Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen, with Basho’s Haikus

Talks on Zen

Talks given from 26/09/88 pm to 04/10/88 pm

English Discourse series

CHAPTER 1

The language of suddenness

26 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN HYAKUJO FIRST ARRIVED AT CHIANG-SI TO PAY HIS RESPECTS TO MA TZU, MA TZU

INQUIRED, ”FROM WHERE HAVE YOU COME?”

”FROM THE GREAT CLOUD MONASTERY AT YUEH CHOU,” ANSWERED HYAKUJO.

”AND WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO GAIN BY COMING HERE?” ASKED MA TZU.

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”I HAVE COME SEEKING THE BUDDHA-DHARMA.”

TO THIS MA TZU REPLIED, ”INSTEAD OF LOOKING TO THE TREASURE HOUSE WHICH IS

YOUR VERY OWN, YOU HAVE LEFT HOME AND GONE WANDERING FAR AWAY. WHAT FOR?

I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HERE AT ALL. WHAT IS THIS BUDDHA-DHARMA THAT YOU

SEEK?”

WHEREUPON HYAKUJO PROSTRATED HIMSELF AND ASKED, ”PLEASE TELL ME TO WHAT

YOU ALLUDED WHEN YOU SPOKE OF A TREASURE HOUSE OF MY VERY OWN.”

MA TZU REPLIED, ”THAT WHICH ASKED THE QUESTION IS YOUR TREASURE HOUSE.

IT CONTAINS ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING YOU NEED AND LACKS NOTHING AT ALL. IT IS

THERE FOR YOU TO USE FREELY, SO WHY THIS VAIN SEARCH FOR SOMETHING OUTSIDE

YOURSELF?”

NO SOONER WERE THESE WORDS SPOKEN THAN HYAKUJO RECEIVED A GREAT

ILLUMINATION AND RECOGNIZED HIS OWN NO-MIND. BESIDE HIMSELF WITH JOY, HE

BOWED IN DEEP GRATITUDE.

HYAKUJO SPENT THE NEXT SIX YEARS IN ATTENDANCE UPON MA TZU. BUT AS TAO-CHIH, HIS FIRST TEACHER, WAS GROWING OLD, HE WANTED TO RETURN TO LOOK AFTER HIM.

BEFORE HYAKUJO LEFT MA TZU, HE WENT TO PAY HIS FINAL TRIBUTE TO HIM.

SEEING HIM COMING, MA TZU RAISED HIS HORSE WHISK STRAIGHT UP. HYAKUJO ASKED,

”ARE YOU IN THE USE OF IT, OR APART FROM THE USE?”

MA TZU HUNG THE HORSE WHISK ON THE CORNER OF HIS CHAIR. AFTER A MINUTE OR

SO, HE ASKED HYAKUJO, ”HENCE FORWARD, HOW DO YOU OPEN THOSE TWO LEAVES OF

YOUR MOUTH TO WORK FOR OTHERS?”

AT THIS, HYAKUJO TOOK THE HORSE WHISK AND RAISED IT STRAIGHT UP.

MA TZU SAID, ”ARE YOU IN THE USE OF IT, OR APART FROM IT?”

HYAKUJO HUNG THE HORSE WHISK ON THE CORNER OF THE CHAIR.

JUST AT THAT MOMENT, A GREAT ROAR, LIKE HUNDREDS OF THUNDERBOLTS FALLING, RAINED ON HYAKUJO’S HEAD. MA TZU HAD GIVEN A SHOUT WHICH, IT IS SAID, DEAFENED

HYAKUJO FOR THREE DAYS.

Maneesha, before I speak on the sutras of Hyakujo, I have to say a few words as a preface.

Hyakujo was the direct heir of Ma Tzu and became most well known for his establishment of the first truly Zen monasteries and his treatise on sudden enlightenment.

To understand Hyakujo, the first thing is to understand that enlightenment can only be sudden.

The preparation can be gradual, but the illumination is going to be sudden. You can prepare the ground for the seeds, but the sprouts will come suddenly one day in the morning; they don’t come gradually. Existence believes in suddenness. Nothing is gradual here, although everything appears to be gradual; that is our illusion.

In the past science used to think that everything was gradual: a child gradually becomes young; the young man gradually is becoming older... Now, we know that is not the case because of Albert Einstein and his discoveries about atomic energy. He himself was puzzled when he saw for the first time that the particles of an atom don’t go from one place to another place the way you go from your house to the market. They simply jump. And their jump is so tremendous that Einstein had to find a new word for it: ‘quanta’, the quantum jump. It means that the particle was in one place, A, and then suddenly you see it in another place, B. The path between has never been traveled.

A strange jump that you cannot see the particle between the two points. That gave him an idea that in existence everything is jumping, and because the jump is so subtle, you cannot see it.

Every moment you are jumping towards old age. It is not a gradual thing. It is happening every moment that you are growing older, and there is no way that you can find to rest in between the jumps. The jumps are so close, but you can prepare – and particularly for enlightenment, which is the ultimate quantum leap. You can meditate; you can go as deep as you can; you can find your center. And the moment you find your center, suddenly, there will be a jump as if out of nowhere the buddha has appeared – a buddha of pure flames.

This appearance is not going to be gradual, not partial. Hyakujo’s great contribution was the sudden enlightenment, because it is so illogical. If you go from here to the market, you have to go – not like the monkey god of Hindus, flying in the sky, carrying a mountain, jumping from one mountain to another mountain... You will have to go step by step. You will have to move gradually. You cannot simply disappear from Buddha Auditorium and find yourself in the M.G Road marketplace.

In our actual life we never come across anything sudden: you never see the bud of a rose suddenly becoming a flower; it opens gradually. In the morning it was a bud, in the evening it becomes the flower. Because of the continuous experience of gradualness, the major masters of Zen belonged to the gradual school. To them it was absolutely absurd that you can become a buddha instantaneously, just now.

Everything needs time. If you want to prepare a house, a garden, a painting, a poem, it will take time.

There is only one thing that does not take time, because it is beyond time, that is your buddhahood.

You simply jump out of time and you find yourself as you have been always and will be always – your intrinsic nature.

Hyakujo introduced another thing: Zen monasteries. Before him there were Zen temples – small groups of people living in those temples, meditating, reading scriptures. But he introduced a new thing, the monastery, where people were absolutely devoted to a single-pointed goal: to become the buddha. No scriptures, no rituals... the whole energy has to be poured into a single direction: to discovering your intrinsic nature. And why monasteries? When there are thousands of people together, going into the unknown, it is easier for you, because you know that although you are going alone into your own space, thousands of others are also going into the same space on their own.

You are not absolutely alone. Secondly, a monastery creates a certain atmosphere. That was the greatest contribution of Hyakujo.

A monastery is a climate. Its every fiber, every wave... every leaf of the trees is soaked with only one longing: a great urgency to become the buddha. And when ten thousand people, for years, continuously go on working, it creates an energy field. In that energy field you can be caught and you can easily slip out of your mind. Alone, it is a little difficult. Alone it can happen, it has happened too, but that is not the rule.

Hyakujo’s great insight of introducing monasteries, simply means introducing an energy field which is not visible to you. When ten thousand sannyasins here enter into their inner being, in a way they are alone, but in a way ten thousand people are with them. The experiment is not being done in their cells alone, but in the open, under the sky, with thousands of other people on the same track, creating vibrations, ripples of energy.

Not to become a buddha in such a climate, you would have to struggle against the whole energy field, you would have to swim upstream. But if you want to become a buddha, you simply go with the stream. A deep let-go is possible in that atmosphere. Hyakujo introduced a very scientific concept of monasteries.

Born in 724, Hyakujo was also known as Pai Chang. As a young boy Hyakujo was taken to a temple by his mother, and upon entering, she bowed to the Buddhist statue. Pointing to the statue, Hyakujo asked his mother, ”What is that?”

His mother replied, ”That is a buddha.”

Hyakujo said, ”He looks like a man. I want to become a buddha afterwards.”

This small incident of his childhood has great implications. Buddha never wanted to be in any way extraordinary or special for the simple reason that if he was special and extraordinary, that would discourage people to become buddhas because they know they are ordinary, they are not special; they are not incarnations of God, they don’t have divine miraculous powers. They cannot walk on water; they cannot bring a dead Lazarus back to life... Just look at Jesus and Buddha and you will find that Buddha is absolutely ordinary, simple, humble; he can mix with the crowd. Jesus will stand far away... because you cannot walk on water.

I have heard, only once, that a bishop had come to the holy land of Israel. He had two friends, two old rabbis, and he asked them to take him to all the holy places which were visited by Jesus. So finally, they went to Lake Galilee where Jesus had walked on water. They took a boat to show him the exact place where he had walked. The bishop said to the rabbis, ”Jesus was a Jew, your last prophet and our first founder. Can you also walk on water?”

The rabbi said, ”Easy.”

The bishop could not believe it. He said, ”I want to see.”

So one rabbi got out from the left side of the boat and walked on water for a few feet and came back.

The bishop could not even blink his eyes when he saw the man walking on water. He said, ”We used to think that it was only Jesus, but it seems to be a Jewish quality.”

The old rabbis said to the bishop, ”We don’t follow Jesus and we don’t accept him as our prophet.

We have crucified him for the crime of being a fraud, propounding himself to be our last prophet. But you are a follower of Jesus, so just take the name of Jesus and you try walking on the water.”

Now it was a great challenge....

But the bishop was sitting on the right side, so he got out from the right side and went down into the water and started shouting, ”Help! Help!”

Those two rabbis took him out, and the older rabbi asked the younger, ”Shall we tell this idiot what the secret is?”

The secret was that there were stones in the water, just below the water, but they were on the left side, not on the right side. Jesus must have walked on those stones – there is no question about it.

I have heard that an American Christian, a very rich man but very miserly, went to Israel. And every visitor is bound to go to Lake Galilee which is the holiest place – where Jesus lived for most of his life. And he asked the boatman, ”How much will it cost to take me to the place where Jesus walked on water?”

He said, ”It will cost ten dollars.”

The American said, ”That explains everything about how Jesus walked on water. Ten dollars? Forget about it. I am not in a mood to walk on water.”

You will not find in Buddha anything that is not possible for you. He is as human a being as you are.

He does not proclaim himself to be anything special. That is his grandeur. That is his greatness.

In this incident, Hyakujo is asking his mother, pointing to the statue of Buddha, ”What is that?”

The mother said, ”That is a buddha.”

Hyakujo said, ”He looks like a man.”

He never tried to look like anything else, he simply wanted to look like man so that every man can be encouraged – that you don’t have to walk on water, you don’t have to turn water into whiskey....

You can be a buddha without any difficulty because it is your inner nature. It does not depend on miracles. Religion is not magic. It is a very simple and humble effort to search within yourself for the deepest point where you are joined with the universe. That joining point is the buddha.

Hyakujo said, even though he was a small child, ”He looks like a man. I want to become a buddha afterwards. If this man could become a buddha, I am also a man. Right now I am too small, but later on, I am going to become a buddha.”

Hyakujo became a monk afterwards, when he was twenty years old. He joined a monastery at Yueh Chou, and his first master was called Tao-chih. Tao-chih gave him his first spiritual name which was Hui Hai meaning, Ocean of Wisdom.

Hyakujo was not a monk for long before he heard about the great master, Ma Tzu, and went to him at Chiang-si.

Maneesha has asked:

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN HYAKUJO FIRST ARRIVED AT CHIANG-SI TO PAY HIS RESPECTS TO MA TZU, MA TZU

INQUIRED, ”FROM WHERE HAVE YOU COME?”

These are Zen questions. They don’t mean what they appear to mean. When he says, ”From where have you come?” he means: From where in the eternity have you come here? Are you aware of your eternal nature? – that you are coming here from utter emptiness?

But Hyakujo could not understand at that point. He simply thought that Ma Tzu was asking an ordinary question.

”FROM THE GREAT CLOUD MONASTERY AT YUEH CHOU,” ANSWERED HYAKUJO.

”AND WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO GAIN BY COMING HERE?” ASKED MA TZU.

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”I HAVE COME SEEKING THE BUDDHA-DHARMA.”

TO THIS MA TZU REPLIED, ”INSTEAD OF LOOKING TO THE TREASURE HOUSE WHICH IS

YOUR VERY OWN, YOU HAVE LEFT HOME AND GONE WANDERING FAR AWAY. WHAT FOR?

I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HERE AT ALL. WHAT IS THIS BUDDHA-DHARMA THAT YOU

SEEK?”

WHEREUPON HYAKUJO PROSTRATED HIMSELF AND ASKED, ”PLEASE TELL ME TO WHAT

YOU ALLUDED WHEN YOU SPOKE OF A TREASURE HOUSE OF MY VERY OWN.”

Now he has asked the right question.

MA TZU REPLIED, ”THAT WHICH ASKED THE QUESTION IS YOUR TREASURE HOUSE.”

Your consciousness, your being – who asked the question? Don’t look for the answer. Look from where the question is coming, then you will have to look inside. The question is coming from your innermost core.

”THAT WHICH ASKED THE QUESTION IS YOUR TREASURE HOUSE. IT CONTAINS

ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING YOU NEED AND LACKS NOTHING AT ALL. IT IS THERE FOR YOU

TO USE FREELY, SO WHY THIS VAIN SEARCH FOR SOMETHING OUTSIDE YOURSELF?”

NO SOONER WERE THESE WORDS SPOKEN THAN HYAKUJO RECEIVED A GREAT

ILLUMINATION AND RECOGNIZED HIS OWN NO-MIND. BESIDE HIMSELF WITH JOY, HE

BOWED IN DEEP GRATITUDE.

HYAKUJO SPENT THE NEXT SIX YEARS IN ATTENDANCE UPON MA TZU...

This has stopped happening in the world because we have forgotten the language of suddenness.

We believe only in gradual growth. Suddenness seems to be irrational, illogical, impossible but it is true about everything. If you want anything, it will be gradual. There is only one exception; that is you. You are already there. So it is only a question of just turning your eyes in, just looking inwards with absolute urgency and in a single moment everything is transformed.

When Ma Tzu told him, ”That which asked the question is your treasure house,” he must have immediately looked within – from where the question had arisen. ”IT CONTAINS ABSOLUTELY

EVERYTHING YOU NEED AND LACKS NOTHING. IT IS THERE FOR YOU TO USE FREELY, SO

WHY THIS VAIN SEARCH FOR SOMETHING OUTSIDE YOURSELF?”

Just as he went down from where the question had arisen, he must have reached to the great illumination instantly. Nowadays people ask a question to get an answer. About everything else it is okay, but about yourself, never ask a question. Rather, look within from where the question is arising, and in a single moment, the great enlightenment is possible.

NO SOONER WERE THESE WORDS SPOKEN THAN HYAKUJO RECEIVED A GREAT

ILLUMINATION AND RECOGNIZED HIS OWN NO-MIND. BESIDE HIMSELF WITH JOY, HE

BOWED IN DEEP GRATITUDE.

HYAKUJO SPENT THE NEXT SIX YEARS IN ATTENDANCE UPON MA TZU. BUT AS TAO-CHIH, HIS FIRST TEACHER, WAS GROWING OLD, HE WANTED TO RETURN TO LOOK AFTER HIM.

BEFORE HYAKUJO LEFT MA TZU, HE WENT TO PAY HIS FINAL TRIBUTE TO HIM.

SEEING HIM COMING, MA TZU RAISED HIS HORSE WHISK STRAIGHT UP. HYAKUJO ASKED,

”ARE YOU IN THE USE OF IT, OR APART FROM THE USE?”

MA TZU HUNG THE HORSE WHISK ON THE CORNER OF HIS CHAIR. AFTER A MINUTE OR

SO, HE ASKED HYAKUJO, ”HENCE FORWARD, HOW DO YOU OPEN THOSE TWO LEAVES OF

YOUR MOUTH TO WORK FOR OTHERS?”

AT THIS, HYAKUJO TOOK THE HORSE WHISK AND RAISED IT STRAIGHT UP.

MA TZU SAID, ”ARE YOU IN THE USE OF IT, OR APART FROM IT?”

HYAKUJO HUNG THE HORSE WHISK ON THE CORNER OF THE CHAIR.

JUST AT THAT MOMENT, A GREAT ROAR, LIKE HUNDREDS OF THUNDERBOLTS FALLING, RAINED ON HYAKUJO’S HEAD. MA TZU HAD GIVEN HIM A SHOUT WHICH, IT IS SAID, DEAFENED HIM FOR THREE DAYS.

For three days he could not hear anything else. What has transpired in this dialogue when Ma Tzu asked, ”Are you in the use of it, or apart from it?” The same question both have asked each other.

First Hyakujo has asked, and the meaning should be understood clearly. The meaning is: are you a witness while you are using it? or do you become one with it and forget your witnessing?

When Ma Tzu asked, Hyakujo did the same, exactly as Ma Tzu has done. He hung the horse whisk on the corner of the chair showing that ”I am also a witness; I am no longer the horse whisk. I am no object, I am always a subject and a witness.”

Satisfied, Hyakujo gave a tremendous roar of joy that a disciple had ripened, that a disciple had arrived home, that a disciple’s blindness had disappeared. But the roar was such: LIKE HUNDREDS

OF THUNDERBOLTS FALLING, RAINED ON HYAKUJO’S HEAD. MA TZU HAD GIVEN A SHOUT

WHICH, IT IS SAID, DEAFENED HYAKUJO FOR THREE DAYS.

This was a great roar of tremendous joy, of welcoming Hyakujo, that ”after all, you have arrived.”

A haiku by Basho:

I CLAP MY HANDS

AND WITH THE ECHOES

IT BEGINS THE DAWN –

THE SUMMER MOON.

Basho is one of the greatest poets of the world, but he has written only haikus – very symbolic but very miraculous, very simple but very mysterious. They are all to be understood through visualization, because Zen does not believe in words. Visualize and perhaps you may have some understanding. ”I clap my hands and with the echoes” – in the mountains – ”it begins the dawn –

the summer moon.”

The summer moon is still hanging and the sun is going to rise. And I have clapped my hands, and the echoes are still resounding in the mountains. It is just a painting in words. A haiku has to be understood – a painting in words, not only a poetry in words – and it has to be visualized. Just visualize yourself surrounded by mountains. And you...(OSHO CLAPS HIS HANDS.)... clap your hands. The mountains go on echoing and the summer moon is still there and the dawn has come.

The sun will be arising soon.

Why should he write these small haikus? He used to live by the side of a lake surrounded by mountains, meditating in utter silence. Once in a while he would open his eyes and whatever he would see, he would note down. These haikus are not out of the mind. These haikus are reflections in a mirror, in a no-mind. In a silent heart the summer moon, the dawn very close and he claps his hands, and all the mountains resound with echoes.

A meditator, according to Basho, will go on searching deep within himself, but that does not mean that he should lose contact with the outside world. Once in a while he should open his eyes. With all his emptiness he should mirror the outside world. Those reflections are collected in these haikus.

They don’t mean anything, they simply depict a picture.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

BELOVED OSHO,

MANY DISCIPLES HAVE DEDICATED BOOKS TO THEIR MASTER OUT OF LOVE AND

GRATITUDE. BUT CHARACTERISTICALLY, YOU HAVE TURNED TRADITION ON ITS HEAD BY

DEDICATING TWO OF YOUR DISCOURSE SERIES TO SPECIFIC DISCIPLES.

HAS ANY MASTER LOVED HIS DISCIPLES AS MUCH AS YOU SEEM TO LOVE US?

Maneesha, when I see you all, I don’t see you the way you see yourself. I simply see possible buddhas. No master has dedicated his books to his disciples, because no master has that clarity which can see the future in the present, which can see the rose in the seed. I can see. So when I introduce you as buddhas, it is not symbolic, I mean it. It is not only love, but also respect. My own understanding is: unless a master respects the disciple, he does not deserve respect from the disciple. It is a communication, it is a give-and-take, it is a communion.

I am going to dedicate many books because I don’t have anything else. I have just my words, my experiences, my silences, my songs to dedicate to all those disciples who are keeping me alive.

Without you I won’t wake up next morning – because what will I do? I don’t have anything else to do in the world. I have done everything long ago; in fact, I have overdone.

Now my life is in your hands. If you want me to be here, I can go on postponing the date of my departure. But the day I see that there is no need for me to postpone anymore, I will tell you to be ready for a great ceremony. But I feel right now, my garden is just a nursery.

The buddhas are getting ready to wake up. A few have looked with one eye open, a few have looked with both eyes open, but have taken another turn and pulled their blanket over themselves. It is a question of struggle between me and you. How long are you going to remain hidden in your blanket?

Sooner or later you will get tired. You cannot escape me, you have to become a buddha. Once you are a buddha, you are absolutely free to go around the world taking the fire, spreading it to all the nooks and corners of the world.

My existence has no purpose other than this, that the world should have as many buddhas as quickly as possible before the politicians manage to commit a global suicide. Only a large number of buddhas around the world can create the atmosphere of peace and love and compassion, where war becomes absolutely irrelevant. I am in a special situation that no other buddha ever has been.

This book is dedicated to Anando in spite of her reluctance. She has behaved very unconsciously for these two days. First, I am always worried about it that Maneesha is not allowed to take a holiday, migraine or no migraine, because if she is absent even for one evening – and I know she has this trouble of migraine for years – somebody else has to take her place. But just to take her place for one day is dangerous. The taste of it, and then one starts thinking, ”Why should I not continue?” It is almost as if you are made the king for one day. It will be difficult for your whole life.

So first she freaked out because I still addressed Maneesha, care of Anando. I could see her face and I could see her response. She did not like it, she wanted to be addressed directly. But I knew it was better to be ”care of,” because tomorrow she would be gone. The same trouble happened with Vimal. For a few days he was sitting with almost tears in his eyes. Once he has tasted the joy of asking me the questions, and then he has to give back the place, his kingdom is taken away. Now he has come back to his right mind. I did not want to disturb him again. That’s why I ask Anando.

And I have my own ways of working. In every way I try to find out some secret which needs to be revealed to the person. Anando may not be aware that she is never nice to anybody who is nice to her. She becomes nasty. It is her wrong upbringing from her childhood that she has carried.

Secondly, she is never happy to receive anything. It needs courage. Perhaps you may not be aware.

One loves to give, because by giving you are higher, but one has to learn to receive. At least when you are sitting at the feet of your master, you have to learn to receive. It hurts the ego that you are on the receiving end, not on the giving end.

I wanted to see how she would receive it. She missed the point. First she freaked out about Maneesha’s question, because she thought that Maneesha had indicated in it, that the horse came a little early and disturbed my speech. Because she was one half of the horse, she thought Maneesha was trying to raise the question again before the whole assembly, although there was no question of Maneesha raising it.

Maneesha was asking something else. She was trying to inquire about me, what my response was to this suddenness. That’s why Avirbhava was not disturbed. She was the main part of the horse; Anando was just the back part. Avirbhava proved to be more alert and conscious, seeing that the question did not have anything to do with the coming in early. In fact the early coming was very good: it surprised everybody except me. But I am crazy anyway.

Nothing surprises me....

For thirty-five years continuously I have been looking for something to surprise me.

Nothing

surprises me. Even when a man a few years ago threw a knife at me, it did not surprise me. I just looked at the knife and I continued what I was doing. The man must have been surprised. I did not even report the case. I did not go to the court. The court had to send their representative just to ask me had such a thing happened?

I said, ”It was not much, just a rotten old knife, and it has not hurt anybody. So fundamentally, nothing has happened, except the sound of the knife falling on the ground. Do you call it a crime?”

The man said, ”You are strange. The police are putting the case before the court, and I have come here as a representative of the court because you refused to come.”

I said, ”In any case I would not be there. If the knife had killed me, I would not be there in the court.

Now that the knife has not killed me, why should I be in the court?”

The man said, ”What am I to say to the court?”

I said, ”You just write down – I will sign it – that this case really happened: A man threw a knife; I heard the noise. For a moment I stopped speaking so that the hassle with the man and the police officers stopped. They took him away. I continued my work.”

The horse coming as a surprise to everybody – I really enjoyed it. The real Kalki, the Hindu white horse which is going to come within twelve years, the coming twelve years – any time – will not give a warning to you. It will come as suddenly as Avirbhava’s horse came. So it was absolutely proper

– but Anando was hurt.

But I can understand Avirbhava’s hurry. You should just imagine somebody inside a horse – one wants to get out as quickly as possible. And now she is going to bring elephants and crocodiles...

and she will have to be inside them! Obviously she was in a hurry because the horse might have broken in the middle. So as quickly as possible... It was a perfect performance.

Anando was not exactly disturbed by it; that was a very superficial thing. She was disturbed because I called Maneesha a better reporter, a better recorder than Ramakrishna had in Swami Vivekananda, or Socrates had in Plato. She became hurt because she is doing so much work. She is working hard on all the new books and their publication. She is in charge of the whole of publications and all of the construction that is going on in the ashram. Obviously she thought that Maneesha has been praised – and a subtle jealousy, and the female mind... I wanted them to be exposed.

And the next day when I said that this new series was going to be dedicated to her, Anando freaked out even more – so much so that she is suffering from a fever which is absolutely psychological, emotional. She was absolutely okay when she was sitting here, and just as she reached her room, she declared that she had a great cold coming. And immediately, because that is the time she comes to see me – when I am taking my supper, she comes to see me – she did not come. She really wanted to avoid me because I have seen something which she was hiding. Not only did she not come to me, but she even removed herself from Lao Tzu House to Krishna House, with an excuse that she was getting a cold. She phoned Nirvano to say that she was getting suspicious, and that by dedicating the new series to her, ”Osho is trying to blackmail me.”

This way you can see the difference between the disciples that Ma Tzu and Hyakujo had. Even if they were hit on their heads, they would bow down and touch the feet of the master. So much has changed in the world of consciousness. Man has fallen so low. For what should I blackmail? But just anger, the anger of being ”care of,” that anger became almost hysterical. Now whatever she is saying... again and again she has been phoning Nirvano asking, ”What has Osho said about me?”

I have not said anything. I waited for this question from Maneesha. I cannot take my word back.

You remember Ma Tzu – he wouldn’t remove his legs from the track. He allowed the disciple to run the cart over him and hurt his legs, but he would not move from this position. This book will be dedicated to Anando with the words, ”In spite of herself.” And I will be dedicating more books. I would love to dedicate books to all of you.

If time permits and existence allows, each buddha is going to have a book in his name as a respect and love from the master.

Now it is Anando’s time.

Farmer O’Leary has two prize cows, Daisy and Buttercup.

One day, he borrows the neighbors’ bull and puts it into the field with the cows. The bull does not show much interest in the cows – seems to be a swami! – and soon Farmer O’Leary gets bored and goes off for his lunch.

That afternoon, Father Fumble, the village priest, comes to the farmhouse for tea, so Farmer O’Leary calls his farmhand, Sean, and tells him to go out to the field and watch the bull. Sean is to let him know if the bull shows any interest in Daisy and Buttercup.

Mrs. O’Leary is just pouring Father Fumble a second cup of tea, when Sean comes bursting into the room and shouts, ”The bull is screwing Daisy!”

Father Fumble almost chokes, and Farmer O’Leary drags Sean angrily into the kitchen.

”Listen here, you idiot!” snaps O’Leary. ”You can’t use language like that in front of the priest! Next time, say something like, ‘The bull has surprised Daisy.’ Now, get back outside!”

Ten minutes later, Sean comes bursting into the room in a high state of excitement.

”Farmer O’Leary!” he stammers. ”The bull, er... the bull’s, ah....!” But he cannot finish his sentence.

”Do you mean,” says O’Leary, with a knowing look, ”that the bull has surprised Buttercup?”

”I’ll say he has surprised Buttercup!” shouts Sean. ”He is screwing Daisy again!”

Paddy has been training his horse, Kalki, for the big race. He has been giving it lots of exercise and plenty of good food, but on the day of the race, Paddy is still worried that Kalki will not run fast enough.

Just before the horses go to the start, Paddy quietly gives Kalki a couple of pep pills. Father Murphy, who has been watching this, goes up to Paddy.

”I hope you are not giving your horse any illegal drugs?” says the old priest.

”Certainly not, Father, I was just giving him a vitamin C,” says Paddy, popping one of the pills into his own mouth. ”Here, try one yourself.”

Father Murphy swallows one of the pep pills, thinking that it is a vitamin, and walks off, apparently satisfied.

Paddy turns to Seamus, who is going to ride Kalki in the race.

”Don’t worry, Seamus, you are going to win for sure!” says Paddy, confidently. ”Nothing can pass you in this race, except me or Father Murphy!”

George Grope is fifty years old, and has spent the best years of his life with a woman whose constant nagging and criticism has driven him mad.

Now, in poor health, and with his business on the verge of collapse, he makes up his mind. He goes to the dining room, gets up on a chair, fastens his tie around the chandelier, and is just about to end it all. At that moment his wife enters the room.

”George!” she cries in shock at the scene before her. ”You idiot! That is your best tie!”

Chester Cheese is walking through the forest one day, with his teenage kid, Charlie.

They are enjoying the stroll very much, when suddenly Charlie sees a pair of black satin panties lying on the path.

”Hey, Dad,” exclaims Charlie. ”Look! A young girl’s panties!”

”Well, son,” says Chester, in a fatherly voice. ”I’d say those probably belong to an older woman, not a young girl.”

”Come on, Dad, ” replies Charlie. ”For sure these are a young girl’s panties!”

”I don’t think so, Charlie,” says Chester, stiffly.

Just then Father Finger walks up.

”Excuse me, gentlemen,” he says. ”But I couldn’t help overhearing your discussion. Perhaps I can settle the matter for you.”

Then Father Finger raises his eyebrows, takes the panties, examines them closely, this way and that way.

”Well,” says Father Finger, popping the panties into his pocket, ”I don’t know which of you is right, but I do know one thing. She is not a member of my church!”

Okay, Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.

Now look inward with tremendous urgency as if this is the last moment of your life. Only with this urgency can you reach to the source of your life. And at the source of your life you are a buddha.

From there on, opens the whole universe, your own space, unlimited.

The buddha is the door.

You have to go beyond it.

But first reach to the door... deeper and deeper....

This is a beautiful evening. The rain has stopped just to give you absolute silence. And the silence of ten thousand buddhas is a tremendous energy field. Don’t miss this moment.

To make it clear, Anando...

(Drumbeat)

Just watch your body, your mind, separate from you. You are the watcher. In this witnessing you become the buddha. You have always been the buddha. You discover it. So much dust has gathered on it. Remove the dust. Let it become a pure mirror. This is your ultimate nature.

The evening has become more juicy and more beautiful. The time has stopped – you are floating in space like a cloud in absolute freedom.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, silently, peacefully, with a grace and sit down like a buddha just for a few moments recollecting the experience.

You have to live this experience for your whole twenty-four hours, just like breathing – doing anything you go on continuously breathing. This remembrance of being a buddha has to become just like an undercurrent. It is always there whether you are sitting, walking, waking or sleeping – in action, in inaction, in speaking, in silence, but one thing remains continuously in you – the remembrance of your ultimate nature.

Before the celebration I have to remind Nivedano that I called Anando. That is the name of your drum.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Osho!

CHAPTER 2

The great pearl

27 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

ON ONE OCCASION HYAKUJO SAID, ”IF WE ARE ATTACHED TO A VIEWPOINT THAT WE

ARE NATURALLY THE BUDDHAS AND THAT WE ARE IN ZEN BUDDHISM BECAUSE WE

ARE ORIGINALLY PURE AND ENLIGHTENED, WE ARE AMONG NON-BUDDHISTS WHO DENY

CAUSALITY.”

AT ANOTHER TIME A VINAYA MASTER NAMED YUAN ONCE CAME TO HYAKUJO AND ASKED,

”DO YOU MAKE EFFORTS IN YOUR PRACTICE OF THE TAO, MASTER?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”YES, I DO. WHEN HUNGRY, I EAT; WHEN TIRED, I SLEEP.”

YUAN ASKED, ”AND DOES EVERYBODY MAKE THE SAME EFFORTS AS YOU DO, MASTER?”

HYAKUJO ANSWERED, ”NOT IN THE SAME WAY. WHEN THEY ARE EATING, THEY THINK OF A HUNDRED KINDS OF NECESSITIES, AND WHEN THEY ARE GOING TO SLEEP THEY PONDER

OVER AFFAIRS OF A THOUSAND DIFFERENT KINDS. THAT IS HOW THEY DIFFER FROM ME.”

AT THIS, THE VINAYA MASTER WAS SILENCED.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, THE VENERABLE TAO KUANG ASKED HYAKUJO, ”MASTER, WHAT

MENTAL PROCESSES DO YOU EMPLOY IN PURSUING THE TAO?”

HYAKUJO ANSWERED, ”I HAVE NO MENTAL PROCESSES THAT WOULD BE OF USE, AND NO

TAO TO FOLLOW.”

TAO KUANG ASKED, ”IF BOTH THOSE STATEMENTS ARE TRUE, WHY IS IT THAT EVERY

DAY YOU CONVENE GATHERINGS DURING WHICH YOU URGE OTHERS TO LEARN HOW

TO FOLLOW THE TAO BY MEANS OF ZEN?”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”THIS OLD MONK DOES NOT POSSESS EVEN A DOT OF GROUND IN WHICH

TO STICK AND AWL.”

”WHY, MASTER, YOU ARE LYING TO MY FACE!” EXCLAIMED TAO KUANG.

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”HOW CAN THIS OLD MONK, BEING WITHOUT TONGUE TO URGE

PEOPLE, TELL A LIE?”

”I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE WAY THE VENERABLE ZEN MASTER TALKS,” SAID TAO KUANG.

WHEREUPON HYAKUJO SAID, ”NOR DOES THIS OLD MONK UNDERSTAND HIMSELF.”

Maneesha, this series of talks is entitled THE GREAT PEARL, HYAKUJO, WITH THE HAIKUS OF

BASHO. Hyakujo is immensely expressive and knows what he is doing and how to bring people to the unknowable.

Basho never wrote prose. Basho is one of the greatest poets in the world. His greatness is not in his poetry – there are far greater poets as far as the composition of poetry is concerned. His greatness is that his poetry is not just verbiage, is not just putting words together according to a certain pattern, his poetry is an experience.

I have put them together because Hyakujo never wrote any poetry. His approach is very prose and direct, and the haikus supplement what is missing in the prose. Basho expressed himself very graphically. His experiences are more paintings than poetry. And his understanding is – and I agree with him – that where prose fails, poetry may succeed. Poetry has a more feminine way, more subtle, more graceful, entering into the heart.

