Chapter title: The temper

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‌Chapter title: The temper‌

2 November 1974 am in Buddha Hall Archive

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A ZEN STUDENT CAME TO BANKEI AND SAID: 'MASTER, I HAVE AN

UNGOVERNABLE TEMPER -- HOW CAN I CURE IT?' 'SHOW ME THIS TEMPER,'

SAID BANKEI, 'IT SOUNDS FASCINATING.' 'I HAVEN'T GOT IT RIGHT NOW,'

SAID THE STUDENT, 'SO I CAN'T SHOW IT TO YOU.' 'WELL THEN,' SAID

BANKEI, 'BRING IT TO ME WHEN YOU HAVE IT.' 'BUT I CAN'T BRING IT JUST

WHEN I HAPPEN TO HAVE IT,' PROTESTED THE STUDENT. 'IT ARISES

UNEXPECTEDLY, AND I WOULD SURELY LOSE IT BEFORE I GOT IT TO YOU.'

'IN THAT CASE,' SAID BANKEI, 'IT CANNOT BE PART OF YOUR TRUE

NATURE. IF IT WERE, YOU COULD SHOW IT TO ME AT ANY TIME. WHEN

YOU WERE BORN YOU DID NOT HAVE IT, AND YOUR PARENTS DID NOT

GIVE IT TO YOU -- SO IT MUST COME INTO YOU FROM THE OUTSIDE. I SUGGEST THAT WHENEVER IT GETS INTO YOU, YOU BEAT YOURSELF

WITH A STICK UNTIL THE TEMPER CAN'T STAND IT, AND RUNS AWAY.'

THE TRUE NATURE IS your eternal nature. You cannot have it and not have it, it is not something that comes and goes -- it is you. How can it come and go? It is your BEING. It is your very foundation. It cannot BE sometimes, and NOT BE sometimes; it is always there.

So this should be the criterion for a seeker of truth, nature, tao: that we have to come to the point in our being which remains always and always -- even before you were born it was there, and even when you are dead it will be there. It is the center. The circumference changes, the center remains absolutely eternal; it is beyond time. Nothing can affect it, nothing can modify it, nothing really ever touches it; it remains beyond all reach of the outside world.

Go to the sea, and watch the sea. Millions of waves are there, but deep in its depth the sea remains calm and quiet, deep in meditation; the turmoil is just on the surface, just on the surface where the sea meets the outside world, the winds. Otherwise, in itself, it always remains the same, not even a ripple; nothing changes.

It is the same with you. Just on the surface where you meet others there is turmoil, anxiety, anger, attachment, greed, lust -- just on the surface where winds

come and touch you. And if you remain on the surface you cannot change this changing phenomenon; it will remain there.

Many people try to change it THERE, on the circumference. They fight with it, they try not to let a wave arise. And through their fight even more waves arise, because when the sea fights with the wind there will be more turmoil: now not only will the wind help it, the sea will also help -- there will be tremendous chaos on the surface.

All the moralists try to change man on the periphery. Your character is the periphery: you don't bring any character into the world, you come absolutely characterLESS, a blank sheet, and all that you call your character is written by others. Your parents, society, teachers, teachings -- all are conditionings. You come as a blank sheet, and whatsoever is written on you comes from others; so unless you become a blank sheet again you will not know what nature is, you will not know what Brahma is, you will not know what tao is.

So the problem is not how to have a strong character, the problem is not how to attain no-anger, how not to be disturbed -- no, that is not the problem. The problem is how to change your consciousness from the periphery to the center. Then suddenly you see that you have always been calm. Then you can look at the periphery from a distance, and the distance is so vast, infinite, that you can watch as if it is not happening to you. In fact, it never happens to you. Even when you are completely lost in it, it never happens to you: something in you remains undisturbed, something in you remains beyond, something in you remains a witness.

So the whole problem for the seeker is how to shift his attention from the periphery to the center; how to be merged with that which is unchanging, and not to be identified with that which is just a boundary. On the boundary others are very influential, because on the boundary change is natural. The periphery will go on changing -- even a buddha's periphery changes.

The difference between a buddha and you is not a difference of character -- remember this; it is not a difference of morality, it is not a difference in virtue or nonvirtue, it is a difference in where you are grounded.

You are grounded on the periphery, a buddha is grounded in the center. He can look at his own periphery from a distance; when you hit him he can see it as if

you have hit somebody else, because the center is SO distant. It's as if he is a watcher on the hills and something is happening in the valleys and he can see it. This is the first thing to be understood.

Second thing: it is very easy to control, it is very difficult to transform. It is VERY easy to control. You can control your anger, but what will you do? -- you will suppress it. And what happens when you suppress a certain thing? The direction of its movement changes: it was going out, and if you suppress it, it starts going in -- just its direction changes.

And for anger to go out was good, because the poison needs to be thrown out. It is bad for the anger to move within, because that means your whole body mind structure will be poisoned by it. And then if you go on doing this for a long time... as everybody has been doing, because the society teaches control, not transformation. The society says, 'Control yourself,' and through controlling all the negative things have been thrown deeper and deeper into the unconscious, and then they become a constant thing within you. Then it is not a question of your being angry sometimes and sometimes not -- you are simply angry.

Sometimes you explode, and sometimes you don't explode because there is no excuse, or you have to find an excuse. And remember, you can find an excuse anywhere!

A man, one of my friends, wanted to divorce his wife, so he went to a lawyer, an expert on marriage affairs, and he asked the lawyer, 'On what grounds can I divorce my wife?'

The lawyer looked at him and said, 'Are you married?' The man said, 'Of course, yes.'

The lawyer said, 'Marriage is enough grounds. There is no need to seek any other grounds. If you want a divorce, then marriage is the only thing that is needed, because it will be impossible to divorce a woman if you are not married. If you are married --

enough!'

And this is the situation. You ARE angry. Because you have suppressed so much anger, now there are no moments when you are not angry; at the most,

sometimes you are less angry, sometimes more. Your whole being is poisoned by suppression. You eat with anger -- and it has a different quality when a person eats without anger: it is beautiful to watch him, because he eats nonviolently. He may be eating meat, but he eats nonviolently; you may be eating just vegetables and fruits, but if anger is suppressed, you eat violently.

Just through eating, your teeth, your mouth release anger. You crush the food as if this is the enemy. And remember: whenever animals are angry, what will they do? Only two things are possible -- they don't have weapons and they don't have atom bombs, what can they do? Either with their nails or with their teeth they will do violence to you.

These are the natural weapons of the body -- nails and teeth. It is very difficult to do anything with your nails, because people will say, 'Are you an animal?' So the only thing remaining to you through which you can express your anger or violence easily is the mouth -- and that too you cannot use to bite anybody. That's why we say, 'a bite of bread,'

'a bite of food,' 'a few bites.'

You eat food violently, as if the food is the enemy. And remember, when the food is the enemy, it does not REALLY nourish you, it nourishes all that is ill in you. People with deep suppressed anger eat more; they go on gathering unnecessary fat in the body -- and have you observed that fat people are almost always smiling? Unnecessarily, even if there is no cause, fat people always go on smiling. Why? This is their face, this is the mask: they are so much afraid of their anger and their violence that they have to keep a smiling face continuously on themselves -- and they go on eating more.

Eating more IS violence, anger. And then this will move in every way, in every arena of your life: you will make love, but it will be more like violence than like love, it will have much aggression in it. Because you never observe one another making love, you don't know what is happening, and you cannot know what is happening to you because you are almost always so much in aggression.

That's why deep orgasm through love becomes impossible -- because you are afraid deep down that if you move totally without control, you may kill your wife or kill your beloved, or the wife may kill the husband or the lover. You become so afraid of your own anger!

Next time you make love, watch: you will be doing the same movements as are done when you are aggressive. Watch the face, have a mirror around so you can see what is happening to your face! All the distortions of anger and aggression will be there.

In taking food, you become angry: look at a person eating. Look at a person making love

-- the anger has gone so deep that even love, an activity totally opposite to anger, even that is poisoned; eating, an activity absolutely neutral, even that is poisoned. Then you just open the door and there is anger, you put a book on the table and there is anger, you put off the shoes and there is anger, you shake hands and there is anger -- because now you are anger personified.

Through suppression, mind becomes split. The part that you accept becomes the conscious, and the part that you deny becomes the unconscious. This division is not natural, the division happens because of repression. And into the unconscious you go on throwing all the rubbish that society rejects -- but remember, whatsoever you throw in there becomes more and more part of you: it goes into your hands, into your bones, into your blood, into your heartbeat. Now psychologists say that almost eighty percent of diseases are caused by repressed emotions: so many heart failures means so much anger has been repressed in the heart, so much hatred that the heart is poisoned.

Why? Why does man suppress so much and become unhealthy? Because the society teaches you to control, not to transform, and the way of transformation is totally different.

For one thing, it is not the way of control at all, it is just the opposite.

First thing: in controlling you repress, in transformation you express. But there is no need to express on somebody else because the 'somebody else' is just irrelevant. Next time you feel angry go and run around the house seven times, and after it sit under a tree and watch where the anger has gone. You have not repressed it, you have not controlled it, you have not thrown it on somebody else

-- because if you throw it on somebody else a chain is created, because the other is as foolish as you, as unconscious as you. If you throw it on another, and if the other is an enlightened person, there will be no trouble; he will help you to throw and release it and go through a catharsis. But the other is as ignorant as you

-- if you throw anger on him he will react. He will throw more anger on you, he is repressed as much as you are. Then there comes a chain: you throw on him, he throws on you, and you both become enemies.

Don't throw it on anybody. It is the same as when you feel like vomiting: you don't go and vomit on somebody. Anger needs a vomit. You go to the bathroom and vomit! It cleanses the whole body -- if you suppress the vomit it will be dangerous, and when you have vomited you will feel fresh, you will feel unburdened, unloaded, good, healthy.

Something was wrong in the food that you took and the body rejects it. Don't go on forcing it inside.

Anger is just a mental vomit. Something is wrong that you have taken in and your whole psychic being wants to throw it out, but there is no need to throw it out on somebody.

Because people throw it on others, society tells them to control it.

There is no need to throw anger on anybody. You can go to your bathroom, you can go on a long walk -- it means that something is inside that needs fast activity so that it is released. Just do a little jogging and you will feel it is released, or take a pillow and beat the pillow, fight with the pillow, and bite the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed. Within a five-minute catharsis you will feel unburdened, and once you know this you will never throw it on anybody, because that is absolutely foolish.

The first thing in transformation then is to express anger, but not on anybody, because if you express it on somebody you cannot express it totally. You may like to kill, but it is not possible; you may like to bite, but it is not possible. But that can be done to a pillow.

A pillow means 'already enlightened'; the pillow is enlightened, a buddha. The pillow will not react, and the pillow will not go to any court, and the pillow will not bring any enmity against you, and the pillow will not DO anything. The pillow will be happy, and the pillow will laugh at you.

The second thing to remember: be aware. In controlling, no awareness is needed; you simply do it mechanically, like a robot. The anger comes and there is a mechanism --

suddenly your whole being becomes narrow and closed. If you are watchful control may not be so easy.

Society never teaches you to be watchful, because when somebody is watchful, he is wide open. That is part of awareness -- one is open, and if you want to suppress something and you are open, it is contradictory, it may come out. The society teaches you how to close yourself in, how to cave yourself in -- don't allow even a small window for anything to go out.

But remember: when nothing goes out, nothing comes in either. When the anger cannot go out, you are closed. If you touch a beautiful rock, nothing goes in; you look at a flower, nothing goes in: your eyes are dead and closed. You kiss a person -- nothing goes in, because you are closed. You live an insensitive life.

Sensitivity grows with awareness. Through control you become dull and dead -- that is part of the mechanism of control: if you are dull and dead then nothing will affect you, as if the body has become a citadel, a defense. Nothing will affect you, neither insult nor love.

But this control is at a very great cost, an unnecessary cost; then it becomes the whole effort in life: how to control yourself -- and then die! The whole effort of control takes all your energy, and then you simply die. And the life becomes a dull and dead thing; you somehow carry it on.

The society teaches you control and condemnation, because a child will control only when he feels something is condemned. Anger is bad; sex is bad; everything that has to be controlled has to be made to look like a sin to the child, to look like evil.

Mulla Nasruddin's son was growing up. He was ten years of age and so Mulla thought: Now, this is the time. He is old enough and the secrets of life must be revealed to him. So he called him into his study and gave him the lowdown on sex among birds and bees.

And then in the end he told him, 'When you feel your younger brother is old enough, you tell the whole thing to him also.'

Just a few minutes after, when he was passing by the rooms of the kids, he heard the older one, the ten-year-old one, already at work. He was telling the younger: 'Look, you know what people do, that stuff people do when they want to get a

child, a baby? Well, Dad says birds and bees do the same darn thing.'

A deep condemnation enters about all that is alive. And sex is the most alive thing -- has to be! It is the source. Anger is also a most alive thing, because it is a protective force. If a child cannot be angry at all, he will not be able to survive. You have to be angry in certain moments. The child has to show his own being, the child has to stand in certain moments upon his own ground; otherwise he will have no backbone.

Anger is beautiful; sex is beautiful. But beautiful things can go ugly. That depends on you. If you condemn them, they become ugly; if you transform them, they become divine. Anger transformed becomes compassion -- because the energy is the same. A buddha is compassionate: from where does his compassion come? This is the same energy that was moving in anger; now it is not moving in anger, the same energy is transformed into compassion. From where does love come? A Buddha is loving; a Jesus is love. The same energy that moves into sex becomes love.

So remember, if you condemn a natural phenomenon it becomes poisonous, it destroys you, it becomes destructive and suicidal. If you transform it, it becomes divine, it becomes a God-force, it becomes an elixir; you attain through it to immortality, to a deathless being. But transformation is needed.

In transformation you never control, you simply become more aware. Anger is happening: you have to be aware that anger is happening -- watch it! It is a beautiful phenomenon -- energy moving within you, becoming hot!

It is just like electricity in the clouds. People were always afraid of electricity; they thought in olden days, when they were ignorant, that this electricity was the god being angry, being threatening, trying to punish -- creating fear so that people would become worshippers, so that people would feel that the god was there and he would punish them.

But now we have domesticated that god. Now that god runs through your fan, through your air conditioner, through the fridge: whatsoever you need, that god serves. That god has become a domestic force, it is no longer angry and no longer threatening. Through science an outer force has been transformed into a friend.

The same happens through religion for inner forces.

Anger is just like electricity in your body: you don't know what to do with it. Either you kill somebody else or you kill yourself. The society says if you kill yourself it is okay, it is your concern, but don't kill anybody else -- and as far as society goes that is okay. So either you become aggressive or you become repressive.

Religion says both are wrong. The basic thing that is needed is to become aware and to know the secret of this energy, anger, this inner electricity. It is electricity because you become hot; when you are angry your temperature goes hot, and you cannot understand the coolness of a buddha, because when anger is transformed into compassion everything is cool. A deep coolness happens. Buddha is never HOT; he is always cool, centered, because he now knows how to use the inner electricity. Electricity is hot -- it becomes the source of air conditioning. Anger is hot -- it becomes the source of compassion.

Compassion is an inner air conditioning. Suddenly everything is cool and beautiful, and nothing can disturb you, and the whole existence is transformed into a friend. Now there are no more enemies... because when you look through the eyes of anger, somebody becomes an enemy; when you look through the eyes of compassion, everybody is a friend, a neighbor. When you love, everywhere is God; when you hate, everywhere is the devil. It is your standpoint that is projected onto reality.

