Chapter title: Socialism is a judas
3 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
code:
8902035
ShortTitle:
FIRE05
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
180
mins
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
ON ONE OCCASION, A MONK ASKED MASTER DOGO: "EVEN IF THERE IS NO
CLOUD FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES, IT IS NOT YET THE ORIGINAL SKY.
WHAT IS THE ORIGINAL SKY?"
DOGO REPLIED, "TODAY, IT IS GOOD TO DRY WHEAT."
ON ANOTHER OCCASION, DOGO WAS ASKED BY ANOTHER MONK, "WHAT
IS THE DEEPEST?"
DOGO CAME DOWN FROM HIS SEAT, MADE OBEISANCE IN THE MANNER
OF WOMEN AND SAID, "YOU HAVE COME FROM FAR, AND I HAVE NO
ANSWER FOR YOU."
AT ANOTHER TIME, SEKISO KEISHO ASKED DOGO, "AFTER A HUNDRED
YEARS, IF SOMEONE ASKS ABOUT THE ABSOLUTE MEANING OF THE
UNIVERSE, WHAT SHALL I SAY TO HIM?"
DOGO CALLED THE BOY ATTENDANT, WHO CAME, AND TOLD HIM TO FILL
UP THE WATER BOTTLE. DOGO WAITED A WHILE, AND THEN SAID TO
SEKISO, "WHAT WAS IT YOU ASKED JUST NOW?"
SEKISO REPEATED THE QUESTION. DOGO THEREUPON WENT BACK TO HIS
ROOM, AND AT THIS, SEKISO BECAME ENLIGHTENED.
Friends,
First, I am going to answer a few questions from the Australian TV crew. They have been here for almost one month. When they had come, they were very serious people, as Australians are supposed to be. But this morning they filmed me, and they have completely changed. They were smiling and laughing and
enjoying.
Ecstasy is contagious. It is dangerous to enter this gateless gate! But they are very nice people and very perfectionist. They have been doing a film on the commune, its lifestyle, its philosophical approach to existence. And of course, on me, the spiritual terrorist behind the commune! -- or in other words, the center of this cyclone which is going to grow every day bigger and bigger and is going to envelop the whole earth.
When they go back to their homes, their wives will be absolutely surprised -- whatever happened to these guys? The very air of the commune changes personalities. Your joy, your laughter, your blissfulness, your silence, touches the very heart of anyone who is alive.
This morning I saw, these people are not dead. They are really alive! So now I can trust that their film and their program for television is going to be a real shock to the whole of Australia. If they can create the shock, I am coming!
Question 1
Their first question is:
ARE EITHER COMMUNISTS OR CAPITALISTS READY FOR THE CONSCIOUSNESS REVOLUTION OF A SPIRITUAL TERRORIST LIKE YOURSELF?
They are not ready, but I am going to make them ready! The time is ripe. They will have to be ready, because unless they become more and more conscious and alert, the destiny of this earth is doomed.
If anyone loves this earth, the beautiful birds and animals and human beings, if anyone has a sense of this tremendous phenomenon... because the whole universe is without any greenery, without any flowers, without any oceans, without any rivers. This place, this small earth -- very small -- has a special position in the world. In the whole of existence it is only this earth that has produced buddhas, enlightened people. This earth has become holy, just because so many buddhas have traveled on it.
And because the criminal politicians have come to the end of the rope, now they don't know what to do except create a war. To counteract, to create an atmosphere in the world against any possible war, the only way is to raise the consciousness of the people.
I know perfectly well that neither capitalists are ready nor communists are ready. But first communists will be ready -- then the capitalists, because the capitalists are full of vested interest. The Soviet Union and the people living there have nothing to lose. They are all equally poor, and seventy years of revolution have created a complete vacuum in their being. That vacuum can be filled only by meditative awareness.
As I have told you again and again, nobody can live on negative ideas. The positive idea may be wrong, may be fiction, may be just a hope, a consolation, but still it fills your being. It keeps you unaware of the hollowness. But the negative idea does not fill your inner being. The positive means your fridge may be full of rubbish, junk, but still --
when you open it, it is full.
When somebody starts believing in no God, in no heaven, in no hell -- drops all fictions, all the consolations humanity has lived with for thousands of years -- then suddenly he feels a great vacuum, a hollowness, a meaninglessness. Hence, I always give more priority to the atheist than the theist. The atheist is in every way ready, he just has to be hit on the right point. He has no God, he has nothing to cling to.
In the communist ideology he is left absolutely alone. That's what is missing in communist ideology: it cannot fill people's hearts, it cannot nourish their beings; hence the communists are going to be first to rise in consciousness. The capitalist has too much vested interest. He has so many troubles and problems, so much money, so many businesses. He has no time even to look inside and see that he is hollow.
I have heard about a very super-rich man. When he died, then he realized that he used to be alive -- but only when he died. In the grave where he was buried, he realized for the first time, "My God! I have been alive for eighty years and never thought about what it is to be alive!"
There are many people who only realize the value of life at the point of death.
But then it is too late. Life keeps them engaged. The capitalist has too many things to remain engaged and involved in. The communist has nothing; hence the great possibility that the communist may be ahead of the capitalist as far as consciousness-raising is concerned.
The capitalist goes on postponing. Even though he sees the poverty he is creating, the beggars he is creating, the starving people he is creating, he goes on thinking that a few reforms will do. A little higher wages, a few more facilities for the poor, for the proletariat -- that's what I call socialism. Socialism is an invention of the capitalist mind to distract people from communism. Socialism is reformist, it is not revolutionary. And reforms can keep people hoping. It is a welfare state; it is just renovating the old house which is getting ready to fall down any moment.
Revolution means demolishing the old completely and creating the new, discontinuous with the past.
I love always to tell a small story.…
There used to be a very ancient church, so ancient that even the priest was afraid to go inside. When there was a strong wind, the church used to wave like a tree. Any moment there was a possibility that it would fall down.
So the priest used to hold his assembly outside, far away from the church, under the trees.
But finally something had to be done. The trustees of the church met -- they also met outside -- and they proposed a few things to be done.
First, the church was too old, a new church was needed. But this is how the reformist mind functions.… Their second proposal was, "We will create the new church, but we will make the new church from the materials -- the doors, the bricks, the statues, everything -- of the old church. We will make the new church exactly the same as the old church, with the same materials."
And their third proposal was, "We will not destroy the old church until the new one is ready."
Now how can you manage it? The reformist goes on patching things, covering things, covering wounds and cancers.
Socialism is a renegade, it is a Judas. It is because of the communist danger to the capitalists that they are proposing a new form, socialism. It sounds good, but the intention is very evil.
I am worried about Gorbachev because he is not using the word `communism' anymore.
He is using the word `socialism' -- perhaps unconsciously, not being aware that socialism is a conspiracy of the capitalist world to prevent an international revolution that will transform the whole world into a communist world, with equal opportunity for everybody to attain to his potential.
And when the world is one, there is no need of any government -- that's why Karl Marx says the state will wither away. But it can wither away only when the whole world is communist.
I have every hope that because of the oncoming possibility of a third world war... if it happens it will be the last world war, and there will be no one left even to write the history about it.
When Albert Einstein was asked, "Can you say something about the third world war?"
his reply was amazing. He said, "No, I cannot say a single thing about the third world war, but I can say something about the fourth."
The questioner said, "You can say something about the fourth and you cannot say anything about the third? This is strange."
Albert Einstein laughed; he said, "It is not strange. I can say about the fourth that it will never happen. But about the third, it is impossible to say. The calamity will be so big that man will have never seen such calamity. Within ten to fifteen minutes the whole world, all life, every living thing on the earth, will be dead."
Just America alone has enough nuclear weapons to destroy life on this earth seven times, although there is no need. Only one man, Jesus, is supposed to have been resurrected, and I don't think even he will be able to resurrect seven times. One time he managed to escape from a cave and befool the whole world, but seven times? It will be impossible.
He never went back to Jerusalem, because once he managed to befool people; now it is impossible. If he is caught again he will be crucified.
What is the purpose of accumulating so many nuclear weapons? And seeing the situation, the Soviet Union has stopped creating more nuclear weapons. There are enough in the Soviet Union also to destroy the whole of humanity, all living beings. Now there is no point. They seem to be more intelligent, understanding that if you have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world, why go on wasting money piling up nuclear weapons?
The totality of the war is a new phenomenon to be encountered. All the wars in the past were small, local. Even our second world war was nothing compared to the possibility of the third world war. I call it a total war, because it will be a total destruction of the planet Earth. This creates a certain situation which has never been there before.
The time is short, perhaps not more than ten or eleven years. By the year 2000, most probably we will have either committed suicide or we will have changed the whole structure of the human mind and raised the consciousness and created millions of meditators and thousands of buddhas. That is the only alternative: War or meditation.
War or spiritual revolution.
And the war has to be understood as the culmination of our whole human history. It is not coming from the sky -- it is coming from our past, accumulating more and more anger, more and more violence, more and more weapons. The first world war was smaller, the second became bigger. The third is going to be total.
Because it is a total war, every person has to understand his responsibility. In smaller wars it was nothing to be worried about. If it was going on in Vietnam... who cares about Vietnam? Many people have not even heard the NAME Vietnam. If it is happening in Afghanistan, who cares? -- small pieces of humanity are involved. But this time it is the whole existence of life and all living beings with us: trees, and roses, and lotuses.…
And we are coming closer to the point where man can become a superman. Now we cannot afford a war. We cannot afford a global suicide. We have to understand how to transcend the mind that the past has created and programmed
for wars and destruction and violence.
That's my whole work: to erase the past from your mind and give you a present orientation to look at reality with clean eyes. And your future will be golden if your present is clean. Out of this clean presence will arise a new future, which will not have any continuity with the past; it will be a quantum leap.
If communists are turned towards a revolution for consciousness, capitalists will not be far behind -- just as they are not far behind as far as war is concerned, destruction is concerned. It is a competitive world. If communists turn towards consciousness, that will be a great impetus for the capitalists to try to be ahead of them. Nobody wants to be behind!
So my whole strategy is, the communists should be turned towards a revolution of consciousness. That will become a Zen Fire and a Zen Wind, going around the earth, and turning everybody towards a new competition that they have never known before: who becomes the buddha first?
Question 2
The second question:
YOU HAVE TALKED ABOUT THE GREAT RUSSIAN EXPERIMENT. CAN YOU
TALK ABOUT THE GREAT EXPERIMENT OF YOUR COMMUNE HERE?
My commune here is a far greater experiment than any communism. Communism was only an economic revolution, changing the economic structure of the society. It was very partial; that's why the Russians are feeling a little sad, something is missing.
A partial revolution is bound to fail. It is as if only one part of your body is healthy and the rest of the body is sick. What are you going to do with one hand healthy and the whole body sick?
Revolution has to be total on every plane -- economic, social, psychological, spiritual.
Unless it is a total revolution man is going to feel himself crippled, as if your
head goes on becoming bigger and bigger and your body remains the same. Soon you will be in trouble.
I have heard about a circus.…
The manager declared, "Now comes our last and greatest entertainment for you. Wake up everybody! We bring to the stage our greatest dancer." So a few people who had fallen asleep woke up, sat up in their chairs, alert. The greatest dancer?
Then the curtain opened and they saw a woman lying flat on her chest on the floor. They could not think what kind of dance was going to be happening. Finally, the woman tried hard to get up. Her breasts were so big that just to get up was the dance! When she stood up everybody was clapping! They had never seen such a dance -- the woman was doing a miracle! Her breasts were still touching the earth!
The manager came back and he said, "Have you seen the dance?" And people laughed; they said, "It is really the greatest dance we could have ever imagined!"
Partial revolution is not revolution. Only the total revolution -- and total revolution has to arise from your very center.
That is my work here. I want every individual to clean the past from his mind completely.
All his prejudices, all his thoughts -- political, social, religious -- everything has to be dropped. Just a clean slate, and you have arrived to the space of no-mind.
No-mind is meditation, and no-mind is the revelation, and no-mind is the greatest rebellion that has ever happened.
In the past only very few people... a Gautam Buddha here and there, thousands of years pass and then comes one person who blossoms into a buddha. But now there is no more time. You cannot postpone for tomorrow. Whatever you want to do has to be done now!
For the first time the present is becoming more and more important. Each day you are coming closer to choosing the alternative: either move towards becoming a buddha, or move towards becoming a corpse.
I don't think anybody wants to die, particularly when all life is at risk. This third world war cannot happen. We are going to prevent it!
Our ways are very different... that's why I love your expression for me, a "spiritual terrorist." I don't have any weapons, I don't have any nuclear missiles, but I have something greater and something far more effective. It is not to kill, it is to bring life to those who are living almost as if they are dead. It is bringing awareness to those who are behaving like somnambulists, walking in their sleep, talking in their sleep, not knowing exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it.
I want people to be so awake that their whole consciousness goes to the deepest part of their being, and also to the highest peak. A vertical growth -- just like a tree grows. Its roots go down into the earth, and its branches spread towards the stars. Its blossoms flower into the sky, its nourishment comes from the deepest part of the earth. It is always balanced: the higher the tree goes, the deeper the roots. You cannot have a cedar of Lebanon tree, four hundred or five hundred years old, rising so high in the sky, with small roots. It will fall down immediately.
Life needs a balance between the depth and the height. I teach you both simultaneously.
In your entering to the center in meditation, you are growing your roots deeper into the cosmos. And bringing the buddha out from the hidden center is bringing your fragrance, bringing your grace, bringing your ecstasy higher, where it can blossom into the sky.
Your ecstasy is a movement towards the height and your meditation is a movement towards the depth. And once you have both, your life becomes a celebration.
That is my work, to transform your life from a sad affair into a celebration.
If we can fill the earth with laughter there is not going to be any war. If we can teach the soldiers to tell jokes to the enemy, there is not going to be any war. They will throw their guns and sit down and share jokes! And when somebody is telling a joke, can you kill him? When he is bringing laughter to you, can you destroy him?
Every man now is responsible to create a buddhafield around himself, an energy field that goes on becoming bigger and bigger. Create as many vibrations of laughter, joy, celebration, as possible; dance, sing, let the whole of humanity by and by catch the fire of Zen and the wind of Zen.
Nobody is really interested to be sad. Nobody is interested to torture himself. It is your religions and your politicians who go on making you sad and miserable, because in your misery is their whole business. If you start laughing, if you start dancing, throwing the gun away; if you take up a guitar.…
Jesus says to his disciples, "Carry your cross on your shoulders." I say, don't listen to such nonsense. Carry your guitar on your shoulders, and fresh and fragrant laughter on your lips. Make this whole world a merry-go-round. You don't have that word. You have the word `SORRY-go-round'. I have to create language for you!
Just your laughter will be enough to prevent the war. Your celebration, your dance, will be enough to prevent the war. Your ecstasy, your meditation, will create a tremendous force which will be far higher because it is life-affirmative.
Your religions are life-negative. Your politicians are life-negative. Your religions prepare you for beyond life, not to live here joyously. And your politicians create weapons to kill you. Politicians kill you and priests console you: "Don't be worried. After your death you will be entering paradise -- beautiful women and rivers of wine." No prohibition, no marriage... have you ever heard that in paradise there are marriages?
I am creating a paradise herenow. I don't wait for death -- why should one wait for death? And if there is going to be a paradise after death, please prepare for it! Be ready for it! Enjoy here, so that you can enjoy there. Only those who are capable of enjoying here, and dancing here, and singing here, and loving here, will be able to enjoy paradise...
not your saints, only my people!
Your saints will be sitting there miserable, not looking at beautiful women -- with closed eyes, shrinking into themselves. And what to do? -- there is no water available, only wine, and all around beautiful women, naked, dancing.
One Hindu saint died a few years ago, Swami Muktananda. You must have heard
his name; many of you may have seen him. But you don't know what happened in paradise.
One of his disciples was so miserable because his guru had died, he committed suicide.
He wanted to go with the guru. He reached just a little late, but he reached. And what he saw -- he could not believe his eyes! He saw Muktananda lying naked under a tree, and on top of him was an American actress, Marilyn Monroe, making love to Muktananda.
He could not believe that Muktananda, who was always teaching celibacy.…
In his book, CHIDVILAS -- "Play of Consciousness", he describes that his discipline of celibacy came to such a point that his prick would rise so high that it would touch his navel.… The disciple had read it. And what is Muktananda doing? Has he forgotten everything? But anyway, Muktananda is his master, so he has to pay his respects.
He did not look at what was happening, he just touched Muktananda's feet and said,
"Baba, I think this must be the reward for all your virtues."
And Marilyn Monroe said, "You idiot! This is not the reward for this idiot, this is punishment for me!"
I want you to prepare, because paradise is going to be really great! Far out! But you have to be ready. So love, drink, dance -- this is the preparation, the discipline for entering into paradise. I am an utter hedonist, and only a hedonist has the right to enter into paradise.
People who are masochists, torturing themselves, need to go to hell because there they will not have to torture themselves, the Devil and his whole army will torture them. That will be their joy.
Hell is for saints, heaven is for sinners -- this is absolutely logical. This is my revolution! Once we enter into heaven, we are going to throw all the saints into hell:
"You enjoy torture -- get tortured! We enjoy luxury, we enjoy every comfort. Let us possess paradise; you have lived here long enough. Just get out!"
I am not going alone, you are all coming with me! Because I am a lazy guy, I will be going still sitting in my chair. If Mohammed can go riding on his horse, what is wrong with it? If Jesus can go directly, alive, and pulls his mother up after him, what is the problem?
Perhaps I may reach a little earlier than you, because my podium is a little higher
-- but you won't be too late. I will greet you there, "Hi! So you have arrived. Now do the work
-- throw all those saints towards hell."
They deserve it. They have been disciplining themselves for it. We have been disciplining ourselves for paradise. Our whole expertise, our whole specialization is to possess the kingdom of God.
Question 3
The third question is from a sannyasin. A sannyasin has asked: I CANNOT HELP FEELING SHOCKED AT THE IDEA THAT SINCE PEOPLE
HAVE TO DIE ANYWAY, THERE IS NO HARM IN THEM DYING BY THE
THOUSANDS TO PRESERVE COMMUNISM. WHAT IS IT THAT HORRIFIES ME
ABOUT THIS?
