BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH

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TALKS ON ZEN

Further down you can read all the ten talks on Zen

In english by OSHO

TIO FÖRELÄSNINGAR OM ZEN MEDITATION

Ten talks on zen meditation

( DET FÖRSTA KAPITLET ÄR ÖVERSATT TILL SVENSKA AV FRIA AKADEMIN, SÅ ÄNNU ÅTERSTÅR NIO UNDERBARA KAPITEL ATT ÖVERSÄTTA……)

(MAILA FRIA AKADEMIN OM DU ÄR INTRESSERAD ATT HJÄLPA TILL MED DETTA UTMÄRKT INTRESSANTA OCH HUMORRISTISKA ARBETE ……bjorn_skolen@hotmail.com….)

Här kan Du nu läsa första kapitlet på svenska

Och därefter alla tio kapitlen på engelska

Further down you can read all the ten talks on Zen

In english by OSHO

TALK 1.

Låtsas aldrig,

inte ens om döskallar

OSHO tal 11 juni 1976

PG 1A: The master Fugai...

FÖRST EN ZEN HISTORIA:

Mästaren Fugai ansågs mycket vis och generös,

likväl var han mycket sträng -

både mot sig själv och sina lärjungar.

Han gick till bergen för att sitta i Zen.

Han bodde i en grotta, och när han var hungrig

gick han till byn och bad om matrester.

En dag kom en munk som kallades Bundo till grottan, attraherad

av Fugais meditationsövningar,

bad han att få stanna över natten.

Mästaren syntes lycklig av att hysa honom,

och följande morgon tillagade han risgröt åt honom.

Eftersom han inte hade en extra skål

gick han ut och återvände med en skalle

som han hade hittat nära en grav.

Han fyllde den med gröt och gav den till Bundo.

Gästen vägrade att röra vid den,

och stirrade på Fugai som om han hade blivit galen.

Då blev Fugai ursinnig

och drev honom handgripligen ut ur grottan.

"Dåre !" - skrek han efter honom. "Hur kan du,

med dina världsliga värderingar om orenhet och renhet,

anse dig själv vara en Buddhist ?"

Några månader senare besökte mästaren Tetsgyu honom

och berättade för honom att han tyckte det var en stor förlust

att han hade försakat världen.

Fugai skrattade högt och sa:

"Oh! - det är förhållandevis lätt att försaka världen

och bli en Bonzai-munk,

det svåra är emellertid att sedan bli en sann Buddhist."

PG 1B: Truth is one...

Sanningen är en, men det finns många vägar som leder till den. Sanningen är en, men den kan uttryckas på många sätt.

Två vägar är mycket grundläggande; alla vägarna kan delas upp i två kategorier. Det är bra att förstå denna grundläggande skillnad.

Antingen kan du närma dig Sanningen genom tänkandet eller så kan du närma dig Sanningen genom hjärtat. Så det finns två typer av religioner i världen - båda sanna, båda meningsfulla, men båda motsatta till varandra - huvudets och hjärtats religioner, dvs intellektets religioner kontra hängivenhetens religioner.

Intellektets religioner anser att om du blir utan tanke, om du släpper tänkandet, då når du sanningen. Tänkandet är hindret; tänkandets upphörande är porten. Buddhismen, Jainismen och Taoismen - dessa är tänkandets religioner. De är djupt analyserande religioner, religioner av djup medvetenhet, religioner av Upplysning.

Sedan finns det hjärtats religioner: Judendomen, Kristendomen, Islam, och Hinduismen. De anser att vägen går genom hjärtat, att hjärtat måste upplösas i den älskade, i det Gudomliga.

De första religionerna är meditations religioner, Ordet "meditation" är inte exakt rätt men det finns inget annat ord att översätta sanskrit ordet dhyana med, varken i engelskan eller i svenskan, för dessa språk har aldrig känt till en meditationsreligion, så ordet existerar inte. I själva verket har alla västerländska språk bara känt till hjärtats religioner, så därför har de ett perfekt ord för den vägen - bön. Men för dhyana saknas ord, så meditation är det enda ord som kan användas. I själva verket betyder dhyana exakt motsatsen; dhyana betyder tvärtemot meditation. Ordet "meditation" kommer

PG 2A: from a Greek root 'medonai'...

från den grekiska roten "medonai", som betyder att tänka på. Ordet "meditation" betyder att tänka på, och dhyana, som vi översätter med meditation, betyder att inte tänka på; hur man uppnår ett tillstånd av icke-tanke; hur man kommer till en punkt där du är men inget tänkande pågår; ett tillstånd av icke-tänkande, ren medvetenhet. Meditation är tyvärr alltså det enda ordet och därför kommer vi att använda det.

Zen är höjdpunkten på det Buddhistiska sökandet. Zen är meditationsvägens fullaste blomning. Ordet Zen kommer från dhyana. Dhyana blev Chen i Kina, sedan blev chen till zen i Japan. Kom ihåg: Zen har sitt ursprung i Indien med Gautama Buddha. När Gautama Buddha uppnådde den yttersta upplysningen; ett rent medvetande utan tankar, Då fick världen vetskap om analysens väg, det rätta tänkandets väg, det rätta ihågkommandets väg och vägen om hur man upplöser allt tänkande genom att bli allt mer och mer medveten om tankarna. Bara genom att iaktta tankarna, försvagas de långsamt, långsamt. Du blir helt enkelt en åskådare, du är inte identifierad med ditt tänkande, du står vid sidan om och fortsätter att iaktta, precis som om du stod vid sidan av vägen och iakttog trafiken. Tankarna är som trafiken i en rondell, tankarna går runt som i en cirkel, de upprepas, nästan mekaniskt. Du fortsätter att göra samma sak om och om igen. Hela ditt liv är inget annat än en utdragen upprepning, som går i cirklar. Tänkandet är en mandala, en cirkel, och den rör sig. Om du iakttar uppmärksamt, kommer du med tiden att bli medveten om cirkeln, tänkandets onda cirkel. Om och om igen återkommer samma känslor, samma vrede, samma ilska, samma hat, samma girighet, samma ego... Och du fortsätter. Du är bara ett offer.

När du en gång blir medveten om tänkandet, och börjar iaktta det, då rasar bron, du identifierar dig inte längre med tänkandet. När du inte längre identifierar dig med tänkandet, försvinner det, ty tänkandet behöver ditt samarbete för att finnas till.

De kommande tio dagarna kommer vi att tala om Zen. Men för att kunna förstå Zen riktigt, måste vi förstå motsatsen också - motsatsen blir en kontrast, en bakgrund.

Bönens väg analyserar inte, den försöker inte vara medveten eller uppmärksam. Tvärt om, bönens väg upplöser

PG 2B: itself completely into...

sig själv fullständigt i bönen. Du ska inte vara ett vittne, du ska inte vara en åskådare; du ska vara berusad som en drucken och borta, fullständigt hänryckt.

På bönens väg är kärleken målet. Du skall vara kärleksfull; du skall vara så full av kärlek att ditt ego upplöses i din kärlek, sammansmälter med din kärlek. (Så har tex nunnor i sin hängivna kärlek till Kristus kallat sig själva "Kristi Brud".)* På bönens väg är Gud en nödvändig hypotes. Jag kallar det en hypotes, ett antagande, därför att den är ett behov på bönens väg men den är inte ett behov på meditationens väg.

På meditationens väg är ingen Gud nödvändig, därför har Zen ett inflytande och en dragningskraft i Västvärlden. Gud har blivit nästan obegriplig. Till och med ordet "Gud" verkar vara befläckat. I samma ögonblick du säger "Gud", så utestänger du folk. På grund av detta har Zen en dragningskraft i Västvärlden. Kristendomen är på utdöende därför att hypotesen om Gud har använts alltför flitigt. Den har blivit för mycket exploaterad. Det andra, just det motsatta, behövs.

På bönens väg måste du vara berusad, och i hänryckning; på meditationens väg måste du vara alert. På bägge vägarna försvinner egot. Om du är helt uppmärksam, så finns inget ego därför att när du är i full medvetenhet blir du så transparent att du inte kastar någon skugga. Om Du är helt hängiven, berusad av djup kärlek till Gud, då försvinner du återigen, därför att i kärleken kan inte du finnas. Slutpunkten, det ultimata, är samma, egot försvinner, upplöses. Och då egot inte är där, då kommer du att uppleva vad sanning är.

Ingen har någonsin varit i stånd att säga vad den är; Ingen kommer någonsin att vara i stånd att säga vad den är. Upplevelsen är så fullständig, så stor, att den är odefinierbar. Den är så obegränsad att den inte kan formuleras i ord - ord är mycket begränsade, och upplevelsen är oerhört obegränsad. Men från bägge vägarna, når människor samma mål. Sanningen är En. Veda skrifterna säger: "Sanningen är en, men den har uttryckts på olika sätt av de visa."

Så kom ihåg det. Alla religioner leder i grunden, i sig själva, till samma mål. Även om de till synes verkar helt motsatta, även om de verkar diametralt motsatta, så leder de till samma mål.

Så det beror på dig vilken väg du skulle vilja välja. Om Du har en känsla för Gud - inte en tro, enbart tro räcker inte, tro är bara något dött - om Du har en känsla för Gud, om,

· Övers. anm.

·

PG 3A: by hearing the word...

du bara hör ordet "Gud", och du börjar känna ett subtilt skälvande, du känner ett darrande, en känsla av inspiration, ditt hjärta börjar klappa fortare, om enbart ordet "Gud" gör dig vördnadsfull, då kan du gå bönens väg. Då är Zen ingenting för dig, då kan du helt enkelt glömma Zen, därför att då kommer Zen bara att verka förvirrande.

Men om ordet "Gud" inte har någon mening för dig, om det verkligen har dött för dig, om Gud verkligen är död, det frambringar ingen känsla i dig, ingen rörelse i dig, det får dig inte att vibrera, det pulserar inte i dig, det virvlar inte iväg med dig in i det okända, då är Zen något för dig. Fler och fler människor kommer att vända sig till Zen därför att Kristendomen, Hinduismen, Islam, Judendomen - alla, har på något sätt blivit utnyttjade för mycket. De har förlorat sin dragningskraft.

Budddhismen är fortfarande oförstörd, fortfarande fruktbar, och speciellt för det moderna tänkandet har den en mycket stark dragningskraft - därför att det moderna tänkandet är skapat utifrån ett vetenskapligt förhållningssätt, och Zen är absolut vetenskaplig, supervetenskaplig. Zen går verkligen till botten i ditt medvetande och Zen förutsätter inte att du tror på någonting. Zen har inte någon hypotes alls. Zen kräver inte att du skall tro på någonting, Zen har ingen vidskepelse.

Ordet "vidskepelse" är mycket vackert, Det kommer från latinets "superstes", med vilket menas; det som överlever, rester från det förgångna, sådant som har förlorat sin mening men lever kvar av gammal vana. Du går till kyrkan men du har inte någon känsla för att gå dit, och varje natt innan du går till sängs kanske du ber också - men det är bara en tom gest därför att det finns ingen känsla i det. Du bara upprepar med läpparna; utför bara läpparnas bekännelse. Det är kanske bara gammal vana, en gammal sedvänja: Du har blivit lärd från din tidiga barndom att be, därför fortsätter du. Tänkandet fortsätter att upprepa det som är bekant.

Därför måste detta beslutas av dig. Ingen annan kan besluta det för dig. Du måste söka i ditt eget hjärta. Om du fortfarande har kvar den oskuld som behövs för bönens väg, om du fortfarande är som ett barn, om du fortfarande kan känna förtröstan, kan tro, om du fortfarande kan ha tillit, då finns det inget behov att bry sig om Zen därför att den är då en onödigt mödosam väg. Du kan helt enkelt sammansmälta med och uppgå i Gud.

Jag läste en gång en anekdot - Jag älskade den:

PG 3B: One evening a priest...

En präst, som besökte Irland, gick en kväll längs en landsväg, när han stötte på en gammal gentleman. Efterhand som de gick vidare, tillsammans njutande av kvällen, började det plötsligt att storma och de tog skydd. De samtalade en stund och när tystnaden infann sig, och de inget mer hade att säga, tog den gamle mannen fram en bönbok och började att be.

Den amerikanske prästen, iakttog honom, och blev djupt tagen av den särskilda sorts fromhet som omgav honom när han bad. Oavsiktligt sa han högt:

"Du måste vara väldigt nära Gud."

Den gamle mannen gjorde en paus, log och sa: "Ja, han är väldigt förtjust i mig."

"Ja, han är väldigt förtjust i mig." - Det är allt vad bön handlar om. Det är inte bara det att du älskar Gud - det ensamt hjälper ej. Om du också kan känna Guds Kärlek flöda emot dig, bara då; om du kan känna hans närvaro överallt kring dig, bara då kan bön bli möjlig.

Bön är möjlig, såsom en skugga av Guds förnimbara närhet. Du kan inte be i ett tomt rum om Gud inte är närvarande. Till vem vill du be? Till vem vill du öppna ditt hjärta ? Till vem ? Bön är meningslöst om närvaron inte känns. Om närvaron känns - då är du i bön - oavsett om du säger något eller ej. Du behöver inte säga ett enda ord, du behöver helt enkelt bara vara så full av vördnad, att du förblir tyst, men du kommer att känna närvaron. Ja, att känna Guds närvaro, det är vad bön innebär.

Men om Gud är död, om du inte känner någonting, om ingen sång tonar fram i ditt hjärta inför Gud, om hans närvaro har försvunnit från världen - du ser på träden, och du ser bara träden och ingen Gud gömd där, du ser på himlen och du ser bara himlen och inte Guds oändliga närvaro - då kommer Zen att bli din väg.

Zen kommer att bli det kommande århundradets religion, därför att vetenskap har dödat eller mycket svårt skadat vår förmåga till tillit och tro. Men det är inget att vara orolig över. Du kan utgå från en annan riktning. Men då är det inte fråga om kärlek, om Guds närvaro eller om bön - ingenting sådant.

När västvärlden för första gången stiftade bekantskap med Buddhismen, Jainismen, Taoismen, kunde de inte tro det. Vad är detta för slags religioner ? Det finns ingen gud i dem. De kunde inte

PG 4A: believe that religion...

tro att religion kunde existera utan gudsbegreppet; Gud har alltid varit religionens medelpunkt. Så de trodde att dessa endast måste vara moraliska regler. Det är de inte. De är en helt annan typ av religion. För tjugofem århundraden sedan, på Buddha och Mahavirs tid, nådde Indien samma vetenskapliga ståndpunkt som västvärlden har nått nu. För tjugofem århundraden sedan insåg Indien, åtminstone de som var mycket, mycket intelligenta, lysande och vakna - de insåg att den gamla guden var död. De insåg att bönens gud var död.

Att påstå detta, var helt enkelt att säga att människans hjärta var dött; Det fungerade inte längre. Så en ny väg måste hittas, där hjärtat inte var en grundnödvändighet. Buddha och Mahavir arbetade fram en ny slags religion - en meditationsreligion utan någon gud, utan någon bön, utan någon tro. Ingenting krävs av dig, förutom ett sökande, förutom ett forskande sinne, förutom ett djupt ifrågasättande - det är allt.

Världen kommer att bli mer och mer "Zenistisk". Zen är Buddhatänkandets yppersta blomning.

Innan vi inträder i Zenvärlden, måste några saker förstås angående tänkandet. En sak; Tänkandet fungerar på grund av din samverkan. Du kan stanna det om du drar tillbaka din medverkan. Utan att dra tillbaka din medverkan kan du inte stoppa det. Så hela Zen metoden går ut på hur du kan dra tillbaka din medverkan. Många människor försöker stoppa tänkandet utan att dra tillbaka sin medverkan i tänkandet, då kommer du att bli galen, då kommer du att göra något absurt, något omöjligt. Å ena sidan fortsätter du att föra in energi in i tänkandet, å andra sidan försöker du att stoppa det.

Det är som om du kör bil och du fortsätter att trycka på gasen samtidigt som du trycker på bromsen. Du kommer att förstöra hela mekanismen; du gör två motsatta saker på samma gång.

Zen förespråkar inte att Du ska stoppa ditt tänkande direkt. Zen förespråkar att du drar tillbaka din medverkan från tänkandet på ett skarpsinnigt, subtilt sätt. Undan för undan dras mer och mer energi bort från tänkandet och det börjar tunnas ut alltmer, och det kommer ett ögonblick då tankarna helt enkelt försvinner - därför att det är Du som upprätthåller tänkandet, det är du som

PG 4B: are maintaining it...

livnär det; Det är du som omedvetet, oavbrutet, tillför tänkandet energi. Genom dina önskningar, genom ditt urskiljande, genom dina val, genom ditt gillande och ogillande, så fortsätter Du att tillföra tänkandet näring och energi.

Så Zen säger, om du verkligen vill att tänkandet ska stoppa....

Det finns ingen annan väg för Zen att lära känna sanningen, än genom att tänkandet upphör. Därför att om tänkandet fortsätter att fungera så gör det det såsom en projektor. Då fungerar verkligheten som en filmduk och du fortsätter att projicera dina tankar på den, du ser det du vill se, och Du hör det du vill höra. Du ser aldrig verkligheten som den är, Du ser aldrig det som är, du förvränger verkligheten. Tänkandet är en stor förvrängare.

Så tänkandets projektor måste stanna, Då uppträder plötsligt verkligheten som den är, för ingenting är projicerat på den. Du sitter i en biograf, du ser bara en vit filmduk, och sedan startar projektorn. Sedan försvinner den vita duken och du ser filmen, en storslagen berättelse spelas upp, Du glömmer fullständigt bort filmduken, dess vithet, dess renhet, dess jungfrulighet - allting är glömt. Du är förlorad i en drömvärld. Därefter stannar projektorn, och plötsligt inser du att där har inte funnits någonting. Filmduken har varit tom. Det var bara ett skuggspel, du är lurad, du är bedragen.

I Indien kallar vi världen för maya, en illusion. Det betyder: Det är inte så att det inte finns någon sanning i den, men sanningen är gömd. Sanningen är gömd såsom den vita duken på en biograf och du har projicerat, överfört, dina önskningar och dina drömmar ovanpå den och då har du fullständigt glömt hur verkligheten är.

Zen säger, stoppa projektorn, stäng av den, och du får möjlighet att veta Det som Är. Och att veta Det som Är, är frihet, att veta Det som Är är att bli befriad, att veta Det som Är är att bli upplyst.

Så tänkandet är hindret. Och tänkandet är en ständig repetition. På grund av att Du aldrig har iakttagit det, är du inte medveten om det. Något nytt händer aldrig i tänkandet, det är alltid det gamla vanliga. Något nytt kan aldrig någonsin hända i tänkandet, för det är en mekanism. Denna mekanism kan bara fortsätta spela samma sak om och om igen. Ungefär som en grammofonskiva.

PG 5A: Look at it and by and by...

Se, iaktta tankarnas maskineri, och undan för undan kommer du att kunna se dess mekaniska upprepning. Gurdjieff brukade säga att om du genomskådar att du är en mekanism, då finns det en möjlighet. Om du inser att du bara är en maskin, då finns det en möjlighet att gå bortom maskinen. Då kan du bli medveten.

Jag läste en mycket vacker anekdot. Det finns ingen historia i den, bara ett utdrag från en kassabok.

Nov 1 Annons efter en sekreterare. £ 0.50

Nov 2 Blommor till sekreterarens skrivbord. £ 0.80

Nov 8 Veckolön för sekreterare £ 30.00

Nov 9 Parfym till sekreterare £ 6.50

Nov 11 Godsaker till frun £ 0.10

Nov 13 Lunch för sekreterare och mig själv £ 9.45

Nov 15 Veckolön för sekreterare £ 35.00

Nov 17 Bingo för frun och jag £ 1.00

Nov 18 Teater för sekreterare och mig själv £ 6.00

Nov 19 Godsaker till frun £ 0.10

Nov 20 Doreen's lön £ 40.00

Nov 21 Teater och middag åt Doreen och mig £ 20.00

Dec 2 Harly Street klinik £ 150.00

Dec 3 Päls åt frun £ 700.00

Dec 4 Annons efter manlig sekreterare £ 0.50

Gör anteckningar. Gör en kortfattad dagbok över dina tankar och Du kommer att se att de rör sig i cirklar. Att skriva dagbok är bra, men gör den i så fall för dig själv, inte för att någon annan ska läsa den. Sedan, titta på den, iakttag den och du kommer att se, samma mönster om och om igen, bubbla upp till ytan. Detta är blott och bart ett bortslösande av livet, därför att ingenting nytt händer i det.

Sanningen är alltid ny och tänkandet är alltid gammalt. Detta är orsaken till att tänkandet och sanningen aldrig möts. Tankarna härrör alltid från det förgångna, Sanningen tillhör allltid nuet. Det är orsaken till att tänkandet och sanningen aldrig möts. Tänkandet kommer av det som du redan känner till; sanningen är det som återstår att lära känna. Tänkandet är det kända och sanningen är det okända eller det som ej går att veta. Tänkandet är bara en ingravering av allt som har hänt. Tänkandet är inte ett äventyr; sanningen är ett äventyr.

Det finns ett gammalt ordspråk som lyder: "Det finns inget nytt under solen." Om du tänker på tänkandet är ordspråket sant.

PG 5B: But if you think about...

Men om du tänker på sanningen, så är ordspråket helt falskt. Då finns det ett annat ordspråk, som är sant och som lyder: "Det finns inget gammalt under solen." Allting är absolut fräscht och nytt - likt ett nytt löv som slår ut på en gren. Sanningen är alltid ung, tänkandet är alltid gammalt. Det är därför som Jesus säger till sina lärjungar: "Om Du inte blir såsom ett barn på nytt, kommer du inte att kunna komma in i Guds Rike."

Tänkandet är mycket slugt och listigt, men inte intelligent. Intelligens är en kvalitet av medvetandet och slughet och listighet är bara ett substitut för intelligens. Så tänkandet fortsätter att spela sluga tricks, och i den slugheten trasslar tankarna själva in sig i. Tankarna förlorar sig i sin egen slughet och listighet. Kom ihåg detta - Du kommer inte att bli intelligent genom att vara listig, du kommer att bli intelligent genom att bli mer medveten. Smarthet behöver inte nödvändigtvis vara ett tecken på intelligens. Även dumbommar kan vara sluga. Listighet kommer genom erfarenhet. Du gör saker många gånger, Du lär. Tänkandet blir som en datamaskin - varje erfarenhet matas in och sinnet fortsätter att lära och samla kunskap, och tankarna fortsätter att använda denna kunskap.

Intelligens har en helt annorlunda kvalitet: Den har inget att göra med erfarenheter, den har något att göra med medvetenhet. Slughet kommer av erfarenhet; Intelligens kommer av medvetenhet. Det är därför gamla människor blir mycket sluga... och hippies har rätt när de säger att aldrig lita på en person som är äldre än trettio. Därför att då har personen blivit listig och beräknande, han har lärt sig all världens kryphål och tricks. Han har lärt sig hur en slipsten ska dras.

Men ett barn är intelligent, därför att ett barn är mer alert, mer intensivt närvarande. Se hur ett barn iakttar någonting. Om ett barn iakttar en snigel, iaktta barnet - så alert, så helt han är i ögonblicket. Det är som om han bara är sina ögon. Hela hans väsen strömmar genom ögonen. Ett barn är intelligent, en gammal man blir slug och listig. Ett barn har ingen erfarenhet, så han kan inte använda det förflutna. Han är tvungen att stå ansikte mot ansikte med nuet.

Och hela Zen attityden är att Du måste bli ett barn på nytt; Du måste födas som barn på nytt och släppa alla erfarenheter. Tänkandet är ingenting annat än ett namn på all samlad erfarenhet. Tänkandet är inte en verklig enhet, bara

PG 6A: a piled-up past. If you disperse...

ett upplagrat förflutet. Om du löser upp det, om det förflutnas damm har torkats bort från ditt Väsens spegel, då kommer du att bli intelligent, och endast intelligens kan veta vad Sanningen är.

Efter en föreläsning sa en student till Hegel: "Professor Hegel, jag är förvirrad av din undervisning, för verkligheten ser något annorlunda ut."

Hegel sa: "Kära vän, det var illa för verkligheten."

Zen är inte en filosofi därför att filosofi betyder en teori om verkligheten. Zen är ett rent möte med verkligheten. Zen är inte en teori, Zen är inte en filosofi; Zen utgår inte ifrån några skrifter. Zen är bara ett direkt möte med verkligheten. Alla skrifter härrör från tänkandet, alla filosofier härrör från tänkandet och alla doktriner och teorier kommer ur tänkandets klyftighet. Tänkandet håller oupphörligt på att bekräfta sig självt genom att skapa filosofier som det känner till.

Det är mycket svårt att leva i okunnighet, omedvetenhet, därför att det är mycket splittrande för egot. Så tänkandet skapar filosofier och ger dig en illusion om kunskap.

Zen är en kunskapsväg. Zen innefattar ingen kunskap. Zen är enbart en metodik, för att veta, för att konfrontera, för att direkt möta - omedelbart, här och nu. Zen är en direktöverföring.

Clemenceau, den franske statsmannen tillfrågades av en diplomat, om vad han ansåg om diplomater.

Clemenceau sade: "Diplomater är människor som löser problem som skapats av andra diplomater."

Detta gör även filosofer, och det är även så som tänkandet fungerar. Tänkandet skapar problem som tänkandet därefter försöker lösa.

Zen faller fullständigt ut ur denna ram. Zen är inte en tanke-lek. Zen säger att det finns inga problem att lösa, och det finns inga lösningar att göra, för det finns för det första inga problem. Zen säger att något problem har aldrig existerat. Det är det bedrägliga tänkandet som först skapar ett problem - och naturligtvis, när du har ett problem så måste du lösa det. Så skapar det en lösning. Problemet är falskt, så hur kan du finna en sann lösning till ett falskt problem ? Då är lösningen också falsk. Sedan skapar lösningen tio fler problem - och så håller det på. Filosofi efter filosofi skapas och de är alla

PG 6B: empty, all gibberish, all...

tomma, bara smörja, helt och hållet skräp. Zen är helt och hållet emot filosoferande, därför att Zen är emot tänkandet.

Nu tilllbaks till Zen historien:

Mästaren Fugai ansågs vara mycket vis och generös,

likväl var han mycket sträng -

både mot sig själv och sina lärjungar.

Zen är strängt. Det är en mycket mödosam väg. Det är inte ett spel att leka med, det är som att leka med eld. Du kommer aldrig att bli densamma igen när du väl en gång har stigit in i Zens värld. Du kommer att bli fullständigt förvandlad, så mycket att du inte kommer att kunna känna igen dig själv. Den person som träder in i Zens värld och den som kommer ut är två helt olika väsen. Det finns inget sammanhang, du förlorar kontakten med ditt förflutna. All kontinuitet kommer ur tänkandet; all identitet kommer ur tänkandet; alla namn, alla former, kommer ur tänkandet. När tänkandet släpps blir du plötsligt fri från det förflutna - inte bara från det förflutna, du blir frikopplad från tiden.

Och det är hela hemligheten med Zen: du blir frikopplad från tiden. Då blir du sammankopplad med evigheten. Och evigheten är här och nu; evigheten känner inget förflutet och ingen framtid: evigheten är bara nuet. Tiden känner inte till nuet - tiden är det förflutna och framtiden. Vanligtvis tänker vi att tiden är uppdelad i tre kategorier, det förflutna, nuet och framtiden. Detta är helt fel. Tiden är uppdelad bara i två kategorier: det förflutna och framtiden. Nuet är inte alls en del av tiden. Iakttag bara, se bara: När är Nuet ?? Det ögonblick du fastslår att det här är nuet, då är det redan passerat. Det ögonblick du säger, "Ja, det här är nuet," då är det redan borta, det är förflutet. Eller om du säger: "Detta kommer att vara nuet," då är det fortfarande i framtiden. Du kan inte igenkänna nuet, du kan inte sätta fingret på nuet, du kan inte indikera, påvisa, nuet. I tidens värld finns inget Nu.

När du tittar på klockan, rör den sig ständigt, inte för ett enda ögonblick har den stannat. Under tiden du tittar på den, då

PG 7A: too it was moving...

rör den sig alltjämt. Detta är vad Herakleitos menar när han säger: "Du kan inte stiga ner i samma flod två gånger." Floden flyter. Det förflutna är där, framtiden är där, och framtiden omvandlas hela tiden till det förflutna. Inte för ett enda ögonblick stannar "Nu", inte för ett enda ögonblick stannar klockan, inte för ett enda ögonblick stannar floden. Herakleitos har rätt. Du kan inte stiga ner två gånger i samma flod. En av hans lärjungar sa till honom; "Mästare, Jag försökte, du hade rätt. Men en sak till skulle jag vilja tillägga. Du kan inte ens kliva ner en gång i en flod." Det är exakt så det är. När du vidrör floden, när din fot vidrör floden, då flyter floden. När du sticker ner foten en tum, då flyter floden. När du stiger ner två tum i floden, då flyter floden. Vid det ögonblick då din fot når flodens botten, då har floden runnit så mycket att du inte ens kan säga att du en enda gång har klivit ner i samma flod.

I tiden finns inte Nuet, Nuet är inte en del av tiden, Nuet är en del av evigheten. Det Närvarande betyder Nu och nuet känner inte till något förflutet eller någon framtid.

Om du en gång är fri från tänkandet, så är du fri från tiden. Och tid och rum är sammanvävda.

I detta århundrade upptäckte Einstein att tid och rum inte är två separata företeelser; de är en företeelse, eller två aspekter av samma företeelse. Så därför kallade han det hela för "rum-tiden" för att understryka det faktum att tiden är ingenting annat än den fjärde dimensionen av rummet. Om tiden försvinner, försvinner rummet också.

Därför är en man som gått bortom tänkandet också utanför tid och rum. Han är, men du kan inte säga var han är; han är, men du kan inte säga när han är. När och var upplöses helt. Han bara är, utan någon definition av när och var. Detta är vad Buddha kallar upplysning. Detta är frihet, absolut frihet. Ingenting kvarhåller dig.

Men vägen dit är mycket svår. Det måste vara så därför att det är ett slags slutgiltigt självmord. Du begår självmord. Du begår ett tänkandets självmord. Du lämnar tänkandet, du lämnar tiden, du lämnar rummet. Den värld som du har känt till hittills upplöses och någonting helt nytt, någonting odefinierbart uppstiger i din medvetenhet.

PG 7B: The master Fugai was considered...

Mästaren Fugai ansågs vara mycket vis och generös,

likväl var han mycket sträng...

En Zen mästare måste vara sträng därför att han försöker att döda dig. För bara några dagar sedan kom en sannyasin, och jag frågade hur lång tid hon tänkte stanna här. Hon svarade: "Tre månader." Då sa jag: "Okej, det kommer att vara tillräckligt för att döda dig." Hon sade: "Va !?" Men nu förstod hon poängen - och gjorde sig redo för att dö.

...både mot sig själv och sina lärjungar.

Han gick till bergen för att sitta i Zen.

Zen betyder helt enkelt sittande. På japanska har de hela ordet, "zazen". Det betyder att sitta tyst, och inte göra någonting.

All handling utgår från tänkandet. Varje handling frambringar tänkandet. Närhelst du vill göra någonting, så startar tankarna omedelbart att planera. Med bara idén av att göra, börjar du fylla energi in i tänkandet.

Zen är ett enkelt sittande. Inte göra någonting, inte ens mediterande... därför att meditera, då återkommer ju görandet igen in från bakvägen. Zen innebär helt enkelt: Sitt och gör ingenting. Tänk inte i termer av görande, tänk i termer av varande. Bara var. Så i åratal bara sitter en Zen sökare. Det är den svåraste sak i världen att göra, och jag kan känna att du kommer att förstå det. Det är den svåraste sak i världen att göra - att bara sitta. Du vill ha någonting att göra, därför att detta någonting håller dig upptagen, och du fortsätter att känna att du gör någonting, att du är någon. Och åtminstone ger det dig aldrig tillfälle att möta dig själv. Ditt görande är en flykt från dig själv, så att du aldrig står ansikte mot ansikte med dig själv, så att du aldrig konfronterar ditt eget jag. Du fortsätter undvikandet.

Därför fortsätter folk att göra tusen och en saker, många av dem helt onödiga. Inte bara är de onödiga, många av dem skapar bara bekymmer. Tänk bara på dig själv. Vad har du gjort ? Du har skapat ett helvete omkring dig, men ändå fortsätter du.

PG 8A: People come to me and...

Människor kommer till mig och de frågar; "Vad skall vi meditera på ? Vilket mantra ska vi använda ?" Och ifall jag svarar, "Ingenting, du bara sitter. Du bara betraktar väggen och sitter tyst och låter tiden gå och gör ingenting. Saker och ting kommer att falla på plats på sitt eget sätt. Du bara sitter. Därför att ifall du kommer in och lägger dig i så kommer du att krångla till det ännu mera. Du behöver bara sitta på flodstranden. "Låt floden flyta" - Då säger de, "Men hur kan någon sitta utan att göra någonting ? Ge oss åtminstone ett mantra så att vi kan upprepa det inom oss. Om det inte finns någon aktivitet i det yttre, låt oss ha någon aktivitet inombords."

Det är därför som Maharishi Mahesh Yogi har en särskild dragningskraft i Amerika. Den transcendentala meditationen (TM) är ingenting annat än en flyttning av aktiviteten från utsidan till insidan. Och det amerikanska medvetandet är nästan neurotiskt. Någonting måste göras. Om du inte gör någonting, slösar du bort tid. "Gör någonting !" Vad är inte viktigt, bara gör något. Prat och aktivitet och aggressivitet - gör någonting, fortsätt göra någonting, fort, fort.

Nu, ifall du helt enkelt bara säger, "Gör ingenting, sitt tyst", verkar det nästan omöjligt. Hur kan någon sitta tyst ? "Ge oss någon inre aktivitet", Därför ges ett mantra. Så därför repeterar du tyst: "Aum, aum, aum; Ram, Ram, Ram" - vilket ord som helst kan duga. Vilket abrakadabra som helst. Du kan göra dig ditt eget mantra. Du är dum som frågar någon annan efter ett mantra, du kan skapa ett eget: "Bla, bla, bla!" Det kommer att ge dig samma lugn och frid som någon transcendental meditation. Enbart en inre aktivitet och du mår bra.

Zen har inget mantra. Zen är inte transcendental meditation. Det är det mest mödosamma någon människa någonsin har prövat... Att inte göra någonting. Zazen, bara sitta.

Det är ofattbart att en Zen sökare hade suttit i 20 år och inte gjort någonting - då kom insikten. Allting blev så lugnt och tyst i honom, inte ens ett energiflimmer, ingen upptagenhet, ingenting. Han var nästan död därför att alla aktiviteter upphörde. Då står Du ansikte mot ansikte med varandet, då kommer du att få veta vem du är.

Tänkande är aktivitet. Och om någon vill släppa tänkandet, måste man släppa aktiviteten.

PG 8B: He went to the...

Han gick till bergen för att sitta i Zen.

Han bodde i en grotta, och när han blev hungrig,

gick han till byn efter matrester.

Bara för några rester kom han ner till byn, i annat fall satt han i grottan görandes ingenting.

Det som du söker efter finns redan inom dig. Men du är för mycket upptagen med andra saker så att du ej kan gå in i det. När all rörelse, aktivitet, är borta, då är allt vidhängande borta. Du kan inte hänga fast vid någonting, du fortsätter att falla inåt, inåt, inåt. Ditt bekymmer uppstår därför att du hänger upp dig på aktiviteter. Har du någonsin hört om någon som hade bekymmer med det "inre". Det "inre" har aldrig bekymrat någon. Det inre, den innersta kärnan i ditt varande är tillgänglig för dig just nu, men du är inte tillgänglig för den. Du står vänd med ryggen emot den.

Handling är sansar, handling är hela världen (alltet); och när Zen människor säger: "Lämna världen", så menar de ej att lämna huset, lämna samhället, de menar att lämna vidhäftandet till handling. Även om du måste göra någonting, så gör det på ett passivt sätt. Om du går på gatan, gå, men gå passivt. I ditt inre fortsätter zazen, i ditt inre fortsätter du att sitta, bara på utsidan rör du dig. Om du äter, ät, men i ditt inre så fortsätter du att sitta. I och med detta är ett inre tillstånd uppnått - där någon kan göra saker och ändå vara utan handling. Taoister kallar det wu wei, handling utan handling. Då du en gång vet hur man "sitter" i ditt inre, då kan du göra saker, då utgör de inget störningsmoment. Men först måste man komma till rötterna, till en fördjupning, till en centrering.

En dag kom en munk som kallades Bundo till grottan, attraherad

av Fugais meditationsövningar,

bad han att få stanna över natten.

Mästaren syntes lycklig av att hysa honom,

och följande morgon tillagade han risgröt åt honom.

