl sits down, "so what are you doing tomorrow night?"

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When Madam Fifi's whorehouse is raided by the police, the whole place is in confusion.

Somehow Pinky, the talking parrot, escapes and flies away. She lands in the graveyard and is immediately captured by the preacher's wife and put in a cage.

"Polly wanna a cracker?" asks the preacher's wife, as Pinky sits in the cage above the piano. But Pinky says nothing.

The days go by and Pinky sits silently in the cage wondering what has happened. One day there is a gathering of the church women's club, and amongst all the girls present, the discussion turns to silk underwear.

"Look at this wonderful slip!" says Mrs. Jones, turning up the corner of her dress.

"Ah! And look at these wonderful panties!" says Mrs. Foster, pulling her skirt all the way up.

"Thank God!" sighs Pinky, eyeing Mrs. Foster. "Welcome home, girls! Anybody got a cigarette?"

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent. Mind you have thrown out.

Close your eyes.

Feel the body to be completely frozen.

Look inwards.

At the very center of your being,

is the door of the buddhas.

Deeper ... and deeper.

Without any fear, go in as far as you can.

You will not meet anybody on the way except yourself. And meeting with oneself is the meaning of being a buddha.

One who has encountered himself, realized himself, has become centered into himself, is a buddha. This is the potential of everyone.

Just a little going in.

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The way is very short:

from mind to no-mind.

To make it clear, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax. Feel the body to be completely dead.

The head has fallen somewhere else and you are simply a watcher, not a doer; not a thinker, but just a witness. And the evening becomes beautiful. And you will come out completely drunk with the divine.

You have to carry this silence, this suchness in every action, around the clock. There is no greater ecstasy, no greater blessing, than to have found your inner being -- the buddha.

This moment you are all buddhas.

This moment you are not separate from each other.

It is an ocean of consciousness

in which you are all dissolved.

Let it sink deep in you

that you are not separate from existence.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back. But come back as buddhas,

without any hesitation,

in silence, in grace, in beauty.

Just sit like buddhas for a few moments -- remembering, collecting the experience you have passed through. Slowly slowly it is going to become your very heartbeat. That day will be the most fortunate day in your life.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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6

Be a rare person

4 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

A MONK ASKED BANKEI, "THE ANCESTRAL TEACHERS SINCE ANCIENT

TIMES WERE GREATLY ENLIGHTENED THROUGH DIFFICULT AND PAINFUL

PRACTICES. I HAVE HEARD THAT YOU, TOO, ACCOMPLISHED THE GREAT

TEACHING THROUGH VARIOUS DIFFICULT PRACTICES. BUT FOR PEOPLE LIKE

ME, WHO DON'T CULTIVATE PRACTICE, AND ARE NOT ENLIGHTENED, JUST

REALIZING THAT MY VERY STATE IS THE UNBORN, ENLIGHTENED NO-MIND

DOES NOT REALLY SETTLE ANYTHING."

BANKEI REPLIED:

"IT IS LIKE THE CASE OF TRAVELERS WHO CROSS THE PEAKS OF HIGH

MOUNTAINS WHERE THERE IS NO WATER, AND BECOME THIRSTY. SOMEONE

SEEKS OUT WATER IN A DISTANT VALLEY, BREAKING HIS BACK SEARCHING

HERE AND THERE. FINALLY, HE FINDS WATER AND BRINGS IT BACK TO GIVE

TO THE OTHERS TO DRINK.

"EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE NOT STRUGGLED SO, THOSE WHO DRINK ARE

REFRESHED, JUST THE SAME AS THE ONE WHO WENT THROUGH THE TROUBLE

BEFORE. AS FOR THOSE WHO ARE DOUBTFUL AND WILL NOT DRINK, THERE IS

NO WAY FOR THEIR THIRST TO BE QUENCHED.

"BECAUSE I DIDN'T MEET SOMEONE WITH ENLIGHTENED EYES, I MISTAKENLY WORE MYSELF OUT. I FINALLY DISCOVERED THE BUDDHA IN MY

OWN NO-MIND, AND AM TELLING EVERYONE ABOUT THE BUDDHA OF THEIR

OWN NO-MIND, WITHOUT THEM HAVING TO DO ANYTHING DIFFICULT -- JUST

LIKE DRINKING WATER AND HAVING THEIR THIRST QUENCHED.

"USING THE ENLIGHTENED NO-MIND INHERENT IN EVERYONE, JUST AS IT

IS, HAVING FOUND PEACE AND BLISS, WITHOUT THE DIFFICULTIES OF

CONFUSION -- IS THIS NOT A SACRED TRUE TEACHING?"

AT ANOTHER TIME SOMEONE ASKED BANKEI, "IS THE COMPLETE

ILLUMINATION OF THE EYE OF REALITY ACCOMPLISHED WITH TIME AND

SEASON, OR IS IT REALIZED EVEN IN ONE DAY?"

BANKEI REPLIED, "IT IS NOT A MATTER OF TIME AND SEASON; IT IS

ACCOMPLISHED ONLY WHEN THE EYE OF THE WAY IS CLEAR, WITHOUT ANY

GAP. IT IS ACCOMPLISHED BY THE PRACTICE OF SINGLE-MINDED DEVOTION

TO NURTURING IT."

Maneesha, Bankei is one of my most favorite Zen masters, but that does not mean that I agree with him on every point. With the essentials I am in absolute agreement, but with the Osho - The Language of Existence

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non-essentials I disagree. And it has to be remembered by you that to love a man does not mean to agree with him or to disagree with him. Agreement and disagreement are far below the world of love. I love Bankei just for his own sake. He is a unique enlightened man with a tremendous vision of reality, but on the non-essentials I don't agree with him.

Perhaps the times have changed. Perhaps I am a different kind of person, and perhaps the people who are hearing me are a totally different world. I respond to Bankei according to you, I see Bankei in the context of you; otherwise Bankei has no meaning. We are discussing him for the simple reason that he may give some light to you on the path. Even if a slight glimpse of the ultimate is attained through him, it is more than enough.

I will tell you where I agree and where I don't agree, but as far as my love is concerned it is absolute. I love the man and respect him. But it is natural that as time changes, language changes. Symbols change, metaphors change, and everything that was said a thousand years ago cannot be repeated exactly, except by parrots.

Bankei had a great school of his own. He is still followed by thousands of people. I have met a few of Bankei's disciples, and when I told them that I agree on the fundamentals but I don't agree on the non-essentials, they could not believe me. They said, "If you love the master, if you have some feeling for him, then how can you disagree?"

My position is totally different. If you love a person only then do you have the right to disagree. If you don't love a person, what right have you got to disagree? Only love gives you the freedom of agreeing or not agreeing. Without love there is no freedom. You are forced to agree as all the religions of the world are doing -- forcing people in psychological ways to believe in certain things and not to believe in certain other things.

Their ways of forcing are very subtle, they are using your whole unenlightened unconscious mind. Your greed is expanded up to heaven. What is heaven or paradise except your greed multiplied by thousands? And what is hell except your fear? And what are all the priests of all the religions of the world doing? They are doing the same thing whether they are Mohammedans or Hindus or Christians or Jews. They are giving you a consolation in your misery, in your suffering; they are consoling you that it is not going to last forever -- this world is miserable but beyond this world open the doors of paradise and eternal pleasure, so just have a little patience. Karl Marx was not wrong when he said that religions have functioned as the opium of the people. I am not a Marxist but this statement I cannot deny, he is absolutely right. Religions have proved to be opium.

In Indian villages where women go to work in the fields, or somewhere where a road is being made, or a bridge is being made, and the women working have small children ... One day I was just walking by the side of the river, a bridge was being built and there was a small child under a tree, so happy, so joyous, so ecstatic. I could not believe ... what could be the cause of it? So I waited by the side of the tree. His mother was working on the bridge, and she came back to give some milk to the child. I said to her, "You have a really great child. I have never come across such a psychedelic child in my whole life."

She said, "It is nothing. We poor people, what can we do? We cannot afford somebody to take care of the child, so we give the child some opium. Whether he is hungry or thirsty, whether it is hot or cold, it does not matter. In his opium, he is enjoying paradise."

All the religions have been giving opium to their followers and hell to those who don't follow them. But it is not the way of authentic religion to use people's psychology -- their fears, their greed, their ambitions. It is not the way of love. It is very cruel because if you use Osho - The Language of Existence

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people's greed you are not going to transform them. And you will be afraid if somebody else tries to transform them, because you cannot afford that they should drop their greed and their fear.

Very few people in the whole of history have been able to drop their fears and look directly into reality. There is no hell and there is no heaven, but there is a beautiful existence, so beautiful that your dreams cannot dream it. You have to realize it.

The authentic experienced master will not ask for your belief or disbelief, he will ask only for your inquiry. He will tell you that the well is not far away, so don't remain thirsty. If you are clinging to your suffering, nobody except you is responsible. You can drop all your suffering, all your misery, if you can just drop your mind. It is all mind phenomena.

I love Bankei. He was asked:

THE ANCESTRAL TEACHERS SINCE ANCIENT TIMES WERE GREATLY

ENLIGHTENED THROUGH DIFFICULT AND PAINFUL PRACTICES. I HAVE HEARD

THAT YOU, TOO, ACCOMPLISHED THE GREAT TEACHING THROUGH VARIOUS

DIFFICULT PRACTICES. BUT FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME, WHO DON'T CULTIVATE

PRACTICE, AND ARE NOT ENLIGHTENED, JUST REALIZING THAT MY VERY

STATE IS THE UNBORN, ENLIGHTENED NO-MIND DOES NOT REALLY SETTLE

ANYTHING.

For centuries there have been seekers divided on this point. There are seekers who say that enlightenment comes gradually. You have to work for it, you have to do many kinds of practices for it. It is a faraway star and the journey is tedious, and you almost have to pass through self-torture in the name of disciplining yourself. The other school says that enlightenment is always sudden. It is not a question of traveling anywhere or going anywhere, it is simply a question of awakening to your own self.

Perhaps in the night, in your dream you may have been visiting a faraway star. But as you wake up, you know you have not gone anywhere, you have always been here. Your mind feels misery, suffering; it feels all kinds of emotions, attachments, desires and longings, but it is all the projection of the mind. Behind the mind is your real self which has never gone anywhere.

It is always here and here.

So the question of enlightenment, whether it is gradual or sudden, is a very complicated one. Those who say it is gradual, they make steps, procedures, disciplines to be followed. And in this way, perhaps, after many lives you may become a buddha. The people who believe in sudden enlightenment have no discipline, no rules, except for a simple thing -- wake up, don't remain a somnambulist. Don't act out of sleep, act out of awakening!

So on the path of sudden enlightenment all that is needed is to go withinwards, to look inside and to find the point which can be aware twenty-four hours. And the point is there, you are just keeping your back towards it. Wherever you go, it is always with you. It is the very center of your existence; without it you cannot exist for a single moment.

The question is not of some gradual attainment or achievement. The question is of a great turning in. Our eyes look outside, our desires reach for the stars. Turning in means no desires, no greed, no paradise, no God -- just looking into your own space, what is hidden in you.

From where comes this life? From where comes this consciousness?

As you go deeper within yourself, you will find the center, and not only of yourself. It will be the center of the whole existence. At the center we meet, on the periphery we are separate.

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We are separate only in our bodies, in our minds, but beyond body and mind we are just an ocean of consciousness. There is no 'I am', there is simply pure awareness with no distinctions, no divisions.

In the moment of enlightenment even the trees and the birds and the mountains --

everything becomes enlightened. There is a saying of Gautam Buddha, "The moment I became enlightened, the whole universe became enlightened." It could be disputed, because we can see that we are not enlightened, but his meaning is totally different. He is speaking for himself. From that moment everything becomes enlightened because he has seen the very root from where life arises and goes on eternally arising, with no beginning, no end.

Bankei was asked, "In the ancient times sages used to practice difficult and arduous disciplines and then finally after many years, after many lives, they became enlightened. But in your case it seems to be different. You have not practiced any discipline, you have not tortured yourself by fasting. You have not distorted your body by yoga. How did you become enlightened?"

BANKEI REPLIED: IT IS LIKE THE CASE OF TRAVELERS WHO CROSS THE

PEAKS OF HIGH MOUNTAINS WHERE THERE IS NO WATER, AND BECOME

THIRSTY. SOMEONE SEEKS OUT WATER IN A DISTANT VALLEY, BREAKING HIS

BACK SEARCHING HERE AND THERE. FINALLY, HE FINDS WATER AND BRINGS

IT BACK TO GIVE TO THE OTHERS TO DRINK.

EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE NOT STRUGGLED SO, THOSE WHO DRINK ARE

REFRESHED, JUST THE SAME AS THE ONE WHO WENT THROUGH THE TROUBLE

BEFORE.

I don't agree on this point. Everybody has to find his own enlightenment. Nobody can give it to you.

Bankei is saying that somebody else can bring the water. About water it is okay, it is something objective and outside. Water can be brought, but nobody can bring enlightenment to you.

It has to be very deeply understood that enlightenment is an individual revolution.

Somebody can give you a challenge, somebody can provoke you to the search, somebody's presence may infect you, but nobody can give you enlightenment.

If it was something that could be given, it would have been very easy to make the whole world enlightened. It could be patented, marketed -- then you just go to the M.G.Road and have a little drink of enlightenment; then the rich will gather great amounts of enlightenment and the poor will suffer.

At least as far as enlightenment is concerned, don't make it a material, quantitative phenomenon. It is a subjective, qualitative experience just like love. Can you give love to somebody? There is no way. You can love somebody, but you cannot give love to somebody.

Love is your inner experience, so deep that you cannot even define what it is. All the poets, all the philosophers have been trying to define what love is. And thousands of years of search and enquiry have resulted only in the simple statement that love is indefinable. You can sing it, you can dance it, but you cannot define it. Exactly the same, on a higher level, is enlightenment.

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According to me love is the lowest rung of the ladder and enlightenment is the highest.

They have a similarity on many points. They both happen suddenly -- you fall in love and if somebody asks you why, you simply shrug your shoulders. You cannot answer why. Love is not something to be questioned. You don't know yourself, it just happens.

Enlightenment is the same kind of phenomenon on a higher peak. It just happens. It happens when you are silent, looking inwards. Just like lightning, you suddenly become aware, full of light, luminous. It is not an answer to any question. All questions and all answers dissolve into the luminous splendor of your own inner being.

I differ from Bankei in saying that nobody else can give it to you. If somebody has found it, perhaps he can inspire you -- not by his words, but by his very being, by his every gesture, by his every look. You can see that a different kind of presence surrounds the man, a different kind of silence radiates from him. You can have a taste from somebody else, but nobody can give it to you.

It used to happen that seekers would come to Gautam Buddha. A great philosopher of those times, Maulingaputta, came with his five hundred disciples. He himself was a well-known teacher, and he had come to challenge Gautam Buddha to a debate; that's why he had brought all his disciples.

In India it was a common phenomenon that has now disappeared ... it was so beautiful --

but now to challenge somebody seems to be a way to create enemies. For centuries it was not considered that way in India; challenging was simply a matter of coming face to face, with inquiring, penetrating questions, and finding out who has gone deeper. The one who went deeper was victorious. It was a very loving phenomenon, very friendly.

Maulingaputta said to Gautam Buddha, "I have come here to pay my respects to you and also to challenge you."

Buddha said, "I love your challenge. But you will have to fulfill a condition which I have been keeping my whole life. I cannot make any exception."

At that time there were ten thousand monks, disciples of Buddha. Maulingaputta said,

"Any condition, and I am ready to accept it."

So Buddha said, "The condition is that you have to sit by my side for two years, silently --

no question, no answer. After two years I will tell you, now you can question."

