Osho

The Miracle

Talks on Zen

Talks given from 02/08/88 pm to 11/08/88 pm

English Discourse series

10 Chapters

Year published: 1989

Other title: "Zen: The Miracle"

1

How full, emptiness!

2

2

Dissolved, just like ice

16

3

Unhitch the Universe

33

4

This harvest moon

50

5

You must see for yourself

66

6

Cages of gold

82

7

The mysterious one

91

8

Joy in the morning

102

9

The simple task of turning in

114

10 Sun and moon in one's sleeve

129

Chapter 1 - How full, emptiness!

1

How full, emptiness!

2 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

AN OLD MASTER SAID:

TURN YOUR HEART ROUND AND ENTER THE ORIGIN. DO NOT SEARCH FOR

WHAT HAS SPRUNG OUT OF IT! WHEN YOU HAVE GAINED THE ORIGIN, WHAT

HAS SPRUNG OUT OF IT WILL COME TO YOU OF ITSELF.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE ORIGIN, THEN PENETRATE YOUR OWN

ORIGINAL HEART. THIS HEART IS THE SOURCE OF ALL BEINGS IN THE WORLD

AND OUTSIDE THE WORLD. WHEN THE HEART STIRS, VARIOUS THINGS ARISE.

BUT WHEN THE HEART ITSELF BECOMES COMPLETELY EMPTY, THE VARIOUS

THINGS ALSO BECOME EMPTY. IF YOUR HEART IS DRIVEN ROUND NEITHER BY

GOOD NOR BAD, THEN ALL THINGS ARE JUST AS THEY ARE.

MASTER OTSU, COMMENTING ON THIS EMPTYING OF THE HEART, SAID: THE HEART BECOMES EMPTY, THE SITUATION QUIET, AND THE BODY JUST

AS IT IS. WHEN SOMEONE SUCCEEDS IN REACHING THIS POINT, THE MIRROR

OF HIS HEART SHINES CLEARLY AND HIS NATURE OPENS WIDE AND CLEAR. HE

LEAVES ERROR AND DOES NOT ATTACH HIMSELF TO TRUTH; HE DWELLS

NEITHER IN ERROR NOR AWAKENING. HE IS NEITHER WORLDLY NOR SAINTLY.

ALL WORLDLY DESIRES FALL AWAY, AND AT THE SAME TIME, THE MEANING

OF SAINTLINESS IS EMPTIED WITHOUT RESIDUE.

SUCH DETACHMENT FROM EVERYTHING IS WHAT MASTER RINZAI CALLED

"THE COMPLETE TAKING AWAY OF BOTH, OF MAN AND SITUATION." HERE IS

EXPERIENCED ABSOLUTE NOT-NESS, SINCE SELF AND OBJECT ALLOW

THEMSELVES TO COME TO NOTHING.

GENUINE ZEN EXPERIENCE CONSISTS EXCLUSIVELY IN THIS "TAKING

AWAY OF MAN AND OBJECT." THIS COMPLETE NOT-NESS IS THE ORIGINAL

PLACE FROM WHICH ALL THINKING AND KNOWING SPRING. BUT EVEN IF ONE

IS PERMITTED TO SPEAK OF A "PLACE" AT ALL, SUCH TERMINOLOGY IS ONLY

PROVISIONAL.

EVEN IF ONE WANTED TO CHARACTERIZE IT AS UNBORN-NESS, OR AS

NIRVANA, OR AS TRUTH, ONE COULD NEVER HIT IT. IT LIES BEYOND ALL

TERMINOLOGY AND EXPRESSION; THINKING CANNOT REACH THAT FAR.

Maneesha, there are four possible ways to explain the unexplainable. Unconsciously, man has made philosophies out of those four ways.

Man is a crossroads, where four ways meet. The first way is that of matter. The atheist takes that road, the scientist takes that road: "Man is nothing but matter." From the days of the Osho - The Miracle

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Chapter 1 - How full, emptiness!

charvakas to the days of Bertrand Russell, there have been great, eminent thinkers who have chosen that path. And almost half of the world today is on that path, because communism does not believe in anything else but matter -- mind is only an epiphenomenon.

Epiphenomenon means just a shadow: when the man disappears, the shadow disappears.

There is nothing beyond death, and there is nothing before birth. You are complete between birth and death; that's all you have.

The second road defines man as a duality between matter and mind. Most of the philosophers of the world have chosen that definition because it seems completely rational.

All that we know about man is that his body consists of matter, and we know that he has thoughts which are not material. These things can be observed from outside. Hence, man is basically matter with an addition of a shadow that is his mind. As the body dies, mind also dies. On this path also, life extends only between birth and death.

The third possibility, which has been accepted by all religions, is that man is not just matter or just mind; he is also a soul. Matter is his outer expression, soul is his inner expression, and mind functions as a bridge between the two. On the third path there is a possibility of a life beyond death. The people who have accepted it have created on this foundation the idea of reincarnation: birth after birth, one changes houses but the essential soul remains.

Zen has a fourth standpoint. Man is not matter, although he is covered with matter. He is not mind, although he is covered with mind. Nor is he an individual soul. He is a pure nothingness. Man, from this fourth standpoint, which is the standpoint of Zen, is almost like an onion. You go on peeling it, one layer after another layer, hoping that you are going to find something. Finally, when you have peeled all the layers off, your hands are full of emptiness; nothing is left. The onion was only layers and layers and layers and layers. Behind those layers was emptiness, nothingness, which will not be visible to the eyes, which will not be tangible to the hands.

Zen has taken the ultimate standpoint about man, you cannot go beyond that. Here ends the whole journey, the pilgrimage of the seeker.

Zen wants you not to stop at matter. Respect it, it serves you; care for it, it cares for you.

You are not the mind -- don't make it a master. It is a good servant -- use it. Use it so that you can reach beyond it. It is a ladder to go beyond, but don't get caught up with it.

The "soul" is simply a consolation to people, because if you say to them that meditation will end up in nothingness ... In a million, perhaps one person will become interested in meditation. And if you tell them, "All your effort will come to a vast nothingness," you will frighten them. You will create a question in their minds: "Then what is the purpose? We are --

at least, we are. Doing meditation, we will not be." It is going to be the ultimate death. Yes.

Gautam Buddha was continually asked, "Why do people go on coming to you when you offer nothing but nothingness?"

And Buddha said many times, "Nothingness is not just no-thing-ness. It has its own universality. It is becoming as vast as the whole universe, unlimited. Your personality is too small."

The people who are afraid of nothingness, of dissolving not only their personality but their individuality too, remain with the third standpoint.

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Chapter 1 - How full, emptiness!

The third is very consoling. At least it gives you something to hang on to. Zen does not give you anything; it simply takes away all the layers of the onion and then says to you, "Look, this is you -- just pure nothingness."

But the purity of it is so overwhelming that you are not, but your laughter is. You are not, but your joy is. It has become cosmic. You are not, but your ecstasy is, and now it is not confined to a small area of your personality or individuality; now the whole of existence is ecstatic. The birds flying and the flowers opening and the clouds showering -- everything is happening in the deep nothingness of your realization of the cosmic emptiness as the source of all things.

Perhaps Zen alone has given a very scientific answer to the question. "From where do things come, and to where do they go back?" Even science shrugs its shoulders the moment you start asking them questions about the origin. All that has been said about the origin by the religions, by the scientific people, is simply guesswork. Nobody was a witness, obviously.

How can there be a witness when existence has not started yet? You will come later on; you cannot come before. And, in fact, if there was a creator, existence was already there; otherwise how can the creator exist?

But people don't go to such depths. They don't bother about that, believing in a God who created the world. Why don't you ask who created God? When did he start to be? His family, his nationality, his race -- any trace? Suddenly he comes and starts creating the world. Such a stupid idea, and millions have believed in it, and still believe in it.

Zen is very clean and clear, saying that there has been no beginning at all; hence the question of creation does not arise. And there is not going to be any end; hence the question of anybody destroying it, God or Devil, does not arise. It is always here, it has always been here, and it will always be here. It just goes on playing in many forms. It is a tremendous drama.

If you understand the fourth --

that everything comes from nothingness ...

If you can return to nothingness consciously

you have found the source.

That's what I call meditation:

returning consciously to the very source

not only of your being

but of the very cosmos.

There you find an eternal flame.

Things come, things go.

Waves arise, and waves disappear.

But everything remains,

rooted in nothingness.

This nothingness is very miraculous because one would think that things should be rooted in something. But if you ask the Zen masters if things should be rooted in something, they will simply laugh and ask, "In what will your something be rooted?"

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Chapter 1 - How full, emptiness!

You cannot ask the same question about nothingness. Nothingness simply means nothingness, there is no question of any roots. It neither comes nor goes. Nothing happens to it; it simply remains, utterly silent.

You touch this nothingness when you are deep in your being, because that being is already rooted in this nothingness. You are driving your life, moment to moment, from that nothingness.

The flowers may not understand from where they have come. The branches may not know from where they have come. The trunk of a tree may not know from where it has come, because the roots are hidden underground. The roots are hidden for security purposes, otherwise you could be harmed very badly.

You cannot take even your very intimate friend into your nothingness; you cannot invite anybody there -- no party! You have to go alone. It is such a sacred place.

In the old Jewish tradition ... It is significant to understand, because Jews, their rabbis, will not be able to give the explanation. Zen can give an explanation for many things in other religions also, because it has gone to the very root, it has traveled the whole path. It has not chosen one path, it has accepted all paths, and still it has gone beyond all paths. So it knows more than anybody else and yet it is absolutely innocent because it knows nothing.

In the great temple of Jerusalem there used to be a festival once a year. The temple had an inner sanctum, a small room, and only the chief rabbi was allowed to enter into it. He would enter, close the doors, and in that silent, small chamber he was allowed to whisper the word

"God". It has a beauty of its own, why it was done in such a way. To use the word "God" as a mundane word makes it also like a thing. Jews have avoided it ... you can only whisper in silence. Perhaps you don't even have to whisper; you can simply feel the presence of nothingness.

Judaism is the only religion which does not write the whole word "God". They leave the

"o" out: "G-d". The "o" in between is left out, they don't write it. It is sacrilegious to pronounce the name of God; something of it is bound to remain beyond words. In fact, the most important part -- the middle part -- is missing. You have touched only one side or another side, but you have not touched the heart of it. In the word also, you are making it clear that unless you touch the heart of God ... and the only way is to touch your own heart. You don't know your own heart. Your heart has roots in the universal heart from where it gets its life. And as the universal heart withdraws man dies, but the life that was is not finished. It may move into a new ripple, into a new flower, into a new cuckoo ... millions are the ways. Or it may remain silent in the ocean of the cosmos.

Because it has chosen the fourth, Zen's standpoint is the most superior, the most delicate, and the most intimate one.

AN OLD ZEN MASTER SAID:

TURN YOUR HEART ROUND AND ENTER THE ORIGIN. DO NOT SEARCH FOR

WHAT HAS SPRUNG OUT OF IT! WHEN YOU HAVE GAINED THE ORIGIN, WHAT

HAS SPRUNG OUT OF IT WILL COME TO YOU OF ITSELF.

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Chapter 1 - How full, emptiness!

We are born looking outwards. Our eyes open outwards, our hands reach outwards, all of our senses are ready to receive the outward vibrations. But we don't have any sense available which gives us information about our inner being.

Meditation is the search for that hidden eye that can see your origin. It is called the buddha-eye. But a great turning is needed. You have to close off the world completely, even if just for a single moment, and give a turn to your whole being, to look inside the well from where you are coming.

And don't think about anything else, because this experience of looking into yourself will explain everything that was a question to you. Thousands of answers were there, but no answer was able to satisfy it.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE ORIGIN, THEN PENETRATE YOUR OWN

ORIGINAL HEART. THIS HEART IS THE SOURCE OF ALL BEINGS IN THE WORLD

AND OUTSIDE THE WORLD. WHEN THE HEART STIRS, VARIOUS THINGS ARISE.

BUT WHEN THE HEART ITSELF BECOMES COMPLETELY EMPTY, THE VARIOUS

THINGS ALSO BECOME EMPTY. IF YOUR HEART IS DRIVEN ROUND NEITHER BY

GOOD NOR BAD, THEN ALL THINGS ARE JUST AS THEY ARE.

Zen has no idea of judgment. It never judges that somebody is a sinner or somebody is a saint. These are only waves; there is no need to waste your time on waves. If you know the ocean, you will not bother about the waves. One wave turns in one way, the other in another way, but they all belong to the same ocean and they all dissolve finally into the same ocean.

So the only thing worth consideration is not what is good and what is bad, but what is the origin from where your heart has come. It is an existential approach -- not theoretical, not philosophical.

MASTER OTSU, COMMENTING ON THIS EMPTYING OF THE HEART, SAID: THE HEART BECOMES EMPTY, THE SITUATION QUIET, AND THE BODY JUST

AS IT IS.

Everything remains the same, nothing changes. This does not mean that the man who has approached the very origin of existence becomes somebody special. Everything remains the same. But on the other hand, everything starts looking different. Now he can see the beauty of the flower that you cannot see. His eyes are so fresh that he can see the beauty of a sunset that you cannot see. Your eyes are so full of dust, you are hardly able to see. You cannot penetrate to the very origin of a flower.

But a man who knows his origin knows the origin of everything. He never makes any judgment. This is a great contribution to human consciousness: not to make judgments. That is a very low kind of morality, a very low kind of religion, which goes on making judgments about good and bad.

In Zen everything is, as it is, a manifestation of the cosmic soul. It has to be loved and respected. It does not matter what the manifestation is doing. What matters is that the man who is a thief or a murderer is also coming from the same source as you are, and he will be going to the same source as you are.

So behind the curtain you will find great saints sharing experiences with great sinners. On the stage it is one thing; behind the stage it is totally different. And once you have touched the origin of things, you have gone behind the stage. On the stage it is all acting. On the stage it is Osho - The Miracle

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Chapter 1 - How full, emptiness!

simply drama. Behind the stage it is pure silence, nothingness. A rest, a relaxation --

everything has moved into total tranquility.

WHEN SOMEONE SUCCEEDS IN REACHING THIS POINT, THE MIRROR OF HIS

HEART SHINES CLEARLY AND HIS NATURE OPENS WIDE AND CLEAR. HE

LEAVES ERROR AND DOES NOT ATTACH HIMSELF TO TRUTH.

These are great statements. The day you understand them as your experience, you will dance with joy.

Master Otsu is saying that the moment a person enters into the origin of things, he leaves all dualities behind: truth and untruth, love and hate. He enters into the oneness of things. He is neither worldly nor saintly.

That's why it is very difficult to find an authentic man of meditation. You will find people who are worldly; you can see them. You can find very easily people who are other-worldly, saints. They have renounced the world; that is very easy. The world is so crazy, so insane, that one wonders why everybody is not renouncing it! The problem is where to go? If everybody renounces it, everybody will reach to another place, but the same faces, the same people ... the buses will start going to Everest, restaurants will have to be opened; everybody is coming to the hills, renouncing the world.

There is no way to renounce the world. And there is no point, either. But that's what all your religions have been valuing the most: renouncing the world. So there are saints, and those who are still attached to things are sinners. But for a man of cosmic consciousness --

and that's what the ultimate of meditation is -- all waves are just drama.

It is a beautiful drama. You cannot take away the sinners; otherwise it will lose all salt.

The saints and the sinners both are needed to make the drama. Love and hate both are needed.

If everything is goody-goody ... finished! All taste is lost. If everybody looks alike -- very saintly, very pious -- the world will become a boredom. It is good that a few people are cheats, a few people are cutting your pockets. If nobody cuts the pockets, what is the point of having pockets? To make the drama richer ...

Just the other day, Anando brought me news: A man has reported to the police station that his wife was missing. The police officer asked, "When did you find that she was missing?"

He said, "I don't remember. It may be a few weeks, or maybe a few months. She is certainly missing, but there is no hurry to find her."

A great man of insight.

I have heard another version:

A man came running into a post office, tears coming down, and he said to the postmaster,

"My wife is missing -- find her immediately!" He would not even give the postmaster a chance to say anything. He was so much in misery and suffering, and tears rolling down, that the postmaster said finally, "Listen, this is the post office."

He said, "I know."

The postmaster said, "The police station is just opposite, on the other side of the road."

The man said, "I know."

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Chapter 1 - How full, emptiness!

The postmaster said, "If you know, then why are you bothering me? For half an hour crying and weeping ... Just go to the police station."

The man said, "Once before it also happened, and I went to the police station and those idiots brought my wife back! Now I'm not going. You have to write it down, just for my consolation, that at least I reported it. To whom I reported it does not matter."

The postmaster said, "Okay, I can take the report, but that will not help."

The man said, "That's what I want, that it should not help. You just write the report. Those police officers are such idiots. I told them that there was no hurry, but they brought my wife within six hours and again the old drama started."

But it is a beautiful world where wives run away, where husbands run away, where people forget to come back home, enter into another home and are gone.

Rather than making it a miserable place, Zen gives it color. And that needs a very great heart, to accept that the drama needs many kinds of people, many kinds of acts, many tragedies, many comedies. There is no need to make judgments.

SUCH DETACHMENT FROM EVERYTHING IS WHAT MASTER RINZAI CALLED

"THE COMPLETE TAKING AWAY OF BOTH, OF MAN AND SITUATION."

What is the difference between you and the other person? -- a certain situation. You were born into a different family; that is a situation. You were educated in a different school; that is a situation. What is different between man and man, man and woman? -- just a situation.

Rinzai is saying, THE COMPLETE TAKING AWAY OF BOTH, OF MAN AND

SITUATION. HERE IS EXPERIENCED ABSOLUTE NOT-NESS. He is not using the word

'nothingness' because you misunderstand it. To emphasize that it is not nothingness, he says it is simply not-ness, it is pure emptiness.

... SINCE SELF AND OBJECT ALLOW THEMSELVES TO COME TO NOTHING.

Everything comes to relax into nothing, and then arises, rejuvenated, back into some manifestation. The way Zen looks at the world, it does not make anybody feel guilty; neither does it make anybody feel superior. The source is the same, the game is the same. Of course, different players have to play from different sides.

GENUINE ZEN EXPERIENCE CONSISTS EXCLUSIVELY IN THIS "TAKING

AWAY OF MAN AND OBJECT." THIS COMPLETE NOT-NESS IS THE ORIGINAL

PLACE FROM WHICH ALL THINKING AND KNOWING SPRING. BUT EVEN IF ONE

IS PERMITTED TO SPEAK OF A "PLACE" AT ALL, SUCH TERMINOLOGY IS ONLY

PROVISIONAL.

You cannot call it even a place; it is only space.

EVEN IF ONE WANTED TO CHARACTERIZE IT AS UNBORN-NESS, OR AS

NIRVANA, OR AS TRUTH, ONE COULD NEVER HIT IT.

One has just touched on it. No word can reach to the very heart of existence.

IT LIES BEYOND ALL TERMINOLOGY AND EXPRESSION; THINKING CANNOT

REACH THAT FAR.

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Chapter 1 - How full, emptiness!

But silence can divulge as much depth as you have courage for. What words cannot manage to express, your silence can express, your laughter can express, because laughter is coming from the depth of your heart. It is just like a flower.

Words are first put into you just the way computers are fed full of all the information that they have. Then you can ask them and they will repeat it. That does not make them very great learned scholars. But that is what your learned scholars are. They have not a single word of their own to say.

The cosmic origin of things is beyond our intellect, our mind, our words. But in deep silence we reach it. We feel the dance of it, we hear the music of it, we feel the unknown fragrance of it.

There is a Zen saying:

TEN YEARS OF DREAMS IN THE FOREST!

NOW ON THE LAKE'S EDGE LAUGHING,

LAUGHING A NEW LAUGH.

TEN YEARS OF DREAMS IN THE FOREST! -- because a meditator does not just one day become a meditator; dreams follow, for years. Even if you go into the deepest forest, those dreams haunt you. But slowly slowly those dreams settle down because there is no point. You are no more interested in them; on the contrary you simply sit there watching.

This watchfulness makes you so silent that when sitting by the lake's edge, laughing ...

laughing about what? Laughing about the whole world; that you have it within you and still you are searching for it. LAUGHING A NEW LAUGH. A meditator laughs a new laugh. Its freshness comes from his depths.

Another Zen saying:

FOR TEN YEARS I COULD NOT RETURN;

NOW I HAVE FORGOTTEN THE ROAD

BY WHICH I CAME.

He is saying that he has reached his origins. It took ten years to find it, and now he has forgotten the road, how to come back -- THE ROAD BY WHICH I CAME.

Please, don't you do that! Every day I take you to the very origin of things, but I don't leave you there long enough. I keep Nivedano alert. Somebody may forget the way back; then I will be responsible. But Nivedano has a good drum, and he is finding some other, better instruments. So in spite of yourself, you are suddenly awake. Before you know it, you have come back.

There is not much distance between you as you are and as your original being is. The difference is so slight -- just a drum beat, a hit on your head by Master Niskriya, anything can bring you back.

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Chapter 1 - How full, emptiness!

This Zen master who remained for ten years and could not come back must have been searching alone, without a master. Otherwise the master gives you a certain rope; he does not allow you to go beyond that. He gives you a taste of your being -- that is enough -- and a remembrance of it. He takes you through the rose garden and the fragrance of the roses hangs around your clothes. That much is enough. You know who you are and your actions express your sincerity, your every gesture becomes a buddha gesture. Just two minutes are enough to reach the origin of your being.

I go on watching: when I say die, I have to watch whether somebody is really dying.

Otherwise I will be proved a criminal, that I ordered him to die and he died. So I have to keep watch. And the only way is, I have to feel your heart throbbing -- ten thousand hearts throbbing. And my arithmetic is not good, but somehow I manage. At least up to now I have managed. One never knows about tomorrow, or even tonight.

Sardar Gurudayal Singh is laughing, and he is one of the fellows who may become lost and not come back. He may not care about Nivedano's drum. He may listen, but may not care.

But I have other ways also.

(SARDAR LAUGHS HEARTILY.)

Do you want to see my other ways?

(THE MASTER BEGINS TO MAKE TICKLING GESTURES TOWARDS

AVIRBHAVA, AS HE DID THE PREVIOUS EVENING, AND WAVES OF LAUGHTER

RISE AND FALL AS HE "TICKLES" AGAIN AND AGAIN.) This way is purely imported -- Hollywood, California. A real buddha! And I have my substitutes ...

(HE TURNS TO ANANDO AND PROVOKES MORE LAUGHTER.)

Nobody can die here. Even if you have died, you will have to laugh at least. That's why I am at ease in ordering you to die. Otherwise who orders anybody to die -- and die completely and totally? Because I know that I have ways to wake you up even if you are dead. Every night I have to do it. A few people really die.

And another Zen master:

HE SEES ONLY THE WINDING

OF THE STREAM

AND THE TWISTING OF THE PATH.

HE DOES NOT KNOW THAT ALREADY

HE IS IN THE LAND OF THE IMMORTALS.

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Chapter 1 - How full, emptiness!

A tremendously significant statement. You see only misery and suffering -- all non-essentials. You don't see that on this very earth, immortal buddhas have moved, lived, loved. You don't see the heights that human consciousness has reached many, many times.

You remain confined to very small things.

At least every evening with me, you have to reach the heights. And don't get lost; come back down to the marketplace. My whole message is: Touch the heights of consciousness and bring those heights to the marketplace.

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

YOU SEEM TO EMBODY THE MIRACLE OF ZEN -- HOW FULL EMPTINESS CAN

BE!

Maneesha, there is no end to the fullness of emptiness. Because if there were a limit, then the emptiness would not be really empty; it would have boundaries. Total emptiness means the whole cosmos, unlimited, in your hands. And if, out of meditation, you cannot bring a new juice, a fresh fragrance, a new life and a new laughter, your meditation has not been authentic.

You played the game but not totally.

Otherwise ... every night, ten thousand people are becoming buddhas. When the same buddhas come again they have forgotten what has happened last night. They wake up and start looking for their rented bicycles. This is very strange -- buddhas never have used rented bicycles. And so quickly!

Just take time, don't be in such a hurry.

But I am introducing in the world a new kind of buddha who can have a girlfriend, and can change his girlfriend as many times as he wants, because we don't take this world seriously.

So I see my buddhas moving with new girlfriends every day. Nobody exactly knows ...

(THE MASTER BEGINS TO "TICKLE" AVIRBHAVA AGAIN, AND WE LAUGH

ALONG WITH HIM.)

Maneesha, this is the miracle you are talking about! Another miracle is ...

(HE TURNS TO "TICKLE" ANANDO.)

I have got only two miracles. But I think two are enough to make ten thousand buddhas laugh. And they do nothing. They sit so buddha-like. But still they trigger you.

And I have got, just behind Maneesha, Stonehead. Now he has cut all his hair, removed his beard, and left a small Chinese moustache. You all have to see him in his whole glory.

Germany has never seen a Zen master ...

Do you want to see him in his full glory?

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("YES!" WE RESPOND, LAUGHING AND CLAPPING.) Stand up Zen Master Sekito Niskriya.

(NISKRIYA STANDS UP AND, GRASPING HIS ZEN STAFF, RAISES HIS ARMS

HIGH ABOVE HIS HEAD. HE TURNS SLOWLY TO GREET THE ASSEMBLY, WHO

RESPOND WITH UPROARIOUS LAUGHING, CHEERING AND CLAPPING.) That's great! Now we can ... To welcome Zen Master Sekito Stonehead Niskriya, a few laughs because we don't have anything else to offer.

It is ten o'clock at night when Og and Beep-o, two Martian pilots, land on earth in the middle of a city. Og is sent out to make contact with whatever he finds, while Beep-o watches him on a TV screen.

The first thing Og runs into is big Olga Kowalski taking her dog for its nightly walk. The dog is sniffing enthusiastically at a lamppost as Og approaches them.

Five minutes later, a battered Og returns to his flying saucer. "What happened to you out there?" cries Beep-o.

"Well," says Og, "there was a little hairy creature on a rope that kept smelling me, and then it watered my feet ..."

"Yes," interrupts Beep-o. "But what about that big, ugly beast on the other end of the rope?"

"Oh, that!" exclaims Og. "Be careful of that one. While the little hairy beast was washing my feet, that big one walked up to me, stuck a silver coin in my mouth, then beat on my face and screamed, 'Shit! There is never any fucking Coca-Cola in these machines!'"

Paddy decides to have his old Ford car completely computerized and automated at O'Grady's Garage.

After the job is done, he drives over to Kowalski's house. An hour and ten beers later, Paddy shouts, "Hey, Kowalski! Come and listen to my new automatic compact disc player!"

Kowalski grabs his can of beer, staggers across the yard and gets into the car.

"How about some Irish music?" slobbers Paddy, selecting a tiny silver disc and pushing several buttons on the dashboard.

Five minutes later the speeding Ford car rounds a corner on two wheels, knocks down a policeman and four pedestrians, overturns a fruit-cart, slices a telephone pole in half, flattens one hundred yards of bushes, rolls over three times, and flies through the open door of the pub

-- finally coming to rest against the shattered bar.

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A dazed Paddy opens the crumpled door of the back seat and staggers out. Then an equally dazed Kowalski rubs his eyes and peers at Paddy through the dust.

"Jeezus Christ!" Kowalski cries. "Can you get all that on a tiny compact disc?"

Spudski, the Polack farmer, is hiring someone to help him run his farm.

Clodski applies for the job and goes for an interview.

"Now show me," says Farmer Spudski, "how you blow your nose."

Clodski is puzzled, but obligingly clears his nostrils, one at a time into the air, making a disgusting noise.

"Okay," says Spudski, "you are hired."

"You mean," asks Clodski, "that's all you want to know about me? Why?"

"Well, you see," explains the farmer, "the last guy that worked here had a disgusting habit.

He used to blow his nose into little rubber bags and leave them in my wife's bed!"

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent. Close your eyes.

Feel the body absolutely frozen.

Gather your consciousness inwards.

This is what is meant

by turning the heart

from outside to inside.

Look deeply. Find your roots.

This silence is the miracle

that you are carrying within yourself.

Deeper ... and deeper ... and deeper,

without any fear -- it is your own sky.

Open your wings and fly

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to any heights you want.

There is no obstruction anywhere,

just the courage is needed.

Blessed is this evening.

Ten thousand people are entering

into a deep silence,

into nothingness.

Precious are these moments.

Feel the splendor and the beauty of silence.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax. Let go.

Die completely and totally.

This is just to make clear

that within you is a consciousness

that can never die,

a consciousness

which is connected with the cosmos.

It is eternal.

It has no personality,

no individuality.

It is sheer joy not to be.

When you come back,

bring this joy and this fresh laughter,

these fresh roses and their fragrance,

with you. Slowly slowly

they will become your very breathing.

Unless meditation becomes

a natural, spontaneous phenomenon,

you have not touched

even the periphery of meditation.

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Deeper and deeper.

Die to the past, die to the future.

Only this moment become

just like an arrow

going to the very depths.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back ...

Sit down like buddhas.

In deep silence, in great joy.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the gathering of ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master!

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2

Dissolved, just like ice

3 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

DOGEN WROTE:

NOW, WHEN WE SEE THE FOLLOWERS OF AN ENLIGHTENED ZEN MASTER, WE REALIZE THAT THEY HAVE MANY DIFFICULTIES IN HEARING HIS TRUE

TEACHINGS. TRUE ASPIRANTS OF BUDDHISM AMOUNT TO TWENTY OR THIRTY

-- NAY, TO ONE HUNDRED OR TO ONE THOUSAND. IN THIS CASE, IF A MASTER

TRIES TO LEAD EVERY ONE OF THEM, HE WILL FIND THE DAYS AND NIGHTS

TOO SHORT. FURTHER, THEY HAVE NO EAR FOR HIS TEACHINGS, HOWEVER

HARD HE MAY TRY TO LEAD THEM. BUT WHEN THEY GIVE EAR TO HIM, HIS

SERMON IS ALREADY FINISHED.

WHEN AN OLD ZEN MASTER LAUGHS LOUDLY, CLAPPING HIS HANDS, BEGINNERS AND LATER-DAY TRAINEES IN BUDDHISM SEEM TO HAVE

DIFFICULTY EVEN IN HAVING A CHANCE TO FIND THEMSELVES AMONG THE

ATTENDANTS. SOME OF THEM REALIZE THE INNERMOST DEPTHS OF THE

MASTER, AND OTHERS, NOT. SOME HEAR THE CORE OF THE MASTER'S

ENLIGHTENMENT, AND OTHERS, NOT.

TIME FLIES FASTER THAN AN ARROW; LIFE IS MORE TRANSIENT THAN A DEWDROP. SOME MAY HAVE THE MASTER, BUT REGRET THAT THEY CANNOT

HEAR HIS TEACHINGS. SOME WISH TO LISTEN TO HIS TEACHINGS, BUT REGRET

THAT THEY CANNOT SEE THE MASTER HIMSELF.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, DOGEN SAID:

MY OWN MASTER NEVER EASILY PERMITTED NEW MONKS TO STAY IN HIS

TEMPLE, USUALLY SAYING, "THOSE, WHO, LACKING IN THE BODHI-MIND, BEHAVE THEMSELVES MERELY FROM FORCE OF HABIT MUST NOT STAY

HERE." HAVING TURNED THEM OUT, HE SAID, "THEY ARE LACKING IN THE

BODHI-SEEKING MIND. WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO? SUCH FELLOWS ONLY

DISTURB OTHERS. THEY ARE NOT WORTHY OF BEING ALLOWED TO STAY

HERE."

DOGEN CONTINUED: SEEING AND PERSONALLY HEARING THIS FACT, I SAID

TO MYSELF: "LIVING AS THEY ARE, IN THIS COUNTRY, WHAT SIN OR CRIME IN

THEIR PREVIOUS EXISTENCE, PREVENTS THEM FROM LIVING WITH MY

MASTER? UNDER WHAT A LUCKY STAR I WAS BORN THAT, COMING FROM A FAR-DISTANT FOREIGN COUNTRY, I AM PERMITTED TO STAY HERE TO

WORSHIP HIS VENERABLE BODY AND LISTEN TO HIS SERMON! FOOLISH AS I AM, I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FORM A GOOD AND FRUITFUL CONNECTION WITH

HIM. "

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Maneesha, Dogen is dealing with one of the most important aspects of Zen. His statement is not as exact as it could be, but anyway he comes very approximately near to the truth.

He does not mention, and perhaps no Zen master has ever mentioned, that there are three potentialities. When a seeker comes to a master he may be only a student, most of them are.

They are in search of more knowledge because knowledge brings power, knowledge brings respectability, knowledge brings honor and dignity. But these are not the true seekers.

The second category that comes to the master is the disciple. Zen masters have reached very high as far as human consciousness is concerned. But they have stopped at the second category of seekers, the disciple and the master.

There is another category which Zen is not aware of, because it was not needed. To be a disciple was enough ... to meditate, to watch the master, and to create a connection of consciousnesses. It has worked well for Zen but I can see that something is missing, and that is the devotee.

The third category of seekers did not happen in Zen. The masters have reached to the highest peak, but the disciple cannot reach to the highest peak unless he becomes a devotee.

And the difference is great. The disciple is satisfied if he is connected with the master --

watches his movements, listens to his words, listens to his silences. Slowly slowly he starts growing an individuality of his own. He may jump from disciplehood into mastership.

Zen knows disciples and masters. But a more ancient tradition in India, which has almost disappeared, makes it clear that unless a disciple first becomes a devotee there is no way of becoming a master.

And what is the difference between the disciple and the devotee? The disciple seeks connection, the devotee seeks dissolvement; the disciple seeks individuality, the devotee seeks the ocean. Personality is borrowed, it has to be dropped; individuality is your own, but if you can manage to drop it also then the whole ocean is yours. Otherwise, a dewdrop is beautiful in the sunlight or in the moonlight, but the roaring reality of the ocean and the eternity of the ocean are missing. The dewdrop has no song to sing; the ocean has millions of songs to sing and millions remain unsung.

Although the dewdrop can reflect the moon as much as the ocean, the depth of the reflection cannot be more than the circular dimension of the dewdrop. In the ocean the same moon penetrates to the very depths, miles deep.

Being a devotee means dropping even individuality, dropping even the feeling that, "I am"

... just merging with the universe. It is the ultimate quantum leap. From personality to individuality is a very small jump, available to many, but from individuality to no-individuality is a very rare occurrence. And that's what makes a disciple a devotee.

Because Zen tradition knows nothing about the devotee, there is something missing in it. It brings the individual to realize the truth, it brings the individual back home; but the separation of the individual from the master and the separation of the individual from existence still remain in a very subtle form. The disciple still is. He has not forgotten himself completely, he has not dropped even his being.

A devotee is a miracle. He simply disappears into the whole, leaving behind not even a trace.

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Gautam Buddha is reported to have said that the authentic seeker is just like a bird flying in the sky, leaving no footmarks behind. When the bird becomes one with the sky ... not only in tune, because in tune you still remain separate. The disciple is in tune with the master but they are two different instruments, meeting deeply with each other, but the separation line is still there. The devotee simply disappears, only the master remains. The master himself becomes just a window for him to jump into the beyond.

Because the devotee is not at all a part of the Zen tradition ... and there are reasons why the word has not appeared. The reasons are that devotees -- the very word 'devotee' has become contaminated with the idea of God, with worship. To devote yourself, to dedicate yourself, to surrender yourself ... but all these words are not the essence of the word 'devotee'. Because of these misconceptions about the devotee, Zen has not used the word at all -- because there is no God to be devoted to and there is no worship to be done; you have to be just yourself.

My own experience is that just to be yourself is great, but not great enough. There is one step more -- not to be. Let the pine trees stand in their beauty under the full moon, let the birds sing, let the sun rise and set, but you will not be found anywhere. You are no more, existence is. This ultimate step makes the disciple a devotee ... no worship, no question of any God. And according to me, unless one is a devotee, not in tune with the universe but one with the universe, he cannot be a master.

Hence the master is one of the most miraculous phenomena. He is and he is not. He is to you, from the outside; he is not at all from the inside. Inside is pure space. This you have to remember before I talk about Dogen, because he is talking about the difficulties of the disciple.

Dogen wrote:

NOW, WHEN WE SEE THE FOLLOWERS OF AN ENLIGHTENED ZEN MASTER ...

In fact a Zen master has no followers. That is the beauty of Zen: he has lovers, he has people as fellow travelers, but not followers. Others have followers -- following means imitating, following means preparing oneself step by step in a discipline. It is more or less creating yourself in the image of your master, but that again is hypocrisy.

I will not say, FOLLOWERS OF AN ENLIGHTENED ZEN MASTER. If there are followers then the master is not enlightened. If the master is enlightened there are only lovers, fellow travelers. The question of following does not arise.

I make this statement with absolute authority, that Dogen has missed the point.

He says: ... WE REALIZE THAT THEY HAVE MANY DIFFICULTIES IN HEARING

HIS TRUE TEACHINGS. TRUE ASPIRANTS OF BUDDHISM AMOUNT TO TWENTY

OR THIRTY -- NAY, TO ONE HUNDRED OR TO ONE THOUSAND. IN THIS CASE, IF

A MASTER TRIES TO LEAD EVERY ONE OF THEM, HE WILL FIND THE DAYS AND

NIGHTS TOO SHORT. FURTHER, THEY HAVE NO EAR FOR HIS TEACHINGS, HOWEVER HARD HE MAY TRY TO LEAD THEM.

Dogen does not understand the working of a master. Perhaps these statements were made by him before he himself became a master. There is a difficulty, because in those days there was no printing, no writing, just disciples taking notes. So it is very difficult to know whether it is Dogen's own mistake or the mistake of the person who was taking the notes.

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But anyway we don't know who took the notes. One thing is certain, that Dogen must have said something to create the fault.

First, TRUE ASPIRANTS OF BUDDHISM. He is still talking in terms of 'isms' and Zen is not an 'ism'. Zen is freedom from all 'isms' -- Buddhism included. And aspirants are for the truth, not for Buddhism, not for Hinduism, not for Christianity. These are not aspirants, these are conditioned people who are following their conditioning. They may find a certain solace, a consolation, but they will never find the truth, because truth is not part of any theology.

Dogen's statements are very amateurish. TRUE ASPIRANTS is enough; don't say OF

BUDDHISM. Why should anybody be an aspirant of Buddhism? Everybody is a buddha himself. So it is better to say: "Seekers, aspirants, searchers of one's own being." Why bring theologies in? That is not the Zen way.

And he does not know that a master can have thousands of disciples. He may not know even their names, he may not have even met them -- it does not matter. He works in a totally different way than things are done in the ordinary world. He simply creates an atmosphere, he does not work with "A" and "B" and "C".

Then naturally, according to Dogen, a man's life is very short; if he becomes enlightened --

as Gautam Buddha became enlightened -- at the age of forty ... He lived up to eighty-two. In forty-two years, if he had worked day and night without sleeping, without eating ... even then, how many people would he have been able to bring to the consciousness that he had achieved?

And that is a very foolish way, there is no need. The very mastery, the art of being a master is to create an atmosphere in which things start happening on their own. What are we doing here? I don't know many of you, I don't know your names, I don't meet you personally. I simply create an atmosphere in which you can drown, in which you can drink the very juice of life. There is no need for me to work on individuals -- that is a very poor and primitive way. I work by creating an atmosphere, an energy field, and every day that energy field becomes more and more powerful. Every one of you contributes to it. You are not just on the side of taking; you are also a giver.

Here your presence, your consciousness, certainly creates a chain reaction. Just the man sitting by your side ... you may not know him at all, but in your silence you meet with him.

When everybody becomes silent there is simply a lake of buddhahood -- one consciousness, one existence, one dance. You are not in tune with existence, you are it.

So, for his first mistake, he thinks that life is too short and a master cannot work on many people. That is absolutely wrong. A single master can work on the whole world. And he need not go out of his room; he can radiate enough energy, invisible rays, to surround the whole globe.

Many times it has been reported to me that some sannyasin has come from New Zealand or some sannyasin has come even from the Soviet Union, for the reason that he simply saw my picture. A friend had my picture, and seeing the picture a tremendous longing arose in him somehow to reach me -- irrational, but life is irrational.

Somebody has read a few words in a book and those words become a magnetic force so that he has to come here. Somebody has heard how I have been condemned, criticized, and thinks, "If so many people and so many magazines and so many politicians are against this man, there must be something to him."

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Nobody is opposed on such a vast scale. I cannot enter twenty-one countries, their parliaments have passed laws.

Just today I received a beautiful note from Vimal, who has gone to England. He had taken his girlfriend, who is an Indian, to the British High Commissioner's office in Bombay. They would not give a visa to the Indian woman. They interrogated her for hours and finally refused.

But Vimal is not a person who will accept any refusal so easily. He asked to see the highest authority. He did not want to deal with an assistant commissioner; he wanted to see the High Commissioner himself: on what grounds is he denying a visa just for three weeks?

The High Commissioner said, "To be frank with you, your girlfriend has nothing -- no bank account, no home, no particular reason why she should come back to India again."

Vimal said to him, "Don't be afraid about that. We have not been saying it to you, but we are Osho Rajneesh's disciples. She has every reason to be here. She has no reason to be anywhere else."

And Vimal has written a note to me, "The British Commissioner immediately gave the visa. He said, 'If she is Osho Rajneesh's disciple, then there is no problem.'"

It is the first time that my name has been of help -- because that makes it certain that she will not remain in England. "She can go have a three week trip, or if you want, three months

... any time. We were worried that she may not come back. But if she is a disciple of Osho Rajneesh, there is no worry."

Life is very strange. They were hiding my name, but they forgot that my name has to be kept secret if you are coming FROM England. If you are going TO England it is a different story. The High Commissioner was perfectly satisfied; there was no question of asking any more about the woman. She will come back to India.

I have come across many sannyasins who just heard my name and something started -- a longing, a desire ... as if a forgotten language suddenly is remembered. A master does not work on individuals. He creates an atmosphere and that atmosphere itself goes on becoming every day richer, more dense. Its pull, its gravitation, goes on bringing new people from faraway places.

In Rancho Rajneesh in America ... now even the Oregon newspapers are accepting the fact that our presence has made Oregon a world-famous place. In fact the news media -- television, radio, newspapers, magazines -- they all missed. They had a tremendously beautiful story, with all the colors of the rainbow, with all the rumors that you can manage. We gave them so much material and we allowed them to invent whatever they wanted to invent. We enjoy it anyway, we don't make much fuss whether it is true or not. We kept the whole news media busy.

It is almost unbelievable that I was, for two years, the first man ... I was a tourist whose tourist visa had expired years before, and I was chosen the man of the year in Oregon because I was discussed more than the president himself.

Many times my people said to me, "These allegations ... we should drag them to the court."

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I said, "Stop -- don't bother! Let them make as many allegations as possible. Help to create rumors yourself! Let the whole of America be concerned with you." And we made, within five years, the whole of America concerned.

Now the politicians are missing me. One of my attorneys came a few days ago. He said,

"Now, in Oregon, the politicians are missing you very much."

I said, "Why?"

He said, "Because you were a good reason for them to collect the votes of the Oregonians, because they all were against you. Now there is no reason why they should be chosen." And he added, "The newspapers are missing you, the television is missing you."

The man Ed Meese said in a press conference, "All that we want is to silence Rajneesh absolutely. He should not be heard anywhere, he should not be seen anywhere. We will close all the doors to his voice."

Anando has sent him just now ... Here we are, ten thousand sannyasins, and poor Ed Meese has been kicked out of his Attorney General's job because he has been found guilty of doing many criminal acts.

And Anando, as my secretary, has written to him -- with a photograph of ten thousand sannyasins, that means twenty thousand hands raised -- saying, "Osho Rajneesh is still being heard -- where are you?" It is only a question ...

In the Soviet Union, where it is almost impossible for anybody to enter, I have my sannyasins. They have never seen me. They meet in basements. They have been terrorized, harassed, by the Russian intelligence, their books have been burned. So those poor Russians have to type the books and, from hand to hand, those books are moving around.

Now that America has banned me from entering for five years, Russian intelligence has relaxed. Before they used to think that I must be in favor of America and America's capitalism. Now at least that much is proved -- that America has closed its doors to me.

Now even sannyasins in the Soviet Union have started feeling that they can invite me sometime. Things are getting better, the police are no more harassing them.

I am sitting here in my room, and I am being discussed, for and against, in almost all the parliaments of the world. Articles arrive every day from Holland, from Germany, from England, from places of which I have not even heard -- small places ... Bolivia. And just now I have received their congratulations for my birthday. My sannyasins in Bolivia, in Yugoslavia, in Czechoslovakia ... it is a contagious phenomenon.

To be a master is almost like a dangerous disease moving like winds, like clouds ... it does not carry a passport, it does not believe in any boundaries. A master's existence is always universal. His focus cannot be on individuals. That will take ages to bring enlightenment to the world. No, it is not a retail work -- it is wholesale. When I make you every night enlightened it is wholesale.

And whatever vibrations you are gathering, you will be spreading without your knowing, wherever you go. I don't make anybody a missionary. I don't want you to convert anybody. I want you just to be converted yourself -- converted not to any ideology, converted to your own truth. And suddenly you will start radiating a fragrance for which many are thirsty.

Sannyasins have reported to me that, "It is very strange. We have dropped the orange, we have dropped the mala just so that nobody recognizes us," because the governments, the Osho - The Miracle

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airports ... everywhere the Americans influence, blackmail, because they are all indebted to America. The sannyasins say, "It is very strange. We are immediately recognized, it has made no difference. Even if we say we don't know who Osho Rajneesh is, they say, 'We know you are a man concerned with Osho Rajneesh. Your very eyes show it.'"

Now, I cannot take away my people's eyes. I can give you sunglasses, but then you will be recognized by your sunglasses. Then nobody else in the world will be able to wear sunglasses.

We can have a hilarious time: whoever wears sunglasses is a sannyasin.

Dogen does not understand that the work of a master is very subtle, very fine. And it is not in the realm of the visible, it is in the realm of the invisible, so you don't see it but you know it is spreading.

So much fear in politicians of a man who has no nuclear weapons, not even a vegetable cutting knife ... I have not seen with my own eyes a vegetable cutting knife. I don't know who cuts my vegetables.

Why this fear? It seems the very air is ready for me. The young people around the world are searching for something. They are not satisfied with their own churches, they are not satisfied with their religions or their leaders. There is an immense discontent all over the world. That is the fear of the politicians: that I can catch up with the youth -- with the young, with the fresh, with the intelligent. It is better to avoid me. But the more they try to avoid, the more they make it clear to their people that if these politicians are afraid of a man who has not done any harm to anybody, then it is worthwhile to go to that man.

Half of my people here are from Germany. It is because of the German politicians who are working in my favor by making laws against me. The intelligent youth can see that if these politicians are so much afraid of a man, then it is better to go and not to miss the opportunity.

A master functions like free air -- it goes on around the earth like radiation.

Dogen must have said these things when he was not himself a master. But a few points of what he is saying are, by chance, important. TRUE ASPIRANTS -- I drop off the OF

BUDDHISM. A true aspirant does not remain stuck being a student because as a student he can only be burdened with borrowed knowledge. He can see that it is not his experience. A true aspirant wants to know things as his own experience. He immediately becomes a disciple.

But the disciple has a few difficulties; it depends on both the master and the disciple how great those difficulties will be. First, THEY HAVE NO EAR FOR HIS TEACHINGS.

According to me, there are no teachings, but only a presence. You don't need ears, you need a heart which can drink the presence of a master.

And he is saying, THEY HAVE NO EAR FOR HIS TEACHINGS, HOWEVER HARD

HE MAY TRY TO LEAD THEM. Sheer nonsense! A master never tries hard. When a thing can be done very easily, only idiots try hard. And when you understand the way an energy phenomenon works it is only a question of triggering. It is not a hard job. It is the most easy job, otherwise I would not have chosen it.

I am myself an example: a lazy man who has never done anything. I saw that it seems enlightenment is perfectly in tune with laziness and I immediately became enlightened. I did not have second thoughts. For thirty years I have been enlightened and not for a single Osho - The Miracle

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moment I have doubted. In fact I am so lazy I will not doubt; doubting also takes effort. And once I have become enlightened, why unnecessarily bother?

You go on doing hard things. You become enlightened, you become unenlightened. And next day when you see me you again remember that you are a buddha. In this hall only buddhas sit. It is so easy to be silent, it is so easy to be watchful; it is not an arduous thing. But all old masters made it seem like a very arduous thing.

It is true that very few have the courage to open their hearts so the master can pour himself into them. But it is not a question of any teachings; no master worth the name has any teachings. He certainly has some insights to share. He does not argue, he does not want to convince you. He has no investment in convincing you. He is not interested in converting you to be a follower. It is his joy to share the bliss he has, because the more he shares it, the more he has. It is not out of compassion; it is out of a simple understanding that the more you share your joy, the more there is. It is a strange arithmetic: the more you give, the more is received by your heart from the unknown sources of existence.

Dogen is certainly very immature. BUT WHEN THEY GIVE EAR TO HIM, HIS

SERMON IS ALREADY FINISHED. That is true. If the master is only concerned with teachings, then by the time the person is ready to listen to him the sermon is over. But the authentic master is a teaching himself. He simply provokes in you a synchronicity. He brings you closer to his heart, his being, because that is the door to the universal heart. It is an alchemical transformation; it is not a scholarly job.

WHEN AN OLD ZEN MASTER LAUGHS LOUDLY, CLAPPING HIS HANDS, BEGINNERS AND LATER-DAY TRAINEES IN BUDDHISM SEEM TO HAVE

DIFFICULTY EVEN IN HAVING A CHANCE TO FIND THEMSELVES AMONG THE

ATTENDANTS.

When the old Zen master laughs ... if you start thinking about why he is laughing you have missed. He is simply enjoying it. And if you understand the point, you should join him in his laughter. You will find that you are laughing in a very fresh and new way. You have laughed before; it was very ordinary. This time it seems to be very precious. It has reflected the laughter of the master also. It has joined hands with a tremendous energy, it has reflected the full moon.

Your laughter has been a laughter in dark tunnels. You have laughed because you wanted to hide your misery. You laughed because you did not want to expose your sufferings to others. Your laughter was a defensive device.

But when a master laughs it has nothing to do with anything to hide. On the contrary, he is laughing because he can see his buddhahood and he can see your buddhahood, and he cannot believe how you buddhas can manage to be in suffering. This is the most unbelievable thing: that a buddha is in misery. Carrying essentially the buddhahood, how can you be in misery?

How can you be in suffering? How can you be dry and not blossoming?

Zen is a participation with the master's being. He laughs and you join in his laughter, not even bothering why he is laughing. The question "why?" is the most stupid question. Why are the roses so beautiful? Why are the clouds today silent? Why do the bamboos go on growing?

Everything simply is. At the moment the master feels like laughing he does not ask himself why. His laughter is just like a flower. The bush does not ask, "Why has this rose arisen in me?" The bush enjoys the dance of the rose, its beauty and its fragrance, without any Osho - The Miracle

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questioning. Existence has no rationality in it. It is beyond reason, hence there is no question of any teaching. The question is only of sharing.

SOME OF THEM REALIZE THE INNERMOST DEPTHS OF THE MASTER, AND

OTHERS, NOT. SOME HEAR THE CORE OF THE MASTER'S ENLIGHTENMENT, AND OTHERS, NOT.

You can see the statement seems to be a footnote by a disciple, because a master does not speak about great things as if he has heard about them. He has seen them. He is talking about things that may be happening. Some people hear the master and some people don't hear.

TIME FLIES FASTER THAN AN ARROW; LIFE IS MORE TRANSIENT THAN A DEWDROP. SOME MAY HAVE THE MASTER, BUT REGRET THAT THEY CANNOT

HEAR HIS TEACHINGS. SOME WISH TO LISTEN TO HIS TEACHINGS, BUT REGRET

THAT THEY CANNOT SEE THE MASTER HIMSELF.

Unfortunately, Dogen is still not a master. I have just finished a series on Dogen. Those were the statements when he must have become a master. But these statements, without any doubt, show that he has taken notes but has no authority of his own. A master speaks with authority, the authority that comes out of his own experience.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, DOGEN SAID:

MY OWN MASTER NEVER EASILY PERMITTED NEW MONKS TO STAY IN HIS

TEMPLE.

Now it is impossible for a master to do such an unkind act. Everybody has to begin someday. Everybody is new ... even those who are old disciples started one day as new disciples. Now, not to permit the new monks to stay in the temple is sheer unkindness, and that is not a sign of a master. Perhaps Dogen has stayed with a teacher.

And when he rejected people, USUALLY SAYING, "THOSE, WHO, LACKING IN THE

BODHI-MIND, BEHAVE THEMSELVES MERELY FROM FORCE OF HABIT MUST

NOT STAY HERE." HAVING TURNED THEM OUT, HE SAID, "THEY ARE LACKING

IN THE BODHI-SEEKING MIND. WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO? SUCH FELLOWS

ONLY DISTURB OTHERS."

Not only was Dogen not a master at the time these words were written, his master also was not a master.

The very miracle of the master is to transform the disciple. I cannot conceive that a master will reject anyone. The very foundation of Zen is that everybody is a buddha, whether he knows it or not. The function of the master is very easy: just to help the person to remember his self-nature. There is nowhere one has to go, no discipline has to be enforced, no self-torture ... just a silent searching within oneself. And the master creates the atmosphere.

You see the miracle every day. The new person comes and as he joins in this energy field he becomes as old as you are. His laughter is as deep as yours. Perhaps one day he may hesitate, but the next day he will see that everybody is laughing -- "Why should I hesitate?"

Perhaps one day he will not die, but when he sees another day that everybody here dies and comes back, then there is no fear in dying ... one can die.

The newcomer becomes very soon an old disciple, just within days. I can see when the newcomer for the first time enters the Buddha Hall he is hesitant, worried what is going to Osho - The Miracle

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happen, cannot understand how he is going to do gibberish. But any child can do gibberish, it doesn't need any training. From the very first moment you are almost trained. Gibberish needs no training, nor does laughter need any training.

If you can do the gibberish you are cleansing your mind of all kinds of dust that goes on gathering. And as the mind becomes silent ... there is nowhere to go other than inwards. All roads are forgotten, there remains a single one-way traffic.

Just for a day or two you may hesitate to go that much inside. Who knows whether you will be able to come back or not? That's the whole purpose of creating an energy field -- so that you can see that so many people are coming and going, becoming enlightened, unenlightened. It is a playful, joyful exercise; there is nothing to be worried about, you can go as deep as you want. And when everybody else is going, in that tremendous storm it is so easy to join. Alone you may find it difficult to do gibberish, but when ten thousand people go simply with their wings, not knowing Chinese but speaking Chinese, not knowing what they are saying but saying it very emphatically, not bothering at all who is listening ...

Nobody is listening, so you can say anything you want, you are not going to offend anybody. There is nobody other than you. Such an absolute freedom you will not find even when you are alone. And everybody helps to trigger everybody else. When you see your neighbor is going nuts the resistance drops. Everybody is going nuts and everybody is enjoying it so much, why not take a little step and be nuts, only for two minutes?

That will make you saner than you have ever been, because you throw so much garbage that you were holding. Do you think your gibberish is coming from the sky? You are carrying all that garbage, throw it! And don't be worried that, "What will the others say?" They are throwing their garbage, nobody is interested in anybody else. Although thousands of people are doing it, everybody is doing it on his own.

Just one thing I have to warn you: don't sit silently when people are throwing garbage, because that garbage tends to find new spaces again, some new house. So outdo each other, don't be worried; it is a great competitive phenomenon. If you are just a little polite you are in a danger. It is not a question of being polite, because people are throwing all kinds of poisons.

To keep their poisons from entering in you, you have to be on top of it. Such a joy, and with no ticket! You will not have such a joy even in a madhouse!

Just do it totally, enthusiastically. Don't be bothered whether it is Arabic or Hebrew or Chinese, you are allowed to speak any language that you don't know. Just avoid the language that you do know, because the language that you do know will not bring your nonsense out, it will be very grammatical.

Just be careful that you are not writing a meaningful poetry or prose. Meaning is not at all the requirement. Just for two minutes give an opportunity to your existence to be meaningless.

And you will be immensely shocked to know that just within two minutes you become so light, so ready to enter into silence.

A master's function is not to reject anybody, because anybody who is coming is a buddha in disguise, you have just to help him to discover his buddhahood. He knows in his deepest being but he has forgotten the way. Meditation is just to help him to find the way. And the way is not very long, it is very short. From the head to the heart how many inches? From the heart to the being how many inches? And from the being to the universal being ... just a single step. The reality is so close to you, you are just standing on the boundary of it.

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The master -- any master worth his salt -- will not reject anybody, because to reject anybody is to reject a buddha. He may be hiding himself, he may be thinking himself somebody else, but it is a great joy to remind him.

The master is just a reminder.

Certainly Dogen was not with a master, because that master used to say, "Because they are not yet buddhas, I will not accept them." That is almost like telling a sick person, "The doctor will not accept you because you are sick. When you are healthy come back!"

When one is healthy one does not come back to the doctor.

You are all buddhas, whether you know it or not ... but I know it, so it is only a question of creating a certain climate in which you also become part of the knowing that I am ready to share with you.

DOGEN CONTINUED: SEEING AND PERSONALLY HEARING THIS FACT, I SAID

TO MYSELF: "LIVING AS THEY ARE, IN THIS COUNTRY, WHAT SIN OR CRIME IN

THEIR PREVIOUS EXISTENCE, PREVENTS THEM FROM LIVING WITH MY

MASTER? "

Now he is thinking that the master is right, and these fellows who are being rejected must have committed some grave sins in their past lives, that's why the master is not accepting them. The truth is, the master is not the master.

There is a Tibetan story ... An old master refused his whole life to accept any disciple. His name became more and more famous, people from all parts of Tibet used to come to him to be accepted as a disciple. It had become almost a craziness in all the seekers to see who was going to be accepted first. But he never accepted anyone.

But on the day he was dying he simply called his servant and told him, "Just go to the marketplace and tell whoever wants to be a disciple that I am ready, come! -- because today I am going to die."

Even the servant could not believe, "Has he gone insane or senile or what? Because his whole life he has been refusing -- even kings had been rejected -- and now he is saying, 'Go to the marketplace ... tell anybody!'"

The servant said, "Are you in your senses when you are saying this?"

The master laughed, he said, "Don't waste time, because this evening is my last evening. I was rejecting the disciples up to now because I was not a master. Just this morning as the sun was rising I became the master, I became enlightened. Now I can see the buddhahood of everyone. So don't be worried, just go! Go around the town and declare, 'Whoever wants to become a disciple, come soon, the master will not be available tomorrow.'"

People could not believe the servant, they thought, "It must be some kind of joke -- that old fellow has rejected even kings."

One man's wife had died and he was thinking, "What to do now?" Getting married again meant getting into another tragedy. Somehow existence has saved him, one tragedy has ended

... but sitting without doing anything looks crazy. And he thought, "What is the problem? The old man is going to die tonight. If he can make me enlightened today there is no harm, and tomorrow I will be free to choose whether I want to remain enlightened or not."

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So a few people ... somebody was there on a holiday, somebody was unemployed and just sitting because there was no job -- thirteen people in all. The servant brought a very strange company. One man was going to commit suicide but he thought, "It is better first to become enlightened, suicide can be done afterwards."

One man was a known thief; he thought, "It is a good opportunity, it must be a great gathering. In a big gathering you can cut a few pockets, there is no harm in it, and if you happen to become enlightened ..."

Nobody thought about it, and nobody took it seriously, but they had some free time ... The servant went inside the cave where the old master lived and he said, "I have brought thirteen people, but I cannot say they are aspirants. They are just a useless lot, I know every one of them. One was determined to commit suicide, I told him, 'You can commit afterwards, what is the hurry?' One is a thief at night, so in the day he is free. I am ashamed," the servant said, "to bring this lot, but what can I do? You told ..."

The master said, "There is no problem. Bring each one of them, because they are all buddhas."

And he called that random selection of thirteen and he said to them, "You are all buddhas.

I was refusing up to now because I was not enlightened myself, and I could not accept a disciple because that would be a deception. This morning I have become a buddha and this evening I am going to disappear into the universe. Meanwhile, if any of you want to share my being, just sit silently around me."

They looked at each other ... whether to sit around him or not? But now that they had come so far into the forest, into the mountains, they thought, "It is worth trying, and anyway he is not asking any fee or anything."

The story is ... the man died and those thirteen people became enlightened, because when an enlightened master dies he radiates tremendous energy around himself. They had entered into the cave very ordinary people, they came out of the cave brilliant buddhas.

Dogen must have been in the company of a man who himself was not a master but a pretender. Because he was accepted by the master he thinks, UNDER WHAT A LUCKY STAR I WAS BORN THAT, COMING FROM A FAR-DISTANT FOREIGN COUNTRY, I AM PERMITTED TO STAY HERE TO

WORSHIP HIS VENERABLE BODY AND TO LISTEN TO HIS SERMON! FOOLISH AS

I AM, I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FORM A GOOD AND FRUITFUL CONNECTION WITH

HIM.

You don't make a fruitful connection with a master. In fact, either you dissolve into the master or you remain yourself. 'Connection' is a wrong word. Connection means that the two remain two; they just found a way of relating to each other that they call a connection. I will not say that you are connected with me or I am connected with you. Here there is only one consciousness!

You have to understand that to be with a master is not to be connected, it is to be dissolved, just like ice dissolves.

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Shiki wrote:

MIDNIGHT SOUND --

LEAP UP:

A FALLEN MOON FLOWER.

He must be meditating. These haikus are expressions of certain silences, sounds made out of silences.

MIDNIGHT SOUND -- LEAP UP: A FALLEN MOON FLOWER.

They are not to be understood the way we understand poetry.

Kikaku has written:

FULL AUTUMN MOON --

ON THE STRAW MAT,

PINE SHADOW.

In a certain silence you start feeling yourself part of the world ... the autumn moon, the straw mat, the pine shadow. It does not matter what it is, it has become part of you, you have become part of it.

A haiku by Basho:

HARVEST MOON:

AROUND THE POND I WANDER

AND THE NIGHT IS GONE.

Have you even seen night going? Very few people even become aware of things which are happening every day. Have you ever seen the evening coming? The midnight and its song?

The sunrise and its beauty? We are behaving almost like blind people. In such a beautiful world we are living in small ponds of our own misery. It is familiar, so even if somebody wants to pull you out, you struggle. You don't want to be pulled out of your misery, of your suffering. Otherwise there is so much joy all around, you have just to be aware of it and to become a participant, not a spectator.

Philosophy is speculation, Zen is participation. Participate in the night leaving, participate in the evening coming, participate in the stars and participate in the clouds; make participation your lifestyle and the whole existence becomes such a joy, such an ecstasy. You could not have dreamt of a better universe.

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Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

YOU SEEM TO BE THROWING US BACK TO OURSELVES MORE AND MORE

LATELY, REMINDING US THAT YOU HAVE DISAPPEARED, SO THERE IS NO ONE

TO RELATE TO.

BY WHAT MAY WE GAUGE IF WE HAVE A "GOOD AND FRUITFUL"

CONNECTION, WHEN WE ARE CONNECTING WITH NO ONE?

Maneesha, don't commit the same mistake that Dogen committed. There is no need of any connection, because connection means you are separate; drop all ideas of connecting. Just like a wave disappears into the ocean, let this place be an ocean where you all disappear.

You cannot have any connection with me, because I am not there. But you can dissolve into the same silence and the same space where I used to be once; where for thirty years I have not been. If you want to enter into an uninhabited house, it is up to you. It is dilapidated, but if you want to enter the space ... the walls may have fallen, the roof may have fallen, but the space is still there and has been always there. When the walls were standing, it was there; now the walls are not, it is still there. You cannot connect with it but you can join, you can participate.

Remember, Dogen's thought was not a mature thought of a master. Your question has arisen out of Dogen's GOOD AND FRUITFUL CONNECTION with the master. With the master you don't have any connection at all, because the master is the name of an absence. He is no more! Just an open sky ... what connection can you have with the open sky? You can disappear into it, but it will be participation, and only participation is significant.

Before we enter into this evening's meditation, into a great participation, dissolving ourselves into an ocean of consciousness ... just to make you light, just to make you playful, not serious ...

Ronald Reagan has gone deaf, so he calls in the White House doctor.

Doctor Spook immediately looks in the President's ear. "Why do you have that suppository in your ear?" he asks.

Reagan says nothing.

"Why do you have that suppository in your ear?" shouts Spook.

"What?" replies Reagan.

Doctor Spook pulls the suppository out of the President's ear and shows it to him.

Reagan's face lights up. "A-ha!" he says, "now I know where I put my hearing aid!"

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Jerry Jablonski, the traveling salesman, phones home.

"How are the kids?" he asks.

"Well," replies Jezebel, his wife. "I have got some good news and some bad news."

"So tell me the bad news," says Jablonski.

"Okay," says Jezebel, "the bad news is that Jerry junior grabbed your pet Doberman dog, and chopped it up for fishing bait."

"What?" shrieks Jablonski. "That's ghastly! What could the good news possibly be?"

"Well," says Jezebel, "we have got three giant catfish for dinner!"

Rufus, the big black guy, is fed up with living in Mississippi, so he goes to the station to catch a bus north to Chicago.

Looking around the bus station, he suddenly notices a weighing scale that tells your weight and also your fortune.

Rufus goes over to the scale, steps on it, and drops in a quarter. A little card shoots out that reads: "You weigh one hundred and fifty pounds, you are black, and you need to go to the bathroom."

"Mmm," says Rufus, "I guess I do." He goes to the bathroom, but all he does is pass wind.

He decides to try the machine again, so he digs out another quarter and drops it into the slot. The little card shoots out and Rufus reads it. It says, "You weigh one hundred and fifty pounds, you are black, and the waitress in the snack bar would like to meet you."

So Rufus goes to the snack bar, strikes up a conversation with the waitress, and they end up screwing behind the counter.

Very pleased, Rufus returns again to the machine for another try. This time the card shoots out and reads, "You are still one hundred and fifty pounds, you are still a nigger, and with all this fucking and farting around you have missed your bus!"

Nivedano, just give the beat and everybody goes into gibberish ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent ... close your eyes,

feel your body to be frozen.

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No movement.

Gather your energy inwards,

deeper and deeper.

You have disappeared,

only the buddha remains.

Just a pure consciousness,

the very origin of existence.

You are not your body,

you are not your mind,

you are this consciousness,

this awareness, this watchfulness.

To make it more clear, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax ... let go ... die completely.

Remember this peace,

this silence, this blissfulness.

These are all your flowers.

You are no more,

but the existence is rich, radiant.

When Nivedano calls you back,

come back with a great splendor,

joy, ecstasy,

and sit down for a few moments,

remembering that you are a buddha.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back,

slowly

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remembering.

You have been to a new space within yourself.

It makes you a participant

of an oceanic consciousness.

Feel fresh,

unburdened of past and future,

let this moment be just a pure watching.

You are blessed to be here,

you are blessed to enter into your own being.

Remember it twenty-four hours,

not as a thought, but as a heartbeat,

and it will transform your whole existence.

You don't have to do anything,

just this watchfulness

and you will find everything

slowly, slowly changing.

We have to fill this whole world

with buddhas ... not Buddhists, but buddhas.

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3

Unhitch the Universe

4 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ON ONE OCCASION, RINZAI SAID:

STUDENTS OF TODAY FAIL TO ACHIEVE THEIR ENDS. WHAT IS THEIR

FAULT? IT LIES IN NOT HAVING FAITH IN THEMSELVES. BY LACK OF FAITH

YOU FALL INTO A STATE OF UNCERTAINTY, IN WHICH YOU CONFORM TO ALL

THE FLUCTUATIONS IN YOUR SURROUNDINGS, SUBJECTING YOURSELF TO

THEIR MYRIAD REVOLUTIONS, SO THAT YOU ARE UNABLE TO ACHIEVE

FREEDOM. IF YOU, HOWEVER, SUCCEED IN STOPPING THE MIND, AS IT

MOMENTARILY DASHES HITHER AND THITHER IN ITS SEARCH, YOU THEN

BECOME INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE PATRIARCHS AND BUDDHAS.

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO ARE THE PATRIARCHS AND BUDDHAS? ALL

OF YOU LISTENING TO MY TEACHING HERE BEFORE ME ARE SUCH.

YOU FOLLOWERS OF THE WAY, THERE IS NO NEED FOR YOU TO DEVOTE

EFFORT TO THE BUDDHIST TEACHING. ONLY DO THE ORDINARY THINGS WITH

NO SPECIAL EFFORT: RELIEVE YOUR BOWELS, PASS WATER, WEAR YOUR

CLOTHES, EAT YOUR FOOD, AND, WHEN TIRED, LIE DOWN. THE SIMPLE

FELLOW WILL LAUGH AT YOU, BUT THE WISE WILL UNDERSTAND.

AN ANCIENT SAID: ALL THOSE WHO STRIVE OUTWARDLY ARE STUPID.

SUFFICE IT TO BE ONE'S OWN MASTER WHEREVER ONE MAY HAPPEN TO BE, AND REALITY WILL PREVAIL EVERYWHERE. THUS ONE WILL REMAIN

UNSHAKEN UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES.

RINZAI SAID ON ANOTHER OCCASION: IN YOUR RED HEART, THERE IS A TRUE MAN OF NO FIXED POSITION, WHO COMES IN AND GOES OUT THROUGH

YOUR FOREHEAD. I URGE THOSE WHO HAVE NOT EXPERIENCED THIS, TO TRY

TO SEE IT.

Maneesha, Zen is for the simple, for the ordinary, for the natural. But the mind of man is for just the opposite; it wants to be extraordinary, it wants to be special, it wants to be known.

Respectability, reputation, honor, riches -- they are all desires for making you special.

But to be special is against nature. In nature everything is as it is. Nobody is feeling any inferiority complex, and nobody is suffering from any superiority complex. The roses are beautiful because they don't claim any superiority. There are thousands of flowers but there is no competition, everything is unique in its simplicity. They are not running a marathon race, competing with each other to come first; they are immensely satisfied as they are. In the whole animal kingdom -- and all the trees, all the clouds, all the stars -- nobody wants to be something else. Because even if you try to be something else, it will be only phony.

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In this sense all the religions have committed a great crime against humanity, because they all want you to be saints, great saints. They have categories of austerities, they have categories of respectability. The so-called religions of the world are part of the same game that is being played in the marketplace, that is being played by the politicians. Everybody wants to have a position. He is ready to lose himself, to sell himself, for a position. That's what has happened, and everybody has lost his simplicity.

I came first in the whole university in my post-graduate examinations. My grandfather was a very simple man ... knowing nothing of Zen, but he was a man of Zen. When I told him that I got the gold medal for being the first in the whole university, he looked at me and he said,

"That simply means you were studying with fools; otherwise how could you manage to be first?" Rather than being happy, he was angry with me, "Don't you feel ashamed?"

I said "My God, I was thinking that you would appreciate ..."

He said, "I would have appreciated it if you had given the chance to somebody else, but you grabbed the gold medal yourself. This is very ungainly, ungraceful."

I said, "You will be happy to know that I have not brought the gold medal home."

I had dropped it in the university well. I had told the vice-chancellor that it did not matter to me, and to prove it I threw it in the big well that supplied the water to the whole university.

Everybody thought I was crazy. Even the vice-chancellor said, "This is carrying the argument too far."

I said, "It is not an argument. I'm simply telling you that I don't believe in a system of education which creates categories: first class, second class, third class. Everybody is just himself, this classification is a dangerous phenomenon."

My grandfather said, "That is good, if you have thrown that gold medal. You did well. And never again do such a thing."

I said, "I have done nothing. They simply gave it to me; it was not my fault. I had done everything not to have it."

I was not attending the classes, I was prohibited from attending the classes. I never purchased a single book that was prescribed by the university. I was purchasing strange books which had nothing to do with the examination. Even my professors were worried. They loved me. They said, "You are losing a great opportunity. You have every chance to be the first in the whole university, but we never see you reading anything that is prescribed."

How strange are the ways of life. It was because of this I came first -- because all the other students' answers were repetitive. Only my answers were original -- original in the sense that I was answering them not only for the examination, not for any gain, but just to enjoy the answering ... just as I enjoy answering your questions. I even said, "This question is absolutely wrong, it does not deserve any answer. And if I can find the man who asked it, I will hit him."

Later my professor said, "That examination was prepared by me, and I have read your answer. I understand that you are right, the question was stupid."

The question was, "What is the difference between Indian philosophy and Western philosophy?" And naturally I said, "Philosophy is not geographical. Philosophy is simply philosophy. What does it have to do with East and West? It is a thinking process, you can do it anywhere. It has nothing to do with place, with geography. Your question is absurd, hence I'm not going to answer it. And if I could meet you, I would hit you."

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He said, "It is good that that examination was made by me, because anybody else would have become very angry. You answered beautifully and freshly, your answers were simply answers; everybody else was quoting the text books. You had no idea what was written in the text books, you have never seen them. Obviously, you had to be original."

An old professor, who was from Poona, was the head of the philosophy department of Allahabad University, Professor R. D. Ranade. He was a world-famous authority on Indian philosophy, and he was also famous for not passing anybody. It was said that in his whole career he had passed only three persons. My professors were worried: "If Ranade fails you, it will be very difficult. Even if everybody else passes you, it will not make any difference.

Because Ranade is such an authority, he carries more weight than the three other examiners."

But he gave me a ninety-nine percent grade, and wrote a note to the vice-chancellor,

"Convey to this student my message that I loved his answers. For the first time in my life I wanted to give a one hundred percent score, but that would have been a little too much. Not to look too favorable, I cut one percent. But I'm sorry, he deserved one hundred percent -- I have always wanted answers so direct to the questions, not crammed from text books, and I have always wanted answers as condensed as possible."

I had been warned that this was what he wanted.

I had said, "Don't be worried ... I can answer almost telegraphically -- just one-liners."

They said, "You are mad! We are not saying that you have to answer in one line."

I said, "I will see." And I answered with one-liners. Within fifteen minutes I was finished.

The professor who was in charge in the examination hall tried to force me to stay seated.

I said, "This is strange. It is my right to get out now I'm finished giving answers."

He looked at my answers and said, "My God, these are answers? You are giving maxims!"

I said, "I want to test Ranade. For his whole life, he has been wanting short, simple, direct and original answers. Let him enjoy to his heart's content. It does not matter whether I fail or pass, anyway I'm going to be a vagabond. I'm not going to be in any government service, I'm not going to be doing any business. I'm going to remain in the ancient business of the buddhas."

They said, "You are mad. That's not a business."

I said, "Anything that keeps you busy is business."

Ranade was very happy, but his note shocked the vice-chancellor. And because of Ranade's ninety-nine percent mark, I came first in the whole university. Life is very strange, it is a mystery.

Later on I met Ranade. He was retired, very old. I said to him, "Perhaps you will remember a man who deserved one hundred percent, but you gave him only ninety-nine percent."

He said, "Of course I remember, because this happened only once in my life. I had never gone beyond thirty-three percent. Are you the person?"

I said, "Of course I am the person. And I have come to say to you that you did not prove your greatness. You should have given me one hundred and one percent. What was your fear?

Were you afraid that people would think you were favoring me? You didn't even know me."

He said, "Nobody talks to me this way. I am an old, retired, respected professor."

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I said, "That does not matter. You showed your weakness in cutting me by one percent."

He said, "You are strange. Nobody fights with me, especially after ten years. Now what can I do?"

I said, "You can at least say 'I'm sorry'."

There were at least twenty professors who were sitting with him. He had become almost a holy place, where every kind of professor and intellectual gathered. They were all shocked.

I said, "Don't be worried about these idiots; it's because of them you cut my one percent."

He looked at me and he said, "I am sorry, and I say it publicly. You deserved one hundred and one percent."

I said to him, "Now I can forgive you."

I was speaking in Allahabad University. He had never come to listen to any lecturer visiting the university, but he was sitting just in front of me when I entered the hall.

Everybody was surprised that Professor Ranade also had come to listen. I hit hard on the education system and on the professors who were supporting it.

He listened carefully, and as I came down from the podium he came to me and said, "Son"

-- he was almost ninety years old -- "you are right. We did not have the courage to fight. We all know that our educational system is producing only clerks, secretaries, postmasters, stationmasters. Our whole education is based on the idea of creating servants. And what you want is to create masters. I absolutely agree with you."

Zen wants everybody to be a glory unto himself. It is not an achievement, it is not competition; it is simply originality. And the originality is already there, you have just to throw away all the rubbish that you have been collecting from others. However valuable it may be, it is destroying your original being, covering it with dust; and you will never be happy unless you find your original being. The very finding of your original being is such a dance, such a joy, that you can bless the whole world yet you will remain overflowing.

ON ONE OCCASION, RINZAI SAID:

STUDENTS OF TODAY FAIL TO ACHIEVE THEIR ENDS.

In the first place, Rinzai is a great master and cannot commit this mistake. This must be the translator. He must have said, "Disciples of today," not "students." Students go to the universities, to the schools, to the colleges, not to the monasteries. Students have a totally different interest, exactly opposite to the area of Zen. They accumulate knowledge. Zen wants you to drop all knowledge so that you can become utterly pure and innocent, so that you can say with tremendous beauty, "I don't know."

Not knowing, just being, and all the mysteries of existence open their doors to you. To the knowledgeable they are closed, to the innocent they are open. He could not have said, STUDENTS OF TODAY; he cannot use that phrase. I am absolutely certain because I know Rinzai, and whatever else he is saying is absolutely right.

And it is not that in his time disciples FAIL TO ACHIEVE THEIR ENDS. Anybody who has an end to achieve is bound to fail. In the world of Zen there is nothing to achieve.

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Whatever has to happen has already happened, you have just to discover it. It is not an achievement. It is not a goal somewhere far away, that you have to travel to that place. It is just in your very being, in your very silence. You don't have to achieve it. It is a miracle that you have forgotten it ... in what ways you have forgotten yourself.

All your religions and all your educational systems -- the whole society is bent upon distracting every small child from his original being, making him something other than what he is. We have not been able to create a world up to now where a person is accepted as he is, without any conditions. Not only that, we have created such conditioning that the person himself does not accept his originality. He is doubtful about it, uncertain about it, hesitant about it. It is better to repeat a sutra from Gautam Buddha, because that cannot be wrong. To be original is dangerous -- you can be wrong. But a person who cannot risk being wrong can never be right.

Rinzai's complaint is:

WHAT IS THEIR FAULT? IT LIES IN NOT HAVING FAITH IN THEMSELVES.

That faith has been taken away by the parents, by the teachers, by the professors, by the priests -- they all have imposed the idea, "Have faith in Jesus Christ." No Christian is being told to have faith in himself, but is told to have faith in Jesus Christ, to have faith in his representatives.

Just now a research book has been published, explaining that the pope is the world's greatest Mafia leader. More heroin, more opium, more drugs are sold through the Vatican than through any other place. All the money that comes to the Vatican bank -- the pope's bank -- is heroin money. But his is a special situation. That tiny area in the middle of Rome is an independent, sovereign country, and the pope is the head of the state as well as the head of the religion. The police are his, the Vatican armies are his, and they are all involved in transactions which are illegal anywhere.

Just a few months ago, the government of Italy issued an arrest warrant for the manager-in-chief of the bank, but they could not enter into the Vatican. They waited outside, if he came outside he would be arrested. Rather than arresting him or helping the Italian government to catch him -- because they have found that he is turning dirty money into clean money by the millions -- the pope promoted him. And now it has been found that the pope is behind the whole scene.

He makes all those trips around the world for a stupid reason: to kiss the earth. You can kiss the earth anywhere -- as much as you want, to your heart's content; there is no need to waste millions of dollars. Visiting Australia, he wasted eight million dollars. What is the purpose? -- to kiss the ground at the airport. Where is this money coming from?

And these are the people ... all the politicians of the world are corrupt, but just because they are in power nobody can say that they are corrupt. You will be crushed. It is almost impossible to be in power and not be corrupted. Corruption is the force that leads you: whoever is more corrupt reaches the higher posts.

Every child is being destroyed by his own people. They don't know consciously what they are doing. Parents are projecting their own unfulfilled desires onto their children. The father wanted to be a doctor but could not; he ended up being something else. He could not pass the examinations and became just a chemist, but he imposes the desire to become a doctor onto his son. He sends him to school with great hope that his child will achieve what he could not Osho - The Miracle

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achieve. He is doing it all out of his unconscious love, but unconscious love is not love -- it is blind. With all good intentions, it does harm. The child who is being forced to become a doctor, if he was left alone to grow according to his own nature ... one never knows what kind of beauty or joy, what kind of individuality, he would have contributed to the world.

Zen's whole approach is just to be yourself -- very ordinary, unknown, unnamed, but utterly content. To have faith in yourself you don't need to have faith in Jesus Christ or in Krishna or in Moses. To have faith in yourself is simple -- just to have faith in yourself. Know perfectly well that you are moving into an unknown territory. There may be dangers ahead, you are moving into insecurity, but to take the challenge of being yourself makes you really alive. And when you attain, when you discover yourself, you are on the highest peak of consciousness.

The presidents and the kings and the queens and the prime ministers will never know about it. Knowing it, being it, there comes a tremendous relaxation. You are not going anywhere, you are just here. You have been always here. Your consciousness is unpolluted.

Whatever has happened to you has not left any marks on your consciousness. All those marks are just on the mind, and the mind is not you.

BY LACK OF FAITH YOU FALL INTO A STATE OF UNCERTAINTY ... Obviously --

if you don't have faith in yourself you will have to have faith in somebody else. How can you know that the other is right? How can you know that Jesus Christ is the only begotten son of God?

I have often told of a small incident that happened in Bhagdad. A man declared, "I am the latest prophet after Mohammed. I bring the latest dispensation from God himself."

Now it is impossible for Mohammedans to accept anybody after Mohammed. Before Mohammed you can talk about Buddha, about Jesus -- it doesn't matter. But Mohammed is the last word. The man was caught and brought before the Khalif of Bhagdad. He repeated again,

"Nobody is listening to me, but I say unto you that I am the last prophet! Now times have changed, God sends new messengers. I bring the latest message. Mohammed is out of date."

In fact he was right. Mohammed is out of date, everybody is out of date. But his insistence that he is a prophet sent by God himself ... Mohammedans are not very liberal or compassionate people. They don't believe in argument either, they believe in the sword. That is their only argument: whoever can cut off the other's head is right.

Naturally Omar, the Khalif, said, "Take this man and put him in jail, and for seven days give him the real treatment. Unless he confesses that he is not the prophet, that Mohammed is the only and last prophet, torture him. After seven days I will come to visit."

They bound the man to a pillar and for seven days they beat him; blood was oozing out of his every pore. He was given no food or water. After seven days the Khalif came and asked the man, "Have you changed your mind or are you still insistent?"

The man said, "When I came here God's last message was, 'Remember, you will be beaten, you will be stoned, you may be crucified.' So all these seven days you have only been proving that I am the prophet! Only prophets are treated in such a way."

Omar said, "This is a difficult case."

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At this moment another man, bound to another pillar, who had been tortured there for one month, shouted, "That man is wrong, Omar. Don't believe him! I have never sent anybody after Mohammed! I have come myself."

He was God himself. He had been jailed one month earlier.

If you don't have faith in yourself, you are going to have faith in some madman who proclaims to be God's messenger or God himself, or proclaims that he is a reincarnation. But deep down there will be doubt -- how can you believe that that man is not mad?

Rinzai is saying:

BY LACK OF FAITH YOU FALL INTO A STATE OF UNCERTAINTY, IN WHICH

YOU CONFORM TO ALL THE FLUCTUATIONS IN YOUR SURROUNDINGS, SUBJECTING YOURSELF TO THEIR MYRIAD REVOLUTIONS, SO THAT YOU ARE

UNABLE TO ACHIEVE FREEDOM. IF YOU, HOWEVER, SUCCEED IN STOPPING

THE MIND, AS IT MOMENTARILY DASHES HITHER AND THITHER IN ITS

SEARCH, YOU THEN BECOME INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE PATRIARCHS

AND BUDDHAS.

Patriarchs are equivalent to the master, founders of some school of Zen.

When your mind is silent and all the vibrations of thoughts are no more there, you are one with the buddhas and with the masters. There is nothing to divide. In this position sometimes even the sanest men have declared that they are the buddha, that they are God, but this is a totally different situation. A madman shows every sign of madness, he does not radiate buddhahood. He does not have the fragrance of those heights, nor can you see in his eyes the pacific depths.

There are moments in meditation when you are a buddha. The only distinction between a madman and the man who is a real buddha is that the buddha is compassionate, loving, and is not declaring that he is the only begotten son of God. He is saying, "I am a buddha and you are a buddha, whether you know it or not." The madman declares, "I am the only buddha -- you are just ordinary human beings, made of mud. God breathed in you and you started running hither and thither."

The English word 'Adam' means mud. God made man out of mud. In America we had our commune, Rancho Rajneesh. Before we went there it was called the Big Muddy Ranch. I always wondered, perhaps God took all the mud from this Big Muddy Ranch and created humanity. There wasn't any mud at that Big Muddy Ranch, it was a desert. And certainly it was big, one hundred and twenty-six square miles.

All the words ... for example 'human being' -- 'human' comes from 'humus', and 'humus'

means mud. Religions have degraded man into puppets, made of mud. That is the distinction

-- the madman who is declaring himself as the prophet or the messiah or the Christ does not say that you are also Christ. He wants to be special, that is a sure sign of madness.

A buddha is absolute sanity. He knows that he is a buddha and he knows you are also a buddha. You are just asleep. Perhaps you have not decided yet to wake up, but it is your freedom to do so.

Do you see the difference? The madman wants to be special; the buddha is not special. He is declaring the buddhahood of every living thing -- not only of human beings, but even of Osho - The Miracle

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pine trees and rosebushes. They are on the way to buddhahood; sooner or later they will also be human beings. But whether they know it or not, it does not matter. As far as their innermost nature is concerned, it remains the same.

The difference between the buddha and the rest of existence is simply that the buddha has awakened to his reality. So the buddha is continuously trying to wake you up; creating devices, methods, knowing perfectly well that you are asleep, that you only need some cold water thrown into your eyes. But the madman does not believe that you are also a buddha.

Jesus Christ belongs to the category of madmen, because of his statement that he is the only begotten son of God, and you are just sheep. He is your shepherd; he will lead you and, if he is leading you, you are on the right path -- have faith in him! If you go astray you will be lost. In fact he is saying, "Don't have faith in yourself. Give your faith to me, I am the only one who is connected directly with God. Have trust in me." No buddha will say that.

In the eyes of a buddha this is sheer nonsense. This is the difference between Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Mohammedanism -- all the religions of the world on one side -- and Zen, standing alone, in utter sanity. Zen says that you all have the universal consciousness. Nobody is special. A few people are asleep and a few people are awake, there is not much of a difference.

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO ARE THE PATRIARCHS AND BUDDHAS? ALL

OF YOU LISTENING TO MY TEACHING HERE BEFORE ME ARE SUCH.

I can accept Rinzai as an authentic master. He knows what he is saying, because he is not putting himself over others. He is just saying that we are all part of one consciousness.

YOU FOLLOWERS OF THE WAY, THERE IS NO NEED FOR YOU TO DEVOTE

EFFORT TO THE BUDDHIST TEACHING. ONLY DO THE ORDINARY THINGS WITH

NO SPECIAL EFFORT: RELIEVE YOUR BOWELS, PASS WATER, WEAR YOUR

CLOTHES, EAT YOUR FOOD, AND, WHEN TIRED, LIE DOWN. THE SIMPLE

FELLOW WILL LAUGH AT YOU, BUT THE WISE WILL UNDERSTAND.

AN ANCIENT SAID: "ALL THOSE WHO STRIVE OUTWARDLY ARE STUPID."

The very idea of becoming a buddha is stupid, because you are a buddha. The question is of waking up, not of becoming.

SUFFICE IT TO BE ONE'S OWN MASTER WHEREVER ONE MAY HAPPEN TO

BE, AND REALITY WILL PREVAIL EVERYWHERE. THUS ONE WILL REMAIN

UNSHAKEN UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES.

RINZAI SAID ON ANOTHER OCCASION:

IN YOUR RED HEART, THERE IS A TRUE MAN OF NO FIXED POSITION, WHO

COMES IN AND GOES OUT THROUGH YOUR FOREHEAD. I URGE THOSE WHO

HAVE NOT EXPERIENCED THIS, TO TRY TO SEE IT.

A footnote: "In China, the heart is believed to be the seat of thought, or intelligence, and its western equivalent is mind. A TRUE MAN OF NO FIXED POSITION is the mind which, according to Huang Po, also known as Obaku, has neither location nor direction because it is as immense as space."

This footnote must be from the translator. The red heart does not mean the mind. In Zen tradition the red heart is simply the one that the physician and the physiologist know, the one Osho - The Miracle

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that is running the body. That heart is the center of the body. To complete the distinction, behind this heart there is another heart which in China they used to call the "inner heart."

In India just a few years ago, there was a man, Brahmayogi, who had practiced for almost half a century to bring his breathing to a complete stop. His heartbeat disappeared, his pulse disappeared. He was capable of remaining in this position for ten minutes. He had been tested at many medical institutes, and doctors around the world had given him a death certificate. In those ten minutes they could not find any sign of life. It was his agreement that he would go out of the body, and, "If you find no sign of life, you have to write a certificate for me just the way you would for any dead person."

They could not believe that this man could come back. He had gone too far away: no pulse, no heartbeat, no breathing. He was examined with very accurate instruments, but there was no sign of life. Yet after ten minutes he started kicking again. Slowly breathing came back, the heart started functioning again, the blood started running. These doctors could not believe it, but they had to believe. He was given many hundreds of death certificates, no man in the world got so many death certificates, and from very prominent people. Ordinarily one is enough!

Obviously he proved beyond doubt that what you call death is not real. Only his outer heart stopped. The inner heart, which you have not found yet, has the capacity to go out of the body. Sometimes accidentally, in deep hypnosis, it happens that you suddenly find yourself floating above your body. Your body is lying down on the floor, and you can see your hypnotist sitting there by your dead body.

If a certain doubt arises in this moment, then death will happen. But if you are under hypnosis, doubt cannot arise. You have trusted the man to hypnotize you, and because doubt does not arise, when the man calls you to come back, your body -- the astral body, the inner body, the self -- slowly comes down and enters into your physical body.

It is a tremendously beautiful experience, but dangerous too. If somebody tries to wake you up while you are out, he will think that you are dead and start preparing for the funeral. If you become afraid you may forget how you came out; then how to get back? Coming in and out of the body is not part of knowledge, it is not a technique. Yes, if you make it a point to practice it, it can become possible for you to come out of the body and return whenever you want, but not ordinarily. Sometimes in a car accident your inner self is so much shaken that it leaves the body. But because of your desires you are attached to the body, and you will be pulled back into it.

If a meditator who is finished completely with all desires is in such an accident, he may not return to the body at all. Everybody will think it was an accidental death, but it was not accidental, it was very intentional. The person decided not to return. But nobody can catch hold of him to take him to the court.

Here in this Buddha Hall it may happen many times, but don't talk about it to anybody. If you feel sometimes that you are hovering, don't be worried. Just one hit of Nivedano's drum and you will jump back into your body. That's why it's so safe to tell you to die, because I know you cannot go far away in two minutes. You will be just here, hovering. Just a good drumbeat and you will hurry back, "Everybody is coming back, what am I doing out here? My body is there." Be quick, because somebody else may enter.

That is the only problem I have to keep watching for -- that nobody enters into somebody else's body. So if some day you feel like floating, then float, but stay close by. Don't go out for Osho - The Miracle

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an evening walk, just to see what is happening outside the gate -- that could be dangerous. By the time you come back somebody else may have entered. You can also enter, but it is a very difficult situation when there are two spirits in one body.

Once in a while those cases happen, then you say the person is possessed by a ghost. But the reality is that the ghost lost track of his body after some incident, or does not know how he came out of his body.

My first experience out of the body was falling from a tree. I used to meditate just behind the university, where there was a beautiful hillock and three tall trees, very silent, and nobody used to go there. I used to sit in one of the trees and meditate. One day suddenly I saw that I was sitting in the tree and at the same time my body had fallen down and was lying on the ground. For a moment I could not find how to enter into it again. It was just a coincidence that a woman who used to bring milk to the university from the nearby village saw my body falling down, so she came close. She must have heard that in situations when the inner body becomes separated from the outer body, if you rub between the eyes, the third eye, that is the door. The spirit that has left will be able to enter.

So she rubbed my third eye. I could see her rubbing my forehead, and the next moment I opened my eyes and thanked her and asked her how she knew to do that.

She had simply heard about it. It was a primitive village, but she had heard the traditional idea that the third eye is the place from where one leaves and where one can come back.

IN YOUR RED HEART, THERE IS A TRUE MAN OF NO FIXED POSITION, WHO

COMES IN AND GOES OUT THROUGH YOUR FOREHEAD.

That place in the forehead is called in yoga the third eye.

I URGE THOSE WHO HAVE NOT EXPERIENCED THIS, TO TRY TO SEE IT.

Rinzai is saying it is a tremendously significant experience, because then no argument is needed for you to be convinced that you are not this body -- that you are astral, invisible.

Within this body is hiding another body; behind this heart is beating another heart, which medical science may one day discover. The mystics have always insisted it is there. It is in your hands if you want to experiment.

Just meditating, feel your body lying there. Feel that from your forehead your spirit is moving up, hovering in the air; but don't go too far. And always remember the forehead, the third eye, is the door through which you go out and come back in. This experience creates a conviction. Then it is no more faith. Then you know that you are immortal, that this body is just a bag, a cage.

The poet, Juo, wrote:

BEYOND THE SNATCH OF TIME,

MY DAILY LIFE.

I SCORN THE STATE, UNHITCH

THE UNIVERSE.

DENYING CAUSE AND EFFECT,

LIKE THE NOON SKY.

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MY UP-DOWN CAREER: BUDDHAS

NOR PATRIARCHS CAN CONVEY IT.

He is saying that causality is the basis of science, but your being is not within the area of causality. You are not caused by anything, you are here from eternity to eternity. And the experience of this is something even buddhas cannot express. He is saying, "I am a poor poet.

Don't expect me to express what I have experienced. Even great buddhas find themselves utterly helpless as far as expressing it is concerned."

Shutaku wrote:

FOR ALL THESE YEARS, MY CERTAIN ZEN:

NEITHER I NOR THE WORLD EXIST.

THE SUTRAS NEAT WITHIN THE BOX,

MY CANE HOOKED UPON THE WALL,

I LIE AT PEACE IN MOONLIGHT,

OR, HEARING SOME WATER

SPLASHING ON THE ROCK, SIT UP:

NONE CAN PURCHASE

PLEASURE SUCH AS THIS:

SPANGLES ACROSS THE STEP-MOSS,

A MILLION COINS!

To be in absolute simplicity, to be in such silence ... You are no more mortal human beings. Every day I am reminding you about your immortality, about the fiction of death. It never happens, it has never happened.

You are beyond destruction.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

I IMAGINED THAT OUR TENDENCY TO PUT OURSELVES DOWN WAS A PRODUCT OF OUR CONDITIONING, AND SOMETHING PECULIAR TO MODERN

MAN. BUT EVEN IN RINZAI'S TIME IT APPEARS THAT WAS THE CHIEF

OBSTACLE TO SELF-REALIZATION TOO.

CAN A SOCIETY OF UNENLIGHTENED PEOPLE EXIST ONLY IF EVERYBODY IS

MADE TO FEEL INADEQUATE?

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Yes, Maneesha. This kind of society can exist only if it makes you feel inadequate. This kind of society, the structure, needs people who are suffering, or made to suffer, from inferiority, who deep down are carrying a conditioning that they are unworthy, undeserving.

This kind of society can exist only if it makes every child inadequate, because this society needs exploitation, this society has invested itself in exploiting human beings. It does not and it cannot allow everybody to be himself, because if everybody is himself there cannot be any religious organization to exploit you -- no Christianity, no pope, no kings or queens, no leaders. Because then an individual is enough unto himself, he does not need any leader.

All these so-called great people -- politicians, priests -- exist because every child has been crippled, has not been allowed to become an individual in his own right. Otherwise he will not follow anybody. He will follow himself, he will move in directions which are of his own choosing. He will not need any guide and will not need any map and will not need any dictators. This kind of society can exist only if the children en masse are forced to feel inadequate.

And my effort here is to give you your forgotten dignity. This is the most revolutionary step, because if you can remember your forgotten dignity, your spirituality, your eternity, you will be freed from all the churches, from all the nations. You will be freed from all kinds of stupid ideologies and superstitions. Your consciousness will be such an explosion of light that everything that is false will disappear.

Then this explosion creates a chain reaction -- and that is my effort. It is possible to make a chain reaction.

I am making every effort to have small groups of sannyasins radiating in every country.

The whole world can be transformed if we have just a few people everywhere who can become aflame. Then their flame will move like a wildfire, destroying all kinds of slaveries and all kinds of chains and imprisonments -- creating a new sky, a new freedom for man.

You are right. In Rinzai's time also the same was the case. The whole past of humanity is a past of psychological slavery, physical slavery. Only a few people like Gautam Buddha or Rinzai or Basho, in thousands of years amongst millions of people, have been able to escape from psychological bondage. These people were always thought dangerous by the society.

Now so many parliaments in the world, without ever defining what kind of danger I am, have an unconscious feeling that this man is dangerous and should not be allowed in their country. They don't know exactly what danger they are talking about. I am utterly amazed that in these big parliaments not a single person raises the question, "What danger do you mean?

What danger is this man to anyone?" No, it is simply accepted. It is taken for granted that,

"This man is dangerous."

But I know they are right. They are calling me dangerous without knowing it. I call myself dangerous because I know I am dangerous. I am preparing a situation far more dangerous to the whole society than the nuclear scientists are creating. Their nuclear weapons most probably will never be used; sooner or later they will be thrown into the ocean. But I am creating a totally different kind of explosion -- not an atomic explosion, but an explosion of cosmic consciousness. If this fire spreads, suddenly you will see that those great leaders are just ordinary people, just like you, but pretenders, imposters. You will see that your kings and queens are all bogus, exploiting the society for thousands of years. You will see that your priests are lying and lying continuously about everything.

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This vision, if it spreads, is bound to create a new man and a new society.

A new man can only be an enlightened man.

A new man can only be a buddha.

And if there are just a few buddhas around the world, we can create the wildfire.

It has never been tried, but it is just like ... nobody knew about atomic energy until it was tried at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nobody could imagine that a small atom that you cannot see is carrying so much energy that it can destroy a great city like Nagasaki, with a population of one hundred thousand people, or Hiroshima, an even bigger city. In the whole of history nobody ever dreamt that atoms are carrying so much energy.

Now I am saying to you that if material atoms can explode and destroy so much ... how much more creative a conscious explosion of living beings can be. It can explode millions of people suddenly into a new era of enlightenment.

All their potentialities should become actualities. You will see thousands of poets, you will see thousands of musicians, you will see thousands of sculptors, thousands of scientists who were fast asleep and were just clerks or schoolmasters -- who never knew that their potential is that of a buddha.

We have to create what I call the chain effect, the trigger effect. Now you are all sitting so silently, and I can give just a trigger ...

(THE MASTER MAKES A TICKLING GESTURE TOWARDS AVIRBHAVA WHO

SCREAMS. EVERYBODY LAUGHS.)

Before we do our meditation, a few laughs. And this laughter has a beauty, because it has no cause.

(LAUGHTER CONTINUES.)

I have not told the joke yet!

(MORE HILARIOUS LAUGHTER.)

Have you ever heard such laughter before the joke? Today you have surpassed Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Even he is looking puzzled. Now be quiet, so that I can read the jokes!

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Mr. Samosa, one of Poona's most successful businessmen, is a rubberware manufacturer.

He invites guests from an International Management Conference for a tour of his factory.

Proudly, he introduces his different products, everything from tractor tires to baby-bottle nipples. He is especially proud of his fully automatic condom making machine, with a special electronic leakproof tester.

By the side of the machine, a man is sitting and carefully punching holes in the condoms with a needle.

"What is he doing that for?" asks one of the visitors, "Is it part of the quality test?"

"No," replies Samosa, proudly, "we are trying to promote our Hindu baby products."

Gertie Gusher has been fooling around with other men, and her husband, Gary, the Texas oil millionaire, takes her to court and demands a divorce.

"On what grounds?" asks Judge Grump.

"Breach of contract," replies Gusher.

"Please," says the judge, "you don't own your wife, so you can't treat her like a piece of property."

"Maybe not," growls the oilman, "but I sure have the exclusive drilling rights!"

Two worms, Wilbur and Wallace, share a little hole underneath the Sunnyvale Golf Course.

One day, they plan to go for a wriggle across the course, so Wilbur goes up to see what the weather is like.

Around this time, two women are playing golf just overhead, and one of them urgently has to pee.

"Don't worry," says the partner, "there is no one around, you can pee right here."

So the woman squats down and starts peeing. Just at that moment, Wilbur pops his head out of his hole.

Soaked by the flood of urine, Wilbur quickly wriggles back down into the ground.

"I see it is raining," says Wallace to his dripping friend.

"It certainly is," agrees Wilbur, drying himself on his towel. "In fact, it is raining so hard that the birds are building their nests upside-down!"

Old Mrs. Grumblebum, the wealthy hypochondriac, goes to ask her doctor to cure her latest imaginary illness.

Doctor Spook is completely fed up with the old bag, and tries to tell her she is perfectly well. But Mrs. Grumblebum insists that there is something wrong with her. Despairing, Doctor Spook tells her he will have to make some tests, so he gives her a small plastic cup and tells her to produce a urine sample.

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When she comes back five minutes later, he asks her next to produce a feces sample in the same cup.

"Good," says Spook when Mrs. Grumblebum returns. "Now stick your finger in the cup, stir it around and then drink all of it."

Obediently doing as the doctor tells her, Mrs. Grumblebum downs the concoction.

Immediately, she is violently sick.

"Ah-ha!" shouts Doctor Spook. "Just as I suspected. Upset stomach!"

Now, Nivedano ... beat the drum.

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your body completely frozen.

Collect your consciousness, your awareness,

within your heart,

the red heart of Rinzai.

It is there your buddha is hiding.

The discovery is very simple.

Just go on

deeper and deeper.

Don't be afraid

because there is nothing to fear in the world.

And particularly when you are going inward

you are not going to meet anyone

on the way.

You will be meeting only yourself.

Let this meeting be a rejoicing,

a homecoming.

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Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax.

Let go.

Just be dead. This is simply a way

to concentrate your energy

at the very center of your being.

This moment you are the buddha.

Let this moment stretch

through all your life.

Just go on reminding yourself

who you are.

And this reminding

is going to bring a revolution;

not only to you,

but anybody who comes around you

is going to feel the beauty,

the grace,

the bliss and the fire.

In this fire

everything that is false burns away,

and only the pure gold flowers

in their uttermost beauty remain.

A dance arises in you

for no particular reason.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

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Come back.

Sit down for a few moments

remembering the space you have been in.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Osho.

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4

This harvest moon

5 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

DOGEN WROTE:

QUIETLY CONSIDER THE FACT THAT IF THIS WERE A TIME WHEN THE TRUE

DHARMA HAD NOT YET SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, IT WOULD BE

IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO COME INTO CONTACT WITH IT, EVEN IF WE WERE

WILLING TO SACRIFICE OUR LIVES TO DO SO. HOW FORTUNATE TO HAVE

BEEN BORN IN THE PRESENT DAY, WHEN WE ARE ABLE TO MAKE THIS

ENCOUNTER!

WE ARE NOW ABLE TO COME IN CONTACT WITH THE BUDDHA SAKYAMUNI AND HEAR HIS TEACHINGS DUE TO THE COMPASSIONATE KINDNESS THAT

HAS RESULTED FROM THE CONSTANT PRACTICE OF EACH OF THE BUDDHAS

AND PATRIARCHS. IF THE BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS HAD NOT DIRECTLY

TRANSMITTED THE DHARMA, HOW COULD IT HAVE COME DOWN TO US

TODAY?

THE TRUE WAY OF EXPRESSING THIS GRATITUDE CAN BE FOUND ONLY IN

OUR DAILY PRACTICE ITSELF.

HOW TRANSIENT OUR LIFE IS! TO UTTER TWO OR THREE WORDS OF THE

BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS COMPLETELY IS TO EXPRESS THE BUDDHAS AND

PATRIARCHS THEMSELVES FULLY. WHY IS THIS SO?

IN THEIR REALM THERE IS NO GAP BETWEEN BODY AND MIND, SO EVERY

WORD OF THEIR UTTERING IS THEIR WARM BODY AND MIND.

THEREFORE, WHEN WE BECOME THE BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS, WE

TRANSCEND THEM.

THIS IS THE PRACTICAL EXPRESSION OF TWO OR THREE WORDS OF

BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS.

SO I STRONGLY URGE YOU TO PURSUE THE PRACTICE OF THE BUDDHAS

AND PATRIARCHS.

Maneesha, obviously these statements of Dogen were uttered before his enlightenment. He is a beautiful scholar, a learned man. He has a rare intellect; from the age of seven he was able to translate Buddha's words from Chinese to Japanese. At the age of four he was able to learn Chinese. He was a rare child, a rare intellect, a genius. But that is a barrier as far as Zen is concerned. It must have been a difficult time for him to later change gears from mind to heart.

These sutras are just from the mind. Whoever has compiled these sutras does not know that a master does not speak the way Dogen is speaking. This is the way of the scholar.

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I have to remind you that at some point Dogen must have become a master. We have discussed the sutras written when he had become enlightened. It is a good comparison ... to see in a single man what enlightenment brings and what the impediments are. Even to a man like Dogen with such immense and unique intelligence ... the problem arises that his intelligence is so great that it is very difficult to take the jump out of it.

Sometimes things which are blissful, fortunate, become unfortunate, dangerously preventing the quantum leap. You can see why I call him still a scholar.

DOGEN WROTE: QUIETLY CONSIDER ...

What is consideration? It cannot be meditation. There is no place for consideration in meditation. Consideration is of the mind, consideration is another name for thinking. And how can you consider something which you don't know?

Just the fact that he is asking,

QUIETLY CONSIDER THE FACT THAT IF THIS WERE A TIME WHEN THE TRUE

DHARMA HAS NOT YET SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, IT WOULD BE

IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO COME INTO CONTACT WITH IT.

Sheer nonsense. If Gautam Buddha could become a buddha when there were no precedents, then what is the problem for you to become a buddha? Whether Buddha existed or not -- he may be a myth, a fiction, it makes no difference, because it is not Gautam Buddha that has to be taken into consideration. It is your own being which I am calling the buddha.

And your own being is always with you, whether Buddha has existed or not, whether so many enlightened people on his path have existed or not.

I don't have a master, I don't know Chinese. I don't know Japanese, in which the original Zen teachings are written, and I don't care! In fact, listening to me, if the scholars see that I am saying something different from what is in their books, then they should change their books, correct their books.

It happened ... Bhikkshu Anand Kausalyayan has just died. He was one of the most prominent Buddhists of the contemporary world. I used to stay in Nagpur in a friend's house when I was traveling around India, and that friend was intimate with Bhikkshu Anand Kausalyayan. He said to me, "Anand Kausalyayan wants to meet you. I have talked about you so many times, and he has also heard about you."

I said, "I will be very happy to meet him. I have read his books. You bring him to your home."

So that evening Anand Kausalyayan came to see me and it became a Zen encounter. I had to, because the first thing I asked him was, "Are you a Buddhist or a buddha?"

He looked at the host with whom I was staying, and I could see that he understood, but he was caught in a net. I was staring into his eyes, so he could not lie! He said, "I am sorry, I am still a Buddhist."

I said, "What is the point of being a Buddhist? You are getting older every day. Any moment death will take you away, and your Buddhism will not help. Why don't you become a buddha?"

He said, "My God, I had come to see you to have a polite conversation."

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I said, "With me nothing is polite, either this way or that way. If you are not a buddha, then how is a conversation possible? I am a buddha, you are a mere scholar."

He said, "That seems to be true. When I heard you for the first time in a Buddhist conference in Bodhgaya you told a story. I loved the story, but I have been searching in Buddhist scriptures -- that story is not there! Now almost five years have passed and I am still looking in every nook and corner, because Buddhism has many scriptures ... maybe somewhere that story is. But there is no trace."

I said, "You are doing a wrong thing! You just write the story down in any of your scriptures. A buddha himself is speaking. And you can at least understand that that kind of story can happen only to a buddha. So it does not matter whether it happened to Gautam Buddha or to some other buddha, the taste of it is just like the ocean -- taste it anywhere and it is the same. Don't be bothered about who is telling the story, don't be bothered about the bamboo from which the song is flowing. It is not the bamboo but the hollowness of the bamboo that allows the singer to sing.

"Meditation makes you a hollow bamboo and the same universal spirit starts singing through you. So don't bother with unnecessarily looking into dead scriptures, write it down here, now, and add it to any Buddhist scripture."

He said, "That is very difficult. Nothing can be added, that would be very unholy."

I said, "Do you like the story?"

He said, "I immensely like it."

I said, "Do you think anybody who is not a buddha can manage that story?"

He said, "No, I don't think so."

"Then," I said, "be a little courageous. Scholars are always just like mice, no courage at all.

Be a lion!"

The story was a simple story I have told you many times, and I don't care whether it happened or not. It makes sense, it makes you understand something of the inexpressible, that is justification enough. If it did not happen, it should have happened. If I ever meet Gautam Buddha I will force him to correct the omission.

Anand Kausalyayan said, "I have another appointment."

I said, "I know you must have another appointment, that our conversation is not going to happen. But remember that all your scholarship and all your fame all over Asia, wherever Buddhism prevails, is worth nothing, because you don't have the courage to be a buddha. And being a buddha is not somebody's monopoly. Being a buddha is not being a Buddhist. A Buddhist is a follower, a buddha knows. A buddha has no need to follow anybody."

The story was that Gautam Buddha and Ananda, his disciple, were passing through a forest. They had just crossed a small stream. Buddha is an old man, and he says to Ananda, "I am feeling very thirsty, you just go back and from that stream bring me some water in my bowl."

Ananda took the bowl and went back. But meanwhile a few bullock carts had passed through the stream and had disturbed its water completely; it had become muddy. Dead leaves which were silently asleep on the bottom had surfaced to have another look at the world. The Osho - The Miracle

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water was not drinkable, and Ananda was in a difficulty: what to do? This water he cannot take for his master. So he went back. Buddha was sitting under a tree and asked, "Have you brought the water?"

He told what happened. Buddha said, "You are stupid. You just go there and sit by the side of the stream. When we came it was not muddy. The dead leaves were asleep on the bottom, the water was crystal clear. So just go there and wait, it needs only patience. Soon the leaves will be gone; because the stream is flowing, they cannot stay there. The dirt will settle --

gravitation is continuously pulling everything towards itself. Everything is being done, soon the water will be clear."

Ananda did not want to go, because he had seen that it had become so dirty that it would take days to have that same crystal-clear quality that Buddha remembered.

He said, "Don't be worried. I will bring water, but I will have to go in the other direction.

Ahead there is a big river. It will take a little longer time, because it must be four miles from here, but it will be fresh water, drinkable water. You rest here."

Buddha insisted, "Don't change your mind, just go back." And when the master says, "Just go back ..." Unwillingly, deep down resisting, Ananda went back and was surprised and shocked that meanwhile the leaves had gone and the dirt had settled. He had not even to wait, the water was as crystal-clear as it was before! All that was foreign -- the dirt, the dead leaves

-- had all gone. The water had come to its purity. He filled the begging bowl of Gautam Buddha.

But insistently he was aware of the question, "Why was Buddha so adamant that I have to come back here to bring water? He needs water ... I could have brought it from another stream. Why this stream? There must be some reason."

And as he came back towards Buddha the reason became clear. Just as the leaves and the dirt, which are not natural to the stream -- which are foreign visitors, tourists -- are bound to leave sooner or later ... Suddenly he realized what Buddha meant -- that your thoughts, your emotions, your sentiments, all are foreign to your buddha nature. If you just wait patiently they all will disappear without any effort on your side. Your purity will assert itself on its own accord. The buddha arising in you is a spontaneous phenomenon.

This was the story I had told in the Bodhgaya conference. Anand Kausalyayan was interested; the story was really beautiful. It was an absolutely clear explanation of Buddhist meditation. You have just to wait, don't do anything -- otherwise you will make things muddled. Just wait by the side, watch and be patient, and it is going to happen.

He said, "The story really impressed me, but now that I know that it is not in the scriptures

..."

I said, "Does it interest you or not? Because it is not in the scriptures, has it lost its significance?"

He said, "I have never encountered a person like you, who says, 'What I am saying, put it down into your scripture.' I would love to do it, but it is not according to tradition, and nobody will accept it."

I said, "It does not matter, you accepted."

He considered, wavered a little -- looked at his host again for help, because he had entered into the lion's den unnecessarily. All his scholarship was useless. In the face of truth all Osho - The Miracle

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scholarship is always useless; but the scholars find it immensely difficult to take the jump beyond their mind, because their mind is so precious to them. It contains so many beautiful scriptures, it is their respectability, it is their honor, it is their dignity, it is the whole treasure they have.

It is a strange fact that the more you know, the more you are filled with borrowed knowledge, the less is the possibility of your knowing the truth. The less you know, the less knowledgeable you are, the greater is the possibility to drop your mind, because it is worthless anyway. You don't know anything, you have nothing to lose. But a scholar has much to lose.

It is good, in a way, that we discussed Dogen after he became enlightened and now we are discussing his difficult times, when he must have been a man of great scholarship. His language shows it:

QUIETLY CONSIDER THE FACT THAT IF THIS WERE A TIME WHEN THE TRUE

DHARMA HAD NOT YET SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, IT WOULD BE

IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO COME INTO CONTACT WITH IT.

Now this is stupid. If Gautam Buddha could come to realize it without any Buddhism anywhere, it simply shows that each individual is capable of realizing himself without any tradition. It is good, and encouraging, that there have been buddhas before. To your weak hearts it gives a certain nourishment, a certain trustfulness. But it is not a scientific fact.

Even if there had been no buddha before me, I would have been a buddha anyway, because the buddha simply means an awakened soul. Why can't I wake up? Do I need somebody else to wake up first? And that, too, thousands of years before? Because Gautam Buddha woke up thousands of years before Dogen, does that help a sleeping person in any way now? In fact the sleeping person does not even know that somebody has become awakened. In what way can it help?

This is just a scholar's mind. He is making a logical and rational statement: because Buddhism has spread all over the world, that has made us capable of becoming enlightened.

That is sheer nonsense -- scholarly, of course.

... EVEN IF WE WERE WILLING TO SACRIFICE OUR LIVES TO DO SO.

How did Buddha attain to be a buddha? By risking all. Anybody anywhere -- in any time, in any country -- if he is ready to risk everything, his mind, his body, and just be a watcher, unidentified, he is bound to become a buddha; it does not matter whether Gautam Buddha really existed or not.

He is saying:

HOW FORTUNATE TO HAVE BEEN BORN IN THE PRESENT DAY, WHEN WE

ARE ABLE TO MAKE THIS ENCOUNTER!

Just a foolish scholarly statement. Every moment is blessed for the courageous one, who can come out of the sheep's skin and give a good lion's roar.

You are all hiding, because to be a sheep is secure; the crowd is unafraid of the sheep. Be a lion and all the crowds around the world become afraid. And to tell people that they also are lions is the most dangerous thing to all the vested interests. As sheep they can oppress you because you are ready to be oppressed. They can enslave you because you need, deeply need, to be enslaved. Alone you feel almost as if you are dying. You need a crowd around you, it feels cozy and warm.

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Have you watched sheep? They always move in a crowd, a big crowd, almost stepping on each other. Just the feeling that everybody else is there, there is no need to be afraid ... But nobody has seen a lion moving in a crowd of lions. A lion moves alone. The very word

'crowd' is dishonorable.

These scholars want you to understand that you can only be a follower. And of course to be a follower a master is needed. I want to tell you that a master is helpful, but is not an absolute necessity. A master is helpful only in the sense that seeing a bird fly, its small children gather courage and start fluttering their own small wings. They are sitting on the edge of their nest, the sky seems to be so vast and they are so small. But their parents flying around the nest are simply encouraging them, "Don't be afraid, if we can fly, you can fly also."

I used to live in a place where there was a mango grove. Cuckoos like mangoes very much.

In a mango grove you will find cuckoos singing day and night. When the newborn comes out of the egg -- I have watched -- trembling, hesitating, he wants to fly, just as the mother is doing, but he feels afraid because he has never done it, and who knows whether he will be able to do it or will fall to the ground and die?

The mother goes to a nearby tree and gives a call. Watching them I started learning their language. I could distinguish the call of a lover to his beloved, and the call from a mother to the child, and a call from the child to the mother -- small differences, but you can decipher them. The mother's call is simply to tell the child, "Come up close to me, it is not far away, just look!" She goes around the tree again. And I have seen that if the child cannot gather courage, just flutters but remains on the edge of the nest, the mother has to push him.

It is worth seeing when the mother pushes the child. He is so afraid, it is just as if somebody is pushing you into ice-cold water and you don't know swimming. But he flutters his wings, he cannot do anything else, he has to flutter; he has seen what the mother was doing. And within seconds the transformation -- he has gone to the other tree from where the mother was calling him and gives a call in response, "Now you can come!"

Every day he goes farther and farther and a day comes that he says good-bye and never comes to the nest again, the whole sky is his.

The master is certainly a tremendous help. His very presence gives you a guarantee, his very authority takes away your fear of the unknown, but he is not absolutely necessary. You can take the jump without any master. Gautam Buddha did, then why can't you? Why does Dogen have to wait for Buddhism to spread all over the world to be able to become a buddha?

I don't want you to be a buddha tomorrow. There is no need to wait. The buddha is your nature. All that is needed is to be acquainted with it.

Now sitting here is Rajendra Anuragi. He has a high post in Madhya Pradesh, deputy-director of communications. And because he has come here ... He is only on leave; after the leave finishes he is going to take retirement.

But rumors must have spread, and the government is threatening his wife, "You vacate the government house," and, "We are going to cut off the electricity, telephone, water."

But Rajendra Anuragi is made of a different mettle. I know him from my very childhood. I have sent him a message, "Don't be worried by such political pressures, just tell your wife and your children that if the government takes the house, 'Here is your home, you can come here.'"

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But Rajendra Anuragi is not to go back. Going back is very cowardly. And all these threats

-- they have not taken the house, they have not cut the telephone -- all these threats are simply so that his wife becomes afraid. She has had a heart attack, she has been hospitalized, the children must be worried -- naturally the government must be thinking that Rajendra Anuragi, seeing the situation, will come back.

For a courageous man, no situation exists which can change his mind. He has come here and if the government wants the house -- although it is illegal, he is only on leave -- they can take the house, they can take the telephone and the electricity and the water, but not before his retirement.

But they cannot threaten a man ... This is how the crowd goes on threatening everybody and keeps everybody as sheep. Religions force you to be sheep. All the religions want followers, but this place is for the masters. Here is no crowd, but an assembly of lions, just meeting together. A few lions are asleep ...

(THERE IS A LOUD BELLY LAUGH FROM SARDAR GURUDAYAL SINGH.) It does not matter, it's just an old habit. They will wake up when they will hear Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

I don't want you to be a follower, I want you to be yourself, absolutely, categorically. Only then you can find your buddhahood. It is not something that comes from outside or from tradition, it is something that has to be discovered within yourself.

At the most, the master can be a help. But the master is not a necessity. And I have to remind you, the master can also become a hindrance, because you may start thinking that because you have a master you don't have to do anything, the master will take care. There are people who are saying this.

Jesus goes on saying, "Believe in me" -- don't believe in yourself -- "Believe in me and I will take care."

Krishna says, "Believe in me and I will take care. Whenever there is some problem I will come back." Five thousand years have passed and there have been problems and problems and I am waiting to see the guy come back! But not even a postcard! He has not left even a phone number! These people have deceived millions of people for thousands of years. People become believers, they think that that's all that is needed of them.

So in a sense a master can be a hindrance -- if he promises you, "I will do anything for you." You have to find a master like me who is so lazy ... I can promise you: I will never do anything for you! I don't do anything for myself either.

But there are times when I need to hit you. I had to call back from Germany a solid stonehead; he is sitting there with his staff. But I don't order him to hit, because a German hit can be dangerous. Rather than making you enlightened it may make you hospitalized, because Germans don't know that these Japanese masters were not really hitting, they were just using very light bamboos. I have never heard that anybody's head was broken or that anybody got a fracture, so naturally I conclude that those hits were just playful.

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The master can be a help if he is just a friend, a presence in which you can learn to be yourself, a presence which can encourage you to fly into the sky. But he can be a hindrance if he promises, "I will deliver you from your sins."

Jesus was continually asked when the day of judgment would come, because on the day of judgment all the souls will wake up from their graves and God will decide who is a sinner and who is a saint. And Jesus said, "I am his only begotten son, I will point out who are my people. For them a special concession ... they will enter into paradise without any difficulty."

It has been asked in the Bible again and again ... because the disciples were worried,

"When is this day of judgment going to happen?"

And he used to say, "Soon." Two thousand years have passed, he himself has passed, and the day of judgment has not happened. And I tell you it will never happen, because there is no God to judge and there is no time where existence comes to an end. And what crimes have you done? Every crime that you have done reflects God and his work.

Now psychologists are becoming more and more clear that if somebody murders it is not a crime, it is just hormonal, his chemistry is wrong. And our stupid judiciary goes on hanging these poor people who are suffering from a wrong chemistry for which they are not responsible. If you want to hang somebody, hang God! He is the only murderer, the only man who has raped, the only man who has been stealing, because all these things are built into your biology.

Somebody becomes a thief because of a certain biology; what he needs is not imprisonment, but treatment, psychological and physiological. Nobody is a criminal, who are you going to judge? But making people afraid ... "The day of judgment is very close, be quick and have faith in me and I will recognize you as one of my people. Otherwise you will be lost in a crowd of millions of skeletons, all around the world." And God can not refuse his only begotten son's followers, he has to accept them.

These people like Jesus or Krishna who have made it a point that following them, having faith in them, is going to save you ... they are criminals, utter criminals, because they have been deceiving millions of people for thousands of years. Nobody can save you except you.

An authentic master is going to emphasize in thousands of ways that you are your own savior. In fact this should be the criterion of whether the master is true or a fraud. If he says, "I am going to save you," he is a fraud, because he is keeping you away from yourself; he is preventing you from discovering your buddhahood; he is putting himself above you --

superior, savior, messenger, God's son, God's incarnation. And you? You are just poor animals, just monkeys who have accidentally fallen from the trees and in falling have lost their tails.

This was a very great problem for Charles Darwin. When he proposed his thesis that man is a descendant of the apes, the question was necessarily asked, "Where is man's tail?" But fortunately or unfortunately, there is a place in your backbone which shows that there used to be something attached which is now missing. A monkey without a tail is impossible; the tail is his glory. But Darwin found on skeletons the place where the tail must have been attached, otherwise why is this place left there? Something is missing.

Charles Darwin was not making an effort to prove that you are a buddha, he was trying his whole life to prove that you are just monkeys gone astray. You lost your tail in the meantime and now have forgotten completely how to jump from tree to tree. All the monkeys must be Osho - The Miracle

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laughing, seeing these idiots standing on two legs. This is not natural -- abnormal monkeys, stubborn ... adamant outcasts, unfit monkeys rejected by the society perhaps.

Jesus says you are sheep and he is the shepherd. All these people are consistently trying to take away your dignity as human beings.

I say to you that you are the ultimate consciousness. You are not the body and you are not the mind; you are the buddha, the awakened one. It is just a question of sleeping or waking, not much of a difference. The sleeping person is not inferior just because you are awake and cannot sleep. His sleep simply shows that he is relaxed, while you are unnecessarily making efforts to wake him.

I sometimes wonder whether I am doing the right thing. Sleeping people, rejoicing in their misery, in their suffering ... and I am unnecessarily pulling their legs to get them out of their misery. They think misery is their blanket and they cling to the blanket. But whether I am right or wrong, I enjoy pulling legs.

Dogen said:

WE ARE NOW ABLE TO COME IN CONTACT WITH THE BUDDHA SAKYAMUNI AND HEAR HIS TEACHINGS DUE TO THE COMPASSIONATE KINDNESS THAT

HAS RESULTED FROM THE CONSTANT PRACTICE OF EACH OF THE BUDDHAS

AND PATRIARCHS.

You can see the language, it is that of a scholar and he is making absolutely wrong statements. It is not because of the buddhas in the past that you can become a buddha. You can become a buddha because you are essentially a buddha. The past buddhas may help you as a reminder, but not more than that. There is a danger also that you may start worshipping them, and once you start worshipping you will never remember your own buddha.

It is such an absurdity that a living buddha is worshipping a stone buddha, praying to a stone buddha made by human hands. It is so hilarious that all over the world, in all the temples of the so-called gods, people are worshipping toys.

I have told Avirbhava, "Collect all kinds of toys. We will make a beautiful museum and I appoint you the director general." She has brought me a beautiful bear which walks, which makes sounds very similar to Avirbhava, and when he makes the sounds he waves his tail. It is really a beautiful toy.

But all the gods are not even that much alive. The bear at least moves, waves its tail and makes sounds -- and strangely enough those sounds are exactly like Avirbhava makes.

Tomorrow you will see; Avirbhava will bring it herself.

(THE MASTER IS LAUGHING SO MUCH THAT HE HAS DIFFICULTY SPEAKING.

AVIRBHAVA IS ALSO LAUGHING LOUDLY.)

Now this is ... give it a try ... how he walks and makes the sound ... You will just be missing the tail, otherwise you are perfect.

We are going to make a museum of all kinds of toys which humanity has been worshipping, so when visitors come you can show them that "These are your gods!"

But as far as I am concerned, it is not needed at all for any buddhas to have preceded me or to precede you. I don't accept any followers and I don't accept any predecessors. Successors or Osho - The Miracle

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predecessors are not needed, you are enough unto yourself. It is just a question of awakening.

So everybody will wake up -- how long can you sleep? We will go on harassing you.

IF THE BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS HAD NOT DIRECTLY TRANSMITTED THE

DHARMA, HOW COULD IT HAVE COME DOWN TO US TODAY?

Absolute bullshit! -- but very scholarly, supported by the scriptures. Dharma is your very nature, that is the meaning of the word 'dharma'. Just as coldness is the dharma of ice and heat is the dharma of fire, buddhahood is your dharma. Awareness is your dharma, your fire, your coolness, your nature. It has nothing to do with anybody who has become enlightened before you.

Even if the whole history is completely erased, it won't affect in any way people becoming enlightened. Because it is their nature, sooner or later they will blossom. They may go astray a little bit here and there and that is nothing wrong ... just going for a morning walk, or being lost in a bazaar, in a shopping mall. But finally you will have to come home. You will have to realize yourself. Hence I cannot support Dogen's idea.

He says:

THE TRUE WAY OF EXPRESSING THIS GRATITUDE CAN BE FOUND ONLY IN

OUR DAILY PRACTICE ITSELF.

Gratitude for what? He is asking you to be grateful for Gautam Buddha, for Bodhidharma, for other patriarchs and masters. Gratitude is a by-product. He is not aware about the very psychology of man. Gratitude comes after you have become a buddha. Then you feel gratitude towards existence; then you feel the miracle that you have not asked for anything and you have been given everything, all the mysteries.

Dogen goes on saying:

HOW TRANSIENT OUR LIFE IS! TO UTTER TWO OR THREE WORDS OF THE

BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS COMPLETELY IS TO EXPRESS THE BUDDHAS AND

PATRIARCHS THEMSELVES FULLY. WHY IS THIS SO?

IN THEIR REALM THERE IS NO GAP BETWEEN BODY AND MIND, SO EVERY

WORD OF THEIR UTTERING IS THEIR WARM BODY AND MIND.

THEREFORE, WHEN WE BECOME THE BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS, WE

TRANSCEND THEM.

He has not yet become a buddha. He does not know transcendence, he is still talking about it.

THIS IS THE PRACTICAL EXPRESSION OF TWO OR THREE WORDS OF

BUDDHAS AND THE PATRIARCHS.

SO I STRONGLY URGE YOU TO PURSUE THE PRACTICE OF THE BUDDHAS

AND PATRIARCHS.

This is the way of a teacher, of a priest, of a professor; but these are not the words of a man who is awakened. The awakened people speak in a very different way -- the same words, but they have a different nuance to them.

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A haiku by Basho:

ALONG THE MOUNTAIN ROAD

SOMEHOW IT TUGS AT MY HEART:

A WILD VIOLET.

Now, he is saying more than any scholar can say.

A WILD VIOLET.

SOMEHOW IT TUGS AT MY HEART:

ALONG THE MOUNTAIN ROAD.

A man of silence and understanding, a man of consciousness, understands the beauty of existence, even of a wild flower.

A haiku by Kikaku:

MAY HE WHO BRINGS FLOWERS

TONIGHT,

HAVE MOONLIGHT.

Because the same flowers in moonlight suddenly have a different splendor. In the silence of the night with the full moon, if somebody brings even some wild flowers they have such immense beauty.

But this beauty and this silence are not for the mind to understand, they are for the being to experience.

Ryota writes:

THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE

IS UNBELIEVABLE TONIGHT.

THIS HARVEST MOON!

He is saying that there is only one buddha -- that's what the tradition says -- who can save the world.

THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE

IS UNBELIEVABLE TONIGHT.

THIS HARVEST MOON!

In the beauty of this harvest moon, in this silent sky full of stars, it is unbelievable that in the whole history of mankind there was only one man who became a buddha.

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And I absolutely support Ryota. There have been many buddhas in many different places, of different races, from different countries. They may not have been called buddhas, they may have spoken different languages, they may not have spoken at all; their existence may not have been recorded. But it is impossible to believe that in four million years there has been only one man who attained to the highest peak of consciousness.

At least I can say: Forget the one, because I have touched the same peak. From now onwards remember two buddhas! I cannot say anything about any other buddhas; they may have been pretenders, they may have been just imitators. But I can say with absolute authority that I have known myself and I have known myself more than Gautam Buddha himself, because he got stuck at a point.

He himself describes it in a beautiful way ... In China there are ten pictures, just like Tarot cards, which are called, "The Ten Zen Bulls."

In the first card the bull has escaped from his owner. In the second card the owner is searching for him but does not know which way he has gone. In deep mountains, valleys, forests ... which direction has he taken? In the third he finds the footprints of the bull.

In the fourth, following the footprints he finds the bull hiding behind a tree, just his back is seen in the picture. In the fifth he has seen the whole bull.

In the sixth he catches hold of the bull. It is a struggle, the bull does not want to go back home, he has found the freedom of the forest and the mountains and the rivers. But in the seventh the owner is dragging him back. In the eighth he has conquered the bull. In the ninth the bull is in the stable and the man is sitting under his roof, playing a flute. In the tenth, the man is going towards the pub with a bottle in his hand.

Buddha has described that there comes a point when a buddha forgets his enlightenment. It becomes so natural that there is no need to remember it. The tenth is the transcendence beyond buddha.

When this pack of cards came to Japan they dropped the tenth card because it looks very irreligious. It is perfectly good that the bull has been found -- the bull represents the truth --

that the buddha is at ease playing his flute. But the tenth seems to be very dangerous. So in Japan they dropped the tenth, they brought only nine cards. They were not courageous enough to see a buddha sitting in a pub sipping beer.

But I would like the tenth card to be added again. It is beyond Buddha himself, because he himself said, "I am at the ninth stage. The tenth stage is just to become ordinary and simple, so simple that you can even get drunk. Just a cup of wine, sitting with your friends enjoying ..."

The Japanese priests became aware that this is a very dangerous card; every drunkard will start saying that he has transcended Buddha. But being so afraid of the drunkards ... Anyway they think they have transcended everything, they don't wait for your card. Just look at a drunkard, he believes already that he is a god.

Because of these drunkards they have dropped a very significant point. The bottle and the pub were only symbolic, symbolic of being very ordinary -- just being simple as everybody else is. Once in a while if a buddha takes a little wine, just to give company to other buddhas who may be asleep, I will not object.

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Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

WHAT IS IT ABOUT MAN TODAY THAT HE IS NOT ONLY LACKING IN THE

SIMPLICITY AND INNOCENCE OF THE PEOPLE WE HEAR ABOUT IN THESE ZEN

DISCOURSES, BUT THAT HE IS SO WARY OF COMMITMENT?

IT IS AS IF WE ARE AFRAID TO HAVE ALL OUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET; OR

ARE OBSESSED WITH EXPERIENCING SIMPLY EVERYTHING THAT IS

AVAILABLE. SO WE END UP HAVING TASTED EVERYTHING AND NOT BEING

NOURISHED BY ANYTHING.

Maneesha, as far as man's inner pilgrimage is concerned, time is not a consideration. In every age, in every time, the same was the problem -- and the same was the solution. We are not in any way encountering something new. It is the same old sleep, the same old unconsciousness, the same old mind full of thoughts which does not allow us to move beyond it.

Nothing has changed as far as discovering the buddha is concerned. It is not relative to time or to space. Any time, in any space, it is available. And the hindrances are the same: your mind weaving thoughts day and night, dreaming, imagining, hallucinating. You are caught up in this hole, so badly entangled that it seems difficult to get out of it. But the way is simple --

you don't have to get out of it. You simply don't cling to it, and it will drop on its own accord.

That's what I call meditation. You simply stand aloof and just see the mind disappearing, like a cloud on a faraway horizon, leaving the sky clean and pure. And in that state arises your consciousness in its full glory, in its full celebration.

It is not without any reason that I want you to end up your meditation every day with celebration, with rejoicing. Slowly slowly, as meditation becomes deeper, your celebration will have more splendor, it will become more majestic, more miraculous.

Before we enter into our daily meditation, just to wake up the sleeping and snoring buddhas ...

The third world war is just starting, and after two thousand years Jesus Christ arrives, unannounced, in New York. He has come to give a speech to the United Nations Assembly.

It is late and he is tired after his journey. He looks around for a hotel, but finds that none of them has a room. Finally, in a little back street, Jesus sees a sign which reads, "The Camel and Cow Inn -- Vacancy."

He ties his donkey to a lamppost, goes inside, and walks up to the receptionist. Putting his hand in his pocket, Jesus pulls out some old, rusty nails and throws them on the desk.

"Excuse me," he asks, "can you put me up for the night?"

Chester Cheese walks into the American Express Bank. "I want to open a goddamn current account," snarls Chester.

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"I beg your pardon, sir?" replies Mabel, the teller.

"Listen, damn it," repeats Chester. "I said I want to open a goddamn current account."

"I am sorry, sir," says Mabel. "But we don't tolerate language like that in this bank."

Then she leaves the window, walks over to the bank manager and whispers in his ear. The two of them return to where Chester is waiting.

"What?" says the manager icily, "seems to be the problem here?"

"There is no fucking problem," insists Chester. "I just won ten million dollars in the lottery and I want to open a goddamn current account!"

"I see, sir," says the manager. "And you're getting trouble from this bitch?"

Larry Lurch, a New York yuppy, goes into the Fussy Pussy pub in Greenwich Village.

He finds a beautiful girl he has dated before sitting in a corner, sobbing into her Pina Colada.

Larry sits down opposite her.

"Lulu," he asks her sympathetically, "what is wrong?"

"Oh! Everything," she sobs. "My cat, Tiddles, has disappeared, I got fired from my job, I am being thrown out of my apartment, and the doctors tell me I have terminal diarrhea."

"That is terrible," says Larry in a concerned voice. "What about if I take you out on Saturday night and cheer you up?"

Lulu shakes her head and sobs, "I have decided to kill myself on Saturday night."

"Oh!" says Larry, "Well what about Friday night?"

Now, Nivedano ... beat the drum.

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent. Close your eyes.

Feel your body completely frozen.

No movement ...

Go in, deeper and deeper.

This moment you are all buddhas.

This moment you are not,

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only the buddha is.

One consciousness,

one oceanic consciousness,

and you are drowned in it.

Drink this experience as much as you can.

Let it sink into your every cell,

into your breathing,

your heartbeat,

so that it remains twenty-four hours with you,

just like an undercurrent.

This moment there is no time,

no space. This moment

you have transcended history, mind. This moment

you are only pure consciousness,

just a light unto yourself.

This is what is meant by being a buddha.

To make it absolutely clear, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax, let go.

The body is dead,

the mind is gone far away.

You are left only with a small center,

but this center is the door to existence.

From this center

you are joined with the universal heart.

Never forget the way.

It is very simple,

from mind to heart

and from heart to being

and from being to pure space.

This pure space is

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the buddha.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back from your inner journey,

silently, slowly.

There is no hurry. Sit down for a few moments,

reminding yourself you are a buddha.

This reminding every day

that you are a buddha

will become just like breathing.

You don't have to remember;

just like the heartbeat

you don't have to remember.

One becomes simple,

nobody,

just a pure joy.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the assembly of the buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master!

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5

You must see for yourself

6 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

DOGEN WROTE:

SUCCESSIVE PATRIARCHS PERSONALLY TRANSMITTED THE DHARMA FROM MASTER TO DISCIPLE. WITHOUT THE PERSONAL TRANSMISSION, NOT A SINGLE PATRIARCH, MASTER OR DISCIPLE, COULD BE A BUDDHA OR A PATRIARCH.

IT IS JUST AS IF WE WERE MAKING INNUMERABLE SMALL RIVERS JOIN A GREAT ONE, OR KEEPING THE LIGHT FROM GOING OUT, MAKING COUNTLESS

LIGHTS ONE AFTER ANOTHER: EVENTUALLY, THEY BECOME ONE. AND THERE

IS NO GAP IN THE FUNCTION OF THE TRANSMISSION BETWEEN MASTER AND

DISCIPLE.

SO SUCCESSIVE PATRIARCHS SPENT THEIR DAILY LIFE FACE-TO-FACE WITH

SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA AND WATCHED BY HIS FACE. HOW MANY DAYS THEY

HAD PASSED, I DON'T KNOW. WE SHOULD THINK CALMLY AND BE GLAD OF

THIS. THEIR EYE AND FACE ARE THE BUDDHA'S BECAUSE THEY MADE BOWS

TO THE BUDDHA'S FACE AND TRANSFERRED HIS EYE INTO THEIR OWN, AND

VICE VERSA.

IT IS THROUGH THE TRANSMISSION THAT THE EYE AND FACE HAD BEEN

INCESSANTLY TRANSMITTED TILL NOW.

THERE IS NO GAP IN THE TRANSMISSION BETWEEN MASTER AND DISCIPLE, JUST AS ONE VINE COILS ROUND ANOTHER; THAT IS TO SAY, WE OPEN OUR

EYES AND PRESENT THEM WITH THEMSELVES, THEY RECEIVE THEMSELVES.

THE SAME CAN ALSO BE SAID OF OUR FACE, MIND AND BODY.

UNLESS A DISCIPLE SEES HIS MASTER, HE CANNOT BE SAID TO BE A DISCIPLE; UNLESS A MASTER SEES HIS DISCIPLE, HE CANNOT BE A MASTER.

BOTH OF THEM HAVE GOT THE TRANSMISSION AND SUCCEEDED TO THE

DHARMA BY SEEING EACH OTHER. THAT IS AN APPEARANCE OF THE

TRANSMISSION OF THE PATRIARCHS. THEREFORE, THEY COULD DIRECTLY

TOUCH THE BUDDHA'S FINE FACE.

AT THE TIME OF THE TRANSMISSION, OUR FACE WILL CHANGE

COMPLETELY. THE SKIN ITSELF WILL BE A GREAT MIRROR OF THE BUDDHAS, WHICH HAS NO FLAW INSIDE OR OUT. THE GREAT MIRROR GIVES THE

TRANSMISSION TO THE GREAT MIRROR ITSELF. THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN

CORRECTLY GIVEN EYES TRUE ENOUGH TO SEE SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA PERSONALLY, ARE MORE INTIMATE WITH HIM THAN HE IS WITH HIMSELF.

EVERYONE, REGARDLESS OF SELF AND OTHERS, WHO SEES THE CORRECT

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TRANSMISSION OR THE REAL STUDY OF THIS NEW TRANSMISSION OF THE

TATHAGATA SHOULD PRESERVE IT CAREFULLY.

Maneesha, before I enter into the serious statements of a scholarly Dogen, I would like Avirbhava first to inaugurate.

It is not a bear, as I said yesterday -- because around the world I have so many cases against me, accusing me of hurting people's religious feelings. And the bear is worshipped by men.

It is really a pig. I had to ask Anando to research whether somebody's heart feelings would be hurt if we inaugurate the Museum of the Ancient Dead Gods with a pig. Avirbhava is going to be the Director General. She is completely ready -- with the ears of a pig, and a tail too.

(AVIRBHAVA IS DRESSED IN PIG EARS AND A CURLY TAIL.) About pigs: "In the ancient world pigs were considered the embodiment of the 'Corn Spirit', Osiris. He was the great Egyptian god of the underworld and judge of the dead.

In Greece pigs were sacred to Demeter, the goddess of the fruitful soil and agriculture.

And today they are considered sacred in New Guinea.

In China the pig is considered a great delicacy and, as in many other countries in the past too, was traditionally served at banquets and feasts, notably marriage ceremonies. While people ate the roasted pork, they could view the stuffed pig in the center of the banquet table.

Great care was always taken to choose a pig's head that had a pleasing face.

Pigs were particularly popular at marriages because they represented virtue and fertility.

Generally, in China, pigs are venerated because they represent good fortune."

So it is absolutely appropriate for Avirbhava to inaugurate the museum with her own hands.

Avirbhava, bring your pig ... and inaugurate!

(AVIRBHAVA PLACES A CUDDLY SOFT PINK PIG ON THE PODIUM AND IT

PROCEEDS TO WADDLE ACROSS THE MARBLE IN FRONT OF THE MASTER'S

FEET, MAKING GRUNTING NOISES AS ITS SNOUT AND TAIL WRIGGLE.) That is good.

Now we can turn to the serious matter.

Even this inauguration will hurt many people's religious beliefs, so there will be a few more cases. But this has been the right ancient god with which to inaugurate this museum, where we are going to collect all the dead gods that have been worshipped by a stupid humanity.

Buddhas have been forced to worship pigs and nobody has objected. Stones, monkeys, elephants -- you name it, they have all been worshipped somewhere or other. But nowhere in the whole history of mankind has man been given the dignity of a god. I am for the first time giving you the dignity of a god, and I want you to make a plaything of all the so-called gods Osho - The Miracle

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worshipped by humanity. It is such a degradation, such a humiliation. But man has accepted slavery without revolting against it.

If the crowd was worshipping the pig they followed the crowd, because the crowd gave them security and coziness and they had not the courage to revolt. Our museum will be specially devoted to all those idiots who have worshipped animals rather than searching for their own super-human consciousness, their own buddha; looking into mosques and synagogues and temples rather than looking into themselves.

It will create legal problems, but that does not matter. I have faced legal problems my whole life. I tremendously enjoy the stupidity of the judiciary around the world. They are still protecting those people whose feelings are hurt if you say anything about the pigs. In the name of religion all kinds of nonsense has been forced on man's mind.

My basic function is to take away all this nonsense from you so you can come out in your full glory -- a full moon, a buddha, sufficient unto yourself. I don't teach any prayer, I simply teach exploration of the inner world. There is the treasure; not in the scriptures, as Dogen is saying.

DOGEN WROTE:

SUCCESSIVE PATRIARCHS PERSONALLY TRANSMITTED THE DHARMA FROM MASTER TO DISCIPLE.

It is a half truth, and a half truth is more dangerous than a lie. A lie is at least complete.

Half truths are very dangerous because they hide the lie behind them, so on the surface it looks as if what is projected is true.

What he is saying -- that SUCCESSIVE PATRIARCHS PERSONALLY

TRANSMITTED THE DHARMA FROM MASTER TO DISCIPLE -- has a little truth in it.

That has been so with most of the masters, that they have received the essence, the experience, in the presence of a master. It has been a transmission between two energies. But it is not an absolute principle that he is making:

WITHOUT THE PERSONAL TRANSMISSION NOT A SINGLE PATRIARCH, MASTER OR DISCIPLE COULD BE A BUDDHA OR A PATRIARCH.

This is so obviously stupid -- because who was the master of Gautam Buddha himself?

From where did he get the transmission?

According to Dogen he needed to have a master -- but he had none. It is only a half truth.

But the other half is more important, for the simple reason that you may not find a master, but the universal spirit is always available everywhere.

The really courageous people simply take the jump into the universal being without being pushed by a master. It simply depends on your courage.

To be a buddha is your birthright. Just a little courage and you can declare yourself a buddha. But the mind hesitates, the mind thinks a thousand and one things -- what will happen to my smoking? What about the girlfriend? And what about the bank balance?

These small things I allow you to have. You can be a buddha and smoke -- that will just simply show that you are a stupid buddha! But stupid or not stupid, nobody can take away your buddhahood. You can have a girlfriend -- even Sardar Gurudayal Singh is having girlfriends and he is a well-known buddha, ancient. I don't think he himself knows how old he Osho - The Miracle

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is! But there is no time for him to get old. Girlfriends continuously keep him so engaged, he has no time to grow old. One needs time to grow old.

I allow you every concession that you want except unawareness; that I cannot allow because that is fundamental to buddhahood. If you are alert and aware and conscious there is no need of any master. Universal energy itself transmits the light, the arrow that penetrates to your very center, and you become connected with the whole.

A master is a small window from which you can see the starry sky. But that does not mean that first you need a window, only then you can see the starry night. Why don't you come out of the door?

Mulla Nasruddin died ... his grave still exists in Iran. He used to carry his door wherever he would go, and people would ask, "What is the matter? Why are you carrying that board?

Have you become a Christian?" But even Christ was carrying only the cross, not a board. "Is it some improvement on the cross?"

He said "No, it is just a security measure. Nobody can enter into my house except through the door. So I carry the door."

When he died his disciples wondered what to do about the door. He had left a written will in which he mentioned it: "Just put the door in front of my grave, lock it and put the keys in my hand inside the grave."

They are still there, the door and the grave; and the skeleton must have the keys. He is saying, "If the door is closed and the keys are with me, nobody can disturb my sleep until the judgment day, nobody can enter into the grave." He has taken security measures. Even after death, the door is locked. You may think it seems to be utter foolishness, but the man was laughing about you in all his acts, all his statements.

This act is also simply laughing at your stupidity. What do you think about your security, your bank balance? You can go bankrupt. What do you think of your security, your husband, your wife? If either of you is intelligent enough, he will escape.

There is no security. Even if you carry the door there is no security; in fact it makes you more vulnerable. Thieves don't bother about entering through the door. In fact they never enter through the door; they just make a hole in the wall on their own accord.

But the most hilarious part is ... one cold winter night a thief entered into Mulla Nasruddin's house. Mulla Nasruddin opened one eye and looked at the thief. The thief started trembling -- a man asleep with one eye open? Now he can neither go in, nor even get out. He was so much afraid, but Mulla said, "Don't be worried, I'm coming with you."

He said, "Where?"

Mulla said, "Into the house where you are going."

The thief said, "You seem to be mad! I am a thief!"

Mulla said, "I don't care who you are. For thirty years I have been looking around in this house, and I haven't found anything. Now let us have a partnership -- whatever is found we split fifty-fifty. You came at the right time, because I was becoming discouraged."

The thief said, "My God!"

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But he had to go in, and there was nothing. Mulla followed him with his lamp to show him the way everywhere. The thief wanted to escape somehow, because with the lamp Mulla would see his face. Tomorrow the whole city would know that he is a thief.

Mulla said, "Don't be worried, that's why I had opened only one eye. I'm not looking at you. My concern is our partnership."

He said, "What partnership? There is nothing to be found."

He said, "That's what I was trying to tell you, but you wouldn't listen."

The thief said, "I want to go!"

Nasruddin said, "Where?"

"I'm going to my house."

Nasruddin said, "I'm also coming. Partners should live together!"

The thief said, "My God, this is a difficulty. I have a wife."

Nasruddin said, "Don't be worried about that, I will take care of her. You just do your job and I will take care of your wife."

This man whose house was empty was carrying the door all around, wherever he was going, making a statement in his own way. The man was of immense intelligence. He is saying that it is only a door and nothing else. Just look through the door and the whole sky is open. By carrying the door he was saying that he is a master, a door to the divinity. But he was a unique person.

Dogen is still a scholar. I wonder how he could not see the simple point when he said: WITHOUT THE PERSONAL TRANSMISSION, NOT A SINGLE PATRIARCH, MASTER OR DISCIPLE, COULD BE A BUDDHA OR A PATRIARCH.

What about the first buddha? And if it can happen to Gautam Buddha without any master, why can it not happen to anybody else?

To become enlightened is everybody's birthright, it is not a monopoly of Buddha's. These statements show that Dogen is still learning scriptures. He's not a buddha yet.

He became a buddha finally, after he had gone unnecessarily astray carrying the load of Buddhist scriptures. Finally, when he got finished and fed up with the scriptures and dropped them, he was surprised to realize that from the very beginning there was no need to search.

You are it. The seeker is the goal. If you go on seeking other goals, you are going away from yourself. Seeking has to stop.

IT IS JUST, says Dogen, AS IF WE WERE MAKING INNUMERABLE SMALL

RIVERS JOIN A GREAT ONE, OR KEEPING THE LIGHT FROM GOING OUT, MAKING COUNTLESS LIGHTS ONE AFTER ANOTHER: EVENTUALLY, THEY

BECOME ONE.

Partly he is right, but only partly. But buddhas don't make partial statements. Their statements are categorically absolute.

AND THERE IS NO GAP IN THE FUNCTION OF THE TRANSMISSION BETWEEN

MASTER AND DISCIPLE.

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SO SUCCESSIVE PATRIARCHS SPENT THEIR DAILY LIFE FACE TO FACE WITH

SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA AND WATCHED BY HIS FACE.

Now at the time of Dogen, Sakyamuni Gautam Buddha had been dead for fifteen hundred years. What does he mean by living face to face with Sakyamuni Buddha? He had only stone statues, utterly dead.

In my village there was, very close to my house, a temple of Shiva, and Shiva is represented with the Shivalinga. You must have seen Shiva temples: just any beautiful round stone is placed and that is Shivalinga, which means, "The prick of the Lord Shiva." Now the devotees of Shiva are going to be freaked, but what can I do? I'm simply translating the word

'Shivalinga'.

One of my friends' father lived just in front of that temple, and he was a great devotee of Shiva.

I told him, "You are wasting your time. That Shiva is absolutely worthless."

He said, "What do you mean? You are hurting my religious feelings."

I said, "That is going to be my profession my whole life. This is just the beginning. I have seen rats urinating on your Shiva. He cannot do anything to the rats, what is he going to do for you?"

He was so angry that he told me, "You get out of this house!"

I said, "I will get out, whether you say it or not. But whenever you go to the temple I will be standing there by your side, watching your stupidity. I will not say a single word, but you will understand why I'm standing there."

He said, "You are a strange boy."

From that day, for almost six months, I followed him regularly. Whenever he would enter the temple he would look all around. I was able to see the temple from my house, so immediately I would enter and stand there without saying a word.

And he would say, "My God, have you come?"

I said, "It is better to stop this stupidity. Don't you see so many rats in this temple?"

He said, "It is true. And it is also true that I have seen those rats urinating over the Shiva.

But this is just a statue, a representation, a symbol of the real Shiva."

I said, "Have you seen the real Shiva? Is he just a prick?"

He said, "Listen! You are not allowed to come into my house anymore!"

I said, "I have no intention. If you stop coming to this temple, I will stop coming to your house. It is an agreement. But if you come to this temple, nobody can prevent me coming to your house and provoking you. I will do everything to make you aware that you are being very idiotic."

He said to his son, "You drop your friendship with this boy, because this boy is going to spoil you. He's spoiling me, because sometimes I start thinking that perhaps I am being stupid.

On all rational grounds the boy is right. I have not seen Shiva, and I have never bothered about the meaning of Shivalinga."

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He said, "You have started coming in my dreams."

I said, "If you prevent me coming to your house, then that is the only way I can wake you up."

The old man finally decided not to go to this temple. He went to another temple, but that was a temple of an elephant god. What difference does it make?

Dogen is talking about Sakyamuni Buddha as if the Buddha is alive and you are watching him.

There are certainly more statues of Gautam Buddha in the world than of anybody else. And his last statement before he died was, "Don't make any statues of me, because I will not be in my stone statues." But just as nobody listens to the master ...

They resisted making statues for three hundred years, but then finally they gave up. First they started worshipping the grave of Gautam Buddha, but it is not much joy to worship a grave. Then somebody suggested worshipping the tree under which Gautam Buddha became enlightened. That was a better idea, a tree is at least a living phenomenon ... a beautiful tree with great foliage. But after all a tree is a tree, it cannot be a substitute for Gautam Buddha.

Nothing can be a substitute except your own consciousness.

All these statements made by Dogen simply show that he does not know.

HOW MANY DAYS THEY HAD PASSED, I DON'T KNOW. WE SHOULD THINK

CALMLY AND BE GLAD OF THIS. THEIR EYE AND FACE ARE THE BUDDHA'S

BECAUSE THEY MADE BOWS TO THE BUDDHA'S FACE AND TRANSFERRED HIS

EYE INTO THEIR OWN, AND VICE VERSA.

IT IS THROUGH THE TRANSMISSION THAT THE EYE AND FACE HAD BEEN

INCESSANTLY TRANSMITTED TILL NOW.

THERE IS NO GAP IN THE TRANSMISSION BETWEEN MASTER AND DISCIPLE, JUST AS ONE VINE COILS ROUND ANOTHER; THAT IS TO SAY, WE OPEN OUR

EYES AND PRESENT THEM WITH THEMSELVES, THEY RECEIVE THEMSELVES.

THE SAME CAN ALSO BE SAID OF OUR FACE, MIND AND BODY.

I said to you that it is a half truth. It is true that if you are living with a living master -- not with a statue -- then gazing into his eyes or just watching his presence, his gestures, you will see how awareness functions. And as you become more and more aware of your master, simultaneously you will be becoming aware of yourself.

The master finally proves to be a mirror. In the mirror you can see your face -- your original face, not the painted one which the society has given to you. You can see your original heart -- not the one which is used for pumping the blood in the body, but the original heart which is hiding behind it.

Watching your master in his day-to-day life, something is transmitted. Some energy, some light, some fragrance reaches to you, but it cannot happen with a statue.

There are many Buddhist temples in China, in Japan, in India. Buddhists have disappeared from India, but all the beautiful places like Ajanta are nothing but Gautam Buddha's statues in different postures: sitting, lying, standing, sleeping, waking.

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And in China Buddhists have done an almost impossible thing. There is a temple which is called, "The Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas." A whole mountain has been carved into ten thousand buddhas. First the whole mountainside was carved into big caves. Then the statues were carved in those shaded caves. It must have taken thousands of years for thousands of sculptors, and of very fine potentialities, because the statues are so beautiful.

But it was a futile effort. In the time you can carve a buddha in marble, in that very time you can become a thousand times a buddha. So I consider it an absolute wastage of time.

UNLESS A DISCIPLE SEES HIS MASTER, HE CANNOT BE SAID TO BE A DISCIPLE.

Obviously. Scholars are so foolish. If a disciple has not seen the master, it is obvious that he is not a disciple. A disciple exists only in reference to a master. A master can be alone, he is not dependent on disciples. His mastery depends only on his own awakening. But a disciple cannot be a disciple on his own accord; he has to be in deep trust, in love with someone who has arrived home.

He is saying it right, but he does not seem to know that at the time Buddha had already been dead for fifteen centuries -- and now it is twenty-five centuries. Dogen cannot be a disciple of Buddha. All the Buddhists are living in the fallacy that they are disciples of Buddha. You need a living master to transmit the radiation that wakes up your sleeping buddhahood. No statue can do that.

THEREFORE, THEY COULD DIRECTLY TOUCH THE BUDDHA'S FINE FACE.

He is still talking about statues. No disciple will dare to touch Buddha's face when he is living.

The East knows that the disciple's reach is up to the feet of the master. There is a certain science in it. As the disciple touches the master's feet, the master touches the disciple's head; it becomes a circle. From the feet the energy moves into the disciple and from the hand the energy moves into the disciple. And somewhere at the center of the disciple's heart, the master's energy creates enough fire to wake up the sleeping potentiality of the disciple.

It is not just a gesture of gratitude to touch the feet of the master. It has a subtle science about it. But you can TOUCH THE BUDDHA'S FINE FACE only if your Buddha is a stone statue. And by the way, I have to remind you that the face of the Buddha in the statues is not his. Because Buddha was born on the boundaries of Nepal and India, most probably he was Nepalese -- it was just on the boundary where the two countries meet -- he cannot have this face that appears in the statues.

By a strange coincidence, when his statues were first being made, Alexander the Great was visiting India. It was Alexander the Great's face that inspired the sculptors. Certainly the Greek face has a beauty of its own, and Alexander was one of the most beautiful men the earth has seen. So the face you see on Buddha is not even his.

In those days there were no photographs, so it was very easy to put anybody's head on anybody else's body. Even the body does not seem to be Buddha's. It seems to be almost seven feet tall; Nepalese are not that tall. Even in India seven feet is very, very rare. Nor was Buddha as athletic as the body seems to be; he had been in continuous self-torture for six years, the body would have become just bones.

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The statue is absolutely false. And by touching this statue's face, you cannot get any transmission. If you do it is imagination, it is hallucination. You are deluding yourself.

AT THE TIME OF THE TRANSMISSION, OUR FACE WILL CHANGE

COMPLETELY. THE SKIN ITSELF WILL BE A GREAT MIRROR OF THE BUDDHAS, WHICH HAS NO FLAW INSIDE OR OUT. THE GREAT MIRROR GIVES THE

TRANSMISSION TO THE GREAT MIRROR ITSELF.

Once in a while he says something beautiful. He was a great scholar at the time he was making these statements. It is true that when the transmission happens between a master and a disciple, the face of the disciple starts changing to a new grace, a new beauty, a new compassion, a new love, a new joy, a new dance. He starts reflecting his master's being on a smaller scale.

But it is possible only if the master is alive. I am against all statues because they are deceptive, they are deluding millions of people who may have been seeking and searching the truth. Every milestone shows them the way towards a temple or a synagogue or a mosque. The way is inwards, not outside.

A great Sufi master is known to have gone through a great transmission. His name was Junnaid. He was the master of al-Hillaj Mansoor. Al-Hillaj Mansoor is more known to the world because he was crucified just like Jesus, but in a more cruel way. Part by part he was cut -- the American way, in installments.

Junnaid was a very poor man. And it is said that unless at least once in your life you make the pilgrimage to Mecca, where the stone Kaaba is representing Mohammed's place ... It is from that stone that, sitting on his horse, he simply went upwards to paradise and took his horse too. If you are an authentic Mohammedan, you have to visit that place at least once in your lifetime. So even the poorest Mohammedans collect money, sell their houses, their farms, because it is an absolute necessity that before they die they must go to Kaaba.

Junnaid was getting old and he was very poor, so he collected money from his neighbors.

Nobody refused because the money was for the journey to Kaaba; and everybody is told that if you support a Mohammedan on his pilgrimage, you also partake in the virtue of the great pilgrimage. So people gave him money, gave him some food, clothes, so that he could go. He had to travel ... but people were surprised: the next day he was back. It was expected that he would be back in about six months, three months going and three months coming. This was too quick! -- people could not believe it. And also, he looked absolutely transformed, so radiant, so blissful.

They said, "What happened?"

Junnaid said, "Kaaba itself came to meet me outside the village."

They said, "This is sheer nonsense. That big stone?" It is an asteroid that has fallen from the sky ... huge.

They asked him, "At least tell us in detail what really has happened."

A Sufi master, Bayazid, was sitting under a tree at the crossroads outside the village.

Junnaid asked him, "Which way should I go? I want to reach Kaaba at the pilgrimage time."

At a certain time every year Mohammedans from all over the world try to reach Kaaba.

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Bayazid said, "Nonsense! Bring out all your money!" And he said it with such authority that poor Junnaid brought all the money that he had gathered.

And Bayazid said, "There is no need to go anywhere! Just make the seven circles around me. I am the Kaaba!"

Junnaid could not believe it at first, but what to do? The man was so ... his eyes were so penetrating, his presence was so fragrant. He circled him seven times, as Mohammedans are supposed to go round the Kaaba stone seven times.

And Bayazid said, "Now give me all the other provisions you have for the journey and go home! Your pilgrimage is complete."

He could feel that something had changed. He was no longer the old person who had come just a few minutes before. So he told the villagers, "I met a man who said, 'I am the Kaaba!'

and he took all my provisions and all my money and told me to make the seven rounds." A few people laughed. Those who were stupid laughed, but those who were wise understood because they could see the transformation that had happened.

It does not matter who the man was, but certainly the man was a man of realization. Just going around him seven times, Junnaid himself became a master.

But it cannot happen by going around a stone seven or seven hundred or seven thousand times.

THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN CORRECTLY GIVEN EYES TRUE ENOUGH TO SEE

SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA PERSONALLY ...

Now what nonsense he's talking! Buddha has been dead for fifteen hundred years, there is no way now to personally connect with him. Yes, you can connect with somebody else who is still alive and has the same taste of buddhahood. But he is not talking about that, he is talking about stone buddhas.

EVERYONE, REGARDLESS OF SELF AND OTHERS, WHO SEES THE CORRECT

TRANSMISSION OR THE REAL STUDY OF THIS NEW TRANSMISSION OF THE

TATHAGATA SHOULD PRESERVE IT CAREFULLY.

The word 'study' shows that Dogen is still a student, a scholar, although he is talking as if he knows. In the world you will come across people who are talking about God as if they know, and millions of people believe in them. It seems our minds have lived so long in slavery that we have forgotten even to question. Dogen is not told that what he is talking about is sheer nonsense.

A fifteen-hundred-year gap cannot be filled. You have to find a living buddha. Of course, the living buddha will have the same taste and the same blissfulness and the same aura and the same energy as the original Gautam Buddha. But this is possible only with a living master.

The search for truth is basically the search for a living master. It is very rare that you can find the way without a master. But I allow the exception. I allow the exception because I myself never had any master.

I have met with many so-called masters, but they all wanted to get rid of me, because my presence was such a danger to their respectability. I raised questions that they could not answer. Other disciples started disappearing, and they would say, "Please, you go on and find somebody else; don't disturb our disciples. They never asked such questions before you came; now they have started asking strange questions about which we know nothing."

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There are around the world many who pretend that they know. But you can see in their eyes, in their gestures, in their silences, in their words, whether they know or they are just tape recorders, quoting scriptures.

It is not very difficult -- just scratch a little bit and you will find the scholar and the scripture. They cannot transmit truth, they cannot help you to open the door to existence; they can only create faith in you in some dead god, in some dead prophet. They are a great consolation, but a consolation is not a revolution.

Consolation is very dangerous. It prevents you from searching more, it prevents you from searching deeper.

A Zen poet wrote:

I INTEND TO TRANSMIT IT TO YOU,

BUT YOU CANNOT TAKE IT.

YOU MAY YEARN TO IMITATE ME,

NEITHER CAN THIS SUCCEED.

IF YOU PURPOSELY TURN BACK,

YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS

MEDDLING;

IF I PART WITH YOU, YOU WOULD

THINK ME DESTITUTE OF SENTIMENTS.

These are words of a master. He's saying, "If you turn away on your own you are missing an opportunity. If I turn you away, I'm not compassionate." And it is intrinsic in being a buddha to be compassionate.

But you cannot imitate me and you cannot intend to have it transmitted to you; nor can you take it. It is not something which can be given. It is not something which has to be found somewhere. It is just a sleeping buddha waking up, just as every morning you superficially wake up. A day comes when you wake up in the very innermost core of your being, and once that waking has happened you never lose it.

Jakuan wrote:

PERFECT MELODY -- LIKE WIND

AMONG THE PINES OF FAR-OFF SLOPES.

MIND IS WASHED SKY CLEAN:

HEAR IT BEYOND ITSELF.

These are people of meditation, people of the path. They are not quoting scriptures, but their words become scriptures.

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Another Zen poet:

YOU MUST SEE FOR YOURSELF

THE REED-FLOWERS DRENCHED

IN MOONLIGHT.

You cannot believe in somebody else's eyes; YOU MUST SEE FOR YOURSELF THE

REED FLOWERS DRENCHED IN MOONLIGHT.

The beauty is such that no description can be adequate. No explanation is possible.

The same is true on a far greater and far wider scale about your own being: you should see its beauty with your own eyes. Never have faith in anyone except yourself. Have trust in yourself, and if that trust finds a way and you fall in love with a certain energy, with a certain master ... Don't make any effort, just let it happen silently, without making any noise of footsteps.

If you are fortunate you may find someone. But don't feel destitute if you cannot find a master; the universal spirit is available to you directly. Just a little more courage ... Either a little more courage or a master -- both are possible at any time, in any age.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ARE YOU NOT THE EXCEPTION TO WHAT DOGEN SAYS -- IN THAT YOU DID

NOT HAVE A PERSONAL TRANSMISSION FROM A MASTER?

I have a transmission from the universe itself. The moon has come to my window on its own.

AS YOU DID NOT HAVE A MASTER, HOW WERE YOU TICKLED?

I am being tickled by my disciples. Do you want a little tickling session?

On their fiftieth wedding anniversary, mean old Hamish MacTavish decides to treat his wife, Maggie, by taking her out to lunch at the Bawling Bagpipe Restaurant.

They order their food, and when it arrives Hamish starts eating -- but Maggie just sits there watching.

The waiter becomes anxious, and goes over to the old couple. "Is there something wrong with your food, Mrs. MacTavish?" he asks.

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"No, no young man," replies Maggie. "I'm just waiting for my husband to finish. He's using the teeth first!"

Paddy gets sentenced to thirty days in jail for being drunk and disorderly. When Judge Rumcake has finished pronouncing the sentence, Paddy asks if he can say something.

"Why, of course!" says the judge.

"If I called you a son-of-a-bitch," suggests Paddy, "what would you do?"

"What?" says Rumcake, "I would hold you in contempt of court and give you an extra week in jail."

"I see," says Paddy. "And if I thought you were a son-of-a-bitch, what would you do?"

"In that case," replies Judge Rumcake, "I'd do nothing, because there's no law against thinking."

"Oh! Well in that case," concludes Paddy, "I think you are a son-of-a-bitch!"

Milarepa, Devageet and Sarjano find themselves sitting outside Pythagoras Clinic waiting to see Doctor Azima.

"What are you guys here for?" asks Devageet.

"It's-a my prick," admits Sarjano, nervously. "It has turned bright-a orange!"

"What?" exclaim Milarepa and Devageet together. "That is what I'm here for," says Milarepa. "And me too!" exclaims Devageet.

So the three swamis enter the clinic together.

Undressing, Milarepa and Devageet expose their bright orange machinery, and Sarjano unrolls his sausage.

"My God!" says Azima. "That is amazing!" And he starts to make his examinations.

"How is your sex-a life?" asks Azima. "Do you make-a love once a night?"

The three swamis look at each other and shake their heads in silence.

"Well-a, how-a about twice a week?" continues Azima.

"There was a time ..." reflects Milarepa. Devageet and Sarjano nod quietly.

"Well-a, how about twice a month-a?" asks Azima.

"I wish!" says Devageet, dreamily.

"Once a month?" suggests Azima. There is another silence.

"Well, that's okay then!" says Azima. "Don't be worried. It is just-a rust!"

Ronald and Nancy Reagan are invited to dinner with Ed Meese and his wife, pope the Polack and his bishop, and Rajiv and Mrs. Gandhi.

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They go to a nice restaurant downtown and are seated immediately at the celebrity table.

With full pomp and circumstance, head waiter Reginald the homosexual serves them cocktails and takes their orders.

He returns to the kitchen and hands the order slip to Jablonski the cook.

"Hey, wait a minute," says Jablonski. "This order says 'Give Nancy Reagan her favorite chicken parts.'"

"Yes, that is correct," agrees Reginald gaily. "What about it?"

"Well," says Jablonski. "What the hell are Nancy Reagan's favorite chicken parts?"

"I don't know," says the waiter, "but as far as I can tell, they must be right wings and assholes!"

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

Use this moment of silence

to go in without any fear.

This is your temple,

this is where every buddha

has found himself.

In this silence

you are no more yourself; you have become

part of an oceanic consciousness.

This is what being a buddha means.

Deeper and deeper ...

Nivedano ...

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(Drumbeat)

Relax.

Let go.

Leave the body and the mind aside.

Just keep yourself as a watcher,

a witness.

And suddenly lights, flames, blessings

and flowers of the unknown

start showering on you.

This is your sky.

You can go as deep,

as far as you want.

You will not meet anyone on the way.

There is no need to be afraid.

You can only be encountered by yourself,

your authentic and original being.

What a blessed evening.

Ten thousand buddhas together,

rejoicing in silence,

tasting immortality.

In a single moment,

the whole eternity is condensed.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back

slowly and gracefully.

Remember,

you have been in the land of the buddhas.

Sit down for a few moments,

collecting your memory,

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so that it can become an undercurrent

twenty-four hours in your life,

of joy ... and bliss ... and ecstasy.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master!

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6

Cages of gold

7 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

SEIGEN SAID:

IF NOW YOU COMPREHEND IT, WHERE IS THAT WHICH YOU DID NOT

COMPREHEND BEFORE? WHAT YOU WERE DELUDED ABOUT BEFORE IS WHAT

YOU ARE NOW ENLIGHTENED ABOUT, AND WHAT YOU ARE NOW

ENLIGHTENED ABOUT, IS WHAT YOU WERE DELUDED ABOUT BEFORE.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO DISEASES: ONE IS RIDING AN ASS TO SEARCH FOR

THE ASS; THE OTHER IS RIDING AN ASS AND BEING UNWILLING TO DISMOUNT.

YOU SAY THAT RIDING AN ASS TO SEARCH FOR THE ASS IS SILLY, AND THAT

HE WHO DOES IT SHOULD BE PUNISHED. THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS DISEASE.

BUT I TELL YOU, DO NOT SEARCH FOR THE ASS AT ALL. THE INTELLIGENT

MAN, UNDERSTANDING MY MEANING, STOPS HIS ERROR OF SEARCHING FOR

THE ASS, AND THUS THE DELUDED STATE OF HIS MIND CEASES TO EXIST.

BUT IF, HAVING FOUND THE ASS ONE IS UNWILLING TO DISMOUNT, THIS

DISEASE IS MOST DIFFICULT TO CURE. I SAY TO YOU, DO NOT RIDE THE ASS AT

ALL. YOU YOURSELF ARE THE ASS. MOUNTAINS, RIVERS AND PLAINS ARE ALL

THE ASS. WHY DO YOU RIDE ON IT? IF YOU RIDE, YOU CANNOT CURE YOUR

DISEASE. BUT IF YOU DO NOT RIDE, THE UNIVERSE IN ALL DIRECTIONS

BECOMES ONE WIDE EXPANSE. WITH THESE TWO DISEASES EXPELLED, NOTHING REMAINS TO AFFECT YOUR MIND. THIS IS SPIRITUAL CULTIVATION.

YOU NEED DO NOTHING MORE.

Maneesha, Seigen is raising a very important question. And he not only raises the question, he also gives the answer. That is the way of a master. To raise a question is very easy, but to give the right answer is very difficult, because the right answer is only one.

Millions of questions are possible, but millions of answers are not there.

Before I read you the sutra, I would like to tell you the essence of it. Because it is old Zen language, it looks complicated, but it is not.

All that he is saying is that searching for the self is stupid. It is a disease, and almost incurable. But if by chance you find the self and become enlightened, you have jumped from one disease to another.

Your enlightenment is not a cure. Your enlightenment is now another possession. Now you will be bragging about it. It will not give you freedom but new fetters -- just more shiny, more beautiful, more up to date.

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Seigen is saying that you have to be free from ignorance and you have to be free from enlightenment. This is called the lion's roar. Even enlightenment is not going to be his imprisonment. He wants the whole universe without any limits.

An enlightened person has a tiny flame. But if that tiny flame makes him feel special, greater and better than others, it has already become a fetter. This is not the great enlightenment. It is simply changing dark-colored chains for light-colored chains. The great enlightenment is to not have any chains.

So ultimately the enlightened, the awakened, the buddha, drops his buddhahood too. He becomes absolutely ordinary and simple. In his simplicity radiates the whole cosmos. In his silence is contained all the music and all the rainbows and all the flowers possible. He is himself the universe, there is no more division.

Now he cannot distinguish between the ignorant and the enlightened. To him now the whole universe is nothing but an immense enlightenment in which everything is drowned. A greater dance is not possible.

Seigen said:

IF NOW YOU COMPREHEND IT, WHERE IS THAT WHICH YOU DID NOT

COMPREHEND BEFORE? WHAT YOU WERE DELUDED ABOUT BEFORE IS WHAT

YOU ARE NOW ENLIGHTENED ABOUT, AND WHAT YOU ARE NOW

ENLIGHTENED ABOUT, IS WHAT YOU WERE DELUDED ABOUT BEFORE.

The object of your delusion and the object of your enlightenment remain the same. It is not a great transformation as far as your subjectivity is concerned.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO DISEASES ... Nobody in the whole history has brought the issue to such clarity.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO DISEASES: ONE IS RIDING AN ASS TO SEARCH FOR

THE ASS; THE OTHER IS RIDING AN ASS AND BEING UNWILLING TO DISMOUNT.

One is searching for enlightenment, the other is finding it and not relaxing.

As you bragged about your so-called ignorant knowledge, now you brag about your enlightenment. But your ego remains the same. Get down from the ass! Get down from your enlightenment and mix with the simple existence that is eternal and immortal. Don't keep yourself apart.

The second disease is more difficult. The first disease you yourself wanted to drop. The second disease is difficult, because now the chains are made of gold. To drop chains of gold feels as if you are dropping your beautiful ornaments, and nobody wants to drop their ornaments. It becomes more difficult to get out of a cage made of gold because even the cage seems to be so valuable. And what is there beyond the cage? Just an empty sky as far as you can see. The cage not only makes you special, it also gives you security.

Seigen is saying:

YOU SAY THAT RIDING AN ASS TO SEARCH FOR THE ASS IS SILLY -- that is obvious -- AND THAT HE WHO DOES IT SHOULD BE PUNISHED. THIS IS A VERY

SERIOUS DISEASE. BUT I TELL YOU, DO NOT SEARCH FOR THE ASS AT ALL. THE

INTELLIGENT MAN, UNDERSTANDING MY MEANING, STOPS HIS ERROR OF

SEARCHING FOR THE ASS, AND THUS THE DELUDED STATE OF HIS MIND

CEASES TO EXIST.

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This is how you can determine whether a man really knows. Even from his words you can see some glimpses. Compare it with Jesus' statement, "Seek and ye shall find." Seigen will say, "Seek and you shall never find."

The seeker has already gone away from himself; in search of himself he has left himself far behind. Jesus says, "Ask and you will be answered." Who is there to answer? It is your own mind game. One part of the mind raises the question, another part of the mind supplies the answer. Otherwise this whole universe is utterly silent.

All prayers are in vain. And they don't show your religiousness, they simply show your IQ

-- your intelligence quotient. They show that you are still a child, that you still want someone else to take the responsibility. There is nobody in the sky to take the responsibility. For Jesus there is a God, but for Seigen and any Zen master there is no God to answer. You are the answer -- just don't ask! Be silent! Don't ask! And there is the answer.

Jesus says, "Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you." The very language indicates that the door is somewhere outside you -- you have to knock. But the reality is, you have to go in. There is no question of knocking. Stop all knocking on the doors outside you! Just relax into your center and you have found it. And you will be surprised that you were searching for something which has always been there inside you.

BUT IF, HAVING FOUND THE ASS ONE IS UNWILLING TO DISMOUNT, THIS

DISEASE IS MOST DIFFICULT TO CURE.

Only a master can say that enlightenment is also a disease. Perhaps a better, a cleaner disease. But remember the meaning of the word disease -- it does not mean sickness, it does not mean illness, it simply means 'dis-ease'. And to be at ease with the universe you cannot think yourself enlightened and others unenlightened. To be at ease with the universe you have to dismount from your enlightenment and just be simple ... nobody. And the whole universe is yours.

I SAY TO YOU, DO NOT RIDE THE ASS AT ALL.

In the first place, riding the ass you are getting into difficulty. Don't seek enlightenment, because that will ultimately end up in your finding it. And it will be very difficult for you to get free of enlightenment. It will become a new disease, a new imprisonment -- so cozy and so special for the ego that who wants to just be? Dismount from it! You have been in search for so long and now you have found. Your whole search ... you have invested your whole life!

But a real buddha, a man of existential knowledge will say, I SAY TO YOU, DO NOT

RIDE THE ASS AT ALL!

YOU YOURSELF ARE THE ASS!

The ass is just a symbol.

MOUNTAINS, RIVERS AND PLAINS ARE ALL THE ASS. WHY DO YOU RIDE ON

IT? IF YOU RIDE, YOU CANNOT CURE YOUR DISEASE. BUT IF YOU DO NOT RIDE, THE UNIVERSE IN ALL DIRECTIONS BECOMES ONE WIDE EXPANSE. WITH

THESE TWO DISEASES EXPELLED, NOTHING REMAINS TO AFFECT YOUR MIND.

THIS IS SPIRITUAL CULTIVATION. YOU NEED DO NOTHING MORE.

Enlightenment is the last disease, the last barrier.

There have been wise friends who used to say to me, "You are a blessed soul."

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I said to these people, "Don't make distinctions." Let me remain simply a nobody, with no power, with no domination. Because every subtle desire to be special is a desire for power.

You gather money to be powerful, you go into politics to be powerful, you search for enlightenment again for power. Enlightened you will be worshipped. Perhaps enlightenment is the most dangerous disease of all, because who wants to be unenlightened once he has become enlightened? -- except my people who become enlightened every day. They never tire of it; the next day again they are here.

Gurudayal Singh is laughing. Because he is my ancientmost sannyasin, he has become so many times enlightened! But the next day when he wakes up he thinks, "Enlightenment is not difficult. One can become enlightened any way, any day, any time. Just a little more enjoyment around the world -- enlightenment can wait!"

It is not something that is far away. Once you have known it, you know it is there. Then just be ordinary, simple. In that simplicity is purity and joy and a laughter like a child; and a glory and a splendor that the whole existence pours on such innocence.

A Zen haiku:

EVERY MAN HAS BENEATH HIS FEET,

GROUND ENOUGH TO DO ZAZEN ON.

You don't have to go anywhere. Wherever you are, you have enough ground under your feet and you can become enlightened. You can do the meditation, it does not have to be in a certain holy place.

But even people like Moses would not pass the test set by this haiku poet. When Moses went to meet God on Mount Sinai ... In the first place the whole idea of meeting God is absolutely imagination. He must have been asleep. In a dream he must have gone up the mountain, because thousands of people have gone to the mountain before and after, and God has never been found there. Still people go on thinking that it is a holy place. It was a special concession to Moses that God met him on Mount Sinai. It is strange how he knew that he would be at that moment on Mount Sinai. He had no phone call from him, no letter, no communication of any kind. But he met God on Sinai -- that's what the Old Testament says.

As a metaphor it is beautiful, but religions turn every metaphor into factuality, and then it becomes a superstition.

Moses approaches God ... and what is God? A fire is burning inside a green bush and the bush is still green. Flames are coming out of the bush just like branches, flowers. With those flowers and branches and leaves the flames are coming out. This can be a beautiful metaphor, that life is nothing but fire. But as he approached the bush, somebody shouted from the bush,

"Moses take off your shoes! You are on holy ground."

These kinds of metaphors have proved to be very dangerous. It is beautiful to see God as flames ... certainly cool, because they are not burning the leaves, the flowers, the bush. On the contrary they are nourishing it, dancing with its branches. But, "Take off your shoes, this is holy ground," is a dangerous statement. That means other ground is not holy.

This Zen master says, EVERY MAN HAS BENEATH HIS FEET, GROUND ENOUGH

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go anywhere. Wherever you are, you are in the holy universe. There are not certain places which are holy and certain places which are not holy. If the whole universe is divine then everything is holy.

Another haiku:

THE BAMBOO SHADOWS ARE SWEEPING THE STAIRS,

BUT NO DUST IS STIRRED:

THE MOONLIGHT PENETRATES DEEP

INTO THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL,

BUT NO TRACE IS LEFT IN THE WATER.

Saying things which cannot be said, Zen has such a unique way of indicating aesthetically that it seems unbelievable. The master is saying, THE BAMBOO SHADOWS ... not the bamboos themselves, because bamboos are clumsy and they will make much noise. THE

BAMBOO SHADOWS ARE SWEEPING THE STAIRS, BUT NO DUST IS STIRRED.

This is our actual situation. In our innermost consciousness no dust is stirred. All our thoughts are nothing but bamboo shadows.

THE MOONLIGHT PENETRATES DEEP INTO THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL, BUT

NO TRACE IS LEFT IN THE WATER.

When you become aware you are surprised ... all your actions in the past, your thoughts in the past -- nothing has left any trace. Awakened, you are left completely silent as if there has been no past at all. Just like in the morning when you wake up, just for two or three minutes you remember the last part of a dream. You have been dreaming the whole night, six hours. If you are sleeping eight hours, then six hours you have been dreaming. But when you wake up you remember just the last dream, and that too only when you are half asleep and you can feel it. When you are really awake no trace remains of any dreams.

This was the reason why the mystics called the world just a dream. All your desires, all your possessions, all your thoughts, all your religions, all your anger, love and hate --

everything that makes up your world, your mind, is found to be as if it has never been there.

When you wake up, you are absolutely a clean slate. Nobody has ever written anything on it.

Another Zen master:

IF YOU WISH TO KNOW THE ROAD

UP THE MOUNTAIN, YOU MUST ASK THE MAN

WHO GOES BACK AND FORTH ON IT.

A man who has become enlightened has reached to the highest peak of the mountain, and then he comes down and becomes a simple man. He knows the peak is there, it is his own being. If you want to ask, ask a man who has been to the mountain and has come down. If he Osho - The Miracle

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is still on the mountain your question will not be answered. If he is still on the way going towards the mountain all that he can say will be mere words.

You have to find a man who has been to the ultimate peak and then came down to be amongst you. Then he is at ease, he has no tensions, he is at home. Ask such a person, perhaps he may indicate the way.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

NONE OF THE MASTERS WHOSE SERMONS WE HAVE BEEN HEARING ARE A PATCH ON YOU. IT'S NOT JUST THAT YOU ARE AS GREAT AS ONE WOULD

EXPECT THIS FAR DOWN THE LINE; AND I'M SURE IT'S NOT JUST BECAUSE YOU

ARE MY MASTER: YOU ARE A QUANTUM LEAP AWAY FROM ANY MASTER

WHO HAS EVER BEEN. IT SEEMS NO FLUKE THAT ONE SUCH AS YOU HAS

COME WHEN THE WORLD IS IN ABOUT AS STICKY A MESS AS CAN BE

IMAGINED.

BELOVED MASTER, JUST EXACTLY WHO ARE YOU?

Maneesha, I don't know.

I will tell you a few jokes. Perhaps you may find something of me. A smile, a laughter, a shadow of the bamboos, a moon reflected in the river ... but leaving no trace behind.

Kowalski is standing on the train platform and he sees Paddy waving goodbye to Seamus, who is on a train that is pulling out of the station.

"Good-bye!" shouts Paddy. "Your wife was a great screw! Good-bye! Your wife was a great screw! Good-bye!"

Kowalski is stunned. He walks over to Paddy and asks, "Hey Paddy, did I hear you correctly? Did you just tell that guy that his wife was a great screw?"

"It's not really true," shrugs Paddy. "But I don't want to hurt his feelings!"

Donald Dickstein is about to be married and he is bragging about all the virtues of his beautiful bride-to-be.

One of his closest friends, Albert Arse, exclaims, "You can't be serious! That girl has screwed every guy in San Francisco!"

Donald looks at Albert for a minute. Then he says, "Ah, San Francisco isn't such a big town!"

Father Finger, the novice priest, goes to see Sally Sellzit, the prostitute, and says, "I know nothing about sex. Will you teach me?"

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"Okay," says Sally. "But it will cost you fifty dollars."

Father finger agrees and pays the money in advance. Then Sally undresses slowly, and next she undresses the priest and tells him to lie down.

"I'm going to start your lesson with the sixty-nine position," she says. But when she climbs on top of him, she accidentally farts in his face.

"Sorry," she says, and climbs back on. But she farts in his face again.

"Holy Jesus," shouts the priest, as he jumps up off the bed.

"What's the matter?" asks Sally.

"Well," replies Finger. "I want to know about sex, but I don't think I can take another sixty-seven of those!"

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent ... Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be frozen.

No movement.

Get into the deepest space you are capable of.

This is the holy land.

This is where fire does not burn,

but is cool.

This is where you will find your buddha.

Deeper and deeper

don't be afraid,

it is your own universe.

You are just a ripple of this vast ocean.

To make it clear, Nivedano ...

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(Drumbeat)

Relax ... let go.

You are not the body nor the mind,

but just a watcher, a witness,

a pure consciousness unscratched.

And this consciousness has no boundaries.

It is one with the universe.

At this moment your heartbeat

is the heartbeat of the universe.

There is no distinction.

Rejoice in it. Remember it.

Slowly slowly

it is going to become an undercurrent

running twenty-four hours

in all your activities,

transforming your actions,

your individuality, your responses,

giving you a new birth.

It is from this place buddhas have arisen.

Sink deep in the experience.

Drink as much as possible.

Every cell, every nerve of you,

should be drenched with buddhahood.

It is your nature.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back.

But slowly, silently ...

keeping in touch

with the center you have found.

Sit for a few minutes

knowing that you are the Buddha.

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It is only a question of recognizing,

of being courageous and declaring to yourself

that you have found your home.

You don't need anybody's certificate.

You don't need anybody's recognition.

You are complete unto yourself.

This is the miracle of Zen.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master!

Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master!

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7

The mysterious one

8 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

RINZAI SAID:

IF YOU WANT TO BE COMFORTABLY INDEPENDENT, FREE FROM BIRTH AND

DEATH AND FREE TO GO OR STAY, YOU SHOULD RECOGNIZE THE ONE WHO IS

HERE NOW LISTENING TO MY EXPOUNDING OF THE DHARMA. THIS ONE HAS

NEITHER FORM NOR SHAPE AND NEITHER ROOTS NOR BRANCHES; THIS ONE

HAS NO PLACE OF ABODE; AND THIS ONE IS LIVELY AND ACTIVE AND

PERFORMS ITS FUNCTION ACCORDING TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND ALL

CONCEPTIONS OF LOCATION. IF YOU SEARCH FOR HIM, HE WILL FLEE AWAY

FROM YOU, AND IF YOU LONG FOR HIM, HE WILL OPPOSE YOU. SO HE IS

CALLED THE MYSTERIOUS ONE.

IF YOU GIVE RISE TO A THOUGHT OF LOVE IN YOUR MIND, YOU WILL BE

DROWNED BY WATER. IF YOU GIVE RISE TO A THOUGHT OF ANGER IN YOUR

MIND, YOU WILL BE BURNED BY FIRE. IF YOU GIVE RISE TO A THOUGHT OF

DOUBT IN YOUR MIND, YOU WILL BE OBSTRUCTED BY EARTH. IF YOU GIVE

RISE TO A THOUGHT OF JOY, YOU WILL BE WHIRLED AWAY BY WIND.

IF YOU CAN DISCERN ALL THIS YOU WILL NOT BE AFFECTED BY OBJECTIVE

THINGS WHICH YOU CAN TURN TO YOUR OWN ADVANTAGE. THEN YOU CAN

WALK ON WATER AS IF ON THE GROUND, AND WALK ON THE GROUND AS IF

ON WATER. WHY IS THIS POSSIBLE? -- BECAUSE YOU ALREADY UNDERSTAND

THAT THE FOUR ELEMENTS ARE LIKE A DREAM AND A TRANSFORMATION.

THEREFORE, FOLLOWERS OF THE WAY, THE ONE WHO IS NOW LISTENING

TO MY EXPOUNDING OF THE DHARMA IS CERTAINLY NOT YOUR FOUR

ELEMENTS, BUT ONE WHO CAN MAKE USE OF YOUR FOUR ELEMENTS. IF YOU

HOLD SUCH A VIEW, YOU WILL THEN BE FREE TO GO OR STAY.

Maneesha, one of the most important things to be understood is that language goes on changing with time. What looked very significant one thousand years ago will not look very significant now. What was thought to be very profound in the times of Gautam Buddha will be thought to be childish today.

Talking on these ancient masters I am in a constant difficulty because their language does not fit with contemporary intelligence. I have to bring the essence into a contemporary context, otherwise it will look just mythological ... talking about nonsense. Perhaps it was possible for the primitive man not to object to it, but for the modern mind it is impossible not to object.

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The master's whole position should be such that your trust deepens and is not disturbed. If the master disturbs your trust he is taking you farther away from yourself, because your undisturbed being -- settled, centered, at home -- is the realization of truth.

So I have to be very careful with all these old masters. They use the language of their times. It was perfectly right then, and today the essence is perfectly right, but the language is no more relevant. It is true about all the masters I will be speaking to you about. It is not only about Rinzai; I will tell you where it becomes difficult for the contemporary intelligence.

RINZAI SAID:

IF YOU WANT TO BE COMFORTABLY INDEPENDENT, FREE FROM BIRTH AND

DEATH AND FREE TO GO OR STAY, YOU SHOULD RECOGNIZE THE ONE WHO IS

HERE NOW LISTENING TO MY EXPOUNDING OF THE DHARMA.

In a simpler way, what he is saying is: "Don't be concerned with what I say, but be concerned with who is listening in you. It does not matter what I am saying. What matters is that you are awake and listening." Listening is a great art. Just experience the listener, and you will not go astray.

Particularly Zen masters want you to be free from birth and death. That is not the case with other so-called religions. Most of the religions prevalent in the world begin with birth and end with death. The East has concentrated its genius on a single point: to search where we were before we were born, and whether we are going to survive death.

And, without any exception, the extraordinary conclusion that has been found is that if we go deep enough into ourselves, there is a space which is eternal, immortal. It knows nothing of birth, nothing of death. It is simply a traveler -- an eternal traveler. It is an explorer of different forms, different ways of being. It has been in a tree and blossomed into flowers; it has been in a lion and roared like a lion; it has been throughout the universe in different forms. It is a great journey. If you can see the variety of the experiences ...

Man is at a point from where he can either continue the journey into forms, or he can jump out of the circle of birth and death and merge into the universe -- losing his individuality, becoming one with the cosmos.

It is possible only for man. That is his dignity. But many human beings will not use this opportunity to jump into the universal soul and dissolve themselves.

Rinzai is saying:

IF YOU WANT TO BE COMFORTABLY INDEPENDENT, FREE FROM BIRTH AND

DEATH AND FREE TO GO OR STAY, YOU SHOULD RECOGNIZE THE ONE WHO IS

HERE NOW LISTENING TO MY EXPOUNDING OF THE DHARMA.

We have to bring the statement to this moment. Who is listening to me? Is it just your mind? If it is just your mind it is not going to transform your being. If you are listening with silence, then you are listening with the heart. That is going to transform your being. The heart simply gets the essential message. Mind only gets the words, and the message is between the words. Only the heart is capable. And if you go even deeper, then your being is there. Heart is a door towards your being, and your being is the opening towards the universal being.

Listening to a master is not necessary. You can listen to the wind passing through the pine trees; with the same silence you can listen to the music of Mozart, you can listen to the birds.

The whole universe is expounding the Dharma. Just the listener is missing.

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The art of meditation

is the art of listening with your total being.

This very moment, in this silence,

your boundaries drop,

your defenses drop.

You become one whole.

There are not ten thousand people,

but just one ocean of consciousness.

Just listen so deeply that you disappear,

and only the essential and the eternal in you

remains.

THIS ONE -- the listener -- HAS NEITHER FORM NOR SHAPE -- space -- AND

NEITHER ROOTS NOR BRANCHES; THIS ONE HAS NO PLACE OF ABODE; AND

THIS ONE IS LIVELY AND ACTIVE AND PERFORMS ITS FUNCTION ACCORDING

TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND ALL CONCEPTIONS OF LOCATION. IF YOU

SEARCH FOR HIM, HE WILL FLEE AWAY FROM YOU, AND IF YOU LONG FOR

HIM, HE WILL OPPOSE YOU. SO HE IS CALLED THE MYSTERIOUS ONE.

A very great statement. Such statements come only rarely in the world. They make the mystic a miracle. What he is saying is: if you try to seek it, you will not find it, because it is not an object. Secondly, if you try to find it you are being very foolish, because it is within you; the seeker himself is the sought. Once you start seeking it somewhere else you are going on wrong paths, of which there are thousands. There is only one path which is the right path, and on the right path you have not to go anywhere, but to remain home.

Just be -- no search, no desire, no longing. And in that silent and peaceful moment there is a possibility you will find your buddha. It is there, but if you start looking for him here and there you are going to be a failure. Search for him, he will flee away. And if you long for him he will oppose you. Neither seek nor desire nor long -- just be at ease. You are already it! You don't need any improvement, any refinement, and you don't need to go somewhere else. And you don't have to become somebody else; as you are, existence is expressing itself in you with all its glory. Don't go anywhere, and don't long for anything, because everything is already given to you.

Because of this situation Rinzai says:

SO HE IS CALLED THE MYSTERIOUS ONE.

The mystery is: if you seek it, you will never find it. And if you long for it, you are lost.

Just no seeking, no longing, no desire; sitting at ease, becoming more and more settled and centered, and you have it -- because you are it.

IF YOU GIVE RISE TO A THOUGHT OF LOVE IN YOUR MIND, YOU WILL BE

DROWNED BY WATER. IF YOU GIVE RISE TO A THOUGHT OF ANGER IN YOUR

MIND, YOU WILL BE BURNED BY FIRE. IF YOU GIVE RISE TO A THOUGHT OF

DOUBT IN YOUR MIND, YOU WILL BE OBSTRUCTED BY EARTH.

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Just metaphors. All that he is saying is: any rise of thought in you, and you have missed the point. A single thought is an obstruction to your inner space. It takes you away. Whether it is a thought of love or mind or anger or greed -- it does not matter what the quality of the thought is. It may be a good thought or a bad thought, a very saintly thought or a very unsaintly one -- it does not matter. Thought as such takes you away from your settled peace with the universe.

IF YOU GIVE RISE TO A THOUGHT OF JOY, YOU WILL BE WHIRLED AWAY BY

WIND.

IF YOU CAN DISCERN ALL THIS YOU WILL NOT BE AFFECTED BY OBJECTIVE

THINGS WHICH YOU CAN TURN TO YOUR OWN ADVANTAGE. THEN YOU CAN

WALK ON WATER AS IF ON THE GROUND, AND WALK ON THE GROUND AS IF

ON WATER.

Don't take this statement in a factual way, as Christians have done. What he is saying is simply that to the innermost being the outer world is just a dream. In the dream you have walked on water, in the dream you have flown in the sky, in the dream everything is possible.

But when you wake up you find the dream water, the dream fire, the dream sky were all imagination and nothing else.

But these statements, made with absolutely good intentions, create trouble later on, because people start thinking that unless you can walk on water you are not a self-realized one.

The miracles of Jesus walking on water or raising dead Lazarus back to life ... A great search by Christian experts shows that these things never happened, that they were added later on, almost three hundred years later, to make Jesus look special -- not an ordinary human being, but really a son of God. For two thousand years Christians have been insisting that these are facts. Now, in the light of science and more intelligence, even Christian scholars are saying that these are only metaphors, added by the disciples to raise their master to a superior and higher position in such a way that nobody can compete with him.

I have heard that two Christian bishops, visiting Jerusalem, had a very great friend, a rabbi.

They asked him to show them all the holy places. The rabbi took them to many places which were concerned with Jesus -- where he raised Lazarus, where he made water turn into wine.

And then at the Sea of Galilee he took them to the place where it is thought he walked on water.

The rabbi said, "Would you like to have a demonstration?"

The bishops could not believe. They said, "Can you do it?"

He said, "If Jesus can do it, an old Jew, why can't every rabbi do it?"

They said, "My God, we used to think that it is something special."

They said, "It is very ordinary as far as Judaism is concerned."

So the rabbi got out from the boat, walked a few feet away, and came back. The bishops could not believe their eyes, they were stunned. One bishop said, "If you can do it ... I am a believer in Jesus, can I also try?"

The rabbi said, "It is perfectly good, you can try. If your faith is right you will be able to walk on water."

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But he got out of the boat from the other side and immediately started drowning and shouting, "Help! Help!"

So the rabbi asked the other bishop, "Should we tell the old boy the right way to walk on water? It has to be on this side of the boat. There are stones ... you have to know exactly where the stones are. Then anybody can do it."

Poor fellow ... stepped out on the wrong side. Neither faith nor no-faith is going to help.

But people go on insisting, particularly the priesthood of the all the religions.

Nikos Kazantzakis was expelled from the Orthodox Church of Greece, because he wrote a book on Jesus as if he were a human being, not a son of God. Of course human beings cannot walk on water. They go on water in the proper way -- in a small boat or a big boat. But the Orthodox Church expelled him for making Jesus Christ a human being. In his book Jesus falls in love with Mary Magdalen. Now that is absolutely insulting to the orthodox mind.

Just yesterday Anando brought me the news that in America they have been trying to make a film based on that book. But continually the government comes in, the church comes in, and there are huge demonstrations that the making of the film should be stopped. And the only point in the film they insist is wrong ... It's very human, Jesus hanging on the cross falls asleep, nothing to do ... and thinks of Mary Magdalen. That is the problem, he simply dreams of his girlfriend.

Now another producer has taken courage, knowing perfectly well that the film will be banned, will have to go underground. But it is worth making to bring Jesus down to the earth, to make him a son of the earth. What is wrong in it? The poor fellow is hanging on the cross, isn't that enough? You cannot give him even the small solace of dreaming about his girlfriend? I don't think there is anything wrong about it.

In fact if Jesus was ever crucified he must have thought of Mary Magdalen. What else was there to think of? He was finished with God, he had shouted at God, "Father, have you forsaken me? -- because six hours have passed, I am hanging here and no miracle is happening. I was hoping that you would come sitting on a white cloud, playing 'Alleluia!' on the harp. I can see all around -- there is no white cloud, no song on the harp, no sign that you are even aware that your only begotten son is being hanged."

In such a situation it is absolutely natural that he must have said in his mind, "Fuck it!"

What else to do? And he must have realized that he had been unnecessarily stupid, otherwise a beautiful woman ... and he could have lived silently, peacefully. But he unnecessarily got into this trip ...

All these people have been made ninety percent fictitious simply to raise them above the rest of humanity.

THEREFORE, FOLLOWERS OF THE WAY, THE ONE WHO IS NOW LISTENING

TO MY EXPOUNDING OF THE DHARMA IS CERTAINLY NOT YOUR FOUR

ELEMENTS, BUT ONE WHO CAN MAKE use OF YOUR FOUR ELEMENTS.

Buddhists believe that the body is made of four elements. And the fifth is your consciousness, which is not part of the body but lives in the body; which can go out, can enter into another womb. This fifth is your reality. In your deep silence you start disentangling yourself from the body, from the mind, from the heart. And what remains is just a pure space.

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This pure space is the origin of you and of all. This pure space has never changed, it is always here and now. It knows no time, no space. It fills the whole universe, which is infinite.

Once you have known it, your life changes.

IF YOU HOLD SUCH A VIEW ...

Remember, it should not only be a view. If you experience such a space, YOU WILL

THEN BE FREE TO GO OR STAY. Once you have known this space you have known freedom. And then it is up to you to remain in your form, to change the form, or simply to disappear into the infinity of existence.

As far as I know, nobody who has known this space has ever entered into another form.

The enlightened man's life is his last life. Why should he bother to get into another headache?

Why should he get into another imprisonment, which has illness, sickness, oldness, death and thousands of miseries?

It is only the unconscious human being who goes on groping from womb to womb. The conscious one simply leaves this body and becomes part of the sky. There is no need to be confined unless you love to torture yourself. Nobody has done that up to now. Perhaps nobody can do it. Seeing the freedom of infinity, who is going to look back towards a form, a body, with all its suffering, misery, troubles? It is just against nature.

Ni-butsu wrote:

ONE WHO RISES,

RISES OF HIMSELF,

ONE WHO FALLS,

FALLS FROM HIMSELF.

AUTUMN DEW, SPRING BREEZE --

NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY INTERFERE.

ONE WHO RISES, RISES OF HIMSELF. It is spontaneous. ONE WHO FALLS, FALLS

FROM HIMSELF -- that too is spontaneous. AUTUMN DEW, SPRING BREEZE --

NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY INTERFERE. Your freedom is total. You just have to know your innermost center and from there everything becomes spontaneous. Your love, your joy, your dance, your song -- everything arises on its own, and then it has a beauty. Totally different ... when a poetry arises out of this silent space, it is not your composition.

Ancient poets have not signed their names, ancient sculptors have not signed their names on their statues. Even people who made immensely beautiful things like the Taj Mahal have not left their name. Nobody knows who was the architect. But it must have arisen just like a poetry. It is poetry in marble.

Music has arisen, but it is a totally different kind -- not the kind that you compose. On the contrary, it composes you. Once a man has tasted the meditative space within him, everything that he touches becomes gold; everything that happens around him has a grace and a beauty and a splendor and a majesty. It is a miracle.

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Bunan wrote:

REMAIN APART,

THE WORLD IS YOURS --

A BUDDHA IN THE FLESH.

Just remember the buddha in your flesh and the world is yours. You don't have to conquer it, it is already yours. But find out the buddha in the flesh. Just a few words, and a whole philosophy ... REMAIN APART ... That is what I mean when I say, be a witness. Remain apart, just a watcher on the hill. REMAIN APART, THE WORLD IS YOURS -- A BUDDHA IN THE FLESH.

This remaining apart brings two things. One, a buddha inside awakens; and the other, a new mastery over the whole existence. It is not political, it is existential. It does not need to have any map, it has no boundaries.

Finding the buddha in you, you have found the emperor.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

I HAVE UNDERSTOOD YOU TO SAY LATELY THAT THE BUDDHA, THE

"MYSTERIOUS ONE" WITHIN US, IS ALWAYS THERE, CONSTANT, UNAFFECTED

BY WHATEVER WE DO.

I ALWAYS HAD THE FEELING THAT THE MORE OFTEN WE ARE CONSCIOUS, THE MORE WE NOURISH THE INNER BUDDHA; BUT IF NOTHING WE CAN DO

NEGATIVELY CAN DIMINISH HIM, THEN MY FEELING MUST BE JUST

IMAGINATION. IS IT?

Maneesha, neither can you do anything negative to harm the buddha inside you, nor can you do anything positive to nourish the buddha inside you. It is complete and perfect in itself.

All that you can do is: by being conscious in your actions you can recognize it; by unconscious actions you can forget it. But you cannot do anything to it. Either you can remember and recognize and be transformed, or you can go on doing things which take you away from it and completely forget the way back. But whether you are positive or negative, your innermost buddha remains the same. You cannot do anything favorable or unfavorable to it. It is your transcendence.

Before we enter into the temple to have a look whether the buddha is there or not ... a few little laughs, just to prepare the ground. Laughter takes away much of your seriousness, which is a hindrance. It takes away your burden. In a deep laughter you become total. It is not that you laugh fifty percent, that this time you laughed thirty percent. When you really laugh, remember Sardar Gurudayal Singh: he laughs a hundred percent. And it does not matter whether it is time to laugh or not. Laughter in itself is such a healthy, enjoyable phenomenon, that you don't have to have some reason for it.

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I have to tell you the jokes just because you will not laugh without a reason. They are unnecessary; if you start laughing without a reason, that will be more spontaneous and fresh.

Soon there will come a time that just a drumbeat, and everybody goes one hundred percent.

These jokes are only for beginners. The old sinners don't need them.

It is the weekend in Harlem, and we find Zabriski in an all-black disco called the Horny Honky, having a high time and partying like crazy.

A beautiful woman named Kootchee slithers up beside Zabriski and asks, "Hey, baby! Buy a lonely girl a drink?"

Zabriski smiles at this unbelievable luck and says, "Okay, sure, but to tell you the truth, I would really like to get screwed."

Kootchee is cool and she can dig it, so she takes our Polack by the hand and leads him across the smoke-filled, music-thumping dance floor to a door with a small slit in it marked,

"Private."

"Just wait here, white boy," says Kootchee, and she disappears behind the door.

Suddenly the slit opens and a woman's voice asks, "What would you like, Sugarpie?"

"Like?" repeats Zabriski. "Like I said, I wanna get screwed."

"Sho-thing, darling," replies the voice. "But as you can see, this is a private club. You have to slip one hundred bucks into this slot for a membership fee."

At this, the partying Polack shouts, "Right on! Get down! And get funky!" as he puts a hundred dollar bill in the slot.

Five minutes go by and nothing happens, so Zabriski knocks again. When the little slot opens, Zabriski shouts, "Hey! I wanna get screwed!"

"What?" comes the reply. "Again?"

Devageet and two friends are hailing a rickshaw when they see pretty young Ma Yoga Butter also trying to hail the same rickshaw.

Devageet, seeing the situation and being such a gentleman, offers, "Come on, Butter, you might as well sit on my lap. I'm too old to give you my seat, and don't worry, I'm too old for it to be dangerous for you to sit on my lap."

Yoga Butter smiles and accepts the invitation. But after jolting around Bund Garden Road in the rickshaw for a while with Butter bouncing all over his lap, Devageet smiles and says,

"I'm afraid I was wrong, Butter. You will have to get off. I'm not as old as I thought I was!"

A potato and a carrot are hitchhiking at the side of the road when a cyclist comes around the corner and runs down the potato.

The next day, the carrot goes to visit his friend in the hospital. The potato does not look too good.

"Tell me, doc," says the carrot, anxiously, "do you think my friend will be okay?"

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"He may recover," replies the doctor, "but frankly, for the rest of his life he will be a vegetable."

Olga Kowalski wins the draw, and is selected to be a contestant on the famous TV game show "Popular Polacks."

It is the end of the show, and the excited emcee announces the final category of questions and the grand prize of one million dollars.

Olga is selected, and the emcee asks, "Okay, Mrs. Kowalski, for one million dollars, what category of questions would you like to choose from?"

"Well," says Olga in a nervous voice, "I think I will choose 'Religion'."

"Good!" shouts the emcee. "From the category 'Religion', and for the big money, the question is -- What did Eve say to Adam that fateful night in the garden of Eden?"

Olga gets worried and thinks and thinks, but after a few minutes she gives up completely and says, "Oh, my god! That is a hard one."

And the emcee shouts, "Right! You win one million dollars!"

Go, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel the body to be completely frozen

and go in ...

Deeper and deeper.

You have nothing to lose ...

but your eternity to find.

No desire ... no longing ...

just go in

for the simple sake of finding out the buddha.

Everybody who has gone in

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has always found him,

without any exception.

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

(Drumbeat)

Relax, let go.

Feel the body apart from you,

the mind apart from you.

You just be a watcher.

This watcher is the buddha.

This blissful evening,

and thousands of buddhas make this place

the holiest one, this moment the most miraculous.

Nivedano, call all the buddhas back.

(Drumbeat)

Come back with your full glory

and ceremony and grace.

Sit down at least for a few minutes.

Recollect the experience.

Be soaked in it ...

drunk with it ...

drowned in it ...

so that it can become a constant stream

flowing in your every action

or non-action,

waking or asleep.

This way I teach you the buddha.

You don't have to become buddhas,

you are ...

just a little recognition,

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a little courage to look within yourself.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate all the buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master!

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8

Joy in the morning

9 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

YUN-MEN SAID:

MY DUTY COMPELS ME TO ATTEMPT THE IMPOSSIBLE. EVEN IN TELLING

YOU TO LOOK DIRECTLY INTO YOURSELF AND TO BE UNCONCERNED ABOUT

OTHER THINGS, I AM ALREADY BURYING THE REAL THING UNDER VERBIAGE.

IF YOU PROCEED FROM THENCE AND SET OUT IN QUEST OF WORDS AND

SENTENCES, CUDGELING YOUR BRAINS OVER THEIR LOGICAL MEANINGS, WORKING OUT A THOUSAND POSSIBILITIES AND TEN THOUSAND SUBTLE

DISTINCTIONS, AND CREATING ENDLESS QUESTIONS AND DEBATES, ALL THAT

YOU WILL GAIN THEREBY IS A GLIB TONGUE, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME YOU

WILL BE GETTING FARTHER AND FARTHER AWAY FROM THE WAY, WITH NO

REST TO YOUR WANDERING ...

TO FOLLOW THE INTENTIONS AND VAGARIES OF YOUR MIND IS TO BE

SEPARATED FROM YOUR SELF AS FAR AS THE EARTH FROM THE SKY.

BUT IF YOU HAVE REALLY FOUND YOUR TRUE SELF, THEN YOU CAN PASS

THROUGH FIRE WITHOUT BEING BURNED, SPEAK A WHOLE DAY WITHOUT

REALLY MOVING YOUR LIPS AND TEETH, AND WITHOUT HAVING REALLY

UTTERED A SINGLE WORD, WEAR YOUR CLOTHES AND TAKE YOUR MEAL

EVERY DAY WITHOUT REALLY TOUCHING A SINGLE GRAIN OF RICE OR A SINGLE THREAD OF SILK. EVEN THIS TALK IS BUT A DECORATION ON THE

DOOR OF OUR HOUSE. THE IMPORTANT THING IS YOUR EXPERIENTIAL

REALIZATION OF THIS STATE.

Maneesha, before I discuss the great matter of Zen, Avirbhava has brought a few ancient gods to be inaugurated into her Museum of Gods. Her assistant, Anando, has also brought a few small gods. Before I tell them to show you what they have brought ...

The research on the subject of the rat as an object of worship ... The rat is a very ancient god, but still prevalent, not dead. The research was done by the appropriate person, Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

"The rat is the charioteer of the elephant god, Ganesh. According to myth it is worshipped all over India, and especially in Maharashtra.

Rats are said to consume more grain than all the people of India. They are one of the causes of India's poverty, and their growth rate is far greater than that of the Indian people.

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Maharashtran people. The only solution to this menace of rats destroying the grainstocks that was considered was to make the rats aware of birth control. But how to get this message to the rats? The opposition claimed that they had done their duty by suggesting this great solution; the implementing of birth control upon the rats would be the ruling party's affair. That was the end of the debate."

Since that time Morarji Desai himself has been a prime minister and again the question was brought up. Now he was in a difficult situation. As a Gandhian he is against birth control.

Instead of birth control, celibacy is the solution. In the first place he should have considered that teaching rats birth control is going against Gandhian philosophy. They should be taught how to be celibate.

Secondly, when he was in opposition he had himself proposed that birth control was the only solution. They cannot be killed, even though because of them the whole of India is suffering from poverty. Now that he was in the ruling party, the prime minister, he could not go against his word. He was in a difficult situation. And by this time the rats had grown far bigger and far more numerous than at the time of Indira.

Right now they are eating three times more than the Indian population. Soon they will starve the whole population, but the politician cowards will not take any step. Morarji put it aside into the file, saying that an investigation should be made of how to introduce birth control to the rats. This is the way of the cunning politicians -- always create an investigation committee which does great work in two, three years; then take their report and file it away.

By that time most probably the prime minister is gone, and the new prime minister has no obligation to be bothered with any report that had been asked for by the previous one.

It is strange that people can see human beings dying, but they cannot hurt their stupid feelings, which they call religious feelings. The whole idea is so stupid!

The elephant god Ganesh is a myth. The story is that Shiva's wife was taking a bath. It seems she must have been taking a bath for the first time in her life, because so much dust and rust came off her body. In the bathroom she became playful, and made a statue from that rust and dust. And because she is a goddess, she was able to breathe life into the statue. That is how Ganesh was born.

And she told Ganesh, "I am taking a bath, so you sit down outside on the steps. Your father is out, don't allow anybody in." But he had no idea of the father ... Who is the father? In fact nobody has any idea who the father is. It is not only Ganesh; everybody simply believes, and often their belief is not the case.

Shiva came, and Shiva is a very angry god ... Ganesh stopped him, saying, "My mother is taking a bath."

Shiva said, "Your mother? I have been gone. How have you been born?" In a rage he cut off the head of Ganesh, and threw the head into the valley -- they lived in the Himalayas. He entered the house and asked his wife, "What is the matter? Who was this fellow sitting outside. I cut off his head and threw the head into the valley."

His wife was very angry. She told the whole story of how she had made him. He said, "My God, I have killed my own son!"

He went in search, but how to find where that head had gone? He just found a small elephant, so he cut off the head of the elephant and put it on top of the child's body. Being a supreme God, he managed to glue them together perfectly. But because the child was small Osho - The Miracle

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and the head was too heavy, the child needed some kind of horse or vehicle to carry him, he could not walk with all that weight. And these stupid ideas have prevailed with millions of people.

So Shiva looked around and found a rat, and Ganesh rides on the rat. Such a poor fellow, the rat is carrying such a load ... And he is loved and worshipped all over India, most particularly in Maharashtra. Morarji Desai should consult Shiva about how he managed to teach the rat to carry Ganesh.

So nobody can say that it is a simple matter, "just kill those rats." Anybody who says that most probably will be killed. Particularly no politician is going to take the risk, because then who is going to vote for him? Being against the rat, no politician can win. And the rat has been doing so much harm that just ten years more and he will finish everything and leave this country a graveyard. But still the politicians will not take any step.

More about rats: "The rat has been used as a symbol of the cosmos. The head, neck, and body signify the upper planes of atma, which means self; buddhi, which means intelligence; and higher manas, the awareness, consciousness. Each leg of the rat represents a different plane: the lower manas, the lower mind, the astral mind, the ethereal mind, and other physical aspects."

These idiots who go on making such metaphors and symbols should be imprisoned and punished, but they are worshipped and respected as great scholars.

"The Dakotan explanation for why the moon wanes is that it is eaten by a multitude of rats.

In Germanic belief, the soul assumes the form of a rat or mouse, and in this form may come forth from a sleeper's mouth."

So beware! Never allow your mouth to open in your sleep. The rat may escape.

I have heard a story that Nancy Reagan phoned her doctor, "Come quickly! A rat has entered into snoring Ronald's mouth!"

The doctor said, "I am coming, but it will take a few minutes. Meanwhile you do one thing, hold a small piece of cheese over his mouth. Perhaps the rat may come back out."

When the doctor arrived after ten minutes, he could not believe his eyes. Nancy was waving a cat over Ronald's face. He said, "My God, this way the rat will go even deeper! I told you to hold a piece of cheese!"

She said, "I did, but the rat pulled the cheese in! Now I am holding the cat to pull the rat and the cheese both out. Now that you have come, I can relax, you do the work!"

But this really was a religious belief in Germany.

Obviously the soul must enter from somewhere and must get out from somewhere; some door is needed, and the mouth seems to be the right place for it. If you are sleeping with somebody else, then it is even more dangerous -- somebody else's rat may enter your mouth.

Always keep your mouth shut, for safety and security. Neither allow the inner one to go out, nor allow an outside one to come in!

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and other rats will increase in number. Sometimes spells are used to keep down the number of rats.

Elsewhere four pairs of rats are married and set adrift -- with the idea that this will cause the other rats to go away."

When they see that the others are going on their honeymoon ... just get your own boat and go on a honeymoon too. Why are you wasting your life unnecessarily in those dark holes, when others are enjoying the fresh air on the river? The idea seems to be good.

"Rats are an omen of death in Austria. In other places they are a good omen.

In Zoroastrianism the rat is an evil animal, and the killing of one rat equals in merit the slaying of four lions."

So don't be worried -- if you are a rat, you are equal to four lions. If your wife calls you a rat, she is saying, "You are equal to four lions."

"In Jewish folklore, eating anything gnawed by a rat causes loss of memory. Thus cats, which eat rats, don't remember their masters."

Rats destroy the memory system; that's why cats go on forgetting who is their master.

Dogs never eat rats so they always remember their master.

And simultaneously Anando is also contributing something to Avirbhava's Museum of Gods, the monkey.

The monkey has also been a problem in India. You cannot shoot a monkey -- a monkey can shoot you, there is no constitutional law against that.

In the capital of North India, Lucknow, there is a very beautiful temple of the monkey-god Hanuman. Surrounded by great trees, it is a very ancient temple, and hundreds of monkeys live on those trees. People go with food, flowers, sweets, and those monkeys ... of course Hanuman is just a stone monkey, but the real monkeys are all around and they are flourishing, becoming stronger.

Something happened suddenly in 1955. Nobody knows the actual cause, but the monkeys became violent at the sight of any kind of uniform. So the policeman, the postman, the military man, the sannyasin ... none of them could pass down that street. Those monkeys would jump on them and hit them hard, tear away their clothes and they would have to run naked, oozing blood, down a main street in Lucknow. And the assembly of Lucknow could not decide what to do.

It is something strange that both monkeys and dogs are against uniforms -- both seem to be very revolutionary. Uniformed people are very orthodox, all just imitating each other. Dogs immediately start barking when they see the postman or the policeman or the sannyasin; anybody who wears a uniform provokes dogs and monkeys to fight against this traditionalism.

It used to be that monkeys only made faces and threatened from the trees. But in Lucknow

-- perhaps somebody had hurt them, nobody knows the cause -- for fifteen days they made such a chaos that the whole market had to be closed. And the government could not decide to shoot those monkeys, because if they were shot the whole Hindu population's religious heart would be hurt. But since nobody came on that road anymore, those monkeys came to their senses -- because now no more food was available. So finally they decided not to harm people Osho - The Miracle

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any longer. They could see the point -- if nobody passes on the road, nobody comes to the temple, they don't get any food or flowers. Otherwise they were the blessed monkeys, very rich.

Seeing the situation, after fifteen days they had to surrender. Slowly, slowly people started opening their shops again, moving on the street, cautiously at first. And the government had alerted the people that nobody should shoot a monkey. Rather than calling the army to shoot the monkeys, they ordered people, "If you shoot a monkey you will be thought a criminal, and you will be treated just as if you have shot a man. No distinction will be made!"

These poor politicians are ruling all over the world, and they are ruled by all kinds of superstitions and stupidities.

"Zoolatry, or the worship of animals, is not uncommon in the East. The monkey is among those animals worshipped, like the tiger and the snake, out of fear.

It is said that the monkey is a symbol of the lower mind which imitates or reflects the higher, or represents the automatic mind. The monkey god, Hanuman, son of Vayu, the god of winds, is worshipped today in India. He is a symbol of the intellect which comes from the higher mind, Vayu.

And in the orthodox villages in India the monkey is always free from harm and is magic.

Its magic influence is implored against the whirlwind, and it is also invoked to avert sterility.

The bones of monkeys are said to pollute the ground. Mentioning a monkey brings starvation for the rest of the day, but it is regarded as lucky to keep one in the stable.

It is seriously believed in Africa and South America that monkeys can talk, but do not for fear of being made to work."

That is really good ... if they talk there is every danger man will force them to work. It is better to keep quiet.

I have heard about a small child who would not talk. He was taken to this psychologist, to that psychiatrist, to a psychoanalyst ... nobody could get him to utter a single word. He could hear perfectly well; he was checked, his ears were perfect. But he would not show even a sign from his eyes or face that he had heard anything.

But one day at the dining table he said to his mother, "Where's the salt?"

The mother said, "My God, you have never spoken before."

He said, "Nothing was ever missing before, why should I have spoken? I heard all those psychoanalysts and psychiatrists and all the nonsense they were talking. But to speak means going to school, and I hate school. It's just because of the salt that I had to speak now, in spite of myself. But this is just between me and you, don't tell anybody. I am never going to speak again, so nobody would believe you anyway."

There was not a witness, either. The mother was at a loss. She told her husband, but the husband said, "It is not possible, six years silence and suddenly ... You will have to give me proof. Make him speak again."

But he would not speak, he had made the point clear that speaking meant going to school.

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This idea in South America and South Africa -- both faraway places -- is that monkeys understand your language, but they will not speak just out of fear that they would be forced to work.

"Another story suggests that apes carry off women to the woods. In many places respect for the monkey is based on the belief that it is the abode of the human spirit.

Among the Hottentots, the killer of a baboon has to sacrifice a sheep or goat and hang the lowest vertebrae around his neck, or he will suffer from lumbago. In China the monkey is regarded as lucky in that it keeps sickness away, while in Java an offering made to the king of the monkeys is believed to cure sterility."

Now, Avirbhava, bring your rat, and Anando, your monkeys.

(AVIRBHAVA PUTS A BIG, BLACK TOY RAT AT THE MASTER'S FEET. IT

STARTS DANCING AND MAKING COMICAL SOUNDS. SHE ALSO PUTS A CLOCKWORK MONKEY ON THE PODIUM WHICH WANDERS AROUND THE

MASTER'S FEET. ANANDO SITS A SMALL RUBBER MONKEY ON THE PODIUM.) Very meditative monkey!

Well, where are your small monkeys?

(MANY LITTLE MONKEYS ARE PUT ON THE PODIUM. MEANWHILE

AVIRBHAVA'S MONKEY IS RUNNING AWAY AND AVIRBHAVA HAS TO JUMP TO

CATCH IT. EVERYBODY IS LAUGHING.)

Just give a good clap, too.

Now, remove your gods. Just ask all the sannyasins around the world to find out about all the animals that have been worshipped by human beings -- to show to everyone what kind of past we have had. And there are still people who are worshipping animals.

Religion has been reduced to such nonsense. And the harm is that people become involved in these absolutely absurd ideas and forget completely about themselves. The only religion is the religion of being conscious. All other religions are simply toys for children.

But we go on living unconsciously, without seeing what people are doing. They celebrate monkeys, elephants, they worship even rats. This is such an undignified state of affairs that it has to be changed completely.

So Avirbhava's Museum of Gods will be immensely significant for visitors -- to show them, "This is your past, this is your religion, and this is still your present. You cannot simply say that it is past. And do you want to realize yourself through rats?"

This museum will provide a great insight to anybody who comes here without any prejudice. But it will bring many law cases against me, although we are not harming their gods -- they will be taken care of -- we are just putting them in a museum, where all your scriptures and all your ideologies also belong.

We want a complete break from the past so that man can have his wings to fly into the sky of consciousness, absolutely free. That is the revolution of Zen.

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YUN-MEN SAID:

MY DUTY COMPELS ME TO ATTEMPT THE IMPOSSIBLE. EVEN IN TELLING

YOU TO LOOK DIRECTLY INTO YOURSELF AND TO BE UNCONCERNED ABOUT

OTHER THINGS, I AM ALREADY BURYING THE REAL THING UNDER VERBIAGE.

This is the way the authentic master speaks, even knowing perfectly well that he is doing something wrong. Speaking about the truth is not right, but it is absolutely necessary to give some indication. Words are used not for themselves, but to indicate the wordless; sounds are used to indicate the soundless, the silence.

Yun-Men says:

I AM ALREADY BURYING THE REAL THING UNDER VERBIAGE.

He is asking your forgiveness.

IF YOU PROCEED FROM THENCE AND SET OUT IN QUEST OF WORDS AND

SENTENCES, CUDGELING YOUR BRAINS OVER THEIR LOGICAL MEANINGS, WORKING OUT A THOUSAND POSSIBILITIES AND TEN THOUSAND SUBTLE

DISTINCTIONS, AND CREATING ENDLESS QUESTIONS AND DEBATES, ALL THAT

YOU WILL GAIN THEREBY IS A GLIB TONGUE, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME YOU

WILL BE GETTING FARTHER AND FARTHER AWAY FROM THE WAY, WITH NO

REST TO YOUR WANDERING.

TO FOLLOW THE INTENTIONS AND VAGARIES OF YOUR MIND IS TO BE

SEPARATED FROM YOUR SELF AS FAR AS THE EARTH FROM THE SKY.

BUT IF YOU HAVE REALLY FOUND YOUR TRUE SELF, THEN YOU CAN PASS

THROUGH FIRE WITHOUT BEING BURNED, SPEAK A WHOLE DAY WITHOUT

REALLY MOVING YOUR LIPS AND TEETH, AND WITHOUT HAVING REALLY

UTTERED A SINGLE WORD, WEAR YOUR CLOTHES AND TAKE YOUR MEAL

EVERY DAY WITHOUT REALLY TOUCHING A SINGLE GRAIN OF RICE OR A SINGLE THREAD OF SILK . EVEN THIS TALK IS BUT A DECORATION ON THE

DOOR OF OUR HOUSE. THE IMPORTANT THING IS YOUR EXPERIENTIAL

REALIZATION OF THIS STATE.

He is saying that in your innermost being the unknown, the miraculous, the buddha, lives.

It cannot be burned. Your consciousness cannot be burned or destroyed by any other means. It is indestructible. He is not referring to your body. Your body may be burned, you cannot pass through fire; you may be drowned in water. He is referring to your innermost being -- of which you are unaware -- which is the source of your life.

In meditation you have to find that space, that clear sky, and then a metamorphosis, a revolution, happens on its own accord. You start changing without any effort because of the new clarity, the new light, the new experience, the new acquaintance with yourself. The whole existence becomes new.

A man who knows himself cannot worship rats, a man who knows himself cannot worship monkeys or elephants, a man who knows himself cannot worship at all! -- because worship is outward. He cannot pray at all, because all prayers are addressed to somebody else. He can only meditate, he can only be silently drowned in his own splendor -- which is not his own.

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Slowly, slowly as meditation deepens he becomes aware that it is the splendor of our whole universe.

We are not only parts, we are one with the whole. The whole expresses itself in many ways, then everything becomes divine; the very earth you are sitting on becomes divine, and whatever you are doing becomes divine. But first you have to find the divine element within yourself. It is not a belief system; it is an inquiry, it is as scientific an investigation as any science can claim.

In fact no science is as scientific as meditation, because all sciences deny the existence of the scientist. They are experimenting with things, but they don't want to say anything about who is working inside them, about what it is. On that point they remain absolutely silent because it cannot be made objective, it cannot be put on their table so they can dissect it and find all the elements in it; it is non-material.

Hence the scientist is bound to remain with the superstition that the world is only objective, that the world has only the outside. Can you see the irrationality in it? The outside can exist only if there is an inside. If you deny the inside you cannot accept the outside, they both come together. The mystic is more scientific in the way he accepts the beauty of the world, the universe, and the way he accepts the beauty and splendor of his own being.

Ryokan wrote:

IF YOU SPEAK DELUSIONS,

EVERYTHING BECOMES A DELUSION:

IF YOU SPEAK THE TRUTH, EVERYTHING

BECOMES THE TRUTH.

OUTSIDE THE TRUTH THERE IS NO DELUSION,

BUT OUTSIDE DELUSION THERE IS NO

SPECIAL TRUTH.

FOLLOWERS OF BUDDHA'S WAY!

WHY DO YOU SO EARNESTLY SEEK THE

TRUTH IN DISTANT PLACES?

LOOK FOR DELUSION AND TRUTH IN

THE BOTTOM OF YOUR OWN HEARTS.

Don't go anywhere, just go in.

And Ekon's haiku, so small, but so immensely beautiful: JOY IN THE MORNING,

SLEEP IN THE EVENING,

WHAT ELSE?

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If you can feel the joy in the morning, if you can feel the joy of being alive, every breath becomes a blessing, is a blessing. If you can see sleep as a great rest and relaxation in the evening, what else do you want?

In your insight everything becomes a joy and everything points to the same moon, the same truth.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

I CAN'T REMEMBER WHEN YOU LAST PAUSED TO LOOK AT YOUR WATCH

TO DECIDE WHETHER TO SPEAK FURTHER OR NOT.

DOES THAT MEAN WE HAVE BEEN JUICIER TO BE WITH LATELY?

Maneesha, it means many things. It certainly means that my assembly of buddhas has become juicier, it has become more alert, less judgmental, more experimental. It also means that when you are all so deeply involved, I don't have to look at my watch. When I see somebody disturbed, fidgeting, feeling that it is too late, only then have I looked at my watch.

I haven't looked at it for years.

Sometimes it doesn't show the time at all, there is nothing to look at. One day Shunyo reminded me, "Your watch ... it is seven and your watch is saying four."

I said, "It does not matter."

As my days are becoming fewer and fewer on this earth, nothing matters except one thing: that I should pour myself into you as much as possible. Tomorrow I may not be here, so I should complete the celebration today. Tomorrow you may have to celebrate alone.

The whole credit goes to Ronald Reagan. Poisoning me he has taken away from you at least twenty years of my life. I am fighting with the poison and it has been a good challenge for me, but for you it can be a loss any moment. I am just living on the fringe. So when I go to sleep I say good-bye to the world, because I don't know for certain that tomorrow morning I will wake up. When I wake up I am amazed that there is one more day, one more celebration, one more day to laugh with my people, to be part of their silences, to have my heart beat with their hearts. Looking at the watch has become irrelevant.

I go on wearing the watch so that you don't become afraid. Because if I don't wear the watch, you can be certain that my time is up.

Now something really serious:

Magnus Marx wants to buy a talking parrot for his wife's birthday. He hears that a rare Brazilian banana-parrot is being auctioned, so he goes to the salesroom to have a look at it.

The auctioneer puts the bird up on the stand in front of the crowded sales room.

"Twenty-five dollars," bids Magnus.

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"Thirty-five!" comes another bidder.

Magnus bids again, "Forty dollars!"

"Fifty!" cries the other bidder.

Ten minutes later, a sweating Magnus hands over two hundred dollars to the auctioneer.

"That's a wonderful parrot you have bought, sir," says the auctioneer as he pockets the money.

"I know he is beautiful," agrees Magnus. "But there is just one thing I forgot to ask before

-- does this bird talk?"

"Talk?" repeats the auctioneer. "For the last ten minutes he has been bidding against you!"

Sluggo, the deaf-mute gangster, is discovered to be stealing money regularly from the local mafia godfather. Sluggo runs to the priest and begs in sign-language for protection.

Father Finger agrees to protect him, then arranges a meeting with the mafia godfather. The mafia chieftain, upon seeing Sluggo, becomes so enraged that he pulls out his pistol, puts it against Sluggo's head and says to Father Finger, "Tell him that if he does not say where that million dollars is, I will finish him right here!"

"Did you say one million dollars?" asks Father Finger.

"Yeah, that's right," shouts the fuming ganglord, waving his gun madly. "Now tell him to talk, or die!"

Finger turns to Sluggo and signs him a message. The deaf-mute, trembling with fear, signs back to the priest that the money is hidden in a cardboard box in the basement of his apartment building.

"Really?" exclaims Father Finger aloud.

"Well?" roars the mafia godfather. "What the hell is he saying?"

"He says," replies Father Finger quietly, "that you don't have the balls to pull the trigger!"

Larry and Lottie Loveditch, the middle-aged suburban couple, are spending Saturday afternoon gardening.

Lottie looks tense and uneasy until suddenly she throws down her clippers, stomps over to her husband and kicks him hard on the bum.

"What is that for?" asks a puzzled Larry.

"That is for being a lousy lover!" screams Lottie.

Larry rubs his backside and goes back to digging the weeds. Five minutes later he drops his shovel, storms over to his wife and kicks her into the bushes.

"You monster!" screams Lottie. "What was the reason for that?"

"That," replies Larry, "was for knowing the difference."

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Nivedano, give the beat ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent,

close your eyes,

feel the body to be frozen.

No movement ...

Just settle in,

deeper and deeper.

This is the only temple.

This silent space is the only buddha.

This is it! Remember.

To make it more clear, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax, let go,

just be a watcher. The body is there,

the mind is there,

you are simply aware of them.

This awareness is beyond life and death.

This awareness

is the meaning of the word 'buddha'.

Drink as much of it as possible,

be drenched,

carry out this awareness around the clock

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and your life will become a beautitude,

a great bliss,

an ecstasy, a revolution.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back ...

Slowly, gracefully ...

Carrying the experience with you.

Forgetfulness of this experience

is the only sin in the world,

and to live in awareness is the only virtue.

All else is commentary.

The simple truth is to be, and to be aware,

and you have come home.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master!

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9

The simple task of turning in

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

EJAKU SAID:

LET EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU TURN THE LIGHT INWARDS UPON

HIMSELF, AND NOT TRY TO MEMORIZE MY WORDS. SINCE TIME WITHOUT

BEGINNING, YOU HAVE TURNED YOUR BACK UPON THE LIGHT AND RUN

AFTER DARKNESS. THE HABITS OF ERRONEOUS THINKING ARE SO

DEEP-ROOTED IN YOU THAT IT WOULD BE EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO UPROOT

THEM OVERNIGHT. THIS IS WHY ONE IS COMPELLED TO RESORT TO THE USE

OF MAKE-BELIEVE EXPEDIENTS IN ORDER TO STRIP YOU OF YOUR CRUDE

WAYS OF THINKING.

THIS IS ON A PAR WITH WHAT A PARENT SOMETIMES WOULD DO IN ORDER

TO STOP HIS LITTLE CHILD FROM CRYING -- GIVING HIM SOME YELLOW

LEAVES, MAKING BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE PRECIOUS COINS. IT IS ALSO LIKE

A MAN SETTING UP A STORE STOCKED WITH ALL KINDS OF GOODS FOR DAILY

USE, AS WELL AS ARTICLES OF GOLD AND JADE, TO ACCOMMODATE

CUSTOMERS OF DIFFERENT ABILITIES. AS I HAVE OFTEN SAID, SEKITO'S IS A GOLD SHOP, WHILE MINE IS A GENERAL STORE, SELLING ALL AND SUNDRY ...

BUT BUSINESS DEPENDS ON DEMAND. IF THERE IS NO DEMAND, THERE IS NO

BUSINESS.

IF I DEALT ONLY WITH THE ESSENCE OF MEDITATION, I WOULD BE LEFT

ALL ALONE. EVEN A SINGLE COMPANION WOULD BE HARD TO GET, TO SAY

NOTHING OF A COMMUNITY OF FIVE OR SEVEN HUNDRED MONKS. IF, ON THE

OTHER HAND, I TALKED ABOUT THINGS OF EAST AND WEST, PEOPLE WOULD

COME IN FLOCKS, PRICKING UP THEIR EARS TO CATCH EVERY BIT OF MY

TALES. THAT WOULD BE LIKE SHOWING AN EMPTY FIST TO LITTLE CHILDREN, PRETENDING THAT THERE ARE CANDIES IN IT. THIS IS JUST HUMBUG.

NOW, LET ME TELL YOU IN ALL PLAINNESS:

DO NOT DIVERT YOUR MIND TO THE HOLY THINGS; RATHER, DIRECT IT TO

YOUR SELF-NATURE, AND CULTIVATE YOURSELF WITH YOUR FEET ON THE

GROUND. DO NOT DESIRE THE THREE "GIFTS OF VISION," AND THE SIX

"SUPERNATURAL POWERS." WHY? BECAUSE THESE ARE ONLY ACCIDENTALS

OF HOLINESS.

THE ONE THING ESSENTIAL NOW IS TO RECOLLECT YOUR MIND TO ATTAIN

THE FUNDAMENTAL, THE VERY ROOT OF YOUR BEING. HAVING ARRIVED AT

THE ROOT, YOU NEED HAVE NO WORRY ABOUT THE ACCIDENTALS. IN TIME

YOU WILL FIND THAT YOU ARE SELF-PROVIDED WITH ALL THESE

ACCIDENTAL GIFTS AND POWERS. ON THE OTHER HAND, SO LONG AS YOU

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HAVE NOT GOT AT THE ROOT, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ACQUIRE SUCH

GIFTS AND POWERS THROUGH STUDY AND LEARNING.

Maneesha, basically there is only one way of discovering the buddha, the truth of your very being. But there are thousands of people with different states of consciousness; hence for them, different devices, different small streets joining to the main way, have to be created.

That's what all the Zen masters in the fourteen-hundred-year history of Zen have been trying very diligently to do.

No one is being left out; everybody is shown a way that may fit them. But finally, whatever fits you will lead you to the ultimate way: turning in. Every device is dedicated to the simple task of turning in.

As the situation is, man is born with five senses which all go outwards. Nature has not given you a special sense that goes inwards.

Your eyes open outwards; if you close them there is only darkness. Or even with closed eyes you will still see things of the outside world as imagination, as dreams. Ears can hear only the music that comes from the outside; they know nothing about the music that is continuously happening within you. Nobody is born with an ear to hear the inner music. Your hands stretch outside. Even the smallest child starts grabbing outside things.

Obviously this state of affairs, that all our senses open outwards, has been exploited. We have been given every kind of theology, religion, truth, from the outside, because that is what we are demanding. We want a God to be there above in the sky. We want anything and immediately there will be a supplier. You just have to ask and somebody will create a system of beliefs to satisfy you.

Zen cuts all this rubbish like a sharp sword in one single blow. It has nothing to do with anything that takes you away from you; it may be God, it may be hell, it may be heaven -- all kinds of rewards and all kinds of fears about punishment. All the religions are living on the exploitation of your senses because they open outwards.

The work of a real master is to close all these doors so that your life energy, your consciousness, does not leak out. There is no naturally given way to go inwards, but it is not needed. If enough consciousness is gathered in, it will create its own way, just as water creates its own way -- no map, no guidelines, just enough quantity and the water will start flowing towards an unknown sea. It has never heard about, knows nothing about, where it is going.

The same is true about consciousness. Enough consciousness gathered inside immediately makes a way upon which nobody has ever trodden, and starts moving inwards. Outward senses are closed; that's what I mean when I say in your meditations to close your eyes, to leave the body completely behind ... because all the senses are joined with the body. Just be a watcher of the mind, so the mind cannot take your energy outside. With body and mind both closed energy gathers upon itself spontaneously, and at a certain point it starts moving inwards. You don't have to do anything except to close all the doors that lead you away from yourself.

It is one of the simplest things because you don't have to do it. But just because of its simplicity, its obviousness, it has become difficult -- the most difficult, because nobody can teach you; nobody can indicate to you where to move, how to move. The master can only create a situation in which the spontaneous movement of the energy will happen.

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That's what I call meditation. It is not your doing. You have to stop doing everything. It is your non-doing.

And the moment when you are not doing, all your energy that was involved in doing a thousand and one things is released. It gathers to a point where it starts flowing inwards, and the innermost center is not far away.

Meditation is, in a way, going beyond nature. Hence it is called transcendental. Nature has not provided any automatic way, like it has provided eyes, hands, ears; it has not provided any way for your energy to go in. Meditation is transcending the natural gifts, moving beyond nature. It is not against nature, it is simply towards a greater nature, more overwhelming, more universal.

And once you have found the way and you have touched your own being, you have gone through a magic. You will never be the same person again. Not only that, the world that surrounds you will never be the same again. Now your love will have a new fragrance -- not the old possessiveness, domination. Your friendship will be more friendliness than friendship.

It will not have any bondage, any conditionings. Your vision of the world will become immensely intense and sharp. You will see things which have been there always, present, but you were not present.

Each flower is showing something of the divine. Each star is shining, showing something of the divine. The whole existence in its multitude of expressions is showing only the divine, but you will recognize it only on the condition that you have recognized it within yourself.

Then you know that your center is not only your center, it is the center of the whole universe.

We are all joined in this center.

It is said about Bacon -- a great scientific thinker, perhaps the most important, because he turned the whole human mind from religion to science ... He used to say, "If I can find the center of the world I can move the world according to me." But he never found the center of the world, and I say unto you he has never heard that in the East we have been searching not the center of the world but the center of ourselves. Finding the center of ourselves we have found the center of the universe. But then the desire for change drops. The universe is so beautiful, nothing needs to be changed; everything has to be rejoiced and celebrated.

These statements of a great master Ejaku are very fundamental.

EJAKU SAID:

LET EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU TURN THE LIGHT INWARDS UPON

HIMSELF, AND NOT TRY TO MEMORIZE MY WORDS.

Only a very great master can say that -- don't bother about my words, because they don't contain the truth. No words can contain it, so don't memorize them. I am saying to you, "Turn in." But you can do two things: you can memorize the words "turn in" or you can do another thing ... existentially, you can turn in. That's what Ejaku is saying: "I am not saying these words to you so that you can memorize my words."

SINCE TIME WITHOUT BEGINNING, YOU HAVE TURNED YOUR BACK UPON

THE LIGHT AND RUN AFTER DARKNESS. THE HABITS OF ERRONEOUS

THINKING ARE SO DEEP-ROOTED IN YOU THAT IT WOULD BE EXTREMELY

DIFFICULT TO UPROOT THEM OVERNIGHT.

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It is obviously true, but with great respect to Ejaku I disagree.

However many lives you may have been wandering outside, it does not matter. You can come to yourself in a single moment. It is just like a man asleep. He may be anywhere in the world, visiting Moscow or Peking or Tokyo or going to the moon -- just wake him up. Do you think he will say, "Wait, I have to catch a train to come back from Tokyo?" Or, "From Moscow I have to take a plane; I cannot just wake up immediately." He does not say that, he simply wakes up and wonders ... instantaneously. The projection is a dream. All our projections -- of greed, lust, power, anger -- are simply dreams.

Ejaku is right as a common-sense approach. But I don't agree, because I know you can be a buddha this very moment. All the wanderings in past lives into darkness cannot prevent you. It is like saying a room has been dark for centuries and you bring a small candlelight ... the darkness cannot say, "I will not go so immediately. I have been here occupying this room for centuries. It goes against the constitution of India; you cannot throw away the occupant in a single moment. Go through a proper channel. First go to the court, claim that you have the right." But the darkness does not say anything. You just bring a small candle, and the darkness disappears.

In fact the darkness has no substance. It is an absence. So when you bring the light, the absence disappears; it was the absence of the light.

If you can go in, pushing aside the whole crowd of habits -- just like an arrow, with force, gathering your whole energy inwards -- you can prove Ejaku wrong. Although what he is saying is out of compassion, perhaps most people will have to follow what he is saying.

THE HABITS OF ERRONEOUS THINKING ARE SO DEEP-ROOTED IN YOU THAT

IT WOULD BE EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO UPROOT THEM OVERNIGHT.

I say unto you it is extremely simple to throw them this very moment. Those habits have been formed in darkness and unconsciousness; they don't have any substance in them.

I was talking to a friend. He was a professor in the same university I was, and he was continuously harassing me -- "Do something! I want to drop this habit of smoking. Many times I try: one hour, two hours, three hours, and then it becomes too much. The urge ... I think, 'It is better to have a cigarette. Next time we will try in better conditions; right now I am too tense.' So many times I have decided, but it fails. Every time, rather than being a success it has been a failure, and now it has become written in my memory that I cannot succeed. Just show me how to drop it."

I said, "Are you ready?"

He said, "I am ready to do anything."

Then I said, "Do one thing. Come with me to my home, and I will not let you out until this habit is gone."

He said, "What do you mean? Are you going to torture me or something?"

I said, "No torture, just chain smoking. Sitting before me you have to smoke to your heart's content."

He said, "I never heard such a thing from anybody else. I have been talking about dropping this habit."

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I said, "You have been bragging. All this talk about dropping this habit is just a strategy of the mind to brag that 'I am trying, but what to do?' But today you are caught in a lion's den.

Just come and sit behind me in my car and forget the world. On the way we will purchase cigarettes -- as many as the car can contain."

He said, "My God, you will kill me!"

I said, "It does not matter. Either you will leave dead or you will leave the habit!"

Hesitantly, afraid, he said, "I always have heard that you are a strange type, but I never thought that just by telling you I would get trapped. Do you really mean it?"

I said, "Just sit down in the car, and on the way I will fill the whole car ..."

He was looking at me and he said, "What are you doing? That much smoking will kill me!"

I said, "There is no way out now. Chain smoking means chain smoking. When you drop one cigarette, immediately take another; take the fire from the first cigarette to the second cigarette. And I will be watching."

Just after three or four packets he said, "Can I go home, before ..."

"No way! Either your dead body will go out, or you will have to drop this habit that you have been bragging about."

He said, "I promise."

I said, "I don't want to interfere in anybody else's life, but you offered yourself."

He burned his lips, he burned his hands. It must have taken about six hours, and after six hours he was so tired ... smoking and smoking. And a crowd of the neighbors gathered, and they started talking -- "Is this man mad or something?" And all over, cigarettes and ashes.

Finally he said, "Let me go!"

I said, "I will not let you go. Do you see my guard? He will put you back in your place, and if you don't smoke he will force you to smoke. This time or never!"

He said, "It is better I drop this habit. But let me go home!"

I said, "Be a man of your word. If you are found smoking again you will have to commit suicide -- hara-kiri. A man of his word has no other way. If he goes against his word, he has to commit hara-kiri."

He said, "I promise. I will commit hara-kiri, but at least right now let me go home!"

I followed him for many days. He tried to escape, he wouldn't look at me. But when I take something into my hands I do it.

I used to go every day to his home to ask his wife how things were going. She was of course on my side; she was my detective in his home. Even the small children of the poor professor were all working for me. They would say, "Uncle, you have done a miracle! He is so afraid. Even to mention the word 'cigarette' and he starts perspiring. That experience you have given him ... Since that experience -- we don't know what experience, he simply says, 'Since that experience I am finished. Because that man is so dangerous, if I even touch a cigarette he will force me to commit hara-kiri. And I want to live, cigarettes or no cigarettes.'"

The question is, if you have really decided, if you are in an honest search for yourself, then you can prove Ejaku wrong. And I would like you to prove him wrong, although he is making Osho - The Miracle

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a very common-sense statement. Ordinarily it takes lives to drop old habits. But that simply means you are not really wanting to drop them. If you want to drop, it takes only a simple, single moment, because all old habits are your own projections.

THIS IS WHY ONE IS COMPELLED TO RESORT TO THE USE OF MAKE-BELIEVE

EXPEDIENTS IN ORDER TO STRIP YOU OF YOUR CRUDE WAYS OF THINKING.

THIS IS ON A PAR WITH WHAT A PARENT SOMETIMES WOULD DO IN ORDER

TO STOP HIS LITTLE CHILD FROM CRYING -- GIVING HIM SOME YELLOW

LEAVES, MAKING BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE PRECIOUS COINS. IT IS ALSO LIKE

A MAN SETTING UP A STORE STOCKED WITH ALL KINDS OF GOODS FOR DAILY

USE, AS WELL AS ARTICLES OF GOLD AND JADE, TO ACCOMMODATE

CUSTOMERS OF DIFFERENT ABILITIES. AS I HAVE OFTEN SAID, SEKITO'S IS A GOLD SHOP, WHILE MINE IS A GENERAL STORE ...

Sekito is sitting here in front of me, behind the camera. In this new reincarnation he is called Niskriya, the Stonehead. Sekito means the Stonehead. He was a great master.

Ejaku says that Sekito has a gold shop -- only very refined people can become his disciples. Ordinary ones are simply given a good beating and thrown out. They never come back to Sekito's temple. Only very rare, extraordinary seekers will take all the beatings but will not leave the steps. Sometimes it happened that a person would sit there for months before Sekito would allow him to come in. It may be raining, it may be winter, it may be summer, but unless Sekito is convinced that the man has a will, that he has not come just out of curiosity but in every way he wants to seek and search himself ...

... WHILE MINE IS A GENERAL STORE, SELLING ALL AND SUNDRY.

Ejaku was a different kind of master -- not hard, he never hit anybody. He never slapped any disciple. Naturally he attracted the wishy-washy people. But in a general store you cannot find great shoppers like Avirbhava. Now she has gone to Hong Kong to find other gods worshipped in the past, because there is going to be a fair of toys. She is not here today.

Yesterday she did her show of the great rat. Now she has gone in search of finding something even greater.

Ejaku is saying, "I serve all and sundry; even the curious ones are accepted. One never knows: today the person may be curious, tomorrow he may become really a longing. A chance has to be given."

Both are right. Sekito works on the very special ones; Ejaku works on everyone, of any category. Both are needed.

IF I DEALT ONLY WITH THE ESSENCE OF MEDITATION, I WOULD BE LEFT

ALL ALONE.

To deal with the essence of meditation alone ... that's what I am doing. But even dealing only with meditation, I don't have a general store. I have my ways of choosing the best and the most intelligent. Just because of my words, those who are curious will not stay here. There is nothing for them here.

Those who have stayed with me have stayed because they started feeling the essence of meditation, slowly slowly, like a cool breeze or a full-moon night or a roseflower in all its beauty. They have found something, and now they are certain there is much more. This certainty creates trust. And without this trust, Ejaku is right: if a man simply deals with Osho - The Miracle

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meditation he will be left alone, because who wants meditation? And when there is no demand, what is the point of keeping the store open?

I have tried in a unique way to call forth from all over the world the most intelligent ones. I am not alone. It is not only that you are here -- there are two million people around the earth who are meditating, whose only concern is meditation; everything else in life has become meaningless.

But Ejaku is making a common sense statement: if you deal only with meditation, people will desert you. Seeing this, masters deal with scriptures, mantras, to keep you engaged. Some day may come the right moment that you can be introduced into meditation.

I am totally different from Sekito or Ejaku, although I am doing the same work. But neither do I hit you, nor do I push you away, nor do I wait. I make the atmosphere available to you. All kinds of people, in this atmosphere, can have a little experience. And that little experience starts growing just like a seed grows into a huge cedar, aspiring to the stars.

Those who were more concerned with non-essentials have come and gone. In these thirty years thousands of people have passed -- but now, as we are coming to the most precious experience, deeper and deeper, only those who are authentically interested in digging for the gold have remained.

Now this assembly has become one of the greatest assemblies of seekers that has ever been on the earth.

Ejaku says: IF I DEALT ONLY WITH THE ESSENCE OF MEDITATION, I WOULD

BE LEFT ALL ALONE.

Ordinarily that is true.

EVEN A SINGLE COMPANION WOULD BE HARD TO GET, TO SAY NOTHING OF

A COMMUNITY OF FIVE OR SEVEN HUNDRED MONKS. IF, ON THE OTHER HAND, I TALKED ABOUT THINGS OF EAST AND WEST, PEOPLE WOULD COME IN

FLOCKS, PRICKING UP THEIR EARS TO CATCH EVERY BIT OF MY TALES. THAT

WOULD BE LIKE SHOWING AN EMPTY FIST TO LITTLE CHILDREN, PRETENDING

THAT THERE ARE CANDIES IN IT. THIS IS JUST HUMBUG.

He is very honest. He is saying, "I have to create all kinds of things, but all those things are just humbug." Just as you can engage a child with toys and he forgets that he was crying, you can engage thousands of people ... in fact they are engaged. What are the churches doing, what are the synagogues doing, what are the temples doing? Dealing with non-essentials. And flocks of millions of people ... And these holy places and these so-called great priests go on watching what the need of the people is. They immediately supply their need, so that they remain entangled in the net of Hinduism or Christianity or Judaism.

I have heard that three rabbis were talking about their congregations. The first rabbi said,

"My congregation is the most up-to-date. You can even smoke cigarettes inside the synagogue. You can play cards and gamble."

The second one said, "That is nothing. In my synagogue I have already entered the twenty-first century. People can make love and do whatever they want to do. They can drink wine, they can dance. After all, one has to have a congregation; otherwise we will lose our profession, our salaries. So whatever they want to do, let them do."

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The third one said, "That's nothing. In my synagogue there is a sign in front of the synagogue on which it is written, 'This synagogue is closed on Saturdays and all Jewish holidays.'" What more do you want? This is the most ultra-modern! People are happy, very much rejoiced, to be members of a synagogue which is always closed, which does not bother them at all with old sermons.

But all the religions have been keeping people engaged with the non-essentials.

Ejaku is very sincere. He says, "It is not in my capacity to deal only with the essential Zen.

I know that I will not find even a single companion. So I go on giving them devices, scriptures, mantras and all kinds of things -- a general store. But it is all humbug."

Do you know what 'humbug' means? It was Charles Darwin's sixtieth birthday, and he was very friendly with children. So all the children of the neighborhood decided, "Precious presents will be coming to the great scientist. We poor children, what can we do? But something has to be presented to the great scientist who is our friend." So one small boy came up with a great idea, and they managed it. They found all kinds of insects ... because that was the interest of Charles Darwin. Working out his theory of evolution, he was looking into insects, into animals, in every place.

What they did was cut up all those insects and made a new insect. The body of one insect, the legs of another, the face of a third, the tail of a fourth ... and they made it so perfectly and beautifully that anybody could be deceived. They brought their present to the great Darwin and asked him, "Uncle, can you say what it is? You are such a great scientist, you must know the name."

He looked and he could not imagine ... He had never come across such an insect. He looked again and again, and then finally he saw that it was not one insect -- the legs are different, the tail is different, the head is different. But the boys had done a great artistic job, so he said, "This is a humbug. Its name is humbug."

Most of the people are humbugs. They are carrying something from somebody, something from somebody else. They are not themselves, they are many people, a multitude. They are a crowd.

Says Ejaku:

NOW, LET ME TELL YOU IN ALL PLAINNESS: DO NOT DIVERT YOUR MIND TO

THE HOLY THINGS; RATHER, DIRECT IT TO YOUR SELF-NATURE, AND

CULTIVATE YOURSELF WITH YOUR FEET ON THE GROUND. DO NOT DESIRE

THE THREE "GIFTS OF VISION," AND THE SIX "SUPERNATURAL POWERS." WHY?

BECAUSE THESE ARE ONLY ACCIDENTALS OF HOLINESS.

THE ONE THING ESSENTIAL NOW IS TO RECOLLECT YOUR MIND TO ATTAIN

THE FUNDAMENTAL, THE VERY ROOT OF YOUR BEING. HAVING ARRIVED AT

THE ROOT, YOU NEED HAVE NO WORRY ABOUT THE ACCIDENTALS.

All the virtues come on their own as you become conscious, so don't cultivate those virtues. They will be artificial and they will become preventive, hindrances on the way to your own self.

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Don't ask for miracles. A man of meditation is himself a miracle. Whatever he does is a miracle. It is a beauty, it is magic, but it is all spontaneous. It is not practiced, it is not rehearsed.

But most people are interested in supernatural powers, healing people with supernatural powers, or creating things out of nothing, just as Satya Sai Baba is doing. All kinds of frauds ... but people become interested in them, thinking that here is a man of miracles. And what is the miracle if you can produce a Swiss watch which was hiding in your sleeve ...?

One old Parsi woman came to me in Bombay. Satya Sai Baba used to stay at her place, and she told me, "One day when he had gone into the bathroom, just out of curiosity I looked into his suitcases. They were all full of watches! I could not believe that this man was deceiving."

She said, "I kicked him out. I told him, 'Never again come in my house!' I cannot be a partner to any kind of fraud." She told me, "I am an old woman. Nobody listens to me, they think I have gone senile. I have come to you ... perhaps you can do something about it."

I said, "I have been challenging Satya Sai Baba, saying that this is stupid. When the country is dying of starvation, produce more food out of your miracles. He should bring rain to Hyderabad" ... where the Shankaracharya of Puri is going to force a woman to be burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre, and only then rain will come. And Satya Sai Baba is not far away from Hyderabad. Bring rain to Hyderabad -- do some real work! All that he produces is ash, and he gives you the ash and you think it is great. It is so simple that any street magician can do it. In fact the more experienced street magicians can do it in a far better way, and can do many more things than he is doing.

I have no objection to him as a magician, but he should not pretend to be a spiritual man. It is not only a question of a single person pretending to be spiritual when he is not. The question is that he attracts thousands of people, mediocre people, who believe that this man of miracles may impart something to them, may lead them to the ultimate truth.

Ejaku is right: don't bother about supernatural powers, THREE "GIFTS OF VISION."

THE ONE THING ESSENTIAL NOW IS TO RECOLLECT YOUR MIND TO ATTAIN

THE FUNDAMENTAL, THE VERY ROOT OF YOUR BEING. HAVING ARRIVED AT

THE ROOT, YOU NEED HAVE NO WORRY ABOUT THE ACCIDENTALS. IN TIME

YOU WILL FIND THAT YOU ARE SELF-PROVIDED WITH ALL THESE

ACCIDENTAL GIFTS AND POWERS. ON THE OTHER HAND, SO LONG AS YOU

HAVE NOT GOT THE ROOT, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ACQUIRE SUCH GIFTS

AND POWERS THROUGH STUDY AND LEARNING.

A very honest man, saying simply two things: one, turn your lights in; second, don't be concerned with accidentals, non-essentials. As you become an enlightened man, miracles follow you like a shadow. You don't have to do them, they happen around you, in your very air.

And the greatest miracle is that whoever comes in contact with the awakened one tastes for the first time the sweetness of awakening, the grace of awakening, and a longing arises in him which he has never thought about -- to be a buddha himself.

The greatest miracle in the world is to bring people to the recognition of their buddhahood.

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A Zen poet wrote:

IN THE BOTTOMLESS BAMBOO BASKET

I PUT THE WHITE MOON;

IN THE BOWL OF MINDLESSNESS

I STORE THE PURE BREEZE.

These are true miracles. They happen on their own in your silences of the heart.

Seigensai wrote:

THIS GRASPED, ALL IS DUST --

THE SERMON FOR TODAY.

LANDS, SEAS.

AWAKENED, YOU WALK THE EARTH ALONE.

Everything is dust once you understand yourself. And the moment you understand yourself you find your aloneness so beautiful, so precious, that you don't get lost in the crowd and its stupid ideologies. You become for the first time an individual on your own; you are no more a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian. You simply belong to the universe. You are a universal man. This is the greatest miracle.

Another Zen poem, by Nensho:

ONLY GENUINE AWAKENING RESULTS IN THAT.

ONLY FOOLS SEEK SAINTHOOD FOR REWARD.

LIFTING A HAND,

THE STONE LANTERN ANNOUNCES DAYBREAK.

SMILING, THE VOID NODS ITS ENORMOUS HEAD.

What Nensho is saying is: Why are you trying to be a saint? -- because saints will be rewarded in heaven. All your virtues are just making a way towards paradise, where you will be provided all kinds of pleasures. What are your saints torturing themselves for? Hoping that the more they torture themselves, the closer is paradise. And what does paradise provide?

Naked young women, rivers of wine, no work; everybody is given a harp ... drink the wine, find a girlfriend, play on the harp, Alleluia! That's all that is happening in paradise.

And I say to you that your saints will look very hilarious. Here they have been torturing themselves, they have become ugly, rotten. And those girlfriends in heaven are plastic, because they have been serving since eternity. I have never heard that anybody goes into retirement. They remain always stuck at the age of sixteen. Time goes on, but they don't grow old -- only plastic can do that. Plastic never grows old, never dies.

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And the descriptions in the scriptures make me convinced, because those girls don't perspire. Skin is bound to perspire, that is its very life, it is its breathing. Every pore of the skin is breathing. And there is a reason why it perspires: perspiration keeps your temperature the same so that whether it is cold outside or hot outside, it doesn't matter. Your life is dependent on your temperature. From ninety-six degrees to one hundred and eight -- just twelve degrees is your lifespan. If you go beyond one hundred and eight, you have gone beyond. Perspiration keeps you below that level, because it keeps the heat engaged -- the perspiration becomes evaporated, so the heat becomes engaged in evaporating the perspiration and forgets you completely. It is a miracle.

When it is cold, you start shivering, even your teeth start chattering. Do you know what for? This is all to keep you warm.

I have heard stories -- I don't believe them -- that people will leave their false teeth in the bathroom, and in the cold those teeth, out of old habit, start chattering. I don't know ... but there are stories on record. Perhaps just an old habit ...

Your shivering keeps you warm. Otherwise your temperature will fall and that will be again death. Your lifespan is just within those twelve degrees.

Now those beautiful ladies in paradise never grow old, they always remain young. I cannot conceive that they have been serving all the saints for millions of years, and still nobody calls them prostitutes! They are the only eternal prostitutes. And these saints are dreaming about them. Here it is prohibited, you cannot drink wine; it is a sin according to many religions. But the same religions provide rivers of wine -- there is no need to drink, you can drown! Here, every religion goes on working on every child: "Do something; otherwise you will be a hobo."

And what are all your saints doing in paradise? -- hobos, playing on their harps. Hippies were simply imitating your saints in paradise, playing their guitars and doing nothing.

It is such a boredom to conceive that for millions of years you will be just playing on your harp. There is nothing else to do. You can have as many women as you want, you can drink as much alcohol as you want. Perhaps to make it up-to-date, God may have provided new drugs

-- LSD, heroin, hashish -- because the saints have earned them by their virtue; this is their reward.

A genuine search is not for any reward. It is just to know who I am, why I am, what I am.

It is a pure search to be acquainted with oneself, because that is the only way to find some connection with the universal spirit.

Nensho has a beautiful metaphor. He says, "All these saints, what they are doing in declaring their saintliness is like lifting a hand with a stone lantern, announcing daybreak."

But all over, there is darkness. It is not daybreak. These saints are just stone lanterns, they are not the sunrise.

And the universe smiles at these fools: the void, the immense void, nods its enormous head, smiling.

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Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

IF YOU WERE TO USE JUST ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE THE ESSENCE OF TRUE

RELIGIOUSNESS, ONE WORD THAT IS THE KEY TO BEING ABLE TO DROP

WHATEVER HAS BEEN AND SIMPLY LIVE ONE MOMENT AT A TIME -- WHAT

WOULD THAT ONE WORD BE?

Maneesha, that one word is in. Just in.

Go in and all the mysteries open before you.

But before you go in ... because nobody knows whether you will return or not. It is a miracle that everybody returns every day. What more miracles do you want? Jesus raised only one man from death. I have to do double the work! First I have to tell you to die -- ten thousand sannyasins die every night -- and then the great work has to be done to bring you back to life. And the miracle is, you all come back! Not a single one is left behind.

So before that inward journey -- the dangerous journey, as one may not like to come back

-- a few laughs are necessary. So on your inner journey you go laughing ... at least smiling.

When pretty Angela Carrotti goes out on her first date, her parents tell her to be home by nine o'clock.

She gets in at nine-fifteen with her hair messed up and her make-up smeared. Momma Carrotti asks her how the evening was. Angela rolls up her eyes and says breathlessly,

"Mamma mia!"

The next night, Angela goes out again with the same boyfriend. Her parents tell her to be back by nine. At ten-thirty Angela gets home with her clothes dishevelled and her hair in tangles.

Poppa Carrotti tells her off for being so late and asks her if she has had fun.

Rolling her eyes up, Angela says, "Mamma mia!"

The following night, Angela gets home at two in the morning. Momma and Poppa are furious.

"So!" cries Momma. "Now what-a you have to say for yourself?"

Angela looks down and says, "Me-a mamma!"

Feenie and Frankie, two Italian school friends, graduate from college at the same time.

Feenie's dad gives his son a solid gold wristwatch, and Frankie gets a pearl-handled pistol from his father.

The friends meet and admire each other's presents so much that they decide to trade them.

That evening at dinner, Frankie checks the time.

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"Where did you get-a that gold watch?" asks his father. He listens to Frankie's story with a look of disbelief on his face. "Whassa matter with you?" shouts his dad. "Some day you get-a married. And some day you find-a your wife in bed with another guy. And what are you gonna do? Look at your watch and say-a, 'Hey! How long you gonna be?'"

"Darling," whispers Johnny, "you are the only one for me. I love you. I need you. I can't live without you."

"Please!" gasps Julie, pushing him away.

"Why? What is wrong?" asks a stunned Johnny.

"I am in such a playful, happy mood," says Julie, "and I don't want to get serious."

"So?" smiles Johnny. "Who's serious?"

Old Grandpa Goldberg walks into the Saint Jones Cathedral, looks around anxiously, and then sits down in the dark confessional box.

"Father," says Goldberg to the priest. "I have been screwing a juicy blonde nymphomaniac nineteen-year-old girl twice a day for the past three weeks."

"Good Lord, Mr. Goldberg!" says Father Fungus. "But aren't you Jewish? Why are you telling me?"

"Why am I telling you?" replies Grandpa. "I'm telling everyone!"

Now, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

Close all the doors going outwards.

Collect your whole energy in.

Deeper, deeper ...

In the very center of your being

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is the heart of the whole universe.

We are not separate islands,

we are all one in this inner space.

This inner space is eternal, immortal,

knows nothing of life or death.

Be well acquainted with it,

so that you can remember.

In your day-to-day activities

don't forget the buddha within.

Express your buddha in all your actions,

in your words, in your silences, in your songs.

But always remember: you are a buddha.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax.

Let go of the body, of the mind.

You are just a watcher,

a small light at the center of your being.

But that light is connected

with the center of the universe.

It is from this center you get your life.

This is the root

that connects you with the universal soul.

Blessed is this moment ...

ten thousand buddhas

drowned into one consciousness.

Blessed is this this-ness, this suchness, this silence.

Feel the silence.

Feel the beauty of it.

Feel the joy of it.

Feel its universality.

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And in a single moment

here now

you can prove Ejaku wrong.

You can be a buddha.

You are a buddha,

just you have forgotten.

Remember ... Remember.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back,

gathering your experience,

remembering your experience.

Sit down like a buddha.

This is your true nature.

This is the meeting point with the universe.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master!

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10

Sun and moon in one's sleeve

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

ENO SAID:

GOOD FRIENDS, MY TEACHING OF THE DHARMA TAKES MEDITATION AND

WISDOM AS ITS BASIS. NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SAY

MISTAKENLY THAT MEDITATION AND WISDOM ARE DIFFERENT; THEY ARE A UNITY, NOT TWO THINGS. MEDITATION ITSELF IS THE SUBSTANCE OF

WISDOM; WISDOM ITSELF IS THE FUNCTION OF MEDITATION. AT THE VERY

MOMENT WHEN THERE IS WISDOM, THEN MEDITATION EXISTS IN WISDOM; AT

THE VERY MOMENT WHEN THERE IS MEDITATION, THEN WISDOM EXISTS IN

MEDITATION.

GOOD FRIENDS, THIS MEANS THAT MEDITATION AND WISDOM ARE ALIKE.

STUDENTS, BE CAREFUL NOT TO SAY THAT MEDITATION GIVES RISE TO

WISDOM, OR THAT WISDOM GIVES RISE TO MEDITATION, OR THAT

MEDITATION AND WISDOM ARE DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER.

TO HOLD THIS VIEW IMPLIES THAT THINGS HAVE DUALITY -- IF GOOD IS

SPOKEN WHILE THE MIND IS NOT GOOD, MEDITATION AND WISDOM WILL NOT

BE ALIKE. IF MIND AND SPEECH ARE BOTH GOOD, THEN THE INTERNAL AND

THE EXTERNAL ARE THE SAME, AND MEDITATION AND WISDOM ARE ALIKE.

THE PRACTICE OF SELF-AWAKENING DOES NOT LIE IN VERBAL

ARGUMENTS. IF YOU ARGUE WHICH COMES FIRST, MEDITATION OR WISDOM, YOU ARE DELUDED PEOPLE. YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO SETTLE THE ARGUMENT, AND INSTEAD WILL CLING TO OBJECTIVE THINGS, AND WILL NEVER ESCAPE

FROM THE FOUR STATES OF PHENOMENA.

ENO ADDED: GOOD FRIENDS, HOW THEN ARE MEDITATION AND WISDOM

ALIKE? THEY ARE LIKE THE LAMP AND THE LIGHT IT GIVES FORTH. IF THERE

IS A LAMP THERE IS LIGHT; IF THERE IS NO LAMP THERE IS NO LIGHT. THE

LAMP IS THE SUBSTANCE OF LIGHT; THE LIGHT IS THE FUNCTION OF THE

LAMP. THUS, ALTHOUGH THEY HAVE TWO NAMES, IN SUBSTANCE THEY ARE

NOT TWO. MEDITATION AND WISDOM ARE ALSO LIKE THIS.

Maneesha, the understanding of mind ultimately ends in the understanding of meditation.

The function of the mind is to divide things. Duality is its territory: darkness and light, life and death. The mind cannot conceive anything which has not its opposite.

But existence is not obliged to function according to the mind. In existence day and night merge into each other, every evening, every morning. They are not separate. Neither are life and death separate. If they were separate it would be possible for someone to go on living, and not to allow death to enter into his house.

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An ancient Chinese story will help you to understand the great Zen master Eno. His every statement is a scripture in itself.

The ancient story is that a great emperor, being afraid of death, created a palace with a single door. No other doors, no other windows, no way of entering into the palace except from one small door where he had placed a complete row of guards. Guard number one was to be guarded by number two, and guard number two was guarded by number three, and guard number three was guarded by number four ... seven guards watching each other! More protection is not possible.

A neighboring king heard about it, and he wanted to see this most secure palace. He was welcomed. The owner of the palace took him in, showed him all the facilities inside, that there was no way for any enemy, for any thief, for any killer to enter.

The king was very much impressed. He said, "I will immediately order the same. Just give me the names of the architects, to make the same palace for me in my kingdom."

Talking with each other, they came out to where the chariot of the king was waiting. And when he said, "I'm going to make exactly the same palace. I loved it, the very idea. It is so safe and secure ..." a beggar by the side of the road started laughing madly.

Both were stunned. For a moment there was silence.

They both asked the beggar, "Why are you laughing?"

He said, "I'm laughing because there is a loophole in all this, and I know the loophole. I have been sitting in this place for years, begging, so I have been watching the building of the palace."

The emperor asked, "What is the loophole?"

He said, "That one door!"

The emperor laughed. He said, "I have placed seven guards on it. They are guarding on each other, nobody can betray. What is the fear?"

The beggar said, "With due respect, I want to tell you that death will enter and your guards will not be able to see it. And death is the only insecurity. What else? Do you have any protection against death?"

The emperor was at a loss.

The beggar said, "My suggestion is that if you want really to be secure, tell your builders to raise a wall in place of that door! I still cannot guarantee that death will not enter -- but at least you have made as much effort as possible; close the door and be inside."

The emperor said, "But that means I'm already dead! It becomes a grave, not a palace, if I cannot come out."

The beggar said, "If you think just by closing one door your life will be finished, don't you think that by closing other doors, parts of your life are finished? By closing the windows, other parts of your life are finished? You are going to live at the minimum, while the maximum was available."

Both the kings were surprised to see the intelligence of the beggar. They came close to him and they asked him, "From where have you come?"

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He said, "You will not understand. Your fathers were my friends. Once I also used to be an emperor. But seeing the whole unnecessary trouble, I made myself completely secure -- I dropped all walls, all worries, opened all windows. Now for almost half a century nobody has harmed me. I'm just a beggar -- why should anyone harm me? I have nothing to be stolen. I sleep as I have never slept before."

If you really want to be living at the maximum, don't listen to the duality of the mind.

The only security in existence is going beyond the mind.

The beggar was a great Taoist master. His name was Lieh Tzu. But people had forgotten that fifty years before he had dropped his kingdom.

He said, "The only security I have found is in being silent, in being myself, where all duality disappears. Where you and the universe are one, then death cannot do anything."

You have disappeared on your own accord; now there is no way to harm you. There is nobody to harm you. The body is not you, the mind is not you. You are just a guest in a house.

Don't get identified with the house, just remember the guest.

This statement of Eno is tremendously beautiful:

GOOD FRIENDS, MY TEACHING OF THE DHARMA TAKES MEDITATION AND

WISDOM AS ITS BASIS. NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SAY

MISTAKENLY THAT MEDITATION AND WISDOM ARE DIFFERENT; THEY ARE A UNITY, NOT TWO THINGS.

But all the so-called intelligent people of the world have taken them as two things.

Meditation is for the mystics and wisdom comes from accumulating knowledge from the scriptures, from the old traditions. They have degraded wisdom to knowledge -- borrowed knowledge.

Eno is saying that wisdom is the fragrance of meditation; they are not separable. You cannot have wisdom without meditation and you cannot have meditation without wisdom. In fact, they are two names for one phenomenon.

To be yourself, silently and fully aware, is to know without any doubt that meditation and wisdom are one.

Meditation is the source and wisdom is the radiation. Meditation is your understanding and wisdom is your action according to that understanding. Meditation is your inner experience and wisdom is its outer expression.

A man of meditation cannot do anything wrong. And a man of so-called wisdom alone is just a parrot. He goes on repeating, but his heart is not touched by his own repetitions.

A priest had two parrots. They were very good, saintly, with their rosaries in their hands, repeating Ave Maria. But once in a while they would become very sad, both of them at the same time. So he thought perhaps they needed a companion.

He went to the pet shop, thinking certainly they need a companion, because both are male; they need a female at least to share with. So he bought a female, and as he put the female Osho - The Miracle

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parrot into their cage, one parrot said to the other, "Johnny, now drop the rosary! There is no need of it, our prayers have been heard!"

The priest could not believe that these idiots had been praying for their own reasons, not for the Christian religion. They both dropped their rosaries.

A man who thinks that through borrowed knowledge he is wise, is not only befooling himself but others also. His wisdom is just a memory, not a knowing, because knowing blossoms only through meditation.

Eno says:

NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SAY MISTAKENLY THAT

MEDITATION AND WISDOM ARE DIFFERENT; THEY ARE A UNITY, NOT TWO

THINGS. MEDITATION ITSELF IS THE SUBSTANCE OF WISDOM; WISDOM ITSELF

IS THE FUNCTION OF MEDITATION. AT THE VERY MOMENT WHEN THERE IS

WISDOM, THEN MEDITATION EXISTS IN WISDOM; AT THE VERY MOMENT

WHEN THERE IS MEDITATION, THEN WISDOM EXISTS IN MEDITATION.

GOOD FRIENDS, THIS MEANS THAT MEDITATION AND WISDOM ARE ALIKE.

STUDENTS, BE CAREFUL NOT TO SAY THAT MEDITATION GIVES RISE TO

WISDOM, OR THAT WISDOM GIVES RISE TO MEDITATION, OR THAT

MEDITATION AND WISDOM ARE DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER.

TO HOLD THIS VIEW IMPLIES THAT THINGS HAVE DUALITY -- IF GOOD IS

SPOKEN WHILE THE MIND IS NOT GOOD, MEDITATION AND WISDOM WILL NOT

BE ALIKE. IF MIND AND SPEECH ARE BOTH GOOD, THEN THE INTERNAL AND

THE EXTERNAL ARE THE SAME, AND MEDITATION AND WISDOM ARE ALIKE.

THE PRACTICE OF SELF-AWAKENING DOES NOT LIE IN VERBAL

ARGUMENTS. IF YOU ARGUE WHICH COMES FIRST, MEDITATION OR WISDOM, YOU ARE DELUDED PEOPLE. YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO SETTLE THE ARGUMENT, AND INSTEAD WILL CLING TO OBJECTIVE THINGS, AND WILL NEVER ESCAPE

FROM THE FOUR STATES OF PHENOMENA.

ENO ADDED:

GOOD FRIENDS, HOW THEN ARE MEDITATION AND WISDOM ALIKE? THEY

ARE LIKE THE LAMP AND THE LIGHT IT GIVES FORTH. IF THERE IS A LAMP

THERE IS LIGHT; IF THERE IS NO LAMP THERE IS NO LIGHT. THE LAMP IS THE

SUBSTANCE OF LIGHT; THE LIGHT IS THE FUNCTION OF THE LAMP. THUS, ALTHOUGH THEY HAVE TWO NAMES, IN SUBSTANCE THEY ARE NOT TWO.

MEDITATION AND WISDOM ARE ALSO LIKE THIS.

Eno is making a significant statement. You are standing on a road -- inwards is the realm of meditation. And if you reach to the point where you touch your very being, then outwardly you can express your meditation in everything that you do. All your gestures, all your actions, even your silences -- not doing anything, just sitting -- will also express the radiance, the fragrance, the beauty, the joy of meditation. This is wisdom.

But people have been misled by parents, by teachers, by priests, by everyone, to accumulate wisdom. You can accumulate great wisdom and yet you will be just a learned Osho - The Miracle

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idiot. Your behavior will show it, your actions will show it; just your words will be in consonance with the scriptures.

The authentic wisdom does not come from outside. The authentic wisdom comes when you have gone deeper into your being and found the center of your life -- then suddenly an explosion. Everything that you do or don't do expresses your wisdom.

Wisdom is just the fragrance of a rose. Find the rose first and the fragrance will be found on its own accord. Don't even make the distinction of which comes first, because they are not two. They are one, looked at from two sides -- one from inside and one from outside.

Whatever is your enlightenment expresses itself inside as meditation, and outside as wisdom.

Neither comes first, they are one. The outer and the inner both are together.

But mind always creates distinctions, separations. And it is because of the mind that you get into unnecessary troubles: philosophic conflicts, theological arguments. You waste your time on books looking for something that may help you to find yourself.

You cannot find, anywhere, anything that will help you to find yourself. You have to be clear about it: you are not to be found, you are already here. You have just to recognize the fact.

A master does not teach you to be yourself; he simply makes you recognize what is hidden behind your heartbeat. In his presence a certain synchronicity happens. You simply be close to a master, silently, and you start feeling a rush of energy flowing towards you, making you afire. It is invisible to the spectators; only the participants are the blessed ones.

Once you know yourself, you are in meditation and your actions will show wisdom.

A Zen poet wrote:

TO HAVE THE SUN AND MOON IN ONE'S SLEEVE;

TO HOLD THE UNIVERSE

IN THE PALM OF ONE'S HAND.

And his haiku is complete. Just remember one hand, just remember one sleeve.

TO HAVE THE SUN AND MOON IN ONE'S SLEEVE,

TO HOLD THE UNIVERSE

IN THE PALM OF ONE'S HAND.

When you open your hand, don't you have the whole universe in your palm? Just don't close it. The closed hand is the poorest; it has nothing in it.

It is a strange thing, that every child is born with a closed hand, and everybody dies with an open hand. It has never been heard of that anybody has died with a closed hand, because to close the hand you need energy. The open hand needs no energy, no tension. A closed hand will get tired. The dying man cannot afford the energy to close his fist.

But it is beautiful to go deeper into the question of why every child is born with closed hands. It signifies that every child is born with great hopes and expectations and desires.

Those closed hands are showing that he has to make something of himself -- to be successful, Osho - The Miracle

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rich, politically powerful. It is an unconscious, very deep-rooted expression of his being. He comes into the world with great secrets; soon he will start getting frustrated. No success succeeds.

In fact, every success ends up in failure, in a deep frustration, because what you wanted is not found.

The old man dying has nothing to hold on to. No desire, no expectation ... he moves into death just like a beggar.

When Alexander the Great died, he told his ministers, "Keep my hands hanging outside of the coffin."

They said, "Strange idea!" It had never been heard of. Nobody had done it. A dead man should behave and keep his hands inside the coffin.

But Alexander said, "It is my order and it has to be fulfilled! It is my last wish. It does not matter that nobody else has done it; it's going to be done to me. Keep my hands hanging outside the casket!"

They said, "But why this idea?"

Alexander said, "Millions of people will come to see. I want to make it clear to them that I had come into the world with closed fists, with great expectations, with great secret desires -- I am going from the world utterly frustrated, with open hands. I'm not taking anything with me.

All that I had has proved to be just a delusion."

Meditation makes you an open hand. Mind is very secretive; mind goes on keeping your desires, your angers, your frustrations, your miseries, all secret -- a closed fist. Meditation is an opening of the fist. And then the whole universe is in your hands. A small haiku with a great meaning ...

Ikkyu wrote:

SHOULD YOU SEEK

THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA

ALL NIGHT LONG,

SEARCHING, YOU WILL ENTER

INTO YOUR OWN MIND.

You can go on searching not only the whole night but the whole life of unconsciousness and darkness, searching for Buddha. You will always end up with your mind.

You will not find the buddha because the buddha is not to be found by searching. The buddha has to be simply recognized. Without making any effort to seek and search, just look in. You are the buddha.

And immediately all your actions, all your ways of life, all your functions, will change --

immediately. They will all carry the fragrance of a buddha.

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Another haiku:

HOWEVER MUCH WE POUR IN,

NEVER TO BRIM OVER;

TO LADLE OUT, NEVER EXHAUSTING;

MOREOVER, NOT TO KNOW THE REASON FOR IT --

THIS IS CALLED THE HIDDEN LIGHT.

The light within you is perfect. You cannot take anything out of it, nor can you add anything to it. It is a perfect circle, it is a perfectly opened lotus. You cannot do anything to it; you can only rejoice. You can dance, you can sing a song, in praise of the lotus that has blossomed within your being.

Particularly, I want my people to know that meditation is not just being silent -- that is only one part of it. Finally, it has to be creative. And when a poetry comes out of your inner silences, or a painting, it has a flavor which is not of this world.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

WHEN YOU SAY EACH EVENING DURING THE MEDITATION, "GO IN, GO

DEEPER AND DEEPER LIKE AN ARROW TO YOUR CENTER," IS IT THAT THERE IS

ACTUALLY NOWHERE TO GO AND NOTHING TO DO BECAUSE WE ARE

ALREADY IN?

IS ALL WE CAN DO JUST BE AWARE OF HOW AND WHEN WE PERPETUALLY

GO OUT, FURTHER AND FURTHER FROM OURSELVES?

Yes, Maneesha. There is nowhere to go. You are already there, where you needed to be.

And once you recognize it, then you carry your consciousness wherever you go. Then time makes no difference, nor does space. You are a buddha in the temple and you are a buddha in the shop; you are a buddha sitting silently, deep in meditation, and you are a buddha having a good laugh with Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

It is midnight in Miami, and Glamorous Gladys arrives for a winter holiday to find that all the hotels are full.

The receptionist at the four-star Screwing Sands Hotel suggests that he can put her in to share a room with a nice man on the fifth floor, named Donald Dickstein.

Gladys likes the idea and takes the room.

She enters the room quietly, takes a peek, and sees Donald sleeping in one of the beds.

Then she turns on the bathroom light, leaves the door open, and begins to slowly and seductively take off her dress.

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Then she ever so slowly removes her bra. Bending in the light, she takes her sweet time slipping off her black lace panties.

Finally, she saunters around the room completely naked, and gets into her bed. Then she leans over and whispers to Donald, "Would you like to come in my bed?"

"No thanks," replies Donald, wide awake. "I've already come in mine!"

There is an explosion at a Polack salami factory, and one of the salamis gets blown right to heaven. It lands at Saint Peter's feet.

"What a funny-looking thing," says Saint Peter, picking it up. And he goes to show it to Jesus.

"Did you ever see such a thing?" Saint Peter asks Jesus.

"No," replies Jesus. "I've never seen one before." So, Saint Peter takes it to show to Mary.

"Mary," he asks, "did you ever see something like this?"

"Oh!" exclaims Mary. "You know, if it didn't have that funny smell, I would swear it was the Holy Ghost!"

Caroline Kratz goes to visit her local channeler to find out about her late husband, Caruso.

"What's it like up there?" asks Caroline, anxiously, when she gets the right channel.

"Marvellous!" replies Caruso. "I get up late, go swimming, then have sex, sleep, eat, take a rest, go swimming, have sex, sleep, eat again, have sex ..."

"Ah!" cries Caroline, "but down here you only made love to me once a month!"

"I know," admits Caruso, "but down there I was not a duck!"

Old Rubenstein is passing the local pet shop one day, when he sees a sign advertising a parrot that can speak many languages.

Since he considers himself an expert on languages, Rubenstein goes inside and starts to question the parrot.

"Parlez-vous francais?" asks Rubenstein.

"Parlez-vous francais?" replies the parrot.

"Habla espanol?" asks the old Jew.

"Habla espanol?" comes the reply.

"Speak English?" asks Rubenstein.

"Speak English?" replies the bird.

Old Rubenstein goes closer to the parrot, and asks confidentially, "Tell me, my friend, if you are so smart, do you speak Yiddish?"

The parrot fixes Rubenstein with its beady eyes: "Tell me, my friend," says the bird, "you think I should not speak Yiddish with a nose like this?"

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Okay, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent ...

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be frozen.

Gather all your energy inside.

Deeper and deeper ...

Take this energy

to the very center of your being.

Your body is only a circumference.

Find the center of your consciousness.

Once you have found the center

of your consciousness,

you are a miracle, a buddha ...

the greatest mystery in existence.

Don't hesitate ...

Take the jump.

There is nothing to fear.

It is your own world.

Finding the center of your consciousness

is finding the center of the universe itself.

After that,

you exist spontaneously --

without any effort,

with great grace and bliss.

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Meditation ultimately brings wisdom

to your life.

To make it absolutely clear that you are not the body, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax ... fall dead.

Collect yourself as deep

within your innermost core as possible ...

You are discovering the buddha ...

This moment is the most precious moment

when one discovers the buddha in oneself.

Then all theology and religion and philosophy

are just commentaries,

non-essential.

You have got the essential thing

right in your hands.

This buddha-nature knows no death, no birth --

it knows only eternity.

No beginning, no end.

No boundary.

It becomes oceanic ...

The whole universe becomes its home.

For the first time

there is not even a fence

between you and the universe.

You are the universe.

This is the meaning of finding the buddha.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

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Come back, slowly, silently, gracefully,

carrying the experience,

recollecting it.

Sit for a few moments as a buddha.

And carry out

your twenty-four-hour activities,

remembering that you are a buddha

and all your expressions should be of wisdom.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master!

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Table of Contents

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 4 - This harvest moon

Chapter 6 - Cages of gold

Chapter 6 - Cages of gold

Chapter 6 - Cages of gold

Chapter 6 - Cages of gold

Chapter 6 - Cages of gold

Chapter 6 - Cages of gold

Chapter 6 - Cages of gold

Chapter 6 - Cages of gold

Chapter 6 - Cages of gold

Chapter 7 - The mysterious one

Chapter 7 - The mysterious one

Chapter 7 - The mysterious one

Chapter 7 - The mysterious one

Chapter 7 - The mysterious one

Chapter 7 - The mysterious one

Chapter 7 - The mysterious one

Chapter 7 - The mysterious one

Chapter 7 - The mysterious one

Chapter 7 - The mysterious one

Chapter 7 - The mysterious one