Chapter title: The Halo of Yakushi-Buddha

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‌Chapter title: The Halo of Yakushi-Buddha‌

23 February 1976 am in Buddha Hall Archive

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ONE WINTER DAY, A MASTERLESS SAMURAI CAME TO EISAI'S TEMPLE

AND MADE AN APPEAL: 'I'M POOR AND SICK,' HE SAID, 'AND MY FAMILY IS

DYING OF HUNGER. PLEASE HELP US, MASTER.'

DEPENDENT AS HE WAS ON WIDOWS' MITES, EISAI'S LIFE WAS VERY AUSTERE, AND HE HAD NOTHING TO GIVE.

HE WAS ABOUT TO SEND THE SAMURAI OFF WHEN HE

REMEMBERED THE

IMAGE OF YAKUSHI-BUDDHA IN THE HALL. GOING UP TO IT HE TORE OFF

ITS HALO AND GAVE IT TO THE SAMURAI. 'SELL THIS,' SAID EISAI, 'IT

SHOULD TIDE YOU OVER.' THE BEWILDERED BUT DESPERATE SAMURAI TOOK THE HALO AND LEFT.

'MASTER!' CRIED ONE OF EISAI'S DISCIPLES, 'THAT'S SACRILEGE! HOW

COULD YOU DO SUCH A THING?'

'SACRILEGE? BAH! I HAVE MERELY PUT THE BUDDHA'S MIND, WHICH IS

FULL OF LOVE AND MERCY, TO USE, SO TO SPEAK. INDEED, IF HE HIMSELF

HAD HEARD THAT POOR SAMURAI HE'D HAVE CUT OFF A LIMB FOR HIM.'

MEDITATION is a flower and compassion is its fragrance.

Exactly like that it happens. The flower blooms and the fragrance spreads on the winds in all directions, to be carried to the very ends of earth. But the basic thing is the blooming of the flower.

Man is also carrying a potentiality for flowering within him. Until and unless the inner being of man flowers, the fragrance of compassion is not possible. Compassion cannot be practiced. It is not a discipline. You cannot manage it. It is beyond you. If you meditate, one day, suddenly, you become aware of a new phenomenon, absolutely strange -- from your being compassion is flowing towards the whole of existence; undirected, unaddressed, it is moving to the very ends of existence.

Without meditation, energy remains passion; with meditation, the same energy

becomes compassion. Passion and compassion are not two energies, they are one and the same energy. Once it passes through meditation, it is transformed, transfigured; it becomes qualitatively different. Passion moves downwards, compassion moves upwards; passion moves through desire, compassion moves through desirelessness; passion is an occupation to forget the miseries in which you live, compassion is a celebration, it is a dance of attainment, of fulfillment...you are so fulfilled that you can share. Now there is nothing left; you have attained the destiny that you were carrying for millennia within you like an unflowered potentiality, just a bud. Now it has flowered and it is dancing.

You have attained, you are fulfilled, there is no more to attain, nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Now what will happen to the energy? You start sharing. The same energy that was moving through the dark layers of passion, now moves with light rays upwards, uncontaminated by any desire, uncontaminated by any conditioning. It is uncorrupted by any motivation -- hence I call it fragrance. The flower is limited but not the fragrance.

The flower has limitations it is rooted somewhere in bondage. but fragrance has no bondage. It simply moves, rides on the winds; it has no moorings in the earth.

Meditation is a flower. It has roots. It exists in you. Once compassion happens, it is not rooted; it simply moves and goes on moving. Buddha has disappeared but not his compassion. The flower will die sooner or later -- it is part of earth and the dust will return unto dust -- but the fragrance that has been released will remain forever and forever. Buddha has gone, Jesus has gone, but not their fragrance. Their compassion still continues and whoever is open to their compassion will immediately feel its impact, will be moved by it, will be taken on a new journey, on a new pilgrimage.

Compassion is not limited to the flower -- it comes from the flower but it is not of the flower. It comes through the flower, the flower is just a passage. but it comes really from the beyond. It cannot come without the flower -- the flower is a necessary stage -- but it does not belong to the flower. Once the flower has bloomed, compassion is released.

This insistence, this emphasis, has to be deeply understood, because if you miss the point you can start practicing compassion but then it is not real fragrance. A

practiced compassion is just the same passion with a new name. It is the same desire-contaminated, motivation-corrupted energy and it can become very dangerous to other people -- because in the name of compassion you can destroy, in the name of compassion, you can create bondage. It is not compassion, and if you practice it, you are being artificial, formal -- in fact a hypocrite.

The first thing to be remembered continuously is that compassion cannot be practiced. It is this point where all the followers of all the great religious teachers have missed.

Buddha attained compassion through meditation -- now Buddhists go on practicing compassion. Jesus attained compassion through meditation -- now Christians, the Christian missionaries, go on practicing love, compassion, service to humanity but their compassion has proved to be a very destructive force in the world. Their compassion has created only wars; their compassion has destroyed millions of people. They end up in deep imprisonments.

Compassion frees you, gives you freedom, but that compassion has to come only through meditation, there is no other way to it. Buddha has said that compassion is a by-product, a consequence. You cannot catch hold of the consequence directly, you have to move; you have to produce the cause, and the effect follows. So if you really want to understand what compassion is you have to understand what meditation is. Forget all about compassion; it comes on its own accord.

Try to understand what meditation is. Compassion can become a criterion as to whether the meditation was right or not. If the meditation has been right, compassion is bound to come -- it is natural; it follows like a shadow. If the meditation has been wrong then compassion will not follow. So compassion can work as a criterion as to whether the meditation has been really right or not. And a meditation can be wrong. People have a wrong notion that all meditations are right; It is not so. Meditations can be wrong. For example, any meditation that leads you deep into concentration is wrong -- it will not result in compassion. You will become more and more closed rather than becoming open.

If you narrow down your Consciousness concentrate on something, and you exclude the whole of existence and become one-pointed, it will create more and more tension in you.

Hence the word 'attention'. It means 'at-tension'. Concentration, the very sound of the word, gives you a feeling of tenseness.

Concentration has its uses but it is not meditation. In scientific work, in scientific research, in the science lab, you need concentration. You have to concentrate on one problem and exclude everything else -- so much so that you almost become unmindful of the remaining world. The only problem that you are concentrating upon is your world.

That's why scientists become absent-minded. People who concentrate too much always become absent-minded because they don't know how to remain open to the whole world.

I was reading an anecdote.

'I have brought a frog,' said a scientist, a professor of zoology, beaming at his class, 'fresh from the pond, in order that we might study its outer appearance and later dissect it.'

He carefully unwrapped the package he carried and inside was a neatly prepared ham sandwich. The good professor looked at it with astonishment.

'Odd!' he said, 'I distinctly remember having eaten my lunch.

That goes on happening to scientists. They become one-pointed and their whole mind becomes narrow. Of course, a narrow mind has its use: it becomes more penetrating, it becomes like a sharp needle, it hits exactly the right point, but it misses the great life that surrounds it.

A Buddha is not a man of concentration, he is a man of awareness. He has not been trying to narrow down his consciousness; on the contrary, he has been trying to drop all barriers so that he becomes totally available to existence. Watch...existence is simultaneous. I am speaking here and the traffic noise is simultaneous. The train, the birds the wind blowing through the trees -- in this moment the whole of existence converges. You listening to me, I speaking to you, and millions of things going on -- it is tremendously rich.

Concentration makes you one-pointed at a very great cost: ninety-nine per cent of life is discarded. If you are solving a mathematical problem, you cannot listen to the birds --

they will be a distraction. Children playing around, dogs barking in the street -- they will be a distraction. Because of concentration, people have tried to escape from life -- to go to the Himalayas, to go to a cave, to remain isolated, so that you can concentrate on God.

But God is not an object. God is this wholeness of existence, this moment; God is the totality. That's why science will never be able to know God. The very method of science is concentration and because of that method, science can never know God.

It can know more and more minute details. First the molecule was thought to be the last particle, then it was divided. Then an even tinier part, the atom, was known, then concentration divided that also. Now there are electrons, protons, neutrons -- sooner or later they are also going to be divided. Science goes on from the smaller to the smaller, and the bigger, the vast, is completely forgotten. The whole is completely forgotten for the part. Science can never know God because of concentration. So when people come to me and they say, 'Osho, teach us concentration, we want to know God,: I'm simply puzzled. They have not understood the basics of the search.

Science is one-pointed; the search is objective. Religion is simultaneity; the object is the whole, the total. To know the total, that is, to know God, you will have to have a consciousness which is open from everywhere -- not confined, not standing in a window.

Otherwise the frame of the window will become the frame of existence. Just standing under the sun in the open sky -- that is what meditation is. Meditation has no frame: it is not a window, it is not a door. Meditation is not concentration, it is not attention --

meditation is awareness.

So what to do? Repeating a mantra, doing transcendental meditation, is not going to help.

Transcendental meditation has become very important in America because of the objective approach, because of the scientific mind. Now it is the only meditation on which scientific work can be done. It is exactly concentration and not meditation, so it is comprehensible for the scientific mind. In the universities, in the science laboratories, in psychological research work, much is being done

about TM, because it is not meditation.

It is concentration, a method of concentration; it falls under the same category as scientific concentration; there is a link between the two. But it has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is so vast, so tremendously infinite, that no scientific research is possible. Only compassion will show whether the man has achieved or not. Alpha waves won't be of much help because they are still of the mind and meditation is not of the mind

-- it is something beyond.

So, let me tell you a few basic things. One, meditation is not concentration but relaxation

-- one simply relaxes into oneself. The more you relax, the more you feel yourself open, vulnerable, the more you are less rigid, you are more flexible -- and suddenly existence starts penetrating you. You are no longer like a rock, you have openings. Relaxation means allowing yourself to fall into a state where you are not doing anything, because if you are doing something, tension will continue. It is a state of non-doing. You simply relax and you enjoy the feeling of relaxation. Relax into yourself, just close your eyes, and listen to all that is happening all around. No need to feel anything as distraction. The moment you feel it is a distraction, you are denying God. This moment God has come to you as a bird. Don't deny. He has knocked at your door as a bird. The next moment he has come as a dog -- barking, or as a child crying and weeping, or as a madman laughing.

Don't deny; don't reject; accept -- because if you deny you will become tense. All denials create tension. Accept. If you want to relax, acceptance is the way. Accept whatsoever is happening all around; let it become an organic whole. It is

-- you may know it or you may not know it. Everything is inter-related. These birds, these trees, this sky, this sun, this earth, you, me -- all are related. It is an organic unity. If the sun disappears, the trees will disappear; if the trees disappear, the birds will disappear; if the birds and trees disappear, you cannot be here, you will disappear. It is an ecology. Everything is deeply related with each other.

So don't deny anything, because the moment you deny, you are denying something in you. If you deny these singing birds then something in you is

denied.

Once it happened that it was spring. The weather was delightful and I was sitting on a park bench. I enjoyed the spring, the birds, the air and the sun. I listened to the melodious chirping of numerous birds.

A stranger was also sitting on the same bench. I turned to him and said to him, 'Is not the music of the birds delightful?'

But he must have been a religious man. He was doing some mantra. He felt disturbed. He felt as if I had interfered.

He scowled and said, 'How the devil can I hear what you are saying over the damned noise of those stupid birds?'

But if you deny, reject, if you feel distracted, if you feel angry, you are rejecting something within you. Just listen again to the birds without any feeling of distraction, anger, and suddenly you will see that the bird within you responds. Then those birds are not there as strangers, intruders -- suddenly the whole existence becomes a family. It is, and I call a man religious who has come to understand that the whole existence is a family. He may not go to any church, he may not worship in any temple, he may not pray at any mosque or gurudwara -- that doesn't matter. That is almost irrelevant. If you do, good, it is okay; if you don't that is even better. But one who has understood the organic unity of existence is constantly in the temple, is constantly facing the sacred and the Divine.

But if you are doing some stupid mantra you will think these birds are stupid. If you are repeating some nonsense within you, or thinking some trivia -- you may call it philosophy, religion -- then these birds become distractions. Their sounds are simply Divine. They don't say anything, they are simply bubbling with delight. Their song has no meaning except an overflowing of energy. They want to share with existence, with the trees, with the flowers, with you. They have nothing to say; they are just being there, themselves.

If you relax, you accept; acceptance of existence is the only way to relax. If small things disturb you then it is your attitude that is disturbing you. Sit silently; listen to all that is happening all around, and relax; accept, relax -- and suddenly you will feel immense energy arising in you. That energy will be felt first is a deepening of your breath.

Ordinarily your breath is very shallow and sometimes if you try to have deep breaths, if you start doing PRANAYAM, you start forcing something, you make an effort. That effort is not needed. You simply accept life, relax, and suddenly you will see that your breath is going deeper than ever. Relax more and the breath goes deeper in you. It becomes slow, rhythmic, and you can almost enjoy it; it gives a certain delight. Then you will become aware that breath is the bridge between you and the whole. Just watch. Don't do anything.

