Category: on Zen

God is an Escape – Osho

The appearance of Gautam the Buddha was one of the most phenomenal events of human consciousness. Whatsoever was going on in the name of religion before he appeared stopped forever. He brought truth to such simplicity, to such felicity, to such grace. He spoke the way an enlightened person speaks – he spoke through his being. He was not a scholar, and he was not worried about speculation. He had no abstract ideas; he was very down-to-earth.

And since then, Zen people have carried the flame down the ages. They speak, not because they have a philosophy to propound; they speak because they have seen something – it has to be conveyed. They speak as seers, not as thinkers. They speak as masters, not as believers.

Buddha transformed the very quality of religion. It was theology before him; after him it became anthropology. God was dethroned, man was enthroned. ‘God’ is not a relevant word with Buddha, ‘man’ is. He says: All that is needed is hidden inside human consciousness. Man has not to look up to the heavens, he has not to ask for any grace from anywhere. He has to become a light unto himself.

And the light is there; it is the very core of your life. Just one thing has happened, you have forgotten it. Not that you have lost it, just forgotten. Remember it, because that is very fundamental to Buddha’s approach.

Life is a forgetfulness and a remembering. And that’s all, and that’s the whole story. one falls asleep and dreams a thousand and one things, and in the morning, one wakes up and all the dreams are gone. So is life. We have fallen asleep – fallen asleep to our inner being. We have forgotten who we are. Hence, the world, the samsara. The samsara means the world of ten thousand things. And we go on rushing from one thing to another thing – in search of a self. Because we have lost contact with our self, we are continuously searching for it. If you look deep down into the agony of man, this is the agony. He has forgotten who he is and is searching and asking, asking of everybody, “Who am I?” May not be so consciously . . .

That’s what you are asking when you fall in love. You are asking your beloved to tell you who you are. Why do people feel so beautiful when they are in love? Because some identity starts arising.

The woman you love says, “You are beautiful. You are intelligent, you are unique.” She is giving you a self. When you say to the woman, “You are beautiful. I have never come across such a beautiful person. I cannot live without you, you are my life, my joy, my very existence,” you are giving an identity to the woman. She was searching for it; she does not know who she is. Now you are creating a self She is creating a self for you, you are creating a self for her.

That’s why people feel so at ease when they are in love. When love disappears, is broken, shattered, they are shattered. Why are you shattered? You are shattered because your identity is again lost, again you don’t know who you are. It was the woman or the man who was giving you a certain kind of idea of who you are. Now the woman is gone and the idea is gone with her. Now again you are in darkness. Again, you don’t know, again you start searching for . . .

Why do you seek money and wealth? Just to have some identity. So that you know who you are, so that people can say who you are. Why do you go on searching for power, prestige? The same reason.

Man is in a constant search for the self. Man is in a constant identity crisis. And because in the past things were more settled, people were more at ease. Now things are changing so fast that again and again your identity is shattered.

Just think: in the old days, once you got married, you got married. You were not going to be searching again for a woman or for a man; it was a whole-life thing, a settlement. A certain idea would become fixed, slowly, slowly, that you were the husband, the father of the children, this and that. But now it is difficult, and more so particularly in the West.

Every once in a while, you will change the woman; every once in a while, you will change the man. Again and again, you will have to search for the identity.

In the past, people used to do the same work their whole life; it was traditional. Your grandfather was a carpenter, your father was a carpenter, you are a carpenter, your children will be carpenters – you knew who you were. Now it is impossible to know. People go on changing their jobs; things are changing so fast . . .

You knew in the past where you belonged. You were an Indian, a Christian, a Hindu, a Chinese, a Buddhist. Now you don’t know any more. The world has come very much closer; boundaries have become false. The world has become a small village, a global village. Now you don’t know. And now you know there is not much difference between a Hindu and a Christian or a Mohammedan; that identity is not of any help any more.

Who are you? This problem is one of the most fundamental problems. Modern man is very much puzzled. almost paralyzed.

Buddha says: It is not going to be of any help if you create a false identity. You can live with it your whole life, still you will not know who you are. The only way to know who you are is to go within yourself with great remembrance, with great mindfulness, with awareness. Asking from the outside, whatsoever you get is a pseudo-thing. Your woman, your man, your country, your religion, your church – they will give you a certain kind of identity. They will create a false self. But that is not real.

And only the mediocre can be deceived by it, only the stupid can be deceived by it. The intelligent person sooner or later will have to see the point that these identities are from the outside: “In fact I don’t know who I am. My being a husband does not say anything about me. My being a father or a mother does not say anything about me. My being a Christian or a Hindu does not say anything about me. I am still in darkness.”

These labels may be of some help in the outside world but your identity card is not you. Your name is not you, even your photograph is not you, because you go on changing and the photograph remains static. It simply represents one moment in your life. It is not that it represents you – one gesture in your life, and that too very superficial. For example, you were smiling and the photograph was taken, and you may have just been smiling for the photographer.

I have heard: One photographer was saying to a very, very serious-looking man, “Just for a single moment, sir, smile. And then you can be your usual self again.”

Now, this photograph of this serious man smiling is absolutely false; that smile is just on the lips. The photograph cannot penetrate inside you. In fact not even an X-ray can penetrate inside you – it may take the pictures of your bones but it cannot take your picture.

There is no way to see from the outside who you are. There is only one way, and that is to become alert inside, to awaken inside, to make great effort inside, so that you are not asleep there. Then only will you have the first glimpse of the real man.

And remember Ikkyu: One single glimpse of the real man and one is in love. The man who is searching for his identity cannot be in love; his love is also nothing but a search for the identity. Amongst other searches, that also is one. You write a book, you become a famous author, or you paint and you become a painter, or you sing and you become a singer. But these are all efforts to somehow categorize you, to identify who you are.

There is an ancient story about a philosopher who was very forgetful. He was so forgetful that in the night he would sleep with all his clothes on, even with his shoes on. Somebody suggested, “This is not a way to sleep – and how can one sleep with shoes on? and your hat on, and all the dress?”

And he said, “It is very difficult. If I put them away in the night, then in the morning I forget where I have put my shoes, where I have put my coat. And what is a coat? and what are shoes? And what is my hat? Everything becomes such a mess and it takes so much trouble to find and sort things out that I have decided never to do it again. Half my day is wasted.”

The man was a practical man. He said, “This is a simple thing. I know that you are a very forgetful man – you can do one thing. You can write, you can stick small labels on everything: ‘This is my coat’, ‘This is my shoe’. And you can keep a diary also: where you have put the shoes, underneath the bed; and where you have put your coat, and where your underwear is . . . you can just make notes.”

That appealed to the philosopher, and he did it. And next morning he was really in a mess – he had never been in such a mess. Everything worked out. He found his shoes, they were underneath the bed. He found his coat; it was hanging there in the cupboard. He found his shirt – he found everything. And finally, he shouted, looking at the sky, “My God! But now where am I? Because I have forgotten to note it down!”

He looked in the bed, but he was not there. You can imagine the poor man’s anguish. He searched all over the house, he looked in every nook and corner, and he was not there. And he came running out of the house shouting, “Please, somebody tell me where I am? Everything else I have found in its place; just one thing I forgot. I didn’t write in the notebook where I have to find myself. I think was in the bed, but the bed is empty.”

The story looks fictitious; it is not. It is your story. It is everybody’s story. It is man’s story. You know where your house is, you know your phone number, you know who your wife is, you know who your son is . . . you know you are a Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Indian, Japanese. But do you really know who you are and where you are? And you will be almost in as much bewilderment as that ancient philosopher.

But people don’t ask this question, because this question creates such uneasiness. They avoid it. They go on living, avoiding it. Buddha transformed the quality of religion. Religion with Buddha became man-oriented. Before Buddha it was God-oriented. Now, God is not a problem at all – whose problem is God? How are you concerned with God? Seems to be a bogus problem, nobody’s concern. Maybe priests have some investment in it, maybe politicians have some investment in it, but really it is not an existential question.

The existential question is: Who am I?

With Buddha, religion changed its quality. It became realistic, it became pragmatic. Buddha said: There is no need to be worried about God. Let him worry himself about himself – if he wants to know who he is he can ask, “Who am I?” Why should you be worried?

And in the first place, God is your creation. That is your ultimate effort to avoid yourself. You go on creating fictitious problems. There is one beautiful thing about fictitious problems: they can be solved, easily they can be solved. In fact the problem is fictitious – any fictitious answer will do. The disease is pseudo – any pseudo-medicine will do.

People become very much interested in pseudo-problems, and they think they are great seekers. Buddha hit them hard and shattered their ego, the ego of being a seeker. He said: if you are seeking and searching for God, you are simply befooling yourself.

God is nobody’s problem I Just see the point. How can God be your problem? But people think it is a problem. B! making it a problem, they can avoid their own problems. They become too much occupied with God. They start thinking, they start collecting answers, they start philosophizing, speculating; they go into scriptures, and they are lost in the jungle of words. And they have forgotten the simple question that was really their question: Who am I? God may be the greatest escape.

It has been noted by psychologists that in times of anguish, misery, war, trouble, people start thinking of abstract things – God, truth, heaven, after-life. In times of stress when people are very uneasy on this earth, they start looking at the sky. They focus their problems there so they can avoid the real problems of the earth. This has been watched, observed, again and again. After each year there is a great revival of religion – the so-called religion.

And you know it by your personal experience also. Whenever you are in misery, in pain, you remember God. Whenever you are happy, when you are flowing and life is a celebration, you don’t care a bit about God, you don’t remember. This is a simple experience; no psychologist is needed to observe it. Everybody can observe in his own life. What does it say? It simply says that when you are in anguish you have to avoid the anguish and you have to create a false problem to go away from it – a great occupation . . .

