Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment

Talks Given in ”Gautam the Buddha Auditorium” from 17 jan 1989 to 21 jan 1989

Darshan Diaries.

CHAPTER 1

Whatever the cost enlightenment is cheap

17 January 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

KOKE RECEIVED A HORSE FROM THE EMPEROR DOKO AS A REWARD FOR HIS TEACHING.

HE RODE AWAY ON IT, BUT THEN FELL OFF AND BROKE HIS LEG. WHEN HE RETURNED

TO THE TEMPLE HE HAD THE HEAD MONK MAKE SOME CRUTCHES. SUPPORTED BY THE

CRUTCHES, KOKE CAME ACROSS A MONK, TO WHOM HE SAID, ”DO YOU KNOW ME?”

”WHY SHOULDN’T I KNOW YOU?” REPLIED THE MONK.

KOKE SAID, ”HERE’S SOMEBODY WHO EXPOUNDED THE DHARMA, AND CAN’T WALK AS A RESULT OF IT.”

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, A MONK ASKED KOKE, ”WHAT SHOULD WE SPEAK ABOUT

BEFORE THE MANY-CHILDREN STUPA?”

KOKE SAID, ”IF ONE TELLS A LIE, TEN THOUSAND REPORT IT AS TRUTH.” AT ANOTHER TIME, HOJU, A DISCIPLE OF RINZAI, SAID TO TANKU, A FELLOW DISCIPLE,

”WHEN A MAN COMES TO YOU WHO HAS NOT PUT AWAY THE SECOND AND THIRD ROOTS, HOW DO YOU RECEIVE HIM?”

TANKU RESPONDED, ”YOU HAVE, IN BRINGING UP THIS QUESTION, ALREADY MADE A MISTAKE.”

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CHAPTER 1. WHATEVER THE COST ENLIGHTENMENT IS CHEAP

HOJU REPLIED, ”YOU ALSO HAVE NOT AVOIDED ERROR.” TANKU CONTINUED, ”BE MY FRIEND!”

HOJU ADDED, HIS HAND BY HIS SIDE, ”YOU OLD ROBBER!” FRIENDS, the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, has made a statement to an international conference. the statement says that the earth is one. All national boundaries should be dissolved.

all differences of caste and race and color should be dissolved. All divisions of organized religions should be dissolved.

I have been saying the same thing for almost twenty years, and my every meeting is an international conference. But I don’t have the power; I am not a politician.

I would like Mr. Rajiv Gandhi to understand the implications of what he is saying. I support him with my whole heart, but the question is: Who is going to begin it?

If I had the power, India would have been the first nation in the world to dissolve its armies, to drown all its armaments, to dissolve all distinctions of caste and religion and race.

I would like to know from Mr. Rajiv Gandhi: Can you practice what you are preaching? And if you cannot practice it, please don’t preach nonsense.

You have the power, you have the idea – now go ahead! Somebody has to begin it. Don’t wait for somebody else to begin. And the idea is yours – take the risk! You are young enough, intelligent, have guts. Take the risk and begin to act on what you are saying. Let India be the first nation to dissolve all distinctions and become part of one earth, one world.

Perhaps Rajiv Gandhi has not looked into the implications, and I am wondering why nobody stood up at that international conference and asked him, ”If this is your idea then start it. Take the risk.” There is no evolution in the world without any risk.

I am reminded of an old story which I have refined, and I go on refining.

You must know – and Mr. Rajiv Gandhi must know the old story, but he may not be aware of the refinement, so I have to repeat it.

The old story is ... for millions of years international conferences of mice have been discussing the problem: How to be safe and secure against the cats? And they have always, without fail, come to the conclusion that there is only one solution. A bell should be put around the neck of the cat. A good idea, because the bell will make the mice aware that the cat is coming, and they can simply slip into their holes.

But the problem is: Who is going to tie a bell around the neck of the cat? And there all international conferences ended.

And here comes my refinement.

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The last international conference of the mice was again discussing the same problem – and there is only one, the cat. After long discussions they came to the same conclusion, but the problem was: Who is going to do it?

A young mouse stood up and said, ”I am going to do it.” All the elders laughed. They said, ”You are too young, you don’t understand the risk.” The young mouse said, ”I understand everything. Tomorrow you will see the cat with the bell.” They looked at him, absolutely unbelievingly, but he managed it.

He went into a medical store next door to the house, found some tranquilizers, and put them into the milk of the cat. When she was fast asleep under tranquilizers, he managed to tie a bell onto her neck.

Next day all the mice could not believe it; and the cat also could not believe it. ”What has happened?

Wherever I go, the mice immediately disappear.”

Rajiv Gandhi, you are a young mouse. It is time not just to talk. Take the risk. Begin with this country.

And I have immense trust in the intelligence around the world. If one country takes the risk, others are bound to follow.

Don’t wait for there to be an agreement amongst all the nations to do it simultaneously. Then it is never going to happen. That agreement is impossible. One has to start, knowing perfectly well the danger and the risk. But I remind you, nothing happens without risks – no evolution, no progress.

Yes, the earth has to be one. Without the earth being one, we cannot solve its problems. It is now so clear that even blind people can see it, that unless the earth is one, without boundaries ... in a world without boundaries we can dissolve all the problems from which humanity is suffering immensely.

And in the coming ten years it is going to suffer almost a suicide.

There is still time. Somebody should come out. You have made a beautiful speech, but you are not aware that somebody is going to ask you, ”If you have the idea, why not start practicing it?” Who is preventing you? That which is preventing you is preventing everybody – the fear. Come out of the fear.

Anyway, you have nothing to lose. This country has lost everything. Only a poor country which has nothing to lose can take the risk. America is not going to take the risk, neither is the Soviet Union.

They have too much to lose if they take the risk.

But what have we got? Nine hundred million poor people who are going to die in utter starvation, misery and suffering in the coming ten years.

It is a good opportunity.

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I hope you will understand what I am saying.

From tomorrow morning, start dissolving the armies, drowning all your armaments in the ocean, and hope for the best – that the intelligentsia around the world will follow.

Nobody listens to words. Actions are needed to materialize any idea into a reality.

I will wait for tomorrow.

What I have said should be sent immediately in a telegram to Rajiv Gandhi.

Tomorrow morning begins a new history for man. Otherwise, take your words back, and apologize to the whole of humanity. These political talks have tortured us too much.

Question 1

One friend has asked,

”EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD, FOR SOME SUPPORT OR TO NEGATE SOMETHING, PEOPLE

ARE ASKED TO RAISE ONE OF THEIR HANDS. WHY DO YOU ASK US ALWAYS TO RAISE

BOTH OUR HANDS?”

A relevant question, but I never do anything which I cannot scientifically explain to you.

Your two hands are connected with your two brains, crosswise. Your right hand is connected with the left brain, your left hand is connected with the right brain, and these two brains have no bridge, no communication between themselves. So when you are asked to raise one hand, it is bound to be the right hand.

A strange fallacy has persisted for centuries, as if right is right and left is wrong. So people are asked to raise their right hand in support or in negation, but that represents only the left brain, only half of your being. Your right brain may not be with your left brain, may not support it.

One hand is half-hearted, that’s why I ask you always to raise both hands. Both hands represent your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole being. Nothing is left out of it.

Raising one hand does not prove that you are totally with the hand. Half your mind, half your body is not with it.

So it is not without reason that I have always asked you to raise both your hands. It is because I want you always to be total. Never be partial; only a total man is an authentic man.

And a third small thing ....

A British scientist, James Lovelock, has been working for almost twenty-five years, trying to prove that even Earth has its own organic life. If it can be proved that Earth has its own organic life just as you have, then it only remains to take the theory to the stars, to the moon, to the sun. They all have their own life.

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It has been very difficult for the poor British scientist. The whole scientific mind is against the idea; that’s why he has been struggling for twenty-five years to prove it. Now he has come up with evidence that life is not your monopoly; neither is mind your monopoly. Animals have it, trees have it. And just as trees come out of the earth, we are also made of the earth.

Remember Omar Khayyam: ”Dust unto dust ....” The day will come when we will go back into the dust. Everything that arises from the earth finally goes back to the earth. It cannot be that the earth is dead, otherwise life would not be possible at all. From where will trees get their life? From where will you get your life?

The Earth has a certain atmosphere around it, two hundred miles deep; a layer of breathing space.

Birds, animals, trees, man – all species breathe this air.

What is your food? It comes from the earth. It gives you life, it gives you intelligence. Unless it contains all this, it cannot give it to you. That is so simple a logic.

And James Lovelock is perhaps not aware that for thousands of years in the East, without any scientific experimentation, the mystics have propounded these fundamentals. Their very clarity of no-mind has seen life all around. There is nothing dead.

But perhaps he is not aware of the East, he is not aware of the Eastern mystics, otherwise he would have found an immense support – if not from the scientists, then from the mystics, who have a far wider perceptivity, a far deeper sensitivity. They have gone deep into themselves and they have found that life arises from the cosmos. Just as we are getting life from the cosmos, all the planets, all the stars are getting life from the cosmos.

Do you know, every day dozens of great stars are born, and every day dozens of great stars die.

Everything that is born and dies must have life in between birth and death; otherwise, what is birth and what is death? Unless life is in between birth and death, birth and death have no meaning.

Perhaps he is going to have great difficulty convincing the scientists, but I give him my whole support on behalf of all the mystics – Sufis, Zen, all the buddhas. He should look to the East for his support and to the Eastern concept that everything is life in different shapes, in different forms, expressing itself in immense variety. And that variety makes existence beautiful.

Man in his ignorance has been disturbing the life of this planet. The earth needs a certain amount of trees, and we have cut them down just to make paper for third-rate yellow newspapers. There is no need for these yellow newspapers, these pornographic magazines.

When there are alive people, why bother about a picture of a naked woman – just a photograph?

When I was in the first American jail, in my cell I had one Negro partner. He was a very pious fellow, although he was charged with murder and rape and all kinds of things. Pious people do all kinds of things.

He used to put his head on the Bible every morning, every evening. He would put the Bible on the bed, kneel down on the ground and put his head on the Bible. He was not educated, so he could Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 6

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not read. And just above the Bible he had all kinds of nude women in all kinds of insane postures which he had cut from magazines. The whole wall was covered with nude women.

I asked him, ”Do you bow down to these nude women?” He said, ”No, I have the Bible.”

I said, ”You don’t know how to read?”

He said, ”No, I don’t know.”

”Who told you that this is a Bible?”

He said, ”The jail authorities have given it to me.”

”And what do you do when you kneel down?”

He said, ”I pray to God.”

And I said, ”I have been watching you for three days continuously. The nude women laugh.” He said, ”They laugh?”

I said, ”I have been watching. Because you are putting your head on the Bible with closed eyes, you can’t see – and it is only at that time that they all laugh!” He looked at me. I said, ”What kind of religion is this?”

He said, ”I am a devout Catholic.”

I said, ”Great. These are Catholic saints?”

He said, ”I am sorry for that.”

And I said, ”You have been doing both things together. Every day I see you cutting some picture from some magazine – PLAYBOY, PLAYGIRL, PENTHOUSE – and you go on putting them up. Don’t you see the contradiction – that this is your repressed sexuality?” A repressed sexuality can never be prayerful; the prayer will be polluted with repressed sex. A sexually repressed human being can never be in meditation. Those sexual pictures will arise from the unconscious.

And this is not only so about that poor Negro. The Hindu scriptures say that when the seers – great Hindu seers, their great saints – reach to the ultimate peak, just one step more and they will become gods ....

Hinduism is not a one-God-oriented religion, it has many gods; in fact, thirty-three million gods.

Once upon a time India had a population of thirty-three million. At that time those scriptures were written. Obviously, everybody needs a god, a personal god, just like a personal guard. One god cannot maintain correspondence and answer prayers. It seems to be perfectly mathematical that each person has a god of his own he can approach; twenty-four hours a day the god is at his service.

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These gods in heaven have a chief god to maintain the thirty-three million gods, otherwise there will be chaos in heaven. They will fight, because there are beautiful women available, so they will fight for the women; there will be bloodshed. So one god is the chief god to keep order; his name is Indra. And that chief god always becomes afraid of anyone reaching to a higher consciousness than himself, because if somebody reaches to a higher consciousness, he will come to heaven and dethrone Indra and take his place. It is sheer competition: the big fish eats the small fish. The same law of the jungle applies to heaven, to gods.

So whenever a Hindu saint reaches to the highest peak, Indra immediately sends the most beautiful woman from heaven. Uruvasi is one of the most beautiful women in heaven – he sends Uruvasi immediately. He monopolizes Uruvasi, he does not allow any other god ... she is the most beautiful woman in heaven.

If by chance you reach there, first find out where Uruvasi is. Perhaps she is the reincarnation of Cleopatra – or Amrapali, India’s most beautiful woman of the times of Gautam Buddha.

He sends Uruvasi, naked. Uruvasi dances around the saint. Obviously the poor saint has been sitting on a volcano of repressed sexuality, and such a beautiful woman, who does not perspire ....

No deodorants are needed, no mouthwash; she is always clean and fresh. She never ages, she is always sixteen years of age; for centuries she remains sixteen years of age – time has stopped, perhaps the clock has stopped.

Naturally this old idiot, who has been thinking he is a saint, opens his eyes, he forgets all about saintliness, gets involved with Uruvasi, and he is finished. Then Uruvasi disappears. Once he has ejaculated, Uruvasi is gone; that was the purpose. Now again he has to begin from zero, and by the time he reaches to the top of the ladder, again Uruvasi will come.

A strange game .... You call it religion?

But these are mass-oriented ideas. Whatever the mass wants, whatever the unconscious mind of people wants, religions are ready to supply the demand.

But there has been a small line of authentic seekers in the East, who will agree with James Lovelock.

He calls his theory Gaia.

The Gaia theory says that Earth is an alive organism which maintains its own balance. But man is trying in every way to disturb the balance, because he has not recognized that the earth is your mother, and the sky is your father – not any God.

You are beings of the earth and the sky.

You are the meeting point of the earth and sky.

You are born out of earth and sky. That’s why in the East the woman is called the earth and the man is called the sky.

And certainly it balances. That proves its intelligence.

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Whenever there are one hundred girls born, one hundred and fifteen boys are born simultaneously.

Strange, but fifteen boys die before the age of marriage, so by the time they are marriageable, the balance is there: one hundred girls, one hundred boys – an indication of the very life process, that it keeps on balancing everything.

But because of his ignorance, man does not understand the ecology; he goes on destroying the balance. He has now even made holes in the ozone layer that surrounds the earth after the two hundred miles of air. A thick ozone layer all around the earth protects it from the sun’s deathrays.

All rays are not nourishment to life, there are rays which are fatal to life. This ozone layer turns back the deathrays and allows only those which enhance life. But we have made holes in the ozone layer by sending rockets to the moon. Utter ignorance!

And now scientists are regretting what we have done, because rockets going, rockets coming –

Russian rockets, American rockets – they have made hundreds of holes in the ozone layer. Now from those holes deathrays can enter onto the earth; they are entering.

The rate of cancer has gone four times higher since the ozone layer has been broken. But man in his utter stupidity ....

What is the use of going to the moon? You cannot manage even the Earth; what will you do on the moon? You will simply stand there and look stupid. There is nothing: no water, no clouds, no rain, nothing green. No visible life has happened yet on the moon. The moon may have a life of its own, but it has not come to expression because many things are missing. Water is missing, fire is missing; without water there cannot be any clouds. The ozone layer is missing – because ozone is just like oxygen with a little more oxygen than ordinary oxygen.

It is a well-founded theory that quantity changes quality. When oxygen is thicker, at a certain moment it becomes ozone.

Now you have cut the trees which breathe out oxygen. Every day hundreds of trees are being cut in every country, for useless things which are not necessary to life. And as there is not enough oxygen even for human beings and the animals, those holes cannot be filled with ozone, otherwise the Earth would have managed to fill those gaps again with new ozone. But there is not even enough oxygen to support life here on the planet; restoring the ozone is a faraway thing.

James Lovelock has come to a tremendously meaningful discovery. Mystics have been talking about it all the time, but nobody hears the mystics because they cannot produce any evidence. They are not scientists, they don’t have any labs to experiment in. All that they have is their inner perception, their clarity, their enlightenment, their awakening to this great life all around.

I would like James Lovelock to come here.

Lovelock is not a good name, James. We will open the lock, and return you back just as James Love.

The sutra:

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CHAPTER 1. WHATEVER THE COST ENLIGHTENMENT IS CHEAP

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

KOKE RECEIVED A HORSE FROM THE EMPEROR DOKO AS A REWARD FOR HIS TEACHING.

HE RODE AWAY ON IT, BUT THEN FELL OFF AND BROKE HIS LEG. WHEN HE RETURNED TO

THE TEMPLE HE HAD THE HEAD MONK MAKE SOME CRUTCHES.

There was a time in the world when the horse was the most valuable animal – the fastest in peacetime, the most courageous in war. It was one of the great gifts in those days.

So when Emperor Doko heard that Koke had become enlightened, he thought, ”What to send as a present?” He must have sent some Arabian horse, because they are the best in the world – pure white, and of the greatest speed, and tremendous power.

India has been defeated again and again for almost two thousand years. You will not believe me, but the reason was that the enemies were very small countries but they were coming on horses, and India was vast but India’s emperors had armies of elephants. That was the reason for its continual defeat. Because elephants are royal people, they don’t compete with small horses. They walk just like emperors.

And because horses were small, they could enter into the army of Indian emperors, inside. And once the enemy attacks the elephant, he goes crazy, he creates a stampede. Then he does not bother whom he is destroying – his own people, his own army. He turns back and starts killing people. Now you cannot control him.

India was defeated for this simple reason, again and again. They thought that the elephant is a great animal. He is, but in war a horse is more practical.

If a marriage ceremony is happening, an elephant is perfectly good. But war is not a marriage ceremony.

So Emperor Doko sent Koke a beautiful horse as a present. Now, Koke must have never ridden on a horse. There is no need for an enlightened man, living on his mountain, to have a horse. This must have been the first time; seeing the beautiful horse, Koke rode on it.

This shows one thing, that even enlightened people can commit mistakes. Except the Christian pope, everybody commits mistakes. Only the Christian pope is infallible.

Even Jesus commits mistakes. He talks about loving your enemies, even loving your neighbors. I wonder: he has forgotten to tell you, ”Love your wives too, your husbands too.” And I think it is a tautology, loving your enemies and loving your neighbors – they are the same people.

One day it happened that he passed two, three villages and they were not welcoming; they were angry, they closed their doors. They did not give him food or water, or shelter. So he was getting angry, although he says that you should not be angry, you should always be pure love – love even the enemy.

And then hungry and thirsty he comes to a tree, and although it is not the season for the tree to give fruits – but when you are angry you are blind – he curses the tree, a fig tree, saying, ”You have insulted the only begotten son of God by not producing figs!” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 10

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Now it is not the season, and the fig tree has no concern with any God. She is not even aware that the only begotten son is hungry. And he curses the tree: ”You will be condemned forever!” Now this man talks about forgiveness as the greatest virtue, anger as a sin? Certainly he himself cannot practice what he is saying in his sermons. He is as fallible as any human being.

I am not condemning him, I am simply saying he is fallible.

Only these idiot popes are infallible. And there are thousands of instances which prove that they are fallible.

One pope ordered that a great investigation should be made about a young woman, Joan of Arc.

The investigation was made. The whole country loved the woman because she had been fighting for the country and she had achieved freedom for the country. This angered the pope, that she was being worshipped more than him.

His investigation team proved that she was possessed by spirits, the devil was at work. The woman was burnt alive. The whole country was shocked.

After three hundred years, seeing that the wound in the country’s heart had not healed and they were still angry at the pope – although that pope was gone and some other pope had taken his place – the pope thought, ”It is better to console the people. It is dangerous to let them move away from you.” So he declared that the woman was not possessed by spirits, she was not possessed by the devil; she was a saint.

So after three hundred years her grave was opened again. Only bones remained. The bones were worshipped – even the pope was there to worship the bones – and then a great memorial was made.

Who says that popes are infallible? Either the first pope was fallible or the second pope was fallible.

It is such a clear-cut instance. It is sheer stupidity to call yourself infallible. Even God is not infallible; I have my evidence for it.

It is said that God made the whole world, then he made man and woman. After that he realized the mistake – that he had gone too far. Since then nobody has heard about him, he has been on holiday. Sunday never ends, it has been for eternity.

What happened to him? He was expected to come to his job on Monday. He has left the whole world in a mess, everything incomplete, everything undeveloped!

But why did he become so afraid? As he created them he recognized that he had committed a mistake by creating man and woman: ”These are the people who are going to destroy everything that I have created.”

... One was hoping that when President Ronald Reagan retired, the new president, George Bush, would prove more human. But the situation is just the opposite. He is now supporting, with three billion dollars, the creating of the greatest death gas, which will kill living people, living trees, living animals, and leave the houses intact, roads intact, cars intact, railway trains intact. Everything will remain intact; the gas will kill only the living beings.

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Just see this nightmare of the earth: houses and houses, streets and streets, trains standing at the platform and nobody on the platform, airplanes on the runway and nobody in the airport .... No dogs, no peacocks, no swans, no trees – just man-made things which are dead.

And the gas will be invisible. It can be simply showered on you and you will not know when you are alive and when you are not. In a single moment, as you take one puff of the gas, one breath, you are finished.

Ronald Reagan had been thinking to create this gas – which is going to be the most fatal instrument in any war because you will not even be able to see it. The whole earth can be drowned in the gas clouds and life will disappear.

Seeing the man and the woman, God disappeared, because he must have seen in them the faces of men like Adolf Hitler, Ronald Reagan, George Bush – they are all going to be descendents of this fellow Adam. He stopped creation immediately and escaped one knows not where; it is a vast universe without any boundaries ....

The master Koke did not realize that to ride on a horse, and particularly a horse that has been sent by the emperor, you need a certain training, you need a certain education. That was not an ordinary horse, it was not a donkey from Poona.

HE RODE AWAY ON IT, BUT THEN FELL OFF AND BROKE HIS LEG. WHEN HE RETURNED

TO THE TEMPLE HE HAD THE HEAD MONK MAKE SOME CRUTCHES. SUPPORTED BY THE

CRUTCHES, KOKE CAME ACROSS A MONK, TO WHOM HE SAID, ”DO YOU KNOW ME?” Certainly he looks different with the crutches and the wounds. He asks,

”DO YOU KNOW ME?”

”WHY SHOULD I NOT KNOW YOU?” REPLIED THE MONK.

KOKE SAID, ”HERE IS SOMEBODY WHO EXPOUNDED THE DHARMA

– here is somebody who has been teaching how to be enlightened –

AND NOW HE CANNOT WALK AS A RESULT OF IT.

”I became enlightened; I had no idea that the emperor would send a horse as a present, otherwise I would have remained unenlightened.” Now see the situation: ”As a result of my enlightenment, I cannot even walk.”

It is a good warning to you. Before you become enlightened, have another thought, think again or take some advice, because who knows what kind of troubles you are going to go through after enlightenment?

I know perfectly well. Since enlightenment I have gone through thousands of troubles! But those troubles are just outside; they have not touched me at all. I don’t repent, but still I warn you that Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 12

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when the moment comes and you see enlightenment coming, have at least one more consideration:

”Should I become enlightened?”

But the reality is, you don’t have time for it. When enlightenment comes there is no way to get out of it. It suddenly comes and surrounds you, and wherever you go it is with you.

But certainly problems are bound to arise which don’t arise for ignorant people. Once you are enlightened everybody is against you, because the very phenomenon of your enlightenment hurts their egos. You are just as human as they are, and you have become enlightened and they have not become enlightened. They cannot tolerate your height and their smallness.

They have only two ways out: either to grow up to your full height, which is an uphill task, or the easier way is to destroy the enlightened one – to poison Socrates, to crucify Jesus, to murder al-Hillaj Mansoor. That is easier. Then the whole crowd is satisfied and consoled: ”There is nobody who is above us. Everybody is of the same size.” An ancient Greek story is:

A famous king had made a guesthouse for other kings when they used to visit. He made such a beautiful guesthouse, even better than the palace, and he made a golden bed which exactly fitted him: if he was five foot five inches, he had made the bed exactly five foot five.

Nobody had the courage to ask him, ”What are you doing? Somebody may come who is six feet, and he will not find it comfortable on this bed.” But it was well known that if you asked this king anything he answered with his sword, your head would be cut off. You could not ask anything; his word was the law!

So the craftsmen made the bed exactly to fit a man who is five foot five inches. But it is very difficult to find the same sized people ....

The first emperor who came as a guest loved the guesthouse. He repented later on, but then it was too late. In the night four big wrestlers came in. Because he was six feet tall they had to push him from both ends to fit the bed.

The king had ordered, ”Everybody has to fit the bed. If he is too long, cut him short, or push him in!

If he is too short, make him longer! Don’t be worried whether he lives. Alive or dead – I have made a special bed of pure gold ....”

The emperor tried hard, but those four wrestlers first tried to push him in to fit to five foot five, and it was a difficult job. How to squash a man of six feet? They almost killed him. He said, ”What are you doing?”

They said, ”You have to fit with the bed.” But because they could not manage to push him shorter they had to cut off his head; then he fit the bed perfectly. And they told the king, ”The guest is in absolute rest.”

Just two, three more people were caught by him, and then the story spread. But he killed three kings just by trying to make them fit according to the bed.

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That is being done all over the world by all the religions.

They want you to fit their ten

commandments, they want to make you fit according to their scriptures. They don’t care about you; their bed is more important. It is made of twenty-four-carat gold. Now all those commandments, all those disciplines preached five thousand, ten thousand years ago, have become out of date. They need refinement. They also need to evolve as everything is evolving. But no religion is ready to modify anything or refine anything or evolve anything. It has been given by God, and he knows better, so you have to follow things which don’t suit you.

All the religions are old and everything has changed since then: only those scriptures are dead and cannot change. But their ideologies are poisonous, they will kill you. They are killing human beings

– their very spirit is destroyed, their radiance has been taken away, their growth stifled.

And for all this they are respected as virtuous, honored as saints. The more you cut yourself according to out-of-date principles, the more respectable you become – but the more dead. You will not find a respectable person alive: he cannot afford to be alive.

Women have been taught by all the religions not to enjoy lovemaking; to enjoy it is a sin. Remain almost dead, not enjoying it, so the whole sin goes to the man; you are out of it.

I have heard about a drunkard who was brought into the court in France. He had been making love on the beach to a dead woman.

The judge asked, ”Did you realize that the woman was dead?” He said, ”No, I thought she was English.” She was lying so silently, unmoving, she was certainly not French!

All the religions have taught this. That’s why only the missionary posture is allowed – the man on top of the woman, so he can have movement but the woman cannot move. The beast on the beauty.

The woman has been told not even to open her eyes, because even to enjoy what is happening by opening your eyes is a sin. So every woman closes her eyes, becomes completely cold, almost stops breathing, and just waits until the beast finishes.

For that reason, only in this century have psychoanalysts discovered the possibility of a woman having an orgasm. For millions of years woman was not even aware that her body was capable of having an orgasm. She was just a factory for reproduction.

These stupid ideas! What is wrong, when you are making love, in enjoying it? I don’t see any sin in it. Make it more joyful, make it more blissful, make it a dance so that you can come to an orgasm.

This experience may lead you towards meditation – because what happens when you are in a state of utter joy and blissfulness? Time stops, mind stops; just for a few seconds, but in those few seconds, the doors of meditation open.