Eftersom han inte hade en extra skål

gick han ut och återvände med en skalle

PG 9A: he found lying near a tomb...

som han hade hittat nära en grav.

Han fyllde den med gröt och gav den till Bundo.

Gästen vägrade att röra vid den,

och stirrade på Fugai som om han hade blivit galen.

Du kan bli galen på två sätt, det ena är ett felaktigt sätt, det andra är ett riktigt sätt. Du kan bli galen om du blir helt förvirrad i ditt tänkande. Då är du frånkopplad utan rötter i ditt varande. Och du kanske inte förefaller vara galen i förhållande till andra, men du kommer att vara galen. Du kommer inte att förefalla galen i förhållande till andra, därför att andra är också galna på samma sätt likt dig. Denna jord är ett stort dårhus. Normalt är varje människa galen; att inte vara galen är närmast en abnormitet. Folk skiljer i graden av galenskap, men alla är galna. Och när en psykiatriker hjälper dig att bli normal, så tar de dig helt enkelt tillbaks till den sociala galenskapens nivå, de tar dig tillbaks till den nivå som är lagligt accepterad. Du var på väg något litet bortom den sociala gränsen, och de för dig tillbaka. Detta är vad de kallar återanpassning.

Men en människa kan bli galen på ett annat sätt, på ett riktigt sätt. Man kan ramla ut ur tänkandet in i det inre lugnet, in i den inre tanklösheten, den inre tomheten. Då kommer han omedelbart att verka galen. Om du tittar in i ögonen på en man som har uppnått "zazen", så blir du förskräckt. Hans ögon kommer att vara som en bottenlös avgrund; du kommer att undvika hans ögon. Hans ögon kommer att vara tomma. Han kommer att titta på dig och ändå kommer han inte att titta på dig. Hans ögon kommer att vara som ett nyfött barns, och du kommer att känna att han har blivit galen. På ett sätt har han gått utanför medvetandet, och att gå utanför medvetandet är att bli galen.

Så därför föreföll alla betydelsefulla människor såsom Jesus eller Buddha eller Mansoor, galna jämfört med deras samtida. När Jesus blev korsfäst, så blev han korsfäst som en neurotisk person som skapade bekymmer, som en som hade gått utanför sitt medvetande. Han blev korsfäst som en som hade gått utanför sitt tänkande. Han blev korsfäst som en av de allra farligaste förbrytarna. När Sokrates blev förgiftad, så blev han förgiftad för att han var galen på ett särskilt sätt. Han ledde andra människor till galenskap.

Samhället har alltid varit rädd för människor som har uppnått "zazen", därför att deras attraktionskraft är stor men deras beteende är obegripligt. Deras beteende måste vara obegripligt, därför att de fungerar utifrån ett helt annat centrum än ert.

PG 9B: For a man of...

För en människa i "zazen", finns ingen skillnad mellan en döskalle eller en skål. En döskalle består av jord, såsom att en skål också består av jord. Alla döskallar kommer förr eller senare att åter upplösas till jord igen, och då kan du göra en skål av den jorden och du kommer inte att känna dig besvärad. Men ifall du blir erbjuden en döskalle så blir den omöjlig att ens beröra; att dricka eller äta ur väcker kväljningar, det vänder sig i magen. Omöjligt.

Men för någon i "zazen", har det inre hänt - allting är ett. Det är samma verklighet i olika former. Utav samma guldklimp kan du göra ett sorts ornament eller något annat sorts ornament, det gör ingen skillnad. Det är samma verklighet som utgör döskallen, det är samma verklighet som utgör keramikskålen. Så vad är skillnaden ?

En människa som har varit djupt inne i sig själv vet att hela verkligheten består av en enda grundläggande, elementär, kraft, det är en energi, även om den tar olika uttryck.

Och mannen kunde inte röra vid döskallen, kunde inte tro att någon skulle kunna erbjuda den som en skål att äta ur. Vad tänkte han ? Hans tankar snurrade och spann, "Detta är en människas döskalle." Idén, hela idén var äcklande. Han tänkte att denna man, Fugai, har blivit galen.

Då blev Fugai ursinnig

och drev honom handgripligen ut ur grottan.

"Dåre !" - skrek han efter honom. "Hur kan du,

med dina världsliga värderingar om orenhet och renhet,

anse dig själv vara en Buddhist ?"

Alla uppfattningar är från tänkandet. Att säga att någonting är vackert och någonting annat är fult är från tänkandet. I själva verket är ingenting vackert och ingenting är fult. Om tänkandet försvinner, upplöses, vad kommer då att vara vackert och vad kommer då att vara fult ? Gillande och ogillande tillhör bara tänkandet.

Föreställ dig världen; Människan är borta, tredje världskriget har hänt och människan har försvunnit. Jorden kommer att fortsätta vara densamma. Blommorna kommer att blomma, men kommer de att vara vackra ? De kommer helt enkelt att vara sig själva, inte vackra, inte fula. Allting kommer att vara sig självt, men det kommer inte att ske någon värdering, därför att värderaren är borta.

Tänkandet hos en människa som uppnått "zazens mål", har försvunnit, har upplösts. Han är inte längre en människa, därför att alla hans begrepp, föreställningar, värderingar, attityder,

PG 10A: prejudices, have disappeared...

fördomar, har upplösts. Nu ser han utan fördomar, varken för eller emot. Han iakttar helt enkelt. Hans ögon är tomma därför att han har inget att projicera. På så sätt framstår saker och ting på ett helt annat sätt

Men för vanliga mänskliga varelser, kommer han att verka nästan galen, därför att galenskap helt enkelt betyder att vara utom sig, att ej vara. Faktiskt så är han utanför sitt tänkande - men har gått in i sitt innersta Väsen, sitt Vara.

Så det finns två typer av galenskap, du kan vara ute ur ditt tänkande och inte i ditt Vara; då är du inte frisk; du kan vara ute ur ditt tänkande och i ditt Vara, då är du närmare verklig hälsa. Du blir hel, du blir helig.

"Dåre !" - skrek han efter honom. "Hur kan du,

med dina världsliga värderingar om orenhet och renhet,

anse dig själv vara en Buddhist ?"

Alla värderingar kommer från tänkandet, icke-tänkandet värderar inte.

Fugai försökte skapa en situation för denna stackars man. Men mannen missade tillfället. Fugai skapade en situation, så att denna man kunde bli upplyst. Han skakade om honom hårt, för att dra bort honom från sina drömmar om gillande och ogillande, renhet och smuts, skönhet och fulhet, gott och ont. Hela uppgiften var att skingra hans tänkande, därför att hela idén med Buddhismen utgörs av, just det - att skingra tänkandet.

Det är sagt om en Zen mästare, som i sina yngre dagar, var en lärjunge åt en annan mästare, att han hade arbetat hårt med sin meditation i månader i sträck. Så en dag kom Mästaren, satte sig mittemot honom med en tegelsten och började gnida den mot en annan sten. Ljudet som uppstod blev distraherande och störande för den unge lärjungen.

Till slut, frågade den unge mannen irriterat: "Vad gör du ?"

Mästaren svarade: "Jag tillverkar en spegel."

Lärjungen sade: " Har du blivit galen ?, Genom att bara gnida en tegelsten kan en spegel inte bli gjord, du må gnida den hela ditt liv. Speglar görs inte på det sättet."

Då sade Mästaren, "Då har jag inget att säga till dig. Du försöker polera ditt tänkande. Speglar är inte heller gjorda på det sättet. Jag kastar bort denna tegelsten - och se - gör du detsamma."

PG 10B: Drop the mind...

Släpp tänkandet. Det är inte frågan om att polera tänkandet, att modifiera tänkandet, att göra det klarare och klarare. Det är inte frågan om att ändra tänkandet, det är frågan om att släppa det helt.

Buddhismen är ett kraftprov att släppa tänkandet totalt. Men hur släpper man tänkandet ? Om du fortsätter att tänka - gillande och ogillande, fördomar, detta är bra, detta är dåligt - då kan du inte släppa tänkandet, därför att det är tänkandet som särskiljer, diskriminerar, det är tänkandet som delar upp, kategoriserar. Alla kategorier härrör från tänkandet. Det är därför Buddhisten inte säger att Gud är god och Djävulen är ond, därför att för en Buddhist skapas både Gud och Djävulen av tänkandet - gott och ont. Det är därför Buddhister inte säger välj himlen och undvik helvetet, därför att de säger att bägge kommer från tänkandet - helvetet och himlen. Släpp hela tänkandet. Och genom att släppa tänkandet, är alla skillnader borta, och du är i en djup och oförfalskad verklighet.

Det är vad sanning är. Den är inte Gud, den är inte Djävulen; den är inte ljus, den är inte mörker - den är bortom bägge.

Några månader senare besökte mästaren Tetsgyu honom

och berättade för honom att han tyckte det var en stor förlust

att han hade försakat världen.

Fugai skrattade högt och sa:

"Oh! - det är förhållandevis lätt att försaka världen

och bli en Bonzai-munk,

det svåra är emellertid att sedan bli en sann Buddhist."

Det är väldigt enkelt att försaka världen, det är väldigt enkelt att dra sig undan. Vilken ynkrygg som helst kan göra det. Det är lätt att fly från verkligheten, men flykten är inte en omvandling. Det är väldigt enkelt att sitta frånvänt som en bonzai - du kan bli en buddha-staty, fortfarande helt orörlig - men det verkliga problemet är att släppa tänkandets tankecirklar, det inre tankearbetet i tänkandet. Sett utifrån kan du sitta tyst, men ifall den inre oredan fortsätter då är du inte en Buddhist.

Med en Buddhist menas en som har blivit en Buddha, en som har uppnått upplysningen. Och det inträffar bara när den

PG 11A: inner movements have...

inre turbulensen har avstannat, när tänkandet har avstannat, när tänkandet inte längre är härskaren. När tänkandet inte längre manipulerar dig, när tänkandet inte längre styr dig, när tänkandet bara är en mekanism - om du behöver det - så använder du det - annars lägger du det åt sidan - Först då är du fri från tänkandet, du har blivit din egen mästare.

På utsidan är det lätt att ändra sig, den verkliga förändringen måste ske inombords. Kom ihåg det. Använd utsidan för att hjälpa insidan att ändras, men tro inte att utsidans förändring är allt. Sitt tyst, därför att den sittande ställningen är behjälplig. När kroppen sitter helt orörlig, hjälper den tänkandet att koppla av, därför att kropp och tänkande inte är två separata ting, de är ett. Du är inte kropp och själ, du är kropp-själ. Du är psykosomatisk, så att allting som händer i kroppen ger subtila vibrationer i tänkandet; och allting som händer i tänkandet manifesterar sig i kroppen.

Det är därför, som ifall du intar alkohol, tänkandet blir berusat. Alkoholen går in i kroppen men påverkar tänkandet. Om du intar LSD eller marijuana eller någon annan drog, så påverkar det tänkandet. Du intar det i kroppen, du sprutar in det i kroppen, och det når tänkandet. Eller om du övar tänkandet, disciplinerar tänkandet, så når det fram till din kropp också. Om ditt tänkande är positivt, om du har övat det...

Till exempel, det finns positiva filosofier för att öva tänkandet, såsom Emile Cones filosofi: att hypnotisera sig själv, suggerera sig själv, "Jag blir bättre och bättre och för varje dag blir jag mer och mer full av medkänsla, vänlighet och kärlek." Om du upprepar detta om och om igen, så kommer denna subtila idé att slå rot i tankarna, och påverka kroppen. Det är därför många sjukdomar kan bli botade med hypnos - därför att de i första hand helt enkelt kanske bara är dina suggereringar och inga verkliga sjukdomar. Utav hundra sjukdomar, är nästan sjuttiofem rent mentala företeelser, men de påverkar kroppen. Om tankarna tar in dem, om tankarna påverkas, så följer förr eller senare kroppen efter. Både kropp och själ är ett, så vad som än påverkar det ena, påverkas det andra också. De är parallella, verkar tillsammans. En djup, subtil balans bibehålls emellan dem.

PG 11B: So, I am not saying...

Så, därför säger jag inte att inte använda det yttre - du måste använda det, men tänk inte att det är allt. Använd utsidan för att ändra insidan. Då kommer du inte bara att bli en "bonzai", då kommer du att inte bara bli en staty, du kommer att bli en verklig Buddha.

Det hände sig att en Zen sökare kom till en mästare och frågade honom,

"Jag har kommit långt bortifrån, jag har rest tusentals kilometer för att sitta vid dina fötter."

Mästaren frågade: "För vad, Vad vill du ?"

Mannen sade: "Jag vill bli en Buddha."

Mästaren sade, "Försvinn härifrån ! Vi har redan för många Buddhor här."

Mästaren brukade bo i ett tempel som kallades "Templet med de tusen och en Buddhorna". Där fanns tusen och en statyer av Buddha.

Så han sade: "Försvinn ut härifrån! Gå genast bort härifrån. Vi är trötta. Vi har redan ett tusen och en Buddha här, vi behöver inte en till. Men ifall du vill bli dig själv, så kan du stanna."

Kom ihåg, Zen är inte någon imitation. Ingen Zen mästare kan ens komma på tanken att skriva en bok liknande Thomas Campus bok "Imitation av Kristus" Omöjligt. Enbart titeln är löjeväckande.

Den sanna religionen är inte någon imitation av någon annan, den är ett sökande efter ditt eget autentiska jag, Den du är. Så därför räcker inte bara yttre disciplin; yttre disciplin kan användas som ett medel, men den är inte målet.

Så kom ihåg att den grundläggande förändringen måste hända inuti dig.

"Oh! - det är förhållandevis lätt att försaka världen

och bli en Bonzai-munk,

det svåra är emellertid att sedan bli en sann Buddhist."

Det svåra är alltid att bli en sann Kristen, en sann Muslim, en sann Hindu, en sann Buddhist, en sann Sikh, därför att det svåra är att bli sann.

Människan är en bedragare. Han fortsätter att bedra sig själv. Och det är mycket enklare att bli som någon, att låtsas bli någon;

PG 12A: it is much easier to act...

det är mycket enklare att handla som någon annan, än att vara, Att vara är mödosamt. Du kommer att gå igenom många svårigheter; du kommer att gå igenom många upplevelser av död och pånyttfödelse, du kommer att genomgå en total revolution, en total mutation (omvandling). Det är svårt. Det är mycket lätt att låtsas, det är mycket lätt att vara pseudo. Hela världen är full av låtsas-religiösa människor. De går i kyrkan, de går i moskén, de ber, de låtsas meditera, men man blir bara förvånad. Vem bedrar de ? De bedrar bara sig själva och ingen annan.

Detta måste ihågkommas därför att du är på denna väg, du är här som en sökare. Den största fällan för en sökare är att bli ett offer för självbedrägeri; det är lätt och ser ut som en genväg. Förställ dig aldrig. När en gång förställandet har etablerat sig, så har du tagit ett felaktigt steg och det blir mycket svårt att uppnå någon verklighet. Och du kommer att behöva gå tillbaks förr eller senare, därför att ifall du inte släpper detta låtsas-varande, kommer du aldrig att mogna.

Till exempel: Om du är i tjugofemårsåldern och du förställer dig och du fortsätter att förställa dig upp till femtioårsåldern, och att du då inser att ett visst förställande inträffade i tjugofemårsåldern, så måste du gå tillbaks och göra det ogjort. Du kommer att behöva återuppleva dessa tjugofem år igen. Du kommer att skapa en onödig komplexitet, men livet är redan tillräckligt komplext. Om du inte släpper förställandets mask redan vid tjugofemårsåldern, så kommer hela din tillvaro att vila på en felaktig grund.

Detta är vad som är meningen med Primal Terapi; du bör gå tillbaks, återuppleva. När någonting har gått fel, så bör du gå tillbaks samma väg, komma till denna punkt, upplösa denna knut och sedan gå vidare.

Skapa därför inte någon onödig komplexitet. Du är här med mig - kom ihåg en sak: Att inte förställa sig. Därför att du kommer inte att bedra någon, du kommer bara att bedra dig själv.

Bli ingen "bonzai". Sanningen måste förtjänas. Den är inte lätt-tillgänglig och det finns ingen genväg till den.

Jag läste en historia om en berömd Hassid-rabbi. Han brukade berätta denna historia för sina lärjungar.

Det var en gång en man som var mycket dum. När han steg upp på morgonen var det så svårt för honom att hitta sina kläder att han

PG 12B: at night he almost hesitated to...

på kvällen nästan tvekade att gå till sängs, därför att han tänkte på det besvär som väntade vid uppvaknandet.

En kväll gjorde han en stor ansträngning, tog papper och penna, och medan han klädde av sig, skrev han ner exakt var han lade alla sina kläder. Nästa morgon, mycket nöjd med sig själv, tog han papperslappen och läste: "Mössa" - där var den, Han satte den på huvudet. "Byxor" - där låg de. Han tog på sig dem. Och så fortsatte det tills han var helt påklädd.

"Allting är bra, men var är nu jag själv ?" frågade han sig själv med bestörtning. "Var någonstans i världen är jag ?"

Han letade och letade men det blev ett förgäves sökande. Han kunde inte hitta sig själv.

"Och det är så det är med oss", sa rabbinen till sina lärjungar.

Kom ihåg, du må klä dig som en sannyasin, då må vara i den ockra-färgade klädnaden, men det gör ingen större skillnad ifall du inte vet var du är, eller vem du är. Du må vara välklädd som en sannyasin men det kommer inte att hjälpa mycket. Så tro därför inte på billiga trick. De är till stor hjälp på ett sätt - det är en gest att ni har blivit sannyasins, det är en gest att du är redo att möta dig själv, det är en stor gest att du är redo att gå in i det okända, in i det obekanta, det kommer att göra en stor skillnad - men ta det inte som att det är hela alltet. Det är bara början på resan, inte slutet.

En stor poet, Robert Prost, brukade säga:

"Två stigar delade sig i skogen och Jag, Jag tog den

minst använda och det har åstadkommit hela skillnaden."

Ni har valt med mig en väg som inte vanligtvis används av folk, inte används av majoriteten, av folkhopen, av massan. Det kommer att göra stor skillnad, men det är bara en början. Glöm aldrig, ens för ett enda ögonblick, att detta bara är en början. Och slutet är mycket långt borta och mycken ansträngning, mycken disciplin, mycken inre omvandling kommer att behövas. Och ingen kan göra det åt dig. Bara du kan bli pånyttfödd i dig själv, ingen annan kan bli pånyttfödd åt dig. Du måste leva ditt eget liv, ingen annan kan leva i ditt ställe. Bara du kan älska och bara du kan dö, ingen annan kan göra det åt dig.

PG 13A: Life is intrinsically...

Livet är i sig självt individuellt. Allt som är meningsfullt, allt som är betydelsefullt, måste göras av dig själv. Det som kan göras av andra är ovidkommande; det som kan göras av prästen är oväsentligt. Den här förvandlingen måste du tillföra dig själv. Det kommer att bli mödosamt, men ta det som en utmaning. Det är väl, att vägen är mödosam, hur skulle vi annars kunna bevisa vår själ ? Hur skulle vi kunna bevisa vår utkristalliserade själ ? Denna utmaning är en välsignelse. Men försök aldrig att låtsas, eller att förställa dig.

THE END

Översättning: Inger Myrstrand, Björn Skålén

o Svenne Berggren

Vi på Fria Akademin är mycket tacksamma för kommentarer och frågor angående texten. Hör av dej, skriv en rad på bjorn_skolen@hotmail.com

Ps

Personlig kommentar av Björn Skålén

Om Du vill veta varför jag valt att översätta Osho och just den här texten om kan Du läsa följande bakgrund.

Året var 1967 och Ungdomsrevolten stod i blom. Visionen om utopia på jorden, i den globala byn, tog två huvudriktningar.

Många sökte lösningar i en politisk revolution, andra i en inre revolution.

Beatles reste till Indien och lärde sig meditera, spela sitar och sjöng om The fool on the hill...

Som nykläckt student valde jag då den inre resan,

rullade ihop en filt i en sovsäck

och promenerade ut ur hemstaden Trollhättan

och började liftarresan mot Indien.

I packningen fanns två böcker: dels Buddha talade och sade,

dels On the road ; På drift av Jack Keruack.

Snart kunde jag orsakskedjan om lidandets uppkomst utantill

både baklänges och framlänges.

Ett halvt år var jag pälshandlare i Afghanistan. I Indien levde jag bland Hippies och Yogis, sadhus och pilgrimer och tibetanska munkar. Så hem till Sverige igen och folkskollärarexamen vid lärarhögskolan i Göteborg. Så ny resa och samma sökande

igen. Goa Gil förde mej till Prem Varni min Yoga lärare i Rishikesh som lärde mej Hatha Yoga och Meditation.

Guru efter Guru passerade revy. Varje Ashram skulle besökas.

Varje meditationsmetod skulle provas. Överallt ställde jag samma fråga till vishetslärarna : How to quiet the mind? Vad är sann lycka?

Det var först när jag träffade Osho som frågan försvann. Han visade att : Sinnet går ej att stilla. Tankarna kan ej stoppas. Ej heller molnen på himlen går att stoppa. Eller ska stoppas. I stället går det utmärkt att vila i Medvetandet, i den rena Vakenheten, och se hur tankar kommer och går. Ock att de försvinner av sig självt. Som en linje man drar i en vattenyta.

Att inget behöver eller skall göras och att allt är som det är. Och att vila i detta : Som Det Är, detta suchness, som buddisterna kallar TATATA är svaret på frågan, ty det stora lugnet, den stora friheten finns redan inom Dej som den stora Öppna himmelen, där molnen aldrig snuddar skyn…

Som det stora eviga havet där vågorna kan storma fritt.

I virvelns stilla centrum kan Du alltid vila som ren vakenhet, som det rena Medvetandet.

Ahhh THIS

Ds

Dang Dang Doko Dang

Talks on Zen

Talks given from 11/06/76 am to 20/06/76 am

English Discourse series

10 Chapters

Year published: 1977

Dang Dang Doko Dang

Chapter #1

Chapter title: Never Pretend, Even About Skulls

11 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 7606110

ShortTitle: DANG01

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 96 mins

THE MASTER FUGAI WAS CONSIDERED VERY WISE AND GENEROUS, YET HE WAS MOST SEVERE BOTH WITH HIMSELF AND HIS DISCIPLES.

HE WENT TO THE MOUNTAINS TO SIT IN ZEN. HE LIVED IN A CAVE, AND WHEN HE WAS HUNGRY HE WENT TO THE VILLAGE FOR SCRAPS.

ONE DAY A MONK CALLED BUNDO, ATTRACTED BY FUGAI'S AUSTERITIES, CALLED AT THE CAVE AND ASKED TO STAY THE NIGHT.

THE MASTER SEEMED HAPPY TO PUT HIM UP, AND NEXT MORNING PREPARED RICE GRUEL FOR HIM. NOT HAVING AN EXTRA BOWL HE WENT OUT AND RETURNED WITH A SKULL HE FOUND LYING NEAR A TOMB. HE FILLED IT WITH GRUEL AND OF OFFERED IT TO BUNDO.

THE GUEST REFUSED TO TOUCH IT, AND STARED AT FUGAI AS IF HE HAD GONE MAD.

AT THIS FUGAI BECAME FURIOUS AND DROVE HIM OUT OF THE CAVE WITH BLOWS. 'FOOL!' HE SHOUTED AFTER HIM.'HOW CAN YOU, WITH YOUR WORLDLY NOTIONS OF FILTH AND PURITY, THINK YOURSELF A BUDDHIST?'

SOME MONTHS LATER THE MASTER TETSGYU VISITED HIM AND TOLD HIM THAT HE THOUGHT IT A GREAT PITY THAT HE HAD FORSAKEN THE WORLD. FUGAI LAUGHED LOUDLY AND SAID:'OH, IT'S EASY ENOUGH TO FORSAKE THE WORLD AND BECOME A BONZAI, THE DIFFICULT THING IS THEN TO BECOME A TRUE BUDDHIST.'

TRUTH IS ONE, but it can be approached in many ways. Truth is one, but it can be expressed in many ways.

Two ways are very essential; all the ways can be divided into two categories. It will be good to understand that basic polarity.

Either you approach truth through the mind or you approach truth through the heart. So there are two types of religions in the world -- both true, both meaningful, but both opposite to each other -- the religion of the mind and the religion of the heart.

The religion of the mind believes that if you become thoughtless, if the mind is dropped, you attain to truth. The mind is the barrier; the no-mind will be the gate. Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism -- these are the religions of the mind. They are religions of deep analysis, religions of deep awareness, religions of enlightenment.

Then there are religions of the heart: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism. They believe that the path goes through the heart, that the heart has to be dissolved into the beloved, into the Divine.

The first religions are the religions of meditation. The word 'meditation' is not exactly right but there is no other word to translate DHYANA into English, because the language has never known a religion of meditation so the word does not exist. All Western languages, in fact, have known only the religion of the heart so they have the perfect word for that path -- prayer. But for DHYANA they don't have any word so meditation is the only word that can be used. In fact, DHYANA means exactly the opposite; DHYANA means just the contrary. The word 'meditation' comes from a Greek root 'medonai' which means to think about. The word 'meditation' means to think about, and DHYANA, which we are translating as meditation, means how not to think about; how to be in a state of no thought; how to come to a point where you are but there is no thinking; a state of no-mind, pure awareness. But meditation is the only word so we will use it.

Zen is the culmination of the Buddhist search. Zen is the uttermost flowering of the path of meditation. The word 'zen' comes from DHYANA. DHYANA became 'chen' in China, then 'chen' became 'zen' in Japan. Remember this: Zen originated in India with Gautam Buddha. When Gautam Buddha attained to his ultimate enlightenment, the state of no-mind, the world came to know the path of analysis, the path of right thinking, the path of right remembering, and the path of how to dissolve all thinking by becoming more and more aware of thoughts. Just by watching thoughts, slowly, slowly, they fade out -- you become simply a watcher, you are not identified with your thinking, you stand aside and you go on watching, just as if you are standing by the side of the road and watching the traffic. The mind is like traffic, very circular, goes on moving in a circle, very repetitive, almost a mechanism. You go on doing the same thing again and again and again. Your whole life is nothing but a prolonged repetition, very circular. The mind is a mandala, a circle, and it moves. If you watch, by and by you become aware of the circle, of the vicious circle of the mind. Again and again it brings the same emotions: the same anger, the same hatred, the same greed, the same ego.... And you go on. You are just a victim.

Once you become aware of the mind and you start watching it, the bridge is broken, you are no more identified with the mind. Once you are not identified with the mind, the mind disappears because it needs your co-operation to be there.

These coming ten days we will be talking about Zen. But to understand it rightly, you have to understand the opposite also -- the opposite becomes a contrast, a background.

The path of prayer does not analyse; it does not try to be aware or alert. On the contrary, the path of prayer dissolves itself completely into the prayer. You should not witness, you should not be a watcher; you should be drunk like a drunkard and lost, completely lost.

On the path of prayer, love is the goal. You should be loving; you should be so full of love that your ego dissolves into your love, melts into your love. On the path of prayer, God is a necessary hypothesis. I call it a hypothesis because it is a need on the path of prayer but it is not a need on the path of meditation.

On the path of meditation no God is needed, hence the influence and the appeal of Zen in the West. God has become almost incomprehensible. The very word 'God' looks dirty. The moment you say 'God' you put people off. Hence the appeal of Zen in the West. Christianity is dying because that hypothesis has been used too much, has been exploited too much. The other, just the opposite, is needed.

On the path of prayer you are to be drunk; on the path of meditation you have to be alert. In both the ways the ego disappears. If you are fully alert there is no ego because in full awareness you become so transparent that you don't create any shadow. If you are fully drunk, in deep love with God, again you disappear -- because in LOVE you cannot be. The ultimate is the same: the ego disappears. And when the ego is not there you come to know what truth is.

Nobody has ever been able to say what it is; nobody will ever be able to say what it is. The experience is so ultimate, so vast, that it is indefinable. It is so unlimited it cannot be put into words -- words are very narrow and the experience is tremendously vast. But from both the paths, people reach to the same goal.

Truth is one. Vedas say, 'Truth is one but it has been seen in different ways by the seers.'

So remember that. All religions are basically, intrinsically, leading to the same goal. Even when they appear very opposite, even when they appear diametrically opposite, they are leading to the same goal.

So it depends on you which path you would like to choose. If you have a feeling for God -- not a belief, belief alone won't do, belief is just a dead thing -- if you have a feeling for God, if, by hearing the word 'God', you start a subtle throbbing, you feel a trembling, you feel inspired, your heart starts beating faster, if the very word 'God' gives you a great awe, then you can move on the path of prayer. Then Zen is not for you, then Zen is to be simply forgotten, because then Zen will be a disturbance.

But if the word 'God' has no meaning for you, if it has really died for you, if God is really dead, it provokes no feeling in you, no emotion in you, it does not vibrate you, it does not pulsate you, it does not whirl your being into the unknown, then Zen is for you. More and more people will have to be moving on the path of Zen because Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism -- all, in a way, have been exploited too much. They have lost their appeal.

Buddhism is still unspoiled, still fertile, and for the modern mind particularly it has a very deep appeal -- because the modern mind is made of a scientific attitude and Zen is absolutely scientific, super-scientific. It goes to the very roots of your mind and it does not ask you to believe in anything. It has no hypothesis whatsoever. It does not ask that you should believe in something, it has no superstition.

The word 'superstition' is very beautiful. It comes from the Latin 'superstes' which means: that which survives, remnants of the past, things which have become futile but persist out of habit. You go to the church but you don't have any feeling for going there, and every night before going to the bed you may pray also -- but it is just an impotent gesture because there is no heart in it. You simply repeat with the lips; you pay lip-service to it. It is maybe just an old habit, an old conditioning: you have been taught from your very childhood to pray, so you continue. The mind goes on repeating the familiar.

So this has to be decided by you. Nobody else can decide it for you. You have to search in your own heart. If you still have that innocence which is needed for the path of prayer, if you are still like a child, if you still can trust, can believe, if you still can have faith, then there is no need to bother about Zen because it will be an unnecessarily arduous path. You can simply melt and merge into God.

I was reading one anecdote -- I loved it.

One evening a priest who was visiting Ireland was walking along a country road, when he came upon an elderly gentleman. As they walked along enjoying the evening together, a storm suddenly arose and they took shelter. They talked for a while and then when silence came upon them, the old man took out a prayer book and began to pray.

The American priest, observing him, was struck very deeply by a certain kind of hallowedness around him as he prayed. Unintentionally he said aloud,

'You must be very close to God.'

The old man paused, smiled and said, 'Yes, he is very fond of me.'

'Yes, he is very fond of me.' That is what prayer is all about. It is not only that you love God -- that alone won't help. If you can also feel God's love flowing towards you, only then; if you can feel his presence all around you, only then will prayer become possible.

Prayer is possible as a shadow of his felt presence. You cannot pray in an empty room if he is not present. To whom will you pray? To whom will you utter your heart? To whom? Prayer is futile if the presence is not felt. If the presence is felt, then you are in prayer -- whether you say something or not. You may not say a single word, you may be simply so full with awe that you remain silent, but you will feel the presence. Yes, to feel the presence of God is what prayer is all about.

But if God is dead, if you don't feel anything, if no song arises in your heart for God, if the presence has disappeared from the world -- you look at trees and you only see trees and no God hidden there, you look at the sky and you only see the sky and not his infinite presence -- then Zen is going to be your path.

Zen is going to be the religion of the coming century because science has killed, or damaged very badly, the capacity to trust. But there is nothing to be worried about -- you can move from another direction. But then there is no question of love, of presence, of God, of prayer -- nothing of the sort.

When the Western world for the first time became aware of Buddhism, Jainism, Tao, they could not believe it. What type of religions are these? There is no God in them. They could not believe that religion could exist without the concept of God; God has always been the centre of religion. So they thought that these must be just moral codes. They are not. They are a totally different kind of religion. And India, in the days of Buddha and Mahavir, twenty-five centuries before, reached to the same scientific attitude as the Western world has reached now. Twenty-five centuries before, India realised -- at least, those who were very, very intelligent, brilliant, alert -- they realised that the old God was dead. They realised that the God of prayer was dead.

To say this was simply to say that the heart of man was dead; it was no longer functioning. So a new path had to be found in which heart was not a basic necessity. Buddha and Mahavir worked out a new sort of religion -- the religion of meditation, without any God, without any prayer, without any belief. Nothing is required of you except a seeking, except a searching mind, except a deep enquiry -- that's all.

The world is going to be more and more 'zenist'. Zen is the ultimate flowering of the Buddha-mind.

Before we enter into the world of Zen, some things are needed to be understood about the mind. One thing: mind functions because of your co-operation. You can stop it if you withdraw your co-operation. Without withdrawing your co-operation you cannot stop it. So the whole method of Zen is how to withdraw the co-operation. Many people try to stop the mind without withdrawing the co-operation -- then you will go crazy, then you will do something absurd, impossible. On one hand you go on pouring energy into the mind and on the other hand you go on trying to stop it.

It is as if you are driving a car and you go on pushing the accelerator and at the same time you go on pushing the brake as well. You will destroy the whole mechanism; you are doing two contradictory things together.

Zen is not in favour of stopping the mind directly, it is in favour of withdrawing your co-operation from the mind in a subtle way. As more energy is withdrawn from the mind it starts falling on its own accord and a moment comes when the mind simply disappears -- because it is you who are supporting it; it is you who are maintaining it; it is you who unknowingly, continuously, goes on pouring energy into it. Through your desires, through your discriminations, through your choices, through your likes and dislikes, you go on pouring energy into it.

So Zen says, if you really want the mind to stop.... There is no other way for Zen to come to know the truth unless the mind stops. Because if the mind goes on functioning, it is a projector. Then the reality functions as a screen and you go on projecting your mind onto it, you go on seeing that which you want to see, you go on hearing what you want to hear. You never see reality as it is, you never see that which is, you corrupt reality. Mind is a great corruptor.

So mind, the projector, has to be stopped. Then suddenly the reality appears as it is, because nothing is projected onto it. You are sitting in a movie house, you just see a white screen, and then the projector starts. Then the screen disappears and you see the film, a great story unfolding. You forget completely the screen, the whiteness, the purity of it, the virginity of it -- everything is forgotten. You are lost in a dream-world. Then the projector stops and suddenly you realise there has been nothing. The screen has been empty. It was just a game of shadows -- you were befooled, you were deceived.

In India we call the world MAYA, illusion. It means: it is not that there is no truth in it, but the truth is hidden. The truth is hidden like a white screen in a movie house and you have projected your desires and your dreams on top of it and have forgotten completely what reality is.

Zen says stop the projector, put it off, and you will be able to know what is. And to know that which is, is freedom; to know that which is, is to be liberated; to know that which is, is to be enlightened.

So mind is the barrier. And mind is a continuous repetition. Because you have never watched it, you are not aware of it. Nothing new ever happens in the mind; it is always the rotten old. Nothing new can ever happen in the mind because it is a mechanism. The mechanism can only go on playing the same thing again and again -- it is like a gramophone record.

Look at it and by and by you will be able to see the mechanicalness of it. Gurdjieff used to say that if a man realises that he is a mechanism then there is a possibility. If a man realises that he is only a machine, then there is a possibility to go beyond the machine. Then a man can become conscious.

I was reading a very beautiful anecdote. There is no story in it, just an extract from a petty-cash ledger.

Nov. 1 Advertisement for secretary .50

Nov. 2 Flowers for secretary's desk .80

Nov. 8 Week's salary for secretary L30.00

Nov. 9 Perfume for secretary L6.00

Nov. 11 Sweets for wife .10

Nov. 13 Lunch for secretary and self L9.45

Nov. 15 Weeks salary for secretary L35.00

Nov. 17 Bingo for wife and self L1.00

Nov. 18 Theatre for secretary and self L6.00

Nov. 19 Sweets for wife .10

Nov. 20 Doreen's salary L40.00

Nov. 21 Theatre and dinner for D and self L20.00

Dec. 2 Harley Street Clinic L150.00

Dec. 3 Fur coat for wife L700.00

Dec. 4 Advertisement for male secretary .50

Just take note. Make a small diary of your mind and you will see circles and circles moving. To make a diary is good, but make it for yourself, not for somebody else to read it. Then look at it, watch it, and you will see -- the same pattern again and again bubbles, surfaces. This is a sheer wastage of life because nothing new is happening in it.

Truth is always new and mind is always old. That's why mind and truth never meet. Mind is always of the past, truth is always of the present. That's why mind and truth never meet. Mind is that which you have already known; truth is that which is yet to be known. Mind is the known and truth is the unknowable or the unknown. Mind is just a record of all that has happened. Mind is not an adventure; truth is an adventure.

