Osho

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

Reflections on the Transformation of an Intellectual to Enlightenment Talks given from 15/07/87 am to 20/08/87 pm

English Discourse series

38 Chapters

Year published: 1987

Content

Prologue

2

1

Clear the mind

4

2

Insight

18

3

Power

34

4

Trust

49

5

Non-attainment

63

6

Innocence

73

7

The source

86

8

Delusion

97

9

Illusion

109

10 Clinging

117

11 Emptying

132

12 Non-duality

149

13 Nothingness

165

14 Clarity

175

15 Suchness

188

16 Before seeking

197

17 No goal

210

18 No guilt

220

19 Radiance

233

20 Affliction

244

21 Understanding

255

22 Witnessing

262

23 So very close

276

24 The inescapable

286

25 Two awakenings

295

26 Wordlessness

305

27 Just being

315

28 Mindlessness

327

29 Faith

335

30 Be thorough going

344

31 Release

353

32 Desirelessness

363

33 Serenity

371

34 Enlightenment

381

35 Discontinuity

390

36 Compassion

401

37 This moment

408

38 Transformation

420

Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

2

Prologue

PROLOGUE

From the Blue Cliff Record of Ta Hui's teacher, Yuan Wu: The teacher would not offer a word of explanation, but made Ta Hui express his own view. In every case Ta Hui completely comprehended the subtle meaning. The older master exclaimed, "You must be someone who's come again!"

Yuan Wu told Ta Hhui, "It wasn't easy for you to get to this stage -- too bad that having died, you are unable to come back to life. Without a doubt, words and phrases are a great disease, but haven't you seen the saying

HANGING FROM A CLIFF, LET GO --

AND AGREE TO ACCEPT THE EXPERIENCE.

AFTER ANNIHILATION, COME BACK TO LIFE --

I COULDN'T DECEIVE YOU."

Ta Hui was given a purple robe and the name "Buddha Sun" as a sign of imperial honor.

Emperor Hsiao Tsung bestowed the title "Ch'an master of great wisdom" from which the name of Ta Hui comes.

It was eleven sixty-three, on the ninth day of the eighth month, after showing signs of illness, when Ta Hui told the congregation of monks, nuns, and lay-people, "Tomorrow I'm going." Towards the pre-dawn hours, his attendant asked Ta Hui for a verse. In a serious voice Ta Hui said, "Without a verse, I couldn't die." He took up the brush and wrote: BIRTH IS THUS

DEATH IS THUS

VERSE OR NO VERSE

THAT'S THE FUSS?

then he let go of the writing brush and passed on.

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Clear the mind

15 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

CLEAR THE MIND (TO LI HSIEN-CH'EN)

BUDDHA SAID, IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE REALM OF BUDDHAHOOD, YOU

MUST MAKE YOUR MIND AS CLEAR AS EMPTY SPACE, AND LEAVE FALSE

THINKING AND ALL GRASPING FAR BEHIND, CAUSING YOUR MIND TO BE

UNOBSTRUCTED WHEREVER IT MAY TURN. THE REALM OF BUDDHAHOOD IS

NOT SOME EXTERNAL WORLD, WHERE THERE IS A FORMAL "BUDDHA": IT'S

THE REALM OF THE WISDOM OF A SELF-AWAKENED SAGE.

ONCE YOU ARE DETERMINED THAT YOU WANT TO KNOW THIS REALM, YOU DO NOT NEED ADORNMENT, CULTIVATION, OR REALIZATION TO ATTAIN

IT. YOU MUST CLEAR AWAY THE STAINS OF AFFLICTIONS FROM ALIEN

SENSATIONS THAT HAVE BEEN ON YOUR MIND SINCE BEGINNINGLESS TIME, SO THAT YOUR MIND IS AS BROAD AND OPEN AS EMPTY SPACE, DETACHED

FROM ALL THE CLINGING OF THE DISCRIMINATING INTELLECT, AND YOUR

FALSE, UNREAL, VAIN THOUGHTS TOO ARE LIKE EMPTY SPACE. THEN THIS

WONDROUS, EFFORTLESS MIND WILL BE UNIMPEDED WHEREVER IT GOES.

MINDLESSNESS (TO HUNG PO-CH'ONG)

AN ANCIENT WORTHY HAD A SAYING: "TO LOOK FOR THE OX, ONE MUST

SEEK OUT ITS TRACKS. TO STUDY THE PATH, SEEK OUT MINDLESSNESS.

WHERE THE TRACKS ARE, SO MUST THE OX BE." THE PATH OF MINDLESSNESS

IS EASY TO SEEK OUT. SO-CALLED MINDLESSNESS IS NOT BEING INERT AND

UNKNOWING LIKE EARTH, WOOD, TILE, OR STONE; IT MEANS THAT THE MIND

IS SETTLED AND IMPERTURBABLE WHEN IN CONTACT WITH SITUATIONS AND

MEETING CIRCUMSTANCES; THAT IT DOES NOT CLING TO ANYTHING, BUT IS

CLEAR IN ALL PLACES, WITHOUT HINDRANCE OR OBSTRUCTION; WITHOUT

BEING STAINED, YET WITHOUT DWELLING IN THE STAINLESSNESS; VIEWING

BODY AND MIND LIKE DREAMS OR ILLUSIONS, YET WITHOUT REMAINING IN

THE PERSPECTIVE OF DREAMS' AND ILLUSIONS' EMPTY NOTHINGNESS.

ONLY WHEN ONE ARRIVES AT A REALM LIKE THIS, CAN IT BE CALLED TRUE

MINDLESSNESS. NO, IT'S NOT LIP-SERVICE MINDLESSNESS: IF YOU HAVEN'T

ATTAINED TRUE MINDLESSNESS AND JUST GO BY THE VERBAL KIND, HOW IS

THIS DIFFERENT FROM THE PERVERTED CH'AN OF "SILENT ILLUMINATION"?

"JUST GET TO THE ROOT, DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE BRANCHES."

EMPTYING THIS MIND IS THE ROOT. ONCE YOU GET THE ROOT, THE

FUNDAMENTAL, THEN ALL KINDS OF LANGUAGE AND KNOWLEDGE AND ALL

YOUR DAILY ACTIVITIES AS YOU RESPOND TO PEOPLE AND ADAPT TO

CIRCUMSTANCES, THROUGH SO MANY UPSETS AND DOWNFALLS, WHETHER

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JOYOUS OR ANGRY, GOOD OR BAD, FAVORABLE OR ADVERSE -- THESE ARE

ALL TRIVIAL MATTERS, THE BRANCHES. IF YOU CAN BE SPONTANEOUSLY

AWARE AND KNOWING AS YOU ARE GOING ALONG WITH CIRCUMSTANCES, THEN THERE IS NEITHER LACK NOR EXCESS.

The great Zen teacher Ta Hui comes from the same lineage as Bodhidharma. He was born four hundred years after Bodhidharma had left for the Himalayas, to disappear into the eternal ice, the eternal silence there.

I have called Ta Hui the great Zen teacher -- not a master ... it has to be explained to you clearly. The master is one who is enlightened. but sometimes it happens that the master may be enlightened, but is not articulate enough to give expression to what he has known. That is a totally different art.

The teacher is not enlightened, but he is very articulate. He can say things which the master, although he knows, cannot bring to words. The teacher can say them, although he does not know.

The teacher he has heard ... he has lived with enlightened people, he has imbibed their energy, he has been showered by their flowers. He has tasted something transpiring from the enlightened ones, so he has a certainty that something like enlightenment happens, but he has no authority of his own; his authority is borrowed. And if the teacher is a genius, he can almost manage to express things over which masters have faltered, or they have remained silent.

The teacher has his own utility. He is more available to the people -- he belongs to the people. The master is on a high sunlit peak. Even if he shouts from there, only echoes reach to the people's ears. But the teacher lives amongst the people, knows their life, knows their language, knows how things should be expressed so they can understand. The master remains committed to his experience, while the teacher is more committed to the people, to spread the message.

Once in a while it happens that the master cannot express at all. For example, Ramakrishna was an enlightened man, but utterly uneducated, uncultured, knowing nothing of great literature, knowing nothing of what other enlightened people have said. He experienced the beauty of his inner being, but he was absolutely handicapped as far as conveying it to others. He had to take the support of a man, Vivekananda, who was not enlightened but was a great genius -- very intelligent, rational, logical, intellectual, well-versed, well-educated. He became the mouthpiece of Ramakrishna. He went around the world spreading his message.

Whatever exists today as Ramakrishna Mission, is completely the work of Vivekananda, but he himself died in utter agony. The agony was more intense because he had been spreading the good news of ecstasy, but inside he was empty. His whole message was only verbal, but he managed it so cleverly that many started thinking of him as enlightened.

The same thing happened with Ta Hui. When he was just sixteen years old he was so intelligent ... he left the world, and after one year of preparation he was initiated as a monk, when he was just seventeen. Then he went from master to master, seeking the right enlightened man who could show him the way.

He found his master in Yuan Wu. It seems almost the same situation: Yuan Wu knows, but cannot say it. Ta Hui does not know, but can say it. Just living with the master, imbibing Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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his energy, watching his grace -- the way he walks, the way he sits, the way he remains silent ...

Rarely, once in a while, Yuan Wu speaks a word or sentence. His statements are collected in a small book, BLUE CLIFF RECORD, but they are almost impossible to understand. They don't seem to be related to each other, relevant to each other; they look fragmentary. They don't create a system.

Even though his words were recorded in BLUE CLIFF RECORD, Yuan Wu never addressed the people. On the contrary, he simply asked Ta Hui just to look into the BLUE

CLIFF RECORD and express his opinion, say what he thinks of them. He was not certain that he had been able to say what he wanted to say, and whether what he had said conveyed anything or was just a futile exercise. In every case Ta Hui completely comprehended the subtle meaning.

THE OLDER MASTER EXCLAIMED, "YOU MUST BE SOMEONE WHO HAS

COME AGAIN!"

By saying this he is saying, "You must have been born almost enlightened, just a little bit is missing; perhaps you may be able to manage it in this life. But you have understood my expressions perfectly well." This was his seal, when he said "You must be someone who has come again!" -- you cannot be new. You have been on the path for a long, long time; although you have not achieved the ultimate end, you are very close.

But the master could not be deceived just by Ta Hui's understanding of the words, which any intelligent man of great talent like Ta Hui could have done. Yuan Wu again said to Ta Hui, "It was not easy for you to get to this stage" -- you have struggled hard -- "Too bad that having died, you are unable to come back to life." This will be clear to you if I refer to Jesus who says, "Unless you are born again, you will not understand the truth."

There are two parts of the path. The first part is to let your ego die. It is strenuous, arduous, difficult, because you know only your ego, you don't know your authentic self. You are jumping into an abyss, not knowing whether you will survive or not; THAT Ta Hui has done.

But the second part -- of resurrection, of giving birth to your new individuality, or your authentic being -- has not happened.

"IT WAS NOT EASY FOR YOU TO GET TO THIS STAGE -- TOO BAD THAT

HAVING DIED," died as an ego, "YOU ARE UNABLE TO COME BACK TO LIFE.

WITHOUT A DOUBT, WORDS AND PHRASES ARE A GREAT DISEASE, BUT

HAVEN'T YOU SEEN THE SAYING"

-- and it is a beautiful statement from the master:

HANGING FROM A CLIFF, LET GO --

AND AGREE TO ACCEPT THE EXPERIENCE.

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That is the most important part in it: hanging from a cliff, let go.

That is accepting death of the ego. But don't do it with effort, with tension. Don't do it to achieve anything based on greed or ambition; just do it simply to discover your real self. The right way of doing is ... agree to accept the experience.

Yuan Wu tells Ta Hui: You have not agreed to accept the experience, so only the first half is complete. The ego has died and has left you in a limbo, because you have not been absolutely total in your let-go. Let-go you managed -- but it was a managed let-go, it was not a spontaneous acceptance. You have not enjoyed the let-go. If you had enjoyed, then: AFTER ANNIHILATION, COME BACK TO LIFE --

I COULD NOT DECEIVE YOU.

He was a man of few words. It is unfortunate ... very rarely a few people become enlightened, but out of those few the major part never say anything. The few who say anything say only fragments, and in a language ... unless you are enlightened it will not be possible to comprehend their meaning. And a few never say a single word. They don't leave any trace on the sands of this bank, of this shore; they simply disappear into the other shore.

Ta Hui, hearing this saying from the master Yuan Wu, hanging from a cliff, let-go -- and agree to accept the experience ... If you can manage this falling into the abyss as a celebration, with a joyful heart, then after annihilation, come back to life -- then there is no problem: you will come back to life. In fact, what you used to think of as life was not life; now you will come to the eternal life. But the bridge between the two is total acceptance.

Yuan Wu must have seen in the eyes of Ta Hui some doubt, some question mark. That's why he adds, "I could not deceive you."

Ta Hui remained with Master Yuan Wu; he fell in love with the master. When the master could even see in his mind just a little doubt, and had to say, "I could not deceive you," it was clear that he had come to the right man, who could look into his very being and could say in exact words what had happened to him. Half of his journey was over, but because he had not been in a total accepting mood, the half had been incomplete ..."Now accept totally, and resurrection will happen on its own."

Naturally Ta Hui would have doubted; that is the nature of intellect, to doubt, and he was a very intelligent man, young, fresh, and belonging to the genius category. He must have realized that the master had even seen the unexpressed doubt in his mind, and that is why he is saying, "I could not deceive you."

He remained with the master. Listening to the master, imbibing his spirit, his presence, slowly, slowly he became very articulate, although enlightenment perhaps was still far away ...

And it became even farther away, because he started receiving honors from the people -- even from the emperor, from the government -- as a realized man. These are very dangerous things.

When you are not realized and the government recognizes you, and great honors are conferred on you, you can get into a deluded state about yourself. You can start thinking, "Perhaps I am enlightened."

Two things can do this. One: he has learned in moving from master to master everything that Zen teaching is. So if you listen only to his words, it is very difficult for you to find that Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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he is not enlightened. Unless you are enlightened, you will not be able to see the flaws, the small gaps, which are bound to be there because it is not his own experience; it is simply clippings from other masters that he has collected -- collected with tremendous intelligence.

He almost deceived the Imperial Power. They honored him as the "Buddha Sun," as the "Sun of Enlightenment."

EMPEROR HSIAO TSUNG BESTOWED THE TITLE "CH'AN MASTER OF GREAT

WISDOM" FROM WHICH THE NAME TA HUI COMES.

Ta Hui means the "Great Master of Wisdom."

Only at the last moment it seems he attained enlightenment, just before he died, but then he did not say anything except a small verse. So I have called him "The Great Teacher" -- and he was certainly a great teacher. He influenced millions of people; he was a great leader in the sense that anybody who came in contact with him was immediately intellectually convinced.

But he had no presence, and he had no inner silence. It seems that only at the last moment he attained the goal, he completed the journey.

IT WAS ELEVEN SIXTY-THREE, ON THE NINTH DAY OF THE EIGHTH MONTH, AFTER SHOWING SIGNS OF ILLNESS, WHEN TA HUI TOLD THE CONGREGATION

OF MONKS, NUNS, AND LAY PEOPLE, "TOMORROW I AM GOING."

That is the first indication that he knows when he is going to die. The second ... towards the pre-dawn hours, his attendant asked Ta Hui for a verse. That is an old tradition in China: when a great master dies, as his last statement, his last gift to the world, people ask him to write a verse.

IN A SERIOUS VOICE TA HUI SAID, "WITHOUT A VERSE, I COULD NOT DIE."

HE TOOK UP THE BRUSH, AND WROTE:

BIRTH IS THUS

DEATH IS THUS

VERSE OR NO VERSE

WHAT'S THE FUSS?

This is the whole idea of Gautam Buddha's philosophy of suchness condensed. Birth is thus ... thusness or suchness mean exactly the same. There is no reason to think why it is: it is there.

BIRTH IS THUS

DEATH IS THUS ...

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There is no reason why you are dying. A tremendous acceptability is part of the philosophy of thusness, or suchness. Everything that happens, the man of understanding simply accepts it

-- this is how things are, this is how nature functions. There is no complaint, there is no grudge.

BIRTH IS THUS

DEATH IS THUS

VERSE OR NO VERSE

WHAT'S THE FUSS?

THEN HE LET GO OF THE WRITING BRUSH AND PASSED ON.

Perhaps in this moment, when he was writing this verse, he completed his journey.

The discourses that are going to follow were given when he was not enlightened, but he was very clear in explaining everything to the ordinary people. He moved amongst laymen, he talked to the ordinary people, and he talked in a way that they could understand. His whole approach was that the great masters are not available to the people; they are available only to very intimate disciples, or perhaps only to the devotees -- who will take care of the millions?

So he started moving amongst the people, and the people were rejoicing; that's why the emperor honored him as a great master, as a sun of awareness.

Masters don't move, they don't go to the people; they know the gap between them and the ordinary people is too big, almost unbridgeable. Unless somebody comes close to the master on his own accord, there is no way for the master to penetrate his being.

But Ta Hui was not a master, he was a very articulate teacher. He was not talking Zen; he was talking about Zen. All that he had gathered ... and he had gathered really very consistently, very logically. Only once in a while will I tell you that he has committed a mistake -- which is natural, because he has nothing inside himself to compare it with. He has no criterion except his intelligence, his logic, his reason. But enlightenment is beyond your mind, beyond your rationality, beyond your intellect. That ultimate criterion is not within him.

But he is certainly of immense cleverness, although blind; he has not seen the light. He describes the light as if he is a man who has eyes. He has only heard people who have eyes.

But he has collected every piece of information in a very systematic way. So remember this: he is a teacher, not a master. And I make an absolute distinction.

A teacher is one who transfers knowledge which he has collected, borrowed from others.

He can be very articulate. If you face a master and a teacher perhaps you may choose the teacher, because he will be more appealing to your intellect and mind.

The master will look a little crazy. He will be jumping from one point to another point without creating a systematic philosophy. But the master has the real treasure, the teacher has only heard about it. The teacher is poor, howsoever clever.

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The sutras:

BUDDHA SAID, IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE REALM OF BUDDHAHOOD, the world of ultimate awareness, YOU MUST MAKE YOUR MIND AS CLEAR AS EMPTY

SPACE.

It is another way of saying that you should move beyond mind into a state of no-mind, because there is no such thing as empty mind. That's why I say such flaws will be there.

Empty mind? Empty space? A man of enlightenment would have simply said, "You should move beyond mind to no-mind."

There is a very famous book by a rabbi, Joshua Liebman. It has sold millions of copies in many languages. It is a beautiful piece of work; the name of the book is PEACE OF MIND.

Naturally, everybody wants peace of mind.

I wrote a letter in 1950 to him, saying "Your very title shows that you don't know anything about meditation. Peace of mind is a contradiction in terms: when mind is there, peace cannot be; and if peace is there, then mind cannot be. They cannot both be there together." In fact, mind is your anxiety, your anguish, your tensions, your thoughts, your emotions, sentiments, moods, ups and downs -- everything is mind. Peace is possible only if you go beyond mind.

So I told him, "If you are really sincere, in the next edition you should change the title.

Peace is equal to no-mind." I had made it so clear in many ways to him. But this is the situation of our intellectuals -- he never replied, because there was nothing to reply. He must have seen that what I am saying is a fact.

But I can forgive Joshua Liebman because he knows nothing of Eastern meditation. He is an American Jew, and meditation is simply a strange phenomenon to them. Peace of mind? ...

Perhaps my letter was the only one that had objected to the title. I said, "When the title is wrong I cannot read the book, because I know perfectly well that when a man writes a book and even the title is wrong, his book is worthless. If you ever change the title ... but just the change of title won't do -- you will have to change the whole book according to the title."

AND LEAVE FALSE THINKING AND ALL GRASPING FAR BEHIND ...

Now he is saying exactly what I mean by no-mind, but no-mind would not have been conceivable for him. He is a mind, and everything that he has understood is through mind.

And the people who are listening to him are able to make a bridge between his understanding and their understanding because all are minds. A mind can talk to another mind very easily.

So he has collected these words, empty space, and Leave false thinking and all grasping far behind. But I would like to make you aware how even the most intelligent people can fall into traps. He is saying, leave false thinking -- what about right thinking? A man of enlightenment will simply say, "leave all thinking." Thinking as such is a problem -- either false or not. Mind can conceive that that which is wrong can be left, and that which is good can be kept. But you cannot divide the wrong from the right. They are two sides of the same coin, and you cannot have a coin with only one side; the other side will be there.

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If you protect right thinking -- whatever you think is right -- underneath will remain wrong thinking. If you try "love" ... of course love is not wrong thinking; it is one of the most beautiful emotions, and the thought of love is one of the great thoughts. But just behind love there will be hate hiding, and love can change into hate anytime. Right thinking can become wrong thinking anytime.

If it had been his own experience, he would not have said, leave false thinking and all grasping far behind; he would have said, leave all thinking and all grasping far behind, causing your mind to be unobstructed wherever it may turn.

But these are the qualities of no-mind.

THE REALM OF BUDDHAHOOD IS NOT SOME EXTERNAL WORLD WHERE

THERE IS A FORMAL "BUDDHA": IT IS THE REALM OF THE WISDOM OF A SELF-AWAKENED SAGE.

He has collected the right words.

Once you are determined ... In Sanskrit and in Hindustani, the word which has been translated as "determined" is far deeper and more significant. The word is nishchaya.

'Determined' has a quality of stubbornness, adamantness. It has a quality of something that belongs to the ego, such as, "I am determined to do it." The word nishchaya does not have all these connotations.

Nishchaya is a very beautiful word. It means when you come to the master, just his presence, his fragrance, his eyes, his gestures, his words, his silence give you a tremendous trust within. It is not your determination; it is the deep impact of the enlightened man in your heart.

Instead of saying 'determined,' I would like to say that once you are in trust, in nishchaya, no doubt arises. All doubts have disappeared; you feel completely at ease.

This nishchaya -- that you want to know this realm -- is bound to create in you a longing, not a desire. These words may mean the same in the dictionaries, but in actual existence they are so far apart. When you have attained to nishchaya -- "This is the man to whom I belong, this is the man whom I have been searching for lives. These are the eyes I have seen in the silences of my heart, this is the face I have been looking for in so many, many ways in so many lives" ... suddenly a nishchaya, a trust which knows no doubt. It is not a belief; belief is always about doctrines. Trust is always about persons.

It is not what the master is saying that you believe; it is what the master is that creates a nishchaya, a trust in you. And that trust will start growing into a deep longing -- you would also like to enter into the same world of awareness, into the same world of blissfulness, into the same paradise where your master is.

YOU DO NOT NEED ADORNMENT, CULTIVATION, OR REALIZATION TO

ATTAIN IT

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... your longing will just go on becoming deeper and deeper and deeper. You will be waiting with tremendous love. You will not demand of existence, "Give me this state,"

because any demand on existence is ugly. You will simply wait; you will not even pray. You will simply feel thirsty, and existence is compassionate enough. You cannot dominate it, but if you are simply thirsty, you will find existence fulfills your longing.

He has at least heard well!

YOU DO NOT NEED ADORNMENT, CULTIVATION, OR REALIZATION TO

ATTAIN IT. YOU MUST CLEAR AWAY THE STAINS OF AFFLICTIONS FROM ALIEN

SENSATIONS THAT HAVE BEEN ON YOUR MIND SINCE BEGINNINGLESS TIME, SO THAT YOUR MIND IS AS BROAD AND OPEN AS EMPTY SPACE ...

You can see the discrepancy! If you say that your mind is as open as empty space, it is no longer mind. It is as if you are saying, "When your fire is as cold as ice" -- then why call it fire? Just calling it ice will be the right thing! But for an intellectual it is difficult; he is simply collecting opinions. And nobody is going to raise a question, because they don't know that he is committing a mistake either.

... SO THAT YOUR MIND IS AS BROAD AND OPEN AS EMPTY SPACE ...

How much space is there? Do you know? The whole universe is empty space. The mind does not have the capacity to be so broad.

... DETACHED FROM ALL THE CLINGING OF THE DISCRIMINATING

INTELLECT, AND YOUR FALSE, UNREAL, VAIN THOUGHTS TOO ARE LIKE

EMPTY SPACE.

But he goes on making the distinction that you should keep your good thoughts.

In a state of absolute silence and peace there are no good thoughts, no bad thoughts.

Thoughts as such are a disturbance, whether they are good or bad. The sinner may be having bad thoughts in his mind, and the saint may be having good thoughts in his mind, but both are in the mind. There is no qualitative difference between them.

The true sage, the buddha, has no mind at all.

He lives without mind, he acts without mind.

It comes from his very innermost being; hence, it has a quality, a freshness, a great splendor. Thoughts are always dusty and old. The sage always acts afresh, not out of any old thoughts; he responds to the situation moment to moment. There is no need for him to think. It is almost like a blind man: if he wants to go out of this auditorium, he will have to ask,

"Where is the way?" And then, with his walking stick, he will find the way and go out. But you never even think about it when you want to go out; you simply see the way out and you go. There is no thinking involved in it, and certainly no walking stick.

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I have heard about a blind man whose eyes were operated upon. He had come with his walking stick, and after a few days the doctor opened the bandage on his eyes and told him,

"Now, slowly, slowly open your eyes. Your eyes are perfectly good; now you can see."

He was amazed at what he had been missing, all the colors, the sun, the moon, the stars, people's faces -- everything he had been missing. He thanked the doctor, but out of old habit he took his walking stick. The doctor said, "What are you taking that walking stick for? Leave it."

But he said, "Without it how am I going to find my way?"

The doctor said, "You are an idiot. Now you have eyes, there is no need to find the way; the way will be clear to you. Just put that walking stick on that pile."

There were many walking sticks. All the people he had cured had come with their walking sticks, and he had been collecting them as souvenirs, showing how many people he had cured.

And he said, "It is not only you! Every blind man, when I cure his eyes, immediately picks up his walking stick to start going out."

Unconscious habit ... too long he has had the walking stick; he cannot believe that life is possible without it.

The same is the situation of all who have lived with the mind for millions of lives. That has been their guide, whatever they wanted to do. It is inconceivable for the mind that you can live even for a single moment without it. But it is just a walking stick for a blind man.

There is far more consciousness beyond the mind -- so broad, so spacious, so silent that you need not think. It simply goes on responding. In the mind you have to think what to do and what not to do. It is always a question of either/or.

The moment you are beyond mind there is no question of either/or. You simply know what has to be done and you do it, and there is no repentance, ever. You never look back, you never feel that you have done something wrong -- you cannot do wrong.

These are the reasons why I have not called Ta Hui the great Master. I am simply calling him a great teacher; perhaps at the last moment he became enlightened -- but at the last moment. These teachings were given before it.

THEN THIS WONDROUS EFFORTLESS MIND WILL BE UNIMPEDED

WHEREVER IT GOES.

He goes on using the word "mind" for "no-mind." Because he has been collecting, and he has no inner criterion, you will come across many contradictions. In the second sutra, which is called mindlessness ... now what has happened to the mind that he was talking about in the first sutra?

AN ANCIENT WORTHY HAD A SAYING: "TO LOOK FOR THE OX, ONE MUST

SEEK OUT ITS TRACKS. TO STUDY THE PATH, SEEK OUT MINDLESSNESS.

WHERE THE TRACKS ARE, SO MUST THE OX BE."

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The ox is an old symbol in Zen tradition for the lost soul, the lost self that you have forgotten all about. Mindlessness will show you the path, will indicate to you the soul; it will become an arrow, and you have simply to follow without any tension, without any effort.

THE PATH OF MINDLESSNESS IS EASY TO SEEK OUT. SO-CALLED

MINDLESSNESS IS NOT BEING INERT AND UNKNOWING LIKE EARTH, WOOD, TILE, OR STONE; IT MEANS THAT THE MIND IS SETTLED

... Again he starts using the word "mind." This is the trouble with a teacher.

IT MEANS THAT THE MIND IS SETTLED AND IMPERTURBABLE WHEN IN

CONTACT WITH SITUATIONS AND MEETING CIRCUMSTANCES; THAT IT DOES

NOT CLING TO ANYTHING, BUT IS CLEAR IN ALL PLACES, WITHOUT

HINDRANCE OR OBSTRUCTION; WITHOUT BEING STAINED

... but it is still there. Then why did he start calling the sutra mindlessness? The mind again comes in. It is settled, but that which is settled can be unsettled any moment. It is imperturbable, but that which is imperturbable can be perturbed.

That it does not cling to anything ... but it is there. And clinging is an old habit; it can start clinging tomorrow, if not today. It can fall back.

... BUT IS CLEAR IN ALL PLACES WITHOUT HINDRANCE OR OBSTRUCTION; WITHOUT BEING STAINED.

If it is there, there is every possibility of its being stained. Mindlessness is the right word to explain pure space, without any possibility of falling back.

... YET WITHOUT DWELLING IN THE STAINLESSNESS; VIEWING BODY AND

MIND LIKE DREAMS OR ILLUSIONS ...

You can see his mind continuously wavering, because all these statements he must have collected from different people. Some may have been enlightened, some may have been just teachers, some may have been just learned people. He has made a good collection -- but I can see that there are inconsistencies in it, because I have a criterion within me.

VIEWING BODY AND MIND LIKE DREAMS OR ILLUSIONS ...

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If mind and body are illusions, then what is the need of making them broad, making them spacious, making them non-clinging? If they are like dreams or illusions, just wake up and they are finished. That wakefulness is mindlessness.

... YET WITHOUT REMAINING IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF DREAMS' AND

ILLUSIONS' EMPTY NOTHINGNESS. ONLY WHEN ONE ARRIVES AT A REALM

LIKE THIS CAN IT BE CALLED TRUE MINDLESSNESS.

He is utterly messed up! He may have been helpful in bringing people to the masters, but he himself is not yet clear on what he is saying.

NO, IT IS NOT LIP-SERVICE MINDLESSNESS: IF YOU HAVE NOT ATTAINED

TRUE MINDLESSNESS AND JUST GO BY THE VERBAL KIND -- and that's what he is doing -- HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM THE PERVERTED CH'AN OF "SILENT

ILLUMINATION"?

These people commit many mistakes because of their attachment to a certain school. Now, he is attached to a certain school -- Mahayana also has different sects. First Buddhism was divided into two sects, Mahayana and Hinayana; then they started dividing into different sects.

In all, there are now thirty-six sects. A man of unenlightenment is continuously trying to defend, to criticize, the other sects.

In China there has been a sect called "The Sect of Silent Illumination." I don't see that there is any problem -- all illumination happens in silence. Silence is the illumination. But people fight over words: because they don't call it enlightenment, they call it illumination, that has created a rift. But you can understand very easily that both words mean the same.

'Illumination' or 'enlightenment' -- both are simply declaring that darkness has disappeared.

What you choose to call it is immaterial.

"Just get to the root, don't worry about the branches" -- he must have got this from an enlightened master. "Just get to the root, don't worry about the branches," because once you have cut the root, the whole tree will wither away. But just cutting the branches is not going to help; the foliage may become, on the contrary, thicker.

EMPTYING THIS MIND IS THE ROOT.

Not just emptying ... in the first place, there is no way to empty the mind. You don't have any control over your mind. It goes on in its own way, filled with dreams and thoughts and emotions and feelings and reactions, sadnesses, happinesses -- there is no way to empty it.

How are you going to empty it? From one side you will be emptying it, and from the other side a great flow will go on coming in. The only way to empty it is to go beyond it -- to become awareness.

Watch the mind, and the mind disappears.

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ONCE YOU GET THE ROOT, THE FUNDAMENTAL, THEN ALL KINDS OF

LANGUAGE AND KNOWLEDGE AND ALL YOUR DAILY ACTIVITIES AS YOU

RESPOND TO PEOPLE AND ADAPT TO CIRCUMSTANCES, THROUGH SO MANY

UPSETS AND DOWNFALLS, WHETHER JOYOUS OR ANGRY, GOOD OR BAD, FAVORABLE OR ADVERSE -- THESE ARE ALL TRIVIAL MATTERS, THE

BRANCHES. IF YOU CAN BE SPONTANEOUSLY AWARE AND KNOWING AS YOU

ARE GOING ALONG WITH CIRCUMSTANCES, THEN THERE IS NEITHER LACK

NOR EXCESS.

That is one of the most important experiences of Gautam Buddha. He says that if you are just in the middle of any two polar opposites -- find exactly the middle, neither lack nor excess

-- if you are exactly in the middle, you will go beyond.

The middle is the beyond.

If you go to the extreme, then you will start clinging to it; from the extreme you cannot go beyond.

That was a great contribution to spiritual science and to humanity, that the middle is the beyond. Just keep yourself balanced in the middle, and suddenly you will see you have gone above both the extremes -- neither good nor bad, neither ordinary nor extraordinary, neither knowledgeable nor ignorant.

This beyondness is his nirvana. Just to think about it you will feel an immense peace. Just visualize it and you will feel a great silence descending on you. And this is only visualization

-- what will happen in actuality if you come to the middle? You cannot conceive the ecstasy of it, the blissfulness of it, the benediction of it.

I have chosen Ta Hui to help you understand the difference between the teacher and the master, because many religions have lost their masters. For example, Jainism in India has had no masters, no enlightened persons at all, for centuries -- only teachers.

Without an enlightened being, the religion loses its soul. It is only the small stream of enlightened people that keeps the religion breathing and its heart beating, that keeps it alive, flowering.

And one enlightened person is not just a singular phenomenon; he spreads his illumination all around. Wherever he is, he carries a certain energy field, and whoever is receptive will be pulled into the energy field. The teacher has no energy field. He is just repeating mechanically like a parrot.

But Ta Hui was certainly a great teacher, because he collected ... he went to dozens of enlightened masters. He was so young when he was initiated into monkhood, and he gathered like a bee gathers honey from thousands of flowers. So on the one hand he is very rich; he has brought so much honey from different flowers. But on the other hand he is very poor; he has not contributed anything from his own being. But I am happy that at least in the end, at the very end of his life, he became enlightened. His small verse is certainly of great beauty: Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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BIRTH IS THUS -- just a happening in a dream.

DEATH IS THUS -- just a happening in a dream.

VERSE OR NO VERSE

WHAT IS THE FUSS?

He has entered into a realm of ultimate serenity and silence. It does not matter whether it is life or death. It does not matter whether he is following the tradition of writing a verse, or not writing it.

Then he just let go of the writing brush and passed on ...passed on into eternal existence. It does not matter when you become enlightened. Even if you become enlightened at the last breath of your life, it is perfectly good. You have not lost anything. You will see the whole life that you have lived as a dream.

And the moment you can see your whole life as a dream, it has lost all its impact on you.

You have become totally free -- free from all bondage of the body and the mind, free from all limitations. You are ready to enter into the limitless consciousness of existence itself.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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2

Insight

15 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

TEND THE OX

SINCE YOU'RE STUDYING THIS PATH, THEN AT ALL TIMES -- IN YOUR

ENCOUNTERS WITH PEOPLE AND RESPONSES TO CIRCUMSTANCES -- YOU

MUST NOT LET WRONG THOUGHTS CONTINUE. IF YOU CANNOT SEE THROUGH

THEM, THEN THE MOMENT A WRONG THOUGHT COMES UP YOU SHOULD

QUICKLY CONCENTRATE YOUR MENTAL ENERGY TO PULL YOURSELF AWAY.

IF YOU ALWAYS FOLLOW THOSE THOUGHTS AND LET THEM CONTINUE

WITHOUT A BREAK, NOT ONLY DOES THIS OBSTRUCT THE PATH, BUT IT

MAKES YOU OUT TO BE A MAN WITHOUT WISDOM.

IN THE OLD DAYS KUEI SHAN ASKED LAZY AN, "WHAT WORK DO YOU DO

DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF THE DAY?"

AN SAID, "I TEND AN OX."

KUEI SHAN SAID, "HOW DO YOU TEND IT?"

AN SAID, "WHENEVER IT GETS INTO THE GRASS, I PULL IT BACK BY THE

NOSE."

KUEI SHAN SAID, "YOU'RE REALLY TENDING THE OX!"

PEOPLE WHO STUDY THE PATH, IN CONTROLLING WRONG THOUGHTS, SHOULD BE LIKE LAZY AN TENDING HIS OX; THEN GRADUALLY A WHOLESOME RIPENING WILL TAKE PLACE OF ITSELF.

DO NOT GRASP ANOTHER'S BOW

"DO NOT GRASP ANOTHER'S BOW, DO NOT RIDE ANOTHER'S HORSE, DO NOT

MEDDLE IN ANOTHER'S AFFAIRS." THOUGH THIS IS A COMMONPLACE SAYING, IT CAN ALSO BE SUSTENANCE, FOR ENTERING THE PATH. JUST EXAMINE

YOURSELF CONSTANTLY: FROM MORNING TO NIGHT, WHAT DO YOU DO TO

HELP OTHERS AND HELP YOURSELF? IF YOU NOTICE EVEN THE SLIGHTEST

PARTIALITY, OR INSENSITIVITY, YOU MUST ADMONISH YOURSELF. DON'T BE

CARELESS ABOUT THIS!

IN THE OLD DAYS CH'AN MASTER TAO LIN LIVED UP IN A TALL PINE TREE

ON CH'IN WANG MOUNTAIN; PEOPLE OF THE TIME CALLED HIM THE "BIRD'S

NEST MONK." WHEN MINISTER, PO CHU-YI, WAS COMMANDER OF CH'IEN

T'ANG, HE MADE A SPECIAL TRIP TO THE MOUNTAIN TO VISIT HIM.

PO SAID, "IT'S VERY DANGEROUS WHERE YOU'RE SITTING, CH'AN MASTER."

THE MASTER SAID, "MY DANGER MAY BE VERY GREAT, MINISTER, BUT

YOURS IS EVEN GREATER."

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PO SAID, "I AM COMMANDER OF CH'IEN T'ANG: WHAT DANGER IS THERE?"

THE MASTER SAID, "FUEL AND FIRE ARE JOINED, CONSCIOUSNESS AND

IDENTITY DO NOT STAY: HOW CAN YOU NOT BE IN DANGER?"

PO ALSO ASKED, "WHAT IS THE OVERALL MEANING OF THE BUDDHIST

TEACHING?"

THE MASTER SAID, "DON'T COMMIT ANY EVILS, PRACTICE THE MANY

VIRTUES."

PO SAID, "EVEN A THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILD COULD SAY THIS!"

THE MASTER SAID, "THOUGH A THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILD CAN SAY IT, AN

EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD MAN CANNOT CARRY IT OUT." PO THEN BOWED AND

DEPARTED.

Tending the ox is a very ancient symbol in the history of Zen. There exist ten paintings in China; the tenth painting has been a cause of great controversy. I would like you to understand those ten paintings, and the controversy, before we start Ta Hui's sermon on tending the ox.

The ten paintings are immensely beautiful. In the first, the ox is lost. The man to whom the ox belongs is just standing, looking all around in the thick forest, and he cannot see where the ox has gone. He is simply bewildered, confused. It is getting late, the sun it setting; soon it will be night, and then to go into the thick forest to find the ox will become more and more difficult.

In the second picture he finds footprints of the ox. He feels a little happier; perhaps there is a possibility to find the ox -- he has found the footprints. He follows the footprints.

In the third picture he sees the back of the ox standing in the thick forest. It is difficult to see, but he can figure out that it is the back of his ox. In the fourth he has reached the ox; he can see the ox now, its whole body. He rejoices.

In the fifth painting he takes hold of the ox's horns. It is a great struggle to bring it back home, but he wins. In the sixth picture he is riding on the ox, coming back towards his home.

These are beautiful paintings!

In the seventh picture the ox is tied down in his place. In the eighth picture the man is so full of joy that he starts playing on his flute. The ninth picture is an empty frame -- there is nothing painted in it.

In the tenth picture, which is the cause of a great controversy, the man is going with a bottle of wine towards the marketplace, almost drunk. You can see, he cannot even walk. This tenth picture has caused a great controversy which has been raging for two thousand years.

One sect, which is the major sect of mahayana, believes that the ninth is the last picture. It represents the no-mind; you have achieved the goal. The ox is your innermost self which you have lost, and the whole series of pictures is in search of your inner self. You have found the self in the ninth. There is immense silence and peace. It is nirvana, it is no-mind.

Beyond the ninth ... the people who say this is the end of the journey think that somebody has added the tenth picture, which seems to be absolutely irrelevant. But the people who belong to a small sect of Zen believe in the tenth picture too. They say that when one has become enlightened this is not the end. This is the highest peak of consciousness, it is the Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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greatest achievement, but one has to come back to the human world, to the ordinary world.

One has to become again part of the greater humanity. Only then can he share, only then can he provoke others for the search. And certainly when he comes from such height, he is absolutely drunk with ecstasy. That bottle of wine is not an ordinary wine. It is just symbolic of an ecstatic state.

When these pictures were brought to Japan, just twelve or thirteen hundred years ago, only nine pictures were brought. The tenth was troublesome; it was left in China.

I was puzzled when I first looked at the Japanese pictures. They seem to be complete.

Once you have achieved nirvana, what more is there? And then I found in an old Chinese book ten pictures. I was immensely happy that somebody had the insight two thousand years ago that a buddha is not a buddha if he cannot come back to the ordinary humanity, if he cannot become again just simple, innocent, carrying his nirvana, carrying his ecstasy in the bottle of wine, utterly drunk with the divine but still going towards the marketplace.

I could see that whoever painted the tenth picture was right. Up to the ninth, it is simply logical. Beyond the ninth, the tenth, is a great realization.

According to me, up to the ninth a man is only a buddha; with the tenth he also becomes a Zorba. And this has been my constant theme: I have been insisting that the tenth picture is authentic, and if it were not there, I was going to paint it. Without it, ending in nothingness looks a little sad, looks a little serious, looks empty.

All this effort of finding yourself, meditating, going beyond the mind, realizing your being and ending up in desert of nothingness ... no, there must be something more to it, something more beyond it, where flowers blossom, where songs arise, where dance is again possible -- of course, on a totally different level.

But these pictures of tending the ox have been found to be tremendously significant in explaining the whole path step by step.

Ta Hui says, SINCE YOU ARE STUDYING THIS PATH ... Remember what I have said about Ta Hui -- he is a teacher; otherwise no master can use the word studying. The master will say, "Since you are following this path, since you are on this path ..." Studying? -- that is not the way of the seeker; that is the way of the curious student who wants to know something

-- more information, more knowledge -- but who is not interested in actually transforming himself.

But Ta Hui is a teacher. Although he tries in every possible way to pose like a master, he cannot deceive anyone who is enlightened. Here and there will be loopholes, but he cannot imagine that they will show his masterhood to be just a hypocrisy.

It would have been absolutely correct if he had said, "I am only a teacher." But he is not saying that. When there is a possibility to be accepted as a master -- even the emperor accepts him as a great master of Ch'an -- then he keeps quiet. He must have known, because he seems to be a very intelligent man, he must have been aware that he is not a master. He is a very good teacher, and I would like you to remember on every point how he shows his unawareness.

SINCE YOU ARE STUDYING THIS PATH ... Studying belongs to students. A seeker does not study the path, a seeker gets involved. He participates in the whole pilgrimage. He is Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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a pilgrim, he is not a student. He has no desire to know about the path; he wants to reach the goal -- path or no path. He wants to come back home.

THEN AT ALL TIMES -- IN YOUR ENCOUNTERS WITH PEOPLE AND

RESPONSES TO CIRCUMSTANCES -- YOU MUST NOT LET WRONG THOUGHTS

CONTINUE.

Again, a loophole. The question is not of wrong thoughts and right thoughts; all thoughts are wrong as far as going beyond the mind is concerned. He is not even aware of the fact that the right and wrong are never separate; they are always together.

Can you separate love from hate? Millions have tried but not a single person has been able to succeed, because you are going against the very nature of things.

Can you separate darkness from light? Although they look so different, scientific enquiry into light and into darkness has proved something against common sense. The difference between darkness and light is only of degrees. Darkness simply means less light, and light simply means less darkness.

That's why there are animals, like owls and others, for whom in the night it is as day. They have better eyes than you have, so even in lesser light -- which looks to you like darkness --

for them it is full light. Their eyes are more capable than your eyes. In the day they cannot open their eyes, because their eyes are so sensitive that the daylight is dazzling. In the daylight their eyes simply close; naturally they see darkness. When for you it is light, for the owls it is night. And when for you it is night, for the owls it is day, full light.

So the difference between light and darkness is only of degrees. You cannot have light without darkness, and you cannot have God without the devil.

It is strange that the religions who believe in God automatically believe in the devil too.

They have to, it is just a logical necessity. And the religions who don't believe in God don't believe in the devil either. For example, Jainism has no God, therefore there is no devil. It is simply out of the question. But all the religions that believe in God have to accept his polar opposite, the devil.

Why this necessity? Because existence always needs a polarity. Birth is polarized by death, love is polarized by hate, compassion is polarized by cruelty. Look around life. Everything has its polar opposite, and if you can take away the polar opposite then the other will also disappear. They can exist only together.

What is a good thought and what is a bad thought? And how can you separate them? Only a teacher does not know that the final approach towards your being needs all thoughts to disappear -- it does not matter whether they are good or bad. We are not talking here of morality; we are talking here of authentic religion.

Of course in morality there are good thoughts and bad thoughts, and they are all arbitrary.

Because for Mohammedans, to have four wives is not a bad thought, but to everybody else in the world the very idea of having four wives is a bad thought.

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To the ancient Hindus, even a woman having five husbands was not a bad thought; the woman who had five husbands is worshiped as one of the five great women of India! Of course five husbands is not the right number because the weekend remains -- what to do with the weekend? Every day for five days the poor woman had to change husbands, and two days were just a holiday. So the weekend is not something new and American; it is very ancient and Indian! Nobody has condemned it as an ugly situation. No Hindu thinker or philosopher or theologian has condemned it; it was acceptable.

Yudhisthir, the eldest of the five brothers who shared one wife, is thought of by Hindus as one of the most religious men that has ever lived on the earth. He is called Dharmaraj, the

"king of religiousness". And this fellow Yudhisthir was a compulsive gambler; he gambled to the extent that he staked his whole kingdom, his whole treasury, and finally he staked his wife! All five brothers were present, and they consented. And nobody has condemned it. They still go on calling Yudhisthir one of the greatest religious men -- and he has treated this woman worse than he would an animal, as if a woman were just a dead piece of property, like furniture, that you can gamble with.

So what is right?

For the Mohammedans the KORAN is their holy source, and the KORAN says God created all other animals for man to eat. Now if God says it, there is no harm in eating animals. Except for man, all animals can be butchered and eaten without any problem. No question of nonviolence ever arises. Then there are Jainas. Their monks keep a mask on their nose because when you exhale the air becomes hot, and in the atmosphere there are very tiny invisible living cells that hot air can kill. To protect those cells which you cannot see, they are continuously keeping their nose covered with a cloth, so by the time their hot air reaches out through the cloth it is no longer hot; the cloth is preventing it and cooling it. Now who is right?

There are Hindu monks who shave their hair, their mustache, their beard -- every hair has to be removed. The reason is that they consider that hairs are dead parts of the body. In a way they are right. Dead cells in your body are being thrown out continuously in different ways.

That's why when you cut your hair you don't feel hurt. If they were living you would have felt the pain. So hairs are just as dead as any corpse. Why carry dead things? Hindus and their monks remove them.

If you look at different people, different traditions, you will be simply surprised. But how to decide what is right and what is wrong?

In China, even eating snakes is not thought to be anything strange. It is in fact one of the most delicious foods. They just have to cut the snake's head, because its poison is only in the mouth -- just a small gland in its mouth has the poison. They chop the head, and the remaining part is just vegetable. If you are a guest in a Chinese house, they will certainly serve you with it, just as a welcome, and those who have eaten it say it is delicious.

There is not a single animal, bird, insect, which is not being eaten somewhere. It will create nausea in you -- what kind of people are these? But traditionally they have accepted it as right, and once something is accepted as right, it becomes right to that tradition, to those people. They simply laugh at you -- you are missing such beautiful food.

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In ancient India, and even now in the South of India, the temples are nothing but whorehouses. It was a custom that everybody should donate his eldest daughter to God, but God is just a stone statue; the priest exploits the poor woman sexually, in the name of God.

Then so many women start gathering in the temple, and rich people start coming to the temple. These women are called devadasis, servants of God, but their actual function is to attract the rich people to the temple. They function as religious prostitutes, and because of them the temple goes on becoming richer and richer.

You will be surprised to know that just a few days ago, in Bombay, a survey was made of the prostitutes. Thirty percent were found to be devadasis from the temples of South India, because if the priest finds someone beautiful enough, then it is better to sell her in the Bombay market rather than keep her in the temple. That way the priest can get a lump sum of money.

Thirty percent of the prostitutes that were offered to God had reached the market of the prostitutes in Bombay. And no Hindu has objected to it -- not even today. The government takes no notice. It continues because nobody wants to irritate anybody, nobody wants to annoy anybody. Everybody is trying to look good in other people's eyes.

Millions of women in this country have been burned alive! They had to die with their husbands; they had to jump onto the funeral pyre with the dead husband. That was called the tradition of suttee. Those women who managed this suicide -- a very painful suicide -- were called great women, very religious women.

But the real idea behind it was not religious; there was nothing good in it. The real idea behind it was that the man does not want that his wife, when he is dead ... who knows? She may fall in love with somebody else. He wants to keep her as his possession even after death.

So the only way is -- because leaving her he cannot trust -- that she should also die with him, just to satisfy his masochistic, male chauvinistic, stupid idea of being the owner.

They respected these women, they made memorials for them. I have been asking shankaracharyas and learned and wise Hindu monks, "If this is the case, why has not one single man in the whole history jumped with his wife when she has died?" And they have nothing to answer. They simply look embarrassed, they want to change the subject. But with me it is very difficult to change the subject! I said, "If it is something great, then man has proved himself lower than women."

But the truth is that man has always thought that he is the master, and the woman is the possession -- why should he die for the possession? He can have as many women as he wants.

In fact, in ancient India women were sold in the marketplaces -- as they were sold all over the world -- as slaves. And you will be surprised that the great Hindu saints, sages -- because nobody looks behind the curtain -- even they were going into the places where women were auctioned, and they were purchasing women.

They had wives and alongside they had purchased women. For these purchased women a special word was used. For the wife the word is patni and for the purchased woman the word is vadhu. Now the distinction is lost, because now there is no auction place for women.

But it was accepted as being perfectly right. Even the so-called seers, saints, whom you would think have gone beyond all worldly things, were not so sensitive as to have revolted against this brutal process of auctioning women, purchasing them just like any other thing you purchase in the market.

What is right? And what is wrong?

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So the question is not, you must not let wrong thoughts continue. You must not let thoughts continue -- no question of right, no question of wrong.

In other words: every thought is wrong.

All thoughts have to be removed from your mind so the screen of the mind is completely empty, so you have a vast sky open and nothing moves in the mind. That is authentic Zen. But that can be said only by an enlightened master.

Ta Hui has collected, from here and there, whatever he felt seems to be significant. But he had no inner criterion to judge what is the authentic path of self-realization. He was going to all kinds of teachers, and he was collecting all kinds of contradictory thoughts.

He was an intelligent man, but intelligence alone is not able to conceive the nature of your being. It falls short.

IF YOU CANNOT SEE THROUGH THEM, THEN THE MOMENT A WRONG

THOUGHT COMES UP YOU SHOULD QUICKLY CONCENTRATE YOUR MENTAL

ENERGY TO PULL YOURSELF AWAY.

First, every thought is wrong.

Second, you don't have to pull your mental energy away, because mental energy is the root of all your thoughts. It is the mother of all your thought processes, good or bad. The mental energy has not to be pulled away. You have to get out of the mental energy, out of the mess of mental energy; you have to pull yourself out.

You have to stand out of your mind, as a watcher. Whatever is going on in the mind, you don't even interfere. You simply watch. You simply go on seeing it, as if it is somebody else's mind, and you have nothing to do with it -- it is none of your business.

In this indifferent aloofness, all thoughts disappear.

And with thoughts disappearing there is no mind, because mind is nothing but a collective name of thoughts.

Ta Hui does not know anything about meditation. He has never meditated.

IF YOU ALWAYS FOLLOW THOSE THOUGHTS AND LET THEM CONTINUE

WITHOUT A BREAK, NOT ONLY DOES THIS OBSTRUCT THE PATH, BUT IT

MAKES YOU OUT TO BE A MAN WITHOUT WISDOM.

He knows nothing about wisdom. He is using a wrong word. Whatever he is saying ... only one thing can be said: If you allow thoughts to continue without a break, this will not only obstruct the path, but it makes you out to be a man without knowledge -- not without wisdom.

That also has to be clearly seen. Knowledge is absolutely relevant in science. The very meaning of the word 'science' is knowledge, and the whole effort of science is to go on Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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changing the unknown into the known. The ultimate goal of science is that one day there will be nothing left unknown -- everything will be known.

All will be reduced to knowledge. And this is the point where religion differs. And the difference is of tremendous value.

Religion says that there are not only two categories in the world, the categories of known and unknown. There is a third category which is more significant than the other two, and that is the category of the unknowable, the mysterious, the miraculous. You can live it, you can be it, you can rejoice it, you can sing it, you can dance it. But you cannot know it. Knowledge is not possible.

To enter into this realm of the unknowable is wisdom.

Wisdom is not knowledge.

Wisdom is innocence and a deep feeling of the miraculous.

A wise man's eyes are full of wonder; just a small flower makes him wonder. It is so mysterious -- why is it there?

It happened one night ... Socrates did not return to his home. His wife was very much disturbed, the whole neighborhood was disturbed. They looked all around -- where has he gone? He was not a man to go anywhere; from the school where he used to teach, he used to come directly home. It had never happened before, it was unprecedented. Snow was falling, and they were very much concerned whether he had got lost somewhere in the forest. By the morning they found him. He was standing by the side of a tree, supporting his back with the tree, and looking at the sky. When they reached him he was almost frozen, because there was snow up to his knees.

They shook him -- "What are you doing here?" He said, "What am I doing here? The night was so wonderful and the stars were so mysterious that I just went on gazing and gazing and gazing. Many times the thought came that it is getting late, but I was almost hypnotized by the stars and their beauty. I knew that snow was falling, I was shivering -- but I could not move."

Now this man is a man of wisdom. There are millions of people in the world who go on running here and there, never looking at the sky. It is just on top of them -- no fee, no ticket, no standing in the queue before a movie house -- and such a splendor! And you own it, because nobody else owns it.

A full moon night, and nothing stirs in your heart?

A rosebud opens, and nothing opens in your being?

A cuckoo starts singing its song, and you don't get cuckoo?

Wisdom is a totally different thing than knowledge. Knowledge de-mystifies existence; wisdom mystifies it. Wisdom belongs to the mystics; knowledge belongs to scientists, to philosophers, to theologians -- but they are not the people of religion. They don't know the heartbeat of the universe.

Only people who enter into the realm of the mysterious open doors upon doors of mystery and suddenly find themselves, not in a mundane world which is meaningless, but in a fairyland where everything is so significant, so poetic, so musical, so beautiful.

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This whole experience is the experience of a religious being. And this experience is possible only if you can put your mind aside. Mind is a collector of knowledge; it has no interest in mystery.

IN THE OLD DAYS, KUEI SHAN ASKED LAZY AN, "WHAT WORK DO YOU DO

DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF THE DAY?" AN SAID, "I TEND AN OX."

KUEI SHAN SAID, "HOW DO YOU TEND IT?" AN SAID, "WHENEVER IT GETS INTO

THE GRASS, I PULL IT BACK BY THE NOSE." KUEI SHAN SAID, "YOU'RE REALLY

TENDING THE OX!"

Zen is full of such small dialogues, which are very special to Zen. In this small statement, just a few words are transferred between two men, but everything that has to be said about Zen has been said.

An was known in the history of Zen as a lazy man. His name became Lazy An, because he never did anything. Kuei Shan asked him, "what work do you do during twenty-four hours of the day?" -- because you don't do anything, just sitting silently.

People loved Lazy An. He was a beautiful man, of a great presence. His very being in a place made it almost holy, he had such an energy -- although he was never doing anything.

People used to bring food to him. He never even went to beg, which was the way of all buddhist monks, but people took care of him. They were concerned about him. If it was cold they would bring blankets; if it was raining they would make some arrangement.

An was so lazy he would not even walk; people would have to carry him! People knew that there was no point saying anything to him, you just do whatsoever you do. And he never prevented anybody, or asked, "Where are you taking me?" Even that much was too much -- to ask, "Where are you taking me?" He is a special character.

Kuei Shan was also a man of great understanding, so he asked, "What do you go on doing for twenty-four hours a day?"

An said, "I tend an ox."

He refers to those ten pictures of tending the ox. Just a small statement ... and he didn't say anything more.

KUEI SHAN SAID, "HOW DO YOU TEND IT?"

AN SAID, "WHENEVER IT GETS INTO THE GRASS, I PULL IT BACK BY THE

NOSE."

KUEI SHAN SAID, "YOU ARE REALLY TENDING THE OX!"

And that is the end of the dialogue. But Kuei Shan has given his agreement that this is the way of meditation. When your consciousness starts getting involved in the mind, pull it back.

Remain aloof, stand aside. Keep a distance between your self and the mind ... and there is no need to do anything else.

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Kuei Shan really was satisfied that Lazy An is not lazy at all; he is doing great inner work.

Outside of course he looks lazy, but one can see from his aura, his energy field, a certain sweetness surrounding him, a certain fragrance.

He does not do anything; still, wherever he is, people take care of him, on their own accord. They suddenly feel that it is their responsibility to take care of Lazy An; it is as if he is just a small child, so innocent, that anybody will immediately start taking care of him -- and he was an old man.

Nobody ever told him to do something. He was doing what can be called the real doing.

He was constantly doing only one thing: not allowing his consciousness to be involved in the grassland of the mind, where thoughts grow like grass, wild grass. He just went on pulling his ox back.

And it does not take much time. Once your consciousness becomes accustomed to not being involved in the mind, you don't have to pull it again and again; to be out of the mind is so peaceful, so joyful, so blissful, that consciousness itself becomes aware that to be in the mind is to be in hell.

Now it is up to you. If you want to be in hell, you can be; otherwise it is not compulsory, it is optional. Hell is optional!

People who study the path ... again he goes on using the word 'study' ... in controlling wrong thoughts -- again he goes on saying wrong things -- should be like lazy an tending his ox.

He has not understood what Lazy An is doing. He is not controlling his thoughts. He is simply pulling his consciousness out of the world of thoughts, out of the area and the territory of the mind ... then gradually a wholesome ripening will take place of itself.

DO NOT GRASP ANOTHER'S BOW

"DO NOT GRASP ANOTHER'S BOW, DO NOT RIDE ANOTHER'S HORSE, DO NOT

MEDDLE IN ANOTHER'S AFFAIRS." THOUGH THIS IS A COMMONPLACE SAYING, IT CAN ALSO BE SUSTENANCE FOR ENTERING THE PATH.

It is an ancient saying in China: "Do not grasp another's bow, do not ride another's horse, do not meddle in another's affairs." It is tremendously beautiful, although it is just the wisdom of the people. They are saying, "Do not borrow anything from anybody." Depend on your own resources, because unless you depend on your own resources you can never be free, and you can never be an individual. You will always remain a slave.

Ta Hui says, "Though this is a commonplace saying, it can also be sustenance for entering the path." Once in a while, he says something which he must have gathered from someone who knows it.

Just examine yourself constantly ... but immediately he falls back into his own state. This is the trouble; if you are repeating somebody else's knowledge, you cannot go on long. Soon you will say something which will expose you.

He says, Just examine yourself constantly.

That is not the way of Zen.

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That is the way of psychoanalysis, which was not existent in those days, and which is not existent in the East even today. And if the West is not adamant, is not prejudiced, and is open to understand, psychoanalysis will disappear even from the West.

Examining yourself makes no change in you.

You can go on examining yourself constantly. Examining is another word for analyzing --

why this thought, why that thought? What is the cause of it? Why did it come to me? What should I do with it? You will get into a madhouse.

No, that is not the way of the East.

The East says, "Remain aware of yourself constantly."

And being aware is not examining yourself.

Being aware is simply being aloof, but alert. Whatever the mind is doing, let it do; whatever is going on in the mind, let it be. You simply be out of it. You should not be a participant -- that's all that is needed, and mind dies its own death.

By your examining you are entering into the territory of the mind. And mind is such a subtle phenomenon -- the moment you enter into it, it starts exploiting your energy for its own purposes.

This is the experience of all the Eastern mystics. Do not analyze, do not examine, do not justify, do not condemn. Don't make any evaluation. Simply stand aside, as if the road is full of traffic and you step by the side of the road and stand there, without bothering who is going, who is coming, who is good, who is bad.

This discovery of awareness has been such a miracle: the traffic simply disappears, just by your stepping out of it. You don't have to examine, you don't have to control, you don't have to dispel anything. You don't have to do anything at all -- just pure awareness is enough to kill the mind.

FROM MORNING TO NIGHT, WHAT DO YOU DO TO HELP OTHERS AND HELP

YOURSELF? IF YOU NOTICE EVEN THE SLIGHTEST PARTIALITY OR

INSENSITIVITY, YOU MUST ADMONISH YOURSELF. DON'T BE CARELESS ABOUT

THIS.

He is simply talking like a moralist teacher, a Catholic priest! He has forgotten that once a man is aware of himself he does whatever is right, and he never does whatever is wrong. It is not a question of choice. His awareness is enough to take him towards the right, and never towards the wrong. He simply remains choicelessly alert and aware, and his whole lifestyle changes. Then whatever he does, it is always beneficial. Then he is a constant blessing to the whole world. But it is not a decision on his part. It is simply his spontaneity. It is simply his nature just to be good. Just as on a rosebush roses blossom, on the bush of awareness roses also blossom -- roses of goodness, roses of beauty, roses of grace, roses of all kinds of blessings for others, for himself.

IN THE OLD DAYS CH'AN MASTER TAO LIN LIVED UP IN A TALL PINE TREE

ON CH'IN WANG MOUNTAIN; PEOPLE OF THE TIME CALLED HIM THE "BIRD'S

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NEST MONK." WHEN MINISTER PO CHU-YI WAS COMMANDER OF CH'IN T'ANG, HE MADE A SPECIAL TRIP TO THE MOUNTAIN TO VISIT HIM.

PO SAID, "IT'S VERY DANGEROUS WHERE YOU'RE SITTING, CH'AN MASTER."

THE MASTER SAID, "MY DANGER MAY BE VERY GREAT, MINISTER, BUT

YOURS IS EVEN GREATER."

PO SAID, "I AM COMMANDER OF CH'IEN T'ANG: WHAT DANGER IS THERE?"

THE MASTER SAID, "FUEL AND FIRE ARE JOINED, CONSCIOUSNESS AND

IDENTITY DO NOT STAY: HOW CAN YOU NOT BE IN DANGER?"

What he is saying is tremendously significant. He is saying, "I am sitting in a bird's nest in a pine tree. It is obvious that there is danger of falling, but are you aware that if you fall from your position you will be in a far greater danger? And your fall is possible any moment. You are commander-in-chief, the enemy is not far away. You and your enemy are just like fuel and fire joined. Just close by is fire, very near to it is fuel; they can join any moment. Any moment there can be an explosion. You are sitting on a volcano.

"I am certainly in danger if I fall -- perhaps I may break a few of my bones. But it is not much of a danger. Your danger is far greater. Consciousness and identity do not stay. Your consciousness is so small; that is the greatest danger in the world, because any moment you can slip into unconsciousness. Then in unconsciousness whatever you do is going to harm you. My consciousness is absolute. I can sit in a bird's nest in this tall pine tree; I know I will not fall, because I am alert. Even when I am asleep, I am alert."

Once Ananda had asked Gautam Buddha ... he used to sleep in the same room, to take care of anything Buddha needs in the night if he suddenly feels sick. Buddha was fragile, he was old, and he was working so hard, walking continually, till his very last breath. Gautam Buddha used to sleep in the posture which is called the Lion's posture, because it is just the way the lion sleeps. But Ananda was surprised that once Buddha had taken the posture, he remained in the same posture the whole night; he did not move his feet, he did not move his hand, he did not move anything. He remained almost like a statue. Ananda was surprised -- one day perhaps one can manage, but day after day, month after month, year after year ...? Finally he could not contain his curiosity. He said, "I have to ask, do you sleep or not? -- because you never change your posture."

Buddha said, "The body sleeps, the mind sleeps, but my awareness is eternal, it knows nothing of sleep. And secondly: you toss and turn because you are trying to find the right posture. I have found it -- why should I toss and turn? What are you doing tossing and turning this way and that way? In fact you are trying to find the right pose. I have found it, Ananda.

Now there is no need to change it. And as far as awareness is concerned, even in the night there is a small flame of awareness eternally burning within me, even in sleep."

So the old master was right when he said, "my danger maybe very great, Minister, but yours is even greater. Your consciousness is so small, and your identity is so false. You think yourself commander-in-chief, but behind your uniform you are just a mortal. Just a bullet will Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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finish you; just an order from the emperor that you are retired or demoted and you will lose your identity.

"Nobody can take my identity back from me.

"Nobody can tell me to retire -- I am retired already. Nobody can tell me, 'You are demoted.' Where else can you throw me? I am already in such a situation that nobody would like to change places with me.

"Rarely people come here. You are a strange fellow, taking so much trouble to come to this mountain, to this lonely spot, and to talk to a strange man who just lives in the pine tree and never gets down.

"My identity is within my own hands. Your identity is given to you; it can be taken away --

your danger, minister, is far greater."

PO ALSO ASKED, "WHAT IS THE OVERALL MEANING OF THE BUDDHIST

TEACHING?"

THE MASTER SAID, "DON'T COMMIT ANY EVILS. PRACTICE THE MANY

VIRTUES."

That is absolutely wrong, and I don't think that it has been said by the Ch'an master Tao Lin; he cannot say this. This must be Ta Hui's addition, because this is not the teaching of Buddha, and he's asking the overall teaching of the Buddhist philosophy -- just the gist.

The gist of Buddha's philosophy is simply vipassana -- in one word, meditation.

Everything else is secondary and nonessential. What Ta Hui is saying is all nonessential: Don't commit any evils. Practice the many virtues -- that is not Buddha's teaching.

That is where Buddha is unique -- different from any other master of the world: his teaching can be reduced to a single statement: "Be silent, go beyond mind, then whatever you do is good."

PO SAID, "EVEN A THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILD COULD SAY THIS!"

THE MASTER SAID, "THOUGH A THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILD CAN SAY IT, AN

EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD MAN CANNOT CARRY IT OUT."

That is true, because the only way to carry it out is not mentioned.

The only way to carry it out is silence.

Out of silence all the flowers blossom.

It is difficult even for an eighty-year-old man not to commit any evil and to practice all the virtues, because they are by-products. And you can not do anything which is a by-product.

You have to go to the roots.

For example I will tell you ... I remember a small incident in Mao Tse-tung's life when he was very young, and his father had died. His mother was very much interested in growing roses of all colors and all varieties; she had such an aesthetic sense, and she had made such a beautiful garden around her house.

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Her sister became very sick, and she was very much concerned about her roses. Mao was very young, not more than twelve years old. He said, "Don't be worried, mother. You can go --

it is only a question of a few days -- you can be with your sister. As far as your garden is concerned, I will take care."

The mother went, and Mao took as much care as you can conceive; the whole day from morning till evening he was looking after the roses. But it was very strange, they were dying --

trees were dying, flowers were dying -- and he could not think what he would say when his mother came back. Her whole garden looked deserted, and he had been doing so much hard work.

His mother came. She looked around the garden and laughed, because Mao was standing there with tears in his eyes. He said, "I worked continuously from morning till evening." The mother said, "I knew this was going to happen, so don't be worried. I just came silently and stood at the gate and watched what you were doing."

What he was doing? -- he was washing each flower with water, taking away the dust with his small brush. Naturally all the flowers ... he had taken great care, but to take care of the flowers you have to take care of the roots. You don't have to bother about the roses, they will take care of themselves; you simply take care of the roots. He never bothered about the roots

-- he had no idea of the roots. He never bothered the roots; he simply washed the flowers.

The trees died, the flowers died and the poor boy was in utter misery. The mother said, "I have seen ... standing outside I just wanted to see what is going on, and I could see that you have destroyed the whole garden! But there is no need to cry and weep."

His mother said to him, "This is what human beings are doing all over the world.

Everybody is taking care of the flowers and nobody is concerned about the roots. And the real thing is the roots. Flowers come automatically. You don't have to take any special care for them."

So without meditation, even an eighty-year-old man cannot carry it out, although it is so simple that a three-year-old child can say it.

THE MASTER SAID, "THOUGH A THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILD CAN SAY IT, AN

EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD MAN CANNOT CARRY IT OUT." PO THEN BOWED AND

DEPARTED.

This is an incomplete statement. He must have heard it from someone -- secondhand, thirdhand -- because the old master Tao Lin could not have left out mentioning the roots.

Unless meditation is mentioned you don't know anything about the teachings of Gautam Buddha. And he must have mentioned it: if he had not mentioned it, then Po would not have bowed down and departed. Po was absolutely satisfied, but in this conversation there was no reason to be satisfied.

My way of seeing things is very straightforward. I don't see from this conversation why Po should be satisfied, but he must have been satisfied because he, with great honor, bowed down and departed. Certainly something is missing, something essential is missing ... and it always Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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happens. A man who does not understand, who has not experienced meditation himself, will talk about all the things which are by-products, and will forget about meditation.

This has happened so many times, in so many traditions, that it can be accepted as a rule.

For example Mahavira ... It was thought by his disciples, by his followers for twenty-five centuries, that he was teaching non-violence, that he was teaching non-possessiveness, that he was teaching being authentic and truthful.

Now these are all by-products. But Jaina monks have been following them, and I have seen their faces: they don't show any signs of joy, of fulfillment, of contentment, of reaching to any great silence or peace or bliss. They look absolutely dry, dead. Although they are following the discipline as accurately as possible, they are just missing the foundation.

All these three things -- non-violence, non-possessiveness, authenticity and truthfulness --

arise without any effort on your part ... IF you succeed in meditation. A man of meditation cannot lie. A man of meditation can not hurt anybody; hence he is non-violent.

A man of meditation knows perfectly well that all things are ephemeral. You came into the world without anything, and you will have to go from the world without anything; so you can use things -- but you cannot possess them. You can use things just the way you use the railway train. Just because you are sitting in the railway train you don't start declaring that you are the owner of the train! You are using it for a time being; at one station you get in, at another station you get out.

Life should be taken just the same way. Whatever life gives to you -- use it, but don't become the owner. Don't cling to it, and then when it goes out of your hands, you are not sad, you are not frustrated; you don't start thinking of committing suicide just because you have gone bankrupt, or just because your wife has escaped with somebody else.

I have heard about a man who went to the post office and started telling the postmaster,

"Please write down that my wife has escaped." The postmaster said, "I am sorry that your wife has escaped. Perhaps you are in such a disturbed state that you don't see that this is a post office. The police office is just in front -- you go there." He said, "I am not going there and I am not telling you to take the report without knowing that it is a post office."

The postmaster said, "This is strange. You know that this is a post office, and still you are telling me to report that your wife has escaped with somebody."

He said, "Yes, seven days ago. And I am not going to the police station, because last time she escaped I reported it to the police station, and those idiots brought her back. This time I have remained silent for seven days to let them go as far as possible. But then my conscience started pricking and I said, 'This is not right. At least I should report it.' So I thought that it is better to report it to the post office. You just take the report and free me from my pricking conscience."

The postmaster said, "It's strange. If such is the problem, then why bother? It is good that she has escaped."

He said, "I am not bothered about her; I am bothered about the man with whom she has escaped. What will be happening to that poor fellow? I am accustomed to her; he is new. She will kill him. Seven days have passed, and nothing has been heard."

"Don't you feel any problem -- anything?" asked the postman.

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"I am not bothered about my wife; I am bothered about the man she has got hold of. I cannot report it to the police office -- you can understand my problem -- but I am praying every day in the temple. Have mercy on the poor man. Save his life.'"

People are living in such misery. But even if they have been miserable with the wife or the husband, they will not separate. They will not allow freedom to each other. But why go on suffering? There is no reason at all.

This life is to rejoice.

If you can rejoice together -- good.

If you can rejoice separately -- even better.

All that is needed is a certain deepening of your consciousness, and that happens through meditation. Then all your actions, your behavior, your life starts changing on its own accord; you start seeing things clearly. Right now you see things through such smoke that nothing seems to be clear.

A woman went to the doctor and asked, "What kind of prescription have you given to my husband? He was so good, so obedient and suddenly, since you have given him the prescription, he has escaped."

The doctor said, "I have not given him any medicine. I have simply prescribed new lenses for his glasses, so naturally he must have escaped. I can see you -- that's enough. He had the wrong prescription, he was not able to see you. The moment he saw you clearly, he escaped.

There is no problem in it."

All that you need is clear eyesight ... into your life, into your actions, into your relationships, into everything that surrounds you. Just a clear insight -- and that will change everything, without any arduous effort on your part.

Okay , Maneesha?

Yes , Osho.

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3

Power

16 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

DO NOT GRASP ANOTHER'S BOW

NOW IF YOU WANT TO SAVE MENTAL POWER, DO NOT BE CONCERNED

WITH WHETHER OR NOT A THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILD CAN SAY IT, OR WHETHER

OR NOT AN EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD-MAN CAN CARRY IT OUT. JUST DON'T DO ANY

EVIL AND YOU HAVE MASTERED THESE WORDS. THEY APPLY WHETHER YOU

BELIEVE OR NOT, SO PLEASE THINK IT OVER.

IF WORLDLY PEOPLE WHOSE PRESENT CONDUCT IS WITHOUT

ILLUMINATION WOULD CORRECT THEMSELVES AND DO GOOD, THOUGH THE

GOODNESS IS NOT YET PERFECT, ISN'T THIS BETTER THAN DEPRAVITY AND

SHAMELESSNESS? ONE WHO DOES EVIL ON THE PRETEXT OF DOING GOOD IS

CALLED IN THE TEACHINGS ONE WHOSE CAUSAL GROUND IS NOT GENUINE, BRINGING ON CROOKED RESULTS. IF, WITH A STRAIGHTFORWARD MIND AND

STRAIGHTFORWARD CONDUCT, YOU ARE ABLE TO SEIZE SUPREME

ENLIGHTENMENT DIRECTLY, THIS CAN BE CALLED THE ACT OF A REAL MAN

OF POWER. THE CONCERNS THAT HAVE COME DOWN FROM NUMBERLESS

AGES ARE ONLY IN THE PRESENT: IF YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THEM RIGHT

NOW, THEN THE CONCERNS OF NUMBERLESS AGES WILL INSTANTLY

DISPERSE, LIKE TILES BEING SCATTERED OR ICE MELTING. IF YOU DON'T

UNDERSTAND RIGHT NOW, YOU'LL PASS THROUGH COUNTLESS EONS MORE, AND IT'LL STILL BE JUST AS IT IS. THE TRUTH THAT IS AS IT IS HAS BEEN

CONTINUOUS SINCE ANTIQUITY WITHOUT EVER HAVING VARIED SO MUCH AS

A HAIRSBREADTH.

MATTERS OF WORLDLY ANXIETY ARE LIKE THE LINKS OF A CHAIN, JOINING TOGETHER CONTINUOUSLY WITHOUT A BREAK. IF YOU CAN DO

AWAY WITH THEM, DO AWAY WITH THEM IMMEDIATELY! BECAUSE YOU

HAVE BECOME HABITUATED TO THEM SINCE BEGINNINGLESS TIME, TO THE

POINT WHERE THEY HAVE BECOME TOTALLY FAMILIAR, IF YOU DON'T EXERT

YOURSELF TO STRUGGLE WITH THEM, THEN AS TIME GOES ON AND ON, WITH

YOU UNKNOWING AND UNAWARES, THEY WILL HAVE ENTERED DEEPLY INTO

YOU. FINALLY, ON THE LAST DAY OF YOUR LIFE, YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO DO

ANYTHING ABOUT IT. IF YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO AVOID GOING WRONG

WHEN YOU FACE THE END OF YOUR LIFE, THEN FROM NOW ON WHENEVER

YOU DO ANYTHING, DON'T LET YOURSELF SLIP. IF YOU GO WRONG IN YOUR

PRESENT DOINGS, IT WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO GO WRONG WHEN YOU'RE

FACING DEATH.

THERE'S A SORT OF PERSON WHO READS SCRIPTURES, RECITES THE

BUDDHA-NAME AND REPENTS IN THE MORNING, BUT THEN IN THE EVENING

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RUNS OFF AT THE MOUTH, SLANDERING AND VILIFYING OTHER PEOPLE. THE

NEXT DAY HE DOES HOMAGE TO BUDDHA AND REPENTS AS BEFORE. ALL

THROUGH THE YEARS TILL THE END OF HIS LIFE HE TAKES THIS AS DAILY

RITUAL -- THIS IS EXTREME FOLLY. SUCH PEOPLE ARE FAR FROM REALIZING

THAT THE SANSKRIT WORD 'KSHAMA' MEANS TO REPENT FAULTS. THIS IS

CALLED "CUTTING OFF THE CONTINUING MIND." ONCE YOU HAVE CUT IT OFF, NEVER CONTINUE IT AGAIN; ONCE YOU HAVE REPENTED, DO NOT COMMIT

[WRONGDOINGS] AGAIN -- THIS IS THE MEANING OF REPENTANCE ACCORDING

TO OUR BUDDHA WHICH GOOD PEOPLE WHO STUDY THE PATH SHOULD NOT

FAIL TO KNOW.

THE MIND, DISCRIMINATING INTELLECT, AND CONSCIOUSNESS OF

STUDENTS OF THE PATH SHOULD BE QUIET AND STILL TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

A DAY. WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO, YOU SHOULD SIT QUIETLY AND

KEEP THE MIND FROM SLACKENING AND THE BODY FROM WAVERING. IF YOU

PRACTICE TO PERFECTION OVER A LONG, LONG TIME, NATURALLY BODY AND

MIND WILL COME TO REST AT EASE, AND YOU WILL HAVE SOME DIRECTION IN

THE PATH. THE PERFECTION OF QUIESCENCE AND STILLNESS INDEED SETTLES

THE SCATTERED AND CONFUSED FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SENTIENT

BEINGS, BUT IF YOU CLING TO QUIESCENT STILLNESS AND CONSIDER IT THE

ULTIMATE, THEN YOU'RE IN THE GRIP OF PERVERTED "SILENT ILLUMINATION"

CH'AN.

Ta Hui reminds me of an incident in Charles Darwin's life. His sixtieth birthday was celebrated. The children of his neighborhood also thought of something to present to him.

Great people, rich people, were going to present him many things -- he had become by that time a world reknowned scientist -- but children have their own way of seeing things.

Charles Darwin's whole life was devoted to the study of animals, birds, insects, fish. He was working out in what steps human evolution has happened, how man has come to be. He never believed in the theory of creation. No man of intelligence can believe in it, for the simple reason that every day new things go on happening. Creation would have been a closed circle: God created everything and there was no question of any new inventions, new discoveries. God's work has to be perfect; hence there is no space for evolution. Evolution can happen only when things are imperfect.

The children found a way. They collected many insects, dissected them -- took out some insect's head, some other insect's leg, some other insect's body, and piece by piece they joined and glued a totally new insect which God has not created. And they went to Charles Darwin, saying, "We have brought an insect that perhaps you would love to know. We have never seen this. Just today we have found it."

Charles Darwin himself was a little taken aback: he had gone around the world, but he had never seen such an insect. Then he looked closely and he saw that the head belonged to some other insect -- he could see the glue and he could see the children's inventiveness -- and the children wanted to know the name of the bug.

Charles Darwin said, "I know it. Its name is humbug."

Ta Hui reminds me ... he is a humbug. He has been moving from one master to another master and he was collecting things -- something from one person, something from another Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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person. He has made a good collection and glued it perfectly well, but he cannot deceive one who knows the truth. And all the masters he had visited may not have been enlightened. Some certainly must have been enlightened, because there are a few statements which only an enlightened man can make. But there are a few others which only unenlightened moralists, puritans -- that kind of people -- can make. They are good people; they mean well, their intentions are good, but they don't know that just to mean well is not enough.

You should be at the very source of your being, where you can feel these three things: goodness, beauty and truth. In India we have called it the experience of SATCHIDANAND --

that is one expression. The other expression of the three is SATYAM, SHIVAM, SUNDERAM. I would like you to understand both statements, because they contain the very gist of the religious experience.

Satchidanand is made of three words: SAT, which means ultimate truth; CHIT, which means ultimate consciousness; ANAND, which means ultimate bliss. That is one set which denotes the experience of enlightenment.

But enlightenment is vast. There is another set: SATYAM, which means truth; SHIVAM, which means good; SUNDERAM, which means beautiful.

Why is this difference there? -- that too is significant to understand. The first statement comes from people who are of a philosophical bent: truth, consciousness, bliss. The second set comes from people who are basically poetic. Truth remains in both the sets, but the other two qualities change. To the poet, beauty is more important than anything else -- and also the quality of goodness.

So the first set comes from people who have become enlightened, but they have been of a philosophical mind. And the second group comes from people who have been poets. The only thing that joins them is truth -- and truth is a vast sky -- it contains all great experiences. You can choose any according to your own inclination.

Ta Hui has come across mere moralists who don't know the source of good, but talk about good. They are ethical, not religious. He has also come in contact with some enlightened masters -- I will tell you from where he has made this humbug teaching. The difference is so vast, qualitatively so different, but even a man of Ta Hui's intelligence could not figure out that they don't meet anywhere. You cannot glue them together -- the distance is so vast. But it will be a good discipline for you -- that's why I have chosen Ta Hui. It will be a good discipline for you to learn a little discrimination; otherwise you get impressed by any nonsense.

Just the other day somebody brought a book about a woman I had known. She was just a very ordinary woman, living with Swami Muktananda -- serving him, cooking his food. After the death of Muktananda, she has taken his place. Now her name is Gurumayi, the feminine of the Guru -- Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, and she is followed by many people. The book has been sent to me because she is touring around the world and many people are impressed by her. She is the successor of Muktananda. He himself was a perfect idiot -- now where to put this woman? You cannot be more perfect than Muktananda was.

But the problem is people simply listen to the words and they don't have any criteria to check whether these people are saying things out of their own experience, or they have collected them from books, from other people, and are simply repeating. You can see it very clearly in Ta Hui. He is a perfect specimen.

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NOW IF YOU WANT TO SAVE MENTAL POWER ... Buddha's whole teaching is that all the power that mind has is given by you. Mind has no power of its own; it is given by you through identification. Because you identify yourself with it, the mind becomes powerful. It is YOUR power.

Mind has no power at all; mind is just like the walking stick of a blind man. The stick walks, but the power is coming from the blind man. The stick cannot walk on its own, although it is called a walking stick. The blind man walks, and all the power that the stick has belongs to the blind man.

Your mind is a blind man's walking stick.

The moment you open your eyes and understand the identity, you can withdraw your power from the mind. You have given it, and the moment you withdraw your power, mind simply collapses. So to talk about mental power, he must have heard some teacher.

DO NOT BE CONCERNED WITH WHETHER OR NOT A THREE-YEAR-OLD

CHILD CAN SAY IT, OR WHETHER OR NOT AN EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD MAN CAN

CARRY IT OUT. JUST DON'T DO ANY EVIL AND YOU HAVE MASTERED THESE

WORDS. THEY APPLY WHETHER YOU BELIEVE OR NOT, SO PLEASE THINK IT

OVER.

Now he goes on committing mistakes ... if you compare him to any enlightened man's statements. First: JUST DON'T DO ANY EVIL. No awakened being of the world has ever said that "because awakening makes one clear. You go on doing evil acts because of your unconsciousness. Evil acts don't have any grip over you.

Gautam Buddha used to say that if a house shows light from the windows, from the doors, then thieves remain away. They know that the owner of the house is yet awake. The light is enough indication for a thief not to take the risk. But if the light is put off then the thief can come closer; it is a good opportunity. In darkness he can manage to steal something.

He used to say that the situation of human beings is the same. If your eyes show light, if your very existence shows illumination, if you radiate ... then evils don't come close to you.

Then whatever you do comes out of your blissfulness, and blissfulness cannot do any evil.

To teach people not to do evil is absolutely absurd.

If they are unconscious they are bound to do evil. They can try; they can force themselves to do good and not to do evil, but it will remain superficial. They don't have even the awareness of what is evil and what is good.

Once a man, a very rich man of Calcutta, came to Ramakrishna. He wanted to do some good act. He was becoming old, and he was very rich, and he thought it would be good to donate one thousand golden rupees -- at that time there were gold rupees. The word 'rupee'

simply comes from gold. It is a Sanskrit word, RAUPYA; in Hindi it has become RUPAYA; in English it has become rupee -- but it comes from gold. Now even a paper note is called a rupee; the word has lost all meaning, it has no relevance. But that's how things go on changing, and we go on using the same words for new realities to which they do not belong at all.

In the beginning people used to use horses. They were the fastest vehicle, but still people ask, "How much horsepower does your car have?" Strange ... horses have gone, but our old Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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mind still manages to think about a car in terms of horsepower, and nobody thinks about the stupidity of it.

This man brought one thousand gold rupees. He was feeling very great and thinking,

"Ramakrishna will be surprised, nobody will have given him such a gift. I'm going to do a great good work." It was for the temple of Ramakrishna where he lived in Dakshineshwar, just near Calcutta.

The first thing he did was to pour from his bag all one thousand gold rupees in front of Ramakrishna ... so loudly! They made so much sound that everybody in the ashram gathered:

"What is happening?"

Ramakrishna said, "Do you want to exhibit what you are doing? You could have silently given the bag to me. There was no need to pour out all those one thousand rupees in front of me. That was almost as if you were trying to make everybody in the ashram curious to come and see what is happening. This is not a good act. Deep inside you it is an ego trip, but I will accept the rupees. Now put them back in the bag."

So he put them in the bag and Ramakrishna said, "Now, are the rupees mine or yours?"

The man said, "Of course they are yours; I have offered them to you."

Ramakrishna said, "That's good. I offer them to the Ganges. Can you help me a little?"

The man said, "What kind of help?"

"Just go -- behind the temple is the Ganges. Throw the whole bag into the Ganges. Now it is MY money not yours, so you need not be worried about it."

The man was in shock -- "I got caught in unnecessary trouble. One thousand gold rupees ...

people would certainly say that this man is mad -- offering it to the Ganges?" But he was committed, so he went to the Ganges. Hours passed.

Ramakrishna said, "What is the matter? Throwing the bag away cannot take that much time."

He sent somebody who brought the news: "That man takes one rupee out of the bag and throws it on the stone rocks around the Ganges. A big crowd has gathered because those rupees are making so much noise and they are pure gold. Then the man throws one rupee far away in the Ganges. Then he takes another rupee, again hits it on the rocks ... and more and more people are gathering there. He is making a great show."

Ramakrishna had to go himself. He said, "You are not only an egoist, you are stupid too.

One checks whether rupees are authentic or not by throwing them on the stone so that he can hear the sound of gold, and if they are not authentic, they will not give the same sound. But that is when one is collecting them. You are throwing them away! Whether they are authentic or not makes no difference.

"Secondly, one counts rupees when one is collecting them. You are throwing the rupees away. What does it matter whether there are exactly one thousand, or one rupee less or one rupee more? But perhaps you have not realized that in the name of doing good, you are just doing something stupid. This is not going to bring any blessings to you. Your one thousand rupees have gone in vain."

But everywhere this is being done. We may think we are doing good. We may think we are not doing evil. But thinking has nothing to do with good and evil.

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Good is that which comes spontaneously from your awareness and evil is that which never comes spontaneously out of your awareness.

The man of awareness does only good.

His action and his awareness are in a deep synchronicity. Evil cannot enter into the lighted house of that man.

But moralists have no idea of enlightenment or meditation. They go on teaching people disciplines: Do this, do that; this is right, that is wrong. And finally Ta Hui says, SO PLEASE

THINK IT OVER.

Thinking can never bring you to any conclusion.

Thousands of years of philosophy ... the greatest geniuses thinking all over the world have not come to any conclusion at all. It has been such a great wastage of intelligence and genius.

They cannot even think on small matters.

Immanuel Kant, a great German philosopher who belongs to the highest category of philosophers, was told by a woman, "I love you. I have waited long hoping that perhaps you may take the initiative. But you don't seem to take initiative so I have to ask you to marry me."

He said, "You could have asked before, but first I have to think it over. I never do anything without thinking."

He consulted all the libraries, all the books on marriage; he collected all the pros, all the cons. The difficulty was that for three years he worked, but the pros and cons were equal. So there was no decision coming ... Finally, on the pro side, one thing appeared that was more than on the con side. He came across a book that said: It is always good to experience a thing even if the experience proves to be wrong. It will give you maturity. It is never good to avoid any experience, because avoiding any experience is avoiding maturity.

This was the only point that was more in favor of marriage; otherwise both sides were equal. Seeing that he had found the solution, he rushed to the woman's house and knocked on the door. The girl's old father opened the door and asked, "What do you want?"

Immanuel Kant said, "Your daughter has asked me to get married to her and I have been thinking. It certainly took a long time; thinking is a long process. It took three years. I worked hard day and night and finally I have come to the conclusion that I should marry."

The old man said, "That's good, but my girl has married long ago. She already has two children. She could not wait. And in these three years you never showed your face even a single time."

He said, "I was so much engaged in thinking -- consulting ancient scriptures, all the manuals of marriage. It was a tremendous job to come to the conclusion." Immanuel Kant remained unmarried his whole life.

Thinking is not the way to find the truth.

Non-thinking is the way.

Thinking always creates more muddle. Non-thinking brings clarity, spaciousness, purity and a great straightforward insight. It is not a question of pros and cons; you simply know in what direction you have to go. It is a simple understanding.

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Ta Hui must have listened to some other teacher who was telling his disciples to think it over.

IF WORLDLY PEOPLE WHOSE PRESENT CONDUCT IS WITHOUT

ILLUMINATION WOULD CORRECT THEMSELVES AND DO GOOD, THOUGH THE

GOODNESS IS NOT YET PERFECT, ISN'T THIS BETTER THAN DEPRAVITY AND

SHAMELESSNESS? These are not the words of those who have arrived. These are the words of very superficial mental activity.

ONE WHO DOES EVIL ON THE PRETEXT OF DOING GOOD IS CALLED IN THE

TEACHINGS ONE WHOSE CAUSAL GROUND IS NOT GENUINE, BRINGING ON

CROOKED RESULTS. IF, WITH A STRAIGHTFORWARD MIND ... but it remains still the mind, and mind is never straightforward. You all have minds, so it is not a problem to understand that the mind is always crooked. It is never straightforward.

The Eastern mystics have used the tail of a dog to symbolize mind. They say even if you keep the tail of the dog straight in a hollow bamboo for twelve years, whenever you remove the bamboo the tail will again go crooked. You cannot expect that it will remain straightforward; that is just the nature of the tail.

The situation with the mind is the same -- it is crooked. It never goes directly, immediately, straightforward. It is cunning, it is clever. It tries to find a way in which it can pretend to be good and yet enjoy all the pleasures that evil offers.

I have heard about a bishop who was in the confessional, and a young, beautiful woman came to confess. She said, "Father, I have been raped -- and not once, but three times in the night."

The bishop said, "But if you have been raped, you don't have to confess. The man who raped you has to confess. You have not committed any sin."

The woman said, "You don't understand. I enjoyed it -- that's why I have come to confess and pray to God to forgive me -- otherwise I could have done everything not to be raped. It was the same man who raped me three times in the night, and I did not scream or shout. I really enjoyed it."

The father said, "This case is very serious. You come to the side of the room, because you have to explain to me the exact details of what that man did. He seems to be just a born devil."

Then the father kissed the young girl and asked, "Has he done this?"

The girl said, "Yes, Father."

The father said, "He is really a devil." Then he started playing with her breasts and asked,

"Did he do this too?"

The girl said, "Yes, Father."

And the father said, "That man should be condemned to hell! And did he tell you to undress?"

The girl said, "Yes, Father."

He said, "That man needs eternal hell fire! You undress."

And the father made love to her and asked, "Did he do this too?"

The girl said, "Yes, Father."

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He said, "Let that man come to my confessional. He will have to come."

But the girl said, "He did one thing more too."

The father said, "What! More?"

The girl said, "He gave me gonorrhea. I have told you beforehand; he is really a very evil person."

Your so-called good people go on doing, in the name of good, all kind of evil acts -- and it is bound to be so. It is not their fault. They have been brought up with a wrong teaching. They have been told to do this, to do that, but nobody has ever gone deep into their psychology --

why are they doing it? What is the root source of their evil acts? And, unless that root is cut ...

Man's nature in itself is basically good. You just have to remove the wild weeds that have grown in his nature. Meditation is the only method to take out all that is evil, without much effort, and then what remains is good. Then whatever the man does, he has not to think about it -- about whether it is good or evil. He simply does it. He feels a deep harmony with existence and he cannot go against that harmony.

Evil is going against nature's harmony.

It is creating discord.

And only people who don't know the beauty of harmony and the joy of harmony can commit evil acts. But don't say to them, "Do this, do that."

I have heard that God, in the beginning, first asked the Babylonians, "Would you like a commandment?"

They asked, "What is the commandment?"

God said, "Don't look at another's wife with an evil thought."

The Babylonians said, "That is impossible. Keep your commandment to yourself, because if some beautiful woman comes in front of us, it does not matter whose wife she is. The evil thought arises on its own accord. We cannot do anything; before we even think anything, it is there."

God went to the Egyptians and asked, "Would you like a commandment?"

They said, "First we want to know, what is the commandment?"

And God said, "Always do good."

The Egyptians said, "You go to others and give this commandment to them, because if somebody gives evil to us, how are we going to defend ourselves? An eye for an eye ... if he is doing evil, we will do greater evil; only can we put him right. If he is doing evil and we go on doing good, we will be crushed. Forgive us, we don't want your commandment. You can keep it."

Then he went to Moses and asked Moses, "Do you want a commandment?

And Moses asked, "How much does it cost?" He did not bother to ask what the commandment is. The real thing is how much it costs.

God said, "It costs nothing."

Moses said, "Then I will take ten!"

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If it is free, then why not take ten? That's how Jews have ten commandments. But in those ten commandments there is no commandment for meditation. They are all just moralistic, superficial teachings.

IF, WITH A STRAIGHTFORWARD MIND AND STRAIGHTFORWARD CONDUCT, YOU ARE ABLE TO SEIZE SUPREME ENLIGHTENMENT DIRECTLY, THIS CAN BE

CALLED THE ACT OF A REAL MAN OF POWER. All this is simply crap. It is just putting things upside down.

The enlightened man is really a man of power -- not power over others but simply a source of power, not a power that dominates, enslaves, but just a deep strength, stamina, courage. It is his inner source. It has nothing to do with anybody else. It is simply his power that radiates all around him. Anything that he is saying comes from that power. Then the conduct is straightforward, then the mind is straightforward. But you cannot first put the mind straightforward and your conduct straightforward, and then attain supreme enlightenment directly.

Enlightenment has to be the first thing and everything else is just a by-product. As the tree grows, the roots are needed first, although the roots are invisible. Perhaps that is the reason why thinkers have missed the basic point: roots are invisible, but once the roots are there, the tree starts growing. Foliage comes, beautiful greenery, flowers come -- psychedelic and colorful -- fruits come which can give great nourishment, but they are all coming because of the hidden roots.

It is not vice versa: that first you hang a few flowers and a few fruits, bring some foliage, tie it together -- and then the roots will grow. It does not happen that way; that is not the course of nature. But this is what people have been taught: first become good, first become moral, first follow a certain discipline. Then you will attain to enlightenment and enlightenment will give you great power.

Enlightenment itself is power. But it has to come first, it cannot be second. And everything else will follow.

The enlightened man cannot do wrong, cannot do evil. His every breath is in the service of good, his every act is in the service of the divine. He himself is totally surrendered to the whole -- allowing the whole to use him in whatever way it wants.

This is the difference between morality and religion: a religious person is moral, but the moral person is not religious.

The moral person is only a hypocrite.

But the problem has arisen because we have seen enlightened people like Gautam Buddha, but we don't see their enlightenment. Their roots are hidden. We see their actions, their fruits, their flowers, their foliage. And the natural logic of the mind is that if we also start doing the same acts as they are doing, we will become enlightened.

You can see the logical fallacy, but it appears very rational ... Buddha eats one time a day, so you eat one time a day; Buddha has only three sets of clothes, so you have only three sets of clothes; Buddha never uses any vehicle, always walks from village to village, so you always walk. You can imitate every action of Buddha without difficulty, you can repeat his words exactly the way he says them, but still you will not become enlightened, because the roots are missing. And with roots the problem is that they are always hidden; they are secret.

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So Buddhists, for twenty-five centuries, have been continuously imitating: Christians have been imitating Christ, and the same is true about other religions. They have all created great imitators, but inside they are just as ordinary, as unenlightened, as anybody else. They have taken the whole thing from the wrong end.

THE CONCERNS THAT HAVE COME DOWN FROM NUMBERLESS AGES ARE

ONLY IN THE PRESENT. This sentence he must have got from someone enlightened, because he could not manage to think of it himself. It is a very pregnant sentence.

THE CONCERNS THAT HAVE COME DOWN FROM NUMBERLESS AGES ARE

ONLY IN THE PRESENT: IF YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THEM RIGHT NOW, THEN

THE CONCERNS OF NUMBERLESS AGES WILL INSTANTLY DISPERSE, LIKE TILES

BEING SCATTERED OR ICE MELTING. IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND RIGHT NOW, YOU'LL PASS THROUGH COUNTLESS EONS MORE, AND IT'LL STILL BE JUST AS

IT IS. THE TRUTH THAT IS AS IT IS HAS BEEN CONTINUOUS SINCE ANTIQUITY

WITHOUT EVER HAVING VARIED SO MUCH AS A HAIRSBREADTH. Now these words cannot come from a teacher. The insistence on NOW and the implication behind now is immensely great. He is saying that you may have committed thousands of crimes in the past, but the past is no more. Only memories of the past have remained in your mind. You may have imagined committing many crimes and evils in the future, but they are only in the mind.

They are all now: your past, your present, your future are all in this moment.

This is a very tremendous statement. It means you don't have to get rid of your past by doing good acts. It means that you don't have to be punished for your past -- because it was an unconscious action. You were not aware. If you can become aware right now, all that has been a heavy load on you will melt away like ice.

Now there is no question of doing good and there is no question of doing evil. Now the only thing is bringing a deep understanding of the present moment, an awareness of the present moment.

And that's what meditation is. It does not care about the past, it does not care about the future; it simply becomes a pillar of light in the present. In that pillar of light in the present, all past and future simply disappear. They don't have any actual existence.

It is as if you have slept the whole night, doing good acts and bad acts -- sometimes escaping with your neighbor's wife, sometimes becoming a saint -- but in the morning when you wake up, you know you have not done anything. It was only the sleepiness that created all those dreams.

To the man of understanding, all that you have done has been done in your unconsciousness; so the only way is just to become conscious, and you will be awake. And all your past will disappear just as dreams disappear when you are awake. This statement can certainly be said to come from a source of enlightenment.

MATTERS OF WORLDLY ANXIETY ARE LIKE THE LINKS OF A CHAIN, JOINING TOGETHER CONTINUOUSLY WITHOUT A BREAK. IF YOU CAN DO

AWAY WITH THEM, DO AWAY WITH THEM IMMEDIATELY!. That's why I was saying that he has done a good patchwork. He has deceived even the emperors by doing his patchwork.

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from others. And they are so mixed up with each other that it is very difficult to make a clear-cut division.

But I wanted to take it whole; otherwise I could have cut out all that is nonsense and left only that which is true. I wanted to give you a certain insight in how to distinguish whether it is coming from a source of enlightenment or it is just intellectual gymnastics.

BECAUSE YOU HAVE BECOME HABITUATED TO THEM SINCE

BEGINNINGLESS TIME, TO THE POINT WHERE THEY HAVE BECOME TOTALLY

FAMILIAR, IF YOU DON'T EXERT YOURSELF TO STRUGGLE WITH THEM, THEN

AS TIME GOES ON AND ON, WITH YOU UNKNOWING AND UNAWARES, THEY

WILL HAVE ENTERED DEEPLY INTO YOU. FINALLY, ON THE LAST DAY OF

YOUR LIFE, YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

Do you see how he forgets himself? If things can be done now, in a single moment of awareness, why can't you do it at the moment of death? That too will be a NOW and a single moment. And it will be easier to do at that time than it is now, because now you can postpone for tomorrow. When death is standing in front of you, there is no question of postponing; either you have to do it or not do it. And who would like to carry all his nightmares with him?

Ta Hui himself became enlightened just a minute before he was dying. Death can be of immense help, it can be a blessing in disguise, because now there is no future, no tomorrow.

You cannot say, "Today I am busy, tomorrow I will meditate." You have to drop all business.

Now the only significant thing to be done is to be alert and aware, get rid of all your past, and move into death -- innocent, clean, clear, unburdened. Then your very death becomes the entry into the divine. Then you are not dying; you are entering into eternal life.

But Ta Hui says as a thinker, as a teacher, FINALLY, ON THE LAST DAY OF YOUR

LIFE, YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. Nothing has to be done. If one has only to become aware, he can become aware any time, whether the next moment is death or not. But death can become a great incentive to do it immediately. Just the idea of tomorrow makes you say, "It's okay, there's no hurry. If not today, then tomorrow" -- and tomorrow never comes. It is always today. And you become habituated to postponing for tomorrow. Death for the first time makes you aware that now there is no tomorrow. If you want to be aware, be aware. And the shock of death helps awareness.

Many people at the time of death have become enlightened, although their enlightenment remains unknown, because after it they simply die. Their enlightenment never helps anybody else because there is no time, but still it is great -- at least they have managed it for themselves.

IF YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO AVOID GOING WRONG WHEN YOU FACE THE

END OF YOUR LIFE, THEN FROM NOW ON WHENEVER YOU DO ANYTHING, DON'T LET YOURSELF SLIP. He goes on, up and down. Those few sentences were absolutely right. Now again he has come to DOING. IF YOU GO WRONG IN YOUR

PRESENT DOINGS, IT WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO GO WRONG WHEN YOU'RE

FACING DEATH.

Meditation is not a question of DOING at all.

Meditation is a question of awakening.

THERE'S A SORT OF PERSON WHO READS SCRIPTURES, RECITES THE

BUDDHA-NAME, AND REPENTS IN THE MORNING, BUT THEN IN THE EVENING

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RUNS OFF AT THE MOUTH, SLANDERING AND VILIFYING OTHER PEOPLE. THE

NEXT DAY HE DOES HOMAGE TO BUDDHA AND REPENTS AS BEFORE. ALL

THROUGH THE YEARS TILL THE END OF HIS LIFE, HE TAKES THIS AS DAILY

RITUAL -- THIS IS EXTREME FOLLY. SUCH PEOPLE ARE FAR FROM REALIZING

THAT THE SANSKRIT WORD 'KSHAMA' MEANS TO REPENT FAULTS. THIS IS

CALLED "CUTTING OFF THE CONTINUING MIND."

Now what he is saying is absolutely applicable to him -- he is repeating good words, he is repeating scriptures. He may be worshiping the Buddha, being a Buddhist monk. What he is saying seems to be his own experience.

It is true. Millions of people in the world are doing the same -- whether they are Christians or Jews or Hindus or Buddhists or Jainas, it does not make any difference. They are the same people. When they are in the temple they pretend to be religious. This one hour of religion is not going to help because twenty-three hours are canceling it continuously. Twenty-three times more they are irreligious. This one hour religion is just a self-deception.

And you can see how he goes on mixing things. The Sanskrit word KSHAMA does not mean repenting faults. KSHAMA means forgiving, forgiving others and forgiving yourself too

-- forgiving because you were unconscious and others are unconscious. This forgiveness will bring some awareness to you.

Every year Jainas have one day, KSHAMAVANI, the day of forgiving, when even enemies have to meet each other and forgive each other. And the miracle is that after the day is gone the enemies are still enemies; nothing has happened, it's just a ritual.

We can make a ritual of every great thing. You step on somebody's feet and you say, "I am sorry." Do you really mean it or is it just a social convention? It makes life smooth, but it does not come from your very being. You don't even think about it.

But certainly he catches hold of a sentence which is not from ordinary teachers: THIS IS

CALLED "CUTTING OFF THE CONTINUING MIND."

You can see the contradiction. A person who lives in repentance cannot be said to be

"cutting his mind."

Repentance is always about the past.

It is a feeling of guilt -- "I have done wrong."

"Cutting the mind" means that the past is no more -- "it was a dark night and I was unconscious. Things that have happened were out of my sleep; now I don't have any connection with that old past." Not having any connection with the mind means not having any connection with the past.

Your mind is your past.

The whole past is continuously gathering in the mind. Cutting the mind away from yourself, you are cutting your past and you are starting anew, fresh.

This is what the great masters have said: Die each moment to the past, and be reborn for the new, for the fresh, for that which is coming -- dying each moment because past is being created every moment.

Your present is nothing but continuously becoming past -- why go on gathering an unnecessary weight? It is better that each moment you go on cutting yourself from the past.

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Don't carry any scratches from the past and remain available and open to the future. Soon the future will also become past.

The moment anything becomes past, cut yourself away from it. Then you can die just like an innocent child, then your death will be just like a birth: no past, an innocent mind.

And this is the right death because it is not an ending of life, but a beginning of a greater life -- of a life which will not be encased in the body, but will be spread all over existence: you will dance in the trees and you will smile in the flowers and you will shine in the stars. Your freedom will be total and you won't have any boundaries.

ONCE YOU HAVE CUT IT OFF, NEVER CONTINUE IT AGAIN; ONCE YOU HAVE

REPENTED, DO NOT COMMIT AGAIN -- THIS IS THE MEANING OF REPENTANCE

ACCORDING TO OUR BUDDHA. He does not know the Buddha. Buddha does not teach repentance; he simply teaches awareness.

Repentance is a dangerous technique. It is just like Catholic confession. Every religion has managed to create some cheap substitute that everybody can do and feel good. You go to the church, you confess to the priest, and you think that you are freed. Now the priest will tell God and you are forgiven. But in reality what happens when you come out of the confessional is that you are again ready to commit the same things. There is no problem. Next week you can again confess.

Hindus go to the Ganges to take a bath. Every twelve years a great gathering -- perhaps the greatest in the world -- happens in Prayag. Hindus from all over the country, and even from outside the country, just come there to have a dip in the Ganges, because it is thought that the moment you take a dip in the Ganges all your sins, even all your wrongdoings, are washed away.

I used to go to Prayag many times, but I have never taken a dip in the Ganges. I love swimming and I have been swimming in many rivers, but never in the Ganges. I used to stay with a family. They said, "This is strange. You love swimming, you always go to the rivers when you are in other cities, but here where the whole country comes to take a dip ..."

I said, "That is the reason -- so many sins must be afloat here and for centuries people have been dipping in it. It is very dangerous. I keep away from the place because if their sins are really washed away here ... as long as we can remember -- at least ten thousand years --

millions and millions of people have been washing their sins here. This is the dirtiest place in the whole world. I cannot step in it."

The man was very much shocked because he was always bragging that he lived near the Ganges and took a dip in it every day. I said, "You are an idiot. Every day! You must have gathered so many sins that now even God cannot help you."

He said, "But nobody ever thought about it."

I said, "Who thinks? People simply go on doing what others are doing. And you are a doctor, well educated, well known in your area -- at least you should not be so superstitious and stupid. If sins can be washed away by the Ganges, that simply means you are again ready to commit sins. What is the problem? Go on committing as many sins as you want to commit.

The Ganges is there -- just go and have a dip."

These are the religious priests exploiting people so cunningly, giving them hope, giving them simple tricks to deceive even God.

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WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO, YOU SHOULD SIT QUIETLY AND KEEP

THE MIND FROM SLACKENING AND THE BODY FROM WAVERING. IF YOU

PRACTICE TO PERFECTION OVER A LONG LONG TIME, NATURALLY BODY AND

MIND WILL COME TO REST AT EASE, AND YOU WILL HAVE SOME DIRECTION IN

THE PATH. THE PERFECTION OF QUIESCENCE AND STILLNESS INDEED SETTLES

THE SCATTERED AND CONFUSED FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SENTIENT

BEINGS, BUT IF YOU CLING TO QUIESCENT STILLNESS AND CONSIDER IT THE

ULTIMATE, THEN YOU'RE IN THE GRIP OF PERVERTED "SILENT ILLUMINATION"

CH'AN.

This small school of silent illumination is one of the highly evolved methodologies about awareness, but Ta Hui does not belong to that small line of illumined people.

The mind always thinks of doing something.

When you are doing something, mind is nourished. When you are not doing anything, mind starts dying. Mind is almost like a bicycle. If you go on pedaling, the bicycle goes on moving. If you stop pedaling, it may go a few feet because of the old momentum, but finally it has to fall. Mind needs continuous doing. Do something ... that is the pedaling that keeps the mind going on.

This school of "silent illumination" ch'an, which Ta Hui speaks continually against, is of a far higher quality than Ta Hui can understand. These people simply sit silently. They don't do anything -- good or bad. They simply don't do anything. If somebody offers food they can take it; if nobody offers food they remain hungry, but they don't do anything for it.

And existence is so compassionate that if a certain person is simply sitting silently, he creates a field of silence around him. Somebody is bound to be attracted towards him. No

"silent illumination" ch'an adept has died of hunger or cold. Somebody has come to cover him, somebody has brought some food, somebody has brought water. Not even a single man of that lineage has died ... and they have attained to the highest peak of illumination.

It seems Ta Hui feels a certain jealously that these people don't do anything and still they are worshiped. These people don't do anything; still they are thought to be living buddhas. His own leanings are for moral works, good works, service to the people. He is an intellectual. But it seems before he died he became tired of his intellectual approach, because he had not gained anything.

At the last moment of his life, he must have realized that he had wasted his life unnecessarily wandering in a desert where nothing grows. This realization, in a single moment, changed his whole character, his whole being. His whole life he was only a teacher, but he died as a master. If he had lived a little more, perhaps he would have asked forgiveness from the people who belong to the "silent illumination" ch'an. We don't know. Perhaps inside his own being he must have asked for forgiveness.

But he seems to be jealous because he is teaching, he is doing good, he is serving people; he is moving from town to town bringing people to the feet of Gautam Buddha, and these people don't worship Buddha. They don't even chant Buddha's name. They simply sit silently.

They don't have any records because they don't say anything. Their whole being is their statement. They are themselves buddhas. Why should they chant the name of Buddha, why should they worship Buddha, why should they go to the Buddha's temple?

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My own sympathy is not with Ta Hui. My own sympathy is with those "silent illumination" ch'an people. They are the very salt of the earth.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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4

Trust

16 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

DO NOT GRASP ANOTHER'S BOW

ACTIVELY TRY TO CLEAR OUT YOUR MIND, THEN YOU WON'T GO WRONG; SINCE YOU DON'T GO WRONG, CORRECT MINDFULNESS STANDS OUT ALONE.

WHEN CORRECT MINDFULNESS STANDS OUT ALONE, INNER TRUTH ADAPTS

TO PHENOMENA; WHEN INNER TRUTH ADAPTS TO EVENTS AND THINGS, EVENTS AND THINGS COME TO FUSE IN INNER TRUTH. WHEN PHENOMENA FUSE WITH THEIR INNER TRUTH, YOU SAVE POWER; WHEN YOU FEEL THE

SAVING, THIS IS THE EMPOWERMENT OF STUDYING THE PATH. IN GAINING

POWER YOU SAVE UNLIMITED POWER; IN SAVING POWER YOU GAIN

UNLIMITED POWER.

THIS MATTER MAY BE TAKEN UP BY BRILLIANT, QUICK-WITTED FOLKS, BUT IF YOU DEPEND ON YOUR BRILLIANCE AND QUICK WITS, YOU WON'T BE

ABLE TO BEAR UP. IT IS EASY FOR KEEN AND BRIGHT PEOPLE TO ENTER, BUT

HARD FOR THEM TO PRESERVE IT. THAT'S BECAUSE GENERALLY THEIR ENTRY

IS NOT VERY DEEP AND THE POWER IS MEAGER. WITH THE INTELLIGENT AND

QUICK-WITTED, AS SOON AS THEY HEAR A SPIRITUAL FRIEND MENTION THIS

MATTER THEIR EYES STIR IMMEDIATELY, AND THEY ARE ALREADY TRYING

TO GAIN UNDERSTANDING THROUGH THEIR MIND'S DISCRIMINATING

INTELLECT. PEOPLE LIKE THIS ARE CREATING THEIR OWN HINDRANCES, AND

WILL NEVER HAVE A MOMENT OF AWAKENING. "WHEN DEVILS FROM

OUTSIDE WREAK CALAMITY, IT CAN STILL BE REMEDIED," BUT THIS RELIANCE

ON INTELLECTUAL DISCRIMINATION AMOUNTS TO "WHEN ONE'S OWN FAMILY

CREATES DISASTER, IT CANNOT BE AVERTED." THIS IS WHAT YUNG CHIA MEANT WHEN HE SAID, "THE LOSS OF THE WEALTH OF THE DHARMA, AND

THE DEMISE OF VIRTUE, ALL STEM FROM MIND'S DISCRIMINATING

INTELLECT."

THE MIND'S CONCEPTUAL DISCRIMINATION

THE OBSTRUCTION OF THE PATH BY THE MIND, AND ITS CONCEPTUAL

DISCRIMINATION, IS WORSE THAN POISONOUS SNAKES OR FIERCE TIGERS.

WHY? BECAUSE POISONOUS SNAKES AND FIERCE TIGERS CAN STILL BE

AVOIDED, WHEREAS INTELLIGENT PEOPLE MAKE THE MIND'S CONCEPTUAL

DISCRIMINATION THEIR HOME, SO THAT THERE'S NEVER A SINGLE INSTANT --

WHETHER THEY'RE WALKING, STANDING, SITTING, OR LYING DOWN -- THAT

THEY'RE NOT HAVING DEALINGS WITH IT. AS TIME GOES ON, UNKNOWING

AND UNAWARES THEY BECOME ONE PIECE WITH IT -- AND NOT BECAUSE

THEY WANT TO, EITHER, BUT BECAUSE SINCE BEGINNINGLESS TIME THEY

HAVE FOLLOWED THIS ONE LITTLE ROAD UNTIL IT'S BECOME SET AND

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FAMILIAR. THOUGH THEY MAY SEE THROUGH IT FOR A MOMENT AND WISH

TO DETACH FROM IT, THEY STILL CAN'T. THUS IT IS SAID THAT POISONOUS

SNAKES AND FIERCE TIGERS CAN STILL BE AVOIDED, BUT THE MIND'S

CONCEPTUAL DISCRIMINATION TRULY HAS NO PLACE FOR YOU TO ESCAPE.

The great problem with people like Ta Hui is their own intellect. Even if they are talking against intellect, it is nothing but their own intellect. The intellect is capable of creating an illusion that you are going beyond intellect, but the illusion can be easily detected.

The things that Ta Hui is saying in these sutras, he must have heard from a very right source. But he himself is only an intellectual; hence everything that passes through his intellect changes its form. This change is so subtle that unless one becomes enlightened himself, he will never see where the intellect has deceived him.

Just listen to what he is saying: Actively try to clear out your mind. Who are you? Do you know yourself as distinct from the mind? If you know yourself as distinct from the mind, the mind is cleared away. The question of actively trying to clear out your mind does not arise.

The mind is there because you are not there; you are fast asleep, you are not alert. The darkness is there because you have not brought even a single candle, and just a small candle is enough to dispel vast darkness. This is how the mind misinterprets -- and still it feels that one is going on the right path.

The enlightened man can say to you, "Dispel all darkness." But the only way to dispel darkness is to bring light in. The intellectual will understand that dispelling darkness means actively fighting with darkness, throwing it out of the house. But can you manage to empty your room of darkness just by bringing out buckets full of darkness and throwing it away? The room will still remain dark. The only thing that will happen will be a tremendous frustration, tiredness, disgust with the whole idea. But if you had an understanding that is not from the mind, but from the beyond ... that comes only through meditation, and this man is not talking about meditation at all.

It is only through meditation that your inner light, which is dormant, becomes suddenly active and alive. It is an eternal source of light. Once the light is there, darkness is automatically dispelled. Even to say dispelled is wrong, because darkness does not exist; it is only the absence of the light. Darkness does not have its own existence, so you cannot do anything directly with it.

Whatever you want to do with darkness, you will have to do something with light. If you want darkness, put the light off. If you don't want darkness, put the light on. But you can act only with light, because light is a positive existence. Darkness is simply an absence of light --

and so is the state of our mind.

Mind is your absence. The moment you are present, there is no mind.

So the absolute emphasis of all the buddhas of all the centuries has been simply this: Come to consciousness, become a presence, and there will be no place for the mind and all its ingredients -- greed, anger, delusion, dreams, hallucinations, ambitions, the whole lot.

If you start listening to people like Ta Hui and working according to their idea, you will get more and more in a mess. He is saying, actively try to clear out your mind. He is giving you a wrong direction, without any intention to take you on a wrong path. But intentions don't matter. What matters is whether the indication is in the right direction or not.

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Nothing can be done directly with the mind.

He says, actively try to clear out your mind, then you won't go wrong, but the first condition cannot be fulfilled. You will be going wrong all the time. But he is accepting that the first condition can be fulfilled.

Not a single enlightened person has ever said that you can do anything directly with the mind, but because he accepts that idea, he goes on and on ...then you won't go wrong; since you don't go wrong, correct mindfulness stands out alone. Still, it is mindfulness.

Meditation is not mindfulness.

Meditation is a state of no-mind.

Mindfulness is still intelligence. You can be highly intelligent -- that does not mean that you know meditation. A great contemporary British philosopher, C.E.M. Joad, was very much disturbed by the ideas of George Gurdjieff and his disciple, P.D. Ouspensky. He was sick, and he was reading P.D. Ouspensky's book on the teachings of Gurdjieff. He was one of the great philosophers of the century.

Joad told one of his friends, "I hear Ouspensky is in London, but I am not in a good enough condition to go and talk to him. The doctors say I should rest in bed. But I cannot wait, because it may be that I am just counting my last days, any day may be the end. Can you go to Ouspensky and tell him my situation ... and if he can come, it will be very kind of him. I want to talk to him, because I don't understand what this no-mind is. Beyond mind, I cannot understand there is anything."

Joad had worked his whole life with the mind, and he knew what the mind was, but he had never gone beyond the boundary. "In fact," he said to the friend, "the people who go beyond the mind go into an insane asylum. We say mad people are 'out of their mind.' And this strange man Gurdjieff goes on talking about no-mind. You go and persuade Ouspensky!

Perhaps, knowing my name, he may come."

Ouspensky came, and Joad said to him, "I cannot understand at all what this no-mind is. I can understand mind, I can even understand mindfulness, but no-mind is simply beyond my conceivability."

Ouspensky said, "It is a very simple matter. I am sitting here. You just close your eyes and remember one thing: whatever is going before your inner eye is the mind, and the presence in front of which the mind is passing is the no-mind."

Joad had never done any such thing. He closed his eyes ... a half hour passed, one hour passed, and his face was looking so silent, so serene. Ouspensky had some other appointment, so he had to wake him up. He told him, "I am sorry to disturb you -- you were going really deep."

And Joad said, "I am immensely grateful. I cannot express my gratitude ... I had never thought about the possibility that I can watch the mind; that certainly means I am not the mind. The watcher is certainly different from the watched. And rather than explaining it to me intellectually, you gave me the experience itself. It was so beautiful and so silent. These last days, staying in bed, I have nothing else to do. I am going to continue watching my mind.

"Perhaps Gurdjieff is right, and perhaps the Eastern mystics are right. And this is the right time for me. If I can get away from the mind into myself, into my witnessing, into my Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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watching -- what they call no-mind -- perhaps I will go from life not feeling that I lived meaninglessly."

After just ten days he died. But before his death, he dictated to his secretary a small statement to be delivered to George Gurdjieff and to Ouspensky. He said, "I am dying with great gratitude -- you showed me the way. Now death does not matter, now nothing matters. I have tasted something of the beyond, of the eternal. Mind was the barrier. I was thinking mind is all that we have, but I never thought that mind is just an instrument, like any other instrument."

You have kidneys, you have hands, you have legs; if your hand is cut off, that does not mean that you are destroyed. You are more than the total sum of your parts -- that is the meaning of no-mind. You are not an arithmetical entity, you are a spiritual being.

I would like to repeat so that you remember it: You are more than the sum total of your parts, and that which is more than the sum total of your parts is your real being. A machine is not more than the sum total; a machine is exactly equal to the sum total of its parts.

It is only life which is more than its sum total.

And when life becomes conscious, it is even more.

And when consciousness becomes absolute illumination, it is tremendously more. The sum total of your parts remains far behind, a very small, tiny thing. You become as vast as the sky itself.

But Ta Hui has no understanding yet. He is still talking like a thinker.

WHEN CORRECT MINDFULNESS STANDS OUT ALONE, INNER TRUTH ADAPTS

TO PHENOMENA; WHEN INNER TRUTH ADAPTS TO EVENTS AND THINGS, EVENTS AND THINGS COME TO FUSE IN INNER TRUTH. WHEN PHENOMENA FUSE WITH THEIR INNER TRUTH, YOU SAVE POWER.

That too has to be understood. Power from the lips of Ta Hui is not the same power about which a Gautam Buddha may talk.

Power -- according to the mind -- is always power over others. Mind is continuously trying to dominate, to enslave, to be powerful over others, because mind has no power of its own.

All its power is borrowed. What does the prime minister of any country have as his power?

Just the votes that he has begged. He is really the greatest beggar in the country. All his power belongs to the people; he does not have any power of his own.

So when the mind talks about power, it talks about politics, it talks about domination, it talks about possessiveness; it talks about increasing your empire of riches, of power, of prestige, in whatever way, so you can become a dominant figure.

But the power that the awakened one talks about is not power over others. He talks about it as an intrinsic explosion, just like the atomic explosion. It is not the power that is coming from outside; it is the power that was deep inside the atomic cell. Because the atom has exploded, the power is all over the place.

A very strange piece of information has come to me just the other day ... a Japanese scientist had been continuously watching, studying the effects of atomic energy and its Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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radiation in and around Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Forty years have passed since the atomic explosion happened there, when the atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

This one scientist really risked his life; nobody goes to Hiroshima because everything is full of radiation, but he went and lived there for a few weeks, just to see what effect the radiation would have. And when he came back he brought a great surprise to his fellow scientists. He looked ten years younger, and healthier than he had ever been.

They were all surprised, because nobody had thought ... it had always been thought that radiation will kill, but he has discovered that radiation will kill only in a certain great quantity.

It is a question of degrees. In small quantities it can help to destroy disease, to give man a longer life, to keep him young until his death. Now he has prepared a small ceramic paper, with a very small dose of radiation coming out of it. He thinks that keeping that in your room will be enough for you to remain healthy and younger!

I have always been saying that energy is neutral: that which can destroy, can also create; we just have to discover how it destroys and how it creates.

This Japanese scientist has done a tremendous service to the coming humanity. It means that if the nations are willing, and if their stupid politicians don't hinder it, then all the atomic energy and nuclear weapons that they have gathered can be brought to the service of life -- to bring more health to the world, to dispel illness, to dispel hunger, to dispel old age, to make man live longer and remain younger.

The power of the atomic bomb is not power coming from outside; it is the power of the atom which was dormant, sleeping, and has been awakened. If this is possible through the atom -- which is part of electricity, just a small particle -- what is possible if we can explode the living being of a man? A small particle of his consciousness, if it explodes, is going to bring so much light and so much power.

Perhaps the mystics who have always been talking about power were talking about the power that they were feeling inside themselves. It has nothing to do with dominating anybody.

Their power has been used as compassion, their power has been used for showering flowers over others. Their power has not ever been used for any destructive purpose, in the service of death.

But the word 'power' itself is dangerous, because ordinarily its association is with politics.

When Ta Hui uses the word power he does not understand that the mystics have used it in a different way, totally opposite. He says,

WHEN PHENOMENA FUSE WITH THEIR INNER TRUTH, YOU SAVE POWER; WHEN YOU FEEL THE SAVING THIS IS THE EMPOWERMENT OF STUDYING THE

PATH. IN GAINING POWER YOU SAVE UNLIMITED POWER; IN SAVING POWER

YOU GAIN UNLIMITED POWER.

The way he is saying it is clear: unlimited power -- over whom? Why this emphasis on power?

The power that comes out of meditation does not come as power. It comes as if flowers are showering on you; it comes as fragrance, it comes as love, it comes as compassion. It brings all the great qualities and all the great values of life suddenly to their blossoming. It is the spring of your consciousness. Everything suddenly becomes green, everything becomes cool; Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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the breeze becomes full of fragrance, because you are bursting forth into flowers which cannot be seen by the eye. But those who have the heart and the courage to open to it will certainly feel it. They will feel its song, they will feel its dance.

But the word power is not to be used. It has been associated with wrong people -- they have contaminated it.

THIS MATTER MAY BE TAKEN UP BY BRILLIANT, QUICK-WITTED FOLKS ...

and he himself is nothing but a brilliant, quick-witted folk ... BUT IF YOU DEPEND ON

YOUR BRILLIANCE AND QUICK WITS, YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO BEAR UP. IT IS

EASY FOR KEEN AND BRIGHT PEOPLE TO ENTER, BUT HARD FOR THEM TO

PRESERVE IT. THAT'S BECAUSE GENERALLY THEIR ENTRY IS NOT VERY DEEP

AND THE POWER IS MEAGER. WITH THE INTELLIGENT AND QUICK-WITTED, AS

SOON AS THEY HEAR A SPIRITUAL FRIEND MENTION THIS MATTER, THEIR

EYES STIR IMMEDIATELY AND THEY ARE ALREADY TRYING TO GAIN

UNDERSTANDING THROUGH THEIR MIND'S DISCRIMINATING INTELLECT.

Ta Hui has a misunderstanding. Mind has only one power and that is the discriminating intellect; it has no other power.

Because of its discriminating intellect, mind is so useful in science, and it is absolutely a hindrance in spiritual growth. There you don't need any intellect. All that you need is a deep trust in existence, a deep reverence for life.

Intellect is never trust, it is always doubt. Spiritual growth is hindered more by doubt than anything else, but how can you gain trust? Doubt is natural to the mind; trust is not part of the mind. How can you come to trust?

That's why all spiritual teachings emphasize a deep intimate relationship with someone who has gone ahead of you. You need to be related to one who is already awakened. His very awakening will become an evidence, an argument for you to dispel all doubt, and to dispel all mind.

You have to come in contact with a man who lives as a no-mind, who lives as silence.

His silence is luminous. It is contagious. If you come close to such a man, you are bound to be caught in the net of his radiating love, his radiating awareness. Only that experience will create trust in you, will give you the feeling that if this beautiful flowering can happen to one man ... and I am also a man. It will remind you of your own potential: there is no need to doubt; if this man can blossom into such a beautiful flower ... I am also a man.

The presence of the enlightened person brings a great dignity to you, a great pride, which is not ego ... a pride that you are a human being full of the potential of being a buddha.

And once trust has arisen in you, you are on the path.

Trust is another name of the path.

Doubt is the name of going astray.

Intellect is nothing but another name of doubt. Doubt is a beautiful instrument as far as science is concerned, but doubt is not of any help to go beyond the mind. To go beyond the Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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mind you need trust, and trust has a beauty of its own. Doubt has no beauty, it is ugly. It does not give you integrity, it always keeps you suspicious.

Once trust has arisen in you, you are beyond the dangers of the mind.

But Ta Hui has not understood, although he has been from one master to another -- to many masters. Perhaps that has created the whole confusion in him. In those many masters, a few may have been just teachers, a few may not have even been teachers, but people who love to advise -- whether they know anything or not. They enjoy advising, because in advising they become higher than you; you are ignorant, and they are knowledgeable.

I have been part of a psychology department in a university. There were four other psychologists in the department, and they were all practicing psychoanalysis, except me. I never believed in any kind of analysis, any kind of psychology, because I don't want to do anything with the mind at all. But you will be surprised, they were giving counseling to sick people -- mentally sick, psychologically sick. They were analyzing, and they were earning much money, but they were suffering from the same problems.

I was the only one available, so they were all asking me, "What to do with this problem that never leaves us?"

I said, "You are great psychoanalysts; you counsel people, you help people."

They said, "Don't make a laughingstock of us! We know the technique, we have learned psychoanalysis, and we advise."

But I said, "If you cannot follow your own advice, what right have you got to give it to somebody else?"

I used to tell them an ancient Sufi story. A woman was very much disturbed by her young child -- she had only one child, and her husband had died. She was rich, but she had lost all interest in life. She was living simply because of this small child, and certainly in such circumstances, children are spoiled; the child would not eat anything except sweets. The doctors were saying, "This is bad, his whole health will be spoiled." But the child was not listening.

The woman used to go to the Sufi mystic, so one day she thought, "He does not listen to me, but perhaps he may listen to the mystic, because the man is so radiant that anybody who goes close to him feels impressed."

She took the child and she told the mystic, "He does not listen to anybody. Doctors tell him that his health will be spoiled, and I am telling him every day. His whole food consists only of sweets; otherwise he prefers to remain hungry. He is my only child, my husband is dead, and I am only living for him. I cannot see him hungry, so I have to give him sweets, knowing well that I am giving poison to him -- white sugar is white poison. So I have brought him. You tell him something! You are a man of God, perhaps your words may have a different impact."

The mystic looked at the child. He said, "My son, I am not in a position to answer you right now because I myself love to eat sweets. You come back after two weeks. For two weeks I will not eat sweets, if I can manage it. Only then can I advise; otherwise, I am not the right person to advise."

The woman could not believe it. This could even be dangerous ... but the child was immensely impressed. He touched the feet of the mystic. He said, "I have been taken to many Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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people; my mother goes on taking me to this wise guy, to that wise guy, and they all go on advising immediately. You are the first man who is sincere. I will come after two weeks, and whatever you say, I will do. I can trust you."

A man who confesses before a child ..."Right now I am not in the right position even to advise you, because I myself like sweets; so for two weeks I will have to try my advice on myself, and then you come.

"If I fail, I will say, 'I am sorry, I cannot advise you.' If I succeed, then I will say, 'Don't be worried, if I can succeed -- an old man -- you are so young and so powerful, and so intelligent, you can succeed also. Just give it a try!'"

The mother was shocked. If the mystic says after two weeks that he cannot succeed, then the whole thing is finished; then there is nobody else to whom she can take the child.

After two weeks, they came back. The mystic said, "My son, it is difficult but not impossible. I managed not to eat sweets for two weeks, and I promise you that my whole life I will not touch sweets again. Do you think I can advise you? If you allow me to advise, only then will I do so."

The child said, "There is no need to say anything. I have received the message. I am grateful to you. A man like you who is ready to drop eating sweets for his whole life just to give me the advice that he himself practices, is worthy of trust. I trust you. I also promise you that I will not eat sweets from this moment onwards."

I used to tell these psychologists, "When you advise other people, have you ever thought that the advice is coming from somebody who himself suffers from the same problem?"

So this Ta Hui must have gone to learned people, to the knowledgeable, to teachers of all kinds. Once in a while perhaps he may have accidentally met an awakened man, a master, a mystic, and he has collected from all these sources; so once in a while there is a statement that seems to be absolutely right. But mostly he has collected all kinds of pieces from sources which are as ignorant as he is, but they were as willing to advise as he is willing to advise.

I would like my people to remember it: never advise unless it is your experience. In the world, advice is the only thing which everybody gives and nobody takes, so why bother?

Everybody enjoys giving advice and nobody ever takes it, and the reason is that everybody knows that advice is meant for others -- not for yourself.

I would like my people to remember: never advise, unless it has been your own authentic experience. Then too you can simply say, "This has been my experience. It is not necessary that it will be right for you -- you can experiment. If you feel that it brings more harmony to your life, more joy, you can go ahead. If you feel it is not bringing anything ... because individuals are different. What fits me may not fit you, what is medicine to me may be simply poison to you."

An absolutely alert man is always alert about what advice to give and what not to give.

Even if he gives advice, it is always conditional -- conditional upon experiment. He says it only as a hypothesis: "You try a little bit -- perhaps it works. If it works, good. If it does not work, don't go on doing it. It has helped me, that's true, but that does not mean that it will help everybody on the earth."

People are different; each individual is unique, and each individual needs a unique way that suits him.

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PEOPLE LIKE THIS ARE CREATING THEIR OWN HINDRANCES, AND WILL

NEVER HAVE A MOMENT OF AWAKENING. "WHEN DEVILS FROM OUTSIDE

WREAK CALAMITY, IT CAN STILL BE REMEDIED," BUT THIS RELIANCE ON

INTELLECTUAL DISCRIMINATION AMOUNTS TO "WHEN ONE'S OWN FAMILY

CREATES DISASTER, IT CANNOT BE AVERTED."

He is giving good advice, but he has no experience. I am so certain that he has no experience because so many sentences, so many sutras, give clear-cut indications of ignorance.

THIS IS WHAT YUNG CHIA MEANT WHEN HE SAID, "THE LOSS OF THE

WEALTH OF THE DHARMA AND THE DEMISE OF VIRTUE ALL STEM FROM

MIND'S DISCRIMINATING INTELLECT."

What he is saying is right, but he himself is not the right person to say it. All his understanding is based on intellect.

The statement of Yung Chia is absolutely right:

"THE LOSS OF THE WEALTH OF THE DHARMA AND THE DEMISE OF VIRTUE

ALL STEM FROM MIND'S DISCRIMINATING INTELLECT."

Yung Chia was an enlightened master. He is saying that because of the mind, the world has become irreligious; because of the mind, all that is great has disappeared. It was perfectly true for Yung Chia to say it; it was his own experience. But Ta Hui is simply repeating it. The words are beautiful, the sentence is beautiful -- he is collecting beautiful flowers from everywhere.