My own understanding is that it is through sexual ecstasy that man has discovered meditation. He discovered that in sexual ecstasy, when both the partners have disappeared almost into each other, Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 14

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and both are throbbing with joy and blissfulness ... those who were intelligent detected what is happening. They witnessed that time has disappeared, that mind has disappeared .... It was a very easy conclusion that if you can manage for time to disappear and mind to disappear, perhaps you will come to the same space for a longer time, because it will be in your hands.

Sexual ecstasy cannot last long – perhaps for a few minutes. But if you are a witness .... I will not say don’t enjoy it, I will say rejoice in it, but remember to witness whatever is happening, what changes are happening in your inner being.

Where is the mind? There is no thought. Where is time? Suddenly there is no sense of time at all.

And these two are the basic things. If they disappear you are in meditation. Then the woman does not need the man, the man does not need the woman. For the first time they become independent.

Meditation was discovered through love.

But the people who have been told to repress their joy, to repress their ecstasy, are never going to find the taste of meditation. A very unrepressed, uninhibited energy is needed for meditation.

But once you become enlightened ... Koke says rightly,

”HERE IS SOMEBODY WHO EXPOUNDED THE DHARMA, AND CAN’T WALK AS A RESULT OF

IT.”

But still I will say to you, even if you can’t walk, even if you can’t live any more amongst the insane world, still enlightenment is not to be missed. At whatever cost, it is cheap.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, A MONK ASKED KOKE, ”WHAT SHOULD WE SPEAK ABOUT

BEFORE THE MANY-CHILDREN STUPA?”

KOKE SAID, ”IF ONE TELLS A LIE, TEN THOUSAND REPORT IT AS TRUTH.” On the mountain where Koke used to preach there was a memorial which was called Many-children Stupa.

Now, children are not given memorials, and children have not yet been able to become enlightened.

A stupa, according to the Zen tradition, is made only in the memory of a buddha, of an awakened one.

It is a huge, round, very vast and big memorial with beautiful carvings all around it and a beautiful gate – either golden or marble, or of some special stone.

If you want to see beautiful stupas, Sanchi, near Bhopal, is the place. It has the best stupa in the world. Just to see the gate ... one can imagine it must have taken hundreds of years to make such a beautiful gate. Each inch is carved in stone, and there is such symmetry. The stupa is a beauty to see.

But a stupa is given only as a memorial to the enlightened one. So of course this ”Many-children Stupa” must have been a lie. Hence Koke says,

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”IF ONE TELLS A LIE, TEN THOUSAND REPORT IT AS TRUTH.” Lies are very impressive. You just start a lie and by the evening the whole city will be believing it.

Perhaps on the way home it may come to you also, and you may suspect whether it is a lie or a truth. If the whole city – such a self-styled cultured city – believes it, it must be true.

If you say the truth to anybody, nobody is going to believe it: ”You! And you have found the truth?” Just keep your mouth shut. If people hear it, they will kill you. But if you give a beautiful lie, everybody enjoys it and it goes on from mouth to mouth immediately, like wildfire. And soon it becomes true. It gathers new information that you had not imparted, it gathers new ornaments, and by the evening when it comes back to you, you cannot believe this is the same lie that you had started.

The world loves lies, because lies don’t need you to be transformed. Lies are good conversation, but truth is a danger. To utter it is to invite all kinds of calamities.

I have watched all kinds of stories against me, even when I was a student in the university. I was expelled from this college, from that college, from this university, from that university, just because I did not tolerate any lie on any subject matter.

In one college I fought for eight months continuously on one subject. Finally the professor resigned.

He said, ”If this young man remains in my class, I cannot teach. When am I going to finish the course? Eight months are gone, and he won’t let me move a single inch! He brings such strange arguments, and he comes with a lot of information to support them.” I was searching in the library, in all the encyclopedias, because all the professors, if they are experienced, are at least twenty to thirty years behind. In thirty years, knowledge has grown so much – objective knowledge, scientific knowledge – that what was right thirty years ago is no longer right. But those people who had been studying thirty years ago, were still carrying the same ideas.

And when I brought the new ideas, they felt embarrassed. They wanted the principal to expel me.

I was called again and again to the principals’ offices or the vice-chancellors’ offices, and asked,

”Why do you create trouble?”

I said, ”I don’t create trouble. I simply want them to admit that what has become out of date is a lie!

The truth should be spoken. These teachers are dead; thirty years ago they died. Since then they have not looked into the world; everything has been changing.” The principals accepted that. ”You are right, but we cannot afford the resignation of such a well-known professor. He is our most prestigious person.” I said, ”You are giving more credit to prestige than to truth. You can expel me, but you will regret it.

It will remain like a wound, because you are accepting that I am right and still you are expelling me.

Do you have any sense of dignity or not?”

And when it became well known .... The city I was studying in had twenty colleges, and so there were enough possibilities for me to move from one college to another college. But soon it became known in every college and they simply started refusing me: ”We will not allow you in this college.

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What is the point? Within two months you will be expelled, not more than that because we know your whole history. You have not lasted in any college.” I had to take the support of a lie because the truth was not functioning. So rather than going to the office, early in the morning I inquired about the principal: what kind of life does he live? What are his beliefs? They said that he was a devotee of the Mother Goddess of Calcutta.

That temple of the Mother Goddess is the ugliest temple in the whole world, because the Mother Goddess of Calcutta is a black woman, standing on the chest of her husband – every woman does it – in one hand holding a freshly-cut head, blood dripping, and in the other hand a sword, very ferocious-looking.

And Calcutta, one of the greatest cities in the world – at one time it was the greatest city in the world, the most educated city in India – worships this Mother Goddess. Worship means killing goats: every day dozens of goats are killed, and then the meat and the blood are distributed among the devotees and they eat raw meat as a gift from the Mother Goddess. This is the most murderous, primitive hangover of religion.

So I inquired about the man, I looked at his photograph. He looked perfectly the right person to worship the Mother Goddess. He had been a wrestler in his youth, now he had a big belly; a black man, very fat, looking very dangerous.

I inquired what time he worshipped the Mother Goddess. He had a small replica and had made a small temple, so I went there early, at five o’clock in the morning. He was worshipping Kali: ”Jai Kali!

Victory to Kali!”

I entered the temple and by his side I also started saying, ”Victory to Kali! Jai Kali!” He looked at me, and he said, ”You are also a worshipper of Kali?” I said, ”I have always been a worshipper of Kali. You are the only man in this whole city who knows what real truth is.” He looked at me – everybody thought that he was a little cracked, a crackpot –

and I said, ”You are the only religious man in this irreligious city.” He said, ”Strange that only you recognized me. We are brothers in faith.” He hugged me.

I said, ”Don’t kill me!” – because he had been a wrestler. The only safety was his belly: he could not pull me closer than his belly. There was some distance, so I was safe.

He said, ”What do you want? What have you come for?” I said, ”I want simply to sit at your feet and learn.” He said, ”Come to the office. And because you have recognized me, I also recognize you. I will give you full freeship” – an extra scholarship which is under the power of the principal. ”And whatever you need – accommodation in the hostel, free food ...” I said, ”Everything.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 17

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But just the second day the difficulty arose. The professor of philosophy went to him and he said,

”You have created trouble for me. That young man is difficult and impossible, and he creates such arguments that the whole class laughs and I feel very embarrassed. Perhaps he is right, but that is not the point. The point is my prestige. If I lose my prestige, nobody is going to listen to me.” The principal called me. With great respect he called me close to him, pulled up a chair, told me to sit down, and he said, ”These people will not understand us. They are utterly blind. I cannot expel you as others have done, so some other way has to be found. I thought that I will give you a full one hundred percent attendance if you don’t come to the college.” I said, ”Great. That suits me.” So I never went to the college; but I used to go once in a while at five o’clock just to give that man a little juice.

When I passed and graduated from his college, I told him that it was all just a joke. He said ”What?!” I said, ”I have to tell you the truth, now you cannot harm me at all. I hate your Kali, and I say to you: Death to your Kali and you! You are perpetuating a murderous creed! Are you a cannibal? That woman is holding a man’s head, freshly-cut, and blood is dripping.” He said, ”But for two years continuously you were saying ‘Jai Kali! Victory to Kali!’” I said, ”I had to say it. I tried truth in many colleges; truth is expelled. I thought perhaps a lie would succeed, and it succeeded. This is my certificate, and it is based on a lie. You have lied, because I never came to the college. One hundred percent attendance you have given me, one hundred percent I was absent.”

He became afraid I might expose him to the newspapers. He said, ”Okay, okay. Cool down. You have your way, I have my own way.”

I said, ”That’s right. Don’t ever use the word ‘us’; that does not apply. I was just tolerating the situation for these two years to somehow get my graduation so I can move to some university far away from this city.”

Where truth brings trouble, lies bring great fortunes, because the whole society lives on lies. Their God is a lie, their heaven is a lie, their hell is a lie, their devil is a lie. Their conception of morality is full of lies.

Surrounded by the ocean of lies, if you insist on being true, obviously you are going to get into trouble. But it is a joy. To get into trouble for the sake of truth is one of the greatest blessings one can think of.

AT ANOTHER TIME, HOJU, A DISCIPLE OF RINZAI, SAID TO TANKU, A FELLOW DISCIPLE,

”WHEN A MAN COMES TO YOU WHO HAS NOT PUT AWAY THE SECOND AND THIRD ROOTS, HOW DO YOU RECEIVE HIM?”

The Second and Third Roots are the three poisons: desire, hate, ignorance.

The question was,

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”WHEN A MAN COMES TO YOU WHO HAS NOT PUT AWAY THE SECOND AND THIRD ROOTS, HOW DO YOU RECEIVE HIM?”

TANKU RESPONDED, ”YOU HAVE, IN BRINGING UP THIS QUESTION, ALREADY MADE A MISTAKE.”

He is saying: A man who is full of poisons – desire, hate, ignorance – will not come to a master in the first place. In the second place, if he comes, the doors will be closed in his face. There is no question of welcoming him. Your question is fundamentally wrong.

In the first place, such a man will never come to the master. He will avoid the master. Even if the master comes close to him, he will escape, just as darkness escapes when you bring the light in.

Have you ever seen darkness coming close to light, just to have a closer look, or to have a little conversation in the middle of the night? No, such a person will not come near to a master. And if by chance he happens to come, the master will close the door in his face.

First he has to clean himself of the lowliest poisons, only then a search for truth can begin.

HOJU REPLIED, ”YOU ALSO HAVE NOT AVOIDED ERROR.” Tanku has said to him, ”You have already made a mistake by asking the question.” HOJU REPLIED, ”YOU HAVE ALSO NOT AVOIDED ERROR

by answering it, in any form. You should have remained silent.” Both are masters and just playing with each other.

TANKU CONTINUED, ”BE MY FRIEND!”

HOJU ADDED, HIS HAND BY HIS SIDE, ”YOU OLD ROBBER!” This is a greeting in Zen. ”You have robbed my heart” – the old robber.

Meisetsu wrote:

BUTTERFLIES FOLLOW LOVINGLY

THE FLOWER-WREATH

PLACED ON THE COFFIN.

For butterflies there is no difference between death and life.

BUTTERFLIES FOLLOW LOVINGLY THE FLOWER-WREATH PLACED ON THE COFFIN.

This should be the attitude of a meditator: witnessing everything, birth and death, with the same love, with the same clarity, with the same silent witnessing.

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Question 2

Maneesha has asked a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

IT IS GENERALLY ACCEPTED THAT EVOLUTION IS FOR THE BETTER, THAT IT IS A PROCESS

OF IMPROVEMENT, OF REFINING. BUT FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE MAINTAINS THAT SPECIES

DON’T GROW MORE PERFECT, BECAUSE THE WEAKER – WHO ARE IN THE MAJORITY –

DEFEAT THE STRONG.

WHAT IS YOUR UNDERSTANDING?

Maneesha, I agree with Friedrich Nietzsche totally.

Man would have evolved tremendously, but because of the weaker masses Socrates is poisoned.

Now, Socrates was a peak of evolution. If the weaker people had not destroyed Socrates, Greece would have been at the top of all the nations today. With the poisoning of Socrates, Greece has fallen lower and lower and lower – not evolution, but INvolution.

And Nietzsche is right that the weaker are in the majority; hence they can destroy the delicate flower of evolution – which has a strength of its own; even destroyed, it will somehow remain in the air.

Socrates is still more alive in the air than even the alive people are.

But the majority, which is the little man, cannot tolerate a very evolved being like Buddha. Buddha suffered many attempts on his life.

The story is very beautiful ....

One day Buddha’s own brother, Devadatta, who had become his disciple, wanted Buddha to declare him his successor. Now, no buddha declares successors. It is not a dynasty, it is not like wealth that the elder son will succeed to it: You become a buddha. It is not a question of succession. Nobody is preventing you.

”I am giving you as much attention as everybody,” Buddha told Devadatta. ”You become a buddha, it is not a question of succession. I cannot declare you to be my successor. There are many enlightened disciples and you are not even enlightened.” This hurt Devadatta very much. He dropped the commune. He was also a prince, and he had a small gang of followers in the commune. They also dropped with him. He was thinking to create another commune in which there would be no need for anybody to make him a successor, he would be the founder. But he could not gather people; he had no light in his eyes, no grace in his hands, no ecstasy in his heart. He was just hungry for prestige, power.

Slowly slowly, those who had come with him also deserted him. Most of them went back to Buddha with apologies. Being alone he became furious, almost mad. He wanted to kill Gautam Buddha, his own brother, and he tried.

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Once Buddha was sitting on a rock meditating; Devadatta was hiding just behind him up a big hill, and he rolled a big rock down the hill, directed towards Gautam Buddha. It would have crushed the fragile flower of the Buddha. All that is higher is fragile; a lotus flower, a roseflower – they have a certain strength and beauty, but if you put them under a rock they will be destroyed. Of course their fragrance will remain in the air.

The story is beautiful. It says that the rock came directly towards Buddha and just as it was going to hit Buddha it changed its route, leaving Buddha alive.

It looks just like a parable, but one never knows. Rocks are also alive, they grow, they have a certain sensitivity. Perhaps it is a factual phenomenon, because many other things of the same category happened.

Devadatta became very mad, he could not believe how the rock changed its course. Just one foot more and Buddha would have been crushed under it.

Devadatta’s father had a mad elephant who was always kept in chains. He was very dangerous.

Criminals who had been sentenced to death were thrown near the cage of the mad elephant, and he immediately pulled them in, killed them and ate them. They were keeping that elephant just to kill the criminals.

Devadatta got the key and asked the man in whose control the elephant had grown up .... Still, even in his madness, the elephant remembered him and always followed him. Wherever the man wanted to take him he could take him; the elephant never harmed him. It is said that elephants have perhaps the greatest memory system, they never forget. If you kill one elephant, a husband, or a wife – they live in couples – never leave the other one alive, otherwise the other one will find a way to kill you, wherever you go. Even twenty years afterwards people have been killed.

The same is true about cobra snakes: they live in couples. Never kill one; if you want to kill one, kill both. If you kill one the other will find a way, wherever you go; years may pass, but he will find a way to kill you. Their memory system is very strong.

Because this man had raised the elephant from his very childhood, even in his madness the elephant remembered him – his love, his compassion. Devadatta bribed the man and told him to take the elephant towards Buddha, who was meditating outside the city in a mango grove.

The man took the mad elephant, who had killed many men; as they reached close to the mango grove his chains were removed. The man who controlled him took him directly to Gautam Buddha.

There was every possibility – they had not thought that anything else could happen – that the elephant would kill Gautam Buddha.

But the elephant came near Buddha; with his small eyes he looked at Buddha, and then, bending his knees, he touched Buddha’s feet with his head.

Neither the man who controlled him could believe it, nor could Devadatta believe it. But such is the blindness of man, that Devadatta continued to do something or other trying to destroy Buddha.

Seeing these two phenomena he should have stopped. Even a mad elephant had the sensitivity to Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 21

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see that this was not an ordinary man to be destroyed, he was not a criminal. Even a rock moved, changed its course.

But Devadatta was much more unconscious than the elephant and the rock. He continued for Buddha’s whole life to try to kill him. There is every suspicion ... Buddha died of food-poisoning but nothing is on record; there is every possibility that Devadatta’s hand was behind his death. The food was given to him by somebody else, mixed with poison.

Maneesha, man could have grown to immense heights, to the Himalayan peaks of consciousness, but because of the unconscious, stupid majority of people, evolution is delayed continually.

You kill one Socrates, you have delayed evolution perhaps for one thousand years. You kill a Buddha by poisoning, you have again delayed evolution for another thousand years. You kill al-Hillaj Mansoor and you have delayed evolution.

Evolution is being delayed continually, because the majority cannot tolerate anybody rising like an Everest – the highest peak of the Himalayas – in consciousness, in love, in compassion.

We have to create a great force of thousands of buddhas.

Only then there is a possibility of a quantum leap in evolution.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

”Thanks for the new drum-set you gave me,” says Little Ernie to Uncle Newton. ”It is the best present I have ever had.”

”Really?” says Uncle Newton. ”I am very pleased you like it.”

”Yeah,” exclaims Ernie, ”and I’m getting rich already!”

”Really?” asks Uncle Newton. ”Rich? Are you becoming a professional?”

”Kind of,” replies Ernie. ”You see, my mom pays me a dollar a day not to play those drums you have given me during the day, and Grandpa pays me ten dollars a week not to play them at night!” George Bush’s appointment as the president of America goes to his head completely. He becomes even more power-mad and rude and throws his weight around a lot.

One day, Bush is invited to a big gathering of the Intellectuals of America Society. He is pushing his way through the guests to get to lunch, when he stomps on Professor Popoff’s toes.

”Well,” says Popoff to Bush, ”the least you could do is apologize!”

”Me? Apologize?” says Bush. ”Do you know who I am? I am the president of America!”

”Thank you,” says Professor Popoff.

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”That may not be an apology, but it is certainly an explanation.” One day at the Sunnyvale Insane Asylum, Crazy Karl escapes and runs to town. He is very impressed when he comes upon the local laundromat, so he decides to go in and wash his clothes.

As he is doing his laundry, he sees two very pretty girls, Grizelda and Bimbo, also doing their wash.

Crazy Karl likes them both, so he asks them if they would like to make love. They both smile and say ”Yeah,” and the three of them get going at it right there.

Just then, Bernie Bernstein, the local newspaper reporter, stumbles upon Crazy Karl and the girls making love on top of a washing machine. Bernie takes one look, then pops a photograph of the orgy for his paper.

Crazy Karl looks up in shock and then runs off.

Bernie, with camera in hand, rushes away to report the story.

That afternoon the headlines read:

”Nut Screws Washers and Bolts!”

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

(gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards.

Gather your whole life energy, collect your total consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is the last moment of your life, rush towards the center of your being.

That is the only shelter in existence, because that center is beyond birth and death. It is your eternity, it is your cosmos, it is your buddha.

As you go deeper and deeper you come closer and closer to yourself.

A great silence starts descending on you, an immense peace, a great joy.

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As you come to the center of your being you have found your original face. Your original face is the buddha.

Remember only one quality of the buddha – because buddha has no other quality – witnessing.

Witness that you are not the body.

Witness that you are not the mind.

Witness that you are not the astral body.

Witness that all the experiences that are happening and will be happening, you are not. You are just a detached, unidentified witness.

This witnessing is the greatest miracle in the world, because it takes you out of the circle of birth and death and gives you the wings to fly into the eternal sky.

It brings you to your home, it makes you aware of the forgotten language of your being.

It fills your heart with love, compassion, kindness. It creates a strange longing in you: How to share it?

To make it clear, Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Relax ....

But remember not to forget the witness. That is your very soul, that is your spirituality, that opens the door of all the mysteries of existence.

At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.

Collect as many flowers, as much fragrance as possible. Persuade the buddha to come along with you. Every day the distance is becoming less and less.

When the buddha starts to be your ordinary life, your day-to-day life, when he expresses his grace, his understanding, his enlightenment, in your ordinary activities, gestures, words, silences, waking or asleep, you have found the ultimate truth of your being.

The day it happens is the most glorious, the most splendrous, the purest of your life. There is nothing beyond it. It is the truth, it is beauty, it is godliness.

Before Nivedano calls you back, just witness that your separation from other buddhas has melted down.

The Buddha Auditorium has become an ocean of consciousness of ten thousand buddhas, without any ripples, without any stir.

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Collect the juice of life, the sense of eternity, and persuade the buddha to come along with you.

He will come, he has always come. Without any doubt, it is your intrinsic nature. It is nobody’s monopoly. It is absolutely your territory, nobody can interfere in it.

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Come back, but remember you are coming back as a buddha – with the same grace, with the same beauty, with the same grandeur.

Sit down for a few moments just to remember the golden path you have followed in, just to remember that buddha has come very close to you like a shadow.

One buddha can create enough fire to make millions afire, aflame.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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CHAPTER 2

There is no way to compare me with anybody

18 January 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

YAKUSAN HAD NOT GIVEN A DISCOURSE FOR SOME TIME WHEN, ONE DAY, THE HEAD

MONK CAME AND SAID, ”THE CONGREGATION OF MONKS ARE THINKING ABOUT YOUR

PREACHING A SERMON.”

YAKUSAN SAID, ”RING THE BELL!”

THE SUPERIOR BANGED AWAY AT THE BELL, BUT WHEN ALL THE MONKS GATHERED, YAKUSAN WENT BACK TO HIS ROOM. THE HEAD MONK FOLLOWED HIM AND SAID, ”THE

MASTER WAS GOING TO GIVE A TALK, AND THE MONKS ARE ALL READY; WHY DIDN’T YOU

SAY ANYTHING TO THEM?”

YAKUSAN SAID, ”THERE ARE SUTRA PRIESTS FOR THE SUTRAS, SHASTRA PRIESTS FOR

THE SHASTRAS; WHY DO YOU QUESTION MY GOINGS-ON?” Friends, I have received today from Germany a very scholarly and honest book, written by Peter Priskil; a comparison between me and Jesus.

The man who has written the book is very rare, because he himself is a Christian but without any prejudice. He has been almost a witness while writing the book. He rates me above Jesus – his conclusions on every point are in my favor, against Jesus – and he himself is a Christian.

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Such honesty is very rare, almost impossible: to keep aside one’s upbringing, one’s mind, and to say straight out the truth of the matter, risking every ideology that you may have carried with you from childhood.

Even a man like Bertrand Russell wrote that he has denied Christianity, he has come out of the fold of Christianity and he knows in his mind, in his intelligence, that Gautam Buddha is far higher than Jesus Christ – but he cannot write it. Something in his unconscious simply prevents him. He knows it perfectly well – there is no doubt about Gautam Buddha being far superior to Jesus Christ – but he feels helpless, he cannot put it down in writing because then it will become a historical fact that the greatest intellectual of this century has decided not only against Christianity, but against Jesus.

But this man, Peter Priskil, seems to be of a far higher superiority than Bertrand Russell.

In the first place, to praise a living contemporary is very difficult. He is so visible, he is so tangible, his whole life is an open book. As time passes, mythologies grow around the person; his real life disappears and a fictitious life arises – very consoling, very much according to the masses.

It has been practically impossible, in the whole history of man, to praise a contemporary. It is very easy to praise someone who lived two thousand years before, five thousand years before. The man has become a myth.

But Peter Priskil has shown such honesty in comparison that at first I felt perhaps he is not a Christian, because he goes on condemning Jesus when comparing him with me, and goes on praising me.

I liked his tremendous honesty, love of truth, his capacity to put his mind aside – his whole programming of being a Christian. He has not allowed it to come between me and Jesus. His unconscious would have liked to have put Jesus above me. That’s why I say it is a rare phenomenon that he has not listened to the unconscious. He has been perfectly conscious, without any prejudice; he has been absolutely just.

But I want Peter Priskil to know that I don’t like to be compared with anybody.

What comparison can there be between me and Jesus? He is the only begotten son of God. I don’t have any God. He believes in heaven and hell; I don’t have in my vision, my philosia, any place for heaven or hell. Jesus believes that he is the savior. The very concept of saving others is ugly to me, it is insulting, humiliating. Who are you to save anybody? And how can you save anybody? If you can save yourself that’s more than enough.

But people are in great need of the consolation that they will be saved. They are ready to become sheep and allow Jesus to become the shepherd. This is the ugliest slavery. There are many kinds of slavery, but spiritual slavery is the ugliest. You have sold your very soul.

Jesus thinks himself to be the last prophet of the Jews. I am neither a savior nor a prophet. I am simply a man amongst you. I am not talking to you from a high peak, from the point of view that I know and you don’t know. I am talking to you man to man.

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All that I am saying to you is that there was a time when I was asleep, just as you are asleep, and there is nothing wrong in it. It is perfectly okay with existence – you can sleep for eternity; but it is not good for you.

What you are seeing in your sleep is only dreams, hallucinations. If you want to know the reality and its beauty you have to wake up. And only you can do it, nobody can help you in any way.

I can go on shouting till my last breath. That will not help unless you are ready to hear and be receptive. And even if you hear, you are receptive, then too you have to walk the path from the circumference of your life to the center of your being. Nobody can do it on your behalf.

It is just like love. Can somebody else love on your behalf? There is one existentialist novel in which, in some future century, people become so rich that they start sending servants to make love to their beloveds. They can afford it; why bother yourself with all that huffing and puffing? The servants can do it.

Perhaps that may be possible some day, but nobody, in any future, can walk the path inside you on your behalf. You are going to be your own savior.

I teach the individual. Jesus tries to convince the masses; I don’t care about the masses at all.

Religion is the greatest creative art, in which you create yourself again. You become the womb and you give birth to yourself once more. The birth from the mother’s womb is only physical. You have to give yourself a birth which is going to bring your spirituality with all its flowers, with all its mysteries, with all its roses, with all its freedom, its truth, its beauty, its godliness. But you have to do it!

I am absolutely against Jesus Christ because he is saying to people, ”I will do it for you; you just believe in me!” I am against all belief systems.

How is any comparison possible? On no point do I agree with any founder of any religion. I have my disagreements, and they are so fundamental and essential that there is no possibility of any compromise.

Peter Priskil has done a great scholarly job, but perhaps he does not know me intimately. He may have read my books, but he has not been in my presence, he has not looked into my eyes, he has not heard my silence. His scholarship is based on the Bible and my books.

Jesus is dead, and there is every possibility he may never have existed at all because no contemporary source even mentions his name. George Gurdjieff used to say that Jesus Christ never existed; it used to be a drama. Every year people played the drama, until by and by they forgot that it was a drama, they started thinking that it was a reality.

I don’t think so. I say Jesus was at least one percent real, ninety-nine percent fiction. All his miracles, all his nonsense talk about God and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and the devil and hell and heaven

– it is all fictitious. It was created after his death. A long time passed, almost one hundred years, before the first gospels were written.

The man who really founded Christianity was not Jesus, it was one of the arch-egoists, Paul. His real name was Saul. He was a fanatic, a fanatic Jew; he wanted to kill all the Christians. He was Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 28

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going from his home towards Jerusalem to kill all the Christians and destroy all the ideas that these people were propagating.

But he was not only a fanatic, he was also suffering from schizophrenia – a split personality. He used to fall into fits of unconsciousness, epileptic fits; he was utterly sick.

On the road to Jerusalem .... It was a hot summer and the sun was burning like a fire, showering on the earth. For days he went on and on, just on foot. One day, under the hot sun, he fell on the earth in an epileptic fit, he became unconscious. And in that unconsciousness his split personality changed: that which was on top went under, and that which was underneath came on top. When he opened his eyes he saw in the burning sun the face of Jesus.

He changed his name from Saul to Paul. He became the most fanatic Christian; instead of killing Christians, he started preaching. He was the man who created Christianity: a schizophrenic, an epileptic, a fanatic, a split personality – a man sick unto the soul.

But every religion needs a fanatic in its foundation. Without fanatics you cannot create religions.