Prose directly enters into the head and immediately becomes a concern of logic and reason. Poetry has a different root, a different path. You don’t bring in rationalization as far as poetry is concerned.

Something else becomes stirred in you, something deeper than the mind. Poetry cannot be a logical statement. It is an existential statement – what Basho himself has seen he has tried to put into words. Hence I have put together two great masters.

The name, THE GREAT PEARL is Hyakujo’s old name in Chinese. His childhood name was Chu, and Chu means pearl. Both are Himalayan peaks, and together they are going to create a tremendous harmony. What prose can say in a very straightforward way, poetry cannot say in that straightforward manner. But there is much that is left out. Poetry can pick up that which is left out because it has no obligation to any logic, no obligation to any grammar, no obligation to any formulation. It has a certain freedom which prose has not, so it can say things that prose will become embarrassed to say. The Great Pearl applies to both. They both are the most beautiful Zen masters.

Before I discuss Hyakujo’s and Basho’s sutras... Yesterday I introduced you with a biographical note on Hyakujo. Today I want to introduce you with the biography of Basho.

The Japanese haiku poet, Basho, was born in 1644, the son of a samurai in the service of the lord of Ueno castle. As a young boy, Basho became the page and study companion of the nobleman’s eldest son, and together they learned, among other skills, the art of making verse.

On the death of his master, Basho went to Edo – now Tokyo – where he studied verse under Kigin.

He then became a disciple of the Zen master, Buccho.

Basho’s fame as a master poet spread. He began to attract disciples of his own.

Journeying became Basho’s life-style, providing him with a chance to observe and write of nature, with which he felt such a deep affinity.

He once wrote, ”All who achieve greatness in art possess one thing in common: they are one with nature. Whatever such a mind sees is a flower, and whatever such a mind dreams of is the moon. It is only a barbarous mind that sees other things then flowers, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon.”

The flower and the moon are only symbolic. What he is intending to say is that the really silent mind can only see the greatest in existence, the most beautiful, the most truthful. He can see only flowers and moons. In his status, in his height, he cannot see the mean and ugly things of which the human mind is so filled up. He calls this mind, which has not known the experience of emptiness, a barbarous mind – a beautiful definition of a barbarous mind.

The mind of a buddha will only see flowers all around. The mind of a buddha reclining will see the moon and the stars and all that is beautiful in the darkness of the night. Whether it is morning or evening, it does not matter, the no-mind only reflects the most precious, and the so-called mind that we have is only concerned with the ugliest – it is barbarous.

When Hyakujo returned to Yueh Chou, he lived a retired life, concealing his abilities and outwardly appearing somewhat mad. It was at this time that he composed his sastra, called, ”A Treatise Setting Forth the Essential Gateway to Truth by Means of Instantaneous Awakening.”

Later, this book was stolen and brought to the Yangtse region and shown to Ma Tzu. After reading it carefully, Ma Tzu declared to his disciples: ”In Yueh Chou there is now a great pearl. Its luster penetrates everywhere freely and without obstruction.”

Ma Tzu was making a pun on Hyakujo’s original surname of Chu. Hyakujo was Ma Tzu’s disciple and finally his successor.

Maneesha has asked these sutras for today:

BELOVED OSHO,

ON ONE OCCASION HYAKUJO SAID, ”IF WE ARE ATTACHED TO A VIEWPOINT THAT WE

ARE NATURALLY THE BUDDHAS AND THAT WE ARE IN ZEN BUDDHISM BECAUSE WE

ARE ORIGINALLY PURE AND ENLIGHTENED, WE ARE AMONG NON-BUDDHISTS WHO DENY

CAUSALITY.”

Now, this is something to be understood and it is one of the most debated subject matters for centuries: if enlightenment is sudden, that means there is no cause to it. It can be sudden only if it has no causality. If it has any cause, first the cause has to be produced, then enlightenment will follow.

Science believes in causality. You provide all the necessary causes, and this will be the inevitable outcome. But Zen, in the sense of sudden enlightenment, drops the idea of causality. There is no cause that leads to enlightenment – and Hyakujo is making it clear. If no cause, no causality, leads to enlightenment, the reason is that enlightenment is not an effect; cause and effect are joined together. Enlightenment is not an effect of any cause; it is already there. The effect is in the future.

That which is already there, needs no cause. It needs only a turning of your vision. That is not a cause. It needs only a remembrance. That is not a cause. What is already there, in this very moment, requires no causality. Causality produces something. It is already perfectly present; nothing has to be added. All that is needed is to wake up and see.

Seeing is not a causality, you have to understand it. That’s why no method, no device can be said to be absolutely certain to lead you to enlightenment. All that it can do, is to trigger a certain process in you so that you start looking inwards. It can produce the looking inwards, but it cannot produce your enlightenment. If you honestly and urgently look inwards, the buddha is there. Your enlightenment explodes in thousands of ways; it has been just waiting for your eyes.

All Zen masters have been talking about methods, about devices. The reason is that there is no way to introduce you to your own buddha, your own nature. It is so deep down inside you, it cannot be made objective. It cannot be said, ”Look, this is your nature. Say hello to it. Get introduced.”

Nobody can introduce you to your own nature. Hence, all these devices which are in a way lies, are desperate efforts of the masters somehow to force you to look inwards. Then everything will happen on its own accord.

... A VINAYA MASTER – vinaya is the whole Buddhist scripture – NAMED YUAN ONCE CAME

TO HYAKUJO AND ASKED, ”DO YOU MAKE EFFORTS IN YOUR PRACTICE OF THE TAO, MASTER?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”YES, I DO. WHEN HUNGRY, I EAT; WHEN TIRED, I SLEEP.”

Such a great and beautiful statement contains so much, oceans of meaning.

”YES, I DO”, says Hyakujo, ”WHEN HUNGRY, I EAT; WHEN TIRED, I SLEEP.” He is saying, ”I simply go with nature. I am no more, only nature is: tired, it goes to sleep; hungry, it eats. Neither do I interfere nor do I make any effort in the sense ‘effort’ is understood.”

Yuan asked a necessary question, ”AND DOES EVERYBODY MAKE THE SAME EFFORTS AS

YOU DO, MASTER?”

HYAKUJO ANSWERED, ”NOT IN THE SAME WAY. WHEN THEY ARE EATING, THEY THINK OF A HUNDRED KINDS OF NECESSITIES, AND WHEN THEY ARE GOING TO SLEEP THEY PONDER

OVER AFFAIRS OF A THOUSAND DIFFERENT KINDS. THAT IS HOW THEY DIFFER FROM ME.”

A clear-cut differentiation. If you can understand this, you will understand the difference between a buddha, who looks almost human, and other human beings. Their actions are the same: the buddha eats when he is hungry, he sleeps when he feels tired; so you do. On the surface there seems to be no difference. The difference is inside: when the buddha is eating, he is simply eating; there are no other thoughts in the sky of his mind. His whole attention, his whole awareness, is just concerned with the act in the present – eating. When he is asleep, he is simply asleep. He does not dream, he does not wander here and there with a thousand anxieties and problems; he has none. Asleep, he is simply asleep.

Modern psychoanalysis has to come to an understanding. They have not yet dared. They have only been studying what Hyakujo calls the barbarous mind. All their conclusions and their whole science will remain absolutely incomplete unless they explore the mind of a buddha. That will bring a tremendous revolution in the whole psychoanalytical movement, because on the surface the buddha is exactly the same as you are. But you can see the point: while you are eating, you are thinking a thousand and one thoughts; while you are sleeping, you are dreaming of faraway lands, or maybe repressed desires.

It is sad that even while you are making such a deep and intimate act as love, you are not loving the woman you are making love to, you are thinking of Sophia Loren. And don’t think that it is only you who is thinking of Sophia Loren, the woman you are making love to, is thinking of Mohammed Ali.

On every bed there are four fellows. This is the barbarous mind: never in the moment, always going astray.

Hyakujo put the difference with the enlightened man very clearly: when hungry, eat; when tired, sleep. Don’t do anything else. Always remain contained in the moment, contained in the act. Raising hands, just raise your hand; don’t think of anything else. Sitting, just sit; walking, just walk. Every act should be so concentrated that it does not allow other thoughts to enter in.

A simple understanding of this can make one a buddha, because this will bring your whole consciousness together to such a point that it becomes almost an arrow. And whenever your consciousness becomes an arrow, it starts moving towards the origin of your life. All devices are just to make your consciousness an arrow and with an urgency, so that it moves. You are not far away.

It is just a small journey, but it takes people millions of lives to fulfil it because they never move even an inch inwards.

”... AND WHEN THESE BARBAROUS MINDS ARE GOING TO SLEEP, THEY PONDER OVER

AFFAIRS OF A THOUSAND DIFFERENTS KINDS. THAT’S HOW THEY DIFFER FROM ME.”

AT THIS THE VINAYA MASTER WAS SILENCED.

He was only a scholar, he had no idea of the inner world. He has absolute control of the outer objective, philosophical concepts, but he has no idea at all from where his life arises, from where his consciousness arises, where the roots of his very being are. He was completely silenced by the master. He could not utter a single word, but he could not become enlightened either. He could not ask anything more, he could not answer the master. He simply became silent, knowing that he was entering in an unknown territory. He knows the sastras, the scriptures perfectly well, but he does not know anything about this ”eating, eat; walking, walk; sitting, sit.”

This is the problem with the scholars: they go on missing the authentic master. They come to understand, but they come to understand the word not the experience.

AT THIS THE VINAYA MASTER WAS SILENCED.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, THE VENERABLE TAO KUANG ASKED HYAKUJO, ”MASTER, WHAT

MENTAL PROCESSES DO YOU EMPLOY IN PURSUING THE TAO?”

HYAKUJO ANSWERED, ”I HAVE NO MENTAL PROCESSES THAT WOULD BE OF USE, AND NO

TAO TO FOLLOW.”

This is the ultimate statement of a witness. There are no mental processes. He has left the mind far behind, and there is no goal of Tao, or Dhamma. He himself is the goal; he is the buddha. He is Tao, he is Dhamma; he is the truth itself. Now, there is no question of any mental processes or any goal of Tao.

TAO KUANG ASKED, ”IF BOTH THOSE STATEMENTS ARE TRUE, WHY IS IT THAT EVERY

DAY YOU CONVENE GATHERINGS DURING WHICH YOU URGE OTHERS TO LEARN HOW

TO FOLLOW THE TAO BY MEANS OF ZEN?”

That is the way intellectuals function. He has not understood Hyakujo’s great statement, he has simply analyzed it and found that there is a contradiction. But this man says there is no mental process that would be of any use, and there is no Tao to follow. If this is true, then why does this man go on teaching great assemblies. You have to see how intellectuals function and how they miss.

He asked him, ”IF BOTH THOSE STATEMENTS ARE TRUE, as you say, WHY IS IT THAT EVERY

DAY YOU CONVENE GATHERINGS DURING WHICH YOU URGE OTHERS TO LEARN HOW TO

FOLLOW THE TAO BY MEANS OF ZEN?”

That can be asked of any master. Even the master himself is very much concerned.

I have told you that Gautam Buddha did not speak for seven days after his enlightenment. When asked, he said, ”I have been pondering for seven days whether to speak or not, and I cannot find any reason to speak. There are no means that I can teach to people that will lead them inevitably to enlightenment. There is no goal to be achieved so people can be shown the path.

”People want some understanding about what discipline is to be followed – what cause is going to produce buddhahood. There is no cause. So, all these seven days I have been thinking that whatever I say will not be exactly true. Should I say it or keep quiet? To be silent seems to be more honest and more truthful but a little unkind – unkind to those who are still staggering in darkness, unkind to those who are very close to the source. Just a little help, a little push, may make them buddhas.”

But it is not so easy. If you push somebody he becomes angry. Your push is not necessarily going to be understood as a compassion. The person may become more ugly than he was by your push.

He may become more barbarous. He may stand up to fight with you asking, ”Why did you push me? Why did you said this? Why did you expose me?” The work of the master is not just full of roses. It is one of the most delicate works of art to help a man become a buddha. A slight mistake and everything is spoiled. And the problem is not the master, the problem is the disciple. How the disciple is going to take your word is not within your control.

So Buddha said, ”I am thinking not to speak at all. Those who are capable of becoming buddhas will become buddhas – a little late perhaps – and those who are too much involved in darkness and mundane activities are not going to listen to me. They will simply waste my time and will be angry at me that I am wasting their time.”

But the people who were urging him said, ”You are ninety-nine point nine percent right, but please think of the point one percent. You may fail with ninety-nine point nine percent of the people, but you may succeed in helping one person out of one hundred to become a buddha. This is such a great event that those failures can be simply forgotten – they don’t matter. Anyway they were not going to become buddhas; you need not be worried about them. But think of that point one percent. You will be very unkind to those who are just on the periphery. A little push, a little kindly word that gives them a sense of urgency; a little look in their eyes that gives them the depth that they also contain; a little touch of love, the warmth of a buddha, just his gesture...”

And Buddha agreed. His agreement is one of the greatest agreements that has been made in human history. He could have disagreed. There was no way to force him, but then something great would have been completely forgotten. At least it is remembered here and there. Some people still become buddhas, still reach to the same heights, because they know somebody has already traveled the path. ”If one man is capable of becoming a buddha, then there is no reason why I cannot become a buddha.” This gives great courage, and great encouragement.

But the intellectual mind, not understanding the inner process of enlightenment, noncausal, nonlogical, immediately jumps to the conclusion that there is a contradiction. Here you are saying that there are no mental processes which are of any use.

By your mind you cannot reach

buddhahood, you will have to drop the mind, so what is the use of mental processes? Mind as a whole entity has to be pushed aside so that you can see clearly and directly, without any thoughts gathering in front of your eyes. There is no goal. The moment you find utter silence and a deep understanding of yourself, your roots, you simply have a laugh – just a laugh that ”I have been searching for the person who is hiding behind me, inside me, at my very center.”

But he immediately asked, ”There is a contradiction because you teach people to meditate, you teach people certain devices. What is the point?”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”THIS OLD MONK DOES NOT POSSESS EVEN A DOT OF GROUND IN WHICH

TO STICK AN AWL.”

He is saying that he does not possess any mind to answer and satisfy your contradiction.

”WHY, MASTER, YOU ARE LYING TO MY FACE!” EXCLAIMED TAO KUANG.

That is an eternal problem: the master has to lie. And if you think only of his lying, you will never understand that he was lying out of compassion, and that those lies were just preparing a ground for you to take a jump in.

I will tell you an old story....

A king was very much interested in a young man who always remained underneath a tree, sitting silently. Every night the king passed around the city in disguise to see whether everything was right or not. He always found that young man sitting like a statue, without any movement.

Finally, he could not contain his curiosity. He stopped his horse and he said, ”Young man, forgive me for disturbing your meditation.”

The young man opened his eyes and he said, ”There is no need for any apology because I am not meditating, I am meditation – nobody can disturb it. But whatever your curiosity is, please fulfill it.”

The king said, ”I would love you to come to my palace. I will take care of you. There is no need to sit under this tree. Seeing you so silently, like the ancient story of Buddha, I have fallen in love with your silence, your gestures, your utter undisturbance. I invite you to come with me to my palace. I am the king.”

This is how the barbarous mind functions. The king asks the young man to come to his palace –

inviting him – but deep down his unconscious wants him not to accept his invitation because that will mean he is still desirous of luxuries and palaces.

But that young man simply stood up, and he said, ”I am coming.”

Immediately the whole scene changed. The mind of the king was thinking, ”What have I done?

This man is still interested in the luxuries of a palace, being the guest of a king. This is not a great saint.” This is the old idea of the saint, that he should be as uncomfortable as possible. Discomfort is religion. Sick, hungry, torturing oneself in thousands of ways... and then you become a great saint.

This fellow has suddenly fallen from his sainthood, in the mind of the king. But now it was too late.

He could not take his word back; it would be to ungentlemanly.

But the young man was watching everything. He didn’t say anything. The king provided for him in the best part of the palace, servants, young girls to look after him – and he accepted everything.

With each acceptance he was falling down in the scale of saintliness: what kind of saint was he? He accepted a beautiful king-size bed. He accepted all the delicacies of the palace.

The king said, ”My God. What kind of a stupid person am I? This man has deceived me. It seems like he tricked me. Just sitting there every night, he knew I passed at that time, sitting silently like a buddha, he knew that I would be caught – and he caught me. And now it is very difficult either to swallow him or to spit him out. He is inside the palace.”

But how long can you carry such a state of mind?

After six months, one day early in the morning when they were taking a walk together in the gardens, the king said to him, ”One question has been continuously harassing me and I want to get rid of it.

Because of it, for six months I have not slept well.”

The young man said, ”You can ask any question.”

The king said, ”It hurts me to ask, but I want to know what the difference is between me and you.

You live in the palace, you enjoy all the luxuries... what is the difference between me and you?”

The young man said, ”I knew that this question was going to arise one day. In fact, it arose the same moment I stood up to follow you. You are not a very courageous man. You should have asked immediately. Why waste six months, and for six months unnecessarily disturbing your sleep.

I can answer your question but not here. You have to come with me outside the boundary of your kingdom.”

It was not far away. Just a few miles away was the river, the boundary of his kingdom.

The king said, ”What is the need to go there? You can answer me here.”

He said, ”No. There is a need.”

Both went past the river. Standing on the other shore, the young man said, ”My answer is that I am going ahead. Are you coming with me?”

He said, ”How can I come with you? I have a palace, I have a kingdom, I have my wife, my children...

I have thousands of worries and problems to solve. How can I come with you?”

The young man said, ”Do you see the difference? I am going. I don’t have any palace, I don’t have any wife, I don’t have any problems. I was as happy under my tree as I have been happy in your palace – not a bit more or a bit less. My awareness is the same whether I am in a palace or in a forest.”

The king felt very sad at his ugly mind, that he thought such an ugly thing. He touched his feet and he said, ”Forgive me even to think this. In my own eyes I have fallen.”

The young man said, ”No. Don’t do it. Seeing your tears and you touching my feet I have no difficulty, I can come back, but you will still start thinking, ‘My God. Has he deceived me again?’ I have no difficulty but so as not to be uncompassionate towards you, I will not come. Just let me go. The whole world is there and I don’t need much, just a tree to sit underneath. It does not matter to me at all.”

Now the king became more insistent, ”No, come back, otherwise I will be worried and hurt and wounded, thinking, ‘What have I done?’”

The man said, ”You are putting me in difficulty. I am telling you I can come, but remember, you will again start thinking, ‘What is the difference?’”

The barbarous mind only thinks of the meanness, of the mediocrities. He does not have any heights to look at.

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”HOW CAN THIS OLD MONK, BEING WITHOUT TONGUE TO URGE

PEOPLE, TELL A LIE?”

Now the intellectual must have become even more suspicious. The old monk Hyakujo says, ”HOW

CAN THIS OLD MONK, BEING WITHOUT TONGUE...” Now this is apparently a lie: ”WITHOUT

TONGUE TO URGE PEOPLE, TELL A LIE?” – but he is perfectly right. These are the worlds beyond our ordinary, mediocre lives. A man of enlightenment does not speak, he simply allows existence to speak through him. He does not see, he allows the buddha inside him to see through his eyes.

That’s why, once in a while, somebody receptive enough can look into the eyes of the master, the eyes of a buddha. He has no tongue of his own anymore. He has given everything to existence.

He is no longer in possession of the tongue, of the eyes, of the hands. Now, whatever existence wants to do with him, he simply goes with it. His whole life is just a let-go. But the intellectual will not understand. Now it is absolutely making a lie even more clear: ”I don’t have any tongue” – and he is speaking. He is saying, ”How can I lie without a tongue?”

The problem for a master is that if he speaks, he defiles the truth. However he tries, he cannot bring the truth into words. Just a little fragrance maybe, only for those who are intelligent enough to feel the difference. The same words are being used by a master as are being used by you, but the master’s words are not empty, your words are empty. When you say to someone, ”I love you,” you don’t mean it. Perhaps it is a social custom. When a master says, ”I love you,” his love is not an empty word.

But you need to have great intelligence to figure out the fragrance that is carried by the words or the actions. And remember, to be intellectual does not mean to be intelligent. The intellectual is a great scholar; he has much knowledge, but he may not be intelligent. And a man who knows nothing, a farmer or a woodcutter or a fisherman, may have intelligence. He will not have intellect – he does not know anything about the intellectual world – but in his functioning...

When the Soviet Union emerged from the revolution... The capital during the czars’ rule was Petrograd, it was not Moscow. Petrograd was named after Peter, one of the czars. Because of this association, communists changed the capital to Moscow. But before changing it – it took years

– they had to function in Petrograd.

Just in front of the palace of the czar there was a huge rock that prevented anybody, any vehicle, to pass in front. It was considerately kept there so that nobody passed and disturbed the czar. You could go on any other street but you could not move on the street in front of the palace. The rock was so huge that the communists were worried about what to do with it. It had to be removed, but its largeness prevented all removal. They called architects and engineers and they all thought about many ways, either to cut it into pieces – but that too was not easy... They were all worried and there was no solution coming out.

An old farmer was just leaning on his staff, standing there, watching with all these great engineers, architects, politicians, and when he saw that they were not able to find any solution, he said, ”I am just a farmer and I don’t know anything. I don’t know what engineering is, and what architecture is.

I have just heard these words here, but as I understand, you want to remove this rock. It is a very simple thing.”

Lenin himself asked, ”You say it is a very simple thing? Please tell us what your idea is.”

He said, ”There is no idea. There is no need to remove the rock. Just dig around the rock and go on digging and taking out the mud from underneath the rock, and then finally force the rock down so it becomes part of the road.”

It was so simple, so intelligent, that all those architects and engineers were at a loss because they were thinking in conceptual terms from their books, their university degrees, and this poor man had nothing but a practical intelligence.

He said, ”It is such a small thing. Just dig around the rock, then pull out as much mud as you can from underneath the rock and then force it down. It will settle in the hole and be a part of the road.

And it is such a beautiful rock, it should not be removed. It will make such a beautiful part of the road in front of the palace.”

The farmer’s instructions were exactly followed and the rock is still there in front of Petrograd’s palace.

Intelligence is a clarity, intellectuality is a borrowed knowledge. The intelligent person would not have said this to the master: ”You are lying to my face! You tell people about devices and means, and to me you are saying there are no means and no devices, and that there is no goal either.”

He could not rise to the height, and he could not understand the difficulty of a master, that he has to bring something from the high peaks of experience to the marketplace. He has to use the same words, and he has in some way to create an urge, a longing. The very urge and longing is not there.

Have you ever thought in your dreams that you want to become a buddha? Have you ever wondered where the source of your life is?

The master has to make goals which are not goals for you. He has to tell you that it is a great pilgrimage, that to find the truth you have to travel very far and you have to discipline and cultivate yourself, because the human mind is interested only in the difficult, it is not interested in the obvious and the simple. There are reasons why it is not interested in the obvious and the simple: the simple does not satisfy your ego. You will not go into the street shouting, ”I have just peeled a banana! I need my photograph in the newspaper. The first man has peeled a banana.” People will laugh at you that you are mad – you are yourself a banana.

Small things, but when somebody goes to the top of Everest, the whole world becomes interested.

All the news media declare that the first man has reached the top of Everest. The difficult is attractive because it gives you the ego. The simple is unattractive because you cannot claim any ego on its part. The master has to make a goal of buddhahood although he knows you are the buddha. But he knows perfectly well that even if he tells you that you are the buddha, you are not going to trust him.

I tell you every day, ”You are the buddha.” Have you ever trusted me?

Anando, in her anger, sent a message to me that she is suspicious. Suspicious of what – suspicious certainly about my provoking you to be a buddha. I don’t have anything else to do here. Suspicious about what? You are suspicious about your own potential and I have to hammer on your head continuously. So, for this series, I have given the name Anando to Nivedano’s drum. So he goes on hitting every day until she comes to her senses. Suspicious? But that is not only her problem, it is the problem of every intellectual – Anando is a law graduate.

”I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE WAY THE VENERABLE ZEN MASTER TALKS,” SAID TAO KUNG.

You are speaking and you say that you don’t have a tongue. You go on teaching about devices and goals, and you say there are no mental activities of any use, and there is no goal either.

WHEREUPON HYAKUJO SAID, ”NOR DOES THIS OLD MONK UNDERSTAND HIMSELF.” He accepted that he does not even understand himself. ”Only existence knows what he is using me for.

I am absolutely available to existence. If he wants to lie through me, I will lie. If he wants something else to be done through me, I will do it. I have completely dropped myself into the hands of the cosmos.”

Hyakujo is saying something of tremendous importance: a master is absolutely absent as far as his individuality is concerned; he is absolutely present as far as his cosmic experience is concerned.

And you need to have some intelligence, some heart, to understand it.

A haiku by Basho....

MAD WITH POETRY,

I STRIDE LIKE CHIKUSAI

INTO THE WIND.

”Mad with poetry...” If you are not mad, your poetry will be very poor. Poetry which is sane will be ordinary, prosaic, just a composition of words without any essential meaning running through it. To be a poet is in a certain sense to be mad.

MAD WITH POETRY,

I STRIDE LIKE CHIKUSAI

INTO THE WIND.

It has not been recognized by the religions of the world. I want to make it an absolute discontinuity with the past in the sense that I don’t consider the older saints to be authentically religious. They can be divided in two categories – either they are masochists who enjoy torturing themselves, or they are sadists who enjoy teaching people to torture themselves, who enjoy others torturing. And it is possible that one man may be both – he may enjoy torturing himself and he may enjoy torturing others.

Most of the saints belong to the psychologically sick people, and the real religious people have not been taken in account. They are the poets, the dancers, the painters, the musicians, the sculptors.

All kinds of creative people are the truly religious people, but no religion accepts them as religious because these people are functioning according to their nature, not according to any scripture.

These people are almost part of the universe.

One very rich woman asked Picasso, a great painter of our times, ”You have never done portrait.

You have done so many beautiful paintings, but no portrait. My only desire is to have a portrait of myself made by you. And don’t think about money. You say it and it will be given.” The woman was super rich.

Picasso wanted to tolerate her but he could not tolerate the money. He was in immense need of money. Just for his paintings he needed money, but he did not want to make a portrait, knowing perfectly well that when he started painting he forgot himself, so that what came out may not look like this woman. So he said to her, ”Listen... ten million dollars.”

She said, ”Okay. Start the work.”

He said, ”My God. I asked for ten million so as not to get involved in this work. I have to explain to you that when I start painting, I forget myself. The colors catch me so hard, their beauty becomes so immense, that I don’t know what I am doing; the painting starts painting itself. That’s why I have never done a portrait, but if you insist, I will make an effort – and I cannot lose ten million dollars.

But you have to make me a promise: you cannot criticize my painting on any point.”

She said, ”Agreed.”

The painting was done. The woman could not understand what had happened. She could not find where she was in the painting at all. It was a beautiful painting – great colors, very psychedelic, but it was not a portrait. And she had agreed not to criticize so she said, ”I am not criticizing, but I just want to know where my nose is, so from that point I can figure out where I am.”

Picasso said, ”This is the difficulty. I had told you beforehand that when I paint, I forget. Now I don’t know where your nose is. You take the painting and meditate over it. Sometime you may find that this is your nose, and then figure out... around it there may be some eyes, a mouth.”

The woman said, ”This is a strange kind of portrait that I have to figure out where my nose is.”

Once it happened, a rich man came and he wanted, ”Picasso, two paintings, immediately.” Picasso had only one painting ready so he went in and cut the painting in two.

The girlfriend who used to be with Picasso, said, ”What are you doing?”

He said, ”I cannot miss that customer. He is a rich man and he wants two paintings. I will make two paintings immediately. Anyway nobody can discover what the painting is, whether it is together or in two parts.” He made two paintings, and he sold two paintings.

Those who have purchased his paintings, even in great museums, find it difficult to know how to hang them – which way up... which way down.... You can hang them any way. They are beautiful, but you cannot make any sense of that beauty.

And another haiku by Basho:

FOR HIS MORNING TEA

A MONK SITS DOWN IN UTTER SILENCE –

CONFRONTED BY CHRYSANTHEMUMS.

”For his morning tea a monk sits down in utter silence...” Tea has become associated with Bodhidharma, who introduced Zen into China. He loved tea, and strangely, it helps you to be awake; otherwise, sitting silently, one tends to fall asleep. So tea has become a special Zen thing.

He is just depicting a picture. Under the tree of chrysanthemums, a monk sits in utter silence for his morning tea. Nothing is said – just a silent monk waiting for his tea.

These haikus are, as I have said to you, paintings in words.

Question 1

A question by Maneesha:

BELOVED OSHO,

I WOULD BE DISHONEST IF I DID NOT SAY I ALSO HAVE BEEN JEALOUS, I HAVE NOT ALWAYS

RECEIVED FROM YOU WITH GRACE; I HAVE WANTED TO BE YOUR FAVORITE GIRL. I DON’T

THINK I HAVE ACTED ON THOSE FEELINGS, BUT PERHAPS I HAVE DONE IN SUBTLE WAYS.

IT IS NOT THAT I ONLY BECAME AWARE OF ALL THIS LAST NIGHT, OR THAT BY YOUR

POINTING OUT CERTAIN THINGS ABOUT ANANDO MEANT THE REST OF US WERE FREE

OF THOSE SAME THINGS. I KNOW WE ALL HAVE THE SAME FAILINGS. I KNOW, YOU KNOW, BUT I JUST NEEDED TO SAY ALL THIS TO YOU – FOR MY SAKE, IF YOU WILL ALLOW ME, OR

FOR THE RECORD.

Maneesha, this has to be very clearly understood: that whatever I am saying to one person, everybody has to look within himself to see whether that is applicable to him also. I cannot talk to each of you differently; it is an impossibility. Every person to me is symbolic. What I said about Anando is just symbolic – you all have to ponder over it. Perhaps the same tendencies, the same unconscious feelings, jealousies, greed, ambitions may be hiding in you. Most probably they are.

Before enlightenment you all have this barbarous mind. Anando is not an exception, nor are you an exception, Maneesha – and it is perfectly okay.

What is needed is an awareness that these things are within you. Nothing has to be done.

Just watch them and they will wash out. But what do people do? – they do something to the contrary. They repress them, they pretend that ”others may have jealousies we don’t have.” They pretend that ”others may have anger we don’t have.” They go on repressing all their ugliness in the unconsciousness. This is not going to be helpful in your awakening. These unconscious repressed desires, feelings, attitudes, are all going to become a hindrance to your enlightenment.

My effort, in different ways – answering your question, or telling a joke, or talking about strange sutras of strange people – is simply to help you face your own repressed mind. Once you encounter it, then the only secret to be learned, which I teach every time, is to witness them. Don’t do anything. Don’t condemn them, otherwise they will immediately go deeper into the darkness of your unconscious mind. Don’t condemn them, don’t appreciate them, otherwise they will become attached to your conscious mind. Don’t make any judgment for or against.

Just witness, as if you have nothing to do with them. Witnessing is the greatest device that has been found by the whole of the past enlightened people. It cuts through all rubbish just like a sharp sword: don’t get identified; just remain aloof and watch. Anger is there, take note of it and just watch how it arises, how it spreads like a mushroom, how it covers you like a blinding force; how it starts making decisions for you, how you start acting according to it.

Just watch, and you will be surprised that it cannot do anything. As it arises, it will not even go to the point of becoming a mushroom because it can become a mushroom only by nourishment. By watching it you have cut the very nourishment. It will arise as a crippled anger which cannot stand up even, and soon it will disperse like mist. It has no reality except your identification.

It is good of you, Maneesha, that you have taken note of it. Anando is also calming down. Here you are to become buddhas, not stupid buddhas, because such a thing has never existed in the world –

a stupid buddha.

Now it is Anando’s time....

Princess Diana and Princess Fergie are the wives of Prince Charles and Prince Andrew of England.

Soon after Fergie has arrived to live in the palace, Diana offers to take her on a bicycle tour of the London sights. Fergie is delighted and they set off, pedaling through the palace gates.

Diana knows all the shortcuts through the London traffic, and soon the two princesses are bouncing along on their bicycles over the cobblestones in the small back streets.

”Wow! Di!” cries Fergie, giggling and squealing, her ample body vibrating like jelly, ”I have never come this way before!”

”Really?” says Di, ”I guess it must be the cobblestones!”

Big Leroy, the black American football player, and Rabbi Sapperstein, the Jew, are riding in a train together.

It is a hot, sunny day, and there are many flies, lazily buzzing around the compartment. Suddenly, a fly lands on the Rabbi’s sleeve and he brushes it off in disgust.

A few moments later another fly lands, but this time on Big Leroy’s leg. The giant football star moves like lightning, and grabs the fly between two of his huge black fingers.

Leroy then slowly pulls off both the fly’s wings and pops it into his mouth, chewing it contentedly.

Soon afterwards, a fly lands on the Jew’s sleeve again. But this time, instead of brushing it off, the rabbi grabs it between two of his long, boney fingers.

He then slowly removes both of its wings, leans over to Leroy, and says, ”Wanna buy a fly?”

Kowalski is out for a drive in the countryside in his new Chevrolet car. He stops on the top of a hill and gets out to admire the view.

It is a beautiful, peaceful scene, with a black horse and a white horse chomping grass in the field nearby.

Satisfied and breathing a deep sigh, Kowalski gets back into his Chevy, but the car will not start.

He gets out, walks around to the front of the car, opens the hood and looks in dismay at the engine.

He is wondering what to do when the white horse trots up, leans over the fence, sticks his head under the hood, and says in a deep voice, ”Your spark plugs need cleaning!”

Kowalski is shocked and terrified, and runs off to the nearby farmhouse. He sees the farmer in the yard, and rushes up to him.

”My car has broken down,” stammers Kowalski, ”and one of your horses told me to clean the spark plugs!”

”Really?” replies the farmer. ”Was it the black horse or the white one?”

”The white one,” gasps Kowalski.

”Pity,” says the farmer. ”The white one does not know a thing about cars!”

Doctor Braino is a world-famous shrink who specialized in secretly treating neurotic American politicians. It is a hopeless job, but he carries on anyway.

One day, Senator Donald Dixteen, the thirty-five-year-old Republican Fundamentalist Christian Reagan-lover is sitting nervously in Dr. Braino’s office.

”What can I do for you?” Braino asks Donald.

Donald looks around to make sure no one can hear him. Then, in a quiet voice he says, ”Doc, I’m not having any luck with women. I try to be cool... I try to be real hip cat, but I’m afraid that I’m a premature ejaculator... I always come too soon.”

”Well,” says Braino, studying Donald closely, ”when does this usually occur with the woman?”

”Well,” says Donald, looking around, ”Usually between ‘Hello,’ and ‘What is your sun sign?’”

