Tag: Nansen

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 #1, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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The Old Problem of the Goose in the Bottle – Osho

The official, Riko, once asked Nansen to explain to him the old problem of the goose in the bottle.

The problem is very ancient. It is a koan; it is given to a disciple, that he has to meditate on it. It is absurd; you cannot “solve” it. A koan is something which cannot be solved. Remember, it is not a puzzle. A puzzle has a clue; a koan has no clue. A koan is a puzzle without any clue. Not that more intelligence will solve it. No, no intelligence will ever solve it. Even if it is given to God, it will not be solved. It is made in such a way that it cannot be solved. This is a koan.

“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?”

Don’t break the bottle — and the goose has to be taken out — and don’t kill the goose. Now, these are the two conditions to be fulfilled. The koan becomes impossible. The bottle has a small neck; the goose cannot come out from it. Either you have to break the bottle or you have to kill the goose. You can kill the goose, and piece by piece you can take the goose out, or you can break the bottle, and the goose can come out alive, whole. But the condition is the bottle has not to be broken and the goose has not to be killed. The goose has to come out whole and the bottle has to remain whole. Nothing has to be destroyed; no destruction allowed. Now, how are you going to solve it? But meditating on it, meditating on it . . . one day it happens that you see the point. Not that you solve the problem, suddenly the problem is no more there.

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!”

Now, it is tremendously beautiful. What he is saying is that the goose has never been in, the goose has always been out. What is he saying, the moment he said, “Riko!”? What happened? Those seven layers of ego disappeared and Riko became aware. The shout was so sudden, the sound was so unexpected. He was expecting a philosophical answer.

That’s why sometimes the Zen Master will hit you on your head or throw you out of the window or jump upon you or threaten you that he will kill you: he will do something so that those seven layers of ego are immediately transcended and your awareness, which is the center of all, is alert. You are made alert.

Now, shouting “Riko!” so suddenly, for no reason at all — and he has brought a small puzzle to be solved and this Master suddenly shouts “Riko!” — he cannot see the connection.

And that is the whole clue to it. He cannot see the connection, the shout startles him, and he says, “Yes, Master.”

“See,” said Nansen, “the goose is out!” […]

“Yes, Master” — in that moment Riko was pure consciousness, without any layer. In that moment, Riko was not the body. In that moment, Riko was not the mind. In that moment, Riko was just awareness. In that moment, Riko was not the memory of the past. In that moment, Riko was not the future, the desire. In that moment, he was not in any comparison with anybody. In that moment, he was not a Buddhist or a Mohammedan or a Hindu. In that moment, he was not a Japanese or an Indian.

In that moment, when the Master shouted “Riko!” he was simply awareness, without any content, without any conditioning. In that moment, he was not young, old. In that moment, he was not beautiful, ugly. In that moment, he was not stupid, intelligent. All layers disappeared. In that moment, he was just a flame of awareness.

That is the meaning when the Master says, “See, the goose is out — and I have not broken the bottle, I have not even touched the bottle.” The bottle means the ego, those seven layers. “I have not broken the bottle, it is there, and I have not killed the goose. And the goose is out.” Now, there are three types of religions in the world. One which will destroy the bottle. Then you become very vulnerable, then you become very insecure, then great trembling arises in you, and then there is every possibility you may go mad. That sort of thing happens many times in India. There are methods which can destroy the bottle, easier methods. They destroy the bottle, and the goose is out; but then the goose has no house to abide in, no shelter; then there is every possibility the man may go mad. And many people in India, seeking, searching, working towards the unknown become mad. When the unknown comes into them, they have no protection.

Remember, you need protection even against God because God can be too much too suddenly. Those protections have not to be destroyed; practically, they have to remain there. Just think of a person who has no ego. Now, the house is on fire: he will not run out. For what? “I am not. The fire cannot burn me, because I am not.” Just think of a man who has no ego, and he is standing in the middle of the road, and there comes a bus and the driver honks and honks, and he does not bother. He is the immortal soul; he is not the ego. This state can be dangerous. It happens if you destroy the bottle.