And when I say watch, don't TRY to watch, otherwise you will become tense again, and you will start concentrating on the breath. Simply relax, remain relaxed, loose, and look...because what else can you do? You are there, nothing to be done, everything accepted, nothing to be denied, rejected, no struggle, no fight no conflict, breathing going deep -- what can you do? You simply watch. Remember, simply watch. Don't make an effort to watch. This is what Buddha has called VIPASSANA -- the watching of the breath, awareness of the breath -- or SATIPATTHANA -- remembering, being alert of the life energy that moves in breath. Don't try to take deep breaths, don't try to inhale or exhale, don't do anything. You simply relax and let the breathing be natural -- going on its own, coming on its own -- and many things will become available to you.

The first thing will be that breathing can be taken in two ways because it is a bridge. One part of it is joined with you, another part is joined with existence. So it can be understood in two ways. You can take it as a voluntary thing. If you want to inhale deeply, you can inhale deeply; if you want to exhale deeply, you can exhale deeply. You can do something about it. One part is joined with you. But if you don't do anything, then too it continues. No need for you to do anything and it continues. It is non-voluntary also.

The other part is joined with existence itself. You can think of it as if you are taking it in, you are breathing it, or you can think in just the opposite way -- that it is breathing you.

And the other way has to be understood because that will lead you into deep relaxation. It is not that you are breathing, but existence is breathing you. It is a change of gestalt, and it happens on its own. If you go on relaxing, accepting everything, relaxing into yourself, by and by, suddenly, you become aware that you are not taking these breaths -- they are coming and going on their own. And so gracefully. With such dignity. With such rhythm.

With such harmonious rhythm. Who is doing it? Existence is breathing you. It comes into you, goes out of you. Each moment it rejuvenates you, each moment it makes you alive again and again and again.

Suddenly you see breathing as a happening... and this is how meditation should grow.

And this you can do anywhere, in the marketplace also, because that noise is also Divine.

And if you listen silently, even in the marketplace you will see a certain harmony in the noise. It is no longer a distraction. You can see many things if you are silent --

tremendous waves of energy moving all around. Once you accept, wherever you go you will feel

The bird is not important but you will feel something tremendously great, you will feel something holy, something luminous, something mysterious. A miracle is constantly happening all around you but you go on missing it.

Once meditation settles in you and you fall into rhythm with existence, compassion is a consequence. Suddenly you feel you are in love with the whole and the other is no longer the other -- God. in the other also you live. And the tree is no longer just 'the tree there', somehow it is related to you. Everything becomes inter-related. You touch a leaf of grass and you have touched all the stars because everything is related. It cannot be otherwise.

Existence is organic. It is one. It is a unity.

Because we are not aware we don't see what we go on doing to ourselves. One thing happens and something which you have never thought that it was related to starts happening.

Just the other night I was reading something about smell. The sensation, the capacity of smell, has almost disappeared from humanity. Animals are very sharp. A horse can smell for miles. A dog can smell more than a man. Just by the smell the dog knows that his master is coming, and after many years the dog will again recognize the smell that is his master's smell. Man has completely forgotten.

What has happened to smell? What calamity has happened to smell? There seems to be no reason why smell has been so suppressed No culture anywhere has consciously suppressed it but it has become suppressed. It has become suppressed because of sex.

Now, the whole of humanity lives with sex deeply suppressed -- and smell is connected with sex. Before making love, a dog will smell the partner because unless he smells a harmony deep down between the two bodies, he will not make love. Once the smell is fitting then he knows that now the bodies are in tune and they can fit and they can become a song -- even for a moment a unity is possible.

Because sex has been suppressed all over the world, smell has become suppressed. The very word has become a little condemnatory. If I say to you, 'Do you hear?' or if I say to you, 'Do you see?' you don't feel offended. So, if I say, 'Do you smell?' one should not feel offended, it is the same language. Smell is a capacity; just like seeing and hearing, smelling is a capacity. When I ask, 'Do you smell?' one feels offended because one has completely forgotten that it is a capacity.

There is a famous anecdote about an English thinker, Dr. Johnson. He was sitting in a stagecoach and a lady entered. She said to Dr. Johnson, 'Sir, you smell!'

But he was a man of language, letters, a grammarian. He said, 'No, madam. You smell. I stink!'

Smell is a capacity. 'You smell. I stink.' Linguistically he is right. That's how it should be if you follow grammar. But the very word has become very condemnatory. What has happened to smell? Once you suppress sex, smell is suppressed.

You can read in the scriptures that people say, 'I saw God. Nobody says, 'I smelled God.'

What is wrong in it? If eyes are right then why is nose wrong? In the Old Testament it is said that your face is beautiful and your taste is beautiful, but not your smell. Smell is not talked about. We talk about God's beatific vision, we never talk about his beatific smell.

One sense is completely crippled -- and if you cripple one sense then one part of the mind is crippled. If you have five senses then your mind has five parts. One

fifth of the mind is crippled and one never knows. That means one fifth of life is crippled.

The implications are tremendous. If you touch a small thing somewhere it reverberates all over. Accept everything. I was talking to you a few minutes before about repressing sex: because of repressing sex, smell has been repressed, and because of repressing sex your breathing has become shallow -- because if you breathe deep, your breathing massages the sex center inside. People come to me and say, 'If we really breathe, we feel more sexual.' If you make love to a woman your breathing will become very deep. If you keep your breathing shallow you will not be able to achieve orgasm. The breathing hits hard, deep down in the sex center; from the within it massages the sex center.

Because sex has been repressed, and because breathing is repressed people have become incapable of meditation. Now look at the whole thing. What nonsense we have done!

Repressing sex we have repressed breathing and breathing is the only bridge between you and the whole.

Gurdjieff is right when he says that almost all religions have behaved in such a way that they seem to be against God. They talk about God but they seem to be basically against God. The way they have behaved is against God. Now that breathing is repressed, the bridge is broken. You can only breathe shallowly you never go deep, and if you cannot go deep in yourself, you cannot go deep in existence.

Buddha makes breathing the very foundation. A deep, relaxed breathing, an awareness of it, gives you such tremendous silence, relaxation, that by and by you simply merge, melt, disappear. You are no longer a separate island, you start vibrating with the whole. Then you are not a separate note but part of this whole symphony. Then compassion arises.

Compassion arises only when you can see that everybody is related to you. Compassion arises only when you see that you are a member of everybody and everybody is a member of you. Nobody is separate. When the illusion of separation drops, compassion arises. Compassion is not a discipline.

In the human experience, the relationship between a mother and her child is the closest to compassion. People call it love but it should not be called love. It is

more like compassion than love because it has no passion in it. A mother's love for the child is closest to compassion. Why? Because the mother has known the child in herself; he was a member of her being. She has known the child as part of herself and even if the child is born and is growing the mother goes on feeling a subtle rhythm with the child. If the child feels ill, a thousand miles away the mother will immediately feel it. She may not be aware of what has happened but she will become depressed; she may not be aware that her child is suffering but she will start suffering. She will make some rationalization about why she is suffering -- her stomach is not okay, she has a headache, or something or other -- but now depth psychology says that the mother and the child always remain joined together with subtle energy, waves, because they go on vibrating on the same wavelength. The telepathy is easier between a mother and the child than between anybody else. Or, between twins -- between twins telepathy is very easy.

Many experiments on telepathy have been done in Soviet Russian -- not of course for religion, they are trying to find out if telepathy can be used as a war technique. They will be able to use it because they are finding clues: twins are very telepathic. If one twin has a cold a thousand miles away the other starts having a cold. They vibrate on the same wavelength, they are affected by the same things within seconds. Because they have both lived in the same womb as part of each other; they have existed in the mother's womb together.

A mother's feeling for the child is more of compassion because she feels he is her own.

I was reading an anecdote.

During the preliminary inspection of a Boy Scout Camp, the director found a large umbrella hidden in the bedroll of a tiny scouter, obviously not one of the items of equipment listed. The director asked the lad to explain. The tenderfoot did so neatly by asking, 'Sir, did you ever have a mother?'

Mother means compassion, mother means feeling for the other as one feels for oneself.

When a person moves deeply in meditation and attains to samadhi, he becomes a mother.

Buddha is more like a mother than like a father. The Christian association with

the word

'father' is not very meaningful or beautiful. To call God 'father' looks a little male-orientated. If there is any God he can only be a mother, not a father.

'Father' is so institutional. A father is an institution. In nature a father doesn't exist. If you ask a linguist he will say that the word 'uncle' is older than the word 'father.' Uncles came first into existence because nobody knew who the father was. Once private property was fixed, once marriage became a private ownership, the institution of father entered into human life. It is very fragile, it can disappear any day. If the society changes, the institution can disappear, as many other institutions have disappeared. But mother is going to remain. Mother is natural.

In the East, many people, many traditions, have called God, the mother. Their approach seems to be more relevant. Watch Buddha, his face seems more like a woman than like a man. In fact, because of that we have not depicted him as having a beard or mustache.

Mahavir, Buddha, Krishna, Ram -- you never see any mustache or beard on their faces.

Not that they were lacking in some hormones they must have had beards, but we have not depicted them because that would give their faces a more male-like appearance. In the East we don't bother much about facts, but we bother much about relevance, significance.

Of course, the statues of Buddha that you have seen are all false, but in the East we don't worry about that. The significance is that Buddha has become more womanly, more feminine. That is what I was telling you about, the first day: the shift from the left hemisphere of the brain to the right hemisphere of the brain, from the male to the female, the shift from the aggressive to the passive, the shift from the positive to the negative, the shift from effort to effortlessness. A Buddha is more feminine, more motherly. If you really become a meditator by and by you will see many changes in your being and you will feel more like a woman than like a man -- more graceful, more receptive, non-violent, loving. And a compassion will arise continuously from your being; it will be just a natural fragrance.

Ordinarily whatsoever you call compassion goes on hiding your passion in it.

Even if you sometimes feel sympathetic towards people, watch, dissect, go deeper into your feeling and somewhere you will find some motivation. In acts which look very compassionate, deep down you will always find some motivation.

Once it happened that a man called Louie came back home. He was very shocked to find his wife in the arms of another man. He rushed out of the room crying, 'I am getting my shotgun.'

His wife dashed after him despite her unclothed state, seized him and shouted, 'You fool, what are you getting excited about? It was my lover who paid for the new furniture we recently got, my new clothes, the extra money you thought I earned sewing, the little luxuries we have been able to buy -- they all came from him!'

But Louie wrenched away and continued upstairs. 'No shotgun, Louie!' yelled his wife.

'What shotgun?' called back Louie. 'I am getting a blanket. That poor fellow will catch cold, Lying there like that.'

Even if you feel, or you think you feel, or you pretend that you feel, compassion, just go deep and analyze it and you will always find some other motivation in it. It cannot be pure compassion and if it is not pure it is not compassion. Purity is a basic ingredient in compassion, otherwise it is something else -- it is more or less a formality. We have learned how to be formal: how to behave with your wife, how to behave with your husband, how to behave with your children, with friends, with your family. We have learned everything. Compassion is not something which can be learned; when you have unlearned ail formalities, all etiquette and manners, it arises in you. It is very wild; it doesn't taste of etiquette, of formality, they are all dead things compared to it. It is very alive, it is a flame of love.

At the twelfth hole of a hotly-contested match, the grounds overlooked the highway and as Smith and Jones approached the green, they saw a funeral procession making its way along the road.

At this, Smith stopped, took off his hat, placed it over his heart, and bent his head till the procession disappeared around the bend.

Jones was astonished and after Smith had replaced his hat and returned to his game, he said, 'That was delicate and respectful of your Smith.'

Ah, well,' said Smith, 'I could not do less. I had been married to the woman for twenty years, after all.'

Life has become plastic, artificial, formal, because you have to do certain things that you do. You of course reluctantly follow duties but if you miss much of life, it is natural, because life is possible only if you are alive, intensely alive. If your own flame has become covered by formalities, duties, rules, which you have to fulfill reluctantly, you can only drag. You may drag comfortably, your life may be a life of convenience, but it cannot be really alive.

A really alive life is, in a way, chaotic. In a way, I say, because that chaos has its own discipline. It has no rules because it need not have any rules. It has the most basic rule in-built in it -- it need not have any external rules.

Now the Zen story.

ONE WINTER DAY, A MASTERLESS SAMURAI CAME TO EISAI'S TEMPLE

AND MADE AN APPEAL: 'I AM POOR AND SICK,' HE SAID, 'AND MY FAMILY

IS DYING OF HUNGER. PLEASE HELP US, MASTER.' DEPENDENT AS HE WAS

ON WIDOWS' MITES, EISAI'S LIFE WAS VERY AUSTERE, AND HE HAD NOTHING TO GIVE.

