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Chapter title: Tozan's five pounds
7 November 1974 am in Buddha Hall Archive
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7411070
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FLOWRS08
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102
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THE MASTER TOZAN WAS WEIGHING SOME FLAX IN THE STOREROOM.
A MONK CAME UP TO HIM AND ASKED: 'WHAT IS BUDDHA?' TOZAN SAID: 'THIS FLAX WEIGHS FIVE POUNDS.'
RELIGION IS NOT CONCERNED with philosophical questions and answers. To go on looking this way is stupid, and a sheer waste of life, time, energy and consciousness, because you can go on asking and answers can be given -- but from answers only more questions will come out. If in the beginning there was one question, in the end, through many answers, there will be a million questions.
Philosophy solves nothing. It promises, but never solves anything -- all those promises remain unfulfilled. Still it goes on promising. But the experience which can solve the riddles of the mind cannot be attained through philosophical speculation.
Buddha was absolutely against philosophy -- there has never been a man more against philosophy than Buddha. Through his own bitter experience he came to understand that all those profundities of philosophy are just superficial. Even the greatest philosopher remains as ordinary as anyone. No problem has been solved by him, not even touched.
He carries much knowledge, many answers, but he remains the same in his old age -- no new life happens to him. And the crux, the core of the matter is that mind is a question-raising faculty: it can raise any sort of question, and then it can befool itself by answering them. But YOU are the questioner, and YOU are the one who solves them.
Ignorance creates questions, and ignorance creates answers -- the same mind creating both parts. How can a questioning mind come to an answer? Deep down, the mind itself is the question.
So philosophy tries to answer questions of the mind, and religion looks at the very base.
The mind is the question, and unless mind is dropped the answer will not be revealed to you -- mind won't allow it, mind is the barrier, the wall. When there is no mind you are an experiencing being; when the mind is there you are a verbalizing being.
In a small school it happened: there was a very stupid child; he never asked any questions and also the teacher neglected him. But one day he was very excited when the teacher was explaining a certain problem of arithmetic, writing some figures on the board. The child was very excited, raising his hand again and again; he wanted to ask something.
When the teacher finished with the problem, she washed the figures from the board, and was very happy that for the first time this child was so excited as to ask something, and she said, 'I am happy that you are ready to ask something. Go ahead -- ask!'
The child stood, and he said, 'I am very worried, and the question comes again and again to me but I couldn't gather the courage to ask. Today I have decided to ask: where do these damn figures go when you wash them off?'
The question is very philosophical; all questions are like this. Many ask where a buddha goes when he dies; the question is the same. Where is God? -- the question is the same.
What is truth? -- the question is the same. But you cannot feel the stupidity hidden in them, because they look very profound, and they have a long tradition
-- people have always been asking them, and people whom you think very great have been concerned with them: theorizing, finding answers, creating systems... but the whole effort is useless because only experience can give you the answer, not thinking. And if you go on thinking you will become more and more mad, and the answer will still be far away -- farther away than ever.
Buddha says: When the mind stops questioning, the answer happens. It is because you are so much concerned with questions that the answer cannot enter you. You are in such trouble, you are so disturbed, so very tense, the reality cannot enter into you -- you are shaking so much inside, trembling with fear, with neurosis, with stupid questions and answers, with systems, philosophies, theories; you are so filled up.
Mulla Nasruddin was passing through a village in his car. Many crowds were gathered at many spots, and he was worried -- what is the matter? Nobody was on the streets, everybody was gathered somewhere or other. Then he saw a policeman, and he stopped him and asked, 'What is the matter? Has something gone wrong? What has happened? I don't see people anywhere, working, moving, in the shops... they are gathered in many crowds!'
The policeman could not believe his ears; he said, 'What are you asking? There has been an earthquake just now! Many houses have fallen, many people are dead!' Then the policeman said, 'I cannot believe that you couldn't feel the earthquake!'
Nasruddin said, 'Because of alcohol I am always shaking so much, my hands are so jittery, that I missed it.'
If an earthquake is going on inside you continuously, then a real earthquake will not be capable of entering you. When you are silent and still, then the reality
happens. And questioning is a trembling inside. Questioning means doubt, doubt means trembling.
Questioning means you don't trust anything -- everything has become a question, and when everything is a question there will be very much anxiety. Have you observed yourself? Everything becomes a question. If you are miserable, it is a question: Why?
Even if you are happy, it is a question: Why? You cannot believe yourself being happy.
People come to me when meditation goes deeper and they have glimpses, they come to me very disturbed because, they say, something is happening, and they cannot believe that it is happening to THEM, that a bliss can happen -- there must be some deception.
People have said to me, 'Are you hypnotizing? -- because something is happening!' They cannot believe that they can be blissful, somebody must be hypnotizing them. They cannot believe that they can be silent -- impossible! 'Why? Why am I silent? Somebody is playing a trick!'
Trust is not possible for a questioning mind. Immediately experience is there, the mind creates a question: Why? The flower is there -- if you trust, you will feel a beauty, a blooming of beauty; but the mind says: Why? Why is this flower called beautiful? What is beauty? -- you are going astray. You are in love, the mind asks: Why, what is love?
It is reported that Saint Augustine said, 'I know what time is, but when people ask me, everything is lost, I cannot answer. I know what love is, but you ask me: What is love? --
and I am at a loss, I cannot answer. I know what God is, but you ask, and I am at a loss.'
And Augustine is right, because profundities cannot be asked, cannot be questioned. You cannot put a question mark on a mystery. If you put a question mark, the question mark becomes more important; then the question covers the whole mystery. And if you think that when you have solved the question, then you will live the mystery, you will never live it.
Questioning is irrelevant in religion. Trust is relevant. Trust means moving into the experience, into the unknown, without asking much -- going through it to know it.
I tell you about a beautiful morning outside, and you start questioning me about it here, walled in a room, enclosed, and you would like your every question to be answered before you take a step outside. How can I tell you if you have never known what morning is? How can I tell you? Only that can be told through words which you already know.
How can I tell you that there is light, beautiful light falling through the trees, and the whole sky is filled with light, the sun has risen, if you have always lived in darkness? If your eyes are accustomed only to the dark, how can I explain to you that the sun has risen?
You will ask: What do you mean? Are you trying to deceive us? We have lived all our lives and we have never known anything like light. First answer our questions, and then, if we are convinced, we can come out with you; otherwise it seems you are leading us astray, astray from our sheltered life.
But how can the light be told of if you don't know about it? But that's what you are asking: Convince us about God, then we will meditate, then we will pray, then we will search. How can we search before the conviction is there? How can we go on a search when we don't know where we are going?
This is distrust -- and because of this distrust you cannot move into the unknown. The known clings to you, and you cling to the known -- and the known is the dead past. It may feel cozy because you have lived in it, but it is dead, it is not alive. The alive is always the unknown, knocking at your door. Move with it. But how can you move without trust? And even doubting persons think that they have trust.
Once it happened: Mulla Nasruddin told me that he was thinking of divorcing his wife. I asked, 'Why? Why so suddenly?'
Nasruddin said, 'I doubt her fidelity towards me.' So I told him, 'Wait, I will ask your wife.'
So I told his wife, 'Nasruddin is talking around town and creating a rumor that
you are not faithful, and he is thinking of divorce, so what is the matter?'
His wife said, 'This is too much. Nobody has ever insulted me like that -- and I tell you, I have been faithful to him dozens of times!'
It is not a question of dozens of times -- you also trust, but dozens of times. That trust cannot be very deep, it is just utilitarian. You trust whenever you feel it pays. But whenever the unknown knocks you never trust, because you don't know whether it is going to pay or not. Faith and trust are not a question of utility -- they are not utilities, you cannot use them. If you want to use them, you kill them. They are not utilitarian at all. You can enjoy them, you can be blissful about them -- but they don't pay.
They don't pay in the terms of this world; on the contrary, the whole world will look at you as a fool, because the world thinks someone wise if he doubts, the world thinks someone wise if he questions, the world thinks someone wise only when he moves a step with conviction, and before he is convinced he will not move. This is the cunning and the cleverness of the world -- and the world calls such people wise!
They are fools as far as Buddha is concerned, because through their so-called wisdom they are missing the greatest, and the greatest cannot be used. You can merge with it, you cannot use it. It has no utility, it is not a commodity; it is an experience, it is an ecstasy.
You cannot sell it, you cannot make a business out of it -- rather, on the contrary, you are lost in it completely. You will never be the same again. In fact you can never come back -
- it is a point of no return: if you go, you go. You cannot go back, there is no going back.
It is dangerous.
So only very courageous people can enter on the path. Religion is not for cowards. But you will find in churches, temples, mosques -- cowards: they have destroyed the whole thing. Religion is only for the very very courageous, for those who can take the most dangerous step -- and the most dangerous step is from the known towards the unknown; the most dangerous step is from the mind to no-mind, from questioning to no-questioning, from doubt to trust.
Before we enter this small but beautiful anecdote -- it is just like a diamond: very small but very valuable -- a few more things are to be understood. One: you will be able to understand it only when you can take a jump, when you can bridge, somehow, the known with the unknown, mind with no-mind. Second thing: religion is not at all a question of thinking; it is not a question of RIGHT thinking, that if you think rightly you will become religious -- no! Whether you think rightly or wrongly you will remain unreligous. People think that if you think rightly you will become religious; people think that if you think wrongly you will go astray.
But I tell you, if you think, you will go astray -- rightly or wrongly is not the point. If you DON'T think, only then are you on the path. Think and you miss. You have already gone off on a long journey, you are no longer here, now; the present is missed -- and reality is only in the present.
With mind, you go on missing. Mind has a mechanism -- it moves in circles, vicious circles. Try to observe your own mind: has it been on a journey, or just moving in circles? Have you really been moving, or just moving in a circle? You repeat the same, again and again. The day before yesterday you were angry, yesterday you were angry, today you have been angry -- and there is every possibility that tomorrow you are going to be angry; and do you feel that anger is different? The day before yesterday it was the same, yesterday it was the same, today it is the same -- the anger is the same. Situations may differ, excuses may differ, but the anger is the same! Are you moving? Are you going somewhere? Is there any progress? Are you reaching some goal, getting nearer?
You are moving in a circle, reaching nowhere. The circle may be very big, but how can you move if you move in a circle?
I overheard once, walking in the afternoon, I heard coming from the inside of a small house a child whining and saying, 'Mum, I am fed up with moving in circles.'
The mother said, 'Either you shut up, or I will nail your other foot to the floor also.'