I am not creating a religion. I cannot create a religion because I am against all religions. My whole process is that religion is an individual affair, it is nobody else’s business. No organized church can be in the service of the individual. Every organized church becomes dictatorial, and individuals are subdued, made to surrender, destroyed and made into slaves.

Just today I received the message that this Pope the Polack is turning into an absolute dictator.

Throughout the past, bishops have been chosen by the local clergy. He has, for the first time, started nominating bishops. There is no more election, but imposition from above; and he is putting his own bishops into all the important positions, removing the bishops chosen by the people, by the clergymen of the locality. Now there is a great uproar, and it is conceivable that in the coming months thousands of bishops are going to march to the Vatican against this dictatorial change in the very policy of the church.

But even before the procession reaches there ... it is not going to help. He is putting his own people, who are absolutely conservative, orthodox, in every important city. And he has come up with a very beautiful meaning for the word ‘conservative’.

It is an ugly word, but he has come up with the idea that everything needs to be conserved; conservative means one who conserves. He has taken it completely out of context. It has always meant orthodox, reactionary; now he is saying a conservative is one who conserves.

Okay ....

A conservative is one who conserves lies.

A conservative is one who conserves all kinds of murderous institutions. The church has been one of the most murderous institutions in the history of man. It has murdered more people than Adolf Hitler. Its whole history is bloody. You want to conserve this?

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What does the Catholic church have to conserve? all kinds of nonsense without any logic, without any rationality, without any evidence? What are you going to conserve – the concept of God?

You don’t have a single argument for it. You don’t have anything like enlightenment, which can be an inner experience. Your God is far away above the clouds.

I look again and again, and I see only Jayesh and his great tent. Sometimes I think perhaps God is sitting on Jayesh’s tent – but we have looked; our engineers have been searching all over the tent, and they have never found any God anywhere.

On which cloud is God sitting?

The physicists have explored as far away as possible. Just empty space and stars, but no God.

God has been moving farther away.

Wherever man reaches, the theologians, the religious organizations move God away.

In India, first he used to live on Everest in the Himalayas. Shiva, the great god, used to live in the Himalayas. His wife, Parvati – it means one who is born of the mountains, parvat means mountain

– was the daughter of the Himalayas. But when man reached and discovered all the peaks of the Himalayas, not even a footprint was found.

The first question Edmund Hillary was asked when he came down from Everest was, ”Have you seen God?”

He said, ”God? I did not see any sign of him. On the very peak there is not even enough space; only one man can stand there.” If God was living there he would have been standing throughout eternity.

You cannot sleep there.

Hindus moved God to the moon; but soon people were there on the moon, and there was no sign of God.

Religions go on moving their God, because it is only a lie. You are never going to find God. And a man like Jesus must be a crackpot – without any hesitation I say it; he simply hallucinated that he himself was the only begotten son of God. No man has lived in such a deep hallucination.

You cannot compare me, Peter Priskil, to Jesus. In fact, you cannot compare me to any founder of religion. I am not a founder of any religion. I want all religions to be destroyed so that the individual is free to look for himself into his own being; not focusing himself on some objective God, but searching into his subjectivity. That is the only real spirituality – to go inwards.

The churches are out, God is out, heaven and hell are out; they are not part of your inner being, and your inner being is your only existential truth.

I don’t want to create a religion. I want religious individuals, seekers, searchers – not Christians, not Hindus, not Mohammedans. And when I am gone, I don’t want any organization to go on persisting around my teachings.

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Find out yourself.

The earth is never without a few enlightened people; it needs search. And only a living master can give you a taste, only a real rose has fragrance. A plastic rose is a deception, and all the religions are relying on plastic roses, all their scriptures are plastic roses.

My effort is so totally different and diametrically opposite to all the founders of religions, that there is no way to compare me with anybody. I am a majority of a single individual, and I want all of you to be a majority of single individuals.

You are enough unto yourself. You don’t need anything. You need only a deep inner search. You need only become a meditative genius.

A little biographical note:

YAKUSAN, ALSO KNOWN AS YUESHAN, WAS BORN IN 750. HE BECAME A PRIEST AT THE

AGE OF SEVENTEEN. LATER, WHILE WITH SEKITO, HE REALIZED HIS ENLIGHTENMENT.

ONCE A MASTER WITH DISCIPLES OF HIS OWN, YAKUSAN ESTABLISHED A MONASTERY, WHICH PROSPERED WELL.

What does it mean – WHICH PROSPERED WELL? Does it mean it accumulated great wealth?

No, it means it accumulated thousands of seekers for truth. It means many became enlightened under the guidance and presence of Yakusan. It is a totally different kind of prosperity. It is totally a different world. It belongs to your innermost splendor.

When so many people became enlightened under Yakusan, the whole mountain where he was collecting all these seekers must have become a paradise. So many enlightened people ... the whole mountain must have been rejoicing and dancing. That is what it means: his monastery prospered well.

The sutra:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

YAKUSAN HAD NOT GIVEN A DISCOURSE FOR SOME TIME WHEN, ONE DAY, THE HEAD

MONK CAME AND SAID, ”THE CONGREGATION OF MONKS ARE THINKING ABOUT YOUR

PREACHING A SERMON.”

What has happened? He used to give a daily discourse, and then suddenly for some time he did not turn up to the discourse place. Every day thousands of seekers gathered to listen to him, but had to return back very sad and in despair: ”What has happened to the master? Why is he not coming to give his sermons?”

It was not that he was ill, he was perfectly healthy; he was chopping wood – the disciples saw him –

he was carrying water from the well, he was doing everything except the sermons. What could have been the cause?

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As far as I am concerned, I know the cause.

The cause was that so many people had

become enlightened that the master thought, ”When there are so many enlightened people in the congregation, they will share. There is no need for me to go on and on telling people. Enough people are enlightened: they can share their enlightenment, their illumination, their light, their life.

What is the need for me?”

But the chief monk of the monastery ... that is an administrative post, it does not mean that the chief monk is enlightened. On the contrary, the chief monk is never enlightened, because he has to do some work; he has to take care of thousands of monks.

Look at Tathagat! I will not allow him to become enlightened. Once he becomes enlightened, who is going to run to the courts, to the police? I have given him the name Tathagat – it means the buddha.

Be patient and be at ease. When the time is ripe, when I see that now there is no need to run to any court, to the police .... I have given you the name to indicate that if you are patient enough you will become a buddha. But right now, you are in charge of the commune.

Head monks, chief monks, whatever their name, are not allowed to be enlightened. They have to do other things too. If everybody becomes enlightened, I will be in trouble. Who is going to cook food for you all?

So many things are needed for ten thousand people. Certainly a few people have to be patient and wait till others have reached to enlightenment. Their waiting is a virtue. Their waiting for others to become enlightened is a great quality of compassion, of love. So they are not the losers.

THE HEAD MONK CAME AND SAID, ”THE CONGREGATION OF MONKS ARE THINKING ABOUT

YOUR PREACHING A SERMON.”

They could not understand why Yakusan had stopped giving his sermons. They could not see that even the rocks of the mountain are giving sermons. So many people have become enlightened that the whole mountain is aflame. Now others who are not enlightened should sit by the side of the enlightened ones.

YAKUSAN SAID, ”RING THE BELL.”

That calls all the monks to the congregation place.

THE SUPERIOR BANGED AWAY AT THE BELL, BUT WHEN ALL THE MONKS GATHERED, YAKUSAN WENT BACK TO HIS ROOM. THE HEAD MONK FOLLOWED HIM AND SAID, ”THE

MASTER WAS GOING TO GIVE A TALK, AND THE MONKS ARE ALL READY; WHY DIDN’T YOU

SAY ANYTHING TO THEM?”

The fact is, that which needs to be said cannot be said, and that which can be said is not the truth.

Every enlightened person has come across the difficulty of how to transfer the experience.

Words are impotent and dangerous. Much is lost the moment you convert your experience from the no-mind into your mind; almost ninety-nine percent is lost, but still there is some fragrance left. But Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 32

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when you speak it, and it reaches the ears of the listeners, that one percent very rarely survives because the listener goes on interpreting it.

Unless the listener stops interpreting – that means, unless he becomes a no-mind .... Mind is interpretation; it is commentary, it is constant commentary. It is continuously telling you what it means.

When you simply listen in silence, with no commentary, no interpretation, that one percent fragrance will become a seed. And as you go on meditating that seed will one day become a flowering bush.

But it is very difficult, because the disciples have to be ready, rooted deep in meditation. Only then that one percent, perhaps, may enter their being and become a seed.

The master came to the congregation. All the monks had gathered because for many days he had not spoken. But when the gathering was complete, when everybody had come, the master returned to his room without saying a word.

In fact, he is not saying but showing. He is saying, ”Return to your innermost room.” He is not saying it in words, he is showing them: ”Don’t waste time in words; just go inside, into your inner room, into your inner shrine. There you will find me, there you will find my message. There you will find your buddha.”

His returning to his room is a gesture, an indication, that ”You also return to your rooms, close your eyes, go inwards as I am going. Don’t waste your time in words.” The head monk, very disappointed, followed the master and said,

”THE MASTER WAS GOING TO GIVE A TALK.

You have told me to ring the bell, and to call all the monks together to listen to your sermon –

AND THE MONKS ARE ALL READY; WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY ANYTHING TO THEM?” This is the beauty of Zen, that it always remains a mystery. When the master says ”Ring the bell,” that does not mean that he is going to say something.

If the people were meditative, just the bell ringing and then becoming more silent, more silent, more silent ... the sound disappearing into silence .... If people were ready, meditative, they would not have come to the congregation. They would have listened to the bell, its sound disappearing into silence, the sound of their own mind disappearing into the silence of no-mind.

That was the message: not to come to the congregation place but to go inwards. As the sound disappears, you disappear. Let a great silence descend on you. But the head monk could not understand, nor the other monks.

Perhaps the enlightened ones may not have come to the congregation, and perhaps the master has come just to see who has gathered.

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The head monk thought, ”He is coming, so he will give the sermon.” But he simply came and looked around. He saw that none of the enlightened ones had come. They must have been meditating outside under some tree, by the side of a river, on the top of the hill. They must have heard the bell ringing and the sound disappearing into silence. That must have given them the sermon.

The master looked at the people who had gathered. These are the people who don’t know anything about meditation. What to say to them? Anything said to them will be misunderstood, and no master wants to create any misunderstanding in the disciples.

Let the masses misunderstand; it does not matter, they are already living in all kinds of misunderstandings. They are unconscious people, groping in the dark. A little more understanding or misunderstanding is not going to help them either this way or that.

But for the people who are trying to meditate, the master showed them a gesture. Silently and gracefully he walked back, went into his room.

The head monk followed because he could not understand this irrational, unreasonable behavior.

”First you call the monks by ringing the bell, and when they have all gathered from different places on the mountain, hoping that you are going to speak, you do not speak. What is the matter with you?”

YAKUSAN SAID, ”THERE ARE SUTRA PRIESTS ....”

There are priests all over the world whose only knowledge comes from the scriptures, from other people’s experiences. He calls them ”sutra priests” – those who don’t know anything on their own.

They simply repeat like parrots ancient sutras, ancient maxims of spirituality.

AND THERE ARE SHASTRA PRIESTS ....

Sutras are very small maxims, aphoristic. The reason why sutras were used in the past was that until writing came into existence, everything had to be memorized. You cannot memorize a big book, but you can memorize small sutras in the seed.

So all the ancient awakened ones have spoken in sutras, so that those sutras would reach the coming centuries just by memory. There was no other way of conveying to the future generations.

Hence all old languages are very poetic, for the simple reason that poetry can be memorized more easily than prose. You can sing it.

I am reminded of a very strange phenomenon .... Alexander the Great came to India three hundred years after Buddha had died. He had heard about Buddha. His master was the father of Western logic, Aristotle.

Aristotle had asked him to bring back two things. One I have told you about: a sannyasin – because the West had not known a sannyasin. What kind of a person is a sannyasin, what kind of individual?

What is his style of life? What is so special about a sannyasin that the whole East touches his feet?

”So bring a sannyasin, with great respect, as a guest of the emperor.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 34

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And the second thing Aristotle said was, ”I have heard so much about the ancientmost scripture of the Hindus, RIGVEDA, so you bring a copy of RIGVEDA.” Printing had not started yet, but writing had started. There were only a few families in the whole of India who had handwritten Vedas. There are four Vedas.

Alexander inquired wherever he went in India, ”Is there someone who can give me, at any cost, a copy of RIGVEDA?”

In one place they said, ”Yes, there is a brahmin family which has a copy of all the four Vedas, but we don’t think they will give it to you. That is their treasure.” It was very rare to have all four Vedas, particularly in those days. Now you can purchase them from any bookstall. The Hindus had insisted not to print their RIGVEDA or the other three Vedas, knowing perfectly well that they are ninety-nine percent rubbish; once they are printed they will lose their glory.

But at the time Alexander came here there were a few families which had the four Vedas. Those families were called chaturvedis: chatur means four, vedis means having the Vedas. Those who had three Vedas were called trivedis – tri means three. Those who had only two Vedas were called dwivedis – dwa means two. The English word two has come from dwa. First it became twa in certain languages passing towards the West, then it became two. But it is the same root, dwa.

These families were very much respected; nobody knew what the secret of those Vedas was.

Finding a family with four Vedas, Alexander was immensely happy.

He went to the family and he said, ”I am ready to pay anything you want. And if you don’t give me the four Vedas ... you should know who I am!”

The old man of the family said, ”By custom, I cannot give you those four Vedas right now, but in the morning when the sun rises I will give you all the four Vedas.” Alexander had come in the evening. He said, ”That’s okay, I can wait. What will be the price?” The old man said, ”There is no question of price.” But Alexander took every care, he surrounded the house with his army. There was every possibility that in the night this old man might escape – because he was so willing to give, and Alexander had heard that it was very difficult to get; that they will give their lives, but they will not give their Vedas.

Seeing that the old man was so willing – he was just asking a little time. ”Let the night be over. We cannot give them in darkness; they are the source of light. We will give them to you when the sun is rising. You come then,” – Alexander said, ”I am not going anywhere. I will camp here in front of your house. And my army is surrounding your house. Don’t try to deceive me.” The old man said, ”There is no reason to deceive. You wait.” And he closed his doors, all the windows.

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In those days brahmins used to be fire-worshippers, so inside their house there was always a fire which had been continuous for hundreds of years past; it had never died out. They were giving it fuel, wood, continuously keeping the fire going.

In the night he gathered his four sons, and he brought all the four Vedas, and he said to each, ”You listen to the RIGVEDA, you listen to the YAJURVEDA, you listen to the ATHARVVEDA, you listen to the SAMVEDA” – these are the four names of the Vedas – ”and remember them! And I don’t have much time. Only once you will hear it, and you have to remember it. There will be no question of saying that you have forgotten something, because once I read it, I will drop that page into the fire. I cannot give my ancient heritage to Alexander, but I can give my sons.” So he went on reading and dropping the pages into the fire. By the morning all the four Vedas were burnt, but the four sons were ready. He opened the door; Alexander immediately came out from his camp and said, ”The sun is rising.”

The old man said, ”The Vedas are ready.” He brought his four sons.

Alexander said, ”Where are the Vedas?”

He said, ”These are the Vedas. This is the first Veda, this is the second, this is the third, this is the fourth. Whenever you want, they will repeat them. Whichever page you want, they will repeat.

Whichever line you want, they will repeat and explain to you.” Alexander said, ”But what happened to the books?” He said, ”Look at the fire.”

There in the fire he saw the four ancient books; they were still burning.

Alexander could not believe it. He could not conceive that this would happen. He was thinking that this man may escape, so he had put his army around the house and he was camping in front of the house. He had never thought even in his dreams, his wildest dreams, that this would happen. But it had happened: the four Vedas were burnt.

The old man was laughing. He said, ”You can take the living Vedas. I am giving you my four sons in my old age. They are my only support – but it is no problem, take them to your land. Let your master and others know what is in the Vedas.”

But Alexander said, ”Why did you burn your books?” He said, ”There was no other way; I could not give them to you. That was my father’s order when he was dying. When he handed them to me, he said, ‘Never give these books to anybody at any cost.’

You could have given me your whole empire, and still I would not have given those books to you. It was a promise given to a dead father, a promise given when he was dying.” Alexander was at a loss. He did not take those four boys, because how would he know whether they were saying the right thing? ”If this man, this old man, can be so clever, so intelligent, how to know Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 36

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whether these boys are reciting RIGVEDA or something else? We don’t have anything to compare with. If he had given the books, we could have compared whether they were reciting the same thing.

Now there is no point.”

Back home he told Aristotle, ”You have to forgive me. I could not bring a sannyasin because the sannyasin refused. He said, ‘I am a master of myself, you cannot order me. You may be a great emperor, that does not matter; to a sannyasin it is absolutely immaterial who you are.’

”I threatened the sannyasin,” Alexander said to Aristotle, ”that I would cut off his head. He laughed.

He said, ‘You can do that because I have cut off my head long ago. You cut it! Take your sword out of your sheath!’

”I have never been so afraid. I have never seen such a ferocious man! Very fragile, very silent, very graceful, but he said, ‘Bring out your sword and cut off my head! Just as you will see the head falling on the ground, so I will also witness. I have left the head long ago so it is empty, don’t be worried.

You cut it off.’

”I could not cut off the head of such a man, such a beautiful man, so fearless. How can you cut off the head of someone who is inviting you ...?

”And I am sorry I could not bring the four Vedas, because that old man deceived me. He burnt the four Vedas, and in his very old age he gave his four sons. They were his only support. He said,

‘Don’t be bothered about me. You take these four sons.’ But I decided not to bring them, because how would we know whether they were right or wrong?” When there was no way of writing, sutras came into existence; very small, aphoristic, two lines at the most – and that too written in a poetic form, so you can hum, recite, sing, and let them settle in your memory.

So there are sutra priests, and when writing came into existence, shastras, scriptures, were written.

Now there was no need to write aphoristically, because in an aphoristic style there is the possibility of misinterpretation.

You will find in India a strange phenomenon which has not happened in any place outside India.

Every sutra book has been interpreted in thousands of ways, because the sutra is so small, so condensed, so full of meaning, that you can take any viewpoint. It opens in all dimensions; you can interpret it in such a way that nobody has ever thought of.

So there are interpretations of sutras, but these interpretations are also sutras. So then there are interpretations of the interpretations .... Sometimes it goes on until one sutra has been interpreted, then the interpretation has been interpreted – twelve times, fifteen times, thirty times. I have come across one thousand interpretations of SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA.

Such a thing has never happened anywhere else in the world, because never were such condensed sutras given.

Seeing the difficulty of sutras, that they can be interpreted in millions of ways contradictory to each other and create many schools of thought .... This was not the purpose. There was a single meaning, but who knows which is the right meaning? When there are a thousand meanings available, how are you going to choose which was the original meaning?

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Hence, shastras came into existence. ‘Shastras’ mean prose scriptures. You don’t have to interpret.

Every detail is given; not just a condensed aphoristic form, but everything that the person wanted to say has been explained by himself. You don’t need any interpreter.

YAKUSAN SAID, ”THERE ARE SUTRA PRIESTS AND THERE ARE SHASTRA PRIESTS” –

and what is their function? They don’t know anything as their experience.

The sutra priests exist for sutras; they are just biological computers carrying sutras. You ask them for sutras, they will give you sutras. And there are shastra priests; they don’t know anything on their own authority, but they can give you the whole shastra with all the interpretations possible. But it is all games, gymnastics of intellect and language.

Yakusan said, ”I am neither, so WHY DO YOU QUESTION MY GOINGS-ON?

Why do you question that I have left the congregation? Neither am I a sutra priest, nor am I a shastra priest. I am myself. I expound my own experience, and I have expounded enough.

”I have said the unsayable in as many ways as it was possible to say it. I have expressed the inexpressible in thousands of ways, and so many people have become enlightened. Now all these meditators should sit by the side of those who have become enlightened. I have done my work, now I want to retire. Seeing the utter futility of saying anything, I wanted to retire from the very first day when I became enlightened. But because of my compassion, my love, and thousands of people coming with such thirst, I remained; I did not go into retirement, into silence. I hoped that perhaps their thirst may help them. The deeper their thirst ... I will be able to reach them with my words, with my silences, with my gestures. Perhaps if a thousand people come, one person may become enlightened. For that every effort is worth doing.

”And now that so many people are enlightened .... I am getting old, you should start sharing with the enlightened ones. This is my last gesture to you: Go into your innermost shrine. That’s why I have come to my room.” And he closed his doors.

Yakusan never opened his doors again. He died inside his room.

Zen masters die in different ways. They live individually, they die individually. Their every expression is so authentic, so original, you can never predict it.

The monks, the disciples, even the enlightened ones, were sitting around his house crying, shouting,

”Please open the door.” But there was nobody to open the door. Finally they had to break the door down. Yakusan was sitting in a lotus posture – just the body; his being had melted like ice into the cosmos.

It is a very beautiful ending; the last sermon of the master just before his death.

Basho wrote:

COME, LET’S GO

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SNOW-VIEWING,

TILL WE ARE BURIED.

It is absolutely graphic.

COME, LET’S GO SNOW-VIEWING, TILL WE ARE BURIED.

What he is saying is: if you become acquainted with the beauty of existence, your breathing will stop. The beauty is so overwhelming, you will be buried in it. It will become not only your inner enlightenment, it will also become your outer samadhi.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY THAT IF WE LOSE CONSCIOUSNESS – THROUGH FEAR – AT THE

POINT OF DEATH WE RE-ENTER THE CIRCLE OF BIRTH AND DEATH.

IS WITNESSING ALL WE CAN DO AT THIS CRUCIAL MOMENT OR IS THERE ANY SPECIFIC

TECHNIQUE?

Maneesha, there is nothing except witnessing, and witnessing is not a technique.

Witnessing is your nature, your very nature.

You are nothing but witnessing.

Witnessing is the purest consciousness.

And it is not only fear that makes you unconscious. Fear is only one element. When you are dying, it is not only fear that makes you unconscious; you already have too much unconsciousness – fear only takes away the thin layer of consciousness. One-tenth is conscious, nine-tenths is unconscious.

Fear takes away the thin layer of consciousness and you are drowned in your own unconsciousness.

It is so deep. It does not come from outside.

In meditation, when you are witnessing, you are by and by, without your knowing it, dispelling unconsciousness. You are becoming more and more conscious. The thin layer of consciousness becomes thicker and thicker and thicker, and a moment comes when your whole being is full of consciousness. This is witnessing.

So when death comes, you witness death. When life was there, you witnessed life. It is nothing new: death is only an object, just as life was an object. If you have learned how to witness, there is no question of being afraid. You will be a witness in your death too.

And if you are a witness in your death, you will never be born again into any other prison of the body.

You will not suffer nine months in a mother’s womb, in deep darkness, completely encaged. You Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 39

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will not suffer coming out of the womb – because the passage is very narrow and the child suffers immensely.

In fact, the scientists say that every child is born before his time; nine months are not enough for the child to become mature. At least eighteen months are needed, but eighteen months will kill the mother. In eighteen months the child will be so big, you will not believe it: the mother is bursting.

To save the life of the mother, nature balances in such a way that it cuts it to nine months, which is exactly when the child can come – although it is difficult and painful, the passage is very narrow.

That’s why the human child is so helpless; no other animal’s child is so helpless. For just a few days perhaps the animal mother looks after them, then they are on their own.

But a human child has to be looked after for twenty-five years until he comes with a Ph.D. from the university! Twenty-five years is one third of life, and even then there is no certainty that he is mature.

Most of them are retarded. They may have a Ph.D. but a Ph.D. is nothing, it is a very clerical job. You just go on cutting pieces from different books and pasting them and soon you will have a doctorate, a Ph.D.

It is such a clerical job that I refused to do it.

After my postgraduation, when I was offered a scholarship for three years to do a doctorate, I refused.

My vice-chancellor called me. He said, ”You are mad.” I said, ”That’s true. You know me. Why have you called me?” He said, ”Listen, for three years you are given the biggest scholarship we have in the university and all facilities – residence, food, teachers to help you for your doctorate.” I said, ”My understanding about doctorates is this – because I have seen many doctorates in the library. All my teachers are doctors; I have seen their doctorates and I have told them all that it is a simple job. You need only scissors.”

They said, ”What?”

I said, ”You go on cutting from different books and go on pasting and soon ... it won’t take more than six months. Three years is a waste. In six months you can produce a new book out of fifty books.” The head of my department had a doctorate from Oxford. Obviously he had written it in English.

He wanted it to be translated into Hindi and wanted it to be published. It was a beautiful book: THE

NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN HINDU PHILOSOPHY. He could not find the right person to translate it. For almost twenty years he had been looking. I was his student, and he told me, ”I am tired of looking, but I think you can manage it. You will just have to devote to it at least one summer vacation – two months.”

I looked at his thesis and I said, ”It won’t take that long. I will translate it, but looking at your thesis I can say which passage has been taken from which book.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 40

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He said, ”That you keep secret; you just translate it. You are not to bother which passage has come from which book. I know you can manage it, because you are living in the library the whole day. You know all the books that I have consulted.”

I told him, ”You have not consulted them, you have cut pieces. You needed only scissors and German glue!”

I translated his book. He was immensely happy. But I had marked on each passage ”From this book, from this page to this page ....”

He said, ”You have spoiled everything! I will have to have it typed by someone and I will have to cut all these references. Why did you do it?”

I said, ”I know this passage is not yours, you have taken it from Badrayana.” I had brought Badrayana, and I opened the page and I said, ”Look! Word for word. You have been stealing.” He said, ”That’s true. It is difficult to argue with you.” So I told my vice-chancellor, ”I don’t want to do a clerical job. I would prefer to die than to be a clerk!” He said, ”Don’t be angry at me; if you don’t want to do it, don’t do it.” He said, ”I have another offer for you. A commission of twelve students from all over India, who have come top this year in their universities, is going to visit Afghanistan. I have proposed your name, without asking you.” I said, ”You have done absolutely wrong. You withdraw my name.” He said, ”But why do you want to withdraw your name?” I said, ”You don’t know, these names will reach to the politicians; they will have to approve them. My name can never be approved by the politicians.”

Even in my university I was hitting the politicians right and left. Even the first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, I was criticizing continually from the platform of the Students’ Union of the university. He was Rajiv Gandhi’s grandfather.

When he came to visit the university, he particularly asked the vice-chancellor, ”Where is that young man who has been criticizing me continually on everything?” The vice-chancellor called me. He said, ”Nobody except you could be doing this. Why have you been criticizing him?”

I said, ”I am ready to answer if he has any question to ask, or if he has any answer to give I am ready to criticize.”

Pandit Jawaharlal looked at me. For a moment there was silence. He must have thought that if he criticizes me before everybody .... And he had read all my criticisms, because I was sending the university magazine every month to the prime minister with all my criticisms of his policies. So he was wise enough, he just hugged me.

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I said, ”Remember, this is not an argument!”

But we laughed. He understood the situation.

I told my vice-chancellor, ”Take my name off the list.” He said: ”I have already sent it and it will look very awkward.” I said, ”Then it is up to you. I say to you that just to stop me, they can even cancel the whole commission.” And that’s what happened. The whole commission was dropped. Nobody was to go because they could not drop me alone and send the eleven others to Afghanistan to study, to see the country and its people and report to the government. The whole commission was canceled.

The vice-chancellor called me and he said, ”You were right. You are always right!” Maneesha, there is no technique as such. Your being, your consciousness, has to transform all the dark corners inside you. The light has to reach into every nook and corner.

That’s what we call meditation.

