The Original Man

Talks on Zen

Talks given from 16/08/88 pm to 25/08/88 pm

English Discourse series

CHAPTER 1

You simply are

16 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

BASUI SAID:

IMAGINE A CHILD SLEEPING NEXT TO ITS PARENTS AND DREAMING IT IS BEING BEATEN

OR IS PAINFULLY SICK. THE PARENTS CANNOT HELP THE CHILD, NO MATTER HOW MUCH

IT SUFFERS, FOR NO ONE CAN ENTER THE DREAMING MIND OF ANOTHER. IF THE CHILD

COULD AWAKEN ITSELF, IT COULD BE FREED OF THIS SUFFERING AUTOMATICALLY.

IN THE SAME WAY, ONE WHO REALIZES THAT HIS OWN MIND IS BUDDHA FREES

HIMSELF INSTANTLY FROM THE SUFFERINGS ARISING FROM IGNORANCE OF THE LAW

OF CEASELESS CHANGE WITHIN THE SIX REALMS. IF A BUDDHA COULD PREVENT IT, DO

YOU THINK HE WOULD ALLOW EVEN ONE SENTIENT BEING TO FALL INTO HELL? WITHOUT

SELF-REALIZATION ONE CANNOT UNDERSTAND SUCH THINGS AS THESE....

IN A DREAM, YOU MAY STRAY AND LOSE YOUR WAY HOME. YOU ASK SOMEONE TO SHOW

YOU HOW TO RETURN OR YOU PRAY TO GOD OR BUDDHAS TO HELP YOU, BUT STILL YOU

CAN’T GET HOME. ONCE YOU ROUSE YOURSELF FROM YOUR DREAM STATE, HOWEVER, YOU FIND THAT YOU ARE IN YOUR OWN BED AND REALIZE THAT THE ONLY WAY YOU

COULD HAVE GOT HOME WAS TO AWAKEN YOURSELF.

THIS KIND OF SPIRITUAL AWAKENING IS CALLED ”RETURN TO THE ORIGIN” OR ”REBIRTH

IN PARADISE.” IT IS THE KIND OF INNER REALIZATION THAT CAN BE ACHIEVED WITH SOME

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TRAINING. VIRTUALLY ALL WHO LIKE ZAZEN AND MAKE AN EFFORT IN PRACTICE, BE

THEY LAYMEN OR MONKS, CAN EXPERIENCE TO THIS DEGREE. BUT EVEN SUCH PARTIAL

AWAKENING CANNOT BE ATTAINED EXCEPT THROUGH THE PRACTICE OF ZAZEN. YOU

WOULD BE MAKING A SERIOUS ERROR, HOWEVER, WERE YOU TO ASSUME THAT THIS

WAS TRUE ENLIGHTENMENT IN WHICH THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT THE NATURE OF

REALITY. YOU WOULD BE LIKE A MAN WHO, HAVING FOUND COPPER, GIVES UP THE

SEARCH FOR GOLD.

Anando, Basui is apparently right, but there are possibilities that the enlightened man can create devices for the unenlightened. It is certainly one of the most impossible jobs, to talk to a sleeping man or to enter in somebody’s dreams. But I say that Basui is only relatively true, because I constantly enter into your dreams. There will be many witnesses for it.

He is saying:

IMAGINE A CHILD SLEEPING NEXT TO ITS PARENTS AND DREAMING IT IS BEING BEATEN

OR IS PAINFULLY SICK. THE PARENTS CANNOT HELP THE CHILD, NO MATTER HOW MUCH

IT SUFFERS, FOR NO ONE CAN ENTER THE DREAMING MIND OF ANOTHER.

There is no need to enter into anybody’s dreaming mind.

By chance Anando is here to read the sutras instead of serious Maneesha.

(THE MASTER REACHES TOWARDS ANANDO, HIS HANDS FURIOUSLY QUIVERING IN

A ”REMOTE-CONTROL” TICKLE. ANANDO, TOTALLY TAKEN BY SURPRISE, COLLAPSES

INTO UNCONTROLLABLE LAUGHTER. MUCH TAKEN BY THE INFECTIOUS GIGGLING, THE

MASTER THEN DECIDES TO TICKLE EVERYONE, AND FOR A FEW GOLDEN MOMENTS, RIPPLES OF TICKLING AND LAUGHTER FILL THE AUDITORIUM.) The parents can do at least this much: they can tickle the child. No need to enter into his dreams, just wake him up. Existence manages so beautifully... that Maneesha is absent, by chance, and the right child is sleeping in front of me. And you can see, not only can I tickle her, the tickle spreads all over. Even the children of the neighborhood will be awakened!

That’s why I say Basui is only relatively true. As far as I am concerned, he is not. I have tickled people, I have entered in their dreams. I constantly trespass, because you love me, you trust me.

What is your trust for? If I cannot trespass, if I cannot interfere in your dreams, what is your love for me? There is no point in being here at all if I cannot help, in some way, to awaken you.

So always remember, there are relative truths and there are absolute truths. Basui is saying a relative truth: ordinarily it is true, but only ordinarily. For an extraordinary master to create devices which can wake you up is just a playful game, because what are your dreams? – just imagination.

What is your sleep...? Just a little cold water thrown into your face and the sleep will disappear. The master has just to be aware of who is prepared to receive the gift, the device, gratefully.

But relatively it is true; nobody can enter into your dreams, into your sufferings. You have to wake yourself up. It is a very difficult task to wake yourself up. The enlightened person cannot wake you, The Original Man

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and Basui is hoping that the sleeping person will wake himself up – not much chance! The sleeping person will go into another dream and another dream... Even his waking will be a dream. Just as the awakened person’s sleeping is a waking, the sleeping person’s waking is also full of dreams.

Just close your eyes and you will see dreams floating. You are engaged outside so they keep waiting by the side for when you are finished with your work. But you dream day in, night out... continuously.

You can change the names; you can call it imagination, fantasy, dreaming, but these are names for the same stuff that is not there, but you project it.

Basui says:

IF THE CHILD COULD AWAKEN ITSELF, IT COULD BE FREED OF THIS SUFFERING

AUTOMATICALLY.

Obviously, but the problem is how the child can awaken itself. In the first place, in his dreams there is no dream of awakening. He has never seen the awakened one. He cannot even dream of a buddha, he cannot even dream of a dreamless state – how is he going to awaken himself? It can only be accidentally, not automatically.

I take note even of simple words which one may ignore. Basui is saying, IF THE CHILD COULD

AWAKEN ITSELF, IT COULD BE FREED OF THIS SUFFERING AUTOMATICALLY.

I have my objections. First, anything that you are freed of automatically you can be fettered with again automatically, because it was never in your hands. Your slavery was out of your hands; your freedom is also out of your hands. And ‘automatically’ is not the right word to use in the world of consciousness. In the world of consciousness things can happen spontaneously, but not automatically. Perhaps Basui is not well versed. He is a man who knows, but he is not a man who can express the inexpressible. He is trying his best.

I say a child can awaken accidentally, for example, if a rat runs over the child. And if, for example, the child is Anando, can you think what will happen? – an explosion in Lao Tzu house! The rat is not concerned with your enlightenment, but you will become enlightened... at least for the moment.

And then you can go to sleep again.

Anything from outside can disturb your mind, and your dreams are nothing but your mind. So it cannot be said that the child can be freed of this suffering automatically. Once in a while it has happened that the child has come to the end of dreaming and is fed up with the dreaming. The child is only a symbol for a sleeping humanity. Everybody at a certain moment is going to get bored with what he is doing. And how long has he been doing it?

Even in sleep... and everybody is in sleep with open eyes. The sleep does not denote your ordinary sleep, it denotes your spiritual sleep. You are not aware of yourself, that is the meaning of sleep.

But for how long? It depends on your intelligence. If you have no intelligence at all then you never feel bored. Boredom is the measurement. Just watch a buffalo; you cannot find on the whole earth a buffalo that is bored, or even has thought about it – boredom? It has not come into the consciousness of the buffalo.

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In humanity, the people with the very highest intelligence – like Jean-Paul Sartre, or Jaspers, or Martin Heidegger, or Soren Kierkegaard – suddenly came out with a new idea which humanity had never thought about. That was the idea of boredom. Man’s real problem is boredom and he goes on avoiding it. He goes on hoping good days will come, that the night will be over, that sooner or later there will be a sunrise. But as far as boredom is concerned, it has been gathering since eternity.

But only a very few intelligent people – who can be counted on ten fingers, from all around the world

– have touched on the sense of boredom. And particularly the people who created the philosophy of existentialism based it on the question of boredom: man is so bored that except suicide there seems to be no exit.

In Dostoevsky’s THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, perhaps the most important novel that has ever been written, one of the brothers – it is a history of the three brothers Karamazov – is an atheist and another brother is a very devoted theist. The atheist brother says to him, ”Listen, if by chance you prove to be right and you meet God... I don’t believe that this is going to happen, because there is no God in my conception, but you insist that there is a God, so do at least a little service for your brother. Just tell your God, ‘My brother wants to get out of this existence. You have bored him enough.’”

Suicide seems to be the only exit – not a very brave, not a very courageous one, but it looks like an escape. In existentialist circles this has been a continuous problem, that if we feel that suicide is the only thing then we should commit suicide. And the answer was always, ”Who knows? After suicide things may be even worse. We don’t have any way to compare, we don’t have any alternatives, we cannot come back. If we commit suicide and then we think, ‘My God, what have I done? This is a far bigger hell that I have entered.’ Now there is no going back... So we cannot live peacefully, and we cannot die peacefully.”

It is not something new. In the West it is new, but in the East, as far back as we can see, the question has been asked but has taken a totally different turn. In the West they think, ”How to get out of this boring anguish that we have been told is life?” In the East we have also thought about life – but not going out of it, going beyond it.

That is the difference between Western existentialism and Eastern existentialism. In the East there never existed a particular school because every seeker was seeking a beyond. Only more life can dispel the boredom – more radiant life, more vibrant life, more eternal life.

The Western existentialism seems to be defeatist, a failure: this life is not worthwhile, the only way is to jump in a lake. But you should be aware that the whole East, in its long history – which is longer than the West’s – has never thought about suicide as a solution, because life continues. By suicide you simply miss a great opportunity for transcendence. Every master in the East has been against suicide because if you are so ready to commit suicide, then why not try a jump beyond life? You have nothing to lose; at the most it may be a suicide.

Meditation is a jump beyond life. It is not getting out of life, it is getting to the very center of life.

The people who have entered at the very center of life have shown such grace, such beauty, such presence that they have even become a tremendous inspiration for millions. Just their very presence has transformed people. The question is not of time but of understanding.

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Everybody can be freed from nightmares, from sufferings, from miseries, but of course not directly.

The problem is that you cannot be freed from your suffering directly because you are clinging to it.

It is not the suffering that is the problem, it is you who are clinging which is the problem. You don’t want to leave it. You brag about it, you talk about it. You even talk about how to get out of this misery.

But one who has eyes can see that you are clinging to the misery as hard as possible.

Just the presence of a master can help you to see whether the misery is clinging to you, or you are clinging to the misery. That is a very decisive point. Once you see that you are clinging to the misery, you are freed. Just the seeing of it, the very understanding, is freedom.

Looking deep into your minds, you will find how you are clinging. Somebody insulted you ten years ago and you still remember it as if it is something precious. In fact it was his problem that he shouted and was angry, it was not your problem. If you had simply remained a watcher, there would have been no scratch in your mind for these ten years... and whenever you see the person, the scratch becomes deeper....

All that is needed is to pass through life as a reflecting mirror, not as the film of a camera. The film of a camera catches hold of whatever is reflected on it – that is its function. The mirror also reflects but it never catches it. Things go on passing – the camera goes on filling with new pictures, reflections, but the mirror remains empty.

Remain empty in this world not holding on to anything, and you have entered into a new field of energy which is your own. You have just been neglecting it because you were too occupied with unnecessary non-essentials.

IN THE SAME WAY, ONE WHO REALIZES THAT HIS OWN MIND IS BUDDHA FREES

HIMSELF INSTANTLY FROM THE SUFFERINGS ARISING FROM IGNORANCE OF THE LAW

OF CEASELESS CHANGE WITHIN THE SIX REALMS. IF A BUDDHA COULD PREVENT IT, DO

YOU THINK HE WOULD ALLOW EVEN ONE SENTIENT BEING TO FALL INTO HELL?

He is making commonsense statements. It is true, if a buddha could prevent it then not a single human being would fall into the hellfire. But that does not mean that the buddha is not making every effort. The problem is that you are also involved in it; a buddha cannot disturb your freedom. If you want to go to hell he will simply show you the path. Out of compassion he will make it clear to you what hell is: ”Do you know...?” But if you are bent upon going to hell – it is an experience...!

A buddha – anyone who is awakened – without any effort creates an energy field. It is not right to say that he creates it, he finds an energy field spreading around himself. Whoever is touched by that energy field will not be the same again. He will start changing and transforming in a miraculous way.

Sometimes even in spite of himself, he will do things which only a buddha can do. His old habits, his ignorance, his unconsciousness, all will be against it, but the feeling of a buddha, his presence...

It may be a very slight experience, a very small flame, but it is enough to dispel the darkness of millions of years.

Don’t think that it is small. Just one evening’s meditation, if you really touch the inner center, is more powerful than all your ignorance that you have lived for centuries, is more powerful than all your habits, is more powerful than all your personality. Just a single flame, and slowly it becomes a great fire in which all that is false is burned, and only the pure gold remains behind.

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WITHOUT SELF-REALIZATION ONE CANNOT UNDERSTAND SUCH THINGS AS THESE....

IN A DREAM, YOU MAY STRAY AND LOSE YOUR WAY HOME. YOU ASK SOMEONE TO SHOW

YOU HOW TO RETURN OR YOU PRAY TO GOD OR BUDDHAS TO HELP YOU, BUT STILL YOU

CAN’T GET HOME.

In a dream, whatever you do is part of the dream. It is a very mysterious realm. You can have in a dream another dream. For example, in a dream you think of your girlfriend. You go to the girlfriend’s home and you find that she has gone to see a movie, and you go to see the movie. And you are surprised that you and your girlfriend both are playing a part in the movie.... A dream can be very complicated.

You can dream that you have come home and gone to sleep, and that you are dreaming. A dream within a dream within a dream is possible... it just needs a very unconscious mind. You can also dream of meeting a god or meeting a buddha, but the gods of your dreams and the buddhas of your dreams have no value at all. They are still dreams, good or bad. When you wake up you know. You may have been a great king or you may have been a beggar – it does not matter. When you wake up both have disappeared.

IN A DREAM YOU MAY STRAY AND LOSE YOUR WAY HOME. YOU ASK SOMEONE TO SHOW

YOU HOW TO RETURN OR YOU PRAY TO GOD OR BUDDHAS TO HELP, BUT STILL YOU CAN’T

GET HOME. ONCE YOU ROUSE YOURSELF FROM YOUR DREAM STATE...

On this point he has given no explanation of why you should rouse yourself. There must be some causality; otherwise dreaming can be so sweet.

A man was telling his friend, ”Last night... My God what a dream! I went fishing and I caught such big fish that I had to carry them, with difficulty, one at a time to my home. The whole night I was fishing and fishing, but the fish were so big and huge... you should have seen them. It was the dream of the century.”

The other man said, ”This is nothing. Last night I dreamed that Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe both were sleeping in my bed, and I was in the middle. I thought, My God, I am a poor man and I have never thought that such great fortune... Marilyn Monroe on one side and Sophia Loren on the other side...!”

The other man became angry. He said, ”You say you are my best friend – why didn’t you call me?” He said, ”Wait! I did call you. I immediately phoned and your wife said you had gone fishing.” Your dream world is just a reflection of your real world. You cannot wake up without a particular device that has been created for you. Once in a while a person comes to a point where he is fed up with everything, dreaming included. But that happens very rarely – in centuries, after millions of people have come and gone. So one cannot depend on it. It cannot be made a principle, it is so exceptional. It only proves the rule. It does not discredit the rule.

The rule remains the same, that it is a transmission of the lamp from the master to the disciple.

It can go on being transmitted for thousands of years. The master has just to be clear before he transmits it, that the disciple will be able to carry it.

The Original Man

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I will tell you a small anecdote from the inexhaustible history of beautiful Zen incidents....

One great Chinese Zen master was ready to leave the body, so he called a gathering of the monks.

The monastery had two wings, each wing having five hundred monks.

So all of the one thousand monks gathered and he told them, ”This week sometime, I am going to leave the body. I have not decided the day, because I have to choose the person to whom to transmit the flame. My method of choosing is that just in front of my hut, whoever thinks that he is capable of receiving the flame should write a sentence that describes the essence of Zen.” In those one thousand monks, there were a few very eminent scholars, and everybody thought that one of four people was bound to win the game. ”We know much, but in a single sentence the very essence... and the master is not an ordinary master, you cannot deceive him.” Even the scholars were not ready to expose themselves, because it would be a great exposure if he said that what you have written is not the right thing. But one scholar who was the most famous in the monastery and its surroundings, went in the middle of the night so that nobody would know that he had written it. He wrote a beautiful piece that ordinarily would have been accepted. He said,

”No-mind and the revelation of the buddha is the essence of Zen.” You cannot say anything against it. The poor fellow had done quite well. But in the morning when he saw it, the master said, ”Who is the idiot? Catch hold of him... he has not signed his name.” Out of fear, the scholar had not signed his name. He was waiting so that if the master appreciated it he would come out, and if he did not appreciate it amongst one thousand sannyasins he would not be able to find who was the person who had written it.

He told his attendant to clean the wall. There was a great discussion all over the monastery, ”This is strange. This sentence was clearly showing the very essence of Zen: No-mind, the discovery of the buddha. This is the essence of Zen.”

As much as it was discussed... it was so tremendously important who was going to be the successor.

Two monks were discussing it while passing a monk who had been there for twenty years, doing nothing but cleaning rice for the monastery from the early morning when he would get up, until late at night. It was not an easy job to prepare rice for one thousand monks.

Twenty years ago when he was young, he had come to the master and the master looked into his eyes and said, ”If you really want to be here, just keep a few things clear. Never come again to me, just go to the kitchen. The man who used to work with the rice is dead, so you take his place. From morning till night just clean the rice, prepare the rice. You are not to participate in any sermons, in any meditations, or listen to any scriptures.”

Strange conditions... a man comes to the monastery to know the truth not to prepare the rice. But the man said, ”Once I have accepted you as my master, whatever you say is my way. You will never see my face again, unless you come to me.”

And twenty years is a long time. The whole monastery had almost become unaware of the poor monk, because who takes notice of a man whose whole work is just to prepare rice day after day, The Original Man

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year after year? He is not a scholar, he does not discuss anything with anybody, he does not talk with anybody, he has no friends. He was accepted almost like an automatic machine. Nobody took any notice of him.

But that morning the master came to the man, looked into his eyes again and said, ”Can you improve upon this? ‘No-mind, discovering the buddha. This is the very essence of Zen?’” He laughed and he said, ”Some idiot must have done it. I have heard... just people walking here and there discussing it...”

”What is your idea?” the master asked.

The man said, ”No-mind, no buddha, pure nothingness. What is the need to say this is the essence of Zen? It is. But no-mind, no buddha...”

The master accepted him as his successor, gave him his robe, his staff – that is traditional in Zen

– and told him, ”Run away from the monastery as fast as you can, because I have created one thousand enemies for you. They would like to kill you because they think, ‘That rice monk... that idiot who never uttered a single word...’”

So he took the robe and the staff, but he told the master, ”Because you are telling me, I am doing it; otherwise I am not interested in being a successor. These twenty years have been such a silence.

What can you think from morning to night, not talking with anybody, not a word? Just cleaning the rice, preparing the rice, everything has disappeared. And I say to you that when mind disappears completely, the very idea that ‘I am a buddha’ also disappears because that is part of the mind, the last part... only nothingness....

”I am not interested, but if you say, I will take the robe and the staff. But I want you to know that if anybody asks me to give them the robe and the staff, I am not going to resist, I will simply give it.

Who cares? I have come home. Now it does not matter whether I am a leader of a great monastery with thousands of monks and great fame and respectability. It does not matter. I am fulfilled unto myself just cleaning the rice. Leave me alone.”

But the master insisted, ”You have to take them, because there is nobody else to whom I can transmit the lamp.”

The whole monastery laughed about it, but they had to accept the ”rice monk” – as he had become known. They had never looked at him, they had never bothered about him. For the first time they saw that his presence was far greater than the master’s, his silence was far deeper than the master’s, almost tangible. You could touch his silence. You could feel around him a different kind of energy, a different void. You could look into his eyes. No other person tried to take the robe and the staff, even though he was willing.

The rice monk assembled the monks and told them, ”I have been chosen as the successor. This is the robe and the staff. If anybody is interested, he can take them, but the very interest will show that he is not the right person. The very motivation, the desire for power will show that he is not the right person. But still I will give them to him because I don’t want to be bothered with all kinds of things about the monastery. I am perfectly happy – I would go back to the kitchen.” The Original Man

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But the monks realized that they had been wrong about the poor fellow: ”He is not poor. He is the richest monk, although he knows nothing of the scriptures. But because he also dropped the buddha with no-mind, he shows his insight.”

The moment you drop the mind, everything is dropped. You disappear just like a ripple in the lake, not leaving a trace behind.

ONCE YOU ROUSE YOURSELF FROM YOUR DREAM STATE, HOWEVER, YOU FIND THAT YOU

ARE IN YOUR OWN BED AND REALIZE THAT THE ONLY WAY YOU COULD HAVE GOT HOME

WAS TO AWAKEN YOURSELF.

The example is right, but it very rarely happens. When you wake up, most of you find yourself in somebody else’s bed. To be true, it is very rare that you find you are in your own bed! Most people get up and go home.

Who is at home? If you were at home then even the possibility of the dream would not exist. You have been traveling along, life after life. Even if you manage somehow accidentally to pass by your home, you will not recognize it. You have been away from it for so long that even the memory, the remembrance has to be a hit on your head that this is your home! What are you looking for... where are you going...?

A master is almost an absolute necessity. You have not gone very far away from the home. However far you may have gone, it is not very far. You just need a magnetic force to pull you back.

The master is only a magnetic force. He says nothing, but without saying, the magnet pulls. He describes the home so that you can recognize it when you have come close to it. He describes the experiences that will happen on the way back home, the blissfulness, the peace, the silence, the ecstasy, the utter relaxation. He describes everything just to remind you that when you come closer to home these things will start happening. They will help you to find home.

Without the master, without someone who has already reached his home and knows what kind of experiences happen on the path, it is almost impossible to wake up on your own.

THIS KIND OF SPIRITUAL AWAKENING IS CALLED ”RETURN TO THE ORIGIN” OR ”REBIRTH

IN PARADISE.” IT IS THE KIND OF INNER REALIZATION THAT CAN BE ACHIEVED WITH SOME

TRAINING.

VIRTUALLY ALL WHO LIKE ZAZEN AND MAKE AN EFFORT IN PRACTICE, BE THEY LAYMEN

OR MONKS, CAN EXPERIENCE TO THIS DEGREE. BUT EVEN SUCH PARTIAL AWAKENING

CANNOT BE ATTAINED EXCEPT THROUGH THE PRACTICE OF ZAZEN. YOU WOULD BE

MAKING A SERIOUS ERROR, HOWEVER, WERE YOU TO ASSUME THAT THIS WAS TRUE

ENLIGHTENMENT IN WHICH THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY. YOU

WOULD BE LIKE A MAN WHO, HAVING FOUND COPPER, GIVES UP THE SEARCH FOR GOLD.

Basui seems to be a man who is awakened but is not articulate enough to transfer inwardly what he has experienced. There have been three kinds of masters. The first kind never speaks, knowing perfectly well that he is not articulate enough to use words for a wordless experience. It is better to The Original Man

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be silent than to say anything that is not rightly directing to the moon. He knows his incapacity; he remains silent. He is called the arhata; He has conquered the enemy. Arhata means one who has conquered the enemy, the ignorance, the unconsciousness, but one who is not able to transmit the lamp to anyone else.

The second category is of the bodhisattva, one who is articulate enough to manage words in such a way that they start indicating towards something beyond the words, who is capable of arbitrary devices so that you can become awakened.

The third category has not been recognized in the ancient scriptures anywhere, but I want you to know that Basui belongs to the third category. It would have been better for him to be silent and be an arhat. Rather than being silent he is trying to be a bodhisattva. That’s why he is committing so many mistakes. Although he knows, he is not able to express it, or even to indicate it in a correct and adequate way.

This category has not been recognized, but certainly there have been many, and I will tell you who the people are who belong to this category. It would have been better for them to remain silent like the arhatas, but perhaps out of compassion they tried their best. Intentions don’t matter; their expression is childish. They cannot be bodhisattvas. All their words are borrowed, although they have their own experience. So I will not call them the teachers.

It is strange that this category has not been recognized separately. Perhaps very rarely people have tried the way Basui is trying – with all good intentions, with compassion – but he is not capable. You may have good intentions, but that does not mean you can play on a guitar. You may have all the good intentions, but that does not mean you can dance. It needs a totally different quality, a certain genius, which is missing.

Whatever he is saying is more or less true, but not very sharp... like a sword cutting all that is false in a single blow. He is a very mild kind of bodhisattva, a lukewarm bodhisattva.

Let us call this new category the lukewarm bodhisattva.

Ryokan wrote:

WITHOUT A JOT OF AMBITION LEFT

I LET MY NATURE FLOW

WHERE IT WILL.

THERE ARE TEN DAYS OF RICE

IN MY BAG,

AND BY THE HEARTH,

A BUNDLE OF FIREWOOD.

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WHO PRATTLES OF ILLUSION

OR NIRVANA?

FORGETTING THE EQUAL DUSTS OF

NAME AND FORTUNE,

LISTENING TO THE NIGHT RAIN

ON THE ROOF OF MY HUT,

I SIT AT EASE,

BOTH LEGS STRETCHED OUT.

Now, this is a sharp, swordlike man saying things clearly....

”Without a jot of ambition left I let my nature flow where it will” – no direction, no destiny. I give my nature total freedom.

”There are ten days of rice in my bag” – enough. Who lives with certainty for more than ten days?

Enough. Nature has taken care up to now, it will take care after ten days. So I don’t collect, it is enough.

”And by the hearth, a bundle of firewood” – what a richness! What a contentment in utter poverty!

Even kings will be jealous of this man.

”Who prattles of illusion or nirvana?” – and who bothers whether I am awakened or not awakened, whether I am in an illusion, in a dream, or in nirvana...? In awakening, ”who prattles?”

”Forgetting the equal dusts of name and fortune” – all is dust of name and fortune.

”Listening to the night rain on the roof of my hut... both legs stretched out.” Relaxed, listening to the dance of the rain on the roof – this is a right way of expressing the inexpressible. He is expressing utter relaxation, no concern even about nirvana, so silent....

He is saying, ”I sit at ease, both legs stretched out” as if time has ceased, nothing matters. This is the space in which you can say you have come home.

Dogen wrote:

THE WORLD?

MOONLIT DROPS

SHAKEN FROM THE CRANE’S BILL.

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Just a watcher, sitting silently, watching the world....

”Moonlit drops shaken from the crane’s bill” – nothing to do, nowhere to go, just silently... to watch the whole drama.

Question 1

Anando has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

WHAT IS IT TO BE ORIGINAL? IS THE AWAKENED MAN, THE MAN OF ZEN, THE ONLY TRULY

ORIGINAL MAN?

Anando, to be original simply means just as you were born – fresh, uncluttered by any garbage, theology, religion, politics, etiquette, manners. As you grow up, around you much garbage grows.

The society helps to grow it; the whole educational system exists to support it. By the time you are still young, you have already lost your original home. You know so much, but you don’t know anything in fact. You pretend so much, you may even believe in your pretensions, but that does not make them true. The whole society up to now has been creating hypocrites.

The original man is just the polar opposite of the hypocrite. He is simply natural, unpredictable. The hypocrite is predictable. You know what he is going to do – his reactions, his responses. You know his future, because he is a false entity not a living plant. You cannot predict in what directions the branches will go, on which branches the flowers will come. Everything is unpredictable, but with a plastic plant everything is known and predictable. Society wants you to be predictable, because its whole business depends on predictability.

The day I entered America, the first question the immigration department asked me was: ”Are you an anarchist?” I had been told beforehand that anarchists are not allowed in America.

I told the man, ”I am something more.”

He said, ”My God, for something more there is no regulation.” He had his book open: communists, anarchists are not allowed... but something more...?

He looked at me and he said, ”You look like something more, but you will be in trouble and you will create trouble for us.”

I said, ”I am a silent man. I don’t even leave my room.” He said, ”That is the danger, but because in the rules there is no provision for preventing something more than the anarchist, I have to allow you.”

And from that very moment the struggle began that lasted for five years.

The original man is simply a natural man not nurtured by the society. He has kept himself aloof and individual. He has not allowed anybody to condition him.

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My father used to go to the temple to listen to the monks and the priests of Jainism, and he would ask me, ”You are sitting here uselessly, why don’t you come with me?” I said, ”You are going in search of something which I have found.” He said, ”It is very difficult to talk with you.” I said, ”It is.”

He tried to persuade me many times: ”A very learned monk is speaking today in the temple.” I said, ”It does not matter who is speaking in the temple, in my temple there is absolute silence.

Learning is all rubbish.”

But my grandfather was a different kind of man. When my father had gone to the temple, he would say, ”Now, come on. Let us have a little fun.”

He was old but very childlike. He would provoke me, ”Let us disturb the meeting. At my age it does not look right, but I will be your protector.”

And he was one of the oldest persons in the community. So he said, ”Don’t you be worried, you just create as much chaos as possible. I will not support you directly, but I will be there to see that no harm is done to you.”

I said, ”That’s okay.”

Then my father would see that I had come with my grandfather, and then he would become afraid that now...

And small questions would create trouble. Those learned monks... I would stand up in the middle, and people would start shouting, ”Don’t stand up in the middle!” And my grandfather would say, ”He will stand. Nobody can stop my child from asking a relevant question.”

And I used to ask all kinds of questions which those poor fellows were not able to answer... just small things. In Jainism a woman cannot go into ultimate freedom, and if the man was talking about that I would ask him, ”How do you know? Are you a woman?” He would look here and there... some support...?

”On what grounds do you say that a woman cannot enter heaven?” All that he could say was, ”It is written in the scripture.” I said, ”Then it is not your experience. Have you been to heaven? Have you seen that there are no women there?”

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He said, ”My God, nobody has asked about this, and nobody comes back from heaven.”

”Then,” I said, ”who has written that scripture? Somebody who has not gone to heaven writes that a woman cannot enter heaven, and you are repeating it like a parrot...?” The poor fellow’s learnedness was finished, and my grandfather would take hold of me and say,

”Child, let us go.”

Back home my father would say, ”I asked you to come but at that time you were talking great philosophy. Why did you go with your grandfather?” I said, ”I never deny him, he is so old. And I wanted him with me; otherwise you would have been preventing me. In his presence you cannot prevent me. I don’t trust that you will go against the so-called manners of your society. I trust him. In fact he is a revolutionary.” He used to take me to other religions’ meetings. He was so old and respected by the community, but seeing me with him, everybody became nervous that ”something is going to happen. Both these fellows should not be seen together.” And he was always ready.

Whenever I would find that something was happening, somebody was talking about God, I would tell him, ”This is not a time to waste. You are tired, but you have to come, because alone, I am too small and they will all start shouting at me and trying to silence me.” He said, ”Don’t be worried. As long as I am alive nobody can stop you from asking questions. The basic purpose of these assemblies is to find out, to inquire, to question.” And to the man who was speaking on God, I would ask, ”Have you seen God with your own eyes?” He would look all around....

I would say, ”Are you looking for witnesses? Put your hand on your heart, and in the name of God be truthful: Have you seen God?”

And in a temple these poor believers cannot lie! He would say, ”No, I have not seen him... I believe in God.”

I said, ”Belief means nothing. One can believe in anything. You have some nerve to talk about God without having seen him. Have you heard that he is sick?” He would say, ”I have never heard such a thing. God... and sick?” I said, ”Why not? I was just preparing you for the bad news.” He said, ”What do you mean?”

I said, ”Friedrich Nietzsche says God is dead. Can your belief protect God from dying? All this lecturing about God, not even knowing the ABC of experience.... You are fooling and cheating people.”

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Then everybody would fall silent and my grandfather would say, ”The work is done. He will never come to this town again.”

And it used to happen that those people never came again, knowing perfectly well that I would be there.

When I left the town and went to the university, I used to come back on holidays. My grandfather would say, ”I miss you very much because those old idiots, knowing that you are not here, have started coming back. And I am too old to create a disturbance. You were a great help to me because I want to destroy all these nonsense beliefs.” One should either know, or should know that one does not know.

The original man is simply a natural man who has survived the conditioning of the society, the manners of the society; who has asked everything before accepting anything; who has inquired into the truth of anything before accepting it. He is never a hypocrite.

The Zen man certainly is the original man. It is the search for the original man, your very nature, where you are not a man, not a woman, not a Hindu, not a Christian; where you simply are –

unfettered freedom, unscratched sky. The beauty of it and the benediction of it is infinite.

Now it is time for a really original man....

Sardar Gurudayal Singh got the point! He always gets it before anybody else. He is a bodhisattva.

