The Search

Talks on The Ten Bulls of Zen

Talks given from 01/03/76 am to 10/03/76 am

English Discourse series

CHAPTER 1

The Search for the Bull and Discovering the Footprints 1 March 1976 am in Buddha Hall

1. THE SEARCH FOR THE BULL

IN THE PASTURE OF THIS WORLD,

I ENDLESSLY PUSH ASIDE THE TALL GRASSES IN SEARCH OF THE BULL.

FOLLOWING UNNAMED RIVERS,

LOST UPON THE INTERPENETRATING PATHS OF DISTANT MOUNTAINS, MY STRENGTH FAILING AND MY VITALITY EXHAUSTED, I CANNOT FIND THE BULL.

I ONLY HEAR THE LOCUSTS CHIRRING THROUGH THE FOREST AT NIGHT.

COMMENT:

THE BULL HAS NEVER BEEN LOST. WHAT NEED IS THERE TO SEARCH? ONLY BECAUSE

OF SEPARATION FROM MY TRUE NATURE, I FAIL TO FIND HIM. IN THE CONFUSION OF

THE SENSES I LOSE EVEN HIS TRACKS. FAR FROM HOME, I SEE MANY CROSSROADS, BUT WHICH WAY IS THE RIGHT ONE, I KNOW NOT. GREED AND FEAR, GOOD AND BAD, ENTANGLE ME.

2. DISCOVERING THE FOOTPRINTS

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CHAPTER 1. THE SEARCH FOR THE BULL AND DISCOVERING THE FOOTPRINTS

ALONG THE RIVER BANK UNDER THE TREES,

I DISCOVER FOOTPRINTS!

EVEN UNDER THE FRAGRANT GRASS I SEE HIS PRINTS.

DEEP IN REMOTE MOUNTAINS THEY ARE FOUND.

THESE TRACES NO MORE CAN BE HIDDEN THAN ONE’S NOSE LOOKING HEAVENWARD.

COMMENT:

UNDERSTANDING THE TEACHING, I SEE THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE BULL. THEN I LEARN

THAT, JUST AS MANY UTENSILS ARE MADE FROM ONE METAL, SO TOO ARE MYRIAD

ENTITIES MADE OF THE FABRIC OF SELF. UNLESS I DISCRIMINATE, HOW WILL I PERCEIVE

THE TRUE FROM THE UNTRUE? NOT YET HAVING ENTERED THE GATE, NEVERTHELESS I HAVE DISCERNED THE PATH.

We enter on a rare pilgrimage. The Ten Bulls of Zen are something unique in the history of human consciousness. Truth has been expressed in many ways, and it has always been found that it remains unexpressed whatsoever you do. Howsoever you express it, it eludes, it is elusive. It simply escapes description. The words that you use for it cannot contain it. And the moment you have expressed, immediately you feel frustrated as if the essential has been left behind and only the nonessential has been expressed. The Ten Bulls of Zen have tried in a single effort to express the inexpressible. So first, something about the history of these ten bulls.

Basically, there were eight pictures, not ten; and they were not Buddhist, they were Taoist. Their beginning is lost. Nobody knows how they started, who painted the first bulls. But in the twelfth century a Chinese Zen master, Kakuan, repainted them; and not only that, he added two more pictures, and eight became ten. The Taoist pictures were ending on the eighth; the eighth is emptiness, nothingness. But Kakuan added two new pictures. That is the very contribution of Zen to religious consciousness.

When one moves on an inner journey one leaves the world, renounces all that hinders the path, renounces all that is nonessential so that the essential can be searched, sought. One tries to become unburdened so the journey can become easier, because the journey, this journey, is towards the height, the greatest height there is – the very pinnacle of human possibilities, the very climax.

One leaves the world, one renounces the world; not only the world – one renounces the mind, because the mind is the cause of the whole world. The world of desires, the world of possessions, is just the outer part. The inner part is the mind: the desiring mind, the lustful mind, the jealous, competitive mind, the mind full of thoughts; that is the seed.

One renounces the outer, one renounces the inner, one becomes empty – that’s what meditation is all about. One becomes totally empty. But is this the end? The Taoist pictures ended with nothingness. Kakuan says this is not the end – one comes back to the world, one comes back to the marketplace; only then is the circle complete. Of course, one comes totally new. One never comes with the old; the old is gone, gone forever. One comes totally renewed, resurrected, reborn – as if The Search

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this man had never gone; as if this man is coming totally fresh and virgin. One comes back to the world and again one lives in the world yet lives beyond it. Again one becomes ordinary – chopping wood, carrying water from the well, walking, sitting, sleeping – one becomes absolutely ordinary.

Deep inside, the emptiness remains uncorrupted. One lives in the world but the world is not in your mind, the world is not within you. One lives untouched, like a lotus flower.

These two pictures bring the seeker back to the world, and Kakuan has done a tremendously beautiful thing. One comes to the marketplace; not only that, one comes with a bottle of wine, drunk – drunk with the divine – to help others also to be drunk, because there are many who are thirsty, there are many who are seeking, there are many who are stumbling on their path, there are many who are in deep darkness. One comes back to the world because of compassion. One helps other travelers to arrive. One has arrived, now one helps others to arrive. One has become enlightened, now one helps others towards the same goal. And each and everyone is searching for the same goal.

The Taoist eight bulls are good but not enough; beautiful, but something is missing in them.

Emptiness is perfect, but there is a perfection still to be attained. Emptiness is perfect, let me repeat it, but still there is a perfection yet to be attained. Emptiness is perfect in a negative way. You have renounced, it is negative, but you have not loved yet. The positive is missing. Unhappiness is gone, misery disappears, but you are not yet ecstatic. You have attained to silence and silence is beautiful, but your silence is not yet a fulfillment, it is not an overflowing; it is not a blissful dance of your inner being.

Here Kakuan goes beyond Taoism and beyond Buddhism – because both ended on emptiness, as if the journey was complete. You have reached Everest, cool, collected, calm. Now what is the point of going back to the marketplace? But if your meditation does not become compassion, then your meditation is still somehow hiding your ego, then your meditation is still selfish.

If you don’t cry, if tears don’t come to your eyes for others, and if you don’t start moving back to the world to help people who are stumbling, then somehow your meditation is still not religious. It has helped you; you may be feeling very, very good, but unless it becomes a compassion and overflows in all directions, the tree has come to a stopping point, it has not yet flowered. The tree is green, healthy, perfectly beautiful looking, but a tree without flowers is not fulfilled. A tree without flowers may look beautiful but there is still a perfection to be attained. The tree must bloom, the tree must release the fragrance to the winds so it can be carried to the very ends of existence.

Kakuan brings the seeker back into the world. Of course, he is totally different so naturally the world cannot be the same. He comes to the marketplace but he remains in his meditation; now the marketplace cannot become a distraction. If the marketplace becomes a distraction, then your meditation is not yet complete. If anything can distract you, then your meditation has been a forced thing – you have made yourself still, you have controlled yourself somehow. Your meditation is still not spontaneous, it is not a natural flow. It has not happened to you; you have made it happen.

Hence the fear of coming back to the marketplace.

You will find many sannyasins in the Himalayas who are stuck there with the eighth bull – empty, silent. There is nothing wrong with them, at the most you can say nothing is wrong with them, but you cannot say that they have bloomed, you cannot say their fragrance is released to the winds.

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Their light is still burning only for themselves. It has a certain ugliness in it. One may not see it immediately, but if you ponder over it you will see that this is selfishness. In the beginning it is good to be selfish, otherwise you will never grow; but in the end, with the meditation coming to a real completion, crescendo, the ego must disappear, the selfishness must disappear. You should become one with the whole.

And not only that – Kakuan says one comes with a bottle of wine. Tremendously significant! –

one comes drunk with the divine. One is not only silent, one dances, one sings, one becomes creative. One is not simply escaping and hiding in a cave. One is so free now that there is no point in hiding anywhere. Now freedom is one’s quality. The world becomes a new adventure. The circle is complete: from the world back to the world; beginning from the marketplace, ending again in the marketplace. Of course, totally different – because now you don’t have a mind, so the marketplace is as beautiful for you as the silent Himalayas; there is no difference. And people are thirsty. You help them, you show them the path.

Buddha has said that when somebody becomes a siddha, attains, the possibilities are two. Either he remains quite contented in his attainment, not moving out of it; then he becomes like a pool of water – fresh, cool, silent, with no ripples, but a pool of water; in a way static, not a river, flowing.

Buddha has used two words. If you become a pool of water he calls you arhat. Arhat means one who has attained to perfection but is not at all concerned with others. And another word he uses is bodhisattva. If your meditation flowers into compassion you have become a Bodhisattva; then you help others and your ecstasy is being shared.

Kakuan painted ten pictures of the whole search of man – and man is a search. He is not only an inquirer: he is inquiry. From the very moment of conception the search starts. If you ask scientists they will say that when a man and woman meet, the man releases millions of cells and those cells start running somewhere, towards the female egg. They don’t know where it is, but they run fast.

The search has started. They are very tiny cells but they are seeking the egg. One of them will reach; others will perish on the way. One of them will reach the egg, will be born into the world.

From that moment the search has started, the inquiry has started. Until death the search continues.

Socrates was dying. His disciples started crying and weeping; it was natural, but he said to them,

”Stop! Don’t disturb me – let me inquire into death. Don’t distract me! You can cry later on, I will be gone soon. Right now, let me inquire what death is. I have been waiting my whole life for this moment to go into the reality of death.”

He was poisoned. He was lying on his bed watching what death is, inquiring what death is. And then he said to his disciples, ”My feet are getting numb, but I am still as much as I was before. Nothing has been taken away from me. My feeling of my being is as total as before. My feet are gone.” Then he said, ”My legs are gone, but I am still the same. I cannot see myself reduced to anything less. I remain the total.” Then he said, ”My stomach is feeling numb, my hands are feeling numb.” But he was very excited, ecstatic. He said, ”But I still say to you: I am the same, nothing has been taken away from me.” And then he started smiling and he said, ”This shows that sooner or later death will take my heart also – but it cannot take me.” Then he said, ”My hands are gone, now even my heart is sinking, and these will be my last words because my tongue is becoming numb. But I tell you, remember, these are my last words: I am still the same, total.” This is the inquiry into death. From the very conception to the very end, man is an inquiry into the The Search

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search for truth. And if you are not searching for truth, you are not a man. Then you have missed.

Then at the most you look like a man, but you are not man. Your humanity is only in appearance but not in your heart. And don’t be deceived by appearances: when you look in the mirror you can see that you are a man, that proves nothing. Unless your inquiry grows to such heights that your whole energy is transformed into inquiry and you become a quest, you are not man.

That is the difference between other animals and man. They live, they don’t inquire. They simply live, they don’t inquire. No animal has ever asked: What is truth? What is life? What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? From where do we come? To what goal are we destined? No tree, no bird, no animal – this big earth has not asked this. This tremendously vast sky has never inquired about this.

This is the glory of man. He is very small but bigger than the sky, because something in him is unique – the inquiry. Even the vast sky is not so vast as man, because there may be an end to the sky, but there is no end to man’s inquiry. It is an eternal pilgrimage – beginningless, endless.

These ten bulls are a pictorial representation of the inquiry, the inquiry that I call man. Kakuan painted the pictures but he was not satisfied. They are tremendously beautiful pictures, but he was not satisfied. Truth is such that whatsoever you do you remain discontented. It cannot be expressed.

Then he wrote poems – to substitute. First he painted these ten pictures; feeling dissatisfied, he wrote ten small poems to supplement them. Whatsoever was missing in the pictures he tried in the poems. Again he felt dissatisfied. Then he wrote ten commentaries in prose. I know then too he must have felt unsatisfied, but then there was nothing else to do. Truth is vast, expression limited, but he had tried his best. Nobody had done that before or after.

Painting is the language of the unconscious. It is the language of visualization. It is the language of children. Children think in pictures, hence in children’s books we have to make many, many pictures, colored pictures. The text is very small, pictures are very big – because that is the only way to persuade children to learn to read, because they can learn only through the pictures. The primitive mind thinks in pictures.

That’s why it is thought that languages like Chinese must be the most ancient, because they are pictorial. The language has no alphabet; Chinese, Japanese, Korean don’t have any alphabet –

they have thousands of pictures. That’s why it is very difficult to learn Chinese; an alphabet makes things very simple. For each thing, a picture! How many things are there in the world?

And pictures can never be very accurate. They only give you a hint. For example, if in Chinese you have to write ’war’, ’fight’, ’conflict’, then Chinese has a pictogram: a small roof, and under the roof two women are sitting – that is ’fight’. One roof and two women! That means, one husband and two women – fight. But this is just indicative, a hint.

Children think in pictures, in dreams. Whatsoever they have to think, first they have to visualize it.

All primitives do that. That is the language of the unconscious. You still do it; howsoever articulate you are with language, and howsoever proficient you have become in rational argumentation, still in the night you dream in pictures. The more primitive you are, the more colorful your pictures will be; the more civilized you have become, your pictures become less and less colorful. They become, by and by, black and white.

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Black and white is the language of civilization. The rainbow is the language of the primitive. Black and white is not a true language, but we tend... all people who have been trained in Aristotelian logic tend to think in black and white, good and bad, night and day, summer and winter, God and devil – black and white! And there are no other mid-stages. Who is in between God and the devil? –

nobody. This is not possible. Watch a rainbow: seven colors. Black on one side, white on the other side, and between these two a great range of colors, step by step.

The whole of life is colorful. Think in colors, don’t think in black and white. That is one of the greatest diseases that has happened to humanity. The name of the disease is ’Aristotle-itis’ – it comes from Aristotle. You say: This man is good. What do you mean? And then you say: That man is bad.

What do you mean? You say: This man is a saint, and that man is a sinner. What do you mean?

Have you ever seen a sinner in whom the saint has completely disappeared? Have you ever seen a saint in whom the sinner has completely disappeared? The difference may be of degrees; it is not that of black and white.

Black and white thinking makes humanity schizophrenic. You say: This is my friend and that is my enemy. But the enemy can become a friend tomorrow, and the friend can become an enemy tomorrow. So the difference can be, at the most, relative; it cannot be absolute.

Think in color – don’t think in black and white.

Visualization is the language of children, of all primitive people, and of the unconscious. Your unconscious also thinks in pictures.

Kakuan first tried the unconscious language because that is the deepest: he painted these ten bulls.

But he felt dissatisfied. Then he wrote ten poems as a supplement, as an appendix. Poetry is mid-way between the unconscious and the conscious: a bridge, a misty land where things are not absolutely in the dark and are not absolutely in the light – just somewhere in the middle. That’s why where prose fails, poetry can indicate. Prose is too superficial; poetry goes deeper. Poetry is more indirect but more meaningful, richer.

But still Kakuan felt dissatisfied, so he wrote prose commentaries.

First he wrote the language of the unconscious, the language of painters, sculptors, dreamers; then he wrote the language of the poets, the bridge between the unconscious and the conscious – of all art. And then he wrote the language of logic, reason, Aristotle – the conscious. That’s why I say such an experiment is unique; nobody else has done that. Buddha talked in prose. Meera sang in poetry. Unknown painters and sculptors have done many things – Ajanta, Ellora, the Taj Mahal. But a single person has not done all three things together.

Kakuan is rare, and he must have been a great master. His painting is superb, his poetry is superb, his prose is superb. It rarely happens that one man is so extraordinarily talented in all the directions, all the dimensions of consciousness.

Now the poems of Kakuan:

The Search for the Bull....

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CHAPTER 1. THE SEARCH FOR THE BULL AND DISCOVERING THE FOOTPRINTS

IN THE PASTURE OF THIS WORLD,

I ENDLESSLY PUSH ASIDE THE TALL GRASSES IN SEARCH OF THE BULL.

The bull is a symbol of energy, vitality, dynamism. The bull means the very life itself. The bull means your inner power, your potentiality. The bull is a symbol, remember that.

You are there, you have life also – but you don’t know what life is. You have the energy, but you don’t know where this energy comes from and to what goal this energy is going. You are that energy, but still you are not aware of what that energy is. You live unaware. You have not asked the basic question: Who am I? That question is the same as the search for the bull: Who am I? And unless this is known, how can you go on living? Then the whole thing is going to be futile, because the basic question has not been asked, has not been answered. Unless you know yourself, whatsoever you do is going to be futile. The most basic thing is to know oneself. But it happens that we go on missing the most basic, and we go on worrying about trivia.

I have heard one anecdote:

A young woman who was planning her wedding, visited the hotel where the reception was to be held. She was busily looking over the place, pointing out where the punchbowl would be, where the bridesmaids would stand, and then she said to the hotel manager, ”In the receiving line, my mother will stand here, and I will stand next to her, and here on my right will stand what’s-his-name.” She has forgotten the name of the husband! In life it happens continuously that you go on making arrangements about the useless, and about the most essential you become completely oblivious.

What is your name? The name with which you have become acquainted as yourself is just a given name, it is just utilitarian. Any other name will do just the same. You are called Ram, you can be called Hari, it will not make any difference. What is your real name? What is your original face?

Who are you? You will make big houses, you will purchase big cars, you will manage this and that, and when you die you will leave a big account in the bank – all nonessential, and without ever going for the real quest of who you are.

The bull means your energy – the unknown strange energy that you are, the tremendous energy out of which you have come into being, which goes on growing in you like a tree. What this energy is –

that is the meaning of the bull.

IN THE PASTURE OF THIS WORLD,

I ENDLESSLY PUSH ASIDE THE TALL GRASSES IN SEARCH OF THE BULL.

What are the tall grasses? Symbolic. Poetry talks in symbols. Painting paints the symbols, poetry talks the symbols. Desires are the tall grasses in which your bull is lost. So many desires, pulling you to this side and that. So many desires! Constantly a tug-of-war: one desire pulls you to the south, another to the north.

In a small school the teacher asked, ”Now, can anyone tell me where we find mangoes?” The Search

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”Yes, teacher,” replied a little boy. ”Wherever woman goes – man goes.” Wherever woman goes.... Man goes on following the woman, the woman goes on following the man.

The whole of life is just a running after this desire or that. Finally, nothing is attained; only frustrated dreams, a heap of frustrated dreams. Look back – what have you attained? You have been running and running – where have you reached? These are the tall grasses.

Money attracts, power attracts – and without asking oneself: Why should I run after these things?

we go on running. In fact, because the whole society is running, every child gets the disease by inheritance. Everybody is running – the child learns by imitation. The father is running, the mother is running, the brother is running, the neighbor is running, everybody is running – for power, prestige, money, things of the world. Unaware, the child is also forced into the main current of life. Before the child can start thinking, he is already running.

In our schools we teach competition, nothing else. In our schools we prepare children for the greater competition of life. In our schools, in fact, nothing is going on except a rehearsal: how to fight, how to manage yourself, and how to leave others behind, how to come out on top. But nobody asks the basic question: What is the point? Why should one hanker for the top? What are you going to do when you have reached the top? When you have become a president of a country, what are you going to do? How is it going to fulfill you?

It is as if a person was thirsty and we put him on a track which leads to more and more money. He comes, struggles hard, accumulates much money, but the money is not related to the thirst at all.

Then suddenly he feels frustrated. Then he says: Money cannot do anything; but now it is too late.

See what your inner need is, and then work for it, and work diligently for it, intelligently for it. But first see what your inner need is. And the inner need can be recognized only when you recognize who you are.

If you can understand the quality of your energy, you will be able to understand what is going to fulfill you. Otherwise, not knowing oneself, one goes on running. The running is almost mad. Stop by the side of the road, meditate a little, reconsider what you are doing, why you are doing it. Don’t run in a fever because running will make you run faster. Running will make you, by and by, incapable of stopping. You will go on doing something or other; it will become a habit. Without it you will not feel alive.

I know people who have earned enough money; now they can retire. In fact, they have been saying their whole life that once they have attained to such money, they will retire. But they don’t retire.

I know one man. In the past twenty years I have stayed with him many times. Whenever I visited Calcutta I would stay with him and he would always say, ”I am going to retire; now I have enough.

Just a few things have to be arranged, because it is not good to leave things incomplete, and then I will retire.”

Last time I visited him I asked him, ”When? Will you retire after your death? And you go on saying that first you have to complete things but you go on starting new things, so they will never be completed.”

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He said, ”No, now I have fixed a time, that after ten years I will retire.” He was sixty then, now he is dead. He worked hard and he lived like a beggar just hoping that some day he was going to enjoy. But by the time he had money, he had become obsessed with having more, to have more....

One very basic thing has to be understood: these things are not going to fulfill you because they are not basic needs. One needs something else. But that something else has to be searched for within yourself; nobody else can give you the direction. You have your destiny within you. You have the blueprint within you. Before you start running after anything, the most fundamental thing is to close your eyes, get in tune with yourself, with your energy, and listen to it – and whatsoever it says is good for you. Then you will feel fulfillment. By and by, you will come closer and closer to your blooming, to your flowering.

But people are afraid to become themselves. People are very afraid to be themselves, because if you try to be yourself you will become alone. Everybody is unique and alone. If you try to be yourself, you will feel aloneness. So people follow others, the crowd; they become one with the crowd. There they do not feel alone... surrounded, so many people are there. If you meditate, you will be alone, and if you get mad after money, you will never be alone – the whole world is going there. If you search for God you will be alone; but if you search for politics, power, then the whole world will be there, you will never be left alone.

People are afraid of being alone. And people can never know themselves if they are afraid of being alone, they can never search for the bull.

Walter Kaufmann has coined a new word for a certain fear that has always existed but for which there has never been a word. He calls it ’decidophobia’. People are afraid to decide anything on their own:

’decidophobia’. They allow others to decide for them, then they don’t take the responsibility.

You were born accidentally into a Hindu family, or a Christian family; then you allowed your parents to decide your religion. How can your parents decide your religion? Who are they to decide your religion? – and how can it be decided by birth? Birth has nothing to do with religion. How can birth decide? Their parents decided their religion and so on and so forth; you will decide the religion of your children.

Borrowed – there must be some deep fear in making a decision on your own. The fear is that if you decide on your own, who knows? – it may be wrong. It is better to let others decide; they know more, they have more experience. Let tradition decide, let society decide, let the politicians decide, let the priests decide. One thing is certain: others have to decide so you are free of the responsibility of making a decision. Hence people go on following others, and everybody goes on missing his own individuality.

There are two ways to avoid decision. One is: let others decide. Another is: never decide, simply drift. Both are the same because the basic thing is not to take the responsibility of deciding. New generations have chosen the other alternative: drifting. The older generations have chosen the first alternative: to let others decide. You may not allow your father to decide, but that doesn’t mean that you are going to decide yourself – you may simply drift. You may do things, whatever happens... you may become a driftwood.

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In both ways the search becomes impossible. The search means decisiveness. The search means taking risks. So remember this word ’decidophobia’. Don’t be afraid, drop this fear. Who else can decide for you? Nobody can decide anything for you. Yes, others can help, others can show the path, but the decision has to be yours – because through your decision your soul is going to be born.

The more decisive you become, the more integrated you become.

The more you take the

responsibility of commitment... of course, it is very dangerous, but life is dangerous. I know there are many possibilities of going astray, but that risk has to be taken. There are possibilities you may err, but one learns by erring. Life is trial and error.

I have heard:

In the eighteenth century, France had its effete and privileged aristocracy, and a poor scholar was hired to teach geometry to the scion of one of the nation’s dukedoms.

Painstakingly, the scholar put the young nobleman through one of the very early theorems of Euclid, but at every pause, the young man smiled amiably and said, ”My good man, I do not follow you.” Sighing, the scholar made the matter simpler, went more slowly, used more basic words, but still the young nobleman said, ”My good man, I don’t follow you.” In despair, the scholar finally moaned, ”Oh, monseigneur, I give you my word that what I say is so.” Whereupon, the nobleman rose to his feet, bowed politely, and answered, ”But why, then, did you not say so at once so that we might pass on to the next theorem? If it is a matter of your word, I would not dream of doubting you.”

But life is not a matter of anybody’s word. It is not a theorem, it is not a theory. You cannot accept it just because somebody else is authoritatively saying it is so. Authority is a trick. Behind it you hide your fear.

You have to decide. Decisions can be fatal but there is no other way. You may go astray, but nothing is wrong in it. Going astray, you will learn something, you will become richer. You can come back and you will be happy that you went astray, because there are many things which can be learnt only by going astray. There are millions of things which can be learnt only if you are courageous enough to make mistakes. Remember only one thing: don’t make the same mistake again and again.

If religion is decided by others, then there is no need to search. Your father says: God is. Your mother believes in heaven and hell, so you believe. The authority, the priest, the politician, says something and you believe it. You are avoiding; through belief you are avoiding trust. Belief is the enemy of trust. Trust life! Don’t believe beliefs – avoid them! Avoid beliefs – Hinduism, Islam, Christianity. Seek on your own. You may come to find the same truth. You will come, because the truth is one. Once you have found it you can say: Yes, The Bible is true – but not before. Once you have found it you can say: Yes, the Vedas are true – but not before. Unless you have experienced it, unless you become a witness to it personally, all vedas and all bibles are useless. They will burden you, they will not make you more free.

IN THE PASTURE OF THIS WORLD,

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CHAPTER 1. THE SEARCH FOR THE BULL AND DISCOVERING THE FOOTPRINTS

I ENDLESSLY PUSH ASIDE THE TALL GRASSES IN SEARCH OF THE BULL.

FOLLOWING UNNAMED RIVERS,

LOST UPON THE INTERPENETRATING PATHS OF DISTANT MOUNTAINS, MY STRENGTH FAILING AND MY VITALITY EXHAUSTED,

I CANNOT FIND THE BULL.

I ONLY HEAR THE LOCUSTS CHIRRING THROUGH THE FOREST AT NIGHT.

The search is difficult because the truth is unknown. The search is difficult, because the truth is not only unknown – it is unknowable. The search is difficult, because the seeker has to risk his whole life for it.

Hence Kakuan says: FOLLOWING UNNAMED RIVERS.... If you are following scriptures you are following named rivers. If you are following a certain religion, a sect, a church, then you have a map

– and there cannot be any map for the truth. There cannot be any map because truth is private and not public. Maps become public; they are needed so that others can also follow. On the map, super highways are shown, not small footpaths; and religion is a footpath, not a super highway. You cannot reach God as a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. You reach as you, authentically you, and you cannot follow anybody’s path.

FOLLOWING UNNAMED RIVERS,

LOST UPON THE INTERPENETRATING PATHS OF DISTANT MOUNTAINS, MY STRENGTH FAILING AND MY VITALITY EXHAUSTED,

I CANNOT FIND THE BULL.

And there comes a moment in the search when one feels completely exhausted, tired. One starts thinking it would have been better if he had never started his search. One feels so frustrated that one starts feeling jealous about those who have never been bothering about such things. This is natural, but that is exactly the moment when the real search starts.

This exhausted energy, this tiredness, is of the mind. The mind feels tired because the mind is always happy in following maps. With the known, the mind remains the master; with the unknown, the strange, the mind is completely at a loss. The mind cannot figure it out, what is going on –

the mind feels tired, the mind feels exhausted. The mind says: What are you doing? Why are you wasting your life? Move back! Come to the world, be as other people are! Follow the crowd, don’t try to be individual.

Hence, you never see hippies beyond the age of thirty-five. By that time they are tired. By that time they start thinking of marriage, of settling, of a house. By that time they start becoming squares. By that time they have forgotten all about revolution and rebellion and all that nonsense. They become The Search

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part of the status quo; tired, exhausted; in fact, repentant, feeling sort of guilty. This moment comes in everybody’s search. It is an essential moment. And if you can move, even feeling exhausted, tired, frustrated; if you can still move on and on, then the mind is dropped and the first glimpses of meditation appear.

The second poem:

ALONG THE RIVER BANK UNDER THE TREES, I DISCOVER FOOTPRINTS!

If you go on, if you don’t listen to the mind and its game of tiredness, exhaustion, and this and that....

The mind wants to pull you back – to the fold, to the crowd. The mind wants you to belong to a sect, to a church, so that you need not decide every step on your own. Everything is decided already, everything is ready-made. You have just to believe in it.

ALONG THE RIVER BANK UNDER THE TREES,

I DISCOVER FOOTPRINTS!

EVEN UNDER THE FRAGRANT GRASS I SEE HIS PRINTS.

DEEP IN REMOTE MOUNTAINS THEY ARE FOUND.

THESE TRACES NO MORE CAN BE HIDDEN THAN ONE’S NOSE

LOOKING HEAVENWARD.

Mind dropped. And the mind is dropped only when you go on and on when the mind is saying to stop; if you don’t listen to the mind and you say: I am going to inquire, I am going to search. If you are tired, you can drop. The mind will cling to you a little while more. But if you don’t listen and you remain aloof and unconcerned and your eyes focused there on the goal, on the bull, you will come to discover footprints. They have always been there, only you were much too crowded with thoughts, much too clouded by the mind. Hence you were not able to see those subtle footprints.

ALONG THE RIVER BANK UNDER THE TREES,

I DISCOVER FOOTPRINTS!

EVEN UNDER THE FRAGRANT GRASS....

I told you that the tall grass represents desires. And now, even under the grass, even under your same desires, you find the same footprints of the bull. Even under desires you find God hidden.

Even under the so-called worldly things, you have been seeking something of the beyond.

If a man is searching for more and more money, what in fact is he searching for? – money? If he is searching for money, then there will come a point where he will be satisfied – but that point never comes. It seems he is searching for something else. Mistakenly, searching for money, he is trying to find something else. He wants to be rich....

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Let me tell you it this way: A man who is searching for money wants to be rich but he does not know that to be rich is totally different from having money. To be rich means to have all the experiences that life can give to you. To be rich means to be a rainbow, not black and white – all the colors together. To be rich means to be mature, alert, alive.

The man who is searching for money is searching for something else; that’s why when money is achieved, nothing is achieved. The man who is searching for power, for what is he searching in fact? He wants to be a god. And in the world, he says, if you have power you can pretend to be a god. Behind his search for power, the same search for God is hidden. So when he attains to power, suddenly he will feel powerless inside, impotent; outside, riches; inside, poor, a beggar.

EVEN UNDER THE FRAGRANT GRASS I SEE HIS PRINTS.

DEEP IN REMOTE MOUNTAINS THEY ARE FOUND.

THESE TRACES NO MORE CAN BE HIDDEN THAN ONE’S NOSE

LOOKING HEAVENWARD.

And then one is surprised: How was it possible that I couldn’t see these footprints? They are just in front of me! They have always been there, like one’s nose. But if your eyes are closed or clouded, then you cannot see.

I have heard one anecdote:

It was late at night and due to several detours a man had become completely lost. He stopped at a farmhouse to ask the way, ”Am I headed in the right direction for Atlanta?” he inquired of the woman who opened the door.

”Which way you headed?” she asked.

Unsure of the direction, he tried again: ”I mean, are my car lights pointed that way?”

”Yes, sir,” said the woman. ”At least the red ones are.” This is the situation. The faster you run, the more confused you get. The more speedy you get, the more and more confusion happens to you. By and by, you lose all sense of direction. You simply go on zooming from here to there. Speed itself becomes the goal, as if, running fast, one feels one is reaching somewhere; hence the attraction for speed. It is a neurosis.

The whole of science is engaged in making things more and more speedy. Nobody asks where you are headed for. And as I see it, your red lights are showing the right direction. Somewhere behind you, you have already left home. Somewhere at the very source of your being is your home. But only one thing is fortunate about you: that is, that whatsoever you do, you cannot go very far from home because whatsoever you do is a sort of sleep-walking.

A woman was very upset. ”My husband,” she told the doctor, ”seems to be wandering in his mind.” The Search

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”Don’t worry about that,” said the doctor. ”I know your husband. He can’t go far.” I know you. You can’t go far – because in fact, you are simply dreaming about the speed, about the going, about the goal. You are fast asleep. It is all happening in your mind, not in reality.

Hence, Zen says that if you are ready, this very moment enlightenment is possible – because you cannot go far. If your traveling is real traveling, then sudden enlightenment is not possible. You will have to come back. The same distance you will have to travel again.

And you have been traveling for millions of lives. If the same distance has to be traveled back again, then enlightenment is almost impossible. If enlightenment is going to be gradual, it is almost impossible. Zen says it has to be sudden: as if a person is fast asleep and dreaming, and dreaming that he has gone to the moon. But in the morning he opens his eyes – where will he find himself?

On the moon? He will find himself here, now. The moon will disappear with the dream.

The world is a dream. Not that it does not exist, not that it is not – the world is a dream because the world that you think is, is nothing but your dream, because you are asleep, unconscious, sleepy, moving, doing things. It is fortunate that you cannot go far! You can become awakened this very moment.

Now the prose comment for the first sutra:

THE BULL NEVER HAS BEEN LOST. WHAT NEED IS THERE TO SEARCH? ONLY BECAUSE

OF SEPARATION FROM MY TRUE NATURE, I FAIL TO FIND HIM. IN THE CONFUSION OF

THE SENSES I LOSE EVEN HIS TRACKS. FAR FROM HOME, I SEE MANY CROSSROADS, BUT WHICH WAY IS THE RIGHT ONE I KNOW NOT. GREED AND FEAR, GOOD AND BAD, ENTANGLE ME.

The bull never has been lost – because the bull is you. The bull is your energy, it is your life. The principle of your dynamism is the bull. The bull has never been lost. What need is there to search? If you can understand that, then there is no need to search. Then that very understanding is enough.

But if that understanding does not dawn on you, then the need for search.

The search is not going to help you to reach the goal because the goal has never been lost. The search is only going to help to drop greed, fear, possessiveness, jealousy, hatred, anger. The search is only going to help you drop the hindrances, and once the hindrances are not there, suddenly one becomes aware: I have always been here, I have never gone anywhere else.

So the whole search is negative in a way. It is just like when somebody makes a statue out of a marble block. What does he do? He simply chips unessential parts away, and by and by the image appears.

Somebody asked Michelangelo.... He was making a statue of Jesus – somebody said, ”Your creation is great.”

He said, ”I have not done anything. Jesus was hiding inside this marble block and I just helped him to be released. He was already there, just more marble was there than was needed. The unessential was there – I have cut away the unessential. I have simply discovered him, I have not created him.” The Search

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In fact, the marble block had been discarded by the builders. Walking around the church which was going to be built, Michelangelo asked the builders, ”Why has this marble block been thrown away?” They said, ”It is useless.” So he took it away – and one of the most beautiful images of Jesus came out of it.

Michelangelo used to say, ”When I was walking by the side of this block, Jesus called me. Hidden inside the block he said, ’Michelangelo, come and release me!’ I have done only negative work.” The bull is already there. The seeker is the sought. Just a few unnecessary things are crowding you. The search is negative – drop them and you discover yourself in all your glory.

THE BULL NEVER HAS BEEN LOST. WHAT NEED IS THERE TO SEARCH? ONLY BECAUSE

OF SEPARATION FROM MY TRUE NATURE, I FAIL TO FIND HIM. IN THE CONFUSION OF

THE SENSES I LOSE EVEN HIS TRACKS. FAR FROM HOME, I SEE MANY CROSSROADS, BUT WHICH WAY IS THE RIGHT ONE I KNOW NOT. GREED AND FEAR, GOOD AND BAD, ENTANGLE ME.

The comment on the second sutra:

UNDERSTANDING THE TEACHING, I SEE THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE BULL. THEN I LEARN

THAT, JUST AS MANY UTENSILS ARE MADE FROM ONE METAL, SO TOO ARE MYRIAD

ENTITIES MADE OF THE FABRIC OF SELF. UNLESS I DISCRIMINATE, HOW WILL I PERCEIVE

THE TRUE FROM THE UNTRUE? NOT YET HAVING ENTERED THE GATE, NEVERTHELESS I HAVE DISCERNED THE PATH.

UNDERSTANDING THE TEACHING, I SEE THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE BULL.

Understanding the teaching.... Buddhas, millions of buddhas, have been on this earth. They have all taught the same thing. They cannot do otherwise. The truth is one, descriptions many. The truth is one – they have all talked about it. Now, if you try to understand you will be able to discern the footprints of the bull. But rather than understanding, you try to follow – and there you miss.

Following is not understanding. Understanding is very, very deep. When you understand, you don’t become a Buddhist. When you understand, you become a buddha yourself. When you understand, you don’t become a Christian. When you understand, you become Christ yourself. Following will make you a Christian. Understanding will make you a christ – and tremendous is the difference.

Following is again ’decidophobia’. Following means: Now I will simply follow blindly. Now there is no question of my own decision. Now wherever you go, I will go. Understanding is: Whatsoever you say, I will listen, I will meditate. And if my understanding arises and gets in tune with your understanding, then I will follow my understanding.

Teachers are helpful, they indicate the way. Don’t cling to them. Following is a clinging – it is out of fear, not out of understanding.

Once you become a follower, you are losing the track. Once you become a follower, one thing is certain: that you are not inquiring any more. You can become a theist and you can say, ”God is, I The Search

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believe in God.” You can become an atheist and you can say, ”I don’t believe in God. I am an atheist, or a communist,” but in both the cases you have joined a church. You have joined a doctrine, a dogma. You have joined a mob, a crowd.

The search is individual, full of danger. Alone one has to move. But that is the beauty of it. In deep aloneness, only in deep aloneness where not even a thought is present, God enters in you, or is revealed to you. In deep aloneness, intelligence becomes a flame, bright. In deep aloneness, silence and bliss surround you. In deep aloneness, eyes open, your being opens. The search is individual.

What am I doing here? I am trying to make you individuals. You would like to become part of a crowd, you would like that because it is very convenient and comfortable to follow like a blind man.

But I am not here to make you blind. I am not here to allow you to cling to me, because then I will not be in any way helpful to you. I will allow you to be close to me, but I will not allow you to cling. I will allow you all the possibilities to understand me, but I will not allow you to believe in me. The difference is subtle but great. And remain alert, because your mind will tend to throw all responsibility on me.

That’s what you mean when you say: I have surrendered. It is not a surrender of trust – it is out of decidophobia, out of fear, a fear of being alone. No, I am not here to make your journey comfortable, convenient, because it cannot be made comfortable and convenient. It has to be hard, it is hard, it is uphill. And in the last moment, in the final moment of what Zen people call satori, even I will not be there with you. Only up to the gate can we be fellow travelers. When you enter the gate, you enter alone.

So on the whole path I have to make you capable of being alone. I have to help you drop fear, to help you to become decisive. Trust life – there is no need of any other trust. Trust life and it leads you spontaneously and naturally to the ultimate, the truth, God – or whatsoever you want to name it.

The river of life is flowing towar ds the ocean. If you trust, you flow in the river. You are already in the river, but you are clinging to some dead roots on the bank, or you are trying to fight against the current. Clinging to scriptures, clinging to dogmas, doctrines, is not allowing the river to take you with her. Drop all doctrines, all dogmas, all scriptures. Life is the only scripture, the only bible. Trust it and allow it to take you to the ocean, to the ultimate.

Enough for today.

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CHAPTER 2

Dropping the Why

2 March 1976 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO, I DON’T KNOW WHY I AM HERE.

Nobody knows – and there is no way to know it, and there is no need to know it. This constant questioning – why am I here? why am I doing this? – this constant hankering for the why, is a disease of the mind. No answer is going to satisfy you, because the why can be asked again. If I say something – you are here because of this – the why will be pushed back a little, that’s all. You will again ask: Why? The why is nonending.

Once you understand it, you drop it. The why is ridiculous. Rather than asking: Why am I here? it is better to use the opportunity, it is better to flower, it is better to exist authentically. And this is the beauty of it, that once you start existing authentically, truly, once you stop all nonsense thinking and you start delighting in life, once you are no more a philosopher, the why is answered. But it is not answered by anyone from the outside – it is answered by your own life energy.

The answer is possible, but it is not going to come like an answer, it is going to come like a lived experience. The answer is going to be existential, not intellectual. The question is intellectual.

Drop it! Rather, be! Otherwise, you can go on asking.... For centuries man has asked millions of questions; not a single question has been solved by speculation, thinking, logic, reason. Not even a single question is solved. On the contrary, whenever people have tried to answer a question, the answer has created a thousand and one more questions.

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Who created the world? – and it has been answered: God created the world. And then immediately the question arises: Who created God? or, Why did he create the world? When did he create the world? And why did he create such a world? – so miserable, so hell-like? The one who was answering you that God created the world must have been thinking that your question would drop; but out of one answer a thousand and one questions arise. Mind is a question-creating mechanism.

So the first thing to understand is: drop why. Immediately you become religious. Continue with the why – you remain philosophical. Continue questioning and you remain in the head. Drop questioning – suddenly the energy moves in a new dimension: the dimension of the heart. Heart has no questions, and there hides the answer.

It will appear paradoxical, but still I would like to say to you: When your questioning stops, the answer comes. And if you go on questioning, the answer will become more and more elusive.