HE WAS ABOUT TO SEND THE SAMURAI OFF WHEN HE REMEMBERED THE

IMAGE OF YAKUSHI-BUDDHA IN THE HALL. GOING UP TO IT HE TORE OFF

ITS HALO AND GAVE IF TO THE SAMURAI. 'SELL THIS,' SAID EISAI, 'IT

SHOULD TIDE YOU OVER.' THE BEWILDERED BUT DESPERATE SAMURAI TOOK THE HALO AND LEFT.

'MASTER!' CRIED ONE OF EISAI'S DISCIPLES, 'THAT'S SACRILEGE! HOW

COULD YOU DO SUCH A THING?'

'SACRILEGE? BAH! I HAVE MERELY PUT THE BUDDHA'S MIND, WHICH IS

FULL OF LOVE AND MERCY, TO USE, SO TO SPEAK. INDEED, IF HE HIMSELF

HAD HEARD THAT POOR SAMURAI HE WOULD HAVE CUT OFF A LIMB FOR

HIM.'

A very simple story, but very significant. First, even when you have nothing to give, look again. You will always find something to give. Even when you have nothing to give, you can always find something to give. It is a question of attitude. If you cannot give anything, at least you can smile; if you cannot give anything, at least you can sit with the person and hold his hand. It is not a question of giving something, it is a question of giving.

This Eisai was a poor monk as Buddhist monks are. His life was very austere and he had nothing to give. Ordinarily, it is an absolute sacrilege to take the halo off Buddha's statue and give it away. No so-called religious person could think of it. Only somebody who is really religious would -- that's why I say compassion knows no rules, compassion is beyond rules. It is wild. It follows no formalities.

Then suddenly the Master remembered the image of Buddha in the hall. In Japan, in China, they put a gold halo around the head of the Buddha, just to show the aura around his head. Suddenly the Master remembered it -- every day he must have worshipped the same statue.

GOING UP TO IT HE TORE OFF ITS HALO AND GAVE IT TO THE SAMURAI.

'SELL THIS,' SAID EISAI, 'IT SHOULD TIDE YOU OVER.' THE BEWILDERED

BUT DESPERATE SAMURAI TOOK THE HALO AND LEFT.

Even the samurai was bewildered. He had not expected this. Even he must have thought that this was sacrilege. What type of man is this? He is a follower of Buddha and he has destroyed the statue. Even to touch the statue is sacrilege and he has taken away the halo.

This is the difference between a real religious person and a so-called religious person.

The so-called religious person always Looks to the rule; he always thinks of what is proper and what is not proper. But a really religious person lives it. There is nothing proper and improper for him. Compassion is so infinitely proper that whatsoever you do through compassion becomes proper automatically.

'MASTER!' CRIED ONE OF EISAI'S DISCIPLES, 'THAT'S SACRILEGE HOW

COULD YOU DO SUCH A THING?' Even a disciple understands that this is not right.

Something improper has been done. 'SACRILEGE? BAH! I HAVE MERELY PUT THE

BUDDHA'S MIND WHICH IS FULL OF LOVE AND MERCY, TO GOOD USE, SO

TO SPEAK. INDEED, IF HE HIMSELF HAD HEARD THAT POOR SAMURAI HE

WOULD HAVE CUT OFF A LIMB FOR HIM.'

To understand is something other than just to follow. When you follow, you become almost blind; then there are rules which have to be kept. If you understand, then too you follow, but you are no longer blind. But each moment decides, each moment your consciousness responds, and whatsoever you do is right.

One of the most beautiful stories in Zen is about a Zen master who asked, one winter night, to be allowed to stay in a temple. He was shivering because the night was cold and snow was falling outside. Of course, the temple priest sympathized and told him, 'You can stay, but only for the night, because this temple is not a sarai. In the morning you will have to go.'

In the middle of the night the priest suddenly heard a noise. He came running and could not believe his eyes. The monk was sitting around a fire which he had made inside the temple. And one Buddha statue was missing.

In Japan they make wooden Buddhas. The priest asked, 'Where is the statue?'

The Master showed him the fire and he said, 'I was shivering and it was very cold.'

The priest said, 'You seem to be mad! Don't you see what you have done? It was a Buddha statue. You have burnt Buddha!

The Master looked in the fire, which was disappearing, and poked the fire with a stick.

The priest asked, 'What are you doing?'

He said, 'I am trying to find the bones of the Buddha.

The priest said, 'You are certainly mad. It is a wooden Buddha. There are no bones in it.'

Then the monk said, 'The night is still long and it is getting even colder, why not bring these two other Buddhas also?'

Of course, he had to be thrown out of the temple immediately. This man was dangerous.

When he was being thrown out he said, 'What are you doing throwing a live Buddha out?

For a wooden Buddha? The alive Buddha was suffering so much I had to show

compassion. If Buddha was alive he would have done the same. He would himself have given all those three statues to me. I know it. I know from my very heart that he would have done the same!'

But who was there to listen to him? He was thrown out into the snow and the doors were closed.

In the morning, when the priest went out, he saw the Master sitting near a milestone with a few flowers on top of it, worshipping it. The priest came again and said, 'What are you doing now? Worshipping a milestone?'

The Master said, 'Whenever the time to pray comes, I create my Buddhas anywhere, because they are always all around. This milestone is as good as your wooden Buddhas inside!'

It is a question of attitude. When you look with worshipful eyes then anything becomes Divine.

And remember, the story about Eisai is easy to remember because the compassion is shown towards somebody else. This story is even more difficult and complex to understand because the compassion is shown towards oneself. A real man of understanding is neither hard towards others nor hard towards himself because it is one and the same energy. A real man of understanding is not a masochist; he is not a sadist, he is not a masochist. A real man of understanding simply understands that there is no separation -- all including himself is Divine. And he lives out this understanding.

To live out of understanding is compassion. Never try to practice it, simply relax deep into meditation. Be in a state of let-go in meditation and suddenly you will be able to smell the fragrance that is coming from your own innermost depth. Then the flower blossoms and compassion spreads. Meditation is the flower and compassion is its fragrance.

Ancient Music in the Pines Chapter #4

Chapter title: Be a light unto yourself 24 February 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code:

7602240

ShortTitle:

ANCIEN04

Audio:

Yes Video: No Length:

94

mins

The first question:

Question 1

IS ZEN THE PATH OF SURRENDER? THEN HOW COME THE BASIC TEACHING

OF BUDDHA IS 'BE A LIGHT UNTO YOURSELF'?

The essential surrender happens within you, it has nothing to do with anybody outside you. The basic surrender is a relaxation, a trust -- so don't be misguided by the word.

Linguistically, surrender means to surrender to somebody, but religiously, surrender simply means trust, relaxing. It is an attitude rather than an act: you live through trust.

Let me explain. You swim in water -- you go to the river and swim. What do you do?

You trust water. A good swimmer trusts so much that he almost becomes one with the river. He is not fighting, he does not grab the water, he is not stiff and tense. If you are stiff and tense you will be drowned; if you are relaxed the river takes care. That's why whenever somebody dies, the dead body floats on the water. This is a miracle. Amazing!

The alive person died and was drowned by the river, and the dead person simply floats on the surface. What has happened? The dead person knows some secret about the river which the alive person did not know. The alive person was fighting. The river was the enemy. He was afraid, he could not trust. But the dead person, not being there, how could he fight? The dead person is totally relaxed with no tension -- suddenly the body surfaces.

The river takes care. No river can drown a dead person.

Trust means you are not fighting; surrender means you don't think of life as the enemy but as the friend. Once you trust the river, suddenly you start enjoying. Tremendous delight arises: splashing, swimming, or just floating, or diving deep. But you are not separate from the river, you merge, you become one.

Surrender means to live the same way in life as a good swimmer swims in the river. Life is a river. Either you can fight or you can float; either you can push the river and try to go against the c. or you can float with the river and go wherever the river leads you.

Surrender is not towards somebody; it is simply a way of life. A God is not needed to surrender to. There are religions which believe in God, there are religions which don't believe in God, but all religions believe in surrender. So surrender is the real God.

Even the concept of God can be discarded. Buddhism does not believe in any God, Jainism does not believe in any God -- but they are religions. Christianity believes in God, Islam believes in God, Sikhism believes in God -- they are also religions. The Christian teaches surrender to God; God is just an excuse to surrender. It is a help, because it will be difficult for you to surrender without any object. The object is just an excuse so that in the name of God you can surrender. Buddhism says simply surrender --

there is no God. You relax. It is not a question of some object, it is a question of your own subjectivity. Relax, don't fight. Accept.

The belief in God is not needed. In fact, the word 'belief' is ugly. It does not show trust, it does not show faith -- belief is almost the very opposite of faith. The word 'belief' comes from a root 'lief' -- 'lief' means to desire, to wish. Now let me explain it to you. You say, 'I believe in God the compassionate.' What exactly are you saying? You are saying, 'I wish there was a God who is compassionate.' Whenever you say, 'I believe,' you say, 'I intensely desire.' But you don't know.

If you know, there is no question of belief. Do you believe in the trees here? Do you believe in the sun which arises every morning? Do you believe in the stars? There is no question of belief. You know that the sun is there, that the trees are there. Nobody believes in the sun -- if he did, you would say he is mad. If somebody came and said, 'I believe in the sun,' and tried to convert you, you would say, 'You have gone mad!'

I have heard an anecdote.

A certain lady, Lady Lewis, was appointed ambassador to Italy by the United States of America. She was a recently converted Catholic, and, of course, when people become converted, they are very enthusiastic. And she was boring everybody. Whosoever she came into contact with, she would try and make him a Catholic.

The story goes that when she went to Italy as the ambassador, she went to see the Pope. A long discussion followed -- it went on and on. A press reporter slipped closer and closer, just to hear what was going on. The Pope had never given so much time to anybody, and the discussion seemed to be very heated and hot. Something was going on. When the Pope talks so long to the ambassador of the richest and the strongest nation in the world, there is going to be some news.

Just to overhear, he came closer and closer. He could hear only one sentence. The Pope was saying in a faltering English, 'Lady, you don't understand me. I am already a Catholic!'

She was trying to convert the Pope!

If somebody comes and says to you, 'Believe in the sun,' you will say, 'I am already a Catholic. I already believe. You don't be worried about it.' You know.

Somebody asked Shri Aurobindo, 'Do you believe in God?' He said, 'No.' Of

course the questioner was very shocked. He had come from far away, from Germany, and he was a great seeker of God and he was hoping for much. Then this man simply says a flat no. He said, 'But I was thinking that you have known him.' Aurobindo said, 'Yes, I have known him, but I don't believe in him.'

Once you know, what is the point of belief? Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don't know, know that you don't know -- the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.

Trust knows no doubt. Belief is just repressing doubt; it is a desire. When you say, 'I believe in God,' you say, 'I cannot live without God. It will be too difficult to exist in this darkness, surrounded by death, without a concept of God.' That concept helps. One doesn't feel alone; one doesn't feel unprotected, insecure -- hence belief.

Martin Luther has written, 'My God is a great fortress.' These words cannot come from a man who trusts. 'My God is a great fortress'? Martin Luther seems to be on the defensive.

Even God is just a fortress to protect you, to make you feel secure? Then it is out of fear.

The thinking that 'God is my greatest fortress', is born out of fear, not out of love. It is not of trust. Deep down there is doubt and fear.

Trust is simple. It is just like a child trusts in his mother. It is not that he believes

-- belief has not yet entered. You were a small child once. Did you believe in your mother or did you trust her? The doubt has not arisen so what is the question of belief? Belief comes only when the doubt has entered; doubt comes first. Later on, to suppress the doubt, you catch hold of a belief. Trust is when doubt disappears; trust is when doubt is not there.

For instance, you breathe. You take a breath in; then you exhale, you breathe out. Are you afraid of breathing out, because who knows, it may not come back? You trust. You trust it will come. Of course there is no reason to trust, what is the reason? Why should it come back? You can at the most say that in the past it has been happening so -- but that is not a guarantee. It may not happen in the future.

If you become afraid of breathing out because it may not come back, then you will hold your breath in. That's what belief is --

clinging, holding. But if you hold your breath in, your face will go purple and you will feel suffocated. And if you go on doing that, you will die.

All beliefs suffocate and all beliefs help you not to be really alive. They deaden your being.

If you exhale, you trust in life. The Buddhist word 'nirvana' simply means exhaling, breathing out -- trusting. Trust is a very, very innocent phenomenon. Belief is of the head; trust is of the heart. One simply trusts life because you are out of life, you live in life, and you will go back again to the source. There is no fear. You are born, you live, you will die; there is no fear. You will be born again, you will live again, you will die. The same life that has given you life can always give you more life, so why be afraid? Why cling to beliefs? Beliefs are man-made; trust is God-made. Beliefs are philosophical; trust has nothing to do with philosophy. Trust simply shows that you know what love is. It is not a concept of God who is sitting somewhere in heaven and manipulating and managing.

Trust needs no God, the infinite life, this totality, is more than enough. Once you trust, you relax. That relaxation is surrender.