Anando...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

(Drumbeat)

Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen. Now look inwards with great urgency, as if this is the last moment of your life.

Deeper and deeper... Collect your whole consciousness as an arrow and go in search for your very source of life. There you will find the buddha.

Sitting silently, this is your real being. This moment you all have become buddhas.

To make it more clear...

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax. Watch your body as separate from you. Watch your mind as separate from you. You are just a witness, just a mirror reflecting all that is around you. A buddha is nothing but a mirror. From this point, of being a buddha, a witness, you can take another jump and dissolve yourself into the oceanic consciousness. Just within two steps, the journey is complete.

Thousands of flowers are showering on you. A deep silence, an immense space utterly empty but full of great potentialities. In this space you will find the truth, the meaning of life, the beauty of everything in existence, and the goodness of every being. Those who have come to this point will carry it around the clock, just hiding it behind their heartbeats.

So act like a buddha: eat when you are hungry, but don’t think of anything else. When you are tired, go to sleep, but don’t ponder about a thousand worries. Each moment should be given your total consciousness – and you have come home.

It is so peaceful, it is so blissful. This evening was already beautiful, but ten thousand buddhas make it a miracle, a magic moment. If you are intelligent enough, you can make this moment a transformation of your whole life.

Now, gather all the flowers, the fragrance of this moment – you have to bring it back.

Collect all the great pearls.

You are at the very source of everything.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, but come back as a buddha, witnessing silently. Get up, sit down for a few moments, recollecting the space you have traveled, recollecting the experience that you have encountered.

This has to become your very life-style.

Not for a single moment be suspicious about your buddhahood.

Your buddhahood is your nature, act accordingly. The more you act accordingly, the more is the possibility of a growing trust in your being a buddha. The more intelligent can instantly pass through the transformation. The old self dies away, and a totally fresh new being is born – innocent, pure.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Osho!

CHAPTER 3

In search of a lost treasure

28 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

THE QUESTION WAS ASKED OF HYAKUJO: ”THERE IS A SUTRA WHICH SAYS THAT NOT TO

PERCEIVE ANYTHING IN TERMS OF BEING OR NON-BEING IS TRUE DELIVERANCE. WHAT

DOES THAT MEAN?” HYAKUJO RESPONDED:

”WHEN WE ATTAIN TO PURITY OF MIND, THAT IS SOMETHING WHICH CAN BE SAID

TO EXIST. WHEN THIS HAPPENS, OUR REMAINING FREE FROM ANY THOUGHT OF

ACHIEVEMENT IS CALLED NOT PERCEIVING ANYTHING AS EXISTENT. REACHING THE

STATE IN WHICH NO THOUGHTS ARISE OR PERSIST, YET WITHOUT BEING CONSCIOUS

OF THEIR ABSENCE, IS CALLED NOT PERCEIVING ANYTHING AS NON-EXISTENT.

”THE SURANGAMA SUTRA SAYS, PERCEPTIONS EMPLOYED AS A BASE FOR BUILDING UP

POSSIBLE CONCEPTS ARE THE ORIGIN OF ALL IGNORANCE. PERCEPTION THAT THERE IS

NOTHING TO PERCEIVE – THAT IS NIRVANA, ALSO KNOWN AS DELIVERANCE.”

A QUESTION WAS ASKED, ”WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE PHRASE ‘NOTHING TO

PERCEIVE’?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED: ”BEING ABLE TO BEHOLD MEN, WOMEN AND ALL THE VARIOUS SORTS

OF APPEARANCES WHILE REMAINING AS FREE FROM LOVE OR HATE AS IF THEY WERE

ACTUALLY NOT SEEN AT ALL – THAT IS WHAT IS MEANT BY ‘NOTHING TO PERCEIVE.’”

THEN HE WAS ASKED: ”THAT WHICH OCCURS WHEN WE ARE CONFRONTED BY ALL

SORTS OF SHAPES AND FORMS IS CALLED PERCEPTION. CAN WE SPEAK OF PERCEPTION

TAKING PLACE WHEN nothing CONFRONTS US?”

”YES,” REPLIED HYAKUJO.

”WHEN SOMETHING CONFRONTS US, IT FOLLOWS THAT WE PERCEIVE IT,” CONTINUED

THE QUESTION, ”BUT HOW CAN THERE BE PERCEPTION WHEN WE ARE CONFRONTED BY

NOTHING AT ALL?”

HYAKUJO ANSWERED BY SAYING: ”WE ARE NOT TALKING OF THAT PERCEPTION WHICH IS

INDEPENDENT OF THERE BEING AN OBJECT OR NOT. HOW CAN THAT BE?”

”THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION BEING ETERNAL, WE GO ON PERCEIVING WHETHER

OBJECTS ARE PRESENT OR NOT. THEREBY WE COME TO UNDERSTAND THAT, WHEREAS

OBJECTS NATURALLY APPEAR AND DISAPPEAR, THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION DOES

NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS. IT IS THE SAME WITH ALL YOUR OTHER SENSES TOO,”

CONCLUDED HYAKUJO.

Maneesha, before I discuss the sutras of Hyakujo and the haikus of Basho, I have to settle this great matter about Anando. I call it the great matter, because to me you all are buddhas. You may know it, you may not know it, but in my vision, I perceive you in your perfection. I want and hope that one day, you will also be able to see clearly your buddhahood, because that is the only solution out of the troubles of the mind.

A famous American Jewish writer, Joshua Liebman, has written a book, PEACE OF MIND. The very title is wrong. Mind can never be at peace. Peace is something beyond mind. Mind is the problem.

You can change problems, but that will not help. You have to go beyond mind.

I wrote a letter to Joshua Liebman: ”Your very title is wrong, your very attitude is wrong. You don’t know a simple fact about the inner world: mind is the cause of all trouble; only no-mind can be at peace, because in a state of no-mind you have gone beyond the clouds into the open sky, where problems don’t exist.”

The mind is a small accumulation of thousands of years of problems. You are still carrying them, and they are just waiting for some situation to surface. Even you are surprised, ”From where has this problem surfaced?”

You were not aware that ninety percent of your mind is in darkness. Only a small fragment – ten percent – has become a little awake. He knows nothing about what is going on in the depths of the ninety percent. And from that unconscious, anything can surface to the conscious. Just a certain situation is needed to trigger it off. It may remain dormant for years, for lives, and it may become suddenly the greatest problem in your life.

This is not only a question for Anando, it is a question for everyone who has a mind. Only those who have not a mind, and function directly and straightforward without bringing any thoughts in between, who rather than thinking simply reflect – they don’t have any problems. We have called such people buddhas.

You all have the potential of having mind or no-mind. You can have both: when you need to work with the objective reality you can use the mind – it is extrovert; when you are working towards the inner world, and the treasure house of your being, you have to use the no-mind.

The problem arises that you are accustomed to using the mind, because you are accustomed to the outside world. So when you start working for the inner, you still continue functioning with the mind.

That is not the area of functioning for the mind.

The mind can only be objective, it can never be subjective. And the moment you try to make it subjective, you will get into tremendous anguish, strange anxieties. The whole of the unconscious mind will start arising in flames within you. It is a great struggle of the mind that it does not want you ever to explore the inner, it wants you to remain engaged with something outside. Then it is perfectly happy.

Turning in simply means a death to the mind.

Turning in means the mind will have to be put aside, with all its knowledge, its problems, its anxieties, its anguishes. Of course, the mind has been in power for four million years, it cannot easily give way, so it creates any kind of disturbances that can prevent you from entering into your own being and finding the buddha.

Anando has written:

BELOVED OSHO,

I AM SORRY. I MUST BE THE MOST STUBBORN AND STUPID DISCIPLE OF ALL TIME. I AM

NOT EVEN SURE I CAN BE CALLED A DISCIPLE AFTER MY BEHAVIOR.

I FEEL TERRIBLE THAT I FORCED YOU TO HIT ME SO HARD, BUT I SAW THAT MY LAYERS

OF PRIDE AND MY STUPID DEFENSES OF INDEPENDENCE FROM LOVE WERE SO OLD AND

SO THICK, THAT I NEEDED SOMETHING DRASTIC.

I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DID, EXCEPT THAT BOY, DID IT HURT. NOW I UNDERSTAND

WHY THE TRUTH IS SO UNPOPULAR.

BUT IN SPITE OF MY WORST EFFORTS, YOU, WITH YOUR LOVE, HAVE MANAGED A MIRACLE

AGAIN. I FEEL HEALED AND SO GRATEFUL.

THANK YOU SOUNDS SO INADEQUATE, BUT I SAY FROM THE DEPTH OF MY BEING: I WASH

YOUR FEET WITH MY TEARS OF GRATITUDE.

ANANDO.

Anando, you have done perfectly well. It was something troublesome in you that you have dropped in this crisis. This crisis was painful – every crisis is – but few crises bring a new approach, a new attitude, a new being in you. And this crisis has brought a new dawn to your life.

People don’t understand at all that they are afraid of love. People think they are very loving, but their unconscious is very afraid of love. Love means merging, and that seems to the mind as if you are losing your independence, your individuality.

In ordinary love affairs it is true to some extent.

That is the whole struggle between lovers,

continuously fighting. It is not certain things that they are fighting about – any excuse and they are fighting. Their fight is to survive as an individual. This flood of love creates great fear in them.

But this is about the ordinary love affairs. What to say about the great love affair between the disciple and the master? It is a very tidal wave, but the difference is that the tidal wave will not take away your independence. In fact, you don’t have independence right now, it is just a vague idea. You don’t know freedom, you don’t know independence.

With the tidal wave of a master’s love, all that is slave in you will be drowned. You will come out fresh, more independent, more individual, and yet, more grateful, more peaceful, more graceful.

That’s what has happened to you, Anando, you have come back home. You have gone a little astray, but with me it is very difficult to go astray. I give you as much rope as you want – I give you the whole rope – and then you come back with that whole load of rope.

You proved to be an authentic disciple. And what you are saying is not simply words, it is your very heart.

When I hit someone, remember always, I hit myself more deeply. I can understand that you are healed, because my pain has disappeared, and I can feel your gratefulness. Not only was I feeling the pain through which you were going, the whole assembly was sad.

I would like Anando to bow down to all the buddhas here – they were all sad for all these days that you were in deep pain. Fighting with it, you have come victorious.

It is not enough to be grateful to me, you have to be grateful to all the buddhas who are working here together in search of a lost treasure, a lost golden climate. It is not an organization of buddhas –

buddhas don’t organize – it is simply a meeting of brothers and sisters in a deep love. They are all moving towards the same center of their being, and the universal being.

Anando, come in front and bow down to the whole assembly. This will be a record for the future.

(ANANDO WALKS TO THE FRONT OF THE ASSEMBLY AND STANDS IN FRONT OF EVERYONE

IN NAMASTE. OSHO TELLS HER TO BOW DOWN. SHE SIMPLY STANDS AND BOWS, AND IN

RESPONSE, BEFORE SHE RETURNS TO HER PLACE, EVERYONE BOWS DOWN.) Now, the biographical note:-

THE GREAT PEARL’S TREATISE ON SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT WAS WRITTEN BEFORE

HE ACTUALLY HAD ANY DISCIPLES – IN THE PERIOD DESCRIBED AS ”WHEN HE LIVED

A RETIRED LIFE, CONCEALING HIS ABILITIES AND OUTWARDLY APPEARING SOMEWHAT

MAD.” EVEN THOUGH THE BOOK IS WRITTEN IN THE STYLE OF A DIALOGUE, HYAKUJO

COMPOSED THE QUESTIONS AS WELL AS THE ANSWERS HIMSELF SO THAT HE COULD

EXPLAIN HIS POINTS IN THE MANNER HE WISHED.

The sutra:

BELOVED OSHO,

THE QUESTION WAS ASKED OF HYAKUJO: ”THERE IS A SUTRA WHICH SAYS THAT NOT TO

PERCEIVE ANYTHING IN TERMS OF BEING OR NON-BEING IS TRUE DELIVERANCE.

”THERE IS A SUTRA WHICH SAYS THAT NOT TO PERCEIVE ANYTHING IN TERMS OF BEING

OR NON-BEING IS TRUE DELIVERANCE. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?”

HYAKUJO RESPONDED: ”WHEN WE ATTAIN TO PURITY OF MIND, THAT IS SOMETHING

WHICH CAN BE SAID TO EXIST. WHEN THIS HAPPENS, OUR REMAINING FREE FROM

ANY THOUGHT OF ACHIEVEMENT IS CALLED NOT PERCEIVING ANYTHING AS EXISTENT.

REACHING THE STATE IN WHICH NO THOUGHTS ARISE OR PERSIST, YET WITHOUT

BEING CONSCIOUS OF THEIR ABSENCE, IS CALLED NOT PERCEIVING ANYTHING AS NON-EXISTENT.

”THE Surangama SUTRA SAYS, PERCEPTIONS EMPLOYED AS A BASE FOR BUILDING UP

POSSIBLE CONCEPTS ARE THE ORIGIN OF ALL IGNORANCE. PERCEPTION THAT THERE IS

NOTHING TO PERCEIVE – THAT IS NIRVANA, ALSO KNOWN AS DELIVERANCE.”

A QUESTION WAS ASKED, ”WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE PHRASE ‘NOTHING TO

PERCEIVE’?”

Hyakujo, even before becoming a master, has already become enlightened. It is not necessary for every enlightened being to become a master. Most of the enlightened beings have remained silent, for the simple reason, that to say the truth is to annoy the whole world. And not to say the truth, one feels like one has betrayed oneself.

The situation of an enlightened man is a very difficult situation. He has all the blessings, and all the joys, but there is a problem: he cannot communicate it to those who are moving in darkness, in blindness. And the trouble is, with enlightenment arises great compassion and love spontaneously.

So the enlightened person tries to help in every possible way, creates devices, even tells lies to help you to come to the truth.

Very few enlightened people are articulate, because that is a totally different expertise. So they remain silent, although their silence becomes heavy on them. They become sad because they cannot communicate. They know the truth, and that somebody is searching for it, but they cannot even indicate the way. They feel helpless.

A few people who became enlightened remained silent for a few years, just pondering over the problem of communion. That was the case with Hyakujo. He became enlightened, and waited for the right moment when he had found the right words, the right devices which can help somebody.

He wrote these sutras after his enlightenment, but before his becoming a master. He himself asked the question. It is a preparation for himself – the homework. He asked the question and he himself answers it, trying to see whether he will be able to answer the questions which are bound to arise when he declares his enlightenment.

One of the most difficult things is: what is nirvana? The word ‘nirvana’ has a very special meaning to it. No other religion in the world has ever dared to think of such a thing. ‘Nirvana’ literally means blowing away the flame. You have a candle, you blow away the flame – now where you can find that flame again? Is it possible to find that flame again in this vast universe? It has gone into the oceanic existence, become one with it. There is no way to find it.

Buddha used ‘nirvana’ as the ultimate state when your individual consciousness disappears into the universal consciousness. It is just like blowing away a flame. No more will you be heard; no more will you be; only existence will be there. You will walk, and it will be existence who will be walking within you. You will talk, and it will be existence who will be talking through you. You will become just a hollow bamboo, and existence can make a flute out of you.

The words or the silences are all coming from the cosmic sources. The enlightened masters have danced, have sung, have written poetries, have done all kinds of creative work, but not as themselves. They are allowing existence to use them as instruments of the cosmic soul. They will not do anything on their own.

I am reminded of an English poet, Coleridge....

After his death, forty thousand incomplete poems were found in his house. His friends were aware all his life, and they insisted, ”Why don’t you complete a poem which is so beautiful? Just two lines more and it will be completed – or sometimes one line more and it will be completed.”

But according to me, Coleridge was authentically a mystic poet. He simply said, ”I never write anything, I only allow existence. At this point existence stopped, what can I do? I cannot manage to complete the poem. If existence wants to complete it some day, it will be completed; if not, it is not my concern.”

He completed only seven poems, but even seven poems have made him one of the greatest poets that has ever lived on the earth. His poems give the sense that they are coming from beyond. He is just a receiving center, he is not a composer, he is not writing them. He is just in the hands of existence... perhaps a fountain pen, but the hands are cosmic.

He was courageous enough. It needed immense courage to see thousands of poems gathering which could be completed – and he was capable of completing them. But he tried a few times and he found out that the one line he composed was dead, and the other lines which had flown through him, had a life of their own – they had a heartbeat.

Nirvana is disappearance into the ultimate. Even while living, you start living in the hands of the ultimate. The ultimate is our freedom, the ultimate is our independence.

Anando has raised a question about independence in her letter. There are independences and there are great differences between them. One independence is from others – you are independent from others. That is a very small independence that does not carry much meaning. Another independence is, you are independent from yourself. That is the great freedom, the ultimate freedom

– you are no more.

As long as you are, there is a certain slavery to circumstances, to the body, to the mind, to the society. You cannot be absolutely independent as long as you are.

Nirvana is absolute freedom.

Now there is no one who can be enslaved.

The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean.

These sutras are good enough to make Hyakujo a master – and finally he became a master. He did not revise these sutras. He continued his whole life on the same line.

The first sutra says that NOT TO PERCEIVE ANYTHING IN TERMS OF BEING OR NON-BEING

IS TRUE DELIVERANCE.

Everything that you can see is just a reflection of the moon in the river. If somebody asks you if the reflection of the moon in the lake has a being, or if it is a non-being, what are you going to say?

Neither is it a being, nor is it a non-being, it is just a reflection in the mirror. So whatever you see with your eyes, your eyes are just mirrors. Whatever you see around in the world outside, you are simply reflecting them, you are not seeing them. And all your reflections neither can be called beings nor non-beings. What are they? – just reflections. Your eyes are just mirrors.

You don’t have any way to find out that what you are seeing is really there. All your senses can deceive you, and there is no way to judge whether you have seen something which is a mirage or real water.

There is a great Christian college in Allahabad....

I was invited to give some lectures there. It is just on the bank of the great Ganges, in a very beautiful place.

I was sitting by the side of the riverbank with a friend who was a professor in the Christian college, and the friend became very excited.

I said, ”What is the matter?”

Far away there was a very beautiful woman taking a bath in the river, but her back was towards us.

So I said, ”What is the problem? Let her take the bath.”

He said, ”The problem is, I want to see her face.”

I said, ”You can go and look at her face.”

He went with great excitement, and came back so disappointed because it was not a woman at all.

It was a Hindu monk with long hair. When he saw the monk he said, ”My God, I was just about to fall in love.”

I said, ”Before falling in love, at least you should encounter the person from the front side. From the back side... And are you certain that he is a monk and not a woman?”

He said, ”You are creating doubt in me. For a moment I was also doubtful because he is beautiful.

Now I will have to go back again.”

I said, ”Leave it. You know now that he is a monk.”

He said, ”No. You have created the doubt, and I don’t want to live with this doubt. He may really be a woman, because I did not see any beard or mustache. Who knows? My conclusion that he is a monk is dependent only on his orange clothes, but that is not a decisive point because a Hindu nun will also use orange clothes.”

He said, ”I will have to go.”

He went again. Even the monk became surprised as to why this man was coming again, and he looked down from this way and that way.

The monk said, ”What is the matter?”

He said, ”Nothing is the matter. You just have such beautiful hair that my friend who is sitting there and I got into a discussion about whether you are a man or a woman.”

The monk must have been a man of a great sense of humor. He said, ”Aha! I don’t know myself. A monk is a monk – he is neither a man nor a woman.”

The man became even more disappointed. He said to me, ”Now it is very difficult. His body is very shapely, and he himself says that he does not know who he is.”

What you can see with your eyes is only a reflection. Hyakujo is saying that all our perceptions are neither beings nor non-beings. They are ephemeral. They are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. Don’t be too much concerned, attached, identified with them. That creates the bondage.

Hyakujo himself responded to his question: ”WHEN WE ATTAIN TO PURITY OF MIND, THAT

IS SOMETHING WHICH CAN BE SAID TO EXIST. WHEN THIS HAPPENS, OUR REMAINING

FREE FROM ANY THOUGHT OF ACHIEVEMENT IS CALLED NOT PERCEIVING ANYTHING AS

EXISTENT.”

Nothing can be called existent, because everything is in a flux. This is a Buddhist attitude, that you cannot refer to anything with a noun or a pronoun. Their approach is really deep. They say, ”You say, ‘the river is,’ but the river is constantly flowing.”

They are saying exactly what Epicurus and Heraclitus in Greece said: ”You cannot step in the same river twice.”

When I read Heraclitus for the first time, that you cannot step in the same river twice, I tried. And my conclusion was that if I meet Heraclitus somewhere – not much chance because he was a contemporary of Gautam Buddha, but one never knows, everything is possible in this vast universe

– I am going to tell him, ”You cannot step in the same river even once. I have tried; you were simply postulating. When you put your feet in the river, the water is flowing. As your foot goes a little deeper, the water is flowing... a little more, and water is flowing. By the time you touch the ground, perhaps so much water has gone – every second it is flowing – that you cannot say that you have stepped in the same river, in the same water.”

Gautam Buddha’s very profound approach was, that for mediocre reasons we have made all verbs into nouns. Otherwise a tree should be called treeing; it is continuously growing. At no point you can call it a tree; either it is growing or it is dying. Everything is a process, not a thing – an event, but not a thing. And if everything is a process, you cannot call anything a being. The river is flowing, the water is flowing, the trees are growing, the stars are moving, the earth is moving, you are moving...

The whole existence all around is in movement. There is not a single thing in the outside world which is not moving either backwards or forwards. But movement is the reality, that’s why it is called ephemeral. Only one thing is not moving, has never moved, and that is your ultimate center of being.

That has remained the same in this whole world going around in circles.

The great scientist, Bacon, can be called the father of Western science. He wrote a very great book, NOVUM ORGANUM, in which he has stated in aphorisms the differences between philosophical attitudes and science. He says in NOVUM ORGANUM – Novum Organum means a new canon of thought – ”If I can find a center in the world which is not moving, I can explain the whole world without any difficulty. But there is no center in the world which is not moving; everything is moving.

By the time you have explained it, it is no longer the same.”

He was not aware of the inner world. There, there is a center which is unmoving, but he was not a religious man.

We are in search of a center inside, and all the mystics, all the buddhas, are in absolute agreement that in the deepest core of your being there is a center which is the only unmoving center in the whole of existence.

And strangely enough, that unmoving center is not only yours. At that center we all meet, just like lines drawn from the circumference to the center. You can draw many lines from the circumference to the center. On the circumference they are different lines. As they move closer to the center, they also become closer to each other. When they reach the center, they are one.

We are many on the circumference.

At the center we are one.

And that oneness is the only freedom, because now there is no other to make you a slave. Only you are, and because only you are, you cannot even say that you are. To say that you are, you need others for context. Unless the other is, you cannot be. You need for your I a thou. Without a thou the I cannot exist; linguistically it is impossible.

So at the very center only is-ness remains.

Neither me nor you, but just a pure existence.

”THE SURANGAMA SUTRA SAYS, PERCEPTIONS EMPLOYED AS A BASE FOR BUILDING UP

POSSIBLE CONCEPTS ARE THE ORIGIN OF ALL IGNORANCE. PERCEPTION THAT THERE IS

NOTHING TO PERCEIVE – THAT IS NIRVANA.”

There is nothing to perceive, only you are. Only the mirror is there and nothing to reflect. So deeply are we rooted in one cosmic whole, that there is no other which can be reflected. All around there is nothingness, but this nothingness is very alive. It is not the nothingness of a cemetery, it is the nothingness that you experience every day in meditation – everything becomes absolutely silent.

Somebody passing by the side of the road cannot infer that there are ten thousand people.

This silence is vibrating, has a heartbeat.

This is a small example of the ultimate silence that surrounds the cosmos. It has a heartbeat, it is not simply nothing. It is called nothingness because there is nothing to perceive, no reflection is made. When you go deep inside you, you will see that no reflection is made. A pure mirror without any reflections, a purity without any ripples – this, according to Buddha, is nirvana.

A QUESTION WAS ASKED, ”WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE PHRASE ‘NOTHING TO

PERCEIVE’?”

How can you perceive nothing? You can perceive an object, a tree, a moon. You can perceive an object, but how can you perceive nothing? The question is very philosophical, but it is good to face it because some day it may arise in you too, that when you are absolutely silent, just a mirror, nothing to perceive, how do you know? Nothing to perceive – can you perceive nothing? You can perceive no-thing, and that perception of no-thing, gives you the idea of nothingness. There is no-thingness around you, no objects but just a pure space.

Have you ever thought about the word ‘object’? We call things ‘objects’. ‘Object’ simply means that which obstructs, hinders, prevents. It is an objection; you cannot go. It is a barrier. Things are called objects because they prevent you from moving beyond them. They are like walls; they are not like doors. No object, or no thing simply means there is nothing around to ”object” you.

This is the perception that as far as you can see, there is no thing left. The mirror is pure, unreflective, centered in itself in deep blissfulness.

Hyakujo replied: ”THAT WHICH OCCURS WHEN WE ARE CONFRONTED BY ALL SORTS OF

SHAPES AND FORMS IS CALLED PERCEPTION. CAN WE SPEAK OF PERCEPTION TAKING

PLACE WHEN NOTHING CONFRONTS US?”

”YES,” REPLIED HYAKUJO.

”WHEN SOMETHING CONFRONTS US, IT FOLLOWS THAT WE PERCEIVE IT.”

If we can perceive something, it means that when something will be removed, we will perceive nothing.

The question continues:

”BUT HOW CAN THERE BE PERCEPTION WHEN WE ARE

CONFRONTED BY NOTHING AT ALL?”

HYAKUJO ANSWERED BY SAYING: ”WE ARE NOT TALKING OF THAT PERCEPTION WHICH IS

INDEPENDENT OF THERE BEING AN OBJECT OR NOT. HOW CAN that BE?”

”THE TRUE NATURE OF PERCEPTION BEING ETERNAL, WE GO ON PERCEIVING, WHETHER

OBJECTS ARE PRESENT OR NOT.”

A mirror can exist without reflecting. Just take that case, that a mirror can exist without any reflection.

A consciousness can exist without any perception. There is no need, no necessity. The mirror and its mirror quality is not dependent on anything and its reflection. For example, the lake can go on existing whether the moon comes or not. If it comes, it will be reflected; if it does not come, who cares? The lake is perfectly satisfied unto itself, so is the case of the inner lake of consciousness.

”THEREBY WE COME TO UNDERSTAND THAT, WHEREAS objects NATURALLY APPEAR AND

DISAPPEAR, THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION DOES neither OF THOSE THINGS.”

The mirror remains; things come and go. Consciousness remains, awareness remains, witnessing remains; things come and go. Life comes, death comes, your mirror-like witnessing remains eternally. It is the only thing in the whole of existence which never changes.

Basho wrote:

AUTUMN EVE – PLEASE

TURN TO ME.

I, TOO, AM A STRANGER.

Basho’s haikus have no parallel. All Zen masters have written haikus, but Basho seems to have melted and merged into nature more deeply than anybody else.

”Autumn eve – please turn to me. I, too, am a stranger.” Just as you are, he is saying, ”Here in this world we are all strangers.”

We ordinarily forget the matter, we start taking everybody for granted. Have you ever thought about it? These ten thousand buddhas are all strangers. We make efforts to forget that everybody is a stranger – we make marriages, friendships, we try to introduce each other – just to forget the feeling that everybody is a stranger. It will make us very much frightened, that we are surrounded with strangers. All our families, all our clubs, all our religions, all our nations are only an opportunity to hide the fact that we are all strangers.

Zen is an effort to make you fully aware of your strangeness. This will give you freedom from the crowd. This will give you a sense of being yourself, a deep intensity of consciousness that you are surrounded in a strange world where everybody is a stranger.

It has many deeper implications. If you can understand the fact that everybody is a stranger, all your expectations will drop. Who are you to expect? A husband expects certain things from the wife.

He has forgotten the fact that the wife is a stranger. We have just met on the way, talked a little bit, walked together on the way, and we have forgotten the fact that we are still strangers.

We don’t know ourselves, how can we know others? But on the surface, we try to make familiarity, we try to forget the fearsome idea that we are alone. The wife, the children, the Rotary Club...

somewhere we want to be associated.

We don’t want to stand alone in deep freedom under the sky, and dance under the sun and the rain.

No, we simply want a coziness with the crowd, we want to disappear in the crowd – it feels warmer there.

It is not without any reason that Jesus could call people sheep, and himself the shepherd – and nobody objected. This is strange: Jesus was crucified, but nobody ever objected to any of his teachings, and nobody ever argued against him.

The reality seems to be that people accepted it deep down themselves that they were nothing but sheep, they needed a crowd to surround them, they could not move alone in an unknown territory.

Nobody stood up to Jesus, and said to him, ”You are insulting humanity. You are humiliating us by being a shepherd and making us sheep.”

That nobody objected makes it clear that the people felt he was right, ”We need a crowd.”

Basho is saying, ”Autumn eve – please turn to me.” – you are not the only stranger here – ”I, too, am a stranger.”

I have heard...

An Englishman who got off the train was feeling very dizzy. His wife had come to pick him up from the station. She asked, ”What is the matter? You are looking very pale and dizzy.”

He said, ”It was a difficult situation. Whenever I sit in the opposite direction – the train is going to the East, and I am sitting facing the West – it makes me dizzy.”

The wife said, ”It is such a small thing, you could have said to anybody, ‘This makes me dizzy, please change the seat.’”

He said, ”You are right, but we were all strangers. Nobody has introduced me to anybody.”

The wife said, ”You are an idiot! We are strangers, that is true, but that does not mean that you cannot ask a small thing.”

He said, ”Next time I will try.”

And the next day, he came back even more dizzy.

The wife said, ”What happened now?”

He said, ”On the front seat there was nobody, so I could not ask. You need somebody to ask; the seat was empty...”

The wife said, ”I will not interfere in your matters. You are simply either a philosopher or insane.”

Both mean the same.

Another haiku by Basho:

THE CRESCENT MOON –

THE EASTERN SKY IS DARK,

AND THE SOUND OF A BELL.

He depicts in words. Without any colors he makes paintings. ”The crescent moon – the eastern sky is dark, and the sound of a bell.” You can almost hear the sound of a bell. These are his moments of meditation. When he opens his eyes once in a while, he sees something: ”The crescent moon – the eastern sky is dark, and the sound of a bell” – just fragments out of a meditative mind. They don’t say much, they simply depict a situation. Very visual – you can see it, you can hear it. Basho is very earth bound.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

BELOVED OSHO,

ALTHOUGH BASHO’S HAIKUS ARE EXQUISITE, THEY MOSTLY TEND TO BE A BIT

MELANCHOLY.

I HAVE ALWAYS ASSOCIATED ENLIGHTENMENT WITH LEVITY, IF NOT ECSTASY –

ALTHOUGH IS SEEMS THAT KRISHNAMURTI DIDN’T EXTRACT MUCH ENJOYMENT FROM

HIS ENLIGHTENMENT.

WAS BASHO ENLIGHTENED?

Maneesha, every enlightened being expresses himself in his own unique way. Basho certainly seems to be a little melancholy, but his sadness is not your sadness. Your sadness is a repressed anger. You may not have thought about it. You become sad in a situation where you cannot express your anger.

For example, a husband and wife sitting together are always sad for the simple reason that they are angry at each other. The wife thinks, ”What kind of idiot have I got?” And the man is thinking, ”How to escape from here? Some excuse...”

Anger suppressed becomes sadness, but this is not the sadness of Basho. Basho is sad, certainly, and his sadness also has a beauty. Your sadness is ugly. His sadness is about the whole world, it has nothing to do with himself. It is the sadness of a man who knows how easy and how close your buddhahood is – and you are running here and there unnecessarily. The whole world is fighting, violent, angry... All this energy can transform their being into buddhas.

Basho’s sadness is out of his compassion, it has nothing to do with anger. But your observation that he seems to be a little sad in his haikus is right. He has to be. He is sad for you. He is sad for all of humanity. He is sad for all those who will follow him, because he knows the truth. It is so close –

just within your grasp – and still you don’t raise your hand. That makes him sad. His sadness has a beauty and a splendor.

As far as Krishnamurti, he was sad out of anger. But again it was a different anger from your anger.

Things are so subtle.... He was angry as to why people could not understand him. He is so clear, so rational, why can people not understand him? He used to beat his head in front of assemblies saying, ”You have been listening to me for forty years, fifty years, and I look at your faces and I feel immensely sad.”

He suffered for almost fifty years with migraine, with so deep migraines that he has written in his dairies that sometimes he wanted to hit his head against the walls. The migraine had nothing to do with his physiology, it was because he was talking to people, giving interviews, private interviews from morning until night, and nobody was showing the light in their eyes that they had understood him.

You cannot blame him for his anger – although that is a very special case. As I have told you, every enlightened person encounters the world in his own unique way. Krishnamurti lived long – ninety years – and even at the last moment, he was angry. At the last moment he said, ”I have wasted my whole life running around the world telling people, and they thought that it was an entertainment. I was talking about enlightenment, and they used to gather as if it was a circus.”

His anger is out of his compassion, but it is a very strange kind of conversion of compassion. He was so insistent that you should understand what he was saying, and this made him angry.

He was against sannyasins, he was against me. He wanted to see me, and sent a message to me.

We both were in Bombay.

I said, ”I don’t think there is any point. I am in absolute disagreement with him, and he is in absolute disagreement with me, so why unnecessarily waste my time and make him angry? He may hit his head on the wall, and unnecessarily I will be blamed for it.”

But I used to send my sannyasins to sit in the front row in orange clothes with malas. That was enough! He would come, and as he would look around, he would completely forget what the subject matter was that he was going to talk about. He would immediately start talking against me, and become so angry, saying, ”I cannot understand why these sannyasins are sitting in front of me. I am against these robes, I am against sannyas.”

And I told my people that when he becomes angry, laugh, don’t bother. That makes him more angry.

And my sannyasins were all over the world, wherever he was speaking.

My own understanding is, that it was somewhat of a perversion of compassion. You should not be so insistent; you should make available whatever you have. If somebody choses it, it is his freedom; if somebody does not, it is his freedom. You cannot impose your ideas upon others.

Even though the ideas were about freedom, the difficulty was that he was talking about freedom, but he wanted you to agree with his ideas about freedom. He could not see that even this is forcing slavery, a psychological slavery, on people.

You can simply share your vision of freedom, and that’s all. It is up to the people. If something rings a bell in their hearts, good; if nothing rings into their hearts, what can you do? You cannot force somebody to freedom. And what kind of freedom will it be, which is forced? – that you are free, under machine guns!