Why are you here? – who can answer it? And if it can be answered, you will no more be a man, you will become a mechanism. This mike is here and there is a reason for it; it can be answered. The car is there in the porch; the why can be answered. If your why also can be answered, you become a mechanism like a mike or a car – you become a utility, a commodity. But you are a man, not a machine.

Man means freedom. Why is there freedom? You can raise the question, but the question is foolish.

The why about man cannot be answered. And if the why about man cannot be answered, how can it be answered when you put it for the ultimate, for God? Even about man the why cannot be answered

– about God also it is almost impossible even to raise the question rightly.

My effort is not to answer your questions, but to make you aware that out of a hundred questions, ninety-nine are simply foolish. Drop them! And once you have dropped the foolish questions – they look very philosophical – the one question remains. And that question is no longer concerned about irrelevant, nonessential things. That one question is concerned about existence, about you, your being. Not why you are here, not about the purpose of your being here, but about your being here –

who you are: Who am I?

This can be known – because for it there is no need to go to anybody else; you can go inside. For it, there is no need to look in the scriptures – you can look withinwards. For it, you have just to close your eyes and move into inner silence. And you can have the feel – who you are. You can taste the flavor – who you are. You can smell it, you can touch it. This is existential questioning. But why you are here, I don’t know. And there is no need to know about it.

The second thing to be understood: that whenever you ask such questions, they are indicative of certain states of mind. For example, whenever you are miserable, you ask why. Whenever you are blissful, you never ask why. If you are suffering, you ask: Why am I suffering? But if you are dancing blissfully, at ease, deep in contentment, do you ask: Why am I blissful? Then the why looks ridiculous.

We ask why about something which is not acceptable to us. We ask why about suffering, misery, hell. We never ask why about love, happiness, blissfulness, ecstasy. So the why is simply an indication that you must be miserable. So rather than asking why you are here, ask why you are miserable. Then something can be done, because misery can be changed.

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Buddha used to say to his disciples: Don’t ask metaphysical questions, ask existential questions.

Don’t ask who created the world, don’t ask why he created the world. These questions simply show that you are living in misery. Ask why you are miserable – then the question is alive and something can be done about it, something which will change your misery, which will transform the energy that is involved in misery, will release it from the misery. And the same energy can become a flowering of your being.

You are here – who are you? And that question you cannot ask me. A real question has to be faced by yourself. How can I answer your question – who you are? If you cannot answer, then how can I answer your question, who you are? Whatsoever I say will be from the outside – and you are there deep, very deep within yourself. You have to move deep, you have to fall into your own abyss, into that inner space where only you are and nobody else; not even a thought passes by.

Only in that space will you have the answer – not a verbal answer, not that somebody will say from within you that you are a soul, or you are God. Nobody will say anything because there is nobody –

pure silence. But that silence is the answer. In that silence, you feel, you know. There is no need to give you any information. No words are needed. You have touched your rock bottom, your innermost core.

It happened – a small boy was initiating his younger brother about the school: Said the first grader to his four-year-old brother: ”The smart thing for you to do is not to learn to spell your first word. The minute you learn to spell ’cat’ you are trapped. From then on the words get longer and longer and longer.”

If you are here, you have spelt the word cat. And the question is asked by one of my sannyasins, Yoga Pratima. You have spelt the word cat already. Now the words will become longer and longer and longer – you are trapped! So rather than asking why you are here, use this opportunity. Allow me and allow yourself... towards a transformation of your being. Allow me to enter you! Don’t ask stupid questions. Open your doors.

Rather than answering you, I can help you towards an inner transformation where all questions disappear – and the answer appears. But that is experiential. You will know it, but you will not be able to tell others. You will know it, your whole being will show it; your eyes will say something about it, there will be a glow around you. People who have eyes to see, they will be able to see that you have known it. But you will not be able to say who you are. No word can express that – it is so tremendously vast. You can have it, but you cannot express it.

So what do you want? Should I give you a verbal answer why you are here? Can’t you imagine, whatsoever I say will be irrelevant? I can say: Because in your past lives you have earned many good karmas, you have been very virtuous – that’s why you are here. Is that going to help? That will make you even more egoistic. That will create a barrier between me and you. Rather than being open, you will become more closed.

What do you want? Do you want that I have called you as a chosen few? You have not come, but you have been called? You would like such answers, but they are meaningless and harmful –

because once you start feeling that you are the chosen few you will miss me, because all these are the tricks of the ego. It goes on playing so many games.

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Don’t ask for answers. Ask for the answer. Then I can show you the way, I can lead you towards the temple. Once inside the temple, you will know. And there is no other way to know it.

Knowing from somebody else can never really be knowledge. It remains, at the most, information.

Knowing from somebody else is never intimate. It remains just on the periphery. It never penetrates to your innermost core, it never hits home. Philosophy and religion differ in this. Philosophy goes on thinking in terms of questions and answers, reasoning, syllogism, logic – it is thinking. Religion is not thinking at all. It is more practical – as practical as science, as pragmatic as science. The method of religion is not speculation; the method of religion is experience. Meditate more, and in the interludes, in the gaps, in the intervals, when one thought has gone and another has not come in, you will have the first glimpses of satori, samadhi.

This word ’interlude’ is very beautiful. It comes from two Latin words: ’inter’ and ’ludus’. Ludus means games, play, and inter means between. Interlude means between the games. You are playing the game of a husband or a wife; then you play the game of a father or a mother. Then you go to the office and you play the game of being a banker, a businessman – a thousand and one games you play, twenty-four hours. Between two games, interludes.

Go into yourself. For a few moments every day, whenever you can get an opportunity, drop all games, just be yourself – neither a father, nor a mother, nor a son, nor a banker, nor a servant: nobody. These are all games. Find out the interludes. Between two games, relax in, sink in, drown into your own being – and there is the answer.

I can show you the way to drown in interludes, but I cannot give you the answer. The answer will come to you. And it is true only when it comes to you. Truth has to be one’s own – only then is it truth, only then does it liberate. My truth will become a theory to you; it will not be a truth at all. My truth can blind you, but cannot make your eyes more perceptive. My truth can surround you as a security, but it will be borrowed – and truth cannot be borrowed.

The second question:

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO, PLEASE EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE

BETWEEN ’DECIDOPHOBIA’ AND DISCIPLEHOOD.

The question is complex, and you will have to be very alert to understand it, because with complex questions misunderstanding is more possible than understanding.

The first thing: disciplehood is a great decision. You can become a disciple only if you drop your decidophobia – because it is a great decision, it is a commitment. You cannot become a disciple if you are afraid of taking, making decisions. This is the greatest decision in one’s life – to trust somebody else as the master, to trust somebody else and stake your whole life. It is a gamble. Much courage is needed. Too many people come to me; they say they would like to become sannyasins, but they are afraid. The decision is too much, and a thousand and one things have to be considered before they take the decision.

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Decidophobia means you are afraid of deciding anything. Disciplehood is a decision. If you are born a Hindu, that is not disciplehood. If you are a born Hindu and a shankaracharya comes to your town and you go and pay your respects, that is not disciplehood. You never decided in the first place to be a Hindu. This is coincidence, your Hinduism is just an accident. Somebody else is a Christian, and the pope comes and he goes to pay his respects – this is not disciplehood. He has never decided to be a Catholic or a Christian.

In fact, you remain a Hindu or a Christian because you cannot decide to get out of them. It is not a decision, it is a lack of decision. Because you are afraid of deciding, you continue whatsoever you have got from tradition, heritage, from your father and mother. Just think: people deciding their religion by their blood – is there any greater stupidity possible? Religion being decided by your blood? Then take the Mohammedan’s blood and the Hindu’s and the Christian’s blood, and go to the expert and ask him which is the Hindu’s blood and which is the Mohammedan’s blood. No expert can show you; blood is simply blood. There are differences in blood, but those differences are not religious.

Deciding your religion just by birth, it is as if you are deciding your future by the I Ching, or going to an astrologer, deciding your future by the stars, or Tarot cards. These are not decisions, these are tricks how not to decide. Somebody else decides for you. The book of I Ching was written five thousand years back – somebody, nobody knows his name now, is deciding for you. You ask so-long-dead people to decide your future. You ask the past to decide your future. But it is helpful in a way, because you are no longer needed to decide. If you are a Hindu, just by your birth... you have not decided it. Your disciplehood is not disciplehood, it is decidophobia.

Just look: in small things you think so much, and in great things you don’t think at all. If you go to the market to purchase clothes, you decide – ordinary things, trivia, you decide. It is as if there is a rule that if you drive your car slowly then drive carefully, but if you are going beyond fifty miles per hour then close your eyes. In small things – purchasing clothes or toothpaste or soap – you decide.

Religion, God, meditation, prayer, you leave to somebody else to decide.

In great things you want to be blindfolded, and tradition works as a blindfold. People who are not born blind become almost blind because of a constant blindfold. Blinkers are on your eyes.

Somebody’s blinkers are known as Hindu, somebody’s as Christian, somebody’s as Jaina, but they are all blinkers, blindfolds, given to you by the society because you are afraid of opening your eyes.

So better let somebody else decide; then you are freed of the responsibility, and you can say: We are obedient. Tradition is great, we simply follow the tradition. The past is great, and we follow the past.

You can rationalize these things, but this is not disciplehood. Disciplehood is always a personal choice. For example, you are here. I am neither a Christian, nor a Hindu, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Jaina, nor a Buddhist, and if you decide to go with me, it is going to be a decision. If you suffer from decidophobia, you cannot go with me; then you will remain within your fold in which you were born accidentally.

Once you decide – and ’decide’ means you have to decide, the responsibility is yours and personal, it is a commitment. And I know it is very difficult to decide; hence much courage is needed. You can be Hindu easily; you can be Christian easily. But to walk with me you will have to drop your decidophobia. Only then do you become a disciple.

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So it depends what type of disciplehood you are keeping in your mind. In the world there are very few disciples. Yes, the people who decided to go with Jesus were disciples.

Jesus passes by a lake, and two fishermen have just thrown their net in the lake. He comes by their side, puts his hand on one of the fishermen’s shoulders. The fisherman looks at Jesus – those tremendously penetrating eyes, those tremendously silent eyes, more silent than the lake – and Jesus says to that man, ”What are you doing? Why are you wasting your whole life in catching fish?

Come with me, I will teach you how to catch men. Why go on wasting your life catching fish? Come follow me!”

A great moment. The man must have wavered between decidophobia and disciplehood. But then he gathered courage, he threw the net into the lake, and he followed Jesus.

By the time they were getting out of the town, a man came running and said to the fisherman,

”Where are you going? Your father who was ill is dead. Come back home!” And the fisherman asks Jesus’ permission: ”Let me go for three, four days so I can finish with the last rites for my dead father, and then I will come.” And Jesus said, ”Forget all about it. There are enough dead people in the town, they will bury the dead. You come follow me!” And he followed, he forgot all about his dead father.

This is disciplehood. Those who followed Jesus were disciples, but Christians are not disciples; now they are following a dead tradition. Those who followed Buddha were disciples, but Buddhists are not disciples. you are my disciples; some day or other your children’s children will also remember me – they will not be my disciples. If your children start remembering me, loving me, because of you, then they are not related to me – then they have a fear of decision. Don’t create that fear in your children’s minds. Let them decide themselves.

Life can become very rich if people are left to decide. But the society tries to force decisions on you.

Society is afraid that if it does not decide for you, you may not be able to decide. But, in fact, because of this, by and by you lose the capacity to decide things. And once you lose your decisiveness, you lose your soul.

The word ’soul’ means an integrated unity within you. It comes out of great, fatal decisions. The more you decide and the more risky the decision is, the more integrated you become, crystallized.

If you have decided – and remember the emphasis – if you have decided to be with me, this is a great revolution in your life, a momentous phenomenon. But if you are not the deciding one – you came here because your wife was here or your husband was here, your friends were here and you came here and you saw so many people moving in orange, and you started feeling an outsider, and you started feeling a little uneasy, that you look alien, and because of that you also took sannyas –

then this is decidophobia, this is not disciplehood; then you have followed the crowd. Your sannyas is not worth anything – because it is not your sannyas at all. You have imitated. Never imitate. Be decisive on your own, and every decision will give you more and more integration.

And this is a great decision – to commit yourself, to get involved totally, to move with me towards the unknown. The mind will create a thousand and one doubts, hesitations; the mind would like to cling to the past – but if you decide, in spite of all this, you rise above your past, you transcend your past.

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But don’t try to be clever. Try to be authentic and true. Don’t try to rationalize... because you may have taken sannyas without any decision on your part. You may have drifted with the crowd. Then you will rationalize it. You will say: Yes, this is my decision. But whom are you trying to kid? You are deceiving only yourself.

I have heard an anecdote:

The mother was scolding her oldest son: ”I have told you before that you should let your little brother play with the toys half the time.”

”I do!” protested the kid. ”I use the sledge going downhill and let him use it going uphill – half the time!”

Don’t try to be clever. You can call your decidophobia a disciplehood – but you are not deceiving me, you are deceiving only yourself. Be clear about it. Great clarity is needed in the search for truth.

The third question:

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHY DOES SO MUCH REACTION COME TO ME AGAINST DISCIPLINE?

AND AN ATTRACTION AND A VOICE SAYING, ”YOU MUST!” IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OBEYING AND SURRENDER?

There is a great difference. Not only a difference: obeying and surrender are diametrically opposite.

Listen well.

If you are surrendered then there is no question of obeying. Then my voice is your voice; you don’t obey it. Then I am no more separate from you. If you are not surrendered, then you obey it, because my voice is separate from yours. You manage to obey, you enforce a certain discipline on yourself.

There must be some greed behind it. You must be looking for some result. So you obey, but deep down you remain separate. Deep down the resistance goes on continuing. Deep down you are still fighting with me. In the very word ’obey’ there is resistance.

Obeying is ugly. Either surrender or be on your own. Obeying is a compromise: you don’t want to surrender, one thing; and you are not confident to remain on your own, another thing. So you compromise. You say: I will remain on my own, but obey. I will listen to you, whatsoever you say, and will find ways and means to obey it.

Surrender is a totally different thing. There is no duality in surrender. When a disciple surrenders to a master, they have become one; that moment the duality has disappeared. Now the master is no more thought of as separate, so who is going to obey and who is going to obey whom?

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Because the surrender has not yet happened. Otherwise, discipline is beautiful; there is nothing like discipline. If surrender has happened, then you don’t enforce discipline, it comes spontaneously.

When I say something to you, and you are surrendered, you hear my voice as your own. In fact, you will see immediately that this is what you wanted to do, but you were not clear about it. You will be able to understand that I have told you something about which you were groping in the dark. You had a certain feel for it, but things were vague – I have made them clear for you. I have spoken for you. I have brought your own heart’s desire to you.

In surrender that is going to happen. Then what is the point of calling it ’obeying’? It is not obedience.

In obedience, a certain conflict is hidden.

I have heard one anecdote:

One man had been having trouble with a teenage son, so he sent him out to a cattle ranch operated by an old friend. After the youth had been working on the ranch a couple of months, he asked about his progress.

”Well,” said the rancher friend, ”he’s been working good. Already he speaks cow language.”

”Sounds all right.”

”But,” said the old cowman seriously, ”he ain’t learnt yet to think like a cow.” That’s the difference. Once you start thinking like a cow then there is no question of any obedience, disobedience. Once you start thinking like me, then there is no question, then there is no problem, no conflict, no struggle, no effort. In fact you are not following me, you are following yourself. In deep surrender this happens.

Ordinarily, people have a very wrong notion about surrender, particularly in the West. Surrender is a deeply Eastern concept. People think that in surrender your individuality will be lost. Absolutely wrong, one hundred percent wrong. In surrender your personality is not lost. In fact in surrender your personality for the first time becomes clear; because if you surrender, you surrender the ego, not the personality, not the individuality. Just the wrong notion that you are somebody... you drop that notion. Once that notion is dropped, you are at ease, you grow; your individuality remains intact, in fact grows bigger and bigger. Of course there will not be the feeling of ’I’, but a tremendous growth will happen.

If surrender is not there, then millions of questions arise about how to obey.

I was called to a seminar; many universities’ vice-chancellors and chancellors had gathered there.

They were much worried about the indiscipline in the schools, colleges and universities, and they were much worried about the new generation’s disrespectful attitude towards the teachers.

I listened to their views and I told them, ”I see that somewhere the very basis is missing. A teacher is one who is respected naturally, so a teacher cannot demand respect. If the teacher demands respect, he simply shows that he is not a teacher; he has chosen the wrong profession, that is not his vocation. The very definition of a teacher is one who is naturally respected; not that you have to The Search

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respect him. If you have to respect him, what type of respect is this going to be? Just look: ’have to respect’ – the whole beauty is lost, the respect is not alive. If it has to be done, then it is not there.

When it is there, nobody is conscious about it, nobody is self-conscious about it. It simply flows.

Whenever a teacher is there it simply flows.”

So I asked the seminar: ”Rather than asking students to respect the teachers, you please decide again – you must be choosing wrong teachers, who are not teachers at all.” Teachers are as much born as poets, it is a great art. Everybody cannot be a teacher, but because of universal education millions of teachers are required. Just think of a society that thinks that poetry is to be taught by poets and everybody is to be taught poetry. Then millions of poets will be required.

Of course, then there will be poets’ training colleges. Those poets will be bogus, and then they will ask: Applaud us! – because we are poets. Why are you not respecting us? This has happened with teachers.

In the past there were very few teachers. People used to travel thousands of miles to find a teacher, to be with him. There was tremendous respect, but the respect depended on the quality of the teacher. It was not an expectation from the disciple or from the student or the pupil. It simply happened.

If you are surrendered, obedience simply happens without any self-consciousness. Not that you have to follow – you simply find yourself following. One day you simply recognize the fact that you have been following, and there has been no conflict, no struggle. The more you try to be obedient, the more resistance will grow.

I have heard:

A woman complained to her doctor: ”You just don’t know how bad I feel. Why, I can’t even eat the things you told me not to!”

Once you say to somebody: Don’t do this! a deep desire arises to do it. Don’t eat this – a deep desire arises to eat it. Mind functions always negatively; the very function of the mind is to negate, to say no.

Just watch yourself, how many times you say no in the day, and reduce that quota. Watch yourself, how many times you say yes – increase that quota. And by and by you will see just a slight change in the degrees of yes and no, and your personality is changing basically. Watch how many times you say no where yes would have been easier; there was no need really to say no. How many times you could have said yes, but either you said no or you kept quiet.

Whenever you say yes, it goes against the ego. The ego cannot eat yes; it feeds itself on no’s. Say: No! No! No! and within yourself arises great ego.

Just go to the railway station: you may be alone at the window to purchase a ticket, but the clerk will start doing something, he will not look at you. He is trying to say, ”No.” He will at least make you wait. He will pretend that he is very busy, he will look into this register and that. He will force you to wait. That gives a feeling of power, that he is no ordinary clerk – he can make anybody wait.

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It happened just in the beginning days of Soviet Russia, when Leon Trotsky was the war minister there. He was very strict with rules, discipline, this and that. There was going to be a great meeting of the Communist Party, and he was in charge to issue passes. He completely forgot that he also needed a pass to enter the hall. When he went there the policeman who was standing at the gate stopped him. He said, ”Where is your pass?”

Leon Trotsky said, ”Don’t you recognize me?”

He said, ”I recognize you perfectly well – you are our war minister. But where is your pass?” Trotsky said, ”Look at the other passes you are holding in your hands. They are signed by me.” The policeman said, ”Maybe, but this is the rule, that nobody can enter without a pass. So go back home and find a pass.”

Leon Trotsky has written in his diary, ”I could see how powerful he was feeling that day – saying no to the war minister, making him feel tiny.”

People go on saying no. The child says to the mother: Can I go outside and play? and immediately, without thinking for a single moment, she says: No! Politics! What is wrong in being outside, going outside and playing? And the child is going to go; the child will insist, and he will go into a tantrum, and then mother will say, ”Okay, you can go.” This could have been done in the first place, in the very beginning, but even a mother cannot lose an opportunity to say no.

The first thing that comes to your mind is no. Yes is almost difficult. You say yes only when you feel absolutely helpless and you have to say it. Just watch it! Make yourself a yea-sayer; drop no-saying, because it is the poison of no on which the ego feeds itself, nourishes itself.

A religious man is one who has said yes to existence.

Out of that yes, God is born.

Yes is the father of God.

That yes attitude is the religious attitude.

But remember: I don’t insist on obeying. Either be with me totally, or don’t be with me at all.

Compromise is not good, compromise kills. Compromise will make you lukewarm, and nobody can evaporate from that state. Compromise comes out of fear. Take courage: either be with me or don’t be with me – but don’t be in a limbo. Otherwise, one part of your mind will go on saying: I have to follow, I have to do this, and another part will go on saying: No, why should I do it? And this constant conflict within yourself dissipates energy, it is destructive. It will poison your whole being.

The fourth question:

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IF THERE ARE NOT ANY GAPS?

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Look within, it has never been so and you cannot be an exception. All seekers who have gone within have gone through the gaps. The gaps are there, but you have not looked and hence the question has an ’if’. Please don’t ask ’if’ questions. I am not talking about theories, I am talking about facts.

It is as if somebody says: What if there is no heart within? But the if is just speculative. Close your eyes and you will hear the heartbeat. If you are to ask the question, the heart is bound to be there.

If you are there to raise this question, the gaps are bound to be there. Without gaps, thinking cannot exist. Between two words the gap is a necessity; otherwise the two words will not be separate, they will overlap. Between two sentences there is a gap – necessarily so, otherwise there will be no division between the sentences, between two thoughts.

Just look within....

At the supper table one night a farmer was very angry.

”Where were you boys when I called for you to help me an hour ago?” he demanded.

”I was in the barn setting a hen,” said one.

”I was in the loft setting a saw,” said another.

”I was in grandpa’s room setting the clock,” said the third.

”And I was in the pantry setting a trap,” said the fourth son.

”A fine set you are!” exclaimed the farmer. ”And where were you?” he asked, turning to the youngest son.

”I was on the doorstep setting still.”

So find a few moments when you can be just ”setting still”; immediately you will be in the gaps.

Sitting silently, you will be in the gaps.

Thoughts are intruders; gaps are your real nature. Thoughts come and go. The emptiness within you always remains; it never comes, never goes. The emptiness is the background, thoughts are moving figures against it. Just as you write on a blackboard with white chalk – the blackboard is there, you write with white chalk – your inner emptiness functions as a blackboard, and on that blackboard thoughts move.

Slow down! Slow down a little. Just sit silently, relaxed, not doing anything in particular. If you ask

’if’ questions, you are wasting time. In the same time and with the same energy, those gaps can be experienced and you can become immensely rich. And once you have tasted the gaps, then the hold of thoughts on you will disappear.

The last question:

Question 5

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BELOVED OSHO, WHO CARES?

IS THIS CREATIVE INDIFFERENCE, OR SLEEP?

PLEASE COMMENT.

Creativity can never be indifferent. Creativity cares – because creativity is love. Creativity is the function of love and care. Creativity cannot be indifferent. If you are indifferent, by and by all your creativity will disappear. Creativity needs passion, aliveness, energy. Creativity needs that you should remain a flow, an intense, passionate flow.

If you look at a flower indifferently, the flower cannot be beautiful. Through indifference, everything becomes ordinary. Then one lives in a cold way, shrunken in oneself. This calamity has happened in the East, because religion took a wrong turn and people started thinking that you have to be indifferent to life.

One Hindu sannyasin came to see me once. He looked around my garden, and there were many flowers, and I was working in the garden when he came to see me. He said, ”Are you interested in the flowers and gardening?” On his face there was a look of condemnation. He said, ”But I was thinking you must be indifferent to all these things.” I am not indifferent. Indifference is negative, it is suicidal, it is escapist. Of course, if you become indifferent many things will not bother you; you will live surrounded by your indifference. You will not be distracted, you will not be disturbed, but just not to be distracted is not the point. You will never be happy and overflowing.

In the East, many people think that to be indifferent is the way of religion. They move away from life, they become escapists. They have not created anything. They simply vegetate and they think they have attained something – they have not attained anything.

Attainment is always positive and attainment is always creative. God is creativity – how can you reach God by being indifferent? God is not indifferent. He cares about even small blades of grass, he cares about them also. He takes as much care to paint a butterfly as he takes care to create a buddha.

The whole loves. And if you want to become one with the whole, you have to love. Indifference is a slow suicide. Be in deep love, so much so that you completely disappear in your love, that you become a pure creative energy. Only then do you participate with God, hand in hand you move with him.

To me creativity is prayer, creativity is meditation, creativity is life.

So don’t be afraid of life, and don’t close yourself in indifference. Indifference will desensitize you, you will lose all sensitivity; your body will become dull, your intelligence will become dull. You will live in a dark cell, afraid of the light and the sun, afraid of the wind and the clouds and the sea – afraid about everything. You will wrap a blanket of indifference all around you and you will start dying.

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Move! Be dynamic! And whatsoever you do, do it so lovingly that the very act becomes creative and divine. I am not saying that you all should become painters and poets; that’s not possible. But there is no need also. You may be a housewife – your cooking can be creative. You may be a shoemaker

– your shoemaking can be creative. Whatsoever you do, do it so totally, so lovingly, so intimately; get involved into it so your act is not something outside. You move in your act, your act becomes a fulfillment. Then I call you religious. A religious person, a religious consciousness, is immensely creative.

Never use the phrase: Who cares? That attitude comes from the ego – who cares? No, if you really want to grow, care more. Let care be your whole style of life. Care about each and every thing. And don’t make any distinction between the great and the small. Very small things... just cleaning the floor, do it with deep care, as if it is the body of your beloved, and suddenly you will see you are being born anew through your own creativity.

Each creative act becomes a rebirth for the creator, and each indifferent act becomes a suicide, a slow death. Be overflowing. Don’t be misers. Don’t try to hold – share! And let care be your very center of life. And then there is no need to go to the church, no need to go to the temple, no need to kneel down before any god and pray. Your butterfly life, your way of life, is prayer. Whatsoever you touch will become sacred. I say whatsoever, unconditionally.

Love makes everything sacred. Carelessness makes everything ugly.

Enough for today.

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CHAPTER 3

Perceiving the Bull

4 March 1976 am in Buddha Hall

3. PERCEIVING THE BULL

I HEAR THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE.

THE SUN IS WARM, THE WIND IS MILD, WILLOWS ARE GREEN ALONG THE SHORE.

HERE NO BULL CAN HIDE!

WHAT ARTIST CAN DRAW THAT MASSIVE HEAD, THOSE MAJESTIC HORNS?

COMMENT:

WHEN ONE HEARS THE VOICE, ONE CAN SENSE ITS SOURCE. AS SOON AS THE SIX

SENSES MERGE, THE GATE IS ENTERED. WHEREVER ONE ENTERS ONE SEES THE HEAD

OF THE BULL! THIS UNITY IS LIKE SALT IN WATER, LIKE COLOR IN DYESTUFF. THE

SLIGHTEST THING IS NOT APART FROM SELF.

4. CATCHING THE BULL

I SEIZE HIM WITH A TERRIFIC STRUGGLE.

HIS GREAT WILL AND POWER ARE INEXHAUSTIBLE.

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CHAPTER 3. PERCEIVING THE BULL

OR IN AN IMPENETRABLE RAVINE HE STANDS.

COMMENT:

HE DWELT IN THE FOREST A LONG TIME, BUT I CAUGHT HIM TODAY! INFATUATION

FOR SCENERY INTERFERES WITH HIS DIRECTION. LONGING FOR SWEETER GRASS, HE

WANDERS AWAY. HIS MIND STILL IS STUBBORN AND UNBRIDLED. IF I WISH HIM TO SUBMIT, I MUST RAISE MY WHIP.

I wonder whether you have observed it or not: that man is the only animal who draws his picture, his own picture. No other animal has ever done that. Not only does he draw pictures of himself, he stands before a mirror, looks at himself mirrored, reflected. Not only that – he stands before the mirror, looks at his reflection, and looks at himself looking at his reflection, and so on and so forth.

Because of this, self-consciousness arises. Because of this, ego is born. Because of this, man becomes more interested in reflections than in reality.

Watch your own mind! You become more interested in a pornographic picture than in a real woman.

Pictures have a tremendous grip over the human mind; hence man lives in a fiction. And self-knowledge is not possible in fiction. You have to become more interested in the real than in the reflected. Mirrors have to be broken. You have to come back home; otherwise, you go on further and further away from yourself.

This interest in reflections, fictions, dreams, thoughts, images, is the basic cause why man cannot know himself. He is not interested at all in himself. He is more interested in the opinion of others, what they think about him. That again is a mirror. You are constantly worried what people think about you. You are not worried at all about who you are – that is not a real quest – but about what people think you are. Hence you go on decorating yourself. Your morality, your virtue, is nothing but a decoration so that in others’ eyes you can look beautiful, good, righteous, religious. But this is a great loss.

If people think you are religious, that does not make you religious. If people think you are happy, that doesn’t make you happy. And once you are on the wrong track, you can miss your whole life.

Become more interested in being happy than being thought happy. Become more interested in being beautiful rather than being thought beautiful – because thoughts cannot satisfy your thirst, thoughts cannot satisfy your hunger. Whether people think you are well-fed or not is not the question; you cannot deceive the body. Real food is needed, pictures of food won’t do. Real water is needed, pictures of water, formulas about water, won’t do. H2O cannot quench your thirst. Once you understand this, then the discovery starts; then you are in search of the bull.

Watch yourself. You will catch yourself red-handed many times a day when you are not thinking about reality but about fictions. Looking in a mirror and thinking that you are looking at yourself is one of the most absurd things. The face that is mirrored is not your face; it is just the surface, it is just the periphery. No mirror can mirror your center. And the circumference is not you. The circumference goes on changing every moment; it is a flux.

Why are you so much attracted to the form? Why not to the real? A man who is in search of his self, who has become interested in self-knowledge, goes on breaking all mirrors. He does not smile The Search

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because people are looking at him and a smile will give a good impression about him, he smiles when he feels to. His smile is authentic. It is not dependent on people, it is not dependent on onlookers. He lives his life. He is not trying always to convince an audience that ”I am so and so.” Remember: people who are too much concerned about convincing others are empty people, hollow within. They don’t have anything authentic. Otherwise, the desire will disappear. If you are a happy man you are a happy man and you don’t think about it, that it has to be reflected in others’ eyes.

You don’t go on collecting opinions. Whatsoever identity you think you have, just analyze it and you will see thousands of people have said things about you and you have gathered them. Something your mother said, something your father said, your brother, friends, society, and you have gathered all that. Of course, it is going to be contradictory because of so many people, so many mirrors. Your identity is self-contradictory. You cannot call it a self, because a self is possible only when you have dropped living in contradictions. But for that you have to go within. The first step of understanding is that your self is already waiting for you – within you. You need not look into anybody else’s eyes.

Don’t believe in mirrors – believe in reality.

I have heard, once it happened:

An old clergyman advised a politician to go out into the rain and lift his head heavenward. ”It will bring a revelation to you,” he promised.

Next day the politician returned. ”I followed your advice,” he said, ”and water came down my neck and I felt like a fool.”

”Well,” said the old clergyman, ”for a first try, don’t you think that’s quite a revelation?” If you can understand your foolishness, it is quite a revelation – yes it is, because from that point begins a journey.

A man who is constantly worried about his impression in others’ eyes, how he looks in mirrors, is a fool, because he is wasting a great opportunity in which tremendous experiences are possible. But he has not taken the first step, afraid because he will look like a fool. Don’t be afraid of foolishness, otherwise you will remain a fool.

One day or other you have to recognize the fact that up to now you have lived in deep stupidity.

And if you go on living this way – through mirrors, reflections, opinions – you by and by lose your individuality, you become part of the masses, you lose your soul. Then you are not an authentic individual.

The word ’mass’ comes from a Latin root massa. Massa means something which can be molded, kneaded. And when I say you become a mass, I mean that you are being continuously molded by others, kneaded by others. But you allow it, you cooperate with it. You take all sorts of trouble to become a part of the mass, of some crowd, because alone you lose your identity. Your whole identity is through the crowd.

That’s why people, when they become retired, die sooner. Psychoanalysts say that at least ten years’ life is cut. Politicians, when they are in power, are very healthy; once they are out of power, The Search

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their health disappears, they die soon – because out of power their whole identity starts disappearing like a dream. Out of the office, suddenly you are nobody. You have been nobody your whole life, but you go on believing in the fictions that you create around you.

A man who is a great officer thinks himself great; once his post is gone, all the greatness is gone.

A man who is rich thinks himself rich through his riches; he feels he is somebody. If he becomes a bankrupt suddenly, it is not only that his wealth disappears, his soul disappears, his whole identity is gone. It was a paper boat, it was a house of playing cards – a small breeze and everything is gone.

Self-knowledge means that you have come to understand one thing: that you have to know yourself immediately, directly – not through others, not via others. There is no need to ask anybody; how stupid it is to ask somebody: Who am I? How can anybody answer it? Go withinwards – that is the search of the bull. Go into your own energy; it is there. Just taste it, just merge with it.

Once you have understood that you have to seek your identity within yourself, in total aloneness, you are becoming free from the masses, from the crowd. Individuality is born, you are becoming an individual, unique. And remember: when I say ’individual’ I don’t mean an egoist. An egoist is always part of the masses. The ego is the total of all the opinions that you have gathered from others about you, and hence the ego is very contradictory. Sometimes it says you are not beautiful, very ugly; sometimes it says you are very beautiful, very lovely; sometimes it says you are a fool; sometimes it says you are a wise man – because in so many situations so many things have been said to you about you, and you have gathered all of them.

The ego is always in trouble. It is a false entity. It appears as if it is, and it is not.

When you become individual.... The word is good: it means indivisible. Individual means that which cannot be divided, that which cannot suffer any split, that which cannot be two, dual or many, that which is absolutely one, no division exists; then you are an individual. It has nothing to do with the ego. Ego is a barrier towards it because ego is always divided, so much so that many times people come to me and I ask them: Are you happy? – they shrug their shoulders. I ask them: Are you unhappy? – again they shrug their shoulders. They are not definite about what state of mind they are in, because there are many states of mind together within them. They would like to say both yes and no to every question.

I have heard about a political leader who was suffering from a split personality, the beginning of schizophrenia. He was hospitalized. In ordinary things also, he had become very indecisive. He could not make ordinary decisions: whether to go to the bathroom or not, to eat this or not, to wear these clothes or not – small things, trivia. And anything that had to be decided would create trembling in him. He was treated six months in the hospital, and when the doctors decided that he was perfectly okay they told him, ”Now you can go. You are now normal; the problem has disappeared. What do you say?”

He said, ”Yes and no.”

The ego is many, it is never one. Because it has been collected from so many different people it cannot be one. You are one, the ego is many. And if you think that you are the ego, then you are on the path of madness. Once you understand this, you can see the footprints of the bull.

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Once I traveled all over the country with a friend. He was constantly with his camera. In the Himalayas he was not interested in the Himalayas – he was interested in taking pictures. One fullmoon night we were looking at the Taj Mahal, and he was interested in taking pictures. After a few moments together, I asked him, ”What are you doing? The Taj Mahal is here; I don’t see you looking at the Taj Mahal. You are constantly worried about your pictures, whether the pictures will come out or not, the light is proper or not.”

He said, ”Why be worried about the Taj Mahal? Later on I am going to make a beautiful album of the whole journey. Then I can sit and see things.” This is ’kodakomania’: interested more in pictures than in the reality. Become more interested in reality. And whenever your mind tries to pull you away from reality – in pictures, fictions, dreams –

become alert, come back. Come back to the present moment.

One doctor used to come here; now he has been transferred from Poona. He was continuously taking notes; while I was speaking, he would take notes. I told him, ”While I am speaking, try to understand it.”

He said, ”But taking notes is good, because later on, at home, with ease, I can go through them and understand.”

Now this man will never be able to understand what I am saying, because it is not a question of taking notes; it is a transfer of a certain vision. He never looked at me because he was looking at his copy. And I don’t think that he could write notes either, because by the time he wrote, something else had been said and he missed this. They would be just fragmentary. And then he would make a whole out of them – that whole would be his, not mine.

You have to be here with me in reality, totally here with me. Then... then a new understanding arises.

And that should become your way of life, the very style. Constantly be engaged in reality, participate in reality. Don’t be an onlooker, and don’t get too much interested in pictures; otherwise, by and by, you will lose the capacity to be aware of reality. But mind has old, deep habits, and it is going to be a constant struggle in the beginning. The mind is like a salesman.

I have heard an anecdote:

The salesman for a junior encyclopedia got his foot in the doorway and was trying to fast-talk the young mother of a five-year-old into taking a set of the books.

”These books will answer any question your child will ever ask,” he assured her. ”You will never be at a loss for an answer with these.” He patted the boy on the head, ”Go ahead, sonny. Ask me a question, any question, and I’ll show your mother how easy it is to answer by looking in one of these books.”

The little fellow thought a moment, and then asked, ”What kind of car does God drive?” Life is like that. And mind is like the salesman and the Encyclopedia Britannica. The mind goes on accumulating things, cataloging all the experiences – categorizing, classifying, filing, so that in The Search

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future when the time comes they can be used. But life is so alive that it never asks the same question again. And if you are too much in your mind, then always whatsoever you answer is not to the point

– it can never be. Life goes on changing every moment. It is like a small child asking, ”What kind of car does God drive?”

You can manage to find some answer about this also – a Rolls Royce, or something else – but the child is not going to ask the same question again. Next moment he will be asking something else. The child’s curiosity is more than any encyclopedia. And life is so innovative that no book can answer real situations.

So try to be more alert rather than more knowledgeable. If you become too much knowledgeable, you will collect pictures, memories; you will go on taking notes; you will go on comparing your notes.

You will come to a beautiful rose, and you will compare with some other roses that you have seen in the past; or you may compare with some other roses which you hope to see in the future – but you will never look at this rose. And only this rose is true! The roses that are accumulated in your memory are unreal, and the roses that you dream about are also unreal. Only this rose is real.

Remember this, here now.

If you shift your energy from mind towards awareness, you will be immediately aware of the footprints of the bull. Ordinarily, you follow the crowd. It is convenient, it is comfortable; it is like a sedative.

With the crowd you need not worry; the responsibility is with the crowd. You can leave all the questions to the experts. And you can depend on a long tradition, the wisdom of the ages. When so many people are there doing one thing, it is easier to imitate them than to do your own thing, because once you start doing your own thing, doubts arise: maybe... are you right or wrong? With a great crowd doing something, you become part of it. The question never arises whether you are right or wrong. ”So many people can’t be wrong,” the mind goes on saying, ”they must be right. And for so many centuries they have been doing the same thing; there must be some truth in it.” If doubt arises in you, then doubt is your fault. For centuries and centuries a crowd has been doing a certain thing. One can follow easily, imitate. But once you imitate others, you will never be able to know who you are. Then self-knowledge becomes impossible.

In the Malayan language, they have a word, lattah. It is very beautiful. The word means: people imitate others because they are frightened; out of fear people imitate others. Have you watched?

If you are sitting in a theater and suddenly the theater is on fire and people start running, you will follow the crowd – wherever the crowd is going. It happens when a ship is sinking, the greatest problem becomes this: that the whole crowd runs towards one direction, they all gather together on one side, which helps the ship to sink sooner.

Whenever you are in fear, you lose individuality. Then there is no time to think and meditate, then there is no time to decide on your own; time is short and a decision is needed. In times of fear people imitate others. But ordinarily, also, you live in lattah, you live in a constant frightened state. And the crowd does not like you to become different, because that creates suspicion in others’ minds also.

If one person goes against the crowd – one Jesus or one Buddha – the crowd doesn’t feel good with this man, the crowd will destroy him; or, if the crowd is very cultured, the crowd will worship him. But both ways are the same. If the crowd is a little wild, uncultured, Jesus will be crucified. If the crowd is like the Indians – very cultured, centuries of culture, of nonviolence, of love, of spirituality – they The Search

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will worship the Buddha. But by worshipping they are saying: We are different; you are different. We cannot follow you, we cannot come with you. You are good, very good, but too good to be true. You don’t belong to us. You are a god – we will worship you. But don’t trouble us; don’t say things which can unhinge us, which can disturb our peaceful sleep.

Kill a Jesus or worship a Buddha – both are the same. Jesus is killed so the crowd can forget that such a man ever existed, because if this man is true.... And this man is true. His whole being is so full of bliss and benediction that he is true; because truth cannot be seen, only the fragrance that comes out of a true man can be felt. The blissfulness can be felt by others, and that is a proof that this man is true. But if this man is true, then the whole crowd is wrong, and this is too much. The whole crowd cannot tolerate such a person; it is a thorn, painful. This man has to be destroyed – or worshipped, so we can say: You come from another world, you don’t belong to us. You are a freak, you are not the normal rule. You may be the exception, but the exception only proves the rule. You are you, we are us: we will go on our path. Good that you came – we respect you very much –

but don’t disturb us. We put Buddha in the temple so that he need not come into the marketplace; otherwise he will create trouble.