Now, IS ZEN THE PATH OF SURRENDER? Yes. Religion, as such, is surrendering, relaxing. Don't cling to anything. Clinging shows that you don't trust life.

Every evening, Mohammed used to distribute whatsoever he had collected in the day.

All! Not even a single pai would he save for the tomorrow because he said that the same source that had given today, would give to him tomorrow. If it has happened today, why be untrusting about tomorrow? Why save?

But when he was dying and he was very ill, his wife became worried. Even at midnight a physician may be needed, so that evening she saved five rupees, five dinars. She was afraid. 'Nobody knows -- he may become too ill in the night, and some medicine may be needed and in the middle of the night, where would I go? Or a doctor may be needed and the fee would have to be given.' Not saying

anything to Mohammed, she'd saved five dinars.

Near about midnight, Mohammed opened his eyes and he said, 'I feel a certain distrust around me. It seems something has been saved.'

The wife became very much afraid and she said, 'Excuse me, but thinking that something may be needed in the night, I have saved just five dinars.'

Mohammed said, 'You go out and give it to somebody.'

She said, 'In the middle of the night who is going to be there?'

Mohammed said, 'You just listen and let me die peacefully, otherwise I will feel guilty, guilty against my God. And if he asks me. I will feel ashamed that at the last moment I died in deep distrust. You go out!'

The wife went out, unbelieving of course, but a beggar was standing there.

When she came back, Mohammed said, 'Look, he manages well, and if we need something, then a donor will be standing outside the door. Don't be worried.'

Then he pulled up his blanket and died immediately, relaxed totally.

Clinging to anything, anything whatsoever, shows distrust. If you love a woman or a man, and you cling, that simply shows that you don't trust. If you love a woman and you say, 'Tomorrow also, will you love me or not?' you don't trust. If you go to the court to get married, you don't trust. Then you trust more in the court, in the police, in the law, than in love. You are preparing for tomorrow. If this woman or this man tries to deceive you tomorrow or leaves you in the ditch, you can get support from the court and the police, and the law will be with you and the whole society will support you. You are making arrangements, afraid. But if you really love, love is enough, more than enough.

Who bothers about tomorrow? But deep down there is doubt. Even while you think you are in love, doubt continues.

It is reported that when Jesus was resurrected after his crucifixion, the first person to see him back alive was Mary Magdalene. She had loved him tremendously. She ran towards him. In the New Testament it is said that Jesus said, 'Don't touch me.' I became a little suspicious because Jesus saying, 'Don't

touch me,' does not look right. Something somewhere has gone wrong. Of course it is okay if a pope says, 'Don't touch me,' but a Jesus saying, 'Don't touch me.' Almost impossible. So I tried to find the original. In the original the Greek word can mean both touch or cling. Then I found the key. Jesus says,

'Don't cling to me,' not 'Don't touch me, but the translators have interpreted it as, 'Don't touch me.' The interpreter has entered his own mind in it. Jesus must have said, 'Don't cling to me,' because if there is trust, there is no clinging if there is love, there is no clinging. You simply share without any clinging; you share in deep relaxedness.

Surrendering means surrendering to life; surrendering to the source from where you come and to where one day you will go back again. You are just like a wave in the ocean: You come out of the ocean, you go back to the ocean. Surrendering means trusting in the ocean -- and of course, what can a wave do except that? The wave has to trust the ocean and whether you trust or not, you remain part of the ocean. Non-trusting, you will create anxiety -- that's all. Nothing will change. only you will become anxious. tense, desperate.

If you trust, you flower. you bloom. you celebrate. knowing well that deep down is your mother, the ocean. When tired, you will go back and rest in her being again. When rested, you will come back again to have a taste of the sky and the sunlight and the stars.

Surrendering is trusting and it has nothing to do with any concept of any God, any ideology of any God. It is an attitude.

Then you can understand the meaning of Buddha s last utterance. Be a light unto yourself. When he says. Be a light unto yourself. he means: if you have surrendered to life you have become a light unto yourself. Then life leads you. Then you always live in enlightenment. When he says. 'Be a light unto yourself, he is saying don t follow anybody, don't cling to anybody. Learn from everybody but don't cling to anybody. Be open, vulnerable, but remain on your own, because finally the religious experience cannot be a borrowed experience. It has to be existential; it has to be your own. Only then it is authentic. If I say something and you believe in it, it is not going to help. If I say something and you search, and you surrender, and you trust, and you also experience the same -

- then it has become a light unto yourself. Otherwise my words will remain words; at the most they can become beliefs. Unless you experience the truth of

them, they cannot become trust, they cannot become your own truth. My truth cannot become yours, otherwise it would have been very cheap. If my truth could be yours then there would be no problem.

That is the difference between a scientific truth and a religious truth. A scientific truth can be borrowed. A scientific truth, once known, becomes everybody else's property.

Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity. Now there is no need for everybody to discover it again and again and again. That would be foolish. Once discovered, it has become public. Now it is everybody's theory. Once discovered, once proved, now even a school child can learn it. Now no genius is needed -- you need not be an Albert Einstein.

Just a mediocre mind will do; just an ordinary mind will do. You can understand it and it is yours. Of course, Einstein had to work for years -- then he was able to discover it. You need not work. If you are ready to understand and put your mind to it, in just a few hours you will understand.

But the same is not true about religious truth. Buddha discovered, Christ discovered, Nanak and Kabir discovered, but their discovery cannot become your discovery. You will have to rediscover it again. You will have to move again from ABC; you cannot just believe in them. That won't help. But that is what humanity has been doing: mistaking religious truth for scientific truth. It is not scientific truth, it can never become a public property. Each individual has to come to it alone, each individual has to come to it again and again. It can never become available in the market. You will have to pass through the hardship; you will have to seek and search and follow the same path. A shortcut cannot even be made. You will have to pass through the same austerities as Buddha, the same difficulties as the Buddha; you will have to suffer the same calamities on the path as the Buddha and you will have to be in the same hazards as the Buddha. And one day, when the clouds disappear, you will dance and be as ecstatic as the Buddha.

Of course, when an Archimedes discovers something, he runs naked in the streets,

'Eureka! I have found it!' You can understand Archimedes within minutes, within seconds, but you will not be ecstatic -- otherwise every school child would run

naked in the streets, crying, 'Eureka!' Nobody has done that since Archimedes did it. It happened only once. For Archimedes it was a discovery; since then it has become public property.

But it is good that the religious truth cannot be transferred to you otherwise you would never achieve the same ecstasy as Buddha or Jesus or Krishna. Never, because you would learn. it in a school textbook -- any fool could transfer it to you. Then the whole orgasmic experience will be lost.

It is good that religious experience has to be experienced individually. Nobody can lead you there. People can indicate the way but those indications are very subtle -- don't take them literally. Buddha said, 'Be a light unto yourself.' He is saying, 'Remember, my truth cannot be your truth; my light cannot be your light. Imbibe the spirit from me, become more thirsty from me, let your search be intense and be totally devoted to it, learn the devotion of a truth-seeker from me

-- but the truth, the light, will burn within you. You will have to kindle it within you.' You cannot borrow truth, it cannot be transferred, it is not a property. It is such a subtle experience that it cannot even be expressed. It is inexpressible. One at the most tries to give a few hints.

The second question:

Question 2

PLEASE EXPLAIN THE NATURE OF THE EXPERIENCES WE CALL BOREDOM

AND RESTLESSNESS.

Boredom and restlessness are deeply related. Whenever you feel boredom, then you feel restlessness. Restlessness is a by-product of boredom.

Try to understand the mechanism. Whenever you feel bored you want to move away from that situation. If somebody is saying something and you are getting bored, you start becoming fidgety. This is a subtle indication that you want to move from this place, from this man, from this nonsense-talk. Your body starts moving. Of course, because of politeness you suppress it, but the body is already on the move -- because the body is more authentic than the mind, the body is more honest and sincere than the mind. The mind is trying to be polite, smiling. You say, 'How beautiful,' but inside you are saying,

'How horrible! I have listened to this story so many times and he is telling it again!'

I have heard about Albert Einstein's wife, Frau Einstein. A friend of Albert Einstein used to come many times and Einstein would tell some anecdotes, some jokes, and they would laugh. But the friend became curious about one thing: whenever he came, and whenever Einstein started telling jokes.…

Einstein was a Jew, and Jews have the best jokes in the world. Because they have suffered so long they have lived by jokes. Their life has been so miserable that they had to tickle themselves -- hence they have the most beautiful jokes. No other country. no other race, can compete with them. In India we don't have good jokes at all because the country has lived very peacefully -- no need to tickle. Humor is needed when one is in constant danger; one needs to laugh at anything. Any excuse will do to laugh.

.…Einstein would tell some joke, some anecdote, some story and they both would laugh.

But the friend became curious because whenever Einstein would start saying something, the wife would immediately start knitting or doing something.

So he asked, 'The moment Einstein starts telling some joke, why do you start knitting?'

The wife said, 'If I don't do anything, it will be tremendously difficult for me to tolerate because I have heard that joke a thousand and one times. You come sometimes -- I am always here. Whenever anybody comes he tells the same joke. If I didn't do something with my hands, I would become so fidgety that it will be almost impolite. So I have to do something so that I can move my restlessness into work and I can hide behind the work.'

Whenever you feel bored you will feel restless. Restlessness is an indication of the body; the body is saying, 'Move away from here. Go anywhere, but don't be here.' But the mind goes on smiling and the eyes go on sparkling, and you go on saying that you are listening and you have never heard such a beautiful thing. The mind is civilized; the body is still wild. The mind is human; the body is still animal. The mind is false; the body is true. The mind knows the rules and regulations -- how to behave and how to behave rightly -- so even if you meet a bore you say, 'I am so happy, so glad to see you!' And deep down, if you were

allowed, you would kill this man. He tempts you to murder. Then you become fidgety, then you feel restlessness.

If you listen to the body and run away, the restlessness will disappear. Try it. Try it. If somebody is boring you simply start jumping and running around. See. Restlessness will disappear because restlessness simply shows that the energy does not want to be here.

The energy is already on the move; the energy has already left this place. Now you follow energy.

So the real thing is to understand boredom not restlessness. Boredom is a very, very significant phenomenon. Only man feels bored, no other animal. You cannot make a buffalo bored. Impossible. Only man gets bored because only man is conscious.

Consciousness is the cause. The more sensitive you are, the more alert you are, the more conscious you are, the more you will feel bored. In more situations you will feel bored. A mediocre mind does not feel so bored. He goes on; he accepts; whatsoever is, is okay; he is not so alert. The more alert you become, the more fresh, the more you will feel as if some situation is just a repetition, as if some situation is just getting hard on you, as if some situation is just stale. The more sensitive you are, the more bored you will become.

Boredom is an indication of sensitivity. Trees are not bored, animals are not bored, rocks are not bored -- because they are not sensitive enough. This has to be one of the basic understandings about your boredom -- that you are sensitive.

But Buddhas also are not bored. You cannot bore a Buddha. Animals are not bored and Buddhas are not bored, so boredom exists as a middle phenomenon between the animal and the Buddha. For boredom a little more sensitivity is needed than is given to the animal. And if you want to get beyond it then you have to become totally sensitive. Then again the boredom disappears. But in the middle the boredom is there. If you become animal-like, then boredom disappears. So you will find that people who live a very animalistic life are less bored. Eating, drinking, marrying -- they are not very bored, but they are not sensitive. They live at the minimum. They live only with that much consciousness as is needed for a day-to-day routine life. You will find that intellectuals, people who think too much, are more bored, because they think.

And because of their thinking they can see that something is just repetition.

Your life is repetition. Every morning you get up almost the same way as you have been getting up all your life. You take your breakfast almost the same way. Then you go to the office -- the same office, the same people, the same work. Then you come home -- the same wife. If you get bored it is natural. It is very difficult for you to see any newness here; everything seems to be old, dust- covered.

I have heard an anecdote.

Mary Jane, the very good friend of a wealthy broker, opened the door cheerfully one day, and then quickly attempted to close it when she discovered the person on the threshold to be her lover's wife.

The wife leaned against the door and said, 'Oh, let me in, dear. I don't intend to make a scene, just to have a small friendly discussion.'

With considerable nervousness Mary Jane let her enter, then said cautiously, 'What do you want?'

'Nothing much' said the wife, looking about. 'I just want the answer to one question. Tell me dear, just between us, what do you see in that dumb jerk?'

The same husband every day becomes a dumb jerk; the same wife every day...you almost forget how she looks. If you are told to close your eyes and to remember your wife's face, you will find it impossible to remember. Many other women will come in your mind, the whole neighborhood, but not your wife. The whole relationship has become a continuous repetition. You make love, you hug your wife, you kiss your wife, but these are all empty gestures now. The glory and the glamour has disappeared long before. A marriage is almost finished by the time the honeymoon is over, then you go on pretending. But behind those pretensions a deep boredom accumulates. Watch people walking on the street and you will see them completely bored. Everybody is bored, bored to death. Look at their faces -- no aura of delight. Look at their eyes -- dust-covered, no glimmer of inner happiness. They move from the office to the home, from the home to the office, and by and by the whole life becomes a mechanical routine, a constant repetition. And one day they die... almost always people die without ever having been alive.