You can simply give the idea, and forget all about it. And as far as I am concerned, I consider enlightenment the greatest entertainment. Only the enlightened person can really entertain, enjoy, laugh. What can miserable people do about it?

I refused to meet him for the simple reason that I did not want him to be unnecessarily angry. He was sick, old, and he knew as well as I knew, that there is no way to come to an agreement.

I am a complete discontinuity with the past idea of entertainment, or the past idea of enlightenment.

Krishnamurti was still a very old type, stubborn, and always thought that what he is saying is the only truth. There are many aspects to truth. There are many ways to present it. And all that a man of truth needs is to share his vision lovingly, peacefully, with absolute freedom for anybody who wants to join in his exploration of reality. If somebody does not want to join, it is not right to be angry. Your anger shows that you were expecting that he should join.

If you don’t understand me, nothing is wrong. It is your freedom not to understand. I never take note of it whether you understand me or not. I go on, on my way. If somebody likes to be with me, a fellow traveler, as long as it is good... And if he wants to depart at a certain point, it is perfectly his freedom.

But my approach and Krishnamurti’s approach are bound to be different, because I had no master in my life. That has given me a totally different space to work from. Because I have never been under a master, I can give you total freedom. I have enjoyed total freedom myself. I have never listened to anybody, I have just lived the way I wanted. And that is my message to you: live the way you want.

I can share my understanding with you – you can choose. There is no need for me to be angry.

Krishnamurti was forced to become enlightened. For twenty-five years the Theosophical Movement, particularly the president, Annie Besant and one of the spokesmen, Leadbeater, kept him almost imprisoned. He was not allowed to meet ordinary people. Their idea was to present suddenly to the world a world teacher. So they were preparing the ground for a world teacher to come, who would save the whole of mankind. They were spreading books, literature, that ”soon the world teacher is to appear.”

They were hiding Krishnamurti and five other children – because who knows who will be right at the right time? Four were rejected, one died, and Krishnamurti was chosen to be a world teacher, but he was completely trained for it. Even books were written in his name by Leadbeater. A great book, AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER, is supposed to have been written by him when he was thirteen years of age – and he himself does not remember! Later on when asked, ”Have you written this book?” He said, ”I don’t remember.” The reality is, he never wrote that book. That book – and I have looked deeply into Leadbeater’s other books – is in the same style. It is the same man, Leadbeater, who has written that book in the name of J. Krishnamurti. It is to prove to the world that it is not an ordinary human being, but a divine incarnation – that at the age of thirteen he was writing such a great book.

The book is certainly great, and Leadbeater was a very articulate writer and well-studied man. He chose J. Krishnamurti and his brother Nityananda just when Krishnamurti was nine years old.

Those two boys were playing in the river, near Adyar in Madras, where the headquarters of the Theosophical Movement was. Leadbeater saw those two boys swimming and enjoying in the river, throwing water at each other. And he was certainly a very perceptive man – he could see that something great was possible with these two boys. He found three other boys. They all became great in their own fields.

Nityananda died because of too much discipline. He was a very fragile person. They had to wake up at three o’clock, to go through all kinds of rituals, to listen to scriptures, to eat only certain things...

One of the great difficulties with Leadbeater was, he was a homosexual. And he abused every child, including J. Krishnamurti. There was a case against Leadbeater in Madras High Court. When the father of these two children – he was a poor man, a poor clerk whose wife had died and so he was in trouble about how to manage these two boys and his office... So when Leadbeater proposed the idea that Annie Besant could adopt them, the father was very happy. Annie Besant was a world-famous woman.

He gave the adoption to Annie Besant, but it was discovered by many people that those small children had been sexually abused by Leadbeater. So the man appealed to the high court: ”I want my children to be returned me. They are being homosexually abused by Leadbeater.”

To avoid the situation, the judge was ready to return the children because there were witnesses of this abuse. Annie Besant, being a very famous British woman, managed to smuggle all those children to England before the court orders were passed. This was easy for her because India was under British rule, and Annie Besant was a powerful woman. So she managed to take the children out of the country.

Then when the magistrate’s orders were issued, saying that the children should be returned, the children were not there.

She did not put those children, J. Krishnamurti included, into any state school. This was such a guarded phenomenon – in a public school he may have started smoking, he may have started behaving like ordinary students. He was kept almost a prisoner. Private tutors were teaching him, and all kinds of nonsense – religious, scriptural – was forced upon him.

All this created a situation in which he revolted.

A day was appointed when they were going to declare him as a world teacher, enlightened. In Holland six thousand representatives of the Theosophical Movement gathered from all over the world. And at the last moment, when he was going to declare it, he stood up and said, ”I am not a world teacher and I refuse to be the head of any organization.”

A special organization, The Star of the East, was created for him, which would work for the world teacher. It was a section of the Theosophical Movement.

He carried those wounds his whole life. Those twenty-five years he could not forgive his teachers. It is a very strange case, and a tragic case.

So when he was speaking he was not free from his past experiences, he was still fighting against those teachers who had forced him. I don’t think that he was really enlightened. He had the capacity and the intelligence to become enlightened, and he was very close to enlightenment. The only barrier was his hatred, anger, about his masters and their behavior with him. That anger continued as an undercurrent.

I love the man. He has contributed great insights to the world, but he himself remained just close to enlightenment. He was not a Gautam Buddha, or a Ma Tzu, or a Hyakujo. I feel sad to say it, because I love him. His insights are very clear, but something was pulling him back, he could not open up in full flower. Something remained hanging around him, around his psychology. He was not a man of absolute freedom, although he talked about it.

He was a sincere man, otherwise he would not have refused to be the world teacher. He knew that he was not enlightened and that it would be insincere, dishonest, to declare himself as the world teacher. I love his honesty, but that does not mean I have to say that he was enlightened. Perhaps next life – this life he missed, and he missed because of his teachers.

Now, it is Anando time....

Loony Larry is wobbling home from the pub along the railway tracks. It is a fullmoon night, and Larry is well plastered with rum.

All of a sudden, he trips over a human leg lying on the tracks. He picks himself up, rubs his eyes in disbelief, and staggers on.

A few minutes later, he stumbles over another leg lying on the tracks. Next, he comes across an arm. By now, Looney Larry has become really interested, and when he sees a body, he stops to have a good look at it.

Walking around the body, he scratches his chin, and mumbles to himself, ”That coat looks rather familiar! I wonder if it is...” But just then, he steps backwards and falls over a head.

He stares in drunken shock at the head, recognizing the face of his friend, Harry. Then, Larry sees an ear lying on the ground a few feet away. He crawls over to the ear, picks it up, and shouts into it,

”Harry! Harry! Are you alright?”

Father Fumble is giving confession one day, when Seamus comes in and tells him that he has been having an affair.

”I see,” says Fumble, ”but I cannot bless you until you tell me the woman’s name.”

”Okay, Father,” replies Seamus. ”She’s the most gorgeous blonde you have ever seen – and her name is Pussy Green.”

The next Sunday, Father Fumble is getting ready for mass when a stunning blonde in a tiny skirt wiggles down the aisle to the front seats.

Father Fumble fumbles for his glasses, slips them on, and takes a good look at her.

”Is that Pussy Green?” he whispers to little Albert, the choir boy.

Albert looks hard this way and that.

”No, Father,” he replies, ”I think it is just the reflection from the stained-glass windows.”

Pope the Polack arrives at New Delhi airport, on the first leg of his ten-million-dollar Catholic mission to the East.

The Polack steps off the plane and immediately falls to his knees weeping, and then kisses the runway.

Cardinal Singh, the head of the Indian Catholic church, rushes up to the Polack pope and helps him to his feet.

”My goodness, Holy Father!” cries the cardinal. ”Why did you do that?”

”Well,” says the Polack, wiping his lips, and drying his eyes. ”Have you ever flown Air India?”

I have been calling Nivedano’s drums, Anando, up to now, to hit her so deep that she goes through the breakthrough. She has gone through it, and it is a joyous and blissful evening for every of you.

For this series the drum will still be called Anando, but for other reasons – to welcome her home.

Anando...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

(Drumbeat)

Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen. Look inward with great urgency, as if this moment is the last moment of your life. Only with great urgency can you reach to your buddhahood.

It is not far away.

Just gather all your consciousness into an arrow. It is an unknown path for you – but go ahead!

There is no fear.

Nobody is ever harmed by reaching to the life source.

Deeper and deeper... at the center of your being is the unmoving center of the whole existence. To be it, is to have found the treasure house of all the mysteries and miracles.

Just look, without any evaluation, without any judgment.

Be a mirror – only reflecting.

A witness – just a witness with no idea, no opinion.

To make it clear, Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Watch, witness. Your body is not you; your mind is not you.

You are just a pure witness. This is your buddhahood.

The evening was beautiful on its own, but your experience of witnessing has made it tremendously beautiful. Rejoice in the experience, because you have to live it out twenty-four hours of the clock.

The experience of being a buddha is not something for a few moments, or a few hours, it is for your whole life. And unless it is for your whole life – all your actions, all your gestures – it is of no worth.

You have to become a buddha. It is only a recognition, nothing has to be done. You are already a perfect buddha. Just recognize it, and rejoice in recognizing it. Let it become an undercurrent in all your actions, responses, gestures, waking, sleeping. Let the undercurrent become more and more deep.

At this moment, there are not ten thousand buddhas, but only one oceanic buddhahood. You have all merged into a tremendous experience.

Collect as many flowers as possible, as much fragrance as possible. Soon you will be coming back from your life source to the circumference. Bring something from your treasure house with you.

Don’t come back as you have gone in – come transformed.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, slowly, silently, gracefully, and sit down for few moments, just to recollect the experience.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes Osho!

CHAPTER 4

Lie down and witness

29 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

ONE DAY WHEN HYAKUJO WAS TO GIVE HIS DAILY DISCOURSES TO HIS DISCIPLES, HE

BEGAN BY SAYING, ”I AM NO ZEN ADEPT. I HAVE NOT A SINGLE THING TO OFFER ANYONE, SO I MUST NOT KEEP YOU STANDING HERE. GO AND TAKE A REST.”

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, A GROUP OF DHARMA MASTERS SOUGHT AN INTERVIEW AND

SAID: ”WE HAVE SOME QUESTIONS TO ASK. ARE YOU PREPARED TO ANSWER THEM, MASTER?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”YES. THE MOON IS REFLECTED IN THAT DEEP POND; CATCH IT IF YOU

LIKE.”

THE GROUP CONTINUED, ”WHAT IS THE BUDDHA REALLY LIKE?”

”IF THAT WHICH IS FACING THE LIMPID POND IS NOT THE BUDDHA, WHAT IS IT?” SAID

HYAKUJO.

THE MONKS WERE PUZZLED BY THIS REPLY, AND AFTER A SHORT WHILE INQUIRED

AGAIN: ”MASTER, WHAT DHARMA DO YOU EXPOUND IN ORDER TO LIBERATE OTHERS?”

HYAKUJO RESPONDED, ”THIS POOR MONK HAS NO DHARMA BY WHICH TO LIBERATE

OTHERS.”

THEY EXCLAIMED, ”ALL ZEN MASTERS ARE OF THE SAME STUFF!”

AT THIS, HYAKUJO ASKED THEM, ”WHAT DHARMAS DO YOU VIRTUOUS ONES EXPOUND

FOR LIBERATING OTHERS?”

THE MONKS REPLIED, ”OH, WE EXPOUND THE DIAMOND SUTRA.”

HYAKUJO ASKED, ”HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU EXPOUNDED IT?”

”MORE THAN TWENTY TIMES,” THEY ANSWERED.

HYAKUJO CONTINUED, ”BY WHOM WAS IT SPOKEN?”

TO THIS THE MONKS ANSWERED INDIGNANTLY: ”MASTER, YOU MUST BE JOKING! OF

COURSE YOU KNOW THAT IT WAS SPOKEN BY THE BUDDHA.”

HYAKUJO SAID: ”WELL, THAT SUTRA STATES: ‘IF SOMEONE SAYS THE TATHAGATA EXPOUNDS THE DHARMA, HE THEREBY SLANDERS THE BUDDHA! SUCH A MAN WILL

NEVER UNDERSTAND WHAT I MEAN.’”

HYAKUJO CONTINUED, ”NOW, IF YOU SAY THAT IT WAS NOT EXPOUNDED BY THE BUDDHA, YOU WILL THEREBY BELITTLE THAT SUTRA. WILL YOU VIRTUOUS ONES PLEASE LET ME

SEE WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY TO THAT?”

AS THEY MADE NO REPLY, THE MASTER PAUSED AWHILE BEFORE ASKING HIS NEXT

QUESTION, WHICH WAS: ”THE DIAMOND SUTRA SAYS: ‘HE WHO SEEKS ME THROUGH

OUTWARD APPEARANCE, OR SEEKS ME IN SOUND, TREADS THE HETERODOX PATH AND

CANNOT PERCEIVE THE TATHAGATA.’

”TELL ME, VIRTUOUS ONE,” SAID HYAKUJO, ”WHO OR WHAT IS THE TATHAGATA?”

ONE MONK REPLIED, ”SIR, AT THIS POINT I FIND MYSELF UTTERLY DELUDED.”

HYAKUJO SAID: ”HAVING NEVER BEEN ILLUMINED, HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT YOU ARE NOW

DELUDED?”

THEN THE MONK ASKED, ”WILL THE VENERABLE ZEN MASTER EXPOUND THE DHARMA TO

US?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”THOUGH YOU HAVE EXPOUNDED THE DIAMOND SUTRA OVER

TWENTY TIMES, YOU STILL DO NOT KNOW THE TATHAGATA!”

Maneesha, before I discuss the sutras placed before me, I have to introduce a new animal god to Avirbhava’s museum of gods. This god is the fish.

FISH HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH ALL ASPECTS OF A MOTHER GODDESS AND

WITH ALL LUNAR DEITIES.

ALTHOUGH SACRED FISH ARE NOT UNCOMMON, A FISH GOD SEEMS TO BE A SOMEWHAT

RARE PHENOMENON. DAGON, THE CHIEF GOD OF THE ANCIENT PHILISTINES AND

LATER THE PHOENICIANS, IS REPRESENTED AS HALF MAN AND HALF FISH. DAGON’S

WORSHIPPERS WORE FISH SKINS.

THERE WERE SACRED FISH IN THE TEMPLES OF APOLLO AND APHRODITE IN ANCIENT

GREECE. XENOPHON, THE GREEK HISTORIAN WHO WAS A PUPIL AND FRIEND OF

SOCRATES, RECORDS THAT FISH WERE REGARDED AS GODS.

IN PERU SARDINES ARE SAID TO HAVE BEEN WORSHIPPED IN ONE REGION, THE FISH

KNOWN AS SKATE IN ANOTHER REGION, AND THE DOGFISH IN ANOTHER.

IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, THE FISH, EVEN TODAY, REPRESENTS CHRIST.

ONE OF THE MOST PROMINENT ROLES OF THE FISH, IN ALL MYTHOLOGIES, IS THAT OF

RESTORER OF LIFE AND SAVIOR OF MANKIND. THE BUDDHISTS CALL THEIR FOUNDER

DAG-PO OR ”GREAT FISH”; HEBREWS DESIGNATE THE SAME NAME FOR THE COMING

MESSIAH IN THE TALMUD.

IN INDIA, THE FISH SAVIOR, MATSYA, AN INCARNATION OF VISHNU, LED MANU TO SAFETY

IN THE GREAT FLOOD, THUS SAVING MANKIND AS WELL.

Avirbhava’s museum of gods represents to you that man has always been humiliated. His dignity in many ways has been destroyed. It was a well-organized conspiracy against humanity. To teach people to worship animals is simply so irrational. But yet, almost all the animals around the world have been worshipped as gods and nobody seems to have objected. People have been put in such great psychological slavery that they have forgotten even to question, to doubt. They have simply accepted whatever conditioning has been given to them in their childhood.

Unless you are free from all such stupid conditionings, you won’t be able to recognize the God within you. If you are searching for gods in fishes, in horses, in pigs, how are you going to search for the god within yourself? And that is the only place where you can find the ultimate consciousness. These poor animals are still growing towards that consciousness. They contain the same consciousness, but it is far more deeply asleep.

Making man – who is the only conscious animal in the universe – worship far more sleepy animals, is a very dangerous strategy. It means making sleepiness virtually far more superior to awareness.

Animals should be loved, should be respected, because somewhere at some time they will also reach to the same consciousness as you. There is a constant evolution going on – but worshipping the animal is dangerous.

Loving the animal is absolutely human. Loving the animal shows that you can see the future of these animals’ evolution. Some day they may come to the same point where we are, and some day they may come to the same height as any buddha. Regarding their future, you can be loving and respectful towards them.

But the strange phenomenon of worshipping animals means you are lower than the animals. And the thing becomes even more weird. You worship the animals – and you kill them for your food. On the one hand they are gods, and on the other hand game.

When a man kills a lion, they call it a game. And when a lion kills a man, they call it a disaster. Why do you change the word? In a game both the parties should be respected equally. For thousand of years man has been hunting without even bothering that he is destroying life. We are part of that same life. It is almost like destroying one’s own hand or one’s own eyes. Those animals are part of the cosmic whole just as we are. But the blindness of man can do both the things together. He can’t see the so obvious contradiction that the worshipped cannot be hunted. And if you are hunting, you know perfectly well, your worship is just phony.

Do you think even for a moment that you can go hunting for God? Searching for God is okay, but hunting for God? I have never heard that expression before. But that’s what you have been doing. First you make these animals gods and then you go hunting them. And you don’t see the contradiction. Your consciousness is also very superficial.

This museum of gods will provoke great criticism around the world. So many cases are bound to be forced on me, but I love to fight for unpopular causes. Who cares about animals? Who bothers that much to go to the court and to fight for them? I am not only fighting for the animals that they should not be worshipped, but that they should be respected and loved. They are our common brothers and sisters. We share the same existence. We should give them the dignity that belongs to them. And we should not destroy our dignity. But the priests want us not to be dignified. They want us to be as undignified and as great sinners as possible, because that makes them saints, and that makes them mediators between God and you.

The fish in the Hindu mythology is the first reincarnation of God. Why does God go on choosing such reincarnations? – and nobody ever thinks about these incarnations. Each incarnation has committed so many crimes that it is out of the question to worship them. They should simply be listed on the criminal records.

You cannot believe... One Hindu god, Parasuram... His name became Parasuram because parasu is a special kind of sword, very heavy. In a single blow it takes away the head. Parasuram carried this sword continuously. He killed as many people single-handedly as perhaps anybody has killed.

He killed his own mother because of an old suspicious father. The father was suspicious that the mother was having some love affair, and of course, when the father orders...

Obedience has been proclaimed a fundamental virtue by all religions.

The father ordered

Parasuram, ”Go immediately and cut the head of that woman.” And it was only a suspicion, no evidence, no witness. It may have been just an idea in his mind. And my feeling is, it was just his mind because he was getting very old, and his wife was very young compared to him.

Old people who become inadequate start becoming suspicious about everything. But Parasuram did not even ask, ”Let us first investigate the case.” Just because he did not ask the question, but immediately went and cut the mother’s head and brought it to the father’s feet, he is recognized as God’s incarnation – for his great obedience.

That was the beginning of his great journey of violence. He was a brahmin, and the suspicion was that the mother was having an affair with a warrior, a chhatriya. Not knowing who the man was, he decided to destroy all the warriors on the earth. Such a strange violent mind: because he does not know who is the right person to be killed, he kills the whole category, millions of warriors, single-handedly. He was a great warrior, there is no question about it.

And this happened many times, because there was in those days a very strange tradition in India that Indians themselves never look back. Perhaps they were afraid they may come across something ugly; there is so much ugliness.

He killed all the chhatriyas, but he did not kill the women because it was not a question of women.

The issue was that some man was having an affair with his mother. So the women were left as widows all over the country. The tradition was that any woman can go to a seer, a saint, ask him to give her a child and the saint cannot refuse. Great saints and great religions! So all these widows went to saints; in fact they had to stand in queue because there were not so many saints as had been created widows by Parasuram. But they all became pregnant by some saint. Perhaps they may have invented saints just to become pregnant.

Again young boys started growing and again Parasuram went on another round, killing the small boys. He was determined that he would not leave a single warrior in the world. His world was confined fortunately to India only. Sixteen times he killed the warriors. But this country was full of saints – they were really a kind of bull. Just one bull can manage to make many cows pregnant. You don’t have to have many bulls for many cows. They don’t believe in monogamy – one cow, one bull.

One bull is enough for the whole village. Just one saint was also enough. So although Parasuram killed sixteen times, the warriors still continued. He could not delete them from existence.

My problem is that Hindus still go on believing that he is an incarnation of God. If these people are an incarnation of God, then who are the criminals? Either animals or criminals, they have chosen strange people... The fish is the first and the horse is the last. The horse has not come yet. That is the last incarnation of God which will end this age, this civilization. So most probably within twelve years you will see a white horse trotting around killing sinners, saving saints.

I have been going through all the Hindu PURANAS and not a single purana even mentions this: that you are giving too much responsibility to a horse – he will judge.

All these are ways of taking dignity from man. Before you can make a man a Christian or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, you have to take away his dignity.

My effort here is to take away everything that hinders your dignity to grow to its ultimate heights.

I want you to be freed from all these gods they are your slavery, all these religions and all these scriptures, they are your slavery. I want you to live in a silent and peaceful freedom of being, in tune with existence, with joy and blissfulness, with gratitude and ecstasy.

There is no question of worship at all and there is no question of any gods’ incarnation. In the first place the god does not exist himself. How can he have incarnations? It is just so obviously foolish.

Hindus had ten incarnations before Mahavira. Their scriptures before Mahavira mention only ten incarnations, because of the ten fingers – to count more than that was a difficult job. And Hinduism is the most ancient religion. Religion came first; mathematics came centuries later, so ten was the only ultimate number.

But Mahavira, just to make the Hindus feel inferior, dropped the idea of ten. Jainism believes in twenty-four tirthankaras. They are equal to incarnations of God. Twenty-four...? – because there are twenty-four hours in the day. Exactly like that there are twenty-four periods of one age – for one period, one incarnation. And so they arrived at the idea of twenty-four.

Buddha was the founder of his own religion. He was in a difficulty. So he managed this idea of twenty-four previous lives, just not to be inferior in any sense to Mahavira. Hindus immediately changed their number. After Mahavira all Hindu scriptures talk about twenty-four reincarnations.

What happened to the ten incarnations suddenly? God changed his mind? It was a question of comparison. Jainas have twenty-four tirthankaras, buddhas have twenty-four incarnations of Buddha. Hindus looked so poor, with just ten incarnations of God, and so they immediately raised the number. It is just imagination, so you can play with it the way you want. After Buddha and Mahavira all scriptures completely forgot about ten incarnations.

I mention this point to show you that it is all imagination. How did ten become twenty-four? It was just because it looked inferior in the marketplace. Everybody has twenty-four and you have only ten. Such a poor god! And because it is all imagination, it is very easy to make it twenty-four. Now all the three religions have twenty-four. Buddha closed his door. He is the last buddha in the line of twenty-four buddhas. Mahavira closed the door. He is the last tirthankara in the line of twenty-four tirthankaras. Hindus had to keep at least one reincarnation still in the future because of their mythology.

Their mythology is that God has three heads. The first head is Brahma, who creates the world; the second head is Vishnu, who maintains the world; the third head is Shiva who destroys the world.

It is perfect mathematics. And because the world is still there, there has to be one incarnation left to end it. And perhaps in the coming twenty years of this century, whether Kalki comes or not, the world is going down. Between the fish and Kalki lies our whole history.

I would like Avirbhava to bring her fish god....

(FROM THE RIGHT ENTRANCE OF THE PODIUM, TWO VERY ORNATE FISH COME

SWIMMING IN. MEANWHILE, A HUGE GREY DOLPHIN GLIDES DOWN FROM THE PAGODA ROOF OF THE PODIUM AND WRIGGLES IN A VERY FISHY DANCE IN FRONT OF OSHO. FISH, DOLPHIN, MUSIC, LAUGHTER... ALL DIVE, SOAR AND LEAP IN ONE EXPLOSION OF PURE

JOY.)

An introductory note for the sutras:

HYAKUJO WAS KNOWN FOR HIS SIMPLE WORDS, BUT HE HAD A THOROUGH KNOWLEDGE

OF BUDDHISM. HE WAS CLEVER AND GENTLE AT THE SAME TIME; THERE WAS NOTHING

OSTENTATIOUS ABOUT HIM.

MANY DISCIPLES BEGAN TO GATHER AROUND HIM, AND ENDLESS DISCUSSIONS TOOK

PLACE WITH QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS FOLLOWING ONE UPON ANOTHER. AMONG THE

MOST FAMOUS OF HIS DISCIPLES WERE ISAN AND OBAKU.

The sutra:

ONE DAY WHEN HYAKUJO WAS TO GIVE HIS DAILY DISCOURSES TO HIS DISCIPLES, HE

BEGAN BY SAYING, ”I AM NO ZEN ADEPT. I HAVE NOT A SINGLE THING TO OFFER ANYONE, SO I MUST NOT KEEP YOU STANDING HERE. GO AND TAKE A REST.”

A very strange statement to the disciples who were waiting for his morning sermon, but it has tremendous meaning. First he says, I AM NO ZEN ADEPT... I am no Zen master – meaning that I am no more, so how I can be a Zen master. I am lost into the oceanic consciousness, so how can I claim to be still separate from existence?

I am not a Zen adept simply means I have dissolved myself into the existence. I have not kept my identity and my separation. I am no more, only existence is. Secondly: I HAVE NOT A SINGLE

THING TO OFFER ANYONE, SO I MUST NOT KEEP YOU STANDING HERE. This is something every master will concede to. The master has nothing to give to the disciple; on the contrary, he has to take much from the disciple. I cannot give you anything, I can only take away your false notions, shadows, your illusions, your personalities and leave behind only that which is authentically yours, purely existential, not borrowed from society. So it can be said that a master takes away everything, leaving only that which cannot be taken away – but he gives nothing. Anything given will again be a borrowed thing.

Hyakujo, in a simple statement, made a great point: I HAVE NOT A SINGLE THING TO OFFER

ANYONE, SO I MUST NOT KEEP YOU STANDING HERE. GO AND TAKE A REST. But in Hyakujo’s system of working, rest was meditation. In fact, if you are not in complete rest, you are not in meditation. Meditation and rest are equivalent. But it was only Hyakujo who used the word ‘rest’, that whatever has to be found, has to be found in your rest. Just drop all thoughts, all emotions, all sentiments, all identities. Lie down and witness.

This was the meaning in his system of thought of the word ‘rest’. If you have come to rest, you are one with existence; there is nothing to separate you. In a simple statement he has given his whole philosophy.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, A GROUP OF DHARMA MASTERS SOUGHT AN INTERVIEW AND

SAID: ”WE HAVE SOME QUESTIONS TO ASK. ARE YOU PREPARED TO ANSWER THEM, MASTER?”

Dharma masters are teachers of religion. In those old days in China and Japan these dharma masters, these teachers used to go around the country teaching people, because the people did not know language, they could not read; language was a very recent invention. And you will be surprised that in the whole world, in the beginning, language was always pictorial, because a child can only understand pictures. That’s why in children’s books you will find big pictures, colored pictures. And by pictures you can teach them that this is a horse, this is a fish... Through pictures you can bring alphabets.

In China, in Japan, in the whole Far East, language has not yet moved from the pictorial to the alphabetical. The alphabet began everywhere as pictorial, and then finally, it was found that a pictorial language is a very cumbersome – an unnecessary wastage of time and does not give exact meanings. One picture can be used to mean many things, but because it became an art, calligraphy, people became addicted to calligraphy. Calligraphy is beautiful, but alphabetical languages cannot use calligraphy.

So because of calligraphy, the Far East countries remained pictorial. But for anyone who is not born a Chinese or a Japanese, it is very difficult to learn. It takes many years because you have to learn thousands of pictures before you can read even an ordinary newspaper.

One of my friends has sent me a picture from Korea. Just a line, and then another line making a cross.... and two dots underneath the first line, the cross. And he said, this means that in one house two women is a crucifixion – that cross; in one house two women is enough – a war, a constant war. But if you have to remember these kinds of pictures, it is going to take years. The alphabet makes it easier. The more modern alphabets have fewer characters; for example, Sanskrit has fifty-two, English has only twenty-six. Everything non-essential has been taken out, so that the thing becomes easier and simpler, direct and clear-cut, giving only one meaning. Old languages, whether pictorial or alphabetical, have a beauty. That beauty is that each word can be used in many ways, with many meanings. It gives great freedom to the poet.

For example in Sanskrit the word ‘go’ means cow, and it also means the ray of the sun; it has twelve meanings in all. The English word ‘go’ is exactly the Sanskrit word that has entered into English.

Why has it taken the meaning of going in English? In Sanskrit it also had the meaning of going, because the cow goes every morning to the field, then goes back home every evening. And in those days the cow was so important for nourishment, for agriculture, that its coming and going became the meaning of the word ‘go’.

Thirty percent of the words in English are from Sanskrit, but moving from Sanskrit to English, they have become fixed. Now ‘go’ in English exactly means one word, has one meaning. In Sanskrit it still means twelve words, has twelve meanings. The poet has more freedom with the old languages.

Science cannot afford old languages. It needs a very definite meaning, not just a vague idea that can be translated in many ways. This word ‘rest’ is used strangely by Hyakujo to mean meditation, but very rightly. To be completely at rest, you are no more. If you are, then the rest is not complete.

He has given a totally new connotation to the word ‘rest’. Just think of it. If you are absolutely at rest, then where are you? Your being can only be separate from existence if it is restless. So he is saying to his disciples: GO AND TAKE A REST. Don’t wait for me, I cannot give you anything, I don’t have anything to give to you. And don’t think about me as a Zen master. I am no more. I have allowed myself to be dissolved into the ultimate reality.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION A GROUP OF DHARMA MASTERS SOUGHT AN INTERVIEW AND

SAID: ”WE HAVE SOME QUESTIONS TO ASK. ARE YOU PREPARED TO ANSWER THEM, MASTER?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”YES. THE MOON IS REFLECTED IN THAT DEEP POND; CATCH IT IF YOU

LIKE.”

He said, ”Whatever I say will be as far away from truth as is the reflection of the moon from the moon itself. I am ready to answer your questions. But remember, you will have to understand, all my answers are as far away from truth as the reflection of the moon in the deep pond is far away from the real moon. My words are only reflections. Don’t cling to them as if they are the very truth.”

THE GROUP CONTINUED, ”WHAT IS THE BUDDHA REALLY LIKE?”

”IF THAT WHICH IS FACING THE LIMPID POND IS NOT THE BUDDHA, WHAT IS IT?” SAID

HYAKUJO.

Hyakujo said – they were all looking at the limpid pond for the reflection of the moon – ”If those who are looking at the reflection of the moon in the limpid pond, if they are not buddhas, then who can be buddhas? You are witnessing. Just move from the object to the subject – who is looking at the reflection? Or in other words, who is asking the question? If it is not buddha, what is it? This witnessing, this watching, if it is not buddha, then what is it?” said Hyakujo.

THE MONKS WERE PUZZLED... Everybody will be puzzled if you say that you are a buddha. Just try it on any stranger, ”Wait! I think you are a buddha,” and see the response. He will simply freak out, ”Are you mad or something? Are you mad or something?” But you are saying the truth. You are revealing his own reality to him.

When I call you the buddhas, it is not a metaphor. I really mean it – and you have to drop your suspicions about yourself. You cannot accept the idea of being a buddha, because you know that you smoke cigarettes. Now poor Hasya is trying to drop cigarettes. I have informed her not to drop it because there is no need to go into unnecessary trouble. She was even taking medication to try and overcome the withdrawal symptoms.

In my buddhafield just smoking cigarettes cannot disturb your buddha nature. If such a small thing disturbs the buddha nature, it is of no worth. Just think about it... such small things. And these are the things which make you think, ”How can I be a buddha?” Your reasons for not being a buddha are simply mediocre: because you have a wife, or because you have a girlfriend... A buddha with a girlfriend is simply inconceivable.

Sri Lanka’s ambassador to America wrote to me in a letter, ”You should tell your sannyasins to stop calling their discos Zorba The Buddha, because it is very insulting to the Buddhists. And if your sannyasins open such restaurants or discos in Sri Lanka, they will be burned and there will be riots.

So I want to warn you.”

I wrote him a really nice letter. I told him that if Zorba cannot be the buddha, then nobody can be the buddha. Everybody has to begin from the Zorba. Zorba is the beginning. Buddha is the end.

These, my people, who are calling their discos Zorba The Buddha, are saying ”We are starting with Zorba, hoping to end up as buddhas.” And I told him, ”Remember that Buddha is not the monopoly of the buddhists. The word ‘buddha’ simply means the awakened one. It can happen in any religion, to any community, you don’t have the monopoly. And if you want to see buddhas, before going back to Sri Lanka, come to our commune and you will find everywhere buddhas and buddhas... We don’t have any other kind, just one kind, and you will never find such juicy buddhas anywhere – with their girlfriends, smoking cigarettes, going to the disco, having all the fun that existence allows you. Just sitting under a tree with a sad face wondering, ‘What am I doing sitting here? The whole world is enjoying all kinds of things and it is a strange destiny that I am just sitting under the tree all the time.’”

He never answered my letter, and he never again wrote.

A buddha is not something separate from you, it is your intrinsic being. It is your most essential being. Everything else may have gathered all around it. Much junk has gathered around it, but that does not matter. It does not make any difference to the pure gold of your buddha. It may fall into the dust, it may be covered in mud, but it remains twenty-four carat gold. You are covered with a body, covered with a mind, but that does not make any difference.

You are the buddha, but the Buddhist traditional mind will not even accept an umbrella in Buddha’s hand. Even while it is raining, the poor fellow has to sit without an umbrella. Who has ever heard of Buddha having an umbrella? But my approach to the buddha is closer to the approach of Zen, not the Ceylonese or the Burmese Buddhism. The Burmese, the Ceylonese and the Tibetans are more Hinduized. The people who took Buddhism to Burma were traditional orthodox people. And the woman emperor, Ashoka’s daughter, Sangamitra, who took Buddhism to Ceylon was as orthodox as her father. From its very beginnings Tibetan Buddhism has remained attached to Indian Buddhism.

Zen has a speciality; in fact, it should not be called Buddhism. Although it is the very essential message of Buddha, it originated with Mahakashyapa’s laughter. Zen considers Mahakashyapa to be their founder, not Buddha. Buddha is Mahakashyapa’s master, and that is their business.