THE OBSTRUCTION OF THE PATH BY THE MIND, AND ITS CONCEPTUAL

DISCRIMINATION, IS WORSE THAN POISONOUS SNAKES OR FIERCE TIGERS.

One simply cannot believe that a man is saying things which he has not experienced! And he has not gone beyond them.

WHY? BECAUSE POISONOUS SNAKES AND FIERCE TIGERS CAN STILL BE

AVOIDED, WHEREAS INTELLIGENT PEOPLE MAKE THE MIND'S CONCEPTUAL

DISCRIMINATION THEIR HOME, SO THAT THERE'S NEVER A SINGLE INSTANT, WHETHER THEY'RE WALKING, STANDING, SITTING, OR LYING DOWN, THAT

THEY'RE NOT HAVING DEALINGS WITH IT. AS TIME GOES ON, UNKNOWING

AND UNAWARES, THEY BECOME ONE PIECE WITH IT -- AND NOT BECAUSE

THEY WANT TO, EITHER, BUT BECAUSE SINCE BEGINNINGLESS TIME THEY

HAVE FOLLOWED THIS ONE LITTLE ROAD UNTIL IT HAS BECOME SET AND

FAMILIAR. THOUGH THEY MAY SEE THROUGH IT FOR A MOMENT, AND WISH

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TO DETACH FROM IT, THEY STILL CAN'T. THUS IT IS SAID THAT POISONOUS

SNAKES AND FIERCE TIGERS CAN STILL BE AVOIDED, BUT THE MIND'S

CONCEPTUAL DISCRIMINATION TRULY HAS NO PLACE FOR YOU TO ESCAPE.

All that he is saying is right -- but he is not. This has to be understood clearly: a wrong man can say right things, although a right man can never say wrong things. For the right man to say wrong things is impossible, but for the wrong man to say right things is very possible because it hides his wrongness. It becomes a cover-up to his ignorance.

In the world there are millions of teachers, priests, monks, belonging to different religions and different paths; they are all repeating beautiful words, but because they come from them, they lose all beauty.

They are the same words spoken by Zarathustra, by Lao Tzu, by Jesus Christ, by Gautam Buddha; they are the same words, but the man who is speaking is not the same. And those words have significance only if they are supported by an existential individual standing behind them. Those words are living only if they come from a living source. Hence, my insistence is: never bother about dead saints, never bother about holy scriptures.

Try to find a living master.

The living master contains all the scriptures and all the dead saints. Through the living master, whatever comes to you goes directly into your heart.

The living master never misses the target.

A beautiful story for the end. There was a carnival going on in the town, and Mulla Nasruddin asked all his disciples to come with him. He would take them to the carnival to teach them a few things; that was his usual method, to take his disciples to actual situations.

As they entered, the whole crowd there became interested, because they always knew that wherever Nasruddin is, something interesting is going to happen.

He was there with his fifty disciples following him. He went directly into a stall, where people were putting down money; if they could hit the bull's-eye with the arrow, the stall keeper would give them three times as much money, and if they missed, their money was gone. Many people were trying, but it is not easy unless you are an archer.

Mulla Nasruddin went there, put ten rupees on the table, and took the bow and arrow.

There was great silence. His fifty disciples were standing behind him, and a great crowd watching and thinking, "We never thought that this Mulla Nasruddin is an archer also. Now let us see what happens!" He took a shot, and the arrow simply went far away beyond the bull's-eye.

Everybody laughed! He said, "Stop!" He turned towards his disciples and said, "Look, this is the arrow of a man who is too ambitious. He always misses the point, he goes far away."

Even the stall keeper became interested ...

Nasruddin took out another arrow, took a shot, and the arrow fell just in front of him.

Again people laughed. He said, "You idiots, stop! I have brought my disciples here to teach them something." And he turned to the disciples, and said, "Look, this is the arrow of a man who is always hesitant, wishy-washy -- to die or not to die? Because of this either/or situation, he always falls short; he never hits the bull's-eye." The people became silent -- "He is right."

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He pulled out the third arrow, and the stall keeper was also silent -- "This man has some ideas and he is not wrong." And Mulla hit the bull's-eye, took his ten rupee note, and asked for twenty more.

The stall keeper said, "What!"

Mulla said, "This is Mulla Nasruddin's arrow; he never misses the target. You just bring twenty rupees!"

People laughed, but the stall keeper had to give twenty rupees. The disciples also said,

"This is too much! In fact, if he had missed again, he would again have brought some explanation; this is just accidental. But he is a great man, there is no doubt about it."

He was able to bring as many explanations as possible. If you go on shooting, one time it is going to hit; whenever it hits, it is Mulla Nasruddin's arrow.

Mulla Nasruddin walked away with his thirty rupees and his disciples. He said, "Come on, you can enjoy some sweets, some fruits. Take these twenty rupees. Just leave my ten rupees, because only those ten belong to me; the other twenty came only from tricks."

The so-called teachers like Ta Hui go on saying things, and among so many things, once in a while there may be one arrow hitting the target. But my concern is to show you how humanity has been deceived by teachers. Ta Hui was honored by the emperor of China as a great Ch'an master, a great Zen master, and he has been accepted as a great Zen master since then. When the emperor honored him with the title, who is going to dispute it?

It is now almost one thousand years ago, and nobody has raised the question that these are not the words of a man who is enlightened. It is basically to teach you a certain awareness and clarity, so that when you hear someone or read someone you can feel whether it is coming from an enlightened source or from a dark source -- from someone who knows how to collect beautiful words, someone who is knowledgeable, someone who can deceive even emperors.

But emperors are nothing but human beings -- just like you!

For one thousand years, even Zen people have not taken Ta Hui to task. That is also something to be understood. Every tradition goes on protecting its people; whether they are right or wrong is not the question. The question is that they belong to their tradition; they have to be right.

This has messed up the whole atmosphere of the world. It has created such confusion for the whole of humanity. It seems that people are not interested in helping humanity grow into consciousness; they are more interested in their own line, in their own heritage, and in proving that it is right.

Naturally nobody else interferes. Perhaps I am the only man who goes on searching. I don't care whether the person is Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Christian, or a Buddhist, or a Jew, or a Jaina.

To me the whole humanity is one.

And the whole heritage of the past is mind.

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I would like to make a clear-cut distinction for the future, so that all those who are not right should be known as not right, and those who are right -- to whichever tradition they belong -- should be declared right.

In fact, in other words: I would like in the world only two traditions -- the people who are right and the people who are wrong -- to simplify things. Their future generations don't have to worry; otherwise it is such a confusing mess. You are not supposed to say that anything wrong is wrong, because it belongs to your heritage.

It happened that in my village, between my house and a temple, there was a piece of land.

For some technical reason, my father was able to win the case if he took it to court -- only on technical reasons. The land was not ours, the land belonged to the temple. But the technical reason was this: the map of the temple did not show that the land was in their territory. It was some fault of the municipal committee's clerical staff; they had put the land onto my father's property.

Naturally in court there was no question; the temple had no right to say that it was their land. Everybody knew it was their land, my father knew it was their land. But the land was precious, it was just on the main street, and every technical and legal support was on my father's side. He brought the case to the court.

I told him, "Listen" -- I must have been not more than eleven years old -- "I will go to the court to support the temple. I don't have anything to do with the temple, I have never even gone inside the temple, whatever it is, but you know perfectly well that the land is not yours."

He said, "What kind of son are you? You will witness against your own father?"

I said, "It is not a question of father and son; in the court it is a question of what is true.

And not only will your son be there; your father I have also convinced."

He said, "What!"

I had a very deep friendship with my grandfather, so we had consulted. I had told him,

"You have to support me because I am only eleven years old. The court may not accept my witnessing because I am not an adult, so you have to support me. You know perfectly well that the land is not ours."

He said, "I am with you."

So I told my father, "Just listen, from both sides, from your father and from your son ...

you simply withdraw the case; otherwise you will be in such a trouble, you will lose the case.

It is only technically that you are able to claim. But we are not going to support a technical mistake on the part of the municipal clerk."

He said, "You don't understand a simple thing, that a family means ... you have to support your family."

I said, "No, I will support the family only if the family is right. I will support whoever is right."

He talked to my grandfather who said, "I have already promised your son that I will be going with him."

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My father said, "That means I will have to withdraw the case and lose that valuable piece of land!"

He said, "What can be done about it? Your son is going to create trouble for you, and seeing the situation, that he will not in any way be persuaded, I have agreed with him -- just to make his position stronger so that you can withdraw; it is better to withdraw than to get defeated."

My father said, "But this is a strange family! I am working for you all. I am working for you, I am working for my son -- I am not working for myself. If we can have a beautiful shop on that land you will have a better, more comfortable old age; he will have a better education in a better university. And you are against me."

My grandfather said, "I am not against anybody, but he has taken my promise, and I cannot go against my word -- at least as far as he is concerned -- because he is dangerous, he may put me in some trouble. So I cannot deceive him; I will say whatever he is saying. And he is saying the truth -- and you know it."

So my father had to withdraw the case -- reluctantly ... but he had to withdraw the case. I asked my grandfather to bring some sweets so we can distribute them in the neighborhood.

My father has come to his senses, it has to be celebrated. He said, "That seems to be the right thing to do."

When my father saw that I was distributing sweets, he asked, "What are you doing? -- for what? What has happened?"

I said, "You have come back to your senses. Truth is victorious." And I gave him a sweet also.

He laughed. He said, "I can understand your standpoint, and my own father is with you, so I thought it is better that I should also be with you. It is better to withdraw without any problem. But I have learned a lesson." He said to me, "I cannot depend on my family. If there is any trouble they are not going to support me just because they belong to me as father, as son, as brother. They are going to support whatever is true."

And since that time no other situation ever arose, because he never did anything in which we had to disagree. He remained truthful and sincere.

Many times in his life he told me, "It was so good of you; otherwise I was going to take that land, and I would have committed a crime knowingly. You prevented me, and not only from that crime, you prevented me from then onwards. Whenever there was a similar situation, I always decided in favor of truth, whatever the loss. But now I can see: truth is the only treasure. You can lose your whole life, but don't lose your truth."

This is what I want you to learn from Ta Hui's teachings: to experiment in seeing what is right and why it is right, what is wrong and why it is wrong, and also to know that even right becomes wrong when it comes from a wrong mind, from a wrong person.

Truth needs to be born out of an experience of truthfulness. It is a very delicate flower but the most precious treasure in life, because it brings liberation, it brings freedom, it brings to you your own immortality.

But never be a borrower, never depend on the other's knowledge. A small piece of your own experience is far more important than all the VEDAS, all the KORANS, all the BIBLES, Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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all the TALMUDS. A little experience of your own inner being is more valuable than all the buddhas of all the ages.

Truth has to be your own.

Only then is it alive, with a beating heart.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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5

Non-attainment

17 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

THERE IS NOTHING TO ATTAIN

GENTLEMEN OF AFFAIRS OFTEN TAKE THE MIND, WHICH ASSUMES THERE

IS SOMETHING TO ATTAIN, TO SEEK THE DHARMA, WHEREIN THERE IS

NOTHING TO ATTAIN. WHAT DO I MEAN BY "THE MIND, WHICH ASSUMES

THERE IS SOMETHING TO ATTAIN"? IT'S THE INTELLECTUALLY CLEVER ONE, THE ONE THAT PONDERS AND JUDGES. WHAT DO I MEAN BY "THE DHARMA, WHEREIN THERE IS NOTHING TO ATTAIN"? IT'S THE IMPONDERABLE, THE

INCALCULABLE, WHERE THERE'S NO WAY TO APPLY INTELLIGENCE OR

CLEVERNESS.

HAVEN'T YOU READ OF OLD SHAKYAMUNI AT THE ASSEMBLY OF THE

LOTUS OF THE TRUE DHARMA? THREE TIMES SARIPUTTA EARNESTLY

ENTREATED HIM TO PREACH, BUT THERE WAS SIMPLY NO WAY FOR HIM TO

BEGIN. AFTERWARDS, USING ALL HIS POWER, HE MANAGED TO SAY THAT

THIS DHARMA IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE UNDERSTOOD BY THOUGHT

OR DISCRIMINATION. THIS WAS OLD SHAKYAMUNI TAKING THIS MATTER TO

ITS ULTIMATE CONCLUSION, OPENING THE GATEWAY OF EXPEDIENT MEANS

AS A STARTING POINT FOR THE TEACHING OF THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY.

WHEN HSUEH FENG, A TRULY AWAKENED MASTER, HEARD OF THE

TEACHING OF CHOU, MASTER OF THE ADAMANTINE WISDOM SCRIPTURE, ON

TE SHAN, HE WENT TO HIS ABODE. ONE DAY HE ASKED TE SHAN, "IN THE

CUSTOM OF THE SCHOOL THAT HAS COME DOWN FROM HIGH ANTIQUITY, WHAT DOCTRINE IS USED TO INSTRUCT PEOPLE?" TE SHAN SAID, "OUR

SCHOOL HAS NO VERBAL EXPRESSION, NOR DOES IT HAVE ANY DOCTRINE TO

TEACH PEOPLE." LATER HSUEH FENG ALSO ASKED, "DO I HAVE ANY SHARE IN

THE BUSINESS OF THE VEHICLE OF THIS ANCIENT SCHOOL?" TE SHAN PICKED

UP HIS STAFF AND IMMEDIATELY HIT HIM SAYING, "WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?"

UNDER THIS BLOW HSUEH FENG FINALLY SMASHED THE LACQUER BUCKET

OF HIS IGNORANCE. FROM THIS WE OBSERVE THAT IN THIS SECT

INTELLIGENCE AND CLEVERNESS, THOUGHT AND JUDGMENT, ARE OF NO USE

AT ALL.

AN ANCIENT WORTHY HAD A SAYING: "TRANSCENDENT WISDOM IS LIKE A GREAT MASS OF FIRE. APPROACH IT AND IT BURNS OFF YOUR FACE." IF YOU

HESITATE IN THOUGHT AND SPECULATION, YOU IMMEDIATELY FALL INTO

CONCEPTUAL DISCRIMINATION. YUNG CHIA SAID, "LOSS OF THE WEALTH OF

THE DHARMA AND DESTRUCTION OF VIRTUE ALL STEMS FROM THE MIND'S

CONCEPTUAL DISCRIMINATION."

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ONCE YOU HAVE THE INTENT TO INVESTIGATE THIS PATH TO THE END, YOU MUST SETTLE YOUR RESOLVE AND VOW TO THE END OF YOUR DAYS

NOT TO RETREAT OR FALL BACK SO LONG AS YOU HAVE NOT YET REACHED

THE GREAT REST, THE GREAT SURCEASE, THE GREAT LIBERATION. THERE'S

NOT MUCH TO THE BUDDHA DHARMA, BUT IT'S ALWAYS BEEN HARD TO FIND

CAPABLE PEOPLE.

One of the greatest contributions of Gautam the Buddha to humanity is that religion is not to attain something. That which you want to attain you already have, so any effort to attain it is simply stupid. You have got your illumination within, you have got your enlightenment ready to explode at any moment, but the problem is you are never here and now. You are wandering and searching all over the world, and this search, this constant urge to achieve, has a certain psychology in it.

The mind is empty, and emptiness hurts like a wound. The mind cannot look back, it can only look ahead. To fill its emptiness it goes on achieving money, power, prestige, respectability. But nothing satisfies it because its emptiness is infinite. It may have any amount of money -- still more is needed. It may have any amount of power -- still more is needed.

The constant urge in the mind is for more and more, that's why it is never at rest. It cannot be at rest; it has to achieve more. No one in the whole history of mankind has ever said that his mind is satisfied; such a statement does not exist in the annals of history.

Mind means dissatisfaction, mind means complaints, mind means unfulfilled greed, mind means incomplete desire.

Mind is by its very nature a beggar.

Diogenes asked Alexander, "Are you satisfied with conquering so many lands?"

He said, "No, unless I conquer the whole world I will not be satisfied."

Diogenes said, "Remember my words. Even if you conquer the whole world, the mind will ask for more, and there is no other world to conquer. Remember ... you have conquered the world that is, and there is no other world to conquer -- and mind is asking for more. You will be in such a frustration that you cannot conceive of it right now."

The day Alexander died, he remembered Diogenes. He had conquered the whole known world, and he was dying in utter frustration because the mind was not content.

Mind, by its very nature, cannot be content.

In fact, it is the name of your discontent.

Before his death, Alexander told his generals and ministers, "When you take my coffin to the grave, let my hands hang out of the coffin."

They said, "What kind of strange idea has come to you? That is not the way -- it has never been done! And what is the reason for it?"

He said, "I want everybody to know that even Alexander is going with empty hands. A whole life's effort, not a single moment's rest, running after more and more, and the ultimate result is just empty hands. Because millions of people will be standing by the side of the road Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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to watch the procession, it will be the right moment to let them see and think. And when they ask, tell them why my hands are hanging out -- I am going as unfulfilled as I had come."

Gautam Buddha is very clear about the situation that, if you remain in the mind, you cannot get out of the trap of "more and more." The only way to get out of the trap of more and more is to get out of the mind.

Mind is the greatest disease.

Ta Hui is in a strange situation. Sometimes he rises and grasps something of immense importance, but it is still intellectual. His words don't sound authentic because immediately he says something else that spoils it completely. He certainly has a genius for understanding people, and he has been with many teachers and many masters.

In the first place, when somebody is with many teachers and many masters one thing is certain -- that he has not yet found the man to be with. Seeing someone, the bells of his heart do not start ringing. He is still searching. This is also because of the mind, which wants more and more. He has understood this teacher, now he wants something more. He goes to another teacher.

Ta Hui went on and on searching for teachers his whole life, but this too is in a strange way the same trip -- it is not different. Yes, once in a while he had come across a master, but he had not the eyes to recognize him. So he collected his words, but mixed them with the words of those who didn't know anything. His whole philosophy is a hodgepodge, but we can take out those beautiful diamonds that have fallen into the mud. A diamond is still a diamond although it may be covered with mud.

This sutra, there is nothing to attain, he must have heard from someone who really knows.

But he has not been able to understand exactly why there is nothing to attain. That is possible to understand only when you are enlightened. That is possible only when you see that all that you had wanted to attain is already given to you; it is intrinsic in your self nature -- that's why there is nothing to attain.

He says, Gentlemen of affairs often take the mind, which assumes there is something to attain, to seek the dharma, wherein there is nothing to attain, but he does not give the reason why there is nothing to attain. Truth has to be attained, bliss has to be attained, beauty has to be attained, immortality has to be attained: mind can think only in terms of attainment.

I have been talking to thousands of people and so many times people have come to tell me,

"You insist on meditation, but you never say what we will attain by it. Even if we meditate, we have to be certain what we are going to attain."

I said, "You don't understand. Meditation is not for attainment; meditation is just to discover who you are. Whether you discover it or not, you are the same from eternity. It is not an attainment, only a discovery."

Ta Hui, listening to the masters, starts talking against the mind, but in a way which only a man of mind can do. You can see it in his language, his way of stating

... WHAT DO I MEAN BY "THE MIND, WHICH ASSUMES THERE IS SOMETHING

TO ATTAIN"? IT IS THE INTELLECTUALLY CLEVER ONE, THE ONE THAT

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PONDERS AND JUDGES. WHAT DO I MEAN BY "THE DHARMA, WHEREIN THERE

IS NOTHING TO ATTAIN"?

But he himself is not aware of why there is nothing to attain -- because you already have it!

I have said many times that my function is to take away from you all that you don't have, and to give you all that you already have. Just a thin layer of unconsciousness is covering your treasures. But because the mind becomes worried about its emptiness, its ignorance, naturally it starts seeking and searching somewhere to be somebody. But it can never be somebody. Just behind it, it is already a god, already a buddha, already the awakened one. It is a very strange situation that the emperor is so much surrounded by beggars that slowly, slowly you only know the beggars and you can't see the emperor behind them.

IT'S THE IMPONDERABLE, THE INCALCULABLE, WHERE THERE'S NO WAY TO

APPLY INTELLIGENCE OR CLEVERNESS.

My difficulty with Ta Hui is that I can seen he is simply repeating like a parrot. He himself does not understand what he is saying. He is intelligent enough to grasp the words spoken by the awakened ones, and his memory is good -- he can repeat them. But I don't feel at all that he understands what he is saying.

HAVEN'T YOU READ OF OLD SHAKYAMUNI AT THE ASSEMBLY OF THE

LOTUS OF THE TRUE DHARMA? THREE TIMES SARIPUTTA EARNESTLY

ENTREATED HIM TO PREACH, BUT THERE WAS SIMPLY NO WAY FOR HIM TO

BEGIN. AFTERWARDS, USING ALL HIS POWER, HE MANAGED TO SAY THAT

THIS DHARMA IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE UNDERSTOOD BY THOUGHT

OR DISCRIMINATION. THIS WAS OLD SHAKYAMUNI TAKING THIS MATTER TO

ITS ULTIMATE CONCLUSION, OPENING THE GATEWAY OF EXPEDIENT MEANS

AS A STARTING POINT FOR THE TEACHING OF THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY.

Even when he relates an incident of tremendous importance like this ... Every year Gautam Buddha used to have a special assembly called the lotus assembly of the authentic religion.

This was a special occasion, when all the wandering monks would gather together, thousands of monks. In one assembly this incident really happened.

Sariputta was one of his most intimate disciples, and Sariputta was the head of the lotus assembly. He asked Gautam -- entreated him three times -- to preach, but Gautam Buddha remained silent. Ta Hui has not understood that silence is his preaching.

It was an assembly of people who could understand why he remains silent. Buddha had said all that was needed to be said: Become silent and you will know it. He did not say it, because by saying it, it is defiled, contaminated; he was simply showing it by his own silence.

And certainly when Buddha was utterly silent with his eyes closed, the whole assembly became as if there was nobody -- a 'pin drop' silence.

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Sariputta asked again and again, and Buddha remained silent. In fact, he had preached, he had given the golden key; he had blessed the whole assembly by his silence.

That reminds me of Jesus. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, wanted somehow to release Jesus because he could see he was innocent, he had not done any harm to anybody.

He said things which hurt the traditional people -- but that was their problem. And they were not able to convince him ... that would have been the human way.

If you disagree with me, it is perfectly okay. Disagreeing does not mean that you have to crucify me; that is not an argument, and that does not prove you right. In fact, on the contrary, it proves you wrong! Because you could not answer the man, you became angry -- so angry, so bloodthirsty, that you killed the man.

By crucifying Jesus, his contemporaries sealed his truth, recognized his truth. Crucifixion is a recognition that they accepted their defeat. But before it happened, Pontius Pilate tried to talk to Jesus ... and Jesus answered everything. Finally Pontius Pilate asked, "What is truth?"

Jesus looked into his eyes and remained silent. Pontius Pilate asked again, "What is truth?"

-- exactly three times. And Jesus went on looking into his eyes, but not saying a word. Those who don't understand may think Jesus does not know the truth; otherwise why is he silent?

But the reality is: he is silent because that is the only language in which truth can be expressed.

Ta Hui has not got the point. He thinks that, afterwards, using all his power, he managed to say that this dharma is not something that can be understood by thought or discrimination.

Buddha never said that; it is not part of authentic history. He remained silent. The assembly was dispersed for that day, and Sariputta declared to the assembly, "I have asked your question

-- it was not my question. My question he has answered long ago. It was your question, you wanted to know. I asked on your behalf three times, and he has answered three times. I am grateful, and I thank him. The assembly is dispersed for today."

What Ta Hui is saying is really to fill the loophole in his own nonunderstanding with some words. This has never happened: afterwards, using all his power, he managed to say that this dharma is not something that can be understood by thought or discrimination. This is Ta Hui's own invention, and the reason why he has to invent it is that he himself must be feeling uneasy about the incident with the three silences. He could not understand that Buddha has said it, and now there is nothing else to be said.

The assembly was dispersed, and Sariputta knew that this was the answer. There are things which cannot be said, but can be understood. Truth is one of them.

THIS WAS OLD SHAKYAMUNI TAKING THIS MATTER TO ITS ULTIMATE

CONCLUSION, OPENING THE GATEWAY OF EXPEDIENT MEANS AS A STARTING

POINT FOR THE TEACHING OF THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY.

Again he falls back to the true teaching of the nature of reality. There cannot be any teaching of a true nature: all teaching is philosophizing, all teaching is thinking, all teaching is diametrically opposite to the reality.

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intellects. Once they are convinced intellectually, they come closer to him, they become intimate with him. And in that intimacy is the transfer, in that intimacy the silence can be heard. So the forty-two years' teaching should not be taken at face value ... he was doing it only as a device.

I am not teaching you anything at all.

I am simply preparing you to listen to my silence.

Certainly teaching can be used to create silence, just as sound can be used to create silence.

But the sound is not the real music ... the real music is between the sounds, the gaps, the intervals. Ta Hui has not got the point at all.

WHEN HSUEH FENG, A TRULY AWAKENED MASTER, HEARD OF THE

TEACHING OF CHOU, MASTER OF THE ADAMANTINE WISDOM SCRIPTURE, ON

TE SHAN, HE WENT TO HIS ABODE. ONE DAY HE ASKED TE SHAN, "IN THE

CUSTOM OF THE SCHOOL THAT HAS COME DOWN FROM HIGH ANTIQUITY, WHAT DOCTRINE IS USED TO INSTRUCT PEOPLE?"

TE SHAN SAID, "OUR SCHOOL HAS NO VERBAL EXPRESSION, NOR DOES IT

HAVE ANY DOCTRINE TO TEACH PEOPLE." LATER HSUEH FENG ALSO ASKED,

"DO I HAVE ANY SHARE IN THE BUSINESS OF THE VEHICLE OF THIS ANCIENT

SCHOOL?"

TE SHAN PICKED UP HIS STAFF AND IMMEDIATELY HIT HIM SAYING, "WHAT

ARE YOU SAYING?" UNDER THIS BLOW HSUEH FENG FINALLY SMASHED THE

LACQUER BUCKET OF HIS IGNORANCE.

But Ta Hui is not able to convey correctly the incident that has happened, to tell what has transpired. Hitting him with the staff, do you think ignorance can be dispelled?

Te Shan was one of the most famous masters of China, and Hsueh Feng was also a truly awakened master, so there is no question of his ignorance being dispelled by hitting him with the staff.

Hsueh Feng went to Te Shan and asked him, "What doctrine is used to instruct people?"

The master said, "Our school has no verbal expression, nor does it have any doctrine to teach people."

Hsueh Feng also asked, "Do I have any share in the business of the vehicle of this ancient school?"

At this point, the master took his staff and immediately hit him saying, "What are you saying?"

This was just playfulness between two enlightened people; it has nothing to do with destroying his ignorance. Nobody can destroy anybody's ignorance by hitting him with a staff; otherwise things would be so easy! I can just call each of you and give a good hit, and your ignorance disappears and you become enlightened.

No, this was simply a playfulness. The master hit just to show Hsueh Feng, "You cannot deceive me ... you are asking in a different way so that I may say something which is not right.

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I have answered you already: we don't have any doctrine, and we don't have any expression in our school. It is an absolutely silent school. We don't talk, we don't read scriptures, we don't worship Buddha -- we simply sit silently on this mountain. Slowly, slowly the mind disappears. It has nothing -- no work, no possibility of ambition, no question of achieving anything -- it disappears."

And because he asked again -- Te Shan had answered completely -- now to ask him again in a different way, in a tricky way ... It was a tradition in Zen that masters used to go to each other -- Zen is a very joyful, playful, nonserious religion -- and as Te Shan saw that Hsueh Feng was trying to bring the question again from a different angle, he hit him with his staff and said, "What are you saying? Have you not heard -- we don't have any verbal expression, we don't have any doctrine, so in what way can you serve? In what way can you be a vehicle for this ancient school? The only way to be part of this school ... you cannot be a vehicle, you cannot be a messenger, you cannot be a missionary because we don't have any message and we don't have any doctrine. You can participate in the school, you can be part of it, but to be part of it means just to fall into utter silence."

But Ta Hui could not understand what happened, so he says ... and this kind of translation in the Western world is creating a very strange impression. People think that perhaps there was a special way of hitting with the staff, because it is absolutely absurd that by hitting with the staff all his ignorance is dispelled.

This is not the case. Hsueh Feng is already an awakened master, he is just being playful.

But Te Shan has a direct insight ... you cannot be playful with him, you cannot catch him in some way so that he goes against what he has said. He has hit Hsueh Feng with the staff just to tell him, "It is enough! I have said everything, now the only way I can put your questions to silence is by hitting on your head. We don't need your head, we don't need your mind." By hitting his head Te Shan is saying, "Your mind should not be here at all. These people are living in a state of no-mind, and that is our school."

From this we observe ... you can see the words that Ta Hui is using are the words of a school teacher. From this we observe that in this sect intelligence and cleverness, thought and judgment, are of no use at all. Observe? He is still behaving like a student who is studying, observing -- what is the doctrine of this school, what is the philosophy of that school? He himself is not a participant.

AN ANCIENT WORTHY HAD A SAYING: "TRANSCENDENT WISDOM IS LIKE A GREAT MASS OF FIRE. APPROACH IT AND IT BURNS OFF YOUR FACE." IF YOU

HESITATE IN THOUGHT AND SPECULATION, YOU IMMEDIATELY FALL INTO

CONCEPTUAL DISCRIMINATION. YUNG CHIA SAID, "LOSS OF THE WEALTH OF

THE DHARMA AND DESTRUCTION OF VIRTUE ALL STEMS FROM THE MIND'S

CONCEPTUAL DISCRIMINATION."

Once you have the intent to investigate ... just look at his words. They are words of a man who writes a thesis; they are not the words of a master who knows his own illumined nature.

ONCE YOU HAVE THE INTENT TO INVESTIGATE THIS PATH TO THE END, YOU MUST SETTLE YOUR RESOLVE AND VOW TO THE END OF YOUR DAYS

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NOT TO RETREAT OR FALL BACK SO LONG AS YOU HAVE NOT YET REACHED

THE GREAT REST.

The enlightened masters have never used such phrases, such paragraphs, such long complicated sentences. This is the intellectual approach.

One Zen master was sitting on the seashore, and a man came and said to him, "I have been looking for you, but life has so many responsibilities that I could never come to you. It was just by coincidence I was passing and I saw you. I thought, 'This is an opportunity I should not lose.' I want to ask -- just explain to me in a very simple way the master key of your religion."

The master remained sitting just like a marble statue, not saying anything, not even blinking his eyes. The man was a little bit afraid. He asked loudly, "Have you heard me or not?"

The master laughed and said, "This is the question I should have asked you. Have you heard me or not?"

The man said, "But you have not said anything."

The master said, "That's what my teaching is: there is nothing to say, but only to experience."

The man said, "That does not help me. Just give me a little more; I may not be able to come to you again."

So the master wrote in the sand with his finger: "DHYANA ... 'meditation.'" The man said,

"That's perfectly right, but it doesn't make much sense to me. Can't you explain it a little bit more?" So the master wrote DHYANA, in bigger letters. The man said, "Smaller letters or bigger letters, it is not going to help me."

The master said, "I cannot lie just to help you. I have gone as far as truth will allow.

Beyond that, you please forgive me. I have told you everything that my religion consists of: silence is its flowering, and meditation is its root. Now get lost!"

Zen masters, or any enlightened masters, don't speak like intellectuals, like the intelligentsia. They have their own way ... a very special way. Only those who are ready to open their hearts to them can be filled with their energy, can allow a few rays of light to enter into their being, may have some flowers showered on them -- because it is not in the words that the transmission happens. It is possible only when both persons, the master and the questioner, are moving on the same wavelength, in the same state of silence.

Ta Hui says, The great liberation, the great rest, the great surcease ... And still he goes on:

"There is not much to the Buddha Dharma, but it's always hard to find capable people."

He is expressing his own understanding. All that is possible in Gautam Buddha's approach to reality; in fact, it is the richest religion in the whole world. No religion has come to such heights, such peaks, and no religion has been able to produce so many enlightened beings in the world. Most of the religions have remained very mundane, very worldly.

Buddha stands out completely alone as far as the growth of human consciousness is concerned; he is the greatest contributor. Most of the enlightened people have come out of his insight, so it is stupid to say, "There's not much to the Buddha Dharma." And why is he saying this? Because buddha dharma, the religion of Gautam Buddha, does not have great Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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philosophical treatises, but simple things: silence, no-mind, meditation, living totally, witnessing. Just on two hands ... ten fingers may be enough to count the whole buddha dharma.

Naturally, to an intellectual this does not seem to be much. But the intellectual does not understand that you can have a huge mountain made only of rocks; it will be great as far as weight is concerned, but just one Kohinoor is enough ... it is far more valuable than your whole mountain. Other religions have great doctrines ....

Buddha has said again and again, "I am just a finger pointing to the moon, and my insistence is: 'Don't look at my finger but look at the moon.' My finger does not mean anything; the reality is there in the moon. Forget my finger, and look at the moon." So even whatsoever little he has said, he has insisted that it is only an arrow showing you the path and the direction. Naturally, for an intellectual, a philosopher, this is not much.

Ta Hui's whole approach is such that it is mixed. To sort out what he has got from enlightened people, what he has got from learned people, and what he has made up himself is not difficult for me, but it will be difficult for you. And that's the reason I have chosen the book. This will give you the idea that whenever you are reading someone or listening to someone you must be very alert. Has the man the presence, the depth, the silence, the authority that comes out of one's own experience? Or is he just a knowledgeable person? And ask people, "Do you know it yourself?" and you will immediately find ... if they hesitate even for a single moment or are taken aback, they were not expecting that you will ask this.

From my very childhood that has been the most interesting game that I have been engaged in. I have never played with the boys of my age. My whole time was involved in a different kind of game. One swami, Swarupananda, used to come to the town often, and he used to stay with one of my father's friends. The friend was very rich and was well known as a wise man; all the saints used to stay in his guest house. But he was very angry with me, because whenever he arranged a meeting for his saints, I was always in the front row.

I always used to take my grandfather with me, and my grandfather was really, even in his old age, a very juicy man. He would go on hitting me, saying "Start! Do something."

And I would suggest, "But let him speak, let him say something that I can find fault with."

And in the middle I would stand up and ask just a single question, "Is this your own feeling, your own experience? And remember, you are in the temple of God" -- these meetings used to happen in the most beautiful temple in the city -- "so you cannot lie!" And the man would hesitate, and I would say, "Your hesitation is saying everything! Either you know, or you don't know. Where is the space for hesitation?"

Intellectuals can talk about all kinds of things. Catch hold of their necks and ask them, "Is it your own experience?" -- and just look in their eyes. You will be surprised that out of a hundred perhaps you may find one man who is speaking out of some experience; otherwise, all is borrowed. And all that is borrowed is simply crap. These people have harmed humanity more than anybody else because they speak beautiful words, but those beautiful words are dead. And because of these people it has become difficult to find a real master, because there are so many fake teachers all over the world.

This is the greatest dishonesty that man can do to humanity. You can cheat people out of money, there is nothing much in it; you can be a con-man and do all kinds of deceiving ... it is all okay with me because it does not matter whether the money is in one's pocket or in Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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somebody else's pocket; the money is in the pocket -- that's all. It is not a great loss in any way.

But the people without experience who are pretending to be masters are really harming you spiritually. They are giving you words which are dead -- they mean nothing -- and they are preventing you from finding the right man. When there are so many fake people, the greater is the possibility that you will get caught by some fake person. And the fake person is always nicer, more persuasive; he talks in a way that supports your prejudices.

The master does not care about your prejudices ... he is out to destroy them. He cannot be nice like the fake people, he has to be hard. Only those who have a real longing -- like a thirst

-- to become enlightened, to reach to the source of their life, can tolerate the hardness, the strange behavior of the master. He is not going to be according to you. You have to be according to him. The fake master is always ready to be according to you -- that fulfills your ego.

But the real master can not be according to you. He is bent upon destroying your ego completely, he is bent upon taking away your mind completely. He leaves you only a clean space. In that silent, clean space is your realization. It is not an achievement, it is only a discovery.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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6

Innocence

17 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

THERE IS NOTHING TO ATTAIN

ONLY IF THE PERSON TRULY POSSESSES THE FACULTY OF WISDOM AND

WILL POWER WILL HE CONSENT TO STEP BACK AND REFLECT.

YUNG CHIA ALSO SAID, "THE REAL NATURE OF IGNORANCE IS IDENTICAL

TO THE NATURE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. ORIGINAL INHERENT NATURE IS THE

NATURALLY REAL ENLIGHTENED ONE." IF YOU THINK LIKE THIS, SUDDENLY, IN THE PLACE WHERE THOUGHT CANNOT REACH, YOU WILL SEE THE BODY OF

REALITY IN WHICH THERE IS NOT A SINGLE THING -- THIS IS THE PLACE FOR

YOU TO GET OUT OF BIRTH AND DEATH. WHAT I SAID BEFORE, THAT ONE

CANNOT SEEK THE DHARMA, WHICH HAS NOTHING TO ATTAIN, WITH THE

ATTITUDE THAT THERE is SOMETHING TO ATTAIN, IS JUST THIS PRINCIPLE.

GENTLEMEN OF AFFAIRS MAKE THEIR LIVING WITHIN THE CONFINES OF

THOUGHT AND JUDGMENT THEIR WHOLE LIVES: AS SOON AS THEY HEAR A MAN OF KNOWLEDGE SPEAK OF THE DHARMA IN WHICH THERE IS NOTHING

TO ATTAIN, IN THEIR HEARTS THERE IS DOUBT AND CONFUSION, AND THEY

FEAR FALLING INTO EMPTINESS.

AS SOON AS YOU HEAR IT SAID THAT YOU SHOULDN'T THINK, IMMEDIATELY YOU ARE AT A LOSS AND CAN'T FIND YOUR GRIP. YOU'RE FAR

FROM REALIZING THAT THIS VERY LACK OF ANYWHERE TO GET A GRIP IS THE

TIME FOR YOU TO LET GO OF YOUR BODY AND YOUR LIFE.

IF CORRECT MINDFULNESS IS PRESENT AT ALL TIMES, AND THE ATTITUDE

OF FEAR FOR BIRTH AND DEATH DOESN'T WAVER, THEN, OVER LONG DAYS

AND MONTHS, WHAT WAS UNFAMILIAR WILL NATURALLY BECOME FAMILIAR, AND WHAT WAS STALE WILL NATURALLY BECOME FRESH. BUT WHAT IS THE

STALE? IT'S THE BRILLIANCE AND CLEVERNESS, THAT WHICH THINKS AND

JUDGES. WHAT IS THE UNFAMILIAR? IT'S ENLIGHTENMENT, NIRVANA, TRUE

THUSNESS, THE BUDDHA-NATURE -- WHERE THERE'S NO THOUGHT OR

DISCRIMINATION, WHERE FIGURING AND CALCULATING CANNOT REACH, WHERE THERE'S NO WAY FOR YOU TO USE YOUR MENTAL ARRANGEMENTS.

This is a special evening, because one of us has left for the other shore. Swami Anand Maitreya was certainly a man of tremendous courage. He met me sometime near 1960. He had already been a member of parliament for twelve years and he was very close to the first prime minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. But the moment he heard me he simply dropped his whole political career.

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Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru tried to persuade him, saying, "There is every chance for you to become the chief minister of your state." -- he was from Bihar, the land of Buddha.

But Maitreya said, "I want one thing understood clearly: ambition is hell and I am not going to look back; politics is finished for me. All ambitions are finished for me." And since then he has been with me.

He has never asked a single question. He has never doubted, his trust was absolute. In these years, thousands of people have come to me; many have been lost, but he remained unwavering. He could not conceive how people can find contradictions in my statements.

Sometime in 1984 Maitreya became enlightened, but he had chosen to remain silent, so he remained silent. He did not even tell me what had happened to him. But the day it happened I called a small meeting of a few sannyasins in Rancho Rajneesh in America. I declared that there were going to be three special committees: one of mahasattvas, the great beings who are destined to become enlightened in this very life; the second of sambuddhas, who have already become enlightened; and the third of bodhisattvas, who will also become enlightened ... but perhaps they will take a little longer than the other two categories, but certainly before their death.

Because I had included Maitreya's name, he was shocked. He wanted to keep it completely to himself, not to say anything about enlightenment to anybody. As he left the meeting, he told a few people outside, "It is very strange, I have not said -- I have been trying to hide it -- but somehow he has seen it. And not only has he seen it, he has declared me enlightened."

And his response was truly a response of great love. He said, "Osho is really a rascal."

All these years before his enlightenment and after his enlightenment, he just remained absolutely ordinary, with no ego, with no desire, with no greed.

Just before I came back to Poona, Maitreya told me in Bombay, "I have got ten thousand rupees in a post office deposit in Patna, Bihar; that's all I have, but now I will not need it."

Certainly he was becoming aware that his time of departure was coming closer. And he transferred the money to Neelam for the ashram. He died without anything, any possessions.

And he slipped very slowly, very silently, from sleep into eternal sleep.

I am saying this evening is special, because one of us has moved from the world of mortals to the world of immortals. He will not be born again. He has attained to the freedom and the liberation we have been talking about.

This is a moment of great celebration and rejoicing. It happens very rarely. In millions of people perhaps one comes to this silent explosion of light and disappears into the ocean of consciousness that surrounds existence.

I would like these talks to be dedicated to Swami Anand Maitreya, who slipped from sleep into eternal sleep. But he was not asleep! He has gone in full awakening. He has gone with full awareness. You will keep him in your memories because he has shown the path to you, too. He lived joyously, although he had nothing, and he died peacefully, blissfully.

That's what attaining to one's destiny means. Those who live in misery and die in misery go on missing their destiny. They are failures, and because they have failed so many times, they become accustomed to failing again and again. But even if one person amongst you succeeds, it is your success, too. He has proved that what we have been talking about is not mere philosophy -- it is an authentic path to self-realization.

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Maitreya will be missed. Just the other night, when I last saw him, I had a certain strange feeling ... as if he is going to depart very soon. And this feeling happened to many other people too; it was as if he was gathering himself and preparing for the eternal pilgrimage. He has gone the way a man should go -- joyously, ecstatically.

You have to remember that his whole experience was based on two things: one, that he has fallen in trust with me ... It is a strange language that I am using. You may not have ever heard the phrase 'falling in trust'. Falling in love happens every day. Falling in trust happens only once in a while.

And secondly, not for a single moment since he has met me has he missed entering into meditation as much as possible. His death was not an end to life, but the ultimate culmination of a tremendous trust and meditativeness. Where trust and meditation meet, one attains to one's potential in its whole glory and splendor.

Now the sutras:

ONLY IF THE PERSON TRULY POSSESSES THE FACULTY OF WISDOM AND

WILL POWER WILL HE CONSENT TO STEP BACK AND REFLECT.

Ta Hui is a strange mixture. Perhaps he is not even aware that the words he is using are not the right words. For example, wisdom is not a faculty; intelligence is a faculty.

Wisdom is your whole being. Wisdom is you. It is not a faculty, it is your wholeness that becomes luminous.

But Ta Hui is an intellectual and is trying his best to teach people something which even those who have attained find it difficult to teach. And he is meddling in people's minds:

'faculty of wisdom' -- and then the second word he uses, 'will power.'

Will power is nothing but another name of ego power. A man of wisdom has no will, just as he has no mind -- because to will means to keep yourself separate from existence. It is a little subtle, but try to feel it. The moment you will it means you are always willing against things as they are. You want them to be some other way.

A man of enlightenment has no will. The universal will is enough, there is no need of having an individual will. He has surrendered his individual will to the universe, now wherever the river takes him, he goes. He is not even swimming, he is simply floating.

Will is struggle, fight.

WILL TO POWER is the name of the book by Friedrich Nietzsche. It was published after his death because even Nietzsche himself could not imagine how he would face the world when the book was published. It will be criticized, because will to power means a continuous struggle, violence -- for money, for power, for position. Life becomes a war field, no more a rejoicing. It is simply competition -- and a very terrific competition because everybody is trying to reach to the same place.

Ta Hui uses the word without understanding the nature of meditation: there is no will power, there is no faculty of wisdom. And he goes on to say, only if the person truly possesses the faculty of wisdom and will power will he consent to step back and reflect.

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The man of wisdom does not reflect. Reflection is another name for thinking, a superior kind of contemplation. But howsoever superior it may be, it is a form of thinking. The man who has eyes knows that light is; he never thinks about whether light is or is not. And if a man reflects about whether the light is or is not, one thing is certain: he has no eyes. Eyes don't have to think. Eyes simply know, spontaneously know that light is.

The same is true when you have gone beyond the mind. There is no question of any reflection; you simply see whatsoever is the case. And because it is the nature of things, it cannot be otherwise; hence there arises a tremendous acceptance, called by Buddha tathata --

'suchness' or 'thusness'. You cannot do anything. It is simply the nature of things.

All that is needed is for you to relax, be at rest, and accept the reality as it is -- a total

"yes," holding nothing back. Naturally in this state of thusness there cannot be any misery and there cannot be any suffering. There is only immense silence and tremendous joy. Your whole being is continuously surrounded by music; you are still, and yet in a dance -- a dance without movements and a song without words.

But Ta Hui is not yet aware of it. He goes on quoting masters whom he has been meeting.

YUNG CHIA ALSO SAID, "THE REAL NATURE OF IGNORANCE IS IDENTICAL

TO THE NATURE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. ORIGINAL INHERENT NATURE IS THE

NATURALLY REAL ENLIGHTENED ONE."

He is quoting Yung Chia, but I don't see that he understands what he is saying, or what he is quoting, because the following sentences show his ignorance. He has not understood Yung Chia.

He says,

IF YOU THINK LIKE THIS, SUDDENLY, IN THE PLACE WHERE THOUGHT

CANNOT REACH, YOU WILL SEE THE BODY OF REALITY IN WHICH THERE IS

NOT A SINGLE THING -- THIS IS THE PLACE FOR YOU TO GET OUT OF BIRTH

AND DEATH.

Can you see the contradiction?

First, Yung Chia's statement is of great importance. He is saying "The real nature of ignorance ..." What is the real nature of ignorance? Perhaps you have never thought about it.

What is the real nature of ignorance?

The real nature of ignorance is innocence.

It knows nothing; hence it is clean, pure, unpolluted.

Yung Chia is saying, "The real nature of ignorance is identical to the nature of enlightenment" -- because the enlightened man also knows nothing. He is also innocent, just like a small child. A very strange statement ... it can disturb many who think only intellectually. The question is bound to arise in their minds: if the real nature of enlightenment is the same as the real nature of ignorance, then why bother? You are already ignorant. Now Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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meditating and contemplating and concentrating, and standing on your head, and doing yoga postures, and fasting, and going to the caves and to the Himalayas, renouncing the world ...

Why do this whole circus if the nature of enlightenment is just the same as the nature of ignorance? In a way it is the same; in a way it is not.

As far as innocence is concerned, it is the same. But the child's innocence is corruptible, and the enlightened man's innocence is incorruptible -- there is the difference. The child will become knowledgeable; he cannot resist. There is no way to keep the child continuously ignorant. The child's innocence will soon be lost. In fact every effort is being made so that he will soon become knowledgeable and adult, mature.

But the sage has passed through all those stages of knowledge, maturity; he has come round the whole circle. He is incorruptible. Now nobody can tell him, "You should try to know something." He has known everything and dropped it. He has not only dropped knowledge, he has dropped the very faculty of knowing: the mind. He has seen that the whole game is simply futile; his innocence is now incorruptible. So there is a similarity -- and there is a great unbridgeable difference.

Ta Hui is quoting this great statement, but I don't have the feeling, looking at the following statements, that he has understood it. If you think like this he says ... It is not a thinking. You cannot think like this. Thinking always leads to knowledge, never to innocence. So the moment he says, if you think like this, he misses the whole point. And you can see how very intellectual people can behave in a very stupid way.

Listen to the whole sentence: If you think like this, suddenly, in the place where thought cannot reach ... and he is asking you to think, and to think about a place where thought cannot reach ... you will see the body of reality in which there is not a single thing -- this is the place for you to get out of birth and death. One does not get out of birth and death; one simply becomes awakened, and one is out of death, out of birth.

It is not a question of first becoming aware ... and then you have to do something to get out of the circle of birth and death. No, the moment you are aware, you are out of it. They are simultaneous.

Just as in the morning when you get up -- have you to do something to get out of your dreams? The moment you get up, you are out of your dreams already; otherwise it would have been very difficult to know whether you are dreaming or whether you are awake. If there were some effort needed to get out of your dreams, who will make the effort? You are fast asleep, you are dreaming -- who will get out of the dreams?

You must have had dreams, once in a while, when you dream that you are awake. And only when you really become awake you find, "My God, that was only a dream, and I was thinking that I am awake." Awakening and getting out of the dreams have to be simultaneous.

This life, this birth, this death, this whole circle of events -- in which we go on and on moving from one life into another -- is only because we are spiritually asleep.

Meditation wakes you up.

It is simply a method of awakening, and the moment you are awake, you are out of the whole circle of birth and death.

But Ta Hui is still talking about having "to get out of birth and death." You don't have to get out. Even if you want to get in, you cannot get in either.

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I have heard ... one night Mulla Nasruddin saw an angel who said, "You have been so virtuous, Mulla, I am going to give you a gift." And he gave him one rupee note.

Mulla said, "Are you joking? For my virtues, just one rupee reward! I cannot accept it, it is humiliating."

Haggling, the angel said, "Okay, two, three, four" ... finally they came to ninety-nine rupees.

Mulla said, "Listen, just for one rupee, don't destroy the whole thing. Make it just a one hundred rupee note. That seems to be correct, complete. Ninety-nine looks so incomplete."

But he said it so loudly -- "Make it one hundred!" -- that his wife woke up. She thought,

"What is he saying and to whom is he talking?" So she shook him and he woke up.

Mulla said, "You idiot! You don't understand that I was getting one hundred rupees from an angel. My whole night I have been haggling and haggling, and that was such a miserly angel. I have never seen such a miserly person. He was stuck at ninety-nine, and now you have awakened me. Just bring my glasses. I will go to sleep again, but I need glasses because I suspect that that angel is so miserly, the hundred rupee note may be false. Be quick!"

The poor woman thought, "This is absolutely stupid; in sleep you don't need glasses." But not wanting to quarrel in the middle of the night and disturb the neighbors, she brought the glasses and Mulla put them on. And then he started, "Come on! Where have you gone? Okay, ninety-nine. I will settle even for ninety-eight." And in this way he went down again, but the angel was nowhere to be seen. When a dream is broken, you cannot reconnect it. Finally he said, "Okay, one rupee. Now don't hide."

His wife was listening to the whole thing. She said, "Don't waste your night. You can take one rupee from me, and just go to sleep. You will not get that dream sequence again, and for God's sake, take those glasses off; otherwise you will break them in your sleep. And sleeping by your side, knowing that you have your glasses on, I cannot sleep. I feel uneasy ... what kind of thing is happening?"

So Mulla said, "Okay, you give me one rupee. In fact, you disturbed the whole thing. I was going to manage that fellow for one hundred rupees. If I and pull him from one rupee to ninety-nine, and then it was only a question of one rupee more ... I was going to convince him!

You woke me up and disturbed the whole thing, and meanwhile that miserly fellow has escaped. Now when I close my eyes, he is not there -- nowhere to be seen."

You cannot continue the same dream again. Once you are awake, to enter into the same dream is impossible -- and this is about ordinary awakening. When you are truly awakened, your whole being conscious, there is no question of getting out of birth and death. You are out of it. Now even if you want to get into it, it is not possible.

A young boy, not more than seven years old, was arguing with his father: "You said yesterday, 'Always remember, nothing is impossible.' And you said this statement is from Napoleon Bonaparte. And I say to you that I have found one thing which is impossible."

The father asked, "You have found something which is impossible? What is it?"

The boy said, "It is just in our bathroom."

The father said, "Just show me."

The boy brought the tube of toothpaste and he said, "This is impossible -- even if Napoleon Bonaparte wants to do it, he cannot do it -- once you take it out, to put it back in. I Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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have tried my best, it does not go back. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, no Napoleon Bonaparte can put it back in. You try! You are a great fan of Napoleon Bonaparte. Do this small thing. Just the other day you were bragging that nothing is impossible in the world, and in your bathroom, the impossible thing is there."

The most impossible thing in the world is: once you are awake, you cannot go back to your unconsciousness. There is just no way. Even if you want, even if you try, nothing is going to succeed. Just as you cannot go back in time, you cannot go back to yesterday, to the day before yesterday. You cannot go back into a state of unconsciousness.

All your problems of life and death are of unconsciousness.

So although these are very small mistakes, they show a great misunderstanding on the part of Ta Hui. He has listened to masters, but he is only an intellectual. He has not experienced ...

So it is very easy to detect where the loopholes are.

WHAT I SAID BEFORE, THAT ONE CANNOT SEEK THE DHARMA, WHICH HAS

NOTHING TO ATTAIN, WITH THE ATTITUDE THAT THERE IS SOMETHING TO

ATTAIN, IS JUST THIS PRINCIPLE.

GENTLEMEN OF AFFAIRS MAKE THEIR LIVING WITHIN THE CONFINES OF

THOUGHT AND JUDGMENT THEIR WHOLE LIVES: AS SOON AS THEY HEAR A MAN OF KNOWLEDGE SPEAK OF THE DHARMA, IN WHICH THERE IS NOTHING

TO ATTAIN, IN THEIR HEARTS THERE IS DOUBT AND CONFUSION AND THEY

FEAR FALLING INTO EMPTINESS.

In the first place, he uses the phrase, "a man of knowledge," which is never used for anyone who is enlightened. He can be called a man of wisdom, he can be called a man of knowing, he can be called a man of innocence, but he cannot be called a man of knowledge.

Knowledge always belongs to the mind.

What is the difference between knowing and knowledge? Knowing is actual experience in the moment. Knowledge is when knowing goes dead, when knowing becomes past.

Knowledge is stale, knowing is fresh.

Knowing is the rose dancing in the sun, yet connected with the roots deep in the earth, alive. Knowledge is a roseflower you have put in your holy scripture. It still has the shape of the flower but the color has faded, the fragrance is no longer there, and there is no way to make it dance in the sun, in the wind, in the rain. It is dead, it is a corpse.

Knowing is living experience.

Knowledge is a corpse.

A man of enlightenment can be called a man of knowing, of experiencing, but not a man of experience, not a man of knowledge. These are subtle differences, but they make one thing clear: Ta Hui does not have any experience of the things he is talking about. And to talk about things when you don't have the experience is one of the greatest crimes -- because you will stuff people's minds with all your nonsense.

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AS SOON AS YOU HEAR IT SAID THAT YOU SHOULDN'T THINK, IMMEDIATELY YOU ARE AT A LOSS AND CAN'T FIND YOUR GRIP.

Perhaps he is saying it about himself. Tell any thinker, "You should not think; only then can you enter into the temple of meditation," and he cannot conceive the idea -- without thinking? He immediately imagines that without thinking he will fall into a darkness, into emptiness, into ignorance, into stupidity -- without thinking, he will be lost. Thinking is the only light that he has.

He is saying it about others, but my feeling is that it is his own experience.

AS SOON AS YOU HEAR IT SAID THAT YOU SHOULDN'T THINK, IMMEDIATELY YOU ARE AT A LOSS AND CAN'T FIND YOUR GRIP. YOU'RE FAR

FROM REALIZING THAT THIS VERY LACK OF ANYWHERE TO GET A GRIP IS THE

TIME FOR YOU TO LET GO OF YOUR BODY AND YOUR LIFE.

IF CORRECT MINDFULNESS IS PRESENT AT ALL TIMES ...

Now he sometimes talks so stupidly that it is amazing that he has been thought to be a great master. He is saying: if correct mindfulness ... which means there is a possibility of incorrect mindfulness. There is no possibility of incorrect mindfulness. Mindfulness is simply awareness. It is the wrong word for awareness, but it actually means awareness.

Buddha has used a word which has been translated in all these languages: Chinese, and Japanese, and Korean. That word is sammasati. Samma means 'right,' and sati means

'remembering.' Sammasati has been translated as 'correct mindfulness.' But in the case of sammasati, it can be said that this is not a contradiction.

Sammasati is Pali for the Sanskrit words, samyak smriti. From language to language, small nuances go on changing. Samyak smriti is the root word. And samyak smriti means 'balanced remembrance.' In Pali, it becomes sammasati. There it also means 'right remembrance.'

Remembrance can be wrong. There are two kinds of remembrance, right and wrong.

Right remembrance is concerned with your own being, when you remember yourself.

When you are aware of yourself that is sammasati. When you remember other things that is not right remembrance. You may remember a thousand and one things, but if you don't remember yourself, your remembrance is wrong.

But when it is translated as 'mindfulness,' then the whole word has taken on a new meaning. There cannot be any wrong mindfulness. All mindfulness is right. And mindfulness doesn't mean anything to do with the mind; it simply means you are conscious, alert, aware. If you are walking mindfully, it means you are walking with consciousness. If I am moving my hand mindfully, it means I am moving it knowingly, not just like a robot.

IF CORRECT MINDFULNESS IS PRESENT AT ALL TIMES, AND THE ATTITUDE

OF FEAR FOR BIRTH AND DEATH DOESN'T WAVER, THEN, OVER LONG DAYS

AND MONTHS, WHAT WAS UNFAMILIAR WILL NATURALLY BECOME FAMILIAR, AND WHAT WAS STALE WILL NATURALLY BECOME FRESH.

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What he is saying is so stupid that even to call it stupid does not seem right; he needs something more powerful. He is saying something which can be perfectly right for an intellectual, but it is not right as an experience. And you can see it if you are just a little bit aware.

First, whenever one becomes aware, one becomes aware for twenty-four hours. It is not a question of becoming aware and then losing it, and then becoming aware again -- it is not like that.

Awareness is just like your heartbeat.

When you are asleep, the heart is beating, when you are working, the heart is beating, when you are talking, the heart is beating. Whatever you are doing or not doing, the heart is continuously functioning. When your awareness becomes just like a continuous undercurrent, only then is it worthy of being called awareness. So to say, if correct mindfulness is present at all times -- it is present at all times -- and the attitude of fear for birth and death does not waver ... is nonsense.

A man of awareness has no problem of fear as far as birth and death are concerned. Once awareness has arisen, you are free from the fear of birth and death; there is no question of wavering. Wavering can arise only if it is just an intellectual conviction, not an actual experience. Then doubts can always arise; in fact they will arise.

And then Ta Hui goes on and on making wrong statements: then, over long days and months, what was unfamiliar will naturally become familiar. He is thinking of awareness as if it were a habit which you have to practice continuously, so after months and days, slowly, slowly it will become familiar.

Awareness is not a gradual phenomenon. It does not come slowly, slowly, in installments.

It is an explosion, it is always sudden; it comes to you in its totality. It is not that slowly, slowly it comes and you become familiar with it.

And because he is making a wrong statement, he goes on round and round making more wrong statements: and what was stale will naturally become fresh. Now that which was stale, after days and months will become fresh. Can you see the contradiction? What is fresh may become stale after months. He is saying what was stale in the beginning, after days and months becomes fresh. He is not aware that even a small child who has nothing to do with enlightenment can say that this is stupid. As time passes, fresh things become stale, not vice versa.

The same is true about awareness. It goes on and on being fresh because it never becomes old. For consciousness there is no time -- neither days, nor months, nor years, nor lives.

Awareness is beyond time and beyond mind.

It never becomes stale, and it has never been stale. First you were unaware of it; now you are aware of it.

IT'S THE BRILLIANCE AND CLEVERNESS, THAT WHICH THINKS AND JUDGES.

WHAT IS THE UNFAMILIAR? IT'S ENLIGHTENMENT, NIRVANA, TRUE THUSNESS, THE BUDDHA-NATURE -- WHERE THERE IS NO THOUGHT OR DISCRIMINATION, Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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WHERE FIGURING AND CALCULATING CANNOT REACH, WHERE THERE'S NO

WAY FOR YOU TO USE YOUR MENTAL ARRANGEMENTS.

Ta Hui is important for you to understand, because he is a representative of thousands of intellectuals in the world who go on deceiving themselves because they can consistently, logically, think about experiences that have not happened to them. Perhaps they are influenced by people who have actually experienced, and that impact is so great that they start believing that certainly such things happen. Then they are capable of intellectual systematizing -- and they can go on systematizing -- but underneath they don't know a thing.

These people are the theologians, these people are religious heads, these people are philosophers, these people are great professors. These people dominate humanity, and they are the wrong people -- wrong because they are dishonest, wrong because they don't accept that it is not their experience. They simply go on fabricating beautiful words and theories and creating an illusion in the minds of people that perhaps they are authentic seers, enlightened people.

I will tell you an actual incident that happened, just at the beginning of this century. One young man, Ramateertha, was a professor of mathematics in Lahore University, and he was certainly a genius. He is well known for this incident -- perhaps nobody else has done it this way ... In examinations, the question paper comes with a note, "Answer any five out of the seven questions." When he was a student this was his consistent practice: he would answer all seven questions with a note, "Examine any five questions." He always answered all seven questions exactly right, so there was no problem for him -- you could choose any five yourself, whichever ones you wanted to examine. When he passed his post-graduation -- he topped the university in mathematics, he was a gold medalist -- he was immediately appointed as a professor. He had the caliber of a great intellectual. And just then Vivekananda returned from America.

Vivekananda was a monk and a disciple of Ramakrishna, who was an enlightened man but uneducated. Ramakrishna was not articulate enough to manage to say something about his experience, so he had chosen Vivekananda, who was a very intelligent person, from the cream of Bengal's intelligentsia. Vivekananda impressed people all over the world, wherever he went; now he had come back from America and was going around India. He came to Lahore, to the university where Ramateertha was a professor, and Ramateertha was so much impressed by Vivekananda that he wanted to be initiated by him immediately.

Vivekananda himself was just an intellectual, but a very forceful personality, a very imposing personality. He appealed to Ramateertha immediately because they were both intellectuals, so there was immediately a harmony, a synchronicity between their minds.

Vivekananda initiated him into sannyas, and Ramateertha left for a world tour himself.

Ramateertha was far more articulate than Vivekananda himself, far more poetic, far more impressive ... not as a personality, because Vivekananda looked like a giant -- he had a huge body -- but Ramateertha seems to have been far superior, intellectually. In particular, he was so much drowned in Persian, Arabic, and Urdu poetry, which are all unique as far as their mysticism is concerned -- they all belong to the Sufi tradition of mystics.

So Ramateertha had some new area about which Vivekananda had no knowledge. He also impressed people very much wherever he went. And the problem with the mind is that if people are impressed by you, slowly, slowly, it has a feedback effect. Because they get Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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impressed by you, you become impressed by yourself: "I must be carrying some great message; otherwise why are so many people mad about me?" He became convinced that he was enlightened. The crowd that was following him everywhere convinced him that he was enlightened.

When he came back to India, he was imagining a great reception ... Naturally, an enlightened person coming back home, after impressing the whole world ... He went directly to Varanasi, which has been the Hindu citadel for centuries, and where the Hindu learned people have their council which decides who is enlightened and who is not. None of these learned people is enlightened, but they are immensely learned as far as scriptures are concerned. So Ramateertha first approached the council of the learned to get recognition.

Now to me, even the idea of getting recognition from someone means you are not certain about your own attainment -- you are asking recognition from those who are not enlightened!

On what grounds do they have the authority to recognize you?

In the first place, your asking makes it certain that you are not enlightened. Secondly, you are asking people who are not enlightened themselves -- that reinforces that you don't understand what enlightenment is. It never needs anybody's recognition; it is a self-evident phenomenon. Even if the whole world says you are not enlightened, it does not matter. And even if the whole world says you are enlightened and you are not, then too, you will not become enlightened.

Something very strange happened there: one scholar of the council asked Ramateertha -- It was sheer stupidity for Ramateertha to go to the council -- one scholar asked, "Do you know Sanskrit?" And Ramateertha had no knowledge of Sanskrit, because he came from the part that is now in Pakistan. It was a Mohammedan area; there the language of the learned people was Arabic, Persian, Urdu. It was not the part where Sanskrit had any influence. So he was very deeply rooted in Persian and Arabic literature, and certainly Sufi literature has a beauty which Sanskrit literature does not have.

Sanskrit literature is very dry, like mathematics. Sufi literature is pure poetry. It has a certain juiciness about it, because the whole of Sufism is based on a foundation of love. Sufis are the only people in the world who think of God as the beloved, like a girlfriend. Naturally they have written beautiful poetry for the beloved. God is not a man, but a beautiful woman!

No poetry can reach to the heights of Sufi poetry.

Ramateertha was at a loss. He said, "No, I don't know anything about Sanskrit. I come from the part of the country where Sanskrit is far away; even Hindi is not spoken.

All those scholars laughed, and they said, "Without knowing Sanskrit, do you think one can become enlightened? First learn Sanskrit."

I can forgive all those idiots, but I cannot forgive Ramateertha, because he started learning Sanskrit! -- just to get the recognition from unenlightened people that he is enlightened.

I have always liked his discourses, but I have always found places in them which show decisively that the man is only an intellectual. He has no experience of his own. He knows beautiful poetry, he can talk in a very poetic way; he knows beautiful Sufi stories, he can explain those stories very impressively. But he himself is a beggar -- his bowl is empty.

Such is the situation of Ta Hui. Understanding Ta Hui will help you to understand many others who are in the same boat.

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Ramateertha went to the Himalayas, to a small state called Tihri Garhwal. The king of that state was very much impressed by Ramateertha, so he made him a special bungalow in the mountains, where he was learning Sanskrit in order to be recognized.

One day it happened ... Ramateertha had a secretary, a certain Sardar Pooran Singh who was a great writer in Punjabi, certainly a very refined writer -- his prose is almost like poetry.

He was so impressed by Ramateertha that he dropped his job, became Ramateertha's secretary and was taking care of his body, his letters and the correspondence from all over the world ...

One day, looking out of the window, Ramateertha saw his wife coming. He had been married, but he had renounced his poor wife and become a sannyasin. The wife was so poor that she was doing all kinds of jobs in the village, grinding people's wheat or washing people's clothes. She did not even have the tickets for traveling ...

When she heard that Ramateertha was in Tihri Garhwal, she had sold a few ornaments that had been given to her at the time of their marriage. She just wanted to touch the feet of Ramateertha. She had not come to complain -- she was really glad. In the East that has been the tradition: if the husband becomes a world-renowned sannyasin ... even though the wife was living in rotten circumstances, still she was very happy that she had a husband whose name would go down in the corridors of history.

When Ramateertha saw his wife coming, he told Sardar Pooran Singh, "Close the window and close the door, and go out on the veranda. My wife is coming. Tell her that I am not here, that I have gone into seclusion in the forest, and nobody knows when I am supposed to return.

Just somehow get rid of her."

Sardar Pooran Singh was a very sincere man. He said, "This is strange, because I have seen you allowing people, both men and women, to see you. Why are you preventing your own wife, whom you have renounced? Now she is no longer any relation to you. Your preventing her means that deep down your mind still believes that she is your wife. Why are you discriminating between other women and her? And why are you so afraid?

"Certainly that poor woman cannot do anything to you. It must be something inside you of which you are afraid. I am not going to close the window or the door. And I cannot lie to the woman. You have to decide one thing: either you have to see her or I am no longer your secretary, no longer your disciple. I am going."

Ramateertha could not afford for Pooran Singh to go. He was dependent on him for everything. So he said, "Okay, if you insist, I will see her." And his wife came with tears of joy and just touched the earth, not even his feet. And Pooran Singh wrote in his diary, "Even my tears started flowing. The woman is so respectful, she does not consider him her husband anymore. He has become so divine to her that even to touch his feet will be defiling him."

Pooran Singh touched the feet of Ramateertha's wife. He said, "To me you are more religious and more understanding than Ramateertha." And Ramateertha felt so ashamed ... you will not believe what he did: he immediately changed his clothes. He was wearing the orange robe of a Hindu sannyasin. He dropped that and took clothes from Sardar Pooran Singh --

ordinary clothes, not those of a sannyasin. Sardar Pooran Singh asked, "What are you doing?"

Ramateertha said, "I am so ashamed. I am not enlightened; I am not even worthy to be called a sannyasin. The recognition has come to me, although late, but still it is good that it has come to me. I have been believing that I am enlightened, that I have renounced the world.

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these orange clothes." And then he went out of the bungalow, and jumped from the mountains into the Ganges -- the Ganges flows just nearby, coming down from the mountains. He committed suicide.

But such is the hypocrisy of the society that the same learned people who refused to accept him as enlightened started saying that he had "renounced his body" -- not that he committed suicide, not that he had committed a crime. Their actual word is jal samadhi: "He has dropped into the water and become one with existence."

And still there exists a Ramateertha League, and there are followers ... and his books are published, and people are reading those books in order to become enlightened.

Intellect can deceive you, can deceive others.

Beware of the intellect.

Beware of the mind.

Be very careful; don't be impressed easily. Certainly don't be impressed through intellect.

If suddenly a connection happens from being to being, that's another matter.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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7

The source

18 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

SEE THE MOON, FORGET THE POINTING FINGER

YOU MUST SEE THE MOON AND FORGET THE FINGERS. DON'T DEVELOP AN

UNDERSTANDING BASED ON THE WORDS.

AN ANCIENT WORTHY SAID, "THE BUDDHAS EXPOUNDED ALL TEACHINGS

TO SAVE ALL MINDS; I HAVE NO MIND AT ALL, SO WHAT'S THE USE OF ALL

THE TEACHINGS?" IF THEY CAN BE LIKE THIS WHEN READING THE

SCRIPTURES, ONLY THEN WILL PEOPLE OF RESOLVE HAVE SOME

COMPREHENSION OF THE INTENT OF THE SAGES.

STORIES AND SAYINGS

THESE DAYS, IN THE CH'AN

COMMUNITIES, THEY USE THE

EXTRAORDINARY WORDS AND MARVELOUS SAYINGS OF THE ANCIENTS TO

QUESTION AND ANSWER -- CONSIDERING THEM SITUATIONS FOR

DISCRIMINATION, AND BEGUILING STUDENTS. THEY ARE FAR FROM GETTING

TO THE ROOT OF THEIR REALITY.

WHEN PEOPLE ENGAGED IN MEDITATION READ THE SCRIPTURAL

TEACHINGS, AND THE STORIES OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH THE

ANCIENT WORTHIES ENTERED THE PATH, THEY SHOULD JUST EMPTY THEIR

MINDS. DON'T LOOK FOR THE ORIGINAL MARVEL, OR SEEK ENLIGHTENMENT

IN SOUNDS, NAMES, AND VERBAL MEANINGS. IF YOU TAKE THIS ATTITUDE, YOU'RE OBSTRUCTING YOUR OWN CORRECT KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION, AND YOU'LL NEVER HAVE AN ENTRY.

P'AN SHAN SAID, "IT'S LIKE HURLING A SWORD AT THE SKY: NO TALK OF

WHETHER IT REACHES OR NOT!" DON'T BE CARELESS! VIMALKIRTI SAID THAT

THE TRUTH GOES BEYOND EYES, EARS, NOSE, TONGUE, BODY, AND

INTELLECT.

TE SHAN WOULD SEE A MONK ENTER THE DOOR AND IMMEDIATELY

STRIKE HIM WITH HIS STAFF; LIN CHI WOULD SEE A MONK ENTER THE DOOR

AND IMMEDIATELY SHOUT! VENERABLE ADEPTS EVERYWHERE CALL THIS

"BRINGING IT UP FACE TO FACE," "IMPARTING IT DIRECTLY," BUT I CALL IT

FIRST CLASS TRAILING MUD AND DRIPPING WATER. EVEN IF YOU CAN TAKE IT

UP WITH YOUR WHOLE BEING AT A SINGLE BLOW OR SHOUT, ALREADY YOU

ARE NOT A MAN OF POWER -- IN FACT YOU HAVE BEEN DOUSED OVER THE

HEAD BY SOMEONE ELSE WITH A LADLEFUL OF FOUL WATER. HOW MUCH

MORE SO, IF AT A SHOUT OR BLOW YOU ARE LOOKING FOR MARVELS OR

SEEKING SUBTLE UNDERSTANDING -- THIS IS THE STUPIDEST OF THE STUPID.

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Ta Hui is a strange fellow, but he represents all those people who try to find their self-nature by intellectual effort. The problem with these people is that they have a good intellect. They can grasp words from masters, they can repeat them; they can deceive people and they can be deceived themselves.

Now this is one of the most stupid sutras amongst all his teachings, and I will show you why I am saying that. As I go more and more into Ta Hui, I am wondering whether to call him a great teacher or just a pseudo teacher. A master certainly he is not; a teacher he may have been, but there are things which are even below the status of a teacher. He seems to be a pseudo teacher. He has not fulfilled even the qualifications for being an authentic teacher, just transmitting knowledge from the masters to the masses.

He cannot even understand what has been happening in the school of Zen. It is so special that a very rare insight is needed to comprehend it, and unless you have your own experience there will always remain something of a doubt in you.

For example, Zen is the only school in the world where the masters have slapped the disciples, hit them with their staffs, or even physically thrown students out of the window. Not only that, one master jumped on top of a disciple; sitting on his chest he asked, "Got it?"

The Zen master is mysterious in his working. People who simply read the anecdotes cannot make any sense out of them because they don't know the inner story which cannot be compiled in the anecdotes. It is a happening between the master and the disciple: it is the invisible transfer of energy.

Just to give you an insight so that you can see the stupidity of Ta Hui ... An understanding of this man who has been thrown out of the window by Lin Chi, who then jumped on him and asked, "Got it?", needs the total background to the story and the intrinsic undercurrent running through it.

The disciple had been working for almost a year on a koan which is the most famous koan in Zen -- 'the sound of one hand clapping.' Now, there cannot be any sound of one hand clapping. You can go on clapping one hand, but sound is not possible. Sound is only produced when two things clash; if there is only one thing, sound is not possible.

So the first thing to understand is that a Zen koan is not an ordinary puzzle which can be solved. It needs a different approach -- not that of solution, but that of dissolution.

The poor student went, sat under a tree, thought about it, meditated -- what can be the sound of one hand clapping? Do you hear the cuckoo ...? He heard a cuckoo from a faraway bamboo grove. He said, "This is it!" -- so beautiful, so peaceful, bringing such joy. He rushed back and told the master, "I have heard it. It is the song of a cuckoo."

The master slapped him and said, "You idiot! I have told you to find out the sound of one hand clapping! What does a poor cuckoo have to do with it? Just go back and meditate."

He was very much puzzled, because his mind was searching for sounds -- which sound is it? One day he heard a breeze passing through the pine trees and he said, "This must be it!"

And he rushed back ...

This went on for one year. He would find some sound, the sound of running water, and he would go back. A point came when the master had no need to hear his answer. The moment he saw him, he slapped him, and he would say, "Go back."

He replied, "But I have not even said anything ..."

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The master said, "As long as you go on finding, you will not have found it. Just go back. I know you have brought some stupid sound again!"

This was the student ... After one year, when he came in, the master saw that slapping was not going to do it -- he had been slapping him for one year continually! He just took hold of him and threw him out of the window. It was a two-story building ...

It was such a shock to the student. He was expecting a slap, but he was not expecting to be thrown from the window into a ditch. And besides that, the master jumped on top of him, so the few bones which had been left unbroken were now broken. He had multiple fractures! And on top of all that, the master was asking, "Got it?" The shock was such that his mind stopped

-- it was so unexpected.

Mind stops only when there is something unexpected -- so unexpected that the mind cannot figure it out ... it stops.

Absolute silence ... and tears of joy in the eyes of the disciple. He touched the feet of the master and said, "Why have you waited for one year? You could have done it on the very first day."

The master said, "It would not have worked. I had to wait for the right moment, when you were ripe. You had worked hard with your mind. Your mind was tired, utterly tired; it had lost all hope that there is any possibility to find the answer. This was the moment when, if something unexpected happens to you, the mind may stop -- just for a single moment. And that's enough to hear the sound of one hand clapping."

The words are deceiving. It is not the sound of one hand clapping; it is the silence when the mind stops. Now anybody looking at the anecdote and not knowing the whole inner process -- just an outsider -- is bound to think this is simply stupid. But the disciple became enlightened, and it is always the end which decides whether the means were right or wrong.

Ta Hui is just an intellectual, so sometimes he repeats beautiful words. But here he has shown his reality, because he could not conceive any meaning in the stories and the anecdotes.

I will go into them.

You must see the moon and forget the finger. This is so easy to repeat, because for the thousands of years since Gautam Buddha this has been one of the most important statements: the buddha only points the finger towards the moon.

His 'finger' means all that he says, all that he does, and it is only an indication -- a hint.

You should not get too much attached to the finger, because the finger is not the point. What he is saying, what he is preaching, is not the point; it is only an indication. You should not get attached to the philosophy, you should not become a buddhist. You should look at the moon.

And if you want to look at the moon, the most fundamental thing is to forget all about the finger. If your eyes are focused on the finger, how are you going to see the moon? Unless you move your eyes from the finger towards the faraway moon in the sky, it is not possible.

Buddha was saying, "Don't get attached to what I say, don't get attached to any doctrine, to what I preach; don't get attached to my personality. These are all just fingers pointing to the moon. Forget me, don't start worshiping me; just look at the moon. And once you have looked at the moon, I don't matter at all."

It is a very pregnant statement, and a very courageous one, to make to one's own disciples:

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a system of beliefs or a philosophy. These are all devices to indicate the truth. It is beyond all words, but words can be used as a finger pointing to it. They cannot express it, but they can indicate it."

It is very easy to repeat it, but I don't think Ta Hui understands. You must see the moon and forget the fingers. don't develop an understanding based on the words. But that's actually what he has done. All his understanding is based on words.

AN ANCIENT WORTHY SAID, "THE BUDDHAS EXPOUNDED ALL TEACHINGS

TO SAVE ALL MINDS; I HAVE NO MIND AT ALL, SO WHAT IS THE USE OF ALL

THE TEACHINGS?"

The quotation is perfectly right, but this is what Buddha means by saving: The understanding arising in you that you don't have any mind, that you are a no-mind. And then there is no question of saving. While you are attached to the mind you are in a bondage, and you need to be brought out of the bondage.

So the ancient worthy is right when he says, "the buddhas expounded all teachings to save all minds. I have no mind at all" -- he is a saved man -- "so, what's the use of all the teachings?"

Certainly when you are saved there is no use. When you have seen the moon, what is the use of the fingers? When your disease is cured, what is the use of the medicine? Are you going to worship the bottle of medicine? Are you going to carry it wherever you go because it has saved you from a disease? The moment you are cured, you throw the medicine bottle; it is finished, its work is done.

It is almost as if you have a thorn in your foot: you take another thorn to take the first thorn out. The other thorn is as much a thorn as the first one, but you can manage to take out the first thorn with the other one. Now what are you going to do with the other thorn? Are you going to put it in the wound that has been created by the first thorn because it has saved you from that thorn? That would be utter stupidity -- then you still have what was wrong in the first place. No, once the first thorn is taken out, you throw away both the thorns together.

All teachings are just like that. The ancient worthy is saying it right, but Ta Hui does not understand what he is saying. He says,

"IF THEY CAN BE LIKE THIS WHEN READING THE SCRIPTURES, ONLY THEN

WILL PEOPLE OF RESOLVE HAVE SOME COMPREHENSION OF THE INTENT OF

THE SAGES."

Ta Hui is saying that you can understand what the sage has said only if you are reading the scriptures; only if you are a man of resolve and determination, a man of comprehension, will you be able to understand the intent of the sages.

All the words that he is using are not needed to understand the sages. What is needed is an experience. Not your comprehension, because all comprehension is intellectual; nor your resolve, because all resolve is of the mind; nor your reading of the scriptures, because that is Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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all your intellectuality -- these things are not going to help you understand such a profound statement as, "The moment you have seen the moon, forget all about the fingers."

This kind of statement can be experienced only through experience. Ta Hui has no experience at all, and that becomes very clear when he comes to the stories and sayings. Any intellectual, even today, will condemn Zen stories or simply laugh, thinking that perhaps they are just jokes, because they don't make any sense to the mind.

THESE DAYS IN THE CH'AN COMMUNITIES, THEY USE THE EXTRAORDINARY

WORDS AND MARVELOUS SAYINGS OF THE ANCIENTS TO QUESTION AND

ANSWER -- CONSIDERING THEM SITUATIONS FOR DISCRIMINATION, AND

BEGUILING STUDENTS. THEY ARE FAR FROM GETTING TO THE ROOT OF THEIR

REALITY.

WHEN PEOPLE ENGAGED IN MEDITATION READ THE SCRIPTURAL

TEACHINGS, AND THE STORIES OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH THE

ANCIENT WORTHIES ENTERED THE PATH, THEY SHOULD JUST EMPTY THEIR

MINDS.

He is not even aware that he goes on saying things in which he contradicts himself. Just look: when people engaged in meditation read the scriptures ... A man who is engaged in meditation does not need to read the scriptures, because whatever the scriptures contain is a faraway echo of somebody's meditation. And if you are yourself meditating, you are at the very source. Why should you bother about faraway echoes, corrupted, distorted by the interpretations of intellectuals, teachers, pedagogues, commentators?

When you are at the very source yourself, you are at the very root from where all scriptures have arisen. A man of meditation has no necessity to read the scriptures and the teachings in the scriptures, but that is what Ta Hui is saying. Then immediately he says: ... and the stories of the circumstances in which the ancient worthies entered the path, they should just empty their minds.

How can you empty your mind when you are reading scriptures, teachings, and stories of how the ancient sages entered the path? you are filling the mind, not emptying the mind.

Meditation empties the mind; studying anything only fills it. They are diametrically opposite to each other. But Ta Hui, in a single sentence, is bringing the whole opposition together, without ever being aware that what he is doing will be thought utterly idiotic by anyone who knows what meditation is.

DON'T LOOK FOR THE ORIGINAL MARVEL, OR SEEK ENLIGHTENMENT IN

SOUNDS, NAMES, AND VERBAL MEANINGS.

How are you going to read the scriptures if you don't look for the verbal meanings? What other kind of meanings are there? In a scripture there are only words and nothing else; you can read the scripture only as verbal meanings.

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IF YOU TAKE THIS ATTITUDE, YOU'RE OBSTRUCTING YOUR OWN CORRECT

KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION AND YOU WILL NEVER HAVE AN ENTRY.

He has no idea that knowledge is the problem. One has to get free of it. It is not knowledge that gives you perception; it is knowledge that hinders your perception. It is removing the knowledge that clears the sky, just as when the clouds have moved there is absolute clear perception.

But this is bound to happen to a man who has been gathering things from here and there and who has not gone into meditation himself. Not a single thing shows that he has had any taste of meditation.

P'an Shan said ... he quotes people because he has been going to teachers, masters; he must have been taking notes of what they were saying. He quotes many people.

P'AN SHAN SAID, "IT'S LIKE HURLING A SWORD AT THE SKY: NO TALK OF

WHETHER IT REACHES OR NOT!" DON'T BE CARELESS! VIMALKIRTI SAID THAT

THE TRUTH GOES BEYOND EYES, EARS, NOSE, TONGUE, BODY, AND

INTELLECT.

I am simply amazed! This man quotes Vimalkirti, and Vimalkirti is saying, "Unless you go beyond intellect and all your senses, you will not have the perception of reality, you will not know your self nature." But it does not strike him that he is simply working through the intellect.

TE SHAN WOULD SEE A MONK ENTER THE DOOR AND IMMEDIATELY

STRIKE HIM WITH HIS STAFF; LIN CHI WOULD SEE A MONK ENTER THE DOOR

AND IMMEDIATELY SHOUT! VENERABLE ADEPTS EVERYWHERE CALL THIS

"BRINGING IT UP FACE TO FACE," "IMPARTING IT DIRECTLY," BUT I CALL IT

FIRST CLASS TRAILING MUD AND DRIPPING WATER. EVEN IF YOU CAN TAKE IT

UP WITH YOUR WHOLE BEING AT A SINGLE BLOW OR SHOUT, ALREADY YOU

ARE NOT A MAN OF POWER -- IN FACT YOU HAVE BEEN DOUSED OVER THE

HEAD BY SOMEONE ELSE WITH A LADLE FULL OF FOUL WATER. HOW MUCH

MORE SO, IF AT A SHOUT OR BLOW YOU ARE LOOKING FOR MARVELS OR

SEEKING SUBTLE UNDERSTANDING -- THIS IS THE STUPIDEST OF THE STUPID.

Because he cannot understand, because he has no experience of his own, he calls it stupidest of the stupid. I will try to explain to you exactly what these people were doing. They were immensely successful, and they are not stupid. Ta Hui is the stupidest of the stupid.

Te Shan is famous and a great master. A monk would enter the door and immediately he would strike him with his staff. You have to understand the situation. The master sees the disciple; he gives him a certain koan, an unsolvable puzzle. Then whenever he finds the right answer to it, he has to come and report to the master. Now there is really no answer for it -- so whenever a disciple enters to give him an answer, why waste time? He would simply hit him hard. He is making it as clear as possible that all answers are wrong, so there is no need to Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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listen to your answer. Although it looks very strange that you have not given the answer and he is hitting you -- if you were wrong, he could have hit you ... but you may have been right.

But that is the problem: no answer is going to be right, only silence.

So it happened many times that the student will get hit -- many, many times. Then for a few days he will not appear, and Te Shan will enquire, "Where is he?" He will go to the place

-- it was a big monastery, a beautiful Zen garden -- and he will find the disciple sitting under a tree, in utter silence. His face showed that the mind is no longer functioning, that there is no wavering inside, that everything is quiet and calm.

And the same Te Shan who has been hitting this disciple will touch his feet. As he will touch his feet, the disciple will open his eyes and he will say, "Master, what are you doing?"

Te Shan will say, "I am touching your feet because you have found the answer. I suspected that something else had happened, because for many days you did not come. It happens that students only stop coming when they have found, because what to say? -- there is no answer.

And they are enjoying their silence so tremendously ... they have forgotten the koan, they have forgotten the master, they have forgotten everything. They are living in such an ecstasy that everything is left far away."

Te Shan used to find the disciples, and it always proved right -- his hitting had helped. His hitting finally made them aware that he is so compassionate and so loving, he will not hit unnecessarily. His hitting again and again shows only one thing: that whatever answer you have found is wrong. There is no need to hear it because there is no possibility of a right answer. By hitting he is making it clear that there is no possibility of a right answer; mind is absolutely impotent to give you the answer.

Slowly, slowly, the disciple forgets about the koan, forgets about the sound, because it brings nothing but a hit from the staff of the master. But the moment he forgets the mind, and the koan, and the master, and the search for any answer, he falls into a deep, abysmal silence.

That silence is the answer, but you cannot say anything about it. And it is so wonderful, mysterious ... you are so contented with it that there is no need for recognition from the master that you have found the answer. All these things have become trivia.

But Ta Hui does not understand it at all, and perhaps nobody -- not even the greatest philosopher in the world -- will be able to understand what kind of things these are. It looks simply absurd: first you give him a koan, and then you don't even listen to his answer. But it is a strategy, a strategy of great love and great compassion.

The master touches the feet and asks to be forgiven for all the hits that he has given ... he had to do it: "There was no other way to destroy your stubborn mind, to destroy your clinging with the mind, to destroy the idea that you can find an answer through the mind. It was not only you that was hurt by my staff, I was hurt more. For all that I touch your feet, and I ask for your forgiveness."

Te Shan was loved by his disciples even though he hit them with his staff; Ta Hui has no understanding at all.

Lin Chi would see a monk enter the door and immediately shout! Any intellectual will make a laughingstock of the whole thing. What is the point? -- you give the appointment to the student, to the disciple, to come to your room, and then you suddenly shout for no reason at all.

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In my childhood I came across a man. His name was Sardar Chanchal Singh. He had been with Subhash Chandra Bose, a great Indian revolutionary, who had escaped from the jails of the British government. He had gone first in disguise to Germany to see Adolf Hitler, because he wanted to suggest, "You are fighting with the British. We are also fighting them, and we need your help. If you can give us help, the British Empire can be attacked from two sides.

We can attack from inside and you can go on attacking it from the outside."

The policy was absolutely clear ... and you will be surprised, Adolf Hitler never introduced any man to his armies the way he introduced Subhash Chandra Bose. He said to the armies,

"Respect this man more than you respect me, because I am a fuhrer of only a small nation; this man is a revolutionary and the leader of a vast continent." And he gave him -- although he was not in any political position -- a guard of honor.

It was Adolf Hitler and Subhash Chandra's plan ... they worked out that it would be better that Subhash Chandra went to Japan. In Japan there were thousands of Indian soldiers who were fighting for the British government against Japan.

It was a very clever policy: Subhash Chandra would go to Japan and Hitler would inform Japan -- because Japan was an ally with Germany against the British, against the Americans ...

He would inform them, "Allow Subhash to talk to all the Indian soldiers who are prisoners in Japanese jails. I have every certainty that this man is capable." -- and he was a man of immense charisma -- "and that he will convince those soldiers, 'You are fighting for the British empire, which keeps your slavery intact. Instead, come with me, and we will make an army and fight against the British Empire.'"

It was so logical and simple that the prisoners were ready. First ... if they are ready, they will not be prisoners any more; they will be guests of Japan. Secondly, they may have been fighting for the British, but deep down they were against the empire; just for their bread and butter, they had sold their souls.

Once Subhash told them, "You have sold your souls ..." then all the camps of prisoners were opened. A new army -- the Indian National Army -- was created by Subhash Chandra Bose. Sardar Chanchal Singh was one of the close colleagues of Subhash. He was also a prisoner. He had had a high post in the Indian army, and he also had a very high post in the Indian National Army that was going to attack from Japan.

They succeeded as far as Rangoon; they defeated the British armies. Even Calcutta started feeling the fear that after Rangoon the next attack would be on Calcutta. All British were removed from Calcutta, and people who had enough money all moved from there. Calcutta was a danger point.

At that very moment Germany was defeated. Atom bombs were thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so Japan surrendered.

Subhash was in a strange position. Now, both friends who were supporting him were defeated. He had a small army -- but although he was winning, how long could he go on? He could not even reach Calcutta, which was his home town. So he escaped from Rangoon ...

It is still a mystery what happened to him. There are stories that he has been seen in the Soviet Union; there are stories that he lives in Tibet; there are stories which seem to have been created by himself ... The plane he had taken from Rangoon fell in Taipei and burned. The pilot and somebody else -- nobody knows who the other man was -- were immediately burned, Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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without any press conference or without any medical examination. They were already burned in the crash, and because they were both Hindus, they were put on a funeral pyre.

Most probably, Subhash had been dropped somewhere else, and this plane was purposely burned to create the impression to the British Empire that Subhash was dead; otherwise he was enemy number one, to be caught dead or alive. So, this was a good fiction: he is dead, now there is no point ... and he has even been burned.

Taipei gave out the report that he had been put on the funeral pyre -- but there was no point, the bodies were already burned, they were unrecognizable. They had not even photographed those bodies -- which is absolutely necessary for a man with the status of Subhash, for whom the British Empire was bloodthirsty. They should have taken photographs, they should have called medical people to examine the bodies. They should, in fact, have delivered the body to the British Empire. But my feeling is that it was not the body of Subhash; it was just a created facade. And that was the feeling of Sardar Chanchal Singh also.

He, by chance, met me in a restaurant in Jabalpur. He had been released from the Indian jail ... After Subhash left, all the Indian National Army people were again in jail -- but now they were in the jails of the British. But a case was fought for them, and Chanchal Singh was released. He was searching for employment, so I told him, "If you have learned any martial arts in Japan, I can arrange a group of college and university students. You can teach them martial arts, and they will pay you enough so that you can survive until you can get other employment."

I have told you about Chanchal Singh because he had learned from someone to shout exactly the way Lin Chi must have been shouting -- and I have heard him shout! I don't know Lin Chi -- he must have been more articulate in his shouting ... but even if this man Chanchal Singh shouted at you, your mind would stop immediately. If you were going to strike him with a sword, and he shouted, your hand would stop.

His shout was so deep, so much penetrating in you, that whatever you were doing you would simply stop. We had tried bringing wrestlers to hit him, to punch his nose. They were expert boxers, but the moment he would shout, their hands would just stop, close to his nose ... Something strange in his sound.

Just jokingly we used to use him. somebody was urinating and we would say, "Chanchal Singh, give a good shout." He would give a good shout and the urination would stop! The man would look all around -- what happened?

I know perfectly well that there are many stories about Lin Chi, whose shout has awakened people, but it was not an ordinary shout. It was a certain training that enters into the deepest core of your being. The whole problem is that man is asleep. A good shout can wake him up.

Even today, in the school of Lin Chi, the shout is being used. But it is not being used on every disciple -- only when a disciple has worked hard with his mind and his mind is tired.

Those koans are so tiring because you know that they are absurd. But if the master says, "Find the answer," and you have come to the master to become awakened, then you have to follow whatever discipline he gives you.

Those shouts are given only when the mind is almost on the brink of failure, and it is the understanding of the master that now is the time. Then a disciple enters in Lin Chi's room, without expecting that he will shout like a lion's roar for no reason at all ... jump and shout as Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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if he is going to kill the disciple. The disciple will remain just ... the whole mind stops. And just for a moment he can see his self-nature.

The question is not of time. If you know your self-nature, even for a moment, things become easy. Now you know the way. Now you know yourself, you can reach to it again and again. Now a shout is not needed every time; it was only an arbitrary device.

But Ta Hui condemns it because he does not understand the deep compassion, the psychology, the articulateness behind it. He proves himself to be an ordinary intellectual. Only in one thing is he right, when he uses the words stupidest of the stupid. But those words belong to him, not to Lin Chi, not to the master Te Shan.

These people were using absolutely new methods to awaken people. Their contribution is great. Zen has made more people enlightened than any other school of any other religion.

Even in one monastery you can find many enlightened people. And this has been the only living current which has not stopped somewhere in the past; it is still alive. There are still people like Te Shan and Lin Chi, but they have fallen into obscurity.

America has corrupted the Japanese atmosphere completely; otherwise, Japan would be a totally different world. Its whole genius was concentrated on how to become enlightened.

Now, under the American rule, their whole energy has been diverted towards money. And, they are people of great integrity, so great that now their money has the greatest value. Even the dollar, the American dollar, is left far behind. They are one of the richest nations in the world, and their money is more trustworthy than any other nation's currency. But this is not a success; it is a tremendous failure.

America has corrupted Japan's universities. What is being taught now in their universities is borrowed from America; they are completely imitating America, competing with America.

Certainly they have made America afraid: although their products are very highly taxed when they enter America, still they are able to compete in the American market with American products, which are not taxed at all. The taxation has been going higher and higher to prevent the American market from being completely taken over by Japan.

But even though the Americans are raising the taxation on any import, Japan is still competing very well on every front in the American market. And America is absolutely impotent to compete in the Japanese market.

The Japanese work hard, work totally, work intensely. Their only problem is that they don't have much land to create more factories. So just a few days ago they have succeeded in floating an artificial island. On this artificial island they will be making factories. Once they succeed on one island, they will float many other islands. They are creating land for the first time.

Ta Hui does not understand. And this is the sign of a stupid person -- that without understanding anything, he criticizes it. Intellectuals are very willing to criticize anything that does not come within their comprehension.

But there are methods which work whether you can comprehend them or not. You should look at the ultimate result. Although the Japanese monasteries have fallen into darkness, still there are people who are working with devices which can create awakening.

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Ta Hui is absolutely wrong. I was thinking to call his teachings, "Teachings of a Great Teacher." But as I am going into his sutras, I will have to change the title of the book. It will be "Zen Teachings of a Pseudo Teacher -- Ta Hui."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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8

Delusion

18 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

ENLIGHTENMENT AND DELUSION

"BUDDHA" IS THE MEDICINE FOR SENTIENT BEINGS; ONCE THE DISEASE OF

SENTIENT BEINGS IS REMOVED, THE MEDICINE HAS NO FURTHER USE.

IF YOU WANT TO ATTAIN ONENESS, JUST GIVE UP BOTH BUDDHAS AND

SENTIENT BEINGS AT ONCE!

AN ANCIENT WORTHY SAID, "JUST PERCEIVE NOTHINGNESS IN THE MIDST

OF THINGS."

"I FORMED THE REPOSITORY OF THUSNESS WITH SUBTLE ILLUMINATION

THAT IS NEITHER DESTROYED NOR BORN; AND THE REPOSITORY OF

THUSNESS IS ONLY THE ILLUMINATION OF SUBLIME ENLIGHTENMENT

SHINING THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE COSMOS."

NEVERTHELESS, BOTH ARE ULTIMATELY EMPTY FALSEHOODS. IF ONE

ABANDONS THE POWER OF ACTIONS TO GRASP THE POWER OF THE PATH, THEN I WOULD SAY THAT THIS PERSON DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE SKILL IN

MEANS OF ALL THE BUDDHAS IN EXPOUNDING THE TRUTH AS IS

APPROPRIATE TO THE OCCASION. WHY? HAVE YOU NOT READ HOW OLD

SHAKYAMUNI SAID, "IF YOU CLING TO THE TRUTH ASPECT, YOU ARE

ATTACHED TO SELF, PERSONALITY, LIVING BEINGS, AND LIFE; IF YOU CLING

TO THE NON-TRUTH ASPECT, YOU ARE ATTACHED TO SELF, PERSONALITY, LIVING BEINGS, AND LIFE." THUS IT IS SAID, "THE BUDDHA ONLY USES

PROVISIONAL TERMS IN GUIDING SENTIENT BEINGS."

AS SOON AS THE SOURCE OF THE SICKNESS WAS POINTED OUT TO HIM BY

AN OLD ADEPT, CHANG CH'O, THE FAMOUS SCHOLAR IN THE OLD DAYS

UNDERSTOOD ENOUGH TO SAY:

TRYING TO ELIMINATE PASSION AGGRAVATES THE DISEASE; RUSHING

TOWARDS TRUE SUCHNESS IS ALSO WRONG. THERE IS NO OBSTRUCTION IN

WORLDLY CIRCUMSTANCES ACCORDING TO ONE'S LOT: "NIRVANA" AND

"BIRTH AND DEATH" ARE EQUALLY ILLUSIONS.

BE LIKE THE STILLNESS OF WATER, LIKE THE CLARITY OF A MIRROR, SO

THAT WHETHER GOOD OR BAD, BEAUTIFUL OR UGLY APPROACH, YOU DON'T

MAKE THE SLIGHTEST MOVE TO AVOID THEM. THEN YOU WILL TRULY KNOW

THAT THE MINDLESS WORLD OF SPONTANEITY IS INCONCEIVABLE.

Ta Hui in these sutras comes very close to truth. But even to be close to truth is not to attain it. Even the closeness is a distance.

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Whatever he is saying could have been said by an enlightened being, and then its meaning would be totally different. He is repeating very cleverly the statements of ancient enlightened people, but they sound phony, they don't sound alive. It seems something is dead inside them.

He does not show that what he is saying is his own experience; there is no authority in it.

But we will try to understand, because the statements that he is quoting from others are significant in themselves. Alas that he himself has not experienced them! And experience makes such a great difference. A blind man can describe all the qualities of light; he can describe all the beauties of a rainbow, but in his description something essential will be missing. And anybody who knows light and knows the colors of the rainbow will immediately feel that the man is blind. Perhaps he has heard about light, but he has not seen it. And I will tell you how different would be the same statement from a man of enlightenment.

The first sutra:

"BUDDHA" IS THE MEDICINE FOR SENTIENT BEINGS; ONCE THE DISEASE OF

SENTIENT BEINGS IS REMOVED, THE MEDICINE HAS NO FURTHER USE.

It is perfectly true as far as medicine is concerned, but buddha is not the medicine. Buddha is the state when you are cured and no medicine is needed. Buddha is your innermost nature.

A man who knows through experience would have said, "Meditation is the medicine for sentient beings. Once the disease of sentient beings is removed, the medicine has no further use. Meditation is no longer needed for one who is enlightened."

But to use the word 'buddha' instead of 'meditation' shows tremendous confusion in the mind of the person. He may have heard someone talking about how once the disease is gone the medicine has no use. That's true, but is buddha the medicine? Buddha is your absolute help. He is your intrinsic eternal nature -- you cannot discard it. It is you, in your very innermost authentic being.

Meditation is a method, and the method is for a particular purpose. When the purpose is fulfilled, the method is not of any use. Do you think I meditate? The disease is gone and at the same moment, simultaneously, meditation has also disappeared.

I have told you before that the words 'meditation' and 'medicine' come from the same root.

Medicine is to cure the body, and meditation is to cure the consciousness, but their function is to cure. Once the cure has happened they become of no use, but to use the word 'buddha' is absolutely absurd. That's how a man who tries intellectually to understand is bound to commit small mistakes, and he will not be able to figure out where he is committing the mistake. He is very careful, but carefulness alone is not going to help. Consciousness is needed.

IF YOU WANT TO ATTAIN ONENESS, JUST GIVE UP BOTH BUDDHAS AND

SENTIENT BEINGS AT ONCE.

The same mistake continues. It is true: if you want to attain oneness you have to drop all kinds of duality. The duality between the ignorant and knowledgeable, the duality between birth and death, all kinds of dualities have to be dropped.

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But buddhahood is another name of oneness. There is nothing opposite to buddha. It is not part of the world of dualities, it is the very transcendence beyond the dualities. Every duality will disappear ... then you will know oneness, then you will know your enlightenment, then you will be a buddha.

Buddha has not to be dropped the way other dualities have to be dropped, because it is not part of any duality. Have you ever met anybody who is a non-buddha? Everybody is a buddha; a few are asleep, a few are awake, but there is not a single sentient being who can be called a non-buddha. This word 'buddha' has no opposite to it, hence it is exactly of the same meaning as oneness.

"I FORMED THE REPOSITORY OF THUSNESS WITH SUBTLE ILLUMINATION

THAT IS NEITHER DESTROYED NOR BORN; AND THE REPOSITORY OF

THUSNESS IS ONLY THE ILLUMINATION OF SUBLIME ENLIGHTENMENT

SHINING THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE COSMOS."

He is again quoting someone: this statement is within quotes. But this is the problem with all the intellectuals in the world: they can quote perfectly, but the whole quotation goes against the previous sutras. As it is, if they are right then this quotation cannot be right. This quotation can be right only with my changes: instead of 'buddha', 'meditation', and instead of

'dropping buddhas and sentient beings to attain oneness', 'dropping all dualities to attain buddhahood' -- because buddhahood is another name of oneness. If these corrections are made then this quotation is right.

I will read it again so you can understand why I am saying that it can be right only with corrections in the previous sutras.

"I FORMED THE REPOSITORY OF THUSNESS WITH SUBTLE ILLUMINATION

THAT IS NEITHER DESTROYED NOR BORN; AND THE REPOSITORY OF

THUSNESS IS ONLY THE ILLUMINATION OF SUBLIME ENLIGHTENMENT

SHINING THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE COSMOS."

Now, what is this illumination of sublime enlightenment, except buddhahood? -- just a different name. And if even this has to be dropped, then what remains?

Dualities have to be dropped, not oneness. Birth and death have to be dropped, not life.

Life is eternal, it is beyond birth and beyond death. Now he is accepting that the subtle illumination ... and what is illumination other than the state of buddhahood? These are different names only -- illumination, enlightenment, awareness, buddhahood -- but he does not seem to understand that they are names of the same experience.

This subtle illumination is neither destroyed nor born ... There is only one thing that is neither destroyed nor born, and it is the very principle of life. Birth happens in it, death happens in it -- thousands of times -- but life continues. Birth and death are small incidents in the eternal flow of life-energies. Birth is not the beginning and death is not the end ... just small incidents in the eternity of life and existence.

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... nevertheless both are ultimately empty falsehoods. Now this is his own statement, without quotation-marks, and immediately he falls into his intellectual state ...

NEVERTHELESS BOTH ARE ULTIMATELY EMPTY FALSEHOODS. IF ONE

ABANDONS THE POWER OF ACTIONS TO GRASP THE POWER OF THE PATH, THEN I WOULD SAY THAT THIS PERSON DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE SKILL IN

MEANS OF ALL THE BUDDHAS IN EXPOUNDING THE TRUTH AS IT IS.

To say that both are ultimately empty falsehoods means the ignorant people are false, and the awakened people are also false; ignorance is false and illumination is also false -- then what remains that you can call true? And if there is nothing true, there is no criterion to call anything false. False is possible only if there is something which is not false; unless the not-false is there, the false cannot exist.

Ta Hui is saying both are false: the not-false and the false, the true and the untrue -- both are false. And he thinks that he is making a great statement. He is simply showing his utter ignorance! All intellectuals are ignorant people with great borrowed knowledge, with beautiful words, with great philosophical jargon -- but no understanding or experience of truth.

HAVE YOU NOT READ HOW OLD SHAKYAMUNI SAID, "IF YOU CLING TO THE

TRUTH ASPECT, YOU ARE ATTACHED TO SELF, PERSONALITY, LIVING BEINGS, AND LIFE; IF YOU CLING TO THE NON-TRUTH ASPECT, YOU ARE ATTACHED TO

SELF, PERSONALITY, LIVING BEINGS, AND LIFE." THUS IT IS SAID, "THE

BUDDHA ONLY USES PROVISIONAL TERMS IN GUIDING SENTIENT BEINGS."

It is a little subtle but not impossible to understand. He is quoting Gautam Buddha, but in the quotation there is something missing. If you cling to the truth aspect ... If you cling to any aspect, true or false, you cling to the part -- and the part is never the whole. The part becomes the barrier to attaining the whole. So Buddha is right when he says, "Don't cling to the truth aspect and don't get attached to it." He also says, "Don't cling to the non-truth aspect."

But remember the word 'aspect' which Ta Hui has forgotten. He is not saying that both truth and untruth have to be dropped. If truth and untruth both have to be dropped, then what remains? What are you going to call it?

Buddha is saying a totally different thing, and Ta Hui misunderstands -- naturally, because an intellectual cannot do more than that. Buddha is saying, "Don't cling to any aspect, whether it is the aspect of truth or the aspect of non-truth. Just don't cling."

His insistence is for not clinging, for nonattachment -- because every attachment, every clinging will keep you in a bondage, will keep you in ignorance. Even if you feel, "This is true," don't cling. The question is not of truth or untruth, the question is of clinging. His emphasis is on nonclinging ... don't cling even to the truth!

That does not mean that truth has to be abandoned. It simply means clinging has to be abandoned. Clinging makes everything a bondage, an imprisonment. Nonclinging brings freedom to you, and truth can be alive only in absolute freedom.

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You cannot keep truth in bondage, in any kind of imprisonment. You cannot grasp truth, because truth is almost like the open sky. You can have it in your open hand -- the whole sky is yours, all the stars are yours -- but don't try to make a fist. The moment you make a fist, the whole sky has slipped out of your hand.

His insistence: is not to be attached. Certainly, not to be attached to untruth is simple to understand; that's why he is making it clear ... even if you are attached to truth, the very attachment is a poison which will kill even the truth itself.

So remain aloof, unattached, just a witness.

Then the whole truth is available to you, and the whole untruth simply disappears. It has never been there. It was your own projection -- you had created it.

But Ta Hui thinks that Buddha is saying: "Truth and non-truth both have to be dropped."

That certainly Buddha has never said, and he is not saying it even in this statement.

To support his idea Ta Hui again says, thus it is said, "The Buddha only uses provisional terms in guiding sentient beings."

It is true that Buddha uses provisional terms, arbitrary terms -- but not for any special reason. There is no possibility to bring the truth into knowledge, into words, into language --

so he uses only provisional terms, approximate, as close as possible to the truth. But it is provisional.

Once you have reached the realm of truth, you will have to abandon all those terms and words and theories and doctrines and scriptures. They have helped you. When the finger points to the moon, certainly the finger is helping, but the finger is not the moon. And when you have seen the moon, the finger is of no use. There is no need to cling to the finger; there is no need to worship the finger because it has shown you the moon. That will be simply foolishness.

The finger pointing to the moon is just like the arrows on the milestones which show you how far you are from the place you are going to, and how far you have come from the place you have left. But you never worship those arrows; you never even say to them, "Thank you, sir."

They are provisional means, and they are of great utility. All the words used by enlightened people are of great utility -- but they don't have the essential truth in them. They are only arrows pointing towards it. But without them perhaps you may never look at the moon.

If the buddhas were not insistent, continuously emphasizing, "You are asleep, wake up!" --

if they were not making all kinds of devices to wake you up, perhaps you might never wake up. But once you are awake, you don't worship the alarm clock. The alarm clock has been of great utility, it has awakened you, but a thing of utility is not a thing to which you have to be grateful.

AS SOON AS THE SOURCE OF THE SICKNESS WAS POINTED OUT TO HIM BY

AN OLD ADEPT, CHANG CH'O, THE FAMOUS SCHOLAR IN THE OLD DAYS

UNDERSTOOD ENOUGH TO SAY ..."

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Now to use for Chang Ch'o the word 'scholar' is not right, he is not a scholar -- Ta Hui is a scholar. Chang Ch'o is a buddha, he has come to know the reality. And we can see in his statement the fire, the illumination, the celebration -- and a subtle presence of truth. Even though you may not have experienced it, if you can just for a moment, be silent and listen to what Chang Ch'o says, you can see the difference between the words of a scholar and the words of a man of enlightenment.

These are the words of Chang Ch'o: "trying to eliminate passion aggravates the disease."

I have been condemned for years because I have been saying, "Don't repress anything that is natural to you." That has become a worldwide antagonism against me in the minds of the priests of all the religions, without exception. They think that I am supporting people's biological instincts. What I am doing is simply what Chang Ch'o is saying ... trying to eliminate passion aggravates the disease.

All the people who have been teaching celibacy, anti-life attitudes, controlling your sex, controlling your hunger, controlling everything that nature requires you to fulfill -- it has not helped anybody. It has only created perverted people, sick people -- psychologically, spiritually, physically, all kinds of perversions have been created.

This man Chang Ch'o must have been a man of absolute enlightenment, because thousands of years ago he was saying exactly what the world even today is not willing to understand.

TRYING TO ELIMINATE PASSION AGGRAVATES THE DISEASE; RUSHING

TOWARDS TRUE SUCHNESS IS ALSO WRONG ...,

... because you cannot desire suchness. Rushing is a desire -- you want to reach quickly to the state of suchness where you can relax, rest, and accept whatsoever life brings to you.

It is not a question of rushing towards some place: it is simply a question of relaxing right now. It is not a desire and it is not a goal; it is not a destination that you have to reach. It is a simple understanding ... and you are already -- wherever you are -- able to live the beautiful experience of suchness.

Chang Ch'o is right when he says; Rushing towards true suchness is also wrong ... because you cannot make a goal of it, you cannot make a destination of it. It cannot be an object of your desire and your will. It is simply a pure understanding, a silent understanding that whatsoever life brings to you -- rejoice in it. No complaint, no grudge, no asking for more ...

just in a silent moment relish the feeling.

Then this very moment, suchness is yours.

There is nowhere else to go.

Suchness is your nature.

There is no obstruction in worldly circumstances according to one's lot. I started telling the monks -- Hindu monks, Jaina monks, Christian monks -- that renouncing the world is simply cowardliness. It does not show your understanding, it simply shows your fear. It is escapist.

There is no obstruction in worldly circumstances ...

If you are living in suchness and let-go there is nothing in the world which can disturb you.

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will absorb it without any complaint. You will simply say, "Such is my lot, such is my destiny." You will not ask that it should have been otherwise. So why escape from the world?

Escaping means that you wanted a different kind of place, where you can be at ease. But you can never be at ease anywhere.

I have heard about a man who had a very angry nature, and was very quick in reacting. He would not think for a single moment what he was doing, and he would repent it for his whole life. He became a nuisance in the whole town; he asked a monk who was visiting the town,

"What should I do? Everybody seems to be boycotting me. I understand that I am temperamental, and I get angry very quickly. It comes with such force that I don't have any time to think about it, and I act according to my anger. Then I repent -- I should not have said that, I should not have done that. But now I have made the whole town my enemy."

The monk said, "It is not your fault. This world never allows anybody to live peacefully, silently, prayerfully. One has to renounce it; it is a world full of sins and full of sinners. What do you think ... all the great religions' founders have renounced the world -- were they fools?

Renounce this world! Come along with me!"

The logic was clear. It is very easy to throw the responsibility on other people's shoulders: the world is wrong, you are perfectly right, but what can you do if the whole world is wrong and it drives you into wrong paths? And from everywhere the incentive is to do wrong.

The monk convinced him, "Just come with me. I am going to the Himalayas. Live silently in a cave -- nobody will provoke you and the anger will disappear. How can you be angry when there is nobody else except you?" It was so convincing and so ego-fulfilling to think, "I was not wrong, the whole world is wrong." That's why all great religious teachers renounced it, went into seclusion, into isolation. If they could not cope with this world ..."I am a small man, how can I cope with it?"

So he renounced the world and went into the forest. Sitting under a tree he was feeling very good, thinking that this is true: "Those who have renounced the world have known eternal peace." And just at that moment a crow pissed over him. You can renounce the world, but there are monk crows who have also renounced the world and they live in the mountains ...

Immediately he jumped up! He became very angry, forgot all about renunciation, and started throwing rocks at the crow. The master who had brought him came out of his cave, asking "What is the matter?"

And he became angry at the master: "Yes, you are the matter! You have told me to renounce the world and there will be no anger. And I am sitting here silently, doing nothing, no provocation from my side -- and a crow comes and pisses over me!"

The master who had brought him began to think that he had brought a very dangerous fellow. He may get angry with him at any moment, for any reason. He said, "It is better ...

forgive me for suggesting to you the idea of renouncing. You go back to the world."

The man said, "I cannot go back to the world. I have suffered there enough, and I have suffered here. I am going to commit suicide!"

The master said, "It is up to you, but I am not suggesting it because I don't want to take the responsibility." And the man left. Just near by there was a village and he collected wood for his funeral pyre on the bank of the river.

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The village people gathered out of curiosity: "What is going on, what are you doing?"

He said, "I am going to commit suicide. I am going to burn these logs of wood and jump into the fire, alive. Enough is enough -- I have seen the world, I have seen renunciation. Now the only thing left is to see whether in death people can get peace or not!"

The villagers said, "Your idea perhaps is right, but do one thing: don't make your funeral pyre here, because when you are burning ... We poor people live here. It will stink and the smoke will come to our huts. Can't you go somewhere else?"

Now he was really angry. He said, "This is a strange world. They don't let you live, they don't let you die! I cannot even choose the place for my death!"

If you start thinking in such terms -- that others are responsible, that the world is the problem, other people are the problem -- then you are looking from a very wrong perspective.

Chang Ch'o's perspective is absolutely right when he says, THERE IS NO OBSTRUCTION IN WORLDLY CIRCUMSTANCES ACCORDING TO

ONE'S LOT: "NIRVANA" AND "BIRTH AND DEATH" ARE ALL EQUALLY

ILLUSIONS.

What he is saying is that people think that if they can achieve nirvana then there will be no birth, no death, no misery, no problem. Nirvana, according to their mind, is just a golden paradise. But the nirvana conceived by the ignorant people cannot be the true nirvana; hence Chang Ch'o has put 'nirvana' into inverted commas.

He does not mean the real state of nirvana; he means the conception of nirvana according to ignorant people. Because of their ignorance they will think about nirvana also, but it cannot be the true nirvana. Their nirvana, their birth and death, are all equally illusions. When they have gone beyond all illusions they will find the space which Buddha calls nirvana. That will not be the same as they were thinking it would be.

It used to happen almost every day in Gautam Buddha's life, because he was the first man to use a negative term for the ultimate state ... In India, Jainas use for the ultimate state the word kaivalya. It means to be absolutely alone in your pure consciousness; it is a concept of freedom. The Hindus have the word moksha, which actually means absolute freedom. These are positive terms.

Buddha perhaps is the only man in the whole of history who uses for the ultimate state a word which is negative. Nirvana means nothingness, emptiness. As a word it literally means

'blowing out the candle.'

When you blow out the candle, what remains? Just darkness ... Darkness -- people want to attain to eternal light, not to eternal darkness. People want to be part of a paradise with all the comforts and luxuries that they are missing here; they don't want to enter into a state of emptiness. People want to become gods; they don't want to become just pure nothingness.

So every day people were telling Gautam Buddha, "If you go on using this word 'nirvana', nobody is going to follow you -- because who wants emptiness, who wants nothingness, who wants eternal darkness?" Buddha said, "What you want is out of your ignorance. It is out of your unawareness that the desire is coming. So your paradise, your heaven, your moksha are nothing but projections of your ignorance. What I am saying is simply to negate your projections.

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"By emptiness, I am saying all that you can conceive will not be there -- and what will be there you cannot conceive, neither can I speak about it. I am saying whatever you think are comforts, luxuries, joys, happiness will not be there, and what will be there you don't have any way even to dream about. Hence I am using the word 'nothingness'. It is just to negate you!

"I am not talking about a negative state. I am talking about a very positive state, but that positive state is beyond expression, beyond words. So the only way is to negate you. If you can understand that your mind, your self, your personality will all be gone ... if you can accept this tremendous idea of entering into an absolutely unknowable world, only then can you taste something of meditation. And finally, you can taste what I call nirvana, enlightenment, illumination."

He was immensely courageous to use the word 'nirvana'. People want their desires to be fulfilled -- they want consolations, they want opium, they want beautiful opportunities -- then they are ready to do fasting, they are ready to do austerities, they are ready to do any kind of stupid thing you ask in the hope that it is only a question of a few days, and after that ...

eternal carnival, circus, movies, love-affairs. Deep down in their unconscious, these are the projections.

Buddha is cutting their projections in the single blow of a sword. He says, "Nothing of all this nonsense! You will be attaining to eternal peace and silence and serenity -- which can be very closely expressed as emptiness, as nothingness, as blowing out the candle, as nirvana."

And I can understand that he was right.

People should not be supported in their illusions. They have lived millions of lives in their illusions, and religions go on supporting and nourishing their illusions: "You will be getting this, you will be getting that. Just the same desires that you are not able to fulfill here, you will be able to fulfill there in the ultimate state." This is a very dangerous game that priests are playing with the whole of humanity. The greatest deception, the greatest cheating, the ugliest profession, is that of the priests. Buddha is very much against the priests. He is very much against all those people who are trying to persuade you.

I am reminded ... one day I was going to the university and a beautiful woman waved to stop my car, so I stopped the car. She came close to me and she gave me a beautiful leaflet.

On the front of the leaflet there was a picture of a very beautiful house by the side of a beach and the ocean, and on the other side a thick pine-forest. And the caption on this picture said,

"Do you want to have such a house?"

I said, "Strange, is there such a house available in this city?" So I looked inside; I thought perhaps it is just for sale or something, and I wanted to look. I would have loved to have that house -- the house was really great, and the situation was fabulous.

I looked at the back and it said, "If you follow Jesus Christ then in paradise this house will be allotted to you." This in short is the whole history of religions. They are telling you that you will get this, you will get that.

Buddha is the only man who says, "You won't get a thing. All that you have will be taken away." He does not even allow you, as a self. You will be just a consciousness without any idea of "I."

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has used all the negatives -- and yet the man must have been of tremendous charisma, because he persuaded people to lose everything, to drop everything and enter into eternal nothingness.

His persuasion is in his silence, in his blissfulness, in his grace. People have felt, "If this man has entered into nothingness, and out of nothingness has come so much flowering and so much fragrance, then there is no need to be worried ... this nothingness seems to be better than all our conceptions and dreams." Your nirvana is not the nirvana of Gautam Buddha.

Chang Ch'o is certainly a man of enlightenment. His statement is so clear. Three things he is saying: One, don't try to eliminate passion, because that will aggravate the disease -- and this is two thousand years before Sigmund Freud.

Rushing towards true suchness is also wrong. This is against all religions, who want you to be greedy for a life after death, for a heaven where you will be rewarded, where your virtues will be rewarded -- and there seems to be no criterion as to how the virtues will be rewarded.

I have heard Hindu saints saying that if you donate one rupee to a saint here ... of course, to a saint -- and there is no saint other than himself in the vicinity -- you will get one crore rupees in heaven as a reward. It seems to be a kind of lottery, just for one rupee. And it is worth risking just one rupee! It is better to have a ready-made account there; when you reach there will be millions of rupees in your account. Then enjoy all the luxuries that you could not manage on the earth!

But it is written in Hindu scriptures that one million times more ... whatever virtue you gain, it becomes one million times more in heaven. This is simply exploiting people's desires, people's minds. Gautam Buddha perhaps is the only great teacher who has not exploited anybody.

Ta Hui goes on quoting from great enlightened people, but he does not seem to understand that scholarship and enlightenment are not one. There are so many scholars -- you can get them for one rupee a dozen. They are all around, all the universities are full, all the churches are full, all the synagogues are full -- great rabbis, great pundits, great bishops and cardinals, but they are all scholars. They have studied much, they have gained much knowledge -- but they have not gained much being.

Wisdom belongs to those whose being expands to its ultimate limits.

But it is good to see how an intellectual person, a genius, can go on committing mistakes

-- what to say about ordinary people? If they commit mistakes they have to be forgiven; even geniuses go on committing mistakes!

Perhaps the basic problem with intellectuals is that they cannot conceive of anything greater and better than intelligence. Meditation is certainly that which goes far above anything that intelligence can even conceive.

In the whole world there are so many learned people, but these learned people are not interested in meditation. They think learning is enough: "Learn more! There is so much to learn." -- and every year knowledge goes on growing so fast that to keep pace with it has become almost impossible. Who has time for meditation?

I have been with so many learned people in this country and I have asked them, "After all your learning, hasn't the idea of meditation ever occurred to you?"

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They said, "Why should it happen to us? There is nothing better than intelligence ..." It hurts them, their ego is wounded, to hear that there is something greater than intelligence --

meditation.

An incident happened ... I was a student, but I used to go to conferences and other places to speak on different subjects. There was a meeting on the birthday of Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. The president of the meeting was the chief justice of Madhya Pradesh high court, and I was the speaker. I was just a student but this man, whose name was Ganeshwar, was a rare man. I have never come across another man of his quality.

He was the chief justice and I was only a postgraduate student. After I spoke he simply declared to the assembly of almost ten thousand sikhs, "Now there is nothing more to be said.

At least I cannot say anything better than has been said by this young man, so I will not deliver the presidential address, because that may spoil what he has said to you. I would rather that you go home silently pondering over what he has said, and meditating upon it."

The Sikhs were surprised, everybody was surprised, and as I was stepping down from the podium the chief justice, Ganeshwar, touched my feet. I said, "What are you doing? You are of the age of my father. You are a learned man, you are a brahmin."

He said, "Nothing matters -- neither my being a brahmin, nor my age, nor my prestige, nor my being the chief justice. What matters is that whatever you have said has come from the deepest being. It was unexpected ... I have presided over many meetings and I have listened to many learned people, but all that they say is within quotation marks. For the first time I have heard a man who speaks directly, without any quotation marks -- who speaks on his own authority. So don't prevent me. I am showing my gratitude by touching your feet."

The judges had come because the chief justice was presiding over the meeting, and the advocates of the high court had come because the chief justice was there -- they were all shocked! But Ganeshwar became a regular visitor to my house. It became almost a regular routine that his car would be standing in front of my house.

People whose cases were being heard in the high court started coming to me. I said, "I cannot help you."

They said, "Just a word from you, and he will not do anything against it."

I said, "I cannot do any such thing. He comes here with such respect towards me that I cannot bring up such trivia."

It became a problem. I had to keep a servant in front of my house to send these people away, otherwise everybody was coming to the house saying, "I am in much trouble, and just a little support from you will get me out of it."

After he retired from the chief justice-ship he became the vice-chancellor of Sagar University. By that time I had become a professor in Jabalpur University, and I had gone to Sagar to speak in a public conference of all religions. He heard that I had come, so he invited me to the university where he was now the vice-chancellor.

Once I had been a student in that university, and because the vice-chancellor had called the meeting, all the professors and all the students, everybody was present. I was worried about only one thing -- that he may do the same act again. The professors who had taught me were there, and thousands of students were there who had also been students, junior to me -- and he did his act.

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As I went on the podium he stood, touched my feet, and said to the audience, "To be learned is one thing, and to know on your own experience -- face to face -- is a totally different thing. In my long life I have been in high positions, and I have come across so many learned people, and I can say with absolute confidence that learning brings no transformation to their being. The transformation of one's being comes through some other door, not through the doors of mind."

It was a great shock! Many of them were my teachers, many of them were students who knew me when I was a student in that university, and their vice-chancellor touching my feet ...

My old professors gathered when I came down after speaking, saying, "This is a strange phenomenon. We had never expected ..."

I said, "I was studying under you, but you never looked deeply into me, you never looked into my eyes. You never thought about the questions I was asking. You simply thought of one thing -- that I was just creating trouble for you because you had no answer, and you were not courageous enough to say, 'I don't know.'"

Intellectuals are very weak about one point. They cannot say, "I don't know."

Only an enlightened being can say, "I don't know." His innocence and his enlightenment are synonymous.

Okay Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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9

Illusion

19 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

THE GREAT AFFAIR

THIS AFFAIR IS LIKE THE BRIGHT SUN IN THE BLUE SKY, SHINING CLEARLY, CHANGELESS AND MOTIONLESS, WITHOUT DIMINISHING OR INCREASING. IT

SHINES EVERYWHERE IN THE DAILY ACTIVITIES OF EVERYONE, APPEARING IN

EVERYTHING. THOUGH YOU TRY TO GRASP IT, YOU CANNOT GET IT; THOUGH

YOU TRY TO ABANDON IT, IT ALWAYS REMAINS. IT IS VAST AND

UNOBSTRUCTED, UTTERLY EMPTY. LIKE A GOURD FLOATING ON WATER, IT

CANNOT BE REINED IN OR HELD DOWN. SINCE ANCIENT TIMES, WHEN GOOD

PEOPLE OF THE PATH HAVE ATTAINED THIS, THEY'VE APPEARED AND

DISAPPEARED IN THE SEA OF BIRTH AND DEATH, ABLE TO USE IT FULLY.

THERE IS NO DEFICIT OR SURPLUS: LIKE CUTTING UP SANDALWOOD, EACH

PIECE IS IT.

SINCE THERE IS NO PLACE TO LOCATE IT, BUDDHA IS ILLUSION AND

DHARMA IS ILLUSION: THE THREE WORLDS, TWENTY-FIVE STATES OF BEING, THE SENSE ORGANS, SENSE OBJECTS, AND CONSCIOUSNESS ARE UTTERLY

EMPTY. WHEN YOU GET TO THIS REALM, THERE'S NO PLACE TO PUT EVEN THE

WORD 'BUDDHA'; IF EVEN THE WORD 'BUDDHA' HAS NO APPLICABILITY, WHERE IS THERE TRUE THUSNESS, BUDDHA-NATURE, ENLIGHTENMENT OR

NIRVANA? THUS THE GREAT BEING FU SAID, "FEARING THAT PEOPLE WILL

GIVE RISE TO A VIEW OF ANNIHILATION, WE PROVISIONALLY ESTABLISH

EMPTY NAMES."

In all the sutras up to now, Ta Hui has not been able to establish himself as an enlightened being. He is trying hard, he is using the most logical and intellectual methods, but they are empty; they don't carry any weight. For example, when he says, "All the senses, self-nature, dharma, all are illusory," one has to ask him, "To whom are you talking?" And, "Who is talking?" He has used the word 'illusory' without understanding its implications.

Anybody who is not aware of both the intellectual potentialities and the nature of 'no-mind'

will not be able to figure out whether this man is authentic or pseudo.

Before I go into his sutras, I am reminded of a beautiful incident about the Adi Shankaracharya, the first shankaracharya, who established four temples -- the four seats of shankaracharyas for all the four directions. Perhaps in the whole world, he is the most famous of those philosophers who are trying to establish that everything is illusory. Without doubt he was a great logician, because he went on conquering other philosophers; he moved all over the country and defeated all other schools of philosophy. He established his philosophy as the only right vision, the only right perspective: that all is maya, illusion.

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Shankaracharya was in Varanasi. One day, early in the morning -- it was still dark because traditionally the Hindu monks take a bath before sunrise -- he took a bath. And as he was coming up the steps, a man touched him on purpose, not accidentally, and told him, "Please forgive me. I am a sudra, I am untouchable. I am sorry, but you will have to take another bath to clean yourself."

Shankaracharya was very angry. He said, "It was not accidental, the way you did that; you did it on purpose. You should be punished in hell."

The man said, "When all is illusory, it seems only hell remains real." That took Shankaracharya aback.

The man said, "Before you go for your bath, you have to answer my few questions. If you don't answer me, each time you come up after your bath, I will touch you."

It was lonely and nobody else was there, so Shankaracharya said, "You seem to be a very strange person. What are your questions?"

He said, "My first question is: Is my body illusory? Is your body illusory? And if two illusions touch each other, what is the problem? Why are you going to take another bath? You are not practicing what you are preaching. How, in an illusory world, can there be a distinction between the untouchable and the brahmin? -- the pure and the impure? -- when both are illusory, when both are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of? What is the fuss?"

Shankaracharya, who had been conquering great philosophers, could not answer this simple man because any answer was going to be against his philosophy. If he says they are illusory, then there is no point in being angry about it. If he says they are real, then at least he accepts the reality of bodies ... but then there is a problem. If human bodies are real, then animal bodies, the bodies of the trees, the bodies of the planets, the stars ... then everything is real.

And the man said, "I know you cannot answer this -- it will finish your whole philosophy.

I'll ask you another question: I am a sudra, untouchable, impure, but where is my impurity --

in my body or in my soul? I have heard you declaring that the soul is absolutely and forever pure, and there is no way to make it impure; so how can there be a distinction between souls?

Both are pure, absolutely pure, and there are no degrees of impurity -- that somebody is more pure and somebody is less pure. So perhaps it is my soul that has made you impure and you have to take another bath?"

That was even more difficult. But he had never been in such trouble -- actual, practical, in a way scientific. Rather than arguing about words, the sudra had created a situation in which the great Adi Shankaracharya accepted his defeat. And the sudra said, "Then don't go take another bath. Anyway there is no river, no me, no you; all is a dream. Just go in the temple --

that too is a dream -- and pray to God. He too is a dream, because he is a projection of a mind which is illusory, and an illusory mind cannot project anything real.

What Ta Hui is saying here is something similar. He does not understand the implications.

Let us look into each sutra.

THIS AFFAIR -- this affair of enlightenment -- IS LIKE THE BRIGHT SUN IN THE

BLUE SKY, SHINING CLEARLY, CHANGELESS AND MOTIONLESS, WITHOUT

DIMINISHING OR INCREASING. IT SHINES EVERYWHERE IN THE DAILY

ACTIVITIES OF EVERYONE, APPEARING IN EVERYTHING. THOUGH YOU TRY TO

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GRASP IT, YOU CANNOT GET IT; THOUGH YOU TRY TO ABANDON IT, IT

ALWAYS REMAINS. IT IS VAST AND UNOBSTRUCTED, UTTERLY EMPTY.

These words he must have borrowed, because these are the words of a man who knows.

Each single sentence is impeccably true. This affair -- the affair of enlightenment or liberation or self-realization -- is like the bright sun. It has been the experience of thousands of mystics that when they reach the highest peak of their consciousness there is an explosion of light, something like an atomic explosion.

One of the great mystics, Kabir, says, "It is shining so much that it seems one thousand suns have risen suddenly around me. Wherever I look, the sun that I used to see seems completely paled ... the brightness of these one thousand suns is so much. It has purified every fiber and cell of my being, as if I have passed through fire the way gold does. All that is not gold is destroyed by the fire and only the pure gold comes out.

"Passing through this experience of one thousand suns, for the first time I know what purity means -- its fragrance, its freshness, its absolute newness. It is never stale, it is never past, it is never present, it is never future. You cannot divide it into time segments. It always is; it is the very nature of existence itself."

So Ta Hui is quoting these words without quotation marks, which is one of the cunning strategies of all the intellectuals of the world. They go on stealing from every source, and pretending that it is their own experience. But they cannot manage it -- sooner or later something immediately shows their stupidity.

THIS AFFAIR IS LIKE THE BRIGHT SUN IN THE BLUE SKY, SHINING CLEARLY, CHANGELESS AND MOTIONLESS, WITHOUT DIMINISHING OR INCREASING. IT

SHINES EVERYWHERE IN THE DAILY ACTIVITIES OF EVERYONE, APPEARING IN

EVERYTHING. THOUGH YOU TRY TO GRASP IT, YOU CANNOT GET IT; THOUGH

YOU TRY TO ABANDON IT, IT ALWAYS REMAINS. IT IS VAST AND

UNOBSTRUCTED, UTTERLY EMPTY.

These sentences are certainly stolen from someone who knows. And the reason I am saying they are stolen is because just as we enter into further sutras it becomes clear that he is not aware that they are showing his ignorance.

LIKE A GOURD FLOATING ON WATER, IT CANNOT BE REINED IN OR HELD

DOWN. SINCE ANCIENT TIMES, WHEN GOOD PEOPLE OF THE PATH HAVE

ATTAINED THIS, THEY'VE APPEARED AND DISAPPEARED IN THE SEA OF BIRTH

AND DEATH, ABLE TO USE IT FULLY. THERE IS NO DEFICIT OR SURPLUS: LIKE

CUTTING UP SANDALWOOD, EACH PIECE IS IT.

The first thing that he has wrong is that enlightened people are not, and cannot be called, good people. One can become a good person without being enlightened; in fact one can become a good person even without believing that there is consciousness, soul, or God. Do Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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you think the atheists have not produced good people? Epicurus in Greece was a great atheist but you cannot find a better man; you cannot find anything to blame in his life.

In India there has been a big school of atheists called Charvakas. They did not believe in any other world, in God, in reincarnation, in the existence of the soul. They were purely materialists, but they produced such good people that even the theist Hindu scriptures mention their originator with great respect as Acharya Brespati, the great master Brespati. They don't agree with his ideas, but they cannot disagree with his character, with his goodness.

The enlightened person is beyond good and evil. You cannot confine him to the word good. He is neither good nor evil, he is simply aware. Good passes in front of him and evil passes in front of him, and he remains unaffected. Whatever he does, he does not follow any ethical code or any morality; he simply follows his own awareness. So the good is not a goal for him, it is simply a by-product of his awareness. He is not doing virtuous things and he is not waiting for any reward. He is simply conscious; he has eyes.