But you are not yet fed up. One foot is nailed to the earth, and like the child you are moving in circles. You are like a broken gramophone record -- the same line repeats itself, it goes on repeating. Have you ever listened to a broken
gramophone record?
Listen! -- it is like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation, TM: you repeat one thing, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram... you go on repeating. You get bored; through boredom you feel sleepy. Sleep is good! After the sleep you feel fresh -- but this is not going towards truth at all, it is just getting a good sleep, through a trick. But this TM you are doing continuously; your whole life is a TM, repeating, moving in the same groove again and again and again.
Where are you going? Whenever you become aware of this you will think simply: What has been happening? You will feel very strange, shocked, that your whole life has been a misuse. You have not moved a single inch. The sooner the better -- if you realize this, the sooner the better, because through this realization something is possible.
Why this repetition? Mind is repetitive, it is a broken record; the very nature of it is just like a broken record. You cannot change it. A broken record can be repaired, mind cannot be, because the very nature of the mind is to repeat; repetition is the nature of the mind.
At the most you can make bigger circles, and with bigger circles you can feel that there is some freedom; with bigger circles you can deceive yourself that things are not repeating.
Somebody's circle is just twenty-four hours. If you are clever you can make a circle of thirty days; if you are even more clever you can make a circle of one year; if you are even more clever you can make a circle of a whole life -- but the circle remains the same. It makes no difference. Bigger or smaller, you move in the same groove, you come back to the same point.
Because of this understanding, Hindus have called life a wheel -- your life, of course, not a buddha's life. A buddha is one who has jumped out of the wheel. You cling to the wheel, you feel very secure there -- and the wheel moves on; from birth to death it completes a circle. Again birth, again death. The word SANSAR, the word Hindus use for this world, means the wheel. It moves in the same groove. You come and go, and you do much -- to no avail. Where do you miss? You miss in the first step.
The nature of the mind is repetition, and the nature of life is no repetition. Life is always new, ALWAYS. Newness is the nature of life, Tao; nothing is old, cannot
be. Life never repeats, it simply becomes new every day, new every moment -- and mind is old; hence mind and life never meet. Mind simply repeats, life never repeats -- how can mind and life meet? That's why philosophy never understands life.
The whole effort of religion is: how to drop the mind and move into life, how to drop the repetitive mechanism and how to enter the evernew, evergreen phenomenon of existence.
This is the whole point of this beautiful story, TOZAN'S FIVE POUNDS.
THE MASTER TOZAN WAS WEIGHING SOME FLAX IN THE STOREROOM. A MONK CAME UP TO HIM AND ASKED: 'WHAT IS BUDDHA?'
TOZAN SAID: 'THIS FLAX WEIGHS FIVE POUNDS.'
Many things: first, a zen master is not a recluse, he has not renounced life; rather, on the contrary, he has renounced the mind and entered life.
There are two types of sannyasins in the world: one type renounces life and enters the life of the mind completely -- these are the anti-life people, escaping from the world towards the Himalayas, Tibet. They renounce life to be completely absorbed in the mind -- and they are in the majority, because to renounce life is easy; to renounce mind is difficult.
What is the difficulty? If you want to escape from here, you can escape! You can leave your wife, your children, your house, your job -- really you will feel unburdened, because your wife has become a burden, the children have become a burden, and the whole thing, working every day, earning... you are fed up! You will feel unburdened.
And what will you do in the Himalayas? The whole energy will become mind: you will repeat Ram, Ram, Ram, you will read the Upanishads and the Vedas, and you will think profound truths. You will think about where the world came from, where the world is going, who created the world, why he created the world, what is good and what is evil.
You will contemplate, think -- great things! Your whole life energy which was engaged in other things will be freed from them now and will be absorbed in the
mind. You will become a mind.
And people will pay you respect because you renounced life. You are a great man! Fools will recognize you as a great man: fools can recognize you only because you are the greatest of them and they will pay respect, they will prostrate themselves at your feet --
you have done a great miracle!
But what has happened? You renounced life just to be the mind. You renounced the whole body just to be the head -- and the head was the problem! You saved the disease, and you renounced everything. Now the mind will become a cancerous growth. It will do JAPA, mantra, austerities -- it will do everything; and then it will become a ritual. That's why religious people move in rituals: ritual means a repetitive phenomenon. Every morning, every day they have to do their prayer: a Mohammedan does five prayers in a day -- wherever he is, he is to do the prayer five times; a Hindu goes on doing the same ritual every day for his whole life; Christians have to go to church every Sunday... just a ritual! Because mind likes repetition, mind creates a ritual.
In your ordinary life also, mind creates a ritual. You love, you meet friends, you go to parties... everything is a ritual, has to be done, repeated. You have a program for all the seven days, and the program is fixed -- and this has been so always. You have become a robot, not alive. Mind is a robot. If you give too much attention to the mind it will absorb all your energy; it is a cancer, it will grow, it will spread all over.
But a zen master belongs to the other category of sannyasin. He belongs to my category of sannyasin. A zen master has always been a neo-sannyasin -- hence I love to talk about them; I have a deep affinity with them. They renounce mind and they live life; they don't renounce life and live mind -- just the contrary. They simply renounce mind because it is repetitive -- and they live life. They may be living the life of a householder; they may have a wife, they may have children; they will work on the farm, they will work in the garden, they will dig holes, they will weigh flax in the storeroom.…
A Hindu cannot think why an enlightened man should weigh flax -- why? Why such an ordinary activity? But a zen master renounces mind, lives life in its totality. He drops mind and becomes simple existence.
So the first thing to remember: if you renounce mind and live life you are a true sannyasin; if you renounce life and live mind you are an untrue sannyasin, you are a pseudo-sannyasin. And remember well, to be pseudo is always easier; to be real is always difficult. To live with a wife and to be happy is really difficult; to live with children and to be blissful is really difficult. To work in a shop, in an office, in a factory and to be ecstatic is the real difficulty.
To leave everything and just sit under a tree and feel happy is not difficult -- anybody will feel that way. Nothing to do, you can be detached; everything to do, you become attached. But when you do everything AND remain unattached, when you move with the crowd, in the world and yet alone, then something real is happening.
If you don't feel anger when you are alone, that is not the point. When you are alone you will not feel anger because anger is a relationship, it needs somebody to be angry towards. Unless you are mad you will not feel anger when you are alone; it will be inside but it will not find any way to come out. When the other is there, not to be angry THEN
is the point. When you don't have any money, any things, any house -- if you are unattached, what is the difficulty in it? But when you have everything and you remain unattached -- a beggar in the palace -- then something very deep has been attained.
And remember, and always keep it in your heart: truth, love, life, meditation, ecstasy, bliss, all that is true and beautiful and good, always exists as a paradox: in the world, and not of it; with people, yet alone; doing everything, and being inactive; moving and not moving; living an ordinary life, and yet not being identified with it; working as everybody else is working, yet remaining aloof deep down. Being in the world and not of the world, that is the paradox. And when you attain this paradox, the greatest peak happens to you: the peak experience.
It is very easy to move into a simple existence either in the world and attached or out of the world and detached -- both are simple. But the greater comes only when it is a complex phenomenon. If you move to the Himalayas and are unattached, you are a single note of the music; if you live in the world and are attached, again you are a single note of the music. But when you are in the world AND beyond it, and you carry your Himalaya in the heart, you are a harmony
not a single note. An accord happens, including all discordant notes, a synthesis of the opposites, a bridge between two banks. And the highest is possible only when life is most complex; only in complexity the highest happens.
If you want to be simple you can choose one of the alternatives -- but you will miss the complexity. If you cannot be simple in complexity, you will be like an animal, an animal or someone in the Himalayas living a renounced life -- they don't go to a shop, they don't work in a factory, they don't have wives, they don't have children.…
I have observed many people who have renounced life. I have lived with them, observed them deeply; they become like animals. I don't see in them something of the supreme happening; rather, on the contrary, they have fallen back. Their life is less tense of course because an animal's life is less tense, they don't have worries because no animal has worries. In fact they go on falling, they regress; they become like vegetables -- they vegetate. If you go to them you will see that they ARE simple, no complexity exists -- but bring them back to the world and you will find them more complex than you, because when the situation arises they will be in difficulty. Then everything that is suppressed will come out. This is a sort of suppression. Don't regress, don't move backwards -- go ahead.
A child IS simple, but don't become a child, become mature. Of course when you become absolutely mature, a childhood happens again, but that is qualitatively different. A sage is again a child, but not childish. A sage has again the flower, the fragrance, the newness of a child, but a deep difference is also there: a child has many repressed things in him and whenever the opportunity is given they will come out . Sex will come out, anger will come out -- he will move into the world and become attached and lost. He has those seeds within him. A sage has no seeds, he cannot be lost. He cannot be lost because he is no more. He carries nothing within him.
Zen masters have lived a very ordinary life -- very otherworldly, but in the world. They are more beautiful people than any Hindu sannyasin, they are more beautiful than any Catholic monk. In fact, nothing like zen exists on the earth, because they have attained to the highest paradox.
THE MASTER TOZAN WAS WEIGHING SOME FLAX IN THE STOREROOM.
An enlightened person, a buddha, weighing flax? You would have simply turned away.
Why ask any question of this man? -- if he knew anything he would not be weighing flax.
Because you have a concept of a saint, a sage, as something extraordinary, beyond you, somewhere in the sky sitting on a golden throne, you cannot reach him. He is very different -- whatsoever you are, he is just the opposite.
A zen master is not that way. He is in no way extraordinary -- and yet extraordinary. He lives the very ordinary life just like you, and yet he is not you. He is not somewhere in the sky, he is HERE, but still beyond you. Weighing flax
-- but just the same as Buddha under a bodhi tree. In India nobody can conceive of Mahavira weighing flax or Buddha weighing flax -- impossible! It would look almost profane. What is Buddha doing in a storeroom? Then what is the difference between you and him? You also weigh flax, he is also weighing flax, so what is the difference?
The difference is not outward -- and outward differences don't make any change. You can go and sit under a bodhi tree -- nothing will happen. And when the inside changes, why be bothered with the outside? Carry on whatsoever you were doing. Carry on whatsoever is given to you. Carry on whatsoever the whole wills.
THE MASTER TOZAN WAS WEIGHING SOME FLAX IN THE STOREROOM.
A MONK CAME UP TO HIM AND ASKED: 'WHAT IS BUDDHA?'
