Tag: Zen

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

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.

Where Does the Fire Come From – Osho

Maneesha, before discussing your sutras, a little biographical note on Isan is essential. I say it is essential because unless you understand the man, his background, his upbringing, his qualities, you will not be able to grasp just the pure sutras. They are almost writings in the air, or, if you prefer, in the water. The man who has written the sutras or told the sutras, or managed these anecdotes, has to be understood to understand all that is connected with him, because his whole being covers and colors whatever he says. You cannot take it out of context.

Isan is a totally different personality than Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma was a hard master; Isan was very polite. Naturally his politeness would affect whatever happened around him. He was a very humble person, never tried to convert anybody, but on the contrary slipped deep down into the forest, so nobody came to him. He felt it a little embarrassing to be the master and degrade somebody as a follower – a very nice, very delicate personality, the personality of a poet, of a singer, of a dancer.

Isan was a mellow and patient master in guiding his disciples to attain their enlightenment.

He never used shouting or hitting or beating; that was not possible for him. He was such a loving, compassionate being that to think of him hitting the way Zen masters hit is impossible. He was very humble; hence he had to create absolutely different devices than those of Bodhidharma or Nansen.

Isan was a mellow and patient master in guiding his disciples to attain their enlightenment. Unlike those Zen masters who preceded him, he did not use the stick or shout.

However, his mildness of manner was only a veneer for the iconoclast and rebel within.

You should not understand that his humbleness was not a rebellious quality. You should not think that his humbleness made him compromise with the past and the traditions. He remained a great rebel against all that goes towards preventing a person’s enlightenment.

So his mildness of manner was only a veneer, just a cover for the iconoclast and rebel within. Deep down he was fire. On the surface he was very polite. Those who came to him because of his politeness – because there were many who were afraid of the Zen masters who would beat, who would hit, who would suddenly jump on you; their behavior looked so irrational. Isan looked very good compared to the other predecessors. Although he never was interested in people, still in the deepest forest one thousand disciples had gathered, and they had come from such faraway places just because they had heard that Isan was not a man to hit or slap. He was so mild and so humble and so loving. . .

But this was only a veneer. Inside there was glowing fire. Once you had come close to him, because of his humbleness, because of his very friendly behavior, you were caught in the net. As you would come closer, you would know the fiery nature of his being – but it was too late to go back. You had fallen in love with the man. Now whatever happens, if you have to pass through this fire, you will pass through this fire.

Maneesha has brought one anecdote:

Our beloved master,

On one occasion, a monk came to Isan’s monastery to be taught, and seeing him, Isan made as if to get up.

“Please don’t stand up!” Exclaimed the monk.

“I have not sat down yet!” Said Isan.

When you are in the middle, it is very difficult to say whether you are going to sit down or you are going to get up.

Mulla Nasruddin used to suggest to his followers that if you don’t want to be bored by anybody, just take your umbrella and stand in the door.

If the fellow is alright and you would like to welcome him, you can say, “You came at the right time; I was just coming in.” And if the fellow is a bore, you can say, “Excuse me, you came at a wrong time. I am going out.” But just standing at the door with the umbrella, now it is very difficult to decide where the man is going, whether in or out. He is standing in the door, in the middle.

The same was the position: the man has come to be taught, and seeing him, Isan made as if to get up. It was a strategy to know his response, how the other man will behave. Isan was not getting up; he just made as if he was going to get up.

“Please don’t stand up!” Because you stand up to give honor to someone, the man naturally thought that Isan was going to honor him by standing. “Please don’t stand up!” Exclaimed the monk.”

But such was the subtle way of Isan to know about the inner mind of man. This man looks perfectly right in saying, “Please don’t stand up!” But on what grounds has he assumed that Isan should be standing up to welcome him?

“I haven’t sat down yet!” Said Isan. “What about standing up? – I was just going to sit down. Why did you assume . . .?”

Perhaps that assumption is a deep expectation that he should be honored. Perhaps it is unconscious, but Isan has brought it to the surface. The man could have thought that Isan was going to sit down. He was in the middle – both possibilities were available to him – but the man had chosen the possibility that Isan was going to stand up. That shows his mind – a deep longing, a desire to be honored, although he has come only as a student to be taught.

Isan said, “I haven’t sat down yet” – the question of standing does not arise.

But the poor monk did not understand the subtle way: “I haven’t bowed yet,” The monk said.

“You rude creature!” Commented Isan.

Very strange encounters! When Isan said, “I haven’t sat down yet!”, that was the moment to bow down and touch his feet, and to offer himself for the discipline, for the meditation, for all his teachings.

Rather than taking that, he retorted – he thought as if Isan was making a fool of him – “I haven’t bowed yet,” The monk said.

“You rude creature!” Commented Isan. “This is not the way to be with me. You have to be grateful to be allowed to see me. Instead of it you are showing your ego.”

“I haven’t bowed yet,” he is saying. “Don’t consider that I am your disciple, or I am your student; I have not even bowed yet.” And he has come to learn, but ego is such a subtle phenomenon that without your knowing, it immediately asserts. The ego simply retorted, “I haven’t bowed yet.”

Now, this has to be understood. There are things which should not be said; the very moment you say them they lose all their grandeur, gratefulness. You have to behave in a way that shows your gratitude, not your words.

Bowing down is a gesture of saying, “I am ready. You can trust that I will not misuse the time that you will give me, or the meditation or any kind of discipline. I will not misuse it. I have come to you whole-heartedly.” It is just a way, without words, of saying, “I am available.”

But the man said instead, “I haven’t bowed yet.”

As if a man like Isan is in need of your gratefulness! By being grateful to a person like Isan, you are not making him in any way richer; on the contrary, you are becoming richer. You are learning a new way, a new gesture and its significance.

In the West it never evolved that the disciple should touch the feet of the master, and even today the Western mind thinks it really strange – one human being touching the feet of another human being. But they don’t know the significance of it, they don’t know the esoteric significance of it.

When the disciple touches the feet of the master, it is not only what you see, something else is happening. When the disciple touches the feet, the master touches his head. A circle of energy is created that is not visible to the eyes – because no energy is ever visible to you. You only see the gesture: one is touching the feet, the other is touching his head.

But the East, for at least ten thousand years, has come to know this secret way of approaching a master. And the master will put his hand on your head only if he feels your energy is worth it. By touching his feet . . . You should remember that energy moves only from the fingers of the hand or from the toes of the feet; energy moves from points which are dead ends. When somebody touches his feet, the master immediately recognizes the kind of energy. If he feels that the person has to be accepted, is worth being worked upon, then he touches his head, and with his hand he gives a taste of his energy, and then both energies become a circle. And if the circle becomes smooth great possibilities can happen.

But for the outsider it seems simply that one person is touching the feet of another person. The West has not been able, even today, to understand. Life is not what it appears from the outside; it is much more, immensely more, on the inside.

The man showed an egoistic pattern of his mind. That’s why Isan had to comment, “You rude creature!” He was not accepted as a disciple.

To be accepted as a disciple by a great master is not a small thing. In that very acceptance your enlightenment has come miles closer, your liberation has taken a tremendous quantum leap. You are just on the verge, ready, just because the master has accepted you. He accepts only when he sees the possibility, the vulnerability, the openness. It is an inner drama which is not visible to the eyes.

On another occasion, Isan was watching a brush fire, and asked his disciple, Dogo, “Do you see the fire?”

Now, it will look strange – the fire is there, Dogo, his disciple, is there, Isan is sitting there. There is no reason why Dogo should be asked, “Do you see the fire?”

Replied Dogo, “I see it.”

The master asked Dogo, “Where does the fire come from?”

Dogo said, “I would like you to ask me something that has nothing to do with walking around or zazen or lying down” – At which Isan left off talking and went away.

Dogo has closed all the doors. When Isan was asking, “Do you see the fire?” he should have been alert. When you are with a master you have to be alert every moment. What he says must imply some greater significance which may not appear in the words.

Now, it is a strange question. They both are seeing the fire; but if the master asks, “Do you see the fire?” he means many things which Dogo is missing. He means, “Are you here?” You can be seeing the fire and yet you may be somewhere else, and the fire may be just a faraway, faded thing. It may not be a living experience right now. If your mind is full of thoughts, you can even miss the fire, because who is going to see it? You have to be here – that is the point that is hidden behind the question.

If Dogo had had the understanding he would have immediately thought that the question means his mind has moved somewhere else. He must have been thinking of other things, other worlds, other matters.

I have told you a story about two friends.

One morning they met. The first friend said, “You will not believe it: last night I had a dream I had gone fishing, and I caught such big fish that I had to carry one fish at a time. The whole night it continued. It was strange – for years I have been fishing and I have never found such great fish. You should have seen what a joy it was.”

The other man said, “That is nothing. Last night I dreamed that in my bedroom, in my bed itself, on one side was Marilyn Monroe, utterly naked, on the other side Sophia Loren, utterly naked. I was greatly shocked. I had never believed that this chance would arise in my lifetime.”

The first friend said, “You idiot! Why did you not call me?”

The second man said, “I did call, but your wife said you had gone fishing!”

People seem to be somewhere, but their minds may be anywhere. To be in the moment is a clear-cut message of Zen.

Isan’s asking Dogo, “Do you see the fire?” certainly meant that Dogo was not there. He was just sitting there but his mind had roamed away. It would have been right for him to say, “I don’t see it, because I have gone into my thoughts somewhere else.” But rather than telling the truth he said, “I see it.”

The master asked Dogo, “If you see it, can you tell me Where does the fire come from?” Now he is asking, from where do all things come – the fire is only a symbol – and where do they go finally? What is the source from which they arise and what is the point where they disappear?

To the meditator it becomes slowly clear that the source and the goal are one. The same point is the source; the energy moves in a circle and comes back to the same point. You are at the same point both the times – when you are born and when you die. You may have changed much meanwhile – so much experience, so much knowledge – that’s why you miss the pure innocence of death. You missed the innocence of birth because of your ignorance, and you miss the innocence of death because of your knowledge.

Of course, you were not expected to recognize innocence in your birth, you can be forgiven for that; you were not told or taught. The experience was so new, you could not name it even. But the man who dies full of knowledge again misses the innocence, because of his knowledgeability.

In mystic circles around the world, it has been a long-standing understanding that unless a man is just like his birth-innocence when he dies, he missed the whole point and the whole dance of life, he missed the whole significance of life. He has taken a long route of seventy or eighty years, and has come back to the source, but missed it again.

In India, the word for the experience of this circle, the word that is used is sansar. Sansar means both the world and the circle. The whole world is a circular experience. In the beginning you are innocent; you should be innocent at the end. Then your life has been a great life of love, of understanding, of many flowers, of many blessings. You have not lived insanely, you have lived intelligently, you have lived meditatively; you have lived out of silence, not out of anxiety, anguish, and thoughts.

A man is complete only when at the moment of his death he is again the same as he was when he was born, again a child – the second childhood.

So when Dogo was asked by the master, “Where does the fire come from?” the fire was just an excuse. He was asking, “From where do things come and where do they go?”

But Dogo again missed. Rather than answering the question, Dogo said, “I would like to ask you to ask me something that has nothing to do with walking around or zazen or lying down” – At which Isan left off talking and went away.

Dogo has closed all the doors. He is saying, “You should ask me something which is not concerned with zazen – that is intense meditation – or a walking meditation, or a lying down meditation.”