Do you think that because you have eyes and you can see the trees and the sun, you need some reward for it? Or because you can see the door and can go out or come in, do you think you need some reward for it?

The man of awareness simply has eyes.

The moralist has no eyes of his own. He is practicing what has been said traditionally to be good. He does not know exactly whether it is good or not; people just say it is good. He is born amongst people who believe it is good, and because by doing it he is honored, respected

-- his ego is fulfilled -- he goes on doing it. It is a beautiful arrangement; here it is ego-fulfilling and there in the other world, after death, he will be showered with great rewards.

He is really doing a good business.

The enlightened man has no reward. He has the greatest thing in the world: a total awareness. Now nothing can be added to his richness. He is neither good nor bad; this is where Ta Hui shows his ignorance about the enlightened people.

Secondly he says, they've appeared and disappeared in the sea of birth and death. That is absolutely wrong. Once a man is enlightened, he never comes back into a womb; he goes beyond birth and death. Good men are bound to be born, are bound to die, but not the enlightened one. The very foundation of enlightenment is to get free from the wheel of birth and death, and to enter into universal life -- formless, without a body. A body is a confinement, it is an imprisonment. Consciousness need not have a body; it can be just pure, formless space.

Once a man is enlightened, he never comes back into another body. And because Ta Hui is saying that "he appears and disappears in the sea of birth and death," he is showing his ignorance about the whole affair of enlightenment.

The last sentence is certainly beautiful and significant, but it is again stolen; it is stolen from Gautam Buddha himself. Buddha was always asked, "Does the experience of awakening, in different people, have the same taste, the same flower, or is it different?" And he has used two statements. One is: "The sea is vast, but you can taste it from anywhere and it is always salty; it has the same taste." And second: "Like cutting up sandalwood, each piece is it." You can cut the sandalwood into many pieces, but each piece will have the same fragrance; it will not be different in different pieces.

This is a famous statement of Gautam Buddha. Ta Hui has simply used it.

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THERE IS NO DEFICIT OR SURPLUS: LIKE CUTTING UP SANDALWOOD, EACH

PIECE IS IT.

SINCE THERE IS NO PLACE TO LOCATE IT, BUDDHA IS ILLUSION AND

DHARMA IS ILLUSION.

The reason that he is giving for why buddha is illusion and why dharma, the nature of enlightenment, is illusion is that you cannot find a place to locate them. Can you find a place to locate space? Can you find a place to locate time? Is time illusory? Is space illusory?

Just because you cannot locate them ... they are formless, hence location is not possible. If you make it a criterion that anything that cannot be located and pointed at is not real, then only things which have boundaries will be real and things that don't have any boundaries will not be real. Then your body will be real, because it can be located, and your consciousness will be unreal, because it cannot be located.

Ta Hui does not understand the implication of what he is saying. Just in the beginning he was talking about the affair of enlightenment, and there he did not mention at all that he was talking about an illusory affair. It was bright sun in the blue sky, shining clearly, changeless and motionless, without diminishing or increasing. it shines everywhere. A thing that shines everywhere, of course, cannot be located. You can locate a thing which exists somewhere, but a thing that exists everywhere cannot be located.

... appearing in everything. If it were appearing in some things, to locate it would be possible, but if it is appearing in everything ... If rocks are also buddhas, fast asleep, and they don't have any qualitative difference from enlightened beings ... They are aware and the rocks are fast asleep, but being asleep or awake doesn't make any difference to their basic reality.

In all those statements ... he is saying, though you try to grasp it, you cannot get it -- you cannot grasp it because it is so vast, and so formless. Though you try to abandon it, it always remains. You cannot abandon it because it is everywhere; wherever you go you will find it. It is within you, it is without you. Those statements were absolutely right, but they are not his experiences.

The later sutras show that he cannot befool, he cannot deceive: Since there is no place to locate it, buddha is illusory. Suddenly, that which was shining in the blue sky like the bright sun has become illusory. And even the nature of awareness, which is dharma, has become illusory.

The three worlds -- hell, earth and heaven -- twenty-five states of being, the sense organs, sense objects, and consciousness are utterly empty. He is not leaving anything which is real.

Then to whom is he talking? Their ears are illusory, their eyes are illusory, and so it is the case with Ta Hui himself.

All the senses are illusory. The sense of seeing the people to whom he is talking, the very fact of talking ... if everything is illusory, then he is simply mad. What is the point of writing these sutras? For whom is he writing these sutras? And if everything is illusory, do you think that the paper on which these sutras are written ... only the ink and the paper are real? --

although the man who was writing was illusory.

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When you get to this realm, there is no place to put even the word 'buddha.' But that does not make buddha illusory, it simply makes the word inapplicable. In that experience no word is applicable. All words are just tentatively used. When one has become awakened he cannot say anything about his experience of awakening. It is true: there is not even space to place the word 'buddha.'

IF EVEN THE WORD 'BUDDHA' HAS NO APPLICABILITY, WHERE IS THERE

TRUE THUSNESS, BUDDHA-NATURE, ENLIGHTENMENT, OR NIRVANA?

And he was talking about 'this affair' in the beginning of the sutras, where it extended throughout space. You could not grasp it because it was too vast, and you could not abandon it because where will you abandon it? Wherever you go, you will find it. You are in it, you ARE

it.

Those statements were perfectly true. But now he is saying, IF EVEN THE WORD 'BUDDHA' HAS NO APPLICABILITY, WHERE IS THERE

TRUE THUSNESS?

Now where is the great idea of true thusness, or buddha-nature, or enlightenment, or nirvana? Now everything is denied.

In these small sutras he has done a great job! What he says in the beginning, and says very clearly, he denies in the end. It is just intellectual gymnastics. It is true, the word 'buddha' is arbitrary -- not because the existence of that for which we are using the word 'buddha' is illusory, but because the experience is so vast that even the word 'buddha' cannot contain it.

It is not that the experience of thusness is illusory; in fact it is one of the greatest disciplines of awareness that has arisen in thousands of years.

If one can say and feel and experience the nature of thusness, tathata, he will not be disturbed by pain, he will not be disturbed by pleasure, he will not be disturbed by failure, he will not be disturbed by success. He will simply say, "Thus is the case. Such is the way things happen in nature. I am just a witness. Right now success is passing in front of me like a cloud.

Soon failure will follow, just as day is followed by night. This moment it is pleasure, soon it will bring pain, but I am absolutely aloof -- they don't even touch me. I am beyond their grasp."

This is one of the greatest approaches to reality that has come to man's understanding: the idea of 'thusness' or 'suchness.' And Ta Hui is saying it is illusory! and then that even enlightenment is illusory, buddha-nature is illusory, nirvana is illusory. One has to ask Ta Hui how you can call something illusory unless there is something real in existence; otherwise, how will you compare?

You can call something illusory only because something else is real. But if there is nothing real, then there is nothing illusory either. They have to exist together. He does not talk about what is real; in fact, all that is great and real, he is calling illusory. Now what is real? And if he says there is nothing which is real, then he has no right to call anything illusory.

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THUS THE GREAT BEING FU SAID, "FEARING THAT PEOPLE WILL GIVE RISE

TO A VIEW OF ANNIHILATION, WE PROVISIONALLY ESTABLISH EMPTY

NAMES."

He goes on quoting enlightened people out of context. What the great master Fu said does not mean what Ta Hui wants it to mean. He has put it in a context: he is calling enlightenment, buddhahood, thusness, nirvana, all illusory, and then he quotes master Fu, fearing that people will give rise to a view of annihilation if they are told that everything is illusory ...

That's why buddhas have not said that. They have talked about enlightenment and thusness and buddha-nature and nirvana, just so that people don't get the view of a total negativity, of an utter emptiness, annihilation.

We provisionally establish empty names. All these names are empty, but Fu's meaning is totally different. What Ta Hui wants him to mean is not his meaning. He is saying: "We are giving provisional, empty names -- but the empty names are given to realities, not to illusions.

They are provisional and empty because they cannot contain the vast reality of nirvana, enlightenment, thusness, buddha-nature. So just to give a small indication we have used provisional, empty names." But once a person comes to experience himself, he will be able to see that all names were only provisional.

To tell them in the beginning that everything is illusory ... They are already in misery, they are in deep anguish, and he tells them that there is no possibility of getting beyond it because everything that can take one beyond is illusory! But very strange is the fact that he does not call people's misery illusory: their sadness is illusory, their egos are illusory, their intellects are illusory, their minds are illusory -- he does not mention these things.

And if everything is truly illusory, then what is the fear? If illusory people feel afraid, what is wrong in it? The people don't exist, so let them fear! Non-existential people are fearing annihilation; they are already no more -- so what more annihilation can happen to them?

No, the people are real, although their conception about themselves is not real. They have to find their authentic reality, and that authentic reality is so vast that we have to give it provisional names -- provisional, because once you have reached it you will see that those names were just utilitarian. They don't define and they don't confine the experience. That's what master Fu meant when he said, we provisionally establish empty names.

But if there is nobody, if master Fu is illusory and the people he is concerned about -- the ones that may become afraid of annihilation -- don't exist, then what is the problem?

Everything is solved: there is no need of any preaching, there is no need of any scriptures, there is no need of any meditation, there is no need to go beyond your anguish, anxiety, misery. You yourself don't exist; how can you be miserable? Have you ever heard of somebody who does not exist feeling very much worried, someone who has never existed going through a migraine? The very idea is so stupid.

Ta Hui's whole approach is to pick up all the great statements from different masters, to compile them and give a fallacious impression to people that he himself is enlightened. But enlightenment is far away. He is living in a very deceptive state. He is deceiving others, but Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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that is not so important; he is deceiving himself. And this is the case not only with Ta Hui; this is the case with ninety-nine percent of so-called religious scriptures.

I am talking about all this nonsense to make you aware that whenever you come across the same kind of nonsense again somewhere else -- beware! Don't get caught in it. Enlightened people have been respected so greatly that intellectuals have had a great jealousy, and they have tried in every way to imitate the enlightened people's statements. There are thousands of treatises which have been produced by intellectual people -- and they are clever enough. They have the acumen, the logic, the reason ... they can deceive millions of people without any difficulty.

Ta Hui even deceived the emperor of China, who honored him by offering the title: 'The Great Zen Master.' In fact, the word 'Ta Hui' itself means 'The Great Zen Master.' The word

'Ta Hui' is not his real name; it has been conferred on him by the emperor of China. If he can deceive the emperor, what to say about ordinary people?

I am talking about Ta Hui just to make you aware. Don't get caught. Be very watchful.

When you are reading something or listening to something, be alert and see whether those words are coming from a space of realization ... or are they just mind games? And whenever you find any kind of mind game, throw it away.

Just the other day I was looking at a picture of a Zen master who is very famous in Japan for his actions. In the picture he is tearing up scriptures and throwing them away; scriptures are flying all around in the air while he is tearing them up. And he became famous for this act!

Looking into the picture, I was trying to find out whether Ta Hui's sutras are in them or not ...

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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10

Clinging

19 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

LECTURE AT THE REQUEST OF WEI CH'IANG

HAVEN'T YOU SEEN THE SAYING OF THE MAN OF OLD: "EVEN IF THERE

WERE SOMETHING SURPASSING NIRVANA, I WOULD SAY THAT IT TOO IS LIKE

A DREAM, AN ILLUSION." IF IN THE MIDST OF DREAMLIKE ILLUSION, YOU ARE

ABLE TO WITNESS IT AS IT REALLY IS, TO UNDERSTAND IT AS IT REALLY IS, TO

WORK ON IT AS IT REALLY IS, AND TO ACT ON IT AS IT REALLY IS, THEN YOU

CAN USE THE METHOD OF 'ACCORDING WITH REALITY' TO SUBDUE YOURSELF, AND, AROUSING AN ATTITUDE OF GREAT COMPASSION, CREATE ALL KINDS OF

SKILLFUL EXPEDIENTS WHEREBY YOU CAN ALSO SUBDUE ALL SENTIENT

BEINGS.

DEALING WITH SITUATIONS

OLD YELLOW FACE (BUDDHA) HAS SAID, "WHEN THE MIND DOES NOT

VAINLY GRASP PAST THINGS, DOES NOT LONG FOR THINGS IN THE FUTURE, AND DOES NOT DWELL ON ANYTHING IN THE PRESENT, THEN YOU REALIZE

FULLY THAT THE THREE TIMES ARE ALL EMPTY AND STILL." YOU SHOULDN'T

THINK ABOUT PAST EVENTS -- WHETHER GOOD OR BAD; IF YOU THINK, THAT

OBSTRUCTS THE PATH. YOU SHOULDN'T CONSIDER FUTURE EVENTS; TO

CONSIDER THEM IS CRAZY CONFUSION. PRESENT EVENTS ARE RIGHT IN

FRONT OF YOU: WHETHER THEY'RE PLEASANT OR UNPLEASANT, DON'T FIX

YOUR MIND ON THEM. IF YOU DO FIX YOUR MIND ON THEM, IT WILL DISTURB

YOUR HEART. JUST TAKE EVERYTHING IN ITS TIME, RESPONDING ACCORDING

TO CIRCUMSTANCES, AND YOU WILL NATURALLY ACCORD WITH THIS

PRINCIPLE.

UNPLEASANT SITUATIONS ARE EASY TO HANDLE; PLEASANT SITUATIONS

ARE HARD TO HANDLE. FOR THAT WHICH GOES AGAINST ONE'S WILL, IT BOILS

DOWN TO ONE WORD: PATIENCE. SETTLE DOWN AND REFLECT A MOMENT

AND IN A LITTLE WHILE IT'S GONE. IT'S PLEASANT SITUATIONS THAT TRULY

GIVE YOU NO WAY TO ESCAPE: LIKE PAIRING MAGNET AND IRON, UNCONSCIOUSLY THIS AND THAT COME TOGETHER IN ONE PLACE.

Ta Hui is facing something very fundamental as far as the intellect and intelligence of man is concerned. This is of great importance: to have a clear conception that intellect is not intelligence.

Intellect is of the mind: it depends on memory, it functions through borrowed knowledge.

All our educational systems in the world are rooted in intellectual development; hence they all depend on memory. The examinations in our schools, colleges, universities, are not of Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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intelligence -- they are only testing how good a memory you have. But memory is not an indication of intelligence. Memory is mechanical. A computer can have a better memory than a man of genius, but the computer has no intelligence.

The mind of man is nothing but a bio-computer, evolved over a long, long time. And intelligence is when the memory is silent and the intellect is not functioning, when the whole mind is at rest.

Intelligence is something beyond mind.

In English there is a problem because the same word is used for both -- and they are totally different. In Sanskrit, and in all Eastern languages, we have different names for each: intellect is called bodhi, the faculty of knowledge; and intelligence is called pragya, the faculty of knowing, not knowledge.

Knowledge is always dead; it is information. And all our educational systems are doing with students exactly what we are doing with computers -- feeding them with more and more information. But no computer can answer a question for which it has not been already prepared. Intellect can only answer that which it already knows; it is stale, it is of yesterday.

Intelligence is a response to a new situation, not out of your past memories but from your present awareness, this very moment. You don't function as a computer, you don't search for the answer in your memory storage; rather you simply open your consciousness to the situation and allow the spontaneous response.

In other words, intelligence is spontaneous responsibility.

The word 'responsibility' has also been misunderstood. It has to be broken in two; otherwise, by and by, it loses its original meaning. It has become almost equivalent to duty.

The reality is different. Break the word 'responsibility' in two, then it becomes 'ability to respond' or 'response-ability'. Intelligence is response ability -- and that is bound to be spontaneous. The response is going to surprise even you, because it is so new -- you are not repeating anything from the past.

There has been a perennial conflict between intelligence and intellect. The man of intellect thinks that he is intelligent because he knows so much. He has accumulated a great heritage of knowledge, he is burdened with all kinds of information. The man of intelligence is innocent; he functions moment to moment, his functioning has a freshness and a beauty. But to find intelligence one has to go beyond the mind. Meditation is the way.

The problem with Ta Hui is the problem with all intellectuals of the world. They cannot think -- they would not like to think -- that there is something higher and superior to intellect.

It is not a coincidence that he calls Gautam Buddha 'Old Yellow Face'; it is an unconscious, sarcastic remark. And it is not only in this passage; in another place he says something even worse than 'Old Yellow Face'. He may not be aware ... this is utterly disrespectful, but the intellectual is always disrespectful towards the man of intelligence. He feels deep down a certain inferiority complex and he takes revenge in many ways.

The intellectual tries to imitate the man of intelligence, the man of wisdom, the man of enlightenment -- and he is capable, he is articulate. He has more capacity as far as language and words are concerned. He may be a better speaker, a better writer, a better orator. He can manage to deceive the world very easily just by repeating whatever the enlightened people have said.

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Sometimes it has happened that the imitator can defeat the original. It happened once that a few friends arranged a birthday celebration for an English actor. They made it a nationwide competition: who can imitate the actor the best? In every big city people would be chosen, and then the final test would be in London. The winner was going to have a great prize.

Many actors participated. The actor himself thought that it would be a good joke to enter the competition from a small town. Of course he was certain that he was going to come in first

-- he is the original, everybody else is imitating him. But to everybody's surprise -- and more to his -- he came in second. When it became known that he was the real man, nobody could believe that it had happened -- how had all the examiners got misled by an imitator?

But I see deeper into the psychology of it: the imitator prepares, rehearses, does much homework. The original simply stands there in his spontaneity and reality -- he has not prepared, he has not rehearsed, he is just as he is. But somebody who is trying to come in first in the great competition may have worked for months. Naturally, he deceived the examiners.

And this has happened a thousand and one times -- that someone like Ta Hui, who is just an intellectual, has been accepted for one thousand years as a great master of Zen teaching, and he is simply repeating.

I would like you to see that everything can be imitated, except enlightenment. You may say the same words, but they will not have the same fire. Your gestures may be the same, but they will not have the same grace. You may act as if you are enlightened, but that 'as if' is a big gap, almost unbridgeable. This becomes so clear in Ta Hui's case.

He says, HAVEN'T YOU SEEN THE SAYING OF THE MAN OF OLD: "EVEN IF

THERE WERE SOMETHING SURPASSING NIRVANA, I WOULD SAY THAT IT TOO

IS LIKE A DREAM, AN ILLUSION."

It is true that the people who have achieved the ultimate realization -- you can call it nirvana, liberation, self-realization -- those who have achieved it are fully able to say that that too is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. It is the most beautiful dream, the most perfect dream -- but nothing more than that.

The reason for the enlightened man to call his enlightenment only a dream is a very fundamental one. He is trying to say: "This too is an experience, and I am separate from my every experience -- whether the experience is of misery, of suffering, of anguish, or of blissfulness or enlightenment, it makes no difference. They belong to the same category of experiences.

"I am not the experience, I am the experiencer. I am always transcendental to any experience that happens to me. I am only a witness, a sakshi. Just as I have seen black clouds, I am seeing white clouds. Just as I have seen clouds, I am seeing a cloudless sky -- but I am separate.

"My consciousness is not an experience. All experiences pass in front of my consciousness, but I am always a witness. So whether the experience is of misery, agony, or of ecstasy, it makes no difference."

But this can be said only by a man who has attained to that beatitude, that benediction --

that this too is a dream, a beautiful dream, the most beautiful dream, but one has not to get identified with it. Hence the saying that when one becomes the buddha he forgets all about buddhahood; he becomes again an ordinary human being. Then the circle is complete. He had Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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started from being an ordinary human being, but that was a state of unconsciousness, like a sleepwalker, a somnambulist. Now he has come back to the same state, with only one difference: now he is no longer asleep, he is awake.

A buddha is fully awake but, compared to anyone else, he is not special. He is not holier than you and he is not higher than you. You are asleep and he is awake -- this makes no qualitative difference. In fact, the person who is asleep is showing that he has the capacity to be awake. If you were not capable of being asleep, you would not be capable of being awake either; both capacities belong to the same realm. And unless an enlightened man again becomes an ordinary man, he has been fulfilling only his ego. Then his enlightenment is not authentic; his enlightenment is only an intellectual understanding, not an experience.

Ta Hui is quoting some ancient seer: "Even if there were something surpassing nirvana" --

something surpassing enlightenment -- "I would say that it too is like a dream, an illusion." A tremendously pregnant statement ...

IF IN THE MIDST OF DREAMLIKE ILLUSION, YOU ARE ABLE TO WITNESS IT

AS IT REALLY IS, TO UNDERSTAND IT AS IT REALLY IS, TO WORK ON IT AS IT

REALLY IS, AND TO ACT ON IT AS IT REALLY IS, THEN YOU CAN USE THE

METHOD OF 'ACCORDING WITH REALITY' TO SUBDUE YOURSELF.

Now here he goes wrong. As long as he was quoting the ancient seer he was perfectly right, because those were not his words, he was only repeating. They were the words of someone who has known the experience. Now he starts his own understanding, his own intellectual grasp -- and everything goes wrong.

He says, "If you can be a witness of this dreamlike illusion, then you can use the method of

'according with reality' to subdue yourself." A man who has come to the point of knowing that even enlightenment is an illusion cannot have the idea of self anymore -- he cannot have the idea that "I am."

The witness has no idea of any ego.

The witness is but there is no idea of "I am."

The witness is simply like a mirror; it reflects. Whatever comes in front of it, it reflects --

without any reaction, without any attachment, without any identity. A beautiful face or an ugly one, all are just reflections, without any difference. When the beautiful face goes away, the mirror does not try to prevent it, to cling to it. And when an ugly face comes before it, it does not want to get rid of it, it does not close its eyes. It has no evaluation, no judgment; it remains simply a witness of whatsoever is the case.

A man of enlightenment has no problem as far as the self is concerned -- the self was lost long before. You cannot attain to enlightenment before you have lost your self. That is a necessary step to attain to enlightenment.

Let me say it this way:

You cannot be enlightened.

When you are not, enlightenment is.

You have to give way for enlightenment to descend, for that great awakening to fill your whole sky, to fill your whole consciousness.

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If you are there, then whatsoever happens is only mental gymnastics. You can manage to create an illusion of everything except enlightenment. You can see Jesus Christ, you can create the illusion; your mind has every capacity. You may just have to make the right arrangement -- a three week fast and isolation, and the continuous repetition of the name of Jesus Christ -- and you will start seeing Jesus Christ with you in the cave. You will start talking with Jesus Christ -- and not only will you be talking, he will be answering you too!

And nobody is there except you.

All the religions of the world have insisted on fasting. The reason is that when you are fasting your capacity to judge between the real and the unreal is lost after three weeks. Your mind needs the continuous nourishment of certain proteins; just a three week fast, and those proteins are finished. The mind keeps a certain emergency reserve and that emergency reserve is finished in three weeks -- and that is if you are a non-vegetarian. If you are a vegetarian, then within a week all your proteins are gone, because vegetarian food is not sufficient food as far as the mind is concerned.

It is no coincidence that not a single vegetarian has received the Nobel prize! It is strange; it should be otherwise. Vegetarians think that since they are eating the purest food, they must have the purest minds, but even the three persons from India who have received the Nobel prize -- all were non-vegetarians.

Being a vegetarian and fasting and isolation are all strategies to bring your mind to a position where you cannot distinguish whether what you are seeing is real or unreal. It happens to small children. At an early age, when they wake up they start crying for something they had in their dream. They ask, "Where has it gone? It was just now here with me." It takes a little time for children to grow to understand that what they see in sleep is a dream and what they see when they are awake is not a dream.

The distinction between dream and reality needs a certain development of the mind. And what happens in this development? Those proteins which make your intellect ...

All religions are agreed on the principle that fasting is something spiritual, but the reason is psychological, not spiritual: fasting is a beautiful way to create illusions. Have you ever thought about it ... that a Christian never comes to see Krishna? When he is meditating in isolation, fasting in his monastery, Krishna never comes to him, Buddha never comes to him.

And to a Buddhist, Jesus never comes. It seems these people also discriminate between Christians, Buddhists, Hindus ... First they enquire whether this man is a Buddhist -- should I go or not?

It is your conditioning. Nobody comes, there is nobody to come! These people have disappeared into the universal consciousness. They don't have any body, any vehicle anymore

-- even if they want to come, they cannot come. But you can create the illusion, and these are the devices: fasting, isolation ...

When you are with people, it is one thing; when you are alone it is another thing. Have you watched the difference? -- when you are in your bathroom you are a different person than when you are in a marketplace. In the bathroom, even though you may be seventy years old, you can start making faces before the mirror. And if you become aware that just a small child is looking through the keyhole, you will change immediately into a serious, mature, experienced, seventy-year-old person! Just the eyes of that five-year-old boy in the keyhole can make such a great change.

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Albert Einstein's life was full of surprises. His greatest surprise was when he became aware that if you are observing the behavior of electrons, they behave differently from when nobody is observing them. Strange! We used to think that electrons were like dead people --

just matter -- but they seem to be very much alive, and very sensitive.

They don't belong to our society, they don't belong to our culture, they don't need to be worried about what we think about them, but something happens ... when they are alone they behave in one way and when they feel that somebody is watching, then they immediately become gentlemen! Albert Einstein was so shocked, because it meant that electrons have awareness of some kind. They are not just electric particles; they have their own consciousness.

Perhaps you are not aware that when you pass by the side of a tree it changes its behavior.

It stands more erect, more beautiful, it releases more fragrance from the flowers. Somebody is coming by; it has to show itself as beautiful as possible.

I was teaching in a university, and by the side of my department there was a long row of a certain beautiful flower -- gulmohar. That flower is not found in cold countries; it is a flower of very hot countries. And when it comes to blossom, then all the leaves disappear and only red flowers ... it seems as if the whole tree has become aflame, afire. It is a very beautiful thing to see. The whole department was surrounded by gulmohar trees.

I used to park my car under one gulmohar tree, and it had become known to almost everybody that that gulmohar tree had to be left for my car, because I had been parking my car there for years. Even when I didn't go to the university, I used to send my car! The car was parked -- everybody was satisfied that I was in the university. I had told my driver, "Just enjoy the garden" -- the university has a beautiful garden -- "and after two, three hours, you take the car back, but first let the vice-chancellor see it." The vice-chancellor's office was just beside the tree and he could see from his window that my car was standing there.

It was he who brought to my notice ... I had not been looking closely at the other trees, and one day just as I was parking my car he came out of his office, and stopped me saying, "It is a miracle! All the other gulmohar trees" -- and there were nearly fifty trees -- "have died for no reason at all; perhaps some kind of epidemic has attacked those trees. Only your tree is still alive, is still green, still blossoms. It must have something to do with you!"

I said, "It is strange ... I had never thought about it."

Seeing that other trees had died, I had enquired of the gardener, "What is the matter? Why have all the trees died?"

He told me, "I cannot figure it out. Every care has been taken, but they simply go on dying."

The trees were just standing naked, without leaves, without flowers. The vice-chancellor jokingly said to me, "You must be doing something; only your tree is alive."

Two years after I left the university I went there again, and the first thing I did was to look at my tree -- but it was gone! I was going to speak, so the vice-chancellor had come to receive me. He said, "Look! I told you that you were doing something to that tree. It remained alive for seven years when all the other trees were dying, but the day you left the university your tree started dying. Within two months it was gone. We tried everything, but we could not save it. And I used to love that tree," he said, "because it was just in front of my window."

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It is possible that the tree had become in some way intimate to me and just for friendship's sake it remained alive for all those seven years.

Now, scientists are finding out that trees are very sensitive. When a woodcutter comes to cut the tree it trembles, and its trembling can be read on a graph, just like a cardiogram. A little instrument has to be attached to the tree, and it goes on showing how the tree is feeling --

whether it is feeling happy, wholesome ... The moment the tree sees the woodcutter coming ...

the woodcutter has not started cutting the tree but if he has in his mind the idea to cut the tree, the graph goes suddenly crazy, it loses all harmony. Just a moment before, everything was harmonious on the graph, and now the graph is going up and down. The tree must be trembling; its heart must be worried.

Strange -- it was sensitive to the thought of the man. He has not done anything as far as cutting is concerned, only the idea was there. Perhaps the tree is more sensitive than we are.

And if the woodcutter passes by without the idea, the graph remains the same.

Not only does the tree that he is going to cut become worried, concerned, other trees surrounding it also start feeling worried and concerned -- because one of them is going to be harmed. It seems subtle vibrations from the mind of the man who is going to cut or not cut are being caught by the trees.

This whole existence is immensely sensitive.

Everything is made of consciousness.

Once you experience this universal consciousness, you are not there -- you are left far behind. Hence the question of 'subduing yourself' and 'arousing an attitude of great compassion' ... These statements by Ta Hui are absolute nonsense.

He is saying, and arousing an attitude of great compassion. The man of enlightenment does not have to arouse the attitude of compassion; he finds that it is already there. It comes with enlightenment as a by-product.

We have to practice it. If you want to be compassionate you have to discipline yourself, you have to practice ... you have to practice against yourself, because you are basically violent and cruel. Deep down you are carrying all the animals that you have passed in the evolution.

But a man of enlightenment does not practice compassion. He has not even to think about compassion, he simply finds it. As his ego disappears and as he realizes the ultimate universal life force as his own -- it is not that he is only a part of it ... That is something very difficult to understand.

P.D. Ouspensky, in his great work about George Gurdjieff's teachings, IN SEARCH OF

THE MIRACULOUS, has a statement. There is a mathematics that we know -- and Ouspensky was a mathematician by profession -- where the part is never equal to the whole.

That is simple mathematics. How can the part be equal to the whole? The part is always less than the whole.

But living with Gurdjieff, meditating with him, he states that there comes a moment when a higher mathematics becomes real, where the part can be equal to the whole and sometimes the part can be bigger than the whole. Looked at logically it is absurd, but looked at from a different perspective than logic, from the perspective of no-mind, I support it absolutely.

There is a higher mathematics, which belongs to no-mind, where the part is the whole.

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So when one disappears in the whole, it is not that he is only a part; he is one with the whole. He is the whole cosmos. The question of being compassionate to anybody does not arise -- because there is nobody else left outside him! The trees are within him, the animals are within him, the oceans are within him, the stars are within him; everything that is is within him. To whom is he going to be compassionate? But he feels a tremendous compassion.

It is as if you are sitting in your room and nobody is there. If you are a man of love, although there is nobody in the room you will still be radiating love, you will still be radiating compassion; although there is nobody in the room, if you are a man of truth you will still be radiating truth.

So two things are to be remembered: the man of enlightenment finds that with enlightenment many things have come as by-products -- and compassion is one of the most important. But there is nobody left towards whom he can be compassionate.

It is a strange, mysterious existence. When there are millions of people to be compassionate towards, it is so difficult for you; you have to practice it, you have to go through austerities, you have to discipline yourself, you have to torture yourself. And when the compassion comes to you on its own accord, there is nobody left to whom you can be compassionate!

These small things show whether the man is enlightened himself or is simply repeating words from other enlightened people. Ta Hui is saying, "subdue yourself" after enlightenment.

It as if somebody comes and says to you when you have brought the light in, "Now throw out the darkness." It is exactly that kind of statement. If the light is there ... The darkness was only an absence of light; you cannot find it.

I have always loved an ancient story: When God created the world, one day darkness appeared before God, very grumpy and angry, and said to God, "You have to do something!

Your sun, from the morning till the evening, harasses me unnecessarily. Wherever I go, sooner or later he reaches and I have to run away. I cannot find rest, I cannot relax, I have to be continuously on guard. The sun may come any moment.

"I have not done any harm to the sun; in fact we have not even been introduced to one another. There is no question of enmity, we are not even friends! You just tell your sun that this misbehavior -- and that, too, with a lady -- is very ungentlemanly! This primitive behavior has to be stopped."

God was absolutely convinced that this should not be so. He said, "You should have informed me before," and he immediately sent messengers to bring the sun into his court. The sun was simply amazed to hear that some lady called darkness has complained against him: "I don't know any such lady -- I have never come across her, I have never seen her! What harm can I do without seeing her?"

God was very angry, but the sun said, "Before you become so angry and start shouting at me, please give me a chance to say something also. I don't know any lady who is being harassed by me. The best course will be for you to bring that lady in front of me. At least I can see who the person is who is complaining against me." And since then God has been trying ...

But he can get only one, either the sun or the lady, but never both together in the court. So the case remains in the file.

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that files have the slowest speed. I don't think that God will ever be able to produce both parties together in the court. The case cannot be solved.

It is exactly the same thing: when enlightenment comes, the ego has already gone out.

When enlightenment comes, just as a shadow to it compassion comes in, truth comes in, beauty comes in, grace comes in, blissfulness comes in. All that you have been searching for and were never able to manage is just showered on you.

One of the disciples of Gautam Buddha -- the first of his disciples to become enlightened

-- was Manjushree. The story is beautiful ... one day he had been meditating in the early morning, and as the sun was rising in the cool breeze of the morning, he became enlightened.

And the story says that the whole existence started showering flowers on him. What flowers?

They cannot be just the flowers that we know; they are the flowers of compassion, of love, of beauty, of grace, of truth, of authenticity.

These flowers shower on you on their own accord. It is the whole existence rejoicing in your enlightenment, because your enlightenment is not only yours; it raises the consciousness of the whole existence higher. With each person becoming enlightened, the whole existence becomes more enlightened. The whole existence rejoices and celebrates.

Ta Hui has no idea of enlightenment and what happens as a by-product.

SUBDUE YOURSELF, CREATE THE ATTITUDE OF COMPASSION, CREATE

SKILLFUL EXPEDIENTS WHEREBY YOU CAN ALSO SUBDUE ALL SENTIENT

BEINGS ...

This too is very significant to understand.

Gautam Buddha has related many stories of his past lives, and they have such beauty and significance. In one of his past lives he heard about a man who had become enlightened; his name was Deepankar Buddha. The word deepankar means one who can light the candle of your being; the word 'lamplighter' is the exact meaning of deepankar. Deep means lamp, and deepankar means lamplighter. Gautam Buddha was not enlightened in that life. Thousands of people were going to see Deepankar Buddha, and just out of curiosity he also went.

When he saw Deepankar Buddha -- he had no intention ... He had come there only out of curiosity, but the moment he saw the man and the beauty of the man -- those deep eyes reminding him of the depth of oceans -- and the field of a certain energy vibrating around the man ... not knowing what he was doing, with tears rolling down from his eyes, he touched the feet of Deepankar Buddha.

He himself could not believe what he was doing, and why ...? He had not come to touch his feet, and why were these tears coming and why was he feeling so immensely happy?

Nothing visible had happened, but something invisible had touched his heart, the bells in his heart had started ringing. A subtle music had touched him.

And at that very moment, as he stood in front of Deepankar Buddha, Deepankar Buddha bowed down and touched the feet of Gautam Buddha -- who was not enlightened in that life.

He could not believe what was happening. He asked, "What are you doing? If I touch your feet it is perfectly right, I am ignorant. But you have attained to the ultimate consciousness -- you are not supposed to touch my feet."

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And Deepankar Buddha said something that Gautam Buddha remembered when he became a buddha. The first thing that he remembered then was the statement of Deepankar Buddha of many lives before: "Don't be worried. Yesterday I was also ignorant, today I am enlightened; today you are ignorant, tomorrow you will be enlightened. There is not much difference -- it is only a question of time. When you become enlightened, remember."

The moment somebody becomes enlightened, to him the whole existence becomes enlightened -- at least potentially. He can't see himself in a special position. And that's what Ta Hui is trying to say -- that you should create devices and methods whereby all other sentient beings can also become enlightened.

The really awakened man does nothing to enlighten anybody. His very presence certainly does miracles, his very being is magical, but as far as he is concerned, he himself is no more.

Who is there to do anything?

On the last day of his life, Gautam Buddha said -- when his disciples were paying tributes to him because then he was leaving his body -- "Don't feel grateful to me, because I have not done anything. In fact, since the day enlightenment happened I have not been in existence.

Things have been happening around me -- that's another thing. But I am not the doer; the doer is dead, the doer has gone long before enlightenment entered."

Things certainly happened, hundreds of people became enlightened around Gautam Buddha, but he was not doing anything to make them enlightened. He was just available, like a well. If you are thirsty you carry the water from the well and drink, but the well is not doing anything.

Ta Hui's statements show very clearly that he has not tasted the experience itself -- he has only heard about it. And then he says,

OLD YELLOW FACE (BUDDHA) HAS SAID, "WHEN THE MIND DOES NOT

VAINLY GRASP PAST THINGS, DOES NOT LONG FOR THINGS IN THE FUTURE, AND DOES NOT DWELL ON ANYTHING IN THE PRESENT, THEN YOU REALIZE

FULLY THAT THE THREE TIMES ARE ALL EMPTY AND STILL."

The statement of Buddha is right, but this sarcastic reference to Buddha as 'Old Yellow Face' is so ugly that it shows the mind of Ta Hui. Although Ta Hui is quoting Gautam Buddha, there seems to be no reverence. Intellectuals are very clever in criticizing, but are absolutely impotent as far as showing reverence is concerned. Criticism is very easy because it is very ego-fulfilling. Reverence is very difficult because it means you have to put your ego aside.

Ta Hui wants to pretend that he himself is an enlightened man, but still he cannot show reverence to Gautam Buddha. To call Gautam Buddha 'Old Yellow Face' is just unimaginable.

But his ego is feeling hurt somewhere. In a very subtle way, from the back door, it is taking revenge.

The quotation of Gautam Buddha is beautiful:

"WHEN THE MIND DOES NOT VAINLY GRASP PAST THINGS, DOES NOT LONG

FOR THINGS IN THE FUTURE, AND DOES NOT DWELL ON ANYTHING IN THE

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PRESENT, THEN YOU REALIZE FULLY THAT THE THREE TIMES ARE ALL EMPTY

AND STILL."

It is a very significant statement, particularly to us, because for the first time, on a scientific basis, time is no longer the same as it used to be. Since Albert Einstein, time has become the fourth dimension of space.

Time is still, just as space is still. It neither goes anywhere nor comes from anywhere. It is just our language that goes on saying that time is passing. In fact, we are passing, time stands still.

Time has no movement. There are not only scientific but logical difficulties. If time moves, for example just like a river ... if time moves, then there must be something on both sides of the river, unmoving. The river moves only in contrast to two unmoving banks. If there are not two banks which are still, how can the river move?

Once in a while you may have been sitting in a train, with another train standing on the next track, and suddenly you feel that your train has started moving. Then you look at the platform, and you realize that your train is not moving because the platform is still there. The other train is moving. But if the platform was not there ... Just think, if there was nothing on the other side -- only empty space -- how would you manage to know whether your train is moving or the other train is moving?

The example can be taken even further. If two trains in space, or two planes in space, are moving parallel in one direction, nobody will feel that there is any movement -- because to feel the movement you need something static in contrast. If you say time is moving, you have to show against what.

Time is still; only the mind is moving.

These tenses -- past, present and future -- are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind is the present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future.

Past is that which is no longer before you.

Future is that which is not yet before you.

And present is that which is before you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past.

Buddha is saying: If you don't cling to the past ... because clinging to the past is absolute stupidity. It is no longer there, so you are crying for spilled milk. What is gone is gone! And don't cling to the present because that is also going and soon it will be past. Don't cling to the future -- hopes, imaginations, plans for tomorrow -- because tomorrow will become today, will become yesterday. Everything is going to become yesterday.

Everything is going to go out of your hands.

Clinging will simply create misery.

You will have to let go.

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You cannot manage to prevent the process of things moving out of your sight, so it is better just to watch, just to witness, and let things be wherever they want -- in the past, in the present, in the future. Don't you be disturbed, because everything is going to fall into the past.

Only one thing is going to remain with you: that is your witnessing, that is your watchfulness. This watchfulness is meditation.

Mind is a clinger -- it clings, it hoards, it possesses. In the name of memory it collects all the past. In the name of planning for the future it clings to hopes, desires, ambitions -- and it suffers. Mind is continuously in tension, is continuously in anguish -- always in a turmoil.

Buddha is saying: If you can just remain silent and a witness, every misery, every worry, every tension will disappear. And there will be a silence and a clarity that you had never even thought about. This clarity will bring you the awakening; it is witnessing that, as it matures, finally becomes the awakening.

Witnessing can be called the seed and enlightenment can be called the flowers. But begin from witnessing, and then it starts growing. Go on nourishing it, go on caring for it, go on watering it, strengthen it in every possible way -- and one day it is going to blossom. That day will be the greatest day of your life.

You should not think about past events -- whether good or bad. This is commentary by Ta Hui on Buddha's statement -- and you can see the difference. You should not think about past events ... Buddha is not saying anything about thinking; he is simply saying, don't cling! ...

whether good or bad -- Buddha is not saying anything about good or bad.

If you think, that obstructs the path. Buddha is not talking about any obstruction to the path. His statement is very simple. He is saying if you don't cling to past, present and future, then all is empty and still. There is nothing else to say. To add anything else would be superfluous.

You should not consider future events. Now does Ta Hui think he is enriching Buddha's statement? To consider them is crazy confusion. He himself is in crazy confusion; Buddha's statement was complete -- impeccably complete. There is nothing to be added to it.

PRESENT EVENTS ARE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU: WHETHER THEY ARE

PLEASANT OR UNPLEASANT.

He is simply bringing in his own mind about good and bad, about pleasant and unpleasant.

DON'T FIX YOUR MIND ON THEM. IF YOU DO FIX YOUR MIND ON THEM, IT

WILL DISTURB YOUR HEART.

Now he is really in crazy confusion!

The witness is neither the mind nor the heart.

Mind is a division which thinks, and heart is another division of the same mind which feels. Feeling and thinking, thoughts and emotions ... but witnessing is separate from both.

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angry -- the witness still watches. An emotion is passing by, just like clouds pass and you see them.

You are neither the good nor the bad.

You are neither the pleasant nor the unpleasant.

You are neither the thought nor the emotions.

You are neither the mind nor the heart.

But Ta Hui says,

IF YOU DO FIX YOUR MIND ON THEM, IT WILL DISTURB YOUR HEART. JUST

TAKE EVERYTHING IN ITS TIME, RESPONDING ACCORDING TO

CIRCUMSTANCES, AND YOU WILL NATURALLY ACCORD WITH THIS PRINCIPLE.

What principle? What principle is he talking about? Buddha has not given any principle.

He has simply explained a simple thing: if you cling, you suffer; if you don't cling, you attain to peace and silence.

Buddha is not a moralist or a puritan. He is not interested in what is good and what is bad.

His whole interest is very simple, and that is: you should not be asleep. Spiritually, you should be awake and then everything else will be settled. You don't have to do anything else.

UNPLEASANT SITUATIONS ARE EASY TO HANDLE. Now this crazy fellow goes on ... UNPLEASANT SITUATIONS ARE EASY TO HANDLE; PLEASANT SITUATIONS

ARE HARD TO HANDLE. FOR THAT WHICH GOES AGAINST ONE'S WILL, IT BOILS

DOWN TO ONE WORD: PATIENCE. SETTLE DOWN AND REFLECT A MOMENT

AND IN A LITTLE WHILE IT IS GONE. IT IS PLEASANT SITUATIONS THAT TRULY

GIVE YOU NO WAY TO ESCAPE: LIKE PAIRING MAGNET AND IRON, UNCONSCIOUSLY THIS AND THAT COME TOGETHER IN ONE PLACE.

It is good to reflect on the statements of those who have arrived home, but your reflections should make them in some way more rich. If you drag what they have said into a lower state, you are being very unjust. It is better not to say anything if you don't know. But this is the problem with intellectuals: they have to say something. Whatever Ta Hui is saying is so ordinary, so meaningless, that it does not help you in any way to enter into the space of enlightenment. On the contrary, he starts bringing in things which will certainly confuse you.

It has to be very clearly understood that morality is not religion, although religion is morality. A moral person need not be religious, but the religious person is of necessity moral; he cannot be otherwise. A moral person need not even be concerned with religion: he may be an atheist, he may be an agnostic -- still he can be moral. But the religious person has no possibility of being immoral. His very consciousness is enough to give him the right direction.

He has not to depend on the precepts given by great religious founders or by religious scriptures; he has his guide in his own awareness.

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And because he lives according to his own light, there is a joy in his living. His morality is not a burden. His morality is not something imposed on him. His morality is something like overflowing joy, overabundant rejoicing. He loves because he has so much love. He cannot hate because hate has disappeared from his being.

I am reminded of one very great woman -- Rabiya al-Adabiya, a Sufi woman. A great Sufi mystic, Hassan, was staying with Rabiya. In the morning he wanted the holy KORAN. He had not brought his own copy, thinking that Rabiya must have a holy KORAN and that will do.

Rabiya gave him her copy. He opened it and he was shocked, because Rabiya had made many corrections in the holy KORAN! To any fanatic religious person, to any fundamentalist, nothing can be more sacrilegious. A Mohammedan cannot think that you can correct God's only messenger, and the last messenger. Now God is not going to send another improved edition of his holy scripture. The last one he sent was the holy KORAN. Mohammedans say there is only one God; one prophet, Mohammed, and one holy scripture, the KORAN. And this old woman, Rabiya, is making corrections -- she has cut out a few lines completely!

Hassan said, "Rabiya, it seems somebody has spoiled your book."

Rabiya said, "Nobody has spoiled my book. I have simply corrected it."

Hassan said, "I cannot understand. I always thought that you were a great religious woman.

I cannot conceive that you would do such a thing."

She said, "I had to do it. Just look at what I have crossed out!" The sentence in the KORAN was: "When you see the devil, hate him." And she has crossed it out.

Rabiya said, "Since I have experienced my innermost being, I don't have any hate left.

Even if the devil stands before me, I have nothing to offer but love. I have to correct the KORAN. It is my book; it has to be according to my experience! Mohammed has no monopoly. I will not tolerate anything in my book which is against my experience."

A man of enlightenment is so full of love, so full of joy, that he shares it. Sharing comes to him without any effort -- it is not an effort, it is not an action. That's why people like Lao Tzu say "actionless action", and "effortless effort".

But people like Ta Hui cannot understand that. To them, "effortless effort" and "actionless action" will look like illogical, absurd statements. How can there be an actionless action? How can there be effort without any effort? But I know that once you are awakened, you don't do anything -- everything starts happening. It is just a spontaneous outpouring, just as roses come on rose bushes, without any effort.

Love and compassion, good and beauty, grace and blessings, simply go on and on coming out of the overfullness. Just as a raincloud showers without any effort, an awakened man showers also without any effort. And the beauty of no-effort -- and yet tremendous happenings

-- is so majestic. It is the ultimate splendor in existence.

Gautam Buddha has said ... For forty-two years continuously he was speaking, and at the end he says, "I have not spoken a single word." And he is right, because he has not made any effort to speak. It was just a raincloud showering, it was a rose bush bringing roses with no effort, with no action. Buddha had to speak because he was so overfull. All that poetry, all that music, all that came out of him was simply spontaneous.

A moralist makes efforts; he tries to do good, he avoids doing bad. His whole life is continuously "Do this," or "Don't do that." He is always split, and he is always worried about Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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whether what he is doing is right ... is it really right? Or, who knows? -- it may not be right.

The moralist acts out of confusion. He depends on others who themselves may have been confused.

The last words of Gautam Buddha on the earth were, "Be a light unto yourself. Don't be bothered about what others say, don't be bothered about traditions, orthodoxies, religions, moralities. Just be a light unto yourself."

Just a small light is enough, and you can go on with that small light for ten thousand miles without any difficulty. Your light may be falling only four feet ahead of you -- just go on moving. As you move, the light will be moving ahead, and if you can see four feet ahead, that's enough. You can go as far as you want. You can go on an eternal pilgrimage with just a small light of your own.

Don't live on borrowed light.

Don't live on borrowed eyes.

Don't live on borrowed concepts.

Live according to your own light, and your life will be, each and every moment, a greater joy, a greater blissfulness, a greater ecstasy.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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11

Emptying

20 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

STILLNESS AND COMMOTION

WORLDLY PASSIONS ARE LIKE A BLAZING FIRE: WHEN WILL THEY EVER

END?

RIGHT IN THE MIDST OF THE HUBBUB, YOU MUSTN'T FORGET THE

BUSINESS OF THE BAMBOO CHAIR AND REED CUSHION (MEDITATION).

USUALLY (TO MEDITATE) YOU SET YOUR MIND ON A STILL CONCENTRATION

POINT -- BUT YOU MUST BE ABLE TO USE IT RIGHT IN THE MIDST OF THE

HUBBUB ...

VIMALKIRTI SAID, "IT'S LIKE THIS: THE HIGH PLATEAU DOES NOT PRODUCE

LOTUS FLOWERS; IT'S THE MIRE OF THE LOW SWAMPLANDS THAT PRODUCES

THESE FLOWERS." THE OLD BARBARIAN (BUDDHA) SAID, "TRUE THUSNESS

DOES NOT KEEP TO ITS OWN NATURE, BUT ACCORDING TO CIRCUMSTANCES

BRINGS ABOUT ALL PHENOMENAL THINGS ..."

DON'T CLING TO STILLNES (TO K'UNG HUI)

ONCE YOU HAVE ACHIEVED PEACEFUL STILLNESS OF BODY AND MIND, YOU MUST MAKE EARNEST EFFORT. DO NOT IMMEDIATELY SETTLE DOWN IN

PEACEFUL STILLNESS. IN THE TEACHINGS THIS IS CALLED "THE DEEP PIT OF

LIBERATION," MUCH TO BE FEARED. YOU MUST MAKE YOURSELF TURN

FREELY LIKE A GOURD FLOATING ON THE WATER, INDEPENDENT AND FREE, NOT SUBJECT TO RESTRAINTS, ENTERING PURITY AND IMPURITY WITHOUT

BEING OBSTRUCTED OR SINKING DOWN. ONLY THEN DO YOU HAVE A LITTLE

FAMILIARITY WITH THE SCHOOL OF THE PATCHROBED MONKS. IF YOU JUST

MANAGE TO CRADLE THE UNCRYING CHILD IN YOUR ARMS, WHAT'S THE USE?

DON'T PRAY FOR RELIEF

LIN CHI SAID, "IF YOU CAN PUT TO REST THE MIND THAT FRANTICALLY

SEEKS FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT, YOU WILL BE NO DIFFERENT FROM OLD

SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA."

HE WASN'T FOOLING PEOPLE. EVEN BODHISATTVAS OF THE SEVENTH

STAGE SEEK BUDDHA-KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT THEIR MINDS BEING SATISFIED: THEREFORE IT IS CALLED "AFFLICTION." REALLY THERE'S NO WAY TO

MANAGE: IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO APPLY THE SLIGHTEST EXTERNAL MEASURE.

SEVERAL YEARS AGO THERE WAS A CERTAIN LAYMAN, HSU, WHO WAS

ABLE TO FIND AN OPENING; HE SENT ME A LETTER, EXPRESSING HIS

UNDERSTANDING, THAT SAID, "EMPTY AND OPEN IN MY DAILY ACTIVITIES, THERE'S NOT A SINGLE THING OPPOSING ME; FINALLY I REALIZE THAT ALL

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THINGS IN THE THREE WORLDS ARE FUNDAMENTALLY NONEXISTENT. TRULY

THIS IS PEACE AND HAPPINESS, JOYFUL LIVELINESS, HAVING CAST IT ALL

AWAY." ACCORDINGLY I INSTRUCTED HIM WITH A VERSE: DON'T BE FOND OF PURITY: PURITY MAKES PEOPLE WEARY. DON'T BE

FOND OF JOYFUL LIVELINESS: JOYFUL LIVELINESS MAKES PEOPLE CRAZY. AS

WATER CONFORMS TO THE VESSEL, IT ACCORDINGLY BECOMES SQUARE OR

ROUND, SHORT OR LONG. AS FOR CASTING AWAY OR NOT CASTING AWAY, PLEASE THINK IT OVER MORE CAREFULLY. THE THREE WORLDS AND MYRIAD

THINGS ARE NO REFUGE -- WHERE IS THERE ANY HOME?

IF YOU ARE JUST THUS, THIS IS A GREAT CONTRADICTION. THIS IS TO

INFORM LAYMAN HSU THAT HIS OWN KIN ARE CREATING DISASTER. OPEN

WIDE THE EYE OF THE THOUSAND SAGES, AND DO NOT KEEP PRAYING FOR

RELIEF.

EMPTYING MIND AND OBJECTS

IN THE DAILY ACTIVITIES OF A STUDENT OF THE PATH, TO EMPTY OBJECTS

IS EASY BUT TO EMPTY MIND IS HARD. IF OBJECTS ARE EMPTY BUT MIND IS

NOT EMPTY, MIND WILL BE OVERCOME BY OBJECTS.

JUST EMPTY THE MIND, AND OBJECTS WILL BE EMPTY OF THEMSELVES. IF

THE MIND IS ALREADY EMPTIED, BUT THEN YOU AROUSE A SECOND

THOUGHT WISHING TO EMPTY ITS OBJECTS, THIS MEANS THAT THIS MIND IS

NOT YET EMPTY AND IS AGAIN CARRIED AWAY BY OBJECTS. IF THIS SICKNESS

IS NOT DONE AWAY WITH, THERE IS NO WAY TO GET OUT OF BIRTH AND

DEATH.

HAVEN'T YOU SEEN THE VERSE WHICH LAYMAN P'ANG PRESENTED TO MA TSU?

IN THE TEN DIRECTIONS, THE SAME CONGREGATION: EACH AND EVERY

ONE STUDIES NON-DOING. THIS IS THE PLACE WHERE BUDDHAS ARE CHOSEN: MINDS EMPTY, THEY RETURN SUCCESSFUL.

Ta Hui is constantly in a dilemma. His dilemma is: he wants to be recognized as an enlightened man, but this is only his ambition, his greed; it is not his experience.

Whenever he quotes some enlightened person, the quotation has great significance. But when he himself comments on the quotation, those commentaries are just crap. He uses all great words, but the words coming from an intellectual don't carry the meaning -- the same meaning -- as they carry when coming out of an enlightened being. And you will see his unconscious continually making sarcastic remarks, sometimes so ugly and condemnable that one cannot think that this man has even begun to grasp the meaning of enlightenment.

I will show you how fast asleep the man is -- he is talking in his sleep. He is clever and cunning. He can manage to befool people who are not enlightened because they don't have anything to compare his statements with. They don't have any of their own experience as a criterion to decide whether what he is saying is worth saying, or if he is just making much fuss about nothing.

The first sutra:

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WORLDLY PASSIONS ARE LIKE A BLAZING FIRE; WHEN WILL THEY EVER

END?

Now this is from a man who, in his previous sutras, has said that everything is illusory --

the world is illusory, the senses are illusory, the mind is illusory, even the Buddha is illusory!

If everything is illusory, then from where come these worldly passions which are like a blazing fire? They are not illusory. He has forgotten, because it was not his own understanding. He simply quoted. But the reality is, he knows his passions are like a blazing fire; he has not gone beyond passions.

Talking about even Buddha as an illusion is not only stupid, it is immensely harmful.

People who will read it, if they see that even Buddha is illusory, enlightenment is illusory, will wonder then what is the point of unnecessarily running from one illusion to another illusion?

One illusion cannot be better than another illusion. Illusions are simply illusions; there is no qualitative difference.

RIGHT IN THE MIDST OF THE HUBBUB, YOU MUST NOT FORGET THE

BUSINESS OF THE BAMBOO CHAIR AND REED CUSHION.

He cannot say directly, "Don't forget meditation." The word 'meditation' somehow hurts all intellectuals, because it is something beyond the grasp of the intellect. They want to be on the top, and suddenly they feel that there is something more beyond their grasp. So rather than simply using the word 'meditation', he says, "Don't forget the business of the bamboo chair and reed cushion."

He may think he is being very clever, but it is just his unconscious showing itself -- its antagonism for meditation. He is not a man of meditation at all.

USUALLY (TO MEDITATE) YOU SET YOUR MIND ON A STILL

CONCENTRATION POINT ...

That is absolutely wrong! That's why I say the man is not a man of meditation.

Concentration is not meditation; concentration is a faculty of the mind. Mind concentrates; meditation is the absence of mind. Mind cannot do anything about meditation. It simply does not know meditation, and there is no intrinsic possibility for the mind ever to come in contact with meditation. Just as I said before, darkness cannot come in contact with light because darkness is only an absence -- so is the mind.

Mind is the absence of meditation.

The moment meditation arises in you, mind is found nowhere.

A Sufi mystic, Junnaid, who himself finally became a great master, was with his old master. One day, early in the morning, the master said, "Just look outside to see if it is still dark."

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So Junnaid said, "Okay," and he took the lamp.

He was going out when the master said, "Wait! If you take the lamp with you, how are you going to find out whether it is dark or not? Leave the lamp here."

Junnaid was only in his disciplehood. He said, "If you say so I will leave it, but without a lamp how can I see whether it is dark or not? A little light is needed to see anything." That is true about everything else, but not about darkness. If you go with a lamp into the house searching for darkness, you will not find it. The same is true about mind and meditation.

Ta Hui thinks meditation is to set your mind on a still concentration point. A concentration point is within the capacity of mind; it has its utility. The whole of scientific work comes out of concentration of the mind, focusing the mind, not allowing it to move anywhere, staying only on a single point.

In the ancient story of Mahabharata -- the great Indian war that happened five thousand years ago -- there was a famous archer, Dronacharya. All the princes used to come to learn archery from him. His most intimate disciple was Arjuna, whose concentration was the reason for this intimacy, because archery depends on concentration.

One day Dronacharya was examining his disciples. He asked one disciple, Yudhishthira, Arjuna's eldest brother ... Dronacharya had hung a dead bird on a tree, and the dead bird's right eye was the target. He told Yudhishthira -- he was the first, being the eldest -- "Take the bow and the arrow, but before you shoot, I have to ask you something."

He became ready with his bow and arrow, and Dronacharya asked him, "What are you seeing?"

He said, "I see everything -- all the trees, all the birds."

The second man was called in and asked, "What are you seeing?"

He said, "I can see only the bird."

The third man was Arjuna. Dronacharya asked him, "What are you seeing?"

Arjuna said, "Only the right eye of the bird."

Then Dronacharya told all three to shoot their arrows. Yudhishthira's arrow went so far off ... you cannot even say it missed -- the distance between his arrow and the bird was so big.

The second man's was a little closer, but still did not reach the right eye -- it hit the bird. But Arjuna's arrow hit exactly the right eye of the bird. And the right eye of the bird on a faraway tree is such a small spot ...

But Dronacharya said, "Just your answers had given me a sense of who was going to hit the target. If you see so many trees, you are not focused. If you see only the bird you are more focused, but still you are not focused on the right eye. The whole bird is a big thing in comparison to the right eye. But when Arjuna said, 'I can't see anything else except the right eye,' then it was certain that his arrow was going to reach the target."

In science, in archery, in other arts, concentration may be of great use -- but it is not meditation. And this is the point that justifies my continuous insistence that Ta Hui is an intellectual: he has no idea even what meditation is.

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without the mind in between you and existence, you are in meditation. It is not concentration.

It is utterly silent. It is not focusing ... it is absolutely unfocused awareness.

BUT YOU MUST BE ABLE TO USE IT RIGHT IN THE MIDST OF THE HUBBUB.

This is the problem with the man -- he has collected from every source, without knowing whether those statements connect with each other or not.

Concentration cannot be practiced in the midst of the hubbub; concentration needs a space where you are not disturbed by anything. That's why the people who believe in concentration have left the world and gone to the mountains, to the caves, to the desert, where there is nothing to distract them. They can just put their minds on Jesus Christ or Gautam Buddha or Krishna ... and there is nothing else.

The desert has been one of the most practical places for concentration; it is even better than the mountains, because in the mountains there is so much to see -- the birds are there, the animals are there, the trees are there, beautiful peaks with snow are there -- there are many possibilities for distraction. But in a desert, as far as you can see there is only desert, and desert ...

But meditation can be possible even in the marketplace, because it does not have to concentrate on anything. Meditation cannot be disturbed, it is all-inclusive. Concentration is exclusive; it excludes everything and just keeps the mind on one point.

Meditation is all-inclusive. The car passes ... the mind in meditation is fully aware of the horn. The birds start singing ... the mind is fully aware of their singing. There is no question of distraction; nothing distracts. Everything -- the mind is no longer there -- is simply watched.

You are only aware that there is a horn, a car is passing by -- but it is not a distraction.

Distraction comes only when you are trying to concentrate, then anything -- a small ant crawling up your leg -- will be enough to distract you. But when you are in meditation, you simply know that the ant is crawling up your leg. If you like it, you allow it; if you don't like it, you throw it away. But there is no distraction -- your silence remains unscratched. How can the noises on the street distract you? You simply listen to them -- they don't make any impact on you. They come and go, and you remain just a witness.

Meditation is possible in the hubbub of a marketplace ... Ta Hui has heard some man of meditation talking, but he has never meditated himself; all that he knows is concentration of the mind.

VIMALKIRTI SAID, "IT IS LIKE THIS: THE HIGH PLATEAU DOES NOT PRODUCE

LOTUS FLOWERS; IT IS THE MIRE OF THE LOW SWAMPLANDS THAT PRODUCES

THESE FLOWERS."

He is quoting Vimalkirti, but he is not commenting on it. He is just throwing names in to decorate his sutras. I don't think he has understood what Vimalkirti means.

Vimalkirti was one of the strangest people who came in contact with Gautam Buddha. He never became a sannyasin -- he remained a layman -- but even Gautam Buddha respected him.

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He used to come to listen to Gautam Buddha, and he was meditating, but he could not see that there was any need to renounce the world and become a sannyasin and a beggar. He was such a genius that he was the first layman to become enlightened. The first sannyasin to become enlightened was Manjushri, and the first layman to become enlightened was Vimalkirti.

But Vimalkirti was a very strange person. For a few days he had not come, and Buddha was concerned ... is he sick, or is there some trouble? -- why is he not coming? So he asked that one of his disciples should offer to go to Vimalkirti -- he lived in the city -- to enquire about his health and why he is not coming.

But out of ten thousand sannyasins, nobody wanted to go, for the simple reason that even to say hello to Vimalkirti was dangerous! He would make it a point of great discussion -- "To whom are you saying hello? Are you certain I am not a dream? Can you give me any evidence that I am not a dream? If you see me in a dream, will you recognize that it is a dream and not reality?"

He used to put everybody in such a corner -- on any point. If you didn't say anything and you simply tried to avoid him, he would say, "Hey, where are you going? Is there any place to go? The truth is right here now. Where are you going?" He had tortured almost everybody.

Finally one disciple said, "I will go. Whatever he does I will take it easy, but he has to be asked after." When the disciple went he said, "Gautam Buddha has sent me to enquire about your health. As I came here, just outside your house, your family said that you are sick."

Rather than answering him, the sick Vimalkirti said, "Sick? About whom are you talking?

I don't exist at all, how can I be sick? To be sick you first have to exist -- what do you think? I have disappeared long ago in my meditations. So just go back and tell Gautam Buddha,

'Vimalkirti is no more -- there is no question of sickness or health.'"

The disciple was very much disturbed, because if he tells Gautam Buddha that Vimalkirti is no more, he will think that perhaps he has died. So he told Vimalkirti, "This statement can be misunderstood. If I say simply that Vimalkirti is no more, the obvious meaning will be that Vimalkirti is dead."

He said, "That's the right meaning! Vimalkirti is dead. It was a phony name which disappeared with meditation. When I was born I was not Vimalkirti, and when I was reborn in meditation I again became nameless, formless -- it is perfectly right. You can even say that Vimalkirti is dead."

The disciple said, "That is too much, because you are alive and I will be in trouble.

Tomorrow you may appear before Buddha, and he will ask me, 'What were you saying?'"

And in this way a whole sutra, Vimalkirti's Hridaya Sutra, has developed between the disciple and Vimalkirti. He is so clear that you cannot catch hold of him, you cannot grasp him. He is so vast that whatever you say, you are immediately caught.

Quoting from Vimalkirti is just to decorate Ta Hui's sutras, but he does not comment on it.

Perhaps he does not understand it either.

VIMALKIRTI SAID, "IT IS LIKE THIS: THE HIGH PLATEAU DOES NOT PRODUCE

LOTUS FLOWERS; IT IS THE MIRE OF THE LOW SWAMPLANDS THAT PRODUCES

THESE FLOWERS."

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The lotus comes out of mud, out of swamplands. It is perhaps the best flower -- the biggest flower, the most fragrant and the most delicate. No other flower can be compared with it, yet it is born out of mud.

Vimalkirti is saying, "Don't be worried about man's ignorance, his anger, his greed, his lust, his desire for power and for money, his attachment to things, his aggressiveness, his violence ... Don't be worried -- this is the mud out of which the lotus of enlightenment arises.

Accept it all, because the lotus flower cannot be born on high land, on a plateau. So you should be grateful to all your ignorance, all your anger, all your greed, your sex ..."

Whatever the religions have been condemning, Vimalkirti is saying be grateful to it because it is only out of this that the buddha is born, that the lotus flower comes out. But Ta Hui does not make any comment on it. This is strange. If you are not going to make any comment, then there is no need to quote. On the contrary, he goes on speaking in a very ugly way. THE OLD BARBARIAN ... he calls Gautam Buddha "the old barbarian."

The Chinese, just like everybody else, think that they are the most cultured people. When Marco Polo reached China, he wrote in his diary:

"These people cannot be thought of as human beings. They look like human beings but they are a lower species. They eat snakes, they eat dogs, there is nothing that they will leave; they eat everything! They look very strange, and their ideas are very strange. With high cheekbones they are ugly, but they think high cheekbones are immensely beautiful. They have only a few hairs in their beards, you can count them -- at the most twelve! Their mustaches also have very few hairs, which can be counted on the fingers. Very strange people! It seems they are on the way to becoming human beings."

The emperor of China, who invited Marco Polo to his court, told his historian to write about him, "We have heard that these people believe that man has come from the monkeys.

We could not believe it because we had not seen these people" -- Marco Polo was the first westerner to visit China. The emperor continued, "But they are perfectly right! As far as they are concerned, monkeys are their forefathers. They look like monkeys."

But this is the situation everywhere. Indians think they are the purest Aryans, the Germans think they are the purest Aryans. The word arya is Sanskrit -- it means 'the highest'. Everybody thinks ... But to use the word 'barbarian' for Gautam Buddha -- and that, too, by a man who pretends to be his disciple -- is simply inconceivable. If Gautam Buddha is a barbarian, then in the whole world nobody has ever been a cultured man.

Even now Buddha is the most cultured man, the most graceful. His beauty is such that Friedrich Nietzsche condemned him because of his grace and his beauty. He looked feminine to Nietzsche, because his idea of a real man was to be strong and to be made of steel ... grace, beauty? -- those are feminine qualities.

Nietzsche condemned Gautam Buddha: "I cannot believe in his teachings. They are dangerous, they will turn the whole world into a feminine world. I want man to keep his manhood and not to be impressed by people like Gautam Buddha."

Nietzsche loved the warrior -- that was his ideal for every man -- as sharp as the blade of the sword, as hard as steel, neither worried about killing, nor worried about being killed; these are just manly games.

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compassionate, but your manhood will disappear. You may become a roseflower, but you will not be a sword.

Friedrich Nietzsche may be wrong but his esteem is right. He cannot call Gautam Buddha a barbarian. Perhaps there is no other man who was so cultured as Gautam Buddha. But Ta Hui is calling him, "the old barbarian."

BUDDHA SAID, "TRUE THUSNESS DOES NOT KEEP TO ITS OWN NATURE, BUT

ACCORDING TO CIRCUMSTANCES BRINGS ABOUT ALL PHENOMENAL THINGS."

The quotation is right. Buddha is saying true thusness is always ready to change with the circumstances. It has no resistance, because resistance means ego, resistance means, "I have my own will. I will go on my path."

To accept life in its totality, as it is, means to relax and let life take charge of you; then wherever it takes you, go with it. This is his most fundamental teaching of suchness or thusness.

Such a man is always at peace. Whatever happens makes no problem for him; he simply goes with it with total willingness. Not only does he have no resistance, on the other hand he welcomes life in whatever form it comes. He welcomes death -- even death cannot disturb him. There is nothing that can disturb him because he goes with everything, allows it ...

He is just like a leaf dropping from the tree. If the wind takes it up, it goes up; if the wind takes it to the north, it goes to the north; if the wind takes it to the south, it goes to the south; if the wind drops it on the ground, it rests on the ground. It does not say to the wind, "This is very contradictory -- you just started going north, and now you have started going south. I don't want to go south -- I am destined for the north." No, the leaf has no destination of its own.

Existence has its own destination, and the man of meditation makes existence's destination his own destination. He makes no separation at all. If existence feels it is time for death, then it is time for death. His ability to accept is total. Such a man cannot be in pain, in agony, in misery, in anguish -- he has cut the very root of all these things.

ONCE YOU HAVE ACHIEVED PEACEFUL STILLNESS OF BODY AND MIND, YOU MUST MAKE EARNEST EFFORT.

Now these are Ta Hui's words. Whenever he quotes, that quotation is great. But whenever he comes to his own understanding, he falls very low. He says, "Once you have achieved peaceful stillness of body and mind ..."

In the first place, a man like Gautam Buddha will not use the word 'achievement', because it is not an achievement -- it is only a discovery. Secondly, he will not say "peaceful stillness of body and mind." He will say "transcendence of body and mind" -- only then can you be still. Body and mind cannot be still by their very nature. Thirdly, he says, "You must make earnest effort." The meditator does not make any effort.

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The whole idea of Gautam Buddha about meditation is so unique and so tremendously beautiful that it has been a problem for other religions to understand it -- because every religion thinks earnest effort is needed. But Gautam Buddha's idea is beautifully represented by Basho's haiku: "Sitting silently, doing nothing ... the spring comes and the grass grows by itself." There is no question of any effort; you are simply sitting, doing nothing ...

If you want to do something, effort is needed. But if you are in a state of non-doing, no effort is needed ... and if, for non-doing, effort is needed, what kind of non-doing will it be?

Effort is doing, and out of doing, you cannot create non-doing. You have to renounce doing.

Sitting silently, doing nothing ... the spring comes. It is not your effort that brings the spring; it comes, in its turn. It has always been coming. And when the spring comes, you don't have to pull the grass and make earnest effort so that it grows -- it grows on its own accord.

The grass grows by itself ...

Nobody except Buddha has come to this tremendous discovery, that meditation is a very simple phenomenon. You just relax -- but not the American way! I cannot forgive a man who has written a book, YOU MUST RELAX! That 'must' destroys the whole idea of relaxation, but that is the American idea -- "you must relax." And the book has sold very well, because everybody wants to relax. It is well-written, but the person does not know anything about relaxation. It cannot be a must.

Relaxation has to be a very simple understanding ... no effort, no doing -- you just sit silently, and let your body relax. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to achieve, so there is no point in being tense -- because you have it already within you. Relaxation becomes possible without any effort. You are sitting where you want to reach, so what is the point of making any effort? You have always been in the space where you want to be, you just have not looked inwards. No achievement, no longing, no desire, nowhere else to go ... relaxation comes on its own.

A relaxation which has been managed is not much of a relaxation. There is bound to be a subtle tension around it -- you are holding it. You can sit silently, still, but deep down you are very tense, you are holding yourself still -- no movement. This is not stillness, this is fake.

Stillness should be natural. And how can it be natural?

Buddha's whole philosophy gives you the right situation in which it happens on its own accord. There is nothing to achieve -- there is no God, there is no heaven, there is no hell. All that you need is already given to you, you have it within you. You are not a sinner that has to pray continuously to get rid of your sins. You are as pure as Buddha himself. The only difference -- and that does not make you inferior in any way -- is that you are not aware of it.

You have the Kohinoor -- the most precious diamond -- within you, but you are not aware of it. Buddha is aware of it.

So all that needs to happen is sitting silently, waiting for the spring, waiting for the right moment ... when your relaxation comes to its highest peak, when your silence becomes absolute, the spring has come. And "the grass grows by itself" is only a symbol. It is a symbol that you, your potential, starts growing on its own, spontaneously. It is a natural phenomenon, it is an intrinsic capacity -- you don't have to do anything.

So when Ta Hui says you must make earnest effort, he misses completely the whole new message of Gautam Buddha.

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DO NOT IMMEDIATELY SETTLE DOWN IN PEACEFUL STILLNESS. IN THE

TEACHINGS THIS IS CALLED "THE DEEP PIT OF LIBERATION."

Whenever he quotes, because the quotation is not his, he is right. But whenever he says anything of his own, he is wrong. Now this is certainly right -- it is a quotation.

"The deep pit of liberation" -- there is a danger for all seekers, for all people of the path, that you may settle for a small treasure. Just a little silence, a little relaxation, a little peace, and you may think you have come home. This they call the "deep pit of liberation." You have settled long before you have blossomed.

So one has to be alert not to settle anywhere. Just go on growing -- allow your potential to grow. Don't start feeling, "I have come, I have arrived." Your potential is immense, and your treasure is incalculable.

So go on and on and on ... and you will find more and more peace, more profound spaces, more juicy experiences. Your desert-like life you will find slowly turning into a green beautiful garden. You will find many, many flowers blossoming within you. Just go on ...

there is no end to your growth.

One never comes to the end of one's growth. It is always coming closer -- but just coming closer. You cannot come to the end of the road because existence is eternal, and you are one with existence. Your journey, your pilgrimage, is also to be eternal.

YOU MUST MAKE YOURSELF TURN FREELY -- now these are Ta Hui's words --

LIKE A GOURD FLOATING ON THE WATER, INDEPENDENT AND FREE ...

The gourd is not independent and is not free! The gourd cannot go against the current --

how can it go? It is simply moving with the current. Wherever the river is going, it is going --

what kind of independence is this? The gourd wants to stop at some place; it cannot, because the river is continuously moving. What kind of freedom is this?

No, this example is absolutely wrong. You can say the gourd is relaxed, you can say the gourd is no longer resistant, you can say the gourd has total acceptance -- wherever the river takes it. But you cannot say that it is independent and free. That would be an absolutely absurd idea. What independence can it have? It cannot go against the current, it cannot stop when it wants ... If the river moves to the south, it has to move to the south; it cannot say, "No, I don't want to go south." It is neither free nor independent.

He must have heard about the gourd ... that a man should relax just like a gourd in the river. It is immensely graceful because there is no resistance, no tension, no fight. In fact, it has become almost one with the river. It has no ideas different from the river, it has no intentions different from the river, it has nothing of what you call 'will power'. It has surrendered completely to the river. It has great peace and silence, acceptance, thusness.

This example of the gourd has been used by Buddha for thusness, for suchness, for tathata.

But it is not used for freedom and independence.

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... NOT SUBJECT TO RESTRAINTS, ENTERING PURITY AND IMPURITY

WITHOUT BEING OBSTRUCTED OR SINKING DOWN.

But this does not show its independence! When the river moves into impurity, the gourd has to move in impurity. When the river moves in pure waters, the gourd has to move in pure waters.

It simply shows that Ta Hui has not understood the idea of surrendering yourself to nature totally. In that surrender, you have disappeared -- who is going to be independent, and who is going to be free? That does not mean that you have become a slave, and that does not mean that you have become dependent. These are the subtleties of the experience of surrender.

You have become one with existence. You are neither dependent nor independent -- you are no more. And YOU have been the problem ... so now, because you are no more, there is no problem.

ONLY THEN DO YOU HAVE A LITTLE FAMILIARITY WITH THE SCHOOL OF

THE PATCHROBED MONKS.

No, he is not right.

And again he is using sarcastic remarks ... patchrobed monks. Buddha used to say to his disciples, "People throw out clothes when they are useless or rotten or have been used too much. Collect those pieces of cloth and make patchrobes; just put those pieces of cloth together and make a robe. That way you will not be a burden on people for your robes."

It was a great idea in itself. Buddha's whole effort was that his people should not be a burden and parasite on poor people, so he had taken every care. "You should not take your food from one house, you should take your food from five houses -- just a small piece from one house, another small piece from another house -- so you are not a burden.

"You should not remain longer than three days in one place; you should not ask for food from the same house while you are three days in the town; and you should collect thrown-away robes, clothes. And when the days of rain come, and for four months you cannot move and you have to stay in one place, then make patchrobes for yourself, for other sannyasins. You have enough time. So for clothes you are not dependent at all and for food your burden is negligible."

In fact, everybody enjoyed giving some food. Even in the poorest family, if a guest suddenly comes he can be accommodated. And he was not being dependent on one family but five families, and only one meal a day. So Buddha had minimized as much as possible the burden on the people, and people rejoiced without any reluctance. They wanted to share something with the monks, and this much they could manage.

Sometimes people used to give clothes to the monks, and Buddha had said that, "If somebody gives you a cloth you should cut it in pieces, because it should not be that some monks are using patchrobes and some monks are using clothes which are not patched. That will create unnecessary competitiveness."

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He was very careful to create a commune of equals, without any conflict -- and he succeeded in it. There was no conflict. Even the newest clothes were cut down and patched again, so they looked the same as anybody else's. But Ta Hui's reference to the school of the

'patchrobed' is sarcastic, it is not respectful.

IF YOU JUST MANAGE TO CRADLE THE UNCRYING CHILD IN YOUR ARMS, WHAT IS THE USE?

He is saying that just being silent -- a small silence, a small peace -- is not much use. It is just like cradling the uncrying child in your arms -- what is the use? About that he is right.

You should go to the profoundest ecstasy. Silence is only the beginning. Stillness is only the beginning, not the end.

LIN CHI SAID, "IF YOU CAN PUT TO REST THE MIND THAT FRANTICALLY

SEEKS FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT, YOU WILL BE NO DIFFERENT FROM OLD

SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA." HE WAS NOT FOOLING PEOPLE.

Lin Chi's statement is clear: If you can put to rest the mind that frantically seeks from moment to moment, you will be no different from old Shakyamuni Buddha.

The only difference between you and the awakened one is that you go on being dominated by the frantic mind, which is continuously restless. Buddha has overcome it; he has put his mind to rest. This is the only difference.

But Lin Chi is not being sarcastic -- he was a great master. He is saying, "the old Shakyamuni Buddha" -- shakya is his clan; hence he is called shakyamuni, the man from the Shakya clan who became utterly silent.

In fact, Ta Hui needed a master like Lin Chi. He says that Lin Chi was not fooling people.

Why is he saying that? Perhaps unconsciously he knows that he is fooling people. He needed a man like Lin Chi. Lin Chi was the most strange master. I have told you about him ... he used to hit people, he used to beat his disciples, for no reason at all. And once he threw a disciple from the window of a two story building and then jumped on top of him. Sitting on his chest he asked him, "Got it?" And the strangest thing is that the disciple said, "Yes, sir!" because this was so surprising ...

Lin Chi had been beating him -- to that he had become accustomed. He knew that whenever he goes, he will get a good beating. But even to be beaten by a man like Lin Chi ...

he was so beautiful, so loving. He was beating out of love; there was no anger in it. He was trying in every way to wake him up.

But beating had become known and familiar. That's why Lin Chi had to throw him out of the window -- to shock him completely: "This is going too far!" Then when he saw Lin Chi coming behind him, his mind must have stopped! And sitting on his chest, Lin Chi asked "Got it?"

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grace, and his words, "Got it?" The answer came not from his mind, but from his very being.

He said, "Yes, sir."

Ta Hui needed a man like Lin Chi. Perhaps then he may have come to a state of no-mind, even for a single moment. And that would have changed his whole approach from intellectual to meditative.

EVEN BODHISATTVAS

OF THE SEVENTH STAGE SEEK BUDDHA-

KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT THEIR MINDS BEING SATISFIED: THEREFORE IT IS

CALLED "AFFLICTION." REALLY THERE IS NO WAY TO MANAGE: IT IS

IMPOSSIBLE TO APPLY THE SLIGHTEST EXTERNAL MEASURE.

Again it is a quotation, and the quotation is right: Really there is no way to manage, because you cannot do anything for realization -- so naturally, there is no way to manage.

Or in other words: if you drop managing, if you drop doing, if you drop effort, it happens on its own accord. But you cannot manage it, you cannot manage to be a buddha. If you manage to be a buddha it will only be a hypocrisy; you will be only an actor and nothing else.

SEVERAL YEARS AGO THERE WAS A CERTAIN LAYMAN, HSU, WHO WAS

ABLE TO FIND AN OPENING; HE SENT ME A LETTER EXPRESSING HIS

UNDERSTANDING, THAT SAID ...

Here you will see that an ordinary layman has come to a great understanding of truth. The answer that Ta Hui sends him is so ordinary and irrelevant that it will make it clear to you that there is no question of comparing him with any Zen master. He is not even capable of understanding the experience that has happened to a layman, an ordinary man, and the way that man has expressed it.

Layman Hsu sent Ta Hui a letter, and said in the letter,

"EMPTY AND OPEN IN MY DAILY ACTIVITIES, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE

THING OPPOSING ME; FINALLY I REALIZE THAT ALL THINGS IN THE THREE

WORLDS ARE FUNDAMENTALLY NONEXISTENT. TRULY THIS IS PEACE AND

HAPPINESS, JOYFUL LIVELINESS, HAVING CAST IT ALL AWAY." ACCORDINGLY

I INSTRUCTED HIM WITH A VERSE.

Hsu does not need any instruction from Ta Hui, but Ta Hui is pretending to be a great teacher.

Hsu has expressed his experience, which is perfectly in tune with Gautam Buddha and the Zen masters. The instruction that Ta Hui has sent is absolutely irrelevant. First he says, don't be fond of purity. Now in the letter the poor man has not said anything about purity! Don't be fond of purity: purity makes people weary. don't be fond of joyful liveliness ... Hsu has not Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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said anything about that. He has simply said that a joyful liveliness has happened to him; he has not said that he is fond of it.

Joyful liveliness makes people crazy. Ta Hui's instruction is dangerous ... because he was thought to be a great Zen master, accepted by the emperor. The poor man must have been disturbed by the instruction he was sent.

AS WATER CONFORMS TO THE VESSEL, IT ACCORDINGLY BECOMES

SQUARE OR ROUND, SHORT OR LONG. AS FOR CASTING AWAY OR NOT

CASTING AWAY, PLEASE THINK IT OVER MORE CAREFULLY.

He does not need the word 'think'.

THE THREE WORLDS AND MYRIAD THINGS ARE NO REFUGE -- WHERE IS

THERE ANY HOME?

Hsu has not talked about all these things in which Hui is instructing him.

IF YOU ARE JUST THUS, THIS IS A GREAT CONTRADICTION. THIS IS TO

INFORM LAYMAN HSU THAT HIS OWN KIN ARE CREATING DISASTER -- OPEN

WIDE THE EYE OF THE THOUSAND SAGES, AND DO NOT KEEP PRAYING FOR

RELIEF.

He is not praying for relief, he is not disturbed by anything, he is not in any contradiction, he is not seeking any refuge ...! I would like to read Hsu's words again, so you can see how irrelevant is the instruction. But just to be the teacher, Ta Hui has to say something ...

Ta Hui has not even understood the layman's statement: "Empty and open in my daily activities, there is not a single thing opposing me." When you are empty and open, how can anything oppose you? Opposition comes when you are there with a will, with a certain ego, with a certain desire -- then there is opposition. But if you are empty and open, naturally there is no opposition possible.

"FINALLY I REALIZE THAT ALL THINGS IN THE THREE WORLDS ARE

FUNDAMENTALLY NONEXISTENT."

It has to be understood what, in the heritage of Gautam Buddha, the word 'nonexistent'

means. It simply means nothing is stable, everything is changing.

Buddha's definition of the existent is "that which always remains the same." There is only one thing that is existent, and that is the witnessing self, the witnessing consciousness. It remains always the same ... past, present, future, from eternity to eternity, it is the same. This is the only existent thing. Everything else changes; every moment it is changing, and that which is changing is nonexistent. It does not mean that it is not there; it simply means that Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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while you are seeing it, it is already changing. While you are listening to me, you are already changing -- your death is coming closer.

This world is ephemeral. The word 'nonexistent' in Buddha's philosophy simply means

"that which is ephemeral, that which goes on changing" -- you cannot rely on it. The only thing you can rely on is your witnessing consciousness. It never changes. It is the very center of the cyclone. But about this, in his great instruction, Ta Hui does not say anything.

"TRULY THIS IS PEACE AND HAPPINESS, JOYFUL LIVELINESS. HAVING CAST

IT ALL AWAY."

Hsu is not saying, "I am fond of these things" -- that, "I desire them." He is saying, "I have found them, they are there." And Ta Hui's instruction is absolutely out of place: don't be fond of purity -- I am amazed that he cannot see that what he is saying has no reference to the layman's letter --

PURITY MAKES PEOPLE WEARY. DON'T BE FOND OF JOYFUL LIVELINESS: JOYFUL LIVELINESS MAKES PEOPLE CRAZY. AS WATER CONFORMS TO THE

VESSEL, IT ACCORDINGLY BECOMES SQUARE OR ROUND, SHORT OR LONG. AS

FOR CASTING AWAY OR NOT CASTING AWAY, PLEASE THINK IT OVER MORE

CAREFULLY.

Thinking is a very low activity; it is of the mind. Meditation is the highest within you; it is beyond mind. The layman has touched something beyond mind, and Ta Hui is dragging him down by saying, please think it over more carefully. The three worlds and myriad things are no refuge -- where is there any home? But the poor fellow has not asked about the home or any refuge.

IF YOU ARE JUST THUS, THIS IS A GREAT CONTRADICTION.

Hsu has not said that he is just thus! He is simply saying that this is his awareness, his consciousness. He can see it, he is aware of his emptiness, his openness. And he has found that since the moment he became empty and open, not a single thing opposes him.

"And as I have entered into this emptiness and openness, I realized that all things in the three worlds are fundamentally nonexistent. Truly, this is peace and happiness, joyful liveliness." He is simply stating the experience of his meditation.

Ta Hui has not been able to understand it; his instruction is absolute nonsense. Finally he says, "and do not keep praying for relief." Anybody can see that he is saying things just to pose as a great instructor.

IN THE DAILY ACTIVITIES OF A STUDENT OF THE PATH ...

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Ta Hui does not understand the difference between a student, a disciple, and a devotee.

The student is never on the path.

IN THE DAILY ACTIVITIES OF A STUDENT OF THE PATH, TO EMPTY OBJECTS

IS EASY BUT TO EMPTY MIND IS HARD.

It seems to be his own experience; otherwise to empty the mind is the simplest thing. A thing is hard when it needs great effort to do it, but to empty the mind needs no effort at all.

How can it be hard?

IF OBJECTS ARE EMPTY BUT MIND IS NOT EMPTY, MIND WILL BE

OVERCOME BY OBJECTS.

JUST EMPTY THE MIND, AND OBJECTS WILL BE EMPTY OF THEMSELVES. IF

THE MIND IS ALREADY EMPTIED, BUT THEN YOU AROUSE A SECOND

THOUGHT WISHING TO EMPTY ITS OBJECTS, THIS MEANS THAT THIS MIND IS

NOT YET EMPTY AND IS AGAIN CARRIED AWAY BY OBJECTS. IF THIS SICKNESS

IS NOT DONE AWAY WITH, THERE IS NO WAY TO GET OUT OF BIRTH AND

DEATH.

HAVEN'T YOU SEEN THE VERSE WHICH LAYMAN P'ANG PRESENTED TO MA TSU?

IN THE TEN DIRECTIONS, THE SAME CONGREGATION: EACH AND EVERY

ONE STUDIES NON-DOING.

Ta Hui is not clear anywhere that a seeker does not study. Only a student studies. A seeker absorbs, drinks. He absorbs the presence of the master, he allows the master's energy to transform his energy. The student collects information; the seeker is not interested in information -- his only interest is transformation. These are totally different things.

Each and everyone studies non-doing. How can you study non-doing? Either you can be in the state of non-doing, or you cannot be. But studying is not possible.

THIS IS THE PLACE WHERE BUDDHAS ARE CHOSEN: MINDS EMPTY, THEY

RETURN SUCCESSFUL.

Gautam Buddha will not use the word 'successful'. When you are not, there is no success, no failure. Success is an ego-projection. Failure is when that projection does not succeed and your ego feels hurt.

A buddha knows no success, no failure. He simply knows one thing: his awareness. And that awareness has always been there, there is no question of success. Even if he had slept a few lives more it would have remained there. Asleep or awake, it is always there.

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awakening stops dreaming. But that is not much of a difference ... dreams are just dreams, they are not even as real as soap bubbles.

To allow such people as Ta Hui and his sutras to be holy scripture is a great misunderstanding on the part of people who have followed the path of Zen. Perhaps they have committed the same fallacy as other religions go on committing: if they see something wrong in their scriptures they ignore it, or they try to patch it up, or they try to interpret it in a way that somehow fixes it.

But I am not a person to do any patchwork. I am not the person to interpret somebody just so as to give the feeling that everything is right. When things are right, I am absolutely in support; when things are wrong, I am absolutely against them.

My commitment is towards truth.

My commitment is not towards anybody else.

Even if Jesus Christ or Buddha or Mahavira or Lao Tzu -- the great masters -- commit something which looks to me to be against my experience of truth, I am going to criticize it.

That does not mean that I am against them. It simply means that I am totally for truth, and if I find anybody somewhere mistaken, in a fallacy, then with all due respect I have to point it out so that in the future nobody is confused by it.

Now this Ta Hui calls Buddha 'the old barbarian' -- that I cannot tolerate! That piece I have to just throw away ...! (Osho tears up the paper into four pieces, and throws it away.) Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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Non-duality

20 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

ILLUSION

SPEAKING OF "EMPTY ILLUSION," IT IS ILLUSION WHEN CREATED, AND

ILLUSION WHEN EXPERIENCED TOO; IT'S ILLUSION WHEN YOU'RE KNOWING

AND AWARE, AND ILLUSION WHEN YOU'RE LOST IN DELUSION TOO. PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE ARE ALL ILLUSIONS. TODAY, IF WE REALIZE OUR

WRONG, WE TAKE AN ILLUSORY MEDICINE TO CURE AN EQUALLY ILLUSORY

DISEASE. WHEN THE DISEASE IS CURED, THE MEDICINE IS REMOVED, AND WE

ARE THE SAME PERSON AS BEFORE. IF YOU THINK THAT THERE IS SOMEONE

ELSE OR SOME SPECIAL DOCTRINE, THEN THIS IS THE VIEW OF A MISGUIDED

OUTSIDER.

IN THE INSTANT OF MAITREYA'S FINGER-SNAP, SUDHANA WAS EVEN ABLE

TO FORGET THE MEDITATIVE STATES FOSTERED IN HIM BY ALL HIS

TEACHERS: HOW MUCH MORE SO THE BEGINNINGLESS HABIT ENERGY OF

EMPTY FALSEHOOD AND EVIL DEEDS! IF YOU CONSIDER THE MISTAKES

WHICH YOU COMMITTED IN THE PAST AS REAL, THEN THE WORLD RIGHT IN

FRONT OF YOU NOW IS ALL REAL, AND EVEN OFFICIAL POSITION, WEALTH

AND STATUS, GRATITUDE AND LOVE, ARE ALL REAL.

NON-DUALITY

IF YOUR MIND DOES NOT RUN OFF SEARCHING, OR THINK FALSELY, OR GET

INVOLVED WITH OBJECTS, THEN THIS VERY BURNING HOUSE OF PASSION IS

ITSELF THE PLACE TO ESCAPE THE THREE WORLDS. DIDN'T BUDDHA SAY,

"NOT DEPENDING ON, OR ABIDING IN, ANY SITUATION, NOT HAVING ANY

DISCRIMINATION, ONE CLEARLY SEES THE VAST ESTABLISHMENT OF REALITY

AND REALIZES THAT ALL WORLDS AND ALL THINGS ARE EQUAL AND

NONDUAL."

THOUGH A BODHISATTVA OF THE "FAR-GOING" STAGE APPEARS TO ACT

THE SAME AS OUTSIDERS, HE DOES NOT ABANDON THE BUDDHIST

TEACHINGS; THOUGH HE APPEARS TO GO ALONG WITH ALL THAT IS

WORLDLY, HE'S PERPETUALLY PRACTICING ALL WORLD-TRANSCENDING

WAYS. THESE ARE THE REAL EXPEDIENT DEVICES WITHIN THE BURNING

HOUSE OF PASSION ...

ONLY HAVING PENETRATED ALL THE WAY THROUGH CAN YOU SAY THAT

AFFLICTION IS ITSELF ENLIGHTENMENT AND IGNORANCE IS IDENTICAL TO

GREAT WISDOM. WITHIN THE WONDROUS MIND OF THE ORIGINAL VAST

QUIESCENCE -- PURE, CLEAR, PERFECT ILLUMINATION -- THERE IS NOT A Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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SINGLE THING THAT CAN CAUSE OBSTRUCTION. IT IS LIKE THE EMPTINESS OF

SPACE ...

One of the most fundamental problems that has to be faced by everyone on the path to enlightenment is that when you become enlightened, all that you have passed through looks illusory. It is just as when you wake up in the morning, the whole night of dreams simply becomes unreal; you don't even think about it. But while you are asleep, the dreams are very real.

In a very strange way, while you are awake you may doubt whether that which is surrounding you is real or not. At least, doubt is possible. Who knows? you may be seeing just a dream. But while you are dreaming even the doubt is not possible. You cannot doubt --

"What I am seeing perhaps is not real." The dream seems to be more deep-rooted in the mind than our so-called reality.

The reality at least allows doubt. The dream does not allow doubt. In fact, that is the only criterion to distinguish between them. If you can doubt, it means you are awake. If you cannot doubt, it means you are fast asleep. A very strange criterion, but that is the only criterion.

Because all the religions are against doubt, they have destroyed the most fundamental criterion available to man. All the religions of the world, without exception, insist on believing. And belief is the antidote to doubt.

One can condition oneself to such an extent that doubt does not arise, but then you have lost the only criterion you have for making the distinction between what is real and what is unreal. Dreams cannot be doubted -- reality can be doubted.

In the life of Chuang Tzu comes one of the most beautiful incidents. One morning he was sitting in his bed -- very sad, very serious ... and sadness and seriousness were absolutely against his nature, his philosophy. He was the most hilarious man. He has written the most absurd stories with such great significance -- illogical, irrational, but yet pointing to the truth.

His disciples gathered and they were worried, "It has never happened, he has never been sad. He is a man of laughter, and he is looking so serious. Is he sick, or has something gone wrong?"

Finally some disciple asked, "What is the matter, master?"

Chuang Tzu said very seriously, "The matter is almost beyond my comprehension, and I don't think you will be in any way helpful to me, but still I will tell you. In the night I dreamt that I had become a butterfly."

All the disciples laughed and said, "That is nothing to be serious about. It was only a dream, so you don't have to be so worried. Now you are awake; the dream is finished."

He said, "You first listen to the whole story. When I woke up this morning, a strange idea arose within my heart: "If Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly in his dream, why cannot a butterfly become Chuang Tzu in her dream? There seems to be no logical reason why a butterfly cannot dream to be Chuang Tzu."

Still the disciples said, "You don't need to worry about butterflies! Let them dream whatever they want to dream, but why are you sad?"

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Chuang Tzu said, "You still have not grasped the problem. The problem for me now is --

who am I? Am I a butterfly dreaming to be Chuang Tzu? Because Chuang Tzu was able to dream of being a butterfly, how am I to feel satisfied that I am not just a butterfly dreaming myself to be a Chuang Tzu?"

The disciples became sad themselves, because it was really a problem that could not be solved. And it has remained unsolved for almost twenty five centuries. Unfortunately I was not there as one of his disciples, because to me the basic criterion is: while you were a butterfly in your dream, did you have any problem? was there any doubt? Now that you are awake, you can doubt -- who knows, you may be a butterfly.

This is the only distinction between the dream and the real: reality allows you to doubt, and the dream does not allow you to doubt. Obviously you are Chuang Tzu, don't be worried.

Certainly you were not a butterfly; it was a dream, because it did not allow you to doubt.

To me, the capacity to doubt is one of the greatest blessings to humanity. The religions have been enemies because they have been cutting the very roots of doubt, and there is a reason why they have been doing that: because they want people to believe in certain illusions that they have been preaching.

A man who believes that if he prays earnestly, sincerely ... Then Krishna may visit him, or Jesus may appear before him. These are ways of creating dreams while you are awake, with your eyes open. But because you are awake, you can doubt. So first doubt has to be destroyed; otherwise Jesus may be standing before you and you may start doubting -- who knows, perhaps it is just an illusion. What evidence have I got that it is not an illusion?

There are thousands of people in madhouses around the world who believe in their illusions so deeply that they talk with people whom you cannot see -- only they can see. And they not only talk, they also get a response; they do the work of both themselves!

The strangest thing is that when they speak from one side, their side, they have their own voice, and when they answer from Jesus Christ's side, their voice changes. It has a different quality to it, a different authority to it. You can see that they are doing both things -- the question and the answer -- and that there is nobody else. But because they cannot doubt, their illusion becomes a reality.

Let me tell you:

If you can doubt, even the reality becomes illusory.

Why have the people like Gautam Buddha been so insistent that the whole existence --

except your witnessing self, except your awareness -- is just ephemeral, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of? They are not saying that these trees are not there. They are not saying that these pillars are not there. Don't misunderstand because of the word 'illusion'.

In English you don't have an exact translation of the word maya; in English, either something is real or it is illusory. Maya is just in between the two: It looks real, but it is not real. It appears real, but it is not real. In English there is no word which exactly translates maya. It has been translated as illusion, but illusion is not the right word. Illusion does not exist. Reality exists. Maya is just in between -- it almost exists. As far as day-to-day activities are concerned, it can be taken as reality. Only in the ultimate sense, from the peak of your illumination, it becomes unreal, illusory.

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The problem is that what becomes illusory in the experience of enlightenment cannot be conceived of as illusory by people who are not enlightened. How can you think that your wife, your husband, your house, your car, your neighborhood ... that all this is just a dream?

It is not a dream the way you know dreams are; hence the word 'maya' has to be kept untranslated, because maya does not mean dream. It simply means that things which are not eternal cannot be accepted as real. They are born, they are there, and they are constantly dying.

From the very moment something is born, it starts dying -- what kind of reality is this?

Your birth was the beginning of death. Since then you have not been doing anything except dying -- every day, continuously -- although the process is very slow. It may take seventy years or eighty years to reach your grave, but you have been moving towards it since you left your cradle ... consistently ... never taking a single holiday, never going astray. There is no way of going astray! Whatever you do, wherever you go, you are going towards the graveyard. One day you were not ... one day you are again not -- although you existed for seventy years.

Your dream also exists, for the time being. It may be only seven minutes, or seventy minutes, but that does not make any difference. The dream is born, it remains there ... you are affected by it, as you are affected by anything real, and then it dies.

The same is the nature of our so-called reality. Perhaps it is on a bigger scale, the dream lasts longer. But millions of people have lived here before us, and we don't know even their names. We don't know that they had fallen in love, that they had fought, that they had killed, murdered, that they had committed suicide, that they had become prime ministers, presidents, super-rich ... and they have all disappeared as if they were nothing but writing on water -- or at the most writing on the sand. It lasts a little while, then a strong wind comes and all the writing disappears.

According to the people of enlightenment, that which is just writing on the water ... or it may be writing on the sand, or it may be writing on the granite lasting for thousands of years

-- the difference is only of time; otherwise there is no difference. The difference is only of the medium -- water, sand, or granite. The writing is the same: one day it was not, for some time it remains, one day it is again not.

Everything comes from nothing and everything moves into nothing: that is the meaning of maya. It does not mean unreal, because even the writing on the sand is real. Even the writing on water has its own reality, although it is very fleeting -- you have not even written and it has disappeared! The writing on granite will last for thousands of years. Yet one thing is certain: they are all real, but one day they come out of nothing, and one day they go back into nothingness. That is the meaning of the word 'maya'. It is not equivalent to illusion.

The man of enlightenment sees the whole existence as maya. It comes into existence, it disappears. It is not an eternal reality, that which never begins and never ends.

The whole search of truth is for that which remains always and always the same. It neither comes into existence nor does it go out of existence. And thousands of seekers have come to the same conclusion: that there is only one thing, only one thing in the whole existence that remains always the same, and that is your awareness.

Except awareness, everything is maya.

Only awareness, the watcher within you, belongs to eternal reality -- is the only reality. It is never born ... never dies. It has always been, and it will be always.

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The experience of enlightenment makes it so clear. But to bring it into language that can be understood by people who don't have the experience yet has been always a great problem, and many misunderstandings arise.

For example, if you call the world illusory, then people think, "Then what is the difference between good and bad? Whether you are a saint or a thief, it is all the same -- it is just a dream. Whether you kill somebody or you save somebody from drowning in a river, it is all the same -- both are illusory, so there is nothing that can be called moral, and nothing that can be called immoral." It is very disturbing to the society, and it is very disturbing to the people who have to manage the society and its affairs.

Actually, there is no way to reduce the experience of enlightenment into the languages of people who are asleep. You have to use their words, and their words have their own connotations. The moment you say something, you immediately feel that you have brought the truth in words which are going to be misunderstood.

This country has remained in slavery for two thousand years, and one of the most basic reasons was the idea that everything is illusory. Whether the country is free or a slave, it does not make much difference. India has been ruled by such small, barbarous tribes, and it is such a vast continent; it is simply unbelievable that such a big country could be controlled by a small tribe. But the reason was that India never gave any resistance. It never fought. It simply accepted slavery as part of a dream. Freedom is a dream and slavery is a dream ...

People coming from advanced countries cannot believe it -- so much poverty, and yet the poor people are utterly contented. The rich people in the advanced countries are in so much anguish, agony, angst ... such a great discontentment. And the people in the East, particularly in India, don't have anything -- and yet they seem to be fully contented.

The reason is, men like Gautam Buddha and Mahavira and Neminatha and Adinatha, a long line of enlightened people, have been talking about their experience -- that when they have come to the ultimate height of their consciousness, the whole of life appears to be just a mirage ... just maya, a magical creation with no substance in it. They were perfectly right, but they forgot one thing: the people they are talking to are not enlightened.

Sometimes even the greatest truth can become a calamity. It has been so in this country.

Poverty has been accepted, slavery has been accepted, because it is all just a dream -- one need not be disturbed by it. This can be dangerous. This has proved to be dangerous; hence I don't say that the world is a dream. I can see that the implications have proved very dangerous.

There was no intention on the part of the awakened people, but still the responsibility lies on their shoulders. They told things to people who were not ready to understand them. It was absolutely certain that they would be misunderstood -- and they have been misunderstood.

India has lived in poverty without any revolution. The very idea of revolution is irrelevant

-- one never revolts against a dream. One simply accepts that a dream is nonexistential, it does not matter at all. But to the ignorant people, it matters -- hunger matters.

I have been in immense difficulty to say the ultimate truth to people, because the question is what the effect is going to be on their minds and their lives ... to say to a hungry man who is dying, starving, "Don't be worried, it is all just a dream."

I am reminded of a story ... In ancient China, the wells were made without any protective wall around them. There was going to be a big fair and one man fell into a well, but there was so much noise that, although he was shouting from the well, nobody heard him.

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Just by coincidence a Buddhist monk passed by the side of the well, and because he was accustomed to silence he was able to hear, even in the hubbub of the fair, that somebody was shouting from the well. He went close by and the man said, "Please save me."

The Buddhist monk said, "There is no point. Everybody has to die; it is only a question of time. Remain peaceful. The great Gautam Buddha has said that life is just a dream, so if you have fallen in a dream into a well, don't unnecessarily shout. Just relax."

The man said, "I am ready to listen to all your teachings -- first take me out!" He could not believe that somebody would give him such a strange sermon in such a situation, when he is dying!

But the Buddhist monk said, "Our master Gautam Buddha has said, 'Never interfere into anybody's life.' So excuse me, I cannot do anything. I can only help you by giving you the real teaching: at the time of death, if you can be silent and peaceful, you will be born in a higher stage of consciousness."

The man said, "I simply want to get out of this well! I don't want to be born in higher stages ..."

But the Buddhist monk went on his way.

A Confucian monk heard the man, he looked inside. The man said, "You are not a Buddhist" ... and Confucius is very pragmatic. He is not an enlightened being and he is not an idealist. He is very moralistic, realistic, practical. He does not believe in any other life beyond death. He does not believe that consciousness has a separate existence. So the man said, "It is good. I am happy that a Confucian has come, because just now a Buddhist monk has gone by, giving me the advice to relax and die peacefully."

The Confucian monk said, "Don't be worried! I will go into the crowd and immediately I will start a revolution in the country."

The man said, "For what?"

The Confucian said, "Our master Confucius has said that every well should have a protective wall around it. It is not a question only of your life; it is a question of millions of people's lives. You should not be worried for your tiny self. Think of the generations to come, and feel satisfied that you have come across me. I will create a great upheaval in the whole country, that every well should have a wall."

The man said, "That is perfectly okay, but what about me? By the time the revolution succeeds and every well has a wall, I will be gone."

The Confucian said, "I am sorry, but I believe in social changes. Our concern is not with individuals, but with society ..."

Just behind him comes a Christian missionary with a bucket and a rope, and before the man says anything he throws the bucket in, and he says, "We will talk later on. First you have to be saved. Just sit in the bucket and I will pull you out."

Out of the well, the man said, "You are the only religious person. That fellow just now has gone to create a revolution -- I am dying here! The other one wanted me to be born in a higher stage of consciousness ... But you are really religious. Just one question, why have you been carrying this bucket and rope?"

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The Christian missionary said, "I am always ready and prepared for every emergency, because Jesus Christ has said, 'If you save people, if you serve people, immense will be your reward in the kingdom of God.' So don't think that I am interested in saving you; my interest is to earn more virtue. I am going to fight that Confucian because his revolution will stop people falling into wells. That means ultimately, we will not be able to save them, and without saving them there is no way to the kingdom of God. I have saved you, you teach your children always to fall into wells ... and I am always around here. You can call me, and I am always ready for every emergency. This is my whole service to the people."

The religions have not been at all concerned with humanity at large. I cannot say to the hungry people, "Your hunger is just a dream," and I cannot say to a thirsty man, "Just die peacefully. Don't ask for water, don't demand anything because that will create a bad impression for your future life."

You can understand my difficulty.

I am absolutely aware that everything is illusory, and yet I would not like people to take the idea as a belief system, because that belief system, without an experience, is going to destroy their whole life in many ways. I would like them to enter on the path, to realize for themselves what it means that life is just a dream, or maya, and be freed from this illusory misery, suffering, anguish.

Help others also to rise to the same meditative consciousness. But don't give people ideas as beliefs -- which they don't have as their experience -- because they will start acting according to them, and their actions will be tremendously dangerous to them.

India has suffered so much from its enlightened people. No science could grow in this land. Mathematics was found for the first time here, but it could not produce an Albert Einstein. Many scientific inventions had their beginning in the East. The first printing presses were born in China three thousand years ago, the first currency notes two thousand years ago.

But science could not progress, because if the idea is prevalent that everything is illusory, what is the point in searching and analyzing the illusory world? So there have been tremendous geniuses, but they were all devoted to only one thing -- to find their own interior consciousness. They had no interest in the outside world.

The idea of meditation and enlightenment has created an introversion, and just the opposite has happened in the West. The West is extrovert. It only looks at the outside -- the outside is real and the inside does not exist; it is illusory. But in a way, both are the same. The East accepts one half, the inside, and denies the other half, the outside; the West accepts one half, the outside, and denies the other half, the inside.

The West has become scientifically, technologically rich, but has lost its soul. It has become spiritually poor. The East has been spiritually rich, but it has lost all grip on the outside reality and has become so poor that by the end of this century perhaps half the population of India -- that means five hundred million human beings -- will be dying. And this will not be the case only in India, but in all the Eastern countries which have remained poor.

It is not coincidental. To me it is absolutely clear why it has happened: the whole man has never been taught.

I stand for the whole man. His outside -- I will not call it illusory, I will call it "changing reality" -- and his inside, unchanging reality. That is the only difference I will make. The Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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changing reality has its own beauty, just as unchanging reality has its own beauty. And both have to be fulfilled.

Man needs religiousness as much as he needs the scientific approach. Science is for the outside, the objective world, and religion for the inside, the subjective world. If both can grow together, just like two wings of a bird, then there is a wholeness. And to me, when man is whole only then he is holy.

Our scientists are incomplete, our saints are incomplete. The complete man has not come yet into the world. My every effort is to make you aware that the world needs immensely, urgently, the birth of a whole man -- a man who is not split into the inner and the outer. Only this man can make this existence beautiful, can make his awareness a great light, a great joy.

I am, from the very beginning, against this attitude of calling the world illusory. It is a changing reality, it is a flux. In fact, if it were not a changing reality it would have been very boring. Its continuous change of climate, of day into night, of night into day, its continuous change from life to death, from death to life, keeps it interesting, keeps it an adventure, a continuous challenge for investigation into unknown territories.

The same is true about the inner world. If it were also changing, then you would not be the same person for two consecutive days. Yesterday you borrowed money from somebody; the next day, it is not you who is supposed to return it. Somebody else has borrowed -- you are not that person. And if inner and outer both are continuously changing, then against what will you see that they are changing? -- change requires something unchanging as a background.

Your awareness is the center of the cyclone.

Everything around you goes on changing; just you, at the innermost being, remains always the same. With this understanding, I will talk about Ta Hui's sutras.

SPEAKING OF "EMPTY ILLUSION," IT IS ILLUSION WHEN CREATED, AND

ILLUSION WHEN EXPERIENCED TOO

... he is not right in what he is saying, not right according to the experience of enlightenment. He remains an intellectual. He never rises to the heights of intelligence, at least not yet. Perhaps in his future sutras he may be able to enter higher realms, fly a little higher.

But he seems to be very unaware of what he is saying, yet his pretension is that what he is saying, he knows.

The first thing, SPEAKING OF "EMPTY ILLUSION ..." Now this is a repetition of terms.

Illusion is obviously empty. There is no need to call it empty illusion; it is redundant, it is unnecessarily repetitive. Illusion means empty. Illusion means there is no substance in it --

now why call it empty illusion? Are there some illusions which are not empty? What kind of illusions will they be which are not empty, and how can you call them illusions if they have substance? Dreams don't have any substance.

It is possible to use such terms only because he has heard from many masters, he has read many scriptures, but it is not his own experience.

IT IS ILLUSION WHEN CREATED, AND ILLUSION WHEN EXPERIENCED TOO.

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That is absolutely absurd! It is illusion only when you are not aware. The moment you are aware and you experience it, it disappears. You have been dreaming and you wake up -- do you think the dream continues when you are awake? The moment you are awake, the dream is finished. Your awareness and your dreaming cannot continue simultaneously.

The moment somebody becomes enlightened, all that is dream disappears. He finds only pure consciousness all over the universe, just an ocean of consciousness. All the forms that used to appear before have disappeared ... just a formless, universal consciousness. There is no dream anywhere, there is no illusion anywhere. It is because of this experience that he says that people who are living unconsciously are living in illusion. Where they are seeing forms there are no forms; where they are seeing great things there is nothing, no substance.

What is the substance in your ambitions, what is the substance in your greed? What is the substance in your lust, what is the substance in your will to power? Even if you become the most powerful man in the world, an Alexander the Great, what is the substance in it?

When Alexander the Great was coming to India he met one great man, Diogenes. In their dialogue there is one point which is relevant. Diogenes asked him, "What are you going to do after you have conquered the whole world?"

Alexander said, "After I have conquered the whole world, I am going to relax, just like you."

Diogenes was having a sunbath, naked. He lived naked, by the side of a river, and he was lying in the sand enjoying the morning sun and the cool breeze. Diogenes laughed and he said,

"If after conquering the whole world you are just going to relax like me, why not relax right now? Is conquering the whole world a precondition for relaxation? I have not conquered the whole world."

Alexander felt embarrassed because what he was saying was right. Then Diogenes said,

"Why are you wasting your life in conquering the world -- only to relax, finally, just like me.

This bank of the river is big enough, you can come, your friends can come. It is miles long and the forest is beautiful. And I don't possess anything. If you like the place where I am lying down, I can change!"

Alexander said, "Perhaps you are right, but first I have to conquer the world."

Diogenes said, "It is up to you. But remember one thing: have you ever thought that there is no other world? Once you have conquered this world, you will be in difficulty."

It is said that Alexander became immediately sad. He said, "I have never thought about it.

It makes me feel very sad that I am so close to conquering the world ... and I am only thirty-three, and there is no other world to conquer."

Diogenes said, "But you were thinking to relax. If there was another world, I think first you would conquer that and then relax. You will never relax because you don't understand a simple thing about relaxation -- it's either now or never. If you understand it, lie down, throw these clothes in the river. If you don't understand, forget about relaxation. And what is the point in conquering the world? What are you going to gain by it? Except losing your life, you are not going to gain anything."

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heard so many stories about you. But I have never met such a beautiful and impressive man as you. Can I do anything for you? Just a word, a hint from you, and it will be done."

Diogenes said, "If you can just stand a little to the side, because you are preventing the sun. That will be enough gratitude -- and I will remain thankful for my whole life."

When Alexander was leaving him, Diogenes told him, "Remember one thing: you will never be able to come back home because your ambition is too great and life is too short. You will never be able to fulfill your ambitions, and you will never be able to come back home."

And actually it happened that Alexander never could reach back home. He died when he was returning from India, just on the way.

A fictitious story has been prevalent for these two thousand years. The story has some significance, and some historicity also about it, because on the same day Diogenes also died.

Both died on the same day, Alexander a few minutes before, and Diogenes a few minutes after him; hence the story has come into being ...

When they were crossing the river that is the boundary of this world and the kingdom of God, Alexander was ahead of Diogenes, just a few feet ahead, and he heard a laughter from behind. It seemed familiar and he could not believe it -- it was Diogenes. He was very much ashamed, because this time he was also naked. Just to hide his embarrassment, he told Diogenes, "It must be an unprecedented event that on this river a world conqueror, an emperor, is meeting a beggar" -- because Diogenes used to beg.

Diogenes again laughed and said, "You are perfectly right, but on just one point you are wrong."

And Alexander asked, "What is the point?"

Diogenes said, "The emperor is not where you think he is, nor is the beggar where you think. The beggar is ahead of me. You have come losing everything; you are the beggar. I have come living each single moment with such totality and intensity, so rich, so fulfilled, that I can only be called an emperor, not a beggar."

This story seems to be fictitious, because how can one know what happened? But it seems to be significant. The moment you know that life and existence are fleeting phenomena ... it does not mean you have to renounce them; it simply means: before they fly away, squeeze the juice of every moment.

That's where I differ from all the enlightened people of the world. They will say,

"Renounce them, because they are changing." And I will say, "Because they are changing, squeeze the juice quickly. Before they escape, taste them, drink them, rejoice in them. Before the moments go away, make them a celebration, a dance, a song." Because they are fleeting, that does not mean you have to renounce them. It simply means that you should be very alert, so nothing can escape without being squeezed completely.

This world has to be lived as intensely and totally as possible, and it is not against your awareness. In fact, you will have to be very aware not to miss a single moment. So awareness and enjoying this life can grow together simultaneously. And this is my vision of the whole man.

IT IS ILLUSION WHEN CREATED, AND ILLUSION WHEN EXPERIENCED TOO; IT'S ILLUSION WHEN YOU'RE KNOWING AND AWARE ... this is absolutely wrong.

When you are knowing and aware, all that is illusion disappears ... AND ILLUSION WHEN

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YOU'RE LOST IN DELUSION TOO. It is delusion only when you are lost in it. When you are standing aside as a watcher, as a witness, it is just a fleeting phenomenon. That is the meaning of the word 'maya', which illusion does not rightly translate.

You know it -- everything is fleeting. Either you can renounce it, which in the past people have been doing ... but I am against renouncing it. What is the point of renouncing?

Something which is renouncing you, which is every moment going into annihilation ... It is better, it will make you richer, it will make you more mature to take hold of it before it is gone, to live it.

And the man who lives every moment, alert, watchful, knowing perfectly well that there is nothing to cling to -- everything is going away, it will also go away -- he has no misery, no regret, no complaint, no grudge against life. Life is fleeting -- fleeting is its suchness, its thusness. It is its nature -- and your nature is absolutely and eternally the same. Why not enjoy it?

It is true. The roseflower that has blossomed in the morning, will be gone by the evening.

But does that mean destroy it in the morning because it will be gone in the evening? That will be sheer stupidity. But that has been the whole history of all your religions.

I say unto you: because the roseflower which has blossomed in the morning and is dancing in the sun and in the air and in the rain will be gone by the evening ... before it is gone, dance with it, rejoice with it, let its fragrance become part of you. Don't cling to it! When it is there, be grateful to existence. When it is gone, it will leave a beautiful memory in you, a great remembrance. But nothing to be worried about because more and more roses will be coming.

One has to learn the art of living with awareness. To me, that can be the definition of religion: the art of living with awareness -- not renouncing, but rejoicing.

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE ARE ALL ILLUSIONS. TODAY, IF WE REALIZE

OUR WRONG, WE TAKE AN ILLUSORY MEDICINE TO CURE AN EQUALLY

ILLUSORY DISEASE. WHEN THE DISEASE IS CURED, THE MEDICINE IS

REMOVED, AND WE ARE THE SAME PERSON AS BEFORE. IF YOU THINK THAT

THERE IS SOMEONE ELSE OR SOME SPECIAL DOCTRINE, THEN THIS IS THE

VIEW OF A MISGUIDED OUTSIDER.

He himself is an outsider. He does not know what he is saying. He is simply repeating the stale words of all the enlightened people. I say that it is not his experience, because he commits so many mistakes which show that. A man of experience cannot commit those mistakes.

IN THE INSTANT OF MAITREYA'S FINGER-SNAP, SUDHANA WAS EVEN ABLE

TO FORGET THE MEDITATIVE STATES FOSTERED IN HIM BY ALL HIS

TEACHERS: HOW MUCH MORE SO THE BEGINNINGLESS HABIT ENERGY OF

EMPTY FALSEHOOD AND EVIL DEEDS! IF YOU CONSIDER THE MISTAKES

WHICH YOU COMMITTED IN THE PAST AS REAL, THEN THE WORLD RIGHT IN

FRONT OF YOU NOW IS ALL REAL, AND EVEN OFFICIAL POSITION, WEALTH

AND STATUS, GRATITUDE AND LOVE, ARE ALL REAL.

He quotes a very significant incident, but without commenting on it. It is strange. He goes on throwing in big names and incidents just to show his scholarship, his learning. But the incident is so tremendously significant that to talk about it and not to make any comment on it shows that he has not understood what it means.

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IN THE INSTANT OF MAITREYA'S FINGER-SNAP, SUDHANA WAS EVEN ABLE

TO FORGET THE MEDITATIVE STATES FOSTERED IN HIM BY ALL HIS

TEACHERS. The story is that Sudhana was learning with many teachers, many techniques of meditation. And then he came in contact with an enlightened master, Maitreya. As he touched Maitreya's feet and Maitreya looked at him, Maitreya snapped his fingers -- and something strange happened. Sudhana simply became silent. He had never been in such a space, even though he had been practicing meditation, had been living with many teachers. Just this finger-snap ... Perhaps he was just on the verge. It can happen. Just a little push, it can be anything. Just as he was rising from touching his feet and Maitreya snapped his fingers, he may have looked at Maitreya -- what is he doing? For a moment he forgot his mind, all his thoughts, all his meditations. For a moment there was a gap, and that gap opened the doors of eternity.

It can be anything. If a person is just on the verge, then a man who understands and can see inside you, and can see that you are just on the verge ... a little push, and you will have moved into a totally new dimension.

This simple gesture, a finger-snap, and Sudhana became enlightened. He had come to ask many questions, but all questions were finished. He had just touched the feet of Maitreya as a newcomer -- and after this small gesture, he had to touch the feet of Maitreya again, just to thank him. Not a single word was said by Maitreya, not a single word was said by Sudhana ...

and everything happened.

When Sudhana left, Maitreya said to his other disciples, "Look, you are working so hard, and I have been beating you so hard ..." And he told them that Gautam Buddha was right when he said that there are a few men who are like the horses which will not move unless you beat them really hard, and there are a few men who are like a different kind of horse -- just a little hit by your feet is enough for them to move. And there are horses which don't need even that; just the shadow of your whip will be enough.

"I have heard it," Maitreya said, "but for the first time I have seen a man who belongs to the third category of horses. Just the shadow of the whip, not even the whip, and he has moved into the other world."

Ta Hui mentions this great incident, but without commenting at all about it. It is very strange that one can talk about such great incidents and not comment at all. Perhaps he has not understood it. Perhaps he belongs to the first category of horses!

IF YOUR MIND DOES NOT RUN OFF SEARCHING, OR THINK FALSELY, OR GET

INVOLVED WITH OBJECTS, THEN THIS VERY BURNING HOUSE OF PASSION IS

ITSELF THE PLACE TO ESCAPE THE THREE WORLDS.

What he is saying is right: You don't have to go anywhere. Mind is always interested in going somewhere. Mind is American, always going somewhere -- it does not matter where.

What matters is going.

I have heard about a couple ... the husband is driving the car so fast, and the wife is concerned. She goes on saying, "At least you should look at the map! Are we on the right road or the wrong road for where we are going?"

And the husband snapped back, "You shut up! You don't see how fast we are going. It does not matter where we are going, what matters is the speed, just the joy of speed."

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I have heard that Ronald Reagan was visiting Greece and had gone to see an old volcano.

He looked inside, deep in the volcano, and he said to the guide, "My God, it looks like hell."

And the guide said, "You Americans, you have been everywhere!"

Mind is American, that is absolutely certain; otherwise there is no need to move anywhere.

Wherever you are is the place of your enlightenment.

... THE PLACE TO ESCAPE THE THREE WORLDS -- hell and earth and heaven. In Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, all the three religions born outside of India -- heaven is the ultimate. But the religions born in India don't think of heaven as the ultimate. To be free from all these three is their ultimate goal, and that fourth is called moksha -- authentic liberation.

Heaven is nothing but a holiday resort. You have earned some money and then you rush to a holiday resort. Heaven is nothing according to the Eastern religions, only a holiday resort.

You have earned a little virtue, you have donated to charitable causes, you have been running orphanages, and things like that; these things are absolutely needed, otherwise you will not be able to get into heaven, because from where will you get your bank account to be opened in heaven?

Bertrand Russell was right when he said that if there is no poverty in the world, if everybody is comfortable, happy, living joyously, all so-called saints will disappear. Who would need their services? These saints need people to be poor, to be orphans, to be beggars, so that they can earn virtue. Virtue is a kind of currency that is used in heaven.

According to Indian religions, when you reach heaven you live there as long as your account lasts, and when your account is finished you are back on the earth -- again the business of earning virtue. So they call these "the three worlds." A few people open their accounts in hell by doing evil acts. They also come back. When their account is finished and they have been tortured enough, they also come back.

This earth, this world, is just a place from where people go in all directions -- and they go on coming back. When the account is finished, they have to come back here. This is a vicious circle.

The Eastern religions call it the circle of birth and death. And to be totally free from it, they have a different name -- which is not available in the religions born outside of India --

moksha, or nirvana. That means now you have gone forever, the point of no return. You will not be coming back again.

You can leave all the three worlds just from the place where you are. You don't have to move anywhere -- to the Himalayas, to some caves, to some monasteries. All you have to do is to move withinwards, to your awareness.

DID NOT BUDDHA SAY, "NOT DEPENDING ON, OR ABIDING IN, ANY

SITUATION, NOT HAVING ANY DISCRIMINATION, ONE CLEARLY SEES THE

VAST ESTABLISHMENT OF REALITY AND REALIZES THAT ALL WORLDS AND

ALL THINGS ARE EQUAL AND NONDUAL."

THOUGH A BODHISATTVA OF THE "FAR-GOING" STAGE APPEARS TO ACT

THE SAME AS OUTSIDERS, HE DOES NOT ABANDON THE BUDDHIST

TEACHINGS; THOUGH HE APPEARS TO GO ALONG WITH ALL THAT IS

WORLDLY, HE'S PERPETUALLY PRACTICING ALL WORLD-TRANSCENDING

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WAYS. THESE ARE THE REAL EXPEDIENT DEVICES WITHIN THE BURNING

HOUSE OF PASSION ...

ONLY HAVING PENETRATED ALL THE WAY THROUGH CAN YOU SAY THAT

AFFLICTION IS ITSELF ENLIGHTENMENT AND IGNORANCE IS IDENTICAL TO

GREAT WISDOM. WITHIN THE WONDROUS no-MIND ... I am saying "no-mind." Ta Hui continues to say "mind" -- and that is absolutely wrong. Gautam Buddha's whole teaching is based on no-mind, on going beyond mind.

... WITHIN THE WONDROUS no-MIND OF THE ORIGINAL VAST QUIESCENCE --

PURE, CLEAR, PERFECT ILLUMINATION -- THERE IS NOT A SINGLE THING THAT

CAN CAUSE OBSTRUCTION. IT IS LIKE THE EMPTINESS OF SPACE ... He is saying: You can live in the world and yet not be of the world. You can live in the world and not allow the world to live in you. All that is needed is a little watchfulness.

A small story in the end ... Just as you have heard the name of Cleopatra -- one of the most beautiful women of Egypt -- in the East, equivalent to Cleopatra, we have the name of a beautiful woman contemporary to Gautam Buddha, Amrapali.

Buddha was staying in Vaishali, where Amrapali lived. Amrapali was a prostitute. In Buddha's time, in this country, it was a convention that the most beautiful woman of any city will not be allowed to get married to any one person, because that will create unnecessary jealousy, conflict, fighting. So the most beautiful woman had to become nagarvadhu -- the wife of the whole town.

It was not disrespectable at all; on the contrary, just as in the contemporary world we declare beautiful women as "the woman of the year", they were very much respected. They were not ordinary prostitutes. Their function was that of a prostitute, but they were only visited by the very rich, or the kings, or the princes, generals -- the highest strata of society.

Amrapali was very beautiful. One day she was standing on her terrace and she saw a young Buddhist monk. She had never fallen in love with anybody, although every day she had to pretend to be a great lover to this king, to that king, to this rich man, to that general. But she fell suddenly in love with the man, a Buddhist monk who had nothing, just a begging bowl --

a young man, but of a tremendous presence, awareness, grace. The way he was walking ... She rushed down, she asked the monk, "Please -- today accept my food."

Other monks were also coming behind him, because whenever Buddha was moving anywhere, ten thousand monks were always moving with him. The other monks could not believe this. They were jealous and angry and feeling all human qualities and frailties as they saw the young man enter the palace of Amrapali.

Amrapali told him, "After three days the rainy season is going to start ..." Buddhist monks don't move for four months when it is the rainy season. Those are the four months they stay in one place; for eight months they continuously move, they can't stay more than three days in one place.

It is a strange psychology, if you have watched yourself ... You can watch it: to be attached to some place it takes you at least four days. For example, for the first day in a new house you may not be able to sleep, the second day it will be little easier, the third day it will be even easier, and the fourth day you will be able to sleep perfectly at home. So before that, if you are a Buddhist monk, you have to leave.

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Amrapali said, "After just three days the rainy season is to begin, and I invite you to stay in my house for the four months."

The young monk said, "I will ask my master. If he allows me, I will come."

As he went out there was a crowd of monks standing, asking him what had happened. He said, "I have taken my meal, and the woman has asked me to stay the four months of the rainy season in her palace. I told her that I will ask my master."

People were really angry -- one day was already too much; but four months continuously ...! They rushed towards Gautam Buddha. Before the young man could reach the assembly, there were hundreds standing up and telling Gautam Buddha, "This man has to be stopped. That woman is a prostitute, and a monk staying four months in a prostitute's house ..."

Buddha said, "You keep quiet! Let him come. He has not agreed to stay; he has agreed only if I allow him. Let him come."

The young monk came, touched the feet of Buddha and told the whole story, "The woman is a prostitute, a famous prostitute, Amrapali. She has asked me to stay for four months in her house. Every monk will be staying somewhere, in somebody's house, for the four months. I have told her that I will ask my master, so I am here ... whatever you say."

Buddha looked into his eyes and said, "You can stay."

It was a shock. Ten thousand monks ... There was great silence, but great anger, great jealousy. They could not believe that Buddha has allowed a monk to stay in a prostitute's house. After three days the young man left to stay with Amrapali, and the monks every day started bringing gossips, "The whole city is agog. There is only one talk -- that a Buddhist monk is staying with Amrapali for four months continuously."

Buddha said, "You should keep silent. Four months will pass and I trust my monk. I have looked into his eyes -- there was no desire. If I had said no, he would not have felt anything. I said yes ... he simply went. And I trust in my monk, in his awareness, in his meditation.

"Why are you getting so agitated and worried? If my monk's meditation is deep then he will change Amrapali, and if his meditation is not deep then Amrapali may change him. It is now a question between meditation and a biological attraction. Just wait for four months. I trust my young man. He has been doing perfectly well and I have every certainty he will come out of this fire test absolutely victorious."

Nobody believed Gautam Buddha. His own disciples thought, "He is trusting too much.

The man is too young; he is too fresh and Amrapali is much too beautiful. He is taking an unnecessary risk." But there was nothing else to do.

After four months the young man came, touched Buddha's feet -- and following him was Amrapali, dressed as a Buddhist nun. She touched Buddha's feet and she said, "I tried my best to seduce your monk, but he seduced me. He convinced me by his presence and awareness that the real life is at your feet. I want to give all my possessions to the commune of your monks."

She had a very beautiful garden and a beautiful palace. She said, "You can make it a place where ten thousand monks can stay in any rainy season."

And Buddha said to the assembly, "Now, are you satisfied or not?"

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If meditation is deep, if awareness is clear, nothing can disturb it. Then everything is ephemeral. Amrapali became one of the enlightened women among Buddha's disciples.

So the whole question is: wherever you are, become more centered, become more alert, live more consciously. There is nowhere else to go. Everything that has to happen, has to happen within you, and it is in your hands. You are not a puppet, and your strings are not in anybody else's hands. You are an absolutely free individual. If you decide to remain in illusions, you can remain so for many, many lives. If you decide to get out, a single moment's decision is enough.

You can be out of all illusions this very moment.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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13

Nothingness

21 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

NOTHING TO BE GIVEN

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANYTHING TO GIVE TO PEOPLE, ONLY FOLKS WHO

HAVE BEEN ABLE TO POINT OUT THE ROAD FOR PEOPLE. AN ANCIENT

WORTHY SAID, "HAVING SOME ATTAINMENT IS THE JACKAL'S YELP; HAVING

NO ATTAINMENT IS THE LION'S ROAR."

BUDDHA WAS SOMEONE WHO HAD MASTERED ADAPTATION: IN THE

COURSE OF FORTY-NINE YEARS, IN MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY

ASSEMBLIES WHERE HE TAUGHT THE DHARMA, HE GUIDED PEOPLE

ACCORDING TO THEIR INDIVIDUAL FACULTIES. THUS HE PREACHED WITH ONE

VOICE THROUGH ALL REALMS, WHILE SENTIENT BEINGS EACH OBTAINED

BENEFITS ACCORDING TO THEIR KIND. IT'S LIKE: "ONE GUST OF THE EAST

WIND, AND THE MYRIAD GRASSES ALL BEND DOWN." THE DHARMA PREACHED BY THE BUDDHA IS ALSO LIKE THIS.

IF HE HAD HAD THE INTENT TO CREATE BENEFIT IN ALL REALMS, THEN

THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN PREACHING THE DHARMA EGOTISTICALLY. TO

WANT TO CAUSE MYRIAD BEINGS TO GAIN DELIVERANCE ACCORDING TO

THEIR KIND -- ISN'T THIS AFTER ALL IMPOSSIBLE? HAVEN'T YOU READ HOW

SARIPUTTA, AT THE ASSEMBLY WHERE THE PERFECTION OF WISDOM WAS

PREACHED, ASKED MANJUSHRI, "DON'T ALL BUDDHAS, THE TATHAGATAS, AWAKEN TO THE REALM OF TRUTH?" MANJUSHRI SAID, "NO, SARIPUTTA.

EVEN THE BUDDHAS CANNOT BE FOUND: HOW COULD THERE BE BUDDHAS

WHO AWAKEN TO THE REALM OF TRUTH? EVEN THE REALM OF TRUTH

CANNOT BE FOUND: HOW COULD IT BE REALIZED BY THE BUDDHAS?" SEE

HOW THOSE TWO MEN SPURRED EACH OTHER ON THIS WAY. WHEN DID THEY

EVER SET THEIR MINDS ON ANYTHING? ALL THE BUDDHAS AND ALL THE

PATRIARCHS SINCE ANTIQUITY HAVE HAD A STYLE LIKE THIS IN HELPING

PEOPLE. IT'S JUST THAT LATER DESCENDENTS HAVE LOST THE ESSENCE OF

THE SCHOOL AND SET UP THEIR OWN INDIVIDUAL SECTS, MAKING UP

STRANGE THINGS AND CONCOCTING MARVELS.

It is beautiful when Ta Hui simply quotes the words of the awakened ones. But the moment he brings himself in, the whole glory and the splendor is lost. He is trying hard to pretend that he is enlightened, but he cannot hide it -- he cannot hide it from eyes which can look deep into his very self. It will be a great event when he realizes his pretensions.

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experience is absolutely nil. but I hope that slowly, slowly he is coming closer to realize this, because now he is not adding his own statements, he is just quoting the buddhas.

The first sutra is a very ancient one it has not even originated with Gautam Buddha.

Perhaps all the awakened ones have emphasized the fact -- they have to because it is so real and so significant, it has to be told to the people -- that the master cannot give anything to you.

If he could, he would have given you everything. But as far as enlightenment is concerned it is absolutely your individual, private territory. Nobody can interfere with it.

Then what is the purpose of the master? His purpose is to take away from you things which you think you are. His purpose is negative -- he simply takes away your false conceptions. And once all false conceptions are taken away from you, that which is real illuminates in all its beauty. He has not given you anything, but he has removed all the obstructions, all the hindrances which you were clinging to.

The moment you become enlightened, you will know that this experience has been always with you -- just your eyes were closed. The master tries in every way, with arbitrary devices, to wake you up. Once you are awake nothing has to be said, because you are seeing yourself.

And the experience of enlightenment is exactly the same.

Ta Hui is quoting the ancient sutra:

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANYTHING TO GIVE TO PEOPLE, ONLY FOLKS WHO

HAVE BEEN ABLE TO POINT OUT THE ROAD FOR PEOPLE.