In Buddhism that is the greatest question to be asked -- just like what is truth? or what is God? -- because in Buddhism God is not a concept, Buddha is God; no other god exists.
Buddha is the highest reality, the highest peak; nothing is beyond it. The truth, God, the absolute, Brahma -- whatsoever name you give to it, Buddha is THAT.
So when a monk asks, 'What is Buddha?' he is asking what is truth? what is Tao? what is Brahma? what is that one among the many? what is the basic reality? what is the very central core of existence? -- he is asking all that.
TOZAN SAID: 'THIS FLAX WEIGHS FIVE POUNDS.'
Absurd. Irrelevant. It seems to be completely pointless because the man was asking,
'What is Buddha?' And this Tozan seems to be a madman. He is not talking about Buddha at all, he has not answered the question at all -- and yet he has answered. This is the paradox. If you start living this paradox your life will become a symphony; it will become a higher and higher synthesis of all the opposites. In YOU, then, all opposites will dissolve.
TOZAN SAID: 'THIS FLAX WEIGHS FIVE POUNDS.'
One thing he said: that this very ordinary life is Buddha, this very ordinary life is truth, this very ordinary life is Brahma, is the kingdom of God. There is no other life except this; there is no that, only THIS exists. Hindus say, 'THAT exists, this is illusion'; Tozan said, 'This is true, that is illusion. This very moment is truth, and don't ask for any extraordinary thing.'
Seekers always ask for something extraordinary, because ego feels fulfilled only when something extraordinary is given. You come to a master and you ask questions, and if he says such things you will think he is mad, or joking, or not a man worthy to be asked.
You will simply escape. Why? -- because he shatters your ego completely. You were asking Buddha, you were desiring Buddha, you would like to be a buddha yourself; hence the question. And this man says: What nonsense you are asking! Not even worth answering! This flax weighs five pounds. This is more important than any buddha. This moment, this flax, is the whole of existence. In this five pounds of flax is centered the whole being of the world -- here and now. Don't go astray; don't ask philosophical questions. Look at this moment.
Tozan did a wonderful thing. Tozan is a buddha. Tozan weighing flax is Buddha weighing flax -- and reality is one! Tozan is Buddha, and the flax is also Buddha; and in that moment it weighed five pounds. That was the truth, the facticity of the moment. But if you are filled with philosophy you will think this man is mad and you will go away.
This happened to Arthur Koestler, one of the keenest intellects in the West. He missed the whole point completely. When he went to Japan to study zen he
thought: These people are simply mad -- or else they are joking, not serious at all. He wrote a book, Against zen. It looks absurd. It is. He is wrong, and yet right. It IS absurd. If you don't know the language of zen it is absurd; if you are identified too much with logical thinking, it is absurd. It is illogical -- what more illogical thing can you find: somebody asking, 'What is Buddha?' and somebody answering, 'This flax weighs five pounds'?
You ask about the sky and I answer about the earth; you ask about God and I talk about a rock -- no meeting. And yet there is a meeting -- but very perceptive eyes are needed, not intellectually keen but feelingfully perceptive; not identified with reasoning but waiting to look, watching, witnessing what is happening; not already prejudiced, but open.
Koestler is prejudiced... a very keen intellect, can work out things very logically in the tradition of Aristotle, but does not know anything, does not know at all that there exists an absolutely non-Aristotelian world of zen, where two plus two are not necessarily four; sometimes they are five, sometimes they are three -- anything is possible. No possibility is destroyed, all possibilities remain open, infinitely open. And every time two and two meet, something else happens. The world remains open, unknown; you cannot exhaust it.
Look: superficially this man is mad, but deeply you cannot find a saner man than this Tozan. But Koestler will miss, and Koestler is a keen intellect, very logical; only a few people can compete with him in keen intelligence, but he misses. In this world intelligence is a means, in that world intelligence becomes a barrier. Don't be too wise, otherwise you will miss the real wisdom. Look at this Tozan without any prejudice, without any mind of your own. Simply look at the phenomenon, what is happening?
A disciple monk asks, 'What is Buddha?' -- and a zen master lives in the moment, he is always here and now, he is always at home -- whenever you come you will find him there, he is never absent from there -- he remains in this moment. The trees, the sky, the sun, the rocks, the birds, the people -- the whole world is concentrated in this moment!
This moment is vast. It is not just a tick of your clock; this moment is infinite, because in this moment, everything is. Millions of stars, many new stars being born, many old stars going to die, this whole infinite expanse of time and space meets in this moment. So how to indicate this moment? -- and Tozan was
weighing flax -- how to indicate this moment, how to bring this monk here and now? How to put his philosophic inquiry aside? How to shock him and awaken him to this moment, and in this moment?
This is a shock -- because he must have been inquiring about Buddha in his mind, thinking: 'What is the reality of a buddha? What is truth?' And he must have been expecting some profound answer, something very superb: 'This master is enlightened, so he must say something very valuable.' He could never have expected that it was going to be such an ordinary thing, such an ordinary and absurd answer. He must have been shocked.
In that shock you can be awake for a moment, a fraction of a moment. When you are shocked thinking cannot continue. If the answer is anything relevant, thinking can continue, because that is what mind asks -- relevancy. If something is said which is relevant to the question, thinking can continue; if something is said which is absolutely absurd, discontinuous, is not to the point at all, the mind cannot continue. Suddenly the mind is shocked, and the continuity broken. Soon it will start again, because the mind will say: This is absurd!
Mulla Nasruddin was being analyzed by a psychiatrist. After many months of analysis, many meetings, the psychiatrist said, as Mulla lay on the couch: 'This is what I feel, this is what I conclude: you need to fall in love, you need a beautiful feminine object. Love is your need.'
Mulla said, 'Between me and you, don't you think love is silly?' The psychiatrist said, 'Between me and you? -- it would be absurd!'
For a moment he must have been shocked, but only for a moment. If you cannot find relevancy, the mind will say immediately: This is absurd! If you find relevancy, the continuity continues. If there is something absurd, for a split second there is a discontinuity, the mind is not able to cope with what has been said. But immediately it recovers, it will say it is absurd; continuity restarts.
But the shock, and the assertion of the mind that it is absurd, are not simultaneous; there is a gap. In that gap satori is possible. In that gap you can be awakened, you can have a glimpse. It would have been wonderful if the opportunity could have been used; wonderful is this man Tozan, incomparable. You cannot find such a man anywhere else.
And what a spontaneous answer! Not prefabricated, not in any way readymade; nobody had said that ever before, and there is no point in saying it now. Nobody has ever said,
'THIS FLAX WEIGHS FIVE POUNDS' in answer to a question about Buddha: 'What is Buddha?'
Tozan is spontaneous, he does not answer from the memory; otherwise he knows the scriptures, he was a great scholar before he became enlightened He knows
by heart and has chanted all Buddha's words, he has discussed philosophy for many years; he knows what the monk is asking, he knows what he is expecting -
- but he is simply spontaneous, weighing flax.
Just try to imagine and see Tozan weighing flax. In that moment what could indicate more spontaneously the reality of the moment, the facticity of existence? He simply said,
'THIS FLAX WEIGHS FIVE POUNDS' -- and finished! He doesn't say anything about Buddha; there is no need. This is buddhahood. This being spontaneous is buddhahood.
This being true to the moment is buddhahood.
What he says is just part of it; what he leaves unsaid is the whole. If you awaken in that moment you will see Buddha weighing flax -- and the flax weighs five pounds. What is he indicating? He is not saying much, but he is showing much, and by not saying much he is creating a possibility: you may, for a single moment, be aware of the whole existence that is there concentrated in this Tozan.
Whenever a buddha happens in the world, the whole existence finds a center there. Then all the rivers fall in him, and all the mountains bow down to him, and all the stars move around him. Whenever there is an enlightened man, the whole existence converges on his being. He becomes the center.
Tozan weighing flax in that moment was the buddha: the whole existence converging, flowing into Tozan, and Tozan weighing flax -- and the flax weighed five pounds. This moment is so real: if you awaken, if you open your eyes, satori is possible. Tozan is spontaneous; he has no readymade answers; he responds to the moment.
Next time if you come to Tozan the same answer cannot be given, will not be given, because Tozan may not be weighing, or may be weighing something else, or may be even weighing flax, but the flax may not weigh five pounds. Next time the answer will be different. If you come again and again, each time the answer will be different. This is the difference between a scholar and a man of knowledge. A scholar has fixed answers. If you come, whenever you come, he has a readymade answer for you. You ask, and he will give you the answer, and the answer will always be the same -- and you will feel he is very consistent. He is.
There was once a case against Mulla Nasruddin in the court, and the judge asked his age.
He said, 'Forty years.'
The judge looked surprised and he said, 'Nasruddin, four years ago you were here, and I asked that time also what is your age, and you told me forty years. Now this is absolutely inconsistent -- how can you still be forty?'
Nasruddin said, 'I am a man of consistency. Once forty, I remain forty always. When I have answered once, I have answered for ever! You cannot lead me astray. I am forty, and whenever you ask you will get the same answer. I am a man who is always consistent.'
A consistent man is dead. If you are dead, only then can you remain forty. Then there is no need to change. A dead man never grows -- and you cannot find persons more dead than pundits, scholars, men of information.
An enlightened man lives in the moment: you ask, he replies -- but he has got no fixed replies. He IS the reply. So whatsoever happens in that moment happens; he does not manipulate it, he does not think about it, about what you are asking. You simply ask, and his whole being responds. In this moment it happened that Tozan was weighing flax, and in this moment it happened that the flax weighed five pounds, and when this monk asked,
'What is Buddha?' in Tozan's being five pounds was the reality. He was weighing; in Tozan's being five pounds was the fact. He simply said: Five pounds of flax.
Looks absurd on the surface. If you go deeper, deeper, you find a relevancy
which is not a logical relevancy, and you find a consistency which is not that of the mind, but of the being. Understand, try to understand the difference. If next time you come and Tozan is digging a hole in the garden, and you ask, 'What is Buddha?' -- he will give you the answer. He will say, 'Look at this hole,' he will say, 'It is ready; now the tree can be planted.' Next time, if you come again, and if he is going for a walk with his walking stick, he may say, 'This walking stick.'
Whatsoever is in the moment will be the reply, because a buddha lives moment to moment -- and if you start living moment to moment, you become a buddha. This is the answer: live moment to moment and you become a buddha. A buddha is one who lives moment to moment, who does not live in the past, who does not live in the future, who lives here now. Buddhahood is a quality of being present here and now -- and buddhahood is not a goal, you need not wait, you can become just here and now.