(BETURBANNED SARDAR, DEEP IN BELLY LAUGH, HAS, AS IS NOW A NIGHTLY

OCCURRENCE, SENT RIPPLES OF LAUGHTER TO EVERY CORNER OF THE AUDITORIUM.

THE MASTER, HAS TURNED IN SARDAR’S DIRECTION AND HAS ALSO JOINED IN THE

LAUGHTER.)

Paddy is in town for a big party at the Wonky Donkey Pub. By five in the morning, Paddy has had enough. He leaves the party and makes his way back to his hotel. Staggering around, he climbs up three flights of stairs before he remembers that there is an elevator. Pulling open the elevator door, Paddy steps into the open elevator shaft and falls straight to the basement.

Shakily, he stands up, brushes himself off and adjusts his cap.

”Dammit!” Paddy shouts, ”I said UP!”

Olga Kowalski wakes up late one morning. Her hair is full of curlers, her eyes are puffy and her face has a mud pack on from the night before.

She plods downstairs to the kitchen in an old housecoat and a worn out pair of carpet slippers.

Looking blearily out of the kitchen window, Olga sees that the garbage truck is about to move on up the street. She grabs her bag of garbage, dashes out of the house and races up to one of the garbage men, panting.

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”Am I too late?” gasps Olga.

”No, lady,” replies the man, ”just jump right in!” Zabriski calls for his little son, Albert, and gives him five dollars. ”Albert,” he says, ”go to the store and get three pounds of butter.”

Albert dashes off, grabbing the family dog, Bucko, to take along with him. On the way to the grocers, Albert passes his favorite sweet shop and gets a better idea of what to do with the money.

He runs into the candy store and buys sweets. Afterwards, he sneaks back home and hides the chocolates under his bed. Then little Albert puts on a sad face and goes to see his father. ”What happened?” asks Zabriski. ”Where’s the butter?”

”The dog,” says Little Albert, pointing to Bucko. ”That son-of-a-bitch snatched the butter away from me and ate it all up!”

Zabriski grabs the little dog and puts him up on the weighing scale. The scale indicates exactly three pounds.

Zabriski scratches his Polack head, turns to little Albert and says, ”Well, there’s the butter, now where the hell is the dog?”

Now, Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent, feel your body to be frozen.

Close your eyes and all the doors that open outwards.

Gather your life energy inwards; move as deep as possible. There, is waiting your real being, the buddha.

Rejoice this moment – the experience of being a buddha. The clouds overhead are very happy.

Deeper and deeper, so your memory becomes engraved with the reality of your being.

Essentially everyone is a buddha. It is only a question of remembering it.

To make the perception more clear....

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Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax. Drop the body, drop the mind, drop everything.... Just remain a watcher.

This witnessing is the ultimate experience of life because it opens the doors of miracles. The first miracle is, it makes you aware of your originality. It takes away all the dust that has gathered upon your mirror. It washes away all thoughts and leaves behind only the original man.

The original man is the buddha – they are synonymous.

Remember your natural self twenty-four hours – silently, running like an undercurrent in all your activities. Never lose track of your original being and you have found eternity, and you have found divinity, and you have found all the treasures of the world.

To be natural, to be original is just to be in tune with existence. And slowly, slowly even this much separation disappears. You are not in tune, you are no more. Only a great universe is, with all its ecstasy, with all its joy, with all its blessings.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, but don’t come back as your old self. Come back with this new originality, with this new, natural....

Sit down for a few minutes, just rejoicing the fact of your buddhahood, of your original man.

Okay, Anando?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas gathered?

Yes!

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17 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

RINZAI SAID:

IF YOU MEET A BUDDHA, CUT HIM DOWN; IF YOU MEET A PATRIARCH, CUT HIM DOWN; IF

YOU MEET AN ARHAT, CUT HIM DOWN; IF YOU MEET YOUR PARENTS, CUT THEM DOWN

AND IF YOU MEET YOUR RELATIVES, CUT THEM DOWN.

ONLY THUS WILL YOU BE LIBERATED, AND IF YOU ARE NOT HELD BY EXTERNALS, YOU

WILL BE DISENGAGED AND COMFORTABLY INDEPENDENT.

AFTER THIS MOUNTAIN MONK HAS SAID THAT THERE IS NO DHARMA EXTERNALLY, STUDENTS WHO DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS IMMEDIATELY MAKE THEIR INTERPRETATION

OF THE INTERNAL. THEY THEN SIT AGAINST THE WALL WITH THE TONGUE TOUCHING THE

PALATE, TO BE IN A MOTIONLESS POSITION AND REGARD THIS AS THE BUDDHA DHARMA OF THE PATRIARCHS.

THE GREATEST MISTAKE IS THAT IF YOU TAKE STILL IMMOBILITY AS THE RIGHT STATE, YOU WILL MISTAKE THE DARKNESS FOR YOUR MASTER. THIS IS WHAT AN ANCIENT MEANT

WHEN HE SAID, ”IN COMPLETE DARKNESS, AN ABYSS IS DREADFUL.” IF YOU TAKE THE MOVING STATE AS THE RIGHT ONE, ALL PLANTS AND STRAWS CAN

MOVE. ARE THEY TAO? THEREFORE, THE MOVING IS THE ELEMENT WIND, AND THE

UNMOVING IS THE ELEMENT EARTH. BOTH THE MOVING AND THE UNMOVING HAVE NO

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NATURE OF THEIR OWN. IF YOU WANT TO CATCH IT IN THE MOVING, IT WILL GO TO

THE UNMOVING; AND IF YOU WANT TO CATCH IT IN THE UNMOVING, IT WILL GO TO THE

MOVING. IT IS LIKE A FISH CONCEALED IN THE WATER WHICH IT CAN STIR INTO RIPPLES

THROUGH WHICH TO SKIM.

VIRTUOUS ONES, THE MOVING AND UNMOVING ARE TWO KINDS OF STATES, BUT THE MAN

OF TAO CAN MAKE USE OF BOTH THE MOVING AND UNMOVING STATES.

Anando, one of the fundamentals of Zen that makes it a totally unique religion, more than any other religion of the world, is that it does not want to exclude anything from your life. Your life has to be inclusive. It has to comprehend all the stars and the sky and the earth. It is not a path of renouncing the world.

What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls Transcendental Meditation, Rinzai is condemning. You teach people to sit silently with their tongue touching their palate, so even inside their mouth they cannot make any movement of the tongue, and the whole body should be just a statue – then only you can realize the truth. But it is only half of the truth. And a half truth is more dangerous than a total lie; at least a lie is total.

Life is both rest and movement.

If you go sometime to Bodhgaya, where Gautam Buddha became enlightened, there stands a temple in memory of his enlightenment, by the side of the tree where he used to sit and meditate. That was his routine: for one hour he would sit under the tree and meditate, then for one hour he would walk by the side of the tree. Even the places where he moved are marked by stones to show you, a small path.

One hour he would walk and meditate, showing perfectly that life, if it is unmoving, is dead. And life – if it has no rest, goes on moving – it too will end very soon. Life is a balance between rest and movement. And when the harmony is achieved between rest and movement, you come to the very center of your life, which is always with you whether you are sitting or moving, whether you are awake or asleep. Its existence is absolutely certain, but not by reading scriptures. You have to experience it, then you can do anything. Then there is no problem for you, because whatever you do will be done out of a buddha nature.

It happened...

A young beautiful prince got initiated by Gautam Buddha. In those days, Vaishali was one of the richest cities in India. Buddha was staying for the monsoon near Vaishali. So the prince and every other monk used to go into the city to beg for their meals.

In the city there lived one of the most beautiful women in history. There are only two names that have been known as the most beautiful: one was an Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, and another was Amrapali of Vaishali.

Amrapali was so beautiful. It was a tradition in Buddha’s time that the most beautiful woman cannot be married to any man. She cannot be the monopoly of anybody; she’s so beautiful, she should remain free and available to anybody she likes.

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Even kings stood in a queue in front of her house. Just to be with her for a few hours, tremendous money was paid. She had become so rich that even the king used to borrow money from her.

Those days were of a different quality of mind. They did not call her a prostitute, they called her nagarvadhu – married to everyone. She was so beautiful that it would have been absurd to tie her to one person – she would not have remained tied. Soon somebody else would be more attractive; you would be putting her into an unnecessary nightmare. Let her be free – her beauty was such that it could not be owned but everybody was capable of rejoicing in it, according to her will. Such great respect for beauty. ‘Nagarvadhu’ means married to all.

When this monk of Buddha, who used to be a prince just a few years before, was seen passing by, Amrapali sent a servant to prevent him and tell him: ”You don’t have to go anywhere. Today, please accept my invitation.”

Other monks were following him, because with Gautam Buddha were ten thousand monks who always followed wherever he went. They could not believe that this monk was entering the house of a prostitute. They rushed back. A few even did not go to beg. It was their prior concern to report to Buddha, ”This man has betrayed you. He has entered into a prostitute’s house.” Buddha said, ”I know him. You need not be worried about him. Whatever happens in his life is coming out of the very center of his being; it can never be wrong. But I will take care of it; let him come.”

Soon a few more monks came rushing. They cried, ”It is too much! Amrapali has asked him to stay with her at least for the monsoon while we are in Vaishali. And he has accepted!” They could not believe it. They wanted immediate expulsion: ”He should be disrobed!” Buddha said, ”Wait, let him come here. I know him just as I know you. You have not come here to save somebody’s virtue, you have come here out of jealousy. You have always been jealous of that young man because he is so beautiful, so attractive, so articulate, and wherever he goes he gets more respect, more love, more dignity.”

And then the prince returned, because he had told Amrapali, ”I accept your invitation because it is against my master to refuse anything; it is cruel. But I have one condition: I have to ask the permission of my master. From my side there is no objection, but if my master objects I’m helpless.

I have surrendered myself totally to my master. If he says yes, it is yes; if he says no, it is no. So please forgive me if I don’t return. But most probably I will return because I know my master.” There was great uproar, gossiping, and the prince returned to ask the permission of Buddha.

Kneeling down before him, he said, ”I’m asking permission for a very strange thing: a prostitute has asked me, with so much love and so much prayer, to stay with her during this monsoon season while you are here. I have given her my agreement with the condition that ”if my master agrees, I will stay with you, but if my master says no, that is absolute – then no question arises at all.” The whole assembly of monks was utterly silent, listening to what Buddha would say.

Buddha said, ”You should go and stay with the woman because I know that a man who has entered into his own center cannot be influenced by the non-essentials of life. Moreover I know that when The Original Man

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after four months you come back, you will not be alone – Amrapali will be coming with you to become a sannyasin. I trust you – you can go with my absolute agreement.” It was such a shock to the thousands of monks. They started saying to Buddha, ”What are you doing? You are destroying a young man; the woman is too beautiful – you don’t know, you never go to the city. The woman is so beautiful that kings from other kingdoms come and stand in a queue for their turn, just to have one night’s stay with the woman. And she’s not only beautiful, she is a great singer and a musician. You are sending our young monk into the lion’s den, unnecessarily putting him in trouble.”

Buddha said, ”You wait, the four months will soon pass.” Amrapali did everything to make the prince comfortable. She played on musical instruments, she danced, she had delicious dishes made for him. She closed her door for four months to any other visitor, even if he were a king or an emperor. She hoped, deep down, ”This young monk will melt, will fall in love with me. I have been searching and searching, but I have not found a man with whom I can live my whole life. This is the man.”

But the prince sat in the lotus posture. While she was dancing, he was meditating. While she was making all kinds of loving gestures, he was simply watching.

For four months he lived in her house and finally the day of departure came. He thanked her, saying, ”It has been a great discipline for me, and the whole credit goes to you. My meditation has deepened. I am more at home than ever before. My master will rejoice seeing me.” Amrapali said, ”Perhaps you do not know that your master will not only see you, he will also see me reformed. I can see all the fallacious world of lust and love and power. Also I can see, against it, a totally different world of watchfulness and peace and serenity. You say you are grateful to me – I say I am immensely grateful to you. Just help me, so that your master does not reject me.” The young prince said, ”He never rejects anybody.” They both came. They both touched the feet of the master, and the young monk asked, ”Amrapali wants to be initiated...” And as an initiation gift... They were staying in a very big mango grove – it must have been, because ten thousand people were there and every man had a place under one mango tree. There must have been more than ten thousand mango trees... Before coming Amrapali had asked the owner of the land if he would sell it.

He said, ”I cannot sell it; it has become sacred for me. Buddha has stayed here; it has now become part of history. This land is no longer ordinary land.” Amrapali said, ”You don’t know how much I can pay.” The man said, ”If you really want to purchase it, my price is very high. I’m putting it so high that nobody can purchase it – not even the emperor!”

Amrapali said, ”You simply say it – no haggling.” His price was certainly very strange. He said, ”You can have the land if you put golden coins all over it, covering it completely. I don’t know how many millions of coins will be needed.” The Original Man

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The woman said, ”It does not matter. The land is mine; you come with me and count the coins and measure the land.”

So the young monk said to Buddha, ”This woman has bought this whole beautiful mango grove to be used only for meditators, and she has asked me to ask you for her initiation because she has seen something in me that is missing in her.”

And Amrapali said, ”I don’t even have the face to ask for initiation. I have been a sinner all my life.

You must know that I’m a prostitute. Your young monk – I hoped to change him, but on the contrary, he has changed me. Now I don’t have any desire, except to sit at your feet and follow the path where one comes to one’s own innermost center. Now I know – up to now I have not even been aware that there is an inner center of life.”

That inner center is the most powerful thing in the world. That innermost center is not of the individual. With that innermost center we are all joined. It is the center of the whole cosmos.

And once you feel yourself as part of the cosmos – eternal and immortal...

Amrapali said, ”The bliss and the benediction I have seen radiating from your disciple in these four months – I myself could not resist.” The people who had been so anxious for this day to come so they could inform Buddha, ”Now look what has happened, your disciple has not returned,” were very much ashamed. Not only had he returned, he had brought with him a transformed human being.

Anando, the meditation that Buddha gave to the world is perhaps one of the most significant. There are many meditations, many ways to enter into yourself, but Buddha’s is sharp, almost like a sword

– it cuts everything that hinders. And even in a split second, you can reach to your ultimate destiny.

But for that, Rinzai says: IF YOU MEET A BUDDHA... He does not mean the actual Buddha, because where will you meet him now? Even when he was alive – I mean Rinzai – Buddha had been dead for almost fifteen hundred years. So what is the meaning? – IF YOU MEET A BUDDHA, CUT HIM DOWN...

It is a meditation process. When you go deeper into yourself, you are bound to meet figures which are very close to your heart. If you have loved Buddha, you are going to meet Buddha before you meet yourself. It will be just an image, but in the silences of the heart that image will be so radiant that there is a possibility you may sit by the side of the image and forget that this is not the goal.

IF YOU MEET A BUDDHA, CUT HIM DOWN –

Immediately! IF YOU MEET A PATRIARCH, a master, CUT HIM DOWN – immediately!

... IF YOU MEET AN ARHAT, CUT HIM DOWN; IF YOU MEET YOUR PARENTS, CUT THEM

DOWN AND IF YOU MEET YOUR RELATIVES, CUT THEM DOWN. ONLY THUS WILL YOU BE

LIBERATED...

It is an inner psychological process – making you free from the master, from the parents, from the friends. It has nothing to do with the outside world, it is your inner world where images go on gathering. And unless all these images are dissolved, you cannot see yourself. They are preventing your perception. Rinzai’s description of the Buddhist meditation is excellent.

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AND IF YOU ARE NOT HELD BY EXTERNALS, YOU WILL BE DISENGAGED AND

COMFORTABLY INDEPENDENT.

Now, the internals you have cut down. The images, your dreams, your love affairs, you have destroyed all of them and made the path towards you clean, but you may still be attached to externals. You may be ready to cut away your parents’ image and be free of it, but the desire for power in the world, the desire to be the richest man in the world... A thousand and one desires surround you in the external world.

Now the second step is easier. Rinzai begins with the hardest because he knows if you can do the hardest, the easier can be done without any difficulty.

IF YOU ARE NOT HELD BY EXTERNALS, YOU WILL BE DISENGAGED AND COMFORTABLY

INDEPENDENT.

AFTER THIS MOUNTAIN MONK HAS SAID THAT THERE IS NO DHARMA EXTERNALLY, STUDENTS WHO DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS, IMMEDIATELY MAKE THEIR INTERPRETATION

OF THE INTERNAL.

Rinzai is saying that it is very easy to misunderstand a master. In fact, it is easier to misunderstand a master than anybody else, because he is talking a new language, giving new meanings to words, talking about spaces you have never been to. It is almost human to be mistaken, to misunderstand.

He says:

AFTER THIS MOUNTAIN MONK HAS SAID THAT THERE IS NO DHARMA EXTERNALLY... There is no religion externally. Going to the temple or to the church or to the synagogue, reading scriptures, ancient holy books – these are all externals and there is no dharma as far as externals are concerned. They are dead skeletons, remnants of somebody who attained, but now it is too difficult to decode the scriptures. The man is no more there, only the skeleton of the man which cannot speak, which cannot explain, which cannot help you in any way.

You can go on carrying scriptures, but those scriptures will be your interpretations not the meaning of the masters. Outside you can go to the temples, but what are you doing? Man-made temples, man-made gods – and you are worshipping those stone gods. And you are not alone! Almost the whole world is worshipping something or other as a god. But in this way you cannot find the essence of dharma. It is a very upside down, disturbed and perverted situation when man starts worshipping gods he has made himself.

You have to know the source of life – the source from which you spring, just as roses spring. And it is not a question of prayer, it is a question of intense exploration inside to find your roots. And you will be surprised: your roots are the roots of the moon, of the sun, of the stars – of the whole existence. You are just a small branch of a vast tree. Once you know it, there is no fear of death.

You cannot die – you belong to immortality. There is no more desire.

What more can you have? You have the whole universe in your hands. You are already everything you could have dreamed, desired, asked to be. A great contentment descends over you. In this contentment are all the qualities of blissfulness, of ecstasy, of all that is a continuous dance, a festivity, a ceremony.

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Rinzai says, ”But I can be misunderstood” – and the misunderstanding will be Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation.

”When I say there is no dharma externally, they then SIT

AGAINST THE WALL WITH THE TONGUE TOUCHING THE PALATE, TO BE IN A MOTIONLESS

POSITION AND REGARD THIS AS THE BUDDHA DHARMA OF THE PATRIARCHS.” Just sitting... how long can you go on sitting? And when you stand up, Bodhidharma or Buddha or Rinzai will say, ”What happened to the buddha?”

The buddha was sitting; sitting has become your form of experience, but standing, it will disappear.

Walking, you will be walking away from sitting. Rinzai is trying to say things in simple terms and he had to be very simple because he was the man who brought Zen from China to Japan. He was talking to absolutely unconcerned people who had never heard about meditation.

THE GREATEST MISTAKE IS THAT IF YOU TAKE STILL IMMOBILITY AS THE RIGHT STATE, YOU WILL MISTAKE THE DARKNESS FOR YOUR MASTER.

Immobility is only a rest period. Existence is motion, continuous motion. Yes, there are moments of rest, but if you choose the moments of rest as the whole truth, you are accepting darkness as your master. You are cutting life in two: darkness and light.

Have you watched one thing? Darkness is stable. It never goes anywhere, it is always here. You bring light – you cannot see darkness. You take the light away and darkness is there. It does not come running from M.G. Road. It is never late, not even a single moment. If it had gone out for an evening walk or just to have a look at what is happening around the world, there would be gaps when you had taken the lights away and still the darkness was not there. But there is never a gap.

The reason is, darkness is always here even when light is here; it is just because of the light that you cannot see the darkness.

Even in the motion, the action, the gesture of a buddha, there is a certain restfulness.

That

restfulness brings a grace to it, a beauty to it.

THIS IS WHAT AN ANCIENT MEANT WHEN HE SAID, ”IN COMPLETE DARKNESS, AN ABYSS

IS DREADFUL.”

Meditation is not meant to cut your life and your existence in two parts and then to choose one, the internal. A perfect meditation is all-inclusive. It transforms you, and with your transformation your vision of things transform, but nothing is excluded.

IF YOU TAKE THE MOVING STATE AS THE RIGHT ONE, ALL PLANTS AND STRAWS CAN

MOVE. ARE THEY TAO? THEREFORE, THE MOVING IS THE ELEMENT WIND, AND THE

UNMOVING IS THE ELEMENT EARTH, AND BOTH THE MOVING AND THE UNMOVING HAVE

NO NATURE OF THEIR OWN. IF YOU WANT TO CATCH IT IN THE MOVING, IT WILL GO TO

THE UNMOVING...

They are continuously changing places: day becoming night, night becoming day; life becoming death, death becoming life. Don’t hold onto anything. It will immediately change into its other.

The Original Man

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IT IS LIKE A FISH CONCEALED IN THE WATER WHICH IT CAN STIR INTO RIPPLES THROUGH

WHICH TO SKIM. VIRTUOUS ONES, THE MOVING AND UNMOVING ARE TWO KINDS OF

STATES, BUT THE MAN OF TAO CAN MAKE USE OF BOTH THE MOVING AND THE UNMOVING

STATES.

The movement and the non-movement are both in your hands. You are the watcher, neither the moving nor the unmoving.

You simply are.

You have never moved, so the question of unmoving does not arise. The question of movement or no movement is irrelevant to your witnessing consciousness.

Your witnessing consciousness is just existential. It is here. And if your meditation does not bring you to this state of watchfulness, it is a false meditation. If it brings you to any god, you are befooling yourself, you are dreaming. If it brings you to Jesus Christ, then... Jesus Christ!

Rinzai is saying if you meet Jesus Christ, give him another cross – immediately! ”That is your work, what else are you all doing here?” Even Buddha is not spared – and they are all disciples of Buddha.

If you meet the Buddha on the way, cut his head immediately!

Nothing is more important than your own internal watchfulness. That is the very stuff the universe is made of.

Basho wrote:

A WINTRY GUST

DISAPPEARS AMID THE BAMBOOS

AND SUBSIDES TO A CALM.

What is our so-called life? ”A wintry gust disappears amid the bamboos and subsides to a calm.” Just a little drama, just a little playfulness and you are gone.

Our so-called life is so momentary that one should not get attached to it. Its only function – only proper function – can be to find the immortal. Hidden behind every moment is the eternal. But you can go on moving on the surface, never going deeper into your consciousness. You will move for millions of lives on the surface like ripples. It is sheer wastage of an immense awareness that can open all the doors of your originality, of your creativity, of your beauty, of your joy. Each moment becomes such a dancing moment.

Another Zen poet wrote:

WHERE THE INTERPLAY OF ”IS” AND

”IS NOT” IS FIXED,

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NOT EVEN THE SAGES CAN KNOW.

There you are – not in terms of ”is” and ”is not,” in no duality.

All duality can be watched. That which can be watched, you are not. You are always the watcher.

And remember: you cannot watch the watcher. That is absolutely impossible. If you watch the watcher, then one is just mind – which you are calling the watcher – and the other is the real watcher.

But the real watcher is your ultimate. You cannot go beyond it, it is the boundary of existence.

WHERE THE INTERPLAY OF ”IS” AND

”IS NOT” IS FIXED,

NOT EVEN THE SAGES CAN KNOW.

Now there is nothing to know. Watching silently, everything disappears. An immense silence opens its doors. There is nothing to know. Knowledge becomes absolutely futile. You, for the first time, come home. This is ultimate rest.

Question 1

Anando has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

I THOUGHT ENLIGHTENMENT WAS THE END OF ALL PROBLEMS. AFTER LAST NIGHT I REALIZED IT COULD BE THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ONE: HOW TO AVOID BECOMING A LUKEWARM BODHISATTVA?

Anando, enlightenment is the end of all problems. But if you cling to enlightenment, then you create a problem. Experience it and drop it. Don’t carry it. You have experienced it, you have become it; now there is no need even to think about it.

Do you think in my silent nights and days I have ever thought that I’m enlightened? I don’t remember, even for a single moment. It is just like you are a man – do you remember in twenty-four hours sometimes that you are a man and not a lion or a parrot or a rat? Neither do parrots think about it.

Once you are enlightened, what does it mean to be enlightened? It simply means all problems are dissolved.

But you can make a problem. Man has the capacity to make a problem where there is no problem at all.

It is just old habit – you can start thinking, is this true enlightenment or not? Is this lukewarm enlightenment or a hot potato?

Anando, even if you want to become a lukewarm bodhisattva you cannot – you are a hot potato. You may not know it but everybody else knows it – that this Anando is a hot-potato buddha.

The Original Man

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Satisfied?

Now everybody will taste you. And just feel whether she is really a hot potato! Don’t take my word, experience it.

There is an even bigger hot potato, Avirbhava. She is taking a suntan somewhere in Singapore just to become more hot. Within two or three days you will hear her. She is bringing a whole load of old gods... forty she has already collected. Anando is her associate director. You can call the museum the Museum of Gods, or you can call it the Museum of the Hot Potatoes – they are synonymous.

Olga Kowalski gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom. She has forgotten her husband’s warning about sitting on the newly-painted toilet seat. She sits down and makes herself comfortable. But half an hour later, when Olga tries to get up, she is stuck to the seat.

Kowalski comes home late and finds Olga freaking out in the bathroom. He manages to unscrew the seat from the toilet and then phones for the fire department. While the fire truck is on its way, Kowalski helps Olga into the bed, and then covers her ass with his ten-gallon cowboy hat.

Just then, Fire Chief Muldoon and his crew burst into the bedroom carrying hoses. Muldoon drops his axe and goes over to examine the situation carefully. After a few moments he pulls Kowalski aside and whispers to him, ”We can save your wife, but I’m afraid the cowboy has had it!” Big Leroy is coming home from work one day, when he stops in the fish market and buys himself an eel for his dinner. He slips it into his coat pocket and goes into the Crazy Crocodile Pub for a drink.

Some hours and drinks later, Leroy reels out of the pub and stumbles home. When he gets there, he wobbles into the bathroom to relieve himself.

Swaying backwards and forwards, Leroy fumbles in his pants and pulls out what he thinks is his prick. He feels a warm trickle running down his leg, and looks down with wide-eyed disbelief.

”I knew you was big,” mutters Leroy, ”and I knew you was black. But I sure did not know you had such beautiful blue eyes!”

Bernie Bush, the ace political reporter for the American Righteous News, is having a day off with his family at the zoo. They are walking by the lions’ cage, when Bernie notices a young boy reaching his hands through the bars to pet one of the lions.

Another huge lion suddenly leaps forward with a tremendous roar, but at the last second, the boy is swept to safety by a man in the crowd.

Spotting a sensational story, Bernie approaches the man and says, ”Excuse me, sir, but that was an incredible display of instant courage. I want to write a story about you for my newspaper. Tell me, where do you get such courage?”

”Simple,” Swami Deva Coconut said, ”I’m a disciple of Osho Rajneesh.” The Original Man

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”What?” shouts the right-wing reporter, turning and walking away, ”This will make a real story for sure!”

The following day, the headline of the American Righteous News reads: ”Rajneesh Disciple Snatches Lunch From Hungry African Immigrant!”

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent, close your eyes.

Feel your body to be frozen...

Gather your life energy to the very center of your being. The more concentrated is the life energy...

it suddenly bursts into a flame. This flame burns everything that is false in you and brings back the original man – the way nature intended you to be, not the way you have been nurtured to be.

The original man is the buddha.

Not to be a hypocrite is the only discipline.

Just drop everything false. And the deeper you go, the false starts dropping on its own accord. It is an exploration of tremendous meaning.

If you can find your original man, you have found everything that this existence contains – all the splendor, all the glory, all the ceremony, all the joy.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax. Let the body be there, let the mind be there, and you are simply the watcher. You have nothing to do with the body or the mind.

Just be clear that you don’t get identified with the body-mind system. You remain a pure watcher, unconcerned.

This brings you to the very center of your life, and to the very center of the universe too.

Drink it deeply – the experience – so that it remains all the day long with you, running like an undercurrent.

The Original Man

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For this moment you are a buddha. I want you to be a twenty-four-hour buddha, no holiday.

To be your original being is the greatest dignity that the universe can confer on you. It is nothing to do with the society, nothing to do with any religion, nothing to do with any philosophy. It is pure existence conferring on you all the joys, all the flowers, all the stars.

The whole universe becomes your home.

This is the dance which shows the fulfillment of meditation.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back all the buddhas, carrying your experience with you. Sit down slowly, silently, gracefully, remembering the place where you have been.

Buddhahood is not an achievement, it is only a remembrance.

You are a buddha whether you know it or not.

In this peace, in this silence, how beautiful becomes the whole universe...

Okay, Anando?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the assembly of ten thousand buddhas?

Yes!

The Original Man

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CHAPTER 3

Look in and find it

18 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

SHOITSU SAID TO CHIMOKU:

SINCE THE BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS, THERE HAVE BEEN THREE GENERAL LEVELS

OF DEALING WITH PEOPLE. ON THE UPPERMOST LEVEL THERE ARE NO FURTHER

TECHNIQUES, NO MEANING OF PRINCIPLE; VERBAL UNDERSTANDING IS IMPOSSIBLE. IF

YOU TAKE IT UP DIRECTLY AT THIS, THEN THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE FROM ”THE CYPRESS

IN THE GARDEN,” ”THREE POUNDS OF HEMP,” ”SWALLOW THE WATER OF THE WEST RIVER

IN ONE GULP.”

ON THE SECOND LEVEL, IT IS JUST A MATTER OF BRINGING OUT A QUESTION, GOING

ALONG TO BREAK THROUGH; THIS IS LIKE RINZAI QUESTIONING OBAKU AND GETTING

HIT SIXTY TIMES.

ON THE THIRD LEVEL WE ENTER THE MUD AND WATER, SETTING DOWN FOOTNOTES, BLINDING PEOPLE’S EYES, DESTROYING THE LINEAGE OF THE BUDDHA.

BUT A TRUE, PATCH-ROBED ONE MUST SEARCH OUT AND INVESTIGATE THE LIVING WORD, NOT GO FOR THE DEAD WORD. EMINENT CHIMOKU, YOU ARE PURE AND TRUE. IF YOU

CAN ATTAIN REALIZATION AT THE LIVING WORD, YOU CAN BE TEACHER OF BUDDHAS AND

PATRIARCHS. NOT BEGRUDGING MY FAMILY WAY, I HAVE SHOWN YOU THREE LEVELS OF

DEVICE.

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Anando, what Shoitsu is saying to Chimoku is of tremendous importance for you to understand, for everyone who is on the way. Shoitsu said:

SINCE THE BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS, THERE HAVE BEEN THREE GENERAL LEVELS

OF DEALING WITH PEOPLE. ON THE UPPERMOST LEVEL THERE ARE NO FURTHER

TECHNIQUES, NO MEANING OF PRINCIPLE; VERBAL UNDERSTANDING IS IMPOSSIBLE.

That’s the best and the most perfect way – a simple transmission from the master to the disciple; nobody knows about it, nobody sees it. It is simply energy moving from one fire to another possibility of fire, and making the hidden, possible fire in the disciple awakened.

This first principle is really the only important principle, but it needs tremendous trust on the part of the disciple – an opening of the whole heart, coming as close to the master as possible so his flame can reach your heart and can start another flame within you, can awaken you to your buddhahood.

Shoitsu is right that in this category, the uppermost category, there are no further techniques. It is not a question of technique, it is a question of love, of trust. Trust is not a technique, love is not a technique. It is not something that you use, that you do, it is something that happens to you.

Suddenly you see the master and your heart starts dancing and rejoicing, knowing that you have found. There is no doubt in it, no question in it; it is just like falling in love. You can define trust as rising in love because falling in love is going down – it is biological. Rising in love is going upwards

– it is your spiritual principle.

NO MEANING OF PRINCIPLE, no teaching; VERBAL UNDERSTANDING IS IMPOSSIBLE. The phenomenon is so great – the transmission of the lamp from heart to heart, from being to being –

that no word is big enough to contain it or even to indicate towards it. Nothing is said but something tremendously important happens; it is spontaneous.

The best disciple receives the light without words – just by opening himself, holding nothing back.

IF YOU TAKE IT UP DIRECTLY AT THIS, THEN THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE FROM ”THE

CYPRESS IN THE GARDEN,” ”THREE POUNDS OF HEMP,” ”SWALLOW THE WATER OF THE

WEST RIVER IN ONE GULP.”

These are traditional answers given by different masters when they were asked, ”What is the buddha?” And it is absolutely impossible for people who are not acquainted with the Zen tradition to understand it. If you ask a master, ”What is the buddha?” he points you to the cypress tree in the garden and says, ”That is the buddha.” Now it is so illogical, apparently irrational... or he says,

”Three pounds of hemp – that is the buddha.”

In this category, any kind of answer is possible, because in this category it is understood that the whole cosmos is the buddha. So anything belonging to the cosmos – whether it is a cypress tree, or a rose bush, or a lotus flower, it does not matter. Every stone on the path is nothing else but a buddha, because the buddha becomes now the very fabric of the whole existence.

The second category needs techniques. This second category needs methods and devices for the simple reason that the disciple is not able to open on his own. The master has to make artificial, The Original Man

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arbitrary arrangements. And because it is helpful, Buddha has defined it: ”Whatever is helpful on the path is right. It does not matter whether it is a lie or a truth, the consequence matters.” A house is on fire, small children are inside playing. A great crowd gathers around shouting to the children, ”Come out, the house is on fire!”