The actual words of Buddha are: "I can show you the path, but you will have to travel it. I cannot travel it for you. Not that I don't want to, but it is simply not in the nature of things."

... ABLE TO POINT OUT THE ROAD FOR PEOPLE. AN ANCIENT WORTHY SAID,

"HAVING SOME ATTAINMENT IS THE JACKAL'S YELP; HAVING NO

ATTAINMENT IS THE LION'S ROAR."

On the path there are many moments when you will feel, "I have attained it, I have got it."

Remember a criterion: whenever the idea arises in you, "I have got it," you are without any doubt wrong. The very idea, "I have got it," means an ego achievement. You are there and some goal has been achieved. It may be some beautiful experience, but still illusory; hence THE ANCIENT WORTHY SAYS, "HAVING SOME ATTAINMENT IS THE JACKAL'S

YELP; HAVING NO ATTAINMENT IS THE LION'S ROAR."

On the path that moment comes when the seeker is lost, and the desire to attain anything leaves you. As you are not there, who is going to attain? When you are so simple and innocent that you cannot manage to say "I," there is no question of attainment -- because there is no attaining mind. But this is the attainment: losing everything, even the seeker. You have found what the seeker was seeking, but now there is nobody to declare it.

Then comes just a lion's roar: a simple recognition with no word. You explode into a rejoicing, into a dance -- all is lost. And when you are standing in a state of utter nothingness, from the other side all is gained.

But those words do not apply any more, and you cannot say, "I have attained it." It is a simple recognition that it has been always with you; hence the lion's roar.

BUDDHA WAS SOMEONE WHO HAD MASTERED ADAPTATION: IN THE

COURSE OF FORTY-NINE YEARS, IN MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY

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ASSEMBLIES WHERE HE TAUGHT THE DHARMA, HE GUIDED PEOPLE

ACCORDING TO THEIR INDIVIDUAL FACULTIES.

Ta Hui's statement is true. Buddha does not believe in the collective mind, he believes in individual consciousness. Perhaps he is the first man to declare that the very existence of God deprives man of his individuality. His reason for denying God is not theological -- he is not an atheist. His denial of God is to declare that individual consciousness is the highest growth in existence: nobody is above it.

All the religions think that God created the world -- he created man, he created woman and everything that is in the world. To Buddha it is a very insulting, humiliating idea. If God can create, he can uncreate at any moment; you are just puppets in the hands of a puppeteer. Then all talk of individuality and freedom and enlightenment is just futile. God has to be removed as a hypothesis because he is the greatest hindrance to your individuality.

Nietzsche recognized it, after twenty-five centuries, in a different context, but the realization is the same. He said, "God is dead and now man is free!" If God is still alive man cannot be free -- how can you be free?

The very idea of all the religions that god created man out of mud ... that's the meaning of

'humus', from which comes the word 'human'. That is also the meaning of Adam -- Adam means mud. God made Adam out of mud and then breathed life into him. It is almost like creating a toy. What freedom, what individuality, what liberation exists for a puppet?

Buddha dropped the hypothesis of God twenty-five centuries before it was a great, rebellious idea. Nietzsche was only a thinker, he could not influence many people. But Buddha dropped God in favor of man's consciousness, so that it can grow unhindered, so that his privacy is sacred and nobody can enter into it. The religions say that God is watching you every moment. In the sight of God you don't have any privacy.

I have heard about a nun who used to take a bath in her bathroom with closed doors, but always keeping her clothes on. Other nuns became a little suspicious, "Is she a little crazy or what?" So they asked her, "What is the matter? The doors are closed, you can remove your clothes."

She said, "But, God is omniscient. He looks every moment in every place. Are you suggesting to me to be naked before God?" But the poor woman did not understand that if God's eyes can penetrate walls they can penetrate clothes, they can penetrate your skeleton.

The very idea of God is inhuman, and Buddha was the first man to recognize the fact that as long as God exists, man will remain a slave. God has to be completely dropped as a useless hypothesis. Then man is absolutely free, individual, has his own private world of consciousness and realization. Any master worth calling a master always takes each individual and teaches him according to his potentialities, according to the stage where he is. This sometimes creates discrepancies, contradictions, but they cannot be avoided, because it is impossible to talk to each individual.

For example I have to talk to you all. And I am not only talking to you; what I am saying to you is going to reach around the world to all of my people. When I am talking to you I am also talking to them. As far as I am concerned they are as much present to me as you all. But it creates a problem: I am saying something which may be applicable to a certain individual and may not be applicable to somebody else. In their past lives they have grown different individualities, and they have come to different points.

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Just last night we saw how Maitreya did not say anything to Sudhana but just a finger-snap, which was absolutely absurd, unrelated to anything ... but he clicked his fingers and something transpired through that small gesture: Sudhana became enlightened. He was already ready, just standing on the border line, and this simple gesture pushed him.

But there are thick skulls! You go on hammering on them, and they think some kind of massage is being ... You go on telling them the most profound truths, and they think it is a great entertainment. Enlightenment to them is nothing but a curiosity. They don't want to become enlightened, but they want to understand -- perhaps sometime it may be a good dimension to explore.

One great master from Sri Lanka was dying. He called all his disciples, and his last words were, "You have been listening for almost half a century, but you go on listening, accumulating knowledge, and nothing seems to change in your being. So as a last resort I have decided that those who want to become enlightened I will take with me. I am dying; they will have to die with me. So if anyone is really interested, stand up!"

Thousands of monks ... and they started looking at each other -- "You are senior, you should stand up. You, a great knower, should stand up. You are so learned in scriptures, you give such beautiful sermons, now is the time -- get up!" But nobody was getting up.

The old man said, "I don't have much time." Then a man raised his hand, but he also did not get up. The old man said, "Just raising the hand won't do. Stand up"

The man said, "Forgive me, but I have many other things to do first. I am raising my hand to enquire, because you will be gone and I don't know anybody else who can show me the way. In short, just tell me! If some day my work is finished, my complicated affairs are settled. I may follow but right now ... please forgive me. Don't misunderstand my hand --

that's why I am not standing, only the hand is standing. I don't want to become enlightened right now, but I would like to know the right path."

The old man said, "For half a century I have been talking about the right path, and you have not understood it. How can you understand with in a few minutes? -- because my time has come. But this has given me a great insight that your curiosity, your enquiry, was not for enlightenment. It was a kind of spiritual entertainment."

So there are different people ... There are people who are ready; they need just a small help, just the shadow of a whip. And there are people who would not budge from their state of affairs, even if all the buddhas of the past and the present and the future were trying to make them enlightened. Nobody can make you enlightened unless it has become your own innermost longing.

Individuals differ, hence Gautam Buddha was always giving instructions to individuals.

He was speaking in big assemblies of thousands of monks but he was answering a particular individual and his question. Or he was saying something to a person who was not even aware that it is being said to him. But the person who is ready will catch it immediately, whether he understands that it is especially for him ... It will start working in his being.

Because of differences in individuals the teaching cannot be a philosophical system. It cannot be logical non-contradictory. It has to be multi-dimensional. And Ta Hui is right when he says ... HE GUIDED PEOPLE ACCORDING TO THEIR INDIVIDUAL FACULTIES. He is talking about Gautam Buddha. It seems he has come to a little sense. He is no longer calling him the pale face, the old barbarian ...

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THROUGH ALL REALMS, WHILE SENTIENT BEINGS EACH OBTAINED

BENEFITS ACCORDING TO THEIR KIND. IT IS LIKE: "ONE GUST OF THE EAST

WIND,.. The quotation is from Gautam Buddha but so beautiful and so poetic ... "ONE GUST

OF THE EAST WIND, AND THE MYRIAD GRASSES ALL BEND DOWN."

Just when I come in and I see you bending down I remember the statement of Gautam Buddha: "ONE GUST OF THE EAST WIND, AND ALL THE GRASSES BEND DOWN."

A man of enlightenment is nothing but a gust of the east wind. Just his being present is enough for those who are capable of some intelligence, who are not prejudiced, who are open and available like the open sky, and who are as innocent as the trees, as the grasses ... it is irresistible not to bow down. You are not stone statues. But there are idiots in the world ...

Just a few days ago there were seventy people from THE TIMES OF INDIA group of papers. This is the biggest organization of papers, the biggest network, in India -- and the oldest. The owners were all here except for one person, the owner himself, who has been in love with me for a long time, since when he was a small child and I used to stay in their house in Calcutta.

He wanted to become a sannyasin -- he had been here in the ashram before for a few days to meditate, but his father is very much against me. For two reasons his father is against me.

First, that boy is his only son, and they are one of the topmost super-rich people in India. He is afraid that his son becomes a sannyasin, then who is going to take over his great empire? And the fear that he may start helping the movement with his money ... And secondly he was angry with me, although we had not even quarreled or harmed each other. He was so afraid of me that when I used to stay in their house -- because his wife has always been interested in me --

he would go out of town immediately. Until I left their house he would not come home again.

Just a casual encounter and there may be some trouble ...

The second reason for his antagonism towards me was that his wife had asked me, "When a wife ceases to love the husband, is it right to sleep with him?"

I said, "That is prostitution! One has to be very sincere about it. If you don't love him, you have to say it. Don't try to pretend -- at least in matters like love."

Then she asked me, "If the wife loves somebody else ...?"

I said, "Love is the highest law, and you should not be dominated by any lower law of morality, of society. When you are following the highest law, nothing goes wrong."

She was asking these questions not just out of curiosity or for somebody else; she was asking for herself. The husband was angry that I had supported his wife, and he was worried --

the wife is already impressed with me, the son is impressed and the daughter is impressed.

So he prevented the son, made it clear that, "If you become a sannyasin I will disown you.

With my money you cannot help a movement that I don't like, a man who has been disturbing our old tradition, our religion, our morality and who is corrupting the mind of the youth." Now the son has become the director of THE TIMES OF INDIA group of papers, and the daughter also -- associate director.

So they were here, the mother was here, and seventy people from the staff. They insisted that they wanted their questions to be answered. I agreed, because of a long relationship with their family. But when I came in I was surprised, those seventy persons were sitting like stone statues. They could not even answer my greeting, with folded hands. I was initiating the Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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greeting but they could not raise their hands. It was hilarious that because of those seventy people ... The wife, who is really now the owner of the whole thing because the husband is absolutely weak and cannot do anything that the wife does not want, she is now the queen of the whole empire that they have created ... even she was sitting like a stone statue, worried about those seventy people -- what if they see her? And greeting is a common practice; even on the street if you see a stranger, just to greet him ... The only person who greeted me was Sameer the young man who wanted to become a sannyasin.

The girl Nandita greeted me in a very strange situation: on one side was Sameer, greeting me just as any sannyasin, in the middle was her mother who was sitting like a dead corpse, and behind them the seventy corpses. The girl wanted to greet me, but she could not go the whole way. She compromised; she just raised her hands this much. She could not bring them together -- a compromise. But when all these three saw me the next day, they all touched my feet. People have such public faces and such private faces!

But I was really feeling sad for those seventy people. They had come just to listen to me, to the answers -- to the questions ... and I devoted the whole meeting to their questions. If they cannot even greet me, do you think they can understand me?

The east wind comes -- only dead trees will remain static. All the living trees will start bowing down.

These are the foremost journalists of the country, but with such prejudiced minds! I have answered their questions, but they don't have the guts to publish their own interview in their own newspapers! They are afraid of the government, they are afraid of the public, and perhaps they are afraid of themselves -- "What people will say? ... because you listened to all this hammering on journalists and you could not speak a word ...

"Looking at them ... finally I decided not to look at them, because looking at them was such a pitiable scene. I simply forgot all about them. I looked at my people who are unprejudiced, open, available -- and if the east wind comes to them, they will rejoice in its coolness.

In India the east wind is a special symbol, it has a meaning to it ... From the east the coolest wind comes, very soothing to the heart, very refreshing to your whole being. But it cannot do anything to a corpse, neither can it give him coolness nor freshness. On the contrary, the corpse will give the cool wind its disgusting foul odor.

Buddha is saying, ONE GUST OF THE EAST WIND, AND THE MYRIAD GRASSES

ALL BEND DOWN." THE DHARMA PREACHED BY THE BUDDHA IS ALSO LIKE

THIS.

IF HE HAD HAD THE INTENT TO CREATE BENEFIT IN ALL REALMS, THEN

THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN PREACHING THE DHARMA EGOTISTICALLY.

Buddha preaches without any intention. He preaches the way flowers release their perfume

-- without any intention. Even in the loneliest forest where nobody ever goes, when the flower opens it petals it releases its perfume. It is not a question of waiting for somebody to appreciate. It is not intentional. It is spontaneous.

Ta Hui, at least on this point, is right -- and he is right perhaps because he himself is teaching with an intent to change people, TO CREATE BENEFIT IN ALL REALMS. And he is becoming a little aware of the fact that he himself does not know it; he has heard about it, and he is clever enough to manage intellectually to give it a form -- systematized and logical Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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and rational. But one cannot deceive oneself for long. Sooner or later one comes to know: What I am saying is not my experience, because my actions don't show that they are coming from an enlightened being.

TO WANT TO CAUSE MYRIAD BEINGS TO GAIN DELIVERANCE ACCORDING

TO THEIR KIND -- IS NOT THIS AFTER ALL IMPOSSIBLE? HAVE NOT YOU READ

HOW SARIPUTTA, AT THE ASSEMBLY WHERE THE PERFECTION OF WISDOM

WAS PREACHED, ASKED MANJUSHRI ...

These two are very intimate disciples of Gautam Buddha, perhaps the most learned. But they dropped all their learning. The dialogue between them has to be very minutely and very lovingly understood, because this is how Buddhist enlightened people had been talking to each other for centuries. This is something special to Buddhism, in no other religion does such a thing happen. Both are enlightened beings.

Sariputta asked, "DON'T ALL BUDDHAS, THE TATHAGATAS, AWAKEN TO THE

REALM OF TRUTH? He knows the answer but he is simply asking Manjushri, who has just become enlightened.

Manjushri said: NO, SARIPUTTA. EVEN THE BUDDHAS CANNOT BE FOUND: HOW COULD THERE BE BUDDHAS WHO AWAKEN TO THE REALM OF TRUTH?

The question was just to test how deep Manjushri has reached into his enlightenment. And Manjushri shows a tremendous insight. He says, "When you become enlightened you are no more. You don't find a buddha. You are no longer a person, you are only a presence. And when there is no buddha, how could there be any truth to be found? Who will find it? The seeker, the searcher, the finder is no more -- who will find the truth?

"EVEN THE REALM OF TRUTH CANNOT BE FOUND: HOW COULD IT BE

REALIZED BY THE BUDDHAS?" That which cannot be found certainly cannot be realized.

Ta Hui does not understand the intention of this small dialogue. He thinks, SEE HOW

THOSE TWO MEN SPURRED EACH OTHER ON THIS WAY. They have reached beyond the way; there is no question of being spurred by each other! Sariputta is simply trying to find how much depth there is to Manjushri's enlightenment -- and he is perfectly satisfied.

Enlightenment means: you become only a presence, and that very presence is the truth.

There are not two persons -- the finder and the found. the seeker has dissolved, and what has remained is just a pure awareness with no identity, with no personality, with no ego. This very presence is truth. There is no other truth than your awareness.

But Ta Hui does not say that Sariputta was immensely satisfied that Manjushri has reached to this place. His question was not a curiosity; his question was to fathom the depth.

Manjushri has just gone through the transformation, and this was a usual practice among Buddha's disciples: when somebody becomes enlightened, all other enlightened people will ask him strange questions -- not that they don't know the answer, they want to hear the answer from this man who has freshly entered into the eternal source of life.

But Ta Hui has left the dialogue incomplete. Sariputta was over-enjoyed, and he said to Manjushri, "So you have reached! Now there is nothing more, nowhere else to go. You have found your authentic reality." Because Ta Hui does not say that, my feeling is he has not understood the purpose of the dialogue.

WHEN DID THEY EVER SET THEIR MINDS ON ANYTHING?

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He cannot yet conceive the space of no-mind. He remains in the mind. Once in a while he comes to the very boundary of the mind, but then he again goes back; he does not step out of it. For example, this dialogue could have helped him to come out of the mind. There are no buddhas in enlightenment; there is no realization of truth in enlightenment, but only a pure presence, a pure life, pure consciousness but that is what we call the buddha, that is what we call the truth.

But Ta Hui's approach is through the intellect and the mind, so he finishes by commenting: SEE HOW THOSE TWO MEN SPURRED EACH OTHER ON THIS WAY. WHEN DID

THEY EVER SET THEIR MINDS ON ANYTHING? ALL THE BUDDHAS AND ALL

THE PATRIARCHS SINCE ANTIQUITY HAVE HAD A STYLE LIKE THIS IN HELPING

PEOPLE.

They are not helping. The dialogue is not a question of helping, because both are enlightened. There are millions of dialogues ... so beautiful. I have been thinking sometimes just to talk about those dialogues which have happened between enlightened people.

For example, Lin Chi is standing on a bridge with his master. He says, "Master, is it true"

-- because Buddha says everything is a flux -- "that we are standing on a bridge which is in a flux? -- it is dangerous. The river is moving, that is true, but the bridge is not moving."

The master hit Lin Chi and told him, "You idiot! The river is not moving, the bridge is moving. Meditate over it!" And Lin Chi had to meditate over it and recognized ... in a certain silence the bridge is also moving, but very slowly. To say that the river is moving is meaningless because the very meaning of the word 'river' is movement; to say "movement is moving" is absurd. But the bridge that looks stable and permanent is moving, it is getting old.

One day it will collapse. It is not a fast runner -- very slow movement, so slow that you cannot detect it.

He went back to the master and said, "Forgive me. The river is not moving, the bridge is moving. River means movement, so there is no point in saying that it is moving. The real question is the bridge."

And the master said, "You managed to see. In the right perspective, even mountains are moving, even stars are moving, because everything is in a flux. The river is moving so fast that you can see it, but that which you can see is not a great realization ... until you start seeing that which is happening that you are not aware of.

IT IS JUST THAT LATER DESCENDENTS HAVE LOST THE ESSENCE OF THE

SCHOOL AND SET UP THEIR OWN INDIVIDUAL SECTS ... He himself belongs to an individual sect, and he is saying, IT IS JUST THAT LATER DESCENDENTS HAVE LOST

THE ESSENCE OF THE SCHOOL ...

He knows it from his very inner feeling: he has also lost the essence, and he has also become part of a sec ... MAKING UP STRANGE THINGS AND CONCOCTING

MARVELS. But it seems he is becoming a little alert about the situation; there is every possibility, because however asleep a man may be, he is going to awake sooner or later.

I would love to see Ta Hui ... before he ends his sutras I would love to be able to say to you that he has come home. He wandered much; he went astray many times; he committed great mistakes, but all that can be forgiven if he comes back home. If he realizes even in the last sutra the essence of enlightenment, then everything else can be forgiven.

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Man is very frail, very vulnerable. Ta Hui is not an exception. When he called Gautam Buddha "the barbarian" he was at the farthest point from realization; -- he was lost in a jungle.

To call Buddha a barbarian means there is no hope for man, ever. Buddha is a great hope in the sense that he has shown what is hidden in man's being, and he has brought it more clearly than anybody else in the world.

Bertrand Russell remembers ... He lived a long life, almost one century and saw many things happening -- a long life of tremendous changes, revolutions, wars. He was brought up with a very fanatic Christian conditioning, but he was a man of tremendous intelligence and courage. He dropped all that conditioning because he looked into THE BIBLE with an open mind -- not as a Christian -- and he found so many stupid statements that he had to write a book: WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN.

But he remarks in his autobiography: "Although I have dropped almost all my conditioning, it is an impossible task -- even through the conditioning has been dropped, some traces somewhere have still remained. I became aware of those traces because when I read Gautam Buddha I was immensely satisfied that this is the man, the greatest man who has walked on the earth. But then suddenly something in me felt uneasy -- how can somebody be a greater man than Jesus Christ. And I was amazed; I had been thinking that I am no longer a Christian!"

He has criticized Jesus on many points, and with such clear logic that no theologian of Christianity has been able to answer him -- and I suspect even Jesus may not have been able to answer him! His questions are very clear.

For example he says, "Jesus goes on talking about compassion, love: 'Love your enemies, love your neighbors'" -- which is an even more difficult thing because enemies live far away.

You don't have to bother about them the whole time, but the neighbors are very close enemies continuously harassing you in some way or other. Christians call Jesus a prince of peace, but Bertrand Russell finds in THE BIBLE incidents which prove that Jesus was not a man of peace. And he is caught up in such stupid incidents that there is no way to clean it up or to explain it away.

One day they had been hungry -- he and his followers -- because the people of the town had refused to give them any food. Jesus was so angry that when he came close to a fig tree ...

it was not the season for figs and the tree was without any fruits, but he was so blind in anger that he cursed the tree, "You will always remain an ugly tree because the only begotten son of God has come to you, and you are not ready with fruits -- with no welcome!"

Bertrand Russell says, "Intellectually I understand perfectly that Gautam Buddha is perhaps the highest expression; Jesus is no comparison to him. But somewhere deep down I could not manage ... the most I could do was to say that both were equal. I could not put Jesus Christ lower than Gautam Buddha knowing perfectly well that Gautam Buddha is far higher.

But that is only intellectual understanding. The conditioning goes into the unconscious, and the unconscious becomes restless unless you satisfy it. As he accepted that perhaps they are both of equal status, the restlessness disappeared.

And this is from a man who is very intelligent, a genius -- not only about the world but about himself also. He is watching how his mind functions. His intellect is saying that it is absolutely certain, but his unconscious feels disturbed. The unconscious is nine times bigger than your conscious, and to feel the unconscious disturbed is a kind of sickness, a nausea. To Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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settle it down he agrees that both Buddha and Jesus are equal, and immediately the restlessness disappears.

Ta Hui is an intellectual. Calling Buddha a barbarian, sooner or later he must have realized that that was going too far -- and it was too ugly.

I hope that he will come back. Even if he can come back at the last moment of his death, everything else can be forgiven. It is human to forgive ... The ancient saying is, "It is human to err and it is divine to forgive." I want a little change in it: "It is human to err, it is more human to forgive." Why bring in the divine unnecessarily? The scientific mind always tries to have as few hypotheses as possible.

Maneesha had asked last night, seeing that Ta Hui has not proved a great treasure of enlightenment, "We can finish the discourses on Ta Hui tonight ..."

I said; "No, because that will be an injustice. I have hammered him. If he can come back home I would like to appreciate him also; so I will go through all the sutras.

I don't know what is going to happen in them. But a man, even though he may be an intellectual ... if he continues, sooner or later he is going to recognize that he is going round and round in a circle. There is much more than this continuous circle, but that much more can be seen only if you stand out of the circle as a witness. And I think he is capable -- because everybody is capable. It is only a question of when you turn inwards, only a question of when you drop your pretensions and hypocrisies.

So I will wait for two weeks -- she says there will be sutras for two weeks more. If he goes astray, he will get hit. But my feeling is, a man who is interested may realize at some point that what he is doing is only intellectual gymnastics -- and that may prove a turning point in his life. If it happens, then this whole series on Ta Hui will be of immense significance, because it will be the story of any man -- wandering, going astray, coming back to the path and then falling again and again, but at the end, finally he becomes a light unto himself.

I will also feel at ease, because I don't like to hit anybody. If I can see him coming back with the insight of enlightenment as his own experience, I will also feel good: 'The man was worth hitting. You were not hitting just an ordinary idiot -- he was extraordinary!"

I don't know what is going to happen in these two weeks. It all depends on Ta Hui -- how many times he is going to go astray, and whether he has the potential to realize, or he dies without realization.

It will be a sad affair if he dies without enlightenment. I would like it to be a celebration ...

and my hope is that the man is capable.

Any moment the turning point can come, and any moment his inner flame can burn bright.

So you will have to tolerate Ta Hui for at least two weeks more.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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14

Clarity

21 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

PROFOUND CLARITY

I AM GIVING YOU THE NAME CHAN-JAN, "PROFOUND CLARITY". A PATRIARCH SAID, "AS LONG AS THERE IS MENTAL DISCRIMINATION, AND

CALCULATING JUDGMENT, ALL THE PERCEPTIONS OF ONE'S OWN MIND ARE

DREAMS. IF MIND AND CONSCIOUSNESS ARE QUIESCENT AND EXTINCT, WITHOUT A SINGLE THOUGHT STIRRING, THIS IS CALLED CORRECT

AWARENESS."

THESE DAYS THERE'S A KIND OF PHONY, WHOSE OWN STANDPOINT IS NOT

GENUINE: THEY JUST TEACH PEOPLE TO CONTROL THEIR MINDS AND SIT

QUIETLY, TO SIT TO THE POINT WHERE THE BREATH CEASES. I CALL THIS LOT

PITIABLE. I'M ASKING YOU TO MEDITATE IN JUST THIS WAY, BUT THOUGH I INSTRUCT YOU LIKE THIS, IT'S JUST THAT THERE'S NO OTHER CHOICE ...

BEGINNERS' DISEASE

BUDDHIST DISCIPLE CH'EN, YOU HAVE REALIZED THAT PERSONAL

EXISTENCE IS FALSE, AND THAT THINGS ARE ILLUSORY. AMIDST ILLUSORY

FALSEHOOD YOU WERE ABLE TO CONTEMPLATE THE SAYING "A DOG HAS NO

BUDDHA-NATURE" -- YOU SENT ME A LETTER EXPRESSING YOUR

UNDERSTANDING. THOUGH IN THE MAIN YOUR BASIS IS ALREADY CORRECT, YOU ARE NOT YET CLEAR ABOUT THE GREAT DHARMA -- THIS IS A COMMON

DISEASE OF BEGINNERS ENTERING THE PATH.

OLD SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA SAID, "THIS WAY IS ALL RIGHT, AND NOT THIS

WAY IS ALL RIGHT TOO; THIS WAY OR NOT THIS WAY, IT'S ALL ALL RIGHT."

JUST GET THE ROOT, DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE BRANCHES. OVER A LONG

LONG TIME IT WILL SINK IN THOROUGHLY: DON'T WORRY THAT YOU WON'T

ATTAIN ONENESS. WORK ON IT!

I can see the difficulties Ta Hui is passing through. He can intellectually understand the path of awareness, he can also intellectually explain it to others -- but he himself still remains only a philosopher. He has not transformed himself into a mystic.

The philosopher talks about truth.

The mystic is truth.

And there is a profound difference between talking about it and being it.

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Certainly the people who have reached to the point of being truth itself also can talk, but their words vibrate on a totally different level, and it can be seen very clearly that they are not coming from the mind.

They are coming from an absolute nothingness.

They carry something of nothingness with them.

You cannot grasp it but you can feel it ... a very subtle fragrance ... you cannot see it, but you can smell it. You may not be able to prove it, but you yourself know, it is absolutely certain.

Ta Hui's problem is that from the very beginning he has taken the standpoint of an intellectual. If he was just an ordinary intellectual, satisfied with his intellect and his conceptualizations, there would be no difficulty. But there is some part of him which does not simply want to live with borrowed knowledge. A part of him longs to realize and experience and know the mystery firsthand.

This is his dilemma, and he is continuously moving from one part to another part. As we are going further into his sutras, I feel a hope that his mystical part is winning ground. His intellect is lagging behind -- although it is not defeated yet. The first sutra: I AM GIVING YOU THE NAME CHAN-JAN, "PROFOUND CLARITY". A PATRIARCH SAID, "AS LONG AS THERE IS MENTAL DISCRIMINATION, AND

CALCULATING JUDGMENT, ALL THE PERCEPTIONS OF ONE'S OWN MIND ARE

DREAMS. IF MIND AND CONSCIOUSNESS ARE QUIESCENT AND EXTINCT, WITHOUT A SINGLE THOUGHT STIRRING, THIS IS CALLED CORRECT

AWARENESS."

The first thing: clarity is always profound. There is no other way for clarity to be. Profound clarity does not make sense.

It is just like somebody telling you, "I love you very, very much." In fact, you cannot love less, and you cannot love more. Love does not belong to the world of quantity; hence 'less' and

'more' are irrelevant. You can either love, or not love. How can you love less, and how can you love more?

Still people go on saying, "I love you very much," not seeing the tremendous fallacy that love is a quality and not a quantity. A quality is either present or not present. More and less belong to the world of quantities.

The English word 'matter' and the French word 'meter' come from the Sanskrit word matra, and matra means quantity. That which can be measured is matter -- matter simply means measurable -- and that which cannot be measured, that which is not within the territory of quantity, is consciousness.

He's saying, I AM GIVING YOU THE NAME CHAN-JAN. He must be initiating somebody into sannyas and giving him the name Chan-Jan, which means profound clarity.

But he does not understand that clarity is always profound; it is never less and never more.

Nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be taken out of it.

This is the problem with intellectual understanding. You seem to understand, and still you go on somewhere missing the point. The intellectuals try in every way to be as profound as the mystics, but their profundity is hilarious.

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I am reminded of an ancient parable: A great archer -- he was also the king of his country

-- was going through a village in his golden chariot, and he was amazed to see that on every tree there was a target, and an arrow or many arrows exactly hitting the bull's-eye. There was a circle, and the arrow was exactly in the middle; there was not a single miss, and on almost all the trees there were a few arrows. He could not believe that in this small village there was such a great archer.

He stopped his chariot, and he enquired about the archer. The person he enquired of started laughing. He said, "He is an idiot! Don't be worried about him."

But the king said, "You don't understand. He may be an idiot -- I'm not concerned with that

-- but he is a greater archer than me, that is certain. I would like to see him."

A crowd gathered, seeing the king, and they all laughed and said, "It is pointless. He is really a fool."

But the king could not understand how an idiot can manage such good shots, absolutely perfect, impeccable. He said, "Stop laughing and call the man!" A young man was brought to him; he looked stupid, retarded. The king was also puzzled. He asked the young man, "What is your secret?"

The young man said, "What secret?"

The king showed him that every arrow is exactly in the middle of a circle.

The young man started laughing. He said, "I cannot lie to you. The truth is, first I shoot the arrow and then I draw the circle. Naturally, one hundred percent ... It does not matter where the arrow goes; wherever it goes, I make the circle later on. Everybody who passes through this village is struck by the great art. I remain quiet, I never say the truth to anybody, but you are the king and I cannot lie to you."

This is really the situation of intellectuals. They are profound archers -- but first they shoot the arrow and then they draw the target! Their work appears, to those who don't know their way and their strategy, as perfect.

Now, giving a disciple the name "profound clarity," he cannot even think that he is doing something wrong. He does not know what clarity is, as an experience; otherwise he would never have given the name, "profound clarity." Clarity is enough unto itself.

A PATRIARCH SAID, "AS LONG AS THERE IS MENTAL DISCRIMINATION, AND

CALCULATING JUDGMENT, ALL THE PERCEPTIONS OF ONE'S OWN MIND ARE

DREAMS. IF MIND AND CONSCIOUSNESS ARE QUIESCENT AND EXTINCT, WITHOUT A SINGLE THOUGHT STIRRING, THIS IS CALLED CORRECT

AWARENESS."

Whenever he quotes, almost always he is right, but only when it is a quotation. These are not his words. I am coming to his words, and then you will see how the intellectual falls far below the mystic and his experience. These are his words: THESE DAYS THERE IS A KIND OF PHONY, WHOSE OWN STANDPOINT IS NOT

GENUINE: THEY JUST TEACH PEOPLE TO CONTROL THEIR MINDS AND SIT

QUIETLY, TO SIT TO THE POINT WHERE THE BREATH CEASES. I CALL THIS LOT, PITIABLE. And, I AM ASKING YOU TO MEDITATE IN JUST THIS WAY -- which he calls PITIABLE -- BUT THOUGH I INSTRUCT YOU LIKE THIS, IT IS JUST THAT

THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE ...

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Can you see the stupidity of our intellectual effort to understand that which is beyond? He is teaching the same kind of meditation to people -- then it is right. And when others are teaching the same kind of meditation it is "pitiable"; these people are "phony."

It is so difficult to save him. In the first place, if this is the same meditation that he himself is giving to others, on what grounds is he calling others phony who are giving the same meditation? He has not made it clear in any way why they are phony, why they are not genuine -- because their teaching of meditation is the same as his own.

And secondly, he says, "I have to teach this way because IT IS JUST THAT THERE IS

NO OTHER CHOICE." That too is absolutely wrong; there are hundreds of methods of meditation -- but he has never meditated. But there is always in intellectuals a kind of rivalry, a kind of competition, a kind of jealousy.

You must have seen dogs barking at each other for no reason at all; they just cannot resist the temptation. Once a dog sees another dog, then immediately they both start barking.

I have heard a story about a dog ... He used to live in Varanasi, the holy place of the Hindus. But everybody was going towards New Delhi, so he enquired, "What is the matter?

Why is everybody going to New Delhi?" And he found out that those who were representatives of the people were going to Delhi to be members of the parliament. So he collected a great crowd of dogs -- and he was a very big dog, and could bark better than anybody else -- and naturally he was chosen the leader. He informed the dogs of Delhi beforehand, "I have been chosen from Varanasi, and I am coming. It will take almost one month because I will be walking from Varanasi to New Delhi" -- but he reached in three days.

The dogs of New Delhi were simply amazed. They could not believe that a journey of one month ..." How did you manage to do it in three days?"

He said, "You don't know our people! The dogs would not let me rest anywhere. These three days I have been running non-stop. The dogs from one village would follow me barking, and by the time I reached into another village, another group of dogs would follow me. There was no time for anything -- to rest or to sleep or to eat or to drink. All the way I have been running and running."

The dogs said, "This is one of our great qualities. It is said in our holy scriptures that intellectuals are born as dogs." It is their old habit of barking at each other ... Everything they have forgotten, but the barking has been their very soul.

Now, as you can see, this man is calling others phony. I don't know what word has been translated as phony. One thing is certain, at the time of Ta Hui China had no telephones ... The word 'phony' comes from telephone, because the voice on the telephone becomes unreal. It loses a living quality; hence the word phony. The word is not Chinese; the word is American

-- and in America, everything is phony.

What word has been translated as phony? It must have been something like inauthentic, insincere. But to call others inauthentic, insincere, phony, not genuine, without giving any reason, because they are TEACHING PEOPLE TO CONTROL THEIR MINDS, AND SIT

QUIETLY. TO SIT TO THE POINT WHERE THE BREATH CEASES, I CALL THIS LOT

PITIABLE. I AM ASKING YOU TO MEDITATE IN JUST THIS WAY, BUT THOUGH I INSTRUCT YOU LIKE THIS, IT IS JUST THAT THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE ...

If there is no other choice then why are you calling those poor people phony? They also don't have any other choice.

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So the first thing: intellectuals have a very egoistic, quarrelsome attitude, always ready to start a battle of words. That is not right for a mystic.

Secondly, the method that the people he calls phony are teaching is not a right method, but because he himself has never meditated, he does not understand what is right and what is wrong. The method these people are teaching -- and he himself is teaching -- is to control your mind.

Meditation has nothing to do with controlling the mind -- because every control is a kind of repression and that which is repressed will take its revenge. Whenever you relax a little, the mind that was in control will immediately come up and start, with vengeance, to stir up everything within you.

Meditation is not control, because control creates tension and meditation is based on relaxation. Meditation has a few essential things in it, whatever the method. But those few essentials are necessary in every method.

The first is a relaxed state: no fight with the mind, no control of the mind, no concentration.

Second, just watching with a relaxed awareness whatever is going on, without any interference ... just watching the mind, silently, without any judgment, any evaluation. These are the three things: relaxation, watching, no judgment.

Slowly, slowly a great silence descends over you. All movement within you ceases. You are, but there is no sense of "I am" ... just a pure space.

There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation; I have talked on all those methods. They differ in their constitution, but the fundamentals remain the same: relaxation, watchfulness, a non-judgmental attitude.

So in the first place the method is wrong. He is teaching the same method, he says,

"because there is no other choice." He is not aware of a tremendous choice: one hundred and twelve methods which are as ancient as ten thousand years, at least.

The first man to collect all those methods was Shiva, and his statues have been found in Harappa and Mohanjodaro. These cities flourished seven thousand years ago. They must have been the most cultured cities of those days, because their roads were so wide; they had attached bathrooms, they had hot and cold running water in their bathrooms, and they had swimming pools as big as olympic swimming pools.

In those cities the only thing that we can recognize which still persists is the statue of Shiva -- the Shivalinga, the phallic symbol of Shiva. That is the only thing that connects us with Harappa and Mohanjodaro. Because of this the historians have concluded that Shiva was not an Aryan, because those cities existed before Aryans came into India.

But Shiva has, in his book VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA, one hundred and twelve methods of meditation. More methods can be created -- I have created many more methods --

just the essential ingredients should be there. You can change the device according to the times, according to individuals, but you cannot leave out these three things -- relaxation, watchfulness and a non-judgmental attitude.

So, in fact, just these three things are the only method of meditation; all others are variations of the same theme. Whatever Ta Hui has been teaching is wrong. The others must have been other intellectuals, other teachers, whom he is calling phony, and he cannot see a Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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simple thing: how can you call them phony and pitiable if your teaching also is of the same method?

And he is not aware that there are many alternatives -- he has never meditated. One does not have to know Shiva's VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA. If one meditates just with these three essentials, he can create as many methods for different situations, different people, as he likes. But one should have his own experience. And to condemn others who are doing the same thing, he must be utterly blind. He cannot see what he is saying.

BUDDHIST DISCIPLE CH'EN, YOU HAVE REALIZED THAT PERSONAL

EXISTENCE IS FALSE, AND THAT THINGS ARE ILLUSORY. AMIDST ILLUSORY

FALSEHOOD YOU WERE ABLE TO CONTEMPLATE THE SAYING "A DOG HAS NO

BUDDHA-NATURE" -- YOU SENT ME A LETTER EXPRESSING YOUR

UNDERSTANDING. THOUGH IN THE MAIN YOUR BASIS IS ALREADY CORRECT, YOU ARE NOT YET CLEAR ABOUT THE GREAT DHARMA -- THIS IS A COMMON

DISEASE OF BEGINNERS ENTERING THE PATH.

This is an old statement of Lin Chi and of other Zen masters, and there is a possibility it may be from the times of Gautam Buddha himself. It has been asked down the ages by the disciples ... because Buddhism says that every living being has a buddha-nature; every living being can become a buddha. Naturally, the question arises, does a dog also have buddha-nature? All the great masters have said yes, and those who have said no, don't understand at all.

It is something to be pondered over. Why should a dog not have a buddha-nature? If every living being has buddha-nature, why should dogs be such exceptional beings? Just because in your minds the very word 'dog' is condemned, you cannot think that a dog can have a buddha-nature -- "My God, then what is the point of having a buddha-nature? Even a dog can have it. It is not worth bothering! Years of meditation, long pilgrimages, and finally what you attain is just a dog's nature." Naturally those who don't understand have immediately said no --

and Ta Hui agrees with those people who say no.

But in fact a dog is just a god spelt wrongly. I for one am absolutely ready to say yes, a dog has as much potential to be a buddha as Gautam Buddha himself. There is no question why poor dogs should be left out, when all beings -- donkeys and monkeys and even Yankees -- all are included. The dog is a poor animal, innocent. There is nothing wrong in the dog. Perhaps he has to travel a long way to become a buddha, but it is only a question of time. Some day a dog is also going to become enlightened. In some birth, somewhere in the future ...

You should understand it clearly that in the eternity of time it does not matter whether you become enlightened today, or tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, in this life or in another life. In the eternity of time it does not matter at all. In the eternity of time nobody is ahead and nobody is behind, because there is no beginning in time and there is no end in time.

So whenever you become enlightened you are always a contemporary of all the buddhas.

They may have become enlightened thousands of years before. If you become enlightened today, suddenly you will find you are raised to a different scale of time, where you are a contemporary of all the buddhas, past, present, and future. So a man who has tasted awakening will not deny to dogs their intrinsic treasure. They are living beings.

OLD SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA SAID, "THIS WAY IS ALL RIGHT, AND NOT THIS

WAY IS ALL RIGHT TOO; THIS WAY OR NOT THIS WAY, IT IS ALL ALL RIGHT."

JUST GET THE ROOT, DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE BRANCHES. OVER A LONG

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LONG TIME IT WILL SINK IN THOROUGHLY: DON'T WORRY THAT YOU WON'T

ATTAIN ONENESS. WORK ON IT!

He calls this kind of question -- whether a dog has buddha-nature or not -- A COMMON

DISEASE OF BEGINNERS ENTERING THE PATH. It is natural human curiosity. But at least somebody has entered the path. Such questions don't mean anything to those who have not entered the path at all. It is not a disease; it is simply a curiosity.

If all living beings are intrinsically as capable of awakening as human, it simply makes existence truly communist. As far as I am concerned, I think communism is right only when it is concerned with the ultimate nature of beings. Only in that ultimate stage is there equality.

Before that, communism is a utopia and is never going to be fulfilled.

Only two buddhas are equal, but ignorant people cannot be equal. Ignorant people are psychologically unequal; hence the whole idea of Karl Marx and his followers that man is equal is psychologically wrong.

No two men are equal. They have all the differences that you can conceive, and to force them into equality you will have to destroy democracy, you will have to destroy freedom, you will have to destroy freedom of expression, you will have to destroy people's individuality, their dignity of being human, their very pride. It is a very strange kind of equality. Everybody is bulldozed, and everybody becomes equal!

There was one king in Greece who was a little cuckoo. He had made a beautiful golden bed in a special guesthouse, a great palace. Only a few guests ever stayed in his guesthouse, and they never came out alive because the trouble with the king was that the guest had to fit with the bed. If he was a little long, then his legs or his head had to be cut to size. Or if he was a little short, then traction -- he had to be pulled from both ends; the king had four wrestlers practicing traction. But anyway he was going to be killed. In traction his head would be pulled out, because they were pulling his head to make him the size of the bed, or his legs may be pulled out.

The king believed in the holy scriptures of the whole world: they all suggest that man is made for them, not that they are made for man. His bed was not made for man, every guest has to fit with the bed. As the rumor reached to other friends, other kings, nobody accepted his invitation. He was continuously inviting guests, but nobody was ready to come because anybody who ever went never came back again: what happened to the guests? In fact the king was practicing a sort of communism, making everybody of equal size. And that's what has happened in the Soviet Union for seventy years.

Just seventy years ago, before the revolution, the Soviet Union was one of the giant countries; it had given birth to a great line of geniuses. In seventy years they have not been able to create a single genius of the quality of Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, not a single man in seventy years. All these five men existed before the revolution, and Maxim Gorky even remained alive after the revolution for a few years.

If you want to choose the names of the ten great novelists of the whole world, of all languages, these five will be absolutely there. You cannot leave a single one of them out of a list of ten: the rest of the world will have only five places, and five places will be given to the Russians. Still those five from the rest of the world will not be really comparable to the greatness of the Russian novelists. What happened?

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After the revolution, everybody was cut to size. Mind is no longer free. You cannot say anything that is not approved by the government, you cannot write anything that is not approved by the government. There is no freedom of thought. There is no individual expression in anything. Everything has become uniform -- people have disappeared. Only a crowd exists, only numbers, not individuals.

When Khrushchev came into power and was addressing his first meeting of the communist party, he exposed Joseph Stalin, saying that he had killed almost one million people after the revolution. Anybody who was trying to be himself and was not willing to become a cog in the wheel was immediately killed ...

In Russia you are not allowed to have any opinion of your own. For everything you have to depend on the government, and the whole country has become a concentration camp, no democracy. The press, the radio, the television, everything belongs to the government. You cannot get information which the government does not release. The Soviet Union lives almost in darkness about the whole world, what is going on in the world. And the Soviet Union is not a small country; it is one sixth of the land of the whole world.

Khrushchev addressed the first meeting and exposed how brutal, murderous, Joseph Stalin had been. In the name of communism he had killed all the genius of the people, he had reduced everybody to equal poverty. Certainly there has come a certain equality: everybody is equally poor. Everybody is equally suppressed. Everybody is equally enslaved. Everybody is equally trembling with fear. Any moment and death can knock on the door ... In Russia, the name of death is KGB.

When Khrushchev was telling this to the Communist party, one man from the back said,

"You have been a colleague of Joseph Stalin his whole life. Why did you not object?"

There was a great silence. For a moment Khrushchev looked at the place from where the voice had come, and he said, "Comrade, please just stand up so I can see you better." Nobody stood. He again said, "Just stand up so I can see who is asking the question."

Three times he asked. Nobody stood, and nobody asked the question again. He said, "Now do you understand why I was silent? Why are you silent? -- because if you stand up, you are finished. I remained silent because I wanted to be alive." To create equality, all human values have been destroyed.

No ... as far as man is concerned, man needs freedom to be UNequal, equal opportunity to be UNequal. Opportunity should be given equally to all, but opportunities to grow in their uniqueness, in their own individuality: in short, opportunities to be unequal, but equal opportunities.

Only when people become enlightened, when there is nothing but a pure consciousness, is communism possible; otherwise that day is just a utopia.

The word 'utopia' is very beautiful. It means 'that which never comes'. Only in enlightenment is there a possibility of equality, and to the enlightened person all beings -- they may not be enlightened now -- are going to be enlightened someday. So intrinsically, every being -- every living being, the trees are included -- wherever there is life in any form, they are all on the way, moving, evolving, going higher. And the goal is the same: to become awakened, to become absolute purity, consciousness, blissfulness, ecstasy. So it is not a disease to ask such a question. It is absolutely natural curiosity.

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I am a communist as far as man's intrinsic potential is concerned, and I am not a communist as far as man's actuality is concerned. He should be given every support, every opportunity to grow in his own way. A forced equality is destructive, destructive of all that is valuable. There should be big trees, tall trees reaching to the stars, and there should be small bushes; they both enrich existence. There should be lotuses and there should be roses and there should be marigolds. The variety, the difference, the inequality makes life richer, makes life more livable, lovable.

Just think, if everybody goes through plastic surgery and has the same kind of nose --

equal noses -- has the same kind of eyes, has the same kind of faces, it will be so boring that people will start walking with closed eyes, tired of seeing the same noses and same eyes and same faces. It will be the most hellish world possible. It is beautiful that there are long noses and short noses, and they come in all sizes and all shapes.

Inequality in humanity is a psychological truth.

Equality is a spiritual truth.

One should not get mixed up.

A dog has a buddha-nature, just as anybody else has. It is not the disease of a beginner entering the path. It is purely a human curiosity, whether all living beings have the same potential to blossom into the ultimate ecstasy that only very few people -- a Gautam Buddha, a Lao Tzu, a Zarathustra -- have achieved. I consider it absolutely normal, not a disease.

Ta Hui quotes Gautam Buddha, which needs some explanation because you will not understand it. And I don't think Ta Hui understands it, because he gives no explanation about it. OLD SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA SAID, "THIS WAY IS ALL RIGHT, AND NOT THIS

WAY IS ALL RIGHT TOO; THIS WAY OR NOT THIS WAY, IT IS ALL ALL RIGHT."

He does not explain why he is quoting this statement. He is simply throwing names, quotations, which is one of the strategies of intellectuals to show their knowledgeability. But I don't think he understands even the meaning of it, because it is one of the most difficult things to understand.

Aristotle is said to be the father of Western logic. His logic is the simplest logic: Black is black, white is white; yes means yes, no means no -- a clearcut division. It is called twofold logic. Gautam Buddha believed -- and I think he has far greater insight than Aristotle -- in a threefold logic. And if you can understand his threefold logic, only then will this statement become clear to you.

For example, if somebody asked Gautam Buddha, "Does God exist?", according to his threefold logic he will answer, "Yes, God exists. No, God does not exist. Yes and no both: God exists, God does not exist." Aristotle's logic is twofold: either God exists, or God does not exist. There is no question of the third possibility, that both may be right.

In a certain sense, from a certain angle, it may be said with absolute truthfulness that God exists, for example if you mean that existence is intelligent, that existence is not material, that existence is basically made of consciousness and even matter is only a form of sleeping consciousness -- consciousness in coma. If you can mean by God, "universal consciousness,"

he exists. But you may mean by God, "a person who created the world"; then God does not exist.

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But it is possible to conceive of God as consciousness, and also not as a creator, but as the very creativity of existence. It all depends on us and what we mean by God, because God is only a hypothesis, a word; the meaning has to be given by us. If God is not a creator and a person but the very phenomenon of creativity and consciousness, then both are right: God exists and God does not exist.

This was the threefold logic. And Gautam Buddha is going to win the future world over to threefold logic. Aristotle is already out of date. But Gautam Buddha's contemporary, Mahavira, has a sevenfold logic, and he is going to be the ultimate winner as far as logic is concerned because he has gone to all the possible alternatives. These three alternatives are not all the possibilities. For example, Mahavira's fourth alternative is: perhaps God is not. And the fifth: perhaps God exists and is indefinable; he brings indefinability as the fifth alternative.

And the sixth: perhaps God is not, and is still indefinable. And the seventh: perhaps nothing can be said, only that it is indefinable. He has covered all the possibilities and interpretations.

Even Gautam Buddha avoided going that far; he remained within comprehensible limits.

Now, seeing his statement, you can understand it. OLD SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA SAID,

"THIS WAY IS ALL RIGHT, AND NOT THIS WAY IS ALL RIGHT TOO; THIS WAY OR

NOT THIS WAY, IT IS ALL ALL RIGHT."

Three statements ... it makes experience more mysterious. Aristotle demystifies existence.

Just dividing it into life and death, into day and night, into right and wrong, into good and bad, into God and Devil is a little childish, a little retarded. Life is more complex than that. He is only taking the two extremes, and he is forgetting the middle point.

Buddha has called his way the middle way, so he has to take into account the exact middle point where the opposites meet, where contradictions dissolve into each other and become complementaries. Then it becomes a threefold logic: two extremes and one where extremes merge and melt into oneness. His approach is not only more mystical, it is more scientific too.

Modern physics is coming closer to Gautam Buddha and completely abandoning Aristotle.

And with Aristotle is also abandoned Euclidean geometry, because that was a by-product of Aristotelian logic. So Aristotle and Euclid have reigned for two thousand years in the West, but modern physics finds that things are more complicated than Aristotle and Euclid thought.

Gautam Buddha perhaps is closer to reality because he is taking a more mysterious approach.

He is broadening our perception of reality.

My own feeling is that ultimately modern physics will have to accept not only Gautam Buddha but Mahavira, because his sevenfold logic is absolutely complete. You cannot add anything more. There cannot be eightfold logic; with seven possibilities, all have been covered. Nothing has been left out, everything has been taken in; it is all-inclusive. Mahavira has been accepted -- without scientists even knowing that they are accepting a certain man who lived twenty-five centuries before, a contemporary of Gautam Buddha -- because he preached the theory of relativity. Mahavira was the first man to preach the theory of relativity.

Albert Einstein would have been immensely happy if somebody had introduced him to Mahavira's theory of relativity. It is not about physics, it is about human consciousness, but it is the same standpoint. And Albert Einstein would have danced if he had heard the sevenfold logic of Mahavira because he was finding so much difficulty with Aristotle. Reality was big, and logic was smaller; it was not able to help in any way to further research going deeper into matter and energy. It was good for day-to-day work in the marketplace, but it was not good enough for deeper realms.

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But I think Ta Hui has not got any idea why he has quoted this statement ... perhaps just to mystify people, just to pretend that he understands this strange logic of threefoldness, because he does not say anything about it. It is out of context. Anything said must have some meaning, some relationship. It is neither related to the previous sutra, nor is it related to the succeeding sutra. He has just inserted it.

My feeling is: he simply wants to mystify people, pretending that he knows great things that they cannot understand. It is one of the significant things to understand about man that whatever he cannot understand he thinks must be right. Because of this, philosophers have been writing in such a way that you will go on reading big phrases, long phrases, long sentences, big paragraphs -- so big that by the time you come to the end of the paragraph, you have forgotten the beginning.

For example, the German philosopher Hegel was a master in mystifying absolutely nonsensical things, and his whole strategy was just to write big words, pompous, bombastic.

A single sentence would run the whole page, and by the time you come to the end of the sentence you don't have any idea what was in the beginning, what was in the middle ...

Hegel was thought to be a great philosopher -- till he was understood! When he was understood, he was put aside as just a tricky fellow, who was only trying to mystify people.

And he had succeeded. At least in his life, he enjoyed the idea of being a great philosopher.

Only after his death slowly, slowly scholars looked into it and found that he says nothing. He says so much, but if you condense it, your hands are empty. There is nothing in it.

Whenever I have thought about Hegel, I have always remembered a man in my village. He was almost a nutcase; he had crammed the whole Oxford dictionary, and he used to write letters to the president, to the prime minister, to the governor. He was living just near my house.

Once in a while he used to come to me to show me his letters -- twenty pages, thirty pages, fifty foolscap pages typed out, but not a single sentence making any sense. He knew nothing about language; he knew everything about the dictionary, and that was the trouble. He would simply go on writing big words; it made no sense at all.

He was torturing me, so I said, "You do one thing. I don't have much time and your letters are too long, and it will be helpful also because this big letter the President is not going to read. So with the letter you should write a small summary, just ten lines, twelve lines at the most."

He said, "That's a good idea. I will write the summary. That is not a problem."

So he went to write the summary, but he left the letter with me. I was surprised; this is something strange, how is he going to write the summary? There was no problem for him; the dictionary was with him ... so another ten lines of absolute absurdity. I said, "This is perfectly good. This explains everything! And I can say to you that this much the president is going to read. Twenty pages is too much. You write such great philosophy."

But nobody was answering his letters. He would come to me saying, "Now one month has passed and no answer, not even a receipt that they have received my letter! And I had been working so hard."

I said to him, "I don't think these politicians have intelligence enough to understand your great philosophy."

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He said, "That is right. You are the only man who understands me. Nobody seems to understand."

Every day he was going to the collectorate with a new letter and the collector was tired.

One day the collector met me in the library and he said, "Can't you stop this man? I never read any of his letters, but even to keep them on the table is a torture. One feels inside one's stomach some disturbance; just to read two or three lines is enough to drive anybody crazy."

I said, "It is very difficult to stop him, because I am the only man who understands him. If you have any difficulty, I can tell him, and he can explain."

He said, "I don't want you to mention it to him at all! He will come with a bigger explanation."

Once in a while I used to go to my town, and he used to wait for me. I loved the man. He was crazy, but very nice and very sweet and absolutely harmless. I told him, "You have done only one thing wrong."

He said, "What?"

I said, "You should have been born in Germany, and you would have been known in history as a great philosopher. I have studied all those great German philosophers; they are all nutcases!"

One man who was thought to be one of the greatest German philosophers of this century, Martin Heidegger, started many books, but he never completed any because by the time he was halfway, he had forgotten what he had written. So the first volume would be published, and people would be waiting for the second volume; it never came.

This went on happening his whole life; he never completed any book. When asked, he said, "The reality is, I myself forget what I have been writing. It is so complicated that it is better to start a new book rather than to read the old one. Let others read ... I don't want to get involved in it." It will be a great entertainment to you if you read something of Martin Heidegger.

And this shows his great "intelligence": he was a follower of Adolf Hitler, who was certainly a madman! The greatest philosopher follows an idiot ... it does not show anything about Adolf Hitler, but it shows something about Martin Heidegger! I have gone through all his works. In the end your hands are empty. You don't get anything of what he wants to say, why he wants to say it. Why all this long process of gymnastics without any conclusion? But these people have been impressing the common masses.

My understanding is that whatever people cannot understand they think must be great.

Because we cannot understand, naturally it has to be something very miraculous, very mysterious. But the truth is always simple: it is mysterious because it is simple.

The truth is always obvious.

It is miraculous because it is obvious, not because it is complex, not because it is far away.

It is so close that you tend to forget it. It is within you, so you don't even bother to look at it.

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Truth is simple, obvious, uncomplicated. All that it needs is just a silent awareness, and a great understanding descends on you, an understanding that does not become knowledge, an understanding that deepens your innocence and that deepens the mystery of life.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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15

Suchness

22 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

SEE THE TATHAGATA EVERYWHERE

WHERE DO WE COME FROM AT BIRTH? WERE DO WE GO AT DEATH? IF YOU

KNOW WHERE WE COME FROM AND WHERE WE GO, THEN YOU CAN BE

CALLED A STUDENT OF BUDDHA.

WHO IS IT WHO KNOWS OF BIRTH AND DEATH? AND WHO IS IT WHO

EXPERIENCES BIRTH AND DEATH? AGAIN: WHO IS IT WHO DOESN'T KNOW

WHERE WE COME FROM AND WHERE WE GO? WHO IS IT WHO SUDDENLY

REALIZES WHERE HE COMES FROM AND WHERE HE GOES TO? AND WHO IS IT

WHO, CONTEMPLATING THESE WORDS, BLINKS HIS EYES UNABLE TO

UNDERSTAND, HIS BELLY CHURNING UP AND DOWN, AS IF A MASS OF FIRE

WERE PLACED IN HIS HEART? IF YOU WANT TO KNOW, JUST APPREHEND HIM

AT THE POINT WHERE HE CAN'T UNDERSTAND. IF YOU CAN RECOGNIZE HIM

THEN, YOU'LL KNOW THAT BIRTH AND DEATH SURELY HAVE NOTHING TO DO

WITH HIM.

WHENEVER YOU'RE READING THE SCRIPTURES OR THE STORIES OF THE

ANCIENT WORTHIES ENTERING THE PATH, WHEN YOUR MIND DOESN'T

UNDERSTAND CLEARLY, AND IT SEEMS BEWILDERING AND STIFLING AND

FLAVORLESS -- AS IF YOU'RE GNAWING ON AN IRON SPIKE -- THIS IS JUST THE

TIME TO APPLY EFFORT: ABOVE ALL YOU MUST NOT GIVE UP. THIS IS THE

PLACE WHERE CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE DOESN'T OPERATE, WHERE

THOUGHT DOESN'T REACH, WHERE DISCRIMINATION IS CUT OFF, AND THE

PATH OF REASON IS ANNIHILATED. WHERE YOU CAN ALWAYS EXPLAIN

REASONS AND APPLY DISCRIMINATION. THIS ALL PERTAINS TO EMOTIONAL

CONSCIOUSNESS. TIME AND AGAIN PEOPLE TAKE THIS THIEF AS THEIR SON.

DON'T BE UNAWARE OF THIS!

Ta Hui seems to come very close to the truth but somehow goes on missing it. In this sutra the beginning part is immensely important because it is not a quotation. He is speaking himself. And what he is saying is one of the most ancient meditations, one which has helped many on the path to the final arrival, to the very peak of their consciousness.

WHERE DO WE COME FROM AT BIRTH? It has not to be asked verbally; verbally it is meaningless, but if you feel existentially ... We are here; certainly we must have come from somewhere, and certainly we are going somewhere. It is absolutely certain, the coming and going. If it becomes something like a thirst in the very fibers of your being, if every cell within you becomes a question mark, then this meditation works.

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WHERE DO WE COME FROM AT BIRTH? WHERE DO WE GO AT DEATH? IF

YOU KNOW WHERE WE COME FROM AND WHERE WE GO, THEN YOU CAN BE

CALLED A DISCIPLE OF THE BUDDHA.

I will not use the word student; it is too ordinary and has implications of only an intellectual approach. A disciple uses his whole being to approach the ultimate questions of life. A disciple is interested only in realization, not in just knowing about it. The student is interested in knowing about it. And these are very diverse interests. Knowing about it is one thing, but knowing it, not about it ... the word 'about' means around and around but never coming to the point.

I used to know an old man, Mahatma Bhagwandin. Only two persons were recognized in India as mahatmas, great souls: Mahatma Gandhi and Mahatma Bhagwandin. Mahatma Bhagwandin met me just by coincidence, and he started feeling something for me, so whenever he was moving from my city to somewhere else he would make it a point to stay with me for at least one day, two days, three days, as much as he could afford.

He was an old man, a very beautiful man, and I have never come across a man who was more knowledgeable. It seemed he was almost a walking ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA. You ask anything and he knows. I have never heard him saying, "I don't know." And I have found that what he says is always right -- and about strange things with which he has no concern. I used to go with him every day for a walk in the morning and he would tell me about the Latin names of the trees. He knew so much about everything ... as if his whole life had been nothing but collecting information.

One day I told Mahatma Bhagwandin, "You know all the Latin names of all the trees that we pass but I don't think you know yourself." He was shocked but he was a very patient man and he tried to understand why I said that.

I said, "You are like a walking ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, but nobody has ever heard that an ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA has become enlightened. There is no possibility. You know everything, but I suspect that this is a way to avoid knowing yourself."

He remained silent. He didn't say anything. We reached home, he took his bath, and after his bath he said, "You are right. But now tell me how to forget all this knowledge."

I said, "There is no need to forget it. Just don't go on bragging about it, bringing it up again and again, telling it to people. Don't be an exhibitionist. And the whole energy that you have been pouring into collecting information is enough to bring a transformation to your life.

"Only two questions are important: 'From where do you come, and where are you going?'

Why are these two questions important? -- because they will make you aware of your inner being which travels from birth to birth in new lives. And once you have become alert about that greatest phenomenon in life, your own being, then whether or not you know anything else does not matter."

Then for many years I had no chance to see him. I was lecturing at the University of Nagpur, and somebody who knew me and knew Mahatma Bhagwandin told me, "He is here and he is very sick. There is every possibility he will not survive." So after the lecture I rushed to his place. I could not believe my eyes! He had been a very healthy man, and it had been only four or five years that I had not seen him. And now he was just a skeleton, continuously coughing. Even to talk was difficult for him. That coughing was so continuous ... the moment he said something, in the middle of the sentence he would start coughing.

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I said, "You need not say anything."

But he insisted, "No, I have to talk because I am not going to survive and I am immensely sad that I could not do what you had told me. And now I realize all my knowledge has been futile; it doesn't help. I am dying as ignorant as I was born."

I said, "This too is a great achievement: that you are dying innocent and fully aware that knowledge is useless. And still there is time ... because you are still alive. It may take a few days or maybe a few months ... nobody knows. Why don't you begin to meditate on the same point which is coming closer every moment: Where are you going? From where have you come? And who are you?"

He said with tears in his eyes, "I will do it."

I had to leave, so I left him. Just after three days he died. But his friend, Poonam Chandrika, with whom he was staying informed me, "You will be immensely happy that he managed. He died not coughing, but laughing." And this was his last message to me: that he knows from where he is coming and to where he is going and who this fellow is who is traveling. He has recognized him. He is dying with great joy. At his death he was suffering very much, but he died laughing, smiling. The body suffered, and the mind knew that the body was suffering, but because he had understood the innermost core of his being, it did not matter at all. He knew now that his life source is eternal.

This meditation which Ta Hui is mentioning is one of the oldest. He is just using a wrong word: 'student'. He should use the word 'disciple'. The student simply remains concerned with words, theories, philosophies. The disciple is more involved; he wants to know with his own eyes, he wants to experience with his own heart.

AND WHO IS IT WHO KNOWS OF BIRTH AND DEATH?

That is the central point in the meditation. Birth and death are simply devices, because neither birth is true nor death is true. We have been before birth, so how can birth be true?

And we will be after death, so how can death be true? Only one thing is true: the consciousness that comes with you through birth and goes with you through death -- perhaps birth is a door, and death too! Perhaps they are the same door, just your direction is different.

When you enter this door into life your direction is towards life, and when you leave life you go through the same door, only your direction is outward. There is no need for two doors; one door will do perfectly well. When you enter this door you read the word PUSH, and when you go out the same door, from the other side, only the word changes: PULL.

But the real thing is: Who is to push and who is to pull?

WHO IS IT WHO KNOWS OF BIRTH AND DEATH AND WHO IS IT WHO

EXPERIENCES BIRTH AND DEATH? AGAIN: WHO IS IT WHO DOES NOT KNOW

WHERE WE COME FROM AND WHERE WE GO?

It is the same being. Awakened it knows, asleep it does not know.

WHO IS IT WHO SUDDENLY REALIZES WHERE HE COMES FROM AND WHERE

HE GOES TO?

Here he comes very close to the reality of enlightenment, because enlightenment is always sudden. You may have been preparing for it for years, but in those years you were not enlightened; it was not that slowly, slowly you were becoming enlightened. The preparation may be long, of many lives, but when you become enlightened it is just in a single moment. It Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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is always sudden. One moment you were ignorant; the next moment you are laughing hilariously ... seeing that, "I am the same person who had been going through all kinds of sufferings, nightmares, worries, humiliations, failures, and now suddenly I am out of it all, as if by magic all the clouds have disappeared and the sun is shining bright."

There are two schools in Zen. One is called the gradual school and the other the sudden school. The gradual school has a little misunderstanding of the point; otherwise nothing is wrong. They include in enlightenment the period of preparation, the period of wanderings --

as if all those wanderings have helped, as if they were the cause of enlightenment. They recognize that enlightenment happens suddenly, but that this suddenness has been earned through lives of discipline, meditation, and virtue, so they include the preparation period.

Hence they insist it is gradual.

But the word 'gradual' is not right for it, because gradual enlightenment immediately gives the sense that you get it in installments: one part and then after a few years another part ... and slowly gathering all these parts, one day you have the whole enlightenment.

I don't agree with the gradual idea.

Enlightenment is sudden.

Preparation for it may take lives or may not take lives -- it depends on you. If you are authentically interested in being enlightened it can happen without any preparation, because your inner being is already enlightened -- it is just a point of turning in.

I had one colleague in the university who was very much curious about enlightenment.

Even while I was teaching in the university I was moving around the country, finding people who can belong with me one day ... but his interest in enlightenment was only that of a student. One day he came to me and I said, "This day is very special."

He asked, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Today, if you want to be enlightened, I can manage it."

He looked worried. He said, "But I have a wife and children ..."

I said, "Enlightenment does not prohibit you from having a wife or children."

He said, "If this is a day of such a strange quality I should come on some other day."

But I asked, "What about enlightenment?"

He said, "Forgive me, I am only curious. I love you and I feel to be close to you, but enlightenment right now ...? There are so many things to be done, and moreover do you think as a buddha I will look adequate?"

I said, "You don't be worried about it. Enlightenment has nothing to do with whether you look like a buddha or not. Certainly you will be a special buddha." He had very strange eyes --

one looking this way, one looking that way. I said, "Don't be worried because I don't think that is a hindrance for enlightenment. It will be really very hilarious for people to see a buddha ..."

If he was talking to you he was looking another way. I said, "It will be a little strange when you are delivering sermons, but your eyes can be fixed. You don't be worried; that is my responsibility. First you become enlightened."

He said, "It is not only eyes. There are many things ... I have false teeth. Do you think it will look right for a buddha to have false teeth? And if somebody comes to know ...?"

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I said, "You don't be worried about these trivia."

But he stood up. He said, "I am going home. First I have to ask my wife. I never do such strange things without asking her; she is a very pragmatic woman."

I said, "It is up to you, but it has never happened in the whole history that somebody who becomes enlightened first asks the permission of his wife. You become enlightened; then you simply go and declare your enlightenment."

He said, "At least give me some time to think."

Then I said, "But such a day may not come again so soon. Today everything is ready."

He said, "I can wait. It will do even if it comes two or three years later."

And from that day he started avoiding me. If I was sitting in the common room he would not enter. He made sure that I was not in the university; then he would move everywhere freely. He would make sure that I was not in the library; then he would go to the library.

One day I arrived at his home. I said, "The day has come again."

He said, "My God, I have been avoiding you all this time, and just within three months the day has come again? My wife is absolutely against it!"

And then his wife came out and she said, "You should not make him enlightened. He is already a trouble, a nuisance. If he becomes enlightened our whole family's life will be disturbed. Even in his ignorance he is not what a husband should be and if he becomes enlightened I can visualize troubles and more troubles. You just leave him alone! He has been avoiding you for three months because of my advice. Now this is too much that you have started coming to our house."

And you will not believe that the next day he went to the capital and got himself transferred from that university to another university. After two or three days -- I had been looking for him -- I went again to his home and the neighbor said, "They are gone!"

I asked, "What was the problem?"

He said, "You were the problem."

I said, "I was simply trying to make him enlightened."

Enlightenment is such a simple thing that nobody needs to be worried about it. But it has become such ... Down the ages religions have been insisting that it is a very great phenomenon; it is not for ordinary mortals, it is only for those who have some special dispensation from God. Ordinary mortals should not try for it because that is trying for the impossible. It is good for a Gautam Buddha because he is an incarnation of God. It is good for Krishna because he is an incarnation of God, but ordinary people are not incarnations of God.

And I have been arguing my whole life with people that Gautam Buddha was not an incarnation of God before he became enlightened. Enlightenment came to him first; then you recognized him as an incarnation of God. Neither was Krishna accepted as an incarnation of God until he became enlightened. So your whole logic is false. You try to be enlightened and then people will accept you as a reincarnation of God.

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be sudden, without any preparation. Preparation is needed for something which is not your nature. Preparation means nurture, education.

Enlightenment is your nature.

You are already enlightened; you just don't know. All that is needed is a simple insight inwards.

Ta Hui is right when he says, WHO IS IT WHO SUDDENLY REALIZES WHERE HE

COMES FROM AND WHERE HE GOES TO? AND WHO IS IT WHO,

CONTEMPLATING THESE WORDS, BLINKS HIS EYES UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND, HIS BELLY CHURNING UP AND DOWN, AS IF A MASS OF FIRE WERE PLACED IN

HIS HEART? IF YOU WANT TO KNOW, JUST APPREHEND HIM AT THE POINT

WHERE HE CAN'T UNDERSTAND.

This is so pregnant a sentence, you should not forget it. Ta Hui has not been able to make many pregnant statements; he only quotes. But in this sutra he is not quoting at all. It seems something has transpired; it seems he has had a glimpse, because what he is saying can be said only by a man who has at least had a glimpse. He may not be enlightened yet, but certainly he has seen something beyond the mind.

I repeat the sentence because it is very important: IF YOU WANT TO KNOW, JUST

APPREHEND HIM AT THE POINT WHERE HE CAN'T UNDERSTAND.

Mind stops when it can't understand something. That is the whole art of the koan -- given an absurd puzzle, you turn and toss and you find this answer and that answer, and everything is wrong from the very beginning because the puzzle is not intrinsically solvable.

I have heard about a man who was purchasing toys for his children. He was a great mathematician and he became interested in a jigsaw puzzle. It was meant for small children, but he tried to fix it this way and that way and he failed. He could not believe ... if a mathematician of his caliber cannot fix the puzzle, how are small children going to do it? He asked the shopkeeper, who was watching and laughing, "Why are you laughing? And what kind of toy have you produced? I am a professor of mathematics and I cannot solve it. How will my small children solve it?"

And the shopkeeper said, "That's why I am laughing -- because this puzzle is not meant to be solved. It is a training for children for their coming life -- that life is a puzzle with no solution. So it is just preparing them: 'Don't get frustrated if you cannot solve it. You will be facing your life in a thousand ways and you will be amidst many problems which you cannot solve.'"

Have you ever looked? Have you solved your problem of love? Have you solved your problem of silence, peace? Have you solved your problem of putting the mind aside, just to have a weekend without the mind? Have you solved in any way how to be non-tense -- at least for a few minutes every day, how to be without thoughts for a few minutes every day?

What have you solved? You are simply living with all your unsolved problems, which go on becoming more and more of a burden to you. By the time of your death you will be burdened with mountains of unsolved problems.

The man who created that jigsaw puzzle had some insight.

Ta Hui is saying, "The moment the mind cannot understand something, naturally it goes beyond it. It stops, not knowing what to do! This is a great point, because you can apprehend Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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something that is beyond the mind. Because the mind has stopped all its noise for a moment --

its continuous turmoil is no longer there -- you may have a little glimpse into your authentic being.

I say this is a very pregnant statement by a man who has been up to now simply intellectualizing, philosophizing. For the first time he has come close to meditation, although it is only a very small glimpse -- but meditation as a glimpse is a great beginning. You have got the seed, now it can grow. Just give it the right soil and as soon as the spring comes you will have flowers dancing in the air, you will have flowers dancing within your being.

IF YOU CAN RECOGNIZE HIM THEN, YOU WILL KNOW THAT BIRTH AND

DEATH SURELY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH HIM.

If you can have just a glimpse of yourself you will know you have never been born and you have never died. Yes, birth and death have been happening around you but not to you.

The body was dying, the mind was dying; the body was being born, the mind was being born again, but you have remained eternally the same.

WHENEVER YOU ARE READING THE SCRIPTURES OR THE STORIES OF THE

ANCIENT WORTHIES ENTERING THE PATH, WHEN YOUR MIND DOES NOT

UNDERSTAND CLEARLY, AND IT SEEMS BEWILDERING AND STIFLING AND

FLAVORLESS -- AS IF YOU ARE GNAWING ON AN IRON SPIKE -- THIS IS JUST

THE TIME TO APPLY EFFORT.

This is the time to make the effort to wake up, a great opportunity ...

ABOVE ALL YOU MUST NOT GIVE UP. This is the moment ... make the effort to wake up. Above all don't give up because such moments rarely come. They come only when you encounter something which is too big for your mind. The mind remains in a kind of awe. This gives you a small window, a small opening, to see beyond the mind. Make every effort and don't give up!

THIS IS THE PLACE WHERE CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE DOES NOT OPERATE, WHERE THOUGHT DOES NOT REACH ... This is the first time he is talking about thoughtlessness, transcendence of conceptual knowledge ...

... WHERE DISCRIMINATION IS CUT OFF, AND THE PATH OF REASON IS

ANNIHILATED. It is for the first time in all these sutras that he is taking a quantum jump from reason to a world of mystery.

WHERE YOU CAN ALWAYS EXPLAIN REASONS AND APPLY

DISCRIMINATION. THIS ALL PERTAINS TO EMOTIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS. TIME

AND AGAIN PEOPLE TAKE THIS THIEF AS THEIR SON. DON'T BE UNAWARE OF

THIS!

Whenever you can explain things, whenever you can give reasons, whenever you feel at ease ... this is a dangerous time. Whenever just the opposite happens -- mind feels absolutely uncomfortable; something which it cannot comprehend is standing in front of it -- it naturally stops. There is no reason for thinking, for rationalization, for explanations; the thing is too big and the mind realizes for the first time its smallness.

Hence Ta Hui's suggestion: WHERE YOU CAN ALWAYS EXPLAIN REASONS AND

APPLY DISCRIMINATION. THIS ALL PERTAINS TO EMOTIONAL

CONSCIOUSNESS. TIME AND AGAIN PEOPLE TAKE THIS THIEF AS THEIR SON.

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DON'T BE UNAWARE OF THIS! Up to now he himself has been doing the same --

accepting this thief as his son.

But some change has happened. One never knows when it will happen. It suddenly comes like a breeze and you feel cool, you feel fresh, you feel younger. All staleness disappears. So even the people who are only intellectually interested in Zen are always in danger: the danger is that their intellectual interest may turn at any moment into an existential longing to experience.

Gautam Buddha has a statement: "Don't prevent people from reading scriptures; don't prevent people from listening to teachers who don't know anything, because sometimes it has happened that the teacher was only a teacher but the disciple turned out to be a master."

There is a beautiful story about one Tibetan monk, Marpa. Tibet has known only two great monks -- Marpa and Milarepa. Milarepa is already here; Marpa will be coming sooner or later! There was a great teacher with profound knowledge but no experience. He had thousands of students around him. He was influential.

Marpa was in search of a master. Seeing that so many people were around this man -- he was the most celebrated teacher of those days ... Marpa was a very simple man. He went and surrendered himself at the master's feet and said, "I have come here. Now it is up to you; whatever you want to make of me you can make. I will not have my own will other than you, and I will not have any thought other than you. I will not have my life in any way separate from you; I want to be just a shadow to you." Amongst thousands of disciples, the teacher became even more egoistic. When Marpa said this he initiated him into sannyas.

Marpa was immensely innocent and trusting. Just within a few days there was great trouble. Sannyasins saw him jumping from high mountains into the valley. They had to go down and it took hours to reach him. He would simply take a jump. It was almost impossible to survive that jump. But they always found -- after three hours going round and round down the mountain -- that when they reached the valley he was sitting under a tree, unscratched.

They could not believe it: "What kind of man is this?" And they became jealous also. They started reporting to the teacher: "This Marpa is not good to keep around. He is trying to influence your students; many have become his disciples. Soon everybody will desert you if you don't throw him out."

The teacher said, "But what is the quality in him that people are so much interested in him?"

And they said, "Quality? He is a miracle. He goes through fire and he is not burned. He sits naked when the snow is falling and it seems he does not feel the cold. He jumps from mountains thousands of feet high into the valley. Just to go into the city for begging we have to take a three hour route; coming and going it means six hours just for one meal. The whole day is lost. And that fellow does it within minutes! And yesterday it was too much: he was walking on water!"

The master ... the teacher said, "Call him!" And he asked Marpa, "What is your secret?"

Marpa said, "My secret? I am just your shadow. Your name is my secret. Whenever I want to do something I simply take your name and pray to you: 'Protect me' -- and then I simply do it. Just by taking your name I can walk on the rivers, I can jump from the highest mountains, I can pass through fire -- nothing is impossible. You are so great; just your name is enough!"

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The teacher thought to himself: "If my name can do such miracles I must be a fool that I have never tried doing miracles myself. I could have been the greatest master in the whole of Tibet." So he said, "That's very good. You have got the right secret." And he told all the disciples, "This is what trust is."

And he tried to walk on water himself. When his name is enough ... of course, for him, walking on water would not be a problem. But just as he took a step he started drowning.

Marpa had to jump in and pull him out.

And the teacher said, "This is strange -- that my name is working and I myself am drowning."

Marpa said, "You have destroyed everything. Now your name will not work. It was not your name -- it was my trust. And now seeing you drowning, how can I trust in your name?

You have destroyed my innocence. I had come here to learn to be more trusting, to be more innocent. Rather than being a help, you have almost destroyed all my hope."

But Marpa became a great master. His teacher's name is not known. Marpa managed to transform the whole of Tibet to the path of the Buddha.

So sometimes it has happened that the teacher may not know, but if the disciple trusts, his trust can create miracles. Buddha has said, "Let people read the scriptures, let them listen to teachers ... the teachers may not know that the scriptures are dead words; but who knows, if these people have trust, their trust can resurrect the dead words. Their trust can get inspiration from people who don't have anything that can inspire.

Finally it is trust in yourself, but it takes a little time to find the trust in yourself. It is easy to trust in somebody else. But once you have understood that it is trust -- then why trust in individuals? Why not trust in the whole existence? Then your whole life becomes a mystery, and things start happening around you which you are not doing.

Something has happened, because Ta Hui has changed his tone. He has stopped quoting others. For the first time he is saying things on his own authority, and things of tremendous importance: be aware of yourself, who you are. And the right moment to be aware is when your mind for some reason gets baffled, cannot function, and a window opens and you can see yourself.

Once you have seen yourself you can never be caught in the snares of the mind. Once you have seen yourself -- even just a glimpse -- the true pilgrimage has begun.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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16

Before seeking

22 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

BEFORE SEEKING

YOU'VE INDICATED YOU WANT ME TO INSTRUCT YOU BY LETTER IN THE

DIRECT ESSENTIALS. THIS VERY THOUGHT OF SEEKING INSTRUCTION IN THE

DIRECT ESSENTIALS HAS ALREADY STUCK YOUR HEAD INTO A BOWL OF

GLUE. THOUGH I SHOULDN'T ADD ANOTHER LAYER OF FROST TO THE SNOW, NEVERTHELESS WHERE THERE'S A QUESTION IT SHOULDN'T GO

UNANSWERED. I ASK YOU TO ABANDON AT ONCE ALL THE JOY YOU'VE EVER

FELT IN READING THE WORDS OF THE SCRIPTURES YOURSELF OR WHEN

BEING AROUSED AND INSTRUCTED BY OTHERS.

BE TOTALLY WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING, AS BEFORE, LIKE A THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILD. THOUGH THE INNATE CONSCIOUSNESS IS

THERE, IT DOESN'T OPERATE. THEN CONTEMPLATE WHAT'S THERE BEFORE

THE THOUGHT OF SEEKING THE DIRECT ESSENTIALS ARISES: OBSERVE AND

OBSERVE. AS YOU FEEL YOU'RE LOSING YOUR GRIP MORE AND MORE AND

YOUR HEART IS MORE AND MORE UNEASY, DON'T GIVE UP AND SLACK OFF: THIS IS THE PLACE TO CUT OFF THE HEADS OF THE THOUSAND SAGES.

STUDENTS OF THE PATH OFTEN RETREAT AT THIS POINT. IF YOUR FAITH IS

THOROUGHGOING, JUST KEEP CONTEMPLATING WHAT'S BEFORE THE

THOUGHT OF SEEKING INSTRUCTION IN THE DIRECT ESSENTIALS ARISES.

SUDDENLY YOU WILL AWAKEN FROM YOUR DREAM, AND THERE WON'T BE

ANY MISTAKE ABOUT IT.

Ta Hui is saying a few significant things. The first is that the consciousness of a three-year-old child, a baby, is there, but it does not create thinking. It remains just like a mirror, reflecting everything around the child, but the child does not start thinking whether something is good or bad, beautiful or ugly.

Why three years are mentioned is significant to understand: if you try to go backwards in your memory, you will stop at the age of three. You cannot go beyond that. The reason is that only after three years of age do thoughts start stirring the consciousness and impressions start collecting in the memory.

Up to the age of three the child is exactly like a sage, only with one difference: this innocence is natural and is bound to be lost, because the child is not aware of its beauty, its richness, its splendor.

He does not know how much valuable treasure he is going to lose as soon as he starts thinking. In fact he wants to think as quickly as possible, because he is seeing people all around him who can think better, who are more articulate, achieve to higher positions, greater Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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prestige, more honor. This whole world supports the process of thinking. For any ambition to be achieved, thinking is absolutely essential.

The moment the child becomes aware of the fact that thinking is the most essential thing to being someone in the world, somebody special with name and fame, then he starts learning as quickly as possible and transforming his consciousness and its energy into thoughts, into memory, into imagination -- not knowing that he is losing his most precious nature, his most precious meditative consciousness.

It is true, just as Jesus says: Unless you are born again you will not attain the kingdom of God. He does not mean that first you have to die and be born again; he is only using a metaphor. You have to die as a thinker, as a mind, and you have to be reborn only as an innocent consciousness, just like a child.

Once a man has completed the whole circle from childhood to the enlightened man, he comes to the same self-nature, only with one difference: the child was not aware of it, and the enlightened person is nothing but awareness. He recognizes the value, he enjoys the tremendous bliss of it; his is the ecstasy of the ultimate and the eternal.

The child was just innocent in a negative sense -- he was innocent because he was ignorant

-- and the sage is innocent because he is wise. All ignorance has been dispelled.

The child's innocence was not meditative; it was simply non-functioning consciousness; it was just waiting for the right time and age to start functioning. Perhaps the reason is ... all the animals in the world are born complete; only man's child is born incomplete. Hence man's child is more dependent and helpless than any animal in the world.

An animal's children can survive without the family, without the mother, without the father; they will find some way. But it is impossible to think that man's child can find some way to survive on his own.

The reason is very strange; perhaps you have never thought about it. The reason is that man's child is born incomplete. He has to be born incomplete because the mother cannot carry the child for three years more; that would mean for four years continuously ... Nine months is the ultimate for the mother to carry the child; more than that it is impossible, her womb has not the capacity.

So every child is born three years before he should have been born. Those three years he is out of the womb, but almost totally dependent on the mother, on the father, on the family --

now this is the womb around him. After three years he starts taking a few steps outside the circle of the womb, the family, and for the first time he starts showing indications of being an individual.

Below the age of three, children are almost always referring to themselves in the third person: "The baby is hungry"; "The baby wants to sleep"; "The baby is thirsty." They don't say, "I am thirsty"; the "I" has not formed yet. The "I" will need a little time, because it is nothing but the center of the mind. The body is formed; the mind is still in the process of forming. It takes three years for the mind to come to a point from where it starts functioning as an individual.

So the body is born when the child has been nine months in the mother's womb, and the mind is born when the child has been three years out of the womb. That's why we cannot remember further backwards than the age of three. There, suddenly a China wall ...

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Those three years we have lived, and in those three years a thousand and one things must have happened. But they have not left any impact, any footprints on our memory system; the memory system was not ready. The child has every capacity to function as an individual; he just needs a little time for the whole mechanism to be ready to function.

The sage has lived as a mind, suffered as a mind, has gone through the whole hell of the mind, and has learned the lesson that unless you go beyond the mind life is going to remain a continuous agony.

Mind is agony.

Once this experience settles deeply in you, out of your own experience arises a new effort, a new beginning, a new birth ... the birth of meditation. Just as at the age of nine months the body is born, at the age of three the mind is born. Somewhere -- it depends how intelligently you are watching your experiences, how you are looking at the sources of your misery and suffering -- if you are intelligent enough, perhaps by the age of thirty-five you may start feeling a deep urge to go beyond the mind.

The seven years between thirty-five and forty-two prepare you to take the quantum leap. If everything goes naturally, unobstructed and unhindered by the society, by organized religions, then the age of forty-two will be the third birth, the birth of meditation, a new beginning beyond mind.

It does not happen to everyone at forty-two, because no society wants it to happen. It is the most dangerous thing as far as the society is concerned, that people should start going beyond the mind, because going beyond the mind means going beyond the social order, going beyond the organized church, going beyond the scriptures, going beyond all vested interests, going beyond slavery, going beyond any kind of exploitation, oppression, and attaining to your dignity as an authentic consciousness.

This consciousness cannot be imprisoned, it cannot be killed, it cannot be burned. Even nuclear weapons are absolutely impotent as far as this consciousness is concerned.

No society wants individuals so powerful in themselves. Every society wants you to remain dependent on it.

Your independence is being curtailed in every possible way. And because your independence, your individuality is being curtailed, death comes before meditation comes.

Life has been a wastage. Unless you attain to meditation, you have not really lived.

I have heard about a man who only became aware that he was alive when he died.

Suddenly an awakening ... "My God, I have been alive, but now it is too late." Perhaps this may be true not just about one man -- it may be true about every man who has died without meditation. Dead people don't tell stories; just this one man was an exception. There are a few exceptional men in the world always.

While you are alive you are not really conscious how precious life is. In fact it is one of the tricks of the mind: whatever you have, you don't recognize its value unless you lose it.

There was a great king who had conquered many lands and had accumulated immense wealth, but was very unhappy and miserable. There was not a single moment of joy, bliss ...

He started asking people, "What is the purpose of all my wealth and all my kingdom? I cannot even sleep. My mind is so full of tensions, worries, there is no space for anything else. Is there someone in my kingdom who can help me?"

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People had heard about a Sufi mystic and they said, "In your kingdom there is a Sufi mystic, a very strange fellow. He has helped many people, although you have to be a little alert with him because he is not predictable, he may do anything. But one thing is certain: whatever he does, finally you find that it had a reason. In the beginning it will look absolutely irrational. If you have courage enough you can go."

The king said, "Do you think me a coward? I have invaded great lands; my whole life has been the life of a warrior. Can a poor Sufi mystic make me afraid? I will go ... and I will go alone, no bodyguards, no army, no advisers."

But he took with him a big bag full of diamonds and rubies and emeralds, just to show to the Sufi mystic: "This is only a sample. I have so much money but it is not helping me at all.

First I used to think that when I have money I will relax and enjoy. But now money is there and I'm living in hell."

The Sufi mystic was sitting under a tree. The king went there, got down from his horse, touched the feet of the Sufi mystic and asked him, "Can you help me?"

The Sufi mystic said, "What do you want? I will help you immediately."

He had heard that this man was strange -- otherwise nobody would tell you, "I will help you immediately." He is going to do something ... The king was a little afraid: nobody wants to be helped immediately. He said, "There is no hurry, but ..."

The Sufi mystic said, "Just tell me what you want. Don't waste my time. You say it; I will give it to you and be finished."

The king said, "You don't understand. I want peace of mind."

And when he was saying "peace of mind," the Sufi mystic took his bag of emeralds and diamonds and rubies and ran away. The king said, "My God, what kind of man is he? Is he a mystic or a thief?"

He ran -- in his whole life he had never run. The village was unknown to him, with small streets. The Sufi was perfectly well known; he lived in that village. The king was shouting,

"Catch hold of that thief" -- and people were laughing, because people knew that every day something or other happens. And it was really a laughing matter: the king was huffing and puffing and shouting, "Catch him! Why are you just laughing?" -- and still running because that old fellow is taking away all his money and he is going so fast.

The Sufi mystic gave him a good round of the whole village, made the whole village aware that the mystic is ahead and the king is following, perspiring. Finally he reached to the same tree, sat there, and waited for the king to come. The king came very tired, perspiring, and the mystic gave him the bag. He took the bag, put it on his chest and said, "My God!"

The Sufi said, "Have you got some peace of mind? Had not I told you I would help you immediately?"

The king said, "Strange is your way ... but it is true, I am feeling very peaceful, as I have never felt in my life. And the trouble is that this money was always with me, and I never felt so happy as I am feeling now."

The Sufi said, "I have solved your problem. Your problem is that you have got everything.

You need some distance, you need to lose it; only then will you understand what you had. And this is not only true about your money. This is more true about your life itself: because you Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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have it, you have started taking it for granted. It is too obvious it is yours. You are not at all concerned that tomorrow it may not be yours, or even the next second."

The day you become aware that death will destroy all opportunities for growth ... Life is a great opportunity to grow, but rather than growing you have been simply accumulating junk which will all be taken away. People only grow old, but growing old is not growing up.

Very few people grow up.

Growing old is a natural thing; every animal does it, there is nothing special about it. It is horizontal. Growing up is vertical. Only very few people grow up; and meditation is the only path that moves vertically. Mind moves horizontally.

Ta Hui is making a few very important statements.

The first thing, the first sutra: YOU'VE INDICATED YOU WANT ME TO INSTRUCT

YOU BY LETTER IN THE DIRECT ESSENTIALS. THIS VERY THOUGHT OF

SEEKING INSTRUCTION IN THE DIRECT ESSENTIALS HAS ALREADY STUCK

YOUR HEAD INTO A BOWL OF GLUE.

It seems he is getting free from his own intellectual jargon. He is becoming aware of something more than the mind. He is condemning the very idea of getting instruction through somebody else, and that too through a letter, through words, through language. First from somebody else, second through language ...

THOUGH I SHOULDN'T ADD ANOTHER LAYER OF FROST TO THE SNOW ...

because whatever I say will become more knowledge to you, it will simply strengthen the power of your mind. What is needed is to weaken the power of the mind so that you can go beyond it without being hindered by it.

This has been the problem of all the enlightened people. Ta Hui is right when he says, NEVERTHELESS WHERE THERE'S A QUESTION IT SHOULD NOT GO

UNANSWERED.

Why should it not go unanswered? Because every question, if answered by somebody who is not just knowledgeable, can be turned into a quest. The right answer does not mean what it means in schools and colleges and universities; the right answer is that which turns your question into a quest. The right answer does not mean the answer that is given in the books and you are repeating it just like a parrot.

As far as the enlightened man is concerned the right answer has nothing to do with your question. He simply uses your energy involved in the question and turns it into a quest; it becomes your thirst.

That's why Ta Hui is right when he says, WHERE THERE IS A QUESTION IT SHOULD

NOT GO UNANSWERED.

The opportunity should not be missed to change the question into a quest. Your answer has to be such that the question is not solved but rather deepens into a quest; it becomes less intellectual and more existential. A question about water should be turned by your answer into a deep thirst.

All the awakened people down the ages have been answering only for this purpose, not that they are giving you the right answers -- there are no right answers. Your questions are being used to provoke in you a search, a deep longing. If the answer can do that, it is the right answer.

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I ASK YOU TO ABANDON AT ONCE ALL THE JOY YOU'VE EVER FELT IN

READING THE WORDS OF THE SCRIPTURES YOURSELF OR WHEN BEING

AROUSED AND INSTRUCTED BY OTHERS.

He is turning towards his own being. He is not using quotations anymore. He is saying things which just a few sutras before he himself was doing; now he is saying things against them. He is saying, I ASK YOU TO ABANDON AT ONCE ALL THE JOY YOU'VE EVER

FELT IN READING THE WORDS OF THE SCRIPTURES YOURSELF OR WHEN

BEING AROUSED AND INSTRUCTED BY OTHERS.

Why have the awakened people always been against scriptures? This is a great misunderstanding all around the world. The people who have awakened are against the scriptures for a totally different reason than people understand. People think they are against scriptures because scriptures are wrong; they are against scriptures because if you get lost in the words of scriptures you will never come to know your own truth. The scriptures may be right, that is not the point. Perhaps they are right -- but they are not right for you; they were right only for those people who had experienced and have expressed something out of their experience.

But to you they are just dead words, and if you become too much interested in collecting dead corpses around yourself you will soon be drowned in the dead words. That's what happens to all the scholars: their great effort simply becomes a suicide. They work hard, but their gain is nothing.

Scriptures may have come from people who were awakened, but the moment somebody says ... It is no more the same as his own experience. And when it is written it goes even further away. That's why no enlightened person in the whole world has written anything by his own hand; they have spoken -- because the spoken word and the written word have qualitative differences.

The spoken word has a warmth; the written word is absolutely cold, ice cold. The spoken word has the heartbeat of the master. The spoken word is not just a word -- it is still breathing when it reaches you, it has still some flavor. It is coming from a source of immense joy and light; it is bound to carry something of that fragrance, some radiation from that light, some vibe which may not be visible but will stir your being.

To listen to a master is one thing, and to read just the same words is totally different, because the living presence of the master is no more behind the words. You can't see those eyes, you can't see those gestures, you can't see in those words the same authority ... you can't feel those same silent gaps.

The presence of the master, his charisma, his energy is missing in the written word. The written word is absolutely dead. No master has ever written except Lao Tzu -- and that too under imperial pressure.

His whole life he refused to write, and in the end he was going to leave China and go towards the Himalayas for his ultimate rest. The emperor of China ordered the armies on the boundary, "If Lao Tzu passes through that area" -- because that was the only gate towards the Himalayas, he was bound to pass by there -- "imprison him. Take good care of him, but make it clear to him he cannot go out of China unless he writes his experiences. This is an order from the emperor."

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Poor Lao Tzu was not aware what was going on. He simply went to the place where it was easiest to move out of China. There was an army waiting, and he was caught immediately.

Respectfully, with great honor, they told him, "This is the imperial order. Forgive us, we don't want to hinder you, but just to fulfill the order -- otherwise we will not be able to allow you to go out of China. And we have made a special guesthouse for you with every comfort, luxury, according to the orders from the emperor. You stay and you write whatever you have experienced, what the truth is that you have realized which has attracted so many people."

Because he wanted to reach quickly to the Himalayas -- his death was coming closer and he wanted to die in the Himalayas ... The Himalayas have an eternal silence, a peace that you cannot find anywhere else. Under such circumstances he wrote TAO TE CHING, a small booklet.

That is the only exception in the whole history when an enlightened man has written anything. But the beginning of the book says, "Truth cannot be written. So remember, whatever I am writing is not truth. I will try my best to be as close to truth as possible, but approximate truth is not truth." So he has begun his book with the statement, "Whatever is written goes far away from the living experience." That is the reason why all the awakened people have been against scriptures.

But the ordinary masses have always misunderstood them. If I say anything against the VEDAS, Hindus are angry; if I say anything against THE BIBLE, Christians are angry.

But I am not against the VEDAS or against THE BIBLE; I am against your being lost in those dead words. Once they were alive, but now the people whose presence was needed to give them life, to keep their flame burning, themselves have disappeared into the universal consciousness. Just their footprints are left on the sand of time. You can call them holy footprints, but that does not make any sense. You can worship them, you can have photographs of them, you can hang those photographs. You can do all kinds of stupid things, which are being done in all churches, all mosques, all temples, all synagogues.

The man who knows has to say something against all that is going on. Ta Hui is right when he says, "Stop having any joy in scriptures; that is dangerous, it is poisonous."

BE TOTALLY WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING, AS BEFORE, LIKE A THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILD. THOUGH THE INNATE CONSCIOUSNESS IS

THERE, IT DOES NOT OPERATE.

Be born again as a child. The greatest achievement in life is if in your old age you can again become a child. You have completed the circle, you have come back home, you have rediscovered your self-nature. Every child comes with it, but first he has to lose it. Only then will he recognize what he has lost in gaining money, power, respectability, which are of no use at all. He has lost himself, he has sold himself in the marketplace for a few pieces of gold.

If one recognizes this, one stops accumulating knowledge and starts dropping all so-called knowledge. A simple criterion has to be used: whatever is not your experience is not true. It may be the experience of Gautam Buddha, it may be the experience of Jesus, it may be the experience of Lao Tzu -- but it is not your experience.

When a Buddha eats, his hunger disappears, not your hunger. If Buddha finds the truth, his darkness disappears, not your darkness. Nobody can help anybody else.

I don't think of it as a calamity; I think of it as one of the greatest privileges of man: at least in this world there is one thing which is absolutely yours -- neither can anybody give it to Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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you nor can anybody take it away from you. It cannot be stolen, there is no way to destroy it ...

but you have to find it yourself. There is no shortcut to it and there is no cheap way to find it.

You will have to go into your own aloneness, into your own subjectivity, into the very center of your being where nothing moves and everything is absolutely still. In that stillness you will find again your lost childhood. And to find it again is such a celebration, every cell of your being starts dancing.

Ta Hui is saying, "If you can reach to the same state of consciousness when it was there but not operating" ... THEN CONTEMPLATE WHAT IS THERE BEFORE THE

THOUGHT OF SEEKING THE DIRECT ESSENTIALS ARISES: OBSERVE AND

OBSERVE.

He is giving you an essential method of meditation. Any thought arising in your mind ...

rather than finding out the answer, try to find out from where it arises and what was the situation of your inner being when it had not arisen.

You will suddenly find again and again the same innocence, the same childhood consciousness, the same golden period. Every thought, if you observe, will lead you to the same state. Then thought is not your enemy, then mind is not your enemy; on the contrary, it becomes an object of observation.

OBSERVE AND OBSERVE. Just watch. A thought arises and a thought disappears. It arises from nowhere. Before it arises there is absolute silence, and then it disappears into silence again, into nothingness. In the beginning is nothingness, in the end is nothingness ...

and this nothingness is your pure consciousness.

THE BIBLE says, "In the beginning there was the word. And God was with the word, and God was the word."

It is possible that in the beginning there was sound -- but not word, because 'word' means a meaningful sound. Who will give meaning to it?

And in fact, if you look scientifically, when you go into the forest and you hear the sound of running water in a waterfall, there is no meaning in it, but there is sound. You will be surprised to know the scientific understanding: the sound is there only because you are there; without your ears there is no sound.

So it will be very surprising to you: when there is nobody around the waterfall, there is no sound, because sound needs ears. In the same way, there is light here -- the moment we all are gone there is no light, because the light needs eyes. Without eyes there is no light.

When you move out of your room do you think things remain the same? -- the blue remains blue and the red remains red? Just forget all that nonsense. The moment you go out of the room all the colors disappear -- it is a very magical world -- you close the room and all colors are gone, because colors need eyes. Without an eye no color can exist. And just look through the keyhole ... they come back.

This miracle is happening every day. In fact, even if you are sitting in your room and you close your eyes, all the colors disappear. Don't try just to see from the corner of your eye whether they have disappeared or they are still there -- they will come back immediately!

To say that in the beginning there was the word is absolutely wrong. Sound would have been better, but that too is not right. Silence would be even better than sound, but silence also needs ears, just as sound needs ears. Do you think when you are absent from your room there Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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is silence? It is not possible. There is no noise, that is true, but there is no silence either. Noise and silence both are experiences of the ears.

So what was in the beginning?

No silence ... no sound ... no word.

Gautam Buddha and his approach seem to be far more scientific: there was only nothingness. That nothingness is our very being. We have come out of that nothingness and we will disappear into that nothingness one day.

So make friends with that nothingness, because it is going to be your eternal home. To make friends with nothingness is all that is meant by meditation. And as you observe your thoughts, slowly, slowly they disappear, and only a pure nothingness surrounds you. You have come to the beginning of the world, which is also the end of the world. You have come to the source and you have come to the goal.

In this state only your awareness is the truth. That's why Buddha and all those people who have awakened to the ultimate truth don't recognize the hypothesis of God. In that nothingness they don't find any God, unless you want to call nothingness "God." Then there is no problem

-- but it will give a very wrong understanding about nothingness.

I myself have come to the conclusion that rather than saying, "There was no God" --

because it will unnecessarily hurt people and will not help in any way -- it is better to say,

"There was godliness." Just a quality ... That nothingness was not empty; that nothingness was full, overfull. It was full of consciousness, and consciousness is the divine quality; you can call it godliness.

And the whole of existence is made of the same stuff. You can call it nothingness, you can call it godliness -- it is only a question of whether you prefer a negative description or a positive description, but both the words mean the same thing.

AS YOU FEEL, says Ta Hui, YOU'RE LOSING YOUR GRIP MORE AND MORE AND

YOUR HEART IS MORE AND MORE UNEASY ... When you observe your thoughts and this nothingness starts surrounding you, there is always a possibility that your heart will start sinking. You may become afraid, scared.

Don't be scared and don't be uneasy. It is happening only because of your old habit. You have never experienced nothingness, otherwise there is nothing more blissful, there is nothing more peaceful, there is nothing more alive.

... DON'T GIVE UP AND SLACK OFF: THIS IS THE PLACE TO CUT OFF THE

HEADS OF THE THOUSAND SAGES. This refers to a certain statement of Gautam Buddha. He used to say to his disciples, "If I meet you on the way, don't hesitate --

immediately cut my head. Most probably I will meet you" -- because the disciples have loved him so much and the master has showered so much love on them that when they become silent there is every possibility the mind will play its last trick. The last trick will be to bring the master himself ... and that will become the barrier to seeing the nothingness.

Gautam Buddha is absolutely right: "Cut my head immediately -- because I am not there, just mind is playing the last game, the last resort."

It happened in Ramakrishna's life ... He was a worshiper of mother-goddess Kali, and he came in contact with an enlightened wandering monk, Totapuri. Totapuri said to him, Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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"Although you have progressed so much, you are stuck. You are stuck with this goddess ...

because there is no goddess, nothing; it is just your imagination."

Ramakrishna was already worshiped by thousands of people, but when Totapuri said this to him he immediately recognized that the man was right. He said to Totapuri, "Help me --

because when I close my eyes everything else disappears. Only the mother-goddess remains, so beautiful, so radiant that I forget completely that I have to enter into nothingness. She is so beautiful and so charming that I get lost into her beauty and into her energy. And when I wake up I cry, because I wanted to go beyond her but she seems to surround me like a boundary, like a jail, from everywhere."

Totapuri said, "You sit before me, and just look at this piece of glass."

Ramakrishna said, "What is the purpose of that piece of glass?"

Totapuri said, "I will watch your face, because I know -- I have watched you: when you see the mother-goddess inside yourself your face becomes so beautiful, so graceful that I will know immediately that you have come to encounter your illusion that you have been conditioning yourself with for years. I will immediately cut just on your forehead with this piece of glass, and as I cut and blood starts flowing, you also take courage and cut the head of the mother-goddess."

Ramakrishna said, "It is very difficult. And moreover from where am I going to get the sword?"

Totapuri laughed and he said, "If you can imagine the mother-goddess, can't you imagine a sword? It is all imagination. And if you miss, I am not going to stay here anymore. So don't miss this chance, otherwise in this life perhaps you will not meet another Totapuri."

Ramakrishna closed his eyes and as he became radiant, joyful and his face started showing that he was seeing something tremendously beautiful, Totapuri cut exactly what in the East is called the third eye. From the top of his forehead he went down to his nose, cutting the skin.

Blood was flowing and Ramakrishna gathered courage, pulled out his sword -- he could not believe from where this sword had come -- and he cut the head of the mother-goddess. It was very difficult because he had loved this mother for years. He had been dancing and singing, chanting; he was creating the illusion -- otherwise there are no mother-goddesses, no father-gods, except in man's imagination, except in man's childish fixation on mothers and fathers.

He cut the head and he could not believe it: the mother fell in two parts, the head on this side and the body on that side. And it was as if a door opened -- a door to nothingness, to infinity ... for six days he remained in that state.

After six days he opened his eyes -- there were tears in his eyes -- and the first words he spoke to Totapuri were, "The last barrier has fallen. I am grateful to you. You have shown tremendous compassion."

That was the last day. After that he never went into the temple of the mother-goddess; after that he never mentioned the name of the mother-goddess. And after that he was a totally different man -- so silent, so peaceful, so joyous, as if there was not a single worry in the world.

He lived almost three years after this experience, and those three years were his most precious years. People who have sat by his side -- and he was not very ancient, he existed just Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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in the last century, in the last years of the past century. So just a hundred years ago he was here, and I have come across people in Bengal whose grandfathers sat with Ramakrishna, and they still remember their grandfathers telling them about the man.

Those three years he was not speaking ... Once in a while he would tell a small story, once in a while he would dance, but otherwise he would sit silently with hundreds of disciples, all enjoying and sharing the ultimate nothingness.

STUDENTS OF THE PATH OFTEN RETREAT AT THIS POINT. Those who are beginners are naturally afraid when they come across nothingness. Naturally the fear arises as if they are drowning, as if this nothingness is going to swallow them. It is true: it will swallow ... but only that which you are not. Only your false personality will disappear; just your authentic being will remain in its crystal-clear purity.

There is no need to fear. The master is needed at such stages. This is the last stage where the master is needed -- not to let you retreat, but to give you a good push, just a little encouragement: "Don't be worried, I have also been through the same stage; there is nothing to be feared. It is not death. This nothingness is not death; this nothingness is purest life."

IF YOUR FAITH IS THOROUGHGOING, JUST KEEP CONTEMPLATING WHAT'S

BEFORE THE THOUGHT OF SEEKING INSTRUCTION IN THE DIRECT ESSENTIALS

ARISES. SUDDENLY YOU WILL AWAKEN FROM YOUR DREAM, AND THERE

WON'T BE ANY MISTAKE ABOUT IT.

Allow this nothingness to take possession of you ... and all your dreams disappear; your sleep, your spiritual sleep cannot remain anymore.

I have to explain something to you at this point. For thousands of years it has been thought that dreams are a kind of disturbance to sleep, but the latest findings say just the opposite.

Dreams are not a disturbance to your sleep, they are very protective and helpful to your sleep.

They prevent your sleep from being broken.

For example, you feel hungry and you are asleep, and a dream arises that you are going into the kitchen and you are opening the fridge, and you are taking a good share of sweets or ice cream or whatsoever you like -- because in a dream there is no question, whatsoever you like ... The dream is very generous -- and as much you like, because dreams don't listen to doctors.

This way the dream has protected your sleep, otherwise the hunger would have disturbed you. Now you feel you have taken enough and the sleep continues.

Recent research about dream and sleep have made many things clear. Out of eight hours you would not think that you are dreaming almost six hours; for only two hours are you asleep, and even that is not in a single piece for two hours -- a few minutes here, a few minutes there ... In six hours of dreams, for just a few fragments here and there are you asleep.

There has been an experiment done in many psychological labs. A person was disturbed whenever he was dreaming. It is very easy to know when a person is dreaming: if you are sitting by the side of your wife or your husband or your friend, the moment you see his eyes start moving under the eyelids he is starting to dream. So it is very easy to know when he is dreaming and when he is not dreaming, because when he dreams then naturally he is seeing scenes, almost like a film, and his eyes start moving. When he is simply asleep his eyes don't move.

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Experiments have been done: whenever a person would dream, they would wake him up, they would disturb his dream. They would allow him to sleep, but they would not allow him to dream. And they were surprised that although he had slept two, three hours -- which was the most that he would sleep -- he was very tired, exhausted, he was not rejuvenated; in the morning he did not feel like getting up. They could not believe it; they were thinking that although his dreams were being disturbed, his sleep would be complete. The old idea had been that it is the sleep that rejuvenates you, revitalizes you.

Then they did another experiment. They would disturb the person when he was asleep, they would not let him sleep; he could dream as much as he wanted -- his dreaming time they would leave undisturbed. And the strange finding was that in the morning the man was more fresh than he had ever been. He had not slept at all; the whole night he had been in a movie house, and he was not tired.

So two things have become clear: one, that dreams are not disturbing the sleep but are protecting and guarding it; second, dreams are more necessary for your health than your sleep, because dreams are throwing out all the garbage that you collect the whole day. They clean your whole being -- six hours spring-cleaning -- so in the morning you feel fresh.

Why am I telling you about this experiment? Because the same applies to the spiritual sleep. The moment your dreams disappear in meditation -- thoughts, images; these are all dreams -- when they all disappear, then your spiritual sleep cannot remain; your dreams were protecting it. So just as on the ordinary mental level it is true, it is true on the spiritual level too, exactly in the same way. Once dreams have disappeared, that means meditation has come to maturity.

And after the dreams are gone, suddenly you will feel a new awakening. You have been waking up every morning, but once you wake up from your spiritual sleep, then you will see the difference, and why in the East we have been dividing sleep into four stages. The first stage is so-called waking; the second stage is dreaming; the third stage, sleep, and the fourth stage, real awakening.

The so-called waking we all know; every morning we wake up. The enlightened being knows the real awakening. It has some quality of our awakening, but our awakening is very small, a very thin layer.

The awakening of a Gautam Buddha is total. In that total awakening there is a luminous awareness surrounded by a positive nothingness. It is not empty, it is overfull. Rather than say nothingness, Gautam Buddha used to say "no-thingness." Things have disappeared ... and what has remained is inexpressible. We try to express it as blissfulness, as ecstasy, as eternal joy, but these are faraway echoes of the real thing. They don't represent it exactly -- there is no way.

In our language we cannot translate the experience of the ultimate awakening, but a few hints can be given.

Ta Hui's suggestions to the young seeker are all significant: FAITH IS

THOROUGHGOING ... It has to be thoroughgoing, but one has to remember it is not the faith in a church, it is not the faith in a holy scripture; it is simply faith in yourself.

The function of the master is not to create faith in him, but to create faith in yourself. An authentic master makes you more and more trusting in your own individuality, in your own Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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potential, in your own courage, in your own ultimate possibility of a quantum leap from mind to no-mind.

This can be the criterion to judge: if somebody wants you to have faith in him, he is a fraud. And if somebody helps you to have faith in yourself, he is a friend.

A true master is a friend. He is not superior, he is not holier than thou; he is just a friend.

He has so much to share ... he wants many friends because his sources are abundant. But his whole effort is to help you to stand on your own legs. He does not create faith in God, faith in any savior, faith in any priest, faith in any messengers, faith in any scriptures; he creates faith in yourself. And anybody who helps to create faith in yourself obviously cannot be a fraud, because he cannot exploit you.

Exploitation is possible only if he creates faith in him; if he asks, "Surrender to me; have faith in me. I will deliver you, I will redeem you. I am the savior. I am the shepherd and you are just sheep." If something like this is being told to you ... beware of such shepherds. They are simply frauds exploiting your helplessness, exploiting your ignorance.

The friend will help you to save yourself, to become a savior of yourself.

The last words of Gautam Buddha were: "Be a light unto yourself." Those are the most pregnant words ever uttered by any man.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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17

No goal

23 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

DON'T CONSCIOUSLY AWAIT ENLIGHTENMENT

WHETHER YOU'RE HAPPY OR ANGRY, IN QUIET OR NOISY PLACES, YOU

STILL MUST BRING UP CHAO CHOU'S SAYING, "A DOG HAS NO

BUDDHA-NATURE." ABOVE ALL, DON'T CONSCIOUSLY AWAIT

ENLIGHTENMENT. IF YOU CONSCIOUSLY AWAIT ENLIGHTENMENT, YOU'RE

SAYING, "RIGHT NOW I'M DELUDED." IF YOU WAIT FOR ENLIGHTENMENT, CLINGING TO DELUSION, THOUGH YOU PASS THROUGH COUNTLESS EONS YOU

WILL STILL NOT BE ABLE TO GAIN ENLIGHTENMENT. AS YOU BRING UP THE

SAYING, JUST AROUSE YOUR SPIRIT, AND SEE WHAT PRINCIPLE IT IS.

CONSTANTLY TAKE THE TWO CONCERNS -- NOT KNOWING WHERE WE

COME FROM AT BIRTH AND NOT KNOWING WHERE WE GO AT DEATH -- AND

STICK THEM ON THE POINT OF YOUR NOSE. WHETHER EATING OR DRINKING, WHETHER IN QUIET OR NOISY PLACES, YOU SHOULD MAKE SCRUPULOUS

EFFORTS FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT -- ALWAYS AS IF YOU OWED SOMEONE

MILLIONS WITH NO WAY OUT, YOUR HEART SORELY TROUBLED, WITH NO

OPENING TO ESCAPE.

SEARCHING FOR BIRTH, IT CANNOT BE FOUND; SEARCHING FOR DEATH IT

CANNOT BE FOUND -- AT SUCH A MOMENT, THE ROADS OF GOOD AND EVIL

ARE IMMEDIATELY CUT OFF.

HAVEN'T YOU READ HOW IN THE OLD DAYS, MASTER TZU HU SAID, "THE

PATRIARCH'S COMING FROM THE WEST ONLY MEANS THAT WINTER IS COLD

AND SUMMER IS HOT, NIGHT IS DARK AND DAY IS LIGHT." IT'S JUST THAT YOU

VAINLY SET UP MEANING WHERE THERE IS NO MEANING, CREATE CONCERN

WHERE THERE IS NO CONCERN, IMPOSE "INSIDE" AND "OUTSIDE" WHERE

THERE IS NO INSIDE OR OUTSIDE, AND TALK ENDLESSLY OF THIS AND THAT, WHERE NOTHING EXISTS.

"NO SPEECH IS TRUE SPEECH, AND NO HEARING IS TRUE HEARING." THUS I AM YOU AND YOU ARE ME: WE ARE NOT TWO, YOU AND I, BECAUSE THERE'S

NO DUALITY, NO DISTINCTION, AND NO SEPARATION.

It is good news that Ta Hui is at last coming closer and closer to the point. What he is saying now is not mere knowledge. It seems the sutras had been collected by his disciples from the time Ta Hui started teaching as an intellectual up to the point when he became enlightened.

In this way this series is of tremendous importance -- it will give you the whole process of mind changing into no-mind, of intellect dissolving into intelligence, of words losing their Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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existence into wordlessness. All sounds become silent ... all separations disappear ... even the separation between the master and the disciple is no more there. The whole series is significant in the sense that it will show you the path in different stages.

Most people who are enlightened speak only after their enlightenment. There is a great distance between you and them -- they are on a high, sunlit mountain peak, and you are in the dark valleys of your life. The distance is so much that to expect any understanding arising between you becomes very difficult.

But with Ta Hui your dialogue starts when he himself is in the dark valley, and the dialogue continues as he goes on climbing the mountain. Still there is something to be climbed, but it is becoming more and more certain that he will be able to make it. He has reached very close.

Because the dialogue with him has started while he was just one of you, that continuity and the slow change in his being can be of great importance for understanding not only him, but your own journey.

Perhaps the emperor of China met him when he was enlightened. and that's why he gave him the honorable title, "The Great Master of Zen." We have to see whether he makes it or goes astray ... because one can go astray at the very last moment. He has just to go one step more, and something -- some idea, some accident, some incident -- can take him away.

There is an old saying in the East that people don't get lost until they have almost reached.

It is a very strange saying, but it has great psychological insight behind it. As people start feeling they are reaching, they start losing the awareness that is needed to take the final jump.

They start thinking, "Now it is almost certain I will reach, it is only a question of a few steps more ..." Even one step is enough to take you astray, if you become certain. If you remain open, vulnerable, aware that you can still miss it, then there is less possibility of missing it.

It is well known to travelers that when they come close to their goal, they start feeling utterly tired -- just before the goal. They have been traveling thousands of miles, but they had never felt so tired. And because now they can see the goal has almost been reached, there is no hurry; they can sit down, they can rest -- and that is a very dangerous situation.

The inner journey is such that you cannot rest and wait, because the goal is not something dead, an objective that will remain there.

Even if you are resting outside the temple of your ultimate realization, you can fall asleep again. The old habit ... and habits die hard -- they can overwhelm you. And if the old sleep comes in the name of tiredness, saying "You can rest now that you have already arrived; tomorrow morning you can enter into the temple. There is no hurry now" ... Up to now it was always a hurry, but because you have almost made it, you can rest, you can fall into a deep sleep ... and your sleep can take you so far astray that when you open your eyes, the temple is no longer there.

So we have to see the whole process of evolution from a student to a disciple, to a devotee, to a master -- from just intellectual effort to understanding what enlightenment is, and then to experience it in one's own being.

Ta Hui can be of more help to you than anybody else, because all the enlightened people are recorded only after their enlightenment. Ta Hui is an exception. Because he was a great teacher, very articulate, the disciples started thinking that he was already enlightened and they began collecting his sutras.

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Meanwhile he is growing ... and you can see the growth. Slowly, slowly he is becoming more clear. He is no longer in the mind, he is stating things which are beyond mind and he is making pointers to the ultimate realization in exactly the right direction.

This sutra, DON'T CONSCIOUSLY AWAIT ENLIGHTENMENT, is of great importance.

Even awaiting is a form of desire, very subtle, very soft. Desire is a little crude, primitive, unsophisticated; awaiting is more sophisticated, more cultured -- but deep down it is still desire. The desire has become decorated, but it has not changed.

Enlightenment is possible only when there is no desire at all, in any form, within you. You are not even waiting for it. You are simply relaxed and allowing things to happen. You don't have a certain will that things should be moving in a certain direction, that things should culminate into the point of enlightenment. You don't have that any more. You are just in a let-go, watching the flow of experiences, but not getting attached to anything, not bothering about the past and not awaiting any special future.

Don't consciously await enlightenment, otherwise you will miss it.

So what has to be done? One has simply to live in a state of let-go -- going nowhere, with nothing to be sought, no goal to be reached, no great experience to be expected. One simply lives day-to-day life in utter relaxation, as if this moment is all: there is no concern about the next moment.

When you are in this cleanness of no desire, no awaiting, no thinking about the future, simply enjoying the moment that you have got in its fullness, enlightenment comes. It comes always from the back door. If you are awaiting it, you will be at the front door. It comes so silently that if you are waiting to hear its footsteps, you will miss. The change is so silent that when it has happened, only then you know ... "My God, what has happened? I am no longer the same person."

This is a beautiful statement, very truthful. And what follows ... all the sutras have to be understood clearly -- except one statement that Ta Hui has quoted before, which he is quoting again, and which seems to come from some kind of unconscious guilt in him, because he called Buddha 'the pale face' and 'the barbarian.'

As he is coming closer and closer inside, in his consciousness, he must be becoming aware that he has misbehaved, that he has not been grateful to the great master -- he is a disciple of Gautam Buddha. Although he has come fifteen centuries afterwards, he is from the same line, in the same lineage, and he should not have spoken those words. But those words were spoken when he was only an intellectual; they don't carry any value, except as a historical record.

Only one statement shows that he is feeling that he has done something wrong -- and to avoid that wrong, he is making another wrong statement. This is the trouble when you don't understand and start repenting.

If you understand, there is no repentance: past is past. You were unenlightened -- how can you expect from an unenlightened man anything better than what he has done? He has to be forgiven. He was no one other than you, but you are now on a higher peak. Now you can see better, your perspective is vaster. Then you were in the dark valley where you could not see clearly, and you may have said a few things which now you feel were not right.

If understanding is clear, you will simply laugh at the stupidity of intellectuals, of yourself, of those past days -- there will be no repentance. But if a certain repentance is there, then you will try to do just the opposite to compensate. And that's where he is committing another Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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mistake. That is the only statement in the today's sutras where he is not yet completely free of the past.

WHETHER YOU ARE HAPPY OR ANGRY, IN QUIET OR NOISY PLACES, YOU

STILL MUST BRING UP CHAO CHOU'S SAYING, "A DOG HAS NO

BUDDHA-NATURE." Why is he insisting on this statement: "A DOG HAS NO

BUDDHA-NATURE"? This statement is not true. Chao Chou's statement is: A dog has a buddha-nature.

Ta Hui does not want to make another derogatory statement about Buddha -- he has already made derogatory statements -- so he changes the statement of Chao Chou ... and it was not derogatory! Just in his mind, the repenting mind, it looks derogatory that a dog has a buddha-nature. It seems that you are putting Buddha in the same category as dogs. But the reality is, you are putting dogs in the same category as the buddhas. Buddha is not insulted; only the dog is raised to its potential, ultimate glory.

The statement is not about Buddha; the statement is about buddha-nature. To translate it rightly, buddha-nature means awakening. If he had simply thought about awakening, then Chao Chou's statement that a dog has also the capacity to be awake would not have created this problem -- that he is making a derogatory statement towards Buddha. To avoid that, he changes the statement and says, "A DOG HAS NO BUDDHA-NATURE."

This is a guilt feeling that moves to its extreme. It will disappear; the way he is growing up and the way he is dropping many things, this too will be dropped. But this is the only statement where he is still wrong.

ABOVE ALL, DON'T CONSCIOUSLY AWAIT ENLIGHTENMENT. Absolutely right!

IF YOU CONSCIOUSLY AWAIT ENLIGHTENMENT, YOU ARE SAYING, "RIGHT

NOW I AM DELUDED." A very beautiful argument. Test the argument that he is making: IF

YOU CONSCIOUSLY AWAIT ENLIGHTENMENT, it means, in other words, you are accepting that right now you are not enlightened, you are deluded; otherwise there is no need to await enlightenment.

His argument has tremendous penetration. He is saying that if you await enlightenment, every moment of your awaiting you are insisting that you are deluded. When you continuously insist, "I am deluded, I am deluded, I am deluded" -- although you are not saying it, that is what it actually comes down to -- you are conditioning yourself, hypnotizing yourself, to be an unenlightened being. Then how can enlightenment happen to you? You are creating a thick wall, and every moment of awaiting is making the wall thicker and thicker.

Do you see the beauty of his argument? Naturally, in waiting for enlightenment you are accepting the fact that you are not yet enlightened. And as you go on and on waiting, and your unconscious goes on being conditioned that it is not yet awakened, not yet awakened, not yet awakened .... This idea can become such a great barrier that it will prevent your enlightenment.

IF YOU WAIT FOR ENLIGHTENMENT, CLINGING TO DELUSION, THOUGH YOU

PASS THROUGH COUNTLESS EONS YOU WILL STILL NOT BE ABLE TO GAIN

ENLIGHTENMENT. AS YOU BRING UP THE SAYING, JUST AROUSE YOUR SPIRIT, AND SEE WHAT PRINCIPLE IT IS. What principle is functioning? Waiting for enlightenment, you are unknowingly, unconsciously, using a certain principle of autohypnosis.

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Just here in Poona, some twenty years ago, a young man who was a professor in the university came to see me. He wanted a private interview; he did not want to say anything about his problem before others. And later on, naturally I understood that it must have been embarrassing for him to say it before others. He had from his very childhood learned the habit

-- which is very strange, because a man's physiology does not allow it -- of walking like a woman.

A man cannot walk like a woman for the simple reason that he does not have a womb. It is the womb in the woman's body that makes her walk differently; without the womb, nobody can manage it. But something must have happened in his childhood of which he was not aware. Perhaps he was born in a house where there were only girls -- his sisters -- and he was the only boy. And naturally, children learn from imitation: if he was surrounded only by girls, he may have started moving the way they were moving and become almost fixated on it.

Everybody was laughing at him, and particularly that he is a professor in the university, and walking like a woman, and all the students laughing ... He had been to doctors, but they said, "What can we do? -- there is no disease, no medicine can help. There is nothing wrong in your body. No operation can help."

He had been to psychoanalysts in Bombay and New Delhi and they were also unbelieving, because such a case had never come to them. So none of the advice they could give was the advice of psychoanalysis -- because psychoanalysis has no precedent for such a case. In all the discoveries of psychoanalysis, I have never come across a single case like this that has been treated by psychoanalysts.

So naturally ... the man was a psychoanalyst, but the advice he was giving was just commonplace advice. He said, "You have to try hard to walk like a man. Be alert." This is commonsense advice. "What can be done? You have to change your habit and create a new habit. So particularly when you go for a morning walk, or an evening walk, try hard to walk like a man."

And that created the trouble: the more he tried to walk like a man, the more his mind was getting hypnotized to walk like a woman. That was why he was trying ... otherwise nobody tries. Have you ever tried not to walk like a woman?

But if you are so consciously trying hard to walk like a man, you don't understand the mechanism of hypnosis: you are hypnotizing yourself more to walk like a woman. You are trying hard and you are failing, and every failure is making your autohypnotic situation deeper. So all the advice of great psychoanalysts turned him into even more of a mess. He started walking more like a woman than he had before.

When he came to see me, a few friends were there and he said, "I cannot tell you my problem. I want absolute privacy."

So I said, "Okay, you can come into my room." I took him into my room, and he locked the door. I said, "What kind of problem do you have that you are so much afraid?"

He said "It is so embarrassing ... I walk like a woman."

I said, "You should not be embarrassed about it. In fact, you have done a miracle.

Physiologists cannot believe that it is possible: walking like a woman needs a womb, otherwise you cannot. And you don't have a womb ..."

He said, "Whatever may be the case ..."

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I said, "You are somebody to be appreciated. Who says that this is embarrassing? You would win a competition, you would come first in the whole world -- a man walking like a woman ... no man can compete with you!"

He said, "What are you saying? You are trying to console me."

I said, "No. I am simply trying to make it clear to you ... you have listened to psychoanalysts and other advisers who have told you to make hard and conscious efforts to walk like a man -- and what has been the result?"

He said, "The result has been this, that I am walking more like a woman than before."

I said, "Now, listen to my advice. You try hard to walk like a woman ..."

He said, "You will make me look absolutely stupid."

I said, "You try it just here in this room, before me. Make a conscious effort to walk like a woman. I want to see how you can walk ... because it is physiologically impossible. It is just a psychological conditioning, and it can be broken -- but not by the opposite extreme." He was afraid, but I said, "You try, just around the room -- but be conscious and make it as woman-like as possible."

And he failed, he could not manage it. He said "My God, this is strange!"

I said, "Now go out, go to the university, and walk consciously as a woman. Watch women, how they are walking ... find the best woman and just walk like her."

And after seven days, when I was leaving, he came back and he said, "You have done a miracle. The harder I tried to walk like a woman ... I could not do it. People have even started looking at me strangely, because they expect me to walk like a woman and I am walking like a man. I am trying my hardest, my best, to walk like a woman, and nothing succeeds!"

I said to him, "This is the way to break through your autohypnosis. Autohypnosis is unconscious. If you consciously do the same thing, then the autohypnosis will be broken. It cannot stand the light of consciousness."

Ta Hui is saying, JUST AROUSE YOUR SPIRIT AND SEE WHAT PRINCIPLE IT IS.

Why are you not enlightened? The question is not that you should be enlightened -- how have you missed being enlightened? What is the principle of your missing it? Desiring it, waiting for it, is the principle that is making it difficult to become enlightened.

If you drop the whole idea, and you simply enjoy the moment, enlightenment comes. It is nothing that comes from outside; it is something that in your peaceful, silent, let-go arises within you. The moment you are not desiring for anything, not waiting for anything, no ambitions -- this means there is no tension in you at all.

Let-go is the right preparation for you suddenly to discover that you have always been enlightened. Enlightenment is your nature. You are creating a hypnosis that you are deluded, that you are not enlightened. By making the effort to attain enlightenment, you are going far away. Just drop all effort.

CONSTANTLY TAKE THE TWO CONCERNS -- NOT KNOWING WHERE WE

COME FROM AT BIRTH AND NOT KNOWING WHERE WE GO AT DEATH -- AND

STICK THEM ON THE POINT OF YOUR NOSE. He says, rather than bothering about enlightenment, you should take only two concerns, which are not possible for you to discover

-- they are koans. The first is: From where are you coming?

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A young boy was asking his father, "Tell me, dad -- from where have I come?" The father looked a little embarrassed, but finally -- he was an educated man and thought himself to be very advanced -- he told the whole story of how he made love to the boy's mother. The boy was watching the father with wide open eyes and thinking, "What nonsense is he talking? I have asked a simple question -- from where do I come? -- and he is telling me things that don't make any sense." But he silently listened.

The father was perspiring and telling him, "I made love to your mother ..." and how love is made. The boy thought that he had asked a simple question, but he allowed the father to explain to him the whole of sexology. And when the father ended, he asked, wiping his perspiration, "Have you understood?"

The boy said, "You have not said a single word in answer to what I have asked. Johnny Jones in my school says he has come from New Jersey, and I want to know from where I have come. I will look so stupid telling what you have been telling me to all the boys of my class.

They will make me a laughingstock: 'You are an utter idiot. People come from New Jersey, people come from New York, people come from Washington -- but you are a very strange fellow. What kind of route have you followed?' "

You cannot find out from where you are coming, and you cannot find out where you are going. Then why is he telling you to make this your sole concern? So that the mind is absolutely engaged. These are not desires; these are explorations, enquiries. And you cannot succeed -- that is certain.

A koan has to be made in such a way that you cannot succeed. If you can succeed, then mind has taken possession of you; if you cannot succeed, then mind -- in utter failure -- stops functioning.

Where are you coming from and where are you going? This is to stop the functioning of the mind. The mind cannot ... The mind came after your birth, so it does not know from where it is coming. And the mind goes into a coma before your death, so it never comes to know where it is going -- so birth and death both remain beyond mind. Facing such impossible questions, the mind becomes tired, utterly tired, and stops functioning.

In that state, when mind stops functioning, you may have the visitor arise within you, for whom you were not even waiting. You may see your luminous being with all the blessings possible.

The whole strategy is to put the mind into a non-functioning state. Desire keeps it functioning, awaiting keeps it functioning, ambition keeps it functioning. Whether you are ambitious for money or whether you are ambitious for enlightenment, it does not make any difference to the mind. Whether you are seeking power or you are seeking truth, it makes no difference. The object is not the problem.

Mind needs desire, ambition, expectation.

Mind is always projecting into the future, and if you can stop the mind projecting ...

Zen has found the best way. There have been thousands of other traditions in the world, and there have been many ways of stopping the mind, but nothing is comparable to Zen. It is the most scientific, the most psychological -- and the quickest.

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on ... That is why Ta Hui says, AND STICK THEM ON THE POINT OF YOUR NOSE.

Don't forget the concern with the koan even for a single moment.

And it is also significant that he says, AND STICK THEM ON THE POINT OF YOUR

NOSE. You may not be aware, but the East has been aware for thousands of years that before you die -- six months before -- you stop seeing the tip of your nose. You will know, when you stop being able to see the tip of your nose, that the journey has come to an end. And why do you stop seeing the tip of your nose?

When a man dies, you must have seen that people immediately close his eyes. Nobody dies with closed eyes, because to keep the eyes closed needs energy, and a dead man has no energy. A dead man is no longer there, so who is going to keep them closed? No dead man dies with a fist. Every child is born with fists, and every old man dies with open hands, because to make a fist you need energy, it is an effort; with an open hand you don't need any energy. The same is true about your eyes: everybody dies with open eyes.

Then why do people immediately close the eyelids? The reason is that to see a dead man with open eyes is a very traumatic experience, because his eyes turn upwards: all you can see is just the white part of the eyes. To see the white part of the eyes may give you nightmares --

you have never seen such eyes.

So just to save others -- there are children, there are women, there are other people, why make them unnecessarily freak out? -- the eyes have to be closed. But this turning of the eyes upwards starts happening six months before; slowly, slowly the eyes start moving upwards. It takes six months for them to go completely beyond your vision, until you can see only the white.

His saying, STICK THEM ON THE POINT OF YOUR NOSE, has a double meaning.

One is that you should remember constantly; and the second is that enlightenment has to happen before you stop seeing the tip of your nose -- because enlightenment needs a tremendous energy explosion.

Once the eyes have started turning, you are dying fast. Within six months you will be gone. It is a very beautiful symptom to remember: while you are capable of seeing the tip of your nose, let enlightenment happen. But your concern should not be enlightenment directly; your concern should be something that engages your mind in a futile exercise, an exercise which cannot come to any conclusion.

WHETHER EATING OR DRINKING, WHETHER IN QUIET OR NOISY PLACES, YOU SHOULD MAKE SCRUPULOUS EFFORTS FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT --

ALWAYS AS IF YOU OWED SOMEONE MILLIONS WITH NO WAY OUT, YOUR

HEART SORELY TROUBLED, WITH NO OPENING TO ESCAPE.

SEARCHING FOR BIRTH, IT CANNOT BE FOUND; SEARCHING FOR DEATH, IT

CANNOT BE FOUND -- AT SUCH A MOMENT, THE ROADS OF GOOD AND EVIL

ARE IMMEDIATELY CUT OFF.

This same man was talking in the previous sutras about doing good acts, earning virtue, not being in the grip of evil acts, and all kinds of things. Now he is saying that AT SUCH A MOMENT -- when your mind has stopped functioning -- THE ROADS OF GOOD AND

EVIL ARE IMMEDIATELY CUT OFF. You are beyond good and evil.

Friedrich Nietzsche has written a book by that name exactly -- BEYOND GOOD AND

EVIL. Although his book has not the depth of the mystic, it has tremendous power of Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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intellectual penetration. He has some insight. It is not beyond mind yet, but he is struggling hard to find a place where you are beyond good and evil -- because that is the place of nirvana.

That is what enlightenment is: when you are neither good nor bad, just innocent.

HAVEN'T YOU READ HOW IN THE OLD DAYS, MASTER TZU HU SAID, "THE

PATRIARCH'S COMING FROM THE WEST ONLY MEANS THAT WINTER IS COLD

AND SUMMER IS HOT, NIGHT IS DARK AND DAY IS LIGHT."

You can see the change of climate in the consciousness of Ta Hui. He has been quoting before, but those quotations looked out of context. Now he still quotes, but they fit exactly what he is trying to explain; those quotations don't seem to be unnecessarily put in, to show his knowledgeability.

This question is concerned with Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma went from India to China, and it became a tradition among the disciples of Bodhidharma -- because he is the first patriarch of Zen in China -- "THE PATRIARCH'S COMING FROM THE WEST ... What is the meaning of it? Why did Bodhidharma come to China?