It is not only you, there may be a few more who have been shocked. Majid is sitting there
-- he must be shocked, and other Italians, because they have a political prejudice in their mind. They think they are radicals, and they don't understand even the ABC of radicalism.
When I said that Joseph Stalin killed one million people to save communism, you did not give much thought to it. Who were the one million people? Priests, bishops, cardinals, archbishops -- those were the people, and they were not ready
to give away the possessions of the church to the society. These were the people, whether rich or poor it does not matter, who resisted revolution, who wanted their things to be theirs.
Those things may not be much -- a house, a little piece of land, maybe a few trees, maybe a few cows or horses. But for centuries man has been programmed to possess, and to go on possessing more and protect and defend whatever he already possesses.
So these were the people who were obstacles to revolution. The revolution was for twenty million people in the Soviet Union. And at that time the idea of revolution was not national, it was an idea of international revolution.
You will be surprised to know... I was very small when I became acquainted with a man, one of the most intelligent men I have come across, who was with Lenin and Trotsky in the Soviet revolution. His name was Manvendra Nath Roy. He was one of the members of the international commanding body of the communists, the Politburo. He was the only Indian who ever rose to that status, and he fought in the revolution side by side with Lenin.
After the revolution he thought, "Now my work is in India. I have to go and create revolution in India." But here he found himself in utter difficulty, because the Hindu mind is more possessive than any other mind. It talks about non- possessiveness, it talks about celibacy, it talks about morality. But always remember, people who talk about these things are the people who are suppressing just the opposite.
A person who praises celibacy knows perfectly well that he is not celibate. People who are greedy, their religion will be teaching no greed. Otherwise why should religions teach no greed? For five thousand years, from Manu to Yagnavalkya to Buddha to Mahavira to Mahatma Gandhi -- all the teachers of this country are talking to people about "non-attachment." Why? Certainly people are too much attached; otherwise... their whole history is the teaching of non-attachment! People must be greedy; hence the teaching, "no greed." People must be violent; hence the teaching of non-violence.
Always remember this as a fundamental. Look at the teachings of the scriptures and you will know what kind of people they were -- just the opposite, otherwise there is no need.
Why does Buddha go on telling people his whole life, forty-two years after his enlightenment, "Don't be attached to things. Be non-possessive." And the same continues.…
When M.N. Roy came to India, he found himself in an absolutely different world. He was thinking that because everybody had been teaching non- possessiveness, communism would be the easiest thing in India. This is where logic fails. He had read -- he had lived his whole life in the West -- he had only read about Indian scriptures, that they have been teaching non-possessiveness for centuries and centuries. So he thought people must be ready to give all their possessions to the collective; they will not have much difficulty in dropping their private possessions.
But when he came to India he was utterly surprised. Nobody was ready; the very word
`communism' was anathema. And because he was a well-educated man, well dressed, used to smoke cigarettes, the Indian mind turned absolutely against him.
Mahatma Gandhi crushed that man, who was far more intellectual, far more significant than Mahatma Gandhi himself. But Mahatma Gandhi crushed him because people would rather follow Mahatma Gandhi, half-naked -- it appeals to people. "This is a mahatma.
And what kind of mahatma is this who is smoking cigarettes, who is well dressed in a poor country?"
Nobody listened to M.N. Roy. Perhaps I was the only person who became very deeply interested in him. It was just by chance that I met him, in a train. I was going for my studies, traveling from my village to the bigger city to join a university. And just on the platform we were both waiting for the train... because in India no train ever arrives on time. Only once has it arrived on time in my experience. For twenty years I was traveling in trains continually -- only one time.…
In Allahabad, the train arrived exactly at six o'clock in the morning. It was a miracle! I ran to thank the driver, and I told him, "You have done it! I was waiting for a day when somebody would bring the train at the right time."
He looked very ashamed. I said, "Why are you looking ashamed?" He said,
"This is yesterday's train."
By that time the conductor had come, and the stationmaster had come. I asked the stationmaster, "This seems to be stupid. If every train is going to be late, why publish the timetable?"
He said, "The timetable is absolutely needed; otherwise how will we know how much the train is late?" So the timetable is published in India to know how much the train is late.
I said, "That seems to be absolutely right."
The train was late and I was sitting on the bench, and M.N. Roy came and sat by my side.
I was reading a book by Lenin, his collected works. He was surprised, because I was so young -- may have been seventeen years old. He looked at the big volume, and he asked me, "Where did you get this collected works of Lenin?"
I said, "I have the whole library of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, everybody."
He said, "You are the first man... I have been here for seven years, continuously trying.
Are you a communist?"
I said, "Right now I am nobody. But who knows? I may turn out a communist. I am looking in every direction without any prejudice. Whichever dimension fulfills me totally, I will be that. Communism is my study, I am not a communist. I have to study many more things before I can decide. I have to look into anarchism, I have to look into socialism, I have to look into capitalism, I have to look into spiritualism. Before that I cannot say anything. I am just a seeker."
We became friends. He talked about his experiences in the Soviet revolution, and he became a constant visitor to my small house.
I was living outside the city in a very small house. Nobody else was ready to take that house because it was known as being haunted by ghosts. So when I asked the owner, he said, "Without any rent you can live there. At least somebody living there may create the idea in people that it is not haunted. If a
small boy is living there alone..." So he said, "It is good. If you need anything I will support you. I want to sell it, but neither can I sell it nor is anybody ready to rent it. And I myself am afraid! My wife is not willing to move with me, otherwise we could sell this house and move there. That house is in a very beautiful location."
It was absolutely alone. For miles there were no other houses, and behind were the beautiful Satpura Mountains. It was so peaceful there. He said, "I purchased it just to live there, but nobody is willing. So you start living there."
I started living there, but I continued to create the fear in everybody that it was haunted by ghosts because if somebody purchased it, I would be thrown out. The owner heard that I was continuing to create the rumor. He came to me: "This is strange. I gave it to you free of charge..."
I said, "I will keep it free of charge! But remember, it is haunted with ghosts. Don't come here -- whenever you want me, just phone me and I will come -- it is dangerous!"
He said, "And it is not dangerous for you?"
I said, "I know a few secrets about ghosts. They are afraid of me. Do you know anything?" He said, "No, I don't..." I said, "You simply go back."
And I lived in that house for almost ten years without any rent. On the contrary, I would order him, "Send me something" -- and he would bring it -- "otherwise I will leave the house."
M.N. Roy used to come, and he loved the place. He used to live in the Himalayas in Nainital, but he said, "Even there it is too crowded, too many people have come. Roads, airport, buses -- it is no more the old Nainital I used to know in my childhood before I left India. But your place..."
I said, "This place will remain as it is, as long as I want to live in it. For miles nobody can build a house, because not only this house is haunted, the whole area is haunted!" I went on creating the rumor and making the area bigger. Nobody was ready, even at the cheapest rate, to purchase the land.
When I talked with M.N. Roy, he said, "What do you think is the cause of my unsuccessfulness? I was such a successful member of the international high
command of the communists. I fought in the revolution, I was a close friend of Lenin and Trotsky, who were the architects of the revolution. And here? I am nobody; nobody is ready to listen."
I said, "Here, you will have to change. You will have to be a hypocrite. You will have to smoke in your bathroom, not in public -- in public, speak against smoking. You will have to wrap yourself in a small cloth just covering you down to your knees, just like Mahatma Gandhi -- or even smaller will be better. Shave your head and become a mahatma, and I can manage everything for you. But first become a mahatma. I will call a barber here, and he will make you a mahatma."
He said, "My God -- first I have to become a mahatma?"
I said, "Without becoming a mahatma, in this country you don't have any appeal. This country is so fucked up that first you have to pretend all kinds of things. You don't drink tea -- if somebody sees you drinking tea, finished! You are not a mahatma.
"In the cold, you have to remain half-naked. You will get accustomed, don't be worried.
All the animals are accustomed, and you are an intelligent animal so you will get accustomed. It is only a question of two or three years and then heat or cold, all are the same, because your skin becomes thicker and thicker. And your skull also becomes thicker and thicker! You will be a mahatma, and everybody will be listening to you."
He said, "I cannot do that."
I said, "Then forget all about leadership." And he died an unknown man. If he had lived in the Soviet Union he would have been a cabinet minister.
This country is so prejudiced.
Your question comes out of a prejudice. You don't understand the mechanism, the dynamics of life.
Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Hirohito of Japan -- all three together killed thirty million people, and for no purpose at all, just a personal egoistic desire to
become the whole and sole owner of the earth. Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and Nadirshah -- three generations of one family -- amongst the three they killed one hundred million people for no purpose. And you don't bother about these people.
How many people did Napoleon kill? How many people did Alexander kill? And how many people has the Catholic church killed? -- you don't bother about it -- and for no reason!
Stalin was not killing for any personal reason, and he was not killing those who were ready to understand the revolution and participate in it. He had to kill to remove all obstacles from within, because he was surrounded on all sides by enemies ready to enter the country and finish it. If he had had to face both the enemies, inside and outside, there would have been no possibility for that experiment ever to succeed.
And the people he killed... don't think they were individuals. They were just robots, as the masses are. No individuality, no dignity, no understanding -- just greed and lust and the old mind, that "My things are mine. I will not give them to the collective." And he is miserable because what he has is not enough for his own nourishment or his family, but he is not ready to create a collective land where tractors and other modern mechanisms can be used to sow the seeds. When the land is miles long, airplanes can be used to sow seeds. Tractors can be used to prepare the land. On a small piece of land this is not possible.
Whatever communism was saying to them was absolutely correct, but just their prejudices.…
And when I said that it does not matter, everybody has to die anyway, I meant it. Unless you are a buddha, it does not matter. Only the death of a buddha matters.
What are you going to contribute? What are you going to do tomorrow, except repeat today? You can live for thirty years repeating the same circle, morning to evening, evening to morning, what is the point? Where are you going? Round and round, reaching nowhere.
To these people the experiment of communism was not at all important. Their own prejudice was important, that "Our things cannot be taken away by anybody." And those things were their misery! Even a beggar was not ready to give his things, and what did he have?
The whole idea was that all the land, the whole property and everything in it, should belong to the collective. Soviet means a commune. The village turns into a soviet, it becomes a commune. Families disappear; only individual members contribute whatsoever they can and the commune will fulfill their needs -- not according to their worth, but according to their need.
Somebody may not be such a hard worker and somebody else may be a hard worker, but in a commune it is a bigger family. You have to understand that somebody is weaker, somebody is sick, somebody is old, but their needs have to be fulfilled.
Now Gorbachev is saying, "Each according to his work." What about the old people?
They will not be able to work the same way as the young people. What about the children? They will not be able to work the same as the young people. What about the women? They cannot be put into any muscular work.
The communist idea was far higher and superior: "Each according to his needs." An old man has his own needs. He may not be able to work, but he has worked enough his whole life. A child has not worked yet, but one day he will work. And he has needs right now.
Now Gorbachev is saying, "Each according to his work," and that is the motto of capitalism. He is deceiving and betraying the whole communist approach.
Just think -- Majid is here -- if revolution comes to Italy, are you going to allow the pope to continue the Vatican? Are you going to allow the Vatican Bank to change black money, heroin money, into white money and earn billions of dollars per year? Are you going to allow all the priests and bishops and archbishops and all the churches to continue as they are? They will all resist, because it is their vested interest. Then what are you going to do? Just sit before the churches and cry like small babies? You will have to finish these people or throw them out in the ocean -- and you have such a beautiful ocean.
Revolution does not care for these parasites. It is against these parasites, and these parasites will create every kind of difficulty for you, from inside and from outside. Now the Catholics number six hundred million around the world. If you do anything against the pope he will fight, and the six hundred million Catholics around the world will create great pressure on you from every government:
"Don't touch the Vatican; otherwise we will disconnect our relationship with you."
That's what had happened in Russia. All other countries dropped their connections with Russia. All the countries called their ambassadors back, there was no communication with Russia -- boycott, absolute boycott.
You have only heard one side of the story, which America goes on propagating, that Stalin created an "iron curtain." It was not Stalin who created the iron curtain, it was all the countries who withdrew from the Soviet Union, boycotting it completely. Then it was absolutely necessary that the Soviet Union should create a situation where nobody could enter. All kinds of agents to provoke people... and people were ready to be provoked because they were very sad that their personal things had been taken. People become so attached to their personal things -- small things. They were ready to be provoked, and the whole country was full of spies from every capitalist country trying to provoke people to destroy the collectives, to burn the collectives.
All the different Christian sects agreed on the point that communism is against religion --
and all the Mohammedans, all the Buddhists... because the Soviet Union has three religions. One part, Mongolia, is Buddhist; another part near Afghanistan is Mohammedan. The third part is orthodox Christian. Now these three religions were agreed: "Communism is against religion, so we have to give a fight." And all the people had belonged to some religion. Everybody had belonged to some religion -- either to the Buddhists, to the Mohammedans, or to Christianity. How to deal with the situation?
I don't see that except Stalin there was anybody else in the Communist Party at that time to deal with the situation. And the poor fellow has been condemned because he saved communism; otherwise these people would have destroyed it.
It was a chaos. Once the czar was killed there was no system, there was no order in the country. Trains were running -- nobody knew where they would end up, where they were going, because people had taken out railway lines, had destroyed the bridges. Trains were moving -- burning. These were the people for whom the revolution had been made, who were burning the trains, who were burning the palaces of the governors, who were burning the palaces of the czar.
And the Communist Party was trying to tell them, "Now all these belong to you. Don't destroy them! The czar is finished, it is your property." But nobody was listening, and people were carrying things to their homes.
I have heard that after the Czar's family was taken out of his palace -- it used to be one of the biggest palaces in the world, the richest; it was one of the oldest royalties --
people were taking everything from the palace to their homes. Even the carpet... it was so huge that nobody could take it alone, so people were cutting the carpet with scissors, just enough for their home -- take-away! Now what can you do with these people?
There was no time to convince them. There was no time to make them understand that,
"Everything belongs to you and you are destroying it." Except Stalin... neither Lenin was able to do it nor Trotsky was able to do it. This man had certainly a heart of steel: at any cost, revolution had to survive.
And as I have told you again and again, the masses are the greatest enemy of themselves; they don't know what they are doing. So the bullet was the only answer, and he killed for an absolutely right end. There are times when you have to use means which are apparently wrong -- violence, murder. But what can you do with this humanity? If you are in power you will suddenly realize that the only way is to put people back to their senses. When one person is killed, a hundred persons absolutely understand that "this is a difficult problem, keep quiet." Those one million people killed made twenty million people silent, settled.
But you have your prejudices. You are shocked -- but that is my business. When I was criticizing Christianity you were not shocked, you were happy. Now let the Christians be happy, because everybody has his own time. The Catholics would have been shaken --
they were shaken. The whole seminary, *which consists of five hundred missionaries being trained, and must be at least one hundred professors to teach them, was agog with only one thing: they wanted to hear what I have said. One student came here the next day, saying, "The whole seminary is talking about only one thing -- so you bring the tape or the video." And I sent Prasad, because
he had already been to the seminary to talk to them, to explain my philosophy to them, so he was acquainted with the authorities there.
He went there but the authorities said, "We don't have equipment and it will take time to arrange for equipment, so we cannot do it."
A group of students from a local seminary attended one discourse recently, and their questions were addressed throughout the series, CHRISTIANITY, THE GREATEST
POISON AND ZEN, THE ANTIDOTE TO ALL POISONS.
Prasad said, "Don't be worried about the equipment. I will bring all the equipment with me."
Then they changed immediately. They said, "But first, permission from higher authorities is needed." It was not needed before. Now the permission from higher authorities is needed!
The next day he went again and asked, "Has permission been granted?" They said, "We are waiting." And finally they phoned: "You don't have to come here. We hope that within two and a half weeks permission will be obtained."
I don't think permission will be obtained. It is just a delaying process; after another two and a half weeks... and who are the higher authorities? They live there in the campus! It takes two and a half weeks to reach their bungalow? And they go every day to the office.…
But you were not worried then. Somebody else was being hit and you were enjoying.
Now it is your turn. Let others enjoy!
I am against every kind of prejudice. This is just a prejudice. If you understand the practicality of it you will not be against it. Theoretically you can go on and on thinking about it: "One million individuals..." Forget that word -- there is rarely an individual.
One million phonies, who were obstructing a revolution which was going to be one of the greatest experiments in human history.
It was worth it. And when I said anyway you have to die, I could immediately feel that you became very shocked. But still I repeat: Anyway you have to die. Don't die against revolution. If you have to die, die for revolution. Don't die for the status quo; if you have to die, die for rebellion.
Everyone has to die, and as far as I am concerned, whether Stalin kills them or Adolf Hitler or Mussolini or Hirohito, it doesn't matter; he only kills the body. The soul immediately gets into another woman's womb. Nothing is killed, only houses are changed. Do you think those one million people are finished? Many of them may be here!
If not now, soon.
To me, these people seem to be absolutely absurd, who are against violence and still talk about eternal life. They don't see their contradiction. If life is eternal, then death does not matter: life will continue in new forms somewhere else. If not in the Soviet Union, then in China, and if you are killing China then India is always available. From where do you think all these Indians go on growing?
Hitler kills, Stalin kills, Hirohito kills -- whoever kills, India's population goes on growing. India gives ready-made wombs to everybody. People may be dying of starvation but they brag that they have twenty children. So what is great about it? Look at a bull -- a bull has thousands of children, so do you think the bull is greater than you?
And poor people are bound to produce more children because they have no other entertainment. By the evening -- they don't have electricity, they don't have television, they don't have too much to eat so that their bellies become too big and they cannot reach the woman. So the whole dark night, and cold, not enough blankets... the woman is warm, is a good blanket, and no other thing to do in the dark, so people go on producing children. They cannot go to see a film, it takes money; they cannot go to have dinner in a restaurant, it takes money. Sex is free.
So everywhere you kill, India is ready to receive! From four hundred million people, just forty years ago, today there are more than nine hundred million people. It seems every year, ten million people are added. By the end of this century the population will have gone beyond one billion people. From where are all these people coming?
Richer countries, more educated countries, are losing population -- because
educated people understand that this is stupid, creating people and making the country poorer.