There is an old proverb which says, 'There is nothing new under the sun.' If you think about the mind the proverb is true. But if you think about truth, the proverb is absolutely false. Then there is another proverb -- which is true -- which says, 'There is nothing old under the sun.' Everything is absolutely fresh and new -- like a fresh leaf coming out of the tree. Truth is always young, mind is always old. That's why Jesus says to his disciples, 'Unless you become like small children, you will not be able to enter into my Kingdom of God.'

Mind is very cunning and clever, but not intelligent. Intelligence is a quality of awareness and cunningness and cleverness are just substitutes for intelligence. So mind goes on playing tricks of cleverness and;n that cleverness, mind itself is caught. In its own cleverness and cunningness it is lost. Remember this that you will not become intelligent by being clever, you will become intelligent by being more aware. Cleverness need not be necessarily a sign of intelligence. Even stupid people can be clever. Cleverness comes out of experience: you do things many times, you learn. The mind becomes like a computer -- each experience is fed into it and it goes on learning and accumulating knowledge and it goes on using that knowledge.

Intelligence has a totally different quality: it has nothing to do with experience, it has something to do with awareness. Cunningness comes out of experience; intelligence comes out of awareness. That's why old people become very cunning... and hippies are right when they say never believe a person who is more than thirty. Because by that time a person becomes cunning, one has learned the tricks and the ways of the world.

But a child is intelligent because a child is more alert, more radiantly alert. See a child watching something. If a child is watching a snail just watch the child -- how alert, how totally in the moment he is. It is as if he has become just the eyes; his whole being is pouring through the eyes. A child is intelligent, an old man becomes cunning and clever. A child has no experience so he cannot use the past. He has to face the present.

And the whole Zen attitude is that you will have to become a child again; you will have to attain a second childhood in which you drop all experiences. Mind is nothing but a name for the whole accumulated past. Mind is not an entity really, just a piled-up past. If you disperse it, if the dust of the past is cleaned away from the mirror of your being, you will become intelligent. And only intelligence can know what truth is.

After a lecture a student said to Hegel, 'Professor Hegel, I am confused by your teaching because reality looks quite different.'

Hegel said, 'My dear friend, all the worse for reality.'

Zen is not a philosophy because philosophy means some doctrine about reality. Zen is a pure encounter with reality. It has no doctrine, it has no philosophy, it has no scriptures. It is just a direct encounter with reality. All scriptures belong to the mind, all philosophies belong to the mind and all doctrines are the cleverness of the mind. The mind goes on consoling itself through creating philosophies that it knows.

It is very difficult to remain in ignorance because it is very ego-shattering. So the mind creates philosophies and gives you an illusion of knowledge.

Zen is a way of knowing. It has no knowledge. It is just a methodology to know, to face, to encounter -- immediate, herenow, direct. It is a direct transmission.

Clemenceau, the French statesman, was asked by a diplomat what he thought about diplomats.

Clemenceau said, 'Diplomats are people who solve problems that have been created by other diplomats.'

That's what philosophers also do and that's what the whole function of the mind is. Mind creates the problem and then mind tries to solve it.

Zen completely drops out of this whole game. It is not a mind game. Zen says there are no problems to be solved and there are no solutions to be made, because there are no problems in the first place. Zen says there has never been a problem in existence. It is the tricky mind which first creates a problem -- and of course, when you have a problem, you have to solve it. So it creates a solution. The problem is false, so how can you find a true solution for a false problem? The solution is also false. Then the solution creates ten more problems -- and so on and so forth it goes. Philosophies upon philosophies are created and they are all empty, all gibberish, all scrap. Zen is absolutely against philosophising because Zen is against mind.

Now this Zen story.

THE MASTER FUGAI WAS CONSIDERED VERY WISE AND GENEROUS, YET HE WAS MOST SEVERE -- BOTH WITH HIMSELF AND HIS DISCIPLES.

Zen is severe. It is a very arduous path. It is not a game to play with, it is playing with fire. You will never be the same again once you enter into the world of Zen. You will be totally transformed, so much so that you will not be able to recognise yourself. The person who enters into the world of Zen and the person who comes out are two totally different entities. There is no continuity, you become discontinuous with your past. All continuity is of the mind; all identity is of the mind; all name, all form, is of the mind. When the mind is dropped you suddenly become discontinuous with the past -- not only with the past, you become unconnected with time.

And that is the whole secret of Zen: to become unconnected with time. Then you become connected with eternity. And eternity is here-now; eternity knows no past and no future; eternity is pure present. Time knows no present -- time is past and future. Ordinarily we think that time is divided into three categories: past, present and future. That is absolutely wrong. Time is divided only into two categories: past and future. The present is not part of time at all. Just watch, just see. When is the present? The moment you recognise that this is the present, it is already past. The moment you say, 'Yes, this is the present,' it is already gone, it is past. Or if you say, 'This is going to be the present,' it is still future. You cannot recognise present, you cannot finger present, you cannot indicate present. In the world of time there is no present.

When you look at the clock it is already moving, not for a single moment has it stopped. When you were watching it, then too it was moving. That's what Heraclitus means when he says, 'You cannot step twice in the same river.' The river is flowing. The past is there, the future is there, and the future is continuously being converted into the past. Not for a single moment is there present, not for a single moment does the clock stop, not for a single moment does the river stop. Heraclitus is right. You cannot step twice in the same river. One of his disciples said to him, 'Master, I tried, you are right. But one thing more I would like to add -- you cannot step even once in a river.' That's exactly how it is. When you touch the river, when your foot touches the river, the river is flowing. When you penetrate one inch into the river, the river is flowing. When you penetrate two inches into the river, the river is flowing. By the time you reach the bottom the river has flowed so much that you cannot say you stepped even ONCE in the same river.

In time there is no present; present is not part of time. Present is part of eternity. Present means now and now knows no past and no future.

Once you are discontinuous with mind, you are discontinuous with time. And time and space are together.

In this century Einstein discovered that time and space are not two separate things; they are one thing, or two aspects of the one thing. So he called the whole thing 'spatio-time' to emphasise the fact that time is nothing but the fourth dimension of space. If time disappears, space also disappears.

So a man who has gone beyond his mind is beyond time and space. He is, but you cannot say where he is; he is, but you cannot say when he is. When and where all dissolve. He simply is, without any definition of where and when. This is what Buddha called enlightenment. This is freedom, absolute freedom. Nothing confines you.

But the path is very severe. It has to be so because it is a sort of ultimate suicide. You commit suicide. You commit a mind suicide. You drop out of the mind, you drop out of time, you drop out of space. The world that you have known up to now disappears and something totally new, something indefinable, arises in your consciousness.

THE MASTER FUGAI WAS CONSIDERED VERY WISE AND GENEROUS, YET HE WAS MOST SEVERE...

A Zen Master has to be severe because he is trying to kill you.

Just a few days before, a sannyasin came and I asked her how long she was going to stay here. She said three months. So I said, 'Okay, that will be enough to kill you.' She said, 'What!?' But now she has understood the point -- getting ready to die.

... BOTH WITH HIMSELF AND HIS DISCIPLES. HE WENT TO THE MOUNTAINS TO SIT IN ZEN.

Zen simply means sitting. In Japanese they have the full word, 'zazen'. It means sitting silently, doing nothing.

All doing is of the mind. Whenever you do, the mind comes into being. Whenever you want to do something, the mind immediately starts planning. With even the idea of doing you start pouring energy into the mind.

Zen is a simple sitting. Not doing anything, not even meditating... because to meditate, from the back door the doing again comes in. Zen simply says, sit and don't do anything. Don't think in terms of doing, think in terms of being. Just be. So for years a seeker of Zen simply sits. It is the hardest thing in the world to do and I can feel you will understand it. It is the hardest thing in the world to do -- just to sit. You would like something to do because that something keeps you preoccupied, and you go on feeling that you are doing something, that you are somebody. And at least it never gives you any opportunity to face yourself. Your doing is an escape from yourself, so that you never come face to face, so that you never encounter your own being. You go on avoiding.

So people go on doing a thousand and one things, many of them absolutely unnecessary. Not only are they unnecessary, many of them simply create trouble for them. Just think about yourself. What have you done? You have created a hell around you but still you go on doing.

People come to me and they ask, 'What should we meditate upon? What mantra should we chant?' And if I say, 'Nothing, you simply sit. You just face the wall and sit silently and let time pass and don't do anything. Things will settle on their own accord. You simply sit. Because if you come in and interfere you will muddle things more. You please just sit on the bank. Let the river flow -- ' they say, 'But how can one sit without doing anything? At least give us a mantra so we can repeat it inside. If there is no activity outside, then let us have some activity inside.'

That's why in America, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has certain appeal. The transcendental meditation is nothing but the transfer of activity from the outside to the inside. And the American mind is almost neurotic. Something has to be done. If you are not doing something you are wasting time. Do something! What it is is not the point, but do something. Speech and activity and aggressiveness -- do something, go on doing something, go on moving, fast, fast.

Now, if you simply say, 'Don't do anything, sit silently,' it looks almost impossible. How can one sit silently?'Give us some inner activity.' So a mantra is given. So you repeat inside, 'Aum, aum, aum; Ram, Ram, Ram,' -- anything will do. Any abracadabra. You can make your own mantra. You are foolish to go and ask somebody else for a mantra, you can create your own:'Blah, blah, blah!' That will give you the same silence and tranquillity as any transcendental meditation. Just an inner activity and you feel good.

Zen has no mantra. Zen is not transcendental meditation. It is the most arduous thing man has ever tried...not to do anything, zazen, just sitting.

It is unbelievable that sometimes a Zen seeker has sat for twenty years not doing anything -- then came the light. Everything became so silent in him, not even a flicker of energy, no occupation, nothing. He was almost dead because all activities disappeared. Then one comes face to face with being, then you come to know who you are.

Mind is activity. And if one has to drop mind, one has to drop activity.

HE WENT TO THE MOUNTAINS TO SIT IN ZEN. HE LIVED IN A CAVE, AND WHEN HE WAS HUNGRY HE WENT TO THE VILLAGE FOR SCRAPS.

Only for a few scraps would he come down to the village, otherwise he was sitting in his cave doing nothing.

That which you are seeking is already within you. But you are too much occupied with other things so you cannot fall into it. When all activity is lost, all clinging disappears. You cannot cling to anything, you simply go on falling in and in and in. Your troubles arise because you hanker for activity. Have you ever heard about anybody who was troubled by the 'in'? The 'in' has never troubled anybody. That 'in', the inner, that very core of your being, is available to you right now, but you are not available to it. You are standing with your back towards it.

Activity is SANSAR, activity is the world; and when Zen people say leave the world, they don't mean leave the house, leave the market, they mean leave the attachment to activity. Even if you have to do something, do it very passively. If you are walking on the street, walk, but walk very passively. Inside, zazen continues; inside, you remain sitting, only outside you move. If you are eating, eat, but inside you remain sitting. By and by that inner posture is attained -- when one can do things and yet be without activity. Taoists call it WU WEI, action without action. Once you know how to sit inside, then you can do things, then it will not be a disturbance. But first one has to come to roots, to a deep grounding, to a centering.

ONE DAY A MONK CALLED BUNDO, ATTRACTED BY FUGAI'S AUSTERITIES, CALLED AT THE CAVE AND ASKED TO STAY THE NIGHT.

THE MASTER SEEMED HAPPY TO PUT HIM UP, AND NEXT MORNING PREPARED RICE GRUEL FOR HIM. NOT HAVING AN EXTRA BOWL HE WENT OUT AND RETURNED WITH A SKULL HE FOUND LYING NEAR A TOMB. HE FILLED IT WITH GRUEL AND OFFERED IT TO BUNDO.

THE GUEST REFUSED TO TOUCH IT, AND STARED AT FUGAI AS IF HE HAD GONE MAD.

You can go mad in two ways. One is a wrong way, another is a right way. You can go mad if you are completely lost in your mind. Then you are uprooted from your being. And you may not appear mad to others but you will be mad. You may not appear mad to others because others are also mad like you. This earth is a great madhouse. Normally everybody is mad; in fact, not to be mad is almost an abnormality. People differ in degrees but all are mad. And when psychiatrists help you to be normal they simply bring you back to the level of the social madness, they bring you to the level which is allowed legally. You were going a little beyond the social limit so they pull you back. That's what they call readjustment.

But a man can become mad in another way, in a right way. One can fall out of the mind into the inner silence, into the inner thoughtlessness, inner emptiness. Then he will immediately appear mad to us. If you look into the eyes of a man who has attained to zazen you will be frightened. His eyes will be like an abyss, bottomless; you will avoid his eyes. His eyes will be empty. He will look to you and yet he will not be looking at you. His eyes will be vacant, and you will feel that he has gone mad. In a way he has gone beyond the mind, and to go beyond the mind is to go mad.

So all great people like Jesus or Buddha or Mansoor, they all appeared mad to their contemporaries. When Jesus was crucified he was crucified as a neurotic who was creating trouble, who had gone out of his mind. He was crucified as one of the most dangerous criminals. When Socrates was poisoned, he was poisoned because he was mad in a certain way. He was leading other people to madness.

Society has always been afraid of people who attain to zazen because their appeal is great but their behaviour is incomprehensible. Their behaviour has to be incomprehensible because they function from a totally different centre than yours.

For a man of zazen there is no difference between a skull or a bowl. A skull is made of earth as a bowl is made of earth. All skulls by and by will dissolve into earth again and then you can make a bowl of the earth and you will not be bothered. But if a skull is brought to you it will be impossible to touch even; to drink, to eat out of it will be nauseating, vomiting. Impossible.

But for a man of zazen the inside has happened -- all is the same. It is the same reality in different forms. Out of the same gold you can make one sort of ornament or another sort of ornament, it makes no difference. It is the same reality which becomes the skull, it is the same reality which becomes the bowl. So what is the difference?

A man who has been deep inside himself knows that the whole reality consists of one elemental force, it is one energy even if it takes different forms.

And the man could not touch the skull, could not believe that somebody could offer it as a bowl to eat out of. What was he thinking? His mind was weaving, spinning, 'This is a skull of man.' The idea, the very idea, was nauseating. He thought that this man Fugai had gone mad.

AT THIS FUGAI BECAME FURIOUS AND DROVE HIM OUT OF THE CAVE WITH BLOWS.'FOOL!' HE SHOUTED AFTER HIM, 'HOW CAN YOU, WITH YOUR WORLDLY NOTIONS OF FILTH AND PURITY, THINK YOURSELF A BUDDHIST?'

All notions are of the mind. To say that this is beautiful and this is ugly is of the mind. In fact, nothing is beautiful and nothing is ugly. If the mind disappears, then what will be beautiful and what will be ugly? Likes and dislikes all belong to the mind.

You just think of the world. Man has disappeared, the third world war has happened and man has disappeared. The earth will remain the same. The flowers will flower, but will they be beautiful? They will be simply themselves, not beautiful, not ugly. Everything will be itself but there will be no evaluation about it because the valuer has disappeared.

The mind of a man who attains to zazen has disappeared. He is no more a man, because all his conceptions, values, attitudes, prejudices, have disappeared. Now he looks without any prejudices, without for and against. He simply looks. His eyes are empty because he has nothing to project. Then things appear in a totally different way.

But to ordinary human beings he will look almost mad because madness simply means one who is out of his mind. In fact, he is out of his mind -- but he has moved into his being.

So there are two types of madnesses: you can be out of your mind and not in your being, then you are unhealthy; you can be out of your mind and in your being, then you attain to real health. You become whole, you become holy.

'FOOL!' HE SHOUTED AFTER HIM, 'HOW CAN YOU, WITH YOUR WORLDLY NOTIONS OF FILTH AND PURITY, THINK YOURSELF A BUDDHIST?'

Discrimination is of the mind; non-discrimination is of the no-mind.

Fugai was trying to create a situation for this poor man. The man missed. Fugai was creating a device so that this man could be awakened. He was shaking him hard to pull him out of his dreams of likes and dislikes, purity and filth, beauty and ugliness, good and bad. The whole effort was to shatter his mind because the whole of Buddhism consists only of that -- how to shatter the mind.

It is said of a Zen Master, who, in his younger days, was a disciple of another Master, that he had been working hard at his meditation for months together. The one day the Master came, sat in front of him with a brick and started rubbing the brick on the stone. The sound was there and it was distracting and disturbing to the young disciple.

Finally, irritated, the young man asked, 'What are you doing?'

The Master said, 'I am trying to make a mirror.'

The disciple said, 'Have you gone mad?' Just by polishing a brick a mirror cannot be made, you may polish it for your whole life. Mirrors are not made that way.'

And the Master said, 'Then I have nothing to say to you. You are trying to polish your mind. Mirrors are not made that way either. I throw this brick -- see -- you do the same.'

Drop the mind. It is not a question of polishing the mind, modifying the mind, making it more and more clear. It is not a question of changing the mind, it is a question of dropping it utterly.

Buddhism is an effort to drop the mind totally. But how to drop the mind? If you continue in thinking -- likes and dislikes, prejudices, this is good, this is bad -- then you cannot drop the mind because it is the mind which distinguishes, discriminates, it is the mind which divides, categorises. All categories are of the mind. That's why Buddhists don't say that God is good and Devil is bad, because for a Buddhist God and Devil are both of the mind -- good and bad. That's why Buddhists don't say choose heaven and avoid hell because they say both are of the mind -- hell and heaven. Drop the whole mind. And by the dropping of the mind, all distinctions are dropped and you are in a deep, undiscriminated reality.

That is what truth is. It is not God, it is not Devil; it is not light, it is not darkness -- it is beyond both.

SOME MONTHS LATER THE MASTER TETSGYU VISITED HIM AND TOLD HIM THAT HE THOUGHT IT A GREAT PITY THAT HE HAD FORSAKEN THE WORLD. FUGAI LAUGHED AND SAID: 'OH, IT'S EASY ENOUGH TO FORSAKE THE WORLD AND BECOME A BONZAI, THE DIFFICULT THING IS THEN TO BECOME A TRUE BUDDHIST.'

It is very easy to forsake the world, it is very easy to renounce. Any coward can do that. It is easy to escape from the world, but escape is not a transformation. It is very easy to sit outwardly like a bonzai -- you can become a statue, still not moving at all -- but the real problem is to drop the movement of the mind, the inner working of the mind. You can sit silently from the outside but if the inside turmoil continues then you are not a Buddhist.

A Buddhist means one who has become a Buddha, one who has attained to enlightenment. And that happens only when inner movements have ceased, when thinking has stopped, when the mind is no more the master. When the mind no longer manipulates you, when the mind no longer controls you, when the mind is just a mechanism -- if you need, you use it, otherwise you put it aside -- you are free of the mind, you have attained your own masterhood.

It is easy to change from the outside, the real change has to happen inside. Remember that. Use the outside to help the inside to change, but never believe that the outside change is all. Sit silently, because the sitting posture will help. When the body sits completely immobile it helps the mind to relax, because body and mind are not two separate things -- they are one. You are not body and mind, you are bodymind. You are psychosomatic, so everything that happens in the body has subtle vibrations in the mind; and anything that happens in the mind reaches to the body.

That's how if you take alcohol, the mind becomes drunk. The alcohol goes into the body but it affects the mind. If you take LSD or marijuana or some other drug, it affects the mind. You take it into the body, you inject it into the body, and it reaches to the mind. Or, if you train your mind, discipline your mind, that reaches to your body also. If your mind is happy, if you have trained it....

For example, there are positive philosophies to train the mind, like Emile Coue's philosophy: go on auto-hypnotising yourself, suggesting to yourself, 'I am getting.better and better and every day I am becoming more and more compassionate, kind, loving.' If you go on repeating this again and again, the subtle idea will settle in the mind, it will affect your body. That's how many diseases can be cured by hypnosis -- because in the first place they may be just your suggestions and not real diseases. Out of a hundred diseases almost seventy-five are just pure mental things, but they affect the body. If the mind takes them in, if the mind is affected, then sooner or later the body follows. Both mind and body are one, so whatsoever affects one affects the other also. They are parallel, running together. A deep subtle balance is kept between the two.

So I am not saying don't use the outside -- you have to use it, but don't think that that is all. Use the outside to change the inside. Then you will not just become a bonzai, then you will not be just a statue, you will become a real Buddha.

It happened that a Zen seeker came to a Master and asked him,

'I have come from a very long distance, I have travelled thousands of miles to come to your feet.'

The Master asked, 'For what? What do you want?'

The man said, 'I would like to become a Buddha.'

The Master said, 'Get out from here! Already we have too many Buddhas here.'

The Master used to live in a temple which is called 'the Temple of One Thousand and One Buddhas'. There were one thousand and one statues of Buddha.

So he said, 'Get out of it! Immediately out of it. We are tired. We already have one thousand and one Buddhas here, we don't need anyone else. But if you want to become yourself, you can come in.'

Remember, Zen is not an imitation. No Zen Master can ever think of writing a book like Thomas Campus' book 'imitation of Christ'. Impossible. The very title will be laughed at.

The real religion is not imitation of anybody else, it is a search to find out your own authentic self, who you are. So just outer discipline will not help; outer discipline can be used as a means, but it is not the goal.

So remember that the basic thing has to happen inside you.

'OH, IT'S EASY ENOUGH TO FORSAKE THE WORLD AND BECOME A BONZAI, THE DIFFICULT THING IS THEN TO BECOME A TRUE BUDDHIST.'

The difficult thing is always to become a true Christian, a true Mohammedan, a true Hindu, a true Buddhist, a true Sikkha, because the difficult thing is to become true.

Man is a deceiver. He goes on deceiving himself. And it is much easier to become someone, to pretend to be someone; it is much easier to act like someone, than to be. To be is arduous. You will have to pass through many fires; you will have to pass through many deaths and rebirths; you will have to move through a great revolution, a total mutation. It is difficult. It is very easy to pretend, it is very easy to be pseudo. The whole world is full of pesudo-religious people. They go to the church, they go to the mosque, they pray, they pretend to meditate, but one is simply surprised. Whom are they deceiving? They are deceiving themselves and nobody else.

This should be remembered because you are on the path, you are here as seekers. The greatest pitfall for a seeker is to become a victim of self-deception; it is cheap and it looks like a short-cut. Never pretend. Once pretension settles in, you have taken a wrong move and it will be very difficult for you to attain to any reality. And you will have to go back one day or other because unless you drop that pretension you will never grow.

For example. If you are at the age of twenty-five and you pretend and you go on pretending up to the age of fifty, and then you realise that a certain pretension happened at the age of twenty-five, you will have to go back and undo it. You will have to relive those twenty-five years again. You will create an unnecessary complexity and life is already too complex. Unless you go and drop that layer of pretension at the age of twenty-five, all your house will be on a wrong base.

That's what the meaning of Primal Therapy is: you have to go back, regress. Wherever something has gone wrong, you have to re-traverse the path, move to that point, undo that knot and move again.

So don't create any unnecessary complexity. You are here with me -- remember one thing: not to pretend. Because you will not be deceiving anybody, you will only be deceiving yourself.

Don't become a bonzai. Truth has to be earned. It is not cheap and there is no short-cut to it.

I was reading a story about a famous Hassid rabbi. He used to tell this story to his disciples.

There was once a man who was very stupid. When he got up in the morning it was so hard for him to find his clothes that at night he almost hesitated to go to bed for thinking of the trouble he would have on waking.

One evening he finally made a great effort, took paper and pencil, and as he undressed, noted down exactly where he put everything he had on. The next morning, very well pleased with himself, he took the slip of paper and read:'Cap' -- there it was. He set it on his head.'Pants' -- there they lay.

He got into them. And so it went until he was fully dressed.

'That's all very well, but now where am I myself?' he asked with consternation.'Where in the world am I?'

He looked and looked but it was a vain search. He could not find himself.

'And that is how it is with us, ' said the rabbi to his disciples.

Remember, you may dress like a SANNYASIN, you may be in the ochre robe, but that doesn't make much difference unless you know where you are, unless you know who you are. You may be well -- dressed like a SANNYASIN but that is not going to help much. So don't believe in cheap things. It is a great help in a way it is a gesture that you have become SANNYASINS, it is a gesture that you are ready to come to yourself, it is a great gesture that you are ready to go into the unknown, into the unfamiliar, it is going to make great difference -- but don't take it as the whole. It is just the beginning of the journey, not the end.

One great poet, Robert Frost, used to say, 'TWO ROADS DIVERGED IN A WOOD AND I, I TOOK THE ONE LESS TRAVELLED BY AND THAT HAS MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

You have chosen with me a path not ordinarily travelled by people, not travelled by the majority, by the crowd, by the mass. It is going to make a great difference, but it is just a beginning. Never for a single moment forget it that this is just a beginning. And the end is very far and much effort, much discipline, much inner transformation will be needed. And nobody else can do it for you. You have to be born for yourself, nobody else can be born for you. You have to live for yourself, nobody else can live in your place. And you have to love and you have to die, nobody else can do it for you. Life is intrinsically individual. All that is meaningful, all that is significant, has to be done by you. That which can be done by servants is irrelevant; that which can be done by the priest is irrelevant. This transformation you have to bring to yourself. It is going to be arduous, but take it as a challenge. It is good that the path is arduous otherwise where are we going to prove our soul? Where are we going to prove our crystallised soul?

This challenge is a blessing. But never try to pretend.

Dang Dang Doko Dang

Chapter #2

Chapter title: Magicless Magic

12 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 7606120

ShortTitle: DANG02

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 100 mins

The first question:

Question 1

YESTERDAY WHILE SITTING IN ZAZEN I FELT MYSELF GET HIT WITH A STICK ON MY HEAD. BUT PRADEEPA THAT TIME HAD NOT HIT ME. ALSO TODAY DURING THE LECTURE I GOT HIT TWICE ON THE HEAD BUT NO STICK-HITTER WAS AROUND. IS THIS MAGICLESS MAGIC?

It is sheer imagination, and on the path of meditation imagination is the greatest pitfall. Be aware of it. You can imagine so deeply and you can believe in your imagination so intensely that it can appear more real than the real.

Imagination is a great force. On the path of meditation, imagination is a barrier; on the path of love, imagination is a help. On the path of love, imagination is used as a device: you are told to imagine as intensely and passionately as possible. But on the path of meditation the same thing becomes a barrier.

Imagination simply means that you visualise a certain thing but you put so much energy into it that it almost becomes real. Every night we all dream. While dreaming, every dream looks real. To come to know in a dream that this is a dream will be the end of it; then you will find yourself awake. The dream can continue only if you believe that it is real. And even people who are very skeptical, doubting, of the scientific attitude, even they go on believing in the night, they go on believing in their dreams.

Every morning you find that it was just imagination but again every night you become a victim to it. And again when the dream unfolds you start believing it. On the path of meditation that hold of the dream faculty has to be loosened. Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples. 'Unless you can remember in a dream that it is a dream, you will never awake.' This whole world is a dream -- a dream is a private world, the world is a common dream. If you cannot awake while dreaming, it will be impossible to awake while you are awake, because now the dream is very big, and it is not only your energy that is creating the dream, it is the energy of all. It will be difficult. If you cannot come to see that something in your dream is false, when you alone are to decide and nobody else can interfere.... It is nobody else's business. You cannot invite anybody else into your dream because it is so private.

It happened that two patients of a psychoanalyst tried to play a trick on the analyst. It was the first of April and perfectly appropriate.

They decided that the next day they would come, separately, and they would relate the same dream -- they decided on the details of the dream -- to the psychiatrist and watch how he feels. It is impossible to dream the same dream together, two persons have never dreamed one dream together, so they wanted to shock him.

The first related his dream. When he left the second came and he related his dream. And he waited for some hint that the psychiatrist was shocked or surprised, but he was not surprised at all. He simply listened as if there was nothing out of common, as if it was just usual, as if it were an everyday affair.

The man asked, 'Are you not surprised?'

The psychiatrist said, 'This is the third time I have heard this dream.'

The man said, 'Third time? Who is the third person?'

He was shocked because only two persons knew about the dream. Who was this third person?

The psychiatrist laughed. He said, 'You cannot play a trick like that on me, because no two persons can dream the same dream. It is impossible.'

It does not happen that way because a dream is an absolutely private world. You cannot invite anybody else into your dream, you cannot ask anybody else's opinion about your dream -- whether it is true or untrue. It depends absolutely on you. And if you cannot even awake in this, how will it be possible for you to awake in the great MAYA, the great illusion that the world is?

So Gurdjieff used to say that the first effort is to awake in a dream and see the dream as a dream. He had a few techniques for how to awake in a dream. He would teach his disciples that every night, when they went to sleep, they should go on repeating as deeply as possible, as passionately as possible, 'This time when I start dreaming in the night I will raise my hand and touch my head. And immediately when I touch my head the remembrance will happen to me that this is a dream.' For months together the disciple would think, auto-suggest. Every night falling into sleep they would repeat it again and again with deep passion, so that it entered into the very unconscious layers of the mind.

When it enters deeper than the dream then one day it happens; while dreaming, automatically the hand goes to the head and suddenly he remembers that this is a dream. But the moment he remembers that it is a dream, the dream simply withers away, fades out. He is awake while asleep, and the dream has left him.

If it happens that you awake in a dream, in the morning the whole world has changed. It is no more the same world because your eyes are clear, you have attained to a certain clarity of perception. Now dreams cannot deceive you, now you see things as they are. You don't project.

Beware of imagination. You would like me to tell you that yes it was me. You will feel very much fulfilled if it was me hitting your head. People like to believe in miracles; hence miracles happen because people like to believe. People feel happy believing in their dreams; they go on giving energy to their dreams. That's how you have lived for many, many lives in a dream world.

I am not going to cooperate with you in any way. It was sheer imagination, you imagined it. Now you want my help also.

I have heard.

The rabbi of Chelm was distracted by children as he was preparing a sermon. He hollered out the window to chase them away, 'Hurry down to the river where a terrible monster is in the water. He is breathing fire, and is an ugly dragon.'

The children ran to see what was going on. People followed them, the crowd grew.

As the rabbi saw the mob running, he asked, 'Where is everyone going?'

'Down to the river where there is a monster breathing fire. It is an ugly green dragon.'

The rabbi joined the race.'True, I did make it up, ' he thought as he panted.'Still, you never can tell.'

You may be creating something but if others start believing it you will start believing it. This is your imagination. If I say, 'Yes, it was true,' then you will suddenly believe in it, and you will think that you have believed in me. You have simply taken my support for your own dream.

Mind is a great liar, it goes on lying to you. Beware of the tricks of the mind.

A little girl was always lying. She was given a St. Bernard dog, and this little girl went out and told all the neighbors that she had been given a lion.

The mother called her and said, 'I told you not to lie. You go upstairs and tell God you are sorry. Promise God you will never lie again.'

She went upstairs and said her prayers and then came down.

Her mother said, 'Did you tell God you are sorry?'

The little girl said, 'Yes, I did and God said that sometimes he finds it hard to tell my dog form a lion too.'

That's how it goes on. But I am not going to help you in any way, because any hint of help will be destructive for you. On the path of meditation, on the path of Zen, all imagination has to be avoided. You have to be indifferent about it.

And the more you enter into meditation, the more and more imagination will try to distract you. It is not a new phenomenon, it has always happened. All the great meditators have come across it. Buddha is distracted by Mara, the god of devils. Jesus is distracted by the devil. Sufi mystics are distracted by Satan. There is no Satan, no Mara, no devil -- the real devil is in your mind, the imagination.

There are stories of Hindu seers that when they reach to the final step of their meditation they are distracted by Indra. He sends beautiful maidens, APSARAS, to distract them. But why should anybody distract these poor saints? Why? They are not doing anybody any harm. They have left the world, they are sitting under their trees or in their caves in the Himalayas, why send beautiful maidens to them?

Nobody is sending anybody. There is no agency like that. Imagination is playing the last tricks, and when your meditation goes deep, deeper layers of imagination are provoked. Ordinarily, when meditation is not there, you live on the surface of the mind. Of course, your imagination is also superficial then. The deeper you move in meditation, the more the deeper layers of imagination will be revealed to you, they will be more real. They will be so real that you cannot even think that they can be imagination.

Now you can even bring proofs that they are not imagination. For example, this SANNYASIN who has been hit twice, he can even show his head and you can find the marks. Now, he will say, 'How can it be imagination? Nobody has hit me -- and these marks are here?' Then you ask people who know about hypnosis. In deep hypnosis, the hypnotist suggests that he is putting fire in your hand, and he puts nothing -- but the hand gets burnt. Now what happened? It was just that the imagination worked so tremendously. The body is also under control of imagination. So if you think yourself beautiful you will become beautiful. If you think yourself ugly you will become ugly. Your imagination will give a mould to your body.

That's how there are fire-walkers. If your imagination takes it deeply that you are not going to be burnt and God is protecting you, you will not be burnt. You can pass through a pit full of burning coals without being burnt. But even if a slight suspicion arises in your mind, then immediately you will be burnt. Because that slight suspicion is a loophole in your imagination. Then you are no longer protected by the seal of your own imagination.

So the deeper you go in meditation, the deeper will be the games of imagination. Sometimes it will come as APSARAS, beautiful maidens, dancing, provoking, seducing you. Sometimes it will come as tremendous fire-monsters throwing fire from their mouths. Or, anything that you can imagine will surround you. And if you get caught into it, if for a single moment you forget that this is imagination, then the imagination has destroyed your penetration into meditation. You are thrown back to the surface again. Then you will have to seek the path again. So if you are sitting in zazen, as the SANNYASIN has said, then remember it.

But this is a good indication. That you could imagine so deeply shows that meditation is going deep. The deeper the meditation, the deeper will be the imagination. Only at the last point does meditation take over. Until the last, the struggle continues between imagination and meditation. And sometimes the imagination is so beautiful.... This is not such a beautiful imagination, you have been hit twice! Still you want to believe in it, because just to think that miracles have started to happen to you, just to think that your Master is working hard on you, just to think that he goes on making you aware and hits on your head when you were falling asleep, is very ego fulfilling.

There are many beautiful imaginations -- they will come. Flowers will shower on you and you can almost smell them. It is possible that you can imagine very deeply that roses are falling on you and you can smell them. That's okay -- but somebody else passing by your side may be able to smell your roses! Then it becomes tremendously powerful.

It means your imagination is not only passive, it has become active. You are creating a certain smell inside your body by your imagination. Your body has all that the earth has. The earth creates the rose. If the rosebush is not there you cannot smell roses in the earth, there is no smell. But if you put a rosebush there, one day suddenly it flowers and the smell is there. The earth was containing the smell and the rosebush helped the smell to come to an expression. Your body is earth, it contains all that is contained by earth. If your imagination is tremendous, not only you will smell, others also can smell the rose. But still it is imagination. Your imagination functioned just like a rosebush; it helped to express something that was hidden within you.

Man is earth. The word human comes from 'humus'. Humus means the earth. The Hebrew word 'adam' comes from a Hebrew root which means the earth. We are made of earth, we are miniature earths. We carry all that is hidden in the earth, that is our potentiality also. Once you help through imagination your potential starts becoming actual.

But on the path of meditation even beautiful experiences like these are to be avoided. Because once you get into them you are getting into the mind, and the whole effort is how to drop the mind, how to get rid of the mind. Once the mind is not there then you are completely separate from the body -- mind is the bridge, mind connects you with the body. Mind dropped, there is the body, the earth, and there is you, the sky -- totally separate realities. Then you have become a witness.

So if next time it happens -- this magicless magic -- to you, and you feel a hit on the head, don't be concerned by the hit, simply remain aware. Just watch. Whether it is true or untrue is irrelevant, remain a witness. Simply remain a watcher, don't get involved in it in any way and soon it will disappear. And once you have learned the technique of how to drop the games of imagination it is going to be tremendously beneficial to you. Because the more you go into meditation, the more and more imagination will be coming. Stronger and stronger waves of imagination will pass through your being, and you will have to be aware and alert.

If it is difficult for you, impossible for you, then the path of meditation is not for you. Then the path of love, then the path of BHAKTI and devotion, where imagination is not avoided but used, is for you. Then you forget all about zazen, that path is not for you. Then you forget all about Buddha, Mahavira, that path is not for you. Then you move into the world of Meera, Chaitanya, Mohammed. Then you move into the world of devotion.

Remember, one thing can be a help on one path, and the same thing can be a hindrance on another path. For example, there are rails, the train runs on them, they are a help, without rails the train will not run. But if you start moving a car on those rails you will be in difficulty. They are a help for trains but they cannot be a help for cars. Cars need a more free way, more freedom. So remember always, a thing which is a hindrance on one path need not be a hindrance on another path.

But if you choose zazen.... I think the SANNYASIN who has asked this question will be tremendously benefited on the path of zazen because such imagination that he could believe it to be true simply shows that his sitting is helping. He is relaxing into deeper layers of consciousness.