Bankei's lineage comes from Mahakashyap. Mahakashyap was a rare being, nobody had ever heard him speak. He never asked any question, he never answered anybody, even a hello was too much. People simply passed by his side as if he was not. He had a special tree where he used to sit whenever Buddha was speaking. When Buddha said to Maulingaputta, "You have to sit for two years silently by my side and then you can have any inquiry, any debate, any discussion, any question," there was suddenly a great outburst -- Mahakashyap laughed loudly.

The whole assembly felt very strange because this man had never talked to anybody, and there was no special reason that he should laugh. But he must have been a reincarnation of Sardar Gurudayal Singh, or vice versa. Sardar is the only man in the whole world who can laugh before a joke is told. It does not matter, what matters is the laughter. Why not enjoy it, why wait? It is a deep trust that something good will be coming.

Maulingaputta said, "Why is this fellow laughing?"

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Buddha said, "You can ask him yourself. He is a rare person, he never speaks. In the twenty years he has been with me he has never asked any question. It is for the first time that suddenly he has exploded in laughter."

So Maulingaputta asked Mahakashyap, "Why did you laugh?"

Mahakashyap said, "I laughed because this fellow Gautam Buddha is a tricky guy. He tricked me with the same trick; he told me to sit for two years and I have been sitting for twenty years! Now the desire to question or to debate has been left miles back. So if you want to ask, ask now; otherwise you will be sitting just like me. And there are many other monks who will be witnesses to what I am saying."

Buddha had a lotus flower in his hand. At that moment he called Mahakashyap and gave the lotus flower to him with the words, "What I have been able to say, I have said to everybody. And what I have not been able to say, I transfer it to you."

This is called in Zen the transmission of the lamp. Nothing is said. But in twenty years of silence one becomes enlightened oneself. It is not something that Buddha has given. Buddha has simply created a situation.

Maulingaputta remained silent for two years and he even forgot the time, that two years had passed. It was Buddha who had to remind him, "Maulingaputta, now two years have passed. Come on and confront me."

He came and touched Gautam Buddha's feet and he said, "I am sorry, I was arrogant. I did not understand what enlightenment is. Now don't make me more ashamed. Just being in silence for two years all thoughts have disappeared. A deep silence reigns inside and I have found myself and the beauty and the truth and the good -- all together in my own being. Now there is no seeking, no search. Mahakashyap was right."

After touching the feet of Gautam Buddha, he touched the feet of Mahakashyap. It is on this account that Mahakashyap is thought to be the first Zen master. He was a disciple of Buddha, but he started a new tradition, of people who simply sit silently for years.

You remember Basho -- and today there are many poets here, they will understand Basho

-- perhaps one of the greatest poets the world has produced.

SITTING SILENTLY

DOING NOTHING

SPRING COMES

AND THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF.

The whole philosophy of Zen is contained in this simple statement, this small haiku.

SITTING SILENTLY

DOING NOTHING

SPRING COMES

AND THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF.

You don't have to do anything. Enlightenment is not your doing. And it is not a gift. You already are enlightened, just you have not looked in the right direction. The difference between the enlightened being and the unenlightened is not much; it is negligible. One has looked into himself, the other has not looked into himself. This is not much of a difference. At Osho - The Language of Existence

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any moment the other can also look into himself. Perhaps when your eyes are tired of looking outside, you close them in utter boredom and tiredness and look inside.

You have searched much and found nothing outside. You look in and suddenly all that you were seeking is already there. You have come with it into the world, it is your intrinsic quality.

Bankei is saying that someone else can bring the water, but it is not a right way of explaining it.

He says:

AS FOR THOSE WHO ARE DOUBTFUL AND WILL NOT DRINK, THERE IS NO

WAY FOR THEIR THIRST TO BE QUENCHED. BECAUSE I DID NOT MEET

SOMEONE WITH ENLIGHTENED EYES, I MISTAKENLY WORE MYSELF OUT. I FINALLY DISCOVERED THE BUDDHA IN MY OWN NO-MIND, AND AM TELLING

EVERYONE ABOUT THE BUDDHA OF THEIR OWN NO-MIND, WITHOUT THEM

HAVING TO DO ANYTHING DIFFICULT -- JUST LIKE DRINKING WATER AND

HAVING THEIR THIRST QUENCHED.

On this point I am in absolute agreement. Bankei himself became suddenly enlightened although he had been trying. I have to remind you of Gautam Buddha himself. For six years continually he tried all the methods and all the disciplines available in those days, but nothing happened. He became so tired, so utterly bored, that one full-moon night sitting under a tree, he dropped even the desire for enlightenment. He had dropped all other desires. The only desire that he had been carrying for six years -- on that full-moon night he dropped that too.

Utterly desireless he slept a tremendously deep sleep. And as he woke up in the morning, the last star was setting, and as the last star disappeared, he became enlightened.

It was not those six years of training that made him enlightened, it was that relaxed night, that utter let-go. There was no desire, no ambition, the mind had no function at all. When you don't have any desire, any ambition, any longing, mind disappears, because mind is nothing but a combination of all these things. It is not an entity in itself, it is only a combination, just like my fist. A fist is not an entity, it is just the five fingers closed. You open the fingers and the fist has disappeared.

Mind is not a reality. It is not a fact, it is simply a combination of all desires. Even a single desire is enough to keep it breathing. But when the last desire drops, and that can only be the desire of enlightenment ... in the morning he woke up without a mind. In the morning he was a no-mind, so silent, so peaceful. Watching the last star disappearing, he also watched himself disappearing. He remained just a watcher.

This state of watchfulness is your pure consciousness. And it is not yours, it is the universal consciousness. You can call it awakening, you can call it buddhahood, you can call it enlightenment, names don't matter.

USING THE ENLIGHTENED NO-MIND INHERENT IN EVERYONE, JUST AS IT IS, HAVING FOUND PEACE AND BLISS, WITHOUT THE DIFFICULTIES OF

CONFUSION -- IS THIS NOT A SACRED TRUE TEACHING?

AT ANOTHER TIME SOMEONE ASKED BANKEI, "IS THE COMPLETE

ILLUMINATION OF THE EYE OF REALITY ACCOMPLISHED WITH TIME AND

SEASON, OR IS IT REALIZED EVEN IN ONE DAY?"

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BANKEI REPLIED, "IT IS NOT A MATTER OF TIME AND SEASON; IT IS

ACCOMPLISHED ONLY WHEN THE EYE OF THE WAY IS CLEAR, WITHOUT ANY

GAP. IT IS ACCOMPLISHED BY THE PRACTICE OF SINGLE-MINDED DEVOTION

TO NURTURING IT."

He is making a great statement. He is saying that it is not a question of time, it is not a question of season.

In my village one old priest was very much respected as a wise man. I used to go to him.

And to any question that I ever asked him, he would say, "Wait. At the right time, in the right season, you will find the answer."

I came back from the university and I went to see the old man; he was dying. I said to him,

"You have been deceiving me. I have been waiting for the right moment and the right season.

It has not come. And I want to ask you, at least while you are dying, to be honest. Tell me, has your right time come?"

He had tears in his eyes. He said, "Forgive me, I used to say that to everyone, just to avoid their question -- because I don't know the answer. I am myself as ignorant as anybody but people think I am a wise man, and by and by they have convinced me that I am a wise man. I too have started believing in it."

I said, "At least now drop that belief. Die as ignorant as you are. Your whole life you have been dishonest, but even a single moment before death, if you are honest, perhaps the right time and the right season may come suddenly." And actually it happened. He closed his eyes, and I was sitting by his side and I saw the change happening around his energy; there was a freshness, a different fragrance. His old face became so beautiful -- wrinkled with age, but now showing a maturity.

He opened his eyes and he took my hand in his hand and he said, "I cannot be more grateful to anybody in my life than to you, although you have not done anything. But seeing the fact that death is coming, I closed my eyes and for the first time I looked inwards. It was there, it has always been there." He died an enlightened man. He lived unenlightened, in misery, in suffering, but he died enlightened, in tremendous joy.

He told me, "Nobody should weep or cry; nobody should be sad or serious because my death is an illumination. What life has not been able to give me, my death has given to me.

Celebrate! Tell the people that my death has to be celebrated."

And when I told the people, they wouldn't believe me. I said, "Whether you believe me or not, that old man's last wish should be fulfilled. If you cannot celebrate I will have to bring my friends, and we will celebrate."

I had to gather people, and they were hesitant because death is not celebrated, death is a calamity. But the death of an enlightened being, and particularly a death which makes a man enlightened, has to be a festival. It is far more valuable than birth. Birth brings you life.

Enlightened death brings you eternal life, a timeless ecstasy, a blissfulness that never ends.

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Daio wrote:

THE SPHERE OF PERFECT COMMUNION

IS CLEAR EVERYWHERE.

THE WATER IS ALIVE,

THE WILLOW EYES ARE GREEN.

WHY ARE PEOPLE THESE DAYS

IN SUCH A GREAT HURRY?

IN EACH LAND,

THE SPHERE OF PERFECT COMMUNION.

THOSE WHO GO RIGHT IN

ARE RARE.

Daio is saying: everything is so beautiful, the stars and the trees and the birds, why can't you simply sing and dance and join into the cosmos? Where are you hurrying to? Wherever you go you will be frustrated, because the thing that you are trying to find is hidden within you.

This very moment can become your illumination. Not a single step has to be taken.

IN EACH LAND,

THE SPHERE OF PERFECT COMMUNION.

THOSE WHO GO RIGHT IN

ARE RARE.

Just go right in, be a rare person! Don't search it outside. This is the whole teaching of all the buddhas.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked one question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

I HAVE MET SOMEONE WITH ENLIGHTENED EYES WHO DOES NOT JUST

BRING US WATER TO DRINK, BUT SHOWERS US WITH IT. AND YET, AND YET ...

ARE WE SO NEUROTIC, SO COMPLEX, SO FAR REMOVED FROM INNOCENCE, THAT WE CAN ONLY RECEIVE THAT FOR WHICH WE HAVE SUFFERED?

It is the whole wrong training of the religions, of the societies, of the cultures, which says that unless you deserve a thing, unless you are worthy of it, you cannot get it. That is the reason, Maneesha, that if I tell you that you are enlightened, you look here and there. You cannot trust -- "My god, I am enlightened! And I have not done anything. I have not tortured myself, I have not prayed. I have not fasted, I don't know the scriptures."

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But I say to you that for everything except enlightenment you will have to work. If you want money, you cannot sit with closed eyes. If you sit with closed eyes, you may even lose money -- somebody may cut your pocket. For money you have to work hard. If you want political power, you have to work hard. You have to be cunning, you have to be dishonest, you have to be a hypocrite. You have to use all kinds of right or wrong means to achieve the end. Only enlightenment, in the whole phenomenon of existence, is without any need to deserve it.

It is already there. You can deny it as long as you want, you can find excuses as long as you want, but finally you will be tired of excuses and you will have to accept it -- "Yes, I am enlightened."

It is just a totally different phenomenon. It is neither money, nor power, nor prestige, nor reputation. You don't have to learn it, you don't have to earn it. It is in your very heart, it is your heartbeat. You have just to look into your own being.

Now something really serious. You see, Sardar Gurudayal Singh already laughs. And it is a difficult one, Sardar!

Before I tell the joke, I have to tell you that if you tell a joke to an Englishman, he laughs twice. Once, not to look stupid; and again in the middle of the night when he gets it. If you tell the same joke to a German, he simply wonders why people are laughing. My oldest sannyasin, Haridas, is here. He is from Germany. He has been with me almost for fifteen years, but even today he asks people, "Why were you laughing?" The German mind has a speciality, it is a very serious mind. Laughing is a non-serious affair.

If you tell the same joke to a Jew, he will interrupt you in the middle. He will say, "Shut up. This is an old joke and moreover you are telling it all wrong." It is very difficult to make a Jew laugh at a joke because almost all the jokes are Jewish. That is their monopoly. And the reason is that they have suffered most in the world. Just to keep going, they have had to find something to laugh at; otherwise life was nothing but suffering.

Since Moses left Egypt with his followers to find the holy land in Israel, for four thousand years the Jews have been continuously in suffering. It has not stopped for a single moment.

Adolf Hitler alone killed six million Jews. But because of their continuous suffering they had to invent something to laugh at, something to enjoy. There was nothing in their life to laugh about.

I have always wondered that there is not a single joke which is Indian. I have been searching for a long time to find a single Indian joke, but it is because India has never suffered. Even in its poverty, even in its slavery, its religion was so much that it kept it patient, like opium. The rationalization is that you are suffering because of your past lives' evil acts.

The explanation is that if you suffer peacefully, your gain in the world beyond life is going to be great.

It is certainly a very poor phenomenon. India has been a serious land of seers, of saints.

You don't expect a saint to tell a joke. Can you imagine Mahavira laughing? It will be as strange as meeting a buffalo laughing. You can believe in the buffalo, but you cannot believe that Mahavir will laugh.

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Mabel is putting her hair up in curlers in front of the mirror in her room at the Dark Shadows Hotel.

"Do you realize, George," she says, "that this room is supposed to be haunted by a blood-thirsty ghost that returns every year on this date at midnight to find a human sacrifice?

"George ...? George ...?"

Do you see that Sardar Gurudayal has not laughed? In the middle of the night he will get the idea.

Wu, the Chinaman, always eats at Plato Salado's Greek restaurant, because Plato makes such good fried rice.

Every night, Wu comes in, sits down, and orders "flied lice". And every night, Plato collapses laughing when he hears Wu making his order. Sometimes, Plato even tells all the other customers to be quiet and listen to Wu asking for his "flied lice".

Finally, Wu gets really pissed off and decides to practice saying "fried rice" correctly.

The next time Wu goes into Plato's restaurant, he announces very plainly, "Fried rice, please."

Plato looks up in shock.

"What did you say?" asks the Greek.

"You heard what I said," shouts back Wu, "you flucking Gleek plick!"

Rainbow Banana-Kiss, the aging hippy, is puffing away frantically on his reefer in complete distress over his failing marriage. Desperate, he picks up the phone, pulls out a phone number that he has been keeping in his pocket, and dials it.

"Hello," says the tape-recorded voice at the other end, "this is Julie Frostbelly of Soulmate Divorce Company.

"We know your troubles," the voice continues. "Your story probably goes something like this ... A few years ago, you met someone special. It was wonderful. The honeymoon was ecstatic. You instantly remembered your past lives together. Your sex was true tantric love.

Channels and psychics confirmed what you already knew intuitively, that you had found your soulmate.

"Now, it is years later," the taped voice goes on. "The glow is gone. The sex is ordinary, and your soulmate is a pain in the neck. Your partner takes the biggest piece of cake, wants more money, and falls in love with any shmuck that walks by and winks. Face it -- the relationship is dead.

"Soulmate Divorce is here to help you. Our attorneys , Boris Babblebrain and Henry Hypojerk, will get you a complete legal divorce in keeping with your cosmic lifestyle.

"Through creative therapy, you can make crucial decisions like who gets to keep the water bed, the Tarot cards, and the children.

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"Come and see us, and for your comfort, our staff psychics will help free you from any karmic stress. Each of you will be given your own personalized divorce mantra.

"After all, you'll probably wind up together again in the next life!"

Percy and Peggy Sue get married and go on honeymoon to the Bahamas. While they are there, Percy buys a beautiful parrot in a cage and takes it back to the hotel room.

But every time that Percy and Peggy Sue start making love, the parrot starts commenting on their movements.

The cheeky parrot says things like, "Thatta girl, Peggy Sue!" and "Come on Percy, you can do better than that!" and "Oh! Oh! Slow down! Speed up, turn left ...!"

Finally, the parrot's descriptions get so explicit that Percy jumps off the bed and flings a sheet over the cage. "If you don't shut up," he shouts, "I'm going to send you to the zoo!"