They are using all kinds of methods to prevent the explosion of population, in spite of all the popes and the bishops. Who cares? These people, even Catholics, don't care; it is just a formal respectability. But there are countries which are promoting programs for giving birth to more children. Their population is shrinking and the fear is that they may disappear in the vast third-world population which is growing. Soon they will be rushing all over Europe; no boundaries will be able to prevent them.
Already in Germany, that is the problem. From Turkey, so many people have entered Germany that there is a great problem of unemployment. And you will be surprised to know that the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler is again raising its head. One of Adolf Hitler's men has organized a party which won eleven seats in the parliament just now, on the basis that all these Turkish people should be thrown out of Germany, otherwise Germany will be drowned.
Adolf Hitler was throwing out Jews -- now it is the Turkish people. And this party has won eleven seats. This is the beginning... and why have people supported an ex-Nazi officer? Because the German people are becoming afraid: "If these populations go on immigrating to Germany, we will be poorer. We will have to give employment to these people. We will have to share our money with these people, our land with these people, our houses with these people." And this caravan of immigrants is going to grow every day, because Mohammedan countries allow one man to marry four women, so Mohammedans increase four times more than anybody else.
You can create only one child in a year, at the most, with great difficulty. Mohammedans can create four children. That's why in India, just forty years ago, Mohammedans took away Bangladesh and Pakistan, but within forty years again they are so many that the biggest Mohammedan country in the world is India -- not Saudi Arabia, not Pakistan, not Bangladesh or any of the other Middle East countries. The biggest Mohammedan country is India -- second to the Hindus are the Mohammedans, and soon they will be the first because they have four women and you have only one. And it continues in the name of not interfering in anybody's religion -- the government allows Mohammedans to have four wives and Hindus only one.
This kind of stupidity can be prevented only if you are really hard.
I would like the population explosion in India to be stopped, on a war scale. The whole army should be sent to every village and if people are not ready voluntarily, then compulsorily they have to be sterilized. You will say, "It is not democratic." But is it democratic that five hundred million people will die by the end of this century? Problems are very connected. Whenever you look at a problem, look from all sides and you will be able to understand what I am saying.
And drop your preconceived ideology.
My effort here is to bring you to a space of no-mind. And from no-mind, function --
then you function directly, looking at the situation. Whatever is right immediately arises in you, and you do it. Neither is it a question of morality nor is it a question of religion; it is a question of immediate response to a situation. And immediate response comes only through meditation.
I shock your mind on purpose, and I go on finding ways. I will not leave anyone! People are wondering -- Jews are wondering, "Maybe our turn is coming." Wait, it will come!
I am going to speak against all ideologies of the past, all moralities of the past. I am against the whole past of humanity -- in toto -- I don't make any exception. I want a totally new man to arise on the earth -- the superman.
The sutra:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
ON ONE OCCASION, A MONK ASKED MASTER DOGO: "EVEN IF THERE IS NO
CLOUD FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES, IT IS NOT YET THE ORIGINAL SKY.
WHAT IS THE ORIGINAL SKY?"
DOGO REPLIED, "TODAY, IT IS GOOD TO DRY WHEAT."
This is the way of Zen. Don't waste your time in unnecessary theoretical things -
-
"Although there are thousands of miles with no cloud... but this sky is not the original sky, because beyond this sky there will be another sky and beyond that another sky.
Where is the original sky?"
But Master Dogo said, "Forget all about it! Today, it is good to dry wheat. The day is sunny, the sky is open, there is no cloud. Be in the present! Today it is good to dry wheat."
And once you are in the present you will become aware of the original sky -- which is not said. The original sky is within you. It is not outside, thousands of miles or millions of miles don't matter. You will never come to the end of the sky outside.
But there is a sky inside which is the original, out of which you are living, you are getting your nourishment. Your roots are in that original sky. Just go inwards and it is not thousands of miles away. It is only thousands of thoughts away.
So it is only a question of reducing the thoughts and the mileage is reduced. If you don't have any thoughts, you are in it.
You are it.
You don't have to go anywhere; you have to simply go on throwing your thoughts.
That is the purpose of our gibberish before the meditation. Just a time to throw everything, without inhibition.
These creatures that you throw out are eating your head continuously, destroying your intelligence. Catch them and throw them out, and don't be worried with a moral question that they may enter into somebody else's mind. No, your creatures are accustomed to your mind. Even if you throw them, they will wait
outside on the bamboos, and when you are going to the canteen they will jump!
And you can see in the canteen -- I never go there -- but so much talk, discussion... all the creatures are back. So beware of the bamboos! Just watch out that these creatures don't enter in your head again -- run! And in the canteen be silent. The more you open your mouth, the more they get in. They know you perfectly well, they will not enter into anybody else. Nobody wants foreigners, strangers; everybody wants to enter into his own place, into his own house. You don't enter somebody else's house. You don't pick up somebody else's rented bicycle.…
Everybody finds his own rented bicycle, in thousands of bicycles. Strange!
Those creatures are very well acquainted with you and they know how much you love them. What is the guarantee that the other person will be loving towards them? -- may not be even friendly, and you have been feeding them year after year.
So when you are throwing, throw them so far away that they get mixed up, start fighting with each other, and meanwhile you escape to the canteen.
The inner sky is only as far away as the number of thoughts you have. If you don't have any thoughts, you are just in the present. That's what Dogo means:
"TODAY, IT IS GOOD TO DRY WHEAT."
Just be now and here, and without saying anything about the original sky... that is the way of Zen, to indicate. If you have intelligence, just an indication is enough. If you don't have intelligence, even if one goes on hammering on your head, it doesn't matter.
Dogo showed the monk where the original sky is. It is within you, if you are in the present.
To be in the present is to be out of the mind. To be in the present is to be in the beyond, in the space, in the sky which is your very being.
ON ANOTHER OCCASION DOGO WAS ASKED BY ANOTHER MONK, "WHAT
IS THE DEEPEST?"
DOGO CAME DOWN FROM HIS SEAT, MADE OBEISANCE IN THE MANNER
OF WOMEN AND SAID, "YOU HAVE COME FROM FAR, AND I HAVE NO
ANSWER FOR YOU."
In fact, he has given the answer. What is the deepest? -- humbleness, gratitude, nobodiness. He is a man, but he bowed down in the manner of a woman -- no distinction between man and woman, because it is not a question of the body. And a woman is more humble, more grateful, more loving. So he is showing it: create the female qualities of love, of gratitude, of compassion, of humbleness; just be a nobody. And he came down and made obeisance, bowed, to the stranger.
He has answered. But the stranger, the monk, has not understood -- that's why he is saying, "YOU HAVE COME FROM FAR, AND I HAVE NO ANSWER FOR
YOU." If you want an answer in language, I don't have it.
This is also done out of compassion. He has answered that humbleness is the deepest, nobodiness is the deepest; to be nothing, to be utterly selfless is the deepest. There is no further depth possible. He has given the answer by his action, but the man looked as if he did not understand. It is also out of compassion, not to make the man feel embarrassed, not to make him feel that he has not understood.
Dogo said, "You have come from very far away, and I have no answer for you." He takes the responsibility on himself: "It is not your fault. You have done great work, you have come from very far, and I don't have any answer for you." He takes the responsibility on himself -- although the reality is that the monk has missed the answer.
This is the beauty of a master. It shows in so many different colors, in so many rainbows.
Unless you understand it, you will not be able even to see it. Just reading it, you would have missed it.
AT ANOTHER TIME SEKISO KEISHO ASKED DOGO, "AFTER A HUNDRED
YEARS, IF SOMEONE ASKS ABOUT THE ABSOLUTE MEANING OF THE
UNIVERSE, WHAT SHALL I SAY TO HIM?"
You will be gone. After a hundred years you will be no more; otherwise, you could have answered him. Just give me the answer so if somebody asks the question after you are gone, I can give him your answer.
But that is impossible. You cannot give my answer unless it is also your answer.
Repeating my answer will be simply borrowed, it won't have life and it won't have any charisma in it. It won't penetrate the heart of the person. Unless it is alive, throbbing with life and radiant with life and luminous with great energy, coming out of your own experience... Then perhaps the other, if he is intelligent enough, meditative enough, receptive enough, may get it.
DOGO CALLED THE BOY ATTENDANT, WHO CAME, AND TOLD HIM TO FILL
UP THE WATER BOTTLE.
He did not pay any attention to Sekiso's question. Not paying attention to Sekiso's question is also an answer. He is saying, "Don't ask absurd things. Find out the answer yourself, by your own experience. My answer is not going to help so I am not going to give it."
So he simply, as if he has not heard -- he has heard it perfectly -- calls the boy attendant and tells him to fill up the water bottle.
DOGO WAITED A WHILE...
It is strange: the master is not answering the question.
AND THEN SAID TO SEKISO, "WHAT WAS IT YOU ASKED JUST NOW?"
As if he has not heard: "What was it you asked just now?"
SEKISO REPEATED THE QUESTION. DOGO THEREUPON WENT BACK TO HIS
ROOM, AND AT THIS, SEKISO BECAME ENLIGHTENED.
He had answered the first time, but Sekiso did not get it, that what he was saying was,
"Don't ask such things which are available only to your own experience, alone." But because he did not understand, Dogo waited a while: perhaps he may catch it.
AND THEN SAID TO SEKISO, "WHAT WAS IT YOU ASKED JUST NOW?" SEKISO REPEATED THE QUESTION.
That shows he had not understood the answer that Dogo had indicated by not paying attention to his question. At this, Dogo went back to his room without answering him again.
This time he got it, that it is not a question which can be answered: you have to go inside your room.
The word `room' is very beautiful. It simply means space. And you sometimes use it in the sense of space, that this place has "enough room." What do you mean by it, "enough room"? Enough space, no unnecessary furniture.
I used to stay with a very rich man in a place called Saugar. He was an accumulator of junk. He had enough money, so all kinds of things... whether he needed them or not was not the question, he could afford.
There was no television in those days in Saugar.… I used to stay with him, and he had a special guest room, filled with all his junk. I saw a television there. I asked, "Are you mad? There is no television!" At that time it was not even in Bombay, not in New Delhi; television had not been introduced in India. "What are you doing with a TV set?"
He said, "I had gone to London, and I just liked it." I said, "Just liked it?" He said,
"Sometime television will come." And he was at that time seventy-five years old.
I said, "At least not in your lifetime." He said, "What?" I said, "You don't understand that you are seventy-five..." But he said, "It is not good to say to anybody `not in your lifetime'. That means you are already thinking about my death!"
I said, "I am not thinking about your death, I am thinking about your city. It is still one thousand years behind! Even in New Delhi the television has not come. In your city it will take at least a century, and I don't think you will be able to make it."
But he was very angry, and he said, "I have put it here for your entertainment."
I said, "I am not mad. This box cannot make any kind of entertainment. It is dead, because there is no connection to it anywhere."
And then I saw many radios, lined up, all kinds of models of radios. I said, "One is enough." He said, "But I can afford them, so whenever some new model comes, some new manufacturer comes in..."
I said, "In this room I cannot stay. I will go insane, because there is no room at all!"
Things upon things, things upon things! Just... you had to somehow make your way to the bed, and if it was night -- and there was no electricity there -- you could not even go to the bathroom without having multiple fractures and destroying his many valuable things.
So I said, "Forgive me. You just give me a plain room." He said, "Plain room?"
I said, "Yes, because I sometimes go to the bathroom also." He said, "The bathroom is there."
I said, "In the dark night, and there is no electricity.… And your room is simply mad! I will have nightmares here, I cannot tolerate all this!"
There were all kinds of clocks, old, ancient, and they were all making noise at different times. No clock was at the same time as another clock. I said, "Do you
want me to sleep or not?"
He said, "You are the first guest who is making so much fuss." I said, "I am not making fuss, I simply want a room." He said, "This is a room!"
I said, "You don't understand the meaning of the word `room'. This is not a room, this is a junkyard!"
So when the master Dogo went to his room, he was again giving another chance to Sekiso: "Just go into the silent space within you. As I am going into my room, you go into your room, into your own space." And this time Sekiso got it. He became enlightened.
The master goes on repeating the same thing in different ways, in different words, in different gestures, with the hope that some day, at some point, you are going to get it.
How can you escape?
I will go on hitting you from every angle, poking you from every possibility, into every rib. I don't care whether you are getting fractures or not, I will go on hitting you. My hits are more subtle than those of the Zen people. Their hits are more primitive.
So whenever you get upset and disturbed, remember, it is a hit. Just take a shower and sit down to meditate. No need to think about it, it was just a hit to wake you up.
My speaking to you is not that of an orator or that of a philosopher. My talking to you is that of a master who knows how to disturb you. And your function is not to be disturbed whatever happens, whatever I say.
I may call Jesus a crackpot, don't be worried. Just enjoy and have a good shower if some trouble arises... because what have I to do with Jesus? My concern is with you! If I see somewhere in your head Jesus lurking, then I immediately hit Jesus. I am hitting you.
What concern have I with Jesus? In fact, nobody knows whether this fellow ever was there or not.
But when I talk about Stalin, don't get worried. I have nothing to be concerned with Stalin. He is not my disciple, you are! And you are on your own -- in spite of me. I am trying every possible way to throw you out, but you still go on coming.
You know perfectly well that my words should not be taken at face value. They are strategies and devices. The whole problem is how to shock you and shatter your mind completely so you can enter into the inner room and see with your own eyes your vast sky.
Basho wrote:
A COLD RAIN STARTING, AND ME WITHOUT A HAT.
ON SECOND THOUGHT, WHO CARES?
This is the beauty of Zen.
A COLD RAIN STARTING, AND ME WITHOUT A HAT.
ON SECOND THOUGHT, WHO CARES?
Remember it. On second thought, don't care at all about anything. Perhaps on the first thought you may not be able, but on second thought, don't miss it. Sekiso did not miss on second thought.
Question 4 Maneesha's question:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
EMMA GOLDMAN, THE ANARCHIST, WROTE IN ONE OF HER
REVOLUTIONARY ESSAYS, EARLIER THIS CENTURY, THAT "FRIEDRICH
NIETZSCHE IS DESCRIBED AS A HATER OF THE WEAK BECAUSE HE
BELIEVED IN THE SUPERMAN. IT DOES NOT OCCUR TO THE SHALLOW
INTERPRETERS OF THAT GIANT MIND THAT THIS VISION OF THE
SUPERMAN ALSO CALLS FOR A STATE OF SOCIETY WHICH WILL NOT GIVE
BIRTH TO A RACE OF WEAKLINGS AND SLAVES."
WITH THE FLAME OF ZEN IN ONE HAND, YOU ARE THE COMPLETION OF
THE CIRCLE OF MAN'S SEARCH FOR INNER INTEGRITY; WITH THE FLAME
OF SPIRITUAL ANARCHISM IN THE OTHER HAND, ARE YOU NOT ALSO THE
COMPLETION OF THE CIRCLE OF MAN'S SEARCH FOR OUTER INTEGRITY?
Maneesha, Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most misunderstood giants of mankind. And nobody can feel for him more than I feel, because I am also in the same category -- even more misunderstood a man than Friedrich Nietzsche.
When I say I hate poverty, people think I hate the poor people. I hate poverty because I want to destroy poverty completely! There will be no poor people when the poverty is destroyed.
The same was the situation with Nietzsche. When he said, "I hate weaklings, and I proclaim the coming of the superman," people misunderstood. They thought, "This man is in favor only of the powerful, superior people, and he is against the ordinary, average humanity." That was not the case.
Emma Goldman is right. She is one of the few women of history who has had a very clear-cut intellectual understanding. Very few women think about great problems, their world is very limited -- the neighborhood, who has got a new
sari.…
A woman rushed into the house and said to her husband, "You have to do either one thing or the other."
He said, "What?"
The woman said, "The neighbor has purchased a new car. Either you purchase a new car, or change neighborhoods. We will move into some other house, we cannot live in this house. I cannot stand to see a new car in his garage, when in our garage is an old Ford. So you be quick! Either find a new house -- we move out of this house -- or bring home a new Cadillac!"
The woman's world has been very limited. It has been made limited by man, but the woman is also responsible; she accepted it. When somebody enslaves you, of course that person is responsible -- but don't think that you are not responsible. You are also responsible: you could have died instead of becoming a slave; then how could he have made you a slave?
So whenever there is such a phenomenon, people only think with compassion and pity about the victim, but they don't think that the victim somehow agrees with the status quo.
Otherwise, if all the women just go on a one-day strike all over the world, men will be massaging their feet: "You are not only equal, you are superior! Just come back to the kitchen."
I know about myself... I cannot even make a cup of tea. I have tried and burned myself.
Just once was enough, then I said, "It is not my thing."
Have you ever thought, if you have to sleep with your little baby what is going to happen in the night? Either you will throw the baby out of the window... because these small babies are such rascals, you won't believe. They will sleep the whole day and they will stay awake the whole night. And every moment they want this, and they want that; and if nothing else, they want to go to the bathroom! They will drive you crazy just within one night. Either you will shoot yourself, or throw out the baby and have a peaceful night.
The woman is immensely patient. She has no problems about what will happen when third world war happens. Who cares? Right now, the question is that the husband has not come home. Where is he? With which woman? She is just going down the list of all the women she knows.…
And when the husband comes back in the middle of the night, she immediately inquires,
"Where have you been?" And he says, "I was with my friend such-and-such."
And the wife has all the information. She has phoned all the friends. "That friend is not at home, so where have you been? Be truthful and honest! I have inquired, I have your diary, all the phone numbers. That fellow is not at home! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?"
Now you are caught red-handed! Nobody can escape a wife's scrutiny. I have never heard of a single man who has escaped the scrutiny of a wife. They are such great detectives that sometimes I think they should all enroll in the CIA, the FBI, the CID -- they will do far greater work! Their concern is so limited, so their whole concentration.…
Very few women, like Emma Goldman, have ever thought about such problems as anarchism. She was really a rare woman. No husband could tolerate her, she was too intellectual. Every husband will feel inferior to her.
She is perfectly right about Friedrich Nietzsche, that when he talked about superman and he said, "I hate the weaklings" -- people have missed the point. They think he is a hater of the average humanity and only wants the superman, a superior quality, intellectual giants. That is not the case.