But they don’t listen. They are so involved in their game, and they don’t bother – they don’t know.

What does it mean? The house is on fire, so let it be. They don’t see the implication that they will be burned.

Then their father comes from his shop. He sees the crowd which gathers around him shouting,

”Somehow save the children! They don’t listen at all, they don’t look at all. They are so involved in their games and the fire has almost reached to every nook and corner of the house. Soon they will be burned.”

The father shouted from a small window which was not yet touched by the fire, ”What are you doing?

I have brought you all the toys you had asked for” – and they all came to the window.

The father said, ”Jump out! All the toys are in my bag!” They jumped out and then he said, ”You have to forgive me, I had to lie to bring you out. I forgot to bring your toys, but tomorrow, certainly I will bring you all those toys.” And then they could see. He said, ”This fire is burning the house – it would have burned you also. I had to lie!”

It is not a question of always being truthful. At least a master is allowed to use even a lie as a device.

All devices are lies.

This second category is important in the sense that it is through this second category that most of the buddhas have realized their essence.

The first category is very rare, very unique. It is not in your hands. The second category has created many more buddhas than the first, because in the second category the master is trying to help you to drop your differences in strange ways. Nobody in the world has used devices as Zen has.

Now, hitting a disciple sixty times... Certainly I cannot do it – just because of the counting...! Who is going to count up to sixty? But the master must have had great compassion to count up to sixty.

But why is he beating the disciple? He is not beating the disciple, he is beating the disciple’s ego, bringing him to his senses: ”Here, personality and ego won’t do.” And these hits are not received by everybody; they are received by only the great disciples with great gratitude.

It is certainly because of compassion that the master comes to the point of hitting the disciple –

because he is so close. Just a little push and the whole sky will open up.

He had to hit sixty times because the disciple must have been very stubborn. He went on getting hit after hit but remained closed. And I think the master would not have stopped at sixty. At sixty, by chance, the disciple must have decided, ”Now it is better to open. Why torture this old man?” The Original Man

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He relaxed and opened, and the hitting stopped.

The hitting is just a device. It is neutral; it has nothing to do with truth or untruth.

And this kind of device is used only for the most prominent disciples. Other disciples feel jealous.

They say, ”Somebody got sixty hits – so much love. The master will not leave him closed – whatever happens.”

And there are a thousand and one devices. Every master creates his own devices. The only question is to somehow throw ice-cold water in your eyes so that you open your eyes. You may be angry, you may be annoyed: ”You are disturbing my morning sleep!” But you have asked for it. The day you asked for initiation, you have agreed that whatever the master wants to do is okay to bring you closer to yourself.

This category is secondary, but as far as the number of buddhas is concerned, this category is more important. More people have become buddhas because of the second category.

ON THE SECOND LEVEL, IT IS JUST A MATTER OF BRINGING OUT A QUESTION, GOING

ALONG TO BREAK THROUGH; THIS IS LIKE RINZAI QUESTIONING OBAKU AND GETTING

HIT SIXTY TIMES.

Western psychology is aware of a certain state of mind they call ”breakdown.” When a person is too tense, so that he cannot hold himself together, then it is a breakdown. He goes insane. He cannot keep his personality, his mask, anymore. The burden is so much that he is dying under it. He tries hards, but there is no way – the tension goes on growing. The more he tries to control himself, to keep himself in control, the more difficult it becomes. Sooner or later a breakdown is absolutely inevitable.

But Western psychology does not know anything about the ”breakthrough.” Breakdown is leading you towards insanity, and breakthrough is leading you to an open, transcendental sky. Breakdown is losing your mind and becoming just a vegetable. Breakthrough is also losing your mind but gaining something far bigger, far greater – a pure consciousness. Breakdown is simply losing your mind.

The small consciousness that you had – even that is gone; now you are just a vegetable. You may be a cabbage, or a cauliflower, because those who know, say there are two categories of vegetables, cabbage and cauliflower. Cauliflower is with a college education; cabbage is just a villager with no education at all.

But it does not matter whether the madman is educated or uneducated. Mostly the educated man goes mad. The uneducated never has too many tensions. He never worries about any war, he never worries about nuclear missiles. He is not concerned about all these things; he is a simple man. It is impossible for him to be mad.

But the educated man... as he becomes more educated, he becomes more aware of the tremendous problems that humanity is facing. He’s also a part of it. Whatever is going to happen he will also be in it. His tensions increase. Ordinary men will not understand his tensions because the ordinary man’s comprehension does not include the problems of tremendous significance, problems such that they can even destroy all life in existence. But breakdown, whether educated or uneducated, leaves behind just an insane being.

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Breakthrough is going beyond mind, not below mind. Breakthrough brings you to the open sky of your being. It also leaves the mind behind, but it becomes the master of the mind. The master is awake now – is at home. And the servant who has been there taking care of the home has even forgotten about the master, because it has been thousands of years since the master has been at home. The servant has become the master – obviously.

All the devices of Zen are to wake up the sleeping master. And as the master wakes up, the servant immediately surrenders. The servant immediately becomes a very efficient mechanism. It is a beautiful mechanism, but as a servant only, not as a master. As a master, it is the most dangerous thing. As a master, it will lead you into dreams, fantasies, imaginations which are never fulfilled. And finally, there is nothing but emptiness in your hands, utter frustration.

The awakening of the master is the breakthrough. Mind is in its place now, as a servant. When the master wants, it functions; when the master does not want, it remains silent and quiet.

ON THE THIRD LEVEL WE ENTER THE MUD AND WATER, SETTING DOWN FOOTNOTES, BLINDING PEOPLE’S EYES, DESTROYING THE LINEAGE OF THE BUDDHA.

On the third level is the student. On the second level was the disciple. On the first level was the devotee. The lowest level is to study. To make an effort through words, scriptures and heritage to understand what is within you, is so foolish. It is as foolish as when you stop a man on the road and ask him, ”Please can you tell me who I am?”

The man will shrug his shoulders and say, ”If you don’t know yourself, how do you suppose I will know? The fact is, I don’t even know who I am. I’m in the same boat – as ignorant as you are.” Searching in the scriptures for the answer that will give you the ultimate freedom, that will make you part of the cosmic whole, that will give you the dignity of a buddha, the awakened, the enlightened, is absolutely a hindrance.

Thousands of people work on the third level because it is the easiest to read the sutras, to cram the holy scriptures. But you are still as ignorant as you were before. Now you are just decorated with beautiful words. Your ignorance is now deeper than it was before. Before, your ignorance was not deep, it was just on the surface – a little hit and your waking would have happened. But as knowledge becomes thicker and thicker and thicker, as more and more layers of knowledge are added, you are farther and farther away from yourself.

On the path, the third category of student means to enter the mud and water, setting down footnotes, blinding people’s eyes: destroying the lineage of the Buddha.

Buddha’s basic contribution to the world is to say that you are a buddha, don’t look anywhere else.

Don’t search anywhere else, don’t go to any holy place – just go in.

BUT A TRUE, PATCH-ROBED ONE MUST SEARCH OUT AND INVESTIGATE THE LIVING WORD, NOT GO FOR THE DEAD WORD.

The living word is only possible with a living master. So the real search for truth is ninety-nine point nine percent the search for a living master. Point one percent I’m leaving for that rare breed in the first category where it happens spontaneously.

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In the second category, every effort is made to allow the student to open up. In the third category, the student simply becomes more and more knowledgeable. But to be knowledgeable is not to be a knower. To carry a load of scriptures will not make a donkey into a rabbi, or a pope, or a shankaracharya. These are dead words. Where can you find the living word?

A TRUE, PATCH-ROBED ONE MUST SEARCH OUT AND INVESTIGATE THE LIVING WORD, NOT GO FOR THE DEAD WORD. The word is living only in the energy field of a master. When you listen to a master, it is not only the word that you listen to. By the side of the word also enters the wordless message. The words simply function as a boat. Hidden in the boat is the real message. It is not in the meaning of the word. The word is used only as an arrow; it hits your heart. Don’t look for its meaning in the dictionary. Look within your heart, whether it has reached deep and touched your being.

The living word means to be with a living master. Reduced to its minimum, the search for truth is the search for the master. But it is a difficult search, because there are so many teachers pretending to be masters. In the dictionaries they have become almost synonymous – teacher and master. They are as different as day and night. The teacher only carries the dead word. Once the word may have been a living word, once it may have had breath, once it may have had a heart of its own. But once the master is dead, the word becomes a footnote. It loses all life; it is just a photograph.

I have told you...

Once a beautiful woman, an old friend of Picasso, came to see him after a few years. Picasso was sitting in a room where a big photograph of him was hanging on the wall. The woman looked at the photograph and said, ”Very beautiful. Is it you? Because I have not seen you for many years, and you have changed so much.”

Picasso said, ”This picture is certainly not me, because if it were me, it would have kissed you! Just come near, so that I can show you the real Picasso.” The dead word cannot create a fire in you. It is in the master’s presence that the ordinary word takes on an imminent, significant splendor – it suddenly becomes breathing.

EMINENT CHIMOKU, YOU ARE PURE AND TRUE. IF YOU CAN ATTAIN REALIZATION AT THE

LIVING WORD, YOU CAN BE TEACHER OF BUDDHAS AND PATRIARCHS. NOT BEGRUDGING

MY FAMILY WAY, I HAVE SHOWN YOU THREE LEVELS OF DEVICE.

Chimoku has come to Shoitsu to know how to discover himself. Shoitsu belongs to the first category.

It is very rare for the first category of people even to talk about any other category, but seeing in Chimoku the possibility that he’s so close, Shoitsu decided that it would be better to describe all the categories to him. The third-rate quality certainly has to be avoided. You don’t have to be a student, a scholar – that is a hindrance. The second category is a lower category, but you can still become a buddha. And who cares, when you become a buddha, by what ladder you have reached?

Once a buddha, you are a buddha.

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The difference is only that someone needs a ladder, and someone simply jumps. Somebody needs to go step by step... very calculative, thinking himself very clever and intelligent.

The first category belongs to the people who have a lion’s heart. They don’t calculate – they simply enjoy taking risks. And there cannot be anything more risky than to be close to a living master.

He’s going to burn you as you are and bring out a totally new being in you, with which you were not acquainted, but which was your real soul, your real existence. It is a great risk. Whatever you know about yourself will be burned, and only whatever you don’t know about yourself will remain in its purity. Chimoku seems to be a man who may take the jump and belong to the first category. If not, then at least the second category is open for him.

These categories are not hierarchical. Remember, it is not that the first category of buddha is higher than the second category of buddha. The difference is only in their jumps. The first is the quantum leap; the second has a ladder. But once you are a buddha, by which path you have reached does not matter. Buddhahood has no hierarchy. No buddha is more buddha than anybody else.

Chimoku seems to be a very potential candidate for buddhahood. That’s why Shoitsu says to him,

”Not begrudging my family way...” He’s talking about his family of lions, who have become buddhas without any devices – even without a master.

I am showing you three levels of device: first, avoid, absolutely avoid the lowest one. The second is good: you can follow a master, trust a master; let him destroy you so your authentic reality starts flowering. Unless a seed dies in the soil, the plant will never come. And the roses are far away

– miles away. The seed needs to be courageous enough to be destroyed, to be swallowed by the earth.

So in the second category you have to find a master. But if you are really a lion – as I see you –

you can take the jump without finding a master. The question is not outside you; you have to find your inner space. No device is needed, but unfortunately, people won’t listen; they have to be given something to do. They are so habituated to doing, that to tell them not to do anything...

SITTING SILENTLY BY THE ANCIENT POND

A FROG JUMPS IN.

A LITTLE SOUND – AND GREAT SILENCE....

They will say, ”It is all okay in poetry, but what happened about my buddhahood. How am I going to get it?”

It is not a question of getting it – you have it!

It is a well-known fact that sometimes people who use glasses for reading become so accustomed to them, that even without the glasses they feel that the glasses are there. And sometimes, because of this long familiarity, they have the glasses on while they are looking for them.

And if you ask them, ”What are you looking for?” they will say that they are looking for their reading glasses. And you have to tell them, ”Those reading glasses are sitting on your nose!” Only then will they feel them, because the glasses had become almost a part of their body.

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For whom are you looking? – you are it. A man of deep courage simply looks in and finds it. No need of any scripture, no need of any device, no need of any master....

It is very fortunate to find a man like Shoitsu, who said to Chimoku, the seeker, ”my family way.” By

”family” he is referring to all the buddhas who have become buddhas without any master, without any device, without any technique, any scripture. ”Not bothering about it, seeing the flame is ready to burst open in you, I tell you about these three categories.” The student has to be avoided: either be a disciple or be a devotee. The devotee is the highest form as far as reaching to your innermost blossoming is concerned. The devotee means a lover, a man who trusts – he is ready to do anything.

I am reminded of Bodhidharma, who introduced Zen into China.... He sat for nine years facing the wall in a small temple on the hills. Many people came because his fame had reached all over China. He was, at that moment, perhaps the greatest living master. Even the emperor had come to receive him. He wanted Bodhidharma to come to the palace and teach the people. But he did not understand that Bodhidharma’s family is not that of teachers. And the emperor had no idea that there are categories of seekers.

Some stop at being students; they will have to go through the round of birth and death many more times yet. The second category of disciple is very difficult for the emperor – to touch the feet of the master, to open a little bit – because he cannot think that somebody else is higher than him. Even touching the feet is difficult – he knows he is the emperor of the biggest empire. This poor fellow –

and Bodhidharma was a very strange master.

From the very first moment he entered China, the emperor had come to receive him on the border.

It is a rare thing that an emperor should come to receive a beggar, and the beggar behaved in such a strange way that the emperor could not swallow it. He could not understand – and if it were somebody else in Bodhidharma’s place, the king would have cut his head immediately, because he was behaving in such an unmannerly way.

In the first place he came with one shoe on his head and one shoe on his foot. The emperor tried to avoid – being a gentleman, well cultured – seeing that shoe. But for how long? Again and again his eyes would go to Bodhidharma’s head, thinking, ”This man I have come to receive, and he seems to be absolutely mad.”

But he thought it was better not to talk about the shoe: ”It is his business. I should talk about something else.” He had created hundreds of temples, made thousands of buddha statues. He had used the whole empire’s treasures. One thousand scholars were continuously translating Buddha’s words from Pali into Chinese, and ten thousand Buddhist monks were fed by the imperial treasury.

So he had done much to make China Buddhist. Obviously, he thought that he would be appreciated, so he said, ”I have done these things. What do you think – what will be the virtue attained out of all this?”

Bodhidharma said, ”Virtue? You idiot!” – in front of the whole court, because the court had come with the emperor. There was silence. He said, ”You will go directly to hell!” The emperor could not understand. He said, ”I don’t see why you are so angry.” The Original Man

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Bodhidharma replied, ”You are destroying a living word, and you are feeding these scholars who have nothing to contribute to the consciousness of the people. Still you have the nerve to ask if you are doing great virtue? You will suffer in hellfire.” The emperor thought, ”How to get out of this man’s trap? I have entered in a lion’s den and now it is very difficult to get out...” So he asked, ”If you say this... Up to now all the Buddhist monks have told me that my virtues are so great that paradise is certain. Who are you to say that I will go to hell?” Bodhidharma said, ”I don’t know. It is not a question of knowing. I am a man of NOT-KNOWING.” The emperor could not understand, but his eyes were continuously caught by the shoe on Bodhidharma’s head. Before retiring he asked, ”What is the purpose of one shoe on the head and one shoe on the foot?”

Bodhidharma said, ”You are the purpose. I wanted to see whether you are a curious child or a mature man. A mature man will not bother where my shoes are. Are you a shoemaker? Why are you concerned with my shoes? It is my head, and my shoe.” The emperor thought, ”This is impossible!” He went back, and Bodhidharma never crossed the Chinese boundary. He remained in the hills just outside China’s boundary.

Sitting in a temple, facing the wall for nine years, he declared, ”To talk to people who don’t understand is just like talking to a wall. But talking to a wall at least one has a consolation that it is a wall. When you are talking to people and you see that they are functioning like a wall, one feels to cut their heads! I will turn my face only when I see that somebody has come who is worthy of listening to the living word.”

Nine years is a long time – and what a man! He went on sitting, and finally one morning the man came. He said, ”Listen, I think I am the person you are waiting for.” As a proof he cut off one of his hands with his sword, threw the hand into the lap of Bodhidharma and said, ”Turn towards me; otherwise I will cut off my head and you will be responsible for it!” Bodhidharma turned immediately. He said, ”This is enough. This is enough proof that you are as crazy as I want! Sit down. There is no need to cut off your head – we have to use it; you are going to be my successor.”

A man who cuts his hand just to give proof of his sincere search... and there was no doubt in Bodhidharma’s mind that if he did not turn he would have cut his head. Unnecessarily, he would be burdened with the responsibility of killing a man, and such a beautiful man, so courageous. And certainly the man was Bodhidharma’s successor.

But what happened between these two, nobody knows. Not a single word – Bodhidharma just turned towards him, told him to sit down, looked into his eyes... and they both sat down. The snow was falling and there was an immense silence all around. It is known that for three years the successor remained, and then Bodhidharma said, ”It is time for me to go back to my home.” But nothing is known of what transpired between these two fellows. They were just sitting silently.

First Bodhidharma was sitting alone looking at the wall; then they were both sitting looking at the The Original Man

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mountains, at the trees – but in utter silence. Not a single question was asked, and not a single answer was given. But something must have transpired, otherwise Bodhidharma would not have chosen him as his disciple.

The day of his leaving – by that time many more disciples had joined Bodhidharma, because now he was not sitting facing towards the wall – Bodhidharma called four disciples to stand up so that he could choose his successor. Everybody looked at each other. He was a very dangerous fellow, one never knew what he would do. Still, the four men came out and he asked the first man, ”What is the essence of Zen?”

The man said, ”Very clearly, the essence of Zen is to know yourself.” Perfectly right as far as any examination is concerned, but not right enough for Bodhidharma. He said, ”It is good, you have my skin. Just go there and sit down.” The second one said, ”Silence, absolute silence is the essence of Zen.” Bodhidharma said, ”A little better. You have my bones. Just sit down there.” The third man said, ”Nothingness is the essence of Zen.” Bodhidharma said, ”Good. But still not up to my standard. You have my flesh. Just go there and sit down.”

He turned to the fourth one, and this was the man with one hand, and he asked him, ”What is the essence of Zen?”

That man, with tears in his eyes, fell to the feet of Bodhidharma, and did not say anything.

Bodhidharma said to all of his disciples, ”This is the man I choose as my successor, because even to say nothing is to say something. Just tears of gratitude and not a single word, only a gesture of deep gratitude. This man has my very heart – I am not going without leaving something of myself behind.”

In Zen the best, the very best, happens only spontaneously.

A haiku runs:

THE MOUTH DESIRES TO SPEAK,

BUT THE WORDS DISAPPEAR;

THE HEART DESIRES TO ASSOCIATE ITSELF,

BUT THE THOUGHTS FADE AWAY.

He is describing exactly the state of meditation. I will repeat so that you remember what meditation is:

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THE MOUTH DESIRES TO SPEAK,

BUT THE WORDS DISAPPEAR;

THE HEART DESIRES TO ASSOCIATE ITSELF,

BUT THE THOUGHTS FADE AWAY.

And when nothing remains, you are.

In this very nothingness is your being.

Shinsho’s haiku:

DOES ONE REALLY HAVE TO FRET

ABOUT ENLIGHTENMENT?

NO MATTER WHAT ROAD I TRAVEL,

I’M GOING HOME.

These are the lions who don’t care even about enlightenment. He is saying: ”Does one really have to fret about enlightenment?” – talk about it, discuss it, read about it, listen to it...?

”No matter what road I travel...” It may be a long road or a short road, it may take millions of lives or just a single moment – one thing is certain, ”I’m going home.” A man with this certainty will reach to his home this very moment. He will become enlightened but will not bother to talk about it. This type of enlightened person is called an arhata. He has known, but he keeps quiet; he is very secretive.

The man who knows and tries to spread the fire, is known as a bodhisattva. The arhata seems to be a little hard. His understanding is: ”Just as I have found my enlightenment, so everybody should find their own enlightenment. Why should I interfere into anybody’s sleep?” He has a point. His understanding is that this goes against compassion. Somebody is sleeping and snoring, having beautiful dreams, and you unnecessarily push and pull the man. You wake him and tell him, ”Become enlightened, become awake. All that you are seeing is only a dream. Don’t be lost in dreams.” But certainly it is a kind of interference, poking your nose into somebody’s affairs. The arhata has a point but it looks a little hard.

The bodhisattva also has his point. His point is: when I have found – I know everybody has it, just a little recognition is needed – if a little push can help, then not to push is cruel. If a little device can help the man to wake from his dreams and sleep, then not to create that device looks very uncompassionate.

But my feeling is that people are unique in their ultimate enlightenment too. I will not say anything against the arhata because that is his uniqueness. It is his way of seeing things, not to interfere.

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Interference is taking away the freedom of somebody else. It may be well intentioned but you are disturbing somebody’s sleep.

I will not say anything against the bodhisattva. He is also right in his own way, that when you know and don’t share it, you are very hard-hearted. When you know and you see people are stumbling, falling in their blindness, and just a small effort on your side will open their eyes, it is not compassionate not to do anything. Only a small effort is needed. Fire can spread and thousands of sleeping buddhas can become awake, suddenly awake, after centuries of sleep. Both are right, both are different, both are unique.

Question 1

Anando has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

SHOITSU HAD THREE LEVELS OF DEVICE, BUT I SUSPECT YOU HAVE A LOT MORE THAN

THAT UP YOUR ABUNDANT SLEEVE. DO WE HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL WE TOO, ARE PURE AND

TRUE, BEFORE YOU WILL REVEAL YOUR DEVICES TO US?

Anando, each and every moment I am devoting to you. My work was long ago finished as far as I am concerned. I am living for you.

Each moment I am creating devices for you. My hope is to spread the fire around the world. Up to now the greatest buddhas have remained confined to very small places. For example Gautam Buddha, the greatest, remained confined to a small state, Bihar; he never went out of Bihar. Perhaps I am the only one who is concerned with the whole world.

I would like, in every country, hundreds of buddhas. And it is so simple that it can be done – just a little support from your side, Anando. It cannot be done against you. It can be done only if you are open, available, waiting for it – then it is going to happen.

This time the transmission of the lamp is going to happen to millions of people.

Those old buddhas had a very small company; my company is worldwide. I don’t belong to any nation, to any religion, and I don’t want you to belong to any nation or any religion. I want you to belong to the whole universe and spread the fire!

Carry whatever experience you gain here, because I cannot move. I wanted to move around the world for the remainder of my life, but every country believes that I am a dangerous man. I will not say that they are wrong – I am a dangerous man. But it does not matter whether I go anywhere or not, I can remain here in my room, and those who have the potential of becoming buddhas will reach me from every nook and corner of the world. They will carry the fire around the world, spreading it.

This time is a very ripe time.

Either the buddhas are going to win or the ugly politicians are going to destroy the whole earth, the whole of life. The whole contribution of all the poets, painters, sculptors, dancers, mystics, they The Original Man

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are ready to destroy at any moment. Only one thing can prevent them from destroying the world, and that is spreading meditation, silence, love, joy, dance; making the whole life a celebration, a continuous ongoing festival.

That is the meaning of your name, Anando; it means bliss. And since yesterday your name has gained a new title.

For centuries you will be remembered as, Anando: The Hot Potato Buddha...!

Swami Bharti Barfi is sitting in Bodhidharma Tea Garden with Swami Beyondananda.

”Hey, man!” says Barfi. ”Your girlfriend... wow! Every day I see her with a different guy!”

”Really?” replies Beyondananda. ”It can’t be true.”

”Come with me,” says Barfi, and the two friends go to the smoking temple.

There is Beyondananda’s girlfriend, Ma Mango Milkshake, wrapped around another man.

”See!” says Barfi. ”Aren’t you going to go over there and primally encounter that guy to show him what you learned in your group?”

”Well,” sighs Beyondananda. ”Let’s meditate for a few minutes until she grabs someone more skinny!”

Grandma Swinger goes to see Doctor Gasbag for a medical checkup.

”Mrs. Swinger,” says Gasbag, ”you are sixty-five years old. Your health is perfect, but I have one question for you. Your record here shows you as Mrs. Brooks, Mrs. Goldstein, Mrs. Smith and Mrs.

Jones. You have been married four times. But I see you are still a virgin. I don’t get it!”

”Oh,” says Grandma, ”it is easy. My first husband was a poet, so he only dreamed about it. Then I married a musician – he only played with it. Then I married a weather forecaster – he always missed it. And finally, I married a plumber. I’ve called him twenty times already, but he never shows up!” Harvey Hornbee owns the Weird Wild Animals pet shop. His store is famous for strange creatures of all kinds – eccentric pets for exotic people.

One afternoon, luscious Miss Willing walks in and approaches Harvey.

”Hello,” she says, seductively. ”I’m looking for a pet that will keep me from feeling lonely at night.”

”Well,” Harvey splutters, eyeing the woman up and down, ”I’ve got just what you want. Follow me.” He leads Miss Willing to a black curtain. Throwing it open, he reveals a huge, soft velvet pillow.

Sitting in the center of it is a very large and handsome frog, named Doobee-doo.

”This magnificent frog,” says Harvey, ”will make wild and passionate love to you.” The Original Man

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”Really?” replies Miss Willing, giggling over the frog. ”I can’t believe it!”

”Okay,” says Harvey, enthusiastically. ”Just undress, lay back on the pillow, and Doobee-doo will do the rest.”

The shop bell rings and Harvey goes out, drawing the curtain behind him.

Half an hour later, Harvey goes to check up on the amorous couple. He opens the curtain to see Miss Willing sprawled naked on the pillow, with a disappointed look on her face.

”What is the matter?” asks Harvey.

”That frog just sits there and looks at me!” she replies.

”Really?” says Harvey, shaking his head in disbelief. He picks up Doobee-doo and sits the frog on the side of the pillow.

”Okay, Frog! Pay attention!” exclaims Harvey, exposing his own machinery, ”It is the last time I’m going to show you how to do this!”

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent... close your eyes. Feel your body to be absolutely frozen, no movement. Gather all your life energy and consciousness deep inwards.

Find out the deepest point. The deeper you go within, the closer you are to yourself.

At the deepest point you are the buddha. Feel it as deeply as possible. It is your own territory –

nobody can enter here. It is absolutely your space, your universe. There is no need to fear.

With freedom, open yourself. This moment you are the eternal buddha, the luminous buddha, the ultimate principle of life and existence.

To make it more clear...

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax. Just feel the body lying there, the mind lying there and you are just a watcher. This way you will reach to the deepest and the innermost core of your being.

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Just be a witness.

Remember this space around the day, running like an undercurrent, and your whole lifestyle will start changing.

You will be surprised yourself. The things that you are saying, the gestures that you are making are so new, are so fresh.

You have found the original man.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, but come back with the original man throbbing in your heart, the buddha, not a memory but a living experience.

Sit down for a few moments just to recollect the experience, to drink it deeply. Be drowned in it. Let it sink into every fiber and cell of your life.

There is no other virtue in the world other than to be the original man. We call the original man the buddha because he is dropping sleep, and waking up. The word ‘buddha’ means the awakened one.

And everybody who can sleep is capable of being awake. Whatever you have done in your sleeping stage has been nothing but dream.

You may have been a saint or you may have been a sinner, it does not matter. Once you are awake you are just pure clean space.

Okay, Anando?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes!

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CHAPTER 4

The inner innocence

19 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

DOKAI SAID:

AS SOON AS I GET UP ON THE SEAT TO SPEAK, I AM ALREADY INVOLVED IN THE

DUSTS. IF I GO ON AND FREEZE MY EYES, IT WOULD JUST SHOW A FLAW. THE SPECIAL

TRANSMISSION IN A SINGLE STATEMENT IS TAKING IN A THIEF WHO RANSACKS YOUR

HOUSE. NOT LOSING THE FUNDAMENTAL SOURCE IS LIKE A FOX FOND OF ITS DEN.

THEREFORE TRUE THUSNESS, ORDINARY AND HOLY, IS ALL DREAM TALK; BUDDHAS AND

SENTIENT BEINGS ARE EXPRESSIONS OF ASSUMPTIONS.

WHEN YOU GET HERE TURN THE LIGHT AROUND TO SHINE BACK, LET GO YOUR HANDS

AND ACCEPT IT – EVEN THEN YOU STILL WILL NOT HAVE ESCAPED BEING LIKE A COLD

CICADA CLINGING TO A DEAD TREE, NOT TURNING HIS HEAD WHEN HIS CRYING ENDS.

DOKAI RAISED HIS STAFF AND CONCLUDED:

IF YOU CAN GET IT HERE, IT IS ALL SOMETHING SET UP BY THE BUDDHAS. EVEN IF

YOU CAN SPRING UP IN THE EAST AND DISAPPEAR IN THE WEST, OPEN OUT OR SHUT

AWAY FREELY, YOU STILL HAVEN’T EVEN DREAMED OF SEEING WHAT WAS BEFORE THE

BUDDHAS.

YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT THERE IS ONE MAN WHO DOESN’T GET ANYTHING FROM

OTHERS, DOES NOT ACCEPT ANY TEACHING OR COMMAND, AND DOES NOT FALL WITHIN

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THE SCOPE OF GRADE OR RANK. IF YOU KNOW THIS MAN, YOUR LIFE’S STUDY IS

COMPLETED.

HERE DOKAI PAUSED AND SUDDENLY CALLED OUT TO THE ASSEMBLY, SAYING, ”IF YOU

FREEZE YOUR EYES ANY MORE, DON’T BOTHER TO SEE ME.” Anando, the original man is the constant concern of Zen. In your innermost being no dust has gathered from outside, no thought is capable of reaching there. It is as pure and clean as ever. It never becomes old, it never becomes stale; its freshness is its nature.

But it is deep down hidden inside you. Many layers have been put upon it: layers of knowledge, layers of respectability, layers of morality; all kinds of honor, all kinds of belief systems. It has become a very thick wall, although it is only of words. And a courageous and intelligent man can cut the whole wall in the single blow of a sword. Otherwise it takes lives and lives, taking away one layer, then another layer. And while you are taking away layers, new layers are gathering. You have to clean your mirror every day; otherwise in twenty-four hours new dust will have gathered.

So enlightenment has to be in a single blow; otherwise it will take an infinity of time. You cannot go slow, you cannot postpone it. You have to take the leap this very moment, because the next is never certain. Roads turn, and friends who are together become enemies. That which was possible this moment may not be possible the next moment.

The whole world is a chaos and in a mess. It is not only now that it is in a chaos, it has always been in a chaos, because so many millions of unconscious human beings are creating all kinds of dreams, projections, expectations, frustrations. The whole air is heavy with the clouds of unfulfilled hopes, incomplete desires. Even failures in success: knowing that you have achieved the goal that you had determined, you are still as ignorant and empty, inside, as you were before.

They say in a proverb that nothing succeeds like success; it is only a half truth. I want to make it complete: nothing fails like success. And the second part is more important; otherwise kings would not renounce their kingdoms, Gautam Buddha would not have been born. There comes a moment when you are successful moneywise or powerwise, you are famous...

Rousseau has lamented in his autobiography that, ”When I was young the only desire in me was to become world famous.” One never thinks what you will do when you become world famous. One simply never asks these questions. One simply gets caught in a net: ”Everybody is trying to be successful and famous – I should be the first in the queue.” It is a long struggle and conflict.

Finally, Rousseau became a world-famous philosopher. But unfortunately in France in those days there was a tradition that if you tear off a piece of cloth from a world-famous man, that piece of cloth brings success to you. This became such a trouble that he could not go even for a morning walk. He would come home naked, with scratches all over, and crowds were preventing him from escaping.

He could not go to the railway station; he had to be escorted by the police. And even the police, in the end, would snatch sometimes...

He writes in his autobiography, ”When I was nobody I suffered, when I became somebody I suffered.

Suffering is there, whatever you do.”

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So one day one comes to know that one layer is finished, but there are other layers. Zen’s insistence that it should be in this moment, not to be postponed, has a very significant implication. It shows that if you cannot do it now, tomorrow is not going to be different, just a little more difficult, because within twenty-four hours more dust will have gathered. The sooner you do it the better.

And the reason for doing it is to find what nature has desired you to be: whether you are a seed of a lotus flower or a seed of something else. These layers don’t allow you even to be acquainted with your potentiality, your seed. Not only do they prevent, they actively take you astray. They create new goals which have nothing to do with your innermost being.

A great surgeon was celebrating his sixtieth birthday. He had trained hundreds of surgeons during his professorship in the university. They all had gathered and they were drinking and dancing, and then somebody noticed that the old surgeon was not there. So one of his friends went out to see –

perhaps he had gone out for some air. He was sitting, crying, underneath a tree.

The man said, ”Are you insane or something? We have come from faraway places to celebrate your birthday and you are sitting here and weeping.”