You start praying. And you had never prayed. In fact, when things were going well you had never gone to the priest. When things were going beautifully and you were succeeding in life and the life was a bed of roses, you didn’t remember God. But when life becomes a bed of neurosis, then – then suddenly you remember God. God is an escape.

Bertrand Russell is right in saying that if life on earth becomes really blissful people will forget all about God and there will be no religion. He is right, because he does not know the religion of Buddha. He knows Christianity. Yes, religions like Christianity and Hinduism will disappear. But if life is really happy on the earth, something like Buddha’s message will become very, very prevalent.

When life is going well, beautifully, and all is flowing and flowering, this question arises in the deepest core of your being: “Now is the time to know – who am I?” When life is not flowing, all is blocked and there is only misery and misery and all is hell, how can you ask “Who am I?” To come that close to yourself is dangerous because there is only hellfire and nothing else. How can you come that close? How can you sit silently with closed eyes and look into yourself? You have to avoid, you have to escape, you have to run away. So anything will do.

And that’s how things always happen. Whenever a society is in turmoil people become very much interested in occult, esoteric things. They start seeing UFO’s, they start seeing beings from other planets, they start thinking of great things that are going to happen. They start going to the astrologers . . . and all kinds of nonsense .

Buddha brings a very sensible religion to the world. Empirical, experiential, existential. In Buddha’s way, there is no God, no prayer.

And just think of your poor God, if he exists. What will his situation be? – just think of him. All kinds of people praying and shouting at him and complaining. And it has been going on and on. Either he does not listen at all, or he must have gone crazy by now.

A great psychotherapist was asked by his student . . . The student watched the great old man working from the morning till evening, continuously psychoanalyzing mad people, all kinds of nuts, listening to them. And he u as dead tired by the evening, he was a young man. And the old man was as fresh as he was in the morning.

One day he could not contain his curiosity. He asked, “What is the matter? How do you manage? The whole day listening to such horrible tales, nightmares, and you never become tired?”

And the old man said, “Who listens?”

God must be avoiding you. […]

Buddha relieved man of God, and Buddha relieved God of man. Buddha’s approach is such that if Friedrich Nietzsche had been born in a Buddhist land, he could not have written that God is dead and that from now onward man is free. There would have been no need.

Buddha helped God disappear without any bloodshed. Nietzsche had to kill. Nietzsche says: God is dead; and not that he has died a natural death – we had to kill him, just to be free of him. How can man be free with God? If God is there, then religion becomes nothing but obedience. If God is there, then religion is reduced to obedience.

That’s why in Christianity you don’t talk about freedom; you don’t talk about moksha. Moksha means absolute freedom. And absolute freedom includes freedom from God! Otherwise, how can it be absolute? If there is somebody to whom you are responsible and answerable, you can’t be free.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s statement – God is dead and we had to murder him – is just a reaction created by Christianity and its obsession with obedience. Christianity has created slaves in the world. Nietzsche had to utter that word, had to utter that statement. If Nietzsche had not done it, then somebody else would have done it. It was a need, it was inevitable.

Christianity leaves no alternatives . . . it leaves only two alternatives: either commit suicide, lose all your freedom, become a zombie in the name of God; or murder God and be free. And both are ugly – suicide or murder?

Buddhism does not give you such ugly alternatives. It simply says God is not the problem – the problem is man. God is an escape from the problem. Look into man, find out your source inside, and all will be solved.

And remember again, Buddha is not an atheist. He is not saying there is no God, but his concept of God is totally different. When you come to the deepest core of your being, to your very source, you will know that you are God.

Christianity says: You are sons of God. Buddhism says: When you come to know yourself, you are not sons – you are godhood itself. There is no God other than you, there is no God other than the universe. Hence Buddha never talks about God, because there is no God other than this. There is no that other than this. This is that. Existence is divine.

But to know this, no prayer is going to help. To know this, no philosophy is going to be of any support. To know this, one has to go utterly into oneself – with only one question like an arrow piercing your heart: Who am I? And the deeper you go, the deeper you will see that you don’t exist as an individual.

That is the meaning of Buddha’s doctrine of anatta – no-self. You will not come to see any self inside you. The whole idea of being a person will slowly, slowly melt, and there will be a kind of presence but no personality. The individual will disappear and there will be the universal. You will not be separate from existence; you will find yourself one with the whole.

-Osho

From Take It Easy, Discourse #11

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

The Mysterious One – Osho

Rinzai said:

If you want to be comfortable 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 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.

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 comfortable 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 comfortable 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.

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.

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. […]

Therefore, followers of the way, the one who is now listening to my expounding of the dharma is certainly not 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.

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 the architect was. 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.

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.

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.

-Osho

From The Miracle, Discourse #7

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Enlightenment – Osho

Enlightenment is the greatest revolution you can conceive of because it destroys all fictions, all rituals, all gods, all traditions, all scriptures. It leaves you with only the essential consciousness of your own being. Its trust in consciousness is so total that there is no need of anything else.

It has not been said as clearly as I am putting it . . . I want to make it absolutely clear that the very idea of enlightenment is against all religions. Or, in other words, the only authentic religion is that of enlightenment. All other religions are part of the marketplace; they are businesses exploiting human helplessness, exploiting human weakness, exploiting human limitations.

Religions have done so much harm to man that it is unparalleled. Nothing else has been so dangerous. In every possible way they have been preventing man from even hearing the word ‘enlightenment’. You should not become aware that raising your hands to the sky is stupid — there is no one to answer your prayers, no prayer has ever been answered. […]

Enlightenment is a rebellion against all traditions, against all priests, against all religions, because it declares that there is nothing higher than man’s consciousness. And man is not suffering because some stupid man in the past disobeyed a fictitious God; man is not suffering because of millions of lives of evil acts. Man is suffering for the simple reason that he does not know himself. His ignorance about himself is the only cause of his suffering, misery, torture.

Enlightenment brings everything to a very simple and scientific conclusion. It pinpoints that all that you need is to learn the art of awareness.

Ta Hui is right to say that enlightenment is the key, the only key which opens all the realities and all the blessings and all the potentials which have been hidden within you. You are a seed: enlightenment is nothing but finding the right soil and waiting for the spring to come.

Enlightenment is such a radical standpoint.

It is not another religion.

It is the only religion.

All other religions are pseudo.

Ta Hui says, Some take sitting wordlessly with eyes shut beneath the Black Mountain, inside the Ghost Cave, and consider it as the scene on the other side of the primordial Buddha, the scene before their parents were born — They also call it “silent, yet ever illuminating,” and consider it ch’an. This lot don’t seek subtle wondrous enlightenment. They consider enlightenment as falling into the secondary.

This word ‘secondary’ has to be understood because it has a context, and without the context you will not be able to grasp the meaning. Gautam Buddha has said, “To experience enlightenment is primary, but to say anything about it is secondary.” To know it is fundamental, but to say anything about it — howsoever articulate, howsoever intelligently worded — falls into the secondary, into the nonessential. The essential is the experience; the expression is nonessential.

But this is one of the great misfortunes of humanity, that even great truths are destined to be misunderstood by people. What Buddha is saying is one thing; what people hear is another.

There is a school which says enlightenment is secondary, and Gautam Buddha himself has said it. Don’t be bothered by it. Certainly, Gautam Buddha has said it, but he has not said that enlightenment is secondary. He has said that to say anything about it is to go wrong . . . even the very word enlightenment, and you have gone far away from the experience.

And you know in your ordinary life there are situations . . . When you see a beautiful rose, is it the same to experience the beauty of the rose and to say that it is beautiful? Can the word ‘beautiful’ contain your experience of the rose? You experience love, but is it possible to say through the word ‘love’ exactly what you experience in the silences of your heart? The love that you experience and the word ‘love’ are not synonymous. The word is not even an echo of your authentic experience. And these are ordinary realities: beauty, love, gratitude. Enlightenment is the ultimate experience of being one with the whole. There is no way to say it.

Lao Tzu refused his whole life to say anything about it: “You can talk about everything, but don’t mention the ultimate experience” — because he cannot lie, and to say anything about the ultimate truth is a lie.

Gautam Buddha was right, but he was not taking into consideration the stupid people who are always in the majority. He would never have thought that there would be a school quoting him, saying that enlightenment is secondary; the real thing is to worship, the real thing is to pray. Gautam Buddha has denied . . . His last words were, “Don’t make statues of me, because I don’t want you to be worshipers, I want you to be buddhas. And a buddha praying before a stone statue is simply ridiculous.”

But such is the ignorance of man that the first statues made of any man were those of Gautam Buddha. There had been statues, but those were of fictitious gods. Gautam Buddha is the first historical person whose statues were made and made on such a great scale that even today he has more statues in the world than anybody else. And the poor fellow had said, “Don’t make my statues, because I am not teaching you to worship, I am teaching you to awaken. No worship is going to help; it is simply a waste of time.”

But the priest is interested in worship; hence Buddha’s words were not taken care of, and priests started making statues. Rituals were created, and he had been fighting for forty-two years continuously against rituals, against temples, against scriptures. Exactly what he had been fighting against was done afterwards — and done with all good intentions by people who thought they were doing some service to humanity, by people who thought that they were followers of Gautam Buddha.

It is a strange history. Every master has been betrayed, without exception, by his own people in different ways. The betrayal of Judas was very ordinary, superficial. But the betrayal of those who have created statues of Buddha, made temples of Buddha, created scriptures in the name of Buddha, brought everything back against which that man had fought for forty-two years continuously . . . From the back door everything has come in.

These people say . . . and they are many, and of many different sectarian ideologies. There are thirty-two Buddhist sects in the world, and they all think they are teaching exactly what Gautam Buddha has said. But there are only a few who can be said to have understood Gautam Buddha — because the only way to understand him is to become him, is to become an awakened being.