Buddha used all actions in life as an opportunity to meditate. Walking, you should walk meditatively, each step with full awareness. Lying down, you should lie down with awareness, not just out of old habit. And zazen is the intense and urgent quality of meditativeness.

Dogo is saying to his master, who has asked, “Where does the fire come from?” . . . He has not answered the question because that question implies meditation. Only in meditation can you know that everything comes from the same source and goes back to the same eternity. Nothing ever dies, nothing ever is born; everything is, only forms go on changing. What was sometime before wood, is now fire; what is fire soon will be smoke.

These are the ways of disappearing into the ultimate reality. The fire was hidden, so long remained hidden in the tree. Now it has blossomed, just as flowers blossom; it has come out of the prison. A little dance, a little joyful life, and the fire will turn into smoke. Smoke will have a little joyful life, and slowly, slowly will disappear into the eternal. This implies a meditative experience.

Rather than answering it, because only a meditator can answer from where the fire comes . . . Unless you know your own center, how can you answer from where your fire comes? Your life is a fire, and where does it go finally? Does it disappear outside or does it again relapse into the origin? Only the meditator has known the secrets of inner life. Life sometimes is dormant in the center and sometimes comes to the circumference, and when tired goes back to the center.

One of the greatest men in history was Patanjali, who created a whole science of yoga singlehanded. It is very difficult to create a whole science alone. Five thousand years have passed and not a single word has been added, it has such a completion; neither has a single word been taken out. The system is so complete in itself, there is no possibility to go beyond Patanjali as far as yoga is concerned.

But only people who will go deeper into themselves will know that they are carrying the source and the goal both at the same center. Everything comes from the same center of the universe and goes back finally into the same center.

But rather than answering the question – perhaps he was not able to answer it – on the contrary, he was closing all doors. He was saying, “I would like you to ask me something that has nothing to do with walking – because in Zen monasteries there is a special place for walking meditation – or zazen – which is sitting meditation – or lying down.” These three meditations are followed by all meditators on the path of Zen. He is saying, “Leave these out and ask me something.”

Now, Zen is not concerned with anything else. In fact, there have been cases when a new disciple comes to a master and the master almost always asks, “From where are you coming?” The authentic seeker will say, “I don’t know. I have come to you to find out from where I am coming.” This kind of disciple will be immediately accepted.

But instead of it he says, “From some town, some village . . .”

And the master asks, “How much is the price of rice in that village?”

And the person starts talking about the prices, not knowing that the master is trying to find out whether this man has the capacity, is made of the right stuff to be a meditator.

One Sufi mystic, Bayazid, went to his master for the first time. The master was staying in a mosque. Bayazid entered the mosque – he was perfectly alone, as far as you could see – but the master immediately said, “Keep the crowd out! You come alone; this is not a place for the crowd.”

Bayazid looked all around and said, “What crowd? There is no one here except me.”

The master said, “Don’t look around, look in. You have been carrying a whole crowd – all the friends you have left behind, your wife, your children, your parents. They had all come to say good-bye to you at the boundary of the village, but they are still in your mind. I am talking about that crowd. Just go out, and until that crowd is gone don’t come in.”

It took one year for Bayazid. He remained sitting outside, watching his mind, waiting for the moment when the mind was empty. The moment he found, “Now the crowd is gone,” he entered the mosque.

The master hugged him and told him, “My hands are small, I cannot hug a whole crowd. Now you have come alone, something is possible.”

Once, Isan was asked by Ichu to compose a gatha for him.

Gatha means a poem. Ordinarily that question is not right; it is asked only at the time when the master is dying. The disciples ask as a memorial, “Just write down a small poem. Your last word, in your own handwriting, will be our greatest treasure.” That last word is called gatha.

Isan was asked by Ichu to compose a gatha for him. That was so stupid a question, because Isan was not going to die.

Isan replied: “It is foolish to compose one when face to face. When I am face to face with you, read me, read my heart. A gatha is written when a master is dying because he will not be anymore available. It is so foolish to ask such a thing when we are face to face. Feel my presence. And, in any case, writing things on paper!” . . .

Isan is saying, “In the first place, it is foolish when I am present not to rejoice in my presence, not to dance with my presence, not to be ecstatic and drunk with my presence. And secondly, in any case, writing things on paper! – what will be their value? When you cannot understand the living master and his word, that dead paper, that dead ink – what are you going to do with it?”

So Ichu went to Kyozan, a disciple of Isan, and made the same request.

In response, Kyozan drew a circle on paper and wrote a note next to it . . .

It is a beautiful note. He has not compiled a gatha, but he has responded in a different, unique way, in his own way.

He has not composed a poem; on the contrary, he drew a circle on the paper and wrote a note next to it that said: “To think and then know is the second grade. Not to think and then know is the third grade.”

He has left out the first grade because something has to be left for the disciple to find. What is the first grade? He says, “Not to think and then know is the third grade. To think and then know is the second grade.”

But Ichu did not ask him, “What is the first grade?”

The first grade is just to know; no question of thinking or not thinking, but just to know.

The moment you enter into deep meditation you pass through many things: the thinking mind, the feeling heart. You come into a space where everything is empty, only witnessing has remained. That witnessing is the only authentic knowing; that is the first grade.

But Ichu went on missing. In all these sutras he could not make a single step deeper into the mystery of life, although every possibility was made available to him.

Soseki wrote:

Don’t ask why the pine trees

In the front garden

Are gnarled and crooked.

The straightness

They were born with

Is right there inside them.

It is a very significant statement. You see the tree – a pine tree or any tree which is not straight for any reason. Circumstances may not have allowed it to be straight, or perhaps the gardener did not want it to be straight, but in the innermost being of the tree the possibility of being straight is still there.

All these poems are about you. Whatever the symbol – the fire, or the pine tree – these symbols don’t matter; they simply give you an indication.

Don’t ask why the pine trees in the front garden are gnarled and crooked. The straightness they were born with is right there inside them.

This is exactly the case with you all. Whatever you have become, however far you have gone from your natural potential, it does not matter. Your buddha remains within you. Your straightness remains within you. You can come back home any moment you decide with totality and utter urgency. Nothing can prevent you.

-Osho

From Isan: No Footprints in the Blue Sky, Discourse #3

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Today the Bird Opens Its Wings – Osho

Maneesha, this is the last anecdote in this series, and you have chosen a very beautiful, meaningful, and significant dialogue for any seeker. The words are from a great master, hence you have to be very silent to understand it, as silent as if you are not. You can sit silently like a Gautam Buddha, but your mind goes on weaving strange and unnecessary thought patterns. And those patterns become the barrier to understanding what we are trying to do. It is not a mere lecture; it is a search together for your innermost being. […]

Nobody is absolutely here, because the moment you are absolutely here, you disappear and the buddha appears in your place. You will find yourself dispersing like a cloud; and a new image, a new golden image of pure consciousness will start arising in you, just like a mountain peak. Each silent moment is the only moment when you live.

In a seventy-year life span, if you can live only seven minutes as a buddha, that is enough. But unfortunately, even in seventy years you cannot manage seven minutes. The mind goes on and on like a stuck record, repeating the same thing. The mind can never be original, it only knows how to repeat. Have you seen a buffalo chewing? That’s exactly what the mind goes on doing. But all chewing is nothing but chewing gum; it is a stupid act. Even the bamboos are laughing. They know that although everyone thinks he is silent, underneath he is sitting on a volcano.

This anecdote can become a transforming force in your life. These few minutes here can create a new man out of you. Just a small thing has to be done: tell the mind to shut up, and be strong enough not to be involved or identified with the thinking process. It has become our habit. We have almost forgotten that we were born without any thinking. All thoughts are nothing but dust that has gathered upon you during the time you have been growing up, and this dust is preventing you from seeing yourself.

These anecdotes are small but very emphatic ways to remove the dust, to make the mirror clean, so that you can see your original face. It is the face that existence has given to you, not the face and the personality which the society has imposed upon you. Remember this, that your personality is an imposition by others on you. With all good intent, your parents, your society, your teachers have all been trying that you should not be yourself, you should be somebody else. And they provide the ideal – who it is that you have to be.

But unfortunately, it is impossible; you cannot be anyone other than who existence has intended you to be. But you can miss your destiny. You cannot be anybody else’s destiny, but you can miss your own destiny. And the way to miss it is very simple: try to be somebody else, and slowly, slowly a personality, a false mask which is not you – which consists of the expectations of others – will arise and cover your innocence. And that innocence is your only treasure, your very eternity, your deathless life.

Once, when Tozan was traveling with another monk, they saw a vegetable leaf floating down a valley stream. Tozan said, “If there were no-one in the deep mountains, how could there be a vegetable leaf here? If we go upstream, we might find a wayfarer staying there.” Making their way through the brush and going several miles up the valley, they suddenly saw the strange-looking, emaciated figure of a man. It was master Ryuzan.

A very famous name in the history of Zen.

His name meant “Dragon Mountain,” and he was also known as Yinshan, meaning, “hidden in the mountains.”

Because he was there in the mountains, far away from people, just sitting there doing nothing. The silent mountains . . .

If you are not doing anything, how long can your mind go on persisting with things which have become out of date, which do not relate to you anymore? As time passes the thoughts become thinner, and a moment comes when simply you are, without any thought. This moment when you arrive to the clearance, the opening of your consciousness, is the most precious moment, because it is your hidden nature. It is your splendor, it is your dance, it is your joy, it is your freedom. Once you have entered into it there is no way to be miserable, there is no way to be tense, there is no way to be in anguish – you have simply passed all those things, which used to be your constant companions.

Ryuzan, in his answers, proves his great understanding.

Tozan and the other monk put down their bundles and greeted Ryuzan.

Ryuzan then said, “There is no road on this mountain – how did you get here?”

Tozan said, “Leaving aside the fact that there is no road, where did you enter?”

Now these are great dialogues; they are no more talking about ordinary roads. Ryuzan’s question is not concerned with the ordinary road, but it appears on the surface as if he is asking, “There is no road on this mountain – how did you get here?” Tozan himself was a master. Anyone else in his place would have been a failure; he would not have understood the meaning that there is a place in our being which no road leads to – but still you can reach there, without any vehicle, without any road, without any guide, without any map. There is a point in our being which we can reach because we are there already – we don’t have to come. We just have to withdraw our thoughts and imaginations, to drop all that is false, and just remain together in the deep solitude.

Tozan understood it exactly, that Ryuzan is not talking about ordinary roads. He said, “Leaving aside the fact that there is no road, where did you enter? We can discuss the road later. For the moment . . . if you can enter here, why cannot we enter here, leaving aside the fact that there is no road?” He is showing his Zen understanding very clearly; if you can reach here without any way, why can we not reach? He is making such a great statement that can be translated in a thousand ways, with a thousand implications.

It means that if even one person can become a buddha, in his buddhahood he declares everybody’s buddhahood. His buddhahood means that man has the capacity and the potentiality of being a buddha. Whether you become the buddha or not, that is not the point; but your potential has been shown clearly, that this is the destiny of every human consciousness.

Ryuzan said, “I did not come by clouds or water.” Tozan then asked, “How long have you been living on this mountain?”

He dropped the subject because Ryuzan’s answer makes it clear that there is no way to say . . . all that he can say is that he did not come by clouds or water. There is no road, but he did come.

Tozn then asked, “How long have you been living on this mountain?”

Ryuzan said, “The passing of seasons and years cannot reach it.”