Bertrand Russell is reported to have said, 'When I remember, I cannot find more than a few moments in my life when I was really alive, aflame.' Can you remember? How many moments in your life were you really aflame? Rarely it happens. One dreams about those moments, one imagines those moments. one hopes for those moments -- but they never happen. Even if they happen, sooner or later they also become repetitive. When you fall in love with a woman or a man you feel a miracle, but by and by the miracle disappears and everything settles into a routine.

Boredom is the consciousness of repetition. Because animals cannot remember the past, they cannot feel bored. They cannot remember the past, so they cannot feel bored. They cannot remember the past, so they cannot feel the repetition. The buffalo goes on eating the same grass every day with the same delight. You cannot. How can you eat the same grass with the same delight? You get fed up.

Hence people try to change. They move into a new house, they bring a new car home, they divorce the old husband, they find a new love affair, but again that thing is going to become repetitive sooner or later. Changing places, changing persons,, changing partners, changing houses, is not going to do anything. And whenever a society becomes very bored, people start moving from one town to another. from one job to another, from one wife to another, but sooner or later they realize that this is all nonsense because the same thing is going to happen again and again with every woman, with every man, with every house, with every car.

What to do then? Become more conscious. It is not a question of changing situations; transform your being, become more conscious. If you become more conscious you will be able to see that each moment is new; but for that, very much energy, tremendous energy of consciousness is needed.

The wife is not the same -- remember. You are in an illusion. Go back home and look again at your wife -- she is not the same. Nobody can be the same. Just appearances deceive. These trees are not the same as they were yesterday. How can they be? They have grown. Many leaves have fallen, new leaves have come. Look at the almond tree.

How many new leaves have come! Every day the old are falling and the new are coming.

But you are not that much conscious.

Either have no consciousness -- then you cannot feel repetition -- or have so much consciousness that in each repetition you can see something new. These are the two ways to get out of boredom.

Changing outside things is not going to help. It is just like arranging the furniture in your room again and again. Whatsoever you do -- you can put it this way or that way -- is the same furniture. There are many housewives who continuously think about how to manage things, how to put things, where to put them, where not to put -- and they go on changing. But it is the same room, it is the same furniture. How long will you deceive in this way?

A brief television skit I once saw was of a caveman and a cavewomen who were kissing wildly and hysterically. They broke apart only to say, 'Gee, this is great!' then they turned to kissing again.

Finally the cavewoman pulled away to say, 'Listen. Do you suppose this wonderful thing we have discovered means that we are married?'

The caveman bent his small mind to the matter and finally said, 'Yes, I guess we are married. Now let us kiss some more.'

Whereupon the cavewoman put her hand to her head and said in sudden anguish, 'Oh, I have such a headache!'

Two persons meet, strangers -- everything is wonderful, beautiful. But sooner or later they become acquainted with each other. That's what marriage means. It means that now they are settling, now they would like to make it a repetition. Then the same kissing and the same hugging is no longer beautiful; it becomes almost a duty.

A man came home and found his friend kissing his wife. He took the friend into another room. The friend was trembling with fear. Now there is going to be something! The friendship will be broken.

The husband seemed to be very angry, but he was not. He closed the door and asked the friend, 'Just tell me one thing. I HAVE to -- but why were you kissing?'

'I HAVE to, but why were you kissing?' By and by everything settles, newness

disappears, and you don't have that much consciousness or that quality of consciousness which can go on finding the new again and again. For a dull mind, everything is old; for a totally alive mind there is nothing old under the sun. Cannot be. Everything is in flux.

Every person is in flux, is river-like. Persons are not dead things. How can they be the same? Are you the same? Between when you came this morning to listen to me and when you went back home, a lot has happened. Some thoughts have disappeared from your mind, other thoughts have entered. You may have attained to a new insight. You cannot go the same as you had come. The river is continuously flowing; it looks the same but it is not the same. The old Heraclitus has said that you cannot step twice into the same river because the river is never the same.

One thing is that you are also not the same, and another thing is that everything is changing.… but then one has to live at the peak of consciousness. Either live like a Buddha or live like a buffalo, then you will not be bored. Now the choice is yours.

I have never seen anybody the same. You come to me -- how many times you have come to me -- but I never see the old. I'm always surprised by the newness that you bring every day. You may not be aware of it.

Remain capable of being surprised. Let me tell you one anecdote.

A man entered a bar, deep in private thoughts of his own. He turned to a woman just passing and said, 'Pardon me, Miss, do you happen to have the time?'

In a strident voice she responded, 'How dare you make such a proposition to me!'

The man snapped to attention in surprise and was uncomfortably aware that every pair of eyes in the place had turned in their direction. He mumbled, 'I just asked the time, Miss.'

In a voice even louder the woman shrieked. 'I will call the police if you say another word!'

Grabbing his drink and embarrassed very nearly to death, the man hastened to

the far end of the room and huddled at a table, holding his breath and wondering how soon he could sneak out the door.

No more than half a minute had passed when the woman joined him. In a quiet voice she said, 'I'm terribly sorry, sir, to have embarrassed you, but I am a psychology student at the University and I am writing a thesis on the reaction of human beings to sudden, shocking statements.'

The man stared at her for three seconds, then he leaned back and bellowed, 'You will do all that for me, all night, for just two dollars?'

And it is said that the woman fell down unconscious.

Maybe we don't allow our consciousness to rise higher because then life would be a constant surprise and you might not be able to manage it. That's why you have settled for a dull mind, there is some investment in it. You are not dull for no reason, you are dull for a certain purpose -- if you were really alive then everything would be surprising and shocking. If you remain dull then nothing surprises you, nothing is shocking. The more dull you are, the more life seems to be dull to you. If you become more aware, life will also become more alive, livelier, and there is going to be difficulty.

You always live with dead expectations. Every day you come home and you expect certain behavior from your wife. Now look how you create your own misery: you expect a certain fixed behavior from your wife and then you expect your wife to be new. You are asking the impossible. If you really want your wife to remain continuously new to you, don't expect. Come home always ready to be surprised and shocked, then the wife will be new. But she has to fulfill certain expectations. We never allow our total flux-like freshness to be known to the other. We go on hiding, we don't expose, because the other may not be able to understand it at all. And the wife also expects the husband to behave in a certain way, and, of course, they manage the roles. We are not living life, we are living roles. The husband comes home; he forces himself into a certain role. By the time he enters the house, he is no more an alive person -- he is just a husband.

A husband means a certain type of expected behavior. The woman there is a wife, and the man there is a husband. Now when these two persons meet there are really four persons: the husband and wife, which are not real persons -- just personas, masks, false patterns expected behavior, duties, and all that -- and the

real persons hiding behind the masks. Those real persons feel bored.

But you have invested much in your persona, in your mask. If you really want a life which has no boredom in it, drop all masks, be true. Sometimes it will be difficult, I know, but it is worth it. Be true. If you feel like loving your wife, love her, otherwise say you don't feel like it. What is happening right now is that the husband goes on making love to the wife, and goes on thinking of some actress. In imagination he is not making love to this woman, in imagination he is making love to some other woman. And the same is true about the wife. Then things become boring because they are no more alive.

The intensity, the sharpness, is lost.

It happened on a railway platform. Mr. Johnson had weighed himself on one of those old-fashioned penny machines that delivered a card with a fortune printed on it.

The formidable Mrs. Johnson plucked it from her husband's fingers and said, 'Let me see that. Oh, it says you are firm and resolute, have a decisive personality, are a leader of men, and are attractive to women.'

Then she turned over the card, studied it for a moment and said, 'And they have got the weight wrong as well'

No woman can believe that her husband is attracted to other women. There is the whole point, the whole crux. If he is not attracted to other women, how can she expect that he will be attracted to herself? If he is attracted to other women only then can he be attracted to her, because she is also a woman. The wife wants him to be attracted to her and not attracted to anybody else. Now this is asking something absurd. It is as if you are saying,

'You are allowed to breathe only in my presence and when you go near somebody else, you are not allowed to breathe. How dare you breathe anywhere else?' Just breathe when the wife is there, just breathe when the husband is there, and don't breathe anywhere else.

Of course, if you do that you will be dead and you will not be able to breathe in front of your wife also.

Love has to be a way of life. You are to be loving. Only then can you love your wife and your husband. But the wife says, 'No, you should not look at anybody else with a loving eye.' Of course you manage because if you don't it creates such nuisance.… But by and by the glimmer in your eyes disappears. If you cannot look anywhere else with love, by and by you cannot look at your own wife with love -- it disappears. The same has happened to her. The same has happened to the whole of humanity. Then life is a boredom; then everybody is waiting for death; then there are people continuously thinking of committing suicide.

Marcel has said somewhere that the only metaphysical problem facing humanity is suicide. And it is so, because people are so bored. It is simply amazing why they don't commit suicide; how they go on living. Life doesn't seem to give anything, all meaning seems to be lost, but still people go on dragging somehow, hoping that some day some miracle will happen and everything will be put right. It never happens. You have to put it right; nobody else is going to put it right. No Messiah is to come. Don't wait for any Messiah. You have to be a light unto yourself.

Live more authentically. Drop the masks; they are a weight on your heart. Drop all falsities. Be exposed. Of course it is going to be troublesome but that trouble is worth it because only after that trouble will you grow and become mature. And then nothing is holding life. Each moment life reveals its newness. It is a constant miracle happening all around you only you are hiding behind dead habits.

Become a Buddha if you don't want to be bored. Live each moment as fully alert as possible, because only in full alertness will you be able to drop the mask. You have completely forgotten what your original face is. Even when you stand before the mirror in your bathroom and you are alone, nobody is there, even standing before the mirror you don't see your original face in the mirror. There too you go on deceiving.

Existence is available for those who are available to existence. And then I tell you, there is no boredom. Life is infinite delight.

The third question: Question 3

I FEEL SO MUCH RESISTANCE AGAINST MEDITATION AND I DON'T HAVE

THIS DESIRE FOR GOD THAT YOU SPEAK ABOUT. IS THIS THE RIGHT PLACE

FOR ME?

If you feel much resistance against meditation it simply shows that deep down you are alert that something is going to happen which will change your total life. You are afraid of being reborn. You have invested too much in your old habits, in the old personality, in the old identity.

Meditation is nothing but trying to clean your being. trying to become fresh and young, trying to become more alive and more alert. If you are afraid of meditation it means you are afraid of life, you are afraid of awareness, and the resistance comes because you know that if you move into meditation, something is bound to happen. If you are not resisting at all it may be because you don't take meditation very seriously. you don't take meditation very sincerely. Then you can play around. What is there to be afraid of?

It is exactly because you are resisting that this is the right place for you. This is precisely the right place for you. The resistance shows that something is going to happen. One never resists without any cause.

You must be living a very dead life. Now you are afraid that something is becoming alive, something is changing. You resist. Resistance is an indication, resistance is a very clear indication that you have suppressed much. Now in meditation that suppression will surface, it will be released. You would also like to be released of the burden but in that burden there are investments.

For example, you may be carrying pebbles in your hands but you think they are diamonds. And then I tell you, 'Clean yourself. Drop these pebbles. They have become a burden and you cannot move because of them.' You would like to be unburdened but then you are afraid that your diamonds will be lost. And they are not diamonds. Look again at your diamonds. If they were really diamonds, you should be happy. If they were really diamonds, you would not have come to me at ail. There is no need. If you have come, it shows that you are seeking. You may say that you are not interested in God -- I am also not interested in God -- but you are interested in yourself. Are you interested in yourself?

Forget all about God. If you are interested in yourself. then this is precisely the place for you. If you are interested in your own being, in your own wholeness and health; if you are interested in becoming a blossomed flower, then forget all about God -- because in that blossoming you will know what God is. When your fragrance is released then you will know what God is. God is your ultimate flowering, your final flowering; your destiny fulfilled is what God is all about.

A woman seeing Turner's pictures said once, 'Making a lot of fuss over him, are they not?

I never saw anything in him myself.'

And another woman said to Turner himself, 'But you know, Mr. Turner I never see sunsets like yours.'

She received the mild yet devastating reply, 'No. Don't you wish you could?'

When a Turner paints a sunset of course he sees a sunset in a totally different way to you.

He brings all his sensitivity, his whole being, to see it. In fact, you may not have ever seen a sunset the way a painter looks at it. Turner says rightly, 'Don't you wish you could?'

I'm here. I know you can't see what I am talking about, but don't you wish you could? I know that many things I am saying are almost nonsense to because to see them you will have to attain different eyes, you will have to clarify your being; to see them you will have to pacify your turmoil within. I know you cannot see the green that I am seeing in the trees. Your green is bound to be very dusty because your eyes are full of dust.