The second question:

Question 2

WHILE PRACTICING ZAZEN, JUST SITTING, I DISCOVERED THAT I HAD BECOME THE GREATEST FOOL ON EARTH. BUT SUDDENLY I REMEMBERED ONE PROVERB: WHEN IGNORANCE IS BLISS, IT IS FOLLY TO BE WISE. THOUGH THIS STUPIDITY HAS MADE ME A FOOL, I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO FULL AS I AM NOW. I HAVE NOW FALLEN IN LOVE WITH THIS ZAZEN STUPIDITY. I INVOKE YOUR BLESSINGS SO THAT I REMAIN A FOOL TILL ETERNITY.

Yes, there is a foolishness which is wisdom, there is a foolishness which is enlightened. There is a foolishness of the wise. Why call it foolishness? It is foolish in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of the worldly because it belongs to a different realm. It is not of the world of calculation, cleverness. It is innocent.

Jesus looked like a fool. Lao Tzu also looked like a fool. In India for the fool we have a term, BUDDHU -- it comes from Buddha. Buddha must have looked like a fool, tremendously like a fool, hence the term BUDDHU. We call a man BUDDHU if we want to call him an idiot. BUDDHU means buddha-like.

Buddha must have looked like a fool when he renounced his empire. He was going to be the king and he became a beggar. Can you find more foolish a person? He had the most beautiful women around him and he escaped from the palace. What foolishness! When Buddha escaped, renounced, he didn't stay in his father's kingdom because the spies of his father would have followed him and they would have caught hold of him again. He immediately left the kingdom, went outside, and entered into another kingdom.

But the king was a friend of his father. So when the king came to know he came to see Buddha and he said, 'What foolishness you are doing! If you are angry with your father, don't be worried, you come to my palace. Get married to my daughter and be a king here. If there is some trouble with your father, forget all about it. I am just as loving towards you as your father. He is my old friend, and my kingdom is not lesser than your father's kingdom. So come! But what nonsense you are doing! Begging on the street? You are not a beggar. Your family has been royal for centuries.'

Buddha laughed and he said, 'As far as I know I have been a beggar for many lives. I don't know about my family, but I know about me. And I come through my father but I don't belong to him. He has just been a passage.'

Yes, if you move deeper than the mind, you will start looking foolish to others -- even to yourself you will start looking foolish, because you will fall out of line. That is the meaning of the word 'idiot' -- one who has his own idiom of life, his own private style of life. That is the meaning of 'idiot'. If you have a language of your own nobody will be able to understand it. Then people will say, 'Why are you talking like an idiot? It is gibberish.' You may be using a perfect language of your own coinage, but unless it is social it cannot be accepted as language. Unless your life belongs to the society you cannot be thought intelligent. People who are thought to be intelligent are those who are in the rat race in this competitive world, hankering to cut each other's throat, trying to reach to the topmost, trying to become the first in the world.

Jesus says blessed are the meek, the non-competitive; blessed are the poor, those who have nothing. Of course he's talking nonsense. If Jesus is right then all the politicians are foolish. If Jesus is right then all the rich men are foolish. Then what about Alexander the Great? If Alexander the Great is right, then of course Jesus is a fool. And Alexander the Great seems to be right because the crowd believes in him. Jesus is lonely, Lao Tzu is lonely, Zen Masters are lonely -- solitary beings, idiots, they have their own idiom. They live their life according to their own being, they don't bother a bit, they don't fulfil the formalities of the society. They live as individuals, that is their foolishness. They don't live just like mechanical parts of society, they are not robots. They are alive beings.

If you are alive, if you are really alive and vibrating with life, you will look foolish; that's why children look like fools. Old people look wise because they are dead, stiff -- all life has oozed out of them. They are alive only for name's sake. They may have died a long time before.

I have heard about one man who made a will when he died. And in the will he said, 'Write on my tomb: Born such-and-such year, died when thirty, buried when seventy.'

Almost always it happens that people die near about thirty, then they are buried at seventy. That's another thing: burial is one thing, dying is another thing. When society comes to know that you are dead that's another thing.

I have heard about a priest -- a Catholic priest of course -- who died, and for three days he could not understand what had happened. Then he came to his church and tried to communicate with his successor, and said, 'Be aware. I died, but for three days I did not think that I was dead because I was more dead while I was alive. I was feeling more alive so I did not think that I was dead. It took three days for me to realise the fact that I had died.'

Children look foolish, and Jesus says, 'Unless you are like small children you will not be able to enter into my Kingdom of God. In fact he is saying, 'Blessed are the fools.'

Children are fools, that's why everybody tries to make the children wise. The very effort to make them wise simply kills them. By and by they become afraid to live; their streaming life is crippled from everywhere, only a very narrow passage which is socially acceptable is allowed for them to live in. Then through that tunnel only, they somehow cling to life. That tunnel is just a very small thread -- they don't die, that's all, but they don't live either. They don't live at all. They somehow drag.

So if you sit in zazen and you move deeply into it, your mind will start falling away, and your mind has up to now been your cleverness, your so-called intelligence. Your mind has accumulated all your experiences, your past. And when the past starts withering away and you become fresh and alive in the moment, you are again like a child, again a fool.

Lao Tzu said, 'Everybody is clever except me. Everybody seems to be very calculating, I am just muddle-headed.'

It is related that Rabbi Hanuk told this story.

For a whole year I felt a longing to go to my master, Rabbi Bonon, and talk with him. But every time I entered the house I felt I was not man enough. Once though, when I was walking across the field and weeping, I knew that I must run to the rabbi without delay.

He asked, 'Why are you weeping?'

I answered, 'I am after all alive in this world, a being created with all the senses and all the limbs, but I do not know what it is I was created for, and what I am good for in this world.'

'Little fool,' he replied.'That's the same question I have carried around with me all my life. You will come and eat the evening meal with me today.'

Ordinarily we think people who know answers are wise. They may be learned but they are not wise. They may be very well informed, but information has nothing to do with wisdom. People who are really wise, in fact, have no answers. They have a quest, an enquiry, a tremendous enquiry in them, but no answers. By and by they come to understand that all questions are meaningless, so they drop questions also. A man becomes perfectly wise when he has no answers and no questions.

Ordinarily, if you have many answers you will be thought wise. But religiously, in the Zen way, if you don't have any answers and no questions.... Questions exist in the mind and then mind tries to find out answers, then through answers mind creates more questions, and so on and so forth it goes. It is an endless chain, it goes on ad nauseam. Once you understand this -- that this whole game is a mind game -- you simply drop it. You don't hesitate in dropping it, you don't postpone it for tomorrow -- 'I will drop it tomorrow' -- you drop it right now. You say, 'This is just foolish.'

Then, of course, when you drop your foolishness, you will look a fool to the world. If somebody asks you, 'Who are you?' and you say, 'I don't know,' will you look wise? He will think either you are a fool or a madman.'You don't know? You don't know your name? You don't know who you are? You don't know your identity?' The man will become suspicious of you, he will report to the police immediately that here is a man who seems to be suspect, who could be dangerous. But if you say, 'Yes, my name is this. My address is this,' then everything is settled.

Socrates said in his last days, 'When I was young I knew many things, and I used to think of myself as the wisest man in the world. The more I grew, the more I became aware that I didn't know much. And then the last thing happened -- one day I suddenly realised that I knew nothing.'

It is said that the oracle at Delphi declared that Socrates was the wisest man in the world. People who had heard the oracle came to Socrates and told him that the oracle has declared that he was the wisest man in the world. Socrates looked shocked and he said, 'There must have been some mistake, because just today I have realised that I don't know anything at all. I am the most ignorant man in the world! You please go and correct the oracle.' And they went and they told the oracle that Socrates himself says that he is the most ignorant man in the world. The oracle said, 'That's why I have declared him the wisest.'

The more open you become, the more innocent, the more childlike you become, the more the winds of existence start flowing in and out of you. The more you are knowing and have the gesture of knowledge, the more you are closed. Then you don't allow the winds of existence to enter you, then you are always distrustful, you don't trust life. A fool is one who goes on trusting; a fool is one who goes on trusting against all his experience. You deceive him, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you. Then you will say that he is a fool, he does not learn. His trust is tremendous; his trust is so pure that nobody can corrupt it.

Be a fool in the Taoist sense, in the Zen sense. Don't try to create a wall of knowledge around you. Whatsoever experience comes to you, let it happen, and then go on dropping it. Go on cleaning your mind continuously; go on dying to the past so you remain in the present, here-now, as if just born, just a babe. In the beginning it is going to be very difficult. The world will start taking advantage of you... let them. They are poor fellows. Even if you are cheated and deceived and robbed, let it happen because that which is really yours cannot be robbed from you, that which is really yours nobody can steal from you. And each time you don't allow situations to corrupt you, that opportunity will become an integration inside. Your soul will become more crystallised.

I have heard.

A thief visited the house of a Sufi mystic at night, and spread his shawl to wrap up the loot. After a long search he had not found anything. In the meantime the dervish sleeping on the floor had rolled over onto the shawl. When the thief came to pick up his shawl, he saw the dervish sleeping on it.

Just as he was leaving empty-handed, the dervish woke up and called after him, 'Please shut the front door.'

'Why should I?' the thief answered.'I came and supplied your mattress, someone else might come and bring your blanket too.'

So remain open, don't be worried -- even a thief cannot steal anything from you. He may supply a mattress or a blanket, that is another matter. He may give something to you but he cannot take anything from you, because that which can be taken is not yours. That which cannot be taken, only that is yours.

Be a fool. Zen is the effort of dropping the mind, destructuring it, so that your innocence that has become hidden behind the structure reveals itself again. You were born without knowing anything. You were born with clear eyes with no thoughts in them, with no clouds. Your inner sky was pure. Then you were taught, conditioned -- a thousand and one things -- and you became cluttered with knowledge, from the school, the college, the university, and life's experiences. And you were taught how to doubt -- because doubt is the intelligence of the wordly man.

Trust is the intelligence of the religious man. You were taught to doubt, trained to doubt, but because of doubt you became closed. A man who doubts cannot remain open; a man who doubts always feels;insecure. A man who doubts always thinks about the world as if it is the enemy; the man who doubts is constantly fighting. That fight is going to end in your defeat because the part cannot win over the whole. That's not possible.

So you are fighting a doomed fight. You are going to be defeated finally. You may have small victories here and there, but they don't count. Finally death comes, and all is taken away. And in this fight you could not enjoy, you could not delight in life. To delight in life one needs to be a fool, trusting.

Read Dosteovsky's 'the Idiot'. The main character in 'The Idiot' is a Zen character, a Tao character, a prince who is foolish, totally foolish. But his doors are open, he is not in any way fighting the world. He is relaxed. All tensions gather in you because of doubt, all tensions make their abode in your being because of fear, insecurity. And you are just a small wave in the ocean but you are afraid of the ocean and you are trying to fight with the ocean. You will simply waste an opportunity which could have become a celebration, which could have become festive.

The same energy which could have laughed is turned sour and bitter and becomes poisonous. To be alive.... When I say 'to be alive' I mean to be alive in the whole spectrum of life. Alive to cry and alive to laugh; alive to weep and alive to love -- the whole spectrum. I see thousands of people living half-heartedly. They have chosen a certain colour of the spetrum and they have narrowed down their being. Now they are missing, they are missing much -- because you can enjoy life only when you are a rainbow.

A man was deeply in love with a woman, but he was a very shy man. Finally he succeeded in persuading her to be at least friendly towards him.

This man was a friend of Henry Miller, and Henry Miller was asking again and again, 'What is happening in your love affairs?'

One day he came and he said, 'I was almost on the verge of succeeding. I had succeeded so much that I persuaded her to undress completely, but more than that she would not do. What do you suggest I should have done?'

Miller said, 'Why, you should have wept.'

'Wept?' The man could not believe what he was saying.

He said, 'What else can you do? Laughter I cannot see in you, it is impossible. It is very, very far away because you have not even wept yet.'

Laughter is possible only if one is able to cry and weep deeply. The child cries -- that is the first relationship with the world. Every child born cries first. That is the first rung of the ladder. Miller says rightly, 'You should have wept because I don't know that you can do anything else. But this much you can do because this much you must have done when you were born. You should have wept.'

A fool is one who lives the whole rainbow -- he cries, tears are flowing from his eyes, he is not blocked in any way. He can cry in the marketplace, he is not ashamed of life. Unashamedly he lives, and lives totally. That's why he is a fool, or thought to be a fool. He laughs, and he delights. He is a rainbow. And God comes only to those who are like a rainbow.

Blessed are the fools.

The third question:

Question 3

I FEEL THE WORD 'GOD' HAS NO HEARTFELT POTENTIAL, YET THE SKY AND PLANTS CAN BRING ME TO MY KNEES AND THERE IS A HEARTACHE FOR SOMETHING UNKNOWN. ZEN ATTRACTS ME WITH ITS FRESHNESS, COOLNESS, BUT ITS DEMANDS MAKE ME FEEL IMPOTENT. YOU SEEM THE MOST ATTRACTIVE, YOU WARM MY HEART AND HAVE THE COOLNESS OF A STREAM. ARE YOU POSSIBLY A THIRD WAY? BECAUSE I CAN'T DECIDE.

I am not a way at all, I am just a presence. You have to understand it because you are going to be with me. You have to understand it as deeply as possible.

I am not a way. A way leads you somewhere, it connects you with the there, and my whole effort is to bring you HERE. A way is there -- oriented, and I am here-oriented. A way is needed if the goal is far away from you. If the goal is away, distant, then the way is needed. As I see it, the goal is within you; you are the goal, you are the target. So there is nowhere to go, a way is not needed. In fact, dropping all the ways, dropping the very search and just being yourself is enough. Because you cannot do that you have to be shown a few ways to walk and get tired on. That is just to exhaust you.

The whole effort is to exhaust you. When the effort is exhausted and you are really tired and you fall down, and you say, 'Now I don't want to go anywhere,' and you relax... you reach. Seeking is not the way to reach, but seeking is needed because you are very active.

Even to reach God, ways are needed -- and God is here-now. He is your surround, he is within you and without. It is as foolish as a fish seeking the ocean and living already in the ocean. You are in truth because there is no other way; only in truth can you be. You may have forgotten it or you may not be able to recognise it because it is so obvious. It is so close that there is no distance to see it -- distance is needed to have a perspective, you cannot see things from very close. And God is not only close, he is not only the closest -- he is you. God is not a 'seen', he is in the see-er; God is not a goal, he is in the seeker. The seeker is the sought.

So I am not a way. I talk about ways because you are mad. I talk about medicines because you are ill and you cannot understand the vision of no-way. You will have to walk, seek, get frustrated. When I say there are two ways, I mean there are two ways to get frustrated. One is of love, and another is of meditation.

But I am not a way. I am just a presence. And those who will understand me will not need anything more than just being with me. That's what in the East we call SATSANG -- just being with me, just being in my presence, just relaxing in my presence, just allowing me to enter you, not resisting, not fighting with me.

And suddenly one day you will start dancing, singing, celebrating. One day suddenly you will start laughing. What were you seeking? You were seeking yourself. How can you seek yourself? You are already that.

The questioner says: I FEEL THAT THE WORD 'GOD' HAS NO HEARTFELT POTENTIAL.... I know it. Theologians have killed it. They have killed a very beautiful word, 'God'.

Jews were right because they were very reluctant to call the name of God in any way. They were very reluctant. They were right because if you use the name of God, too much use will destroy its beauty. Before Jesus, Jews were not allowed to utter the name of God. Even now, if you look in Jewish books, and if they write God, they don't write G-o-d. They simply write G-d; they leave out the 'o'. Because how can you pronounce his name in totality? He is so big. Whatsoever you call him is going to be incomplete, so they write G-d, not G-o-d -- the 'o' is left out. And it is good that they leave out 'o' -- 'o' is the symbol of emptiness, SHUNYA. 'O' is void, zero. That is the very soul of God, 'O', zero, that is his very being -- so they leave it out.

For many centuries only the high priest in the temple of Jerusalem was allowed to utter the name of God, and that too only once in a year, and that too in total aloneness. People would wait, millions of people would wait together outside the temple. Then the high priest would go into the innermost shrine, all the doors would be closed, nobody will be able to hear, and there, in the innermost shrine, he would whisper the name. That's all.

It was good because words like 'God', 'love', should not be used too much otherwise their beauty is lost. Theologians killed the beautiful word 'God'. Now it is almost ugly, it is almost vulgar.

How theologians have killed it has to be understood. Each of you has a theologian inside. You have been conditioned for so many centuries that the theologian has almost become a part of you. God is wild, has to be, but the theologian is always afraid of the wild God, the theologian is always afraid of anything alive. So by and by he cuts out all wildness from God. He polishes, trains, and conditions the very word 'God'.

If you go to the old scriptures of the world, God was wild, as wild as you can imagine. He used to be angry also; he used to fall in love also; he used to run after women also. He was very human, down-to-earth, and very alive, throbbing and kicking.

But then it was not acceptable to the theologians because it was difficult to categorise him and it was difficult to use him. So by and by, limb by limb, they destroyed God. Now only a mummy, a dead body exists, preserved by chemicals, in churches. Churches are the tombs of God, their God has died. They made God more and more further away from man because it was impossible for their egos to understand that God could be in any way related to man. The creator and the created, the creator and the creature, how can they be related? No! The creator is far away in the seventh heaven and we are just like worms crawling on the earth, sinners asking to be forgiven. They condemned man and they went on raising God higher and higher. A moment came when the bridge broke.

It is so simple to see that the creator has to be related with the creation. A poet is deeply related with his poetry, has to be so, he loves his poetry. A painter is deeply related with his painting -- it is his life, his flowering, his expression. A sculptor loves the statue he has made. Watch a sculptor when he has finished a statue, how he touches and feels it -- almost as if it is the girl of his dreams, his beloved. Watch a sculptor when, in difficult circumstances, he has to sell his art work. Tears come to his eyes.

If God is the creator, he has to be close to creation, he has to be deeply in love with his creation. But then you cannot condemn man and then you cannot make man feel guilty. And if you cannot force man to feel guilty, then churches cannot exist, then their whole business disappears. The whole business of the church exists only if you are guilty. Because of your guilt you need their help; because of your guilt you need salvation.

If God is already close to you, and if God is already breathing in you, singing in your heart, then what is the need of any salvation? If God has created you, then how can you be sinners? Then you cannot be condemned, the signature of God is on you.

But then the whole business of religion disappears. So they went on making God more and more clinical. Now he smells almost like a hospital -- no life, but everything clean. They became so afraid of the germs of life that they killed all the germs. But God also is killed.

The word 'God' has lost the heartfelt potential.

One of my SANNYASINS has sent a beautiful anecdote to me. Listen to it, meditate over it.

The anecdote:

Yesterday somebody knocked on my door, and I opened it and it was God. And he asked me if he could use my bathroom. I said, 'Sure, come on in.'

When he finally came out of the bathroom, he explained that he had been having some trouble finding somebody who would let him use their bathroom because most people like to think God never has to go to the bathroom. Then he thanked me and told me he was looking for somebody to be the Messiah and he thought I showed promise.

I asked him if he really thought so. And he said he liked my bathroom.

God is eccentric, otherwise why should he create such an eccentric world?

But theologians have killed him completely. They cannot think that he needs a bathroom, there is no provision in heaven for that. He simply sits on his throne, he never goes to the bathroom. An inhuman God is a dead God. God has to be made alive again, he has to be brought home. Then your heart will start throbbing for him. If you drop theology then religion is beautiful, but if theology is always there between you and religion, then the theology is ugly and it makes religion look ugly also.

I FEEL THAT THE WORD 'GOD' HAS NO HEARTFELT POTENTIAL, YET THE SKY AND THE PLANTS CAN BRING ME TO MY KNEES. AND THERE IS A HEARTACHE FOR SOMETHING UNKNOWN.... That's good. That's how one should approach God, without theology. Don't use even the word 'God', there is no need, because the word 'God' is not God. The word 'love' is not love -- drop the word, you just carry the innermost core of it, the significance of it, the song of it. That's the only real way to enter into his temple -- nature, the trees, the birds, the sun and the stars. He is all around you, calling you in many, many ways. Don't go to the church. That is the last place you can hope for him to visit. Last! Maybe in some crisis, but otherwise not.

He's alive in the flowers, he's alive in the rainbows, he's alive in the birds. Listen to him. In fact, if you learn how to listen, you cannot avoid him for long. Love -- if you know how to love you cannot escape from him for long. Love is his shrine and listening is the way to help him come into you.

There is an anecdote in the annals of Hasidism.

'Where is the dwelling of God?' This was the question with which the Rabbi of Coates surprised a number of learned men who happened to be visiting him.

They laughed at him.'What a thing to ask, Rabbi! Is not the whole world full of his glory?'

Then the Rabbi answered his own question.'God dwells wherever man lets him in.'

Let him in. He is knocking at your doors, allow him in. You need not go anywhere. Just relax, trust. His hand is already searching you. Just allow him to find you, and immediately a great transformation happens.

So that is the right way.

Question 4

...THE SKY AND THE PLANTS CAN BRING ME TO MY KNEES AND THERE IS A HEARTACHE FOR SOMETHING UNKNOWN.

Yes, God is the eternally unknown. Even by knowing him, one never knows him; even by knowing him, he remains unknown. His unknowability is his mystery. And it is good that man cannot know him, otherwise he will become part of science, otherwise he will be just caught in a test tube somewhere in a lab. And you know what scientists can do. They will torture him if they can find him. They will poke him from here and there to find out secrets, just as they are torturing monkeys and other animals. They will torture God if they can find him.

No, God can never become knowledge. The word 'science' means knowledge. God can never become knowledge and can never become science. He is not a riddle to be solved, he is a mystery to be lived, a dance to be danced, a song to be sung, a love to be dissolved in. Yes, you can come to feel him but you can never come to know him. The unknown God is the only God there is.

There is a story about St. Paul. When he came to Athens to the Greek world to preach Christianity, he was very much surprised. In the centre of Athens there was a temple dedicated to the Unknown God. There was no image, the temple was absolutely empty and silent. There was no one inside it. Just on the door of the temple there was an inscription: Dedicated to the Unknown God. And people used to come to pray there, to feel God there. There was no priest and there was no theology and no philosophy around it.

St. Paul destroyed it because he started teaching people and he laughed at the stupidity of this temple. He is reported to have said that it was absolute foolishness. How can you love an unknown God? Here he was and he would show them the known God. God had become known in Jesus Christ.

He was thinking that he was doing a great service to humanity but he is one of the greatest criminals. He destroyed the concept, or no-concept, of an unknown God. That is the only God there is. He may have been reflected in the eyes of Jesus but he still remains unknown. In fact, by knowing him, he is not known, you also become part of his mystery and become unknown. Jesus has become a mystery by knowing him -- not that he has become known through Jesus. There is no way. He is so vast it is impossible to put him down as a formula, as a theory, as a dogma, as a creed.

Forget the word 'God'. Don't make that your obsession. It has nothing to do with God. You can drop the word. Dropping the word will be helpful, because with that word, all that theologians have done up to now will be dropped. You just look around, look into the eyes of a child, or into the eyes of your beloved, your mother, your friend -- or just feel a tree. Have you ever hugged a tree? Hug a tree. And one day you will come to know that it is not only that you have hugged the tree but that the tree also responds, the tree also hugs you. Then for the first time you will be able to know that the tree is not just the form, it is not just a certain species the botanists talk about, it is an unknown God -- so green in your courtyard, so full of flowers in your courtyard, so close to you, beckoning you, calling you again and again.

Forget the word. Forget all words! If you can dedicate your being to the unknown, that is the best dedication possible. Theologians, priests, and people who do the business of religion have different things in their minds. They are not concerned with you or with God. Religion has become a great investment. In fact, it is the biggest trade in the world. No millionaire is so rich -- and he cannot be -- as churches are. No company Burmah Shell or Standard Oil -- is so rich, they cannot be. When religion becomes an investment, then there are other reasons than religious, other considerations.

I have heard an anecdote -- it happened in a Jewish temple. Jewish temples and synagogues do not pass the plate as do the Christian churches, consequently they have to raise money in other ways. One of them is the sale of tickets for reserved seats for the high holy days when business is best.

On one holiday a young man went to the synagogue in Philadelphia to look for his uncle. The guard refused him admittance because he had no ticket.

'Look', the youngster said,'it is very important.'

'Not a chance,' said the guard.'Everybody says that. Nobody gets in here without a ticket.'

But the boy pleaded,' It is a matter of life and death. Please, I will only be two minutes.'

'Well okay, if it is so important,' the guard said.'But don't let me catch you praying!'

This can happen in this ashram also. This happens always. Because whenever something of the unknown descends on the earth, immediately man's cunning mind starts changing it into a commodity that can be sold in the market. Immediately the profit motive comes in. The word 'God', the churches, the temples, the synagogues, they have become marketplaces. You cannot find your heart there. The only way to find your heart is to see the unknown again. You will have to move alone, you will have to go alone. You cannot follow a crowd. If you follow a crowd you will reach some temple, or some synagogue, or some church. If you want to find the wild God, the God of this universe, the unity, the cosmos, then you will have to seek on your own, alone.

Pray to a tree, pray to a river, pray to a rock. Feel, there is no need for words. Let your heart communicate. Melt yourself into the world and let the world melt into you. This communion is prayer.

The person who has asked the question will be helped if he moves on the path of love. Zen will not be helpful for him. He has a very feeling heart. Listen to the heart.

Many other questions are there, questions about making a synthesis of love and meditation, of heart and mind, of thought and feeling -- because many people would like to move on both the ways together.

Synthesis comes, but you cannot make it. If you follow the path of meditation, one day you will attain to love as a consequence. If you follow the path of love, one day you will attain to meditation as a consequence. Synthesis comes, but you will have to follow one path. If you try to follow two you will be in confusion. Synthesis comes at the end on its own accord, so don't be worried.

It is always so: if meditation happens, love is bound to happen. If love does not happen, then that simply shows meditation has not happened yet. If love happens, meditation also happens as a shadow. If meditation has not happened through love, then your love is not yet real. If it has not happened yet, you may be thinking about it, but you have not moved into the world of love. So don't be worried about synthesis. You cannot make a synthesis. It is not for you to worry about it. Follow one, whichever feels more close to you.

There are a few questions which ask, 'Both seem to be almost fifty-fifty, so what to do?' If both seem fifty-fifty, then Zen is your way. Because a person who cannot decide is not the man of the heart; a person who cannot decide is the man of the mind. If it is heart it is always decisive. Have you ever fallen in love with two women together, fifty-fifty? If you fall that way, then one thing is certain, it is not love. There may be other considerations. One is rich, another is a daughter of a prime minister or something like that. Love is not a consideration. If love is the consideration then immediately you choose one, then there is no problem.

So if you have a problem to decide, then it is decided: you are the mind type, you will have to follow Zen. If you can decide, then good; if you cannot decide then take it for granted that the very doubt, the indecisiveness, shows that you are a mind type, thinking, doubting, analyzing, thinking about pros and cons. And then your greed says, 'Is there not a way to make a compromise of both?'

Remember, compromise is not a synthesis. Compromise is a dead thing; synthesis is organic unity. You can make a compromise but through compromise nobody has ever grown; you cannot make a synthesis, it comes.

You start growing on one path, because both the paths use different devices, not only different, diametrically opposite. If you try to make a compromise, it will be impossible because one goes to the south, another goes to the north. So one leg will be going to the south, another will be going to the north. You will not be able to reach, you will be divided, you will become split. In making the compromise you will become a schizophrenic. That's how the human mind has become schizophrenic, split.

Don't bother about compromise. It always comes. Those who have attained through zazen have attained to the same love as those who have reached through devotion, BHAKTI.

A man, a Christian, came with the Bible to a Zen Master and started reading the Sermon on the Mount. After a few lines the Master said, 'Stop, there is no need. Whosoever has said these words is a Buddha.'

He had never known anything about the Bible, he had never heard anything about Jesus, he used to live in a far-away cave, completely out of the society. But he said, 'No need to read it anymore. Even one sentence is enough. It has the taste of the sea. Whosoever has said this is a Buddha -- is enlightened.' If you ask Buddha, Meera is enlightened, Chaitanya is enlightened. If you ask Meera and Chaitanya, Buddha is enlightened, Bodhidharma is enlightened.

Let me put in this way. If you follow love, devotion, surrender, one day you will suddenly find you are full of meditation. If you follow meditation, one day you will find the beloved has come, he has knocked at the door.

Dang Dang Doko Dang

Chapter #3

Chapter title: 'As within, so without'

13 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 7606130

ShortTitle: DANG03

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 100 mins

AFTER BANKEI HAD PASSED AWAY, A BLIND MAN WHO LIVED NEAR THE MASTER'S TEMPLE SAID TO A FRIEND: 'SINCE I AM BLIND I CANNOT WATCH A PERSON'S FACE, SO I MUST JUDGE HIS CHARACTER BY THE SOUND OF HIS VOICE.

ORDINARILY WHEN I HEAR SOMEONE CONGRATULATE ANOTHER UPON HIS HAPPINESS OR SUCCESS, I ALSO HEAR A SECRET TONE OF ENVY. WHEN CONDOLENCE IS EXPRESSED FOR THE MISFORTUNE OF ANOTHER, I HEAR PLEASURE AND SATISFACTION, AS IF THE ONE CONDOLING WAS REALLY GLAD THERE WAS SOMETHING LEFT TO GAIN IN HIS OWN WORLD.

'IN ALL MY EXPERIENCE HOWEVER, BANKEI'S VOICE WAS ALWAYS SINCERE. WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED HAPPINESS, I HEARD NOTHING BUT HAPPINESS, AND WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED SORROW, SORROW WAS ALL I HEARD.'

MAN IS SPLIT. Schizophrenia is a normal condition of man -- at least now. It may not have been so in the primitive world, but centuries of conditioning, civilization, culture and religion have made man a crowd -- divided, split, contradictory. One part goes one way, the other part goes in just the diametrically opposite way and it is almost impossible to keep oneself together. It is a miracle that man is existing at all. He should by now have disappeared long before.

But because this split is against his nature, deep down somewhere hidden the unity still survives. Because the soul of.man is one, all the conditionings at the most destroy the periphery of the man. But the centre remains untouched -- that's how man continues to live. But his life has become a hell.

The whole effort of Zen is how to drop this schizophrenia, how to drop this split personality, how to drop the divided mind of man, how to become undivided, integrated, centred, crystallised.

The way you are, you cannot say that you are. You don't have a being. You are a marketplace -- many voices. If you want to say 'yes', immediately the 'no' is there. You cannot even utter a simple word 'yes' with totality. Watch... say 'yes', and deep inside the 'no' also arises with it. You cannot say a simple word like 'no' without contradicting it at the same time. In this way happiness is not possible; unhappiness is a natural consequence of a split personality. Unhappiness, because you are constantly in conflict with yourself. It is not that you are fighting with the world, you are every moment fighting with yourself. How can there be peace? How can there be silence? How can you be for even a single moment at rest? Not for a single moment are you at rest. Even while you are sleeping you are dreaming a thousand and one things. Even while sleeping you are tossing this way and that -- a continuous conflict. You are a battlefield.

You say to somebody 'I love you', and the more you say it, the more you have to repeat it. It appears there is suspicion behind it. If you really love there is no need even to say it, because words do not matter. Your whole being will show your love; your eyes will show your love. There will be no need to say it, there will be no need to repeat it continuously. You repeat to convince the other and at the same time to convince yourself -- because deep down, jealousy, possessiveness, hatred, the urge to dominate, a deep power politics, are hidden.

In his epistles St. Paul uses 'in Christ' one hundred and sixty-four times. He must have been a little doubtful about it.'In Christ. In Christ. In Christ...' one hundred and sixty-four times! It is too much. Once would have been enough. Even once is more than enough. It should be your being that shows that you live in Christ -- and then there is no need to say it.

Watch. Whenever you repeat a thing too many times, go deep within yourself. You must be carrying it. But you cannot falsify it, that is the problem. Your eyes will show that it is hidden behind.

Have you watched? You go to somebody's house and he welcomes you. But there is no welcome in his presence. He says, 'I am very happy to see you, glad to see you.' But you don't see any gladness anywhere; in fact, he looks a little anxious, worried, apprehensive. He looks at you as if trouble has come to his home. Have you watched people saying to you 'take any seat' and simultaneously showing you a certain seat to take? They say 'take any seat' but they show you, in a subtle gesture, 'take this seat'. They go on contradicting themselves.

Parents go on telling their children, 'Be yourself,' and at the same time they go on teaching how one should be.'Be independent' -- and at the same time they go on forcing the child to be obedient. They have their own idea about how the child should be and when they say, 'Be yourself,' they mean, 'Be the way we want you to be.' They don't mean, 'Be yourself.'

Continuously something else is there present and you cannot really falsify it. But man has become cunning about that also. We don't look into each other's eyes because eyes can show the truth, so it is thought to be part of etiquette to avoid eyes. Don't look into somebody's eyes too much or you will be thought a little uncultured -- transgressing, trespassing. It is very difficult to falsify the eyes. You can falsify the tongue very easily, because the tongue, the language, is a social by-product. But eyes belong to your being. You say something but your eyes continually show something else, hence in all the societies of the world people avoid each other's eyes. They don't encounter -- because that will be looking into the truth.

But you can watch these contradictions in yourself and it will be a great help. Because unless your 'in' is just like your 'out' and your 'out' is just like your 'in', you can never be at rest.

In Tibet, in Egypt, they say, 'As above, so below.' Zen says, 'As within, so without.'

Unless your within becomes as your without you can never be at rest because your periphery will continuously be in conflict with your centre. The problem is that the periphery cannot win. Ultimately only the centre can win. But the periphery can delay, postpone; the periphery can waste time and life and energy. If you go on living on the periphery and just go on pretending, not really living, you will have many faces but you will not have your original face.

I have heard.

Abrahamson had reached the grand old age of eighty and decided to celebrate. All his life he had been orthodox, had worn a long beard, black hat, black suit and black overcoat. Now to celebrate his birthday the old man shaved off the beard, replaced his sombre black clothes with the latest style green checked suit, a burgundy tie and blue striped shirt and headed for the massage parlour.

As Abrahamson crossed the street he was struck by a truck and killed. In heaven he spoke to his maker, God, 'Why me? I was a good husband, I gave to all the charities, I have always been a religious man.''To tell the truth,' said the Lord, 'I did not recognise you.'

And I would like to tell you even God will not be able to recognise YOU either. He changed his dress only once and became unrecognisable and you change your periphery every moment, you change your dress every moment, you change your face, your mask, every moment. Forget about God -- you cannot recognise yourself. You cannot say who you are.

In Zen they have a koan, a deep object for meditation, to find out one's original face. The Master says to the disciple: 'Go and sit silently and find out your original face.' They mean the face you had before you were born or the face that you will have after you have died -- because the moment the child is born, the society starts giving him false faces; the moment the child takes his first breath, corruption starts. The child has entered into the world of politics, falsification, untruth. Now, layer upon layer, there will be many faces.

And the clever man has many more faces than the simple man. So whatsoever the need he immediately changes his face. He adjusts his face.

Have you watched? You are sitting in your room and your servant passes by. You have a different face for the servant, a very indifferent face. In fact, you don't look at your servant, he is not worth looking at. You don't recognise that a man, a human being just like you, has entered the room. It is as if a mechanism has passed. You don't recognise the humanity of the servant. But if your boss comes into the room immediately you are standing, wagging your tail, smiling -- all smiles. You have a different face for your boss. If your wife comes you have a different face, if your mistress comes you have a different face.

Continuously you go on adjusting, manipulating. One has to understand otherwise one cannot find one's original face.

A man who has an original face has a unity. He remains the same. Buddha is reported to have said that the taste of an enlightened man is just like the taste of seawater -- wherever you taste it, whenever you taste it, it always tastes of the salt.

The enlightened person always shows one face. Not that he is monotonous.... Remember, don't misunderstand me -- he is not monotonous at all. In fact, you are monotonous because your faces are all dead. He is alive, growing, but his face is his. The face goes on growing, it goes on becoming richer and richer, it goes on taking on more and more awareness, it goes on becoming more and more radiant, alive, beautiful, a grace goes on increasing around it, it is surrounded by a light, but, it remains the same face. You can recognise it. There is a discontinuous continuity or, a continuous discontinuity. He changes yet he remains the same. He remains the same and yet he goes on changing. You can recognise the continuity and you can also recognise a constant growth.

Growth always happens to the original face -- remember. False faces cannot grow, they are dead. They have no life in them, how can they grow? You can bring plastic flowers -- they cannot grow. You can keep them, you can deceive people, but they cannot grow. Real flowers grow. Only life grows.

If you are not growing you are dead. Remember that each moment should be a growth moment. One should continuously go on moving and yet remain centred, rooted in one's being.

You can deceive others, you cannot deceive yourself. But there are also very, very clever people who can deceive themselves also. They are the worst enemies of themselves.

