Chapter title: Seeing double
9 November 1974 am in Buddha Hall Archive
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7411090
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FLOWRS10
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A MASTER WAS ASKED BY A CURIOUS MONK: 'WHAT IS THE WAY?' 'IT IS
RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES,' SAID THE MASTER.'WHY DO I NOT SEE IT FOR
MYSELF?' ASKED THE MONK.'BECAUSE YOU ARE THINKING OF YOURSELF,'
SAID THE MASTER.'WHAT ABOUT YOU,' SAID THE MONK, 'DO YOU SEE IT?'
THE MASTER SAID: 'SO LONG AS YOU SEE DOUBLE, SAYING I DON'T,
AND
YOU DO, AND SO ON, YOUR EYES ARE CLOUDED.' 'WHEN THERE IS
NEITHER I NOR YOU, CAN ONE SEE IT?' SAID THE MONK.'WHEN THERE IS
NEITHER I NOR YOU, WHO IS THE ONE WHO WANTS TO SEE IT?' REPLIED
THE MASTER.
YES, THE WAY IS RIGHT before your eyes. But your eyes are not right before the way
-- they are closed, closed in a very subtle manner. They are clouded. Millions of thoughts are closing them, millions of dreams are floating on them; whatsoever you have seen is all there, whatsoever you have thought is all there. And you have lived long -- many lives, and you have thought much, and it is all gathered there in your eyes. But because thoughts cannot be seen you see your eyes as clear. The clarity is not there. Millions of layers of thought and dreams are there in your eyes. The Way is right before you. All that is, is right before you. But you are not here. You are not in that still moment where eyes are totally empty, unclouded, and you SEE, and you see that which is.
So the first thing to be understood is: how to attain unclouded eyes, how to make eyes empty so that they can reflect truth, how not to be continuously in a mad rush within; how not to be continuously thinking and thinking and thinking, how to relax thought.
When thought is not, seeing happens; when thought is, you go on interpreting and you go on missing.
Don't be an interpreter of reality, be a visionary. Don't think about it, see it!
What to do? One thing: Whenever you look, just be the look. Try. It is going to be difficult, difficult just because of old habit. But try. It happens. It has happened to many, why not you? You are no exception. The universal law is as available to you as to a buddha or to anybody. Just make a little effort.
You see a flower: then just see, don't say anything. The river is flowing: sit on the bank and SEE the river, but don't say anything. Clouds are moving in the sky: lie down on the ground and SEE, and don't say anything. Just don't verbalize!
This is the deepest habit, to verbalize; this is your whole training -- to jump immediately to words from reality, to immediately start making words: 'beautiful flower,' 'lovely sunset.' If it is lovely, let it be lovely! -- why bring in this word? If it is beautiful, do you think your word 'beautiful' will make it more beautiful? On the contrary, you missed an ecstatic moment. The verbalization came in. Before you could have seen you moved, moved in an inner wandering. If you go too far away in this wandering you become mad.
What is a madman? He who never comes to reality, who always wanders in his own world of words -- and he has wandered so far that you cannot bring him back. He is not with the reality, but are YOU with the reality? You are not either. The difference is only of degree. A madman has wandered very far, you never wandered that far -- just in the neighborhood -- and you come again and again and touch reality and go again.
You have a small touch, a small contact somewhere, uprooted, but still one root seems to be there in the reality. But that root is very fragile; any moment it can be broken, any accident -- the wife dies, the husband escapes, you become bankrupt in the market -- and that fragile root is broken. Then you go on wandering and wandering; then there is no coming back, then you never touch reality. This is the state of the madman, and the normal man is different only in degree.
And what is the state of a buddha, an enlightened man, a man of Tao, of understanding, awareness? He is deeply rooted in reality, he never wanders from it -- just the opposite of a madman.
You are in the middle. From that middle either you can move towards being a madman or you can move towards being a buddha. It is up to you. Don't give much energy to thoughts, that's suicidal; you are poisoning yourself. Whenever thinking starts, if it is unnecessary -- and ninety-nine percent of it is unnecessary
-- immediately bring yourself back to reality. Anything will help: even the touch of the chair you are sitting on, or the touch of the bed you are lying on. Feel the touch -- it is more real than your thoughts about God, it is more godly than your
thoughts about God because it is a real thing.
Touch it, feel the touch, be the touch, be here and now. You are eating? -- taste the food well, the flavor. Smell it well, chew it well -- you are chewing reality! Don't go wandering in thoughts. You are taking a bath? -- enjoy it! The shower is falling on you? -
- feel it! Become more and more a FEELING center rather than a thinking center.
And yes, the way is right before your eyes. But feeling is not allowed much. The society brings you up as a thinking being not as a feeling being, because feeling is unpredictable; no one knows where it will lead, and society cannot leave you on your own. It gives you thoughts: all the schools, colleges and universities exist as centers to train you for thinking, to verbalize more. The more words you have, the more talented you are thought; the more articulate you are with words and words, the more educated you are thought. It will be difficult, because thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years of training... but the sooner you begin the better. Bring yourself back to reality.
That is the meaning of all sensitivity groups. In the West they have become a focal point and all those who are interested in consciousness, extension of consciousness, have to be interested in sensitivity groups, in training to be more sensitive. And you need not go anywhere to learn it, the whole of life is sensitivity. Twenty-four hours a day the reality is just before you, around you -- it surrounds you; you breathe it in, you eat it. Whatsoever you do you have to do with reality.
But the mind moves far away. There exists a gap between your being and your mind --
they are not together, the mind is somewhere else. You have to be here in reality because when you eat you have to eat real bread; thinking about bread won't help. When you take a bath you have to take a real bath; thinking about it is of no use. When you breathe you have to breathe real air; just thinking about it won't do. Reality surrounds you from everywhere, is bumping you from all sides
-- wherever you go you encounter it.
That is the meaning of: The way is right in front of your eyes. It is everywhere because nothing else can be -- only the real IS.
Then what is the problem? Why then do people go on seeking and seeking and seeking and never find it? Where does the problem exist? What is the basic core of the whole trouble? The trouble is, mind can be in thoughts. The possibility for mind being in thoughts is there. The body is in reality, but the mind can be in thoughts -- and that is the duality. And all your religions have been in favor of the mind and not in favor of the body. That has been the greatest block that has ever existed in this world. They poison the whole mind of humanity; they are for the mind, not for the reality.
If I tell you: When you are eating, eat with taste, and eat so deeply that the eater is forgotten, simply become the process of eating -- you will be surprised because no religious man will say a thing like that. Religious people have been teaching: Eat without taste -- ASWAD; they have made a great thing out of it, the training for no-taste.
In Gandhi's ashram they had eleven rules. One of them was aswad, no taste -- eat, but without taste, kill the taste completely. Drink -- but without taste. Make your life as insensitive as possible. Deaden your body completely, so that you become a pure mind.
You will become so -- but this is how people go towards madness.
I teach you just the contrary, just the opposite. I am not against life -- and life is the way.
I affirm life in its totality. I am not a negator, I am not a denier -- and I want you to bring your mind back to reality. Your body is more real than your mind. You can befool with the mind, you cannot befool with the body. The body is more rooted in the world; the body is more existential than your mind. Your mind is just mental. It thinks, it spins words, it creates systems -- and all systems are foolish.
Once it happened, Mulla Nasruddin was gambling in a horse race. First race he lost; second, he lost; third -- he went on losing, and two ladies just by his side sitting in a box were continuously winning every race.
Then at the seventh he could not contain his curiosity. What system were they following?
Every race, and it was now the seventh, they had been winners and he had been a
loser, and he had been working so hard at it. So he gathered courage, leaned over, and asked the ladies: 'You are doing well?'
They said, 'Yes,' very happily, they were beaming with happiness. So he whispered: 'Can you tell me about your system? Just a hint.'
One lady said laughingly, 'We have a lot of systems! But today we have decided for long tails.'
But all systems and all philosophies are just like that -- long tails. No system is true to reality because no system CAN be true to reality. I am not saying that some system can be -- no. NO system can be true to reality because all systems are fabrications of the mind, verbalizations, your interpretations, your projections -- mind working on reality.
That's how a system is born; all systems are false.
Reality needs no system. Reality needs a clarity of vision. To look at it needs no philosophy, it is right here and now. Before you start moving into a philosophy it is there; when you come back it will be there and will have always been there with you -- and you were thinking about it. Thinking about it is the way to miss it.
If you are a Hindu you will miss, if you are a Christian you will miss, if you are a Mohammedan you will miss; every 'ism' is a way of missing. If you have the Koran in your head you will miss, if you have the Gita in your head you will miss; whatsoever scripture you carry -- scripture is mind, and reality doesn't fall in line with the mind, reality does not bother about your mind and your fabrications.
Beautiful theories you spin, beautiful arguments you give, logical rationalizations you find. You work hard. You go on refining your theories, polishing them, but they are just like bricks: you go on rubbing, polishing, but they can never become a mirror. But I say: Maybe bricks can become a mirror, but the mind can NEVER become a mirror to reality.