Witnessing penetrates to every nook and corner – slowly slowly, all darkness, all unconsciousness disappears. And if you die consciously, witnessing death, you are freed from the imprisonment of the birth and death circle. Then you can melt into the cosmic whole, into absolute silence, into great ecstasy. That is the only authentic religiousness.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

Duckworth Bird and Whitney Whacker find themselves sitting next to each other at the poolside of the Screwing Sands Hotel in Jamaica. Duckworth leans back in his beach chair, takes a long sip on his iced Pina Colada, and sighs, ”Ah! Life is good!”

”Yes,” replies Whitney, sipping on his Tequila Sunrise. ”It is true.”

”You know,” says Duckworth, ”I am here on my insurance money. I collected ten thousand dollars for fire damage.”

”Me too!” exclaims Whitney. ”But I got twenty thousand dollars for flood damage.” There is a long silence. Then Duckworth sits up straight in his chair, and turns to look at Whitney.

”Tell me something,” says Duckworth. ”How do you start a flood?” Paddy and Seamus are having a beer in the pub, and are talking about Sean, their absent-minded friend.

”He’s getting worse,” says Paddy, shaking his head in dismay.

”Yes, I know what you mean,” agrees Seamus. ”Just last week he took his dog for a walk around the park and got lost.”

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”Well that’s nothing,” explains Paddy. ”It was really embarrassing just last night in this pub. He started kissing a woman by mistake!”

”My God!” exclaims Seamus. ”Did he think it was his wife?”

”No!” replies Paddy. ”It was his wife!”

There is a loud clamor of screaming and the noise of smashing dishes coming from the Kowalski house. This goes on for fifteen minutes, when finally Kowalski comes storming out of the house.

”Ah, you’ll be back!” screams Olga, standing in the doorway waving a teapot in the air. ”How long do you think you will be able to stand happiness?”

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

(gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen. This is the right moment to look inwards.

Gather your life energy, collect your whole consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is the last moment of your life, go deeper and deeper like an arrow piercing to the very center of your being.

The deeper you move, the closer you are coming to yourself. The deeper you move, soon you will be facing your hidden buddha, your hidden witness.

At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth. A great silence has descended upon you, and flowers of peace and the fragrance of love and the climate of compassion surrounds you.

You can see the buddha clearly.

It is your very being.

It is you.

Witness that the body is not you, the mind is not you, the astral body is not you. You are the buddha.

You are the pure witness.

To make it clear, Nivedano ...

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(drumbeat)

Relax ....

But go on witnessing whatever happens inside.

A great ecstasy may come to you, almost a feeling of drunkenness, and as you become settled in the witnessing, your body starts melting.

Gautama the Buddha Auditorium becomes an ocean of consciousness, without any ripples.

Collect as many flowers, as much fragrance, as much joy as you can contain – the blissfulness, the benediction of this moment. And persuade the buddha. He has been hiding at the center for many many lives. The spring has come, now he has to come out. He has to become one with you, not only in the center but in your day-to-day ordinary activities.

Unless a buddha can sing a song with you and dance a dance, unless a buddha can participate in your very mundane affairs, you have not got it. But it is your very being, so you can pull him out; when Nivedano calls you back, hold his hand. I myself have brought him out by holding his neck!

He will come with you.

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Come back, but be silent, be graceful.

Sit for a few moments remembering the golden path you have traveled, remembering all the experiences at the center, and watch.

The shadow of the buddha is behind you.

Every day, inch by inch, the distance between you and your buddha is becoming less and less.

This is what I have called:

Straight to the point of enlightenment!

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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CHAPTER 3

A grand approach to reality

19 January 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

IN THE DAYS WHEN YAKUSAN WAS STILL ACTIVELY INSTRUCTING HIS DISCIPLES, RIKOH

– THE GOVERNOR OF HO-SHU AND ALSO A GREAT CONFUCIAN – WENT TO VISIT

YAKUSAN, WHOM HE GREATLY ADMIRED. YAKUSAN WAS LOOKING AT A SUTRA WHEN

THE ATTENDANT MONK SHOWED RIKOH INTO THE MASTER’S ROOM. YAKUSAN DID NOT

LOOK UP ON THE GOVERNOR’S ARRIVAL, BUT APPEARED ABSORBED IN WHAT HE WAS

READING. AFTER A FEW MOMENTS, RIKOH, WHO HAD A HOT TEMPER, COULD NOT STAND

IT ANYMORE.

HE GRUMBLED, ”IT’S BETTER TO HEAR THE NAME

THAN TO SEE YOUR FACE,” AND STOOD UP TO LEAVE.

IMMEDIATELY YAKUSAN SAID, ”WHY DO YOU RESPECT THE EAR AND LOOK DOWN ON THE

EYE?”

RIKOH PRESSED HIS HANDS TOGETHER AND BOWED DOWN. HE THEN ASKED, ”COULD

YOU PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TAO IS?”

YAKUSAN IMMEDIATELY POINTED UP AND THEN DOWN WITH HIS HAND AND ASKED, ”DO

YOU UNDERSTAND?”

RIKOH SAID, ”I DON’T UNDERSTAND.”

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YAKUSAN SHOUTED, ”CLOUDS ARE IN THE SKY; WATER IS IN THE WELL!” RIKOH SUDDENLY REALIZED AND FELT GREAT JOY. AND WITH HIS CONTENTMENT, HE

BOWED DOWN TO YAKUSAN AND PRESENTED THIS POEM TO HIM:

”ACHIEVED FORM, IT LOOKS LIKE A FORM OF THE CRANE.

UNDER THE THOUSANDS OF PINE TREES, THE WAY OF THE TWO POLES.

I COME AND ASK TAO: NO WASTEFUL ARGUMENT.

CLOUDS ARE IN THE SKY; WATER IS IN THE WELL.”

FRIENDS, the two greatest enemies of man and life are religions and the military. They have both the same orientation: life-negation.

Religions teach people to renounce life, it is a sin to rejoice in it. In an indirect way they are teaching people to be life-destructive. They are enhancing a consolation that after life, after death, you will have all the pleasures of paradise.

The military is also life-negative. Its whole function is to prepare for death. You can see the relationship: the military prepares to destroy people, and religion consoles them, ”Don’t be worried.

The real life begins after death.” Hence they have a subtle conspiracy, which is not so obvious to ordinary people.

Religions – all the religions are included – have done their best to destroy people’s love, their life, their laughter. They have poisoned everything on the planet. If you are miserable, it is not your fault; you are programmed by the religions to be miserable. If you are criminals, suicidal, murderers, rapists, you are not responsible at all. You have been programmed to do all these things – but in such a way that unless you have the vision of a buddha, you will not be able to figure it out.

For example, to forcibly make man monogamous is to destroy his whole joy of being with women, women’s joy of being with men. A husband soon becomes a commodity, a wife soon becomes a lifelong purchased prostitute. You use each other, and to use any human being is against the dignity of humanity.

You can use things, but you cannot use human beings. And what are husbands doing? What are wives doing? And who is responsible for this? Who has created the prostitutes? To save marriage, millions of women live in the ugliest manner: by selling their bodies. It is religion.

Who has taken away your laughter, your smiling faces? Who has made you look so sad, in such despair and misery and anguish?

Sigmund Freud was right when he said that religion has been teaching against sex. It could not manage to make people against sex, but it has succeeded at least in poisoning sex. While making love you feel guilty – and how can you rejoice when you feel guilty? If you are committing a sin you cannot rejoice. Unless love is a virtue, your birthright, it is poisoned.

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Just as Sigmund Freud is right, so is Karl Marx when he says that religions are the opium of the people. They keep people drugged, drugged in fictions: in God, in heaven, in the greed for paradise and its pleasures, in the fear and paranoia of hell.

Just today I have received all the literature from the American Atheist Society. They have suffered immensely – you will not believe it – just as our commune suffered in America. Again, behind the government was the Christian church.

The woman who founded the Atheist Society has been jailed nineteen times without any reason –

and the American Constitution gives the freedom to choose your religion or not to choose. It is your personal affair, the state cannot interfere in it.

Her house has been burnt down by an American government agency, the CIA. Her whole library has been destroyed. She has been beaten for no reason at all. She had to escape to Hawaii just to save her life.

Slowly slowly, more and more atheists started gathering, and finally they founded the Atheist Society of America. In their literature they also mention my name. They quote me as calling Jesus a nutcase.

So the first thing I would like to tell the Atheist Society is that to be an atheist is not the right thing; you are simply a shadow of theism. If theism disappears, the shadow will disappear. Never be a shadow. Be on your own feet.

Atheists cannot stand on their own feet. If all theisms, all religions disappear, what reason will there be for atheism to exist? Atheism is simply a reaction against theism.

I would suggest to them to change the name of their society. Atheism indirectly emphasizes God by denying him. If there is no God, there is no point in denying. You don’t deny things which don’t exist, do you? Even to deny a thing, it has to be in existence. Even denial is an indirect way of approval.

I have watched theists and atheists, and the strangest phenomenon is that theists are rarely concerned about God.

Amrito from Greece is here. Because the Greek Orthodox Church was threatening me .... I was only there for four weeks on a tourist visa. I had never left the beautiful house where I was staying just by the side of the ocean, and people from all over Europe had come to be with me.

The archbishop started threatening me, and threatening the government that if they don’t send me away out of Greece, immediately, he will burn down the house where I am living and my friends are staying. He will dynamite the house. This is from the archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church!

The reason? – I was corrupting the morality of the Greek youth. And no Greek youth was there!

My people who were there had come from all over Europe. Perhaps half a dozen Greek sannyasins were there, whom I had already corrupted.

But he made such a fuss that the prime minister had to immediately arrest me, and ordered that I should leave the country without staying for another single moment.

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And now the prime minister himself has a girlfriend. His old wife is still there – he has not divorced her – and he is moving publicly with his girlfriend. The difference in age is great too, and he is even going to the parliament with his girlfriend.

The French president has refused an invitation from the University of Athens to give him an honorary doctorate. He refused, saying that, ”I will not come because of your prime minister.” And other countries .... The Soviet Union has refused to have anything to do with Greece unless this man divorces his wife. But there are problems: the Orthodox Church of Greece does not allow divorce. And the prime minister is afraid.

And what happened to the archbishop?

Amrito, when you go back, ask him what happened to his morality. Why is he silent? Why not dynamite the prime minister’s house? He is absolutely the right person to be dynamited.

What more corruption do you want?

What do you mean by morality?

Now the archbishop is completely silent.

There is no God, hence there is no need of any atheism. You cannot deny something which does not exist.

So my suggestion to the Atheist Society of America is to call your society the Agnostic Society of America. Agnostic means one who is searching for the truth; he is on the way, he is a seeker. He is not a believer. He does not believe in theism, he does not believe in atheism – because both are believers and both are wrong. All believers are ignorant. In what they believe does not matter. You believe in God, somebody believes in no God.

And as I was saying, I asked Amrito when I was in Greece, ”How many people belong to the Orthodox Church?”

She said, ”Almost ninety percent.”

And I said, ”How many people attend the church every Sunday?” She said, ”Not more than four percent.” And who are these four percent who attend? – old, almost-dead women, with one foot in the grave and one foot in the church.

This archbishop of Greece wanted to have a procession against me in front of my house, but he could not manage it because his whole congregation consisted of six old ladies. It would have looked so embarrassing and idiotic.

I have never heard any theist talking about God, but atheists are continuously saying, ”There is no God.” This being too much concerned about God is dangerous. You are more concerned than the Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 48

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theists. Your whole literature consists of denying, continuously denying. One sentence only would be enough.

Whom are you denying? There has never been any God.

There is no reason for anybody to be an atheist.

But to be an agnostic is a totally different world. The agnostic does not believe either in God or no God. He simply does not believe. He searches, he explores, he tries to find the truth; and unless he finds, he will remain simply non-committal, he will not believe in any system of thought.

And when he has found, there is no question of believing. He knows it! He knows the truth. Only people who do not know, believe. Those who know, simply know. There is no question of believing.

Do you believe in the sun? Do you believe in the moon? You simply know, there is no question of believing.

My suggestion to the Atheist Society of America and other atheists of the world is simply to change their name and their attitude. Don’t fight against fictions, you are wasting your life.

A few people are wasting their lives in worshipping fictions, a few people are wasting their lives in fighting against fictions. Both are in the same boat. Both are idiotic, both are nutcases.

The saner man searches, tries to find a way to approach first his own being, and then from that point to enter into the cosmos. Knowing the truth brings great joy and blissfulness and ecstasy.

I have never seen any theist happy, I have never seen any atheist happy. Both are two polarities of the same thing. One has taken the positive attitude, the other has taken the negative attitude, but the object of both is the same God – the greatest lie in the world.

On one side is religion, which is death-oriented, and it has immense power of which you are not aware.

Just in America, Christianity has more land than the five biggest corporations, which are almost empires in themselves. The five biggest corporations of America have not as much money or as much land as the Christian church. And the American government, against its own constitution, protects Christianity. You cannot find out how much money the church has got. Nobody can explore or research into the matter; the government secures its secrecy.

But still a few things leak out.

Every year, in different ways, the American government goes on giving the Christian church one hundred billion dollars. And the constitution of America says that state and religion should be separate!

The churches – not only the Christians, but all the churches of the world belonging to different religions – have more power than any government, more money, more people supporting them. But their work is absolutely underground, you don’t see it on the surface.

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And all these churches make death precious and life trivial. Life is something to be renounced. Then what remains? Only death. All the religions make death precious, because beyond death open the doors of paradise.

All fictions! And the whole of humanity is being forced to live under these fictions.

The second enemy is the military. It prepares especially for death, it has no other function. It prepares for war and destruction. And how much money is spent on it?

Just in America, Ronald Reagan has spent two trillion dollars on military build-up. Two trillion dollars!

One thousand million dollars make one billion dollars; one thousand billion dollars make one trillion dollars. One million dollars are equal to fifteen crore rupees ... The proposed military budget for this year in the US is three hundred billion dollars.

Churches own one hundred and two billion dollars worth of land. The government subsidizes the church with at least one hundred billion dollars a year.

And this is only America. The case is similar in every country – while the people are dying of starvation. These churches talk about charity, and they are accumulating billions and trillions of dollars.

President George Bush was very angry with me because of my Rolls Royces. But my ninety-three Rolls Royces cost only five point three million dollars – and I was not the owner of them, they belonged to different people who had donated to a trust.

George Bush, I have come to know from very intimate friends of the White House, was very much against me. Again and again he was criticizing me: ”The world is poor. Why does this man have ninety-three Rolls Royces?” As he became president, a special Lincoln Continental limousine was made for him. It took three years to make it, and six hundred thousand dollars; and he forgot all about what he had been saying about me.

I want to remind him, ”You have still a second-rate car.” My sannyasin, Avirbhava, has a Rolls Royce here for me. It is the greatest Rolls Royce that has ever been made by the Rolls Royce company.

George Bush is going to spend thirty million dollars on his inauguration as president – and this same fellow was talking about my Rolls Royces. And they were not mine. I don’t own anything; I have enough friends around the world to take care of me.

I had allowed my friends to make a trust with those ninety-three Rolls Royces. Even the president of the Rolls Royce company came to see, because I was the greatest customer in their whole history; never before, never after, is anybody going to have ninety-three Rolls Royces!

What was the purpose of it? Because I used only one Rolls Royce; I never went to see the garage which the Rolls Royce president went to see. He could not believe his eyes: that my cars were kept in a condition that even his new cars could not compete with, because they were given out of love, and taken care of out of love.

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I never went there. I was always telling the directors of my garage, Avesh and Anandadas, that sometime I would come. It was not far away, it was just near the gate of my house. I used to pass by its side twice every day, coming and going, but I never went in. That was not my interest.

My interest was something else: to provoke the jealousy of the American so-called rich. And I succeeded absolutely. Even the president was jealous, the vice president was jealous. The super-rich, Rockefeller and others, were feeling defeated. For the first time somebody had made them appear poor. That was the purpose; otherwise, what is the use? I cannot ride in two Rolls Royces simultaneously. They were all of the same model, they all looked the same from the inside – and I was not sitting on the bonnet! In America, three million people are dying of cold and hunger, and President George Bush is spending thirty million dollars just for his inauguration. Jimmy Carter managed his reception on only three million dollars. If Jimmy Carter can manage on three million dollars – and that too was too much – then why can George Bush not manage?

Has he forgotten all about me?

Now it is my turn to hit him as hard as I can.

He is a coward. He has chosen a vice president, Quayle, who is an idiot. The whole of America is talking about only one thing: Why has an idiot been chosen as a vice president?

Only George Bush and I know the reason. The reason Quayle has been chosen as vice president is as a safety measure. Nobody can shoot George Bush because they will be afraid that then Quayle will become the president. This is the strategy. Nobody would like Quayle to be the president. But this shows the cowardice of George Bush.

It is traditional in America that any intelligent president has to be shot down. George Bush need not be afraid, he is not that intelligent. A Lincoln has to be shot down, a Kennedy has to be shot down; twenty percent of the American presidents have been shot down, and they were the most intelligent ones. The idiots? Who cares! Why waste your bullet?

But cowards are cowards.

America goes on pretending that it is the same great and super-rich nation. It is no longer. You will not believe it but it has started borrowing money from poor countries, and of course from rich countries, richer than America.

Japan is now the richest country in the world. The richest man in America has only four billion dollars. The richest man in Japan has twenty-six billion dollars. Japan is one-fourth the size of America as far as land is concerned, but its land and all that land contains is worth four times more than America. America is already sliding back. It should be counted soon as a backward country.

These receptions – wasting thirty million dollars of the taxpayers’ money – are just to boost the idea in the world that America is still rich. It no longer is, and it is going down the drain every day. Ronald Reagan has left it in debt.

Now the military is asking for one and a half trillion dollars: ”Otherwise you will not be competing with the Soviet Union.” George Bush is at a loss from where to get one and a half trillion dollars. And Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 51

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the military goes on increasing its budget, although it has the greatest budget in the world. But still it is far behind the Soviet Union. The reason: vested interests.

The Soviet Union is absolutely computerized.

Its missiles will be handled by the computers.

American missiles will be handled by human beings. A computer can work for one thousand people, ten thousand people – as many as you want. Now these people are not allowing the government to set up computers because then they will lose their jobs. But missiles handled by human beings cannot compete with missiles handled by computers.

America is already a second-rate power in comparison to the Soviet Union.

And it goes on

pretending that it will not only fight for itself, it will protect the European continent, it will protect Panama, it will protect Mexico, this and that. America is going to protect all the world which is not communist – that is its promise. It cannot do it, it has not the capacity.

If the Soviet Union attacks Europe, it will take ten days for America to bring its missiles to the Soviet Union or to Europe. It has missiles, but it does not have the carriers, so it will have to use old kinds of ships to get its missiles to Europe. It will take ten days. In ten days the whole of Europe will be gone. Those ships will search for Europe and Europe will not be found!

But the military experts in America go on continually bringing bigger and bigger budgets. Their experts’ idea is that to keep the world in peace, you have to go on increasing military power, making more nuclear weapons. Pile them up; whether you will ever need them or not, that is not the question.

The Soviet Union is cutting its nuclear weapons, but America does not believe it. The Soviet Union invited news media people to see with their own eyes, and the news people were immensely impressed with the honest desire of the Soviet Union to avoid a third world war. Even the American news media was absolutely convinced that whatever the Soviet Union is saying, it is doing.

But the American military experts cannot believe it; it is against their vested interest. How can they believe it? To believe it means to cut the budgets.

And they have been exploiting so much money; they have become accustomed to having immense amounts of money in their hands. And it is not publicly known; the public is being told that it is a secret, a military secret. It is public money and a military secret! The American taxpayer is the most exploited in the whole world, and the most deceived.

My understanding is .... Just the other day I told the Indian prime minister, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, that if you say to an international gathering that there should not be any boundaries to nations, no organized religions, no differences in colors or races, the whole earth is one .... I have sent him a telegram saying that whatever you are preaching, practice it.

And I know he cannot practice it, because of the military. The military is not going to take his orders for dispersion. On the contrary, the military will take his power into their own hands rather than going to the fields, and to the orchards, and to work. The military is completely spoiled. Without doing any work they are getting the best food, the best clothes, the best houses. Why should they leave all this?

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Rajiv Gandhi cannot do it. He will be thrown out of power by the military. The military cannot tolerate such things. You can talk about it, that’s good – but don’t try to do anything.

Every nation is in the grip of the military and religion. Nor would religion like to be dispersed, because what will happen to its millions of acres of land, billions and trillions of dollars? No religion is going to disperse.

No white man is going to accept the Negro as his equal, although there is nothing special about being white.

The actual truth is .... When God was making human beings, first he cooked them too much; that’s why the Negroes are so black. Seeing the Negroes, he became afraid. Out of fear, he then half-cooked them; that’s how white people are – half-cooked people. Then he remained in the middle: that’s how Indians are – neither white nor black, perfectly cooked!

But there is no need to feel any superiority or inferiority. You can see it on every beach in America and Europe: what God has left half-cooked, people are cooking themselves! It is such a hilarious scene ... thousands and thousands of people, particularly women, lying almost naked, burning themselves – completing the job that God has left undone.

I don’t like people when I see their faces sunburnt, it looks ugly. But it is loved very much by the white people. I cannot conceive whether they have any sense of beauty, any aesthetics .... If you are half-cooked, be happy, there is no harm in it. Why torture yourself?

All the beaches have become torture places where people are burning and torturing themselves.

And that torture won’t last: within two, three weeks, four weeks, it will disappear. Again you have to go to the beach.

And fat women .... You cannot figure out where the mouth is, where other things are – everything is scattered on the beach. Clothes keep you tight. If everybody becomes loose, it is an ugly scene.

They say, these religious people, that in hell you will be burnt for eternity in fire. The white people will enjoy it, they will get really sunburnt!

But nobody is going to change his attitude. Jews will keep on thinking they are the chosen people of God. After four thousand years of constant misery, they still continue to think that they are the chosen people of God. Four thousand years have not convinced you?

The Nordic Germans go on believing they are the chosen people of God. Has the second world war not proved anything to you?

The intelligent young people have understood. My sannyasins ... the greatest number are Germans, the second Japanese, the third Italians. These were the three countries together with Adolf Hitler.

It is not a coincidence, it is simply intelligence. They have understood that they are living in a mad society; it is better to get out of it, find some place where no such stupid ideas are maintained.

Their coming to me is coming to a saner place, where no distinctions are maintained. Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior.

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Races will not drop their ideas.

Armies will not be ready to disperse.

Religions will not drop their hold on millions of people.

I have sent the telegram to Mr. Rajiv Gandhi. Let us see what he can do.

He will come up against all the powers which he has never thought would oppose him. Right now they are with him, but if you start dispersing armies, throwing away your armaments ....

And I don’t think he himself has said that consciously, because on one hand he is making India a nuclear country – India is already producing nuclear weapons – and on the other hand he is talking about disarmament, de-nationalization. He does not see the contradiction.

You are so poor, and you are trying to be a member of the nuclear club. It is such a costly affair for a poor country, that for one nuclear missile millions of Indians will have to die. At this cost, you can become a member of the club of those countries which have nuclear weapons.

Right now there are only five countries in the club. India will be the sixth. By the end of this century there will be twenty-five countries having nuclear weapons. The whole energy is going towards producing death.

Such a love for death, and such a hate for life?

That’s why I say it is an insane world. You have to be aware – at least individually you can drop all death-orientation. And the only way to drop it is to love life, to love love, to love laughter, to rejoice

– not in a paradise after death, but here now. Before death destroys, you have to find the eternal in you.

That eternal can be found only by rejoicing people, loving people, compassionate people, silent people; not people who are against life, they can never find the source.

It is such a simple arithmetic. If you are against life, as all the religions are and all the militaries are, then how can you go deeper into life to find the source, the roots in the cosmos?

I want you, my people particularly, to be life-affirmative, against destruction. They have to be creative in their small ways. Maybe they create poetry, music, dance; maybe they create a small garden with flowers. Inside they have to find their buddha. The more people find the buddha in their innermost being, the more secure is this beautiful planet earth.

In this whole universe, the scientists can only guess that there may be some planets somewhere which have life on them. But this is all guesswork, there is no valid evidence. In this vast universe, only this small earth is full of life.

The whole universe in a way is dead. Nothing green, no river has been found on any planet, on any star; no mountains, no thick forests. No birds fly in their skies, no cuckoos sing songs, no peacocks dance with their psychedelic-colored feathers.

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There is no sign of any human beings anywhere else in the whole universe.

This is the glory of this small planet. It is a very small planet, but strangely of a tremendous glory and splendor. It is a miracle!

In this whole universe, only this earth has greenery, only this earth has humanity. Only this earth has the possibility for human beings to rise to the ultimate peak of being buddhas. This is our only security, otherwise religions and armies are going to destroy the only place where life exists, where consciousness has grown, where a few people have touched the ultimate eternity, where a few people have reached to the very center of existence and found the ultimate significance and meaning of life.

It is not just a question of five billion people dying; it is a question of the whole universe becoming without life, without consciousness. It is a tremendous problem.

You are responsible for such a great work.

Your meditation is not only for you. It is creating a certain milieu around the earth to help people become more creative, more life-affirmative, more in tune with existence, more sane ... and more in the present.

The sutra:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

IN THE DAYS WHEN YAKUSAN WAS STILL ACTIVELY INSTRUCTING HIS DISCIPLES, RIKOH –

THE GOVERNOR OF HO-SHU AND ALSO A GREAT CONFUCIAN – WENT TO VISIT YAKUSAN, WHOM HE GREATLY ADMIRED.

It is very easy to admire a master from far away, looking into his sermons. It is very difficult to face a master, and particularly for a man who was a great Confucian scholar. He could not see the contradiction.

Confucius is not a master, he knows nothing of meditation. He is just a moralist, a thinker who makes rules, regulations on how to behave in a more gentlemanly way. His concern is social, social convenience. He is not concerned at all with your spirituality; he is a materialist, a socialist.

Rikoh, although he was a governor, could not see the contradiction that to admire Yakusan, a Zen master, is very contradictory to Confucian scholarship.

But that’s how people are living – in all kinds of contradictions. They don’t have the eyes and the clarity to see that their life is a contradiction, that they say something, and they believe something and they do something else. And they never see their confused life. They think beautiful thoughts but their actions are ugly, because their beautiful thoughts repress their ugly thoughts. Those ugly thoughts and desires find some way to assert themselves from the back door.

You are all sitting on volcanoes, centuries old, ready to burst any moment. Just a small provocation is needed. Your morality is not even skin deep. Just a little scratch and out comes the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the ape. Your humanity is very thin.

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To understand the contradiction is to get beyond it. Rikoh must have been a very confused man.

Intellectuals are bound to be: they live in the mind, and the mind has no power over the body.

Just try this small experiment: move your earlobes. Try with your mind, however you want to, just to move your earlobes, and you will find it is absolutely impossible.

I have come across only one man, and he was a freak of nature – because there are no nerves in the earlobes so you cannot move them. This young man was my class fellow; now he is a doctor.

By a freak of nature, his earlobes have some nervous system; he can manage any way you say.

You cannot believe it.

Have you ever thought why you cannot move your earlobes the way you move your hand?

Mind has no control over the body, and the people who live in the mind start moving far away from the wisdom of the body. They start making intellectual systems for life, and life does not believe in your intellect. It has its own built-in program.

The intellect may be convinced that you should be celibate, but the body is not convinced, and intellect has no way to convince the body. There has never been a single man who was celibate, except those who are impotent. But the impotent man is not celibate.

Have you ever observed a simple phenomenon? No impotent person, and there are many, has contributed anything to the world, to its evolution. No impotent man has been a great painter, or a great dancer, or a great musician, or a great poet, or a great mystic. No impotent man has been a buddha.