Awareness is needed, not condemnation -- and through awareness transformation happens spontaneously. If you become aware of your anger, understanding penetrates.

Just watching, with no judgment, not saying good, not saying bad, just watching in your inner sky. There is lightning, anger, you feel hot, the whole nervous system shaking and quaking, and you feel a tremor all over the body -- a beautiful moment, because when energy functions you can watch it easily; when it is not functioning you cannot watch.

Close your eyes and meditate on it. Don't fight, just look at what is happening -- the whole sky filled with electricity, so much lightning, so much beauty -- just lie down on the ground and look at the sky and watch. Then do the same inside.

Clouds are there, because without clouds there can be no lightning -- DARK clouds are there, thoughts. Somebody has insulted you, somebody has laughed at

you, somebody has said this or that... many clouds, dark clouds in the inner sky and much lightning. Watch!

It is a beautiful scene -- terrible also, because you don't understand. It is mysterious, and if mystery is not understood it becomes terrible, you are afraid of it. And whenever a mystery is understood, it becomes a grace, a gift, because now you have the keys -- and with keys you are the master.

You don't control it, you simply become a master when you are aware. And the more you become aware, the more inwards you penetrate, because awareness is a going-inwards, it always goes inwards: more aware, more in; totally aware, perfectly in; less aware, more out; unconscious -- you are completely out, out of your house wandering around.

Unconsciousness is a wandering outside; consciousness is a deepening of the inside.

So look! -- and when anger is not, it will be difficult to look: what to look at? The sky is so vacant, and you are not yet capable of looking at emptiness. When anger is there, look, watch, and soon you will see a change. The moment the watcher comes in, the anger has already started becoming cool, the heat is lost. Then you can understand that the heat is given by you; your identification with it makes it hot, and the moment you feel it is not hot, the fear is gone, and you feel unidentified with it, different, a distance. It is there, lightning around you, but you are not it. A hill starts rising upwards. You become a watcher: down in the valley, much lightning... distance grows more and more... and a moment comes when suddenly you are not joined to it at all. The identity is broken, and the moment the identity breaks, IMMEDIATELY the whole hot process becomes a cool process -- anger becomes compassion.

Sex is a hot process, love is not. But all over the world people always talk about warm love. Love is not warm; love is absolutely cool, but not cold -- it is not cold because it is not dead. It is cool, just like a cool breeze. But it is not hot, not warm. Because of the identification with sex, the conception has come to the mind that love should be warm.

Sex IS hot. It is electricity, and you are identified with it. The more love, the more coolness -- you may even feel cool love as cold; that is your misunderstanding, because you feel love has to be hot. It cannot be. The SAME

energy, when not identified with, becomes cool. Compassion is cool, and if your compassion is still hot, understand it is not compassion.

There are people who are too hot, and they think they have much compassion. They want to transform the society, they want to change the structure, they want to do this and that, they want to bring a utopia into the world: the revolutionaries, the communists, the utopians -- and they are very hot.

And they think they have compassion -- no, they have only anger. The object has changed. Now their anger has a new object, a very impersonal object -- the society, the structure of the society, the state, the situation. They are very hot people. Lenin, or Stalin, or Trotsky -- they are hot people but they are not against anybody in particular, they are against a structure. Gandhi is a hot person -- against the British Empire. The object is impersonal, that's why you cannot feel that he is angry -- but he IS angry. He wants to change something in the outside world, and wants to change it so immediately that he is impatient, fighting. The fighting may choose nonviolence as the means, but the fighting IS violence. Fight as such is violence. You can choose nonviolent means to fight --

women have always chosen them. Gandhi did nothing else, he simply used a feminine trick.

If a husband wants to fight, he will beat his wife; and if the wife wants to fight, she will beat herself. This is as old as woman -- and woman is older than man! She will start beating herself; that is her way to fight. She is violent, violent against herself. And remember, beating a woman you will feel guilty, and sooner or later you will have to come down and make a compromise. But beating herself, she never feels guilty. So either you beat a woman and you feel guilty, or she beats herself and then also you feel guilty --

that you created the situation in which she is beating herself. In both cases she wins.

The British Empire was defeated because it was a male aggressive force, and the British Empire could not understand this feminine fight of Gandhi's: he will fast unto death --

and then the whole British mind will feel guilty. Now you cannot kill this man, because he is not fighting in any way with you, he is simply purifying his own soul -- the old feminine trick, but it worked. There was only one way to defeat

Gandhi, and that was impossible. It was for Churchill to go on a fast unto death, and that was impossible.

Either you are hot against someone in particular or just hot against some structure in general, but the heat remains.

A Lenin is not compassion, cannot be. Buddha is compassion -- not fighting at all with anything, simply being and allowing things to be as they are; they move on their own.

Societies change on their own, there is no need to change them; they change as trees change in season. Societies change on their own -- old societies die on their own, there is no need to destroy them! And new societies are born just like new children, new babies, on their own. There is no need to force an abortion, it goes on automatically by itself.

Things move and change. And this is the paradox: that they go on moving and changing and still in a sense they remain the same -- because there will be people who are poor, and there will be people who are rich; there will be people who are helpless, powerless, and there will be people who have power over them. Classes cannot disappear -- that is not in the nature of things. Human society can never become classless.

Classes can change. Now in Russia, there are not the poor and the rich but the governed and the governors -- they are there now. Now a new class division has arisen: the bureaucrats and the ordinary people, the managers and the managed -- the same, it makes no difference. If now Tamerlane was born in Soviet Russia, he would become the prime minister. If Ford was born in Soviet Russia, he would become the general secretary of the communist party, he would manage from there.

Situations go on changing, but in a subtle sense they remain the same. The managers, the managed; the governors, the governed; the rich, the poor -- they remain. You cannot change it, because society exists through contradiction. A real man of compassion will be cool; he cannot be a revolutionary really, because revolution needs a very hot mind and heart and body.

No control, no expression on others, more awareness -- and then consciousness shifts from the periphery to the center.

Now try to understand this beautiful anecdote.

A ZEN STUDENT CAME TO BANKEI AND SAID: 'MASTER, I HAVE AN UNGOVERNABLE TEMPER -- HOW CAN I CURE IT?'

He has accepted one thing, that he has an ungovernable temper; now he wants to cure it.

Whenever there is a disease, first try to find whether there is really disease or a misunderstanding, because if there is a real disease then it can be cured, but if it is not a real disease, just a misunderstanding, then no medicine will help. Rather, on the contrary, every medicine that is given to you will be harmful. So first be perfectly clear about a disease, whether it is there or not, or whether you are simply imagining it, or whether you are simply thinking that it is there. It may not be there at all; it may be simply a misunderstanding. And the way man is confused, many of his diseases don't exist at all --

he simply believes they are there.

You also are in the same boat, so try to understand this story very deeply; it may be helpful to you.

The student said,

'MASTER, I HAVE AN UNGOVERNABLE TEMPER -- HOW CAN I CURE IT?'

The disease is accepted, he does not doubt it; he is asking for the cure. Never ask for the cure. First try to find out whether the disease exists or not. First move into the disease and diagnose it, decipher it, scrutinize it; move into the disease first before you ask for a cure.

Don't accept any disease just on the surface, because the surface is where others meet you, and the surface is where others reflect in you, and the surface is where others color you. It may not be a disease at all, it may be just the reflection of others.

It is just like a silent lake, and you stand on the bank of the lake with your orange robe, and the water near you looks orange, reflects you. The lake may

think that it has become orange. How to get rid of it? Where to find the cure? Whom to ask?

Don't go to the experts immediately. First try to find out whether it is really a disease or just a reflection. Just being alert will do much: many of your diseases will simply disappear without any cure, no medicine is needed.

'SHOW ME THIS TEMPER,' SAID BANKEI, 'IT SOUNDS FASCINATING.'

A man like Bankei immediately starts working on the disease, not on the cure. He is not a psychoanalyst; a psychoanalyst starts working for the cure -- and that is the difference.

Now new trends in psychiatry are coming up which start working on the disease, not on the cure. New trends are developing: they are nearer to reality, and nearer to zen, and nearer to religion. Within this century psychiatry will take on a more religious color, and then it will not be just a therapy, it will REALLY become a healing force -- because therapy thinks of a cure, and a healing force brings your consciousness to the disease.

Out of a hundred diseases, ninety-nine will disappear simply by bringing your consciousness to them. They are false diseases; they exist because you are standing with your back towards them. Face them, and they go, and they disappear. That is the meaning of encounter -- and encounter groups can be helpful, because the whole message is how to encounter things as they are. Don't think of cure, don't think of medicine, don't think of what to do; the real thing is, first, to know what is there.

Mind has deceived you in so many ways that a disease appears on the surface but there is no disease deep down; or a disease appears on the surface, but you move within and you find there are other diseases, and that was just a trick to deceive you, that was not the real disease.

A man came to me and he said, 'My mind is very much disturbed. I am continuously tense, anxiety is there, I cannot sleep. So give me some technique of meditation -- how to be silent and at peace.'

I asked him, 'What is really the problem? Do you really want to be at peace with yourself?'

He said, 'Yes, I am a seeker, and I have been to Sri Aurobindo's ashram, and I have been to Sri Raman's ashram, and I have been everywhere, and nothing helps.'

So I asked him, 'Have you ever thought about it -- that when nothing helps maybe the disease is false? Or that you have labeled it falsely? Or that the container contains something else which is not written on it? You easily accept that Sri Aurobindo failed, Sri Raman failed, and you have moved all around '

And he was feeling very victorious that everybody had failed, and nobody had been able to help, that everybody was bogus. And then I told him, 'Sooner or later you will go and say the same about me also, because I don't see that you are a spiritual seeker, I don't see that you are really interested in being at peace with yourself. Just tell me, what is your anxiety? What is your tension? Just go on telling me what thoughts come continuously to you, and why you go on thinking about them.'

He said, 'Not many, only one thought: I had a son, he is still alive -- but no more a son to me. I have thrown him out. I am a rich man, and he had fallen in love with a girl not of my caste, and economically also below my status, uneducated. And I told the boy, "If you want to marry this girl then never come back to this house." And he never came back.'And now I am getting old. The boy lives in poverty with the girl, and I continuously think about the boy, and THIS is my trouble. You give me some technique of meditation.'

I said: 'How will this technique of meditation help? -- because the technique of meditation will not bring the boy home. And this is such a simple thing, there is no need to go to Aurobindo, there is no need to go to Sri Raman or come to me. A sword is not needed for your problem, a needle will do. You are looking for swords, and then swords prove failures because you need only a needle. This is not a spiritual problem, just ego.

Why shouldn't one fall in love with a girl who is economically below one's status? Is love something economical? Something to think of in terms of finance, economics, money, wealth, status?'

I told him one story: One marriage agent came to a young man and told him, 'I have got a very beautiful girl, just exactly fit for you.'

The boy said, 'Don't bother me. I am not interested.'

The marriage agent said, 'I know, but don't be worried, I have another girl who will bring five thousand rupees in dowry.'

The young man said, 'Stop talking nonsense. I am not interested in money either! You simply go.'

The man said, 'I know. You don't bother! If five thousand is not enough, I have another girl who will bring twenty-five thousand rupees in dowry.'

The boy said, 'You simply get out of my room, because if ever I get married, it is for me to think about, it is not a question for an agent to settle. You simply get out of it! Don't make me angry!'

The agent said, 'Okay, now I understand. You are not interested in beauty, you are not interested in money. I have a girl who comes from a family of long tradition, a very famous family -- everybody knows about it, and four prime ministers have come from that family in the past. So you are interested in family, right?'

Now by this time the boy was very very angry and he wanted to physically throw this man out. And when by physically forcing him he was just throwing him out of the door, he said, 'If I ever get married it will be for love and nothing else.'

The agent said, 'Then why in the first place didn't you tell me? I have those kinds of girls too.'

I told this man this story.

Love is not manageable, it is simply something that happens, and the moment you try to manage it everything misfires. So I told that man, 'Just go and ask your son's forgiveness

-- that's what is needed. No meditation technique, no Aurobindo, no Raman, no Osho, nobody can help you. Simply go to your boy and ask his forgiveness! -- that's what is needed. Accept and welcome him back. It is just the ego that is troubling you. And if EGO is troubling you then the disease is different. You seek meditation, and you think through meditation silence will be possible? No.'

Meditation can be a help only to that person who has come to a right

understanding with his inner diseases, when he has come to understand which disease is false, which disease is wrongly identified, and which disease is not there at all -- the container is empty.

When one has come to an understanding, a deep understanding with all one's diseases, then ninety-nine percent of the diseases disappear -- because you can do something and they disappear. Then only one thing remains, and that one thing is spiritual search.… A deep anguish, unrelated to this world, not related with anything in this world: son, father, money, prestige, power -- nothing. It is not related to them, it is simply existential. Deep down, if you can pinpoint it, it is HOW TO KNOW ONESELF. Who am I? Then this anguish becomes the search. Then meditation can help -- never before it. Before it, other things are needed: needles will do, why carry a sword unnecessarily? And where needles will do, swords will be failures. This is what is happening to millions of people all around the world.

This Bankei is a master. He immediately got to the point, to the business. 'SHOW ME THIS TEMPER,' said he,'IT SOUNDS FASCINATING.'

It sounds fascinating, really. Why does this Bankei say it sounds fascinating? -- because the whole thing is false. This boy, this student has never looked within. He is seeking for a method and he has not diagnosed what his disease is.

'I HAVEN'T GOT IT RIGHT NOW,' SAID THE STUDENT, 'SO I CAN'T SHOW IT

TO YOU.'

You cannot manage to bring about anger, can you? If I tell you: 'Be angry right now,'

what will you do? Even if you act, even if you manage somehow to pretend, it will not be anger, because deep down you will remain cool and acting. It happens! What does it mean, 'it happens'? It means it happens only when you are unconscious. If you TRY to bring it, you are conscious. It cannot happen when you are conscious, it can happen only when you are unconscious. Unconsciousness is a MUST -- without it anger cannot happen. But still, the boy said:

'I HAVEN'T GOT IT RIGHT NOW, SO I CAN'T SHOW IT TO YOU.' 'WELL THEN,'

SAID BANKEI, 'BRING IT TO ME WHEN YOU HAVE IT.' 'BUT I CAN'T BRING IT

JUST WHEN I HAPPEN TO HAVE IT,' PROTESTED THE STUDENT. 'IT ARISES

UNEXPECTEDLY, AND I WOULD SURELY LOSE IT BEFORE I GOT IT TO YOU.'

Now, Bankei has put him on the right path. He has already moved along, he is already nearing the goal, because he is now becoming aware of things of which he was never aware. The first thing he becomes aware of is that he cannot produce it right now. It cannot be produced; it happens when it happens -- it is an unconscious force, you cannot bring it about consciously. That means if he goes further, the next step will be that he remains conscious, and if you remain conscious it cannot happen.

Even while anger is happening, if you suddenly become conscious it drops. Try it. Just in the middle, when you are feeling very hot and would like to commit murder, suddenly become aware, and you will feel something has changed: a gear inside -- you can feel the click. Something has changed, now it is no more the same thing. Your inner being has relaxed. It may take time for your outer layer to relax, but the inner being has already relaxed. The cooperation is broken; now you are not identified.

Gurdjieff used to play a very beautiful trick on his disciples. You are sitting here, and he will create a situation; he will tell you, 'Somebody, A, is coming, and when he comes I will behave rudely with him, very rudely -- and you all have to help me.'