Talking, I am a buddha, because only talk is happening. If only listening is happening there at the other end with you, you are a buddha in listening. Try to catch a glimpse of the moment, this moment. This moment Tozan is not weighing flax; Tozan is talking to you. This moment you have not asked, 'What is Buddha?' but the question is there whether you ask it or not. The question goes around and around in the mind: What is truth? what is Buddha? what is Tao?
Whether you ask it or not it is the question. YOU are the question.
In this moment you can awake. You can look, you can shake the mind a little, create a discontinuity, and suddenly you understand... what Arthur Koestler misses. If you are also too intelligent, you will miss. Don't be too intelligent, don't try to be too clever, because there is a wisdom which is attained by those who become fools; there is a wisdom which is attained by those who become like madmen; there is a wisdom which is attained only when you lose your mind.
Tozan is beautiful. If you can see, and if you can see that the answer is not absurd, you have seen it, you have understood it. But if the understanding remains intellectual it will not be of much use. I have explained it to you, you have understood it, but if the understanding remains intellectual -- you understand with the mind -- again you miss.
Koestler may be against zen and you may be for it, but you both miss. It is not a
question of being for or against; it is a question of a nonmental understanding. If it arises from your heart, if you feel it, not think it, if it touches your whole being, if it penetrates, is not just a verbal thing, not a philosophy, but becomes an experience, it will transform you.
I am talking about these stories just to shock you out of your mind, just to bring you down a little towards the heart -- and if you are ready, then still further down towards the navel.
The further down you go, the deeper you reach... and, ultimately, depth and height are the same thing.
And The Flowers Showered Chapter #9
Chapter title: Deaf, dumb and blind
8 November 1974 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code: 7411080
ShortTitle: FLOWRS09
Audio: Yes Video: No Length: 114
mins
GENSHA COMPLAINED TO HIS FOLLOWERS ONE DAY: 'OTHER MASTERS
ARE ALWAYS CARRYING ON ABOUT THE NECESSITY OF SAVING
EVERYONE -- BUT SUPPOSE YOU MEET UP WITH SOMEONE WHO IS DEAF, DUMB AND BLIND: HE COULDN'T SEE YOUR GESTURES, HEAR YOUR
PREACHING, OR, FOR THAT MATTER, ASK QUESTIONS. UNABLE TO SAVE
HIM, YOU'D PROVE YOURSELF A WORTHLESS BUDDHIST.'
TROUBLED BY THESE WORDS, ONE OF GENSHA'S DISCIPLES WENT TO
CONSULT THE MASTER UMMON WHO, LIKE GENSHA, WAS A DISCIPLE OF
SEPPO.'BOW PLEASE,' SAID UMMON.
THE MONK, THOUGH TAKEN BY SURPRISE, OBEYED THE MASTER'S
COMMAND -- THEN STRAIGHTENED UP IN EXPECTATION OF HAVING HIS
QUERY ANSWERED.
BUT INSTEAD OF AN ANSWER, HE GOT A STAFF THRUST AT HIM. HE LEAPT
BACK.'WELL,' SAID UMMON, 'YOU'RE NOT BLIND. NOW APPROACH.'
THE MONK DID AS HE WAS BIDDEN. 'GOOD,' SAID UMMON, 'YOU'RE NOT
DEAF EITHER. WELL, UNDERSTAND?' 'UNDERSTAND WHAT SIR?' SAID THE
MONK.'AH, YOU'RE NOT DUMB EITHER,' SAID UMMON.
ON HEARING THESE WORDS THE MONK AWOKE AS FROM A DEEP SLEEP.
JESUS USED TO SAY to his disciples, and not only once but many times, 'If you have eyes -- look! If you have ears, then hear me!' They had eyes just like you and they had ears just like you. Then Jesus must have meant something else
-- not these ears, not these eyes.
There is a different way of seeing the world and a different way of hearing -- a different way of being. When you have that different quality of seeing, God is seen; when you have that different way of hearing, God is heard; and when you have that different quality of being, you become God yourself. As you are, you are deaf, dumb, blind -- almost dead.
Deaf to God, dumb to God, blind to God, dead to God.
Nietzsche has declared that God is dead. In fact, when YOU are dead, how can God be alive to you? God is dead because you are dead. You can know God only when you live abundantly, when your life becomes an overflowing, when it is a flood. In that overflowing moment of bliss, life and vitality, for the first time you know what God is, because God is the most luxurious overflowing phenomenon.
God is not a necessity in this world. Scientific laws are a necessity -- without them the world cannot be. God is not a necessity that way. Without him the world can be, but it will be worthless. Without him you can exist, but your existence will be just a vegetable existence. Without him you can vegetate, you cannot be really alive.
God is not a necessity -- you can be there, but your being there will not be of any meaning, it will not carry any meaning at all. It will have no poetry, it will have no song, it will have no dance to it. It will not be a mystery. It may be an arithmetic, it may be a business, but it cannot be a love affair.
Without God all that is beautiful disappears, because the beautiful comes only as an overflowing -- it is a luxury. Watch a tree: if you have not watered it well, if the tree is not getting nourishment from the soil, the tree can exist but flowers will not come.
Existence will be there, but futile! It would have been better not to be, because it will be a constant frustration. Flowers come to the tree only when the tree has so
much that it can share, and the tree has so much nourishment that it can flower -- flowering is a luxury!
The tree has so much that it can afford it.
And I tell you that God is the most luxurious thing in the world. God is not necessary --
you can live without him. You can live very well, but you will miss something, you will feel an emptiness in the heart. You will be more like a wound than like an alive force.
You will suffer; there cannot be any ecstasy in your life.
But how to find this meaning, this ecstasy? You will need a different way of looking.
Right now you are blind. Of course you can see matter, but matter is a necessity. You can see the tree very well but you miss the flowers; and even if you can see the flowers, you miss the fragrance. Your eyes can see only the surface -- you miss the center, the very core. Hence Jesus goes on saying that you are a blind man, you are deaf -- and you have to be dumb, because if you have not seen him what is there to say? If you have not heard him what is there to convey and communicate? If that poetry has not happened what is there to sing? You may make gestures from your mouth, but nothing will come out of it because nothing is there in the first place.
When a man like Jesus speaks he is POSSESSED; something greater than him speaks through him. When a man like Buddha speaks he is not Gautam Siddhartha who was born a son to a king; no, he is no longer that. He is no longer the body you can see and touch, he is not even the mind that you can comprehend and understand. Something of the beyond has entered, something which is not of time and space has come into time and space. A miracle has happened. HE is not speaking to you, he is just a vehicle; something else is flowing through him, he is just a medium. He carries to you something from the unknown shore. Only then can you sing -- when ecstasy has happened. Otherwise you can go on singing, but it will be superficial. You may make much noise, but noise is not speaking. You may use many words, but they will be empty. You may talk too much, but in fact how can you TALK?
When it happened to Mohammed, the first day when he came in contact with the divine, he fell on the ground, started shivering and shaking and perspiring -- and the morning was as cold as this morning. He was alone, and from the very pores of the soles of his feet he started perspiring; he was afraid. Something unknown had touched him and he was scared to death. He came running home and went to bed. His wife was very afraid.
Many blankets were put on him but still he continued shivering and his wife asked, 'What has happened? Your eyes look dazed -- and why don't you speak? Why have you gone dumb?'
And Mohammed is reported to have said, 'For the first time something is there to say. Up to now I have been a dumb man; there was nothing to say, I was making gestures from the mouth. I was talking but only my lips were moving, there was nothing to say. Now there is something I have to say -- that's why I am trembling so much. I am pregnant with the unknown, with the divine. Something is going to take birth.'
And this brings suffering, as every mother knows. If you have to give birth to a child you have to pass through many painful days, and when the birth happens there is much suffering. When life enters, it is a struggle.
For three days, it is said, Mohammed remained in his bed, absolutely dumb. Then, by and by, just as a small child starts talking, he started talking. And then the Koran was born.
You are dumb. You may be saying too many things, but remember -- you talk too much just to hide that dumbness. You talk not to communicate, you talk just to hide -- to hide the fact that you are dumb. Next time you start talking with someone, WATCH: why are you talking? Why are you so verbal? What is the need? Suddenly you will become aware that the fear is, if I remain quiet the other will think I am dumb. So you talk just to hide this fact -- and you know there is nothing to say, yet you go on talking.
I once stayed with a family and I was sitting with the man of the house, my host, when the son came in, a small child, and he asked his father if he would answer a few questions. The father said, 'I am engaged; you go and ask your mother.'
The child said, 'But I don't want to know that much! Because if she starts talking there is no end to it, and I have to do my homework -- and I don't want to know
THAT much!'
People go on talking and talking and talking and without knowing why they are talking --
for what? What is there to convey? It is just to hide their dumbness. People go on moving from here to there, from this town to that; they go on traveling, and go for holidays to the Himalayas and to Switzerland -- why all this traveling, moving? They want to feel they are alive.
But movement is not life. Of course life has a very deep movement, but movement is not life. You can go on moving from one town to another, and you can cover the whole earth, but that movement is not life. Life is of course a very subtle movement -- the movement from one state of consciousness to another.
When people get stuck they start moving outwardly. Now the American has become the bona fide traveler; he travels all over the world from this corner to that -- because the American consciousness is stuck somewhere so badly that if you remain in one place you will feel you have gone dead. So move! Move from one wife to another, move from one job to another, move from one neighborhood to another, move from one town to another -
- never in the history of man has this happened. In America the average time for a person to stay in a town is three years; people move on within three years -- and this is just the average, there are people who are moving every month. They go on changing -- dresses, cars, houses, wives, husbands -- everything.
I have heard that once one Hollywood actress was introducing her child to a new husband. She said, 'Now, meet your new father.'
The child said, 'Hello, I am happy to meet you! Would you like to give me your signature in my visitors' book?' -- because he had met so many new fathers.
Everything has to be changed just to feel that you are alive. A hectic search for life. Of course, life IS a movement, but not from one place to another; it is a movement from one state to another. It is a DEEP inward movement from one consciousness to another consciousness, to the higher realms of being. Otherwise you are dead. As you are, you are dead. Hence Jesus goes on saying, 'Listen! -- if you have ears. See! -- if you have eyes.'
This has to be understood first, then this story will become easier.