The mind is a destroyer. The moment it enters, everything becomes cloudy. Please don't be a philosopher, and don't be an addict of any system. It is easy to
bring an alcoholic back, it is easy to bring back a person who has gone deep into drugs; it is difficult to bring a system-addict back. And there exist organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous for alcoholics and other organizations for drug addicts, but there exists no organization for people who have become system- addicts -- and there cannot be, because whenever there is an organization, it itself is a system.
I am not giving you a system. My whole effort is to bring you out of your systematizing mind. If you can become again a child, if you can look at reality without any preconceptions about it, you will attain. It is simple, it is ordinary, nothing is special about it. Reality is nothing special and extraordinary -- it is there, it is everywhere. Only your mind is an unreal thing. Mind creates illusion, MAYA, mind creates dreams -- and then you are clouded in them. And you are trying to do the impossible, that which cannot be done: you are trying to find the real through the mind. You lose the real through the mind, you cannot find it through the mind. You have to drop the mind completely.
Yes, the way is right before your eyes -- but you are not there.
First thing: mind won't help. Try to understand it: mind won't help, it is the barrier. And the second thing: your over-concern about yourself is the greatest barrier. It has been my constant observation that people who meditate miss because they are concerned too much in themselves. They are too egocentric. They may pretend humbleness and they may even want to know how to be egoless, but they are the most egocentric people; they are only worried about themselves, they are only concerned with themselves.
To be worried about others is stupid; to be worried about oneself is even more stupid --
because to be worried IS stupidity; it makes no difference about whom you are worried.
And people who are worried about others, you will feel they are always more healthy.
So in the West psychoanalysts help people to think about others and drop thinking about themselves. Psychologists go on teaching people how to be extroverts and not to be introverts, because an introvert becomes ill, an introvert becomes in reality perverted. He thinks continuously about himself, he becomes
enclosed. He remains with his frustrations, worries, anxieties, anguish, depressions, anger, jealousy, hate, this and that --
and he only worries. Think what type of anguish he lives in, continuously worried about things: Why am I angry? How should I become non-angry? Why do I hate? How should I transcend it? Why am I depressed? How to attain bliss?
-- he is continuously worried, and through this worry he creates the very same things he is worried about. It becomes a vicious circle.
Have you ever observed that whenever you want to go beyond a depression the depression deepens? Whenever you want not to be angry you become more angry.
Whenever you are sad and you don't want to be sad any more, more sadness descends on you -- have you not observed it? It happens because of the Law of the Reverse Effect. If you are sad and you want not to be sad, what will you do? You will look at sadness, you will try to suppress it, you will be attentive to it -- and attention is food.
Psychoanalysts have found a clue. That clue is not very meaningful in the end; it cannot lead you to reality, it can at the most make you NORMALLY unhealthy. It can make you adjusted -- it is a sort of adjustment to the people around you. They say: Be concerned with others' worries, help people, serve people.
Rotarians, members of Lions Clubs and others, they always say: We serve. Those are the extroverts. But you will feel that people who are in social service, those who are concerned with others and are less concerned with themselves are happier than people who are concerned too much with themselves.
Too much concern with oneself is a sort of disease. And then the deeper you move within
-- you are opening a Pandora's Box: many things bubble up and there seems to be no end to it. You are surrounded by your own anxieties and you go on playing with your wounds, you go on touching them again and again to see whether they are healed or not.
You have become a pervert.
What to do? There seem to be only two ways: either be an extrovert -- but by
being an extrovert you can NEVER become a buddha, because if you are worried about others, this worrying about others may be an escape. It is. You cannot look at your own worries when you are worried about others. Your focus is others, you are in a shadow. But how will your inner being grow this way? You will look more happy, you may look as if you are enjoying life more, but how are you going to grow? How will your inner being come to that point where it becomes light? If you are not concerned with it at all, it is not going to grow. To be an extrovert is good in the sense that you remain healthy -- you don't become a pervert. To be an introvert is dangerous. If you move wrongly, you will become a pervert and the wrong movement is that you become too concerned. Then what to do?
Treat yourself as if you also are the other; don't be too concerned.
And you ARE the other. Your body is other, why not my own body also? Your mind is other, why not my own mind? The question is only distance: your body is five feet away from me, my body is a little closer, that's all. Your mind is there, my mind is here -- the difference is of distance. But my mind is as other as your mind, and my body is as far away from me as your body. And if this whole world is not a concern to me, why make myself a concern? Why not leave both and be neither extrovert nor introvert? -- this is my message.
If you cannot follow this then it is better to follow the psychoanalysts. Be an extrovert, be unconcerned; you will not grow but at least you will not suffer so much as an introvert suffers. But don't be an introvert and don't play with your wounds. Don't be concerned too much. Don't be so selfish and don't be so self- centered. Look at yourself from a distance; the distance is there, you only have to try it once and you will feel it. You are also the other.
When your body is ill it is as if somebody else's body is ill: do whatsoever is needed but don't be too concerned, because that overmuch concern is a greater illness than the body's. If you have a fever go to the doctor, take the medicine, take care of the body, and that's all. Why be concerned too much? Why create another fever -- which no doctor can treat? This fever in the body can be treated, but if you become too concerned another fever is created. That fever is deeper, no doctor can help with it.
And this is the problem: the body may become well soon, but the other fever may continue; and the other fever may go on continuing, and you may feel that
the body is still ill. This happens every day: the disease disappears from the body but not from the mind and the mind carries it on. It has happened many times.
Once somebody was telling me about his friend who is a drunkard -- he walks on crutches, he cannot walk without them. For many years he has been walking on crutches -
- some accident some twenty years ago. Then one day he had taken too much drink; he forgot the crutches and went out for a walk. After one hour he came running back in a panic; he said, 'Where are my crutches? I cannot walk without them! I must have taken too much.' But if while you are drunk you can walk, why not when you are not drunk?
All over the world many cases are reported about paralysis. Somebody is paralyzed and then the house catches fire and everybody runs out, and the man who was paralyzed and who couldn't get out of his bed -- everything was done in the bed -- he also runs out, because he forgets. The house is on fire, he forgets completely that he is paralyzed. In that forgetfulness he is not paralyzed. And outside the house the family looks at him and says, 'What are you doing? How can you run?' -- and he falls down; remembering comes back.
You may be creating many diseases, not because the body is ill but because the mind carries the seed. So once a disease happens the mind carries the seed and goes on projecting it again and again and again. Many diseases, ninety percent, have their origin in the mind.
Too much concern about yourself is the greatest disease possible. You cannot be happy, you cannot enjoy yourself. How can you enjoy? So many problems inside! Problems and problems and problems and nothing else! -- and there seems to be no solution. What to do? You go crazy. Everybody, inside, IS crazy.
I have heard -- it happened in Washington -- one man suddenly climbed up a pole, a flagpole. A crowd gathered, policemen came, and the man shouted as loudly as he could, uttered profane words, then came down.
Immediately he was caught by the police and they asked the person, 'What are you doing here?'
The man said, 'Don't disturb me. If I don't do such a crazy thing now and then I will go mad, I will go nuts. I tell you, don't stop me. If I do such a thing now and
then everything runs smoothly. And I did not think that anybody would be able to know, because where so much craziness is going on all around, who will bother?'
You also need to become mad now and then -- that's how anger happens: anger is a temporary madness. If you don't allow a leakage now and then you will gather so much you will explode, you will go nuts. But if you are continuously concerned with this you are already nuts.
This has been my observation, that people who meditate, pray, seek and search for the truth are more prone to neurosis than other people. And the reason is: they are concerned with themselves too much, too egocentric, just continuously thinking of this and that, this block, that block, this anger, that sadness, headache, backache, stomach, legs... they are continuously moving inside. They are never okay, they cannot be, because the body is a vast phenomenon and many things go on.
And if nothing is happening then too they are worried: why is nothing happening? And immediately they have to create something because that has become their constant business, occupation; otherwise they feel lost. What to do? Nothing is happening! How is it possible that nothing is happening to me? They feel their ego only when something is happening -- maybe it is depression, sadness, anger, an illness, but if something is happening they are okay, they can feel themselves.
Have you seen children? They pinch themselves to feel that they are. The child remains in you -- you would like to pinch and see whether you are or not.
It is said about Mark Twain that once at a dinner party he was suddenly in a panic and he said, 'Sorry, I will have to leave, and you will have to call a doctor. It seems my right leg has become paralyzed.'
The lady sitting by his side started laughing and said, 'Don't be worried, you have been pinching MY leg.'
Then Mark Twain said, 'Once twenty years ago a doctor said to me, "Some day or other your right side will get paralyzed," so since then I have been pinching myself; I always feel, twenty or thirty times a day, whether it has gone. Just now I was pinching and' ... he was pinching somebody else's leg.