Time is not a measurement for consciousness. In your deepest being you have been always here, and you will remain always here; you never move from here. Everything else moves around you – the whole world moves; all the stars move. There is not a single thing except your consciousness which does not move. But your consciousness is the center of the cyclone. It simply remains here.

Ryuzan’s answer is so beautiful: “The passing of seasons and years cannot reach it.”

It is beyond time, so the passing of seasons and years . . . don’t ask stupid questions.

Tozan asked, “Were you here first, or was the mountain here first?”

From the point where he was rebuffed, he tried another way to bring time in, and to bring it in such a way that Ryuzan would be caught. He asked, “Were you here first, or was the mountain here first?”

Ryuzan answered, “I do not know.”

Who was here first – “I live here without bothering about the mountain and the forest, or who came first and who came second.”

It has been a question constantly asked by all theologians and philosophers: who came first? The Bible says that in the beginning was the Word – it was first, and then came God; but seeing the foolishness of it, whoever wrote that statement immediately added that God and the Word are one.

Because the question will be – without anybody else, how can there be a Word? The Word needs somebody to speak it. But if you put God first, the question remains the same … for centuries it has been discussed. Zen never discusses that question in the old way, with words like ‘god’, ‘creation’ . . . […]

Zen does not talk about God. It is the only religious phenomenon which has no God, no prayer, and yet has attained to the highest peaks, unavailable to any other religion in the world.

This question, “Were you here first, or was the mountain here first?” was asked to Jesus also. “If you think you are the son of God, were you here before Abraham, the father of the Jews? Were you before him? If you are the son of God, you must have been.”

Jesus said, “Yes, I have been before Abraham.”

This is the difference between other religions and Zen. When Tozan asked, “Were you here first, or was the mountain here first?”

Ryuzan answered, “I do not know.”

Only a man of great understanding and realization can say innocently, “I do not know.”

Tozan said, “Why not?”

Ryuzan said, “I don’t come from celestial or human realms.”

I don’t come from gods – the celestial realm – and I don’t come from human realms. My consciousness has no designation, no categorization, it is simply universal. I really don’t come from anywhere; I have been here.

Tozan said, “What truth have you realized that you come to dwell here on this mountain?”

Ryuzan said, “I saw two clay bulls fighting, go into the ocean, and up till now have no news of them.”

In a very symbolic way, he is saying, “I saw, amongst humanity, that people are fighting over clay bulls.” What are your gods, except clay bulls? Seeing that everybody is fighting about thoughts and concepts and scriptures and statues and temples, Ryuzan said, “Seeing that  . . . and they have not yet settled. I have heard no news about them.”

For the first time, Tozan bowed with deep respect for Ryuzan, seeing that he cannot be entangled in any controversy, he cannot be forced to say things which should not be said.

He knows; that’s why he can say “I do not know.”

Ordinarily, people who know nothing go on claiming their wisdom. All your Shankaracharyas and all your popes – not a single one is enlightened, but they are religious heads. Now what kind of guidance will these people give? They are going to poison people’s minds. But Ryuzan, a man who has the dignity and courage to say, “I do not know,” is declaring his innocence, his childlike purity. This made Tozan bow down with deep respect to Ryuzan.

Then he asked Ryuzan, “What is the guest within the host?” These are traditional Zen questions, which decide whether the master is really a master or just a teacher, a man of realization or just a man who has gathered knowledge from others, from scriptures.

“What is the guest within the host?”

Ryuzan said, “The blue mountain is covered by white clouds.”

The white clouds are the guests. The blue mountain is the host, because it will remain, and the clouds will come and go. That which comes and goes is the guest, and that which remains is the host. But he said it in a very beautiful poetic way. Zen is sheer poetry: “The blue mountain is covered by white clouds.”

Tozan asked, “What is the host within the host?” That is another traditional question. Ryuzan answered very beautifully. He said, “He never goes out of the door.” The host never goes outside the door. That which goes outside is the mind; it goes around everywhere, Bangkok . . . where are you going right now, L.A? […]. In you, in everybody, the consciousness always remains in; it never goes out of the door.

The mind travels around the world. The moment the mind stops traveling, you come to a great realization: that you are not the one who has been traveling. You are the one who has not moved even a single inch, who is always inside you at the deepest center, never leaving that place.

In our meditations we are searching for the host. We have all become guests and gone too far away from our own beings. In our meditations we are trying to come back and let the guest merge into the host. The moment you enter into your very interiority, there is a great explosion of light. You are no more a human being; you have become a buddha. You have become pure awareness, unconfined, unlimited.

Ryuzan’s answer is so beautiful:

“He never goes out of the door.”

Tozan then asked, “How far apart are host and guest?”

Ryuzan said, “Waves on a river.”

He must be a great master, of tremendous understanding. He is saying that just as a river has waves, those waves are the guests. And when the waves have disappeared, the guest has disappeared in the host. The river remains; the waves come and go.

Ryuzan said, “Waves on a river.”

Tozan then asked, “When guest and host meet, what is said?”

Ryuzan said, “The pure breeze sweeps the white moon”

Nothing is said.

“The pure breeze sweeps the white moon.”

Just a tremendous beauty, a blissfulness, a benediction arises. Nothing is said, not even a hello.

Tozan took his leave and departed.

Hakuyo has written:

Over the peak-spreading clouds,

At its source the river is cold.

If you would see,

Climb the mountain top.

If you want to see you will have to climb the mountain top. If you want to see you will have to reach to the highest point of your consciousness.

Another Zen poet:

For long years, a bird in a cage,

Today, flying along with the cloud.

These small statements defeat the great scriptures of other religions. In what a beautiful way he says everything that needs to be said!

For long years, perhaps many, many births,

A bird in a cage,

Today, flying along with the cloud.

Freedom is the ultimate goal. We are all living in cages, not only of body and mind, but of all kinds of concepts, superstitions. Unless we drop all these cages, scatter them, burn them, and become free – just like a bird on the wing, flying away with the clouds – we will not know what is possible. We will not know what our destiny is. We will not be able to realize the joy, the ultimate experience of truth.

-Osho

From Zen: The Diamond Thunderbolt, Discourse #13

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.

Beyond the Gateless Gate: Transcending the Seven Bodies, Part 2 – Osho

Raja yoga begins with the fourth body. Only hatha yoga begins with the first body; other yogas begin from somewhere else. Theosophy begins from the second body, and other systems begin from the third. As civilization goes on progressing to the fourth body, many persons will be able to begin from there. But only if they have worked through the three lower bodies in their past lives can the fourth be used. Those who study raja yoga from scriptures or from swamis and gurus without knowing whether or not they have worked through their three lower bodies are bound to be disillusioned because one cannot begin from the fourth. The three must be crossed first. Only then does the fourth come.

The fourth is the last body that it is possible to begin from. There are four yogas: hatha yoga for the first body, mantra yoga for the second, bhakti yoga for the third, and raja yoga for the fourth. In ancient days, everybody had to begin with the first body, but now there are so many types of people: one has worked up to the second body in a previous life, another up to the third, et cetera. But as far as dreaming is concerned, one must begin from the first body. Only then can you know the whole range of it, the whole spectrum of it.

So in the fourth body, your consciousness must become like fire – going upward. There are many ways to check this. For example, if the mind is flowing toward sex it is just like water flowing downward, because the sex center is downward. In the fourth body one must begin directing the eyes up, not down.

If consciousness is to go upward, it must begin from a center that is above the eyes, not below the eyes. There is only one center above the eyes from which the movement can be upward: the ajna chakra. Now the two eyes must look upward toward the third eye.

The third eye has been remembered in so many ways. In India, the distinction between a virgin and a girl who is married is made by a color mark on the third eye of the married one. A virgin is bound to look downward toward the sex center, but the moment she is married she must begin to look upward. Sex must change from sexuality to beyond sexuality. To help her to remember to look upward, a color mark, a tilak, is used on the third eye.

Tilak marks have been used on the foreheads of so many types of persons: sannyasins, worshippers – so many types of color marks. Or it is possible to use chandan – sandalwood paste. The moment your two eyes look upward toward the third eye, a great fire is created at the center; a burning sensation is there. The third eye is beginning to open, and it must be kept cool. So in India, sandalwood paste is used. It is not only cool; it also has a particular perfume that is concerned with the third body and the transcendence of it. The coolness of the perfume, and the particular spot where it is placed, becomes an upward attraction, a remembrance of the third eye.

If you close your eyes and I place my finger at your third eye spot, I am not really touching your third eye itself, but you will still begin to feel it. Even this much pressure is enough. Scarcely a touch, just a gentle fingering. So the perfume, the delicate touch of it and its coolness, is enough. Then your attention is always flowing from your eyes to the third eye.

So to cross the fourth body there is only one technique, one method, and that is to look upward.

Shirshasan, the headstand, the reverse position of the body, was used as a method to do this because our eyes are ordinarily looking downward. If you stand on your head, you will still be looking downward, but now the downward is upward. The flow of your energy downward will be converted into an upward flow.

That is why in meditation, even without knowing it, some persons will go into reverse positions. They will begin to do shirshasan because the flow of energy has changed. Their minds are so conditioned to the downward flow that when the energy changes direction they will feel uncomfortable. When they begin to stand on their heads they will feel at ease again, because the flow of energy will again be moving downward. But it will not really be moving downward. In relation to your centers, your chakras, the energy will still be moving upward.

So shirshasan has been used as a method to take you from the fourth body to the fifth. The main thing to be remembered is to be looking upward. This can be done through tratak – staring at a fixed object, through concentration on the sun, through so many objects. But it is better to do it inwardly. Just close the eyes!

But first, the first four bodies must be crossed. Only then can it be helpful, otherwise not. Otherwise, it may be disturbing; it may create all sorts of mental diseases, because the whole adjustment of the system will be shattered. The four bodies are looking downward, and with your inner mind you are looking upward. Then, there is every possibility that schizophrenia will result.

To me, schizophrenia is the result of such a thing. That is why ordinary psychology cannot go deeply into schizophrenia. The schizophrenic mind is simultaneously working in opposite directions: standing outside and looking inside; standing outside and looking upward. Your whole system must be in harmony. If you have not known your physical body from the inside, then your consciousness should be facing downward. That will be healthy; the adjustment is right. You must never try to turn the outward moving mind upward or schizophrenia, division, will be the result.

Our civilizations, our religions, have been the basic cause for humanity’s split personality. They have not been concerned with the total harmony. There are teachers who teach methods to move upward to persons who are not even inside their own physical body. The method begins to work and part of the person remains outside his body while a second part moves upward. Then there will be a split between the two. He will become two persons: sometimes this, sometimes that; a Jekyll and Hyde.

There is every possibility that a person can become seven people simultaneously. Then the split is complete. He has become seven different energies. One part of him is moving downward, clinging to the first body; another is clinging to the second; another to the third. One part is going upward; another is going somewhere else. He has no center in him at all.

Gurdjieff used to say that such a person is just like a house where the master is absent, and every servant claims he is the master. And no one can deny it, because the master himself is absent. When anybody comes to the house and knocks on the door, the servant who is nearby becomes the master. The next day, another servant answers the door and claims to be the master.