Out of fear you go on following others. Out of fear you cannot become an individual. So if you are really in search of the bull, then drop fear, because the search is such that you will be moving in danger, you will be taking risks. And the society and the crowd is not going to feel good. And the society will create all sorts of troubles for you, so that you can come back and become normal again.

The first thing I told you about man is that he is more interested in pictures than in reality, more interested in mirrors than in reality, more interested in his own image than in himself. And the second basic thing about man to be remembered is: man is the only animal who stands erect – the only animal who walks on his two hind legs. This has created a very unique situation for man.

Animals walk on their four legs. They can look only in one direction. Man stands on his two feet –

he can look in all directions simultaneously. There is no need to turn his whole body; just the turning of the head and he can look in all directions. Because of this possibility, man became an escapist.

Whenever there is a danger, rather than fighting, encountering the danger, he escapes. In the same situation where the animal will have to encounter the enemy, man tries to escape. All directions are available. The enemy is coming from the north – a lion is standing there – now, all directions are available for man; he can run away, he can escape.

Man is the only escapist animal. Nothing is wrong in it as far as fighting with animals is concerned

– and man has been in the wild for long. Still he goes on escaping from lions and tigers; must have had great experience in the past. But that escapism has become a deep rooted mechanism in man.

The same he goes on doing with psychological things.

If there is fear, then rather than encountering it he goes in another direction – prays to God, asks for help. Feeling poverty, inside poverty, rather than encountering it he goes on accumulating wealth, so that he can forget that he is poor inside. Seeing that he does not know himself, rather than encountering this ignorance he goes on collecting knowledge, becomes knowledgeable, like a parrot, and goes on repeating borrowed things.

These are all escapes. If you really want to encounter yourself, you will have to learn how not to escape. Anger is there; don’t escape from it. Whenever you feel angry, you start doing something The Search

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to become occupied. Of course, if your energy moves in another direction, anger is repressed. It cannot get any energy from you; it falls back into the unconscious. But it will take revenge; sooner or later it will find an opportunity again and will come up out of all proportion to the situation.

If sex arises in you, you start doing something else, you start chanting a mantra. But these are all escapes. And remember: religion is not an escape. The religions that you know are all escapes; but the religion I am talking about is not an escape – it is an encounter. Life has to be encountered.

Whatsoever comes before you, you have to look into it deeply, because that same depth is going to become your self-knowledge.

Behind anger are the footprints of the bull. Behind sex are the footprints of the bull. If you escape from sex, anger, greed, this and that, you will be escaping from the footprints of the bull – and then it will be impossible to find who you are.

These two things: that man is interested in fictions more.... Have you seen people in the theater looking at a movie, how different they are there? They cry; if something happens on the screen, tears go on flowing from their eyes. In real life you don’t find them so kind, so compassionate.

In real life they may be very hard. But looking at a picture – and nothing is there on the screen; just light and shadow, a game, a dream – they cry and weep and they laugh, and they become excited. Rather than watching the movie, it will be more valuable if you watch the audience. What is happening to these people?

Man seems to be more interested in illusions than in reality. And if you try to awaken somebody from his illusions he gets angry; he will never forgive you. He will take revenge – you disturbed him.

These fictions of the mind and a constant readiness to escape are the two problems which have to be faced.

I have heard: One mother wanted to spend Saturday afternoon downtown, and father, a statistician, reluctantly agreed to give up his golf and sit with the children. On her return, the father handed over the following report on the afternoon:

”Dried tears – nine times. Tied shoes – thirteen times. Toy balloons purchased – three per child.

Average life of balloon – thirteen seconds. Cautioned children not to cross the street – twenty-one times. Number of Saturdays I will do this again – zero.” A statistician is a statistician. Mind is very mathematical; that’s why mind has become so powerful.

That’s why it is so difficult to get out of the mind. So much is invested in it: your whole efficiency, your whole caliber, your whole career – everything depends on the mind. And in meditation you have to come out of it. Hence many times you decide to come out, but deep down you go on clinging.

Mind pays in many ways. Particularly in the world, if you exist with no-mind you will not be able to compete, you will not be able to struggle violently; you cannot become a part of the cut-throat rat race which is continuously going on. In this crowd of mad people, you will not be able to participate.

You will walk down the street by the side; you will find a footpath of your own.

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minds of whom the society consists. You will become very, very happy, blissful, silent, but people will think that you have gone crazy – because misery to them seems to be the normal state of the human mind. To be miserable seems okay, but to be blissful seems a sort of madness. Who has ever heard of a man being happy without being mad? It does not happen.

So if you are really in search of the bull, you will have to take this risk of getting out of the mass. And you can get out of the mass only if you can get out of the mind, because the mass has created your mind.

The mind is the inner mass. The mass has created a mechanism inside you; from there you are controlled. The society believes in certain things; those beliefs the society has inculcated in you. Deep down, when you were almost unaware, it hypnotized you into a certain role. If you do something against it, immediately conscience will say no. That conscience is not really conscience; that’s a substitute, a social trick, politics. The society has created certain rules inside your mind, and if you go against them, immediately from your inside comes the voice of the society: Don’t do it. It is wrong. It is a sin. The society will force you from the inside to feel guilty.

If you want to get out of the so-called conscience, and achieve a real and authentic conscience, then a great effort is needed. And the whole effort is going to be this: a shift of consciousness from mind to no-mind, from conscience to consciousness.

Conscience is given by society; consciousness arises in you.

Conscience is borrowed, stale,

rotten; conscience comes from the past which is no more – and life has changed completely.

Consciousness comes from you.

Consciousness is always of the present, it is always fresh.

Consciousness will make you integrated – consciousness is integrity.

The word ’integrity’ is a Latin word; it comes from two roots – ’in’ and ’tangere’. Tangere means pure, whole, uncorrupted, virgin. A man of integrity is whole; not many – one. A man of integrity is pure, uncorrupted by the past, virgin. And out of that virginity arises the fragrance which we call religion.

Morality is not religion. Morality is a social trick.

Religion is individual discovery – you have to discover religion.

Morality can be given; religion never.

Now the sutras:

The third sutra: Perceiving the Bull.

I HEAR THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE.

THE SUN IS WARM, THE WIND IS MILD, WILLOWS ARE GREEN ALONG THE SHORE.

HERE NO BULL CAN HIDE!

WHAT ARTIST CAN DRAW THAT MASSIVE HEAD, THOSE MAJESTIC HORNS?

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The fourth sutra: Catching the Bull.

I SEIZE HIM WITH A TERRIFIC STRUGGLE.

HIS GREAT WILL AND POWER ARE INEXHAUSTIBLE.

HE CHARGES TO THE HIGH PLATEAU FAR ABOVE THE CLOUD-MISTS, OR IN AN IMPENETRABLE RAVINE HE STANDS.

The third sutra is about sensitivity.

I HEAR THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE.

THE SUN IS WARM, THE WIND IS MILD, WILLOWS ARE GREEN ALONG THE SHORE.

When you become sensitive, sensitive to all that is happening around you – THE SONG OF

THE NIGHTINGALE – when you become sensitive to everything that is happening to you, and surrounding you, then THE SUN IS WARM, THE WIND IS MILD, WILLOWS ARE GREEN ALONG

THE SHORE.

The religious search is different from a scientific search. In a scientific search, inquiry, you have to be concentrated, so much so that you forget the whole world. There have been cases: a scientist was working in his lab and the house caught fire, but he was not aware of it. He had to be dragged out of the house. He was so concentrated... so narrow becomes the consciousness that everything else is excluded, bracketed off: only one object, like a target.

In India we have a great epic poem, Mahabharat. Bhagavad Gita is only one part of it. The Pandavas and the Kauravas, the cousin-brothers, are being taught by a master archer, Dronacharya. One day he has put the target on a tree, and he asks every disciple what he is seeing. Somebody says, ”I see the tree and the sky and the sun rising.” Somebody says, ”I see the tree, the branches, the birds on the tree.” And this way he goes on.

And then he comes to his chief disciple, Arjuna, and he asks, ”What do you see?” Arjuna says, ”I can’t see anything – just the target.” And Dronacharya said, ”Only you can be a great archer.” Concentration is a narrowing of consciousness. A concentrated mind becomes very, very insensitive towards everything else.

This is meditation: becoming aware of all that is happening, without any choice, just choicelessly aware.

I HEAR THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE.

THE SUN IS WARM, THE WIND IS MILD, WILLOWS ARE GREEN ALONG THE SHORE.

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HERE NO BULL CAN HIDE!

In such a sensitivity, how can the bull hide? The bull can hide if you are concentrated in one direction; then there are many directions in which the bull can hide. But when you are not concentrated in any direction, just open to all directions, how can the bull hide? A beautiful sutra! Now there is no possibility, because there is not a single corner which is outside your consciousness. There is no hiding place.

Through concentration you can avoid. You become alert about one thing at the cost of a thousand and one other things. In meditation, you are simply aware without any bracketing. You don’t put anything aside. You are simply available. If the nightingale sings, you are available. If the sun is felt, touches you on the body and you feel the warmth, you are available. If the wind passes by, you feel it, you are available. A child cries, a dog barks; you are simply aware. You don’t have any object.

Concentration is objective. Meditation has no object to it. And in this choiceless awareness, mind disappears – because mind can remain only if consciousness is narrow. If the consciousness is wide, wide open, the mind cannot exist. Mind can exist only with choice.

You say: This singing of the nightingale is beautiful. In that moment, all else is excluded – mind has come in.

Let me tell you in this way: Mind is a narrowing state of consciousness, consciousness flowing through a very narrow passage, through a tunnel.

Meditation is just standing in the open sky, available to everything.

HERE NO BULL CAN HIDE!

WHAT ARTIST CAN DRAW THAT MASSIVE HEAD, THOSE MAJESTIC HORNS?

And suddenly the bull is seen! In great sensitivity, suddenly you become aware of your energy, pure energy, sheer delight.

WHAT ARTIST CAN DRAW THAT MASSIVE HEAD, THOSE MAJESTIC HORNS?

No, no artist can draw it. It is the real bull, it is not a picture.

The prose comment:

WHEN ONE HEARS THE VOICE, ONE CAN SENSE ITS SOURCE. AS SOON AS THE SIX

SENSES MERGE, THE GATE IS ENTERED.

This is what sensitivity is all about – all your senses merged into one sensitivity. Not that you are eyes and ears and nose, no – you are eyesearsnose all together. There is no gap. You see and you hear and you touch and you smell and you taste all together, simultaneously. You have not chosen any sense in particular.

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Ordinarily, we all choose. A few people are eye-oriented: they only see, they cannot hear so well

– they are sound-blind. If some great music is going on, they simply feel restless: What is there to listen to? If there is something to be seen, they are ready. They may enjoy a dance, but they will not enjoy singing.

There are ear-oriented people who can enjoy sound and singing, but their eyes are dull. And the same with other senses. Each person has devoted his energy to one sense and that has become a dominating factor, a dictatorial factor. Particularly eyes have become very important, and eighty percent of your energy is devoted to the eyes. Other senses suffer badly because only twenty percent is left for all other senses. The eye has become an Adolf Hitler. The democracy of your senses is lost.

That’s why whenever you see a blind man you feel more compassion than you feel towards a deaf man. In fact, your compassion is needed more for the deaf man because a deaf man is cut off from society completely. Because human society is basically language, all communication is cut off. A blind man is not so much cut off from society. A deaf man is in a more difficult plight, but nobody feels as much pity for him as for a blind man. Why? – because eyes are eighty percent of our civilization.

That’s why, if somebody attains to truth, we say he is a great seer. Why seer? Truth can be heard, truth can be tasted, truth can be smelt. Why do we just call him a great seer? – because of the eyes. We are eye-oriented. And this is a very unbalanced state. Each sense has to be given its total freedom, and all the senses should merge into one great current of awareness, sensitivity.

A real man of understanding lives through all the senses; his touch is total. If a real man of understanding touches you, immediately you will feel a transfer of energy. Suddenly you will feel something inside you has been awakened; his energy has touched your sleeping energy. Something arises in you.

If you hear the voice of a man of understanding, his content is significant, but even his voice is significant. Something touches your heart, something soothes you. His voice surrounds you like a warm blanket – his voice has warmth, it is not cold. It has a singing quality in it, a poetry.

The sutra says:

WHEN ONE HEARS THE VOICE, ONE CAN SENSE ITS SOURCE. AS SOON AS THE SIX

SENSES MERGE, THE GATE IS ENTERED.

Here Zen is superb. No other religion, no other development, has touched so deeply on the right path. Senses should remain alive – not only that: your senses should fall in a deep inner rhythm and harmony, they should become an orchestra. Only then can truth be known, only then can you catch hold of the bull.

WHEREVER ONE ENTERS ONE SEES THE HEAD OF THE BULL!

And then, when your senses are totally alive and merging into each other, and you have become a pool of energy, WHEREVER ONE ENTERS ONE SEES THE HEAD OF THE BULL!

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THIS UNITY IS LIKE SALT IN WATER...

Your awareness moves through all your senses like salt in water.

... LIKE COLOR IN DYESTUFF. THE SLIGHTEST THING IS NOT APART FROM SELF.

And out of this wholeness of sensitivity arises the self, the atman – your authentic being. Create a rhythm, create a harmony, create an orchestra of your being. Then the bull cannot hide anywhere.

I SEIZE HIM WITH A TERRIFIC STRUGGLE.

Struggle is going to be there, because the mind is not going to lose its power easily. The mind has been a dictator for so long; now you want the dictator to come down from the throne – it is impossible. The mind has become accustomed to bossing you and bullying you. It will give you a tough fight. It will go on following you, and it will go on finding weak moments when it can again overpower you.

I have heard a very beautiful anecdote:

The family was gathered at dinner. The eldest son announced he was going to marry the girl next door.

”But her family did not leave her anything,” the father objected.

”And she spends all her salary,” added the mother.

”What does she know about football?” asked the younger brother.

”Did you ever see a girl with so many freckles?” demanded the sister.

”All she does is read books,” grumbled the uncle.

”And doesn’t dress with what I would have called good taste,” snapped the aunt.

”But she doesn’t forget the paint and the powder,” chimed the grandma.

”Yes,” said the son, ”but she has one big advantage over all of us.”

”What’s that?” came the chorus of voices.

”No family!” retorted the son.

The family resists always. Now the son is going to get married; that means another woman, a stranger, is now going to become the most important person in his life. The family feels shaken. No family ordinarily, normally, accepts such a situation – it fights.

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concerned, who is going to be married. He is not to be asked, as if he has no part in it. He is going to live with this woman to whom he is going to be married, but he is not even asked. Then the family does not feel threatened; it is their own choice.

But if a son comes and says: I have fallen in love, the whole family feels antagonistic.

The

antagonism is because now a stranger is going to become very, very important. The mother will never feel at ease with the daughter-in-law. There is going to be a constant bickering and fighting –

because the mother was supreme up to now, and suddenly she is deposed. Now another woman, a stranger, who has not done anything for this boy, has become supreme. A conflict arises.

The same happens with the inner search: your mind is your inner family. Whenever you want to do something new, whenever you want to move into the unknown, the mind resists, the mind says: No, this is not good. The mind will find a thousand and one rationalizations, and it is going to give you a hard struggle. That is natural, so don’t be worried about it – it has to be so. But if you persist, you will become the master. Just perseverance, persistence is needed.

I SEIZE HIM WITH A TERRIFIC STRUGGLE.

But once you have seen the bull, the energy of your being, you can catch hold of it. Of course, it is going to be a struggle, because the mind has remained in power so long: HIS GREAT WILL AND POWER ARE INEXHAUSTIBLE.

HE CHARGES TO THE HIGH PLATEAU

FAR ABOVE THE CLOUD-MISTS, OR IN AN IMPENETRABLE RAVINE HE STANDS.

And this energy, this bull, is inexhaustible. Sometimes it is standing on the top of a hill, at a peak of experience. Sometimes in a valley, a deep ravine.

Once you become sensitive to the world around you, then your sensitivity can be turned towards the inside, towards your inner home. It is the same sensitivity with which you hear a nightingale sing, with which you feel the warmth of the sun, with which you smell the fragrance of a flower. It is the same sensitivity that now has to be turned withinwards. With the same sensitivity you are going to taste you, smell you, see you, touch you.

Use the world as a training for sensitivity. Always remember: if you can become more and more sensitive, everything is going to be absolutely right. Don’t become dull. Let all your senses be sharp, their tone sharp, alive, full of energy. And don’t be afraid of life. If you are afraid of life, then you become insensitive so nobody can hurt you.

Many people come to me and they say they would like to fall in love with someone, but they cannot because they are afraid they may be rejected. If somebody approaches them, they close themselves with the fear: Who knows, the other may create some trouble. Who knows, with the other some problem may arise. It is better to be sad and alone than to be happy together with someone, because that happiness may bring dangers.

Let me tell you one story:

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Tired of being engaged, he decided to cancel it in a diplomatic manner.

”Darling,” he said one day, ”we were never meant to be mates. Our temperaments are too different.

We will only be bickering and fighting.”

”Sweetheart,” she said, ”you have got the wrong idea. We love each other like two turtle doves.”

”Really, my darling, we’ll never agree, and between us there will always be friction.”

”No, it will be like Romeo and Juliet. I will be a perfect wife and we will never have a quarrel.”

”Darling, I’m telling you that there will never be anything but arguments between us.”

”But, sweetheart, I say....”

”See,” he yelled, ”what did I tell you? We are fighting already!” People are afraid. If they move in any relationship, they may be rejected. If they move in any relationship, they may not prove adequate. If they move in any relationship, then their reality will surface and the masks will drop. They are afraid because the other may leave some day, so it is better not to get involved; otherwise it will hurt very much. Then they become insensitive. They move blindfolded in life – and then they ask: Where is God? God is all around. You need to be sensitive, and you can see the bull anywhere.

Behind each tree, and behind each rock, the bull is hiding. Touch with love and even the rock responds, and you can feel the bull there. Look lovingly at the stars and the stars respond; the bull is hidden there.

The bull is the energy of the total. You are part of it. If you are alive and sensitive, you can feel the whole.

The prose commentary:

HE DWELT IN THE FOREST A LONG TIME, BUT I CAUGHT HIM TODAY! INFATUATION

FOR SCENERY INTERFERES WITH HIS DIRECTION. LONGING FOR SWEETER GRASS, HE

WANDERS AWAY. HIS MIND STILL IS STUBBORN AND UNBRIDLED. IF I WISH HIM TO SUBMIT, I MUST RAISE MY WHIP.

Now there is a difficulty with the word whip. Ordinarily, the association comes to the mind as if you have to be very violent, you have to take the whip in your hands. But in Buddhism the whip is not a repressive symbol, not violent. The whip is simply awareness.

For example: if somebody suddenly comes with a sword to kill you, what happens? In that moment, mind stops. The sword flashes in your eyes, and the mind stops. The moment is so dangerous that you cannot afford the luxury of thinking. Suddenly there is a break: the mind is no longer there, and no-mind arises.

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In dangerous situations, spontaneously, meditation happens for a single moment. Again you will be back – but it happens suddenly. You are driving a car and there is going to be an accident; and a moment, just a moment before, you become aware that now an accident is going to happen – your brake is not working, or the car is slipping. In that moment all thought stops. Suddenly, you are in a state of meditation, awake, alert. That is the meaning of the whip.

In Zen monasteries, disciples meditate and the master goes on moving with a stick, his staff. And whenever he sees somebody dropping, falling into sleep, he hits hard on the head. A sudden jerk...

energy becomes alert, a momentary glimpse. Sometimes satori has happened that way. The master hits hard; you were falling almost asleep... try to understand it. When you are falling asleep, you are on the threshold. From that threshold, two doors open: one door goes into sleep, another door goes into samadhi. That moment is very pregnant. Ordinarily you will fall asleep – your old routine. But you are on the threshold, and if at that time you can be made alert and aware, your life may have a glimpse of satori, samadhi.

Patanjali, in his Yoga Sutras, also says that deep sleep is like samadhi, with only one difference: the awareness is not there. In samadhi, you are as deep asleep as in any sleep, but you are alert. The whole mechanism is asleep; body, mind – both are asleep. But you are alert. So sometimes it has happened that a man was hit on the head by the master and he became enlightened. This is the whip of Zen.

IF I WISH HIM TO SUBMIT, I MUST RAISE MY WHIP.

The struggle is going to be difficult. One should be aware of it from the very beginning so that you don’t get disheartened on your journey. It is going to be difficult. Mind has a very negative attitude about your inner search; it is against it. And it is much easier to be against anything than to be for it.

It is much easier to say no than to say yes – the mind is a no-sayer.

I have heard about one law expert, Clarence Darrow. He was a noted, world-famous criminal lawyer: He had found himself on the dissenting side of arguments since youth. And now he was to debate with another attorney.

”Are you familiar with the subject?” he asked Darrow.

”No,” Darrow admitted.

”Then how can you engage in debate?”

”That’s easy,” said Darrow. ”I will take the negative side. I can argue against anything.” It is very, very easy to argue against anything. No-saying comes easily to the mind. Once you say yes, things become difficult. No simply cuts the whole thing; there is no need to go any further.

For example, if I tell you: Look, these trees are beautiful, and if you say yes, and I ask why – Why do you think these are beautiful? – it is going to be very difficult to prove. For thousands of years, philosophers have been thinking about what beauty is and nobody has yet been able to define it. So if I ask why, you will be in difficulty. But if you had said no then there would be no problem, because now it will be a problem for me – to prove that they are beautiful. You simply say no.

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No is very economical. Yes is dangerous. But remember once you say no, you become less alive. A man who goes on saying no, no, no, becomes more and more insensitive. No is a poison – be alert.

Try to say yes more, even if it is difficult – because with the yes the mind will lose its hold on you.

With the no, the hold will become more and more strong.

And the mind is going to follow you to the very end. Only at the very end, just on the steps of the temple of God, does mind leave you – never before it. It goes on following you.

One businessman had died and gone to hell. He had hardly warmed up when he was slapped on the back by a hearty hand. Into his ear boomed the loud voice of a persistent salesman who had pestered him while on earth.

”Well,” laughed the salesman, ”I’m here for the appointment.”

”What appointment?”

”Don’t you remember?” the salesman asked. ”Every time I called on you at your office on earth you said you would see me here!”

Now they are in hell.... The mind will persistently follow you to the very end. It leaves only at the last moment. Hence the struggle is difficult – but not impossible. Difficult, but possible.

And once you have attained something of the no-mind, then you can see that whatsoever you have done was nothing compared to what you have got. You will feel as if you have not done anything –

so precious is the innermost experience of finding your own energy, your life energy.

The last thing: the bull is always waiting for you. That bull is not somewhere outside you. The bull is your innermost core. Between the bull and you there is a big wall of mind, of thoughts. Thoughts are the bricks, transparent bricks made of glass. So you can see through them and you may not even be aware that there is a wall between you and reality.

I have heard that a fish one day asked the queen fish in an ocean, ”I have been hearing so much about the ocean, so much talk about the ocean – but where is this ocean?” And the queen fish laughed and she said, ”You are born in that ocean, you are born out of that ocean, you live in that ocean. Right this moment you are in it and it is in you. And one day you will again disappear in the ocean.”

But the question seems relevant, because how can the fish know? – because the ocean has always been there, not missed for a single moment. It has been so obviously there, so naturally there, and so transparently there. One thing is certain: that the fish, the mind of a fish, is going to be the last thing to know anything about the ocean. So close, hence so distant. So obvious, hence so hidden.

So much available, hence one is not aware of it.

Man also lives in an ocean of energy – the same energy inside, the same energy outside. You are born of it, you live in it, you will dissolve in it. And if you are missing it, it is not because it is very far away – you are missing it because it very close. You are missing it because you have never missed it. It has always been there. Just become more sensitive.

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CHAPTER 3. PERCEIVING THE BULL

Listen to the nightingales more deeply. Listen to the trees, the music that surrounds you. Listen to everything, look at everything, touch everything with so much intensity and so much sensitivity that when you look at anything you become the eyes, when you hear anything you become the ears, you touch anything and you become the touch. And you are not stuck in any sense – all the senses merge into one. All the senses become one sensitivity... and suddenly you find you have always been in God, you have always been with God.

To me, the whole training is how to become more and more sensitive. Other religions have told you to become insensitive, to kill and destroy your sensitivity. I tell you to make life as intense as possible – because, finally, God is not separate from life. Being alive to life is being alive to God. And that is the only prayer; all other prayers are home-made, man-made. Sensitivity is the only prayer God-given.

Be alert, aware. Hear the song of the nightingale. Allow the sun to touch you and feel the warmth.

Let the breeze not only pass by you but pass through you, so it goes on cleansing your heart. Look!

WILLOWS ARE GREEN ALONG THE SHORE. HERE NO BULL CAN HIDE! It is impossible for God to hide. God is not hidden, only you live with blindfolds on your eyes. You are not blind! God is not hidden! Just blindfolds are on your eyes.... Those blindfolds are of thoughts, desires, imaginations, dreams, fictions – all fictions.

If you can drop fictions, if you can renounce fictions, suddenly you are in reality. So I don’t ask you to renounce the world, I ask you to renounce the dreams – that’s all. Only renounce that which you have not got. Only renounce that which is not really there in your hands; you simply imagine it is there. Renounce your dreams and reality is available.

The struggle is going to be a little hard because the mind will not be so easily convinced – because it is going to be the death of the mind. So that too is natural, that the mind will resist. The death of the mind is your life. And the life of the mind is your death. If you choose mind, you commit suicide as far as your inner being is concerned. If you choose your self, you will have to drop the mind.

And that is what meditation is all about.

Enough for today.

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CHAPTER 4

Happiness Knows No Tomorrow

5 March 1976 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU SAY THAT MIND’S SUBSTANCE IS MEMORY AND INFORMATION.

DOES READING THEREFORE INFLATE AND INVIGORATE THE MIND?

It depends. It depends on you. You can use reading as a food for the ego. It is very subtle. You can become knowledgeable; then it is dangerous and harmful. Then you are poisoning yourself, because knowledge is not knowing, knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom has nothing to do with knowledge. Wisdom can exist in total ignorance also. If you use reading just as a food for the mind, to increase your memory, then you are in a wrong direction. But reading can be used in a different way; then reading is as beautiful as anything else in life.

If you read the Gita not to collect information but to listen to the song of the divine – which is not in the words but between the words, which is not in the lines but between the lines – if you read the Bhagavad Gita as a song of the divine, if you listen to the music of it, then it has a tremendous beauty and it can be helpful. In certain moments of deep absorption you will become one with the divine.

This can happen listening to the song of a bird also, so the question is not of the Gita, Bible or Koran

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the Gita, Koran, Bible will all poison you. If there is no greed, you will just read it as a beautiful poem; it has tremendous beauty in it. You are not trying to fill your memory with it, but you are just being aware; reading, watching, observing, moving into it as much as possible but remaining at the same time aloof – a watcher on the hills. You should not be impressed, because all impressions are like dust gathering on the mirror. If you are not impressed – I am not saying not inspired, that is totally different. To be inspired is totally different than to be impressed. Anybody can be impressed, but to be inspired you need great intelligence, understanding.

Inspiration is getting in tune with a certain scripture, to be meditative with it – not through the mind but through your totality. If you read the Gita that way, you are reading the Gita with your blood, with your guts, with your heart, with your mind, with your body. Everything that you have, your totality, is there. When you are simply collecting information, only your head is there and nothing else. Then you gather impressions and you have missed.

Listening to me the same is possible. You can listen to my words; you can listen to me. If you listen only to the words you will leave a little more knowledgeable than when you had come here; your burden will be more not less. You will be deeper in bondage, not freed, because whatsoever I am saying, these are not words. Listen to the silence in them. Listen to the person who is speaking through them. Be with me! If you forget my words, nothing is lost. But if you carry only my words and you forget me, everything is lost.

Listening to me should not be through the head only, but with your totality. You are a unity. Everything is joined together. When you listen to me, listen from the heart, listen from the feet, the hands –

become totally a listener, not just the head. If the head listens, then it goes on comparing with whatsoever you have known before. It goes on interpreting and, of course, your interpretations are yours not mine.

Everybody, if he is listening from the head, is going to listen from acquired knowledge, from some conclusions already achieved. Then he is not pure, not uncorrupted. Then he is listening from a corrupted mind – and whatsoever you interpret will be your interpretation.

I was reading one anecdote; it happened in a small school: The teacher was telling the pupils about the discovery of America – Columbus and his journey and the discovery. One small boy was very, very excited, was listening very intently, attentively. So the teacher asked him to write an essay on the discovery of America. This is what that brilliant boy wrote:

”Columbus was a man who could make an egg stand on end without crushing it. One day the King of Spain sent for him and asked: ’Can you discover America?’

’Yes,’ Columbus answered, ’if you will get me a boat.’

He got the boat and sailed in the direction of where he knew America was. The sailors mutinied and swore there was no such place as America, but finally the pilot came to Columbus and said,

’Captain, land is in sight.’

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When the boat neared the shore Columbus saw a group of natives. ’Is this America ?’ he asked them. ’Yes,’ they replied.

’I suppose you are Indians?’ Columbus went on.

’Yes,’ said the chief, ’and you are Christopher Columbus, I take it?’

’I am,’ said Columbus.

The Indian chief then turned to his fellow savages and said, ’The jig is up. We are discovered at last.’”

A child listens with a childish mind, his own interpretations. Everybody listens with his own mind –

then you are hearing but not listening.

In India, when somebody is reading an ordinary book it is called ’reading’; but whenever somebody is reading the Gita we have a special term for it: we call it path. Literally translated it will mean

’lesson’. Ordinary reading is just reading – mechanical; but when you read so deeply absorbed in it that the very reading becomes a lesson, then the very reading goes deep in your being and is not only part of your memory now but has become part of your being. You have absorbed it, you are drunk with it. You don’t carry the message in so many words, but you have the essence in you. The very essential has moved into your being. We call it ’path’.

In reading a book, once you have read it the book is finished. To read it twice will be meaningless; thrice will be simply foolish. But in path you have to read the same book every day. There are people who have been reading their Gita every day for years – fifty, sixty years – their whole life. Now it is not reading because it is not a question of knowing what is written in it; they know, they have read it thousands of times. Then what are they doing? They are bringing their consciousness again and again to the same tuning, as if Krishna is alive before them, or Jesus is alive before them. They are no longer reading a book – they have transformed themselves into a different space, in a different time, in a different world.

Read the Gita, sing it, dance with it, and allow it as much as possible to go withinwards. Soon words are left behind but the music goes deeper. Then even that music is left behind – only the rhythm resounds. And then even that is gone. All the nonessential is gone, only the essential... and that essential is inexpressible. It cannot be said – one has to experience it.

So if you read, it depends on you whether reading is going to help you become free, or whether reading is going to make you a greater slave. Whether it is going to become a freedom or an imprisonment, it depends on you.

A music teacher took her class to a concert in the hope of further developing their musical appreciation. After the program she took them out to eat and they had cakes, ice cream and other goodies.

Just as they were ready to go home, the teacher asked the youngest of them, ”Well, did you enjoy the concert?”

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”Oh yes,” he replied happily, ”all except the music.” If you read the Gita or The Bible only from the head, you will be enjoying everything else except the music; and the music is the real thing. That’s why we have called it Bhagavad Gita – the song of the divine. The whole thing is in the innermost coherence of it. It is poetry, it is not prose. And poetry has to be understood in a totally different way from prose.

Prose is logical, poetry is illogical. Prose is linear, it moves in a straight line. Poetry is not linear, it is circular, it moves in circles. Prose is for ordinary things and ordinary experiences. There are experiences which cannot be expressed in prose. Those experiences need poetry. Poetry means a more liquid form. Poetry means a more singing, dancing, celebrating form. All great scriptures are poetry; even if they are written in prose they are poetry. Poetry can be written in prose and prose can be written in poetry. So it is not a question only of linguistic form – it is a question of its very essence.

So when you read the Koran, don’t read it – sing it! Otherwise you will miss, you will miss everything and you will think you have understood everything – because the whole thing is in the music. If the music surrounds you, of the Koran, Bible or Gita, and you have a dancing feeling, your energy is in sheer delight, overflowing, tears, laughter, dancing; if you feel as if a new breeze has entered into your being – then you don’t gather dust.

To read is to know a certain art. It is to get into deep sympathy. It is to get into a sort of participation.

It is a great experiment in meditation. But if you read the Gita the same way as you read novels you will miss it. It has layers and layers of depth. Hence, path – every day one has to repeat. It is not a repetition; if you know how to repeat it, it is not a repetition. If you don’t know, then it is a repetition.

Just try it for three months. Read the same book – you can choose any small book – every day. And don’t bring your yesterday to read it: just again fresh as the sun rises in the morning – again fresh as flowers come this morning, again fresh. Just open the Gita again, excited, thrilled. Again read it, again sing it, and see. It reveals a new meaning to you.

It has nothing to do with yesterday and all the yesterdays when you were reading it. It gives you a certain significance today, this moment; but if you bring your yesterdays with you, then you will not be able to read the new meaning. Your mind is already full of meaning. You think you already know.

You think you have been reading this book again and again – so what is the point? Then you can go on reading it like a mechanical thing and you can go on thinking a thousand and one other thoughts.

Then it is futile. Then it is just boring. Then you will not be rejuvenated by it. You will become dull.

That’s why, out of a hundred, ninety-nine religious persons are dull. Their intelligence is not sharp –

almost stupid. It is very difficult to find a religious man and not stupid, because they are repeating the same ritual every day – but the wrong is in their minds, not in the rituals. You can do the same thing absolutely new, there is no need to repeat it.

You love a woman, then the woman is new every day. Reading the Gita or Koran is just like a love affair: every day new. Maybe the words are the same, but the same words can carry different meanings. The same words can penetrate into your being from different doors. The same words in a certain moment can have a certain significance which they will not have in any other context. The meaning depends on you, not on the words you read. You bring meaning to the Gita, or Koran, or Bible, not vice versa.

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Of course, after twenty-four hours you are more experienced. You have lived life twenty-four hours more. In fact, you are not the same person. The Gita is the same – you are not the same person.

After twenty-four hours, how much water has flowed in the Ganges?

One day you are in a mood of love. Another day you are in the mood of sadness. One day you are overflowing, another day you are a miser. Different colors and shades of moods, and in different shades and colors you will be reading the same book. Again and again, and the Gita becomes millions of doors. You can enter it from so many ways, from so many doors, and you bring the meaning. The meaning is yours.

One day when your mind has stopped functioning completely and you are just a flow – when I say mind has stopped functioning completely, I mean you don’t bring the past at all; mind is the past

– if you don’t bring the past at all and you can read and listen, then your reading has become a meditation. Yes, reading can be helpful, but ordinarily it proves to be harmful, because the way you behave with books is harmful to you. You simply collect; you go on collecting dead facts. You become a junkyard – maybe an encyclopedia, but you lose the inner coherence, the inner music, the inner harmony. You become a crowd: so many voices, no unity. This is not getting integrated, this is disintegration.

So whatsoever you do – it is not only a question of reading, listening – whatsoever you do, it will depend on you.

The second question:

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO, I TOOK SANNYAS FROM SWAMI SHIVANAND OF RISHIKESH AFTER

READING HIS BOOK BRAHMACHARYA AND OTHER BOOKS OF HIS.

AFTER SOME YEARS, I WAS ATTRACTED TO SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI AND THEREAFTER TO

SRI AUROBINDO DUE TO HIS INTEGRAL APPROACH TO THE DIVINE. FROM 1959 ONWARDS I WAS DOING MEDITATION ON THE LINES INDICATED BY SRI AUROBINDO AND THE MOTHER.

THEREAFTER J. KRISHNAMURTI’S APPROACH ATTRACTED ME, NOW YOURS.

I ENJOY AND FEEL HAPPY WHENEVER I READ SRI AUROBINDO’S WORKS, SINCE HE

EMPHASIZES LIVING A FULL LIFE AND REALIZATION OF INTEGRAL DIVINE AND GIVES

MUCH EMPHASIS TO PHYSICAL TRANSFORMATION.

YOU ALSO EMPHASIZE NOT TO NEGATE LIFE BUT TO LIVE FULLY, AND HAVE GIVEN A NEW

MEANING TO SANNYAS.

HENCE I AM HERE TO EMBRACE THIS ALSO.

I WONDER WHETHER I AM ON THE RIGHT PATH OR DRIFTING?

WHAT IS THIS MULTIFARIOUS ATTRACTION IN ME?

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COULD YOU HELP ME WITH A RIGHT PATH IF I AM DRIFTING?

The first thing to be understood: Before one can come to the right door, one has to knock on many doors. Life is an adventure – of courage, daring, and basically it is trial and error. One has to go astray many times to come to the right path. And when I say the right path, I don’t mean that Sri Ramana’s path is not right, but it must not have been right for the questioner; otherwise there is no need.

Once you have come to the right path for you... and it is always a question of the individual, it has nothing to do with Ramana, Aurobindo or me; it is a question of you. If you have come to me and you feel at home, then your journey has finished. Now there is no need to drift any more, now you can settle and start working – because in drifting work is impossible.

It is as if you start constructing a house and just in the middle you are attracted to something else and you leave it and you start another house; and just in the middle again you are attracted to something else. Then you will live like a vagabond. The house will never be completed. One has to settle somewhere, one has to commit somewhere, one has to take the fatal decision. But it is not difficult. If you have courage, it happens.

One has to be available to many sources. It is good that you have been to Shivanand, to Ramana, to Aurobindo. It shows you have been seeking – but it also shows that nowhere could you feel at home. So the journey continues. The journey has to continue until you come to a point where you can say: Yes, I have arrived. Now there is no need for any more departures. And you can relax.

Then the real work starts.

Whatsoever you have been doing is just moving from one place to another. The journey is exciting, but the journey is not the goal. One becomes enriched by the journey. You must have become enriched being open to so many sources; you must have learnt many things – but still the journey continues. Then you will have to seek again and again.

Now you are here. Try to see and try to understand: do you fit with me, or do I fit with you?

Sometimes it is possible that you may have learnt only one thing – how to drift again and again, how to go away again and again. It can become a mechanical habit. Then you will be gone from here also. So don’t allow mechanical habits to lead you. If you don’t fit with me it is perfectly good to go away, because then your being here is going to be a sheer wastage of time for you. But if you fit, then take courage and be committed – because only after the commitment does real work start, never before it.

You think you have been to Shivanand and you think you have been initiated by him, but the initiation has not happened yet, otherwise you would not have been here. Initiation means a commitment: that now one has looked all around – now this is the place to settle. Shivanand may have initiated you, but you have not taken the initiation yet. You have been just a visitor. You have not become intimate with any system of growth.

It is as if the plant has been removed from one place to another again and again. The plant cannot grow; the plant needs that it should settle on one ground so that roots can go deep. If you go on removing the plant again and again, the roots will never grow; and if roots cannot go deeper, the plant cannot go higher.

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Hence commitment. Commitment means: now this is the soil for me and I am ready to settle for it.

It is risky because, who knows, a better soil may be available somewhere else. So the risk is there, but one has to take that risk some day or other. If you go on and on just waiting for something better, something better, the time may be lost, and by the time you have arrived you will be dead.

The real thing is work. It is good to go around, have a look, visit many places, many people – but don’t make it a habit. That habit is dangerous. It won’t allow you roots. And if roots are not there, the tree cannot be alive, flowers are not possible; fragrance will not spread from you, your life will remain empty.

So the first thing: don’t make your past a pattern to be repeated in the future. Now you are here: don’t do the same thing to me as you have been doing to Shivanand, Ramana, Aurobindo. You don’t know what you have done.

It happened:

A great painter, James McNeill Whistler, is reported to have displayed a just-completed painting to Mark Twain.

Mark looked at the painting judiciously from a variety of angles and distances while Whistler waited impatiently for the verdict.

Finally, Mark leaned forward and, making an erasing gesture with his hand, said, ”I’d eradicate that cloud if I were you.”

Whistler cried out in agony, ”Careful! The paint is still wet!”

”That’s all right,” said Mark coolly, ”I’m wearing gloves.” You must be wearing gloves. You think you were initiated by Shivanand, but it has not happened.

Your gloves won’t allow it. You must be living in a capsule, closed. You must be clever, logical, cunning. You have been on the alert not to be committed anywhere deeply. Hence, before the commitment happens, you move.

You say: ”I took sannyas from Swami Shivanand of Rishikesh after reading his book, Brahmacharya, and other books of his.”