That evening the honeymooners are packing to leave their hotel. But Peggy Sue is having some trouble closing her suitcase; she cannot fasten the lock.

"Darling," says Percy, "why don't you get on top, and I'll try." But the suitcase will not close.

"Look, sweetheart," says Peggy Sue, "you get on top and I'll try." But that does not work, either.

"Listen," suggests Percy, "why don't we both get on top, and we can both try."

At this point, the parrot pulls the sheet off its cage and shrieks, "Zoo or no zoo, this I've gotta see!"

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent.

You have thrown away your mind.

Close your eyes,

feel the body to be completely frozen.

Look in. The deeper you can go,

the closer you will be to your buddha-nature.

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It is very simple because it is your own space, you are not trespassing in anybody else's space. You are entering into your own being.

Deeper and deeper. You will start feeling a deep silence, a peace that passeth understanding, and a new fresh life energy, a blissfulness that you have never dreamt of.

This is your eternity, this is your inner buddha. Those who go in search somewhere else are lost.

Those who go in are surprised to find that the whole splendor and treasure of existence is available to them.

Being at the center of your life source, you are also connected with the universe. Your heartbeat slowly starts becoming more harmonious with the heartbeat of the universe.

When they become one you have arrived home.

To make it more clear, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax ... let go ... just watch.

The body is there, the mind is there,

but you are not.

You are the watcher.

This watching witnessing self is the buddha.

Rejoice in finding it.

Let it sink into every fiber of your being

so when you come out you are not the same person as you were going in, you bring something of the buddha with you.

Every day it goes on increasing. A moment comes that the buddha is there, whether you are in or out. That is the ultimate fulfillment.

The process is very simple. Whatever you are experiencing now, go on experiencing it in your twenty-four hour activities. Just like an undercurrent, just like breathing, just like a heartbeat.

You don't have to remember it, it is there.

You know it is there, and this knowing will transform your whole being, all your activities, your whole personality.

It will give you a new birth, a resurrection.

Nivedano ...

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(Drumbeat)

Come back,

but don't come back as you have gone in,

bring something from the inner treasure with you.

Peacefully, silently, gracefully

sit down like a buddha for a few seconds,

just remembering,

just reminding yourself

that this is the only experience in the world

for which nothing special is required,

no effort, no discipline.

It is already your nature.

You are it.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the resurrection of the buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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7

Now you have it

5 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

TOZAN SAID:

THE TEACHING OF THUSNESS HAS BEEN INTIMATELY COMMUNICATED BY

BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS. NOW YOU HAVE IT, SO KEEP IT WELL.

FILLING A SILVER BOWL WITH SNOW, HIDING A HERON IN THE MOONLIGHT

-- WHEN YOU ARRAY THEM, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. WHEN YOU MIX THEM, YOU KNOW WHERE THEY ARE. THE MEANING IS NOT IN THE WORDS, YET IT

RESPONDS TO THE INQUIRING IMPULSE. IF YOU ARE EXCITED, IT BECOMES A PITFALL; IF YOU MISS IT, YOU FALL INTO RETROSPECTIVE HESITATION.

TURNING AWAY AND TOUCHING ARE BOTH WRONG, FOR IT IS LIKE A MASS

OF FIRE. JUST TO DEPICT IT IN LITERARY FORM IS TO RELEGATE IT TO

DEFILEMENT.

IT IS BRIGHT JUST AS MIDNIGHT. IT DOESN'T APPEAR AT DAWN. IT ACTS AS

A GUIDE FOR BEINGS -- ITS USE REMOVES ALL PAIN.

ALTHOUGH IT IS NOT FABRICATED, IT IS NOT WITHOUT SPEECH. IT IS LIKE

FACING A JEWEL MIRROR: FORM AND IMAGE BEHOLD EACH OTHER. YOU ARE

NOT IT, IT ACTUALLY IS YOU.

IT IS LIKE A BABE IN THE WORLD, IN FIVE ASPECTS COMPLETE. IT DOES NOT

GO OR COME, NOR RISE NOR STAND.

ULTIMATELY IT DOES NOT APPREHEND ANYTHING, BECAUSE ITS SPEECH IS

NOT YET CORRECT. IT IS LIKE THE SIX LINES OF THE DOUBLE SPLIT

HEXAGRAM: THE RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE INTEGRATE. PILED UP, THEY

MAKE THREE; THE COMPLETE TRANSFORMATION MAKES FIVE. IT IS LIKE THE

TASTE OF THE FIVE-FLAVORED HERB, LIKE THE DIAMOND THUNDERBOLT.

Maneesha, Zen is more like poetry, like music, like dance. It is not a philosophy; hence, no conceptual thinking can comprehend it. Mind is absolutely impotent as far as Zen is concerned. You have to go beyond mind to have some taste of Zen. Going beyond the mind simply means dropping all thoughts, creating a vacuum -- a nothingness. But that nothingness is not empty; it is just like the sky. It is full of nothingness.

And when your eyes are without any dust and your mind is without any thoughts, you see clearly, straight into reality. It is not a question of belief. You don't have to believe what you will be seeing, you have simply to clean your inner eye, your vision, and the reality will appear on its own accord, not according to anybody's belief. Hence, those who have beliefs never attain to reality.

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I am making a statement against all religions. They are all based on belief -- believe first, then you will know. But once you believe you have closed the doors of inquiry, once you believe you have accepted your ignorance, your blindness. You have accepted that somebody else has known -- "What is the need for me to know? I have just to believe in Jesus Christ or Krishna or Buddha." But when Buddha drinks the water, your thirst is not quenched; and when Jesus eats, your hunger does not disappear. Even these ordinary things, mundane, you have to experience individually -- what to say about the ultimate experience? And Zen is the name of the ultimate experience.

You cannot depend on anybody. You cannot believe anybody's experience. You have to drop all beliefs, all thoughts, all philosophies, all religions, and you have to go, utterly innocent, inside your own being.

From there the door opens and life takes a new color, a new radiance, a new joy. Your words are no more empty, they contain overflowing significance. Your gestures become meaningful for the first time. Your actions have a poetry of their own. Your very movement is a dance because you have known the innermost blissfulness. It starts overflowing you in your actions, in your words, in your silences. It starts overflowing and reaching to others. You become almost a fountain, showering all around.

Or you can say you become a beautiful lotus spreading, radiating its perfume all over the space; whether anybody is there or not is not the point. Even in the faraway forest the rose will spread its joy, its fragrance. Perhaps a passer-by may be enriched by it, but it is not the point, whether anybody gets it or not.

When truth is realized, the overflowing of it is intrinsic. This you have to understand before I take up Tozan, because Tozan is one of the great masters. All his statements are just an overflowing of his experience; he is not quoting scriptures, he is simply sharing his experience.

And whenever somebody is sharing his own experience it is not a question of belief or not

-- just enjoy it. Perhaps in your enjoyment you may get some glimpse, very invisible ... some click, not available to the outside world. Perhaps for a moment the heartbeat stops, or takes a totally different rhythm.

If Zen was a philosophy it would be very easy to convey it. If it was a religion it would not be difficult -- there are thousands of scriptures depicting religion. But it is something more miraculous than anything else in the world. You can taste it, you can drink it, you can relish it, you can dance out of sheer joy, but you cannot say it.

That is the only difficulty with Zen -- you cannot say it. And unfortunately man has become too much language-oriented; he has forgotten other ways of communication. There are many other ways of communication. The idea that language is the only way of communication has made humanity very poor, very prosaic. It has lost the mystery of poetry, it has lost the meaningless, but utterly significant, music of existence. Now dance has become a discipline, outwardly practiced, rehearsed, but not something growing from within you and spreading out.

Discussing Tozan, you will have to remember that he is trying his best to say that which cannot be said. Every master has tried to say it; nobody has ever succeeded. One wonders why, if it cannot be said, why people should try to say it. One of the most prominent philosophers of the modern world, Wittgenstein, has written perhaps the most profound book Osho - The Language of Existence

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of this century. In one of his books, TRACTATUS, he comes to the point where he is almost turning into a mystic. He says, "That which cannot be said should not be said."

I was a student -- he was alive -- and I wrote him a letter saying, "You have contradicted yourself: 'That which cannot be said should not be said.' You are also saying something about it."

He must have been a man of tremendous honesty; immediately a letter came with an apology. He said, "It is true. I never thought about it, that even to say that nothing should be said, you have already said something."

One has to understand that all the mystics of the world have been in a tremendous difficulty. They know it cannot be said, but still they say -- they try at least their best. My own understanding is, it cannot be said but it can be heard. That is the reason why the mystics go on speaking, knowing perfectly well it is not possible to put it into language, but hoping that somebody may hear it between the words, between the lines, in the gestures, in the eyes of the master, in his presence, in his intimacy.

Perhaps just as a flame can jump to another unlit candle if you bring them close enough, intimate enough ... The master's work is to bring the disciple close enough to his inner flame, which is a fire. Because it is a fire, only the daring ones come very close to the master, because it is going to burn you completely and utterly. It is going to be your death -- and a resurrection.

The old, ancient Sanskrit scriptures say that the master is a death, but that is incomplete.

The master is also the eternal life, beyond death. But of course, first comes the death. The disciple comes close to the master and dies into his fire, into his love, and is resurrected in a totally new being: fresh, innocent, and a child of eternity. That's what Tozan's first statement is.

TOZAN SAID:

THE TEACHING OF THUSNESS HAS BEEN INTIMATELY COMMUNICATED BY

BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS. NOW YOU HAVE IT, SO KEEP IT WELL.

Every word is so full of significance.

THE TEACHING OF THUSNESS ...

It is a very strange way, particularly for people who are not acquainted with the world of Zen. Thusness is as important, or perhaps more important, than the so-called gods of all your religions. 'Thusness' means this moment your silent existence is all there is to discover.

Its splendor is great, but you will have to pay for it. You will have to pay for it with your mind, with your personality. You will have to go beyond your facade, your so-called cultured personality, your knowledge cultivated by others and from others. You will have to lose all this garbage ... you will have to be utterly empty. In that emptiness you will feel for the first time the experience of thusness.

Thusness can also be translated as 'thisness'. It can also be translated as 'suchness'. The original word used by Gautam Buddha is tathata. Just being in the moment -- no past, no future -- just being here, one-pointed, and the door of all the mysteries of existence opens.

The teaching of thusness is the teaching of all the great masters, and it has been intimately communicated because there is no other way. I am communicating it this very moment, but Osho - The Language of Existence

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not through my words, in the silences, in the gaps. When you feel simply this moment in its utter purity, you have become intimate with all the buddhas -- past, present, future.

The word 'buddha' is very significant; it means one who has attained to thusness. Just because of thusness, Buddha's other name is Tathagat. 'Tathagat' means one who lives moment to moment, who knows nothing of the past and who knows nothing of the future, who is utterly settled and centered here and now.

The moment you are centered here and now you are an intimate of all the buddhas. The moment you are intimate with reality, obviously you are intimate with all the masters and all the mystics.

This very moment you are connected with existence, but you go on roaming in the mind and you completely forget that behind the mind and beyond the mind there is a witness which is watching silently. You come across these experiences every day but you don't take much note of it.

For example, I was a student of a Mohammedan teacher and he was very strict; he was known in the school as the most strict person. The first day of his class he entered and said to us, "I want you to remember always, don't ask me for leave because you are having a headache or stomachache. Anything that I cannot see, I don't believe." Students do that continuously: "I have a headache so I want to go home."

That very evening ... He used to go for an evening walk, and just in front of his house there were two kadamb trees, very beautiful trees, so I waited in one tree with a big rock in my hand. He returned -- it was getting dark -- and I dropped the rock on his head. He freaked out.

I said, "Shut up! Now do you believe in headaches?"

He looked at me surprised, a little bit shocked. He said, "Listen, we can negotiate. If you have a headache just raise one finger and I will allow you to go out, but don't make it a public thing. I will not say anything about this rock that you have thrown on me. It is a compromise."

I said, "I never compromise. In the first place, I don't believe that you have been hurt."

He said, "You are strange ..."

I said, "You are strange. Remember in the morning, at the beginning of the class, you said you don't believe in headaches? I am going to make this incident public knowledge."

But it is something far more important than just an incident. When you have a headache, how do you know? There must be a watcher behind the head who knows the headache. The headache itself cannot know; there must be a witness, a watcher, who knows the headache, who knows the stomachache, who feels emotions and can watch those emotions.

When you are full of anger, if you sit down and watch you can watch the anger clouds all around you, dark. When you are in love you can watch a certain perfume, a certain beauty, a certain blissfulness all around you. Every moment in ordinary life you are coming across the witness but you have never recognized it, you have just not taken note of it. At this very moment I am speaking to you, you are hearing me. Just look a little more back -- there is a witness who knows that you are hearing. That witness is your eternity.

"By all these mystics, the message has been conveyed intimately" means, they have brought people closer to them. All their words are nothing but fishermen's nets. Through their words they bring you closer. If their words trigger something in you, you feel pulled, magnetized, and the closer you come the less you are. And when you have become really Osho - The Language of Existence

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intimate, you disappear -- you, as you have known yourself -- and the one who is behind, who you had never taken note of, comes in front. For the first time you know you are only a witnessing consciousness, everything else is a clothing.

Your inner center, which is the connecting link with the universal heart from where you get your life, your love, your joy, is to be found in witnessing. The master is a witness.

Becoming intimate with him, the fire of witnessing simply jumps in a single, instantaneous moment. Where there was all dark suddenly becomes light; where there was all misery suddenly becomes a tremendous joy overflowing you, and a great longing arises in you.

Just as before you wanted more money, more power, more prestige, now there is only one longing -- how to spread this fire. Because unless a person is burned completely, all his falsities gone, he will never know the beauty and the truth and the splendor of existence, which was available to him every moment.

THE TEACHING OF THUSNESS HAS BEEN INTIMATELY COMMUNICATED BY

BUDDHAS. NOW YOU HAVE IT ...

Tozan must be talking to his disciples.

I am saying to you, you have it. I am not simply reading Tozan. On my own accord I am saying to you: you have it. Take note of it and don't forget it. In ordinary life go on remembering that you are a buddha. Nothing else is needed, this very remembrance that you are a buddha is going to transform all your activities.

I am reminded of a great mystic, Nagarjuna. He used to live naked, and even kings and queens used to touch his feet. He was absolutely a beggar -- he had not even a begging bowl.

So while he was visiting the capital the queen presented him with a golden begging bowl studded with diamonds. With tears she asked him not to reject it.

Nagarjuna said, "I will not reject it, I will not hurt your feelings, but it will be very difficult for me to keep it for long -- a naked man, and I have to sleep also. Anybody can steal it. I sleep under the sky, I sleep under a tree ... It is not going to be with me for long."

But the queen said, "It does not matter, I will prepare another better than this. Now it is a question of my prestige. So if it is lost, whenever I see you again you will get another."

Nagarjuna said, "I have no objection."

A thief was hearing all this and said, "My god. A golden bowl worth millions of rupees, studded with diamonds, and this naked man ... it is absolutely unsuitable, it does not fit." So he followed Nagarjuna thinking, "Let this fellow go to sleep ..." Nagarjuna was staying in ruins outside the town where doors were missing, where walls had fallen -- and this thief was hiding behind a wall.

Nagarjuna was watching -- "Somebody is following me. Obviously he cannot be following me to these ruins. He must be following for the begging bowl." Then he saw the thief hiding behind a wall. He threw the begging bowl outside the window and told the man, "Take it. I will not force you to become a thief, I give it to you as a gift."