But why go on pinching? Why be concerned with paralysis? It is more of a disease if you have to pinch your leg thirty times a day for twenty years. Count it. This is worse than paralysis! Paralysis happens once; this is happening thirty times a day for twenty years.
They say a brave man dies once and cowards die millions of times -- because they go on pinching and feeling whether they are dead yet or not.
Your diseases help you to retain your ego. You feel that something is happening -
- of course not bliss, not ecstasy, but sadness and 'Nobody is as sad as I am,' and 'Nobody is as blocked as I am,' and 'Nobody has such a migraine as I have got.' You feel superior there, everybody else is inferior.
If you are concerned too much with yourself remember, you will not attain. This over-concern will enclose you, and the Way is right before your eyes. You have to open your eyes, not close them.
Now try to understand this parable.
A MASTER WAS ASKED BY A CURIOUS MONK: 'WHAT IS THE WAY?'
The first thing is to understand that the monk is curious, not a seeker. If you are a seeker you inquire in a different way. You inquire with your being, you put yourself at stake, you become a gambler. If you are simply curious it is just like an itch; you feel a subtle itch in the mind but it is nothing, you are not REALLY concerned with it, not sincere about it -- whatsoever the answer you will not bother. It will not change you. And a curious man is a superficial man. You cannot ask such questions out of curiosity, you have to ask them out of a very authentic search. And when you go to a master you feel you have to ask something; otherwise you will be thought foolish.
Many people come to me and I know from where they are asking. Sometimes they are simply curious: because they have come, now they have to ask; otherwise they will be thought foolish. And by asking they prove they ARE foolish, because if the question has not really arisen in you, if the question has not become a deep inquiry, if the question does not put everything at stake, if the problem is not a problem of life and death, if you are not ready to be transformed by the answer, you are foolish if you ask. And if you are not questioning from the heart, it is difficult to give any answer, and even if an answer is given you will misunderstand it.
The monk was a curious monk, that's why in this parable he does not awake. Otherwise...
we have been studying many parables; when the search is true, in the end satori happens, a certain enlightenment comes. Suddenly a disciple becomes alert, as if someone has shaken him out of his sleep. A clarity comes. Maybe only for a split second, but clouds disperse and the vast sky is seen. The clouds will come again
-- that's not the problem, but now you know what real sky is and you will carry this seed within you. Rightly taken care of, this seed will become a tree, and thousands will be able to find rest and shelter under you. But if you are curious, nothing will happen. If you are curious, the question has not come out of the heart. It is an intellectual itch -- and in mind, seeds cannot be sown.
Jesus has a parable -- he was continuously talking about it. A farmer went to sow seeds.
He just threw them here and there. Some fell on the road; they never sprouted because the road was hard and the seeds could not penetrate the soil, they could not move in the deeper, darker realm of the soil Because only there does birth
happen, only in the deep dark does God start working. The work is secret work, it is hidden.
Some fell by the side of the road; they sprouted, but animals destroyed them. Only some fell on the right soil; they not only sprouted, they grew to their full height, they flowered, they came to fulfillment, and one seed came to be millions of seeds.
If you ask from curiosity, you are asking from the road. The head is just a road -- it has to be, it has such a constant traffic. It has to be very hard, almost concrete. Even on your roads the traffic is not so much as in your head. So many thoughts going here and there at fast speed! We have not yet been able to invent a faster vehicle than thought -- our fastest vehicles are nothing before thought. Your astronauts may reach the moon, but they cannot reach it with the speed of thought, they will take time; you can simply immediately reach the moon in thought. For thought, it is as if space does not exist: one moment you can be here, next moment in London and the next in New York, and hop around the world many times within a second. So much traffic the road is almost concrete;
throw something there, it will never sprout.
Curiosity comes from the head. It is asking a master something just as if you have encountered him in the market and you ask him. I know such people. I was traveling so much it was a problem to avoid such people. Even on the platform -- I am going to catch a train and they are accompanying me and they will ask, 'What about God? Does God exist or not?' These people are curious and they are foolish! Never ask a question out of curiosity, because it is useless, wasting your time and others'.
If somebody had asked this master the question right from the heart, the end would have been different. The man would have flowered into satori, there would have been a fulfillment. But there is no end like that because the very beginning was wrong. A master gives you an answer out of compassion, knowing well that you are curious -- but maybe, who knows, even accidents happen; sometimes curious people also become authentically interested, nobody knows.
A MASTER WAS ASKED BY A CURIOUS MONK: 'WHAT IS THE WAY?' 'IT IS
RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES,' SAID THE MASTER.
This is absurd because if it is really right before the eyes then why do people seek, why do people inquire? And why can't they see for themselves?
A few things to be understood. One: the closer a thing, the more difficult it is to see it --
the closest almost impossible, because eyes need a certain space, perspective, to see. I can see you, but if I go on coming closer and closer and closer everything will be blurred; your face will be blurred, lines will lose their shape. And if I go on coming and coming and just put my eyes on your face, nothing will be seen -- your face will become a wall.
But still I can see a little because a little distance will be there.
Not even that much distance exists between you and the real. It is just touching your eyes.
It is just touching your skin -- not only that, it is penetrating the skin. It is moving in your blood. It is beating in your heartbeat. It is you. The Way is not
only in front of your eyes, the way is YOU. You are one with it. The traveler is not different from the Way, not in reality; they are one.
So how to see it? No perspective, no space...? Unless you attain to a clear intelligence, to a clarity of understanding, you will not be able to see it. Unless you become so intensely aware, you will not be able to see it. The distance is not there, so ordinary ways of looking AT will not do; you need an extraordinary awareness, to be so extraordinarily alert that nothing is asleep in you. Suddenly the door opens. The Way is there -- you ARE
the Way. But you miss because it is there already. It has always been there -- before you were born. You were born on the Way, in the Way, for the Way, of the Way -- because the Way is the reality.
Remember, this Way doesn't go to a goal; this Way IS the goal. So in fact there is no traveling, just staying alert, just being still, silent, not doing anything. Just becoming a clarity, an awareness, a silent cool understanding.
'IT IS RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES,' SAID THE MASTER.'WHY DO I NOT SEE IT
FOR MYSELF?' ASKED THE MONK.
When you are curious, every answer will create another question, because curiosity can never be satisfied. Inquiry can be satisfied, inquiry can come to an end, to a conclusion; never curiosity, because you bring again the same curious mind to the answer, again a new question comes out of it. You can satisfy one who is really in inquiry, you cannot satisfy one who is simply asking: 'WHY DO I NOT SEE IT FOR MYSELF?'
Another thing: a curious person deep down is not concerned with reality, is concerned only with himself. He says, 'WHY DO I NOT SEE IT FOR MYSELF? Why can you see it and why can't I see it? I cannot believe you, I cannot trust, and if it is right in front of my eyes then why can't I see it?'
'BECAUSE YOU ARE THINKING OF YOURSELF,' SAID THE MASTER.
The Way is there, and you are thinking about yourself: 'Why can't I see?' Nobody can see who is filled so much with the ego. Put it aside, because the ego means your whole past, all that you have experienced, all that you have been
conditioned for, all that you have known, studied, collected, gathered -- information, scripture, knowledge -- all that is your ego, the whole lot, and if you are concerned with it, you cannot see it.'WHAT ABOUT
YOU?' SAID THE MONK.
Whatsoever a master says, every answer could lead to a satori -- if the person is right.
Just the first thing, when he said, 'IT IS RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES,' would have become an enlightenment if the right person had been there. But he missed; otherwise the next statement would have been an understanding.
'WHY DO I NOT SEE IT FOR MYSELF?' HE ASKED.'BECAUSE YOU ARE THINKING OF YOURSELF.'
But no. Curiosity cannot be satisfied, it never comes to an end. Suddenly, whenever you touch somebody's 'I', he jumps on you. He said:
'AND WHAT ABOUT YOU... DO YOU SEE IT?'
Ego always feels: If I cannot see it, how can anybody else see it? The ego can never feel that anybody else can be egoless: impossible. And if you can feel this your ego has already started dying. If you can feel that somebody can be egoless, already the grip is loosening. The ego won't allow you to feel that anybody has EVER been without an ego.
And because of your ego you go on projecting egos on others.
Many books have been written about Jesus -- more than about anybody else -- and many books try to prove that Jesus must have been a very deep egoist because he goes on saying, 'I am the son of God; I and my father are one.' He is saying: I am God. Many psychoanalysts have tried to explain that he was neurotic. How can you say you are God?
You must be an egoist.
And that's how Jews felt when Jesus was alive. They also felt: this man is just mad with his ego! What is he saying -- that he is God, or the only son of God?
Claiming so much for himself! And they mocked. They mocked, they laughed.