Then the second thing: why are you so dead? Why are you so dumb, blind, deaf? There must be something, there must be some investment in it -- otherwise so many people, millions of them, could not be in such a state. It must be paying you something, you must be getting something out of it, otherwise how is it possible that Buddhas and Krishnas and Christs go on saying, 'Don't be blind, don't be deaf, don't be dumb, don't be dead! Be alive! Be alert, awake!' -- and nobody listens to them? Even if they appeal intellectually, you never listen to them. Even if you feel in certain sublime moments of life that they are right, you never follow them. Even if sometimes you decide to follow, you always postpone it for tomorrow -- and then tomorrow never comes. What is the deep investment in it?
Just the other night I was talking to a friend. He is a very educated man, cultured
-- has moved all over the world, has lived in the Soviet Union and the UK and the United States, has been to China, and this and that. Listening to him I felt he is completely dead!
And then he asked me, 'What solution would you suggest? -- because life has so many sufferings and miseries, so many injustices, so many things that hurt you. How to live life so that you don't feel hurt, so that life cannot create so many wounds in your being --
what to do?'
So I told him there are two ways: one -- which is easier but at a very great cost -- one is to become dead, to become as insensitive as possible. ... Because if you are insensitive, if you grow a thick skin around you, an armor, then you don't bother much, nobody can hurt you. Somebody insults you and you have such a thick skin that it never enters. There is injustice, but you simply never become aware of it.
This is the mechanism of your deadness. If you are more sensitive, you will be hurt more.
Then every small thing will become a pain, a misery, and it will be impossible to live --
and one has to live. There ARE problems, and there are millions of people --
there is violence all around, there is misery all around. You pass through the street and beggars are there; you have to be insensitive otherwise it will become a misery, a heavy weight on you. Why these beggars? What have they done to suffer this? And somehow deep down you will feel: I am also responsible. You simply pass by the beggar as if you are deaf, dumb, blind -- you don't look.
Have you ever LOOKED AT a beggar? You may have seen a beggar, but you have never looked at him. You have never encountered him, you have never sat with him, you have never taken his hand in your hand -- it would be too much. So open -- there is danger.
And you have to think about your wife, not about this beggar; you have to think about your children -- and you are not concerned! So whenever there is a beggar, watch: your speed increases, you walk faster and don't look that way. If you really look at a beggar you will feel the whole injustice of life; you will feel the whole misery -- and it will be too much. It will be impossible to tolerate it, you will have to do something and what can you do? You feel so helpless; you have your own problems too, and you have to solve them.
You see a dying man, what can you do? You see a crippled child, what can you do? Just the other day one sannyasin came to me and he said he was very much disturbed, because on the road when he was passing a truck almost killed a dog. The dog was already not in good shape; two legs must have been crushed before. With only two legs the dog was trying to live, and then this truck again crushed him. The sannyasin took pity, felt compassion, he took the dog in his hands -- and then he saw there was a hole in its back and millions of worms. He wanted to help, but how to help? And he became so disturbed that he couldn't sleep; he had nightmares and continuously the dog was haunting him: 'I have not done anything -- I have to do something. But what to do?' The idea came to his mind to kill the dog because that was the only thing that could be done now. With so many worms, maggots, the dog could not live. And its life would be misery, so it was better to kill it. But to kill -- wouldn't that be violence? Wouldn't that be murder?
Wouldn't that be a karma? So what to do? You cannot help. Then the best way is to be insensitive.
There are dogs and there are trucks, and things go on happening, you go on your way, you don't look around. It is dangerous to look, so you never use your eyes
one hundred percent -- scientists say only two percent. Ninety-eight percent, you close your eyes.
Ninety-eight percent, you close your ears -- you don't listen to everything that is happening all around. Ninety-eight percent you don't live.
Have you ever observed how you always feel fear whenever you are in a love relationship or whenever love stays? Suddenly a fear takes over, because whenever you love a person you surrender to the person. And surrendering to a person is dangerous because the other may hurt you. Your protection is down. You don't have any armor.
Whenever you love you are open and vulnerable, and who knows, how to believe in the other?... because the other is a stranger. You may have known the other for many years but that makes no difference. You don't even know yourself, how can you know the other? The other is a stranger. And to allow the other to enter into your intimate life means to allow him to hurt you.
People have become afraid of love; it is better to go to a prostitute than to have a beloved.
It is better to have a wife than to have a beloved, because a wife is an institution. Your wife cannot hurt you more because you never loved her. It was arranged: your father and mother and the astrologer... everybody was involved except you. It is an arrangement, a social arrangement. Not much is involved. You take care of her, you arrange for her food and shelter. She takes care; she arranges the house, the food, she looks after the children -
- it is an arrangement, a business-like thing. Love is dangerous, it is not a business, it is not a bargain. You give power to the other person in love, COMPLETE power over you.
The fear: the other is a stranger and who knows...? Whenever you trust anybody, fear grips.
People come to me and they say, 'We surrender to you,' but I know they cannot. It is almost impossible. They have never loved, how can they surrender? They are speaking without knowing what they are saying. They are almost asleep. They are talking in their sleep, they don't mean it, because surrender means that if I say, 'Go on top of the hill and jump!' you cannot say no. Surrender means
total power has been given to the other: how can you give that?
Surrender is just like love. That's why I say only lovers can become sannyasins -
- because they know a little of how to surrender. Love is the first step towards the divine, surrender is the last. And two steps is the whole journey.
But you are afraid. You would like to have your own control on your life: not only that --
you would like to control the other's life also. Hence the continuous quarrel between husbands and wives and lovers -- constant quarrel, conflict. What is the conflict? The conflict is: Who will dominate whom? Who will possess whom? It has to be settled first.
This is not a surrender but a domination -- just the opposite. Whenever you dominate a person there is no fear. Whenever you love a person there is fear, because in love you surrender and you give total power to the other. Now the other can hurt, the other can reject, the other can say NO. That's why you live only two percent, not one hundred percent. Ninety-eight percent you are dead, insensitive. And insensitivity, deadness, is very much respected by the society. The more you are insensitive, the more society will respect you.
It is said, it happened in Lokmanya Tilak's life -- one of the great Indian leaders. He lived in Poona, just this town, and before Gandhi took over and dominated the scene he was the topmost man in India -- it is said about him that he was a man of discipline, and men of discipline are always dead because discipline is nothing but how to deaden yourself. His wife died, and he was sitting in his office where he published a newspaper, KESARI -- it is still published -- when somebody reported, 'Your wife has died, come home!' Hearing this, he looked at the clock at the back and he said, 'But it is not yet time.
I only leave my office at five.'
Look at the whole thing. What type of intimacy, what type of love, what type of caring and sharing was there? This man cares about his work, this man cares about time, but not about love. It seems almost impossible that when somebody says your wife is dead, to look at the clock and then to say, 'It is not yet time. I leave my office only at five.' And the wonder of wonders is that all his biographers appreciate this incident very much.
They say, 'This is devotion to the country! This is how a disciplined man should be.' They think this is nonattachment. This is NOT nonattachment, this is not devotion to anything.
This is simply deadness, an insensitivity. And one who is insensitive towards his wife, how can he be sensitive to the whole country? Impossible.
Remember, if you cannot love a person you cannot love humanity. That may be a trick.
Those who cannot love persons -- because it is very dangerous to love a person -
- they always think they love humanity. Where is humanity? Can you find it anywhere? It is just a word. Humanity exists nowhere. Wherever you go you will find a person existing. Life is persons, not humanity. Life is always personified, it exists as an individual. Society, country, humanity, are just words. Where is society? Where is the country, the motherland? You cannot love a mother, and you love a motherland? You must be deceiving somewhere. But the word is good, beautiful: motherland. You need not bother about the motherland, because the motherland is not a person, it is a fiction in your mind.
It is your own ego.
You can love humanity, you can love the motherland, you can love society, and you are not capable of loving a person -- because a person creates difficulties. Society will never create a difficulty because it is just a word. You need not surrender to it. You can dominate the word, the fiction, but you cannot dominate a person. Even with a small child it is impossible, you cannot dominate him because he has his own ego, he has his own mind, he has his own ways. It is almost impossible to dominate life but words can be easily dominated -- because you are alone there.
People who cannot love a person start loving God. They don't know what they are doing.
To talk to a person, to communicate to a person, is a difficult matter. It needs skill, it needs a very loving heart, it needs a very KNOWING heart, understanding heart. Only then can you touch a person, because to touch a person is to move in a dangerous arena --
life is throbbing there also. And each person is so unique that you cannot be
mechanical about it. You have to be very alert and watchful. You have to become more sensitive if you love a person; only then does understanding arise.
But to love a god who is somewhere sitting in the sky, it is a monologue. Go to the churches -- people are talking to no one. They are as crazy as people you will find in the madhouses, but that madness is accepted by the society and this madness is not accepted, that is the only difference. Go to a madhouse; you will find people talking alone, nobody is there. They talk, and not only do they say something, they answer also. They make it LOOK like a dialogue; it is a monologue. Then go to the churches and the temples; there people are talking to God. That too is a monologue, and if they really go mad they start doing both things: they say something and they answer also, and they feel that God has answered.
You cannot do that unless you have learned how to love a person. If you love a person, by and by the person becomes the door to the whole. But one has to start with the person, with the small, with the atomic. You cannot take the jump. The Ganges cannot simply jump into the ocean, it has to start in the Gangotri, just a small stream; then wider and wider and bigger and bigger it goes, and then finally it merges with the ocean.
The Ganga, the Ganges of love, also has to start just like a small stream, with persons, then it goes on becoming bigger and bigger. Once you know the beauty of it, the beauty of surrender, the beauty of insecurity, the beauty of being open to all that life gives --
bliss and suffering both -- then you get bigger and bigger and bigger and expand, and the consciousness finally becomes an ocean. Then you fall into God, into the divine. But because of fear you create insensitivity -- and the society respects it. Society does not want you to be very alive because alive people are rebellious.
Look at a small child: if he is really alive he will be rebellious, he will try to have his own way. But if he is a dumb imbecile, an idiot, somehow stuck somewhere and not growing, he will sit in the corner perfectly obedient. You tell him to go, he goes; you tell him to come, he comes. You tell him to sit down, he sits; you tell him to stand, he stands. He is perfectly obedient because he has no personality of his own. The society, the family, the parents, will like this child. They will say, 'Look, he is so obedient.'
I heard once: Mulla Nasruddin was talking to his son; he had come with a report card from his school. Mulla was expecting that he would receive an A, and he had received a D; in fact he was the last in the class. So Nasruddin said, 'Look, you never obey me, whatsoever I say you disobey; now this has resulted. And look at the neighbors' child --
he always receives an A, always stands first in the class.' The child looked at Nasruddin and said, 'But that's a different matter -- he has talented parents.' This child is very alive, but he has his own ways.