Do you see how the buddhas behave? "I will not force you to become a thief because that will be my crime, not your crime. I give it to you as a gift. Just take it and run away." The man could not run away, could not believe it. He was almost frozen. He had never seen such a man, who can throw a thing worth millions of rupees just as if it is nothing, and he is saving him from being a thief. He is giving it to him as he would give a friend a gift.

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Something triggered in the thief's heart. He said, "Can I come inside and touch your feet and sit by your side just for a few minutes? I have never seen such a man like you."

Nagarjuna said to him, "That was exactly the purpose of throwing the bowl, to bring you in. Come in, sit down."

He followed everything. He asked Nagarjuna, "How could you manage to throw such a precious thing? I am a thief, to be honest. I cannot be dishonest to a man like you. And you have been so compassionate that you don't want me to be a thief, but that is my profession."

Nagarjuna said, "There is no harm, you continue to be a thief. Just remember one thing, that you are a buddha."

He said, "My god, I am a thief and you are telling me to remember that I am a buddha!"

Nagarjuna said, "This is enough. You just try, and I am going to stay for two weeks. You can come anytime, day or night, to give me the result, what happens."

After the third day he was there with the begging bowl, asking Nagarjuna, "Please take it back; otherwise I will be murdered. Now the whole town knows that I have got it. I have been hiding it here and there but it can be protected only by a queen or a king."

Nagarjuna said, "You leave it here, it is not important. What is important is, what happened to the discipline I had given to you?"

He said, "You have given me a tremendous discipline. I first thought, 'It is so easy just to remember that I am a buddha.' But you are very clever, because when I went to steal something, just the remembrance that 'I am a buddha' and I would get frozen, my hands would not move to take anything. For three days I have not stolen a single thing. This is unprecedented in my life. And I don't think that again I will be able to steal. This is a dangerous thing you have said to me, because the moment I find an opportunity to steal something, the remembrance that I am a buddha ... I simply relax, I escape -- it is not right for a buddha. I cannot let you down or let the buddha down."

Nagarjuna said, "That is your problem. But take this begging bowl because somebody will take it, and it does not matter who takes it."

He said, "Forget all about it. Just as you remember, I also remember: I am a buddha."

The very remembrance of who you are is going to transform your whole life. You cannot do anything against your consciousness. You have been doing it because you have been unaware. The only secret is to achieve a recognition that inside you there is a witnessing self.

The name of the witnessing self is the buddha. In every act, in every word, just remember your inner being -- its blissfulness, its silence, its grandeur, its eternity -- and you cannot be the same man.

This is called the transmission of the lamp. It happens in the intimacy of the master and the disciple. Nothing is said but something is understood. The very energy of the master, the very presence simply penetrates you and awakens you, brings you out of your dreams and your sleep. That is the meaning of the word 'buddha': one who is awake.

NOW YOU HAVE IT, SO KEEP IT WELL.

FILLING A SILVER BOWL WITH SNOW, HIDING A HERON IN THE MOONLIGHT

-- WHEN YOU ARRAY THEM, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. WHEN YOU MIX THEM, YOU KNOW WHERE THEY ARE. THE MEANING IS NOT IN THE WORDS, YET IT

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RESPONDS TO THE INQUIRING IMPULSE. IF YOU ARE EXCITED, IT BECOMES A PITFALL; IF YOU MISS IT, YOU FALL INTO RETROSPECTIVE HESITATION.

TURNING AWAY AND TOUCHING ARE BOTH WRONG, FOR IT IS LIKE A MASS

OF FIRE.

When you go in, you are entering into a mass of fire. Touching it is dangerous. Turning away from it is dangerous. Just remembering it, that your inner world is not dark but is radiant with thousands of suns, is going to transform your life in every detail.

JUST TO DEPICT IT IN LITERARY FORM IS TO RELEGATE IT TO DEFILEMENT.

IT IS BRIGHT JUST AS MIDNIGHT. IT DOESN'T APPEAR AT DAWN. IT ACTS AS

A GUIDE FOR BEINGS -- ITS USE REMOVES ALL PAIN.

ALTHOUGH IT IS NOT FABRICATED, IT IS NOT WITHOUT SPEECH. IT IS LIKE

FACING A JEWEL MIRROR: FORM AND IMAGE BEHOLD EACH OTHER. YOU ARE

NOT IT, IT ACTUALLY IS YOU.

When you are facing a mirror, you see yourself in the mirror. Tozan is saying, YOU ARE NOT IT, IT ACTUALLY IS YOU.

It is a complicated phenomenon. When you stand before a mirror, one ray of light is going towards the mirror, making your reflection in the mirror; another ray is coming towards you so that you can witness that the mirror is reflecting you.

But you are neither the reflected one nor the reflection. You are the witness, which no mirror can reflect. A witness is always simply a witness. It cannot be anything, not even a reflection.

IT IS LIKE A BABE IN THE WORLD, IN FIVE ASPECTS COMPLETE. IT DOES NOT

GO OR COME, NOR RISE NOR STAND.

It simply is. It neither goes nor comes, it is neither born nor dies, it is neither young nor old, it is neither man nor woman. It is simply a pure witnessing, watching.

You cannot go behind it, or beyond it. You cannot watch your own watching. That will create a logical regress -- what they call in logic 'infinite regression'. If you say that you can watch your watcher, that means watcher number one is being watched by watcher number two

-- what about number three? Where are you going to stop? Wherever you will stop ... you will have to stop somewhere. You will get tired -- millions and trillions, all watching the next.

Finally you will have to say that "This is the last." But why go so far away? The first is the last! You cannot go behind it.

Have you seen small children when for the first time they see a mirror? If you have not, you can do the experiment. A small child who cannot stand up yet and moves on all fours, just put a mirror in front of him. First he will be very inquiring -- the fellow is there ... He cannot think that it is his own reflection; he has never seen his own reflection. He does not know that mirrors exist.

First he will try to touch the fellow. But it is strange, the fellow also touches him. He laughs, the fellow laughs; he mimics, the fellow mimics. A strange fellow! And when he touches there is nothing but glass. Without exception, every child is going to have a look behind the mirror -- where is the other child hiding? He will crawl around the side and look behind.

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A Mulla Nasruddin story ... By the side of the road he found a small mirror. He looked into it, and he said, "My god, this looks like my father. I had never thought that he is so fashionable." He could not conceive that it was his own reflection, he had never seen a mirror before -- this was the first encounter.

And of course it looked ... the only way for him to conceive it was, it looked like his father. His father was dead; he himself had become very old. It really looked like his father.

But he said, "I have never thought that he is so fashionable. He was a very traditional man, very orthodox. But anyway, it is good I have found it. I will keep it as his memory."

So he came home, but he did not want his wife to know about it. But no man has ever been able to hide anything from his wife. Just by the way he entered the wife said, "It seems you have done something wrong."

He said, "My god, I have not done anything wrong."

She said, "I will see. Your face seems to be that of a guilty man."

He went upstairs and put the mirror in an old trunk. And when he had gone out for work the wife went up, opened the box and took out the mirror. She looked into it and she said, "My god. So, he is having a love affair with some ugly looking, tattered woman. Now let him come back ..."

If you have never seen a mirror, it is obvious -- you cannot immediately think that it is your reflection.

A drunkard came home. Not to create trouble, he went very silently into his wife's room.

He had to go to the bathroom, so he went into the bathroom and there he saw in the mirror that his face had scratches and blood on it, because he had been fighting in the pub.

He said, "This is going to be troublesome in the morning. When the wife sees it, I will be caught red-handed." So he tried somehow to hide those scratches, but he could not find anything other than a lipstick. He managed to cover all the scratches and was very happy at his success.

In the early morning, when the wife went into the bathroom, she shouted, "Who is the person ...? It must be you, you idiot! You destroyed my lipstick and you have destroyed the mirror." Because he had made all those lines on the mirror, where his face had been. This face was in a drunken state. Even that much was a great intelligence, to find that this is his face.

We are all drunk, almost living in sleepiness. Our actions go wrong; our intentions go wrong; our life becomes a misery, a pain, an anguish. But the ultimate reason and cause is that we are not aware of our being. Just a single thing contains all the essence of all the religions: awareness of oneself. And then you cannot do anything wrong.

ULTIMATELY IT DOES NOT APPREHEND ANYTHING, BECAUSE ITS SPEECH IS

NOT YET CORRECT. IT IS LIKE THE SIX LINES OF THE DOUBLE SPLIT

HEXAGRAM: THE RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE INTEGRATE. PILED UP, THEY

MAKE THREE; THE COMPLETE TRANSFORMATION MAKES FIVE. IT IS LIKE THE

TASTE OF THE FIVE-FLAVORED HERB, LIKE THE DIAMOND THUNDERBOLT.

The Zen experience is certainly a diamond thunderbolt. It comes like lightning, and suddenly everything that was dark becomes light. And once you have seen yourself, you cannot forget, even if you want to. Have you tried one thing: can you forget your name? Just Osho - The Language of Existence

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try. The more you try to forget it, the more you will remember it, because each time, to forget you have to remember.

We have never looked in. Once you look in, a lightning thunderbolt ... and the recognition of the face of the buddha within you, your original face. Then even if you want to forget it you cannot. Once a buddha, forever a buddha. It is your essential self. It is not an achievement; it is not something far away, that you have to travel to get it. It is just a question of looking in, where you have never looked before.

All our meditations are devoted to a single thing, looking in.

A poem by Kanzan:

MY MIND IS LIKE

THE AUTUMN MOON,

UNDER WHICH THE GREEN POND

APPEARS SO LIMPID,

BRIGHT AND PURE.

IN FACT, ALL ANALOGIES AND

COMPARISONS ARE INAPT.

IN WHAT WORDS CAN I DESCRIBE IT?

No words can describe the beauty of a moon reflected in the pond.

Daio wrote:

NO LONGER AWARE OF

MIND AND OBJECT,

I SEE EARTH, MOUNTAINS, RIVERS

AT LAST.

THE DHARMAKAYA'S EVERYWHERE.

WORLDLINGS, FACING IT,

CAN'T MAKE IT OUT.

Dharmakaya means your body of religiousness. Those who are looking outwards cannot find it; those who look inwards, they immediately jump into it. It is always there.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

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THOSE DIAMOND THUNDERBOLTS YOU HURTLE AROUND YOU WHEN YOU

DANCE WITH US EACH EVENING -- AT THE RATE WE'RE GOING, SOMEONE

COULD BE KNOCKED CONSCIOUS!

BUT PLEASE, DON'T STOP!

Maneesha, I want you all to be knocked conscious. But you are so clever, such accomplished actors that you even act meditation. You follow Nivedano's drum just like actors. Nivedano drums and you start your gibberish just as if you are a robot, just waiting for Nivedano to push the button. But you are not total. If you are total, it will not be acting anymore.

You do, and you try to be total, but trying will not help -- you have to be total. I can hear and I can see: people are trying to do, in every possible way, but they know inside that it is all acting. That's where they miss the point.

Make it a reality, throw out all your garbage. Don't say relevant things; that you are doing every day, the whole day. Just for two minutes, go crazy without any fear. When you are going crazy yourself, you can come back any moment. When Nivedano beats his drum you will become silent.

But remember one thing: everything has to be authentic, sincere. Otherwise you will do every day the same thing; it will become automatic. You will become a good actor, but not a meditator. I want you really to be knocked conscious, because that is the only way to find the meaning and truth of life.

This evening, don't act, be real and be as total as possible. Throw out all the gibberish --

and you have enough. Don't be worried that you will miss it, it will come back! When you throw it out, it is just like a thrown ball. It hits the wall or the tree and comes back to you.

Here, all around, everybody is throwing his garbage. Once in a while it gets mixed up, entangled; I can see it, that you are getting somebody else's garbage.

But garbage is garbage ... and that's why I warn you, don't sit silently. Throw everything as fast as possible, because you have to throw yours and you have to avoid others' coming --

because everybody is throwing towards you. If you sit silently, you will collect such a good load of garbage that it will be very difficult for you even to move with that load -- a truckload!

I go on seeing, when people are throwing their garbage it goes on slipping from Stonehead Niskriya's head; it falls over it, jumps away. But he is really a stonehead. He remains silent, does not allow anything to enter into him.

Don't remain silent. Gibberish is one of the most scientific ways to clean your mind. And if somebody wants the garbage, he can take it; but here nobody wants it. So when you are throwing, be honest, don't act. When you are silent, be really silent. When you are looking in, then don't open your eyes even for a split second just to see what is happening to others. It is not your concern what is happening to them. Let them tackle their problem; you manage yours.

And when I say -- and Nivedano beats the drum -- to relax and let go, just fall like a falling tree; don't try to make yourself comfortable. That is the point where you miss. I see people making themselves comfortable. From the very beginning they look all around -- where will they have to relax? Which side to fall? You just fall as if you are falling dead. And there is no Osho - The Language of Existence

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harm if you don't return. We will miss you, but you will give us another occasion for celebration!

Before this knocking out happens, a few laughters just to prepare the way. Even if you have to die, die laughing. And one never knows ... everybody has to die. Someday somebody is going to die here, but here death will be a totally different phenomenon. It will be a conscious death. And to die consciously is the greatest achievement in life because then you are never born again, you enter into the eternal sources of life.

That's why I tell a few jokes for you to remember in your eternity. Once in a while you may meet another sannyasin. And you will be able to recognize sannyasins when they tell jokes; nobody else is going to tell jokes. You will meet dry-bone sannyasins, old-type, old-fashioned. This will be your distinction, you will be known by your laughter.

Jablonski wants to have a date with Sally-May, so he goes to the pharmacy. Behind the counter is pretty Lucy Go-Good.

"Ahem!" says Jablonski, clearing his throat. "May I see the manager or a male clerk?"

"I am the manager now," smiles Lucy, "and we have no male clerks. Tell me what you want."

"Well," says Jablonski, nervously. "I would like a few condoms."

"Okay," replies Lucy. "What size?"

"Gosh!" says Jablonski. "I don't know. Do they come in sizes?"

"Come back here," says Lucy, taking him behind a curtain at the back of the store. "Just put it in," she says, lying back on a couch and lifting her skirt.

Jablonski is shocked, but seeing the situation, decides that it is okay. As he inserts his machinery, Lucy smiles and says, "Size seven. Take it out. Now, how many condoms do you want?"

Dazed, Jablonski staggers out of the store, with his package in his hand, and wanders down the street. He runs into Paddy.

"What do you have there?" asks Paddy, quietly finishing off a bottle of whisky.

Jablonski tells Paddy what just happened in the pharmacy, and Paddy's eyes light up. He dashes off and wobbles into the store where Lucy is still waiting behind the counter.

"Excuse me," slobbers Paddy, "but do you have condoms?"

"Yes," smiles Lucy. "What size?"

"Size?" smiles Paddy, trying not to laugh. "Gosh, I don't know."

"Well," remarks Lucy, easily, "come with me."

They go behind the curtain, Lucy lifts her skirt, throws herself on the couch and says, "Put it in." Paddy does, and does and does, until he is done.

"You take size eight," says Lucy getting up. "How many would you like?"

"Well," replies Paddy, "actually, I don't want any. I just came in for a fitting!"

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Fergus Fillup makes himself a small distillery and starts to brew some illegal White Lightning whiskey. His whiskey is so strong that Fergus boasts it can burn its way through a steel plate.

One day, Fergus drinks a little too much of his home-made whiskey, and he sees so many animals running around his room that he sticks up a sign outside his house which reads:

"Fergus Fillup's Circus."

Police Officer O'Leary and his men go to investigate. Fergus invites O'Leary into his room and puts a large glass of White Lightning whiskey into the policeman's hand.

When officer O'Leary staggers out half an hour later, his men gather around him excitedly, asking him what happened.

Officer O'Leary raises his hand for silence.

"It is all right, men," he slobbers, "the worst is over. He has agreed to sell me half of the elephants!"