His conception of the superman and the society that will come with the superman is that such a society will not allow weaklings to be born. That's exactly my conception too. And I am being criticized all around the world because I have been saying that man should not be allowed anymore to give birth to accidental children.
Up to now the whole humanity has been accidental. Now we have every means to choose the right child. We can create a humanity in which everybody will be a superman.
Nietzsche was only an intellectual -- a great intellectual, perhaps the greatest. I have left intellect far behind. I use it just for you.
In my vision we don't have to wait for biological engineering to create the superman. It will go against all the masses, all the societies. All the religions will become hindrances, they won't allow it. Because I have proposed it, I am being criticized. I have received from all over the world criticism of my book, *THE GREATEST CHALLENGE, THE
GOLDEN FUTURE, saying that I am a fascist just like Friedrich Nietzsche was a fascist.
But they don't understand me. Neither have they understood Friedrich Nietzsche. And they will misunderstand me even more because I am not going to wait for biological engineering. I am going to create the superman by a very different methodology.
My methodology is meditation.
I can change the ordinary, average human being into a buddha. There is no need right now to go into changing the ordinary structure of reproduction. Finally it has to be done, because that will be the easiest way. And if I have supermen to work with, then meditation will be so easy, immediately understood.
But Friedrich Nietzsche had no idea about meditation. I can change, through meditation, the very ordinary and average person into a superman. The moment you enter into your being -- centered, silent, the whole sky within has no clouds of thought -- you are turning into a superman. I call that superman the buddha.
Maneesha, you are right -- because I am looking at man from every angle: from his body, from his mind, from his soul. I am looking at man as a totality. So many half-circles are going to be complete in me. Buddha was looking only at the spiritual; Marx was looking only at the material; Sigmund Freud was looking only at the psychological.
My approach is total, from all dimensions and directions. And I have gone through all these people as deeply as possible, and I know where they stand, where they have stopped. Nietzsche has stopped with intellectual analysis, Sigmund Freud has stopped with psychoanalysis, Marx has stopped with an economic analysis of the society.
But man is not partial. Don't deal with man part by part.
You can deal with a machine in a partial way -- you can change one part if it is not functioning well -- but man is an organic unity; you cannot do that with man. You have to take the whole man into your vision. My vision is for the whole man.
And the moment you also understand all your dimensions, all your directions, all your potentialities, suddenly a great transformation happens: the superman is born in you. You don't have to wait because you cannot change your programming of biology now.
Perhaps your children's children may gather courage enough to change the biology of man.
When I am talking to you, I am taking care not only about you but about your children's children's children. My approach is not only concerned with you -- it is certainly concerned with you, but not only with you. My vision reaches far deeper. I am saying many things which should be said only one century from now. That's what creates controversies about me, unnecessary condemnation of me, but I am helpless.
In fact, I enjoy all the controversies, all the condemnation. At this moment, I am the most condemned man in the whole world. That gives me great joy! At least I am something.…
This brings us to Sardar Gurudayal Singh.
Guiseppe and Martino, two Italians, are at the movie house watching a spaghetti western and feeling bored.
Martino leans over in the dark and taps his friend on the arm. "Hey-a, Guiseppe,"
whispers Martino, "I am-a really bored! You see-a this guy in front with the bald-a head?
I give-a you a thousand lira if you smack him over the head!"
Guiseppe immediately takes the money, stands up and hits the bald man in front
--
POW! -- over the head.
The man turns around in a daze.
"Hey-a! Francesco!" says Guiseppe. "Good-a to see you!"
"I am not-a Francesco!" replies the man, shakily, and he turns back to watching the movie.
Five minutes pass, and Martino is bored again.
"Hey-a Guiseppe!" he whispers. "I give-a you two thousand lira if you hit-a the bald-a guy again!"
Guiseppe takes the money, stands up and hits the bald-headed man -- BONK! -- on the head.
The bald man spins around and is just about to climb over the back of his seat, when Guiseppe says, "Hey-a! Francesco! Good-a to see you!"
"I tell-a you!" snaps the bald man. "I am not-a Francesco!" and he storms out and goes and sits upstairs in the balcony.
Ten minutes later, Martino is bored again.
"Hey-a! Guiseppe!" he whispers, "I am-a bored! Let's-a go upstairs!" The two friends go to sit in the balcony just behind the bald-headed man.
"Hey-a! Guiseppe!" whispers Martino. "I give-a you ten thousand lira if you hit- a the man with the bald-a head again!"
Guiseppe puts the money into his pocket, gets to his feet, and hits the bald head -
-
SMACK! -- with his hand.
The man spins around in his seat.
"Hey-a! Francesco!" says Guiseppe. "You know, downstairs there is a guy that looks just-a like you!"
One day, Joseph Stalin wants to find out what the people of Russia really think about him. So he disguises himself with a big black beard and an overcoat and goes out into the streets of Moscow. He walks around for a while and then goes into a favorite communist pub, the Czar's Head.
He walks up to the bar, orders a double vodka and begins to sip it slowly. Then he turns to the man next to him, Comrade Popov, and casually asks, "Tell me, comrade, what do you think of Joseph Stalin?"
Comrade Popov turns white, looks over both shoulders, grabs Stalin by the arm, and whispers, "Are you crazy? We can't talk here -- follow me!"
The two Russians go outside through the back door, into the quiet back street. Popov looks around frantically, then leads Stalin into a dark alley. Then Popov looks around and says, "We are still not safe here! These walls have ears! Come with me."
He takes Stalin through a maze of unlit passages and side streets before arriving at a small, hidden garden. They climb over the fence, and finally crouch behind some bushes.
"Okay," says Popov, "we can talk here. You want to know what I think of Joseph Stalin?"
"That's right," replies Stalin.
"Well," says Popov, "I could not say it in the pub, but personally -- I like the guy!"
Igor and Becky Ivanovich, a Moscow couple, keep a parrot called Boris in their apartment. Boris likes to cry, "Down with communism!" at the top of his voice, and one day the neighbors hear him and report him to the KGB.
When the police arrive, Igor quickly hides Boris in the freezer.
The KGB officers search everywhere throughout the apartment and cannot find anything.
But just before they leave, one of them decides to have a look in the freezer and finds a frozen Boris.
When Boris finally thaws out he starts shouting at the top of his voice: "Hurray for Gorbachev! Long live communism!" The KGB men are very happy and leave the apartment.
When they are gone, Igor grabs Boris.
"I don't understand," says Igor. "Why did you suddenly start praising communism?"
"Look," replies Boris, "you would do the same if you had just returned from Siberia!"
Nivedano... (Gibberish) Nivedano... Be silent.
Close your eyes.
And feel your body to be completely frozen. This is the right moment to look inwards.
Gather your whole life energy and rush towards your very center of being, with total consciousness and with an urgency as if this is going to be the last moment in your life.
Without such urgency nobody has ever reached to his very being, the center which is your original face, which is your door into the divine.
Faster and faster, deeper and deeper.…
As you come closer to yourself, a great silence descends over you, almost like soft rain.
A little closer... and you find a tremendous peace blossoming around you.
A little more... and fragrances from the beyond fulfill your being.
Now you can see your original face. This is the buddha, hidden at the center of your being for centuries. This is your superman.
The only quality of the buddha is witnessing, and as your witnessing deepens, your blissfulness deepens also.
As your witnessing becomes greater, a tremendous ecstasy arises in your very being. It is not something coming from outside, it is something that is arising in you and blossoming in you like a lotus flower.
But it all happens -- this whole miracle of meditation is nothing but witnessing. A single word, and the whole of religion is intrinsic in it.
At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth. To make the witnessing a little deeper, Nivedano...
Relax, let go. Just continue to witness. Witness that you are not the body, witness that you are not the mind.
Witness that you are only a witness, just a buddha,
a pure consciousness, and eternal life
suddenly becomes clear to you.
You have been changing bodies again and again and again but your life goes on flowing from eternity to eternity. It is infinite; it is immortal.
And as you relax you start melting like ice. All separations dissolve. Gautam the Buddha Auditorium suddenly becomes an ocean of ten thousand buddhas melting their consciousness into oneness, without any waves, without any ripples.
The evening was very beautiful on its own but your totality, your urgency, your
tremendous longing to reach to the center have made it a miraculous evening -- a great splendor.
Meditation is the only magic in the world and the only miracle.
Before Nivedano calls you back, gather all the flowers that are showering on you
-- of ecstasy, of joy, of peace, of a deep serenity, silence, a fire within you. The fire of eternal life, which is very cool, and a breeze which is so fragrant, of the beyond.
This I have called Zen Fire, Zen Wind. We have to fill the whole earth with Zen Fire and Zen Wind. This is the only possibility for saving humanity and this beautiful planet from destruction, from the politicians and from the priests.
And don't forget to persuade the buddha to come with you. He has to become your daily life. In each of your activities, in each of your gestures, in every bird, in every silence --
he has to be a constant presence, just behind you. Just his presence behind you will start changing your lifestyle. It will bring grace and beauty and benediction and compassion that you have never dreamt of.
Meditation makes the greatest dream a reality. Nivedano...
Come back, but come back as buddhas, silently, peacefully, with deep gratitude and great grace.
Sit for a few seconds just to remember where you have been, to what sky, to what space, what golden path you have traveled. And just feel who is behind you, the presence of the buddha.
These are the three steps before you become enlightened: Buddha comes behind you like a shadow, the first step.
Buddha comes before you and you become the shadow, the second step.
Your shadow disappears in the buddha. You are no more, only buddha is... the third and the final step.
The moment your shadow disappears in the buddha, you will find, suddenly, that buddha is only a transparent consciousness. When there is something transparent it makes no shadow.
And buddha is your very nature, so there is not much problem to bring him from the hidden sources and to make him your whole being.
He is just a seed at the center. As you bring it out the seed breaks down and suddenly out of your mud, dirty mud, of all kinds of desires, jealousies, anger, violence, arises a beautiful lotus.
This lotus is the flowering of your very potential. This will make you a superman.
Nietzsche can only talk about you: I can transform you into the superman. Superman is my very teaching.
I teach you the superman, the buddha. I don't give you any discipline, any philosophy --
I simply help you to bring out your own consciousness into a state of flowering. Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Beloved Master.
Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind Chapter #6
Chapter title: Wolves in a sheep's skin
4 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
code: 8902045
ShortTitle:
FIRE06
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
240
mins
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
DOGO VISITED NANSEN, WHO ASKED HIM, "WHAT IS YOUR NAME?" DOGO REPLIED, "MY NAME IS ENCHI."
NANSEN ASKED, "HOW DO YOU EXPRESS THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM
DOESN'T REACH?"
DOGO REPLIED, "I WOULD NEVER EXPRESS IT."
NANSEN SAID, "THAT'S RIGHT. IF YOU EXPRESS IT, HORNS WILL GROW
AND YOU WILL BECOME A BEAST."
A FEW DAYS LATER, DOGO AND UNGAN WERE SITTING OUTSIDE THE
DORMITORY AND DOING SOME WORK. NANSEN WAS TAKING A WALK, AND WHEN HE SAW DOGO, HE ASKED, "ENCHI, THE OTHER
DAY, YOU SAID
YOU WOULD NEVER EXPRESS THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM DOESN'T REACH. NOW, HOW ARE YOU PRACTICING IT?"
HEARING THIS, DOGO SLIPPED INTO THE DORMITORY, WAITED THERE
UNTIL NANSEN WALKED AWAY AND THEN APPEARED AGAIN.
UNGAN ASKED DOGO, "WHY DIDN'T YOU ANSWER WHEN OSHO ASKED
YOU THE QUESTION?"
DOGO REPLIED, "WHAT A CLEVER CHAP YOU ARE!"
THEN UNGAN CAME UP TO NANSEN AND ASKED, "OSHO, YOU HAVE ASKED
A QUESTION JUST NOW OF MY BROTHER-DISCIPLE, ENCHI. HOW SHOULD
ONE ANSWER TO IT?"
NANSEN SAID, "HE IS QUITE GOOD AT THE BEASTS' WAY." UNGAN ASKED, "WHAT is THE BEASTS' WAY?"
NANSEN SAID, "YOU MUST HAVE HEARD THAT YOU SHOULD NEVER
EXPRESS THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM DOESN'T REACH. IF YOU EXPRESS IT, HORNS WILL GROW. IF YOU NAME IT SO-AND-SO, IT WILL ALREADY BE
WRONG. YOU SHOULD IMMEDIATELY GO THE BEASTS' WAY."
Friends,
Comrade Gorbachev seems to be bent upon destroying communism, root and all.
He has even stopped using the word `comrade'.
Sangeet has been going through his books, because I don't waste my time on any rubbish.
She has found a few points which I would like to discuss with you. The first point is about women.
It was one of the great contributions of Joseph Stalin to bring about equality between men and women in every sphere of life. He allowed women the same education, the same financial freedom as the men. He allowed the women freedom to work equally with men.
He brought the woman out of the prison of the home. Russia was the only country in the world where women were given back their dignity, and the whole credit goes to Joseph Stalin.
Now Gorbachev is forcing the woman back into the kitchen. His idea is only valid in the sense that unless the family is again enforced, it will be difficult to bring private property and capitalism to the Soviet Union. He is almost playing into the hands of the Western capitalist countries. Now he wants the woman not to be given equal work, or equal education; she should go back and be a wife, a mother. The house and the family is to be her only field.
All over the world women are fighting for freedom. And freedom is possible only if the woman is educated, has the capacity to earn money for herself, is not dependent on the husband's bank account; if she is not forced to remain within the boundaries of the house, taking care of the children, preparing food, washing dishes and clothes. But that's what Gorbachev is trying to do now.
All the women of the Soviet Union should revolt against it, and all the women outside the Soviet Union should support the Soviet woman's fight for freedom.
These are small strategies for bringing capitalism back. Once the family is solid, and the woman has lost her equality, private property can be brought back in very easily.
Gorbachev is already talking about private property; he is already talking about socialism, he has dropped the word `communism' also. And socialism is a cunning conspiracy of the capitalists.
All over the world there are socialist parties, and their only function is to prevent people from becoming communist. They are being paid by the capitalists -- as far as India is concerned I am absolutely certain. I know, because the same man offered me money also.…
The head of India's biggest super-rich family was Jugal Kishore Birla. He was giving monthly salaries to Jaiprakash Narayan, who was the head of the Socialist Party of India.
Seeing my meetings, where fifty thousand or one hundred thousand people would attend, he was immensely interested.
And I used to stay in Delhi with one of the members of parliament from my constituency, Dr. Seth Govinddas. Both Seth Govinddas and Jugal Kishore Birla belong to the same caste, of marwaris -- they are the Jews of India -- so he had found a medium to reach me. He asked Govinddas, "A meeting is absolutely necessary. You arrange it."
Govinddas said to me, when I was staying with him in Delhi for a few days, "It will be immensely helpful for your work."
I said, "In what way can Jugal Kishore Birla help my work? My work is to destroy Birlas, and Tatas, and Sahus" -- the three great super-rich families of India -- "how can he help me?"
He said, "But there is nothing wrong in meeting the man." I said, "Okay."
So I met the man, and he immediately made an offer to me: "I will give you a blank check, as I have given to Mahatma Gandhi." And he had been supporting the freedom movement, and had a very clear vision of the future, that sooner or later these people would be the presidents, the prime ministers, so whatever he was giving them was an investment. Then he would take the advantage -- and he was taking advantage, after the freedom of India. People who had been on a monthly salary from him... he had purchased their souls.
He told me, "Jaiprakash Narayan is on my payroll."
I said, "If you can give me a blank check without any conditions, I will be grateful to you.
But I don't accept any conditions. I cannot sell myself."
He said, "Conditions are bound to be there; otherwise why should I give you a blank check? I am a businessman."
I said, "You may be a businessman, I am not."
He said, "But my conditions are very simple: preach Hinduism to the world. And the second condition is, create a great movement in India to protect the cows from being slaughtered."
I simply got up and I said, "Throw your blank check to the dogs! I am going." Govinddas was very much embarrassed, because they all felt great respect for his money and his support.
And I told him, "You have asked me to come, and you have insulted me! Nothing can be more insulting than offering money as a bribe, trying to purchase a man. You cannot purchase me -- nobody can purchase me. I am going to speak against Hinduism my whole life! You have strengthened my idea; you have reminded me that I have to take care of Hinduism. And I am going to fight with all those people who are trying to stop cow slaughter."
That's how I came to be the arch-enemy of the Shankaracharya of Puri, because he is the head of the movement to stop cow slaughter.
So I know from the very man himself, Jugal Kishore Birla, that the head of the Socialist Party and perhaps other leaders were on his payroll.
Why was he paying the socialists? What is the function of the socialist? The function is to divide the proletariat, to create barriers so the proletariat, the poor people, the labor unions, don't go to the communists.
And it is easy for the socialists to do it, because the socialists agree with all the superstitions of the masses. They agree with all their superstitions, they don't disturb their religion. They don't disturb anything in their prejudices, they support it, so obviously the masses are attracted to them more easily than to the communists who are non-compromising, who hit hard on everybody's religion, on everybody's theism, belief in God, and all kinds of fictitious ideas and superstitions. Naturally, the Communist Party in India -- which is one of the oldest communist parties in the world -- has not been able to gather any power or
any great number of people to be members. And it is not going to.
Socialists pretend that they are Marxists, and that they are going to bring equality, they are going to bring social justice, but without disturbing anybody's superstitions. Now they are talking in absolute contradictions! Without destroying the masses' prejudices, their past-orientation, their superstitions, you cannot bring equality.
God has created only man in his own image, not woman. The woman has been created by taking a rib out of man, so she is just to be a servant to the husband. She cannot claim equality. How can a rib bone be equal to a man? She is almost reduced to being just a body and not a soul.
How are you going to make people equal when God has made them unequal, unless you strike God completely dead? And how are you going to bring social justice to the masses who believe that their poverty is because of their past life's evil acts? They are perfectly satisfied with their poverty -- it is a punishment. And they don't think that the rich people are responsible for their poverty -- they are enjoying the good acts of their past life. If you don't disturb these superstitions, how are you going to bring equality to man?