The reason is simple. Our life energy is equal to our sex energy. They are not two things. The impotent man has no energy at all; how can he be creative? All creative people are oversexual.

Nobody says such truths to you, and I am bound to be condemned by the masses because I am saying that every creative person is oversexual, has to be!

Average human beings are average sexually; their sexuality is finished by creating a dozen children.

To create poetry you need more energy than just the productive. To create a great dance, to be a great musician, a painter, a sculptor, you will need something extra; you will need something overflowing that the average man has not. The average man is finished with the children, then he lives his whole life like a spent cartridge!

The mystics, the buddhas, are the most sexual people in the world, for the simple reason that unless you have too much energy, overflowing, you cannot enter into the center of your being. It needs tremendous force! And it is the same energy, whatever name you give to it.

The governor, Rikoh, admired Yakusan very much. It is very easy to admire from far away, because then you are only hearing stories from people. You have never encountered a Zen master. The real encounter has a totally different effect. Because he admired Yakusan, he went to see him.

YAKUSAN WAS LOOKING AT A SUTRA WHEN THE ATTENDANT MONK SHOWED RIKOH INTO

THE MASTER’S ROOM. YAKUSAN DID NOT LOOK UP ON THE GOVERNOR’S ARRIVAL, BUT

APPEARED ABSORBED IN WHAT HE WAS READING.

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A master is always total in whatever he is doing; he may be chopping wood ....

It is said about Rinzai, the great master who brought Zen from China to Japan .... He had a beautiful monastery and just near the gate he was chopping wood. Winter was coming soon; he was getting ready for the winter. He was so absorbed in chopping wood, when a man entered the gate. Seeing a vast monastery he wondered where he was going to find the master, Rinzai. He had heard so much about him.

Seeing one man chopping wood, he asked him, ”Can you tell me where I can find Master Rinzai?” Rinzai looked at the man. For a moment there was silence, and then he just indicated with his finger,

”There! As far as I know, Rinzai lives in that hut.” He was so absorbed, he forgot that he was Rinzai.

The man went.

Then he had a second thought: ”My God! I am Rinzai, and the poor fellow has gone in search of me!” So he ran, he went into the hut from the back, sat in the master’s position.

The man knocked. Rinzai said, ”Come in.” The man looked at him: he was the same man, still perspiring.

The man said, ”But where is Master Rinzai?”

He said, ”I am Master Rinzai.”

The man said, ”Don’t deceive me. I have just seen you at the gate chopping wood.” Rinzai said, ”That’s right. At that time I was not Master Rinzai, but just a woodcutter, totally a woodcutter. That’s why I forgot and I showed you the way. Then I remembered, and I had to run

– you can see I am perspiring; I had to run by the back way and come quickly before you reached here. Now I am Master Rinzai. What do you want?” The man was very puzzled. He could not believe it. What to say of this man: whether he is just a woodcutter pretending to be Rinzai or he IS Rinzai and was cutting wood?

He said, ”I will come some other day. You have confused me completely.” Rinzai said, ”I have not confused you, you have always been confused. I have brought it to the surface. Come some other time, but remember, I am doing all kinds of things. Sometimes I am carrying water from the well. Don’t ask me where Master Rinzai is; at that time I am just a water carrier.”

A Zen master is basically total in his action. Nothing is left behind. So when Yakusan was reading the sutra, he was totally there. He did not even look to see who had entered. It was not that he was insulting or humiliating the governor – he had not even raised his eyes, he had no idea that the governor had entered. He went on contemplating the sutra, its significance, its implications.

YAKUSAN DID NOT LOOK UP ON THE GOVERNOR’S ARRIVAL, BUT APPEARED ABSORBED

IN WHAT HE WAS READING. AFTER A FEW MOMENTS, RIKOH, WHO HAD A HOT TEMPER ....

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Now, what kind of Confucian is this? That’s what I mean by skin-deep morality.

A great Confucian scholar who has learned all the manners and etiquette and morals, and a man in the high post of governor – but he forgot it all. Just because Yakusan did not pay any attention to him for a few seconds, his hot temper came to the surface.

The Confucian cannot dissolve anger, no moralist can help you to dissolve anger; they only teach you to repress. Go on repressing greed, anger, jealousy, and they will all accumulate inside you and will become a strong force. Just a slight provocation ....

And Yakusan was not provoking consciously, he was simply reading his sutra. But even that, the governor felt, is insulting: ”I am no ordinary person, I am a governor and he is just a beggar.” Zen masters are beggars.

”A beggar! – and he has not even looked at me, what to say about standing up and receiving me and bowing down. He knows no manners! He is a wild type of man.” He became very angry. He could not stand it anymore.

HE GRUMBLED, ”IT IS BETTER TO HEAR THE NAME THAN TO SEE YOUR FACE,” AND STOOD

UP TO LEAVE.

IMMEDIATELY YAKUSAN SAID, ”WHY DO YOU RESPECT THE EAR AND LOOK DOWN ON THE

EYE?

You have heard of me and you respected me. And now you have seen me and you are angry and you are going in anger. Why do you prefer the ear to the eye?” A very significant question. The eye gives you eighty percent of your experiences, and the remaining four senses, only twenty percent. That means that each sense other than the eye gives you only five percent of your total experience, while the eyes give you eighty percent.

But people are very much believers in the ear. You believe any kind of rumor, you never bother to check. You believe any kind of lie, you never try to find out; ”First I should understand whether there is any truth in it.” Who wants to take that much care?

People live in lies; and they have only heard, they have not seen anything. Have you seen God?

And the whole world believes in it, just because you have heard. And the people you have heard it from, have you asked them, ”Have you seen God?” They have also heard. Go on searching; you will never find a man who has seen God. You will find, century after century, people who have heard.

Who created the rumor?

I have always loved a small story ....

By chance, by some mistake a journalist, after dying, reached the pearly gates. Saint Peter opened his window and looked down, and he asked, ”Who are you?” The man said, ”I am a journalist. Open the door.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 58

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Saint Peter said, ”A journalist? Our quota is full. We had a quota for twelve journalists, but that has been full since eternity because there is no news happening in paradise. Everything is calm and quiet. All the saints are sitting on their clouds, playing on their harps, singing ‘Alleluia!’” What news can there be? No stealing, no murder, no suicide, no rape, nothing. So only the first issue of the newspaper had appeared – that was in the very beginning when God made the world.

That was the only news. Since then those twelve journalists had been just sitting uselessly.

”So please, you go to the other door in front.”

The journalist looked at the other door. He said, ”That is the door to hell. I don’t want to go to hell; I want to first inspect heaven.”

Saint Peter felt pity for the man. He said, ”I will do one thing: I will give you twenty-four hours. You go in. If you can convince any journalist amongst the twelve to go to hell, then you can remain here and he can go to hell. Our quota will remain twelve. If you cannot convince anybody, then after a day you will have to go.”

The journalist said, ”That’s enough. Twenty-four hours – that’s enough.” He went in and started talking to everybody who met him saying, ”In hell they have brought the latest machinery for printing, a great new newspaper is going to be published. They are in need of journalists, editors, sub-editors.”

He talked to the saints; they didn’t care much, but the journalists became alert. They said, ”Really?” He continued on around heaven, and after twenty-four hours he went to see whether anybody had left, or he had to go.

Seeing him coming, Saint Peter locked the door. Saint Peter said, ”You cannot go. All the twelve have gone, you convinced them!”

He said, ”My God, all the twelve? Then I want to go.” Saint Peter said, ”You created the rumor.”

He said, ”That’s true that I created the rumor, but if twelve journalists have believed it, who knows, the rumor may be true! Just open the door, I am getting suffocated!

”And anyway, twenty-four hours in heaven is more than enough. Nothing is happening here. All rotten saints, and just doing only one thing: sitting on their small clouds, floating, and playing on their harps, ‘Alleluia!’ I don’t want to do this anymore. You just open the door. Anyway I am not supposed to be in heaven.”

Saint Peter said, ”It is up to you. Because we don’t need journalists, you can go – but don’t come back.”

He said, ”Who is going to come back? The rumor must have some truth in it.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 59

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Saint Peter laughed: ”I have never seen such an idiot. You created the rumor and now you say that it must have some truth!”

The journalist said, ”Yes, my whole life I have been doing it. What is the purpose of a journalist? To create rumors. But I have never been so convincing. That means the rumor has some truth in it. I am convinced myself because those twelve were convinced, and they were all ancient, experienced journalists. If they have left, I am going.”

People believe whatever they hear.

Every Buddhist scripture ... they were not written by Buddha, they were not written while he was alive; they were written after he died. Then a great meeting of all the enlightened disciples, five hundred in all, reported whatever they had experienced with Buddha. But everybody reported that

”I HAVE HEARD Buddha saying such and such a thing.” Every scripture of Buddha begins with ”I have heard ...” because those people were authentically true. They had heard Buddha, but to hear is one thing and to experience is another. That was their honesty, sincerity.

Yakusan said, ”It is better to hear the name, you said, Governor, than to see the face?

WHY DO YOU RESPECT THE EAR AND LOOK DOWN ON THE EYE?” What is he saying? He is saying, ”If you had seen me totally absorbed in my work, utterly – nobody was left behind, only the sutra resounding in the nothingness of my being – if you had silently watched and witnessed, you would have got something immeasurably valuable.

”But you were so full of opinions, which you had heard, that your eyes were blind; you could not see.

Your ears overpowered your eyes. If you had seen me in that position of absolute meditation ... I was not, only the sutra was. In my utter silence and absence, the sutra was resounding just like a bell ringing, the sound disappearing into silence.

”If you had just witnessed, putting all your opinions and admiration aside – because that is only heard, that is not your experience. You missed a chance, a great chance. You have never seen a man so absorbed that he does not look even at the governor.” There is a beautiful temple in Maharashtra. In Maharashtra, Krishna’s name is Vitthal. There is a story behind the name. Vitthal means ”Sit down!” There was a great lover of Krishna. He had almost become absolutely absent as far as he himself was concerned. He had opened all his doors for Krishna to come in. Krishna for him was the name of the cosmos.

There is no problem, you can call the cosmos by any name, just don’t get into a misunderstanding.

By naming it Krishna, you may start thinking it has a personality, that it is an individual. But the man was not at all confused about it. His name for the cosmos was Krishna.

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His old mother was almost dying and he was massaging her feet. It was a cold night. The story is beautiful. Now it becomes a parable; up to now, it may have been factual.

Seeing that his devotee was serving his mother so totally – he has forgotten to eat, to drink –

Krishna came to help. He stood behind him, but the man was so absorbed in massaging the feet of his mother he did not look behind him, although he had heard somebody come – the footsteps.

Krishna had to declare himself: ”I have come to help you!” He said, ”I am enough to serve my mother.” But he did not look at Krishna. There was a brick lying by his side. He just threw the brick behind him, without looking up, and said to Krishna, ”Sit down on the brick till I am finished.”

Because he told Krishna, ”Sit down on the brick,” in Maharashtra Krishna is called Vitthal – Vitthal means ”Sit down!” – and they have a beautiful temple in which a brick is preserved, and Krishna is sitting on the brick.

I am not concerned with the mythology, I am concerned about the man’s total absorption, his absolute immersion in the act he was doing. Even if God comes, he says ”Sit down! You will have to wait.” He does not look behind him.

Even God cannot create a disturbance in a meditator, what to say about a governor.

I have loved the story, although it seems to be mythological because there is no Krishna to come, it is all imagination.

But my concern is not Krishna, my concern is the man who was so deeply involved in serving his almost-dead mother. In the morning she was dead. He was still massaging her feet when he found that she was dead.

Yakusan is saying, ”You should trust your eye more than your ear. You should put aside all opinions, prejudices, and clean your eyes. Let them be mirrors to reflect the reality.” RIKOH PRESSED HIS HANDS TOGETHER AND BOWED DOWN.

He saw the point. He was an intelligent man – of course not a meditative person, but he could see the point that he had missed and he had misbehaved. Coming to the Zen master and getting hot tempered and angry was not the right manner, even according to Confucius in whom he had believed.

RIKOH PRESSED HIS HANDS TOGETHER AND BOWED DOWN. HE THEN ASKED, ”COULD

YOU PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TAO IS?”

Tao is the Chinese word for truth, for existence, for dharma, for buddha – the ultimate reality that cannot be translated into words. Tao is a beautiful symbol. It does not mean anything, it simply indicates. It is an arrow on a milestone. It says go on, you are on the right path, don’t stop unless you reach to the very end.

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Rikoh asked, ”What is Tao?”

YAKUSAN IMMEDIATELY POINTED UP AND THEN DOWN WITH HIS HAND AND ASKED, ”DO

YOU UNDERSTAND?”

With his hand he had shown everything – the highest ultimate peak of consciousness and the deepest depth of consciousness – the whole span of consciousness from the depth, the abysmal depth, to the ultimate height which ends nowhere, it simply goes on and on and on. He had shown the vertical process.

You have to understand it. We move in time horizontally. The child becomes young, the young man becomes old, the old man dies; from the cradle to the grave we move in a horizontal line. Time is horizontal, truth is vertical. Meditation is vertical; it does not move horizontally, it moves vertically.

You have seen the cross of Jesus – but Christians don’t understand the meaning of the cross. The cross shows both the lines: the horizontal line, the hands of Jesus, and the vertical line, his head down to his feet. There is a crossing point where the vertical crosses the horizontal. That point you find in meditation. That I have been calling your center.

Once you have found that point, you know. A door opens upwards and a door opens downwards.

For the first time your vision becomes vertical, time ceases. You start moving into timeless eternity.

Mind ceases, because thinking is horizontal. You start moving into no-mind.

Unfortunately, Christians completely missed the meaning of the cross. Even the pope just hangs a golden cross around his neck, not seeing the utter stupidity of it. Jesus was not hanged on a golden cross, and he was not hanging the cross around his neck. He was hanged on the cross. If the pope really wants to be the representative, then the only way is to help him to be hanged on a wooden cross. Only then will he be a representative. A golden cross, and so small, and such a big Polack

....

Christians have not understood the significance of the cross. It shows the two lines in existence: one line is of time and mind, and one line is of no time, no mind – and that is your truth, when you start moving vertically.

YAKUSAN IMMEDIATELY POINTED UP AND THEN DOWN WITH HIS HAND AND ASKED, ”DO

YOU UNDERSTAND?”

RIKOH SAID, ”I DON’T UNDERSTAND.”

YAKUSAN SHOUTED, ”CLOUDS ARE IN THE SKY; WATER IS IN THE WELL!” What does he mean? He says that everything is in its place ... what is there to understand or not to understand? Everything is in its place. The clouds are in the sky and water is in the well. Nothing is wrong anywhere. The buddha is in its place; you may be aware of it or not, that is another point, but he has not moved out of you even for a single moment for a morning walk.

Tao means everything is exactly where it should be. Nothing has to be improved, nothing has to be changed. Everything has to be allowed to be as it is, relaxed, at rest, and the whole existence becomes a celebration.

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RIKOH SUDDENLY REALIZED AND FELT GREAT JOY.

The moment he heard Yakusan shouting,

”CLOUDS ARE IN THE SKY; WATER IS IN THE WELL!,”

he understood the symbolic message. Nothing has to be done, just watch. Clouds are in the sky and the water is in the well. Be a witness.

No effort is needed to become a buddha. No effort is needed to realize Tao. Just witness. Everything is in its place. Nothing has ever gone wrong.

This is a very strange but very grand approach to reality.

RIKOH SUDDENLY REALIZED AND FELT GREAT JOY. AND WITH HIS CONTENTMENT, HE

BOWED DOWN TO YAKUSAN AND PRESENTED THIS POEM TO HIM:

”ACHIEVED FORM, IT LOOKS LIKE A FORM OF THE CRANE.

UNDER THE THOUSANDS OF PINE TREES, THE WAY OF THE TWO POLES.

I COME AND ASK TAO: NO WASTEFUL ARGUMENT.

CLOUDS ARE IN THE SKY; WATER IS IN THE WELL.”

Very beautifully he says,

”I COME AND ASK TAO.”

He is saying, ”I have not asked about Tao, now I understand. I have asked Tao himself.” Yakusan is Tao, is in this moment just a pure witness, utterly at rest.

”I COME AND ASK TAO: NO WASTEFUL ARGUMENT,”

– no argument from the master, no effort to convince. Just a simple indication of a vertical existence, from high up to the very abysmal depth, and the whole existence is yours. No wasteful argument.

He simply says,

”CLOUDS ARE IN THE SKY; WATER IS IN THE WELL.”

And everything is understood.

Rikoh touched the feet of the master in deep gratitude.

Basho wrote:

A QUICK, LIGHTNING FLASH!

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TRAVELING THROUGH THE BLACKNESS

THE NIGHT HERON CALLS.

The night heron calls – a quick lightning flash traveling through the darkness.

That’s how it happened to Rikoh. Yakusan managed a quick lightning flash, passing through all darkness like the night heron calls, and then there is the utter silence of deep gratitude.

Question 1

A question from Maneesha:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

IS THE POINT OF THE QUESTIONS TO FIND AS MANY DIFFERENT WINDOWS THROUGH

WHICH WE MIGHT VIEW – AND FINALLY REALLY COMPREHEND – WHAT YOU ARE SAYING?

OR IS THERE MORE YOU HAVE NOT YET SAID, AND THE QUESTIONS ARE OUR DRAWING

YOU OUT ON THOSE AREAS WHICH YOU HAVE NOT YET DISCLOSED?

Maneesha, both things are true. I want you to look from every window possible. One never knows from which window you will see the light, from which window you will see the moon. I don’t want to leave out any angle, any dimension. Your questions bring new dimensions. So the first thing is absolutely right, and the second thing is also absolutely right.

I have five hundred books, but what I wanted to say I have not said yet. I am trying hard, hoping that in some way, in some moment, whether I say it or not, you will hear it. Perhaps I may not be able to say it, but I may be able to show it. You may not hear it, but you may see it.

I am reminded of one of the great Indian poets Rabindranath Tagore. He was a Nobel Prize winner.

He has written six thousand songs which can be sung and put to music. They are not just poetries to recite, they are composed according to musical instruments. In the English language only Shelley comes a little close to Rabindranath Tagore. He has two thousand songs which can be put to music, but Rabindranath is far ahead – six thousand songs.

When Rabindranath was dying, one of his friends was there and also his uncle – a great painter, just as Rabindranath was a great poet – was sitting by his side. His name was Avanindranath Tagore. In this century in India nobody has surpassed Avanindranath Tagore as far as painting is concerned.

They were almost of the same age.

Rabindranath was dying – both were old – and Avanindranath said to Rabindranath, ”I see tears in your eyes. You should rejoice. You are leaving six thousand songs behind you. There is no single poet in any language who can be compared to you. You can die with dignity and pride. Withdraw your tears.”

Rabindranath said, ”These tears are not what you think. They are not of despair, they are not of fear, they are not because death is coming. The reason for them is that I have sung six thousand songs, Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 64

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but the song that I have come to sing, I have failed. That song I sing again and again and again, but something else comes out. That song remains hidden deep in my soul.

”I am crying because I was coming very close. This is not the moment for me to die. God is absolutely unjust with me. A whole life of rehearsal – all those songs are just rehearsals, rejections

– and the song that I wanted to sing still remains unsung.” But that is not going to be the case with me. I will sing the song; I will try from every angle to approach you, from every possible dimension, in every possible way and device. My song is not of words, my song is me. I want to share my whole being with you, hence the questions.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

Ronald Reagan picks himself up off the street outside the exclusive Big Deal Restaurant.

”I guess I don’t have anything to complain about,” says Reagan, as he dusts himself off. ”They treated me all right!”

”What do you mean, ‘treated you all right’?” asks Reginald, Ronald Reagan’s private secretary, straightening Reagan out. ”They threw you out, did they not?”

”Yes they did,” replies Reagan. ”They threw me out through the kitchen into the street. Then I told the manager that I used to be the president of America, so he picked me up gently, brushed me off, and escorted me back into the restaurant. Then he threw me out of the front door!” Timid Teddy Toober is tired of being a wimp, so he goes to see Doctor Feelgood, the famous psychiatrist.

”As I see it,” recommends Feelgood, ”you need to be more firm, more tough at home. Just show your wife, Big Bertha, that you are a man and not a mouse!”

”Great idea!” replies Timid Teddy.

And that evening he goes home feeling like a real man. He walks in the door and sees Big Bertha carrying the couch upstairs by herself.

”Listen, here,” commands Timid Teddy. ”Just put down that couch, and from now on you are taking orders from me. First, I want my slippers, my newspaper, and my pipe delivered to me in my easy-chair!”

Big Bertha looks at Teddy in disbelief as she slowly puts down the couch.

”Then, after you prepare supper,” Teddy continues, ”just go up and lay out my evening clothes – I am going out alone tonight with the boys. And do you know who is going to dress me in my best tuxedo and black tie?”

”Sure, I know,” says Big Bertha, smiling, ”the undertaker!” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 65

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Humphrey Hogbreath wakes up slowly after undergoing a serious brain operation.

He is just

conscious enough to feel the softness of the comfortable bed and the warmth of gentle hands on his forehead.

”Ah!” gasps Humphrey. ”Where am I? In heaven?”

”No, dear,” replies Hilda, his wife, ”I am still right here with you!” Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

(gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment. You can look inwards. Gather your total energy, your whole consciousness, and with an urgency, as if this is going to be your last moment on the earth, go rushing towards the center of your being – faster and faster.

As you come closer to your inner center you are coming closer to the cosmos. You are coming closer to yourself. You are coming closer to your inner splendor, the buddha.

Centered in your being, you are no longer the personality you have always believed. Centered in yourself, for the first time you are a buddha, your real and authentic being.

The only quality that buddha has, you have to remember. That quality is witnessing. Just witness ...

the body is not you, the mind is not you, the astral body is not you, the subtle body is not you.

You are only a witness.

Silence descends, deep peace arises in you, a great ecstasy surrounds you. Just witness.

At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth, ten thousand buddhas ready to melt into each other.

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Relax ....

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But keep witnessing.

Everything that may be happening inside you, just watch. Slowly slowly you are melting. Your separations are disappearing. Gautama the Buddha Auditorium has become an ocean of pure consciousness, without any ripples.

This is the moment to persuade the buddha to come with you. Collect the grandeur of this moment, the beauty, the truth, all the flowers of the mysterious existence which are available at the center of your being, all the fragrances of the beyond.

This is the vertical moment. You are no longer in time, you are no longer in mind, you are in eternity, timelessness. You are beyond mind, just a pure silence, witnessing your original face.

Before Nivedano calls you back, persuade the buddha. He has been hiding in your center for centuries. He has to be brought from the center to your ordinary day-to-day life. He has to become your song, your dance. He has to become your activities, your words, your gestures, your silences.

The day only he remains and you disappear will be the greatest day of your life.

After that, the whole existence is yours, with all its mysteries.

After that you will never be born into a body, into a prison, into the cycle of birth and death.

You will spread all over the cosmos.

You will become one with the whole.

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Come back, but come as a buddha, silently, peacefully, with great grace. Just sit down for a few moments to recollect, to remember the golden path that you have traveled. Watch. The buddha is coming closer and closer every day. He is becoming a reality in your life, not just an idea.

This I call:

Straight to the point of enlightenment!

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master

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CHAPTER 4

The sutra is long, the night is short

20 January 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

WHEN THE NOVICE MONK, GAO, FIRST CALLED ON YAKUSAN, YAKUSAN ASKED HIM,

”WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?”

GAO SAID, ”FROM NANYUE.”

YAKUSAN ASKED, ”WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

GAO REPLIED, ”TO JIANGLING TO RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS.” YAKUSAN THEN ASKED, ”WHAT IS THE AIM OF RECEIVING PRECEPTS?” GAO ANSWERED, ”TO ESCAPE BIRTH AND DEATH.”

YAKUSAN SAID, ”THERE IS SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS AND HAS

NO BIRTH AND DEATH TO ESCAPE – DO YOU KNOW?” GAO ASKED, ”THEN WHAT IS THE

USE OF THE BUDDHA’S PRECEPTS?” YAKUSAN SAID, ”THIS NOVICE STILL HAS LIPS AND

TEETH.”

AT THIS, THE NOVICE BOWED AND WITHDREW.

DOGO THEN CAME FORWARD AND STOOD BY YAKUSAN, WHO SAID TO HIM, ”THAT LIMPING

NOVICE WHO JUST CAME, AFTER ALL HAS SOME LIFE IN HIM.” DOGO SAID, ”HE’S NOT

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TO BE ENTIRELY BELIEVED YET – YOU SHOULD TEST HIM AGAIN FIRST.” WHEN EVENING

CAME, YAKUSAN WENT UP INTO THE HALL; HE CALLED, ”WHERE IS THE NOVICE WHO

CAME EARLIER?” GAO THEN CAME FORWARD FROM THE ASSEMBLY AND STOOD THERE, AND YAKUSAN SAID TO HIM, ”I HEAR THAT CHANGAN IS VERY NOISY.” GAO SAID, ”MY PROVINCE IS PEACEFUL.” YAKUSAN ASKED, WITH MUCH JOY, ”DID YOU

REALIZE THIS FROM READING SCRIPTURES OR FROM MAKING INQUIRIES?”, TO WHICH

GAO REPLIED, ”I DID NOT GET IT FROM READING SCRIPTURES OR FROM MAKING

INQUIRIES.”

YAKUSAN SAID, ”MANY PEOPLE DO NOT READ SCRIPTURES OR MAKE INQUIRIES – WHY

DON’T THEY GET IT?”

GAO SAID, ”I DON’T SAY THEY DON’T GET IT – IT IS JUST THAT THEY DON’T AGREE TO TAKE

IT UP.”

Friends, one sannyasin has asked: he has been to the Dalai Lama, he has been to many Zen masters in Japan, but when he comes here he feels perfectly at home. Why?

Thinking about his problem, I remembered ....

A man went to the psychiatrist and said, ”I am feeling so happy. Why?” The psychiatrist was at a loss. He had seen miserable people, sick people, and he could answer the ‘why’ – why they are miserable, why they are in despair, why they are sad – but how to answer a man who asks, ”I am feeling very happy. Why?”

Happiness has no cause. It simply arises in your being without any cause. If you feel at home here, this is your home. From where comes the question, ”Why?” But I can understand what you wanted to ask but could not phrase it rightly. You have been to the Dalai Lama .... The Dalai Lama is not enlightened. He still has the great desire to be the political head of Tibet. That desire is preventing his enlightenment. I feel sorry for him – a nice man – but any desire is going to become a tremendous obstacle.

I had sent him the message that, ”It is time you dropped the very idea of being the political head of Tibet.”* He is in tremendous anguish. In this state he cannot become enlightened. If he drops the desire, the longing to be the political head of a country, perhaps as the desire disappears like smoke, he may see the light for the first time. He has not seen it yet.

And moreover, even if he becomes enlightened, his language, his way of answering you will be out of date. He is too learned in the Buddhist scriptures: he will repeat those scriptures, and they are very ancient, they are no longer contemporary.

The same is the situation in Japan. You have been hearing me speak on Zen masters; that creates a great desire in you to go to Japan. But don’t go to Japan, you will be frustrated.

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While I am speaking on Zen masters, I am speaking in a way which is absolutely contemporary; you can understand it. They are still speaking the language of the past.

It is a calamity that the so-called religious people get caught up in a certain moment in history. Then they don’t progress from that place. The Buddhists are caught up with Gautam Buddha, twenty-five centuries back. Everything has changed, but their ideology remains twenty-five centuries old. It does not ring bells in your heart, hence you cannot feel at home.