And when they crucified Jesus their behavior with him is simply incomprehensible. They put a crown of thorns on his head and said, 'You, King of the Jews, son of God, you and your father are one -- remember us when we also come to your Kingdom of God.' They forced him to carry his cross. He was weak, the cross was very heavy -- they had made it very heavy knowingly, and they forced him just like an ordinary criminal to carry his own cross. And he was feeling thirsty, because where he was crucified it was a hill; the hill is known as Golgotha. It was uphill, he was carrying his big cross, heavy cross; he was perspiring, feeling thirsty, and people were mocking all around and making jokes about him, and they said, 'Look -- the King of the Jews! Look! The man who claims that he is the son of God.'
Many had gathered there just to enjoy it -- it was a sort of amusement, a merriment. The whole town had gathered there just to throw stones at this man. Why were they taking such a revenge? -- because they felt that this man had hurt their egos. He claimed that he was God himself. They couldn't understand that this man had no ego at all; hence the claim. The claim was not coming from the ego, the claim was simply a reality. When YOUR ego drops you are also a god.
But one can claim from the ego. All our claims are from the ego, so we cannot see how a person can claim without the ego. Krishna in the Gita says to Arjuna, 'Come to my feet.
Leave all, and surrender to me.' Hindus are not so bold, and they are very mannerly; they have not written that this man is an egoist. But in the West many have felt the same as with Jesus: What manner of man is this who says, 'Come to my feet!' Our egos cannot feel that when Krishna is saying to Arjuna, 'Come to my feet,' there is no one inside. It is coming to nobody's feet. But egos cannot see this. You can see only that which you are, you cannot see that which you are not.
Immediately the monk said, 'And what about you?' He feels hurt because the master has said, 'Because you are thinking of yourself, that's why you are missing the way -- and it is right in front of you.' Now this man is reacting. He would like to hurt the master also. He says,
'WHAT ABOUT YOU... DO YOU SEE IT?'
He wanted, he expected -- because of his own ego -- that this man would say, 'Yes, I see it,' and then everything would have been easy. He could have said, 'Then you are also concerned with your I; how can you see it? You also assert your ego -- how can you see it? We are just the same.' And he would have gone away happy, because the account would have been closed with this man.
But you cannot close your account with a master. He never fulfills your expectation. He is simply unpredictable. You cannot get him caught in your trap because his ways always change. Your mind cannot give you the answer which he is going to give.
THE MASTER SAID: 'SO LONG AS YOU SEE DOUBLE, SAYING I DON'T, AND
YOU DO, AND SO ON, YOUR EYES ARE CLOUDED.'
The master has not said anything about himself. If there had been an Arjuna there the master would have said, 'Yes, I see it -- and please, don't you go around and around, come to my feet.' But this man was no Arjuna -- just a curious man, not really interested.
It was just a problem, not a question. He is not going to change himself in any way. At the most he will have a little more information, he will become a little more knowledgeable.
That's why the master says, 'SO LONG AS YOU SEE DOUBLE, SAYING I DON'T, AND YOU DO, AND SO ON, YOUR EYES ARE CLOUDED' --
because the monk's eyes are clouded by 'I' and 'you'. They are one phenomenon, try to understand this. I and you are two aspects of the same coin: this side I, that side you. If I drops, you drop. If I is there no more, you are there no more, because when the coin drops both the aspects drop together. I -- that is one pole, thou -- that is another pole; they both drop or they both remain. If you are, then all around you is a crowd, a milling crowd of I's, you's; if you are not, the whole crowd has disappeared as if it was just a nightmare -- it was -- and simply silence exists, in which there is no division, not even this one of I and thou.
That's why zen people never talk about God, because, they say, 'if we talk about God we will have to say thou.' Buddha never talked about God, and he said, 'Don't pray, because your prayer will continue the division, the duality, the dual vision -- I and thou.'
At the very peak also you will carry the same disease, in subtle ways: you will say I, you will say thou. Howsoever lovingly you say it, the division exists, and with the division the love is not possible. That is the difference between Jewish thinking and Jesus' way of thinking.
Martin Buber has written a book, I and Thou. He is one of the most profound Jewish thinkers -- but he remains a thinker. He may talk about mysticism, but that talk is also one of a thinker and philosopher, because at the very end he retains the old division, I and thou. Now the thou is not here, in this world, but God has become the thou, but the old division persists.
Jews, Mohammedans have always denied that you can become one with God just because of that fear that the I may claim that it has become God. They have retained the division.
They say that you can come closer and closer and closer, but you will remain you and he will remain he. You will remain an I and he has to be addressed as thou.
And that is the trouble that Jesus created, because he said, 'I and my father in heaven are one.' He dropped the division of I and thou. That has been the trouble with Mohammedans in India -- they couldn't understand the Upanishads, they couldn't understand the Hindu teaching that you are the same as him. Drop the I and he is no more a thou. In fact, suddenly the poles disappear and the energy is one. Here I disappear, there you disappear, and the energy is one.
Sometimes in deep love glimpses happen when neither you are an I nor is your lover or beloved a thou -- but sometimes only, it is very rare, when two energies simply meet and you cannot find the division, where they are divided. They mingle and meet and merge and become one; you cannot feel where the boundary is, suddenly the boundary has disappeared. That's why love creates fear.
Deep love creates deep fear. It looks like death because the I disappears, the you disappears -- and it IS a sort of death. And when YOU die, only then do you enter into the divine. But then the divine is no more a God, you cannot address him; hence no prayer exists in Buddhism. So Christians can't believe what type of religion Buddhism is: no prayer?'How can you pray?' Buddha said. 'Because the prayer can be possible only with a division -- I praying, thou listening -- how
can you pray?'
In Buddhism only meditation exists. Try to understand the difference: prayer continues with the old division of I and thou, meditation drops the division. Prayer has to lead finally to meditation. Prayer cannot be the final thing. It is beautiful, but it is not the ultimate. The ultimate can only be this: when both have disappeared and only oneness exists. Tremendous... vast! You become afraid of it! All the cozy divisions of I and thou disappear. All relationship disappears -- that is the fear; that's what Buber is afraid of.
He's afraid that if there is no I and no thou, the whole phenomenon will be so tremendous and so terrible and fear-creating... because no relationship is possible.
Relationship gives you a home; relationship gives you a feeling of coziness; relationship gives you something which does not look like a TREMENDUM, which is not fear-creating. Meditation has to be the ultimate, because prayer can never lead to the nondual -
- and this is what the master is saying. He says:
'SO LONG AS YOU SEE DOUBLE, SAYING I DON'T, AND YOU DO, AND SO ON, YOUR EYES ARE CLOUDED.'
Division is the clouding. Through division is the mist in the eyes, through division is the dust in the eyes, through division your eyes are murky, cloudy, distorted. Drop the division and the Way is there.
But a curious mind goes on and on and on. The monk could have become enlightened at that moment, because enlightenment is nothing but a clarity, an understanding. Such profound truths -- and the seeds go on missing, because the man is just a highway, the man is not a right soil. He said again:
'WHEN THERE IS NEITHER I NOR YOU, CAN ONE SEE IT?'
Look: avoid this tendency of being curious. He is not listening at all, he has not understood a single word, he has not felt anything -- he goes on and on, and on the same surface, at the same level, not even an inch deeper. His questioning is not an inquiry now, rather a reaction: whatsoever the master says, he reacts. Whenever this happens it means that when the master is speaking he is thinking
at that moment also, preparing the next question. He is not listening. 'WHEN THERE IS NEITHER I NOR YOU, CAN ONE SEE IT?'
He will again be expecting. Whenever you ask a question of someone you already have an expected answer. If it fits with your expected answer, then the man is right; if it doesn't fit, then this man is talking nonsense.
Never come to me with your expected answers, because if you already have the answer then there is no need to ask. And this is the difference -- if you ask a question without any expected answer, you will be able to hear the answer; if you have a subtle expectation that THIS is going to be the answer, if your mind has already given you an answer, you will not be able to listen. You will simply be listening either to be confirmed that your answer is right, or to be confirmed that this man is wrong -- but in either case you are right.
Never ask a question with the feeling that you are right. If you are right there is no need to ask. Always ask the question from the position of a man who is ignorant, knowing well that 'I don't know,' so how can you expect, how can you create an answer? Knowing perfectly that 'I don't know,' ask -- and you are a right soil, and the seeds will fall in it, and a large crop will be possible.
Asked the man again:
'WHEN THERE IS NEITHER I NOR YOU, CAN ONE SEE IT?'
He's trying to put this master in a corner, as mind always tries -- because now he must say yes. If he says yes then the curious mind can ask again, 'Then who will see it if there is neither I nor you?' And if you say, 'Yes, then the Way can be seen,' then the question will arise automatically, 'Then who will see it? When I am not there and you are not there, then who will see it?'
But you cannot put an enlightened man into a corner. You can put another mind into a corner, then you can play a game of chess, but a man who has no mind -- you cannot put him in a corner and you cannot defeat him, because he is not there. His victory is absolute. With him, either you are defeated or you escape. His victory is absolute because he is no longer there -- who can be defeated? Who can be forced into a corner?