So socialism is a strategy to prevent the proletariat from going to the communists. It is a very deep and subtle conspiracy against communism. And Gorbachev has started calling the Soviet Union a socialist country, not a communist country. Already he has started making compromises.
The second thing Sangeet has found is about democracy. He wants a democracy of the people -- the same way as America has democracy "for the people, of the people, by the people." But a democracy can exist only the way it existed in Athens, in a city-state --
even there it was not perfect -- with direct democracy, no representatives. The whole city would gather and decide.
That's how they decided to poison Socrates. Fifty-one percent of the population of Athens voted that he should be given the punishment of death by poisoning: "He has been corrupting people's morals, he has been corrupting people's religion. He does not believe in God. He does not believe in anything -- he believes only in rational, logical things, and that destroys our morality. That destroys our religion, our superstitions, and those are our only consolations in
life." Just by a very small majority -- fifty-one percent were against him, and forty-nine percent were in favor of his being set free. But a majority is a majority; whether it is one man's majority or two men's majority does not matter.
But even in Athens it was not a total democracy. It was direct, there were no representatives -- because once the representatives come in, it is not the people who rule, it is the representatives who rule. And for five years they have absolute power. Just once every five years they become servants of the people, just for a few days while the election is on; after the election the people don't matter at all. Then they go on doing whatever they want to do. But in Athens, the larger part was made up of slaves. What kind of democracy? -- where people were auctioned, women were auctioned. And these slaves were not citizens, so the greater part of the population of the Athens was not able to vote, not able to participate in the so-called direct democracy. Athens has come closest, but that kind of demacracy is possible only in small cities, not in vast nations.
In vast nations you can't have a government by the people, of the people, for the people.
In vast lands you have to fall back on mediators. So it is just making people blind, giving them good slogans, but in fact democracy exists nowhere. It is always the politicians who are the rulers of the people.
But as I have told you, Gorbachev is too much impressed by America and wants the Soviet Union to be another America. He is not saying it directly, but slowly slowly he is coming closer to it.
Democracy will destroy seventy years' experiment completely. Democracy will bring the rich back, the poor back; a classless society will become again a society with classes.
And whenever there are rich people, they are the real rulers of the country because they can purchase the politicians. Politicians don't have money, and they need money for their elections. No poor man can stand for election because it takes so much money to fight an election.
Even in a poor country like India you need at least a million rupees to fight an election.
From where are the people going to get that much money? And that one million
rupees is the minimum. It depends on the constituency, and it depends on the rival candidate. If he is throwing away two million rupees, you have to throw away more than two millions; otherwise you are finished. And in a poor country, an uneducated country, people are ready to sell their votes.
In India, anybody who has money can win an election. Not a single poor man has reached the parliament in forty years' time, and it will never be possible, because how can you fight? You need hundreds of jeeps, you need to pay the poor -- because the poor are not interested in who goes to the parliament. It is all the same; only faces change, nothing else changes. The poor go on becoming poorer, the rich go on becoming richer, and all these politicians only go on giving promises.
Even a man like Mahatma Gandhi had promised that the first president of India would be a woman, and not only a woman but a woman belonging to the sudras, the untouchables.
These two classes have suffered the most, because of the Hindu ideology that the untouchables are not human beings but beasts of burden, and the woman has no rights of her own. For centuries.…
So just to get the attention of the women, and the votes and the attention of the untouchables... And Gandhi changed the name -- politicians are very clever in changing names -- he started calling the untouchables, harijans. Harijan means "people of God."
Now if harijans are the people of God, then why are they suffering for five thousand years? And those who are not the people of God are exploiting them, reducing them to cattle.
Strange... but even the untouchables enjoyed the word, the change of the word. It gave them a great consolation that they are the chosen people of God. It does not take away your poverty, it does not give you food, it does not give you any dignity, but just the change of the name.…
It happened a few years before.…
There is a certain animal in the Himalayas which looks like a cow, but it is not a cow. Its color is bluish, so it is called the "blue cow." For centuries that has been its name. It is not a cow -- it is a wild, ferocious animal, and it comes down from
the Himalayas and destroys whole crops in North India. And it has been growing in population, just like the Indians are growing.
A time came that the population of these blue cows grew so big that the parliament had to decide to do something, otherwise on the one hand there is a population explosion of human beings and on the other hand this animal goes on destroying the crops. But Hindus were absolutely against it because of the name, "blue cow." They are worshippers of the cow. So there was great agitation all over India, "You cannot kill or shoot the blue cows."
And in this way you can understand how cunning politicians are. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the grandfather of Rajiv Gandhi, changed the name. He proposed to the parliament that "We have to kill these blue horses." Instead of neelgaay, blue cow, he called them neelghora, blue horses.
And no Hindu protested! They were shot in the thousands and thousands, almost their whole race was finished. They don't come anymore to North India. And not a single Hindu, not even this mad Shankaracharya of Puri, could understand a simple strategy of the politicians. When they were blue cows, the whole of India was in an uproar. When they became blue horses, who cares? And they are the same people!
Gandhi promised that he would make the first president of India a woman, and not only a woman but an untouchable woman. But when India became independent, he completely forgot the promise. And he is worshipped, not only in India but outside India, as a great man of truth -- just because he has written his autobiography and titled it, AN
EXPERIMENT WITH TRUTH. But he was continuously lying to his own people.
The first president of India, and the first prime minister of India... all were high- caste people. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was a brahmin, and the brahmins have been ruling this country for centuries. Again the rule goes to the brahmin priests. And the miracle of the name.…
Rajiv Gandhi is not a Hindu, but nobody has said it.
I have to say it: Rajiv Gandhi is a crossbreed. His father, Feroze Gandhi, was a Parsee; and his mother, Indira Gandhi, was a Hindu. But the name -- Gandhi --
gives the feeling as if he is Hindu, because Mahatma Gandhi was Hindu. So people think.…
And Parsees are not known very much; they are confined to Bombay, and a few people in Poona, a few people in Surat -- just this small territory. Basically they are confined to Bombay, so all over most of India nobody knows about them, that they also have a surname, Gandhi.
The word gandhi comes not from caste or religion; it means a man who sells perfumes.
Gandh means perfume, and gandhi means a perfume seller. So anybody who sells perfumes becomes "Gandhi." It has nothing to do with religion, it has nothing to do with caste.
Feroze Gandhi's family, sometime in the past, must have been selling perfume. And that was also true of Mahatma Gandhi's parents or forefathers. Somewhere back, they must have been selling perfume; both are called "gandhis."
This word `Gandhi' gives the impression to the whole of India that Rajiv is a Hindu. He is not. Rajiv is half Hindu and half Parsee. If the whole of India comes to know it, it will be very difficult for Rajiv to come back to power again. I want the whole of India to know it: he is a crossbreed, but the word `Gandhi' is hiding him. And he goes to the shankaracharyas and to all the so-called Hindu saints and nobody objects, because they all think he is a Hindu. I have to expose him. This man is just like a blue horse who used to be a blue cow.
Changing names is an old, very ancient strategy of the politicians. Now "comrade" is dropped because it was very significant, and only communists used it. And it is a beautiful word. Comrade means friend, brother, belonging to the same path. And Gorbachev has dropped the word `communism' and is continually talking in his two books about socialism, which was never before mentioned in the seventy years of the Soviet Union's life. It was a communist country. For the first time we hear it is a socialist country.
And he wants private property to come back, he wants foreign money to be invested in the Soviet land. He is completely destroying everything for which so much sacrifice has been made.
It is still time for the Soviet Union to stand up against this man. His whole desire
is to be a world leader.
Just a few days ago I had told you that soon he will be getting a Nobel Prize. Today his name has been nominated. It has not been long, and my prediction has come true. These names have been nominated: Gorbachev is first, Ronald Reagan is second, Rajiv Gandhi is third, Dalai Lama is fourth. And the head of the International Football Federation is the fifth!
Nobody has ever heard that the head of the International Football Federation is contributing something to human evolution -- football! And in what way is this football contributing to peace? -- because he has been nominated to be given a Nobel Prize for peace. Strange...?
And what has the Dalai Lama done? He escaped from Tibet when China attacked. If he was really in favor of the Tibetan people he should have remained with his people, even if he was to be murdered.
And when he escaped he did not bring the Buddhist scriptures with him, he brought seventeen camels loaded with gold, because he knew that it would be impossible to get back to Tibet. A man who has betrayed his own people... and they are being killed every day. He has taken the money of the people. It was not his private money. No lama can have private money -- a lama is a Buddhist bhikkshu, he cannot possess anything. The money belonged to the taxpayers, the poor Tibetans. All the gold that was in the possession of the Lhasa Palace of Dalai Lama -- he ran away with all the gold, leaving the Tibetan people in the hands of China. And they are being killed every day, butchered, tortured.
And you will not believe... Every child has to learn Chinese now, not Tibetan. So they are not only destroying people's political freedom, they are even destroying their literature, their whole heritage. The children will be Chinese, because they will be speaking Chinese. Soon, when the old people die, even the Tibetan language will die. And Tibetan scriptures will disappear.
This is an absolute crime against a culture -- they have brought not just a political slavery to Tibet, they are destroying Tibet's whole ancient culture, which has something beautiful in it. They have destroyed all the monasteries of Buddhist monks. They have been turned into hospitals, into schools. And they have brought a great number of Chinese to become residents of Tibet. The number of Chinese is now more than the Tibetans. So now they will bring
democracy to Tibet, because now in any case Tibetans cannot win the elections; more Chinese have been infiltrated.
And what has Dalai Lama done?
His younger brother has died just a few days before, because his younger brother
-- his name was Panchen Lama -- proved far more courageous than Dalai Lama. Dalai Lama was the head of state and Panchen Lama was number two; if Dalai Lama dies or something happens, then Panchen Lama would be the head. He was not the head, but he took over as Dalai Lama escaped. He did not escape with Dalai Lama, he remained with his people, and he tried in every possible way to prevent this invasion. But Tibet had no armies, Tibet had no arms. Tibet had nothing to fight with, no roads, no tanks, no bombs.
Tibet had only twenty-one guns belonging to the guards of Dalai Lama's palace -
- that was all. There were no courts, no police -- because the Tibetan people are such a silent people, such a meditative people.
That's why I feel for the Tibetan people.
If the Nobel Prize was given to the Tibetan people, it would have been absolutely right.
They are suffering and their meditativeness is being laughed at. They are being forced not to meditate, but to go to the fields and work. Under loaded machine guns, meditators are being forced to work.
And Panchen Lama died just four or five days ago, because in a international conference in Beijing he directly hit the Chinese government. He made it clear that Tibet is being completely destroyed -- not only its people are being killed, its scriptures are being burnt, its temples are being destroyed. Nobody can learn Tibetan anymore. The language is being destroyed, the children are being forced to learn Chinese and to speak Chinese.
This is a real generation gap, where children will not be able to understand their own parents. Their parents will not be able to say anything to the children; they will not understand each other's language.
And he lashed out against China, risking his life. Because the conference was international, he wanted the whole world to know what is happening in Tibet at
the hands of the Chinese. So he exposed the whole situation, and that very night he was found dead in his hotel. No autopsy was made, no certificate from a doctor that he has died a normal, natural death -- he was a young man, perfectly healthy -- and he was buried. Now they will put someone, their agent -- he may be Tibetan -- as the head of Tibet.
For what is the Dalai Lama getting a nomination? He is not even the head of the International Football Federation! And he is a coward. Cowardice is being rewarded by a Nobel Prize.
And what has Rajiv Gandhi done? He has come accidentally into power because his mother, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated. Naturally the whole nation's sympathy was with Rajiv, her only son. The other son, Sanjay, had died in an airplane accident. But one should see the politician's mind.…
Sanjay Gandhi was very much interested in flying airplanes; he had a small airplane and he went flying in it just over his own house. Just two or three blocks from Indira Gandhi's house, where Sanjay lived with his mother, something went wrong. And there is every suspicion that there must have been some political conspiracy, because the examiner at the airport who checked the plane before Sanjay took it said that there was nothing wrong with it, it was absolutely perfect. But just within five minutes... there is a possibility of some sabotage.
And as Indira was informed -- immediately, because she was just two blocks away; she had seen the airplane falling down -- as she was informed, she rushed immediately to the place. I have heard that her first question was not about whether Sanjay was alive or dead -- this is the politician's mind -- her first question was, "He was carrying two keys. Where are those two keys?"
One of those two keys belonged to all the money that she was gathering for the coming elections, and the other key was to a safe in which she was keeping all the files against all the politicians, files that she inherited from her father.
Those files are immensely valuable, because all politicians commit crimes but if they are in the ruling party then nobody ever knows what they have done. But the prime minister knows. He keeps a record of it, what this man has done. If he turns against the prime minister, then he will be exposed immediately to the public as a criminal.
So all those files belonged to Indira. And Sanjay was very ambitious to become
the prime minister after Indira Gandhi. He was younger than Rajiv but more political and more crazy for power. The rumor is that he even slapped Indira Gandhi once because she would not give him the keys.
Finally he got those two keys, which were of immense importance: all the money -- one never knows how much money it was; it must have been a few million rupees or even more. And the second was even more important. To control all enemies completely, just the fear was enough, that the file is there and immediately an investigation can be started and they will lose all face, all their hypocrisy will be exposed.
She did not ask what happened to Sanjay. She immediately asked, "Where are those two keys he was carrying with him?" So they said, "Those two keys have been put in the hands of the police. You can get them from the police station." She did not go directly to the hospital to see Sanjay, who was dead; first she went to the police station, got the keys.
Then she went to the hospital.
When Rajiv Gandhi came to power, he told the country, "I promise you that I will lead the country into the twenty-first century." And after the election he never said that again.
Now he is talking about simple methods, simple solutions for complex problems. He is talking about the past and the heritage, the great culture, of India. Now he is not looking forward.
Nobody can take the country into the twenty-first century except me! I can take it to the twenty-second century! There is no problem, we can have quantum jumps. But he cannot.
He has no plan for the country; all his promises are lies.
Four days ago he spoke to an international conference of scientists in New Delhi, and then he said, "Nations should disappear; there should be no boundaries on the earth. The whole earth is one." I suspect he must have been reading my books! If he is not reading them, then it must be the secretary who is preparing his speeches. "We should dissolve all differences -- nations, boundaries, races -- and create one humanity." That was in front of the international conference.
And four days later he was speaking to a Hindu conference, and there he completely forgot about dissolving the boundaries. He started talking about the great Indian heritage
-- "We have to protect it." The great Indian morality -- "We have to protect it."
If you are going to protect the Indian heritage, why should Germans not protect their heritage? Why shouldn't Japanese protect their heritage, and Americans protect their heritage? Where has the one earth gone?
But people are blind and utterly in darkness; they cannot see simple contradictions. The man talks to the international conference, and talks in terms of one world. And when he talks to the Hindus, then he says, "Our culture is the best in the world."
But that's the stupidity which everybody is doing. That's how nations are divided, races are divided against each other, religions are divided, because everybody is claiming, "We are the best!"
He talks about making things simple, and on the other hand he has started creating nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are simple things? It is the most complex and the most ultra-modern. And in what way does it belong to the Hindu heritage? You should go back to bullock carts, and you should go back to the spinning wheel -- that is the only technology that belongs to the Hindu heritage. You should return to satipratha -- killing women alive on their husband's funeral pyre, and you should keep the untouchables as animals, as Hindus have kept them for centuries. This is the Hindu heritage!
But all these people have no dedication to any truths. These are all opportunists.
A Nobel Prize for Rajiv Gandhi? What has he done? But this is part of bringing him together with Gorbachev, because India and Russia are in a treaty for another thirty years in the future: they will be friends and they will defend each other, and they will fight for each other. If somebody attacks Russia, India will fight. If somebody attacks India, Russia will fight. And Russia has been absolutely supporting India, in every possible way. But now, as Gorbachev is moving towards America, it is good to give a Nobel Prize to Rajiv Gandhi also, so both can move together towards America. There is no other reason except a political strategy to give these people a super-ego.
And I was surprised... it is perfectly okay to give a Nobel Prize to the International Football Federation's head, but what has Ronald Reagan done? There are so many crimes that he has committed under his regime that it is just a coincidence that he has not been arrested and brought to the Supreme Court -- a coincidence, a very strange coincidence.
The American Constitution gives the Supreme Court absolute power. Even the president cannot overrule the Supreme Court's orders. But the president has one power in his hands: if one of the judges -- and there are nine judges on the whole Supreme Court bench -- if one of the judges dies, then the president can appoint a new judge. From the best judges of all the state supreme courts, or high courts... anybody he wants he can appoint.
Those people who made the constitution never conceived that five judges could suddenly retire. The time of retirement for five judges had come when Ronald Reagan was in power, so if five of the judges retired -- it is just a rare coincidence -- he could appoint five men of his own. Now in the Supreme Court, five out of nine judges are Reagan's men, and four are a minority. That's how he has escaped being punished for his criminal acts during his presidency. The Supreme Court cannot do anything because the majority of the judges are his men. He has come out of the White House completely white, snow-white, clean.
There were rumors all over America and all around the world -- "What will happen about all the crimes he has commited? Will he be impeached?" But nothing has been done. And he has been doing things against the Senate, he has been doing things against the constitution, he has been doing things against the common law of the country... and now he deserves a Nobel Prize!
They should start giving Nobel Prizes to the great criminals. Why not be frank? That will be more truthful.
None of these people deserve anything.
Gorbachev is getting a Nobel Prize because he is destroying a seventy-year-old great experiment for the human future.
Ronald Reagan is being given the Nobel Prize for all his crimes which prevented any change in the social structure, in the social status quo of America.
Rajiv Gandhi is being given the Nobel Prize because he is preventing the
communists, he is preventing any kind of revolutionary step in India. He is keeping the same bureaucracy.…
Albert Einstein during his whole life was working on the speed of light, and finally he figured it out. And then he wondered: the speed of light is the greatest speed in the world... what is the lowest? He could not find out, and he died before I could have told him.
The lowest speed is the Indian bureaucracy. The file moves so slowly from one table to another table... and on each table you have to bribe. Then the file moves to another table.
Then you have to bribe again. Then it moves to the third table. By the time it reaches the final table, perhaps you may be finished!