Now, if you are impressed by a book written on brahmacharya, it shows much about you. You must have something of a problem concerning sex. It has nothing to do with brahmacharya or Shivanand.

You must be obsessed somehow with sex – hence the appeal of brahmacharya. You must have been repressing sex. You must have been brought up with wrong ideas about sex; hence you become impressed by Shivanand’s book on celibacy.

It is not that you are impressed by Shivanand – you are still following your own mind. You could not surrender to him. The phenomenon that you call initiation was intellectual; by reading the books, not by being in the presence of the master. You must be an intellectual, calculating, theorizing.

This won’t allow you to move in a deep relationship – and the relationship between a master and a disciple is the deepest, deeper than the relationship between a lover and the beloved.

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You may have been impressed by what Shivanand has written, but deep down you search for it again and again. It is not Shivanand that you are impressed, influenced by. You have certain ideas in your mind; wherever you find those ideas appreciated, you feel good. With me it is going to be dangerous. I am not going to appreciate any of your ideas; they are all rubbish. I say that even without knowing what your ideas are, because that is not needed. Unless you are aware, all your ideas are rubbish. So it is not a question of saying that this idea is rubbish and that is good. To me, all thoughts are rubbish; only awareness is valuable. And awareness has no ideas in it. It is a simple, pure light of consciousness.

So it is going to be difficult with me. You may have come to the man now who can shake and shock you. With Shivanand, you thought you were with Shivanand, but basically, deep down, you felt that Shivanand was with you; that’s why you lingered there a little while. This is not going to be so here with me. I am not going to be with you, remember; you have to be with me. I am not going to be with you, I repeat, you have to be with me.

So I am not going to fulfill your expectations in any way. If you have theories, I am against them already without knowing them, because I am against mind and my whole emphasis is how to become a no-mind.

But the questioner seems to be too much in the head: then he became interested in Sri Aurobindo,

”because he emphasizes living a full life and realization of the integral divine.” You have some fixed ideas, so whosoever seems to be following your ideas you become impressed by. In fact, you remain impressed only with your own ego. You have been playing an ego game. You have been on an ego trip – that’s why Shivanand, Ramana, Aurobindo, nobody could help you.

As far as I know, if somebody comes back from Ramana, then there must be something very deeply wrong. With Shivanand it is not much of a problem, with Aurobindo also it is not much of a problem.

Shivanand is just ordinary. Aurobindo is a great intellectual – a mahapundit, a great scholar. So if somebody comes away, nothing is lost; you have not lost much because there was nothing in the first place to be gained. But if you have come away from Ramana, that shows something deep like a cancer in your soul, because persons like Ramana are very rare – thousands of years pass, then sometimes that quality of being arises. Ramana is like a Buddha, a Jesus, or a Krishna – a very rare phenomenon. But I know why you could not get in tune with Ramana – because of your Shivanands and your Aurobindos. To get in tune with a Ramana means to drop your ego completely. Great courage is needed.

Now you are here. If you are really a seeker, then gather courage and drop the ego and the past.

Forget the past; it has been nothing but a nightmare. And don’t go on repeating it; otherwise, you can go on repeating to the very end of time, changing from one person to another. This can become a habit; this shows simply your restlessness. Otherwise to come back from Krishnamurti would have been almost impossible. There is no need.

So now become aware of your basic trouble: something in you is betraying your whole effort; something in you is continuously causing clouds around your intelligence. Your awareness is not sharp.

It happened:

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The little girl was invited to dinner one night at the home of a friend. The hostess, knowing that many children don’t like spinach, asked if she liked it.

”Oh yes,” the little girl replied. ”I love it.”

When the platter was passed, however, she refused to take any.

”But, dear,” said the hostess, ”I thought you said you liked spinach.”

”Oh, I do,” explained the child, ”but not enough to eat it.” Going to Shivanand, Aurobindo, Ramana, Krishnamurti – and you have some idea that you like and you love these people, but your liking is not enough. You don’t love enough; otherwise you would have eaten them and they would have transformed you.

Become aware! As it is you have wasted a long time already. You can also go from this door empty-handed, but remember, the responsibility is yours. If you take courage I am ready to give you whatsoever can be given. But for visitors nothing can be given, and even if it is given they will not be able to understand.

If you are tired of your journey, going from one place to another, from one person to another, if you are really tired, then here I am ready to give you whatsoever you are seeking – but you will have to fulfill one condition, and that is: a total commitment. Unless you become part of my family, nothing can be given. I would like to give you something even then, but you will not be able to take it; or, even if you take it, you will think it is nothing – because your mind will continuously befog you. It won’t allow you to understand, it won’t allow you to see directly. It won’t allow you to see what type of game you have been playing with yourself.

Up to now it has been a drifting. Become aware how much you have wasted. Many opportunities were there but you have missed them. Now don’t miss this opportunity! But I know: the mind gets in a rut, it becomes a pattern. You go on repeating the same thing again and again, because you become very efficient in repeating it. Now get out of that vicious circle. I am ready to help if you are ready to take my help. And such a help as this cannot be forced on you. You have to take it or not take it. Your freedom has to decide it; it is your choice.

And don’t ask: What is the right path? All paths are right or wrong. It is not a question of deciding which path is right. The only thing to be decided is which path fits you. Of course, Ramana has a certain path – very simple, absolutely nonintellectual. The head was not required at all on that path; the head was to be dropped. If you had allowed him, you would have been beheaded by him. The head was not part of his path. It is a path of the heart.

Just the opposite is Krishnamurti. The path is absolutely true, but the head has to be used and transcended, not to be dropped. That’s why Krishnamurti appeals tremendously to intellectuals –

nothing of the heart; everything is analysis, dissection. He is a great surgeon; he goes on dissecting.

You give him any problem – he does not, in fact, answer it; he simply dissects it. And if you are listening with deep participation, sympathy, it will be possible that through his dissection he gives you an insight – not the answer, but the insight – and that is your insight. He simply dissects the The Search

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problem. He is a rare intellectual man; gone beyond intellect, but has gone through it. Ramana bypasses intellect, he never passes through the intellect; his path is of the heart. Krishnamurti’s path is of intellect, of the head, of understanding, dissection, analysis.

Shivanand is not yet enlightened. He has no path – stumbling in the dark. A traditional man, he can make you knowledgeable, but he cannot help you towards the ultimate understanding. A good man, a very good man, but just a good man, not yet a Jesus or a Buddha, not yet a Krishnamurti or Ramana – a simple man. If he becomes enlightened some day in some life, he will be like Ramana

– his path will not be of the head. But he is not yet realized.

And then there is Aurobindo: his path is as yet the path of an unenlightened person, moving towards it but yet in the dark. The morning is not very far away, but it has not happened yet. If some day it happens, then he will be a man like Krishnamurti; he will go through the head – a great scholar, he has much appeal for those who like logic-chopping, hair-splitting.

And here I am: all paths are mine, or no path is mine. I am more concerned with individuals. When you come to me, I don’t have a certain path to give you. I look at you to find which path will be suitable for you. I have no fixed path; I have wandered on all the paths, and all paths are true. If it fits, then any path can lead you to the ultimate. If it doesn’t fit, then you can go on struggling, fighting, but nothing is going to happen; you are trying to pass through a wall. You will be hurt, wounded, that’s all; nothing is going to happen.

I don’t belong to any path, hence all paths belong to me. And I am more concerned with the individual seeker. If I see that devotion, worship, prayer, will be helpful to you, I teach you that. If I see meditation will be helpful to you, I teach that. If I see that just understanding, pure awareness, will be helpful, I teach that. If I feel that awareness is going to make you very tense, does not fit with your type, then I teach you to be lost completely in something, absorbed completely in something.

Dancing, get into it so much that you become the dance and there is nobody watching it; don’t create any separation and division between you, become the act.

Hence I am going to be very, very contradictory, because to one person I will say something, to another I will say something else, sometimes even just the opposite, diametrically opposite. So whatsoever I have said to you, somebody may come and say to you: Osho has said something else to me. Don’t listen to anybody. Whatsoever I have said to you, I have said to you. Otherwise, you will be confused.

Millions of paths go towards God. In fact there is nowhere else to go. Wherever you are going, you are going towards God. All paths lead to him. But when you are seeking, only one path can lead you. If you start walking on all paths together, you will be lost. One has to choose a path. So please don’t repeat your old pattern.

Now it will be very difficult. I am hurting your ego knowingly – because when I say Aurobindo is not enlightened, I immediately can feel what is happening to you. It is not a question of Aurobindo –

whether he is enlightened or not enlightened, who bothers? It is his problem; it is not my problem, it is not your problem. But if you have been following Aurobindo and I say he has not yet become enlightened, your ego is hurt. You, and following an unenlightened person? – never, it is not possible!

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When I say Shivanand is good but ordinary, mediocre, of course you will feel hurt because you have been initiated by Shivanand, and how is it possible? – you, so intelligent, being initiated by a mediocre man? No, it is going to hurt, but I do it knowingly.

I will create every sort of trouble for you so that if you stay, you really stay. If you decide to stay, it will be a real decision to stay with me. I am going to be hard. Shivanand, Ramana, Krishnamurti, Aurobindo, it seems, have been too compassionate towards you; hence you could drift.

I will make every effort so that you can go away. I will create a struggle within you, a friction, because that is the only way now; otherwise your old habit will go on functioning. If you come and ask for sannyas from me, I am not going to give it to you easily... because you have been taking things very easily. This sannyas is going to be arduous.

The third question:

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

I CAME TO A POINT WHERE I SAW THE EGO CAN BE DROPPED RIGHT NOW – BUT THEN I HAD TO SEE THAT I DON’T WANT TO DROP IT.

BUT I WANT TO WANT.

CAN YOU BRING LIGHT TO THIS PLACE?

Let me tell you a few anecdotes:

After being promoted to a high position in government, one man visited the town where he was born.

”I suppose the folks here have heard of the honor that has been conferred on me?” he asked a former schoolmate.

”Yes,” came the gratifying reply.

”And what do they say about it?”

”They don’t say anything,” was the reply. ”They just laugh.” You think your ego is something valuable? People simply laugh at it. Except you, everybody else is against your ego. Except you, everybody knows the ridiculousness of it – about your ego; I am not talking about their egos.

What is the ego? It is a very ridiculous standpoint. The ego says, ”I am the center of the universe.” The ego says, ”The universe exists for me.” Ridiculous standpoints! Just a small understanding will be enough – not much light is needed. Just a small light will be enough. You are not the center of the world – because the world was there when you were not, and the world will be there when you are not there. You cannot be the center. You are not the center.

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If there is a God, then only God can say ’I’ – nobody else. It’s okay as a formal expression, but only God can say ’I’ because he is the center of the world. But he never says anything like that; he has been keeping quiet. Man goes on saying ’I’. Why? – because it is very, very disorienting to feel that you are not the center of the world, that you are not the end and the purpose of the world, that the whole world has not been waiting for you; that without you the world can exist. It is very disorienting.

If you feel this, you feel shaken – as if the earth has been taken away from beneath your feet and you are hanging in a bottomless abyss.

The ego gives you a rock to stand on, but the rock is imaginary, it is just a dream. The ego is a declaration that ”I am separate from others, separate from the trees, separate from the sky, separate from the sea, I am separate from others” – but are you? Are you really separate from others? In millions of ways you are joined with everything else.

You are joined with your mother, your father, and your father is joined with his father and mother, and so on and so forth. It goes on and on. You are joined with the air every moment. If you don’t breathe, you will die. You are joined with the sun rays; if the sun simply forgets one day to rise in the morning, we will be dead within ten minutes. You depend on water, you depend on food. How can you say you are not joined with the trees? We are deeply connected with everything else – that is the meaning of ecology. It is one system.

To say ’I’ is simply absurd. You cannot be independent – totally independent you cannot be; then how can you say ’I’? Just look at the ridiculousness of the I. I am not saying to drop it, because in the first place it is not there so I cannot tell you to drop it. To say to you: Drop it! means that I accept that it is there. It is not there; it is simply a ridiculous notion, an idea with no substance in it. It is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. So I cannot say: Drop it! I can only say: Wake up! Be awake! I can only shock you so that you can open your eyes and see that it is not there. Awareness is needed – I don’t teach egolessness, no.

For centuries religious people have been teaching egolessness. That doesn’t seem to work out.

Then people become egoistic about their humbleness. Then they say: Nobody is more pious than me and nobody is more religious than me.” Look at the so-called religious people. You will never find more sharp egos anywhere else. They go on trying to hide behind words, rituals, prayers, but the ego is there.

Walter Kaufmann has coined a new word; he calls it ’humbition’. Humility, humbleness and ambition he has joined together: humbition. And he says humbition is very good. But humbition is not possible – it is impossible. You can make a word out of two diametrically opposite things, but they cannot be joined. A humble man cannot be ambitious, and an ambitious man cannot be humble. But people go on trying to find some ways how to hide – now humbition: I am humble and yet ambitious.

This is impossible! A humble man is nonambitious, nonegoistic.

So I am not going to tell you to become humble or humbitious. I only want to point out to you that the ego you are clinging to is not there in the first place. It is just an idea. And everybody knows this about your ego as you know about others’ egos, but the stupidity is that no one becomes aware of his own nonsense.

The question is: ”I came to a point where I saw that the ego can be dropped right now.” You have not come to the point – because if you come to the point, there is no way to stop the ego dropping The Search

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by itself.... If you come to the point of understanding, it is not that you understand that now you can drop the ego. If you come to that point, you suddenly see there is no ego to be dropped or to be carried. You simply start laughing. The jig is up: at last America is discovered! Not that after understanding you have to drop it; in the very understanding it drops.

It is just as in the morning when you awaken: do you drop your dreams? Can you say, ”In the morning there came a moment of wakefulness where it was absolutely clear to me that if I want I can drop my dreams”? No, that’s not possible. If you are awake, dreams are no more there – not that you have to drop them, they are dropped! The very act of awakening drops them. There is no need to drop them separately. Here arises understanding: there disappears the ego. It is simultaneous; not even a single moment’s gap is there.

”But then I had to see that I don’t want to drop it.” You missed. In the first place, the understanding has not been there. Hence the second part, that you felt that you don’t want to drop it. But if understanding arises, there is nobody to drop it or not to drop it, and there is nothing to be dropped or not to be dropped.

Whenever you think that understanding will arise, you think you must be there and understanding will arise. No, you will not be there. In understanding you disappear, just like the dew on the grass leaves disappears, evaporates, when the sun rises.

You are the ego. About whom are you talking?

You are talking as if you are separate from the ego and ego is something you can drop or carry. Who are you then when ego is dropped? You are dropped in it.

I have heard about one movie star who claimed he had not slept well for twenty years. He was vacationing at the home of a friend in the Himalayas. One morning the friend noticed the star looked a little more drawn and tired than usual. ”Did you get any sleep?” he asked.

”Yes, I slept,” was the reply, ”but I dreamt that I didn’t.” People go on playing hide-and-seek with themselves. You think you came to an understanding and then you decided not to drop it, and now you are asking me because you want to want to drop it.

Understanding is enough, there is no need to want to want to drop it. It drops when you are in that state of understanding, in that space of understanding.

So I am not worried about your ego. Forget about it! It is a shadow phenomenon; why be bothered?

Rather, become more and more aware and understanding. You go on becoming more and more aware, and one day you will come and say to me: Now I am aware and I have been trying to find out where the ego is, and I cannot find it.

Bodhidharma went to China. The emperor said, ”I am in a deep turmoil within. I am very ambitious.

Although I have one of the biggest empires in the world, the ego still feels discontented.” Bodhidharma laughed and said, ”You have come to the right person. Do one thing: come early in the morning at four o’clock. But remember to bring your ego with you; otherwise what can I do if you don’t bring it?”

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The emperor felt a little confused: What does he mean? He asked again, ”What do you mean?” Bodhidharma said, ”Exactly what I am saying, that’s what I mean. Bring your ego with you and I will be ready to finish it forever. But come alone; no need to bring any guards or anything.” Four o’clock in the night? – and this man seems to be very ferocious and nobody knows what he will do. The emperor could not sleep. He tried to forget the whole thing and not go, but then there was attraction also: Maybe this man knows something, and he seems to be so confident.” He had seen many great saints, this and that, and nobody had said so easily, ”Bring it, and I will finish it forever!” So finally he decided to go. He went there. Bodhidharma was sitting with a big staff in his hand. The emperor approached trembling.

Bodhidharma said, ”Alone? Where is your ego?”

The emperor said, ”It is not a thing that I can bring. It is always in me.” Bodhidharma said, ”Then it’s okay. Sit down and close your eyes, and find out where it is hiding in you. The moment you catch hold of it, just tell me.” Trembling, alone in that temple outside the town, the emperor for the first time in his life closed his eyes to meditate and he started looking around: Where is the ego? One hour passed, another hour passed. The sun was rising, and the emperor was sitting in such a blessed state. Bodhidharma shook him and said, ”Now, it is enough – two hours! Where is it?” And the emperor started laughing. He bowed down and touched Bodhidharma’s feet and he said, ”I cannot find it.”

Bodhidharma laughed and he said, ”See! I have finished it. Now whenever you have this wrong notion of ego, don’t go asking other people how to drop it. Just close your eyes and try to find where it is.”

Those who have gone in have never found it there. It is as if I give you a torch and tell you to go in the room and find where the darkness is hiding. You take the torch, you go into the room, but the darkness is not there. If you take the torch with you, the darkness is not there. If you don’t take the torch, then it is there. Darkness is an absence of light. Ego is an absence of awareness. If you bring awareness to your being, suddenly it is not there.

So I don’t tell you to drop it, and whosoever says it has not understood anything.

Whosoever preaches: Drop your ego! has not understood anything about the ego – it is not there.

You cannot drop it, you cannot carry it. It is simply ridiculous.

The last question:

Question 4

OSHO, HOW CAN I SURRENDER WHEN JUDAS IS IN THE WAY?

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Nobody is in the way, no Judas, but the mind has a tendency to throw its responsibility on somebody or other. The mind goes on finding scapegoats. And this is the trick of the mind to save itself, to protect itself.

Except for you yourself there is nobody in the way; only you are obstructing the path. Don’t call it names. Don’t say Judas; don’t say Devil, Satan, Beelzebub; nobody is hindering your path. But once you believe that somebody else is hindering, you are relieved. So it is not you, so what can you do? Somebody else is obstructing the path. But I say there is nobody.

Religious people, so-called religious people, have always been creating such things. They have created a devil, so whenever you commit a sin it is the devil who tempted you. One feels relieved: So it is not me after all, it is the devil. Hindus don’t talk about the devil, they have their own mythology: that in a past life you committed wrong karmas. Those karmas are forcing you to do wrong karmas now. Again you are relieved – so what can you do? The past life cannot be changed now. And if you ask these Hindus: How did it happen that in the past life I committed wrong karmas? then they say: In another life you had done wrong things.

But in the first place, in the very beginning, how did sin start? Then they become angry. They say: Don’t ask such questions – you have to believe. The same question can be asked about people who believe in the devil. And there are more people who believe in the devil than those who believe in God, because God is not of much use – the devil is of much use. God, in fact, is a little troublesome.

If God is, then you feel a restlessness; but if the devil is, you feel unburdened, you can throw all your responsibilities on the devil. You commit murder – the devil tempted you. What can you do, a helpless victim?

Remember, this is not going to help. Don’t pity yourself so much and don’t try to appear like a victim.

This is a trick of the mind. Except you, nobody is hindering the path. And except you, nobody is going to help you. So don’t throw responsibilities. Take all the responsibilities there are, because only through accepting them will your maturity happen.

But people go on using devices – and their devices look very logical. Of course, when you become angry and go almost mad, later on you repent, you feel guilty. Now how to manage it logically? Later on you say: I never wanted to do it. Later on you say: In spite of me it happened. Later on you have to repaint your image. You have been mad, and you have always been thinking about yourself that you are one of the most wise and sane persons in the world. Now that image is broken. What to do? Bring in the devil, Judas – anything will do. You have not done it, somebody has forced you to do it.

In the story, when Adam is expelled from the garden of Eden, the same thing starts. Adam throws the responsibility on the woman, Eve. He says, ”Eve seduced me to eat the fruit.” Of course, Eve says, ”I have done nothing; the serpent....” And the serpent cannot say anything, so it is finished! So with the serpent, everything is okay. Poor serpent!

Everybody is trying to shift the responsibility on somebody else. If the serpent could speak he would say, ”God – he created me and he created me in such a way that I had to do it.” Logic goes on finding ways and means – and looks very logical. But I have not come across anything more illogical than logic.

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Let me tell you one anecdote:

The old blacksmith in a small town was telling a friend that when he was a young man his mother wanted him to be a dentist and his father urged him to become a blacksmith.

”And you know,” said the old man, ”it’s a lucky thing that my father had his way, because if I’d been a dentist I’d have starved to death.”

”How do you know that?” asked the friend.

”Well,” said the blacksmith, ”I can prove it. I’ve been right here in this shop for over thirty years and doing a lot of blacksmithing, but not once in all that time has a living soul asked me to pull a tooth.” Looks logical. Logic looks logical – it is not logical. And in small things it may be logical, but when you come to the deep, ultimate questions of life, logic is the most illogical thing. It is good in arranging small things, managing small things, but life is bigger than logic. Logic is only a part, a very tiny part in life.

Listen to life. Close off and meditate more inside yourself. Close your eyes and meditate more, and see who is barring your path. Judas? There is nobody except you. If you are doing something wrong, take the responsibility on yourself, because that is the only way to transcend it one day. If you are doing it then the possibility is open: if you want not to, you may not do it. But if somebody else is forcing you to do it, then the possibility is lost, then freedom is impossible.

Freedom and responsibility go together; they are two aspects of the same coin. If you want freedom, you have to be responsible for whatsoever you are doing. If you don’t want the responsibility, then you lose your freedom also.

Everybody likes to be free and nobody wants to be responsible. We go on shifting responsibility.

And in shifting responsibility to others’ shoulders, you are throwing all possibilities of freedom also.

Become responsible! If you have been angry, you have been angry. Don’t say: In spite of me. Don’t bring in Judas Don’t say: Somebody else, some other force, has possessed me. No, nobody is possessing you.

Whatsoever is happening, it is your choice. You have chosen it that way. You may be completely unaware how you have chosen it, because sometimes you want one thing and you choose another

– that creates the problem. You think you want one thing and you choose another. Or, you wanted something else, you have also chosen that same thing, but the result is different.

For example: you try to dominate people – that’s your choice. You want to dominate people, but when you dominate people they fight – because they are also wanting the same thing. They will try to dominate you, and now you don’t like it – the struggle, the jealousy, the hell that is created all around it. And you say: I never wanted it. But you wanted to dominate people, that was the seed.

Always look for the cause. If the effect is there, the cause is bound to be there. And the effect cannot be, is not possible, if in the first place you have not chosen the cause. People want to challenge the effect, but they don’t want to change the cause. This is the ordinary mind, the mind which is stupid.

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The intelligent mind is of a totally different quality. Whenever it doesn’t want any effect, it goes deep into the cause and drops the cause – then there is no problem!

You want people to love you, and you are getting angry and hateful, and you do all sorts of things to people, and you want them to love you; and when they don’t love and they also hate you and they are also angry at you, then you say: These things are happening and I have never chosen them to be there. You have chosen them. You wanted something else, but your choice is wrong. Look at the cause.

Just a few days ago, a sannyasin came and he said nobody loves him here; he loves everybody and nobody loves him. He was very angry. I asked him to bring a few witnesses whom he loves and who don’t love him, and I would ask them what they say. They would say the same thing, that they love and nobody is returning their love. He was not ready to bring any witness.

Everybody goes on thinking that he loves people and nobody returns the love, but it has never happened that way. It is against the law; it is against dharma, against the ultimate law of life. If you love, love comes in return. If it is not coming, go deeper; somewhere in the name of love you have done something else.

One man asked his boss one day if he could borrow the farmer’s car on October 30. The date was about a month away.

”Sure,” said the farmer, the boss. ”You can borrow the car. What’s happening then?”

”I’m getting married that day.”

”Fine!” said the farmer. ”Who’s the lucky girl?”

”Well, I ain’t picked her out yet,” was the reply. ”Wanted to be sure of getting the car first.” Nonessential things. You want to be sure of them first and you think the essential is going to follow.

Change that attitude: think of the essential first; the nonessential follows. Think of the essential first!

What is essential? The effect is not essential – the cause is. The other is not essential – you are.

Whatsoever is happening today, you have managed somehow – unaware, unconscious, but you have sown the seeds of it; now you have to reap it. People go on thinking that if they can manage the nonessential, the essential will come.

For example, people think if they can earn enough money they will be happy. It is not so. If you are happy, you will be wealthy – that’s right, you will be rich. If you are happy, you will be rich. A happy person cannot be otherwise. He may not have big palaces, but still he will be rich. He may be a beggar on the street, but still he will be rich. But you first try to have much wealth, then you think you will be happy. It never happens that way, because wealth cannot be a cause of happiness.

Happiness is always a cause of wealth.

You think that essential things will come: First let me manage the nonessential. By managing the nonessential I will create a situation. First, power, prestige, wealth – all nonessential things.

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Try to look deep into your being, and think of the essential. Be happy! Right this moment you can be happy. Nobody is barring the path. And if you cannot be happy right this moment, you can never be happy. Happiness has nothing to do with the future. Happiness knows no tomorrow, because happiness does not depend on anything else. It is just an attitude. You can be happy right now as you are.

Try to be just happy for no reason at all, and you will be surprised! You can be happy for no reason at all, because happiness is the reason for many things, it is a basic cause. You can be happy – try it. You have been trying the other way, now try it from the basic cause. First have the cause – be happy – and then effects will follow by themselves. And always remember not to find scapegoats –

that is a sure way to miss your life.

Enough for today.

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CHAPTER 5

Taming the Bull

6 March 1976 am in Buddha Hall

5. TAMING THE BULL

THE WHIP AND ROPE ARE NECESSARY,

ELSE HE MIGHT STRAY OFF DOWN SOME DUSTY ROAD.

BEING WELL TRAINED, HE BECOMES NATURALLY GENTLE.

THEN, UNFETTERED, HE OBEYS HIS MASTER.

COMMENT:

WHEN ONE THOUGHT ARISES, ANOTHER THOUGHT FOLLOWS. WHEN THE FIRST

THOUGHT SPRINGS FROM ENLIGHTENMENT, ALL SUBSEQUENT THOUGHTS ARE TRUE.

THROUGH DELUSION, ONE MAKES EVERYTHING UNTRUE. DELUSION IS NOT CAUSED BY

OBJECTIVITY; IT IS THE RESULT OF SUBJECTIVITY. HOLD THE NOSE RING TIGHT AND DO

NOT ALLOW EVEN A DOUBT.

6. RIDING THE BULL HOME

MOUNTING THE BULL, SLOWLY I RETURN HOMEWARD.

THE VOICE OF MY FLUTE INTONES THROUGH THE EVENING.

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MEASURING WITH HAND-BEATS THE PULSATING HARMONY, I DIRECT THE ENDLESS

RHYTHM.

WHOEVER HEARS THIS MELODY WILL JOIN ME.

COMMENT:

THIS STRUGGLE IS OVER; GAIN AND LOSS ARE ASSIMILATED. I SING THE SONG OF THE

VILLAGE WOODSMAN, AND PLAY THE TUNES OF THE CHILDREN. ASTRIDE THE BULL, I OBSERVE THE CLOUDS ABOVE. ONWARD I GO, NO MATTER WHO MAY WISH TO CALL ME

BACK.

Truth liberates, and nothing else. Everything else creates a bondage, a burden. And truth cannot be found by intellectual effort, because truth is not a theory, it is an experience. To know it you have to live it – and that is where millions of people go wrong. They think that if they can cling to a belief, clinging will help them to find the truth. By and by they settle with the belief, and belief is not truth.

It is a theory about truth: as if somebody has settled just by words, scriptures, doctrines, dogmas; as if a blind man has started believing that light exists, or a hungry man reads a book on cooking, believes this way, that way, but all the time he remains hungry. That is not the way to satisfy hunger.

Truth is a food. One has to digest it, assimilate it; one has to allow it to circulate into one’s blood, beat into one’s heart. Truth has to be assimilated into your organic unity. Belief is never assimilated, it remains an unrelated phenomenon.

You may be a Hindu, but Hinduism remains just an intellectual concept. You may be a Christian, or a Mohammedan, but they are not organic parts of your being. Deep down, the doubt continues.

I have heard one story:

Titov, the Russian cosmonaut, returned from space and was asked by Nikita Khrushchev privately whether he had seen anyone there. The story goes that he replied, ”Yes, I really did see God,” to which Khrushchev answered: ”I know that already, but you know our policy, so please don’t tell anybody.”

Later Titov was with the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. The patriarch asked him whether he saw anyone in space. Titov, faithful to his instructions, replied, ”No, there was no one.”

”I know that already,” replied the church leader, ”but you know our policy, so please don’t tell anybody.”

Underneath your beliefs, whatsoever the belief, doubt continues. Doubt is at the center, and belief is on the periphery. So your life is basically determined by your doubt, not by your belief. You may be a communist, and still somewhere deep down the doubt continues. You may be a Catholic, a Christian, a theist, but deep down the doubt continues.

I have looked into so many people belonging to different beliefs, sects, but deep down – the same doubt. And the doubt is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. And the doubt is neither The Search

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communist nor anti-communist. Doubt is pure – simply doubt. For this pure doubt you will need pure trust.

This pure doubt which has no adjective to it – Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan – cannot be destroyed by Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan concepts, beliefs, theories, philosophies. What to do about this doubt?

A real seeker is not searching for any belief to console himself. Rather, he is trying to find a deeper center in himself which goes beyond doubt. This has to be understood. You have to go deep in your own being to such a point of aliveness where doubt is left behind on the periphery. Rather than doing that, people go on clinging to beliefs on the periphery, and doubt remains deep down. Just the reverse has to be the case.

Go deeper into your being. Don’t be worried about the doubt, bypass it. Let it be there! Don’t try to hide yourself in a belief. Don’t be an ostrich. Face the doubt – and go beyond it. Go deeper than the doubt. Then comes a moment in your being... because at the deepest core, at the very center, only life is. Once you have touched that deep core within yourself, the doubt is just a faraway peripheral thing. It can be dropped very easily.

And there is no need to cling to any belief in order to drop it. You simply see the stupidity of it. You simply see the ridiculousness of it. You simply see how the doubt has been destructive to your whole life, how the doubt is continuously eroding your being, how it has been poisonous. Just seeing the fact that doubt has been poisonous, and it has not allowed you to celebrate, a great opportunity is being missed. You simply drop it. It is not that instead of the doubt you cling to a belief.

A real man of trust has no belief – he simply trusts, because he has come to know how beautiful life is. And he has come to know how eternal, timeless, life is. He has come to know that just within himself is the kingdom of God. He becomes a king – and not a king in the ordinary sense of the word, because that kingdom which comes from without is a false kingdom, a dream kingdom.

I have heard about Shah Farouk, the king of Egypt: He was once asked how many kings there would be in the world after twenty-five years.

He replied without hesitation that there would be five, and then he explained: ”The king of England, the king of hearts, the king of diamonds, the king of clubs and the king of spades.” The kingdom that comes from the outside is just a kingdom of dreams. You can be a king, but you will be a king of playing cards or, at the most, the king of England. Nothing much of value, worthless; just a bogus symbol, meaning nothing.

The real kingdom is within. And the most amazing fact is this: that you go on carrying it within yourself completely unaware, not knowing what treasures you are having, and what treasures are yours just to claim.

Religion is not a search for any belief. Religion is an effort to know the very ground of your being, to touch the very rock bottom of your existence. That experience of the rock bottom of your existence is what we mean when we use the word truth. It is existential. It is an experience.

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So don’t be too much befooled by beliefs. Be alert – they are deceptions. And because of these beliefs people don’t search, because once you think you know, you believe you know, what is the point of searching? They are devices to avoid the search, because the search is arduous, the search is difficult. Many dreams will be shattered, many images will be shattered, and much, much pain you will have to pass through. That pain is a necessity: it cleanses, it gives you solidity, integrity; it matures you. Those pains are like birth pains, because through them you are going to be reborn.

Belief is cheap; it costs nothing. Just a nodding of the head and you become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. It is too cheap. Truth cannot be that cheap. You will have to sacrifice many cherished dreams. You will have to sacrifice your imaginary image. You will have to sacrifice many things which you value too much in your ignorance. You will have to come out of the cloudy state of your being in which you are right now. You will have to rise above it. And, of course, climbing a mountain is difficult – and there is no other mountain which is greater than you.

You are carrying the greatest peak, the Everest, within you. And, of course, the climbing is going to be difficult. But the difficulty pays, pays tremendously. Once you reach the peak, just the effort, the difficulties, the challenge, the arduousness of climbing – and something goes on crystallizing within you. The moment you reach the peak, it is not only a peak that you have reached – you have become the peak. You have attained to a height you had never known before. You were living in a dark valley; now you live in sunshine.

So the first thing for the seeker is to be aware that beliefs are barriers. If you come to me as a Christian, you cannot come to me. If you come to me as a Hindu, you appear only to have come to me – but you cannot come, because between me and you, your Hinduism, your Jainism, is creating a distance. And what you believe makes no difference to me. All beliefs – unconditionally, all beliefs

– are barriers.

It happened in a capital: The party picket lines were pacing in front of the courthouse where some comrades were being indicted. A policeman, trying to keep order, shoved an onlooker.

”Don’t shove me!” the onlooker complained. ”I’m anti-communist.” The cop glared at him. ”You just keep moving,” he ordered. ”I don’t care what kind of communist you are!”

It makes no difference: the communist is a communist; the anti-communist is also a communist –

because it makes no difference whether you believe in Marx, or Moses, or Manu, or Mahavira. It makes no difference. You believe; whether in Srimad Bhagavad Gita, or Das Kapital, or the holy Koran, it makes no difference – because the believer’s mind is the wrong mind.

Drop the belief so that you can come to encounter your doubt. Facing doubt, encountering doubt, trust arises. If you allow the doubt to be there, and you don’t hide somewhere else, if you face it in its nakedness – the very encounter and immediately you will have something new arising in you, and that is trust. Trust arises facing doubt, not escaping from it; belief is an escape. And belief is a false coin, a false substitute for trust; it looks like trust, it is not trust. In belief, the doubt continues underneath as an undercurrent.

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In trust there is no doubt. Trust has never known doubt, trust has never encountered doubt. It is just as light has never encountered darkness: the moment light comes, the darkness disperses, disappears. But if you only believe in light, that is not going to help. You live in darkness and you go on believing in light – but you live in darkness! And your belief in light is not a help, it is a hindrance

– because if you had no belief in light, you would have searched for light. Believing in light, you think it is going to happen. It is there. Some day or other, by the grace of God, it is going to happen. You go on living in darkness, so belief is a trick of the darkness to protect itself. Belief is a trick of the untrue to protect itself. Be on guard.

To believe is as if you have taken the symptoms to be the real disease. You go to a physician; he diagnoses your illness. He looks for symptoms, but symptoms are not diseases. Symptoms are only indicative that something is wrong somewhere deep inside. Doubt is an indication, just as when your fever goes high – a hundred and two, a hundred and three degrees – but the fever itself is not the disease.

So if somebody has a high fever, don’t start giving him a cold shower. That is logical: if you think that fever itself is the disease, then cool down the body. The body is getting hotter and hotter, cool it down; give him an ice-cold shower bath. You are fighting with the symptoms – you may kill the patient. This is not the way. The illness is somewhere deep down; the fever is simply indicative that something has gone wrong within. Treat that something which has gone wrong within, and the temperature will come down to normal of its own accord.

Doubt is a symptom, it is not the disease. When you try to cling to a belief, you are misunderstanding doubt as the disease. So you think: If I believe, doubt will disappear. No, it won’t disappear – it will just go underground. It will become unconscious. In the conscious you will believe in God; in the unconscious you will go on denying him.

Don’t be afraid of doubt. Doubt is not the enemy; doubt is the friend. The doubt is simply saying to you that you have not searched within; hence, doubt is there. You have not looked into your own reality; hence, doubt is there. Look into your own reality, and doubt disappears like darkness. Bring light....

I have heard about one great Christian priest, Henry Ward Beecher. In his church there was a clock which was always either too fast or too slow, and people were always complaining about the clock.

It was an everyday problem. Whosoever came, he would talk to Beecher and he would say, ”The clock is not right.”

One day Beecher got tired of it all and put a sign on the clock: ”Don’t blame my hands,” it read. ”The trouble lies deeper.”

The trouble always lies deeper. The trouble is not on the surface. The trouble is not with the hands of a clock, but deep in the mechanism. So don’t try to change your mind from doubting into believing; that is not going to help. It is not a question of the mind – the trouble lies deeper, deeper than your mind, and you have to move deep within yourself.

This is the whole meaning of searching for the bull. The bull is life energy, the dynamism, the vitality.

The fifth sutra:

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THE WHIP AND ROPE ARE NECESSARY,

ELSE HE MIGHT STRAY OFF DOWN SOME DUSTY ROAD.

BEING WELL TRAINED HE BECOMES NATURALLY GENTLE.

THEN, UNFETTERED, HE OBEYS HIS MASTER.

The sixth sutra:

MOUNTING THE BULL, SLOWLY I RETURN HOMEWARD.

THE VOICE OF MY FLUTE INTONES THROUGH THE EVENING.

MEASURING WITH HAND-BEATS THE PULSATING HARMONY, I DIRECT THE ENDLESS RHYTHM.

WHOEVER HEARS THIS MELODY WILL JOIN ME.

Listen to every word as carefully as possible:

THE WHIP AND ROPE ARE NECESSARY....

The whip is a symbol for awareness, and the rope is a symbol for inner discipline. Awareness and discipline are the most fundamental things for a seeker. If you discipline yourself without awareness, you will become a hypocrite. If you discipline yourself without awareness, you will become a zombie, a robot. You may not do harm to anybody, you may be known as a good man or even as a saint, but you will not be able to live your real life, you will not be able to celebrate it. There will be no delight in it. You will become too serious; the playfulness will be gone forever. And seriousness is a disease.

If discipline is without awareness, then you will enforce it and it will be a violence, a rape of your own being. It will not give you freedom; it will create more and more, bigger and bigger, imprisonments.

The discipline is right if it is based on awareness. The discipline goes completely wrong, becomes poisoned, when it is done not with awareness but by a blind, believing mind.

So the first thing is the whip – the awareness. And the second thing is the rope – the discipline.

What is the need of discipline? If you are aware, it seems awareness is enough. Eventually it is enough, but not in the beginning – because the mind has deep patterns, and the energy tends to move from the old habits and old patterns. New channels have to be created.

You may have become aware, but that itself will not be enough in the beginning – because the mind, finding any opportunity to move in any old pattern, immediately slips, in a split second. It takes no time to become angry. By the time you become aware, already anger has flashed. Later on, when your awareness has become total, when your awareness has become an absolute with you –

before anything happens, awareness is always there, as an a priori; if anger comes, before anger awareness is there; if sexuality possesses you, before it awareness is there – when awareness has The Search

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become a natural, spontaneous thing, like breathing, even in your sleep it is there, then discipline can be discarded. But in the beginning – no. In the beginning, when awareness is settling, discipline will be helpful.

Discipline simply is an effort to create new pathways for the energy to move on, so it need not move on the old pathway.

For many lives you have been continuously angry; the root is engraved. The moment you have energy, the energy automatically moves through anger. Hence, many religions prescribe fasting. If you are fasting – that means, if you are starving yourself – you don’t have enough energy. Food creates energy. If you don’t have enough energy, then you cannot become angry. But weakness is not a transformation; it is again a deception.

Many religions preach fasting so that you can overcome sex. Of course, if you fast too much and your body is starved, you will not have enough energy to move into sexuality. To move into sexuality you need overflowing energy, because sex is a luxury. When you have too much, only then does it happen. When you don’t have too much, it disappears of its own accord – but that is not true brahmacharya. You are deceiving yourself. Energy should be overflowing, but it should move in a different dimension – the dimension of love. But for that you will have to create a discipline, so when the energy arises it moves in love not in sex, it moves in compassion not in passion, it moves in sharing not in greed.

Discipline is needed to create new pathways. So awareness and discipline should go together.

There are people who insist that only awareness will do. In a way they are right; but to get to that point of awareness where it is enough, where it is its own discipline, is very, very difficult. It rarely happens.

Krishnamurti goes on saying that only awareness is enough, no discipline is needed. And he is logically right! But it doesn’t happen that way. Life is very illogical; it doesn’t listen to logic. So people have been listening to Krishnamurti for forty years, and nothing has happened because they think only awareness will do. But to get to that awareness, tremendous effort is needed – and that they cannot afford. In fact, Krishnamurti has become an escape for these people, so they can avoid discipline and they can go on thinking that only awareness will do. And they go on living in their darkness, the peak never happens.