Except for that, there is no way to understand Buddha. You cannot study him from scriptures and you cannot persuade him by your prayers. You can be in his company only by being awakened the same way as he was. On those same sunlit peaks of consciousness, you will be able to understand him. In other words, the day you understand yourself you will have understood the message of this strangest man who has walked on the earth. The priests have been trying to misquote him, to distort him, to interpret him for their own interests. They consider enlightenment as falling into the secondary.

They think that enlightenment deceives people . . . The fact is, only enlightenment does not deceive people. Except enlightenment, everything in the name of religion deceives people.

. . . That enlightenment is a fabrication . . . And I say again to you: only enlightenment is the ultimate reality. Other than that, everything else is a fabrication. All your gods, all your messiahs, all your prophets are nothing but your own imagination, your own projection. They are fulfilling certain needs in you, but those needs are sick. They are providing you with father-figures.

It is not strange that people call God “the father,” because everybody feels alone in the world, unprotected. Always death is walking by your side; it can grab you any moment. Life is so insecure and unsafe that you need some insurance, some guarantee. God comes in handy; he is your father. In times of trouble, you can always rely on him, although he has never helped anybody.

Even Jesus on the cross is praying. Finally, he freaks out and shouts at the sky, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” But still, he goes on looking, hoping that God will be coming on a white cloud to save him, with angels playing on their harps, singing “Alleluia!” But not a single white cloud appears.

Jesus can be taken as the greatest example of all those who believe in fictions. He believed too much . . . The sky is not responsible for his beliefs, and if the sky is not fulfilling his expectations, only he is responsible — nobody else. He had immense belief, but he was not enlightened; he did not trust. He believed in a God; he believed madly that he was the only son of God.

These very ideas show that the man was a little neurotic. Instead of helping him and giving him the right treatment, there were other idiots who crucified him . . . but crucifixion is not a treatment. So one sort of idiots crucified him and another sort of idiots, in their imagination, have resurrected him. Now half of humanity is following a man who was a mental case.

But why has he been able to influence so many people? The reason is not that he had a great, convincing philosophy — he had no philosophy at all! The reason is that humanity at large is also neurotic. It feels very good to believe in Jesus Christ, to believe in God; it creates a protection — just in your mind. You will be deceived, finally you will be disillusioned, but to be disillusioned at the time of death is meaningless. Then there is no time is left to do anything else.

The people who say that enlightenment deceives people, the people who say that enlightenment is a fabrication, are people who since they have never awakened themselves, they don’t believe anyone has awakened either.

It is like blind people who don’t believe that there is light — and there is no way to convince them. Even the greatest logician will not be able to convince a blind man that there is light, because light is not an argument but an experience. You need eyes — you don’t need great philosophical proofs.

If you are deaf, no music exists for you. If you are crippled, it hurts you that somebody else can dance. And if the majority is crippled — which is the case as far as enlightenment is concerned . . . If once in a while there is a dancer and millions of people are crippled, they cannot believe that he is real. Maybe he is a dream, maybe an illusion, maybe a magical trick — but he cannot be real. Their own experience does not support his reality.

The awakened ones have found themselves in utter aloneness in a world where everybody is capable of becoming a dancer, but people have chosen to remain crippled, people have chosen to remain blind. There are people who can exploit you only if you are blind, if you are crippled, if you are deaf, if you are dumb. These parasites are your prophets, these parasites are your priests.

Enlightenment is a rebellion against all these parasites.

-Osho

From The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Discourse #34

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Samyak Shravan – Right Listening – Osho

To discipline ourselves in learning is called hearing.

And Buddhists call the first step of learning, of knowing, hearing; right hearing – ‘samyak shravan’. […]

Because the truth happens when you are in the mood of right listening. It has nothing to do with the object of listening; it has everything to do with the quality of listening. But we have forgotten how to listen. Even when we are silent, we are not listening. Even when we pretend to show that yes, we are listening, we are not listening; we are doing a thousand and one things in the mind. Many thoughts are crowding in. Politely we show that yes, we are listening, politely sometimes we nod also – we are listening –but deep inside us is the madhouse. How can you listen?

To listen you will have to drop your thinking. With thoughts, listening is not possible. If you are speaking inside and I am speaking here, how can you listen to me? Because you are closer to yourself than me, your thoughts will be closer to you, they will make a ring around you and they will not allow my thoughts to enter. They will allow only those thoughts which are in tune with them, they will choose and select. They will not allow anything that is strange, unfamiliar, unknown. Then it is not worth listening because you are simply listening to your own thoughts. And it is dangerous because now you will think that you have listened to me. Right listening means to be in a totally receptive, silent mood.

In Zen the disciple sits for many months, sometimes years, before he becomes capable of listening. Whenever anybody came to Buddha he would say, ‘For one year or two years you simply sit here. Nothing else has to be done. You simply learn how to sit.’ People would say, ‘We know already how to sit.’ And Buddha would say, ‘I have never come across a person who knows how to sit, because when I say sit, I mean sit – no turmoil, no movement of thought, totally silent, utterly silent, no movement in the body, no movement in the mind. A pool of energy with no ripples.’

To discipline ourselves in learning is called hearing.

So the whole Buddhist discipline, Zen discipline, starts by right listening.

-Osho

From Dang Dang Doko Dang, Discourse #9

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The Path is Only a Reminder – Osho

If Zen is the path, and you are the gate, then who lives in the house?

Prem Michael, Zen is the path, and I am the gate, and you live in the house. You have completely forgotten – that’s what makes the possibility of making a path, to remind you. The path is only a reminder. You have completely forgotten that you are in the house. You think you are out of the house; hence a gate is needed to bring you in. […]

Your question is beautiful. “If Zen is the path and you are the gate, then who lives in the house?” You live in the house, but you have forgotten. And to remind you, a path has to be created; to remind you, a gate has to be created. To remind you, you have to be taken on the path and given help to enter the house, which in fact you have never left.

Just an imaginary game – getting out on the path, doing great disciplines, meditations, the master . . . Finally, the gate comes, and you say, “Aha! I have arrived.” And this is the house which you have never left.

-Osho

From Hari Om Tat Sat, Discourse #10

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A Rhythm of One – Osho

First try to understand the word ‘suchness’. Buddha depends on that word very much. In Buddha’s own language it is tathata – suchness. The whole Buddhist meditation consists of living in this word, living with this word, so deeply that the word disappears and you become the suchness. For example, you are ill. The attitude of suchness is: accept it – and say to yourself, “Such is the way of the body,” or “Such are things.” Don’t create a fight, don’t start struggling. You have a headache – accept it. Such is the nature of things. Suddenly there is a change, because when this attitude comes in a change follows just like a shadow. If you can accept your headache, the headache disappears.

You try it. If you accept an illness, it starts dispersing. Why does it happen? It happens because whenever you are fighting, your energy is divided: half the energy moving into illness, the headache, and half the energy fighting the headache – a rift, a gap and the fight. Really this fight is a deeper headache.

Once you accept, once you don’t complain, once you don’t fight, the energy has become one within. The rift is bridged. And so much energy is released because now there is no conflict – the release of energy itself becomes a healing force. Healing doesn’t come from outside. All that medicines can do is to help the body to bring its own healing force into action. All that a doctor can do is just to help you to find your own healing power. Health cannot be forced from outside; it is your energy flowering.

This word ‘suchness’ can work so deeply that with physical illness, with mental illness and finally with spiritual illness – this is a secret method – they all dissolve. But start from the body, because that is the lowest layer. If you succeed there, then higher levels can be tried. If you fail there, then it will be difficult for you to move higher.

Something is wrong in the body: relax and accept it and simply say inside – not only in words but feel it deeply – that such is the nature of things. A body is a compound, so many things combined in it. The body is born, it is prone to death. And it is a mechanism, and complex; there is every possibility of something or other going wrong.

Accept it, and don’t be identified. When you accept you remain above, you remain beyond. When you fight you come to the same level. Acceptance is transcendence. When you accept, you are on a hill, the body is left behind. You say, “Yes, such is the nature. Things born will have to die. And if things born have to die they will be ill sometimes. Nothing to be worried about too much” – as if it is not happening to you, just happening in the world of the things.

This is the beauty: that when you are not fighting, you transcend. You are no more on the same level. And this transcendence becomes a healing force. Suddenly the body starts changing. And the same happens to mental worries, tensions, anxieties, anguish. You are worried about a certain thing. What is the worry? You cannot accept the fact, that’s the worry. You would like it in some way different from how it is happening. You are worried because you have some ideas to enforce on nature.

For example, you are getting old. You are worried. You would like to remain young forever – this is the worry. You love a wife, you depend on her and she is thinking to leave, or of moving with another man, and you are worried – worried because what will happen to you? You depend on her so much, you feel so much security with her. When she is gone there will be no security.

She has not only been a wife to you, she has been also a mother, a shelter; you can come and hide against the whole world. You can rely on her; she will be there. Even if the whole world is against you, she will not be against you, she is a consolation. Now she is leaving, what will happen to you? Suddenly you are in a panic, worried.

What are you saying? What are you saying by your worry? You are saying you cannot accept this happening; this should not be so. You expected it just the otherwise, just the contrary; you wanted this wife to be yours forever and ever, and now she is leaving. But what can you do? When love disappears what can you do? There is no way; you cannot force love, you cannot force this wife to remain with you. Yes, you can force – that’s what everybody is doing – you can force.

The dead body will be there, but the living spirit will have left. Then that will be a tension on you.

Against nature nothing can be done. Love was a flowering, now the flower has faded. The breeze has come into your house, now it has moved into another. Such is the way of things; they go on moving and changing. The world of things is a flux; nothing is permanent there. Don’t expect! If you expect permanency in the world where everything is impermanent, you will create worry. You would like this love to be forever. Nothing can be forever in this world – all that belongs to this world is momentary. This is the nature of things, suchness, tathata.