Zen considers Mahakashyapa to be its originator. And Bodhidharma was a disciple of the line that followed Mahakashyapa. That line became a little alienated from the orthodox line because very individual people, freedom lovers joined Zen – all kinds of eccentrics, geniuses, not mediocre fellows who just go to the temple to read the sutras and say the prayers. That is being done by every other religion. Their scriptures may be different, their prayers may be different, their temples may be different, but essentially they are all doing the same thing.

Zen has broken new ground. Mahakashyapa did the first thing: he laughed. Buddha never laughed in his life. With his laughter starts a new stream of more joy, of more rejoicing, of more dancing, of more human beings. And when Bodhidharma took Zen to China, it took another turn. It became more eccentric, because Bodhidharma was far more eccentric than Mahakashyapa. He was the strangest fellow, but always to the point. He looked strange. You could not understand him. He was not part of the common crowd.

So first, Bodhidharma made it a very special dispensation and then it met with Taoist mystics. This is one of the greatest meetings of two religions where there was no conflict. They simply understood each other’s silence – not even a debate. They looked into each other’s eyes and knew that they were both in the same space.

So Zen is a by-product of the meeting of Buddhism and Taoism. It has a different character from both, it is a crossbreed: something of Tao that is essential, and something of Buddha that is essential has created a new phenomenon, Zen. And when it reached China, it took a few centuries to be clear that it was no longer the orthodox Buddhism and no longer the orthodox Taoism, it was something new. Out of the meeting of those two came a strange flower, and this flower has been carried to Japan, where it blossomed to its ultimate peak.

THE MONKS WERE PUZZLED BY THIS REPLY, AND AFTER A SHORT WHILE INQUIRED

AGAIN: ”MASTER, WHAT DHARMA DO YOU EXPOUND IN ORDER TO LIBERATE OTHERS?”

Surely adequate questions but not in the context of Zen.

HYAKUJO RESPONDED, ”THIS POOR MONK HAS NO DHARMA BY WHICH TO LIBERATE

OTHERS.” You should have to understand the beauty of these words. THIS POOR MONK... does not mean simply that he has no possessions. He is saying, ”I am so poor, that even I am not. My poverty is not ordinary poverty. I have lost myself in the cosmos. I am no more.”

THIS POOR MONK... how can he have any dharma, any teaching by which to liberate others? It is difficult on the surface to understand Zen. But just a more deeper insight into it, and it blossoms into beautiful flowers. The ”poor monk” means one who has become part of the universe. He has become so much part of the universe that he himself is the dharma. He cannot have dharma. He cannot have dharma as an object. His very soul radiates the truth, he cannot have it. Because he is no more, only truth radiates in utter silence, in utter nothingness. And the idea of liberating others is absolutely stupid. You cannot liberate anyone. You can liberate only yourself.

THEY EXCLAIMED, ”ALL ZEN MASTERS ARE OF THE SAME STUFF!” Disappointed they could not understand what this fellow was talking about. They said all Zen masters are of the same stuff; they are all strange fellows. You ask something and they will answer something so far-fetched, that you could have never imagined before. AT THIS, HYAKUJO ASKED THEM, ”WHAT DHARMAS DO

you VIRTUOUS ONES EXPOUND FOR LIBERATING OTHERS?”

THE MONKS REPLIED, ”OH, WE EXPOUND THE DIAMOND SUTRA.” This is one of the most beautiful sutras of Buddha. HYAKUJO ASKED, ”HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU EXPOUNDED IT?”

It is a very big voluminous scripture. It takes years to finish one reading. Read the sutra, explain it, explain the commentaries made upon it and sometimes commentaries upon commentaries. The Diamond Sutra has in itself a whole library. It itself is a very long scripture. Then there are commentaries, but the commentaries are also so difficult that more commentaries are needed.

Sometimes you will find a fifth or sixth commentary, and if you are really teaching, you have to take account of all the commentaries and make your point. Perhaps that may be a new commentary.

THEY ANSWERED, ”MORE THAN TWENTY TIMES.”

HYAKUJO CONTINUED, ”BY WHOM WAS IT SPOKEN?” TO THIS THE MONKS ANSWERED

INDIGNANTLY – obviously angry because they know that Hyakujo at least must know, that The Diamond Sutra was spoken by Gautam Buddha.

TO THIS THE MONKS ANSWERED

INDIGNANTLY: ”MASTER, YOU MUST BE JOKING! OF COURSE YOU KNOW THAT IT WAS

SPOKEN BY THE BUDDHA.” HYAKUJO SAID: ”WELL, THAT SUTRA STATES...” In The Diamond Sutra itself there are statements which will be very difficult for teachers to understand or make others understand.

HYAKUJO SAID: ”WELL, THAT SUTRA STATES: ‘IF SOMEONE SAYS THE TATHAGATA EXPOUNDS THE DHARMA, HE THEREBY SLANDERS THE BUDDHA!” Tathagata is another name for Buddha, very significant, very meaningful. It comes from the root tathata, suchness, thusness, thisness – always this moment, from everywhere pointing suchness, thisness. Because Buddha devoted his whole life to the present moment, people started calling him Tathagata, the man who teaches tathata.

IF SOMEONE SAYS THAT THE BUDDHA EXPOUNDS THE DHARMA, HE THEREBY SLANDERS

THE BUDDHA – a very strange statement, but very beautiful and very meaningful. He is saying, that there is no way to expound the truth. You can only make statements pointing to the truth but those statements don’t contain the truth. Just like the finger pointing to the moon, the finger does not contain the moon.

So Buddha says that if anybody says that Buddha expounds the dharma, he thereby slanders the Buddha and you, those dharma masters were doing the same thing – teaching, expounding. And even they are saying that Buddha has expounded the truth of The Diamond Sutra. Hyakujo says that such a man will never understand what I mean’.

It is something like...Lao Tzu wrote a small treatise under compulsion. His first statement makes it clear. He says ”Truth cannot be said. And that which can be said, can never be true. Now whatever I say, remember my first statement.” You cannot say the truth. You can only make certain indications, hints, at the most.

HYAKUJO CONTINUED, ”NOW, IF YOU SAY THAT IT WAS NOT EXPOUNDED BY THE BUDDHA, YOU WILL THEREBY BELITTLE THAT SUTRA. WILL YOU VIRTUOUS ONES PLEASE LET ME

SEE WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY TO THAT?”

AS THEY MADE NO REPLY, THE MASTER PAUSED AWHILE BEFORE ASKING HIS NEXT

QUESTION, WHICH WAS: ”THE DIAMOND SUTRA SAYS: ‘HE WHO SEEKS ME THROUGH

OUTWARD APPEARANCE, OR SEEKS ME IN SOUND, TREADS THE HETERODOX PATH AND

CANNOT PERCEIVE THE TATHAGATA.’

”Heterodox” means the path of the people who do not understand Buddha, who go against Buddha.

Anybody who says and tries to find, in the diamond Sutra, the truth, is just like the Heterodox, the opponents–and there were many opponents. India has seen a very strange time. Just in that small state of Bihar, from Maitreya has come. There were eight teachers in the time of Buddha who all claimed enlightenment, and they all differed on every point. And I have been reading all those people, and my understanding is they were all enlightened. Strange time: in a small state, eight enlightened people continuously moving around and around in the state, teaching conflicting views.

But they were all very beautiful people.

Six of them have completely been forgotten. Only Buddha and Mahavir have remained in the memories of man. The other six were more eccentric, more intelligent. And they have been forgotten for the simple reason they never made anybody a follower, who was going to carry their teachings, who was going to preserve their scriptures.

So only we know their names in the teachings of Buddha where he criticizes them, or in the words of Mahavira where he criticizes them, so we know that these six people were in existence. And they were important enough that Buddha has to criticize them, but we don’t know exactly what was their teaching. Even in the criticism of Buddha he has first to expound their teaching and then criticize it. That small piece that he takes to criticize seems to be so significant that we don’t know in what context it was said, because Buddha is not talking about the context, so his criticism looks right.

But I have been trying to find...there is no visible signs of any scriptures left of these people: Ajit Kays Kumberley, Sanjay Belattiputta. But I have been, in my own imagination, creating the whole context in which those sentences will fit, which are condemned by Buddha. But if you put it in that context, Buddha’s criticism does not make any sense. Those people were in their own right as illumined, as awakened, as Gautam Buddha himself. But it does not mean that all awakened people should agree with each other. If they agree, good! But they are free not to agree! Existence is multi-dimensional, and every teacher can take a certain dimension. And you may not take that dimension at all in account. Then your opinions will be absolutely opposite.

But because I am nobody’s follower, and I don’t have any prejudice against or for, I can see that all those eight people were as enlightened as Gautam Buddha although their opinions were different.

For example, Sanjay Belattiputta must be a very joyous person and a man of a great sense of humor.

Hindus believe in one hell, I told you. Jainas believe in three hells, I have told you. Buddhists believe in seventy-seven hells, I told you. Sanjay Belattiputta heard it and he laughed. He said, ”Seventy-seven won’t do because I know there are more categories of sinners than seventy-seven. In fact there are seven hundred seventy-seven hells.” And I know he was joking! He was making a joke that all this nonsense of counting hells.

I have remembered, in Agra there used to be a small sect, which is still existent, Radhaswami. And they were in great competition with Taj Mahal. And their idea was to create for their master a greater palace, far more beautiful, than Taj Mahal.

Taj Mahal was made by a great emperor. It took thirty years in making; ten thousand people working every day for thirty years continuously. And he was the emperor of the whole of India, Pakistan, and Burma, and Ceylon and Afghanistan included. He has immense riches to pour on ten thousand people. And these then thousand people were the best sculptors, marble craftsmen, brought from all over the world. But a jealousy: in the same city, everybody goes to see the Taj Mahal. From all over the world people come to see it. Naturally, the Radhaswamis became jealous of the point. And they have made; they could not manage to complete the samadhi of their master, because they are not emperors. But they are still working. Their whole sect, whatsoever they earn, goes still into their samadhi. Only one ground floor is ready.

I don’t think they will every be able to complete it. Their idea is two floors. On the ground floor will be the samadhi. But the ground floor, they have certainly defeated Taj Mahal. If they had money, they would have made a better, unique miracle than Taj Mahal. All the science of greatness in their ground floor. They have made creepers of marble, flowers of marble, whole plants of marble; creepers moving around the pillars. Sixty years they have been working up to now.

Their present master asked me to come to see the samadhi that they are working. I was speaking in Agra. He had come to listen to me. I went with him to see. What I saw there is...they have done their best. Their garden is far more beautiful than Taj Mahal. Their first floor is a miracle in marble.

On the first floor they have a map of the whole existence; not only of the world: all the hells, all the heavens, and this world in between. Their heaven has fourteen sections, you can say fourteen heavens.

So he asked me that, ”What do you think about it?” By the side of the map there are written names of people. In the fifth heaven–as you go higher, you are a higher personality. In the fifth, there is Mohammed, Moses. In the sixth, there is Jesus. In the seventh, there is Kabir, Dadu, Nanak. That way they has put name: on the ninth, Mahavir; on the tenth, Buddha. On the fourteenth, only one man has reached up to now, their founder!

He asked me, ”What do you think about it?”

”I think it is absolutely right!”

He said, ”People object. A Mohammedan cannot believe that Mohammed is just in the fifth. A Jaina cannot believe that Mahavira is below Buddha. You are the first person who is saying, ’You are absolutely in agreement’.”

I said, ”I have to be in agreement because I have reached to the fifteenth! And I know your master.

He is in the fourteenth! And he tries hard, but I go on pushing him! As long as I am, he cannot enter into the fifteenth!”

He said, ”This is a new idea!”

I said, ”Not a new idea! It is a reality! I go on hitting him because he is continuously trying to move into the fifteenth. And I don’t want to share my place with anybody! Because there is no sixteenth!

Otherwise I would have moved in the sixteenth. Fifteenth is absolutely secure. And now your master has become very tired. So he rarely tries because whenever he tries, then for a few days he remains sick–I hit him so hard.”

He said, ”You should not say such things, in our temple!”

I said, ”What can I do? I had to say the truth. If you can write these stupid names, according to your desire, what grounds you have, and what measurements, that Buddha is ahead than Mahavira? Or Moses and Mohammed are the lowest? What grounds you have that Jesus is higher than Moses?

And Kabir is higher than Jesus? If you can make an imaginary map, I have every right to add something more to it. It is incomplete. Make the fifteenth floor, and reserve it for me.”

He said, ”I was wrong to bring you here.”

I said, ”That’s true! It is not only true about you.”

Many people feel that it is wrong that they invited me. They were hoping that I will praise whatever idiotic ideas they have.

I know Sanjay Belattiputta must have joked about the hells but nothing else has remained. Sanjay Belattiputta was against heaven-followers, so he never created any organized religion. He remained a single, alone, teacher moving around, provoking all the philosophies that were prevalent; criticizing Buddha; criticizing Mahavira. But he never allowed anybody to be a follower.

That was his standpoint: that everybody has to liberate himself; all those who claim to liberate others are lying. This much piece I have found in the criticisms of Buddha and Mahavira: that all those who are trying to liberate others are lying. Nobody can liberate anybody.

Zen certainly believes that everybody is capable of liberation, but only he can do it, it cannot be done by anybody else.

”TELL ME, VIRTUOUS ONES,” SAID HYAKUJO, ”WHO OR WHAT IS THE TATHAGATA?”

ONE MONK REPLIED, ”SIR, AT THIS POINT I FIND MYSELF UTTERLY DELUDED.” And here, Hyakujo makes really a great penetration: ”HAVING NEVER BEEN ILLUMINED, HOW CAN YOU

SAY THAT YOU ARE NOW DELUDED?” It is a comparison. Having never been a buddha, how can you say that you are not a buddha?

That is my approach also. When I say that you are a buddha, you cannot deny it. You don’t know who you are. At least I know who you are. I am simply introducing you to yourself. In spite of everything, you are the buddha! You cannot get out from your buddhahood. It is your very nature.

THEN THE MONK ASKED, ”WILL THE VENERABLE ZEN MASTER EXPOUND THE DHARMA TO

US?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”THOUGH YOU HAVE EXPOUNDED THE DIAMOND SUTRA OVER

TWENTY TIMES, YOU STILL DO NOT KNOW THE TATHAGATA!”

Twenty times you have expounded The Diamond Sutra, the greatest sayings of Gautam Buddha, and you don’t know who Tathagata is! You have not yet understood the meaning of tathata which is the very foundation of The Diamond Sutra and all Buddhist scripture.

This is the situation of teachers – they are parrots. They don’t understand, but they can repeat exactly whatever they read in the scriptures without understanding the essential meaning. The essential meaning has to be found within yourself, not in the scriptures.

A haiku by Basho:

MOONLIT PLUM TREE –

WAIT,

SPRING WILL COME.

In a very indirect way, in a very delicate way, Basho says, ”Moonlit plum tree...” Don’t be in a hurry,

”Wait, spring will come.” It is metaphoric. It is about you, not about the plum tree. Just wait, everybody has his own spring. If you rightly wait, the spring can come right now. It depends on the depth of your waiting.

Another haiku by Basho:

DYING CRICKET –

HOW FULL OF

LIFE, HIS SONG.

The cricket is dying, but is still singing....

DYING CRICKET –

HOW FULL OF

LIFE, HIS SONG.

This should be the situation of every alert and aware person. Even dying full of life, full of song –

and then there is no death.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

BELOVED OSHO,

LAST NIGHT, AFTER HEARING YOU SPEAK SO LUCIDLY, SO BEAUTIFULLY ON HYAKUJO’S

SOMEWHAT TORTUROUS PASSAGE, I FELT THAT YOU ARE NOT ONLY WORKING ON YOUR

DISCIPLES, YOU ARE TRANSFORMING THE MASTERS OF THE PAST TOO.

I RECOGNIZE THAT MY BUSINESS HERE IS TO FIND OUT WHO I AM, BUT IN MOMENTS LIKE

LAST NIGHT, THE QUESTION OVERWHELMS ME: WHO IS THIS BEING WE KNOW AS OSHO?

I HAVE ASKED THIS QUESTION BEFORE. YOU HAVE ANSWERED, BUT THE QUESTION STILL

REMAINS.

Maneesha, the question will remain until you know yourself. No answer is going to satisfy you, but the moment you know yourself, you will know me too. Knowing oneself is knowing all the buddhas

– not only me, all the buddhas of the past, of the present, of the future. And knowing yourself, you also know the sleeping buddhas. Then your clarity, your perception will be total.

There are only two categories in the world: awakened buddhas and asleep buddhas.

The

awakened buddhas can understand the two categories, the two layers, the sleeping buddhas cannot understand the second one. They are of course asleep, so they cannot understand the awakened.

The awakened can understand them, and the awakened can understand other awakened ones.

You are right. When I am speaking on any master, I don’t care a bit whether that master really meant what I am saying. If he did not mean this, he should have meant it. My clarity shows me absolutely what should be the case. So it does not matter on whom I am speaking, I am speaking, in fact, only on myself. There is no other way. Hyakujo can disagree, but it will be very difficult for him to disagree with me.

A thousand years have passed. I have gathered more experience in these one thousand years.

Hyakujo will have to listen to me. Enlightenment is also a growing process. It is not an event, but a process. Every enlightened person reaches higher into the realms of being. It is not only a time gap, it is also a gap of clarity.

I can see much more clearly, much more definitely with all the possible implications which were not available to Hyakujo, because Hyakujo knew nothing about Sigmund Freud, knew nothing about Albert Einstein, knew nothing about Carl Gustav Jung... These people have created such new original approaches to man’s being, although they are all stuck at the mind.

But this century we understand mind more than any century before. And if you are a meditator, then you can understand the no-mind also more, because your understanding of the mind and the unconscious layers of the mind is far more accurate and more scientific. The difference is simply between a bullock cart and a Rolls Royce. They belong to the same lineage. A Rolls Royce is the bullock cart refined and refined and refined... then it becomes a Rolls Royce. Hyakujo belongs to the age of bullock carts – a man of tremendous understanding, but don’t hope that he can fix a Rolls Royce. He can only fix a bullock cart perfectly well.

So when I am speaking on these people, I cannot remain just confined to their meaning. I have to raise the meaning of their statements to the heights of my consciousness. As far as I am concerned I have never spoken on anybody else other than myself. These are just excuses – Hyakujo or Ma Tzu... These are just excuses so that I can say to you things about humanity which have been forgotten completely. But when I say something, I make it as grand and as great as possible.

Now it is Anando time.

Before I ask Nivedano, I have to change the dedication of this series again, and I hope I will not have to change it again. Now the dedication will be: Dedicated to Anando who has gone astray and has come back home.

Now, Anando,

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

(Drumbeat)

Be silent, close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen. Now look inwards with tremendous urgency as if this is the last moment of your life. Gather all your consciousness. It becomes like an arrow reaching to the very center of your being.

This center is the only unmoving part in the universe. Everything is changing around it. Only this center remains unchanging. Its only quality is single: that is witnessing. It has no other qualities. It is just a mirror.

To make it more clear...

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax, watch the body as separate, the mind as separate. You are just a witness. Dive deep in your witnessing. The buddha is another name of witnessing.

The evening was beautiful in itself, but you have given it all your splendor of silence. You have made it more beautiful by your witnessing. It is going to prove a milestone in your life.

Just gather all the flowers and the fragrance from this silent space, so that you can bring it from the center to the circumference, so that you can live as a buddha in the ordinary life without any hesitation, without any doubt, without any suspicion.

All the buddhas are pointing to only one truth: that every being intrinsically is a buddha. In silent witnessing you come across yourself. Don’t lose the thread.

When you come back, bring the buddha with you. This is what Buddha calls suchness. This is why he is called tathagat. This moment you have all dissolved into an ocean of witnessing.

All separation is dropped.

You are no more – only existence is.

Rejoice in this transformation,

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, but bring all the fragrance with you. You have to live it twenty-four hours.

Sit silently for a few moments, without any doubt you are the buddha – a living buddha. It is your intrinsic nature.

Today everything has gone upside down, but it is a good experience. Every day you used to laugh before being a buddha. Today you have to laugh after being a buddha.

Anando, this is your time....

Hamish MacTavish goes out fishing in his old row boat.

He sits, gently rocking on the waves all day, but doesn’t catch a thing. He is just about to pack up and row back to the shore, when he feels a little nibble on his line. He hauls in the line, but all he has caught is a tiny little silver cod – not even enough for a mouthful.

Not wanting to go home empty-handed, Hamish is about to throw the fish into his bag, when it opens its tiny mouth and says, ”Stop! I am Dagon, the God of the Cod. And if you save my life, I will grant you three wishes.”

Hamish is amazed and can’t believe his luck. He is about to give his first wish when Dagon says,

”Stop! Remember, I am a very compassionate god, and whatever you wish for, your worst enemy will get double.”

”Okay,” says Hamish. ”My first wish is for one million dollars.”

”Granted,” replies the God of the cod. ”But Paddy Murphy gets two million.”

”Okay,” says Hamish. ”My second wish is for a hundred beautiful women to look after me.”

”Granted,” says Dagon. ”But Paddy gets two hundred.”

”Okay,” says Hamish. ”And for my third wish, I would like you to painlessly remove one of my balls!”

Fading American president, Ronald Reagan, and his pal, Pope the Polack, are sunbathing on the beach in the south of France. Suddenly, a beautiful looking girl strolls by and winks at the Polack pope.

Nervously, the Polack turns to Ronald for advice.

”What should I do?” asks the pope.

”Quick,” says Ronnie, his eyes twitching, ”wink back!”

So Pope the Polack winks back.

Then the girl winks again, and smiles a big grin at the Polack.

”Jesus Christ!” exclaims the pope, sitting straight up. ”Now what do I do?”

”Quick, you idiot,” cries the ancient president, ”wink and smile back at her!”

So Pope the Polack winks and smiles.

At this, the girl slowly removes her bikini top, and then seductively takes off her panties, dropping them in the sand.

”Wow!” slobbers the pope. ”What in God’s name do I do now?”

Ronald is shaking with excitement and he says, ”Hey, man, just show her your nuts!”

”What?” cries the Polack pope, frantically searching his pocket. ”I’ve eaten all my nuts!”

Ed, the Oregonian rancher, drives into Fossil to buy a new tractor, and wants to get a present for Mabel, his wife.

Very nervous, he goes along to the lingerie shop and walks up to the pretty salesgirl.

”Can I help you, sir?” asks the girl.

Ed points to a bra on a dummy, blushes, and stammers, ”I wanna buy one of those things.”

”Certainly, sir,” replies the girl. ”What size?”

”Size?” gasps Ed. ”Ah! My God! I don’t know!”

”Well,” says the girl, helpfully, ”are they like coconuts?”

”Oh no!” replies Ed.

”Well then, are they like grapefruits?” she asks.

”No, not at all,” replies Ed.

”Oranges then,” suggests the girl.

”No,” replies Ed.

”Lemons?” she asks.

”Lemons?” repeats Ed. ”Ah, no!”

”Well then, how about eggs,” suggests the girl.

”Eggs... yes, eggs!” says Ed, confidently – ”fried eggs!”

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate?

Yes, Osho!

CHAPTER 5

Don’t be idiot buddhas

30 September 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

ONCE, HYAKUJO WAS OUT IN THE FIELDS WORKING ALONGSIDE HIS DISCIPLES. JUST

AS A CERTAIN MONK LIFTED UP HIS HOE, THE SOUND OF THE DINNER DRUM COULD BE

HEARD.

WITH THIS, THE MONK LAUGHED LOUDLY, DROPPED HIS HOE AND WENT TO THE TEMPLE.

”WONDERFUL!” EXCLAIMED HYAKUJO. ”THIS IS THE GATE TO THE ENTERING OF THE

BODHISATTVA KANNON.”

HYAKUJO FOLLOWED AFTER THE MONK, AND ARRIVING AT THE TEMPLE, ASKED THE

MONK, ”WHAT TRUTH DID YOU PERCEIVE WHEN YOU HEARD THE DINNER DRUM?”

THE MONK SAID, ”JUST NOW I WAS TERRIBLY HUNGRY, AND WHEN I HEARD THE SOUND

OF THE DRUM, I WENT BACK AND HAD MY MEAL.”

ON HEARING THIS, HYAKUJO HIMSELF LAUGHED.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, ISAN, HEARING THE WOODEN GONG SOUNDING, RUBBED HIS

HANDS AND GAVE A GREAT LAUGH.

WHEN HYAKUJO SAW AND HEARD THIS, HE ASKED ISAN THE SAME QUESTION AS HE HAD

ASKED THE OTHER MONK IN A SIMILAR SITUATION, AND RECEIVED A SIMILAR RESPONSE.

AT ANOTHER TIME, A MASTER OF THE VINAYA SECT NAMED FA MING REMARKED, ”YOU

ZEN MASTERS DO A LOT OF TUMBLING ABOUT IN THE EMPTINESS OF THE VOID.”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”ON THE CONTRARY, VENERABLE SIR, IT IS YOU WHO TUMBLE A LOT

IN THE EMPTINESS OF THE VOID.”

THE VINAYA MASTER ASKED, ”HOW CAN THAT BE?”

”THE SCRIPTURES,” CONTINUED HYAKUJO, ”ARE JUST WORDS – MERE INK AND PAPER –

AND EVERYTHING OF THAT SORT IS JUST AN EMPTY DEVICE. ALL THOSE WORDS AND

PHRASES ARE BASED ON SOMETHING PEOPLE ONCE HEARD – THEY ARE NOTHING BUT

EMPTINESS. YOU, VENERABLE SIR, CLING TO THE MERE LETTER OF THE DOCTRINE, SO

OF COURSE YOU TUMBLE ABOUT IN THE VOID.”

”AND DO YOU ZEN MASTERS NOT TUMBLE IN THE VOID?” ASKED THE VINAYA MASTER.

HYAKUJO SAID, ”WE DO NOT.”

THE VINAYA MASTER RESPONDED ”HOW NOT?”

AT THIS, HYAKUJO SAID, ”ALL THOSE WRITINGS ARE THE PRODUCTS OF WISDOM, AND

WHERE WISDOM’S MIGHTY FUNCTION OPERATES, HOW CAN THERE BE TUMBLING ABOUT

IN THE VOID?”

Maneesha, before I introduce Hyakujo’s sutras, and their meaning to me, I have to make you all understand that you must act intelligently.

Just the other day, because I told Hasya not to unnecessarily struggle with dropping cigarettes –

her whole life she has been smoking – many others who had already dropped, they immediately jumped! And many who had never smoked, they started smoking, perhaps thinking that this is a device towards buddhahood.

You are all buddhas, but don’t be idiot buddhas.

Today the whole place is full of tobacco smell. I don’t want this place to be filled with tobacco smell.

It has been so clean, and if you, many of you start smoking, you will bring the smell here. So those who have never smoked, simply stop. Those who have stopped and already were out of the withdrawal symptoms, should not start again.

It was specially meant for Hasya and Chitten, who have been going through withdrawal symptoms.

When I entered yesterday and looked at Chitten, he was looking so sad, so dead. I wondered what was the matter, because I was not aware that he was also following Hasya. And when I said that Hasya can smoke, and there is no need to be worried... What does it matter if you live two years longer, or two years lesser? You will never know the difference. Nobody will know the difference, that Hasya lived two years less.

So except Chitten and Hasya, everybody has to come back. Use your own intelligence.

When I told Hasya to smoke, Chitten had a great smile on his face. I wondered what was happening to him, because Hasya’s withdrawal symptoms cannot affect Chitten. Later on I came to know that he was on the same trip. Just hearing that he is free to smoke was enough to bring a great smile to him – he has not smoked yet, but all the withdrawal symptoms disappeared!

Don’t be unnecessarily stupid. If necessary, it is okay, but unnecessarily stupid, that is a little too much!

And remember, I should never smell tobacco in Buddha Hall. Even Hasya and Chitten, they can smoke wherever they want, but before coming to Buddha Hall they will change their clothes, take a shower and wash their mouths.

The cigarette is not a device for buddhahood. It is simply a kindness, not to unnecessarily harass you, but it is not for others to follow. They are already good, there is no need for them to start smoking. It is poison, it is destructive. It cannot destroy your buddhahood, but it shows your unintelligent habits. But if they have been formed a long time ago – for years – it is going to take too much time to throw them away. I will allow you to become a buddha smoking, but this is not the rule, this is only the exception.

Still you will look a little foolish, when you become a buddha with your cigarettes. You yourself will think, ”What am I doing? Being a buddha...”

One man used to come to me nearabout thirty years ago. He wanted somehow to drop his smoking habit.

I said, ”It is not difficult, it is simply a question of determination, a little will. What the cigarette is giving to you – a certain poison, nicotine – that keeps you feeling a certain well-being for a few minutes, meditation can do for twenty-four hours without any nicotine.”

He started meditating, he dropped the cigarettes – not with force. They dropped on their own as his meditation became deeper. Then he wanted to be initiated as a sannyasin.

I said, ”Have you thought it over?”

He said, ”I am absolutely ready.”

He took sannyas, and the next day he came saying, ”You were right. I was going to the market with my wife, and people surrounded us. They started asking me questions: ‘With whose wife are you escaping?’ – because a sannyasin is not supposed to have a wife...”

He tried his best to say, ”She is my wife!”

But they said, ”You are a sannyasin.”

The poor fellow was in a difficulty, so he mentioned my name.

Then they said, ”Then it is okay, because with Osho everything is okay. You can go, but it will be better that you get your wife also to become a sannyasin. Then it will be easier, otherwise some other crowd will beat you.”

So he brought his wife.

I said, ”She has no understanding. She has never thought about it, but it has now become necessary.”

So she became a sannyasin.

The third day they were traveling in the train. They had a small child, and people caught hold of them and stopped the train. They called the police saying, ”These sannyasins are trying to escape with somebody’s child.”

They tried hard saying, ”He is our child – ask him!”

They said, ”You cannot deceive us this easily, you must have hypnotized him. That poor boy!”

So they were taken to the police station. The police officer had heard me, had read me. So he said,

”Don’t be worried, I can understand. But the best way will be to let your son also be a sannyasin.

Otherwise, anywhere you go you will be in trouble.”

So on the third day the child was introduced into sannyas. I said, ”How many people are you around?

Bring them all together – why harass me every day?”

He said, ”I am not harassing, I am being harassed. You were right that I should think twice, but I did not think of all these problems, that people would be so angry.”

So the child also became a sannyasin.

They still come here. They live in Bombay, and some day you may see all the three.

Before you start smoking a cigarette, remember: it is going to create unhealthiness in you, in your lungs, and a shorter life. And most importantly, it is taking away your drive, your urgency towards meditation. You relax with your cigarette, then what is the need of the rest that Hyakujo talks about.

The nicotine gives a little restfulness. There is no need for any meditation – just more and more cigarettes.

I am not a man who is dogmatic in any way, but I will not put you in any discomfort. If you become sad and dull, and you start losing the joy of life, then it is okay, continue with the cigarettes. But remember, the responsibility is now greater on you to get into meditation. Only if in meditation you can get a deeper rest than nicotine can give you, will dropping cigarettes be easy.

But two fools are in trouble. Why are other idiots, who are almost out of the trouble, immediately jumping into it? Before withdrawal symptoms, you withdraw from the cigarettes. So anybody who has started, stop immediately. And anybody who has already stopped before, and has overcome the withdrawal symptoms, should not start again.

Always interpret whatever I say as my compassion and my love.

I don’t want you to be in

unnecessarily uncomfortable states. So if I make somebody an exception, it does not mean I am making a rule for everybody.

At least in Buddha Hall air, no smoke smell should be here. This you should take as a warning. If I smell tomorrow again the smell, I will immediately go back.

Now the introductory note about Hyakujo:

AS MENTIONED BEFORE, HYAKUJO WAS THE ORIGINATOR OF THE ZEN MONASTERY. THE

DUTIES OF THE ABBOT AND OTHER OFFICERS WERE CAREFULLY DEFINED, AND THE

LIVES OF THE MONKS REGULATED IN DETAIL.

IN ADDITION, HYAKUJO ENCOURAGED HIS MONKS TO WORK IN THE FIELDS DURING

THE DAY. THIS WAS QUITE A REVOLUTIONARY MOVE, AS BEFORE HYAKUJO’S TIME, MONKS WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO ENGAGE IN PRODUCTIVE WORK, BUT WERE ENTIRELY

DEPENDENT ON GIFTS FROM PEOPLE BY WHICH TO LIVE.

Certainly it was a great revolutionary move, to make sannyasins work in the fields, in the orchards, because for centuries they had not done anything. Society had taken the responsibility to take care of them, but there was a limit.

This situation happened in the time of Buddha, when India was one of the richest countries in the world. It was called The Golden Bird. It was not difficult for India, to provide all that was needed for a few thousand sannyasins. Joyfully, people did it. But as times changed, and the whole of the East had fallen into poverty, had been exploited by the West, sucked completely...

In Thailand, where one person is a sannyasin in every four persons, the burden has become too much. The Thailand government had to make a law that nobody can take sannyas without a government license. That is to prevent people from taking sannyas.

This seems to be very strange. You cannot even be a sannyasin without government permission.

Even sannyas is not free anymore, but has become mandatory because a poor country and so many sannyasins... And now it is no longer a joy to contribute to their welfare, to their monasteries. They have become almost a heavy burden on the poor societies.

The same is the situation in India, but the Indian government has not taken any step, just because of the fear that if Hindu sannyasins have to take a license from the government, the whole of the Hindu society will go against the present-day rulers. In a vote they will be thrown out.

Half of India’s population is undernourished. One fourth of India’s population can manage only one meal a day, and if you see that meal, you will be simply shocked – what a meal! And all the predictions of scientific sources are that by the time of the year two thousand, India will have the biggest starvation problem that has ever happened in history. Fifty million people are predicted to die in that year. That means for every two persons, one person will die. All around there will be corpses.

In this situation of poverty you cannot afford sannyasins who are depending on social charity.

Hyakujo’s introduction of work and productivity was certainly a great revolutionary step. Society must have opposed him, and the monks must have opposed it because they were enjoying complete free time and all kinds of luxuries.

But Hyakujo was a very strong man. In his monastery he managed it that everybody worked. It did not mean that he was taking you away from meditation. The work was not very strict, but very flexible, depending on your intelligence – whatever you could contribute to the monastery. If you could work in the field, or chopping wood, or carrying water – whatever you could do. But the necessary thing was that everything should be done with a meditative mind.

Work should be a meditation. Just as you sit for meditation, Buddha introduced walking also as meditation. Then why should working not also be associated with meditation. There is no reason.