It happened once, that a man was staying with a friend at somebody's house. The host and the guest were standing near the window -- the window was closed -- and in the neighbor's house, clothes were hanging out to be dried.

The host said, 'These people are very dirty. Look at their clothes.'

The man looked, he came closer to the window and he said, 'Those clothes are not dirty.

Your window glass is covered with dust.'

They opened the windows and it was so. Those clothes were not dirty.

Life is tremendously beautiful. It is Divine. When we say 'Life is God' we simply say that life is so tremendously beautiful that one feels a reverence for it. That's all. Life is so tremendously beautiful that one feels like worshipping it. That's all we mean when we say 'Life is God.' When we say 'Life is God' we only mean, 'Don't see that life is ordinary.

It is extraordinary. There is tremendous potentiality. Just open your eyes.' I have never seen a person who is not interested in God -- although he may not know it

-- because I have never seen a person who is not interested in happiness. If you are interested in happiness, you are interested in God; if you are interested in being blissful, you are interested in God.

Forget all about God. You just try to be blissful, and one day, when you are dancing in your inner bliss. when the inner juices are flowing, suddenly this life is no longer ordinary. Everywhere some unknown force is hiding and you will see God in the flowers and in the stones and in the stars. I talk to you just to plant a seed, a song, a star. If you can become happy, you become religious. A happy person is a religious person -- let that be the definition. A religious person is not one who goes to the church or the temple if he is unhappy, he cannot be religious. A religious person is happy. Wherever he is, he is in the temple. A happy person carries his temple around him. I know it because I have been carrying it. I need not go to any temple. Where I am is my temple. It is a climate. It is my own inner juice overflowing. God is nothing but you realized, reached, fulfilled.

Yes. I say to you, I have never seen a man who is not interested in God. There cannot be.

That man is not possible. Even people who say they don't believe in God, who are atheists, are not uninterested in God. They are interested. Their denying, their saying that they don't believe may be just a trick of the mind to protect themselves; because once you allow yourself to be possessed by God you disappear, only God remains. So people who are afraid of being, of disappearing, of moving into non-being, people who are too egoistic and cannot allow their drop to drop into the ocean, say there is no ocean. That is the trick of their mind

so that they can protect themselves. They are fearful people, afraid, scared of life.

If you are interested in being happy, this is the place for you. And you are already here.

Nobody has brought you, nobody has forced you, you have come on your own. Some inner search that you may not be aware of has brought you here. Maybe something is in the heart and your head does not know anything about it. There are desires of which the head is completely unaware -- the head is concerned only with rubbish. The heart may have brought you here.

Break that resistance -- and when you are here, be really here. Don't miss this opportunity.

In the New Testament the Greek word for sin is 'antinomic' or 'anomeia'. It means to miss the point; or, as in archery, to miss the mark. The word 'sin' comes from a root which means to miss the point, to miss the mark. If you are here and you miss me, that will be a sin. If you are here then why waste time? Be totally here. Drop the resistance. Or if you cannot be totally here, then go away from here. But go totally away. Then never again remember me, otherwise that will be a sin.

The word 'sin' is beautiful. It has been badly corrupted by Christianity. It has nothing to do with guilt, nothing to do with something bad, evil. It has nothing to do with morality but it has something to do with consciousness. If you are here, be consciously and totally here; your unconscious heart has brought you here. Groping in the dark you have come to me, now don't miss this opportunity. Either be totally here, or go away. Turn your back against me and never remember me again; because going away, if you remember me, then you will not be totally there -- wherever you are going. Wherever you are, be totally there, that's the only way to open the secrets and mysteries of life.

And don't be worried about whether you are interested in the concept of God or not. In fact, people who are too interested in the concept of God will not be able to know him.

I have come across a very beautiful book, written somewhere in the Middle Ages by a certain man known as Dionysius Exegius. His book is 'Theologica Mystica'. He says in that book that the highest knowledge of God is through what he calls

in Greek 'agnostos', which means unknowing. You must have heard the word 'agnostic', it comes from the same root, agnostos. Agnostos means unknowing. And this Dionysius says that God is known only by unknowing. No need to be worried about the concept; no need to accumulate knowledge, theories, doctrines about God; forget all about the word and the theory. You be simply interested in your happiness, in your bliss, and one day you will find God has entered in you. It is another name for ultimate bliss.

The last question:

Question 4

OSHO, I HAVE THIS IDEA THAT YOU DON'T REALLY EXIST. WHEN WE

THINK THAT THERE IS SOMEONE WHO LIVES IN YOUR HOUSE AND WHO

MAKES THINGS HAPPEN TO US, IT IS NOT REALLY YOU AT ALL. COULD

YOU TELL US WHAT THIS IS AND BY THE WAY, WHO IS GIVING THE DISCOURSE EVERY MORNING?

I don't know.

Ancient Music in the Pines Chapter #5

Chapter title: The Ultimate Secrets of Swordsmanship 25 February 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 7602250

ShortTitle:

ANCIEN05

Audio:

Yes Video: No Length:

83

mins

YAGYU YAJIMA NO KAMI MUNENORI WAS A TEACHER OF SWORDSMANSHIP TO THE SHOGUN.

ONE OF THE PERSONAL GUARDS OF THE SHOGUN CAME TO TAJIMA NO

KAMI ONE DAY ASKING TO BE TRAINED IN SWORDPLAY.

'AS I OBSERVE, YOU SEEM TO BE A MASTER OF THE ART YOURSELF,' SAID

THE TEACHER. 'PLEASE TELL ME TO WHAT SCHOOL YOU BELONG BEFORE

WE ENTER INTO THE RELATIONSHIP OF TEACHER AND PUPIL.'

THE GUARDSMAN SAID: 'L DO NOT BELONG TO ANY SCHOOL, I HAVE

NEVER STUDIED THE ART.'

'IT IS NO USE TRYING TO FOOL ME,' SAID THE TEACHER. 'MY JUDGING EYE

NEVER FAILS.'

'I AM SORRY TO DEFY, YOUR HONOUR,' SAID THE GUARD, 'BUT I REALLY

KNOW NOTHING.'

'IF YOU SAY SO THEN IT MUST BE TRUE, BUT I AM SURE THAT YOU ARE

THE MASTER OF SOMETHING, SO TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF.'

'THERE IS ONE THING,' SAID THE GUARD. 'WHEN I WAS A CHILD I THOUGHT

THAT A SAMURAI SHOULD NEVER BE AFRAID OF DEATH, SO I GRAPPLED

WITH THE PROBLEM, AND NOW THE THOUGHT OF DEATH HAS CEASED TO

WORRY ME.'

'THAT'S IT!' EXCLAIMED THE TEACHER. 'THE ULTIMATE SECRETS OF SWORDSMANSHIP LIE IN BEING RELEASED FROM THE THOUGHT OF

DEATH. YOU NEED NO TECHNICAL TRAINING, YOU ARE ALREADY A MASTER.'

THE ocean is not only hidden behind the waves, it is also manifesting itself in the waves.

It is there on the surface as much as it is in the depth. The depth and the surface are not two separate things: they are two polarities of the same phenomenon. The center comes to the circumference; it is as much on the circumference as it is at the center.

God is not only the unmanifest, it is also the manifest. God is not only the Creator, God is also the creation. God is as much in his world as he is in himself.

Just the other night, a new sannyasin asked me,' Osho, can you show me the

Divine form?' I told him, 'All forms are Divine. I have not seen a single form which is not Divine. The whole existence is Divine -- don't divide it into profane and sacred.'

All the time, what else am I doing? Showing the Divine form. What else are you doing?

Showing the Divine form. What else is happening all over existence? The Divine is spread everywhere. It is as much in the small as it is in the great; it is as much in a grass leaf as in a faraway great star.

But the mind thinks in dualities. It thinks God is hidden, then it tries to deny the manifest and seek the unmanifest. Now you are creating an unnecessary conflict for yourself. God is here, now -- as much as anywhere else. God is as much in the seeker as in the sought.

He is manifesting himself. That's why I say that the ocean is in the waves. Dig deep into the waves, dig deep into the form, and you will find the formless.

If you cannot see this it doesn't mean that God is not manifested, it only means that you are still blind. You have still not got the eyes that can see the obvious. God is the obvious.

And this is so on every level of being: whatsoever you are, you go on broadcasting it around you. You cannot hide it. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can be hidden. There is a Zen saying that nothing whatsoever is hidden -- from of old, all is as clear as daylight.

But all is not as clear as daylight for you. That doesn't mean the daylight is not there -- it simply means you are standing with closed eyes. Open your eyes, just a little, and the darkness starts disappearing. Open your eyes, and wherever you are, immediately you will be able to see as deep as existence is.

Once your eyes are open, everything becomes transparent.

When you see me, you just see the surface, the waves. When you hear me, you only hear the words, not the silence hidden behind them. You see exactly that which is of no worth and you miss all that is of any worth and significance. When I see you, it is not the form, it is not the image that you see in the mirror. When I see you, I see YOU.

And you are broadcasting yourself in your every gesture, in your every movement. The way you walk, the way you talk, the way you stay silent and don't talk, the way you eat, the way you sit -- everything is manifesting you. Anybody who is perceptive will be able to see whether you are dark inside, or whether you have kindled the flame.

It is as easy as if you pass by a house in the night, a dark night, and the house is lighted inside. Is it in any way difficult to know it is lighted? No, because from the windows and from the doors you can see the light coming out. Or, if the house is in darkness and there is no light burning inside, then of course, you see it. It is obvious.

The same is happening in you. Whatsoever you are is being broadcasted every moment.

Your neurosis is broadcasted; your enlightenment also. Your meditation is broadcasted; your madness also. You cannot hide it. All efforts to hide yourself are futile. They are stupid, ridiculous.

I was reading a book by Edmund Carpenter. He was working on a sociological project, a research project, in Borneo. He writes: 'In a small town in Borneo, professional clerks sit before open windows, reading and writing. Because people are illiterate and they cannot read and write, for their letters, documents, or any other thing, they need the help of professional writers and readers. And I was very surprised because I noticed one who was plugging his ears with his fingers while he read aloud. I inquired and was told that this was done at the request of the writer who did not want to share his letter with the reader!'

So the reader was plugging his ears with his fingers and reading the letter loudly!

But this is what is happening in everybody's life. You go on hiding, but everything is being declared, continuously, loudly. Everything is being broadcasted; you are a continuous broadcasting station. Even while you are asleep, you are broadcasting. If a Buddha comes to you while you are asleep he will be able to see who you are. Even in your sleep you will be making gestures, faces, movements, uttering something. And all those things will indicate something about you, because the sleep is yours and it is bound to carry your signature.

If one becomes a little alert, one stops hiding. It is futile, it is ridiculous. Then

one simply relaxes. Because of your hiding you remain tense, continuously afraid that somebody may know about you. You never expose yourself, you never live in the nude...spiritually I mean. You never live in the nude, you are always afraid. That fear cripples you and paralyses you.

Once you understand that, everything is bound to be declared. it is already being declared; that the center is coming to the circumference every moment, and the ocean is waving in the waves; that God is everywhere, spread all over existence, and you are spread all over your activities -- there is no point in hiding. Nothing whatsoever is hidden from of old; everything is as clear as daylight. Then why bother?

Then one relaxes -- the anxiety, the tension, the anguish, disappear. Suddenly you become vulnerable, no more closed; suddenly you are open; suddenly you become inviting. And this is the point to be understood: once you are exposed to others, only then will you be exposed to yourself. If you are hiding from others, whatsoever you are hiding from others will by and by be thrown into the basement of your unconscious mind.

Others will not know about it and by and by you will also forget about it.

But whenever you come within the vision of a perceptive man, everything will be revealed. That is one of the basic reasons why, in the East, the relationship of a disciple to a master is so valued: because the master is just like a ray of light, an x-ray, and the disciple exposes himself. And the more the master penetrates and knows about the disciple the more the disciple by and by becomes aware of his own hidden treasures.

Trying to hide himself from others, he has become such an expert in hiding that he hides from himself also.

You don't know much about yourself; you know just a fragment about yourself, just the tip of the iceberg. Your knowledge about yourself is very limited -- not only limited, it is almost irrelevant! It is so partial, it is so fragmentary that unless you put it in the context with your whole being it carries no meaning. It is almost meaningless.

That's why you go on living without knowing yourself. And how can one live without knowing oneself? And you go on projecting things on others which have nothing to do with others; they may be just hidden inside you. But you project

them on others.

Somebody looks Like an egoist to you -- you may be the egoist, and it is you projecting.

Somebody looks very angry. The anger may be inside you and the other is just like a screen -- it is you projecting.

Unless you know yourself exactly, you will not be able to know what is real and what is projection. And you will not be able to know about others also. Self- knowledge becomes the door of all knowledge; it is the very base. Without that foundation all knowledge is just knowledge in appearance; deep down it is ignorance.