Never think for a moment that what I am saying about Zen has been said by the Zen masters themselves. I am constantly improving, improvising. With me religion is not something static. It is an evolutionary process. It grows like a tree, hundreds of feet high, it moves like a river, thousands of miles; not for a single moment does the movement stop. Since eternity rivers have been moving and moving and moving.

I am not a pond; and when you go to Japan you will find ponds. I make every effort to make the ponds flow like a river. A pond knows nothing but death; it is dying every moment, the water is evaporating. Soon there will be just mud left.

A river is always alive, singing and dancing, and moving into the unknown territories without any map, without any guidance, without a guide – just trusting in existence. It knows that the ocean has to be somewhere. ”If the thirst for the ocean is in me, that is enough proof, enough evidence that somewhere the ocean is waiting for me. He has called me, otherwise why this thirst, why this longing to meet with the unlimited?” Your thirst is a proof, an argument, a valid evidence.

With me, nothing is static. That creates a puzzle in many static minds, because whatever I have said yesterday was yesterday. Today I am absolutely fresh and new. Even I don’t know what I am going to say to you. When you hear it, I will also hear it.

You get puzzled, confused: ”The other day you were saying this, and today you have changed completely.” I go on improving on devices, I go on improving on parables, on stories, so you will find the same story told in different ways in my literature. Sometimes I take a different standpoint, sometimes I look at it from a different angle. Sometimes I drop something out of it – it does not fit the moment. Sometimes I add something which I have never said before. And it is easy for me because I don’t remember what I have said before; otherwise it would be difficult, even for me! But it is not.

The past is past, that which is gone is gone.

I am just here to respond to your thirst.

I don’t care whether it is consistent with my past statements. I am still alive. Only dead people are consistent because they cannot change anything, they are in their graves.

If a person remains consistent while living, that means at some moment of time he died. He is living a posthumous life, a ghost life. He is no more a reality; reality has stopped at a certain point.

Hippies used to say, ”Don’t believe anyone who is more than thirty years old.” I can see a certain truth in it. As a person becomes more experienced in the world, he becomes more and more cunning.

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The world is cunning. You have to face a cunning world, and the only way is to be more cunning than the others. You have to compete with all kinds of ugly people. You have to be hard, you cannot remain nice, compassionate. As one becomes more and more experienced in the world, he is more and more corrupted, he loses his innocence; he has died.

Most people die at the age of thirty, and hippies themselves have given the proof; they have all died.

What happened to the hippies? They simply disappeared. By the time they had looked around the world, they saw that everybody is competitive; in this competitive world you cannot survive. Now all the hippies are good managers in great corporations. They are now called with a new name: Yuppies.

I have been searching for a hippy; there are no hippies anymore. It is not that they have all died; they have all shaved their beards, dropped their ideology of being dirty, they have started taking showers.

They have got married, they have forgotten all about great love affairs under the moon.

Now they have their own houses, a small garden, a beautiful car, a wife, two or three children, a good job. Now they cannot afford the old lifestyle of being a hippy; they will be thrown out of the office. Now they use ties, shoes. They have mixed with the rotten society that they had condemned before. But in a way, their old statement was right: Don’t believe a man who is over thirty.

It is very rare to find a man who remains his whole life like a child, utterly innocent and uncorrupted by the world.

When you come here, when you face me, you are facing a man who belongs to eternity, not to time.

And eternity is your home, your eternal home. With me you will learn how to go on growing, how to go on flowing, how to go on with existence without bothering with your mind and its consistencies, without bothering that ”This is contradictory to what you said yesterday!” It has to be. If you are a living being, your today is going to contradict all your yesterdays. That means you are fully alive, nothing has gone dead in you.

People die partially; slowly slowly nothing of life remains in them. Then they become absolutely consistent. But don’t listen to a man who is consistent. He is dead. Beware of it.

Your feeling at home here simply means you have entered into the river which goes on flowing. It is always fresh, it never becomes dirty. It is always singing songs, and its waves go on dancing in the sun, in the moon. But it is always on the go.

It was customary with Gautam Buddha that whenever somebody became enlightened, he was sent away to share his experience with those who were stumbling on the path. Obviously, those disciples who had become enlightened would ask him for his last message so that they can carry it in their heart.

You will be surprised what his last message was to every disciple who was departing. He would call the disciple close, so nobody else could hear – because it was the same message for every one. In the ear of the disciple he would say, ”Always remember: charaiveti, charaiveti, go on, go on, never stop. Existence never stops; why should you stop? charaiveti, charaiveti.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 71

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Because it was always said into the ear of the disciple in secrecy, everybody wondered what the last message was. But you could get it only when you became enlightened.

I give it to you even without enlightenment.

Buddha was very miserly.

Why wait for your

enlightenment? Why not tell you the truth right now? charaiveti, charaiveti – go on, flowing, flexible, at rest with existence.

You have been to the Dalai Lama, you may have been to other masters. They are great teachers, they are not masters. That’s why you have not felt at home. Teachers don’t have the charisma, the magnetic force, the buddhafield around them. They have only mere words, unlived, unexperienced.

They have great scriptures with them, they are argumentative, they can convince you about a certain philosophy.

I don’t have any philosophy because existence has no philosophy at all. It has flowers, it has stars, it has rivers, it has oceans, mountains. But I have never come across existence having any philosophy, any religion, any dogma, any theology, any creed, any cult. It is absolutely open and free.

Every philosophy becomes an imprisonment. Every religion chains you, handcuffs you. Every cult and creed is poisonous.

You must have come across the teachers. They are repulsive. They try in every way to attract you, and maybe for a small time you may be attracted by their great learning, but soon you will discover that learning is only paper-thick. Inside, the man is as ignorant, perhaps more ignorant, than you are. Soon you will have to desert him.

Here we don’t have any philosophy.

Life is our philosophy.

Existence is our philosophy.

To be in tune with the world, to be in harmony with the cosmos, is our religion. And the whole existence is continuously flowing: charaiveti charaiveti. It goes on and on. There is no end and there is no beginning.

Unless you find such a master, multidimensional, without beginning, without end, you will not feel at home. You will feel in a prison. Only the vast sky of a master can allow you to feel at home, because the basic necessity of every consciousness is freedom.

I teach you freedom. I share with you my freedom, my love, but without any conditions attached to it.

I am just a well, overflowing. If you are thirsty you can drink. You need not even thank me. You don’t owe anything to me, not even gratitude. I am already overflowing, whether anybody drinks of me or not.

Even if you all disappear from the Gautama the Buddha Auditorium, I will come every evening at exactly seven o’clock, and I will talk to my absent disciples.

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Just the other day I told Nirvano – because sometimes she comes late by two minutes, just the way of a lady, never in time; I told her, ”This won’t do. I have to be in my chair on time. Whether anybody is there or not does not matter. I will speak to the trees, to the bamboos – they are such great listeners, they never interrupt.”

These people – the Dalai Lama and others – are fossils, they have died long ago.

When I give my interpretation, remember always it is my interpretation. If I meet the master who has written the sutras, I know perfectly well that there is no possibility of agreement. But because they are all dead I am completely free to interpret them according to the times, not according to their creed.

Their background was their background; today that background does not exist, that world is no longer there. Man’s concerns have changed, man’s conditionings have changed. Man is programmed in different ways. I have to deprogram the people whom I am facing.

I am exactly in the moment, that’s why you feel at home. But rejoice, rather than being worried: ”Why am I feeling at home? Why am I happy?” Just be happy! Happiness needs no cause. Only misery can be diagnosed, not happiness.

Go to any doctor and ask him, ”I am feeling happy. Diagnose it.” As far as I know, up to now nobody has been able to diagnose happiness. Yes, diseases can be diagnosed and cured, but happiness cannot be diagnosed, and neither can it be cured. Once you have caught fire, nobody can put it out.

So it is perfectly okay. But I know the problem is that your whole life you have never been okay, something was always wrong. Somebody was always pointing out that you are doing wrong, you are behaving wrongly, that this is not the right etiquette. Some Confucius, some Manu, some Moses, some Mohammed was telling you how to behave. Somebody was deciding for you what is right and what is wrong.

This is the only place, for the first time in the whole of history, where nobody is deciding for you what is right and what is wrong. My effort is to bring your consciousness to the highest peak, so that it can decide on its own what is right and what is wrong.

It may not be in agreement with Manu, five thousand years old, it may not be in agreement with Moses, it may not be in agreement with Mohammed. It will be only in agreement with existence and with you.

To me, religion is an individual love affair with existence. It has nothing to do with scriptures, nothing to do with knowledge, learning – that is all nonsense.

But because you have become accustomed to being told that you are unworthy, undeserving and you have accepted it, when you come here to a total freedom, with no inhibitions, with no repressions, with nobody to tell you what to do and what not to do, you feel at a loss. It is just like a small child in a fair who loses his mother’s hand and feels at a loss where to go.

You remain retarded because of these people who go on telling you what is right and what is wrong.

They keep you in dependence, in slavery. And I have told you, the greatest slavery is spiritual slavery, and the whole of humanity is living under spiritual slavery.

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I teach you rebellion!

Come out of the masses. Stand alone like a lion and live your life according to your own light. Find the light and it will show you the path. The path that is shown by your own light is the only path that is right. What others have been telling may be right for them; it cannot be right for you.

That’s why I am not a moralist, I am not an immoralist. I am absolutely amoral. I don’t consider morality or immorality at all. I am not a puritan who creates guilt in you.

Just the other day I was telling you about the German scholar who has compared me with Jesus.

He has a point. He seems to be a man of very keen intelligence. He says that I am far superior to Jesus, but I will not be able to found a religion. He is right! Why does he say that? He says,

”Because you go on teaching freedom, how can you found a religion?” A religion is founded by slaves, and to create slavery there is a psychological device.

First, create guilt. Once a person starts feeling guilty that he is doing something wrong, that he is undeserving, unworthy, then he has a wound inside which will not heal, which will go on growing.

He has a spiritual cancer in the name of guilt. But all the religions have been creating that spiritual cancer.

Their purpose is that when you feel guilty, undeserving, you lose your confidence and you have to go to the priest to find confidence. You have to confess to the priest that you have been doing something wrong, that you have been having a love affair with somebody else’s wife. Now you feel guilty. You cannot say it to your wife, you cannot say it to the husband of the woman you are in love with. Where to go? It becomes a constant tension in you. You are hiding like a thief from everybody.

The priest is available. You can go and confess to the priest that this is happening. He is perfectly happy. He says, ”You are forgiven. I will pray for you to God. Now put ten dollars into the donation box, say five Hail Marys, and you are free of sin.” Great! First they create the guilt, then they make the arrangement for removing the guilt. And it is worth ten dollars. Now you have found a way: you can have as many love affairs with anybody’s wife, and no worry. Just ten dollars.

This is a very subtle exploitation of man.

I have told you .... In a small school, the teacher was talking about Jesus as the greatest man in history. For half an hour or more she talked about Jesus, around and around, not exactly making the pronouncement that he was the greatest man in history, but all her arguments pointed to that statement.

Then finally she asked a small boy – he was American – to stand up. ”Who is it?” He said, ”Abraham Lincoln.”

She was shocked. She said, ”It is good, but not perfect. Sit down.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 74

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She asked another boy. He said, ”Winston Churchill.” She said, ”Not bad, but not right either. Just sit down.” And that way she went around the class.

It was an international school, so everybody was talking – somebody about Lenin, somebody about Mao Zedong, somebody about Mahatma Gandhi.

She was puzzled. She had been talking about Jesus and nobody was answering, ”Jesus.” Then finally she came to a small boy, Jewish. She was worried that he would say Moses.

But you know Jews ....

The little boy stood up and said, ”Jesus Christ.” She said, ”Absolutely perfect!” But she was puzzled a little; this boy was a Jew. So after the class she took him aside and asked him, ”Are you not a Jew?” He said, ”Yes, I am a Jew.”

”Then why did you say that Jesus Christ was the greatest man in history?” He said, ”In my heart of hearts I know Moses was the greatest man in history, but business is business!”

All the religions, all the societies, are corrupting people. So when you come here and find no corruption, no morality, no puritanism, and find absolute acceptance as you are, nobody interfering in your lifestyle, you feel good, but a little confused. You are coming from a world which has been guiding you on every step.

Do you know, Gautam Buddha’s scriptures have thirty-three thousand principles for the Buddhist monk. Even to remember them is impossible. Thirty-three thousand principles, for every detail of life! The smallest detail of life is determined. You have to follow it, otherwise you are guilty.

You can have only three pieces of clothing. It may be a very cold winter and you may need something warmer, but that is not in accordance with the principles, because all woolen things come from the hair of animals.

While taking that hair from the animals you are hurting those animals, and you are leaving them without fur in winter. Only in winter does that hair grow to protect them from the cold. All the year round they don’t care about their fur, but just as winter starts coming closer, the fur becomes thicker.

It is a natural protection for the poor animals, and you are cutting their fur exactly in the middle of the winter when it is the biggest and the best. You are leaving them without fur in the cold winter of the mountains, in the Himalayas, where snow is falling.

Buddha prohibited it: you should not use any woolen clothes.

Now, minute details: you cannot have two baths every day, that is luxurious. You should not eat in the night, and you should not drink in the night. At night all animals sleep, all trees sleep, you should sleep. Only between sunrise and sunset can you eat – and only one time.

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The smallest details .... You should not wear shoes because in those days they were made only of animals’ skins. It was violent. In the hot summer, the followers of Buddha would be walking with naked feet on the burning earth. They could not have even an umbrella. In the rains they were soaking wet, and even in the hot summer they could not have an umbrella, because that is a luxury.

And it is not that Buddha was the most ascetic; according to Mahavira, Buddha was living in luxury because he had three pieces of clothing. Mahavira lived naked, this is real asceticism. Buddha was a luxurious fellow, having three pieces of cloth. It is all relative, what is luxurious and what is not.

You think having two meals a day is luxurious? Not for the Americans, who are having at least five meals per day – and tea break and coffee break and ice-cream break and Coca-Cola break. The American is doing only one thing: watching the television and swallowing all kinds of junk, getting fatter and fatter and fatter. And the ultimate result? He is taken to the hospital.

Three million people are in hospitals just because they are too fat and it is dangerous to their hearts.

They are suffering very much because they want to go home, they are missing the fridge!

Only the American misses the fridge. Other people miss other things: the wife, the children, the house, the garden; the American misses the fridge. Even in the night he will get up one or two times; that is normal. I am not talking about abnormal people – almost asleep they will move directly to the fridge.

A man was complaining to his psychoanalyst, that his wife was becoming fatter and fatter and fatter.

”Now she simply sits and watches television and goes on eating. It is disgusting to see her. I remain late in the office unnecessarily, I go to the pub unnecessarily, just not to see the face of that woman.

Late in the night, completely drunk, I return. You have to do something!” The analyst said, ”You do one thing. Take this beautiful picture of a naked woman” – absolutely proportionate, could have won the world beauty contest. ”Take this and paste it inside the fridge.

Whenever your wife opens the fridge, she will see the beautiful woman and she will see herself – just a bag, no curves, no slopes, no high peak points, nothing. She will become jealous of this picture, and she will start dieting.”

The man said, ”Perfectly right. It seems logical.” On the way home he looked at the picture. He said, ”My God! What a woman!” He went and pasted the picture in the fridge.

After six months the psychoanalyst met him on the sea beach. He could not believe it; it was as if somebody had puffed air into him. He had become a balloon!

The psychoanalyst asked, ”What happened?”

He said, ”Everything backfired. My wife does not care a bit about that bitch you have given me but I fell in love with the picture; so whenever I have any time I immediately run to the fridge to see the picture. But when you see the picture you also see the ice-cream .... So, because of that picture, this is my situation. You ditched me, you are responsible. And my wife is still the same.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 76

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The psychoanalyst said, ”I had never thought that this would happen. Now it is beyond psychiatry, you need to get hospitalized.”

He said, ”I cannot. I cannot lose my fridge and my beloved’s photograph.” She had become his beloved.

According to Buddha these people will be thought monsters. But in America it is average: seven and a half hours of television is average. And what will you do sitting in the chair? The mouth also needs to move – a little exercise ... not to get too disturbed – because if you go to the fridge you will miss something on the television.

And it is all rubbish! Fifty percent is advertisement; the other fifty percent is just to allure you, to keep you watching to see the advertisement. And what is being advertised? They are advertising more food, better ice-cream!

The whole country is getting insane. Food seems to be God. In fact, in the Hindu scriptures food is called God. But it was because people were so poor, starving, that food was God; not the American style. America has made food God: eat, drink, be merry – for the first time the whole country is living a hedonistic life. Buddha would have condemned it totally.

Who is right? If this is the only life and there is no life after death, then perhaps the American is right and Buddha is wrong. If this is the only life, then why not eat, drink, be merry? There is nothing else

....

But Buddha is not wrong. There have been lives before and there are going to be lives afterwards.

Even now a new branch of psychology, parapsychology, is investigating all over the world in many universities, and finding valid evidence of past lives and possibilities of future lives. If there have been past lives, that makes it certain that you will have future lives.

Under hypnosis people are remembering many lives in the past. And it is not imagination, because you can hypnotize them a second time and they will remember the same thing. It is not dreaming.

You cannot repeat a dream, it is not under your will. And if it is only remembering, that is not so great an achievement. The East has always talked about it, has methods how to remember; and not only to remember – but how to live it again.

Parapsychologists are interested that when a person goes backwards and remembers past lives, many of his sicknesses, psychological tensions, anxieties which he has carried, disappear. They belong to his past lives, and unless you go to the very roots you cannot cut the tree.

Once he remembers from where this anxiety comes, he simply starts laughing. It is an anxiety about a woman he was married to in the past life. She tortured him, and that memory is still carried in his mind.

Because of this memory he cannot look at his own wife; that memory comes between them. He is afraid, he is afraid of women. Once he finds this out, he starts laughing and giggling: ”This is nonsense. That was another woman and that is finished.” Suddenly all anxiety disappears. For the first time he looks at his wife as she is. That old film of the past life is no longer a hindrance.

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Parapsychology is going to be of great importance in future. When psychoanalysis and psychology are dead, parapsychology will be of immense help to humanity.

We are doing everything here in hypnosis to take you backwards in time. If you can go completely into thousands of lives, all your psychological problems will disappear, and meditation will be so simple that you need just close your eyes and you will have reached to the center. We are trying to reach to the center of your very being. This is your home.

Once you have come in contact with me, no teacher, no learned scholar is going to satisfy you. You will not find another man who is not only contemporary to you, but almost one century ahead. I will remain relevant for at least one century.

Now the sutra .... The sutra is long and the night is short. I hope that I will be able to finish it before sunrise!

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

WHEN THE NOVICE MONK, GAO, FIRST CALLED ON YAKUSAN, YAKUSAN ASKED HIM,

”WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?”

This question is asked again and again and again:

”WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?”

It does not refer to the place, it refers to the space. It refers to your ultimate home from where you have come.

GAO SAID, ”FROM NANYUE,”

– the name of his village. He could not understand, he was a newcomer. He had no idea why Zen masters ask,

”WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?”

They are asking, ”Have you meditated? Have you been to the center of your being? Have you looked beyond the center, to the eternal space from where you are coming?” It is asking in a very roundabout way, ”Are you a meditator? Have you found the center of your being, your buddha?” But they don’t ask that way, they ask a simple question. Now the answer of the novice will decide for the master from where to begin.

GAO SAID, ”FROM NANYUE.”

YAKUSAN ASKED, ”WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

That is another question of the same category. If you know where you are going, you will know simultaneously from where you are coming, because it is the same place – from where we come Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 78

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and to where we go. It is a complete circle, the same point is reached again, the same eternity, the same cosmos.

A tidal wave arises in the ocean – from where is it coming? And soon it disperses back in the ocean.

The source of your coming and the object of your going are absolutely the same.

Because the first question failed, the newcomer could not understand it, YAKUSAN ASKED, ”WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

If you don’t know where you are coming from, at least you must know where you are going.” GAO REPLIED, ”TO JIANGLING TO RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS.” Jiangling was a kind of university where great scholars translated Buddhist scriptures from China and India. It was the most famous learned place. So he said, ”I am going to Jiangling to receive the precepts, the teachings of the Buddha.”

YAKUSAN THEN ASKED, ”WHAT IS THE AIM OF RECEIVING PRECEPTS?” What will you do with the precepts? You can learn all the scriptures, but that will not make you wise.

On the contrary, it will make you more egoistic and more ignorant. What are you going to get by receiving precepts?

Zen is not concerned with knowledge at all.

One Zen master burned all the Buddhist scriptures; and he worshipped Buddha, he loved Buddha and he had become enlightened as a heritage of Buddha. But he burned all the scriptures after his enlightenment, because he saw that, ”These scriptures have been hindering me for years. I would have become enlightened anytime, but because of these scriptures I was repeating words, cramming theorizations, filling myself with great philosophy, and that was becoming a great China Wall, very difficult to pass beyond.”

When he became enlightened under a master, his first thing was to burn all the scriptures. That does not mean he was disrespectful to Buddha, because the next morning he was dancing before the Buddha’s statue.

His master said, ”But you have burnt the scriptures?” He said, ”Yes, I have burnt the scriptures because I have realized the truth of Buddha. It is not in the scriptures, it is in me. In deep gratitude I am dancing before his statue.” One Zen monk burned Buddha’s wooden statue because the night was too cold. The priest came and said, ”Are you insane?”

He said, ”Maybe, but the night is too cold. You have got two more Buddhas in your temple; I have just taken one. Be compassionate, bring at least one more, because still there is a long night ahead and it is becoming colder.”

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The priest said, ”I thought you were a great master, that is why I allowed you to stay the night in the temple. I had never thought even in my dreams that a great master would do such a thing. You have burnt my most precious Buddha. It was made of sandalwood.” The master took his staff and started searching in the ashes of the burnt Buddha.

The priest said, ”What are you doing now?”

He said, ”I am looking for his bones.”

The priest said, ”My God! You are really mad. It is a wooden statue, it does not have any bones!” He said, ”That’s what I was saying. It is not Buddha, it is just a wooden replica. You just bring another statue. None of your statues are buddhas, they are just wooden sculptures. Bring it. The night is too cold and a living buddha is ordering you.” The priest thought that this man was going to burn the whole temple. He pushed him out of the door and closed the door. The master said, ”Listen, you will repent later on. You are throwing out the living buddha for the wooden statues. But it is okay. See you in the morning.” There was no anger, no feeling of humiliation.

In the morning when the priest opened the doors – he opened them very cautiously, looking to where that madman had been sitting – he was not there. So he opened the doors, and then he saw him sitting on the other side of the road. There was a milestone, and he had collected a few wildflowers and put them on the milestone, and he was doing his morning worship: Buddham sharanam gachchhami.

The priest said, ”What kind of man is he? In the night he burned the buddha, and now before a milestone he is saying, ‘I come to the feet of the Buddha.’” The priest went close to him, but he did not look at him. He was in deep meditation, in deep serenity.

As the sun was rising, something inside of him was becoming lighter and lighter. When he opened his eyes, the priest looked into his eyes. He had never seen such beauty, such depth. He had never seen such silence, such grace. Perhaps he had done wrong. He touched the feet of the master.

The master said, ”I had told you beforehand that you would repent. You are throwing a living buddha out of the temple and preserving the wooden buddhas.” Zen is very straightforward. Neither statues can help, nor scriptures can help. The only thing that can help is going deeper into yourself, realizing the inner sky and the freedom that comes with it, and the fragrance of the beyond.

The master asked,

”WHAT IS THE AIM OF RECEIVING PRECEPTS?

What are you going to do when you become learned? When you have received all the teachings of Buddha, what are you going to do? What is the goal?” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 80

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GAO ANSWERED, ”TO ESCAPE BIRTH AND DEATH.”

He must have heard about it, that these Buddhists are trying to get out of the circle of birth and death. And, obviously, most people live life in such a way that it creates more and more misery.

The whole programming of humanity is for misery, so one starts thinking how to get out of the circle of birth and death. That is not really going to help. You have to learn how to get out of the programming the society has given to you. Once you are out of that programming, you are out of birth and death and the so-called circle.

But feeling miserable, he may have thought, ”It is better to get out of birth and death.” YAKUSAN SAID, ”THERE IS SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS AND HAS

NO BIRTH AND DEATH TO ESCAPE – DO YOU KNOW?”

He is indicating towards his inner buddha.

”THERE IS SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS AND HAS NO BIRTH AND

DEATH TO ESCAPE – DO YOU KNOW HIM?”

GAO ASKED, ”THEN WHAT IS THE USE OF THE BUDDHA’S PRECEPTS?” He missed the point again. The master was very clear. Rarely are Zen masters so clear, but seeing that the man is a beginner, Yakusan must have been very clear, uncomplicated. He has said it exactly:

”THERE IS SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS AND HAS NO BIRTH AND

DEATH TO ESCAPE – DO YOU KNOW him?”

He is simply asking, ”Do you know yourself? Do you know someone inside you who needs no knowledge, who needs no escape from birth and death, who is already beyond, who has never been born and who has never died? It needs no knowledge from the precepts, it knows directly the existence itself.”

But Gao could not understand.

GAO ASKED, ”THEN WHAT IS THE USE OF THE BUDDHA’S PRECEPTS?” He started arguing. That is almost always the case with newcomers. They think they can argue with the master. They don’t know a thing, but their mind is full of junk and all kinds of arguments and theories and creeds. He started arguing without listening to what the master had said. His argument was: ”If there is someone who does not need the precepts and who does not need to get out of the circle of birth and death, then what is the use of the Buddha’s precepts?” It looks logical, rational – but only to those who don’t know meditation, only to those who know only the mind.

YAKUSAN SAID, ”THIS NOVICE STILL HAS LIPS AND TEETH.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 81

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– lips to speak, teeth to bite. He does not understand anything but at least he has lips which move and he has teeth to bite in argument.

AT THIS, THE NOVICE BOWED AND WITHDREW.

This bowing down has become ritual in Japan. He has not understood anything. He has wasted the time of the master. His bowing down has no gratitude in it, it is simply a formality just as when you shake hands without love and warmth.

Have you watched people shaking hands? Different hands give different messages. Some hands are so cold, as if you are holding a dead branch of a tree; nothing moves from those hands. Some hands are so warm and loving that you can feel a tingling, some energy moving in you; they are ready to share. And there are hands which suck your energy; after holding the hand you will feel a strange weakness coming over you.

In Japan, bowing down has become a ritual. It has lost the beauty of gratitude.

I have seen it happen for almost fifteen years now, since the Westerners started coming to me ....

The Indians may touch the feet, but very rarely as gratitude, most often just as a formality. Thousands of people have touched my feet, and I have been watching the subtle nuances, the differences of their energies. Most of them had no gratitude, nothing; it was just the routine in India.

When the Westerners started coming to me ....

It is not a routine in the West.

In fact, the

whole Western culture and the educational system teaches you pride, ego. It is against touching somebody’s feet. So when the Westerners were here, it was very difficult for them to touch the feet, just as it was very easy for the Indians to touch the feet.

Very rarely did an Indian touch the feet with gratitude, but when the Westerner felt the gratitude arising in him, his touching the feet was more authentic. It was not formality, it was not a built-in program in his mind. In fact, he himself was taken aback. What is he doing? Against his whole education, against his whole culture, he is touching the feet! But when you come across a person to whom you feel gratitude, there is no other way to express it.

This novice did not understand anything, but bowed down and withdrew.

DOGO THEN CAME FORWARD AND STOOD BY YAKUSAN, WHO SAID TO HIM, ”THAT LIMPING

NOVICE WHO JUST CAME, AFTER ALL HAS SOME LIFE IN HIM.” DOGO SAID, ”HE IS NOT TO BE ENTIRELY BELIEVED YET – YOU SHOULD TEST HIM AGAIN

FIRST.”