Only when work and all kinds of movements of your body, are followed by a meditative silence, can you really be a buddha. And certainly a buddha should not be dependent on charity.

We cannot understand how great the step was. For centuries monks have enjoyed a complete freedom from any activity, and all their welfare was taken care of by the society.

So Hyakujo’s introduction of work was a great step, and had a great clarity about the future as society was becoming more and more poor. Rather than governments making rules – it becomes so ugly, that you have to take a license from the government to become a sannyasin... Sannyas has always been an act of freedom and the government has nothing to do with it, but an intelligent move on the part of sannyasins is needed. Hyakujo has to be heard all over the world.

NOT ONLY THAT, HYAKUJO WAS CRITICIZED BY ALL CONSERVATIVE BUDDHISTS AND

MONKS FOR HIS INSISTENCE THAT ALL THAT THE CROPS YIELDED THROUGH THE LABOR

OF HIS MONKS SHOULD BE SUBJECT TO THE ASSESSMENT OF TAXES ON AN EQUAL BASIS

WITH THOSE OF LAY PEOPLE.

They were angry at the very idea of sannyasins working. And on top of it, Hyakujo insisted that the same tax system should be applicable to sannyasins’ work and earning as it was for anybody else in the country. Sannyasins should not be given a special place.

Naturally he was tremendously opposed, but he was right. And when you oppose right, sooner or later the right wins over.

Now in China every sannyasin works, in Japan... And the work has become so creative because it is no longer only an economic consideration. It is an aesthetic expression of your meditativeness, of your joy, of your blessings. Paintings, sculpture, all kinds of things became available by the idea that work and meditation are not opposed, but that meditation can continue underneath. That’s what I am saying to you every day: your buddha should continue underneath in every one of your activities.

HYAKUJO’S FAVORITE MOTTO WAS: ”ONE DAY WITHOUT WORKING, ONE DAY WITHOUT

EATING.”

If you don’t work one day, then be prepared, next day is a fasting day. Absolutely right! You are working for your liberation. Why should anybody else be taxed for it? Why should anybody support you? You are working for your enlightenment. You will not be able to share it with anybody.

So it is absolutely necessary in Hyakujo’s monastery, that if you don’t work, you don’t eat. If you want to eat, then work just a little. That helps for your food, for your clothes and small necessities.

You don’t have to become the richest person in the world. You don’t have to accumulate all kinds of unnecessary luxuries, but be comfortable. In a state of uncomfortableness, meditation becomes difficult.

HE SAW THAT WORSHIP AND MEDITATION COULD BE PART OF EVERYDAY WORK AND

SEEMINGLY MUNDANE ACTIVITIES.

IT IS SAID THAT THE GREAT PEARL WAS THE CREATOR OF THE CHINESE TEA CEREMONY.

Hyakujo himself was the creator of the Chinese tea ceremony. To make tea a meditative ceremony is just symbolic. It shows that any mundane activity can become meditative. Digging a hole in the garden, planting new roses in the garden... you can do it with such tremendous love and compassion, you can do it with the hands of the buddha. There is no contradiction.

The tea ceremony is only the beginning. I say unto you: Your every act should be a ceremony.

If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion, life itself will be the religion.

Now the sutra:

ONCE, HYAKUJO WAS OUT IN THE FIELDS WORKING ALONGSIDE HIS DISCIPLES. JUST

AS A CERTAIN MONK LIFTED UP HIS HOE, THE SOUND OF THE DINNER DRUM COULD BE

HEARD.

WITH THIS, THE MONK LAUGHED LOUDLY, DROPPED HIS HOE AND WENT TO THE TEMPLE.

”WONDERFUL!” EXCLAIMED HYAKUJO. ”THIS IS THE GATE TO THE ENTERING OF THE

BODHISATTVA KANNON.” HYAKUJO FOLLOWED AFTER THE MONK, AND ARRIVING AT THE

TEMPLE, ASKED THE MONK, ”WHAT TRUTH DID YOU PERCEIVE WHEN YOU HEARD THE

DINNER DRUM?”

THE MONK SAID, ”JUST NOW I WAS TERRIBLY HUNGRY, AND WHEN I HEARD THE SOUND

OF THE DRUM, I WENT BACK AND HAD MY MEAL.”

ON HEARING THIS, HYAKUJO HIMSELF LAUGHED.

Simple things... the monk was so deeply engaged, so totally engaged in his work, that he had forgotten completely that it was time for lunch. And as the drum was beaten to call all the monks from the fields and the gardens, he laughed, throwing away his hoe.

Hyakujo asked him, ”Why did you laugh?”

A simple and honest answer: ”I laughed at the coincidence. As the drum was beaten, suddenly I felt a great hunger. I laughed at the coincidence.”

ON HEARING THIS, HYAKUJO HIMSELF LAUGHED.

Hyakujo made Zen very light, very earthly, very honest, sincere.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, ISAN, HEARING THE WOODEN GONG SOUNDING, RUBBED HIS

HANDS AND GAVE A GREAT LAUGH.

WHEN HYAKUJO SAW AND HEARD THIS, HE ASKED ISAN THE SAME QUESTION AS HE HAD

ASKED THE OTHER MONK IN A SIMILAR SITUATION, AND RECEIVED A SIMILAR RESPONSE.

If you are silent and honest, the response cannot be different. Both have laughed at the coincidence.

They were both so totally engaged in their work, they completely forgot themselves. And when you forget yourself, how can you remember your hunger? And when they heard the drum or the gong

– a sudden hit and a spontaneous remembering: ”I am hungry and this is the time to go to the dininghall.”

Both laughed. Hyakujo asked both just to see whether the similar situation would have a similar response from two honest, simple, meditative people.

In fact, all buddhas will respond similarly in a situation because of the simple fact that they are in the moment and their action is not through the mind, but instantaneous. They respond, they don’t react. And being empty-hearted, their responses will be just like a mirror – reflecting the situation, whatever is there in front of them.

Because both confronted hungriness, they laughed, ”This is strange that we got lost so much in the work, that there was not even a sign of hunger. And just the gong... as if the gong created the hunger.”

The hunger was there but was waiting, because the consciousness was totally engaged somewhere else. The gong brought the consciousness to the waiting hunger. Hyakujo laughed, seeing the similarity of simple and empty-hearted people.

AT ANOTHER TIME, A MASTER OF THE VINAYA SECT NAMED FA MING REMARKED, ”YOU

ZEN MASTERS DO A LOT OF TUMBLING ABOUT IN THE EMPTINESS OF THE VOID.”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”ON THE CONTRARY, VENERABLE SIR, IT IS YOU WHO TUMBLE A LOT

IN THE EMPTINESS OF THE VOID.”

THE VINAYA MASTER ASKED, ”HOW CAN THAT BE?”

”THE SCRIPTURES,” CONTINUED HYAKUJO, ”ARE JUST WORDS – MERE INK AND PAPER –

AND EVERYTHING OF THAT SORT IS JUST AN EMPTY DEVICE. ALL THOSE WORDS AND

PHRASES ARE BASED ON SOMETHING PEOPLE ONCE HEARD – THEY ARE NOTHING BUT

EMPTINESS. YOU, VENERABLE SIR, CLING TO THE MERE LETTER OF THE DOCTRINE, SO

OF COURSE YOU TUMBLE ABOUT IN THE VOID.”

Ordinarily, the meditator is thought to be in the emptiness, in the ultimate void. But these forming teachers, who were only scholars of the vinaya scriptures of Gautam Buddha...

The master of the vinaya sect must have been very skeptical of Zen. It is his skepticism that said,

”YOU ZEN MASTERS DO A LOT OF TUMBLING ABOUT IN THE EMPTINESS OF THE VOID.”

Scholars always think that meditators are wasting their time just sitting silently doing nothing.

Scholars think they are doing great work creating great systems of thought and philosophy, and these meditators simply sit with their closed eyes. To the scholars, the meditators seem to be just lazy people who have found a good name, meditation, just to hide the laziness.

So his question was not sincere and honest, it was rather an effort to make a laughingstock of Hyakujo. But it was difficult – it is always difficult. A scholar is not even the dust underneath the feet of a meditator. He knows nothing of the heights of consciousness. Hyakujo did well, he did not felt offended.

”ON THE CONTRARY, VENERABLE SIR, IT IS you WHO TUMBLE A LOT IN THE EMPTINESS

OF THE VOID.”

This must have come as a shock to the vinaya master: ”HOW CAN THAT BE?”

”THE SCRIPTURES,” CONTINUED HYAKUJO, ”ARE JUST WORDS – MERE INK AND PAPER –

AND EVERYTHING OF THAT SORT IS JUST AN EMPTY DEVICE. ALL THOSE WORDS AND

PHRASES ARE BASED ON SOMETHING PEOPLE ONCE HEARD – THEY ARE NOTHING BUT

EMPTINESS. YOU, VENERABLE SIR, CLING TO THE MERE LETTER OF THE DOCTRINE, SO

OF COURSE YOU TUMBLE ABOUT IN THE VOID.”

Facing an enlightened man is a rare experience in the sense, that you cannot make a laughingstock of him.

He turned the whole thing on the scholar: ”Rather than saying that we Zen people are tumbling in the emptiness and the void, calling it meditation... the truth is that you scholars are tumbling in the emptiness and void. What are your scriptures? Just paper and ink, mere words spoken by somebody, but those words are always empty. The moment they reach to the paper, to the ink, they don’t have life.

”You are really tumbling into emptiness. We are not tumbling into emptiness, we are becoming emptiness, and that is a totally different thing. We are enjoying the emptiness, we are finding that emptiness is our nature, that out of this emptiness arises everything – our very life source.

”AND DO YOU ZEN MASTERS NOT TUMBLE IN THE VOID?” ASKED THE VINAYA MASTER.

HYAKUJO SAID, ”WE DO NOT.”

THE VINAYA MASTER RESPONDED, ”HOW NOT?”

AT THIS, HYAKUJO SAID, ”ALL THOSE WRITINGS ARE THE PRODUCTS OF WISDOM, AND

WHERE WISDOM’S MIGHTY FUNCTION OPERATES, HOW CAN THERE BE TUMBLING ABOUT

IN THE VOID?”

A Zen meditator also reads the scriptures, but his reading cannot be called empty. He brings those words back again to life through his meditativeness, through his own wisdom. Someone has spoken those words out of wisdom, out of enlightenment – a buddha. Only another buddha can bring them to life again. Only another buddha can give meaning to them again.

Hyakujo says, ”We are not tumbling into emptiness. Even if we are reading the ancient sutras, they are always secondary. We are simply testifying to our meditativeness, looking into the mirrors of the scriptures. For us, scriptures are a kind of reference source. Alone, inside, we don’t know whether we are on the right track or not. Reading about the same track in the scripture, functions in a double way. It makes the scripture alive, and it makes you confident to move along the same path you are doing.”

Basho wrote a small haiku:

YELLOW ROSE PETALS

THUNDER –

A WATERFALL.

Remember always, a haiku is a painting in words. Silently Basho must have been meditating and when he opens his eyes saw ”yellow rose petals, thunder – a waterfall.”

Just the minimum words are used. Haikus are telegrams – not a single unnecessary word. You cannot add into this small haiku another word, nor can you take out a single word. It is exactly in a silent mind that opening the eyes and looking outside: rose petals and a great thunder and a waterfall.

Try to understand haikus as paintings in words from great masters of meditation. That is the only way to understand them. Otherwise they are just empty words, unrelated, without any grammar and no care about the language. They don’t say anything. They simply show something: if you are meditating, and out of meditation you open your eyes, whatever you see becomes so beautiful, so poetic, so musical that Zen masters keep a copybook with them. They simply note down a few words.

Those words actually represent what they have seen. They don’t elaborate, they don’t make a great poem out of them. These are simply notes of meditators about the beauty of existence of which the non-meditators are absolutely unaware.

Question 1

Maneesha’s question:

BELOVED OSHO,

IT SEEMS THAT IF WE ARE EVEN TO BEGIN THE JOURNEY, WE NEED TO FEEL CONNECTED

TO YOU. IF WE ARE TO persevere WE NEED TO love YOU. BUT ONCE WE HAVE SOMETHING

WE CAN DEFINE AS A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU, YOU WILL TELL US TO DROP IT.

YOU POINT OUT THAT YOU ARE SIMPLY A REFLECTION AND A REMINDER OF OUR OWN

INNER EMPTINESS; SO WE BEGIN TO EXPLORE THAT. WE ACTUALLY START ENJOYING, EVEN LOVING THAT SPACE. YOU EXPLAIN THAT THAT TOO HAS TO BE DROPPED.

THEN COMES THE FINAL BOMBSHELL: YOU TELL US THAT IN FACT WE HAVE TO BE

DROPPED.

AND THAT IS THE HARDEST THING.

WHAT CAN ONE DO TO DISAPPEAR? CAN WE ONLY BE AWARE OF THE WAYS IN WHICH WE

PERPETUATE OUR SELVES?

Maneesha, it is not the hardest thing. It is the most relaxed, and the easiest thing in the world. But it is the easiest thing only, for a man who has gone deep in witnessing.

I have told you about a king, Prasenjita. It is a small story of great importance....

Buddha was staying outside the capital of Prasenjita, and Prasenjita was going to see the master, to present something to him. He tried to find what would be a suitable thing. He had one great diamond, of which many kings and emperors were jealous, because there was no comparison to that diamond. It was like pure water. Its quality was absolutely one hundred percent. He thought,

”This will be the best thing to offer to Gautam Buddha’s feet.”

His wife was an older disciple of Buddha. Before she married the king, she was already under the influence and impact of Buddha.

She told her husband, ”You think this beautiful and most valuable diamond will be the right present for Buddha? I don’t think so. To him it is just a stone, a dead stone. It will be more beautiful to give a lotus flower or a rose flower – something still alive, something of immense beauty and fragrance.”

The kind said, ”Okay, I take the challenge. I will take both, and let us see what Buddha chooses.”

So he took both – in one hand the diamond, in the other hand a beautiful lotus flower.

First he offered the diamond. Buddha said, ”Drop it!”

Now, when Buddha says, ”Drop it!” before ten thousand surrounding sannyasins, even Prasenjita could not manage... Reluctantly, he dropped it. It was such a valuable a thing.

He thought perhaps the wife was right, so he put forward his other hand in which the lotus flower was.

Buddha said, ”Drop it!”

He had not expected this situation, so he dropped the flower also.

Now he was standing with empty hands, and Buddha said, ”What are you waiting for? Drop it!”

He looked all around, because now there was nothing to drop.

One old sannyasin of Buddha, Sariputta, said to him, ”He did not mean to drop the diamond or the lotus flower: He means to drop you. Drop yourself!”

That is the only offering you can bring to a buddha, neither diamonds nor flowers, but your utter egolessness.

Maneesha, it is not difficult.

And secondly, don’t ask what you have to do to disappear. You don’t have to do anything. If you do something to disappear, you will remain the doer. You will get into a vicious circle. You are trying to disappear, so you have divided yourself in two parts: the one that you want to disappear into and the one that is trying to disappear. You will never succeed.

It is not in your hands to disappear. You simply search for the origin of your being, and you will find you have disappeared. It is a finding, not an effort, and hence it cannot be difficult. It can only be the easiest revolution, the greatest spontaneous rebellion. But it cannot be based on your effort.

You have to stop making efforts. You have just to be a witness. To be a witness is not an effort, because it is your nature. Do you think a mirror is trying continuously, twenty-four hours to remain a mirror? It is its nature.

This empty heart is your mirror. Just find it, and everything else that you always wanted will disappear

– your anger, your ego, your very idea of personality. You will enter into a totally new dimension where you are the ocean, not the dewdrop.

Now, it is Anando’s time....

Pope the Polack feels a little strange, so he walks into Doctor Snuffit’s office and asks the doctor to give him a checkup.

After a complete examination, Snuffit tells the papal Polack that he is suffering from ”HAGS.”

”HAGS!” cries Pope the Polack, in alarm. ”What is HAGS?”

”It is herpes, AIDS, gonorrhea and syphilis all combined,” replies Snuffit.

”Holy Virgin Mary!” shrieks the pope. ”Is there any cure for that?”

”I don’t think so,” replies Snuffit, ”but I am going to put you on a special diet, and put you in a special room for observation.”

”What kind of special diet?” asks the Polack pope, trembling.

”Pancakes and flatfish,” replies Snuffit.

”That’s a bit weird,” says the Polack patient. ”Why pancakes and flatfish?”

”Well,” explains Snuffit, ”they are the only things we can fit under the door!”

There is a hell of an argument going on in the bar of the Howling Haggis Hotel.

At one end of the bar are sitting Paddy Murphy and Seamus O’Reilly. And standing at the other end of the bar are Hamish MacTavish and Sandy MacPherson.

”I tell you,” shouts Paddy, ”that Irish whiskey is the strongest stuff you will ever drink!”

”That’s not true!” roars back Hamish MacTavish, pounding on the bar.

”Everyone knows that Scotch whiskey is the real drink!”

Just then, an American tourist and his wife come over to the bar from their table in the corner.

”I want to tell you all,” says the American, ”that I think that Irish whiskey is the real dynamite. Last week, my wife and I drank a whole bottle of Irish whiskey, got up the next morning and went to church for the early morning mass.”

”What is so unusual about that?” asks Hamish, trying to be polite. ”Lots of people drink a bottle of whiskey and get up the next day to go to church.”

”Yes, I know,” says the American, ”but we are Jewish!”

Pussy Green comes to Father Fumble for her confession.

”Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” mumbles Pussy.

”How have you sinned?” asks Father Fumble.

”Well,” continues Pussy, softly, ”I have sinned with my boyfriend.”

Fumble presses his ear against the partition and says, ”Speak up, my child. SPEAK LOUDER!”

Pussy clears her throat and carries on.

”Last night,” she says, ”my boyfriend and I went to the pub, and afterwards I brought him home.”

”Carry on, my child. Carry on,” urges Fumble, beginning to perspire.

”We sat on the sofa,” says Pussy, ”and he unbuttoned my blouse.”

”And then?” says the priest, wiping the sweat from his hands.

”Then he unhooked my bra,” continues Pussy, ”and fondled my breasts.”

”And then? And then?” gasps Fumble, removing his steamed-up spectacles.

”Then he lifted up my skirt,” says Pussy, ”and pulled down my panties.”

”Then what? THEN WHAT?” cries the priest, digging his fingernails into the wooden partition.

”Then he pulled out his prick,” says Pussy, ”and climbed on top of me.”

”And then?” sobs Fumble, ”AND THEN?”

”And then,” says Pussy, ”my mother walked in.”

”Ah!” screams the priest. ”Shit!”

Anando...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

(Drumbeat)

Nivedano...

Be silent, close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.

Now look inwards with absolute urgency as if this is the last moment of your life.

Bring your total consciousness as an arrow, moving towards the center of your being. It is not a long journey from the circumference to the center.

Just a little deeper, and you will be entering the very source of your being. The realization of this is called the buddha.

First you have to realize the buddha in your whole life – in your actions, in your inactions. But this is not the last step, it is just the last but one.

I want you to take a jump from this stepping board into the ultimate oceanic reality. Unless you disappear completely, leaving no trace behind, you cannot be at rest.

The buddha is only the door.

To make it more clear, Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax. Let go of the body and the mind. Only the witnessing remains, which is another name of buddhahood.

Rejoice this great moment.

Very few people have reached to their own center, even in millions of lives. Hence I say you are fortunate.

This evening is blessed.

This place is holy. Where ten thousand buddhas are just melting in their consciousness into each other – it has become a lake of consciousness, without any ripples.

Gather as much life juice, collect all the wild flowers, before you return back.

Slowly, slowly your circumference and center will come closer.

And one day, suddenly, the

circumference will disappear and only the center will remain. That will be your realization of the buddha. One step more beyond that, and your center also disappears.

This nothingness beyond the center is not empty, it is the greatest benediction; it makes you the whole universe.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, all the buddhas, carrying as much experience. Sit down, and recollect the space you have been in.

Every day, inch by inch, you have to grow into a buddha.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Osho!

CHAPTER 6

The disciple is the seed

1 October 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

ONCE A TAOIST, HAPPENING TO PASS BY HYAKUJO’S MONASTERY, ASKED, ”IS THERE

ANYTHING IN THE WORLD MORE MARVELOUS THAN THE FORCES OF NATURE?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”THERE IS.”

”AND WHAT IS THAT?” THE TAOIST INQUIRED.

HYAKUJO SAID, ”THE POWER OF comprehending THOSE NATURAL FORCES.”

THE VISITOR ASKED, ”IS COSMIC VITALITY THE TAO?”

HYAKUJO RESPONDED, ”COSMIC VITALITY IS COSMIC VITALITY. THE TAO IS THE TAO.”

THE TAOIST SAID, ”IF SO, THEY MUST BE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS?”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”THAT WHICH KNOWS DOES NOT PROCEED FROM TWO DIFFERENT

PERSONS.”

THE EXASPERATED TAOIST REPLIED, ”WHAT IS WRONG AND WHAT IS RIGHT?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”WRONG IS THE MIND THAT ATTENDS TO EXTERNALS; RIGHT IS THE

MIND THAT BRINGS EXTERNALS UNDER CONTROL.”

Maneesha, listening to these dialogues and anecdotes, the more important thing should not be forgotten. This is not a school or a university. You are not here learning any knowledge. You are being transformed, awakened. All these sutras are meant only to wake you up, to catch your attention – which is vibrating continuously, moving around thousands of things – to make it absolutely here is the whole purpose of all these sutras.

This is possible only if you are only listening and not interpreting, listening and not making judgments, listening and not saying, ”Yes, this is right; no, this is not right...” You don’t have to say anything. That is not the point of the whole process. The point is that you can be just a listener without any judgment. That prepares you for your meditation.

Maneesha has brought these dialogues,

ONCE A TAOIST...

In the first place nobody can be a Taoist.

Tao is neither a religion nor

a philosophy. It is simply the purest understanding of meditation where everything disappears, including you. Then what remains is Tao. Buddha will call it dhamma; you can call it truth, consciousness, beauty. But all these words denote one oceanic feeling of awareness in which you are not separate from the cosmos. But the difficulty with man is, he makes everything into an ism.

So when Lao Tzu died, people started making an ism. And his whole life he had been teaching that there is no ism, no philosophy, no theory. You have to drop all these mind activities. You have to attain to a silent and empty space. That is Tao.

Nobody can be a Taoist, so from the very beginning, we know that the questions are going to be wrong. Of course you can answer rightly to wrong questions – and that’s what Hyakujo is going to do.

ONCE A TAOIST, HAPPENING TO PASS BY HYAKUJO’S MONASTERY, ASKED, ”IS THERE

ANYTHING IN THE WORLD MORE MARVELOUS THAN THE FORCES OF NATURE?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”THERE IS.”

But being a follower of a certain dogma, his eyes are as blind as any Hindu, any Mohammedan, any Christian’s eyes are. He could not understand that there could be ANYTHING MORE MARVELOUS

THAN THE FORCES OF NATURE. He is forgetting himself completely. Anybody could have said that the seer is far more marvelous than the seen. The knower is more marvelous than the known, because the known is just an object. The knower shows a different quality of consciousness. He is alive, not only alive, but consciously alive.

”AND WHAT IS THAT?” THE TAOIST INQUIRED.

HYAKUJO SAID, ”THE POWER OF comprehending THOSE NATURAL FORCES.”

What I have said to you, the seer, the witness, the watcher – that’s what Hyakujo is calling the power of comprehending the natural forces. That is more marvelous. That is the ultimate splendor.

THE VISITOR ASKED, ”IS COSMIC VITALITY THE TAO?”

HYAKUJO RESPONDED, ”COSMIC VITALITY IS COSMIC VITALITY. THE TAO IS THE TAO.”

THE TAOIST SAID, ”IF SO, THEY MUST BE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS?”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”THAT WHICH KNOWS DOES NOT PROCEED FROM TWO DIFFERENT

PERSONS.”

THE EXASPERATED TAOIST REPLIED, ”WHAT IS WRONG AND WHAT IS RIGHT?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”WRONG IS THE MIND THAT ATTENDS TO EXTERNALS; RIGHT IS THE

MIND THAT BRINGS EXTERNALS UNDER CONTROL.”

In a more contemporary way a few things have to be noted first. The visitor is not intrinsically concerned, urgently concerned with what he is asking. His questions are scattered, they are not in one sequence. He gets one answer, drops it as if he has understood. But his next question has no relation to the first. If he had understood, there would not have been another question.

One question is enough for the man of intelligence. And if the intelligence is ultimate and meditative, not even one question is needed. Nothing is said, and everything is heard in the empty heart of the disciple. But he is not a disciple – just a visitor, a curiositymonger. People simply go on collecting knowledge from different sources and then they brag as if they know all these things. You can see this – his interest is not at all to understand what he is asking. He asks, ”What is more marvelous in existence than natural forces?”

Hyakujo’s answer is absolutely perfect: it is the seer who comprehends, who witnesses the existence. Just by the sheer nature of witnessing, it is higher than the witnessed. If he had understood the point, there was no more to ask. But he went on asking. THE VISITOR ASKED, ”IS

COSMIC VITALITY THE TAO?” Now this has no connection with the first question. This shows that he has collected the answer, is not bothered what it means... just words. And now he will repeat those words to anyone as if they are his own. He is in a hurry to ask another question, and the first is not dissolved yet. With the first dissolving he will also dissolve.

On the path there are not answers, simply the disappearing of the questions. What the master says makes the question disappear, makes the question irrelevant, out of context, meaningless. He clears the space, so you can see also the same clarity that is his own. He wants to share his clarity and he removes your questions by answers. He is not interested either in answers or in questions.

He answers only just to remove the question. But if a person is not a person on the path of seeking, it does not matter. He may have removed one question to the side... he brings another.... He does not see the point.

THE VISITOR ASKED, ”IS COSMIC VITALITY THE TAO?” Neither does he know cosmic vitality, nor does he know Tao. This is where intellectuals get lost, in words. Words are a far more thick forest than you can find anywhere else. Apparently it seems to be perfectly right to ask a question, ”Is cosmic vitality the ultimate life? The same as the Tao?” But the question is arising out of curiosity, not out of inquiry. It does not matter if you don’t answer. What I mean by urgency is, it matters that we should find our life source, the cosmic vitality.

HYAKUJO RESPONDED, ”COSMIC VITALITY IS COSMIC VITALITY. THE TAO IS THE TAO.”

Now immediately in any ordinary mind the question will arise: Are they two? Is the path and the goal two? The path is the path; the goal is the goal – but they are not two. The path is only the extension of the goal. The goal is only the end point of the path. Hyakujo is not saying they are two. He is simply saying, the path is the path and the goal is the goal. Don’t make any decisions before you have followed the path. At the end point of the path you will find the goal. And then suddenly, you will realize their absolute oneness.

THE TAOIST SAID, ”IF SO, THEY MUST BE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS?” A very ordinary mediocre mind can say that. In front of a master, one has to think twice what he is asking.

HYAKUJO SAID, ”THAT WHICH KNOWS DOES NOT PROCEED FROM TWO DIFFERENT

PERSONS.” You can follow only one path. There may be many paths – just like a mountain peak, you can climb it from one side or the other side. And there can be a thousand paths moving to the ultimate peak, but as paths they are different from other paths. Some paths may be moving through a desert, and some paths should be moving through lush green trees. As paths they are different, but when they will reach to the end, there will be an explosion of understanding that everything leads to the ultimate.

Some take a little more time, some take a little less time; some are arduous, some are very relaxed...

it is your choice. Move from anywhere towards your life source. You will reach to the same point that any buddha has ever reached. The ultimate experience is not either yours or mine, it is simply the ultimate experience of all consciousnesses who move towards the inner source.

THE EXASPERATED TAOIST REPLIED... He was exasperated because he could not understand what was being said. ”WHAT IS WRONG AND WHAT IS RIGHT?” He thought it is better to ask a very simple question and then see what this man answers: ”WHAT IS WRONG AND WHAT IS

RIGHT?” Nothing can be more simple apparently, but deep down, it is one of the most significant questions. HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”WRONG IS THE MIND THAT ATTENDS TO EXTERNALS...” The mind in subjugation, the mind in slavery to objects – that is wrong. When you change the whole status, and the mind is no longer under the control of the objective world, but becomes a master in his own right, it is right.

Ordinarily we think that right and wrong are judgments – somebody is doing something, and you feel it is not right, or it is right. In our common understanding right and wrong have become parts of our judgmental approach, but to those who know, to those who have arrived, right and wrong have a totally different meaning.

Mind can function as a master, mind can function as a slave. Now, ordinarily nobody thinks right and wrong has something to do with this, but basically mind in slavery of the objective world is wrong.

Then whatever you do is wrong. And when the mind is freed from objective slavery, it becomes empty. That empty mind becomes a showering – a master. It is no longer a slave. That is the only right. Then out of this situation, whatever arises, out of this space, whatever responses are produced – they are right. So right is not a judgmental question, it is a question of where you are and what your state is: Is your consciousness the master, or is it easily enslaved by anything?

I am reminded of a Sufi master, Junnaid...

He himself was a very simple man and would not have become world famous except for Al Hillaj Mansoor, his disciple who was crucified. He used to say, the question of right and wrong is the question concerning your consciousness. If you are conscious, then whatever you do, is bound to be right. If you are unconscious, then whatever you do is wrong. The world may appreciate it differently.

For example, a man may donate, give to charities and everybody will say, ”How nice, how great, how righteous, how virtuous is this man.” If you look into his mind, he is giving to all these charities in order to make a special place in God’s bank, so when he reaches the pearly gates, he should be welcomed with angels, and he will have all the comforts. What he is giving, is nothing compared to what he is exploiting. Perhaps one percent... and he becomes a great virtuous man – and ninety nine percent he is exploiting the same people.

Unless one is conscious, absolutely a pillar of consciousness, it is very difficult to do right. Because you are not right, how can the flowers of right arise out of you? So the question to the authentic master changes the whole area. It is not your activity, it is your consciousness. What you do is irrelevant – from where comes the doing? Consciousness or unconsciousness – that is the decisive factor.

Zen has brought a totally different outlook. It is not a morality. It does not emphasize your actions.

The emphasis is on you. You are doing right things for wrong reasons. That will not make them right. Somebody is afraid of hell, and out of fear, he goes to church every Sunday. It is a bother...

listening to the priest, the same Old Testament and the same old garbage which he has listened to so many times. So most of the church goers simply have a good morning sleep in the churches. It is a very religious sleep.

A man used to snore in a church....

The bishop was worried, he took the man aside and told him, ”I am not against sleeping, and sleeping is not an irreligious activity, but snoring is a little too much.”

The man asked, ”Is snoring irreligious?”

He said, ”No, I am not saying that snoring is irreligious. I am simply saying that because of your snoring the whole congregation cannot sleep, and that creates many difficult problems. I have only three sermons which I have been giving my whole life. Nobody listens – what is the point? To be original and to find new material... And nobody has ever objected – that is absolute proof that nobody has ever listened. They were all fast asleep. And it is good for me too... unnecessary trouble. And in fact, those three sermons are also not written by me. Those are the three sermons of the previous preacher who has retired. He gave them to me and told me, ‘These are enough.

Don’t bother to take much trouble. The whole congregation comes to the church to have a good morning sleep. Just don’t let anybody snore.’

”You are the most prominent member of the church. Snoring is killing me. If people start listening, it will not be long... it will be only three weeks, before they will come to know that ‘this fellow has been repeating the same record.’ So please, just for God’s sake, sleep as deep as you can, but don’t snore.”

All the religions have been action oriented. Don’t do this, don’t do that – they are all commandments.

The question is not of your doing, the question is of your being. Be in a conscious state, then do whatever comes out of your spontaneity – and it is right. If it does not come as a spontaneous conscious response, then even if the whole world says it is good, it is not good. The ultimate criterion is not the action. The ultimate criterion is the origin.

The mind is capable of doing both. It can be a slave, as it is to millions of people. Very rarely is the mind completely free from objects, desires, anger, and just a simple empty space, no-mind.

So we can say it in this way: if you act through mind, it is wrong; if you act through no-mind, it is right.

A haiku by Basho:

BIRTH OF ART –

SONG OF RICE PLANTERS,

CHORUS FROM NOWHERE.

If you are utterly silent, then everything that happens in that silence, takes a new color. It becomes the birth of very art. ”Song of rice planters” – it is not much of a music. Poor rice planters, just to keep them engaged, they are singing in chorus. But a man of silence, immediately makes or gives a glamor to the ordinary stones. ”Song of rice planters, chorus from nowhere.” As far as he is concerned he is utterly silent, so he wonders from where this chorus is coming. The whole existence has become a chorus, a beautiful symphony. Our lives can be lived as music, as poetry, as art... as mystics. Those are the right ways to live our lives. Right, because to live those styles, you will have to find your origin first.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT IS THE URGE TO UNDERSTAND?

Maneesha, the urge to understand comes from your very nature. The mystery of existence wants you to become a shareholder. The mystery of existence does not want you to stand outside, but to come inside the temple. It is too hot outside, it is perfectly cool inside.

The urge to understand is absolutely a part of intelligence. Intelligence wants to know, who is there within me; from where comes my love, my tears, my laughter? One does not want to remain ignorant of his own house.

The urge to understand is the only hope for man. If there is no urge to understand, there will not be any mysticism, and there will not be any poetry; there will not be any music, there will not be any dance. There will be only a deep sadness, a suicidal sadness, that what is the point of going on living because the urge to understand, the meaning of life is missing. But fortunately the urge is not something to be learned from somebody else. The urge is there in you. You may have repressed it as much as you want, but in the right season, in the right time, in the right moment, if you encounter a man who knows, suddenly the urge will surface. That is one of the criteria of meeting a master.

People have asked me again and again, ”How to decide that we have met the master?” If meeting a man, you suddenly feel that you would also like to be in the same space, in the same joy, in the same song, the urge to understand has arisen. This urge makes you a disciple, and a disciple is just the beginning of a master. The disciple is the seed and the master is the flowers.

Now it is Anando’s time....

Olga Kowalski is chatting to her friend, Rosa, over a cup of coffee.

”If you ask me,” says Olga, ”the television is a stupid invention.”

”Why is that?” asks Rosa, munching on a cookie.

”Well,” says Olga, ”all it is, is crime – or sex!”

”Really?” replies Rosa.

”I’m sick of it,” says Olga. ”Whenever I switch the TV on at night, all I see is violence!”

”Then why don’t you switch it off?” suggests Rosa.

”Well if I do that,” replies Olga, ”then Kowalski wants to have sex!”

Gorgeous Gloria goes to see Robin Meany, the show business agent, and asks him to see her act.