The surgeon said, ”The reason is, I never wanted to be a surgeon. That was not my longing. I wanted to be a dancer, but my parents, my teachers, my colleagues, everybody forced me to be a surgeon, because to be a surgeon is respectable. And who knows? As far as dancing is concerned you may turn out to be just a beggar. Dancing is not a certain profession.” And the old professor said, ”Now I have succeeded as the greatest surgeon in the country, but there is no fulfillment. The tears are because my whole life was wasted unnecessarily. Even if I had been a street dancer, just dancing for any crowd that wanted to see my dance, I would have felt more fulfilled. I would not have felt this discontent. Now there is no way to go back, it is too late.” Always remember, time is running fast – every moment you are becoming older. What is possible today may not be possible tomorrow; hence don’t take unnecessary risks.

The discovery of the original man is absolutely essential, because hidden in the original man is your destiny, what nature wanted you to be. Unless you become that you will remain frustrated, you will remain angry. You will not be able to love, you will not be able to dance, you will not be able to relax.

Your whole life will become just a sickness until death.

The discovery of the original man is the discovery of the eternal element in you. And once you have discovered it and allowed it spontaneously to go anywhere it wants to go – without bothering about your parents, your well-wishers, your teachers, your preachers – you may find that your original being in its ultimate fulfillment, flowering, is the buddha. The buddha is nobody else.

You are the seed buddhas. The buddha is the lotus, not the seed. This is not much of a difference, but we make it such a long journey, unnecessarily.

DOKAI SAID:

AS SOON AS I GET UP ON THE SEAT TO SPEAK, I AM ALREADY INVOLVED IN THE DUSTS.

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As far as the inner innocence is concerned, the experience of your original source is concerned, Dokai is making really a great statement. And he has not uttered a single word, he has simply got up on the seat to speak. But just the intention to speak has already raised much dust – just the intention. The words are going to raise much more dust! Hence the emphasis of Zen that words are absolutely impotent in conveying the experience. You can have it as a transmission, as a synchronicity with the master or with the universe.

The master is simply a door to the universe. It is easier to get in harmony with the master – he is a living human being. Once you know the art of how to get in harmony, the master’s work is finished.

You can get in harmony with the stars and the mountains and the rivers... and the whole universe becomes your home. Now you are as natural as a rose, as a lotus, as a bird flying in the sky.

Except man everything is original.

Only man has gone astray.

Don’t take it as unfortunate. Going astray means man has come to a point where he has the freedom to go astray or not to go astray. Other than man, the whole existence is centered, natural but unconscious. It cannot go astray. The rose cannot become something else; it cannot become a marigold. The whole existence, except man, lives naturally, but this naturalness is not out of freedom. Only man has this great destiny: he can choose to be a fake or to be real.

The joy that comes to man by being original does not come to the whole of existence, because they are natural, they cannot go beyond that. They are not freely natural, they are automatically natural.

Their being natural is a kind of bondage. The rose is bound to be a rose, and the grass is bound to be grass. And the trees, however they may try, cannot reach to the stars.

Everything is in a universal slavery. That’s why there are no accidents. Millions of stars don’t clash...

no traffic control. They are all moving with tremendous speed, but there are no accidents anywhere...

no universal ambulance rushing to this star, rushing to that star!

And just in Poona, this dirty, tiny village, utterly polluted – look at the traffic...! It seems all the mad people of India have become rickshaw drivers in Poona! In every direction they are going, and the miracle is, rarely any accident happens. As far as I am concerned, I think it is a miracle that people reach home. No traffic seems to be enjoying so much freedom as Poona traffic.

Nature is in a bondage; it is not even aware that it is in bondage. It is the privilege of man to know that he is in bondage. And when you know that you are in bondage, you also know, simultaneously, that freedom is possible.

If you know that you are in prison, you can start finding ways how to get out of it, how to have some contact with the outside world, how to find some way, some ladder, some hole to get out of the prison. But if you think the prison is your home, then naturally there is no question of inquiring.

Millions of human beings think that whatever they are, this is what they are supposed to be. They are suffering and they are miserable; they are in anguish, they are in absolute angst; their life is a tragedy. But they go on living, saying, ”What is the point of committing suicide? Who knows...?” At The Original Man

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least while you are alive you are surrounded with the crowd, which is also as miserable as you are.

You have friends – you can tell your misery to them and console them, and they can console you in return, and there is something to gossip about!

Committing suicide is entering into a dark tunnel where no one knows what is going to happen. At least one thing is certain: you will be alone. There is no guarantee that the misery will not be there; there is no guarantee that your anxiety will not be there. But there is one thing certain, that with all this, one new thing will be added: you will be alone. And there will be darkness and no electricity!

No scripture says that there is electricity in hell, or in heaven. You should not expect these things there. Even if you can find fire... perhaps they have fire in hell to torture people. But it is not known whether in heaven they even have fire for cold nights or to put small lights in your houses, or some petrol lighters for your cigarettes.... It is certain that in heaven there is no shopping mall – saints don’t need anything!

By committing suicide it is not certain that you will reach heaven. Most probably you will simply wander in the darkness and you will not reach anywhere because you don’t have any map and you don’t have any virtue. The only possibility is that by chance you may enter into hell. That too by chance! It is a vast universe. It is not that you just get out of your home and enter into hell; it is not so easy, otherwise most of the people would never return home. There are problems in hell, but nothing compared to the home, ”Home Sweet Home...” These miserable creatures sing songs, and they think they are befooling others.

The experience of enlightenment, or the experience of the original man, is inexpressible, so inexpressible that Dokai says:

AS SOON AS I GET UP ON THE SEAT TO SPEAK, I AM ALREADY INVOLVED IN THE

DUSTS. IF I GO ON AND FREEZE MY EYES, IT WOULD JUST SHOW A FLAW. THE SPECIAL

TRANSMISSION IN A SINGLE STATEMENT IS TAKING IN A THIEF WHO RANSACKS YOUR

HOUSE.

A very original statement about the one-blow enlightenment. He says it is like TAKING IN A THIEF

WHO RANSACKS YOUR HOUSE.

I am reminded about Sheik Farid, a great mystic...

A thief entered his house. He had collected a few things from the neighbors and he thought, ”By the way, have a look into this poor monk’s house.”

As he entered he found nothing but a begging bowl, a staff – things like that, that are needed even by the poorest man, but he collected all of them. Farid was sleeping, or pretending to sleep, just looking from the corners of his eyes at what was going on. When the thief had bundled everything up, he went out of the house, mixing Farid’s things with the other things that he had stolen from other houses. He made a huge bundle of all those things, and started to carry it.

After a few steps the thief found somebody was following him. He looked and he was surprised.

Sheik Farid was well known – ”and this fellow was asleep... why is he following me?” And suddenly the thief asked, ”Why are you following me?”

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Farid said, ”Why? We are changing houses.”

The thief said, ”My God, this means I have to take you also to my house?” Farid said, ”You are taking everything else!”

The thief said, ”I have never seen such a strange fellow. Take away your things!” Farid said, ”Fifty-fifty.”

The thief said, ”My God! But these are not your things, they belong to others.” Farid said, ”No. Either fifty-fifty or I am coming with you.” Fifty-fifty he had to agree to – crying, because he had stolen those things at so much risk. ”And this fellow, sleeping perfectly well, did not speak a single word; otherwise I would not have touched his things. They are are of no value at all.”

And Farid said, ”Of course I am the chooser, so I will choose which things come to my lot and which things go to your lot. I am always a master of any situation.” He said, ”That I can see. You just choose quickly, otherwise the neighbors will wake up and everything will be gone. You just take away whatever you want. Don’t bother whether it is exactly fifty-fifty or not.”

Farid was a very humorous man. He writes in his biography, ”That was such a joy to share. In the morning I went around and told people, ‘You can come and take if your things are here. I could not manage one hundred percent, because that would have been very difficult – that man was tough.

But still, at least sixty percent I have managed. So take away your things and be careful about thieves. As for me it is okay. What can he take away from me?’” Dokai is saying that, in a single moment, to find the original man within you, is like taking a thief into your house who steals everything that you have collected around yourself, and leaves you naked as if you are just born. From this just-born nakedness you may for the first time feel a new throb, a new heartbeat, a new source of breathing and a new growth. No longer conditioned by the society or by religion or by education, you will start being yourself according to this vast universe’s desire.

And the difference between you and the trees, and the flowers, and the mountains will be that they are mountains not out of freedom. Roses are roses not out of freedom, but whatever you are, you will be out of your freedom. Originality and freedom – these two qualities combined make you the awakened one, original and with freedom. Naturally, with freedom, nobody is going to choose something against his nature. With freedom one is going choicelessly with the flow of the wind, with the flow of the river, wherever it leads.

Finding the original source, one finds a tremendous trust in oneself, because one is now connected with the universe. Otherwise we are rootless people, disconnected, just going here and there for no reason, for no purpose – just tourists.

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The easiest way to waste your time is to be a tourist. That is the worst category of human beings: people who have nothing else to do, who just know how to carry big suitcases and cameras and run from this place to that place. And they are in such a hurry; they don’t see the Taj Mahal, they just take a photograph. At home, at ease, they will look at the picture. They are making an album which they could have purchased in their own city, only more professional, more accurate. All this running away...

But that’s what is happening in our actual lives. What are you trying to be? Is it something that the society has told you to be, or is it out of your autonomous freedom? Every child is being asked again and again, ”What are you going to be?”

In my childhood they used to ask me, ”What are you going to be?” I said, ”That is not your concern. I am keeping it a secret.” They said, ”Strange, we have asked many children. Every child says he is going to be a doctor, he is going to be an advocate, he is going to be a leader, a politician, or he is going to be a sannyasin.

You are the only person who is saying, ‘This is not your concern’ – and to whom are you talking?” I said, ”I know, you are my uncle, you are my father, but that does not mean that my growth is your concern. Just keep yourself out of my way. I know where I am going!” They said, ”Remember, you will end up as nothing!” I said, ”I know.”

And by chance I ended up as nothing. But I am so happy in my nothingness, because it is my whole freedom. Nobody has imposed it on me, it is my own choice. I have not allowed anybody even to touch it. This has been my constant stand, from my early childhood up to university.

The question was asked many times, ”What are you going to be?” And when they heard that ”This is not your concern. You should take care of yourself, I will take care of myself. Just don’t collide with me,” my professors were hurt. They said, ”We were asking out of sympathy.” I said, ”I don’t want anybody’s sympathy. Never mention that dirty word!” They said, ”My God, ‘sympathy’, you call a dirty word?” I said, ”It is, because it is a substitute and all substitutes are prostitutes.” They said, ”Strange, from where do you get these ideas?” I said, ”I don’t get them from anywhere. Can’t I make them up myself? I don’t have to quote anybody, I quote myself.”

Everybody is trying to be somebody else, because the whole pressure of society is to be somebody else. Nobody even takes note of what your original program is, what the program you brought with you at your birth is.

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In a natural, peaceful, intelligent society this will be our first task: to help every child to find out his program, not our program. And even if his program goes against our program, it is out of love that we should support him. We may not agree with him, but we should support him. He has to follow his nature.

Zen is so insistent on the original man – not without reason, because everybody has become a carbon copy of somebody else. This has become almost a rule of the game. Zen is a rebellion: a rebellion against the whole society’s past, a rebellion for the individual and his freedom to choose his own destiny. It is not an ordinary revolution – a communist revolution, a fascist revolution, a Gandhian revolution; these are just mundane revolutions.

Zen is the deepest revolution within the individual himself. It has nothing to do with the outside structure. And just to be oneself is the greatest blessing and the greatest ecstasy.

NOT LOSING THE FUNDAMENTAL SOURCE IS LIKE A FOX FOND OF ITS DEN...

Don’t lose the fundamental source of your life.

THEREFORE TRUE THUSNESS, ORDINARY AND HOLY, IS ALL DREAM TALK; BUDDHAS AND

SENTIENT BEINGS ARE EXPRESSIONS OF ASSUMPTIONS...

Only a great master can say such things. What is he saying? He is saying that somebody is trying to be a buddha, somebody is trying to find the original source – these are all mental assumptions.

Even the buddha is a concept.

You will have to drop the buddha. You will have to drop all your assumptions and just look at the very center of your being, where there is no assumption, where you are drowned into your original source. Get rooted there, and then branches will shoot on their own accord and flowers will come in their own time. You need not worry. Your only worry should be that you are not distracted from your original source, that you are not bribed from your original source, that you stick to one point: ”I am going to be myself, neither Gautam Buddha nor Jesus Christ...” Sometimes I think it is good that they crucified Jesus, because that fellow was pretending to be the son of God. That is absolute fantasy, and we should not allow these kinds of people, otherwise somebody will say, ”I am the father of God.”

If Jesus is the son, somebody must be the father. And what about uncles and aunts and the whole family? And you cannot prevent... if you accept Jesus as the son, without any certificate, without any indication from God himself, what is the problem in saying, ”I am the grandfather of Jesus?” These are all assumptions. One should be just oneself. The moment somebody tries to pretend to be somebody else, crucify him because he is spreading a sickness in the society. He is going to pollute the minds of people: ”You have to be somebody special. You have to be a prophet, a messenger, a messiah; otherwise you are just ordinary.” Nobody wants to be ordinary. Even those you think are ordinary, in their minds they think they are extraordinary. They smile without showing you that ”you are an idiot, I am extraordinary. You can The Original Man

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go on thinking that because you have a little more riches or a little more political power... but that does not matter. The real thing is, I am so extraordinary. I don’t care about riches or about political power.”

Dokai is saying: NOT LOSING THE FUNDAMENTAL SOURCE IS LIKE A FOX FOND OF ITS

DEN... Cling to your source. At any cost you have to remain being yourself. You may end up just like me, into nothingness. I can only share my experience, that being nothing is the greatest joy. But I don’t want you to become nothing, I don’t want you to imitate! Remember the difference.

I am saying, being yourself, the worst that can happen to you is that you may end up into nothing.

That happened to me, and I am feeling so blissful that I cannot stop spreading the fire around, making people courageous enough to explore their original source – even if they end up into nothing.

NOT LOSING THE FUNDAMENTAL SOURCE IS LIKE A FOX FOND OF ITS DEN. THEREFORE

TRUE THUSNESS, ORDINARY AND HOLY, IS ALL DREAM TALK; BUDDHAS AND SENTIENT

BEINGS ARE EXPRESSIONS OF ASSUMPTIONS.

How do you know that a man is a buddha? Because he has said it to you, but this is very gullible.

How do you know that Jesus Christ is the son of God? In the first place nobody knows about God, and suddenly, this carpenter’s son – not actually the son of the carpenter, but of somebody else who pretended to be the holy ghost...

He is talking about being the son of God, and the only son – and people are trying to be like Jesus.

One great classic of Christianity is THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. How to imitate so that you can also become Jesus.

I used to see the principal of a Christian theological college on the way to the university, and we became friends. While coming and going I was always stopping at his house for a little talk –

certainly a great theological talk. I would create some trouble in his mind for the whole twenty-four hours until I saw him again.

Finally, he said, ”This stopping every day is very dangerous, because it has taken away my peace of mind. You ask such questions!”

I had asked him: ”I am reading THE IMITATION OF CHRIST, but the ultimate should be the crucifixion; otherwise you are just a half-baked potato. So what do you think about this great classic?

At what point do you stop following Christ? If you are really following him you will have to bribe a few people to crucify you, because nowadays nobody is interested in crucifying anybody. People have their work, their concerns – who is interested?” He said, ”The whole night I could not sleep. I had always thought that THE IMITATION OF CHRIST

is a great book and you disturbed my whole idea. Even in my dream I dreamed that somebody was crucifying me.”

He said, ”My God, this is enough! I don’t want to discuss theology with you because you create such strange theological questions which are never discussed by great theologians. For example, this grandfather... it is absolutely rational; otherwise the whole thing seems to be so phony. God has The Original Man

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no father; the son is a bastard; nobody knows who this Holy Ghost is – some gangster? What kind of theology is this?”

Don’t be distracted either by Buddha or Jesus or Mahavira. Don’t be distracted by anybody, including me. You have to be just yourself, purely yourself. Only then can you attain to the ultimate bliss possible to man.

Only then can you blossom into many flowers, and your life can be a life of fulfillment, contentment, peace, without any tension at all.

The enlightened man is the original man come to his ultimate growth, not imitating anybody but just insisting on being himself. The whole society is trying to drag you somewhere else.

WHEN YOU GET HERE, TURN THE LIGHT AROUND TO SHINE BACK, LET GO YOUR HANDS

AND ACCEPT IT – EVEN THEN YOU STILL WILL NOT HAVE ESCAPED BEING LIKE A COLD

CICADA CLINGING TO A DEAD TREE, NOT TURNING HIS HEAD WHEN HIS CRYING ENDS.

DOKAI RAISED HIS STAFF AND CONCLUDED:

IF YOU CAN GET IT HERE, IT IS ALL SOMETHING SET UP BY THE BUDDHAS. EVEN IF

YOU CAN SPRING UP IN THE EAST AND DISAPPEAR IN THE WEST, OPEN OUT OR SHUT

AWAY FREELY, YOU STILL HAVEN’T EVEN DREAMED OF SEEING WHAT WAS BEFORE THE

BUDDHAS.

You can think of East and West, you can turn this way and that way, but you are in the mind – you are not going out of the mind. You can think, I am a buddha. There are religions which repeat it as mantra: I am a buddha, I am a buddha. And if you repeat it many times continuously, you may start thinking you are.

The Hindus go on thinking, aham brahmasmi, I am the ultimate – and repeating it again and again and again. Naturally, the memory goes on deeper and deeper and you may even, at the risk of your life, repeat aham brahmasmi. That does not prove that you have reached the ultimate. Al-Hillaj Mansoor was also crucified because he was saying ”Ana’l haq!” – I am God and I have sent Mohammed as a prophet. Now, Mohammedans cannot accept even for a single moment somebody calling himself God and reducing Mohammed to just a prophet.

Mansoor’s experience that ”I am God” may have been just a mind trip. That’s what his master Junnaid was telling him continuously, ”Okay, you are God, but what is the need of proclaiming it?

Just keep quiet. Yes, you are God but don’t say it to anybody.” Mansoor said, ”But when I AM God, why should I not say it?” It was a beautiful dialogue between the master and the disciple. Junnaid said, ”In that case I am also God. And you know perfectly well there are not two Gods.” He said, ”That’s right. There is only one God.”

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And how to deny the master – his own master? He says, ”I am also God, but I don’t say it to anybody because I don’t want to be unnecessarily crucified. What is the point in it?” It is a suicidal instinct according to Junnaid, and I think he is right – that it is very psychological.

But Mansoor did not listen to him – and he was a very beautiful man. But the experience should not be expressed by the word ‘God’, because that word is contaminated. That word has become an obsession for millions of people of different religions. It is better to avoid it.

He could have said, ”I am pure consciousness,” and nobody would have bothered about it. Who bothers about pure consciousness? If you are pure consciousness, be! Nobody objects. If you say,

”I am the original man,” perfectly good! All those things are synonymous.

Zen chooses the most simple and most humanitarian words: the original man. It contains all the buddhas and it contains all the gods, because it contains the essence of the very existence.

YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT THERE IS ONE MAN... This is the man I have been talking about.

YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT THERE IS ONE MAN WHO DOES NOT GET ANYTHING FROM

OTHERS, DOES NOT ACCEPT ANY TEACHING OR COMMAND, AND DOES NOT FALL WITHIN

THE SCOPE OF GRADE OR RANK. IF YOU KNOW THIS MAN, YOUR LIFE’S STUDY IS

COMPLETED. HERE DOKAI PAUSED AND SUDDENLY CALLED OUT TO THE ASSEMBLY

SAYING, ”IF YOU FREEZE YOUR EYES ANY MORE, DON’T BOTHER TO SEE ME.” He is saying that if you still go on reading the scriptures and freezing your eyes, or meditating and freezing your eyes, don’t come to me again. Come to me again when you have found your original man. I have described the man. I have given the indications and the qualifications of the man.

Ikkyu wrote:

THE MIND OF MAN

IS WITHOUT SOUND,

WITHOUT ODOR.

HE WHO ANSWERS WHEN CALLED

IS NOTHING BUT A THIEF.

He is saying that when you are so silent that there is no sound, no odor, and somebody asks you,

”Who are you?” only silence is the answer. If you answer anything else – that I am the God, that I am the only begotten son of God, that I am a messiah, that I am a buddha – then you are nothing but a thief. You have borrowed these words from others, from scriptures, but you have not known your original man.

Another poet wrote:

IN THE LANDSCAPE OF SPRING

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THERE IS NEITHER HIGH NOR LOW;

THE FLOWERING BRANCHES GROW NATURALLY,

SOME LONG, SOME SHORT.

The poet is saying that in nature there is no gradation, no inferiority, no superiority.

Those who are short don’t feel inferior, those who grow long don’t feel superior. Everything is accepted in its suchness. The original man, once found, and you will not think in terms of gradations; you will not think in terms of who is superior and who is inferior.

I was staying in a government guest house and two old men came to see me....

Both must have been eighty or eighty-five, and they told me, ”We have been friends from our childhood, but we have been in a constant quarrel about the existence of God.” One was an atheist

– he did not believe in God. The other was a theist – he believed in God. They said, ”We heard you are here, so we thought it will be good to get another opinion about it.” I asked those old fellows, ”Have you seen God?” – first to the man who believed in God.

He said, ”No, I have not seen him. I believe, I don’t know.” I asked the second man, ”Have you seen that there is no God?” He said, ”No, I have not seen. But I believe that there is no God.” I said, ”There is no disagreement between you two.” They said, ”What?”

I said, ”You both believe. On the point of seeing you both agree that you have not seen. Where is the disagreement?”

They looked at each other. They said, ”The point is worth considering, because neither I know nor you know, and we have been quarreling for our whole lives.” I said, ”Better discover, rather than believe. In believing you have wasted your whole life.” Discovery is possible in a single moment, but first you will have to drop your beliefs. Disbeliefs are also beliefs, they are just negative beliefs. There is no difference between theists and atheists. Both are believers – one positively, one negatively. The seeker has to be completely free from belief and disbelief. He has to be completely open and available.

The original man is not far away on any star – he is hidden within you.

Question 1

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Anando has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

DOKAI SAYS IT IS ALL DREAM TALK. ARE YOUR WORDS THEN JUST AN EXCUSE TO LULL

US INTO A SPACE WHERE HOPEFULLY, SOME DAY, WE MAY BE READY FOR THE SPECIAL

TRANSMISSION?

You are ready for the special transmission right now, Anando. It just needs courage to accept it.

The society has condemned you so deeply, the condemnation has gone so deep in you that you never think you are worthy of anything. And to be ”worthy” of being the original man is not a question of worth, it is not a question of deserving.

You are.

Even if you deny it, still you are.

Even if you try to escape somewhere else, it will be within you.

So, Anando, Dokai is right when he says all is talk. You just stop talking, stop thinking – and the original man is there. All that is needed is to give a little gap and you will find a fresh growth, a flame, arising from your very center. That’s what we are trying to do.

First, I am trying to convince you that I am not a scripture, I am a living human being as you are.

I am not superior, I don’t have any relationship with God – I am not even a faraway cousin! I am simply just as you are. The difference is so small, it is not even worth mentioning: I know it, and you are looking here and there, not looking at the right point.

On the contrary, you are avoiding it, because if you find it there may be troubles. Do you want to be crucified? Do you want to be poisoned? Do you want to be killed? It is better just to be a doctor, a grocer, a film actress, a hairdresser, and not to bother about this original man. These original men have always gotten into trouble – it is better to avoid.

The whole history of man is wrong because it has always crushed the original. It wants carbon copies, it wants slaves; it does not want independent people.

Independent people will always be rebellious, rebellious in the sense that they will do something only if it fits with their nature. They will not do anything that goes against their nature. The society wants slaves, the society wants obedience.

That’s how the Bible starts the story of the world. Adam and Eve are thrown out of the garden of God because they disobeyed. Disobedience is the greatest sin, because disobedience means you are going to be a rebellious person. You will do things which you like. You will not be enslaved by vested interests. Otherwise no problem is there preventing you from asserting your original nature.

This very moment you can say, ”I am my original nature,” and you can drop all the faces, masks, personalities. You will just be simple.

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People are so unbelievably stupid. In the Middle Ages in England, even dogs had clothes, because to see a naked dog is pornography. Strange, what about the horses and the donkeys and the elephants? How are you going to put clothes on all these people? The whole of humanity will be involved in dry cleaning continuously. There will be no other business. Even the legs of chairs and tables were covered because ‘legs’... the word reminds you of something. But in fact the covered legs remind you more. Uncovered they are just wooden legs, but covered, one never knows...!

People have been hiding nature in every possible way: trying to pretend, in the name of etiquette; smiling when you really want to hit, holding back your tears when you want to cry, because a man should not cry; it is only for the weaker sex, for women, to cry to their hearts’ content – and they do.

That’s why they are less sick, live longer, are healthier in every way than men, more joyous... and they have a sense of humor.

Man is such a dodo. But he has been made a dodo. All his reality has been covered. He has to behave like a gentleman.

Otherwise, Anando, there is no problem at all. I am talking to you to destroy the conditionings, and I am helping you to enter into meditation so that you can find your original self. I don’t give you any ideals. I don’t want you to be somebody other than yourself. And if you are taking time, I am not responsible for it. I am reaching you every day, but I find your doors are closed. The moment your doors are open, the transmission will happen immediately.

The transmission is a simple phenomenon. It is just waking you up, but you are sleeping with closed doors. I cannot even enter in your room. Sleep with open doors, don’t be afraid. If I don’t enter, somebody will enter and wake you up. The whole question is of waking you up.

Every day we are meditating, you reach very close to the center, but the conditionings are millions of years old. You go with hesitation. I go on forcing you: ”A little more, a little more.” Poor Nivedano has to go on beating his drum, and the drum is becoming enlightened, not Nivedano.

Nivedano is Nivedano, he will always beat the drum. And when he sees that you are not getting the point, he beats more, but he is completely unaware that he has also to become enlightened. I am leaving him for the time being. When you all have become enlightened, then you can all beat Nivedano. And in a single moment he will jump up, and he will say, ”I am enlightened. No need to beat me!”

I trust him – that’s why I am not putting him into meditation. But he is earning great virtue by trying to beat the drum, and he is enjoying.

Anando, it is just a question of dropping all conditioning. You can do it retail or you can do it wholesale. I would prefer that you do it wholesale because retail is a long process. This day is as good as any day. This moment is as good as any moment. But I will go on trying, inch by inch, that you go in; little by little, that you gather courage.

I am not going to leave you unless you jump into your original source. You can delay, but you cannot stop. Before Nivedano tries to drum your heads... He is not beating his drum, remember, that is just an excuse. He is beating your heads. Before getting into that serious work of finding the original man, a few laughs will make you ready.

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Leroy, a huge black guy, walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder.

”Hey!” says the bartender, ”Where did you get that?”

”Africa,” replies the parrot.

Kowalski’s son, Kowalski Junior, comes back from college and asks his dad a riddle: ”What is long and hard and leaks?”

”Son!” exclaims Kowalski, ”I can’t believe you would use such vulgar expressions.”

”Don’t get excited, Dad,” says the boy. ”It is a pen.” Kowalski is very amused by this trick, and he decides to repeat it at his next church gathering.

”My son told me this riddle which he heard at college,” brags Kowalski, proudly. ”What is long and hard and leaks?”

There is a gasp from his listeners and the ladies all raise their hands to their mouths in horror.

”Don’t get excited, ladies,” says Kowalski. ”It is a pen, not a prick!” Old man Finkelstein, the shopkeeper, is waiting at the entrance to the Pearly Gates while Saint Peter speaks to Leroy, a big black guy, who has also just died.

”You can have anything you want,” says Saint Peter.

”I’d like a million dollars,” says Leroy.

”Done!” says Peter, and Leroy walks away with a suitcase stuffed with dollar bills.

Then St. Peter turns to Finkelstein and says, ”You’ll be granted any wish you make. What would you like?”

”Well,” says the Fink, ”I’d like twenty dollars worth of fake jewelry, and about ten minutes with that black guy!”

Mildred Maxwell is surrounded by all of her sad friends as they look down into her husband, Melvin’s grave.

”I’m so sorry,” says Mildred’s priest, Father Flab. ”What did he die of?”

”Gonorrhea,” replies Mildred, sadly.

Then her neighbor, Peaches, comes up and says, ”Oh Mildred, I’m so sorry this happened. What did the poor man die of?”

”He died of gonorrhea,” says Mildred somberly.

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Old Mrs. Hucksteen comes to give her condolences.

”The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” says the old lady. ”And now he has taken Melvin. What was it dear, a heart attack?”

”No,” says Mildred quietly, ”gonorrhea.”

Mildred’s sister Mabel finally comes up to her. ”Mildred!” whispers Mabel tensely, ”What are you telling people? Melvin did not die of gonorrhea, he died of diarrhea!”

”I know,” says Mildred. ”But I would rather people think he went out like a playboy, and not like the shit he was!”

Now, Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent, close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen, no movement.

Gather your consciousness inside, and just like an arrow, let this consciousness go deeper and deeper until it hits the source of your being.

There is no fear because on this road to your self you are not going to meet anybody.

Deeper and deeper.

This moment you are the original man.

This moment you are the buddha.

Remember it, twenty-four hours – not like a parrot.

Let it become your breathing, your heartbeat, your blood circulation, so that in every action and gesture this originality, this spontaneity is expressed without any effort.

Meditation is the greatest revolution in the world because it brings the original man into existence. It is always there but every society pushes it under many, many covers. Our work here is to throw all those covers, all those layers and find the real, the original, the natural.

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Start your growth from your natural center. Then whatever you may be, you will find contentment, you will find great joy in life. You will find not only joy in life, but in death too, because your original nature is eternal.

Birth is a drama, life is a drama, death is a drama.

Only your original consciousness is the watcher.

Dramas change, the watcher remains.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax, let go. The body is lying there – you just be a watcher of body and mind both, simply a watcher. This watcher is the original man.

Rejoice that you have found it. Feel silently grateful that you have found it. Now don’t forget the root.

Every day go on pushing deeper and deeper, because the original man has a circumference and also a center. First you will touch the circumference, and then your arrow will enter into the center.

Once you have entered into the center, you have gone beyond life and death. You have become one with the universe.

Nivedano, make your drum enlightened again!

(Drumbeat)

Come back, slowly, so that you can carry the experience with you. Silently, gracefully, sit down as a buddha, without any hesitation, without any doubt.

You are the buddha, the awakened soul.

At least for this moment you are blessed with the ultimate ecstasy, and all the invisible flowers are showering over you.

Feel grateful.

There is nothing more religious than gratefulness.

There is no other prayer than gratefulness.

It is a Thank You to existence.

Okay, Anando?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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Can we celebrate the gathering of the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes!

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CHAPTER 5

The sky of realisation

20 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

BASUI SAID:

UPON SUCH REALIZATION, QUESTION YOURSELF EVEN MORE INTENSELY IN THIS WISE:

”MY BODY IS LIKE A PHANTOM, LIKE BUBBLES ON A STREAM. MY MIND, LOOKING INTO

ITSELF, IS AS FORMLESS AS EMPTY SPACE, YET SOMEWHERE WITHIN, SOUNDS ARE

PERCEIVED. WHO IS HEARING?”

SHOULD YOU QUESTION YOURSELF IN THIS WISE, WITH PROFOUND ABSORPTION, NEVER

SLACKENING THE INTENSITY OF YOUR EFFORT, YOUR RATIONAL MIND EVENTUALLY WILL

EXHAUST ITSELF AND ONLY QUESTIONING AT THE DEEPEST LEVEL WILL REMAIN.

FINALLY, YOU WILL LOSE AWARENESS OF YOUR OWN BODY. YOUR LONG-HELD

CONCEPTIONS AND NOTIONS WILL PERISH, AFTER ABSOLUTE QUESTIONING, IN THE

WAY THAT EVERY DROP OF WATER VANISHES FROM A TUB BROKEN OPEN AT THE

BOTTOM. PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT WILL FOLLOW LIKE FLOWERS SUDDENLY BLOOMING

ON WITHERED TREES....

WHILE YOU ARE DOING ZAZEN, NEITHER DESPISE NOR CHERISH THE THOUGHTS THAT

ARISE; ONLY SEARCH YOUR OWN MIND, THE VERY SOURCE OF THESE THOUGHTS. YOU

MUST UNDERSTAND THAT ANYTHING APPEARING IN YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS OR SEEN BY

YOUR EYES IS AN ILLUSION, OF NO ENDURING REALITY. HENCE YOU SHOULD NEITHER

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FEAR NOR BE FASCINATED BY SUCH PHENOMENA. IF YOU KEEP YOUR MIND AS EMPTY

AS SPACE, UNSTAINED BY EXTRANEOUS MATTERS, NO EVIL SPIRITS CAN DISTURB YOU, EVEN ON YOUR DEATHBED. WHILE ENGAGED IN ZAZEN, HOWEVER, KEEP NONE OF THIS

COUNSEL IN MIND. YOU MUST ONLY BECOME THE QUESTION, ”WHAT IS THIS MIND?” OR,

”WHAT IS IT THAT HEARS THESE SOUNDS?” WHEN YOU REALIZE THIS MIND, YOU WILL

KNOW THAT IT IS THE VERY SOURCE OF ALL BUDDHAS AND SENTIENT BEINGS.