Then there are others who go on saying that discipline is enough, no need for awareness. They also are talking of the other extreme. Discipline alone cannot be enough. Then the man who goes on forcing discipline on himself becomes, by and by, a mechanical robot.

I have heard about one saint who died, but he was forced to go to hell. He could not believe it. He asked that he would like to see God and ask him what wrong he has done, because his whole life he was one of the purest of men. And God said to him, ”You have never done anything bad, that’s right, but you have never done anything good either because, in the first place, you have never been there. You were just like a robot.”

A mechanism goes on doing something; it is neither good nor bad. The mechanism has no spirit, no soul in it. It simply goes on repeating. The repetition is dead. Repetition won’t help. You can go The Search

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and do your prayer every day – but only the mind’s mechanism will be repeating it. You will not be in it.

You can go on serving people, helping people – the poor and the ill – but if you are just moving like a robot, if the discipline is all and there is no awareness in it, then you are like a computer. Your skill may be great, but you are not there.

Many religions have been teaching just discipline, morality, good actions and good deeds; that has not helped the world. People have not become alert, alive through it. Both opposites are half and half. Zen says both awareness and discipline have to be followed together. A rhythm has to be created between these two opposites. One should start by the whip and one should end with the rope.

THE WHIP AND ROPE ARE NECESSARY,

ELSE HE MIGHT STRAY OFF DOWN SOME DUSTY ROAD.

The bull is well acquainted with many dusty roads, and if the whip and the rope are not applied, every possibility is that again the bull that you have caught will be lost.

BEING WELL TRAINED, HE BECOMES NATURALLY GENTLE.

THEN, UNFETTERED, HE OBEYS HIS MASTER.

Then there is no need for discipline. Then you have become a master.

WELL TRAINED, HE BECOMES NATURALLY GENTLE.

Training is needed, but training is not the goal. Training is just a means. Finally, one has to come out of training, one has to forget all discipline. If you have to continue in your discipline, that simply shows the discipline is not yet natural.

In the beginning you remain alert, you create new pathways for your mind energy. By and by, there is no need – by and by, even to remain alert is not needed. One is simply alert; not that one tries to be alert. Only then is the flowering – when alertness is natural, when meditation is not to be done but simply goes on happening. It has become your very climate; you live in it. You are it.

THEN, UNFETTERED, HE OBEYS HIS MASTER.

The sixth sutra:

MOUNTING THE BULL, SLOWLY I RETURN HOMEWARD.

If you are not the master, then you go away, far away from home. If you are the master, you start coming back towards the original source. If you are not the master, then the energy moves away from you – towards things, persons, power, prestige, fame. The energy goes on moving away and away from you, towards the periphery. Once you are the master, the energy starts moving homeward.

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Kabir, one of the great Indian mystics, has said, ”The day I became enlightened, I saw the Ganges flowing upcurrent, flowing back to the source.” He is right: the Ganges then no longer goes towards the ocean; it goes back towards Gangotri, the origin from where it comes in the Himalayas.

If you are the master, the mind follows you like a shadow. If you are not a master, you have to follow the mind like a shadow. And mind means outgoing energy, and meditation means incoming energy

– the same energy. Just the direction is different.

MOUNTING THE BULL, SLOWLY I RETURN HOMEWARD.

THE VOICE OF MY FLUTE INTONES THROUGH THE EVENING.

And remember this: that if your search is not leading you towards more and more blissful states, where you can sing and dance, then something is wrong – then something is absolutely wrong.

Then you are on some wrong path. Your blissfulness, your singing and dancing, is the indication. It need not be extrovert: you need not sing so that others can hear it – but you will hear the singing there continuously within yourself. If you like, you can sing and share, but there will be a dance inside you. The more you come nearer home, the more you feel happy. Happiness is a quality of energy returning towards home.

THE VOICE OF MY FLUTE INTONES THROUGH THE EVENING.

MEASURING WITH HAND-BEATS THE PULSATING HARMONY, I DIRECT THE ENDLESS RHYTHM.

WHOEVER HEARS THIS MELODY WILL JOIN ME.

That’s how millions have joined Buddha, Jesus, Krishna – their song, their blissfulness, their ecstasy, is infectious. Once you hear, you cannot do anything but join. That’s why people are afraid to hear.

People are afraid to come in contact with somebody who can change their direction, their life. They avoid them. They convince themselves that there is nothing to go for. But their argumentation is nothing but a rationalization of a deep, hidden fear.

People behave as if they are blind and deaf. This is the cunning mind which goes on saying: Don’t move in this direction – there is danger. Danger for the mind, of course, but not for you. You will become for the first time masters of your being – but then you will have to allow somebody who has come to know to touch your heart and to give a rhythm to your heart, to allow so that he can share his harmony with you.

In the East we call it satsang. It means to be in the presence of a master, to be in the harmony of the master, to fall in line with the master. The master is there – you simply sit around him, not doing anything. But by and by you imbibe the climate, the milieu. By and by the energy of the master goes on overflowing, and you become open to it. By and by you relax, and you don’t resist, and you don’t fight, and you start tasting, and you start smelling something of the unknown – the flavor, the fragrance. The more you have the taste of it, the more trust arises.

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Just by being in the presence of an enlightened man, tremendous possibilities open, your potentiality starts functioning, working. You can feel the hum, the humming sound of the newness that comes to you. But it is a sharing of a song, a sharing of a dance, a sharing of a celebration.

Remember this, let it be the criterion: if you are here with me and you become sad and long-faced and serious, then something is wrong – you have misunderstood me, your mind has misinterpreted me. If you are really here, vulnerable to me, open, then by and by you will see a song is bursting in you. You will feel walking is no longer a walking – it is getting a quality of dance. The heart is not simply pumping the blood – now it is beating a harmony. You will feel the orchestra of life in you.

Then you are on the right path. Then you have not misinterpreted me; then you have been imbibing me.

That’s the meaning of sannyas: a simple gesture on your part that you are available – nothing else.

Just a simple gesture that you are no more resisting me, that you will not fight with me; that you are not going to waste the time in fighting; that you drop all defense measures. That is the meaning of sannyas – that you are getting ready for satsang, that now I can shower on you and you will be ready to receive. It simply shows a receptivity.

THE VOICE OF MY FLUTE INTONES THROUGH THE EVENING.

MEASURING WITH HAND-BEATS THE PULSATING HARMONY, I DIRECT THE ENDLESS RHYTHM.

WHOEVER HEARS THIS MELODY WILL JOIN ME.

The same I say to you: Whoever hears this melody will join me.

Now, the prose comments. For the fifth sutra:

WHEN ONE THOUGHT ARISES, ANOTHER THOUGHT FOLLOWS. WHEN THE FIRST

THOUGHT SPRINGS FROM ENLIGHTENMENT, ALL SUBSEQUENT THOUGHTS ARE TRUE.

THROUGH DELUSION, ONE MAKES EVERYTHING UNTRUE. DELUSION IS NOT CAUSED BY

OBJECTIVITY; IT IS THE RESULT OF SUBJECTIVITY. HOLD THE NOSE-RING TIGHT AND DO

NOT ALLOW EVEN A DOUBT.

As you are, you cannot find truth. As you are, you can find only the untrue, because it is not a question of seeking and searching, it is a question of your consciousness. If you are untrue, how can you find truth? Once you become true, you find truth. Truth happens to those people who have become authentically true themselves. If you are false, you will meet with falsity wherever you go –

because, in fact, it is not a question of the objective world, it is a question of your own subjectivity.

You create your world. You are your world. So if you are wrong, you create a wrong world around you. If you are false, then you create a world of lies around you, you project your own world. So don’t be angry at the world – whatsoever world you have got, you have earned it. You deserve it.

The world is nothing but your own magnified mind.

WHEN ONE THOUGHT ARISES, ANOTHER THOUGHT FOLLOWS. WHEN THE FIRST

THOUGHT SPRINGS FROM ENLIGHTENMENT, ALL SUBSEQUENT THOUGHTS ARE TRUE.

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Somebody asked Buddha once, ”What is truth?” and he said, ”Whatsoever an enlightened person is doing is true.”

Somebody asked Mahavira, ”Who is a real saint?” and Mahavira said, ”Whosoever has become awakened.”

It is not a question of acts. What you do does not matter – it is what you are. Ordinarily people think that though they are false, they can still do a few good things. That’s not possible. They know that they are ignorant, but still they think that something, a few fragments of life, can be transformed,

”At least that much we should do.” But nothing is possible. You cannot do a few good things – it is impossible. It is not a question of what you do: it is a question of your being. If you are wrong, all that you do is wrong. Whatsoever the appearance, all that you do is wrong. You cannot do a right thing if you are not right in the first place. And if you are right in the first place, you cannot do anything wrong – whatsoever the appearance.

If Krishna goes and becomes a thief, that is right. It has been very difficult for the Western mind to understand the Eastern attitude, because the whole Eastern attitude depends on being and the whole Western attitude depends on doing. Goodness is something to be done; saintliness is concerned with actions – not so in the East, because you can perform a good action and you may not be good; then somewhere in the good action there will also be some bad intention. It has to be so. And if you are awakened, it is impossible to do anything wrong. Even if it appears to be wrong, even if the society decides it is wrong, the society is at fault – because out of an awakened heart it is impossible that a wrong can arise.

A fakir was invited to a dinner. The fakir was seated next to a man and during the evening he asked the man, ”What are you living for?”

”I am a pharmacist,” replied the man.

”Yes,” said the fakir. ”That’s what you are doing to make a living – but what are you living for?” There was a moment’s hesitation. ”Well, sir, I really have not thought about that,” replied the pharmacist.

In the West, and particularly for the modern mind whether in the East or in the West, doing has become more and more important. And when doing becomes more and more important, you lose all contact with your being, you lose all contact with the source of life. Then you go on doing a thousand and one things – except the most essential. The most essential is to know oneself, and you cannot know yourself unless you shift your whole consciousness from doing to being.

Whenever somebody asks: Who are you? you say: I am a doctor, or, I am an engineer, or an architect, or something like that. These answers are wrong. This is what you are doing – this is not your being. When I ask you: Who are you? I am not asking you whether you are a doctor or an engineer. That’s what you do. That is not your being. That’s how you earn your living – that’s not your life.

Who are you?

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If you drop the ideas of being a doctor, engineer, a professor, then suddenly you will become aware of a certain emptiness within you... you don’t know who you are. And what type of life is this in which you are not even aware of who you are?

One goes on avoiding this emptiness within oneself. One goes on fixing patches all around oneself, so from nowhere can you see this inner void. One goes on clinging to actions, and actions are not more than dreams – both good and bad. Good actions, good dreams; bad actions, nightmares. But both are dreams – and the whole effort in the East has been this: to know the dreamer.

Who is this dreamer?

Who is this consciousness on which dreams come, flow and go?

THROUGH DELUSION, ONE MAKES EVERYTHING UNTRUE. DELUSION IS NOT CAUSED BY

OBJECTIVITY; IT IS THE RESULT OF SUBJECTIVITY.

The world is not causing it: you are causing it. So never blame the world. Don’t say, as people are prone to say, that the world is illusory, the world is maya. The world is not maya, the world is not illusory – it is your mind, it is your own subjectivity, which goes on creating maya, illusion, all around you.

For example: you are walking, you have gone for a morning walk and by the side of the road you see a diamond, a beautiful diamond, shining. It is valuable for you; the value is given by your mind

– otherwise it is a stone like any other stone. If you ask other stones by the side of the road, they will simply laugh at you: ”Maybe a shining stone, but what difference does it make? – a stone is a stone.” If no man passes by the road, then there is no diamond. Once a man passes by the road, immediately a certain stone transforms itself into his mind and becomes a diamond.

That diamondness is given by the mind to the stone – it has never been there. Once humanity disappears from this earth, things will be there but in a totally different way. A roseflower will be as ordinary a flower as any flower; there will be no difference. The Ganges will not be a holy river; it will be an ordinary river as other rivers are. And there will be no difference between a church and a temple; they will be both just the same.

The difference is brought by the mind. Categories are created by the mind. Appreciation and condemnation are of the mind. Once mind is not there, everything is in its reality as it is. No evaluation arises.

One makes everything untrue if one is untrue. You go on projecting yourself – everything else functions as a screen.

DELUSION IS NOT CAUSED BY OBJECTIVITY; IT IS THE RESULT OF SUBJECTIVITY.

HOLD TIGHT THE NOSE-RING AND DO NOT ALLOW EVEN A DOUBT.

In the beginning, the discipline has to be hard: HOLD TIGHT THE NOSE-RING AND DO NOT

ALLOW EVEN A DOUBT. In the beginning, the work is going to be hard, arduous, because if you The Search

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relax a little the mind moves into old patterns immediately. It brings the old miseries back again. It creates the whole nonsense again and again. In the beginning, you have to be really strict.

The night Buddha achieved enlightenment, he sat under the tree and he said: ”I will not rise from this tree again in my life if I don’t attain enlightenment. Finished!” he said, ”I am finished with doing anything for it. I am going to sit here – this tree is going to become my death.” A total decision. At that moment he dropped the ’decidophobia’ completely – a total decision. Just meditate on it! And that very night, by the morning he became enlightened.

I have heard one story about a Sufi mystic, Baba Shaikh Farid: Once a young man approached Farid and Farid was taking his bath in the Ganges river, and the man asked him how he might find God. Baba Shaikh Farid took hold of him, led him into the water, and when they had gone deep enough, he forced him under the water. The young man nearly drowned before the holy man released him.

”Why did you do that?” he gulped incredulously.

”When you long for God as much as you wanted air while you were underwater,” replied Baba Shaikh Farid, ”you will find him.”

The desire should become so intense that you put all that you have at the stake. The passion to seek should be so total that not a single doubt is allowed to make you waver. The very intensity will bring truth. It can happen in a single moment! – just you need to become a total intensity of inner fire.

The decision should be total. It is arduous, of course, but everybody has to pass through that arduousness once. One has to pay for truth, and there is no other way to pay for it – you have to put your whole being on the altar. That is the only sacrifice that is needed.

HOLD TIGHT THE NOSE-RING AND DO NOT ALLOW EVEN A DOUBT.

The prose comment for the sixth sutra:

THIS STRUGGLE IS OVER; GAIN AND LOSS ARE ASSIMILATED. I SING THE SONG OF THE

VILLAGE WOODSMAN, AND PLAY THE TUNES OF THE CHILDREN. ASTRIDE THE BULL, I OBSERVE THE CLOUDS ABOVE. ONWARD I GO, NO MATTER WHO MAY WISH TO CALL ME

BACK.

If the intensity is total, the struggle is over. If you are really interested in seeking the bull, then don’t go on working for it half-heartedly. Either seek it, or don’t seek it – because a lukewarm search is not going to help; it is a sheer wastage of energy. If you want to seek, then put yourself totally in it.

If you don’t want to seek it, forget all about it. Move into the world totally. Some other day will be the right moment for the search to begin.

If you are not ready to put yourself completely in the search, to get involved with your whole heart, that simply shows that you are not yet finished with the world. The world still attracts you, desires The Search

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still go on haunting you. You would still like to become a rich man, a powerful man, a president, or something like that. Greed is still hiding within you. You still have not come to that moment of awareness where one realizes that the real treasure is within and not without. Then go into the outside world. Don’t be half-half; that is the most dangerous situation.

If you are half religious and half worldly, you will miss both. You will not be able to cope with the world; your religion will become an interference. And you will not be able to cope with the inner search; your worldly desires will continuously distract you. There is no need! If the world still attracts you, if you still feel that there is something which has to be attained, then go, and get frustrated completely. You will get frustrated. That means you need a little more wandering, going astray.

Nothing is wrong in it – go fast! Go totally, so you are finished sooner. Then you are ripe. Then your whole energy turns inwards. Frustrated by the without, energy moves inwards spontaneously.

But people are cunning. They want to have both worlds – they want to have the cake and eat it also.

They are trying to be clever, and this cleverness is going to prove their stupidity. This cleverness is not intelligence – because half-heartedly nothing is attained. All attainment needs intensity, total intensity.

In a single moment the struggle can be over.

THIS STRUGGLE IS OVER; GAIN AND LOSS ARE ASSIMILATED.

And when the struggle is over, then one understands that everything was right. Gain and loss, both are assimilated. Going astray was also part of growth, and going into the world was also part of the search for God. It was needed! So when I say go into the world, I don’t say it in any condemnatory sense. I simply say that it is needed. Be finished with it! You are yet not ripe, and if you try halfheartedly to come to your inner source it is going to be a suppression. And suppression divides, makes you ill.

I have heard an anecdote:

The boy, his mother and his father had been invited to dinner at an aunt’s home. She was a fussy type and his parents had warned the boy to be on his best behavior. ”Don’t start asking for things at the table, or reaching for things,” he was told. ”Just wait until you are asked.” Somehow at the table the boy was overlooked as the good things were being served. He didn’t say anything. Finally, he coughed a little. Nobody paid any heed.

At last, during a brief lull in the chatter, he said in a loud, clear voice, ”Anybody want a clean plate?” That is the mind of the suppressed man – always watching, waiting; always hankering, desiring. And the mind will find some way or other to cough, or to say: Does anybody need a clean plate?

Any suppressed desire is going to assert itself; it will find a way to assert itself. Never suppress a desire. Understand, but never suppress. Be aware, but never suppress. Desires are great lessons; if you suppress, you will miss the lesson. Live in them. Live consciously. Understand them, why they are there, what they are. And when I say understand them, the understanding is possible only The Search

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if you don’t condemn them. If you already condemn them, then you cannot understand them. Be neutral: don’t decide what is wrong and what is right. Just watch.

When anger arises, don’t say it is bad. In fact, don’t say even that it is anger, because in the very word anger a condemnation has entered. Simply close your eyes, say X,Y,Z, anything – that X

is arising. Just feel the difference when you say anger is arising and when you say X is arising.

Immediately there is a difference. With X you have no pro or con; with X you are neither in favor nor against; with X you are unprejudiced. With anger you are prejudiced – centuries of conditioning that anger is bad.

Just look, observe, watch. Anger is also energy – maybe not moving in the right direction, but still the energy is there, part of the bull. Watch it. Observe it. And just by watching and observing, you will see the energy is transforming. Observation is alchemical. It changes the energy, the quality of it. And soon you will see: the same energy that was going to be anger has transformed into compassion. Compassion is hidden in anger as the tree is hidden in the seed – just deep insight is needed.

So go into the world; be finished with the world. Don’t be afraid of the world, because if you are afraid you will try to escape half ripe, and to be half ripe is the worst shape to be in. Let the heat of the world make you perfectly ripe. You are so much so frustrated, disillusioned, that now you are available to go on some other trip, into some other space.

And then a beautiful thing happens....

If you become repressive, you not only repress those things which have been condemned by the society – you also start repressing all those things which are natural and are not to be repressed.

But a beautiful thing happens. For example, sex will disappear, but that doesn’t mean that love will disappear. A totally new kind of energy arises in you. Love will become strengthened, love will become vigorous. And if sex happens, it will be part of love; it will have a totally different context. So it is not good to call it sex.

Right now, if love happens at all, it happens as part of sex. Sex remains the basic thing. Love is just a shadow to it. When sex disappears, love disappears. When you become interested sexually in some other person, love disappears from the person you were sexually related to before.

When sex energy is transformed, moves in higher realms, you become urdhva-retus – the energy is not moving downward but upward; or not moving outward but inward, which is the same. The inward and the upward are the same dimension. Downward and outward are again the same dimension.

They are not two dimensions. When the energy is moving upward or inward, sex becomes a part, a shadow, of love. It is now no longer important in itself.

But if you are repressing and not becoming aware, then you will repress sex and you will repress love also, because you will become afraid: whenever love comes into your mind, sex will follow –

immediately. So you will become afraid of love also. A repressive person becomes afraid of energy itself.

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I have heard about one man: he was in love with a woman and he asked the woman to marry him.

But before she accepted she inquired, ”Just one thing, Harry. Are you the sort of man who would expect a wife to go out to work?”

Harry said, ”Look, Sybil. No wife of mine is ever going to have to go out and take a job – unless, of course, she wants food and clothes and luxuries like that.” Now food, clothes, are not luxuries – but if you repress, then you become afraid of everything. Then fear grips you. A repressed person is a frightened person, afraid of everything.

If you go and present some money to Vinoba Bhave, he will not touch it. He’s afraid to touch money.

Not only that: he will move his head so he cannot see, or he will close his eyes. Now this seems a little too much. It seems as if the miser is standing on his head – the same type of mind.

The miser goes on accumulating money, and then one day, frustrated, he starts repressing his desire. Then he chooses just the reverse course, just the opposite pole. Then he is afraid even to see money. Now if money is worthless, then what is the fear in seeing it? And if money has no deep attachment in you, deep obsession in you, then why close your eyes? You don’t close your eyes to other things. If you ask Vinoba he says: ”Money is dirt.” One of his disciples came to me once and he said, ”I asked Vinoba and he says money is dirt.”

”But then,” I said, ”you go back and tell him: ’Then whenever you see dirt, close your eyes! And don’t touch earth, don’t walk on earth – hang yourself in the air. Because if money is dirt, then dirt is money. But you behave differently: with dirt you are not afraid! With money you are afraid.’” No. I cannot believe that money is dirt. Money is still money, dirt is dirt. And when you call money dirt, you are simply showing some deep obsession. Otherwise, why is money dirt? It is a useful means. Use it, but don’t be used by it! – that I can understand. Don’t be used by it!

That is how a person who is aware functions in life. But if you repress, then you move to the opposite polarity. A miser stands on his head, becomes a great, great person who has renounced the world.

Remember: repression is not going to help.

THIS STRUGGLE IS OVER; GAIN AND LOSS ARE ASSIMILATED. I SING THE SONG OF THE

VILLAGE WOODSMAN AND PLAY THE TUNES OF THE CHILDREN.

Beautiful! One becomes like children – simple, innocent, happy in small things.

I SING THE SONG OF THE VILLAGE WOODSMAN. ASTRIDE THE BULL, I OBSERVE THE

CLOUDS ABOVE. ONWARD I GO, NO MATTER WHO MAY WISH TO CALL ME BACK.

The old world calls me back. The old desires call me back. The old patterns call me back. But now it doesn’t matter – I am moving towards the real treasure. So delusions cannot attract me any more, and everything has become beautiful – the clouds in the sky, and the song of the woodsman.

The real saint becomes like a small child: simple, almost like an idiot. Saint Francis used to call himself the fool of God. Lao Tzu says: The whole world is clever except me. I am an idiot.

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One becomes like small children – with no logic; tremendously alive, but not hung up in the head.

Energy becomes a flow; now there are no blocks, nothing is frozen, and the boundaries are merged.

Then one is not separate from the whole, but simple like woodsmen and their simple song. Life becomes a simple song, and life becomes innocence.

Once you know what life is, tremendous beauty arises in your being. Everything becomes luminous, illumined with God. Each stone becomes a sermon. Each silence becomes a song. One feels the benediction constantly being showered upon oneself.

ASTRIDE THE BULL, I OBSERVE THE CLOUDS ABOVE. ONWARD I GO, NO MATTER WHO

MAY WISH TO CALL ME BACK.

Enough for today.

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7 March 1976 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

FOR SOME YEARS I HAVE BEEN KEEPING A JOURNAL TO RECORD MY IDEAS, THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, SPACES. LATELY, THOUGH, I OPEN THE BOOK AND JUST STARE AT THE BLANK

PAGE OR DRAW LITTLE PICTURES. MUCH SEEMS TO BE HAPPENING YET NOTHING SEEMS

TO BE HAPPENING. THE WORDS JUST DON’T SEEM TO COME THE WAY THEY USED TO....

One should be happy, one should feel blessed, if instead of words silence starts coming to you.

These are the gaps, the intervals. So don’t be worried about the words that are not coming that used to come. Something else tremendously valuable is coming to you. You have not yet recognized it.

Pure space is coming to you. Empty space is coming to you. Nothingness is coming to you, and only out of this nothingness does God appear. Only out of this nothingness is truth encountered.

Forget about the words. Just wait! Look at the blank page – a blank page has much more in it than any written page can ever have.

There is a Sufi book, The Book of the Books. It is completely empty. Nothing is written in it. If you purchase it, you will feel cheated. But that book really is the book of the books. If you read it, you will read the ultimate in it. It is indicative. It is simply a gesture: become as empty as the book.

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So when the blank page is before you, don’t draw even pictures, because that will keep you occupied and you will miss the great nothingness that is coming closer to you. Mind gets afraid, and in fear the mind starts doing anything just to keep itself occupied.

Make it a meditation. Keep the blank before you and watch, and become as blank as the page.

Let two blanknesses meet, and in that encounter you will be lost and something of the beyond will penetrate in you. You will never be the same again, because you will have tasted something which is deathless. You will have tasted something of the formless, of the unknown, of the inexpressible, of the eternally elusive.

The mind goes on growing words. Those words occupy you. They fill you and they don’t give any space for something else to enter in you. The words block you. Your flow, then, is not spontaneous, not natural. Then there are too many rocks around you. Words exist like rocks around you.

If it is happening, then much is happening: rocks are there no more, and the now is getting in tune with the divine. Only nothingness can be in tune with the divine. So please don’t even draw pictures, because that is again a trick of the mind. The mind is unable to bring words; something else will do

– drawing pictures will do. Just look at the blank page. Even better will be to sit facing the wall and look at the blank wall.

That’s what Bodhidharma was doing for nine years. He became enlightened just facing the wall.

That was his mantra and meditation. That was all that he did. It is not doing at all. He did nothing; he simply sat facing the wall. Just think! – for nine years, if you sit facing the wall, you will become as blank as the wall. By and by thoughts will not be coming, they will not be chasing you. By and by they will find some other host. You are too indifferent towards them.

Blankness is tremendously valuable, but we have been trained to be always full of words. So when this starts happening, one becomes a little scared. You start feeling as if nothing is happening. Yes, in a totally different sense, nothing is happening, because nothing is the greatest happening there is. Use this great opportunity that has come to you. It is what meditation is all about: to be empty.

But in the West – and for the modern mind wherever it is, in the West or in the East – somehow a deep association has been conditioned that emptiness is something negative. Not only that, but a condemnation is also there in being empty. People think that to be empty is to become a workshop for the devil. It is not so. To be full of words is to be a workshop for the devil. To be empty is to become a workshop for God – because God can function only when you are not.

When you are so much absent that you are not in any way an interference, that you don’t come in between God and you, that you are not a disturbance in any way, you are so silent as if you are not –

immediately God starts functioning in you. The moment you stop functioning, God starts functioning.

So don’t be afraid. Love this empty space. It is not negative. It is the most positive thing in the world, the most absolutely positive thing in the world – because out of nothingness everything arises, and into nothingness everything disappears again. This whole universe arises out of nothingness and disappears into nothingness again. Nothingness is the source and the seed, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.

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Remember this, so whenever you are coming close to nothingness, feel happy and dance and celebrate so that it can become more and more available to you. The more you welcome it, the more of it will be coming to you. Welcome it, feel delighted – you have been blessed.

The second question:

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

IN ALMOST EVERY LECTURE I HAVE THE TENDENCY TO GO TO SLEEP.

WHEN THAT HAPPENS, I WAKE UP WITH A SHOCK, OR RATHER IN A SHOCK, WHICH GOES

THROUGH MY WHOLE BODY. IS THIS THE WHIP?

Not yet! Just the shadow of the whip. But it is still something: the shadow of the whip. If you are a man of understanding, the whip will not be needed; its shadow will do. If you are not a man of understanding, then sooner or later the whip itself will be needed.

Buddha has said that there is one type of man for whom just the shadow of the whip is enough. Just like very, very intelligent horses: just the shadow of the whip is enough. Then there is a second type: the sight of the whip is needed, the shadow won’t do – the mediocre mind. Then there is a third type, lower, for which even the sight of the whip won’t do – unless you use the whip.... And there is a fourth type also, the lowest; lower than that is nobody. Even hitting him with the whip, whipping him, is not going to help. These four types are four stages of sleep.

It is natural to fall asleep while listening to me. That is a way of the mind to avoid me. Something is happening here which is going to destroy your mind. The whole effort is how to demolish your mind so that you can become new again, so that you can be reborn; how to help you to die so that resurrection becomes possible. Only out of your death will life flame up, will life come to you.

The mind feels it! It is dangerous to listen to me. The mind creates many sorts of excuses to be absent. Sometimes it goes on thinking, listening only on the periphery. Sometimes it goes on arguing – whether what I am saying is right or wrong, agrees with you or doesn’t agree with you.

Then too one is missing. Or, if you stay long enough with me, then arguing will stop; then by and by the mind will start falling into sleep. That is the last trick; then there is no need to listen!

But one thing is good: that you have become aware that you fall asleep. There are many who fall asleep and don’t know. And the shock that comes to you is good. Use it! If you use it, by and by sleep will disappear. Sleep is a trick to create a barrier between me and you. If logic does not work, then sleep works.

And whatsoever I am saying to you is in a way the same truth again and again. So the mind can say to you: What is the need to listen? You can have a little rest. The mind can say: These things have been said many times before. But I am saying these things again and again to you because you have not heard yet.

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He said, ”Because of you!”

If you hear me then there is no point in repetition, but you don’t hear me even when I repeat them a thousand and one times.

The mind can create the idea that you can sleep, you can rest. The mind can even say to you that this is very meditative, that you fall in sleep and everything becomes silent. Sleep is not wrong, but there is a time to sleep. If you are sleeping here then one thing is certain: when you are sleeping you are not sleeping.

There is a time to sleep and there is a time to be awake. And there is a time to be working, and there is a time to be lazy and not working. Your life should move in an order, in an inner order. Sleep in the night as deeply as possible so that in the morning you can become as much awake as possible.

If you have slept well in the night, you will be awake in the morning. If you have not slept well, then you will feel sleepy. In the morning to feel sleepy is bad, because that simply shows your energy is not functioning rightly, that your energy is not functioning in a healthy way.

Think again about your night and your sleep in the night – it must be disturbed by dreams. Some disturbance must be there so that in the morning you are not fresh; in the morning you are feeling tired. Either your sleep is not complete in the night, or you may be sleeping too much. That too is dangerous. Six, seven hours sleep is enough. If you sleep more than that, then sleep is not paying; on the contrary, it starts making you lazy.

The function of sleep is to make you alert, energetic, alive. But if you sleep more than needed, then it is just as if you eat too much; then the food becomes poison. There is a quantity which is needed for the body; more than that becomes a load on the body. It is destructive then, it is not life-giving.

There is a quantity of sleep that is needed. More than that, then you feel lazy, then the wheel moves in the wrong direction.

Everybody has to find the right quantity of sleep and food for himself. That should be a basic for any seeker, because much will depend on it. So either you are not sleeping enough or you are sleeping too much. Hence, in the morning you feel lazy or sleepy. And while you are listening to me, keep alert, keep yourself as much aware as possible – because even in that awareness, if you miss what I am saying, nothing is missed, because at least awareness will be practiced. And basically awareness is the goal.

And this is just a decision: if you want to be aware, alert, you can be. One just has to say to the body and the mind, definitively: I want to be aware and alert.

Start being the master of your own self. Give rest to the body, but don’t become a slave. Listen to the body’s needs, but remain capable, remain in control, remain a master. Otherwise the body has a lethargy in it, and the mind has a repetitive, mechanical quality in it. Then it can become just an everyday habit. You come to listen to me, you sit, and the body and mind start moving towards sleep. Break it! Come out of it.

The third question:

Question 3

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BELOVED OSHO,

FOR ME THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MEDITATION IS TO SIT IN A CORNER AND WATCH THE

CHILDREN PLAYING AROUND THE ASHRAM. BUT I’M IN TROUBLE: IS THIS A MEDITATION

AT ALL?

Watching is meditation. What you watch is irrelevant. You can watch the trees, you can watch the river, you can watch the clouds, you can watch children playing around. Watching is meditation.

What you watch is not the point; the object is not the point. The quality of observation, the quality of being aware and alert – that’s what meditation is.

So perfectly good! Children are beautiful – pure energy dancing around, pure energy running around. Delight in it and watch it. I don’t see why you are feeling yourself in trouble. The mind goes on creating trouble. Whatsoever you do, the mind goes on creating trouble.

Now the mind says: Is this meditation at all?

Remember one thing: meditation means awareness.

Whatsoever you do with awareness is

meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you sit alertly. Listening to the birds can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful. The whole point is: one should not move in sleep.

Then whatsoever you do is meditation – and don’t be worried about it!

The mind constantly creates some anxiety. Many times people come to me. They say they are feeling very good, very high – but is this real? Now the mind is creating a new trouble: Is this real?

The mind has never asked this before. When you have a headache, do you ask: Is this real? You trust in misery too much. A headache is necessarily real, but if you go high and you feel a peak of bliss, the mind starts creating a subtle anxiety: Is this real? You may be in a delusion, hallucination, imagination. You may be seeing a dream. Or if you cannot find anything else, then: Osho must have hypnotized you. You must be in hypnosis.

You cannot believe that you can be blissful, that you can be happy. Because of this tendency of the mind, the mind clings to the miserable. Mind is always seeking and searching for hell, because it can exist only in misery; in bliss it disappears. Only in misery does it have throbbing life; only in misery does its business go well. Whenever you are happy it is not needed; when you are blissful, who needs mind? – you have already gone beyond it. The mind feels left behind, neglected, it starts nagging you. It says: Where are you going? Are you hypnotized? What illusions are you seeing?

These are all dreams!

Because of this tendency, millions of people have come to a meditative point some time or other in their life but they miss the door. The door comes but they cannot believe in it. Meditation is as natural a phenomenon as love. It happens to everybody! It is part of your being, but you cannot believe in it. Even if it happens, you somehow overlook it. Or even if you feel that something is happening, you cannot say to others that something is happening because you are afraid others will think that you have gone mad. Your own mind goes on saying that this is not possible; this is too good to be true. So you forget about it.

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Remember again: in your childhood, or later on when you were young, there must have been a few moments. It is impossible that those moments were not there; they have been there in everybody’s life. Just try to recollect again and you will remember there have been moments when something was opening, but you closed it, afraid.

Sometimes, sitting on a silent night, looking at the stars – and something was going to happen and you shrank; apprehensive, frightened, you started doing something else. It was too good to be true. You missed an opportunity. Sometimes, in deep love, just sitting by the side of your beloved, something started happening; you were moving in some unknown direction. You became scared, you pulled yourself back to earth.

Sometimes, for no reason at all, just swimming in the river, or running around in the hot sun, or just relaxing on the beach and listening to the wild roar of the ocean, something started happening inside you, some inner alchemical change, as if your body was creating LSD. Something inside...

and you were moving in a totally unknown dimension – as if you had wings and you could fly. You became afraid, you started clinging to the earth.

It has happened many times when people come to be initiated into sannyas. Sometimes, if I see very perceptive people, very receptive, and I touch their head, immediately they become scared. Just a few days ago the daughter of Ashok Kumar, one of the very famous film actors, took sannyas. The moment I touched her head she started crying, ”Stop, Osho! Stop! Stop!” And her whole body was shaking. She started clinging to the earth. A door was very, very close. Something tremendously valuable could have happened, but she became afraid.

Many times in each person’s life, such moments come; but those moments are not aggressive, they cannot force anything against you. If you are ready you can move, drift into them, slip into them, float with them, to the farthest end of existence. If you are afraid you cling to your shore, and you miss the boat. The boat cannot wait for you.

So don’t be disturbed by the mind. Watching children playing around is a beautiful meditation –

because watching is meditation. But remember, don’t think about it. If children are dancing, running around, playing, shrieking, jumping, jogging, don’t start thinking – just watch. Watch without any thought. Be aware, but don’t think. Remain alert – just seeing, a pure seeing, a clarity, but don’t start thinking about it; otherwise you have already moved away. Watching children, you can remember your own child back home. Then you have missed, then you are not watching these children. Some memories are floating in your mind. A film starts moving; then you are in a daydream. Simply watch!

The fourth question:

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

THE ULTIMATE SEARCH IS INDIVIDUAL, BUT CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE INTEGRAL PART OF

THE BELOVED IN TANTRA AND THE SEARCH FOR OUR INNER SELF?

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If you are not in love, you are lonely.

If you are in love, really in love, you become alone.

Loneliness is sadness; aloneness is not sadness. Loneliness is a feeling of incompleteness. You need someone and the needed one is not available. Loneliness is darkness, with no light in it. A dark house, waiting and waiting for someone to come and kindle the light.

Aloneness is not loneliness. Aloneness means the feeling that you are complete. Nobody is needed, you are enough. And this happens in love. Lovers become alone – through love you touch your inner completeness. Love makes you complete. Lovers share each other, but that is not their need, that is their overflowing energy.

Two persons who have been feeling lonely can make a contract, can come together. They are not lovers, remember. They remain lonely. Now, because of the presence of the other, they don’t feel the loneliness – that’s all. They somehow deceive themselves. Their love is nothing but a deception to deceive oneself: I am not lonely – somebody else is there. Because two lonely persons are meeting, their loneliness basically is doubled, or even multiplied. That’s what happens ordinarily.

You feel lonely when you are alone, and when you are in relationship you feel miserable. This is an everyday observation. When people are lonely they feel lonely, and they are in a deep search for somebody to be related to. When they are related to somebody, then misery starts; then they feel it was better to be lonely – this is too much. What happens?

Two lonely persons meet – that means two gloomy, sad, miserable persons meet. The misery is multiplied. How can two uglinesses become beautiful? How can two lonelinesses coming together become completion, totality? Not possible. They exploit each other, they somehow try to deceive themselves through the other. But that deception doesn’t go far. By the time the honeymoon is finished, the marriage is also finished. It is very temporary. It is just an illusion.

Real love is not a search to go against loneliness. Real love is to transform loneliness into aloneness.

To help the other – if you love the person, you help him to be alone. You don’t fill him or her. You don’t try to complete the other in some way by your presence. You help the other to be alone, to be so full out of her or his own being that you will not be a need.

When the person is totally free, then out of that freedom sharing is possible. Then he gives much, but not as a need; he gives much, but not as a bargain. He gives much because he has much. He gives because he enjoys giving.

Lovers are alone, and a real lover never destroys your aloneness. He will always be totally respectful about the aloneness of the other. It is sacred. He will not interfere in it, he will not spoil that space.

But ordinarily, lovers, so-called lovers, are very much afraid of the other and the other’s aloneness, independence; they are very much afraid – because they think if the other is independent then they will not be needed, then they will be discarded. So the woman goes on trying... that the husband should remain dependent, always in need, so that she can remain valuable. And the husband goes on trying in every way so that the woman always remains in need, so that he remains valuable. This The Search

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is a bargain and there is continuous conflict, struggle. The struggle is that everybody needs his freedom.

Love allows freedom; not only allows, but strengthens freedom. And anything that destroys freedom is not love. It must be something else. Love and freedom go together, they are two wings of the same bird. Whenever you see that your love is going against your freedom, then you are doing something else in the name of love.

Let this be your criterion: freedom is the criterion; love gives you freedom, makes you free, liberates you. And once you are totally yourself, you feel grateful to the person who has helped you. That gratefulness is almost religious. You feel in the other person something divine. He has made you free, or she has made you free, and love has not become a possessiveness.

When love deteriorates it becomes possessiveness, jealousy, struggle for power, politics, domination, manipulation – a thousand and one things, all ugly. When love soars high, to the purest sky, it is freedom, total freedom. It is moksha – it is absolute freedom.

Now the question: ”The ultimate search is individual, but can you explain the integral part of the beloved in Tantra and the search for our inner self?” Tantra is purest love. Tantra is the methodology of purifying love of all its poisons. If you are in love, the love I am talking about, your very love will help the other to be integrated. Your very love will become a cementing force for the other. In your love the other will come together, because your love will give freedom; and under the shade of your love, under the protection of your love, the other will start growing.

All growth needs love – but unconditional love. If love has conditions then growth cannot be total, because those conditions will come in the way. Love unconditionally. Don’t ask anything in return.

Much comes on its own – that’s another thing. Don’t be a beggar. In love be an emperor. Just give it and see what happens... a thousandfold it comes back. But one has to learn it. Otherwise one remains a miser; one gives a little and waits for much to come back, and your waiting, your expectation, destroys the whole beauty of it.

When you are waiting and expecting, the other feels that you are manipulating. He may say it or not, but he feels you are manipulating. And wherever you feel manipulation, one wants to rebel against it – because it is against the inner need of the soul, because any demand from the outside disintegrates you. Any demand from the outside divides you. Any demand from the outside is a crime against you, because your freedom is polluted. Then you are no more sacred. You are no more the end – you are being used as a means. And the greatest immoral act in the world is to use somebody as a means.