A schizophrenic is without any center. And we are all like that! We have adjusted ourselves to society, that’s all. The difference is only of degrees. The master is absent or asleep, and every part of us claims ownership. When the sex urge is there, sex becomes the master. Your mortality, your family, your religion – everything will be denied. Sex becomes the total owner of the house. And then, when sex has gone, frustration follows. Your reason takes charge and says, “I am the master.” Now reason will claim the whole house and will deny sex a home.

Everybody claims the house totally. When anger is there, it becomes the master. Now there is no reason, no consciousness. Nothing else can interfere with the anger. Because of this, we cannot understand others. A person who was loving becomes angry, and suddenly there is no love. We are at a loss now to understand whether he is loving or not loving. The love was just a servant, and the anger too is just a servant. The master is absent. That is why you cannot ordinarily rely on anybody else. He is not master of himself; any servant can take over. He is no one; he is not a unity.

What I am saying is that one should not experiment with techniques of looking upward before crossing the first four bodies. Otherwise, a split will be created which will be impossible to bridge, and one will have to wait for one’s next life to begin again. It is better to practice techniques that begin from the beginning. If you have passed your first three bodies in past births, then you will pass them again within a moment. There will be no difficulty. You know the territory; you know the way. In a moment, they come before you. You recognize them – and you have passed them! Then you can go further. So my insistence is always to begin from the first body. For everyone!

To move from the fourth body is the most significant thing. Up to the fourth body you are human.  Now you become superhuman. In the first body you are just an animal. Only with the second body does humanity come into being. And only in the fourth does it flower completely. Civilization has never gone beyond the fourth. Beyond the fourth is beyond the human. We cannot classify Christ as a human being. A Buddha, a Mahavira, a Krishna, are beyond the human. They are superhuman.

The upward look is a jump from the fourth body. When I am looking at my first body from outside it, I am just an animal with the possibility of being human. The only difference is that I can become human and the animal cannot. As far as the present situation is concerned, we are both below humanity, subhuman. But I have a possibility to go beyond. And from the second body onward, the flowering of the human being happens.

Even someone in the fourth body looks superhuman to us. They are not. An Einstein or a Voltaire looks superhuman, but they are not. They are the complete flowering of the human being and we are below human, so they are above us. But they are not above the human. Only a Buddha, a Christ or a Zarathustra is more than human. By looking upward, by raising their consciousness upward from the fourth body, they have crossed the boundary of the mind; they have transcended the mental body.

There are parables worth our understanding. Mohammed, looking upward, says that something has come to him from above. We interpret this above geographically, so the sky becomes the abode of the gods. For us, upward means the sky; downward means the layer below the earth. But if we interpret it in this way, the symbol has not been understood. When Mohammed is looking upward he is not looking toward the sky; he is looking toward the ajna chakra. When he says that something has come to him from above, his feeling is right. But, ‘up’ has a different meaning for us.

In every picture, Zarathustra is looking upward. His eyes are never downward. He was looking upward when he first saw the divine. The divine came to him as fire. That is why the Persians have been fire worshippers. This feeling of fire comes from the ajna chakra. When you look upward, the spot feels fiery, as if everything is burning. Because of that burning, you are transformed. The lower being is burnt, it ceases to be, and the upper being is born. That is the meaning of “passing through fire.”

After the fifth body you move into still another realm, another dimension. From the first body to the fourth body the movement is from outside to inside; from the fourth to the fifth it is from downward to upward; from the fifth it is from ego to non-ego. Now the dimension is different. There is no question of outside, inside, upward or downward. The question is of “I” and “non-I.” The question is now concerned with whether there is a center or not.

A person is without any center up to the fifth – split in different parts. Only for the fifth body is there a center: a unity, oneness. But the center becomes the ego. Now this center will be a hindrance for further progress. Every step that was a help becomes a hindrance for further progress. You have to leave every bridge you cross. It was helpful in crossing, but it will become a hindrance if you cling to it.

Up to the fifth body, a center has to be created. Gurdjieff says this fifth center is the crystallization.

Now there are no servants; the master has taken charge. Now the master is the master. He is awakened; he has come back. When the master is present, the servants subside; they become silent.

So when you enter the fifth body, crystallization of the ego happens. But now, for further progress, this crystallization must be lost again. Lost into the void, into the cosmic. Only one who has can lose, so to talk about egolessness before the fifth body is nonsense, absurd. You do not have an ego, so how can you lose it? Or you can say that you have many egos, every servant has an ego. You are multi-egoistic, a multi-personality, a multi-psyche, but not a unified ego.

You cannot lose the ego because you do not have it. A rich man can renounce his riches, but not a poor one. He has nothing to renounce, nothing to lose. But there are poor people who think about renunciation. A rich person is afraid of renunciation because he has something to lose, but a poor one is always ready to renounce. He is ready, but he has nothing to renounce.

The fifth body is the richest. It is the culmination of all that is possible for a human being. The fifth is the peak of individuality, the peak of love, of compassion, of everything that is worthwhile. The thorns have been lost. Now, the flower too must be lost. Then there will simply be perfume, no flower.

The sixth is the realm of perfume, cosmic perfume. No flower, no center. A circumference, but no center. You can say that everything has become a center, or that now there is no center. Just a diffused feeling is there. There is no split, no division – not even the division of the individual into the “I” and the “non-I,” the “I” and “the other.” There is no division at all.

So the individual can be lost in either of two ways: one, schizophrenic, splitting into many sub persons; and another, cosmic – lost into the ultimate; lost into the greater, the greatest, the Brahma; lost into the expanse. Now the flower is not, but the perfume is.

The flower too is a disturbance, but when only the perfume is, it is perfect. Now there is no source, so it cannot die. It is undying. Everything that has a source will die, but now the flower is not, so there is no source. The perfume is uncaused, so there is no death and no boundary to it. A flower has limitations; perfume is unlimited. There is no barrier to it. It goes on and on, and goes beyond.

So from the fifth body the question is not of upward, downward, sideways, inside, outside. The question is whether to be with an ego or without an ego. And the ego is the most difficult thing of all to lose. The ego is not a problem up to the fifth body because progress is ego-fulfilling. No one wants to be schizophrenic; everyone would prefer to have a crystallized personality. So every sadhaka, every seeker, can progress to the fifth body.

There is no method to move beyond the fifth body because every type of method is bound with the ego. The moment you use a method, the ego is strengthened. So those who are concerned with going beyond the fifth, talk of no-method. They talk of methodlessness, of no-technique. Now there is no how. From the fifth, there is no method possible.

You can use a method up to the fifth, but then no method will be of use because the user is to be lost. If you use anything, the user will become stronger. His ego will go on crystallizing; it will become a nucleus of crystallization. That is why those who have remained in the fifth body say there are infinite souls, infinite spirits. They think of each spirit as if it were an atom. Two atoms cannot meet. They are windowless, doorless; closed to everything outside themselves. Ego is windowless. You can use a word of Leibnitz: ‘monads’. Those who remain in the fifth body become monads: windowless atoms. Now you are alone, and alone, and alone.

But this crystallized ego has to be lost. How to lose it when there is no method? How to go beyond it when there is no path? How to escape from it? There is no door. Zen monks talk about the gateless gate. Now there is no gate, and still one has to go beyond it.

So what to do? The first thing: do not be identified with this crystallization. Just be aware of this closed house of “I.” Just be aware of it – don’t do anything – and there is an explosion! You will be beyond it.

They have a parable in Zen….

A goose egg is put in a bottle. The goose comes out of the egg and begins to grow, but the mouth of the bottle is so small that the goose cannot come out of the bottle. It grows bigger and bigger, and the bottle becomes too small to live in. Now, either the bottle will have to be destroyed to save the goose, or the goose will die. Seekers are asked: “What is to be done? We do not want to lose either. The goose is to be saved and the bottle also. So what to do?” This is the question of the fifth body. When there is no way out and the goose is growing, when the crystallization has become consolidated, what to do now?

The seeker goes inside a room, closes the door and begins to puzzle over it. What to do? Only two things seem to be possible: either to destroy the bottle and save the goose, or to let the goose die and save the bottle. The meditator goes on thinking and thinking. He thinks of something, but then it will be cancelled because there is no way to do it. The teacher sends him back to think some more.

For many nights and many days the seeker goes on thinking, but there is no way to do it. Finally, a moment comes when thinking ceases. He runs out shouting, “Eureka! The goose is out!” The teacher never asks how, because the whole thing is just nonsense.

So to move from the fifth body, the problem becomes a Zen koan. One should just be aware of the crystallization – and the goose is out! A moment comes when you are out; there is no “I.” The crystallization has been gained and lost. For the fifth, crystallization – the center, the ego – was essential. As a passage, as a bridge, it was a necessity; otherwise, the fifth body could not be crossed. But now it is no longer needed.

There are persons who have achieved the fifth without passing through the fourth. A person who has many riches has achieved the fifth; he has crystallized in a way. A person who has become president of a country has crystallized in a way. A Hitler, a Mussolini, is crystallized in a way. But the crystallization is in the fifth body. If the four lower bodies are not in accordance with it, then the crystallization becomes a disease. Mahavira and Buddha are crystallized too, but their crystallization is different.

We all long to fulfill the ego because of an innermost need to reach the fifth body. But if we choose a shortcut, then in the end we will be lost. The shortest way is through riches, power, politics. The ego can be achieved, but it is a false crystallization; it is not in accordance with your total personality. It is like a corn that forms on your foot and becomes crystallized. It is a false crystallization, an abnormal growth, a disease.

If the goose is out in the fifth, you are in the sixth. From the fifth to the sixth is the realm of mystery. Up to the fifth, scientific methods can be used, so yoga is helpful. But after that it is meaningless, because yoga is a methodology, a scientific technique.

In the fifth, Zen is very helpful. It is a method to go from the fifth to the sixth. Zen flowered in Japan but it began in India. Its roots came from Yoga. Yoga flowered into Zen.

Zen has had much appeal in the West because the Western ego is, in a sense, crystallized. In the West, they are the masters of the world; they have everything. But the ego has become crystallized through the wrong process. It has not developed through the transcendence of the first four bodies.

So Zen has become appealing to the West but it will not help because the crystallization is wrong.

Gurdjieff is much more helpful to the West because he works from the first body to the fifth. He is not helpful beyond the fifth, only up to the fifth, to the crystallization. Through his techniques, you can achieve a proper crystallization.

Zen has been just a fad in the West because it has no roots there. It developed through a very long process in the East, beginning with hatha yoga and culminating in the Buddha. Thousands and thousands of years of humbleness: not of ego but of passivity; not of positive action but of receptivity – through a long duration of the female mind, the receptive mind. The East has always been female, while the West is male: aggressive, positive. The East has been an openness, a receptivity. Zen could be of help in the East because other methods, other systems, worked on the four lower bodies.

These four became the roots, and Zen could flower.

Today, Zen has become almost meaningless in Japan. The reason is that Japan has become absolutely Western. Once the Japanese were the most humble people, but now their humbleness is just a show. It is no longer part of their innermost core. So Zen has been uprooted in Japan and is popular now in the West. But this popularity is only because of the false crystallization of the ego.

From the fifth body to the sixth, Zen is very helpful; but only then, neither before nor beyond. It is absolutely useless for the other bodies, even harmful. To teach university level courses in the primary school not only does not help; it may be harmful.

If Zen is used before the fifth body you may experience satori, but that is not samadhi. Satori is a false samadhi. It is a glimpse of samadhi, but it is just a glimpse. As far as the fourth body – the mental body – is concerned, satori will make you more artistic, more aesthetic. It will create a sense of beauty in you; it will create a feeling of well-being. But it will not be a help in crystallization. It will not help you to move from the fourth body to the fifth.