This is a beautiful corner. This man must have been a professor or a logician or a
pundit.
He has really brought the master to a corner within three questions -- if a man were there he would have been put in a corner. But because a master is not, how can you force him into a corner? He is the whole sky. How can you force the whole sky into a corner? All corners exist in him, but you cannot force him into a corner.
THE MASTER SAID, 'WHEN THERE IS NEITHER I NOR YOU, WHO IS THE ONE
WHO WANTS TO SEE IT?'
Really, when you see... you see only when you are not. When you are not, there is no question of trying to see, wanting to see, desiring to see. Who will desire?
When YOU
are not, who bothers about the Way? The Way has already happened. Who bothers about God? -- it is already the case!
Here you disappear and there everything is ready, everything that you ever sought, everything that you were seeking, every inquiry fulfilled. Here you dissolve and all answers disappear and all queries dissolve. Suddenly the truth is there.
Your dissolution is the truth. Your 'not being there' is the Way. Your absence is the presence of God.
And The Flowers Showered Chapter #11
Chapter title: Not mind, not buddha, not things 10 November 1974 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code:
7411100
ShortTitle:
FLOWRS11
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
87
mins
A MONK ASKED NANSEN: 'IS THERE A TEACHING NO MASTER EVER PREACHED BEFORE?'
NANSEN SAID: 'YES THERE IS.' 'WHAT IS IT?' ASKED THE MONK.
NANSEN REPLIED: 'IT IS NOT MIND, IT IS NOT BUDDHA, IT IS NOT THINGS.'
THE 'TEACHINGS' OF THE AWAKENED ONES are not teachings at all because they cannot be taught -- so how to call them teachings? A teaching is that which can be taught.
But nobody can teach you the truth. It is impossible. You can learn it, but it cannot be taught. It has to be learned. You can absorb it, you can imbibe it, you can live with a master and allow it to happen but it cannot be taught. It is a very indirect process.
Teaching is direct: something is said. Learning is indirect: something is indicated, not said -- rather, something is shown. A finger is raised towards the sun, but the finger is not the point; you have to leave the finger and look at the sun, or at the moon. A master teaches but the teaching is just like the finger: you have to leave it and look where it indicates -- the dimension, the direction, the
beyond.
A teacher teaches, a master LIVES -- you can learn from his life, the way he moves, the way he looks at you, the way he touches you, the way he is. You can imbibe it, you can allow it to happen, you can remain available, you can remain open and vulnerable. There is no way to say it directly, that's why those who are very intellectual miss it -- because they know only one way of learning and that is direct. They ask, What is truth? -- and they expect an answer.
This is what happened when Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, 'What is truth?' and Jesus remained silent -- not even a flicker, as if the question had not been asked, as if there was no Pontius Pilate standing before him and asking. Jesus remained the same as he was before the question was raised, nothing changed. Pontius Pilate must have thought this man a little mad, because he had asked a direct question: 'What is truth?' and this man remained silent as if he had not heard.
Pontius Pilate was a viceroy, a well-educated, cultured, cultivated man; Jesus was a son of a carpenter, uneducated, uncultivated. It was as if two poles were meeting, two opposite poles. Pontius Pilate knew all philosophy -- he had learned it, he knew all the scriptures. This man Jesus was absolutely uneducated, in fact he knew nothing -- or, he knew ONLY nothing. Standing before Pontius Pilate, totally silent, he replied -- but the reply was indirect: he raised a finger. That total silence was the finger raised towards truth. But Pontius Pilate missed. He thought, This man is crazy. Either he is deaf, cannot hear, or he does not know, is ignorant -- that's why he is silent. But silence can be a finger raised towards truth -- that is incomprehensible to the intellectual Pontius Pilate.
He missed. The greatest opportunity! He may be still wandering somewhere in search of
'What is truth?' On that day truth was standing before him. Could he be silent for a moment? Could he be in the presence of Jesus, not asking? just looking, watching, waiting? Could he imbibe Jesus a little? Could he allow Jesus to work upon him? The opportunity was there -- and Jesus indicated it. But Pontius Pilate missed.
Intellect will always miss the teaching of the awakened ones, because intellect believes in the direct way, and you cannot hit truth in such a direct way. It is a very subtle phenomenon, delicate, the most delicate possible; you have to move
very cautiously, you have to move very indirectly. You have to feel it -- it comes through the heart, it never comes through the head. Teaching comes through the head, learning happens through the heart.
Remember my emphasis. It is not the master who teaches, it is the disciple who learns. It is up to you -- to learn or not to learn; it is not up to me to teach or not to teach. A master cannot help himself: because of the way he is, he goes on teaching. His every moment, his every breath is a teaching, his whole being is a teaching, a message. The message is not different from the master. If it is different then the master is simply a teacher, not a master; then he is repeating words of others. Then he is not awakened himself, then he has a borrowed knowledge; inside he remains as ignorant as the student. There is no difference in their being, they differ in their knowledge.
A teacher and a student are on the same level as far as their being is concerned; as far as their knowledge is concerned they are different: the teacher knows more, the student knows less. Some day the student will know more, he himself will become a teacher, he can even come to know more than the teacher -- because it is the horizontal line of accumulation. If you accumulate more knowledge, information, you can become a teacher, but not a master.
A master is truth. He does not know ABOUT truth, he has become it, so he cannot help himself. It is not a question of to teach or not to teach, it is not a choice. Even if he is fast asleep, he goes on teaching. Buddha fast asleep -- you simply sit near him, you can learn much; you can even become enlightened, because the way he sleeps is totally different.
The quality differs because the being differs. Buddha eating -- you just watch, and he is giving a message. The message is not separate, that's why I say he cannot help himself.
He IS the message.
You cannot ask the question, 'What is truth?' Anyway, he will not answer you directly.
He may laugh or he may offer you a cup of tea, or he may hold your hand and sit silently, or he may take you for a morning walk into the woods, or he may say, 'Look! This mountain is beautiful!' But whatsoever he is doing is an indirect way of indicating, indicating towards his being.
All that is beautiful, true, good, is like happiness -- I say 'like happiness' because you may be able to understand that. You have known something of happiness. Maybe you have lived very miserably, as people live. But sometimes, even in spite of yourself, moments happen when happiness enters you -- you are filled with an unknown silence, an unknown bliss; suddenly those moments come. You cannot find a man who has not had a few moments of happiness in his life.
But have you observed one thing? -- whenever they come they come indirectly. Suddenly they happen, unexpectedly they happen. You were not waiting for them, you were doing something else, and suddenly you become aware. If you are waiting for them, expecting them, they never come; if you are directly in search, you will miss.
Somebody says, 'When I go swimming in the river I feel much happiness.' You are also in search of it; you say, 'Then I will come also,' and you follow. You are seeking happiness -- you are not concerned with swimming directly, you are concerned directly with happiness. Swimming is just a means. You swim for hours; you are tired, you wait, you expect -- and you are frustrated. Nothing is happening, the bliss is not there, and you tell your friend: 'You deceived me. I have been swimming for hours, feel completely tired, and not a single moment of happiness has happened.'
No, it cannot happen. When you are lost in swimming so completely that there is nobody, the boat is empty, there is nobody in the house, the host is silent, swimming is so deep that the swimmer is lost in it and you simply swim, you play with the river, and the rays of the sun and the morning breeze, and you are simply lost in it... and there is happiness!
Swimming by the bank, swimming all over the river, spreading all over existence, jumping from one ray to another ray of light -- every breeze brings it. But if you expect you miss, because expectation leads you into the future and happiness is in the present. It is not a result of any activity; it is a consequence, it is a byproduct. You are so deeply involved, it happens.
It is a consequence, remember, it is not a result; a result can be expected. If you put two plus two, the four, the result, can be expected; it is already there in the two plus two, it will come out. The result can be expected if things are mechanical, mathematical. But a consequence is not a mechanical thing, it is an organic phenomenon. It happens only when you are not expecting. The guest
comes to your door and knocks when you were not thinking about the guest at all. It always comes like a stranger, it always surprises you. You suddenly feel something has happened -- and if you start thinking about what is happening, you will immediately miss. If you say, 'How wonderful! How beautiful!' it is already gone; the mind is back. Again you are in the same misery, thrown back.
One has to learn deeply that all that is beautiful is indirect. You cannot make an attack upon it, you cannot be aggressive with it; you cannot snatch from existence. If you are violent and aggressive, you will not find it.
Move towards it like a drunkard, not knowing where, not knowing why, like a drunkard -
- lost completely, you move towards it.
All meditations are subtle ways to make you drunk, subtle ways to make you drunkards of the unknown, drunkards of the divine. Then you are no longer there with your conscious mind functioning, then you are not there expecting, then you are not there planning for the future. You are NOT. And when you are not, suddenly flowers start showering on you, flowers of bliss. Just like Subhuti, empty... you are surprised! You were never expecting, you never knew! You never felt that you ever deserved it; that's how it is felt -- like a grace, because it is not something YOU have brought on, it is something which has happened.