Mulla Nasruddin had been pulled from the river in what the police decided was a suicide attempt. When they were questioning him at headquarters he admitted that he had tried to kill himself. This is the story he told:

'Yes, I tried to kill myself. The world is against me and I wanted to end it all. I was determined not to do a half-way job so I bought a piece of rope, some matches, some kerosene and a pistol. Just in case none of those worked I went down by the river. I threw the rope over a limb hanging out over the river, I tied the rope around my neck, poured kerosene all over myself and lit the match. I jumped off the bank, put the pistol to my head and pulled the trigger.

'Guess what happened! I missed. The bullet hit the rope before I could hang myself so I fell into the river and the water put out the fire before I could burn myself. And you know, if I had not been a good swimmer, I would have ended up drowning my fool self!'

That's how things go.... You want to do a thing and yet you don't want to do it.

You go on and yet you don't want to go. You live and yet you don't want to live. You even try to commit suicide and yet you don't want to commit suicide. That's why out of ten suicide attempts only one succeeds. And that too seems to be by some error. Nine attempts fail.

People are contradictory. They just don't know how to do a thing totally. And it is natural. It can be understood that when they try to commit suicide they cannot be total, because they have never been total in their lives. They don't know what totality is. They have never done a single act with their total being. Whenever an act is total, it liberates; whenever it is half-hearted it simply creates a conflict. It dissipates energy, it is destructive, it creates bondage.

In India you have heard the word KARMA -- the very cause of all bondage. A KARMA is a KARMA only if it is half-hearted -- then it binds you. If it is total it never binds you, then there is no bondage for you. Any act lived totally is finished. You transcend it, you never look back. Any moment lived totally leaves no trace on you -- you remain unscratched, untouched by it. Your memory remains clean, you don't carry a psychological memory about it. There is no wound.

If you have loved a woman totally and she dies, there is no wound left. But if you have not loved her totally and she dies then she continues to live in the memory. Then you weep for her, you cry for her, because now you repent. There was time, there was opportunity when you could have loved her, but you could not love her. And now there is no opportunity; now she is there no more. Now there is no way to fulfil your love.

Nobody weeps and cries for somebody's death -- you cry and weep for the lost opportunity to love. Your mother dies. If you have loved her really, totally, then death is beautiful, there is nothing wrong in it. You go and say goodbye to her and you don't carry any wound. You may be a little sad -- naturally, she has occupied your heart for so long and now she will not be there -- but that is just a passing mood. You don't carry a wound, you don't go on crying continuously, you don't hang with the past. You did whatsoever you could -- you loved her, you respected her -- now it is finished. One understands the helplessness of life. You are also going to be finished one day. Death is natural; one accepts it.

If you cannot accept death that simply shows there has been a contradiction in your life. You loved and yet you were withholding yourself. Now that withholding creates the problem.

If you have enjoyed food, you forget all about it. Once you are finished, you are finished. You don't go on thinking about it. But if you were eating and you were not eating totally, if you were thinking about a thousand and one other things and you were not at the dining table at all -- you were just physically there but psychologically you were somewhere else -- then you will think about food. Then food will become an obsession.

That's how sex has become an obsession in the West. Making love to a woman or to a man you are somewhere else. It is not a total act, it is not orgasmic, you are not lost in it, so a greed arises. You try to satisfy that greed, that unfulfilled desire, in a thousand ways: pornography, blue movies, and fantasy, your private movie. You go on fantasizing about women. When a real woman is there and she is ready to love you, you are not there. And when the woman is not there, you have a woman in your fantasy.

This is a very sad state of affairs. When you are eating, you are not there and then you are thinking about food, fantasizing about it. This is happening because you are not total in your act, you are always divided. While making love you are thinking of BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy. Then while being a celibate you.are thinking of making love. You are never in tune, never in harmony.

And one goes on pretending that everything is okay so one never faces the problem.

I have heard about one couple who was known all over Poland as the most ideal couple ever. Sixty years of married life and never had there been a conflict. The wife was never known to nag the husband, the husband was never known to be rude to the wife. They had lived very peacefully -- at least it appeared so.

They were celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary. A journalist came to interview them.

'How old is your wife?' enquired the journalist.

'She is eighty-seven,' said the husband, 'and God willing, she will live to be a hundred.'

'And how old are you?' enquired the journalist.

'Eight-seven too,' answered the husband, 'and God willing, I will live to be a hundred and one.'

'But why,' asked the journalist, 'would you like to live a year longer than your wife?'

'To tell the truth,' said the old octogenarian, 'I would like to have at least one year of peace.'

Appearances are very deceptive. Appearances may give you respectability but they cannot give you contentment. And some day or other, in some way or other, the truth has a way of surfacing.

Truth cannot be repressed forever. If it can be repressed forever, eternally, then it is not truth. In the very definition of truth one should include the fact that truth has a way of bubbling up. You cannot go on avoiding it forever and ever. One day or other, knowingly or unknowingly, it surfaces, it reveals itself.

Truth is that which reveals itself. And just the opposite are lies. You cannot make a lie appear as truth forever and ever. One day or other the truth will surface and the lie will be there condemned.

You cannot avoid truth. It is better to face it, it is better to accept it, it is better to live it. Once you start living the life of truth, authenticity, of your original face, all troubles by and by disappear because the conflict drops and you are no more divided. Your voice has a unity then, your whole being becomes an orchestra. Right now, when you say something, your body says something else; when your tongue says something, your eyes go on saying something else simultaneously.

Many times people come to me and I ask them, 'How are you?' And they say, 'We are very, very happy.' And I cannot believe it because their faces are so dull -- no joy, no delight! Their eyes have no shining in them, no light. And when they say, 'We are happy,' even the word 'happy' does not sound very happy. It sounds as if they are dragging it. Their tone, their voice, their face, the way they are sitting or standing -- everything belies, says something else. Start watching people. When they say that they are happy, watch. Watch for a clue. Are they really happy? And immediately you will be aware that something else is saying something else.

And then by and by watch yourself. When you are saying that you are happy and you are not, there will be a disturbance in your breathing. Your breathing cannot be natural. It is impossible. Because the truth was that you were. not happy. If you had said, 'I am unhappy,' your breathing would have remained natural. There was no conflict. But you said, 'I am happy.' Immediately you are repressing something -- something that was coming up, you have forced down. In this very effort your breathing changes its rhythm; it is no longer rhythmical. Your face is no longer graceful, your eyes become cunning.

First watch others because it will be easier to watch others. You can be more objective about them. And when you have found clues about them use the same clues about yourself. And see -- when you speak truth, your voice has a musical tone to it; when you speak untruth, something is there like a jarring note. When you speak truth you are one, together; when you speak untruth you are not together, a conflict has arisen.

Watch these subtle phenomena, because they are the consequence of togetherness or untogetherness. Whenever you are together, not falling apart; whenever you are one, in unison, suddenly you will see you are happy. That is the meaning of the word 'yoga'. That's what we mean by a yogi: one who is together, in unison; whose parts are all interrelated and not contradictory, interdependent, not in conflict, at rest with each other. A great friendship exists within his being. He is whole.

Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of it -- and suddenly you forget your split, your schizophrenia; you relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the Himalaya peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together. Or, listening to beautiful music, you fall together.

Whenever, in whatsoever situation, you become one, a peace, a happiness, a bliss, surrounds you, arises in you. You feel fulfilled.

There is no need to wait for these moments -- these moments can become your natural life. These extraordinary moments can become ordinary moments -- that is the whole effort of Zen. You can live an extraordinary life in a very ordinary life: cutting wood, chopping wood, carrying water from the well, you can be tremendously at ease with yourself. Cleaning the floor, cooking food, washing the clothes, you can be perfectly at ease -- because the whole question is of you doing your action totally, enjoying, delighting in it.

The society is not in favour of an integrated man, so remember, society cannot help you. It will create all sorts of hindrances for your growth. Because only a disintegrated man can be manipulated -- the politicians can dominate him, the teachers can dominate him, the religious priests can dominate him, the parents can dominate him. Only a disintegrated soul can be forced into slavery.

Integrated, you are free; integrated, you become rebellious; integrated, you start doing your own thing; integrated, you listen to your own heart, wherever it leads. Such types of individuals can be dangerous for the dead so-called society. They can create trouble -- they have always created trouble. A Jesus, a Socrates, a Buddha... they have always been troublesome because they are so integrated that they can be independent. And they are living so blissfully that they don't bother about other nonsense.

Try to understand it. If you are unhappy, you will become ambitious; if you are happy, ambition will disappear. Who bothers to become a prime minister unless you are a little insane? Who bothers to become the richest man in the world unless you are mad? Who bothers about fame? You cannot eat it, you cannot love it, you cannot sleep with it. In fact, the more famous you become, the more difficult it becomes to be happy.

The richer you are, the more worries you have -- problems of security, future. Whatsoever you have, you have to hold it. You have to hold it against others because they are constantly watching for a right opportunity to take it back. Whatsoever you hold, you hold out of violence. And of course, if you have been violent then others can be violent to you. They are just waiting for the right moment. The richer you get, the more worries, more problems, more fears you have. Who bothers, if one is happy?

It is said that a Taoist mystic was sought by the emperor of China because he had heard that the mystic was very wise and he wanted him to become his prime minister. Ambassadors, with a golden chariot following them and with many presents from the court, were sent to him.

The two ambassadors were puzzled because they found this wise man sitting on the bank of a small river fishing, very poor, just ordinary. But the king had ordered so they told him, 'The king wants you to become his prime minister. You are welcome. We have come to take you.'

The mystic looked at the ambassadors and then he looked around. A turtle was wagging his tail in the mud, enjoying, just by the side of the river, by a small pool.

The mystic said, 'Look at that turtle!'

The ambassadors said, 'We don't understand. What do you mean?'

He said, 'I have heard there is a turtle in the emperor's palace three thousand years old -- dead of course -- encased in gold, with valuable diamonds, very precious. The dead turtle is worshipped. If you ask this alive turtle, 'Would you like to become the dead turtle in the king's palace? You will be encased in gold, surrounded with precious stones and you will be worshipped by the king himself, ' what do you think this turtle will choose? Would he like to go to the palace or would he like to wag his tail in the mud?'

They said, 'Of course, he would like to wag his tail in the mud.'

The mystic said, 'Do you think I am more foolish than the turtle? Go back! I would like to wag my tail here in this mud -- I would like to be alive.'

Who has ever heard of anybody living in a palace and being alive? Difficult, almost impossible. If you are unhappy then you become ambitious, because an unhappy person thinks, 'If I attain much wealth I will become happy.' The unhappy person thinks, 'If I become the prime minister, the president, then I will become happy.' An unhappy person starts projecting into the future; a happy person lives here and now. And he is so happy, so infinitely happy, that he has no future. He has no concern for the future.

That's just what Jesus means when he says, 'Think not of the morrow. Look at the lilies in the fields. Even the great Emperor Solomon was not so beautiful, arrayed in his precious dresses, as these poor lily flowers. Look at the grandeur! And they toil not and they think not of the morrow.'

The whole society depends on creating ambition in you. Ambition means a conflict, ambition means that whatsoever you are, you are wrong -- you have to be somewhere else. Wherever you are, you are wrong -- you have to be somewhere else. A constant madness to be somewhere else, to be somebody else, is what ambition is.

So every child is corrupted, destroyed. The parents were destroyed by their parents, and they go on destroying their children -- and so on and so forth. Of course they don't know what else to do. They simply repeat the old pattern: whatsoever was done to them by their parents, they do to their children. The parents say, 'Go to school and come first. Go to university and attain the gold medal.' Then for their whole life they are always chasing and chasing the gold medals. They live in a dream -- and because of this they have to follow many things which are against their nature, they have to do many things which are against their nature. If they are to attain some goals in society they have to follow the society.

And society is constantly trying to force something on you: a certain morality, a certain religion. Whether it suits you or not is not the problem; whether it is going to help your being flower is not the problem. The society goes on enforcing things on you.

One day I met Mulla Nasruddin on the road. He was walking with his two children.

So I said, 'How are your two children?'

He said, 'Both are good.'

I said, 'How old are they?'

He said, 'The doctor is five and the lawyer is seven!'

Already the future is fixed in the mind of the father. One has to become a doctor, the other has to become something else. The children have not been asked. Now the father will enforce. He can enforce, he has power. The children are helpless. And if the child was going to become a singer and he cannot become a singer but has to become a doctor, he will never feel at ease. He will be false. He will be carrying something false -- continuously dragging himself. His whole life will be destroyed. It will be a sheer wastage. There are doctors who would have been beautiful singers or dancers or poets and there are poets who would have been better to have been doctors or surgeons. There are poets who should have been engineers, scientists, and there are scientists who should have been somewhere else. It seems that everybody is in some wrong place because nobody has been allowed to be spontaneous and to be himself.

The society forces you to be something that you are not meant to be. Nobody else can know who you are meant to be, your destiny has to unfold within you. It is only you, left to yourself. A society can help. If a real, right society exists some day in the world, it will simply help you. It will not give you directions, it will give you all support to be yourself. But this society first tries you to make somebody else -- imitators, carbon copies -- and when you have become carbon copies then people start saying that you are not yourself.

A Jewish momma found herself sitting next to a young man on a bus. She looked at him quizzically for a few moments, then nudged him in the ribs and said confidentially, 'You are a Jewish boy, aren't you?'

He said, 'Er, no, as a matter of fact, I'm not.'

She laughed and said, 'Oh, go on, I'm Jewish myself -- I can always tell. You're Jewish, aren't you?'

He said, 'No, missus, I'm not.'

She said, 'What's the matter? You ashamed of it or something? You're Jewish.'

So just to keep her quiet, the young chap said, 'All right, if it'll make you happy -- yes, I'm Jewish.'

She said, 'That's funny, you don't look Jewish....'

That's how it goes on. First everybody is trying to convince you that you are this, and once you are this, suddenly you find -- and everybody else starts saying -- that you don't look yourself.'What is wrong with you? You look unhappy, you look sad, you look frustrated, you look depressed -- what is the matter with you?' First they try to force you to be somebody else that you are not and then they want you to be happy also. This is impossible!

You can be happy only if you become yourself. Nothing can be done about it, that is how it is. You can be happy only if you are yourself -- but it is very difficult to find out now who you are because you have been so confused, you have been so crippled. And society has entered so deep down in you that it has become your conscience. Now your parents may be dead, your teachers may be dead -- or even if they are alive they are no longer sitting on your head -- but still whatsoever they have taught you goes on speaking in subtle whisperings within you.

It has become your conscience. The parental voice has become your ego. If you do something against it, it immediately condemns you. If you do something accordingly, it applauds you, appreciates you. Still you go on being dominated by the dead.

I have heard.

Rothstein owed a hundred dollars to Wiener. The debt was past due and Rothstein was broke, so he borrowed the hundred dollars from Spevak and paid Wiener. A week later Rothstein borrowed back the hundred dollars from Wiener and paid Spevak. Another week went by and Rothstein borrowed back the hundred dollars from Spevak to pay back Wiener. He repeated this transaction several times until finally he called them up and said.

'Fellers, this is a lot of bother. Why don't you two exchange the hundred dollars every week and keep me out of it!'

This is how it has happened. First your mother, your father, your teachers, your priests -- they have put things in your mind. Then one day they come and they say, 'Now you be on your own. Keep us out.' Now the conscience goes on functioning as a subtle agent.

Remember, the conscience is your bondage. A real man is conscious but he has no conscience. An unreal man is unconscious and has a very strong conscience. Conscience is given by others to you; consciousness has to be attained by you. Consciousness is your earned being, your earned quality of awareness. Conscience is given by others who wanted to manipulate you in their own ways. They had their own ideas and they manipulated you, they coerced you, tortured you into certain directions. They may not have been aware of it themselves because they were tortured by their parents.

This is how the future is dominated by the past and the present is dominated by the dead.

A real man has to drop his conscience. The parental voice has to be dropped.

There are a few sayings of Jesus which are very rude but true to the very core. He says, 'Unless you hate your father and mother you will not be able to follow me.' Now this looks very rude. The language is rude but what he means is what I am saying to you -- drop the conscience. He is not saying you should hate your father and mother, he is saying you should hate the mother's and father's voice inside you. Unless you drop that you will never be free; you will remain split, you will have many voices in you, you will never become one.

You have lost your original face. People have painted your face too much according to their own ideas. They have made you. Now you have to take the whole process in your hands you have to become aware that you are not here to fulfil anybody's expectations. You are here to attain your destiny.

So don't choose the safer way which you have been choosing up to now. It is safer to follow society because then society does not create trouble for you. It is very, very dangerous to follow your own voice, very dangerous to follow yourself, because then you are alone and society is not there to support you.

They used to tell a story of the Russian dictator, Stalin. The dictator walked into a movie incognito and sat in the last row. Suddenly his picture flashed on the screen and everybody rose in salute. He remained seated, enjoying the spectacle of his power, when suddenly an usher poked him in the back and whispered harshly: 'You'd better get up too if you know what's good for you. I don't like him any more than you do, but you'd better get up. It's safer.'

We have been choosing the safer, the secure, the socially approved. You will have to get out of it. There are two ways to get out of the socially approved: one is the way of the sinner, the criminal; another is the way of the saint, the holy man. These are the two ways to get out of the structured being that the society has given to you, cut of the role that the society has given you to play.

One is the criminal way. That is a reactionary way, foolish. It is not going to help you. You may get out of the social structure but you will find yourself in prison. That is not going to help much; you cannot go very far on that way. That too is a way of getting out of the bondage of society -- the criminal is also trying to be free. Of course, he does not know how to be free, so he gets more into bondage. But his desire is the same as that of the saints. He is moving in the wrong direction, but his desire is the same. Society has forced many people to be criminals because the structure is too strong and people don't know how to get out of it. So they do something wrong, just to get out of it.

The saint is also doing the same but he is trying to create devices. Meditation is a device, zazen is a device to get out of society without becoming a criminal.

So remember, that danger is there. If you understand me and you think, 'Right, I will get out of society,' and you don't understand what I mean by meditation, you will become a criminal.

That's what hippies are doing in the West. They are hankering for freedom and their desire is right, absolutely right, they have absolute birthright to be free -- but they don't yet know the way of the saint. So knowingly, unknowingly, they are moving onto the path of the sinners. Sooner or later they will be crushed by society.

Just to be free of society is not enough. To be free and responsible, to be free and responsibly free -- only then are you free, otherwise you will be caught in another pattern. The hippie is reacting, the people of Zen are rebelling. In reaction you just go to the opposite: if the society says no drugs, you say drugs are the only panacea. If the society says do this, you immediately do just the opposite. But remember, in doing the opposite, you are still in the trap of society because society has decided what you should do. Even the opposite is decided by society. The society said no drugs so you say, 'I am going to take drugs.' By saying no, the society has decided your direction.

So the one who is conventional is within the society and the one who has reacted against it, again gets caught in the society. One says yes to the society, another says no the society, but both react to the society. The man who really wants to be free says neither yes nor no.

The language is created by the society so the language is simply contradictory. Either you have to say yes or you have to say no. Sometimes you don't want to say either yes or no but there is no word. Just lately Edward de Bono has done a great service to humanity. He has invented a new word, 'po' -- just in the middle of no and yes. Because there are situations when you would like to say po. You mean, 'I don't want to say yes, I don't want to say no, I don't want to take any alternative between these two. I want to be free. If I say yes, I am caught -- you decided my yes; if I say no, you decided my no in the opposite direction. I say po.'

A Zen person says po, the hippie says no -- and much is the difference, great is the difference.

The language is decided by the contradictory mind so everything is divided into two: heaven and hell, god and devil, yes and no, good and bad, the sinner and the saint. Everything is divided into two, and in life, in fact, it is totally different -- it is a rainbow. All the seven colours are there. There are many stages between the saint and the sinner; there are many possibilities between yes and no. And dark and light are not only two possibilities -- they are two poles. Between these two poles are all the rays, all the colours of the rainbow.

But the aristotelian logic, which is the logic of the society, divides only into two. That two creates a falsity in man. If you don't want to say yes and you don't want to say no, the language does not give you any other alternative. Somebody says, 'Do you love me?' What are you going to say? If you say yes it may not be true, if you say no that also may not be true. You may like to remain uncommitted, you may like simply to shrug your shoulders -- but in language there is no way to shrug your shoulders.

I have heard about a man who went to visit a church with his wife. The church had over the portal the inscription: This is the house of God. This is the Gate of Heaven.

The man must have been a logician, a follower of Aristotle.

He glanced at these words, tried the door and found it locked.

Then he turned to his wife and said, 'In other words, go to

hell!'

Because the door to heaven is closed, where to go?'In other words, go to hell!'

Life is divided into two -- that is too miserly a division. Life is much richer. Life is neither white nor black, it is grey. White is one end of it, black is another end of it, but life is grey.

If you don't know that language is also a social trap, morality is also a social trap, formality is also a social trap, etiquette is also a social trap, you will not be able to get out of it. And this is possible only if you become very, very aware, very keenly aware, sincerely aware. Then you will see traps all around. Don't react to them. Sinners have always been there, criminals have always been there -- they tried to break out of the bounds of the society, but they never could get very far; they were always caught.

The only way to get out of it is a very subtle one, and that is to get within yourself so deeply that the society cannot reach there. That's the only way -- to become true, to get to your centre. That's what Zen is all about.

Once, at a scientific gathering, a young physicist approached the British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington and asked:

'Is it true, Sir Arthur, that you are one of the only three men in the world who really understands Einstein's theory of relativity?'

Then noticing the look of discomfort that came into the astronomer's face, he apologised.

'I'm sorry,' he said.'I didn't mean to embarrass you. I know how modest you are.'

'Not at all,' said Eddington.'I was just wondering who the third man could be.'

All your social formality, modesty, politeness, is just a layer, a very thin layer -- like when you pour oil on water and a thin film of the oil covers it. It is not even skin deep. Don't be deceived by it. The only way to get beyond is to go within. You can become rude -- that is happening. Just to become sincere, some people are becoming rude. That is not the way. Just to be honest, people are becoming violent. Just to be true, they are becoming angry and insane. That is not the way. If you want to be true, move to the centre -- because if you remain on periphery you will remain untrue. Let your centre dominate the periphery. You move to the centre.

And be in a hurry. I don't mean be impatient. I mean don't be lazy. Because the problem is that if you have lived too long in the society and you have followed its rules and regulations for too long, one becomes accustomed to it. One forgets that it is a bondage, one forgets that these are chains. The chains start appearing like ornaments. You in fact start protecting them.

It happened.

To celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary, Mulla Nasruddin came home and presented his wife with a little monkey.'Are you crazy or something?' shouted Mistress Nasruddin.'Where the hell are we gonna keep a monkey?'

'Don't worry,' said Nasruddin.'He will sleep right in the bed with us.'

'And what about the smell?'

'If I could stand it for thirty years, he will get used to it soon.'

Be in a hurry because once you get settled it will be difficult. Difficult because you will not realise that you are in bondage. If you can escape younger, it will be easier. The older you grow, the more difficult it becomes.

Now, the story.

AFTER BANKEI HAD PASSED AWAY, A BLIND MAN WHO LIVED NEAR THE MASTER'S TEMPLE SAID TO A FRIEND: 'SINCE I AM BLIND I CANNOT WATCH A PERSON'S FACE, SO I MUST JUDGE HIS CHARACTER BY THE SOUND OF HIS VOICE.'

'ORDINARILY WHEN I HEAR SOMEONE CONGRATULATE ANOTHER UPON HIS HAPPINESS OR SUCCESS, I ALSO HEAR A SECRET TONE OF ENVY. WHEN CONDOLENCE IS EXPRESSED FOR THE MISFORTUNE OF ANOTHER, I HEAR PLEASURE AND SATISFACTION, AS IF THE ONE CONDOLING WAS REALLY GLAD THERE WAS SOMETHING LEFT TO GAIN IN HIS OWN WORLD.'

'IN ALL MY EXPERIENCE, HOWEVER, BANKEI'S VOICE WAS ALWAYS SINCERE. WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED HAPPINESS, I HEARD NOTHING BUT HAPPINESS, AND WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED SORROW, SORROW WAS ALL I HEARD.'

This is the greatest homage that can be done to a man, to the memory of a man.

Bankei was one of the greatest Zen Masters. This blind man who used to live near the temple could not see people's faces. Blind people become very, very perceptive. Because they are blind they become very perceptive. Because their eyes are not functioning, the whole energy and the capacity to see moves to their ears. Their ears become substitutes for eyes.

And there is a difference between eyes and ears. Eyes are linear, they look only in one direction. Ears are not linear. The ears hear from all directions, the sound is caught from all directions. Ears are more total than eyes. Eyes just focus; eyes are more concentrated. Ears are more meditative; hence all the meditators close the eyes, because with the eyes the mind becomes linear. It is easy to concentrate with the eyes; difficult to meditate. Remember the difference: when you concentrate, you focus your mind exclusively on something, and everything else is excluded out of it. You include only the certain thing on which you are concentrating, and everything is excluded. You focus. But ears are more meditative. They include all, everything that happens around. If you are listening to me, you are also listening to the birds. It is simultaneously happening. To the ears, existence is simultaneous; to the eyes it is linear, gradual. If I start looking from this side to that side, first I will see Amida, then Teertha, then somebody else, then somebody else -- you are all here together. But eyes will create a linear procession which is a falsification of reality. You are not here in a queue, you are all here together. But if I listen with my ears, with closed eyes, to your breathing, your being -- then you are all here together.

Ears are closer to existence than eyes, and it is a misfortune that ears have been neglected and eyes have become very predominant. Psychologists say that eighty per cent of human knowledge is gained through the eyes. Eighty per cent! It is too much. It has become almost dictatorial. The eyes have become the dictators. Ears are closer to the existence, to the diffused existence, to the togetherness of existence.

There are methods, particularly in Zen, where one simply sits and listens -- listens to existence, not concentrating anywhere. It is easier for eyes to be closed; you can open them, you can close them. Your mind can manipulate your eyes, but your ears you cannot close. They are always open.

So if your emphasis moves from eyes to ears, you will become more open. The eyes can be manipulated more easily, the mind can play tricks with the eyes. With ears it is more difficult to play tricks.

If you have come across a blind man, you will see, it happens. He starts seeing by his ears. And he can see many subtle nuances which eyes cannot see. He becomes more perceptive. By the sound, by the tone, by small waverings in the tone, fluctuations, he starts seeing deeply into you. And because he is not part of the society -- society belongs to those who have eyes -- a blind man is almost an outcast, out of the society. So you don't know how to deceive a blind man. You know how to deceive people who have eyes but you don't know how to deceive a blind man. You have never practised it, it has never happened. Rarely do you come across a blind man.

He starts seeing many things. Even by your footsteps, by the sound of your footsteps, he starts recognising many things in you. Are you a man rooted in the earth? Grounded in the earth? A blind man can see just by your footsteps -- he can hear whether you are grounded or not.

Every person moves in a different way, walks in a different way. If a Buddha walks he is tremendously grounded. His legs are almost like the roots of a tree. He is in deep contact with the earth. He is nourished by the earth, the earth is nourished by him. There is a continuous transfer of energy.

Ordinarily people are uprooted trees. They walk as if they are uprooted; they don't have roots in the earth, they are not grounded. You try sometimes. Just stand with naked feet on the earth or on the sand on a beach and just feel that your legs are like roots and that they are reaching deep into the earth. And start swaying with the wind like a tree. Forget that you are a man, think of yourself as a tree, and soon you will see something transpiring between you and the earth. It may take a little time because you have forgotten the language but one day you will see something is transpiring. Something is given by the earth to the feet and you are also returning, responding. And the day it happens you will start walking in a totally new way -- rooted, solid, not fragile, not sad, more alive, full of energy. You will be less tired and your footsteps will have a different quality.

A blind man can immediately say whether this man is rooted in the earth or not.

A man who is a thief walks in a different way -- continuously afraid. The fear enters into the footsteps, into the sound of the footsteps. A man who is walking in his own home -- at home, at ease -- walks in a different way.

The blind man who lived near Bankei's temple must have known thousands of people. He was a beggar. He said, when Bankei died,

'ORDINARILY WHEN I HEAR SOMEONE CONGRATULATE ANOTHER UPON HIS HAPPINESS OR SUCCESS, I ALSO HEAR A SECRET TONE OF ENVY.'

When people congratulate others, deep down they are jealous. The envy is there. It is just a social formality that they are fulfilling. Their voice will show it. You watch, you start watching life. It is a beautiful thing to watch. Many things are happening around you continuously. You are missing tremendous experiences. Watch people's voices -- someone congratulating someone. Try to see what his voice says -- not what he is saying, but what his voice says. And immediately you will understand what this blind man means. There is a subtle jealousy, envy, pain, misery, frustration -- that somebody else has succeeded and he has not succeeded. It is just a lip service.

'WHEN CONDOLENCE IS EXPRESSED FOR THE MISFORTUNE OF ANOTHER, I HEAR PLEASURE AND SATISFACTION....'

The second thing is still deeper. The first thing you can understand. You can say, 'Right, true. There is jealousy when you congratulate somebody.' But the blind man says that when you condole, when you see somebody has died or somebody has gone bankrupt or somebody's house has burned, and you go and you sympathize and you say, 'It was very bad,' deep down there is a subtle satisfaction and pleasure. Because deep down you are feeling good that your house has not been burned, somebody else's has; that your wife has not died, somebody else's has; at least your child is still alive, somebody else's has died. God has not been so cruel to you. You feel a subtle joy.

Whenever you sympathize or express condolence, watch. Or when you watch others doing that, just look deep down into their voice -- something else is also present; bound to be so. In your love, hatred is present. Even when you laugh, something deep down goes on crying within you. Your laughter is not pure; your laughter can be changed into crying very easily, your crying can be changed into laughter very easily. You know it. You love a person and you can hate him any moment. You were ready to die for him, and now you are ready to kill him. A friend can become foe any moment. Man is contradictory, schizophrenic.

And the blind man said,

'IN ALL MY EXPERIENCE, HOWEVER, BANKEI'S VOICE WAS ALWAYS SINCERE. WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED HAPPINESS, I HEARD NOTHING BUT HAPPINESS...'

It was pure, uncontaminated by the opposite, uncorrupted, uncontradicted. It was simple. It was not complex. It was sincere.

'...AND WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED SORROW, SORROW WAS ALL I HEARD.'

This simplicity is the goal of Zen; this sincerity is the goal of Zen.

I was reading a few lines of T. S. Eliot the other day:

A CONDITION OF COMPLETE SIMPLICITY (COSTING NOT LESS THAN EVERYTHING) AND ALL SHALL BE WELL AND ALL MANNER OF THINGS SHALL BE WELL WHEN THE TONGUES OF FLAME ARE IN-FOLDED INTO THE CROWNED KNOT OF FIRE AND THE FIRE AND THE ROSE ARE ONE.

They express the very essence of Zen. AND THE FIRE AND THE ROSE ARE ONE. There comes a moment of simplicity when the energy that is invested in hatred and the energy that is invested in love are released from their polar opposites. AND THE FIRE AND THE ROSE ARE ONE.

Then a man is simply simple. He has no contradictions in him. You can taste him; his taste is always the same. And whatsoever he does he does it totally -- there is no other way. He cannot do even a small thing without being total in it. Even a small gesture of his hand and he is totally there in that gesture. He looks at you and he is there in his look -- totally there. He touches you -- it is not only his hand that touches you, it is his whole being.

Ordinarily we are manipulating things -- chairs, tables, a thousand and one things -- and we have forgotten that hands are meant for something more also, not just manipulating things. So when you touch your beloved's hand, you touch as if you were touching a table. You have forgotten that hands are not just to manipulate, they are to give also. The hands have become dead.

When a man like Bankei touches, then you will know what touch is. He will flow through his touch totally into you; he will pour himself into you. His touch will be a gift, his look will be a gift, because he has attained. He has given the ultimate gift of his own being to himself -- AND THE FIRE AND THE ROSE ARE ONE.

Listen to your heart, move according to your heart, whatsoever the stake:

A CONDITION OF COMPLETE SIMPLICITY

COSTING NOT LESS THAN EVERYTHING....

To be simple is arduous, because to be simple it costs everything that you have. You have to lose all to be simple. That's why people have chosen to be complex and they have forgotten how to be simple.

But only a simple heart throbs with God, hand in hand. Only a simple heart sings with God in deep harmony. To reach to that point you will have to find your heart, your own throb, your own beat.

'THIS IS MY WAY,' Nietzsche used to say. 'WHERE IS YOURS? THUS I ANSWERED THOSE WHO ASKED ME THE WAY. FOR THE WAY...THAT DOES NOT EXIST.'

'THIS IS MY WAY, WHERE IS YOURS? THUS I ANSWERED THOSE WHO ASKED ME THE WAY. FOR THE WAY...THAT DOES NOT EXIST.' Only ways exist -- THE way does not exist. Your way, my way, yes -- but THE way, no.

Zen is an absolutely individual path. It is not a religion in the sense of Christianity, it is not a religion in the sense of any organization. One has to become individual. The word 'individual' is good. It simply means: one who cannot be divided. Indivisible means individual. You are not yet individuals because you are split. Become one and you will become individuals.

Great is the stake, great is the risk, but it is worth it.

Dang Dang Doko Dang

Chapter #4

Chapter title: When Grapes Are Sour

14 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 7606140

ShortTitle: DANG04

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 104 mins

The first question:

'HAPPINESS IS NOT BEING SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW WHAT TO WORRY ABOUT.' PLEASE COMMENT.

This must have been said by a very unhappy man, and yet a very egoistic one. He cannot recognise the fact that unhappiness is created by being unintelligent. He is trying to save his ego. He is saying that the grapes are sour.

To be unhappy no intelligence is needed. Everybody is capable of being unhappy but happiness is very, very rare. Great talent is needed. Not only intellect, intelligence is needed. Only rarely does a Buddha, a Krishna, become happy. It is almost impossible to be happy.

So let us try to understand what unhappiness is. Unhappiness is the incapacity to understand life, the incapacity to understand oneself, the incapacity to create a harmony between you and the existence. Unhappiness is a discord between you and reality; something is in conflict between you and existence. Happiness is when nothing is in conflict -- when you are together, and you are together with existence also. When there is a harmony, when everything is flowing without any conflict, smooth, relaxed, then you are happy. Happiness is possible only with great understanding, an understanding like the peaks of the Himalayas. Less than that won't do

Anybody is capable of being unhappy any moment, that's how the whole world is so unhappy. To be happy you will have to create such a great understanding about you and about the existence in which you exist, that everything falls in line, in deep accord, in rhythm. And between your energy and the energy that surrounds you a dance happens and you start moving in step with life.

Happiness is when you disappear. Unhappiness is when you are too much. You are the discord, your absence will be the accord. Sometimes you have glimpses of happiness -- when by some accident you are not there. Looking at nature, or looking at the stars, or holding the hand of your beloved, or making love...in some moments you are not there. If you are there, even there there will be no happiness. If you are making love to your beloved and it is really as you express it, a 'making', then there will be no happiness.

Love cannot be made. You can be in it or not in it, but there ii no way to make it. The English expression is ugly. To 'make love' is absurd. How can you make it? If the maker is there, the doer is there, the technician goes on existing. And if you are following some techniques from Masters and Johnson or Vatasyayana or some other source, and you are not lost in it, happiness will not happen. When you are lost you don't know where you are going, you don't know what you are doing, you are possessed by the whole, the part does not exist separate from the whole... then there is an orgasmic experience. That is what happiness is.

For happiness you will need tremendous intelligence. And I say INTELLIGENCE, not intellect, knowingly. Intellect you can get from the market, intellect you can get from the books, intellect you can get from the university. Intellect is transferable, intellect is mechanical, intellect is of the bio-computer you call mind. Intelligence is not of the mind, intelligence is of the no-mind -- what Zen people call no-mind. Intelligence has nothing to do with information, knowledge; it has only one element and that element is of awareness.

If you are intelligent then your life will be of happiness. Why is intelligence needed? Because life in itself is meaningless. Meaning is not something sitting there and you have just to reach and possess it. Meaning has to be created. People come to me and they ask,'What is the meaning of life?' As if life has any meaning. Life has no meaning -- that is the beauty of life. That's why it is freedom. You are free to create your own meaning and I am free to create my meaning. If life has a meaning then we will all be just slaves and that meaning will not be worth anything. Life is freedom. It does not impose any meaning on you; it simply gives you an opportunity to create your own meaning. The meaning has to be created. It is not like a thing that you can uncover, you will have to become your meaning, you will have to give a rebirth to yourself. That's why I say much intelligence is needed. Only when you feel meaning in life will you be happy, not before it.

Life has no meaning in itself, you have to bring meaning into it. Life is just raw material, you have to create your meaning out of it. You have to create your God. God is not there waiting for you. You have to create it within your heart, within your innermost core of being. Only then will you be happy.