Then A comes and Gurdjieff laughs and he says, 'You are looking a perfect fool!'

-- and everybody looks at the man and shows him that everybody agrees. Then Gurdjieff will say nasty things about this man, and everybody nods and feels in agreement. The man gets angrier and angrier, and Gurdjieff will go on and on, and everybody nods as if there is complete agreement, and the man becomes hotter and hotter -- and then he explodes.

And when he explodes, suddenly Gurdjieff says 'Stop and look!'

Something inside relaxes. Immediately the man understands he has been moved into a situation, he has become angry -- and the moment he realizes that this is a situation, that Gurdjieff has played a trick, the gear changes: he becomes alert, aware. The body will take a little time to cool down, but deep at the center, there everything is cool and he can look at himself now.

The student is already on the path -- Bankei has put him immediately on the path. The first thing he has become aware of is: 'I cannot show it to you right now, because it is not there.'

'WELL THEN, BRING IT TO ME WHEN YOU HAVE IT.'

A second step has been taken.

'BUT I CAN'T BRING IT JUST WHEN I HAPPEN TO HAVE IT,' PROTESTED THE

STUDENT. 'IT ARISES UNEXPECTEDLY.'

'I don't know when it will arise. I may be very far away, you may not be available, and, moreover, even if I bring it to you, by the time I reach you it will not be there.' He has already arrived at a deep understanding.

You cannot bring anger to me, can you? ... Because in the very effort to bring it, you will become aware. If you are aware, the grip is lost; it starts subsiding. By the time you have reached me it will be no more.

And it was easier to reach Bankei; it is difficult to reach me, you will have to pass through Mukta. By the time the appointment is given and by the time you reach me, it will not be there. Hence the appointment -- because otherwise you will bring problems unnecessarily. They drop automatically by themselves -- and if they persist, then they are WORTH bringing to me.

By the time you come to me you will have already passed over it; and if you understand, that means that things that come and go are not worth paying any attention to -- they come and go. You always remain, they come and go. YOU are the thing to be more attentive about, not things that come and go -- they are like seasons, climate changes: in the morning it was different, in the evening it is

again different. It changes. Find out that which doesn't change.

The student has already reached a beautiful understanding. He says:

'UNEXPECTEDLY IT ARISES, AND I WOULD SURELY LOSE IT BEFORE I GOT

IT TO YOU.' 'IN THAT CASE,' SAID BANKEI, 'IT CANNOT BE PART OF YOUR

TRUE NATURE.'

... Because true nature is always there. It never arises and never sets, it is always there.

Anger arises, goes; hate arises, goes; your so-called love arises, goes. Your nature is always there.

So don't be too bothered and concerned with all that comes and goes; otherwise you can remain concerned with it for years and years, and lives and lives, and you will never come to the point.

That's why Freudian psychoanalysis never serves much purpose. The patient lies down on the couch for years together -- three years, four years, five years, he goes on talking, talking about things that come and go. Remember, the whole Freudian analysis is concerned with things that come and go: what happened in your childhood, what happened in your youth, what happened in your sex life, what happened in your relations with others -- it goes on and on! It is concerned with what happened, not to whom it happened -- and that is the difference between Bankei and Freud.

If you are concerned with what happened then... so much has happened. Even in twenty-four hours so much happens that if you relate it, it will take years -- and you go on relating. It is just like talking about the weather for your whole life, how it has been: sometimes very hot, sometimes very cloudy, sometimes rainy, sometimes this and that.

But what is the point of it all?

And what happens? How does the psychoanalysis help a patient? It helps a little.

It simply gives time, that's all. For two years you are continuously talking about things that happened. These two years, or one year, or even more, just give you time; the wound heals automatically, you become readjusted again. Of course, a certain understanding also arises, the understanding that arises when you go backwards, and come forwards, move like a shuttle in your memory. A certain understanding arises because you have to watch your memories. Because of this watching... but that is not the main thing.

Freud is not concerned with your witnessing. He thinks that just by relating, telling your past, bringing it out through words, verbalization, something deep is changing. Nothing deep is changing. A little garbage is thrown out. Nobody listened to you, and Freud and his psychoanalysts are listening to you so attentively. Of course, you have to pay for it.

They are professional listeners. They help in a way, because you would like to talk to someone intimately -- even that helps. That's why people talk about their miseries; they feel a little relaxed, somebody has heard patiently, with compassion. But now nobody listens, nobody has that much time.

Bertrand Russell has written a small story. In the coming century, the twenty- first century, there will be a great profession of professional listeners. In every neighborhood, every four or five houses there will be a house with a sign: Professional Listener -- that is what psychoanalysis is -- because nobody will have time, everybody will be in such a hurry. The wife will not be able to talk to the husband, the husband will not be able to talk to the wife, people will make love through phone calls, or will see each other on the television screen. That is going to happen, because what is the use of going to meet a friend when you can see him on the television screen, he can see you? Phones will have screens also so that you can see your friend talking to you, he can see you talking, so what is the point? ... Because what will you do just sitting in front of each other in a room? It is happening already: the distance is covered by the telephone and the television.

Contact will be lost, so professional listeners will be needed.

You go to psychoanalysts and they listen like a friend. Of course you have to pay

-- and psychoanalysis is the most costly thing in the world now, only very rich people can afford it. People boast about it: 'I have been in psychoanalysis for five years. How many years have you been in it?' Poor people cannot afford it.

But the Eastern methods of meditation have a different attitude: they are not concerned with what happened to you, they are concerned with to whom it happened. Find out: to whom?

Lying down on a Freudian couch you are concerned with the objects of the mind. Sitting in a zen monastery you are concerned with to whom it happened -- not the objects but the subject.

'IN THAT CASE,' SAID BANKEI, 'IT CANNOT BE PART OF YOUR TRUE

NATURE. IF IT WERE,YOU COULD SHOW IT TO ME AT ANY TIME. WHEN

YOU WERE BORN YOU DID NOT HAVE IT, AND YOUR PARENTS DID NOT

GIVE IT TO YOU -- SO IT MUST COME INTO YOU FROM THE OUTSIDE. I SUGGEST THAT WHENEVER IT GETS INTO YOU, YOU BEAT YOURSELF

WITH A STICK UNTIL THE TEMPER CAN'T STAND IT, AND RUNS AWAY.'

He is simply joking -- don't start doing it, don't take the stick literally.

In zen, awareness is called the stick by which you beat yourself. There is no other way to beat yourself, because if you take an ordinary stick the body will be beaten, not you. You can kill the body, but not YOU. To beat with a stick means: when you feel angry, continuously be aware; bring awareness to it, become alert, conscious, and beat with the stick of awareness continuously inside, UNTIL THE TEMPER CAN'T STAND IT AND

RUNS AWAY. The only thing that the temper CAN'T stand is awareness. Just beating your body won't do. That's what people have been doing -- beating others' bodies or their own. That's not Bankei's meaning -- he is joking, and he is indicating a symbolic term zen people use for awareness: the stick one has to beat oneself with.

In the zen tradition, when a master dies he gives his stick, the staff, to his chief disciple, to him whom he chooses as his heir, he who is going to replace him. He

gives him the stick, the staff, that he carried his whole life. The meaning is that he to whom this stick is given has attained to the inner stick -- to awareness. To receive the stick of the master is the greatest gift, because he accepts through it, agrees, recognizes, that now your inner stick is born; you have become aware of what happens to you, to WHOM it happens. The distinction is there. The gap has come in, the space is there; now the periphery and your center are not identified.

Said Bankei, 'I SUGGEST THAT WHENEVER IT GETS INTO YOU, this

anger, it must be coming from outside. You didn't have it when you were born; nobody, not your parents or anybody, presented it to you as a gift, so from where is it coming? It must be coming from outside, the periphery must be touching other peripheries. From there, you must be getting the ripples and the waves. So be conscious' -- because the moment you are conscious you are suddenly thrown to the center.

Be unconscious and you live on the periphery. Be conscious and you are thrown to the center.

And from the center you can see what is happening on the periphery. Then if two people touch on the periphery, then two people will create trouble on the periphery, but it will not be any trouble for you. You can laugh, you can enjoy it, you can say, 'It sounds fascinating.'

It happened: Buddha was passing near a village; a few people came and they abused him very badly, said nasty things, used vulgar words -- and he just stood there. They got a little puzzled, because he was not reacting. Then somebody from the crowd asked, 'Why are you silent? Answer what we are saying!'

Buddha said, 'You came a little late. You should have come ten years ago, because then I would have reacted. But now I am not there where you are doing these things to me; a distance has arisen. Now I have moved to the center where you cannot touch me. You came a little late. I am sorry for you, but I enjoy it. Now I am in a hurry, because in the other village where I am going, people will be waiting for me. If you are not yet finished, then I will pass back by the same route. You can come again. IT SOUNDS

FASCINATING.'

They were puzzled. What to do with such a man? Another from the crowd asked,

'Really, are you not going to say anything?'

Buddha said, 'In the village I have come from just now, people came with many sweets to present to me, but I take things only when I am hungry, and I was not hungry, so I gave them back their sweets. I ask you, what will they do?'

So the man said, 'Of course, they will go in the village and give those sweets as PRASAD

to people.'

So Buddha started laughing and he said, 'You are really in trouble, you are in a mess --

what will you do? You brought these vulgar words to me, and I say I am not hungry -- so now take them back! And I feel very sorry for your village, because people will get such vulgar things, vulgar words in their prasad.'

When you are at the center, IT SOUNDS FASCINATING -- you can enjoy it. When you are cool you can enjoy the whole world. When you are hot you cannot enjoy it, because you get so much into it; you are lost, you get identified. You become so messed up in it, how can you enjoy it?

This may sound paradoxical, but I tell you: only a buddha enjoys this world. Then everything sounds fascinating.

And The Flowers Showered Chapter #4

Chapter title: What is the way?

3 November 1974 am in Buddha Hall Archive

code: 7411030

ShortTitle:

FLOWRS04

Audio:

Yes Video: No Length:

95

mins

A MASTER WHO LIVED AS A HERMIT ON A MOUNTAIN WAS ASKED BY A MONK: 'WHAT IS THE WAY?' 'WHAT A FINE MOUNTAIN THIS IS,' THE

MASTER SAID IN REPLY.'I AM NOT ASKING YOU ABOUT THE MOUNTAIN,'

SAID THE MONK, 'BUT THE WAY.'

THE MASTER REPLIED: 'SO LONG AS YOU CANNOT GO BEYOND THE MOUNTAIN, MY SON, YOU CANNOT REACH THE WAY.'

THE WAY IS EASY -- but you are the mountain and beyond lies the Way. Crossing yourself is very difficult. Once you are on the Way there is no problem, but the Way is very far from you.

And you are such a mass of contradictions! One fragment of you goes to the east, another goes to the west -- you are not moving in one direction. You cannot as you are, because to move in one direction you need an inner unity, a crystallized being. As you are you are a crowd, with many selves, with no unity.

At the most, if you make some arrangement, as everybody has to make -- if you control yourself, at the most you can become an assembly, not a crowd; and then too you will be the Indian assembly, not the British: at the most the majority of your fragments can move in one direction, but the minority will always be there,

going somewhere else.

So even a very controlled man, disciplined, a man of character, of thinking, that man too never reaches the Way. He may be able to adjust to the society, but he is also unable to reach the Way from where the door towards the divine opens.

You are really a mountain.

The first thing to be understood is that the crowd must go. The polypsychic existence must become unipsychic; you must be one. That means you must be thoughtless, because thoughts are a crowd; they divide you, and every thought pulls you apart. They create chaos within you and they are always contradictory. Even when you decide, the decision is always against some part within you, it is never total.

I have heard it happened: Mulla Nasruddin was very ill -- tense, psychiatrically ill. And the illness was that he became, by and by, absolutely unable to make any decision -- not big decisions at that, but small ones also: whether to take a bath or not, whether to wear this tie or that, whether to take a taxi to the office or drive the car -- not big ones, small decisions, but he became unable to make them so he was put in a psychiatric hospital.

Six months of treatment and everything settled, and the doctors felt that now he was okay. They said one day, 'Now, Nasruddin, you are absolutely okay. You can go back in the world, take your job, start working and functioning. We are completely satisfied that now there is nothing wrong.' But seeing a slight indecision on Nasruddin's part the doctor said, 'Don't you feel that now you are ready to go into the world and start working and functioning?'

Nasruddin said, 'Yes and no.'

But this is the situation. Whether you are ill or healthy is not the question, the difference is only of degree -- but this remains the problem deep inside: yes and no, both.

You love a person? -- yes, and deep down is hidden the no. Sooner or later when you get bored and fed up with the yes, the no will come up and you will hate the person, the same person you loved. You like something but the dislike is hidden; sooner or later you will dislike this same thing.

You were mad when you loved, when you liked; and you will be mad when you hate and dislike. As you are -- yes and no, both -- how can you move towards the divine? The divine needs total commitment, nothing less will do. But how to commit totally? -- you are not a total being! This is the mountain.

The path is easy, but you are not on the path; and all the techniques, all the methods in the world, and all the masters, to be exact, they don't give you the path -- the path already exists. Their methods and techniques simply lead you towards the path; THEY are not paths. They create small pathways on the mountain so you can go beyond -- because the path is THERE; there is no need to create a path, it already exists. But you are lost in a forest. You have to be brought to the path.

So the first thing is: the more divided you are, the farther away from the Way you will be; the more undivided, the nearer the path.

Thoughts divide because they always carry the opposite within them: love carries hate, friendship carries enmity, liking carries disliking. Sosan is right when he says: 'A slight distinction between like and dislike, a slight movement in your being of like and dislike, and heaven and earth are set apart.' No distinction

-- and you have reached, because with no distinction you are one.

So the first thing to remember is how to drop thoughts and become thoughtless --

thoughtless but alert, because in deep sleep also you become thoughtless, and that won't do. It is good for the body, that is why after a deep sleep your body feels rejuvenated. But the mind remains tired even in the morning, because the mind continues its activity. The body relaxes, though it too cannot relax totally because of the mind; but still, it relaxes.

So in the morning the body is okay, at least workably okay -- but the mind feels tired, even in the morning. You go to bed tired, you get up in the morning more tired because the mind was continuously working, dreaming, thinking, planning, desiring; the mind was continuously working.

In deep sleep for a few moments when you are absolutely unconscious you become one.

This same oneness is needed with a conscious and alert mind. As you are in deep sleep --

no thought, no distinction of good and bad, heaven and hell, God and the devil, no distinction of any sort, you simply ARE, but unconscious -- this has to be attained while you are alert and conscious. Samadhi, the final, the ultimate, the utter meditation, is nothing but deep sleep with full consciousness.

Deep sleep you attain, so the only thing to be attained is more and more consciousness. If you can add more consciousness to your deep sleep you will become enlightened. The mountain is transcended and the path opens -- one thing.

Second thing: you carry the past within you -- that creates multiplicity. You were a child, the child is still hidden in you, and sometimes you can still feel the child kicking; in certain moments you regress and become the child again. You were once young, now you are old; that young man is hidden there, and sometimes even an old man starts being as foolish as a young man.