Obedience has a certain dumbness about it, disobedience a sharp intelligence about it.
But obedience is respected because obedience gives less inconvenience. Of course that's right -- disobedience creates inconvenience. You would like a dead child because he will not create any inconvenience. You would not like an alive child -- the more alive, the more danger there is.
Parents, societies, schools, they all force obedience, they dull you; and then they respect those people. That's why in life you never see people who stand first in schools, universities; in life they are simply lost. You never find them in life, where they go... they prove themselves very talented in school, but somehow in life they are lost. It seems that the ways of school are different from the ways of life. Somehow life loves lively people -
- the more lively, the more rebellious: people with their own consciousness, being, and personality; people who have their own ways to fulfill; people who are not dead. Schools prefer just the opposite. The whole society helps you to become dumb, deaf, blind, dead.
In the monasteries you will find dead people worshipped as saints. Go to Varanasi: you will find people lying down on beds of thorns, nails -- and they are worshipped like gods.
And what have they achieved? If you look at their faces you will not find more stupid faces anywhere. A person lying on a bed of nails or thorns has to be STUPID. In the first place to choose this way of life one has to be stupid. And then what will he do, what can he do by lying on the nails? He has to make his whole body insensitive. That's the only way: he must not feel it. By and by he becomes thicker-skinned, then it doesn't matter.
Then he becomes a rock, completely dead. And the whole society worships him: he is a sage, he has attained something. What has he attained? He has attained more deadness than you. Now the nails do not matter because the body has become dead.
You may not know, but if you ask physiologists they say there are already many spots in the body which are not alive; they call them dead spots. On your back there are many dead spots. Just give a needle to one of your friends, or your wife or your husband, and tell him to push the needle in your back on many spots. You will feel some spots and some you will not feel. Some spots are already dead, so when the needle is pushed in you don't feel it. Those people, they have done one thing: they have made their whole body a dead spot. But this is not growing, this is regression. They are becoming more material rather than more divine, because to be divine means to be perfectly sensitive, to be perfectly alive.
So I told that man that there is one way, and that is to be dead: that is easier, that is what everyone is doing. People differ in degrees, but in their own ways they are doing that.
You return to your home afraid of your wife; you become deaf, you don't hear what she says. You start reading your newspaper, and you put your newspaper in such a way that you don't see her. What she says you simply become deaf to, otherwise you feel, How can I live if I listen to her? You don't see that she is crying or weeping. Only when she makes it almost impossible for you, then you look -- and that look is so angry.
You go to the office, you move through the traffic, everywhere you have to create a certain deadness around you. You think it protects -- it does not protect, it only kills. Of course you will suffer less, but less blessings will come to you, less bliss also. When you become dead, suffering is less because you cannot feel it; blissfulness is less because you cannot feel it. A person who is in search of a higher blissfulness has to be ready to suffer.
This may look a paradox to you: that a man of the status of a buddha, a man who is awakened, IS blissful -- absolutely -- and also suffers absolutely. Of course he is blissful inside, the flowers go on showering there, but he suffers for everybody all around. He has to, because if you have sensitivity for blessings to become available to you, suffering will also become available to you. One has to choose. If you choose not to suffer, you don't want to suffer, then you will not attain to
blissfulness either -- because they both come by the same door; this is the problem. You can close your door in fear of the enemy, but the friend also comes by the same door. And if you lock it completely and block it completely, so afraid of the enemy, then the friend cannot come either. God has not been coming to you, your doors are closed. You may have closed them against the devil, but when doors are closed they are closed. And one who needs, feels the hunger, the thirst to meet the divine, has to meet the devil also. You cannot choose one, you have to meet both.
If you are alive, death will be a great phenomenon to you. If you live totally you will die totally; if you live two percent you will die two percent. As life, so will be death. If the door is open for God it is open for the devil also.
You have heard many stories but I don't feel that you have understood: whenever God happens the devil happens just before him, because whenever the door is open the devil rushes in first. He is always in a hurry. God is not in a hurry.
So with Jesus -- when he attained to the final enlightenment the devil tempted him for forty days. When he was meditating, fasting in his aloneness, when Jesus was disappearing and he was creating a place for Christ to come, the devil tempted him.
Those forty days the devil was continuously by his side. And he tempted very beautifully and very politically; he is the greatest politician, all other politicians are his disciples.
Very diplomatically he said, 'Right, so now you have become the prophet, and you know that in the scriptures it is said that whenever God chooses a man, and a man becomes a messiah, a prophet, he becomes infinitely powerful. Now you are powerful. If you want you can jump from this hill and angels will be standing in the valley. And if you are really a messiah, fulfill whatever is said in the scriptures -- jump!'
The temptation was great and he was quoting scriptures. Devils always quote, because to convince you a scripture has to be brought in. Devils know all the scriptures by heart.
Jesus laughed and said, 'You are right but in the same scripture it is said that you should not test God.'
Then one day when he was feeling very hungry... thirty days of fasting, the devil always sitting by his side... before God comes, the devil comes; the moment you open the door he is just standing there, and he is always first in the queue. God always lags behind because he is not in a hurry, remember: God has eternity to work, the devil has not eternity to work -- moments only. If he loses, he loses, and once a man becomes divine, he will not be hurt any more... so he has to find weak moments when Jesus is disappearing and Christ has not entered. That gap is the moment where he can enter.
Then the devil said, 'But it is said in the scriptures that when a man is chosen by God he can turn even stones into bread. So why are you suffering? And PROVE this, because the world will be benefited by this.' This is diplomacy. He said, 'The world will be benefited by this.'
It seems that's how the devil has convinced your Satya Sai Baba. The world will be benefited by this because when you turn stones into bread, people will know that you are the man of God. They will come running, then you can help them. Otherwise who will come and who will listen to you?
Jesus said, 'You are right. I can turn -- but not I, God can turn stones into bread. But whenever he needs to he will tell me, you need not bother. Why are you taking so much trouble?'
Whenever you enter into meditation the first man you will find on the gate, the moment you open the door, will be the devil, because it is in fear of him you have closed the door.
And remember... but first I will tell you an anecdote, then you will understand.
In a shop they had declared a special concession for Christmas, particularly for ladies'
clothes and dresses, so there was a crowd of ladies. One man had come because his wife was ill, and she forced him to go because this was not a chance to be lost. So he stood, gentlemanly, for one hour, but he couldn't reach the counter. You know ladies, their way
-- screaming, shouting at each other, moving from anywhere, no queue; and the man was thinking of a queue, so he stood. When one hour passed and he was nowhere near the counter, then he started shoving and shouting and screaming,
and he started forcibly to enter the crowd and reach the counter. One old lady shouted, 'What! What are you doing? Be a gentleman!'
The man said, 'For one hour I have been a gentleman. Now I must behave like a lady!
Enough!'
Remember, the devil never behaves like a gentleman, he behaves like a lady. He is always first in the queue. And God is a gentleman. It is difficult for him to be first in the queue and the moment you open the door, the devil enters. And because of your fear of him, you remain closed. But if the devil cannot enter, God also cannot. When you become vulnerable, you become vulnerable for both God and the devil -- light and dark, life and death, love and hate -- you become available for both opposites.
You have chosen not to suffer, so you are closed. You may not be suffering but your life is a boredom, because although you don't suffer as much as you will suffer if you are open, there is no blessing either. The door is closed -- no morning, no sun, no moon enters, no sky enters, no fresh air, everything has gone stale. And in fear you are hiding there. It is not a house where you are living; you have already converted it into a grave.
Your cities are graveyards, your houses are graves. Your whole way of life is that of a dead man.
Courage is needed to be open -- courage to suffer, because blessing only becomes possible then.
Now we should try to understand this beautiful anecdote: DEAF, DUMB AND BLIND.
GENSHA COMPLAINED TO HIS FOLLOWERS ONE DAY: 'OTHER MASTERS
ARE ALWAYS CARRYING ON ABOUT THE NECESSITY OF SAVING
EVERYONE -- BUT SUPPOSE YOU MEET UP WITH SOMEONE WHO IS DEAF, DUMB AND BLIND? HE COULDN'T SEE YOUR GESTURES,
HEAR YOUR
PREACHING, OR, FOR THAT MATTER, ASK QUESTIONS. UNABLE TO SAVE
HIM, YOU'D PROVE YOURSELF A WORTHLESS BUDDHIST.'
Masters generally don't complain, but when they complain it means something. This is not only Gensha complaining, it is all the masters complaining. But this is their experience, and wherever you move you find deaf and dumb and blind people, because the whole society is that way. And how to save them? They cannot see, they cannot hear, they cannot feel, they cannot understand any gesture. If you try too much to save them they will escape. They will think: This man is after something, he wants to exploit me, or he must have some scheme. If you don't do very much for them they feel: This man is not for me because he is not caring enough. And whatsoever is done they cannot understand.
This is not Gensha's complaint, because enlightened persons never complain for themselves. This complaint is general, it is how it happens. A Jesus feels the same way, a Buddha feels the same way. Wherever you go, you have to meet people who are deaf, dumb, blind. You make gestures -- they cannot see; or even worse, they see something else. You talk to them -- they cannot understand, and even worse, they misunderstand.
You say something else, they understand something else again, because meaning cannot be given through words. Only words can be communicated, meaning has to be supplied by the listener.
I say a word; I mean one thing. But if ten thousand people are listening there will be ten thousand meanings, because each will listen from HIS mind, from HIS prejudice, from HIS concept and philosophy and religion. He will listen from HIS conditioning and his conditioning will supply the meaning. It is very difficult, almost impossible. It is just as if you go to a madhouse and talk to people. How will you feel? That's what Gensha feels, that's the complaint.
That's my complaint also. Working with you, I always feel a block comes. Either your eyes are blocked, or your ears are blocked, or your nose is blocked, or your heart is blocked; somewhere or other, something is blocked, a stonelike thing comes. And it is difficult to penetrate because if I do too much to penetrate it, you become afraid -- why am I interested so much? If I don't do too much, you
feel neglected. This is how an ignorant mind works. Do this and he will misunderstand, do that and he will misunderstand. One thing is certain: he will misunderstand.
GENSHA COMPLAINED TO HIS FOLLOWERS ONE DAY: 'OTHER MASTERS
ARE ALWAYS CARRYING ON ABOUT THE NECESSITY OF SAVING EVERYONE.'