So you know now the love has disappeared. It gives you sadness – okay, accept sadness. You feel trembling – accept trembling, don’t suppress it. You feel like crying, cry. Accept it! Don’t force it, don’t make a face, don’t pretend that you are not worried, because that won’t help. If you are worried you are worried; if the wife is leaving, she is leaving; if the love is no more it is no more. You cannot fight the facticity; you have to accept it.

And if you accept it gradually, then you will be continuously in pain and suffering. If you accept it without any complaint, not in helplessness but in understanding, it becomes suchness. Then you are no more worried, then there is no problem – because the problem was arising not because of the fact, but because you couldn’t accept it the way it was happening. You wanted it to follow you.

Remember, life is not going to follow you, you have to follow life. Grudgingly, happily – that’s your choice. If you follow grudgingly, you will be in suffering. If you follow happily you become a Buddha, your life becomes an ecstasy. Buddha has also to die – things won’t change – but he dies in a different way. He dies so happily, as if there is no death. He simply disappears, because he says a thing which is born is going to die.

Birth implies death, so it is okay, nothing can be done about it.

You can be miserable and die. Then you miss the point, the beauty that death can give to you, the grace that happens in the last moment, the illumination that happens when body and soul part. You will miss that because you are so much worried, and you are so much clinging to the past and to the body that your eyes ate closed. You cannot see what is happening because you cannot accept it, so you close your eyes, you close your whole being. You die – you will die many times, and you will go on missing the point of it.

Death is beautiful if you can accept, if you can open the door with a welcoming heart, a warm reception: “yes, because if I am born, I am to die. So the day has come, the circle becomes complete.” You receive death as a guest, a welcome guest, and the quality of the phenomenon changes immediately.

Suddenly you are deathless: the body is dying; you are not dying. You can see now: only the clothes are dropping, not you; only the cover, the container, not the content. The consciousness remains in its illumination – more so because in life many were the covers on it, in death it is naked. And when consciousness is in total nakedness it has a splendor of its own; it is the most beautiful thing in the world. But for that an attitude of suchness has to be imbibed. When I say imbibed, I mean imbibed – not just a mental thought, not the philosophy of suchness, but your whole way of life becomes suchness.

You even don’t think about it; it simply becomes natural. You eat in suchness, you sleep in suchness, you breathe in suchness, you love in suchness, you weep in suchness. It becomes your very style; you need not bother about it, you need not think about it, it is the way you are. That is what I mean by the word ‘imbibe’. You imbibe it, you digest it, it flows in your blood, it goes deep in your bones, it reaches to the very beat of your heart. You accept.

Remember, the word ‘accept’ is not very good. It is loaded – because of you, not because of the word – because you accept only when you feel helpless. You accept grudgingly, you accept halfheartedly. You accept only when you cannot do anything, but deep down you still wish; you would have been happy if it had been otherwise. You accept like a beggar, not like a king – and the difference is great.

If the wife leaves or the husband leaves, finally you come to accept it. What can be done? You weep and cry and many nights you brood and worry, and many nightmares around you and suffering . . . and then what to do? Time heals, not understanding. Time – and remember, time is needed only because you are not understanding, otherwise instant healing happens.

Time is needed because you are not understanding. So by and by – six months, eight months, a year – things become dim, in the memory they are lost, covered with much dust. And a gap comes of one year; by and by you forget.

Still, sometimes the wound hurts. Sometimes a woman passes on the road and suddenly you remember. Some similarity, the way she walks, and the wife is remembered – and the wound. Then you fall in love with someone, then more dust gathers, then you remember less. But even with a new woman, sometimes the way she looks . . . and your wife. The way she sings in the bathroom . . . and the memory. And the wound is there, green.

It hurts because you carry the past. You carry everything, that’s why you are so much burdened. You carry everything! You were a child; the child is still there; you are carrying it. You were a young man; the young man is still there with all his wounds, experiences, stupidities – he is there. You carry your whole past, layers upon layers – everything is there. That’s why you sometimes regress. If something happens and you feel helpless, you start crying like a child. You have regressed in time; the child has taken over. The child is more efficient in weeping than you, so the child comes in and takes over, you start crying and weeping. You can even start kicking, just like a child in a tantrum. But everything is there.

Why is so much load carried? Because you never really accepted anything. Listen: if you

accept anything it simply never becomes a load, then the wound is not carried. You accept the phenomenon; there is nothing to carry from it, you are out of it. Through acceptance you are out of it. Through half – helpless acceptance it is carried.

Remember one thing: anything incomplete is carried by the mind forever and forever, anything complete, it is dropped. Because mind has a tendency to carry the incomplete things just in a hope that someday there may be an opportunity to complete them. You are still waiting for the wife to come, or for the husband, or for the days that have gone you are still waiting. You have not transcended the past.

And because of a too much loaded past, you cannot live in the present. Your present is a mess because of the past, and your future is also going to be the same – because the past will become more and more heavy. Every day it is becoming heavier and heavier.

When you really accept, in that attitude of suchness there is no grudge, you are not helpless. Simply you understand that this is the nature of things. For example, if I want to go out of this room I will go out through the door, not through the wall, because to enter the wall will be just hitting my head against it, it is simply foolish. This is the nature of the wall, to hinder, so you don’t try to pass through it! This is the nature of the door, that you pass through it – because the door is empty you can pass through it.

When a Buddha accepts, he accepts things like wall and door. He passes through the door; he says that is the only way. First you try to pass through the wall, and you wound yourself in many millions of ways. And when you cannot get out – crushed, defeated, depressed, fallen – then you crawl towards the door. You could have gone through the door in the first place. Why did you try and start fighting with the wall?

If you can look at things with a clarity, you simply don’t do things like this, trying to make a door out of a wall. If love disappears, it has disappeared! Now there is a wall – don’t try to go through it. Now the door is no more there, the heart is no more there, the heart has opened to somebody else. And you are not alone here; there are others also.

The door is no more for you, it has become a wall. Don’t try, and don’t knock your head on it. You will be wounded unnecessarily. And wounded, defeated, even the door will not be such a beautiful thing to pass through.

Simply look at things. If something is natural, don’t try to force any unnatural thing on it. Choose the door – be out of it. You are doing every day the foolishness of passing through the wall. Then you become tense, and then you feel continuous confusion. Anguish becomes your very life, the core of it – and then you ask for a meditation.

But why in the first place? Why not look at the facts as they are? Why can’t you look at the facts? Because your wishes are too much there. You go on hoping against all hope. That’s why you have become so hopeless a case.

Just look: whenever there is a situation, don’t desire anything, because desire will lead you astray. Don’t wish and don’t imagine. Simply look at the fact with your total consciousness available and suddenly a door opens and you never move through the wall, you move through the door, unscratched. Then you remain unloaded.

Remember, suchness is an understanding, not a helpless fate. So that’s the difference. People are there who believe in fate, destiny. They say, “What can you do? God has willed it such a way. My young child has died, so it is God’s will and this is my fate. It was written; it was going to happen.” But deep down there is rejection. These are just tricks to polish the rejection. Do you know God? Do you know fate? Do you know it was written? No, these are rationalizations – how you console yourself.

The attitude of suchness is not a fatalist attitude. It does not bring in a God, or a fate, or a destiny – nothing. It says simply look at things. Simply look at the facticity of things, understand, and there is a door, there is always a door. You transcend.

Suchness means acceptance with a total welcoming heart, not in helplessness.

In this world of suchness there is neither self nor other than self.

And once you merge – you are merged into a suchness, in tathata, in understanding – there is no one as you and there is no one as other-than-you, no self, no other-self. In a suchness, in a deep understanding of the nature of things, boundaries disappear.

Mulla Nasruddin was ill. The doctor examined him and said, “Fine, Nasruddin, very fine. You are improving, you are doing well, everything is almost okay. Just a little thing has remained; your floating kidney is not yet right. But I don’t worry a bit about it.”

Nasruddin looked at the doctor and said, “Do you think if your floating kidney was not all right I would worry about it?”

The mind always divides: the other and I. And the moment you divide I and the other, the other becomes the enemy, the other cannot be a friend. This is one of the basic things to be deeply understood, you need a penetration into it. The other cannot be the friend, the other is the enemy. In his very being the other, he is your enemy.

Some are more inimical, some less, but the other remains the enemy. Who is a friend? The least of the enemies, really, nothing else. The friend is one who is least inimical towards you and the enemy is one who is least friendly towards you, but they stand in a queue. The friend stands nearer, the enemy further away, but they all are enemies. The other cannot be a friend. It is impossible, because with the other there is bound to be competition, jealousy, struggle.

You are fighting with friends also – of course, fighting in a friendly way. You are competing with friends also, because your ambitions are the same as theirs. You want to attain prestige, power; they also want to attain prestige and power. You would like to have a big empire around you, they also. You are fighting for the same, and only a few can have it.

It is impossible to have friends in the world. Buddha has friends, you have enemies. Buddha cannot have an enemy, you cannot have a friend. Why does Buddha have friends? Because the other has disappeared, now there is nobody who is other than him. And when this other disappears the I also has to disappear, because they are two poles of one phenomenon. Here inside exists the ego, and there outside exists the other – two poles of one phenomenon. If one pole disappears, if ‘you’ disappears, ‘I’ disappears with it; if ‘I’ disappears, ‘you’ disappears.

You cannot make the other disappear, you can only make yourself disappear. If you disappear there is no other; when the I is dropped there is no thou. That’s the only way. But we try, we try just the opposite – we try to kill the ‘you’. The ‘you’ cannot be killed, the ‘you’ cannot be possessed, dominated. The ‘you’ will remain a rebellion, because the ’you’ is in an effort to kill you. You are both fighting for the same ego – he for his, you for yours. The whole politics of the world is how to kill the ‘you’ so that only ‘I’ is left and everything is at peace. Because when there is nobody else, you alone are there, everything will be at peace. But this has never happened and will never happen. How can you kill the other? How can you destroy the other? The other is vast, the whole universe is the other.