Zen says don’t destroy the bottle. Use it when it is needed. Whenever you feel to have protection, the goose simply goes inside the bottle. Sometimes one needs rest, and sometimes the bottle is also useful. It can be put to a thousand and one uses. The ego can be used if you know that you are not the ego. Then the ego cannot use you, you can use it. And there are methods which will save the bottle and kill the goose — self-destructive methods are there — so one becomes more and more unaware. That is what I mean when I say kill the goose: one becomes more and more unaware. Drugs can do that. Drugs have been used in India for thousands of years. They can kill the goose. The bottle remains protected, but the goose is killed. If you take some foreign chemicals inside your being and your nature is not ready to absorb them, by and by you will kill the goose, your consciousness will be gone, you may fall in a coma.

The first possibility, if the bottle is broken and thrown; you may go mad. The second possibility, if the goose is killed, or almost killed: you will become so unconscious that you will become a zombie. You can find zombies. In many monasteries there are zombies, whose goose is killed, or at least drugged. And there are mad people, maniacs. Zen says avoid both. The bottle has to remain and the goose has to come out. This is a great synthesis.

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

“See,” Said Nansen, “The goose is out!”

It must have been a moment of great discovery to Riko. He must have seen it, “Yes, it is out.” He is fully aware. The trick worked, the device worked, the shouting and clapping worked. In fact, Riko must have been almost on the verge; otherwise shouting would not do. You can go on shouting. Clapping won’t do. But the man must have been just on the verge of it. Just a small push, and he has jumped the barrier.

Meditate over it. This is the way to attain the first principle: to know that the goose can be out without destroying the bottle, that you can be God without destroying your humanity, that you can be God without destroying your ordinariness.

A disciple of His Divine Grace Prabhupad came to see me. Prabhupad is the founder of the Krishna Consciousness movement. Naturally, to be respectful to me, he also called me His Divine Grace. I said, “Don’t call me that; just call me ‘his Divine Ordinariness’.” The ordinary is the extraordinary. The ordinary has not to be destroyed. Once the ordinary is in the service of the extraordinary it is beautiful, it is tremendously beautiful.

Let me repeat: the trivial is the profound, samsara is nirvana. Whatsoever you are, there is nothing wrong with it. Just something is missing. Nothing wrong with it! Something is simply missing. Just that missing link has to be provided, that plus, and everything that you have becomes divine.

Love has not to be destroyed; only awareness has to be added to it. Relationship has not to be destroyed; only meditation has to be added to it. You need not go from the marketplace; you need not go to any cave and in the Himalayas; only God has to be called there in the marketplace.

The bottle is beautiful, nothing is wrong in it. You just have to learn that you can come out of it whenever you want and you can go into it whenever you want, that it is your pleasure. It is almost like the house. When you feel too cool or cold in the house, freezing cold, you get out under the sky, under the sun, to warm yourself. Then it becomes too warm and you start perspiring; you go into the house. You are free. The same door takes you out, the same door takes you in, and the house is not the enemy.

But if you cannot get out of the house, then something is wrong. There is no need to leave the house, there is no need to drop being a householder. There is only one thing needed: in the house become a sannyasin, in the world remain in such a way that the world is not in you. See, the goose is out. In fact, the goose has always been out, just a recognition is needed.

-Osho

From The First Principle, Discourse #9

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Go Beyond Emptiness – Osho

Sekiso has a poem:

For six years sitting alone
Still as a snake
In a stalk of bamboo,
With no family but the ice
On the snow mountain . . .
Last night, seeing the empty sky
Fly into pieces,
He shook the morning star awake
And kept it in his eyes.

A tremendously beautiful poem. He is saying, for six years sitting alone – that means meditating; sitting, in Zen, is equivalent to meditation, just sitting and doing nothing. Six years sitting alone, still as a snake . . . When the snake is waiting to catch something to eat, he remains absolutely immobile as if he is dead. The slightest movement, then the bird he was going to catch will be gone, then the butterfly he was going to catch will not be there. He has to remain just dead, no movement.