I have heard an anecdote.

Mistress Jones, deeply troubled, was consulting a psychiatrist.

'My husband,' she said, 'is convinced he is a chicken. He goes around scratching constantly, and sleeps on a large bar of wood he has fixed up as a perch.'

'I see,' said the psychiatrist thoughtfully. 'And how long has your husband been suffering from this fixation?'

'For nearly two years now.'

The psychiatrist frowned slightly and said, 'But why have you waited till now to seek help?'

Mistress Jones blushed and said, 'Ah well, it was so nice having a steady supply of eggs!'

Now this woman is neurotic -- but she thinks her husband is neurotic! Whenever you think something about somebody else -- watch. Don't be in a hurry. First look within. The cause may be inside you. But you don't know yourself so you go on confusing your own projections with outer realities. It is impossible to know anything real unless you have known yourself. And the only way to know oneself is to live a life of vulnerability.

openness. Don't live in a closed cell. Don't hide yourself behind your mind.

Come out.

Once you come out you will become by and by aware of millions of things in you. You are not a one-room apartment, you have many rooms -- you are a palace. But you have become accustomed to living on the porch and you have forgotten the palace completely.

Many treasures are hidden in you, and those treasures constantly go on knocking, inviting. But you are almost deaf.

This blindness, this deafness, this insensitivity, has to be broken -- and nobody else can do it. If somebody else tries, you will feel offended, you will feel a trespassing. 11

happens every day. If I try to help you, you feel you have been trespassed upon; if I try to say something true about you, you feel offended, you feel humiliated, you feel hurt, your pride is hurt. You want to listen to lies about yourself from me; you want to listen to something which helps your already-fixed image. You have a very golden image about yourself which is false. It has to be shattered to pieces, because once it is shattered, the reality will arise. If it is not shattered you will go on clinging to it.

You think you are religious, you think you are a great seeker -- you may not be religious at all. You may be simply afraid of life. In your temples and churches cowards are hiding, afraid of life. But to accept that one is afraid of life is very humiliating so they say they are not afraid of life, they have renounced: 'Life is not worth anything. Life is only for mediocre minds.' They have renounced everything for God; they are searching for God.

But watch. They are trembling. On their knees they are praying -- but their prayer is not of love, their prayer is not of celebration, their prayer is not a festivity. Their prayer is out of fear. And fear corrupts everything; nobody can approach God through fear.

You have to approach truth through fearlessness, but if you are hiding your fear behind religiousness then it will be very difficult to shatter it. You are greedy, miserly, but you go on saying that you live a very simple life. If you are hiding behind the rationalization of simplicity, then it is very difficult to see that you are a miser.

A miser misses tremendously. Because life is for those who share, life is for those who love, life is for those who are not too clinging to things -- because then they become available to persons.

To cling to a thing is to cling to something which is below you. And if you go on clinging to things which are below you, how can you soar high? It is as if you are clinging to rocks and trying to fly in the sky. Or you are carrying rocks on the head and trying to climb Everest. You have to throw them. You have to throw those rocks. You will have to unburden yourself.

Edmund Hillary, the first man to reach to the top of Everest, says in his autobiography,

'As we started reaching closer and closer, I had to leave more and more things behind. At the last moment, I had to leave almost everything, because everything became such a burden.'

The higher you reach, the more unburdened you need to be. So a miser cannot soar high.

A miser cannot soar in love, or in prayer, or in God. He remains clinging to the earth, he almost remains rooted in the earth. Trees cannot fly. If you want to fly, you need to be uprooted. You need to be like a white cloud, with no roots anywhere -- a wanderer.

But you can hide your miserable self. And you can hide your diseases behind good, beautiful terms and words. You can be very articulate and you can be very rationalizing.

All these have to be broken.

And if you go on hiding, then not only do you hide your diseases, you hide your treasures also. This hiding becomes a fixation, it becomes a habit, an obsession. But I tell you, before a perceptive man, before a Master who has known himself, you will be completely x-rayed. You cannot hide from somebody who has eyes. You can hide from yourself, you can hide from the world, but you cannot hide from somebody who has come to know what clarity is, what perception is.

For such a man, you are absolutely on the surface.

I have heard about an American couple who were strolling along the banks of the Seine under the shadows of Notre Dame. He was lost in silence. She said finally, 'What are you thinking about, darling?'

'I was thinking, dear, that if anything happened to either of us, I would like to spend the rest of my life in Paris.'

He may not be aware of what he is saying; he may have uttered this in absolute unawareness. Let me repeat it. He says, 'I was thinking, dear, that if anything happened to either of us, I would like to spend the rest of my life in Paris.' He wants the wife to die although he is not saying it clearly. But he has said it.

We continuously broadcast, in many ways.

Just a few days ago, President Ford gave a party in honor of the Egyptian ambassador to the States. But then when he was giving the toast he forgot completely and something from the unconscious bubbled up -- a slip of the tongue, we say, but it is not just a slip of the tongue. He raised the glass and said, 'In honor of the great nation of Israel.' To Egyptians! Then of course he tried to mend it, to patch it -- but it was too late. Deep down, he wants Israel to win over the Egyptians; from the unconscious it bubbled up, surfaced.

It happened at a party: a man was leaving, but he was very diffident. He murmured to the hostess, 'The meal was delicious what there was of it.'

Noting the hurt expression on his hostess' face, the guest blushed and hastened to say,

'Ah, ah. And there was plenty of food, such as it was.'

These are unconscious assertions; they come out of you when you are not on guard.

Ordinarily, you are on guard. That's why people are so tense: continuously on guard, guarding themselves. But there are moments when the tension is too much and one relaxes; one has to relax, one cannot be on guard for twenty-four hours. In those moments, things surface.

You are truer when you have drunk a little too much, and things start surfacing from your unconscious. Under the influence of alcohol you are truer than you

ordinarily are, because the alcohol relaxes the guard. Then you start saying things you always wanted to say, and you are not worried about anything, and you are not trying to leave any impression -- you are simply being true. Drunkards are beautiful persons: truer, more authentic. It is ironical that only drunkards are authentic.

The more you are clever and cunning, the more inauthentic you become. Don't hide behind screens. Come out in the sunshine. And don't be afraid that your image will be shattered. The image that you are afraid of being shattered is not worth keeping -- it is better to shatter it on your own. Take a hammer and shatter it.

That's what being a SANNYASIN means: you take a hammer in your hands and you shatter the old image. And then you start a new life from ABC, from the very beginning again, as if you are born again. It is a rebirth.

Then by and by, if you relax, and if you are not too much worried about your image in the eyes of others, your own authentic face, your original face, comes into being -- the face that you had before you were born, and the face that you will again have when you are dead, the original face, not the cultivated mask. With that original face you will see God everywhere, because with the original face you can meet with the original, with the reality.

With a mask, you will meet only other masks; with a mask, there can be never any dialogue with reality; with a mask, you remain in the relationship of 'I' and 'it'. The reality remains behind it. When the mask is removed and you have come back home, a tremendous transformation happens. The relationship with reality is no more one of 'I/it', it is of 'I/Thou'. That 'Thou' is God.

The reality takes on a personality: you become alive there, reality becomes alive there. It has always been alive -- just you were dead. It is as if you have taken chloroform: when you come back, and the influence of the chloroform disappears by and by, how do you feel? It is a beautiful experience! If you have never been to the surgeon's table, go, just for the experience! For a few moments you are completely in oblivion -- and then consciousness arises. Suddenly, everything becomes alive, fresh. You are coming out of the womb. Exactly the same happens when you decide to live an authentic life. Then for the first time you understand that now you are born. Just before...you were thinking and dreaming that you were alive -- but you were not.

A great mathematician, Herr Gauss, was keeping vigil while his wife lay ill upstairs. And as time passed, he found himself beginning to ponder a deep problem in mathematics.

People have grooves in their mind and they move in the same grooves again and again. A mathematician has a certain track. The wife is going to die, the doctors have said that this is going to be the last night, he is keeping vigil -- but the mind started moving, in its old pattern of course. He has started thinking about a mathematical problem. Just see. The wife will no longer be there, it is the last night, but the mind is creating a screen of mathematics. He has completely forgotten about the wife; he has moved, he has gone far away on a journey.

As time passed he found himself beginning to ponder a deep problem in mathematics. He drew pen and paper to himself and began to draw diagrams. A servant approached and said deferentially. Herr Gauss. your wife is dying.

And Gauss, never looking up, said, 'Yes, yes. But tell her to wait till I'm through.

Even the great minds are as much unconscious as you are. As far as consciousness is concerned, great, small, and mediocre, all sail in the same boat. Even the greatest mind lives under chloroform.

Come out of it. Make yourself more alert. Bring yourself together. Let one thing become a centering, a constant centering in you -- and that is alertness, awareness. Do whatsoever you do, but do it consciously. And by and by consciousness accumulates and it becomes a reservoir of energy.

Now, the Zen story.

YAGYU TAJIMA NO KAMI MUNENORI WAS A TEACHER OF SWORDSMANSHIP TO THE SHOGUN.

In Zen, and only in Zen, something of great import has happened. That is, they don't make any distinction between ordinary life and religious life; rather, they have bridged them both. And they have used very ordinary skills as UPAYA, as methods for meditation. That is something of tremendous import. Because if you don't use ordinary life as a method to meditation, your meditation is bound to become something of an escape.

In India it has happened, and India has suffered badly. The misery that you see all around, the poverty, the horrible ugliness of it, is because India always thought religious life to be separate from ordinary life. So people who became interested in God, they renounced the world. People who became interested in God, they closed their eyes, sat in the caves in the Himalayas, and tried to forget that the world existed. They tried to create the idea that the world is simply an illusion, illusory, a MAYA, a dream. Of course, life suffered much because of it.

All the greatest minds of this country became escapists, and the country was left to the mediocres. No science could evolve; no technology could evolve.

But in Japan, Zen has done something very beautiful. That's why Japan is the only country where East and West are meeting: Eastern meditation and Western reason are in a deep synthesis in Japan. Zen has created the whole situation there. In India you could not conceive that swordsmanship could become an UPAYA, a method for meditation, but in Japan they have done it. And I see that they have brought something very new to religious consciousness.

Anything can be converted into a meditation because the whole thing is awareness. And of course, in swordsmanship more awareness is needed than anywhere else because life will be at stake every moment. When fighting with a sword you have to be constantly alert -- a single moment's unconsciousness and you will be gone. In fact, a real swordsman does not function out of his mind, he cannot function out of his mind --

because mind takes time. It thinks, calculates. And when you are fighting with a sword, where is time? There is no time. If you miss a single fragment of a second in thinking, the other will not miss the opportunity: the other's sword will penetrate into your heart or cut off your head.

So thinking is not possible. One has to function out of no-mind, one has to simply function, because the danger is so much that you cannot afford the luxury of thinking.

Thinking needs an easy chair. You just relax in the easy chair and you go off on mind trips.

But when you are fighting and life is at stake and the swords are shining in the sun and at any moment a slight unawareness and the other will not lose the opportunity, you will be gone forever, there is no space for thought to appear,

one has to function out of no-thought. That's what meditation is all about.

if you can function out of no-thought, if you can function out of no-mind, if you can function as a total organic unity, not out of the head, if you can function out of your guts.… It can happen to you. You are walking one night and suddenly a snake crosses the path. What do you do? Do you sit there and think about it? No, suddenly you jump out of the way. In fact you don't decide to jump, you don't think in a logical syllogism that: here is a snake; and wherever there is a snake there is danger; therefore, ergo, I should jump.

That is not the way! You simply jump! The action is total. The action is not corrupted by thinking, it comes out of your very core of being, not out of the head. Of course, when you have jumped out of the danger you can sit under a tree and think about the whole thing -- that's another matter! Then you can afford the luxury.

The house catches fire. What do you do? Do you think whether to go out or not to go out

-- to be or not to be? Do you consult a scripture about whether it is right to do it? Do you sit silently and meditate upon it? You simply get out of the house. And you will not be worried about manners and etiquette -- you will jump out of the window.

Just two nights ago a girl entered here at three o'clock in the night and started screaming in the garden. Asheesh jumped out of his bed, ran -- and only then he realized that he was naked. Then he came back. That was an act out of no-mind, without any thought. He simply jumped out of the bed. Thought came later on. Thought followed, lagged behind.

He was ahead of thought. Of course, it caught hold of him so he missed an opportunity. It would have become a satori -- but he came back and put on his gown. Missed!

Swordsmanship became one of the UPAYAS, one of the basic methodologies. Because the very thing is so dangerous that it doesn't allow thinking. It can lead you towards a different type of functioning, a different type of reality, a separate reality. You know of only one way to function: to think first and then to function. In swordsmanship, a different-type of existence becomes open to you: you function first and then you think.

Thinking is no longer primary, and this is the beauty.. when thinking is not primary, you cannot err.