Ivan Ivanovitch is sitting at home in his apartment in Moscow, when he hears a loud knock at the door.

"Who is it?" asks Ivan nervously.

"It is the Angel of Death!" booms a voice.

"Ah, thank god," says Ivan. "I thought it was the KGB."

Paddy and Sean are out duck hunting. They creep down to the edge of Farmer Banana's pond and find lots of ducks swimming around near Banana's cows.

"Hey," says Paddy. "Those ducks are not afraid of that cow."

"I can see that," replies Sean, "but if you shoot at the ducks you might hit the cow."

"Yes, man," says Paddy. "But think -- what if we were in the skin of the cow?"

The next day they go to the theatrical outfitters and hire a cow costume. Paddy is in the front end and Sean in the rear. As they approach the pool, the ducks do not move at all.

Suddenly, there is panic in the front end of the cow, as Paddy tries to start running.

"Stop that, Paddy," hisses Sean. "You will frighten the ducks."

"Okay," says Paddy, "but you had better brace yourself. There is a bull right behind you!"

Now, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

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(Drumbeat)

Be silent. Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be frozen.

Go inside. Look deep,

as if you are looking into a deep well.

Deeper and deeper ...

until you find the center of your life radiating, a light unto itself. The moment you feel the light, a great joy and a great silence arise in you. This center connects you with the universe.

To be more intimate with the universe, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax ... let go. Just watch. The body is there, the mind is there, but you are not the mind or the body.

You are just the witness. This witness is the buddha.

Remember, around the clock, that you are carrying a buddha within you. Act accordingly, respond accordingly. This small remembrance of the buddha within you is going to transform you totally into a new being:

radiant and dancing with joy,

grateful to the universe,

utterly humble, peaceful and loving.

This is the moment when Tozan must have said, THE TEACHING OF THUSNESS HAS

BEEN INTIMATELY COMMUNICATED BY ALL THE BUDDHAS. NOW YOU HAVE

IT, SO KEEP IT WELL.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back ... but not the same as you have gone in. Come back as a buddha, without any hesitation, silently, peacefully, gracefully.

Sit down for a few moments just reminding yourself that you are a buddha. And let this remembrance continue around the clock, and you will see a tremendous revolution happening within you and without you.

Your every act will become a poetry,

your every movement will become a dance,

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your very breathing will become musical,

your very heart will beat

in deep synchronicity with the universe.

You will not be separate,

you will be one with the oceanic consciousness

that surrounds us all.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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8

Please, settle for no-self

6 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

BUKKO SAID:

IT MAY BE ASKED, HOW IS THE SELF TO BE APPROACHED? BY LOOKING

INTO IT THROUGH THIS SORT OF INQUIRY: FORTY YEARS AGO, WHERE DID IT

COME FROM; AND A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE, WHERE WILL IT HAVE GONE

TO? AND RIGHT NOW, WHO IS THE PERSON WHO IS MAKING THE INQUIRY?

THAT TRUE FACE WHICH WAS BEFORE FATHER AND MOTHER WERE BORN, WHERE IS IT RIGHT NOW? WHEN SUDDENLY ONE DAY THE LIGHT OF LIFE, NOW SO BRILLIANT, WILL BE WITHDRAWN, WHERE DOES IT GO TO?

IN THIS SORT OF WAY, CONTINUED BUKKO, LOOK INTO THE SELF. LOOK

WHEN YOU SLEEP, LOOK WHEN YOU SIT, LOOK WHEN YOU WALK. WHEN YOU

FIND YOU CANNOT LOOK ANYMORE, THEN YOU MUST LOOK AND SEE HOW

THAT INABILITY TO LOOK APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS. AS YOU ARE LOOKING

AT HOW THE SIGHT COMES AND THE SIGHT GOES, SATORI REALIZATION WILL

ARISE OF ITSELF.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, BUKKO SAID: THE DHARMA IS DIFFERENT FROM

SEEING, HEARING, PERCEIVING, KNOWING -- SEEING, HEARING, PERCEIVING, KNOWING ARE ALL DHARMA.

THIS MOUNTAIN PRIEST MAKES A HOME FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE WIDE

EARTH. WITHOUT THE DUST BEING RAISED, THEY ENTER THE REALM OF

PARADISE.

LIFTING HIGH HIS STAFF, BUKKO SAID: OM, OM, OM! HASTE, HASTE, HASTE!

QUICK, QUICK, QUICK! BOW, BOW, BOW!

THROWING HIGH, NOT REACHING THE SKY; LAYING DOWN, NOT REACHING

THE EARTH. ALL THE BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS FIND NO HOLD AT ALL.

HOLD, NO HOLD. OM! -- DIVINE STREAMS RUSHING, RUSHING!

Maneesha, all the religions of the world are concerned with something objective, a God who is somewhere above the clouds, a heaven, a hell. But they are all outside of you, they are all objective. Zen's basic difference from all religions is, its inquiry is absolutely subjective. It does not bother about whether there is a God or not, whether there is a heaven and a hell or not. These are all fictitious questions, and all the answers given for or against are going to be fictitious.

To the Zen seeker, the only reality is inwards. He does not deny the outside reality, but he does not concern himself with it. That is the work of science, to inquire into the objective reality. The authentic religions should be confined to the inquiry into the subjectivity of your Osho - The Language of Existence

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consciousness: from where arises your life, your love, your dance; from where this whole existence arises, and to where you disappear.

Now we know even existence does not allow anything to be stable; even the greatest stars, which may have lived millions of years or trillions of years, one day have to die. Every day great stars die, and every day new stars are born -- but from where? What is the source of all life? Whether it exists in the poor grass leaves or in the richest and greatest star, it does not matter, the source of life is the same.

And the only right inquiry is to go withinwards, to find your roots, to find your center, to go deep into your center as much as possible. Finally you will be surprised to know that as you go deeper you start disappearing. A moment comes when you disappear and the whole universe opens all its mysteries.

The individual is a fiction -- the whole cosmos is a reality. We are just dewdrops on lotus leaves, very beautiful in the early morning sun. But a small breeze comes and the dewdrop slips into the ocean. It does not die, it simply becomes infinite, eternal. As a dewdrop it was going to die sooner or later. As an individual we are all going to disappear into the universe.

Before we disappear, the only way to live a life of joy and blissfulness, a life of gratitude and prayer, is to find your eternal roots. And they are so close within your grasp, you don't have to go anywhere, neither in time nor in space.

This very moment you are breathing the universe, your heartbeat is in tune with the universe; this very moment your roots are being nourished by the universe, just you have never looked within. And you have been unnecessarily begging for small things, while inside you are an emperor. The splendor that you have inside you is unimaginable, the treasure is incalculable. Just a single look inside and a new dimension of existence opens up. And this is your reality, authentic reality. It is so blissful and ecstatic that once you have tasted it you will carry this taste around the clock.

In terms of Zen this is called the experience of the buddha. Everybody is a buddha. A few buddhas are looking outward; hence they are not aware of their inner treasure and majesty.

And a few buddhas have looked inward and are amazed: what you are seeking outside is trivial, the real treasure is inside. And you were born with it -- it is not something to be achieved, it is something to be recognized, to be remembered. It is a forgotten language.

Zen can be reduced into a simple definition: it teaches you the forgotten language. It teaches you the language of the inner world. Simple are the steps; there is no complication.

You don't need to have a great intelligence, all that you need is a little courage ... a little courage to forget all the desires that lead you outwards; a little courage to look inwards, which is an unknown territory, untraveled. In the beginning it will look very dark and you will be very alone.

Most people in life have tried to look inwards, then immediately came back to the outside world. They have become too much accustomed to being a sheep in a crowd. They don't have the guts to be a lion, and to be alone. They don't know the beauty of aloneness; they don't even know the distinction between loneliness and aloneness.

Loneliness is always begging for somebody, loneliness is missing somebody. Loneliness is a miserable state. But aloneness is finding yourself in such glory, in such beauty and benediction, that no desire remains. Even clouds are below your feet, even faraway stars suddenly come close to you, because you are getting more and more intimate with the existence.

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The only richness is to know oneself.

By knowing oneself one comes to know that he was only a door to the vast and the infinite, to the eternal and the deathless. It is a very strange paradox that the moment you know yourself, you are not, the whole is. The dewdrop has disappeared, and all around is the ocean.

One of the Indian mystics, Kabir, in his youth wrote a small poem, the beginning of which means, "I have been searching my self, my friend. But on the contrary, finding myself, I found no 'myself.' The dewdrop disappeared in the ocean, now where to find it? I am no more."

At the time of his death he called his son, Kamal, and said to him, "Correct those lines. As I have become more intimate with reality I see that a correction is urgently needed, and I am going to die. After me nobody will have the courage to correct me." And in fact those lines are so beautiful, there is no need to correct them.

Kamal said, "Those lines are so beautiful -- the dewdrop disappearing into the ocean --

what more do you want?"

Kabir said, "Change it, make it the other way around -- the ocean disappearing into the dewdrop. My first experience was that the dewdrop is disappearing; my last experience is that the ocean has disappeared into me. Now I am the whole."

What people like al-Hillaj Mansoor say -- "ANA'L-HAQ!" I am the truth -- is not bragging, they are simply stating an ordinary fact of everybody's life. You either know or you don't know -- it is up to you. You can delay as long as possible; you have the whole eternity to postpone. But by postponing the truth you are living in utter misery, suffering, anguish, anxiety. Your whole life is just a tragedy -- tragedy upon tragedy, failure upon failure.

Everybody is trying to hide his tears and failures. Your love is unfulfilled, your desire is incomplete, whatever you have longed for has disappeared as a mirage ...

You know the ordinary proverb of the ancients: man proposes and God disposes. There is no God, and what purpose will be served by God disposing your desires? He will be getting mad by disposing everybody's propositions. Everybody is proposing a thousand and one things, and God goes on disposing! He seems to be a head clerk or something, who simply disposes of files without even looking in them.

But the proverb carries meaning. God may not exist, but in the very fact of proposing you have disposed yourself. In the very fact of proposing you have asked existence to be according to you, and this vast existence cannot be according to you. If you want it to be according to you, you will have to be according to it.

Don't try to swim upstream, just let the river take you to the ocean. Why make unnecessary effort and get tired? That is one of the essentials of Zen: no effort, total relaxation into the hands of totality; no seeking, but just looking in. Because it is already there, you don't have to seek.

Zen will not agree with Jesus -- neither do I agree. The words are very beautiful; one is tempted to agree with Jesus when he says, "Seek and ye shall find" -- it is poetry -- "Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you. Ask and the answer will be given to you."

It hurts to object, but one is helpless. Jesus has to be criticized on those points, because Zen says, if you seek you will go far away. Don't seek, just be. In seeking you have to go somewhere, you have to do something, you have to follow some guide. Don't seek, just be; or Osho - The Language of Existence

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don't seek and find. On whose doors are you going to knock? It is beautiful when you read Jesus, "Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you." We can forgive him for his poetry, but on whose doors are you going to knock?

There are no doors to existence. Don't waste your time knocking on doors. Just close your eyes and the whole sky of the inner is open; there are no doors, no windows, no locks, no keys. And Jesus says the answer will be given to you if you question. Zen says you are the answer, just drop the question. It is the question that is hindering your finding the answer.

Don't question, just enter inside yourself with grandeur, an essence of birthright. Without any question, you are the answer. Your consciousness, your awareness, your being, reveals all the truths and all the mysteries of existence.

Bukko is an important master. He says:

IT MAY BE ASKED, HOW IS THE SELF TO BE APPROACHED? BY LOOKING

INTO IT THROUGH THIS SORT OF INQUIRY: FORTY YEARS AGO, WHERE DID IT

COME FROM; AND A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE, WHERE WILL IT HAVE GONE

TO? AND RIGHT NOW, WHO IS THE PERSON WHO IS MAKING THE INQUIRY?

That is the most significant point. You are asking a question, but are you aware who the person is behind the question, who is asking the question? The question cannot arise from nowhere, there must be someone hidden inside you who is asking the question. Drop the question and find the questioner. And in finding the questioner, you will find the answer. It is a very strange and paradoxical world. Howsoever difficult it may seem in the beginning, if you just take a single step inwards, everything goes on becoming more and more simple.

Gertrude Stein, one of the most significant women poets, was on her deathbed. Her friends had gathered, knowing that her death was close. Suddenly, she opened her eyes and asked,

"What is the answer?" Everybody looked at each other, thinking, "It seems she has gone senile

... We don't know the question, how can we say what the answer is?" Somebody gathered courage and asked, "You are being very illogical. You are asking us, 'What is the answer?' but we don't know the question."

Gertrude Stein laughed and said, "Okay, then tell me what the question is!" And she died with a smile.

To me, in the West very few people have attained to the state Gertrude Stein attained. In her last moment she certainly became a buddha. She is saying, there is no question and there is no answer. Life is so simple, so beautiful, so honest. There is no place for any question or for any answer. Life can be sung, life can be danced, life can be loved; but there is no question and there is no answer.

Bukko is saying:

WHO IS THE PERSON WHO IS MAKING THE INQUIRY? THAT TRUE FACE

WHICH WAS BEFORE FATHER AND MOTHER WERE BORN, WHERE IS IT RIGHT

NOW?

You must have had a face before you were born. Or were you faceless? And you will have a face when you are dead. Or do you think you won't have any face?

Zen's most significant inquiry is to find the original face. This face that you have right now is not your original face, it is changing every moment. Every moment you are becoming older; every moment death is coming closer. Just a few years before you were a child, and just a few Osho - The Language of Existence

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years afterwards you were an old man. A few more years and not even a trace of you will be found anywhere. How many millions of people have lived before you?

Some crackpot has inquired -- because only crackpots inquire into such things -- and found that wherever you are sitting, there have been at least eight graves in the past. You are sitting on eight ghosts! And just think of the implication -- you will be the ninth. And the tenth ghost will be sitting on your head. Where have all those people disappeared?

No. This face, this body, this mind which comes and goes, is not your true being, your original face. You have to find something in you which never changes. In Zen language, that which never changes in you is your original face. All others are masks.

Only one thing never changes in you and that is witnessing, watchfulness, awareness.

Everything changes. You are aware of the anger, anger will change. How long can you be angry? The hottest person is going to be cool sooner or later, and the coolest person can be driven to be hot. You love, but the moment you say, "I love," you should remember that love has started dying. Soon you will be carrying the corpse of love, still saying the old words, repeated dialogues. But deep inside you know the love that was a romance, a poetry, a song, is no more there; your heart no more sings, no more dances.

But awareness remains the same. At one time it was aware that you loved, now it is aware that love is gone. Seasons come and go, flowers blossom and disappear in the dust, but at the deepest core of your being is the greatest mystery of awareness, which is eternal, which is your original face.

WHEN SUDDENLY ONE DAY THE LIGHT OF LIFE, NOW SO BRILLIANT, WILL

BE WITHDRAWN, WHERE DOES IT GO TO?

IN THIS SORT OF WAY, CONTINUED BUKKO, LOOK INTO THE SELF. LOOK

WHEN YOU SLEEP, LOOK WHEN YOU SIT, LOOK WHEN YOU WALK.

And you will be surprised that the awareness remains the same. When you are sitting, it does not mean that the awareness is sitting also. When you are walking, it does not mean that the awareness is walking also. When you are going to your bed, it does not mean the awareness is also going to sleep. Who watches the dreams? Asleep or awake, sitting or standing, walking or not walking -- one thing in you is absolutely the same. And to find this is the whole of religion; everything else is non-essential.

WHEN YOU FIND YOU CANNOT LOOK ANYMORE, THEN YOU MUST LOOK

AND SEE HOW THAT INABILITY TO LOOK APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS.