Buddha has said that when you are saved, the only thing to do is save others.
When YOU
have attained the only thing to do is to spread it to others, because everybody is struggling. Everybody is on the path stumbling, everybody is moving knowingly, unknowingly, and you have attained. Help others.
And that is a necessity also, an inner necessity of energies, because a man who has become enlightened will have to live a few years, because enlightenment is not a destiny; it is not fixed, it is not caused. When it happens it is not necessarily at the moment when the body dies. There is no necessity for these two happenings to be together. Really, it is almost impossible, because enlightenment is a sudden uncaused phenomenon. You work for it but it never happens through your work. Your work helps to create the situation but it happens through something else -- that something else is called grace. It is a gift from God, it is not a byproduct of your efforts; they don't cause it. Of course they create a situation: I open the door and the light enters. But the light is a gift from the sun. I cannot create light just by opening the door. Opening of the door is not a cause to it. Non-opening of the door was a hindrance but opening of the door is not a cause -- I cannot cause. If you open the door and it is night, light will not enter. Opening the door is not creating light, but by closing the door you hinder.
So all the efforts that you make towards realization are just to open the door. Light comes when it comes. You have to remain with an open door so whenever it comes, whenever it knocks at your door, it finds you there and the door is open so it can enter. It is always a gift -- and it has to be so, because if you can attain the ultimate through your efforts it will be an absurdity. A limited mind making efforts -- how can it find the infinite? A finite mind making efforts -- all efforts
will be finite. How can the infinite happen through finite efforts? The ignorant mind is making efforts -- those efforts are made in ignorance; how can they change, transform into enlightenment? No, it is not possible.
You make efforts; they are necessary, they prepare you, they open the door -- but the happening happens when it happens. You remain available. God knocks many times at your door, the sun rises every day. And remember, nowhere else is it said what I would like to say to you, although it will be a help. It is not said because if you misunderstand it can become a hindrance. There is a day for God and there is a night also. If you open the door in the night, the door will remain open but God will not come. There is a day -- if you open the door in the right moment, immediately God comes.
And it has to be so, because the whole of existence has opposites. God is also in a rest period when he sleeps. If you open the door then he will not come. There is a moment when he is awake, when he is moving -- it has to be so because every energy moves through two opposites, rest and movement, and God is infinite energy! He has movements and he has a rest. That's why a master is needed.
If you do it on your own you may be working hard and nothing is happening, because you are not working at the right moment. You are working in the night; you open the door and only darkness enters. Afraid, you close it again. You open the door and there is nothing but vast emptiness all around. You become afraid, you close it again, and once you see that emptiness, you will never forget it -- and you will be so afraid that it will take many years for you to gather courage again to open it Because once you see the infinite abyss, when God is asleep,
when God is in rest, if you see that moment of infinite negativity and abyss and darkness, you will be scared -- so much so that for many years you will not make another attempt.
And I feel people are afraid, they are afraid of going into meditation -- and I know that somewhere in their past life they have made some effort and they had a glimpse of the abyss at the wrong moment. They may not know it but unconsciously it is there, so whenever they come near the door and they put their hand on the knob and it becomes possible to open the door, they become afraid. They come back exactly from that moment, run back -- they don't open it. An unconscious fear grips. It has to be so, because for many lives you have been struggling and striving.
Hence the necessity of the master who knows, who has attained, and who knows the right moment. He will tell you to make all the efforts when it is the night of God. And he will not tell you to open the door. He will tell you to prepare in the night, prepare as much as you can, be ready, and when the morning strikes and the first rays have entered he will tell you to open the door. Sudden illumination! Then it is totally different because when the light is there it IS totally different.
When God is awake then the emptiness is not there. It is a fulfillment; it is perfect fulfillment. Everything is full, more than full -- it is everflowing perfection. It is the peak, not the abyss. If you open the door in the wrong moment, it is the abyss. You will get dizzy, so dizzy that for many lives together you will never attempt it. But only one who knows, only one who has become one with God, only one who knows when the night is, and when the day, can help, because now they happen in him also -- he has a night, he has a day.
Hindus had a glimpse of this and they have a beautiful hypothesis: they call it Brahma's day, God's day. When the creation is there they call it God's day -- but the creation has a time limit, and the creation dissolves and Brahma's night, God's night, starts. Twelve hours of Brahma's day is the whole creation. Then, tired, the whole existence disappears into nonexistence. Then for twelve hours it is Brahma's night. For us it is millions and millions of years, for God it is twelve hours -- his day.
Christians also had a theory, or a hypothesis -- because I call all religious theories hypotheses, for nothing is proved, nothing can be proved by the very nature of the thing.
They say God created the world in six days, then on the seventh day he rested. That's why Sunday is a rest day, a holiday. Six days he created, and on the seventh day he rested.
They had a glimpse that even God must rest.
These are both hypotheses, both beautiful, but you have to find the essence of it. The essence is that every day God also has a night and a day. And every day there is a right moment to enter and a wrong moment; in the wrong moment you will be against the wall, in the right moment you simply enter. Because of this those who have knocked at the wrong moment say that to attain enlightenment is a gradual thing, you attain it by degrees; and those who have come to the door in
the right moment say enlightenment is sudden, it happens in a moment. A master is needed to decide when is the right moment.
It is reported that Vivekananda started his disciplehood and then one day he attained the first glimpse. You can call it SATORI, the zen word for SAMADHI, because it is a GLIMPSE, not a permanent thing. It is just as if clouds are not there in the sky -- the sky is clear and from a distance of one thousand miles you have a glimpse of Everest in all its glory, but then the sky becomes cloudy and the glimpse is again lost. It is not attainment, you have not reached Everest, you have not reached the top; from thousands of miles you had a glimpse -- that is satori. Satori is a glimpse of samadhi. Vivekananda had a satori.
In Ramakrishna's ashram there were many people, many people were working. One man, his name was Kalu, a very simple man, a very innocent man, was also working in his own way -- and Ramakrishna accepted EVERY way. He was a rare man; he accepted every technique, every method, and he said everybody has to find his own way, there is no superway. And this is good, otherwise there would be such a traffic jam! So it is good, you can walk on your own path. Nobody else is there to create any trouble or make it crowded.
That Kalu was a very simple man. He had at least one hundred gods -- as Hindus are lovers of many gods, one is not enough for them. So they will put in their worship place this god, that god, whatsoever they can find; they will even put calendars there. There is nothing wrong in it; if you love it, it is okay. But Vivekananda was a logician, a very keen intellect. He always argued with this innocent man and he could not answer.
Vivekananda said, 'Why this nonsense? One is enough, and the scriptures say that he is one, so why these one hundred and one gods?' And they were all sorts of shapes, and Kalu had to work with these gods at least three hours in the morning and three in the evening -- the whole day was gone, because with every god he had to work, and however fast he worked it took three hours in the morning and three in the evening. But he was a very very silent man and Ramakrishna loved him.
Vivekananda always argued, 'Throw these gods!' When he had a glimpse of satori he felt very powerful. Suddenly the idea came to him that in this power, if he simply sent a telepathic message to Kalu -- he was worshipping in his room, this was time for worship -
- to take all his gods to the Ganges and throw them, it would happen.
He simply sent a message. Kalu was really a simple man. He gathered all his gods into a bed sheet and carried them towards the Ganges.
From the Ganges Ramakrishna was coming, and he said, 'Wait! This is not you who is going to throw them. Go back to your room and put them in their place.' But Kalu said,
'Enough! Finished!'
Ramakrishna said, 'Wait and come with me!'
He knocked at Vivekananda's door. Vivekananda opened the door and Ramakrishna said,
'What have you done? This is not good and this is not the right moment for you. So I will take your key of meditation and will keep it with me. When the right moment comes I will give it to you.' And for his whole life Vivekananda tried in millions of ways to attain, but he couldn't get that glimpse again.
Just before he died, three days before, Ramakrishna appeared in a dream and he gave him the key. He said, 'Now you can take the key. Now the right moment is here and you can open the door.'
And the next day in the morning he had the second glimpse.
A master knows when it is the right time. He helps you, prepares you for the right moment, and he will give you the key when the right moment is there; then you simply open the door and the divine enters -- because if you open the door and darkness enters it will look like death, not like life. Nothing is wrong in this but you will get scared, and you can get so scared that you may carry that fear for ever and ever.
Buddha says that whenever you attain, start helping others, because all your energies that were moving into desire... now that door is finished, that travel is no more, that trip is no more; now let all your energies which were moving in desiring, VASANA, become compassion, let them become KARUNA. And there is only one compassion -- how to help the other to attain the ultimate, because there is nothing else to be attained. All else is rubbish. Only the divine is worth
attaining. If you attain that you have attained all; if you miss that you have missed all.
When one becomes enlightened he lives for a few years before the body completes its circle. Buddha lived on for forty years because the body had got a momentum: from the parents the body had got chromosomes, from his own past karma the body had got a life circle. He was to live eighty years, enlightened or not. If enlightenment became possible or if it happened, then too he had to live eighty years. It happened nearabout when he was forty; he lived forty years more. What to do with the energies now? Now there is no desire, no ambition. And you have infinite energies flowing. What to do with those energies? They can be moved into compassion. Now there is no need for meditation either; you have attained, you are overflowing -- now you can share. Now you can share with millions, you can give it to them.
So Buddha has made this a part of his basic teaching. He calls the first part DHYANA, meditation, and the second part PRAJNA, wisdom attainment. Through meditation you reach to prajna. These are your inward phenomena, two parts: you meditated, now you have attained. Now to balance it with the outer -- because a man of enlightenment is always balanced. Outside, when there was no meditation inside, there was desire. Now there is wisdom inside, there should be compassion. The outer energies should become compassion; the inner energies have become wisdom, enlightenment. Enlightenment inside, compassion outside. The perfect man is always balanced. So Buddha says go on and on and help to save people.
Gensha complained: how to do it if you come to somebody who is deaf, dumb and blind?
-- and you almost always come across such people because only they are there. You don't come across a buddha, and a buddha doesn't need you. You come across an ignorant person, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to move. How to help him?
TROUBLED BY THESE WORDS, ONE OF GENSHA'S DISCIPLES WENT TO
CONSULT THE MASTER UMMON.
Ummon was a brother disciple to Gensha -- they were disciples to the same
teacher, Seppo. So what to do? Gensha has said such a troubling thing to this man: how to help people? He went to Ummon.