Still as a snake in a stalk of bamboo, with no family but the ice on the snow mountain. Last night . . . those six years sitting matured. Last night the moment came of great benediction.

Last night, seeing the empty sky fly into pieces, he shook the morning star awake and kept it in his eyes. He is talking about the inner sky, the inner emptiness, that suddenly gave way. For six years he was holding. Last night, suddenly the emptiness also fell into pieces. He was thinking that just to be empty is enough for meditation. Just to be empty is only the beginning. A moment comes when emptiness falls into pieces. You go beyond emptiness.

Last night, seeing the empty sky fly into pieces, he shook the morning star awake . . . He is talking about his own inner being. That emptiness flying into pieces shook the star awake and kept it in his eyes. Now he is carrying that star in his eyes, that clarity, that light, that shining jewel which is not in the sky, which is hidden somewhere inside your emptiness, which is covered by your thoughts and emotions. Your mind is blocking the path, but somewhere inside you, it is shining bright. Just a little turning in, and you will be fulfilled.

-Osho

From Nansen: The Point of Departure, Discourse #2

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.

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Your Original Face – Osho

Will we recognize our original face, when we encounter it?

Maneesha, encountering the original face simply means realizing what is real and what is reflection.

You become a reflection when you see the real. It is just like standing before a mirror. It seems you are standing in the mirror. When you realize the fact that you are standing outside the mirror – in the mirror is only the reflection and the reflection is not a truth – then you encounter your original self.

Suddenly you realize that up to now you have lived a false face, this is your original face.

Up to now you have been living as a reflection, a shadow, an unreality. You disappear, only the original face remains. Your question is logical, relevant, because how will you recognize that this is your original face? You will not be there. You will disappear as the original face appears; you will not have to recognize it; you will not be there at all. The original face itself will know that up to now a false personality has been representing you.

Now the false has disappeared and only the truth remains. There is no question of recognizing. You are the false, how can you recognize? When the real comes, the false disappears: they never meet.

This is the fear of searching for oneself; because the moment you find yourself, the way you know yourself now will disappear like a shadow, as if it had never been – just a dream.

I have told you… A drunkard had been fighting in the pub, and had got many scratches on his face. He came home very much afraid of his wife. So very silently, taking his shoes in his hands, he entered into the room, went into the bathroom, looked at his face and said, “My God! So many scratches! How am I going to hide them? In the morning she will find out.”

So he tried somehow to cover up. He could not find anything else but the lipstick of his wife. So he covered his scratches with the lipstick and went back silently to bed. In the early morning his wife shouted from the bathroom, “Who has tried to make a painting with my lipstick on the mirror?”

That drunk had thought that he was putting it on his face, but he was putting it on the mirror because there was the face. He could not see his own face!

We are almost in exactly the same situation. When the original appears, we will suddenly see the false going away. They never meet so there is no question of recognition.

-Osho

From Nansen: The Point of Departure, Discourse #10

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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Prajna or Samadhi? – Osho

Beloved Osho,

Once, when Obaku was sitting in Nansen’s reception room, Nansen asked him, “It is said that the Buddha Nature can be clearly seen by those who study both samadhi and prajna equally. What does this mean?”

Obaku answered, “It means that we should not depend on anything at any time.”

Nansen then asked, “I wonder whether the opinion you have just expressed is really your own. “

Of course not!” said Obaku.

Nansen then said, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water for the moment, let me ask whom you intend to have the money for the straw sandals returned to?”

To this question, Obaku made no reply.

Maneesha, although this anecdote seems to be very simple, it is not so. In these few words a tremendously important question has been raised. And unfortunately nobody has discussed that question up to now. I would like to go in detail into what I mean. Once, when Obaku was sitting in Nansen’s reception room, Nansen asked him, “It is said that the Buddha Nature can be clearly seen by those who study both samadhi and prajna equally. What does this mean?”

Before we go into the answer of Obaku, you have to understand the meaning of samadhi and prajna.