Religion works through a different dimension: it tries to drop the I. And once the I is dropped there is no other, the other disappears. That’s why you cling to your complaints and grudges – because they help the I to be there. If the shoe pinches, then the I can exist more easily. If the shoe is not pinching, the foot is forgotten – then the I disappears.

People cling to their diseases, they cling to their complaints, they cling to all that pinches. And they go on saying that “These are wounds and we would like them to be healed.” But deep down they go on making the wounds, because if all the wounds are healed, they will not be there.

Just watch people – they cling to their illness. They talk about it as if it is something worth talking about. People talk about illness, about their negative moods, more than about anything else. Listen to them, and you will see that they are enjoying talking about it.

Every evening I have to listen, for many years I have been listening. Look at their faces, they are enjoying it! They are martyrs . . . their illness, their anger, their hatred, their this problem and that, their greed, ambition. And just look, the whole thing is simply crazy – because they are asking to get rid of those things, but look at their faces, they are enjoying it. And if they are really gone, what will they enjoy then? If all their illnesses disappear and they are completely whole and healthy, there will be nothing for them to talk about.

People go to psychiatrists and then they go on talking about it, that they have visited this psychiatrist and that, they have been to this Master and that. Really, they enjoy saying that “All, everybody, has failed with me. I am still the same, nobody has been able to change me.” They enjoy this, as if they are succeeding because they are proving every psychiatrist a failure. All ‘pathies’ have become failures.

I have heard about one man who was a hypochondriac, continuously talking about his illnesses. And nobody believed him, because he was checked and examined in every possible way and nothing was wrong. But every day he would run to the doctor – he was in serious difficulty.

Then by and by the doctor became aware that “Whatsoever he hears – if on the TV there is an advertisement about some medicine and talk about some illness – immediately that illness comes to him. If he reads about any illness in a magazine, immediately, the next day, he is there at the doctor’s office – ill, completely ill. And he imitates all the symptoms.”

So the doctor said once to him, “Don’t bother me too much, because I read the same magazines you read and I listen to the same TV program you listen to. And just the next day you are here with the disease.”

Said the man, “What do you think? Are you the only doctor in town?”

He stopped coming to this doctor, but he would not stop his madness about illness.

Then he died, as everybody has to die. Before his death he told his wife to write a few words on a marble stone on his grave. They are still written there. In big letters on his gravestone it is written: “Now do you believe that I was right?”

People feel so happy about their misery. I also feel sometimes that if all their misery disappears, what will they do? They will be so unoccupied they will simply commit suicide. And this has been my observation: you help them come out of one, the next day they are present there with something else. You help them to come out of that, they are again ready . . . as if there is a deep clinging to misery. They are getting something out of it, it is an investment – and it is paying.

What is the investment? The investment is that when the shoe is not fitting, you feel more that you are. When the shoe fits completely, you simply relax. If the shoe fits completely, not only is the foot forgotten, the I disappears. There cannot be any I with a blissful consciousness – impossible!

Only with a miserable mind can the I exist; the I is nothing but a combination of all your miseries. So if you are really ready to drop the I, only then will your miseries disappear. Otherwise, you will go on creating new miseries. Nobody can help you, because you are on a path which is self-destructive, self-defeating.

So whenever next time you come to me with any problem, just first inquire inside whether you would like it to be solved, because be aware – I can give it. Are you really interested in solving it or just talking about it? You feel good talking about it.

Go inwards and inquire, and you will feel: all your miseries exist because you support them. Without your support nothing can exist. Because you give it energy, then it exists; if you don’t give it energy it cannot exist. And who is forcing you to give it energy? Even when you are sad, energy is needed, because without energy you cannot be sad.

To make the phenomenon of sadness happen, you have to give energy. That’s why after sadness you feel so dissipated, drained. What happened? – because in depression you were not doing anything, you were simply sad. So why do you feel so much dissipated and drained? Out of sadness you must have come full of energy – but no.

Remember, all negative emotions need energy, they drain you. And all positive emotions and positive attitudes are dynamos of energy; they create more energy, they never drain you. If you are happy, suddenly the whole world flows towards you with energy, the whole world laughs with you. And people are right in their proverbs if they say: “When you laugh, the whole world laughs with you. When you weep, you weep alone.” It is true, it is absolutely true.

When you are positive the whole existence goes on giving you more, because when you are happy the whole existence is happy with you. You are not a burden, you are a flower; you are not a rock, you are a bird. The whole existence feels happy about you.

When you are like a rock, sitting dead with your sadness, nursing your sadness, nobody is with you.

Nobody can be with you. There simply comes a gap between you and the life. Then whatsoever you are doing, you have to depend on your energy source. It will be dissipated, you are wasting your energy, you are being drained by your own nonsense.

But one thing is there, that when you are sad and negative you will feel more ego. When you are happy, blissful, ecstatic, you will not feel the ego. When you are happy and ecstatic there is no I, and the other disappears. You are bridged with existence, not broken apart – you are together.

When you are sad, angry, greedy, moving just within yourself and enjoying your wounds and seeing them again and again, playing with your wounds, trying to be a martyr, there is a gap between you and existence. You are left alone, and there you will feel I. And when you feel I, the whole existence becomes inimical to you. Not that it becomes inimical because of your I – it appears to be inimical.

And if you see that everybody is the enemy, you will behave in such a way that everybody has to be the enemy.

In this world of suchness there is neither self nor other-than self.

When you accept nature and dissolve into it, you move with it. You don’t have any steps of your own, you don’t have any dance of your own, you don’t have even a small song to sing of our own – the whole’s song is your song, the whole’s dance is your dance. You are no more apart.

You don’t feel that “I am”; you simply feel, “The whole is. I am just a wave, coming and going, arrival and departure, being and non-being. I come and go, the whole remains. And I exist because of the whole, the whole exists through me.”

Sometimes it takes forms, sometimes it becomes formless – both are beautiful. Sometimes it arises in a body, sometimes it disappears from the body. It has to be so, because life is a rhythm. Sometimes you have to be in the form, then you have to rest from the form. Sometimes you have to be active and moving, a wave, and sometimes you go to the depth and rest, unmoving. Life is a rhythm.

Death is not the enemy. It is just a change of the rhythm, moving to the other. Soon you will be born – alive, younger, fresher. Death is a necessity. YOU are not dying in death; only all the dust that has gathered around you has to be washed. That is the only way to be rejuvenated. Not only Jesus is resurrected, everything is resurrected in existence.

Just now the almond tree outside has dropped all his old leaves, now new leaves have replaced them. This is the way! If the tree clings to the old leaves then it will never be new, and then it will get rotten. Why create a conflict? The old disappears just for the new to come. It gives place, it makes space, room, for the new to come. And new will always be coming and old will always be going.

You don’t die. Only the old leaf drops, just to make room for the new. Here you die, there you are born; here you disappear, there you appear. From the form to the formless, from the formless to the form; from the body to the no-body, from the no-body to the body; movement, rest; rest, movement – this is the rhythm. If you look at the rhythm you are not worried about anything, you trust.

In the world of suchness, in the world of trust, there is neither self nor other-than self.

Then you are not there, neither is there any thou. Both have disappeared, both have become a rhythm of one. That one exists, that one is the reality, the truth.

-Osho

From Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing, Discourse #9

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

That Area is Meditation – Osho

Maneesha, Ryusui is pointing to a very fundamental question which Gautam Buddha raised for the first time in human history.

The question is, is enlightenment something to be achieved, desired, longed for? If so, then there must be practices, disciplines, rituals, and the whole paraphernalia. And millions of people have gone astray in search of enlightenment. Buddha is the first human being who has said that everything is absolutely arbitrary because you need not go anywhere. Enlightenment is your very nature.

It is consciousness that you are built with; this house, this body is not you. And this mind also is not you. And there is not much problem to stand aside and watch the mind and its functioning, to stand aside and watch the gestures of the body. This watcher is your reality, your truth. It is already here, so don’t go in search somewhere else. Whenever, wherever you find it, you will always find it here and now. Now is the time and here is the space. If you can be now here, you are a Gautam Buddha.

I have heard a small story about a man who was a great atheist. The whole day he was arguing against religion, against all kinds of superstitions. He had written in his sitting room in big letters: God is nowhere.

Then a small child was born to him.

One day the small child was looking at the writing. He was just learning to write, learning the alphabet, so he could not manage to read God is nowhere; on the contrary, he read: God is nowhere – nowhere can be divided into two.

The father heard it and was amazed. He had never thought about it, that ‘nowhere’ consists of ‘now’ and ‘here’.

The small child changed the man’s whole approach; he started thinking about now and here. And he was puzzled . . . because he has never been now; his mind has been wandering in the past or in the future, but never now, never in the present.

Meditation means no mind – no past, no future, no present . . . just eternity, a pure mirror which reflects the whole and is not scratched by anything. Just as the sky is not scratched by the clouds moving, or the sun rising, or the full-moon night, the sky remains unscratched.

The father had defeated many philosophers, but this small child changed his whole life because he started to be here, and to be now, and he found a new area opening within himself.

That area is meditation.

Meditation means no mind – no past, no future, no present . . . just eternity, a pure mirror which reflects the whole and is not scratched by anything. Just as the sky is not scratched by the clouds moving, or the sun rising, or the full-moon night, the sky remains unscratched.

You have heard the Zen haiku about the shadows of the bamboos . . . sweeping the temple steps, but they don’t make any noise.

The moon in the sky is reflected in the smallest pond but it does not disturb the pond. It does not create even a single ripple. And the miracle is, neither does the pond want the moon to reflect nor does the moon want to be reflected. But existence manages spontaneously a beautiful phenomenon – a single moon being reflected all over the earth.