You carry the whole past, every moment of it, and you have been many things! From the womb up to now you have been millions of persons, and they are all carried within you, layer by layer. You have grown, but the past has not disappeared; it may be hidden, but it is there -- and it is not only in the mind, it is even in the body. If, when you were a small child and you were angry and someone said, 'Stop! Don't be angry,' and you stopped, that anger is still being carried by your hand. It has to be so because energy is indestructible, and unless you relax that hand it will persist, unless you do something consciously to complete the circle of that energy which became anger in a certain moment fifty years back or sixty years back, you will carry it within you, and it will color all your actions.

You can touch somebody, but the touch won't be pure: the whole past is carried by the hand; all repressed anger, all repressed hatred is there. Even if in love you touch a person your touch is not pure, love cannot be -- because where will that anger go which is carried by the hand?

Wilhelm Reich worked very much on this somatic repression. The body carries the past, the mind carries the past; because of this loaded state you cannot be here and now. You have to come to terms with your past.

So meditation is not only a question of doing something here and now; before that is possible you have to come to terms with your past -- you have to dissolve

all hangovers, and there are millions of them.

Even when one becomes old he is also a child, a young man, and all that he has ever been is there, because you don't know how to die every moment.

That is the whole art of life -- to die moment to moment so that there is no hangover.

A relationship has finished -- you don't carry it, you simply die to it! What can you do?

Something was happening and now it is not happening. You accept it and you die to it --

you simply DROP IT with full awareness, and then you are renewed in a new moment.

Now you are not carrying the past.

You are a child no more, but watch yourself and you will feel the child is there -- and that child creates trouble! If you were really a child there would be no trouble, but you are young or old.…

I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin was hospitalized. He was eighty -- and then came his birthday, and he was waiting for his three sons to bring him some present. They came of course, but they had not brought anything -- because he was eighty years old! A child feels happy with a present, but an old man? Eighty years old! His eldest son was sixty. So they didn't think about it at all, but when they came and Mulla looked and they were empty-handed, he felt angry, frustrated, and he said, 'What! Have you forgotten your old father, your poor old father's birthday? It is my birthday!'

The child... at that moment you could have looked into his eyes, and this eighty- year-old man was not there, just a child waiting for some toys.

One son said, 'Forgive us, we forgot completely.'

Mulla Nasruddin said, 'I reckon I will forgive you, because it seems this forgetfulness runs in our family. Really, I forgot to marry your mother.' He was really angry.

So they all three shrieked in unison, and they said, 'What! Do you mean we are...?'

He said, 'Yes! -- and damned cheap ones at that!'

The child continues somewhere in you: when you weep you can find him, when you laugh you can find him, when somebody gives you a present you can find him, when somebody forgets to, you can find him, when somebody appreciates you, you can find him; when somebody condemns you, you can find him -- it is very difficult to be really mature. One can never be mature unless the child simply dies within you, is no longer a part of you -- otherwise it will go on influencing your actions, your relationships.

And this is not only true for the child, every moment of the past is there and influencing your present -- your present is so loaded. And millions of voices from the body and the mind go on manipulating you; how can you reach the path?

You are a mountain. This mountain has to be dissolved. What to do? It can be dissolved consciously -- one thing is to live your past again, consciously.

This is the mechanism of consciousness: whenever you live something consciously it never becomes a loaded thing on you; try to understand this. It never becomes a burden on you if you live it consciously.

If you go to the market to purchase something and you move consciously, walk consciously, purchase the thing consciously, with full remembrance, mindfully come back home, this will never be a part of your memory. I don't mean that you will forget it -

- it will not be a load. If you want to remember it, you can remember it, but it will not be constantly forcing your attention towards it, it will not be a loaded thing.

Whatsoever you do consciously is lived through and is no longer a hangover. Whatever you live unconsciously becomes a hangover, because you never live it totally --

something remains incomplete. When something is incomplete it has to be carried -- it waits to be completed.

You were a child, and somebody had broken your toy, and you were crying; and your mother consoled you, diverted your mind somewhere -- gave you some sweets, talked about something else, told you a story, diverted you -- and you were going to cry and weep, and you forgot. That has remained incomplete; it is there, and any day whenever somebody snatches a toy from you -- it may be any toy, it may be a girlfriend, and somebody snatches her -- you start weeping and crying. And you can find the child there, incomplete. It may be a post: you are mayor of the town and somebody snatches the post, a toy, and you are crying and weeping again.

Find out... regress into the past, move through it again, because there is no other way now; the past is there no more, so if something has remained hanging the only way is to relive it in the mind, move backwards.

Every night make it a point to go backwards for one hour, fully alert, as if you are living the whole thing again. Many things will bubble up, many things will call your attention --

so don't be in a hurry, and don't pay half-attention to anything and then move again because that will again create incompleteness. Whatsoever comes, give total attention to it. Live it again. And when I say live it again I mean LIVE it again -- not just remember, because when you remember a thing you are a detached observer; that won't help.

RELIVE IT!

You are a child again. Don't look as if you are standing apart and looking at a child as his toy is being snatched. No! BE the child. Not outside the child, inside the child -- be again the child. Relive the moment: somebody snatches the toy, somebody destroys it, and you start crying -- and cry! Your mother is trying to console you -- go through the whole thing again, but now don't be diverted by anything. Let the whole process be completed.

When it is completed, suddenly you will feel your heart is less heavy; something has dropped.

You wanted to say something to your father; now he is dead, now there is no way to tell him. Or you wanted to ask his forgiveness for a certain thing you did which he didn't like, but your ego came in and you couldn't ask his forgiveness; now he is dead, now nothing can be done. What to do? -- and it is THERE! It

will go on and on and destroy all your relationships.

I am very much aware of that because to be a master is to be in a certain sense a father --

it is to be many things but very importantly it is in a certain sense to be a father. When people come to me, if they are loaded with their relationship with their father, then it becomes very difficult to be related to me because I always feel their father comes in. If they have hated their father they will hate me, if they wanted to fight with their father, they will fight, if they love their father they will love me, if they respected their father they will respect me, if they respected him just superficially and deep down they had a disrespect, it will be the same with me -- and the whole thing starts working.

If you are conscious, you can watch. Go back. Now your father is no more but for the eyes of the memory he is still there. Close your eyes; again be the child who has committed something, done something against the father, wants to be forgiven but cannot gather courage -- now you can gather courage! You can say whatsoever you wanted to say, you can touch his feet again, or you can be angry and hit him -- but be finished! Let the whole process be completed.

Remember one basic law: anything that is complete drops, because then there is no meaning in carrying it; anything that is incomplete clings, it waits for its completion.

And this existence is really always after completion. The whole existence has a basic tendency to complete everything. It does not like incomplete things -- they hang, they wait; and there is no hurry for existence -- they can wait for millions of years.

Move backwards. Every night for one hour before you go to sleep, move into the past, relive. Many memories by and by will be unearthed. With many you will be surprised that you were not aware that these things are there -- and with such vitality and freshness, as if they had just happened! You will be again a child, again a young man, a lover, many things will come. Move slowly, so everything is completed. Your mountain will become smaller and smaller -- the LOAD is the mountain. And the smaller it becomes, the freer you will feel. A certain quality of freedom will come to you, and a freshness, and inside you will feel you have touched a source of life.

You will be always vital -- even others will feel that when you walk your step has changed, it has a quality of dance; when you touch, your touch has changed -

- it is not a dead hand, it has become alive again. Now life is flowing because the blocks have disappeared; now there is no anger in the hand, love can flow easily, unpoisoned, in its purity. You will become more sensitive, vulnerable, open.

If you have come to terms with the past suddenly you will be here and now in the present, because then there is no need to move again and again.

Go on moving every night. By and by memories will come up before your eyes and they will be completed. Relive them; completed, suddenly you will feel they drop. Now there is no more to be done, the thing is finished. Less and less memories will come as the time moves. There will be gaps -- you would like to live, nothing is coming -- and those gaps are beautiful. Then a day will come when you will not be able to move backwards because everything is complete. When you cannot move backwards, only then do you move forwards.

There is no other way. And to move forwards is to reach the path: the whole consciousness moving ahead every moment into the unknown.

But your legs are being pulled back continuously by the past, the past is heavy on you; how can you move into the future, and how can you be in the present? The mountain is really big, it is a Himalaya, uncharted, unmapped; nobody knows how to pass through it -

- and everybody is such a different Himalaya that you can never make a map, because it differs with everybody. You have your Himalayas to carry, others have their Himalayas to carry, and with these mountains, when you meet with people there is only clash and conflict.

The whole life becomes just a struggle, a violent struggle, and everywhere you can see and feel and hear the clash. Whenever somebody comes near, you are tense and the other is also tense -- both are carrying their Himalayas of tension and sooner or later they will clash. You may call it love but those who know, they say it is a clash. Now there is going to be misery.

Be finished with the past. As you become more free from the past, the mountain starts disappearing. And then you will attain a unison: you will become, by and by, one.

Now, try to understand this parable: What is the Way?

A MASTER WHO LIVED AS A HERMIT ON A MOUNTAIN WAS ASKED BY A MONK: 'WHAT IS THE WAY?'

Every word has to be understood because every word carries meaning: A MASTER WHO LIVED AS A HERMIT ON A MOUNTAIN.…

It has been happening always, that a Buddha moves to the mountains, a Jesus moves to the mountains, a Mahavira goes into the mountains. Why do they move to the mountains, to the loneliness? Why do they become solitaries? Just to face their inner mountains immediately and directly. In society it is difficult because the whole energy is wasted in day-to-day work and routine and relationship; you don't have enough time, you don't have enough energy to encounter yourself -- you are finished in encountering others! You are so very occupied -- and to come face to face with oneself a very unoccupied life is needed, because it is such a tremendous phenomenon to face oneself. You will need all your energies. It is such an absorbing job, it cannot be done half-heartedly.

Seekers have always moved into solitary existence, just to face oneself. Wherever they go

-- just to face oneself; to make it uncomplicated, because in relationship it becomes complicated because the other brings his or her miseries and mountains. You are already loaded -- and then comes the other! And then you clash, then things become more complex. Then it is two diseases meeting, and a very complicated disease is created out of it. Everything becomes entwined, it becomes a riddle. You are already a riddle -- it is better to solve it first and THEN move in relationship, because if you are not a mountain, then you can help somebody.

And remember, two hands are needed to make a sound, and two mountains are needed for a clash. If you are a mountain no more, now you are capable of being related. Now the other may try to create a clash, but it cannot be created because there is no possibility of creating a sound with one hand. The other will start feeling foolish -- and that is the dawn for wisdom.

You can help if you are unburdened; you cannot help if you are not unburdened. You can become a husband, you can become a father, a mother, and you will be burdening others with your burdens also. Even small children carry your

mountains; they are crushed under you -- it has to be so because you never bother to have a clarity about your being before you become related.

That must be the basic responsibility of every alert being: Before I move in any relationship I must be unburdened. I should not carry a hangover; only then can I help the other to grow. Otherwise I will exploit, and the other will exploit me! Otherwise I will try to dominate and the other will try to dominate me. And it will not be a relationship, it cannot be love, it will be a subtle politics.

Your marriage is a subtle politics of domination. Your fatherhood, motherhood, is a subtle politics. Look at mothers, just simply watch! -- and you will feel they are trying to dominate their small children. Their aggression, their anger, is thrown on them -- they have become objects of catharsis, and by this they are already burdened. They will move in life carrying mountains from the very beginning, and they will never know that life is possible without carrying such loaded heads; and they will never know the freedom that comes with an unloaded being. They will never know that when you are not loaded you have wings and you can fly into the sky and into the unknown.

And God is available only when you are unburdened. But they will never know. They will knock at the doors of temples but they will never know where the real temple exists.

The real temple is freedom: dying moment to moment to the past and living the present.

And freedom to move, to move into the dark, into the unknown -- that is the door to the divine!

A MASTER WHO LIVED AS A HERMIT ON A MOUNTAIN... alone.

You must make a distinction between two words: lonely and alone. In the dictionary they carry the same meaning, but those who have been meditating, they know the distinction.

They are not the same, they are as different as possible. Loneliness is an ugly thing; loneliness is a depressive thing -- it is a sadness; it is an absence of the other. Loneliness is the absence of the other -- you would like the other to be there, but the other is not, and you feel that and you miss them. YOU are not there in loneliness, the absence of the other is there. Alone? -- it is totally

different. YOU are there, it is your presence; it is a positive phenomenon. You don't miss the other, you meet yourself. Then you are alone, alone like a peak, tremendously beautiful! Sometimes you even feel a terror -- but it has a beauty.

But the presence is the basic thing: you are present to yourself. You are not lonely, you are with yourself. Alone, you are not lonely, you are with yourself. Lonely, you are simply lonely -- there is no one. You are not with yourself and you are missing the other.

Loneliness is negative, an absence; aloneness is positive, a presence.

If you are alone, you grow, because there is space to grow -- nobody else to hamper, nobody else to obstruct, nobody else to create more complex problems. Alone you grow, and as much as you want to grow you can grow because there is no limit, and you are happy being with yourself, and a bliss arises. There is no comparison: because the other is not there you are neither beautiful nor ugly, neither rich nor poor, neither this nor that, neither white nor black, neither man nor woman. Alone, how can you be a woman or a man? Lonely, you are a woman or a man, because the other is missing. Alone, you are no one, empty, empty of the other completely.

And remember, when the other is not, the ego cannot exist: it exists with the other. Either present or absent, the other is needed for ego. To feel 'I' the other is needed, a boundary of the other. Fenced from the neighbors I feel 'I'. When there is no neighbor, no fencing, how can you feel 'I'? You will be there, but without any ego. The ego is a relationship, it exists only in relationship.

Alone the master lived -- a hermit means alone -- on a mountain, facing himself, meeting himself at every corner. Wherever he moves he is encountering himself

-- not burdened with the other, so knowing well what he is, who he is.

Things start solving themselves if you can be alone, even things like madness. Just the other night I was talking to a few friends. In the West if a man goes crazy, mad, insane, neurotic, much treatment is given; too much really -- for years! And the result is almost nothing. The man remains the same.

I have heard, once it happened: a psychiatrist was treating a woman who had an obsession -- the obsession is called kleptomania, stealing things. She was very rich, there was no need, just a psychological obsession. It was impossible for her not to steal: wherever she found an opportunity she would steal, even worthless

things: a needle, a button. She was treated for years.

After the five-year-long treatment -- thousands of dollars had gone down the drain -- after five years the psychiatrist who was treating her, the Freudian psychoanalyst, asked, 'Now you look normal, and now there is no need to continue the treatment. You can drop out of it. What do YOU feel?'

She said, 'I feel perfect. I feel fine. Everything is good. Before you started treatment I always used to feel guilty about stealing things -- now I steal, but I never feel guilty.

Fine! Everything is good. You really did it. You helped me a lot.'

This is all that happens. You simply become accustomed, attuned to your illness, that's all.

In the East, particularly in Japan -- because of zen -- a totally different treatment has existed for at least one thousand years. In zen monasteries... these are not in any way hospitals, not meant for ill people, but in a village, if a zen monastery exists, it is the only place; if someone goes mad or neurotic, where to go? In the East always they bring the neurotic people to the master because if he can treat normal people, why not neurotics?

The difference is only of degree.

So they will bring the neurotic people to the zen monastery, to the master, and they will say, 'What to do? You take charge of him.' And he will take charge.

And the treatment is really unbelievable! The treatment is -- no treatment at all. The man has to be given a solitary cell somewhere at the back of the monastery, in a corner; the neurotic has to live there. He will be given food, every facility -- that's all. And he has to live with himself. Within three weeks, only three weeks, with no treatment, the neurosis disappears.

Now many Western psychiatrists are studying this as a miracle. This is not a miracle.