It is a very intricate and complex question. Samadhi can be understood watching Ramakrishna. That will give you the basic symptoms which can be observed from the outside.

Ramakrishna used to go into samadhi for hours. Once for six days he was in samadhi. And samadhi to him and to his followers – and there is a great tradition from Patanjali, five thousand years old, which believes in samadhi – means to become perfectly unconscious. To every outsider he was almost in a coma; to the psychologist he had gone deeper into the unconscious layers of the mind.

And there was no way to bring him back.

Automatically, whenever his consciousness surfaced again, he would become aware. And whenever he came out of this samadhi, this deep coma-like unconsciousness, he would weep and cry, “Why have you taken away that great beauty, that great bliss, that great silence that I was experiencing. Time had stopped, the world was forgotten, I was alone and everything was at its perfection. So why have you taken it away?” He was asking the question to existence. “Why don’t you let me continue it?”

Now, Buddha himself would not consider it a samadhi. His samadhi means prajna, and prajna means awareness. You have to become more and more conscious, not unconscious; just two polarities, samadhi and prajna. Prajna is perfect awareness of your being. And samadhi in Ramakrishna’s case means absolute oblivion. Nobody has gone into the deeper search for what exactly is the difference deep inside.

Both talk about great blissfulness, both talk about eternity, truth, beauty, goodness as their ultimate experience. But one is completely unconscious – you can cut his hand and he will not know – that much unconsciousness; and Buddha is so conscious that before sitting on the floor, first he will look to see if there is any ant or anything that may be killed by his sitting there. In his every act he showed immense awareness.

I have told you the story that one day passing through a street in Vaishali, a fly came and sat on his head. He was talking to Ananda about something. So just automatically the way you do it, he simply waved his hand. Then he suddenly stopped talking to Ananda and again waved his hand. Now there was no fly.

Ananda said, “What are you doing? The fly has gone.”

He said, “The fly has gone, but I acted unconsciously. I waved my hand automatically like a robot. Now I am moving as I should have moved, with full consciousness, awareness.”

So these seem to be two polarities. Both have become a point of great debate as to who is right, because the experience they talk about is the same. My own experience is that mind can be crossed from both ends. One tenth of the mind is conscious, nine tenths of the mind is unconscious. Just think of mind: the upper layer is conscious and nine layers are unconscious. Now mind can be passed from both the ends. You cannot pass from the middle; you will have to travel to the end.

Ramakrishna passed the mind by going deeper and deeper into the unconscious layers. And when the final unconscious layer came, he jumped out of the mind. To the world outside he looked as if he was in a coma. But he reached to the same clear sky although he chose a path which is dark, dismal; he chose the night part of consciousness. But he reached to the same experience.

Buddha never became unconscious in this way. Even walking he was stepping every step fully conscious and gracefully, every gesture fully conscious, gracefully. He transformed his consciousness to such a point that unconscious layers started becoming conscious. The final enlightenment is when all unconscious layers of the mind have become conscious. He also jumps out of the mind.

Both samadhi and prajna are no-mind states, going outside the mind. So the experience is the same but the path is different, very different. One is the white path of light that Buddha followed; one is the path of darkness that Ramakrishna followed. And it is obvious that the people who cannot understand both, who have not followed both the paths and come to the same experience, are going to debate and discuss to no end.

One will say that Ramakrishna’s samadhi is a coma, that he has lost consciousness. Another will say that because Buddha never goes into Ramakrishna-like samadhi, he does not know anything about samadhi. But my experience is, both know the samadhi, both know the prajna.

Ramakrishna first knows samadhi and out of samadhi prajna is born. Buddha knows first prajna and then out of prajna samadhi is born. It is only a question of understanding that existence is always contradictory, made of opposites – night and day, life and death.

Ramakrishna’s path is of unconsciousness. Nobody has deliberately considered the point. And Buddha’s path is of pure light, of continuous awareness. Even in sleep Buddha sleeps consciously.

So Nansen has raised a very meaningful question.

“It is said that the Buddha Nature can be clearly seen by those who study both samadhi and prajna equally. What does this mean?”