In rivers, in oceans, in ponds, in lakes, in streams . . . even in a single dewdrop on a lotus leaf, the full moon is reflected as fully as in the biggest ocean.

But everything is happening so silently on its own accord.

In existence there is no effort, there is no intention. Everything is very relaxed and at ease.

Gautam Buddha was the first man to say that anybody who is searching for himself is a fool. The very search is preventing you from finding. Don’t search! Don’t go anywhere, just sit down and close your eyes and be within. Forget all about past and future, forget the body and the mind – you are the host. This is only a house, a temporary caravanserai; by the morning you will have to go on. The caravan continues from one serai to another serai, so don’t get attached to the caravanserai where you happen to be right now, in this moment.

Detached, aloof, just watching . . . and the mind disappears.

Mind is your attachment with the body and through the body with the world and all its greed, anger, love, hate, jealousy. The whole world is a projection of your mind, in which you live in suffering and misery – or once in a while a little joy, a little pleasure, but very superficial, not even skin deep. But behind all this scene is hiding your buddha, your awareness, your pure consciousness – unclouded, unscratched, from eternity to eternity.

To realize this is the greatest experience in the world.

But all the religions have been driving people astray, searching for gods which don’t exist, praying before gods they have never met. No prayer has been responded to, but all the religions are combined in a conspiracy to take you away from yourself. These are the ways . . . God is far away; self-realization is going to be through arduous practices, disciplines. Everybody cannot afford it. Nobody has that much time, nobody has that much capacity for self-torture. Nobody is so much a masochist that he can become a saint.

Naturally, the ultimate outcome is the present-day humanity: everybody has lost his way to himself. And it is a single step – just turning in. It is not a finding, it is not a discovery, it is not an invention. It is simply a remembrance.

You can forget it, you can remember it. These are the only two things you can do about your nature, about your intrinsic consciousness.

But between the two there is not much difference; the difference between sleep and waking is the only difference. And one who is awake today was asleep yesterday; one who is asleep today may become awake tomorrow, so it is only a question of timing. It is only a question of your decision, when to recognize. As far as buddhahood is concerned, it is waiting there since eternity to eternity. Whether you recognize it or not, it does not matter.

If you recognize it, all your actions will change. Your world view will change. Mind will not be any more a master to you but will be a very good and very efficient servant, a good bio-computer. But first the master has to be recognized, then the mind and the body function according to the wisdom of the master.

-Osho

From Turning In, Discourse #1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Sammasati – The Last Word – Osho

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

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

A Course in Witnessing Blossoms

Covid changed the entire landscape. Out of the garden of our in-person meditation gatherings, A Course in Witnessing grew. We did not have any intention to create it. But covid changed everything.

We had been holding almost weekly meditation meetings wherever we happened to be living. They had started in Prescott, AZ, moved to Gainesville, FL, and on to the Atlanta area.

But covid created the need to reimagine the meditation meetings. And then we heard about Zoom. We began to experiment with holding our meditation meetings on Zoom on a weekly basis.

Several years before, I had begun to explore Osho’s books chronologically: from the earliest talks, through the meditation camps, the Bombay discourses, the talks in Pune 1, the discourses in Rajneeshpuram, the talks held around the globe on Osho’s world tour and his talks on his return to Pune 2. All the while, I was collecting pieces where Osho spoke on his teaching of witnessing. I discovered that witnessing was the common thread through all the discourses from the very beginning all the way to the last Zen series where Osho led us into witnessing in the no-mind, let-go guided meditations.

For our meditation meetings, we had created recorded Osho/music satsangs, so that we could just put on a CD and join in the meditation ourselves. In addition to the satsangs created, we also put together some of Osho’s talks on Shiva’s meditation techniques from The Book of Secrets in order to be able to work with, and practice them, in our meditation meetings.

The blog site Sat Sangha Salon had been created many years before and was the repository of the collected works.

When we moved our meditation meetings to Zoom, a whole new world opened up. First of all, friends could join us from anywhere, and secondly, it allowed the possibility of having two-hour meditations rather than the one-hour meetings that we had restricted ourselves to previously.

Soon, all those posts of Osho discourse excerpts and The Book of Secrets meditations were forming the basis of what I began to see as modules, all part of one whole, which we would call A Course in Witnessing. I must state here that much credit for the creation of A Course in Witnessing has to be given to all the friends who joined us in our online meditations, because this became the laboratory in which the course emerged.

Before we knew it, we had created 144 two-hour meditation programs collected in seven modules. I say, “before we knew it,” but the complete course blossomed 14 years after the first satsang recording was created.

So, what exactly are the meditation programs? They are in two parts: first the Listening Meditation and then the Satsang Meditation.

The Listening Meditation is an approximately one-hour discourse excerpt. We call it Listening Meditation because we encourage the participants to bring a meditative quality to the space of listening. That means listening without either agreeing or disagreeing, listening without judging, and listening without analyzing. Osho has called this right listening, or total listening. It is the kind of listening we would bring to our time sitting in front of Osho during discourse. In the discourse excerpts in A Course in Witnessing, we are listening to Osho describe in great detail the whole journey of witnessing, sometimes through the teachings of the Upanishads, sometimes through the meditation techniques of Yoga or Tantra, sometimes through Zen stories, and sometimes through answering questions from his sannyasins.

Throughout all of these discourses is a common thread and that is Osho’s teaching of witnessing.

The second part of the meditation program is Satsang Meditation. These meditations are made up of alternating periods of silence, music and spoken word (highlights from the discourse). This is an opportunity to experiment with, explore more fully in our own light, that which has been heard in the listenings, maybe one of the techniques that has been introduced or maybe Osho’s guidance through the flow of watching, being and witnessing.

Currently we are holding weekly Zoom meditation meetings based on A Course in Witnessing. If you would like to be put on our mailing list to receive announcements for the meditation meetings, send an email with name and email address to info@o-meditation.com.

Whether in our meditation meetings or in your own time, we invite you to explore A Course in Witnessing:

Osho Sakshi and the Science of Awakening (16 programs)

Osho Transcendence from the Many to the One (16 programs)

Osho Alchemy and the Fire of Awareness (16 programs)

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation (20 programs)

Osho Yoga and the Discipline of Transformation (20 programs)

Osho Zen and the Mystery of No-Mind (20 programs)

Osho Dhamma and the Flowers of Awarefulness (36 programs)

The modules can be done independently, consecutively or randomly. They are arranged chronologically, however, in the order that Osho spoke them. The individual meditation programs within the modules can also be done randomly or in chronological order. There is, however, much benefit in doing them chronologically, especially the first six modules because the discourses that make up these meditation programs have a natural progression.

If you choose to do the programs randomly, you may want to print out the Map of Programs, so that you can check off the ones completed in order not to repeat.

I have also created a syllabus for the course, which, of course, is only a suggestion, a possibility: A Syllabus for A Course in Witnessing.

The Listening Meditations in the modules Osho Sakshi and Osho Transcendence are from discourses that Osho gave at meditation camps in different locations around India, mostly on various Upanishads. Osho Alchemy and Osho Tantra are from discourses that Osho gave at his apartment in Mumbai on the Atma Pooja Upanishad (The Ultimate Alchemy) and Vigyan Bhairav Tantra (The Book of Secrets). The discourses in Osho Yoga on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali were given in Mumbai and then continued in Pune after his move there. Osho Zen includes discourses that Osho gave on Zen both from Pune 1 and Pune 2. The last eight programs of Osho Zen include Osho guiding us into no-mind meditation. The module Osho Dhamma is made up of discourses arranged mostly chronologically that Osho gave in Pune 1, Rajneeshpuram, on his world tour, and finally, back in Pune 2.

We have also gathered all of the discourses from the listening meditations and compiled them into PDF books based on the seven modules, A Course in Witnessing Module Books.

Osho spent his whole life working to awaken as many individuals as possible through the practice of meditation. In addition to teaching the 112 ancient meditation techniques of the Vigyan Bhairava Tantra, Osho also devised new “active” meditation techniques designed specifically to overcome the complexities and busyness of the modern mind. Osho, however, also says that the very core of meditation is witnessing.

“Real meditation is not a technique. Real meditation is just relaxing, sitting silently, letting it happen, whatsoever it is. Allowing the whole anxiety to come up, to surface. And watching it, watching it. And doing nothing to change it. Witnessing it is real meditation.

“In that witnessing your Buddhahood will become more and more powerful. Witnessing is the nourishment for your Buddhahood. And the more powerful your Buddhahood is, the less anxiety there is. The day your Buddhahood is complete, all anxiety is gone.”

-Osho

From The Perfect Master, V.1, Discourse #8

Enjoy!

Purushottama and Amido

The Goose is Out! – Osho

Is the goose really out?

Anand Bhavo, the goose has never been in, the goose has always been out. It is a Zen koan. First you have to understand the meaning of Zen and the meaning of a koan.

Zen is not a religion, not a dogma, not a creed, Zen is not even a quest, an inquiry; it is non-philosophical. The fundamental of the Zen approach is that all is as it should be, nothing is missing. This very moment everything is perfect. The goal is not somewhere else, it is here, it is now. Tomorrows don’t exist. This very moment is the only reality. Hence in Zen, there is no distinction between methods and goals, means and goals.

All the philosophies of the world and all the religions of the world create duality; howsoever they may go on talking about non-duality, they create a split personality in man. That has been the greatest calamity that has befallen humanity: all the do-gooders have created a schizophrenic man. When you divide reality into means and goals you divide man himself because for man, man is the closest reality to man. His consciousness becomes split. He lives here but not really; he is always there, somewhere else. He is always searching, always inquiring; never living, never being, always doing; getting richer, getting powerful, getting spiritual, getting holier, saintly — always more and more. And this constant hankering for more creates his tense, anguished state, and meanwhile he is missing all that is made available by existence. He is interested in the far away and God is close by. His eyes are focused on the stars and God is within him. Hence, the most fundamental thing to understand about Zen is: The goose has never been in. Let me tell you the story how this koan started:

A great philosophical official, Riko, once asked the strange Zen Master, Nansen, to explain to him the old koan of the goose in the bottle.