I know about a case against one of my very respected friends. He was an old man, but it has been my strange fate to be in contact with the oldest people. This man was a revolutionary, Pandit Sunderlal, and he fought his whole life against the British government. Somewhere in 1914, when he was young, very young, he wrote a book on Indian history in which he contradicted what the British were teaching in the schools about Indian history.
Those histories were written by the British, so naturally they were not talking about the brutalities the British had committed. But he collected all the facts and he wrote a history.
The British government started a case against four persons: the publisher, the writer, the editor, and the printer. In the Allahabad high court the case started.
I saw Pandit Sunderlal in 1970 for the last time -- he was very old. I asked him what had happened with the case. He said, "Don't ask. Somebody has to write a history about the case, because all the judges who tried it are dead; all the advocates from my side and from the government's side are dead. The case was started against four persons -- three are dead, only I am alive. The case was started by a government which is no longer here!
Now India is free, but the case continues. It will end only when I am dead."
There is no way. Such is the bureaucracy... sixty years continuously, an ordinary case, and everybody died! Even the British Empire died! And now the Indian
government is carrying the case. Great bureaucracy.…
I could have told Albert Einstein that I have found that the Indian bureaucratic files have the slowest speed in the world. Nothing moves slower. And if you don't bribe, it does not move at all.
You can go into any bureaucrat's office and you will see on every clerk's table, piles of files. You won't see the clerk, you will see two piles; the clerk is hiding behind. You give, from underneath the table, a ten-rupee note, and your file is brought to the top. But after half an hour another person comes and he gives ten rupees -- his file goes on top of your file. After a month you find your file has reached to the same old place, it is on the same table. And the clerk needs high piles so you can't see his face. You just find his hand underneath the table with your hand, and you cannot even report who has asked you for money because you have never seen the face, you just see the hand!
And these people like Rajiv Gandhi are keeping the same British Empire bureaucracy --
no change at all.
The country is becoming every day poorer, with more population, more population.… No guts in this man Rajiv Gandhi! Because now, birth control needs almost military action -
- nothing else will help. And armies are sitting around unnecessarily. Bring those armies to every village and sterilize people!
But the fear... in the election these people will defeat you, and the fear is right. Indira Gandhi got defeated on the same point, because Sanjay was too much interested in birth control, sterilization. And he was absolutely right, but because of him Indira Gandhi was condemned that she was giving him the power and he was going too far.
Not voluntary birth control -- because voluntary birth control won't succeed. People believe that children are given by God and to interfere in the work of God is a sin. So unless it is compulsory, such that either you get sterilized or otherwise you get shot...
You can choose -- this is freedom of choice. But no politician has the guts to
give this freedom of choice.
Just within two days all this nonsense of population explosion can be stopped. Within two days! Just bring the guns and give the freedom to the people to choose -- either the doctor or the army! But please don't misunderstand me -- I simply want that something drastic should be done to prevent the population explosion. Things can be done only Stalin-style, there is no other way. But Joseph Stalin never got the Nobel Prize, and these pygmies are getting Nobel Prizes.
The third thing Sangeet has found in Gorbachev's book is about cutting back the army and weapons.
American experts are suggesting to President George Bush that he go on increasing weapons, nuclear weapons, more refined missiles, and not stop it. What will be the outcome of it? If Russia cuts back its army and weapons, and America goes on piling up nuclear weapons, there will be no need of any war. Just a threat will be enough to finish Russia -- just a threat, that "If you don't listen to us we are going to attack you."
A great world power, just because of one man, is losing all its dignity. I hope that somebody shoots this man! He deserves it; rather than destroying a whole country, it is better to get rid of Gorbachev. Just put him to eternal peace -- I don't mean it literally, but Gorbachev has to be removed from office. There is still time.…
And you can see his workings. He is talking about democracy and he has taken all the power in his hands. He is the most powerful man in the whole of Russia's history -- even Stalin had not that much power.
He has become the president of the country, and the prime minister has become nominal, and has no power. He has changed the whole Communist Party's high command, the Politburo. All the old people have been thrown out, and he has put all his own people into the commanding body. He has changed the head of the KGB, which is the country's most powerful agency, and he has put his own man as the head.
Now he is in complete control of the KGB, the Communist Party, and he is also the secretary of the Politburo, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. So he has all the powers -- and he is the president of the
government. These are the three most important posts; he is holding all three himself.
You can see that he is not a democratic man at all.
The academician Sakharov used to be the director general of the Academy of Sciences.
Because he accepted the Nobel Prize... Gorbachev himself asked him not to accept the Nobel Prize. And because he did not listen... Sakharov is a man of some integrity; he knew perfectly well that this could mean a lifelong sentence in a concentration camp in Siberia. Before him, three scientists from his own academy had received the Nobel Prize, but because they did not listen to the government they were thrown into Siberia, into labor camps. He knew this could happen to him also, but he risked. And he had some influence over the Russian masses as a very great scientist. Perhaps he is the greatest scientist alive in the world.
Gorbachev removed him from the directorship of the academy. And a small meanness...
he took away his car also, which was given to him as a director, so he could not have much freedom of movement. Now Sakharov is only a member of the academy.
The Academy of Sciences in Russia has a certain quota in the parliament. A few members are chosen by the academy for the parliament, and Sakharov stood for a post, and he was perfectly certain that he would be chosen. He has been the director of the academy, all these people know him, they have worked under him. There was no question that he would not be chosen. But he was not chosen because Gorbachev is behind the idea that he should not be chosen. He does not want any other man of world renown in the parliament except him. This is democracy!
And now Gorbachev has to see what happens to his Nobel Prize. If he is a man of any honesty he should refuse it -- because he has been forcing Soviet scientists to refuse the Nobel Prize; now the question has come to him. If he accepts the Nobel Prize, that man is a chicken! He should refuse immediately; even the nomination he should refuse: "I don't want to be nominated."
Show some consistency, some honesty! And why have you prevented Sakharov from being chosen? The whole academy must have been forced by the KGB -- "You cannot choose him, or your life is at risk."
Now Sakharov has led thousands and thousands of people in a procession -- this must be the first procession in seventy years -- to President Gorbachev's Kremlin, shouting slogans like "Where is your democracy?" and "Where is your socialism?" and "Where is your openness to the world? What happened to all that?" Thousands and thousands of people joined the march at the risk of their lives.
Sakharov is loved immensely. Gorbachev must have felt, "This man can be a competitor, so don't let him enter into the parliament." Now Sakharov is being supported by the people, and they have asked him: "You stand -- not from the academy, you stand as a general candidate against the Communist Party candidate, and we will support you." Now he is standing for election from his district where he lives, and I hope he succeeds. I hope he confronts Gorbachev in the parliament on every point.
People say one thing, do something else, and think something else. These are the politicians of the world.
Now it is absolutely stupid, but it is a compromise: Gorbachev will get a Nobel Prize if he cuts down his army and weapons. If he opens the doors of the Soviet Union to capitalism, he will be given a Nobel Prize. And a world-famous leader... he will become the topmost leader in the world, but at the risk of destroying the sacrifice of twenty million Russians and a tremendously great experiment in changing the social structure of the society. Nobody for hundreds of years will be able to do it again.
The fourth thing he has been insisting is to cut down military aid to small communist countries.
One can see clearly that his mind is determined to completely demolish communism from the earth. Now those small countries like Cuba, or Czechoslovakia, or Yugoslavia --
they are so small that if the Soviet Union is not behind them, capitalist countries can run over them, there is no problem. Cuba will be immediately finished. Once the Soviet Union withdraws its armies from Cuba, America will take over it
without any difficulty.
Gorbachev is behaving very unconsciously, not understanding exactly the implications for humanity. He is playing into the hands of enemies.
Question 1
One sannyasin from the Soviet Union -- she is here -- has asked me a question: WHILE GROWING UP IN THE SOVIET UNION I HAD ALWAYS OPPOSED THE
USSR'S CLOSED-DOOR POLICIES, AND SOMEWHERE FELT DISAPPOINTED
THAT I WAS BORN THERE. NOW AFTER EXPERIENCING LIFE IN THE WEST
AND HEARING YOUR REVOLUTIONARY, MIND-BLOWING DISCOURSES ON
THE VALUE OF THE SEVENTY-YEAR DICTATORIAL REGIME, I CAN SO
CLEARLY SEE THE DEPTH, THE WISDOM, THE TRUTH OF YOUR WORDS.
AND IN THE DEPTH OF MY HEART I FEEL SO FORTUNATE AND GRATEFUL
THAT I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE THERE.
DO YOU THINK THAT THE PEOPLE OF THE SOVIET LAND WILL BE ABLE TO
SEE THE VALUES OF THEIR COUNTRY'S PAST DICTATORIAL REGIME
WITHOUT HAVING TO GO THROUGH THE EXPERIENCE OF THE WESTERN
STYLE LIVING, AND WITHOUT FALLING INTO THE TRAP OF TRYING TO
IMITATE THE WEST?
It is very difficult to predict, and I am not a prophet. I can only hope for the best, that one man cannot undermine twenty million people. Somebody is bound to finish him, because other than that, nothing is going to help.
And anyway the Soviet Union has enough experience of what the dictatorship of Stalin managed to do: raise the poorest country in the world to the highest peak of power. Even America was threatened, continuously living in paranoia. A single man managed to raise the country to such a power.…
Millions of people in the Soviet Union must be feeling that Gorbachev is destroying their dignity. They will belong to a backward country. Once their doors are open to capitalist money and to all kinds of spies from capitalist countries, once Gorbachev reduces his army and weapons, the country will be in need, just as other poor countries are in need, of foreign aid.
I hope somebody in the Soviet Union, or somebody who understands the revolutionary strategy from outside the Soviet Union, can do something to stop this insane man from the destructive step that he is going to take -- that he is already taking.
Question 2
The second question:
REVOLUTIONARIES HAVE ALWAYS CLAIMED THAT IT IS SOCIETY'S
REPRESSIVE INSTRUMENTS OF CONTROL THAT DEFORM HUMANITY AND
PRODUCE THE UGLY BEHAVIOR OF MAN.
THE REACTIONARIES HAVE CLAIMED THE OPPOSITE: THAT HUMAN
NATURE IS INHERENTLY UGLY, AND THAT IT IS ONLY THE INSTRUMENTS
OF CONTROL THAT LIMIT THIS UGLINESS AND ALLOW WHAT LITTLE
CIVILIZATION THERE IS. THEY SAY THAT WITHOUT SUCH CONTROL, THIS
UGLY BEHAVIOR WOULD RAPIDLY REDUCE US TO BARBARITY. IT SEEMS THAT, AS ALWAYS, YOUR APPROACH IS COMPLETELY
DIFFERENT AND TOTALLY UNIQUE. WOULD YOU TALK ABOUT THIS CENTURIES-OLD CONTROVERSY?
The truth is, the whole controversy is absolutely wrong. It is based on prejudices, not on an experience of human nature.
I speak from the experience of my own humanity, that the deeper you go the more cultured you are; the deeper you go the more graceful you are. The deeper you reach the more human you become. So I can say with absolute certainty and guarantee that man is not by nature ugly.
Man by nature is born absolutely innocent, neither ugly nor cultured, just a tabula rasa.
Whatever you want to write on him he will become.
If you are alert and aware, you will not write anything; you will leave the child alone.
You will help him to be stronger, you will help him to be well-nourished, you will help him to be more healthy, you will take every care, in the way a gardener takes care of a rosebush. You will not force anything on the rosebush -- roses will come in their own time, they are hidden; you have just to take care.
Every child has roses, lotuses, buddhas hidden in him, in his innocence. Help him to remain innocent. Don't force so-called culture, society, in the fear that "if we don't force, he will become a barbarian."
Without any experimentation, this controversy has been going on for centuries. I know; I have been fighting in my university with my professors, because the same thing comes up again and again in every psychological and social effort to understand what to do with the child. And my standpoint from the very
beginning has been not to do anything with the child; you simply protect.
Your function is to nourish the child, to make him healthy, to keep him intelligent. Let him be himself, his innocence intact -- he will find meditativeness very easy. If you want, if your temptation to teach is too much, teach meditation. That will make him more innocent. Don't teach knowledge, culture, civilization. That becomes the burden, that becomes the false personality, that becomes the hypocrisy.
We are living in a hypocrite world, not a cultured world. It is not really a cultured or civilized world. H.G. Wells was right.… He was writing a world history and he had almost completed it -- it is one of the greatest histories ever written, by a man of a very clear insight into things. A friend asked, "You know about the whole of world history.
What is your idea about civilization?"
H.G. Wells said, "It is a good idea, but it has to happen. It has not happened yet.
Somebody has to bring it to humanity. Humanity is still barbaric."
Just look at your armies, just look at your arms, just look at your nuclear weapons. Even barbarians are not that barbaric; even animals are not that animalistic. Have you seen any animal killing his own species?
A dog will never kill another dog. Sometimes you can see them fighting, but watch closely. Be a witness, and you will be surprised to discover... because I have been watching. I have not only been watching human beings, I have been watching all kinds of beings. I have never missed any opportunity to watch, to figure out what is happening.
When two dogs are fighting, you can see they are not really hitting each other, they are just barking. Everybody is showing his power and both are watching each other: "Who is more powerful?" This is arithmetic! Once it is decided, both understand clearly that one is weaker, then the weaker one simply puts his tail underneath his legs. Just a symbol, that "There is no point. I am weaker, you are stronger. Finished." And they stop barking, and the stronger does not take advantage of the weaker. That will be too un-dogly.
Once the weaker has accepted that he is weaker, then the stronger simply moves
away; there is no point in fighting. In fact, they may become friends -- most often they become friends. Once things are settled, that one is weaker and one is stronger, what is the point of fighting, unnecessary killing?
And there is no humiliation in accepting your weakness. If you are weak, what can you do? You are weak, you are simply accepting the truth. There is no insult, there is no humiliation. You are simply giving the signal to the other person that "I am weak, and if you want to kill me you can kill." But that will not be fair, and that will not be just, and the stronger person immediately understands that "this poor fellow needs protection rather than attack." They become friends.
No animal species kills its own people except man. And no animals have weapons, so the fight is face to face, it is an encounter, direct. It has a dignity in it. It is only man who has invented weapons. And what is the purpose of the weapons? To shoot the enemy from far away, so you don't have encounter him face to face, eye to eye.
First, man invented arrows and the bow to kill faraway animals, faraway birds. You don't know... you cannot fight even with a strong dog. You cannot fight with a monkey, although Charles Darwin says you are the evolution of monkeys. But your retarded brothers are far stronger than you.
Even a man like Vivekananda, who was really fat, big, and an arch-egoist... He was passing somewhere in the Himalayas and one monkey started threatening him. And Vivekananda started running, forgot all about God, forgot all about spiritual powers. The monkey looked very strong -- they are strong, you cannot compete with them. From tree to tree they go, from house to house they jump. You cannot do that.
As far as monkeys are concerned, my feeling is they must be thinking that human beings are a fallen race, not evolved, because you have fallen from the trees onto the ground.
They are still higher than you! They must be laughing at Charles Darwin's one- sided judgment. Nobody has asked a monkey -- it is a one-sided judgment. Man is deciding on his own that he is the evolution of apes, of gorillas, of chimpanzees.
Have you seen chimpanzees and gorillas and apes? Just one chimpanzee is enough for five men! Within minutes you will be finished.
Man started with arrows, but the idea was to be able to kill from a distance. This was a cowardly idea, so that the animal cannot attack you; the animal is far away. Then came gunpowder, even more powerful. And your so-called great hunters sit up in a tree where the lion cannot reach. To deceive the lion they put a goat underneath the tree, so the lion smells the goat, and he comes to catch the goat. And when he is killing the goat, you --
from the top of the tree where he cannot reach -- shoot him. And you are a great hunter!
I have heard about a hunter. His wife was always asking him, "Sometimes you should take me also." This time she was adamant. She said, "Either I come, or you don't go. And not only I am coming, my mother is also coming."
The hunter thought for a moment, and he said, "If your mother is also coming, then come."
They put the old woman in a cave to watch the scene and they both sat in the tree, the husband and wife. The wife suddenly nudged the husband and told him, "Look! One lion has entered into the cave where my mother is!"
The hunter said, "It is the lion's own fault. I cannot help. Why has that idiot entered there? Now he will suffer as I am suffering."
Now there are missiles, which are the ultimate: you can kill somebody in America from here, and you don't have to see the enemy at all. Missiles are computerized -- you simply tell the computer, you press a button. And you don't know where the missile is. It may be somewhere in the ocean on a warship, but the computer knows where it is and the computer knows where it has to go. You can sit inside your house and destroy the whole of America, or the whole of the Soviet Union, or the whole of India, just by pressing buttons on the computer -- it is exactly like a typewriter. This is the remotest way of killing millions of people, not encountering them.
Now there are airplanes without pilots; the computer manages the plane. It will go to any city, it will drop the hydrogen bombs, or atom bombs, whatever you
want the computer to do. The computer manages the flight, and the airplane will drop the bombs at the right place and turn back and come home. And there is no need for any human being to be inside the plane, because that is dangerous.
This is the latest development of the arrow. The arrow was the beginning of remote killing. The highest development of the arrow are the missiles controlled by computers.
Man is the most barbarious animal, and he kills man. And just now it had been discovered... perhaps it has been discovered before but was kept secret for a right time to release it. Hirohito, the emperor of Japan, has died, and immediately America released the news that after the second world war when Japan was defeated, there were many Japanese on small islands, in the forests -- guerillas, fighting. Because Japan was defeated, Germany was defeated, these people were left in the jungles of Burma. Having no food, they started eating the dead bodies of the British soldiers in the jungles of Burma. They have released that news just now, when Hirohito's funeral was about to take place. That has created a great problem. The Prince of Wales was going to attend, but he refused. Then Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth, was asked to go to the funeral of the emperor of Japan. He said, "I can go, but I belong to a special club that has been created by Mountbatten." Mountbatten was the viceroy in Burma for almost his whole life; only in the last part of his life he came to India. He created a special club of all the royal princes and old royalties of the world. So Prince Philip is a member of that Burma Club.
I had never heard about the club, because it was a secret club. Just now Prince Philip has said, "If I go, then I will be immediately expelled from the Burma Club. So I don't think it is right for me to go."