Anando, before I say something about Basui’s statements a small preface is needed, because it is very difficult to distinguish a teacher from a master. And it is essential for everyone who is on the path to exactly make that distinction, because both use the same language, and sometimes even the teacher may be more articulate. That is the case with Basui.

Unfortunately I have to say to you that he is still a teacher and not a master. I am hoping that before the series ends he will come to his senses. It will be difficult for those who have not experienced their innermost consciousness to know where he goes wrong, or where he is just repeating right words. Because even right words when used by the mind become wrong, and even wrong words when used by a master become devices. Anybody who is studying and not meditating, just studying the scriptures and not entering into his own consciousness, will find it very difficult to know whether Basui is a teacher or a master.

The master is one who knows. He may not be able to convey it. Most probably he will keep silent; even if he speaks his speech will be leading towards speechlessness. His words are pointing towards a wordless existence. He is not a man of language, he is a man beyond mind.

Basui’s statements are mixed. A few he must have got from the scriptures because they appear to be exactly right, but the others expose that he has not experienced himself. He is a good spokesman...

but a spokesman is just a spokesman! The teacher simply repeats perfectly, like a parrot, the ancient scriptures, sages, buddhas. He is very accurate. Years of training and discipline have made his mind a reservoir of wisdom, but it is all borrowed. Real wisdom can never be borrowed. You can befool people but you cannot convert and transform them. You yourself are not transformed. Your own light is not yet found – how can you transmit the lamp of existential experience?

Basui is trying his hardest to be on the right lines, but he is helpless. Everybody is helpless. You cannot manage it; a blind man may remember perfectly well where the door is, but still you can see that his movement is hesitant. You can see that with his walking stick he is still trying to find the door.

He does not have the right clarity about where the door is. He may have the right description, but he has not got the experience. A blind man can talk about light and about colors, but what does he know about colors, what does he know about rainbows, what does he know about the starry night?

It is hard work for me to bring down Basui from his idea of being a master and reduce him to the level of a teacher – a good teacher of course, the best of the kind, showing every sign that sooner or later he will realize that he is repeating borrowed knowledge. The moment you realize that you are repeating borrowed knowledge, that all your mind is borrowed, the mind slips out of your hands.

And without taking a single step, you have arrived home.

The moment you can say, ”I do not know,” you are just an open space, available to existence.

Existence starts pouring through you – it is that which you cannot say that you know, it is so vast.

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The word ‘knowledge’ is very small; it is good for science. The word ‘science’ comes from a root which exactly means knowledge, but the word ‘knowledge’ is not right for the realm of religiousness.

There it is too small.

Knowledge is tethered to the mind, and wisdom is when the mind has disappeared.

With this clarity you have to listen to Basui’s statements. Basui says: UPON SUCH REALIZATION, QUESTION YOURSELF EVEN MORE INTENSELY IN THIS WISE...

Now I will have to point out again and again where he shows that he does not know. If I were to write this sentence I would say that upon such realization all questions drop, but not only questions drop, answers drop also. You are left utterly silent, without any question and without any answer. You just are, a pure sky, unscratched.

He is saying, UPON SUCH REALIZATION, QUESTION YOURSELF EVEN MORE INTENSELY...

After realization what is there to question? And if something remains to question after realization, the realization is fake. Realization simply means that you have become one with the universe. Who is going to question whom? You are no more. Realization means that you have dissolved yourself in the vastness of reality. Now who is going to question more intensely?

All these things, questioning and questioning intensely, are before realization, not after it. These things can bring you closer to realization, but after realization it is almost like saying to somebody,

”When you become healthy, take the medicine more and more.” The medicine was perfectly good when you were sick, but when you are healthy taking it more and more is going to make you sick.

Basui has no realization of his own, otherwise he could not have said: QUESTION YOURSELF

EVEN MORE INTENSELY IN THIS WISE... He even shows the way. He is telling you what question to ask:

MY BODY IS LIKE A PHANTOM...

All these things happen before realization, not after it.

After realization all phantoms have

disappeared, all shadows have gone. All that is false is no more; only the real shines in its splendor.

No question is possible.

MY BODY IS LIKE A PHANTOM, LIKE BUBBLES ON A STREAM. MY MIND, LOOKING INTO

ITSELF, IS AS FORMLESS AS EMPTY SPACE...

All these questions are for the disciples, not for the master. He has passed through all that gibberish,

... YET, SOMEWHERE WITHIN, SOUNDS ARE PERCEIVED. WHO IS HEARING?

A man of realization is asking such questions? Then what about a man of no realization, what will he ask? Leave something for the unenlightened, don’t take away everything from them.

These questions are relevant when you don’t know the watching self, the witnessing self, the innermost eye. Before it everything is absolutely clear. No bubbles arise, no sounds are perceived.

It is absolute silence, but very alive; the silence of a garden, not the silence of a graveyard.

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After realization there is no point in asking any question – and I am saying this on my own authority.

I did not ask a single question; it was impossible to ask. You are so peaceful, so calm, so clear, that that which is false, simply disappears, just as when you bring the light in, the darkness disappears.

When you become aware of yourself, all falseness, all lies, all the personality that you have cultivated around your essential being, drop suddenly. You are standing alone, a luminous flame in which everything false is burned. This luminous flame has only one quality and that quality is watchfulness.

You simply watch just like a mirror.

Have you ever seen a mirror asking, ”Why do you have such a Jewish nose? Can’t you manage a little plastic surgery?” The mirror simply says nothing. Whether you have a Jewish nose or a Chinese nose is not the concern of the mirror. Its concern is only to reflect what comes in front of it, not to comment or judge. Judgment is of the mind, commentary is of the mind. The mirror simply watches silently. Everything is okay; the mirror is at ease with everything it reflects. The mirror will not ask you, ”Hey man, where did you lose your tail? According to Charles Darwin you should have a tail when you dropped from the trees and became man. Who are you trying to cheat?” It will not ask a monkey, ”Why don’t you drop your tail and become a man? Just get a good tailor!” Simple things, but the mirror is absolutely silent – rejoicing in whatever is happening without any comment, any recommendations, any questions.

But Basui goes on being astray.

SHOULD YOU QUESTION YOURSELF IN THIS WISE, WITH PROFOUND ABSORPTION, NEVER

SLACKENING THE INTENSITY OF YOUR EFFORT...

This is too much! Zen is against effort, Zen is a let-go. All the religions of the world are for effort.

Hence this statement will not be criticized anywhere except by a man of Zen. Zen is not effort. Effort is tension, effort is work, effort is to achieve something.

Zen is not something to achieve. You are already that. Just relax, relax so deeply that you become a revelation to yourself. Now Basui is going too far away from authentic Zen.

NEVER SLACKENING THE INTENSITY OF YOUR EFFORT, YOUR RATIONAL MIND

EVENTUALLY WILL EXHAUST ITSELF AND ONLY QUESTIONING AT THE DEEPEST LEVEL

WILL REMAIN.

Who will question at the deepest level? If the rational mind is exhausted, there is nobody to question, there is only a mirror simply reflecting.

Poor Basui still has to go a few rounds of birth and death, unless by chance he meets an authentic master who gives him a good hit on the head and brings him to his senses – ”Forget this idea.

Do you think you are realized? All your statements make it clear that you don’t know the sky of realization, the space that opens up for a realized man.” What to say about questions, even answers are not found.

FINALLY YOU WILL LOSE AWARENESS OF YOUR OWN BODY.

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This is not true. You will never lose awareness at any point. On this great pilgrimage your awareness will become more and more, but never will a point come when you will lose awareness. Awareness is the quality of the mirror. He is saying, FINALLY YOU WILL LOSE AWARENESS OF YOUR OWN

BODY. You will certainly lose the identification with the body, but that is not losing awareness of the body. You will know: ”This is the body, and I am not connected with it.” But even this much will not be verbal. It will be just like when I can see that you are there, I can never think by mistake that I am sitting there, so I don’t have to drop the idea that I am sitting there.

Once you are aware of it you don’t even have to say, ”I am not the body.” You are not. You simply see it through and through. You are not the body, nor are you the mind, nor are you the emotions.

All these are just reflected in you, but by mistake you have been identifying yourself with them.

You were thinking, ”My body, my mind...” But your thoughts are not yours, nor is your mind yours, nor is your body yours. What remains when you negate all these identifications? Only a pure awareness, a kind of isness; a being who radiates light, who radiates eternity, who dances with joy that he has come home.

FINALLY, YOU WILL LOSE AWARENESS OF YOUR OWN BODY. YOUR LONG HELD

CONCEPTIONS AND NOTIONS WILL PERISH...

Basui is really poor. I have compassion for him because all these things have to happen before realization. But this is the problem with a man who has not traveled the path himself but has only collected wisdom from others. He will put things upside down. He does not know which comes first and which comes second.

YOUR LONG-HELD CONCEPTIONS AND NOTIONS WILL PERISH, AFTER ABSOLUTE

QUESTIONING, IN THE WAY THAT EVERY DROP OF WATER VANISHES FROM A TUB BROKEN

OPEN AT THE BOTTOM. PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT...

Nonsense has many forms, stupidity has no limits. Enlightenment as such is perfect, so don’t use

‘perfect’ enlightenment. That is unnecessary repetition. ‘Perfect’ is enough or ‘enlightenment’ is enough, because both are the same.

Using ‘perfect’ enlightenment gives the idea that there can be imperfect enlightenment too – fifty percent enlightenment, sixty percent enlightenment. Enlightenment is always one hundred percent, neither less nor more. No buddha is higher than another buddha. The moment you awaken to your being, you have gone beyond all categories, you have melted in the universe where everything is equal. Perhaps Zen is the only real communism.

The communism that we hear about from Marx and Engels and their followers is a very poor thing.

And it is very unpsychological, because no two men are equal. You cannot find two men who are equal; every man has his own distinct individuality. Hence, on this level of the outside world, equality can only be imposed by force. It was not just because of the character Joseph Stalin, anybody in his place – if he was obsessed with the idea of equality – would have had to do the same. He killed one million Russians in an effort to make them equal.

I am reminded of a story from old Greek mythology.... A king was very much interested in gold. He prayed for it day and night. Finally, the gods gave him the power that whatever he touched would The Original Man

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become gold. So he touched everything in his house and made it gold. But he lost his wife, he lost his daughter, he lost his son. They all escaped, because if he had touched them... He was really AIDS-positive – the first pioneer!

He made a beautiful guest house, but only a few times did somebody become a guest, because in his guest house he had two rules – his whole philosophy was that the world should be filled with gold, and that everybody should be equal.

He made a very beautiful bed out of solid gold especially for the guests. But some guests were taller, some guests were smaller, so he had wrestlers to stretch the guest exactly to the size of the bed.

Naturally, every guest died. You cannot stretch a man according to a measurement. He had decided on the right average size, and everybody had to be equal to the average. But somebody was five inches short... Now if you stretch a man five inches, do you think he will still be alive? Perhaps his head may come off or his legs may give way. But if somebody is bigger than the bed, then the problem is even more difficult. To force him, to press him, all his intestines are destroyed. But the rule had to be followed – equality! He introduced the word ‘equality’ to the world.

I am not in favor of equality in the outside world because everybody has to be unique and himself.

Certainly equal opportunity should be given to everybody – equal opportunity to be unequal. That is a different matter. But in the inner world every buddha is just the same.

Gautam Buddha is reported to have said that if you taste the seawater from anywhere, you will find it has the same taste, the same salty taste. It is exactly the same with buddhahood. You can taste it from one buddha or from another buddha, it does not matter. It gives the same taste, the same fragrance, the same light, the same joy.

Basui is saying:

PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT WILL FOLLOW LIKE FLOWERS SUDDENLY BLOOMING ON

WITHERED TREES...

There is no perfect enlightenment. Enlightenment is enough unto itself, it needs no perfection. The moment you use ‘perfect’ enlightenment, you are allowing yourself logically, rationally to accept that enlightenment can be of an imperfect quality. But you cannot conceive what kind of enlightenment it will be that is not perfect.

Enlightenment as such is perfect. Its perfection is intrinsic, so no master can use those two words together, it has to be either perfection or enlightenment. ”Perfect enlightenment” is the expression of a teacher who has gathered much knowledge from the scriptures, who is a man of learning but not a man of knowing.

WHILE YOU ARE DOING ZAZEN...

This is why I said that stupidity has no limits. When you have become a buddha, when you are enlightened, for what will you be doing zazen? Once you have learned the alphabet of a language, do you go on all your life learning the alphabet again and again in case you forget?

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I have never come across a man who has forgotten a letter of the alphabet. It is almost impossible.

If you can count up to ten, you can count millions and trillions, because they are all repetitions of ten, and you cannot forget that you have ten fingers.

Zazen means sitting in silence watching the mind. Now a buddha cannot do it. In the first place there is no longer any thought left. That’s why he has become a buddha. Now what is he going to watch? The show is over, the people are gone and Gautam Buddha is sitting in his lotus posture watching the screen? Even the projector has been removed. This is great zazen – a real stupidity, one hundred percent pure stupidity.

Zazen is needed for ignorant people who don’t know who they are. Then sitting silently and watching your mind creates the distinction between the thoughts and yourself. You become aware for the first time that there is something beyond the mind – the watcher. You cannot watch the watcher, that is impossible. You cannot go beyond the watcher, the watcher is the limit of the universe. You cannot say that you can watch the watcher – watcher number one watching watcher number two watching watcher number three – you will end up in a madhouse.

It happened to a centipede....

Early one spring morning a centipede was going for a walk. A little rabbit was very much puzzled looking from his hole. ”My God!” he said. ”How does this fellow remember which leg to put first?” He has a hundred legs, that’s why he is called a centipede. He has made the century! You are far away – just two legs and bragging so much.

He wondered and worried, and then came out and said, ”Uncle, I cannot resist my curiosity. I should not interfere in your morning walk but I have just a small question. How do you manage a hundred legs? Which one first? Which one second?”

The centipede said, ”The question is valid but I have never thought about it. Let me try.” So he started walking and counting, ”One, two, three...” And just as I get lost after three, he got lost. By the fourth he had fallen, and the rabbit ran off because the question had been a disaster.

The centipede somehow managed to drag himself to his hole and said to the other centipedes,

”If somebody asks you how you manage your legs, never answer the question. They manage themselves! It is not our work, it is not our effort, our management.” Basui is saying that when you are a buddha, self-realized, you should sit doing zazen.

NEITHER DESPISE NOR CHERISH THE THOUGHTS THAT ARISE.

Can you see his problem? He has read many scriptures and collected fragments from here and there, and now he does not know which leg to put first and which leg to put second. The last leg he has put first. He begins with: UPON SUCH REALIZATION... After that nothing has to be said, but he goes on to say everything that should come before realization.

All these things are valid, but in their place, in their context, not just anywhere. And I don’t think that he has ever done zazen, because he says:

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NEITHER DESPISE NOR CHERISH THE THOUGHTS THAT ARISE; ONLY SEARCH YOUR

OWN MIND, THE VERY SOURCE OF THESE THOUGHTS. YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT

ANYTHING APPEARING IN YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS OR SEEN BY YOUR EYES IS AN

ILLUSION, OF NO ENDURING REALITY...

All these things are perfectly right, but in a wrong place.

HENCE YOU SHOULD NEITHER FEAR NOR BE FASCINATED BY SUCH PHENOMENA.

The whole world thinks that the man of realization still meditates, but the world is wrong. Once meditation is fulfilled, once you have reached to the point of knowing that you are a pure awareness beyond mind, beyond all thoughts, this very experience of beyondness disperses all clouds from the sky. Then you don’t have to do all the work that he is suggesting.

HENCE YOU SHOULD NEITHER FEAR NOR BE FASCINATED BY SUCH PHENOMENA. IF YOU

KEEP YOUR MIND AS EMPTY AS SPACE, UNSTAINED BY EXTRANEOUS MATTERS, NO EVIL

SPIRITS CAN DISTURB YOU, EVEN ON YOUR DEATHBED.

A man of realization knows there is no death. Death is a fiction, you have never died. Yes, you have changed your form many times. You have changed your house many times, many times. But you have never died. Have you ever seen yourself dying? It is always somebody else who dies.

That’s why you go on enjoying all kinds of stupid things – football, television rubbish... and people are glued...! An American survey says that everybody is glued to the chair in front of the television for seven and a half hours per day, and naturally meanwhile eating all kinds of things.

So they have created a television potato association. And thousands of Americans have joined the association, have become members.

The only thing is – it is bound to happen – you will become a potato. For seven and a half hours sitting in your seat pushing all kinds of rubbish – ice cream, Coca Cola... keeping the fridge just within your reach – you will turn into a potato. Soon you will see the world full of potatoes.

Somebody suggested to me that the tomato would be far better. I said, ”Why tomato? A potato is at least harder. If a tomato gets so much rubbish, it will burst out – it has a very thin skin – then from all over, somewhere ice cream is coming out, somewhere else Coca Cola is coming out. Tomatoes cannot manage it. Potatoes are harder people.”

A man doing zazen comes to the point of realizing that whatever is seen is phenomenal. It is made of just the same stuff as dreams are made of. Everything goes on changing. That is the Eastern definition of reality and unreality. The unreal is simply the one that changes.

You were a child, you have become a grown-up, you will become old. This is phenomenal, this is unreal. But there is something within you which never becomes anything other than itself. In your childhood it is the same, in your youth it is the same, in your old age it is the same, in your death it is the same. A man of meditation knows his eternal being, his immortal being. There is no deathbed for him.

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WHILE ENGAGED IN ZAZEN, HOWEVER, KEEP NONE OF THIS COUNSEL IN MIND...

He knows not even the ABC of zazen. He is saying that while doing zazen you should not keep any part of what he has described in your mind. But a man who has experienced zazen simply knows that whatever comes in front of the eyes is just phenomenal. It comes and goes, just like clouds come and go, flowers come and go. Everything in the world except your being goes on moving into new forms.

To find yourself is to find the center of the cyclone. The whole world is a cyclone. But once you have found the center, the cyclone disappears. The mirror remains empty. This emptiness is buddhahood.

This nothingness is the ultimate peak of consciousness.

I hope that this fellow forgets all that he has learned and begins to meditate. Knowledge, howsoever valuable, is useless in transforming you. Only your own experience, your own fire, can transform you. And you have the fire, everybody is born with it. You just have to turn yourself inwards.

I hope that Basui may have turned inwards by now. If not then he will have to come here. Because now, even in Japan, Zen has become just a scholarly study. Zen is not a scholarly study. Zen is an existential quantum leap. It is not of the mind. It is going beyond the mind.

Dogen, a Zen master, wrote:

SCARECROW IN THE HILLOCK.

PADDY FIELD –

HOW UNAWARE! HOW USEFUL!

A scarecrow is a false man which farmers make just by putting up a bamboo and covering the top with a mud pot, as if it is a monk’s head, perfectly shaven. Then they put another bamboo just like a cross and cover the cross with a robe, and put two hands on it. It is to create fear in wild animals.

Sometimes in moonlit nights even the scarecrow looks so beautiful, and certainly it is useful. But it is not a true man. So if a thing is useful it does not mean it is true, and vice versa: if it is true it does not mean that it may prove useful. What use is enlightenment? You cannot sell it. Even if you want to, even if you can find somebody to purchase it, there is no way of selling it. What use is enlightenment?

Utility is not the goal of life. The goal of life is a deep relaxation from all effort, being in a dance with the dancing trees, with the dancing stars, rejoicing in existence without any worry, without any mind, just being part of the cosmos.

Dogen is right, ”Scarecrow in the hillock. Paddy field – how unaware...” The poor fellow is absolutely unaware. But that is the situation of all of us. We are just scarecrows

– hung up on a skeleton and covered with a skin bag.

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They have invented, and they are already making man-made men, robots. They will be perfectly good, in fact they will be more efficient than you. The only problem is when their battery runs out.

Otherwise you will not be able to know... a person is saying to you, ”I love you, sweetheart,” and then rrrrr, rrrr... his battery runs out, and you suddenly become aware, ”My God, it is a robot.” Otherwise he had the whole program, the whole dialogue, computerized. He can do many things, he is very useful.

Just a few days ago in Japan, in a factory where they were using robots, an accident happened which may determine the future of robots in the coming century. Robots can work twenty-four hours at a time. They don’t need Sundays or any other holiday. They don’t go on strike, they don’t ask for any raise. They are very good people, nice and gentlemanly. And they work continuously. One robot can do the work of almost one thousand people in the same time period. But in a factory where a few robots were used experimentally, something went wrong.

It always happens with electricity – something goes wrong. Something went wrong and six robots just clutched at the nearest human being who was passing by, and hugged him. It was not in their program, and a robot hug? – the man was finished.

You cannot survive after a robot hug. You will have so many fractures that it will not be worth hospitalizing you. They are still trying to find out what happened. Something went wrong because it was not only one, but six robots, all of whom were working in the factory. Suddenly a great love for humanity arose – and they don’t believe in heterosexuality or homosexuality; it doesn’t matter...

Anybody who was moving around, they simply pulled him close, gave him a good hug and finished him.

It has been known to biologists that there are a few spiders in Africa which are a very rare species, but very significant. When the male mounts the female, making love – maybe he is talking in their language all kinds of movie dialogues – when he comes onto her, the lady underneath starts eating the fellow. That spider makes love only once in his life, then his work is finished. But he has a great orgasm. He is trembling on long legs and the lady is eating him and he is in such ecstasy. He cannot even escape. Each love becomes death.

Perhaps it is very symbolic. If robots get mixed up in humanity, they will have everything that you have. The only thing will be that they will be running on batteries, so it depends on the battery, how powerful it is. If a robot makes love to a woman it will depend on his battery. After it that woman will never be satisfied by any man because human batteries are very small. There is human electricity in the body but a very small quantity.

Man is not just a utility, that can be done by machines, by robots. Man is a dance, a song, for no purpose at all. Do you think a rose has any purpose? Do you think a lotus has any purpose? Do you think these millions of stars have any purpose? Just out of sheer joy the whole existence is dancing. A man of meditation comes to the same point. He starts dancing in utter ecstasy and joy without any purpose. This kind of man may love you, he may have compassion, he may be creative but all for sheer joy. Only for a buddha is art for art’s sake. For everybody else art is a commodity to be sold in the marketplace.

Another Zen poem:

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THE MIND CANNOT

BECOME THE BUDDHA;

THE BODY CANNOT

BECOME THE BUDDHA.

ONLY WHAT CANNOT BECOME THE BUDDHA

CAN BECOME THE BUDDHA.

What are the ingredients in you? The body cannot become the buddha, the mind cannot become the buddha. Apart from body and mind is there something else within you? That is what I am calling watchfulness, awareness, witnessing. Only that, but that also cannot become the buddha, it already is the buddha. It is a very beautiful poem and it shows that the man understands what he is saying....

THE MIND CANNOT BECOME THE BUDDHA;

THE BODY CANNOT BECOME THE BUDDHA.

ONLY WHAT CANNOT BECOME THE BUDDHA

CAN BECOME THE BUDDHA.

That last part will look like a puzzle to anybody who does not understand his own awareness. You don’t have to become a buddha. You already are a buddha, you just have to discover it. You are covered with a body, you are covered with a mind. You just have to discover yourself, you don’t have to become. You just have to recognize. You just have to penetrate within your body and mind, reaching to the innermost core – and suddenly you are the buddha. It is not that you have become a buddha, you are a fully-fledged buddha already. You have just not looked inside yourself.

Question 1

Anando has asked a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT THE TRANSMISSION CAN HAPPEN IN A SECOND, THAT YOU

REACH OUT TO US EVERY DAY – BUT STILL OUR DOORS ARE CLOSED. SO MANY OF US

HAVE BEEN WITH YOU SO MANY YEARS; YOU HAVE MELTED OUR HEARTS SO MANY TIMES.

CAN IT BE THAT OUR DOORS HAVE SOMEHOW RUSTED SHUT?

Anando, saying that your doors are closed is only symbolic. You don’t have any doors. They cannot be rusted shut.

Have I told you the famous anecdote about Rabiya al-Adabiya?

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She was a Sufi master, very rare because she was a woman, and very unique, almost like a Bodhidharma. She never went to the mosque and people used to ask her, ”You are so religious, so simple, so innocent. Why don’t you come to the mosque?” She said, ”What is the purpose now? The mosque is for you because you are not sincere and you are not simple. It is not for me. I have found my home.” One day she was passing by the mosque and a man named Hassan, who afterwards became a great master himself, was praying in front of the steps with both his hands raised, kneeling down on the ground: ”God, when will you listen to me? Why don’t you open the door?”

When Rabiya heard it, she hit Hassan and told him, ”You idiot, there are no doors! And to whom are you praying? There is nobody in the sky to answer your question. Just go home and look inwards –

there are no doors.”

Nothing is preventing you except your own desire to remain outside, maybe to have a little more money, a little more political power, a little more influence in the world, a little more of a name to be written in the history books. This is all trivia. Just remember not to get caught by this trivia. Enter into yourself and the buddha is there.

Perfect! There is nothing missing in it. Before we enter again tonight – because it is a dangerous journey... You may find the buddha and may not come out, but I take the risk, because I will be responsible before the court: ”You told people to go in and they have gone. Now pull them out!” It is very difficult. So you have to remember, when I say come out, come out!

Going in is very easy. But the inside is so beautiful and so alluring that you may decide – what is the point of coming out? Please don’t do that because I will be responsible. So just see the buddha, understand that he is there, but when Nivedano gives you the drumbeat to come back, don’t hesitate.

Just come back slowly, gracefully, remembering the buddha. Keep the remembrance around your twenty-four-hour life, in your actions, in your gestures, in your words, in your silences.

But please, this one thing you have to remember: don’t get stuck there inside, because then nobody can pull you out; no operation will help. If you decide to be in, finished! Then we will just have to make a ceremony, that one man has become a buddha. We don’t say that anybody has died because here nobody dies. Up to now only three persons have become buddhas. Death is a fiction.

But there is no need and no hurry. Enjoy going in every evening just like going for an evening walk.

Enjoy, relish, be nourished and let this experience transform your whole outer life. But one never knows what you will decide when you are inside. You will be alone.

So before that, a few good laughters, perhaps just those laughters will bring you out: ”Let us have one night more, a few laughters more. Perhaps our master will tell some jokes tomorrow and I will not be here.” Remember it!

Mad Marvin escapes from the crazyhouse and runs to a nearby town. He is seen standing by an old well, dancing and shouting, ”Five! Five! Five!”

Curious, Officer Chump, the local cop, saunters over to Marvin.

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”What is all this noise about?” inquires the cop.

”Look!” exclaims Mad Marvin, pointing into the well. ”Look! Five! Five! Five!” Officer Chump shakes his head at the looney, and just to humor him, steps up to the well. Then, with a wide grin and a big push, Mad Marvin shouts, ”Six! Six! Six!” Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent, close your eyes. Sit just as a buddha, a frozen statue, no movement.

Gather your consciousness inwards. Go deeper and deeper.... At the very center of your being is your enlightenment.

This very moment, being at the center in such tremendous silence, you are a buddha. You don’t have to become a buddha, you just have to discover. You have only forgotten, you have just to remember.

Don’t be afraid, this is your space.

You will not meet anybody on the way except your own being in all its glory and splendor, in all its eternity, beauty, truth.

Everybody is carrying the ultimate treasure within himself.

To make it more clear....

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax, let the body and the mind remain there. Withdraw your identification, just be a watcher.

Watching is the secret key.

It opens the doors of all that is mystery, all that is miracle.

Rejoice in it and remember the path, the way, by which you have come to this point, so that at any time you want you can enter in and get refreshed.

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Bring out your buddhahood in your actions, in your gestures, in your responses.

Just this small thing of entering into your own center is the whole religion – everything else follows on its own accord. When things happen spontaneously, they have a beauty of their own.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back. Resurrect slowly, keeping your awareness, your remembrance. Sit down like a buddha for a few seconds.

This is an ever-deepening process. It is not that one day you become buddha and the pilgrimage is finished. You go on becoming more and more, your depth goes on becoming deeper and deeper, your clarity becomes absolutely dustless.

It is the greatest phenomenon in the world to experience your buddhahood and act it in your ordinary life.

Okay, Anando?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the gathering of ten thousand buddhas?

Yes!

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Roots in the universe

21 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

MANZAN SAID:

THE ULTIMATE WAY IS THE ONE REAL GREAT WAY. THE MIND OF FAITH IS THE NON-DUALISTIC, INCONCEIVABLE MIND.

MIND AND THE WAY DO NOT DECREASE WHEN IN ILLUSION, NOR INCREASE WHEN IN

ENLIGHTENMENT; EVERYTHING IS PERFECT REALITY, EACH PARTICULAR IS COMPLETE –

YOU CAN’T GRASP OR REJECT ANYTHING.

HOWEVER, EVEN SO, ”IF YOU DO NOT PRACTICE IT, IT WILL NOT BECOME MANIFEST; IF

YOU DO NOT REALIZE IT, YOU CANNOT ATTAIN IT.”

IT IS LIKE HAVING A JEWEL HIDDEN IN YOUR POCKET AND SUFFERING FOR WANT OF

FOOD AND CLOTHING.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION MANZAN SAID:

GREAT PERFECT AWARENESS IS THE OCEAN OF ULTIMATE PEACE. STILL AND SILENT, MYRIAD FORMS AND IMAGES REFLECT THEREIN. YET SUDDENLY, WHEN THE WIND OF

OBJECTS ARISES, IT TURNS INTO AN OCEAN OF BIRTH AND DEATH, WITH WAVES OF

CONSCIOUSNESS AND FEELINGS BILLOWING DAY AND NIGHT, WHERE ALL SENTIENT

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BEINGS APPEAR AND DISAPPEAR, WITH NO END IN SIGHT. ALTHOUGH THE TWO OCEANS

SEEM DIFFERENT, REALLY THEY COME FROM THE SAME SOURCE – MIND.

ORIGINALLY, THERE IS NO SIGN OF DISTINCTION IN THE MIND SOURCE. LIFE AND DEATH

AND NIRVANA ALL REVERT TO THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE SOURCE.

THEREFORE, WHEN YOU REALIZE THE MIND-SOURCE, THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS A GREAT, ROUND, PERFECT OCEAN.

BUT HOW TO REALIZE THE MIND-SOURCE? YOU MUST LIBERATE BODY AND MIND ON THE

SITTING CUSHION BEFORE YOU CAN DO SO.

Anando, before we discuss Manzan and his statements – a few necessary things.

One is the word ‘mind’...

In Sanskrit, there are two words: one is man from which the English words ‘mind’ and ‘man’

both have been derived; another is chit, which can be approximately translated as consciousness, awareness, watchfulness.

The translating of these words has taken such a long journey. With Gautam Buddha already it was not Sanskrit; it was a small branch of Sanskrit, Pali. The words have already begun to waver and to take new shapes and forms.

Then when they reached China, they took even more unrecognizable forms, and after China, they reached Japan. They have gone so far away from their origin that to translate them from Japanese into English is really a gymnastics!

This translator has used a certain method: wherever man, the ordinary mind, is concerned, he uses a small M. And wherever chit, the universal consciousness, is concerned, he uses mind with a capital M.

In writing, it is perfectly good; in reading, it becomes more difficult. Whether the M is a capital or a small M, in both cases you are going to call it ”mind.” So remember, all the time he is using mind... I will remind you when it is a capital M and when it is a small M. You have the small-M mind, a dewdrop of the universal Mind. When this dewdrop disappears in the ocean, it becomes a capital-M Mind. It is no longer yours, it is nobody. It is simply the universal, existential, awareness. It does not belong to anybody, it is nobody’s possession.

Secondly, it has always been a difficult process for an enlightened man to bring his experience into language. Everybody falters. It is not the person’s fault; the very process is one of trying to do the impossible. The experience of the universal consciousness is so far away from language that when you drag it down to language, it becomes something else. Then it can have many interpretations.

Your experience was one, absolutely singular, absolutely clear. There was no question of any alternative meaning or any interference. But when you bring it down to the level of language, then thousands of problems arise.

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You have to remember the difficulty of the enlightened man, and you have to be compassionate, because our language is so poor that it cannot contain things of the beyond.

For example, Krishna’s SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA has one thousand interpretations. Now, either Krishna was so mad that he would speak words with one thousand meanings... A word with one thousand meanings means nothing! And those meanings are contradictory to each other. But in bringing them to language, they become vulnerable. There are one thousand great commentaries on Krishna’s GITA, and they all condemn each other. They all project their own mind – and they are free, because Krishna is not there to interrupt, to say, ”This is not my meaning.” A word can have many meanings. Particularly older languages – Sanskrit, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic –

have a beauty but also a difficulty. Their beauty is that they are very poetic. Poetry needs as much freedom to use words as possible. Even to use the same word in different meanings gives the poet a great freedom.

But you cannot write science in the same way as you write poetry. It has to represent exactly the one thing that you are trying to pinpoint. You cannot write a treatise on science in Sanskrit; it is impossible, because immediately there will be commentators and there will be differences, and it will simply create confusion.

Science is very much prose. But the inner world of man is just the opposite; it is very much poetry.

So it was very good that these ancient languages were capable of having one word with many meanings, and many words with one meaning. They could manage to convey something which is not possible to convey in prose.

Many times I will have to remind you where the translator has misunderstood Manzan.