It had been asked of Bodhidharma himself: Why had the patriarch come such a long way?

Such a tedious journey -- three years it took him to reach China -- an enlightened man ... why should he bother to come to China? And what he said has become a tremendously significant statement of suchness, of thusness.

"THE PATRIARCH'S COMING FROM THE WEST ONLY MEANS THAT WINTER

IS COLD AND SUMMER IS HOT, NIGHT IS DARK AND DAY IS LIGHT." Just accept things as they are. A very simple statement, but of immense meaning: ... WINTER IS COLD

AND THE SUMMER IS HOT, NIGHT IS DARK AND DAY IS LIGHT. To teach this, Bodhidharma had to come to China.

IT'S JUST THAT YOU VAINLY SET UP MEANING WHERE THERE IS NO

MEANING, CREATE CONCERN WHERE THERE IS NO CONCERN, IMPOSE "INSIDE"

AND "OUTSIDE" WHERE THERE IS NO INSIDE OR OUTSIDE, AND TALK

ENDLESSLY OF THIS AND THAT, WHERE NOTHING EXISTS.

Now Ta Hui is speaking the language of a master: Things are the way they are.

Once this simple statement is understood, you stop desiring, you stop willing that things should be different. All that your prayers consist of is that winter should not be cold, that summer should not be hot; all your prayers are asking that nature should not be what it is.

Your prayers are your complaints, your grudges, your frustrations. A man who has understood that this is the way things are -- that a roseflower is a roseflower and a thorn is a thorn, there is nothing to be done about it ...

Understanding this brings a great relaxation to you -- when you don't VAINLY SET UP

MEANING WHERE THERE IS NO MEANING, CREATE CONCERN WHERE THERE IS

NO CONCERN, IMPOSE "INSIDE" AND "OUTSIDE" WHERE THERE IS ONLY ONE

EXISTENCE -- THERE IS NO INSIDE, THERE IS NO OUTSIDE, AND TALK

ENDLESSLY OF THIS AND THAT, WHERE NOTHING EXISTS.

"NO SPEECH IS TRUE SPEECH, AND NO HEARING IS TRUE HEARING." THUS I AM YOU AND YOU ARE ME: WE ARE NOT TWO, YOU AND I, BECAUSE THERE IS

NO DUALITY, NO DISTINCTION, AND NO SEPARATION.

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In this non-duality, in this meaningless splendor of existence, in this state of unconcern --

not waiting for anything, not desiring for anything -- you become so innocent, so open and so vulnerable, that the greatest experience simply arises in you. You have prepared the ground.

Enlightenment is not a goal; it is your intrinsic potentiality. When you are relaxed, the lotus flower of enlightenment opens its petals. And not only you, but the whole existence rejoices in this tremendous experience. There is no meaning in it but there is great splendor.

There is no meaning in it, but there is great significance. There is no meaning in it, but there is great contentment and fulfillment and a feeling that you have come home.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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18

No guilt

23 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

CONTEMPLATING "NO"

A MONK ASKED CHAO CHOU, "DOES A DOG HAVE BUDDHA-NATURE OR

NOT?" CHAO CHOU SAID, "NO." THIS ONE WORD "NO" IS A KNIFE TO SUNDER

THE DOUBTING MIND OF BIRTH AND DEATH. THE HANDLE OF THIS KNIFE IS IN

ONE'S OWN HAND ALONE: YOU CAN'T HAVE ANYONE ELSE WIELD IT FOR YOU: TO SUCCEED YOU MUST TAKE HOLD OF IT YOURSELF. YOU CONSENT TO TAKE

HOLD OF IT YOURSELF ONLY IF YOU CAN ABANDON YOUR LIFE. IF YOU

CANNOT ABANDON YOUR LIFE, JUST KEEP TO WHERE YOUR DOUBT REMAINS

UNBROKEN FOR A WHILE: SUDDENLY YOU'LL CONSENT TO ABANDON YOUR

LIFE, AND THEN YOU'LL BE DONE. ONLY THEN WILL YOU BELIEVE THAT WHEN

QUIET IT'S THE SAME AS WHEN NOISY, WHEN NOISY IT'S THE SAME AS WHEN

QUIET, WHEN SPEAKING IT'S THE SAME AS WHEN SILENT, AND WHEN SILENT

IT'S THE SAME AS WHEN SPEAKING. YOU WON'T HAVE TO ASK ANYONE ELSE, AND NATURALLY YOU WON'T ACCEPT THE CONFUSING TALK OF FALSE

TEACHERS.

DURING YOUR DAILY ACTIVITIES TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY, YOU

SHOULDN'T HOLD TO BIRTH AND DEATH AND THE BUDDHA PATH AS

EXISTENT, NOR SHOULD YOU DENY THEM AS NON-EXISTENT. JUST

CONTEMPLATE THIS: A MONK ASKED CHAO CHOU, "DOES A DOG HAVE

BUDDHA-NATURE OR NOT?" CHAO CHOU SAID, "NO."

There seems to be a misunderstanding on the part of Ta Hui. Perhaps it is something to do with his unconscious, because he has been speaking in a sarcastic way against Gautam Buddha. Now the pendulum has moved to the other extreme -- because the answer of Chao Chou was not "No," but "Yes."

It is possible, when you are unconsciously trying to get rid of guilt, that you can read things which are not there or you can miss things which are there. Your mind is never reading what is actually the case; it is continuously interpreting according to its own prejudices. One thing is certain, that Ta Hui is feeling guilty for a misbehavior. He has been disrespectful to a man who has done no harm to him.

But there was a reason to be disrespectful: Ta Hui was an intellectual, he was a man of mind. And all the people who are confined to their minds are bound to be offended by men like Gautam Buddha, whose whole insistence is that mind is wrong and no-mind is right.

All intellectuals are bound to condemn such an attitude, just to defend themselves. They don't know anything about no-mind; they know only what mind is. But they have achieved honors, respectability, prestige and power through the mind, and anybody who says that mind Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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is not a power but a bondage, that mind is not a prestige but sheer stupidity, that mind is not your honor but simply an indication that you belong to the lowest of human beings ... The real power belongs to the man of no-mind; hence, intellectuals always have felt offended by the mystics.

Ta Hui started his journey as an intellectual. Although he was part of a tradition that was created by Bodhidharma in China in the name of Gautam Buddha, somewhere in his unconscious there was a vengefulness which was coming up again and again in sarcastic remarks like, "the old pale face," "the barbarian." To call Gautam Buddha a barbarian is such nonsense, and in time he must have realized what he had done. Now he wants to put things right, but he is in such a hurry to put things right that he starts misreading things -- with all good intentions. Remembering this, you have to understand what he is saying: A MONK ASKED CHAO CHOU, "DOES A DOG HAVE BUDDHA-NATURE OR

NOT?"

It is an ancient strategy. It is not only Chao Chou who has been asked; thousands of other masters since Gautam Buddha have been asked the same question, and the disciples have been receiving the same answer. The answer has always been "Yes," because Gautam Buddha had answered "Yes." The same question was asked to him: "Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?" -- because he was teaching that all beings have buddha-nature. It is very natural to ask,

"All beings ...? You mean dogs and donkeys and buffaloes? Do you really mean all beings?"

If he was saying all human beings, then too it would be questionable. What about Adolf Hitler? What about Ronald Reagan? But he is saying all living beings, and so naturally the question arises -- it is not only about dogs, but simply about the lower categories of animals.

And how can Gautam Buddha say, "No"? It will contradict his whole fundamental attitude about life, it will contradict his reverence for life.

Whether life exists in the form of a dog or in the form of a Gautam Buddha, it does not matter. It is life. Just the form is constantly changing; the life inside, which is absolute and eternal, is exactly the same as it is in Gautam Buddha. His "Yes" accords with his reverence for life. To him, there is no God except life.

So when you ask such a question as "Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?", without even asking Gautam Buddha I can answer on his behalf: Yes! A dog has a buddha-nature.

That is the very essence of his philosophy. And this master Chao Chou is an enlightened master; he cannot say "No."

But it seems Ta Hui cannot say "Yes," because again that will remind him, "I am doing the same thing again. I have called him 'pale face', I have called him 'the barbarian', and now I am doing even worse. I am calling him equal to a dog!"

It is because of his past utterances that he reads "No," where there is "Yes." This should be a great lesson to you: you can read things which are not there. Just because you want to read them, you can read them. You can go on missing things which are there if you don't want to see them. Your mind is not only a receptacle, not only a vehicle to receive information, it is also a continuous censor.

Scientific work on the mind is almost unbelievable; they say that it does not allow ninety-eight percent of information to enter, but keeps it outside, and it allows in only the two percent which fits with it. Ninety-eight percent ... If the mind does not hear, or hears from one ear and allows it to go out from the other ear, then it is a man's mind. If it is a woman, then Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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she hears from both ears and allows it to go out from the mouth. That is the only difference --

but that difference is there. Mind retains only the two percent which fits with its expectations, with its conditionings, with its prejudices.

And that's actually the case with Ta Hui. He reads "No" -- which is impossible! I cannot say "No". How can Gautam Buddha say "No"? And how can Master Chao Chou say "No"?

Anybody who knows life and the potential of every living being for growing someday, sometime, somewhere, finally into an ultimate luminous being, is bound to say "Yes." So I will read "Yes" instead of "No."

"DOES A DOG HAVE BUDDHA-NATURE OR NOT?" CHAO CHOU SAID, "Yes."

THIS ONE WORD "Yes" IS A KNIFE TO SUNDER THE DOUBTING MIND OF BIRTH

AND DEATH. THE HANDLE OF THIS KNIFE IS IN ONE'S OWN HAND ALONE: YOU

CAN'T HAVE ANYONE ELSE WIELD IT FOR YOU: TO SUCCEED YOU MUST TAKE

HOLD OF IT YOURSELF. YOU CONSENT TO TAKE HOLD OF IT YOURSELF ONLY

IF YOU CAN ABANDON YOUR LIFE.

Many things are implied in these few sentences. THIS ONE WORD "Yes" IS A KNIFE

TO SUNDER THE DOUBTING MIND OF BIRTH AND DEATH. Without knowing, how can you believe that you were before you were born? And how can you believe that you will be after you have died? But if Gautam Buddha says, "Yes, a dog has buddha-nature," that means Buddha is accepting the eternity of life, and that forms go on changing.

Evolution is not something discovered by Charles Darwin. Evolution is an Eastern concept discovered by the mystics -- and in the East they have really gone deeper. Charles Darwin is only superficial; he thought that man has come from the monkeys, and he was laughed at all over the world. The idea looks strange ... but the mystic's idea does not look strange. He does not say that man has come from the monkeys; he says that the essence of consciousness has passed through many forms, and it has passed through the forms of monkeys too.

According to me, not every man has come to be a man from being a monkey; different people have traveled different lines of evolution. All are coming from different animals, and that is one of the reasons why they are so unequal. A man who is coming from monkeys is bound to carry some traits, some characteristics, of the monkeys. Another man coming from horses will have different characteristics.

There are millions of animals in the world, and every person has moved through different forms. It is not a highway, with the whole of humanity coming from the same source. If that were the case, all people would have been equal. Somebody is a genius, somebody is a born idiot -- certainly they are coming from different sources.

Gautam Buddha himself remembers his past lives: in one life, he says, he was an elephant, and after the life of the elephant he was born as a man. And the reason why the elephant was born as a man ... he tells a beautiful incident:

The forest in which the elephant lived suddenly caught on fire. It was a summer night and a strong wind was blowing, and the whole forest was on fire. The elephant, just like the other animals, started moving out of the forest. Because the fire was all around, it was very difficult to find a way out of it, particularly for such a big animal like the elephant.

Finally he comes under a big tree which has not yet caught fire, and just to take a little rest, he stands under the tree and looks all around to see in which direction he should move to get out of the fire. As he takes up one of his feet to move, suddenly a small rabbit comes just Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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underneath his foot, thinking it is a shelter. Of course the rabbit cannot see the elephant -- the elephant is too big.

In the dark night every animal is so shaken and frightened; the rabbit is trembling, afraid for his life, and the elephant will kill the rabbit if he puts his foot down. If he does not put his foot down to move -- and the fire is approaching closer! But the elephant finally decides to sacrifice his own life, and not to kill the rabbit. Just because of this decision, the consciousness takes a jump from the elephant form into human form.

People are coming from different sources for different reasons. The theory of reincarnation is basically a more scientific approach to evolution than that of Charles Darwin. It is well known that different animals have different characters. If you read Aesop's fables or the ancient PANCHTANTRA, which is the most ancient book of parables -- and researchers think that the fables of Aesop are all taken from PANCHTANTRA. In fact, historically, there has never been any man with the name Aesop; these are the stories of PANCHTANTRA told by Gautam Buddha, who is also called Bodhisattva.

As the word 'Bodhisattva' moved from India -- Alexander was the first to take the name of Buddha to the West -- it became 'Bodhisat'. It is always a problem: whenever a word moves from one language to another language, and then another language, it goes on changing its form. It is Bodhisat which becomes Aesop, but it has gone through at least five or six languages before it turns up as Aesop.

All the stories are told by Buddha himself. All the stories are about animals -- animals talking -- and each story has tremendous significance. If you look in the animal world, for example, the elephant has a memory which is far stronger than any human being. He never forgets; it is just not in his nature to forget anything. The elephant will recognize its master even after thirty years.

It happened ... Gautam Buddha's cousin-brother, Devadatta, was very jealous of Gautam Buddha and his enlightenment, and his thousands of disciples. He was a very intellectual man himself, and he became a disciple of Gautam Buddha in the hope that Gautam Buddha would choose him as his successor. First, he was Gautam Buddha's cousin-brother, very close; secondly, he was as intelligent as you can hope a person to be -- very erudite, very scholarly.

Time went on and Buddha started becoming old. Finally one night Devadatta told him, "It is time you should declare the name of your successor because you are getting old. Without a successor your disciples will break apart into small groups after your death."

Buddha said, "Do you have somebody in mind?"

Devadatta was in much difficulty. He had not thought that this was going to be the case, but he was very ambitious, so finally -- although he was feeling embarrassed -- he said, "Yes, I offer myself. I belong to the same family; our blood is the same and I have grasped everything that you have said. I can represent you perfectly well, and I don't think anybody else can be a competitor to me."

Buddha said, "The very idea is egoistic. I can only choose someone who has never thought about being chosen, who is so innocent that he could not even think of it. Certainly you cannot be my successor, so forget all about it."

But Devadatta could not accept this situation, which looked to him like a humiliation. He revolted against Buddha, and took five hundred disciples away with him -- but that did not make much difference. Buddha had thousands of disciples, and if five hundred had gone with Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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Devadatta, that did not make even a dent in the great commune that Gautam Buddha had created.

These five hundred were the people who were also ambitious, who wanted position, who wanted to be declared enlightened -- although they were not enlightened -- and who were jealous of people who were being declared as enlightened. These were the people who had entered the great commune of Gautam Buddha with some egoistic ambition -- they left.

But Devadatta could not sit silently; he had not left just to retire to the Himalayas. He started conspiring against Gautam Buddha. He made many efforts to kill him. And that's what I wanted to tell you about. He had caught a mad elephant, not knowing that that elephant used to be a friend of Gautam Buddha when he was a child. It had belonged to Gautam Buddha's royal palace, and it was so heartbroken when Gautam Buddha left the palace that it simply escaped to the forest and started behaving in a crazy way -- the shock was too much. He had loved him as a child, and they were really great friends. They were always moving together; in the great garden near the river they were always found together.

It was almost forty years afterwards that Devadatta found this mad elephant in the forest.

He managed to catch hold of it, and he thought that this would be a great opportunity; he would take it to where Gautam Buddha meditates under a tree and leave it there, because that elephant has killed many people ... He was not aware that that elephant had gone mad because Gautam Buddha had left him forty years before.

So the elephant rushed at Gautam Buddha, and he would have killed him. But as he recognized Buddha, all his madness disappeared. He bowed down, touched Buddha's feet with his head, and sat at his feet, putting his head in his lap. Forty years of separation ...! Buddha opened his eyes and he could not believe that his old, old friend ... he had forgotten! And Devadatta could not believe it. He thought it was a miracle. He became so afraid that after that he stopped making any effort to kill Gautam Buddha. But he had no idea what had really happened. It was not a miracle; it was simply the memory of the elephant.

A person who is coming from the body of an elephant into the body of a man will have a tremendous memory. In the same way, all the animals have their own special talents. I am saying this for the first time -- that every human being has come from a different animal.

Charles Darwin's idea that all have come from the monkeys is wrong. If it was so, then all will show the same characteristics -- which is not so.

A dog can be born as a human being, or may go through a few other life-forms -- may become a lion, may become a deer and then come as a human being. But if he comes from a lion, then he will have tremendous courage; then he will have the courage to be a rebel. If he is coming from a sheep, he will become a Christian -- particularly a Catholic -- because a sheep cannot do anything else. You cannot say that Jesus Christ was wrong when he said, "I am the shepherd and you are my sheep" -- he must have recognized that all these guys have come from sheep.

Charles Darwin's idea is right, but not in the details; in the details he has not been able to work it out. I agree with him on this essential point that man has evolved out of animals, but I don't agree with him that all human beings have evolved from the same animal -- monkey, ape, or chimpanzee. Human beings have come from all different directions. It is a gathering of all kinds of animals, and if you watch people you can find from where each person is coming.

Just a little watchfulness is needed, alertness, and you can feel that this man seems to be related to a certain species.

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Ta Hui is saying, THIS ONE WORD "YES" IS A KNIFE TO SUNDER THE

DOUBTING MIND OF BIRTH AND DEATH.

Now you can see: "No" cannot do that, only "Yes" can do it. If Chao Chou had said, "No.

Dogs are dogs and buddhas are buddhas and there is no bridge between them" -- then dogs die as dogs, then there is no evolution for dogs. Then elephants die as elephants, and there is no evolution for elephants. This seems too much. It is man's monopolistic ideology that only man has the capacity to evolve and nobody else ...

I have heard ... Somewhere in Sweden in a railway station there is a statue of a dog. It is not more than a hundred years old. The master of the dog used to come to that railway station every day to catch a train for a nearby city. The dog would come with him and would go on looking until the train moved far away beyond the horizon. When the train was gone he would return home, but he would always be present exactly at the time the master used to come back in the evening.

One day the master never returned. He had had a heart attack and died. The dog was waiting -- the message had come, but how to explain to the dog? The dog was searching for the master in every compartment of the train. All the people of the railway staff were really feeling sad for the dog. They had all known him for years. It was a daily routine, which he had never missed: he had always come at the right time, and if the train was late he would sit exactly where the master's compartment used to stop.

They tried to chase him away, but he would come back again and again and sit there. One train passed, another train ... and he would search in every compartment with tears rolling down from his eyes. Seven days continuously ... the dog searched every train, every compartment, and tears were continuously coming to his eyes and he refused to eat. The whole staff of the railway station was immensely concerned; they could not believe that a dog could have so much love. Even human beings don't show so much love.

The dog died sitting at the same place where he used to meet his master every day for years. The station staff contributed money and there they have raised a statue of the dog, and the whole story is written on the marble base on which the marble statue of the dog stands. It is not just about one dog ... there are many dogs who have proved immensely loving, trusting, who have even sacrificed their lives for their masters.

To stop the gates of evolution for every other kind of being and to keep them open only for human beings is simply ugly. What is the difference between human beings and other animals, except for the bodies? The form of your bodies is different, but the no-form consciousness within you is the same.

If Chao had said "No," then all the statements following it would not be right. They can be right only with my correction, with "Yes." Then THIS ONE WORD becomes A KNIFE TO

SUNDER THE DOUBTING MIND OF BIRTH AND DEATH. THE HANDLE OF THIS

KNIFE IS IN ONE'S OWN HAND ALONE: YOU CAN'T HAVE ANYONE ELSE WIELD

IT FOR YOU: TO SUCCEED YOU MUST TAKE HOLD OF IT YOURSELF. YOU

CONSENT TO TAKE HOLD OF IT YOURSELF ONLY IF YOU CAN ABANDON YOUR

LIFE ...

If you are ready even to abandon your life, you will rise to the ultimate peak of your consciousness. That's why the path is called the razor's edge, because it is risky. One has to risk everything to find that ultimate splendor. It cannot be found without risking everything Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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for it; you cannot hold something back. Without holding anything back -- if you are ready to abandon your life, you can find it this very moment.

IF YOU CANNOT ABANDON YOUR LIFE, JUST KEEP TO WHERE YOUR DOUBT

REMAINS UNBROKEN FOR A WHILE.

He is suggesting a beautiful meditation again. If you cannot abandon your life because of your doubts, because of -- who knows? If you abandon your life and nothing happens, no enlightenment, then you cannot even complain! You cannot even go to the police station and report that, "These people are deceiving. They say, 'Abandon your life!' -- I abandoned my life and no enlightenment, nothing."

Once your life is gone, it is gone; you cannot complain. The risk is total. You cannot hold back a little bit, so that if it does not happen you can at least inform others, "Don't believe such a thing. I have abandoned almost ninety-nine percent of my life. Just one percent I am keeping to inform others, as a warning." But that is not the way it works: either you risk one hundred percent, or you don't risk at all.

But if you doubt, then there are other ways. There is no need to feel hopeless. IF YOU

CANNOT ABANDON YOUR LIFE, JUST KEEP TO WHERE YOUR DOUBT REMAINS

UNBROKEN FOR A WHILE.

Just remain alert to your doubt. It cannot remain forever on the screen of your mind. That's the beauty of all the meditations: they can finally can be reduced to watchfulness. From any direction you can come to watchfulness. Just watch the doubt, and go on looking at it. It will not remain there forever. Even if it remains for just a few seconds, that will be a great achievement. Soon it will disperse in the smoke, leaving a silent space behind it.

SUDDENLY YOU WILL CONSENT TO ABANDON YOUR LIFE ... as the doubt disappears without any effort on your part. If you repress the doubt it will remain. Don't repress, just watch -- and it will disappear into thin air, and you will be ready suddenly to abandon your life.

AND THEN YOU WILL BE DONE. ONLY THEN WILL YOU BELIEVE THAT

WHEN QUIET IT IS THE SAME AS WHEN NOISY, WHEN NOISY IT IS THE SAME AS

WHEN QUIET, WHEN SPEAKING IT IS THE SAME AS WHEN SILENT, AND WHEN

SILENT IT IS THE SAME AS WHEN SPEAKING.

Once you are ready to abandon even your life, which is our deepest longing ... We can abandon money, we can abandon family, we can abandon everything -- but when it comes to abandoning life, that is the last thing we would like to save.

The question is not that you actually have to commit suicide ... just your willingness ... and the miracle happens. Not that you have really to abandon it -- just your willingness, "I am ready to abandon it." But don't try to deceive, because that means deep down you know you are not going to abandon it: you are just talking about it because it is not really needed that you abandon it. You cannot deceive on that point.

If you are willing to abandon it, then suddenly all dualities in life will disappear; then silence and noise both will look exactly the same: neither silence has any appeal to you, nor has noise any disturbance. Then life and death are the same to you: neither life makes you cling to it, nor death makes you run away from it.

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YOU WON'T HAVE TO ASK ANYONE ELSE, AND NATURALLY YOU WON'T

ACCEPT THE CONFUSING TALK OF FALSE TEACHERS.

DURING YOUR DAILY ACTIVITIES TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY, YOU

SHOULD NOT HOLD TO BIRTH AND DEATH AND THE BUDDHA PATH AS

EXISTENT, NOR SHOULD YOU DENY THEM AS NON-EXISTENT.

What he is saying is that all these categories of existence or non-existence, life and death, misery and happiness, all these categories belong to the mind. A person who is ready to abandon life is naturally ready to abandon mind, because mind is only a small part of your life.

It is not all of it.

Once you are ready to take the jump, the jump is no more needed. Only your readiness is needed ... but your readiness should be total, and in that readiness you can live your ordinary life doing whatever you have always been doing. Your doing and your non-doing will not be opposed any more; your speaking and your being silent will not be opposed; the world and renouncing it will not be opposed. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you will do it without any disturbance and without any clinging -- absolutely balanced.

The word that Buddha uses for this experience is sammasati -- 'right remembrance'. You are just full of a remembrance of your own eternal being. The moment you have renounced dualities, you have entered the path of the eternal, you have become an immortal.

JUST CONTEMPLATE THIS: A MONK ASKED CHAO CHOU, "DOES A DOG

HAVE BUDDHA-NATURE OR NOT?" CHAO CHOU SAID, "YES."

Why contemplate this? If a dog has buddha-nature, obviously you also have it; and if a dog one day is going to become a buddha, then your destination is also not far away. There are many implications in it: if a dog has a buddha-nature, then you have it, then your enemies have it, then all living beings have it -- so there is no question of superiority or inferiority.

It is only a question of when one decides to wake up. It is up to you whether you want to have a little more sleep -- then turn over and pull the blanket up. But even while you are asleep inside the blanket, enjoying a beautiful morning, you are a buddha. It is up to you.

Buddha decided to sit under a tree; you have decided to lie down in bed -- but there is no essential difference. If Buddha can become enlightened under a tree, you can become enlightened under a blanket. It will really be better, because you will be opening a new possibility for future humanity; otherwise people will think that you always have to sit under a tree. And particularly in the cold winter, and in the rainy season, and in all kinds of trouble they will go on postponing buddha-nature.

I say to you that there is no problem: you can be perfectly cozy under your blanket and become a buddha there. There is no problem, because becoming a buddha has nothing to do with sitting under a tree, it is not a pre-requisite; nor do you have to sit in a lotus posture --

what does buddhahood have to do with a lotus posture? And if the lotus posture is essential, then dogs cannot become ... impossible! How can a dog manage to sit in a lotus posture?

Of course it is possible under a blanket, and I think most of you will prefer it under a blanket. It was just coincidental that poor Gautam Buddha was sitting under a tree. He had no idea that the same can happen under a blanket. In fact the same question was asked to him by his wife ...

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After twelve years, when he came back to the palace, he knew that his father would be very angry. He was the only son, born when the father was very old, and all his father's hopes were dependent on him. The old man was just waiting for him to be ready to take charge of the whole kingdom -- he was tired and he wanted to retire -- and just before that Gautam Buddha escaped from the palace.

Just one day before Gautam Buddha left, a child had been born to his wife. It is such a human story, so beautiful: before leaving the palace, he just wanted to see at least once the face of the child, his child, the symbol of his love with his wife. So he went into the chamber of his wife. She was asleep, and the child was covered under a blanket. He wanted to remove the blanket and to see the face of the child, because perhaps he will never come back again.

He was going on an unknown pilgrimage. Nothing can be known of what will happen to his life. He is risking everything, his kingdom, his wife, his child, himself, in search of enlightenment -- something he has only heard of as a possibility, which has happened before to a few people who have looked for it.

He was as full of doubts as any one of you, but the moment of decision had come ... That very day he had seen death, he had seen old age, he had seen sickness and he had also seen a sannyasin for the first time. It had become an ultimate question in him: "If there is death, then just wasting time in the palace is dangerous. Before death comes I have to find something that is beyond death."

He was determined to leave. But the human mind, human nature ... He just wanted to see the face -- he has not even seen the face of his own child. But he was afraid that if he removes the blanket, if Yashodhara, his wife, wakes up -- there is every possibility she will wake up --

she will ask, "What are you doing in the middle of the night in my room? -- and you seem to be ready to go somewhere."

The chariot was standing outside the gate, everything was ready; he was just about to leave, and he had said to his charioteer, "Just wait a minute. Let me see the child's face. I may never come back again."

But he could not look because of the fear that if Yashodhara wakes up, starts crying, weeping, "Where are you going? What are you doing? What is this renunciation? What is this enlightenment?" One never knows about a woman -- she may wake up the whole palace! The old father will come, and the whole thing will be spoiled. So he simply escaped ...

After twelve years, when he was enlightened, the first thing he did was to come back to his palace to apologize to his father, to his wife, to his son who must be now twelve years of age.

He was aware that they would be angry. The father was very angry -- he was the first one to meet him, and for half an hour he continued abusing Buddha. But then suddenly he became aware that he was saying so many things and his son was just standing there like a marble statue, as if nothing was affecting him.

The father looked at him, and Gautam Buddha said, "That's what I wanted. Please dry your tears. Look at me: I am not the same boy who left the palace. Your son died long ago. I look similar to your son, but my whole consciousness is different. You just look."

The father said, "I am seeing it. For half an hour I have been abusing you, and that is enough proof that you have changed. Otherwise I know how temperamental you were: you could not stand so silently. What has happened to you?"

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Buddha said, "I will tell you. Just let me first see my wife and my child. They must be waiting -- they must have heard that I have come."

And the first thing his wife said to him was, "I can see that you are transformed. These twelve years were a great suffering, but not because you had gone; I suffered because you did not tell me. If you had simply told me that you were going to seek the truth, do you think I would have prevented you? You have insulted me very badly. This is the wound that I have been carrying for twelve years.

It was not that you had gone in search of truth -- that is something to rejoice in; not that you had gone to become enlightened -- I would not have prevented you. I also belong to the warrior caste. Do you think I am that weak that I would have cried and screamed and stopped you?

"All these twelve years my only suffering was that you did not trust me. I would have allowed you, I would have given you a send off, I would have come up to the chariot. First I want to ask the only question that has been in my mind for all these twelve years, which is that whatever you have attained ... and it certainly seems you have attained something.

"You are no longer the same person who left this palace; you radiate a different light, your presence is totally new and fresh, your eyes are as pure and clear as a cloudless sky. You have become so beautiful ... you were always beautiful, but this beauty seems to be not of this world. Some grace from the beyond has descended on you. My question is that whatever you have attained, was it not possible to attain it here in this palace? Can the palace prevent the truth?"

It is a tremendously intelligent question, and Gautam Buddha had to agree: "I could have attained it here but I had no idea at that moment. Now I can say that I could have attained it here in this palace; there was no need to go to the mountains, there was no need to go anywhere. I had to go inside, and that could have happened anywhere. This palace was as good as any other place, but now I can say that at that moment I had no idea.

"So you have to forgive me, because it is not that I did not trust you or your courage. In fact, I was doubtful of myself: if I had seen you wake up and if I had seen the child, I may have started wondering, 'What am I doing, leaving my beautiful wife, whose total love, whose total devotion is for me. And leaving my one-day-old child ... if I am to leave him then why did I give birth to him? I am escaping from my responsibilities.'

"If my old father had awakened, it would have become impossible for me. It was not that I did not trust you; it was really that I did not trust myself. I knew that there was a wavering; I was not total in renouncing. A part of me was saying, 'What are you doing?' -- and a part of me was saying, 'This is the time to do it. If you don't do it now it will become more and more difficult. Your father is preparing to crown you. Once you are crowned as king, it will be more difficult.'"

Yashodhara said to him, "This is the only question that I wanted to ask, and I am immensely happy that you have been absolutely truthful in saying that it can be attained here, it can be attained anywhere. Now your son, who is just standing there, a little boy of twelve years, has been continually asking about you, and I have been telling him, 'Just wait. He will come back; he cannot be so cruel, he cannot be so unkind, he cannot be so inhuman. One day he will come. Perhaps whatever he has gone to realize is taking time; once he has realized it, the first thing he will do is to come back.'

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"So your son is here, and I want you to tell me what heritage you are leaving for your son?

What have you got to give him? You have given him life -- now what else?"

Buddha had nothing except his begging bowl, so he called his son, whose name was Rahul. I will tell you why his name was Rahul; it was the name Gautam Buddha had given him ...

He called Rahul close to him and gave him the begging bowl. He said, "I don't have anything. This is my only possession; from now onwards I will have to use my hands as a begging bowl to take my food, to beg my food. By giving you this begging bowl, I am initiating you into sannyas. That is the only treasure that I have found, and I would like you to find it too."

He said to Yashodhara, "You have to be ready to become a part of my commune of sannyasins," and he initiated his wife. The old man had come and was watching the whole scene. He said to Gautam Buddha, "Then why are you leaving me out? Don't you want to share what you have found with your old father? My death is very close ... initiate me also."

Buddha said, "I had come, in fact, just to take you all with me, because what I have found is a far greater kingdom -- a kingdom that is going to last forever, which cannot be conquered.

I had come here so that you could feel my presence, so that you could feel my realization, and I could persuade you to become my fellow-travelers." So he initiated all three of them.

He had given his son the name Rahul because in Indian mythology when there is a moon eclipse ... The Indian mythology says that there are two enemies of the moon. In the mythology, the moon is a person, a god, and he has two enemies: one is Rahu and the other is Ketu. When the moon eclipse happens, it happens because Rahu and Ketu catch hold of the moon. They try to kill it, but each time the moon escapes from their grip.

Gautam Buddha had given the name Rahul to his son because he thought, "Now this son of mine is going to be my greatest hindrance, he is going to be my greatest enemy. He will prevent me from going to the Himalayas. Love for him, attachment to him, will be my chains." That's why he had given him the name Rahul.

They all moved into the forest outside the city, where all his sannyasins were staying. In the first sermon to the sannyasins that evening he told them, "My wife Yashodhara has asked me a question which is of tremendous importance. She has asked me, 'Was it not possible to become enlightened in the palace as a king?' And I have told her the truth: 'There is no question of any place, any time. One can become enlightened anywhere -- but at that time nobody was there to say it to me. I had no idea of where it was to be found, whom I had to ask, where I had to go. I just jumped into the unknown.' But now I can say that wherever you are, if you are courageous enough to risk everything for being alert and aware, enlightenment is going to happen."

Hence I say master Chao Chou could not have said, "No." That is not the answer of a man of enlightenment. The answer can only be "Yes" -- and even if master Chao Chou has to say himself to me, "I had said 'No'," I will refuse it. I will not listen even to Gautam Buddha, because the "No" goes against his whole philosophy. His whole philosophy is a tremendous reverence for all life. Hence every living being in every situation has the capacity to blossom into enlightenment.

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the opposite. They have been condemning you: you are born in sin; you cannot redeem yourself; unless a redeemer is sent by God, you are going to live in misery and sin and suffering.

Buddha gives man absolute dignity, freedom, as nobody else before him has ever done. He drops the idea of God just to raise your dignity and your freedom to its ultimate height. He removes God to make YOU God. There has never been another human being who has loved other human beings as Gautam Buddha has loved them -- and not only human beings but all living beings. His love is infinite.

So when I make any correction, I am absolutely certain that my correction is going to be approved by anyone who is enlightened. I am not going to make any compromise. It may be master Chao Chou, it may be Ta Hui, it may be Gautam Buddha -- I am not going to make any compromise because my own innermost experience says, "Yes!" Then I don't bother about anybody, any history, any scripture.

I was speaking in a Buddhist conference in Bodh Gaya. One of the most learned Buddhist monks in India is Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan, and he was the president of the conference.

When I had spoken he came to my camp, and he told me, "I have heard you a few times before, once in Nagpur, once in Wardha and this was the third time. You are a strange man: you go on saying things which Buddha has not said. I have devoted my whole life" -- and he was an old man, nearabout seventy at that time. If he is still alive he must be nearabout one hundred.

"Buddha has not said it; you go on telling stories which I have never found in any scripture

-- and the trouble is that your story seems to be so right and to the point that it feels that perhaps the people who were collecting the scriptures have forgotten to write it. It fits, I cannot deny it -- I cannot say that it goes against the essences of the scripture -- but it is not there. So my problem is," he said, "I cannot deny the truth of your story, but I cannot support its historicity. Do you have any suggestion?"

I told him, "There is no problem. Whenever I tell a story about Gautam Buddha, if it is not in the scripture then put it in your scriptures, because it should be there. If I say something that Gautam Buddha has said and you don't find it anywhere, manage to put it in the right place, where it should have been and is missing. Because whatever I am saying ... I am not a historian and I am not a scholar, but I am speaking from the same space as Gautam Buddha was speaking. So you can accept my word as the authority without any trouble."

He said, "My God, even if I do it, no other scholar is going to accept it! After twenty-five centuries, a certain scripture has been accepted -- and you want me to add something into it.

They will kill me."

I said, "It is better to be killed; it is worth it if you can make the scripture a little more beautiful, a little more truthful, a little more authentic. If you say that what I am saying is not true, then I am ready to argue for it."

He said, "No, I am not saying that. But please forgive me -- I cannot make changes in the scriptures, because that is not allowed by any religion."

I said, "This is the trouble -- that all religions become prisons. Every religion should remain a flowing stream, and new rivers should be allowed to meet. Why make your religions like dead stale ponds? Let it be a river and let continuous new streams go on meeting into it.

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become broader and broader, and bigger and more valuable. But this has not happened yet, because people are too much past-oriented and too much afraid of changing anything. The reason is that they don't have the experience about which they are talking."

I asked Bhadant Anand, "Do you have the enlightenment that Gautam Buddha had? If you don't have it, then just listen to what I am saying, because I have it."

Ta Hui is suffering from his past faults, and he is afraid to say "Yes," because that means he is saying that buddha-nature and the nature of a dog are just the same. It is because of his own guilt that he cannot say the truth.

But I don't have any guilt. In fact I don't have any past. Whatever I am saying is exactly the response in this moment, and I don't feel even a single part of me to be reluctant. I am saying it with my whole being. That puts my statements in a totally different category. They are not intellectual, they are not historical, they are not scriptural -- they are existential.

I am saying it from the same space from where Buddha has spoken, from where Chao Chou has spoken, from where one day Ta Hui is going to speak.

Okay Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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19

Radiance

24 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

PRESENT AWARENESS AND COMPARATIVE AWARENESS

YEN T'OU SAID, "IN THE FUTURE, IF YOU WANT TO PROPAGATE THE GREAT

TEACHING, IT MUST FLOW OUT POINT BY POINT FROM WITHIN YOUR OWN

BREAST TO COVER HEAVEN AND EARTH: ONLY THEN WILL IT BE THE ACTION

OF A MAN OF POWER." THAT WHICH FLOWS OUT FROM ONE'S OWN BREAST, AS HE CALLS IT, IS ONE'S OWN BEGINNINGLESS PRESENT AWARENESS, FUNDAMENTALLY COMPLETE OF ITSELF. AS SOON AS YOU AROUSE A SECOND

THOUGHT, YOU FALL INTO THINKING. AWARENESS IS SOMETHING FROM

BEFORE YOUR PARENTS WERE BORN.

THIS AFFAIR IS NOT A MATTER OF INTELLIGENCE OR ACUITY. ACTUALLY, IT'S JUST AN ABRUPT BURSTING OUT THAT'S THE CRITERION. AS SOON AS

YOU'VE ATTAINED THIS SCENE, THEN WHATEVER WORDS YOU HAVE, THEY'RE

ESTABLISHED. WHEN WHERE THEY'RE ESTABLISHED IS REAL, THIS IS THE

SO-CALLED "FLOWING OUT FROM WITHIN ONE'S OWN BREAST TO COVER

HEAVEN AND EARTH."

Truth can never be a missionary, but only a heart-to-heart message -- not to convert the other, but just to share your abundance of love, compassion, blissfulness.

This has to be remembered: a missionary is one of the ugliest persons in the world. He himself knows nothing; his heart is empty, but his head is full. He has read, he has studied ...

but all the words which are written, howsoever significant, are dead corpses. The scholar is a gravedigger. He brings out skeletons, and he lives amongst skeletons.

There is a psychological problem: the man who has not known the truth wants to convince himself that he knows it, and the only way to convince himself that he knows it is to start converting people. It is a feedback system. As more and more people become impressed by his words, by his philosophy, the ultimate outcome is that he becomes convinced that he must have the truth, because so many people could not be idiots.

I have heard ... Once it happened -- it very rarely happens, just once in a billion years --

that a journalist reached to the gate of heaven. A journalist, by his very profession, is already booked for hell, but there are always accidents ...

A journalist knocked on the doors of heaven, and Saint Peter opened the door. But seeing the journalist he said, "Forgive me, we have a quota of only twelve journalists, and it has been full since eternity. Even they are absolutely useless here, because nothing happens in heaven --

no murder, no rape, no robbing, no suicide. So only the first issue of our newspaper was ever published, and that remains relevant forever" ... because good people don't have stories. To have stories you need bad people. It is unfortunate, but that is how it is.

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The saints go on sitting in silence. Now, silence is not news; unless there is a riot, a massacre, a war, nuclear weapons, Ronald Reagan, there is no news. Bernard Shaw has defined news: when a dog bites a man it is not news, but when a man bites a dog, it is news.

All politicians are news -- they are men biting the dog.

But in heaven there is no place for politicians. St. Peter said to the journalist, "So forgive me, you will have to go to the other door, which is just opposite. There are only two places, not many alternatives to choose from ..."

But you know, journalists are very stubborn people. He insisted, "At least give me twenty-four hours, just to look around. And after twenty-four hours, if you have some place vacant, you can allow me to remain. Otherwise I will be gone."

It was not asking too much, so Saint Peter said, "For twenty-four hours you can be in heaven." And immediately the journalist started a rumor that in hell a great new daily newspaper is going to start, and they need a chief editor, they need an editorial board, they need assistant editors, they need all kinds of journalists. Rumor for the journalist is just like water for a fish: he lives in rumors, in lies, in all kinds of things which are not in any way true, but have a quality of sensationalism.

There was great commotion, particularly among the twelve journalists. They were tired of heaven, they were tired of dead saints ... Saints can't have any life, because all religions have condemned life. To be a saint, you have to cut your roots from the earth, you have to become a dry bone with no juice in you. The more dead you are, the greater a saint. Any small fragment of life is enough for your fall.

Those twelve journalists were roaming around for centuries amongst those dead people --

but they could not get any news, nothing was happening. When they heard the rumor, they all became so excited. After twenty-four hours, when our journalist reached the gate, Saint Peter did not open the gate. He said, "Listen, fellow, now you cannot go out. All the twelve have gone."

"It seems that in hell they are going to start a very big newspaper on a great scale," the journalist said, "and I don't want to stay here." Although he knows he has created the rumor, now the suspicion arises that if so many people believe it -- and even Saint Peter believes it --

there must be some truth in it.

A missionary is in search of converts, so that he can be convinced that he has the truth. His search for converts is really a psychological need of his own. He is feeling empty and hollow, but if he can manage a few people ... which is always possible.

There are people who are in need of a father figure; they themselves feel afraid in life, helpless. Life seems to be too big, unmanageable, that's why they have created a father in God in heaven. But it is so far ... and still no phone connection is available, except to a few very cunning people like the pope, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Shankaracharya of India -- these people have direct lines, invisible. But for the common person, there is no way to communicate; he needs a more visible, more tangible person who can take the place of the father.

Only a very few people in the world grow and mature; most remain children, and they need a father to protect them. It is not coincidental that Catholic priests are called fathers. But they don't have wives, they don't have children -- I always wonder how they have become fathers.

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These Catholics are strange people: they believe in the Virgin Mary, who gives birth to Jesus Christ without any contact with any human being, and becomes a mother without a father. There are these millions of Catholic fathers, and they don't have wives, they don't have children. Catholicism is really mysterious.

But to call them "father" indicates that inside you is a need for a protective figure. You have been brought up by your father: he was always a protection, a reservoir of knowledge and wisdom. In your eyes he was the greatest man in the world, and you could relax and depend on him. Now the father may be dead.

Physically you have grown older, but psychologically the average man is less than thirteen years of age, and that child is hankering for protection. Without protection in this vast universe -- unknown, unpredictable, full of all kinds of diseases, sicknesses, and finally death

-- a man is bound to be deeply afraid.

I used to stay in a house, and the woman of the house said to me, "We have a problem with our child." They did not have a bathroom attached to their bedroom; they were old-fashioned people, and they had outhouses far away from the house, at the back. The child was absolutely insistent that when he went in the night to the toilet, the mother or father had to follow him, the doors had to be kept open, and they had to stand there, otherwise he would feel very much afraid.

I said to him, "Why don't you do one thing: you are harassing your mother and father, and a simple solution is possible."

He said, "I am willing. Just tell me, what is the solution?"

I said, "You can carry a lamp with you, or a torch." He laughed. I said, "Why are you laughing?"

He said, "In the darkness somehow I can manage to escape from all the ghosts, but with a lamp they will immediately see where I am. You are suggesting a great idea, but I will be caught immediately. I cannot follow this idea. Even if I have to go in darkness, I am willing, because in the darkness I can dodge them. But with a lamp they all will be able to see where I am, and they all will jump on me."

A father is needed. A missionary fulfills some psychologically sick needs of humanity. He is not interested in giving you the truth; he does not have it in the first place.

It is very much a mutual conspiracy: you are feeling happy that you have somebody to protect you, a mediator between you and the invisible god, and the missionary is feeling good that so many people believe in his truth -- "They cannot be wrong. I alone can be wrong, but a multitude of people, the whole congregation of the church, cannot be wrong. It must be that I have the truth." So this is a mutual, unconscious arrangement.

Ta Hui is saying something tremendously important. If you want to give the message to people about the great truth, the truth of enlightenment, remember one thing: it should not come from your head, it should not be intellectual jargon. You will be so full of it in your heart that it starts overflowing.

Then you are not the giver, and you don't have to brag that you have converted so many people. You are not the converter; it is truth itself which is creating the magic of transformation. You are simply a vehicle.

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But the first thing for you is to be filled with truth, filled with light, filled with fragrance, so that you can share it. In fact, you have to become a rain cloud which becomes heavy with rain and wants to shower. You have to become so heavy with your ultimate experience of freedom, of joy, of blissfulness, of truth, that you want to rain, just like a rain cloud.

This is a very significant message and it must have come to Ta Hui as an experience. He was an intellectual, and we are watching a great transformation: an intellectual being transformed slowly, slowly into an enlightened human being. We are watching the birth of a great buddha, the great awakened one.

The first sutra: YEN T'OU SAID, "IN THE FUTURE, IF YOU WANT TO PROPAGATE

THE GREAT TEACHING, IT MUST FLOW OUT POINT BY POINT FROM WITHIN

YOUR OWN BREAST TO COVER HEAVEN AND EARTH: ONLY THEN WILL IT BE

THE ACTION OF A MAN OF POWER."

Yen T'ou is saying that not only is your heart full, it will be so full that it starts radiating in all directions; the whole sky becomes filled with your flavor, with your charisma, with your presence. Those who have eyes will see it, those who have ears will hear it, those who have hearts will feel it, those who have beings, alert and aware, will immediately experience it ...

and be transformed, transmuted, into a totally new being -- beyond misery, beyond suffering, beyond agonies -- into a world of ecstasy.

You will be so full that the earth and the sky both become filled with your experience, filled with your light, filled with your energy, filled with your radiation.

Yen T'ou is right: In the future, if you want to propagate, don't become a missionary. It is a human weakness to pretend that you are knowledgeable. It is a subtle way of humiliating people: you know, and they don't know. So even if you have got only a little intellectual understanding, you immediately start propagating it because it gives great nourishment for your ego. You start becoming the knower, and everybody else is ignorant.

In fact, you are falling into a great ditch. It is better to be ignorant than to be an egoist, because ignorance is natural and can be transformed into innocence very easily. But ego is a perversion: it is very difficult for the egoistic person to understand anything that demands the demolition of ego. Ego is his only treasure; he knows nothing else in the world except his prestige, respectability, knowledgeability, honor.

IF YOU WANT TO PROPAGATE ... it is not necessary that you propagate. There have been millions of mystics around the world, down the ages, who have decided not to propagate.

I cannot say that they are absolutely wrong; they are ninety-nine percent right.

They have decided not to propagate because there is no way to explain to you something which you have not experienced. If you have experienced it, there is no need to explain it to you. Their logic is clear. In the East these mystics have been called arhatas. They attain to the ultimate enlightenment and remain silent. If somebody comes to drink out of their well he is welcome, but they do not make any effort on their own to reach people.

Only a few people have decided in favor of the one percent possibility: in Buddhism they are called bodhisattvas. They have decided ... It may not be possible to reach to the people's hearts; they are so closed, they have already chosen ... somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan, somebody is a Buddhist. They have already chosen without knowing anything. Their minds are prejudiced and polluted, and these prejudices are functioning like walls around them. They don't allow anything new to enter in.

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But perhaps once in a while you can find a small crack in the wall, and if a person is a seeker, a searcher, open to encounter any truth, then there is a possibility that if you have the truth, his heart will immediately start beating with your heart. It is a synchronicity. Suddenly he will become aware that the man has come for whom he has been waiting and waiting for many lives.

It will not be an intellectual conviction, because you have not even spoken. It will be a subtle, invisible transfer -- a transmission of the lamp. The other person just has to be open.

You cannot force anybody to be open; the more you try to force, the more closed he will become. It is absolutely in his own hands to be open and vulnerable, to be available just like a womb and to give birth to himself into a new space, a new consciousness.

The man of truth can only be a triggering point. That's why Yen T'ou says, IF YOU

WANT ... If you don't want, the question does not arise. IF YOU WANT TO PROPAGATE

THE GREAT TEACHING ... And why is he calling it THE GREAT TEACHING? Why not just teaching?

This is a difference made very clear by Gautam Buddha. Teaching is from the mind; it is a philosophy, a theology, a religion, but it is from the mind. Mind is immensely capable of fabricating systems of thought, very logical, very rational -- but missing the foundation, the foundation of experience.

The great teaching is that which has arisen out of your experience. Its greatness also is that you don't have to make any effort to propagate it. Its very presence starts ringing bells in the hearts of those who are worthy to receive it, who have earned some kind of meditativeness, who have earned some kind of silences of the heart ... whose ground is ready so that the seed of enlightenment can be sown.

The teaching is just a rational approach to existence, and the great teaching is an experiential approach to existence.

"... TO PROPAGATE THE GREAT TEACHING, IT MUST FLOW OUT POINT BY

POINT FROM WITHIN YOUR OWN BREAST TO COVER HEAVEN AND EARTH: ONLY THEN WILL IT BE THE ACTION OF A MAN OF POWER."

So much is condensed in this small quotation from Yen T'ou. Scriptures can be made out of the commentary, and out of the implications of it.

IT MUST FLOW OUT ... You should not make an effort, because your effort will be destroying its beauty, its purity. Your effort means you are not trusting existence and truth.

And your hands are very small; your efforts cannot be great enough to transfer the truth.

It has to be a flow, point by point. You have just to be a witness, not an active agent; you have just to see the flow from your heart, and rejoice.

And if it reaches to a few hearts, they become joined in a certain mystical union. That's what an authentic commune is -- where people are joined by an invisible flow of energy, from heart to heart. Then they are separate as individuals, and yet deeply connected with each other ... just like a garland of flowers -- each flower is individual, but a thin thread, invisible to the eyes, runs through all of them, and makes it a garland.

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opens ... do you think it makes any effort to spread its fragrance to the winds? It happens spontaneously. It is something absolutely natural.

Once your heart has become a roseflower and has opened its buds, then the fragrance starts reaching in all directions. This is the right way of sending messages to those who are worthy of receiving them, and only then will it be the action of a man of power. This has to be understood.

Ordinarily you think a man of power must be a president of a country, or a prime minister, or a great general, or a man like Alexander the Great. Your idea of power is always power over others; it is inhuman and ugly from the very start.

Nobody has the right to have power over anybody else -- neither the husband over the wife, nor the parents over their children, nor any politician over the people. Freedom is our most fundamental right, so that kind of power has to disappear from the world.

That power has created thousands of wars, and that power has been our undoing. Man has not been able to use this time for his evolution, for a better earth, for a more human society, without demarcations of nations, religions, political ideologies.

All our energy goes into such stupidities! Killing each other seems to be the main purpose of man's being on the earth. In three thousand years there have been five thousand wars.

Anybody watching from another planet will think that humanity has gone mad.

There is one great thinker of our age, Arthur Koestler, who thinks exactly that -- that something in the growth of man's mind has gone wrong: either the nuts and bolts are too tight or too loose. All our energies devoted to destruction ... what can be more insane? All these energies can make this earth a paradise, but they are making it only a battlefield.

This meaning of power is not the same meaning as when Yen T'ou uses the word 'power'.

In the East we have used the word power -- not over others, but over oneself. Conquering your own unconquered areas of consciousness, bringing your potential to its total flowering, will make you immensely powerful -- not over anybody, but just a source of power on your own accord.

Power over others is very impotent: just put the president of any country down from his seat, and all power disappears. What kind of world is this? -- where chairs are powerful, where chairs are more important than man, where chairs make man powerful, not vice-versa.

What will Ronald Reagan be without being a president? -- just a senile fellow. What is Richard Nixon? Who cares whether he is alive or dead?

It happened before the Russian Revolution that a man named Kerensky was the prime minister of Russia -- a great power. While the revolution was happening he escaped from Russia, and people remained concerned about what happened to him. Perhaps he had been killed -- because no footprints could be found, no sign of where he had disappeared to. He simply disappeared into thin air. It was found in 1960 -- almost half a century after the revolution -- that he was running a grocery store in New York. Of course, under disguise; he was not telling anybody that he had been one of the most powerful men in the world.

Strange ... but the mystics know of a different kind of power. Wherever the mystic sits, that place becomes holy, that place becomes full of power. The mystic's power is not dependent on any votes, it is not dependent on any chair, it is not dependent on any post. The mystic's power is his own, it is not borrowed.

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Every president and every prime minister is just a beggar, begging for votes. I have heard about an American politician who was campaigning for his election. He knocked on a door, and he started kissing every child -- and there were at least twenty children with running noses, but one has to tolerate everything if one wants power. He was feeling very much disgusted with the whole affair, but he was smiling -- just like the Jimmy Carter smile.

Have you heard anything about Jimmy Carter's smile? It has disappeared. I have seen his latest photographs, and only one thing is missing -- that smile. His smile was from ear to ear ... but it was not his smile, it was the chair. With the chair gone, the smile is gone too.

The poor politician kissed all the children and the woman who was standing there, then he said to her, "You have beautiful children. I have come to tell you that your vote should go to me."

He gave her his card and the woman laughed, saying, "I will think it over. But these are not all my children; I am just a caretaker. Because all the woman of the neighborhood are having a meeting, they have left their children here, and I am just looking after them."

He said, "My God, why didn't you say this before? Now I feel even nauseous! ... these dirty children, with running noses. I have been kissing them, and their mucous was getting on my face."

But one has to tolerate ...! These beggars become very powerful once they are in the post, but their power is very ugly, inhuman, and brutal.

The power of a mystic has a totally different quality, and a different dimension. His power is not dependent on anybody else. His power is not the power of a beggar; his power is the power of an emperor. His power arises within his own being. He becomes a radiant star.

All mystics are men of great power. To be in contact with them is enough to be thrilled, to be thrilled about the unknown possibilities of your own being. Just to be in the presence of a man of truth is enough; no argument is needed to convince you -- his presence is the argument, and his power is the convincing force.

One great Christian missionary, Stanley Jones, used to stay with me whenever he was passing through the place where I was living. He has written beautiful books and he used to give beautiful sermons. Once I told him, "You spoke so beautifully! You were using the same words as Jesus ... but I don't see the power behind them, they are just old gramophone records.

The words are the same, but the man behind the words is not the same. You use every effort to make your message emphatic, but you don't have the power."

He was a very sincere man, and he said, "Perhaps you are right."

I said, "Not perhaps, I am right. If you had that power, which Jesus had, you would already have been crucified. It is hilarious that you hang a golden cross around your neck. Jesus did not hang a golden cross around his neck; his neck hung on a wooden cross, a cross so heavy that although he was only thirty-three years old -- and the son of a carpenter who was accustomed to carrying big logs from the forest to his father's workshop -- he fell three times, the weight of the cross was so much. Whom are you trying to deceive? Your neck has to be on the cross -- not the cross dangling on your neck, a small cross that cannot kill even a mouse."

That was the crime of Jesus ... The whole land of the Jews was full of great scholars, intellectuals, great rabbis, and this single man offended them all. He was not speaking against them, he had not said a single word against any of them. But just his presence, his powerful Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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individuality, was enough to reduce them into pygmies -- and all the pygmies joined together to destroy this man.

Pygmies are in the majority in the world, and they have been doing the same down the ages. Socrates they poisoned, because he was a giant. Even today his arguments are so fresh, as fresh as this morning's roses blossoming in the sun and dancing in the air. They murdered al-Hillaj Mansoor, although what he was saying will remain eternally true. He has only declared a simple fact: "I am God, and you are also God. I know it, you don't know it. Any moment you can recognize it ..."

But the pygmies are feeling very comfortable and cozy in being pygmies. They don't want to take the risk of becoming giants, because they have seen what happens to giants --

crucifixion, poison, murder ... They freak out with these ideas. It is better to be a Christian, with one hour's religion every Sunday; it is better to be a Hindu, it is better to be a Mohammedan. Just belong to a crowd ... because you don't have power, and a man of power stands alone like a lion roaring. He does not need to mix with a crowd.

THAT WHICH FLOWS OUT FROM ONE'S OWN BREAST, AS HE CALLS IT, IS

ONE'S OWN BEGINNINGLESS PRESENT AWARENESS ... What starts flowing, the moment you become aware of your awareness, which is beginningless and endless, which is eternity -- as you become aware of your eternal sources of consciousness, inexhaustible, suddenly the flow comes to you without any effort.

You are not a missionary; your very being is the mission. You are not trying to convince anybody by your argument; your very being is the answer, self-evident, needing no proof, no argument ... FUNDAMENTALLY, COMPLETE OF ITSELF.

The enlightened being, the awakened soul, is complete in itself. It is not in need of anything from anywhere. This gives the awakened person the possibility to be absolutely free of all bondages, of all chains, of all handcuffs. You can put him in a jail, but you cannot enslave his consciousness. Now he no more identifies himself with the body. He has found his real identity. To identify with the body is to carry a false passport.

But Ta Hui wants you to be aware not to allow a second thought to arise. What is the second thought? When you first feel yourself in deep meditation, you say, "Aha, this is it!" --

and you have missed. This sentence you have to remember not to use at any point, because the moment you say, "This is it," your mind has come in. Mind is the most corrupting force, more poisonous than any cobra. It simply spoils the silence and the meditativeness.

There is a tendency in every mind to try it, so one has to be very aware not to give rise to a second thought. Just be alert, just be aware, just be conscious, just be meditative ... but there is no need to reflect about it, or to make a statement about it, or even within yourself to say, "I have arrived."

AS SOON AS YOU AROUSE A SECOND THOUGHT, YOU FALL INTO THINKING.

AWARENESS IS SOMETHING FROM BEFORE YOUR PARENTS WERE BORN.

Jesus was asked, "Who do you think you are? You are just a young man, and the land of Judea has old learned rabbis who have devoted their whole life to looking into the scriptures.

Who do you think you are? You don't even have any education, you can't read, you can't write, and you are too young to be wise."

And the answer of Jesus is one of the most tremendous answers which has ever been given. He said, "I have been before Abraham was." Abraham is the oldest name in the Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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genealogy of the Jews. "I was before Abraham was." This is a statement of power and self-realization. He is saying, "I am beginningless. Don't look at my body -- it may be young, but I am eternal."

THIS AFFAIR IS NOT A MATTER OF INTELLIGENCE OR ACUITY. ACTUALLY, IT IS JUST AN ABRUPT BURSTING OUT, THAT IS THE CRITERION.

Ta Hui has come a long, long way. In the beginning, when he was just an intellectual, he was laughing at sudden enlightenment. How can enlightenment be sudden? In existence everything is gradual ... A tree grows gradually, a man grows gradually. It is not that there was nothing and suddenly a rosebush appears -- complete, with the flowers and the fragrance.

Existence does not believe in suddenness. It is a gradual process. Intellectually, it seems to be perfectly right.

But now he is saying that this is the criterion of whether your enlightenment is true or not: IT IS JUST AN ABRUPT BURSTING OUT, THAT IS THE CRITERION -- a sudden illumination, just like a bolt of lightning. Now he is speaking from his own experience. As far as mind is concerned, it can observe that everything everywhere grows gradually, so why should there be this exception -- that enlightenment is sudden?

The reason is clear: enlightenment is not something that is growing in you; it is something that is already complete, just waiting. It has been complete forever, from the very beginning.

You have just to look at it -- a one hundred and eighty-degree turn.

You will not find a small plant of enlightenment growing slowly, leaf by leaf, branch by branch. No, you will see the whole complete illumination -- because it is your nature, because it is already there, because it has been there forever. It is just that you were not looking at it; you were standing with your back towards it.

And it cannot grow -- it is complete, it is entire, it is as it should be. The only new thing that is going to happen is not to enlightenment, but to you. You were not aware of it; now you have seen it, now you are aware of it.

And this awareness of yours, is also sudden. You cannot see the enlightenment of your being gradually, piece by piece -- one day you see a little enlightenment, then another day you see a little more, and so on it goes. Once you have seen just a little part of it, you will be pulled completely inwards to recognize its totality.

It is very easy, as far as awakening is concerned, to know when a man is only talking intellectually or is talking existentially. Now Ta Hui is talking existentially. It has not only been a great pilgrimage for him, it has been also a great pilgrimage for you all. Seeing how intellect is capable of turning into enlightenment, how an ordinary mind can change into no-mind, how a mortal can become immortal -- it is your story.

Ta Hui is coming to the very end of his pilgrimage. You may be far away from the destination, but Ta Hui's progress will give you tremendous encouragement, however far away you are. He was also very far away, and if he can manage, there is no reason why you cannot manage!

AS SOON AS YOU HAVE ATTAINED THIS SCENE ... Just look at the words, how they change. The intellectual cannot say this; it is just out of his possibilities. He can talk about concepts, he can talk about hypotheses, he can talk about ideologies, but Ta Hui is saying, AS SOON AS YOU HAVE ATTAINED THIS SCENE ... It is only a scene: it was already there -- you were just not seeing it. Now you have opened your eyes and seen it.

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I have heard about a small child who saw the Catholic priest coming by, and he ran to him and said, "Father, my dog has given birth to six small kids. And why I am so excited is because they are all Catholics."

The father said, "That's very good."

After three weeks, the father was coming and he saw the boy sitting on his steps crying. He said, "What happened? What happened to your six Catholics?"

He said, "That is why I am crying. Their eyes are now open, and they are no longer Catholics."

To be a Catholic or to be a Hindu or to be a Mohammedan, your eyes need to be closed, but to be enlightened your eyes need to be open. It is a scene ... the most beautiful scene that you can ever see, or can conceive.

AS SOON AS YOU HAVE ATTAINED THIS SCENE, THEN WHATEVER WORDS

YOU HAVE, THEY ARE ESTABLISHED. Out of an awakened consciousness, each word is on fire, each word is alive, each word is established. It does not need any support of scriptures, and it does not need any support of anybody else in the world. It is its own authority -- that is the meaning of its being established.

WHEN WHERE THEY ARE ESTABLISHED IS REAL, THIS IS THE SO-CALLED

"FLOWING OUT FROM WITHIN ONE'S OWN BREAST TO COVER HEAVEN AND

EARTH." When you are established in truth, you will fill the whole cosmos with your truth, with your ecstasy, with your fragrance. And wherever there are people who are sensitive, they will start searching for the man who has attained the power, and whose words have become established.

Now, you are here from almost every country of the world. Every government is against me, every government is trying to prevent people reaching here. The government of India is trying to prevent journalists, scholars, professors, all kinds of other news media, from reaching here. They are asking every tourist, "For what reason are you going to India?" Just a little suspicion that they are going to meditate, and their application is rejected.

It should be counted as one of the most wonderful things ... because meditators have always come to India from all over the world, down the ages. It has been the land of the mystics and the buddhas and the Jainas. Its only contribution to the world is meditation. But this is not a small contribution; it is the greatest contribution possible.

Now the people -- the so-called political leaders -- who don't know anything about meditation, are ready to give visas to visit the Taj Mahal, Khajuraho, Konarak, Ajanta, Ellora.

But I have received letters from people saying that "because we said we want to learn meditation, our applications were rejected." They are not allowing them to come.

When all the governments of the world -- the Indian government included -- are trying to prevent them, still people are finding ways to come. Something is pulling them. Even if the whole world is against me, it does not matter. The people who have a little sensibility, sensitivity, towards higher states of consciousness are bound to come here.

This is the power Ta Hui is talking about.

I don't have any power in the ordinary sense, but I have a power within myself. I am full of my own awakening, and I am willing to share it with anybody. I don't ask whether you are Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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qualified -- who cares about qualifications? I have come to an inexhaustible source, so even if unqualified people can be benefited, there is no harm. I am not losing anything.

Qualified, or unqualified, deserving or not deserving ... One thing is certain: they have come from far away, from all over the world, and all the governments are trying to prevent them. But something invisible is calling them, and the call is irresistible.

I am not a missionary. I don't convert you.

I am a mission.

If you come close to me, you will be transformed.

It will not be a conversion -- from Hinduism to Mohammedanism, from Mohammedanism to Christianity -- that is simply changing the jails.

Ta Hui has given us some beautiful sutras this morning. Allow them to sink deep into your being. They will be of immense help on the path.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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20

Affliction

24 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

POWER

... THE SENSES ARE MANIFESTATIONS OF ONE'S OWN MIND. IF YOU CAN

UNDERSTAND THOROUGHLY LIKE THIS, THEN IT'S CALLED THE KNOWLEDGE

THAT THERE'S NEITHER SELF NOR OTHERS. HEAVEN AND HELL ARE NOWHERE

ELSE BUT IN THE HEART OF THE PERSON.

... AS SOON AS YOU BECOME AWARE OF GRADUALLY CONSERVING POWER

IN THE MIDST OF THE AFFLICTIONS OF DAILY ACTIVITIES -- THIS IS HOW A PERSON ACHIEVES BUDDHAHOOD.

... WHEN YOU SEE IT AS IT REALLY IS, PRACTICE ACCORDING TO REALITY

AND ACT ACCORDING TO REALITY.

... ONLY IF YOU ARRIVE AT THIS STAGE CAN YOU SAY THERE IS NO HEAVEN

OR HELL, AND SUCH THINGS. YUNG CHIA SAID, "THERE ARE NEITHER HUMANS

NOR BUDDHAS. THE UNIVERSE IS LIKE A BUBBLE IN THE OCEAN, ALL THE

SAGES ARE LIKE FLASHES OF LIGHTNING." IF HE HADN'T GOTTEN TO THIS

STAGE, HOW COULD YUNG CHIA HAVE SAID THIS? BUT WITH THESE WORDS, THOSE WHO MISUNDERSTAND ARE MANY ...

FEELINGS AND AFFLICTION

... IT IS PRECISELY WHEN AFFLICTED THAT YOU SHOULD CAREFULLY

INVESTIGATE AND ENQUIRE WHERE THE AFFLICTION ARISES FROM. IF YOU

CANNOT GET TO THE BOTTOM OF ITS ORIGINATION, THEN WHERE DOES THE

ONE WHO IS AFFLICTED RIGHT NOW COME FROM? RIGHT WHEN YOU'RE

AFFLICTED, IS IT EXISTENT OR NONEXISTENT, EMPTY OR REAL? KEEP

INVESTIGATING UNTIL YOUR MIND HAS NOWHERE TO GO. IF YOU WANT TO

THINK, THEN THINK; IF YOU WANT TO CRY, THEN CRY. JUST KEEP ON CRYING

AND THINKING. WHEN YOU AROUSE YOURSELF TO THE POINT WHERE THE

HABIT ENERGY OF LOVE AND AFFECTION WITHIN THE STOREHOUSE

CONSCIOUSNESS IS EXHAUSTED, THEN NATURALLY IT'S LIKE WATER BEING

RETURNED TO WATER -- GIVING YOU BACK YOUR ORIGINAL BEING, WITHOUT

AFFLICTION, WITHOUT THOUGHTS, WITHOUT SORROW OR JOY.

"HAVING ENTERED THE WORLD, LEAVE THE WORLD COMPLETELY." IS

THERE SUCH A THING AS A FATHER WHO IS NOT TROUBLED WHEN HIS SON

DIES? IF YOU TRY TO SUPPRESS (SUCH SENTIMENTS) FORCIBLY, NOT DARING

TO CRY OR THINK ABOUT IT, THEN THIS IS DELIBERATELY GOING AGAINST

THE NATURAL PATTERN, DENYING YOUR INHERENT NATURE: (IT'S LIKE) RAISING A SOUND TO STOP AN ECHO, OR POURING ON OIL TO PUT OUT A FIRE.

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Ta Hui, the man who started searching, has disappeared in the search. Now the one who is speaking is no more the old Ta Hui; he is discontinuous. The old is gone and the new is born.

Whatever he is saying now has a totally different significance: it is not coming out of his mind, it is coming out of his experience.

One of the most significant experiences is power -- power not over others, but simply a tremendous energy arising in you from the very core of your being. It is not that you are powerful over others, it is simply that you are powerful. The power that is over others can be taken away; it is dependent on others, it is not yours. You are simply hiding your impotence.

Every politician in the world is psychologically sick. His sickness is a deep inferiority complex, a deep impotence. Now, there are only two ways to get out of this state of impotence: the cheapest and the simplest is to become powerful over others. But that is an illusory experience -- certainly cheap, but not real.

Real power comes only with the experience of your own being.

That's where politics and religion separate. Their enquiry is basically the same -- the search for power -- but politics chooses the cheapest, the most plastic way of attaining power, and religion goes in search of the authentic, the real, your own.

If you are independent, absolutely rooted in your own being, this experience of power can be shared. If you are close to the man of power and you are not afraid of opening up, you will immediately see a great flash, a great flow entering into your being, as if a flame has jumped from one lamp to another. It has been called, in the tradition of Zen, the transmission of the lamp. It is transmission of power, and it is a very strange experience.

One of the disciples of Gurdjieff -- perhaps the one who was with him the longest -- was Bennett. He had found Gurdjieff in a refugee camp in Constantinople after the Russian Revolution. Gurdjieff had escaped out of Russia. He knew that remaining in Russia would be absolutely dangerous for his life, and his disciples who were around him also persuaded him to escape in time. There was every danger, particularly from the communists, who don't believe in any spirituality, who don't believe that man has something eternal in him -- and that was Gurdjieff's lifelong work.

There was chaos all over the country. The czar and his government had failed, collapsed.

The communists had not yet been able to establish order and peace. Everything was in chaos; the whole bureaucracy was disrupted -- and that was the time when all the people who wanted to get out of Russia had the opportunity.

Gurdjieff landed in Constantinople, in a refugee camp, where there were thousands of homeless Russians. Bennett discovered him in the refugee camp in Constantinople. That was the first time the world came to know about Gurdjieff. Bennett was in the army; he helped Gurdjieff to reach Paris, and whenever he was able he would come and live with Gurdjieff.

Bennett remembers in his autobiography something concerning power. He had come, utterly tired, to see Gurdjieff, and he was feeling for a few days as if he was going to die, as if all power to resist sickness had disappeared. He was pale, weak, and he had come just to see Gurdjieff for the last time, thinking that he would not be able to see him again.

When he entered Gurdjieff's room, Gurdjieff said, "What has happened to you, Bennett? It is not time for you to die." He put his hand on Bennett's head, and Bennett could not believe it: a great energy started flowing from his hand into Bennett's body. Bennett became young Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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again, just within minutes. He opened his eyes, he could not believe it. He looked at his hands

-- all his paleness had disappeared. There was a feeling of rejuvenation, almost a rebirth.

But when he looked at Gurdjieff, he could not believe it -- he had become pale. Bennett had never seen him so weak, and he could see what had happened: Gurdjieff had given himself, his life-force, his energy to him.

Gurdjieff said, "Don't be worried. It will take just ten minutes for me to be refilled." He went into the bathroom and when he came back, after ten minutes, he was just the same -- full of energy. Bennett wanted to know more about what had transpired.

Gurdjieff said, "If you go on practicing the discipline that I have given you, one day you will see for yourself that everybody has an inexhaustible source of power. It was an urgent situation, an emergency, so I poured myself; otherwise you would certainly have died. But I know that it is almost like a well: you can take the water out ... if you do it quickly, the well may become empty -- but just for a few minutes, because many currents are coming in and filling the well. Soon it will be full again. You needed so much that I could not give slowly, I had to pour myself totally."

You all have that power. It has nothing to do with anybody else; it has something to do with your roots in existence. The more you become aware of your roots in existence, the more powerful you become.

This power has no equivalent in any other source of energy; it is not material, it is not electrical, it is not atomic, it is not nuclear. It is spiritual. It is a totally different dimension, which science has not yet even touched. But all the mystics of the world have lived in it, have danced in it and have given to their disciples without any restraint -- because the more you give it, the more existence brings to you from invisible sources.

Man is just like a tree. As the tree has roots in the earth, which you don't see, man has roots in existence which are invisible.

Once you become aware of your innermost center, at the very same time you become aware of your immense power. And this power can never do any harm to anybody. This power can be used only as a blessing. Ta Hui is talking about this power.

THE SENSES ARE MANIFESTATIONS OF ONE'S OWN MIND. In fact, the mind and the senses are one phenomenon. The senses are doors of the mind, connecting it with the world. Eyes, ears, nose, hands, the whole body -- all your six senses are nothing but your six connections with existence.

Mind goes on gathering information, energy, nourishment, from all these senses. Mind is only your seventh sense and nothing else -- or in other words, the central pool. From every sense, whatever comes falls into the mind. THE SENSES ARE MANIFESTATIONS OF

ONE'S OWN MIND.

IF YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THOROUGHLY LIKE THIS, THEN IT'S CALLED THE

KNOWLEDGE THAT THERE IS NEITHER SELF NOR OTHERS. If you can become aware of your mind, its senses, and be just a watcher, two things will disappear: the self and the other selves, I and thou.

One of the great Jewish thinkers of our age, Martin Buber, has worked his whole life on only one theme. His theme was dialogue, and his central and the most essential book about it is I AND THOU. He says, "The ultimate experience is a dialogue between I and Thou."

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He is very articulate, tremendously intelligent, certainly one of the greatest geniuses of this age -- but he is not a mystic. He is still talking in terms of the duality, I and thou. What he is proposing is beautiful: that there should be a dialogue. Right now, even if you love somebody there is no dialogue; there is continuous conflict, an effort to dominate, not an effort to understand each other.

One of my friends is a professor. His doctors are tired, his wife, his children, everybody is tired of his drinking. The doctor came to me and said, "We have tried every possible way, but your friend simply seems to be incapable of dropping his habit of drinking. He is willing to die, but not to drop drinking."

So I went to see him. Before I could see him -- he was in his bathroom -- his wife told me,

"Just the other day I read in the newspaper all the harm that can happen to drunkards. So I went in the bedroom ... because he still had a hangover. I shook him and told him, 'Look how many dangers there are for drunkards, how many things in the body can go wrong.'

He listened, and I was happy because he said, 'Enough is enough, I will stop it from tomorrow.' And from the next day he stopped purchasing the newspaper, but the drinking continued -- why bother about newspapers that create such trouble?"

What kind of dialogue is possible? Nobody seems to listen to anybody else: everybody is talking, but they are all having a monologue.

So Martin Buber's thesis has an importance of its own: that mankind will be better if people could come to an understanding, could see the other's point of view, could stand in his shoes. That is the only possibility for having a peaceful world. But he does not understand that even a dialogue, although a beautiful thing in itself, is not going to bring peace in the world.

Only one thing can bring peace in the world, and that is when I and thou, the self and other selves, all disappear. A feeling arises of oneness, of one consciousness, of one being. And it can arise, because it is the reality.

IF YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THOROUGHLY LIKE THIS, THEN IT IS CALLED

THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THERE IS NEITHER SELF NOR OTHERS. HEAVEN AND

HELL ARE NOWHERE ELSE BUT IN THE HEART OF THE PERSON. Because we are thinking of ourselves as separate from everybody else, we have created a hell. If we can start having a harmony, a deep accord with each other, this very earth is the lotus paradise.

AS SOON AS YOU BECOME AWARE OF GRADUALLY CONSERVING POWER IN

THE MIDST OF THE AFFLICTIONS OF DAILY ACTIVITIES -- THIS IS HOW A PERSON ACHIEVES BUDDHAHOOD. And because you are continuously in conflict with others, you are losing your power. If all conflicts disappear -- that means if you understand and feel the oneness with existence -- then you will start conserving your power without any effort, because there is nobody else to fight with, there is no way to destroy your power in unnecessary fights. You will conserve so much power that even if you are involved in the day-to-day activities of life, you will attain to buddhahood wherever you are.

This is a tremendous insight of Ta Hui. Now he is not talking from the mind; now he is saying things which only a man of experience can say.

WHEN YOU SEE IT AS IT REALLY IS, PRACTICE ACCORDING TO REALITY

AND ACT ACCORDING TO REALITY. This is where the man of authentic experience differs from your so-called moralists, puritans, social servants, religious leaders.

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The man of experience has no ten commandments, he does not have any fixed moral concepts, he has no ready-made ideas and ideals about good and bad, about right and wrong.

He simply acts according to the harmonious reality; he does not fall in discord with it. That's all he has to do: he remains alert not to fall in discord; to remain always in accord. In tune with reality, you are right; the moment you are out of tune with reality, you are wrong.

This is a very different approach towards morality. It does not say, "Thou should not do this, thou should do this." There are no shoulds and should-nots. A very simple principle: Thou should not fall in discord with reality. Be in tune with it and you will be automatically on the right path. WHEN YOU SEE IT AS IT REALLY IS, PRACTICE ACCORDING TO

REALITY.

Have you ever thought that the word "according" comes from "accord"? I don't think you will have even thought about it. PRACTICE ACCORDING TO REALITY means: Remain in accord with reality AND ACT ACCORDING TO REALITY. Just remember one thing: be in accord with existence, and your life will be a rejoicing, a blissful ecstasy, a continuous dance; your life will become an eternal spring.

ONLY IF YOU ARRIVE AT THIS STAGE CAN YOU SAY THERE IS NO HEAVEN

OR HELL AND SUCH THINGS. YUNG CHIA SAID, "THERE ARE NEITHER HUMANS

NOR BUDDHAS. THE UNIVERSE IS LIKE A BUBBLE IN THE OCEAN, ALL THE

SAGES ARE LIKE FLASHES OF LIGHTNING." IF HE HAD NOT GOTTEN TO THIS

STAGE, HOW COULD YUNG CHIA HAVE SAID THIS? BUT WITH THESE WORDS, THOSE WHO MISUNDERSTAND ARE MANY.

To understand a man like Yung Chia, who was the master of Ta Hui ... It is always easy to misunderstand a man like Yung Chia. It is difficult -- almost impossible -- to understand him, because the basic ground for understanding is missing. You don't have any experience of what he is saying, and whatever your ways of understanding are, they are being contradicted by these statements.

He is saying, "THERE ARE NEITHER HUMANS NOR BUDDHAS." Ordinarily we understand that people who are asleep are human beings, and the people who are awake are the buddhas. But Yung Chia is saying something even greater. He is saying, "There are no humans, no buddhas, but only forms of awareness." One form we call human, another form we call the buddha -- but the reality is of the same energy, the same power, the same awareness.

You can make from the same mud many, many toys of different shapes -- but the reality within them is simply one. They are all mud. This whole existence consists only of consciousness; even rocks are nothing but condensed, fast asleep, snoring buddhas. If you listen closely you may hear their snores. They are really asleep -- so deeply asleep that you cannot wake them -- in a state of coma. But essentially there is no difference.

Essentially we are made of the same stuff. Whether you are a human being or a rock or a tree or a buddha, these are only forms. A man of ultimate awakening will know that all forms are just forms and nothing more. The reality within them is simply one and the same.

But such people as Yung Chia are bound to be misunderstood. Hence Ta Hui says, "BUT

WITH THESE WORDS, THOSE WHO MISUNDERSTAND ARE MANY." How can you accept that a rock and a buddha are no different?

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In fact, three hundred years after Gautam Buddha died, when the first statue of him was made the artist, the sculptor who made it, made it specially from pure white marble. Asked why he had chosen white marble -- because there are many other colors of marble and many other kinds of stones -- he said, "The white marble and Gautam Buddha sitting in his silence have some similarities: the same beauty, the same softness, the same grace. Watching certain great statues, it seems as if the statue is going to open its eyes any moment ..."

In Ajanta, the Buddhist monks have done something absolutely miraculous. They have carved out the whole mountain, made great caves; a few caves are as big as this auditorium, so that five hundred people can very easily sit in meditation in one cave. Each cave has a statue of Buddha, and the last cave has the statue of Buddha when he is lying down and is ready to move into eternal sleep. It is a beautiful statue of Buddha lying down -- so alive that one feels any moment he is going to wake up.

The man who made the first statue made the remark that there is something very similar in the marble, because in its softness, in its beauty, something of Gautam Buddha's qualities is present. Perhaps he was not himself an enlightened being, otherwise he could have said that in the statue Gautam Buddha is fast asleep, and in Gautam Buddha the statue has awakened.

That is the only difference -- not much of a difference.

But this kind of mystical statement can be understood only if you start having some experiences, if you start having some moments of accord with reality, of deep harmony and oneness. Then not only these statements but millions more will become immediately clear to you.

I have spoken on hundreds of mystics, and you will be surprised that I have never read those people before. For example, this Ta Hui: I don't know what he is going to say tomorrow, I don't know how he is going to end up; I simply go on responding to his statements as they are presented to me. But I don't have to read Ta Hui and other supporting material on his life, his works, his teachings. That's what a scholar will do: he will study everything possibly available about Ta Hui.

My approach is that of a mystic, not of a scholar. This is a very strange approach, because nobody else before me has ever done that; it is unprecedented.

Mystics don't care about other mystics; they have come home, now they want to move into eternal sleep -- so why bother? Scholars, who don't have any experience, are left to work on the meanings of the statements and the actions of the mystics. These poor scholars have nothing but libraries, other books, but they don't have any experience of their own. So whatever they do, howsoever clever, howsoever articulate, it remains fundamentally wrong.

Only a mystic has the right to say anything about another mystic.

I have been able to talk on hundreds of mystics without any difficulty, for the simple reason that it is my own experience, and I respect my experience. If I find some mystic committing a mistake in his statements, or perhaps the mistake is committed by the people who recorded them, then I don't spare anybody -- it doesn't matter who he is.

I have a criterion of my own. I judge everything against my criterion, and if it is not twenty-four carat gold, then I say so. It hurts many people, but they don't see that one's commitment should be to the truth, not to personalities. Everything can be sacrificed -- all the saints and all the mystics can be sacrificed -- but not the truth.

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... IT IS PRECISELY WHEN AFFLICTED THAT YOU SHOULD CAREFULLY

INVESTIGATE AND ENQUIRE WHERE THE AFFLICTION ARISES FROM. Now he is coming closer and closer to devices of meditation. This is one of the devices: you are feeling sad or angry, and he is saying you can make it a meditation. Don't fight it, don't try to distract your mind into something else. Don't go to see a movie because you are feeling very sad.

Don't try to repress your feeling. It is a great opportunity for meditation.

Just watch from where the anger arises. Just go to the very roots. Just go to the very roots from where the sadness is coming -- and the greatest surprise is that it doesn't have any roots.

So when you look for the roots, by that time your emotions start disappearing seeing that,

"This man is strange -- he is looking for the roots!" And those afflictions, emotions, sentiments, feelings -- none of them have any roots. They are just clouds, without any roots, surrounding your mind.

So, if you start looking for roots, your emotions start dispersing -- "This is not the right man, he is not going to be affected by us. He is a little strange; here we are, and he is looking for the roots!"

Rather than being sad, rather than being angry, rather than being miserable -- search for the roots!

Every sentiment, every emotion, every feeling will disappear if you look for the roots. If your awareness goes that deep in search, then the emotion will be gone, and the sky of your inner being will be absolutely clear and clean. Ta Hui has given you a simple meditation. Just try it, and you will be amazed.

IF YOU CANNOT GET TO THE BOTTOM OF ITS ORIGINATION, THEN WHERE

DOES THE ONE WHO IS AFFLICTED RIGHT NOW COME FROM?

Perhaps you may not be able to remain unaffected and just be a pure scientific investigator.

You may become affected -- then you cannot find the very bottom from where these clouds are arising. So Ta Hui suggests another method: if you cannot find the origin, try to find out who this fellow is who is becoming miserable. Just turn your awareness and focus it on the person who is becoming angry, instead of on the misery or anger. It is another device: the method is the same and the purpose is the same -- just the object changes.

The moment you turn to look: who is this fellow, who is this guy who is becoming angry?

... you cannot do both the things, because you are the guy. Either you can be angry, or you can look for the guy; you cannot do both things together. Either you can be angry or you can be in search for the one who is angry -- and if you are in search, you will not find the guy. Again the sky is clean and clear.

What you do is not the question; the point is that mind should come again and again to a state of utter silence and nothingness.

RIGHT WHEN YOU ARE AFFLICTED, IS IT EXISTENT OR NON-EXISTENT, EMPTY OR REAL? He is just giving you different devices, similar to each other. You are angry. He is saying: "Now become aware whether this anger is real, or you are just acting. Is it existent or nonexistent?" The device is to create a dislocation, a discontinuity between you and the anger.

Is the anger real?

Are you really angry?

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You have never asked these things.

When you are angry you become so involved, so impressed, that you lose yourself in anger. If you start asking, "Is this anger real?" ... The purpose of this question is to keep a little distance. Only then can you see whether it is real or not. From every aspect, from this corner and that corner, from behind and from the front ask, "Is this anger real?"

But anger cannot remain there if you are looking at it from all around. Anger can remain there only if you are absent. This looking for anger's reality makes you present, alert and aware -- and that's the end of the whole game. The anger starts disappearing like smoke.

So whatever feels right to you, that method has to be followed. Or you can try all the methods at different times -- because the whole day there are problems: sometimes you are miserable, sometimes you are angry, sometimes you are sad, sometimes you are feeling dull, sometimes you are feeling meaningless, sometimes you are feeling in great love and sometimes in great hate. You are such a marketplace, and the shops remain open twenty-four hours, day in, day out.

So it is a great opportunity: use all the methods for different things. And you can devise your own methods. The only thing to be remembered is that you should create a distance between the emotion, the feeling and you.

Just use any method of creating distance, and you will be amazed: this anger that has tortured you so much simply disappears, because you start looking for its roots, or you start looking for the person who is angry, or you start looking at all the aspects of the anger. You forget all about the person towards whom your anger was arrowed; your whole attention is focused now on the reality or unreality of anger itself. These are experienced, absolutely valid methods of transforming your mind into no-mind.

KEEP INVESTIGATING UNTIL YOUR MIND HAS NOWHERE TO GO. IF YOU

WANT TO THINK, THEN THINK; IF YOU WANT TO CRY, THEN CRY. JUST KEEP

ON CRYING, AND THINKING. WHEN YOU AROUSE YOURSELF TO THE POINT

WHERE THE HABIT ENERGY OF LOVE AND AFFECTION WITHIN THE

STOREHOUSE CONSCIOUSNESS IS EXHAUSTED, THEN NATURALLY IT IS LIKE

WATER BEING RETURNED TO WATER, GIVING YOU BACK YOUR ORIGINAL

BEING.

Among many methods that I have devised ... When I used to lead camps myself, there was one method where every afternoon all the participants in the camp used to sit together and everybody was allowed to do whatsoever they wanted -- there was no restriction, just that no one should interfere in anybody else's work. Whatever you wanted to say, you could say: if you wanted to cry ... if you wanted to laugh, you could laugh -- and one thousand people ... It was such a hilarious scene! You could never have imagined people -- serious people -- doing such stupid things! Somebody was making faces, putting out his tongue as far as he could, and you know that this man is a police commissioner!

One man I cannot forget, because he used to sit in front of me every day. He was a very rich man, from Ahmedabad, and because his whole business was the stock market, he was continually on the phone. Whenever this one hour meditation would begin, within two or three minutes he would take up the phone. He would start moving the numbers, saying

"Hello!" And he would ... It looked from his face as if he was getting the answer -- "Purchase it."

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This would continue for one hour, and he was again and again phoning to this and to that place, and once in a while he would look at me and smile: "What nonsense I'm doing!" But I had to keep absolutely serious. I never smiled at him. So he would again start phoning:

"Nobody is taking any notice, everybody is engaged in his own work."

One thousand people doing so many things ... and these things were continuously going on in their minds. This was a great chance for them to bring them out. It was such a drama.

Jayantibhai used to be in charge of the camp in Mount Abu, and one of his closest friends took off all his clothes. That was a surprise! Jayantibhai was standing by my side, and he could not believe it. That man was a very serious man, very rich; what was he doing in front of one thousand people? And then he started pushing the car in which I had come to the place

-- it was Jayantibhai's car. We were in the mountains, and just ahead there was a thousand-foot drop, and he was pushing the car, naked.

Jayantibhai asked me, "What has to be done? He is going to destroy the car, and I had never thought that this man was against my car. We are close friends."

So I told him, "You push it from the other side; otherwise he is going to ..."

So he was preventing the car ... and his friend was jumping around and shouting, "Get out of my way! I have always hated this car." -- because he did not have an imported car, and this was an imported car which Jayantibhai was keeping for me. I was coming to Mount Abu three or four times a year, so he was keeping that car just for me.

His friend must have been feeling jealous inside because he did not have an imported car.

And then a few people rushed to help, seeing the situation. When he saw that so many people were preventing him, just out of protest he climbed a tree in front of me. Naked, he sat in the top of the tree, and he started shaking the tree. There was every danger that he would fall on top of the thousand people with the tree. Jayantibhai asked me, "What has to be done now?"

I said, "He is your friend. Let him be, don't be worried. Just move the people to this side and that, and let him do whatsoever he is doing. Now he is not destroying the car. At the most he will have multiple fractures."

As people moved away, he stopped. Silently he sat in the tree. After the meditation was over, he was still sitting in the tree, and Jayantibhai said, "Now get down. The meditation is over."

As if he woke up from a sleep, he looked all around and saw that he was naked! He jumped out of the tree, rushed to his clothes, and said, "What happened to me?" In the night he came to see me and he said, "This was a very dangerous meditation! I could have killed myself or somebody else. I could have destroyed the car, and I am a great friend of Jayantibhai, and I had never thought ... but certainly there must have been this idea in me.

"I hated the idea that you always come in his car and I hated the idea that he has got an imported car, but it was not at all conscious in me. And what was I doing in the tree? I must have been carrying so much violence in me, I wanted to kill people."

That meditation was immensely helpful. It relaxed people in one hour so much that they told me, "It seems a heavy load has disappeared from the head. We were not aware what we were carrying in the mind." But upon becoming aware of it, there was no other way except an unlimited expression.

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It was only a small experiment. I told people to continue it: Soon you will come to many more things, and one day you will come to a point where all is exhausted. Remember only not to interfere with anybody, not to be destructive. Say anything you want to say, shout, abuse --

whatever you want -- and exhaust all that you have been collecting.

But this is a strange world. The government of Rajasthan passed a resolution in their assembly that I cannot have camps in Mount Abu, because they had heard all these things were happening there -- people who are perfectly alright become almost mad, start doing all kinds of things. Now these politicians in the assembly don't have any idea of human mind, its inhibitions and how to exhaust them, how to burn them. I had to stop that meditation because otherwise they were not going to allow me to have camps in Mount Abu.

What Ta Hui is saying is exactly what my meditation was. IF YOU WANT TO THINK, THEN THINK. IF YOU WANT TO CRY, THEN CRY. JUST KEEP ON CRYING AND

THINKING. WHEN YOU CAN AROUSE YOURSELF TO THE POINT WHERE THE

HABIT ENERGY OF LOVE AND AFFECTION WITHIN THE STOREHOUSE

CONSCIOUSNESS -- that's something of which Western psychology has not yet become aware, this storehouse consciousness. It is just like a basement of your mind.

In Sanskrit the name is alaya vigyan, the house where you go on throwing into the basement things that you want to do but you cannot, because of social conditions, culture, civilization. But they go on collecting there, and they affect your actions, your life, very indirectly. Directly, they cannot face you -- you have forced them into darkness, but from the dark side they go on influencing your behavior. They are dangerous, it is dangerous to keep all those inhibitions inside you.

It is possible that these are the things that come to a climax when a person goes insane.

Insanity is nothing but all these suppressions coming to a point where you cannot control them any more. But madness is acceptable, while meditation is not -- and meditation is the only way to make you absolutely sane.

With no possibility of insanity remaining anywhere within you, with this storehouse consciousness exhausted, you will feel so clean, so fresh, as if you have just taken an inner shower.

THEN NATURALLY IT IS LIKE WATER BEING RETURNED TO WATER, GIVING

YOU BACK YOUR ORIGINAL BEING WITHOUT AFFLICTION, WITHOUT

THOUGHTS, WITHOUT SORROW OR JOY. "HAVING ENTERED THE WORLD, LEAVE THE WORLD COMPLETELY."

Ta Hui is saying, "You have entered the world. Don't leave it incomplete, otherwise you will have to enter again." This is the law of reincarnation. It is one of the great contributions of Eastern mystics. Complete your life ... and your life completes only with enlightenment. After that, there is no birth, no death. But if you leave this world incomplete you will have to come back, again and again. Millions of times you have come back; how many more times are you going to do the same routine job?

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A FATHER WHO IS NOT TROUBLED WHEN HIS

SON DIES? IF YOU TRY TO SUPPRESS (SUCH SENTIMENTS) FORCIBLY, NOT

DARING TO CRY OR THINK ABOUT IT, THEN THIS IS DELIBERATELY GOING

AGAINST THE NATURAL PATTERN, DENYING YOUR INHERENT NATURE: (IT IS

LIKE) RAISING A SOUND TO STOP AN ECHO OR POURING ON OIL TO PUT OUT A FIRE.

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He is absolutely in agreement with my idea that nothing should be repressed, everything should be expressed. If you feel like crying, cry; there is no harm in it, it is absolutely in accord with nature. If you feel like doing anything that is arising in you with a great urge, do it, because once done you are freed from it.

If each moment we go on doing everything naturally, we don't accumulate in the storehouse of consciousness any rubbish, any crap.

And if your consciousness is clean, pure, innocent, the moment is not far away when you will explode into a luminous splendor. That's what is known as enlightenment, or awakening, or self-realization.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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21

Understanding

25 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

UNDERSTANDING RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE

IF YOU WANT TO STUDY THIS PATH, YOU MUST UNDERSTAND RIGHT

WHERE YOU ARE. AS SOON AS YOU RELY ON THE SLIGHTEST KNOWLEDGE, YOU MISS THE SCENE RIGHT WHERE YOU'RE STANDING. WHEN YOU'VE

COMPLETELY COMPREHENDED THE SCENE RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, THEN ALL

KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE -- ALL WITHOUT EXCEPTION -- ARE THINGS RIGHT

WHERE YOU ARE.

THUS THE PATRIARCH SAID, "AT THE VERY MOMENT ONE SPEAKS OF

KNOWLEDGE, KNOWLEDGE ITSELF IS MIND. AND THIS VERY MIND ITSELF IS

KNOWLEDGE."

SINCE KNOWLEDGE IS RIGHT NOW, IF RIGHT NOW YOU DON'T GO ANOTHER

MOMENT, BUT DO AWAY WITH YOUR KNOWLEDGE RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, THEN YOU'LL JOIN HANDS AND WALK ALONG TOGETHER WITH THE

PATRIARCHS. IF YOU CANNOT YET BE LIKE THIS, DON'T GO WRONG IN YOUR

KNOWLEDGE.

Ta Hui is learning every day the language of the mystics. A few holdovers are still there, but they are only because of old habit. He has come to the new experience, but he has not yet clarified his old language. He will manage to do it ... because if you can manage to experience the truth, you cannot continue with the knowledge, the words and the language accumulated before you became enlightened. For a few days they linger on their own momentum, but whatever he is trying to say now is not of the intellect. Intellect never speaks that way.

The intellectual approach is purely verbal and empty. The experiential approach is non-verbal, but so full, so pregnant with immense meanings, significances and indications of your future growth.

The sutra this morning is, UNDERSTANDING RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. Mind is never where you are. It is always wandering, running in all directions. Even if you are sitting in a lotus posture with closed eyes, like Gautam Buddha, that does not mean you are meditating -- you may be thinking of all kinds of rubbish and garbage. Your mind is not changed just because your body is still, just because you are sitting in a certain posture.

This has caused great misunderstanding for those who have been following the path. Your body posture does not change your mind, but if your mind changes, your body posture automatically changes. Seeing this again and again, the vast majority of seekers start from the wrong end. Because the body is visible, and the mind or no-mind is not visible, it was a logical understanding that sitting in a certain pose, you will attain to a certain state of mind. It is not so, but millions of followers of yoga are under the same mistaken impression.

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If you move to the no-mind, in utter silence, your body is bound to become still, unmoving. The body carries your tensions, and when you are relaxed inside, the body immediately reflects your relaxation, but not vice-versa. You can distort your body in strange postures, hoping that enlightenment will come. I have never seen a single enlightened yogi ...

and I have been in search, looking in the Himalayas, and all over the country. They are perfect in their gymnastics -- they could have joined any circus and would have impressed the people with their performance -- but inside they are very ordinary, in the same ignorance, the same unawareness.

It is now my considered opinion that if the inner changes, the outer will follow the change.

The outer is not essential -- it is just a shadow of the inner -- so if you change the outer, there is no necessity for the inner to change.

Ta Hui says, UNDERSTAND RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE.

It does not matter where you are -- in the marketplace, working as a carpenter, or as a doctor, or as a surgeon. Whatever your profession, whatever your activity, understanding has to come to you amidst the hubbub of the world. You should not escape to the mountains, to the Himalayas, to attain to understanding. The Himalayas can't give it to you, but they can give something that can keep you under a fallacy your whole life.

Deep in the Himalayas there is eternal silence -- snow that has never melted. The cold is so much that you will not even find birds. Everything is absolutely quiet ... This quietness of the Himalayas has been attractive for centuries, because surrounded by this quietness and silence and serenity, you start feeling yourself becoming silent. But this silence is fallacious; it is only a reflection of a vast surrounding circumstance.

Many people who have gone to the Himalayas are afraid to come back to the world. I have asked them, "Why are you afraid? You have attained silence; now the world cannot take it away." But they know better. Once in a while when people come to them, very trivial things can disturb them. Somebody traveling into the Himalayas comes to the cave of a yogi but does not touch his feet, and anger immediately arises in him. It is just the opportunity that he is missing; he has not gained anything.

Ta Hui is right. Don't go anywhere. Understanding has to be acquired wherever you are.

Then you can depend on it; you can rely on it; it will be with you wherever you will be.

Nothing can disturb it, because you have gained it amongst all disturbances.

IF YOU WANT TO STUDY THIS PATH, YOU MUST UNDERSTAND RIGHT

WHERE YOU ARE. Your body is in one place, your mind is roaming all over the world. This is not the way of the seeker. Your mind should also be where your body is.

For example, you are here now. Your body certainly is here, but only if you fall into a deep silent communion with me, and your mind is utterly quiet, receptive, with no ideas of its own, no prejudices, will your mind also be here now. If you can remain in this state moment to moment, enlightenment is not far away. It can happen any moment. It happens when your body and mind are in such a harmony, in the present, in this moment ... then you give opportunity for your ultimate potential to explode.

But mind's ways are very strange, very subtle, very cunning. It starts making a goal of enlightenment -- enlightenment is not a goal. It starts thinking in terms of ambitions: enlightenment becomes its ambition -- and ambition needs time, ambition needs future, ambition needs tomorrows.

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So you may be sitting silently in meditation, but your mind is far away, searching for enlightenment. It is not different from any other ambition -- ambition for money, ambition for power, ambition for respect. It does not matter at all what the object of your ambition is; every object of your ambition takes you away from your enlightenment. Nothing can take you to enlightenment, because enlightenment is your nature.

A man, completely drunk, staggering, somehow reached home in the middle of the night, but he could not figure out whether the house was his or somebody else's. Looks like it is his ... but he's not certain. He knocked on the door, and an old woman, his mother, opened the door. Again the same problem: the old woman looks like his mother -- but only looks like. He fell at her feet and started asking her, "Help me find my home. Help me find my mother. She must be waiting."

A crowd gathered, and they were laughing: this is strange, he is holding his mother's feet and asking her to help him find his mother; she must know his house because she lives in this neighborhood somewhere.

And then another drunkard came with a bullock cart, and he said, "Don't waste your time.

Just come into my bullock cart and I will take you to your house and to your mother." Now, the mother was trying hard, the neighbors were trying hard, saying, "If you go into this bullock cart ... That man seems to be more drunk than you are; wherever he leads you will be going away from your mother and from your house, because this is your house, and this is your mother."

Something similar is the case with the human mind. It cannot feel at rest wherever it is. It is always looking for the right place, the right experience, but it cannot be here. Of course, how can it be here? Thousands of years of continuously being taught that you are sinners, has made a deep unconscious impression that as you are, you are not right. Wherever you are, you are not in the right place.

All the religions have succeeded only in one thing: in rejecting you, your place, your time, your life. And they have all given you great ambitions -- ambitions for heaven. It is strange that nobody says to these religions, "You are all against greed, but heaven means nothing but the ultimate greed. You are all against fear, you all want us to be fearless -- but what is your hell and hellfire?"

Between hell and heaven, they have taken away the reality of your being, the existential status of where you are. Avoiding hell, you are running to catch hold of heaven. You are running, but that which you are running for is within you. If you stop running and drop all the ambitions for greed and power and prestige, and just relax into your ordinariness -- then, this very moment, this very body the Buddha, and this very place the lotus paradise. That's what Ta Hui is saying.

IF YOU WANT TO STUDY THIS PATH, YOU MUST UNDERSTAND RIGHT

WHERE YOU ARE. Everything is there -- wherever you are, the whole of existence is centered there.

AS SOON AS YOU RELY ON THE SLIGHTEST KNOWLEDGE, YOU MISS THE

SCENE RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE STANDING. Now this is from a man of great knowledge, of great acquaintance with scriptures. AS SOON AS YOU RELY ON THE

SLIGHTEST KNOWLEDGE, YOU MISS THE SCENE RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE

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you and reality, like a cloud covering your eyes. You become interested in that knowledge, and you forget your reality, your presence, your here-nowness.

WHEN YOU HAVE COMPLETELY COMPREHENDED THE SCENE RIGHT

WHERE YOU ARE, THEN ALL KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE -- ALL WITHOUT

EXCEPTION -- ARE THINGS RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE.

You need not be worried. If you can discover yourself in the present moment, you are not only discovering your being, you are also discovering all the buddhas of the past, of the present, of the future, too -- because it is the same experience, it is the same music, it is the same dance. Finding it within yourself, you have become a contemporary of all the buddhas of all time.

THUS THE PATRIARCH ... and by patriarch, Zen people refer to Bodhidharma. He was their main source from where others learnt the art of being real, authentic, sincere, from whom people learnt awareness. He was the man who introduced India's greatest contribution to the world, the art of dhyan, to China.

THUS THE PATRIARCH SAID, "AT THE VERY MOMENT ONE SPEAKS OF

KNOWLEDGE, KNOWLEDGE ITSELF IS MIND. AND THIS VERY MIND ITSELF IS

KNOWLEDGE." SINCE KNOWLEDGE IS RIGHT NOW ... That's what I was saying -- that his intellectual past still shadows his language. For example, first he said, IF YOU WANT TO

STUDY THIS PATH ... That is the language of a teacher, not the language of a master. What has a master to do with studying? The master would have said ..."If you want to follow this path ..." Now again he misunderstands: although what he is saying is right, it is just that his language is too much under the impact of his past.

SINCE KNOWLEDGE IS RIGHT NOW ... Instead of knowledge, a man who has come to his own being will say, "Since knowing ..." not knowledge -- and the difference is great. The words come from the same root, and I would like you to understand it clearly: knowing is always in the present, knowledge is always of the past. Knowledge means knowing has become part of your memory, it is dead; it is no more alive, it is no more breathing, it has no more any heartbeat.

For example, when you are seeing a sunset and you are overwhelmed by its beauty, in that moment there is knowing. You don't even say to yourself, "How beautiful!" -- because even the words "how beautiful" will be a disturbance, will take you away from the present. If you simply stand before the setting sun, with all the colors spread over the horizon, shadows, reflections in the ocean, it is so enchanting that you almost stop breathing. You are in a state of awe. Those few moments are knowing. Tomorrow you will tell somebody what a beautiful sunset you have seen the day before -- that will be knowledge. Now it is only words.

I have told you the story of Lao Tzu. He used to go for a morning walk in the mountains.

An old friend used to follow him, and one day the friend told him, "I have a guest in my house, and he also wants to come for the morning walk."

Lao Tzu said, "I have no objection, just make sure that he does not start talking. Knowing should remain knowing, it should not be converted into dead knowledge."

The friend said, "I will take care of it." He convinced his guest that it is a great opportunity to be for two hours in the morning with Lao Tzu. "It is rare and invaluable, but the condition is that you should not speak."

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The guest said, "That is not a problem. I will keep completely silent." And then they started. It was still dark and when they reached the peak of the mountain, the sun was rising.

The birds started chirping, the trees started coming out of their sleep ... flowers all around, wild flowers opened their petals and their fragrance. The man forgot that he was not supposed to speak -- and he did not think that this was much speech. He simply said, "How beautiful."

Lao Tzu looked at his old colleague and friend with such stern eyes ... When they were back home he told his friend, "Please don't bring your guest again tomorrow because he is too talkative" -- and in two hours he had said only two words, "How beautiful"!

Lao Tzu said to his friend, "I was present, he was present, you were present, the sun was present, the songs of the birds were present, the fragrance of flowers was present -- there is no need to say anything. I was also aware ... I am not saying that it was not beautiful; I am saying that by saying it is beautiful, you have reduced its multidimensional beauty into two ordinary words. You have made knowing into knowledge."

The difference is very subtle. Knowing is a living, flowing experience, still vibrating in your heart. Knowledge is of the past -- it may be just one minute past. Knowledge is part of the memory; knowing is part of awareness.

So when he says, SINCE KNOWLEDGE IS RIGHT NOW, he really means, since knowing is right now -- because knowledge can never be right now. If right now you don't go another moment, but do away with your knowledge right where you are, then you will join hands and walk along together with the patriarchs, with the buddhas, with the awakened ones.

It is the most immediate approach to existence. You don't have to pray to God, you don't have to believe in a messiah, you don't have to have faith in a holy book, you don't have to go through tortuous disciplines. You have just to be this very moment alert, awake. Then, whatever is happening around you, you listen to it, but you don't make it a knowledge. You don't say, "The birds are singing" -- you listen to the song. You relish the song, you absorb it into your being, but you don't reduce it into words.

If this becomes your way of life, your very style of existence, then any moment --

whenever you will be absolutely attuned, your totality present here and now -- the explosion is going to happen. Look at the beautiful trees, but don't say they are beautiful. Is not looking enough? Is it necessary to bring language in? Can't you enjoy the beauties around you directly, without any language? Just try it.

You have thousands of opportunities every day. Even in the fast hubbub of a marketplace, to be alert, without making any judgment ... it is one of the most wonderful experiences that even the noises in the marketplace don't disturb you. On the contrary, they seem to have a beauty of their own, a life of their own.

Whether you are sitting or working, chopping wood or carrying water from a well, just be alert to everything that is going on around you, without reducing it to knowledge. If you can avoid words and knowledge, which are like dust in your eyes ... they don't allow you to see that which is. And that which is, is the only authentic name for God. It is not a goal somewhere else; it is always available, just you are not available to it.

So the whole process of dhyan, chan, or Zen, is simply to make you available to the existence which is always available to you. Just a meeting, an introduction with the reality in which you are existing -- so simple and so obvious -- and you will not be able to find even traces of all your miseries and afflictions and agonies. They were nightmares, and you were Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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asleep; that's why they were happening. Now you are awake, and all the nightmares have disappeared.

IF YOU CANNOT YET BE LIKE THIS, DON'T GO WRONG IN YOUR

KNOWLEDGE. This is just for those who cannot see the obvious, who cannot do the simple.

IF YOU CANNOT YET BE LIKE THIS, DON'T GO WRONG IN YOUR KNOWLEDGE.

At least if you cannot do the full process -- the full process is dropping knowledge and becoming aware -- if you cannot become aware, at least drop knowledge. That will help you immensely to become aware.

If you cannot see right now, at least remove the dust from your eyes. That will help you to see with clarity whatsoever is available to us. And so much is available that only idiots can go to the temples and to the mosques and to the churches and to the synagogues. Any man of a little intelligence will find his temple wherever he is. This whole existence is nothing but a temple, holy ground.

In the story of Moses, when he met God on Mount Sinai, as he reached close to God, he heard a shout. He started trembling because there was nobody, only a green bush, and inside the bush great flames of fire -- and the bush was still green. The shout had come from the bush, "Moses, take your shoes off. You are on holy ground."

I have always wondered why Moses did not ask "Is there any ground which is not holy? Is only this ground surrounding the bush holy?" But perhaps he was so much overwhelmed ...

and people don't like to argue if they come across God. It is dangerous, and he had shouted so loudly, Moses may have forgotten all. But whenever I have come across that story, the only question that has arisen in me was how he could accept a division between the holy land and the UNholy land. If the whole existence is full of godliness, then in every place, wherever you are, you are on holy ground.

Nanak was far better than Moses. He had gone to the Mohammedans' holy place, Mecca. It was evening time, and his disciple, Mardana, prepared his bed. They were tired from a long journey, and in the morning they would go into the temple and see Kaaba. But they had done one thing wrong: they were keeping their feet towards Kaaba. Somebody informed the high priest that these two persons had come. Their fame had reached ahead of them. "The master is a man of great understanding and the disciple is so merged with the master that they are almost one -- it is difficult to say that they are two -- but they are misbehaving by keeping their feet towards Kaaba."

Mohammedans, living anywhere in the world ... there is no question of not keeping their feet towards Kaaba -- even when dead their graves are made in such a way that their heads are pointing towards Kaaba.

The high priest was very angry indeed. He came with a few people and said to Nanak, "We have heard you are a master, but this does not show the understanding of a master. You are keeping your feet towards the holy Kaaba."

Nanak said, "No problem. You can turn my feet wherever you feel God is not; wherever God is, it will be the same. So you can do it -- I am just lying down; take my feet and move them wherever you think God is not."

I think this is an historic incident, because this was enough for the high priest to apologize and say to Nanak, "I am sorry ... because I cannot find any place where God is not. And Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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naturally, you are right: wherever you keep your feet, they will be pointing towards God.

There is no way to avoid it. Forgive me."

But the story has a metaphorical ending. The priest is so blind that he calls his men and turns Nanak's feet almost in a circle, and he is amazed that wherever he turns Nanak's feet, Kaaba also moves in the same direction. This must be mythological because Kaaba is just a stone. In this world, even men are so dull and dead -- one cannot hope that a stone will be so intelligent.

But the metaphor has the same meaning ... finally they got the idea. They moved him all around, and Kaaba moved wherever his feet were. It may not have happened, but it is true that wherever his feet were, God was there.

But why did Moses forget about it? If existence is divine, then each moment and each inch of it is divine. There is no need to create cathedrals and great temples -- these are done by blind people. Those who have eyes will find this vast starry sky, this beautiful earth, the greatest temple of God. If you look at this whole existence as a holy place, naturally your actions need not be of prayer and ritual. All that your actions need to be is of alertness and awareness in this very moment.

God is available from all sides; just you are not here. He knocks at your door but finds you have gone somewhere else, you are never in your house -- perhaps you have completely forgotten where your house is -- and you have not informed God of your new address. It will be very difficult, because each moment you will have to inform him of your address. It goes on changing.

But if you can relax right now ...

Just listen: the rain has started. Now the trees will be immensely happy, they will dance in the rain. Can you find any moment more precious?

The rains have heard me.

This whole existence is so beautiful. If you can drop your knowledge, your mind, and just merge in the here and now ... this is the great principle of all the awakened ones.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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22

Witnessing

25 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

DISCRIMINATING CONSCIOUSNESS AND WISDOM

CONSTANTLY CALCULATING AND MAKING PLANS, FLOWING ALONG WITH

BIRTH AND DEATH, BECOMING AFRAID AND AGITATED -- ALL THESE ARE

SENTIMENTS OF DISCRIMINATING CONSCIOUSNESS. YET PEOPLE STUDYING

THE PATH THESE DAYS DO NOT RECOGNIZE THIS DISEASE, AND JUST APPEAR

AND DISAPPEAR IN ITS MIDST. IN THE TEACHINGS IT'S CALLED ACTING

ACCORDING TO DISCRIMINATING CONSCIOUSNESS, NOT ACCORDING TO

WISDOM. THEREBY THEY OBSCURE THE SCENERY OF THE FUNDAMENTAL

GROUND, THEIR ORIGINAL FACE.

BUT IF YOU CAN ABANDON IT ALL AT ONCE, SO YOU NEITHER THINK NOR

CALCULATE, THEN THESE VERY SENTIMENTS OF DISCRIMINATING

CONSCIOUSNESS ARE THE SUBTLE WISDOM OF TRUE EMPTINESS -- THERE IS

NO OTHER WISDOM THAT CAN BE ATTAINED. IF THERE WERE SOMETHING

ATTAINED AND SOMETHING REALIZED BESIDES, THEN IT WOULDN'T BE RIGHT.

IT'S LIKE A PERSON WHEN HE'S DELUDED CALLING EAST, WEST, AND WHEN

HE'S ARRIVED AT ENLIGHTENMENT, WEST IS EAST -- THERE IS NO OTHER

EAST.

THIS SUBTLE WISDOM OF THE TRUE EMPTINESS IS COEVAL WITH THE

GREAT VOID: THE VOID IS NOT SUBJECT TO BEING OBSTRUCTED BY THINGS, NOR DOES IT HINDER THE COMING AND GOING OF ALL THINGS WITHIN IT.

In the sutras this evening, Ta Hui is raising the most fundamental questions about meditation.

A few things need to be understood before we can discuss the sutras. The first is about your thinking process, which Ta Hui calls discriminating consciousness -- in other words, your mind.

The mind is constantly involved in thinking, in judging, in evaluating. Its whole function seems to be to keep you involved in thoughts, which are nothing but soap bubbles -- or perhaps soap bubbles have more substance to them than your thoughts.

Your thoughts are almost like writing on water ... no thought leaves any trace on your mind. Your mind is almost like the sky: the birds fly, but they don't leave any footprints in the sky. The sky remains as it was before the birds came and after the birds are gone.

To become aware of this is to enter into another dimension of your consciousness, beyond the discriminating consciousness. The discriminating consciousness consists only of thoughts.

Beyond it is a consciousness which consists only of watching -- not thinking but only Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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witnessing, just seeing ... not for, not against, nor appreciating, nor condemning -- simply seeing, just the way the newborn child sees.

Look for a moment at the newborn child: he has eyes, he has consciousness. He looks all around, he sees all the colors, the flowers, the light, the people, their faces, but do you think the child recognizes the color green as green? Do you think he discriminates between a woman and a man? Or that this is beautiful and that is ugly?

He has a non-discriminating awareness. He is simply seeing everything that is there, but he has no judgment about it. He cannot have -- he has not yet been introduced to the color called green, the color called red. It will take a little time for him to learn discrimination.

In fact, our whole education is nothing but creating discriminating consciousness in every person. Every person is born with a non-discriminating consciousness -- that is a witnessing consciousness. He is born with that which a sage finally achieves. It is a very mysterious phenomenon that what the sage attains ultimately, the child has from the very beginning.

It is not coincidental that different sages, different mystics of different ages, have become aware of the fact that the final illumination, enlightenment, is nothing but regaining your childhood. The same consciousness that you had the first moment you were born has to be attained again. It is not something new that you achieve; it is something ancient, eternal, that you rediscover.

You get lost into the world ... there is every opportunity for you to be lost, because the world needs all kinds of discriminations, judgments, evaluations, the idea of good and bad, the idea of right and wrong -- all kinds of shoulds and should-nots. The world necessarily needs them, and it trains every child for them. The child goes on getting more and more lost into language, into words, into thoughts, and finally comes to a point from where he cannot find the way back home.

Jesus says, "Unless you are born again you will not understand the kingdom of God."

What does he mean when he says, "Unless you are born again ..."? It is obvious, the meaning is clear: unless you look at the world and existence again as a child ...

And that is the essential meaning of meditation: to help you to get out of the mind, to help you to get out of the discriminating consciousness and make a path so that you can enter into a witnessing consciousness.

These two are the only possibilities in your consciousness: either you can be pure sky or you can be sky with clouds; either you can be a consciousness without any thought or you can be a consciousness full of the traffic of thoughts, feelings, sentiments, emotions.

When you are full of the traffic of the mind, you cannot know who you are; you are too engaged, you are too busy. When there is no traffic you are so at ease, so relaxed, that it is impossible to avoid knowing yourself. Nothing is left there to know, so knowing turns upon itself. The knower and the known are no more separate.

This state -- where the knower and the known become one and consciousness is just a pure witness -- Ta Hui calls wisdom. To understand him, remember that he is not using the word

"wisdom" in the ordinary sense.

There are two senses in which the word is used by ordinary language: one is the man who has experienced all kinds of failure, success, poverty, richness, the worldly experiences -- one Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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meaning of wisdom is to be rich about worldly experiences -- that man is called wise.

Naturally, this means the man must be old.

Experiences need time. Hence, in all cultures and all societies old people were respected and honored for their wisdom. This is one meaning of wisdom, which has become absolutely out of use and out of date.

In the past it was necessarily so: the older person knew more than the younger person, because there was only one way of knowing and that was from actual experience. If your father was a carpenter he certainly knew more than you. You would have to learn from your elders. Knowledge was transferred from generation to generation. The older person was always more knowledgeable than the younger; that's why in the past there was no generation gap.

But today the situation has become different. As education has become more and more universal, it is possible to know more than your elders. In fact, it is not only possible, it is always the case. A father who is a doctor sends his son to the university to become a doctor.

When the son comes back ... the father is experienced in his profession, but the son knows more than the father, because he knows the latest research, the newest developments of which the father is absolutely unaware. The father had become a graduate of medical science perhaps thirty years before. In thirty years almost everything has changed. What was relevant thirty years ago is no more relevant; what was thought to be scientific has become absurd and unscientific.

This is a new situation which humanity is facing -- that the younger person knows more than the older person. It is not accidental that respect for the older people has been disappearing. The older people are tremendously concerned about why it is happening -- but they don't see that the situation has changed.

Once it was impossible for the younger person to know more than the older person; now it is impossible for the older person to keep pace with the younger person. The younger person will know the latest developments and the gap between the two will be at least twenty or thirty years. Progress in science is going with such speed that scientists say they cannot write a big volume on any subject because by the time their volume will be ready for publication it will be out of date -- it will not be publishable at all.

So now in science instead of writing big volumes, people write papers. They immediately either read those papers in conferences or they publish them in periodicals. They cannot wait long, because if they do, somebody else, somewhere else, is going to find something better.

When Albert Einstein was asked, "If you had not discovered the theory of relativity" --

upon which the whole of atomic energy and all the development of nuclear weapons depends

-- "do you think there is a possibility that somebody else may have discovered it? And if somebody else may have discovered it, how long would it have taken?"

Albert Einstein laughed and said, "Not more than three weeks. If I had not been quick enough, then some other fellow would have published his research." And it turned out that a German scientist had already discovered the theory of relativity -- he was just a lazy guy. He had discovered it BEFORE Albert Einstein, but he had not published it. There were at least twelve people in the world who were working on the same lines, and they all would have reached, within just two or three months, the same point to which Albert Einstein had reached.

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In the scientific field, which is now the only valid field of knowledge, things are moving so tremendously fast that the gap between the new generation and the old generation is going to become bigger and bigger. Soon they will not be able to understand each other's language.

It is already happening: fathers and sons don't sit together and discuss anymore, because the fathers think their children have strange ideas, and the children think, "The poor old man! He is still repeating things that went out of date long ago."

Now, if this is already in their minds, how is a dialogue possible? They are both thinking badly about each other already, they have arrived at conclusions without any discussion, without any conversation, without any dialogue. And the gap is becoming bigger and bigger.

Because of this gap, the thousand year old tradition of being respectful towards the elders is disappearing, because its fundamental, basic situation is no more valid. The same is the situation between students and professors: the professors know less than the students. If the students are intelligent enough, then they are always capable of knowing more than the professors. Only stupid and mediocre students still know less than the professor. If the students are going to the library and are well acquainted with the latest developments in any field of knowledge, they will be twenty or thirty years ahead of their professors.

The same problem is felt in every educational institution, in every university. Students don't have the same respect that they always had in the past -- they cannot have it. In the past it was natural: the teacher always knew more. Today it is only the mediocre student who knows less than the teacher. The intelligent student certainly knows more than the teacher can afford ... The teacher is so much accustomed to the old ideas which were prevalent when he was a student, which may have been half a century before.

I remember my own days in the university. The professor of psychology would quote names which were important fifty years before. Now you can find those names only in the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITTANNICA as history; they have become absolutely irrelevant, so much water has gone down the Ganges and so many fresh insights have come into being. I was simply at a loss. It seems by the time a person graduates from the university he stops reading, because people read only for examinations and now there is not going to be any examination. They have done their best. And if they have become gold medalists and they have attained a first class they will soon be professors in some college, in some university; now there is no need for them to read.

My own suggestion to the Education Commission of India was that every professor should be sent every year for at least a two months' refresher course -- otherwise he cannot keep pace with the knowledge the way it is growing. This is another meaning of wisdom: knowledge and its quantity; how much you know; how well informed you are.

But the way Ta Hui and the mystics use wisdom is a totally different thing. It is neither the past, old type of knowledge that came from experience, nor is it the knowledge that comes from education. It is the knowledge that comes from a transformation happening within yourself, moving from the discriminating consciousness to the witnessing consciousness.

Witnessing consciousness is wisdom, so you should not get confused about the meaning of the words.

Ta Hui says, CONSTANTLY CALCULATING AND MAKING PLANS, FLOWING

ALONG WITH BIRTH AND DEATH, BECOMING AFRAID AND AGITATED -- ALL

THESE ARE SENTIMENTS OF DISCRIMINATING CONSCIOUSNESS. YET PEOPLE

STUDYING THE PATH THESE DAYS DO NOT RECOGNIZE THIS DISEASE ...

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To the people of the path, to the people who want to meditate and enter into their innermost being, into the only real temple of God, this kind of knowledge, this kind of mind, this kind of consciousness is a disease. It will hinder you from going inwards, it will become the barrier, and it will keep you engaged in the non-essentials of life, in trivia. It will keep you unaware of the most fundamental question: "Who am I?" It will allow you to know everything in the world except yourself -- and what is the purpose of knowing the whole world if you don't know yourself?

At the moment of death all your knowledge of the world will be lost into thin air. Only one thing will go with you, and that one thing is being constantly ignored -- that is your self-knowledge, your self-realization. In fact, this is the only ignorance -- ignoring yourself.

But even the greatest scientist, the greatest philosopher, the greatest thinker thinks about faraway stars, thinks about strange things -- like, "What is the speed of light?" -- works day and night to find how to split the atom, and never thinks for a moment, "Who is this being within me? What constitutes my consciousness?"

Certainly discriminating mind, DISCRIMINATING CONSCIOUSNESS, is the greatest disease, because it will keep you ignorant till the moment of death. Then certainly you will become aware that you have been engaged in a futile exercise. You know so much and yet you don't know who you are. Suddenly all your knowledge is of no use, all your power is of no use, all your money is of no use, all your prestige is of no use. The only thing that could have been of use you ignored your whole life -- and now there is no more time.

Death comes so suddenly, without even knocking at your doors -- it does not give you a single moment's notice. It always comes so silently that you cannot hear its footsteps, you are caught unawares. It is such a shock that most people become unconscious before dying. It is not necessary that they should become unconscious, but the shock that "I have wasted my whole life ..."

Somebody is working his whole life in finding how many species of insects exist in the world, how many kinds of mosquitoes there are. To them it seems these are important questions. These people don't have time to sit silently even for a few minutes and to move away from discriminating consciousness, that is from mind, and to become just a witness --

that is a no-mind, a silence, a peace, a serenity, a pure space, utterly still, with no movement.

In this stillness comes wisdom, and wisdom means self-realization. No other meaning of wisdom has any relevance on the path of the seeker.

YET PEOPLE STUDYING THE PATH THESE DAYS DO NOT RECOGNIZE THIS

DISEASE, AND JUST APPEAR AND DISAPPEAR IN ITS MIDST. People come and go.

People are born and die without knowing who was born and who has died. You are born without a name and you die without a name, and all that existed between birth and death disappears just like writing on the water.

How many people have lived here before us? -- billions and billions of people ... and you don't find any trace that they even existed. They also had love affairs and they thought that great things were happening to them. They also had enemies, they also had anger, they also had sadness, they also had moments of happiness. They also knew failure and the pain of it; they also knew success and the pleasure of it. They knew everything that you know ... and while you are passing through that moment you think it is so important.

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Just think of those billions of people who always thought that when they fell in love it was something unique which had never happened before and which would not happen again. But they have all disappeared without leaving any trace. Whether they existed or not, whether they fought or not, whether they loved or not makes no difference. The sun goes on rising, the moon goes on moving, the stars go on their paths. Existence remains absolutely unconcerned, as if whatever you think so very important is nothing but a drama.

But it is one of the most significant things to remember: whatever your experience, this has been the experience of billions of people -- so don't be too much concerned about it, don't make too much fuss about it, don't take much note about it. Don't become obsessed with it -- it will disappear and you will disappear, and everything will be silent, as if nothing has happened.

Because of this understanding the mystics have been telling you that the world and its experiences are nothing but dreams, so don't take much note. Keep a distance; don't get lost in your dreams.

If you can keep a distance from your dreams you will come to know the only reality that remains forever, which has no birth and no death: that is your pure consciousness, that is your divine consciousness. You can give it any name, it doesn't matter. It is the buddha-nature within you, or it is the god within you.

IN THE TEACHINGS IT'S CALLED ACTING ACCORDING TO DISCRIMINATING

CONSCIOUSNESS, NOT ACCORDING TO WISDOM. The people who are functioning in life according to their discriminating minds are spiritually sick; they are suffering from the great disease.

It happened that Gautam Buddha had come to Vaishali, one of the biggest cities of those days. The old king of Vaishali had died and his son had come into power; he was young and as foolish as young people are bound to be. His old prime minister, who was also the prime minister of his father, told him, "Gautam Buddha is coming to the city, and you have to go to receive him at the gates of the city."

The young man said, "For what? He is just a beggar, and I am a great king. If he wants to see me he can ask for an appointment. But you are giving me strange advice, that I should go and receive him -- a king going to receive a beggar?"

The prime minister said, "Then please accept my resignation."

The king said, "You are making so much of such a small thing. Why should you resign?"

The prime minister replied, "I cannot work under a man who is so ignorant and so spiritually sick. It is humiliating. I have worked under your father, and your father used to go to receive Gautam Buddha and touch his feet. You are only a king -- he was also a king, but he has gone beyond that. He is a beggar not because he could not be a king; he is a beggar because he renounced the kingdom. His begging bowl is far more valuable than your whole kingdom. Either you have to go and receive him, or please accept my resignation, because I cannot work under a man who has no wisdom."

The young man could not afford to lose that old man, because he was experienced; the young man had just become king, he had no knowledge of how to run things. The old man was almost like his father, so he said, "I will go."

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And the story is very beautiful ... when the king -- this young man -- went to receive Gautam Buddha with his old prime minister, Gautam Buddha said, "There was no need for you to come. I'm only a beggar, and you are a great king. If I wanted to see you, I could have come myself."

The young man could not believe that Buddha was exactly repeating the words that he had said, and neither could the old prime minister understand. The old prime minister used to come to Gautam Buddha with the old king. Now he told Gautam Buddha, "You have created a great turmoil in our minds, because this dialogue has already happened between me and the young king. He is young and he does not understand how a man of wisdom should be received.

"I told him, 'The man of wisdom may be a beggar to those who don't understand, to those who don't have the inner eye to see. But those who have the inner eye to see ... a man who has realized himself has not only conquered this world, but has conquered that world too -- he has conquered the outer and he has conquered the inner. His kingdom is eternal. Your kingdom is only a dream -- just as your father has gone, you will be gone. But the kingdom of Gautam Buddha will remain, will remain in the eternity of time.' This dialogue has happened between us, but he was not willing to come."

And Gautam Buddha said, "Looking at his face, I could see his reluctance. I could see that you brought him, he did not come. I could see that although he has come to receive me, he still sees me as a beggar and himself as a king. So just to console him -- as if he were obliging me -- I had to say these words, 'You are a great king; you need not have come to see or receive a beggar.' And in fact, I am a beggar: I don't have anything except myself. You have everything except yourself: your possessions are many, your dominion is big, naturally. My possessions are few. In fact, except myself, I don't have anything else."

But this is called wisdom. And this wisdom is the greatest bliss and ecstasy in the world. If you can find even a few minutes to look into yourself ... In the hubbub of the world, still there are moments when you can look within yourself, however busy you may be. There is not a single person in the world who cannot find a small amount of time to look at his own being.

And in the end you will find only those moments were real which you devoted to searching for yourself, and everything else was unreal.

Everything else has disappeared; only those few moments have remained which you have spent with yourself. Friends are gone, lovers are gone, everything is gone or is going. But those few moments which you have spent with yourself in your aloneness are still with you.

Even death cannot take them away from you. They are your only treasure.

The people who follow the discriminating mind are wasting a great opportunity to discover the ultimate and the intimate -- which are not two different things. The ultimate is the intimate. And those who are concerned with things, howsoever valuable, sooner or later will repent.

Jesus used to tell his disciples again and again, "Repent!" -- and I don't think Christians understand what he means. Suddenly he starts talking about repenting ... What is there to repent? People think perhaps he is saying, "Repent for your sins!" -- but in fact he is saying,

"Repent for all that time that you have wasted in accumulating junk, in accumulating information." Repent for all that -- and the only way to be authentically repentant is to do something that takes you to the undying element in you, to the source of your very life.

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THEREBY THEY OBSCURE THE SCENERY OF THE FUNDAMENTAL GROUND, THEIR ORIGINAL FACE. We never come across our original face. We are so engaged, so busy with a thousand and one things that there is no time left, no energy left, and no inclination either. In millions of people, perhaps, the very longing to know oneself has not arisen. They are all imitators: because other people are running after money, they are running after money; because other people are ambitious, they are ambitious; because other people are doing this, they are doing this.

A woman was saying to her husband, "Do you see that our neighbors have got a new car?"

He said, "Yes, I can see, it is standing in their porch."

The woman said, "Then you have to decide: either bring home a new car or we will have to change neighborhoods, whichever you think is cheaper, but this I cannot tolerate. So I leave it up to you: either find somewhere else to live so I don't have to see that car standing there continuously, or bring a better car for our porch. Just get busy."

People are continuously living their lives of imitation, competition, jealousy ... Who is bothered about his original face -- and what is one going to do with the original face? But the only people who have known anything worthwhile, who have lived in the authentic sense of living, are the people who have searched for their original face.

Certainly you have to get out of this rut of jealousy, competition, imitation, otherwise they won't leave you any time. Somebody is doing something, somebody else is doing something else, and your whole business is to imitate everybody -- they have better clothes, somebody has a better house, somebody has a better garden. People say the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and it is true; it looks greener.

One man was trying hard to sell his house, because more beautiful houses had sprung up and he wanted to have something better. So he called an agent, and the agent said, "It is not difficult, don't be worried."

The agent placed an advertisement and described the man's house in such beautiful terms:

"If you want a scenic place ... just behind you is a lake," -- it was not a lake, it was just rainwater that had collected, with at least five million mosquitoes -- "and behind the lake is a beautiful range of mountains. The sunrise is so beautiful that you can search around the world and perhaps you may not find such a beautiful sunrise. And a beautiful garden ..."

The man read the advertisement, and he said, "This is the kind of house I want" -- because there was no address given under it, only the phone number of the agent. So he called the number immediately, "I am really interested, whatsoever the price. The price does not matter: come immediately and we will settle it."

But the agent said, "This is strange! This is where you live, your own house."

He said, "My God! You are a poet! You have described it with such beauty, and I am being tortured by this house ... and the mosquitoes ... and you call it a lake! And you call those mountains which are thousands of miles away, 'behind the house'!"

But this is how things are. You are impressed by somebody else's house and he is impressed by your house; you are impressed by somebody else's wife or husband, and he is dying for your wife, he is ready to sacrifice everything. He does not know what trouble you are in.

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But this imitative mind keeps you engaged. And the only problem is that it manages to keep you unaware of yourself. Otherwise, nothing is wrong in the world. I'm not against the world, neither is Ta Hui against the world. He does not want you to renounce it; he simply wants you to understand that all that is outside you is phenomenal, it has no ultimate significance.

Just think: twenty years before you had fallen in love with somebody. At that time you were ready to do anything, and now it does not matter at all.

I had a friend who was in love with a Bengali girl. I have seen many lovers, but he was the topmost. He was so much in love that he went to Bengal and lived in Bengal for two years to learn the language and the actual Bengali accent. He used to dress like the Bengalis, talk like the Bengalis ... but the girl was not interested. And after such an effort, when he proposed to the girl she simply refused, saying, "I feel very repulsed by you." Naturally, it was too much.

He was the son of a doctor. He went home, closed his room, and informed the house,

"Don't try to open the door. I'm going to die inside my room."

He was the only son of his father, and the father asked, "But tell us what is the problem.

You wanted to go to Bengal for two years, and we arranged it. Now what is the problem?

Where do you want to go? You can go ..."

He said, "I don't want to go anywhere. I wanted to marry a girl, and for her I went to Bengal. Even with the Bengali accent, and Bengali clothes, she has refused me."

The girl used to live near my house, and just because she lived near my house, he had become friendly towards me! It was the right place for him, because the girl used to come to my house to sit in the garden, to read or to borrow some books from me. This was the right place for him, and that's how I became aware of his existence.

Everybody in the neighborhood tried hard to convince the doctor's son, "We will find a better girl. Your father is rich, you are the only son, there is no problem. We will manage everything, whatever ... If you want a Bengali girl, the whole of Bengal is there! We will find a Bengali girl whatsoever it costs -- but don't do anything stupid." They were afraid he might have taken poison from the father's dispensary or something and he might eat it or do something stupid. But he would not speak, he was completely silent. Then they became very much afraid, because they would knock and he would not answer.