Gloria places a large orange on the floor, and then begins to do a sensational strip to music. When she is completely naked and the music reaches its climax, Gloria suddenly sinks to the floor, legs wide apart, on top of the orange. And when she rises again, the orange has disappeared.

”That is fantastic!” cries Robin. ”A real knockout! I can get you a job in a Paris night club, starting tomorrow.”

”No, not Paris,” says Gloria, nervously. So Robin gets her a job in Berlin instead.

Two weeks later, Robin calls Gloria on the phone. ”Good news!” he says. ” I have bookings for you in Hamburg, Rome, Cairo and Paris.”

”No! Not Paris,” says Gloria.

”What the hell is the matter with Paris, for Christ’s sake,” snaps Robin.

”Well, you see, ” says Gloria, ”in Paris, my mother does the same act with a water melon!”

Kowalski and Zabriski are walking down the street in New York, and Zabriski is saying how much he hates Italians.

”Greasy wops,” he grumbles, ”always making a noise. And talk about stupid...! I wish they would all go back to Italy!”

In the middle of this outburst, the two Polacks walk around a corner. They run smack into Old Luigi, who is playing loudly on a violin, with a little monkey dancing beside him.

Luigi really looks the part. He is dressed in an old greasy, spaghetti-stained coat. He has a gold earring in one of his ears, and he is playing his violin and singing in Italian at the top of his voice.

Kowalski is astonished when he sees Zabriski pull out his purse and put a dollar bill in the little monkey’s outstretched cap.

”What did you do that for?” asks Kowalski, when they have walked on. ”I thought you hated Italians.”

”I do,” admits Zabriski, ”but they are so cute when they are young!”

Anando...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

(Drumbeat)

Be silent... close your eyes... feel your body to be completely frozen...

Gather all your consciousness as an arrow in search of the center of your being. Go inwards with no fear – it is your own territory.

At the very end of your arrow you will find yourself as a buddha, fully awakened. This is the first step. Once you have become the buddha completely, the second step is to go beyond.

Let even the buddha disappear.

Only silence and an infinite sky remains.

This is your home.

You are no more, but you have found the home.

The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean.

Thousands of flowers blossom.

Suddenly from nowhere the music is heard. You find all around you a pulsating life energy, almost in a dance – and you are part of it.

Gather as many flowers and fragrances as possible. Gather the awareness that has arisen in you.

You have to carry your awareness moment to moment in your daily life, waking or asleep.

This is the only transformation I know of which makes the dewdrop the ocean or vice versa – which makes the ocean disappear into the dewdrop.

To make it more clear, Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax.

Just watch....

The body is not you, the mind is not you.

You are simply a witness, no judgment, no evaluation, but a pure silent witnessing like a mirror.

This is your buddhahood.

There is no greater joy in existence than to be a buddha. There is no greater beauty, no greater grace, no greater blessing than to be a buddha. Here life comes in all its colors – the whole rainbow.

The evening was already beautiful, but your witnessing has made it a great splendor, a majestic moment. It has given to it a magical quality. Soon Nivedano will be calling you back. Bring all these qualities with you. Don’t leave them behind.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Slowly gracefully come back, renewed by the process, refreshed by the process.

Sit down for a few moments like a buddha. I am using the word ‘like’ so that you don’t freak out...

otherwise you are the buddha.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Osho!

CHAPTER 7

The last milestone

2 October 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

HYAKUJO: THE EVEREST OF ZEN, WITH BASHO’S HAIKUS Discourse 7 Title: October, 02, 1988, PM

gautam the buddha auditorium, osho commune international, poona, india BELOVED OSHO,

ON ONE OCCASION, YUN KUANG ASKED HYAKUJO, ”MASTER, DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU

WILL BE REBORN?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”WE HAVE NOT DIED YET, SO WHAT IS THE USE OF DISCUSSING OUR

REBIRTHS? THAT WHICH KNOWS BIRTH IS THE UNBORN. WE CANNOT STRAY FROM BIRTH

TO SPEAK OF THE UNBORN. THE PATRIARCH ONCE SAID, ‘THAT WHICH UNDERGOES

BIRTH IS REALLY UNBORN.’”

YUN KUANG ASKED, ”DOES THIS APPLY EVEN TO THOSE WHO HAVE YET TO PERCEIVE

THEIR OWN NATURE?”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”YOUR NOT HAVING PERCEIVED YOUR OWN NATURE DOES NOT IMPLY

THAT YOU LACK THAT NATURE. WHY SO? BECAUSE PERCEPTION ITSELF IS THAT NATURE...

”THAT WHICH CAN PRODUCE THE MYRIAD PHENOMENA OF THE UNIVERSE IS CALLED THE

DHARMA NATURE, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE DHARMAKAYA.

”THE PATRIARCH, ASVAGOSHA, DECLARED:‘IN SPEAKING OF PHENOMENA, WE REALLY

REFER TO THE MINDS OF SENTIENT BEINGS, FOR, WHEN MENTAL PROCESSES OCCUR, ALL SORTS OF PHENOMENA TAKE BIRTH IN ACCORDANCE WITH THEM. WHEN MENTAL

PROCESSES DO NOT OCCUR, PHENOMENA HAVE NOTHING IN WHICH TO ARISE – THERE

ARE NOT EVEN NAMES FOR THEM.’”

Maneesha, these dialogues between Zen masters and their disciples almost appear to be of another world. You will not hear anything alike anywhere else. They lived in a totally different dimension and they talked about things which don’t matter to you. But to them, those things mattered the most.

What matters to you, is immaterial to them, as if we belong to two different worlds. Their world is of immense beauty and of great blissfulness. Our world is of anxiety and anguish and angst. It is the world of mortality. We are here only just for a few years. We don’t know from where we have come.

We don’t know where we go. We don’t know even who we are.

These questions have been put aside by the technological progress of science, and people’s minds have become absolutely materialistic. They have forgotten one thing: their own consciousness.

These dialogues are about your own consciousness and its inner secrets. Without experiencing these secrets of your inner life, your life is not much of a life. It is very superficial.

The deeper you go inwards, everything in your life starts getting depth – it may be love, it may be creativity, it may be singing, it may be dancing. You can dance very superficially just making the movements of the dance, but you can dance so deeply that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains. When the dance remains, then only is the essential left. All non-essentials have gone. You are also gone. You are a non-essential.

Something in you is of the essential, and all these dialogues are in search of that essential – from different angles, different viewpoints. So you must remember never to get confused between your language and the language of these dialogues. It is the same language, but used by very different people, by very different experiences, to be expressed.

ON ONE OCCASION YUN KUANG ASKED HYAKUJO, ”MASTER, DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU

WILL BE REBORN?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”WE HAVE NOT DIED YET; SO WHAT IS THE USE OF DISCUSSING OUR

REBIRTHS? THAT WHICH KNOWS BIRTH IS UNBORN.”

But very few people are born unconsciously, and very few people die consciously. It is a natural arrangement of anaesthesia. Before you die your whole biology releases all that makes you absolutely unconscious. It is the greatest surgery; nature has made a prearrangement for it. Only a very deep meditator, who has reached to samadhi will be able to avoid this poisoning, this oncoming cloud of unconsciousness. He will keep his light alive, his eyes open. Death will come and go. The body will be gone, the mind will be gone, but this essential awareness will enter another womb.

Hyakujo is saying, ”That which knows birth is the unborn.” That one which knows the death, does not die. How can it die and know death at the same time?

One Sufi mystic, Omar Khayyam, has written a great book and became known worldwide. Hundreds of translations have happened, but all are full of misunderstandings. They thought that he was only a poet talking about this world. He was a mystic, and all that he was talking about was symbolic.

His book’s name is RUBAIYAT. The rubaiyat is again a very special form of Persian poetry, just like a haiku.

In one of his rubaiyat he says to his friends not to be afraid of death for two reasons: if you die, you die. There is nothing to be afraid of. There will be nobody left behind, so there is no question of fear.

If it is as the religions say, that you don’t die, then there is no question of being afraid, death does not happen. In either case, fear is irrelevant.

If you can die knowingly, that means the element that is passing through the tunnel of death, is separate from death. The life principle is eternal. It takes many forms, thousands of lives to become a man. Up to now nobody has appeared who is a superman.

Man, up to now, is the ultimate in the evolution of consciousness, but it is very superficial, very new. Underneath, there is deep unconsciousness. So when you die, that deep unconsciousness overfloods your consciousness and you die without knowing what is happening. Everybody knows that you have died except you. And because the death is unconscious, your being born into a womb cannot be conscious.

Both the ends have to be the same: if death is conscious, then birth will be conscious. If death is unconscious, then the birth is unconscious. You don’t know anything about from where you are coming because you were not conscious about your birth. You are certainly coming from somewhere.

THAT WHICH KNOWS BIRTH IS THE UNBORN. This is a very pregnant sentence. That which knows birth is beyond birth. That which knows death is beyond death. It is only a witness. It goes on only watching – that the old body is gone and the new womb has been made available, that a new body has started growing. In deep hypnosis you can be reminded of your experiences in the nine months of your mother’s womb. Nine months cannot go without any episodes. Your mother may fall down, your mother may be very angry, or very loving....

All that goes on in your mother’s mind and body affects the child who is still attached to the mother’s body – everything. Those nine months are of tremendous importance. If the mother can remember that a child is growing in her – she should take care not to do anything, not to act anything that may create a difficulty for the child in his life, because these nine months are the most important period of the whole life of seventy years.

This way, two persons will be changed. The mother takes care of the child and is aware that she has not to do anything that will be disadvantageous to the child. She cannot be angry, she cannot be jealous, she cannot be hateful; she cannot do or even think anything wrong. So two persons are being changed. Those nine months are transforming two persons, the child and the mother.

If in nine months one woman can remain without jealousy, without anger, without hatred, but with just pure love, compassion, the joy of this nine-month experience will be so much that when the child is born, she is not going to fall back to her old habits.

In India we had developed a very scientific process from the very moment of impregnation until the birth of the child, of how the mother has to live, what she has to do. Her life should be of gratitude that God or the universe has given her an opportunity to bring life into existence. Her days and nights should be full of dreams of a buddha. Her child should be a buddha. But he can only be a buddha if seeds are sown. Right now is the time: the soil is soft and the child is absolutely available.

Do you see the significance? It will change both the persons, the mother and the child.

The child can become conscious only if in his past life he has meditated enough, has created enough meditative energy to fight with the darkness that death brings. One simply is lost in an oblivion and then suddenly finds a new womb and forgets completely about the old body. There is a discontinuity.

This darkness, this unconsciousness creates the discontinuity.

The East has been working hard to penetrate these barriers. And ten thousand years’ work has not been in vain. Everybody can penetrate to the past life or many past lives. But for that you have to go deeper into your meditation for two reasons: unless you go deeper, you cannot find the door to another life; secondly, you have to be deeper in meditation, because if you find the door of another life, a flood of events will come into the mind.

It is hard enough even to carry one life. It will become very clumsy and complex if old memories start harassing you. The implications are such that perhaps the person who is your wife now, was your mother in the past life. Now you will be in a very weird state. How to behave with the woman –

as a mother or as your wife? Your life will become a great anxiety. The person who you think is your greatest friend, has been your murderer in the past life. Now how are you going to relate with him?

– and you cannot manage to take anybody with you to your past life, so there is no evidence...! The friend will say, ”Are you mad? I murdered you? You must have dreamed it. In dreams all kinds of things happen. Forget all about it.” But you cannot forget because you know it was not a dream. It happened in a deep meditation and whenever you go to that point, it always happens. You cannot repeat a dream. You cannot even connect a broken dream.

One night Mulla Nasruddin shouted loudly to his wife, ”Bring my glasses! Quick!” – in the middle of the night!

The wife said, ”What are you going to read?”

He said, ”Don’t discuss. This is not the moment to discuss. Just bring!”

So the poor woman brought the glasses. He put the glasses on and he said, ”Just go on back to sleep. I saw such a beautiful woman, but because my eyesight is not good, things were a little vague.” He tried hard to see the woman again with glasses on, but he could not manage.

Another time again he asked for the glasses....

The wife said, ”You are going mad. Glasses won’t help your eyesight in dreams. In dreams your eyesight is perfect.”

But he said, ”It is a question of great importance. Don’t you argue. Just bring my glasses!” And putting his glasses on, he said, ”Okay, now come on.”

A man was offering him one thousand dollars and he wanted to be sure whether the bill was fake or real. But now neither the man was there, nor that one thousand dollar bill was there. He tried hard this way and that way. And he shouted loudly, ”Where have you gone?”

You cannot join a broken dream. You cannot repeat a dream on your own. If it repeats by itself, that is a different thing, but you cannot manage to repeat some beautiful dream again and again – not even once.

But as far as past lives are concerned, this is the difference: as you go deeper into your meditation, if you want to open the doors, you can, but you have to be aware. You will be flooded with tremendous meaningful memories, and they will be as actual as if they are of this life. They will not be like dreams, that you open your eyes and the dream is gone. They will be as actual as your life, but that creates trouble.

If you remember two or three lives, you will be in the same state as the centipede I have told you about....

He had been living perfectly well and was going for a morning walk, when a little rabbit asked him,

”Uncle, I have to ask a question. I have been resisting so as not to disturb your morning walk, but I cannot resist it anymore.”

The centipede said, ”Okay, what is your question?”

He said, ”My question is, how do you manage your hundred legs: which one should come first, which one should come second, which one should come third...? How do you manage one hundred legs together?”

He said, ”I have never thought about. I am not a philosophical type. You seem to be a philosophical type... but I will try and find out.”

He tried and fell immediately over his legs. He was very angry with the rabbit. He said, ”Keep your philosophy to yourself. Never ask any centipede.... Everything is being managed on its own, and I have never thought about it. You are a dangerous fellow. You look so nice, but your questions...!”

If you know three or four lives, you will be in the same position. You will not be able to move, because these same people were related to you in your past lives in different relationships. Somebody was your child, now he is your father; somebody was your mother, now she is somebody else’s wife...

you cannot go to her. Perhaps the neighbor’s wife was your wife. Your mind will be so bombarded.

That’s why nature absolutely closes the doors, completely seals them so you don’t know anything about where you are coming from. But those doors can be opened.

In India we have a special science for it – jaati smaran, remembrance of the past. A certain meditation, certain preparations and you can enter into past lives. But remember that you have to have the stamina and the guts not to get lost. Only in the East has reincarnation been considered.

And the three religions which have born in India are the only religions which have an absolute agreement on the point of reincarnation. They differ in their philosophy, theology, on everything, but not on rebirth. It is factual to all of them. They all have come in their meditations to the same place.

They cannot deny it.

It is an existential fact that you have been before and you will be after your death. The one that was before birth, and the one that will be after death is the same one. Its name is the buddha. Its name is the witness. It never dies and it never is born.

The problem to understand is, Hyakujo says: THAT WHICH KNOWS BIRTH IS THE UNBORN – the knower of the birth is the unborn witness. WE CANNOT STRAY FROM BIRTH TO SPEAK OF THE

UNBORN – if you have not died with absolute consciousness, you cannot talk about the unborn and the undying. THE PATRIARCH ONCE SAID, ”THAT WHICH UNDERGOES BIRTH IS REALLY

UNBORN.”

Confucius, one of the greatest thinkers of the world, was not a religious man. His concern was more civilization, culture, morality, etiquette, ethics. He has influenced the whole of China for these past twenty-five centuries. He is still influencing the Chinese behavior.

One day a young follower asked him, ”You talk about life, you talk about how to style it, how to refine it, how to make it honest, how to make it truthful, but you never say anything about what will happen after death.”

Confucius said, ”There is no need to talk about it. It is certain that you will die. Then, lying in your grave for eternity, you can think whatever you want to think. Why bother me? I will be thinking in my grave; you will be thinking in your grave.”

He simply laughed about the question, because to get entangled in a question like death or birth, immediately brings you to the point that these things are beyond thinking. You cannot think anything about birth or death. If you really want to know, you will have to drop all thinking, and enter into the empty heart. Only the empty heart knows the eternity of your being.

YUN KUANG ASKED, ”DOES THIS APPLY EVEN TO THOSE WHO HAVE YET TO PERCEIVE

THEIR OWN NATURE?”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”YOUR NOT HAVING PERCEIVED YOUR OWN NATURE DOES NOT IMPLY

THAT YOU lack THAT NATURE. WHY SO? BECAUSE PERCEPTION ITSELF is THAT NATURE....

Told in a more contemporary way: I have been telling you continuously, you are a buddha. And I know that you are suspicious – you, and a buddha? Your suspicion or your doubt does not make any difference. Your buddhahood remains the same. You can know it – you can ignore it.

The English word ‘ignorance’ to me simply means ignoring your buddha, ignoring your own nature.

This nature is absolutely clear, transparent. You can see the whole world reflected in it, just like in a mirror, but you have to be utterly silent, centered. That’s what we are trying to do here.

”THAT WHICH CAN PRODUCE THE MYRIAD PHENOMENA OF THE UNIVERSE IS CALLED THE

DHARMA NATURE; OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE DHARMAKAYA.

”THE PATRIARCH, ASVAGOSHA, DECLARED:‘IN SPEAKING OF PHENOMENA, WE REALLY

REFER TO THE MINDS OF SENTIENT BEINGS, FOR WHEN MENTAL PROCESSES OCCUR, ALL SORTS OF PHENOMENA TAKE BIRTH IN ACCORDANCE WITH THEM; WHEN MENTAL

PROCESSES DO NOT OCCUR, PHENOMENA HAVE NOTHING IN WHICH TO ARISE – THERE

ARE NOT EVEN NAMES FOR THEM.’”

He is saying that everything is contained in your mind. All that you perceive, all that you name, all that you know is contained in your mind. From all your five senses you go on collecting knowledge.

Those five senses are really extensions of your mind. You will be able to understand it very easily.

Before this century it was not thought that the sex center is in your mind and not in your genitals.

So as you start thinking of sex, immediately the genitals are affected. If we want real celibacy in the world, you don’t have to cut people’s genitals as they used to do in Russia.

A certain sect of fanatic Christians used to cut their genitals. Women used to cut their breasts...

nothing else to cut, the only protruding thing – and these people were thought to be saints. But they were not aware that by cutting your genitals you will not be a celibate, because the center of your sexuality is in your mind.

If we want real celibacy, then we have to cut the nerve in the mind which pulsates and creates sexual dreams in you, sexual fantasies in you. Once it is cut you will not be able to do anything with your genitals. They will hang out dead. However you try, it won’t work. The center of all your activities and all your senses is in the mind. Smelling or your eyes or your hearing... everything is centered within your skull.

Mind is your world. If we take out the mind, your whole world disappears.

Meditation is an effort that the world you have known through the mind, disappears, and a new perception of no-mind arises in you. What you cannot see with the mind, you can see with the no-mind.

Birth and death have no influence on the no-mind. It simply floats away above birth and death. It has seen many births and many deaths. It does not matter to it, it simply goes on reflecting whatsoever is happening. Nothing leaves a trace on your witnessing. I would like to call this witnessing the buddha. It becomes more understandable, closer.

A haiku by Basho:

MOOR:

POINT MY HORSE WHERE BIRDS SING.

Basho lived a very natural life by the side of a pond, under an ancient tree where he had a small hut.

He was a prince and when his father died, he renounced it. The family was very much in despair and they said, ”This is not the point. Your father is dead and you have to take care of his kingdom.”

Basho said, ”I was waiting for him to die. I wanted to see that everyone dies. Even my father has died. One day I will die and who will take care of this castle and the kingdom? Somebody will take care. Now I cannot remain here, because there is danger of dying any moment. Before I die, I have to know some undying principle as my foundation.”

He was a very loving, joyous and a dancing mystic. He is saying, ”Moor: point my horse where birds sing.”

Let us go to the birds because they are the only people left in the world who are still singing. Man has dropped singing far away. Now only professionals sing. Have you seen in birds any professional singers... professional musicians...? Birds simply sing just out of sheer joy. It does not matter whether it means anything or not. Meaning is not the point; expressing the joy is the point. ”Point my horse where birds sing.”

He always wanted his haikus to be just spontaneous singing like birds – and he succeeded in it.

There is no parallel to the haikus of Basho in the whole history of mankind.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

BELOVED OSHO,

IS THERE JUST ONE REALITY, AND CAN IT BE PERCEIVED ONLY BY NO-MIND?

There are two realities: one that is perceived by the mind, and one that is perceived by the no-mind.

For the no-mind, the reality of the mind becomes phenomenal, dreamlike. That’s why people who have attained to buddhahood, will call the world just a dream. But a dream also has its own existence

– the buddha also becomes hungry. You cannot eat meditation. You will have something from the world of the mind, something objective to eat, because your hunger is also part of the objective world, your body is part of the objective world. You are standing on the borderline of two worlds: the objective world outside, and the subjective world inside. As you go deeper into the subjective, the outer becomes more and more dreamlike, a faraway echo. But I will not say it is unreal. The people who have said it is unreal simply mean that it has no significance.

I was meeting a Jaina monk, and he said, ”Everything outside is illusory.”

I said, ”Can I slap you?”

He said, ”You are a strange fellow. Why should you slap me?”

I said, ”You have forgotten that the outside world is just a dream. In a dream can you prevent anybody slapping you? There is certainly a difference between a dream and the outside world. Just tell me that the outside world has a different reality, not the same stuff as dreams are made off, otherwise I will slap you.”

He looked all around, but I had come with almost twenty friends, so he saw that the situation was not going to be just philosophical wrestling, it was going to be real wrestling.

He said, ”For the moment I accept.”

I said, ”For the moment won’t do. No conditions are allowed. Are you afraid of being slapped?”

The problem is, the people who have gone in, the deeper they go in, the farther away the outer reality becomes. But the outer reality has its own existence. Its existence needs a mind, and the inner reality has a far greater and far more majestic existence. For it no-mind is needed. So it is a double-tier world: mind has its world, and no-mind has on top of it a very beautiful, a very majestic world.

My effort has been to convince all kinds of people. There are people who deny any inner world –

just the objective world is the only reality; all the inner is just dream. And on the other hand there are people who say that everything inner is real, and everything outside is just a dream. But they both agree on one point, that they are denying one reality.

I want to accept both realities. How can the inner exist without the outer? And how can the outer exist without the inner? That’s why I started calling sannyasin restaurants and their discos, Zorba the Buddha. Zorba represents the outside reality.

Kazantzakis, in his great book, ZORBA THE GREEK has given something of immense value to the world. He has given Zorba. It has become almost a reality, not just a fictitious name. Zorba is happy in mediocre things, in anything – drinking, dancing, loving – a very vibrant, a very alive person.

The Church of Greece expelled him from the church because he created Zorba the Greek. Amrito is here from Greece. She has received a letter from Kazantzakis’ wife saying that she would like to be the director of our World Academy. Kazantzakis suffered very much because of the Orthodox Church of Greece.

When I say Zorba the Buddha, I am trying to bring the inner and outer closer. There is no need that Zorba should remain only a Zorba. It is perfectly good, but it is not the highest point where consciousness can rise to greater realities, to greater mysteries.

Zorba has to become the Buddha.

Zorba is the seed of the Buddha.

You are all born as Zorbas – liking the ordinary things of the world, carrying your buddha inside, ignoring it. But even if you realize the buddha, I will not deny the outside world. I am absolutely scientific in the sense that whatever is true; it may be outer, it may be inner. The inner may be a higher reality; the outer may be a lower reality. But as far as reality is concerned, there are two realities: a reality which is perceived by the mind, and a reality which opens its doors to the no-mind.

Now it is Anando time....

Old Buffalo Grass, the ageing hippy, is bopping down the street puffing away on a couple of reefers.

To his amazement, he finds himself standing in front of a barber shop.

”Far out!” he says to himself, scratching his big beard. ”I haven’t had a haircut for thirty-two years.”

So, in a cloud of smoke, he walks in, and sits down in the barber’s chair.

”How much is a haircut?” asks Buffalo.

The barber looks at the old hippy’s long straggly hair and says, ”Ten dollars!”

Buffalo’s eyes pop out. ”Really?” he says. ”And how much for a shave?”

”Two dollars,” replies the barber.

”Okay,” says Buffalo Grass, pointing to his head, ”shave it!”

Little Albert goes to stay with his grandparents at their house in the country. Grandpa and Albert decide to to fishing early next morning, and they sleep together in the same bed so that they will not disturb Grandma when they get up.

In the middle of the night, Grandpa wakes up, and shakes Little Albert.

”Albert!” he cries, excitedly. ”Quick! Go and get your grandma. I have got an erection...! My first one for twenty-one years!”

”Relax, Grandpa,” says Albert, sleepily, ”that’s my prick you are holding!”

Little Ernie is at the zoo with his teacher, Miss Goodbody, and the entire class. They are touring around when Ernie sees a deer peacefully grazing on some grass.

”Ernie, can you tell us the name of that animal?” asks Miss Goodbody, pointing to the deer.

”Well,” says Ernie, ”I think it is a... I guess it is a...”

”Let me give you a hint,” interrupts Miss Goodbody. ”What does your mother call your father every morning?”

”Oh, right!” shouts Ernie. ”It is an asshole!”

Anando...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

(Drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

Now, with tremendous urgency, look inwards. Gather all your consciousness like an arrow pointing to the center of your being.

The center of your being is the target, because at the center of your being you are the buddha.

As you reach to the center flowers start showering on you. A new fragrance, a new cool breeze, a new silence – you are entering into another world.

The buddha is the last milestone.

Once you have reached the buddha, you can take a jump into the beyond. Then words lose meaning.

Only a silent, luminous life remains with a music of its own, with no movement – but a great dance.

This is the other world beyond the world in which we live. Both are real, but the first world consists of ordinary objects, and the other inner world consists of great mysteries and miracles. You have to learn to be a witness to both. The outer and the inner, both are realities and there is also something more than a reality: that is your witness.

Go beyond the outer and the inner both.

Go beyond duality, and a grace starts falling over you like rain. In this great moment you are not, only existence is, with all its glories, eternities – unbounded.

This is the world the mystic has been working to enter in. Just as the scientist is trying to work in the objective world, the mystic’s work is far greater. First he has to enter the inner, and then he has to transcend both, the inner and the outer. That transcendental is beyond words; nobody has ever said anything about it.

To make the transcendental clear,

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax. Just be a witness of the body, of the mind, of anything that is happening.

Remain just a mirror.

This is your very origin. This is not divided. This is one whole continent. At this moment the ten thousand buddhas are no longer ten thousand – just one nature, one silent flowering, one peaceful watcher.

Collect as much joy as possible, as much awareness as possible, because you have to remain a buddha twenty-four hours in a lower kind of reality.

But keep the cleanness of your mirror whatever you are doing. Then every act and gesture becomes a prayer, a gratitude. And from all over, blessings go on coming to you. You had not asked for them, you had not even known that they exist. But when the heart is empty, the whole existence becomes immensely compassionate to you.

Gather all these flowers, these fragrances. When you come back, come back as a buddha.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, silently, peacefully, gracefully. Sit down for a few moments, collecting the space you have been in, remembering that this is the way you have to be twenty-four hours. Only then you will be capable to know the great existence and its hidden treasure.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate?

Yes, Osho!

CHAPTER 8

What words cannot say...

3 October 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

HYAKUJO: THE EVEREST OF ZEN, WITH BASHO’S HAIKUS Discourse 8 Title: October, 03, 1988, PM

gautam the buddha auditorium, osho commune international, poona, india BELOVED OSHO

A MONK ASKED, ”ARE WORDS AND SPEECH ALSO MIND?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”WORDS AND SPEECH ARE CONCURRENT CAUSES; THEY ARE NOT

MIND.”

THE MONK CONTINUED, ”WHAT IS THIS MIND WHICH LIES BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH?”

”THERE is NO MIND BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH,” RESPONDED HYAKUJO.

THE MONK SAID, ”IF THERE IS NO MIND BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH, WHAT IS THAT

MIND IN REALITY?”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”MIND IS WITHOUT FORM AND CHARACTERISTICS. IT IS NEITHER BEYOND

NOR NOT BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH. IT IS FOREVER CLEAR AND STILL, AND CAN

PERFORM ITS FUNCTION FREELY AND WITHOUT HINDRANCE. THE PATRIARCH SAID, ‘IT IS

ONLY WHEN THE MIND IS SEEN TO BE UNREAL THAT THE DHARMA OF ALL MINDS CAN BE

TRULY UNDERSTOOD.’”

Maneesha, language has never been used the way Zen uses it – very symbolic, metaphoric, yet indicating to the ultimate reality. Its prose also is poetry. And while listening to these dialogues, you should not be listening only by the ears, your empty heart is needed to receive them. Only then have you welcomed them because they are not mere prose pieces, they are living hearts of great masters.

A MONK ASKED, ”ARE WORDS AND SPEECH ALSO MIND?”

HYAKUJO REPLIED, ”WORDS AND SPEECH ARE CONCURRENT CAUSES; THEY ARE NOT

MIND.”

‘Concurrent causes’ is a logical terminology. It means like the tracks of railway lines. The two rails run side by side for miles together, but they will never meet. They are so close but the distance remains always the same. Because of the distance remaining the same, the meeting is impossible.

They are concurrent causes. Mind and words and speech are concurrent causes. That is one of the most fundamental things about Zen. Nobody has said that before.

People have always thought that mind means word, speech, thoughts – but that is not true. They are very close, concurrent, so close that you can get the conception that they are one. But when you get deeper into meditation and leave the world of words and speech, you suddenly find there is an empty mind beyond them which is your real mind. To distinguish it, we call it the empty heart.

Either to call it no-mind, real-mind, empty heart... they are all synonymous. But ordinarily, you are so close to thinking, emotions, words, that you cannot conceive there is a sky beyond the clouds, that there is a full moon beyond the clouds. You will have to go beyond the clouds to see the moon.

THE MONK CONTINUED, ”WHAT IS THIS MIND WHICH LIES BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH?”

Now, anybody of some intelligence will not ask such a question. If anything lies beyond, AND

SPEECH, you cannot ask such a question. ”WHAT IS THIS MIND WHICH LIES BEYOND WORDS

AND SPEECH?” If it is beyond words and speech, how can it be answered?

”THERE IS NO MIND BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH,” RESPONDED HYAKUJO.

THE MONK SAID, ”IF THERE IS NO MIND BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH, WHAT IS THAT

MIND IN REALITY?”

He does not get the idea of the beyond.

HYAKUJO SAID, ”MIND IS WITHOUT FORM AND CHARACTERISTICS. IT IS NEITHER BEYOND

NOR NOT BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH. IT IS FOREVER CLEAR AND STILL AND CAN

PERFORM ITS FUNCTION FREELY AND WITHOUT HINDRANCE. THE PATRIARCH SAID, ‘IT

IS ONLY WHEN THE MIND IS SEEN TO BE UNREAL THAT THE DHARMA OF ALL MINDS CAN

BE TRULY UNDERSTOOD.’”

The whole dialogue is between two persons who cannot understand each other. The master, Hyakujo, is speaking as authentically as possible about something which cannot be spoken about.

Anybody in his place, a man like Ma Tzu, would have beaten the monk to give him a little glimpse beyond the mind.

When thoughts stop, when suddenly one hits you, the whole world is in a whirl. Thoughts stop and you are shocked. Even breathing stops: ”I was asking a relevant question and what kind of mad master is he? He hits me...” And before you have opened your mind, he hits you again.

Once Ma Tzu hit a person sixty-six times....

Because he was hit, he was shocked and still started opening his mouth. Again another hit... until he stopped opening his mouth, until he understood that this opening of the mouth is creating the whole trouble.

But Ma Tzu was a totally different master, very loving and very compassionate – he had the right to hit.

And as the man became silent, Ma Tzu closed his eyes, the man closed his eyes. Nothing was asked, nothing was said, and everything was understood.

Those sixty-six hits brought the man to the edge of the mind. He must have been an authentic seeker. He did not bother that his head might be broken... He did not care, but went on insisting for another hit until he found some glimpse that prevented him from speaking.

Seeing that he had found some glimpse, and was not going to speak, Ma Tzu closed his eyes. They sat for hours together in silence.

In that silence is the transfer, the transmission.

The man bowed down, touched the feet of Ma Tzu, and he said, ”If there were more people like you, so compassionate to hit sixty-six times, the world would have become enlightened.”

It was a totally different atmosphere where the hit was not thought to be an insult, it was thought to be a message. What words cannot say, the hit was saying. The hit was saying: ”Keep quiet. Be silent. Be utterly silent.” And the master goes on hitting. He is saying, ”Go on digging deeper and deeper. As I hit you from outside, you hit yourself inside until you reach the life source itself.”

Hyakujo depended more on simple dialogue. His contribution is that he did not behave like a mad Zen master, he behaved very normally. He has brought Zen from the mountains to the marketplace.

Naturally he has to behave according to the manners of the market. So the questions all are stupid.

Each question needs a good hit.

To answer, what Hyakujo has replied is that they are concurrent causes. They appear to be very close but they are not one. They can go separate ways; there is nothing to hinder them. Mind can remain empty without thoughts because thoughts are not intrinsically part, of the mind. They come and go; you know they go on coming and going. Your mind is simply a caravanserai in which they stay for a while.

In your whole life how many thoughts have passed in your mind? Exactly the same as the water that has passed down the Ganges. Every mind is concurrent with a flowing river of thoughts.

His answer is so clear that to ask him, ”WHAT IS THIS MIND WHICH LIES BEYOND WORDS

AND SPEECH?” is absolutely nonsense. He has said, ”It is not mind and there is no relationship between speech, and words, and mind.” They are two separate phenomena running together at close distance but never meeting. Because it is beyond mind and beyond words and speech, a man of understanding would not have asked, ”What is this mind...?” because any answer will be words and speech.

This mind cannot be spoken. This mind can be felt, this mind can be experienced. If the man had asked how to experience this mind which is beyond words and speech, just that simple difference would have made a great difference. That would have proved that the man is really a man of genius.

He understands that something that is beyond words and speech and you are not supposed to ask any question about what it is, because you are forcing the other person to bring something which is beyond speech into speech, beyond words into words.

But Hyakujo was very patient, had to be, because he is working in the marketplace not in a Zen monastery, not amongst authentic seekers but amongst casual inquirers. And one sometimes simply wonders and laughs....

I have been touring this country for thirty years or more. I have found people...

I was going to catch a train. The train stopped for only ten minutes and somebody was holding my hand and saying, ”Just tell me, what is TRUTH?”

I said, ”It will take a little time and I will miss my train. It is not something that I can give you right now. It will need a certain background within you, then only can I indicate to you what is truth. That cannot be done while my train is moving. Just let me go.”