Just to prevent every important person around the world from participating in Hirohito's funeral, that news release was waiting.
Now, it is... The second world war ended in 1945. For what reason has this release been kept back? Just to insult Emperor Hirohito in his death! This is ugly behavior. And my feeling is that even Prince Philip, in the position of those Japanese soldiers who had been hungry for months, would have eaten the corpses. He should just think for a moment, "If I was in their position, what would I do?"
I know about the famous famine in Bengal -- even mothers ate their own children. There is a limit... man is very frail. A woman who has been hungry for one month, and the breast is no longer bringing any milk, the child is hungry... it is a double problem. She is suffering from hunger so she cannot give milk. There is no milk, she has become a skeleton, and the child is dying without milk. Just put yourself in that situation.…
So the women ate their own children, or those who were a little more conscientious sold their children, so others ate them and they got the money to purchase something to eat.
But it is the same, just a little roundabout.
And there are cannibals, you know, in Africa. All the missionaries know -- missionaries are the only people who get caught by the cannibals, because nobody else goes into their forests. They used to be three thousand in the beginning of this century; now they are only three hundred. They have eaten their own people -- what to do?
Once in a while a missionary comes. Then there is great rejoicing, drums are beaten, the whole tribe gathers, and the missionary thinks that they are gathering to listen his sermon.
And sometimes, if the missionary is thin and not worth boiling at this point, they keep him, feeding him fruits, whatever is possible, and the missionary thinks these are very good people: "Unnecessarily they have been called cannibals, and they are serving me!"
And when he becomes really fat, then the drums beat again.…
I have heard about one missionary. When he was put in a big pot in boiling water, he could not think what to say to these people. He said, "Just wait a little. You can kill me later on -- first let me give you a little taste of Christianity."
They said, "Wait! That's what we are trying. When we drink the soup, we will have a taste of Christianity! You just wait, don't be in a hurry -- and anyway you cannot escape."
Man is the ugliest animal in the sense that the people who think they have civilized him, they have cultured him, are absolutely wrong. All their culture and
civilization only goes skindeep. Just scratch, and immediately comes the barbarian.
The only thing to make man really and authentically cultured is to bring up children in their innocence, and help their bodies to be healthy and their innocence to be meditative.
The child can reach his center very easily because he has nothing to obstruct him, no ideas, no thoughts, no prejudices. He is not Catholic, he is not Hindu; he knows nothing.
So when you say, "Go in," he simply goes in. And the road is clean, because no Bibles, no Korans, no Bhagavadgitas are standing like a China Wall preventing him. Children can learn meditation more easily than anybody else.
So my suggestion in response to your question is that every child is born innocent.
Neither barbaric nor a very cultured and religious person -- just innocent. And all that the child needs from the parents and the society is not knowledge, but a deepening of innocence. Meditation is the only way of deepening innocence, and if a child grows with his center blossoming you will have for the first time a society which is cultured, a society of the buddhas, the awakened ones. That's my whole effort here.
Now the sutras:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
DOGO VISITED NANSEN, WHO ASKED HIM, "WHAT IS YOUR NAME?" DOGO REPLIED, "MY NAME IS ENCHI."
Enchi in Chinese means "round" and "wisdom." A man of wisdom becomes round.
Not physically -- if he becomes round physically, he will have to become a member of the TV Couch Potatoes! He will have to be in America. Then just sit on your sofa and watch television for seven and a half hours per day, average. And you cannot leave a sensational murder or rape story. You cannot leave a
man who is raping a woman, in the middle, can you? So a special club is being created which is called the TV Couch Potato Club. You become a member of the club with a certain fee, and you have a card and a number. Whenever you feel that you need ice cream, or you need your lunch, or your supper, or your dinner, whatever -- you simply... By your side is the phone. You go on watching the TV, the rape. Nobody wants to miss any details. Just phone the number and give your membership number from the Potato Club, and tell the hotel, "Bring my dinner here." And immediately your dinner will be served just in front of you. You can go on watching.
People are even making love doggie-style because the man wants to watch the TV and the woman also wants to watch the TV. So a totally new fashion, absolutely original and American -- more particularly, Californian.
I don't know who gave this name to California, because it should be Californiac.
"Fornication" -- that is the basic root from which California should come. Whether it comes from that or not I don't bother.
Enchi means a man who is wise. And when a man is wise he does not have corners. His whole consciousness becomes round, shapely, graceful. The roundness represents grace.
And if you have sharp corners here and there, that means you are dangerous, you can kill anybody with your corners.
You know, in America they call the old-fashioned people "squares." The square has four corners. Hippies brought that word into existence. "Squares" -- they have corners, they are just looking to hit somebody. They are just ready to be angry and enraged.
In ancient Chinese symbolism, roundness, enchi, is a symbol of wisdom. One has lost all the corners of anger, violence, murder, rape, crime. One has lost all corners and has become completely round. The round shape certainly gives a feeling of peacefulness, settledness, grace, beauty, perfection.
So when Nansen asked Dogo, "What is your name?" DOGO REPLIED, "MY NAME IS
ENCHI" -- wise and round. Certainly it was not his name. He was describing his
inner being.
The name is just a label put on you by your parents. You can change it. Just go to any court and change your name, there is nothing in it. It has no deep connection with you, it is just on your skin. You are labeled, it is a social convenience, because if everybody lives namelessly it will be very difficult. Somebody wants to call you -- now what to do? How to call you? How to address you? Somebody falls in love with you and wants to write a love letter. To whom? He will have to write, "To Whomsoever It May Concern"!
You are all nameless, born nameless. And you know it: that name is a fiction. So when a man like Nansen, a great master, a great buddha, asks Dogo, "What is your name?"...
Dogo was his name, but he did not say, "Dogo is my name." Because a master like Nansen will not ask about labels, he will ask about your very being.
Nansen could not deceive Dogo, although there was every possibility to be trapped, because he was asking, "What is your name?" And if Dogo had said, "My name is Dogo,"
he would have fallen in the eyes of the master -- "He is not worth much. It may be a wastage of time to accept him as a disciple."
But Dogo said, "My name is Enchi" -- wisdom, and perfectly round.
NANSEN ASKED, "HOW DO YOU EXPRESS THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM
DOES NOT REACH?"
You are saying you are wise, and you are saying you are perfectly round. Okay, just tell me the place where wisdom does not reach.
Certainly there is a place inside you where there is only silence, absolute silence. An eternal space, infinite sky, but nothing can reach there, not even wisdom.
DOGO REPLIED, "I WOULD NEVER EXPRESS IT."
The master is asking, "How do you express the place where wisdom does not
reach?"
Another trap. But Dogo is really meditative. He says, "I would never express it."
Nobody can express that space where wisdom cannot reach. If wisdom cannot reach it, how can you express it? -- "So I will never express it. I will experience it, enjoy it, love it, dance it, but I will not express it. No explanation is possible."
NANSEN SAID, "THAT'S RIGHT. IF YOU EXPRESS IT, HORNS WILL GROW
AND YOU WILL BECOME A BEAST."
You will become just an idiot, a buffalo. If you start expressing that which is inexpressible, you will fall below human intelligence. It is right that you are saying you will never express it. Remember: IF YOU EXPRESS IT, HORNS WILL GROW AND
YOU WILL BECOME A BEAST -- a buffalo, utterly content, chewing grass.
Still, buffalos are not prohibited by any government: "Don't chew grass" -- "grass" in inverted commas; you know what grass I mean. But buffalos don't bother, they go on chewing the whole day. And so contented... they have never shown their discontent, they have never taken a procession against the government. They are not interested in any revolution, they are perfectly at ease with existence.
In utter ignorance, also, a certain contentment happens. But it is a contentment of ignorance. Another contentment happens when you are luminous; all darkness disappears, all ignorance is gone. That contentment is possible only if you are a buddha, not a buffalo.
Nansen said, "That's right. You are a right person who has come to me. But remember, even by mistake if you express it, immediately you will become subhuman." That's what symbolically he means: you will become an animal, a beast, you will grow horns. So please keep it a secret, hidden deep inside you. You know it, that's enough. Don't make it a knowledge, and don't make it an explanation, an expression.
A FEW DAYS LATER, DOGO AND UNGAN WERE SITTING OUTSIDE
THE
DORMITORY AND DOING SOME WORK. NANSEN WAS TAKING A WALK, AND WHEN HE SAW DOGO, HE ASKED, "ENCHI" -- HE DID NOT USE THE
NAMÈDOGO'; he said, "Enchi, the other day you said you would never express the place where wisdom does not reach. Now, how are you practicing it?"
Another trap. The master's function is to create traps and your function is to jump, not to get trapped. This way the master helps you to come closer and closer to the truth.
He asked, "ENCHI, THE OTHER DAY YOU SAID YOU WOULD NEVER EXPRESS
THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM DOES NOT REACH. NOW, HOW ARE YOU
PRACTICING IT?"
In a very different way... If the man is bogus and not authentic, if he is simply repeating some answer which he has heard or read, he will be caught. The master will try from every angle possible. Now he is not asking about expressing, he is asking about practicing.
You cannot practice your enlightenment. You may not have thought about it.…
Enlightenment simply is. You cannot practice it. It overflows you, it expresses in every gesture. It is all around you, but you don't have to practice it. It is your very nature. Do you practice anything that is your very nature?
The blood is circulating in your body -- are you practicing it? The food is being digested by your stomach -- are you practicing it? One day try: try to practice digesting the food, and your whole stomach will be upset for the first time in your life, and it will be very difficult to put it back.
You cannot practice. What is natural is already happening. Your practice may be a disturbance but not a help, a hindrance but not a help.
When he asked, "How are you practicing it?" very nicely, he was setting the trap. If Dogo says, "I am practicing it this way or that way," he is caught. Then Nansen could have said, "All that you have said before is borrowed, it is not yours."
But it was certainly his.
HEARING THIS, DOGO SLIPPED INTO THE DORMITORY, WAITED THERE
UNTIL NANSEN WALKED AWAY, AND THEN APPEARED AGAIN.
UNGAN ASKED DOGO, "WHY DID YOU NOT ANSWER WHEN OSHO ASKED
YOU THE QUESTION?"
When the master asked you the question, why did you not answer? Ungan was Dogo's brother.
But he has answered. By slipping into the dormitory and waiting there until Nansen walked away, he has answered by his action. He is saying, "It is so deep, just like my slipping back into the dormitory so that you cannot even see me. It is so deep, there is no question of practicing it; it is simply there. It is spontaneously functioning, not practicing!"
So just to avoid the answer in language, he gave it in a gesture: "Whenever I want to feel it, to experience it, I simply slip inside myself, hide myself from the whole world. There is no question of practicing. Don't ask such a question." That's why he has not paid any attention to the master's question.
UNGAN ASKED DOGO, "WHY DID YOU NOT ANSWER WHEN OSHO,
the master, aSKED YOU THE QUESTION?"
DOGO REPLIED, "WHAT A CLEVER CHAP YOU ARE!"
You are just a clever chap; you don't understand anything.
A "clever chap" does not mean a man who knows. A "clever chap" simply means a man who intellectually comprehends that which is incomprehensible.
Dogo became enlightened before Ungan. Ungan lagged far behind because of his intellectuality, his cunningness. His clevernesses were all obstacles. They are good in the outside world, but in the inner world they are great obstacles. Don't be clever, just be innocent.
THEN UNGAN CAME UP TO NANSEN AND ASKED, "OSHO, YOU HAVE ASKED
A QUESTION JUST NOW OF MY BROTHER-DISCIPLE, ENCHI. HOW SHOULD
ONE ANSWER TO IT?"
NANSEN SAID, "HE IS QUITE GOOD AT THE BEASTS' WAY." UNGAN ASKED, "WHAT IS THE BEASTS' WAY?"
NANSEN SAID, "YOU MUST HAVE HEARD THAT YOU SHOULD NEVER
EXPRESS THE PLACE WHERE WISDOM DOES NOT REACH. IF YOU EXPRESS
IT, HORNS WILL GROW. IF YOU NAME IT SO-AND-SO, IT WILL ALREADY BE
WRONG. YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY GO THE BEASTS' WAY."
Your brother is very wise. He knows how to avoid the beasts' way.
When he said, "He is quite good at the beasts' way," he is saying that he is quite good at knowing what is the beasts' way and how to avoid it. "He avoided my question completely, did not answer. And in a subtle way he expressed by his gesture of hiding deep in the dormitory, that in the same way that space is hidden inside you. It comes to explosion on its own accord. There is no question of practicing it."
You cannot practice enlightenment; you can become enlightened.
So all those who are trying to practice are going on the beasts' way. Those who are not practicing but just relaxing into their innermost being, are avoiding the
beasts' way. And they will be the only ones who will become enlightened. It is a beautiful anecdote to be understood.
Shiki wrote:
ALONE, I GO THROUGH A TINY VILLAGE, A DARK WINTER DAY.
A DOG BARKS AND BARKS.
These haikus are so different in every way from anything that has been written by man anywhere else. Superficially you will see what is here: ALONE, I GO THROUGH A TINY VILLAGE,
A DARK WINTER DAY.
A DOG BARKS AND BARKS.
Unless I give you the key you will not be able to understand it.
What is he saying? ALONE, I GO THROUGH A TINY VILLAGE... He is saying, alone I go through the tiny village of the mind. It is full of thoughts, but I pass alone, silently, without getting identified with the villagers of my mind, the whole crowd. I remain alone even in the crowd.
ALONE, I GO THROUGH A TINY VILLAGE. Of course, your skull is a very tiny place
-- but still so full of crowd, so many images, so many dreams, so many projections, so many thoughts, almost incalculable.
... A DARK WINTER DAY.
A DOG BARKS AND BARKS.
The mind, when you enter into meditation, becomes almost a barking dog. It creates as much noise as possible to bring you back: "Where are you going? Are you mad? Leaving the mind and going out of it? -- that is the way of madness! Just come back in immediately and close the door!"
In India they have a beautiful proverb. The elephant is thought by the Indians, symbolically, to be one of the wisest animals in existence. And why have they thought that it is the wisest? -- because whenever an elephant passes through a village all the dogs gather... they cannot tolerate such a big animal; it is too hurtful to their egos. Just a mountain! and they look so tiny. Now it is unbearable; something has to be done.
So all the dogs -- and every village in India has so many stray dogs you won't believe, because no corporation, no municipal committee is allowed to kill anything, not even mad dogs. So they go on, everything in India goes on growing. As many dogs start barking, others who are far away immediately run -
- "Something great is happening." So the whole population of dogs follows an elephant.
The proverb says, "Dogs go on barking, but the elephant does not even pay attention." He does not even stand and look at the dogs, he just goes on his way as if he has not heard them. It is because of this -- that he does not get into a fighting mood with the dogs. He pays no attention, remains absolutely indifferent.
And that is the way of a meditator: be indifferent to all the barking dogs of your mind. It is a tiny village and there are many stray dogs, which are going to bark at you with great arguments. They will give evidence: "It is wrong to go out of the mind. Have you not heard that every man who becomes mad, becomes mad because he has gone out of the mind? And where are you going? Out of the mind! Just come back. Regain your intelligence, don't lose it."
All the dogs bark, but the meditator goes on like an elephant without paying any attention. What they are saying is, in a way, true: you can go out of the mind from two doors. Either you fall below the mind -- then you are insane. If you fall above the mind, then you are enlightened.
There is a little similarity between the madman and the enlightened man, because both are out of the mind. That is the similarity. But one has gone beyond the mind, and one has gone below the mind -- although both have gone outside the mind. So the mind has a certain truth in the argument, "Don't go out of the mind; that is the way of becoming mad. Come back home."
But the meditator goes alone, just like an elephant -- dogs barking, barking,
barking.…
Slowly slowly, their barking fades away, far away, as if it is just an echo in the valleys, or maybe a dream you have seen somewhere. The farther you go beyond the mind, the less and less you hear the barking of the dogs, their arguments, their ideologies, their philosophies. Their religions, their theologies, their political beliefs, their social beliefs, their educational conditioning... all goes on barking, barking, but you go on like an elephant, reaching farther and farther, deeper into yourself. Soon you will be so far away, you won't even listen to the barking of the dogs.
And once you are that far away, dogs lose interest. They go on their way to do the work they had been doing, separately. Now there is no need of the assembly, the elephant has gone. Perhaps they believe he has gone because they were barking -- this is how mind functions: "Perhaps the elephant became afraid."
I have heard...
One elephant was passing over a bridge with a small fly sitting on his head. The bridge started wavering -- it was an old bridge -- and the fly said to the elephant after they had passed the bridge... It didn't fall, but it was wavering and there was every possibility. The fly said to the elephant, "Son, we were too much for the bridge!"
The elephant heard somebody saying something. He said, "Who are you? And where are you? And as far as my mother is concerned, she cannot sit on my head."
The fly came closer to his eyes... and it is strange that elephants are so big, but their eyes are very small. That shows God has not made this world. Such an unscientific attitude!
Such a big animal, and with such tiny eyes... must be the work of some idiot. It cannot be the work of an intelligent God.
So the elephant looked at the fly, and he said, "Mother, it is right. Because of us two, the bridge was shaking."
The idea that elephants are very wise comes from such stories. He accepted it: "Don't bother, don't argue with this stupid fly who calls me her son, and thinks
that because of both of us the bridge was shaking. There is no point in arguing. It is better to accept that,
`Mother, you are right,' and just go on your way." Don't be distracted.
Not to be distracted is wisdom.
Flies will be there, and mosquitoes will be there -- although you have the biggest mosquito net in the whole world! But they are waiting outside! They are very silent people, and very musical; when they get you caught, they sing a small song. And they are the ancient enemies of the meditators, but you have not to bother. You have to go on.
Mosquitoes, and flies, and dogs -- the whole world in fact, is against the meditator. They will all be barking at you! If you are sitting silently your wife will come rushing in,
"What are you doing? Why are you silent? Speak!" And if you speak, you are in trouble.
Just open your mouth, and you have not even completed the sentence, and the wife jumps on you. Whatever you do you are in trouble.