Ummon is a very famous master. Gensha was a very silent one. But Ummon had thousands of disciples and he had many devices to work with them. And he was a man like Gurdjieff -- he would create situations, because only situations can help. If words can't help because you are dumb, you are deaf -- words can't help. If you are blind, gestures are useless. Then what to do? Only situations can help.
If you are blind, I cannot show you the door just by gesture because you can't see. I cannot tell you about the door because you are deaf and you cannot listen. Really, you cannot even ask the question, 'Where is the door?' -- because you are dumb. What to do? I have to create a situation.
I can take hold of your hand, I can take you by my hand towards the door. No gesture, no word. I have to DO something; I have to create a situation in which the dumb, the deaf and the blind can move.
TROUBLED BY THESE WORDS, ONE OF GENSHA'S DISCIPLES WENT TO
CONSULT THE MASTER UMMON.
... Because he knew well that Gensha wouldn't say much; he was not a man of many words and he never created any situation; he would say things and he would keep quiet.
People had to go to other masters to ask what he meant. He was a different type, a silent type of man, like Ramana Maharshi; he would not say much. Ummon was like Gurdjieff.
He was also not a man of words, but he would create situations, and he would use words only to create situations.
HE WENT TO CONSULT THE MASTER UMMON WHO, LIKE GENSHA, WAS A DISCIPLE OF SEPPO.
And Seppo was totally different from both. It is said he never spoke. He remained completely silent. So there was no problem for him -- he never came across a deaf, dumb and blind man because he never moved. Only people who
were in search, only people whose eyes were slightly opening, only people who were deaf but if you spoke loudly they could hear something... so that's why many people became enlightened near Seppo because only those who were just borderline cases reached him.
This Ummon and this Gensha, these two disciples became enlightened with Seppo, a totally silent man -- he would simply sit and sit and do nothing. If you wanted to learn you could be with him, if you didn't want to you could go. He would not say anything.
YOU had to learn, HE would not teach. He was not a teacher, but many people learned.
The disciple went to Ummon. 'BOW PLEASE,' SAID UMMON.
He started immediately, because people who are enlightened don't waste time, they simply jump to the point immediately.
'BOW PLEASE,' SAID UMMON.
THE MONK, THOUGH TAKEN BY SURPRISE.…
... Because this is no way! You don't order anybody to bow. And there is no need
-- if somebody wants to bow he will bow, if he wants to pay you respect, he will pay it. If not, then not. What type of man is this Ummon? He says 'Bow please' before the monk has asked anything; he has just entered his room, and Ummon says 'Bow please.'
THE MONK, THOUGH TAKEN BY SURPRISE, OBEYED THE MASTER'S
COMMAND -- THEN STRAIGHTENED UP IN EXPECTATION OF HAVING HIS
QUERY ANSWERED.
BUT INSTEAD OF AN ANSWER, HE GOT A STAFF THRUST AT HIM. HE LEAPT
BACK.'WELL,' SAID UMMON, 'YOU'RE NOT BLIND. NOW APPROACH.'
He said: You can see my staff, so one thing is certain, you are not blind. Now approach.
THE MONK DID AS HE WAS BIDDEN. 'GOOD,' SAID UMMON, 'SO YOU'RE NOT
DEAF EITHER.'
You can listen: I say approach and you approach.
'WELL, UNDERSTAND?' 'UNDERSTAND WHAT SIR?' SAID THE MONK.
What is he saying? He says:
'WELL, UNDERSTAND?' 'UNDERSTAND WHAT SIR? SAID THE MONK.'AH, YOU'RE NOT DUMB EITHER,' SAID UMMON. ON HEARING THESE WORDS
THE MONK AWOKE AS FROM A DEEP SLEEP.
What happened? What is Ummon pointing to? First, he is saying that if it is not a problem to you why be worried? There are people who come to me.…
A very rich man came, one of the richest in India, and he said, 'What about poor people, how will you help poor people?' So I told him, 'If you are a poor person, then ask; otherwise let the poor ask. How is it a problem to you? You are not poor, so why create a problem out of it?'
Once Mulla Nasruddin's child asked him -- I was present, and the child was working very strenuously, grumbling of course, on his homework, and then suddenly he looked at Nasruddin and said, 'Gee Dad, what is this education stuff? Of what use is all this education stuff anyway?'
Nasruddin said, 'Well, there is nothing like education. It makes you capable of worrying about everybody else in the world except you.'
There is nothing like education. All your education simply makes you capable of worrying about situations everywhere in the world, about everyone except you --
about all the troubles that are in the world. They have always been there, they will always be there. It is not because you are here that troubles are there. You were not and they were there; you will not be soon and they will remain there. They change their colors but they remain. The very scheme of the universe is such that it seems that through trouble and misery something IS growing. It seems to be a step, it seems to be a necessary schooling, a discipline.
The first thing Ummon is pointing out is: You are neither blind, nor dumb, nor deaf, so why are you concerned and why are you troubled? YOU have eyes -- why waste time thinking about blind men? Why not look at your master? -- because blind men will be there always, your master will not be there always. And you can think and worry about blind and deaf people, how to save them, but the man who can save you will not be there for ever. So you be concerned about yourself.
My experience is also that people are concerned about others. Once one man brought to me even exactly the same question. He said, 'We can listen to you but what about those who can't come to listen, what to do? We can read you,' he said, 'but what about those who cannot read?'
They appear relevant, but they are absolutely irrelevant. Because why are YOU worried?
And if you are worried in such a way then you can never become enlightened, because a person who goes on wasting and dissipating his energy on others never looks at himself.
This is a trick of the mind to escape from oneself -- you go on thinking about others and you feel very good because you are worrying about others. You are a great social reformer or a revolutionary or a utopian, a great servant of the society -- but what are you doing? You are simply avoiding the basic question: it is with YOU that something has to be done.
Forget the whole society, and only then can something be done to you; and when you are saved you can start saving others. But before that, please don't think -- it is impossible.
Before you are healed, you cannot heal anyone. Before YOU are filled with light, you cannot help anyone to enkindle his own heart. Impossible -- only a lighted flame can help somebody. First become a lighted flame -- this is the first
point.
And the second point is, Ummon created a situation. He could have said this but he is not saying it; he is creating a situation, because only in a situation are you totally involved. If I say something only intellect is involved. You listen from the head; but your legs, your heart, your kidneys, your liver, your totality is not involved. But when the monk got a staff thrust at him he jumped totally. Then it was total action; then not only the head and the legs, the kidneys, the liver, but the whole of him JUMPED.
That's the whole point of my meditation techniques: the whole of you has to shake, jump, the whole of you has to dance, the whole of you has to move. If you simply sit with closed eyes only the head is involved. You can go on and on inside the head -- and there are many people who go on sitting for years together, just with closed eyes, repeating a mantra. But a mantra moves in the head, your totality is not involved -- and your totality is involved in existence. Your head is only as much in God as your liver and kidneys and your feet. You are totally in him, and just the head cannot realize this.
Anything intensely active will be helpful. Inactive, you can simply go on rambling inside the mind. And they have no end, the dreams, the thoughts, they have no end. They go on infinitely.
Kabir has said: There are two infinities in the world -- one is ignorance and another is God. Two things are endless -- God is endless, and ignorance. You can go on repeating a mantra, but it will not help unless your whole life becomes a mantra, unless you are completely involved it it -- no holding back, no division. That's what Ummon did. The monk got a staff thrust at him.
HE LEAPT BACK.'WELL,' SAID UMMON, 'YOU'RE NOT BLIND. NOW APPROACH.'
THE MONK DID AS HE WAS BIDDEN. 'GOOD, YOU'RE NOT DEAF EITHER.'
What is he pointing at? He is pointing at this: 'You can understand, so why waste time?'
Then he asks, 'WELL, UNDERSTAND?' Ummon was finished. The situation
was complete. But the disciple was not yet ready, had not yet got the point. He asked,
'UNDERSTAND WHAT SIR?' The whole thing was there now. Ummon had said whatsoever was to be said. And he had created a situation where thoughts were not: when somebody pushes a staff at you, you jump without thought. If you think you cannot jump, because by the time you have decided to jump the staff will have hit you. There is no time.
Mind needs time, thinking needs time. When somebody pushes a staff at you, or suddenly you find a snake on a path, you jump! You don't think about it, you don't make a logical syllogism, you don't say: Here is a snake; a snake is dangerous; death is possible; I must jump. You don't follow Aristotle there. You simply put aside all Aristotle -- YOU JUMP!
You don't care what Aristotle says, you are illogical. But whenever you are illogical you are total.
That's what Ummon has said. You jump totally. If you can jump totally, why not meditate totally? When a staff is thrust at you, you jump without caring about the world.
You don't ask, 'That's okay, but what about a blind man? If you push a staff, how will it help a blind man?' You don't ask a question -- you simply jump; you simply avoid. In that moment the whole world disappears, only you are the problem. And the problem is THERE -- you have to solve it and come out of it.
'UNDERSTAND?'
-- that's what Ummon asked. The point is complete. 'UNDERSTAND WHAT SIR?' SAID THE MONK.
He has still not got it.
'AH, YOU'RE NOT DUMB EITHER' -- you can speak also.
ON HEARING THESE WORDS THE MONK AWOKE AS FROM A DEEP SLEEP.
A whole situation -- nonverbal, illogical, total. As if someone has shaken him out of his sleep. He awoke; for a moment everything became clear. For a moment there was lightning, there was no darkness. Satori happened. Now the taste is there. Now this disciple can follow the taste. Now he has known, he cannot forget it ever. Now the search will be totally different. Before this it was a search for something unknown -- and how can you search for an unknown? And how can you put down your total life for it? But now it will be total, now it is not something unknown -- a glimpse has been given to him.
He has tasted the ocean, maybe out of a teacup but the taste is the same. Now he KNOWS. It was really a small experience -- a window opened, but the whole sky was there. Now he can move out of the house, come out under the sky and live in it. Now he knows that the question is individual.
Don't make it social. The question is YOU, and when I say you I mean YOU, each individual; not you as a group, not you as a society. When I mean you, I mean simply you, the individual -- and the trick of the mind is to make it social. The mind wants to worry about others -- then there is no problem. You can postpone your own problem; that's how you have been wasting your lives for many lives. Don't waste it any more.
I have been pushing these talks, subtler ones than with Ummon, but if you don't listen to me I may have to find grosser things.
Don't think about others. First solve YOUR problem, then you will have the clarity to help others also. And nobody can help unless he is enlightened himself.
And The Flowers Showered Chapter #10
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