So one thing: truth cannot be taught, bliss cannot be given to you, ecstasy cannot be purchased in the market. But your mind continuously thinks in terms of getting, purchasing, collecting, finding; your mind never thinks in terms of happening because you cannot control happening -- everything else you can control.
I have heard: Once a man became suddenly rich. Of course, when it happened he collected all those things he had always been desiring -- a very big house, a big car, swimming pool, this and that. And then he sent his daughter to college. He had always wanted to be educated but he could not be; now he wanted to fulfill all his desires, and whatsoever HE couldn't do he wanted his children to do. But after a few days the dean of the college wrote a letter to him, and in the letter wrote: 'To be frank, we cannot admit your girl to the college because she has no capacity to learn.'
The father said, 'Just capacity? Don't bother! I will purchase the best capacity
available in the market for her.'
How can you purchase capacity? But a man who has become suddenly rich thinks only in terms of purchasing. You think in terms of power -- power to purchase, power to get something. Remember, truth cannot be got through power; it comes when you are humble. You have nothing to purchase it with, it cannot be purchased. And it is good that it cannot be purchased; otherwise no one would be able to give the cost. It is good that it HAPPENS; otherwise how would you purchase it? All that you have is rubbish. Because it cannot be purchased, that's why sometimes it can happen. It is a gift. It is a sharing of the divine with you -- but the divine can share only when you allow. Hence I say you can learn it but it cannot be taught.
In fact in the spiritual world there are only disciples, not masters. Masters ARE there but they are inactive, passive forces. They cannot DO anything, they are just there -- like a flower: if nobody comes, the flower will go on spreading its fragrance into emptiness. It cannot help itself. The whole thing is decided by the disciple: how to learn? how to learn from a flower? And a flower shows something but doesn't say it. It cannot be said. How can the flower say what beauty is? -- the flower IS beauty. You have to gain, attain, eyes to see, a nose to smell, ears to hear the subtle sound that comes to the flower when the breeze passes by. And you need a heart to feel the throbbing of the flower, because it throbs also -- everything alive throbs, the whole existence throbs.
You may not have observed this because it is impossible before you go into deep meditation; you cannot observe the fact that the whole universe breathes. And just as you expand and shrink the whole existence shrinks and expands. Just as you inhale and the chest fills, and then you exhale and the air goes out and the chest shrinks, the same rhythm exists in existence. The whole existence breathes, expands, inhales, exhales -- and if you can find the rhythm of existence and become one with the rhythm, you have attained.
The whole art of ecstasy, meditation, samadhi, is: How to become one with the rhythm of the universe. When it exhales, you exhale. When it inhales, you inhale. You live in it, are not separate, are one with it. Difficult, because the universe is vast.
A master is the whole universe in miniature. If you can learn how to inhale with the master and how to exhale with the master, if you can learn simply that, you
will learn all.
At the moment when Pontius Pilate asked, 'What is truth?' if he had known anything, even the ABC of disciplehood, the next thing would have been to just close his eyes and inhale and exhale with Jesus... just inhale and exhale with Jesus. The way he inhales, you inhale, and in the same rhythm; the way he exhales, you exhale, and in the same rhythm -
- and suddenly there is oneness: the disciple has disappeared, the master has disappeared.
In that oneness you know what truth is because in that oneness you taste the master.
And now you have the key -- and this has not been given either, remember, it has been learned by you. It has not been given to you; it cannot be given, it is so subtle. And with this key now every lock can be opened. It is a master key, no ordinary key -- it doesn't open one lock, it opens all locks. Now you have the key, and once you have the key you use it with the universe.
Kabir has said, 'Now I am in much difficulty. God and my guru, the whole existence and my master, are standing before me; now to whom do I bow first? To whose feet now do I go first? I am in deep trouble!' And then he says, 'Forgive me, God. I will have to go to my master's feet first, because he has shown you to me. I come to you through him. So even if you are standing before me, excuse me, I have to touch my master's feet first.'
Beautiful... this has to be so, because the master becomes the door to the unknown, he becomes the key to the whole existence. He is the truth.
Learn how to be in the presence of the master, how to breathe with him, how to silently allow him to move in you, how to silently merge into him, because the master is nothing but God who has knocked at your door. He is the whole universe concentrated. Don't ask questions, LIVE with him.
Now try to penetrate this story -- small, but very significant.
A MONK ASKED NANSEN: 'IS THERE A TEACHING NO MASTER EVER PREACHED BEFORE?'
Whatsoever has been preached is not the teaching; the real teaching has never been preached, it cannot be told.
Buddha said to Mahakashyap, 'To all others I have told that which can be told, and to you I give that which cannot be told, cannot be said.' Now for two thousand years followers of Buddha have been asking again and again and again: What was given to Mahakashyap? What was given to Mahakashyap, what was the teaching that Buddha never told to anybody, that even Buddha said cannot be told because words will not be able to carry it?
Words are so narrow, the vastness of truth cannot be forced into them -- and they are so superficial, how can they carry the depth? It is just like this: How can a wave on the ocean carry the depth of the ocean? It cannot. By the very nature of things it is impossible because if a wave exists it has to exist on the surface. The wave cannot go to the depth because if it goes to the depth it is a wave no more. The wave exists only in touch with the winds -- it has to be on the surface, it cannot go to the depth. And the depth cannot come to the wave because the moment it comes to the surface it itself becomes the wave, it is no more the depth.
This is the problem. The truth is the center and the words exist on the surface, on the periphery -- where people meet, where the wind and the ocean meet, where the question and the answer meet, where the master and disciple meet; just there on the surface words exist. Truth cannot come to the surface, it is the very depth, and the words cannot go to the truth, they are the very surface.
So what to do? All that can be said will be just so-so; it will not be true, it will not be untrue, it will be just in the middle -- and very dangerous, because if the disciple has not been in tune with the master he will misunderstand. If he has been in tune with the master, only then will he understand because then there exists a rapport.
Understanding is not a question of keen intelligence; understanding is a question of deep rapport. Understanding is not a question of reason, intellect, logic. Understanding is a question of deep sympathy, or even of deep empathy; hence the central significance of trust, faith. Understanding happens through faith, because in faith you trust, in trust you become sympathetic, in trust rapport is possible -- because you are not defensive, you leave the doors open.
THIS MONK ASKED NANSEN: 'IS THERE A TEACHING NO MASTER EVER
PREACHED BEFORE?'
Yes, there is a teaching; in fact ALL the teaching is there which no master has ever preached before. Then why do masters go on preaching? Why is it Buddha went on talking for forty years? Why do I go on talking, whether you listen or not? Why do they talk? If that which is to be learned cannot be said, then why do they go on talking?
Talking is just a bait. Through talking you are caught, you cannot understand anything else. Talking is just giving sweets to children. Then they start coming to you, blissfully unaware that talking is not the point; blissfully unaware they come for the sweets, they come for the toys. They are happy with the toys. But the master knows that once they start coming, by and by the toys can be taken away, and by and by they will start loving the master without the toys -- and once that happens, words can be dropped.
Whenever a disciple is ready, words can be dropped. They are just a way to bring you closer because you cannot understand anything except words. If somebody speaks, you understand; if somebody is silent you cannot understand. What will you understand?
Silence is just a wall for you, you cannot find your way in it. And silence carries a deep fear also, because it is deathlike. Words are lifelike, silence is deathlike. If somebody is silent you start feeling afraid and scared -- if somebody goes on being silent you will try to escape from there because it is too much, the silence becomes so heavy for you.
Why? -- because YOU cannot be silent, and if you cannot be silent you cannot understand silence. You are a chattering; inside a monkey is sitting, continuously chattering. Somebody has defined man as nothing but a monkey with metaphysics, with some philosophy, that's all. And that philosophy is nothing but a better way of chattering, more systematic, more logical, but still chattering.
A master has to talk to bring you nearer. The nearer you come, the more he will drop it.
Once you are in the grip of his silence there is no need to talk. Once you know
what silence is, once you have become silent, a new rapport exists. Now things can be said without any saying, messages can be given without ever giving them
-- without him giving them you can receive them. Now the phenomenon of discipleship has happened.
One of the most beautiful phenomena in the world is that of being a disciple, because now you know what rapport is. Now you breathe, inhale, exhale with the master; now you lose your boundaries and become one with him. Now something of his heart starts flowing towards you; now something of him comes into you.
A MONK ASKED NANSEN: 'IS THERE A TEACHING NO MASTER EVER PREACHED BEFORE?'
Nansen is one of the most famous zen masters. Many stories are told about him; one I have been telling you many times. I will repeat it again, because stories like that are to be repeated again and again, so that you can imbibe them. They are a sort of nourishment.