The father came running to me and said, "He used to come to you, and perhaps you can manage that at least he should speak. We are worried: perhaps he is unconscious or has fallen in a coma or taken poison, and we are afraid because he has warned us, 'Don't try to open the door, otherwise you will find my dead body inside.' So we cannot forcibly open the door, he may do something ... we are at a loss."

I went there and I said, "There is no problem." I knocked on the door and said, "Arjun" --

his name was Arjun -- "do you want to commit suicide?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Then this is not the way. You come along with me and I will manage a beautiful suicide for you!"

He said, "What?"

I said, "Open the door and just come into my car and I will arrange it, because I know the right place to commit suicide."

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In Jabalpur, just thirteen miles away from my house, is one of the most beautiful places in the world -- the marble rocks. For two miles continuously a beautiful river, Narmada, flows between two mountains completely of marble. On a full-moon night it becomes absolutely dreamlike -- one cannot think that this can be real. With the full moon, high, white marble on both sides, reflecting in the river, absolutely silent ...

It is so unbelievable that when I took one of my professors there ... he was an old man and he had been around the world. He had been a professor in America, in England, in Hawaii; his whole life he had been like a nomad with great qualifications so he was able to get into any university anywhere. I insisted that he should come and see, and he said, "I have seen the whole world, what more can there be?"

I said, "Don't say that until you have seen what I am going to show you."

Finally he agreed, reluctantly. I took him there and when he saw the scene he could not believe his eyes. He said, "Take the boat close to the rocks. I want to touch them because I can't believe they are real. It looks almost like a dreamland." And he touched the rocks, and only then could he believe that they were real, that I was not trying any magic trick on him.

So I took Arjun to my house, and I told him, "The best place is the marble rocks. There is a beautiful waterfall ... so just rest, and whatever you like best to eat -- have a good dinner and we will go to sleep. We will put the alarm on for three o'clock, and at three o'clock we will leave. I have to take you there, and when you are gone I still have to look after other things."

He was continually looking at me with very amazed eyes. Finally he said, "What kind of friend are you? Everybody has been telling me, 'Don't commit suicide. Such things happen.

This is very common: one falls in love ... and if the other person is not willing, there is no need to be worried. The world is full of beautiful girls, and that girl is no Cleopatra. There is nothing to be worried about: we will find a better girl.' Everybody was trying to persuade me not to commit suicide. You are a strange fellow: you are suggesting the exact plan to me!"

I said, "Whenever one has to do something, one should do it with accurate planning. It takes one hour to reach there, then I say goodbye to you, and you jump. I will wait and see that you have jumped, and then I have my own work to do. I will come back."

So I ordered whatever food he liked -- Bengali sweets, everything Bengali -- but even while eating he was continually looking at me.

I said, "Why do you go on looking at me like that?"

He said, "I just wonder what kind of friend you are."

I said, "I am exactly what a friend should be: a friend in need is a friend indeed! If you want to commit suicide, I am ready to help; if you want to live, I am ready to help. I don't interfere."

And when at three o'clock the alarm went off, he immediately put his hand on the clock. I caught his hand on the clock, and I said, "This won't do."

He said, "But it is too cold."

I said, "Cold or not -- for you it is only a one-way affair. For me, I have to come back and I have to live. Think of me!"

Then he suddenly burst out, "I don't want to commit suicide!"

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I said, "This is strange. We have been planning for it, and at the last moment you decide not to do it? No!"

He said, "But I don't want to commit suicide."

I said, "Think about the girl."

He said, "I don't care about any girl."

I said, "But you should have told me before. I wasted money for the dinner."

He said, "I will pay for it."

I said, "That's okay. So you have really decided not to commit suicide? Never mention it again! Life is going to be difficult, so don't blame me. Don't say to me, 'Why did you not persist?' I am persisting! Life is not going to be a bed of roses -- forget all about that. It is going to be all kinds of sufferings and troubles and miseries. You will get married and you will have a dozen children -- and then, don't blame me! Still there is time: you just come. I have kept the car ready ... and it takes just a single moment to jump, and you are free from all misery."

He said, "But I don't want to! I want to go home."

I said, "If you want to go to your home, you can take a rickshaw and go, because I'm not going to take you on this cold night. Then I'm going to sleep; you get out of the house and find your own way."

He met me twenty years later when I went again to Jabalpur and he said, "You were right: I got married and I got into misery. You are a strange person ... I have already seven children, and I know, because you have said so, that there will be twelve. I have got a woman that I pray to God not even my enemy should get. She is a bitch. And I always think of that night -- how beautiful it would have been if I had listened to your advice."

I said, "Nothing is lost yet. I can still arrange it."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "The same thing: those marble rocks are still here, that waterfall is still here, nothing has changed. I will arrange for a car, and at three o'clock ..."

He again looked at me and he said, "What about my wife and children?"

I said, "That is not your problem at all. Once you have jumped ... that is their problem.

Why should you be worried about that? They are torturing you."

He said, "Even after twenty years you seem to be haunting me somehow. And are you still of the same opinion?"

I said, "I will be of the same opinion till your very last breath, because you are simply going to suffer. These twenty years you could have avoided."

He said, "That's true -- if I had listened."

But I said, "Still I am ready, and you are not listening."

He said, "There are problems. My father is dead, my mother is dead. Now the whole business has come on my head."

I said, "Everything disappears in the moment you jump, and if you cannot jump, I can push you!"

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He said, "It is better not to talk with you at all."

And since then I have been to that city a few other times. I went to his house and he was in, but somebody came out and said he was not in. And I told anybody who came out, "Tell him ... go inside and tell him that I am still ready, whenever he wants to be freed from his misery." That is my whole business: freeing people from their misery, liberating people.

The last time I simply pushed the boy who was telling me -- his boy -- and I went inside.

He was hiding inside, and I said, "Come out! You need not be worried, I have not come to take you."

But he said, "I don't want to talk anymore, because you again raise the same matter, and the desire arises ... perhaps that was the right thing to do. Now I am worried because I have so many children; now from seven they have become nine."

I said, "You make them twelve, then I will come. You finish the job, and suffer as much as you want."

He said, "Isn't there any other way than suicide?"

I said, "There is, but you have never been listening. I have been in this city for twenty years continually teaching people meditation. But you were engaged in your own affairs -- you were ready to die. You are married to a better, more beautiful and more educated woman, and you are suffering with her. It is not a question of this woman or that man -- you would have suffered with anybody."

A mind that is not meditative is bound to suffer in every situation: riches, poverty, failure or success, it makes no difference. For the non-meditative mind, suffering is the destiny. Only for the meditative mind who comes to know his original face, his authentic being, misery disappears as if it has never existed. For the first time a new world opens its doors: the world of blissfulness, the world of ecstasy, the world that you are born to discover, that it is your birthright to find.

But you go on moving everywhere searching for joy, for happiness, for blissfulness, and you never look within yourself. All that you are searching for outside is there already in the very innermost shrine of your being.

This is the only truth which is unexceptional. Nobody who has looked in has come out saying that all these mystics, sages, are speaking about something that does not exist. Without any exception, whoever has gone in, has come out with absolute affirmation.

BUT IF YOU CAN ABANDON IT ALL AT ONCE, SO YOU NEITHER THINK NOR

CALCULATE, THEN THESE VERY SENTIMENTS OF DISCRIMINATING

CONSCIOUSNESS ARE THE SUBTLE WISDOM OF TRUE EMPTINESS -- THERE IS

NO OTHER WISDOM THAT CAN BE ATTAINED. Your very being, once it is free of discriminations, once free from thoughts, emotions, once it has become an empty sky, is the only wisdom there is.

IF THERE WERE SOMETHING ATTAINED AND SOMETHING REALIZED

BESIDES, THEN IT WOULD NOT BE RIGHT. This can be said with absolute certainty: the only wisdom is the wisdom of no-mind, of a silent space. Besides that there is nothing else to attain. If anybody says there is, he is not right; either he is deluded or he is trying to delude other people.

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Ta Hui is absolutely right that there is no other wisdom, no other enlightenment, no other awakening than a simple silent space within you ... without any stirring, without even a small ripple of thought -- just a lake without any ripples, a sky without any clouds.

Then you have arrived home. There is nothing else to be achieved, nothing else to be attained. Even the idea of attaining something else has never arisen to a man of wisdom.

IT IS LIKE A PERSON WHEN HE IS DELUDED CALLING EAST, WEST, AND

WHEN HE'S ARRIVED AT ENLIGHTENMENT, WEST IS EAST -- THERE IS NO

OTHER EAST. He is saying that it is almost like a person who thinks in his ignorance, mistakenly, that two plus two is five. When he becomes alert and aware he comes to know that two plus two is four. He will not ask anybody, "What happened to five?"

A great psychoanalyst was asked, "We hear so much about psychosis and neurosis, but we don't know the difference between the two." The man who was asking was a journalist, and particularly an expert in psychological matters. He said, "It seems very difficult to understand what psychosis is and what is neurosis. What is the difference?"

The psychoanalyst said, "The difference is very small, very minute, very subtle. It is this: the psychotic person thinks two plus two is five; the neurotic person thinks two plus two is four, but he is not easy about why it is four."

The difference is very minute, certainly, very minute. One is absolutely certain two plus two is five; one is aware that it is four but is very much anxious about why it is four -- why is it not five? Perhaps the second is on the way towards the first. The difference is not very much

-- perhaps one step more and he will become rested and will declare that two plus two is five.

In fact, the second stage is better: at least one is at ease. But knowing that two plus two is four, and still feeling uneasy that it is so, is really more troublesome.

The enlightened man simply comes to know two plus two is four -- and there is no restlessness. In fact, there is tremendous rest and relaxation with things as they are. There is no expectation in the enlightened being that things should be otherwise. As they are, he is absolutely in harmony with them. This accord with existence as it is, is the greatest benediction possible to human beings.

THIS SUBTLE WISDOM OF TRUE EMPTINESS IS COEVAL WITH THE GREAT

VOID: THE VOID IS NOT SUBJECT TO BEING OBSTRUCTED BY THINGS, NOR

DOES IT HINDER THE COMING AND GOING OF ALL THINGS WITHIN IT.

This last part is very significant to understand, because many become obsessed with the idea that there should be no thought, no emotion, no feeling -- that only then are you enlightened. It is true that you should attain to enlightenment by going beyond all thoughts, feelings, emotions, but once you are enlightened, then there is no problem. Then you are the vast sky; everything can pass through and does not make any scratch on it. Then clouds can pass and they will not be any problem.

A man who has attained enlightenment can use thoughts, can use words, can convey through language what he has attained. It may not be perfect -- it cannot be perfect -- but he can use his mind as articulately as possible. Going beyond the mind does not mean that you cannot use your mind.

In fact, only then can you use your mind as a servant, because the master has arrived home.

Now the mind is a servant, the heart is a servant, the body is a servant, and the master can use everything the way he wants. He is no more used by the servants; he is no more dragged by Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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the servants in their own direction. He is absolutely free. Neither mind nor body nor heart --

nothing can dictate to him his lifestyle. He is beyond any dictation from anybody. He is the master of his own destiny, and this is the greatest joy in existence.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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23

So very close

26 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

SO VERY CLOSE

JUST BECAUSE IT'S SO VERY CLOSE, YOU CANNOT GET THIS TRUTH OUT OF

YOUR OWN EYES. WHEN YOU OPEN YOUR EYES IT STRIKES YOU, AND WHEN

YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES IT'S NOT LACKING EITHER. WHEN YOU OPEN YOUR

MOUTH YOU SPEAK OF IT, AND WHEN YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH IT APPEARS BY

ITSELF. BUT IF YOU TRY TO RECEIVE IT BY STIRRING YOUR MIND, YOU'VE

ALREADY MISSED IT BY EIGHTEEN THOUSAND MILES.

It is such a rejoicing to see Ta Hui coming closer and closer to reality, to the truth, and to his awakening. Just a step more and the old Ta Hui will be no longer there; and the new Ta Hui is naturally going to speak the language of all the awakened ones without exception. This sutra is one of the most important that we have come across up to now.

The greatest difficulty with the human mind is that whatever is available from the beginning it tends to forget, it takes it for granted. There is no gap between you and your truth because you are the truth. This is such a tremendous phenomenon, but one goes on missing it for the simple reason that every search leads you away from it, every question misguides you, every answer is going to be wrong.

If truth was separate from you, things would have been very easy. If the truth was far away from you, you would have achieved it long ago; if truth was difficult, almost impossible, it would have challenged your ego. The ego cannot be challenged by something which is already the case: there is no question of any achievement. If truth was somewhere on Everest, then thousands of Edmund Hillarys would have started moving towards Everest. If truth was on the moon, millions would have been attracted.

There is an ancient story ... God made the world and in the beginning he used to live in the world, in the marketplace. But his life was becoming a nightmare -- not a single moment of rest. People were standing the whole day and waking him in the night, they had so many complaints, so many things were wrong. They were bringing new suggestions as to how things should be changed, how things should be made -- about each and everything.

The torture became too much, and he enquired of his closest angels, "What has to be done? These people will kill me. Somebody comes and says, 'Listen, tomorrow there should be no rain because I am going fishing' -- and just after him a woman comes, 'I need absolutely that there should be rain tomorrow because I have sown the seeds today and if rain comes tomorrow they will settle in the soil.' Now, what I am supposed to do? And this is just one instance."

You can conceive the situation of poor God. He was so fed up with man that he never made anything after he had made man. It is not that his creativity was exhausted with man; he Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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could have created many more things, but man was too much! He was repenting -- why had he created man? Without man life was peace, silence, trees, animals and birds. They were all joyous, without any fear of death, without any religions, without any philosophies, without any theologies, without any wars. Things were utterly silent -- but the moment he created man he committed his first and last mistake. So he asked, "Now what to do?"

Somebody suggested, "Go to Everest."

He said, "You don't know ... I can see the future. Soon Tensing and Edmund Hillary are going to reach there, and if they find me there then you can be sure roads will be made, airports will be made, buses will be running, trains may be reaching, airplanes will be landing

-- and the same trouble will start there."

Somebody said, "Then it is better you move to the moon."

But he said, "You cannot see the future. To me, past, future and present are all simultaneously available. Soon they are going to reach the moon. It is only a question of a little time -- and in the eternity of existence, a few years, a few hundred years, don't mean anything. Give me some idea where they will never reach!"

And an old angel who had been listening all the time whispered in his ear, "Then there is only one place. You start living in man himself; that is the only place he will not bother to look. He will look for you all around the world, to the faraway stars, but he will not look within."

When the first Russian astronaut came back -- he was the first man to reach close to the moon, circulating around it, studying it, bringing photographs from there -- the first question asked to him in Russia was, "Did you see God there?"

And he said, "I didn't see anybody. There is not even water, there is not even a single tree

-- there is no possibility of anybody being there. Life cannot exist. The air is so thin -- oxygen is one eighth of what it is on the earth, so I don't see any possibility. God is not there."

This man Yuri Gagarin ... they have made a museum in Moscow in memory of Yuri Gagarin, the first man who came close to the moon. On the top of the museum they have written, "We have searched everywhere, we have even looked on the moon, and God is not there!"

Perhaps the old angel was right: "They will look for you everywhere. Just start living in the very innermost core of man himself." And since then God has been at peace.

Of course since then you have not been in peace, because even complaining gives a great relief, and now there is nobody to complain to. In the churches, in the synagogues, in the temples, people are still doing the same nagging device they call prayer. They are still suggesting, "Do it this way! Don't do it that way!"

In the Second World War Germany was praying, "Victory has to be to the Germans," and England was praying, "Victory has to be to the English." But now all these prayers disappear into the empty sky; there is nobody to hear them.

Two generals after the Second World War, one English and one German, were talking in a restaurant in Paris. The German said, "What went wrong? Five years we were continually winning, and then suddenly came the collapse."

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The English general smiled and said, "My friend, you don't understand. War is not all ...

we were praying to God continually. Our armies were praying to God before they started moving, every morning."

The German said, "Do you think we were doing otherwise? We were also praying all the time."

The English general laughed and said, "What was the language in which you were praying?"

The German said, "Obviously it was German."

The English general said, "Now the point is clear. God does not understand German, he understands only English!"

Although he has disappeared within you, you are looking at the sky. It is empty, infinitely empty, and you are praying to God ... you will not look even for a single moment within yourself.

The attraction for the faraway is tremendous. It challenges your ego. It will make you the greatest man, the first man who reached the peak of Everest, the first man who walked on the moon, the first man who walked on Mars, and I don't see any point in it. What is the point in it? First or second or third ... a man standing on Mars for a few minutes just looks stupid. But people are trying to reach to the stars.

The faraway has a tremendous magnetic force, particularly for the ego, because it gives you the promise of great achievement. The psychology of the ego is contained in the word achievement: achieve something. The truth is already there, within you; you cannot achieve it, you cannot lose it, because it is your very being. That's why millions of people never become interested in it -- what is the point? You can neither lose it nor can you attain it -- it is already there.

Down the ages slowly, slowly it has become taken for granted that there is nothing to be found inside. And it is true: there is nothing to be found. Nothing to be achieved, because your inside has already the whole kingdom of God -- you cannot add anything to it and you cannot take anything away. But your ego is driving you crazy, taking you to all the corners of the world. The ego is not interested in what you already have because that will not be a great achievement.

Ta Hui's sutra is, JUST BECAUSE IT IS SO VERY CLOSE, YOU CANNOT GET THIS

TRUTH OUT OF YOUR OWN EYES. Even to say, "It is very close," is not right; it is you.

Closeness also means a little distance. When you want to see things you need a certain perspective. If you put your mirror just on your nose you will not see anything; you have to keep it a little away from you, then you can see your face. But the truth is closer than anything.

In fact, the word 'closer' gives the idea of distance. That's why I say, Ta Hui is just one step away. One step more and he will disappear.

Truth is you.

He has almost reached the end of his pilgrimage: JUST BECAUSE IT IS SO VERY

CLOSE YOU CANNOT GET THIS TRUTH OUT OF YOUR OWN EYES. WHEN YOU

OPEN YOUR EYES IT STRIKES YOU, AND WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES IT IS

NOT LACKING EITHER. When you open your eyes it is really the truth opening its eyes, and when you close your eyes it is the truth that is closing its eyes. One who has realized knows Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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that the seeker himself is the sought. That is the trouble: the pilgrim is himself the goal of the pilgrimage.

There is a Sufi story about al-Hillaj. He was a poor man, but very sincere in his search.

Mohammedans think that if you go to their holy place, Kaaba, just once in a lifetime, that's enough for your liberation. So he collected money, sold his house, his land, whatsoever small things he had -- and the village gave him a good send off.

But just outside the village under a tree was sitting a great master, Junnaid. al-Hillaj had no idea who he was, but Junnaid said, "Listen, where are you going?"

al-Hillaj said, "I wanted to ask you which way I should go. I am going to Kaaba." al-Hillaj looked at the man more carefully. He was so radiant -- he was not an ordinary man.

Junnaid said, "Forget all about Kaaba. I am here. Just make seven circles around me, the way you would be doing if you reached Kaaba, and put all your money in front of me. Don't waste it!"

The man was so authoritative that poor al-Hillaj gave him all his money and made the seven circles. Then Junnaid said, "I have found the truth within myself. In Kaaba there is only a stone; I am a living truth! Your pilgrimage is fulfilled, but just one step more ..."

al-Hillaj asked, "What is that step?"

He said, "The step is when you start making the circle around yourself. Still, my truth is my truth. You will be blessed, you will feel great, you will have ecstatic moments, but still it is my truth. You should learn to circle yourself."

al-Hillaj said, "That seems to be a very difficult job. How one can circle oneself?"

And Junnaid said, "Just whirl ... whirl in the same place seven times, and wherever you are is the truth."

al-Hillaj never left Junnaid. He said, "Now give me a place at your feet. I am feeling so fulfilled and contented, I don't know why; so relaxed, I don't know why. I have never been in such a beautiful space. Just allow me to sit by your feet."

And al-Hillaj proved to be the greatest disciple of Junnaid -- so great that he became a master in his own right. Today the situation is that Junnaid is remembered only because of al-Hillaj; otherwise Junnaid would have been forgotten.

al-Hillaj was crucified because he declared, "Ana'l haq -- I am the truth." That was his crime -- but that is the reality. But no religion wants you to know the reality, because their whole business will go bankrupt. Then who is going to bother about the holy scriptures? Who is going to bother about churches and organizations? Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Jews -- who is going to bother with them?

If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find. Truth is functioning through you. When you open your eyes, it is truth opening his eyes. When you close you eyes, it is truth who is closing its eyes.

This is a tremendous meditation. If you can simply understand the device, you don't have to do anything; whatever you are doing is being done by truth. You are walking, it is truth; you are sleeping, it is truth resting; you are speaking, it is truth speaking; you are silent, it is truth that is silent.

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This is one of the most simple meditation techniques. Slowly, slowly everything settles by this simple formula, and then there is no need for the technique. When you are cured, you throw away the meditation, you throw away the medicine. Then you live as truth -- alive, radiant, contented, blissful, a song unto yourself. Your whole life becomes a prayer without any words, or better to say a prayerfulness, a grace, a beauty which does not belong to our mundane world, a ray of light coming from the beyond into the darkness of our world.

WHEN YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH YOU SPEAK OF IT, AND WHEN YOU SHUT

YOUR MOUTH IT APPEARS BY ITSELF.

Even the mystics who have chosen to remain silent have been heard, and people have come to them. Their silence was as loud, perhaps louder than their words could have been.

Even though they were living in the deserts or in the mountains, people have tracked them down.

Something invisible joins us all into one network, and whenever some point becomes luminous, suddenly the whole network feels the thrill. Those who are more sensitive feel more; those who are less sensitive feel less; those who are intellectuals feel it, but interpret it in such a way that they miss the point. Have you seen a spider's web? Just touch it from any place and the whole web will feel your touch; every fiber in it will be vibrating.

Ta Hui is right: "Even when your mouth is shut, it speaks." Whether you want anybody to hear you or not, people from faraway places will start traveling towards you. Otherwise it would have been almost impossible to find the silent mystics.

The story is told that when Jesus was born, three wise men from the East traveled to Judea to pay their respects to the newborn baby. It is said that, in fact, that's how Jesus got his name: when the first wise man entered into the stable where Jesus was born -- the door was small, it was made for donkeys, not for men -- he struck his head against the door and said, "Jesus!"

Mary said to Joseph, "That seems to be a very good name for the boy."

The story is mythological. It says, "A star led the way and guided them" -- otherwise how were they going to find where this small child was? They were old, they had no time to wait, and they had traveled thousands of miles. They were waiting, and a star led the way and stopped exactly over the stable. This is a mythological or perhaps a poetic way of saying it, but it has some truth in it; it is not just a fabrication, a beautiful story.

First, all the three wise men came from the East. Perhaps the West was not able to be so sensitive as to understand Jesus, and that too when he was just a baby. They did not understand him even when he was thirty-three, when they crucified him, and they have not understood him even today! They worship him, but that worship is just a sociality; half the world is Christian, but that is simply politics.

It is significant that all three old men came from the East. My understanding is that the light was not of a star shining ahead of them and leading them to the place. The East has its own explanations, which Christians have never been able to understand. The light was the third eye of these three old wise men -- it is also called "the star" -- and it led them in the right direction.

Stars don't move that way; stars go round and round, they cannot go straight. And stars are far away -- even if it were to stop exactly above the stable you would not be able to figure out where the stable is because that star is so far away that the stable could be anywhere on the earth.

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Christians have not been able to explain what this star is. They have taken it literally -- that a real star guided the way -- and they don't understand that stars are very big. Our sun is a mediocre star; it is six thousand times bigger than the earth, but still it is in the mediocre category. In comparison to some stars this sun is just non-existent. But even this sun cannot lead you. If it comes too close it will burn the whole earth; it has to remain as far away as it is.

Stars are millions of light-years away; certainly it was not a star at all. It is the star that shines in your third eye, between your two eyebrows, and fills your whole being with light; it has a magnetic pull towards a man who is going to became enlightened some day, or who is maybe already enlightened.

The story about Gautam Buddha is the same: A great saint came from the Himalayas. He had not visited the world for fifty years, but his death was approaching and Buddha had been born. No messenger had informed him, nobody knew that this man was going to be a Buddha, but the old man had an absolute certainty. The same star was guiding him too. He rushed fast because he was not certain that he would be able to reach there in time; he might die before reaching. But he reached there and as he was known all over the country as one of the most wise men, the father of Gautam Buddha touched his feet and said, "Why have you taken the trouble? The journey is tedious; you could have simply sent a message and I would have come. What is the reason?

He said, "No, I had to come. I want to see the baby that was born in your house."

The father could not believe it, but the man was so respected he could not even ask him why. He thought that perhaps he wanted to bless the baby -- so the baby was brought and the old man with tears of joy touched the feet of the small baby. The father said, "What are you doing?"

The old man said, "I will not be here when he becomes enlightened; my days are finished.

But he will become a great enlightened being, and at least I will have the satisfaction of touching his feet. And at least I am the first man to touch his feet -- millions will touch them, millions will gather around him, but I am the first to recognize him, to see him. You can see only the baby; I can see his inner light, because I can see my own inner light." Once you see your own inner light you start seeing light wherever it exists. Then time and space are no more barriers.

BUT IF YOU TRY TO RECEIVE IT BY STIRRING YOUR MIND, YOU HAVE

ALREADY MISSED IT BY EIGHTEEN THOUSAND MILES. The truth that is within you, the truth that you are, cannot be found by your mind. Mind is a very low faculty. The higher can see the lower but the lower cannot see the higher.

Mind's function is to know the objective world, and it is a perfectly good mechanism for that. But it has no way to look within itself, to look beyond itself; it simply has no faculties to perform that act. It is just a mechanical device developed through millions of years of evolution.

Not a single man in the whole of history has been able to say that he has recognized truth through the mind. Those who have recognized it have recognized it when the mind was completely silent, nonfunctioning ... no stirring of thoughts, as if the mind was put aside.

Mind is not a ladder to your being; it is a wall, not a bridge.

The essential religiousness consists of only one thing; the transcendence of the mind.

Immediately all the doors of your innermost being start opening of their own accord, and all Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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the mysteries of life and existence become available to you. Once this truth is recognized, known, you can use the mind -- just as a vehicle trained to express in a fragmentary way.

Something can be expressed; although those words are not absolutely correct -- they cannot be, they were not made for it -- they can indicate. At least they can give you a few hints.

There have been two types of saints, sages: one, I have told you -- is the arhatas -- who remain silent; it takes sensitive people to find them. And bodhisattvas -- they make every effort to reach out to the sensitive people. There is no way to say who is doing better; they are simply following their own inner light. Nobody is higher than the other.

The world is so strange: sometimes if truth comes to your door and knocks, his very coming to your door may become a barrier. The reverse is also true: when you go on the search and you knock on the door of truth and everything remains silent ... perhaps you may be more receptive to the silent one, to his presence, than to the bodhisattva who runs after you, who tries every effort to approach as many people as possible. But both have helped in their own unique ways.

You have the capacity, you are just not aware of it.

The most costly and most famous diamond in the world is the Kohinoor -- the word

'kohinoor' means the light of the world -- which was presented to the British king of that time by a Sikh king of the Punjab, Ranjit Singh, just as a friendly gesture. It is still in the crown of the British queen, but it is such a unique piece that it is not used, it is being kept in a museum for people to see.

This Kohinoor has a tremendous story behind it. It was found in the state of Hyderabad, in a small village called Golconda. A poor man had a small field by the side of a small river in Golconda. One day he found this Kohinoor: it was three times bigger than it is now, because so much cutting and polishing has gone on that only one-third has remained, two-thirds have been removed. It was shining in the sand of the river, and he thought it would be good for the children to play with -- so he brought home the Kohinoor and his children were playing with it.

Just by coincidence a wandering sannyasin reached Golconda and asked this poor man for shelter for the night. The poor man was immensely happy: although he was to give him his own food and he himself would have to remain hungry, it is a great blessing that a man who has left everything in the search for truth has knocked on his door.

When the sannyasin had eaten the food and before going to sleep, they started talking. The wandering sannyasin was a source of great information because he was wandering from one corner of the country to the other. He said to the poor man, "Looking at your things, your small hut, your torn clothes, I feel sad. I know places ... if you sell your land and your house here, for the same price you can find at least four times more land. Then your life will be richer."

So the man sold everything, but the children carried their toy, the Kohinoor. And on the way some jewelers saw those children carrying such a big diamond that their breath stopped.

They could not believe, they had never conceived that such a big diamond could exist.

The jewelers asked him the price, and he said, "There is no question of price -- it is just a toy for my children. You can give whatever you feel like giving and take it." But the children were reluctant, they wouldn't give it up. So finally the poor man said, "We don't have anything else, just that children's toy. Don't disturb them" -- and he moved on.

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But by the time he reached to the place the sannyasin had spoken of the prices of things had changed. It was years before that the sannyasin had seen that the prices were very low in that part of the country. So rather than settling there he came back home, and the Nizam of Hyderabad, the king of Hyderabad state, heard about this diamond that those children used to play with. He enquired and was informed that it was the best diamond in the whole world, of the finest quality, of the finest water, without any flaw. You can purchase it at any price and still it will be cheap.

So the king purchased it, gave the man a few thousand gold coins, and the poor man was very happy. The king purchased also his field -- because where the Kohinoor was found, there must be other diamonds in that part of the field. This field became Golconda, one of the greatest mines for diamonds, and the field of that poor man and that small river have produced almost all the famous diamonds of the world -- and in thousands. And the poor man's family had possessed that land for centuries, generation after generation, but was not aware of its treasures.

You also have had the Kohinoor from the very beginning of eternity. But you are not a jeweler -- you cannot appraise what you are carrying within yourself. A Gautam Buddha is nothing but a jeweler who can see immediately that you are carrying a tremendously valuable Kohinoor inside you. If you start searching for it through the mind you will miss it. It can be found only when mind is completely silenced.

That's what meditation is all about. Silence the mind: whatever method you follow is immaterial. Silence the mind, and you are in for a great surprise -- perhaps the greatest surprise, because there is nothing greater than that. You will find your truth, you will find your home, you will find your eternity. You will find everything that you have been dreaming of, desiring, and feeling frustrated and miserable about, because that which you were asking was within you and you were looking everywhere else.

Ta Hui is right: BUT IF YOU TRY TO RECEIVE IT BY STIRRING YOUR MIND, YOU HAVE ALREADY MISSED IT BY EIGHTEEN THOUSAND MILES. Just a small stirring of the mind and you are far away from yourself; no stirring of the mind and you are exactly where you need to be.

Just become aware of your tremendous treasure.

Religion is not to make you poor, religion is to make you the richest man in the world. But your riches will not be of the mundane; they will be of the sacred, they will be of the divine.

Blessed are those who are capable of knowing themselves, because without this, life remains a hell, and there is no way out.

Jean-Paul Sartre has written a very beautiful small book, which is a description of hell.

The name of the book is NO EXIT. There they do not have the old type of tortures, hellfire, etcetera; all comforts, air-conditioning, everything that they need is available. The only problem is there is no exit.

So they are stuck in an air-conditioned place, with all kinds of strangers, with nowhere to go, nothing to do; everything is supplied without even asking. You just desire and you get it --

this used to be the description of heaven! There you just desire and you have it, but there is no exit.

It is an air-conditioned nightmare! You cannot go out; everybody is sitting on a beautiful sofa -- but just sitting there. People are getting fed up with each other for no reason ... just Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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continuously in the public eye, no privacy, and the problem continuously arises, "Now what is going to happen? -- because we cannot get out ..."

What he has described is an air-conditioned nightmare because there is no exit ... without knowing it exactly, he is describing your mind. You are also enclosed in your mind with all kinds of dreams, imaginations, projections, ideologies -- but no way to get out.

Meditation is not a way to get out of the mind. Meditation says, "Just watch the mind and you are out. In fact, you have always been out." Your being inside the mind is your fallacious idea. Once you stop the mind functioning, suddenly the fallacious idea will disappear and you will find you are out in the open. Then the whole sky is available to you -- your freedom, your eternal life, this vast beautiful existence is always available to you, to shower you with all kinds of blessings.

Just a small trick ... it is not really even a technique, just a trick. You are not in the mind, but you have been thinking that you are in the mind -- that is your trouble.

You must remember some nightmare: that will explain to you how this situation continues.

In a nightmare, you want to open your eyes and you cannot; you want to move your hands and you cannot. No exit! -- and the nightmare becomes so intense ... perhaps a lion is standing on your chest or you have been thrown from a mountain into abysmal darkness and you can't even see the bottom of it ... When it comes to its absolute intensity, the very intensity wakes you up.

You cannot manage to wake yourself up if the nightmare is of a mild quality; you cannot come out of it. But if it is very intense then that very intensity wakes you up, and suddenly there is no nightmare. You have never been under the paws of a lion and you were not being thrown from any mountain; you were not being crushed by a bulldozer -- nothing was happening. It was only a dream, but you were thinking you were in it. You were not in it; even when it was happening you were out of it. It was only a film going on in front of you. You were out of it.

Three-dimensional films did not succeed in the market. Perhaps only one or two films were made, because the working and making of them was too costly, too arduous, and they did not succeed. Some day a better technology is bound to bring them back ... but I saw the first, and I was amazed about one thing. Because the film is three-dimensional, people are just as people are: a man comes running on his horse and the whole movie house gives way. The people in this half of the movie hall rush to that side, the other half rush to the other side --

because the horse is inside the movie hall. Being three-dimensional, it looks exactly like a horse.

A man throws a certain weapon and everybody hides his head, because that weapon looks as if it will come out of the screen. Everybody knows that it is a movie, and everybody laughs afterwards when he has done his act, knowing well that, "It is a movie and we are outside of it, nothing can come out of the movie screen." It may be only three-dimensional ... but the moment the horse comes running so fast, you forget all about the movie, and the first question is to save your own life.

You are out of it: the mind is only your belief that you are in it. This belief has to be broken -- and the way to break this belief, I have been telling you, is very simple. Just watch --

and just by watching suddenly you are out of it, because the watcher cannot be inside; he has to stand outside and look at the whole thing.

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And the moment you are identified with the watcher -- which is your real identity -- the mind loses all its grip on you. Mind no more stirring, you have arrived to the truth.

This small sutra is very significant. Perhaps it may be that Ta Hui spoke it when he realized -- not through his intellectual acumen but through his meditation -- the existential truth. This may be the turning point from the intellectual into an enlightened being.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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24

The inescapable

26 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

THE INESCAPABLE

WHENEVER YOU RUN INTO SOMETHING INESCAPABLE AMIDST THE

HUBBUB, YOU'VE BEEN EXAMINING YOURSELF CONSTANTLY, BUT WITHOUT

APPLYING THE EFFORT TO MEDITATE. THIS VERY INESCAPABILITY ITSELF IS

MEDITATION: IF YOU GO FURTHER AND APPLY EFFORT TO EXAMINE

YOURSELF, YOU'RE EVEN FURTHER AWAY.

RIGHT WHEN YOU'RE IN SOMETHING INESCAPABLE, DO NOT BESTIR YOUR

MIND AND THINK OF EXAMINING YOURSELF. THE PATRIARCH SAID, "WHEN

DISCRIMINATION DOESN'T ARISE, THE LIGHT OF EMPTINESS SHINES BY

ITSELF." AGAIN, LAYMAN P'ANG SAID:

IN DAILY ACTIVITIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATION,

I ALONE NATURALLY HARMONIZE.

NOT GRASPING OR REJECTING ANYWHERE,

NOT GOING WITH OR GOING AGAINST.

WHO CONSIDERS CRIMSON AND PURPLE HONORABLE?

THERE'S NOT A SPECK OF DUST IN THE MOUNTAINS.

SPIRITUAL POWERS AND WONDROUS FUNCTIONING:

HAULING WATER AND CARRYING FIREWOOD.

JUST WHEN YOU CAN'T ESCAPE, SUDDENLY YOU GET RID OF THE CLOTH

BAG (OF ILLUSION) AND WITHOUT BEING AWARE OF IT YOU WILL BE

CLAPPING YOUR HANDS AND LAUGHING LOUDLY.

The inescapable ... it is one of the most significant problems for every meditator.

There are things which will disappear as your meditation deepens. All that is false will be gone, all that is illusory will no longer exist; all that you have projected, expected, or dreamt will have no reality. But still there will be something left which is not your dream, which is not your projection, which is not the creation of your mind: this is called the inescapable. In other words, the real will remain -- only the false will be gone.

The meditator has to learn two things: first, to be capable, powerful enough, to allow the false to disappear. But this is not a great problem. Every morning when you wake up you allow the dreams to disappear. You don't hanker for them, howsoever sweet they may have been, you don't even think about them. Just within two or three seconds you start forgetting, and after a few minutes it as if they had never existed at all. You don't cry because in your Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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dream somebody died, and you don't feel very sad because in your dream you became bankrupt. Whatever has happened in the dream, the moment you wake up it becomes meaningless.

So the false known as false is immediately no longer a problem. Now another problem arises which is far bigger, far more profound: the real remains. Up to now, because you were lost in the illusory you were not aware of the real. Suddenly you become aware of the real; now you have to come to terms with the real.

The world remains outside -- the same world, the same people, although your projections will not be there. You were thinking of somebody as immensely beautiful, somebody a great wise man, somebody the most religious person: if these were your projections, they will disappear, but the person whom you were thinking beautiful or religious or enlightened will remain. Now you will have to cope with his reality. And the only way to cope with reality is to create a tremendous harmony with the real. You cannot avoid it, it is inescapable, there is no way to disperse it.

That which was dispersible, you have dispersed; almost ninety percent of your world will have disappeared, and this ninety percent was your projection. But ten percent is not your projection, and you have to be with it in total harmony.

Ta Hui makes a very remarkable statement. Ordinarily to be in harmony means to go with, not to go against. But Ta Hui makes harmony something far deeper -- neither to go with, nor to go against. Even in going with, there is some reluctance: you are still thinking of yourself as separate, that you are going with the current, you are no more fighting with the current. But you are there -- and your very being is a resistance. The very idea that you are going with the current is enough of a disturbance in the harmony.

Ta Hui is making an immensely important point, and only a man who has come to this experience can make that statement. Otherwise it is very simple, ask anybody: to go with means to be in harmony, and to go against is to be in discord.

But Ta Hui says, "Even to go with is a discord, very subtle, very hidden, but you are keeping yourself separate. Real harmony is neither to go with nor to go against. Let reality possess you. Just be overwhelmed by that which is inescapable, and you will find immense peace."

These sutras are important for every meditator on the path. WHENEVER YOU RUN

INTO SOMETHING INESCAPABLE AMIDST THE HUBBUB, YOU'VE BEEN

EXAMINING YOURSELF CONSTANTLY, BUT WITHOUT APPLYING EFFORT TO

MEDITATE.

The first point: your meditation has to be without any effort on your part, because all effort is of the mind, and mind has no way of reaching to meditation. So if you are making some effort, your very effort is the barrier to reach to the space you want to reach.

Meditation is simply a pure understanding that if you can watch the mind without making any effort -- and remember, watching is not an effort, watching is your natural capacity. Effort is something that you have to do; watching is something that you don't have to do. It is already there. It is your very breathing, it is your very heartbeat, just you have never looked at it.

Ta Hui is saying that meditation has to be without any effort, and that is an agreed point amongst all the meditators of the world. Still, effort will disturb and bring the mind in, so with Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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effort there is no meditation, only mind. No effort, no mind ... and a spontaneous awareness that is not your work. You simply discover it as your intrinsic nature.

So this is the first thing about meditation. And the second thing he wants to remind you of is that your meditation should not be something where you put aside one hour every day in the morning, or as Mohammedans do, five times a day. Different religions have different special times for meditation, but the idea of having a special time for meditation means the remaining time you will remain non-meditative.

One hour of meditation and twenty-three hours of non-meditation ... do you think there is any hope that meditation will win in the end? Those twenty-three hours will wash out anything that you think you are doing in meditation.

Secondly, a man who is twenty-three hours in a non-meditative state, how can he suddenly become meditative for one hour? It is not possible. It is like a man who is sick for twenty-three hours and suddenly for one hour becomes perfectly healthy and then again sick, as if it is in his own hands -- whenever he decides that it is time to become healthy, he becomes healthy, and when the time comes to be sick, he becomes sick.

Meditation is your inner health. Twenty-three hours a day sick, spiritually sick, full of anger, hate, jealousy, competition, violence, and suddenly for one hour you become a Gautam Buddha -- how can you manage it? This is not possible.

All the religions have been deceiving people. Because people want to have something spiritual, they have given a toy -- one hour do this and you are doing meditation -- but they have not looked at the psychology of it. It is just not in the nature of things, you cannot do it this way. Either you have to be meditative twenty-four hours a day or you have to be non-meditative twenty-four hours a day, the choice is yours. But you cannot divide your life into two parts -- in the temple you will be meditative and in the shop, in the office, you will be non-meditative.

Gautam Buddha and the people who have understood him down the centuries insist on a meditation that goes with every action, with anything you do. It follows you like a shadow. It runs within your consciousness like an undercurrent. You may be in the market, you may be in the temple -- you may be anywhere, and your inner silence remains undisturbed, unperturbed.

This is the only true meditation.

So first, no effort has to be made, only understanding has to be awakened. If anger is there, watch. Don't make any effort to push it away, just remain a spectator, as if it is not your business to be involved. If hate is there, watch. And these are very thin clouds; if you can just remain watchful, within minutes they will be gone. They will be gone on their own accord.

Don't push them, because the more you push them, the more you accept their reality. The more you push them, the more you fall to their standard. The more you push them ... they have a strange habit. Have you seen insects? -- you throw away an insect, and it will immediately turn and run towards you. A very strange idea: the whole world is available, but it will not go anywhere else. It takes the challenge, "Who are you ...?" Any small insect, any cockroach --

just throw it away and watch what happens: it comes back immediately with tremendous force.

The same is the situation with your mind. In fact, the mind of the cockroach and the mind you have are not very different. Their basic structure is the same. Their mind is a little smaller, a miniature; yours is a little bigger, but they have the same capacities as you have.

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Scientists have been very much puzzled that wherever man is found, cockroaches are always found, or vice-versa: wherever cockroaches are found, man is always found. They have simply never lived separately; they are the ancientmost colleagues in existence. Man is thought to be capable of adapting to any situation -- cold, heat, rain -- and cockroaches have the same capacity.

Even when man went to the moon, cockroaches were found in the rocket. They could not believe this strange fate. They were going to the moon and they were well-prepared, they had had a long training, and the cockroaches were going without any training. But they managed; they came back with the people in the same rocket, without any training. They proved far superior! They had no training, and they managed a situation which no cockroach before them had ever managed.

You don't realize ... the situation was very new: no gravitation, and cockroaches were flying. The men at least had belts on their seats, but the cockroaches had no belts, so they were really flying, and for the first time. They were not puzzled by the non-gravitation; they lost all weight, but they did not make any fuss about it. And on the moon there is no oxygen, but the cockroaches managed perfectly well. They have a miniature mind, but the same model as man's.

The moment you make any effort to throw away your mental stuff, it simply runs back.

You can try it. Just sit for five minutes and try not to think of monkeys and then see what happens. All the monkeys of the world will become interested in you. And you had not even told them; you were just sitting in your room with the idea that you are not to think about monkeys -- and that's enough. It has been broadcast to all the monkeys, and whatever you do they will be there till you say, "Now five minutes are over. Now if you want you can remain, if you don't want to remain it is up to you. I am no longer interested." They will be gone ... but if you want them to go that is against their pride.

Every single thought, every single emotion, feeling, has its own ego it seems. That's why people who try to fight with them get defeated. Don't fight, just watch. There is no harm if they are there. Anger cannot do any harm unless you become identified with it -- then you may do something which can be harmful to somebody. Anger itself cannot do anything; it is absolutely impotent, just an idea. Let it be there, and watch, watch joyfully, and see how long it can last without your support. It won't even last for a few minutes. It will be gone.

Meditation has to be only a watchfulness, then it is possible to have it twenty-four hours a day. Even while going to sleep, be watchful. To the last moment, when you see that now sleep is taking you over -- the darkness goes on growing, the body is relaxing and the point comes when suddenly from wakefulness you move into sleep -- watch up to that moment. And first thing in the morning, as you become aware that the sleep is finished, immediately start watching; soon you will be able to watch even while you are asleep. Watchfulness will become a lamp that goes on burning day and night inside you.

This is the only authentic meditation. All else that has been told to you in the name of meditation is simply a toy to play with, to deceive yourself that you are doing something spiritual. With this meditation you will come across the inescapable. Everything illusory will disappear.

But everything in existence is not illusory. That which is not illusory is inescapable, and what are you going to do with the inescapable? Perhaps you have never thought about it.

This very inescapability itself is meditation.

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If you go on watching even the inescapable, you will be able to see clearly that that which disappears while watching is illusory; that which becomes even more clear, more crystal clear, which was before hidden behind the cloud of your illusory dreams, desires, now stands absolutely clear ...

Ta Hui is saying, THIS VERY INESCAPABILITY ITSELF IS MEDITATION.

The moment you see that this is the real there is no question to be with it or to go against it. The real is vast, immense; in fact we are simply dewdrops in the ocean of the real. There is no question of us going with it or not going with it -- watching silently you will see a deep harmony arising between you and the real. So meditation does two works: one, it destroys the unreal, and second, it creates a harmony with the real.

IF YOU GO FURTHER AND APPLY EFFORT TO EXAMINE YOURSELF, YOU'RE

EVEN FURTHER AWAY. There is no need to go further. You have come to the place where merger can happen. Going further is dangerous. You may start again from the back door bringing thoughts, projections; all that you have rejected at the front door will start entering from the back door.

It is necessary to remember that the moment you come across something that becomes clearer in meditation, truer, more solid, then it is time to allow harmony to happen. There is no need to think what to do about it. Neither do you have to think about the false, because the false disappears with meditation; nor do you have to think about the real, because the real becomes so crystal clear, so certain, so categorical that there is no doubt in you. There is no need to go on. It is time, the right moment to allow the merger to happen.

RIGHT WHEN YOU'RE IN SOMETHING INESCAPABLE, DO NOT BESTIR YOUR

MIND AND THINK OF EXAMINING YOURSELF ... because that will be going backwards.

THE PATRIARCH SAID, "WHEN DISCRIMINATION DOESN'T ARISE, THE LIGHT OF

EMPTINESS SHINES BY ITSELF."

So don't still the mind again, don't start thinking whether it is real or unreal, don't bring in discrimination again, because with discrimination the mind comes back. Simply remember the symptoms: that which is unreal will be immediately gone, just like dreams go in the morning when you wake up.

In sleep you may have been sleeping in a palace; when you wake up, of course the palace is not there, just your old poor house. The unreal has disappeared, and the real -- which was completely forgotten because of the unreal -- is clear. When you were in the palace you did not even wonder what happened to the house. It was completely covered by the illusory.

Once you see the real, then just remember one thing: Bodhidharma says, "WHEN

DISCRIMINATION DOESN'T ARISE, THE LIGHT OF EMPTINESS SHINES BY

ITSELF." Just wait ... don't start stirring your mind again, which is your old habit. There is every possibility you may have the temptation to bestir your mind. If you don't stir your mind,

"THE LIGHT OF EMPTINESS SHINES BY ITSELF."

LAYMAN P'ANG SAID -- and he has said tremendously beautiful things -- IN DAILY

ACTIVITIES WITHOUT DISCRIMINATION, I ALONE NATURALLY HARMONIZE.

NOT GRASPING OR REJECTING ANYWHERE, NOT GOING WITH OR GOING

AGAINST. WHO CONSIDERS CRIMSON AND PURPLE HONORABLE? THERE'S NOT

A SPECK OF DUST IN THE MOUNTAINS. SPIRITUAL POWERS AND WONDROUS

FUNCTIONING: HAULING WATER AND CARRYING FIREWOOD.

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Each sentence of Layman P'ang is significant: IN DAILY ACTIVITIES WITHOUT

DISCRIMINATION -- just remaining silent and doing whatever is needed to be done -- I ALONE NATURALLY HARMONIZE. Because there is no discrimination, there is no barrier to prevent one from harmonizing. Carrying water or chopping wood or cooking food, there is no mind between the activity and your consciousness. A totally new kind of activity arises --

that of harmony. You act in harmony and it does not matter what kind of activity ...

One of the greatest dancers, Nijinsky, was asked by scientists again and again, "We cannot believe it. How do you manage?" -- because his dance was a miracle. When he would come to the peak of his dance he would take such long jumps that are not possible according to gravitation. Even the people who compete in the Olympics for long jump could not jump the way Nijinsky used to jump.

Nijinsky jumped so high that it was simply not possible according to the laws of science.

Looking at his weight and the force of gravity, one should only be able to jump so far and not more -- there is a certain limit -- but he broke all the records. This was the first problem for the scientists.

The second was even more difficult. When things fall, they fall with a speed; gravitation pulls things fast. You see in the night what you call a falling star. Stars don't fall -- a star is too big. If they fell we would have been finished long ago. Our planet is so small that even if a star passes by without hitting us, we will be finished -- just its heat will be enough to burn everything that is alive.

What goes on falling -- and it is not a small number, at least six thousand stars fall every day, twenty-four hours, around the earth -- are not stars, they are small stones. These stones happened because ... it is conceived by scientists that some time back -- nearabout two million years back -- a great star passed near the earth, and because of its passing, it pulled out the moon.

The moon was part of the earth, but the star's gravitation was such that where the Pacific Ocean exists now was once filled by the material that is now the moon. It was pulled away.

The star went by, but because a star moves with the speed of light, it pulled out a great chunk which became the moon. When such a great chunk is pulled out of the earth, millions of small pieces of earth also go into the sky, beyond the two hundred miles' scope of gravitation.

Those millions of pieces of stone and earth are still roaming around in space. Whenever by chance they come close and fall within the limit of gravitation -- that is if they come as close as two hundred miles -- then earth immediately pulls them back. But the force with which they are pulled back is such that the heat from friction with the air burns them up. You see them burning with light, and it is just the friction from the speed at which they are falling.

Most of them disappear in the air, they never reach the earth. A few do manage to reach if they are big enough -- they are a different kind of stone. Because they have existed in space outside of the earth's gravitation for two million years, they have developed different characteristics.

In Mecca, what the Mohammedans worship as Kaaba is a big stone that has fallen from the sky. Those stones can be recognized -- they have grown different characteristics -- and they are called asteroids.

So whenever a thing falls it falls with great speed -- but Nijinsky used to fall just like a feather, wavering, coming slowly this way and that, not in a direct line pulled by gravitation.

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This was almost magic, and Nijinsky was not able to explain it because it was not something he was doing. Finally he accepted that "Whenever I have tried to do it I have failed. Whenever I forget myself completely, whenever the dancer is forgotten and the dance alone remains, it happens. Not only are you surprised, I am also surprised. I did not do it; I was no more, only the dance was there."

A meditator naturally harmonizes. All his activities are a kind of dance, he is one with them. Carrying water he is not separate from the water he is carrying; chopping wood he is not separate, he is simply chopping. Each action is no longer of the old quality, where you were the doer.

Now the doer is gone, only the doing is left.

And because only the doing is left, the dancer is no more, only the dance is left, and there arises a natural harmony -- not grasping. Although it is tremendously blissful, no desire comes to grasp it, no fear that "I may lose it." One is so filled and so aware that it is natural, there is no need to grasp it. It is your own nature. You grasp other things; you don't have to grasp your own nature.

NOT GRASPING OR REJECTING ANYWHERE, NOT GOING WITH OR GOING

AGAINST -- all these questions of for and against belong to the mind. When the mind is no more there, you are neither for nor against: you are simply there, and a natural harmonizing happens. It is not your doing.

WHO CONSIDERS CRIMSON AND PURPLE HONORABLE? P'ang is a Buddhist --

just as Bodhidharma is a Buddhist and Ta Hui is a Buddhist -- and in Buddhism, the colors purple and crimson are traditionally accepted as holy colors.

P'ang is saying, WHO CONSIDERS CRIMSON AND PURPLE HONORABLE?

THERE'S NOT A SPECK OF DUST IN THE MOUNTAINS. All that could prevent your vision, all that could prevent your clarity exists no more -- not even A SPECK OF DUST IN

ALL THE MOUNTAINS.

And who cares what is holy and what is unholy? -- because the mind that used to discriminate is no longer there.

SPIRITUAL POWERS AND WONDROUS FUNCTIONING are no more different than HAULING WATER AND CARRYING FIREWOOD. So whether you are worshipping in the temple or carrying firewood it is all the same, because both are done in a deep harmony and meditativeness. Both have the same fragrance and the same music and the same dance.

JUST WHEN YOU CAN'T ESCAPE, SUDDENLY YOU GET RID OF THE CLOTH

BAG (OF ILLUSION) AND WITHOUT BEING AWARE OF IT, YOU'LL BE CLAPPING

YOUR HANDS AND LAUGHING LOUDLY.

He's saying that the moment somebody becomes enlightened -- just when you can't escape, just when you are so one with reality that there is no escape, when you cannot find any separation from the ocean of existence -- suddenly you get rid of the cloth bag of illusion. You are only separated by a cloth bag, and that too is illusory -- it is just an idea. AND WITHOUT

BEING AWARE OF IT, YOU'LL BE CLAPPING -- and you will not be aware what you are doing, you will be clapping your hands and laughing loudly.

I will tell you a small story to explain it. Two monks, the master and the disciple, are passing through a forest and it is getting late. They have lost their way, and the old man, the Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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master, was continually asking, "How long will it take to reach the next village? It is dangerous to remain in the dark night in this wild forest -- there are wild animals." And he was continuously clutching his bag.

The young man, his disciple, is a little bit concerned: What has happened to the old man?

-- because many times they had lost their way and many times they had had to stay in the forest, but he was never before afraid of wild animals. He is not afraid of death either, it is something new. And why does he go on clutching his bag again and again? And it seems he tries to feel something in the bag ...

The whole day they have been walking, and finally, when the sun is setting, they stop at a well just to take a little shower, wash their bodies which are full of dirt, and then have something to eat before the sun sets.

The master gave the bag to the disciple and told him, "Be careful of it." This too was new.

He had given him that bag many times in their wanderings but he had never said, "Be careful!"

So the disciple said: "Yes, I will be careful" -- and he looked inside the bag and found two bricks of solid gold. He said, "Now I can understand what the problem is. When the old man was washing his body the disciple threw those two gold bricks into a ditch thousands of feet down, and placed two stones almost of the same weight in the bag.

The old man finished his bath quickly and the first thing he said was, "Give me the bag."

He took the bag, felt the weight and was satisfied. They ate their supper and by that time the sun was down, so then they moved. But still there was no sign of any village close by, and the old man was very much worried.

Two miles from the well the young man said, "Now, master, drop the worry."

The old man said, "What do you mean, 'drop the worry'? What worry?"

The disciple said, "In fact I have dropped your worries in a ditch near the well."

The old man immediately opened his bag and took out those two stones. He said, "My God, you have thrown out those two gold bricks?"

The disciple said, "Yes, because they were making you for the first time afraid. And the most miraculous thing is that for two miles, although there was nothing to be afraid of, still you were afraid. Just the illusion that there are gold bricks in the bag is enough to make you afraid." He had been continuously touching the bag and feeling ...

All our illusions -- our friendship, our family, our society, our money, our power --

disappear suddenly the moment you see there is no escape, now the dewdrop has fallen into the ocean.

And in this moment, without your thinking, you start clapping and a loud laughter explodes from your being: "I am the ocean. I have been thinking up to now that I am the dewdrop, and feeling unnecessarily worried that if I by some accident fall into the ocean that will be my death. Now, falling into the ocean, I have found just the opposite. It is my eternal life."

It is time for the dewdrop to clap its hands and have a good laughter. Anyone who has become enlightened -- the first right act is to clap and have a good laughter.

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If you can do it even without becoming enlightened, who knows? -- you may become enlightened. Just give it a try!

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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25

Two awakenings

27 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

TWO AWAKENINGS

IN THE OLD DAYS THE VENERABLE YEN YANG ASKED CHAO CHOU,

"WHAT'S IT LIKE WHEN NOT BRINGING A SINGLE THING?" CHOU SAID, "PUT IT

DOWN." YEN YANG SAID, "SINCE NOT A SINGLE THING IS BROUGHT, PUT WHAT

DOWN?" CHOU SAID, "IF YOU CAN'T PUT IT DOWN, PICK IT UP." AT THESE

WORDS, YEN YANG WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED.

AGAIN: A MONK ASKED AN ANCIENT WORTHY, "WHAT'S IT LIKE WHEN THE

STUDENT CAN'T COPE?" THE ANCIENT WORTHY SAID, "I TOO AM LIKE THIS."

THE MONK SAID, "TEACHER, WHY CAN'T YOU COPE EITHER?" THE ANCIENT

WORTHY SAID, "IF I COULD COPE, I COULD TAKE AWAY THIS INABILITY TO

COPE OF YOURS." AT THESE WORDS, THE MONK WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF THESE TWO MONKS IS PRECISELY WHERE YOU

ARE LOST; WHERE YOU HAVE DOUBTS IS EXACTLY WHERE THESE TWO

MONKS ASKED THEIR QUESTIONS. "PHENOMENA ARE BORN FROM

DISCRIMINATION AND ALSO PERISH THROUGH DISCRIMINATION. WIPE OUT

ALL PHENOMENA OF DISCRIMINATION -- THIS DHARMA HAS NO BIRTH OR

DESTRUCTION."

Zen is special in many ways from other traditions of the mystics. But one thing that stands out, very unique, is these strange, small dialogues: just reading them you cannot see how those small dialogues can bring enlightenment to someone.

Secondly, Zen itself gives no explanations. That is one of the reasons a living tradition of enlightenment has not overtaken the whole world. I would like you to understand these small dialogues which apparently mean nothing, but in a certain circumstance, produced by other Zen methods, can bring awakening. The dialogues are remembered down the centuries; and the people on the path of Zen enjoy them immensely. But for outsiders they remain an anathema, because the context is never told; in what reference the awakening happened is never discussed.

Behind these small dialogues there is a long discipline of meditation, understanding --

maybe years and years of work. But only the dialogue is known to the outside world. You don't know the men who are discussing with each other; they are not ordinary people. The awakening is possible only if they have a background which can make the small piece of dialogue -- which in itself is nothing -- of tremendous importance.

But when you read them, you cannot believe how these dialogues can make somebody enlightened -- because you are reading them and you are not becoming enlightened!

Something is missing in your perspective.

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My effort will be to give you the whole context, and to explain not only the words of the dialogue but also the individuals who are engaged in these small dialogues. Only then will you see that they are not small things, they are the very optimum. Those people have reached to the last point; these dialogues are just a little push. They were almost ready ... it can be said that even without these dialogues they were going to become enlightened, maybe a week later.

These dialogues have cut not more than one week from their being enlightened.

Now that Zen has become fashionable all around the world there is so much written about it. But nobody I have come across up to now ... and I have seen almost everything that has been written about Zen by people who don't have any enlightenment, but who are impressed by the beauty of the people who have been following Zen. They have picked up things which make no sense, are almost nonsense, and they don't have the capacity to give you the background.

Remember, everything depends on the background: long years of preparation are there, long years of waiting, longing, long years of silent patience, meditating. This dialogue comes at the apex, at the very end. If you can understand the whole process, then it will be explained to you how the dialogue can bring enlightenment to someone.

Without knowing the whole process, Zen will remain just entertainment to the world.

What is enlightenment to Zen people falls down to a state of entertainment. These dialogues are not the whole process. It is just like an iceberg: a small piece is showing above the sea --

one-tenth of the whole iceberg -- and nine-tenths is underneath. Unless you understand that nine tenths, this one tenth will not give you any insight.

IN THE OLD DAYS, says Ta Hui, THE VENERABLE YEN YANG ASKED CHAO

CHOU, "WHAT IS IT LIKE WHEN NOT BRINGING A SINGLE THING?" CHOU SAID,

"PUT IT DOWN." YEN YANG SAID, "SINCE NOT A SINGLE THING IS BROUGHT, PUT WHAT DOWN?" CHOU SAID, "IF YOU CAN'T PUT IT DOWN, PICK IT UP." AT

THESE WORDS, YEN YANG WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED.

Now, if you remain confined to this small anecdote, you cannot explain how it can bring great enlightenment. First, in the context of the whole Zen approach: in the eyes of Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Ta Hui, the world is nothing but emptiness. And when they use the word 'emptiness', they have their own meaning; it is not the ordinary meaning that you can find in a dictionary.

If everything is removed from your room -- all the furniture, the photographs hanging on the wall, the chandelier and everything -- and nothing is left behind, anybody will say, "This room is empty." This is the ordinary meaning of the word. But from the perspective of Gautam Buddha, this room is empty of things but it is full of space. In fact, when things were there, they were hindering the space. The very word 'room' means space. So it is overflowing now with space, with nothing to hinder, nothing to prevent and obstruct the space.

Space is not a negative thing like the word emptiness connotes. Everything in the world has come out of space and everything disappears into space. Space seems to be the reservoir of all that is ...

Now, scientists say they have discovered, a few years ago, black holes in space. It is the most amazing story that science has to tell. They themselves feel embarrassed, but what can they do? They have come across a few places in space ... the moment any star, even the biggest, comes into that area, you can no longer see it: it has become just pure nothingness.

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immediately pulled into the black hole, and disappears from the world. Every day, many stars continue disappearing into black holes; that was the basic idea.

But then, certainly, scientists started thinking: if there are black holes, there must be white holes too. If everything goes on disappearing into the black holes, one day everything will have disappeared. But every day new stars are being born -- from where do they come? It is still an assumption, a hypothesis, that from wherever they come, that place should be called a white hole.

My own understanding is that the black hole and the white hole are just two sides of the same phenomenon; they are not separate. It is just like a door: you can go in, you can go out.

On one side of the door is written "Push"; and on the other side is written "Pull." The black hole de-creates; it is a death.

Not only do you get tired and old, now they say even metal gets tired; even for machinery, working twenty-four hours a day is not right. You are creating too much tension in the metal.

It needs a little rest to recover itself; otherwise, soon it will not be functional anymore. Even machines become old, just as men do.

Stars become old, just like anything else. When a star or a planet has become too old and cannot hold itself together any more, it disappears into a black hole. Its death has come. It is a de-creation. The function of the black hole is to disperse all constituents of the planet or star --

they return to their original form.

The original form is just electricity, just energy, so matter melts into energy. Energy cannot be seen, you cannot see it. Have you ever seen electricity? You have seen a byproduct of electricity, like your light bulb, but you have not seen electricity itself. When it is passing through a wire, do you see anything? And if the bulb is removed, electricity is still there -- but do you see it?

No energy can be seen. No energy is visible, so when the whole mass of a vast star or a planet falls back into the original source, it becomes pure energy. That is why you cannot see it: it has disappeared. Perhaps it was time for a long rest. And once it is rested, then the basic constituents can again come together, can again form a new body and get out into the universe from the other side of the black hole -- that is the white hole.

This is very significant today in the minds of physicists. It means the universe is continuously renewing itself in the same way as every individual is born, grows old, dies, and then somewhere else is born in a new form, fresh, young. This is the process of rejuvenation.

Existence itself is full of space. Space looks empty to us -- but it is not empty, it is a potential for things to happen. Everything has come out of it -- hence, how can you call it empty? Can you call a mother's womb empty? It has the potential of giving birth to life. It appears empty, because its potentiality has not been transformed into actuality.

Gautam Buddha was the first man to use the word 'emptiness' in the sense of spaciousness, infinite space. Everything is just a form and the thing that is creating the form is invisible.

Only the form is visible, but the energy that makes it is invisible.

The Zen disciple meditates continuously on the emptiness of existence, on the spaciousness of existence. All forms are empty, no form has a self. Only existence has a self.

All others are only dreams lasting for a few years -- and in the eternity of time, a few years are not much to brag about, they don't matter at all. The meditator continually goes on and on realizing the nature and the flavor of nothingness.

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The day he understands that everything phenomenal that appears will disappear ... today it is, tomorrow it may be gone -- it is nothing eternal. And unless something is eternal, it is not real.

Getting deep into this meditation will change your whole life. Anger comes and you know that it is just an energy form; you don't pay attention to the person against whom you are angry. The meditator pays his whole attention to anger itself. The form disappears, and the energy contained in the form is absorbed by the meditator.

As things go on disappearing -- sadness, tensions, unhappiness, misery -- you go on becoming more and more powerful, because everything is falling back into the form of energy. In this state, try to understand the first anecdote.

YEN YANG ASKED CHAO CHOU, "WHAT IS IT LIKE WHEN NOT BRINGING A SINGLE THING?" It is just customary. Both are adepts -- one has already become enlightened, the other is just on the verge -- and it is respectful to bring something as a present to the master.

But Yen Yang asked, "WHAT IS IT LIKE WHEN NOT BRINGING A SINGLE

THING?" He has not brought any present to the master, and he is asking the master himself,

"What is it like, how does it feel, when you come to the master without a single thing as a present?" CHOU SAID, "PUT IT DOWN."

Logically it is an absolutely absurd answer. When you have not brought anything, what is there to put down? But there is something, and it is not absurd. Yen Yang has asked, "WHAT

IS IT LIKE, how does it feel, WHEN NOT BRINGING A SINGLE THING?" And when Chou says "PUT IT DOWN," he is saying to put down whatsoever it feels like. He is not saying to put anything down; that much is understood between the two of them. How can you put down something which you have not brought? But you are feeling something -- put that feeling down, get rid of it.

Because all things are empty forms, you never bring anything, whether you bring them or not. It is always nothingness -- either potential nothingness or actual nothingness, but it is nothingness. So don't be bothered about it. Whatever your feeling is, there is no need to discuss it; you just put it down, get free of it.

YEN YANG SAID, "SINCE NOT A SINGLE THING IS BROUGHT, PUT WHAT

DOWN?" It is not that he has not understood; it is not your kind of question that he is asking.

He is a man of meditation, and he understands exactly what Chou means when he says, "PUT

IT DOWN." But he is teasing the master; he wants him to say something which is not right, so then he can catch hold of his neck.

He has raised a question in which anybody could be caught. This is the old playfulness in the tradition of Zen. Since not a single thing is brought, put what down? He is making a logical statement, knowing perfectly well what the master means when he says, "PUT IT

DOWN." But you cannot defeat a master.

CHOU SAID, "IF YOU CAN'T PUT IT DOWN, PICK IT UP" -- but he remains in his state of pure nothingness. He does not move a single bit. Although the disciple is trying to move him to say something wrong, an enlightened man, an awakened consciousness cannot be tricked into anything. You can try it from every corner -- and there are thousands of stories in which disciples have been trying to pull the leg of the master. But nobody has ever succeeded.

If somebody succeeds, that means the master is not a master yet, he is a pretender.

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So when he asks, "PUT WHAT DOWN?" he is making a logical statement, and he is trying to prove that what the master is saying is absurd. But the master cannot be moved from his state of being. He says, "Okay, if you cannot put it down, pick it up."

The situation remains the same. The same question can be asked again: "If I have not brought anything, how can I pick it up?" But Yen Yang understood that it was enough. You cannot trick the master into making a statement which is not according to his experience of nothingness. There is nothing to pick up and there is nothing to put down, other than the feeling that you are carrying. Either put it down ... or, if you cannot put it down, then pick it up. What else can be said?

This absurd statement, which looks absurd to any outsider, suddenly triggers in the disciple who is just on the verge of enlightenment the same light, the same understanding that there is nothing to carry, nothing to put down, nothing to pick up -- that you are only a pure awareness in an ocean of nothingness.

Listening to it from the master Chou, it goes directly as an arrow to his being. AT THESE

WORDS, YEN YANG WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED.

I would like to give you another instance which is more clear and which will help you to understand this instance.

One great king, Prasenjita, a contemporary of Gautam Buddha, was going to receive Gautam Buddha outside the main gate of the city. He had a very precious diamond which was unique; all the kings of this country were jealous of this diamond. So he thought, "What would be an appropriate present for Buddha's coming into my city? I will take this diamond ..."

His wife was a long-time follower of Gautam Buddha, since even before she was married to Prasenjita. In fact, Prasenjita was going only because his wife was insisting, "It is a precious moment, don't miss it." He wanted deep down to show the world his generosity, his ego, by offering the great diamond.

On the surface it was one thing: he is so polite, so nice, so humble, that he has brought the greatest, most valuable present. But deep down in his unconscious it was something else: Thousands of monks will be there -- ten thousand monks used to move with Gautam Buddha, wherever he went -- and the whole capital will be there to receive him. So it will be a good chance to show his wealth, his power, his generosity.

His wife could see it in his eyes. She said, "Listen, to Gautam Buddha this is just a stone; don't think that he will be impressed by it. My feeling is, in our pond in the palace, there is a beautiful lotus flower -- you should take that. That will mean much more to him than a dead stone."

He said, "I will take both, and I will see whether you are right or I am."

He went there with his wife. And he was the king, so of course he was ahead of the whole crowd of people who had come to receive Buddha. He brought the diamond before him, and said, "I am not very rich, but I have one of the most precious diamonds, and I offer it to you."

Buddha said, "Drop it."

He could not believe it, but before thousands of people, when Buddha said, "Drop it," he could not even resist or say no. He had to drop it. He thought that perhaps his wife was right: to Buddha it is just a stone; to you it is a very precious thing.

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Then he brought with the other hand the lotus flower, and Buddha said, "Drop it."

He said, "My God, my wife is also wrong!" -- so he dropped the lotus flower.

Now there was nothing to present. Just with empty hands he was standing there ... and Buddha said, "DROP IT!" Now, this was too much! When there is nothing left, what can he drop?

And Mahakashyapa started laughing. Mahakashyapa was the originator of Zen. He was really the founder, but because he never spoke, all that is mentioned once in a while is his laughter.

Prasenjita looked at Mahakashyapa. He himself was the son of a great king and had renounced his kingdom and followed Gautam Buddha. Prasenjita said, "Mahakashyap, why are you laughing?"

He said, "I am laughing because you don't understand what Buddha is saying. To understand him, a deep experience of meditation is needed. He is not saying to drop the diamond, or drop the lotus flower; they are just false. Drop yourself! Unless you drop yourself, you don't drop anything. Fall at his feet!"

This was too much. Prasenjita had not thought about it. He had brought presents ... he was not a follower, his wife was. But now, before so many people, it looked awkward not to bow down.

He touched Gautam Buddha's feet with his head, and this time Gautam Buddha laughed.

He said, "You are pretending to drop, but not dropping! There is no need to pretend here.

Either be authentic, or don't do it. Now take up your diamond and your lotus flower and get lost. If you cannot drop yourself, there is no other present that you can bring to me.

"Unless you are the present itself, no present is acceptable. Only love can be a present.

Only a deep let-go can be a present. Only merging with the one who has arrived can be a present. All presents are just too ordinary: even to bring them is to show your stupidity."

Listening to him, seeing him -- suddenly he was seeing Buddha for the first time. Feeling the energy field around him ... he had never been silent, and now for the first time he was feeling silent -- and thousands of people were utterly silent, as if there was nobody else.

Prasenjita touched Gautam Buddha's feet a second time, and Gautam Buddha said, "Now it is right, it is coming from your very heart. Now I can accept your present." For the ordinary person, the question will be, "What present?" because the diamond has been rejected, the lotus flower has been rejected ... and Buddha is accepting the present now. For the ordinary mind, nothing is transferred any more; but to the perception of the enlightened one, everything has happened.

Prasenjita is no longer the same man. He did not return home. He said to his wife, "I am puzzled: you have been so long a disciple of Gautam Buddha; why then did you get married, why are you still in the palace? When your master is moving barefoot in the hot sun around the country you should be with him, you should take care of him. You can go back home --

the chariot is ready -- but I have dropped myself, I have given myself as a present. I am not coming home."

The wife had not thought of such a possibility. She was a disciple, but that did not mean ...

But now, when the husband was not coming ... she also rose to a higher state of consciousness. She said, "You cannot defeat me; I belong to the same race of warriors to Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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which you belong. Defeat is simply not acceptable. Death is acceptable, but defeat -- no. I am also going to remain. The chariot can go back empty."

This dropping will help you to understand the dialogue between Yen Yang and Chou.

Chou is saying, "Don't carry any tension. If you have not brought anything, it doesn't matter.

When you bring something, then too it doesn't matter. So put it down. This whole feeling that you have not brought anything, this whole guilt, this whole embarrassment -- put it down."

But when Yen Yang says, "When I have not brought anything, how can I put it down?"

Chou then says, "It is up to you. Pick it up." At that very moment, like a sudden bolt of lightning, Yen Yang could see what he means: he is not talking about any thing; he is talking about the tense mind. Either put it down, or if you cannot -- it is sad, but it is okay -- pick it up.

An immediate understanding arose in him. YEN YANG WAS GREATLY

ENLIGHTENED.

If you can see the whole background -- how meditation functions, how masters of meditation have functioned ... And remember, Chou would not have said this to anybody or everybody. Certainly it is Yen Yang's state that is clear to Chou. When you come before the master, he knows where you are. Seeing that just a small thought was preventing him from entering the great nothingness, he answered this way -- otherwise he would not have. If a professor were visiting, a scientist, a logician, he would not have said that. It would be pointless; the other man would not be ready for it.

That's why I have been continually saying to you, I don't answer your questions, I answer you. The question is irrelevant; the questioner is my target, not his question. So it is possible that the same question may be asked by different people and I may answer differently, because the questioner is different. Different people can phrase the question in the same way, in the same words; but different people cannot ask the same question, because those different individuals have different states of consciousness. I have to answer their consciousness, not the rubbish that comes out of their minds.

This creates a problem for anybody who wants to work out what my philosophy is. He is soon going to be in an insane asylum, because he will find so many answers for the same question that he is going to go crazy, nuts! It is not a philosophy; it is not a consistent logical system. It is an intimate, individual-to-individual transfer of some energy, of some light.

AGAIN: A MONK ASKED AN ANCIENT WORTHY, "WHAT IS IT LIKE WHEN THE

STUDENT CAN'T COPE?" THE ANCIENT WORTHY SAID, "I TOO AM LIKE THIS."

This is strange as far as the mind is concerned -- the master saying, "I am also like this." A student cannot cope -- that is understandable. But the master saying, "I TOO AM LIKE THIS"

leads you into a dimension which is not of logic, it is of existence itself.

THE MONK SAID, "TEACHER, WHY CAN'T YOU COPE EITHER?" THE ANCIENT

WORTHY SAID, "IF I COULD COPE, I COULD TAKE AWAY THIS INABILITY TO

COPE OF YOURS." AT THESE WORDS, THE MONK WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED.

First the monk asks about somebody else, from which the master can see directly that he wants to ask a question about himself, but is not courageous enough to ask it.

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his friend has the problem. If you cannot even accept that it is YOUR problem, you don't deserve any answer. You are not authentic even in your question.

He says, "WHAT IS IT LIKE WHEN THE STUDENT CAN'T COPE?" On the path, the master's time has not to be wasted about others; in these rare moments you should ask about yourself. He is really asking, "What is it like when I cannot cope?", but is cowardly.

THE ANCIENT WORTHY SAID, "I TOO AM LIKE THIS." Now the thing becomes even more puzzling. First, the questioner is not opening his heart, but he thinks whatever the master answers will be applicable to him too. And what the master answers is, "I TOO AM

LIKE THIS."

This makes no sense. THE MONK SAID, "TEACHER, WHY CAN'T YOU COPE

EITHER?" It is okay for a disciple, for a student, but for you ...? You are a master, you have already arrived, why can't you cope?

AND THE ANCIENT WORTHY SAID, "IF I COULD COPE, I COULD TAKE AWAY

THIS INABILITY TO COPE OF YOURS." He is not talking about the student, he is not talking about anybody else; he directly hits the monk, who was hiding behind the word

'student'.

The master says, "IF I COULD COPE, I COULD TAKE AWAY THIS INABILITY TO

COPE OF YOURS." If I cannot take it away, that simply means I myself can't cope, I am not a real master. Before a false student, how can I be a real master? I can expose my reality only to one who is authentic towards me. He has caught hold of the man, and he says, "I COULD

TAKE AWAY THIS INABILITY TO COPE OF YOURS."

It must have been a sudden shock -- the monk was asking about somebody else, and the master is answering him. That sudden shock stopped the functioning of the mind. Anything sudden and the mind cannot manage. It can manage only with that which is stale and old, perfectly known to it; it can repeat like a parrot the old answers. But now, what to do? -- the master has caught him red-handed, cheating.

A silence, a shock, but the shock and the silence have helped immensely ... AT THESE

WORDS, THE MONK WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF THESE TWO MONKS IS PRECISELY WHERE YOU

ARE LOST; WHERE YOU HAVE DOUBTS IS EXACTLY WHERE THESE TWO

MONKS ASKED THEIR QUESTIONS. "PHENOMENA ARE BORN FROM

DISCRIMINATION AND ALSO PERISH THROUGH DISCRIMINATION. WIPE OUT

ALL PHENOMENA OF DISCRIMINATION -- THIS DHARMA HAS NO BIRTH OR

DESTRUCTION."

This path, this alchemy of Zen, has no birth and no destruction. It is one of the most direct transmissions from the master to the disciple. It does not go into long verbiage, it does not discuss unnecessary problems. Zen has reduced everything to the very essential; it has cut out everything that was not necessary.

Zen is like a telegram. Have you noticed that when you write a letter, it goes on becoming longer and longer. It is easy to start the letter, but it is difficult to end it. When you send a telegram, just ten words, it is a condensed message. Your ten-page-long letter will not have the same effect as the ten words of a telegram. The more condensed the meaning is, the more striking. The more spread the meaning is, the less impressive.

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Zen believes in the very essentials. It has no nonsense around it, no rituals, in which all other religions have got lost, no chanting, no mantras, no scriptures -- just small anecdotes. If you have the right awareness, they will hit you directly in the heart. It is a very condensed and crystallized teaching, but it needs the person to be prepared for it. And the only preparation is meditative awareness.

You cannot teach Zen in universities. It will be difficult for the simple reason that the students don't have meditative awareness, and you don't have books on Zen which can make meaningful that which looks absurd. You will be surprised that in many Zen universities they are teaching Zen through my books, because my books are at least making an effort to make the absurd appear sensible. I'm trying to give a context, the right background, because I am talking to people who are not born in the Zen tradition. Zen books themselves are very fragmentary.

I have never been to Japan and most probably the government of Japan won't allow me.

But in many universities ... in Japan, the Zen monasteries have a university attached where the Zen monks can teach. It is simply strange that it is their tradition ... they have an almost twelve-hundred-year-old history with great literature, paintings, poems, but they are all fragmentary. Nobody has tried to give more than just the conclusion; nobody has given the whole context.

It was very strange. When I was arrested in America, the first telegram protesting to the president came from a Zen master from Japan: "This is absolutely ugly of your country -- to arrest a man who has not committed any crimes and who cannot commit any crimes. Although we don't know him personally, we teach from his books in our university. The insight that he has brought to Zen is so clear that it is not possible that the man has not reached to the same space as Gautam Buddha.

"You have arrested a Gautam Buddha. Please immediately release him, or it will be a condemnation of you and your country forever." The jailer immediately came to me and showed me the telegram. A copy was sent to me and a copy to the president of the United States.

Just now they are having a great festival of sannyasins in Japan. Everybody else is also invited, and thousands of people are going to gather; most will be monks, people who are meditating, but are somewhere stuck -- people who have been reading, but cannot find the right explanation.

All absurd statements appear absurd only to the mundane mind. Once you have risen above your mundane mediocrity, once you can see clearly, the absurdity disappears. And not only the absurdity disappears -- its disappearance will be a disappearance of your own ego too.

Your mind will also disappear with it.

These small dialogues and stories have served so many people in attaining enlightenment, which great scriptures have not been able to do. Great scriptures have created only scholars.

There is no place for scholars in Zen. For example, what is a scholar to do with these two stories? But a scholar is perfectly at ease with the VEDAS, with the GITA, with THE BIBLE, with the TALMUD, with the TORAH. He is very much at ease, because those are ten-page letters and these are telegrams -- urgent, immediate, not giving you any explanation, but simply giving you the very essence, the perfume of thousands of flowers. You just have to be alert and meditative enough to absorb them.

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If you can absorb them, in the whole world's literature there is nothing more important than Zen anecdotes. In everything they are unique. They are small paintings, and just watching them, you will fall into such peace that you cannot conceive of getting from a Picasso. Seeing a Picasso, you will get such nightmares ... but watching a Zen painting, it is very simple; you will have a great peace descending on you.

There are great poetries, but not of the same significance as the small haikus from Zen. I have always loved Basho, one of the haiku masters. His small haikus say so much that even a whole thousand-page holy scripture does not say -- it is all so much prose. A small haiku of Basho is:

The ancient pond ...

And when you hear the haiku, you have to visualize it. It is so small that it is not a question of understanding, it is a question of entering into it. The ancient pond ... just have the feel of an ancient pond, visualize it.

The ancient pond.

A frog jumps in.

Plop.

And the haiku is complete.

But he has said so much: the ancient pond, the ancient trees, the ancient rocks around it ...

and there must be silence ... and a frog jumps in. For a moment the silence is disturbed, plop.

And again the silence is restored ... perhaps deeper than it was before.

What does he want to say in this haiku? He is saying, This ancient world ... and your existence is just a plop, a little sound in the silence. And then you are gone, and the silence deepens. In this way he makes the whole world ephemeral, dreamlike -- nothing solid in it, except the great silence.

That great silence is your very being. It is also the very being of the whole universe.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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Wordlessness

27 July 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO

THERE IS NO SECOND PERSON

MASTER CHANG CHING SAID, "THE ULTIMATE TRUTH IS WORDLESS.

PEOPLE OF THE TIME DO NOT REALIZE THIS: THEY IMPOSE THE PRACTICE OF

OTHER THINGS, CONSIDERING THEM ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

THEY DO NOT KNOW THAT INHERENT NATURE HAS NEVER BEEN SENSE

OBJECTS, THAT IT IS THE GATE OF SUBTLE WONDROUS GREAT LIBERATION, AWARE OF ALL THERE IS WITHOUT BEING STAINED OR OBSTRUCTED.

THIS LIGHT HAS NEVER STOPPED: FROM AGES PAST UP TO THE PRESENT

IT'S BEEN STEADY, NEVER CHANGING. THE SUBTLE ILLUMINATION OF THE

SPIRITUAL LIGHT DOES NOT DEPEND ON BEING CULTIVATED AND REFINED.

SINCE THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND, PEOPLE GRASP THE FORMS OF THINGS --

IT'S JUST LIKE RUBBING THE EYES, FALSELY MAKING OPTICAL ILLUSIONS

ARISE.

THERE IS NO SECOND PERSON ... In this small statement Ta Hui is saying that the whole of existence is one. And because there is no second person we cannot even say that it is one. This has to be understood ... because the moment we say "one," "two" arises. Then all the numbers follow.

In India we have developed a roundabout way of saying "one," not direct. The mystics of this country have never said that the world, existence is one; they have always said, "It is not two, it is non-dual."

It may seem that there is no difference -- but there is some problem logically. If you say

"one," it implies the whole series of numbers, all the digits. If you say "not two," you don't say

"one," still you are indicating "one" without saying it, indicating oneness.

That's why Ta Hui is also saying in the same way, "THERE IS NO SECOND PERSON."

He could have simply said, "There is only one person" -- but he is a well -- trained logician, an intellectual of the first grade; hence he is also very clear not to commit any mistake when he is saying anything about the truth. And now he is in a position to say something about the truth.

One of the great logicians of our times, Ludwig Wittgenstein, has written a book on pure logic. He was a strange person, verging on the mystic side, but never saying anything about it.

Only once in a while, writing about logic, he would give certain indications which show that he was aware that there is much more to existence than just logic. In this book, TRACTATUS, he says, "One should not say anything about something which is inexpressible."

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I wrote him a letter. I was a student and I wrote him a letter saying, "If you are true, you should not have said this much even. You say, 'One should not say anything about the inexpressible' -- but you are already saying something about it. You are saying, 'It is inexpressible.' You are already giving some indication."

My professor of logic said, "You have been torturing me, now you have started torturing faraway people. He lives in Germany, now ... it is none of your business to harass people."

I said, "I am not harassing him, I am simply saying that if he really means it then he should remove this sentence."

He was one of the best minds. Even his own teacher, Bertrand Russell, had recognized him as a better logician than himself. But he never replied to me, because to reply to me would have meant he had to remove that sentence from the book. There is no logical defense about it. Whatever you say, you are saying something. Even if you say, "Nothing can be said about it," you are still saying something about it. So logic has its own subtleties.

Ta Hui is a well-trained professional logician, but any logician -- if he goes to the very extreme of his own logical thinking -- is bound to come to the point at which logic has to be left behind, because logic ends and existence continues. You have to leave logic behind and go with existence. But then you have to start speaking a different language.

Rather than simply saying, "There is only one existence, hence only one person" -- in which case he knows he will be committing a logical mistake -- he uses the same device that has been used for centuries in this country. He says, "There are not two existences, there are not two persons." He is indicating the one, but without saying anything about it, simply denying the duality, but not affirming the oneness -- because the moment you affirm the oneness you have affirmed the whole multitude of numbers.

It is not something philosophical; now his statements are becoming more and more existential.

We are all part of one oceanic unity.

Our separation is an illusion.

Except our separation there is no other illusion, and because of the separation there are all kinds of problems: enemies, friends, anger, hate, love -- all the problems of ambition, struggle, conquering, dominating, becoming somebody special.

But the moment you realize that there is nothing that separates you from anything in existence ... not only the human beings but the animals of the wild, the trees, the birds, the stars -- they are all part of one organic unity. And I emphasize the word organic, because there are two kinds of unities.

One is a mechanical unity, for example your car or your bicycle or your typewriter. They have a certain unity, but it is mechanical -- you can take them apart. You can separate each part of your car: that does not mean that the car has died, it simply means that you have to put all those parts together again. And if you do, that will not mean that the car has come back to life, it is not a resurrection! The car does not have any life, it is only a mechanical unity. You can pull parts apart, you can put parts together: the car is not more than the sum total of its parts.

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parts back together, but you will not bring it to life again. You may again have a skeleton, but the skeleton is not what the man used to be. You have simply taken parts apart, and you have not seen anything disappearing. But something invisible to the eyes is no more there. You can put all the parts together perfectly, but it will only be a corpse.

The mechanical unity is a dead thing. The organic unity is a living phenomenon. That's why I emphasize that existence is an organic unity. We are all one; there is no other.

MASTER CHANG CHING SAID: "THE ULTIMATE TRUTH IS WORDLESS." It is almost impossible to say something about truth without committing mistakes. However intelligently you try to express it, still you will have to commit mistakes because it is just not possible to bring the ultimate experience into words.

Chang Ching is right when he says, "THE ULTIMATE TRUTH IS WORDLESS," -- and he is wrong too. If it is really wordless, then why call it 'ultimate', and why call it 'wordless'?

because that too is a word; you are using two words, 'ultimate' and 'wordless.' Although your effort is to indicate something true -- your intention is good -- the very nature of language is such that you cannot manage not to commit mistakes. Hence many mystics have remained silent.

It is true that truth is wordless -- but don't say it. By saying it you are contradicting yourself. I would prefer a little roundabout way: say that "Where words end, you enter into truth," or "When you are in absolute silence, whatever you experience is truth." But you cannot say anything about it. Just the nature of language does not allow it.

Once it is understood that truth becomes available to you when you are in utter silence, how can you manage to bring that which comes in silence to the lowest level of language?

Language is mundane; it has been invented for mundane purposes, for the marketplace.

But for the temple there is no language. In the temple you have to be silent. It is perfectly right to use language when you are talking about things, but the moment you go beyond things you have simply to leave language behind.

So the intention of Chang Ching is right. He is a man who understands what he is saying.

But I want you to understand one thing: all that has been said about truth is bound to be full of faults and flaws. This is the least faulty statement: THE ULTIMATE TRUTH IS WORDLESS. PEOPLE OF THE TIME DO NOT

REALIZE THIS: THEY IMPOSE THE PRACTICE OF OTHER THINGS, CONSIDERING

THEM ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THEY DO NOT KNOW THAT INHERENT NATURE

HAS NEVER BEEN SENSE OBJECTS, THAT IT IS THE GATE OF SUBTLE

WONDROUS GREAT LIBERATION.

The mystics have always condemned their contemporaries -- obviously, because those were the people who were misunderstanding them. Nobody condemns the dead because nobody knows whether they understand you or misunderstand you whether they hear you or do not hear you whether they even know about you. So about the dead, nothing can be said.

But with their contemporaries, the living people, all the mystics have felt this problem -- that they don't understand.

PEOPLE OF THE TIME DO NOT REALIZE THIS ...

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Ta Hui is not very ancient; only one thousand years have passed since his times. But in the RIG VEDAS, which are the ancientmost scriptures in the world, you will find the same statement: "The people of this time don't understand."

Gautam Buddha, two thousand five hundred years before, says the same thing. And unfortunately I have to say the same thing: the people of the time don't understand. It seems to be consistently the situation. The mystic is destined to be misunderstood, and perhaps the same will remain the situation in future, because the whole world cannot become mystics ...

One would love to have the whole world become mystics, seekers of truth, but it is hoping too much. Even the most optimistic person cannot conceive that the whole world one day will be able to understand the mysterious experience of spiritual realization.

Chang Ching is right: people of the time do not realize that the ultimate truth is wordless.

They go on asking questions about it -- and there are people who answer them too. There are thinkers who think about truth. That is one of the most impossible thing in the world: how can you think about truth? -- either you know it or you don't. A blind man thinking about light --

what can he think? is there any possibility? He cannot even think about darkness, what to say about light.

I think many of the people in the world never consider the fact that blind people are not living in darkness. It is being taken for granted that a blind man, poor fellow, is living in utter darkness because he has no eyes. But you don't look at the fact that to see darkness, eyes are needed. How can you see darkness without eyes? I can understand ... when you close your eyes you see darkness -- because you have eyes. The blind man has not closed his eyes; he has no eyes at all.

Do you think the deaf person is living in utter silence? Then it would have been really blissful, because that's what all the mystics are searching for, utter silence. If the deaf person is living in utter silence, then the problem is very simple -- so why go on doing unnecessary meditations, yoga exercises, standing on your head and making all kinds of contortions?

Leave all this to the circuses; you simply go to the hospital and get your ears finished -- and you will be in utter silence!

But you will not be. The moment your ears are gone, you can neither hear noise nor you can hear silence. The moment your eyes are gone, neither can you see light, nor can you see darkness. So how can you think ...? But all the thinkers of the world are doing the same thing: people are asking questions, and great thinkers are finding answers, and both are sitting in the same boat. Neither the questioner knows what he is asking nor the answerer knows what he is answering.

Truth is an experience, not a conception. It is not something that you speculate about, think about, and then come to a conclusion. It is not your conclusion.

Truth is something that ... you open, you become silent, you become receptive, you become wordless ... your whole mind comes to a full stop, and then what is left is the truth.

To be showered with that experience is to be transformed into a new being. It is true resurrection. And is true because now you will never die, now you will never know death.

Now you will always know what life, eternal life, is. And it is not going to be only your life. It is going to be simply life as such, neither mine nor yours.

I am also a dewdrop in the same ocean in which you are a dewdrop. The moment the dewdrop falls in the ocean, all separation disappears.

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AWARE OF ALL THERE IS WITHOUT BEING STAINED OR OBSTRUCTED, THIS

LIGHT HAS NEVER STOPPED ... The moment you go beyond words and beyond mind you know something which can be indicated by light -- the closest thing to it is our experience of light -- but it is far more.

Kabir says, "As if one thousand suns have arisen all around" -- but even one thousand suns will be simply a difference of quantity. One sun or one thousand suns ... the difference is not of quality, so I have an objection to it.

All that can be said is that in our ordinary experience, light comes closest to becoming a metaphor for that experience. But the experience is qualitatively different, not just more, light, bigger light. It is something that can be represented by light in our ordinary, mundane world --

but even light or love or beauty are all simply metaphors, poetic representations. But the actual experience is qualitatively different.

AWARE OF ALL THERE IS WITHOUT BEING STAINED OR OBSTRUCTED, THIS

LIGHT HAS NEVER STOPPED ... Now, when Chang Ching says, "THIS LIGHT HAS

NEVER STOPPED, "he is trying to indicate the qualitative difference. All the lights that you know depend on fuel: you light a candle, it burns the whole night, but in the morning it is gone. The fuel is finished, it was dependent on the fuel.

Scientists say that our sun has been giving light to the whole solar system, our solar system. There are millions of solar systems; there are millions of suns, and every sun has its own territory of planets and moons -- that is a solar system. Our sun has its own solar system, and it has been giving light to this solar system for at least ten million years. Our earth is four million years old, but even the sun, a tremendous source of light, is every day diminishing.

Quantity, howsoever big, is bound to end one day -- although they say it is not very close.

I have heard: In a scientific conference, a scientist was saying, "According to my calculations ..." and scientists don't agree about the calculations. It is very difficult to calculate how much more energy the sun still has inside it. All is inference. One scientist was reading a paper on how long our sun is going to last, and he said, "According to me it is going to last four billion years, and not more than that. That is the maximum limit I can give to the sun; longer than that it cannot have energy."

A woman sitting in front of him started trembling, so he became worried about what was wrong with her. He asked, "What is the matter, lady?"

She said, "Repeat what you said -- how long is the sun is going to last?"

He said, "It will last at least four billion years."

She said, "That's okay. I was afraid that you said four million."

"But what difference does it make to you? You are not going to last even forty years," the scientist said to the old woman." You need not be worried, it is not going to happen in your lifetime. You will be finished."

And then whether it lasts four million or four billion years does not make any difference! It may not make any difference, but one thing is certain: it is not different from the candle. Your candle lasts one night, the sun lasts billions of years -- but there is a beginning and there is an end to both. So it is the same kind of light as your small candle that burns the night over, and in the morning is gone.

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But THIS LIGHT HAS NEVER STOPPED. The light that one experiences when mind stops is the light that has always been there, eternal, with no beginning and no end. It does not depend on any fuel. And that makes the great difference, the qualitative difference: it is independent of any fuel, it is autonomous. Because it is autonomous it will continue forever.

And to enter into such light ... the entering is not an ordinary entry. The entering is almost a merger, a melting. As ice melts into water, you melt into this light.

FROM AGES PAST UP TO THE PRESENT IT'S BEEN STEADY, NEVER

CHANGING. THE SUBTLE ILLUMINATION OF THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT DOES NOT

DEPEND ON BEING CULTIVATED AND REFINED.

This spiritual light is what we mean by enlightenment. One who has seen this light has seen the ultimate source of life itself. Just by seeing it, he has become it -- hence we call him enlightened. His innermost being is now connected with the ultimate.

This experience of enlightenment does not depend on being cultivated. It does not depend on what you do, whether you practice yoga postures or chant certain mantras or read certain holy scriptures or do fasting or any other kind of nonsense. It does not depend on what you do

-- it is already there. It is not a question of cultivating it and it is not a question of making a goal of it. It is not far away from you, so there is no question of going in search of it. It is within you.

All search has to stop, only then will you find it. All ambition has to collapse; all desiring, all longing, all goals have to disappear. You are simply sitting, going nowhere, not even in your thoughts ... just sitting silently, still, unmoving, going nowhere, relaxed within yourself, completely centered ... and suddenly it is all there.

With the experience the awareness that it has always been there. It is not dependent on any act of yours. No prayer is going to help, no fire worship is going to help, no reading of scriptures is going to help. What is going to help is stopping all activities of body and mind just for a few moments being within yourself, going nowhere, just being at home ... and it explodes with such tremendous force that what people have seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is just a faraway echo. It was a great light, according to the witnesses, as if the sun itself had descended in Hiroshima -- it was so bright.

But the light that is within you is far more different -- qualitatively, because it has many aspects that no other light has. Love is one of its aspects, beauty is one of its aspects, grace is one of its aspects, blissfulness is one of its aspects. And it is a light that is not hot, it is cool.

You have just not to go anywhere, and you will find it. Do not cultivate anything; what you are going to find is already there, only you are not looking at it, you are keeping it at your back. Just turn and look inside.

SINCE THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND, PEOPLE GRASP THE FORMS OF THINGS --

IT'S JUST LIKE RUBBING THE EYES, FALSELY MAKING OPTICAL ILLUSIONS

ARISE. You can, by rubbing your eyes, create illusions. For example, there is only one sun or one moon, but you can rub your eyes and you can see three moons, four moons -- it all depends on you.

One man had taken his son to the pub. He was a well-known drunkard in the locality, and his son had come of age and he wanted to teach him how much drinking is allowable, is harmless. So they both started drinking, and then after a few drinks the father said to the son,

"Look at those four people sitting by the side of the other table ..."

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The son said, "Four? Only one person is sitting there."

The father said, "My God! I have gone already past the limit. But still you can learn the teaching: before you enter the pub, look all around, see accurately, and before one man starts looking like two, that is the time to stop. I am already gone, I had ... one man looks like four!

And what have you been doing? Have you been drinking or not?"

The boy was afraid, so he had not been drinking. He was just pretending -- the father was drinking, and he was pretending just to see what happens. He said to the father, "Now let us go home. You have already passed the limit, according to yourself. You are seeing double!"

I have heard about another drunkard who was coming home and was obstructed by an electric pole. He tried hard, this way and that, but always the pole was coming in front of him, and he was bumping into the pole. He said, "This is too much. I have never seen that there are so many poles just in front of my house."

Finally, a policeman watching him felt compassionate, came up to him, and asked, "What is the matter?"

He said, "What is the matter? I am surrounded by electric poles, so in whichever direction I go, immediately I am hit by the pole."

The policeman said, "Wait, I will try to get you out. You are certainly surrounded by many poles."

But the man said, "Just when I went out this evening, there was one pole, as always. From where have so many poles come?"

And the man ... the policeman took him to his house. Because he was always coming home late, the wife was tired of it, so she had given him the key: "You take the key, and whenever you come, don't disturb me, just silently open the door and go to your bedroom and go to sleep. There is no question anymore of fighting and quarreling; we have done enough, and it doesn't make any difference. In fact, the more I fight the more you drink."

He tried hard, the policeman could see, but both his hands were shaking, so the key was not going into the lock. This wife was watching from the window and she said, "What is the matter, have you lost the key?"

He said, "No, I have not lost the key. Something seems to be wrong with the lock. If you can throw me another lock, I may be able to open it."

The policeman said, "Don't be stupid. The lock is perfectly okay, and even if you can manage to open another lock, that won't help. Can I help you?"

He said, "You can help. You just keep the house still for a moment, because it seems there is going to be a very big earthquake. The house is moving, and because of the house the lock is moving, I am moving, the key ... I cannot manage to put it in the hole."

It is not only the drunkards who see many things. Even in our ordinary experience we are seeing many things which are not there. You see a beautiful woman or a beautiful man, and you get married, and after a week you don't see any beauty, you simply don't want to see that woman at all -- and neither does she want to see you. Love turns into hate within a week.

Weekend is love's end -- you have come to the very end. It is five working days, so on the weekend in two days find somebody else to be with.

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What happens when you see so much beauty? Are you behaving differently than the drunk? Is the beauty there, or are you projecting it? Is it your lust that is creating the beauty?

Try to understand: you are projecting the beauty, that's why the beauty is finished when your lust is fulfilled. There was never anything in the first place. You managed to see it, but it was your biological lust that gave you the illusion.

And the same was true for the poor woman: she saw you as if you were Alexander the Great, and after seven days she finds you a third-rate mouse of no value at all. You both are caught in a hell, and it seems to be difficult to get rid of each other.

And it is not going to give you any experience: if somehow you can get away from the woman and the woman can get away from you, immediately you will fall in love with another woman and she will fall with another man. The same story can be repeated your whole life, and still you will not be aware that it is your projections.

A man who is aware can only see the reality. Otherwise, whatever you see is your own idea; whatever you want to see, you see. If you see the reality then there is no frustration ever, because reality remains as it is. But your projections cannot remain.

A drunkard is simply a perfect example of all our experiences ... and not only a symbol, but almost exactly the case. Now scientists say if they inject a few more hormones into you, immediately what you are seeing around you will be different. For example, you see a woman as ugly. If a few more of the hormones which make your manhood more vital are injected into you, immediately the ugly woman will start looking like Sophia Loren: "My God, where has Sophia Loren come from!"

Those hormones are affecting your eyes, your sensibility; they are forcing your mind to see what is not there. Any love affair can be destroyed without any difficulty.

One of my students was in a great love affair. All love affairs are great; there is no point in saying 'GREAT love affair.' He was a very intelligent student, and the father of the girl was an army colonel, who has said that if he sees the boy near his house he will shoot him. And he was such a dangerous man he was known to do things like that. So he could not even go near the house of the girl.

The more he was prevented, the more his mind was projecting, dreaming continuously. He asked me, "What should I do? -- because that old colonel is so idiotic, he may shoot. The whole day he goes on polishing his gun. I look from far away at what he is doing, but whenever I see him he is polishing his gun as if he has only this to do."

He was a retired man, and just out of old habit, he had nothing else to do. And it was known that he is the dangerous type. One can talk to somebody if he will allow you to come close, but this man would shoot him immediately. He had told him, "If I see you near my house, then whatever happens to me I will shoot you."

I said, "I know a doctor. The best way for you is to go to the doctor."

He said, "What can the doctor do about it?"

I said, "You do one thing. The doctor will take a few hormones out of you or he will give you some anti-hormones. If he cannot take them out, he can give you some anti-hormones."

He said, "My God, then what will happen?"

I said, "What will happen? Your great love will disappear. There is no need unnecessarily to waste the poor old colonel's one cartridge. There is no need. Let him polish his gun."

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He said, "I used to think that he is strange -- but you seem even more strange. What kind of advice are you giving me?"

I said, "That's the only right advice. It is nothing but hormones. How many times have you seen his girl?"

He said, "Not many times. Because of him, it is so difficult."

I told him, "You consult any doctor, or consult the professor of biochemistry in the university. It is a simple phenomenon, there is nothing special in it. It is only hormonal attraction. But you get confused; you think you are in love. Those hormones are playing tricks."

All your senses are under the impact of your biology, physiology, your hormones, your chemistry, and your whole life is surrounded by all kinds of illusions. Only a man of realization sees things as they are.

You cannot see things as they are. You can only see things as you want to see them, or perhaps as your physiology, your biology, your chemistry makes you see them. Once a man goes beyond mind, he goes also beyond biology, beyond physiology: these are all parts of his mind.

Knowing the light of the beyond, knowing the truth and being the truth and merging with one organic whole -- all this will happen inside you. Nobody else will know about it, but suddenly your perception of the world will change. Your ambitions for power will disappear; your ambitions for money will disappear; your delusions about beauty will disappear. You will see beauty in a totally different way. You will see life not as surrounded by death.

This whole world will remain the same, but for you, it will not be the same anymore, because you have changed. Your change, your transformation is going to transform the whole world. You will see things in a new light.

There will be no attachment; there will be no desire to grab; there will be no greed; there will be no jealousy. And when all these poisons are no more there, your life is going to be a life of immense grace, of tremendous joy ... full of a light which will start radiating from you, which will be felt by those who are receptive to it. It may trigger the same experience in others. It can become a chain reaction.

That's how it has been going on from masters to disciples. It is not transferred through words; it is transferred through presence, through energy. All that is needed on the part of the disciple is an open heart, with no expectations, with no prejudices -- just a simple, silent, open heart. And if the master is a man of enlightenment, his fire can start your own inner flame; his fire can make you afire, aflame.

That's how light has been transferred, truth has been transferred, from masters to disciples down the ages. They have been speaking, but their speaking was only a net to catch hold of your minds. Your minds need words, and if they can catch hold of your minds, then there is every possibility you will start coming closer and closer. Then without your being aware of it, any moment the fire from the heart of the master can jump into you. Then it will be too late, you cannot do anything. It has happened.

Now, all you can do is allow the fire to jump into others. There is no way to escape from this fire, because in fact it is your own fire; it was just repressed with mountains of rubbish.

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without any fear, the master's fire can burn all your rubbish, and your own fire can start being the way it has to be.

Once you have known your own fire, your own light, your own flowering, life is such a contentment. Only one thing remains after that, and that is a constant gratefulness, a gratitude.

I call it the only prayer. It has no words, but just a feeling towards existence of deep gratitude.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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27

Just being

28 July 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

WHO IS IN THE WAY?

WHEN MASTER JUI YEN WAS DWELLING CONSTANTLY IN HIS ROOM, HE

WOULD CALL TO HIMSELF, "BOSS!"

AND ALSO RESPOND TO HIMSELF, "YES?"

"BE ALERT!"

"I WILL."

"HEREAFTER, DON'T FALL FOR PEOPLE'S DECEPTIONS."

"I WON'T."

JUST AROUSE YOURSELF RIGHT HERE, AND SEE WHAT IT IS. THE ONE WHO

DOES THE AROUSING ISN'T ANYONE ELSE, HE'S JUST THE ONE THAT CAN

RECOGNIZE DIMNESS AND DULLNESS. HE'S YOUR OWN FUNDAMENTAL

IDENTITY. THIS IS ME GIVING MEDICINE TO SUIT THE DISEASE, HAVING NO

OTHER ALTERNATIVE; BRIEFLY POINTING OUT THE ROAD FOR YOU TO

RETURN HOME AND SIT IN PEACE, AND THAT'S ALL. IF YOU STICK TO DEAD

WORDS, AND SAY IT REALLY IS YOUR FUNDAMENTAL IDENTITY, THEN YOU'RE

ACKNOWLEDGING THE CONSCIOUS SPIRIT AS YOUR SELF, AND THIS HAS EVEN

LESS TO DO WITH IT. WHAT I SAID BEFORE ABOUT DEPENDING ON DIMNESS

AND DULLNESS TO ENTER IS THIS. SIMPLY SEE WHAT THE ONE WHO CAN

KNOW DIMNESS AND DULLNESS LIKE THIS ULTIMATELY IS. JUST LOOK RIGHT

HERE, DON'T SEEK TRANSCENDENT ENLIGHTENMENT. JUST OBSERVE AND

OBSERVE: SUDDENLY YOU'LL LAUGH ALOUD. BEYOND THIS, THERE'S

NOTHING THAT CAN BE SAID.

Who is in the way? Nobody else except yourself. You are blocking, standing in the way of your own enlightenment. Nobody else can block the way, because the way is inwards. It is accessible only to you and absolutely to you. But how can you block the way?

It is not your real identity -- because that is the goal -- but your false personality, in which you have started believing as the real ... You believe you have a certain name, you believe you have a certain caste, a certain profession, a certain religion, a certain nationality, but when you were born did you have any of these things? You were simply there without any identity. You were, but there was no idea of 'I', there was no ego.

The ego is blocking the way.

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The whole science of meditation is to take away the ego -- and then you don't even have to travel the way. Once the ego is no longer there, not only is the ego gone, but the way disappears too.

Suddenly you recognize ... you are it; you are the treasure that you were seeking before.

But you lost your treasure, forgot about it, because you become so much involved in seeking, searching, finding. Naturally, all seeking, all searching, all finding is outside.

Inside there is no space to move; there is only space enough to be still, unmoving, silent.

That is your reality.

So the first thing Ta Hui is saying in this sutra is, never be deceived by priests and religious systems, theologies which tell you how to attain enlightenment, how to attain awareness -- because the very how is the problem. The more you try techniques and methods, the more you are nourishing your ego. It is very articulate as far as words are concerned, scriptures are concerned, philosophical systems are concerned. It is very articulate, but the more you nourish the ego, the more you are blocking the way.

You have to be as innocent as the newborn child, who has consciousness but who has no ego. He does not know that he is. Although we know he is, and he feels he is, still the conceptual idea of an ego, of I am, is far away. His consciousness is like a pure sky without clouds.

Once you start collecting things from the outside to create your identity ... any created identity is false, because you are not what you do: you are not your profession; you are not your emotions, your thoughts; you are not your prestige, your power, your respectability.

These are all components of your false identity -- hence your ego is continuously ambitious for more and more. Its desire for more and more is unending. Because it is a false phenomenon, you have to keep continuously busy nourishing it, so you don't have any time left even to look at whom you are nourishing. You are nourishing your greatest enemy.

The whole society is supportive of the ego. Then the problem becomes tremendous: your father wants you to be somebody in the world, your mother wants you to be somebody in the world, your teachers want you to be somebody in the world. All are driving you away from yourself, towards a false identity.

It is very rare to come across a person who wants you to be nobody in the world. If you can find a person who wants you to be nobody in the world, he is your master.

You have to understand clearly that you have to be reborn. Last time you were too small, too helpless. You were not aware of the ways of the world, and you trusted and loved your parents, your teachers, your priests without any doubt, so they were able to manage a false identity for you.

I was staying in a house with a friend. He had only one son; he was very rich, and the son was very friendly to me because I used to listen to all his nonsense, gibberish. Everybody was telling him, "Shut up, go and play outside!"

He became very close to me, and I asked him one day, "What are you going to become in life?"

He said, "I think I will go crazy."

I said, "Who has you given you that idea?"

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He said, "It is simple: my mother wants me to be a doctor, my father wants me to be an engineer, one uncle wants me to be a politician, another uncle wants me to continue in our family business ... And if I have to become all these things, naturally I think only one thing will happen: I will go crazy. And nobody asks me; you are the first person to ask, 'What do you want to become?' They have their ideas and they are imposing their ideas on me. They are all powerful; they are quarreling amongst themselves, nobody is concerned with me. I am not even part of the discussion, and they are deciding my destiny."

I said, "If you are that much alert, nobody can drive you crazy. Just remember one thing: whatever you want to become, don't move from that position -- no compromise. Insist that this is what you want to become."

And he asked a fundamental question: "But I don't know exactly what I want to become."

I said, "That is very easy to find, because in fact the whole idea of becoming is the idea of creating a false personality. You are a being, you are already where you want to be. This is the time -- this childhood is the most precious time -- when you can be silent, when you can be inside yourself more easily because there are not many obstructions, many thoughts, businesses, problems, anxieties, worries."

It is so easy for a child to move into meditation, but no society up to now has made it a point that every child should be introduced first to meditation, and then left to his own understanding, what he starts feeling, what he is. Then that isness, that being, goes on growing, flowering, becomes fruitful.

But a strange calamity has happened to humanity, and the calamity is that people who love you without an understanding at all -- but with all good intentions -- try to make something out of you. They don't see the point that you are already your being, and your being has to grow according to its own spontaneity.

If they really love with awareness and alertness, then they will support whatever you want to become -- even if you want just to become a musician or a painter or a dancer or a flute-player, with not much chance of becoming world-famous, not much chance of leaving your name written in golden letters in the history books. I have simply heard about this ... I have looked in many history books, and I have not seen anybody's name written in golden letters. Once a man is dead, who cares? Certainly, if the dead men were writing history they would write at least their names in golden letters.

Think how many millions of people have lived before you and disappeared into thin air without leaving any trace. They were all trying hard to be somebody and they were all miserable; they all lived a life of tremendous anguish. Once you want to become somebody ...

that is not natural to you, you are creating a great tension that will follow you your whole life like a shadow. And as days pass the tension will become bigger and bigger.

People ask me, "How can we live a life without tensions?" One of the education ministers used to come to me because he was so tense, so worried ... and somebody suggested to him that he should see me. He told me, "I want to get rid of all these worries and tensions."

I said, "That is not difficult. But remember, then you cannot be the chief minister."

He said, "Why?"

I said, "You don't understand the simple arithmetic of life. All your worries are about how to become the chief minister. I know you: first you were just an MLA and your worries were Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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about how to become a deputy minister. You became a deputy minister -- then your worries were how to become the minister. Now you have become the minister, your worries are how to become the chief minister. Do you think that is the end of the road?"

He said, "No, that is not the end of the road. I can see beyond it. Once I am chief minister I would like to go to the central cabinet."

I said, "Then first you do all these things. When you have become the prime minister, either you will go insane ... Most probably by the time you become the prime minister you will become senile.

"But with these ambitions you cannot be without tensions; and if you want really to be without tensions, without worries, without anxieties, then get out of this mad race to become somebody more important, more powerful. Then just be whatever you are, and relaxation comes very easily."

Tensions are our guests, we have invited them. Relaxation is our nature. We don't have to invite it. You don't have to relax; you have just to stop inviting tensions, and relaxation will start on its own accord. In your very being, in every fiber, in every cell of your being there will be relaxation. This relaxation is the beginning of meditation.

In this relaxed state nobody is hindering the path. You are standing before the temple of your being, and the doors are open. They have never been closed -- existence can't be so cruel.

Once you are not standing in the way ...

Rabiya al-Adabiya was a Sufi woman, very unique. Man has not allowed women any opportunity to grow in the spiritual dimension. Only a few women have escaped from the slavery of man, very few; they can be counted on ten fingers, and Rabiya would be at the very top. She was going to the marketplace to fetch some vegetables and she saw a famous religious man, Hasan, kneeling down in front of a mosque -- outside, where people leave their shoes, because he used to say he was not worthy enough to enter into the temple of God. For years he had been praying five times a day before the mosque, and his only prayer was,

"Father, open the doors, let me in! How long have I to wait?"

Rabiya had heard this many times while coming and going, and one day she could not resist the temptation: she hit hard on Hasan's head. This is very irreligious. When somebody is praying you should not disturb him -- and this was not an ordinary disturbance.

Hasan simply jumped up, and he said, "Rabiya, are you mad, or what?"

She said, "I am not mad. The doors are always open! What kind of nonsense are you continually praying to God? 'Open the doors, let me in' ... who is preventing you? And who has given you the idea that the doors are closed? I say to you, the doors are open! It is just you who is standing in the way. If you really want to enter, you can enter this very moment. The only condition to be fulfilled is that you should be as an innocent child, and right now you can enter into the temple. But as a religious saint, with a great religious ego, a pious ego ..."

The pious ego is the most poisonous ego. Somebody is egoistic because he has so much money -- but still he knows that death will take it all away. Somebody is bragging because he is the president of a country. He knows that at the next election he will be going down the drain -- if he remains alive, because most probably he will be assassinated before that.

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flushes it. So even if you are a president or a prime minister, it does not matter; you know deep down that soon you will be thrown off your throne. I have always wondered why the throne is called a throne -- perhaps it is the place from where people are thrown. Whoever has given it the name must have been a man of great understanding.

But a man who has a religious ego is the most poisonous because he thinks he is holier-than-thou, higher than everybody else, and he has some spirituality which will go with him beyond death. Everybody else's ego and identity will be left behind on this side of death; only the saint can claim, "My ego is going to go beyond death itself." He does not call it ego; he calls it humbleness, simplicity, religiousness. He gives it beautiful names, decorates it as beautifully as possible.

But even if you have the idea of yourself as spiritual, you are not innocent. No child has the idea that he is spiritual. Take the child, the newborn child, as the criterion: he is, and yet he has no idea of any ego. That will give you the insight that you can also just be: if the child can do it, what is the problem for you?

Without any ego, you can also just be.

This just being is what I call meditation.

Not chanting some stupid name or some stupid mantra ... that is not meditation. It is good for monkeys but not for man. Monkeys cannot sit without chewing something; if they cannot get anything else, they will get chewing-gum. The people who are continuously repeating a mantra are doing nothing but using the word, the language, as chewing gum -- and cheap, because you will have to pay something for chewing gum. Chewing gum lasts long, but still it gets finished, but your mantra is always there -- whenever you want to chew you will start chewing.

Meditation has nothing to do with mantras and chantings. Meditation is simply the pure consciousness of a child regained -- paradise regained. It was once yours, but you had lost it, you forgot it. Because it was yours you started looking all over the world, avoiding just that which was in your very heart. You were born with only consciousness, and everything else you have gathered after that. Whatever you have gathered in the mind after your childhood, put it aside -- and you will be no longer in the way. This simple understanding, and you will find the doors of the temple of your being open.

Nobody is preventing you from realizing yourself.

And to realize oneself is to realize God.

There is no difference.

Ta Hui relates a beautiful Zen anecdote: WHEN MASTER JUI YEN WAS DWELLING

CONSTANTLY IN HIS ROOM, HE WOULD CALL TO HIMSELF, "BOSS!"

AND ALSO RESPOND TO HIMSELF, "YES SIR?"

"BE ALERT!"

"I WILL."

"HEREAFTER, DON'T FALL FOR PEOPLE'S DECEPTIONS."

"I WON'T."

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His disciples were very much disturbed because he was a great master and he had thousands of disciples. This was the first thing he would do when he woke up in the morning, before getting out of bed. First he would call, "Boss!" and then say, "Yes, sir." "Remain alert,"

"I will." "Don't be deceived by people and all their expectations." "I won't." After going through this dialogue with himself he would get out of bed.

His disciples felt a little uneasy about it. If somebody else comes to know, how are they going to explain? They will say, "Your master is insane. Why are you wasting your life and your time with this insane man?"

Finally they gathered courage and asked master Jui Yen, "What is the secret? Very early in the morning you start, in the day time once in a while you repeat it, and when you go to sleep again ... We have heard many mantras, many chantings, but this is simply made up by yourself. You ask the question and you answer the question -- we are very much embarrassed."

Jui Yen said, "You need not be embarrassed. I simply want to assure myself that I am not standing in the way. When I say, 'Boss,' I'm calling to my being. My body is a servant, my mind is a servant, my being -- which is deathless -- is the boss. And when I call 'Boss,' and the answer comes, 'Yes?' ... 'Be alert,' because that is our whole process of meditation, remaining alert, not to forget alertness. Whatever you are doing, an undercurrent of alertness should continue. And the determination again and again arises in me, 'I will.' 'And don't fall for people's deceptions.'"

People are continuously deceiving you -- perhaps not knowingly, perhaps they don't want to deceive you, but they are unconscious and they are behaving almost like a somnambulist in his sleep.

People are giving you ideas: somebody says to you, "You are so beautiful" -- and it is really difficult to deny his idea, it is so ego-fulfilling. Perhaps he has his own design why he is calling you so beautiful; perhaps that is the beginning of cheating you, persuading you for something.

I used to know a man -- the whole city thought that he was mad, but I watched him very closely. He was one of the sanest men I have come across, and his sanity was that nobody could deceive him. If you had said to him, "You are very beautiful," he would say, "Wait, define beauty, what do you mean by beautiful? You will have to convince me. I cannot let you go so easily -- and what is the purpose of calling me beautiful?" And it is very difficult to define beauty, almost impossible.

If somebody would say to him, "You are very intelligent" ... the same problem. Only on one point he would never argue with anyone. If people told him, "You are mad!" -- he would say, "That's perfectly right, I am mad. From a madman you cannot expect anything: you cannot ask, 'Can I borrow some money from you?' The moment you say 'mad,' you have put me outside the society, you have made me an individual. Now you cannot manipulate me."

He used to be a professor, but because of his strange behavior he was thrown out of his college. I used to go to him when I was a student. I liked the man very much. He played the flute so beautifully; I would simply go in and sit, and I never asked anything and I never said anything. One day he looked at me and said, "It seems you are saner than me."

I asked him, "What do you mean by saner?"

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He said, "Right, absolutely right. You have got the point. I will never ask anything and never say anything. You are always welcome; there is no need to go through any social ritual.

You can simply come and rest, sit."

We became friendly. He was living in poverty, but he was immensely happy. He said, "I always wanted to be a flute player, never to be a professor. Just my parents forced me ... but thanks to God the college people expelled me. Now I am absolutely free, and because people think I am mad nobody bothers me. I play my flute, I write songs ..."

He has translated into Hindi the poetry of Omar Khayyam. There are at least a dozen Hindi translations of the poetry of Omar Khayyam -- some done by great poets -- but none comes even close to his. And he lived a life of anonymity. It was I who insisted that his book should be published.

He said, "Who is going to listen to me? I am a madman."

I said, "Don't be worried. I will approach publishers and I will not mention your name in the beginning. First let them see the manuscript -- because there are so many translations, but your translation is not only a translation but in some way an improvement."

I have read Kahlil Gibran, I have read Omar Khayyam. He was interested in these two men and was slowly, whenever he had time, translating them. But I told him, "No translation comes close to yours, and listening to you singing Omar Khayyam I sometimes feel perhaps the original Omar Khayyam does not have that quality, that much poetry, because he was not an insane man; he was a mathematician." Now, one cannot hope for a mathematician to write great poetry. These are opposite poles, poetry and mathematics -- what do they have in common?

Finally I persuaded a publisher ... because he was also amazed and he was continuously asking who the translator was. When he was absolutely convinced that this was the best translation, then I told him the name. He said, "My God, but I used to think he is a madman."

I said, "In this insane world, to be sane is to be mad. He is not insane at all, but he enjoys this idea that people have forgotten about him. Now nobody expects anything from him, nobody expects that he should behave in a certain way. He has attained freedom by being condemned as a madman. He is completely at ease with himself, he goes on doing his own thing and he is immensely happy."

This man died very soon after. Perhaps he was poor and he could not afford medicine -- he had tuberculosis -- but he died so peacefully and so joyously ... singing a song of Omar Khayyam. I was present when he died. The song that he sang last says ... in Hindi, just as in English or Arabic, the body is called the earth. The word 'human' comes from humus, and humus means mud. The word 'adami' or 'adam' comes also from mud.

The song that he was singing and died singing was, "When I die, don't take my body to the funeral or to the cemetery. The earth in my body belongs to the pub" -- he was a drunkard --

"so please let my body be put in a grave inside the pub. I will be dead but others who will be alive ... if they can just drop a few drops of wine over my grave, that will be enough satisfaction for me."

You would not call him a saint, you would not call him religious -- he was not, but he lived a life of utter simplicity, of tremendous beauty. He never harmed anybody, and there was a shine in his eyes because he knows something which other people don't know.

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Your ego is not you.

You are beyond yourself.

If you are alert you will simply move to the beyond -- because awareness is not a faculty of the mind, nor is it possible for the ego to be aware. If you are alert and aware, the only thing that can be aware within you is "the Boss," your being.

Master Jui Yen is absolutely right to remind himself and to remind his disciples, "But don't forget for a moment who is the master in you." If the mind is the master you are living in illusions, and if your consciousness is the master all illusions are left far behind. You have come to realize the reality.

JUST AROUSE YOURSELF RIGHT HERE, AND SEE WHAT IT IS. Don't say, "I will try some day"; don't say, "I will try tomorrow" -- because tomorrow is not certain. You don't have any power over the future. If you become accustomed to postponing, tomorrow will become today, and again you will postpone for tomorrow. That will become your habit, a mechanical habit. If you understand, then JUST AROUSE YOURSELF RIGHT HERE, AND

SEE WHAT IT IS.

It is not a question of practicing, disciplining, going through rituals -- all those things take time. But becoming aware does not take time. The only question is: Are you ready to experience awareness? -- because it will disturb many things in your illusory life. If you are ready, then this moment is the moment -- not the next moment. Then see the reality around you: these same trees will look greener, the same flowers will look immensely psychedelic, the same sun rays will make you full of ecstasy.

As far as the inner world is concerned ... if you are aware, you are aware of your immortality, you are aware of your divineness, you are aware that life continues -- that birth and death are simple episodes in the long eternal pilgrimage of life.

All fear will disappear, and suddenly your life will have a lightness, unburdened. You will walk, but your walk will have the quality of a dance. You will talk, but your talk will have the quality of silence. Then, whatever you will do will have a qualitative difference. You may have done the same thing before, and you may be doing the same thing again; for the outsiders it may not be visible that a great difference has happened, but to you it will certainly be visible.

There was one mystic in India who was a potter -- his name was Gora. Even after becoming enlightened he continued to make the same pottery as he was making before, but now his work had a totally different quality. Now he felt he was preparing those pots for nobody else but for God. Before he used to make the pots in such a way that they were soon broken, weak, so that he could supply his customers with new pots. Now he was making pots with such care, with such love, that they will not break ordinarily as his old pots used to.

His disciples said, "Now you are wasting more time on making things."

He said, "Obviously. Now every customer that comes to me is a disguised God. He may not know, but I know. I cannot deceive God ... and I would love for my pot to serve God as long as possible, so I will make it as beautiful as I can."

Even kings used to come to his gatherings. Rich people were also his followers, and they all said, "Gora, it is better that now you stop doing this work. We can provide you with everything that you need."

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He said, "It is not a question of business; it is my prayer, it is my worship."

A man of enlightenment makes his whole life a prayer, a worship. Whatever he is doing is qualitatively different, it has a grace. It comes not just as a commodity to be sold, it is a piece of art ... and the customers are no longer ordinary human beings. To the person of awareness the whole existence becomes divine. He cannot hurt even a tree. Out of this awareness comes a life of non-violence.

Mahatma Gandhi was trying just the opposite way. He was trying to practice non-violence, which goes against the whole science of meditation. You cannot practice non-violence. You can force yourself to be non-violent, but deep down you will remain violent, and it will show in small things. He never could attain the non-violence that comes naturally to the meditator, because he never knew anything about meditation. All that he knew about religion was the very ordinary religion practiced by the people, the masses, in their unconsciousness. His religion was only praying to God.

When you don't know whether God exists or not, how can your prayer be authentic? and what prayer? Either you will be praising God -- but there are no words to praise him -- or you will be asking for some changes in your life, asking for some things to be given to you. Prayer cannot be begging and prayer cannot be like advice to God: Do things the way I think ...

A prayer comes out of meditation also, but that prayer is wordless, a pure gratitude, a thankfulness. And it is not addressed to any particular God as a person, because there is nobody like a person sitting somewhere high in the sky listening to your prayers.

The meditator comes to know that God is spread all over existence. It is better not to call him God, but to call it just the quality of godliness. He feels grateful to the river, to the ocean, to the moon, to the sun, to the stars, and it is simply a feeling in his heart. It cannot be brought to the lips through words, because the ocean does not understand any language. Neither does a beautiful sunset or the starry night ... but they all understand the language of silence and gratitude.

THE ONE WHO DOES THE AROUSING IS NOT ANYONE ELSE, HE'S JUST THE

ONE THAT CAN RECOGNIZE DIMNESS AND DULLNESS.

Who is within you? The real, the immortal, the eternal, the divine ... he is the witness who can see dullness, dimness. Who can watch all the clouds that pass on the screen of the mind?

-- thoughts, emotions, moods ...

The watcher is your authentic being. He is your own fundamental identity. The watcher is your fundamental identity, and any other identity card that you are carrying, any other passport that you are carrying ... they all are just arbitrary.

The authentic identity is only one, and that is of the witnessing self, who simply sees. He is not a doer. It does not mean that things don't happen around the witness; they happen -- but they happen spontaneously, without any effort, without any tension, without any deliberate action, but just out of spontaneity. Just as flowers blossom and birds sing and trees grow ...

things happen around the witness spontaneously.

THIS IS ME GIVING MEDICINE TO SUIT THE DISEASE, HAVING NO OTHER

ALTERNATIVE -- and there is no other alternative, remember. The witness cannot be replaced by anything else. That's why I say again and again that there are no religions in the world. There cannot be ... because if the self-nature has no alternative, then how can you have alternative religions?

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The witness is one; it is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Jew ... it is neither theist nor atheist ...

It is a pure clarity of seeing.

It is just pure consciousness.

It is just like a mirror, reflecting.

Have you come across mirrors which are Christian, Catholic, Hindu, Mohammedan? A mirror is just a mirror; its function is mirroring, it reflects.

Your fundamental identity is just like a consciousness which has the capacity to reflect and to respond. Whatever comes out of your consciousness is always fresh, always spontaneous, always graceful, always sincere, always true to reality. It is in accord with existence. There is a tremendous synchronicity between you and the whole.

BRIEFLY POINTING OUT THE ROAD FOR YOU TO RETURN HOME AND SIT IN

PEACE, AND THAT'S ALL.

Yes, that's all!

IF YOU STICK TO DEAD WORDS, AND SAY IT REALLY IS YOUR

FUNDAMENTAL IDENTITY, THEN YOU ARE ACKNOWLEDGING THE CONSCIOUS

SPIRIT AS YOUR SELF, AND THIS HAS EVEN LESS TO DO WITH IT. WHAT I SAID

BEFORE ABOUT DEPENDING ON DIMNESS AND DULLNESS TO ENTER IS THIS.

SIMPLY SEE WHAT THE ONE WHO CAN KNOW DIMNESS AND DULLNESS LIKE

THIS ULTIMATELY IS.

First, remove your ego from the way; then only consciousness remains. Now let the consciousness know itself. Because there is nothing else left to know, and consciousness has the capacity to know, it can become a "self-knowing."

That's what Socrates means when he says, "Know thyself." I have made some addition to Socrates' saying because to me it seems incomplete: Know thyself, because that is the only way of being thyself. So know thyself and be thyself ... and you have come home ... and there is no other alternative.

JUST LOOK RIGHT HERE, DON'T SEEK TRANSCENDENT ENLIGHTENMENT.

This is a very pregnant statement by Ta Hui. He is saying to you that even seeking transcendent enlightenment will become a barrier. Any seeking takes you away from yourself.

Don't seek anything, so that you can remain within yourself.

Transcendent enlightenment seems to be different from money or power or prestige ...

people think seeking transcendent meditation or transcendent enlightenment is a different thing from seeking worldly objects. It is not.

The question is not of the object, the question is of seeking, and the seeking is the same.

What you are seeking does not matter; every seeking takes you away from yourself.

Don't seek, don't search. Just sit within yourself, with no desire, with no ambition, nowhere to go. Relax at the very center of your being. This is transcendent enlightenment --

but you can get there only if you don't seek it.

JUST OBSERVE AND OBSERVE; SUDDENLY YOU WILL LAUGH ALOUD.

BEYOND THIS THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN BE SAID.

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The last word that can be said is, "Observe and observe, watch and watch." Then you will see the whole ridiculousness of your life: that which you have been doing was as stupid as a dog trying to catch its own tail. Sometimes you may have seen it -- the dog becomes more and more intrigued with the phenomenon. This is strange -- it is so close ... and when he tries to jump, naturally the tail also jumps, and the distance remains the same. The dog becomes almost frantic because he does not know it is his own tail.

Once you are silently conscious your whole life will look ridiculous. What have you been doing but chasing your own tail -- which was always yours; there was no need to chase it. So the last thing we have heard from the mystics is a sudden loud laughter. After that is absolute silence and serenity. That laughter is the last thing, and beyond that nothing can be said.

Beyond that there is the infinite, the eternal to experience ... but that is beyond words, nothing can be said about it.

But if you have been able to laugh at your own ridiculousness, that proves you have become an observer, detached from your mind, from your body. Now you can easily understand that what you have been doing up to now can be done only in unconsciousness.

I have heard: A man was suddenly awakened by his wife and told, "I have heard that my husband is coming. I have heard the horn of his car, he has just parked the car."

So the naked fellow got up and said, "What shall I do?"

The woman said, "You just jump out of the window."

It was a cold night and it was raining. He jumped out of the window, and only then he realized, "What nonsense! I am the husband!" But just old habit ... he must have been sleeping with other women. The wife must be sleeping with other men.

If you watch life it is ridiculous, and if you can laugh at yourself, that is the last boundary line. Beyond that begins the wordless experience of silence. But the laughter of a man of observation also has a different quality: you always laugh at others, he laughs at himself.

Laughing at others is a little cruel -- there is some violence hidden in it -- but laughing at oneself is a great awakening.

Ta Hui is giving his experiences as clearly as it is possible to give them in language. I agree with him categorically that every enlightened man has laughed. That was the boundary line of moving from this world to the world of the beyond. Before moving beyond, he had to laugh -- for the simple reason that he could see his whole life was nothing but hilarious. Up to now he was doing it so seriously because he was almost asleep; but once awake, all seriousness is fake. He was doing things which now he cannot do even if he wants to ... they are irrational, they are illogical, they are unintelligent.

Start by observation, come to a great laughter ... and go beyond. This is in essence the whole of religion.

The world needs religion, but it does not need religions. That is also ridiculous. You have one science, and you never ask whether this science is Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan.

About the objective world you have one science, and about the inner world ... you have three hundred religions in the world. This is ridiculous.

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The man of awareness comes to understand that religiousness is needed, but religions are no more needed.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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28

Mindlessness

15 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

NOT "KEEPING THE MIND STILL", BUT MINDLESSNESS

THOUGH YOU MAY NOT FULLY KNOW WHETHER THE TEACHERS OF THE

VARIOUS LOCALITIES ARE WRONG OR RIGHT, IF YOUR OWN BASIS IS SOLID

AND GENUINE, THE POISONS OF WRONG DOCTRINES WILL NOT BE ABLE TO

HARM YOU, "KEEPING THE MIND STILL" AND "FORGETTING CONCERNS"

INCLUDED. IF YOU ALWAYS "FORGET CONCERNS" AND "KEEP THE MIND

STILL", WITHOUT SMASHING THE MIND OF BIRTH AND DEATH, THEN THE

DELUSIVE INFLUENCES OF FORM, SENSATION, PERCEPTION, VOLITION, AND

CONSCIOUSNESS WILL GET THEIR WAY, AND YOU'LL INEVITABLY BE DIVIDING

EMPTINESS INTO TWO.

LET GO AND MAKE YOURSELF VAST AND EXPANSIVE. WHEN OLD HABITS

SUDDENLY ARISE, DON'T USE MIND TO REPRESS THEM. AT JUST SUCH A TIME, IT'S LIKE A SNOWFLAKE ON A RED-HOT STOVE. FOR THOSE WITH A DISCERNING EYE AND A FAMILIAR HAND, ONE LEAP AND THEY LEAP CLEAR.

ONLY THEN DO THEY KNOW LAZY JUNG'S SAYING: RIGHT WHEN USING

MIND, THERE'S NO MENTAL ACTIVITY. CROOKED TALK DEFILED WITH NAMES

AND FORMS, STRAIGHT TALK WITHOUT COMPLICATIONS. WITHOUT MIND BUT

FUNCTIONING, ALWAYS FUNCTIONING BUT NON-EXISTENT

-- THE

MINDLESSNESS I SPEAK OF NOW IS NOT SEPARATE FROM HAVING MIND.

THESE AREN'T WORDS TO DECEIVE PEOPLE.

There has been a long misunderstanding about these two things: KEEPING THE MIND

STILL and MINDLESSNESS. There have been many people who have thought that they are synonymous. They appear to be synonymous, but in reality they are as far apart as two things can be, and there is no way to bridge them.