Obaku answered, “It means that we should not depend on anything at any time.”

Obaku was not a master, Obaku was a scholar. And this question cannot be decided by any scholarship; no intelligence will do, only experience. So what he answers is absolutely irrelevant.

He says, “It means that we should not depend on anything at any time.” Can you see any relevance to the question? It has nothing to do with samadhi, nothing to do with prajna. He is not only a teacher, but a blind teacher. The question has gone above his head.

Nansen then asked – immediately, which shows what I am saying – “I wonder whether the opinion you have just expressed is really your own.” Anybody could have seen that this is so stupid, it has nothing to do with the question. He could have said, “I don’t know, I have not experienced either samadhi or prajna. I don’t know whether they end up into the same experience or they lead to different experiences. It is not my own experience, so I can’t say anything.”

That would have been more honest. But looking at his answer, Nansen immediately asked, “I wonder whether the opinion you have just expressed is really your own.”

Even this absurd opinion that you have expressed, I think even this one is not your own. “Of course not!” said Obaku.

Seeing the situation he must have felt it is better to say that this is not my opinion. Nansen then said, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water for the moment... Nansen lived on top of a high mountain for thirty years. To bring water to that height, he had to go miles down to bring water up. To us it may look a little strange that he was asking a price for water. He says, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water, for the moment, let me ask whom you intend to have the money for the straw sandals returned to?”

Zen monks use straw sandals, the same shape as my sandals, but they are made of straw, very beautiful, very aesthetic and very cheap. Nansen is saying, Who has paid for your straw sandals? They look so new. You don’t deserve these straw sandals; they are specially meant for Zen masters. And as for giving you water, I will not ask anything for it, but it has been wasted on a man who does not even know what samadhi is, what is prajna, and still has the guts and the nerve to give an absolutely irrelevant answer; an answer, too, that is not his own. Such a borrowed state is all of scholars, pundits, rabbis.

Nansen exposed Obaku completely to the very innermost core of his being just by asking a small question. But the question is not small, and it is a question which nobody has explained the way I am telling you, that the experiences are not two. Just, the paths leading to the experiences are very different, contrary paths.

One follows the darkness, goes deeper and deeper into the darkness of the mind and the unconscious, reaches to the very end of the mind and jumps out of it. And another tries every possible way to make the unconscious also conscious. And when everything becomes conscious in him, he also takes a jump.

Perhaps Buddha’s method is more scientific. There is no question of right and wrong. Both lead to the same space, but Buddha’s method of prajna is more scientific in the way that you cannot miss because you are aware. Ramakrishna’s path is groping in the dark. He may reach to the dawn, he may not reach. And once he has gone into unconsciousness, all is darkness, he cannot see where he is going. It is just by chance that he finds the door out of the mind, just by chance.

Science does not believe in chance, it has to be a certainty. That’s why you will not find more Ramakrishnas in the world, because it is just a coincidence that groping in the dark you find the door and get out of the mind. It happened to Ramakrishna but you will not find another parallel in the whole history of mankind.

Thousands of mystics have reached to the same point. But they have all followed the path of prajna, because when you have a light with you, you need not grope. When you have a light with you, a consciousness, like a torch showing the path, your reaching to the goal has more certainty.

And once you have known the path, then it is very easy. Only the first time are you going into the unknown. But the unknown is not dark; you keep a torch in your hand. Ramakrishna is going into the unknown without a torch. Ramakrishna’s samadhi in a way is special. He is alone of that kind. He is a rare specimen who went into his depths without taking a single candle. It is more than probable that you will not find the door.

When Buddha was asked about it, he said, “There was a palace with one thousand doors; only one door was real, the remaining were fake; they appeared like doors, but when you went close to them, they were just painted doors, there was a flat wall with no opening.

“A blind man got lost in the palace. He went around groping and groping. He touched many painted doors, but they were not really doors and the time he reached the real door, the only one, a fly came to sit on his head. So he became engaged in waving it away and passed the door.”