I have found people on the streets. They will stop, they will say, ”We don’t have much time to meditate but can you just tell us in short what is meditation?” All over the world there are such people who are in a hurry and want the ultimate experience in their hurry, in their haste.

This man did not understand what had been said. If he had even been just a little intelligent, he would have stopped. His stopping may have given him a glimpse. But rather than stopping he asked, ”What is this mind which is beyond words and speech?” Hyakujo does not act the way he would have acted with a Zen seeker. This is just a curiositymonger. He answered him, ”THERE IS

NO MIND BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH.” What he is saying is that beyond words and speech there is no mind.

No-mind is the empty mind.

No-mind is the empty heart.

Nothing can be said about it more than this: that it is empty of what you call mind.

THE MONK SAID, ”IF THERE IS NO MIND BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH, WHAT IS THAT

MIND IN REALITY?”

Now, he goes on being more and more stupid. Everything has been answered. If he is really in search he will ask about how to get into this space you are talking about – what device, what method... But he is not asking about either method or device, he is trying to counter the master with another question:

”IF THERE IS NO MIND BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH, WHAT IS THAT MIND IN REALITY?”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”MIND IS WITHOUT FORM AND CHARACTERISTICS. IT IS NEITHER BEYOND

NOR NOT BEYOND WORDS AND SPEECH. IT IS FOREVER CLEAR AND STILL, AND CAN

PERFORM ITS FUNCTIONS CLEARLY AND WITHOUT HINDRANCE. THE PATRIARCH SAID, ‘IT

IS ONLY WHEN THE MIND IS SEEN TO BE UNREAL THAT THE DHARMA OF ALL MINDS CAN

BE TRULY UNDERSTOOD.’”

It must have been beyond the questioner, but Hyakujo did whatever is possible through language.

He said, ”Don’t ask about the reality of this mind. It is just a mirror that goes on reflecting all the attributes of existence. It is always clean. You have just never gone close to it.”

Hyakujo must have been in a great sadness seeing these people. I myself have talked to millions of people around the world. I used to talk to crowds of fifty thousand people or one hundred thousand people, and I knew that everything was going beyond their heads; they were just sitting there. To get out of the ocean of one thousand people... one hundred thousand people, they would be beaten:

”You are disturbing. Sit down.” I used to say to people ”If anybody stands up just pull him down.”

And people always enjoy such things...! So they always waited for somebody to get up, then it was a virtue to pull him down, hit him one or two slaps – there was no other way.

These people loved me, not because they understood what I was saying, but just because of the way I was saying it. They loved my presence but they were not seekers. They had just taken an opportunity.

Soon I became tired. It was utterly useless because they were listening with one ear, and from the other ear it was going out – that was the men! Women listen with both the ears, and everything goes out from their mouth. Just a little difference! Have you ever seen two women sitting silently together?

The world is so full of gossiping, and you are talking about meditation. It is so juicy to gossip about what is happening in the neighborhood. As far as meditation goes, there is enough time in old age, or even after death. Silently lying down in your grave you can meditate as much as you want.

But right now there is so much happening all around – somebody’s wife has escaped, somebody’s husband is cheating his wife....

Seeing the situation, that it is almost futile to talk to the crowd, I started gathering a few people. The only way was to drop speaking to the crowds. I would go to a mountain and I would inform people that whoever wanted to come to the mountain for ten days, or seven days, could come and be with me. Naturally, if somebody takes ten days out of his work, he has some interest, it cannot just be curiosity. If he leaves his wife and children and job for ten days, at least he shows a sign that he is not only curious but he really wants to know. That’s how the meditation camps began.

But soon I found that meditation camps began creating trouble for me. In Rajasthan, in their assembly, they decided that I should not be allowed into Rajasthan. I had been going to Mount Abu which is in Rajasthan. In Gujarat, at that time, Morarji Desai was the chief minister. He himself proposed to the assembly that my coming to Gujarat should be prohibited. I used to go to Bhavanagar, to Rajkot, to Jamnagar, to Dwarka – and there were a few very beautiful places for camps – Nargol... miles and miles of huge saru trees. The sun never reaches underneath them because on top they are so full of leaves, branches, and they grow very close. And by the side of the sea you can hear the sound of the sea waves and listen – sitting, not together, but scattered in the forest.

So it became a trouble that my camps should be stopped everywhere. Now, my camps were not doing any harm to anybody. And in my camps only people were coming who wanted to come.

Seeing this happening throughout the world, I have come to the conclusion there is no democracy anywhere.

Everywhere there is talk about democracy, freedom of speech, but it is all talk. The moment you find a man who has something to say, you immediately start stopping him. Yes, there is freedom of gossiping but there is no freedom to say the truth. You are free to lie as much as you can. Nobody will prevent you, no government will ever bother about you, but if you start talking about truth...

And even more dangerous is to give people a certain direction so they can move into their own realization. This is very dangerous to all the vested interests.

I had to remain in Poona and have dropped going anywhere – whoever wants to come here can come. This is my way of finding out the authentic seekers who are not interested in mental gymnastics, but are really dying to know what their life springs are – from where they are coming, to where they are going, what is their reality. They don’t want any verbal answer; they want an experience.

Hyakujo must have been very sad. I can say it out of my own experience. Thirty years simply wasted, because out of those crowds which I talked to around the country, rarely does anybody come here. Naturally, they have not heard me, they have not felt me, they have not seen that something absolutely important is possible even in their life. Just a little sense of direction has to be given to them.

Those who have been coming here in thousands, from all over the world, are a different category of people. They don’t belong to the crowds. They are seekers and searchers, and they are ready to risk their reputation. People are afraid to come here just to save their reputation. To be even associated with me, and they lose their social status. I am a dangerous man. They also become part of the great dangerousness. Nobody knows what the danger is.

Somebody once in a while dares to come in and is shocked why he has missed for so many years.

He may even be living in Poona, he may be passing the gate every day, but just to be associated is dangerous because these people in the Buddha Auditorium don’t belong to any religion, don’t belong to any nation, don’t belong to any stupid ideas of inequality. Here nobody is a man or a woman, nobody is rich or poor. Everybody is in the same boat making every effort to reach to the other shore.

And the other shore is not far away. It needs only a little meditativeness, a little silence. We are touching the other shore every night. It has to be touched many times before you become acquainted with the new space, the new world. Going to the other shore is not just going to the other shore, you will have to leave all that you are on this shore. Only the essential, vital life principle will go to the other shore. Slowly slowly one learns, and slowly slowly one gathers the eyes to see the beauty of the other shore – the tremendous splendor of which we are completely blind. It is so close that it makes me sad. It has always made the people who have reached the other shore very sad – sad about the people who don’t even think of the other shore. Even in their dreams they are dreaming stupid things.

A haiku by Basho:

THE PASSING DAYS AND MONTHS

ARE ETERNAL TRAVELERS IN TIME.

”The passing days and months are eternal travelers in time.”

Why did he write this haiku? Anybody who knows nothing of Zen will not be able to find any meaning in it, but for one who knows the context, the context is the witness.

This haiku is not saying just anything about the witness, but in fact it is saying everything about the witness. It is just like a mirror. Months and days and years are eternal travelers. They go on passing before us, but we are always here and now. We are not traveling. Our whole existence is here and now, always. It does not matter where your body is.

The haiku has meaning only for a meditator. Everything passes on. It is a caravan of stars, of days, of months, of years, of seasons, but you, you simply remain here, silently watching the whole procession.

This center that never moves is the center, not only of you, but of the whole existence. The whole existence is moving on this center. Knowing this, you settle. You have found your whole, you relax.

All desires disappear, all ambitions disappear. There is nowhere to go and there is nothing to be achieved. Everything is as it should be.

In the moment when you experience this – that everything is as it should be – you become a buddha.

This is what we call enlightenment.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU WON’T BREAK OUR HEARTS AND RETURN TO YOUR ROOM, NEVER TO VENTURE OUT

AGAIN, WILL YOU?

IT IS SELFISH OF ME, BUT I CONTINUE HOPING THAT WE CAN KEEP YOU WITH US –

THAT SARDARJI WILL KEEP LAUGHING AND AVIRBHAVA WILL KEEP SCREAMING; THAT THE

SUTRAS WILL BE JUICY ENOUGH, AND THAT THE QUESTIONS MAKE IT CLEAR THAT WE

VERY MUCH STILL NEED YOU HERE WITH US.

Maneesha, you are asking, ”You won’t break our hearts...” I will do. But not in the sense YOU mean.

I will break your hearts in my presence.

Your hearts are closed. Their doors have never been open for centuries. So much dust has gathered, so many cobwebs. I am going to break all that so that you can find the emptiness of your heart. But your idea is totally different. You say, ”You won’t break our hearts and return to your room, never to venture out again, will you?”

Unfortunately I cannot promise that. I would love to give you the promise, but you know I am a contradictory man, so my promise does not make any sense. I cannot promise you anything.

I will try my best to go on coming every day, and it is possible only now that such a promise even can be fulfilled, because I don’t think that the world is going to last more than twelve years. Seeing the stupidity of the politicians and the priests and the so-called leaders of the world, it seems to be absolutely certain that they will destroy this planet – they are bent upon it. Everything is being done with tremendous speed to destroy this planet. So perhaps twelve years are not too much. Avirbhava can wait on the gate. Sardar Gurudayal Singh can continue laughing.

This time, if you all get ripe, if you all can understand something beyond life and death, then we will all go together – with Avirbhava and all! And it will be really great fun. It is certain, if there is any hell, we are going to it. Avirbhava can scream, sitting on the bonnet of my Rolls Royce; Sardarji can be sitting behind, laughing, and the whole caravan can go and take over Hell because the Devil has ruled enough. It needs immediate revolution and change. If we cannot change this world, we will change some world anyway.

(AT THIS POINT THERE IS A MOMENT’S BLACKOUT)

The Devil became worried! One thing is certain that God never created electricity. In no scripture of any religion, is God supposed to have created electricity. Obviously, it is a creation of Devil. So, he gave us a signal: ”Don’t harass me; go the other way!” He would love that our caravan enters Heaven, but we are not interested in Heaven with all those dirty saints, old hippies... most of them naked, doing all kinds of distortions of the body. Somebody is standing on the head... and they all have become shrunken, just skeletons. They don’t have anything else to do except play on the harp and sing Hallelujiah. My people cannot do that for eternity.

You will not find a Gautam Buddha in Heaven, or a Ma Tzu, or a Hyakujo, or a Bertrand Russell, or a Jean-Paul Sartre, or Mozart, or Dostoevski. You will not find a single genius, a single artist, a single mystic – they are all in Hell. And they have made Hell so beautiful. And our people reaching there with joy and laughter – that is the only thing that is missing. What is the point of going to Heaven?

The real work is in Hell – to transform millions of people who have been forced there for eternity, for small things.

Bertrand Russell has written in his autobiography, ”I cannot understand the idea of Christianity that sinners will suffer for eternity in Hell.” How many sins can you commit to deserve a punishment for eternity? Even if every moment, day and night, you commit this sin and that sin... What are the sins? – drinking a cup of tea, smoking a cigarette, falling in love with a dangerous woman, very nice looking... Never go for the looks, the reality is always different. Great philosophers have been writing about appearance and reality.

Russell says, ”One day I counted how many sins I had committed, and I also counted the sins that I wanted to commit but the opportunities did not allow me. On both I could get at least four and a half years of jail from a very strict judge, but eternity is too much. And they say God is compassionate!”

All the great people of the world, creative in any direction, have been thrown in Hell. The stupid and idiotic saints who don’t know anything of creativity, who don’t know anything of meditation, whose whole art is how to torture themselves and others, these people are there, all sick and psychologically mad, in Heaven. I have always suspected that God himself must have changed his place to Hell! Living with these idiots and not one...

Strange people will drive anybody mad. You just think about the saints, what kinds of saints....

I saw one saint who had not taken any position other than standing for twelve years. His legs had become like elephant legs. His upper body had shrunk and become very small, and he was holding a bamboo. To keep him entertained, his disciples would go on singing day and night around him. I was passing by the road. Somebody told me that here there was a great saint, so I went to see him.

That man was torturing himself, and people were enjoying his torture.

I have seen saints dying through will. That means not eating for ninety days. Only after ninety days will your flesh be used up. You will remain just a skeleton. And they are worshipped by thousands of people.... These skeletons – their only quality is that they can torture themselves. There are from different parts of the world, different varieties.

Heaven must be a circus. Nobody who is sane can survive there. And the fence is so ancient that it is broken almost everywhere. I have never heard about anybody trespassing over the ancient fence from the side of Hell to the side of Heaven. Nobody wants to go to Heaven. Just to see from the outside, from the broken fence, is enough. So much stupidity is happening there. All the descriptions of Heaven are so rotten, so ugly.

So don’t be worried, Maneesha. Most probably the whole Buddha Auditorium will shoot directly, as a missile, towards Hell. Just cling to each other so nobody is left behind. And twelve years is not a long time. I can keep the promise.

Now, it is Anando’s time....

Little Albert’s mother cannot bring herself to tell the little boy that his dog, Laddy, has just been run over by a car and killed.

When Albert comes home from school she talks of other things for a few minutes, but finally, she says, ”Albert, listen. Laddy has been run over and killed by an automobile.”

”Oh!” says the boy, and goes out to play, whistling.

At dinner, Little Albert asks, ”Hey, Mom, where is Laddy?”

”Darling,” says his mother, ”I told you this afternoon: Laddy has been killed by a car.”

Suddenly, Albert bursts into tears.

”But Albert,” cries his mother, ”when I told you this afternoon, it did not seem to bother you.”

”No,” sniffs Albert, ”it didn’t – because I thought you said Daddy!”

Pope the Polack is giving High Mass in Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. The mass is coming to an end, and the Polack pope is leading the procession out into Saint Peter’s Square to bless the crowd.

Suddenly, as the cathedral clock strikes three, the big hand falls off the clock, sails through the air, and lands on the pope’s head with a resounding crack!

Pope the Polack falls senseless to the ground, and is rushed to the hospital suffering from concussion.

The next morning, throughout the world anxious Catholics wait to buy their morning newspapers to find out the latest news.

The Vatican News is first off the press, and carries the banner headline: POPE’S HEAD X-RAYED

REVEALS NOTHING!

Max Muldoon is walking in the Oregon hills, when it begins to snow and he goes to a nearby ranch house for shelter. There he meets Ed, the rancher, his pretty young wife and her daughter.

”You can stay here the night,” says Ed, ”but we have only got one bed. So we will have to sleep next to each other, head to toe.

”And I am warning you,” continues Ed, ”no funny business!” Then he waves a big six shooter at Max, and puts it under his pillow and falls asleep.

In the middle of the night, the daughter, who is lying next to Max, slides her hand up his leg and begins to fondle him.

Max points nervously to where the gun is hidden under Ed’s pillow.

”Don’t worry,” whispers the daughter, ”it is not loaded,” and she pulls Max onto her.

Later on, Ed’s wife, who has been watching this, points at the gun, and says softly, ”It is not loaded!”

And then she climbs over on top of Max.

Ed snores on peacefully.

A few minutes later, the daughter slides her hand up Max’s leg again.

Max points at his prick and says, ”It is not loaded!”

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

(Drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

Now, collect all your consciousness and look inwards, as deep as you can. Make the consciousness just like an arrow that goes to the target. The target is the center of your being.

To be at the being, to the very center of your life, you are also at the very center of the universe.

From this silence, from this nothingness, everything arises, all the flowers and all the stars and all the buddhas.

To be at this center is to have reached to the last milestone of a long journey of thousands of lives.

To be a buddha is the end of the road.

Finally, the buddha jumps beyond himself and disappears into the universal energy, and melts just like ice melts.

The evening has been so beautiful, and your being silent, sitting like buddhas has made it a great splendor.

To deepen the splendor...

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax, just witnessing your body, your mind and everything. You are just a mirror and nothing else.

Rejoice this silence.

Rejoice this intensity of peace.

Let your every fiber, every cell be filled with the life juice you have entered in.

Be completely soaked, drenched, so when you come back, you bring the buddha with you.

The buddha has to be in your actions, in your words, in your silences, in your speech.

Remember only one thing: you have been a buddha forever. It is not something new, but only a new revelation.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, but come back with the buddha deep in your empty heart, gracefully, silently.

Sit down, just for a few moments of recollection, remembering the path you have been, the space you entered, the tremendous experience of being a buddha. The remembrance should go on echoing in you around the clock.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Osho!

CHAPTER 9

The Buddha is your empty heart

4 October 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

ON ONE OCCASION, ISAN, GOHO AND UNGAN, WERE ALL STANDING TOGETHER IN

ATTENDANCE ON HYAKUJO.

HYAKUJO SAID TO ISAN, ”WITH YOUR MOUTH AND LIPS CLOSED, HOW WOULD YOU SAY

IT?”

ISAN SAID, ”I WOULD ASK YOU TO SAY IT.”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”I COULD SAY IT, BUT IF I DID SO, I FEAR I SHOULD HAVE NO SUCCESSORS.”

HYAKUJO TURNED TO GOHO. ”WITH YOUR MOUTH AND LIPS CLOSED, HOW WOULD YOU

SAY IT?” HE ASKED HIS SECOND DISCIPLE.

GOHO SAID, ”OSHO! YOU SHOULD SHUT UP!”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”IN THE DISTANT LAND WHERE NO ONE STIRS, I SHALL SHADE MY EYES

WITH MY HAND AND WATCH FOR YOU.”

THEN HYAKUJO ASKED UNGAN, ”WITH YOUR MOUTH AND LIPS CLOSED, HOW WOULD YOU

SAY IT?”

UNGAN SAID, ”OSHO, DO YOU HAVE THEM OR NOT?”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”MY SUCCESSORS WILL BE MISSING.”

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

ON ONE OCCASION, ISAN, GOHO AND UNGAN, WERE ALL STANDING TOGETHER IN

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

HYAKUJO SAID TO ISAN... This was the evening of his life, time to depart from the world. He was in search now for whom to transmit the light that he had carried his whole life. He asked Isan, ”WITH

YOUR MOUTH AND LIPS CLOSED, HOW WOULD YOU SAY IT?”

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

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

So when Hyakujo asked, ”WITH YOUR MOUTH AND LIPS CLOSED, HOW WOULD YOU SAY IT?”

Those who are not acquainted with the world of Zen, will be simply surprised, ”What are you asking, what is it! In the first place you are asking an impossible thing: ‘With your mouth and lips closed,’

and in the second place you are asking, ‘How would you say it?’ – two mysteries in one question.”

ISAN SAID, ”I WOULD ASK YOU TO SAY IT.” He challenged his masters: ”It is impossible, but I will give you a chance. If I cannot say it, I want you to say it. With your lips closed, with your mouth shut, say it.”

HYAKUJO SAID, ”I COULD SAY IT, BUT IF I DID SO, I FEAR I SHOULD HAVE NO SUCCESSORS.”

What he is saying is, ”If I have to say it, then you are not capable of being my successor. I can say it. Neither the lips are needed nor the mouth. Just a good hit and you will know it that I have said it.”

Ordinarily Hyakujo was not very much into hitting people. Perhaps this was the first time he had gone so far: ”My hit is going to be so great that perhaps you will fall dead. I won’t have any successors.

And even if you survive my hit, you would have disqualified yourself. You have not answered. Rather than answering my question, you have questioned me – and this is a test to choose a successor.”

HYAKUJO TURNED TO GOHO. ”WITH YOUR MOUTH AND LIPS CLOSED, HOW WOULD YOU

SAY IT?” HE ASKED HIS SECOND DISCIPLE.

GOHO SAID, ”OSHO! YOU SHOULD SHUT UP!”

It is a little better than the first answer from Isan: ”I would ask you to say it.” He is simply accepting his defeat, but hiding it in a circular way rather than saying, ”I cannot say it.” Even if he had remained silent without saying it, that would have been far better. But very stupidly he said, ”I WOULD ASK

YOU...” He was not the master and he was not going to choose his successor. Hyakujo was the master almost on the verge of death.

The second disciple Goho did a little better. GOHO SAID, ”OSHO!” Osho is a very honorable word.

There are many respectful words, but the sweetness of Osho, the love, the respect, the gratitude, all are together in it. It is just like Christians using ‘reverend’, but that is no comparison to it. Just the very sound of Osho – even if we don’t understand Japanese, the very sound is very sweet. He said,

”OSHO! YOU SHOULD SHUT UP!”

It looks very contradictory, on the one hand addressing him with the most honorable word in Japanese, and on the other hand telling him ”YOU SHOULD SHUT UP!” but that is how Zen is.

It is as sharp as a sword – it cuts hard and straight to the heart – and it is as soft as a lotus leaf. It is both together. It is not right for the disciple to say to the master, ”YOU SHOULD SHUT UP!” To avoid the disrespectfulness of his answer, he first addresses the master, Osho! Don’t misunderstand me.

I have great respect and love for you, but you are asking nonsense. You should shut up. At the moment of death, have you gone a little senile. Just shut up!

HYAKUJO SAID, ”IN THE DISTANT LAND WHERE NO ONE STIRS, I SHALL SHADE MY EYES

WITH MY HAND AND WATCH FOR YOU.”

Beautifully, he has rejected. He is not accepted as a successor because he has not answered the question. But yet he has been very careful. Although he has not answered, he has been very loving, honoring, grateful. Out of this gratitude and love he has earned a special virtue. Hyakujo says,

”IN THE DISTANT LAND...” Somewhere in the universe, if we meet sometime, WHERE NO ONE

STIRS – where everything is silent, utterly quiet – I SHALL SHADE MY EYES WITH MY HAND

AND WATCH FOR YOU. He is saying, ”You can be my companion, but you cannot be my successor.

Somewhere faraway in the distant future at some corner of the universe I will watch for you. You will reach to the goal. Of that I am certain.” But saying this he has rejected him as a successor. His answer was better than Isan’s answer.

THEN HYAKUJO ASKED UNGAN, ”WITH YOUR MOUTH AND LIPS CLOSED, HOW WOULD YOU

SAY IT?”

UNGAN SAID, ”OSHO, DO YOU HAVE THEM OR NOT?” It is a little better. With tremendous respect he says, ”Osho, what are you asking, do you have it already or not. If you have it, then what is the point of asking. And if you don’t have it, you will not understand it.” But this too is not the answer.

Although the second answer is better than the other, Hyakujo sadly said, ”MY SUCCESSORS WILL

BE MISSING.” I will not have any successor, it seems. You are all well versed, you are all great scholars, you have tremendous love and respect for me, but that is not enough for the successor.

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

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

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

A little biographical note:

ALL THAT IS KNOWN ABOUT HYAKUJO’S LAST DAYS IS THAT ONCE, WHEN HE WAS

GETTING RATHER OLD AND FEEBLE, HIS MONKS TRIED TO PERSUADE HIM NOT TO WORK, BUT THEIR WORDS HAD NO EFFECT ON HIM.

FEARING FOR HIS HEALTH, THEY FINALLY RESORTED TO HIDING HIS WORKING TOOLS

FROM HIM. BUT HYAKUJO REFUSED TO EAT, FOLLOWING HIS OWN PRECEPT OF: ”A DAY

WITHOUT WORK IS A DAY WITHOUT FOOD.” FINALLY, HIS MONKS RETURNED HIS TOOLS.

HYAKUJO DIED IN 814 AT THE AGE OF 90.

He did not choose anyone as a successor. He left it to the assembly to find out a successor. So the assembly of the sannyasins nominated a successor. This nomination is just like nominating a pope; he is not authentically a successor. And nobody even objects to the very idea of how unenlightened people can elect the successor of Jesus Christ, who is the representative of God.

Two hundred cardinals come to the Vatican when one pope dies. There is a special place for these two hundred cardinals – small caves in absolute secrecy. Everybody goes into a cave, different caves. Nobody is allowed to talk to each other, or confer with each other about whom to choose.

Twenty-four hours are given and everybody meditates. I don’t know how they meditate, because I have not come across any bishop or cardinal... I have met these people and none of them knows how to meditate.

What they call meditation is contemplation. They contemplate over who will be the right person out of two hundred. So they write down the name, and after twenty-four hours those names are collected. Whoever is chosen by the majority becomes the pope. Of all these two hundred cardinals none of them is enlightened, so it is simply a political election.

As for becoming a successor to a master, it cannot be an election, it can only be a transmission of the lamp. Only the master can choose. But it was a strange situation because the master refused to accept the most intimate three followers. This shows something special about Zen – that it will not choose anything less than the best.

I am reminded of another choosing of the successor by Bodhidharma....

He had four disciples who were very intimate to him. And all the other disciples thought it was almost certain that out of these four, one was going to become the successor.

At the time of departure, Bodhidharma was not dying, he was coming back to the Himalayas. He had gone to China because his master, a woman, had told him to take the message to China. So he traveled for three years to reach China. He remained there for fourteen years until he saw that, ”Now a few people are ripe and ready, and I can choose a successor and move back to the Himalayas.”

The Himalayas have attracted for centuries and centuries the mystical people. There is some quality of mystic atmosphere in the Himalayas. No other mountains in the world have that quality – the height, the eternal snow that has never melted, the silence that has never been broken, paths that have never been trodden. There are some similarities between the Himalayan peaks and the inner consciousness.

Bodhidharma said, ”Now I am old enough and sooner or later I will have to die. I don’t want to leave my footprints behind me. I want to disappear into the Himalayan snows without leaving a trace behind. And it is time that I should move, because it will take years to reach again to the deepest part of the Himalayas.” So he collected his disciples and the four disciples he called forth. Everybody knew that these four were the probable candidates.

He asked the first one, ”What is the essence of my teaching?”

The first man said, and very rightly, ”The essence of your teaching is meditation.” It is not a question of right and wrong, it is a question of depth and height. The answer is very flat. ”Your teaching is meditation.” Any idiot could have said that.

Bodhidharma said to him, ”Your answer to my question is right but not right enough. You have my skin, at the most. Just sit down.”

He asked the second, and he said, ”Your essence is to achieve buddhahood.”

The master said, ”You are right. Meditation finally leads to buddhahood. But that can be said even by a schoolchild. Those who have heard me for fourteen years, can easily say it. You have at the most my bones. Just sit down. You have gone a little deeper than the first. So you have my bones.”

He asked the third one and he said, ”Your essential teaching is to be silent.”

Bodhidharma said, ”It is better than the other two answers, but if my teaching is to be silent, why have you spoken? You are breaking my teaching yourself. You have my marrow” – the marrow is the inner side of the bones – ”but sit down.”

The fourth came forward with tears in his eyes, bowed down to the master, touched his feet, did not say a single word. Bodhidharma said, ”You have my very soul. You are my successor. Your tears have said what the others have missed. Your gratitude has said what the others have missed. Your silence has said what the others have missed.”

This man was chosen by the master as a successor. This is not an election. This is just finding out how deep the person has gone and whether he has realized truth or not. Only that way in Zen is the successor chosen. Just in some instances where the master has found that nobody is ripe enough

– then too it shows such a devotion to truth that he will not choose anybody – will he then leave it to the assembly. ”It is better that all together you find out who is going to be the successor. I am not going to commit the mistake of choosing an unenlightened person. You are at least free. You are unenlightened. What else can you do? You can choose an unenlightened person, very scholarly, learned, clever, a good speaker, a convincing logician. You can do that. But I cannot do something in my last moments of life for which I will be forever condemned by the buddhas.”

All these popes are elected people.

Just by the way, today Prarthana phoned from California. She goes on finding things for me. She was visiting a company which specializes in making bedcovers and pillowcovers. The manager asked her, ”For whom are you ordering these?”

And she said, ”For Osho.”

The man said, ”It is a strange coincidence that Osho and the pope will not agree on anything, but they both are my customers.”

He has the best customers around the world, Princess Diana... and he himself enjoyed the idea....

I have to tell Prarthana to find somebody else. I cannot sleep on those sheets on which this idiot pope.... There is no agreement between me and him on anything, not even on bedsheets.

Basho wrote the haiku:

ONLY THE SHELL

OF THE CICADA LEFT?

DID IT SING ITSELF OUT OF EXISTENCE?

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

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

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

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

You should be in a celebrating mood, in a thankful mood for all that the existence has done for you.

Go dancing and in that dancing death becomes a fiction. That dancing transforms even death into a new life, or into eternal life.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

BELOVED OSHO,

ARE THERE ANY OCCASIONS WHEN IT IS NECESSARY FOR DISCIPLES TO PROTECT THEIR

MASTER FROM HIMSELF?

Maneesha, in fact every day is the occasion to protect the master from himself for the simple reason he has attained whatever was possible to attain in life. Now he is lingering on this shore just for you.

As for himself, he has come to the dead end of the street. His life is just for those who love him.

There is nothing in the world that he longs for.

He may suffer old age, he may suffer sicknesses, just for the sake of the few who love him – that they should become ripe, that they should come to their ultimate flowering.

Every day the disciples have to protect the master against himself, because every moment the master feels: What is the point? – it is good to leave the body now. Just your love prevents him.

There is nothing else to prevent him. All the threads that were connected with life, all the strings that were keeping him attached to the body-mind structure are finished. His empty heart can only listen to your love. And as long as he can manage... because his body goes on becoming old faster than the ordinary body. The ordinary body follows a natural pattern. The enlightened man has got outside the natural pattern. He starts dying quickly.

Most of the enlightened people have died immediately after their enlightenment. Very rare people have survived enlightenment. It is such a shock – thousands of volts. That creates a great gap between consciousness and the body, and it becomes absolutely difficult to live. For the unenlightened it was very simple. There was not a problem at all. The body was too much attached with the soul. The enlightened person lives in a shell of a body – unattached. Any moment he can open his wings and say goodbye to you.

Your question is significant, Maneesha. The master’s whole existence is for those who love. If the people he loves let him down, then there is no need for him to go on unnecessarily suffering.

Because now the body is a suffering, now every moment it is a dragging. And it becomes more painful because he is capable of leaving all this suffering immediately – just close his eyes and go away. The disciple is responsible, immensely responsible to protect the master against himself.

Maneesha’s question may have made you sad, I have to change the subject.

It is Anando time....

Freddy Feinstein, a Jew from New York, is tired of all the high, fixed prices of clothes in America. A friend tells him that in India, bargaining is a way of life, so Freddy jumps on the next plane.

Two days later, he finds himself walking down M.G. Road in the pouring rain. His New York sneakers are soaking wet, so Freddy runs into a shoe shop to buy a new pair of shoes.

He is eager to try out his bargaining skills, so when Rajiv, the salesman, asks a hundred rupees for some shoes, Freddy immediately says, ”Fifty!”

”That’s impossible,” replies Rajiv.

”Fifty or nothing!” says Freddy, firmly.

So Rajiv consults the manager, who consults the owner, and then comes back and says, ”Okay, fifty.”

”No!” shouts Freddy. ”Twenty rupees!”

Again, Rajiv consults the manager who asks the owner.

”Okay, twenty,” says Rajiv, when he returns a few minutes later.

”No! Five!” shouts Freddy.

”Listen,” snaps Rajiv, getting irritated, ”just take the shoes and get out!”

”No!” shouts Freddy.

”No?” asks Rajiv, in surprise, ”you don’t want the shoes?”

”No!” says Freddy. ”I want two pairs!”

When a live sex show opens up in a small theater just outside the Vatican, Pope the Polack is furious.

He gets together Cardinal Catsass, and a flock of bishops, and they go to watch the show to see if it would be harmful for good Catholics to view it.

Coming out of the theater an hour later, Pope the Polack and his crew all agree that it is a terrible, filthy show, and completely unsuitable as entertainment for Catholics.

They are marching back to the Vatican, when suddenly Pope the Polack stops in his tracks.

”I have to go back!” he cries. ”I have forgotten my hat.”

”No you haven’t,” points out Cardinal Cats-ass, ”it is hanging in your lap!”

Sean O’Reilly is driving his horse and cart into town one morning with a load of potatoes, when he has a head-on collision with a truck.

Sean makes a claim for damages against the trucking company, for injuries to himself, his horse and cart, his dog and his load of potatoes. The whole claim amounts to a considerable sum of money.

But a few weeks later in the high court, when Sean is called to the witness stand, his case does not seem to be going too well.

”Isn’t it true,” says Simon Sharkfin, the opposing lawyer, ”that while you were lying on the ground at the scene of the accident, someone walked up to you and asked you how you were feeling, and you replied, ‘I’ve never felt better in my life.’”

”Yes,” replies Sean, ”I remember that.”

”Good,” says Sharkfin, ”I hope the jury takes note of it.”

Then Sean’s own lawyer comes over to Sean and says, ”Would you mind telling the court the circumstances you were in when you said, ‘I’ve never felt better in my life’?”

”Certainly,” replies Sean. ”I was lying there on the ground when a police car drives up and the deputy sheriff gets out. He tells me that my horse is screaming with pain and has two broken legs. He then takes out his gun, points it into the horse’s ear and finishes him off.

”He then tells me that my dog is whining with pain and has a broken back. So he sticks his gun into the dog’s ear and finishes him off.

”Then he turns to me and says, ‘Now, how are you feeling?’”

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

(Drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen. Now look inwards with your total consciousness and with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment.

Deeper and deeper... At the deepest is your center. This center joins you with the universal life.

And this center is called the buddha, because at this center one becomes so alert, so conscious, so awakened. The buddha is only a symbolic name.

This moment you are all buddhas. It is up to you to remain twenty-four hours a buddha, or take here and there a few holidays. But once you have known the beauty, and the joy, and the grandeur, and the splendor of being a buddha, you will not want to go back to the blind valleys, in darkness groping. At this moment you are the light.

To make it more clear, Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax.

Just be a witness of the body, of the mind and of everything. This witnessing is the only thing which is eternal in existence. Everything is changing. Just the reflecting witness remains here and now without any change. This is the very center of existence.

The evening was beautiful already, but by ten thousand buddhas witnessing, you have made it the richest evening possible.

Remember this silence when you come back. Don’t leave it behind. Bring as many flowers and as much fragrance and juice with you as possible. And take care of noting what is the way you reach to the center. The same is the way you come back to the circumference.

You have to become very acquainted with the path. It is a small path. Once you have become acquainted, you can go in, any moment, just as you go in the house and out of the house without any difficulty. This is your space, this is your home.

So blissful is the moment. So many flowers are showering on you. Let your whole life become the light, the awakening, the buddha.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Collect as much from your life source and come back slowly, gracefully and sit down like a buddha for few a moments remembering where you have been, remembering the path that you followed in and out. And keep this quietness, this beautiful grace in all your actions and gestures, in your words and in your silences.

The buddha is your empty heart.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9