Manzan is an enlightened master. What he is saying is absolutely true, but the way he has been translated... and I cannot blame the translator either. Manzan is speaking from high on top of the mountains, snow-peaked, and the translator is translating in the dark valleys of the unconscious mind. It is almost like a conversation between a sleeping man and a waking man. The waking man says something and the sleeping man, if he hears at all, hears something else. Most probably he does not hear; he goes on weaving his own dreams.

A conversation between the sleeping and the awake is the same as the conversation of the masters with the seekers. If the seeker is just a student who has come to acquire knowledge, he will catch hold of the words but he will forget that those words are empty. Just surrounding the word somewhere was the hint; the word was not the real thing. The word was used just as a vehicle, but it was carrying something invisible.

Only a disciple can understand the invisible because he is not interested in acquiring knowledge, so he does not pay much attention to the word. He gives much more opening to the wordless transmission. It is a very difficult task, but if you are alert and open, it is possible to understand even a man who has gone beyond language.

Manzan has certainly gone beyond language. He says: The Original Man

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THE ULTIMATE WAY IS THE ONE REAL GREAT WAY.

To truth there cannot be many ways. To truth there is only one ultimate way. Reduced to its simplicity, it is dis-identifying yourself from the body and the mind and just being a witness, without any judgment, without any appreciation, without any activity on your part – just a reflecting mirror.

This is the ultimate way and this is the only real way. There are a thousand other ways proposed, but they don’t lead to truth, they lead to different places....

For example, if somebody is reciting the name of Buddha... Buddha never became a buddha by reciting his name. He followed the ultimate way – and that too in a strange situation because he had no master. He stumbled and groped for six years continuously, from door to door, from master to master, but nobody satisfied his thirst. They talked about great things but he could see that those great things had not happened to them. They were just like parrots, repeating. They were learned scholars but not experienced wise people.

After six years of strenuous search, one fullmoon night he sat under a tree near Bodhgaya. And he was so tired of this whole search – and this has been missed by the scholars completely, that he was so tired of the whole search, so fed up that he thought, ”I have renounced the world – now let me renounce this search too. I’m so utterly tired, I don’t want to do anything.” That night he slept for the first time in six years without any tensions, without any anxieties, utterly relaxed. And when he opened his eyes, the last star in the morning was just disappearing.

Seeing that star disappearing, desiring nothing, wanting nothing – not even truth, not even enlightenment – suddenly he became a mirror. In the mirror, as the star disappeared in the sky...

from his mirror everything disappeared. He became enlightened not because he was longing for it, he became enlightened at a moment when he had dropped all longing. Every longing is the longing of the mind, and mind is the only barrier.

So what is the ultimate way, the Great Way? To get detached from the mind and the body structure.

These are your imprisonments. And as you become detached, away and away, beyond and beyond, suddenly you see that you consist only of pure consciousness. Your consciousness was imprisoned in a certain body form, in a certain mind. And you have been imprisoned for centuries, for many, many births. Just a small glimpse of the beyond and the heart throbs with a new joy. A dance descends on you. Life becomes just a ceremony, a moment-to-moment festival, because now you are no longer a prisoner or a slave. You are freedom itself.

Manzan is saying: THE ULTIMATE WAY IS THE ONE REAL GREAT WAY. There are many ways propounded... and they will lead to some place. If you go on chanting a mantra, you may feel a certain peace, a certain health, a certain well-being, but this is not enlightenment. You may worship a god with as much belief as possible... because total belief is impossible; doubt is always hidden behind it. If there is no doubt there is no need of any belief. Belief is simply covering the doubt. So you go on worshipping – obviously, with great belief – but you know that by the corner of your eye there is a little doubt about whether this god exists or not. You may not say it to anyone – you may not say even to yourself, but you know it; the doubt is there.

But if you go on worshipping a god, you may start having visions of the god, which are hallucinatory, which are just like dreams. It is such an easy process. Just go to a mountain cave for three weeks The Original Man

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on a fast – fasting helps very much. That’s why all the religions have accepted fasting as a great religious phenomenon.

What fasting does is to take away all the activity of your digestion; your energy that is involved in digestion is freed. And then concentrate on one god: Rama or Krishna or Christ. Now the whole energy is available. You may have felt in your ordinary life that if your stomach is empty, you cannot sleep. What is the problem? The energy that is involved in the stomach goes into the head and it keeps you awake. A good meal and you immediately start snoring, because all the energy is pulled down to the stomach. The mind no longer has its quota to think, to dream, to hallucinate; it will have to wait for some time.

There is much dream research going on around the world. Many psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, are looking into dreams and are surprised that only the first two hours, when you go to sleep, are mostly dreamless. After those two hours, dreams start.

In eight hours’ sleep, six hours you dream and only two hours you sleep. But those two hours are the early hours. Once your food has been digested and energy is released, the mind starts functioning.

It is the same energy. The mind starts functioning, creating dreams. Unfulfilled desires, repressed inhibitions, all start bubbling up.

If you go to a cave in the mountains for a three-week fast, exactly on the fourth or fifth day your appetite will disappear. And once your appetite disappears, you have lost your connection with the earth. Now you are just a mind, and your whole energy is available to the mind. And if you are concentrating on some god, you will start seeing that god. Nearabout the fourteenth or fifteenth day, you will have the first encounter with your god.

By the time your three weeks are over, you will start even talking and receiving answers from your god – and you are doing both the things! And it is not that you are asleep – fully awake, open eyes.

You can go into any madhouse and you can see people talking to somebody; you don’t see to whom they are talking. They are not only speaking, they are also answering. And the strangest thing is that when a madman asks a question, he has a different tone, a different voice. When he answers, he has another tone. Obviously! It is somebody else who is answering him. If you cannot see anybody, that is your problem.

The people who have declared their realization of God are great hallucinators. Their way is not the way to truth. Their way is the way which makes the untrue, the illusory, appear as if it is true. It is the way of ”as if.”

But it is simpler, it is in your hands. You can create any god. You can talk, you can receive the answer to your prayers, and you can be immensely satisfied. But you will not be transformed. Back home, you will be the same man, perhaps a little more egoistic. And the pious egoism is more poisonous than any other. You have realized God; everybody else is inferior to you, just ordinary mortals who don’t know anything about the immortality that comes by encountering God and that only God can confer on you.

Zen has nothing to do with any god. No sincere man, no intelligent man has anything to do with any fiction. He searches within. He looks within – because he is life, so there must be some center within himself from where the life arises.

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And that center cannot be separate from the universal life – from where will it go on being fueled?

Once you have found your center of life, you have also found, on the other side, that this is the way to universal life. From here you have roots into the universe.

You are not without roots. All your nourishment is coming from a source hidden within you.

Zen is the search for this life energy. You can give it any name. This translator has called it the ”Mind of faith.” Most probably he is a Christian, because many Christian missionaries have translated ancient scriptures of the East. Because of that, the Christian language and the Christian way of expressing things has entered into non-Christian scriptures – not intentionally, very unconsciously.

I am reminded that one Christian missionary went to Rinzai, the great Zen master from China who introduced Zen to Japan....

The missionary was absolutely certain that if he read the Sermon on the Mount, he would be able to convert this fellow Rinzai. And he seemed to be very influential; if he were converted, all his followers would be converted.

He asked Rinzai’s permission: ”I want to read something from my scripture, and I want to know your opinion.” He started reading the Sermon on the Mount, and after just maybe two paragraphs, Rinzai stopped him. And he told him, ”Whoever wrote these lines is a bodhisattva. One day he will become a buddha.”

The missionary was very much shocked....

Everybody is a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva means, in essence you are a buddha – just a recognition, a remembrance, and you have never been anything else.

The Sermon on the Mount is a beautiful piece of literature, but Rinzai stopped the missionary and said, ”Don’t waste time. Whoever has written these lines is certainly a bodhisattva of great merit.

One day he will become a buddha.”

The Christians translated the Eastern and Far Eastern scriptures in order to show the Christians,

”Look, these primitive people think they are religious!” But the whole thing backfired. It took a little time, but as people started looking deeply into the Eastern scriptures, they found their Bibles and their Korans to be very ordinary, very mundane.

It is because of this translator’s Christian mind, which is attuned to faith... Zen does not need any faith. ”Faith” certainly means you don’t know and yet you believe. Zen is against any faith. It is for inquiry, not for faith – intense inquiry.

Zen comes closer to science than any other religion for the simple reason that it does not require any faith. It requires of you only an intense inquiry into yourself, a deepening of consciousness, not concentration – a settling, a relaxing of consciousness, so that you can find your own source. That very source is the source of the whole existence.

THE MIND OF FAITH IS THE NON-DUALISTIC, INCONCEIVABLE MIND... Now please change

”Mind of faith” into ”consciousness.” Consciousness is non-dualistic, and because it is non-dualistic it is inconceivable, inconceivable to the mind.

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Mind can conceive only the dual – day and night as separate. Mind cannot conceive that day is just another form of night; light is a little less dark and darkness is a little less light. The distinction between them is not of duality but only of relativity. They are one. That’s why it happens so easily that night changes into day, day changes into night. If there were any duality, then at any time, night might have said, ”I don’t want to go,” or the sun might have said, ”Enough! Today I’m going fishing.” But they are not separate. They are just two phases of one energy.

In the same way, life and death are two phases of the same energy. Death is not the end of life.

Death itself is part of life, and life goes on. You have died many times, and still you are alive. Your life is eternal. Death is a small episode here and there, when you change your house, but the essential of your being remains the same. How many times you change houses does not matter, but it is inconceivable to the mind.

MIND AND THE WAY DO NOT DECREASE WHEN IN ILLUSION, NOR INCREASE WHEN IN

ENLIGHTENMENT; EVERYTHING IS PERFECT REALITY.

Again, I would like you to read instead of ‘mind’, consciousness: CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE WAY DO NOT DECREASE WHEN IN ILLUSION.

They are simply forgotten, not decreased. They are covered with clouds but not decreased.

When the moon is covered with clouds, it is not decreased – it is exactly the same whether the clouds cover it or go on their way somewhere else. Clouds or no clouds, the moon remains in its perfect beauty without any increase or decrease.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE WAY DO NOT DECREASE WHEN IN ILLUSION, so when you are not a buddha, don’t think that you are something less than a buddha. You may know, you may not know, but your buddhahood is exactly the same. If you don’t know, your buddha is covered with clouds.

The mind is nothing but a cloud. The identity with the body is nothing but a cloud. And you are lost in the clouds and forget yourself. To forget oneself is very easy, the easiest thing in the world.

Because you know, whether you forget or not, it is there. You don’t forget anything else, but you can forget – you have forgotten; you have no idea who you are. But whether you forget or remember, these are only clouds or no-clouds, but the moon is in its full glory, shining in its full beauty. Your buddhahood never increases, never decreases.

WHEN IN ENLIGHTENMENT, EVERYTHING IS PERFECT REALITY, EACH PARTICULAR IS

COMPLETE – YOU CAN’T GRASP OR REJECT ANYTHING...

Because awareness is non-judgmental, just like the mirror. It only reflects, it does not say, ”You are really a great beauty!” It does not say, ”You are really very homely – just get out of the way; it hurts to see you. From where have you got this face?”

The mirror simply reflects without in any way judging, appreciating, saying anything about what is reflected in it. And once the thing is gone, the mirror is empty again.

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Zen has been described by the great masters as the empty mirror.

The mirror does not cling to something because something beautiful is passing by. It does not catch hold of the sari...”Where are you going, sweetheart? Let us go for dinner.” I have told you yesterday about the great TV potato movement. On the way back, Anando told me that the news has just come that now in New York, great hotels are giving special service to TV

potatoes. Because they cannot leave their chairs, they just have to phone the hotel and the hotel prepares whatever they need and brings it to their chair, where they eat and continue to look at the television. But they have to be members.

That movement is going to spread all over America and Europe and maybe Japan. It is really a non-political, non-religious, very special movement – nothing like it has ever happened before. And people are wearing badges saying that they belong to the Couch Potato Movement. It is a great respectability; not everybody can afford it. Seven and a half hours per day of watching television is a basic requirement. Only idiots can do it.

I call television the ”idiot box.” Television goes on supplying all kinds of nonsense; television is becoming a great problem. It could have been a great solution; it could have been a great instrument in educating people. But on the contrary, it is destroying people. Nobody reads, and if nobody reads you can’t think that there will be born again a Leo Tolstoy or Fyodor Dostoevsky or Anton Chekhov.

You cannot conceive of there being great poets, great philosophers; nobody is ready to read.

People are just glued to their television set, which is almost seventy-five percent advertisements and twenty-five percent entertainment. It is going to destroy people’s intelligence... because you don’t have to think anything, you don’t have to answer anything, you just relax there. Television can be a great calamity, as it is going.

It can be used in a very great way – to educate people for peace, for love, to educate people for music, for dance. Thousands of dimensions are possible that television can make available. You need not travel around the world, you can just sit in your chair and the television can bring the whole world moving before you – the Taj Mahal, and Ajanta and Ellora, and Bodhgaya and Khajuraho in all their detail, with all kinds of information. It can become a living experience, because reading is one thing; seeing is another.

When you are reading, you are reading just dead words. When you are seeing, the Taj Mahal becomes alive in front of you. You don’t have to move, the Taj Mahal will move and show its beauty from all sides, at different times of night... you can know more about the Taj Mahal sitting in your chair than a man can know wasting years of time, because the Taj Mahal changes its beauty on different nights.

On the night of the full moon, nearabout nine o’clock, the Taj Mahal has such a dreamlike quality that you have a tremendous urge to touch it and feel whether it is real or you are imagining it. In the daytime, the same Taj Mahal looks ordinary – nothing special.

But television is bringing people to a primitive state. Nobody is reading great novels; nobody has time. I have come across people who have not heard even the name of Tolstoy, because it is not The Original Man

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on television. They have not heard the name of Dostoevsky. They don’t have any idea what a great novel or a great poem is. They are fed with junk and they collect that junk.

And the problem is that these people will never think of meditation, because you cannot see the television with closed eyes. You can eat your food... People are making love looking at television!

What kind of love must these people be making? One is really surprised at the ingenuity of human beings.

The television is on from morning until midnight. Television has become the whole world. All that you know is television. And all the great art, poetry, novels, dramas – they have completely disappeared.

Who cares for books?

In America, people purchase only paperbacks, because they are cheap and you can look here and there and leave them in the airplane. Nobody wants to purchase a hardbound book because it is heavy to carry and it is costly to throw away. Book lovers have disappeared, and with them, great books with aesthetic value are completely gone.

People are falling into a primitive state. Certainly, these people become very gullible. Constantly, these are the faithful people, faithful Christians. Whatever the television goes on saying...”This is the best chewing gum” – you start chewing that gum because if television is saying it, it can’t be wrong. And not one television – every television, from all directions the same advertisement, the same chewing gum. And the same beautiful woman is saying to you, ”How great is this chewing gum. You have to purchase it!”

And if you are a member of the Couch Potato Club you just phone the store, give your number, and the chewing gum will be supplied to you! Now television is ruling people’s minds.

Meditation has become almost non-existential. You don’t have time to meditate, because meditation means sitting silently without doing anything and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

Sitting silently for a few moments is impossible. The television – you cannot miss this football match!

And people become so much involved and identified that they shout, they jump up and down in front of their television sets because their side is winning and they have to give moral support.

I have seen a person throw his television set on the floor because his side has lost the football game!

I asked him, ”What are you doing? This is not the fault of the television set.” He said, ”I’m feeling so angry, I could do anything.” So much identification... And meditation is just the opposite – no identification. You simply sit with closed eyes and you have a natural, biological television screen in your mind. And it brings great things to you! You just watch and you will see Sophia Loren... but don’t judge. Don’t even say hello.

She will come and go, you just wait. Just be patient. Don’t ask her to join you for dinner at the Blue Diamond.

Identification, or justification, or judgment, are all against meditation. You simply see. Whatever comes before your eyes, just see it as a cloud passing by. And everything passes by and if you can be patient enough, soon the screen is empty. When the screen is empty, you have gone beyond the mind. You have entered the world of Zen.

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HOWEVER, EVEN SO, ”IF YOU DO NOT PRACTICE IT, IT WILL NOT BECOME MANIFEST; IF

YOU DO NOT REALIZE IT, YOU CANNOT ATTAIN IT.” IT IS LIKE HAVING A JEWEL HIDDEN IN

YOUR POCKET AND SUFFERING FOR WANT OF FOOD AND CLOTHING.

What Manzan is saying is: You are a buddha. You will remain a buddha whether you recognize the fact or not. But if you do not practice... and by ”practice” is not meant what you understand. ”If you do not practice” means if you do not make a small effort to continuously remember who you are, you will remain a buddha but it will not be a manifestation.

What is the point, if you have a lamp in your house and you have covered it with a blanket? It cannot manifest its light. Our forgetfulness is a blanket over ourselves. It does not allow our buddha to radiate. It does not allow our buddha to be seen and experienced by others.

If you do not realize it, you cannot attain it. Realization and attainment are simply the same. In fact, that is the problem I have told you about in the beginning. Neither realization is needed nor attainment is needed. What is needed is a deep silence in which you can find exactly what is your source of life.

Attainment is about objects – somebody attains to the Everest, somebody attains a Nobel Prize, somebody attains to being the greatest rich man in the world.... Attainments are outside you. They take you away from yourself.

Your self, your very being, is already there – it has not to be attained. Neither does it have to be realized.

Do you understand the meaning of realization? – to make something real which was not there.

For example, a painter makes a painting. He realizes something. It was in his dreams; he projects the dream and ”realizes” a painting.

But your buddha is not your dream. Your buddha can neither be realized nor attained; it can only be remembered.

The person who has translated this sutra must be thinking in Christian ways. There is no other way in Christianity – you have to ”attain.” You have to have the heart of faith; you have to reach God through Jesus, a direct approach is not allowed. Jesus has to recognize you, that you are an authentic believer, and he will pray to God to let you in. The missionaries were accustomed to their own language.

Zen is not in any way similar to any other religion. Its uniqueness is inconceivable. How has it become so unique? All religions are repetitive of each other: they may have different gods but they have gods; they may talk in different languages but what they say can be compared.

Now there exists in the universities of the world a new subject, ”Comparative Religion.” Zen cannot be included in that subject. It is not comparable to anything, it is just itself. It has a very unique way: no achievement, no attainment, because you are it. So just a very simple thing is needed, a remembrance.

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I have told you an ancient story....

A lioness gave birth to a child while she was jumping from one hillock to another hillock. Between these two hillocks was passing a great crowd of sheep. The child fell in the crowd of sheep, and it grew up with the sheep. It became a lion, which was a little strange, but it was accepted by the crowd. It had never misbehaved.

It was a strange phenomenon, but he remained a grass-chewing sheep, very nonviolent, and as much afraid of wild animals as other sheep. And he was so friendly that the sheep never bothered about his shape, his height, his length. He was a full-fledged lion.

One day, an accident happened. An old lion saw this procession of sheep and amongst them, in the middle, a great lion. He could not believe his old eyes. He has seen much, an experienced old man.... He said, ”My God, what has happened to this lion?” So he rushed into the crowd of sheep –

the crowd ran away and the lion also ran away, but the old lion got hold of him. He shrieked and he said, ”I want to go with my people, so don’t harass me!” The old man said, ”Be quiet! I’m not harassing you. Just come with me.” Nearby there was a small lake, a silent pool of water. The old lion took away the young one very reluctantly, but he had to go. He knew that old lion could be dangerous. He had accepted himself as a sheep, obviously, and not to follow the order of the lion could be a question of life and death.

He took the young lion by the side of the lake and told him, ”Look into the lake and see my face and your face.” Trembling, he looked; he had to look. But as he looked into the mirror of the lake, immediately a great metamorphosis....

He roared like a lion – he had never roared before. The old lion said, ”My work is done. You had forgotten yourself; now you have remembered.”

All the buddhas are nothing but old lions, forcing you to see your original face just so that you can remember: you are not what you think you are; you are something vast, something great, something universal, something eternal.

There is no need of any realization, of any attainment. But certainly one has to remember.

Meditation is only an effort to remember.

It does not give you anything; it does not take anything away from you. It simply makes you aware of being a lion... and suddenly, a lion’s roar.

One of Gautam Buddha’s sermons is called The Lion’s Roar.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION MANZAN SAID:

GREAT PERFECT AWARENESS IS THE OCEAN OF ULTIMATE PEACE. STILL AND SILENT, MYRIAD FORMS AND IMAGES REFLECT THEREIN. YET SUDDENLY, WHEN THE WIND OF

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OBJECTS ARISES, IT TURNS INTO AN OCEAN OF BIRTH AND DEATH, WITH WAVES OF

CONSCIOUSNESS AND FEELINGS BILLOWING DAY AND NIGHT, WHERE ALL SENTIENT

BEINGS APPEAR AND DISAPPEAR, WITH NO END IN SIGHT. ALTHOUGH THE TWO OCEANS

SEEM DIFFERENT, REALLY THEY COME FROM THE SAME SOURCE... the same universal consciousness.

The marketplace and the temple are not two separate things. The mind in turmoil and the mind in peace are not two things. A lake disturbed by the wind filled with waves and a lake silent without any waves is the same lake.

To be a buddha or not to be a buddha are only two aspects of one consciousness.

It is your decision to remain outside yourself or to go in, once in a while at least. Because if even once you go in, you will be a different person – even on the outside. The taste of the inner, the fragrance of the inner will start coming through you – through your gestures, through your eyes, through your words, through your silences. Everything will show that you have found something that others are missing.

THEREFORE, WHEN YOU REALIZE THE ULTIMATE SOURCE, THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS A GREAT, ROUND, PERFECT OCEAN.

BUT HOW TO REALIZE THE GREAT SOURCE? YOU MUST LIBERATE BODY AND MIND ON

THE SITTING CUSHION BEFORE YOU CAN DO SO.

This last statement is what meditation is – liberating yourself from body and mind. And that is not a struggle. It is simply not being identified. Just remaining silent and aware, soon you are liberated.

You see your body from the inside for the first time, the skeleton and the flesh and the skin bag. For the first time you see your body from within and you see your mind just full of rubbish, all kinds of thoughts, all borrowed. And you are beyond both.

This beyondness, this watcher on the hills, is the recognition of your buddhahood.

A Zen haiku:

PERCEIVING THE SUN IN THE MIDST OF THE RAIN,

LADLING OUT CLEAR WATER

FROM THE DEPTHS OF FIRE.

We are surrounded with many clouds, much rain.

Remembering yourself... not to get lost.

”Ladling out clear water from the depths of fire.” It is as impossible a thing as ladling out pure water from fire. But howsoever impossible it may be, it happens. This is the mystery of existence.

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Here, fire turns into water. Here, the dance of rain declares the sun. There is no opposition in existence, no contradiction. Everything supports everything else.

Another haiku:

THE MIND –

WHAT SHALL WE CALL IT?

IT IS THE SOUND OF THE BREEZE

THAT BLOWS THROUGH THE PINES

IN THE INDIA-INK PICTURE.

What shall we call the mind? That is a constant question. It is just soap bubbles – or wind blowing through the pine trees. It is not substantial.

Your thoughts are not even ricepaper thick.

They are just signatures on water.

But they dominate your life.

You allow them to dominate your life.

It is ultimately your responsibility. You can stop this very moment and get out of the slavery – nobody is forcing you to be a slave of your mind.

You can just move any moment you decide.

There is no need to delay or to postpone.

Question 1

Anando has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

DOES MANZAN MAKE IT AS A MASTER?

Certainly, Anando. He made it as a master.

HE SOUNDS GOOD, EXCEPT WHEN HE TALKS ABOUT THE MIND OF FAITH.

I have told you the translation is by a Christian missionary. To them, faith is the great thing.

To a Zen master, faith is the barrier. You have to be clean of all faith and all belief. You have to be just silent, searching, your eyes having no dust in them. All faith and belief is nothing but dust.

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NOT BEING REALIZED OURSELVES, IS THERE ANYTHING OTHER THAN INTUITION WE CAN

USE TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TEACHER AND THE REAL THING?

Anando, there are many things that you can use to recognize the difference.

The teacher will be always speaking in quotes. He will be quoting the scriptures. His words will not carry any authority; his words will not be coming from his very being.

His presence will be different. The teacher’s presence has no aura to it. The master’s presence has a certain energy field. Those who are receptive, sensitive, can almost touch it; it is tangible.

It is a question of being open, and immediately you can recognize who is only a teacher and who is a master. The difference is very great, but very subtle. And all depends on your receptivity. All depends on your open heart. Only your heart can say whether you are confronted by a master or just listening to a teacher.

With a teacher you don’t have a love affair.

With the master you have a great love affair.

With the teacher, you may be convinced by his arguments. With the master, the arguments don’t matter but his presence, which quenches your thirst. Just being close to a master, you start feeling a new, fresh breeze. The teacher is stale, carrying old, rotten scriptures. He does not have a fresh experience of the truth.

Traditionally, seekers would go from one master to another master just to find a place where they could feel a kind of rapport, where they could feel with the master a certain oneness. Then they stop. They have found the master.

But one has to be very intelligent, very receptive, very sensitive, because the energy of the master is the most subtle energy possible.

If you are open, and you are thrilled and your heart dances and you want to sing, you have found the man.

This is called, in Zen, the Great Love Affair.

There are ordinary love affairs, which are biological. You cannot even explain those, why you find a certain man or a certain woman and suddenly you feel you have fallen in love. You know it.

Something has clicked in you, but you cannot give any explanation. All your explanations will look absurd, idiotic. Just try. When you have fallen in love with a woman or a man, just try to explain to somebody who knows nothing of love – ”Just look at her hair...” He will say, ”What nonsense! You have fallen in love with hairs?”

”Just look at her nose, just look at her eyes...” And whoever you are giving the explanation to will think you are a little cuckoo!

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A person falls in love not with noses and eyes and hair but with a total being.

Zen is a great love affair. It is not biological. Hence, it becomes even more difficult but it goes very deep.

The biological affair can change – has to change. It is a temporary phenomenon. The same woman for whom you could have died, now you want to kill.

I have heard about a psychologist who was taking a round of the madhouse and the superintendent was explaining to him whatever he wanted to know about. In a small room, a young man holding a picture to his heart was weeping and weeping.

The man asked, ”What has happened to him?”

The superintendent said, ”It is a tragedy. He is a very intelligent man, but he has fallen in love with a woman. He is holding the picture of the woman – waking or asleep he does not leave the picture.

But the woman married somebody else; that has driven him mad.” The professor said, ”It is really a sad story.”

In the next room a man was hitting his head on the wall. He said, ”My God! What is he doing?” The superintendent said, ”He married that same woman! Now he wants to kill himself, so he has been put in the madhouse.”

At the biological level things are continuously changing. It is very natural that they should change.

At the spiritual level, where being is never changing... if you have found the master, then there is no way to go anywhere. But if you have not found, then it is better not to waste your time.

And it is a question of your inner thrill, inner click. You can call it intuition. I don’t want to call it intuition because that makes it more mathematical. It is not that mathematical.

I can call it a click. Something simply happened to you. You cannot explain, nor is there any need to explain. Just being with the master you will see the transformation happening. Whether your click was right or wrong, time will prove.

If no transformation happens to you, that means either you are with a teacher who pretends to be a master or you may be with a master, but you are not open; you don’t want to change. No master forces change on you. He creates all the situations in which the change, if you are ready, will be spontaneously happening.

Whatever happens spontaneously is beautiful. Whatever is rehearsed and practiced and disciplined creates hypocrisy. No master will support any hypocrisy.

Before we enter into our inner world, just to remind you that you have to come back... we will be waiting here for you.

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You can go as deep as possible, but don’t get stuck somewhere, howsoever beautiful and howsoever enchanting.

When Nivedano calls with his drum, come back.

My whole effort is to bring buddhas into the marketplace. I don’t want you just to be a buddha and escape. Even Sardar Gurudayal Singh comes back every day. He reaches as deep as possible, but he always thinks, ”Who knows what kind of joke is going to be told tomorrow?” These jokes are keeping him in the world; otherwise, he would have gone long ago.

Paddy and Sean are walking to the Christ is Love Pub, when all of a sudden they hear an explosion.

They run around the corner to see that the pub has been blown up by the IRA.

They are looking through the rubble when Paddy finds a head. He picks it up, holds it in the air and says, ”Sean, isn’t this Danny O’Riley?”

”No,” says Sean, ”it can’t be. He was not as tall as that!” Two rats in a laboratory are having a conversation through the bars of their cages.

”Tell me,” says the first rat, ”how are you getting along with Professor Katzoff?”

”Pretty good,” replies the second rat. ”It took me a while, but now I have finally got him trained.

Whenever I ring the bell, he brings my dinner!”

Father Finger, the priest, is reputed to have an enormous prick. It is so large, that he has great difficulty in getting any of the local women to sleep with him.

”Sorry, Father,” is the reply he always hears. ”I wish I could, but your member is just too big for me!” Feeling desperate, Father Finger goes to Mother O’Mary’s whorehouse on the other side of town where he is not recognized. He quickly chooses a girl and she takes him to a room upstairs. Closing the door behind him, Father Finger tells the girl that he is very shy, and would like to undress with the lights off.

”It is okay with me,” agrees the girl, and the two of them undress in the dark.

When Father Finger gets into bed, he immediately climbs on top of the girl in the missionary position.

”Do you know, Father,” says the girl, ”I’m really glad that this is what you came here for. When I saw you coming in, I was sure you were going to talk to me all about... JEEZUS CHRIST!” Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

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Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent... close your eyes. Feel the body completely frozen. Look inwards... go as deep as possible.

There is nothing to fear; it is your own space.

Deeper and deeper. When you are deepest in your being, you are at the source of life, and you will also find the roots into the universe.

This is your buddha-nature.

Blessed is this experience of your own being, a buddha. Remember it. Let it become your very breathing and heartbeat... twenty-four hours, day in, day out.

This very remembrance will change everything in your actions, in your gestures; it will bring a grace, a beauty, which is not of this world.

To make it more clear that you are not the body nor the mind, but just a pure awareness...

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax... let go.

The body is there, the mind is there – you are neither, you are just a watcher...

Just a mirror.

This quality of being a mirror is what makes you a buddha. Drink from this universal source as much as you can.

Let it sink into your every fiber and cell.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

You can come back – but come back with your experience, don’t leave it behind.

Silently, gracefully, sit down for a few moments, reminding and remembering your inner purity, your inner beauty... your inner innocence.

Okay, Anando?

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Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes!

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Zen is love

22 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

BASUI SAID:

IF YOU WOULD FREE YOURSELF OF THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SIX REALMS, YOU MUST

LEARN THE DIRECT WAY TO BECOME A BUDDHA. THIS WAY IS NO OTHER THAN THE

REALIZATION OF YOUR OWN MIND.

NOW, WHAT IS THIS MIND? IT IS THE TRUE NATURE OF ALL SENTIENT BEINGS, THAT WHICH

EXISTED BEFORE OUR PARENTS WERE BORN AND HENCE BEFORE OUR OWN BIRTH, AND WHICH PRESENTLY EXISTS, UNCHANGEABLE AND ETERNAL. SO IT IS CALLED ONE’S

ORIGINAL FACE.

THIS MIND IS INTRINSICALLY PURE. WHEN WE ARE BORN IT IS NOT NEWLY CREATED, AND

WHEN WE DIE IT DOES NOT PERISH. IT HAS NO DISTINCTION OF MALE OR FEMALE, NOR

HAS IT ANY COLORATION OF GOOD OR BAD. IT CANNOT BE COMPARED WITH ANYTHING, SO IT IS CALLED BUDDHA-NATURE. YET COUNTLESS THOUGHTS ISSUE FROM THIS SELF-NATURE AS WAVES ARISE IN THE OCEAN OR AS IMAGES ARE REFLECTED IN A MIRROR.

IF YOU WANT TO REALIZE YOUR OWN MIND, YOU MUST FIRST OF ALL LOOK INTO THE

SOURCE FROM WHICH THOUGHTS FLOW. SLEEPING AND WORKING, STANDING AND

SITTING, PROFOUNDLY ASK YOURSELF, ”WHAT IS MY OWN MIND?” WITH AN INTENSE

YEARNING TO RESOLVE THIS QUESTION. THIS IS CALLED ”TRAINING” OR ”PRACTICE” OR

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”DESIRE FOR TRUTH” OR ”THIRST FOR REALIZATION.” WHAT IS TERMED ”ZAZEN” IS NO

MORE THAN LOOKING INTO ONE’S OWN MIND.

BECAUSE SEARCHING ONE’S OWN MIND LEADS ULTIMATELY TO ENLIGHTENMENT, THIS

PRACTICE IS A PREREQUISITE TO BECOMING A BUDDHA.

Anando, it is a great moment of rejoicing that finally Basui has come home.

Old habits die hard. He is now a master, but here and there, a few pieces from before, from when he was just a teacher, are still present. Now they can be avoided, or they can be given the right direction. But the man has arrived. He has started speaking out of his own experience. He is no longer a parrot.

To be a parrot is so easy, just to repeat somebody else, to be an echo. But to be a master needs a steel spine – to be oneself and to be utterly aware so that nothing enters and pollutes your purity.

The master is perhaps the most miraculous, the most magical phenomenon in existence.