Only beyond crystallization is Zen helpful. The goose is out of the bottle, without any how. But only at this point can it be practiced, after so many other methods have been used. A painter can paint with closed eyes; he can paint as if it is a game. An actor can act as if he is not acting. In fact, the acting becomes perfect only when it does not look like acting. But many years of labor have gone into it, many years of practice. Now the actor is completely at ease, but that at-easeness is not achieved in a day. It has its own methods.

We walk, but we never know how we do it. If someone asks you how you walk you say, “I just walk. There is no how to it.” But the how takes place when a child begins to walk. He learns. If you were to tell the child that walking needs no method – “you just walk!” – It would be nonsense. The child would not understand it. Krishnamurti has been talking this way, talking with adults who have children’s minds, saying, “You can walk. You just walk!” People listen. They are charmed. Easy! To walk without any method. Then, everyone can walk.

Krishnamurti too has become attractive in the West, and just because of this. If you look at hatha yoga or mantra yoga or bhakti yoga or raja yoga or tantra, it looks so long, so arduous, so difficult. Centuries of labor are needed, births and births. They cannot wait. Some shortcut, something instantaneous must be there. So Krishnamurti appeals to them. He says, “You just walk. You walk into God. There is no method.” But no-method is the most arduous thing to achieve. To act as if one is not acting, to speak as if one is not speaking, to walk effortlessly as if one is not walking, is based on long effort.

Labor and effort are necessary; they are needed. But they have a limitation. They are needed up to the fifth body, but they are useless from the fifth to the sixth. You will go nowhere; the goose will never be out.

That is the problem with Indian yogis. They find it difficult to cross the fifth because they are method-enchanted, method-hypnotized. They have always worked with method. There has been a clear-cut science up to the fifth and they progressed with ease. It was an effort – and they could do it! No matter how much intensity was needed, it was no problem to them. No matter how much effort, they could supply it. But now in the fifth, they have to cross from the realm of method to no-method. Now they are at a loss. They sit down, they stop. And for so many seekers, the fifth becomes the end.

That is why there is talk of five bodies, not seven. Those who have gone only to the fifth think that it is the end. It is not the end; it is a new beginning. Now one must move from the individual to the non-individual. Zen, or methods like Zen, done effortlessly, can be helpful.

Zazen means just sitting, doing nothing. A person who has done much cannot conceive of this. Just sitting and doing nothing! It is inconceivable. A Gandhi cannot conceive of it. He says, “I will spin my wheel. Something must be done. This is my prayer, my meditation.” Non-doing to him means doing nothing. Non-doing has its own realm, its own bliss, its own adjustment, but that is from the fifth body to the sixth. It cannot be understood before that.

From the sixth to the seventh, there is not even no-method. Method is lost in the fifth, and no-method is lost in the sixth. One day you simply find that you are in the seventh. Even the cosmos has gone; only nothingness is. It just happens. It is a happening from the sixth to the seventh. Un-caused, unknown.

Only when it is un-caused does it become discontinuous with what went before. If it is caused then there is a continuity and the being cannot be lost, even in the seventh. The seventh is total non-being: nirvana, emptiness, non-existence.

There is no possibility of any continuity in moving from existence to non-existence. It is just a jump, un-caused. If it were caused there would be a continuity, and it would be just like the sixth body. So to move from the sixth body to the seventh cannot even be talked about. It is a discontinuity, a gap. Something was, and something now is – and there is no connection between the two. Something has just ceased, and something has just come in. There is no relationship between them. It is as if a guest has left from one door and another guest has entered from the other side.

There is no relationship between the going of one and the coming of the other. They are unrelated.

The seventh body is the ultimate, because now you have crossed even the world of causation. You have gone to the original source, to that which was before creation and that which will be after annihilation. So from the sixth to the seventh there is not even no-method. Nothing is of any help; everything can be a hindrance. From the cosmic to nothingness there is just a happening: uncaused, unprepared for, unasked for.

It happens instantaneously. Only one thing is to be remembered: you must not cling to the sixth. Clinging will prevent you from moving to the seventh. There is no positive way to move to the seventh, but there can be a negative hindrance. You can cling to the Brahma, the cosmos. You can say, “I have reached!” Those who say they have reached cannot go to the seventh.

Those who say, “I have known,” remain in the sixth. So those who wrote the Vedas remained in the sixth. Only a Buddha crosses the sixth because he says, “I do not know.” He refuses to give answers to the ultimate questions. He says, “No one knows. No one has known.” Buddha could not be understood. Those who heard him said, “No, our teachers have known. They say Brahma is.”

But Buddha is talking of the seventh body. No teacher can say he has known about the seventh because the moment you say it you lose touch with it. Once you have known it, you cannot say. Up to the sixth body symbols can be expressive, but there is no symbol for the seventh. It is just an emptiness.

There is a temple in China that is totally empty. There is nothing in it: no image, no scriptures, nothing. It is just bare, naked walls. Even the priest resides outside. He says, “A priest can only be outside the temple; he cannot be inside.” If you ask the priest where the deity of the temple is, he will say, “See it!” – And there is emptiness; there is no one. He will say, “See! Here! Now!” and there is only a naked, bare, empty temple.

If you look for objects then you cannot cross the sixth to the seventh. So there are negative preparations. A negative mind is needed, a mind that is not longing for anything – not even moksha, not even deliverance, not even nirvana, not even truth; a mind that is not waiting for anything – not even for God, for Brahma. It just is, without any longing, without any desire, without any wish. Just is-ness. Then, it happens . . . and even the cosmos is gone.

So you can cross into the seventh by and by. Begin from the physical and work through the etheric; then the astral, the mental, the spiritual. Up to the fifth you can work and then, from the fifth on, just be aware. Doing is not important then; consciousness is important. And finally, from the sixth to the seventh, even consciousness is not important. Only is-ness, being. This is the potentiality of our seeds. This is our possibility.

-Osho

From The Psychology of the Esoteric, Discourse #7, Part 2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

For related posts see:

From the Many to the One, Transcending the Seven Bodies, Part 1

Also see: The Mysteries of the Seven Bodies

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 is Your Pure Gold – Osho

Is it useful for those of us with you to try to understand what is happening in our meditation and growth, and to be able to articulate it? Or do we just need to watch?

Maneesha, you just need to watch. The moment you start thinking, “What is happening?” mind will come back. If you start analyzing, mind will come back. Whatever you do, except watching, mind will come back. That is the only enemy to be avoided, and watching is the only shelter in which the mind cannot enter.

Your question is significant. One tends to think, “What is happening?” and analyze it. But one is unaware of the fact that in this effort of analyzing, finding explanations, mind has come back from the back door. By watching, we are trying to get free from mind. All other activities belong to the mind.

So you need only to watch, you need only to get as deep in watching as you can. Go deeper and deeper to such an extent that mind is left miles back, and only a pure witness is there. That is your pure gold, that is your buddha.

-Osho

From Rinzai: Master of the Irrational, Discourse #5

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 Successor Has to be a Master – Osho

Maneesha, this is the last talk on Hyakujo, and the piece that you have chosen is the strangest – a beautiful ending, showing Hyakujo at his peak.

On one occasion, Isan, Goho and Ungan, were all standing together in attendance on Hyakujo.

These three were the most intimate disciples. One of the three was going to be the successor – so was the rumor. In the thousands of disciples these three were possible successors. And every master, before choosing, asks a question which is in fact a koan which cannot be answered.

Hyakujo said to Isan . . .

This was the evening of his life, time to depart from the world. He was in search now for whom to transmit the light that he had carried his whole life. He asked Isan, “With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it?”

Two things: first, the “it” is the ultimate experience. Zen is very particular. There have been gods which are male gods, created by male chauvinists: “How can a god be a woman?” And there have been women goddesses in the primitive tribes, far closer to the idea of the father god than the mother goddess, because the mother gives birth to life. God can be conceived as the whole womb of universe. He creates the world. It seems to be more human to conceive of God as a woman, but the male chauvinist mind won’t allow it. So only in very primitive tribes is there still some idea of mother goddesses. But all over the world, in the so-called civilized societies, the male chauvinist has replaced the mother goddesses and has put father gods.

To avoid this stupid controversy about whether God is a man or a woman, Zen calls the ultimate experience, it – neither he nor she. That comes very close to the point of how God can be male, or God can be female. It can only be a neutral life principle which can express itself in thousands of ways in men, in women, in trees, in mountains. Those are all just his expressions. In reality, hidden behind all these expressions, is a pure life principle. It can only be called it.

So when Hyakujo asked, “With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it?”

Those who are not acquainted with the world of Zen, will be simply surprised, “What are you asking, what is it! In the first place you are asking an impossible thing: ‘With your mouth and lips closed,’ and in the second place you are asking, ‘How would you say it?’ – two mysteries in one question.”

Isan said, “I would ask you to say it.” He challenged his masters: “It is impossible, but I will give you a chance. If I cannot say it, I want you to say it. With your lips closed, with your mouth shut, say it.”

Hyakujo said, “I could say it, but if I did so, I fear I should have no successors.”

What he is saying is, “If I have to say it, then you are not capable of being my successor. I can say it. Neither the lips are needed nor the mouth. Just a good hit and you will know it that I have said it.” Ordinarily Hyakujo was not very much into hitting people. Perhaps this was the first time he had gone so far: “My hit is going to be so great that perhaps you will fall dead. I won’t have any successors. And even if you survive my hit, you would have disqualified yourself. You have not answered. Rather than answering my question, you have questioned me – and this is a test to choose a successor.”

Hyakujo turned to Goho. “With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it?” He asked his second disciple.

Goho said, “Osho! You should shut up!”

It is a little better than the first answer from Isan: “I would ask you to say it.” He is simply accepting his defeat but hiding it in a circular way rather than saying, “I cannot say it.” Even if he had remained silent without saying it, that would have been far better. But very stupidly he said, “I would ask you . . .” He was not a master, and he was not going to be chosen to be his successor. Hyakujo was the master almost on the verge of death.

The second disciple Goho did a little better. Goho said, “Osho!” Osho is a very honorable word. There are many respectful words, but the sweetness of Osho, the love, the respect, the gratitude, all are together in it. It is just like Christians using ‘reverend’, but that is no comparison to it. Just the very sound of Osho – even if we don’t understand Japanese, the very sound is very sweet. He said, “Osho! You should shut up!”

It looks very contradictory, on the one hand addressing him with the most honorable word in Japanese, and on the other hand telling him “You should shut up!” but that is how Zen is. It is as sharp as a sword – it cuts hard and straight to the heart – and it is as soft as a lotus leaf. It is both together. It is not right for the disciple to say to the master, “You should shut up!” To avoid the disrespectfulness of his answer, he first addresses the master, Osho! Don’t misunderstand me. I have great respect and love for you, but you are asking nonsense. You should shut up. At the moment of death, have you gone a little senile? Just shut up!

Hyakujo said, “In the distant land where no one stirs, I shall shade my eyes with my hand and watch for you.”