Every day you have to take nourishment; you won't say, 'Yesterday morning I took breakfast so now there is no need.' Every day you have to eat; you don't say, 'Yesterday I took food, now what is the need?'
These stories -- they are a nourishment. There exists a special word in India, it cannot be translated. In English the word reading exists, in India we have two words for it: one means reading, the other means the reading of the same thing again and again. You read the same thing again and again and again -- it is like a part. Every day you read the Gita in the morning; then it is not a reading, because you have read it many times. Now it is a sort of nourishment. You don't read it, you EAT it every day.
It is also a great experiment, because every day you will come to new shades of meaning, every day new nuances. The same book, the same words, but every day you feel some new depth has opened unto you. Every day you feel you are reading something new, because the Gita, or books like that, have a depth. If you read them once you will move on the surface; if you read them twice, a little deeper; thrice -- you go on. A thousand times, and then you will understand that you can never exhaust these books, it is impossible. The more you become alert, aware, the more your consciousness grows deeper -- that is the meaning.
I will repeat this story of Nansen. A professor came to him, a professor of philosophy.…
Philosophy is a disease, and it is like a cancer: no medicine exists for it yet, you have to go through surgery, a great operation is needed. And philosophy has a similar type of growth, a canceric growth: once it is in you it goes on growing by itself, and it takes all your energies. It is a parasite. You go on becoming weaker and weaker and it becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. Every word creates another word -- and it can go on infinitely.
A philosopher came to Nansen. Nansen lived on a small hill, and when the philosopher came uphill he was tired and perspiring. The moment he entered the hut of Nansen he said, 'What is truth?'
Nansen said, 'Truth can wait a little. There is no hurry. Right now you need a cup of tea, you are so tired!' Nansen went in and prepared a cup of tea.
This can happen only with a zen master. In India you cannot think of Shankaracharya preparing tea for you. For YOU -- and Shankaracharya preparing tea? Impossible! Or think of Mahavira preparing tea for you... absurd!
But with a zen master this can happen. They have a totally different attitude: they LOVE
life. They are not anti-life; they affirm life, they are not against it -- and they are ordinary people, and they say that to be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing. They live a really simple life. When I say a REALLY simple life I mean not an imposed simplicity. In India you can find such impostors all over -- simplicity is imposed. They may be naked, completely naked, but they are not simple; their nakedness is very complex. Their nakedness is not the nakedness of a child; they have cultivated it, and how can a cultivated thing be simple? They have disciplined themselves for it, and how can a disciplined thing be simple? It is very complex.
Your clothes are not so complex as the nakedness of a Jaina DIGAMBER monk. He has struggled for it for many years. They have five steps -- you have to fulfill each step by and by, and then you attain to nakedness. It is an achievement, and how can an achievement be simple? If you work for it for many years, if you make every effort to achieve it, how can it be simple? A simple thing can be achieved here and now, immediately, there is no need to work for it.
Nakedness when simple is a majestic phenomenon; you simply drop clothes. It happened to Mahavira -- it was simple. When he left his house he had clothes on; then, passing by a rosebush, his shawl got caught in the thorns, so he thought: It is evening time and the rosebush is going to sleep, it will be disturbing to remove it. So he tore off half of the shawl that was entangled in the thorns and left it there. It was evening time and the gesture was beautiful. It was not for nakedness he did it, it was for that rosebush. And the next day in the morning, with the half-shawl left, half naked, a beggar asked him for something
-- and he had nothing else to give. How to say no when you still have something left to give -- that half-shawl? So he gave it to the beggar. This nakedness is something superb, simple, ordinary; it happened, it was not practiced. But a Jaina monk practices it.
Zen monks are very simple people. They live an ordinary life as everybody else. They don't make differences, because all differences are basically egoistic. And this game you can play in many ways, but the game remains the same: higher than you. The game remains the same: I have more money, I am higher than you; I have more education, I am higher than you; I am more pious, I am higher than you; I am more religious, I am higher than you; I have renounced more, I am higher than you.
Nansen went in, prepared tea, came out, gave the cup into the professor's hand, poured tea from his kettle. The cup was full. Up to that moment the professor waited because up to that moment everything was rational: a tired man comes and you feel compassion for him and you prepare tea. Of course it is as it should be. Then you fill the cup -- that too is okay. But then something irrational happened.
Nansen went on pouring, the cup was overflowing. Then the professor became a little surprised: What is this man doing? Is he mad? But still he waited -- he was a well disciplined man, he could tolerate little things like that. Maybe a little crazy... but then the saucer was also completely full, and Nansen went on pouring.
Now this was too much. Now something had to be done and said, and the professor shrieked, 'Stop!' -- because now the tea was overflowing on the floor. 'What are you doing? Now this cup cannot contain any more tea. Can't you see a simple thing like this?
Are you mad?'
Nansen started laughing and said, 'That's what I was also thinking: Are YOU mad? --
because you can see that the cup is full and it will not contain a single drop more, but you cannot see that your head is full and it cannot contain a single drop of truth more. Your cup is full in the head, your saucer is full and everything is flowing on the floor -- look!
Your philosophy all over my hut and you can't see it? But you are a reasonable man; at least you could see the tea. Now see the other thing.'
This Nansen helped many people in different ways to awake, created many sorts of situations for people to awake.
A MONK ASKED NANSEN: 'IS THERE A TEACHING NO MASTER EVER PREACHED BEFORE?'
NANSEN SAID: 'YES THERE IS.' 'WHAT IS IT?' ASKED THE MONK.
NANSEN REPLIED: 'IT IS NOT MIND, IT IS NOT BUDDHA, IT IS NOT THINGS.'
Now, if no master has ever said it how can Nansen say it? The questioner is foolish, asking a stupid question. If nobody has said it, how can Nansen say it? If buddhas have kept silent about it, if buddhas have not uttered a single word, could not utter, then how can Nansen? But Nansen would like to help even this stupid man.
And there are only stupid men all around, because unless you become enlightened you remain stupid. So stupidity is not a condemnation, it is just a state, a fact. A man who is not enlightened will remain stupid -- there is no other way. And if he feels himself wise, then he is more stupid. If he feels that he is stupid, then wisdom has started -- then he has started awakening. If you feel you are ignorant, then you are not stupid; if you feel you know you are perfectly stupid -- not only stupid but grounded in it so much that there seems no possibility for you to come out of it.
Nansen would like to help this stupid man, because there are no others; that's why he speaks, he answers. But he has to use all negatives; he says nothing positive. He uses three negatives. He says:'IT IS NOT MIND, IT IS NOT BUDDHA, IT IS NOT
THINGS.'
You cannot say the truth but you can say what it is not. You cannot say what it is but you can indicate it negatively. Via negativa: saying what it is not. This is all that masters have done. If you insist that they say something, they will say something negative. If you can understand their silence, you understand the affirmative. If you cannot understand their silence but insist on words, they will say something negative.
Understand this: words can do a negative job; silence can do a positive job. Silence is the most positive thing and language is the most negative. When you speak you are moving in the negative world; when you remain silent you are moving into the positive. What is truth? Ask the Upanishads, ask the Koran, The Bible, the Gita; they all say what it is not.
What is God? They all say what he is not.
Three things he denies: one -- it is not things, the world; it is not that which you see, it is not that which is all around you. It is not that which can be seen by the mind, which the mind can comprehend -- it is not objects. And second: it is not the mind, it is not the subject; neither this world around you nor this mind within you. No, these two things are not the teaching, are not the truth.
But the third thing only buddhas have denied, only very perfect masters have denied, and that third thing is: IT IS NOT BUDDHA.
And what is Buddha?
The world of things is the first boundary around you, then the world of mind, thoughts: things the first boundary, thoughts the second boundary -- of course closer, nearer you.
You can draw three concentric circles: first circle, the world of things; second circle, the world of thoughts; and then remains the third -- and Buddha has denied that also -- the self, the witnessing, the soul, the consciousness, the
buddha. Only Buddha denies that.
All others have known that: Jesus knows it, Krishna knows it, but they don't deny it because that would be too much for you to understand. So they deny two things: they say this world is illusory, and the mind that looks at this world is also illusory. Mind and world are one phenomenon, two aspects of the same coin. The mind creates the dream; the dream is illusory, and the mind, the source, is also illusory. But they say that the third
-- witnessing, you in your deep consciousness where you are only a witness, not a thinker, where no thought exists, no thing exists, only you exist -- they don't deny that.
Buddha has denied that also.
He says, 'No world, no mind, no soul.' That is the highest teaching -- because if things are not, how can thoughts be? If thoughts are not how can you witness them? If the world is illusory then the mind that looks at the world can't be real. The mind is illusory. Then the witness that looks at the mind -- how can it be real? Buddha goes to the deepest core of existence. He says, All that you are is unreal; your things, your thoughts and you -- all is unreal.