He knows and he cannot say he knows. He is and he goes on saying that he has disappeared. He discovers the buddha in himself, perfect – but he has to say that he has become a buddha. But nobody becomes a buddha. It is not some kind of graduation, education, discipline or practice. But the difficulty of the master is that he has to use words that you can understand.

But now I can see and I will tell you where the points are which make me certain about Basui.

Although he has been long away, falling and rising, moving on this way or that way – his night has been long and dark – finally he has reached to the sunrise. It is light all over.

The moment you are enlightened, the whole existence is enlightened. And even if old habits are there, your new experience will express itself from nooks and corners of your old habits. It is just like a house which is dark and suddenly you bring a light inside. The walls may hide that the house has light now, but the windows, even the closed windows will show that that light has arrived. The house is no longer dark.

The situation is similar in the case of a teacher. An innocent man moves very easily into masterhood, because for him to be a disciple is a very simple and spontaneous act of love. But for the scholar it is difficult, and the more profound his scholarship is, the harder it is for him to even think that anybody else can know more than he knows – and he knows nothing. All that he considers knowledge is just crammed by the memory. Somebody else may have experienced it, but he is just a repetition. He is not the original man. I was hoping that some day Basui would say something that would reveal his splendor and his glory.

BASUI SAID:

IF YOU WOULD FREE YOURSELF OF THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SIX REALMS, YOU MUST

LEARN THE DIRECT WAY TO BECOME A BUDDHA.

You have to remember that because of his profound scholarship, the statements are mixed up.

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When he says, IF YOU WOULD FREE YOURSELF OF THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SIX REALMS, YOU MUST LEARN THE DIRECT WAY TO BECOME A BUDDHA, he is for the first time speaking of the direct way, the only one way, the way in.

You don’t have to wander around the world. Just a small turning in is enough, and all that you have longed for, for lives, is suddenly revealed to be your own self. You were searching for yourself, and that was your suffering: you could not find yourself. You could not find yourself in riches, or in power; you could not find your so-called love. You have looked everywhere, you have walked thousands of ways in thousands of lives, but you have never reached to yourself. This is the basic suffering: not to know yourself. Not to be aware of your eternity is the only misery – all miseries are small expressions of it.

But now Basui says there is a direct way. The direct way is simply to close your eyes and turn inwards. Forget the world as if it is a dream. It does not mean that it is a dream, it is just a way to concentrate your whole life energy inwards. Forget the whole world as if it is a dream, as if it does not exist. Only you are – then the whole energy starts flowing towards your center. There is nowhere to go; all doors are closed.

There is a very strange story of the Jaina tirthankara, Mahavira....

He remained for twelve years in absolute silence. He would not even indicate anything, or make any sign, because that is again a language, you are conveying something, some message. He did not convey a message, he did not ask a thing. For twelve years, he remained naked in the deep forest.

One day it happened that he was standing there by the side of the river, and a man who was looking after many cows had brought them to the river to drink water and he found Mahavira.

He asked him again and again, ”Are you going to stay here?” But Mahavira would simply look at him and not say anything – no emotion even on his face to show that he had heard.

The man said, ”I have to go urgently, I have just been informed that my house is on fire. And I cannot take all these cows, I have to run! So you please take care of my cows. Anyway, you are not doing anything, just standing naked like an idiot – at least you can take care of my cows. I will be coming back soon!”

The man was very much amazed that Mahavira did not show any sign, whether he was deaf or not. He shouted, but there was no effect. He had to run, his house was on fire. So he said, ”Okay, whether you say anything or not, I assume that you will look after my cows. But if you don’t, you will find that I am a very evil man!”

But there was no sign of response. Nobody has lived in silence like Mahavira.

The man went home. And hours later, by the evening, he came back. Mahavira was still standing in his place, but all the cows were gone.

He asked, ”Where are the cows?” But he was as deaf as before.

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The man said, ”This is such a weird man. At least he could tell me where my cows have gone. If he does not want to speak, he could indicate by his finger where they are.” But Mahavira would not use even his hand because that is also a language; a gesture is also a language. He was very clear about it, that no language means no language.

The man ran around and found all the cows gathered behind the bushes. So he thought, ”This man is very clever and cunning. He is hiding the cows behind the bushes and when the sun sets and it is dark, he will take them all away.”

It was a natural conclusion for an ordinary man. And he was getting enraged because Mahavira was not answering. He could not conceive that somebody could be in such silence.

So he got burning torches and said to Mahavira, ”Up to now you have been pretending that you cannot hear, but from now on you will not be able to hear.” And he forced the burning torches into both his ears. Mahavira did not say anything.

The man was very much puzzled. But now nothing could be done, he had destroyed his ears.

Perhaps he was wrong, perhaps he was unnecessarily doubting the man.

It is a mythological story from this point onwards. Up to here it seems to be factual, because Mahavira remained deaf after this time, and his ears remained burned, but after this the disciples must have elaborated it. I don’t want you to believe in the elaboration, but it is significant to know it....

The god Indra, who rules over the clouds and the rainbows, saw all this happening and felt very sad and sorry for poor Mahavira, who had never done any harm to anybody. He thought, ”He needs a bodyguard at least.” So he came down.

With him it was possible, without using any language, without using the body or the mind, to have contact, communication. It was not against silence, it was beyond silence.

The communication was that Indra, without speaking, not visible or audible to anybody, said, ”I feel very sorry for you. I would like to appoint one or two bodyguards because you remain absolutely silent; anybody can do harm to you.”

Mahavira communicated, ”This man has done me a great service. Up to now my silence was only half. I was not speaking but I was hearing, and the hearing was also a disturbance. I’m grateful to him that he destroyed my ears; I don’t need any guard, because the guard can only defend my body, not me. Nobody can harm me – you know it. So don’t be unnecessarily worried, be at peace and go back to your work.

This part seems to be mythological because there is no god of the clouds and rainbows, but it is significant in the sense that Mahavira was not angry. On the contrary he said, ”Up to now, my silence was only half – I was not speaking but others were speaking and I was hearing. And nature has not provided any way to close your ears just as you close your eyes, so he was certainly a very good man and he has done me a great service. He has now made my silence complete.” The Original Man

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Such silence, which is complete, is the direct way.

THIS WAY IS NO OTHER THAN THE REALIZATION OF YOUR OWN MIND.

The word ‘mind’ is from his old habit as a teacher, but he is using it with a capital M, and that is equivalent to no-mind. The old mind is no longer there, but he uses the word out of habit.

Teachers have used, instead of mind, transcendental mind, Mind with a capital M. But a man who is not a scholar will simply say, ”There is no mind anymore... why do you even talk of transcendental mind?”

That which is not – you cannot transcend it. He is still carrying dead bones; what he wants to say is right, but his old habits of speaking are there and he is still using them.

He says, THE DIRECT WAY TO BECOME A BUDDHA...

But nobody ever becomes a buddha. That is the language of the scholar, the teacher, the preacher, the philosopher. The experience of the existential man, the original man, is that you are always a buddha. You may not recognize it, you may even deny it, but that does not matter. A fish can deny the ocean because the fish has never known the ocean. It has been born in it, it has lived in it and one day it will disappear in it; it is just a solid wave.

There is an ancient Sufi story....

A young philosophically minded fish starts inquiring, ”I have heard so much about the ocean. Where is the ocean?”

Nobody could answer. They were all in the ocean. All around was nothing but the ocean. An old fish said to the young philosopher, ”Ocean and we are not separate. You are the ocean. We are just waves in the ocean.”

You need not become a buddha. You have just to be silent, to experience that which is already there.

NOW, WHAT IS THIS MIND? – again, with a capital M. He is trying to make a distinction but it would have been better to ask, ”What is this buddha-nature? What is this consciousness?” The word ‘mind’

can be deceptive.

IT IS THE TRUE NATURE OF ALL SENTIENT BEINGS...

His description is correct, that’s why I say he has come home – of course he is late, but he has arrived.

... THE TRUE NATURE OF ALL SENTIENT BEINGS, THAT WHICH EXISTED BEFORE OUR

PARENTS WERE BORN AND HENCE BEFORE OUR OWN BIRTH, AND WHICH PRESENTLY

EXISTS, UNCHANGEABLE AND ETERNAL. SO IT IS CALLED ONE’S ORIGINAL FACE.

Now, something new, the original face, the ultimately original face. This is not a repetition. His old structure of language is broken down. Fragments of it will hang with him for a few days, perhaps The Original Man

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more. But by and by they will drop, because the essential is grasped. It is called one’s original face.

The buddha is your original face.

THIS MIND IS INTRINSICALLY PURE.

Now you can see what I mean, the old habits. Again, he brings the word ‘mind’ in. ”The Mind is intrinsically pure.” He should say that the no-mind is intrinsically pure. Mind is the impurity; no-mind is the purity. But he has to learn the ways of expressing as a master. He knows how to express as a teacher but he has now become a master. We can understand his difficulty.

THIS NO-MIND IS INTRINSICALLY PURE. WHEN WE ARE BORN IT IS NOT NEWLY CREATED, AND WHEN WE DIE IT DOES NOT PERISH. IT HAS NO DISTINCTION OF MALE OR FEMALE, NOR HAS IT ANY COLORATION OF GOOD OR BAD.

The description shows that he has begun to see and feel.

IT CANNOT BE COMPARED WITH ANYTHING, SO IT IS CALLED BUDDHA-NATURE. YET

COUNTLESS THOUGHTS ISSUE FROM THIS SELF-NATURE AS WAVES ARISE IN THE OCEAN

OR AS IMAGES ARE REFLECTED IN A MIRROR.

IF YOU WANT TO REALIZE YOUR OWN MIND...

Please, always replace his word ‘mind’ with ‘no-mind’. I don’t have to remind you again and again.

Whenever he says mind – you hear no-mind.

... YOU MUST FIRST OF ALL LOOK INTO THE SOURCE FROM WHICH THOUGHTS FLOW.

He is doing his best to get rid of his old scholarship and to bring a freshness to his expression, and once in a while he succeeds.

YOU MUST FIRST OF ALL LOOK INTO THE SOURCE FROM WHICH THOUGHTS FLOW.

SLEEPING AND WORKING, STANDING AND SITTING, PROFOUNDLY ASK YOURSELF...

This is an old habit. A man of understanding simply knows, there is no question, no answer. If you are still asking that means you have not found it.

He says:

ASK YOURSELF, ”WHAT IS MY OWN MIND?”

There is no need. You are it. Experience it. Who are you questioning? Do you think anybody else will answer it? You can taste the sweetness of a fruit, you can smell the fragrance of a flower, but you cannot say what it is exactly in words. And this is a far deeper realm.

... WITH AN INTENSE YEARNING TO RESOLVE THIS QUESTION.

There is no question anymore. It is just his old habit, his old mind – the mechanical mind, which goes on repeating his old scholarship days.

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THIS IS CALLED ”TRAINING” OR ”PRACTICE.”

Once you see your self-nature, there is no practice and no training, or any desire for truth or thirst for realization. In the assembly of masters, he will look such a novice if he says, THIS IS CALLED ”TRAINING” OR ”PRACTICE” OR ”DESIRE FOR TRUTH” OR ”THIRST FOR

REALIZATION.”

If you have realized, there cannot remain any thirst for realization. Just drink a glass of pure water –

which is difficult to find in Poona!

Existence plays strange games. It has made this place to awaken you, but it has no qualifications for it. If you drink even the polluted water of Poona, your thirst will be gone. You may have amoebas

– that is another thing, not at all a concern of Zen. I have gone through the whole literature of Zen; they never talk of amoebas. But you know that you have to pass through the amoebas before you can reach to truth and become a buddha. You have to suffer amoebas. It is a new kind of hindrance imposed on the potential buddhas.

Gautam Buddha will be in difficulty. He will have to be hospitalized because he will not know anything of amoebas. This is a great speciality of Poona. But it is good; it wakes you up, it keeps you aware.

It helps you to become a watchful consciousness. Avoid amoebas!

WHAT IS TERMED ”ZAZEN” IS NO MORE THAN LOOKING INTO ONE’S OWN MIND – AGAIN, REMEMBER, IT IS NO-MIND, BECAUSE SEARCHING ONE’S OWN MIND LEADS ULTIMATELY

TO ENLIGHTENMENT – NOT MIND.

Mind has to be dropped long before. You have to search into no-mind, into that silent space where you will meet yourself, your buddha.

BECAUSE SEARCHING ONE’S OWN NO-MIND LEADS ULTIMATELY TO ENLIGHTENMENT, THIS PRACTICE IS A PREREQUISITE TO BECOMING A BUDDHA.

It is not a prerequisite to becoming a buddha, it is a prerequisite to discovering the buddha. These are small differences of words but they show that the moment you talk about becoming, you are talking about a process of change. Becoming is change, but the moment you talk about being, you are talking about is-ness. There is no change. The buddha is your being, not your becoming. But I can understand Basui’s difficulty; he is saying right things but in the wrong words.

I hope he will do a little more homework.

Jakuan wrote:

PERFECT MELODY – LIKE WIND

AMONG THE PINES OF FAR-OFF SLOPES.

MIND IS WASHED SKY CLEAN:

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HEAR IT BEYOND ITSELF.

A master, in this simple statement, says the whole scripture: ”Perfect melody – like wind among the pines of far-off slopes. Mind is washed sky clean: hear it beyond itself.” Another Zen expression:

BETTER TO SEE THE FACE

THAN TO HEAR THE NAME.

You have heard too much about the buddha, now it is time to see the face.

Question 1

Anando has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

LAST NIGHT I HEARD YOU REFER TO ZEN AS ”THE GREAT LOVE AFFAIR.” YET, RARELY

ARE LOVE OR COMPASSION MENTIONED IN ZEN ANECDOTES OR DISCOURSES OF THE

MASTERS. WHY IS THIS?

Anando, when you love a person, you don’t harass him by saying ”I love you” again and again; otherwise, he will kill you. There is a limit to how much you can listen to ”I love you.” One gets fed up.

Just try it on any lover and see how long the love remains. The boyfriend or the girlfriend will disappear, because you can eat sweets but there is a limit, otherwise sickness will follow.

Zen never mentions love. My own understanding is that the man of Zen simply loves as he breathes.

It is not something special, there is no need to mention it. Don’t you feel my love although I never say it? Do you want me to say it to you again and again?

Zen does not say it, that is a great indication that it understands. Love should not be said, but shown in every gesture – through your eyes, through your hands, through your silence. It should radiate around you. It is the same with compassion. It is not mentioned either.

Zen is not born in America, where there are great thinkers who can be great only in America, like Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill....

Dale Carnegie’s books have been best-sellers in America, second only to The Holy Bible. He used to run classes and schools where people were taught that whether you love or not does not matter.

What matters is the word, the expression. Who can tell about the inside? Before going out of the house, kiss your wife and say, ”I love you, sweetheart. I will miss you so much.” You may have other thoughts inside, absolutely contrary to this: ”Now is the time to enjoy...” Or you may be thinking of your girlfriend! But that is all inside – your wife is not a mind reader. So just say The Original Man

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it, and it does not cost anything to kiss her, at least three times a day. When you come back from the office, again kiss your wife and say to her, ”I love you, darling.” And again before going to bed; don’t forget. These idiots like Dale Carnegie are thought to be great philosophers who are helping people in their relationships.

Real love has no words to express itself. Real love is a presence, you can feel it. It surrounds you like wind, it rains over you like rain. A roseflower does not say, ”How beautiful I am.” And if roseflowers start studying Dale Carnegie and start saying to you, ”Where are you going, darling? I love you so much. And I’m so beautiful,” you will have to say, ”Shut up! Just be a flower – don’t bother me!” –

what else can you do?

Your question is very accurate. Zen is love, and Zen is compassion, but there is no need to make a manifesto, a declaration of it. In utter silence – the transmission of the lamp.

Now before you go in, I have to say a few jokes so that you can come back; otherwise, this world is not worth returning to. I make every effort that at least our small world is joyous, laughing, so that when you go in you will not remain there, you will bring the buddha out. You don’t have to remain there. Just carry the buddha out – in your actions, in your feelings, in your love. But come out!

And just to make sure, I have to tell you a few jokes so you don’t become serious and remain inside thinking the world is a dream. It is all a changing flux – ”Why bother... nobody is going to miss me anyway, and it is so peaceful here...” From this peaceful space, going to the canteen is a quantum leap.

You are here being buddhas, and then seeing the same buddhas eating in the canteen – one is simply shocked. I don’t know where your canteen is, I never go anywhere. Just so as not to see some buddha doing something which is not buddha-like, I keep myself closed in my room. I come only in the evening to see you, when you are ready to be buddhas – just for a few minutes, then you are free.

Kowalski is standing at the urinal quietly pissing, when he notices that he is being watched by a midget.

Kowalski continues his pissing, when suddenly he sees the midget dragging a stool up next to him.

The midget climbs up and proceeds to admire Kowalski’s machinery from close by.

”Wow!” exclaims the midget. ”You have the nicest balls I have ever seen.”

”Well, er... thanks!” says Kowalski, surprised and flattered. Then he begins to move away.

”Listen,” says the midget. ”I know this is a rather strange request, but I wonder if you would mind if I touch them?”

Startled, Kowalski hesitates. But seeing no real harm in it, he says, ”Okay.” Standing on his tip-toes on the stool, the midget reaches up and gets a good grip on Kowalski’s balls. Then in a loud voice, the little guy yells, ”Okay, buster! Hand over your wallet, or I will jump!” The Original Man

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Giovanni is holding his head in despair.

”It-a is a tragedy!” he exclaims to his friend, Luigi.

”Why-a?” asks Luigi.

”I come-a home last night, and what do I see?” says Giovanni. ”My wife is-a in bed with a Chinese!”

”Really? What did-a you say?” asks Luigi.

”What could I say?” shouts Giovanni crazily. ”I don’t-a speak Chinese!” Terry Turkeynose is snoring sweetly one night, when he starts dreaming that God is talking to him.

”Terry!” booms the voice of God. ”I have big plans for you, so you had better clean up your act!” The next morning, Terry races out of the house. He goes to the Facial Fixit Clinic, gets a nose job, a hair transplant, new teeth, a suntan, and then blows the rest of his money on some really snappy clothes.

He is walking home totally exhausted and aching after such a frantic day, when he hears a deep rumbling in the heavens above. Terry looks up nervously, and gets run over by a bus.

The next thing he knows, he’s in Heaven, standing in front of Almighty God.

”Holy shit!” shouts Terry at God. ”Are you nuts?”

”Hey, I’m sorry,” says God, picking up Terry’s new false teeth from the ground and giving them back to him.

”So why the hell did you put me through all that trouble,” screams Terry, ”and then rub me out!”

”Hey, look, man,” booms God, ”I said I’m sorry – I just did not recognize you!” Okay, Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

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

Gather all your consciousness at the center of your being – not going out, but going in. As the consciousness goes inwards, it becomes very crystallized, and a great joy arises.

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For the first time you feel you are blessed, because for the first time you are a buddha.

Let this recognition go deep into every fiber of your being, so that you can remain a buddha twenty-four hours.

It is such a joy, such a dance, such a beauty, such a grace to remain a buddha twenty-four hours. It is your own being, expressing itself in its glory and splendor.

Deeper and deeper...

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax.

Let the body remain there, and the mind – but you are neither.

You are just a pure

consciousness, a no-mind, a watcher on the hills.

This is your original man.

The original man is the buddha.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back. Bring your experience with yourself...

Slowly, silently, gracefully, sit down just like a buddha, without any hesitation.

It is something that you had forgotten, it is remembered again. Recollect the experience of the inner space, the silence and the grandeur of it, the peace and the splendor of it...

These are the few moments which will prove the most precious in your life. And if you are alert enough, you will spread these moments all over your life and death, because the experience of the buddha within you is the experience of eternity within you.

Okay, Anando?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes!

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From the mortal to the immortal

23 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

TOZAN SAID:

SUBTLY INCLUDED WITHIN THE TRUE, INQUIRY AND RESPONSE COME UP TOGETHER.

COMMUNING WITH THE SOURCE AND COMMUNING WITH THE PROCESS, IT INCLUDES

INTEGRATION AND INCLUDES THE ROAD.

MERGING IS AUSPICIOUS. DO NOT VIOLATE IT. NATURALLY REAL, YET INCONCEIVABLE, IT IS NOT WITHIN THE PROVINCE OF DELUSION OR ENLIGHTENMENT. WITH CAUSAL

CONDITIONS, TIME AND SEASON, QUIESCENTLY IT SHINES BRIGHT. IN ITS FINENESS IT

FITS INTO SPACELESSNESS. IN ITS GREATNESS IT IS UTTERLY BEYOND LOCATION. A HAIRBREADTH DEVIATION WILL FAIL TO ACCORD WITH THE PROPER ATTUNEMENT.

NOW, THERE ARE ”SUDDEN” AND ”GRADUAL” IN CONNECTION WITH WHICH ARE SET

UP BASIC APPROACHES. ONCE BASIC APPROACHES ARE DISTINGUISHED, THEN THERE

ARE GUIDING RULES. BUT EVEN THOUGH THE BASIS IS REACHED AND THE APPROACH

COMPREHENDED, TRUE ETERNITY STILL FLOWS.

OUTWARDLY STILL, WHILE INWARDLY MOVING, LIKE A TETHERED COLT, A TRAPPED RAT –

THE ANCIENT SAINTS PITIED THEM, AND BESTOWED UPON THEM THE TEACHING.

ACCORDING TO THEIR DELUSION, THEY CALLED BLACK AS WHITE.

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WHEN ERRONEOUS IMAGINATIONS CEASE, THE ACQUIESCENT NO-MIND REALIZES

ITSELF.

WHEN THE WOODEN MAN BEGINS TO SING, THE STONE WOMAN GETS UP TO DANCE; IT’S NOT WITHIN REACH OF FEELING OR DISCRIMINATION – HOW COULD IT ADMIT OF

CONSIDERATION IN THOUGHT?

PRACTICE SECRETLY, WORKING WITHIN, AS THOUGH A FOOL, LIKE AN IDIOT – IF YOU CAN

ACHIEVE CONTINUITY, THIS IS CALLED THE HOST WITHIN THE HOST.

Maneesha, before I discuss the very beautiful statements of Tozan, I have to introduce to you a few new friends of Avirbhava for the Museum of Gods. Something has to be said before she brings her new acquisitions. Our researchers have been working day and night to find out about all the birds that have been worshipped as gods, but they were very much surprised to find that parrots have never been worshipped anywhere. They looked into this encyclopedia and that encyclopedia. They found every possible source to look into... and they were worried about what to do because she had brought such beautiful parrots. I am going to allow her these parrots in the Museum of Gods for my own reasons.

Why have parrots not been included among the gods by any race, in any country, at any time? It is very clear to me that it is because parrots are just like rabbis, pundits, popes – they repeat, they don’t have any spontaneous response to anything. And priests and rabbis and popes have always been called parrots. Naturally they could not allow their competitors to be gods, and except for this I don’t think there is any reason. But as far as I am concerned, for this reason only I will allow parrots into the Museum of Gods. They are the only ones who represent the whole priesthood of all the religions.

The researchers have sent their report to me:

Many birds have been objects of worship down through history. Among the Indians of the northwest coast of America, the crow and raven are worshipped. They believe that the birds produce dry land by the beating of their wings. In India offerings are regularly made to crows, which are believed to be ancestors.

The Apaches of North America believe that there are spirits of divine origin in the eagle and other birds. The Ostiaks regard a tree as holy on which an eagle has nested. The eagle owl is worshipped as a mediator, and the owl is particularly important among the Ainus; its cry may not be imitated, since it is believed to be capable of bewitching. In parts of Australia, the wren is worshipped. In Central America, Brazil, and West Africa the thunderbird is known as the god of the tempest. In many countries the swallow is regarded as a sacred bird. Misfortune will come to anyone who kills it, and it may not be touched or caught. It is also taboo to take the nest of a swallow.

In India itself the Hindus have believed that the fish is the first incarnation of God, the tortoise is another, the pig is another. But the researchers were concerned that parrots are not mentioned anywhere, and they could not find the reason. It is clear that the parrot is so much like the pundit, or the rabbi, repeating the scriptures; so much like the priest, bishop, cardinal or pope that they cannot allow these fellows. It is a question of business. These parrots repeat whatever you say, they don’t answer.

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I will tell Avirbhava to bring her parrots and to show how they repeat. Avirbhava, bring your gods.

(AVIRBHAVA RESTS TWO HUGE PARROTS ON THEIR PERCHES ON EACH SIDE OF THE

MASTER ON THE PODIUM. IN THE MIDDLE SHE PLACES A SMALL PINK COCKATOO WHICH

FLUTTERS IN FRONT OF HIM.)

Just say something...

(SHE LEANS OVER TO THE PARROT ON THE RIGHT AND SAYS, ”YAA-HOO!” THEN SHE

GOES TO THE ONE ON THE LEFT AND SAYS EVEN MORE LOUDLY, ”YAA-HOO!” THE ONE

IN THE MIDDLE NOW STARTS CHIRPING.... AND THE MASTER CHUCKLES AWAY WHILE

AVIRBHAVA RUSHES FROM PARROT TO PARROT SAYING, ”YAA-HOO! YAA-HOO!” BUT THE

PARROTS’ REPLIES ARE DROWNED IN WILD LAUGHTER. THE MASTER TOO IS LAUGHING

AND ENJOYING THE SHOW TREMENDOUSLY.)

One joke for the parrots....

Klarrot the Parrot has abandoned her perch and is sitting on the lampshade near the telephone when Kowalski gets home. Kowalski opens the door, and steps into a huge mountain of birdseed.

Immediately, Kowalski makes a dive for the lampshade and grabs Klarrot.

”Did you order more birdseed?” he bellows at the parrot, clutched in his hand.

Klarrot remains silent, and glares at Kowalski with her beady eyes.

”Did you order more birdseed?” Kowalski screams again.

Klarrot does not blink.

”Right!” shouts Kowalski, and he takes the parrot upstairs to the attic and ties her to a beam with her wings stretched out.

Kowalski stomps downstairs and Klarrot is left staring into space. She looks around and can just see Jesus on a crucifix, nailed to the opposite wall.

In a quiet whisper, Klarrot asks, ”Did you order more birdseed, too?” When you do your gibberish, bring your parrots. They can do the gibberish with you.

Tozan said:

SUBTLY INCLUDED WITHIN THE TRUE, INQUIRY AND RESPONSE COME UP TOGETHER.

If your inquiry is honest, with your total being, you will want to know that the response will come immediately. There will not be a gap of time between your inquiry and the response from existence.

Existence is very responsive. If no answer comes, that simply means your inquiry is not total.

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Existence responds only to totality. Be a hundred percent in your inquiry, and existence will not fail you. It has always responded.

COMMUNING WITH THE SOURCE AND COMMUNING WITH THE PROCESS IT INCLUDES

INTEGRATION AND INCLUDES THE ROAD.

COMMUNING WITH THE SOURCE – once you have come in communication with the source, existence has started responding to you. Then the whole process, the integration of your being and the road that you follow, is seen clearly as one. The road is none other than the goal, and your integration is none other than your totality. The whole process of being a buddha is nothing but a response from existence to an honest inquiry. It includes all.

MERGING IS AUSPICIOUS. DO NOT VIOLATE IT.

Perhaps the only thing that can be called auspicious is merging with the whole, taking away all your barriers, hindrances and defenses, just jumping into the ocean and disappearing into the ocean without leaving a trace. What is the point of being a dewdrop when you can be the very ocean?

MERGING IS AUSPICIOUS. DO NOT VIOLATE IT. NATURALLY REAL, YET INCONCEIVABLE, IT

IS NOT WITHIN THE PROVINCE OF DELUSION OR ENLIGHTENMENT.

Because of our mind we always divide everything into opposite polarities.

Delusion and

enlightenment, night and day, birth and death, they are all one process but the mind cannot conceive it. It is intrinsically incapable of conceiving of the oneness of life and death, of light and darkness.

And even if somehow it can be proved logically that they are one, the greatest problem arises about delusion and enlightenment. Are they one?

Tozan shows that he is a great master by saying that they are one. The moment delusion disappears, enlightenment also disappears. It is not that delusion disappears and you remain enlightened.

The very idea of remaining enlightened is part of delusion. They both remain together, or they go away together, leaving you alone, neither deluded nor enlightened, but just simple, ordinary – a nothingness, a nobody, a pure space.

WITH CAUSAL CONDITIONS, TIME AND SEASON, QUIESCENTLY IT SHINES BRIGHT.

This nothingness shines bright. It is not your idea of nothingness. You think nothingness means nothingness. By nothingness Tozan or any buddha means no-thingness. It is not a thing that you have arrived at. It is a space. It is consciousness, it is being, it is silence, it is beauty, it is truth. It is nothing that is graspable by your hands.

IN ITS FINENESS IT FITS INTO SPACELESSNESS.

This is going really to the very peak, the ultimate peak. Meditation begins with finding a space where there is no thought, where there is no body, no form, no mind. This is the beginning. But space is still there. At the ultimate point space also disappears. Then what remains? That is the indescribable.

As for space, language is capable... beyond space we are absolutely dumb. In its greatness it is utterly beyond description.

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A HAIRBREADTH DEVIATION WILL FAIL TO ACCORD WITH THE PROPER ATTUNEMENT.

NOW, THERE ARE ”SUDDEN” AND ”GRADUAL” IN CONNECTION WITH WHICH WE SET

UP BASIC APPROACHES. ONCE BASIC APPROACHES ARE DISTINGUISHED, THEN THERE

ARE GUIDING RULES. BUT EVEN THOUGH THE BASIS IS REACHED AND THE APPROACH

COMPREHENDED, TRUE ETERNITY STILL FLOWS.

Since Gautam Buddha it has been a continuous question whether enlightenment is gradual or sudden. If it is gradual that means it will be partial, step by step; slowly, slowly you become enlightened. A part of you becomes enlightened but the remaining part remains unenlightened.

This is absurd. But it has appealed to many people who think, ”How can we attain enlightenment suddenly?” Nothing can be attained in the world suddenly. You cannot become the richest man in the world suddenly. It is a gradual process of acquiring money, wealth, power – everything in the world is gradual.

Just for this reason – that everything in the world is gradual – I say unto you that enlightenment cannot be gradual because it does not belong to this world. It has to be sudden. There is no other way, because you cannot dissect it; you cannot say fifty percent enlightenment, you cannot say,

”Here goes a ten percent enlightened person.”

One is either enlightened or not, there is no other possibility. Because it has to be total, it means that it is already there. If it had to grow, it would have been gradual. No growth can be sudden.

Every growth is gradual – a child becomes a young man, the young man becomes old, a small plant becomes a big tree. But everything that grows is gradual.

Enlightenment does not grow and does not decline. It is already there in you. It needs only a recognition and recognition can be sudden. It just needs a total quest and a turning in – and suddenly you are no more what you used to be. You are a buddha. It will be very difficult for you to tell anybody. It will be very difficult for you even to accept that you are a buddha. But whether it is difficult or impossible, it does not make any difference to the reality: you are a buddha.

Sometimes you forget and sometimes you remember.

Forgetting, remembering, forgetting,

remembering – a point comes when remembrance becomes so solid that you don’t forget. But it is a sudden phenomenon. It is the only sudden phenomenon because it is not of this world.

OUTWARDLY STILL, WHILE INWARDLY MOVING, LIKE A TETHERED COLT, A TRAPPED RAT

– THE ANCIENT SAINTS PITIED THEM, AND BESTOWED UPON THEM THE TEACHING.

ACCORDING TO THEIR DELUSION, THEY CALLED BLACK AS WHITE. WHEN ERRONEOUS

IMAGINATIONS CEASE, THE ACQUIESCENT NO-MIND REALIZES ITSELF.

The realization of no-mind is just like a lake which had waves moving on it. Now the winds are gone and the waves have become silent. It was the same lake while it was in a turmoil, it was just our delusion that it had changed. It is the same consciousness when it gets identified with things. Our nature does not change any more than the lake’s nature is changed by waves. Soon the winds will be gone and the waves will disappear from the lake and the lake will become just a quiet mirror.

It is the same lake. It is the same consciousness which is in delusion, disturbed. It is the same consciousness which in enlightenment is undisturbed. The only difference is of disturbance. So find The Original Man

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out what causes the disturbance in your consciousness. Drop those causes and the disturbance will disappear.

Enlightenment is not some achievement. It is simply the absence of all causes of disturbance. When the lake becomes silent, a mirror, it simply means that the winds have gone home, the cause of the disturbance is no more there.

What is the cause of your disturbance? The one cause is identification: my body, my mind, my religion, my country, my race... There are thousands of examples but always there is identification.

Drop all identifications because they are simply mind projections, they don’t have any reality.

What do you mean, to say that you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian? You were not born a Christian, you were not born a Hindu. Your parents may have believed in Hinduism, in Buddhism, in Christianity, but their belief cannot enter into the child that is born.

The child is pure and still, there are no waves stirring its lake of consciousness. It is for this reason that it has been recognized by all the mystics of the world that finally the mystic becomes like a child.

In Tozan’s words he becomes almost a fool, an idiot, because he knows nothing of the worldly wisdom. He behaves so spontaneously that he is always out of place. He is a misfit. You can forgive the child because he is a child, but you cannot forgive an old man who behaves like a child. Hence you have not forgiven saints, you have started worshipping them. That is a way of not forgiving them – making them dead gods, saying that they are special people, incarnations of God, prophets, messengers, messiahs, and we are just ordinary people.