This is simply giving the man a little space to sort it out, that's all! Because he was normal a few days before, he can be normal again. Something has become too heavy on him and he needs space, that's all. And they will not pay him much

attention, because if you pay a neurotic person much attention, as it is being paid in the West, he is never going to be back to normal again because nobody paid him so much attention before. He is never going to be back the same, because then nobody bothered about him, and now great psychoanalysts are bothering -- great doctors, names, world-famous names, and they talk to him or her: the patient lying on a couch resting, and a great name just sitting behind, and whatsoever he or she says is listened to carefully, every word. So much attention! The neurosis becomes an investment, because people NEED attention.

A few people start behaving foolishly because then the society gives them attention. In every old country, in every village, you will find a village fool -- and he is not a mediocre man, he is very intelligent. Fools are almost always intelligent, but they have learned a trick: people pay them attention, they feed them, everybody knows them, they are already famous without holding any post

-- the whole village looks after them. Wherever they pass, they are like great leaders, a crowd follows them: children jumping and throwing things at them -- and they enjoy it! They are great ones in the town, and they know that this being a fool is an investment, a good one! And the village takes care of them: they are well fed, well clothed -- they have learned the trick. No need to work, no need to do anything -- just be a fool and it is enough!

If a neurotic person... and remember ego IS neurosis and ego needs attention; pay it attention, and ego feels good. Many people have murdered simply to get the attention of the newspapers, because only when they murder can they be covered by headlines. They become suddenly very, very important -- their pictures are given, their names, their biographies are covered: suddenly they are not nobodies, they have become somebodies.

Neurosis is a deep hankering after attention, and if you give it attention, you feed it --

that's why psychoanalysis has been a complete failure.

In zen monasteries they treat a person within three weeks: in Freudian psychoanalysis they cannot treat him in thirty years, because they miss the very point. But in zen monasteries no attention is given to the neurotic person, nobody thinks that he is somebody important -- they simply leave him alone, that is the only treatment. He has to sort out his own things; nobody bothers. Within three weeks he comes out absolutely normal.

Solitariness has a healing effect, it is a healing force. Whenever you feel that you are getting messed up, don't try to solve it there. Move away from society for a few days, for at least three weeks, and just remain silent, just watching yourself, feeling yourself, just being with yourself, and you will have a tremendous force available which heals. Hence, in the East, many people have moved to the mountains, to the forests, somewhere alone, somewhere where there is nobody else to be bothered with. Only oneself... so one can feel oneself directly, and you can see what is happening within.

Nobody is responsible for you except yourself, remember. If you are mad you are mad --

you have to sort it out: it is your deed! This is what Hindus say: your karma. The meaning is very deep. It is not a theory. They say, whatsoever you are it is your own work, so sort it out! Nobody else is responsible for you, only you are responsible.

So go into solitary confinement -- to sort out things, meditate on your own being and your problems. And this is the beauty: even if you can just be quiet, living with yourself for a few days, things settle automatically, because an unsettled state is not natural. An unsettled state is unnatural, you cannot prolong it for long. It needs effort to prolong it.

Simply relax and let things be, and watch, and make no effort to change anything, remember; if you try to make any change you will continue the same because the very effort will continue to disturb things.

It is just like sitting by the side of a river: the river flows, the mud settles, the dead leaves go to the sea; by and by the river becomes absolutely clean and pure. You need not go into it to clean it -- if you go, you will muddle it more. Simply watch, and things happen.

This is what the theory of karma is: that you have messed yourself up; now move alone.

So you need not throw your problems on others, you need not throw your diseases on others -- you simply move alone; suffer them in silence, watch them. Just sit by the bank of the river of your mind. Things settle! When things settle you have a clarity, a perception. Then move back into the world -- if you feel like it. That too is not a necessity, that too should not be an obsession. Nothing

should be an obsession, neither the world nor the mountain.

Whatsoever you feel is natural, whatsoever you feel is good and heals you, whatsoever you feel you are whole in, not divided -- that is the path. The mountain is crossed. You have reached the path -- now follow it, now flow into it!

The mountain is the problem. The path is available when you have crossed the mountain.

And you have accumulated this mountain in many lives -- your karmas, whatsoever you have done. It is now heavy on you.

A MASTER WHO LIVED AS A HERMIT ON A MOUNTAIN WAS ASKED BY A MONK -- a seeker -- 'WHAT IS THE WAY?' 'WHAT A FINE MOUNTAIN THIS IS,'

THE MASTER SAID IN REPLY.

Looks absurd -- because the man is asking about the Way and the master is saying something about the mountain. Looks absolutely irrational, outlandish, because the man has not asked anything about the mountain.

Remember, this is my situation. You ask about A, I talk about B; you ask about the Way, and I talk about the mountain. If you love me, only then can you feel; if you simply listen to me, I am absurd -- because I am not talking relevantly. If I talk relevantly I cannot help you; that is the problem. If I say something which seems relevant to you it will not be of much help, because YOU are the problem; and if I talk relevantly that means I adjust to you. Even if to you I look relevant, it means something has gone wrong. I have to be irrelevant by the nature of the phenomenon itself.

I will look absurd, irrational. And this gap between the question and the answer can only be bridged if you have trust. Otherwise it cannot be bridged -- how to bridge it? The gap between the seeker and the master, the disciple and the master, the gap between the question and the answer -- because you question about the Way and the answer is given about the mountain -- how to bridge it?

Hence trust becomes very very significant; not knowledge, not logic, not argumentative capacity -- no, but a deep trust which can bridge the irrelevant

answer, which can see through the irrelevance deeply and can catch a glimpse of the relevancy.

'WHAT A FINE MOUNTAIN THIS IS,' THE MASTER SAID IN REPLY.'I AM NOT

ASKING YOU ABOUT THE MOUNTAIN,' SAID THE MONK, 'BUT THE WAY.'

He sticks to his question. If you stick you will miss -- because YOU are wrong, your question cannot be right; that's impossible! How can you ask a right question? If you can ask a right question the right answer is not very far away, it is hidden there. If you can ask a right question you are already right! And with a mind which is already right, how can the answer remain hidden? No, whatsoever you ask, whatsoever you say, carries YOU.

It happened: Mulla Nasruddin was getting fatter and fatter, stouter and stouter. The doctor advised a diet.

After two months Mulla went to see the doctor. The doctor said, 'My God! It is a miracle!

You are even fatter than before -- I cannot believe my eyes! Are you strictly following the diet I gave you? Are you eating only that which I prescribed and nothing else?'

Nasruddin said, 'Nothing whatever! Of course I'm following your diet.'

The doctor couldn't believe it. He said, 'Tell me, Nasruddin, nothing whatever?'

Nasruddin said, 'Of course! Except my regular meals.' Regular meals PLUS the diet the doctor has prescribed.

But this has to be so. Your mind moves in whatsoever you do, you ask, you think

-- it colors everything. You cannot ask a right question. If you can ask a right question there is no need to ask, because the right is the thing, not the question and not the answer. If YOU

are right, you ask the right question -- suddenly the right answer is there. If you can ask a right question you simply have no need to go anywhere; just close your

eyes and ask the right question and you will find the right answer there.

The problem is not with the right answer, the problem is not with the Way; the problem is the mountain, the problem is the mind, the problem is YOU.

'WHAT A FINE MOUNTAIN THIS IS,' THE MASTER SAID IN REPLY. 'I AM NOT

ASKING YOU ABOUT THE MOUNTAIN,' SAID THE MONK, 'BUT THE WAY.'

THE MASTER REPLIED, 'SO LONG AS YOU CANNOT GO BEYOND THE MOUNTAIN, MY SON, YOU CANNOT REACH THE WAY.'

Many things to be understood -- to be felt, rather.

THE MASTER REPLIED, 'SO LONG AS YOU CANNOT GO BEYOND THE MOUNTAIN, MY SON, YOU CANNOT REACH THE WAY.'

Why suddenly 'my son'? Up to now the master has not used a single loving word; why suddenly 'my son'? Because now the trust will be needed, and you cannot create trust in a person just by saying something, even if it is the absolute truth. A trust can be created only if the master is loving, because only love creates trust. On the side of the disciple a trust, SHRADDHA, is needed, a deep faith is needed. But the faith arises only when the master says 'my son.'

Now the thing is moving differently. It is not an intellectual relationship, it is becoming one of the heart. Now the master is becoming more a father than a master; now the master is moving towards the heart. He is making a heart relationship now.

If you ask head-oriented questions and the master goes on answering them, it may be a dialogue on the face of it, but it cannot be a dialogue. You can crisscross but you cannot meet that way. When people talk, listen to them: they crisscross each other but they never meet. This is not a dialogue! They both remain rooted in themselves, they never make any effort to reach the other. 'My son' is an effort on the part of the master to reach the monk. He is preparing the way for the disciple to trust.

But then again a problem arises because the disciple can think, 'This is too much! I have not come here in search of love, I have come here in search of knowledge.' But a master cannot give you knowledge. He can give you wisdom, and wisdom comes only through the vehicle of love. Hence suddenly the master says,

'MY SON, SO LONG AS YOU CANNOT GO BEYOND THE MOUNTAIN YOU

CANNOT REACH THE WAY.'

One thing more he said:

'WHAT A FINE MOUNTAIN THIS IS.'

To an enlightened person even madness is beautiful. To an unenlightened person even enlightenment is not beautiful. The whole attitude changes. He says, 'What a fine mountain.' To an enlightened person even your neurosis is a beautiful thing, he accepts that also; it has to be transcended, but not destroyed. One has to go beyond it, but it also is beautiful while it lasts. One has to reach somewhere else, but the goal is not the thing --

the thing is: each moment, living the goal here and now.

For an enlightened person everything is beautiful and for an unenlightened person everything is ugly. For an unenlightened person there are two categories: less ugly, more ugly. No beauty exists. Whenever you say to a person, 'You are beautiful,' in fact you are saying, 'You are less ugly.' Watch when you say it again and then find out what you really mean. Do you really mean beautiful? -- because that is impossible for your mind; your mind cannot see beauty, you are not so perceptive. At the most you can manage to say that this person is less ugly than others -- and less ugly can become more ugly any moment, with just a change of mood.

Your friend is nothing but the person least inimical towards you. You have to be that way because your mind is so messed up, it is such a chaos; everything is muddled, murky, you cannot see direct. Your eyes are covered with millions of layers, it is really a miracle how you manage even to see; you are completely blind.

You cannot hear, you cannot see, you cannot touch, you cannot smell. Whatsoever you do, it is impure; many things come into it. You love, and millions of things are there: immediately you start being possessive, and you never know that being possessive is part of hate, not part of love. Love can never possess. Love is giving freedom to the other.

Love is an unconditional gift, it is not a bargain. But to your mind love is nothing but less hate, that's all. At the most you think, 'I can tolerate this person; I cannot tolerate that person so I cannot love him. This person I can tolerate.' But the valuation remains negative.

When you are enlightened the valuation becomes positive. Then everything is beautiful; even your mountain, your neurosis is beautiful -- even a madman is something beautiful.

God may have gone a little astray and sinned, but it is God.

So nothing can be wrong for an enlightened person. Everything is right -- less right, more right. The difference between the devil and God is nothing, the difference is only of less and more. God and the devil are not two poles, enemies.

Hindus have beautiful words; no other country has been so understanding about words.

Sanskrit is really something which exists nowhere else -- very perceptive people! The English word devil comes from the same root as DEVA; deva means god. Devil and god come from the same root: DEV. Dev means light; from the same dev comes the devil; and from the same dev comes deva, DEVATA, the divine. The words divine and devil come from the same Sanskrit root dev. It is one phenomenon. Your seeing may be different, your standpoint may be different, but it is one phenomenon. An enlightened person will say even to the devil: 'How beautiful! How divine! How wonderful!'

It happened: one Mohammedan mystic woman, Rabiya al-Adabia, changed many lines in her Koran. Wherever it is said, 'Hate the devil,' she crossed it out. Then once another mystic, Hassan, was staying with Rabiya, and on the journey he had forgotten his own copy of the Koran somewhere, and in the morning, for morning prayers, he needed it. So he asked for Rabiya's copy; Rabiya gave it to him. He was a little surprised in the beginning because the Koran had collected

so much dust -- that meant it was not used every day. It was not used at all it seemed; for many months it had not been used -- but he thought it would be impolite to say something so he opened the Koran and started his morning prayer.

Then he was surprised even more, even shocked, because NOBODY can correct the Koran, and there were many corrections. Wherever it is said, 'Hate the devil,' Rabiya had simply crossed it out completely, rejected it.

He couldn't pray, he was disturbed so much: this Rabiya had gone heretic, she had become an atheist, or what?... because it is impossible for a Mohammedan to conceive that you can correct the Koran. It is God's word, nobody can correct it. That's why they say that now no more prophets will be coming, because if a prophet comes again and he says something which is not in the Koran, it will create trouble. So the doors have been closed after Mohammed -- he is the last prophet.

And they are very clever. They say there have been many other prophets in the past: he is not the first, but he is the last. And now no more messages will be coming from God -- he has given the final one with Mohammed. So how dare this woman Rabiya! She is correcting the Koran? He couldn't pray, he was so much disturbed. He finished somehow, went to Rabiya.

Rabiya was an enlightened woman. Very few women have become enlightened in the whole world; Rabiya is one of them. Looking at Hassan she said, 'It seems you couldn't do your prayer. It seems the dust on the Koran disturbed you. So, you are still attached to things like dust? And it seems my corrections in the Koran must have shocked you very much.'

Hassan said, 'How... how could you know?'

Rabiya said, 'I passed by when you were praying and I felt all around you much disturbance; it was not a prayerful prayer at all. It was so neurotic, the vibrations

-- so what is the matter? Tell me and be finished with it!'

Hassan said, 'Now that you have started yourself, don't think I am impolite, but I couldn't believe a woman like you could correct the Koran!'

Rabiya said, 'But look first at my difficulty: the moment I came to realize, the moment I came face to face with the divine, after that, in every face I can see

that same face. No other face is possible. Even if the devil comes to stand before me, I see the same face. So how can I hate the devil now that I have realized the face of the divine that I have come to see? Now every face is his. I had to correct, and if ever I meet Mohammed I have to tell him frankly that these words are not good. They may be good for the ignorant because they divide; but they are not good for those who know, because they cannot divide.'

Hence the master says:

'WHAT A FINE MOUNTAIN THIS IS.'

Everything is beautiful and divine for a man who knows.

'I AM NOT ASKING YOU ABOUT THE MOUNTAIN,' SAID THE MONK, 'BUT

THE WAY.'

Have you ever observed that you never ask any question about yourself, about the mountain, you always ask about the Way? People come to me and they ask, 'What to do?

How to reach God? How to become enlightened?' They never ask, 'What to BE?' They never ask anything about themselves, as if they are absolutely okay -- only the path is missing. What do you think? You are absolutely okay, only the path is missing? So somebody can say, 'Go to the right and then turn to the left and you are on the path'?

It's not so simple. The path is just in front of you. You are not missing the path at all. You have never missed it, nobody CAN miss it -- but you cannot look at it because you are a mountain.

It is not a question of finding the Way, it is a question of finding yourself, who you are.

When you know yourself, the Way is there; when you don't know yourself, the Way is not there.

People go on asking about the Way, and there are millions of ways proposed -- but there cannot be. There is only one Way. The same Way passes before

Buddha's eyes, and the same Way passes before Lao Tzu, and the same Way before Jesus. Millions are the travelers but the Way is one, the same. That is the tao, the dhamma, the logos of Heraclitus -- it is one.