Beautifully, he has rejected. He is not accepted as a successor because he has not answered the question. But yet he has been very careful. Although he has not answered, he has been very loving, honoring, grateful. Out of this gratitude and love he has earned a special virtue. Hyakujo says, “In the distand land . . .” Somewhere in the universe, if we meet sometime, where no one stirs – where everything is silent, utterly quiet – I shall shade my eyes with my hand and watch for you. He is saying, “You can be my companion, but you cannot be my successor. Somewhere faraway in the distant future at some corner of the universe I will watch for you. You will reach to the goal. Of that I am certain.” But saying this he has rejected him as a successor. His answer was better than Isan’s answer.

Then Hyakujo asked Ungan, “With your mouth and lips closed, how would you say it?”

Ungan said, “Osho, do you have them or not” It is a little better. With tremendous respect he says, “Osho, what are you asking, do you have it already or not. If you have it, then what is the point of asking. And if you don’t have it, you will not understand it.” But this too is not the answer. Although the second answer is better than the other, Hyakujo sadly said, “My successors will be missing.” I will not have any successor, it seems. You are all well versed, you are all great scholars, you have tremendous love and respect for me, but that is not enough for the successor.

What is enough, what is needed is that the successor should be able to say it. His whole life will be devoted to teaching people, to provoking people, to challenging people to get it. If he cannot say it, how can he be a successor?

A successor has to be a master. You are all mystics but none of you is capable of being a successor, a master. This will help you to understand. The mystic is one who can experience, but is not articulate enough that through some gestures, some device he can manage to convey it to others.

Out of a hundred mystics perhaps one is a master, because the task is immensely difficult. To say it perhaps is the most impossible thing in the world. You can go roundabout, you can bring the person to the experience by creating false devices, but you cannot say it. Those false devices need a very articulate craftsman – a master who knows that even lies can be used to indicate the truth. Hyakujo said, “Perhaps I will not have any successors.”

A little biographical note:

All that is known about Hyakujo’s last days is that once, when he was getting rather old and feeble, his monks tried to persuade him not to work, but their words had no effect on him.

Fearing for his health, they finally resorted to hiding his working tools from him. But Hyakujo refused to eat, following his own precept of: “A day without work is a day without food.” Finally, his monks returned his tools. Hyakujo died in 814 at the age of 90.

He did not choose anyone as a successor. He left it to the assembly to find out a successor. So the assembly of the sannyasins nominated a successor. This nomination is just like nominating a pope; he is not authentically a successor.

-Osho

From Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen, 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.

 

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 toward 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 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

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.

No Water, No Moon – Osho

Just before Ninakawa passed away the Zen master Ikkyu visited him. “Shall I lead you on?” Ikkyu asked.

Ninakawa replied, “I came here alone, and I go alone. What help could you be to me?”

Ikkyu aswered, “If you think you really come and go, that is your delusion. Let me show you the path in which there is no coming and going.”

With his words, Ikkyu had revealed the path so clearly that Ninakawa smiled and passed away.

Death is the crescendo, the highest peak that life can attain. In the moment of death much is possible. If you have been preparing and preparing, meditating and waiting, then at the moment of death enlightenment is very easily possible – because death and enlightenment are similar. A master, one who is enlightened, can easily make you enlightened at the moment of death. Even before, whenever it happens, you have to be ready to die.

What happens in death? Suddenly you are losing your body, suddenly you are losing your mind. Suddenly you feel you are going away from yourself – all that you believe to be yourself. It is painful, because you feel you are going to be drowned into emptiness. You will be nowhere now, because you were always identified with the body and the mind, and you never knew the beyond; you never knew yourself beyond the body and the mind. You got so fixed and obsessed with the periphery that the center was completely forgotten.

In death you have to encounter this fact: that the body is going, now it cannot be retained any more. The mind is leaving you – now you are no more in control of the mind. The ego is dissolving – you cannot even say ‘I’. You tremble with fear, on the verge of nothingness. You will be no more.

But if you have been preparing, if you have been meditating – and preparation means if you have been making all efforts to use death, to use this abyss of nothingness – rather than being pulled into it you have been getting ready to jump into it, it makes a lot of difference. If you are being pulled into it, grudgingly – you don’t want to go into it and you have been snatched – then it is painful. Much anguish! And the anguish is so intense that you will become unconscious in the moment of death. Then you miss.

But if you are ready to jump there is no anguish. If you accept and welcome it, and there is no complaint – rather, you are happy and celebrating that the moment has come, and now I can jump out of this body which is a limitation, can jump out of this body which is a confinement, can jump out of this ego which has always been a suffering – if you can welcome, then there is no need to become unconscious. If you can become accepting, welcoming – what Buddhists call tathata, to accept it, and not only to accept, because the word accept is not very good, deep down some nonacceptance is hidden in it – no, if you welcome, if it is such a celebration, an ecstasy, if it is a benediction, then you need not become unconscious.

If it is a benediction, you will become perfectly conscious in that moment. Remember these two things: if you reject, if you say no, you will become totally unconscious; if you accept, welcome, and say yes with your full heart, you will become perfectly conscious. Yes to death makes you perfectly conscious; no to death makes you perfectly unconscious – and these are the two ways of dying.

A Buddha dies totally accepting. There is no resistance, no fight between him and death. Death is divine; you die fighting.

If a man has been preparing, getting ready, at the moment of death the master can be miraculously helpful. Just a word at the right moment and the flame inside suddenly explodes, you become enlightened – because the moment is such, so intense, you are so concentrated at one point.

This is happening in this story. Ikkyu is one of the greatest masters, a very rare, revolutionary, nonconformist. Once he stayed in a temple. The night was very cold and there were three wooden Buddhas in the temple, so he burned one Buddha to warm himself. The priest became aware – he was fast asleep, it was in the middle of the night and the night was very cold – he became aware that something was going on, so he looked.

Buddha was burning! – and this man Ikkyu was sitting, happy, warming his hands. The priest became mad; he said, “What are you doing? Are you a madman? – and I thought you to be a Buddhist monk, that’s why I allowed you to stay in the temple. And you have done the most sacrilegious act.”

Ikkyu looked at the priest and said, “But the buddha within me was feeling very cold. So it was a question whether to sacrifice the living Buddha to the wooden one, or to sacrifice the wooden one to the living one. And I decided for life.”

But the priest was so mad with anger, he couldn’t listen to what Ikkyu was saying. He said, “You are a madman. You simply get out of here! You have burned Buddha.”

So Ikkyu started to poke the burned Buddha – ashes were there, the statue was almost completely finished. He started to poke with a stick. The priest asked, “What are you doing?”

He said, “I am trying to find the bones of Buddha.”

So the priest laughed, he said, “You are either a fool or a madman. And you are absolutely mad! You cannot find bones there, because it is just a wooden Buddha.”

Ikkyu laughed, he said, “Then bring the other two. The night is still very cold and the morning is still far away.”

This Ikkyu was a very rare man. He was turned out immediately, out of the temple. In the morning he was sitting just on the side of the street outside the temple – worshipping a milestone, putting flowers, doing his prayers. So the priest said, “You fool! In the night you misbehaved with Buddha. What have you done? You have committed a sin, and now what are you doing with this milestone? This is not a statue.”

Ikkyu said, “When you want to pray, everything is a statue. At that time the buddha within was feeling very cold. At this time the buddha within is feeling very prayerful.”

This man Ikkyu had thousands of disciples all over the country, and he used to wander from one place to another to help disciples. This story is about one of his disciples, Ninakawa. He was just on the verge, almost enlightened. But ’almost enlightened’ means nothing; you can move back, from the last point also you can fall. Unless it has happened, it has not happened. From the very last moment, when only one step remains and you will become an enlightened one, you can come back. This Ninakawa was almost enlightened but still in the grip of the scriptures, because unless you reach to the truth, it is very difficult to get out of the grip of the scriptures.

It is very difficult to get out of the prison of words. It happens only when you are really enlightened. Then you can see that words are just words: nothing is there, they are not substantial, they are made of the stuff dreams are made of. They are just ripples in the mind, nothing else; sounds in the mind. And the meaning? Meaning is given by us; it is not there; no word is meaningful. And any word can become meaningful by common agreement.

So it is just a social phenomenon, not concerned with truth at all. But people live by words: if someone says something against Jesus and you are a Christian you will be ready to kill him, or be ready to be killed – it is a question of life and death. Someone says something against Mohammed, a Mohammedan gets mad. Just a word – ‘Mohammed’ is just a word, ‘Jesus’ is just a word – but people live by words. […]

Have you ever thought, if your scriptures are burned, what will happen to you? If your mottos are burned, what will happen to you? If your words are burned, what will happen to you? You will be in a very sad plight. That’s why, if someone says anything against the Bible, you become mad. It is not because he is saying something against the Bible – he is burning your motto. You depend on the word. And you depend on the word because you don’t know what truth is. If you come to know what truth is you will throw all the words, you will burn all the mottos. […]

This Ninakawa was struggling his whole life, meditating, sitting, using many techniques, trying in every way to become calm and quiet and still; but he was still in the grip of scripture. The day he was dying Ikkyu visited him. That was the moment now to push this man into the infinite abyss. He may miss, because at the time of death, if scripture is there, you will miss.

You need to be totally vacant, you need to be totally empty; only then can you meet death, because death is emptiness. And only the alike can know the alike, the same can understand the same. If you are filled, even with a single word, you will miss, because then the mind is there – and death has no mind, death has no thought; death is simply falling into emptiness.

So Ikkyu came to push this disciple at the last moment. He had been missing his whole life – he should not miss this last moment. And I also tell you: if you miss your whole life, then there is only one possibility and only one hope – at the moment of death. But no need to wait for it, it can happen right now. If it is not happening right now, then go on trying. But get ready for death. If you are ready, I will be there to push you. If you are ready, then it is very easy: just a little jerk, and the mind blows.

Just before Ninakawa passed away the Zen master Ikkyu visited him.

Masters have been visiting always. It may not have actually happened, remember that; it may not have actually happened. It may be, it is possible, that nobody else than Ninakawa saw the master visiting him. It may have actually happened, but that is irrelevant. One thing is certain: that while Ninakawa was dying, just at the last moment the master was there. This dialogue happened with Ninakawa and Ikkyu. There may have been many others there, they may not have heard it at all; they may not have seen Ikkyu coming at all. It was or it was not a physical visit. But it happened, and it did… whatsoever was needed was done.

“Shall I lead you on?” Ikkyu asked. Ninakawa replied . . .

A man of scripture, particularly Buddhist, because in Buddhism the guru is not accepted. Buddha is the greatest guru, but in Buddhism the guru is not accepted. They have a reason for it. Because the human mind is so complex, it creates trouble everywhere: the guru is to liberate you, but you can make a bondage out of him. Hindus have been teaching that without the guru, without the master, there is no liberation. And this is true, absolutely true, but by the time of Buddha it became a bondage.

Without the guru, without the master, there is no liberation. So people started becoming slaves of masters, because without them there is no liberation. Look at the human mind and the stupidity: a master is to liberate, but you can become a slave to the master because only he can liberate; then you can become just docile. Much slavery was created; nobody else on this earth has created such a deep slavery as Hindus. You cannot come across a single revolution in the whole history of Hinduism against the priest. No – the whole thing was so settled and so fixed and systematized, and everybody was aware that if you rebel against the priest there is no liberation – he is the guru, he is the master.

The untouchables – the sudras – have existed in the most miserable condition. They are the greatest of slaves and they have the longest history of slavery, but never have they revolted against it, because it was not possible. The guru, the master, the brahmin – he is the door to the divine. You have missed this life, and if you rebel you miss the other also – so remain a slave.