The master said, ”He may not have understood me – that is not the problem, he is a new man – but one thing is certain:

THAT LIMPING NOVICE WHO JUST CAME, AFTER ALL HAS SOME LIFE IN HIM.” He has come from so far away. Although he knows nothing, he could not understand a word, but still he has some life.

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Dogo, his old disciple, said, ”HE’S NOT TO BE ENTIRELY BELIEVED YET – YOU SHOULD TEST

HIM AGAIN FIRST.”

WHEN EVENING CAME, YAKUSAN WENT UP INTO THE HALL; HE CALLED, ”WHERE IS THE

NOVICE WHO CAME EARLIER?”

GAO THEN CAME FORWARD FROM THE ASSEMBLY AND STOOD THERE, AND YAKUSAN

SAID TO HIM, ”I HEAR THAT CHANGAN IS VERY NOISY.” The place he was coming from was a marketplace, very noisy.

GAO SAID, ”MY PROVINCE IS PEACEFUL.”

When he said, ”My province is very peaceful,” he was saying, ”My inner territory is very peaceful. It does not matter that the place I come from is very noisy. The noise is just outside. Inside my space is very peaceful.”

YAKUSAN ASKED, WITH MUCH JOY, ”DID YOU REALIZE THIS FROM READING SCRIPTURES

OR FROM MAKING INQUIRIES?”, TO WHICH GAO REPLIED, ”I DID NOT GET IT FROM

READING SCRIPTURES OR FROM MAKING INQUIRIES.”

YAKUSAN SAID, ”MANY PEOPLE DO NOT READ SCRIPTURES OR MAKE INQUIRIES – WHY

DON’T THEY GET IT?”

GAO SAID, ”I DON’T SAY THEY DON’T GET IT – IT IS JUST THAT THEY DON’T AGREE TO TAKE

IT UP.”

Why do so many people not become buddhas, if everybody is intrinsically a buddha? Just because you are too much occupied in other things. Perhaps the thirst has not arisen, perhaps you are afraid to become a buddha. In these insane crowds, to become a buddha is taking a great risk.

GAO SAID, ”I DON’T SAY THEY DON’T GET IT – IT IS JUST THAT THEY DON’T AGREE TO TAKE

IT UP.”

The master was delighted. Although the novice had not understood what Yakusan had asked him, he must have meditated over it, tried to find what the master was saying: ”Why did I miss it?” By the evening he was a totally different person.

In the morning he had come as a newcomer, by the evening he had become an old disciple, a very ancient disciple. His answers show a tremendous transformation – just in one day.

It can happen in one minute!

It can happen in one second!

It can happen in a split-second! It is only a question of how intense your effort is to reach to your center.

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He must have felt deeply the sadness that he had come across a master and missed him, and he must have felt utterly stupid that he had started arguing with the master. He cleaned himself just in one day, and by the evening, when the master made inquiries, he was almost a different person.

The master was very much delighted.

Such seekers are needed in the world. These are the people who can rise to the ultimate heights.

I know you are here with an intense urgency, and this intense urgency makes me delighted. Your spring is not far away. Soon you will be full of spiritual blossoms. Your potentiality will come to its actualization. You will see yourself as a buddha.

It is not a question of believing ... I am absolutely against belief. I am a scientist of the subjective world. Just as science does not allow belief, only inquiry, investigation in the objective world, I am a scientist of the subjective world. I don’t allow any belief, only inquiry, search. And if you have the thirst, there is no need to wait. Before sunrise your enlightenment can be complete.

Kyorai wrote:

WHATEVER HAPPENS,

NOT TALKING ABOUT IT

MAKES FOR PEACE.

Kyorai was not only a poet, but also a master. Saying this – ”WHATEVER HAPPENS, NOT TALKING

ABOUT IT MAKES FOR PEACE” – he is talking about his own commune.

I have been asked again and again why I declare people enlightened only when they die. This is simply to keep the peace of the commune. If I declare somebody to be enlightened, you will kill him.

You will not be able to tolerate that this man has become enlightened. You will find a thousand faults in him, you will condemn him, and you will be very jealous.

I have made it a point that I will declare people enlightened only when you cannot be jealous, and you cannot quarrel, because they are already gone.

And when I leave the world, I will leave a note about the people who are enlightened, but in deep secrecy. The note will remain with Nirvano, so whenever somebody out of the list dies, declare it.

Declaring anybody enlightened while he is alive is certainly going to create great trouble for the man who is declared enlightened. Now he will feel very much embarrassed smoking cigarettes. And what to do with the girlfriends? Enlightened, and you have a girlfriend?

Only Sardar Gurudayal Singh is an exception.

But ordinarily you will feel very much in difficulty, drinking wine, going to the pub – even just ordinary beer. And particularly my Germans, what will they do without beer? For Germans I will have to make an exception.

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I don’t want you to be embarrassed. It is good that you are trying to be enlightened. On the way enjoy everything, and I will declare you enlightened when you are completely at rest in the grave.

Nobody can disturb you – no beer, no cigarettes, no girlfriends, nothing. At the most you can toss and turn inside there. If you want, I can put some chewing-gum in every grave, so whenever you feel too much upset, just start chewing gum!

Kyorai is right: WHATEVER HAPPENS, NOT TALKING ABOUT IT MAKES FOR PEACE. And I want my commune to be absolutely peaceful.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

IT SEEMS SOME PEOPLE CONSIDER UNCONDITIONAL TRUST IN ONE’S MASTER TO BE

FANATICISM.

WOULD YOU EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO?

Maneesha, the difference is very small, but of immense importance.

If the unconditional trust in one’s master arises in you unasked, undemanded, it is a totally different matter.

But if the master demands, ”You surrender to me unconditionally,” then in the first place he is not a master. In the second place, if you surrender to such a man, you are surrendering into slavery.

When surrendering comes out of love, and trust arises out of your experience – nobody is asking it, it is simply something that is growing within you – then it is authentic and it does not bring spiritual slavery, it brings spiritual freedom.

So the difference is small, but the implications are immense. Never surrender to anyone who asks, because only a man who does not trust himself and his enlightenment asks for surrender and trust.

A man who knows himself, his ultimate peaks, knows someday you will see those peaks, someday you will feel the tremendous pull.

With your growth will come gratitude, trust, love. And when love grows into surrender, unasked, undemanded, it has a beauty of its own.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

Mrs. Maggie MacTavish runs into her old friend, Dora MacPherson, after a long time.

”Ah! Dora, I have not seen you for years. What’s new?” asks Maggie.

”Well,” says Dora, ”I got married since I last saw you, Maggie.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 85

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”Married are you? Really?” asks Maggie. ”That’s fine!”

”Ah! Not so fine,” says Dora. ”He was a son-of-a-bitch!”

”Married to a son-of-a-bitch?” asks Maggie. ”That’s bad!”

”Ah! Not so bad,” replies Dora. ”He had pots of money!”

”Money? A husband with money?” asks Maggie. ”That’s fine!”

”Ah! Not so fine,” replies Dora. ”He was tight with it!”

”A husband with money and tight with it?” asks Maggie. ”That’s bad!”

”Ah! Not so bad,” replies Dora. ”He built us a house!”

”A house? With his money?” asks Maggie. ”That’s fine!”

”Ah! Not so fine,” explains Dora. ”The house burned down!”

”Burned down?” asks Maggie. ”That is bad for sure!”

”Ah! Not so bad,” replies Dora. ”He was in it!”

Two French chefs are exploring through darkest Africa looking for some special wild ”Herbs de Jongle” for their restaurant in Paris. Just as they enter the deepest, thickest forest, they find their magic herbs, but immediately get captured by Chief Boonga and his cannibal tribe.

The two French chefs are carried to the village among loud drums, singing and dancing, and there they are tied to stakes. The whole tribe gathers to view their new imported dinner, as cannibal chef Spoon-em-Out starts the fire under the cooking pots.

Just then, a crazed cannibal comes dancing wildly out of the crowd. He sways and swirls around the two Frenchmen who are tied to the stake. Suddenly the drums stop. A deathly hush falls over the village, and the wildman speaks to the two white men. ”You are French, are you not?” he asks.

”Oui! Oui!” they reply in unison.

”Good! Then tell me,” says the wildman, ”what are your names?”

”I am Pierre Souffle,” says one Frenchman. ”And this is my friend, Crepe Suzette – but why do you want to know our names? Can you help us?”

”Ah! No,” replies the wildman, ”but now I know what to write on the menu!” It is that fateful day on Calvary Hill. Jesus is hanging on his wooden cross, twenty feet off the ground, utterly exhausted. To his left side, hanging on another cross, is thief Barnaby, cousin-brother of the Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 86

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famous murderer and rapist, Barabbas. On the right side of Jesus, hanging in the air, is Fritz the Hun, great-grandfather of the infamous Attila.

The sun is beating down, there are no clouds or God in sight, and Jesus becomes more and more delirious.

Suddenly, Jesus twitches on the cross, and mumbles towards Barnaby, ”My son, my son, come closer.”

Barnaby looks up at Jesus and wiggles around a bit, but finds himself stuck. Jesus lifts his head weakly and looks at Fritz.

”My son, my son,” he gasps, ”come closer!”

Fritz is completely spaced out, and does not move.

”My sons! My sons!” cries Jesus in frustration. ”Come closer, come closer!” But all is still on Calvary Hill.

”Okay, then,” sighs Jesus. ”It is your own fault if you don’t want to be in the photograph!” Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

(gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your bodies to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards.

Gather your whole life energy, your total consciousness, and with an urgency, as if this is going to be your last moment on the earth – with this urgency rush towards the center of your being.

The closer you come to the center, the closer you are to yourself. The closer you come to the center, the closer you are to your intrinsic buddha.

The silence deepens, a tremendous peace arises in you – a rainshower of blessings, flowers of unknown mysteries. As you reach to the center, for the first time you encounter yourself in a mirror.

The mirror has never gathered any dust.

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This moment you are the most fortunate people on the earth. People have completely forgotten this inner world and the search for the buddha.

Remember, the buddha has only one quality, that of witnessing.

Witness you are not the body.

Witness you are not the mind.

Witness you are not the astral or the subtle bodies.

Witness that you are only a witness. Everything surrounds you but nothing touches you. You are beyond everything. This beyondness is your buddhahood. This beyondness opens the door to the cosmos.

First I want you to be established as a buddha. Then the second step is very easy: any day I can tell you to jump into the cosmos. The first step is more important. Once you are a buddha, the second step is very simple.

Again I say to you, remember, only one quality is your very being, and that is witnessing. That is your eternal quality: it is never born, never dies. It is always here and now. It has no beginning, no end. It is one with the whole existence.

To make it clear, Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Relax ....

Let go.

But go on remembering you are only a witness; whatever happens, whatever experiences arise in you .... A tremendous ecstasy is possible, you may feel almost drunk, but keep aloof, a watcher on the hills, just witnessing.

And slowly slowly, your separation starts melting like ice. Gautama the Buddha Auditorium is becoming an ocean of consciousness without any ripples.

Such peace, such grandeur, such

splendor; and you have been missing it for mundane things.

This is your real world.

This is your truth.

This is your beauty.

And this is your godliness.

The buddha is another name of all these: beauty, truth, godliness.

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Before Nivedano calls you back, do two things: first, gather as much silence, as much peace, as much fragrance of the beyond – you have to bring it with you. Don’t come empty-handed.

And second, persuade the buddha, he has lived too long hidden at the center. He is your very nature. He has to be brought into your daily activities: walking, sitting, sleeping, he has to be with you just like your heartbeat, just like your breathing. He is your ultimate breathing, the ultimate heartbeat of the universe.

If you persuade him, he will come. He has been waiting for you for centuries, but he will not come with you unless you persuade him, unless you welcome him into your ordinary, simple life activities.

In your words, in your gestures, in your silences, in your songs, in your dances, let him be an inner participant. Slowly slowly you will disappear in him, and he will become a solid reality in the world.

That day is the most fortunate day in one’s life.

You are all on the right path. I hope you will all be fulfilled, and not only fulfilled, you will overflow with joy and bliss and benediction for the whole world.

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Come back. But remember not to forget that you are a buddha, not to forget witnessing.

With great silence and peace, sit down for a few moments, just to remember and recollect the golden path you have traveled, the tremendous silence at the center of your being. And the grace of the buddha, who has come closer, is just behind you.

He is now almost like a shadow, but ultimately he will become the reality and you will become the shadow. That is the moment of enlightenment.

I call this:

Straight to the point of enlightenment!

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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CHAPTER 5

The truth is what works

21 January 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ONCE, YAKUSAN ASKED HIS DISCIPLE, UNGAN, ”WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” UNGAN SAID, ”I AM CARRYING WATER.”

YAKUSAN ASKED, ”WHAT ABOUT THAT FELLOW?”

UNGAN REPLIED, ”HE IS HERE.”

YAKUSAN THEN ASKED, ”FOR WHOM ARE YOU WORKING?”

UNGAN REPLIED, ”I’M BUSY ON BEHALF OF THAT FELLOW.” YAKUSAN ASKED, ”WHY DON’T YOU LET THAT FELLOW WORK WITH YOU?” UNGAN SAID, ”OSHO, DON’T MAKE A FOOL OF HIM!”

YAKUSAN SAID, ”DON’T SAY THAT! HAS he EVER CARRIED WATER?” ONCE, YAKUSAN SAID TO DOGO – UNGAN’S BROTHER – ”I HAVE A VERY SPECIAL PHRASE, WHICH I HAVE NEVER TOLD ANYBODY.”

DOGO OBSERVED: ”IT IS ALREADY FOLLOWING YOU.”

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ON ANOTHER OCCASION, UNGAN ASKED YAKUSAN, ”HOW DO YOU EXPRESS THE

PHRASE?”

YAKUSAN SAID, ”IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF EXPRESSION.” DOGO COMMENTED, ”NOW, YOU HAVE EXPRESSED it.”

FRIENDS, the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, has made a few very significant statements.

They have to be discussed, not only here but around the world.

He has said that India is suffering from an alien influence coming from the West, materialism. Hence we should, according to him, reject materialism and enhance our spiritual heritage.

I want Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, with all due respect to him, to know clearly: India is not suffering from materialism. It is suffering from a strange disease which the West is also suffering from.

India is suffering because it has accepted only half of man.

Man is both matter and spirit, the earth and the sky, the outer and the inner. Reject one and you will suffer.

The West is suffering by rejecting the inner. The inner has its own needs; they have to be nourished, evolved, brought to their ultimate peak in an awakened soul.

The East, particularly India, is suffering by rejecting materialism; and Rajiv Gandhi is again insisting on the same fallacy.

India is the oldest country in the world, but it has not developed science, it has not developed technology, it has not developed medical science. It has lived in utter poverty.

This poverty cannot be dispelled without scientific, technological development.

If you reject

materialism, science is rejected automatically. By rejecting materialism, where will you land up?

In his election propaganda he was talking of bringing the country into the twenty-first century. And now? – he wants to reject materialism. That means falling back thousands of years. You will have to reject electricity, you will have to reject trains, you will have to reject cars, you will have to reject your nuclear plants. Has he forgotten that he has been working hard to create nuclear plants? They don’t belong to spirituality.

You will have to reject all medical science, all surgery. You will have to reject all birth control methods.

Do you want to kill this whole country, to commit suicide?

And what is this heritage you are bragging about? From where does it start? From the RIGVEDA?

That is the ancientmost scripture, it can be taken as a milestone.

In RIGVEDA, human sacrifice was a routine thing. It was called narmedha, killing human beings as a sacrifice before a fictitious God, and ashvamedha, killing horses as a sacrifice to the fictitious Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 91

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God. And you won’t believe it: Hindus continuously struggle for cows not be slaughtered. But in RIGVEDA there was gomedha, slaughter of the cow as a sacrifice to God.

But God does not eat the meat, the flesh. What was happening to the flesh of men, horses and cows sacrificed? It was distributed as presents of God, as prasad. Do you want to go back to those days?

Your ancient heritage does not believe in the equality of man. For five thousand years it has been torturing the sudras, the untouchables. Your ancient heritage believed in slaves. People were auctioned just like commodities, and particularly women were auctioned in open markets. Do you want this heritage to be continued?

Millions of women have been sacrificed by India in the so-called sati-pratha: dying with your husband in the funeral pyre.

India has never accepted woman as equal to man. The great, the so-called great, self-styled saint, Tulsidas, who is very much worshipped by the Indians – even the villagers – says in his story of Rama that a woman should be beaten often, otherwise you will not be able to control her.

But what is the need to control? And who are you to control? He counts women with the sudras, the untouchables; they should be beaten. He compares women with drums: just as you beat the drums, otherwise there will be no sound, the woman should also be beaten so she remains under control.

I want to ask Rajiv Gandhi: Do you want all this heritage to be preserved?

It is against your constitution, you are talking against your own constitution. The constitution makes it a crime for any woman to be burned alive by the priests and the family on the funeral pyre. It considers it a heinous crime. And the prime minister of India says, ”I want my country to rejoice in its heritage.”

Your heritage is the worst and the most rotten heritage one can have.

It is your heritage that millions are starving. By the end of this century you will see half a billion people starving and dying. Only science and technology can help, only birth control methods can help. But you are denying all materialism.

Why is this country so poor? It is so ancient, so intelligent, why is it so poor? The intelligence has been distracted from the right path by the continuous insistence on renouncing the world. And the insistence came from people who were kings, princes, who had lived in luxury and found it a meaningless wastage of life.

All the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas were kings. Gautam Buddha was a prince and was going to succeed his father as a king. Krishna and Rama, the Hindu reincarnations of God, were kings. These people had lived in luxury, they had seen the futility of it, that it does not nourish your inner being. They renounced the world. But because they renounced the world, they started teaching everybody to renounce the world, without looking at the background.

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All are not kings; all are not super-rich. This is how India’s intelligence has been distracted. People did not see the implication, that these people were coming from royal families, every one. Buddha, Mahavira, Rama, Krishna, all were coming from royal families.

It was because of their luxurious lives – many women, wine, continuous music, dance and nothing else to do – that they got frustrated. But remember, the background is the most important thing.

They renounced the world. And because they renounced the world, they started teaching everybody,

”Renounce the world.”

Everybody was poor, utterly poor, there was nothing to renounce. But the whole national intelligence got caught into it.

These people taught India that everything outside you is illusory. It is not the case. The objective reality has its own existence, its own reality, just as the subjective, the inner, has its own reality.

What is needed is not to discard materialism; what is needed is to bring materialism and spirituality into a meeting. They are already meeting in your body: your soul and your body are continuously in deep consonance, in a deep harmony. They are already meeting in the whole universe. Everywhere life is in tune with nature.

It is just a mental projection that, ”Outside is unreal, so discard it.” If it is unreal, then what is the point of discarding it? If it is not there, why are you escaping from it? Nobody escapes from nothing.

You know very well it is there! – but you have lived for centuries as escapists.

I know that just a few days ago he was talking about ”one earth, one world.” What happened to that one earth and one world? Now he is talking about an ”alien” influence from the West – now the world has become two, it is no longer one – and discarding the influence.

Do you see the implications?

Discarding science and technology you will not be able to survive at all.

But I understand the politician. The politician does not say the truth, he says what appeals to the masses, what appeals to the ego of the masses.

Poor India has nothing else to brag about. The only thing it can brag about is spirituality, which nobody can see.

But I want to tell Mr. Rajiv Gandhi that the masses are the greatest enemies of themselves. They live in superstitions. Child marriage continues although it is banned by the law, by the constitution; but no action is taken against child marriage.

Women are still burned in the funeral pyres, worshipped because they have jumped into the funeral pyre. Temples are raised to them. And the government simply watches.

And if you drop all birth control methods this country will become such a huge burden. You will not be able to feed them, you will not be able to give them clothes, you will not be able to give them shelter. It will be simply chaos and death.

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If you insist on your ancient heritage, you are driving the country not towards the twenty-first century, but towards its graveyard.

He has also insisted in his statement that we should continue our morality, our religion.

What morality?

Just for instance ... India has called one of its heroes, Yudhishthara, dharmaraj, the king of religion.

He gambled his whole kingdom, and not only the kingdom, he gambled his own wife, and lost everything; and still he is thought to be the king of religion and morality. A gambler, gambling his own wife just like any commodity!

People think – and perhaps Rajiv Gandhi believes in those people – that India was very moral in the past. This is absolutely absurd. All Hindu scriptures, all Buddhist scriptures, all Jaina scriptures, continuously teach people, ”Don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t murder people.” To whom were these statements addressed?

If India had been moral there would not have been so many thieves that Buddha had to continue insisting for forty-two years, every day, morning and evening, ”Be moral.” That indicates that the country was not moral; otherwise Buddha would have been thought insane. You don’t talk to moral people about morality. You don’t talk to people of that which they already have, you talk only about things which they DON’T have.

And it is not only Buddha; Mahavira was doing the same.

And all the religions that have arisen on this sub-continent were continually giving sermons to people; those sermons give the real history of the country. People were thieves, people were murderers, people were suicidal, people were rapists – all kinds of crimes were committed.

Otherwise, all the scriptures would become absolutely meaningless.

So what is your heritage?

Do you want to continue all this?

And where will you land up? Just on the spinning wheel? That can help the country to enter into the twenty-first century? It will help the country to fall back into the first century! And the bullock cart?

Is this acceptable technology for spiritual people?

My own understanding is that spirituality is the highest value, your highest need. When you have fulfilled your material needs, suddenly a great understanding arises in you that, ”These needs are fulfilled but I remain in discontent and despair. My inner world is empty, unfulfilled.” My insistence is that materialism should become the stepping-stone for spirituality. There is no other scientific way of thinking.

MR. RAJIV GANDHI SAID IT WAS IMPORTANT TO ENSURE THAT THE ESSENCE OF

OUR LEGACY WAS NOT LOST IN THIS DELUGE THAT IS COMING FROM THE WEST.

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THE CULTURAL HERITAGE SHOULD BE PRESERVED AND PROJECTED AS A MODEL OF

DEVELOPMENT FOR THE FUTURE.

Great!

I wonder, Rajiv Gandhi, whether you are writing your speeches yourself. I think you are an intelligent, educated person. Perhaps these speeches are written by ghost-writers, because I cannot see that you would commit such contradictions.

MR. GANDHI SAID THE BASIC THINKING SHOULD BE ONE OF SIMPLE SOLUTIONS RATHER

THAN A CONFRONTATIONIST ATTITUDE, SINCE THAT ENDED UP WITH COMPROMISES THAT

DON’T WORK OR CONSENSUS WHICH WORKS EVEN LESS.

Simple solutions for complex problems? Simple solutions for simple problems; complex solutions for complex problems. It is such a clear thing! For all problems simple solutions won’t do, because the problems are complex.

A brain surgeon is dealing with a complex problem, very complex. You cannot call in a butcher to do brain surgery – that will be a simple solution. Soon there will be no problem and nobody who has the problem; both will be finished! A butcher cannot do brain surgery.

Even all surgeons are not capable of doing brain surgery, just very few, very rare geniuses, because the brain is such a complex phenomenon; in a small skull there are millions of nerves.

While doing the surgery your hand should not shake even a little, otherwise you will cut thousands of nerves, which will have effects all over the body. You don’t know where that will lead – to paralysis, to blindness – because everything is controlled by the brain.

If there is a tumor, you have to remove it with such care that nothing else is even touched; the brain is very fragile. And the problems that man has created are very complex. You cannot have simple solutions.

What simple solution is there for birth control? Celibacy? It does not work. What simple solution is there for cancer? Drinking the polluted water of India? Water therapy ... or urine therapy?

Urine therapy seems to be the simplest medicine for all diseases.

Another ex-prime minister,

Morarji Desai, was preaching that the simplest thing for all kinds of diseases – mental, physical, psychological, it does not matter – is just to drink your own urine. It is always available, you don’t have to go to any expert. Just carry a glass with you.

Sometimes I wonder whether to laugh or to weep.

And he says that compromises don’t work; he has forgotten a word, which is ‘synthesis’.

Compromises don’t work, but synthesis, a synchronicity, works.

It is already at work in the whole universe. It is at work in your body. It is at work everywhere.

Wherever life is, there is spirit and there is matter – but it is a very deep harmony.

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He has completely forgotten the word ‘synthesis’ – and that is the only solution for the world. The West and East should meet. Matter and spirit should go hand in hand. Zorba and Buddha should dance together.

And finally he said, ”Our heritage ...” He does not understand at all what our heritage is.

Eternal poverty .... On one hand, a few people were immensely rich, and on the other hand, the whole society was absolutely poor. And the religions and the so-called moralists convinced the poor that, ”Your poverty is not because of the rich people; it is because of your evil acts in your past life that you are suffering. Just suffer patiently, so that in the future life you don’t have to be poor.” And the rich people are enjoying their good, virtuous acts of their past life, ”so don’t feel jealous, don’t have any envy.”

Because of these moralists and these religious people, India has never known any revolution against the bourgeois society, against the feudal lords, against the exploiters. Your whole morality, your whole religion protects the vested interests and destroys the morale, the integrity of the poor. You have treated the poor like cattle.

I am surprised that a young, well-educated man should talk such nonsense.

He also said:

OUR HERITAGE IS NOT ABOUT ECONOMIC GROWTH BUT SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT.

What does he know about spiritual enlightenment?

The country needs economic growth! And he is saying, ”Our heritage is not about economic growth

....” Sure! That’s why you are suffering such poverty. And if you continue that rotten heritage, sick to the soul, you will suffer the ultimate death on this planet! This will be the first country to commit suicide – just by the explosion of population.

And the prime minister of the country says, ”Our heritage is not concerned with economic growth.” But bread comes under economics, and clothes come under economics, and the shelter, a house, comes under economics! So what do you want? For everybody to stand naked under the sun? and hungry? and thirsty? and just be spiritual, not be a body?

Then the only way is to commit suicide. Why unnecessarily torture yourself? Just jump into the ocean so you will be simply spiritual.

And from where did he get this word ‘enlightenment’? Does he know what meditation is?

I was talking to his mother, Indira Gandhi, and she told me, ”Next time you pass by Delhi, I would like my two sons to learn something about meditation from you.” But they were both out of the house.

And I never went to Delhi again.

Laxmi is here. Indira Gandhi had promised her – because she was the mediator between me and Indira Gandhi – ”I will send Rajiv to Poona to learn something about meditation.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 96

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He knows nothing about meditation, and for one who knows nothing about meditation, enlightenment is just a great word.

And the people who were listening to him were all Indians, so naturally, he fulfilled their egos. When he said that the whole earth should be one and nations should dissolve, he was addressing an international conference of scientists.

This is how politicians function. They don’t have any integrity in their individuality. They are purely opportunists. When the gathering was international, the world was one, the earth was one. Naturally, the international gathering must have clapped: ”This is the right person and the right solution!” This last statement has been made in an Indian gathering. Now he has changed his position. This is what I call opportunism. It is the ugliest thing when one practices it. Now he is enhancing, puffing up the Indian ego by saying, ”You are spiritual people, you don’t need any economic growth. You don’t need any science, you don’t need any technology, you don’t need any materialism. You are pure souls. All that you need is enlightenment.” And what is enlightenment, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, except a word? You don’t have any taste of it. If you want to have a taste, I invite you here. We will give you the taste of meditation your mother always wanted you to have, and we will make every effort to make the prime minister enlightened!

But before that happens, you should stop talking nonsense.

Remember, I am not a politician but I want to remind you that you are the servant of the people. And I have every right to correct you. Whenever you go astray, I have to bring you right back to the path.

Perhaps in India nobody else will dare to do it, but I have nothing to lose. I am the world’s most condemned person. What else can happen?

But, strangely enough, these people are such cowards, they don’t even answer.