Millions are the travelers but the Way is one. There are not a million ways, and you are not missing it; but you always ask about the Way, and you always get entangled in the ways because when you ask, when foolish people ask, there are more foolish people to answer them. If you ask and insist on an answer, then somebody has to supply it -- this is the law of economics. You demand, and there will be a supply. You ask a foolish question and a foolish answer will be given because don't think that you are the ultimate fool -- there are better ones. Smaller ones become disciples and better ones become

'masters'. You ask, and they supply the answer.

Then there are millions of ways, and always in conflict. A Mohammedan saying is: You cannot reach through that way because it never leads anywhere, it goes into a cul-de-sac.

Come to our way! -- and if you don't listen we will kill you. Christians are persuading: Come to our way! They are cleverer than Mohammedans; they don't kill really; they bribe, they seduce, they give you bread, they give you hospitals, they give you medicine, and they say, Come our way! Where are you going? They are merchants, and they know how to bribe people; they have converted millions, just by giving things to them. There are Hindus, they go on saying: We possess the whole truth -- and they are so arrogant they don't bother even to convert anybody, remember: You are fools, you need not be converted. They are so arrogant, and they think: We know the Way. If you want to you can come. We are not going to bribe you or kill you -- you are not that important. You can come if you want, but we are not going to make any effort.

And then there are three hundred religions in the world, and each religion thinking: This is the only Way, THE Way. All others are false.

But the question is not of the Way, the question is not: Which Way is true? The question is: Have you crossed the mountain? The question is: Have you gone beyond YOU? The question is: Can you look at yourself from a distance, a watcher? Then, the one Way.

Mohammed and Mahavira and Krishna and Christ -- they all walked on the same

Way.

Mohammed is different from Mahavira, Krishna is different from Christ, but they walk on the same Way -- because the Way cannot be many: how can many lead to one? Only the one can lead you to the one.

So don't ask about the Way and don't ask about the method. Don't ask about the medicine.

First ask about the disease that you are. A deep diagnosis is needed first, and nobody can diagnose it for you. You have created it and only the creator knows all the nooks and corners. You have created it, so only you know how these complexities arise, and only YOU can solve them.

A real master simply helps you to come to yourself. Once you are there, the way opens.

The way cannot be given but you can be thrown upon yourself. And then the real conversion happens: not a Hindu becoming a Christian or a Christian becoming a Hindu, but an outward-moving energy becomes an inward-moving energy -- that is conversion.

You become an inward-looking. The whole attention moves inwards, and then you see the whole complexity -- the mountain. And if you simply watch it, it starts dissolving.

In the beginning it looks like a mountain; in the end you will feel that it was just a molehill. But you never looked at it because it was at the back of you, and it became so big. When you face it, immediately it decreases, becomes a molehill, you can laugh about it. Then it is no longer a burden. You can even enjoy it and sometimes can go in it for a morning walk.

And The Flowers Showered Chapter #5

Chapter title: Is he dead?

4 November 1974 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code:

7411040

ShortTitle:

FLOWRS05

Audio:

Yes Video: No Length:

102

mins

AT THE DEATH OF A PARISHIONER, MASTER DOGO, ACCOMPANIED BY HIS

DISCIPLE ZENGEN, VISITED THE BEREAVED FAMILY.

WITHOUT TAKING TIME TO EXPRESS A WORD OF SYMPATHY, ZENGEN

WENT UP TO THE COFFIN, RAPPED ON IT, AND ASKED DOGO:'IS HE REALLY

DEAD?' 'I WON'T SAY,' SAID DOGO.'WELL?' INSISTED ZENGEN.'I'M NOT

SAYING, AND THAT'S FINAL,' SAID DOGO.

ON THEIR WAY BACK TO THE TEMPLE THE FURIOUS ZENGEN TURNED ON

DOGO AND THREATENED: 'BY GOD, IF YOU DON'T ANSWER MY QUESTION, WHY I'LL BEAT YOU.' 'ALL RIGHT,' SAID DOGO, 'BEAT AWAY.'

A MAN OF HIS WORD, ZENGEN SLAPPED HIS MASTER A GOOD ONE.

SOME TIME LATER DOGO DIED, AND ZENGEN, STILL ANXIOUS TO HAVE

HIS QUESTION ANSWERED, WENT TO THE MASTER SEKISO, AND, AFTER

RELATING WHAT HAD HAPPENED, ASKED THE SAME QUESTION OF HIM.

SEKISO, AS IF CONSPIRING WITH THE DEAD DOGO, WOULD NOT

ANSWER.'BY GOD!' CRIED ZENGEN. 'YOU TOO?' 'I'M NOT SAYING,' SAID

SEKISO, 'AND THAT'S FINAL.'

AT THAT VERY INSTANT ZENGEN EXPERIENCED AN AWAKENING.

LIFE CAN BE KNOWN, death also -- but nothing can be said about them. No answer will be true; it cannot be by the very nature of things. Life and death are the deepest mysteries. It would be better to say that they are not two mysteries, but two aspects of the same mystery, two doors of the same secret. But nothing can be said about them.

Whatever you say, you will miss the point.

Life can be lived, death also can be lived. They are experiences -- one has to pass through them and know them. Nobody can answer your questions. How can life be answered? or death? Unless YOU live, unless YOU die, who's going to answer?

But many answers have been given -- and remember, all answers are false. There is nothing to choose. It is not that one answer is correct and other answers are incorrect; all answers are incorrect. There is nothing to choose. Experience, not

answers, can answer.

So this is the first thing to be remembered when you are near a real mystery, not a riddle created by man. If it is a riddle created by man it can be answered, because then it is a game, a mind game -- you create the question, you create the answer. But if you are facing something which you have not created, how can you answer it, how can the human mind answer it? It is incomprehensible for the human mind. The part cannot comprehend the whole. The whole can be comprehended by becoming whole. You can jump into it and be lost -- and there will be the answer.

I will tell you one anecdote Ramakrishna loved to tell. He used to say: Once it happened that there was a great festival near a sea, on the beach. Thousands of people were gathered there and suddenly they all became engrossed in a question

-- whether the sea is immeasurable or measurable; whether there is a bottom to it or not; fathomable or unfathomable? By chance, one man completely made of salt was also there. He said, 'You wait, and you discuss, and I will go into the ocean and find out, because how can one know unless one goes into it?'

So the man of salt jumped into the ocean. Hours passed, days passed, then months passed, and people started to go to their homes. They had waited long enough, and the man of salt was not coming back.

The man of salt, the moment he entered the ocean, started melting, and by the time he reached the bottom he was not. He came to know -- but he couldn't come back. And those who didn't know, they discussed it for a long time. They may have arrived at some conclusions, because the mind loves to reach conclusions.

Once a conclusion is reached, mind feels at ease -- hence so many philosophies exist. All philosophies exist to fulfill a need: the mind asks and the mind cannot remain with the question, it is uneasy; to remain with the question feels inconvenient. An answer is needed -- even if it is false it will do; mind is put at rest.

To go and take a jump into the sea is dangerous. And remember, Ramakrishna is true: we are all men of salt as far as the ocean is concerned -- the ocean of life and death. We are men of salt, we will melt into it because we come out of it. We are made by it, of it. We will melt!

So mind is always afraid of going into the ocean; it is made of salt, it is bound to

dissolve. It is afraid, so it remains on the bank, discussing things, debating, arguing, creating theories: all false -- because they are based on fear. A courageous man will take the jump, and he will resist accepting any answer which is not known by himself.

We are cowards, that's why we accept anybody's answer: Mahavira, Buddha, Christ -- we accept their answers. Their answers cannot be our answers. Nobody else's knowledge can be yours -- they may have known, but their knowledge is just information for you. YOU

will have to know. Only when it is your own is it knowledge; otherwise it will not give you wings. On the contrary, it will hang on your neck like stones, you will become a slave to it. You will not achieve liberation, you will not be set free by it.

Says Jesus, 'Truth liberates.' Have you seen anybody being liberated by theories?

Experience liberates, yes, but theories about every experience? No, never! But the mind is afraid to take the jump, because mind is made of the same stuff as the universe; if you take the jump you will be lost. You will come to know, but you will know only when you are not.

The salt man came to know. He touched the very depth. He reached the very center but he couldn't come back. Even if he could, how would he relate...? Even if he comes, his language will belong to the center, to the depth, and your language belongs to the bank, to the periphery.

There is no possibility of any communication. He cannot say anything meaningfully, he can only remain silent meaningfully, significantly. If he says something he himself will feel guilty, because he will immediately know that whatsoever he knows has not been transferred through the words; his experience is left behind. Only words have gone to you, dead, stale, empty. Words can be communicated but not truth. It can only be indicated.

The salt man can say to you, 'You also come' -- he can give you an invitation -- 'and take a jump with me into the ocean.'

But you are very clever. You will say, 'First answer the question; otherwise how do I know that you are right? Let me first consider and think and brood and ponder, then I will follow. When my mind is convinced, then I will take the

jump.'

But mind is never convinced, cannot be convinced. Mind is nothing but a process of doubt; it can never be convinced, it can go on arguing infinitely, because whatsoever you say it can create an argument around it.

Once I was traveling with Mulla Nasruddin. At a station, at a stop, a newcomer came into the compartment -- he may have known Nasruddin. He said, 'Hello.' They greeted each other and then he said, 'How are you, Nasruddin?'

Nasruddin said, 'Fine! Absolutely fine!' Then the man said, 'And how is your wife?'

Nasruddin said, 'She is also fine, thank you.' 'And how are your children?' Nasruddin said, 'They are all very well, thank you.'

I was surprised. When the man left at another stop, I asked Nasruddin, 'What is the matter? -- because I know well that you don't have a wife, you don't have any children.'

Nasruddin said, 'I also know -- but why create an argument?'

Many times buddhas have nodded to you, just not to create any argument. They have remained silent just not to create any argument. They have not said much, but whatsoever they have said has created enough argument around it. You are like that. You will weave theories, you will spin philosophies, and you will get so engrossed in them that you will completely forget that the ocean is just near. You will completely forget that the ocean exists.

Philosophers completely forget what life is. They go on thinking and thinking and thinking and going astray, because mind is a distance from the truth. The more you are in the mind, the farther away you are from the truth; the less in the mind, the nearer. If there is no mind, even for a single moment, you have taken the jump -- but then you become one with the ocean.

So the first thing to remember is, if it is a question created by you, not relating to the existential mystery of the universe, then it can be answered. Really, only mathematical questions can be answered. That's why mathematics is such a

clear-cut science, because the whole thing is created by man. Mathematics does not exist in the universe, that's why mathematics is the purest science -- you can be certain about it; you have created the whole game.

Trees are there, but not one tree, two, three trees, four trees -- numbers don't exist there.

You create the numbers, you create the very base, and then you ask, 'How many? If two are added to two, what is the conclusion, what is the result?' you can answer 'Four,' and that answer will be true because you have created the whole game, all the rules: two and two make four. But in existence that is not true because in existence no arithmetic exists -

- it is a wholly man-made affair. So you can go on and on and create as many mathematics, as many arithmetics, as you like.

Once people thought that there was only one mathematics; now they know there can be many, because man can create them. Once people knew that there was only one geometry

-- Euclid's; now they know that you can create as many geometries as you want, because they are man-created. So now there is Euclidean geometry and non- Euclidean geometry.

Many mathematicians have played with numbers. Leibnitz worked with three digits: one, two, three. In Leibnitz' mathematics, two plus two cannot be four, because the four doesn't exist: one, two, three -- only three digits are there, so in Leibnitz' mathematics two plus two will become ten, because after three comes ten. The four doesn't exist.

Einstein worked with two digits: one and two, so two plus two in Einstein's mathematics will be eleven. And they are all right, because the whole game is man-made. It is up to you.

There is no inner necessity to believe in nine or ten digits, except that man has ten fingers, so people started counting on the fingers. That's why ten became the basic unit all over the world; otherwise there is no necessity.

Mathematics is a thought product: you can ask a question and a right answer can be given to you -- but except for mathematics everything moves into the

mysterious. If it belongs to life, no answer can be given. And whatsoever you say will be destructive because the whole cannot be said. Words are so narrow, tunnel-like; you cannot force the sky into them, it is impossible.

Second thing to remember: when you ask something of a master -- a master is not a philosopher, he is not a thinker; he knows, he is a seer -- when you ask something of a master, don't look for and don't wait for his answer, because he IS the answer. When you ask something, don't be attentive towards the answer; be attentive towards the master, because HE is the answer. He is not going to give you any answer; his presence is the answer. But there we miss.

You go and you ask a question; your whole mind is attentive to the question and you are waiting for the answer -- but the master, his whole being, his presence is the answer. If you look at him, if you watch him, you will receive an indication -

- his silence, the way he looks at you in that moment, the way he walks, the way he behaves, the way he remains silent or talks. The master is the answer, because it lies in an indication. The master can show you the truth, but cannot say it. And your mind is always obsessed with the answer: 'What is he going to say?'

If you go to a master, learn to be attentive to his presence; don't be too head- oriented --

and don't insist, because every answer can be given only when the time is ripe. Don't insist, because it is not a question of your insistence; a right thing can be given only when you are ready, when you are ripe. So when you are near a master you can ask a question -

- but then wait. You have asked, then he knows. Even if you have not asked, he knows what is troubling you within. But he cannot give you anything right now -

- you may not be ready; and if you are not ready and something is given it will not reach you, because only in a certain readiness can certain things penetrate you. When you are ripe you can understand. When you are ready, you are open, receptive. The answer will be given, but not in words; the master will reveal it in many ways. He can do it. He can devise many methods to indicate it, but then you will have to be ready.

Just because you have asked a question doesn't mean that you are ready. You can ask a question -- even children can raise questions so mysterious that even a buddha will be unable to answer them. But just because you have asked, just

because you are articulate enough to form a question, does not mean that you are ready, because questions come out of many many sources. Sometimes you are simply curious. A master is not there to fulfill your curiosities, because they are childish. Sometimes you really never meant it. Just by the way you asked, you showed you were not concerned and you are not going to use the answer in any way. Somebody is dead and you simply ask the question, 'What is death?' -

- and by the next moment you have forgotten it.

Curiosity is one thing -- it is childish and no master is going to waste his breath on your curiosities. When you ask a certain thing it may be just intellectual, philosophic; you are interested, but intellectually -- you would like an answer just to become more knowledgeable, but your being will remain unaffected. Then a master is not interested, because he is interested only in your being. When you ask a question in such a way as if your life and death depend on it, then if you don't receive the answer you will miss, your whole being will remain hungry for it; you are thirsty, your whole being is ready to receive it, and if the answer is given you will digest it, it will become your blood and your bones and move into the very beat of your heart; only then will a master be ready to answer you.

You ask a question... then the master will try to help you to become ready to receive the answer. Between your question and the master's answer there may be a great gap. You ask today and he may answer you after twelve years, because you have to be ready to receive it; you have to be open, not closed, and you have to be ready to absorb it to the very depth of your being.

Now try to understand this parable:

AT THE DEATH OF A PARISHIONER, MASTER

DOGO, ACCOMPANIED BY HIS DISCIPLE ZENGEN, VISITED THE BEREAVED

FAMILY.

WITHOUT TAKING TIME TO EXPRESS A WORD OF SYMPATHY, ZENGEN

WENT UP TO THE COFFIN, RAPPED ON IT, AND ASKED DOGO: 'IS HE

REALLY DEAD?'