“If a man puts a gosling into a bottle,” said Riko, “and feeds him until he is full-grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?”

Nansen gave a great clap with his hands and shouted, “Riko!”

“Yes, Master,” said the official with a start.

“See,” said Nansen, “the goose is out!”

It is only a question of seeing, it is only a question of becoming alert, awake, it is only a question of waking up. The goose is in the bottle if you are in a dream; the goose has never been in the bottle if you are awake. And in the dream, there is no way to take the goose out of the bottle. Either the goose will die or the bottle will have to be broken, and both alternatives are not allowed: neither has the bottle to be broken nor has the goose to be killed. Now, a fully-grown goose in a small bottle . . . how can you take it out? This is called a koan.

A koan is not an ordinary puzzle; it is not a puzzle because it cannot be solved. A puzzle is that which has a possibility of being solved; you just have to look for the right answer. You will find it — it only needs intelligence to find the answer to the puzzle; but a puzzle is not really insoluble.

A koan is insoluble; you cannot solve it; you can only dissolve it. And the way to dissolve it is to change the very plane of your being from dreaming to wakefulness. In the dream the goose is in the bottle and there is no way to bring it out of the bottle without breaking the bottle or killing the goose — in the dream. Hence, as far as the dream is concerned, the puzzle is impossible; nothing can be done about it.

But there is a way out — which has nothing to do with the puzzle, remember. You have to wake up. That has nothing to do with the bottle and nothing to do with the goose either. You have to wake up. It has something to do with you. That’s why Nansen did not answer the question.

Riko asked, “If a man puts a gosling into a bottle and feeds him until he is full-grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?”

Nansen didn’t answer. On the other hand, he gave a great clap with his hands and shouted, “Riko!”

Now, this is not an answer to the question — this has nothing to do with the question at all — it is irrelevant, inconsistent. But it solves it; in fact, it dissolves it. The moment he shouted, “Riko!” the official with a start said, “Yes, Master” The whole plane of his being is transformed by a simple strategy.

A Master is not a teacher; he does not teach you; he simply devises methods to wake you up. That clap is a method, that clap simply brought Riko into the present. And it was so unexpected . . . When you are asking such a spiritual koan you don’t expect the Master to answer you with a loud clap and then shout, “Riko!”

Suddenly, he is brought from the past, from the future. Suddenly, for a moment he forgets the whole problem. Where is the bottle and where is the goose? There is only the Master, in a strange posture, clapping and shouting for Riko. Suddenly the whole problem is dropped. He has slipped out of the problem without even knowing that he slipped out of it. He has slipped out of the problem as a snake slips out of its old skin. For a moment time has stopped. For a moment the clock has stopped. For a moment the mind has stopped. For a moment there is nothing. The Master, the sound of the clap, and a sudden awakening. In that very moment the Master says, “See! See, the goose is out!” It is dissolved.

A koan can only be dissolved but can never be solved. A puzzle can never be dissolved but can be solved. So remember, a koan is not a puzzle.

But when people who are accustomed to continuous thinking, logical reasoning, start studying Zen, they take a false step from the very beginning. Zen cannot be studied; it has to be lived; it has to be imbibed — imbibed from a living Master. It is a transmission beyond words, a transmission of the lamp. The lamp is invisible.

Now, anybody watching this whole situation — Riko asking a question, the Master clapping and shouting — would not have found anything very spiritual in it, would not have found any great philosophy, may have come back very frustrated. But something transpired — something which is not visible and can never be visible.

It happens only when the silence of the Master penetrates the silence of the disciple, when two silences meet and merge; then immediately there is seeing. The Master has eyes, the disciple has eyes, but the disciple’s eyes are closed. A device is needed, some method, so that the disciple can open his eyes without any effort of his own. If he makes an effort, he will miss the point because who will make the effort?

Christmas Humphreys, one of the great lovers of Zen in the West, the founder of the Buddhist Society of England and the man who made Zen Buddhism very famous in the Western world, writes about this koan, and you will see the difference. He says:

“There is a method of taking the problem in flank, as it were. It will be nonsense to the rational-minded, but such will read no further. Those who read on will expect increasing nonsense, for sense, the suburban villas of rational thought, will soon be left behind, and the mind will be free on the illimitable hills of its own inherent joy. Here, then, is the real solution to the problem of the opposites.

“Shall I tell it you? Consider a live goose in a bottle. How to get it out without hurting the goose or breaking the bottle? The answer is simple — ‘There, it’s out!’”

Now, the whole point is lost: it becomes philosophical. First, Christmas Humphreys thinks Zen is part of Buddhism; that is to begin with a wrong door, with a wrong step. Zen has nothing to do with Buddhism. It certainly has something to do with the Buddha, but nothing to do with Buddhism as such, just as Sufism has nothing to do with Islam, Hassidism has nothing to do with Judaism, Tantra has nothing to do with Hinduism. Yes, Tantra certainly has something to do with Shiva and Sufism has something to do with Mohammed and Hassidism has something to do with Moses, but not with the traditions, not with the conventions, not with the theologies.

A Moses alive, a Mohammed alive, can transmit something which cannot be said, can show something which cannot be said, can create a certain vibe around him which can trigger enlightenment in many people but without any explanation, without any logical proof.

Enlightenment is almost like a love affair. Just as you fall in love — you cannot rationalize it; it is below reason — in the same way you fall into enlightenment. It is above reason: you fall above words.

There is a beautiful story of a Master who was staying at a disciple’s house. The disciple was a little worried about the Master because his ways were strange, unexpected. He could do anything! He was almost thought to be mad. So not to create any trouble for the neighborhood — because in the night he might start dancing, singing, shouting, sermonizing to nobody and create a disturbance in the neighborhood — they put him in the basement and locked him up in the basement, so that even if he went and did something nobody would hear him. They closed all the windows, all the doors, and locked them.

In the middle of the night, they were suddenly awakened. Somebody was rolling about on the roof with such a loud laughter that a great crowd had gathered all around and they were asking, “What is the matter?”

They rushed up, they found the Master rolling on the roof. They asked, “What is the matter? How did you manage? We locked you in the basement just to avoid such a scene!”

The Master said, “That’s why I am laughing. Suddenly I started falling upwards. I cannot believe it myself! It has never happened before, falling upwards!”

It is a beautiful story. Enlightenment is falling upwards just as love is falling downwards. But something is similar in both; the falling — unreasonable, unexplainable, inexpressible. Only those to whom it has happened know, and even when it has happened, you cannot explain it to anybody to whom it has not happened yet.

Christmas Humphreys calls Zen “Zen Buddhism.” That is starting in the wrong direction from the very beginning. Zen is not Buddhism — the essential core of the heart of Buddha, certainly, but it is the essential core of Moses too, the essential core of Zarathustra too, Lao Tzu too. It is the essential core of all those who have become enlightened, of all those who have awakened from their dream, of all those who have seen that the goose is out, that the goose has never been in, that the problem was not a problem at all in the first place, hence no solution is needed.

Christmas Humphreys says: “There is a method of taking the problem in flank, as it were. It will be nonsense to the rational-minded . . .”

He himself is rational-minded; otherwise, it is not nonsense. Nonsense is something below sense. Zen is supra-sense, not nonsense; it is above sense. It is something far beyond the reaches of reason. Logic is a very ordinary game; anybody who has a little intelligence can play the game. The moment you go beyond logic then you enter into the world of Zen. It is not nonsense, it is supra-sense. His very use of the word “nonsense” shows a deep-down bias towards rationality.

He says: “. . . but such will read no further. Those who read on will expect increasing nonsense, for sense, the suburban villas of rational thought, will soon be left behind . . .”

They are not left behind, because if you leave something behind, you are on the same track. You have left a milestone behind, but the road is the same, the path is not different. Maybe you have gone a mile ahead, but your dimension has not changed. The difference is only of quantity, not of quality.

Reason is not only left behind, reason is transcended, surpassed. There is a difference, a great difference, a difference that makes the difference.

I have heard a story — it happened in the Second World War:

In a thick part of the Burmese jungle, a small plane was left by the army. They were in a hurry, they were retreating, and for some mechanical reason they could not manage to take it with them. The primitives found the plane; they could not understand what it was. They figured out that it must be some kind of bullock cart — that was the only possible thing for them to think; the bullock cart was the ultimate vehicle in their vision. So they started using the plane as a bullock cart, and they enjoyed it. It was the best bullock cart they had ever found!

Then somebody passed by — a man who lived a little further away from the primitive tribe but was part of the tribe. He knew, he had come to experience cars, trucks, buses. He said, “This is not a bullock cart, this is a car, and I know something about cars.” So he fixed it, and they were immensely amazed that without horses, without bulls, the machine was working. It was such a toy! Every morning, every evening, they enjoyed just looking at it again and again from all sides, entering it, sitting in it, and because there were not many roads, even to go a few feet was a great excitement.

Then one day a pilot passed by the primitive forest and he said, “What are you doing? This is an airplane, it can fly!”

He took two primitives with him, and when they left the ground, they could not believe it. This was absolutely beyond their imagination, beyond all their dreams. They used to think that only Gods could fly; they had heard stories about Gods flying in the sky. Yes, they had seen airplanes in the sky, but they had always believed they belonged to the Gods.

Now, the same mechanism can be used as a bullock cart or as a car, but between the bullock cart and the car the distinction is only of quantity, not of quality. The moment the airplane takes off from the ground it changes its plane: it surpasses the bullock cart, the car. It moves in a totally new dimension.