It is the experience of all meditators that sometimes you are aware, and then you forget and you are not aware, and then again you remember. But behind this awareness, forgetfulness, awareness, forgetfulness, there is a deeper awareness, which always remains. What changes is your mental recognition of awareness. Sometimes it is there, sometimes it is not there.

Mind cannot continue remembering a thing forever. It is a flux. Every moment new thoughts are coming, every moment new desires are arising, every moment new longings are knocking on your doors. There is so much busyness without business in the mind that remembering you are a buddha is only a momentary thing. Soon you will forget and you will start behaving in the ordinary way. And suddenly, at some moment you will again remember, what are you doing? You are a buddha and you are smoking a cigarette? It does not look good

-- a buddha and smoking cigarettes? You may drop the cigarette -- nobody can drop buddhahood for a cigarette.

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But these are mind recognitions which change; otherwise, underneath there is an awareness which knows when you remember and when you forget. That is your original face.

AS YOU ARE LOOKING AT HOW THE SIGHT COMES AND THE SIGHT GOES, SATORI REALIZATION WILL ARISE OF ITSELF.

Satori is the Japanese name for SAMADHI. Samadhi is the ultimate experience; its very meaning is, everything is solved. Samadhi means everything is solved -- no question, no answer. One is at peace with existence, one has come home ... a tremendous relaxation which is never disturbed again. Just following awareness, going deeper and deeper from the mental to the non-mental awareness, you end up in realization of satori, or samadhi.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, BUKKO SAID: THE DHARMA IS DIFFERENT FROM

SEEING, HEARING, PERCEIVING, KNOWING.

But he does not include awareness.

SEEING, HEARING, PERCEIVING, KNOWING ARE ALL DHARMA.

But none of them is comprehensive enough to make dharma-nature its monopoly.

But he has not mentioned awareness. Perhaps he is talking to people who are not yet meditators; otherwise awareness is dharma. Awareness includes everything, and something more that cannot be said.

THIS MOUNTAIN PRIEST, says Bukko, MAKES A HOME FOR THE PEOPLE OF

THE WIDE EARTH. WITHOUT THE DUST BEING RAISED THEY ENTER THE

REALM OF PARADISE.

There is no need to make much fuss about your religion. It has to be utterly silent; even your neighbor should not know what you are doing inside yourself. But the people of the earth have been behaving differently. Everybody is proclaiming who he is -- a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a Jew, a Jaina, a Buddhist. A dharma should be such a secret phenomenon, so intimate that you would not like to talk about it.

I have not, in my whole life, voted in any election, for the simple reason that the form that has to be filled in to become a voter has a question in it: to what religion do you belong? That I cannot say. That is my secret, that is my privacy. No government is allowed to enter into my privacy.

And when I refused, saying, "I will not fill in this question," the poor man who was collecting the forms said, "But you are a strange fellow -- everybody fills it in. If you don't have any religion you can say you are an atheist."

I said, "I am not an atheist, but I am not a theist either. I am just myself. And finding myself, I have found the beauty of being natural. It need not be given an adjective -- Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. To give an adjective to nature is to defile a great experience."

But everybody is making so much fuss about religion. Religion should be an absolutely silent phenomenon. In the deepest night, sitting on your bed, you should enter into yourself.

Your own wife, or your husband, or your children will not know about it. It is not something which can be done as a crowd, or as a family. It is something which is absolutely individual.

Your awareness is only your awareness.

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Yes, at the ultimate peak, when you will be disappearing into the universal energies, your individuality will also be lost. Then nothing is private, then everything is universal; but there is nobody to declare it.

I have just mentioned al-Hillaj Mansoor, a Sufi mystic who was killed just like Jesus Christ -- of course in a more primitive and ugly way. He was cut part by part -- legs, hands, head ... And his only crime was that he had declared "ANA'L-HAQ" -- I am the truth. His own master, Junnaid, used to calm him down: "Yes, we all know you are the truth, but there is no need to say it."

I have been deeply inquiring into Junnaid, because al-Hillaj Mansoor has become world famous. Junnaid also knew, "I am God, I am truth," but he was a more understanding, more sane person.

He used to tell Mansoor, "If you know it, you need not say it. Your saying simply means that you want a confirmation. But who can confirm it? Only you know." There is something in the inner experience that nobody can confirm and nobody can certify. No government can give a certificate to you that, yes, you are enlightened. No committee can confirm it, no university can offer a degree in enlightenment -- it is absolutely private.

I agree very much with Junnaid; he understands the psychology of enlightenment far more deeply than al-Hillaj Mansoor. He is saying, "Your statement means you want others to recognize you, but this very desire for recognition is poor. This desire for recognition simply means you are not certain, there is still some doubt lurking inside you about whether you are enlightened or not."

But Mansoor did not listen to him -- he was too young. He was right, but to declare that you are the truth in a crowd means that you are going to offend people. And he did not complete the sentence. If he had said, "Just as I am the truth, you are also the truth," things would have been different.

Jesus was crucified for his proclamation that he is the son of God; Mansoor was crucified for his declaration that he is the ultimate truth. In India thousands of buddhas have expressed this, but they have always expressed it in a way which includes you, which does not exclude you from their experience. They say that they are the buddha, but they also say that you are also the buddha, and the difference between them and you is very slight, not even worth calling a difference. They have opened their eyes to their own reality; you are still a little sleepy -- maybe last night's hangover ... Just a little more -- another turn in the bed, pulling the blanket over your face. But how long are you going to do this? I don't think you will be able to do it for eternity. One day you are going to jump out of the bed: "Enough is enough, Ana'l-haq!"

LIFTING HIGH HIS STAFF, BUKKO SAID: OM, OM, OM!

Om is the silent sound, when the mind stops all chattering and you enter into the world of no-mind. The music of no-mind is something closer to Om. It is not exactly Om, but Om comes very close to that subtle sound.

BUKKO SAID: HASTE, HASTE, HASTE!

All the buddhas are saying that. Why are you postponing your own blissfulness, your own divinity? Why are you postponing?

QUICK, QUICK, QUICK!

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This is not only Bukko. All the buddhas down the ages have been concerned about your continuous snoring. They make every effort, they throw cold water into your eyes, but rather than getting up, you simply freak out. You become angry rather than becoming a buddha.

They have been pulling your legs, they have been pulling your blankets, and you become angry: "In the early morning it is too cold, and this old guy has nothing else to do -- he is pulling my blanket."

You become angry, you shout, but you don't understand that all these buddhas are calling for you to be quick out of compassion.

Bukko says: BOW, BOW, BOW!

Existence is calling for your gratitude, for your prayer, for your gratefulness. But how can you be grateful if you have not experienced it? You have been sleeping for centuries, for hundreds of lives. You cannot be grateful to existence. It has given you only misery up to now, only suffering. It was not existence's responsibility, you were creating it yourself.

You are a great genius in creating misery! If someday you find yourself untroubled, unworried, unconcerned, you will jump on your rented cycle to go somewhere, to do something. This is not natural, sitting silently; it looks a little weird. Just sit silently like a buddha and the neighbors will start looking at you -- "Something has gone wrong; what has happened to this poor fellow? He was running here and there on his rented bicycle, and now he does not even care who is taking his bicycle! He is sitting with closed eyes, undisturbed.

Something must have gone wrong."

And you will also think, "Something seems to be wrong. Somebody is taking notes from my pocket and I am saying nothing. Have I gone mad?"

All your miseries are your own creations; you cannot live without them. You hug them, you sleep with them. They are very familiar, friendly, well known to you. And you brag about them: how many migraines you have. As if it is something great that you have a migraine, that your stomach ... People are talking about amoebas, stomachs, headaches, migraines, and they call it great conversation! It seems the whole world is a big hospital.

THROWING HIGH, NOT REACHING THE SKY; LAYING DOWN, NOT REACHING

THE EARTH. ALL THE BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS FIND NO HOLD AT ALL.

HOLD, NO HOLD. OM!

He is saying, there is nothing to hold, but don't be worried -- existence will take care of you. It has always taken care.

If it was left for you to remember to breathe, do you think you would have been alive? If it was left up to you to remember to keep your heart beating, do you think you would be here today? Long ago you would have been in your grave, or on a funeral pyre. You would have forgotten very easily.

If somebody insults you, at that time do you think you will remember to breathe? If somebody is taking away your rented bicycle, do you think at that time you will remember that the heart should continue to beat? There are a thousand and one opportunities in a day to forget.

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continue, you can fight and still your heart will not stop. You can do everything; the essential things of life are not dependent on you. They are connected, rooted in the universe.

The universe is already taking care of you, but you have not been grateful. The only prayer I know of is the prayer of gratitude -- "I am nobody and still the whole existence takes care of me."

ALL THE BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS FIND NO HOLD AT ALL. HOLD, NO

HOLD. OM! -- DIVINE STREAMS RUSHING, RUSHING!

You don't be worried. HOLD, NO HOLD, whether you have any possessions or no possessions, whether you are or you are not, the divine stream is rushing continuously. You are part of it, or you are the whole of it -- it all depends on you: to remain a part or to become the whole.

I mentioned Kabir. First he was just a dewdrop disappearing into the ocean, but at the last moment of his life he recognized, from the other side, that the ocean had disappeared into the dewdrop. The truth became complete.

Daio wrote:

THE CLOUDS ARE THIN,

THE RIVER ENDLESS.

THE UNIVERSAL DOOR APPEARS

WITHOUT DECEPTION.

QUESTIONING THE BOY,

HE DOES NOT YET KNOW IT EXISTS.

HE WENT USELESSLY SEARCHING

IN THE COLD OF THE MIST AND WAVES

IN A HUNDRED CITIES.

There are people who are searching in the mountains, in the cities, in the forest, and they don't know that it is their own consciousness that they are searching. They cannot find it anywhere -- until they fall, tired of the search, as Gautam Buddha fell one night. It was a full-moon night and he dropped the very desire of searching; he was tired and fed up. That very night he became enlightened.

When you give up, the universe takes you in its millions of hands. Let-go is the only way to find yourself, and to find yourself dissolving into the ultimate.

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Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

LATELY I HAVE FELT AWARE THAT WE ARE JUST BIG VACUUMS, EMPTINESSES, WALKING AROUND WITH A FACADE OF PERSONALITY THAT

DOES THINGS AND THINKS THOUGHTS. BUT BUKKO TALKS OF "APPROACHING

THE SELF." IS THE SELF ANYTHING OTHER THAN THAT SENSE OF EMPTINESS?

ARE THE QUESTIONS JUST A MEANS TO DISCOVER THERE IS NO SELF?

Yes, Maneesha. All inquiry in the beginning is to find the self. But when you find it, it is not the self. When you find it, it is no-self. But to tell somebody, "Go on a search for no-self,"

he will say, "Are you mad? I am already puzzled and in trouble, and I should go in search for no-self, no-mind, emptiness, nothingness? I am already troubled and you are encouraging me to go into more troubled waters. Why should I search for no-self?"

Hence the buddhas say to you, "Go to search the self." Because they know you will find no-self, so there is no problem. They say, "Go and search inside and you will find everything."

But you will find only a pure nothingness.

But that cannot be said. That can be said only to the adepts, to those who are on the path and are able to listen and understand that the ultimate search can only be a dissolution into the whole cosmos, just like a wave disappearing into the ocean, or a stream running fast --

according to Bukko -- with haste, reaching to the ocean just to disappear.

People's minds are oriented to achieve something. If you say to them, "Search for God," it is understandable, because finding God will be a great joy, and he will give you all that you had always desired. He will give you a right place to live in heaven, a beautiful palace, where rivers are full of wine, and where young women who never grow old ... at least up to now it has never been heard that they ever grow old -- they have been at the age of sixteen, fixed, for centuries.

My own understanding is that they are not real women but plastic, pumped with air. They don't perspire -- that is significant to understand. The scriptures make it clear that they don't perspire. Only plastic does not perspire, and only plastic never grows old. And it is very good and transportable. Just take the air out, fold up the woman, put her in your suitcase, and wherever you are going, go. You can even have two or three women in one suitcase.

I have heard ... Two scientists were going to explore in Siberia. They were in the last village post, and they were collecting everything that they would need in the cold, in the eternal snows. And they were going to live there for almost a year, so they were collecting all the things that they would need .

The shop owner said, "Listen, I have been here selling things to scientists, explorers, and I always suggest to them ... first they feel shocked, but then finally they agree with me." Those two scientists said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "You take a plastic woman with you -- I have very beautiful models."

They said, "What nonsense! Plastic women? What will we do with plastic women?"

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The old shopkeeper said, "You will miss ... don't take the chance, be on the safer side. And it will not take much space in your suitcase." And he brought a folded woman, pumped air into it -- and it was really a good model, a Sophia Loren. They both thought, "It looks a little weird, but what is the harm?" But one said, "No, I don't want to be so stupid. Carrying a plastic woman ... and I am a great Nobel Prize winner!"

The other said, "You remain a Nobel Prize winner, but remember, it is my woman. I am purchasing it, and if I ever find you fiddling with her, you know my temper -- then I will not remember whether you are my friend or not. My gun is always loaded."

The friend said, "You are getting unnecessarily hot; let the time come. Let us go -- you put the woman in your suitcase."

The man who had the woman enjoyed the woman very much, and the other fellow forgot all about Nobel Prizes; he felt very lonely. One day when the friend had gone out, he pumped up the woman ... When the other fellow came back he saw the woman flying out of the window. He came inside and he said, "What happened? Why has the woman flown out of the window?"

He said, "I forgot, and I bit on her breast too hard; the air leaked out and the woman simply jumped!" True to his word, the man simply shot his friend immediately.

After a year when he came back to the village to collect things again, the old man said,

"How are things going with the woman?"

He said, "It is a very sad story. You will have to supply me with another woman -- but that one was a very rare model."

The shopkeeper asked, "And what happened to your friend?"

He said, "I told him from the very beginning, 'Don't fiddle with my woman!' And that idiot bit on her breast so deeply that she flew out of the window. And she flew out just when I was coming back, so I shot the man. Now you can give me another woman and we will live in peace. And I have discovered a great truth: it is better than a real woman, because there is no harassment, no nagging. And whenever you want to fold it you can; it is so convenient. It never says, 'I have a headache.' It is always available ..."

My feeling is that if there is a God and there is a paradise, then those saints must have been playing with plastic women for centuries. Real women anyway are not allowed to go to heaven. No religion allows women to go to heaven, so naturally that is the only alternative, a plastic woman. And the poor saints, they can't afford a real woman; they could not manage here -- how can they manage there?

They escaped from the world -- in fact they escaped from the woman. 'The world' is just the name. When they say somebody has renounced the world, they mean he has renounced the woman. The world? Where are you going? Wherever you go it is the world; nobody can renounce the world.

But people call it 'renouncing the world' to hide the fact that it is simply renouncing the woman. And without renouncing the woman you cannot be a saint. It is a tragedy that you renounce a real woman, and in paradise you get a plastic woman with a pump.

I don't believe that you should think of any positive achievement through meditation. You won't get any God, because what will you do with God? You both will feel very awkward.

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After saying, "Hi!" what are you going to say to God? All the miseries of the world that he has created ... This is the worst kind of world that anybody could have created.

I had an old Mohammedan tailor. I used to go to different cities, lecturing in different universities. I told the old man -- he was a very nice guy -- I told him, "I am going in six days, so you have to prepare my clothes; give the priority to my clothes, put everything else away."

He said, "Listen. Do you know that God created the world in six days?"

I said, "What has that to do with my clothes?"

He said, "It has something to do with it. Look at the world -- it is in a mess! If you want your clothes to be made in six days, then don't complain -- they will be a mess."