Each being is an end unto himself. Love treats you as an end unto yourself. You are not to be dragged into any expectations. Tantra is the highest form of love. Tantra is the science, the yoga of love.

So a few things to be remembered. One: love, but not as a need – as a sharing. Love, but don’t expect – give. Love, but remember your love should not become an imprisonment for the other.

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Love, but be very careful; you are moving on sacred ground. You are going into the highest, the purest and holiest temple. Be alert! Drop all impurities outside the temple. When you love a person, love the person as if the person is a god, not less than that. Never love a woman as a woman and never love a man as a man, because if you love a man as a man your love is going to be very, very ordinary. Your love is not going to be more than lust. If you love a woman as a woman, your love is not going to soar very high. Love a woman as a goddess, then love becomes worship.

In Tantra, the man who is going to make love to the woman has to worship her for months as a goddess. He has to visualize in the woman the mother-goddess. When the visualization has become total, when no lust arises, when seeing the woman sitting naked before him he simply feels thrilled with a divine energy, no lust arises, the very form of the woman becomes divine, and all thoughts stop and only reverence is felt – then he is allowed to make love.

It looks a little absurd and paradoxical. When there is no need to make love, then he is allowed to make love. When the woman has become a goddess, then he is allowed to make love – because now love can soar high, love can become a climax, a crescendo. Now it will not be of the earth, it will not be of this world; it will not be of two bodies, it will be of two beings. It will be a meeting of two existences. Two souls will meet, merge and mingle, and both will come out of it tremendously alone.

Aloneness means purity. Aloneness means that you are just yourself and nobody else. Aloneness means that you are pure gold; just gold and nothing else... just you. Love makes you alone.

Loneliness will disappear, but aloneness will arise.

Loneliness is a state when you are ill with yourself, bored with yourself, tired of yourself, and you want to go somewhere and to forget yourself into somebody else. Aloneness is when you are thrilled just by your being. You are blissful just by being yourself. You need not go anywhere. Need has disappeared. You are enough unto yourself. But now, a new thing arises in your being. You have so much that you cannot contain it. You have to share, you have to give. And whosoever accepts your gift, you will feel grateful towards him that he accepted. He could have rejected it.

Lovers feel grateful that their love has been accepted. They feel thankful, because they were so full of energy and they needed someone to pour that energy into. When a flower blooms and releases its fragrance to the winds it feels grateful to the winds – the fragrance was growing more and more heavy on it. It was becoming almost a burden. It was just as if a woman is pregnant and nine months have passed and the child is not being born, is delaying. Now she is so much burdened; she wants to share the child with the world. That is the meaning of birth.

Up to now she has been carrying the child in herself. It was nobody else’s but her own. But now it is too much; she cannot contain it. It has to be shared; the child has to be shared with the world.

The mother has to drop her miserliness. Once the child is out of the womb, it is no more only of the mother; by and by it will go away, and far away. It will become part of the great world. The same happens when a cloud comes full of rain water ready to shower, and when it showers, rains, the cloud feels unburdened and happy and grateful to the thirsty earth because it accepted.

There are two types of love. One: love when you are feeling lonely – as a need, you go to the other.

Then love when are not feeling lonely, but alone. In the first case you go to get something; in the second case you go to give something. A giver is an emperor.

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Remember, Tantra is not ordinary love. It has nothing to do with lust. It is the greatest transformation of lust into love. The ultimate search is individual – but love makes you individual. If it doesn’t make you individual, if it tries to make you a slave, then it is not love – it is hate pretending love. Pretending to be love, it is hidden hatred just managing somehow; managing somehow and pretending that it is love.

Love of this type kills, destroys the individuality. It makes you less of an individual. It pulls you down. You are not enhanced, you don’t become graceful. You are being pulled into the mud. And everybody starts feeling that he is settling with something dirty. Love should give you freedom –

never settle for less. Love should make you a white cloud, completely free, a wanderer in the sky of freedom, with no roots attached anywhere. Love is not an attachment; lust is.

Meditation and love are the two ways to attain to that individuality I am talking about. Both are very, very deeply related together. In fact they are both aspects of the same coin: love and meditation.

If you meditate, sooner or later you will come upon love. If you meditate deeply, sooner or later you will start feeling a tremendous love arising in you that you have never known before – a new quality to your being, a new door opening. You have become a new flame and you want to share now.

If you love deeply, by and by you will become aware that your love is becoming more and more meditative. A subtle quality of silence is entering in you. Thoughts are disappearing, gaps appearing

– silences. You are touching your own depth.

Love makes you meditative if it is on the right lines.

Meditation makes you loving if it is on the right lines.

And there are only two types of people in the world, basically: those who will find their meditation through love, and those who will find their love through meditation.

For those who will find their meditation through love, it is Tantra; that is their science. For those who will find love through their meditation, for them it is Yoga; that is their science.

Tantra and Yoga, these are the only two ways – basically, very foundational. But both can go wrong if you don’t understand well. And the criterion is – listen – if you meditate and it doesn’t become love, know well you have gone wrong somewhere. And you will find ninety-nine yogis out of a hundred have gone wrong. The more they enter into their meditation, the more they become against love.

They become, in fact, afraid of love. They start thinking of love as a distraction. Then their meditation is not real meditation. A meditation out of which love does not arise is not meditation at all. It is an escape, not a growth. It is as if a seed has become afraid of becoming a plant and blossoming in flowers, and has become afraid of releasing its fragrance to the winds – a seed has become a miser.

You will find this type of yogi all over India. Their meditation has not come to bloom. Their meditation got constipated somewhere on the way. They are stuck. You will not find grace on their faces, and you will not find intelligence in their eyes. You will see around them a certain climate of dullness and stupidity. You will not find them alert, aware, alive. A certain deadness... because if you are alive you have to become loving. To avoid love they avoid life.

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And these people will always be escaping towards the Himalayas, anywhere where they can remain without others. Their aloneness will not be aloneness, it will be a loneliness – you can read it on their faces. They are not happy being alone. On their faces you will see a certain type of martyrdom

– which is foolishness! – as if they have been sacrificing. Ego you will find there; humbleness, no –

because whenever humbleness comes, love comes. If the ego becomes too strong, then love can be destroyed completely. Ego is the opposite of love.

Yoga is in the hands of the wrong people. And the same happened with Tantra. In the name of Tantra, people started just fulfilling their lust and sex and their perversions. It never became meditative. It became a subtle rationalization of lust, sex and passion. It became a trick; you can hide behind it. For all sorts of perversions, Tantra became a blanket to hide behind.

So remember this. Man is very cunning. He has destroyed Yoga, he has destroyed Tantra. Remain alert! Both are good, both are tremendously beneficial, but the criterion to remember is that if you are doing one rightly, the other is to follow as a shadow. If the other is not following, then you are wrong somewhere.

Move back, start again. Go into your mind, analyze your mind. Somewhere you have tricked yourself.

And it is not difficult – because you can deceive others, but you cannot deceive yourself. That is impossible. If you just go within and watch, you will come to know where you have been deceiving.

Nobody can deceive himself; it is impossible. How can you deceive yourself?

The fifth question:

Question 5

BELOVED OSHO, HOW FAR CAN ONE RELY ON ONE’S ’INNER VOICE’?

The first thing: the inner voice is not a voice, it is silence. It says nothing. It shows something, but it says nothing. It gestures towards something, but it says nothing. The inner voice is not a voice. If you are still hearing some voice, it is not inner. ’Inner voice’ is a misnomer, it is not the right word.

Only silence is inner. All voices are from the outside.

For example: you are going to steal something and you say the ’inner voice’ says: Don’t steal! –

this is sin! This is not the inner voice – just your conditioning: you have just been taught not to steal.

This is society speaking through you. It appears to be from within, but it is not. If you had been brought up in some other way and you were not taught that stealing was bad, or you were taught that stealing was good, then this inner voice would not have been there – and you know it.

If you have been brought up in a family which is vegetarian, then the moment you see non-veg food, some inner voice says: Don’t eat it – it is sin! But if you have been brought up in a non-vegetarian family, then there is no problem. You simply cannot believe how inner voices say to other people: Don’t eat it! It depends on what you have been taught.

This is not an inner voice, this is just your social conscience. Society has to create an inner arrangement in you because the outer arrangement is not enough. The police are there but it is not enough – the police can be deceived. The courts are there but it is not enough, because you The Search

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can be more clever than the courts. The outer arrangement is not enough; some inner arrangement is needed.

So society teaches you that stealing is bad; this is good, that is bad.

It goes on teaching,

continuously repeating it; it enters into your being, it becomes part of your inner world. So when you go to steal, suddenly somebody inside says: No! And you think the inner voice or God has spoken. No, nothing of the sort. This is just society speaking in you.

Then what is the inner voice? You are going to steal, and suddenly you become silent and you cannot steal. Suddenly you are frozen. A gap arises. Your energy stops. Not that somebody says: Don’t steal! No voice is there – just inner silence. But you are in the grip of the inner silence.

It happened: A great Buddhist monk, a mystic, Nagarjuna, was passing through a village. The emperor of the country was a follower of Nagarjuna, and he had given him a gold begging bowl with diamonds studded around it. It was very costly, and Nagarjuna was a naked fakir. When he was passing, a thief could not believe it: a naked man with such a tremendously valuable thing! So the thief followed him.

Nagarjuna was staying outside the town in an old ruined monastery. There were not even doors, so the thief was very happy. He said, ”Now he will rest, or at least in the night he will rest, go to sleep.

I can take it, there is no trouble.” So he was hiding behind a wall.

Nagarjuna looked out and he said, ”You had better come in and take this begging bowl so that I can sleep at ease. You will take it anyhow, so why not give it? I think it is better to give it to you. I would not like to make you a thief – this is a gift!”

The man came in but he could not believe it. And in spite of himself he touched the feet of Nagarjuna.

Nagarjuna said, ”Now you can go, because I have nothing else. You be at ease and leave me at ease.”

But the thief said, ”Just one thing: I would also like to be so unattached to things as you are. You have made me feel very poor. Is there any way that some day I can also attain to such a peak of consciousness?”

Nagarjuna said, ”Yes, there is a way.”

The thief said, ”But one thing let me say first: don’t tell me to stop stealing. Because whenever I go – and I go to mystics and saints and I am a famous thief around here, so they all know – they immediately say, ’First you stop stealing,’ and that I cannot do. I have tried but that I cannot do, so please don’t make that condition. Whatsoever else you say I will do.” Nagarjuna said, ”Then you could not have yet met a mystic or a saint. You must have been meeting ex-thieves; otherwise, why should one bother about your being a thief? Be a thief! – that is your business, that is not my worry. Just one thing I would like to tell you, and that is: Go, do whatsoever you feel, but be aware, alert. Don’t do anything unconsciously, mechanically, robot-like.” The thief said, ”This is perfectly okay. I will try it.” The Search

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Nagarjuna said, ”I will wait fifteen days in this monastery; you can come and report.” On the tenth day the thief came running, perspiring, and he said, ”You are a tricky fellow! For ten days continuously I have been trying. When I go – and this has been something of a miracle: never in my life have I been so unsuccessful – I enter the houses, I open their treasures, and then I remember you and I watch, and when I become aware, I become so silent that I cannot move. My hands won’t move! When I am unconscious my hands move – but then I have promised you. I become conscious again – I cannot take the thing with me. I have to leave it. For ten days continuously! So please, tell me something else.”

Nagarjuna said, ”That is the only thing. Now it is up to you to choose: you can drop awareness and remain a thief, or you can have awareness and let the thief be dropped. That is for you to choose.

I am not saying that you should stop stealing. You go on stealing; if you can do it with awareness, then I am not worried.”

The thief said, ”That is impossible; I have tried for ten days. If I am aware, then I cannot steal. If I steal, then I am not aware.” And the thief said, ”Really, you have got me – and I cannot leave this awareness now, I have tasted it. Nothing is worth it now, nothing is more valuable now.” Nagarjuna said, ”Then don’t bother me any more. Go and teach the same thing to other thieves!” The inner voice is not a voice, it is an energy phenomenon. You are gripped in awareness, in silence.

And in that silence, whatsoever you do is right; whatsoever is not right you cannot do.

So I don’t tell you not to do this, and do that. I simply tell you what Nagarjuna told the thief: Just be aware!

If you are not aware, then you will have to choose. If you are not aware, then there is always a choice of alternatives – to do this or to do that – and one is always puzzled. If awareness is there, there is no alternative. Awareness is choiceless. It simply allows you to do that which is right; it does not allow you to do that which is not right. There is no question of your choice. So don’t ask how far one can rely on one’s inner voice.

The first thing: the inner voice is not a voice – it is silence. The second thing: you need not be worried about relying on ”how far.” Just remain in that inner space of silence, total science. Virtue is a by-product, it is not a discipline. It follows awareness like a shadow, a consequence.

The sixth question:

Question 6

BELOVED OSHO,

I AM AWARE OF MY NEED FOR APPROVAL AND ACCEPTANCE FROM OTHERS.

I DON’T WANT TO BE DRIVEN BY THIS NEED. HOW DOES IT RESOLVE?

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One has to see the foolishness of it. It is not a question of resolving it. One has to see the ridiculousness of it, then it falls. It is not resolved. Diseases are not to be resolved; they fall away.

Just try to see the foolishness of it.

I will tell you a few anecdotes.

A woman, newly arrived to live in a spacious mansion, met the woman she knew lived in a cottage at the edge of her estate.

”Welcome to our little community,” greeted the cottage dweller.

The new resident, drawing herself up haughtily, replied, ”Please do not address me. I never speak to an inferior.”

”Oh,” replied the cottage dweller sweetly, ”and where in the world did you ever meet one?” Everybody is an egoist. It is difficult to see that you are in the same boat. You can see all others in the same boat. Just see it – that everybody in deep ignorance remains an egoist, goes on thinking in terms of the ego. Nobody is there in the world to fulfill your ego; everybody is trying to fulfill his own. Who has time to fulfill your ego? And if sometimes somebody fulfills your ego, he must be fulfilling it as a means to fulfill his own.

Basically, everybody is interested in himself. As you are interested in yourself, others are interested in themselves. Just become aware of this.

Everybody is trying to compete; and in this competition, and in this egoistic, ambitious race, one is destroying all that is beautiful. One is destroying a beautiful life that could have flowered and become a pinnacle of existence – Buddha-like, Jesus-like, Krishna-like. But everybody is asking others, begging: Approve of me! Say something that gives me a good feeling about myself. Hence, flattery works. Hence, anybody can deceive you just by flattering you.

And people go on doing things which they never wanted to do, but they go on doing them because that is the only way they can get the approval of others. Everybody is distracted from his destiny because others are looking, and they have a fixed idea as to how to approve of you.

It happened in a town:

The new bride had returned to the small town after her runaway marriage. ”I suppose my elopement was a nine days’ wonder around here,” she commented to the village’s lone policeman.

”It would have been,” he replied, ”only the Smiths’ dog went mad the same night.” People go on wasting their time and life and energy. There is no need! In fact, as you are, you are perfect. Nothing is to be added to you. God never creates anybody imperfect. How can he create anybody imperfect?

You have heard religious people teaching you: God created the world. And they go on teaching you: You are created by God in his own image. And still they go on teaching you: Become perfect!

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This is simple absurdity. God created you in his own image, and still you need perfection? Then God must be imperfect. How, out of God, can imperfection come? Creation carries his signature.

You also go on carrying his signature. Drop this begging!

Somebody is asking for money, somebody is asking for bread, somebody is asking for approval. All are beggars. Don’t ask. In asking you will miss much that is already available to you. Look rather than asking. Look within yourself and the emperor of emperors is there. Start enjoying it, start living it!

It happened:

The famous college athlete had just returned from the Olympics with a chestful of medals when he fell ill.

At the hospital the doctor took his temperature, shook his head doubtfully, and said, ”You’re running a temperature of a hundred and five.”

”Oh, yeah?” answered the athlete weakly. Then, suddenly interested, he asked, ”Hey, doc, what’s the world record?”

Drop all this nonsense! You are already approved of, otherwise you could not have been here. God has accepted you, given birth to you. If van Gogh paints, whatsoever painting he creates is already approved of – otherwise he would not have created it in the first place. If Picasso paints something, in the very painting, the painting is approved of. The painter has put his heart into it. Just go deeper into your own being – God has put all the treasures that you need there. He has approved of you, accepted you. He is happy that you are!

But you don’t look there. You are asking from others like a beggar: Approve of me! – and they are also beggars just like you. Beggars asking beggars. Even if they approve of you a little, they will wait for you to approve of them. It is going to be a bargain. And just think of it: they don’t have anything to give to you when they themselves are begging; and what can you give to them when you yourself are begging? Just a little alertness and one drops all begging. And with that, ambition drops, ego drops. One starts living.

Dance, while you are alive. Breathe blissfully while you are alive. Sing while you are alive. Love, meditate, while you are alive. And once you change, you shift your consciousness, your focus of consciousness, from the outside to the inside, you feel tremendously happy and blessed. Just to feel ”I exist” is such a blessing that nothing else is needed. ”I exist!” – all the dance, all the song, all blessings, are included in it. ”I exist!” – God is included in it.

Don’t make your God a beggar. Be a God! Recognize your godliness and then there is nothing to achieve. One has simply to start, one has to start to live. Live like a god: that’s my message to you.

I don’t say: Become a god. I say: You are! Start living! You are – recognize it! You are – remember it! You are – just become mindful of it.

There is nothing to be achieved. Life is not an achievement, it is a gift. It has already been given, for what are you waiting? The door is open, and the host has already invited you. Come in!

Enough for today.

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CHAPTER 7

The Bull Transcended

8 March 1976 am in Buddha Hall

7. THE BULL TRANSCENDED

ASTRIDE THE BULL, I REACH HOME.

I AM SERENE. THE BULL TOO CAN REST.

THE DAWN HAS COME. IN BLISSFUL REPOSE,

WITHIN MY THATCHED DWELLING I HAVE ABANDONED THE WHIP AND ROPE

COMMENT:

ALL IS ONE LAW, NOT TWO. WE ONLY MAKE THE BULL A TEMPORARY SUBJECT. IT IS AS

THE RELATION OF RABBIT AND TRAP, OF FISH AND NET. IT IS AS GOLD AND DROSS, OR THE MOON EMERGING FROM A CLOUD. ONE PATH OF CLEAR LIGHT TRAVELS ON

THROUGHOUT ENDLESS TIME.

8. BOTH BULL AND SELF TRANSCENDED

WHIP, ROPE, PERSON, AND BULL – ALL MERGE IN NO-THING.

THIS HEAVEN IS SO VAST NO MESSAGE CAN STAIN IT.

HOW MAY A SNOWFLAKE EXIST IN A RAGING FIRE?

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HERE ARE THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE PATRIARCHS.

COMMENT:

MEDIOCRITY IS GONE.

MIND IS CLEAR OF LIMITATION. I SEEK NO STATE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. NEITHER DO I REMAIN WHERE NO ENLIGHTENMENT EXISTS. SINCE I LINGER IN NEITHER CONDITION, EYES CANNOT SEE ME. IF HUNDREDS OF BIRDS STREW MY PATH WITH FLOWERS, SUCH

PRAISE WOULD BE MEANINGLESS.

Gertrude Stein was dying. Suddenly she opened her eyes and asked her friends who were gathered together around her, ”What is the answer?” Now this is tremendously beautiful, almost a koan. The question has not been asked; she asks, ”What is the answer?” Of course, nobody was capable of answering it. They looked at each other. They were at a loss even to understand what she meant. A Zen master was needed, somebody who could have responded from his heart – spontaneously, immediate.

Somebody who could have laughed uproariously, or shouted, or done something, because such a question – What is the answer? – cannot be answered through words.

Stein is saying that the question is such that it cannot be formulated – and yet the question is there, so what is the answer? The question is such that it is impossible to utter it. It is so deep, it cannot be brought to the surface. But still it is there, so what is the answer? The question is such that it is not separate from the questioner, as if the questioner’s whole being has become a question mark: What is the answer?

They looked at each other. They were completely at a loss as to what to do. They must have thought: The dying woman has gone mad. It is mad, absurd, to ask, ”What is the answer?” when the question has not yet been formulated. No one replied. No one was aware enough to reply to it. No one responded, because in fact no one was there to respond. No one was so present as to respond.

”In that case,” she insisted, ”what is the question?” Again silence followed. How can anybody else tell you what the question is? Certainly she has gone mad. Certainly she is no more in her senses.

But the question is such that it is impossible to say what it is. The moment you say it, you betray it. The moment you verbalize it, it is no more the same. It is not the same question that was there in the heart. Once it becomes verbalized, it becomes a head thing. It looks almost trivial, almost superficial. You cannot ask the ultimate question. In asking it, it will not be the ultimate any more.

Only a master could have understood what she was saying. She was a beautiful woman, a beautiful person, of tremendous understanding. And at the last moment of her life, she flowered in this koan.

You must have heard her famous statement which has almost become a cliche, a rose is a rose is a rose. Nothing can be said about the rose, except that it is a rose. All that you can say about it will falsify it. It is simply there in its strange beauty, with its unknown fragrance, as a fact. You cannot theorize about it. And whatsoever you theorize will be about something else, will not be about this rose; will be a reflection in the mirror, will not be the true thing.

A rose is a rose is a rose – nothing more can be said. Nothing is being said when you say: A rose is a rose is a rose. If you go to a logician, he will say this is a tautology; you are repeating the same The Search

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word unnecessarily. You are not saying anything! But something is being said: that nothing can be said.

”In that case,” she insisted, ”what is the question?” The silence remained unbroken. Nobody was capable enough to respond. A reply was not needed; she was asking for a response.

You can go on thinking about life and death, and you can go on creating many theories and hypotheses, but the whole of philosophy is just rubbish. Life remains unanswered, death remains unanswered. At that moment, Stein was asking about life and death; about that which is life, about that which is also death – about the ultimate, the substratum, the very ground of your being. She was asking: Who am I? But philosophy has no answers. Philosophy has been trying to answer; centuries of thinking, speculation, but the whole effort is empty.

Omar Khayyam has said: ”Myself when young did eagerly frequent doctor and saint, and heard great argument about it and about, but ever more came out by the same door as in I went.” About it and about.... Much argument, much philosophizing, but about it and about, never exactly to the point, beating around the bush. Much excited argumentation goes on; nothing comes out of it. Seems just gibberish. Nothing can come out of it, because life is not a philosophical question.

And any answer that is only philosophical is not going to be the answer. Life is existential. Only an existential answer can satisfy you, not an answer given by somebody else; not an answer fabricated, manufactured by the mind; not an answer borrowed from the scriptures, but an answer that arises in your being – flowers, blooms, brings your total destiny in a manifested state; makes you fully aware.

It is going to be a realization; not an answer but a realization, not an answer but a revelation, not an answer but an experience – existential.

This is the whole story of the ten bulls. The search is existential. Zen is the most straight way. It goes directly to the target. It never goes here and there, it is never about and about. It is not beating around the bush; it is straight like an arrow.

One of the greatest philosophers of the West, Ludwig Wittgenstein, came very close to the Zen attitude, he knocked almost on the door. He says: It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. That the world is, is the real mystery. Not how you are here, not how you came here, not the purpose of your being here, but just the fact that you are here is the greatest mystery. Just the fact that you are, that I am, is the greatest mystery. And when the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words.

It reminds me:

One man came to Buddha and he said, ”Please answer my question without using words, because I have heard it of old that the answer is such that it cannot be put into words.” Buddha laughed and he said, ”Of course, you have heard rightly; but put your question without using words, then I will answer your question without using words.” Then the man said, ”That is impossible.” Then he understood: if the question cannot be formulated, how can the answer be formulated? If the question itself cannot be stated, how can you demand an answer?

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Wittgenstein is right. And when the answer cannot be put into words and neither can the question be put into words, the riddle does not exist. Neither the question can be put into words nor the answer, so where is the riddle, so where is the problem?

This is a tremendous insight. The problem does not exist – it is created by the mind; it is a mind-creation. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.

Somebody asked Wittgenstein, ”Then why do you go on writing such beautiful books?” His book Tractatus Logico Philosophicus was recently acclaimed one of the great, great books of the whole of human history. ”Then why do you go on writing books? If the question cannot be formulated and the answer cannot be given – then why?”

He said, ”My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical.” Let me repeat it: ”Anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical.” He has used them as steps to climb up beyond them.

He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.” The moment you understand, then whatsoever I am saying also is nonsensical.

If you don’t

understand, then it looks meaningful.

All meaning is because of misunderstanding.

If you

understand, then all meaning disappears; only life is. Meaning is of the mind, a projection of the mind, interpretation of the mind. Then, a rose is a rose is a rose – not even these words exist. Just the rose... just the rose without any name, without any adjective to it, without any definition to it.

Just life is – suddenly without any meaning, without any purpose. And that is the greatest mystery to realize.

So meaning is not the real search. The real search is to come upon life itself – raw, naked.

All questions are foolish in a way, and all answers also. All questions are foolish in a way because they are all mind-created, and mind is the barrier between you and the real. And mind goes on creating questions, it delays the search. It convinces you that you are a great seeker because you are asking so many questions. But because of your asking you are collecting clouds around you.

First you will ask, then the question will surround you; then you will start getting some answers, then answers will surround you – and there will always remain a barrier between you and the raw, wild, naked life, that which is. It is neither a question nor an answer, it is a revelation. When the mind is not, it is revealed to you. It is simply there, manifested in all its glory, available in its totality.

But man goes on asking questions, and it appears to him that this questioning is somehow a great search. It is not. All questions, all answers – all games, all are games. You can play if you like, but nothing is going to be solved through them. And people go on asking to the very end of their lives.

But Gertrude Stein did well. At the last moment she revealed a Zen quality. She proved herself a woman of understanding, awareness. Of course, the people who were there could not understand what she had revealed. She would have been understood in the East, not in the West. There she must have been thought of as if she had gone mad just before dying – because our questions continue, the same foolish questions. Even at the very edge, when death is coming, we go on asking the same routine, rotten questions, and we go on seeking for answers.

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CHAPTER 7. THE BULL TRANSCENDED

I have heard, it happened in a bank, the bank robber shoved a note across to the teller which read:

”Put the money in a bag, sucker, and don’t make a move.” The teller quickly wrote out a note and shoved it back: ”Straighten your tie, stupid. Your picture’s being taken.”

Even at the moment of death, you will be straightening your tie because your picture is being taken.

Man remains interested in mirrors. Man remains interested in what others are thinking about him, what others are saying about him. Man goes on just creating a beautiful image about himself. That is your whole life effort. And one day you disappear, and your image falls into the dust. Dust unto dust, nothing remains.

Be aware. Don’t be too much interested in the image. Be interested in the real – and the real is within you; it is your energy. It has nothing to do with anybody else. No mirror is needed for self-knowledge, because self-knowledge is not a reflection. Self-knowledge is a direct, immediate encounter; you come face to face with your own being.

The seventh sutra: The Bull Transcended.

ASTRIDE THE BULL, I REACH HOME.

I AM SERENE. THE BULL TOO CAN REST.

THE DAWN HAS COME.

IN BLISSFUL REPOSE WITHIN MY THATCHED DWELLING,

I HAVE ABANDONED THE WHIP AND ROPE.

The bull transcended....

Once you have become master of your mind, the mind is transcended. The moment you have become master of your mind, the mind is no longer there. It remains only if you are a slave. Once you have taken hold of the bull and you are riding on it, the bull disappears. The bull exists as separate from you only if you are not the master. This has to be understood.

You remain divided if you are not a master, you remain schizophrenic, fragmented. Once the mastery arises in you, once awareness and discipline – the whip and the rope – are there, divisions dissolve, you become one. In that oneness, the bull is transcended. Then you don’t see yourself as separate from your mind. Then you don’t see yourself as separate from the body. Then you don’t see yourself as separate from the whole. You become one.

All masters are one with existence; only slaves are separate. Separation is an illness. In health, you are not separate from the whole – you become one with it.

Just try to understand it. When you have a headache, your head is separate from you. Have you watched it? When the headache goes on hammering inside, knocking iside, your head is separate The Search

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from you. But when the headache disappears, the head also disappears; then you can’t feel it, then it is no more separate, then it has become part of your being If your body is perfectly healthy, then you don’t have any body sense – as if you are bodiless.

Bodilessness is the definition of perfect health. If something hurts, immediately you become aware of it – and in that awareness is separation. A thorn is in your foot, or the shoe pinches, then a division is there. When the shoe fits perfectly, the division is transcended.

You are aware of the mind because somehow your life is not a harmony; some discordance, something out of tune, out of accord. Something out of step goes on within you, hence you feel divided. When everything falls in tune and in harmony, all divisions are transcended.

This is the seventh sutra: ASTRIDE THE BULL... one is riding on one’s own energy. The energy is not moving in some other direction, and you are not moving in some other direction. Now both are moving in one direction. The fight is no more there, the division has disappeared. You are not fighting with the river; you are flowing, riding on the river. Suddenly, you are not separate from the river.

Go into a river. First try to go upstream – fight, struggle, and you will see the river is fighting with you, you will say the river is trying to defeat you. And you will see: the river will defeat you eventually...

because a moment will come when you will become tired, and you will see the river is winning and you are getting defeated.

Then try the other way: float with the river, let go, and by and by you will see now the river is not fighting with you. In fact, the river was not fighting with you at all; even when you were moving upstream, the river was not fighting with you. It was only you who was in a fight, who was in an egoistic mood; who was trying to win, to be victorious; who was trying to prove something, that ”I am somebody.” That idea of being somebody was creating the whole problem.

Now you are a nobody, floating with the river, in a deep letgo. The river is no longer against you – it has never been! Only your attitude changes, and you feel then that the river has changed completely.

But the river has always been the same; now you are riding on the river. And if you can float totally, not even a slight effort to swim, just floating, then your body and the river’s body merge. Then you are not aware where your body ends and where the river’s body begins. Then you are in an organic unity with the river. Then you will feel an orgasmic experience. Being one with the river, suddenly all limitations are transcended. You are no longer small, you are no longer big – you are the whole.

ASTRIDE THE BULL, I REACH HOME. And that is the way to reach home – because the home is the origin, the very source from where you have come; the home is not somewhere else. Home is where you have been coming from, from where you have been arising. Home is the source. If one allows oneself to be in a deep letgo, one reaches home. ’Home’ means one reaches the very source of life and being, one touches the very beginning.

ASTRIDE THE BULL, I REACH HOME. I AM SERENE.

And you cannot be serene in any other way. The only way to be serene is not to be. The only way to be serene is to be in a deep letgo, surrendered, one with the life energy.

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I AM SERENE. THE BULL TOO CAN REST.

And not only can you rest; the bull also. Not only can you rest, but the river also. When the conflict continues, neither you nor God can rest. Remember this. This is something very valuable to be remembered always. If you are not serene, God cannot be serene; if you are not happy, God cannot be happy; if you are not blissful, God cannot be blissful, because you are part of him, part of the whole. You affect him as much as he affects you.

Life is interrelated.

Everything is interrelated with everything else.

It is an ecology, a deep

interrelated co-relationship. A coherence exists. If you are not happy then God cannot be happy, because you are a part. It is just as if my leg is not happy: how can I be happy? That unhappiness affects me. Not only are you in deep trouble – your life energy is also in deep trouble with you. Not only that you are complicated and ill; your life energy has become complicated and ill.

I AM SERENE. THE BULL TOO CAN REST.

THE DAWN HAS COME.

IN BLISSFUL REPOSE WITHIN MY THATCHED DWELLING,

I HAVE ABANDONED THE WHIP AND ROPE.

And now there is no need for the whip and the rope. The whip means awareness and the rope means discipline. When you have come to a point where you can feel yourself one with the river of life, then there is no need for awareness or discipline. Then there is no need to meditate. Then there is no need to do anything. Then life does it for you. Then one can relax, because one can trust totally. Then there is no need even for awareness, remember.

In the beginning awareness is needed. In the beginning even discipline is needed. But as you grow spiritually the ladder is transcended, you can throw it away.

WITHIN MY THATCHED DWELLING,

I HAVE ABANDONED THE WHIP AND ROPE.

Remember: a saint is really a saint only when he has abandoned the whip and the rope. That is the criterion. If he is still trying to pray, to meditate, to do this and that, and to discipline himself, then he is still not yet enlightened. Then he is still there and some doing continues. And doing accumulates the ego. He has not reached home. The journey is yet to be completed.

In China there exists a beautiful Zen story:

A very rich woman served one monk for thirty years. The monk was really beautiful, always aware, disciplined. He had a beauty that comes naturally when your life is ordered – a cleanness, a freshness. The woman was dying, she was very old. She called a prostitute from the town and told the prostitute, ”Before I leave my body I would like to know one thing – whether this man I have been serving for thirty years has yet attained or not.” The Search

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The suspicion is natural, because the man has not yet abandoned the whip and the rope.

The prostitute asked, ”What am I supposed to do?” The woman said, ”I will give you as much money as you want. You just go in the middle of the night.

He will be meditating, because he meditates in the middle of the night. The door is never closed because he has nothing which can be stolen, so you just open the door, and just watch his reaction.

Open the door, come close, embrace him, and then come back and just tell me what happened.

Before I die, I would like to know whether I have been serving a real master or just an ordinary, mediocre being.”

The prostitute went. She opened the door. A small lamp was burning; the man was meditating.

He opened his eyes. Seeing the prostitute, recognizing the prostitute, he became afraid, a slight trembling, and he said, ”What! Why have you come here?” And when the woman tried to embrace him, he tried to escape. He was trembling and furious.

The woman came back and told the old lady what had happened. The old lady ordered her servants to burn the cottage that she had made for this man, and be finished with him. He had not reached anywhere. The old woman said, ”At least he could have been a little kind, compassionate.” This fear shows the whip is not yet abandoned. This anger shows awareness is still an effort, it has not become natural, it has not become spontaneous.

The eighth sutra: Both Bull and Self Transcended....

First the bull is transcended – the mind, the mind-energy, life, the life-energy, is transcended. And then, when you have transcended life, you transcend yourself.

BOTH BULL AND SELF TRANSCENDED.

WHIP, ROPE, PERSON AND BULL – ALL MERGE IN NO-THING.

THIS HEAVEN IS SO VAST NO MESSAGE CAN STAIN IT.

HOW MAY A SNOWFLAKE EXIST IN A RAGING FIRE?

HERE ARE THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE PATRIARCHS.

The moment mind disappears, you also disappear – because you exist in the struggle. The ego exists in the tension. For the ego, a duality is needed. It cannot exist with a non-dual reality. So just watch: whenever you are fighting, your ego becomes very sharp. Watch twenty-four hours and you will see many peaks and many valleys of your ego, and many times you will feel that it is not there.

If you are not fighting with anything, it is not there. It depends on the fight.

Hence people go on finding ways and means and excuses to fight, because without the fight they simply start disappearing. It needs constant creation, just like one pedals a bicycle. You have to go on pedaling; only then does the bicycle remain running. Once you stop pedaling, sooner or later the The Search

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bicycle is going to fall down. It is a miracle: just on two wheels, against all gravitation, you go on moving. But a constant pedaling is needed.

The ego is a miracle: the most illusory thing, and seems to be the most solid and real. People live for it and die for it. But it needs a constant pedaling – and that pedaling is your fight. Hence, you cannot live without fight. You will find some way or other. You will start fighting with your children if you cannot find somebody else. You will start fighting with your wife or your husband, sometimes for no reason at all. In fact, no reason is needed; all reasons are rationalizations. But you have to fight, otherwise you start disappearing, you start melting. You start falling as if you are in an abyss, a bottomless abyss.

In the morning, when you are just out of sleep, there is for a few seconds a state of no-ego. That’s why you feel so pure and clean and virgin. But immediately the world starts. Even in the night, in your sleep, you go on fighting, you go on creating nightmares, so that the thread with the ego is not completely lost.

The ego is possible only in conflict, struggle. If you have nothing to fight, you will create some way or other to fight.

I was just reading the other day about a man who never had a fight with his wife, and the neighbors were wondering what type of man he is. He would come home from his factory always laughing and happy, never tired, never tense. Even his wife was sometimes wondering: He never fights, never is angry – what is the matter?

Then the whole neighborhood gathered and inquired, and the man said, ”There is nothing much in it. In the factory....” He works in a glass factory where, whenever something does not come up to standard, it is given to him and he smashes it – that is his job. Saucers, cups, glasses – the whole day he is smashing them. He says, ”I feel so happy, there is no need to fight with anybody. It is already too much! I feel on top of the world.”

You know well: whenever the wife is not feeling good, more saucers will be broken, more cups will fall down. It has to be so. The ego finds some way or other, anything – imaginary, even imaginary –

will do, but something has to be destroyed. So fight arises.

Woodchoppers, woodcutters, are very silent people. Their psychology is different: the whole day chopping wood, their anger is thrown out. They are constantly in catharsis. They don’t need Dynamic Meditation. And you will find them very loving people. Hunters are very loving people; their whole work is violence, but they are very loving people – you will not find better people than hunters. They don’t need to bring their ego against you; they have had enough of it with the animals.

If you go to the prisons and see the criminals there, you will be simply surprised that criminals have more silent eyes than your so-called saints. Your so-called saints are sitting on volcanoes, constantly repressing something. Criminals have not repressed anything, that’s why they are criminals. They don’t carry a volcano within them. They are good people in a way – more silent, more loving, more sincere. You can trust them. But you cannot trust your saints – they are dangerous people, and they go on accumulating much poison. And they also have to create imaginary fights.

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You must have heard about saints: the devil comes to tempt them. It is nowhere; the devil doesn’t exist, it is their own imagination. They need some fight, otherwise they feel bad. Their ego cannot exist: they are no longer part of the market. That cut-throat competition is no longer for them; they have dropped out of it. Now, where to sustain the ego, how to sustain the ego? They are not in politics – where to sustain the ego? They are not poets, painters – where to sustain the ego? They are not doing anything, not fighting with any competitors, so they create imaginary enemies – the devil – and they start fighting with the devil.

In India, we have many stories in the Puranas, in the old scriptures, that whenever saints are meditating, beautiful women come from heaven to tempt them. But why should anybody be worried?

They are not doing anything bad meditating. Why should anybody be in any way interested in distracting them? But apsaras, beautiful damsels from heaven, come and dance around them. And they give a great fight! They try to conquer the temptation.

Now this is all imaginary. They have left real enemies, now they are creating imaginary enemies, because the ego cannot exist without enemies. A fight is needed; real, unreal, is not the question. If fight is there, you can be. If there is no fight, you disappear. Hence the greatest message that I can give to you is – remember it – you have to come to a point where all fight is dropped. Only then will you transcend yourself. Only then will you never be again the small self, the tiny, the ugly self that you are. You will transcend it and you will become one with the whole.

WHIP, ROPE, PERSON AND BULL – ALL MERGE IN NO-THING.

A great nothingness arises in which everything is lost. This emptiness is not negative: it is the very source of all being. But it has no limitations.

THIS HEAVEN IS SO VAST NO MESSAGE CAN STAIN IT.

HOW MAY A SNOWFLAKE EXIST IN A RAGING FIRE?

As a snowflake will disappear in a raging fire, in this tremendous energy of the whole everything disappears – whip, rope, person and bull.

HERE ARE THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE PATRIARCHS.

Here you find, for the first time, where buddhas have moved. Here you find, for the first time, the fragrance of the enlightened ones, the significance of their being, of their realization. Here you listen to their song. A new dimension opens its doors. Call this dimension nirvana, moksha, kingdom of God – anything you like – but something absolutely different from the world you have known up to now opens. Here are the footprints of the patriarchs, all the great ones who have walked into nothingness and disappeared into it.

The prose comment for the seventh sutra:

ALL IS ONE LAW, NOT TWO. WE ONLY MAKE THE BULL A TEMPORARY SUBJECT. IT IS AS

THE RELATION OF RABBIT AND TRAP, OF FISH AND NET. IT IS AS GOLD AND DROSS, OR THE MOON EMERGING FROM A CLOUD. ONE PATH OF CLEAR LIGHT TRAVELS ON

THROUGHOUT ENDLESS TIME.

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ALL IS ONE LAW, NOT TWO – oneness is the very nature of existence. Two-ness is our imagination.

Hence, the whole of life we are hankering for love. The hankering for love is nothing but a symptom that where oneness exists, we have created a twoness which is false.

You cannot find a person who is not in deep need of love... who wants to love and who wants to be loved. Why so much desire for love? Must be something very deep-rooted. This is the deep-rooted thing: life is one; we have imagined ourselves as separate. Now that separation becomes heavy. It is false and a burden. Love is nothing but the idea of becoming one again with the whole. Hence the desire to be loved; hence the desire to be needed; hence the desire that somebody should accept your love. It seems difficult to become one with the whole. At least some person will accept you; at least from the door of one person you will be able to bridge the gap.