So reason is not left behind, reason is simply transcended. Hence, Christmas Humphreys calling it nonsense, irrational, or thinking that reason has been left behind, is still thinking in terms of rationality.

He says: “. . . and the mind will be free . . .”

Now that is absolutely stupid; the mind will not be free. When you enter into the world of Zen there is no-mind. Zen is equivalent to no-mind. It is not freedom of the mind, it is freedom from the mind, and there is a lot of difference, an unbridgeable difference. The mind is not free, you are free of the mind. The mind is no longer there, free or unfree, the mind has simply ceased. You have gone through a new door which was always available to you, but you had never knocked on it — the door of being, the door of eternity.

Zen, the very word “Zen” comes from the Sanskrit word dhyana. Dhyana means meditation, but the word “meditation” does not carry its total significance. “Meditation” again gives you the feeling that mind is doing something: mind meditating, concentrating, contemplating, but mind is there. Dhyana simply means a state of no-mind, no concentration, no contemplation, no meditation in fact — but just a silence, a deep, profound silence where all thoughts have disappeared; where there is no ripple in the lake of consciousness; when the consciousness is functioning just like a mirror reflecting all that is — the stars, the trees, the birds, the people, all that is — simply reflecting it without any distortion, without any interpretation, without bringing in your prejudices. That’s what your mind is: your prejudices, your ideologies, your dogmas, your habits.

Christmas Humphreys says: “. . . and the mind will be free on the illimitable hills of its own inherent joy.”

This is real nonsense! First, “mind will be free.” Mind can never be free. Freedom and mind never meet. Mind means bondage, mind is a prison. In the mind you live an encapsulated life, surrounded by all kinds of thoughts, theories, systems, philosophies, surrounded by the whole past of humanity, all kinds of superstitions — Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Buddhist, Jaina; political, social, economic, religious. Either your mind is made up of the bricks of the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, or maybe Das Kapital, or the Communist Manifesto. You may have made your prison differently from others, you may have chosen a different architect, but the prison is the same. The architect can be Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein — you can choose, prisons come in all shapes and all sizes — and then the interior decoration is up to you. You can put beautiful paintings inside, you can carpet it wall to wall, you can paint it according to your likes and dislikes, you can make a few changes here and there, a window on the left or on the right, a curtain of this material or that, but a prison is a prison.

Mind as such is a prison, and everybody is living in the prison. Unless you get out of the prison you will never know what freedom is. Your prison can be very cozy, comfortable, convenient, it can be very well decorated, golden, studded with diamonds . . . It will be difficult to leave it — you have worked so hard to create it — it is not going to be easy. But a prison is a prison; made of gold or made of mud, it makes no difference. You will never know the infinity of freedom; you will never know the beauty and the splendor of freedom — your splendor will be. You will never know that the goose is always out. You will live in all kinds of dreams. Howsoever beautiful they are, dreams are dreams, and sooner or later all dreams are shattered.

But mind is self-perpetuating. If one dream shatters it immediately creates another dream — in fact, it always keeps one ready. Before the old one is shattered it supplies you with a new one — a better dream, more refined, more sophisticated, more scientific, more technological — and again you are infatuated, again the desire arises: “Why not try it? Maybe other dreams have failed, but that does not necessarily mean that all dreams will fail. One may succeed.” That hope goes on lingering; that hope keeps you running after dreams. And when death comes, one finds that one’s whole life has been nothing but the same stuff as dreams are made of:

“. . . A tale

Told by an idiot,

Full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

But this is how millions of people are living.

Christmas Humphreys says: “. . . and the mind will be free on the illimitable hills of its own inherent joy.”

This shows that he never understood even a single dewdrop of the Zen experience. He became the propagator of Zen philosophy in the West but not knowing what he was doing, not experiencing anything of what he was talking about.

The mind cannot reach “the illimitable hills of its own inherent joy”; the mind has no inherent capacity for joy. The mind is the cause of all misery; it knows nothing of joy. It only thinks about joy, and its thinking about joy is also nothing but an imagination against the suffering in which it lives.

If you ask the mind to define joy, its definition will be negative; it will simply say. “There will be no suffering, there will be no pain, there will be no death.” But this is all negative definition; it says nothing about bliss, it simply speaks about painlessness. But the goal of painlessness is not of any worth. Even if you are without pain will you find it worth living and for how long? Even if you don’t have any illness that does not mean that you have the well-being of health; that is a totally different quality. A person may be medically fit, there may be nothing wrong as far as the diagnosis of the physician goes, but if he is not feeling an overflowing joy, it is not health — an absence of disease perhaps, but not the presence of health. The absence of disease is not equivalent to the presence of health; that’s a totally different phenomenon.

You may not be miserable; that does not mean that you are blissful. You may be simply in a limbo, neither blissful nor miserable, which is a far worse situation than being miserable because the miserable person at least tries to get out of it. The person who lives in a limbo, just on the boundary line, neither miserable nor blissful, cannot get out of misery because he is not in misery. He cannot enter into bliss because there is no push from behind; the misery is not hitting him hard enough so that he can take a jump. He will remain stuck, stagnant.

Misery is a negative state, bliss is a positive state, but the mind knows only misery. The mind cannot know “the illimitable hills of its own inherent joy” because there is nothing in it. The mind is only a creation of the society to help you perform your social duties efficiently. The mind is a strategy of the establishment to manipulate you, to enslave you, to keep you as unintelligent as possible because the intelligent person is dangerous.

In the whole of the Bible there is not a single statement praising intelligence. It is full of all kinds of rubbish, but there is not a single statement in praise of intelligence. Superstition is praised, belief is praised, all kinds of stupid things are praised.

All the religions, organized religions, have been trying to make man a robot, a machine, and they have almost succeeded. That’s why there are so few Buddhas, so few Jesuses. The reason is simple: societies, factories, the state, the church, the nation — they are in a deep conspiracy to destroy the small child, who is very vulnerable, delicate and helpless.

You can destroy him. And the basic strategy for destruction is to create a mind, impose a mind on him, so that he forgets his innermost qualities of joy, he forgets the innocence that he brought from the sources of existence, so that he forgets all that is beautiful and becomes only a cog in the wheel of society. He has to be a good servant, he has to be a good mechanic, he has to be a good station-master, a good professor, this and that, but he has not to be a divine being, he has not to function blissfully.

The society is very afraid of blissful people for the simple reason that bliss is such a tremendous experience that one can sacrifice one’s life for it but one cannot sacrifice one’s bliss for anything else. One lives for bliss, one dies for bliss, once one has known what bliss is. Hence the blissful person is absolutely beyond the imprisoning forces of the society. The society can only rule the miserable, the church can only exploit the miserable.

And Christmas Humphreys says: “Here, then, is the real solution to the problem of the opposites.”

There is no “problem of the opposites.” Opposites are not opposites, they are complementaries, hence there is no problem as such. Darkness and light are one phenomenon, two aspects of the same coin. Life and death are inseparable, you cannot separate them – how can you make them opposites? They are complementaries, they help each other. Hence there is no problem and there is no need for any solution.

And Zen is not a solution to opposites, it is a transcendence, it is a higher vision – a bird’s-eye view from where all dualities look stupid.

The most important thing that happened to the first man who walked on the moon was that he suddenly forgot that he was an American. Suddenly the whole earth was one, there were no boundaries because there is no map on the earth. The American continent, the African continent, the Asian continent, this country and that country all disappeared. Not that he made any effort to put all the opposing camps together; there was not even a Soviet Russia or an America, the whole earth was just simply one.

And the first words that were uttered by the American were “My beloved earth!” This is transcendence. For a moment he had forgotten all conditionings: “My beloved earth!” Now the whole earth belonged to him.

This is what actually happens in a state of silence: the whole existence is yours and all opposites disappear into each other, supporting, dancing with each other. It becomes an orchestra.

Christmas Humphreys says, “Shall I tell it you? Consider . . .”

Now, look how just small changes make great differences: “Shall I tell it you? Consider . . .” This is the way philosophy moves, not Zen: “Consider . . .” It is not a question of consideration; either you know or you don’t know.

The Master Nansen did not say, “Consider, now I will give a great clap. Consider, now I will shout, ‘Riko!’ and you have to say, ‘Yes, Master!’ Then I will say, ‘See, the goose is out!’” Then the whole point would have been lost.

Just a few days ago in a darshan meeting in the evening I called Nirupa. She had broken one of her hands. She is one of my mediums, but now she cannot participate in the dancing. She was just sitting in the front line and I called her. For a moment she hesitated and everybody laughed because what was she going to do with one hand? But Zen is done with one hand — the sound of one hand clapping! — and she did well. Of course, only I could hear the sound, but the sound of one hand clapping . . . Even when you are making a sound with two hands clapping the energy is one. Your left hand and your right hand are not two, they are joined in you. They are not opposites, they are complementary, they belong to one being.

All opposites belong to one being, and it is not a question of consideration. If you consider, you take all the juice out of the beautiful koan.

“Consider,” he says, “a live goose in a bottle. How to get it out without hurting the goose or breaking the bottle?”

He cannot even say “without killing the goose.” A proper Englishman! “Without hurting the goose or breaking the bottle.” In fact, even to say “breaking the bottle” his heart must be breaking! “The answer is simple . . .”

It is not simple. In the first place it is not an answer either. “There, it is out!” He has destroyed the whole beauty of the koan. But habits die very hard. It is just the way of thinking, the way of the mind.

The Pope was given a pair of red silk slippers with the initials T.I.F inscribed on them. When His Holiness asked what the letters stood for, he was told, “Toes In First.”

Anand Bhavo, you ask me:

Is the goose really out?

It has always been out, it has never been in. It is only a question of dreaming.

Wake up!

-Osho

From The Goose is Out, Discourse #1, Q1

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