To create meaning you will have to be a creator. Painters paint, create paintings; poets write, create poetry; dancers create dance... but these are all just fragments. A religious person creates himself; the religious person is the greatest artist there is. All other artists are just finding substitutes and one day or other they will become frustrated. You have written many poems, then one day you realise,'What is the point? Why go on writing?' You have painted, then one day suddenly you realise,'What is the point? For whom? For what?' One day you will die and all will be left and will disappear. So what is the point?

Unless you feel a point of immortality in whatsoever you are doing you cannot be happy, and that point of immortality is felt only when you create immortality within yourself.

Gurdjieff used to say, and very rightly, that man is not born with a soul. All other religions say that man is born with a soul, but Gurdjieff's saying is tremendously significant -- man is not born with a soul. And unless you create it you will not have any soul, you will exist empty and you will die empty. You will have to create it, that's why I say great intelligence is needed.

This statement must have been made by someone who was very unhappy and yet so egoistic that he could not or would not recognise the fact that it is he who is creating his unhappiness. So he says, 'HAPPINESS IS NOT BEING SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW WHAT TO WORRY ABOUT.' He is saying that to be happy one has to be ignorant, to be happy one has to be stupid. Then a Buddha is stupid, then a Jesus is stupid, then people who are in madhouses are the only intelligent people in the world.

But this man is trying to save his ego. To be intelligent is arduous, it will need tremendous effort on your part. You will have to destroy much that is rubbish within you, you will have to create almost a fire of consciousness so that what is useless is burned and only that which is pure gold is saved. Very few people are ready to go through that hardship, through that discipline which creates intelligence. People want short-cuts.

A man went to see his psychiatrist and said that every night he was visited by a ten-foot monster with two heads. And he was suffering tremendously, sleep was not possible, he was becoming more and more miserable and any day he could collapse. He had even thought about committing suicide.

'Well, I think I might be able to cure you,' said the psychiatrist,'but I am afraid it will be a lengthy process and it will cost you about three hundred dollars.'

'Three hundred dollars?' said the man.'Forget it! I will just go home and make friends with it.'

That's how to be intelligent is so difficult and it costs so much. You have to put at stake whatsoever you have. It is a cross. In fact, you have to die to be intelligent because only when you are reborn will you be intelligent, not before it. And the cross has to be carried on one's own shoulders, nobody else can carry your cross. You will have to carry your cross to your own Golgotha, there is no other way. Many times you will stumble on the road, many times you will be so tired and exhausted that you will have to rest. Many times you will think that people who have never desired intelligence, awareness, are blessed.'What have I chosen?' Many times doubt and suspicion will arise in your mind.'Is there any goal or am I simply carrying a cross and wasting my life?' Many times you would like to go back to the world, many will be the temptations. But if you can stick it, if you can remain on the path against all odds, one day intelligence flowers.

It is almost like a seed: the seed cannot know what is going to happen, the seed has never known the flower. And the seed cannot even believe that he has the potentiality to become a beautiful flower. Long is the journey, and it is always safer not to go on that journey because unknown is the path, nothing is guaranteed. Nothing can be guaranteed. Thousand and one are the hazards of the journey, many are the pitfalls -- and the seed is secure, hidden inside a hard core. But the seed tries, it makes an effort, it drops the hard shell which is its security, it starts moving. Immediately the fight starts: the struggle with the soil, with the stones, with the rocks. And the seed was very hard and the sprout will be very, very soft and dangers will be many.-

There was no danger for the seed, the seed could have survived for millennia, but for the sprout many are the dangers. But the sprout starts: towards the unknown, towards the sun, towards the source of light, not knowing where, not knowing why. Great is the cross to be carried but a dream possesses the seed and the seed moves. One day.... And there is much competition: other trees are there, other plants are there, and he has to cross all of them because only then will the sun and the sky be available. And then, no one knows. But one day it flowers, it happens.

The same is the path for man. It is arduous. Much courage will be needed.

It is said about Dr. Albert Schweitzer that he was playing host to several European visitors at the hospital in Lambarene in French Equatorial Africa.

'This heat is unbearable,' one of the visitors moaned.'What is the temperature?'

'I don't know,' said Schweitzer.'I don't have a thermometer here.'

'No thermometer?'

'No,' replied the doctor. 'If I knew how hot it was I don't think I'd be able to endure it either.'

People remain unintelligent because if you know, if you start understanding, it will be almost impossible to endure the life that you are living. You are living in hell.

I have heard about a man, a very intellectual man, a philosopher, who died. He came naked before God and God opened the book of the life of the man. God went on to recount all the sins of the man written therein. The man had been guilty of practically all sins including cruelty, lack of charity, thievery, ingratitude, disloyalty, lust and lack of love. To all these charges the man answered, 'Even so did I.'

Thereupon God closed the book of the life of the man and said, 'Surely, I will send you to hell.'

The man said he could not do so because hell was where he had always lived.

So then God, feeling a little disturbed that he could not send this man to hell, feeling almost impotent, not knowing what to do.... Because he was right -- how can you send a man to hell who has always lived in hell? So then God said he would send him to heaven -- -just to save his ego.

And the man cried out,'Thou canst not!'

And God said, 'Wherefore can I not send thee to heaven?'

And the man answered and said, 'Because never, in no place, have I been able to imagine it.'

And there was silence in the House of Judgement.

How can you send a man to heaven who cannot even imagine it, who has never tasted it? How can you send a man to heaven who has not created it in his own soul? Impossible. He defeated God. Hell is not possible because he has lived there and there is no other hell. Heaven is not possible unless you create it. Unless you carry it within yourself you cannot find it anywhere.

It is said in all the religious books of the world that saints go to heaven, but it is a half-statement. They go to heaven because they live in heaven; they go to heaven because they have created their heaven. In fact, to be in heaven, you will have to have heaven within you -- there is no other way.

To be intelligent is to create your own heaven, is to create your own happiness, otherwise there is none. If you create it, you have it. It is just like breathing: if you breathe you are alive, if you don't breathe you are not alive. If you create happiness, you are happy; if you don't create, you are unhappy. Unhappiness needs no creativity on your part. Unhappiness is a negative state, it need not be created. Happiness is not negative, it is a positive state, it has to be created. Absence can be there but the presence has to be created.

Remember it and don't become victims of such quotes. In the West there are many foolish statements in circulation. These statements may appear to be very penetrating -- they are not.

The second question:

Question 1

DURING MY DANCING MEDITATION I KEPT HAVING FLASHES ABOUT WHAT YOU SAID CONCERNING THE SOCIETY, DRUGS, ETC. AND WONDERING THAT NOW THAT I AM INTOXICATED BY THE ULTIMATE DRUG, YOU, OSHO, CAN ANYONE TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME? BRING ME DOWN FROM THAT ETERNAL HIGH?

No one except you. You can destroy it, nobody else. It is totally your creation. You can destroy it or you can nourish it. Remember it, because it is very difficult to move on heights. We are not attuned for heights, we are attuned for crawling on the earth. That's why whenever you attain to a high you cannot remain on that altitude for long. Sooner or later you descend back into the dark valley of your life. Then it becomes just a memory. Not only that, it becomes a frustration because now you know that height is possible. And you have lost your path, you are back in the valley. In fact, you were better before, in a way -- you had not known the height, you had not known the light, so you were thinking that the valley is the only life. Now that you have tasted something you will never be at rest in the valley.

So if you are feeling high, if you are touching some altitude within your consciousness, if some sky is opening, then be very careful because very fragile is the flower of consciousness -- very, very fragile. It can be destroyed in a single moment of unawareness. It needs lives together to create it and a single moment of unalertness to destroy it. It is very fragile.

But nobody else can take it from you, that thing is certain, nobody can rob you of it. It is something within you. So you can be killed but it cannot be killed. It is absolutely yours. Even if I want to take it back from you, I cannot take it because, in fact, I have not given it to you. You have given it to yourself.

My presence may have helped as a catalytic agent but that's all. Even I cannot take it back from you.

But don't be satisfied with this -- that nobody can take it -- you can destroy it. The danger will come from you, the trouble will come from you. So don't look around for the enemy, look within. It is a great gift that you have given to yourself, now watch for the inner enemy: the anger, the hatred, the jealousy, the envy. They are watching. They are watching you flying so high, they are getting ready to pull you down, to pull you back to the valley where they think you belong. Watch there -- the enemy is within just as the friend is within.

Mahavir has said that you are your enemy if you are not alert, you are your friend if you are alert.

A great treasure is happening to you. You cannot remain unconscious as you were before because before you had no treasure, there was nothing to be guarded. Now the more you grow inside, the more you will have to guard, to protect.

The third question:

Question 2

I KEPT WONDERING WHAT YOU MEANT ABOUT OUR HAVING TO GO ASTRAY -- WONDERING WHAT I WOULD HAVE TO DO, AND THEN SUDDENLY REALISED, WE ARE ASTRAY.'

True. A great insight has happened to you. Man is astray. The sin is not to be committed, it has already been committed. That is the meaning of the Christian parable that Adam committed the sin -- the first man. Man is born astray, that is the meaning of it, we are already in sin.

The word 'sin' is very, very beautiful. The original root from which it comes means 'missing the target'. Sin does not mean sin, it simply means missing the target.

We have gone astray, from the very beginning man is astray, so there;s nothing for you to do to go astray. Wherever you are you are missing your goal, your target. You don't know who you are, you don't know why you are, you don't know where you are headed -- and for what. You just go on like driftwood, wherever the winds carry you.

Remember, this is the first realisation,'I am astray,' which will make you come back to the path. The moment Adam realised,'I have committed the sin,' he was returning back home. The moment you realise that whatsoever you are and wherever you are you are wrong.... It is very difficult to realise it because the mind tries to protect, to rationalise. The mind belongs to the world. It goes on protecting you -- not exactly you but your 'astrayness'. You will have to drop all protections, all rationalisations. Once you understand that you are astray, you suddenly realise that you have nothing to save in this world -- the wealth, the power, the prestige, nothing is of worth. It is all rubbish. And you are losing something tremendously valuable for rubbish; you are selling yourself and purchasing toys; you are destroying the possibility of creating a soul for nothing.

This is a basic realisation, the first breakthrough. Feel happy about it if you have recognised the fact that you are astray, if you have recognised the fact that you are wrong -- not wrong in any particular way, but in a general sense. Not wrong because you are angry, not wrong because you are full of hatred, not wrong because you have done this or that -- not in any particular way but in a general sense one feels one is astray. Then only the door opens for growth, then suddenly you start looking in another dimension. Then you don't look out, you start looking in because whatsoever you do outside will lead you more and more away. The more you chase shadows outside, the more you will be losing yourself in the world.

One starts closing one's eyes, one starts feeling and touching one's being. The first thing to know is 'who am I?' -- everything else is secondary. And if this basic thing is solved, if this basic problem is solved, if this basic mystery is penetrated, then all else is solved automatically. And if you don't solve this, and you don't answer the basic quest of man -- 'Who am I?' -- 'then whatsoever you do is irrelevant.

What are you doing? You are not trying to realise yourself, you are trying to compete with others. Nobody is trying to be oneself, everybody is trying to defeat the other. The whole world lives like a competitive madhouse: somebody purchases a car, now you have to purchase a car, and a bigger one. You may not need it but now your ego is hurt. Somebody makes a big house, now you have to make one, and a bigger one. This is how life goes on being wasted. Why should you be worried what others are doing? That is their thing to do; if they feel good, let them do it. You should look at your own need.

But there are two types of people ordinarily: one who is competing with others and another type who goes on condemning others that they are doing wrong. Both are wrong. Who are you to decide? If somebody is making a big house, who are you to decide if he is doing right or wrong? It is none of your concern. It is for him to think about. You should only think about whether what you are doing is for you to do.

People go to absurd lengths in competition, and people go on dying every day. One day death possesses you, then you remember that your whole life was wasted with fighting others. And it was pointless. You should have put your whole energy into realising yourself.

I have heard a very beautiful anecdote.

A Catholic church and a synagogue happened to be on opposite sides of the same street. And a rivalry sprang up between the parish priest and the rabbi. When the church was repainted, the synagogue had to be stuccoed. When the priest organised a parish procession of one thousand witnesses through the town, the rabbi organised a procession of two thousand of the faithful.

The priest bought a new car, so the rabbi bought a bigger one. Then the priest had a solemn ceremony outside his church of blessing his new car and the rabbi came out with a large pair of pliers, went up to his car and cut three inches off the exhaust pipe.

Circumcision! People go on to absurd lengths. One has to defeat the other anyhow. One has to take over the other.

Remember, this foolishness is very ingrained in humanity, and unless you drop this foolishness you will not be able to know yourself, you will not be able to come back home. You will go on moving more and more further away, becoming more and more astray. And one day suddenly you will realise that the whole edifice has collapsed. It was foundationless, you were making a house of cards. A small breeze came and everything disappeared. Or, you were trying to sail in a paper boat.

Man as he is, is simply living in a dream -- the dream of the ego, ambition, power, prestige. The religious man is one who has come to understand that all this is going astray.

One day it happened that I was at Mulla Nasruddin's house. Mulla Nasruddin's teenager son had dented a fender of the family car.

'What did your father say when you told him?' I asked him.

'Should I leave out the cuss words?' he said.

'Yes, of course.'

'In that case,' said the boy,'he did not say a word.'

One day when you look back on your life you will not see a single act that was intelligent -- all were stupidities, foolishnesses. You will feel simply ashamed. The sooner you realise it, the better.

This is what SANNYAS is all about: a recognition that the way you have lived up to now was absurd; a gesture that you would like to discontinue with your past. By changing the name and by changing the dress nothing is changed, it is a simple gesture that now you feel ashamed with the old identity. It was so foolish that it is better to forget all about it. A new nucleus, a new name, so you can start afresh.

And it is easier to drop the past than to renovate it. It is easier to be completely cut off from the past rather than to modify it. You can paint a foolish thing, you can modify it, but you cannot make it wise -- it will remain foolish. It is better to drop it.

So if this recognition has come to you that we are astray, feel blessed, and don't forget it. Remember it continuously. Unless you have come back to the path, go on remembering it. Just recognising it once won't do, you will have to live it, remember it for a long time continuously, again and again, so the hammering continues -- whatsoever you have done in the past, it is finished.

At least if you remember that it was all wrong... and I say ALL wrong. Don't try to decide that a few things were good. I insist: either ALL things are wrong or ALL things are right. There is no other way. It is not possible that a foolish man can do a few things that are right. And the vice versa is also not possible that a wise man can do a few things that are wrong. A wise man does ALL right and a fool goes on doing ALL wrong. But the fool would like to choose at least a few things right, the fool would say,'Yes, I have done many things wrong, but not all.' Then those things that he saves and says were right will become the centre for his ego again. So be totally frustrated with your past.

Fritz Perls used to say that all therapy is nothing but skillful frustration. The great therapist is one who goes on frustrating you skillfully -- that's what I am doing here. I have to show you that whatsoever you have been doing was wrong, because only that understanding can save you. Once you recognise that the whole past was wrong, you simply drop it, you don't bother to choose. There is nothing to choose. It all came out of your unawareness and it was all wrong. Your hatred was wrong, your love also; your anger was wrong, your compassion also. If you seek deep down you will always find wrong reasons for your compassion and wrong reasons for your love. A foolish man is foolish and whatsoever he does is foolish.

So it will have to be remembered continuously, it should become a constant remembrance -- what Buddha used to call mindfulness. One should remain mindful so it is not repeated again. Because only mindfulness will protect and you will not be able to repeat your past again -- otherwise the mind tends to repeat it.

The fourth question:

Question 3

OSHO, I HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH CHUANG TZU, WITH JOSHU, WITH MUMON, WITH BODHIDHARMA. HOW CAN I NOT FOLLOW THEM? I FEEL ALREADY THEY HAVE TRANSFORMED ME. HOW CAN I NOT BE THANKFUL?

Let me tell you one anecdote first.

When Rabbi Nor, Rabbi Moudekai's son, assumed the succession after his father's death, his disciples noted that there were a number of ways in which he conducted himself differently to his father, and asked him about this.

'I do just as my father did,' he replied.'He did not imitate and I do not imitate.'

Meditate over this anecdote. He said,'I do just as my father did. He did not imitate and I do not imitate.' If you really understand Joshu, Bodhidharma or me, you will not imitate -- because I have not imitated, because Bodhidharma never imitated anybody.

Joshu used to say to his disciples,'If you utter Buddha's name, go and rinse your mouth immediately.' Joshu also used to say,'If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him immediately.' And he used to worship Buddha every day.

Ordinarily Zen looks puzzling, but it is clear-cut. It is following Buddha. When Joshu says,'If you meet the Buddha on the way kill him,' he is a right disciple because that was Buddha's essential message. When Buddha was dying, his last utterance in this world was,'APPO DEEPO BHAVA' -- 'Be a light unto yourself.' Don't follow anybody. Anand was crying, weeping because Buddha was leaving the body and he said to Buddha,'You are leaving and I have not yet become enlightened. What about me? What will happen to me? The world will be absolutely dark for me -- you were the light. And now you are going. Have compassion on us.' Buddha opened his eyes and said,'APPO DEEPO BHAVA. Be a light unto yourself, Anand, nobody can be a light for you.'

When Joshu says,'Kill the Buddha if you meet him on the way,' he is a true follower of Buddha. In Zen, following is very, very delicate. Great intelligence will be needed if you want to be a follower of Zen. It is very easy to be a Christian or a Hindu; it is very mathematical. To follow Zen it is very, very delicate and poetic -- because the very following means not following; because that is the message of the Zen Masters, don't follow.

It is reported that it happened in China that a Zen Master had organised a great celebration. People asked him about it because that type of celebration was only arranged at one's Master's birthday. Nobody had ever known this man to follow anybody. He had been to a certain Master but it was known that the Master had refused to accept him as a disciple. So for whom was he celebrating?

He said,'Because that Master refused to accept me as his disciple, he is my Master.'

They said,'We don't follow. What do you mean? When he refused, he refused. He never accepted you as his disciple.'

He said,'That's why I am celebrating. If he had accepted me I would have been lost. He threw me to me, to myself. He said, "Be a light unto yourself." When he rejected, he accepted me. He said, "I will not allow you to imitate me. I will not allow you to become a disciple of mine. I will not allow you to become an imitator, a carbon copy." His compassion was great, he loved me tremendously, that's why he rejected me.'

Zen is a little difficult to understand; its ways are very poetic, zig-zag. Christianity is like a super-highway; Zen is more like a zig-zag labyrinth in a forest. It turns, moves, sometimes in this direction, sometimes in that, sometimes in almost the opposite direction -- you were going to the east and suddenly you turn and start moving to the west. But that's how it is and that's how it should be, because life is not mathematics and life is not like a super-highway. Life is wild. In fact, no path exists -- you walk and you create your own path.

The questioner has said, I HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH CHUANG TZU.... Good, but falling in love with Chuang Tzu means falling in love with oneself. If you want to follow Chuang Tzu you will have to follow yourself, there is no other way. People like Chuang Tzu don't give you ordinary commandments, they don't give you ten commandments -- do this, don't do that. They don't give you a morality. In fact, they don't give you any discipline, they simply impart their awareness, because they know that any commandment, any fixed commandment, is going to become a slavery to you, it will not liberate you. And life changes so much that something that is right this moment may not be right the next moment, and you will be caught in your discipline. Discipline is rigid, discipline is dead, discipline never changes, discipline is not a process. Once fixed, it is fixed forever. Look at the Judaic ten commandments. Moses fixed them, he brought these commandments written on a stone, slabs of stone, dead. Now Jews and Christians have followed them and you may not improve upon them, you may not change them. Life goes on changing. They have become a dead weight and nobody follows them, but still people go on paying lip service to them.

Zen Masters have not given any rigid discipline to anybody. They simply impart their awareness. They say,'You be aware and you will find your discipline moment to moment.'

I have heard, it happened.

The sales manager believed in super-efficiency.'Jones,' he said to the new traveller,'you will take the nine forty-five to Leeds. Your task there will take you two hours and fifty minutes and you will have time for a sandwich and a cup of tea in the station buffet before catching the three forty-five to Manchester. At Manchester go straight to Mennin and Company and get the details of that order. That will take you thirty-five minutes which will enable you to catch the five-thirty back here. Is that all clear?'

'Yes, sir,' said the helpless representative. And off he went.

But at one the sales manager was enraged to receive a telegram from the new salesman which read: 'Leeds buffet out of sandwiches. Stop. What shall I do?'

This is going to happen. If details are so important, this is going to happen.

Zen Masters have not given any details. They simply impart their awareness and say,'You be aware. Awareness will show you the way in each moment. What is needed, you will know. Respond knowingly, alert, that's all.' How can it be decided beforehand what you should do? Who knows? Each circumstance is so unique that it is difficult to decide. And people who decide always encage humanity, imprison humanity.

Zen is a path of liberation. It liberates. It is freedom from the first step to the last. You are not required to follow any rules; you are required to find out your own rules and your own life in the light of awareness.

So keep your light of awareness there, keep your lamp burning -- that's all. Then you know what to do, where to move, where not to move. Once a rigid discipline is given it makes you a prisoner.

So if you love Bodhidharma you are falling in a very dangerous love. If you love me you have fallen in a very dangerous love. I am not going to give you any rigid discipline. People ordinarily expect everything ready-made. They want somebody else to fix their lives -- because that's how they have been brought up. Everybody says to them from the very childhood,'Do this, don't do that.' They have lived on do's and don't's. From the mothers milk they have received commandments and they don't know, if they are left to themselves, what to do. Even if sometimes they want to be left by themselves -- because there is a deep urge to be free -- they don't know what to do. Again they will start finding somebody to lead them. People have been forced to become followers. You are not being trusted to become your own leader and your own follower.

Zen is a way which makes you the follower and the master. The Master is there just to indicate: subtle indications, very indirect. And if you are looking for rigid rules you are looking in a wrong direction.

And remember, you say that you have fallen in love with them, how can you not follow them? Love does not force anybody to follow: love wants to make you free, love wants to give you freedom. In fact, the person who is forcing you to follow him may be on an ego trip himself, may be trying to dominate you, may be trying to destroy you, may be trying to cripple you. No, people who have known don't destroy you. They help you to be yourself, they don't force you to follow them. They only want you to understand them. That's enough. Understanding is more than enough. Nothing else is needed.

Imitation is a substitute for understanding, and a very poor substitute. If understanding is there, there is no question of imitating or of following: you will follow understanding. Keep this very clear: if you follow your understanding, you will be following me. By and by you will see that your path and my path are running parallel. By and by you will see that you are following me if you follow your understanding. If you follow me and forget your understanding sooner or later you will see that I am gone and you are left in darkness. The real way to follow me is not to follow me but to follow your understanding -- then even when I am gone you will be following me. It looks paradoxical but Zen is paradoxical.

HOW CAN I NOT FOLLOW THEM? I FEEL THAT ALREADY THEY HAVE TRANSFORMED ME THROUGH YOU. HOW CAN I NOT BE THANKFUL? Be thankful, be grateful, but there is no need to follow them or imitate them.

Gratefulness is a totally different thing. Thankfulness is a totally different thing than following a person. Gratitude is needed, it is good to be grateful, it will help you to flower. Gratitude never cripples anybody, but if just because of gratitude you think that you have to follow, then already you have destroyed gratitude, already you have destroyed the freedom, the flowering that gratitude gives to you, already you have started to pay.

If you think by following, you are paying a debt, then you are not grateful, you are bargaining.

One day suddenly you will see that you have paid enough. Or you may even get annoyed that you have paid more than enough. And if you are paying your Master in any way trying to pay the debt -- then you don't love your Master, because these things cannot be returned back, there is no way. You can pay everybody else back but you can never pay your Master back -- because it is not a bargain, it is not a commodity. He gives you out of his fullness, he gives you because he has too much and he does not know what to do with it, he gives you because he has to give -- in fact, he is grateful to you that you accept it, he is grateful to you that you didn't reject his gift. You could have rejected it. It is such a deep exchange that the Master is grateful to the disciple that the disciple accepted his gift, and the disciple is grateful to the Master that he thought him worthy. But there is no returning, you cannot pay it back. That would be almost profane, a sacrilege.

Be grateful, be thankful forever and ever, but don't try to make it a duty -- that because you are grateful you have to follow -- otherwise sooner or later you will get very angry. If you are grateful towards me because you have to be, then sooner or later you will be angry also.

Duty is not a good word, it is a four-letter dirty word. Love is religious; duty is social. Love is spiritual; duty is moral. Love is of the transcendental; duty is legal. You serve your mother because you say,'This is my duty.' Better not serve her, leave her and let her die, but don't call it duty, it is ugly. If it is love, from where does this word 'duty' come in? Duty is something forced upon you; reluctantly you have to do it, it is a social obligation, a commitment. It is because she is your mother that you have to do it -- not because of love. If you love her then you serve her, but then service has a fragrance. You are not burdened, deep down you are not thinking about when she is going to die, deep down you are not planning that when she dies you will be finished with this burden. You are flowing, flowing while you are serving her; you are enjoying it, it is a delight that your mother is still alive. When your wife is just your wife and not your beloved, then it is a duty, but when you love your wife, then it is different.

A friend of Mulla Nasruddin was talking to him. He said,'My wife is an angel.'

Mulla said,'But mine is still alive.'

We don't love each other, we have forgotten the language of love.

Feel thankful, feel loving, deep in gratitude, but go on your way. Try to create more awareness and understanding and intelligence. Radiate with intelligence to express your gratitude -- there is no other way.

The fifth question:

Question 4

I HAVE GOT A FUTURE-EGO. IT KEEPS TELLING ME WHAT A SUPER PERSON I AM GOING TO TURN OUT TO BE IN A FEW YEARS' TIME WHEN I AM FINISHED WITH THIS TRIP. IT IS VERY SMUG AND IN THE MEANTIME, LIKE RIGHT NOW, IT IS PRETENDING TO BE SO HUMBLE, SO MALLEABLE, SO ADAPTABLE, AND SO UNTOUCHABLE. COULD YOU HELP ME TO GET AT IT? IT IS BUGGING ME.

Who is this me?

If you think the ego is bugging you, who are you? It is again an ego trip. Now the ego is taking a very subtle form. When the ego is not, you are not. Ego is all that defines you, that makes you say 'i' or 'me'. Ego is your definition, your boundary, ego divides you from others. It is ego, that's why you can say 'i' and 'you'. If the ego disappears, who is 'i' and who is 'you'?

Now you are taking a very subtle form. You say the ego is bugging you. Who are you then? Just see the point. If you don't see the point you can go on playing the game ad infinitum. You can become humble and the ego will be there. You can even become egoless and the ego will be there. Ego is very subtle and very cunning are its ways.

A psychiatrist once asked his patient, Mulla Nasruddin, if the latter suffered from fantasies of self-importance.

'No,' replied the Mulla.'On the contrary, I think of myself as much less than I really am.'

Now you are going on a very pious trip. The ego can become pious. It can become so humble that nobody can feel it. You may even start feeling,'Now it is not bugging me,' but if 'me' is there, it is there.

The poison has become very purified but a purified poison is more poisonous. That's why ordinary people have ordinary egos, but the so-called religious people have pious egos -- they are more dangerous.

And you say, I HAVE GOT A FUTURE-EGO. No, the ego is always of the past, it cannot be of the future. Even when you are thinking of the future it is nothing but projected past. Even if you are thinking,'Tomorrow I am going to become the greatest man in the world,' the idea of the greatest man and the idea of the tomorrow both come from your past. The past accumulated is the substance of the ego. In the past many things were happy and many things were unhappy -- in the future you will like to modify. You would like to drop all that was unpleasant and you would like to collect all that was pleasant. That is your future ego, but it is not future, it is simply the past reshuffled, chosen again, selected. In the past there were many things you did not like -- in the future you will drop them. But the ego belongs to the past, ego IS of the past, ego is a ghost following you -- it comes from the past. And it is always dead.

Just think: if you have no past, can you have any ego? Meditate over it. If your mind is suddenly completely washed of the past -- now there are techniques available, mindwashing techniques -- if your mind is completely washed of the past will you have any ego? How will you have an ego? You will again become like a child, again innocent, you will again have to start from ABC. Again you will create an ego because mindwashing cannot help, the roots are deeper. The seeds are hidden very, very deep inside you; they will again sprout, again the tree of the ego will start spreading. But it is of the ego, it is of the past.

You don't know the future so how can you think about it? You can only think about the past redecorated, refined, modified.

IT KEEPS TELLING ME WHAT A SUPER PERSON I WILL TURN OUT TO BE IN A FEW YEARS' TIME WHEN I AM FINISHED WITH THIS TRIP. If this is a trip, you will never be finished with it. You may be finished with this but then you will choose another trip. Trips never end, they never come to any end -- one changes one train for another, one town for another, one master for another, one religion for another, but the trip continues. If this is not a trip, only then can it end. If to be with me has nothing to do with the future, if to be with me is of the present, if you are here now with me, then it is not a trip. We are not going anywhere -- at least, I'm not going anywhere. You may be but I'm not going anywhere. So with me there is going to be no trip. If you want to be with me you have to drop all trips.

SANNYAS is not a trip. It is an understanding in which you drop all the trips, in which you say,'Now I have arrived. Finished. Now I am not going anywhere. Now there is no future and no desire to go anywhere. Now I have to come to terms with the present, now I will be living in the herenow.'

If SANNYAS is also a trip for you then it is not going to help much. It will become like other trips, sooner or later you will be fed up with it, frustrated with it. Every trip is going to end in a frustration, no trip can fulfil you, because the fulfillment is in the herenow. A trip is directed somewhere else. A trip is desire, hope. And fulfillment is not a desire, not a hope; fulfillment is just to be herenow and just to accept the way you are, the being you are.

And start enjoying. I am not preparing you for any subtle enjoyment in the future, my whole method is to enjoy it right now. Who knows? There may be no future. Why waste this moment? Enjoy, delight! There is no need to sacrifice this moment for any other moment, because any other moment, if it is ever to come, is going to be just like this moment. So why sacrifice this moment? I am against all sacrifice. I don't tell you to sacrifice the present for the future -- that has been told to you by your parents, your teachers, your educational system, your society. They all say sacrifice the present for the future. I say don't sacrifice anything. Live it, delight in it, so that you can learn how to be blissful. Once you know it, even in the future you will be able to delight.

Those moments are going to be the same, can't you see the fact? In the past it is the same time. In fact, the very idea that time is passing is stupid. We are in time, nothing is passing. It is our desire that gives the delusion of passing time. Once you drop the desire suddenly you start laughing: nothing is passing, everything IS. It is the same, it has always been the same, it will always be the same. It is the same eternity surrounding you like an ocean. Live in it, enjoy it. Through enjoyment you will become capable of more enjoyment -- more brings more. The richer people become richer, poorer people become poorer. Says Jesus -- a very Zen saying -- that if you have, more will be given to you, and if you don't have, even that will be taken away. Very anti-communist, very Zen. If you have, more will be given to you. And if you don't have, even that will be taken away from you. It looks unjust.

But Jesus' saying is tremendous truth. Yes, that is the truth, one of the most fundamental. If you have, more will be given to you because you will create the capacity by having it. Nobody is going to give unless you have more capacity.

Have you watched? If you don't use a machine, it lasts. If a watch is guaranteed for ten years and you don't use it too much it will last for twenty years, thirty years.

But just the opposite is the case with life. If you don't use it, it will not last more, it will simply disappear from you. If you don't use your legs, legs will disappear; if you don't use your eyes, eyes will disappear; if you don't use your awareness, awareness will disappear. That's why man is not a machine. Don't use the machine and it lasts longer; don't use man, don't use your potentiality, don't use your body-mind, and you will start disappearing.

It is life's nature -- the more you use it, the more you get.

Enjoy, otherwise your capacity to enjoy will disappear, will be atrophied, paralysed. And tomorrow you will be there paralysed, atrophied -- then who is going to enjoy tomorrow?

Omar Khayam says that he is worried about these religious people. They say that in heaven wine is flowing in streams -- Mohammedans say that -- but they prohibit wine here on the earth. So Omar Khayam says,'I am very much worried about these people. If they don't get accustomed here, how are they going to enjoy heaven? And in heaven there are beautiful women, but these religious people say don't enjoy them here. That is a sin.' Omar Khayam seems to be absolutely logical. He says,'What will you be doing there?'

When I was reading Omar Khayam I remembered an anecdote. Two old women were talking -- eighty years old. One woman said to the other, 'Are you aware or not that your husband is chasing girls?' She said,'I know it, but let him chase them. He is like a dog who chases a car but when he gets it, he cannot drive it.'

So these religious people, if they enter heaven some day, they will be like dogs chasing cars. Once they get it, they don't know what to do, they cannot drive it!

Enjoy. Heaven is not in the future, it is herenow, already present. It is your surround. The more you enjoy, the more you become capable of enjoying.

Yes, Jesus is right. If you have, more will be given to you; if you don't have, even that will be taken away from you.

And when I say these things, remember, everything is addressed to you personally. The mind is very cunning. If I say something you can always rationalise that I am saying it to somebody else. This is not your question certainly, so I am addressing it to somebody else -- you can laugh and enjoy. The question may be anybody's but my answer is addressed to you personally. Never think of the neighbour; think only of yourself.

I will tell you one anecdote.

Father Loran was delivering his Sunday sermon.'Someday' he said,'every man in this parish will die.'

Suddenly the priest heard MacLean laughing in the third row, but he continued.'As I was saying, every man in this parish will die.' Again MacLean began chortling.

Father Loran looked at him and said,'Why, why do you laugh when I say everyone in this parish will die someday?'

'Ha Ha!' exclaimed MacLean.'I am not from this parish.'

Remember it!

The sixth question:

Question 5

YESTERDAY IN YOUR DISCOURSE YOU SAID THAT ONE HAS TO CHOOSE THE PATH BEST SUITED TO ONE'S TEMPERAMENT -- EITHER THE PATH OF MEDITATION OR THE PATH OF THE HEART -- BUT I DO NOT FEEL BOTH PATHS TO BE TOTALLY SEPARATE. CAN ONE TRAVEL A PATH THAT IS SOMEHOW A FUSION OF THE TWO?

Never heard of it. A fusion is not possible and in the name of fusion only a dead compromise will happen.

The directions are so totally, diametrically, opposite. If you love, you will have to use imagination, dreams, all the faculties of dreaming, of auto-hypnosis. If you meditate, you will have to drop all the dreaming faculties, auto-hypnosis, imagination, love -- everything you have to drop. But don't be afraid. If meditation happens, in the end you will find that love simply follows. And then that love is totally different from that love that you were trying to fuse with in the beginning. It is totally different. It comes out of your meditation, out of your silence. It has no desire in it, no passion in it. It is cool. It is not a disturbance, it is not an excitement, it has no madness in it.

And if you follow the path of love, one day meditation will come, and the meditation will be totally different to what you can think of right now. That meditation will not be dry like a desert, it will be like an oasis. That meditation will not make you renounce the world, it will make you capable of enjoying and delighting in it more. That meditation will not be against love.

But you have to follow one path. A fusion is not possible because both paths move in different directions, use different techniques.

And if you make a fusion, who will be making it? You will be making the fusion. What is your understanding? How can you synthesise? Synthesis is possible only when you have gone beyond. When you have become greater than love and meditation both, then you can synthesise -- not before it. A Buddha can synthesise, but he never synthesises because he knows that synthesis has happened in him. And if he synthesises it will not be of use to anybody. It will be simply useless, abstract. He insists on the path of meditation -- so much so that he has to deny the path of love; he has to say that it is absolutely wrong. If he says,'Not absolutely wrong,' then you will start thinking,'Then why not move on both? Why not be safe? Who knows which is right? So be clever.' But your cleverness will help only your ego-confusion to persist and nothing else.

I have heard. George M. Pullman decided to build a model community on the outskirts of Chicago many years ago. It was during the early part of 1880 and the Pullman Company had purchased more than four thousand acres of prairie, twelve miles south of the Chicago business district. On this tract there were going to be constructed shops and a town to house almost ten thousand people.

Mr. Pullman engaged the services of Solon Spencer Berman, a well-known New York architect, who was to be the master designer of the master-town which was to be completed in 1884.

As the town was nearing completion Berman was so proud of his new city with its public buildings, residences, paved streets, paths, playgrounds, freeway system and water-supply that he went to Mr. Pullman one day and suggested that it would be quite appropriate to name the city 'berman' after its architect.

Pullman freely admitted that Berman was a pretty name and that Berman had done a great deal to bring his dream to fruition but in response to Berman's request he said,

'Berman, I will compromise with you. We will use the first syllable of my name and the second syllable of your name. The city will be called Pullman.'

This is how ego goes on trying for its own way. It was going to be called Pullman anyway; now he shows that he has made a compromise -- he has taken in half of the name of the architect.

Don't be clever otherwise you will remain the same, you will not change. Half-techniques on the path of love and half-techniques on the path of meditation will create much confusion in you. They will not help. They may destroy you. You may go berserk.