The first thing: when death is there you have to be very respectful because death is no ordinary phenomenon, it is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the world. Nothing is more mysterious than death. Death reaches to the very center of existence, and when a man is dead you are moving on sacred ground: it is the holiest moment possible. No, ordinary curiosities cannot be allowed. They are disrespectful.

In the East particularly, death is respected more than life -- and the East has lived long to come to this conclusion. In the West life is more respected than death; hence so much tension, so much worry and so much anguish, so much madness.

Why? If you respect life more, you will be afraid of death, and then death will look antagonistic, the enemy; and if death is the enemy you will remain tense your whole life, because death can happen any moment. You don't accept it, you reject it -- but you cannot destroy it. Death cannot be destroyed. You can reject it; you can deny it; you can be afraid, scared, but it is there, just at the corner, always with you like a shadow. You will be trembling your whole life -- and you ARE trembling. And in the fear, in all fears if searched deeply, you will find the fear of death.

Whenever you are afraid, something has given you an indication of death. If your bank goes bankrupt and you are filled with fear and trembling, anxiety -- that too is anxiety about death, because your bank balance was nothing but a security against death. Now you are more open, vulnerable. Now who will protect you if death knocks at the door? If you become ill, if you become old, then who is going to take care of you? The guarantee was there in the bank, and the bank has gone bankrupt.

You cling to prestige, power, position, because when you have a position you are so significant that you are more protected by people. When you are not in power, you become so impotent that nobody bothers in any way who you are. When you are in power you have friends, family, followers; when you are not in power, everybody leaves. There was a protection, somebody was there to care; now nobody cares. Whatsoever you are afraid of, if you search deeply you will always find the shadow of death somewhere.

You cling to a husband, you are afraid he may leave; or you cling to a wife, afraid she may leave you. What is the fear? Is it really the fear of a divorce, or is it a fear of death?

It is a fear of death... because in divorce you become alone. The other gives a protection, a feeling that you are not alone, somebody else is with you. In moments when somebody else will be needed, you will have somebody to look to. But the wife has left, or the husband has left, and now you are left alone, a stranger. Who will protect you? Who will care for you when you are ill?

When people are young they do not need a wife or a husband so much, but when they are old their need is more. When you are young it is a sexual relationship. The older you become the more it becomes a life relationship, because now if the other leaves you, immediately death is there. Wherever you are afraid, try to explore, and you will find death hiding somewhere behind. All fear is of death. Death is the only fear source.

In the West people are very scared, worried, anxious, because you have to fight continuously against death. You love life, you respect life -- that's why in the West old people are not respected. Young people are respected, because old people have moved further towards death than you; they are already in its grip. Youth is respected in the West -- and youth is a transitory phenomenon, it is already passing from your hands.

In the East old men are respected, because in the East death is respected; and because in the East death is respected, there is no fear about death. Life is just a part; death is the culmination. Life is just the process; death is the crescendo. Life is just the moving; death is the reaching. And both are one! So what will you respect more, the way or the goal?

The process or the flowering?

Death is the flower, life is nothing but the tree. And the tree is there for the flower, the flower is not there for the tree. The tree should be happy and the tree should dance when the flower comes.

So in the East death is accepted; not only accepted, welcomed. It is a divine guest. When it knocks at the door, it means the universe is ready to receive you back.

In the East we respect death. And this young man Zengen just came in without even expressing a word of sympathy or respect. He simply became curious. Not only that, he was very disrespectful -- he tapped on the coffin and asked Dogo, 'Is he really dead?' His question is beautiful, but not in the right moment. The question is right but the moment he has chosen is wrong. To be curious before death is childish; one has to be respectful, silent. That is the only way to have a rapport with the phenomenon.

When somebody dies it is really something very deep happening. If you can just sit there and meditate many things will be revealed to you. Questioning is foolish. When death is there, why not meditate? Questioning may be just a trick to avoid the thing, it may be just a safety measure so as not to look at death directly.

I have watched when people go to burn or to cremate somebody -- they start talking too much there. At the cremation ground they discuss many philosophical things. In my childhood I loved very much to follow everybody. Whosoever died, I would be there.

Even my parents became very much afraid; they would say, 'Why do you go? We don't even know that man. There is no need to go.'

I would say, 'That is not the point. The man is not my concern. Death... it is such a beautiful phenomenon, and one of the most mysterious. One should not miss it.' So the moment I heard that somebody had died I would be there, always watching, waiting, witnessing what was happening.

And I watched people discussing many things, philosophical problems such as: What is death? And somebody would say: 'Nobody dies. The innermost self is immortal.' They would discuss the Upanishads, the Gita, and quote authorities. I started feeling: 'They are avoiding. By just becoming engaged in a discussion, they are avoiding the phenomenon that is happening. They are not looking at the dead man. And the thing is there! Death is there, and you are discussing it! What fools!'

You have to be silent. If you can be silent when death is there you will suddenly see many things, because death is not just a person stopping breathing. Many things are happening. When a person dies, his aura starts subsiding. If you are silent you can feel it -

- an energy force, a vital energy field, subsiding, getting back to the center.

When a child is born just the opposite happens. When a child is born an aura starts spreading; it starts near the navel. Just as when you throw a pebble in a lake, ripples start

-- they go on spreading, go on spreading -- when a child is born breath is like a pebble in the lake; when the child breathes the navel center is hit. The first pebble has been thrown in the silent lake, and the ripples go on spreading.

Your whole life you go on spreading. Nearabout the age of thirty-five your aura is completed, at its peak. Then it starts subsiding. When a person dies it goes back to the navel. When it reaches the navel, it becomes a concentrated energy, a concentrated light.

If you are silent you can feel it, you will feel a pull. If you sit near a dead man you will feel as if a subtle breeze is blowing towards the dead man and you are being pulled. The dead man is contracting his whole life, the whole field that he was.

Many things start happening around a dead man. If he loved a person very deeply, that means he had given a part of his life energy to that person, and when a person dies, immediately that part that he had given to another person leaves that person and moves to the dead man. If you die here and your lover lives in Hong Kong, something will leave your lover immediately -- because you have given a part of your life and that part will come back to you. That's why when a loved one dies you feel that something has left you also, something in you has died also. A deep wound, a deep gap will exist now.

Whenever a lover dies, something in the beloved also dies, because they were deeply involved with each other. And if you have loved many, many people -- for example, if a person like Dogo dies, or a buddha -- from all over the universe energy moves back to the center. It is a universal phenomenon because he is involved in many many lives, millions of lives, and from everywhere his energy will come back. The vibrations that he has given to many will leave, they will move to the original source, they will become again a concentration near the navel.

If you watch you will feel ripples coming back in a reverse order, and when they are totally concentrated in the navel, you can see a tremendous energy, a

tremendous light-force. And then that center leaves the body. When a man 'dies', that is simply a stopping of the breath, and you think he is dead. He is not dead; that takes time. Sometimes, if the person has been involved in millions of lives, it takes many days for him to die -- that's why with sages, with saints, particularly in the East, we never burn their bodies. Only saints are not burned; otherwise everybody is burned, because others' involvement is not so much. Within minutes the energy gathers, and they are no more part of this existence.

But with saints, the energy takes time. Sometimes it goes on and on -- that's why if you go to Shirdi, to Sai Baba's town, you will still feel something happening, still the energy goes on coming; he is so much involved that for many people he is still alive. Sai Baba's tomb is not dead. It is still alive. But the same thing you will not feel near many tombs --

they are dead. By 'dead' I mean they have accumulated all their involvement, they have disappeared.

When I am dead, don't bury my body, don't burn it, because I will be involved in you, many of you. And if you can feel, then a sage remains alive for many years, sometimes thousands of years -- because life is not only of the body. Life is an energy phenomenon.

It depends on the involvement, on how many persons he was involved in. And a person like Buddha is not only involved with persons, he is involved even with trees, birds, animals; his involvement is so deep that if he dies his death will take at least five hundred years.

Buddha is reported to have said, 'My religion will be a live force for only five hundred years.' And the meaning is here, because he will be a live force for five hundred years. It will take five hundred years for him to get out of the involvement totally.

When death happens, be silent. Watch!

All over the world, whenever you pay respect to a dead man, you become silent, you remain silent for two minutes -- without knowing why. This tradition has been continued all over the world. Why silence?

The tradition is meaningful. You may not know why, you may not be aware, and your silence may be filled with inner chattering, or you may do it just like a

ritual -- that is up to you. But the secret is there.

WITHOUT TAKING TIME TO EXPRESS A WORD OF SYMPATHY, ZENGEN

WENT UP TO THE COFFIN, RAPPED ON IT, AND ASKED DOGO: 'IS HE REALLY

DEAD?'

His question is right, but the time is not right. He has chosen the wrong opportunity. This is not the moment to talk about it, this is the moment to BE with it. And the man who is dead must have been someone very deep; otherwise Dogo would not be going to pay his respects. Dogo is an enlightened man. The disciple who is dead must have been something. And Dogo was there to do something more for him. A master can help you when you are alive; a master can help you when you are dead even more -- because in death a deep surrendering happens.

In life you are always resisting, fighting, even with your master; not surrendering, or surrendering half-heartedly -- which means nothing. But when you are dying, surrendering is easier, because death and surrender are the same process. When the whole body is dying, you can surrender easily. To fight is difficult, resistance is difficult.

Already your resistance is being broken, your body is moving into a let-go; that is what death is.

Dogo was there for something special, and this disciple asked a question. The question is right but the time is not right.

'I WON'T SAY,' SAID DOGO.'WELL?' INSISTED ZENGEN.'I'M NOT SAYING, AND

THAT'S FINAL,' SAID DOGO.

First thing: what can be said about death? How can you say anything about death? It is not possible for any word to carry the meaning of death. What does this word 'death'

mean? In fact it means nothing. What do you mean when you use the word death? It is simply a door beyond which we don't know what happens. We see a man disappearing inside a door; we can see up to the door, and then the man simply disappears. Your word death can give only the meaning of the door. But what happens really, beyond the door? -

- because the door is not the thing.

The door is to be passed through. Then what happens to one who disappears through the door that we cannot see beyond? What happens to him? And what is this door? Just a stopping of the breath? Is the breath the whole of life? Don't you have anything more than the breath? Breath stops... body deteriorates... if you are body and breath alone, then there is no problem. Then death is nothing. It is not a door to anything. It is simply a stopping, not a disappearance. It is just like a clock.

The clock is tick-ticking, working, then it stops; you don't ask where the tick-tick has gone -- that would be meaningless! It has gone nowhere. It has not gone at all, it has simply stopped; it was a mechanism and something has gone wrong in the mechanism --

you can repair the mechanism, then it will tick-tick again. Is death just like a clock stopping? Just like that?

If so, it is not a mystery, it is nothing really. But how can life disappear so easily? Life is not mechanical. Life is awareness. The clock is not aware -- you can listen to the tick-tick, the clock has never listened to it. You can listen to your own heartbeat. Who is this listener? If only the heartbeat is life, then who is this listener? If breath is the only life, how can you be aware of your breath? That's why all Eastern techniques of meditation use breath awareness as a subtle technique -- because if you become aware of the breathing, then who is this awareness? It must be something beyond breath because you can look at it and the looker cannot be the object. You can witness it; you can close your eyes and you can see your breath going in and coming out. Who is this seer, the witnessing? It must be a separate force that does not depend on breathing. When the breathing disappears it is the stopping of a clock, but where does this awareness go?

Where does this awareness move to?

Death is a door, it is not a stopping. Awareness moves but your body remains at the door

-- just as you have come here and left your shoes at the door. The body is left outside the temple, and your awareness enters the temple. It is the most subtle phenomenon, life is nothing before it. Basically life is just a preparation for dying, and only those are wise who learn in their life how to die. If you don't know how to die you have missed the whole meaning of life: it is a preparation, it is a training, it is a discipline.

Life is not the end, it is just a discipline to learn the art of dying. But you are afraid, you are scared, at the very word death you start trembling. That means you have not yet known life, because life never dies. Life cannot die.

Somewhere you have become identified with the body, with the mechanism. The mechanism is to die, the mechanism cannot be eternal, because the mechanism depends on many things; it is a conditioned phenomenon. Awareness is unconditional, it doesn't depend on anything. It can float like a cloud in the sky, it has no roots, it is not caused, it is never born so it can never die.

Whenever someone dies you have to be meditative near them, because a temple is just near and it is holy ground. Don't be childish, don't bring curiosities, be silent so you can watch and see. Something very very meaningful is happening -- don't miss the moment.

And when death is there, why ask about it? Why not look at it? Why not watch it? Why not move with it a few steps?

'I WON'T SAY,' SAID DOGO.'WELL?' INSISTED ZENGEN.'I'M NOT SAYING, AND

THAT'S FINAL,' SAID DOGO.

ON THEIR WAY BACK TO THE TEMPLE, THE

FURIOUS ZENGEN TURNED ON DOGO AND THREATENED: 'BY GOD, IF YOU

DON'T ANSWER MY QUESTION, WHY I'LL BEAT YOU!'

This is possible in zen, that even a disciple can beat the master, because zen is very true to life and very authentic. A zen master does not create the phenomenon around him: 'I am holier than you.' He does not say, 'I am so superior.' How can one who has achieved say, 'I am superior and you are inferior'? The disciple can think that he is superior, but the master cannot claim any superiority, because superiority is only claimed by inferiority.

Superiority is only claimed by the ego which is impotent, inferior. Strength is claimed only by weakness: when you are uncertain you claim certainty, when you are ill you claim health, when you don't know you claim knowledge. Your claims are simply to hide the truth. A master claims nothing. He cannot say, 'I am superior.' It is foolish. How can a wise man say, 'I am superior'?

So a zen master even allows this -- a disciple to hit him -- and he can enjoy the whole thing. Nobody else in the world has done that; that's why zen masters are rare -- you cannot find rarer flowers than them. The master is so superior really that he allows you even to hit him; his superiority is not challenged by it. You cannot challenge him in any way and you cannot bring him down in any way. He is no more there. He is an empty house. And he knows that a disciple can only be foolish. Nothing else is expected because a disciple is ignorant.

Compassion is needed. And in ignorance a disciple is bound to go on doing things, things which are not proper, because how can an improper person do proper things? And if you force proper things on an improper person, he will be crippled, his freedom will be cut.

And a master is to help you to be free -- so hitting is allowed. In fact it is not irreverence; in fact the disciple also loves the master so much, so intimately, that he can come so close. Even hitting a person is a sort of intimacy -- you cannot hit just anybody.

Sometimes it happens that even a child hits his father, or a child slaps his mother. No antagonism is meant, it is just that the child accepts the mother so deeply and so intimately that he doesn't feel that anything is improper. Andthe child knows he will be forgiven, so there is no fear.

A master forgives infinitely, unconditionally.

The disciple was very angry because he had asked a very meaningful question -- it looked meaningful to him. He couldn't conceive why Dogo should behave so

obstinately and say, 'No!' -- and not only that, he said, 'This is final! And I am not going to say anything more.'

When you ask a question you ask because of your ego, and when the answer is not given the ego feels hurt. The disciple was hurt; his ego was disturbed, he couldn't believe it --

and this must have happened before many people. They were not alone, there were many others, there must have been -- when someone dies many people gather there. And before those people the master said, 'No, and this is final! I am not going to say anything.' They all must have thought, 'This disciple is just a fool, asking irrelevant questions.'