What are you going to say to God? Perhaps you have never thought about it, that it will be a very awkward encounter. And what are you going to do with your paradise? It is a question of eternity; forever and forever the same plastic women, and the same dirty wine flowing in the rivers. And I know perfectly well that Indians must have reached there, and they will be doing all kinds of nasty things -- that wine is no more of any use.

So please, settle for no-self.

Enough of seriousness. This is not a serious place, it is a temple of laughter.

Ace pilot, Captain Cliffski, and his faithful co-pilot, Captain Kurtski, borrow a small airplane from the main runway of Bombay airport to go for a joy-ride.

They are flying around and having a great time, and everything is going fine, when suddenly Kurtski remembers he has a hot date with Gertie, the Polack Airlines stewardess.

"Hey, Cliffski," shouts Kurtski, over the buzzing of the engines, "it is time to land. I've gotta pee and I've got a date."

"Roger-dodger," shouts Cliffski, taking the plane into a nose-dive towards the earth.

Kurtski is clutching the controls while Cliffski is frantically working the foot pedals, and shouting out readings from all the instruments.

They finally get the plane onto the ground, but have to screech to a stop.

"Wow!" screams Cliffski, mopping his forehead. "That was a short runway."

"Yes," pants Kurtski, collapsing in his seat, "but look how wide it is!"

Mrs. Benzini, the big Italian Catholic mama, herds her large family into the cinema, and explains to the cashier which of them is entitled to half-price admission.

"These-a two," points out Mrs. Benzini, "are under five. These-a two are under seven.

These-a two are under eight, and the older twins will be-a ten next week."

"Mama mia!" exclaims the cashier. "Do you and Mr. Benzini have-a twins every time?"

"Not every time," blushes Mrs. Benzini. "Lots and lots of times we don't-a have-a any kids at all."

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Olga Kowalski enters an elevator on the forty-second floor of the Polack Salami Emporium.

It is the operator, Mad Melvin, the escaped lunatic's first day on the job.

Suddenly Melvin, giggling hysterically, throws the switch and drops the elevator through space at a dizzy speed. Then he throws on the brake and brings the elevator to a grinding, shuddering halt.

Seeing Olga standing there in the lift with her eyes crossed, Melvin asks, "Did I stop too quick?"

"Oh no, Melvin," replies Olga, wobbling. "I always wear my panties down around my ankles."

Now, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent ... close your eyes ...

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

No movement, so that all your energy can gather inside.

Look in!

Deeper, and deeper ...

The deeper you go, the more you will feel

what it is to be aware, what it is to be a buddha.

Don't come back without reaching to the very sources of your life. Be acquainted with this territory, with this space.

Remember this silence, this peace, this bliss, twenty-four hours, just like an undercurrent.

Soon it will become your very breathing, your very heartbeat.

Then there is no difference between you and a buddha. You have reached to the ultimate significance of existence and you have touched the eternity, immortality of your being.

To make it clear, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

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Relax ... just let the body be there, the mind be there, and you are neither. You are a watcher. Watch the body, watch the mind, and remember: you are simply the watcher.

Bodies come and go, mind changes every moment, only the watcher remains for eternity.

This watcher is your original face.

Let the experience sink deep into every fiber of your being. It is going to transform all your activities. It will radiate in your actions, in your gestures; it will radiate from your eyes, from your words, from your silences.

This moment you are in

the very land of the buddhas.

This moment you are a contemporary

of all those who have known.

Be grateful.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back,

but don't come back as you have gone in.

Bring something new with you;

bring the buddha with you.

Sit silently for a few moments,

just recollecting and remembering

where you have been, to what space.

This has to become your everyday experience.

It has to penetrate all your life

around the clock.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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9

Lovers of tao

7 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

RINZAI SAID:

FOLLOWERS OF THE TAO, I AM TALKING ONLY ABOUT THAT WHICH IS

DISTINCTLY SOLITARY AND BRIGHT, AND IS LISTENING TO MY EXPOUNDING

OF THE DHARMA. THIS ONE KNOWS NO OBSTRUCTIONS AND IS OMNIPRESENT

IN THE THREE WORLDS OF EXISTENCE IN THE TEN DIRECTIONS OF SPACE. IT

CAN FREELY AND COMFORTABLY ENTER ALL THE DIFFERENT STATES, WITHOUT BEING INFECTED BY THEM.

IN THE SHORTEST INSTANT, IT WILL PENETRATE DEEPLY INTO THE

DHARMA-DHATU WHERE IT WILL TALK ABOUT BUDDHAS, WHEN MEETING

BUDDHAS; ABOUT PATRIARCHS, WHEN MEETING PATRIARCHS; ABOUT

ARHATS, WHEN MEETING ARHATS, AND ABOUT HUNGRY GHOSTS, WHEN

MEETING HUNGRY GHOSTS.

IT WILL GO TO ALL PLACES AND JOURNEY TO LANDS WHERE IT WILL

CONVERT THE LIVING. IT HAS NEVER, EVEN FOR THE TIME OF A THOUGHT, STRAYED FROM OMNIPRESENT PURITY AND CLEANNESS, SHINING THROUGH

THE TEN DIRECTIONS OF SPACE, WHERE MYRIAD THINGS ARE IN THE STATE

OF SUCHNESS. FOLLOWERS OF THE TAO, MEN OF ABILITY KNOW ONLY NOW

THAT FUNDAMENTALLY THERE IS NO CAUSE WHATEVER FOR CONCERN. IT IS

JUST BECAUSE YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS, THAT EVERY THOUGHT OF

YOURS IS DIRECTED TO THE PURSUIT OF EXTERNALS, LIKE ONE WHO REJECTS

HIS OWN HEAD TO LOOK FOR ANOTHER; HENCE YOUR INABILITY TO APPLY

THE BRAKE TO YOUR THOUGHTS.

... WHAT THIS MOUNTAIN MONK IS TALKING ABOUT IS JUST AN

APPROPRIATE MEDICINE TO CURE A PARTICULAR AILMENT OF THE MOMENT

BECAUSE THERE IS NO FIXED DHARMA. THE HOLDER OF SUCH A VIEW IS A TRUE LEAVER OF HOME, AND CAN ENJOY HIMSELF TO THE FULLEST, AS IF HE

WERE SPENDING, EVERY DAY, TEN THOUSAND OUNCES OF YELLOW GOLD ON

HIS PLEASURES.

Maneesha, Rinzai has a special place just as Bodhidharma has. Bodhidharma introduced Zen to China from India, and Rinzai introduced Zen to Japan from China. These two were key figures in creating a whole new approach to reality. You will see, at some points, it is so difficult not to say that this man has certainly seen the original face. He is not philosophizing, although his words are that of a philosopher.

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because of his old training. For an ordinary human being who has not been trained in philosophy it is far easier to understand Zen. Rinzai was unfortunate in the sense that he was professionally a philosopher. So what can be said in a single sentence, he goes on elaborating about, around and around; you have to find that single sentence almost in a forest of words.

He cannot forget his old habit of conceptualization -- he tries his best.

This was not the case with Mahakashyapa who created Zen. He was not a philosopher, he was a very simple, innocent man. And Zen was born out of a laughter -- that you should never forget -- because Mahakashyapa laughed at the very stupidity of a philosopher asking a question about the ultimate reality. You can ask questions about relative reality, about the outside world, and you can get answers, too. All the encyclopedias are full of those answers.

But you cannot raise a question about your inner reality. There is no question and no answer.

There is absolute silence; no dust is raised, just a pure, clean sky. What question can you make out of it?

Philosophy in a way avoids the inner world because in the inner world there is no place for philosophy. It talks about God and it talks about paradise and it talks about a thousand and one things, just avoiding one thing -- yourself. In other words, philosophy is an avoidance of reality, not an inquiry into reality.

Rinzai tried his hardest to forget the old training of his mind, and once in a while he succeeded. There was no difficulty for Bodhidharma. He never knew any scripture, he never knew any philosophy. He was a pure, original man -- uncultured, uncultivated, absolutely raw.

Zen fits with the original, uncultured, unsophisticated very well, because Zen is a gesture. All philosophies are linguistic.

Zen has a totally different language of the presence of the master, of allowing his experience to filter into your being, of receiving with joy his song of silence, of being blessed when the master is showering all his blessings ... like flowers falling on you with invisible mysteries. Zen has to create a totally existential language. Our ordinary language is good enough for theology, for religion, for philosophy, but not for Zen.

I will tell you when he goes into his old habits, and when he remembers to come back to directly pointing to the truth.

RINZAI SAID:

FOLLOWERS OF THE TAO ...

Now, this is ... from the very beginning he commits a mistake. Not intentionally -- he is a great lover of Buddha and Lao Tzu, of Tao and Dhamma. Dhamma is Buddha's finger pointing to the moon, and Tao is Lao Tzu's finger pointing to the same moon. Only the fingers differ. That's why Buddhism never came to clash with Taoism when it reached China.

This is a rare incident in history. Whenever one religion travels there is immediately conflict with the existing religion -- naturally, because their concepts differ. This is the only instance in the whole of history where this did not happen, when Buddhism reached China and was welcomed by the Taoists. It is a phenomenal thing, it is absolutely unique and rare.

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concepts which have no evidence of existence at all. This is the only instance in the whole of history, where the lovers of Tao simply welcomed Bodhidharma. They saw that the finger is different but the moon is the same, and to fight for fingers is absolutely idiotic. They are all pointing to the same moon.

Rinzai commits his first mistake because Tao does not allow any followers. You can love Tao, you can live Tao, but you cannot be a follower -- because Tao is not an ordinary religion.

It is not a church, it has no organized discipline. It is the path of very unique, eccentric people.

You cannot fall into the trap of following because there is nothing to follow -- no doctrine, no discipline, no special way to reach to the truth.

And further on he says that Dhamma is not fixed; Dhamma and Tao are exactly equivalent. If Dhamma is not fixed, how can you follow it? You can follow a thing which is dead and fixed, but Tao is a living phenomenon. It has no scripture, it has only a deep, personal intimacy which is handed down, hand to hand, from master to disciple. The same is true of Zen. It is a transmission, invisible to outsiders, because it is a heart meeting another heart, joining in a dance, falling into the same rhythm.

You cannot call these people followers. I cannot call my people followers because there are no rules to follow. You are not here to follow a certain doctrine, as Christians are doing in churches, you are here simply to experience your own self. It is easier when there are so many people engaged in the same search of their inner reality. It creates a magnetic field. In that magnetic field it is easier for you to relax, it is easier for you not to doubt. It is easier for you to enter into yourself, seeing that so many people are entering; there is no fear.

Tao is an energy field which is being transferred from master to disciple. And the moment it is transferred, the disciple becomes a master in his own right. Now he has his own field of energy. Energy is invisible; only its effects are visible. You can see light, but you cannot see electricity. Have you ever seen electricity? These lights are just the effects of electricity.

Electricity can do a thousand and one things, but nobody has ever seen it and nobody will ever see it.

Energy is not something to be seen, but only felt. Have you seen love? You may have seen lovers -- even that is very difficult -- but to see love ... You yourself may even be in love --

you can have a subtle feeling of a great change in your behavior. You walk differently, your eyes have a different gleam, you smile in a more understanding way, you relate with other people with grace -- but these are all effects. One can act all these effects without having love at all.

I have heard ... Mulla Nasruddin's wife drags him to a movie house. And in the picture which is shown the hero hugs and kisses the heroine so gracefully, so sweetly, that immediately Mulla Nasruddin's wife turns to him and says, "You never do that to me."

Mulla Nasruddin said, "You don't understand -- he is paid. Am I paid?"

But the wife was also a rare personality. She said, "Paid or not paid, you don't know that in real life also they are husband and wife."

Mulla said, "My god! If in real life also they are husband and wife, then he is a great actor.

I can certify that he is a great actor." Showing so much sweetness to one's own wife -- who has ever heard of it?

You can act. People have acted as if they are enlightened, knowing perfectly well inside that it is just acting. But followers are not possible. Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, Osho - The Language of Existence

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"Watch me, feel me, but don't follow me." You have to find your own path alone. And that is a great beauty, that your enlightenment will be fresh and virgin, not second hand.

There are no followers of Tao, but Rinzai is a man of philosophy where there are only followers. In Tao, in Zen, in Dhamma, there are only lovers ... love at the highest peak, where you open your heart to the unknown realities, to the unknown invisible mysteries of your own being. It is a trust certainly, but not a following.

Remember, trust is not a belief. These things I have to remind you of again and again, because all your dictionaries are misleading. I have not come across a single dictionary or encyclopedia which is not mixed up and confused about trust and belief.

Belief is in a system of thoughts and trust is the essence of love. You can trust only a living being; you can believe in a dead scripture. Trust simply means that you have already tasted something and you have heard the call of the master ..."Come closer, be more intimate.

I can show you my inner world in order to help you to see your own inner world." The function of the master is to provoke a quest in you for your inner treasures.

There are no followers of Tao.

There are only lovers.

Rinzai says:

I AM TALKING ABOUT THAT WHICH IS DISTINCTLY SOLITARY AND BRIGHT

AND IS LISTENING TO MY EXPOUNDING OF THE DHARMA. THIS ONE KNOWS

NO OBSTRUCTIONS AND IS OMNIPRESENT IN THE THREE WORLDS OF

EXISTENCE IN THE TEN DIRECTIONS OF SPACE. IT CAN FREELY AND

COMFORTABLY ENTER ALL THE DIFFERENT STATES, WITHOUT BEING

INFECTED BY THEM.

This I call philosophical -- going round and round. In this whole passage what he is saying is simply, "Look into yourself. The reality of your being is as big as all ten dimensions.

Nothing can penetrate it and nothing can burn it, nothing can steal it." If Bodhidharma was to say it, he would simply hit you with his sandal, and that would be enough. "It is you, there is no need to go on talking about it." Why not wake you up directly?

IN THE SHORTEST INSTANT, says Rinzai, IT WILL PENETRATE DEEPLY INTO

THE DHARMA-DHATU.

The poor fellow cannot forget his philosophy. Now, DHARMA-DHATU is simply a philosophical way to say, enter into your fundamental nature. Rather than saying that -- enter into your fundamental nature -- he brings in the word dharma-dhatu. To the fools these strange words sound very profound -- the man must know, must be a great buddha: dharma-dhatu!

And it does not mean much, it simply means your foundation.

WHERE IT WILL TALK ABOUT BUDDHAS, WHEN MEETING BUDDHAS; ABOUT

PATRIARCHS WHEN MEETING PATRIARCHS, ABOUT ARHATS, WHEN MEETING

ARHATS, AND ABOUT HUNGRY GHOSTS WHEN MEETING HUNGRY GHOSTS.

Now you can see how philosophy goes on creating great systems of thought and belief.

Your very foundation is certainly the foundation of all the buddhas; your ultimate consciousness is the source of all the buddhas. A single sentence is enough, that you are containing a buddha within you.

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And as far as hungry ghosts are concerned, I cannot agree with him. There are hungry people, but hungry ghosts? There is no reason for them to be hungry, they can eat in any restaurant without paying -- and they do it. You cannot see them, so they can enter anywhere; locks and doors don't matter. This is a stupid idea he must have got from his childhood which is still hanging around -- hungry ghosts! To frighten a child just a ghost is enough, but to make it hungry means, "Beware!" A hungry ghost immediately gulps you. One moment you are and next moment you are gone. I know ghosts, but I have never heard ..."Poor ghosts, hungry ghosts." There is no reason for them to be hungry -- just something to frighten children ...

But Rinzai is still carrying his own childhood. There are no ghosts in the world, but all the religions talk about ghosts because their very foundation is dependent on a belief in God. And if people start asking questions about God's existence, they are immediately repressed: "Even to disbelieve or doubt for a single moment about God you will be in trouble." The ghosts come in the same line.