But these are three negatives. Buddha's path is the negative path, his assertions are negative. That's why Hindus called him a NASTIK; they called him an atheist, an absolute nihilist. But he is not. When all these three things are denied, that which remains is truth. When things disappear, thoughts disappear, and the witnessing disappears --
these three things that you know -- when all these three disappear, that which remains is truth. And that which remains liberates, that which remains is nirvana, is enlightenment.
Buddha is very very deep; nobody has gone deeper than that in saying. Many people have reached in being but Buddha has tried to be perfect in saying also. He never asserts a single positive. If you ask about any positive he simply remains silent. He never says God is, he never says the soul is; in fact he never uses the word is. You ask and he will use the word not. No is his answer for everything. And if you can understand, if you can feel a rapport, you will see that he is right.
When you deny everything, that doesn't mean you have destroyed everything. That only means you have destroyed the world that you had created. The real remains because the real cannot be denied. But you cannot assert it. You can know it but you cannot state it.
When you deny all these three, when you transcend all these three, you become a buddha.
You are enlightened.
Buddha says you are awakened only when these three sleeps are broken. One sleep is the sleep with things: many people are asleep there, that is the grossest sleep. Millions of people, ninety-eight percent of the people are asleep there -- the first and grossest sleep, the sleep with things. One goes on thinking about his bank balance, one goes on thinking about the house, about clothes, about this and that -- and one lives in that. There are people who only study catalogues for things.…
I have heard one story: One religious man was staying overnight in a family. In the morning, as was his habit, he wanted The Bible to read a little and to pray a little. The small child of the house was passing through the room so he asked the kid, he said, 'Bring that book' -- because he thought the child may not understand what book The Bible was, so he said, 'Bring that book which your mother reads every day.' The child brought the Whole Earth Catalogue, because that was the book the mother read every day.
People, ninety-eight percent of them, are asleep in things. Try to find out where you are asleep, because the work has to start there. If you are asleep with things, then you have to start from there. Drop that sleep with things.
Why do people go on thinking about things? I used to stay in a house in Calcutta. The woman there must have had at least one thousand saris, and every day it was a problem.…
When I was there her husband and I would be sitting in the car and her husband would go on honking and she would say, 'I am coming!' -- and it was difficult for her to decide which sari to wear. So I asked, 'Why is this a problem every day?'
So she took me and showed me, and she said, 'You would also be puzzled. I have got one thousand saris and it is difficult to decide which one to choose, which
will suit the occasion.'
Have you seen people?... from the very morning they start cleaning their car, as if that is their Bible and their God. 'Things' is the first sleep, the grossest. If you are attached too much to things and continuously thinking of things, you are asleep there. You have to come out of that. You have to look at what type of attachments you have, where you cling, and for what. What are you going to get there?
You may increase your things, you may accumulate a vast empire, but when you die you will go without things. Death will bring you out of your sleep. Before death does, it is better to bring yourself out; then there will be no pain in death. Death is so painful because this first sleep has to be broken; you are to be snatched away from things.
Then there is the second sleep, the sleep of the mind. There are people who are not concerned with things -- only one percent of people -- who are not concerned with things but who are concerned with the mind. They don't bother about what type of clothes they use -- artists, novelists, poets, painters; they are not worried about things in general, they live in the mind. They can go hungry, they can go naked, they can live in a slum, but they go on working in the mind. The novel they are writing... and they go on thinking, I may not be immortal but my novel that I am going to write is going to be immortal; the painting that I am doing is going to be immortal. But when you cannot be immortal, how can your painting be immortal? When you are to perish, when you are to die, everything that you create will die, because how is it possible that from death something immortal can be born?
Then there are people who go on thinking of philosophy, thoughts, oblivious of things, not worried much about them. It happened once: Immanuel Kant was coming to his class.
He was a perfect timekeeper, never missed a single appointment, would never be late; at exactly the right time he would enter. He never cared about his clothes, about his house, or food, or anything -- never worried about it, never got married; just a servant would do, because that was not much of a problem and the servant can do the food and take care of the house. He never needed a wife or someone who was intimate, a friend -- no; a servant was okay as far as the world of things was concerned. The servant was really the master, because he would
purchase everything, he would take care of the money and the house and everything.
Immanuel Kant lived like a stranger in that house. It is said that he never looked at the house, he never knew how many rooms the house had, what type of furniture; even if you were to show him something which had been in his room for thirty years he would not be able to recognize it. But he was concerned much with thoughts -- he lived in the world of thoughts, and many stories are told, beautiful stories, because a man who lives in the world of thoughts is always absentminded, absentminded in the world of things, because you cannot live in two worlds.
He was going to his class; the road was muddy and one of his shoes got stuck, so he left it there, went to the class with one shoe. Somebody asked, 'Where is your other shoe?'
He said, 'It got stuck just on the way. It is raining and it was muddy.' But the man who had asked said, 'Then you could have got it back.'
Said Immanuel Kant, 'There was a series of thoughts in my mind and I didn't like to interfere with it. If I had got concerned with the shoe, the track would have been lost, and such beautiful thoughts were there that who cares whether you come to the class with one shoe or two!' The whole college laughed, but he was not concerned.
Once it happened: he came back after his evening walk... he used to have a walking-stick, and he was so absorbed in his thought that he did everything that was done every day, but forgot something. He was so absentminded that he put the walking-stick on the bed where he used to put himself, and he himself stood in the corner of the room where he used to put the... got a little mixed-up!
After two hours the servant became aware that the light was on -- so what was the matter? He looked through the window, and Immanuel Kant was standing with closed eyes in the corner and the walking-stick was fast asleep on the pillow. A man who is asleep too much in the mind will be absentminded in the world. Philosophers, poets, men of literature, painters, musicians -- they are all fast asleep there.
And then there is a third sleep: monks, those who have renounced the world, and
not only the world but also the mind, who have been meditating for many years and they have stopped the thought process. Now no thoughts move in their inner sky, now no things are there; they are not concerned with things, not concerned with thoughts. But a subtle ego, the 'I' -- now they call it ATMAN, the soul, the self, the Self with a capital 'S' -- is their sleep; they are asleep there.
Buddha says sleep has to be broken on these three layers, and when all the sleeps are broken, nobody is awake, only awakening is there; nobody is enlightened, only enlightenment is there -- just the phenomenon of awareness, without any center.…
An enlightened person cannot say 'I'; even if he has to use it he never says it, even if he has to use it he cannot mean it. It is just a verbal thing, has to be followed because of the society and the language game. It is just a rule of the language; otherwise he has no 'I'
feeling.
The world of things disappears -- then what happens? When the world of things disappears, your attachment to things falls, your obsession with things falls. Things don't disappear; on the contrary, things for the first time appear as they are. Then you are not clinging, obsessed; then you are not coloring them in your own desires, in your own hopes and frustrations -- no. Then the world is not a screen for your desires to be projected on. When your desires drop, the world is there, but it is a totally new world. It is so fresh, it is so colorful, it is so beautiful! But a mind attached to things cannot see it because eyes are closed with attachment. A totally new world arises.
When the mind disappears, thoughts disappear. It is not that you become mindLESS; on the contrary you become mindFUL. Buddha uses this word 'right mindfulness' millions of times. When the mind disappears and thoughts disappear you become mindful. You do things -- you move, you work, you eat, you sleep, but you are always mindful. The mind is not there, but mindfulness is there. What is mindfulness? It is awareness. It is perfect awareness.
And when the self disappears, the ego, the atman, what happens? It is not that you are lost, you are no more -- no. On the contrary, for the first time you ARE. But now you are not separate from existence. Now you are an island no more; you have become the whole continent, you are one with the existence.
But those are the positive things -- they cannot be said. Hence, Nansen said, 'Yes, there is a teaching which no master has ever preached, because it cannot be preached, and that teaching is:
'IT IS NOT MIND, IT IS NOT BUDDHA, IT IS NOT THINGS.'
That teaching is emptiness, that teaching is absolute nothingness. And when you are not, suddenly the whole existence starts flowering on you. The whole ecstasy of existence converges on you -- when you are not.
When you are not, the whole existence feels ecstatic and celebrates; flowers shower on you. They have not showered yet because you ARE, and they will not shower until you dissolve. When you are empty, no more, when you are a nothingness, SHUNYATA, suddenly they start showering. They have showered on Buddha, on Subhuti, on Nansen; they can shower on YOU -- they are waiting. They are knocking at the door. They are ready. Just the moment you become empty, they start falling on you.
So remember it: the final liberation is not YOUR liberation, the final liberation is FROM
YOU. Enlightenment is not yours, cannot be. When you are not, it is there. Drop yourself in your totalness: the world of things, the world of thoughts, the world of the self; all three layers, drop. Drop this trinity; drop this TRIMURTI, drop these three faces, because if you are there then the one cannot be. If you are three, how can the one be?
Let all three disappear -- God, the Holy Ghost and the Son; Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh --
all the three, let them drop! Let them disappear. Nobody remains -- and then everything is there.
When nothing happens, the all happens.
You are nothing... the all starts showering on you.
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