That’s why if you are not in love, you constantly think of love. That becomes a haunting; it haunts you. It continuously hovers around you. And if you are in love, then a second thing arises: love, howsoever deep and intense, seems insufficient; something seems to be missing. Those who are not in love, they seek love; those who are in love, they become aware that something more is needed. Great lovers are greatly frustrated deep down, that they come to meet, then they come to a point where it seems everything will disappear... but again they are thrown back to themselves.

They have glimpses of closeness, but not of unity. If you have loved well, then the desire for prayer or meditation arises.

The desire for prayer is this: that I have tried and I have found that love gives glimpses. But glimpses make you even more thirsty than before. One is thirsty and then one comes to have glimpses of a beautiful river, a fountain – cool. And one hears the song of the fountain, and then it disappears –

one becomes even more thirsty than ever before. Those who are not in love, they suffer; but their suffering is nothing compared to those who are really in love. Their suffering is tremendous; their suffering is very penetrating and very intense, because they are close and yet far away. It seems the kingdom is just around the corner, and the more they come close, the farther away it goes. It looks like a receding horizon.

Love is the first step towards God; prayer is the final – or meditation, the final step. Love teaches you a new thirst, a new hunger; hence love is beautiful. People come to me and they ask me about love, and I say to them: Move into it – knowing well that I am sending them into danger. I am not sending them in deep love so that they can be satisfied. Nobody is ever satisfied. I am sending them in a deep love affair to make them really thirsty, to make them so thirsty that only God will suffice, nothing else.

Love prepares you for a great thirst, a thirst for the divine, because you have had glimpses in the other person, there have been moments when you have seen the god or the goddess. In the other person you have looked deep and you have found solace; a serenity has come to you. But it is temporary, momentary, comes and goes; more like the stuff of dreams than of reality.

One man came to Ramanuja, a great mystic, and he said, ”I would like to fall in love with God. Show me the path!”

And Ramanuja said, ”Tell me first one thing: have you ever loved anybody else?” The Search

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The man said, ”I am not concerned with this world and worldly affairs, and love and things like that.

I want God.”

Ramanuja said, ”Again, please think about it.

Have you ever loved any woman, any child –

anybody?”

The man said, ”I am saying to you: I am a religious person; I am not a worldly man, and I don’t love anybody. Show me the path, how I can attain to God.” It is said Ramanuja started weeping. Tears came to his eyes, and he said, ”Then it is impossible.

First you will have to love someone. That is the first step. You are asking for the last step and you have not taken even the first? Go and love somebody!” Only when love does not quench your thirst does God become a need. But both the needs are on the same path. The basic reason is that we are not in reality separate from the whole, but we think we are separate. Hence, the desire arises: How to become one with the whole?

The first step is to be taken with someone you can fall in love with, and then the second step will arise out of it of its own accord. A true love necessarily leads towards prayer. And if a love is not leading you towards prayer, it is not love yet; it is not true love, because a true love necessarily proves that it is not enough. More is needed. A true love brings you to the door of the temple – has to. That is the criterion of a true love.

ALL IS ONE LAW, NOT TWO. WE ONLY MAKE THE BULL A TEMPORARY SUBJECT.

Now the sutra says: The bull is not separate from you; it was just a temporary subject. In your misunderstanding, it has to be thought of that way. It was just a hypothesis, used and then thrown into the rubbish, used and then transcended. So don’t go on fighting continuously. The fight should not become an eternal affair. The fight is just a device. Remember this.

I have seen people who have been fighting their whole lives; not only in this life but also in their past lives they have been fighting and fighting – they have become warriors. Now they have completely forgotten the very aim. Now the fight itself has become the aim! Now they go on fighting, and through fight they go on accumulating a subtle ego – very pious maybe, but still poisonous. They go on accumulating a very subtle ego. Ascetics, monks... watch them and you will find a very sharp ego, steel-like. It is not so sharp in worldly people, because worldly people know that they are ignorant.

I have heard one story:

Against his better judgment, a man, a very old man, consented to go with his teenage son and his nephew on a trial run of the cut down motor job they had put together. When the jalopy failed to make a curve, and finally bounced dizzily to a stop in a ploughed field, he lowered his head into his shaking hands.

”Are you hurt, dad?” asked the son. ”Want to go to a doctor?” The Search

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”No,” came the studied reply. ”Since only a jackass would ride in this contraption, take me to a veterinary surgeon.”

The worldly man knows that he is a jackass. His ego cannot be very sharp. He knows that he has been after foolish things. He knows it! – knows it well that he has been after foolish things, but feels weak. Knowing also, he goes on moving in the old trap, in the old track, in the old routine. He is a weakling – that he knows, repents. Many times he decides not to go into the old trap again, but again goes. He knows his weaknesses, his limitations. His ego cannot be very sharp.

It happened: Mulla Nasruddin went to a psychiatrist. He said, ”I don’t have much money, I don’t have any time to waste on that couch stuff. All I want to do is ask you just two questions.” The psychiatrist said that was not the way he usually did his business, but in this case he would make an exception: ”What are your questions?”

Said the Mulla, ”My first question is this: Is it possible for a man to be in love with an elephant?” The psychiatrist thought that one over seriously for a few moments. Finally he said, ”No, it is not possible for a man to be in love with an elephant.” The Mulla looked disappointed. Was the doctor sure? The doctor said there was no doubt about it.

”Well, then,” said the Mulla, ”my second question is this: Do you know anybody who could use an oversized engagement ring?”

The ordinary worldly man knows that somehow he is being foolish and stupid. His love affair is a stupid affair; he is in love with elephants: money, power, prestige. He knows well that this is not possible; he knows that somehow he is going wrong, but feels incapable of resisting, feels incapable of stopping himself, feels weak. He cannot have a great, sharp ego.

But the religious ascetic, one who has moved away from the world and has gone to the Himalayas, feels tremendously egoistic. His ego is very sharp, like a sword. Of course, it cuts nobody because he has left the world. It is good that he has left the world. It cuts himself, it is self-destructive.

People who are in the world, their egos harm others. People who have left the world, their egos harm only themselves. They become masochistic. They start fighting with themselves and destroying themselves. In fact they start a subtle, perverted joy in the miseries that they create, in the sufferings that they impose on themselves. A very perverted indulgence.

Remember this: if I say to you to be aware, it is just a device. If I say to you to be disciplined, it is just a device, a measure useful for you; don’t make it a goal. Remember always: it has to be transcended one day, so don’t get in deep attachment with it.

It is very difficult. First I have teach to people how to meditate; then it is difficult to move them into meditation. Reluctantly... they create all sorts of difficulties, but somehow I force them into meditation. Then the day comes when I want them to drop it; then they don’t want to drop it. First they never wanted to enter onto the path, then they become too attached to the path. Now they think The Search

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if the path is dropped their whole life is wasted – as if now they cling to the staircase, to the ladder.

First they were afraid to move on it; now they are not ready to leave it.

Meditation is good, it is medicinal. The word ’meditation’ comes from the same root as the word

’medicine’. It is medicinal. A medicine is needed when you are ill. When you are healthy, the medicine has to be transcended. It is not a goal. You should not always carry the bottles with you.

And there is no need to be proud of your medicines.

Meditation has to be transcended.

Awareness has to be transcended.

Discipline has to be transcended.

A moment comes when one has to live spontaneously – chopping wood, carrying water from the well, eating when hungry, sleeping when feeling sleepy, moving absolutely ordinarily; no longer worldly, no longer otherworldly; no longer materialist, no longer religious. Just simple, ordinary. A real man of this quality cannot be categorized. You cannot call him worldly or religious. He is beyond categories. He has gone beyond logic.

WE ONLY MAKE THE BULL A TEMPORARY SUBJECT. IT IS AS THE RELATION OF RABBIT

AND TRAP, OF FISH AND NET – A TEMPORARY RELATIONSHIP. IT IS AS GOLD AND DROSS, OR THE MOON EMERGING FROM A CLOUD.

When the moon is emerging from the cloud, it is just accidental that the cloud is there. It is not part of the moon’s nature. When the moon is hidden behind the cloud, then too it remains the same moon. When it comes out of the cloud, it is the same moon. Nothing has changed. The cloud was just a temporary, a momentary condition.

Mind is a cloud. Thinking is like clouds. You are the moon. The world is like a cloud; it has not made any difference to you. In your intrinsic nature it has not affected you at all. You remain pure, you remain divine.

That’s why I go on insisting that you are gods right now. There is no need to postpone it. Maybe there is a cloud, but that doesn’t make any difference. You can realize your godliness even hidden behind a cloud. The moon remains the same moon.... ONE PATH OF CLEAR LIGHT TRAVELS ON

THROUGHOUT ENDLESS TIME.

The prose comment for the eighth sutra:

MEDIOCRITY IS GONE. MIND IS CLEAR OF LIMITATION. I SEEK NO STATE OF

ENLIGHTENMENT. NEITHER DO I REMAIN WHERE NO ENLIGHTENMENT EXISTS. SINCE I LINGER IN NEITHER CONDITION, EYES CANNOT SEE ME. IF HUNDREDS OF BIRDS STREW

MY PATH WITH FLOWERS, SUCH PRAISE WOULD BE MEANINGLESS.

MEDIOCRITY IS GONE.... Mind is mediocre. People say that somebody has a mediocre mind; that is wrong, because all minds are mediocre. Mind as such is mediocre. Remember it: mediocrity is the quality of mind itself.

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Intelligence is not of the mind, intelligence is of the beyond. When the mind is not there, then there is intelligence. When the moon is not hidden behind the cloud, then you can see it – brilliant, shining.

When it is hidden behind a cloud, the cloud interferes with the brilliance; it cannot reach you. Then you cannot see the brilliance of it. Every mind is a brilliant moon hidden behind a cloud. The cloud is the mind: you are the no-mind.

MEDIOCRITY IS GONE. MIND IS CLEAR OF LIMITATION.

And when there is no limitation, there is no-mind.

I SEEK NO STATE OF ENLIGHTENMENT.

In this moment of realization, who bothers about enlightenment? There are hundreds of beautiful stories in Zen....

Somebody comes to a master and he asks, ”I would like to become a buddha” – and the master hits him hard.

The man says, ”But why? Why are you hitting me? What wrong have I asked?” And the master says, ”You are a buddha, and you want to become a buddha? That’s impossible!” A buddha trying to become a buddha is impossible. Hence a good hit was needed to bring you back home, to bring you back to your senses... that you are asking nonsense. You are a buddha.

Sometimes it has happened that just the hit and the person has become enlightened. It must be the right time. It must be the man has been searching for many lives and is tired of the whole journey, weary of the whole journey, and was ready – as if the last straw was needed for the camel to drop down, and the hit worked as the last straw.

But this is true – you are already that which you are seeking.

The seeker is the sought.

And the goal is not somewhere far away in the future. It is just underneath your feet. It is exactly where you are standing. You may take time to realize it, you may take lives to realize it, but that doesn’t make any difference. The day you realize, you will laugh at the whole foolishness of it – that it was just underneath your feet.

MEDIOCRITY IS GONE. MIND IS CLEAR OF LIMITATION. I SEEK NO STATE OF

ENLIGHTENMENT. NEITHER DO I REMAIN WHERE NO ENLIGHTENMENT EXISTS.

All states are transcended:

enlightenment, no-enlightenment; the world, nirvana – all are transcended.

SINCE I LINGER IN NEITHER CONDITION, EYES CANNOT SEE ME.

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This eighth picture has nothing in it: a circle with nothing inside; neither the bull nor the seeker after the bull. Whip, rope, bull, the fighter, all have disappeared. Pure emptiness.

This eighth picture was the last Taoist picture, because Taoism could not see what more could happen. Finished! Everything has disappeared. No-thing has happened, now what more can happen? Everything has been transcended. Pure transcendence has happened, now what more can happen? But Kakuan created two more pictures – must have been a great creator – and those will be the remaining two pictures we will be discussing. But this is the last Taoist picture.

This is the difference between Tao and Zen, and this is the difference between Buddhism and Zen also. Buddha would also have liked the eighth to be the last. His disciples, Bodhidharma and Kakuan and Baso, have gone a little farther than the master. Zen is not just Buddhism, it is more than Buddhism. It is the ultimate flowering – as if Buddha also has been improved. A few touches, master touches, and the whole face has changed.

Zen brings a totally new form of religion to the world.

Zen is going to be the religion of the future of humanity, because it teaches how to renounce and it teaches how to renounce renouncing also. It teaches how to go beyond the world, and it teaches how to go beyond the beyond. It looks paradoxical but it is not, because when you go beyond the beyond you are back in the world; the circle is complete.

With Buddha the circle remains a little incomplete. Nirvana remains nirvana, the world remains the world – separated. The enlightened man remains enlightened, the unenlightened remains unenlightened – separate. Zen bridges them. The ultimate flowering is when a man is neither enlightened nor not enlightened – beyond categories. He lives in the world and yet does not live in the world. He lives in the world but the world does not live in him. He has become the lotus flower.

Be a lotus flower. Be in the water, and let not the water touch you.

Going to the Himalayas and being pure there is not very difficult. What else can you do? You have to be pure; it is almost helplessness.

Bring your Himalayas back into the world. Let your Himalayas be herenow in the world, in the marketplace, and then there is the criterion, the test.

The real criterion is in the world. If you have really attained to nirvana you will come back to the world, because now there is no fear. Now you can be anywhere. Now even hell is heaven and darkness is light and death is life. Now nothing can distract you. Your attainment is total, perfect, ultimate.

Be a lotus flower!

Enough for today.

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9 March 1976 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IT SEEMS AS IF EVERYTHING I PERCEIVE IN OR OUT OF MEDITATION IS MY OWN CREATION

OR PROJECTION. I CAN’T DISTINGUISH BETWEEN WHAT I SEE, FEEL OR AM CREATING.

OSHO, WHAT IS?

There is no need to distinguish between thoughts, dreams and reality. If you try, you will feel more confused. There is no way to distinguish, because as far as mind is concerned everything appears in the mind as a thought. It may be real, it may not be real; but the moment anything appears in the mind it appears in the form of thought.

You cannot distinguish, and there is no need. And don’t go on that journey, because that journey becomes a journey of thinking, and meditation is lost. Rather, on the contrary, remain centered in your witnessing. Don’t be worried by the objects in the mind; whatsoever they are, they are mind stuff. You simply remain more centered in your witnessing. Just be the watcher. Don’t try to distinguish. Whatsoever appears in the mind, just watch it. Watch it appearing, watch it being there, watch it disappearing.

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dreams, reality – all. Suddenly you are in emptiness; there is no object for you. In the mind there is nothing – pure emptiness. Then open your eyes and look: whatsoever there is, is real.

When you are a witness and the mind has completely dropped, then only is known that which is –

call it God, the real, the truth, or whatsoever you like to call it. Mind will never allow you to know the real. Mind is the disturbance. And if you get too much caught in it, then you will be trying to solve puzzles. You can go on solving and creating and solving and creating new ones, but it never comes to any end. Thinking is not going to lead you to reality; a no-thought awareness is. So don’t try to distinguish. Just watch, irrespective of what it is. Mind is the unreal.

For example: if you are standing before a mirror, something appears in the mirror. It may be real; it may be a reflection of something real outside the mirror, but in the mirror it is just a reflection; it may not be real at all. You may be seeing your own dream reflected. You may be projecting. That too is unreal. Whatsoever appears in the mirror is unreal, because the mirror simply reflects. The mind is a mirror, it only reflects. Drop the mind, drop the mirror, and then see. Whatsoever there is, is real, because now the disturbing factor is no longer there.

My whole effort here is to help you to become witnesses.

So please don’t try to get into thinking, contemplation; otherwise you will become more and more confused. And there is no way to get out of thinking through thinking. It goes on creating itself endlessly. The only way is not to get into it. So watch, and remain alert. Whatsoever passes the mind, don’t try to decide what it is. Watch as if everything is a dream. That is the concept of the Hindu notion of maya – illusion. Everything is unreal. So there is no need to be worried, there is no need to distinguish. Whatsoever appears in the mind, because it appears in the mind it is unreal.

Mind is the faculty of the unreal.

So drop the mind. Be more centered in the witnessing soul. Just be a watcher. By and by silence will pervade, will permeate your soul. By and by you will come closer and closer to home. By and by everything will fall in line and you will center into yourself. Any moment the centering happens.

Suddenly the mind is not there and your eyes are clear, clear of the mind. Then whatsoever you see is real. And this world that you have seen before will not be there as you have seen it before. It will be totally new. It will be something never known before. Everything will be the same and yet not the same – because you have changed. You are no more drunk with the mind. You are alert, aware.

So, let me say it in this way: the more aware you are, the more reality you can know; the less aware, the less is the possibility to know the reality. So the basic thing hangs on being aware. If you are totally aware, whatsoever you know is the reality.

The second question:

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO, WE LIKE LIFE AND ITS ENJOYMENTS AND THINK THAT WE BELONG TO

THE HALFHEARTED, YET WE REALLY DON’T WANT TO GO UNLESS YOU KICK US OUT.

Then you must have misunderstood me. I am not against life. I am not against any enjoyment. In fact, what I am saying is that the way you are living, you are not enjoying life. The way you are living, you only dream that you enjoy. You simply suffer. You remain miserable. You simply hope.

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Hope is not enjoyment. Hope is just a trick of the mind to console, to somehow convince oneself that today is gone but tomorrow everything is going to be good. Today one is in misery, tomorrow one will not be in misery. One dreams, hopes, projects.

A man of real enjoyment is herenow. He never thinks of the morrow, there is no need to think of the morrow. If you are really happy you never think of the past, you never think of the future.

Who bothers? for what? Your whole energy moves herenow, becomes an infinite dance of bliss, happiness, celebration.

I am not against life. I am not against enjoying it. If you have understood me that way, you have misunderstood me. My religion is of celebration. My religion is of delight. My religion is of dance.

I don’t want you to worship any god who cannot dance; then he is no more a god. I want to teach you how to live life so intensely, so passionately, that you live it and yet you don’t cling to it, because clinging always shows a miserable mind. You cling to things only if you are not living them well.

So the first thing: as I see you, I see you miserable. You may be thinking you are enjoying life.

Think again, meditate on the fact – are you really enjoying it? If you are enjoying it, then there is no problem. Enjoy it with my blessings. But I know you are not enjoying it. You simply believe...

because to see the naked fact of your misery will be too much, unbearable. So you go on pretending to yourself that you are enjoying life.

You go on smiling to hide your tears. You go on dressing yourself, painting yourself, to hide your wounds. You go on somehow, deceiving others and deceiving yourself that you are happy. It is not so. If you are happy, you have attained; then there is no need to meditate. If you are happy, then there is no need for any religion for you.

Religion is needed as a means; religion is not the end. It is a method for those who are not yet happy, for those who are still in misery, in darkness, who are still in anguish and anxiety.

But I know: the anxiety is so much that you need a shelter, the anguish is so much that you need a dream, so that somehow you can hope – hope for the future, the tomorrow.

Your heaven and your happiness is always somewhere else; it is never where you are. Real happiness is always here, it is always now. It knows no other time and no other space. If you are really happy, only happiness exists; you don’t exist. Remember it: only in misery, you and misery – two things – exist. In happiness, only happiness.

Happiness is non-dual, what we call in India adwait. Misery is dual. In misery you are always two.

Misery is a division of your being; cut apart, you are not an organic unity. Something goes against you. Something is there you never wanted to be there, but it is there, a thorn in the flesh. You suffer it in the hope that tomorrow it will not be so. But remember your yesterday? Your yesterday was also the same, and you were waiting for today because this today was tomorrow then. Now it has come.

Nothing has happened. In the same way your other tomorrows will go on coming, but they always come as todays, they never come as tomorrow.

Tomorrow never comes. It cannot come by its very nature; it is just a dream on the horizon. You can think about it but you cannot live it. It is a falsity. You think you are enjoying it? Rethink it, because The Search

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I don’t see it. I look inside you and I find you miserable there – hiding it, but from whom are you hiding? And what is the point of hiding it? The more you hide it, the more it will become difficult to get rid of it; because the more you hide it, the deeper it goes. The deeper it goes, the more it poisons your very being; the very source of your life becomes more and more poisoned. Misery spreads. It becomes almost a part of you and then you don’t know how to get rid of it.

So the first thing: I am for life, all for life, and all for enjoyment. I am not for somber seriousness, I am not for sadness. I am against all those religions which go on teaching people to be serious. God is not serious; otherwise flowers won’t exist. God is not serious; otherwise birds won’t be able to sing.

God is tremendously in fun – that’s why we say in India that the creation is not a creation in fact but a play, a leela.

God is playing, he is like a child running hither and thither. Out of sheer energy, overflowing, enjoying, dancing a thousand and one dances, singing a thousand and one songs – never exhausted, he goes on innovating, goes on peopling the earth. Each person is his new way of dance and each person is his new effort to sing again, to love again, to live again. Each person is again a project, again an effort. He is never tired. Infinite is his play.

God is not serious. God is not Christian. He does not live in a church. He is festive. Look at life: it is a constant festivity. Listen to these birds... a continuous festivity. See the trees go on flowering, the sun and the moon and the stars. From the lowest to the highest, it is the same rhythm of joy. Except for man nobody seems to be serious. Except for man, nobody seems to be worried and anxious.

Except for man, the whole of life is fun.

No, I am not for seriousness. I am absolutely against it. I would like you to be playful. Listen to me well: I would like you even to pray as fun. Once seriousness enters in your prayer, it is already dead.

I would like you to meditate like love – a subtle delight, a continuous delight in just being here, in just being alive.

I am not against enjoyment, but I don’t see that you are enjoying; hence meditation is needed.

Meditation is to make you clean of your seriousness. Meditation is to make you aware of your deadliness. Meditation is to help you get rid of all the hangovers of the past, and all the projections and dreams of the future, so that you can be herenow, simply, spontaneously.

Meditation is to help you to enjoy so tremendously that you disappear in that enjoyment. If you remain, misery remains. Let me say it in this way: you are the misery. If you are, seriousness continues.

Wherever you are, immediately you create a serious, somber climate around you; something is already dying. You are your death. You are the disease.

When you are enjoying, dancing, loving, or just sitting doing nothing, you are simply happy for no reason at all. And happiness needs no reason. If you are looking for reasons, you will never be happy. Happiness needs no cause; it cannot be caused. You cannot make it part of the world of cause and effect. It is absolutely illogical. If you want to be happy, be happy! Don’t wait, don’t arrange – there is no need for any arrangement. You are capable of being happy just as you are.

Nothing is lacking. If you can learn this much from me, you have learnt all, my whole art.

Happiness needs no cause. The cause is created by your misery. The misery says, ”Today I am miserable, how right now can I be happy? First, preparations have to be made. Of course, then time The Search

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will be needed, so tomorrow when everything is ready I will be happy. I have to find a beautiful wife; I have to find the perfect husband. I have to find a good house, a big car... this and that. This is possible only tomorrow. Right now, how is it possible? Time will be needed.” This is the trick of the miserable mind.

The miserable mind says time is needed. The miserable mind lives in time, depends on time.

Happiness has nothing to do with time. Just now, just herenow, please try to see the point. It is a question of seeing it. If you become a little alert you can see it right now. It is a realization.

Right now, who is barring your path?

And if you are thinking that before you can be happy you have to find a perfect wife... it looks logical: how can you be happy without a perfect wife? But have you ever heard about any perfect wife?

Have you ever heard about any perfect husband, a perfect house or a perfect car? All illusions.

I have heard about one man who was searching and searching and searching. He reached seventy, and somebody asked, ”Is your search not over? When are you going to get settled?” He said, ”I am in search of a perfect wife.”

”Seventy years have passed. Death is already knocking on the door. When will you settle?” He said, ”What can I do? How can you be happy without a perfect wife?” The friend asked, ”But you have been searching so long, couldn’t you find one?” He said, ”Yes, once I did find one woman.”

Then the man said, ”Then why didn’t you marry her?” And the seventy-year-old seeker became very sad. He said, ”It was difficult: she was also in search of a perfect husband!”

Perfection is a mind-demand, an ego-trip. Life is beautifully imperfect. Once you understand this, you start enjoying right now. And the more you enjoy, the more you become capable of enjoying.

Let me tell you: happiness needs no cause – happiness needs only a habit of enjoying, just a natural quality, a capacity to enjoy. Nothing else is needed. And that capacity comes only by enjoying; by nothing else can it come. If you enjoy, you become more capable of enjoyment. The more you become capable, the more you enjoy. And this goes on and on; it reaches a higher and higher crescendo, a higher and higher peak.

Every moment comes out of this moment. The next moment will come out of this moment. If you have lived this moment totally, loved, delighted, the next moment will come out of this moment, and you will be born out of this moment. The next moment will open more possibilities and it will make you more capable.

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Happiness is a capacity which you already have, but you have never functioned with it. It is as if a child has never been allowed to walk on his feet and he has become crippled. Not that he has not the capacity to walk, but he has never been allowed. The mother was too afraid he may fall down, so now he continues walking on all fours, because of fear. Every child is born to be happy as naturally as every child is born to walk. There is nothing else to it.

So your question is: ”We like life and enjoyments” – not as much as I do; otherwise, you would be a hundred percent in it – ”and think that we belong to the halfhearted.” You belong to the halfhearted because you have not loved life totally.

Never think about my

meditations as something other than life; never make them the opposite of life. I am not trying to give you coins other than life itself. I am not trying to make you convinced of some journey other than life. Life is the journey. Life is the goal.

Religion is not a separate journey. It is, really, to move in life so totally that life starts revealing all its secrets – God, its innermost secret. Once you love and live life, it reveals more and more. Suddenly, one day, it reveals its secretmost center: God.

Loving life, one day you love God. Living life, one day you live God.

So don’t be halfhearted. Be totally in life. And I am not here to distract you from your life. It has already been done. The whole of humanity is suffering because of that. Religions have proved a calamity because they tried to make goals opposite to life, diametrically opposite to life.

George Gurdjieff used to say that all religions are against God. He seems to be absolutely right.

Just think about religions: they all seem to be against God – against life means against God.

God is not against life, this much is certain; otherwise, life would have ceased a long time ago. Your mahatmas may be against life, but God is not. Your mahatmas go on teaching you: Renounce! and God goes on creating more and more life. He doesn’t seem to be an escapist, a renouncer; he seems to be tremendously and deeply involved and committed to life. His involvement is eternal.

Just think: within a life of seventy or eighty years, you are fed up and tired and you are thinking to escape and go to the Himalayas – and God has been for eternity and is not tired yet. He does not know what tiredness is; the energy is still fresh and young. It is as if it is in the beginning right now.

The past is not carried. Each moment is a new creation.

If you become religious in my sense of the term, you will not renounce life. You will renounce yourself, not life. You will drop yourself and be totally one with life, so no division exists. The ’I’, the ego, has to be dropped, not life.

The third question:

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHATSOEVER YOU ARE TELLING US, FROM TIME TO TIME IT APPEALS TO THE MIND, AND

SOMETHING IN ME WANTS TO FOLLOW IT. BUT STILL I FIND MYSELF NEVER PRACTICING

IT. WHY IS IT SO, OSHO?

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The mind may like to follow me, but mind is impotent. Mind is a very small part, and it has no will. It dreams well, it thinks well, it plans well, but it has no will. It cannot act. As far as action is concerned, mind is a coward. In thinking, it is very brave; in action, it is absolutely cowardly. So when you listen to me, if you only think about me, and whatsoever I say you think about it, the mind will say: Perfectly true! Very good! This is what I always wanted. But you will never practice it.

So don’t listen to me from the mind. There is another way of listening. Listen to me as a total being, not only from the mind; listen to me from your very guts. Only then will you practice what I am saying; otherwise, you will remain divided. The mind will think one thing and you will go on doing just the opposite. Then you will repent, and then you will feel guilty. Then it is better not to listen to me at all, because I am not here to create guilt in you. That will be a sin. To create guilt in anybody is a sin. So remember: I will not be responsible for it – you are creating it yourself.

Either listen to me as a total organic unity – your blood also listens, your heartbeats also listen, your bones, your marrow, your guts, you listen to me as a total being – then, only then will you be able to practice it. In fact, to say ”you will be able” is not right – you will practice it. If you have heard me as a total unitary being, you have already started practicing it. There will be no need to make a conscious effort to practice it; you will find it. It has moved into your bloodstream, it has become part of you. You cannot do other than practice it.

So listen to me rightly, and when I say listen to me rightly I mean: don’t listen to me from the head.

The head is the culprit, because the head has found techniques of listening and it doesn’t allow the whole being to be aware of what is happening here. It does not expose your whole being to me.

You listen from the head, hiding behind just a narrow slit, a small hole just like a keyhole. And you go on collecting whatsoever I am saying. You are not drinking and eating me, you are not digesting me; otherwise the question of practice will never arise. You just go on thinking about me, what I am saying; you go on interpreting, making your own theories, explanations, comments, and then you are hung up in the head. Then you come to a decision. But the head has no power to implement it; the head is not the executive force in you. The head has no will, it is impotent. It can think, but it can never implement.

That’s why thinkers go on thinking. If you see their lives, you will simply be surprised. It seems unbelievable! Their thinking is very rich and their lives absolutely poor. They also cannot decide about small things; their thinking remains indecisive.

It happened in the life of a great German thinker, Immanuel Kant: a woman fell in love with him and she waited and waited that some day he would ask for her hand. But he would talk of a thousand and one things, great things, philosophical speculations, but he would never ask for her hand. Finally, tired, she herself asked, ”I would like to get married to you.” He became very puzzled. He said, ”Let me think. I cannot do anything without thinking.” And the story goes that he started thinking. One day he knocked at the woman’s house – he had decided to get married, he had decided to say yes, but when he asked the father if he could see his daughter, the father said, ”But she is already married, and she has two children by now! Where have you been all this time?”

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Almost seven years had passed.

He was thinking and thinking and thinking.

His diaries still

exist; he had found three hundred and fifty-four reasons for marriage and three hundred and fifty reasons against marriage. Because there were four reasons more for marriage, he decided that now something had to be done – but it was too late.

The life of thinking is a bogus life. It has no substratum in it. It is a life of limbo: neither of the earth nor of the sky, just in between.

If you listen to me from the head, this problem is going to haunt you your whole life. The head will say yes, then the problem will arise: how to practice it? And your whole being has not heard about it, and the whole being will go on moving its own way. Your whole being will not bother about your head – it doesn’t bother. In fact, your whole being never listens to your head. It gives your head the opportunity to think, but whenever a question of decision arises, your wholeness comes to a decision, not your head. You decide: Now no more anger, enough is enough! It is always bad and it poisons and leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and it simply creates more trouble and solves nothing.

Your head decides: No more anger, now I make a decision! – and then next day you are angry.

What happened? Your whole being has not even heard about the decision. Your bones, your blood, your guts, are not even aware of your decision.

It is a luxury to think. Unless you hear me from your wholeness, not as thinking beings... if you throb with me, if your heart beats with me, if you fall in rhythm with me, then there will be no need; this problem will never arise: how to practice? You will practice. Suddenly you will see you are practicing.

If something goes true to your being, if something is felt by your totality as truth, it is already on the way to being practiced. You have digested it, and then it never creates guilt.

This question of guilt has to be understood; otherwise, you will listen to me and you will not be able to follow. Then you will feel guilty. And I am here to make you happy, not to make you guilty. A guilty person is an ill person. A guilty person is a poisoned person. A guilty person is not in harmony; he is in an inner conflict. He wants to do something and is always doing something else, just the opposite. The rift grows bigger and bigger, and the bridge becomes more and more impossible.

Guilt creates schizophrenia: you become two persons, or even many. You become a crowd; you become polypsychic – you lose unity.

Listen to me from your whole heart. Absorb me. Otherwise it is better not to listen to me, to forget all about me. But please don’t feel guilty.

If you have listened rightly, if you have listened at all, then the question of practice never arises. You are practicing it. It is as natural as when if you want to go out, you go out through the door, not through the wall. You see the door, you simply get out by the door. You don’t even think where the door is, you don’t ask: Where is the door? You don’t take a decision that: This time I am going to go through the door, not through the wall; that, I am going to stick to my decision whatsoever happens; whatsoever the temptation, I am not going through the wall – I will go through the gate.

If you do such things, that simply shows that you are mad. And you will go through the wall, you will not go through the gate. The wall is much too tempting; you are fascinated, obsessed.

Understanding brings its own practice. Understanding is enough. If you understand me, then there is no problem. So if the problem of practice arises, I am not going to tell you to make more forced The Search

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efforts. No. Drop all efforts. Try again to understand me. You have missed in the first place; you have missed the very thing, the very seed, which brings practice spontaneously.

Listen to me again. Listen to me very relaxed. When the head listens, one is very attentive, concentrated; there is a tension.

Listen to me very relaxed.

Allow me to surround you from

everywhere. Let me be a climate surrounding you from everywhere. And just allow me in, soak me in; be like a sponge – not attentive, relaxed, like a sponge, so you can drink whatsoever I am saying. There is no need to think about it; drink it. Let it become a part of your being. And then you will see that you are never following me.

If the understanding is there, you always follow yourself. The guilt is not created and the follower is not created. The guilt is not created and the conflict – how to practice it – is not created. Then you are not a follower. You become my lovers but not my followers – and that is a totally different dimension. And if you find some day that there is something which the head says has to be followed and done, practiced, and you are not doing it, don’t make any effort to practice it. Try to listen to it again. Go from the very first moment of understanding again; start from the very beginning.

This is a trick of the mind. First it misleads you – just verbal, intellectual understanding, and it gives you an impression that you have understood. Secondly, it says: Now practice! – and you cannot practice because you have not soaked it in; it has not yet become part of you, it is not integral to you. It is something foreign, alien. How can you practice it? It becomes a load, a burden. Then the head says: You are guilty! You understand and you don’t do it. So now, whatsoever you do, you will not feel good. And this, the understanding that you think you have got, cannot be practiced, so you will feel bad. That’s how so many millions of people remain in guilt, in sin, burdened, crushed under the burden.

Drop it! That dimension is wrong. Start listening to me again. There is no need to understand me intellectually. I am not an intellectual, and I am not teaching some doctrines to you. I am simply allowing you to participate in my being, to get in rapport with me, to get in tune with me.

The whole effort is so that you can find a certain harmony between me and you, so that you can become partners with me, sharers with me of something unknown that has happened to me, and is possible to happen to you. I want to hold your hand. I want to give you courage, not intellectual understanding. I want to give you life. I want to share something which is overflowing in me.

So don’t listen from the head; that is the wrong point to listen from. In Zen they say: Listen from the belly. That is better. Try it sometime: listen to me from the belly. That is better than the head. In Tao they say: listen from the bottom of your feet. That is even better – because if you listen from the bottom of your feet, to travel from the feet to the head it will pass through your whole being. If you listen from the belly, that too is very good; at least it will be heard.from the middle, from the very center.

But, I tell you: listen to me as a whole. There is no need to listen from the bottom of the feet or from the belly or from the head. Just listen to me as a whole being.

For example, if you are in danger and somebody is running behind you with a sword, how will you run? Just with your head? Just with your feet? Just with your belly? No, you will run as a total unit. You will forget completely where the head is and where the feet are and where the belly is.

Everything will be forgotten. You will become a total unity. You will run as one.

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That is the way to be here with me. Soak me in, absorb me, and then there is no problem of practicing me. It will start affecting you. It will start changing you. You will be surprised: suddenly you will see you have practiced it. Somebody was angry and there was no anger in you; you could remain calm and serene. Suddenly you have practiced it; not that you tried to practice it – it has become part of your being, it happened.

You will be surprised: if the understanding is true, rather than feeling guilty, you will feel many, many surprises – at your own behavior, at your own responses. In the same old situation, somebody is insulting you, and you will not feel anything at all. It is as if it goes just through you, never hits anywhere; just passes, does not leave a wound, does not even scratch you! And you can smile and you can look back... what has happened? A miracle! Understanding is miraculous. It is the only miracle there is.

If you have understood me, you will find at every point of your life, on every step, surprises waiting for you. You will not be able to believe that ”this is happening to me!” – because you can expect only the old, and this is new, absolutely new. You will start falling in love with yourself.

A new being is arising.

The fourth question:

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

I AM NOT ALWAYS CLEAR ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEAKING AND OVERFLOWING.

COULD YOU GIVE A FEW POINTERS PLEASE?

Mind is always trying to confuse you – because in your confusion is the power of the mind. The more confused you are, the more you have to listen to the mind. If you attain clarity, then the very function of the mind is finished. That’s why the mind never goes on holiday.

I know one man who is a big officer. I was going to the Himalayas once and I asked him to come with me. He said, ”That’s impossible! I cannot go on a holiday.” I said, ”Why?” I had never seen him go on holiday. I said, ”What is the matter?” He said, ”I am absolutely useless in the office and I don’t want anybody to know it. I have to be there continuously to create the impression that I am needed. Once I am on holiday, everybody will become aware that I am not needed at all. I cannot go on a holiday.” That is the situation with the mind. The mind never leaves you even for a single moment. It goes on confusing you – because once you are confused, mind is at ease. You have to ask the mind what the way is. Then the mind becomes your guru. In fact, in simple matters when confusion seems to be impossible, there also it creates confusion. For example, this question:

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Now, the phenomena are so diametrically opposite that there cannot be any confusion. There is no possibility. But the mind can create it....

When you leak, you feel tired. When you are overflowing, you feel fulfilled. Overflowing is a delight –

sheer delight, just delight and nothing else. Just as trees bloom in flowers, that is overflowing. When the tree has too much, only then does it flower; otherwise it cannot flower. When it has too much and cannot contain it, it has to share. It is an unburdening. Look at the tree when it is in bloom: the whole tree seems to be relaxed, unburdened, relieved, happy.

Whenever you overflow, whenever you share, you never feel tired afterwards. In fact you feel more energetic, more in tune, more at home. Everything settles, unburdened. You grow wings, you can fly in the sky. You are so weightless, gravitation disappears. The feeling is so totally different from the feeling when you leak, dissipate, and energy is lost. It is almost impossible to confuse them. How can you confuse them? They are so totally different. But the mind can create a confusion.

The whole function of the mind is to create confusion. It creates doubts – where no doubts can exist, it creates doubts. It creates ghosts, imaginary, and it creates a puzzle. Then, of course, you have to ask the mind itself: What is the way out?

From sexual orgasm you can take an example of the difference of the feeling. If you are making love to a woman or to a man mechanically, and there is no sharing and love – there is no love in it, just a mechanical habit, or just because physicians say it is hygienic, it is needed for the body, or some other nonsense – then you will dissipate, then the energy will simply leak out of you. And afterwards you will feel simply tired, not fulfilled, frustrated. It will leave you weaker, not stronger. That’s why so many people feel frustrated after making love, and so many people decide to get rid of making love

– because it seems so useless.

But if you love the person and you are overflowing, and you want to share your energies with the other person.... It is not sexual at all in that moment, you don’t have any idea of sex; your mind is not there at all, it happens spontaneously. You don’t plan it in the head, you don’t go through a rehearsal; you don’t do it, in fact, it happens; you are not the doer, you become vehicles. You are possessed by something greater than you, higher than you, bigger than you. Then it is not a leakage. Then you are overflowing from all over. It is not local, it is not sexual, it is total. Then you attain to peace, serenity, calmness. Then you attain to fulfillment. That’s what orgasm is. Rarely do people attain to orgasm.

This will not leave you weaker, this will make you stronger. And you will not decide in the wake of your lovemaking that you are against sex, that the so-called saints are true and right and you should have listened to them before; that now you decide to take a vow of brahmacharya, or celibacy, and you decide to become a Catholic monk and move to a monastery – no. If there has been an orgasmic flow and your energy has been simply shared and has overflowed, you will feel grateful towards God. A prayer will arise in you. You will feel so fulfilled that you would like to give thanks.

You will feel so glad, so blessed, that in that moment you can bless the whole world. Your face, your body, your mind, everything will be at a calm altitude – a new plenitude of being. A benediction will surround you.

Prayer arises in such moments of gratefulness, gratitude.

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One becomes religious in such moments.

To me, religion has arisen out of deep love orgasm. Hence, to me, Tantra remains the ultimate in religion, the last word, because that is the highest peak man has attained of at-onement, the highest peak where ego disperses, disappears. One is, but one is not limited. Where one is not blocked, but one is a flow; where energy is flowing and moving, and one becomes just a center of so many crisscrossing ways, pathways of energy – the ego disappears. The ego is very solid, like a stone. In love one becomes liquid, flows, flows all over.

Leakage is frustrating – whatsoever type of leakage: sexual, non-sexual, but it is tiring. Sometimes somebody is with you and you feel tired – just being with the person, just the presence of the person.

You don’t want the person, you are bored, and then you start leaking, then you start dissipating your energy. Then when the person is gone, you feel simply tired, shaken, as if he has taken too much out of you and he has not given anything in return. He simply leaves you weak. But if you love the person, if you are happy that the person has come to see you and meet you, you feel enhanced.