It is as if you are trying two different'-pathies' together: allopathy and ayurvedic. It can be dangerous. Or allopathy and naturopathy, it can be dangerous. Their whole understanding is different, their gestalt is different. Both work, but they are complete systems. Once you accept one it is better to accept that and don't bother to create any synthesis on your own.

Why does this idea of synthesis arise? Because you are so confused you cannot understand which path is your path. Rather than recognising your confusion you start creating a compromise. Drop all idea of compromise, just recognise that you are confused. These are the three possibilities: one, the person knows well that he is a man of the path of love, or, second, he knows that he is the man of the path of meditation, or, one knows the third possibility -- that he is confused.

If the first two are the case then there is no need; if the third is the case then I am here to help you. But to ask for help is against the ego, so you try to compromise. This compromise will be more dangerous, it will confuse you more, because, made out of confusion, it will create more confusion.

So try to understand why you hanker for compromise. Sooner or later you will be able to understand that compromise is not going to help. And compromise may be a way of not going in either direction, or it may be just a repression of your confusion. It will assert itself. Never repress anything, be clearcut about your situation. And if you are confused, remember that you are confused. This will be the first clear-cut thing about you: that you are confused. You have started on the journey.

I have heard.

A friend of Mulla Nasruddin said to him,'Come and have a drink.'

Mulla Nasruddin came up and took a drink of whisky.

'How is this, Mulla?' asked a bystander.'How can you drink whisky? Sure it was only yesterday ye told me ye was a teetotaller.'

'Well,' said Nasruddin,'you are right. I am a teetotaller, it is true, but I am not a bigotted one.'

People go on finding some way or other. But on the path of growth these deceptions are not good.

Another anecdote.

Flagherty sneaked into the room and started making love to his sleeping wife until she awakened and shouted,'Is that you?'

'It better be,' snorted Flagherty.

'When are you gonna stop this sinning?' she demanded.'Moody quit smoking, Paine stopped gambling, what are you gonna give up? 'All right,' said Flagherty through bloodshot eyes, 'from now on, you sleep in the bedroom and I will sleep in the spare room.'

Three weeks went by with Mrs. Flagherty sleeping alone. Finally, unable to contain herself for one night more, she tip-toed to the spare room and tapped lightly on the door.

'What is it?' shouted Flagherty.

'I just wanted to tell yer,' said his wife,'that Moody has started smoking again.'

You cannot repress anything. Howsoever subtle are your ways you cannot repress anything, you will have to face it. If you are confused, face it.

The last question:

Question 6

ARE YOU THE TRICK OR THE TREAT?

Po!

Dang Dang Doko Dang

Chapter #5

Chapter title: Two Ladies And A Monk

15 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 7606150

ShortTitle: DANG05

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 88 mins

THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN IN CHINA WHO HAD SUPPORTED A MONK FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS. SHE HAD BUILT A HUT FOR HIM, AND SHE FED HIM WHILE HE WAS MEDITATING.

ONE DAY SHE DECIDED TO FIND OUT JUST WHAT PROGRESS HE HAD MADE IN ALL THIS TIME.

SHE OBTAINED THE HELP OF A GIRL RICH IN DESIRE, AND SAID TO HER: 'GO AND EMBRACE HIM, AND THEN ASK HIM SUDDENLY, "WHAT NOW?"'

THE GIRL CALLED UPON THE MONK AND IMMEDIATELY STARTED CARESSING HIM, AND ASKING HIM WHAT HE WAS GOING TO DO ABOUT IT.

'AN OLD TREE GROWS ON A ROCK IN WINTER,' REPLIED THE MONK SOMEWHAT POETICALLY, 'NOWHERE IS THERE ANY WARMTH.'

THE GIRL RETURNED AND RELATED WHAT HE HAD SAID.

'TO THINK I FED THAT FELLOW FOR TWENTY YEARS!' EXCLAIMED THE OLD WOMAN IN ANGER. 'HE SHOWED NO CONSIDERATION FOR YOUR NEED,NO DISPOSITION TO EXPLAIN YOUR CONDITION. HE NEED NOT HAVE RESPONDED TO PASSION, BUT AT LEAST HE SHOULD HAVE EXPERIENCED SOME COMPASSION.'

SHE AT ONCE WENT TO THE HUT OF THE MONK AND BURNT IT DOWN.

An ancient proverb says:

SOW A THOUGHT, REAP AN ACT. SOW AN ACT, REAP A HABIT. SOW A HABIT, REAP A CHARACTER. SOW A CHARACTER, REAP A DESTINY.

And I say to you: sow nothing, and reap meditation or love.

Sowing nothing -- that's what meditation is all about. And its natural consequence is love. If, at the end of the journey of meditation, love has not flowered, then the whole journey has been futile. Something went wrong somewhere. You started but you never reached.

Love is the test. For the path of meditation, love is the test. They are two sides of one coin, two aspects of the same energy. When one is there, the other has to be there. If the other is not there, then the first is also not there.

Meditation is not concentration. A man of concentration may not reach to love; in fact, he will not. A man of concentration may become more violent because concentration is a training to remain tense, concentration is an effort to narrow down the Mind. It..is deep violence with your consciousness. And when you are violent with YOUR consciousness you cannot be non-violent with others. Whatsoever you are with yourself, you are going to be with others.

Let this be a fundamental rule of life, one of the most fundamental: whatsoever you are towards yourself, you will be towards others. If you love yourself, you will love others. If you are flowing within your being, you will be flowing in relationships also. If you are frozen inside, you will be frozen outside also. The inner tends to become the outer; the inner goes on manifesting itself in the outer.

Concentration is not meditation; concentration is the method of science. It is scientific methodology. A man of science needs the deep discipline of concentration, but a man of science is not expected to be compassionate. There is no need. In fact, a man of science becomes more and more violent with nature. All scientific progress is based on violence towards nature. It is destructive because, in the first place, the scientific man is destructive to his own expanding consciousness. Rather than expanding his consciousness he narrows it down, makes it exclusive, one-pointed. It is a coercion, violence.

So remember, meditation is not concentration but neither is meditation contemplation. It is not thinking. Maybe you are thinking about God -- even then, it is thinking. If there is 'about', there is thinking. You may be thinking about money, you may be thinking about God -- it basically makes no difference. Thinking continues, only objects change. So if you are thinking about the world, or about sex, nobody will call it contemplation. If you are thinking about God, virtue, if you are thinking about Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, then people will call it contemplation.

But Zen is very strict about it -- it is not meditation, it is still thinking. You are still concerned with the other. In contemplation the other is there, although of course not so exclusively as it is in concentration. Contemplation has more fluidity than concentration. In concentration the mind is one-pointed; in contemplation the mind is oriented towards one subject, not towards one point. You can go on thinking about it, you can go on changing and flowing with the subject, but still, on the whole, the subject remains the same.

Then what is meditation? Meditation is just being delighted in your own presence; meditation is a delight in your own being. It is very simple -- a totally relaxed state of consciousness where you are not doing anything. The moment doing enters, you become tense; anxiety enters immediately. How to do? What to do? How to succeed? How not to fail? You have already moved into the future.

If you are contemplating, what can you contemplate? How can you contemplate the unknown? How can you contemplate the unknowable? You can contemplate only the known. You can chew it again and again, but it is the known. If you know something about Jesus, you can think again and again; if you know something about Krishna, you can think again and again. You can go on modifying, changing, decorating -- but it is not going to lead you towards the unknown. And God is the unknown.

Meditation is just to be, not doing anything -- no action, no thought, no emotion. You just are. And it is a sheer delight. From where does this delight come when you are not doing anything? It comes from nowhere, or, it comes from everywhere. It is uncaused, because the existence is made of the stuff called joy. It needs no cause, no reason. If you are unhappy you have a reason to be unhappy; if you are happy you are simply happy -- there is no reason for it. Your mind tries to find a reason because it cannot believe in the uncaused because it can not control the uncaused -- with the uncaused the mind simply becomes impotent. So the mind goes on finding some reason or other. But I would like to tell you that whenever you are happy, you are happy for no reason at all, whenever you are unhappy, you have some reason to be unhappy -- because happiness is just the stuff you are made of. It is your very being, it is your innermost core. Joy is your innermost core.

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars...and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers -- for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.

The whole existence is made of the stuff called joy. Hindus call it SATCHITANAND, ANANDA, joy. That's why no reason, no cause is needed. If you can just be with yourself, not doing anything, just enjoying yourself, just being with yourself, just being happy that you are, just being happy that you are breathing, just being happy that you are listening to these cuckoos -- for no reason then you are in meditation. Meditation is being here now. And when one is happy for no reason, that happiness cannot be contained within yourself. It goes on spreading to others, it becomes a sharing. You cannot hold it, it is so much, it is so infinite. You cannot hold it in your hands, you have to allow it to spread.

This is what compassion is. Meditation is being with yourself and compassion is overflowing with that being. It is the same energy that was moving into passion that becomes compassion. It is the same energy that was narrowed down into the body or into the mind. It is the same energy that was leaking from small holes.

What is sex? Just a leakage of energy from a small hole in the body. Hindus call these -- exactly -- holes. When you are flowing, overflowing, when you are not moving through the holes, all walls disappear. You have become the whole. Now you spread. You cannot do anything about it.

It is not that you have to be compassionate, no. In the state of meditation you are compassion. Compassion is as warm as passion -- hence the word 'compassion'. It is very passionate but the passion is unaddressed and the passion is not in search of any gratification. The whole process has become just the reverse. First you were seeking some happiness somewhere -- now you have found it and you are expressing it. Passion is a search for happiness; compassion is an expression of happiness. But it is passionate, it is warm, and you have to understand it because it has a paradox in it.

The greater a thing, the more paradoxical it is, and this meditation and compassion is one of the highest peaks, the uttermost peak. So there is bound to be a paradox.

The paradox is that a man of meditation is very cool, not cold; cool yet warm, not hot. Passion is hot, it is almost feverish, it has a temperature. Compassion is cool yet warm, welcoming, receptive, happy to share, ready to share, waiting to share. If a person of meditation becomes cold, he has missed. Then he is just a man of repression. If you repress your passion you will become cold -- that's how the whole humanity has become cold.

Passion has been repressed in everyone.

From the very childhood your passion has been crippled and repressed. Whenever you started becoming passionate, there was somebody -- your mother, your father, your teacher, the police -- there was somebody who immediately became suspicious of you. Your passion was curbed, repressed. 'Don't do it!' Immediately you shrunk within yourself. And by and by one learned that to survive it is better to listen to people who are around you. It is safer. So what to do? What is a child supposed to do when he feels passionate, when he feels full of energy and he wants to jump and run and dance and his father is reading the newspaper? It is rubbish, but he is reading his newspaper, and he is a very important man, he's the master of the house. What to do? The child is doing something really great -- in him it is God who is ready to dance -- but the father is reading his newspaper so there has to be silence. He cannot dance, he cannot run, he cannot scream. He will repress his energy; he will try to be cold, collected, controlled.

Control has become such a supreme value. It is not a value at all. A controlled person is a dead person; a controlled person is not necessarily a disciplined person.

Discipline is totally different. Discipline comes out of awareness; control comes out of fear. People who are around you are more powerful than you, they can punish you, they can destroy you. They have all the power to control, to corrupt, to repress. And the child has to become diplomatic.

When sex energy arises, the child is in difficulty. The society is against it; the society says it has to be channelised. And it is flowing all over the child. It has to be cut.

In the schools what are we doing? In fact, the schools are not so much instruments for imparting knowledge as instruments of control. For six, seven hours a child is sitting there. This is to curb his dancing, to curb his singing, to curb his joy; this is to control him. Sitting for six, seven hours every day in an almost prison-like atmosphere, by and by the energy deadens, the child becomes repressed, frozen. Now there is no streaming, the energy does not come, he lives at the minimum -- that's what we call control. He never goes to the maximum.

Psychologists have been searching and they have come to recognise a great factor in human misfortune -- that is, that ordinarily persons live only ten per cent. They live ten per cent, they breathe ten per cent, they love ten per cent, they enjoy ten per cent -- ninety per cent of their life is simply not allowed. This is sheer wastage. One should live at the hundred per cent capacity, only then is flowering possible.

So meditation is not control, it is not repression. If somehow you have got the wrong idea -- you are repressing yourself -- then you will become very controlled, but then you will be cold. Then you will become more and more indifferent, not detached. Indifferent, non-caring, unloving -- you will almost commit suicide. You will be alive at the minimum. You can be called 'just so-so' alive. You will not be burning from both sides, your flame will be very dim. Much smoke will be there but almost no light.

It happens to people who are on the path of meditation -- Catholics, Buddhists, Jains -- that they become cold, because to control comes easily. Awareness is very arduous. Control is very easy because control needs only a cultivation of habits. You cultivate habits, then those habits possess you and you need not worry. Then you go on with your habits, they become mechanical and you live a robot life. You may look like a Buddha but you will not be. You will be just a dead stone statue.

If compassion has not arisen in you, then apathy will arise. Apathy means absence of passion; compassion means transformation of passion. Go and watch Catholic monks, Jaina monks, Buddhist monks, and you will see very apathetic figures -- dull, stupid, non-radiant, closed, afraid, continuously anxious.

Just the other day I was reading an article on Oscar, the founder of Arica. The man who was interviewing him was a little surprised to see that he was continuously smoking, so he asked, 'Why are you smoking so much and why do you smoke?' At least Oscar was true. He said, 'Whenever I feel nervous I smoke, it helps.'

If a person like Oscar, who has become a master to many people in America, is still nervous and needs smoking to help his nervousness, then what is going to happen to help his followers? He must have controlled himself.

Controlled persons are always nervous because deep down turmoil is still hidden. If you are uncontrolled, flowing, alive, then you are not nervous. There is no question of being nervous -- whatsoever happens, happens. You have no expectations for the future, you are not performing. Then why should you be nervous?

If you go to Catholic, Jaina, Buddhist monks, you will find them very nervous -- maybe not so nervous in their monasteries, but if you bring them out to the world, you will find them very, very nervous because on each step there is temptation.

A man of meditation comes to a point where there is no temptation left. Try to understand it. Temptation never comes from without, it is the repressed desire, repressed energy, repressed anger, repressed sex, repressed greed, that creates temptation. Temptation comes from within YOU, it has nothing to do with the without. It is not that a devil comes and tempts you, it is your own repressed mind that becomes devilish and wants to take revenge. To control that mind one has to remain so cold and frozen that no life energy is allowed to move into your limbs, into your body. If energy is allowed to move, those repressions will surface. That's why people have learned how to be cold, how to touch others and yet not touch them, how to see people and yet not see them. People live with cliches -- 'Hallo. How are you?' Nobody means anything. These are just to avoid the real encounter of two persons. People don't look into each other's eyes, they don't hold hands, they don't try to feel each other's energy, they don't allow each Other to pour. Very afraid. Somehow just managing. Cold and dead. In a strait-jacket.

A man of meditation has learned how to be full of energy, at the maximum, optimum. He lives at the peak, he makes his abode at the peak. Certainly he has a warmth but it is not feverish, it only shows life. He is not hot, he is cool, because he is not carried away by desires. He is so happy, that he is no longer seeking any happiness. He is so at ease, he is so at home, he is not going anywhere, he is not running and chasing... he is very cool.

In Latin there is a dictum: agere sequitur esse -- to do follows to be; action follows being. It is tremendously beautiful.

Don't try to change your action; try to find out your being, and action will follow. The action is secondary; being is primary. Action is something that you do; being is something that you are. Action comes out of you, action is just a fragment. Even if all of your actions are collected together they will not be equal to your being because all actions collected together will be your past. What about your future? Your being contains your past, your future, your present; your being contains your eternity. Your actions, even if all collected, will just be of the past. Past is limited. Future is unlimited. That which has happened is limited, it can be defined, it has already happened. That which has not happened is unlimited, indefinable. Your being contains eternity, your actions contain only your past.

So it is possible that a man who has been a sinner up to this moment can become a saint the next. Never judge a man by his actions; judge a man by his being. Sinners have become saints and saints have fallen and become sinners. Each saint has a past and each sinner has a future. Never judge a man by his actions. But there is no other way because you have not known even your own being, how can you see the being of others? Once you know your own being you will learn the language, you will know the clue of how to look into another's being. You can see into others only to the extent that you can see into yourself. If you have seen yourself through and through, you become capable of seeing into others through and through.

So a few things before I enter into this beautiful story.

If by your meditations you are becoming cold -- beware. If your meditation is making you more warm, more loving, more flowing -- good, you are on the right path. If you are becoming less loving, if your compassion is disappearing and an apathy is settling inside you -- then the sooner you change your direction, the better. Otherwise you will become a wall.

I have heard.

When Ford was Vice-President he went to Israel and asked Golda Meir to see the Wailing Wall. Prime Minister Meir took him to the wall whereupon the Vice-President began to pray, Help Mr. Nixon guide our country.'

He turned to Mrs. Meir and asked, 'Is that nice?'

'That's nice,' she answered.

'Thank you for making me the Vice-President,' he directed to the wall and then to the Prime Minister, 'Is that nice?'

'That's nice,' she replied.

'Let Israel give back the land they took from the Arabs so there will be peace in the Middle-East. Is that nice?'

And Golda Meir said, 'You are talking to a wall.'

Don't become a wall. Remain alive, throbbing, streaming, flowing, melting.

Of course there are problems. Why have people become walls? Because walls can be defined. They give you a boundary, a definite shape and form -- what Hindus call NAM ROOP, name and form. If you are melting and flowing you don't have boundaries; you don't know where you are and where you end and where the other begins. You go on being together with people so much that all the boundaries by and by become dream-like. And one day they disappear.

That is how reality is. Reality is unbounded. Where do you think you stop? At your skin? Ordinarily we think, 'Of course, we are inside our skins and the skin is our wall, the boundary. ' But your skin could not be alive if the air was not surrounding it. If your skin is not constantly breathing the oxygen that is being supplied by the surround, your skin cannot be alive. Take away the atmosphere and you will die immediately. Even if your skin has not been scratched you will die. So that cannot be your boundary. There are two hundred miles of atmosphere all around the earth -- is that your boundary? That too cannot be your boundary. This oxygen and this atmosphere and the warmth and the life cannot exist without the sun. If the sun ceases to exist or drops dead.... One day it is going to happen. Scientists say that in four thousand years more the sun will cool down and drop dead. Then suddenly this atmosphere will not be alive. Immediately. you will be dead. So is the sun your boundary?

But now physicists say this sun is connected to some central source of energy which we have not yet been able to find but is suspected -- because nothing is unrelated.

So where do we decide where our boundary is? An apple on the tree is not you. Then you eat it, it becomes you. So it is just waiting to become you. It is you potentially. It is your future you. Then you have defecated and you have dropped much rubbish out of the body. Just a moment before, it was you. So where do you decide?

I am breathing. The breath inside me is me, but just a moment before it may have been your breath. It must have been because we are breathing in a common atmosphere. We are all breathing into each other; we are members of each other. You are breathing in me, I am breathing in you.

And it is not only so with breathing, it is exactly so with life. Have you watched? With certain people you feel very alive, they come just bubbling with energy. And something happens in you, a response, and you are also bubbling. And then there people...just their face and one feels one will flop down. Just their presence is enough poison. They must be pouring something into you which is poisonous. And when you come around a person and you become radiant and happy and suddenly something starts throbbing in your heart, and your heart beats faster, this man must have poured something into you.

We are pouring into each other. That's why, in the East, SATSANG has become very, very important. To be with a person who has known, just to be in his presence, is enough -- because he is constantly pouring his being into you. You may know or you may not know. You may recognise it today or you may not recognise it today, but someday or other the seeds will come to flower.

We are pouring into each other. We are not separate islands. A cold person becomes like an island and it is a misfortune, it is a great misfortune because you could have become a vast continent and you decided to become an island. You decided to remain poor, when you could have become as rich as you wanted to be.

Don't be a wall and never try to repress, otherwise you will become a wall. Repressed people are just like you...they have masks, faces. They are pretending to be somebody else.

I have heard.

A wealthy farmer went to the church one Sunday. After the service he said, 'Father, that was a damned good sermon you gave, damned good!'

'I am happy you liked it,' said the priest, 'but I wish you would not use those terms in expressing yourself.'

'I can't help it,' said the rich farmer. 'I still think it was a damned good sermon. In fact, I liked it so much I put a hundred dollar bill in the collection basket.'

'The hell you did!' replied the priest.

A repressed person is carrying the same world as you. Just an opportunity is needed, a provocation, and immediately the real will come out. That's why monks disappear from the world -- because there are too many provocations, too many temptations. It is difficult for them to remain contained, to hold on. So they go to the Himalayas or to the caves, they retire from the world so that even if ideas, temptations, desires arise, there is no way to fulfil them.

But this is not a way of transformation.

The people who become cold are the people who were very hot. The people who take vows of remaining celibate are the people who were extremely sexual. The mind turns from one extreme to another very easily. It is my observation that many people who are too obsessed with food one day or other become obsessed with fasting. It has to happen because you cannot stay in one extreme long. You are doing too much of it, soon you will get fed up with it, tired of it. Then there is no other way, you have to move to the other extreme.

The people who have become monks are very worldly people. The market was too much, they had moved too much in the market, then the pendulum moved to the other extreme. Greedy people renounce the world. This renunciation is not of understanding -- it is just greed upside-down. First they were holding, holding...now suddenly they see the pointlessness of it, the futility of it and they start throwing it. First they were afraid to lose a single pai, now they are afraid to keep a single pai, but the fear continues. First they were too greedy about this world, now they are too greedy about the other world, but the greed is there.

Silverstein, the inveterate joiner, came rushing home proudly holding a membership card to his newest organisation....

There are people who go on joining everything. I have known one person who was a member of five political parties, all against each other. When he told me I said, 'What are you doing?' He enjoyed membership.

....Silverstein, the inveterate joiner, came rushing home, proudly holding a membership card to his newest organisation. 'Look,' said Silverstein to his son, 'I just joined the Prostitute Club.'

'What?' said the boy. 'Let me see that card.' After reading it he announced, 'Pa, that is the Parachute Club.'

'All I know is,' said Silverstein, 'they guaranteed me three hundred and sixty-five jumps a year.'

These people one day or other are bound to join a monastery -- then they become great celibates, great renouncers. But it does not change their nature. Except awareness, nothing changes a man, nothing at all.

So don't try to pretend. That which has not happened, has not happened. Understand it, and don't try to pretend and don't try to make others believe that it has happened, because nobody is going to lose in this deception except you.

People who try to control themselves have chosen a very foolish way. Control will not happen, but they will become cold. That is the only way a man can control himself -- to become frozen so that energy does not arise. People who take the vows of celibacy will not eat much; in fact, they will starve their bodies. If more energy is created in the body, then there will be more sex energy, and then they don't know what to do with it. So Buddhist monks eat only once a day -- and then too, not enough. They eat only enough that bodily needs are fulfilled, very minimum needs, so no energy is left. This type of celibacy is not celibacy. When you are flowing with energy and the energy starts transforming itself into love, then a celibacy, a BRAHMACHARYA, which is beautiful, happens.

The sweet old lady came into the store and bought a package of mothballs. The next day she was back for another five packets. Another day passed and she came in for a dozen more.

'You must have a lot of moths,' said the salesman.

'Yes,' replied the old dear, 'and I have been throwing these things at them for three days now and I have only managed to hit one!'

Through control you will not even be able to hit one. That is not the way. You are fighting with leaves, branches -- cutting them here and there. That is not the way to destroy the tree of desire; the way is to cut the roots. And roots can be cut only when you have reached to the roots of desire. On the surface there are only branches -- jealousy, anger, envy, hatred, lust. They are just on the surface. The deeper you move, the more you will understand: they are all coming out of one root and that root is unawareness.

Meditation means awareness. It cuts the very root. Then the whole tree disappears on its own accord. Then passion becomes compassion.

I have heard about a very great Zen Master who had become old and almost blind at the age of ninety-six and no longer able to teach or work about the monastery. Yama Moto was his name.

The old man then decided it was time to die because he was of no use to anybody, he could not be of any help. So he stopped eating.

When asked by his monks why he refused his food, he replied that he had outlived his usefulness and was only a bother to everybody.

They told him, 'If you die now' -- it was January -- 'when it is so cold, everybody will be uncomfortable at your funeral and you will be an even greater nuisance. So please eat.'

This can happen only in a Zen monastery, because disciples love the Master so deeply, their respect is so deep, that there is no need for any formality. Just see what they were saying. They were saying, 'If you die now, and it is January, see, it is so cold, everybody will be uncomfortable at the funeral and you will be an even greater nuisance. So please eat.'

He thereupon resumed eating. But when it became warm again he stopped, and not long after he quietly toppled over and died.

Such compassion! One-lives then for compassion; one dies then for compassion. One is even ready to choose a right time to so that nobody is bothered and one need not be a nuisance.

I have heard about another Zen Master who was going to die.

He said, 'Where are my shoes? Bring them.'

Somebody asked, 'Where are you going? The doctors say are going to die.'

He said, 'I am going to the cemetery.'

'But why?'

He said, 'I don't want to trouble anybody. Otherwise you will have to carry me on your shoulders.' He walked to the cemetery and died there.

Tremendous compassion! What manner of man is this, not to give even that much trouble to anybody? And these people helped thousands. Thousands were grateful to them, thousands became full of light and love because of them. Yet they would not like to bother anybody. If they are useful they would like to live and help, if they are not useful then it is time to leave and go.

Now, the story.

THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN IN CHINA WHO HAD SUPPORTED A MONK FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS. SHE HAD BUILT A HUT FOR HIM, AND SHE FED HIM WHILE HE WAS MEDITATING.

It is a miracle that has happened in the East. The West is still unable to understand it. For centuries in the East, if somebody was meditating, the society would feed him. It was enough that he was meditating. Nobody would think that he was a burden on the society -- 'Why should we work for him?' Just because he was meditating was enough, because the East came to know that if even one man becomes enlightened, his energy is shared by all; if even one man comes to flower in meditation, his fragrance becomes part of the whole society. And the gain is so tremendous that the East has never said, 'Don't sit there and meditate. Who is going to feed you? Who is going to clothe you? And who is going to give you shelter?' Thousands and thousands -- Buddha had ten thousand monks, SANNYASINS, moving with him but people were happy to feed them, to shelter them, to clothe them, to look after them, because they were meditating.

Now it is very, very impossible in the West to think that way. Even in the East it is becoming difficult. In China now, monasteries are being closed, meditation halls are being converted into hospitals or school rooms. Great Masters are disappearing. They are forced to work in the fields or in the factories. Nobody is allowed to meditate because a great understanding is lost. The whole mind is full of materialism, as if matter is all that exists.

If a man in a town becomes enlightened, the whole town is benefited. It is not a wastage to support him. For nothing you are going to get such tremendous treasure. People were happy to help. For twenty years this woman helped a monk who was meditating and meditating and meditating and doing nothing. He was sitting in zazen. She built a hut for him, she looked after him, she took every care. One day when she had become very old and was going to die she wanted to know whether meditation had flowered or not, or whether this man had been simply sitting and sitting and sitting. Twenty years is a long enough time, the woman was getting old and was going to die, so she wanted to know whether she had been serving a man of real meditation or just a hocus-pocus.

ONE DAY SHE DECIDED TO FIND OUT...

The woman must have been of great understanding herself because the examination, the test that she tried, was full of understanding.

ONE DAY SHE DECIDED TO FIND OUT JUST WHAT PROGRESS HE HAD MADE IN ALL THIS TIME.

If meditation is progressing then the ONLY criterion of its progress is love, the ONLY criterion of its progress is compassion.

SHE OBTAINED THE HELP OF A GIRL RICH IN DESIRE, AND SAID TO HER: 'GO AND EMBRACE HIM, AND THEN ASK HIM SUDDENLY, " WHAT NOW?"'

Three are the possibilities. One: if for twenty years he had not touched a beautiful woman, the first possibility was that he would be tempted, would be a victim, would forget all about meditation and would make love with this girl. The other possibility was that he would remain cold, controlled and would not show any compassion towards this girl. He would simply hold himself back, hard, so that he could not be tempted. And the third possibility was: if meditation had come to fruition, he would be full of love, understanding, compassion and he would try to understand this girl and would try to help her. She was just a test for these possibilities.

If the first was the possibility, then all his meditation was simply a wastage. If the second was the possibility then he had fulfilled the ordinary criterion of being a monk but he had not fulfilled the real criterion of being a man of meditation. If the second was the possibility then it simply showed that he was a behaviourist, that he had made a habit, controlled his behaviour.

You must have heard the name of Pavlov the Russian behaviourist. He said there is no consciousness in man or in animals or anywhere -- the whole thing is just a mind mechanism. You can train the mind mechanism and then it starts working in that way -- it is all a question of conditioning. Mind functions as a conditioned reflex.

If you put food before your dog he immediately comes running, his tongue hanging forward, dripping. He starts to salivate. Pavlov tried. Whenever he gave food to the dog he would ring a bell. By and by, the bell and the food became associated. Then one day he simply rang the bell and the dog came running, tongue hanging out, dripping.

Now this is absurd, no dog has ever been known to react to a ringing bell in this way. The bell is not food. But now the association has conditioned the mind.

Pavlov says man can be changed in the same way. Whenever sex arises in you, punish yourself. Go for a seven day fast, flog your body, stand in the cold the whole night, or beat yourself, and by and by the body will learn a trick. Whenever sex arises, it will repress it automatically because of the fear of the punishment.

Reward and punishment -- this is the way to condition the mind if you follow Pavlov.

This monk must have been doing that, many are doing that. Almost ninety-nine per cent of people in the monasteries are doing that -- just reconditioning their minds and bodies.

But consciousness has nothing to do with it. Consciousness is not a new habit; consciousness is to live a life with awareness, not confined to any habit, not possessed by any mechanism -- above the mechanism.

AND SHE SAID TO HER:'GO AND EMBRACE HIM, AND THEN ASK HIM SUDDENLY, " WHAT NOW?"'

'Suddenly' is the clue to the whole thing. If you give a little time then the mind can start working in the conditioned way for which it has been prepared.

'So don't give any time. Go in the middle of the night when he will be alone meditating. Just go inside the hut' -- he must have been living outside the town, alone -- 'go inside the hut and simply start caressing him, embracing him, kiss him. And then immediately ask, "What now?" Watch his reaction, what happens to him, what he says, what colours pass on his face, what his eyes indicate, how he reacts and responds to you.'

THE GIRL CALLED UPON THE MONK AND IMMEDIATELY STARTED CARESSING HIM, AND ASKING HIM WHAT HE WAS GOING TO DO ABOUT IT.

'AN OLD TREE GROWS ON A COLD ROCK IN WINTER,' REPLIED THE MONK SOMEWHAT POETICALLY, 'NOWHERE IS THERE ANY WARMTH.'

He has conditioned his dog; he has conditioned his body/mind. Twenty years is a long enough time to condition. Even this sudden attack could not break his habitual pattern. He remained controlled. He must have been a man of tremendous control. He remained cold, with not even a flicker of energy, and he said, 'AN OLD TREE GROWS ON A COLD ROCK IN WINTER.' Not only was he controlled and cold, he was so controlled, he remained so cold, that in such a dangerous situation, provocative, seductive, he could use poetic words to reply. The conditioning must have gone very, very deep, to the roots.

'AN OLD TREE GROWS ON A COLD ROCK IN WINTER,' REPLIED THE MONK SOMEWHAT POETICALLY, 'NOWHERE IS THERE ANY WARMTH.'

He said, 'I am like a cold rock in winter. Nowhere is there any warmth.' That's all he said.

THE GIRL RETURNED AND RELATED WHAT HE HAD SAID.

'TO THINK I FED THAT FELLOW FOR TWENTY YEARS!' EXCLAIMED THE OLD WOMAN IN ANGER.

His meditation had not flowered. He had become cold and dead, corpse-like; he had not become enlightened or a Buddha.

'HE SHOWED NO CONSIDERATION FOR YOUR NEED...'

A man of compassion always thinks about you, about your need. He remained coldly self-centred. He simply said something about himself -- 'An old tree grows on a cold rock in winter, nowhere is there any warmth.' He did not utter a single word about the woman. He did not even ask, 'Why did you come? Why? What do you need? And why have you chosen me out of so many people? Sit down.'

He should have listened to her. She must be in a deep need. Nobody comes in the middle of the night to a withered-away monk who has been sitting in meditation for twenty years. Why had she come? He did not pay any attention to her.

Love always thinks of the other; ego only thinks of oneself. Love is always considerate; ego is absolutely inconsiderate. Ego has only one language and that is of self. Ego always uses the other; love is ready to be used, love is ready to serve.

'HE SHOWED NO CONSIDERATION FOR YOUR NEED,NO DISPOSITION TO EXPLAIN YOUR CONDITION.'

When you go to a man of compassion he looks at you, he looks deeply into your heart. He tries to find out what your problem is, why you are in such a situation, why you are doing the thing that you are doing. He forgets himself. He simply becomes focused on the person who has come to him -- his need, his problem, his anxiety, is his consideration. He tries to help. Whatsoever he can do he will do.

'...NO DISPOSITION TO EXPLAIN YOUR CONDITION.

HE NEED NOT HAVE RESPONDED TO PASSION...'

That's true. A man of compassion cannot respond in a passionate way. He is not cold but he is cool. He can give you his warmth, nourishing warmth, but he cannot give you any fever. He has none. Remember the difference between a feverish body and a warm body. A feverish body is not healthy, a warm body is simply healthy. In passion, people become feverish. Have you watched yourself deep in passion? You are almost a raving maniac, mad, wild, doing something you don't know why -- and in a great fever, with the whole body trembling, in a cyclone with no centre.

A man of warmth is simply healthy. Just as when a mother takes her child to her breast and the child feels the warmth, surrounded by the warmth, nourished by it, welcomed by it, so when you enter into the aura of a compassionate man you enter a motherlike warmth, you enter into a very nourishing energy field. In fact, if you come to a man of compassion, your passion will simply disappear. His compassion will be so powerful, his warmth will be so great, his love will be showering on you so much that you will become cool, you will become centred.

'HE NEED NOT HAVE RESPONDED TO PASSION, BUT AT LEAST HE SHOULD HAVE EXPERIENCED SOME COMPASSION.'

SHE AT ONCE WENT TO THE HUT OF THE MONK AND BURNED IT DOWN.

It was just a symbolic gesture that those twenty years that he was meditating there -- during which they had been hoping that he had been progressing -- had been a wastage.

It is not enough just to be a monk superficially, just to be a monk repressed and cold -- coldness is an indication of repression, a very deep repression.

That's what I have been telling you: if you move into meditation, compassion and love will come automatically, on its own accord. It follows meditation like a shadow. So you need not be worried about any synthesis. The synthesis will come. It comes by itself, you don't have to bring it. You choose one path. Either you follow the path of love, devotion, dancing, KIRTAN, BHAJAN, dissolve yourself completely into your love towards the Divine. That path is of dissolving, no awareness is needed. You are needed to be drunk, completely drunk with God, you will need to become a drunkard. Or, choose the path of meditation. There you are not needed to be dissolved into anything. You are needed to become very crystallised, you are needed to become very integrated, alert, aware.

Follow the path of love and one day, suddenly, you will see that meditation has flowered within you -- thousands of white lotuses. And you have not done anything for them, you were doing something else and they flowered. When love or devotion comes to its climax, meditation flowers.

And the same happens on the path of meditation. Just forget all about love, devotion. You simply become aware, sit silently, enjoy your being -- that's all. Be with yourself that's all. Learn how to be alone -- that's all. And remember, a person who knows how to be alone is never lonely. People who don't know how to be alone, they are lonely.

On the path of meditation, aloneness is sought, desired, hoped for, prayed for. Be alone. So much so that not even in your consciousness does any shadow of the other move. On the path of love, get so dissolved that only the other becomes real and you become a shadow and by and by you completely disappear. On the path of love, God remains, you disappear; on the path of meditation, God disappears, you appear. But the total and the ultimate result is the same. A great synthesis happens.

Never try to synthesise these two paths in the beginning. They meet in the end, they meet at the peak, they meet in the temple.

One of Rabbi Moshe's disciples was very poor. He complained to the Zaddik that his wretched circumstances were an obstacle to learning and praying.

'In this day and age,' said Rabbi Moshe, 'the greatest devotion, greater than learning and praying, consists in accepting the world exactly as it happens to be.'

The person who is moving into meditation, or who is moving on the path of love, will be helped if he accepts the world as it is. Worldly people never accept the world as it is -- they are always trying to change it. They are always trying to make something else, they are always trying to fix things into a different order, they are always trying to do something outside. The religious person accepts whatsoever is on the outside as it is. He is not disturbed, he is not distracted by the outside. His whole work consists of moving inside. One moves through love, another moves through meditation, but both move inside. The religious world is the world of the within. And the within is the beyond.