So first let us try to find the exact meanings of these two words, because the whole of Ta Hui's sutra this evening is concerned with the understanding of the difference.

The difference is very delicate. A man who is keeping his mind still and a man who has no mind will look exactly alike from the outside, because the man who is keeping his mind still is also silent. Underneath his silence there is great turmoil, but he is not allowing it to surface.

He is in great control.

The man with no mind, or mindlessness, has nothing to control. He is just pure silence with nothing repressed, with nothing disciplined -- just a pure empty sky.

Surfaces can be very deceptive. One has to be very alert about appearances, because they both look the same from the outside -- both are silent. The problem would not have arisen if Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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the still mind was not easy to achieve. It is easy to achieve. Mindlessness is not so easy to achieve; it is not cheap, it is the greatest treasure in the world.

Mind can play the game of being silent; it can play the game of being without any thoughts, any emotions, but they are just repressed, fully alive, ready to jump out any moment.

The so-called religions and their saints have fallen into the fallacy of stilling the mind. If you go on sitting silently, trying to control your thoughts, not allowing your emotions, not allowing any movement within you, slowly slowly it will become your habit. This is the greatest deception in the world you can give to yourself, because everything is exactly the same, nothing has changed, but it appears as if you have gone through a transformation.

The state of no-mind or mindlessness is just the opposite of stilling the mind -- it is getting beyond the mind. It is creating such a distance between yourself and the mind that the mind becomes the farthest star, millions of light years away, and you are just a watcher. When the mind is stilled you are the controller. When the mind is not you are the watcher. These are the distinguishing marks.

When you are controlling something you are in tension; you cannot be without tension, because that which is controlled is continuously trying to revolt against you, that which is enslaved wants freedom. Your mind sooner or later will explode with vengeance.

A story I have loved ... In a village there was a man of a very angry and aggressive type, so violent that he had killed his wife, for something trivial. The whole village was afraid of the man because he knew no argument except violence.

The day he killed his wife by throwing her into a well, a Jaina monk was passing by. A crowd had gathered, and the Jaina monk said, "This mind full of anger and violence will lead you to hell."

The situation was such that the man said, "I also want to be as silent as you are, but what can I do? I don't know anything. When anger grips me I'm almost unconscious, and now I have killed my own beloved wife."

The Jaina monk said, "The only way to still this mind, which is full of anger and violence and rage, is to renounce the world." Jainism is a religion of renunciation, and the ultimate renunciation is even of clothes. The Jaina monk lives naked, because he is not allowed to possess even clothes.

The man was of a very arrogant type, and this became a challenge to him. Before the crowd he threw his clothes also into the well with the wife. The whole village could not believe it; even the Jaina monk became a little afraid, "Is he mad or something?" The man fell down at his feet and said, "You may have taken many decades to reach the stage of renunciation ... I renounce the world, I renounce everything. I am your disciple -- initiate me."

His name was Shantinath, and shanti means 'peace'. It often happens ... if you see an ugly woman, most probably her name will be Sunderbhai, which means 'beautiful woman'. In India people have a strange way ... to the blind man they give the name Nayan Sukh. Nayan Sukh means 'one whose eyes give him great pleasure'.

The Jaina monk said, "You have a beautiful name. I will not change it; I will keep it, but from this moment you have to remember that peace has to become your very vibration."

The man disciplined himself, stilled his mind, fasted long, tortured himself, and soon became more famous than his master. Angry people, arrogant people, egoistic people can do Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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things which peaceful people will take a little time to do. He became very famous, and thousands of people used to come just to touch his feet.

After twenty years he was in the capital. A man from his village had come for some purpose, and he thought, "It will be good to go and see what transformation has happened to Shantinath. So many stories are heard -- that he has become a totally new man, that his old self is gone and a new, fresh being has arisen in him, that he really has become peace, silence, tranquility."

So the man went with great respect. But when he saw Muni Shantinath, seeing his face, his eyes, he could not think that there had been any change. There was none of the grace which necessarily radiates from a mind which has become silent. Those eyes were still as egoistic --

in fact they had become more pointedly egoistic. The man's presence was even more ugly than it used to be.

Still, the man went close. Shantinath recognized the man, who had been his neighbor --

but now it was beneath his dignity to recognize him. The man also saw that Shantinath had recognized him, but he was pretending that he did not. He thought, "That shows much." He went close by Shantinath and asked, "Can I ask you a question? What is your name?"

Naturally, great anger arose in Shantinath because he knew that this man knew perfectly well what his name was. But still he kept himself in control, and he said, "My name is Muni Shantinath."

The man said, "It is a beautiful name -- but my memory is very short, can you repeat it again? I have forgotten ... what name did you say?" ...

This was too much. Muni Shantinath used to carry a staff. He took the staff in his hand he forgot everything -- twenty years of controlling the mind -- and he said, "Ask again and I will show you who I am. Have you forgotten? -- I killed my wife, I am the same man."

Only then did he recognize what had happened ... in a single moment of unconsciousness he realized that twenty years have gone down the drain; he has not changed at all. But millions of people feel great silence in him ... Yes, he has become very controlled, he keeps himself repressed, and it has paid off. So much respect and he has no qualification for that respect --

so much honor, even kings come to touch his feet.

Your so-called saints are nothing but controlled animals. The mind is nothing but a long heritage of all your animal past. You can control it, but the controlled mind is not the awakened mind.

The process of controlling and repressing and disciplining is taught by all the religions, and because of their fallacious teaching humanity has not moved a single inch -- it remains barbarous. Any moment people start killing each other. It does not take a single moment to lose themselves; they forget completely that they are human beings, and something much more, something better is expected of them. There have been very few people who have been able to avoid this deception of controlling mind and believing that they have attained mindlessness.

To attain mindlessness a totally different process is involved: I call it the ultimate alchemy.

It consists only of a single element -- that of watchfulness.

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Gautam Buddha is passing through a town when a fly comes and sits on his forehead. He is talking to his companion, Ananda, and he just goes on talking and moves his hand to throw off the fly. Then suddenly he recognizes that his movement of the hand has been unconscious, mechanical. Because he was talking consciously to Ananda, the hand moved the fly mechanically. He stops and although now there is no fly, he moves his hand again consciously.

Ananda says, "What are you doing? The fly has gone away ..."

Gautam Buddha says, "The fly has gone away ... but I have committed a sin, because I did it in unconsciousness."

The English word 'sin' is used only by Gautam Buddha in its right meaning. The word 'sin'

originates in the roots which mean forgetfulness, unawareness, unwatchfulness, doing things mechanically -- and our whole life is almost mechanical. We go on doing things from morning to evening, from evening to morning, like robots.

A man who wants to enter into the world of mindlessness has to learn only one thing -- a single step and the journey is over. That single step is to do everything watchfully. You move your hand watchfully; you open your eyes watchfully; you walk, you take your steps alert, aware; you eat, you drink, but never allow mechanicalness to take possession over you. This is the only alchemical secret of transformation.

A man who can do everything fully consciously becomes a luminous phenomenon. He is all light, and his whole life is full of fragrance and flowers. The mechanical man lives in dark holes, dirty holes. He does not know the world of light; he is like a blind man. The man of watchfulness is really the man who has eyes.

Ta Hui slowly, slowly is penetrating into the deeper secrets of inner transformation. He says, THOUGH YOU MAY NOT FULLY KNOW WHETHER THE TEACHERS OF THE

VARIOUS LOCALITIES ARE WRONG OR RIGHT, IF YOUR OWN BASIS IS SOLID

AND GENUINE, THE POISONS OF WRONG DOCTRINES WILL NOT BE ABLE TO

HARM YOU ...

He says it is useless to think who is right and who is wrong. There are thousands of doctrines, hundreds of philosophies, and if you go on searching for truth in those words, you will be lost in a jungle where you cannot find the path. All that you know is to attain to a solid basis within yourself.

... "KEEPING THE MIND STILL," AND "FORGETTING CONCERNS" INCLUDED. IF

YOU ALWAYS "FORGET CONCERNS" AND "KEEP THE MIND STILL," WITHOUT

SMASHING THE MIND OF BIRTH AND DEATH, THEN THE DELUSIVE

INFLUENCES OF FORM, SENSATION, PERCEPTION, VOLITION, AND

CONSCIOUSNESS WILL GET THEIR WAY, AND YOU WILL INEVITABLY BE

DIVIDING EMPTINESS INTO TWO.

LET GO AND MAKE YOURSELF VAST AND EXPANSIVE ...

It is not a question of controlling yourself separate from existence; it is a question of letting-go and becoming vast -- as vast as existence itself. And in watchfulness you become infinite: that is the only thing within you which has no limits.

Just have a look at your watching, witnessing. It is unlimited. No beginning, no end ... it is formless.

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This absolute stillness of the mind is exactly no-mind or mindlessness. It is not control, it is not discipline; it is not that you are putting all your pressure on your mind and keeping it silent. No, it is simply not there. The house is empty. There is nobody to control and there is nobody to be controlled. All concerns for control have disappeared into a simple watchfulness. This watchfulness is expansive. Once you have tasted it a little, it goes on expanding to the very limits of the universe.

WHEN OLD HABITS SUDDENLY ARISE, DON'T USE YOUR MIND TO REPRESS

THEM. AT JUST SUCH A TIME, IT'S LIKE A SNOWFLAKE ON A RED-HOT STOVE.

He is reminding you that even when you are moving on the path of watchfulness, sometimes old habits may revive. But don't be concerned; they are like snowflakes on a red-hot stove, they will disappear of their own accord. You simply watch. Don't get concerned, don't get disturbed, don't be worried.

Sometimes there will be anger, sometimes there will be a desire, sometimes there will be an ambition, but they cannot disturb your watchfulness. They will come and they will go without leaving a trace on your mirrorlike purity. But you have only to remember one thing: not to start fighting with them, smashing them, destroying them, throwing them away. It comes very naturally to the mind that if something wrong is happening, jump on it and destroy it. This is the only thing you have to be aware of, because this is what never allows a man to get beyond the mind. Old habits will come -- and old habits are very old, many, many lives old. Your awareness is very fresh and very new; your mechanicalness is ancient, so it is very natural that it will come back.

Somebody insults you -- you don't have to be angry, but suddenly you find anger arising. It is not an effort, it is just an old habit, an old reaction. Don't fight with it, don't try to smile and hide it. Just watch it, and it will come and it will go ... LIKE A SNOWFLAKE ON A RED-HOT STOVE.

FOR THOSE WITH A DISCERNING EYE AND A FAMILIAR HAND, ONE LEAP

AND THEY LEAP CLEAR. ONLY THEN DO THEY KNOW LAZY JUNG'S SAYING: RIGHT WHEN USING MIND, THERE'S NO MENTAL ACTIVITY. If a man has learned the art of watchfulness he can use his mind too, and still he has no mental activity.

I am talking to you, and I am using my mind because there is no other way. Mind is the only way to convey any message in words; that is the only mechanism available. But my mind is absolutely silent, there is no mental activity: I'm not thinking what I'm going to say, and I'm not thinking what I have said. I'm simply responding to Ta Hui spontaneously without bringing myself into it.

It is as if you go into the mountains and you shout and the mountains echo: the mountains are not doing any mental activity, they are simply echoing. When I am talking on Ta Hui, I am just a mountain echoing.

RIGHT WHEN USING MIND, THERE'S NO MENTAL ACTIVITY. CROOKED TALK

DEFILED WITH NAMES AND FORMS, STRAIGHT TALK WITHOUT

COMPLICATIONS. WITHOUT MIND BUT FUNCTIONING ... This is a strange experience, when you can use mind without any mental activity ... WITHOUT MIND BUT

FUNCTIONING, ALWAYS FUNCTIONING BUT NON-EXISTENT.

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I was from my very childhood in love with silence. As long as I could manage I would just sit silently. Naturally my family used to think that I was going to be good for nothing -- and they were right. I certainly proved good for nothing, but I don't repent it.

It came to such a point that sometimes I would be sitting and my mother would come to me and say something like, "There seems to be nobody in the whole house. I need somebody to go to the market to fetch some vegetables." I was sitting in front of her, and I would say, "If I see somebody I will tell ..."

It was accepted that my presence meant nothing; whether I was there or not, it did not matter. Once or twice they tried and then they found that "it is better to leave him out, and not take any notice of him" -- because in the morning they would send me to fetch vegetables, and in the evening I would come to ask, "I have forgotten for what you had sent me, and now the market is closed ..." In villages the vegetable markets close by the evening, and the villagers go back to their villages.

My mother said, "It is not your fault, it is our fault. The whole day we have been waiting, but in the first place we should not have asked you. Where have you been?"

I said, "As I went out of the house, just close by there was a very beautiful bodhi tree" --

the kind of tree under which Gautam Buddha became awakened. The tree got the name bodhi tree -- or in English, bo tree -- because of Gautam Buddha. One does not know what it used to be called before Gautam Buddha; it must have had some name, but after Buddha it became associated with his name.

There was a beautiful bodhi tree, and it was so tempting for me. There used to be always such silence, such coolness underneath it, nobody to disturb me, that I could not pass it without sitting under it for some time. And those moments of peace, I think sometimes may have stretched the whole day.

After just a few disappointments they thought, "It is better not to bother him." And I was immensely happy that they had accepted the fact that I am almost non-existent. It gave me tremendous freedom. Nobody expected anything from me. When nobody expects anything from you, you fall into a silence ... The world has accepted you; now there is no expectation from you.

When sometimes I was late coming home, they used to search for me in two places. One was the bodhi tree -- and because they started searching for me under the bodhi tree, I started climbing the tree and sitting in the top of it. They would come and they would look around and say, "He does not seem to be here."

And I myself would nod; I said, "Yes, that's true. I'm not here."

But I was soon discovered, because somebody saw me climbing and told them, "He has been deceiving you. He is always here, most of the time sitting in the tree" -- so I had to go a little further.

There used to be a Mohammedan cemetery ... Now people ordinarily don't go to graveyards. Of course, everybody has to go once, but except that, people don't like going to graveyards. So that was the most silent place ... because dead people don't talk, they don't create nuisance, they don't ask you unnecessary questions, they don't even ask you who you are or for introductions.

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I used to sit in the Mohammedan graveyard. It was a big place, with many graves, with trees, very shadowy trees. When my father came to know that I was sitting there he said, "This is too much!" He came one day to find me and he said, "You can start sitting in the bodhi tree, or under the bodhi tree, and nobody will disturb you. This is too much, this is dangerous --

and in fact, when somebody goes to the graveyard he should take a bath and change his clothes. You have been sitting here the whole day and sometimes at night, and when you come home we don't know from where you are coming."

This is usual, that when you come back from the graveyard ... Ordinarily nobody goes there unless they are sent, and they have to go; so, reluctantly they go. From the graveyard people normally go directly to the river to take a bath, to change their clothes, and only then do they enter the house. So my father said, "I don't know how long you have been doing this."

I said, "Since you disturbed me on the bodhi tree. I had to find some place ..." And I told him, "Even you will enjoy it once in a while. When you get tired and too tense, just come here

-- no dead man disturbs anybody."

He said, "Don't talk to me about dead men -- and particularly in a Mohammedan grave ..."

Mohammedans are poor; their graves are mud graves. In the rain, sometimes a dead body will appear. The mud has washed away and you can see the dead body -- somebody's head is showing, somebody's leg is showing. He said, "Don't ever tell me to go there. Just the idea that one day I will be in such a position, with my head showing out of a grave, makes me feel so frightened ... you are a strange boy!"

I said, "What is wrong with it? The poor fellow is dead, he cannot do anything. It is raining, he cannot manage to have an umbrella, what can he do? If one of his legs is showing, what can he do? He cannot pull it in -- if he pulls it in then too there will be trouble, so he keeps silent and lets things be as they are."

A love of silence and a love of being absent has helped me so tremendously that I can understand when he says, ALWAYS FUNCTIONING BUT NON-EXISTENT -- THE

MINDLESSNESS I SPEAK OF NOW IS NOT SEPARATE FROM HAVING MIND.

THESE ARE NOT WORDS TO DECEIVE PEOPLE.

Ta Hui is saying, "I am not using these words to deceive anyone; I am not trying to show my knowledge; I am not trying to pretend that I am more knowledgeable than you are. I am saying these words just to share my experience that no-mind and mind can exist together.

There should be no repressive methods used, only pure watchfulness ... and slowly, slowly mind loses all content. It becomes no-mind."

So mindlessness and mind are not separate. Mindlessness is mind without any content, without any thought. It is just like a mirror not reflecting anything.

The silence of being a mirror not reflecting anything is the greatest bliss that existence allows man to have. And from there things go on expanding -- mysteries upon mysteries ... no questions, no answers, but tremendous experiences ... nourishing, fulfilling, giving contentment to the hungry soul which has been wandering for lives upon lives.

It is time to stop this wandering.

To stop this wandering there is a simple method, and that is to start watching your mind, your body, your actions. Whatever you are doing or not doing, one thing you have to be alert of -- that you are watching. Don't lose the watcher -- then it doesn't matter whether you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Jaina or a Buddhist.

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The watcher is no one.

It is just pure consciousness.

And this pure consciousness can only bring a new humanity, a new world, where people will not discriminate against each other for stupid reasons. Nations, races, religions, doctrines, ideologies -- those are just for children to play with, not for mature people. For mature people there is only one thing in existence, and that is watchfulness.

... A monk is going to spread Gautam Buddha's message. He himself is not enlightened yet; that's why Gautam Buddha calls him and tells him, "Remember, I have to say this because you are not enlightened yet ... you are articulate, you speak well, you can spread the message.

You may not be able to sow the seeds but you may be able to attract a few people to come to me -- but use this opportunity also for your own growth."

The monk asked, "What can I do, how can I use this opportunity?"

And Buddha said, "There is only one thing that can be done in every opportunity, in every situation, and that is watchfulness. You will sometimes find people irritated by you, angry because you have hurt their ideologies, their doctrines, their prejudices. Remain silent and watchful. You may have days when you cannot get food because the people are against you, they will not even give you water. Watch ... watch your hunger, watch your thirst ... but don't get irritated, don't get annoyed. What you will be teaching people is of less importance than your own watchfulness.

If you come back to me watchful, I will be immensely joyful. How many people you approached does not matter; how many people you spoke to does not matter. What ultimately matters is whether you have come home, whether you yourself have found the solid basis of witnessing. Then all else is insignificant."

This is the only meditation there is; all other meditations are variations of the same phenomenon.

So this sutra of Ta Hui is one of the most fundamental ones.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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Faith

16 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

ONE SUCHNESS

TO TAKE UP THIS GREAT AFFAIR, YOU MUST HAVE A DETERMINED WILL. IF

YOU'RE HALF BELIEVING AND HALF IN DOUBT, THERE'LL BE NO CONNECTION.

AN ANCIENT WORTHY SAID, "STUDYING THE PATH IS LIKE DRILLING FOR FIRE.

YOU STILL CAN'T STOP WHEN YOU GET SMOKE: ONLY WHEN SPARKS APPEAR

IS THE RETURN HOME COMPLETE." WANT TO KNOW WHERE IT'S COMPLETE? --

IT'S THE WORLDS OF SELF AND THE WORLDS OF OTHERS AS ONE SUCHNESS.

FAITH

BUDDHA SAID, "FAITH CAN FOREVER DESTROY THE ROOT OF AFFLICTION; FAITH CAN FOCUS YOU ON THE VIRTUES OF BUDDHAHOOD." HE ALSO SAID,

"FAITH CAN TRANSCEND THE NUMEROUS ROADS OF DELUSION, AND DISPLAY

THE PATH OF UNEXCELLED LIBERATION."

IF YOU CAN BELIEVE DIRECTLY THAT THIS MIND HAS DEFINITELY

ATTAINED ENLIGHTENMENT FROM THE BEGINNING, AND ABRUPTLY FORGET

ALL YOUR VIEWS, THEN THESE ROADS OF DELUSION THEMSELVES ARE THE

ROUTE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, BY WHICH THE PERSON ESCAPES FROM BIRTH

AND DEATH.

ONE SUCHNESS ... it is a special dimension Gautam Buddha has opened up. Nobody before him has ever talked about suchness. It contains so much that it has to be understood in its totality. If you have understood suchness in its totality, there remains nothing else to understand.

The mind is always questioning, doubting, deciding what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false. In other words, the mind is always in a division and in a conflict. In yet other words, the mind is not at ease with existence.

Suchness means to be at ease with existence. The trees are green and the roses are red --

what can you do? There are murderers and there are great saints. If you don't distinguish, if you simply accept the fact that this is so -- one tree is tall and one is small, existence allows all varieties, expresses itself in diverse ways -- if you are at ease with it all, with the saint, with the sinner, you have attained buddhahood.

If you have no condemnation for the sinner and no admiration for the saint, you have transcended both -- you have come to one suchness. The world of two, the world of dualities, has dropped away from you.

And the moment the world of two, the world of dualities, is no more there, where are you?

Where is your mind? Where is your ego? They are all gone in a single blow of the sword.

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Suddenly the whole existence becomes part of your heartbeat, and your heartbeat becomes the heartbeat of the whole universe. Then birds start singing, and it is not the birds, but you. Then the trees stand in silence -- it is not the trees, but you. Then the sunlit peaks of the Himalayas and the tidal waves of the oceans are no more objects; they are your very subjectivity.

This state Buddha calls 'one suchness.' There is no need of any God; there is no need of a certain code of morality, there is no need of any sense of right and wrong. Who are you to decide? -- you are simply here to rejoice and to join in the dance. In this dance the sinner is as much a part as the saint. Just think of a world without sinners, and it will be so boring, so utterly dry, just a desert, unending.

Life as it is ... this faraway cuckoo calling you is your own heart. Once this is not only a theory but an experience -- that you start dancing with the wind when the trees dance, that you start blossoming with the flowers when they open their petals, that when suddenly a cuckoo calls it is your own song -- then there is no question of discrimination: right is right, and so is wrong.

The ultimate experience of consciousness is that this whole drama needs contradictions. If you take away days, nights will be very poor. If you take away nights, days will be very tiring.

They appear to our mind as contradictories, but in existence they are complementaries. It is just the pendulum of the clock moving from one extreme to another. Seeing the saint and the sinner as two points between which the pendulum goes on moving, you drop all admiration for the saint and you drop all condemnation for the sinner. You simply enjoy the beauty of both. Their very being is enough to fill you with great gratitude.

This experience of one suchness is the greatest contribution of Gautam Buddha. And Ta Hui is going deeper and deeper into Gautam Buddha -- not as an intellectual anymore, but as one who has experienced too.

Just for the moment let this one suchness possess you ... Everything becomes so serene, so silent, everything becomes so joyful that there are no words to express it. This inexpressible experience is the ultimate of religiousness.

Ta Hui talks about two things in this morning's sutra: one suchness, and faith. They are two names for one thing. It is not the faith of a Christian. Words change their meaning as they change their context. Words don't have their own meaning; their meaning comes from their context.

Faith to a Christian or to a Mohammedan or to a Hindu is nothing but another word for belief, and a belief is never anything but a repressed doubt. Every belief has behind it a doubt.

To repress the doubt you believe more and more ... but the doubt goes deeper and deeper into your unconscious.

Faith in the world of Gautam Buddha's experience is not belief. It has nothing to do with doctrines and philosophies, theologies, ideologies. It has something to do with trust, something to do with love, something to do with being at ease with the world, however it is.

There is an ancient story of a Zen monk ... Every night the king used to go on a round of his capital in disguise, to see whether things were alright or there was some trouble which he was not allowed to know. Is somebody miserable? -- if he could do something, he wanted to know it directly, not through so many mediators and bureaucracies.

He was always puzzled by a very beautiful, very silent man, always standing under a tree.

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marble statue. Naturally, curiosity arose, and finally he could not resist the temptation to ask this man what he was guarding. He could not see that he had anything ... in fact he was standing naked.

The young man laughed and said, "I am guarding myself; I don't have anything else. But guarding itself -- being alert and aware and awake -- is the greatest treasure. You have much, but you don't have the guard."

The king was puzzled, but intrigued by the beauty of the man and by the authority of his words. Every night they used to talk a little bit, and slowly, slowly a great friendship arose.

The naked monk never asked, "Who are you?"

The king asked him, "I have been asking so many questions of you -- who you are, from where you have come, what you are doing, what is your discipline -- but you have never asked me, 'Who are you?'"

The young man said, "If you knew who you were, you would not have been asking all these questions. I don't want to humiliate you -- I simply accept whoever you are. I never asked the trees, I never asked the animals, the birds, I never asked the stars -- why should I ask you? It is perfectly good that you are, and I am perfectly at ease with you and with everything."

The question is an uneasiness, it is a tension; it arises deep down from fear. One wants to know the other, because the other may turn out to be an enemy, may turn out to be mad. The other has to be made predictable, then one feels at ease. But can you make anybody predictable?

The young man said, "Nothing can be predicted. Everything goes on moving into more and more mysteries, and I am perfectly at ease; whatever is happening is a joy. Each moment is so sweet and so fragrant, I cannot ask for more. Whoever you are, you are good. I love you, I love everybody ... I simply love. I don't know any other way to relate with existence."

This is faith: not knowing another way to relate with existence except love, except a total acceptance -- the one suchness.

The king was so impressed. He knew well that a man who has renounced the world, even renounced his clothes, and in cold winter nights goes on standing alone in his silence, is bound to refuse his invitation -- a simple expectation of any human being. But he said, "I have fallen in so much love with you that the whole day I wait for when the night comes and I go on my round. I am always afraid that some day you may not be here. I want you to be closer to me. Can I invite you to my palace? I will arrange everything as you want."

There was not even a single moment's hesitation and the man said, "This is a good idea."

The king was shocked. One expects from a saint that he has renounced the world, he cannot come back to the world -- and the saint would have risen in honor and respect in his eyes. But the man said, "This is a perfect idea! I can just go with you right now. I don't have anything to carry with me, no arrangements have to be made."

The king was in doubt -- perhaps he has been befooled. Perhaps this man is not a saint; he has only been pretending and must have been waiting for this moment. But now it was very difficult to take the invitation back. So sadly, reluctantly, he had to take the man whom he had desired so much, loved so much, his company, his presence, his eyes, his every gesture ... He gave him the best palace where his guests, other kings and emperors, used to stay.

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He was hoping that the saint would say, "No, I don't need these golden beds and marble palaces. I am a naked monk, more in tune with the trees, with the wind, with the cold, with the heat." But instead of this, the man became very interested. He said, "Great! This is the right place!"

The king could not sleep the whole night, although the monk slept the whole night perfectly well in those luxurious surroundings. From that morning the monk's respectability in the mind of the king went down every day, because he was eating luxurious food, he was no longer naked, he was using the costliest robes. He was not worried about women -- the most beautiful women were serving him and he was quite at ease, as if nothing had happened. He looked just the same as he did naked under the tree.

But it was too much; it was becoming a wound in the king's heart that he had really been befooled, cheated. Now, how to get rid of this man? He is not a saint ... One day he asked him,

"I have been carrying a question in my mind for many, many days, but have not been courageous enough to ask."

The man said, "I know -- not many, many days, but from the very moment when I accepted your invitation."

The king was again shocked. He said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "I could see that very moment the change in your face, in your eyes. If I had rejected your offer, you would have respected me, touched my feet. But I don't reject anything.

My acceptance is total. If you are inviting me, it is perfectly good. When I said the palace is right, it is not the palace that is right, I am right wherever I am. I was right under the tree naked; I am right under these royal robes, surrounded by beautiful women, all the luxuries.

Naturally I know you must be very puzzled. You look tired, you look sad, you don't look your old self. You can ask me the question, although I know the question."

The king said, "If you know the question, then the question now is that I want to know what is the difference between me and you?"

The young man laughed and he said, "I will answer, but not here because you will not understand it. We will go for a morning walk, and at the right place, at the right moment, I will answer."

So they both went on the horses for a good morning ride, and the king was waiting and waiting. It was a beautiful morning, but he was not there to enjoy the morning; only the young man was enjoying. Finally the king said, "Now this river is the boundary of my empire.

Beyond the river I cannot go; that belongs to someone with whom we have been enemies for centuries. We have ridden miles, and now it is time enough. It is getting hot, the middle of the day."

The man said, "Yes, my answer is -- this is your robe, this is your horse" -- and getting off his horse, he took off the robe. He said, "I am going to the other side of the river, because I don't have any enemies. This robe was never mine, and this horse was never mine. Just one small question: Are you coming with me or not?"

The king said, "How can I come with you? I have to look after the kingdom. My whole life's work, struggle, fight, ambition is behind me in the kingdom. How can I go with you?"

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The man said, "That is the difference. I can go -- I don't have anything in the palace, I don't have anything to lose, nothing belongs to me. As long as it was available, I enjoyed the suchness of it. Now I will enjoy the wild trees, the river, the sun."

The king, as if awakened from a nightmare, could see again that he had been mistaken.

That man had not been deceiving him; he was authentically a man of realization. He said, "I beg your pardon. I touch your feet. Don't go, otherwise I will never be able to forgive myself."

The young man said, "To me there is no problem. I can come back, but you will still start doubting, so it is better that you let me go. I will be just standing by the other side of the bank under that beautiful tree. Whenever you want to come you can come -- at least to the other shore -- and see me. I have no problem in coming back, but I am not coming back because I don't want to disturb your nights and days, and create tensions and worries."

The more he became reluctant, the more the king started feeling sorry and sad, guilty about what he had done. But the young monk said, "You could not understand me because you don't understand the experience of suchness: wherever you are, you are in a deep love relationship with everything that is. You don't have to change anybody, you don't have to change anything, you don't have to change yourself. Everything is as it should be; it is the most perfect world.

"This is my faith, this is not my belief. It is not that I believe it is so, it is that I experience it is so."

So 'faith' in the world of Gautam Buddha and his disciples has a totally different dimension, a different significance. It is not belief. Belief is always in a concept -- a God, a heaven, a hell, a certain theology, a certain system of ideas. Belief is of the mind and faith is of your whole being. Belief is borrowed, faith is your own immediate experience. You can believe in God, but you cannot have faith in God. You can have faith in the trees, but you cannot believe in the trees.

Faith is existential, experiential.

So both the words are of tremendous significance for all those who are not in search of burdening themselves with more knowledge, more information, but are authentically seeking to transform their whole approach to existence.

TO TAKE UP THIS GREAT AFFAIR ... Ta Hui is right to call it "the great affair." You all know small affairs -- you call them love affairs -- but you don't know the great affair.

Nothing is wrong with small affairs; they are like a staircase. Go on having more and more small affairs, and one day you will have the great affair. Loving this person, loving that person, loving this situation, loving that situation -- suddenly you will open up, "Why be miserly? Why choose? Why not love choicelessly?"

When love in small quantities gives so much joy -- the whole ocean, the whole existence loved, trusted, without any complaint, without any grudge, without any desire to change, just as they are -- you suddenly fall into the great love affair. Ta Hui is absolutely right to call it this great affair. But to experience this great affair you are not expected to believe; you are expected to have a determined will. You can see how the paths change.

Belief means surrendering your will to some savior, to some messenger, to some prophet, to some God. But this great affair needs tremendous will on your part to get rid of all ideas and all beliefs, in fact to get rid of your mind itself, so that you can become open in all the dimensions of existence, available to all the experiences -- and they are infinite.

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It needs a determined will that you will not carry borrowed knowledge, that you will not remain conditioned by your parents, by your teachers, by your priests, a determined will that you will clean all this crap from your heart, and you will remain just as you were born -- a small child with no mind but absolute consciousness, with no language but a great clarity. A small child sees the trees but he cannot say they are green; he sees the beautiful moon but he cannot say it is beautiful. Words are not standing between him and existence. It will take some time for him to create a wall around himself of words, language, concepts, ideologies, philosophies, religions. The greater and bigger the wall becomes, the more imprisoned he is: every human being is an imprisoned splendor.

Great will is needed to drop all that you know -- because it is not your knowing -- and just be simple and innocent. Suddenly, in a split second, the transformation happens ... you have fallen into the great affair, the one suchness, and the faith. This faith has no adjective; it is simply faith-fullness.

IF YOU ARE HALF BELIEVING AND HALF IN DOUBT, THERE WILL BE NO

CONNECTION. If you are half believing and half in doubt, you will not be connected with this great affair, with this existence. You are always making the house with one hand and destroying it with the other. Just look at your life: you create a small affair -- forget about the great affair! -- even in your small affairs you are creating it with one hand and destroying it with the other.

It is an established psychological fact that love is never alone, it is always with hate -- you hate the same person you love. And they go on changing shifts: in the morning you hate, in the evening you love.

But this kind of affair of coming close and going farther away is an unending process. It is not going to give you contentment; it is not going to give you the faith, the trust and the blissfulness. Yes, it will give you a few glimpses once in a while, but it will also give you many nightmares. Then they all get mixed up and people become just a mess. Their nightmares and their sweet moments, their golden moments all get mixed up -- look into any mind and you will find this mess. They are unable to sort it out.

In fact, there is no way to sort it out. Either drop it or take it up -- these are the only two alternatives. One day everybody is going to drop it, because how long can you live in hell, how long can you torture yourself? No small affair can be a fulfillment; you are born with the capacity for the great affair.

It needs a determined will -- not a belief, not knowledge, but an absolute determination that you are going to be yourself, that you are going to throw away all that has been loaded onto you, that you are going to be nude, as you were born, and you are going to look at existence without any prejudiced eyes.

There is a possibility of getting connected. You were connected. In your mother's womb you were at ease -- that was your whole world. You have tasted for nine months an eternity of utter peace, blissfulness, no tension, no worry, no sadness, just a dancing of the heart. As you were born you were disconnected with your mother, and then that disconnection goes on and on continuously in the name of education; in the name of making you civilized, cultured, you go on becoming more and more disconnected with existence.

Sigmund Freud is right when he says that all the religions are nothing but a search for another womb. He has great truth in his statement. Sometimes he is shocking, and to his contemporaries he was very shocking when he said that every man's desire to enter the Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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woman's body is nothing but an unconscious effort to find the womb which he has lost --

although that is not the way to find it.

Now you need a bigger womb ... and existence is available, but you don't know how to enter into it. You are cluttered with so many unnecessary hindrances that you don't know how to enter existence. The only way is to drop all these hindrances -- hindrances which are being supported by you.

AN ANCIENT WORTHY SAID, "STUDYING THE PATH IS LIKE DRILLING FOR

FIRE. YOU STILL CAN'T STOP WHEN YOU GET SMOKE: ONLY WHEN SPARKS

APPEAR IS THE RETURN HOME COMPLETE."

A great will is needed to go on drilling, even though for a long time nothing happens. But one day you will see the signs of smoke: don't stop there, smoke is not fire! Unless sparks, unless flames are available to you, don't stop; go on drilling till the moment when you yourself become a flame. That is the completion of your pilgrimage. That is the great affair.

WANT TO KNOW WHERE IT IS COMPLETE? -- IT IS THE WORLDS OF SELF AND

THE WORLDS OF OTHERS AS ONE SUCHNESS.

WANT TO KNOW WHERE IT IS COMPLETE? -- it is complete when the worlds of self and the worlds of others are all dissolved into a great suchness, when there is only one oceanic consciousness expressing itself in different forms.

This whole existence is a brotherhood.

Saint Francis used to travel on his donkey, and people were very much puzzled because he used to call the donkey "Brother Donkey." Many times they said, "This does not look good; people laugh at it."

He said, "But the donkey has never laughed, and I am addressing the donkey, not the people. And we have a certain brotherhood."

The day he died his last words were addressed to the donkey, not to the followers who had gathered from faraway places. He said to the donkey, "Brother, I'm going. You served me your whole life with such deep love that it will remain always a memory in me, wherever I am in existence. And you have opened for me the door of the great brotherhood. It was feeling in tune with you that I started feeling in tune with other animals, with trees."

There are eyewitnesses that Saint Francis would sit in the wild forest and wild animals would come to him, hug him. Birds would come and sit on his shoulders, and when he would come near to the ocean or to any river, different kinds of fish would jump for joy, start dancing in the water. So many people have seen it that it cannot be a mythology; there are so many records of other people who have seen these things. And whenever he was asked, "What is the secret of it?" he said, "I don't know. I know only one thing: the day I became just a brother to my donkey, suddenly the whole existence became a brotherhood."

So to know where it is complete, a simple indication is that you fall into a deep suchness.

In my whole life I have never felt that anything is wrong. Everything fits so beautifully in the drama that without it, life would have been a little less rich.

When I was put in jail in America, the sheriff of the first jail was a man of great intelligence. He immediately recognized me. As he took me to the cell, he would not sit on the chair; he sat on the floor, and he said, "To sit on the chair in front of you is not possible for Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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me." And he asked, "Don't you feel that something has gone wrong somewhere? This cannot be part of your destiny."

I said to him, "This must be part of my destiny. Nothing goes wrong; nothing ever goes wrong. This is the whole religion that I teach: everything that happens is right."

After twelve days, when I left the last prison, the sheriff said, "It is strange, you look better than when you entered the jail."

I said, "Because I enjoyed it so much, it was such a new experience. If I had not been in the jail something would have remained incomplete in my life. It has made me richer."

He said, "Looking at you, it seems ..."

And I said to him, "If you want the life of your presidents and vice-presidents to be richer, give them the same experience. They really need it!"

But not for a moment have I felt an unease with existence. I don't have any temple, I don't have any mosque, I don't go to any church, I don't have any belief system, but I have lived so totally that I can say life is such a great gift that no gratitude can express it.

BUDDHA SAID, "FAITH CAN FOREVER DESTROY THE ROOT OF

AFFLICTION ..." All your afflictions are reduced to a simple statement, nothing more: things are not what they should be. You should have a better post, you should be recognized more, you should have more riches, you should have a more beautiful body, you should have a better house, a better wife, a better husband ... Your complaints are millions, and all these complaints in your mind create your misery.

Buddha is right when he says, "FAITH CAN FOREVER DESTROY THE ROOT OF ALL

AFFLICTION" ... faith in his sense -- accepting whatsoever is the situation without any complaint, knowing that this is how existence wants it to be. And if existence wants it to be, it must be right, because you cannot be wiser than existence itself. You must need it in some way; there must be some part in you that needs it to make you complete.

"... FAITH CAN FOCUS YOU ON THE VIRTUES OF BUDDHAHOOD." It is by the door of faith, trust, love, suchness, that you enter the doors of buddhahood.

I am reminded of another buddha, Socrates. His wife was enough to make anybody enlightened, so it is not the greatness of Socrates that he became enlightened; the whole credit goes to his wife. He was continuously teaching -- students from faraway places were gathering at his house -- and his wife was naturally offended that he never took any notice of her, he had no time.

One day she was preparing tea for him, and then a few students came and he became engaged in deep argumentation. His wife became so angry that she poured the hot water over his face; half his face was burned forever -- but he did not discontinue his dialogue with his students. The students were shocked! They could not believe it: "My God, his face is burned, but he is not disturbed at all!" They had almost forgotten the matter that was being discussed, but he continued. They said, "We have forgotten what the matter was. First clarify one thing to us: your wife is a monster, your face is burned."

Socrates said, "She is my test of fire. I am immensely grateful to her. She has done everything to disturb me, to make me angry, but my being has remained unruffled. I owe much to her. Whatever I am, without her it would not have been possible. My peace, my silence, my understanding, my acceptance of any situation is all due to her."

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If you look at life -- and this is the way of the seeker -- then you change every affliction into a stepping-stone, every nightmare into a situation for awakening.

"FAITH CAN TRANSCEND THE NUMEROUS ROADS OF DELUSION, AND

DISPLAY THE PATH OF UNEXCELLED LIBERATION."

Feeling oneness with existence ... [Banging sounds from outside are heard.] Now somebody comes with his monkey and with his drum ...!

Life is so rich and so unbelievably beautiful. If you can relax with it you have reached THE PATH OF UNEXCELLED LIBERATION, you have reached to the very ultimate beyond which nobody has ever gone. And it is so simple: all that you need is to learn the art of acceptance, suchness, and the faith will arise out of it. With the faith arising, all the doors of existence are opened to you, inviting to you.

The religious people of the world have destroyed the real and the essential meaning of religion. Creating rituals, prayers, statues, churches, synagogues, they have misled the whole of humanity. Nothing of that is needed; it is all junk. All that is needed is a small flame of love towards all, without any conditions, without any expectations -- and whatever life brings, to accept it with gratitude.

So simple is the real religious experience. No holy scriptures are needed. You don't have to go anywhere. Wherever you are you can create the experience of suchness, and you can blossom into the flower of faith, which automatically becomes the fragrance of buddhahood.

Ta Hui has gone a long way. It has been a beautiful experience to see an intellectual, a man of knowledgeability, transforming himself into a man of innocence, faith, suchness. He has gone from mind to no-mind.

It is good that we also traveled with him, with all his frailties, which are our frailties too.

But it is also a certainty that if he can reach to buddhahood, everybody else can reach to buddhahood also.

You are all in essence carrying the ultimate child, the ultimate innocence. Just a little will, a little courage, and you have arrived home.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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16 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

BE THOROUGHGOING

NOW THAT YOU HAVE TAKEN UP THIS AFFAIR, YOU MUST STEADFASTLY

MAKE YOURSELF THOROUGHGOING, AND SIT UPRIGHT IN A ROOM WITH

WHAT YOU'VE TRULY EXPERIENCED AND AWAKENED TO IN THE COURSE OF

YOUR LIFE. IT'S LIKE CROSSING A BRIDGE MADE OF A SINGLE PLANK

CARRYING A TWO-HUNDRED-POUND BURDEN: IF YOUR HANDS AND FEET SLIP, YOU CAN'T EVEN PRESERVE YOUR OWN LIFE, MUCH LESS SAVE OTHERS.

WHEN MONKS CAME SEEKING THE PATH, MU CHOU WOULD SAY, "AN

OBVIOUS CASE: I FORGIVE YOU THIRTY BLOWS."

WU YE OF FEN YANG TOLD QUESTIONERS, "NO FALSE THINKING!"

WHENEVER LU TSU SAW A MONK ENTER THE GATE, HE WOULD IMMEDIATELY

TURN AROUND AND SIT FACING THE WALL.

The problem with every awakened soul has always been the same: before awakening it is the very fact of awakening that is his problem. After awakening, it is again the awakening that comes as a problem -- how to express it?

To experience something is one thing, and to express it is totally another. It is possible to feel at ease with existence, in a deep suchness, but how to say it? It is possible to listen to this beautiful evening, the dance of the rain and the silent joy of the trees, but how to say it?

Words are so poor, and life is so rich. Life is so vast and words are so small. Just feel this very moment, and you will be able to see its immensity, its tremendous beauty, its splendor, its silence, its song. The heart feels it. The being is showered with flowers. The whole universe is so poetic. It is always poetry, it is never prose. If you just have eyes and sensitivity, life is always a rejoicing. And the deepest source of life is within you.

The whole effort of a seeker is to be awake to the source of being within -- which is eternal, immeasurable, immortal. But then the problem arises ... a deep urge, an irresistible longing to share it. All the masters, all those who have become awakened, have struggled hard in different ways, rational, irrational. They have even taken recourse to absurdities, just to give you a hint.

Ta Hui is facing the same situation. He has arrived home, and now he wants to invite all those who are still wandering in the darkness. He wants to send the invitation, but where are the words? He is trying his hardest. This morning he gave you two words. One was the great affair of suchness -- experiencing life as it is without bringing your mind in -- and the second word was faith. Faith is a natural outcome of the experience of suchness. It certainly is a great affair.

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Now he will be trying in these last sutras, for a few days more, from different angles, to approach this great affair again and again. One never knows what will penetrate to your heart.

There is not much to say, but there is much to show. Every effort has been made, certainly, by different teachers in their uniqueness. Ta Hui will be describing other masters too.

This evening the sutra is, BE THOROUGHGOING. Ordinarily people are never thoroughgoing. They are always lukewarm, just so-so, wishy-washy, half-hearted, always thinking with a divided being: To be or not to be? A person who is divided takes one step forward and immediately takes another step backward. He remains in almost the same place as he has always been, although he is making every effort to move.

I have heard about a small child ... it must have been a rainy day like today. The child was always a latecomer to the school, and he was always ready with some excuse. That day the excuse was absolutely clear -- it was raining hard.

The child said to the teacher, "Before you ask, I can answer the question today. At least today the excuse is absolutely clear. The muddy road to the school is so slippery that you will not believe me, teacher: I would take one step forward, and I would slip two steps back!"

The teacher said, "If this is true, then how did you manage to reach here?"

The boy said, "I started walking towards my home, then finally I managed to reach the school."

Every man is in search. It may be better to say that every man is a search, a longing for something; he does not understand exactly what, but something is missing, something is incomplete, something is not entire. There is a gap, and that gap allows no one to remain at rest; it asks to be filled, and unless it is filled, you will never feel that you really are.

George Gurdjieff wrote a book, MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN. One of his disciples asked him, "What is the definition of a remarkable man?"

He said, "A remarkable man is. An ordinary man is still trying to find where he is, whether he is or not. A remarkable man is one who has found."

Everybody is a search, a hunger, an appetite, a thirst, a longing -- a longing to know oneself and a longing to know through oneself the whole beautiful universe. Certainly one of the most important things should be, BE THOROUGHGOING. Don't run in all directions; remain one-pointed, remain crystallized.

Life is small and time is moving fast. If you go on only thinking and never taking a solid step towards transformation, towards awareness, towards crystallization, it is not going to happen on its own accord. It cannot happen in a confused mind. Even at the last moment when a person is dying, if you ask him, "Are you certain, can you tell us what you wanted to be in your life?", ninety-nine point nine percent of people will not be able to answer it.

Gertrude Stein, a woman of tremendous genius, one of the greatest women in the whole of history was dying. Her very close, intimate friends were sitting in silence when suddenly she opened her eyes and said, "What is the answer?" The friends were shocked because the question had not been asked, so how can you say what is the answer? But to a dying woman they could not be hard. A great silence fell over them, but somebody managed to ask her,

"You are asking what is the answer -- but you have not asked, What is the question?"

Gertrude Stein laughed and said, "Okay then, tell me: What is the question?" And that was her last statement. She died.

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In this small incident is contained the life of millions of people. They don't know what is the question and they don't know, of course, what is the answer. And still they are running all over the place in all directions.

BE THOROUGHGOING means, have a determination that you are going to discover yourself, whatsoever the cost. Having life without knowing it is almost equal to not having it.

Living and not knowing what it is, is very humiliating. Loving and not knowing what it is, is unforgivable.

When Ta Hui says, BE THOROUGHGOING, he means: put every iota of your energy, stake everything on a single arrow and then perhaps you may be able to come home. You may be able to discover that which is missing. In fact, the reality is that the moment you are absolutely thoroughgoing, one-pointed, single-minded, with an undivided heart, this very thoroughgoingness is the arrival. You don't have to go anywhere. In this totality, in this intensity, the flower blossoms.

NOW THAT YOU HAVE TAKEN UP THIS AFFAIR ... I love Ta Hui's continuous use of the words "this affair."

NOW THAT YOU HAVE TAKEN UP THIS AFFAIR, YOU MUST STEADFASTLY

MAKE YOURSELF THOROUGHGOING, AND SIT UPRIGHT IN A ROOM WITH

WHAT YOU HAVE TRULY EXPERIENCED AND AWAKENED TO IN THE COURSE

OF YOUR LIFE. IT IS LIKE CROSSING A BRIDGE MADE OF A SINGLE PLANK

CARRYING A TWO-HUNDRED-POUND BURDEN: IF YOUR HANDS AND FEET SLIP, YOU CAN'T EVEN PRESERVE YOUR OWN LIFE, MUCH LESS SAVE OTHERS.

Here, each moment is risky, because each moment can turn into death. You are all crossing the plank with a mountainous burden on you; just a small slip is enough, and you are gone.

You have to be alert, so alert that no other energy is left in you, everything has become just a flame of awareness.

It happened once ... A great warrior came home and was shocked to see that his servant was with his wife in his bedroom. He was a warrior, and warriors have their own ways. He said to the servant, "The only punishment should be that I behead you right now. But being a warrior I cannot do that. You come out, take a sword, and have a chance: you will have to fight with me."

The poor servant said, "It is better you cut off my head, because you are a great warrior and I don't know even how to hold the sword. Why are you making a mockery of me?"

But the warrior was persistent. He said, "If you want a few days to learn, I can send you to the best teacher. Learn ... but you will have to fight. Whoever wins will have my wife."

The servant knew that his master would not change his mind. He went to the teacher, and the teacher said, "Don't be worried, and don't try to learn because your master is also my student. I know him: as far as swordsmanship is concerned, even I cannot defeat him. He has entered far more deeply into the art. You forget about learning. Learning is dangerous: if you know a little bit, you are finished."

The man said, "Then what do you suggest?"

The teacher said, "I suggest one thing. You just take this sword; this is the way it is to be held. Go immediately and challenge your master to come out! Certainly your life is at risk, but now there is no way out. So do whatsoever you want to do: the sword is in your hands; hit Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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your master any way it comes to your mind. This way you will be more thoroughgoing, because your mind will not be divided in thinking what is right, what is wrong, and what step should I take and what step should I avoid? It is better to be ignorant in this situation.

Only one thing you should remember: your life is at risk, so be thoroughgoing! And because you don't know anything, there is nothing wrong, everything is right. And I am coming with you to judge."

The warrior was amazed that he had come back so quickly -- it takes years of learning --

and that his master was also with him. The master said, "I have come to see a strange phenomenon: the fight of a great warrior with a man who does not know even how to handle the sword. But I want you to be aware, be alert, because he is going to be more thoroughgoing than you are. Because you will depend more on your training, on your knowledge, you will not be afraid for your life; you will feel a kind of safety and security which he has not. He is absolutely insecure; hence, be alert and thoroughgoing, because he is going to be more thoroughgoing than you are. You will depend on your knowledge."

And as they started, the warrior became afraid. The servant was hitting him almost madly, not knowing what to do, and he was moving backwards just to save himself; he had never known any warrior to do such things as the servant was doing. Every warrior has a certain discipline, but this ignorant man had nothing!

Finally he came to the fencing wall -- the servant has pushed him to the fencing wall -- and the warrior said, "Wait! I don't want to lose my life for an unfaithful wife. You can take her.

But I am amazed: great warriors have not been able to defeat me, and you made me so afraid because you were hitting this way and that way. I could not believe it -- has this man gone crazy or mad or what?"

It was a question of life and death for the servant. It was not a question of life and death for the warrior -- and that made the difference.

There are only two types of people in the world: those who understand that every moment life is at risk, hence they do something, and those who are absolutely unaware that death can strike any moment and take away their whole future -- all their dreams, all their imaginations, all that they were thinking they were going to do tomorrow.

Death does only one thing:

It takes away your tomorrow.

A man who has entered in this affair of the search leaves tomorrow himself; he does not wait for death to take it away. He has no tomorrow. He has only this moment, and he has to concentrate himself into this moment, without holding anything back. In this crystallization is the great happening of enlightenment.

NOW THAT YOU HAVE TAKEN UP THIS AFFAIR ... Certainly you are here, so these words are actually addressed to you; they are not addressed to somebody fictitious. Being with me means you have taken up this great affair, that you are no more just an ordinary human being but a seeker, that you are ready to risk everything to find the secret of existence.

... YOU MUST STEADFASTLY MAKE YOURSELF THOROUGHGOING. Do everything as if there is no time left, as if this is the last moment to do it; so do it fully, completely, without postponing, without saying, "There is no hurry. Something can be done today, something can be done tomorrow."

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Don't live in installments: that is the meaning of being thoroughgoing. It means don't be American! Don't live in installments; live totally now, as if tomorrow does not exist. In fact it does not exist; it is only our idea, it is our laziness. It is our reluctance to put ourself totally at risk, now. We say, "What is the hurry?" -- we find a thousand and one excuses for postponing, particularly the great affair.

Gautam Buddha was dying and a man came running. Buddha had passed by his village thirty times in his forty-two years of wandering; his village was kind of a crossroad. Buddha had passed by the side of his house and had stayed outside the village thirty times -- and this man had always postponed. He wanted to see Buddha, he had heard so much about him, but always small excuses ... a customer has come, and he is tending his shop; his wife is sick and he has to go to the physician, or something else.

But suddenly one day he heard that Gautam Buddha was outside his village and had told his disciples that now he is going to leave his body: "If you have anything to ask, you can ask.

It should not be said by the coming generations that Buddha did not answer a question which was in the mind of one of his disciples. For forty-two years I have been answering you, but perhaps there may be some questions still. Before I leave the body, I want to answer them all."

The disciples said with tears in their eyes, "You have answered more than we had ever asked, or ever thought to ask. We don't want to disturb you. You can silently leave your body.

This is no moment for any question or answer; this is no moment for any communication with language. We simply want to be silent, watching your disappearance into the universal consciousness."

Three times he asked -- that was his routine ... Many times he was asked, "Why do you ask three times?" He said, "Even three times are not enough, people are so deaf." He again said, "I still ask; if anybody has any question, don't hide, don't be shy" -- but again and again they said they didn't have any question.

So Buddha said, "Then I shall enter into the four stages: The first stage of meditation, in which one leaves the body; the second stage, in which one leaves the mind; the third stage, in which one leaves the heart; and the fourth stage, in which one leaves the very self and the dewdrop disappears into the ocean."

So he closed his eyes ... Just then this man from the village came running, saying "I have a few questions!"

People said, "Don't be stupid. Thirty times Buddha has been near your town, and where have you been?"

He said, "Sometimes there was a customer, sometimes there was a guest, sometimes my wife was sick, sometimes I was engaged in fighting with someone -- just trivia, I know. It was stupid of me to postpone, but hearing that Buddha is leaving the body, now I cannot postpone."

But Ananda, Buddha's chief disciple said, "Now be silent. He has already moved inwards.

He has closed his eyes, and it is absolutely ungentlemanly ... now wait for some other life.

When you find some other buddha, then you can ask your questions. And your questions are not very important either, because if you can postpone them for thirty years they cannot mean much. They are not a priority in your life."

When the meaning, the significance of life becomes a priority, everything else becomes secondary: you have entered the great affair.

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But Buddha had just left his mind. He came back, opened his eyes and said, "Ananda, I would not like it to be on record that when I was still alive somebody had come to ask, and I did not answer. Let the man come. I have just gone beyond the mind; It is not much trouble for me to come back, because that has been happening my whole life. The moment I talk to you, I have to come to the mind. The moment I am not talking to you, I move away from it.

There is no problem. Don't take it seriously."

The man had many questions in his mind, but the situation was such that he forgot all. He simply said, "I used to think that I had many questions, but looking at you, I only want to ask you one question: What should I ask you? There is not much time ... you had just entered the boat and now you have come back out. I cannot waste your time in unnecessary things; just tell me exactly what is the question."

Gautam Buddha said:. "It was worth coming back. You are a man who may not have been very alert in life, who may not have realized your potential, but in this moment you are showing your pure intelligence. The question is only one: you are the question and you are the answer. You in your unawareness is the question; you as awareness is the answer."

And it is said that that man became enlightened. The situation was such ... Buddha came back. There were ten thousand monks with tears in their eyes, and silence all around. Buddha had condensed his whole philosophy: "You as ignorance is the question, and you as alert awareness, you as consciousness, is the answer."

And how does one becomes conscious? Just by being thoroughgoing, just by being total in every act. "Be as alert," says Ta Hui "as if you are CROSSING A BRIDGE MADE OF A SINGLE PLANK, CARRYING A TWO-HUNDRED POUND BURDEN: IF YOUR HANDS

AND FEET SLIP, YOU CAN'T EVEN PRESERVE YOUR OWN LIFE, MUCH LESS

SAVE OTHERS."

In such a situation you will become absolutely aware. You will be simply awareness, nothing else. Just a purity, a luminosity ... and that is enlightenment, the great affair. Your seeking the path is really nothing but seeking awareness, Ta Hui reminds you.

Mu Chou once said: "AN OBVIOUS CASE. I FORGIVE YOU THIRTY BLOWS." Now Zen has special methods of its own, not developed by any other tradition. Mu Chou is one of the great masters who used to hit his disciples with his stick when they would bring the answer to a koan meditation. They were asked to meditate on a koan. A koan is a puzzle which has no answer, and they were told to find out the answer, "and when you have found it, come."

Naturally every answer was going to be wrong. The sound of one hand clapping ... now what answer is going to be right? So Mu Chou did not wait for their answers. He would simply hit them and tell them, "Go back, your answer was wrong. Meditate again; find the right answer."

He was known as a crazy master -- at least he should have the generosity to listen to the poor disciple's answer. The disciple had been meditating day in, day out, and he has found some answer -- he had heard the wind passing through the pine trees and the music ... he had heard the sound of running water and he thought, "Perhaps this is it!" -- and he had run immediately to the master to tell him that he had heard the sound of one hand clapping, with great expectation. But the master was really a hard taskmaster! He would hit him even before he had uttered a single word.

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Many other masters said to Chou, "This is too much! You can hit ... but at least listen to his answer."

But Chou used to say, "Even to listen to their answers is to give an indication that there can be a right answer. I want to make it absolutely clear to them that all answers are wrong.

By hitting them again and again, one day it dawns on the disciple that perhaps no answer is right, perhaps there is no answer at all ... and then he will not come, because now what is the point? Then he will sit under the tree in the garden of the master, enjoying."

And when the master sees that a certain disciple has not come for many days -- the disciple had to report every day what is his finding for those twenty-four hours -- then Chou would go to look for the disciple and would find him giggling under a tree. He would sit with the disciple and giggle, and he would say, "So you have found it!"

This is the man who said once ... He gave to a disciple a famous koan: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" And the disciple, rather than going out, took the stick of the master and hit him hard. This was the situation in which Chou said to him, "AN OBVIOUS CASE. I FORGIVE YOU THIRTY BLOWS" -- otherwise, if you had gone and meditated, you would have got thirty blows. You did the right thing. I was asking you something absurd.

But what is the point of asking the absurd? The point is that mind comes to a stop only when it faces the absurd; if it can solve the problem it goes on functioning. When it cannot solve it this way or that way, it tries hard all the doors and everything is closed, a realization arises that there is no way out -- mind stops.

In that very stopping is the answer. In that very stopping is the silence, the transcendence ... the peace that passeth understanding.

Wu Ye, another master, told questioners, "NO FALSE THINKING!" That was his only teaching. He was asked by the emperor to come to the court to deliver a sermon on some auspicious occasion. He came with his thousands of disciples. There was great silence. All the warriors and the samurais and the courtiers and the queens and the princes and all the rich people of the capital were invited. Wu Ye stepped up onto the platform, looked all around and said, "NO FALSE THINKING! The sermon is over" -- and he stepped down.

The emperor looked ... the whole court was shocked: "What kind of sermon is this?" But Wu Ye's disciples had a great laugh, because they knew this was going to be the sermon. This was the only sermon they had been hearing every day. Every day, without fail, with great seriousness Wu Ye comes and says, "NO FALSE THINKING!"

He was a simple man. In fact, he has condensed the whole philosophy of Buddha into a simple statement: NO FALSE THINKING. And if you start looking into the matter, all thinking is false. No false thinking means no thinking; no false thinking means falling into a deep silence, becoming a no-mind.

His disciples slowly, slowly had understood, because they were meditating. But every day the sermon was there -- and with great seriousness he used to come. Even his old disciples sometimes were expecting that perhaps today he is going to say something else. But in his whole life, as far as I know -- he was the only consistent man -- he never said anything else.

Another master Ta Hui mentions is Lu Tsu. Whenever Lu Tsu saw a monk enter the gate, he would immediately turn around and sit facing the wall. Strange behavior! -- somebody comes to you and the moment he enters in the door, you immediately turn around and start looking at the wall!

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But Lu Tsu had many enlightened disciples. That was his teaching: without saying a word he was saying, "Just sit and look at the wall." Looking at the wall, how long can you go on thinking? -- you will get bored. The same wall ... you may paint it many times in your imagination, but you know it is all imagination. Thoughts will come and float like clouds in the sky, but you know that the sky is always empty. The clouds don't leave any footsteps and slowly, slowly the wall becomes just a screen with no pictures on it, no thoughts on it.

Lu Tsu's method reminds me of Bodhidharma. He must have learned at least the idea of facing the wall from Bodhidharma, his ancient master, who for nine years continuously ...

Bodhidharma did not even bother first to face towards you and then to turn towards the wall; he used to sit only facing the wall, for nine years continuously! And he had made it known that he would turn around only when somebody who was total in his search came; he was there not for ordinary disciples, but only for extraordinary seekers, who were total.

One day a man came, and without saying anything he cut off his left hand with his sword and threw it at Bodhidharma's feet and said, "This is only the beginning. Either you turn around or I will cut off my head."

Bodhidharma turned immediately. He said, "So you have come! No need to cut off your head. You have given enough proof of your being a seeker who is really ready to risk."

This was the man who was finally chosen by Bodhidharma as his successor; he had the guts, he had the right to be a successor. When asked why he had been looking at the wall for nine years, Bodhidharma said, "Looking at people hurts, because they are buddhas and they don't know it; they are buddhas and they are miserable. Looking at them makes one feel so sad and sorry for them, and there is no way you can help them.

"Watching the wall is good, because the wall is not a potential buddha. You don't have to be concerned about the wall. And anyway, somebody who can understand me will be able to understand even while I'm facing the wall ... he can at least sit by my side and start facing the wall."

And actually many disciples did that. The master is showing the way: what more do you want? Just sit by the side and watch. Watching the wall -- slowly, slowly thoughts disappear, thinking stops, mind evaporates and what is left is your authentic reality.

Without finding this authentic reality you will never feel entire and whole, you will never be able to have the feeling that you are part of a great, magnificent, mysterious universe. And not only that you are a part ... you are also the whole. You just have to disappear into the whole, then you are in the trees, and you are in the rains and you are in the clouds and you are in the sky and you are all over.

Just to conceive the idea that "I am one with existence" is so relaxing, is so liberating, that even if you want to become miserable, you cannot. I have tried, and I have failed. Sitting alone in my room, I have tried many times to be miserable -- because people go on telling me they are miserable, and I also want to taste what this misery is.

But to be frank with you, I have been continuously a failure. I have tried to be angry, I have tried all kinds of things -- but if you have realized your oneness with existence there is no one to be angry with, there is no one to fight with, there is no one to be jealous of. This state is certainly the great affair.

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Listen to Ta Hui's invitation! Become part of the great affair. On this pilgrimage from here to here, just be thoroughgoing; half-heartedness will not do. And then even in a single moment one can become enlightened -- because one is already enlightened.

You just have to gather yourself. You have fallen apart: your hand is lying here, your leg is lying there, somebody is playing football with your head. You have just to put yourself together. And once you are together, there is nothing more to achieve. But you yourself go on splitting yourself, dividing yourself.

I have heard ... a thief was brought into the court. He was a famous thief, and the magistrate said, "You are such an experienced man. What was the reason that you entered into the house, remained there the whole night, did not steal anything, and yet, got caught?"

He said, "It is a strange story. First I want to ask you one thing: that if you want to send me to the gallows, you can; but don't give me one sentence, and that is to have two wives."

The magistrate said, "But there is no punishment like having two wives."

The thief said, "That's very good. That's what happened. I entered into this house, and this man has two wives. One wife lives on the ground floor and the other wife lives on the first floor. They both dragged this man on the staircase, and the drama was so great that I forgot completely for what I had come." It was so pitiable! Somehow one woman would pull him upstairs, and as he was reaching, the other woman would come and start dragging him downwards. This went on the whole night, and I could not escape because I was inside the house and all the three people were awake, and I could not steal anything because the scene was so hilarious."

But if you look at yourself, do you know how many wives you have? how many husbands you have? in how many places you have left your parts? how many desires, how many ambitions? You have cut yourself into pieces. You have behaved like a butcher with yourself.

All the teaching of the awakened people is simply one: Be integrated. Come together. Find out all your parts and get crystallized. Become one.

In this oneness is your realization, the end of the world of darkness and the beginning of the world of light, truth, blissfulness ... and much more that has no words to be expressed.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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31

Release

17 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

RELEASE

IN OUR FAMILY THERE IS INDEED A SUBTLE MARVEL NOT TRANSMITTED. IT

WOULDN'T HELP EVEN IF THE SKY BECAME MY MOUTH, AND GRASS, TREES, PEBBLES, AND STONES ALL EMITTED LIGHT TO HELP ME EXPOUND THE

TRUTH. THUS WE BELIEVE THAT THIS THING CANNOT BE TRANSMITTED AND

CANNOT BE STUDIED: IT REQUIRES ONE'S OWN REALIZATION AND

ENLIGHTENMENT.

BE SURE TO REMEMBER THE WORDS OF THE PREVIOUS DAY: "IN PRINCIPLE, IT'S SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT -- TAKING ADVANTAGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

TO CLEAR EVERYTHING AWAY. IN THE EVENT, PHENOMENA ARE NOT

SUDDENLY REMOVED BUT EXHAUSTED GRADUALLY." WHETHER YOU'RE

WALKING, STANDING, SITTING, OR LYING DOWN, YOU MUST NOT FORGET!

YOU DON'T HAVE TO SEEK SPECIAL EXCELLENCE OR EXTRAORDINARY

WONDERS BESIDES.

MASTER SHUI LAO ASKED MA TSU, "WHAT IS THE TRUE MEANING OF THE

COMING FROM THE WEST?"

MA TSU THEN KNOCKED HIM DOWN WITH A KICK TO THE CHEST: SHUI LAO

WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED. HE GOT UP, CLAPPING HIS HANDS AND

LAUGHING LOUDLY, AND SAID, "HOW EXTRAORDINARY! HOW WONDERFUL!

INSTANTLY, ON THE TIP OF A HAIR, I'VE UNDERSTOOD THE ROOT SOURCE OF

MYRIAD STATES OF CONCENTRATION, AND COUNTLESS SUBTLE MEANINGS."

THEN HE BOWED AND WITHDREW. AFTERWARDS, HE WOULD TELL THE

ASSEMBLY, "FROM THE TIME I TOOK MA TSU'S KICK, UP UNTIL NOW, I HAVEN'T STOPPED LAUGHING."

Last night it rained cats and dogs. I have always wondered where this phrase may have come from. There is only one possible source, and that is a fable of Aesop: A cat was very happily walking by, smiling to herself, and a dog asked her, "What is the matter?"

She said, "Last night in my dreams it rained, and it rained rats!"

The dog said, "Listen, you stupid cat. You don't understand a thing about dream psychology. I was also here last night and I can testify that it rained -- but it rained cats, not rats."

That seems to be accurate enough. Dogs can dream of cats raining, but the saying is, "It rained cats and dogs." Who would be dreaming about dogs ...? Except for this small anecdote in Aesop there is no reference in the whole literature of the world, but it seems in almost all Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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the languages somehow the saying has taken root. One thing is certain: whatever the roots --

or no roots -- the saying is very expressive.

The rain last night was an immense joy ... not only to the earth -- thirsty, waiting for it --

but to the trees and to you all. These small experiences can release in you the ultimate experience ... just the beauty of them, the splendor, unexpected, unpredictable. Suddenly you are surrounded with such tremendous peace, silence -- and not empty, but full of songs and dances, and the whole existence rejoicing.

As one goes deeper on the path, as one releases oneself from the prison of one's own mind, ordinary experiences start taking extraordinary colors. Just an ordinary flower looked at silently becomes a wondrous experience. What a marvel that a small flower can exist with beautiful colors, with a little fragrance of its own, an individuality of its own. The greatest philosopher cannot fathom the meaning of the smallest flower.

But the mystic is not a philosopher; he does not bother to fathom meanings, to measure meanings, to think about things. He simply rejoices in them. When it rains, he dances, he joins hands with the rain. When trees are rejoicing, becoming fresh, one starts feeling the same freshness. Only one thing is needed, and that is the offering of the sutra this morning ...

release.

Ta Hui is intending to convey a simple thing to you: you are the prison, you are the prisoner, and you are the one who has imprisoned you. You are playing a game with yourself.

One part of you functions as the jailer, another part functions as the jail, and your innermost core is crushed between these two parts. You become a prisoner; it is not that somebody else is making you a prisoner.

It would have been a great calamity if man's consciousness was imprisoned by somebody else. Then freedom would not be in your own hands; then freedom would be in somebody else's hands. It is marvelous that you are yourself imprisoning your being, hence the release can happen instantly. It is only a question of a little understanding, just a little intelligence.

This sutra is very beautiful. It says, "IN OUR FAMILY ..." To whom is Ta Hui referring as

"our family"? You are included in it, as are all those who are involved in this great affair of searching, seeking, trying to penetrate into the mysteries of existence. They may have been past, they may be present, they may be in the future, but they constitute the only family worth calling family.

There is a physical, biological family: your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your husbands, your wives, your children -- but that is a very superficial phenomenon, accidental.

There is a deeper family which has nothing to do with your biological origins but is concerned with your ultimate search. It is spiritual. It is not accidental -- it is very essential.

Once you become aware, you will be suddenly amazed that all the buddhas of the past and all the buddhas of the future and all the buddhas of the present constitute a single family, because their experience is the same, their truth is the same, their life is surrounded with the same fragrance. They in no way differ from each other. If you have come across a single buddha, you have come across all of them. He contains all of them; he represents all of them.

Ta Hui is immensely beautiful to mention it as a family ... IN OUR FAMILY THERE IS

INDEED A SUBTLE MARVEL NOT TRANSMITTED. Everybody in the family knows about it, but nobody says anything about it. Everybody in the family has experienced it, but Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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remains absolutely silent about it, because knowing the ultimate is also to know simultaneously that it is inexpressible. Those who try to express it are those who don't know.

This is the marvel: Those who know don't try to express it, and those who don't know try to express it.

The ignorant are very articulate; they say things about God, about heaven and about hell, and the ones who know are utterly silent about the mysteries of life. You can know whether a man has experienced something or not by his being silent about the ultimate matters. He may indicate, he may give a few hints, he may create devices in which you can also awaken to the experience -- but he will not say a single word.

Because of this fact, Zen has strange ways of transmitting. The truth has always been transmitted; it has never been said. It is more like a gesture of the hand, more like a smile on the lips, more like a twinkle in the eyes ... but it is never a word.

IN OUR FAMILY THERE IS INDEED A SUBTLE MARVEL NOT TRANSMITTED. IT

WOULD NOT HELP EVEN IF THE SKY BECAME MY MOUTH, AND GRASS, TREES, PEBBLES, AND STONES ALL EMITTED LIGHT TO HELP ME EXPOUND THE

TRUTH. THUS WE BELIEVE THAT THIS THING CANNOT BE TRANSMITTED AND

CANNOT BE STUDIED: IT REQUIRES ONE'S OWN REALIZATION AND

ENLIGHTENMENT.

This has to be understood as the very fundamental: if you are ready, open, receptive, alert, you will get it. And you will get it in strange ways which have no logical relationship, no causal relationship.

Many intellectuals in the world who have become aware of Zen in the past century were, in the beginning, simply laughing at the craziness of these people, because it does not make sense to their reasoning minds. Somebody hits you and you become enlightened ... the mind cannot believe it. There seems to be no reason why a certain hit will destroy all your ignorance.

Even today, Zen is being studied in the West on a vast scale; it has become one of the universal phenomena. But the very idea of studying it goes against it: you cannot study Zen.

You can have it, but you cannot get it from someone else. And the simple reason is that you have already got it. It is just a question of forgetfulness.

It will be helpful for you to be reminded ... Perhaps in everybody's life there are moments when you know that a certain name, a certain person, a certain face is known to you. The expression exists in all the languages that it is "just on the tip of my tongue." Then who is preventing you, why don't you tell it? You know perfectly well it is there, but it needs some release -- and perhaps a hit may do it. You have only forgotten -- perhaps a good hit will help you to forget to remember it, because the effort to remember a thing makes your mind tense, and the more you try to remember, the more tense you become.

Tension means narrowing of the mind. It becomes so narrow that nothing can pass through it. A good hit and the mind opens ... because you have forgotten that you were trying to remember something, and suddenly that which was on your tongue is no more a secret; now you know it fully well. Something like this has been happening in transmissions of a higher and deeper level.

But Zen is not a study. There is no way to make it a subject of studies in the universities; that will be very stupid. There is no way to find someone who has it who can give it to you. It Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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is not that the people who have it are miserly or not generous -- just the contrary. They are the most generous people; if they could give it to you they would not bother whether you want it or not, they would give it to you.

But the very nature of the experience is such that it does not come from outside; it happens within you. The people who have experienced it are in constant search of creating a situation around you so that what is asleep becomes awake. Once you understand it, Zen will not look crazy, it will not look irrational. It will look certainly super-rational -- beyond the capacities of the mind.

THUS WE BELIEVE THAT THIS THING CANNOT BE TRANSMITTED AND

CANNOT BE STUDIED: IT REQUIRES ONE'S OWN REALIZATION AND

ENLIGHTENMENT.

It has become more difficult because Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Jews have created a very difficult situation for millions of people. They have been giving people the idea that it will be delivered to you by a savior, it will be given to you by a messenger; all you have to do is to believe and wait. Jesus will redeem you -- or Mohammed or Krishna.

What I want to point out very clearly is that the idea that somebody else, it does not matter who -- Jesus, Moses, Krishna or Mohammed ... the idea that somebody else will do it on your behalf is absolutely wrong. But this idea has prevailed and it is very easy to accept it, it is very simple to be imprisoned by it, because somebody else is taking the responsibility.

In this world people are very easily ready to give responsibility to somebody else. They think that by giving away responsibility they are free of the burden. They are absolutely wrong. Responsibility is freedom, and the moment you give responsibility to somebody else you have also given your freedom.

Now two thousand years have passed and Christians are waiting for the savior to come. I tell you he is never going to come, for the simple reason that what he has promised he cannot deliver. Krishna has promised that he will be coming, but it is strange that nobody wonders why these people did not redeem humanity while they were here. What is the point of postponing it for the future, for the next time when they will come?

People were as much in misery then as they are now, people were as much ignorant as they are now -- so what was the reason to postpone? Jesus could have redeemed the whole world, Krishna could have enlightened everybody. But it was a very subtle game: they took the responsibility -- and helped you to remain a prisoner till they come back. Just go on praying ...

one day he is going to come.

This has taken away not only your responsibility but your freedom. It has taken away your very individuality and your uniqueness.

I love Gautam Buddha for the simple reason that he is the first man in the long history of man who refused to take the responsibility of redeeming anybody. He seems to be the most courageous man -- because it is so easy to gather followers if you take responsibility, and rather than taking responsibility he was saying that there is no way for anybody else to redeem you.

Let it sink deep in your hearts.

Only you are capable of awakening.

Because only you are capable of falling asleep.

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Nobody else is responsible for your sleep.

How can somebody else be responsible for your awakening? All those who have promised to redeem you have humiliated you; they have reduced you to less than human beings.

It is not a coincidence that Jesus goes on calling himself the shepherd and you the sheep and I sometimes wonder why not even a single man stood up and said, "This is very insulting." Not that people must not have felt it, but it was very cheap, and "the fellow is taking all the responsibility, that is good -- so we need not bother about it. We can go round and round in our trivia and he will take care of our spirituality." It was a good chance to get rid of the whole affair.

It seems hurtful ... but I cannot say anything which is not true. All these people behaved more like businessmen; they were more concerned in having more and more customers.

Gautam Buddha seems to be the single man who is not interested in having followers, who is not interested in being a shepherd, who is not interested in reducing you into sheep. On the contrary, his whole life he insisted on only one thing: You are just like me; the difference is very small. One day I was asleep, today I am awake. Today you are asleep, tomorrow you may be awake -- and if you are intelligent you can be awake this very moment.

Buddha alone gives respect to individuality, to human beings -- no one else has ever given it. He denied God for the simple reason that God cannot be accepted. The very acceptance of God as a creator destroys the whole beauty of humanity. Then you are just a puppet in the hands of a God who seems to be whimsical. For no reason he created you, and for no reason he can decreate you.

Buddha removed God completely from the vision of the people who understood him: God and man cannot exist together. No coexistence is possible, because God is basically a dictatorial concept, absolute dictatorship ... and man cannot raise his head in freedom if there is a God. You can hear people say that without the will of God not even a leaf moves. Then this whole existence becomes an imprisonment, a great concentration camp, and God becomes Adolf Hitler a million times magnified.

Gautam Buddha, rather than talking about hypothetical nonsense, takes the existential problem directly: the problem is your release. And the problem is simple because the release is within your own hands: you have just forgotten who you are. Just by telling you who you are, you will not understand, and the danger is that by telling you who you are, you may become a parrot. You may start ...

In India you will find a whole country full of parrots. Everybody is talking about the soul, enlightenment, awakening, nirvana. They have all been repeating beautiful sentences from scriptures. Buddha also does not want to make you a parrot; hence he says there is no way to give you the truth, for the simple reason that you already have it.

So all that can be done is somehow to create situations to wake you up and, if it is needed, to give you a good slap at the right moment. Anybody's slap won't do, only a master's -- and only a disciple who has been working on the way for years, or maybe for lives, comes to a point just on the boundary line, where a little push ... and he has reached to the other shore. So there are disciplines in Buddhism, but those disciplines are not going to give you the truth.

They are only going to bring you to the point where some insightful compassionate master will be needed to create a device which releases you.

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Have you seen small birds? They see their parents flying all around, and they also flutter their wings. But they are afraid -- naturally, because they have never flown -- and they cannot believe that going out of their cozy nest is safe. The vast sky ... and no experience of flying --

although they are capable of flying, they have the wings, and they will rejoice to fly in the sky under the warm sun.

Finally the parents of those small birds have to push them. That is a device -- that is a Zen device. But the parents have to wait till their wings are strong enough; they do many things which to me seem to be exactly what the Zen master does for the disciple. The mother will fly in front of them, showing that if she can fly, why can't they? The young birds flutter their wings to gain confidence, to become acquainted with the fact that they also have wings -- it's true!

But to take the jump ... They come to the very edge of their nest, they weigh all the pros and cons. There is a great longing to take the jump, but there is also a fear because they are going into the unknown. Who knows -- they may fall flat on the earth and be finished. The mother goes to the other tree, and from there she starts calling them: Come on! It is irresistible. They try, but some invisible boundary prevents them.

When the parents see that now they are perfectly capable, it is only fear that is preventing them, one day, without informing them, suddenly a Zen push ...! Of course in the beginning they flutter in a haphazard way, but they know now that although they are not flying as they should, they can keep themselves up in the air. Then the mother starts calling them from faraway trees. First they go to very close trees, then they start going to farther trees, and then one day they are gone forever into the infinite; they never come back. Then the whole sky has become theirs.

I have always thought that the Zen devices of transmitting must have come from such sources. Zen monasteries are in the forests, and some genius master may have seen the situation of a bird being pushed. There is no logical sense. You cannot convince the bird intellectually, and a push is not a rational way.

BE SURE TO REMEMBER THE WORDS OF A PREVIOUS DAY: "IN PRINCIPLE, IT

IS SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT." In principle only is it sudden enlightenment. In practice, in reality, the small bird has to grow strong wings, wait for the right moment, and has to be under the protection of a right master. Any hurry can be fatal.

If somebody is awakened before his ripening time, before his maturity, that enlightenment can be dangerous. He may not be able to survive it, it may be too much. He was not yet able to contain it, to absorb it, to relish it. So in principle Ta Hui is right; it is sudden enlightenment.

Intellectuals all over the world have asked, "If it is sudden, then why is it not happening to us? Then why does somebody have to meditate for years if it is sudden?" They have not understood that in principle it is sudden. When it will happen, it will happen suddenly -- but before that happening, a certain maturity is needed. That means enlightenment in itself is sudden, but its preparation is gradual.

Ta Hui is bringing a tremendous synthesis to two conflicting schools. One says it is gradual, one says it is sudden -- and they have gone on fighting for centuries, arguing against each other. They cannot see that gradualness and suddenness are not necessarily opposite, that gradualness can be a preparation for suddenness. They cannot see that both can be part of a synthetic process.

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... TAKING ADVANTAGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT TO CLEAR EVERYTHING

AWAY. IN THE EVENT -- but in the actual event -- PHENOMENA ARE NOT

SUDDENLY REMOVED BUT EXHAUSTED GRADUALLY. It takes time, different times for different people. According to their love, according to their trust, according to their longing, according to their passion, according to their readiness to risk all, the time element will differ.

Mahakashyapa was the first to become enlightened amongst Gautam Buddha's disciples, and he was the most silent person. He never asked a question, never even came close to Gautam Buddha. He had his own tree, and he would sit under his own tree; it became known that that place was reserved for Mahakashyapa. He did not speak, he did not question ... he simply sat under the tree, not far away from Gautam Buddha.

Amongst ten thousand disciples everybody was asking questions, and many were asking Mahakashyapa, "Why don't you ask?" He would simply smile ...

One day Gautam Buddha came with a lotus flower in his hand -- and that day was the beginning of Zen. Buddha was supposed to give a discourse as usual, but rather than giving a discourse he sat there in the utter silence of ten thousand disciples, just looking at the lotus flower. Moments passed ... people started becoming restless. What has happened? In the first place he had never come before with anything in his hand; in the second place, he seems to have completely forgotten for what he has come. Thirdly, it is strange that he goes on looking at that lotus flower. It is beautiful ... but that does not mean that you have to go on looking forever and forever.

Hours passed and people became really agitated. Something has to be done ... and at that very moment Mahakashyapa laughed. Gautam Buddha looked at Mahakashyapa, called him close and said, "This flower belongs to you. Take care of it." This is the first transmission without words.

People looked in amazement: "What has happened?" In the first place, to laugh in the presence of the master without any reason is not courteous, it is not respectful. Secondly, there was nothing to laugh at. Thirdly, what has been transmitted? All that people can see is a lotus flower.

But Mahakashyapa became the first Zen master. He is rarely mentioned in the Buddhist scriptures because he rarely spoke. And because he received the transmission without words, nobody knows what he has received. When finally forced by other disciples -- older, more prominent -- Mahakashyapa said, "I have not received, I have only recognized. In that great silence when you were all becoming restless I started becoming restful. My silence became deeper, to a point that I suddenly saw that it is so ridiculous to search for truth because I am the truth. At that very moment I could not contain it, and I laughed. The flower was given to me as a confirmation that 'your laughter means you have opened your wings in the sky. You are released.'"

When one comes to a master, one has so much garbage which the master has to remove gradually, because to him it is garbage, but to the disciple it is knowledge. To the master it is chains; to the disciple, these are his ornaments. So it takes time ... the master goes on throwing the garbage out and the disciple goes on collecting it back, and hiding it in deeper places where the master cannot reach, until there is a recognition that the master and the disciple stand in the same space. Then anything will do, just a little push ...

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WHETHER YOU ARE WALKING, STANDING, SITTING, OR LYING DOWN, YOU

MUST NOT FORGET! ... Must not forget what? Simply MUST NOT FORGET. Simply remain alert and aware, not of anything special, not of any object, but just alert, as if something great is going to happen, you don't know what; as if a great guest is going to come and you are standing at your door waiting. You don't know who is coming ... you don't know whether he is coming or not. You don't have any confirmation -- but greatly alert you are standing at the door, not knowing for what. A pure awareness ...

YOU DON'T HAVE TO SEEK SPECIAL EXCELLENCE OR EXTRAORDINARY

WONDERS BESIDES. On the path the greatest hindrance is that you can find special qualities, extraordinary powers, miracles, mysterious experiences, and you can get lost into all that. It was not your search; you got off the path. Remember not to seek special excellence or extraordinary wonders besides.

MASTER SHUI LAO ASKED MA TSU, "WHAT IS THE TRUE MEANING OF THE

COMING FROM THE WEST?" This is a special way of asking the question, "What is the true meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West?" -- because to China, India is the West.

"What was the special reason for Bodhidharma coming to China?" In other words the question is, "What has he come to transmit?" It took him three years to reach so far, and it took him nine years to transmit. What was it?

MA TSU THEN KNOCKED HIM DOWN WITH A KICK TO THE CHEST: SHUI LAO

WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED. HE GOT UP, CLAPPING HIS HANDS AND

LAUGHING LOUDLY, AND SAID, "HOW EXTRAORDINARY! HOW WONDERFUL!

INSTANTLY, ON THE TIP OF A HAIR, I HAVE UNDERSTOOD THE ROOT SOURCE

OF MYRIAD STATES OF CONCENTRATION, AND COUNTLESS SUBTLE

MEANINGS." THEN HE BOWED AND WITHDREW. AFTERWARDS HE WOULD

TELL THE ASSEMBLY, "FROM THE TIME I TOOK MA TSU'S KICK, UP UNTIL NOW, I HAVE NOT STOPPED LAUGHING."

Remember that Master Shui Lao is not an ordinary disciple; he is already recognized as a great master, although he is only a great teacher. But the difference is very subtle and can be known only by those who are beyond the master and the teacher. He was known as a master himself ... and he was not just a teacher; he had come gradually closer and closer to being a master but he needed a last push. He was fluttering his wings ... he was waiting, but just on the verge of flying into the sky.

Master Shui Lao asked Ma Tsu ... Ma Tsu is one of the strangest masters in the assembly of strange masters of Zen. Shui Lao is asking a simple question: "Why did Bodhidharma come to China? What special transmission was there that he had to deliver?" MA TSU THEN

KNOCKED HIM DOWN WITH A KICK TO THE CHEST: SHUI LAO WAS GREATLY

ENLIGHTENED.

Now incidents like this make intellectuals confused. What has happened? Ma Tsu has shown him that Bodhidharma has come to kill your ego, to release you from the fear of death.

He kicked him in the chest, knocked him down. It was so strange and so sudden, it was not expected. He had asked a simple routine question; any intellectual could have explained why Bodhidharma had come to China -- to spread Buddhism, to spread the message of the great master.

But nobody could have thought that Ma Tsu would do this to the poor questioner and it was so sudden and so unpredictable ... But it is only sudden and unpredictable to us; Ma Tsu Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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could have seen the ripeness of the man, the maturity ... that he needs just a small push, that this moment should not be missed. His kicking him on the chest and knocking him down may have completely stopped the functioning of his mind, because it was so unexpected and so strange. In that stopping of the mind is the release. Suddenly the goose is out! Shui Lao became enlightened.

HE GOT UP, CLAPPING HIS HANDS AND LAUGHING LOUDLY, AND SAID,

"HOW EXTRAORDINARY! HOW WONDERFUL! INSTANTLY, ON THE TIP OF A HAIR, I HAVE UNDERSTOOD THE ROOT SOURCE OF MYRIAD STATES OF

CONCENTRATION, AND COUNTLESS SUBTLE MEANINGS." THEN HE BOWED -- in deep respect -- AND WITHDREW. AFTERWARDS, HE WOULD TELL THE ASSEMBLY

-- he became himself a great master -- "FROM THE TIME I TOOK MA TSU'S KICK, UP

UNTIL NOW, I HAVE NOT STOPPED LAUGHING. How can one stop laughing? This great affair is so ridiculous!

It is just like a dog who, on a winter morning in the warm sun, sitting silently looking at his tail, becomes interested in catching it. He tries in many ways, and the more he tries, the more he becomes challenged, because the tail jumps immediately. The faster he jumps, the faster the tail jumps -- and the difference remains the same. Standing by the side you will laugh: "This stupid dog! That tail belongs to him; there is no need to catch hold of it -- and there is no way ..."

Your enlightenment belongs to you.

There is no need to seek and search.

You are it. It is not an achievement, it is only a recognition -- hence the laughing.

Naturally, people who have not been accustomed to the tradition of Zen will be shocked by such behavior. If I suddenly knock Maneesha here and now, although she is not yet ripe -- but if I knock, will you understand? You will think, "This man has gone mad." You will think,

"We already knew that he was mad; now he has crossed all the boundaries." And from tomorrow, those who sit in front will remain alert: at any moment ...

And this is going to happen, because I am not going to leave this world unless I make more people enlightened than Gautam Buddha. I am watching who is growing wings, who is becoming ready to be knocked -- so don't be surprised. And when somebody gets knocked, rejoice in the happening! The man has become enlightened.

But people who are not in a deep resonance with Zen will not be able to understand it --

Hindus or Mohammedans or Christians or Jews -- because there is nothing like that in their whole history. Their whole history is more or less just intellectual gymnastics.

Zen is absolutely existential. The master is there not only to teach you certain doctrines; he has to release you from the prison that you yourself have made. Whatever arbitrary, expedient methods are needed, he is not going to be worried about what people will think of them; he will use them.

There have never been more compassionate beings than Zen masters. It is a great compassion of Ma Tsu; otherwise, who cares? -- he could have just answered the question and the whole thing would be over. He took so much effort, hit the man, knocked him down ...

And it is not only Ma Tsu who is compassionate: Shui Lao also knows tremendous understanding. If it had happened to somebody who was not ready, he would have started Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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fighting or he would have become angry, saying "This is absolutely absurd! I am asking a question and you are hitting me." But he took the hit in the same way as Mahakashyapa had taken the lotus flower -- with even more beauty: "HOW EXTRAORDINARY! HOW

WONDERFUL!" -- and with great reverence, HE BOWED DOWN AND WITHDREW.

No other question ... everything is solved. He has been kicked out of the nest, now his wings are open in the sky. Now he can fly across the sun. Now there are no more any boundaries. And he remembered the event his whole life, even when he became a great respected master, saying "The greatest thing in my life was the kick that Ma Tsu gave me. I have not stopped laughing since then."

Something that is not visible to the eyes must have happened in that moment. As Ma Tsu reached and knocked him, perhaps -- most probably -- he may have knocked him out of his body, and Shui Lao must have witnessed the whole scene, standing outside his own body. The first experience of being outside your own body is one of the most exquisite, sweet, marvelous experiences: you are released.

Your body is your prison.

Your mind is your prison.

Ta Hui has named the sutra rightly as THE RELEASE.

Get ready and be prepared. It is a totally different world from the days of Ma Tsu, but I would like to make that beautiful time and those beautiful incidents contemporary again. But it all depends on you. If you are gradually dropping all your garbage, becoming more alert, not forgetting for a single moment -- walking, sitting, working, lying down, a constant undercurrent of remembrance -- then the day is not far away when I will start knocking people down. There is no necessity to actually knock somebody down, because between me and Ma Tsu much time has passed, and I have got more refined methods! He is, in a way, primitive.

I do my own kind of kicking and knocking, so don't wait for me to actually hit you on your chest. There is no need ... I have developed more subtle methods -- but you have to be ready anyway.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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32

Desirelessness

17 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

RELEASE

ONE DAY KU SHAN APPROACHED HSUEH FENG. FENG KNEW HIS

CIRCUMSTANCES WERE RIPE, SO HE SUDDENLY GOT UP, HELD HIM TIGHT, AND SAID, "WHAT IS IT?" OPENING UP, KU SHAN WAS COMPLETELY

ENLIGHTENED -- HE EVEN FORGOT HIS COMPREHENDING MIND AND JUST

RAISED HIS HAND AND WAVED, NOTHING MORE. FENG SAID, "WILL YOU

EXPRESS SOME PRINCIPLE?"

HAVING LEFT THE FIFTH PATRIARCH'S PLACE, HUI NENG TRAVELED SOUTH

FOR TWO MONTHS, AND HAD REACHED THE TA YU RANGE. HE WAS PURSUED

BY THE MONK HUI MING, WHO WAS ORIGINALLY A GENERAL, ACCOMPANIED

BY SEVERAL HUNDRED MEN, WHO WANTED TO SEIZE THE ROBE AND BOWL

(EMBLEMATIC OF SUCCESSION TO THE PATRIARCHS). MING WAS THE FIRST TO

OVERTAKE HIM. THE SIXTH PATRIARCH THREW DOWN THE ROBE AND BOWL

ON A ROCK AND SAID, "THIS ROBE SIGNIFIES FAITH: HOW CAN IT BE TAKEN BY

FORCE?" MING TRIED TO PICK UP THE ROBE AND BOWL, BUT WAS UNABLE TO

MOVE THEM. AT THAT POINT HE SAID, "I HAVE COME FOR THE DHARMA, NOT

FOR THE ROBE." THE PATRIARCH SAID, "SINCE YOU'VE COME FOR THE

DHARMA, YOU SHOULD PUT TO REST ALL YOUR MOTIVATIONS, AND DON'T

GIVE RISE TO A SINGLE THOUGHT, AND I WILL EXPLAIN FOR YOU." AFTER A SILENCE, HE SAID, "WITHOUT THINKING OF GOOD, AND WITHOUT THINKING

OF EVIL, AT JUST SUCH A TIME, WHICH IS YOUR ORIGINAL FACE?" AT THESE

WORDS HUI MING WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED. HE ALSO ASKED, "BESIDES

THE INTIMATE WORDS AND MEANING THAT STRUCK HOME OF A MOMENT

AGO, IS THERE ANY FURTHER INTIMATE MESSAGE?" THE PATRIARCH SAID, "IF

IT WERE SAID TO YOU, IT WOULDN'T BE INTIMATE. IF YOU TURN AROUND AND

REFLECT, WHAT'S INTIMATE IS IN YOU." MING SAID, "THOUGH I WAS AT

HUANG MEI, I NEVER REALLY HAD INSIGHT INTO MY OWN FACE. NOW, ENCOUNTERING YOUR INSTRUCTION, I AM LIKE A MAN DRINKING WATER

WHO KNOWS FOR HIMSELF WHETHER IT'S COLD OR WARM."

"JUST KNOW HOW TO BE A BUDDHA: DON'T WORRY THAT A BUDDHA WON'T KNOW HOW TO TALK." SINCE ANCIENT TIMES, PEOPLE WHO HAVE

ATTAINED THE PATH, SINCE THEY ARE FULL THEMSELVES, HAVE PUT FORTH

THEIR OWN SURPLUS TO RESPOND TO POTENTIALS AND RECEIVE BEINGS.

THEY ARE LIKE A BRIGHT MIRROR ON ITS STAND, LIKE A BRIGHT JEWEL IN

THE PALM OF THE HAND; WHEN AN OUTSIDER COMES, AN OUTSIDER

APPEARS, AND WHEN A NATIVE COMES, A NATIVE APPEARS. AND IT'S NOT

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INTENTIONAL: IF IT WERE INTENTIONAL, THEN THERE WOULD BE A REAL

DOCTRINE TO GIVE TO PEOPLE. YOU WANT TO BE CLEAR.

Ta Hui still continues with the meaning of release. The question is so fundamental that however often it has to be repeated it will never be said completely.

There are things which you can only indicate, and the indication is always capable of being misunderstood -- most probably it will be misunderstood -- because the indication is only an arrow. Unless you know to look in that direction, unless you are aware that the arrow is pointing to something beyond itself, there is every possibility you may cling to the arrow itself.

Because of this complexity, things which were said for the freedom of man have become his imprisonment. What are your churches, your temples and your synagogues except prisons of your soul? What are your holy scriptures? They were meant to be arrows pointing beyond words, but even the so-called learned people cling to the words and forget completely that those words are only arrows; they are only pointing towards something which is wordless --

something which they cannot say, but they can point to. But they are only fingers pointing to the moon.

Hence it has to be again and again hammered on your conditioned mind from different aspects what is the meaning of release. Ta Hui gives you a few examples of when the release did happen. And it happened absolutely irrationally; there was no necessity for it to happen --

except that the disciple was ripe and the master's insight was so clear that he did not miss the moment. He struck, he slapped, he shouted, he did something, and suddenly there was an opening -- the clouds disappeared.

ONE DAY, KU SHAN APPROACHED HSUEH FENG. FENG KNEW HIS

CIRCUMSTANCES WERE RIPE. When a woman is pregnant she knows she is pregnant, and when the child is nine months old the mother knows that the time has come to receive a new guest in the world. There are no indications from the child, but the very ripening has its own impact. In the East when the mango groves are full of ripe mangos, passing by the road, suddenly you are aware that the whole air is full of the sweetness of the mangos.

Scientists have been working for almost half a century on bees, because they suspect that bees know a certain kind of language. It is very exciting to find out what kind of language bees use; it will open up a tremendously new area of communication. One bee goes miles in a certain direction for no reason at all -- but she finds the place where flowers are blossoming, and she goes directly to those flowers, as if she is following a map.

Once she has found the flowers she returns, and she dances in a certain way before the whole crowd of bees who are watching the dance. The dance has all the indications -- in which direction, how far away you will find the flowers -- and suddenly thousands of bees start moving towards that direction, without any failure, without going in any other direction.

In the dance of the bee there are indications which have not yet been deciphered. For half a century work has been done, but it is very difficult because we know a language, but we don't know how a dance ... and the same kind of dance with small differences can give different meanings. If there are no ripe flowers the dance will be almost the same, but with such a slight difference that only bees can decipher it; scientists have not been able ... It is certain that there Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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is a difference because no bee moves in that direction; they will wait, and tomorrow again the bee will go.

Certain bees are the messenger bees, the postmen. Bees have a hierarchy; there are soldiers, there are postmen, there are laborers, and there is a queen, and they all do different kinds of work. If there is danger ... the same dance but with a slight difference.

Between the master and the disciple something happens so that when the disciple is ripe, he knows he is ripe and his master knows he is ripe. This is the time to allow him a breakthrough. There are thousands of tremendously beautiful incidents. This one is so simple but so pregnant.

FENG KNEW HIS CIRCUMSTANCES. If you are aware, how can you miss knowing it?

Feng knew Kushan was ripe ... SO HE SUDDENLY GOT UP, HELD HIM TIGHT, AND

SAID, "WHAT IS IT?" And there was an opening: OPENING UP, KU SHAN WAS

COMPLETELY ENLIGHTENED. Nothing special happened; just the master knew, the disciple knew, that something had come to a climax. And the master got hold of the disciple tightly and said, "What is it?" It is not a question to be answered; it is a question that opens up a new dimension in the disciple.

OPENING UP, KU SHAN WAS COMPLETELY ENLIGHTENED. HE EVEN FORGOT

HIS COMPREHENDING MIND. The experience was so great, the splendor was so overwhelming, that he even forgot to show his reverence to the master, or to say some right words to express his gratitude. HE JUST RAISED HIS HAND AND WAVED. This waving of the hand is a mute expression that "I have got it! You got me right in the moment -- it has happened!"

HE JUST RAISED HIS HAND AND WAVED, NOTHING MORE. FENG SAID, "WILL

YOU EXPRESS SOME PRINCIPLE?" But there is absolute silence, the story has ended. The master's question -- "You have waved your hand, that's right. But will you express some principle that you have understood, experienced?" -- the disciple has not answered. There is no answer! He must have stood before the master, being himself the answer -- his silence, his joy, his sudden opening ... His crazy gesture of waving the hand simply indicates that it is beyond the mind and beyond his comprehension ... what principle? -- there is only silence and no principle.

It is something rare; only a Zen story can end in such a way. The master asks the question, and the disciple remains silent -- that is the answer. If he had spoken he would have got a good hit, because his speaking would have shown that he had missed, that he could not manage to open himself entirely, that he had still remained in the mind.

But his silence shows that now there is no question, no answer; there is no principle, no philosophy. There is no you, no me, but only a total serenity, an eternal silence which has never been disturbed.

These are not stories; stories don't end in such a way. This is an actual incident. The silence is being understood by the master. Nothing is said, but everything is heard.

A second incident ... just giving you different aspects, from different doors. HAVING

LEFT THE FIFTH PATRIARCH'S PLACE, HUI NENG TRAVELED SOUTH FOR TWO

MONTHS, AND HAD REACHED THE TA YU RANGE. HE WAS PURSUED BY THE

MONK HUI MING, WHO WAS ORIGINALLY A GENERAL, ACCOMPANIED BY

SEVERAL HUNDRED MEN, WHO WANTED TO SEIZE THE ROBE AND THE BOWL

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(EMBLEMATIC OF SUCCESSION TO THE PATRIARCHS). In Zen, every patriarch gives his robe and his bowl to his successor, and naturally there is great competition and human frailties, jealousies ...

This man, Hui Ming, was far more learned, in every way far more cultured. He had renounced the great post of general, and had become a disciple; he had practiced for a long time. But the master chose a very strange man, Hui Neng, to be his successor. In his monastery there were at least twelve thousand monks, and not a single one would have thought that Hui Neng was going to become the successor.

Hui Neng's only accomplishment was that since he had come, twenty years before, he had been cleaning the rice for the twelve thousand monks from the early morning till late at night.

For twenty years he had not done anything else. He had never been in any of the discourses of the master, he had never read any scripture -- in fact he was illiterate. He was a villager, but a man of tremendous determination.

The day he got initiated, Hui Neng asked the master, "What am I supposed to do?"

The master said, "Go to the mess, clean rice and never again come back to me" -- and he never came back again. Twenty years of silently waiting ... because the master had said, "If it is needed, I will come to you. But you should never again show your face to me. You simply clean the rice from morning till night, then go to sleep; again clean the rice, then go to sleep."

You can understand, twenty years just cleaning rice and going to sleep, his mind became silent. No meditation was needed. He never went to any discourse -- there was no time.

Nobody talked to him because he was thought to be of the lowest category, just a poor villager who knows nothing, and he never asked anything of anybody. People passed by him as if he was not there. He was taken for granted.

The day came for the master to leave his body, and he said, "Before I leave my body I want to choose my successor. The way I want to choose is this: whoever knows the right answer should come in the night and write it on my door; if the answer is right, he will receive my robe and my bowl."

This ex-general, Hui Ming, was certainly the most important person of the whole following of the master, and everybody thought that he would be the winner. So he went in the night and he wrote on the door, "No-mind is the answer." But he was so afraid of the master --

afraid that if it is found to be wrong he is going to get a good beating -- that he did not sign it.

He thought, "If it is right then I will declare that I have written it; if it is wrong then it is better to keep silent."

In the morning when the master woke up he said, "Who is that idiot?" Hearing this, Hui Ming escaped from the monastery -- somebody may inform the master because a few people had got the idea ... they were looking out for who was going to write. In fact it was public knowledge that it was Hui Ming!

Two monks, after taking their food, were just passing by Hui Neng and discussing, saying,

"The master is too hard. The answer seems to be right: "no-mind" is the whole philosophy of Gautam Buddha. What more can be said?" People had completely forgotten that Hui Neng even speaks; for twenty years he had not spoken a single word to anybody. He simply did his work, would go to sleep, wake up, start his work again. That day, listening to those two monks saying that the answer seems to be right and the master is too hard, he laughed. Those two monks stopped and they said, "Why are you laughing?"

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He said, "Whoever wrote that is an idiot." This was exactly what the master had said,

"Who is the idiot who has spoiled my door?" Those monks could not believe it, but they informed the master that a man of the name of Hui Neng, whom he had sent twenty years before to the mess, had said exactly the same thing: "Whoever wrote this is an idiot."

The master said, "I know. He is the only man ... I was hoping that he would come and write the answer. But I forgot completely that in the first place he is non-ambitious; in the second place he cannot write, he is illiterate; in the third place I had prohibited him:

'Whenever the time comes I will come to you, you have to remain in the work I have given to you. Never show your face.'"

In the middle of the night the master came, woke up Hui Neng, gave him the bowl and his robe and said, "Now escape, because you are a simple fellow. There is great competition, and there are dangerous people -- that man Hui Ming has been a general, he is a warrior. They will try to snatch away the robe and the bowl, so you simply escape as far away as possible."

Hui Neng said, "But I don't know anything. Moreover, I have not committed any crime.

Why should you make me your successor? Why can't I be left to live peacefully? You can find ... so many people are eager, wanting to be the successor, why are you bothering me?"

But the master said, "These are the reasons why I am bothering you: a man who is not interested at all is the right man. A man who has no ambitions is worthy. A man who can refuse the highest stage in the tradition of Zen of being a patriarch, a master of masters ..."

Hui Neng still tried to persuade him, "Just let me clean rice and don't disturb my sleep! I am tired and in the morning I have to start my work again, and just think of twelve thousand monks and their rice ..."

The master said, "Stop all this! If people become aware that I have chosen you they will kill you. Just take this bowl and this robe and run away, because tomorrow morning I am going to die, and before that I want you to be miles away." That's how Hui Neng was chosen to be the successor.

Strange people ... and strange are their stories, but of tremendous importance. This Hui Neng was followed by Hui Ming, the general, with thousands of people, to catch hold of him and forcibly take away the bowl and the robe so that Hui Ming could declare himself the master. This is the background to the story.

Ming was the first to overtake Hui Neng, and there were many others also following. THE

SIXTH PATRIARCH THREW DOWN THE ROBE AND BOWL ON A ROCK AND SAID,

"THIS ROBE SIGNIFIES FAITH: HOW CAN IT BE TAKEN BY FORCE?" Faith cannot be taken by force. Faith grows only in the climate of love. Faith is the highest flowering; it cannot be taken away by force.

"So this is the robe and this is the bowl. But remember, THIS ROBE SIGNIFIES FAITH, and you are only a general -- you know the ways of force, you don't know the ways of love.

HOW CAN IT BE TAKEN BY FORCE? If you can take it by force, take it."

MING TRIED TO PICK UP THE ROBE AND BOWL, BUT WAS UNABLE TO MOVE

THEM. It may seem to be fictitious, but in the deepest experience of my own self I don't think it is fictitious. I have my own explanation of why it happened ... Hui Neng was a man of peace and silence, a man without any desires, and when such a man speaks, he speaks with authority, his words are pure power. And when he said, "This bowl and this robe represent faith, and faith cannot be taken by force," his very statement would have weakened Hui Ming.

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Hui Ming knew perfectly well that he does not have faith, he knows only what force is. It must have weakened his whole will. It is not a miracle; it is a simple psychological fact. He tried to pick it up ... but he must have tried knowing perfectly well that he could not pick it up.

There is a place near a beautiful river, Narmada, where there was a temple of Shiva.

Outside every temple of Shiva is his bodyguard, the bull; the bull sits outside the temple.

There is a story that underneath the bull at that particular temple -- it is an ancient temple --

there is a little space which you can pass through ... but only if you have faith.

I had gone there with a friend who was a professor -- full of doubts, although he was not too fat. When I told him, "Try to pass through this small space underneath the bull," he said, "I don't see any problem. Because I am not a fat man, I can pass."

I said to him, "You cannot pass, because unless you have faith ... It is not a question of being fat or being thin; I have seen fat people passing through it, and I have seen thin people getting caught."

He said, "It is all nonsense, I will show you." But even while he was saying it, deep inside he was trembling. A crowd gathered, which made it even more fearful, and he was caught in the middle. He started shouting -- "Help me!"

I said, "In questions of faith, nobody can help. Try your logic, try your reason, try your arguments." And people were laughing! They were laughing because he was so thin, why has he got caught? He just lost his nerve. He knew perfectly well he had no faith, he had no trust, he was full of doubts -- he is doubt and nothing else. He knew perfectly well in the depths of his heart that he could not pass.

I had to pull him out -- of course from the back side, "because," I said, "from the front I cannot, because I cannot go against the rule." So I had to pull him by his legs, backwards. He looked very strange.

He said, "I can see that the space is enough, but something inside me simply gave way. I simply lost my nerve." I myself went through that small space, and I was at least twice the weight of the professor.

There are things which may look like fictions if you don't understand man and his psychology. To me this is not a fiction, this is a historical fact. It must have happened. The words of Hui Neng must have created the atmosphere, the climate, such that Hui Ming lost his willpower. He tried, but he had no force. He suddenly became impotent.

MING TRIED TO PICK UP THE ROBE AND BOWL, BUT WAS UNABLE TO MOVE

THEM. AT THAT POINT HE SAID, "I HAVE COME FOR THE DHARMA, NOT FOR

THE ROBE." THE PATRIARCH SAID, "SINCE YOU'VE COME FOR THE DHARMA, YOU SHOULD PUT TO REST ALL YOUR MOTIVATIONS, AND DON'T GIVE RISE TO

A SINGLE THOUGHT, AND I WILL EXPLAIN FOR YOU." AFTER A SILENCE, HE

SAID, "WITHOUT THINKING OF GOOD, AND WITHOUT THINKING OF EVIL, AT

JUST SUCH A TIME, WHICH IS YOUR ORIGINAL FACE?"

When there is no movement of thought, desire, motivation -- at such a moment you are, in your original purity. And to know this original face is to know all.

AT THESE WORDS, HUI MING WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED. HE ALSO

ASKED, "BESIDES THE INTIMATE WORDS AND MEANING THAT STRUCK HOME

OF A MOMENT AGO, IS THERE ANY FURTHER INTIMATE MESSAGE?" THE

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PATRIARCH SAID, "IF IT WERE SAID TO YOU, IT WOULDN'T BE INTIMATE" --

because words create distance.

The intimate is not a communication.

The intimate is a transmission from heart to heart ...

In silence, in love, in peace.

Nothing is said, nothing is heard, but everything is understood ... that is intimate.

"IF IT WERE SAID TO YOU, IT WOULD NOT BE INTIMATE. IF YOU TURN

AROUND AND REFLECT, WHAT'S INTIMATE IS IN YOU" -- it is not outside you. You are the most intimate to yourself; nobody can be closer to you than yourself. However close somebody may come to you, that closeness is still a distance. Only you are intimate.

MING SAID, "THOUGH I WAS AT HUANG MEI, I NEVER REALLY HAD

INSIGHT" -- he recognized that although he had been in the monastery for years studying, disciplining himself, he had never had any real insight -- "INTO MY OWN FACE. NOW, ENCOUNTERING YOUR INSTRUCTION, I AM LIKE A MAN DRINKING WATER

WHO KNOWS FOR HIMSELF WHETHER IT'S COLD OR WARM."

"JUST KNOW HOW TO BE A BUDDHA: DON'T WORRY THAT A BUDDHA WON'T KNOW HOW TO TALK." SINCE ANCIENT TIMES, PEOPLE WHO HAVE

ATTAINED THE PATH, SINCE THEY ARE FULL THEMSELVES, HAVE PUT FORTH

THEIR OWN SURPLUS TO RESPOND TO POTENTIALS AND RECEIVE BEINGS.

THEY ARE LIKE A BRIGHT MIRROR ON ITS STAND, LIKE A BRIGHT JEWEL IN

THE PALM OF THE HAND; WHEN AN OUTSIDER COMES, AN OUTSIDER

APPEARS, AND WHEN A NATIVE COMES, A NATIVE APPEARS. AND IT'S NOT

INTENTIONAL: IF IT WERE INTENTIONAL, THEN THERE WOULD BE A REAL

DOCTRINE TO GIVE TO PEOPLE. YOU WANT TO BE CLEAR.

These are the two ways ... whether you want to be clear or you want to be clever. However clever you become you will remain ignorant, and you may know nothing, but if you are clear

-- a mirror without any dust -- you will reflect the very essence of existence.

There is a strange story that before Hui Neng died, many years after this incident, he chose Hui Ming to be his successor. What Ming could not get by force, he got by becoming non-ambitious, meditative. When Hui Neng asked him, "Now the time has come for me to depart and, Hui Ming, you have been so ambitious to be the patriarch, you may have the bowl and the robe which you could not take with all your force. Are you ready now?", Hui Ming said, "I am no more interested. There are many others."

Hui Neng, the illiterate, became one of the greatest Zen masters, just by his simplicity, just by his innocent ways. He attracted many disciples of great qualities, and he had many followers who could have been chosen as his successor. But first he told Hui Ming, "You were so desirous; I wanted to give it to you at that very moment, but it was not within my capacity: neither I could give it, nor was it in your capacity to take it. But now I can see you are ripe.

And Hui Ming is reported to have said, "It is a strange game. When I wanted it I could not have it; now I have not the slightest desire, and you are offering me ... Can't you find somebody else?"

Hui Neng said, "These are the indications of a right successor."

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Zen is the path of desirelessness. There is nothing to attain, there is no goal to reach. You are simply to relax, be at ease, and you will find that you have always been there, where you wanted to be. You have never left the Garden of Eden. The Christian story is wrong.

I have been talking about the Christian story from so many different angles ... it is a beautiful story and certainly has tremendous potential. This aspect has also to be remembered, that wherever you are, you are still in the Garden of Eden. It is not even in the capacity of God to throw you out -- where will he throw you? -- because everywhere is the Garden of Eden. I am always wondering why not a single Christian theologian has raised the question in two thousand years: God drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, but where did he drive them to? Is there something outside of existence?

Everything is within, there is nothing without. There are no boundaries to reality -- you cannot be thrown out of reality. It is such a simple fact: you are still in the Garden of Eden, you have just fallen asleep.

Your sleep consists of your mind, of your desires, your dreams, your ambitions, your motivations. Once you drop all this crap, suddenly you wake up and you will find yourself in the Garden of Eden. And the Garden of Eden does not belong to God, it is not his monopoly.

It belongs to everyone, to every living entity, because God is only a collective name for all the consciousnesses that exist in the world; God is not some person.

The Christian story has made God very ugly. If I have to write the story again, the first instructions I will give to Adam and Eve -- and those are the instructions I am giving to you --

will be: Eat the fruit of wisdom, eat the fruit of eternal life. You belong to the ultimate consciousness, you belong to deathlessness.

You are a buddha.

You just have to be shaken up.

It is not that you have to do many austerities and knock on the doors and beg and pray:

"God, Father, please open the door. I will never eat the fruit, I will never look at it." You are sitting under the tree. Just open your eyes, and wisdom is yours, and eternal life is yours. And these are not two trees ...

The story is wrong on many points. First, a God who is a father cannot prevent you from eternal life, and cannot prevent you from being wise. Secondly, wisdom and eternal life are not two; they are two aspects of the same experience.

I declare to you; this is the Garden of Eden.

If you want to sleep a little more, there is no harm. There is no need to be in a hurry either.

Sleep well; just stop dreaming ... and you will wake up. It is the dreams which go on keeping you asleep.

In other words, I can define meditation as a non-dreaming consciousness.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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33

Serenity

18 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

SILENT ILLUMINATION

OLD P'ANG SAID, "JUST RESOLVE TO EMPTY ALL THAT EXISTS: DON'T MAKE

REAL ALL THAT DOESN'T EXIST." JUST MASTER THESE TWO PROPOSITIONS, AND YOUR WHOLE LIFE'S TASK OF STUDY IS COMPLETED.

THESE DAYS THERE'S A BREED OF SHAVEN-HEADED OUTSIDERS WHOSE

OWN EYES ARE NOT CLEAR, WHO JUST TEACH PEOPLE TO STOP AND REST

AND PLAY DEAD. EVEN IF YOU STOP AND REST LIKE THIS UNTIL A THOUSAND

BUDDHAS APPEAR IN THE WORLD, YOU STILL WON'T BE ABLE TO STOP AND

REST -- YOU'LL BE MAKING YOUR MIND EVEN MORE CONFUSED AND

TROUBLED. THEY TEACH PEOPLE TO "KEEP THE MIND STILL," TO "FORGET

FEELINGS" ACCORDING TO CIRCUMSTANCES, TO PRACTICE "SILENT

ILLUMINATION." AS THEY GO ON AND ON "ILLUMINATING" AND "KEEPING THE

MIND STILL," THEY ADD TO THEIR CONFUSION AND OPPRESSION, WITH NO

END TO IT. UTTERLY LOSING THE EXPEDIENT MEANS OF THE PATRIARCHS, THEY INSTRUCT OTHERS WRONGLY, TEACHING PEOPLE TO GO ON IN VAIN

AND WASTEFULLY WITH BIRTH AND DEATH; FURTHERMORE, THEY TEACH

PEOPLE NOT TO CARE ABOUT THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS. "SIMPLY GO ON

PUTTING THINGS TO REST THIS WAY," THEY'LL SAY. "WHEN YOU'VE STOPPED

FEELINGS AS THEY COME AND THOUGHTS ARE NOT PRODUCED, AT SUCH A TIME IT'S NOT UNKNOWING SILENCE -- IN FACT, IT'S ALERT AND AWAKE AND

PERFECTLY CLEAR." THIS KIND IS EVEN MORE PERNICIOUS, BLINDING

PEOPLES' EYES.

TO SAY THAT WHEN ONE HAS PUT THINGS TO REST TO THE POINT THAT HE

IS UNAWARES AND UNKNOWING, LIKE EARTH, WOOD, TILE, OR STONE, THIS IS

NOT UNKNOWING SILENCE -- THIS IS A VIEW BORN OF WRONGLY TAKING TOO

LITERALLY WORDS THAT WERE ONLY EXPEDIENT MEANS TO FREE BONDS. TO

TEACH PEOPLE TO REFLECT ACCORDING TO CIRCUMSTANCES AND TAKE

CARE NOT TO LET ANY BAD PERCEPTIONS APPEAR -- THIS AGAIN IS AN

INTERPRETATION PRODUCED BY ACCEPTING THE SKULL'S EMOTIONAL

CONSCIOUSNESS.

ALL THE ABOVE DISEASES ARE NOT THE STUDENTS' DOINGS -- THEY'RE ALL

DUE TO THE WRONG INSTRUCTIONS OF BLIND TEACHERS.

Man has been miserable -- not without reason. The reasons are of his own making; hence release is possible. But very few people have experienced absolute freedom.

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There are a thousand and one causes for this calamity which has happened to humanity. It is just like a vast garden of thousands of rosebushes, where only once in a while a flower blossoms on a rosebush, and the remaining thousands of bushes simply remain barren. They have the same potential, but something has gone wrong in their structuring.

Ta Hui is trying here to show a few fundamental errors that have been made by man -- and he continues to make them -- which hinder his own growth.

Most of the causes that have destroyed your dignity, your pride, your glory, your splendor are the doings of so-called teachers. There is a subtle egoistic joy in teaching because the moment you teach someone, without saying anything, you have become higher: you know and the other does not know. This has created great trouble for human beings.

So many false teachers go on appearing ... perhaps it is the greatest crime in the world to teach things which you have not experienced. But what are your bishops and cardinals and popes, imams and shankaracharyas? -- just a long line of false teachers. They don't know what they are saying. They may be quoting the right scriptures, their words may be coming from right sources, but it is not the sources and not the scriptures -- it is the man who speaks that is the ultimate criterion of whether what he says is true or not.

One great master, Naropa, has repeatedly said one thing: "Don't listen to what I say, listen to me! It does not matter what I say; what matters is what I am."

A true teacher speaks out of spontaneity, experience, awareness, his own realization. The false teacher is very learned; he knows all the scriptures, he quotes them beautifully and he can easily deceive people. In fact it is very difficult not to be deceived by such a person, because you don't know how to judge. He is speaking the right words, but his right words are just like a gramophone record. You cannot make a gramophone record your master; what it is saying is absolutely true, but there is no one inside. It is just a dead record.

Your memory is also a dead record. Teachers teach through memory, masters teach through awareness, intelligence; hence it is possible to find inconsistencies and contradictions in masters -- in fact, they are bound to be found. This can be used as a criterion: if somebody is continuously consistent, he cannot be a master. He is only repeating things mechanically.

The master has to respond each moment, and each moment is different. The master never answers the question; he always answers the questioner -- and the questioners are different.

The master is not concerned whether what he says is in tune with the scriptures, tradition, convention, or is against. His whole and sole concern is the real person whom he is encountering ... nothing else matters.

But the false teachers have not stopped, and will never stop. It is so easy to be learned; it is so difficult to be wise. Any idiot can be learned; all that he needs is a good memory system, a good biocomputer. But to be an authentic master is a rare flowering, and one has to understand some indications through which he can make a judgment in order to avoid the false and to listen to the authentic.

The first thing is: the false teacher is always repeating somebody else's words; he has none of his own. All his statements are within quotation marks. The second thing: the false teacher, howsoever articulate, learned, clever, will not be able to practice what he preaches. Look at the man rather than looking at his words, and you will see the disparity.

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stranger had come to the town. He saw both of them and he could not believe his eyes. They were not exactly alike, but they used to have the same clothes, the same hairstyle, and it was almost impossible to make a distinction. He approached one of them and said, "Is there a way to distinguish between you two? Only you can say ..."

This brother was the doctor, and he said, "Yes, there is only one way: he preaches and I practice!"

The false teacher only preaches. If you look at his practice you will be very much disappointed; he goes against his own statements continuously.

Thirdly -- and this needs a little more intelligence and awareness to see -- the false teacher is always hesitant. He himself is not certain whether what he is saying is true or not because it is all borrowed. But the true teacher is an absolute authority. What he says he means, and he says only that which he means.

The teacher is only paying lip service to all the good things that you have been told. You will not find any original freshness; he stinks of dead corpses, very ancient corpses. The authentic master has a freshness, a newness. You may go on hearing him for ages, but you will never feel that he is stale because it is always coming from the original source.

Consider the things that Ta Hui wants to point out to you: OLD P'ANG SAID, "JUST

RESOLVE TO EMPTY ALL THAT EXISTS: DON'T MAKE REAL ALL THAT DOES

NOT EXIST." JUST MASTER THESE TWO PROPOSITIONS, AND YOUR WHOLE

LIFE'S TASK OF STUDY IS COMPLETED.

With the masters you will always find something strange, because you are unfamiliar with their world; it is untrodden. With the teachers you will find very familiar things which you already know -- you have heard them. In every church the same sermon, in every temple the same discourse; the whole atmosphere is filled with old and rotten statements.

With the real master you will always find something strange, some wildflower which does not grow in ordinary day to day gardens. Its taste, its fragrance, its color, its form -- everything will have a newness.

Now what master P'ang says is absolutely unique. Nobody has ever said that: "JUST

RESOLVE TO EMPTY ALL THAT EXISTS. He is making two statements. And in those two statements, Ta Hui says, your whole religion is complete: "RESOLVE TO EMPTY ALL

THAT EXISTS: DON'T MAKE REAL ALL THAT DOES NOT EXIST."

But people are doing just the opposite: they go on creating the unreal -- that which does not exist. What do you know about God? Yet millions of people every day are praying to a fiction. It is pathology. What do you know about heaven and hell? But they have entered deep into your psychology: you are greedy for heaven, afraid of hell -- and these are all nonexistent things.

P'ang is saying, "Don't create that which does not exist; and that which exists, empty your mind of all attachment to it, of all infatuation with it." Your infatuation is your bondage; if you are not infatuated with that which exists, and you are not imaginative in creating gods and ghosts, what is left?

A simple silence ...

A pure serenity ...

An undisturbed, unruffled consciousness.

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And that is it!

Hence old P'ang is right. Within two simple sentences he has condensed all the teachings of all the awakened people. There are thousands of scriptures, but these two statements are enough; anything else is just unnecessary fabrication by the deluded people for the deluded people.

People can get concerned with such stupid things -- you cannot believe it.

Christian theologians of the middle ages had argued for centuries in great treatises. You will not believe what kind of idiots these theologians were. Their problem was how many angels can stand on the head of a pin. Why were they concerned? -- but it became such a big problem as if their life depended on whether one angel more or less can stand there. Those angels are fictitious -- and why should even those fictitious angels stand on the head of a pin?

But it was a very serious matter, and for three or four centuries it was debated almost continuously by great theologians, philosophers. If you look into the history of religions you will find such stupidities that you cannot believe that this is our heritage, that these are the old sources of our so-called great religions.

For two thousand years Christians had been arguing and insisting that Jesus was born of a virgin -- Mary. Now what does it matter? Even if he was born of Virgin Mary, he can be wrong. Just by being born of a virgin, you don't become right; in fact, more is the possibility that from the very beginning you are wrong. But even today the pope insists that this is their fundamental principle. What will Christianity be if three fictions are removed? One is the virgin birth of Jesus, which can be cancelled without any trouble.

One young girl was brought to a doctor by her mother, who was an old friend. She was very much worried because it was so apparent that the girl was at least seven or eight months pregnant -- there was no need for any test. Still the doctor took the test and he said, "I am sorry, but nothing can be done. It is too late now; abortion is dangerous. The girl is pregnant."

But the mother said, "How it can be? Because I never allow her any chances ..."

And the girl said, "I have not even touched the hand of any man. How I can be pregnant?"

The doctor looked at both of them and went to the window and looked at the sky. For a moment there was silence. Then the mother said, "What are you doing there?"

He said, "I am waiting for the three wise men from the East. If it is true that she has not even touched the hand of a man, and you insist ... then the miracle has happened again: she is a virgin mother. You should rejoice. Why you are looking so miserable?"

Just a few days ago the pope has again insisted ... A few Christian thinkers are feeling awkward about this virgin birth, but he has insisted that it is "one of our greatest pillars".

The second pillar is that Jesus is the only begotten son of God. Nobody knows about this fellow God -- and except for Jesus' own statement, there is no other evidence or any proof.

But the whole of Christianity depends on the statement of Jesus. No contemporary thinker, no contemporary literature even bothers to mention that Jesus is the son of God -- and not only the son, but the only begotten son. It is great: fictions are creating sons and daughters! And we have no evidence of their own existence ...

And what is so great in Jesus that he should be the only begotten son of God? Why not Gautam Buddha, why not Bodhidharma, why not Mahakashyapa, why not Ta Hui -- why not Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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you? You just need a little courage and a little craziness and you can declare: "I am the only begotten son of God." No proofs are needed, because even Jesus has not given any proofs.

And the third: the trinity of God the father, Jesus the son, and the holy ghost. This holy ghost is the strangest guy you can come across. This holy ghost is the person who made the poor virgin Mary pregnant -- and still he is holy. Then what is the meaning of unholy?

And it is strange ... for centuries Christians themselves have insisted that it looks strange, this trinity, because there is no woman in it. It looks incomplete; it does not look like a complete family. What is wrong in accepting Mary, who is worshipped by Catholics as part of this hierarchy? But the woman, just because she is the woman, cannot be accepted on that high pedestal. The criminal ghost can be accepted.

Just the other day an Italian sannyasin has told me that he wants to put on record -- he is collecting my statements -- what I think about illegitimate children. I said to him, "There are no illegitimate children, there are only illegitimate parents." How can a child be illegitimate?

And who are the illegitimate parents? -- not necessarily those who are not married. Any child who is not born of love makes the parents illegitimate. Whether they are married or not is irrelevant -- but the child certainly is never illegitimate.

This illegitimate person, the holy ghost, is part of God's trinity; he is part of God. These are three phases of God -- but the woman cannot be accepted.

These are the three fundamentals, the three pillars of Christianity. If you remove these three, the whole edifice of two thousand years disappears like a soap bubble. But what is so great in all these ideas? Those who have been teaching these ideas can only be called false teachers, misguiding humanity. You cannot question them; your question will bring you condemnation. And this is not only so about Christianity; this is so about all the religions.

Religion should be very simple, a pure and innocent affair. It should not be made complicated by unnecessary superstitions, stupidities.

Old P'ang has given you the whole of religion in two small statements: "Empty yourself of all attachment, of all infatuation, of all ambition for that which exists." And "Don't create fictions." Nothing more is needed.

This is an authentic master, bringing the essential, pure serenity of your being in tune with the blissfulness of existence.

You are one with this silence ... and how marvelous it is ... and how wonderful. Can you think that something more is needed to rejoice and dance and sing?

Religion, to be authentic, has to be concerned with man's transformation, not with these stupid ideas; whether they are real or unreal does not matter.

THESE DAYS ... and unfortunately, although one thousand years have passed since Ta Hui, "these days" still continue. THESE DAYS THERE'S A BREED OF

SHAVEN-HEADED OUTSIDERS ...

I want to emphasize the word outsiders. Humanity can be divided in that way very easily --

the insiders and the outsiders. The insiders are very few -- those who know the inside story, the inside mystery. And the outsiders are the millions who are just standing outside of themselves, never trying to figure out what it is that makes them tick, what it is that is their life, what it is that is their consciousness, what it is that is their love ... simple matters.

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The outsiders are concerned with faraway stars, quasars, remote galaxies ... so remote that there is no possibility that the earth will ever come in contact with them, because the universe has been found to be expanding. It is just like a balloon which goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and all the stars that you see are moving away from some center, which science has not yet been able to locate. But there is some center from which all these stars are moving at tremendous speed.

Now the old fools were concerned with God, the holy ghost, the virgin birth, and the new fools are concerned with the galaxies, millions of light-years away. They have changed their objects but they have not changed their vision: they are still looking outwards. The outsider is one who is always looking outside. He is never at home.

Religion is basically the experience of the insider. He closes his eyes and enters into the depths of his being, into the silences of his heart, and finally into the mysterious source of life, of all life, of all consciousness.

This is the only contentment, the only fulfillment, the only realization. For the first time there are no longer any problems, no longer any questions. You don't know anything, but your capacity of knowing is absolutely clear. You are just a pure mirror without any dust.

THESE DAYS THERE IS A BREED OF SHAVEN-HEADED OUTSIDERS WHOSE

OWN EYES ARE NOT CLEAR, WHO JUST TEACH PEOPLE TO STOP AND REST

AND PLAY DEAD. Most of the religions have been teaching you to renounce the world, which cuts off most of your life. To renounce all pleasures cuts off your remaining life.

"Become more and more dead, and you will come closer and closer to God." This is a very strange god ...

God can be synonymous with life, then it has some meaning. But God synonymous with death ...? But this is what your saints have done: they have become fossils. Although they breathe, they have died to life in all its concerns. They have withdrawn all their sensitivity, their love, their joy; they have become shrunken.

So Ta Hui is right: EVEN IF YOU STOP AND REST LIKE THIS UNTIL A THOUSAND BUDDHAS APPEAR IN THE WORLD, YOU STILL WON'T BE ABLE TO

STOP AND REST -- YOU WILL BE MAKING YOUR MIND EVEN MORE CONFUSED

AND TROUBLED. This overwhelming, poisonous idea of renouncing the world, of renouncing pleasures, of renouncing the body, of renouncing all that can make your life a little juicy, a little musical, a little poetic, and just being like a stone ... still your mind inside will be in turmoil.

There is a beautiful story from Mulla Nasruddin's life. He had been cutting wood and his donkey was standing by the side; he would load the wood on the donkey and take it home. But he was feeling very tired, and it was a hot afternoon and the shadow of the tree was alluring, so he allowed himself a little relaxation.

Just then a group of wolves came around. Seeing the wolves, Mulla thought it is better to pretend to be dead, because it is known that wolves don't eat dead corpses. They want fresh food; they are not interested in canned food! So he stopped his breathing, but from the corner of his eye he was looking about for the donkey, because that was the problem: he himself is pretending to be dead, but the donkey is a fool ... and those wolves started eating his donkey.

Now he is seeing it and there is a great turmoil inside -- but he is pretending to be dead.

Finally he forgot and said, "Okay, you can kill my donkey because I am dead. If I had been Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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alive I would have shown you what it means to attack my donkey!" This was going on inside his mind, and it came out of his mouth! It was just a coincidence that a few people arrived and he was saved.

But I want to tell you this story because he was pretending to be dead, although he was not. All your saints are pretending to be dead; they are not dead. How can they be? But all the religions have respected these dead people. And because of this respect for dead people, as a counterpart, there is a condemnation for living people. To be alive, fully alive, singing and dancing, rejoicing in the pleasures of existence, has become a sin according to all religions.

Condensed to the essentials: life is sin and death is virtue.

My own experience is just the opposite, the opposite of all these religions. Life is virtue, and the more alive you are, the more virtuous; the more sensitive you are, the more religious; the more dimensions your life has, the more spiritual. Leave that old style of saintliness to the idiots because they cannot do anything else; but they can do that saintliness perfectly. My own understanding is that all your great saints are perfect idiots. They have not understood even the ABC of the mysteries of life, and they have fallen into the trap of false teachers.

THEY TEACH PEOPLE TO "KEEP THE MIND STILL," TO "FORGET FEELINGS"

ACCORDING TO CIRCUMSTANCES, TO PRACTICE "SILENT ILLUMINATION." They use beautiful words because all those words are available in thousands of scriptures, but they don't know that one cannot keep the mind still. Either you have the mind or you don't have it.

A still mind is a contradiction in terms.

One famous American rabbi, Joshua Liebman -- I don't know whether he is still alive or not -- has written a book, PEACE OF MIND. I was a student in the university when I came across the book. I wrote to him in a letter: "Even the title of your book is a contradiction in terms. 'Peace of mind' is simply absurd. When mind is not, there is peace; when mind is, there is no peace. Hence, 'peace of mind' is simply befooling people. But perhaps you yourself think ..."

His book has been sold in millions because everybody wants peace of mind -- and so cheap, in a paperback edition! But I have never come across any man who has attained peace of mind by reading Rabbi Joshua Liebman's book. I was in the habit of writing letters to people, but it is an unfortunate situation that none of them had the courage to answer. Perhaps they could see the point, and it was better to remain silent.

These people who are telling others, "Keep the mind still" ... who is going to keep the mind still? You cannot force the mind to stillness. Mind has to be transcended, and in the transcendence of mind, in the realization that you are not the mind, suddenly the stillness, the peace, the calm, the quietude.

AS THEY GO ON AND ON "ILLUMINATING" AND "KEEPING THE MIND STILL,"

THEY ADD TO THEIR CONFUSION AND OPPRESSION, WITH NO END TO IT.

UTTERLY LOSING THE EXPEDIENT MEANS OF THE PATRIARCHS, THEY

INSTRUCT OTHERS WRONGLY, TEACHING PEOPLE TO GO ON IN VAIN AND

WASTEFULLY WITH BIRTH AND DEATH; FURTHERMORE, THEY TEACH PEOPLE

NOT TO CARE ABOUT THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS. "SIMPLY GO ON PUTTING

THINGS TO REST THIS WAY," THEY WILL SAY. "WHEN YOU HAVE STOPPED

FEELINGS AS THEY COME AND THOUGHTS ARE NOT PRODUCED, AT SUCH A TIME IT IS NOT UNKNOWING SILENCE -- IN FACT, IT IS ALERT AND AWAKE AND

PERFECTLY CLEAR."

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These are deeper realities of life. You can attain a certain state of controlled silence, forced silence, but it will be dead. It will be like a bird on the wing that looks so beautiful. You catch hold of it and you put it in a golden cage; you may think it is the same bird -- it is not.

Apparently it is, but the bird on the wing and the bird -- the same bird -- inside the cage are two different beings.

The bird on the wing has the whole sky ... he has a soul, he has an individuality, he has a beauty. The same bird inside the cage is just dead. It has lost its sky, it has lost its freedom, it has lost its individuality -- and what has it gained? To the bird the golden cage does not mean anything; gold or steel are just the same.