God lives far away; ghosts live just in the neighborhood. They may be living in your own house. To frighten children with a God who lives far away -- no child is so unintelligent to be afraid. By the time the message reaches to him the child will think, "We will see. But first, bring the ice cream from the refrigerator." But hungry ghosts? They may be in the refrigerator itself enjoying all your ice cream!

But a man like Rinzai talking about hungry ghosts simply shows that even if you grow older the child within you remains. And then he became very learned in his scriptures, so the scriptures and the childhood superstitions all got mixed up. Finally he became enlightened, but his whole past was still hanging around him like shadows. And when he starts talking about religion he has to come down to the mind, and the mind is full of those shadows of the past.

He says:

IT WILL GO TO ALL PLACES AND JOURNEY TO LANDS WHERE IT WILL

CONVERT THE LIVING. IT HAS NEVER, EVEN FOR THE TIME OF A THOUGHT, STRAYED FROM OMNIPRESENT PURITY AND CLEANNESS, SHINING THROUGH

THE TEN DIRECTIONS OF SPACE, WHERE MYRIAD THINGS ARE IN THE STATE

OF SUCHNESS.

Now he is saying something of experience. He knows that your suchness, your nature, your Tao is immortal, and it is all over the cosmos.

It is a very difficult job ... and I have suffered so much from these people. Reading their scriptures, I had to sort out what was their childhood, what was their training, what was their scripture knowledge, and what was their actual experience -- that was very small. And to search in a mountain for a small diamond, it is really difficult. Now, what he is saying is true but still the language is not of Zen. The language is of philosophy.

IT HAS NEVER, EVEN FOR THE TIME OF A THOUGHT, STRAYED FROM

OMNIPRESENT PURITY AND CLEANNESS, SHINING THROUGH THE TEN

DIRECTIONS OF SPACE, WHERE MYRIAD THINGS ARE IN THE STATE OF

SUCHNESS.

Just a simple sentence: in your suchness you are the whole. This very moment if you become aware of your suchness, you are not separate from the cosmos. But a small thing Osho - The Language of Existence

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philosophers tend to make much fuss about. Philosophy is so much garbage that it is very easy to forget whether the philosopher has found it or not.

Rinzai is counted as a great philosopher in the Japanese history of philosophy. He should not be, but his words give the impression that he is a philosopher. I want to say that he is a mystic who does not know the language of the mystics. He is a mystic who knows the language of philosophy, and then everything becomes unnecessarily pompous.

Again he says:

FOLLOWERS OF THE TAO, MEN OF ABILITY KNOW ONLY NOW THAT

FUNDAMENTALLY THERE IS NO CAUSE WHATEVER FOR CONCERN.

He is saying a great truth, but again using wrong words. Followers don't exist in the world of the buddhas -- only lovers, only those who are ready to expose themselves to their very core. Otherwise what he is saying is significant. Just change 'followers' into 'lovers of Tao'.

MEN OF ABILITY KNOW ONLY NOW THAT FUNDAMENTALLY THERE IS NO

CAUSE WHATEVER FOR CONCERN.

But it has still to be reduced to a more Zen way, to a more Zen language. He is saying that when you become a buddha, you know that there was no cause for concern. Even if you are not a buddha there is no cause for concern. Your not being a buddha is only a small sleep, just a little dream. In the eternity of time it does not matter that you dreamed for few a seconds.

Our whole lives are so small in comparison to eternity that nothing matters, but this is known only to people who have come to suchness, who have come to realization of their center of being.

Suddenly, for them nothing matters. All judgments drop -- nobody is good, nobody is bad; nobody is a sinner and nobody is a saint. All these are different dreams people are having. One person is dreaming that he is a thief, another person is dreaming that he is a saint. When they wake up, both will be the same. And the difference in dreams is not much of a difference; hence his statement is absolutely correct, that men of understanding know perfectly well that there is no reason for concern.

IT IS JUST BECAUSE YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS, THAT EVERY

THOUGHT OF YOURS IS DIRECTED TO THE PURSUIT OF EXTERNALS, LIKE ONE

WHO REJECTS HIS OWN HEAD TO LOOK FOR ANOTHER; HENCE YOUR

INABILITY TO APPLY THE BRAKE TO YOUR THOUGHTS.

WHAT THIS MOUNTAIN MONK IS TALKING ABOUT IS JUST AN APPROPRIATE

MEDICINE TO CURE A PARTICULAR AILMENT OF THE MOMENT, BECAUSE

THERE IS NO FIXED DHARMA.

Now, this is something very original that he is saying. THERE IS NO FIXED DHARMA, so there is no question of following somebody. It may be right for him to do something; it may not be right for you to do the same thing because you are a different individual, in a different context, in a different time. You have to find your own truth and act accordingly -- not according to anybody else's truth. There is no certainty, stability, permanence in the world of existence. But one thing he forgets, or perhaps is not aware of.

He is saying:

WHAT THIS MOUNTAIN MONK IS TALKING ABOUT IS JUST AN APPROPRIATE

MEDICINE TO CURE A PARTICULAR AILMENT OF THE MOMENT.

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On a very low level the statement is right, but from the heights of a buddha, the ailment is as illusory as the medicine.

You are suffering from illusions. Certainly you need a cure, but the cure has to be as illusory as your suffering; otherwise it will disturb rather than help. Once your ailment is cured you don't keep the bottle of medicine with you, you throw it away.

The people who go on carrying their scriptures are carrying medicines prescribed perhaps five thousand years before to a certain person, who was certainly suffering from an illusory ailment. The prescription you are carrying ... the time has changed, so much water has gone down the Ganges. You are no longer living in the world where the BHAGAVADGITA had a truth, or the Bible had a truth. The whole world has changed, but you cling to your medicine bottles, and you are no longer suffering from those ailments. Now the medicine has become your illness.

THE HOLDER OF SUCH A VIEW IS A TRUE LEAVER OF HOME, AND CAN

ENJOY HIMSELF TO THE FULLEST, AS IF HE WERE SPENDING, EVERY DAY, TEN

THOUSAND OUNCES OF YELLOW GOLD ON HIS PLEASURES.

It is true that a man of enlightenment lives each moment in such bliss and in such splendor --

AS IF HE WERE SPENDING TEN THOUSAND OUNCES OF YELLOW GOLD ON

HIS PLEASURES.

He is not spending a single paisa but what Rinzai is saying is that his blissfulness is far bigger than any emperor. He may be a beggar, but his inner silence and his inner peace and his inner dance is far bigger than any Alexander the Great.

Rinzai has to be understood with very open eyes. He is carrying all his childhood superstitions, he is carrying all that he has learned as a student of philosophy, and he has attained the truth. So when he says something it is very mixed up. It is not pure twenty-four carat gold; it has some truth mixed with some falseness.

Studying Rinzai is arduous, you have to sift it. But how can you sift it unless you know?

My own understanding is that people should read scriptures only when they have attained to the truth. In fact, then there is no need. But that is the only right way, because then they can see what is false and what is right, what is superstitious and what is just garbage. There may be a small truth hidden somewhere, but the problem is that those who have attained don't read and those who read have not attained.

I have read much, but I started reading after my attainment because before that I simply refused ... Philosophers, my professors, well-wishers wanted me to read this book, that book. I said, "No. Before that I have to be absolutely certain about my truth. I don't have any criterion to judge and I don't want to get confused with all kinds of thoughts." But fortunately the enlightenment came very early to me, and then reading was an absolute joy because I could separate the false from the true, the fictitious from the real.

One of my professors used to say, "Why do you unnecessarily waste your time in reading?" Because he had seen my books. I would make comments on my books -- that this is stupid, this is idiotic, this is nonsense carried from their childhood. He said, "Why do you read if you ... he is such a great philosopher and you are making such comments."

I said, "Only now am I able to read it."

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This is a strange world. When you are able to read there is no point in reading, and when you are incapable of reading you read too much and that goes on creating more confusion in your mind.

I have read Rinzai, and I have found that it is very rare to find such a confused enlightened master. He certainly did a great job -- others have to sort it out. But at least he carried the message from China to Japan. Those who followed Rinzai, they dropped his philosophy, they dropped his superstitions. They carried only the pure, clean experience of consciousness.

Rinzai is still worshipped. He has his own school, one thousand years after he was alive.

But the masters who followed really did a good sorting out; almost ninety-nine percent of Rinzai has been dropped. One percent is so true that you cannot drop it. But he was not the man to express only that one percent, he made much fuss about it. It would have been far better for him first to forget his philosophy, drop his superstitions, sort out for himself what is actually his own experience and then give an expression to it. But others have to do this laundry job. He left a mess behind him.

A master, Kansan, of the same lineage as Rinzai, says in a few words much more than Rinzai's big discourses.

Kansan says:

I CLIMB THE ROAD TO COLD MOUNTAIN,

THE ROAD TO COLD MOUNTAIN THAT NEVER ENDS.

THE VALLEYS ARE LONG AND STREWN WITH STONES;

THE STREAMS BROAD AND BANKED WITH THICK GRASS.

THE MOSS IS SLIPPERY,

THOUGH NO RAIN HAS FALLEN;

PINES SIGH, BUT IT IS NOT THE WIND.

WHO CAN BREAK FROM THE SNARES OF THE WORLD,

AND SIT WITH ME AMONG THE WHITE CLOUDS?

He is saying, the road is a non-ending road. Your inner world has no limitations to it. Just as the outer universe has no boundaries, your inner world also has no inner boundaries. He is simply describing the whole path he has moved through.

I CLIMB THE ROAD TO COLD MOUNTAIN.

Because as you go deeper it becomes colder and colder. All the heat is sickness, it is fever.

THE ROAD TO COLD MOUNTAIN THAT NEVER ENDS.

THE VALLEYS ARE LONG AND STREWN WITH STONES;

THE STREAMS BROAD AND BANKED WITH THICK GRASS.

THE MOSS IS SLIPPERY,

THOUGH NO RAIN HAS FALLEN;

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Of course, inside no rain has ever fallen, but still the path is slippery.

THE MOSS IS SLIPPERY,

THOUGH NO RAIN HAS FALLEN;

PINES SIGH, BUT IT IS NOT THE WIND.

It is not the wind passing through the pines. It is the pines themselves which are sighing.

WHO CAN BREAK FROM THE SNARES OF THE WORLD,

AND SIT WITH ME AMONG THE WHITE CLOUDS?

That one is my disciple, my devotee. This is the language of Zen.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

LANGUAGE IS USUALLY ABOUT THE COMMUNICATION OR TRANSFER OF

IDEAS; AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF MOST RELIGIONS SEEMS TO BE THAT

ONE DOES NOT NEED TO BE GIVEN SOMETHING.

HOWEVER, ZEN IS DIFFERENT IN THAT IT APPEARS TO BE SAYING ONE

ONLY NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND WHAT ONE ALREADY HAS. IS THIS WHY YOU

HAVE CALLED ZEN "THE LANGUAGE OF EXISTENCE"?

Maneesha, you are right. Zen has nothing to give to you, but has something to take away --

your personality, your mask, your false identities. Zen has to rip you away, so that only the existence, pure existence remains unpolluted in you. It does not bother about philosophizing.

Its concern is experiencing, its concern is existential. That's why I have called it "the language of existence." All other languages are man's languages -- for purposes of the mediocre and for purposes of the marketplace. Zen is not a marketplace phenomenon. It needs a tremendous courage to enter into one's own existence, leaving everything that one values so much.

It does not want you to renounce the world, it simply wants you to renounce yourself, and just let the existence express and radiate through you. The Zen master, or buddha, does not speak, he only allows existence to sing its song. The buddha is just a flute, a bamboo with holes. Existence can sing any song that it wants; the flute does not interfere. The flute allows existence to commune with those who are capable of listening to the music that is flowing through it.

Rinzai has been a very serious trip. My understanding of Zen is that it is full of laughter and giggles. It is not a serious concern at all.

History records many examples of people in restaurants who have found flies in their soup.

Professor Dingleberry, a world famous authority, has run a survey on the international situation; his findings are revealing.

In America, if a diner finds a fly in his soup, he sends the dish back and complains to the manager.

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In English restaurants, the fly is carefully removed between finger and thumb, placed on the table, and then politely ignored for the rest of the meal.

In France, the fly-finder consumes the soup, but pushes the fly to the side of the plate.

In Scotland, the fly is lifted forcibly out of the soup and squeezed over the plate, then dropped to the ground and trodden into the carpet.

The Chinese consume the fly with one swallow, and then wash it down with the soup.

In Jewish restaurants, particularly in New York, the diner immediately sends for the manager and complains, "Is this all I get, just one fly?"

Captain Cartwright Num-Nuts, the astute commander of the latest electronic miracle battleship, the U.S.S. Turkey Shoot, proudly scans the horizon for smoke. He is standing on the deck of his observation tower, on board ship.

The Turkey Shoot is floating a few miles from the coast of Florida, and Num-Nuts has just commanded the destruction of a mysterious aircraft flying too nearby.

What he does not know is that he has just shot down the latest multi-billion dollar American rocket launched to explore Mars.

Captain Num-Nuts strides proudly up and down the deck, sniffing the salt air and whistling the Turkey Shoot battle song, to celebrate his uncanny marksmanship.

Suddenly, an aide comes running up to the captain. "Here is a special message from the admiral, sir," reports the sailor.

"Read it to me, my son," says Num-Nuts, puffing out his chest, and gazing towards the horizon.

"But, sir," says the sailor, "it is addressed to you personally."

"Just read it to me," snaps back Captain Num-Nuts.

The sailor reads, "Of all the blundering, stupid, idiotic morons, you take the cake!"

Captain Num-Nuts shifts his gaze to the sailor and pauses. Then he says, "Have that decoded at once!"

Luscious Miss Willing starts her new job as a waitress in the Goatburger Cafe.

She approaches a table where Kowalski and Zabriski are sitting after just finishing their meal. She leans over and, cleaning away the plates, asks, "What would you gentlemen like for dessert?"

"Uh, I would like raisin cake," stammers Zabriski, noticing her full, white breasts.

"Okay," she says, turning to Kowalski and leaning all the way over, exposing her beautiful tits. "And is yours raisin, too?"

"Well," says Kowalski, looking down at the napkin on his lap. "Yup, mine is raisin' too!"

Now, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

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(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent. Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

Gather all your energy inwards.

Look, almost like an arrow,

searching deep for your center of being,

because your center of being is also

the center of the universe.

One who knows it becomes a buddha.

Deeper and deeper ...

This moment is precious. You are very close to your own being and to the being of the universe. Realizing it is going to transform your whole life.

Without any fear ... because it is your own territory, it is your own space. Nobody can enter here. It has been waiting for you for millions of lives. Just penetrate it and you will find the greatest blessing showering on you.

To make it more clear, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax, let go of the body and the mind. You are just a watcher. The mind may be creating some dust, the body may be feeling uncomfortable. You are simply a watcher.

Don't get identified, because this body will change, this mind will change. A thousand times they have already changed. Only this watcher is your treasure, which always remains ...

eternity to eternity.

Lao Tzu calls it Tao.

Buddha calls it Dhamma.

Whatever the name,

this is your pure existence.

It opens the doors of all the mysteries -- mysteries that you can feel, but you cannot say; mysteries that you can sing, you can dance, you can live, but you cannot say. This is the world of Zen, and experiencing existence is its language.

Blessed is this evening.

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You have all disappeared into an oceanic love,

into an oceanic consciousness,

dissolving your thin boundaries.

Remember this universal experience twenty-four hours, just like an undercurrent. Remain a buddha -- walking or sitting, sleeping or waking.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Now you can come back, but come back not the same as you had gone in.

Come back much more solid,

much more integrated,

much more centered,

and then sit silently for a few moments

as a buddha.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the gathering of ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao

Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao