Category: on Zen

Friends,

Before the sutras there are a few questions from the sannyasins.

The first question:

Gesta Ital, a former famous German actress, was the first western woman who was allowed to enter in a Zen monastery in Japan and to work with an enlightened Master.

She wrote two books about her path and her experience of enlightenment. When I read these books, I had the impression of a very hard and lonely path. Being with you is much more joyful and playful. Would you like to say something about this difference?

The traditional Zen is hard. It takes twenty to thirty years of constant meditation, withdrawing from everywhere all your energy and devoting it only to meditation.

That tradition comes from Gautam Buddha himself. He had to find his enlightenment after twelve years of hard work.

I am changing it completely from the traditional Zen, because I don’t see that the contemporary man can devote twenty or thirty years to meditation only. If Zen remains that hard, it will disappear from the world. It has already disappeared from China, it is disappearing from Japan, and it disappeared from India long ago. It remained in India for only five hundred years after Gautam Buddha. In the sixth century it reached China, remained there for only a few centuries, and moved to Japan. And now it is almost extinct from both China and Japan.

You will be surprised to know that my books are being taught in the Zen monasteries. Zen masters have written letters to me: “Perhaps now Zen will exist in India, in its original place. It is disappearing from Japan because people are more interested in technology, in science.”

That is the situation in India too. Very few people are interested in the inner exploration. Here you can find a few people from every country, but these are so few compared to the five billion human beings on the earth. Ten thousand is not a great number.

Zen has to be transformed in a way that the contemporary man can be interested in it. It has to be easy, relaxed, it has not to be hard. That old traditional type is no longer possible, nor is it needed. Once it has been explored, once a single man has become enlightened, the path becomes easy. You don’t have to discover electricity again and again. Once discovered you start using it – you don’t have to be great scientists.

The man who discovered electricity worked on it for almost twenty years. Three hundred disciples started with him and nobody remained because it took so long; everybody became exhausted. But the original scientist continued. His explanation to his own disciples was, “The more we are failing in finding the root of electricity, the closer we are going to the very root. Every failure is bringing us closer to the discovery.”

And finally, one night in the darkness, suddenly the first electric bulb started radiating. And you cannot conceive the joy of the man who had been working for thirty years. His silence . . . he was in awe. He could not believe his own eyes that after all this time it had happened, electricity had been controlled – “Now in our hands, how to use it?”

His wife called to him, “Come inside the bedroom, it is the middle of the night. Put the light out!”

She was not aware that it was no ordinary light, and that the scientist had called her – “Come here and be the first to see something original. You will be the first person I will introduce to the secrets of electricity.”

Now, you don’t have to work for thirty years to know about electricity. Nor do you have to work thirty years for the Zen experience. The awakening of the buddha is a very easy and relaxed phenomenon. Now that so many people have awakened, the path has become clear-cut; it is no longer hard and arduous. You can playfully enter inside and joyously experience the awakening of awareness. It is not as far away as it was for Gautam Buddha.

For Gautam Buddha it was an absolute unknown. He was searching for it like a blind man, knowing nothing about where he was going. But he was a man of tremendous courage, who for twelve years went on searching, exploring every method available in his time . . . all the teachers who were talking about philosophy and yoga. He went from one teacher to another, and every teacher finally said to him, “I can tell you only this much. More than this I don’t know myself.”

Finally, he remained alone, and he dropped all yoga disciplines. He had his own five disciples, who thought that he was a great ascetic. But when they saw that he had dropped all yoga discipline, and he was no longer fasting, they dropped him. All those five disciples left him – “He has fallen from his greatness; he is no longer a saint; he has become ordinary.”

But in that ordinariness, when he had dropped everything – just being tired and exhausted – that full moon night when the five disciples left him, he slept under the bodhi tree, completely free from this world and completely free from the very search for that world. For the first time he was utterly relaxed: no desire to find anything, no desire to become anything. And in that moment of nondesiring, he suddenly awakened and became a buddha. Buddhahood came to him in a relaxed state.

You don’t have to work for twelve years; you can just start from the relaxed state. It was the last point in Gautam Buddha’s journey. It can be the first point in your journey.

And the first thing Gautam Buddha did after he became awakened was to go in search of those five disciples to share what had happened to him. And when he reached those five disciples . . . they saw him coming – it is a very beautiful story.

They decided, “Gautama is coming, but we are not going to pay any respect to him. He has stopped being a holy man; he has started living a relaxed and comfortable life.”

But as Buddha came closer, all the five disciples stood up. Although they had decided not to pay him any respect, in spite of their decision, they could see that Gautama had changed completely – “He is no more the same person we used to know. He is coming with such a silence, with such contentment. It seems he has found it.” And they all touched Gautam Buddha’s feet.

And Gautam Buddha’s first statement to them was, “When you had decided not to pay attention to me, why are you paying such respect?”

All those five asked to be forgiven. They said, “We were thinking you were the same old Gautama. We used to know you – for five years we have been together, but you are not the same person anymore.”

Enlightenment is such a transformation that you are a totally different person. The old person dies away, and a totally new awareness, a fresh bliss, a flowering, a spring which has never been there . . .

It took twelve years for Gautam Buddha. It need not take even twelve minutes for you. It is simply an art, to relax into yourself. In the traditional Zen they are still doing whatever Buddha did in his ignorance, and finally they drop it.

I am telling you, why not drop it right now?

You can relax this very moment!

And in that relaxation, you will find the light, the awareness, the awakening.

What has happened to Gesta Ital is not necessarily an introduction to Zen. She has been in the company of old and traditional Zen masters. I understand Zen to be a very simple, innocent, joyful method. There is nothing ascetic in it, nothing life-negative – no need to renounce the world, no need to become a monk, no need to enter a monastery. You have to enter into yourself. That can be done anywhere.

We are doing it in the simplest way possible. And only if Zen becomes as simple as I am trying to make it, can the contemporary man be interested in it. Otherwise, he has so much to do – so many things to do, so many paths to explore, so many things to distract him.

Zen has to become such a small playful thing that while you are going to sleep – just before that – within five minutes you can enter into yourself, and you can remain at the very center of your being the whole night. Your whole night can become a peaceful, silent awareness. Sleep will be in the body, but underneath it there will be a current of light from the evening till the morning.

And once you know that even in sleep a certain awareness can be present inside you, then the whole day, doing all kinds of things, you can remain alert, conscious. Buddhahood has to be a very normal, ordinary, simple and human affair. […]

The third question:

When energy goes inward it turns into thoughts, feelings, emotions, and when energy goes outward it turns into relationships with beings and nature. But when energy does not move inward or outward, it is just there pulsating, vibrating. Then it is one with existence, one with the whole. Is this Zazen?

Exactly. When the energy is just there – not going anywhere, just pulsating at the original source, just radiating its light there, blossoming like a lotus, neither going out nor going in – it is simply here and now.

When I say go inward, I am simply saying don’t go on moving in the head.

The whole society forces your energy to move in the head. All education consists of the basic technique of how to pulsate the energy only in the head – how to make you a great mathematician, how to make you a great physician. All the education in the world consists of taking the energy into the head.

Zen asks you to come out of the head and go to the basic source – from where the educational system around the world has been taking the energy, putting it into the head, and turning it into thoughts, images, and creating thinking. It has its uses. It is not that Zen is not aware of the uses of energy in the head, but if all the energy is used in the head, you will never become aware of your eternity. You may become a very great thinker and philosopher, but you will never know as an experience what life is. You will never know as an experience, what it is to be one with the whole.

When the energy is just at the center, pulsating . . . When it is not moving anywhere, neither in the head nor in the heart, but it is at the very source from where the heart takes it, the head takes it . . . pulsating at the very source – that is the very meaning of Zazen.

Zazen means just sitting at the very source, not moving anywhere. A tremendous force arises, a transformation of energy into light and love, into greater life, into compassion, into creativity. It can take many forms, but first you have to learn how to be at the source. Then the source will decide where your potential is. You can relax at the source, and it will take you to your very potential. It does not mean that you have to stop thinking forever, it simply means you should be aware and alert and capable of moving into the source. When you need the head, you can move the energy into the head, and when you need to love, you can move the energy into the heart.

But you need not think twenty-four hours. When you are not thinking, you have to relax back into your center – that keeps the Zen man constantly content, alert, joyful. A blissfulness surrounds him; it is not an act, it is simply radiation.

Zazen is the strategy of Zen. Literally it means just sitting. Sitting where? Sitting at the very source. And once in a while, if you go on sitting in the source, you can manage all mental activities without any disturbance, you can manage all heart activities without any difficulty. And still, whenever you have time, you need not unnecessarily think, you need not unnecessarily feel, you can just be.

Just being is Zazen.

And if you can just be – only for a few minutes in twenty-four hours – that is enough to keep you alert of your buddhahood.

Before the sutras, a little biographical note.

Tozan Ryokai, a disciple of Ungan, was born in China in 807, and died in 869. He originally was a member of the Vinaya sect but later became interested in Zen and set out on a journey to find a Master.

The Vinaya sect is the Buddhist name of the people who are interested in the scriptures, in the words of the masters in a philosophical and scholarly way. They are mentally active, but they are not moving into the experience themselves. They gather as much knowledge as possible, they become very wise. They know all the answers that are in the sutras, but they don’t have a single experience of their own.

Tozan was first a scholar, studying all the literature – and Buddhism has the greatest literature in the world. Compared to any other religion it has more scriptures.

Just as Gautam Buddha died, his disciples became separated into thirty-two branches. Immediately there were thirty-two branches of scholarship, of different scriptures and sutras, pretending to be authentic, pretending to be the only true ones. The problem was that for forty-two years Gautam Buddha was teaching, morning and evening – a few people heard a few things, a few people heard a few other things.

In forty-two years he was constantly moving from one place to another place. Obviously, there were different people who had heard different things from him, and they compiled sutras. Immediately thirty-two branches started. Gautam Buddha had not written a single word, but every branch pretended to be the authentic one – “This is what Buddha said . . .”

It is very difficult now to find out what actually was said by Gautam Buddha, and what was added by the disciples. So there is a great scholarship in the Buddhist world where people search into scriptures trying to find what is authentic and what is not.

Just recently, the same kind of scholarship has started in Europe. The professors and the very scholarly Christians have formed a special committee, the Biblical Scholars. And they are now searching for what exactly was said by Jesus, and what has been added by others – what is fiction, what is myth, what is truth. […]

They meet every few months, and they discuss papers. And if you listen to them, almost ninety percent of the Bible disappears. And they are absolutely right, because for the first time they are searching at the roots from where this saying, this statement, this gospel has come. A few are found to be in the ancient scriptures of the pagans, and those scriptures have been destroyed so that nobody can prove that Jesus ever said these things.

Even the idea of the virgin birth is more ancient than Jesus. It was a pagan god, a Roman god who was thought to be born from a virgin, and to the same god, the crucifixion happened. And to the same god is connected the idea of the resurrection. All that has been taken and compiled into the Bible. The pagans have been destroyed, their temples have been burned, their scriptures have been destroyed. Now these Biblical Scholars are trying to find ways and methods to uncover the facts from contemporary literature about when Jesus was alive.

One of the gospels was written in India – the fifth gospel of Thomas. It has not been included in the Bible, for the simple reason that it was not available to Constantine, who was compiling, and who was deciding what was to be included and what was not to be included. It was because of him that all these ideas and mythologies and fictions have been added to the life of Jesus.

The same is true about Buddhist literature: much is borrowed from Hindu literature, much is borrowed from Jaina literature – because these were contemporaries. And a few contemporaries of Buddha have left no literature behind, but they were also teaching in the places where Buddha was teaching, so many of their teachings have been compiled and mixed with Gautam Buddha’s.

A very scholarly tradition exists in Zen to find out the original teachings of Buddha. But even if you can find what is the original statement and what is not, that does not mean you can become enlightened. You may know exactly what Buddha said, but that will not make any difference to your consciousness.

Tozan was first a scholar and found that however you go on trying to know and find the original sources, you still remain ignorant. You become a great knower, but deep down you know nothing about yourself. And the question is not to know what Buddha said, the question is to know your own inner buddha, your own inner consciousness.

After being in the scholarly Vinaya sect, he became interested in Zen. He dropped out of the scholarly world and set out on a journey to find a master. He had been with teachers, great scholars, but none of them was a master.

And a master need not be a scholar – it is not a necessity. He may be a scholar – that is accidental. What is necessary and existential is his own knowing, his own experience.

So he went in search of a man who himself knows what is the truth, and who can tell him the way to it.

The sutra:

Beloved Osho,

Tozan had a question about whether inanimate objects expound the dharma. Tozan visited Isan, who recommended that he go to see Ungan.

His inquiry was whether inanimate objects in the world expound the dharma, the ultimate truth – whether you can find in the objective world the ultimate truth.

That’s what science is trying to do – trying to find the ultimate truth in objects. You cannot find it in objects. But this is part of the Zen tradition, that also . . .

Isan was himself a master, but he recommended Tozan to go to see Ungan, seeing that Tozan was a scholar. Isan was not a scholar – he was a master, he knew his own buddhahood. But seeing that this man Tozan was bound to ask philosophical questions, he sent him to Ungan, who was a master and a scholar.

With Ungan, Tozan was first made aware of the truth, and he composed the following gatha to record his experience:

“How wonderful! How wonderful!

The inanimate expounding the Dharma –

What an ineffable truth!”

Ungan told him to be in silence. And as you become silent, everything around you starts expounding the truth: the trees and the mountains . . . all the objects become suddenly aflame, afire with truth. If you are sitting silently in your own source of being, then everything in the world indicates toward the ultimate.

When he found his source, he wrote this gatha:

“How wonderful! How wonderful!

The inanimate expounding the Dharma –

What an ineffable truth!”

If you try to hear it with your ears, you will never understand it.

Only when you hear it through the eye, will you really know it.”

He is talking about the third eye. As you go inward . . . your energy is in the head. First it has to pass the third eye. Going deeper it will pass through the heart, the fourth center – and the whole energy is at the first center. From there it can rise back to the seventh center in the head.

But if you remain hung up in the seventh center only, you will never know as an experience what is truth. You have to come down to the depths, to the valleys of your being. You have to reach to the very roots from where you are joined with the whole.

Ungan asked him, “Are you happy now?”

Tozan answered, “I do not say that I am not happy but my happiness is like that of someone who has picked up a bright pearl from the heap of garbage.”

For a while after his enlightenment, Tozan continued to travel around China.

He is saying that unless you see it yourself, there is no other way to know it. You cannot hear it from somebody else. No buddha can preach it to you, no master can teach it to you. They all can only make gestures. They all can only indicate their finger toward the moon, but the finger is not the moon. You have to drop looking at the finger, and to start looking at the moon. When you look at the moon yourself, you know the beauty of it. You cannot know that beauty by looking at the finger pointing to the moon.

All knowledge is pointing to the moon. All sutras, all scriptures are pointing to the moon – just fingers. And people are clinging to the fingers, they have completely forgotten that the fingers are not the point. The moon is far away, the finger is only pointing toward it. Don’t cling to the finger; forget the finger. Forget all knowledge, all scriptures, and look at your truth yourself.

It is not a question of your ears, it is a question of your very eye, your inner eye. Unless you look inside . . . you cannot know it by hearing, or by reading. Becoming knowledgeable is not becoming a buddha, but becoming an innocent child, reaching to the sources playfully without any seriousness, joyously and cheerfully, dancing . . . Take your energy to the very source and remain there just for a few moments, and you will be filled with a new experience which goes on growing every day.

Soon you find you are filled with light – not only filled, but the light starts radiating around your body. That’s what has been called the aura, and what Wilhelm Reich was trying scientifically to prove. But he was forced into an insane asylum because people could not understand what he was talking about – “What radiation is he talking about?”

But now, Kirlian photography is able to take the photograph of your life aura around your body. The healthier you are, the bigger is the aura. In your happiness it dances around you; in your misery it shrinks. When a miserable person was used as an object by Kirlian, he could not find any aura in the photograph – the aura had shrunk inside. But when he photographed children dancing and enjoying, joyfully plucking the wildflowers or collecting stones on the seabeach, he found such a tremendous aura around them.

The same aura has been found around the buddhas. And it is almost miraculous that although no photography was available in the times of Buddha or Krishna, the paintings, the statues all have the aura – a round aura around the head.

Once you have seen your own life source, you start seeing the same light radiating from every object in the world, every person in the world. You can see from the aura whether the person is miserable or is happy.

His master, Ungan, asked him, “Are you happy now?”

Tozan was a scholar, and he knew the way a buddha speaks. And now he himself has experienced it – you can see it in his answer. He says, “I do not say that I am not happy, but to say I am happy will make it a very ordinary statement. To say that I am happy is not something great, and what I have found is so great that it cannot be described by the word ‘happiness’, it is far more. So I will not say I am not happy. You have to understand, it is something more than happiness. Words cannot describe it. Only this much I can say: I have found a bright pearl in the heap of garbage.”

What he is calling the “heap of garbage,” is his scholarship. He has accumulated so much knowledge unnecessarily, and all that knowledge was only heaping up and hiding the original being – your very roots into existence.

It is not ordinary happiness, in fact there is no word that can describe it. “Blissfulness” comes closer, even closer comes “benediction”, still closer comes “ecstasy”. But beyond that, no word is there; the experience is far deeper than ecstasy itself.

For a while after his enlightenment, Tozan continued to travel around China. One day he arrived at Leh T’an and met the head monk, Ch’u. Ch’u greeted Tozan and said:

“Wonderful, wonderful – the inconceivable realms of Tao and Buddha!”

Ch’u greeted Tozan, and in his greeting, he said, “Wonderful, wonderful – the inconceivable realms of Tao and Buddha! I can see in you the very meeting of Buddha and Tao.”

It is the same experience. Tozan responded, “I don’t know about these realms you are talking about. Who is talking of them?”

He is indicating to Ch’u that it is beyond words – “Look inside yourself. Who is saying these words? From where are these words coming? That source is beyond the words.”

Ch’u remained silent, and Tozan shouted “Speak!”

Ch’u then said, “No need to fight about it. That is the way to miss.”

Tozan replied, “If it has not been mentioned, how can there be fighting and missing?”

Ch’u could make no answer to this.

Tozan then said, “Buddha and Tao – next you will talk of sutras.”

“First you mention Buddha and Tao, and then you will start talking about sutras. Once you begin to talk, there is no end to talking, and the thing you are trying to talk about is beyond words.”

Ch’u replied, “What do the sutras say about this?”

Tozan responded, “When all is understood, words are forgotten.”

Ch’u said, “This is sickness of the mind.”

Tozan said, “Is this sickness slight or severe?”

Ch’u could make no reply to Tozan.

That was the reason Isan sent him to Ungan. He was a man of great scholarship, and once he has found his own buddha, he will become a very great master. Ordinary teachers will not even be able to understand him. Ch’u was an ordinary teacher of Tao and Buddhism both. And you can see that Tozan denied even Buddha and Tao. Those words only indicate, they don’t describe. And he said to Ch’u, “If you go on, soon you will start talking about sutras.”

You can see his philosophical approach. Now that he has found the truth, it is very difficult for anybody who is just a scholar even to talk with him. He will be able to defeat any scholarly person very easily.

Seeing that Tozan is saying that even Buddha and Tao are not exactly the experience, Ch’u, as a teacher, said, “What do the sutras say about this?” He is still talking about sutras – “What do the sutras say about this unknowable, this inexpressible? You are indicating that it is beyond Buddha and beyond Tao.”

Tozan said, “When all is understood, words are forgotten. Once you have known it, once you have tasted it, you become silent.” Of course, a teacher will not agree on this point.

Ch’u, in anger, said, “This is sickness of the mind.”

Tozan said, “Is this sickness slight or severe?”

What kind of sickness? It is not sickness, but a teacher is confined to the mind. You say anything beyond the mind and you are simply talking nonsense. You are sick, you are mad, you are insane. A teacher is confined to the mind, a master is beyond the mind.

Ch’u could make no reply to Tozan’s inquiry whether this sickness was slight or severe.

One day the monk Akinobo went to visit a poet friend of his. Chatting, he mentioned that he had made a collection of poems – one for each day of the year. He read him one:

The fourth day
Of the new year;
What better day
To leave the world?

That very day was the fourth day of the first month of the year 1718. No sooner had he finished reciting the verse than Akinobo nodded his head and died.

Zen masters know how to live and also know how to die. They take neither life seriously nor death seriously. Seriousness is a sick way of looking at existence. A man of perfection will love to live and will love to die. His life will be a dance, and his death will be a song. There will be no distinction between life and death.

It is time, Nivedano . . .

Osho leads a guided meditation into no-mind:

Osho requests the first beating of the drum . . .

Nivedano . . .

(Drumbeat)

and everyone moves totally into gibberish.

(Gibberish)

After a few minutes Osho signals a second beating of the drum.

Nivedano . . .

(Drumbeat)

Be silent . . . Close your eyes . . . and feel yourself completely frozen.

This is the right moment to enter inward.

Gather all your energy, your total consciousness, and rush toward the inner center with deep intensity and urgency.

The center is just two inches below the navel, inside the body.

Faster . . . and faster . . . Deeper . . . and deeper . . .

As you come closer to the center of being, a great silence descends over you, and inside a peace, a blissfulness, a light that fills your whole interior. This is your original being. This is your buddha.

At this moment, witness that you are not the body, not the mind, not the heart, but just the pure witnessing self, the pure consciousness. This is your buddhahood, your hidden nature, your meeting with the universe. These are your roots.

Relax . . .

And the next drumbeat . . .

Nivedano . . .

(Drumbeat)

Relax . . . and just be a silent witness.

You start melting like ice in the ocean. Gautama the Buddha Auditorium becomes an oceanic field of consciousness. You are no longer separate – this is your oneness with existence.

To be one with existence is to be a buddha, it is your very nature. It is not a question of searching and finding, you are it, right now.

Gather all the flowers, the fragrance, the flame and the fire, the immeasurable, and bring it with you as you come back.

And the final drumbeat . . .

Nivedano . . .

(Drumbeat)

Come back peacefully, silently, as a buddha.

Just for a few seconds close your eyes and remember the path and the source you have found, and the buddha nature that you have experienced.

This moment you are the most blessed people on the Earth. Remembering yourself as a buddha is the most precious experience, because it is your eternity, it is your immortality.

It is not you; it is your very existence. You are one with the stars and the trees and the sky and the ocean. You are no longer separate.

The last word of Buddha was, sammasati.

Remember that you are a buddha – sammasati.

Okay, Maneesha?

-Osho

From The Zen Manifesto: Freedom from Oneself, Discourse #11

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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