In the name of religion people have been trying to force themselves into a cage of discipline, precepts, hoping that they will attain to great illumination, alertness, awareness, enlightenment. It is not possible. If you want to be aware you have to start with awareness. If you want to be free you have to start with freedom. Whatever you want to be, your first step is the indication of your last.

Finding realization ... You cannot do it by making yourself a slave of doctrines, precepts, moralities and hope that these will bring awareness, the ultimate flowering of your being.

It is true that if the ultimate flowering of awareness happens you will have a morality, but that morality will have a totally different nuance to it. It will be your own, not Moses', not Manu's, not Confucius'. It will not be a bondage, it will not be a burden, it will not be a commandment that you have to do. You will simply rejoice in doing it. It will not be a duty. It will be simply your joy.

I have heard that when God created the world he went to the Babylonians and said,

"Would you like to have a commandment?"

They said, "What is the commandment?"

He said, "Thou shall not commit adultery."

They said, "Forgive us, without adultery what is the point of living. You just find somebody else ...!"

He went to the Egyptians, he went all around, and nobody was ready to accept a commandment -- and I think they were all right. Commandments cannot be from somebody else, otherwise they make you a slave. They should arise from your own understanding; then they are not commandments, they are sheer joy.

But poor Moses got into trouble. Being a Jew, he asked the wrong question. When God asked, "Moses, baby, would you like to have a commandment?", Moses asked, "How much does it cost?" He did not ask what the commandment is! -- he asked the price!

God said, "It is free!"

Moses said, "Then I will have ten!" If it is free ... And under those ten commandments, for four thousand years the Jews have been crushed.

You certainly need a morality but it has to arise out of your own love, out of your own reverence for life. It has to be your own; it needs your signature. It cannot be a blind belief, it cannot be a duty that you have been conditioned to fulfill. It has to be your freedom. An authentically religious man is amoral; he has no morality, ready-made. Each moment he responds with love and reverence and that is his morality.

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THIS KIND IS EVEN MORE PERNICIOUS, BLINDING PEOPLES' EYES. When teachers start talking about illumination, enlightenment, stilling the mind, they use beautiful words to create a prison cell for you. What you need is freedom from all prisons.

The past has been continuously creating prisons upon prisons. You need a release, and only you can give this gift to yourself. I can only make you aware that you have the capacity --

that's the function of the master. He can only make you aware of your potential, of your possibilities, and then he leaves you to your own decision.

TO SAY THAT WHEN ONE HAS PUT THINGS TO REST TO THE POINT THAT HE

IS UNAWARES AND UNKNOWING, LIKE EARTH, WOOD, TILE, OR STONE, THIS IS

NOT UNKNOWING SILENCE -- THIS IS A VIEW BORN OF WRONGLY TAKING TOO

LITERALLY WORDS THAT WERE ONLY EXPEDIENT MEANS TO FREE BONDS.

The false teachers are collecting words, beautiful words. They are good collectors but they don't know the context, because the context is not present in the scriptures. The context is always present in a living master.

TO TEACH PEOPLE TO REFLECT ACCORDING TO CIRCUMSTANCES AND

TAKE CARE NOT TO LET ANY BAD PERCEPTIONS APPEAR -- THIS AGAIN IS AN

INTERPRETATION PRODUCED BY ACCEPTING THE SKULL'S EMOTIONAL

CONSCIOUSNESS.

ALL THE ABOVE DISEASES ARE NOT THE STUDENTS' DOINGS -- THEY ARE

ALL DUE TO THE WRONG INSTRUCTIONS OF BLIND TEACHERS.

It will be a great day in the history of man when he becomes at least this much responsible: to realize that to teach something that he himself has not experienced is ugly, is criminal; it is the greatest sin. If false teachers disappear from the world there will be a tremendous revolution, because the people who get caught into the nets of the false teachers are really seekers, but they don't know where to go, they don't know how to judge ... and they can be forgiven because they are only searching and looking.

It is the greatest blessing to have found a living master. It is the most difficult thing, because the living master will be condemned by the whole world, so you will be discouraged by the condemnation. The false teachers will be appreciated, honored, respected; naturally, you will think that if the whole world respects, honors, then these must be the right people. It is just the opposite: the authentic master has been always condemned by the contemporaries.

So whenever you find a man condemned unanimously by all, he has something; otherwise why should the whole world be disturbed by him? When the world appreciates, respects, gives honors and awards, beware! This is a false teacher. He is honored because he is serving the vested interests of the society.

If you can keep this small criterion, it is always possible to find the right master. But without a right master, things which are very simple will become so complicated; things which can happen right now do not happen for lives. Beware of the honored ones!

If somebody is condemned, and condemned unanimously, that man is bringing truth into the world, which is living in all kinds of lies.

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Be with him!

Take the risk!

And your reward will be tremendously great.

Okay, Maneesha?

Okay, Osho.

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34

Enlightenment

18 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

ENLIGHTENMENT: THE KEY

SOME TAKE SITTING WORDLESSLY WITH EYES SHUT BENEATH THE BLACK

MOUNTAIN, INSIDE THE GHOST CAVE, AND CONSIDER IT AS THE SCENE ON

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PRIMORDIAL BUDDHA, THE SCENE BEFORE THEIR

PARENTS WERE BORN -- THEY ALSO CALL IT "SILENT YET EVER

ILLUMINATING," AND CONSIDER IT CH'AN. THIS LOT DON'T SEEK SUBTLE

WONDROUS ENLIGHTENMENT: THEY CONSIDER ENLIGHTENMENT AS FALLING

INTO THE SECONDARY. THEY THINK THAT ENLIGHTENMENT DECEIVES

PEOPLE, THAT ENLIGHTENMENT IS A FABRICATION. SINCE THEY'VE NEVER

AWAKENED THEMSELVES, THEY DON'T BELIEVE ANYONE HAS AWAKENED.

THERE'S A KIND ACTING AS TEACHERS SPREADING FALSE TALK WHO TELL

STUDENTS, "JUST PRESERVE STILLNESS." ASKED, "WHAT THING IS THIS, PRESERVING? WHO IS THE STILL ONE?" THEY SAY, "THE STILL ONE IS THE

BASIS." YET THEY DON'T BELIEVE THAT THE ENLIGHTENED ONE EXISTS: THEY

SAY THAT THE ENLIGHTENED ONE IS AN OFFSHOOT, AND QUOTE THIS FROM

YANG SHAN:

A MONK ASKED YANG SHAN, "DO PEOPLE THESE DAYS STILL MAKE USE OF

ENLIGHTENMENT OR NOT?" YANG SHAN SAID, "THOUGH ENLIGHTENMENT IS

NOT ABSENT, NEVERTHELESS IT FALLS INTO THE SECONDARY: DON'T TALK OF

DREAMS IN FRONT OF FOOLS." THEN THEY UNDERSTAND THIS LITERALLY AS

A REAL DOCTRINE, AND SAY THAT ENLIGHTENMENT IS SECONDARY.

SUCH PEOPLE SCARCELY REALIZE THAT KUEI SHAN HIMSELF HAD A SAYING TO ALERT STUDENTS; INDEED, IT'S VERY COGENT: "ENLIGHTENMENT

IS THE STANDARD FOR INVESTIGATING THE ULTIMATE TRUTH THROUGH TO

THE END."

WHERE DO THOSE FALSE TEACHERS PUT THESE WORDS? IT'S IMPOSSIBLE

THAT KUEI SHAN WAS BRINGING DOUBTS AND ERROR TO LATER PEOPLE BY

HAVING THEM FALL INTO THE SECONDARY.

Enlightenment is certainly the key, but almost all the traditions are against it -- and there is a reason why they are against it. The most fundamental reason is that if enlightenment is a reality, God becomes an unreality. If your own illumination is the ultimate, then nothing can be above it. Then man's own consciousness becomes the highest reality.

Religions and traditions believing in God cannot allow enlightenment. It goes against all their fictions. Their fictions can exist only in the darkness, not in the light. To keep their fictions alive, to keep their dreams real, they don't allow human beings to be awake. You don't Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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hear of Christian mystics as enlightened, you don't hear of Jewish mystics as awakened. In fact, enlightenment is the alternative of God.

All that belongs to the ritualistic religions is endangered by enlightenment, because enlightenment has no ritual, it has no prayer, it has no scriptures. It so totally believes in you, its respect for humanity is so absolute and irrevocable ... It is natural that all the priests are going to be against it, because the whole profession of the priests depends on fictions, and enlightenment destroys fictions.

All theologies are fabrications of the mind, and enlightenment is a transcendence going beyond the mind. All that belongs to the mind is a nightmare. Where do your gods exist?

Where is your heaven, your hell? Where are your angels and your ghosts? They all constitute the entity called the mind.

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

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

Religions have done so much harm to man that it is unparalleled. Nothing else has been so dangerous. In every possible way they have been preventing man from even hearing the word

'enlightenment'. You should not become aware that raising your hands to the sky is stupid --

there is no one to answer your prayers, no prayer has ever been answered.

All your gods are your own creations. You sculpt them, and you never think about it -- that you go on worshipping things which you have created. The Christian BIBLE says, "God created man in his own image." The truth is just the contrary: man has created God in his own image. And then -- the ultimate foolishness -- you worship your own image. In fact, if you were a little intelligent, you could just purchase a mirror and worship.

All your gods are nothing but your own reflections. There is no need to go to a temple or to a church; you can just keep a small mirror. Perhaps ladies are very intelligent about it --

they go on looking again and again in the mirror, they believe in the mirror.

But all your gods are the same, all your rituals are created by crafty priests. None of your scriptures are even first-rate literature; they are very third-class contributions. But just because they are holy ... Who makes them holy? There are people who have their vested interests ...

It is a long chain from God to the prophets, to the messiahs, to the holy scripture, to the church. But the only reality in this whole long line of fictions is the priest, and his whole effort through the ages has been to exploit you. And not only to exploit -- exploitation is possible only if certain conditions are fulfilled: you have to be made to feel guilty.

Strange ways have been invented to make you feel guilty. The Hindus say that you are suffering, in misery, not because of your stupidities, not because of your unconsciousness, not because of your unmeditativeness, not because you have made no effort to become enlightened, but because of the evil acts you have done in millions of past lives. Now you cannot undo them; there is no way backwards. That burden you have to carry, and under that Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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burden you lose all your dignity, all your pride. All that you can do is pray to God to help you, to save you.

Christians -- because they don't have the idea of many, many lives, but only one life --

cannot use the same strategy. They have found their own strategy: the Hindu is suffering because of millions of past lives; the Christian is suffering because Adam and Eve, faraway, back in the very beginning, disobeyed God. The idea is so farfetched ... In what way can I be responsible if Adam disobeyed God?

But Christianity goes on insisting -- and Christianity means half of humanity -- that you were born in sin because your forefathers, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God. You are born of sinners; hence, you are miserable. And you will remain miserable unless you repent and unless you are forgiven. Only the son of God, Jesus, can save you. He is going to plead on your behalf; he is going to be your advocate. You have just to believe in him and at the last day of judgment he will choose the people who believe in him, and will ask God to forgive them.

The remainder of humanity is going to fall into eternal hell.

These are great strategies to bring people into the fold of Christianity ... because that is the only way to save your future; otherwise there is no hope. Every religion has in some way taken away your beauty, your greatness, has destroyed the very idea that you have any worth, any meaning, any significance, that you have any potential.

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

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

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

Enlightenment is such a radical standpoint.

It is not another religion.

It is the only religion.

All other religions are pseudo.

Ta Hui says, SOME TAKE SITTING WORDLESSLY WITH EYES SHUT BENEATH

THE BLACK MOUNTAIN, INSIDE THE GHOST CAVE, AND CONSIDER IT AS THE

SCENE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PRIMORDIAL BUDDHA, THE SCENE BEFORE

THEIR PARENTS WERE BORN -- THEY ALSO CALL IT "SILENT, YET EVER

ILLUMINATING," AND CONSIDER IT CH'AN. THIS LOT DON'T SEEK SUBTLE

WONDROUS ENLIGHTENMENT: THEY CONSIDER ENLIGHTENMENT AS FALLING

INTO THE SECONDARY.

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

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

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

And you know in your ordinary life there are situations ... When you see a beautiful rose, is it the same to experience the beauty of the rose and to say that it is beautiful? Can the word

'beautiful' contain your experience of the rose? You experience love, but is it possible to say through the word 'love' exactly what you experience in the silences of your heart? The love that you experience and the word 'love' are not synonymous. The word is not even an echo of your authentic experience. And these are ordinary realities: beauty, love, gratitude.

Enlightenment is the ultimate experience of being one with the whole. There is no way to say it.

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

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

But such is the ignorance of man that the first statues made of any man were those of Gautam Buddha. There had been statues, but those were of fictitious gods. Gautam Buddha is the first historical person whose statues were made, and made on such a great scale that even today he has more statues in the world than anybody else. And the poor fellow had said,

"Don't make my statues, because I am not teaching you to worship, I am teaching you to awaken. No worship is going to help; it is simply a waste of time."

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

It is a strange history. Every master has been betrayed, without exception, by his own people in different ways. The betrayal of Judas was very ordinary, superficial. But the betrayal of those who have created statues of Buddha, made temples of Buddha, created scriptures in Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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the name of Buddha, brought everything back against which that man had fought for forty-two years continuously ... From the back door everything has come in.

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

Except for that, there is no way to understand Buddha. You cannot study him from scriptures and you cannot persuade him by your prayers. You can be in his company only by being awakened the same way as he was. On those same sunlit peaks of consciousness you will be able to understand him. In other words, the day you understand yourself you will have understood the message of this strangest man who has walked on the earth.

The priests have been trying to misquote him, to distort him, to interpret him for their own interests. THEY CONSIDER ENLIGHTENMENT AS FALLING INTO THE SECONDARY.

THEY THINK THAT ENLIGHTENMENT DECEIVES PEOPLE ... The fact is, only enlightenment does not deceive people. Except enlightenment, everything in the name of religion deceives people.

... THAT ENLIGHTENMENT IS A FABRICATION ... And I say again to you: only enlightenment is the ultimate reality. Other than that, everything else is a fabrication.

All your gods, all your messiahs, all your prophets are nothing but your own imagination, your own projection. They are fulfilling certain needs in you, but those needs are sick. They are providing you with father-figures.

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

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

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

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

But why has he been able to influence so many people? The reason is not that he had a great, convincing philosophy -- he had no philosophy at all! The reason is that humanity at large is also neurotic. It feels very good to believe in Jesus Christ, to believe in God; it creates a protection -- just in your mind. You will be deceived, finally you will be disillusioned, but to Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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be disillusioned at the time of death is meaningless. Then there is no time is left to do anything else.

The people who say that enlightenment deceives people, the people who say that enlightenment is a fabrication, are people who SINCE THEY HAVE NEVER AWAKENED

THEMSELVES, THEY DON'T BELIEVE ANYONE HAS AWAKENED EITHER.

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

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

-- but he cannot be real. Their own experience does not support his reality.

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

Enlightenment is a rebellion against all these parasites.

THERE IS A KIND ACTING AS TEACHERS SPREADING FALSE TALK WHO TELL

STUDENTS, "JUST PRESERVE STILLNESS." WHEN ASKED, "WHAT THING IS THIS, PRESERVING? WHO IS THE STILL ONE?" THEY SAY, "THE STILL ONE IS THE

BASIS." YET THEY DON'T BELIEVE THAT THE ENLIGHTENED ONE EXISTS: THEY

SAY THAT THE ENLIGHTENED ONE IS AN OFFSHOOT, AND QUOTE THIS FROM

YANG SHAN -- a great master in his own right.

A MONK ASKED YANG SHAN, "DO PEOPLE THESE DAYS STILL MAKE USE OF

ENLIGHTENMENT OR NOT?" True to his awakened state of consciousness, YANG SHAN

SAID, "THOUGH ENLIGHTENMENT IS NOT ABSENT, NEVERTHELESS IT FALLS

INTO THE SECONDARY: DON'T TALK OF DREAMS IN FRONT OF FOOLS."

Now these great masters are bound to be misunderstood. What they are saying is absolutely right, and there is no way to improve upon it -- they are saying it so beautifully.

Yang Shan is not denying enlightenment, but neither is he asserting that it exists, because the phenomenon is so big that it cannot be contained in any positive statement.

The moment you make a positive statement, it has already fallen to the state of secondary, non-essential. But who is going to understand him? -- only a man of his own category; otherwise he is bound to be misunderstood.

He says, "THOUGH ENLIGHTENMENT IS NOT ABSENT ... He could have said,

"Enlightenment exists" -- that's what he is saying, but he is aware that saying anything positively brings limitations. All positive words are limited; hence, out of necessity the awakened ones have used the negatives -- nothingness, nobodiness -- because nothingness has no limits.

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Have you ever thought about nothingness? Its beauty is that it has no limits; otherwise it will become something. It is nothing because it has no limits. It does not mean that it is not: it simply means it is so much, limitless. But to understand that nothingness is not negation ... it is a way of indicating that which cannot be said by any positive word.

"THOUGH ENLIGHTENMENT IS NOT ABSENT ..." Yang Shan will not say it is present, but he can say, "THOUGH ENLIGHTENMENT IS NOT ABSENT, NEVERTHELESS" -- because even to say this much is to go against the ultimate experience and its inexpressibility -- "NEVERTHELESS IT FALLS INTO THE SECONDARY: DON'T

TALK OF DREAMS IN FRONT OF FOOLS" ... because the fools may take the dreams to be real.

It is better to be silent with the fools; at least they cannot misunderstand. But there are great fools who can even misunderstand your silence ... There are so many kinds of idiots in the world; their categories are inexhaustible.

I have heard ... A man was dying of AIDS and his gay friends were consoling him,

"Everybody who is born has to die." And one of them said, "At least you should be happy that your results are positive."

In his mind, the word 'positive' has some value: be happy that you are dying of positive AIDS, not of some negative disease.

THEN THEY UNDERSTAND THIS LITERALLY AS A REAL DOCTRINE AND SAY

THAT ENLIGHTENMENT IS SECONDARY.

SUCH PEOPLE SCARCELY REALIZE THAT KUEI SHAN HIMSELF HAD A SAYING TO ALERT STUDENTS; INDEED IT IS VERY COGENT: "ENLIGHTENMENT

IS THE STANDARD FOR INVESTIGATING THE ULTIMATE TRUTH THROUGH TO

THE END."

WHERE DO THOSE FALSE TEACHERS PUT THESE WORDS? IT IS IMPOSSIBLE

THAT KUEI SHAN WAS BRINGING DOUBTS AND ERRORS TO LATER PEOPLE BY

HAVING THEM FALL INTO THE SECONDARY.

I will tell you a strange story. You will see everywhere in India people bragging that this is the country of Gautam Buddha. But even the people who are bragging don't know what the brahmins have written about Gautam Buddha.

Of course the man was so charismatic ... His teaching was negative: he had no god, he did not believe in consoling you, he was not a man just to give you false pacifications. He called a spade a spade. He was very pragmatic, and committed absolutely to the truth. He denied that the VEDAS are holy -- which was a shock to the whole country, because the country had believed in the VEDAS for centuries. They are the ancientmost scriptures of the world.

But Buddha was so impressive, his personality was such a great argument, his presence was so convincing, that although there were many who wanted to have a dispute with him, they remained silent because they had no guts.

Once he was dead, the Hindus, the priests, wrote a very strange and very ugly story in one of the Hindu PURANAS. They were in a dilemma: what to do with Gautam Buddha? The man does not believe in God -- and you cannot prove that God exists. He does not believe in the VEDAS, that they have anything sacred in them -- and you cannot prove it. He does not believe in your rituals -- he calls them foolish. He is against all kinds of priesthood; he does Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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not want anybody to stand between individuals and existence -- there should be an immediate meeting and communion -- no mediator in between, no commission agents.

The man's influence was great. The brahmins could not say that he was wrong because then they would have to prove it. They could not ignore him either, because the whole country was overwhelmed by his presence. But priests are a cunning race. They created a holy scripture -- invented a story -- that when God created the world he created heaven and hell, and he gave to the devil the charge of hell. But thousands of years passed and nobody reached hell because people were innocent, nobody committed any sin; everybody was going into heaven -- and the devil was bored sitting alone.

Finally he went to God and he said, "What kind of stupidity is this? Why have you created hell? -- just for me? And I am there in charge, but where are the people? Thousands of years of waiting, and not a single customer. I want to resign. You can appoint somebody else."

God persuaded him, "Don't be worried. You go back. I will be born as Gautam Buddha, and I will teach wrong ideologies to people and then they will start falling into hell automatically."

And the story says that since then, since Gautam Buddha, hell is overcrowded. In fact, many people have to wait outside in a queue.

Do you see the cunningness? They accept that Gautam Buddha has the impact of a god, they accept that he has influenced millions of people, but they managed to plant the idea that whoever follows Gautam Buddha -- although he is one of the incarnations of God -- will fall into hell. And slowly, slowly they convinced the people.

After Gautam Buddha's death, within just five hundred years, there was not a single buddhist left in India. Who is going to follow a man, howsoever beautiful he may be, if the ultimate result is going to be hell?

The situation became so strange that in the memorial temple where Gautam Buddha became enlightened -- his lovers had raised a beautiful temple by the side of the bodhi tree under which he was sitting when he became enlightened -- there was not even a single buddhist left to take care of it.

The memorial temple has been in the possession of a brahmin family for almost two thousand years. Even today the temple is the possession of a brahmin family. They don't believe in Buddha, but there was no other way ... no buddhist was left. Even the tree under which Buddha had become enlightened was destroyed by the Hindus -- and these are the so-called religious people. The tree that exists today is not the original tree; it is one of the branches of the original tree.

It was just a coincidence that King Ashoka sent his daughter, Sanghamitra, who had become a sannyasin of Gautam Buddha, to Sri Lanka to spread the message. He sent with her a branch of the bodhi tree. And the bodhi tree is a strange tree, in a way it is an eternal tree: it never dies unless you destroy it, because from every branch new roots go on growing. It is a tree of its own kind. Those new roots go into the earth, so around the tree many children of the tree start growing. The tree can become so big that thousands of people can sit under it, because it goes on and on spreading its new generations. Even if the old original tree dies, its descendants will still be alive.

So that branch was brought to Sri Lanka by Sanghamitra, and it was planted there.

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Lanka to Buddhism. And when the original tree was destroyed, just when India became free, a branch from Sri Lanka was brought back. It is a descendant that is now in the place where the original tree must have been.

Buddhists were killed, burned alive. Those who could, escaped out of India, and that's how China became Buddhist, Korea became Buddhist, Taiwan became Buddhist, Japan became Buddhist, Burma became Buddhist, Thailand became Buddhist. The whole East turned towards Gautam Buddha, except his own land. India became absolutely without any influence of Gautam Buddha. The old priests came back, the VEDAS became again holy. Old, meaningless rituals again became significant.

There have been people in the world who could have transformed humanity, but there are so many parasites who would not like you to become enlightened because your enlightenment means their profession is destroyed.

Enlightenment is the very essence of human dignity, human grandeur. It is certainly the key, as Ta Hui is saying. It is the golden key. And for anybody in the world who really wants to be religious, except enlightenment there is no other way.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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Discontinuity

19 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

A TALK TO THE ASSEMBLY (PART ONE)

DO YOU WANT TO ATTAIN TRUE ONE SUCHNESS OF MIND AND OBJECTS? IT

REQUIRES AN ABRUPT, COMPLETE BREAK: PICK OUT THE ONE INSIDE YOUR

SKULL THAT'S DOING THE FALSE THINKING, TAKE THE EIGHTH

CONSCIOUSNESS, AND CUT IT OFF WITH ONE BLOW.

HAVEN'T YOU READ MASTER YEN T'OU'S SAYING? "AS SOON AS THERE'S

SOMETHING CONSIDERED IMPORTANT, IT BECOMES A NEST."

ALL OF YOU PEOPLE HAVE SPENT YOUR WHOLE LIVES INQUIRING AFTER

THIS MATTER -- WITHOUT ANY ATTAINMENT -- SITTING IN YOUR NESTS YOUR

WHOLE LIVES WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO COME OUT, TOTALLY UNAWARE OF

YOUR ERROR. THOSE WHO'VE BECOME INFATUATED WITH THE WORDS AND

PHRASES OF THE ANCIENTS TAKE AMAZING WORDS AND SUBTLE PHRASES AS

THEIR NEST. THOSE WHO TAKE DELIGHT IN THE VERBAL MEANING OF THE

SCRIPTURES TAKE THE SCRIPTURES AS THEIR NEST.

ALL THE ABOVE HAVE THINGS THEY CONSIDER IMPORTANT WHERE THEIR

INFATUATIONS LIE. LACKING THE QUALITIES OF GREAT MEN OF POWER TO

STEP BACK AND RECOGNIZE THEIR ERROR, THEY THINK OF WHAT THEY

CONSIDER IMPORTANT AS EXTRAORDINARY, AS WONDROUS AND SUBTLE, AS

PEACE AND SECURITY, AS THE ULTIMATE, AS LIBERATION.

FOR THOSE WHO ENTERTAIN SUCH THOUGHTS, EVEN IF BUDDHA APPEARED IN THE WORLD, IT WOULD BE TO NO AVAIL. WITH NOTHING

CONSIDERED IMPORTANT, NATURALLY YOU'RE FULL OF RAWBONED POWER, WITHOUT DESIRE OR DEPENDENCE, AND MASTER OF THE DHARMA.

Every man creates a certain psychological security, unaware of the fact that his security is his prison. People are surrounded by all kinds of insecurities; hence the natural desire is to create a protection. This protection becomes bigger and bigger as you become more alert to the dangers you are living through. Your prison cell becomes smaller; you start living so much protected that life itself becomes impossible.

Life is possible only in insecurity.

This is something very fundamental to be understood: life in its very essence is insecurity.

While you are protecting yourself, you are destroying your very life. Protection is death, because only those who are dead in their graves are absolutely protected. Nobody can harm them, nothing can go wrong for them. There is no longer any death for them -- all that has happened. Now nothing more is going to happen.

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Do you want the security of a graveyard? Unknowingly that's what everybody is trying to do. Different are their ways, but the goal is the same. By money, by power, by prestige, by social conformity, by belonging to a herd -- religious, political -- by being part of a family, a nation, what are you seeking? Just an unknown fear surrounds you, and you start creating as many barriers as possible between you and the fear. But those same barriers are going to prevent you from living.

Once this is understood, you will know the meaning of sannyas. It is accepting life as insecurity, dropping all defenses and allowing life to take possession of you. This is a dangerous step, but those who are capable of taking it are rewarded immensely, because only they live. Others just survive.

There is a difference between survival and living. Survival is only a dragging -- dragging from the cradle to the grave. When is the grave going to come? In the space between the cradle and the grave, why be afraid? Death is certain -- and you don't have anything to lose, you come without anything. Your fears are just projections. You don't have anything to lose, and one day what you have is bound to disappear.

If death was uncertain there would be some substance in creating security. If you could avoid death, then naturally it would be perfectly right to create barriers between you and death. But you cannot avoid it. Ta Hui has said in his previous sutras, "Accepting the unavoidable is one of the fundamentals of coming to illumination." Death is there; once accepted it loses all fear, nothing can be done about it. When nothing can be done about it, then why be bothered?

It is a well-known fact that soldiers going to the war field are trembling. Deep down they know that all will not be returning back in the evening. Who is going to return and who is not going to return is not known, but it is possible that perhaps they themselves may not be returning home. But psychologists have been observing a strange phenomenon: as they reach the war front, all their fears disappear. They start fighting very playfully.

Once death is accepted, then where is the sting in it? Once they know that death is possible at any moment -- then they can forget all about it.

I have been with many army people -- I had many friends -- and it was strange to see that they are the most joyous people, the most relaxed. Any day the call can come, "Join the forces" -- but they play cards, they play golf, they drink, they dance, they enjoy life to the full.

One of the generals used to come to me. I asked him, "You are prepared almost every day for death, and still ... how can you manage to be happy?"

He said, "What else is there to do? Death is certain."

Once the certainty, unavoidability, inescapability is accepted, then rather than crying and weeping and complaining and dragging yourself towards the grave, why not dance? Why not make the most of the time that you have between the cradle and the grave? Why not live every moment to such totality that if the next moment never comes, there is no complaint? You can die joyously because you have lived joyously.

But very few people have understood the inner working of their own psychology. Rather than living, they start protecting. The same energy that could have become a song and a dance becomes involved in creating more money, more power, more ambition, more security. The same energy that could have been a tremendously beautiful flower of love becomes just an imprisonment in a marriage. Marriage is secure -- by law, by social convention, by your own Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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idea of respectability and what people will say. Everybody is afraid of everybody else ... so people go on pretending.

Love disappears; it is not in your hands. It comes just like the breeze comes, and it goes just like the breeze goes. Those who are alert and aware dance with the breeze, relish it to its deepest potential, enjoy its coolness and fragrance, and when it is gone they are not sorry and sad. It was a gift from the unknown, it may come again. They wait ... it comes again and again. They learn slowly a deep patience and waiting.

But most human beings down the centuries have done the very opposite. Afraid that the breeze may go out, they close all the doors, all the windows, all possible cracks from where it can escape. This is their arrangement for security. This is called marriage. But now they are shocked. When all the windows and the doors are closed and they have plugged even small cracks, instead of having a great, cool, fragrant breeze they have only a stale dead air.

Everybody feels it -- but it needs courage to recognize that they have destroyed the beauty of the breeze by capturing it. In life nothing can be captured and imprisoned. One has to live in openness, allowing all kinds of experiences to happen, being fully grateful as long as they last, thankful -- but not afraid of tomorrow.

If today has brought a beautiful morning, a beautiful sunrise, songs of birds, great flowers, why be worried about tomorrow? -- because tomorrow will be another today. Maybe the sunrise will have different colors, maybe the birds may change their songs a little, maybe there will be rainclouds and the dance of the rain -- but that has its own beauty, that has its own nourishment.

It is good that things go on changing, that every evening is not the same, that every day is not exactly a repetition. Something new ... that is the very excitement and ecstasy of life; otherwise man will be so bored. And those who have made their life completely secure are bored. They are bored with their wives, they are bored with their children, they are bored with their friends. Boredom is the experience of millions of people, although they smile to hide it.

Friedrich Nietzsche is right when he says, "Don't think I am a happy man. I smile just to prevent my tears. I become busy in smiling so I can prevent my tears. If I don't smile, tears are bound to come." Completely wrong attitudes have been taught to people: hide your tears, remain always at a distance, keep others at least at arm's length. Don't allow others too close, because then they may know your inner misery, your boredom, your anguish; they may know your sickness.

The whole humanity is sick for the simple reason that we have not allowed life's insecurity to be our very religion. Our gods are our security, our virtues are our security, our knowledge is our security, our relationships are our securities. We are wasting our whole life in accumulating security bonds. Our virtues, austerities, are nothing but an effort to be secure even after death. It is creating a bank balance in the other world.

But meanwhile a tremendously beautiful life is slipping out of your hands. The trees are so beautiful because they don't know the fear of insecurity. The wild animals have such grandeur because they don't know that there is death, there is insecurity. The flowers can dance in the sun and in the rain because they are not concerned about what is going to happen in the evening. Their petals will fall, and just as they had appeared from an unknown source, they will disappear back into the same unknown source. But meanwhile, between these two points of appearance and disappearance, you have the opportunity either to dance or to despair.

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Ta Hui is saying that people go to the churches and to the temples and to the mosques, not because they are religious, but because they are cowards. Because they cannot live, they are finding ways to protect themselves.

I used to stay with a friend in a house in Surat. This friend belongs to a strange Mohammedan sect, and Surat is their headquarters; their high priest lives in Surat. I could not believe what intelligent people can do ... the community is very rich and very intelligent; all are educated people. Just talking to him I came to know that in their society, when somebody dies, his friends and his family give money to the high priest. Sometimes lakhs of rupees are given to the priest as a representative of God; because the man is going on a pilgrimage, his life after death should be taken care of.

The priest writes a letter to God, a letter of recommendation: "This man has to be taken care of. A good place" -- according to the donations -- "should be arranged for him in heaven."

That letter is put in the pocket of the dead man, the dead man is put in the grave, and the money -- of course -- goes in the pocket of the priest.

I asked the friend, "Do you think that money in some strange way reaches to God?"

He said, "That's the belief."

I took him to their graveyard one night, to a new, fresh grave. We opened it, and he said,

"This is very sacrilegious."

I said, "I don't belong to your religion; don't be worried, all the responsibility is mine."

And I pulled out the letter from the pocket of the dead man. I said, "The letter is here. The fellow has forgotten to take the letter. Now what will he do?" A character certificate ... in the twentieth century! We are still primitives.

And the priest himself I have met. He is a well-educated person, he has a doctorate in literature. I told him, "At least it is your responsibility, being an intelligent person, educated, not to lead people into false securities. People are giving their whole life's money to have a secure place in the other world, but they have not lived HERE."

He could not deny it to me: "This is not good -- but I am just a representative of a long heritage. My father was a priest, my grandfather was a priest. It is our family profession."

I said, "It may be your family profession, but it is more of a crime than a profession. You are an intelligent man, you should expose this hypocrisy."

But he said, "I have thought about it many times. As far as I'm concerned, I'm already too rich ... centuries of accumulation. I can expose it -- that the whole money goes into the pocket of the priest -- but I stop myself because this gives people great consolation and security. I don't want to disturb their consolation and their security."

I can understand his concern and I don't think he was just trying to defend himself. He was sincere. But such are our consolations given in different ways by different religions, different priests, different politicians. Everybody is making your life secure -- and everybody is destroying you.

An authentic religious person simply drops the idea of security and starts living in utter insecurity, because that is the nature of life. You cannot change it. That which you cannot change, accept -- and accept it with joy. Don't unnecessarily hit your head against the wall; just pass through the door.

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Ta Hui, in his last sutras, is giving you his standpoint. DO YOU WANT TO ATTAIN

TRUE ONE SUCHNESS OF MIND AND OBJECTS? IT REQUIRES AN ABRUPT, COMPLETE BREAK ... These are the words to be remembered: IT REQUIRES AN

ABRUPT, COMPLETE BREAK. It requires a discontinuity of the way you have been living up to now. You have to stop living in ostrich logic.

The ostrich is a very logical animal. Whenever the ostrich sees any enemy, a hunter, he puts his head deep into the sand. Seeing no enemy, he feels completely secure. In fact, he has become more insecure. If he was looking at the enemy, then there would be possible ways to escape, or at least an effort could be made. But when he is standing there, his head in the sand, eyes closed, he is absolutely vulnerable.

This has become many people's lifestyle -- ostrich style. Whatever seems to be dangerous, they ignore it; they don't look that way. They believe that if they don't see it, it disappears.

Have you ever consciously looked at death? Have you ever gone to the cemetery and sat there and thought about the people who are lying in their graves? No ... you will go only one time and one way -- you will not come back. Why are graveyards and cemeteries and funeral grounds made outside the city, out of the way? -- so that you don't have to come across them.

In fact, the graveyards should be made exactly in the middle of the city, so you have to come across them many times every day, knowing perfectly well that the people who are sleeping in those graves were also one day living just like you, and one day you also will be lying in the same kind of grave.

The insecurity has to be made absolutely clear. In that clarity there is a possibility of acceptance; there is no other way. You cannot escape, so don't waste time in escaping.

The same time has to be used in coming to know a deeper life which knows no death, a deeper love which is not ephemeral, a love that has nothing to do with infatuation of any kind, a love that is just like a heartbeat to you, not addressed to anybody in particular. It is not loving someone, it is simply loving, it is being love -- that is eternal.

But an abrupt and complete break is needed in our lifestyles. Our lifestyles are based on cowardly, fearful attitudes towards life.

PICK OUT THE ONE INSIDE YOUR SKULL THAT'S DOING THE FALSE

THINKING, TAKE THE EIGHTH CONSCIOUSNESS, AND CUT IT OFF WITH ONE

BLOW.

By AN ABRUPT, COMPLETE BREAK Tah Hui simply means that if you are intelligent enough, you will change in a single blow. You will not say, "I will change gradually, slowly, part by part;" you will not say, "Change will take time." You will say, "I have seen it; now there is no question of changing. I have changed."

There is a Buddhist story ... A woman is in deep love with Gautam Buddha's philosophy.

She is a princess, and Gautam Buddha is in the town. She has just come from the discourse; she is full of the great ideas that Gautam Buddha was talking about. In ancient days in India it was customary ... it was a loving gesture but may have become, by and by, part of women's slavery. She was giving a shower to her husband, rubbing his body.

She said, "By the way" -- because her mind was still filled with Gautam Buddha. She said,

"My brother has been thinking to become a follower of Gautam Buddha."

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Her husband laughed. He said, "That's ridiculous. Thinking? -- how many years has he been thinking?"

The woman said, "As far as I know, nearabout five years he has been thinking."

The man said, "He will never become ... he will go on thinking. A person who can think for five years can think for fifty years."

These are not matters to be thought about; either you understand or you don't. These are abrupt quantum leaps. The moment you see the snake on the road you don't think whether to move away or to jump, you do something abruptly.

When you see the house is on fire, you don't sit there for five years thinking about what to do. Once you have seen the house is on fire you don't even bother to put on your dress properly. If you are taking a shower, you will jump out of the bathroom window naked. This is not a time to follow social etiquette. It does not matter whether it is Poona or anywhere else --

when the house is on fire, you don't think of the police commissioner! The idea simply does not come to your mind.

The man said, "Your brother is simply enjoying the idea that one day he will become a follower and perhaps attain the blissful state of buddhahood. But I can say to you it is not going to happen. These things happen abruptly."

Naturally the wife was offended, because her brother has been criticized. To defend her brother she said to her husband, "Can you do what you are saying? Can you do it abruptly? --

because you are also listening to Gautam Buddha."

The man did not answer; he simply jumped out of the bathroom window. The woman said,

"What are you doing?"

He said, "Forget all about it."

She said, "At least take the clothes ...!"

He said, "Abrupt means abrupt."

People on the street could not believe that the prince was naked. They asked him, "What has happened?"

He said, "I have become discontinuous with my past life!"

He reached Gautam Buddha, naked. Gautam Buddha said, "At least you could have put on some clothes."

He said, "The situation was such that I had to do it abruptly. Initiate me this very moment!"

The wife came running behind, the family came running behind, saying "What are you doing? It was just a playful argument."

The man said, "What I have done I cannot undo."

And this man, because of his courage and a sudden understanding, became one of the enlightened disciples of Gautam Buddha. His name was Sariputta. He is one of the most loved characters in the Buddhist tradition. Certainly he was a man worthy to be loved and respected.

Ta Hui is suggesting to you also ... AN ABRUPT AND COMPLETE BREAK with your lifestyle, which is nothing but consolation, protection, security, safety, guarantee, insurance.

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HAVEN'T YOU READ MASTER YEN T'OU'S SAYING? "AS SOON AS THERE'S

SOMETHING CONSIDERED IMPORTANT, IT BECOMES A NEST." The moment you think something is important -- money, knowledge, power -- it becomes a cozy nest, and you start living within that small nest. You become a prisoner.

A man of ambition cannot be a free man. A man of desires cannot taste the beauty of freedom. His desires are his chains. And whatever has become important -- Yen T'ou is right

-- that very thing becomes your bondage.

Nothing should be more important to you than your own consciousness. Anything more important than your consciousness makes a prison for you; you become secondary. You humiliate yourself, you yourself fall in your own eyes.

ALL OF YOU PEOPLE HAVE SPENT YOUR WHOLE LIVES INQUIRING AFTER

THIS MATTER -- WITHOUT ANY ATTAINMENT -- SITTING IN YOUR NESTS YOUR

WHOLE LIVES WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO COME OUT, TOTALLY UNAWARE OF

YOUR ERROR.

The error is that you have made something more important than your own being, you have put something higher than yourself. It may be a god ... Don't put anything as a goal, don't put anything higher than you. You are the ultimate, nothing can be higher than you. You have to explore yourself, because the moment anything becomes important to you, you stop exploring yourself; you start running after that which is important to you, whatever it is.

THOSE WHO HAVE BECOME INFATUATED WITH THE WORDS AND PHRASES

OF THE ANCIENTS TAKE AMAZING WORDS AND SUBTLE PHRASES AS THEIR

NEST. What are your so-called learned people? -- the pundits, the rabbis, the great scholars.

Words, beautiful words, have become so important to them that they have forgotten themselves. Words have become their whole life; they go on accumulating more and more beautiful quotes, statements, but what they are? -- just imprisoned in scriptures.

THOSE WHO TAKE DELIGHT IN THE VERBAL MEANING OF THE SCRIPTURES

TAKE THE SCRIPTURES AS THEIR NEST. It does not matter what it is -- it may be money, it may even be enlightenment -- if you make it a distant goal, something to be achieved, you have missed the point. Enlightenment is not something to be achieved; it is something that happens to you when you are in a non-achieving mood, when there is nothing important to you, when there is no greed, no desire, no ambition -- not even the ambition for enlightenment. Then suddenly you settle within yourself, not going anywhere, because every desire is going away from you.

When there is no going anywhere, your consciousness concentrates at the very center of your being ... and the explosion. This explosion is enlightenment, but you cannot make it a goal. This explosion is liberation, but you cannot make it a goal.

ALL THE ABOVE HAVE THINGS THEY CONSIDER IMPORTANT WHERE THEIR

INFATUATIONS LIE. LACKING THE QUALITIES OF GREAT MEN OF POWER TO

STEP BACK AND RECOGNIZE THEIR ERROR, THEY THINK OF WHAT THEY

CONSIDER IMPORTANT AS EXTRAORDINARY, AS WONDROUS AND SUBTLE, AS

PEACE AND SECURITY, AS THE ULTIMATE, AS LIBERATION.

Man is a very self-deceiving animal; he can manage to deceive himself. He can call his imprisonment his palace, he can call his handcuffs his ornaments, he can call borrowed Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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knowledge his experience. It is not a great crime to deceive somebody else, but to deceive oneself is certainly the greatest crime.

One who cannot deceive himself cannot deceive anybody else, and one who can deceive even himself is bound to deceive everybody.

FOR THOSE WHO ENTERTAIN SUCH THOUGHTS, EVEN IF BUDDHA APPEARED IN THE WORLD, IT WOULD BE TO NO AVAIL. Those who are infatuated, running after certain projections of their mind, even if they meet Buddha they will not recognize him, because to recognize Buddha one needs an innocent mind, non-ambitious. You can recognize him only if you also have something of the same quality. If you don't have anything of alertness in you, how can you recognize the ultimate of awareness? You will bypass it.

Thousands of buddhas have happened and millions of people have passed them, without even looking back. They are so infatuated, their eyes are so full of their own greed that they cannot see clearly. And a buddha can be seen only if your eyes have no dust, if your mirror is clean.

WITH NOTHING CONSIDERED IMPORTANT, NATURALLY YOU'RE FULL OF

RAWBONED POWER, WITHOUT DESIRE OR DEPENDENCE, AND MASTER OF THE

DHARMA.

With a very simple statement he has made a great invitation to you. You are the most important thing in existence; never put anything above you, otherwise that will become your bondage, your nest. Remain always clear that the greatest thing is throbbing in your own heart.

It has to be explored, inquired into, experienced, but the Kohinoor is within you.

The moment your eyes become fixed on something else, you have reduced yourself into something secondary -- and you are primary.

It happened that I had to be present in a court because I had made a statement and somebody's religious feelings were hurt. I cannot conceive how anybody's religious feelings can be hurt; they must be very weak, they must not have deep foundations. And what I have said he had not even understood.

I had related a small incident in the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi used to listen to the Hindu scripture, RAMAYANA -- the story of Rama -- and Acharya Vinoba Bhave, who was a Sanskrit scholar, used to read it. There comes a point in the story where Sita, the wife of Rama, is stolen, abducted by his enemy. Finding no other way, Sita used a small strategy to leave some marks on the path, so that Rama could find where the enemy has taken her; she started dropping her ornaments. She was a queen -- Rama was a king -- so she had many ornaments, immensely valuable, and she went on dropping them on the way.

Rama found the way, but there was trouble. His brother, Lakshmana, was with him. Rama said, "I cannot recognize these ornaments." His argument was very clear; he said, "You see ornaments only when the person is not worth seeing. Sita is so beautiful that when I see her I forget completely to see anything else, so I don't recognize these ornaments. Lakshmana, perhaps you can recognize them; you have always been following behind Sita."

Lakshmana said, "You will have to forgive me. I can recognize only the ornaments she used to wear on her feet."

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This is the incident: Mahatma Gandhi asked Bhave Vinoba, "What is the matter? Why can't he recognize ...?" And Vinoba Bhave gave the explanation that because Lakshmana was a celibate he could not look at Sita's face. But because the elder brother's wife is equal to the mother, Lakshmana had to touch Sita's feet every day -- in the morning -- so he could recognize the ornaments which were worn on her feet.

Mahatma Gandhi was very much impressed -- so much so that before this moment the word 'acharya' was not used for Vinoba Bhave. It was conferred by Mahatma Gandhi because of this incident, meaning "You are a great teacher" -- acharya means a great teacher -- "I could not have thought about it this way, but you have a very deep insight."

I was speaking in Ahmedabad and I said, "Vinoba Bhave himself is a repressed person, trying to be celibate, otherwise I don't see any problem. Why can't you see a beautiful woman if you can see a beautiful flower, if you can see a beautiful moon? Beauty is not the problem; the problem is your repressed sexuality. You are afraid to see the face because you know that if you see the face you will be infatuated."

And I said, "Vinoba Bhave was wrong, and Mahatma Gandhi was wrong in accepting the explanation. The explanation is sick."

Mahatma Gandhi was dead. I told the court, "I have not made any statement on my own. I have simply said that the statement of Vinoba Bhave shows his own psychology; it does not say anything about the incident. And if it says anything about the incident, then Lakshmana was also sexually repressed. And I'M not saying it; it is a simple conclusion from what Vinoba said. Vinoba is alive, and -- if the court agrees -- he should be called. I am ready to dispute on the point."

But the court was convinced: it is simple -- unless you are repressed you cannot be so afraid of seeing a woman who is almost your mother. And the man whose religious feelings were hurt ... The case was dismissed, but there were thousands of people surrounding the court. The man was so much afraid to come out of the court -- because people would have given him a good beating -- that he asked the judge for police protection.

I said to the judge, "I need police protection because I am hurting the feelings of the Hindus, and the people surrounding the court are all Hindus. Why should this man be afraid?

Certainly he knows that he has brought the case only to harass me -- and the people are outside to take revenge."

But I said to the judge, "Give him protection." And I said to the man, "Remember, never let your religious feelings get so easily hurt."

A religious man cannot feel hurt. Even if something is said against his religion, he will give it consideration: it may be right. If it is right, he will change; he will have the courage to change himself. If it is not right, who bothers? -- he will ignore it.

Why do religious people get easily hurt? There have been dozens of cases against me all over India in different courts for the same simple reason: somebody's religious feeling is hurt.

Why do you go on carrying such religious feelings that get hurt so easily? These are not religions; these are their securities, their consolations. And because I have said something which takes away the consolation, the security ... that's what hurts.

It is as if I have taken away the protection which was hiding their wound. I have not created the wound, I have simply made them aware of it. They should be grateful to me, not Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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angry, because if the wound is opened to the sun, to the air, there is a possibility of its being healed. But the very recognition is lacking that they are living in an imaginary security.

I used to go to my town and I heard that my old teacher, who taught me in school and who loved me very much, was on his deathbed. So I ran to see him, but his wife said, "Please don't disturb him. You have disturbed him so much; whenever you come he cannot sleep for a few nights. And this is a very critical moment: he is just on his deathbed."

I said, "Then I cannot go back. Let me disturb him for the last time! Because there is still time for him to understand." His fear always had been that I would destroy his securities. He used to worship a Hindu statue of Ganesha, the elephant god. I had said to him, "Your statue of Ganesha seems more like a cartoon than a god. And can't you see that this seems to be some joke?" The body is of a man, the head is of an elephant, and the belly is so big that Ganesha cannot see his own feet, and on top of it he is riding on a mouse! I said, "Some practical joker must have made this, and you go on worshipping every day ..."

He said, "Don't disturb me! I'm an old man, and when you say such things they enter in my mind, then my worshipping is half-hearted, because I can see that it is right. This heavy man should not sit on the mouse; he could have found any other kind of vehicle. And such a big belly ..."

But lifelong security ... because it is thought by the Hindus that Ganesh is a very protective god; in your difficulties he will be your savior. So when I pushed past his wife I said, "You get out of the way. I have to see him."

And as he saw me he closed his eyes. He said, "Just forgive me, don't say anything. Let me die peacefully."

I said, "For that very purpose I have come. If you can drop all your nonsense you can die peacefully."

He said, "You have started again! All that I have got is nonsense according to you, and I don't have any rational support for it. But it is not the time to argue; let me die believing in things I have always believed in. You have been distracting me continuously my whole life. I love you, and I know your intention is right, but on a poor old man you should show a little compassion."

I said, "That's what I have come for. I even had to push your wife out of the way. There is still time. If you can abruptly, in a single blow, drop all your beliefs, and without believing in anything die silently and peacefully, perhaps the last moments of your life will be the crescendo, the highest peak of consciousness. Don't miss these moments."

But you will not believe it: he closed his eyes, he closed his ears also. He was not ready to listen to me, because this is the moment to invoke God's help -- death is standing by the side of the bed.

People are living their whole lives in psychological prisons. The authentic religious revolution is an abrupt jump out of your prison cell. Nobody is blocking the way. You are the maker of it, and if you are courageous enough, you can jump out of it.

To know life in its insecurity is to know life in its immense beauty, is to know life in its authenticity. To know life in its insecurity, without any fear, is to transcend death, because life never dies.

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Anything that dies is not life; it is only the house in which life was living. The flame of life goes on eternally. Because of your securities and consolations and beliefs you remain unacquainted with the greatest treasure. You live in misery, you die in misery.

It is possible to live in immense bliss and to die dancingly, at ease with existence.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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36

Compassion

19 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

A TALK TO THE ASSEMBLY (PART TWO)

BUDDHA SAID, "ONE MAY WISH TO REVEAL IT WITH COMPARISONS, BUT IN

THE END THERE IS NO COMPARISON THAT CAN EXPLAIN THIS. SAYING IT'S

BROAD AND VAST HAS ALREADY LIMITED IT -- TO SAY NOTHING OF WANTING

TO ENTER THIS BROAD AND VAST REALM WITH THE LIMITED MIND. EVEN IF

YOU MANAGED THEREBY TO ENTER, IT WOULD BE LIKE TAKING A LADLE TO

LADLE OUT THE OCEAN: THOUGH THE LADLE IS FILLED, HOW MUCH COULD IT

HOLD? NEVERTHELESS, THE WATER IN THE LADLE, BEFORE IT WENT IN

THERE, WAS IDENTICAL TO THE LIMITLESS WATER (OF THE OCEAN). LIKEWISE, BECAUSE YOUR WORLD IS JUST THIS BIG, AND YOU FEEL SATISFIED WITH IT, THIS LIMITLESS WORLD ADAPTS TO YOUR CAPACITY AND FILLS IT UP. IT'S

NOT THAT THE WATER OF THE GREAT OCEAN IS ONLY THIS MUCH."

THEREFORE BUDDHA SAID, "IT'S LIKE THE GREAT OCEAN, NOT DEFERRING

WHETHER MOSQUITOES OR TITANS DRINK ITS WATER -- ALL GET THEIR FILL."

It is the perennial problem: those who have known have come across an unbridgeable gap between their experience and their capacity to express it. What they have known is so vast that whatever they say is going to limit it, and to limit the unlimited is unforgivable. If they don't say anything, then too they are saying something. They are saying that nothing can be said.

But the experience is so glorious, so nourishing, so fulfilling that to say that nothing can be said about it is to show your uncompassion towards those who are not so blessed with the experience. Unless you say something, howsoever limited, millions will remain unaware that their potential was for the whole sky, and they remained limited in a small world. They never opened their wings into the sky, because they never thought that beyond the cage there exists anything else.

To let people remain unaware of their capacity to fly, and the infinity of the sky, is certainly unkind. This is such a dilemma: if you say something it is not right, and if you don't say something it is again not right. You have to say something, howsoever small. It may give someone a hint; perhaps it may not quench the thirst but it may provoke a search.

It may not quench the thirst but it may make you aware of it, that you are thirsty. Even to become aware of your thirst is a great beginning, because one cannot remain thirsty if one knows -- one is going to seek and search in every possible way. And the ocean of life is not far away. We are in it, we are part of it.

There have been two types of mystics in the world. One Gautam Buddha has called the arhatas. They have chosen to remain silent. They are absolutely committed to the truth and they are not going to compromise on any account. They will not say something which is not Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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absolutely right, they will not say something which is only approximately true, because the approximately true is nothing but a lie. They will not give an example because there is no parallel to their experience, there is no possibility of any comparison. Seeing the situation, one can understand why they have chosen to remain silent.

But there has been another category of awakened people, enlightened ones, who have tried, although their efforts have not been very successful. By their very nature, they cannot be. But even if one person in a million has become awakened by the efforts of a bodhisattva, the second category of enlightened people, the effort was worth making.

The arhatas also have an answer for this. They say that if one man in a million becomes awakened by listening to a bodhisattva, that man was destined to become enlightened whether the bodhisattva had spoken or not.

I have been in a dilemma. You cannot deny what the arhatas are saying. They are saying the man has not become awakened from listening to you, because whatever you are saying is just a hint, far away; it cannot make anyone enlightened. And they have a certain reason for saying it, because people have become enlightened sitting by their side in silence, too.

Nothing has been said, nothing has been indicated, but just the presence of the arhata, his silence, his peace, have proved contagious. Anyone who is receptive, available, open, has felt something which was not said, and has moved on the path. Not only has he moved ... many have reached to the ultimate.

Hence the arhata has also a reason for saying that there is no need to say anything. Those who can understand will understand even your silence, and those who cannot understand are not going to understand; you may go on for years and years speaking to them, and they will remain deaf. You may talk about light, but they will not open their eyes. You may try to excite them about the beauties of the ultimate, but they will go on postponing the journey.

But the bodhisattva has his own reasoning -- and perhaps both are right. The bodhisattva says that there are people who are just on the verge: just a little push and they may be transformed; just a little indication -- a finger pointing to the moon -- and they may be able to see. And anyway, even if nobody understands, it is still worthwhile to make the effort; at least it shows your compassion, at least it shows you are not unconcerned with the vast humanity which is groping in darkness. You have done whatever is humanly possible to do. If nobody hears it, if nobody listens to it, it is up to them -- but they cannot blame you. They cannot complain that you knew and yet you remained silent, that you should have made some effort to wake them up.

These two categories have been in conflict for centuries, and both have been so clear about their approach that not even a single arhata has been converted by the bodhisattvas, or vice-versa: not a single bodhisattva has been converted by the arhatas.

My own understanding is that this conversion has not happened because both have something absolutely true about their approach. One is committed to the truth absolutely; one is committed to love, to compassion absolutely. And both values, truth and love, are of equal significance.

I think there is no need for any arhata to become a bodhisattva, or any bodhisattva to become an arhata. Perhaps both are needed. Perhaps people are needed to sing songs of that which cannot be said, and people are needed to remain silent, so silent that their silence itself becomes a magnetic force. Perhaps both have done immense service to humanity, the one by Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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making different efforts -- through language, through devices, singing, dancing -- and the other by remaining absolutely centered, but available to anyone who knocks at his door.

I don't see the conflict as it has been seen down the ages. Those who see the conflict are only learned people; they are neither arhatas nor bodhisattvas.

I am reminded of a great master, Ma Tsu. His monastery was just opposite another monastery in the deep mountains, and the other master was absolutely antagonistic to the methods and to the teachings of Ma Tsu. One disciple of Ma Tsu was having difficult times with the master, because Ma Tsu used to hit, beat ...

It was known that once Ma Tsu had thrown a disciple out of the window and jumped on top of him. The disciple had a few fractures and Ma Tsu was sitting on his chest asking, "Got it?" And the strangest thing is that he got it! He never asked a question again! That simply shows he must have got it; since then he became absolutely silent.

The other master was very angry at Ma Tsu: "What kind of things does he go on doing? He seems to be a crazy man!"

One day a disciple who was meditating on a koan came in. He had been coming for many days and getting a beating. There are hundreds of koans in Zen -- strange puzzles. He was meditating on the famous koan, "the sound of one hand clapping." Ma Tsu had said,

"Whenever you have found the sound, come to me."

The disciple meditated in the silence of the night, he heard the wind passing through the pine trees, and he jumped. He said, "This is it!" The sound was so sweet and of course so musical that he went to the master and told him that it is the sound when the wind passes through the pine trees ... The master hit him hard and said, "Don't bring any idiotic answers to me, just go back and meditate."

And this went on happening. One time he heard a cuckoo calling in the night ... so sweet, so overwhelming, so touching that he forgot all the beatings and went again. Finally he got tired. He had brought all the sounds possible, and no answer was being received, every answer was being rejected. An idea arose in his mind, "Perhaps this is not the master -- at least for me. I am not saying that he is not a master, but at least he is not for me. I should try his opponent who is just nearby." And he went there.

The master asked him, "You are a disciple of Ma Tsu, why have you come to me?" The disciple described what had been going on for months: he brings new sounds and he gets only beatings. There is a limit to patience, and he has come here in search of truth, not to hear the sound of one hand clapping. "Unnecessarily, I am being held back by this, and now I have almost exhausted every sound, but he goes on beating. I have come to you. Accept me as your disciple."

That master had never beaten anyone, but he gave this disciple such a beating that Ma Tsu's beating felt far better! The master said, "You idiot! Just go back, your master is very compassionate. He only beats you, you need to be killed! Just go back."

The disciple said, "My God! I have been in search of truth ... First these people go on talking about enlightenment, and when you get caught in their idea, then they do all kinds of strange things to you. This man has been known always to be against Ma Tsu, and he has never used the device of beating. Why has he done this to me? But certainly, if I have to choose between the two, Ma Tsu is better."

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He went back, and Ma Tsu asked him, "Where have you been?"

He told the whole thing. He said, "I have been beaten very badly. You beat very considerably, but that man is absolutely mad; he wanted to kill me!"

Ma Tsu said, "He is very compassionate."

The disciple said, "This is strange. You are enemies, you have been quarreling for years.

Everything that is said by one is opposed by the other -- but you both agree as far as killing a poor disciple is concerned!"

Ma Tsu said, "I have never said he is wrong, he has never said I am wrong; we are just different. He is an arhata; he simply lives in silence, and anybody who comes has to sit in silence with him. Years pass, and the other also becomes engulfed, overwhelmed, by the silence of the master. But very few people are capable of bearing such a long wait.

"I make every effort to create a shortcut for you. I am a bodhisattva. I trust that there is a possibility that something can be done to bring you towards truth. All these devices, all these teachings, have nothing to do with truth, but they have something to do with you. The effort is to destroy your clinging to the mind, the effort is to defeat your mind. The day your mind is defeated, the day you are free from the cage of the mind, our work is done; then you will know what truth is. Neither of us can give it to you. But still we differ: the arhata never makes any effort; I make every effort possible."

It is very difficult to say that one category of enlightened people should disappear. As far as I am concerned, both are equally valid and both enrich the existence.

Ta Hui is saying that truth is so vast that even to call it vast is to make it limited. It is oceanic, but even to call it an ocean is to give it boundaries. All words fail, no word is big enough. There is no possibility of any comparison; nothing comes close enough to being a comparison or an example.

He is quoting Gautam Buddha: BUDDHA SAID, "ONE MAY WISH TO REVEAL IT

WITH COMPARISONS, BUT IN THE END THERE IS NO COMPARISON THAT CAN

EXPLAIN THIS."

For example, Jesus says God is love. This is a comparison, perhaps the best comparison.

In human experience, love has a tremendously significant place; in its purity, perhaps love can give you a hint of what happens to the man who becomes realized, who comes to know the divinity of existence. But even love is not a right comparison according to Gautam Buddha. It is beautiful, but enlightenment is far beyond. Love is a beautiful flower, but it is just a flower, ephemeral; in the morning it blossoms, in the evening it is gone. It was beautiful when it was, but it is not eternal, it does not have immortality. It is beautiful and delicate, and one can enjoy its dance in the wind.

It is poetry to compare love with God or enlightenment, but it is not truth. There is no human experience which can explain that which goes beyond the human mind. It is simple, it is arithmetic; that which is beyond the human mind certainly cannot be compared with any experience of the mind.

You must have heard the ancient parable of a frog who had come from the ocean -- he was on a religious pilgrimage. On the way he found a small well, and just to have a little rest he jumped into the well. He was happy to find there another frog, and they started talking to each other. The frog of the well asked him, "From where are you coming?"

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The stranger frog said, "It is very difficult to describe. You will have to forgive me, because I am coming from a place which is beyond your comprehension. You have never left this well, and I am coming from the ocean."

The frog of the well certainly felt offended; this was not expected of a guest. He jumped halfway across the well and said, "Is your ocean this big?"

The frog from the ocean was in great difficulty. He said, "Please, just drop this subject.

The ocean is so big that there is no way to measure it by your experience of the well."

The frog in the well jumped the whole length of the well and he said, "Is it that big?"

And the frog from the ocean said, "You are forcing me to be unnecessarily unkind towards you, but I cannot say such a stupid thing that this small well of yours can be compared to the infinity of the ocean."

This was too much for the frog in the well. He said, "You just get out! You are talking about this ocean only to humiliate me."

That's how people of the mind have always reacted to the people of meditation. People who have never been beyond their mind are always offended by the meditators, because the meditators are talking about the ocean ... and there is no comparison if you have lived only in the mind. If you have gone beyond the mind, there is no need of any comparison -- you know it yourself. Either you know it or you don't. There is no way to explain to the one who has never gone beyond the mind.

"SAYING IT IS BROAD AND VAST HAS ALREADY LIMITED IT -- TO SAY

NOTHING OF WANTING TO ENTER THIS BROAD AND VAST REALM WITH THE

LIMITED MIND. EVEN IF YOU MANAGED THEREBY TO ENTER, IT WOULD BE

LIKE TAKING A LADLE TO LADLE OUT THE OCEAN: THOUGH THE LADLE IS

FILLED, HOW MUCH COULD IT HOLD?"

Once Gautam Buddha was passing through a forest and it was the season of autumn. The forest was full of dry leaves, and Ananda finding him alone, said to him, "I have always wanted to ask, but before the others I could not dare. Just tell me the truth: have you told us everything that you know or are you still holding back a few secrets?"

And Gautam Buddha took a handful of leaves from the ground and said to Ananda, "I have told you only this much -- the leaves that you see in my hand. But that which I know is as vast as all the leaves in this great forest. It is not that I want to hold it back, but it is simply impossible! Even to talk about a few leaves is an arduous effort, because it simply goes above your head. You know thoughts, but you have never experienced thoughtlessness. You know emotions, but you have never known a state where all emotions are absent, just as if all the clouds in the sky have disappeared.

"So I am trying my best," he said, "but more than this is not possible to transfer through words. If I can make you understand only this much: that there is much more to life than words can contain; if I can convince you that there is something more than your mind knows, that's enough. Then the seed is sown." Otherwise all the efforts of the great philosophers of the world are LIKE TAKING A LADLE TO LADLE OUT THE OCEAN.

In fact, such an incident is on record. Plato, one of the greatest Greek philosophers -- the father of Western philosophy -- was walking on the beach, and he saw a naked man bringing Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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out the ocean water in his cupped hands and pouring it in a small hole that he had made in the sand. Plato watched him; he was not aware that the other man was none other than Diogenes.

Diogenes was, in the Greek tradition, a very strange fellow. In the Zen world he would have been accepted with great joy; he would have fitted perfectly well. But in the Greek tradition of reason, logic, philosophy, he was a strange fellow. But that was the first encounter between Plato and Diogenes, so he was not aware who this man was. Plato asked him, "What are you doing?"

Diogenes said, "I have decided to empty the ocean."

Plato said, "You must be mad! This cannot be done. Just by taking with your hands a cupful of water, even in millions of years you will not be able to empty the ocean."

Diogenes said, "My work is done. I wanted to show to you that even if you go on thinking about truth for millions of years you are not going to find it. Your effort to find the truth through mind is exactly the same as my effort to empty the ocean by taking cupfuls of water out of it."

Plato was very much shocked, but he had nothing to say against the man. He simply asked,

"Are you Diogenes? -- because I wanted to meet you."

Once in the school where Plato used to teach, he had defined man as "a two-legged animal." When Diogenes heard this he picked up a two-legged sea bird, took out all the feathers, and sent it with a disciple to the academy of Plato: "I am sending a specimen of your definition. This is a human being, a two-legged animal." Since that time Plato wanted to meet that man ... and today Diogenes again had smashed his whole philosophical approach to existence!

Philosophy is nothing but a teaspoon. You can fill it up with ocean water ...

Buddha is right when he is saying, "THOUGH THE LADLE IS FILLED, HOW MUCH

COULD IT HOLD? NEVERTHELESS, THE WATER IN THE LADLE, BEFORE IT WENT

IN THERE, WAS IDENTICAL TO THE LIMITLESS WATER (OF THE OCEAN).

LIKEWISE, BECAUSE YOUR WORLD IS JUST THIS BIG, AND YOU FEEL SATISFIED

WITH IT, THIS LIMITLESS WORLD ADAPTS TO YOUR CAPACITY AND FILLS IT

UP. IT IS NOT THAT THE WATER OF THE GREAT OCEAN IS ONLY THIS MUCH."

THEREFORE BUDDHA SAID, "IT IS LIKE THE GREAT OCEAN, NOT DEFERRING

WHETHER MOSQUITOES OR TITANS DRINK ITS WATER -- ALL GET THEIR FILL."

You can watch the ocean ... every day millions of rivers are falling into the ocean, but the ocean remains the same. Those millions of rivers pouring into it make almost no difference.

And all the clouds that shower rain all over the earth are filled by the ocean. The sun rays are taking the ocean water into the clouds as vapor. Still that does not make any difference -- the ocean remains the same. Whether you add millions of rivers to it or you take all the water that all the clouds rain over the earth, it remains the same.

The UPANISHADS have a very strange but very true statement: The ultimate is so perfect that even if you take the whole out of it, it will still remain the same; or, if you can add the whole back into it, it won't be bigger -- it will still remain the same. All these statements are just to show that we are part of an existence which is infinite in all the dimensions. There are no boundaries to it.

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As you get out of your mind you suddenly become aware of your own limitless, unbounded, oceanic consciousness. No word is capable to describe it. You can experience it, but you cannot explain it. You can have it, but you cannot say anything about it. Only your silence may give a little indication of the tremendous vastness of existence, of life, of consciousness.

Enlightenment is only an effort to make you aware of your infinity, of your eternity.

You are the whole past.

You are the whole present.

You are the whole future.

The moment one comes to know it is the most blessed moment. You have fulfilled your destiny, you have come home; now there is nothing else beyond it. This is the only richness, this is the only victory. All else is mundane; only this experience is the sacred.

And to be filled with this sacredness, nothing much is needed on your part -- just a silent mind, a peaceful heart, a wordless, thoughtless serenity. Suddenly you are no more the dewdrop; instantly you have become the ocean itself. To know the ocean there is only one way ... to become it.

Ta Hui is coming to the close of his journey. He started as an intellectual, but he was a fortunate intellectual; he did not get lost in words and theories and arguments. He managed to get beyond the mind, and now he is making statements which belong to the beyond, which are not arguments but only hints for those who are in search.

The whole journey of Ta Hui is significant because it is the journey of everyone who moves from ignorance to innocence, from mind to mindlessness, from darkness to ultimate light.

It is your journey.

Going with Ta Hui, step by step, will help you immensely, because there is no other book that I have come across which describes the whole transformation. All other books come after enlightenment; people have spoken only when they have known. This is a special case. We start with a teacher and we end up with a great master.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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37

This moment

20 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

A TALK TO THE ASSEMBLY (PART THREE)

DON'T REMEMBER WHAT I'VE SAID, AND CONSIDER IT RIGHT. TODAY I SPEAK THIS WAY, BUT THEN TOMORROW I'LL SPEAK OTHERWISE. AS SOON AS

YOU'RE THUS, I AM NOT THUS; WHEN YOU'RE NOT THUS, THEN I AM THUS.

WHERE WILL YOU SEARCH OUT MY ABIDING PLACE? SINCE I MYSELF DON'T

EVEN KNOW, HOW CAN ANYONE ELSE FIND WHERE I STAY?

THIS IS THE LIVING GATE: YOU CAN ENTER ONLY WHEN YOU'VE PUT TO

DEATH YOUR FABRICATED "REALITY." YET STUDENTS CONSIDER PAYING

HOMAGE TO THE BUDDHA, UPHOLDING THE SCRIPTURES, AND DISCIPLINING

THEMSELVES IN BODY, MOUTH, AND MIND, AS THEIR SUSTENANCE, HOPING

TO FIND REALIZATION. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH IT? THEY ARE

LIKE FOOLS INTENT ON GOING WEST TO GET SOMETHING IN THE EAST -- THE

FARTHER THEY GO, THE FARTHER AWAY THEY ARE; THE GREATER THE

HURRY, THE GREATER THE DELAY. THIS IS THE GATE OF THE GREAT DHARMA: UNCONDITIONED, UNDEFILED, WITHOUT ACCOMPLISHMENT. IF YOU AROUSE

THE SLIGHTEST NOTION OF GAINING EXPERIENCE OF IT, YOU ARE RUNNING

OFF IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. HOW CAN YOU HOPE FOR IT, WANTING TO

RELY ON SOME PETTY, CONTRIVED ACCOMPLISHMENTS?

IT'S NOT A FORCED ACTION: THE DHARMA IS FUNDAMENTALLY LIKE THIS.

DON'T TAKE A LIKING TO OTHER PEOPLE'S MARVELS -- THE MARVELOUS

MISLEADS PEOPLE.

This morning it is raining so beautifully.

Tomorrow ... one never knows; it may be sunny, the clouds may have disappeared.

This morning the cuckoo is continuously singing, tomorrow it may have gone. Life is such. You cannot ask permanency, consistency, that things should always remain the same.

Watching life you will come to know the very secret, and you will also become aware that mind is not functioning according to life. Mind believes in consistency; it wants that it should rain every morning, just the same. Mind is not able to cope with the unknown, with the spontaneous, with the ever-renewing existence.

The disparity between mind and life is the whole problem. Either you listen to the mind ...

then you live in misery, because life is not going to fulfill the demands of the mind.

Unfulfilled, miserable, your life will become just a long drawnout tragedy. But nobody else except you is responsible. You listened to the wrong adviser: you should have listened to life, not to mind.

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Mind is a small mechanism, good for day-to-day affairs, good for the marketplace, but if you want to enter into the vastness of existence mind is absolutely incapable. But you are accustomed to the mind, and even when you are seeking for truth or for love or for the ultimate meaning you go on carrying your old mind, which is absolutely a hindrance; it is not a help on the way.

If you listen to life instead of mind, things are very simple. You never say to life, "You are contradictory. Yesterday there was no rain and today it is raining. Yesterday it was hot and today it is cold." You simply accept life as it comes -- there is no other way. It is one of those inescapables Ta Hui has talked of before. It is unavoidable.

The child will become a young man, the young man will become old, and the old man will die. A man of understanding simply accepts this whole flux, change, without any resistance, because he knows this is how things are. By your expectations they don't change. Your expectations only create frustrations for you.

My whole life I have been told, "You have said something a few years before; now you are saying something else. Your philosophy is contradictory, you are not consistent."

And they have been shocked when I told them, "Yes, you are right. But it is not an objection against me, it is a compliment. It means my philosophy is in tune with life. It changes ... the climate changes, the season changes. Sometimes it is fall and the trees are standing naked; against the sky they have their own beauty. And sometimes it is spring, and the trees are so green with foliage and ready to shower their flowers for anyone who happens to be nearby. No introduction is needed, no acquaintance is needed; the friend and the foe are both treated the same way."

From my very childhood I watched the river of my village swelling in the rains, becoming so vast as if it is the ocean itself. In summer it shrinks to a small stream. I have told people,

"You don't ever say to the river, 'Your behavior is very inconsistent.' You never ask the flowers, you never ask the birds, 'Why are you not singing today? What has happened?' But you go on asking about philosophies, ideologies, whether they are consistent or not."

Once and for all, in a single blow, you have to drop the idea of consistency. It is a by-product of the training of your mind. Mind cannot be with the inconsistent -- but life is inconsistent. I am not responsible for it, and neither are you. Nobody is responsible for it; it simply happens to be so. And it is beautiful.

Ta Hui is making a great statement. No philosopher can make such a statement, only a mystic who has put his mind aside and looks directly into existence and becomes aware of its constantly changing flux. Except for change, everything changes. The only permanent thing in the world is change. And the moment you ask things not to change, you are creating misery for yourself.

Ta Hui says, DON'T REMEMBER WHAT I HAVE SAID, AND CONSIDER IT RIGHT.

Mysticism is not academic, it is not an ordinary school. It belongs to the beyond, the ultimate and the mysterious. If you live with a living master, you have to learn that. There is no need to remember what he has said yesterday. Yesterday was yesterday; today is today.

A living master responds to reality moment to moment; he never bothers whether it is consistent with yesterday or not. His only concern is whether it is true to the moment or not; whether his response to the moment is authentic or not. If it is authentic, then there is no need to bother what he has said yesterday or the day before yesterday.

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This is where the philosopher and the mystic differ. Philosophers remain consistent; they avoid inconsistency. Their only fear is to commit a mistake, to say something which goes against something that they have said before. But just because of this consistency they remain unaware of the mysteries of existence, they remain confined in their mind. They never come to know the rain, the sun, the moon, the trees, the children playing. This whole drama of tremendous beauty is missed by the so-called philosophers.

But strangely enough they are the people who dominate the mind of humanity. There is a natural reason: they can dominate the mind because mind loves consistency and philosophers are consistent people.

Ta Hui is saying: DON'T REMEMBER WHAT I HAVE SAID, AND CONSIDER IT

RIGHT ... The day has passed, the statement is out of date. 'Right' belongs to the present.

Never compare dead corpses with living people; never compare flowers which have disappeared with the flowers that are blossoming now, otherwise you will be getting into a confusion. To come out of such a confusion is very difficult, almost impossible. It is good to remember it from the very beginning: DON'T REMEMBER WHAT I HAVE SAID.

Teachers go on saying to the students, "Remember what I'm saying to you." Only a master can say to the disciples, "Forget all that I have said to you. When it was needed, when it was a response to something actual, it was said and you heard it, and you absorbed it. Now there is no need to remember it. It has become part of you."

Memory never becomes part of you. That's why after the universities your so-called gold medalists, your so-called first-class people, simply disappear in the world; nobody ever hears about them. What happened? They were so great in the university. They should have made a remarkable life outside the university; they should have left a mark in the world; they should have left their signature in life. But nobody ever hears about them, and the reason is that in the university memory is all. They were good at remembering.

In life just memory is of no use. In life something more and something better --

intelligence, spontaneity, being in tune moment to moment with all the changes that are happening -- is needed. A man who is stuck with his memories falls far away from life. That's what happens to your so-called scholars. They know much about scriptures, but they know nothing about life.

DON'T REMEMBER WHAT I HAVE SAID, AND CONSIDER IT RIGHT. TODAY I SPEAK THIS WAY ... because today is today. It has never been before, and it will never be again. It is absolutely new and fresh. It is not a repetition, it is not a continuation either. Life goes on jumping from moment to moment abruptly.

Do you see this rain? Abruptly it starts, abruptly it is gone, abruptly it becomes intense and for no other reason becomes soft again.

TODAY I SPEAK THIS WAY, BUT THEN TOMORROW I WILL SPEAK

OTHERWISE. Ta Hui knows one thing certainly: tomorrow is not going to be the same.

Naturally he can say with confidence, TOMORROW I WILL SPEAK OTHERWISE ..." and if you go on collecting what I say, you will become puzzled. You will start wondering what is right and what is wrong."

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only responses to changing life. You have to see that the mystic is always in the moment; he never looks back, he never looks ahead. Feeling this will bring you closer to the mystic.

I have heard an ancient story ... A drunkard went in the night, after getting completely drunk, to a sweet shop and he purchased some sweets. He gave a ten rupee note, but the shopkeeper said "I don't have any change. Tomorrow you can collect the remaining rupees; right now I don't have them. Either you can keep your ten rupees and tomorrow you can pay, or you can leave ten rupees and tomorrow you can take the remaining part."

The drunkard said, "I am not in a fit state; I may forget those ten rupees somewhere. You keep it. Tomorrow I will collect them."

But in his drunkenness -- confused and dismal -- still he thought, "I should remember exactly the name of the shop, the face of the man, exactly where the place is, because tomorrow morning I will not be drunk and I will have to remember. I should make something special as a mark so that this man cannot deceive me."

He looked all around. He could not see anything except a bull sitting in front of the shop.

He said, "That's right. This man could change the sign; tomorrow his father or his brother may be sitting there and they can simply refuse, saying, 'You never came last night' -- but they won't think about the bull who is so silently sitting."

Happily he left, and the next morning he came to collect his money. But the bull was sitting before a barber's saloon. The drunkard said, "My God! Just for a few rupees you have changed the sign; you have changed even your profession -- you have become a barber just for a few rupees!"

The barber said, "What nonsense you are talking! I have been a barber always."

The drunkard said, "You cannot deceive me. Look at the bull; he is still sitting silently where I had left him last night."

The drunkard was behaving like a philosopher, finding a certain consistency. Reality is different. The bull can change places; there is no obligation for him to sit continuously before the sweet shop -- he can sit anywhere. Life goes on changing.

A mystic is committed to life, not to his own statements. Those statements are old newspapers. He remains alert moment to moment and he remains alert to the disciple, his changes. Your questions may be the same, but the master may answer differently because you are not the same. And the question is not important; you are important.

AS SOON AS YOU ARE THUS, I AM NOT THUS ... Living with a master one has to be flexible, not dogmatic. Whatever the master is saying is not an ultimate statement -- no statement can be ultimate. So don't take it as an ultimate answer, because tomorrow he will change and then you will be in a difficulty.

Your mind would like to remain with the past because it has become familiar, accustomed to the statement. Now this new statement disturbs the mind and its constant search for consistency.

Ta Hui is saying, AS SOON AS YOU ARE THUS, I AM NOT THUS; WHEN YOU ARE

NOT THUS, THEN I AM THUS. WHERE WILL YOU SEARCH OUT MY ABIDING

PLACE? SINCE I MYSELF DON'T EVEN KNOW, HOW CAN ANYONE ELSE FIND

WHERE I STAY?

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The mystic has no philosophy as such. You will be surprised to know that in India we don't have any equivalent word for philosophy. The word that India has used for centuries and which has now become synonymous with philosophy is darshan.

Darshan has a totally different meaning. Darshan means clarity of vision, ability to see; it has nothing to do with philosophy. Philosophy literally means love of knowledge, love of wisdom. Darshan means seeing the reality and responding accordingly. Philosophy is of the mind, darshan is of meditation.

THIS IS THE LIVING GATE ... this understanding that life is changing, you are changing, everything is changing. Don't cling to anything, don't be a fanatic; don't be a fundamentalist Christian, don't be a Hindu. How can you be a Hindu? Five thousand years ago your scriptures were written; in five thousand years the bull has moved! Bulls are not predictable, they are very free, beautiful animals. And you are still holding the dead scripture, and thinking you are a Hindu, you are a Mohammedan, you are a Christian, you are a Communist.

Belonging to the past -- even the closest past, yesterday -- is a wrong approach. Not to belong to anything but to remain available to whatever life brings to you -- this is the living gate. Then every moment is an excitement and every moment is a discovery and every moment is a challenge. Every moment you have to grow because you have to learn to respond in a way you have never responded. You become mature.

All fanatics, fundamentalists, fascists remain retarded. They are living in the past, which is no more. They are completely blind as far as the reality is concerned. They go on seeing things which have disappeared from the scene, and they are incapable ... they really avoid seeing what has become real.

YOU CAN ENTER ONLY WHEN YOU'VE PUT TO DEATH YOUR FABRICATED

"REALITY." Unless you learn the art of dying every moment to the past, you are not really living. The past goes on becoming heavier and heavier, because the past is growing every day.

And your future is so fragile, so small, that the past does not allow you to live in the present. It pulls you backwards.

It is as if you, being a fundamentalist, go on insisting, "I will continue to use my underwear from my childhood." You will be a phenomenon ...!

I have heard about a man who had ordered a tailor to make a beautiful suit for him. He was going to a marriage celebration in a few days, "so make it really beautiful." The suit was made, the man tried it and he could not believe it: one arm of the coat was long, the other arm was short; one leg of the suit was long, another was short. He said, "What kind of thing have you made?"

The tailor said, "Nothing is wrong with it. The arm of the coat which is short ... you just pull your hand inside!"

He said, "This is a difficult job, continuously to keep the hand pulled inside. And what about the other hand?"

The tailor said, "You put your hand outside, and you have to do the same with your legs."

You can conceive ... and the tailor said, "It is such a beautiful suit. I have worked day and night over it, and you complain about small things!"

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So the poor fellow went out. A couple came by and the woman said, "Look at that poor fellow. He seems to be paralyzed or crippled. What has happened to him? One arm is short, one arm is long, and the way he is walking ...!"

But the man said, "Forget about him, look at the suit; it is really beautiful. And what can the tailor do? -- if the man is like that, the tailor has done the best he could do."

Almost everybody in the world -- the Christian, the Hindu, the Jaina, the Buddhist, the Mohammedan, the Jew -- they are all wearing coats and suffering immensely. One hand has to be kept pulled in, another has to be kept pulled out. Man is not important, but doctrines, philosophies, ideologies are important. They are not for man, but man is for them; he has to fit accordingly.

Every idea that comes from the past is crippling your consciousness. You have to learn the art of dying to everything that has passed, so that you can live in the present with totality, with no burden. And when the present moves, you also move, because now the present is becoming past -- die to it.

Always remember that the fresh, the present has to be totally lived, and anything that hinders has to be dropped. Don't bother about being consistent; otherwise to be consistent you will have to wear for your whole life the underwear that you happened to wear in childhood.

Then you cannot be inconsistent; you have to be consistent, however you suffer -- and you are going to suffer. Your whole life will be destroyed by underwear that is to small. You cannot walk, you cannot sit, you cannot talk; you have always to consider the underwear. But everybody is in the same psychological position.

Ta Hui's golden gate is certainly a golden gate. YOU CAN ENTER ONLY WHEN

YOU'VE PUT TO DEATH YOUR FABRICATED "REALITY." YET STUDENTS

CONSIDER PAYING HOMAGE TO THE BUDDHA, UPHOLDING THE SCRIPTURES, AND DISCIPLINING THEMSELVES IN BODY, MOUTH, AND MIND, AS THEIR

SUSTENANCE, HOPING TO FIND REALIZATION. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO

WITH IT? THEY ARE LIKE FOOLS INTENT ON GOING WEST TO GET SOMETHING

IN THE EAST -- THE FARTHER THEY GO, THE FARTHER AWAY THEY ARE; THE

GREATER THE HURRY, THE GREATER THE DELAY.

A few things that he has said ... First, remain fresh and clean; go on dropping the dust that naturally gathers as time passes by.

One Zen master, Rinzai, was sent by his own master to another master. This has been a tradition in Zen, that sometimes masters sent their disciples to different masters just so that they don't become accustomed to a certain way, a certain style; they don't become fixed, they remain flexible. Naturally a different master will have a different style -- and Zen masters are very unique people.

The disciple went to the other master, and he was very much puzzled. What he heard there was almost in contradiction to what he had been hearing from his own master. He asked the new master, "What am I to do? I have come from a master -- he has sent me -- and I have become accustomed to a certain way of life, a certain way of thinking, and here things are totally different."

The master said, "Forget your old master and forget all that you have learned there. One of the greatest principles of learning is the art of forgetting. You have heard that learning is the Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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art of remembering, but you can remember the new only if you forget the old. So forget the old! While you are here, be here!"

After a year or two he became accustomed to the new master, and as he was becoming more and more familiar, relaxed, and the conflict was disappearing, the master said, "Now you go back to your old master."

The disciple said, "This is a strange thing. It took me two years to forget that fellow, and now to go back again ..."

The master said, "You will not find the same fellow, because in two years he must have changed."

The disciple said, "This is a very difficult thing. If he has changed, then I will have to learn again. I will have to forget you."

The master said, "Obviously! That is the whole purpose of exchanging disciples -- so they become flexible and more and more capable of dying to the old and always resurrecting themselves into the new."

When the disciple arrived, he was surprised: everything had changed. And he said to his old master, "Now it will be very difficult for me. First, I became accustomed to your old style; as I was settling you disturbed me, you sent me to another man. As I was settling there, that man threw me back to you. I was hoping deep in my heart that perhaps it won't be a difficult matter to get back into the old style I have already lived, but you have changed. You are saying things you have never said before; you are doing things you have never done before.

You look almost like another person. What I am supposed to do?"

The master said, "Forget all those ... both your old master and your new master. Now you are here with me. I'm not the same man, although I look the same. So much water has gone down the Ganges ..."

I remember old Heraclitus, whose statement has not been taken very seriously in the Greek tradition of philosophy because he goes against the whole trend. He is unique and alone. He says, "You cannot step in the same river twice," because the river is constantly flowing.

If I ever meet Heraclitus -- and I think I am going to meet him some day, because in this eternity people are bound to stumble again and again on the old fellows -- I am going to tell him, "Change your statement. It was great when you made it, but it has a flaw in it. You say,

'You cannot step in the same river twice.' I want you to say, 'You cannot step in the same river even once' -- because even while you are stepping in, the river is flowing. When your foot touches the surface, the water underneath is flowing; when your foot is in the middle, the waters above and below it are flowing; when you reach the bottom, everything above it is flowing ... you cannot enter into the same river even once!"

And such is the nature of life. Everything goes on renewing itself; only mind is a dead thing, it remains the same. Hence mind has no resonance with life. If the mind is Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan it is fixed, it is a fossil, it is dead. It cannot live in the present; it is still searching for answers in the ashes of the burned bodies which do not have any life any more.

The golden gate is available only for those who are always alive to the new, and who are open -- and joyfully, not reluctantly -- who are happy to drop the past and remain unburdened.

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And the second thing Ta Hui says is that your whole life is moving towards the future, and your whole mind is moving towards the past. You are in a dichotomy; you are in a very strange conflict, as if one leg is going backwards and one leg is going forwards. You are bound to suffer immense anguish. You can neither go back, nor can you go forwards; you will remain stuck, you will become paralyzed.

As I see it, all fanatics are paralyzed people. They think they are believers, they think they are faithful people, but actually their psychology is paralyzed. They don't have any contact with the living sources which surround them; they are not contemporaries. It is very rare to find a contemporary. Somebody has come to a full stop one thousand years before. He is still hanging there with Hazrat Mohammed, with Jesus Christ, with Krishna, with Buddha -- and life has left all those places.

Life is here, this very moment.

And Ta Hui makes a very significant statement: THE FARTHER THEY GO, THE

FARTHER AWAY THEY ARE -- because if you are going backwards and life is moving forwards, you will become farther and farther away from reality. THE GREATER THE

HURRY, THE GREATER THE DELAY ... hurrying in a wrong direction is dangerous!

I have heard ... Three professors were standing on the platform. The train was getting ready ... and they became involved in a discussion. One was to leave, two had come to give him a send-off. Suddenly the train whistled, the guard showed the flag, but they were so involved in their discussion that they did not hear anything. Just when the last compartment of the train was leaving the platform, they saw it. They all ran ... two could make it, one was left behind.

A porter was looking at the whole thing. He came to the man and said, "It is sad that you missed."

The professor said, "You don't know the real story. Those two fellows had come to send me off, but in their hurry they jumped into the train going in a wrong direction!"

THE GREATER THE HURRY, THE GREATER THE DELAY. One has to be very clear about one's direction. The direction can be either towards the past ... that's the direction of the majority of humanity. Their golden age has passed. A small section of humanity, a minority, has its golden age in the future: the communists, the socialists, the fabians and all kinds of anarchists are hoping that the golden age is going to come in the future.

But the past is no more and the future is not yet: both are unnecessarily moving in directions which don't exist. One used to exist, but no longer exists, and one has not even started to exist.

The only right person is one who lives moment to moment, whose arrow is directed to the moment, who is always here and now; wherever he is, his whole consciousness, his whole being, is involved in the reality of here and in the reality of now. That's the only right direction. Only such a man can enter into the golden gate.

The present is the golden gate.

Here-now is the golden gate.

THIS IS THE GATE OF THE GREAT DHARMA: UNCONDITIONED, UNDEFILED, WITHOUT ACCOMPLISHMENT. IF YOU AROUSE THE SLIGHTEST NOTION OF

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GAINING EXPERIENCE OF IT, YOU ARE RUNNING OFF IN THE OPPOSITE

DIRECTION.

He is making very significant statements. First, the present is the golden gate, and you can be in the present only if you are not ambitious -- no accomplishment, no desire to achieve power, money, prestige, even enlightenment, because all ambition leads you into the future.

Only a non-ambitious man can remain in the present.

Secondly, IF YOU AROUSE THE SLIGHTEST NOTION OF GAINING EXPERIENCE

OF IT, YOU ARE RUNNING OFF IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. If you are thinking to gain experience of the present moment, you have missed the point already -- because the present moment is so small that if you start thinking of having some experience, you have got into your mind. Thinking, contemplating ... and meanwhile the present moment is slipping by.

A man who wants to be in the present has not to think, has just to see and enter the gate.

Experience will come, but experience has not to be premeditated.

HOW CAN YOU HOPE FOR IT, WANTING TO RELY ON SOME PETTY, CONTRIVED ACCOMPLISHMENTS?

IT IS NOT A FORCED ACTION ... You cannot force yourself to be in the present; it comes out of understanding, not out of force. You have simply to see that the past is not there.

You have simply to understand that the future has not come yet. And between these two is the small golden gate.

Enter into it without thinking, without desiring, without having an achieving mind -- just to explore, just to see what is hidden in the present. Innocently, just like a child, enter into it.

IT'S NOT A FORCED ACTION: THE DHARMA IS FUNDAMENTALLY LIKE THIS.

DON'T TAKE A LIKING TO OTHER PEOPLE'S MARVELS -- THE MARVELOUS

MISLEADS PEOPLE.

And the last statement is: don't start thinking of other people, and what are their accomplishments.

A man came to Ramakrishna. He had been in the Himalayas for a long time; he heard about Ramakrishna and he came to see him. Ramakrishna was sitting under a tree by the side of the Ganges, near Calcutta, where he used to live. The man looked at Ramakrishna; he was thinking that he would be a very marvelous man -- but he was a simple villager, uneducated, very humble.

So the man who had been in the Himalayas practicing yoga said, "I have come from afar and I am very disillusioned seeing you. You look to be absolutely ordinary."

Ramakrishna said, "You are right. I am absolutely ordinary. How I can serve you who have come from so far?"

He said, "There is no question of service. You have so many followers -- for what reason?

Can you walk on the water? I can."

Ramakrishna said, "You are tired. Just sit a little, and then if you want to walk on the water we will enjoy it. How long did it take you to learn the art of walking on water?"

The man said, "Nearabout twenty years."

Ramakrishna laughed. He said, "You wasted your life. What is the point in the first place?

When I want to go to the other shore" -- the ordinary rate in those days was two paise -- "

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because I'm a poor man and people love me, they won't even take me to the other shore if I insist on giving them two paise. They refuse. They say, 'If you want to come, don't talk about money. You can come and we will feel blessed. It is enough to be with you while we are crossing the Ganges.' So something which costs only two paise ... you wasted twenty years to attain it? You surprise me."

The man at first was shocked, but then he realized that what Ramakrishna was saying was right: "What is the point? -- I have become a showman. These twenty years ... almost one third of my life is wasted. And what is my achievement?"

Ta Hui is saying, DO NOT TAKE A LIKING TO OTHER PEOPLE'S MARVELS -- THE

MARVELOUS MISLEADS PEOPLE.

The golden gate is open for those who are simple, who are humble, who are almost nobodies, who don't have great achievements to proclaim to the world, who don't carry awards and Nobel prizes, who have nothing to brag about ... who are just as simple as birds, as trees.

Perhaps you have never thought about it, that the whole existence, the trees, the clouds, the mountains, the stars, are all humble. There is no arrogance anywhere. Only a man who understands the secret of being nobody can enter into the narrow gate.

The gate is very narrow; if you are somebody, you cannot enter into it. You have to be almost nothing, only then the gate of the present is available to you. You have to be egoless, nothing to claim, just being as ordinary as the rainwater or the silent trees, as innocent as the just-born child. He looks all around, he is conscious, but he has no claim. He is, but he has no identity. He does not say, "I am this, I am that"; he does not carry certificates and degrees and miraculous powers.

It has been one of the most significant things that although you hear the Christian missionaries and the Christian bishops talking about the miracles of Jesus, you never hear anything like that about Gautam Buddha, about Mahavira, about Ramakrishna. In fact, if you take away all the miracles of Jesus which Christians go on bragging about, which are all fictitious ... if they are all taken away, nothing will be left in Jesus.

But Gautam Buddha has no miracles. He has never walked on water and he has never raised anybody from the dead; he has never cured anybody from diseases, he has not turned water into wine -- he has done nothing. You cannot destroy him. His greatness is not in his actions but in his presence. His greatness is not in miracles but in his silence, in his humbleness.

I don't think that Christ ever walked on water -- no intelligent person will do it -- but these stories are fictions created by the disciples. Not a single Jewish scripture mentions it; they don't even mention the name of Jesus. Can you think that if a man today walks on water, raises dead people, turns water into wine and things like that it would not be reported as headlines in all the newspapers of the world?

But not a single mention of the name of Jesus is found in any Jewish scripture. And he was a Jew, remember, he was not a Christian; he had never heard the name Christian. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he died a Jew. A Jewish boy -- he was only thirty-three when he was crucified -- doing such miracles, it is inconceivable that he would not be mentioned in some chronicle by somebody. It is impossible to conceive that a Jew doing such great miracles should be crucified. And he was not saying anything against Judaism; in fact all he was claiming was, "I'm the long-awaited Jewish messiah."

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Gautam Buddha was criticizing everything Hindu. If Hindus had crucified him, there would seem to be some justification. But Jesus was not criticizing anything; on the contrary, he was proclaiming himself the Jewish prophet for which the Jews have been waiting since the days of Moses -- "He will come and deliver us." And if this man was walking on water, raising dead people, this must have proved that he was the right messiah: what more can you expect? He must be the only son of God, because no man can walk on water.

The reality is that after three hundred years Christian disciples created fictitious miracles, because if these miracles are not there, then there is nothing in Jesus that can be of any importance. He is not a meditator, he has not said that he has become enlightened, he has not opened any doors of mysteries -- so fictions are needed.

I have heard that a bishop and two rabbis had gone fishing in Lake Galilee, where Jesus used to walk. The bishop said to the rabbis, "I'm new here, you live here. Do you think Jesus really walked on water?"

One rabbi said, "What to say about Jesus -- here almost everybody walks on water."

The bishop said, "What? Can you walk on water?"

The rabbi said, "Yes."

They stopped the boat. The rabbi stepped out, walked on the water a few feet, and came back. The bishop could not believe it. The bishop asked the other rabbi, "Can you also walk ...?"

The second rabbi went out of the boat a few feet on the water, came back and both the rabbis said, "We are not Christians. You are a Christian -- can you walk on water?"

The bishop said, "Of course. If you can walk, even without being Christians, certainly I can also." He gathered confidence, seeing two persons walking, and he got out of the boat ...

and started drowning.

One rabbi said to the other, "Should we tell that idiot that on that side there are no rocks?

The rocks are on this side!"

It is possible to walk on water if you know where the rocks are. But people become very much interested in all kinds of stupid things ...

Ta Hui is saying, "Don't bother about what others have achieved." That always misleads people, because they also start trying to achieve the same marvels, the same miracles. And in existence there is no miracle.

In existence there are mysteries, and you can enter those mysteries, and you can enjoy and relish, and you can dance with great blissfulness. But that does not mean that you will be able to walk on water; nature does not allow exceptions. That does not mean that you will be able to turn water into wine. That is really a crime; don't do that!

It is enough -- perhaps the greatest miracle according to me, and Ta Hui will agree with me

-- to be humble, just to be nobody, with no claim, silent, aware, and capable of entering the golden gate, the present moment.

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The present moment contains all the mysteries of existence. The present moment is the only temple of God.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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Transformation

20 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

BELOVED OSHO,

A TALK TO THE ASSEMBLY (PART FOUR)

IF YOU WERE A MAN, A REAL CH'AN MAN, WHEN YOU HEARD ME SAY,

"WHERE ARE THERE OLD ADEPTS APPEARING IN THE WORLD?" YOU SHOULD

HAVE SPIT RIGHT IN MY FACE. IF YOU DON'T ACT THIS WAY, BUT ACCEPT

THINGS AS SOON AS YOU HEAR SOMEONE BRING THEM UP, YOU'VE ALREADY

FALLEN INTO THE SECONDARY.

AGAIN, HAVEN'T YOU SEEN MASTER LO SHAN'S SAYING? "THE MYSTIC

GATE HAS NO DOCTRINES, ESTABLISHES NO GENERAL PRINCIPLES. IF YOU

WANT TO SEARCH FOR IT, LOOK BEFORE THE SOUND." ALL YOU DISCIPLES OF

BUDDHA, REAL MIND IS NOT FIXED, AND REAL WISDOM IS NOT BOUNDED.

EVEN IF I LET THESE TWO LIPS GO ON TALKING -- FROM NOW TILL THE END OF

TIME -- WITHOUT A BREAK, YOU STILL CAN'T DEPEND ON ANOTHER PERSON'S

POWER: THIS IS A MATTER IN WHICH EACH AND EVERY PERSON IS FULLY

SUFFICIENT IN HIS OWN RIGHT. IT CAN NEITHER BE AUGMENTED NOR

DIMINISHED THE LEAST LITTLE BIT.

THE PATRIARCH SAID:

HOLD TO IT AND YOU LOSE IT,

AND ARE BOUND TO ENTER FALSE ROADS.

LET GO OF IT AND NATURALLY

ITS ESSENCE HAS NO GOING OR STAYING.

JUST HAVE FAITH IN THIS TRUTH OF ONE MIND: IT CANNOT BE GRASPED, IT

CANNOT BE REJECTED. THEN YOU SHOULD GIVE UP YOUR BODY AND YOUR

LIFE RIGHT THERE. IF YOU CANNOT GIVE THEM UP, IT'S BECAUSE OF YOUR

OWN HESITANCY -- ON THE LAST DAY OF YOUR LIFE, DON'T BLAME ME.

THE WEATHER IS HOT AND YOU'VE BEEN STANDING A LONG TIME.

TA HUI GAVE A SHOUT AND DESCENDED FROM THE SEAT.

It is sad to have come to the end of Ta Hui's sutras. It has been an immensely rich pilgrimage, going step by step as Ta Hui was growing, as he was transforming, as he was beginning to change from an intellectual into a mystic.

It was great just to watch the transformation from intellect to intuition, from mind to meditation, from an ordinary human being into an immortal ... the explosion that happened to him. We have also shared a little bit of light, just by being alert and aware.

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These are the last sutras. They are conclusive; they conclude his whole experience, hence they have great potential.

IF YOU WERE A MAN ... and by man he means only a man of meditation. A man who is not a man of meditation is only a man in name; there is not much difference between him and other animals. Animals are violent -- so is man; animals are competitive -- so is man; animals are jealous -- so is man. Animals are also capable of thinking -- though not much, but still there is not any qualitative difference.

The only thing that creates the difference is meditation, because no animal has shown the capacity of being meditative. Even in the vast humanity, only very rarely a man comes to the height of meditation. Hence Ta Hui is perfectly right when he says, IF YOU WERE A MAN, A REAL CH'AN MAN ...

'Ch'an' is Chinese for meditation. He is saying that you become authentically a man only through meditative transformation, and he is saying it now on his own authority. He has been a man of intellect; he began his journey as a thinker. He is ending his journey as a thoughtless silence. He certainly has the authority to define man: he has passed through the fire test himself, he has proved himself a man.

Man, according to all those who know, is the capacity of going beyond the mind, the capacity to become a no-mind, the capacity just to be without a single thought stirring within you. Once you have known this vastness, this silence, you will not ask any question about existence. Not that you know all the answers -- you don't know even a single answer -- but all questions have disappeared, hence the need for any answer has also disappeared.

In this state of no questions, no answers, just a pure consciousness, a mirror reflecting nothing ... just being yourself, without going anywhere, remaining herenow ... you attain to the ultimate bliss which every human being has been seeking for centuries, from life to life, but goes on missing because his search is in a wrong direction: he is always looking outside, and the treasure is inside.

He is searching in the temples and in the synagogues and in the churches, and the person for whom he is searching everywhere is just within him. If he can stop all his searching, all his desiring, all his going away -- just for a single moment -- the revolution happens. Suddenly he is no longer a beggar, no more longing, desiring, hoping, waiting. Suddenly he has become the master.

There is an ancient story ... A king had become very old, and he had only one son. He consulted a great sage to whom he had always looked for advice, and who had always given rare insights into any problem that he had brought to him. He said to the sage, "I am old. I have only one son, and he is going to succeed me. A vast kingdom I am leaving in his hands, not knowing whether he is capable ... will you suggest some way that I can become certain?"

The wise man, the old sage, suggested something very strange, and it was followed. The prince was sent in a chariot outside the kingdom. His clothes were taken away and he was told that he had been expelled from the kingdom, and the clothes of a beggar and a begging bowl were given to him. He could not believe it. He said, "What crime have I committed?"

The charioteer said, "I know nothing. I am simply following the orders given by your father. You are not allowed to enter the kingdom, otherwise you will be put in jail. So simply escape far away." And the chariot returned to the palace.

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The young man was shocked. This is ridiculous behavior; has his father gone insane? He was hoping to become the king and he has become a beggar. But what can you do? Soon he was feeling hungry, thirsty and although it was very shameful, he had to beg. He started begging on the street like an ordinary beggar.

Years passed; he completely forgot that he used to be a prince, he settled. Man has immense capacity to adapt to any condition, and when something is absolutely inescapable you cannot do anything else. A certain afternoon, in the hot sun, he was standing before a hotel asking people, "I have been hungry for two days, give me something." A few coins had been dropped into his begging bowl ... and then suddenly he heard the noise of a golden chariot. In a second, instantly, he remembered his own chariot. Strange ... it looked exactly like that.

The chariot stopped and the same charioteer -- although he had become very old -- got down, touched the feet of the prince, gave his robes and his crown back to him, and said,

"Drop it! Throw away all those beggar's clothes. First come to a good hotel; take a good bath, clean yourself, dress well. Your father is dying and he has remembered you; he wants you to come immediately, because he wants to give you the kingdom and the key to his treasures with his own hand."

The people from whom he was begging gathered around. They could not believe their eyes, not because of the clothes, the crown, the golden chariot, but because the face of the young man immediately changed. His eyes had a different look, his pride returned; now he was standing there with great dignity and grandeur. The beggar disappeared in a split second.

Just a moment before he was a totally different man; just a moment later a discontinuity had happened. The abruptness, the suddenness ... even he could not believe it, because he could see the change even in his consciousness. The way he walked, the way he sat in the chariot, everything had changed; the way he looked at people -- it was not with the same eyes.

Just the remembrance, nothing else had happened; just the awakening of the fact that he is a prince and is going to be a successor to a great kingdom, just words ... but all is changed.

The same kind of miracle happens through meditation: you suddenly recognize that a great kingdom belongs to you, the kingdom of the whole existence; that you are not a beggar who was ambitious for trivia, who was desiring this and that, who was hoping to have more power, more prestige. All the symptoms of being a beggar ... as one enters into meditation, all these symptoms disappear. One suddenly finds one has the kingdom, one's home; one lacks nothing, one is entire, complete, fulfilled.

It is for this reason that Ta Hui says, IF YOU WERE A MAN, a real meditative man, WHEN YOU HEARD ME SAY, "WHERE ARE THERE OLD ADEPTS APPEARING IN

THE WORLD?" YOU SHOULD HAVE SPIT RIGHT IN MY FACE.

These are special ways of Zen; they are not understandable outside the world of Zen. Now Ta Hui is a master and he is saying, "When I was talking nonsense, if you were a real man you would have spit right in my face. You could have stopped me."

It happened that one bishop in Japan wanted very much to see a Zen master, Lin Chi. He had heard much about him, and he was certain that if he went to him with THE BIBLE and read a few beautiful statements of Jesus, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, he was sure that he could convert Lin Chi into being a Christian. And to convert Lin Chi meant converting thousands of his followers; even the emperor of Japan was one of his disciples. Going into the mountains and doing the tedious journey was worth it.

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The bishop reached Lin Chi and said that he wanted to read a few sentences from his master, that he hoped that Lin Chi would like them, and that he wanted also to know what Lin Chi thinks about them. And he started to read those beautiful statements of Jesus. When he had read two or three statements, before he could go further, Lin Chi said, "Stop all this nonsense! Whoever has said these words will become a buddha in some future life, but right now it is all gibberish. Just take it away."

The bishop could not believe it; it was not mannerly. Lin Chi could have disagreed, he could have at least been polite. But people don't understand that Zen does not believe in being polite, it believes in being authentic. It is not important to follow the etiquette of the society; to Lin Chi what is important is to state exactly what he feels and what he sees.

Lin Chi said, "These statements right now are meaningless. But whoever has said them -- I don't know him and I don't want to know him -- will become a buddha in a future life. He is on the right lines, but he has to travel much." In Zen it is understood that there is no question of manners, there is no question of etiquette. Those are all part of the ordinary society.

So when Ta Hui says, "If you were really a man of meditation ... There were many moments when I was talking nonsense, when I was only an intellectual but speaking as if I knew, and I knew nothing. You remained silent and you heard me as if a buddha was speaking to you. If you had known a little bit of meditation, you would have spit right in my face."

IF YOU DON'T ACT THIS WAY, BUT ACCEPT THINGS AS SOON AS YOU HEAR

SOMEONE BRING THEM UP, YOU'VE ALREADY FALLEN INTO THE SECONDARY.

I have explained to you the meaning of the word 'secondary'. It has great significance in the terminology of Zen. The secondary means the borrowed -- you have already fallen from the original to the borrowed. If you are a man of meditation and you are listening to a learned man and you don't stop him, you have already fallen into the secondary. You have lost touch with the primary source of knowing. But this strange behavior, although authentic and sincere, has not gone outside the boundaries of Zen.

I have loved Zen, particularly because it does not care for anything except the true, except the experienced. It does not even allow anybody to pour nonsense into your mind. It is very difficult for a man who knows nothing of meditation to talk to a Zen master. They live in two different worlds; communication seems to be impossible.

You go on behaving the way you are expected by the society to behave, and the Zen master behaves the way his consciousness responds in the moment. He has no ethical code to follow, no discipline beyond his own consciousness. Naturally he is strange and wild, but that is his beauty. It is the same beauty as you will see in the wild animals -- their innocence, their authenticity.

Man's politeness is nothing but another name for cunningness: you go on listening to people, smiling, and inside you are saying, "When is this idiot going to stop?"

A man used to come to my house; he was a friend of my grandfather. I had seen them talking, and he was really a nuisance, bringing all kinds of gossips, wasting time, and my grandfather would go on saying, "Good, very good."

I said one day, "There is a limit to everything. This story goes on every day and it is not even that he brings new gossips and stories. I have heard those things many times, and still you go on!"

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My grandfather said, "Do you think I hear him? I go on doing my own thinking; just in between I give him the incentive to continue. The poor fellow needs someone to listen."

I have remembered it particularly because everybody is in need of somebody to listen to him -- it doesn't matter what he has to say. Bertrand Russell in one of his great insights says,

"In the future, I can see a possibility that there may be millions of psychotherapists in the world. That will be the biggest profession."

It is becoming bigger every day. The only reason for its growing is not that it helps people to become healthy; the only reason is that it allows you to speak all kinds of nonsense and a learned, well-educated man listens to you. Of course you have to pay him ...

I have heard about one great psychoanalyst who was tortured by a billionaire. He was talking such rubbish and such nonsense ... but he was paying, so there was no question of stopping him. He was paying the greatest fee you could want, and he would go on hour after hour. It was good business but it was very tiring and very boring.

One day the psychoanalyst said to him, "Because I have to give two or three hours to you, I cannot look after my other patients. So I have found a small strategy: I will leave my tape recorder, and you go on talking; everything will be taped, and in the silence of night I can listen to it. It will be more valuable too because my mind will be completely free of business and office work and other patients, so I can pay deeper attention."

The billionaire said, "It is a good idea."

The next day he came, went to the couch and within two minutes he was going out. The psychoanalyst looked from his chair and asked, "What is the matter? Where are you going?"

The billionaire said, "I have talked to my tape recorder; now my tape recorder is talking to your tape recorder. I thought, 'Why should I waste my time? I also have many other things to look after.' My business is far bigger than yours -- and late in the night, in silence, I can also talk more freely. It is a good arrangement."

Bertrand Russell says that there will be many, many people getting involved in psychoanalysis just for the simple reason that people will be so much burdened with their thoughts and nobody will have the time to listen to them; they will need professional listeners.

That's what a psychoanalyst is -- a professional listener. He does nothing ... but even listening helps; one becomes unburdened.

My grandfather said, "It doesn't matter what he says, or who listens -- I am thinking my thoughts ... That poor fellow cannot find anybody."

My grandfather died, but that man continued to come. My father was very much disturbed:

"This is a nuisance; now who is going to listen to him?"

I said, "You are of course because I am not going to listen. While you are alive, it would not look right that I should listen to him. First you die, and then if he is still alive, I will listen

-- but right now it is your responsibility."

He said, "You are strange. You don't have anything to do; why can't you just sit and listen to him?"

I said, "Right now it is your duty. Your father has died, not my father. You are getting the whole heritage, and this man is part of the heritage."

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One day he was very busy and the man knocked. He told me, "Somehow tell him that I am not at home."

I went out and I told the man, "He is inside, very busy, and he has asked me to tell you that he is not at home. So you please decide for yourself. It is good that you should go."

He said, "What! He is inside and he says he is not?"

I said, "That's exactly the truth" -- and my father was listening.

So that man said, "Then I will come in."

I said, "That is up to you."

My father was very angry at me. When the man left, after torturing him for two or three hours, he took great revenge on me.

I said, "You are taking revenge on me when in fact you are angry with that man. It is your father who has given you the heritage; I am nobody in this whole business."

He said, "But why did you say that I am in? I have told you that I am out."

I said, "I told him the whole thing, why should I lie? You insist always when you ask me things like 'Where have you been?' -- you say, 'Don't lie.' Now remember, never say to me,

'Don't lie.' Sometimes one needs to lie ... do you understand?"

He said, "This is a different thing."

I said, "It is the same thing. You have taught me continuously to be true, and I will remain true whatsoever the consequence, unless you tell me that I am allowed to lie and you will not again insist on the truth ..."

He said, "Let me think about it, because it is a very difficult decision to allow you to lie. It is better to listen to that man. There is no need to lie; you should say the truth. You have done right."

But I said, "You should start doing the same as my grandfather was doing. He was never tired; in fact by the evening he used to wait for him. Many times he used to ask me, 'Has he not come yet?' Just learn the secret."

He said, "What was his secret? -- because I never came close to them. I never even wanted to be acquainted with this man."

I said, "His secret was very simple: he never listened; he just allowed him to talk. It will take a little time, but it is a good discipline."

In society you go on tolerating people telling lies. You know they are lying, but you will not say to their face, "You are lying." You will pretend that you agree. Society requires you to be hypocrites, and that is the difficulty.

When you come in contact with Zen, hypocrisy is not allowed at all. It is the only small current of non-hypocritical people in the world. Otherwise, can you think of a master telling his disciples, "If you think I am talking nonsense you should spit on my face"? Masters have been beating disciples; that can be understood. But in Zen it happens that disciples have beaten masters.

There was a monastery which had two wings, and the master had a beautiful cat. Every monk -- there were one thousand monks: five hundred in one wing, five hundred in the other wing, and just in the middle was the master's hut. The cat used to wander in this wing, in that Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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wing, and it was so beautiful and so loving that in each wing every monk tried to keep that cat as long as possible. Sometimes there was a quarrel, a fight, because the left wing wanted the cat and the right wing was not allowing them.

The master became tired. One day he called all the monks and said, "It has to be decided; this cat has become a disturbance. Say something, do something which shows your meditation

-- anybody, from any wing. If you cannot ... If somebody can act in a way that shows that he has meditative insight, the cat will be given to that person, to that wing. If nobody can say anything, that leaves me only one possibility: I will cut the cat in two, and give each wing half of the cat."

The monks were shocked. They tried, but nobody could find a way to show their meditation -- what to do? what to say? -- and you cannot deceive the master, that is absolutely certain.

Because nobody came out, the master had to cut the cat in two. He gave those dead pieces of the cat to both the wings. The monks were crying, but it was no use: the master had given them the chance, but they could not show their meditation.

Just then Rinzai, a monk who had gone to do some work in the city, came back and heard the whole story. He could not understand that one thousand monks were there, "and you could not prevent that old fellow from killing the cat?" He went in and slapped the master.

The master said, "It is too late. If you had been here before, the cat would have been saved."

This can happen only in the atmosphere of Zen. The disciple hits the master and the master accepts with gratitude and says with appreciation, "Where have you been? If you had been here, the poor cat would still have been alive. Not a single monk came to tell me, 'What nonsense you are talking! Killing the cat ...' And that would have been enough. But they all remained silent, they could not give any response."

Zen has created a very special world -- not of etiquette and manners and hypocrisy, but simply of authenticity. Rinzai hitting the master is simply showing the truth as he feels it: "It was absolute nonsense to kill the poor cat, there was no need. The very idea was wrong and you need a good slap for that. Never do such a thing again."

Anywhere else in the world such a disciple would have been expelled. But in Zen the disciple was appreciated: "Where have you been? You should have been here. You could have saved the cat, you could have prevented me killing unnecessarily a poor cat, a beautiful cat. It was my cat, and I will miss it."

If you go on listening to something that you feel in your consciousness and awareness is nonsense and stupidity, you should do something to stop it; otherwise you are yourself falling into the secondary. The secondary means you are falling from truth into the world of lies; you are falling from silence into the world of language, society, social manners.

AGAIN, HAVEN'T YOU SEEN MASTER LO SHAN'S SAYING? "THE MYSTIC

GATE HAS NO DOCTRINES." Doctrines are created by philosophers; doctrines are created by those who do not know. It is a very strange phenomenon: those who do not know feel the wound of not knowing. It hurts. They want something to cover it up, so they create doctrines

-- Christian doctrines, Hindu doctrines, Jaina doctrines. Those doctrines help them to forget their ignorance. They don't become wise, they don't become enlightened, but for the time being the device helps them to forget that they are sick, that they are ignorant.

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But it is dangerous. It is always good to know that you are sick because then some treatment is possible. It is dangerous to hide your ignorance because that will keep you ignorant forever. The more you hide it, the more it goes on growing like cancer inside you.

Ignorance is exactly the cancer of the soul. Don't hide it; if it is there, recognize it so that it can be removed, it can be operated upon.

Gautam Buddha used to say again and again, "I am not a philosopher, I am a physician."

You can see why he insisted that he was not here simply to cover up your wounds, to give you a false notion that you know; he was here to heal you. Healing needs a recognition that you are ignorant. Just to recognize for oneself that, "I am ignorant and all my knowledge is borrowed,"

is a great beginning.

THE MYSTIC GATE HAS NO DOCTRINES, ESTABLISHES NO GENERAL

PRINCIPLES. I have been asked throughout my life what my general principles are -- because every religion has its own catechism, its own established doctrines, principles, disciplines. I have been in difficulty to explain to people that I don't have any general principles, I cannot have -- and anybody who has is wrong, because life goes on changing. You cannot have fixed and established principles; they will become your prejudices, and in a changing life your prejudice will always create a distance between you and the real. You will act out of your prejudice, and your action will not be adequate because it will not respond to the reality.

Another small Zen story ... There were two ancient temples, very antagonistic to each other. Their enmity had been very ancient, traditional, and their priests were not on speaking terms. Both the priests had two small boys as their disciples and as their helpers to assist in the worship, to bring things from the market, or to do other small things which those old priests could not do. Both had insisted to the boys, "Don't ask anything, don't talk, don't even say

'Good morning' if you meet the other temple's boy on the way."

But boys are boys! They were very curious, and in fact the old priests had made them more curious. They were also feeling alone with those old people, they wanted to be friendly with each other -- and one day, finally, one boy dared. He stood on the crossroads, waited for the other boy to come, and he asked, "Where are you going?"

The other boy said, very philosophically, "Wherever the wind takes me."

The first boy was very much shocked. He thought, "My master is right that those people are very strange. It was wrong of me; I wanted to be friendly, and the answer he gave cut me short. It was not a friendly answer -- and I could not find what else to say to a man who is saying, 'Wherever the wind takes me."

He told his master, "Forgive me, but out of curiosity I asked that boy just a simple question, 'Where are you going?', and he said, 'Wherever the wind takes me'. You were right. I am sorry. But I am feeling very much ashamed that I could not answer him, because I could not find in that moment what would be the appropriate answer to this."

The master said, "I had warned you but you didn't listen! Now remember, tomorrow stand in the same place, and he will come because he goes to the market. Ask him again, 'Where are you going?', and if he says, 'Wherever the wind takes me,' just tell him, 'And if the wind is not blowing, are you going anywhere or not?'"

The boy repeated it, rehearsed it, prepared himself, became perfect by the morning, and reached the place one hour before. He was standing there repeating it in his mind. It was a question of his prestige.

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The other boy came, and he said, "Where are you going?"

The other boy said, "Wherever my legs take me." Now the whole preparation was useless, because the answer was inadequate. He was at a loss what to do.

He went crying to the master. He said, "Those people are very inconsistent. He has changed his answer. Today he said, 'Wherever my legs take me.'"

The master said, "Don't be worried. Prepare for the next answer. Tomorrow when he says

'Wherever my legs take me' tell him, 'If you were born crippled, lame, would you be going anywhere or not?' Just puzzle him. It is a question not only of your prestige; now it is a question of the prestige of our temple, of our whole heritage, our tradition."

And the boy tried. He could not sleep the whole night; many times in dreams he saw the other boy. In the morning he got ready, reached the place ... The other boy came and he asked,

"Where are you going?"

And the other boy said, "To fetch some vegetables from the market!"

Such is life. You cannot respond to life with principles, established doctrines. You have to be alert and conscious and responsive to the moment. You have to be unprepared. Life is not an examination in a school or college or university. It is not even for a single moment the same.

This morning, Ta Hui was saying, DON'T REMEMBER WHAT I HAVE SAID TO YOU

YESTERDAY, BECAUSE TODAY I AM NOT GOING TO SAY IT.

And he was right: this morning it was raining so much, and now the whole sky has changed. There is no sign of any rain.

Life is constantly changing; hence those who want to be in tune, in synchronicity, in an organic unity with existence, can't afford to have fixed principles, general principles, established doctrines, philosophies. They can only have an alert and conscious being. Then whatever the situation, they will respond accordingly -- not according to any principle, but according to the situation that they are encountering.

There is a story in the life of the founder of Hassidism, Baal Shem-tov ... One woman came to him and said, "I am without a child. Your master had blessed my mother, and because of his blessings I was born; otherwise my mother would have been childless."

So Baal Shem blessed her, but the blessing did not work. The woman waited and waited.

Years passed and she came with anger saying, "You are thought to be a great master, greater than your own master, but your blessing has not worked."

Baal Shem said, "Did I say that it would work? Have I given you any promise?"

But the woman was insistent: "Then why has your master's blessing worked?"

Baal Shem said, "Your mother had not asked for a child ... I was present. My master had blessings for everybody: whoever used to come, he used to bless; it was not especially for your mother. If you were born, it is just an accident. In the first place your mother had not asked and you have asked -- that makes all the difference. Your mother simply loved the master, and the master out of his love used to bless everybody.

"But the situations are different. First, your mother had not asked for anything special --

you are an accident, you are not a by-product of the blessings. Secondly, you asked -- and whenever one desires, one becomes incapable of receiving the blessing. Thirdly, my master Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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Chapter 38 - Transformation

used to bless everybody; it was just his habit. I don't bless everybody; it is not my habit. My master was himself, I am myself.

"You asked, and I simply thought, "The chances are fifty-fifty. If I bless this woman the chances are fifty-fifty that she may have a child -- why miss? If she has a child, my blessings have worked and there will be a miracle. If my blessings don't work, I know how to get out of it; I can prove that she is an accident -- nobody is produced by blessings.'"

One should live life without any prejudice and without any doctrines, without any religions, without any philosophies. Only then can one live in innocence, in purity, in spontaneity.

Master Lo Shan's statement has to be remembered: "THE MYSTIC GATE HAS NO

DOCTRINES, ESTABLISHES NO GENERAL PRINCIPLES. IF YOU WANT TO SEARCH

FOR IT, LOOK BEFORE THE SOUND."

I have told you that THE BIBLE says, "In the beginning there was the word, and God was with the word, and God was the word." Now, according to Zen it is rubbish -- because a word needs meaning; that's the difference between a sound and a word. When you listen to the waterfall, you don't say the waterfall is speaking words; you say, "There is the sound of running water." Sound is meaningless. Certainly there could not be a word in the beginning because there was nobody to give it meaning. It is better to say there was sound.

That is the standpoint of Hinduism. They say, "In the beginning was Omkar ..." Om is just a sound, it is not a word. Hence in the Sanskrit alphabet there is no letter for om, just a symbol. It is not part of the alphabet; it is in the margin. In the beginning was om ... just a sound.

But Zen goes still further. Master Lo Shan is saying, "IF YOU WANT TO SEARCH FOR

IT, LOOK BEFORE THE SOUND" -- because sound needs at least two things to clash. That's why the sound of one hand clapping cannot be heard: there cannot be any sound. If you want to know the ultimate, look before the sound. What is before the sound? Before the sound is silence ...

Now you can see these three statements: there was silence in the beginning; there was sound in the beginning; there was word in the beginning -- and you can see the difference. The word is the most superficial; the sound is a little better; but silence is perfect -- and if you don't say it, then it is even more perfect.

If you simply remain silent, without saying "silence" ... if you are asked what was in the beginning and you remain just silent, not answering, that's exactly right. Otherwise silence, sound, word ... and you go on falling into the secondary.

Remain in the primary, remain in the fundamental, remain in the ultimate. And the ultimate is beyond sound.

ALL YOU DISCIPLES OF BUDDHA, REAL MIND IS NOT FIXED, AND REAL

WISDOM IS NOT BOUNDED. EVEN IF I LET THESE TWO LIPS GO ON TALKING --

FROM NOW TILL THE END OF TIME -- WITHOUT A BREAK, YOU STILL CAN'T

DEPEND ON ANOTHER PERSON'S POWER: THIS IS A MATTER IN WHICH EACH

AND EVERY PERSON IS FULLY SUFFICIENT IN HIS OWN RIGHT.

Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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Chapter 38 - Transformation

You don't have to depend on anybody else; you contain your own truth. You are absolutely independent in your being. Your freedom is absolute and there is no way to disturb it. You can forget it but you cannot lose it.

IT CAN NEITHER BE AUGMENTED NOR DIMINISHED THE LEAST LITTLE BIT.

THE PATRIARCH SAID -- the patriarch always refers to Bodhidharma; he was the first patriarch in China -- HOLD TO IT AND YOU LOSE IT ... In the very holding you show that it is separate from you. Your very holding shows your misunderstanding, your ignorance.

HOLD TO IT AND YOU LOSE IT,

AND ARE BOUND TO ENTER FALSE ROADS.

LET GO OF IT AND NATURALLY

ITS ESSENCE HAS NO GOING OR STAYING.

Let go of it and it is there. It has always been there. The truth is your very essence, so there is no need to cling to it. You are it, you cannot be otherwise.

JUST HAVE FAITH IN THIS TRUTH OF ONE MIND: IT CANNOT BE GRASPED, IT

CANNOT BE REJECTED. THEN YOU SHOULD GIVE UP YOUR BODY AND YOUR

LIFE RIGHT THERE. The moment you understand that your essence is eternal, you will drop the idea of my body, my mind, my life. The moment you become aware of the eternal in you, you will not confine it to my and mine. It is neither mine nor yours; it simply is. We are all part of one organic unity.

IF YOU CANNOT GIVE THEM UP, IT'S BECAUSE OF YOUR OWN HESITANCY --

ON THE LAST DAY OF YOUR LIFE, DON'T BLAME ME. Ta Hui is reminding you in his last statement that if you don't lose your ego, if you don't lose your identity with the body and mind, if you don't become pure meditation, then "don't blame me at the time of your death."

Then you will see the body is going, the mind is going ... and you had remained always confined to the body and to the mind, and you never looked beyond.

When the body and the mind are going, people fall unconscious. The shock is so terrible that they cannot remain conscious. Only a meditator can remain conscious because he knows.

Even before death, many times when he was in meditation the body was lying there, the mind was there ... and he was far above. He was a totally different phenomenon.

A man of meditation dies consciously; hence he does not die. He dies joyously because to him death comes as a freedom, as a freedom from the bondage of body-mind ... as if suddenly all the walls have fallen and you have become the whole sky.

Ta Hui's last statement is so beautiful and so poetic: THE WEATHER IS HOT AND YOU

HAVE BEEN STANDING A LONG TIME.

TA HUI GAVE A SHOUT AND DESCENDED FROM THE SEAT.

In Zen, the shout of the master has a significance which has not been understood anywhere else. There have even been masters who would not speak at all: they would simply ascend onto the platform, look around the audience, give a good shout, and go back again. Their shout would be as if suddenly a lion had come in and roared.

Just think of yourself coming across a lion, and the roar ... Your mind will stop, your breathing will stop, your heart will lose a beat.

Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

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Chapter 38 - Transformation

The Zen master's shout is simply a way to give you an experience of silence. He has tried in many ways, through many aspects, explaining to you -- and finally he gives you a little taste. He gives you a shout. Suddenly the shout ... Naturally everybody becomes silent -- what has happened?

And the master is gone ...

Leaving you in silence ...

Giving you the taste which he has been explaining all along the way.

Nirvano has a stick hidden behind her; she wanted me to hit poor Niskriya. I said,

"Niskriya is German and he will not understand it. Rather than becoming silent, he will stand up to fight -- and to disturb poor Niskriya's work is not right."

I had to persuade her to leave the stick; it is not needed here. I can manage without a shout.

Whenever I become silent in the middle of my sentences while speaking, you become silent.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Osho - The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

431

Table of Contents

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 1 - Clear the mind

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 2 - Insight

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 3 - Power

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 4 - Trust

Chapter 5 - Non-attainment

Chapter 5 - Non-attainment

Chapter 5 - Non-attainment

Chapter 5 - Non-attainment

Chapter 5 - Non-attainment

Chapter 5 - Non-attainment

Chapter 5 - Non-attainment

Chapter 5 - Non-attainment

Chapter 5 - Non-attainment

Chapter 5 - Non-attainment

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 6 - Innocence

Chapter 7 - The source

Chapter 7 - The source

Chapter 7 - The source

Chapter 7 - The source

Chapter 7 - The source

Chapter 7 - The source

Chapter 7 - The source

Chapter 7 - The source

Chapter 7 - The source

Chapter 7 - The source

Chapter 7 - The source

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 8 - Delusion

Chapter 9 - Illusion

Chapter 9 - Illusion

Chapter 9 - Illusion

Chapter 9 - Illusion

Chapter 9 - Illusion

Chapter 9 - Illusion

Chapter 9 - Illusion

Chapter 9 - Illusion

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 10 - Clinging

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 11 - Emptying

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 12 - Non-duality

Chapter 13 - Nothingness

Chapter 13 - Nothingness

Chapter 13 - Nothingness

Chapter 13 - Nothingness

Chapter 13 - Nothingness

Chapter 13 - Nothingness

Chapter 13 - Nothingness

Chapter 13 - Nothingness

Chapter 13 - Nothingness

Chapter 13 - Nothingness

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 14 - Clarity

Chapter 15 - Suchness

Chapter 15 - Suchness

Chapter 15 - Suchness

Chapter 15 - Suchness

Chapter 15 - Suchness

Chapter 15 - Suchness

Chapter 15 - Suchness

Chapter 15 - Suchness

Chapter 15 - Suchness

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 16 - Before seeking

Chapter 17 - No goal

Chapter 17 - No goal

Chapter 17 - No goal

Chapter 17 - No goal

Chapter 17 - No goal

Chapter 17 - No goal

Chapter 17 - No goal

Chapter 17 - No goal

Chapter 17 - No goal

Chapter 17 - No goal

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 18 - No guilt

Chapter 19 - Radiance

Chapter 19 - Radiance

Chapter 19 - Radiance

Chapter 19 - Radiance

Chapter 19 - Radiance

Chapter 19 - Radiance

Chapter 19 - Radiance

Chapter 19 - Radiance

Chapter 19 - Radiance

Chapter 19 - Radiance

Chapter 19 - Radiance

Chapter 20 - Affliction

Chapter 20 - Affliction

Chapter 20 - Affliction

Chapter 20 - Affliction

Chapter 20 - Affliction

Chapter 20 - Affliction

Chapter 20 - Affliction

Chapter 20 - Affliction

Chapter 20 - Affliction

Chapter 20 - Affliction

Chapter 20 - Affliction

Chapter 21 - Understanding

Chapter 21 - Understanding

Chapter 21 - Understanding

Chapter 21 - Understanding

Chapter 21 - Understanding

Chapter 21 - Understanding

Chapter 21 - Understanding

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 22 - Witnessing

Chapter 23 - So very close

Chapter 23 - So very close

Chapter 23 - So very close

Chapter 23 - So very close

Chapter 23 - So very close

Chapter 23 - So very close

Chapter 23 - So very close

Chapter 23 - So very close

Chapter 23 - So very close

Chapter 23 - So very close

Chapter 24 - The inescapable

Chapter 24 - The inescapable

Chapter 24 - The inescapable

Chapter 24 - The inescapable

Chapter 24 - The inescapable

Chapter 24 - The inescapable

Chapter 24 - The inescapable

Chapter 24 - The inescapable

Chapter 24 - The inescapable

Chapter 25 - Two awakenings

Chapter 25 - Two awakenings

Chapter 25 - Two awakenings

Chapter 25 - Two awakenings

Chapter 25 - Two awakenings

Chapter 25 - Two awakenings

Chapter 25 - Two awakenings

Chapter 25 - Two awakenings

Chapter 25 - Two awakenings

Chapter 25 - Two awakenings

Chapter 26 - Wordlessness

Chapter 26 - Wordlessness

Chapter 26 - Wordlessness

Chapter 26 - Wordlessness

Chapter 26 - Wordlessness

Chapter 26 - Wordlessness

Chapter 26 - Wordlessness

Chapter 26 - Wordlessness

Chapter 26 - Wordlessness

Chapter 26 - Wordlessness

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 27 - Just being

Chapter 28 - Mindlessness

Chapter 28 - Mindlessness

Chapter 28 - Mindlessness

Chapter 28 - Mindlessness

Chapter 28 - Mindlessness

Chapter 28 - Mindlessness

Chapter 28 - Mindlessness

Chapter 28 - Mindlessness

Chapter 29 - Faith

Chapter 29 - Faith

Chapter 29 - Faith

Chapter 29 - Faith

Chapter 29 - Faith

Chapter 29 - Faith

Chapter 29 - Faith

Chapter 29 - Faith

Chapter 29 - Faith

Chapter 30 - Be thorough going

Chapter 30 - Be thorough going

Chapter 30 - Be thorough going

Chapter 30 - Be thorough going

Chapter 30 - Be thorough going

Chapter 30 - Be thorough going

Chapter 30 - Be thorough going

Chapter 30 - Be thorough going

Chapter 30 - Be thorough going

Chapter 31 - Release

Chapter 31 - Release

Chapter 31 - Release

Chapter 31 - Release

Chapter 31 - Release

Chapter 31 - Release

Chapter 31 - Release

Chapter 31 - Release

Chapter 31 - Release

Chapter 31 - Release

Chapter 32 - Desirelessness

Chapter 32 - Desirelessness

Chapter 32 - Desirelessness

Chapter 32 - Desirelessness

Chapter 32 - Desirelessness

Chapter 32 - Desirelessness

Chapter 32 - Desirelessness

Chapter 32 - Desirelessness

Chapter 33 - Serenity

Chapter 33 - Serenity

Chapter 33 - Serenity

Chapter 33 - Serenity

Chapter 33 - Serenity

Chapter 33 - Serenity

Chapter 33 - Serenity

Chapter 33 - Serenity

Chapter 33 - Serenity

Chapter 33 - Serenity

Chapter 34 - Enlightenment

Chapter 34 - Enlightenment

Chapter 34 - Enlightenment

Chapter 34 - Enlightenment

Chapter 34 - Enlightenment

Chapter 34 - Enlightenment

Chapter 34 - Enlightenment

Chapter 34 - Enlightenment

Chapter 34 - Enlightenment

Chapter 35 - Discontinuity

Chapter 35 - Discontinuity

Chapter 35 - Discontinuity

Chapter 35 - Discontinuity

Chapter 35 - Discontinuity

Chapter 35 - Discontinuity

Chapter 35 - Discontinuity

Chapter 35 - Discontinuity

Chapter 35 - Discontinuity

Chapter 35 - Discontinuity

Chapter 35 - Discontinuity

Chapter 36 - Compassion

Chapter 36 - Compassion

Chapter 36 - Compassion

Chapter 36 - Compassion

Chapter 36 - Compassion

Chapter 36 - Compassion

Chapter 36 - Compassion

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 37 - This moment

Chapter 38 - Transformation

Chapter 38 - Transformation

Chapter 38 - Transformation

Chapter 38 - Transformation

Chapter 38 - Transformation

Chapter 38 - Transformation

Chapter 38 - Transformation

Chapter 38 - Transformation

Chapter 38 - Transformation

Chapter 38 - Transformation

Chapter 38 - Transformation

Chapter 38 - Transformation