The sutra:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ONCE, YAKUSAN ASKED HIS DISCIPLE, UNGAN,

”WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

UNGAN SAID, ”I AM CARRYING WATER.”

YAKUSAN ASKED, ”WHAT ABOUT THAT FELLOW?”

”That fellow” always refers to the innermost buddha. No name is used, just an indication:

”WHAT ABOUT THAT FELLOW?”

You are carrying water, that’s okay, but what about that fellow? What is he doing?

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UNGAN REPLIED, ”HE IS HERE.”

He is always here. He knows no other place, no other time. He is always here, and always now.

YAKUSAN THEN ASKED, ”FOR WHOM ARE YOU WORKING?”

UNGAN REPLIED, ”I AM BUSY ON BEHALF OF THAT FELLOW.” That fellow is again the buddha hidden inside your being, your spirituality, your eternal being, your cosmic existence.

YAKUSAN ASKED, ”WHY DON’T YOU LET THAT FELLOW

WORK WITH YOU?”

UNGAN SAID, ”OSHO ...”

Osho is really a great word of deep gratitude, love and honor. So much is implied that it cannot be translated by ‘reverend’; that reverend looks so ugly and Christian. Osho is very close and intimate, a very loving address, full of honor and gratitude.

”OSHO, DON’T MAKE A FOOL OF HIM!”

He is my innermost being. I would not allow him to carry water. I can do that. He is thirsty, and he is purely a presence. A presence cannot work directly upon matter, I have to be the mediator. I am between him and the world. If he wants anything I have to do it, he cannot come directly into contact with matter. He is pure space, unbounded. It is sheer joy for me to work for him. I am working for him, but OSHO, DON’T MAKE A FOOL OF HIM. Don’t ask such questions. You know perfectly well that all I am doing is for him! My whole body is dedicated to him.

This is dedication. This is surrender.

YAKUSAN SAID, ”DON’T SAY THAT!” Yakusan insisted.

Both are masters, both are enlightened. Both know what they are saying and what is being replied, but this is a game – just chitchat. When two masters are sitting together, what will they do? This is just pulling each other’s legs.

YAKUSAN SAID, ”DON’T SAY THAT!

HAS HE EVER CARRIED WATER?”

Ungan did not reply. Yakusan has gone beyond the limit, and he knows it. No answer is needed.

How can pure space carry water?

How can pure presence interact with matter?

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The body is a tremendous phenomenon. It is standing in between pure space and solid matter.

It makes a certain interaction possible between two opposite polarities.

The body is doing a

tremendous job with great intelligence and wisdom. You should respect your body. You should love your body. It is the instrument for your buddha.

ONCE, YAKUSAN SAID TO DOGO – UNGAN’S BROTHER – ”I HAVE A VERY SPECIAL PHRASE, WHICH I HAVE NEVER TOLD ANYBODY.”

DOGO OBSERVED: ”IT IS ALREADY FOLLOWING YOU.”

Again, two masters. ”You have not said it to anybody, that’s okay, but I can see it is following you.” ON ANOTHER OCCASION, UNGAN ASKED YAKUSAN, ”HOW DO YOU EXPRESS THE

PHRASE?”

”The phrase” means that which cannot be said, so it is simply used as an indication – the phrase –

just as we were talking about the buddha as ”that fellow.”

”HOW DO YOU EXPRESS THE PHRASE?”

Because basically it is inexpressible. You cannot say what it is. You can bring people to look at it.

You can open the window and you can bring your friend to look at the sunset, or the flowers, or a bird on the wing in the blue sky, or the stars in the sky, anything. You cannot say it but you can show it. And the inner experiences are so deep, they cannot be brought to language.

Yakusan was asked by Ungan,

”HOW DO YOU EXPRESS THE PHRASE?”

YAKUSAN SAID, ”IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF EXPRESSION.” It is a question of experience. Or even better, it is a question of experiencING. Experience seems to be a little dead, not a process but a complete thing.

Experience: you have come to the full point. ExperiencING helps a little more. The full point has not come, all is not said. The river has just started flowing towards the ocean, it has not reached.

Rather than a noun, a verb is more expressive.

But strangely enough, all over the world, all the languages have turned verbs into nouns. Have you ever seen a river? Because it is always moving.

Remember Heraclitus, who said, ”You cannot step in the same river twice.” If I have the chance to meet Heraclitus somewhere in eternity – and there is every possibility, because he will be looking for the moment to meet me – I have been in agreement with him, but I say he has only told half the truth. ”You cannot step in the same river twice,” he says.

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changing both above and below. Your foot goes deeper, the water is changing on both sides, below and above. When you touch the bottom, the water is something different that you had never touched in the beginning. You cannot step even once ....

Rather than call it a river – it will make language a little difficult, perhaps that is the reason we tolerate it – a river should be called ”rivering”. It is continuously rivering, flowing. A tree should be called ”treeing,” not a tree, because it is growing every moment! New leaves are coming, old leaves are falling. New buds are opening, old flowers are dropping their petals. It is a constant process.

In existence everything is a process, nothing is an event.

You yourself say you are young, but do you know you are getting older every moment? You say you are alive, but do you know you are coming closer to your death every moment?

As I see it, the moment you were born, your death was also born with you. One foot is life, the other foot is death. You are a combination of both.

When you were born, you were ninety-nine percent life and one percent death. When you die, you will be ninety-nine percent death and one percent life. You will be surprised by my statement, that I am saying ”one percent life.” Yes, because even in the grave your hair will go on growing, your nails will go on growing. You will not shave your beard anymore, it will start growing. You will become a hippy in the grave. That is why I say one percent.

But I repeat my statement: there are only processes in existence, never events. Everything is constantly moving whether you realize it or not.

Do you realize, the earth you are sitting on is moving, fast. It rotates on its own axis every twenty-four hours, and it makes one round of the sun per year. You are not sitting on a static earth, and neither is the sun static. The sun is moving around some bigger sun – which is only guessed at by the scientists. We have not yet been able to discover which center the sun is going around. It must be far away.

But everything is on the move, and the moment you stop, you are dead.

Never stop growing, never stop flowing. Look around at the world as a flux, not a dead thing.

YAKUSAN SAID, ”IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF EXPRESSION.” But Dogo was also great.

He commented, ”Now, Yakusan, YOU HAVE EXPRESSED IT.

Even to say this much – that nothing can be said about it – you have said something about it!” One of the great – perhaps the greatest – logicians of the contemporary world was Ludwig Wittgenstein, a strange fellow. He was a student of Bertrand Russell in the university, and he found

....

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Bertrand Russell was an authentic teacher. Any other teacher would have expelled Wittgenstein; I have been expelled so many times .... I don’t think anybody except a man like Bertrand Russell would have tolerated Wittgenstein.

Bertrand Russell was a recognized authority on logic, on mathematics – because mathematics is a by-product of logic – but Wittgenstein was far ahead of Bertrand Russell, and it was the greatness of Bertrand Russell that he looked into Wittgenstein’s writings.

While Russell was giving notes, Wittgenstein was taking something else far beyond the notes. He was writing, so it appeared that he was taking notes of what Russell was saying. But Russell suspected ... sometimes he was not saying anything and still Wittgenstein was writing.

So one day Russell went by his side, he stood and looked at the notes. He could not believe it. This was not what he had said; this was something he had always wanted to say but was not able!

He looked at Wittgenstein. He said, ”What are you doing here? I have never come across a greater genius in logic! I would love to see your Ph.D. thesis on logic. I hope to learn much from your thesis.” This is greatness. This is authentic sincerity. A world-famous professor and philosopher says to his student, ”I am looking forward to your thesis!” Wittgenstein wrote the thesis, and Bertrand Russell wrote the introduction to it.

The thesis is something of pure genius. In that thesis there is one sentence, and when I was a student of logic, I crossed out that sentence. The sentence reads: ”That which cannot be said, should not be said.”

I wrote a letter to Wittgenstein, saying, ”You have said it. ‘That which cannot be said, should not be said,’ – is still a statement about that. You should remove this statement.” Unfortunately he was dead. Some of his friends wrote to me, ”It is too late; otherwise, he was so sincere he would have crossed out that line. He would have understood immediately that even to say that nothing can be said is still saying something.” DOGO COMMENTED, ”NOW, YOU HAVE EXPRESSED IT” – because you say, ”IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF EXPRESSION.”

You have, in an indirect way, said something about that which remains beyond all expression – this expression included.

It is beautiful to see two masters encountering each other. It has never happened anywhere else in the world except in the lineage of Zen, because Zen takes everything playfully. The most serious is the most playful. Even masters play like children, arguing, pulling each other’s legs. Just arguing for argument’s sake – it is such a joy! And both know that it is simply passing time: drinking coffee and arguing great things. And both know that it cannot be argued: ”Just finish your tea!” But it is a beautiful scene. Even to visualize it is of tremendous beauty.

Teishitsu wrote:

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THIS! THIS!

I COULD ONLY SAY AT FLOWERY

MOUNT YOSHINO.

The Yoshino mountain is full of flowers – so many flowers, so many colors, such lush green! What can be said about it? How to condense it into a statement? I can only say, ”THIS! THIS! – I can only indicate – I COULD ONLY SAY AT FLOWERY MOUNT YOSHINO.” He is talking about the inner.

Nothing can be said, only ”THIS! THIS!” – an indication, a finger pointing to the moon.

Question 1

Maneesha has a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY THAT BUDDHA SAID, ”TRUTH IS WHAT WORKS.” Before going deeper into the question, first I have to explain what Buddha meant.

Truth cannot be expressed in words, but devices can be created which can wake you up to the world of truth. Those devices are not true or untrue, they are just fiction. But because they work, and bring you to the experience of truth, Buddha defined truth as ”that which works.” If a device works to wake you up and bring you to the world of truth, you know that device was fiction

– but it has led you to truth. You have to be grateful to the device. It has done a miracle. Hence, Buddha says, that which works is also true – true in the sense that it leads you towards the truth.

All meditations are true, in the sense that they will bring your enlightenment. My words are true, in the sense that someday you may hear the wordless message between my words, in the silences of my heart. If it works then it becomes true, because it leads you to the truth.

Symbolically, Buddha says, truth is what works. Science will accept his definition.

Nobody knows what electricity is, not even Thomas Alva Edison who discovered it, but nobody cares. You don’t have to know what electricity is, you only have to know how to put the switch on.

The switch that brings the electricity immediately is true, it works. You don’t have to go into the whole dynamics and the theorization. And there is no way really to find out exactly what electricity is.

Have I told you the story of Thomas Alva Edison?

He had gone for a holiday to a resort village. The village had a small high school, and they were having their annual function. The students from different departments had made things as an exhibition for all the villagers to come and see. The art students had made paintings, toys. The science students had made a few electrical things which amazed the villagers.

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For example, you put your hand underneath the tap and the water immediately comes out. Without touching any button or anything; just the presence of your hand is enough to trigger it and the water comes. As you take your hand away, the water stops.

They had made railway trains, small trains running round and round on tracks. And they had made many other things.

Thomas Alva Edison, just wandering around the village, enjoying the open air and the trees and the sun and the sea air, crisp and salty, came across the school, and he saw a great crowd going there.

He said, ”What is the matter?”

They said, ”It is the annual function and our students have made many beautiful things. We are going to see. Would you like to come?” He had the time, so he joined the crowd.

He went directly to the electrical section; that was his lifelong work. He was the first man to see the electric bulb light up, in the whole history of man. Three years it took for him .... You just push the button, you don’t know how hard people have worked just to create a button for you. Three years

.... Twenty colleagues started, and by and by everybody left, because this man seemed to be mad:

”Nothing is working, everything fails, electricity does not come!” They told him, ”Drop it, you will simply waste your life. You have many other things to do.” He said, ”When I put my hand to one thing, unless I finish it or I get finished there is no way to distract me. If you are tired, frustrated ... you don’t understand scientific research.” They said, ”What do you mean, we don’t understand scientific research? We are all scientists!” He said, ”You may be scientists, but you don’t understand the fundamentals. One fundamental is that every failure brings you closer to success. If there are three hundred possibilities and I have failed two hundred and ninety-nine times, now is the time. One never knows.

Yes, three years have passed. You are frustrated but I am rejoicing that so many things are cut out.

Now very few alternatives remain. The day is not far away ....” And within three months he managed it.

One night he was working hard – it must have been past three o’clock, it was already morning –

when suddenly for the first time in the whole history of man, he saw the light bulb radiating light. He was almost hypnotized. He just looked and looked at the beauty of it. He could not believe that he had succeeded.

And at that time Mrs. Thomas Alva Edison screamed, ”Put that light out and come to bed!” She had no idea that this was no ordinary light.

But Edison went in and said, ”You don’t know .... It is not any old light that you know, it is the result of my three years and three months’ continuous work. Twenty people started with me and all have left, some after one year, some after the second year, some after the third year. Electricity has been caught. You come and see.”

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The wife was amazed. She never believed in Thomas Alva Edison – no wife believes in her husband

– that this fellow was going to succeed. ”Forget all about it. He is simply mad.” So when he went into the school, he saw the trains running, he saw the water coming from the tap just by the presence of the hand underneath it. He asked a student – who was very happy to show him because he knew that this was not a man from the village; just by his dress and everything he looked like a visitor. The student was very interested to show him everything, and Thomas Alva Edison took great interest in everything that the students had made.

Then he asked a question: ”How are these things working?” The boy said, ”Electricity.”

Edison asked, ”What is electricity?”

The boy said, ”What is electricity? That I don’t know. I know how it works. But I will call my science teacher, he is a graduate, a B.Sc. first class; he will certainly know.” So he called his science teacher, who also said, ”Forgive me, sir. We know how to use it, but we don’t know what it is. But perhaps our principal, who has a Ph. D. – he must know what electricity is.”

So they took the principal aside, and the principal said, ”Forgive me, sir. I know how it works, but what it is, I am sorry to say I don’t know.”

Edison laughed. He said to them, ”Don’t feel embarrassed. I am Thomas Alva Edison, and I also don’t know what electricity is. All that I know is how it works.” Science will accept Buddha’s statement, ”Truth is what works.” Don’t ask what it is.

Another great philosopher, G.E. Moore, has written a book on ethics, and the only subject in two hundred and fifty pages is ”What is ‘good’?” Without knowing good, how can you manage ethics, morality, and all kinds of things?

First you should define exactly what ‘good’ is. And after two hundred and fifty pages of very dense argumentation, finally he comes to the conclusion, ”Good is indefinable.” It is just as if somebody asks you, ”What is yellow?” You can say, ”Yellow is yellow,” but what is it?

We are living in a mysterious world where nothing is known. All that we know is how to use things.

If we go to the root of knowing, we will be confronted with an immense mystery which has not been solved even in ordinary matters. What is yellow? What is good?

Maneesha is asking:

I UNDERSTAND THAT TO MEAN THAT, WHEN DELIVERED BY AN ENLIGHTENED MASTER, TRUTH IS WHAT WORKS – HIS TRUTH IS IMPLICIT IN EVERYTHING HE SAYS OR DOES.

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HAVING NO EGO MEANS THAT THERE IS NO MOTIVATION FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN

THE TRUTH.

I HEARD AN OLD SANNYASIN SAY, ”I DON’T EXAGGERATE – I LIE LIKE MY MASTER.” IT

SEEMS TO ME THERE IS A FATAL FLAW IN HIS WORDS.

WILL YOU PLEASE SPEAK ABOUT TRUTH AND TRUST?

Before speaking about truth and trust, I can only imagine two persons who could have made that statement: ”I don’t exaggerate – I lie like my master.” One is Subhuti, who is not here, and the other is Krishna Prem, who is sitting here.

Both are ex-journalists, and although they have been with me and they love me, they cannot drop their old orientation.

It is true that all devices are lies, but because they work, they are true.

But his saying, ”I don’t exaggerate – I lie like my master ....” Am I right, Krishna Prem, it is your statement?

(KRISHNA PREM, SITTING NEAR THE FRONT, SHRUGS HIS SHOULDERS.) You have forgotten? I will produce witnesses.

Stand up!

(KRISHNA PREM STANDS UP.)

You say you have not made this statement?

(KRISHNA PREM ANSWERS, ”I DON’T REMEMBER THE WORDS.”) No, you know it perfectly well. Do you want me to produce witnesses?

(KRISHNA PREM APPEARS TO SHAKE HIS HEAD.)

Then say the truth, that you have made this statement!

(KRISHNA PREM INDICATES AN AFFIRMATIVE.)

So then there are only two alternatives left for you. There is no need to have an apology for me because I love you, you can say anything. But you have to apologize to all the sannyasins. You have hurt them badly. Fold your hands and go round.

(KRISHNA PREM FOLDS HIS HANDS IN NAMASTE, TURNS SLOWLY AROUND IN A CIRCLE, SALUTING THE LARGE GATHERING.)

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Sit down.

It is very difficult to forget your old orientation. Journalists deal only with rumors and lies and all kinds of rubbish.

You cannot say such a thing about me. I may sometimes commit mistakes about facts, because that is not my world. For fifteen years I have not read a single book. Whatever information I get, I get from my secretaries – they read it to me. I don’t know whether it is exactly true or not, and I don’t care.

My concern is totally different. My concern is somehow to bring you to an awakening. I will use everything possible; it doesn’t matter whether it is factual or non-factual.

A journalist lives in the world of facts, he has nothing to do with truth. All facts are not necessarily truths. They may appear ....

I am reminded of an English historian, Edmund Burke. He was writing the whole world’s history; he wasted almost forty years writing it.

One day, just behind his house, a murder was committed in broad daylight, before witnesses. He ran and asked the people who had seen it how the person had been shot dead and how the person who killed him escaped. But there were as many versions as there were witnesses. He could not believe his eyes. It happened in front of them, but everybody had his own story.

Seeing the situation, he went into his house and burned the whole history that he had been writing for forty years about the whole world since the beginning – from Adam and Eve up to now. He burned it because, he said, ”If eyewitnesses cannot agree, what can I say about whether Gautam Buddha or Jesus Christ existed or not? What can I say about whether man comes from the apes, or the chimpanzees, or the gorillas? What can I say about whether they are all coming from Africa or from different parts of the world, or from Mongolia?” At one time there was a theory, accepted by all the scientists, that life was born in Mongolia and from there it spread. The reason for it was the Sanskrit language.

The North Indians came from Mongolia, perhaps ninety thousand years ago. They pushed the natives from North India towards South India; that’s why you find the South Indians are black. They are not Aryans, and their languages have no connection with Sanskrit.

But all European languages, English, Swiss, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, German – all European languages have thirty percent, forty percent Sanskrit roots. One language, Lithuanian, has ninety percent Sanskrit roots. German has forty percent of its roots in Sanskrit.

The reason was that these people had lived together in Mongolia. It was one family, the Aryans, and when the population became big – they were hunters, and they had hunted all the animals – small groups started moving in different directions.

One group reached India. One group reached Iran; its old name was ”Ay-ran,” the country of the Aryans. That Ay-ran has become Iran. And branches of the same family reached from Mongolia to England, to Holland, to Germany, to Sweden, to Switzerland, to the whole of Europe.

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This is one family. The Sanskrit roots prove, basically, that all these people once lived together. Then they dispersed, because there was a food shortage and they had to move in different directions.

You should look at the world map and cut out the maps of Africa and India, and try to put them together. You will be surprised: they match perfectly. There was a time when Africa and India were connected. Now, it is a well-established fact that the continents go on continuously moving. Under the continents, far down deep, they are floating.

Africa moved, but the cut where they broke away remained the same. The South Indian languages and the South Indians have some Negroid blood in them. That’s why they are black, and that’s why their languages don’t have anything to do with Sanskrit.

Now that theory has changed.

Now they say that life started in Africa, because Africa has chimpanzees, apes, gorillas. Because Indian monkeys are very small, they could not have become man. Mongolian monkeys are also very small, they could not have become man.

So now that old idea from Sanskrit has receded and a new idea has come to light; that life was born in Africa. Perhaps there is no contradiction in it. It is possible that life was born in Africa, and a few chimpanzees moved to Mongolia. They prospered in Mongolia, and then with over-population they started moving towards Europe, to India. There is no contradiction in the two. But who is to decide now?

There is a small fraction of scientists who say that life must have been born in different places simultaneously; it was not one place. That seems to be also relevant, because the Chinese, the Japanese, the whole East, the Far East, does not fit with any theory. Neither does the African theory fit with the Chinese.

The African apes, chimpanzees and gorillas have really thick beards. Look at the Chinese beard: you can count the hairs on your ten fingers. Look at their high cheekbones, which are not seen anywhere else in the world.

It seems to me there is no contradiction in all the three. Perhaps in different places life arose simultaneously. There is no reason to deny it, because the differences are so clearly there. Chinese has nothing to do with Sanskrit – not even with the alphabet; it is a non-alphabetical language. It has nothing in common with Sanskrit, and nothing in common with Africa.

Chinese and Japanese and the Far Eastern people, Taiwanese and Koreans, they must have been born separately. Perhaps the theory based on Sanskrit has its own truth. Certainly these people have lived together some place, and it seems that place can only be Mongolia because now Mongolia is almost empty. You will find only reminders of some very ancient cities – houses, roads

– but nobody lives there. So the people who lived there must have moved because of the scarcity of food; that also seems to be right. And the theory that life was born in Africa ... perhaps one section of life must have been born in Africa.

But all these are guesswork!

So sometimes you may find my facts not collaborating with the fashionable theory, but don’t think I am lying. I have never lied in my life. If I have lied, I have lied only as a device to help you to come to truth.

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And Krishna Prem, if you want to lie like your master, be like your master. Before that, you are simply lying; don’t bring me in.

Even right now, you have witnessed, he lied. First he denied, then he shrugged his shoulders. When I said that I would bring witnesses, that was a lie, but the lie brought the truth immediately.

I am absolutely a scientific person. The moment he saw that I know about the witnesses .... I know nothing, I knew just by the way he denied it. I could see his heartbeat going faster. Then he shrugged his shoulders as if he had forgotten – and it is just two days ago!

I was going to take the question yesterday, but he was not here. So I waited. And the moment I said

”witnesses”, he immediately accepted that ”Yes ....” This is how I bring truth through lies.

But I am not lying. My lying is not destructive. It is not to deceive you, it is just to bring you to more awareness, more consciousness.

It is not the fault of Krishna Prem. His whole programming is that of a journalist. I feel sad and sorry for him because he loves me, but his programming pulls him farther away.

The same was the case with Subhuti. Twice he left the commune. Again he came and said, ”I have changed completely, I will not bring my journalist mind in. Please allow me in.” Twice I allowed him.

Again he did the same. Now I have told him, ”The doors are closed. You have closed them yourself.” That was the other alternative I was going to give to Krishna Prem. But because he has apologized to all the sannyasins, the other alternative is not needed. Otherwise I was going to say to him,

”Leave this place. You have been here enough, and if nothing changes in you, what is the point?” I hope this question will help him towards a transformation.

And Maneesha, you are asking:

WILL YOU PLEASE SPEAK ABOUT TRUTH AND TRUST?

I will not, because those are the things that have to be experienced, not to be talked about.

It has been a serious time; now forget all about it. Here comes Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

Chinaman Chinks is telling his friend Wu, the barman, about his amazing cure with Doctor Hak Mee.

”But,” says Wu, ”you were sick for over five months with some rare, unknown disease.

What

happened?”

”Ah!” says Chinks, ”me velly sick man. So me first call Doctor Yoo Dum. Me takee his medicine. Me velly more sick. So then me get Doctor Foo Foo. Then me takee his medicine. Then me velly bad –

me think me going to die! So me callee Doctor Hak Mee.” Yakusan: Straight to the Point of Enlightenment 108

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”Yes! Yes!” exclaims Wu. ”Then what happened?”

”Well,” says Chinks, ”Doctor Hak Mee too busy, no can come. So me get well!” Duncan Dorkee walks into Doctor Doom’s office feeling a little out of condition.

”Ah, yes,” says Doctor Doom, ”you must run ten miles a day, and not take the bus. You must eat lots of tofu and cut out the cake, beer and cigars. You must drop sex for one month, and whenever you have the urge, just drink a glass of prune juice instead – in fact, drink three glasses ....” And the doctor babbles on like this for half an hour.

Duncan eases himself up out of the chair, and heads for the door.

”Wait!” shouts Doctor Doom, ”you have not paid for my advice.”

”Thanks, Doc,” says Duncan, ”but I am not taking it!” Pope the Polack is trotting around the Vatican when Little Giovanni comes racing up to him.

”Hello, my son,” says the Polack pope. ”Can I help you?”

”Yes,” says Giovanni. ”What is the time?”

Pope the Polack fumbles inside his robes and after a long search brings out a clock tied to his crucifix.

”It is exactly five-thirty,” says the pope.

”Well,” says Little Giovanni, turning around, ”at six o’clock, you go to hell!” And Giovanni races away.

Pissed off, Pope the Polack picks up his robes and chases after Giovanni as fast as he can, dashing across Saint Peter’s Square.

Running full speed around the corner, Pope the Polack crashes into Cardinal Catsass.

”Holy Jezus!” shouts Catsass. ”Where are you going so fast?”

”That little boy,” puffs the Polack, ”I told him it was five-thirty, and he told me at six o’clock I was going to hell!”

”Really?” says Catsass, looking at his watch. ”But why so fast? You have still got half an hour!” Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

(gibberish)

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Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Be silent.

Close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards.

Gather your whole life energy, your total consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment, rush towards the center of your being. Faster and faster.

As you come closer to the center, you are coming closer to your buddha.

A little more.

A little more.

The deeper you go, the greater becomes the silence. The moment you reach to the center, you have touched eternity.

This moment, Gautama the Buddha Auditorium is full of ten thousand buddhas.

The only quality the buddha has is witnessing.

Witness that you are not the body.

Witness that you are not the mind.

Witness that you are not the astral or the subtle bodies.

Witness that you are only the witness and nothing else.

This is your purest consciousness. This is your awakening.

To make your witnessing deeper, Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Relax ....

Let go. But remain centered.

A great ecstasy is showering over you. You will find yourself drunk. It is being drunk with the divine.

Slowly slowly, you start melting like ice, and the Buddha Auditorium becomes an ocean of pure consciousness without any ripples.

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You are the most blessed people in the world, because nobody else is looking inwards, nobody else is trying to find his ultimate source.

This will transform your very life. This will give you a new clarity about everything. This will make you an individual with absolute freedom from all fetters, prisons, religions, nations, races. This will make you a citizen of the cosmos.

The whole world is yours.

The whole existence rejoices in your meditation.

Before Nivedano calls you back, collect as much experiencing as you can: the joy, the blissfulness, the benediction, the great matter of being one with the whole.

And persuade the buddha to come along with you. He has to become your very heartbeat, your very breathing. He has to be always present in you.

He is there, but hidden deep, far deep. He has to be brought closer and closer, so soon every word that you speak comes from him, every silence is his silence, every gesture is his gesture.

The day all your songs are his, and all your dances are his, is the greatest day of your millions of lives.

Nivedano ...

(drumbeat)

Come back, but come back as buddhas, with the same grace, the same beauty, the same silence.

Sit down for a few moments just to recollect where you have been, what space you have traveled in, what golden path you have moved on, and what you have brought with you from the new space. A new birth? A resurrection?

Remember it.

Meditation is a death and a resurrection.

In this great moment, I don’t want Krishna Prem to remain sad. I want Nirvano to put Krishna Prem’s name on her list first.

This is what I mean by:

Straight to the point of enlightenment!

Okay, Maneesha?

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Document Outline

- 1 Whatever the cost enlightenment is cheap

- 2 There is no way to compare me with anybody

- 3 A grand approach to reality

- 4 The sutra is long, the night is short

- 5 The truth is what works