Energy becomes more alive, you feel more vital. You feel rejuvenated.

There can be no misunderstanding between the two.

Avoid leakages, and remain available for overflows. And by and by you will become capable of only overflow – because leakage is an attitude of the mind. If a person is boring to you and he is saying things which you don’t want to listen to, you will feel dissipated, a leakage will happen. Just change your attitude.

Right in the middle of the conversation, you were just getting bored. Just change the attitude and start listening to the person. He is also a mysterious person – maybe a little boring, but he is also God. Maybe a little boring.... Listen to him with a new attitude. Shake yourself, give yourself a jerk; drop your old attitude and start listening to his story. Maybe there is something in it. And immediately you will see: energy is no more dissipating.

It is your attitude. Anything can be energy-giving and anything can be energy-destroying; it depends on the attitude. A religious person is one – that’s my definition of a religious person – who is always overflowing whatsoever the situation. Even if death comes to him, death will find him in a deep orgasm.

Ordinarily, even life does not find you in deep orgasm, even love has not found you in deep orgasm.

But a man like Socrates, even death finds him in orgasm – ready, receptive, dancing, as if death is bringing so many mysteries. It is bringing! That, too, is a face of God – maybe dark, but darkness is also divine. You are going to disappear, but disappearance is as mysterious as appearance.

Birth and death are two aspects of the same coin.

Socrates is thrilled! You are not thrilled with life and he is thrilled with death. His disciples started crying and weeping, and he said, ”Stop! You can do that when I am gone. Don’t waste these moments. These moments are momentous. Let us receive death – it only comes once in life. It is a rare guest. It is not every day that it comes. And I am fortunate that it is coming in a predictable way; otherwise it comes unpredicted and one cannot welcome it.” The Search

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He was going to be poisoned, he was sentenced to death by the Greeks. Six o’clock exactly and he will drink the poison – and he is waiting like a thrilled child. The disciples could not believe it! He took the poison and he started walking in the room, and somebody asked, ”What are you doing?” He said, ”I am trying to be alert, to be awake, so death does not find me asleep.” Then it became impossible to walk. The legs were giving way. So he laid himself down on the couch, and he started saying, ”Now my feet are numb; it seems the feet are dead. But I am still as much as I was before. Nothing has been taken away from me – I remain whole!” And he was happy.

And then he said, ”Both my legs are gone – but listen to me: I still remain the whole. That means only the body is being taken away. My consciousness remains untouched, unscratched. It seems death is not going to kill me.”

This is the attitude of a religious man... and it depends on your attitude. Your whole life can be an orgasmic flow. Not only love – each moment of your life can be an orgasmic flow. Then you are overflowing. And remember one basic, fundamental rule: the more you overflow, the more you are given. It is as if you go on taking water from a well: the more water you take out of it, the more fresh water is flowing in – constantly. If you stop taking out the water, the water will become stale, dead, and fresh sources will not be supplying more; there will be no need.

Share! Share as much as you can, and the more you will be given.

Jesus says: If you cling you will lose; if you share you will get. Don’t be a miser – share! And feel grateful: whosoever accepts your energy, feel grateful to him because he could have rejected you. Feel grateful, and go on sharing. And you will see: out of your inner springs, fresh water is continuously coming in. The more you share, the younger you remain. The more you share, the more virgin you remain. The more you share, the more fresh, the more pure.

And if you don’t share, then you start leaking. If you don’t share, if you are not happy in sharing, you become a miser. A miser leaks. Be a spendthrift as far as life energy is concerned. A miser starts leaking and feels frustrated and always miserable, because something has been taken away from him. And in this misery he shrinks; and because of his shrinking the inner sources, the inner springs cannot refill him.

It depends on you.

The distinction is absolutely clear. Let this be the criterion, after any energy contact – and the whole of life is energy contact. When you look at the tree there is an energy contact: your eyes meeting with the greenery of the tree, you have embraced the tree in a subtle way. You touch the rock and there is contact; energy has been shared. You look into the eyes of another human being, and there has been a communication. You say something, or you remain silent, but the communion continues continuously. It is each moment happening.

Now it depends on you whether you will make it a leakage. If it is a leakage, you will die a thousand deaths every day. It depends. If you make it an overflow, a hearty sharing, that you always wanted to give, an unburdening of your heart – as a flower gives its fragrance to the winds, and the lamp gives The Search

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its light to the night, and the clouds give their rains to the earth – if you go on sharing, your whole life becomes an immensely beautiful dance of energy. And each day, you will have a thousand and one new births.

Enough for today.

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Reaching the Source

10 March 1976 am in Buddha Hall

9. REACHING THE SOURCE

TOO MANY STEPS HAVE BEEN TAKEN RETURNING TO THE ROOT AND THE SOURCE.

BETTER TO HAVE BEEN BLIND AND DEAF FROM THE BEGINNING!

DWELLING IN ONE’S TRUE ABODE, UNCONCERNED WITH THAT WITHOUT – THE RIVER

FLOWS TRANQUILLY ON AND THE FLOWERS ARE RED.

COMMENT:

FROM THE BEGINNING, TRUTH IS CLEAR. POISED IN SILENCE, I OBSERVE THE FORMS OF

INTEGRATION AND DISINTEGRATION. ONE WHO IS NOT ATTACHED TO FORM NEED NOT BE

REFORMED. THE WATER IS EMERALD, THE MOUNTAIN IS INDIGO, AND I SEE THAT WHICH

IS CREATING AND THAT WHICH IS DESTROYING.

10. IN THE WORLD

BAREFOOTED AND NAKED OF BREAST,

I MINGLE WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD.

MY CLOTHES ARE RAGGED AND DUST-LADEN AND I AM EVER BLISSFUL.

I USE NO MAGIC TO EXTEND MY LIFE;

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NOW, BEFORE ME, THE TREES BECOME ALIVE.

COMMENT:

INSIDE MY GATE, A THOUSAND SAGES DO NOT KNOW ME. THE BEAUTY OF MY GARDEN IS

INVISIBLE. WHY SHOULD ONE SEARCH FOR THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE PATRIARCHS? I GO

TO THE MARKETPLACE WITH MY BOTTLE AND RETURN HOME WITH MY STAFF. I VISIT THE

WINE SHOP AND THE MARKET, AND EVERYONE I LOOK UPON BECOMES ENLIGHTENED.

Sat Prem came to me last night. Vipassana is on her deathbed. He was very worried, shaken, immensely shaken, and rightly so. The moment of death of someone you have loved deeply brings your own death into your mind. The moment of death is a great revelation. It makes you feel impotent, helpless. It makes you feel that you are not. The illusion of being disappears.

Sat Prem was crying. He is not a man to cry easily, he is not a man to feel helpless easily; tears will not come to him. But he was shaken. Anybody will be shaken – because suddenly you see that the ground underneath your feet has disappeared. You cannot do anything. Somebody is dying that you love. You would even like to give your life, but you cannot. Nothing can be done. One simply waits in deep impotence.

That moment can make you depressed, that moment can make you sad, or that moment can send you on a great journey for truth – a great journey in the search for the bull.

What is this life? If death comes and takes it, what is this life? What meaning does it carry if one is so impotent against death? And remember, not only is Vipassana on her deathbed – everybody is on his or her deathbed. After birth everybody is on his deathbed. There is no other way. All beds are deathbeds, because after birth only one thing is certain, and that is death.

You are also dying, not only Vipassana. Maybe you are a little farther away in the queue, but that is only a question of time. Somebody dies today, somebody tomorrow, somebody the day after tomorrow. What is the difference basically? Time cannot make much difference. Time can only create an illusion of life, but the life that ends in death is not, and cannot be, the real life. It must be a dream. I would like you to become aware of it; then your search for the bull starts.

The search for the bull is the search for the real life, the authentic life, which knows no death. Life is authentic only when it is eternal. Otherwise, what is the difference between a dream and what you call your life? In the night, deep asleep, a dream is as true as anything, as real – even more real than what you see with open eyes. By the morning it is gone; not even a trace is left. In the morning when you are awake you see it was a dream and not a reality. This dream of life continues for a few years; then suddenly one is awakened, and the whole life proves to be a dream.

Death is a great revelation. If there were no death there would have been no religion. It is because of death that religion exists. It is because of death that a Buddha was born. All buddhas are born because of the realization of death.

Buddha passed down a street and he came across a dead man. He asked his servant, the driver who was taking him in the chariot, ”What has happened to this man? What has happened to this man?”

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And the charioteer could not lie. He wanted to lie – that’s what we are doing to each other – he wanted to lie to this young prince: Why unnecessarily disturb him? He is so young now. Why should he be bothered about death?

The story is beautiful. It says that he was just going to lie and avoid it and give some explanation or other, but the gods in heaven were watching and they immediately came into his being; they possessed him: The truth must be spoken; otherwise this Gautam Siddhartha will miss. They forced the driver to speak the truth. And in spite of himself, the driver found himself saying, ”This man is dead, and everybody is going to be like that – even you, sir!”

”Even me?” Buddha asked. ”Then take me back home. Then there is nowhere to go, then this whole life is false. I must not waste my time; then I must seek the eternal.” That is the search for the bull.

Go, sit by the side of Vipassana – feel death. Don’t feel sorry for her. If you feel sorry for her, you miss the whole point. You miss a great opportunity, a great door. Don’t feel sorry for her; there is no need to feel sorry for her. She is perfectly beautiful. She is leaving this world with something gained inside.

The day she came to me, I became apprehensive and aware that her breathing was not right. Hence the name Vipassana. Vipassana means, awareness of breath. And I had told her to be as aware of her breath as possible. She was going to die – when was not important – and she was going to die by some deep breathing trouble. Her breathing was not rhythmic.

But she worked hard, and I am happy that she is dying with a certain integration, so she is not dying uselessly. Don’t feel sorry for her at all. You can, on the contrary, feel happy for her. She has worked hard. And whatsoever she has attained, she is going to carry into her other life. She has used this opportunity as well as possible – so whether she survives or dies is immaterial.

When you go and sit by her side, feel sorry for yourself. You are in the same boat, in the same plight. Death will knock on your door any day. Be ready. Before death comes, find the bull. Before death knocks, come back home. You should not be caught in the middle; otherwise this whole life disappears like a dream, and you are left in tremendous poverty, inner poverty.

The search for the bull is the search for the energy, the eternal energy, the very dynamic energy, of life. It knows no death. It passes through many deaths. Each death is a door for a new formation.

Each death is a cleansing. Each death is an unburdening. Each death simply relieves you of the old.

Life, real life, never dies. Then who dies? You die. The ’I’ dies, the ego dies. Ego is part of death; life is not. So if you can be egoless, then there is no death for you. If you can drop the ego consciously, you have conquered death. And in the search for the bull, the only thing that has to be done is to drop the ego by and by. If you are really aware, you can drop it in a single step. If you are not so much aware, you will have to drop it gradually. That depends on you. But one thing is certain: the ego has to be dropped. With the disappearance of the ego, death disappears. With the dropping of the ego, death is also dropped.

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So go and sit by the side of Vipassana. Soon she will disappear. Don’t feel sorry for her – feel sorry for yourself. Let death surround you. Have the taste of it. Feel helpless, impotent. Who is feeling helpless, and who is feeling impotent? The ego – because you see you cannot do anything. You would like to help her and you cannot. You would like her to survive, but nothing can be done.

Feel this impotence as deeply as possible.

And out of this helplessness, a certain awareness, a prayerfulness, a meditation, will arise. Use her death – it is an opportunity. Here with me, use everything as an opportunity.

She has used her life beautifully. I can say goodbye to her very happily so that she can come back soon. She will be coming on a higher plane. And this death is going to help her, because with this body more work is not possible now. Whatsoever work she could do she has done. A new, fresh body will be needed for further work.

And she is not fighting, she is not struggling. She is simply surrendering by and by – and that’s beautiful. She is in a letgo. If she fights, she may survive for a few days more. That’s why doctors are not going to be of much help, because she herself is accepting death. And when somebody accepts death then nothing can help, because deep down the person is ready to die. And that’s beautiful, that one is ready to die – because one is ready to die only when one has come to feel something which is beyond death, never before. When one has come to feel the taste of deathlessness, a little glimpse maybe, one knows that one is not going to die. One is going to die and yet one is not going to die. When one comes to know that, then one relaxes. Then where is the fight? What is the point?

One relaxes.

She is relaxing. By and by she will disappear. Use that opportunity! Be by her side. Sit silently.

Meditate. Let her death become a pointer to you, so that you don’t go on wasting your life. The same is going to happen to you.

Reaching The Source, the ninth sutra:

TOO MANY STEPS HAVE BEEN TAKEN

RETURNING TO THE ROOT AND THE SOURCE.

BETTER TO HAVE BEEN BLIND AND DEAF FROM THE BEGINNING!

DWELLING IN ONE’S TRUE ABODE, UNCONCERNED WITH THAT WITHOUT –

THE RIVER FLOWS TRANQUILLY ON AND THE FLOWERS ARE RED.

TOO MANY STEPS HAVE BEEN TAKEN.... In fact, there was no need to take so many steps. But this is realized only when you have come to the ninth point. When you reach home you will realize that this was possible in a single step. There was no need to take so many steps, there was no need to move so gradually, in degrees. A jump was possible.

People come to me and I tell them to take the jump. They say, ”But I will have to think.” How can you think for a jump? And if you think and you come to a decision by thinking, how is it going to be called a jump then?

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A jump is a jump into the unknown – unthought, uncontemplated, unplanned. A jump cannot be planned. You cannot prepare for it, you cannot think about pros and cons. You cannot be the decider. A jump is going out of the ego – doing something which has not been decided by the ego.

A jump is allowing the whole to take possession of you. A jump is discontinuous with you; it is not a continuity. If you think and then you come to a decision, it is a continuity. You may take sannyas then, but this will be the first step in a long series.

The sannyas that I was hoping for you was a single step. In one step you would have arrived home

– but you wanted to think. I can understand your problem also: how can you take something without thinking? How can you be so trusting? A jump needs trust. You cannot trust. You doubt; you have been trained for doubt. You have been trained to think about all the possibilities before you decide.

You have been trained to always remain in control.

You can take sannyas as a conclusion of your own thinking; then it is a continuity. The sannyas I was going to give you was more like death, or love. You cannot think about love – it happens. That’s why we have the expression in every language: falling in love. It is a fall – a fall from the ego, a fall from the head, a fall from control, a fall from continuity.

Yes, it is a fall. You are no more a part of your thinking, your continuity. Suddenly a gap appears. Or it is like death; you cannot do anything about it. It comes, it possesses you – it is not your decision.

But one day when you come nearer and nearer home, when your home is just in front of you, then you will realize:

TOO MANY STEPS HAVE BEEN TAKEN

RETURNING TO THE ROOT AND THE SOURCE.

BETTER TO HAVE BEEN BLIND AND DEAF FROM THE VERY BEGINNING!

That is the meaning of trust: better to have been blind and better to have been deaf from the very beginning. If you trust, your mind says: You are becoming a blind believer. Don’t be blind. Think about it, take time, then make the decision. Everything should be your decision.

Have you ever thought about it – that your birth was not your decision? Nobody asked in the first place. And even if somebody had wanted to ask, you were not there to be asked. Your birth came out of the unknown; out of nothingness you were born. It was not your decision. One day you will disappear again into the unknown. That will be your death. That will not be your decision. And in between these two, sometimes there will be glimpses of love; they will all be of the unknown.

Or if you are fortunate enough, and you try meditation and prayer, then again you will have a few glimpses of the unknown. They will not be something of your doing. In fact, your doing is the barrier.

There are things which can be done only by you, and there are things which can be done only when you are not there to do them. There are things which can be done only in a deep non-doing: birth, death, love, meditation. All that is beautiful happens to you – remember it. Let it become a constant remembrance: You cannot do these things.

TOO MANY STEPS HAVE BEEN TAKEN

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RETURNING TO THE ROOT AND THE SOURCE.

BETTER TO HAVE BEEN BLIND AND DEAF FROM THE VERY BEGINNING!

DWELLING IN ONE’S TRUE ABODE, UNCONCERNED WITH THAT WITHOUT –

THE RIVER FLOWS TRANQUILLY ON AND THE FLOWERS ARE RED.

Look at the river: unconcerned with whatsoever is happening all around, it flows on in deep tranquility, in deep calmness, undistracted by what is happening on the banks. Undistracted, it moves on. It remains tuned to its own nature, it never goes out of its nature. It remains true to itself.

Nothing distracts it, nothing calls it away, away from itself. Whatsoever happens in the world around, the river goes on being a river – true to itself, it goes on moving. Even if a war is going on, even if bombs are being dropped, whatsoever is happening, good or bad, the river remains true to itself. It goes on moving. Movement is its intrinsic nature. And tranquility is a shadow when you are true to yourself.

And watch the flowers on the trees... AND THE FLOWERS ARE RED. The trees are also true to themselves. No flower is trying in any way to imitate any other flower. There is no imitation, no competition, no jealousy. The red flower is just red, and tremendously happy in being red. It has never thought about being somebody else. Where has man been missing?

Man misses his true nature because of desire, imitation, jealousy, competition. Man is the only being on earth who is not true to himself, whose river is not in tune with itself; who is always moving somewhere else, who is always looking at somebody else; who is always trying to be somebody else. That’s the misery, the calamity. You can be only yourself. There is no other possibility, it simply does not exist. The sooner you understand it the better. You cannot be a Buddha, you cannot be a Jesus, and there is no need. You can be only yourself.

But everybody is trying to be somebody else. Hence we go on, away and away from the original source. The distance is created because of the desire. You see somebody moving in a beautiful car and you want the car. Not that that car is needed – just a moment before there was no need.

Suddenly, seeing somebody else moving in the car, a desire has arisen. If you had not seen the car, the desire would never have arisen. So it is not intrinsic to you, but something from the outside. It is as if the river was moving towards the ocean, and just on the bank the river has seen something and the flow is broken; the river does not want to go to the ocean now. Now, on this bank, she would like to cling to something, possess something. Now the river has moved away from its intrinsic nature.

It has fallen from its trueness, authenticity, from its truth.

You see somebody, an athlete, a beautiful body, ornamental, and suddenly a desire arises. You would like to have the same body, you would like to become Muhammad Ali – ”the greatest.” Or you see a beautiful man or a beautiful woman and you would like to become like that. Or you see a buddha, a tranquility of great understanding, and you would like to become like him. Remember one thing: you can be only yourself; there is no other way. All other ways simply lead you away from yourself.

Once you realize this the basic understanding has been achieved, and then immediately your river starts flowing. There are no blocks. People come to me and they say that they have so many blocks The Search

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here and there. All blocks exist because of deep-rooted desires to be something other than you can be. All blocks exist because energy becomes frozen – because the energy knows only one way to flow, that’s its natural flow.

Just think of a rose who has become neurotic and thinks to become a lotus. Now what will happen?

There will simply be misery, and in that misery the rose will not be able to become a rose. One thing is certain: the rose cannot become a lotus – that is absolutely certain. The rose will not be able to become a rose either; that too is almost certain, because now the whole desire will be going far away. The rose will dream of the lotus, and the rose will think of the lotus, and the rose will start condemning itself.

How can you grow if you condemn yourself? The rose will not be able to love itself. How can you grow if you cannot love yourself? The energy will not be flowing. Now there will be blocks. Now the rose will be constantly in trouble. One day there is a headache; another day there is something else.

The rose is ill.

Once the rose comes to understand that there is only one possibility, and that is to be a rose, and there is no need to be a lotus, and it is perfectly beautiful to be a rose – once the rose accepts itself and the condemnation disappears, once the rose loves itself, the grace returns, the dignity comes back. Now there are no blocks, they will melt. The rose will start flowing like a river. The rose will be red, happy, tremendously delighted in whatsoever is naturally available to it.

Roses never go neurotic. They laugh at man. Lotuses never go neurotic. The whole world laughs at man. Man is the only animal who goes neurotic. And the neurosis arises once you try to do something unnatural to yourself; then neurosis arises. Once you have an ideal, you are going to be neurotic.

You are the ideal, you are the destiny.

DWELLING IN ONE’S TRUE ABODE... that means just being oneself, not trying to be anybody else.

... UNCONCERNED WITH THAT WITHOUT –

THE RIVER FLOWS TRANQUILLY ON AND THE FLOWERS ARE RED.

The prose comment:

FROM THE BEGINNING, TRUTH IS CLEAR. POISED IN SILENCE, I OBSERVE THE FORMS OF

INTEGRATION AND DISINTEGRATION. ONE WHO IS NOT ATTACHED TO FORM NEED NOT BE

REFORMED. THE WATER IS EMERALD, THE MOUNTAIN IS INDIGO, AND I SEE THAT WHICH

IS CREATING AND THAT WHICH IS DESTROYING.

FROM THE BEGINNING, TRUTH IS CLEAR. From the beginning, truth is not hidden. From the beginning, truth is just in front of you. From the beginning, there is nothing other than the truth.

Something has gone wrong with you, not with the truth.

People come to me and they ask: Why is God invisible? I tell them: He is not. You are blind. Don’t say God is invisible. God is the all that surrounds you, within and without. God is not invisible – you The Search

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have lost the capacity to see. God is herenow. God is all that is. God is just a name for the totality, the whole. In millions of forms he is visible. In the flowing river, he is the flow. In the red flower, he is the redness.

God is not invisible. Somehow either you have gone blind or you have become too attached to your blinkers. You remain blindfolded. Your religions, your culture, your society, your conditionings, the civilization and all that nonsense just function as a blindfold. You are not allowed to open your eyes.

You have become accustomed to living with closed eyes. You have completely forgotten that you have eyes and that you can open them. You have become so afraid of opening your eyes, of seeing the truth, you have become so attuned to lies, that to see truth is going to be very devastating. Your whole image will fall down, will be shattered. Your whole house of playing cards will simply fall down and disappear. You have lived too much in dreams and desires, and you have become deep down afraid of the real.

Don’t say God is invisible. God is absolutely visible here and now.

FROM THE BEGINNING, TRUTH IS CLEAR.

Then where does man go astray? In trying to be something else, in trying to be somebody else, in trying to fulfill some ideals, in trying to go into the future and to become somebody. The ego trip leads you astray.

Drop all ideals. Drop all ideas of how you should be. The ’should’ is the greatest poison there is.

Just live naturally.

This is the uniqueness of Zen: it gives you no ideals, it helps you to be natural. It gives you no images so that you have to follow and imitate. Zen masters say: Even if you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately! And if you utter the name of Buddha, rinse your mouth. They know the exact message of Buddha, they have understood; hence they can be so hard. They look hard; they are not hard. They say you can be only yourself, so no imitation should be allowed. You should destroy all seeds for imitativeness; otherwise you will become a falsity, you will be a phony being.

Just be yourself. There is no other goal to be attained. Live alert, delightfully, and everything will be as it should be. There is no need to think about the ’should’. Truth will follow you like a shadow. You just settle down, relax in your naturalness, be spontaneous, be natural. Don’t live according to rules.

Let the rules come out of your naturalness.

Zen is the natural religion of man. It is almost religionless religion, godless religion. It is beyond ordinary morality.

FROM THE BEGINNING, TRUTH IS CLEAR. POISED IN SILENCE, I OBSERVE THE FORMS OF

INTEGRATION AND DISINTEGRATION.

If you simply remain natural, you become a witness. A desire arises, it integrates – you remain a witness. As it integrates, the same way it disintegrates. You need not do anything. Just like a wave arises in the ocean and falls back – no need to do anything. No need to fight, no need to struggle.

Forms arise and disappear, you remain a watcher. And you know well that no form is identical to you; you are not identified with any form.

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You were a child; that form came and disappeared. If you met your childhood somewhere you would not be able to recognize it. You became a young boy, a young girl – that form also disappeared. Now if you go and meet your youth somewhere, you will not be able to recognize it. You will become old –

that form will also disappear in death. Forms go on like waves, come and go, appear and disappear.

No need to be distracted by them. Anger comes and goes... nothing is to be done about it. If you can remain poised in your alertness, it cannot poison you. You remain aloof – close, very close, and yet aloof, far, far away.

Remain in the midst of forms, and yet remain alert that no form is identical with your being. Your being is not reducible to any form. Your being is pure awareness. It is just awareness, with no forms.

POISED IN SILENCE, I OBSERVE THE FORMS OF INTEGRATION AND DISINTEGRATION. ONE

WHO IS NOT ATTACHED TO FORM NEED NOT BE REFORMED.

This is beautiful: ONE WHO IS NOT ATTACHED TO FORM NEED NOT BE REFORMED. First you get attached to the form of anger, or greed, or jealousy, or possessiveness, or whatsoever. First you get identified with the form of anger, then the question arises: How to drop it? How to attain to non-anger? First you become attached to the form of greed, and then you start inquiring: How to be non-greedy? Now reform is needed. And this is moving in circles.

Zen says: In the first place, why be identified with any form? Rather than trying to make anger non-anger, violence non-violence, greed non-greed, why not get out of the identification in the first place? Watch the anger; don’t get identified with it. Suddenly you are neither angry nor non-angry, neither violent nor non-violent – you are the watcher. The violence and the non-violence, both are forms on the screen. You are the spectator. You have gone beyond. Now no reform is needed. Try to understand this basic, very basic thing.

Zen doesn’t teach you that you should practice brahmacharya, celibacy – no. It simply says: Don’t get identified with the form of sex. The real thing is to be done there. Once you are identified with the form of sex, then you are in a vicious circle. The first step has been wrongly taken; now you cannot arrive home. The first step has to be put right, so there is no need now to go to a saint and take a vow of brahmacharya. Your brahmacharya is going to be dangerous; it will be nothing but repression. And you will get more and more miserable, and sex will become more and more powerful. It will fascinate you more, it will attract you more. You will start living a very perverted life of sex. On the outside, brahmacharya; deep inside, the turmoil.

Zen says: Don’t be worried about brahmacharya; just don’t get identified with the form of sex. When the desire for sex arises, be a watcher. Don’t condemn it, because if you condemn you cannot be a watcher; you have become a party. Then you cannot be impartial, you are already prejudiced. Don’t condemn, don’t judge. Just remain alert with no judgment, because all judgments are subtle forms of identification. If you say it is bad you are already identified, you are already against it. It has taken possession of you already, it has entered in you. If you say it is good, of course, you are getting identified.

Don’t say good or bad, just don’t say anything. Can you remain alert when anger arises, sex arises, greed arises, without saying yes or no? Can you resist the temptation to say yes or no? Can you be just alert, taking note of it, that it is there, with no judgment? Then you have got the key. That is the Zen key. It is a master key; it unlocks all the locks there are.

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ONE WHO IS NOT ATTACHED TO FORM NEED NOT BE REFORMED. THE WATER IS EMERALD, THE MOUNTAIN IS INDIGO, AND I SEE THAT WHICH IS CREATING AND THAT WHICH IS

DESTROYING.

There is no problem really for a man of Zen – because he looks at things and accepts their naturalness. THE WATER IS EMERALD – what is the problem? THE MOUNTAIN IS INDIGO –

what is the problem? A flower is a flower, a thorn is a thorn. Things are what they are. What is the problem?

The problem arises when you start evaluating them. You say: If the water was not emerald, it would have been better. Now the problem arises. If you say: If the mountains were not indigo, it would have been better. Now you are getting into trouble.

The water is emerald, the mountains are indigo – accept the fact. Live with the fact, and don’t bring theories into it. Just go on watching your mind. It brings theories continuously. It does not allow you to accept anything. It goes on thinking: It should not be so, it should be so. It goes on bringing imagination in.

Watch... where is the problem?

Things are as they are. And if you accept this, if you understand this, there is nothing else to be done. You are back home. Then you go on watching and you go on enjoying. The scene is beautiful, the scene is tremendously beautiful – but don’t bring yourself into it. With your evaluation, judgment, the ego enters.

The child is restless, running all around. It has to be so, he is a child. Now you want him to sit silently, you want him to behave like an old man, and the problem has arisen. Now you can’t see that the child is a child. Now you are trying to make him into something which he is not. Now you will be in trouble, and you are creating trouble for the child also. Accept it!

Dogs are barking and you are meditating. Now don’t say that they are disturbing you. They are not concerned at all with you; they don’t even know that you are meditating. They are dogs – and barking is their meditation. You enjoy your meditation, let them enjoy their meditation.

Once you accept, suddenly the problem disappears. But deep down you go on evaluating: It would have been good if these dogs were not barking. But why should they not bark? They are dogs –

and they are enjoying it so tremendously. Just accept the fact, and you will see that the more you accept, the more their barking becomes non-distracting. Then suddenly they go on barking and you go on meditating and there is no clash. The clash arises out of your mind and attitude.

Everything is in its nature. You also be in your nature. And the world is perfectly good, the world is perfectly beautiful – it is the best world there can be.

The tenth sutra: In the World. The ninth sutra is: Reaching the Source. But whenever you reach the source, the circle has to become complete.

I was reading a small anecdote:

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”Who made God?” asked a small eight-year-old child.

”God has no beginning or end,” answered the teacher.

”But everything has a beginning or end,” insisted the boy.

Another eight-year-old tried to help: ”Where is the beginning or the end of a circle?” he asked.

”I see,” said the first child.

If life is really complete, the circle has to come back to the very first step. Then the circle has to become complete. That was what was missing before Kakuan. The Taoist pictures ended with the eighth, but Kakuan felt, and he felt rightly, that the circle was not complete – something was missing.

A man starts in the world; he must end in the world. Only then is the circle complete and man is perfect.

In Zen they have a saying: Before I entered the path, rivers were rivers and mountains were mountains. As I went deeper on the path, I became confused. Rivers were now no more like rivers and mountains were no more like mountains. Everything became topsy-turvy, upside down. It was a chaos. And when I reached the end and the path was complete, rivers again became rivers, mountains became mountains.

It has to be so. You start in the world. The world is the given. Wherever you start, you start in the world. Now one thing is certain: if the circle is complete and the journey full and you are fulfilled, you must end in the world. But in the middle, things will be topsy-turvy.

The siddha – the one who has attained – comes back into the world as an ordinary man. Sometimes you may not even be aware that a siddha lives just in your neighborhood. Somebody you know may be a siddha and you may not be aware. The circle may be so complete that he will look just like an ordinary man, because the effort to look like an extraordinary man is still an ego trip. So be careful!

– you may be passing many siddhas in the marketplace. And be alert – just by your side there a buddha may be sitting who has come full circle.

In the East we bow down to each other in deep remembrance of God. In the West you say hello to somebody, you say good morning, good evening. We don’t say that in the East, we say: jai ram –

God is great. We recognize the god in the other. We hail the god in the other. Who knows, he may have come full circle.

In that deep recognition, we don’t talk about the morning or the evening or the afternoon or night; that is useless. Goodnight is just a formality; good morning – just a formality. But when somebody says: Jai Ram – I bow down to the god in you – it is not just formality. It has a very tremendous significance. It says: Who knows, I am not very alert, and the other person may be Ram, may be God himself. Let me bow down to him.

Whenever a buddha comes full circle, he is back in the world. That is where everybody starts and that is where everybody should end. That is the tenth sutra: The Search

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BAREFOOTED AND NAKED OF BREAST,

I MINGLE WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD.

MY CLOTHES ARE RAGGED AND DUST-LADEN AND I AM EVER BLISSFUL.

I USE NO MAGIC TO EXTEND MY LIFE;

NOW, BEFORE ME, THE TREES BECOME ALIVE.

BAREFOOTED AND NAKED OF BREAST... very ordinary, just like a beggar.

BAREFOOTED AND NAKED OF BREAST,

I MINGLE WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD.

This mingling with the people of the world is a great recognition, realization, that everybody is divine.

So there is no need to go to the Himalayas, there is no need to hide yourself in the seclusion of a monastery, there is no need to keep yourself isolated. Mingling with the people is mingling with God in millions of forms.

BAREFOOTED AND NAKED OF BREAST,

I MINGLE WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD.

Now the division between the world and nirvana is lost. This world and that world – that division is lost. The profane and the sacred – that division is lost. Now everything is sacred or profane, because everything is one. Call it the world or nirvana, it makes no difference. The world is moksha, the world is nirvana.

The sayings like this of Zen masters trouble other religious people very much. Zen masters say: This world is nirvana, this world is enlightenment, supreme, ultimate, and there is no other world. This troubles and creates anxiety in other religious people, because they cannot think that the profane can be sacred, that the ordinary can be the extraordinary, that pebbles on the path are diamonds.

But it is so, and the Zen insight is absolutely true.

The other world is not anywhere else – it is herenow. You only need perception, clarity. When your eyes are clear, pebbles become diamonds. When you attain to clarity, all stones turn into images of God. When you have the realization of your own being, suddenly you have realized the whole.

There is no other world; this is the only world there is.

But there are two ways of seeing it: one is with blindfolded eyes. It is not good to say that it is a way of seeing, it is a way of not seeing. And then there is another: with open, clean, clear eyes, with perceptivity. Then suddenly everything is beautiful, divine, sacred. Wherever you are, you are moving on holy ground. The holiest of the holies surrounds you.

BAREFOOTED AND NAKED OF BREAST,

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I MINGLE WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD.

MY CLOTHES ARE RAGGED AND DUST-LADEN AND I AM EVER BLISSFUL.

Again ordinary – maybe chopping wood, carrying water from the well.

Doing ordinary things:

cleaning the house, preparing the food, looking after the guest.

MY CLOTHES ARE RAGGED AND DUST-LADEN – back to the very ordinariness of life – AND I AM EVER BLISSFUL. But wherever I am, bliss surrounds me. Now it is no more something that happens to me, it is something that has become my intrinsic quality. Not that sometimes I am blissful and sometimes not; it has become my nature, I am bliss.

NOW, BEFORE ME, THE TREES BECOME ALIVE.

I USE NO MAGIC TO EXTEND MY LIFE...

because there is no question of extending life. One lives eternally. Now there is no death, so what is the point of extending life?

Yogis have been very much concerned, almost obsessed, with the idea of extending life, living long.

The desire is deep down in every person. If somebody comes and says, ”I have come across a sadhu in the Himalayas who is one hundred fifty years of age,” you suddenly become interested.

Why? What is the difference if he is fifty or a hundred and fifty or three hundred? What is the difference? Why are you interested? You are still identified with the body – and still afraid of death.

I have heard about a sadhu in the Himalayas who used to say that he was a thousand years old. A Westerner had come to see him from thousands of miles away, just because he had heard that he was a thousand years old: ”It is impossible – but maybe.... Things happen in the East.... ” He had come; he watched the man, but he couldn’t believe it. The man looked not more than sixty.

He watched for a few days, but he could not believe that he was a thousand – sixty at the most.

Even that was too much. Then he gathered courage and asked one disciple who seemed to be the chief disciple, ”What do you think? Is he really one thousand years old?” The disciple said, ”I don’t know much, because I have only been with him three hundred years.” And the disciple was not more than thirty!

The human mind is stupid. But the attraction has a deep significance: it shows that you are afraid of death. You become interested if somebody is a thousand years old – then maybe he can also help you. He can also give you some secret, some alchemical formula, some key, and you can live long as well. But Zen is not interested in long life, because Zen says: Once you understand yourself, then there is eternal life. Who bothers about a long life?

A long life is still a desire of the body – an identified man who is afraid of death. A man of understanding knows there is no death. Death does not happen; it has never happened. It happens only because you are identified with the body and you don’t know yourself. Yes, from the body you will be separated. If you are too identified, that separation looks like death. But if you are not The Search

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identified with the body and you know yourself as the witnessing soul, as the consciousness, as the awareness, then there is no death.

I USE NO MAGIC TO EXTEND MY LIFE... but one thing is happening: NOW, BEFORE ME, THE

TREES BECOME ALIVE. Even dead trees, as I pass them, become alive.

A man who has attained to his innermost core of being is so full of life that wherever he moves he showers his life on everything. It is said that when Buddha moved into the forest, dead trees became alive and trees would blossom out of season. These may be just stories, but significant; mythological, not historical, not true in the sense of history, but still true in a deeper sense. When you are alive, whatsoever you touch becomes alive. When you are dead, whatsoever you touch you kill. Your touch becomes poisonous.

The prose comment:

INSIDE MY GATE, A THOUSAND SAGES DO NOT KNOW ME. THE BEAUTY OF MY GARDEN IS

INVISIBLE. WHY SHOULD ONE SEARCH FOR THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE PATRIARCHS? I GO

TO THE MARKETPLACE WITH MY BOTTLE AND RETURN HOME WITH MY STAFF. I VISIT THE

WINE SHOP AND THE MARKET, AND EVERYONE I LOOK UPON BECOMES ENLIGHTENED.

INSIDE MY GATE, A THOUSAND SAGES DO NOT KNOW ME. The truth of one’s being is so vast that even a thousand sages cannot know it. It is unknowable. Not only the unknown – it is the unknowable. The more you know it, the more you feel its unknowability. It is a mystery, not a problem to be solved, not a riddle which can be dissolved. It is a mystery which goes on growing bigger and bigger. The more you enter it, the more mysterious it becomes. It is the very substratum.

It is the ultimate. There is nothing beyond it. There is nothing beyond you; you are the very base of existence, the very ground of being. Of course, that very ground cannot become part of knowledge.

It is deeper than knowledge. It is deeper than the knower.

INSIDE MY GATE, A THOUSAND SAGES DO NOT KNOW ME. THE BEAUTY OF MY GARDEN IS

INVISIBLE.

One feels it. One feels it but one cannot know it. One becomes alert to it, but it is very subtle. You cannot catch hold of it. You can realize it, you can live in it, but you cannot grab it, you cannot cling to it. It is elusive.

WHY SHOULD ONE SEARCH FOR THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE PATRIARCHS?

Now there is no need. Why should one bother about buddhas, the knowers, the enlightened people?

Jesus and Krishna and Lao Tzu – why should one be worried about them? The search is finished.

You have come home. Why should one search for the footprints of the patriarchs? Now there is no need. Once you are back to your innermost nature there is no need for any scripture, for any doctrine, for any yoga, for any system, for any search.

I GO TO THE MARKETPLACE WITH MY BOTTLE.

Here Kakuan is unique, a very courageous man. It is very rare to find such a courageous man among so-called religious people. Only a really religious person can be so courageous. He accepts the world in its totality.

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I GO TO THE MARKETPLACE WITH MY BOTTLE AND RETURN HOME WITH MY STAFF.

I VISIT THE WINE SHOP AND THE MARKET, AND EVERYONE I LOOK UPON BECOMES

ENLIGHTENED.

Now nothing is prohibited, now nothing is denied. Now there is no ’no’. A great ’yes’ surrounds.

Everything is included, nothing is excluded – even the wine shop is not excluded. Nothing is excluded – the ’yes’ is all inclusive, total.

One becomes so all-inclusive that one goes to the market, even to the wine shop. Now in everything one finds God hidden. Now one has no condemnation for anything. The no-saying has disappeared totally. And remember, the ego disappears totally only when the no-saying disappears totally. If you still have a no, then you have a hang-up. Then the ego is still hiding in subtle ways. It says no, and it feels good.

What Kakuan means by this is: Now the yes is so total that the temple and the wine shop are the same to me. Now I see God everywhere. Now God is everywhereness. And everyone I look upon becomes enlightened.

That is the last thing to be remembered. Once you are enlightened, you cannot find a person who is not enlightened. Not that everyone becomes enlightened, but if I see into you, I cannot see anything else – you are enlightened. That’s why I go on saying you are all buddhas. Buddhahood is your intrinsic nature. The day I looked into myself, that very day the whole world became enlightened to me.

You may be puzzled: I can see your confusion. You may be puzzled about your own treasures. You may not be aware, but I can see: you are carrying the greatest treasure of life. You are carrying a God within you. You may have forgotten completely. You may have completely forgotten the way back home, but it is still there.

And Kakuan is right: Everyone i look upon becomes enlightened. If I look at you, you become enlightened, because for me only enlightenment exists now.

Whatsoever you are, you will find the world exactly the same. You go on finding yourself in the world again and again. The world is a mirror. If you are enlightened, you are surrounded by enlightened beings. There is no other way. You are surrounded by an enlightened universe. The whole existence, the rocks and the rivers, the oceans and the stars, all are enlightened beings. It depends on you.

Where you are, you create your world. If you are miserable, you live in a miserable world. If you are enlightened, you live in an enlightened world. If your energy is celebrating within, the whole becomes a symphony of celebration.

You are the world.

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Document Outline

- 1 The Search for the Bull and Discovering the Footprints

- 2 Dropping the Why

- 3 Perceiving the Bull

- 4 Happiness Knows No Tomorrow

- 5 Taming the Bull

- 6 Come In!

- 7 The Bull Transcended

- 8 Life is the Goal

- 9 Reaching the Source