The truth is just the opposite. They are the most ordinary people, the most simple – so simple that you can even call them fools or idiots. You are the extraordinary people in your egos.

The first, most fundamental cause is identification. So UNidentification becomes the process. Go on unidentifying – with your body, with your mind, with your feelings. Go on eliminating all identifications.

Then what is left? Just a pure space – that is the last thing to be dropped.

It is simply a process of merger into the ocean, into the whole. You cannot remain separate. Being separate from the whole is the cause of all our misery. Being one with the whole, there is no possibility of any misery, you are no more. To be miserable, first you have to be.

WHEN ERRONEOUS IMAGINATIONS CEASE, THE ACQUIESCENT NO-MIND REALIZES

ITSELF. WHEN THE WOODEN MAN BEGINS TO SING...

When you dance, if you are not identified with the body, what is the body? Just a skeleton. Tozan is saying:

WHEN THE WOODEN MAN BEGINS TO SING, THE STONE WOMAN GETS UP TO DANCE; IT’S NOT WITHIN REACH OF FEELING OR DISCRIMINATION – HOW COULD IT ADMIT OF

CONSIDERATION IN THOUGHT?

If you are not identified with the body or the mind, if you are just a watcher, then if a song arises in you, it is arising and flowing through your dead body. A corpse is singing, and if you start dancing, a corpse is dancing. You remain, in every movement, in every gesture, just a watcher.

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This is the simple secret of all religiousness, just to be a watcher. It cuts through all identifications in a single blow. It leaves you in a pure space. That is the beginning of spacelessness. If you have come to the space within, you have come to the gates of the temple. One step more and you will be drowned in spacelessness. Tozan says:

PRACTICE SECRETLY, WORKING WITHIN, AS THOUGH A FOOL, LIKE AN IDIOT – IF YOU CAN

ACHIEVE CONTINUITY, THIS IS CALLED THE HOST WITHIN THE HOST.

Man’s many problems arise from his desire to exhibit. In psychology they call it a disease. You want to exhibit who you are. When you are putting your tie on rightly, looking in the mirror, your whole desire is to be recognized as a man of dignity. I am not against dignity and I am not saying that you should put your tie on backwards. I am saying don’t be identified with this personality. Remain continuously watching yourself and what you are doing. There is no need to change it. If it changes on its own, it is just because of your watching, and that is one of the secrets.

Albert Einstein came to know what mystics have known in their own way. When you look inside the atom... the atom consists of three particles. They are moving in a certain way. But the moment you look at them, they just stop, and begin moving in a different way.

It is exactly like when you are in your bathroom singing some stupid songs, cleaning your teeth and singing at the same time, making faces in front of the mirror – and suddenly you become aware that somebody is looking through the keyhole. You change your posture, you become a normal person, what nonsense were you doing? Just a little moment of freedom was there, and now that has been taken.

It may be that it is just a small child looking through the keyhole but that watchfulness of the child changes your behavior. It has no reason to it, he is not saying anything. In fact the child will enjoy it if you are making faces: ”Daddy is doing great things! He never does these things outside” – but you stop immediately. It is automatic. It is not that you make an effort to stop; you simply stop, knowing that somebody is watching.

This is perfectly good for human beings. But Albert Einstein came across the fact that when you look deep into the constituents of atoms, just the very fact that you are looking changes their behavior.

They don’t behave the same as they were behaving just a second before. They change their course, they become more gentlemanlike.

It has long been an understanding of the mystics that the moment you become a watcher, just your being a watcher is enough. You don’t have to change anything in your behavior, your behavior will change accordingly. It will become more spontaneous, it will be more in communion with existence.

It will be more loving, it will be more compassionate. It will be more joyful, more graceful, more grateful.

Your whole past will have to be dropped, but it is not that you have to drop it. It will drop by itself. A new man, a fresh man, arises out of watchfulness. This secret has not been revealed by the priests of any religion, that there is only one way of transformation and it is not discipline and fasting and standing on your head and doing all kinds of contortions of your body. There is only one way to go through a metamorphosis from the mortal to the immortal, from the prison of your identifications into the freedom of the skies.

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The key is watchfulness.

A haiku:

WHEN THE STONE MAN NODS HIS HEAD,

THE WOODEN PILLAR CLAPS ITS HANDS.

The master who has written this haiku – his name is not known; he just remains unidentified. He is saying that what is happening in the world is that ”the stone man nods his head,” and ”the wooden pillar claps its hands.” Nobody is conscious. Everything is happening in unconsciousness almost as if we were somnambulists, sleepwalkers. This situation of sleep can change just by bringing a little consciousness, a little awareness. I say ”a little awareness” just not to freak you out, because the little awareness is not little. If you bring just a little consciousness, a little watchfulness, the whole ocean drops into you. Just give way and you are gone, and what remains is the truth, the eternal truth.

Here we do meditation every day. By your meditation this place becomes auspicious. But yesterday I saw Proper Sagar... it was not unexpected. He is so proper that he cannot fall without proper adjustment, so he was the only person who was sitting when everybody else was dead. But that way he was showing his stupidity. It is not allowed here.

If people are behaving like this then I have to keep a few guards to make them dead. If they need proper guidance to die, somebody will have to give them proper guidance: this is the way to die! But I hope it will not be needed.

Proper Sagar has been from the very beginning proper. Everything that he does has to be proper, British. He cannot get out of that insanity. At least here you need not be insane. But his problem must have been how to fall – some lady is lying beside you and if you fall somebody may fall over you and everything will become improper. Nobody cared about him, but the guards informed me that Proper Sagar was not participating in the meditation.

It is for you all. Anybody who does not want to participate in the meditation totally is not allowed in the discourse either. The meditation is simply the justification, the experiential justification of whatever has been said. I talked about Tozan, and now we have to feel an experience. What is Tozan saying? What truth is there?

This is not a question of manners and proper behavior and etiquette. Here nobody is a gentleman or a lady. Here are simple human beings without any claim of specialness. This is the basic ground of approaching into your being, otherwise you will remain standing.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

TOZAN SPEAKS OF ”PROPER ATTUNEMENT...”

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Yes, he speaks about proper attunement, but he does not speak about Proper Sagar!

IS NOT PROPER ATTUNEMENT, OR BEING IN HARMONY WITH THE MASTER, A TRUER EXPRESSION OF WHAT TRANSPIRES BETWEEN MASTER AND DISCIPLE THAN

SURRENDER? OR IS SURRENDER A PREREQUISITE BEFORE ONE CAN HOPE TO BE IN

TUNE?

Maneesha, surrender has nothing to do with it as far as meditation is concerned. You don’t surrender to anybody, you are simply going inwards. There is nobody except you. You will not find anybody on the way except you.

But surrender does have a totally different significance. When you have known yourself and you have felt the cosmic relationship that you are part of this great universe, then you cannot go against nature. That is what surrender is. Surrender is not something to be done, it is just knowing your cosmic naturalness, your buddhahood. You cannot go against the cosmos. This not going against the cosmos, but remaining in trust and love and absolute surrender... wherever the wind takes you, you are available to it. Surrender is a by-product, not a prerequisite; it comes on its own accord.

Before we enter in... I am always concerned whether you will come out or not. Poor Nivedano can go on beating his drum, and you may not come. You may have already merged, you may not think it proper to come back. What is the point to go in every day and then to come back? It seems not very proper – either go in and be finished, or don’t bother about it. But there is a reason for going in every day and going deeper and deeper every day. It is because there is an infinity within you.

There are no milestones and there is no end to the road, so come back every day whether you have gone in or not. You will have to measure it by your changed behavior in the outside world. There is no other way to know how deep you have gone. Have you reached the buddha? Then it will affect your whole individuality. You will have to arrange your whole life in the new light.

So every day go deeper and deeper, but always remember that when you have enjoyed the inner space and Nivedano calls you forth with his drumbeat, be compassionate to him. Silently gathering the experience that you have collected, watching the way by which you entered, slowly move outward again.

By and by, as the Sufis say, ”If you pass through a garden of roses – even if you don’t touch the roses, your clothes will get the fragrance.” When you go in, your consciousness will start moving into your actions, your blindness will start disappearing, your darkness will become less. You don’t have to do anything. That is the most important thing about meditation – that it is a single thing, not so many things and so many rituals. It is just a simple process of going in and letting that experience change your whole life structure. You don’t have to do anything else.

Before you go in, a few laughters, so at least you remember that the path is full of laughter. I don’t want you to be serious meditators, I want you to be laughing buddhas.

”He looks so blissful,” sobs Molly Mooch over her husband Marvin’s coffin.

”Yes, he does,” agrees Mr. Koff, the undertaker.

”But there is just one thing,” sniffs Molly.

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”And what is that?” asks Mr. Koff, with a concerned voice.

”Well,” explains Molly, ”green was never his color. I think he would have been much happier wearing a blue suit, like that gentleman in the other coffin over there.”

”Don’t worry, Mrs. Mooch,” says the undertaker, ”I can fix it, if you will just go to the waiting room for a few minutes.”

Less than a minute later, Mister Koff calls Molly back into the showroom. Sure enough, Marvin is wearing the other man’s blue suit.

”That’s wonderful!” gasps Molly in admiration, ”but how did you change them so quickly?”

”I didn’t,” replies Mr. Koff. ”I just switched heads.”

”My husband is fantastic!” exclaims Doreen to Mabel and Blossom over coffee one morning. ”He bought me a mink coat and a diamond wristwatch.”

”That’s nothing,” snaps Mabel. ”My husband has bought me a luxury sailing boat and a speed boat.”

”My husband is poor,” admits Blossom, ”but he is very special. He has a prick so long that twelve yellow canaries can stand on it side by side.”

There is long silence.

”Girls,” says Doreen, ”I must admit I was lying. My husband didn’t buy me those fancy things. He bought me a plastic raincoat and a cheap watch. But I’m very happy with them.”

”Since we are telling the truth,” confesses Mabel, ”I should tell you that I didn’t get any fancy boats.

All I got was a rowboat ride on the river.”

Doreen and Mabel look at Blossom. ”Okay, okay!” says Blossom. ”I’ll tell you the truth, too. That business about twelve yellow canaries standing side by side on my husband’s prick is not true. The twelfth bird can only stand on one leg!”

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

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

Gather your whole consciousness inside. Concentrate it more and more deeply in the center.

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Deeper and deeper... there is no question here.

It is your own space you are entering, your own sky.

This is your buddha-nature, beyond the body, beyond the mind. Just a watching, just a witnessing is the buddha.

To make it clear...

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax. See the body lying there, see the mind lying there, but you are neither. You are standing aloof, watching, just watching. All clouds disappear and the moon shines bright.

Carry this experience twenty-four hours, as an underlying river expressing itself in your actions, words, responses, gestures – in your silences.

Waking and sleeping will not make any difference. Your buddhahood is there, a watcher on the hill.

In the darkest night you are still a light unto yourself.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back all the buddhas, carrying your buddhahood with you. Slowly and gracefully, just sit down for a few moments without any fear, remembering that you are a buddha. And that from this moment you will act as a buddha, you will behave as a buddha, you will love as a buddha.

It is a very simple phenomenon, because it is your ultimate reality. The question is just how to express it, how to recognize it.

Meditation gives you both.

It allows you to recognize it and then to carry it into the marketplace, to manifest it.

Always remember, the world was never in as much need of buddhas as it is today.

The future of humanity will depend on whether we can spread buddhahood like a wildfire around the earth. There is no other alternative.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

Yes!

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CHAPTER 9

Yaa-hoo! – a living sound

25 August 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

RINZAI SAID TO A MONK, ”SOMETIMES, A SHOUT IS LIKE A HARD AND DURABLE

JEWELED SWORD. SOMETIMES A SHOUT IS LIKE A LION, CROUCHING ON THE GROUND –

STRONG AND POWERFUL. SOMETIMES A SHOUT IS LIKE A WEED-TIPPED FISHING POLE, ATTRACTING AND PROBING THE UNWARY. AND SOMETIMES A SHOUT IS NOT USED AS A SHOUT. HOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND ALL THIS?”

AS THE MONK WAS THINKING ABOUT IT, RINZAI GAVE A SHOUT. HE THEN TURNED TO THE

ASSEMBLY AND SAID, ”YOU MONKS SHOULD BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT ALL THIS. WHEN

HOST AND GUEST MEET EACH OTHER, THERE IS ALWAYS AN EXCHANGE OF WORDS

OR DISCUSSION, IN WHICH ARE EXHIBITED EITHER THE FORM APPROPRIATE FOR THE

MOMENT, THE FUNCTION IN FULL, EXPEDIENT DEVICES WITH EITHER JOY OR ANGER AND

INCOMPLETE MANIFESTATION, OR THE RIDER ON A LION OR THE LORD OF ELEPHANTS.

”FOR INSTANCE, A TRUE DISCIPLE WOULD, UPON ARRIVAL, GIVE A SHOUT, THUS

PRESENTING A TRAY OF GLUE. AN INCOMPETENT MASTER WHO DOES NOT KNOW THAT

THIS IS JUST AN OBJECT, WOULD STEP INTO THE GLUE, PUTTING ON HIGH AIRS WITH

HIS LEARNING. THE DISCIPLE WOULD SHOUT AGAIN, BUT THE INCOMPETENT MASTER

WOULD REFUSE TO RETREAT FROM HIS WRONG POSITION. THIS IS A MORTAL DISEASE, WHICH IS INCURABLE AND IS CALLED ‘A GUEST LOOKING AT HIS HOST.’

”IT MIGHT HAPPEN THAT A COMPETENT MASTER WOULD NOT USE ANY OBJECT, BUT

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WHILE THE LATTER WOULD REFUSE WITH ALL HIS STRENGTH. THIS IS ‘A HOST LOOKING

AT HIS GUEST.’

”IT MIGHT HAPPEN THAT A DISCIPLE JUST COMING OUT OF A STILL STATE OF MEDITATION

WOULD PRESENT HIMSELF TO A MASTER WHO KNOWS THAT SUCH A STATE IS MERELY

THE OBJECT, AND SNATCHES IT AWAY FROM THE FORMER, THROWING IT INTO AN ABYSS.

THE DISCIPLE WOULD PRAISE THE ENLIGHTENED MASTER, WHO WOULD REPLY, ‘YOU DO

NOT KNOW WHAT IS GOOD AND WHAT IS BAD.’ THEREUPON, THE DISCIPLE WOULD BOW

HIS THANKS. THIS IS ‘A HOST LOOKING AT A HOST.’

”IT MIGHT HAPPEN THAT A DISCIPLE, ALREADY WEARING HANDCUFFS, WOULD PRESENT

HIMSELF BEFORE A MASTER, WHO WOULD PUT ADDITIONAL HANDCUFFS ON HIM. THE

DISCIPLE, HOWEVER, WOULD BE JOYFUL, AND BOTH WOULD NOT SEE ANYTHING WRONG

IN ALL THIS. THIS IS ‘A GUEST LOOKING AT A GUEST.’

”VIRTUOUS ONES, WHAT THIS MOUNTAIN MONK HAS JUST SAID, IS HOW TO DISTINGUISH A DEMON FROM AN UNUSUAL MAN, IN ORDER TO KNOW WHICH IS HETERODOX AND WHICH

IS ORTHODOX.”

Maneesha, Rinzai is trying to explain one of the mysteries of Zen which has remained very strange to outsiders. It is the sound of Kwatz! It does not mean anything. We can substitute it with Yaa-Hoo!

That means much more. Kwatz! is a single sound; Yaa-Hoo! is a double sound. In fact, Yaa-Hoo!

should be used in future Zen instead of Kwatz! Whichever the sound, Rinzai has explained that although it is not meaningful, it is very significant.

Before we enter into his statements, a few preliminary things have to be understood, otherwise you will lose the whole track.

First is the sound. It is not a word, it does not have a meaning in any dictionary or in any language.

When a sound comes from your very deepest core, it is something of a miracle. You see it happening every day here. When you say Yaa-Hoo! with your total energy, the sound comes from your very center, stirring your whole body, the periphery, the mind, every nerve.

You can say it in a lukewarm way – then you will miss it. It has to be said exactly like the lion’s roar, which comes from the belly. It is not just from your tongue – not even from your throat or your heart.

It exactly hits just below the navel – two inches below to be exact.

You should watch. Whenever you do it, you should keep an eye on where it is coming from – that is the way for you to go in. It is clearing the way, it is making a passage in a forgotten land, giving you a direct line. It connects you with yourself.

Don’t be bothered about idiots. They don’t know anything and still all over the country they have either laughed at the Yaa-Hoo! in newspapers and magazines, or they have made skeptical remarks, not even knowing what the significance of it is. This only shows their blindness, unintelligence and stubborn stupidity.

Before saying a word about something unknown, you should think twice. You may not find the meaning in the dictionary because it is not a word.

You will have to find the significance in

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experience. You have to do it – only then you can have it. But then you will still not be able to explain it to another. The mystery is very profound.

In Zen, Kwatz! has been used for almost fourteen hundred years – in different situations for different purposes. Rinzai is trying to explain it to his disciples.

RINZAI SAID TO A MONK, ”SOMETIMES, A SHOUT IS LIKE A HARD AND DURABLE JEWELED

SWORD.”

If it penetrates you and reaches deep down into your very source, it has done a tremendous work, it has created a way.

”SOMETIMES A SHOUT IS LIKE A LION, CROUCHING ON THE GROUND” – sometimes it is simply an expression that you have come home – ”STRONG AND POWERFUL. SOMETIMES A SHOUT IS LIKE A WEED-TIPPED FISHING POLE, ATTRACTING AND PROBING THE UNWARY.” It does both jobs. It attracts those who are seekers of the path, and keeps away those who are just poor curiositymongers. They won’t enter in a place where people are shouting, ”Yaa-Hoo!” To their intelligence – whatever they have of it, it will seem a maddening phenomenon. All that is beyond their reason they call mad. Only what is reasonable is acceptable. In this way the reasonable man confines his reality to the very small circle of his mind. Only the irrational person – capable of going beyond reason – opens the doors of the beyond.

Rinzai is trying to explain that the shout can be used in many ways.

AND SOMETIMES A SHOUT IS NOT USED AS A SHOUT – but as a salute. HOW DO YOU

UNDERSTAND ALL THIS? AS THE MONK WAS THINKING ABOUT IT, RINZAI GAVE A SHOUT –

the shout is Kwatz! HE THEN TURNED TO THE ASSEMBLY AND SAID, ”YOU MONKS SHOULD

BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT ALL THIS. WHEN HOST AND GUEST MEET EACH OTHER, THERE IS ALWAYS AN EXCHANGE OF WORDS OR DISCUSSION, IN WHICH ARE EXHIBITED

EITHER THE FORM APPROPRIATE FOR THE MOMENT, THE FUNCTION IN FULL, EXPEDIENT

DEVICES WITH EITHER JOY OR ANGER AND INCOMPLETE MANIFESTATION, OR THE RIDER

ON A LION OR THE LORD OF ELEPHANTS.

A small sound can do many things because it has no meaning. You can use it in different devices.

Two friends meet – not just familiar ones, acquaintances, but friends, connected deep down in their roots. They both will give the shout to show the whole universe, ”We are one.” When a man for the first time becomes enlightened he gives a shout, not to anybody in particular but to the whole existence, ”Let it be noted that I am no longer an ignorant and unaware man.” His shout is existential language.

In Zen they have symbols which are very significant. When you are out of yourself roaming around the world, you may be immobile in the body, but your mind is roaming around. This roaming mind is a guest, and the unchanging consciousness within you is the host. So there are many possibilities....

Two guests may meet who both are out of themselves. Their shout will be very shallow, just an etiquette. They themselves are not thick enough, just a thin facade. But it can happen that a guest The Original Man

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can meet a host. One who has arrived is a master; when you come to him you are coming to a host. Your shout will be a declaration: ”I am ready.” The master’s shout will be a declaration: ”You are accepted.”

Sometimes it happens that two hosts meet – both masters. They will give a shout which will penetrate to the very foundation of existence.

This sound of Kwatz! has never been understood by the intellectuals, and will never be understood by them. They understand only superficial words. Words cannot go as deep as sounds.

Rinzai is describing situations:

FOR INSTANCE, A TRUE DISCIPLE WOULD, UPON ARRIVAL, GIVE A SHOUT...

Only a true disciple will have the courage to give a shout to the master, because it is a challenge – a challenge to transform him, a challenge to accept him for the journey, a challenge to take him in his caravan. The false disciple, who is only a student gathering fragments of knowledge here and there, will not have the nerve to give the shout. If he gives the shout he will receive the master’s staff on his head to put him right.

The shout needs your earnest inquiry, not just curiosity. And the difference is clear, it is a nuance.

The sound is the same but the earnest seeker will have a power in his sound. If the seeker is earnest and gives a sound and the master is not a true master but only a teacher, then the disciple is PRESENTING A TRAY OF GLUE.

AN INCOMPETENT MASTER, WHO DOES NOT KNOW THAT THIS IS JUST AN OBJECT, WOULD

STEP INTO THE GLUE, PUTTING ON HIGH AIRS WITH HIS LEARNING.

It is a touchstone also. When a true disciple meets a true master there is no way of saying how the master will respond. But one thing is certain: if the master is not true himself, he will fall into the trap of the true disciple whose shout is a tray of glue. He will start thinking that he is a great master. He will put on high airs, and start talking like a parrot – he will show his learning. But the true seeker is not in search of learning or knowledge, nor is the true master interested in teaching.

The true master is interested in transforming your being, in bringing you home, in making you a host rather than a guest. You have been a guest in many forms, in many lives. The true master’s function is to show you the way home where you are not a guest but a host. Enough of caravanserais, enough of five-star hotels, enough of the friendly, familiar, businesslike, worldly reception as a guest. Unless you find the host you are going to remain superficial, just a personality.

THE TRUE DISCIPLE WOULD SHOUT AGAIN...

He would give another chance to the master, because it is thought to be a responsibility of the master not to be dishonest.

BUT THE INCOMPETENT MASTER WOULD REFUSE TO RETREAT AGAIN FROM HIS WRONG

POSITION. THIS IS A MORTAL DISEASE...

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Rinzai calls it a mortal disease; every mortal is prone to it: the ego.

The ego does not cherish the idea of revealing the truth, because revealing the truth is the death of the ego. It goes on saying that which is untrue, but it cannot hide from authentic seeking eyes. They will uncover that the master is just a parrot – he repeats correctly but he knows nothing.

THIS IS A MORTAL DISEASE, WHICH IS UNCURABLE AND IS CALLED ”A GUEST LOOKING AT

HIS HOST.”

The master himself is a guest but pretending to be a host.

IT MIGHT HAPPEN THAT A COMPETENT MASTER WOULD NOT USE ANY OBJECT, BUT

WOULD MERELY FOLLOW THE DISCIPLE’S QUESTION, TO STRIP HIM OF HIS GRASPINGS, WHICH THE LATTER WOULD REFUSE WITH ALL HIS STRENGTH. THIS IS ”A HOST LOOKING

AT HIS GUEST.”

If you are facing and encountering an authentic master he will start destroying your personality immediately. And if you are a true disciple, you will stand naked, not hiding anything. This he calls

”a host looking at his guest.” To somebody who needs protection, shelter, guidance, the true master becomes everything: a guide, a friend, a shelter, a way, a companion unto the ultimate.

IT MIGHT HAPPEN THAT A DISCIPLE JUST COMING OUT OF A STILL STATE OF MEDITATION

WOULD PRESENT HIMSELF TO A MASTER, WHO KNOWS THAT SUCH A STATE IS MERELY

THE OBJECT, AND SNATCHES IT AWAY FROM THE FORMER, THROWING IT INTO AN ABYSS.

THE DISCIPLE WOULD PRAISE THE ENLIGHTENED MASTER, WHO WOULD REPLY, ”YOU DO

NOT KNOW WHAT IS GOOD AND WHAT IS BAD.” THEREUPON, THE DISCIPLE WOULD BOW

HIS THANKS. THIS IS ”A HOST LOOKING AT A HOST.”

Both understand the meaning. The shout has joined them both. The disciple is coming out of the meditation. He knows the path where he is coming from, and he knows that the same is the path of the shout. He has no fear. If the master takes away anything that is a hindrance, he will not cling to it. On the contrary, he will relinquish it with joy and thank the master, bow down before him.

This is called a host looking at a host. Both have arrived; one is a senior host, the other is a junior host. One has just arrived, but both have arrived.

IT MIGHT HAPPEN THAT A DISCIPLE, ALREADY WEARING HANDCUFFS, WOULD PRESENT

HIMSELF BEFORE A MASTER, WHO WOULD PUT ADDITIONAL HANDCUFFS ON HIM. THE

DISCIPLE, HOWEVER, WOULD BE JOYFUL, AND BOTH WOULD NOT SEE ANYTHING WRONG

IN ALL THIS. THIS IS ”A GUEST LOOKING AT A GUEST.” Neither the master is true nor the disciple is true. The dishonest master can only live by putting more ornaments on his disciples. They look like ornaments, but in fact they are chains to bind them. This is the ugliest situation: you have been in search of freedom, and you fall prey to a man who puts you deeper into slavery.

Ryota wrote:

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THEY SPOKE NO WORDS.

THE VISITOR, THE HOST,

AND THE WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUM.

”They spoke no words...” There is a possibility that if the two persons meeting are both great masters

– not fresh young flowers, but seasoned – then there is no speaking, no words. The visitor is there, the host is there, but there is no one who is a guest. The host is visiting another host.

Issa wrote:

UNDER CHERRY TREES

THERE ARE

NO STRANGERS.

These are ultimate expressions. When two masters meet under the cherry tree, they may not know anything about each other, but just the sound of Kwatz! and they are no strangers. They know that they both are connected to the same source.

I have not used the sound Kwatz! It is old, traditional; it has become a convention. This is the unfortunate history of everything – soon it becomes a dead ritual. That’s why I have used Yaa-Hoo!

At least for my present people around the world, it will be a living sound. And when you shout Yaa-Hoo! you have to watch from what source it is coming. You have to go inwards to that source.

So every night before the meeting, I help to show you the way without saying anything. Then in the meditation you are amazed that this is the same path. And as I leave, I remind you again of your origin.

A sound that can thrill each fiber and cell of your being can give you a dancing quality; it can give you a music unheard, a life that was asleep. An authentic sound penetrates so deep that you cannot remain asleep.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

RINZAI SAID: ”WHEN HOST AND GUEST MEET EACH OTHER, THERE IS ALWAYS AN

EXCHANGE OF WORDS OR DISCUSSION.” BUT HE DID NOT KNOW ABOUT YOU. I WONDER

WHAT RINZAI WOULD MAKE OF A DANCING MASTER AND OUR YAA-HOO! SHOUT?

He would understand it perfectly. He is saying that when a host and guest meet, there is discussion and talk and conversation, but when two hosts meet, not a single word passes between them. Their meeting is that of presences. Their meeting is that of being – not of words and language.

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So, Maneesha, I can say without any doubt that Rinzai would understand our Yaa-Hoo! shout. It does not matter what sound you use. Perhaps he would appreciate it better, because in Yaa-Hoo!

two are present. Both can be the host, or one can be the host and the other can be the disciple, or both can be disciples. But the quality of their Yaa-Hoo! will change accordingly.

And you can feel it here when some spectator enters the assembly by chance. Just out of courtesy, we don’t stop him. He also raises his hands, but you can see how reluctantly. He also gives the Yaa-Hoo! shout, but you can see what a mouse he is.

It is a lion’s den.

If you are really here to participate in what is happening – then be total! It is not a place for spectators. I know Rinzai; hence, I assume, he knows me.

Before we enter the source of our being... The clouds have come to listen for your laughter. This earth has become so dry – nobody laughs, nobody even smiles. Even if they smile, it is just a painted smile, a lipstick smile.

I want my people to laugh like a lion’s roar. Then even laughter becomes a tremendous experience, because it is intelligence at its peak.

”You would not believe it,” says Zabriski in the bar, ”but I think my milkman is turning gay!”

”Why,” asks Klopski, ”what happened?”

”Well,” says Zabriski, ”my wife was sick in bed the other morning. So I stayed home late to take care of her. Suddenly, the milkman started ringing the doorbell, and since I was naked, I slipped on my wife’s bathrobe and went downstairs.

”As I opened the door, the milkman jumped into my arms, started kissing me, and trying to take the bathrobe off me!”

”Hey, man, don’t worry,” says Klopski.

”He’s probably not gay, that was just a coincidence.”

”A coincidence? What do you mean?” asks Zabriski.

”Well, it is obvious,” explains Klopski, sagely, ”his wife must wear a bathrobe the same color as your wife’s!”

On a trip to Rome, Sarjano is driving down the street in Jayesh’s bright red Ferrari at about a hundred and fifty miles an hour.

Suddenly, from a side street, the Popemobile pulls out in front of him. With no time for Sarjano to hit the brakes, there is a colossal collision.

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The next thing they know, Pope the Polack and Sarjano are watching their souls departing the earth together. Of course, there is a bureaucratic, computerized mix-up on the way to Heaven, and as a result, Sarjano is sent to the Pearly Gates, while Pope the Polack is sent to Hell.

The Polack pope, obviously pissed off that he is in the wrong place, soon convinces those in charge that there has been a mistake. And in the blink of an eye, he is transported to the Pearly Gates. As he walks into Heaven, he meets Sarjano just coming out.

”I’m really sorry about this,” says the pope, bending to kiss the Gates, ”but I have waited all my life to kneel at the feet of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the purest virgin who has ever lived.” Sarjano flashes a bright smile at the Polack pope.

”Sorry, Father,” he says, buttoning his pants, ”But you are-a too late!” Walter Wibble arrives at the Pearly Gates and is given a tour of Heaven by Saint Peter. They are walking around Gabriel’s garden when a small bell starts tinkling. All the angels and saints fall to their knees and begin to pray.

”What is going on?” asks Walter, looking at this amazing sight.

”Oh,” replies Saint Peter, ”an innocent child has just told her first lie. All the angels and saints are praying for her.”

A short while later they are inspecting the Harp and Hallelujia Bowling Club, when a large bell starts ringing. A bus load of angels screeches to a stop in the street outside, and all the angels fly out, onto their knees, and start praying.

”What is happening now?” asks Walter.

”Ah,” replies Saint Peter, ”an adult on earth has just told another lie, and all the angels and saints are praying for him.”

Later, they are walking through the Heavenly Dollar Shopping Mall, when suddenly, hundreds of bells start ringing. There is such a terrible noise that Walter drops to his knees, covers his ears, and starts praying.

”Good God!” exclaims Saint Peter. ”Ronald Reagan and his gang are discussing Osho again!” Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

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Be silent... close your eyes. Feel your body to be frozen. Gather all your consciousness, your life energy inwards, and go deeper without any fear.

It is your own being, and unless you know it, you will suffer from death and life and a thousand miseries.

Knowing your own being frees you from all misery, from all suffering, and brings you a world full of joy, blissfulness, ecstasy.

It all depends on you – how deep you go.

Just become an arrow, deeper, deeper and deeper.

This is you – the original man, the buddha.

With deep gratitude enter in. Don’t remain standing outside the temple. And you will find inside nobody but yourself. What was moving around outside was just a projection.

The real host is within you always and always.

To make it clear, absolutely clear....

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax... let the body lie there, the mind far away, and you are simply a watcher.

Nothing has to be done, just watch. This watching is your original nature, unspoiled, undisturbed.

It is just like a mirror. It has reflected many things, but it is still empty and silent.

Drink from this well of your being and remember the way. Twenty-four hours, whenever you have a little time, just look within. It is not far away.

Refresh yourself twenty-four hours with your buddhahood, so that all doubts drop, and it becomes a spontaneous roar within you. Your buddhahood is no longer a thought, but in the roar of your whole being it becomes your ultimate experience.

You are beyond time and beyond mind, you are beyond space. You are the eternity, and you are the immortality. The whole sky is yours, all bondages fallen away, ultimate freedom achieved.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back. But bring your buddha with you, bring your host with you. Slowly, silently, gracefully, sit down for a few moments, rejoicing and remembering the benediction that has happened to you.

The Original Man

126

Osho

CHAPTER 9. YAA-HOO! – A LIVING SOUND

You have been to the holiest of the holy.

You have seen the original man.

Let this experience flow like an undercurrent in every act and gesture of your life.

Slowly, slowly it becomes just like a heartbeat or breathing, spontaneous and of its own accord.

Waking or asleep you remain the buddha, and because of this undercurrent, all your character, all your ideas of good and bad, all your actions will be completely transformed – to a totally new form that you have never imagined, never dreamed of.

Change comes from inner experience, not vice versa. People try to change their character to know their buddha. They will never be able to succeed. All the religions are doing that, I am teaching you just the opposite.

First, experience the buddha, and that experience will start changing you, your love, your compassion. Everything around you will have a new light, a new aura, a new fragrance.

To me, the true religion begins from within and spreads outwards, not the other way.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the gathering of the buddhas?

The Original Man

127

Osho

Document Outline

- 1 You simply are

- 2 Only a remembrance

- 3 Look in and find it

- 4 The inner innocence

- 5 The sky of realisation

- 6 Roots in the universe

- 7 Zen is love

- 8 From the mortal to the immortal

- 9 Yaa-hoo! -- a living sound