Then came Buddha, and he said, “No need for the guru” – not because there is no need for the guru: he said no need for the guru, and he meant no need to become a slave – but that was the only way to say it. So Buddha says, “Be a light unto yourself. Nobody is needed to lead you. Nobody is needed to guide you. You are enough unto yourself.”

This is the greatest possibility of being free, of freedom. But you can misuse this also, this is the problem. Then you think that if there is no need for a master, then why listen to the Buddha? If there is no need for the master, then why go to the Buddha? If I am totally independent, then I am Buddha myself. That happened through Buddhism: slavery didn’t happen, but deep egoism happened. But both are the two extremes: either you become an egoist – because no guru, no master, nobody to follow – or you become a slave, because without the guru there is no liberation.

Can’t you be in the middle? Can’t you just stand in the middle without moving to the extreme? If you can be in the middle, the mind disappears.

Ikkyu came, and he said, “Shall I lead you?”

Ikkyu asked the basic Buddhist question, and Ikkyu knows that if he is still burdened with the scripture he will say, “No, who can lead anybody? Nobody is a guru. Every soul is absolutely independent. I am a light unto myself.” If he is burdened with the scripture, this will be the response. If he is not burdened with the scripture, then the response can be any – infinite possibilities open.

Ninakawa replied, “I came here alone . . .” ‘This is what Buddha says “. . . I go alone. What help could you be to me?”

Everybody is born alone, goes alone; and in the middle of these two, coming and going, you may delude yourself that you are with somebody, but you still remain alone. Because if you are in the beginning alone and in the end alone, how in the middle can you be with somebody? The wife, the husband, the friend, the society, are all illusions. You remain alone, aloneness is your nature. You can be deluded, that’s all. You can have dreams, that’s all, but the other remains always the other and there is no meeting point. This is the basic Buddhist teaching to make man free.

That’s why Buddha even denied God, because if there is God how can you be alone? He is always there. Even when you are in your bathroom he is there – because he is omnipotent, omnipresent. You cannot escape him; wherever you go he will be there. He is the cosmic eye, the cosmic spy, following you. Whatsoever you do, he will be looking! It is very difficult to escape God; if he is, then he is everywhere. You cannot hide – this is beautiful if you can understand – and religious people used it to help.

Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, they have all used the omnipresence of God. It is a great help, because if you can really feel God following you like a shadow everywhere, you will become very, very much alert and aware – because he is there. You are not alone, you cannot relax into sin, you cannot relax into ignorance, sleepiness – he is there. The presence will make you alert.

This is the right use. But otherwise, the presence can become a bondage, a heavy burden, anxiety. […]

This can become a deep anxiety, a neurosis; this can create guilt, and then you have missed. And remember: every key that can open a door can destroy the lock also if you use it wrongly. There is a way, a right way to use a key; only then it opens the lock. If you use it wrongly, the lock may be destroyed. And as the mind is, it always uses keys in a wrong way. Then somebody is needed who must say to you, “Throw this key, because this key is now useless. This is only destroying the lock, not helping you in any way.”

Buddha said no guru is needed – because in his time the guru meant the brahmin. Krishnamurti is saying the same thing: no guru is needed. But there is another possibility – it may give you freedom. If it gives you freedom it is perfectly okay. But it may give you egoism and that’s the problem, there is the rub. If it gives you egoism, you may not become a slave to somebody else, but you have become a slave to your own ego. And remember, nobody can be such a dangerous master as your ego can be. Nobody can make you so blind as your ego can make you. Nobody can lead you to such hells as your ego can lead you.

Ikkyu just wanted to know whether this man is still clinging to the scriptures, or he has come to understand Buddha. Understanding is different, clinging is different. Clinging is to the dead letter. If he has understood, then Buddha is the greatest master. If he has not understood, then he will not allow; even at the point of death, he will cling to the scriptures.

Ikkyu was standing there, and was asking, “Can I lead you? Shall I lead you on? . . . Because the path is unknown. You have never been through it; I have been along it. I know how to die; I know how to celebrate death. I know how to lose yourself into death, and then you never lose; then the real self is born for the first time. I know the secret of dying and rebirth. Can I lead you on?”

Ninakawa replied – he refused – he said: “I came here alone, and I go alone. What help could you be to me?”

And he was in need of help. If he was not in need of help, he would have simply laughed, smiled; he would have said, “Thank you.” There was no need to use these words from the scriptures. Why do you use scriptures? They are rationalizations. Whenever you are uncertain you use the scripture, because the scripture is very certain. Whenever you are in doubt, you use Buddha, Krishna, Christ, because they can hide your hesitation, they can hide your reality, they can give you a false confidence.

Whenever you are using others’ words you are hiding your ignorance. This man was not saying, “I came here alone” – this was not his experience. He was not saying “… And I go alone.” He was repeating words, and you cannot deceive a master with words.

Ikkyu answered, “If you think you really come and go . . .”

These are the most beautiful words ever uttered – the essence of all the Upanishads, the essence of all Buddhas and Mahaviras, just in one sentence.

“If you think you really come and go, that is your delusion. Let me show you the path on which there is no coming and no going.”

This is really very difficult and subtle.

Says Ikkyu, “If you think you really come and go, then the ego is there. Who comes? Who goes? If you think you come and go, you don’t know; then you are simply repeating Buddha’s words” – there is the catch.

If you have come to know that “I come alone, and I go alone,” then there is no coming and no going, because the soul is never born, never dies. Life is an eternal continuum. It continues. It never comes, never goes. This body may have been born, this body may die – but that life, the energy, the self, the soul, or whatsoever you call the consciousness that exists in this body, has never been born and will not die. That consciousness is continuous. There has never been any break in it.

If you really know, then you know that there is no coming, no going. Who comes? Who goes? If you don’t understand, if you have not realized this, then you will say, “I come alone.” But then this ‘I’ is the ego; then this ’I’ is not the self. When you say, “I go alone,” the emphasis is on ‘I’ – and the ‘I’ is the bondage. If there is no ‘I’, suddenly you will see that you have never been born and are never going to die; then there is no beginning and no end.

Says Jesus . . . somebody asked Jesus, “Are you the Messiah we have been waiting for? Who are you? Tell us about you.”

Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am.”

Abraham must have been thousands of years before, and Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” The sentence is really very absurd, logically absurd, grammatically wrong: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Abraham is in the past; Jesus says, “Before he was…” and Abraham is the first prophet. There is every possibility that Abraham is just a changed name of Ram, because in old Hebrew it is not Abraham, it is Abram. And Ab simply means respect, just like Shree Ram; it is just to pay respect.

There is every possibility that Abraham is no one else than Ram.

Says Jesus, “Before Abraham was, I am.” For Abraham he uses the past tense: he has been and is no more; the manifestation was there and now is no more. But “I am,” because “I am always: I was, I am here, I will be.”

The innermost consciousness knows no birth, no death; knows no past, no present, no future; knows no time. It is eternal, and eternity is not part of time.

Said Ikkyu, “If you think you really come and go – if you think that there is a coming and going – You are in delusion. Let me show you the path on which there is no coming and going.”

What have buddhas been doing? They have simply been showing you that you are perfect – as you are. No change is needed. You have not to go anywhere, you have not to move a single inch. As you are, you are in your perfect glory, here and now. There is no coming and no going. Just become aware of the phenomenon that you are. Just become aware who you are! Just be alert! And then nothing is to be achieved, no effort is to be made, because from the very beginning, before Abraham was, you are. You have seen the creation of the world, you will see the end of the world, but there is no beginning to you and no end to you.

You are the witness, and the witness cannot have any beginning and cannot have any end. If you had been alert, you would have seen your own birth. If you can die consciously, you will see that death is happening in the body and you are just an onlooker. So the body dies, and you are just the witness. And if you can be a witness in the death, then in the next life, in the birth, you will be a witness. You will see that the mind is choosing a womb: hovering all around the earth, finding a woman, a couple, making love – you will see it.

Just as if you are hungry: you go to the market, and you can be a witness that your eyes, your mind is looking at the hotels, restaurants, to find the right place where you can have your food. You are hungry, but if you get too identified with the hunger then you cannot be a witness. Otherwise, hunger is there, but you are not the hunger. How can you be the hunger? – otherwise who will know that you are hungry?

Hunger, to be known, needs someone else beyond the hunger who can look and see, who can become alert. If you can become alert in hunger, then you can see how your mind is searching for a right place to have your food. The same happens after death: your mind is in search of a right womb. You choose, you see what is happening.

If you are in search of a particular womb, if you are a very good soul or a very bad soul, then you may take many years to find a right womb – very difficult. If you are just an ordinary person, just normal, nothing special good or bad, neither a Hitler nor a Gandhi, then you can be born immediately; there is no need, because everywhere ordinary, normal, standard wombs are available. Then, this moment you die and the next moment you are born – not even a single moment is lost. […]

If you die consciously and are born consciously you will know that there is no birth and no death, only a body has been chosen. You remain the same, only the house changes. If you change your old clothes, do you say this is a new birth, I am born? No, because you have only changed the clothes; you remain the same.

This is how one who becomes alert comes to know that all changes are just changes of dresses and houses and places, situations, circumstances, but you remain the same; the center never changes, it is eternal.

Says Ikkyu, “If you think you really come and go that is your delusion. Let me show you the path on which there is no coming and going.”

What is that path? Is there really a path? Because we have to use language, that’s why he says ‘path’. Otherwise, there is no path, because a path always leads somewhere. No path can lead to you because you are already there. If you want to come to me there is a path, has to be. If you come to somebody you have to follow a path, go through a passage, a bridge, something or other – because you are moving outward. But if you want to go inward there is no path. You are already there. A sudden jerk is needed and you simply feel that you are there.

It is just like when you dream in the night: you fall into sleep in Poona, and in the dream, you are back at your London home, or in New York, or in Calcutta, or in Tokyo, and in the dream, you completely forget that you are in Poona. Then what is needed? Just a jerk. Somebody comes and wakes you up. Will you wake up in London, Tokyo, New York, or in Poona? It would have been very difficult, it will create a very absurd world, if you are dreaming of New York and suddenly somebody wakes you and you wake up in New York! Then this world would have been a nightmare. But you wake up in Poona; the dream disappears.

Buddhas have been teaching this: that there is no need to go anywhere, because you are already there where you want to go; but you are in a dream. Only in a dream have you moved from the center – you cannot move from there. You are there. For millions of lives, you may have been dreaming, but you have not moved from the center where you are. Nobody can move. Just a jerk, just somebody to shock you . . . you become alert and suddenly the dream disappears. The dreamland and New York and London, they disappear, and you are here and now.

This jerk, this shock can be given very easily at the moment of death – because the whole body-mind is going through a great change. Everything is in chaos. In a chaos you can be made alert more easily because everything is uncomfortable. When everything is comfortable it is difficult to bring a man out of the dream – nobody really wants to come out of a comfortable dream. Only when the dream becomes a nightmare, then you scream. […]

Dreams are effective, they go deep, because in an unconscious mind the distinction is really very vague; what is dream and what is real is very vague. They are mixed, the boundaries are not so clear-cut, the boundaries are blurred.

Have you seen a child waking, and weeping because he has lost a toy he saw in the dream? “I am looking around for the toy – where has the toy disappeared to?”