Zengen must have felt angry, he must have been boiling. When he found himself alone with the master going back to the monastery he said:

'BY GOD, IF YOU DON'T ANSWER MY QUESTION, WHY I'LL BEAT YOU!' 'ALL

RIGHT,' SAID DOGO, 'BEAT AWAY.'

Be finished with it! If you are angry, then be finished with it.

A master is always ready to bring all that is in you out, even your negativity. Even if you are going to hit him he will allow you to. Who knows -- in hitting the master you may become aware of your negativity; you may become aware of your illness, your disease, your madness. Hitting the master may become a sudden enlightenment -- who knows.

And a master is to help you in every way. So Dogo said:

'ALL RIGHT' -- go ahead -- 'BEAT AWAY.'

A MAN OF HIS WORD, ZENGEN SLAPPED HIS MASTER A GOOD ONE.

SOME TIME LATER DOGO DIED, AND ZENGEN, STILL ANXIOUS TO HAVE

HIS QUESTION ANSWERED, WENT TO THE MASTER SEKISO, AND, AFTER

RELATING WHAT HAD HAPPENED, ASKED THE SAME QUESTION OF HIM.

SEKISO, AS IF CONSPIRING WITH THE DEAD DOGO, WOULD NOT ANSWER.

All masters are always in a secret conspiracy. If they are masters at all, they are always together -- even if they contradict each other, they belong to the same conspiracy; even if they say sometimes that the other is wrong, they are in a conspiracy.

Buddha and Mahavira were contemporaries and they moved in the same province, Bihar.

It is known as Bihar because of them: BIHAR means their field of movement, they walked all over that part. Sometimes they were in the same village.

Once it happened that they were staying in the same roadside inn -- half the inn was engaged by Buddha and half by Mahavira -- but they never met each other and continuously they refuted each other. Disciples used to move from one master to the other. It has remained a problem -- why? Buddha would even laugh, he would joke about Mahavira. He would say, 'That fellow! So he claims that he is enlightened? He claims that he is all-knowing? But I have heard that he says it once happened that he knocked at a door to beg food and there was no one inside, and I have heard that he claims that he is all-knowing! And even this much he didn't know -- that the house was vacant?'

He goes on joking. He says, 'Once Mahavira was walking and he stepped on the tail of a dog. Only when the dog jumped and barked did he know that the dog was there, because it was morning and dark. And that fellow says that he is all- knowing?' And he goes on joking. He cuts many jokes against Mahavira; they are beautiful.

They are in a conspiracy, Buddha and Mahavira, and this has not been understood, neither by Jainas nor by Buddhists -- they have missed the whole point. They think they are against each other, and Jainas and Buddhists have remained against each other for these two thousand years.

They are not against each other! They are playing roles, and they are trying to help people. They are two different types. Somebody can be helped by

Mahavira, and somebody else can be helped by Buddha. The person who can be helped by Buddha cannot be helped by Mahavira -- that person has to be taken away from Mahavira. And the person who can be helped by Mahavira cannot be helped by Buddha -- that person has to be taken away from Buddha. That's why they talk against each other; it is a conspiracy.

But everybody should be helped, and they are two different types, absolutely different types.

How can they be against each other? Nobody who ever became enlightened is against any other enlightened person, cannot be. He may talk as if it is so because he knows the other will understand. Mahavira is never reported to have said anything about the jokes that Buddha was telling here and there. He kept completely silent. That was his way. By being completely silent, not even refuting, he was saying, 'Leave that fool to himself!' -- by being completely silent, not saying anything.

Every day reports would come, people would come and they would say, 'He has said this,' and Mahavira would not even talk about it. And that was fitting, because he was very old, thirty years older than Buddha; it was not good for him to come down and fight with a young man -- this is how young fools are! But he was the same as Buddha against other teachers who were older than him. He would talk about them, talk against them, argue against them.

They are in a conspiracy. They have to be -- because you cannot understand. They have to divide paths, because you cannot understand that life exists through opposites. They have to choose opposites. They have to stick to one thing, and then they have to say, FOR

YOU, 'Remember that all others are wrong' -- because if they say everybody is right you will be more confused. You are already confused enough. If they say, 'Yes, I am right.

Mahavira is also right, Buddha is also right -- everybody is right,' you will immediately leave them; you will think: 'This man can't help, because we are already confused. We don't know what is right and what is wrong, and we have come to this man to know exactly what is right and what is wrong.'

So masters stick to something and they say, 'This is right and everything else is wrong,'

knowing all along that there are millions of ways to reach the Way; knowing all along that there are millions of paths which reach the final path. But if they say that millions of paths reach, you will be simply confused.

This disciple Zengen was in trouble, because his Master Dogo died. He never expected that this was going to happen so soon. Disciples always feel in great difficulty when masters die. When masters are there, they fool around and waste time. When masters are dead, then they are in a real fix and difficulty -- what to do? So Zengen's question remained, the problem remained, the puzzle was as it was before. The disciple had not yet come to know what death is, and Dogo had died.

He went to another master, Sekiso, and after relating the whole thing, what had happened, asked the same question of him.

SEKISO, AS IF CONSPIRING WITH THE DEAD DOGO, WOULD NOT

ANSWER.'BY GOD!' CRIED ZENGEN. 'YOU TOO?' 'I'M NOT SAYING,' SAID

SEKISO, 'AND THAT'S FINAL.'

They are doing something. They are creating a situation. They are saying, 'Be silent before death. Don't ask questions, because when you ask you come to the surface, you become superficial. These questions are not questions to be asked. These questions are to be penetrated, lived, meditated on. You have to move into them. If you want to know death -- die! That is the only way to know. If you want to know life -- live!'

You are alive but not living, and you will die and you will not die... because everything is lukewarm in you. You live? -- not exactly; you just drag. Somehow, somehow you pull yourself along.

Live as intensely as possible! Burn your candle of life from both ends! Burn it so intensely... if it is finished in one second it is okay, but at least you will have known what it is. Only intensity penetrates. And if you can live an intense life you will have a different quality of death, because you will die intensely. As life is, so will the death be.

If you live dragging, you will die dragging. You will miss life, and you will miss

death also. Make life as intense as possible. Put everything at stake. Why worry? Why be worried about the future? THIS moment is there. Bring your total existence into it! Live intensely, totally, wholly, and this moment will become a revelation. And if you know life, you will know death.

This is the secret key: if you know life, you will know death. If you ask what death is, it means you have not lived -- because deep down they are one. What is the secret of life?

The secret of life is death. If you love, what is the secret of love? Death. If you meditate, what is the secret of meditation? Death.

Whatsoever happens that is beautiful and intense always happens through death. You die.

You simply bring yourself totally in it and die to everything else. You become so intense that you are not there, because if you are there then the intensity cannot be total; then two are there. If you love and the lover is there, then love cannot be intense. Love so deeply, so totally, that the lover disappears. Then you are just an energy moving. Then you will know love, you will know life, you will know death.

These three words are very meaningful: love, life, and death. Their secret is the same, and if you understand them there is no need to meditate. It is because you don't understand them that meditation is needed. Meditation is just a spare wheel. If you really love, it becomes meditation. If you don't love, then you will have to meditate. If you really live, it becomes meditation. If you don't live, then you will have to meditate; then something else will have to be added.

But this is the problem: if you cannot love deeply, how can you meditate deeply? If you cannot live deeply, how can you meditate deeply? ... Because the problem is neither love nor meditation nor death, the problem is: How to move to the depth? Deepness is the question.

If you move deeply in ANYTHING, life will be on the periphery and death will be in the center. Even if you watch a flower totally, forgetting everything, in watching the flower you will die in the flower. You will experience a merging, a melting. Suddenly you will feel you are not, only the flower is.

Live each moment as if this is the last moment. And nobody knows -- it may be

the last.

Both the masters were trying to bring Zengen an awareness. When Sekiso heard the disciple telling him the whole story he also said, 'No. I'M NOT SAYING AND THAT'S

FINAL.' He repeated the same words Dogo had said. The first time the disciple missed, but not the second time.

AT THAT VERY INSTANT, ZENGEN EXPERIENCED AN AWAKENING.

A satori happened... suddenly lightning... he became aware. The first time he missed. It is almost always so. The first time you will miss, because you don't know what is happening. The first time, the old habits of the mind will not allow you to see; that's why the second master, Sekiso, simply repeated the words of Dogo -- simply repeated. He did not change even a single word. The very line is the same:

'I'M NOT SAYING,' HE SAID, 'AND THAT'S FINAL.'

He again created the same situation.

It was easy to fight with a Dogo, it is not easy to fight with Sekiso. He is not Zengen's master. It was easy to hit Dogo, it will not be possible to hit Sekiso. It is enough that he answers. It is his compassion; he is not bound to answer.

An intimacy was there between Dogo and this disciple, and sometimes it happens when you are very intimate that you can miss -- because you take things for granted.

Sometimes a distance is needed; it depends on the person.

A few people can learn only when a distance is there, a few people can learn only when there is no distance -- there are these two types of people. Those who can learn from a distance, they will miss a master; they will miss their own master, but he prepares them.

Many of you are here who have worked in many lives with many other masters. You have missed them, but they have prepared you to reach me. Many of you will miss me, but I will have prepared you to reach somebody else. So nothing is

lost, no effort is wasted.

Dogo created the situation, Sekiso fulfilled it.

AT THAT VERY INSTANT ZENGEN EXPERIENCED AN AWAKENING.

What happened? Hearing again the same words... is there a certain conspiracy? Why the same words again? Suddenly he became aware: My question is absurd, I am asking something which cannot be answered. It is not the master who is denying the answer, it is my very question, the nature of it.

A silence is needed before death, before life, before love. If you love a person you sit silently with the person. You would not like to chatter, you would like to just hold their hand and live and be silent in that moment. If you chatter, that means you are avoiding the person -- love is not really there. If you love life, chattering will drop, because every moment is so filled with life that there is no way, no space to chatter. Each moment life is flooding you so vitally -- where is the time to gossip and chatter? Each moment you live totally, mind becomes silent. Eat, and eat so totally -- because life is entering you through food -- that mind becomes silent. Drink, and drink totally: life is entering through water, it will quench your thirst; move with it as it touches your thirst, as the thirst disappears.

Be silent and watch. How can you chatter when you are drinking a cup of tea? Warm life is flowing within you. Be filled with it. Be respectful.

Hence, in Japan, tea ceremonies exist, and every house worth calling a house has a tearoom just like a temple. A very ordinary thing, tea -- and they have raised it to a very holy status. When they enter the tearoom, they enter in complete silence, as if it is a temple. They sit silently in the tearoom. Then the kettle starts singing, and everybody listens silently, as you are listening to me: the same silence. And the kettle goes on singing millions of songs, sounds, OMKAR -- the very mantra of life -- and they listen silently. And then the tea is poured. They touch their cups and saucers. They feel grateful that this moment is again given to them. Who knows if it will come again or not? Then they smell the tea, the aroma, and they are filled with gratitude. Then they start sipping.

And the taste... and the warmth... and the flow... and the merging of their own energy with the energy of the tea... it becomes a meditation.

Everything can become a meditation if you live it totally and intensely. And then your life becomes whole.

Suddenly, listening to the same words again, Zengen came to realize, 'I was wrong and my master was right. I was wrong because I thought: He is not answering; he is not paying attention to my question; he is not caring about me at all and my inquiry. My ego was hurt. But I was wrong -- he was not hitting my ego. I was not at all in the question.

The very nature of death is such ' Suddenly he was awakened.

This is called satori. It is a special enlightenment. In no other language does there exist a word equivalent to satori. It is a specially zen thing. It is not samadhi; it is samadhi. It is not samadhi because it can happen in very ordinary moments: drinking tea, taking a walk, looking at a flower, listening to the frog jumping in the pond. It can happen in very ordinary moments, so it is not like the samadhi about which Patanjali talks.

Patanjali would simply be surprised that a frog jumps into the pond and at the sound of it somebody becomes enlightened. Patanjali would not be able to believe that a dry leaf drops from the tree, zigzags, moves on the wind a little, then falls to the ground and goes fast asleep -- and somebody sitting under the tree attains enlightenment? No, Patanjali would not be able to believe it: 'Impossible, because,' he will say, 'samadhi is something exceptional; samadhi comes after much effort, millions of lives. And then it happens in a particular posture -- SIDDHASAN. It happens in a particular state of body and mind.'

Satori is samadhi and yet not samadhi. It is a glimpse, and a glimpse in the very ordinary of the extraordinary: samadhi happening in ordinary moments. A sudden thing also -- it is not gradual, you don't move in degrees. It is just like water coming to boiling point, to one hundred degrees -- and then the jump, and the water becomes vapor, merges into the sky, and you cannot trace where it has gone. Up to ninety-nine degrees it is boiling and boiling and boiling, but not evaporating. From the ninety-ninth degree it can fall back, it was only hot. But if it passes the hundredth degree, then there is a sudden jump.

The situation is the same in the story. With Dogo, Zengen became hot, but couldn't evaporate. It was not enough, he needed one more situation, or he may have been in need of many more situations. Then with Sekiso -- the same

situation, and suddenly something is hit. Suddenly the focus changes, the gestalt. Up to this point he had been thinking that it was his question to which Dogo had not replied. He had been egocentric. He had been thinking, 'It is I who have been neglected by my master. He was not careful enough about me and my inquiries. He didn't pay enough attention to me and my inquiry.'

Suddenly he realizes: 'It was not I who was neglected, or that the master was indifferent, or that he didn't pay attention. No, it was not me -- it is the question itself. It cannot be answered. Before the mysteries of life and death, one has to be silent.' The gestalt changes. He can see the whole thing. Hence, he attains a glimpse.

Whenever the gestalt changes you attain a glimpse. That glimpse is satori. It is not final, you will lose it again. You will not become a buddha by satori; that's why I say it is a samadhi and yet not a samadhi. It is an ocean in a teacup. Ocean, yes, and yet not the ocean -- samadhi in a capsule. It gives you a glimpse, an opening... as if you are moving in a dark night, in a forest, lost; you don't know where you are moving, where the path is, whether you are moving in the right direction or not -- and then suddenly there is lightning. In a moment you see everything! Then the light disappears. You cannot read in lightning, because it lasts only a moment. You cannot sit under the sky and start reading in lightning. No, it is not a constant flow.

Samadhi is such that you can read in its light. Satori is like lightning -- you can see a glimpse of the whole, all that is there, and then it disappears. But you will not be the same again. It is not final enlightenment, but a great step towards it. Now you know. You have had a glimpse, now you can search for more of it. You have tasted it, now buddhas will become meaningful.

Now if Zengen meets Dogo again he will not hit him, he will fall at his feet and ask for his forgiveness. Now he will weep millions of tears, because now he will say, 'What compassion Dogo had, that he allowed me to hit him; that he said, "Okay, you go ahead.

Beat away!"' If he meets Dogo again, Zengen will not be the same. He has now tasted something which has changed him. He has not attained the final thing -- the final thing will be coming -- but he has got the sample.

Satori is the sample of Patanjali's samadhi. And it is beautiful that the sample is

possible, because unless you taste it how can you move towards it? Unless you smell it a little, how can you be attracted and pulled towards it? The glimpse will become a magnetic force.

You will never be the same again. You will know something is there and 'whether I find it or not -- that is up to me.' But trust will arise. Satori gives trust and starts a movement, a vital movement in you, towards the final enlightenment that is samadhi.

And The Flowers Showered Chapter #6

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