In Latin 'sin' has two meanings: one is 'missing the target', and another that is even more beautiful -- 'without'. Sin means to be without, to be outside yourself. Virtue means to be within -- to be inside yourself.

Soon after the death of Rabbi Moshe, Rabbi Mendel of Kotyk asked one of his disciples: 'What was most important to your teacher?'

The disciple thought and then replied: 'Whatever he happened to be doing at the moment.'

The moment is the most important thing. So whatsoever you are doing at the moment, if you are on the path of love, do it with deep love, as if you are doing it for God. Make it a sacrifice. The word 'sacrifice' comes from the same root as 'the sacred'. Sacrifice means making a thing sacred. If you are on the path of love, make everything that you are doing a sacrifice, a holy thing, as if you are preparing for God. He is to come, the guest is to come and you are doing everything for him.

And in fact, it is so. The whole of life is a preparation for the guest and the whole of life is a preparation to become the host, so that when he comes, you are ready, when he knocks at the door everything is ready to receive him.

If you are on the path of meditation, then too -- this moment is the most important moment. On the path of meditation, the past has to be dropped, the future has to be dropped. You have to be just here-now.

So remember, on both paths many things are similar; many things are basic requirements on both paths. But many things are very, very polar opposite.

So please, don't you try to make a synthesis. You simply follow one path. Whatsoever is essential is similar -- that is, to be in the moment, accepting the world as it is, remaining in a mood of celebration. The BHAKTO., the devotee, goes on celebrating life because God is; and on the path of meditation the SADHAKA, the yogi, the Zen follower, goes on celebrating because, 'I am here, I AM.' That very amness, that very amness, is his celebration.

So don't be worried. Many questions have come to me full of worries, anxieties, as if, if you follow one path, you will be missing something. Nothing. You will be missing nothing. By following one, you will be following both; by following both, you will not be following either.

Dang Dang Doko Dang

Chapter #6

Chapter title: Joy Is The Criterion

16 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 7606160

ShortTitle: DANG06

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 101 mins

The first question:

Question 1

HOW CAN I KNOW IF DETACHMENT OR INDIFFERENCE IS GROWING WITHIN?

It is not difficult to know. How do you know when you have a headache and how do you know when you don't have a headache? It is simply clear. When you are growing in detachment you will become healthier, happier; your life will become a life of joy. That is the criterion of all that is good. Joy is the criterion. If you are growing in joy, you are growing, and you are getting towards home.

With indifference there is no possibility that joy can grow. In fact, if you have any joy, that will disappear.

Happiness is health, and, to me, religion is basically hedonistic. Hedonism is the very essence of religion. To be happy is all.

So remember, if things are going right, and you are moving in the right direction, each moment will bring more joy -- as if you are going towards a beautiful garden. The closer you come, the air will be fresher, cooler, more fragrant. That will be the indication that you are moving in the right direction. If the air becomes less fresh, less cool, less fragrant, then you are moving in the opposite direction.

The existence is made out of joy. That is its very stuff. Joy is the stuff existence is made of. So whenever you are moving towards becoming more existential you will be becoming more and more full of joy, delight, for no reason at all. If you are moving into detachment, love will grow, joy will grow, only attachments will drop -- because attachments bring misery, because attachments bring bondage, because attachments destroy your freedom. But if you are becoming indifferent.... Indifference is a pseudo-coin, it looks like detachment, but it only LOOKS like detachment. Nothing will be growing in it. You will simply shrink and die.

So go and see: there are so many monks in the world -- catholic, Hindu, Jaina, Buddhist -- watch them. They don't give a radiant feeling, they don't have the aura of fragrance, they don't look more alive than you are; in fact, they look less alive, crippled, paralysed. Controlled of course, but not in a deeper, inner discipline; controlled but not conscious; following a certain conscience that society has given to them but not yet aware, not yet free, not yet individuals. They live as if they are already in their grave, just waiting to die. Their life becomes morose, monotonous, sad -- it is a sort of despair.

Beware. Whenever something goes wrong there are indications in your being. Sadness is an indicator, depression is an indicator; joy, celebration is also an indicator. More songs will happen to you if you are moving towards detachment. You will be dancing more and you will become more loving. Remember, love is not attachment, love knows no attachment, and that which knows attachment is not love. That is possessiveness, domination, clinging, fear, greed -- it may be a thousand and one things, but it is not love. In the name of love other things are parading, in the name of love other things are hiding behind, but on the container the label 'love' is stuck. Inside you will find many sorts of things but not love at all.

Watch. If you are attached to a person, are you in love? Or are you afraid of your aloneness, so you cling? Because you cannot be alone you use this person so as not to be alone. Then you are afraid. If the person dies or moves somewhere else or falls in love with someone else then you will kill this person and you will say, 'I was so much attached.' Or you may kill yourself and you will say, 'I was so much attached that I cannot live without her or without him.' It is sheer foolishness. It is not love, it is something else. You are afraid of your aloneness, you are not capable of being with yourself, you need somebody to distract you. And you want to possess the other person, you want to use the other person as a means for your own ends. To use another person as a means is violence.

Immanuel Kant has made it one of his fundamentals of moral life. It is. He used to say that to treat a person as a means is the greatest immoral act there is. It is. Because when you treat another person as a means -- for your gratification, for your sexual desire, for your fear, or for something else -- when you use another person as a means, you are reducing the other person to be a thing, you are destroying his or her freedom, you are killing his or her soul.

The soul can grow only in freedom. Love gives freedom. And when you give freedom, you are free, that's what detachment is. If you enforce bondage on the other, you will be in imprisonment on your own accord. If you bind the other, the other will bind you; if you define the other, the other will define you; if you are trying to possess the other, the other will possess you. That's how couples go on fighting for domination for their whole life: the man in his own way, the woman in her own way. Both struggle. It is a continuous nagging and fighting. And the man thinks that in some ways he controls the woman and the woman thinks that in some ways she controls the man. Control is not love.

Never treat any person as a means. Treat everybody as an end in himself, in herself -- then you are a religious person. Then you don't cling, then you are not attached. You love but your love gives freedom -- and, when you give freedom to the other, you are free. Only in freedom does your soul grow. You will feel very, very happy.

The world has become a very unhappy thing. Not because the world is an unhappy thing, but because we have done something wrong to it. The same world can become a celebration.

You ask, HOW CAN I KNOW IF DETACHMENT OR INDIFFERENCE IS GROWING WITHIN? If you are feeling happy, if you are feeling happy with whatsoever is growing, more centred, more grounded, more alive than before, then go headlong into it. Then there is no fear. Let happiness be the touchstone, the criterion -- nothing else can be the criterion. Whatsoever the scriptures say is not a criterion unless your heart is throbbing with happiness; whatsoever I say cannot be the criterion for you unless your heart is throbbing with happiness.

The moment you were were born, a subtle indicator is placed within you. It is part of life that you can always know what is happening, you can always feel whether you are happy or unhappy. Nobody asks how to know whether he is happy or unhappy. Nobody has ever asked. When you are unhappy, you know; when you are happy, you know. Then it is an intrinsic value. You know it, you are born knowing it, so let that intrinsic indication be used and it will never falsify your life.

But if you look in the scriptures there is danger, because for the person who wrote a certain book it may have been a growth, but it may not be a growth for you. He felt happy. Mahavir felt very happy with fasting; Buddha never felt so happy with fasting. So what to do? To whom to listen? Both are perfect beings. If you listen to Buddha there is a possibility that you will start distorting your own feelings; if you listen to Mahavir, there is the same possibility. Krishna lived in the world, loved many women, enjoyed himself. He was a totally different man, perfectly happy. He was always singing and dancing. He had his own feeling -- maybe his feeling suits you or not.

So never try any outer criterion; never try the outside criterion for your inside otherwise there is a danger you may falsify your inner mechanism, the intrinsic mechanism. Listen to your heart.

I am here not to give you any criterion but to make you aware of your own criterion, just to make you aware of your own intrinsic awareness. Feel -- and it is so clear that nothing else is needed to help it.

The second question:

Question 2

WHEN MY MIND IS THE CAUSE OF MY UNHAPPINESS EITHER I DON'T KNOW HOW TO COME OUT OF MIND OR I MUST STILL ENJOY BEING IN MY MIND, DREAMS, FANTASIES.

If the house is on fire and you see the flames of fire you will escape. And you will know how to escape, you will find a way. When the house is on fire who worries whether you are getting out of the right door or whether you are getting out of the back door or getting out of the window? Who bothers? Once you feel that the house is on fire you will not even think about how to get out. You will get out first and then you will think. And then you will wonder how it happened.

Buddha used to say that you ask about techniques because you are not yet aware that the house is on fire.

When you come across a snake on the path do you ask how to get out of the way? And you may not have come across a snake in your whole life. This may be for the first time. And you may never ever have heard anybody talking about how to get out of the way of a snake, but still you will get out of the way -- you will jump. You will not sit there and think about what to do, how to do it, whom to consult, where to find a guru. You will not think, you will simply jump.

The questioner says, WHEN MIND IS THE CAUSE OF MY UNHAPPINESS EITHER I DON'T KNOW HOW TO COME OUT OF MIND OR I MUST STILL ENJOY BEING IN MY MIND, DREAMS, FANTASIES.

WHEN MIND IS THE CAUSE OF MY UNHAPPINESS.... Still it is not clear to you. You may have heard me saying again and again that mind is the cause of all unhappiness. You have listened to me, you have become like a parrot -- now the question arises. But you have not yet felt it. If you have felt that mind is the cause then you will jump out of it, you will know the way. The way is there, the way has always been there.

It is not your realisation. And you must still be enjoying your dreams, your fantasies, because the mind stops immediately, the moment you stop enjoying it. There is no other way to stop it. It is just like a bicycle: you go on pedaling it, it goes on moving. If you stop pedaling it, it may go a little further because of the past momentum but then it will stop.

Mind needs constant co-operation, constant infusion of energy from your side, constant identification. The mind needs your help, it is a mechanism, it cannot run on its own accord. Deep down you are helping it. When the body lies there and the soul has disappeared, the mind stops instantly. It cannot work without you.

You must be enjoying it. In fact, religion is also one of your fantasies; God is your biggest dream. Listening to religious people, seeing their ecstasy, watching their grace, a greed has arisen in you. Your mind fantasises. It would be beautiful to be in nirvana, it would be beautiful to be enlightened. Your mind starts dreaming about it. Then you come to hear that the mind has to be dropped.

Three persons were talking. One said, 'If in a dream you get one million rupees, what are you going to do? As far as I am concerned, I am going for a world tour. That has been my dream from my very childhood. What are you going to do?'

The other said, 'If I get one million rupees, I am not going anywhere. I am just going to rest in my house. Why bother? I am going to stop going and just rest and relax and enjoy. Who bothers to go from here to there?'

And they asked the third man, 'If you get one million rupees in a dream, what are you going to do?'

He said, 'I will immediately close my eyes and sleep again, to dream more to get many more millions. If you can get one million rupees in one dream, I will dream the same dream again to get one million more.'

Your mind is your dream, your fantasy. You are still in it. Even when you are thinking about how to get out of the mind, that too is a mind fantasy. And you must be enjoying it.

I have heard.

Mulla Nasruddin stormed out of his office and yelled, 'Something has got to be done about those six phones on my desk. For the past five minutes I have been talking to myself.'

Mind is nothing but talking to yourself. What else is it? The inner talk, the inner chattering, the rehearsing for the future, the chewing again and again the past experiences -- you are talking to yourself. It is a monologue. With nobody else to talk to, you talk to yourself.

If windows were possible into your mind and people could look inside, or there was a system.... Someday there may be. Science will find a way to magnify your mind. Your mind can be attached, wired, to an instrument and the instrument will start broadcasting what is going on inside your mind. Then you will be simply amazed to see that you are mad. You will not allow anybody to connect your mind to an instrument. Sometimes write down what goes on in your mind on some blank paper. Close the doors and windows so nobody comes in and just write it down. Don't deceive, because nobody will ever see, you can burn it immediately. Just write down whatsoever goes on. Don't improve upon it, don't add something, don't delete anything. Photographically simply write down the way the mind goes on. Within ten minutes you will see how mad you are. What is going on?

But we never look. We look outside, we never look into the mind. Looking into the mind is what meditation is all about

Bodhidharma, the real founder of Zen, used to say, "Looking face to face with the mind is all. Looking directly into your mind is all.' Once you start looking directly you will be surprised. You will come to know that you are carrying a madman; not one really, a madhouse -- many madmen inside, running hither and thither, all against each other, fighting, struggling, warring.

If you look deep inside into the mind directly, first you will be amazed, mystified as to why you go on carrying this mind.

And the second thing you will realise is that you are not the mind, you are the looker, the watcher, the witness, who is seeing into the mind. And that will give you a freedom that you have not yet known. You are confined in the body, then you are confined in the mind. Once you come to know that you are neither the body nor the mind, suddenly you become unconfined -- you are as big, as vast as the sky. Then there is no boundary line around you; then you are one with this ocean of life; then you are one with God.'That art thou -- 'TAT TWAMASI.' Then you come to know that 'i am that', the witness.

So the only thing you can do is just to look deeply inside the mind. It will have two aspects. First you will feel very, very crazy, going mad. Don't try to escape from that madness because if you escape, again you will escape outside. Stick to it, let it be mad -- but go on looking into it, go on looking into it. Sometimes it takes months, sometimes it takes years but it is worth it, even if it takes lives. If you go on looking, unwaveringly, not getting distracted here and there, then one day the second aspect arises in you -- that you are a witness. Your mind looks very, very far away, very distant, on some other planet, only sounds are heard, a few flickering waves come to you. The more you become a witness, the more the energy gathers together in becoming a witness, the more and more energy is taken away from the mind. The mind starts withering. One day you are there all alone without any mind. Then you are in a state of 'nowhereness'.

I have heard about two hobos who were caught by the police and were brought to the court. The policeman suspected they had not committed anything wrong, but their way of life, their style was suspicious.

The magistrate asked the first hobo, 'Where do you live?'

He said, 'Nowhere.'

He asked the second, 'Where do you live?'

He said, 'I am this guy's neighbour.'

The first guy lives nowhere, the other is the neighbour -- the answer is pure Zen.

When you come to know yourself, you come to know that you are nowhere, 'nowhen', because there is no time, no space. Suddenly you are the whole, spread all over reality. This is what we in the East call MOKSHA, absolute freedom.

But you must be enjoying your mind, that's why you are asking how to get out of it, what the way is to get out of it. These are the questions of people who are trying to deceive themselves. You don't want to get out of it so you ask 'how?' because with the 'how?' postponement is possible. The 'how?' cannot be done right now, you will have to practise it, it can happen only tomorrow, it cannot happen right now. The 'how?' gives you time -- tomorrow. and then you say, 'Okay, so we will do it tomorrow. It cannot happen right now.'

People ask me, 'Can enlightenment happen right now?' If I say 'yes', they say, 'Then why is it not happening?' Then they think it is not going to happen to them because if it was going to happen, it would have happened already. It happens right now! If I say to them, 'You will have to work for it, you will have to do hard, arduous work, you will have to move in deep discipline,' then they say, 'Then it is okay. So somewhere in the future it will happen.' And they are relieved. So it is not going to happen right now -- someday -- so what is the hurry?

Whether it is tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, it makes no difference -- it is tomorrow. Both ways they find a way to postpone.

Now let me give you a paradox to meditate on: it always happens right now but one has to work for it. It never happens in the tomorrow, it always happens today, because there is no tomorrow. But one has to work hard; one has to gather together all one's energies and to put them at stake. If all your energies are together right now, if you desire intensely, passionately, if your desire has become almost a flame and you are aflame with one desire, only with one desire -- to attain to enlightenment -- it can happen right now. If you are so thirsty that you disappear and only thirst remains, then God starts pouring into you. Then you have earned, you have earned the capacity. You have become receptive.

WHEN MIND IS THE CAUSE OF MY UNHAPPINESS.... Never ask such questions. You still think it is not so. This is a hypothetical question; when, if, etc., are hypothetical questions.

WHEN MIND IS THE CAUSE OF MY UNHAPPINESS.... No, either it is or it is not, there is no question of 'when'. Either you know that it is the cause of unhappiness or you know that it is not the cause of unhappiness. Decide. If it is not the cause of unhappiness, then things are clear: there is nothing to be done with mind. In fact, if it is not the cause of unhappiness, then the cause must lie somewhere outside you. That's what Communists say -- Marx and Mao. That's what they say -- that the cause of happiness is somewhere outside you not inside you: in the structure of the society, the economic system of society, in the political world -- somewhere outside you.

If your misery comes from outside there is no way to get out of it. Because the cause is outside you, how can you destroy it?

Because of this fact, Freud by and by became very despondent in his later life and finally, before he died, he wrote in a letter: Man can never be happy; it is impossible. Man's desire to be happy is an impossible desire. Man can never be happy because it is not in his hands to be happy.

But Freud is wrong. I am here and I say to you that I am happy. So it is not a question of my belief. It is not a belief that I am happy. Buddha is happy, Krishna is happy, Jesus is happy. But Freud -- why does he think that man cannot be happy? And he is not a man to make meaningless statements. He is a very sincere man. Forty, fifty years of deep observation has brought him to make the statement that man cannot be happy. The reason is that he was also looking for the cause somewhere beyond man.

Marx looks for it in the social structure, Freud looks for it in the unconscious. But the very definition of unconscious is that which is not available to you, that of which you are not conscious. It is outside you, you are in your consciousness. It is outside you, it is somewhere you don't know where. From where does your misery come? How can you change it?

Religion takes a radically and diametrically opposite standpoint: you are the cause. It makes one sad in the beginning that 'i am the cause of my misery' but really one should be happy. If I am the cause, then there is a possibility, then there is hope -- because I can stop it. I can try not to be the cause of my unhappiness.

With religion, man becomes responsible; with communism, man becomes irresponsible. With religion, man becomes a free agent in this world; with communism, man becomes a mechanical thing, a robot-like thing. With religion, you attain to being a soul, you become a soul; with communism, the soul disappears, you are no more there.

If the cause of happiness is outside, if the cause of misery is outside, then your soul is outside -- it is not within you. Then you are to be manipulated by the state, then you are nothing but a hollow puppet and the strings are somewhere in the Kremlin -- somebody is manipulating from there. Then life is almost meaningless -- not only meaningless, horrible. Man is not a hollow puppet; man has a substantial being in him.

So when you say, WHEN MIND IS THE THE CAUSE OF MY UNHAPPINESS, you have taken my statement as true without realising it, without becoming a witness to it. Never do that, otherwise questions arise unnecessarily. It is better not to answer hypothetical questions because they will create more hypothetical questions. If you are unhappy because of your mind, recognise the fact.

Somebody insults you. Do you think you are unhappy because somebody insulted you or do you think you are unhappy because you have a very subtle ego which felt hurt by this insult? Now the possibilities are only two. Either you are unhappy because he insulted you. If that is the possibility, the only possibility, then you can never be happy because the world is vast and how can you manage that nobody will insult you ever? It is beyond you. If it is your ego which feels hurt, then the possibility exists that you can drop the ego. Then let the whole world insult you, you can go on laughing, it makes no difference.

Mulla Nasruddin and one of his friends had been drinking all evening in a bar. The friend finally passed out and fell to the floor. The Mulla called a doctor who rushed him to a hospital.

When he came to, the doctor asked him, 'Do you see any pink elephants or little green men?'

'No,' groaned the patient.

'No snakes or alligators?' the doctor asked.

'No,' the drunk said.

'Then just sleep it off. You will be all right in the morning,' said the doctor.

But Mulla Nasruddin was worried.

'Look, doctor,' he said, 'that boy is in bad shape. He said he could not see any of them animals and you and I know the room is full of them.'

What I say will not make much difference if you know the room is full of them. Finally you are going to be the deciding factor. So watch your mind. Is your mind the cause of misery? If it is not then you cannot be a religious man. Then one day or other you are going to be a communist. These are the two alternatives: religion and communism. Everybody has to decide. And I would suggest to you that if you feel that your mind is not the cause of misery, then become a communist -- nothing wrong in it, be sincere. Sooner or later you will be frustrated, and a frustrated communist becomes religious very easily. Many people need that frustration because then that alternative is finished. Then there is only one alternative. Never hang between the two, never be in the limbo.

Many people are in the limbo. They go to the church but their heart is communistic. When I say communistic I don't mean they belong to the communist party, I mean that they believe that the cause of their misery is outside.

A stubborn old Dubliner stepped into the dentist's office with a terrific toothache. He could not, however, muster up enough courage to have the tooth pulled. So the dentist gave him a glass of whisky to bolster him.

Then the dentist said, 'Right, ready now?'

'Not quite,' said the man smacking his lips.

Two more drinks of whisky and finally he finished up the entire bottle.

'Now step into the chair,' the dentist begged.

The Irishman came out swinging into the middle of the room.

'I would like to see the swine who would dare to touch my tooth now!'

You are almost drunk with your mind. And I am going to touch your teeth, remember. You have to become a little sober, you have to become a little more aware. Once you have a little awareness you will start seeing that it is your mind, nothing else but your mind that goes on spinning new webs of misery. It is just like a spider: he goes on creating a net and goes on being caught into himself.

The first thing to be decided is whether you realise the fact that your mind is the cause of your misery, of your unhappiness. Once this is decided everything becomes clear. Then there is no need, really, to ask how to get out of it. And if you have not yet decided and I help you in some way to get out of it, I will be in trouble.

Let me tell you one anecdote to make the thing clear.

The woman bather had got into a hole and she could not swim. Nor could the young man on the end of the pier. But when she came up the first time and he caught sight of her face he could yell, and he did. Just then a big fisherman walked by.

'What is up?' he asked.

'There!' hoarsely cried the young man.'My wife, drowning. I can't swim. A hundred dollars if you save her!'

In a moment the fisherman was in the water; in another he was out of it with the rescued woman.

He approached the young man.'Well, what about the hundred dollars?'

If the young man's face had been ashen-gray before, now it was dead white as he gazed upon the features of the rescued woman.

'Yes I know,' he gasped, 'but when I made the offer I thought it was my wife who was drowning and now, now it turns out it was my wife's mother!'

'Just my luck,' said the fisherman sadly, thrusting his hand into his trouser pocket.'How much do I owe you?'

So first you decide whether your mind is your wife or your mother-in-law. Then only can something be done about it. Otherwise you will be angry with me. If I pull you out of your mind and you were still fantasising and dreaming, you will be tremendously angry and annoyed and irritated. And if you were dreaming sweet dreams, then more so, because you were hoping that something was just going to be fulfilled.

One day Mulla Nasruddin's wife woke him up in the morning and he became very, very angry and he said, 'You foolish woman. Is this the right time?'

She said, 'But the sun is up.'

He said, 'It has nothing to do with the sun. I was dreaming about a man who was offering me a hundred rupees and just at the moment I was going to take it, you came. You have destroyed the whole thing.'

He tried again to create sleep, tried to close his eyes, turned this way and that, but you cannot catch hold of a dream. Once it is gone it is gone. And he started saying, 'Okay, I will accept even ninety, eighty, seventy, whatsoever you give, I will accept, but give it!'

But there was nobody to give.

If you are dreaming, then dream a little more. Nobody is ever fulfilled by dreaming but one has to figure it out oneself -- 'Enough is enough. I have dreamed enough, fantasised enough, and nothing comes except misery, except frustration.' Each desire brings more frustration, each expectation turns finally into frustration.

Once YOU understand it, there will be no need to take you out of it; once you understand it, the very understanding becomes the coming out of it. The very understanding means freedom from mind.

The third question:

Question 3

YOU TALK ABOUT A LIVING RELIGION YET IN SOME CENTRES PEOPLE KNEEL OVER THE CAST OF YOUR FEET. I AM REMINDED OF THE CATHOLIC RELIGION WHERE I LOST THE MEANING OF THE TEACHINGS AND INSTEAD VENERATED THE SYMBOL. PLEASE TELL ME WHY WE NEED YOUR SYMBOLS. THEY ARE NOT YOU,NOR YOUR TEACHING.

It is a very subtle question. You will have to be very alert to understand it.

Yes, religion has nothing to do with symbols. Religion in its essence is absolutely pure, just an experiencing, a knowing. It has nothing to do with outside symbols. But that is not the question. That pure religion is not possible for you as you are; the way you are you will need symbols.

Once it happened, Joshu was sitting in front of his temple. A great Zen Master. A seeker came and he asked Joshu, 'Master, where is Buddha? Who is Buddha? What is this Buddhahood?'

Joshu looked into the eyes of the man and said, 'You ask who is Buddha? Go inside the temple. He is there.'

The man laughed and said, 'There is only a stone statue. And I know and you know that a stone statue is not Buddha.'

Joshu said, 'Perfectly right. A stone statue is not Buddha.'

Then the man said, 'Then tell me, who is Buddha?'

Joshu looked again into his eyes and said, 'Go into the temple, you will find the Buddha there.'

Now this is very puzzling. The questioner is not yet able to understand the non-symbolic. Though intellectually he understands that the statue is just a stone statue and is not Buddha, it is only intellectual understanding

If your lover gives you a small handkerchief, has it any more meaning than any other handkerchief of the same make, of the same value? If it is lost, tears may come to your eyes. Your mind is still symbolic, still lives in symbols. That handkerchief, a small, valueless handkerchief given by your lover or beloved, carries a certain meaning which nobody else can see. It is an ordinary handkerchief but to you it is very symbolic. It has a message, a love message. That handkerchief is worth a kingdom. It is personal and somebody has given it to you as a deep gesture of his love. It is no more a commodity in the marketplace, it is no more a part of the world of things -- that handkerchief has a personality, almost a soul. Have you not watched this inside you?

If this is so, then symbols are still meaningful for you and you cannot just drop them unless the whole mind is dropped. It depends on you. If those symbols have a certain response in your heart they are alive.

When a Buddhist goes to the Buddhist temple and bows down before the stone statue of Buddha, if it is really a heartfelt prayer, if he is really bowing down in deep humbleness, then don't bother about the statue. The real thing is the humbleness, the desire, the love, the heartfelt urge. That stone statue is just instrumental.

If you go and you are not a Buddhist and you have no heart for Buddha, then, of course, it is a stone statue. A Buddhist has a love affair with Buddha. If you call that stone statue just a stone, he will be hurt because he sees something more in it. That something more is in his eyes, certainly so, absolutely so -- it is not there in the statue. But in front of the statue something responds in him, something starts singing in his heart. His heart beats faster, he feels transfigured. That transfiguration is meaningful. It does not matter if the statue is Buddha or not, it does not matter at all. But it helped.

For example: you come across a rope. It is getting dark, the sun has set, the night is descending, and on a lonely path in the forest you come across the rope and you think it is a snake. You start running, perspiring. There is no snake but is your perspiration real or not? If there was a real snake would the perspiration be a more real? Is your running real or not? Would it have been more real if there had been a real snake? To you it is real.

Buddha has a definition of truth -- a very strange definition. He says, 'That which affects is true.' That which affects is true. If a rope is taken as a snake and it affects you, it is true. To you it is true. It is almost a snake.

A symbol is real if it affects you; if it does not affect you, of course, it is not a symbol at all. The very word 'symbol' means that a thing has some greater value than is available to the naked eyes, a thing has some greater value than a scientist can give to it. That greater value makes it symbolic.

I have heard about a Hasid rabbi, Rabbi Sadagora. He used to say to his hasidim, 'You can learn something from everything. Everything can teach us something, and not only everything God has made or created, but what man has made also has something to teach us.'

'What can we learn from a train?' one Hasid asked dubiously.

'That because of one second one can miss everything.'

'And from the telegraph?'

'That every word is counted and charged.'

'And the telephone?'

'That what we say here is heard there.'

Then everything becomes symbolic, and life takes on a different dimension.

If your heart feels something for the cross, then it is not just a cross, you become connected through it with Jesus. That's not a scientific thing but religion is not a scientific thing. It is more poetic; it is more like love and less like reason; it is more like feeling and less like analysis. It is not logic, it is a very deep romance with reality.

If you drop all symbols -- as many people have, thinking that symbols are just empty symbols, there is nothing in them -- why do you shake hands with your friend? It is simply foolish taking somebody's hand and simply shaking it. Can't you see the foolishness of it? Why do you kiss your woman? Can't you see the lack of hygiene in it? The sheer unmedicalness of it? Two persons transferring their diseases...in each kiss millions of minute cells are transferred. What are you doing? When you say to your woman, 'I love you,' what are these words -- ' I love you'? Just words? Nothing more? Words are symbols. The word 'love' is not love, so drop it. If you go on dropping in that way what will be left?

Let me tell you one anecdote.

The battered old man got up one night during a revival meeting and said, 'Brothers and sisters, you know and I know I ain't been what I ought to have been. I have stole hard and told lies and got drunk and always been in fights and shooting crap and playing poker and I have cursed and swore, but I thank the Lord there is one thing I ain't never done. I ain't never lost my religion.'

Then what type of religion is left? If you drop all symbols, you drop language; if you drop all symbols, you drop poetry; if you drop all symbols, you drop even mathematics. Then what is left?

Man is a symbolic creature, man lives in a world of symbols. Even science cannot do without symbols. Science, which is expected to be absolutely factual, cannot work without symbols. In fact, there is no possibility of growing without symbols. That's why animals are not growing; they cannot grow unless they move into the dimension of symbols. So everything is a symbol.

Once it happened that Ramakrishna was talking to his disciples. He was talking about ANAHAT NAD, the soundless sound, and he said that by the constant chanting of AUM YOU will come to a point where soundless sound is heard.

An intellectual, a logician, was present there and he was getting very irritated by this uneducated man. Ramakrishna was uneducated, he went only to the second grade, he never studied anything, never knew anything about scriptures. So the man was getting annoyed. And people were listening so intently to this uneducated fellow that he was boiling inside and he tried to find a chance to show his knowledge.

Then he said, 'Stop. This is all nonsense. Just by repeating a sound, AUM, AUM, AUM, nothing is going to happen. Because AUM is just a symbol, nothing else. It is just a word -- not even a word, a meaningless sound. So what is going to happen out of it? You can go on repeating and nothing will happen.'

And he started quoting scriptures. He was a learned man. Ramakrishna listened to him for half an hour, very intently, then suddenly he looked at him and said, 'You stupid. Now stop! Don't utter a single word!'

That man was very much disturbed. This illiterate fellow called him stupid! But he became afraid also because this man was thought to be very religious, a great mystic, and he said, 'Don't utter a single word otherwise you will repent.' So he became very afraid because when this mystic's devotees were there, if he said something, they might jump over him. And who knows? This man might know something. So he kept quiet but he was almost fire.

For two or three minutes Ramakrishna again started talking about AUM and ANAHAT NAD, the soundless sound. Then after two minutes he looked at the man. He was perspiring yet it was a winter evening. Ramakrishna said, 'Look, sir. Just a small word 'stupid' and look what it has done. You are perspiring and you are getting so aflame that if these people were not here you would have killed me. Just look at it. Just a small symbol 'stupid' and look what it has done!'

The whole human consciousness has grown out of symbolism. All our languages -- the language of science, the language of religion, the language of poetry -- are all symbols. Our whole life of love, relationship, is nothing but symbolism.

Unless you have come to a point where the whole mind disappears, symbols are meaningful. The questioner asks: YOU TALK ABOUT A LIVING RELIGION YET IN SOME CENTRES PEOPLE KNEEL OVER THE CAST OF YOUR FEET. Those feet are irrelevant, their kneeling is relevant. Those feet are just symbolic, but their kneeling is real. That is not symbolic. They are affected by it.

So when I say 'a living religion' I mean a religion which is still moving the hearts. If somebody is moved by a cross he is still encountering Christ -- the religion is living to him. And if you simply bow down because it is a formality to be fulfilled, then the religion is dead. Because the symbol is dead and there is nothing inside you, the religion is dead. The symbol is always dead but if it affects you and starts a movement in your energy, then it is alive.

A religion is alive in the heart, it has nothing to do with temples and churches. If you are moved, if a rhythm arises in you, if you start dancing seeing Krishna or his statue, suddenly the flute on his lips is no longer just a symbol to you, it has become a real dance. You can listen to his tune, you can hear his tune.

I AM REMINDED OF THE CATHOLIC RELIGION WHERE I LOST THE MEANING OF THE TEACHINGS AND INSTEAD VENERATED THE SYMBOLS. It is your fault. It has nothing to do with the church. If you missed the meaning and started venerating the symbols, it is your fault. Now that you have become so afraid of symbols it simply means you have reacted to your upbringing; you have not yet become a revolutionary, you have just reacted.

Because a few symbols were given to you in your childhood and they never became alive, now you are afraid of all symbols. You will be very poor for that. Don't be afraid. If one set of symbols has not worked, another set of symbols can work. And now you are not a child. Those symbols did not work because they were forced on you by your parents, but if you choose your own religion.... Now remember this, this is my continuous emphasis: if you want to be religious, you have to choose your religion -- then it is alive. Only through choice, voluntary choice, is it alive. If it has been enforced on you then it is dead, then it is somebody else's religion, it is somebody else's trip -- your parents' trip. And you are simply carrying it like a load.

You have chosen to walk with me, it is your choice, it is your voluntary choice. It is your will to be with me. Then between me and you whatsoever transpires is going to be alive. That may not be so with your children when I am gone. You would like your children also to be in orange -- then something may not happen because then it will be your trip and you will be enforcing your trip on your children. Never enforce your trip on anybody else.

If YOU choose hell, even hell is heaven; if you are forced and coerced into heaven, then heaven will become a hell. Freedom is the most fundamental value; nothing is more valuable than freedom. If you choose Christ or Krishna or Buddha -- if you choose, remember -- then they become contemporaries, then there is no gap of twenty centuries between you and Christ, no. Then he walks with you, then he talks with you, then he is a constant companion. Then his cross is your cross and your cross is his cross. Then he is with you in your misery and he is with you in your happiness -- and he shares himself with you. But it has to be your choice.

PLEASE TELL ME WHY WE NEED YOUR SYMBOLS. THEY ARE NOT YOU NOR YOUR TEACHINGS HERE. They are neither me nor my teachings but you cannot see me yet. Whatsoever you see is just a symbol -- my body is just a symbol, it is not me; my photograph is a symbol, it is not me; whatsoever I am saying is symbolic, it is not me. And what I am saying is not my teaching because my teachings cannot be said. Nobody's -- Buddha's nor Christ's -- nobody's can be said. Whatsoever is being said is not the real thing. The real is elusive. Truth cannot be uttered.

But I have to talk to you to persuade you to become silent. This is a very absurd effort, but this is how it is! I have to seduce you towards silence through words. Words are just symbols; silence is.... Remember, when I say silence, the word 'silence' is not silence.

Yes, Joshu was right. The Buddha is in the temple.

The man said, 'But there is no Buddha, there is only a stone statue. How can an enlightened man like you say that a stone statue is a Buddha?'

And Joshu said, 'You are right. It is just a stone statue.'

Then the man said, 'Now tell me, where is Buddha?'

Joshu said, 'Go into the temple, he is there.'

If you have the eyes to see then you can see even in a stone. If you don't have the eyes to see you may come across Jesus and you may not recognise him. Many of you were there when Jesus was there, many of you were there when Buddha was there and you never recognised him. Many of you are here just in front of me and you may never recognise me. So the deepest question is of your recognition. If you can recognise something in a stone, if you can recognise something in a cast of my feet, yes, Buddha is there.

The whole thing is yours -- your Buddha, your Christ, your me. Everything is yours, you are the only one. This is the beauty, the drama of life: you are the actor, you are the director, you are the audience, you are the story-writer, you are the play-back singer, you are all, alone.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

The wholesale company sold a bill of goods to a merchant at a small cross-road village. When the goods arrived he refused them. The wholesale firm prepared to start suit for collection and wrote to the railroad agent of the village for information about the arrival of the merchandise. They also wrote the president of the bank for information concerning the financial standing of the customer, to the Mayor of the town asking him to recommend a good lawyer to handle the case, and to the merchant threatening suit if he did not make payment at once.

The company receive this reply: 'I received a letter telling me I had better pay up. I am the railroad agent here and also received the letter you wrote to the agent. I am president and sole owner of the local bank and can assure you as to my financial standing. As Mayor of the town I hesitate to refer to you a lawyer since I am the only member of the bar in this vicinity. If I were not also the pastor of the town's one church I would tell you to go to hell.'

Now this is the case -- you are all in all. If a symbol is alive to you, it is alive -- you bring life to it, you pour life into it.

When somebody is bowing down before the cast of my feet, for him they become alive -- he pours his life into them. You may be standing there looking at the foolishness. What is he doing?

Yes, it is foolish for you because those feet are not alive for you, that symbol is not throbbing for you, you have not poured your life into it.

So don't be bo