Nine hundred and ninety-nine doors, and a chance comes; that chance is very fragile, it can be missed by anything: your head starts itching or you become so tired of groping and touching that you say, “Take a chance, leave this one, go ahead.”

So Buddha said, “My path is not of such groping. In my palace all the doors are real. And there is no need to grope because I give you eyes of meditation and a light that burns like a fire within you, which is your very life. With that light and silence of meditation you can find the door. There are a thousand doors, every door is capable of taking you out.”

I am absolutely certain that Buddha is right; but that does not mean that Ramakrishna is wrong. But Ramakrishna cannot be the rule, he can only be the exception. Buddha is providing for everybody, not for exceptions. A rule has to be for everybody. You cannot make a rule on a single exception. Of the followers of Ramakrishna not even a single one has attained samadhi. But Buddha’s followers even today, continuing as a chain, master to disciple in different countries, are attaining prajna.

Whether you call it samadhi or you call it prajna, it is the same; the meaning of both is ultimate wisdom.

Buddhists don’t believe Ramakrishna to be enlightened. One very old Buddhist monk… he was an Englishman, and when he was just a child, his father was appointed to some post in Kalimpong where the child came in contact with Buddhist masters. He became a Buddhist at the age of eighteen. His whole family resisted; they were Christians and said, “What are you doing listening to the Buddhist masters?”

He could see that Christianity is very childish. It has nothing much to give to you. What can you do even if Jesus did walk on water? Even if you learn to walk on water, what spirituality can you attain through it? Even if you can turn water into alcohol, which is a crime, it does not help anyone to be spiritual. What are the teachings of Christians which can be compared to Gautam the Buddha? None comes close to him. He certainly is the Everest of the Himalayas.

So a Buddhist won’t accept Ramakrishna as enlightened. But talking to Buddhist monks and particularly this English monk, I asked him, “Have you ever tried forgetting Buddha’s method and giving some time to using Ramakrishna’s method?”

He said, “No, I have never tried it.”

I said, “Then saying that Ramakrishna never achieved samadhi is going beyond the limits of your experience.”

I have tried both ways, going on the path of light and going on the path of absolute darkness. Nobody does that because once you have reached the path, then why should you bother about other paths?

You have reached the station in a rickshaw, now are you going to come back and try a taxi? People will think you are mad. You have reached, now there is no need to try whether a taxi also reaches the station or not.

But I am a little crazy. Seeing the argument going on for centuries, I decided that the only way to come to a conclusion is, follow both the paths: one time the path of light and another time the path of darkness. When I was following the path of darkness, almost all my friends, my professors thought that I had gone mad. “What is the need if you have reached to the light in the day, what is the need to continue traveling in the night after reaching?”

I said, “There is a need because there is no other way to conclude whether Ramakrishna was also in the same state of consciousness as Buddha.”

But neither has any Buddhist tried nor have any of Ramakrishna’s disciples tried. And I am nobody’s disciple, I am just an outsider; I don’t belong to any religion or any organization. But to come to a conclusion, seeing that for centuries people have been discussing it, I could not conceive any way that it could be decided by argument; the only way to decide it was to follow both the paths.

And now the meditation that I have been teaching to you is a combination of both the paths. It is neither a meditation dependent only on prajna, just being aware; nor is it a meditation just to forget all and drown yourself in deep rest and darkness. I am using both. I am telling you to forget the world, I am telling you forget the body, forget the mind, you are not these things, but keep your light alive as a witness. So you are going on both the paths together.

There is no problem. In fact it is more significant, because you will be achieving the space that Ramakrishna achieved and that Buddha achieved. And you will have a good laugh that for centuries scholars have been unnecessarily wasting their time. It is always good to experiment because this is not a philosophical question. It is a question of inner experimentation; it is as scientific as any science.

But in a very nice way Nansen said, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water, because I have to carry the drinking water for miles, Let me ask whom you intend to have the money for the straw sandals returned to? Who has paid the money for your straw sandals? Return the money. You are just a teacher; don’t pretend to be a master. To this question, Obaku made no reply.

-Osho

From Nansen: The Point of Departure, 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.