You have heard the proverb: it is human to err. Yes, it is true. It is human to err because the human mind is prone to err. But when you function out of no-mind you are no longer human, you are Divine and then there is no possibility of erring. Because the total never errs, only the part; only the part goes astray. God never errs, he cannot err. He is the Whole. When you start functioning out of nothingness, with no syllogism, with no thinking, with no conclusions -- your conclusions are limited, they depend on your experience, and you can err -- when you put aside all your conclusions, you are putting aside all limitations also. Then you function out of your unlimited being, and it never errs.

It is said that sometimes it has happened in Japan that two Zen people will fight who have both attained to satori through swordsmanship. They cannot be defeated. Nobody can be victorious because they both never err. Before the other attacks, the first has already made preparations to receive it. Before the other's sword moves to cut off his head, he is already prepared to defend the attack. And the same happens with his attack. Two Zen people who have attained to satori can go on fighting for years, but it is impossible -- they cannot err. Nobody can be defeated and nobody can be victorious.

YAGYV TAJIMA NO KAMI MUNENORI WAS A TEACHER OF SWORDSMANSHIP TO THE SHOGUN.

ONE OF THE PERSONAL GUARDS OF THE SHOGUN CAME TO TAJIMA NO

KAMI ONE DAY ASKING TO BE TRAINED IN SWORDSPLAY.

'AS I OBSERVE, YOU SEEM TO BE A MASTER OF THE ART YOURSELF,' SAID

THE TEACHER.

AS I OBSERVE...' said the Master. When Buddha was alive, one of his contemporaries was Mahavir. Between the disciples of the two there has been a great discussion ever since. The discussion is about an enlightened person's awareness. Mahavir's followers, Jainas, say that whenever a person has become

enlightened, he always knows everything of the past, of the present, of the future. He has become omniscient. He knows everything. He has become a mirror to the whole of the reality.

Buddha's followers say that that is not so. They say that he becomes capable of knowing anything if he observes. If he tries to focus on anything, he will be able to know everything about it. But it does not happen as the followers of Mahavir say -- that whether he focuses or not, he knows.

To me also, the Buddhist standpoint seems to be better and more scientific. Otherwise a man like Buddha would go almost mad. Just think of it: knowing everything of the past, and the present, and the future. No, that doesn't seem to be right. The Buddhist attitude seems to be more right: he has become capable of knowing.

Now, whenever he wants to use the capacity, he focuses, he throws his ray of light, he puts something in the flow of his meditation -- and that thing becomes revealed to him.

Otherwise it would be impossible for him to rest. Even in the night he would be continuously knowing, knowing the past, and the present, and the future. And not only of himself, of the whole world! Just think of the sheer impossibility of it. No. That's not possible.

'AS I OBSERVE...' said the Master. The disciple has come and he has asked to be trained in swordplay. The Master said, 'As I observe...' He focuses his ray of light, his torch, towards this disciple. Now this disciple is under his meditation. He goes through and through -- the disciple becomes transparent. That is what happens when you come to a Master: simply his light penetrates you to your very core.…'YOU SEEM TO BE A MASTER OF THE ART YOURSELF,'

SAID THE TEACHER. He could not find anything wrong in this man. Everything was as it should be, in tune, humming. This man was a beautiful song; he had already achieved.

'PLEASE TELL ME TO WHAT SCHOOL YOU BELONG BEFORE WE ENTER

INTO THE RELATIONSHIP OF TEACHER AND PUPIL.'

That is the highest relationship in the world -- greater than a love relationship,

greater than any relationship. Because the surrender has to be total. Even in a love relationship the surrender is not total, surrender is partial. the divorce is possible. But in fact, if you have once become a disciple of a Master, if you have really become a disciple, if you have been accepted, if you have surrendered, there is no possibility of divorce. There is no going back; it is a point of no return. Then the two persons are no more there. They exist like one, two aspects of one, but they are not two.

So the Master says, 'Before we enter into the relationship of teacher and pupil, I would like to know where you learned this art. How have you become so tuned? You are already a Master.'

THE GUARDSMAN SAID, 'I DO NOT BELONG TO ANY SCHOOL, I HAVE NEVER STUDIED THE ART.'

'IT IS NO USE TRYING TO FOOL ME,' SAID THE TEACHER. 'MY JUDGING EYE

NEVER FAILS.'

Now, listen to this paradox: the judging eye arises only when you have left all judgment.

In meditation you have to leave all judging: what is good, what is bad -- you have to drop all that division. You simply look. You look without any judgment, without any condemnation, without any appreciation. You don't evaluate, you simply look. The look becomes pure.

When this look has happened to you and has become an integrated thing in your being.

you attain to a capacity which never fails. Once you have become one insider and gone beyond morality, dualism -- good and bad. sin and virtue, life and death, beautiful and ugly -- once you have gone beyond the dualisms of mind, you attain to the judging eye.

This is the paradox: all judgment has to be left, then you attain to the judging eye. Then it never fails. You simply know it is so, and there is no alternative to it. It is not a choice on your part, it is not a decision, it is a simple revelation that

it is so.

IT IS NO USE TRYING TO FOOL ME,' SAID THE TEACHER. 'MY JUDGING EYE

NEVER FAILS.'

'I AM SORRY TO DEFY, YOUR HONOR,' SAID THE GUARD, 'BUT I REALLY

KNOW NOTHING.'

'IF YOU SAY SO, THEN IT MUST BE TRUE, BUT I AM SURE YOU ARE THE

MASTER OF SOMETHING '

Now this point has to be understood: it makes no difference what you are a Master of, the taste of Mastery is the same, the flavor is the same. You can become a Master of archery, or you can become a Master of swordsmanship, or you can become a Master Just of the ordinary tea ceremony -- it makes no difference. The real thing is that you have become a Master. The art has gone so deep that you are not carrying it anymore; the art has gone so deep that now there is no need to think about it -- it has become simply your nature.

'...BUT I AM SURE THAT YOU ARE THE MASTER OF SOMETHING...

Maybe you aren't a Master of swordsmanship, but you are a Master '...SO TELL ME ABOUT

YOURSELF.' 'THERE IS ONE THING,' SAID THE GUARD. 'WHEN I WAS A CHILD I THOUGHT THAT A SAMURAI SHOULD NEVER BE AFRAID OF

DEATH, SO GRAPPLED WITH THE PROBLEM. AND NOW THE THOUGHT OF

DEATH HAS CEASED TO WORRY ME.'

But that is what the whole of religion is all about. If death no longer bothers you, you have become a Master. If you have tasted something of the deathless,

something of your innermost nature -- you have known something of the eternal. To know the deathless is the whole business of life. Life is an opportunity to know the deathless.

'...AND NOW THE THOUGHT OF DEATH HAS CEASED TO WORRY ME. 'THAT'S IT!' EXCLAIMED THE TEACHER. 'THE ULTIMATE SECRETS OF

SWORDSMANSHIP LIE IN BEING RE/EASED FROM THE THOUGHT OF DEATH.

YOU NEED NO TECHNICAL TRAINING, YOU ARE ALREADY A MASTER.'

When you are fighting with a sword, if you are afraid of death, thinking will continue.

Now let me tell you one basic truth: thinking is out of fear.

All thinking is out of fear. The more you become afraid, the more you think. Whenever there is no fear, thinking stops. If you have fallen in love with someone, there are moments with your beloved or your lover when thinking stops. Just sitting by the lake, doing nothing, holding hands, looking at the moon or the stars, or just gazing into the darkness of the night, sometimes thoughts stop because there is no fear. Love dispels fear just as light dispels darkness.

If even for a moment you have been in love with someone, fear disappears and thinking stops. With fear, thinking continues. The more you are afraid, the more you have to think

-- because by thinking you will create security; by thinking, you will create a citadel around you; by thinking you will manage, or try to manage, how to fight.

A swordsman, if he is afraid of death, cannot be a real swordsman because the fear will make him tremble. With just a slight trembling inside, a slight thinking inside, he will not be able to act out of no-mind.

There is a story.

A man in China became the greatest archer. He asked the king, 'Declare me as

the greatest archer of the country.' The king was just going to decide and declare him when an old servant of the king said, 'Wait, sir. I know a man who lives in the forest who never comes to the town. He is a greater archer. So let this young man go to him and learn from him for at least three years. He does not know what he is demanding. He is like a camel who has not yet come across a mountain. Archers don't live in the capitals, the real archers are in the mountains. I know one, and I know for certain that this man is nothing.'

Of course, the man was sent. He went. He could not believe that there could be a greater archer than him. But he found the old man and, he was! For three years he learned from him. Then one day, when he had learned everything, the thought arose in him that, 'If I kill this old man, then I will be the greatest archer.'

The old man had gone to cut wood and he was coming back carrying wood on his head.

The young man hid behind a tree, waiting to kill him. He shot an arrow. The old man took a small piece of wood and threw it. It struck the arrow and the arrow turned back and wounded the young man very deeply. The old man came, took out the arrow, and said, 'I knew this. I knew that some day or other you were going to do this. That's why I have not taught you this secret. Only one secret I have kept for myself. There is no need to kill me, I am not a competitor. But one thing I must tell you -- my Master is still alive, and I am nothing before him. You will have to go deeper into the mountains. He is a man of one hundred and twenty years, very old -- but while he is alive, nobody can pretend and nobody should even think of declaring. You must be with him for at least thirty years. And he is very old, so go fast! Find the old man!'

The young man traveled, now very desperate. It seemed to be impossible to become the greatest archer in the country. He found the old man. He was very ancient, one hundred and twenty years old, completely bent, he could not stand upright. But the young man was surprised because there was no bow, no arrow, with him. And he asked, 'Are you the old man who is the greatest archer?'

The old man said, 'Yes.'

'But where are your bow and arrows?'

The old man said, 'Those are playthings. Real archers don't need them once they have learned the art. They are just devices to learn; once you have learned, you

throw them. A great musician will throw his instrument because he has learned what music is. How to carry the instrument is foolish, childish.'

And the old man said, 'But if you are really interested in becoming an archer, then come with me.'

He took him to a precipice. A rock was there overlooking a very deep valley. The old man went ahead of the young man and stood just at the very edge. With a slight trembling he would topple down into the valley. He called the young man to come close to him. He started perspiring, he started trembling, it was so dangerous to be there.

At just two feet away he said, 'I cannot come that close.' The old man started laughing and he said, 'If you tremble so much with fear, how can you become an archer? Fear must disappear totally, with no trace left behind.'

The young man said, 'But how can it be? I am afraid of death.'

The old man said, 'Drop the idea of death. Find someone who can teach you what a deathless life is and you will become the greatest archer -- never before.'

Fear creates trembling; fear creates thinking. Thinking is a sort of inner trembling. When one becomes unwavering, the flame of consciousness remains there, undistracted, untrembling.

'THAT'S IT!' EXCLAIMED THE TEACHER. 'THE ULTIMATE SECRETS OF

SWORDSMANSHIP ARE IN BEING RELEASED FROM THE THOUGHT OF

DEATH. YOU NEED NO TECHNICAL TRAINING, YOU ARE ALREADY A MASTER.'

But he was not aware of his own mastery. He may have been hiding many other things and because of that he was hiding his treasures also. Once exposed to a Master, he became alert. And the Master said, 'There is no need for any techniques. You are already a Master.'

As I see in you, everybody is carrying the deathless within him. You may know it, you may not know it, that is not the point -- but you are carrying it within you.

It is already there, it is already the case. Just a slight understanding of it and your life can be transformed. And then there is no need of any techniques; religion is not technology Everybody is born with a secret treasure but goes on living as if he were born a beggar.

Everybody is born an emperor but goes on living like a beggar. Realize it! And the realization will come to you only if by and by you drop your fear.

So whenever fear comes to you, don't suppress it, don't repress it, don't avoid it, don't get occupied in something so that you can forget about it. No! When fear comes, watch it. Be face to face with it. Encounter it. Look deep into it. Gaze into the valley of fear. Of course you will perspire, and you will tremble, and it will be like a death, and you will have to live it many times. But by and by, the more your eyes become clear, the more your awareness becomes alert, the more your focus is there on the fear, the fear will disappear Like a mist.

And once fear disappears, sometimes, even for only a moment, suddenly you are deathless.

There is no death. Death is the greatest illusion there is, the greatest myth -- a lie. For even a single moment, if you can see that you are deathless. then no meditation is needed.

Then live that experience, then act out of that experience, and the doors of eternal life are open for you.

Much is being missed because of fear. We are too attached to the body and we go on creating more and more fear because of that attachment. The body is going to die, the body is part of death, the body is death -- but you are beyond the body. You are not the body; you are the bodiless. Remember it. Realize it. Awaken yourself to this truth -- that you are beyond the body. You are the witness, the seer. Then death disappears and fear disappears, and there arises the tremendously glorious life -- what Jesus calls 'life abundant,' or 'the kingdom of God.' The kingdom of God is within you.

Ancient Music in the Pines Chapter #6

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