But this child never dies in you. It dies only when you make much effort to become alert; only then the dream and the reality become clear-cut distinctions. And once the vagueness is lost, once the boundaries are not blurred, once you become aware what is dream, what is reality, the dream stops – because then the dream cannot continue. If you have become aware the dream cannot continue. Even in a dream, if you become aware that this is a dream, the dream will stop immediately.

So you never become aware in a dream that this is a dream, you always feel this is real. For anything to continue, your feeling is needed that this is real. You give reality through the feeling. If you withdraw the feeling, the dream disappears and only the reality remains.

It is a dream that you are in this world, and it is the reality that you exist in the divine. It is a dream that you are in the market; it is the reality that you have never moved from the very center of existence, from God. It is a dream you have moved in the market – and a dream can continue, there is no time limit. If you think you are the body, this is a dream – you have never been a body. If you think you are born and you die, this is a dream – you have never been born and you can never die; that is impossible.

Said Ikkyu, “This is your delusion if you say, ‘I come and I go.’ There is no one to come and no one to go. And there is no place to come to and no place to go to. Let me show you the pathless path. Because then there can be no path – because if there is no one to come and no one to go, no place to come to and no place to go to, then how can the path exist? So let me show you the pathless path on which there is no coming and no going.”

With his words, Ikkyu had revealed the path so clearly that Ninakawa smiled and passed away.

It happened! You have heard the words – but you are not Ninakawa, you are not that ready, you are not on your deathbed – that’s the problem. You are still hoping for something in life, your dream still has much meaning for you, you have investments in your dream. You may have a desire to come out of the dream, but this desire is only half-hearted. The other part goes on saying, “Dream it a little more, it is so beautiful.” […]

You may be having nightmares; in those moments you feel, “How to drop out of the dream?” – but you have beautiful dreams also; not only hellish dreams, you have heavenly dreams. And that’s the problem: unless you become aware that even a heavenly dream is a dream and useless, you are not on the deathbed. Your desire continues, you go on watering the world of dreams, feeding it, helping it to grow.

Ninakawa was on his deathbed, he was dying, there was no future left. He was in a chaos. The whole system, the whole adjustment of body, mind and soul was getting looser and looser. Things were falling apart; he was not together. The nightmare was intense, because it is most intense in death. He was simply miserable in that moment: death and no future.

If there is no future you cannot dream, because dreams need space, time to move. That’s why death looks so dangerous, because it allows no time to think. You cannot hope, because there is no tomorrow. Death does not kill you, it simply kills the tomorrow, and tomorrow has been your very existence. You have never lived today; you have been always postponing for tomorrow. And death kills the tomorrow, it simply burns your calendar – suddenly the clock stops, time doesn’t move.

Without time what can you do? How can the mind think, desire, dream? Death closes the door – that is the fear.

Why does death make you so afraid and trembling and scared? Because there seems to be no beyond, no possibility to escape from it. You cannot do anything because you cannot think, and you know only one thing: thinking, nothing else. Your whole life has been a thinking. Now, death allows no thinking. Only a man who has been meditating and has realized no-thinking before death will not be afraid – because he knows that thinking is not life.

And he knows a different plenum of existence. He knows the depth, not the length of existence. He is not moving from this moment to that, he is not moving from today to tomorrow. He is moving in this moment, deeper and deeper and deeper; in today, deeper and deeper and deeper. He is moving here and now, in the depth.

You touch this moment, and you move to another moment; you have a horizontal movement: from A to B, from B to C, from C to D. And a man who meditates goes on moving from A1 to A2 to A3 – in the depth – not to B. He has no tomorrow. This here and now is the only existence, then how can there be death for him? This moment you are alive; only in the next moment can you die. This moment no one has ever died. This moment you are alive, and this man who meditates moves into this moment – how can he die?

Death will happen on the periphery; he will come to know about it. It will be just as you come to know about a neighbor who is dead: he will come to know about it, that the body is dead – this will be news. He may even feel sorry for the body, but he is not dying.

Ninakawa was a meditator just on the verge of enlightenment, still clinging. You can take a jump into the abyss, but still you can cling to a creeper – and you can go on clinging, afraid. You are almost in the abyss, sooner or later you will fall, but still for a moment more the mind says, “Cling!” He was clinging to the scriptures, to the buddhas, to the words, the doctrines. He was still repeating knowledge. Just a creeper – sooner or later he will have to leave this, because when life leaves you, how can words be retained? They will leave you.

With this, Ikkyu’s revelation, he understood, he left the clinging. He smiled and passed away.

You never smile. Either you weep or you laugh, but you never smile. A smile is just in the middle, it is difficult for you. Either you weep or you laugh – they are the possibilities, the two extremes. Try to find out what this phenomenon of a smile is.

Only a buddha smiles, because it is just in the middle. A smile has both a sadness in it, the sadness of the tears, and the happiness of laughter. A smile has both. Smiling is never simple laughter: it has the expansion of laughter and the depth of sadness – it is both. Look at Buddha, meditate on him, and you will see in his face both a sadness and a happiness; a blissful flowing of his being and still a deep sadness.

With these two chemicals, so to say, a smile is created. When you feel sad for everybody, when you feel sad for the whole existence because they are unnecessarily suffering…. You cannot imagine the sadness of a buddha, it is difficult for you. You only think that a buddha is happy. He is happy as far as he himself is concerned, but for you? You cannot conceive his difficulty – because he sees you, and you are unnecessarily suffering, and nothing can be done, you cannot be helped. A disease that is not there – and incurable! And he knows that just by the corner, just a turn of your being, and everything will be solved. But you will not take that turn. You will jump and you will do many things, but you will always miss that turn. You will grope in the dark, but somehow, miraculously, you always miss the door. You know how to miss the door; you are perfect in that: how to miss the door and always go on groping.

A buddha is in difficulty because he has realized something which is there with you already. The same blissful existence, the same beauty, the same ecstasy that he has, you have. And you go on crying, and you go on beating your chest, and you are in such a suffering – and nothing can be done. A sadness…

It is said about Buddha that when he reached the door – the final door beyond which there is no door, and you cannot come back; that is the ultimate – when he reached the door of nirvana, the door was opened for him and there was welcome. Because once in millions of years somebody reaches to the ultimate. But he turned his back towards the door and looked at the world – and they say he is still standing there; he has not entered.

The doorkeeper asked, “What are you doing? You have been endeavoring for this for many, many lives. Now the door is open, come in.”

And Buddha said, “Unless everybody who is suffering out there enters, I cannot enter. I will be the last to enter.” This is the sadness.

The story is really beautiful. Nobody can stand at that ultimate door, that’s true; there is no door like that and no doorkeeper. You fall, and there is no way to stop yourself. The story is beautiful; that shows in a symbolic way the consciousness of a buddha – the trouble, his anguish, his suffering. It is not his suffering now; it is the suffering of others that makes him sad.

It is as if you have awakened but everybody else is fast asleep, and they are dreaming and dreaming nightmares – screaming, jumping, crying, weeping, and you know that these are just nightmares, but these people are so drunk and so fast asleep, you cannot help. If you try to wake them up they become angry. They say, “Why are you disturbing our sleep? Who are you?” You cannot wake them, and you have to see their suffering, and suffer it.

Buddha is sad – for you. Buddha laughs deeply, his whole being is filled with laughter – just like a tree has come to flower, everything has become a dance. And these both meet in him: the laughter that bubbles and goes on coming out – and still he cannot laugh because of you – and the sadness that you create. They both meet and the meeting creates a smile. A smile is both laughter and tears.

You cannot smile – you can laugh, you can weep. When you weep, how can you laugh? Because in weeping it is always for yourself; it is a single element. When you laugh, you laugh; how can you weep? – because laughing is for yourself. In Buddha, the ego has disappeared, now he is no more, the meeting has happened with the all. Two elements meet: his consciousness which has become perfect, and all around millions of consciousnesses which are perfect, suffering – unnecessarily suffering, suffering without any cause – these two meet, and a sad and yet happy smile comes to his face.

He cannot weep because what you are doing is so foolish. He cannot laugh because that will be too hard on you. At the most he can smile. This happened, so a smile has become a symbol of one who has become enlightened.

With his words, Ikkyu had revealed the path so clearly that Ninakawa smiled and passed away.

Then it was not a death, but just a passing – passing to another world, a passing to another birth; then nobody was dying. And if you can die with a smile, you know the art of dying, and the whole of religion consists in the art of dying, nothing else than that.

Now I will repeat the first story we started, so that you don’t forget it: forgetfulness is a trick.

These ten days we have been talking about No Water, No Moon. It will remain just a talk – words and words and words – if you are not ready to die. Be on your deathbed! Be a Ninakawa! Then these words are so clear, as Ikkyu’s never were. I tell you: these words are as clear as Ikkyu’s never were. You can also smile and pass away – remember:

The nun Chiyono studied for years but was unable to find enlightenment. One night, she was carrying an old pail filled with water. As she was walking along, she was watching the full moon reflected in the pail of water. Suddenly, the bamboo strips that held the pail together broke, and the pail fell apart. The water rushed out, the moon’s reflection disappeared – and Chiyono became enlightened. Afterwards, she wrote this poem:

This way and that way,
I tried to keep the pail together,
Hoping the weak bamboo
Would never break.

Suddenly the bottom fell out.
No more water;
No more reflection of the full moon
In the water–
Emptiness in my hand.

Go with emptiness in your hand, because that’s all . . . that’s all I can offer to you, and nothing is greater than that. This is my gift: go with emptiness in your hand. If you can carry emptiness in your hand, then everything becomes possible. Don’t carry possessions, don’t carry knowledge, don’t carry anything that fills the pot and becomes the water, because then you will be seeing only the reflection. In wealth, in possessions, in houses, in cars, in prestige, you will see only the reflection of the full moon. And the full moon is there waiting for you.

Let the bottom drop! Don’t try this way and that way to protect the old pail. It is not worth it. Don’t protect yourself, it is not worth it. Let the pail break down, let the water flow, let the moon in the water disappear, because only then will you be able to raise your eyes towards the real moon. It is always there in the sky – but emptiness in the hand is needed. Remain more and more empty, think yourself more and more empty, behave more and more as if you are empty. By and by, by and by, you will have the taste of it. And once the taste comes, it is so beautiful.

Once you know the taste of emptiness, you have known the very meaning of life. Carry emptiness, drop the pail of water which is your ego, your mind and your thoughts, and remember: no water, no moon – emptiness in the hand.

-Osho

From No Water, No Moon, Discourse #10

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.

In that Dancing, Death Becomes a Fiction – Osho

Basho wrote the haiku:

Only the shell
Of the cicada left?
Did it sing itself out of existence?

An old cicada tree, almost dead, no foliage left – and Basho is saying, “Only the shell . . .” The inner life has left the tree . . .

“Only the shell of the cicada left. Did it sing itself out of existence?”

Did it go out of existence singing, dancing? He is indicating to every disciple who is in search of the eternal sources of life that you should go dancing in your death. Only then can you find it.

Dancing transforms death into eternal life. Dancing is a very transforming force. It contains your joy, your blissfulness, your peace, your gratitude; your thankfulness to existence that it gave you time to blossom, it gave you great foliage, great flowers. And now that it wants you to return to the source, you should not be sad. That is ungratefulness.

You should be in a celebrating mood, in a thankful mood for all that the existence has done for you. Go dancing and in that dancing, death becomes a fiction. That dancing transforms even death into a new life, or into eternal life.

-Osho

From Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen, 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.