The whole world is against the meditator, because the meditator is doing something which the world is avoiding. He is trying to become a buddha, an Everest of consciousness -- that hurts everybody. Everybody will try to distract you. The priest, the politician, the parents, the neighbors, the friends -- everybody will try to bring you out:
"What are you doing wasting time?"
My whole childhood I had to listen to everybody... finally they decided, "Either he is going to be insane, or who knows? He may become a buddha. But he is not going to be a normal human being." Because everybody was telling me...
My uncles would come to me, my aunts would come to me, and it was a big joint family.
Wherever you go somebody is watching, "What are you doing? Why are you sitting silently?"
I would just tell them, "I am not sitting silently; silence is just happening to me, what can I do?"
"Happening to you? It does not happen to us."
I said, "What can I do if it does not happen to you? It happens to me! Don't disturb me."
By and by they became accustomed of me, so much accustomed that... My mother is here. I would be sitting in the house and she would ask me, "Have you seen anybody here? Because I want some vegetables to be fetched from the market."
And I would say, "I have not seen anybody. If I see anybody I will report to you." People finally accepted that "This man is absent. Just don't count on him." Once or twice they depended on me, and felt, "He is not reliable." In the morning they would send me to fetch some vegetables. In the middle of night I would come back to ask, "I have forgotten for what you have sent me." And they had been waiting the whole day, and they would beat their heads: "Where have you been the whole day?"
I said, "You know, on every point there are people ready to argue with me. And then I get so much involved in the argument, by the time I reach the market I have completely forgotten for what I had gone there. Seeing no reason, I went into meditation; I went to the river."
One day one of my aunts sent me, saying, "You can bring some bananas."
I said, "You really mean bananas? I can bring many! The whole city consists of bananas."
She said, "I don't mean that banana, I mean the fruit!"
I said, "Okay, I am going." So I went to the first shop in the market, the vegetable market, and I asked the man, "Which are the most precious and best bananas you have?"
And the man knew me, that I had never come into the vegetable market. He was the first shop near the door of the market. He knew that I was a little eccentric, so he gave me the worst bananas, almost rotten, and asked me the highest price. I gave him the highest price and brought those rotten bananas back.
I could see what was happening, but I said, "This is a good device to get rid of these bananas forever." So I gave those bananas to my aunt. She said, "Are you mad? These are all rotten!"
I said, "I asked the man to give me the best and said I would pay the highest price. So I have paid the highest, and you call them rotten? Now that man knows better about bananas than I know. I have no concern with bananas, either human or fruit."
She said, "Just take them out! There is a beggar woman sitting under the tree; just give them to her."
Even she did not accept them. She told me, "Throw them away. Do you think I am mad just like you? These bananas... In your whole life, for the first time you have come to give me something. These rotten bananas -- just throw them! Nobody is going to accept them."
I said, "That's okay." So I threw them into the gutter. After that nobody asked me to bring anything. I was accepted as an absent member of the family. And I enjoyed it because that relieved me of all the trouble, all kinds of barking. Nobody talked with me; nobody even took any note that I was present.
Even my mother was asking me, "Have you seen anybody?" -- and I am there, present!
And I would say, "Although I have not seen anybody in the house -- the whole house seems to be empty -- if I come across somebody, I will inform you."
The whole world is against the meditator because the meditator is becoming a stranger.
Everybody is going outward and you are going inward.
One drunkard was driving his car and his wife was continuously nagging him, "Be careful, be careful, be careful!"
The drunkard said, "Don't be worried. We must be reaching home because I am hitting more people. As I go ahead, hitting more and more people, that means the village is coming closer. Don't be worried! And I am going fast so that I will hit less people; otherwise, if I go slow, I will hit more. So don't be worried, you keep quiet."
And she told him, "Where are your glasses?"
He said, "With glasses on and this drunk, one starts seeing elephants and kangaroos and zebras and all kinds of things! I never wear my glasses when I am driving. Then you simply hit human beings. If you hit an elephant which does not exist, you are in trouble."
The wife simply sat silently. "There is no point, this man is absolutely drunk -- can't see, because I know his eyesight. And going so fast and hitting so many people... but still he is logical. That village is coming closer."
When everybody is going outward and you are going inward then you are hitting many, many people and everybody is angry: "Where are you going? When the whole crowd is going this way, where are you going? Against the current, against us all -- do you think we are mad?"
So remember: don't pay any attention to barking dogs. That's what Shiki is saying: Alone, move silently. Don't pay any attention to anybody. Dogs or no dogs, they will be barking; that is their nature.
Question 3
A question from Maneesha:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
ONCE AGAIN YOU ARE THE ICONOCLASTIC VISIONARY WHO HAS A TOTALLY ORIGINAL VIEW OF WHAT IS HAPPENING, WHILE WE HAVE
SWALLOWED WHOLESALE THE NEW GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE
INFORMATION INDUSTRY, WHOSE CURRENT CREED IS THAT STALIN IS
BAD AND GORBACHEV, GOOD.
WHY DO WE KEEP BUYING INTO NEW GOSPELS?
Maneesha, there is a tendency in the human mind always to be a victim of the new. To prevent this tendency every society tries to program you that the old is gold. Every society from the very childhood conditions the mind against the natural tendency for the new -- turns it almost diametrically opposite: "Everything old is good. The more ancient the scripture, the more truthful." Every religion tries to prove that their scripture is the most ancient.
Why this attraction for the ancient? Every society thinks they have passed the golden age.
These are the conditionings from society. Culture -- whatever you have -- religion, education... these are to prevent you from falling for the new.
Otherwise, the natural tendency is to believe the new. But neither to believe the old is right, nor to believe the new is right. Not to believe is right.
Without believing anything, just be clear, like a mirror without any dust, and respond to reality with your totality. And you will always find the truth. No news media can deceive you -- nobody can deceive you. You get deceived because your clarity is not there, your mirrorlike ability to reflect the reality as it is, is not there. You are thinking through prejudices.
When the whole news media says that Stalin is a bad guy, it fits with your morality, with your puritan upbringing, your Christianity, your Hinduism. It fits with your upbringing that because he killed so many people.…
Majid was saying to Amrito, my personal physician, that it is not only in the Soviet Union that Stalin killed one million people; he also killed revolutionaries in Spain, in Italy, in other countries. It is true, but I want Majid to know that there are revolutionaries and revolutionaries. There are revolutionaries who are really counter-revolutionaries, but they pretend to be revolutionaries. They are in the service of the status quo.
And Stalin certainly murdered people outside the Soviet Union because his conception was not that of a nationalist. His conception belonged to the original Marxian idea of one earth; the revolution has to happen all over the world, and if
it is not coming from within a country on its own, then the countries which have become communist should help to bring the revolution to these other countries also. And every country which is capitalist, to prevent the communists, create pseudo-revolutionaries. They talk of socialism, they talk of beautiful things, but all these things are just to create barriers and confusion in the proletariat.
So Majid is right that Stalin killed many revolutionaries outside the Soviet Union, but he does not know whether those revolutionaries were revolutionaries, or anti-revolutionaries pretending to be revolutionaries. Their whole effort was to counteract the oncoming revolution of communism, and they succeeded to a large extent in deceiving people.
Stalin was not deceived.
I see that man with very clear eyes. He knew who was a counter-revolutionary, who was a wolf in the skin of a sheep. So you see that he is killing a sheep, but he is killing a wolf.
And so much fuss will be made by the countries where so-called revolutionaries are killed because those are the agents of the capitalists.
They were not revolutionaries.
Joseph Stalin's understanding about revolution was very pragmatic and practical. He was not a dreamer. He could see exactly how things are happening.
I can see it happening in India. The Socialist Party of India is known all over the world as a revolutionary party, but they are paid by the capitalists and they are the agents of the capitalists. One of Mahatma Gandhi's closest disciples, Vinoba Bhave... it is said that Gandhi had two successors. One was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, his political successor, and one was Vinoba Bhave, his spiritual successor.
Vinoba Bhave created a very great movement. He walked all over the country for almost twelve or thirteen years, and he created the idea in the mind of the people that this was real revolution, because he was asking from the landlords.… Eighty percent of India is in the villages, and eighty percent of its poor people are in the villages. So Vinoba Bhave would approach the village, sing devotional songs, his disciples would sing devotional songs... and he was considered to be Mahatma Gandhi's spiritual successor, almost a
"mini-mahatma."
So people would gather, the landlords would gather, and he would talk about VEDAS
and UPANISHADS -- which are appealing to the people -- he would talk about Ramayana, and give interpretations which are absolutely wrong, but appealing to the people.
And he would ask, after he had talked to people, that "Those who have lands -- if you have five children, let me be your sixth child. Give me the sixth part of your land and I will distribute it to the poor." And he collected millions of acres of land. But he became very much disappointed.…
He was supported by all the landlords, capitalists, the government -- even Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who never liked the man before India became independent, because Jawaharlal was an ultra-modern man, educated in the West. Although he was a brahmin, he was not a vegetarian; he was eating meat, he was drinking alcohol. He was an ultra-modern, Western man, and Vinoba Bhave is absolutely antique. So Jawaharlal never liked the man, but he was very close to Gandhi so he had to suffer his presence.
But after freedom Jawaharlal started going to Vinoba Bhave. Whenever Vinoba Bhave was having annual conventions, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was present there, because thousands and thousands of people would gather. He could not miss the opportunity to show them that he was in support of Vinoba Bhave, and Vinoba Bhave would feel great that the prime minister comes to his every conference.
So it was a mutual conspiracy. And it was said even by the capitalists that Vinoba Bhave had to be supported because he was diverting the poor people from the communists. Poor people were thinking that if just by being asked, the landlords are giving their land, what is the problem? Why unnecessary violence? Why does revolution have to be violent when without violence people are giving their land?
And they thought, if people are giving land, they will also give money... because Vinoba Bhave was not yet working in the big cities. First he wanted to transform the bigger part of India which lives in the villages and later on... the big cities are not many. If he succeeds in transforming eighty percent of India, he will be able
to transform the remaining twenty percent without any difficulty. And he certainly became one of the greatest hindrances for the communists.
Communists believe that revolution has to be violent, there is no way out of it. People are not going to drop their private property easily. But Vinoba proved that they were dropping it, so even communist strongholds became weaker.
But the reality is that all the land that was given... and when it was distributed, somebody got half an acre, somebody got one acre because they had a bigger family. It was distributed according to the number of people in the family. But what are you going to do with one acre? And finally it was found that all the land that he had received was absolutely useless, unfertile. Those landlords were giving land that was so stony, on the hills... Vinoba never went to those places to see what kind of land he was receiving, he was just receiving it in public meetings. When it was distributed, then it was found that the poor people refused to take it, saying, "What will we do with this land?"
And those who received it were at a loss, because just the land is not enough. In the first place it was too small a piece of land; it was not going to give them enough nourishment, they would remain undernourished. Secondly, they need bullocks, they need a plow, they need seeds, they need manure. They don't have anything, what to do with the land? And the land is so stony, unless hard work is done those stones cannot be removed.
They needed tractors and bigger mechanical devices to make their land fertile; but they were so poor, from where to get all these technological devices? They could not even purchase two oxes to work for them. And not only that, it became a trouble for them because they had to pay property tax. And the land is not even giving anything to them --
property tax!
So they gave the land back to the distributing committee of Vinoba Bhave, and Vinoba Bhave was so disappointed that he went back to his ashram in Pavnar near Wardha.
But for thirteen years he was thought to be one of the great spiritual revolutionaries. And the government and the capitalists all supported him, because "this man can divert the poor from the communist party." And he certainly diverted them for a time.
So you have to understand, Majid, that all revolutionaries are not revolutionaries. Many of them are wolves wearing a sheep's skin. They could not deceive Josef Stalin. He killed them -- he was killing the wolf. You saw that he was killing a sheep.
It needs immense clarity to see the world as it really is, and to see how society creates certain dynamics, certain pseudo phenomena to protect itself. There are more counter-revolutionaries in the world pretending to be revolutionaries than there are authentic revolutionaries. But it needs a tremendous clarity, coming only out of meditation, so that you can figure it out.
I know you have been in deep love with me. That's why I can hit you without mercy --
mercy is for the enemies, not for the friends. Even Jesus has not said, "Love your friends." He has said, "Love your enemies." That's good! As far as friends are concerned, hit them! This is my improvement on Jesus.
Majid belongs to a radical party in Italy. The head of that radical party wanted to come to me and discuss with me how things should to be done. Of course Majid was the mediator; he had persuaded the man to come to me. But I saw an interview he had given to a journalist, in which the journalist asks, "We hear that you are going to Poona. Are you interested in the philosophy, in the ideology of Osho Rajneesh?"
And he said, "I have nothing to do with his philosophy or with his meditations or with his ideology. My sole concern is that if he can give me ten thousand sannyasins in Italy to become members of the Radical Party, I will go and kiss his feet."
When I saw that interview, I could see that the man is bogus. And I informed Majid that
"I don't want to see that man. His whole interest is that I should tell sannyasins in Italy to join the party."
It is not a radical party, Majid; it is not revolutionary. And you can see it, even though you are not so clear about things. Just to get votes, your Radical Party leader arranged a woman... she must have been a prostitute or must have been having the mind of a prostitute. She remained sitting in the square, the main
square of Rome, with uncovered breasts and said to people, "I will allow you to play with my breasts, I will allow you to kiss my breast, or to kiss me, if you become part of the Radical Party." A membership drive, and she managed to get ten thousand people to become party members.
Do you think this is revolution? This is absolutely prostitution! And the people who have become members of your party don't understand anything about your party. These must be the most third-rate people in Italy, because I can't think that people who were standing in queues to play with her breasts... I don't think any intelligent person, any person who has any self-respect, will stand in those queues. These must have been the worst people, pimps and all kinds of idiots.
A crowd was there watching all this scene. And that woman must be just a vegetable -- a cabbage, not even a cauliflower. I make a distinction between the two, although they are the same. But a cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education. These people who have become members of the Radical Party just by touching the breast of an idiot woman, you think are revolutionaries?
But the head of your party was behind the whole scene. I refused. I said, "Don't bring him here because he is not a revolutionary. He simply wants to have a great ego, become more powerful." Perhaps he hopes to become the prime minister of Italy.
I don't prevent my sannyasins. They are free to join anything, but I would always remind them: join something out of your meditativeness, out of your clarity. I am not in any way preventing anybody. Your freedom is absolutely sacred to me. I will not interfere --
even if you are going wrong, I will not interfere. I will tell you that you are going wrong, but you are free to go.
Now I could not tell my people to belong to the Radical Party. It is not a radical party.
Majid, I would like you to create a real, authentic revolutionary party. Don't collect pimps and prostitutes.
And Maneesha, just as Stalin is a bad guy, and you have accepted it because all the propaganda of the communist world was small in comparison to the propaganda of the capitalist world... The capitalist world has all the newspapers,
magazines, television stations, radio stations. They have the whole propaganda machine in their hands. So when they propagated that Stalin is a bad guy... just repeat any lie again and again and again and it becomes almost true. If not truth, then at least a truism.
Now those same people of the same capitalist propaganda machine are telling you Gorbachev is a good guy. I don't bother what they are saying. I look who is behind the screen. Who is forcing these people to propagate the idea that Gorbachev is a good guy?
The same people, because they want Gorbachev to become personally involved in his ego. That will be their success and that will be the destruction of the Soviet Union and the great experiment of communism I have been telling you about.
But unless you have the eyes of a meditator, it is very difficult. One German Biblical scholar has written a book comparing me and Jesus. A very honest man
-- because he is a Christian; still he praises me higher than Jesus, compares us point by point, and on every point my score is better than that of Jesus. He writes in his book a few very revealing facts about why in Germany the whole news media is creating rumors and lies about me. And that's what people read, that's what people believe.
The reason is that the whole propaganda machine in Germany is owned by Christians, and they are cutting out anything positive about me. I know what happened to one of the STERN journalists. He had come here and STERN was interested only in something sensational. Whether it is true or not, who cares? Sensational stories sell. They bring more subscribers to the magazine.
But Satyananda became so interested and involved that he became a sannyasin -- I don't know what his German name used to be. He became a sannyasin. He thought that it would be far better to write the story from the inside, joining all the meditations, joining all the groups. "I will be reporting more intimately, honestly. Just being a spectator from outside is one thing, but to be a meditator..."
So he became a sannyasin and he meditated and he joined the groups and he really became involved. In the beginning it was just to have an inside view. But once you are inside, it is very difficult to get outside! He wrote a beautiful story
about the commune and what is happening here, and when he went back, the STERN owners simply refused to print anything because, "He has been hypnotized. Otherwise how can he write such a story? He has been completely brainwashed -- and why have you become a sannyasin?"
He said, "I wanted to write honestly, and to write honestly was possible only if I became an insider. In the beginning it was just a show that I was a sannyasin, so I could get in.
But as I experienced meditation and groups and the change that came to me, now I am really a sannyasin. And I am not hypnotized and I am not brainwashed."
But they would not publish his story. He simply renounced his post -- and he was their best journalist -- and came back to India. And he lived here, he lived in the commune in Germany, in America, and he is making money to come back here so that he can be here forever.
This man writes that all the magazines that go on propagating against me in Germany are owned by the Christians, Catholics or Protestants. So they cut out anything that will strike a sympathetic note in people's minds. They just go on creating antagonism; on any point, they invent something. And it is very easy to invent lies.
Now Gorbachev is a "good guy" because this is the way to persuade him to destroy communism. I would like Majid to create a really revolutionary party, and my sannyasins will be helping you. And Italy is one of the lands I own! It is very strange -- Italy I own, Germany I own, Japan I own. These are the three countries which were fighting together against the whole world!
It is very strange that amongst my sannyasins number one are the Germans, number two are the Japanese, number three are the Italians; others are here in very small numbers. But these three countries were together in the second world war, so something brings them to me. They are utterly fed up with war, they are utterly fed up with fascism, they are utterly fed up with people like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Hirohito. That frustration brings them here in search of a world which will not have wars, because they have suffered so badly. Others have not suffered so badly. That's why I own these three countries.
And I would like you to create a revolutionary party on your own. Why be a second-hand man in that Radical Party? Be the leader of a revolutionary party
and I will support you!
And more and more Italians are going to come; just all that we need is more spaghetti!
It is time for Gurudayal Singh. He always manages to find the right place and the right time.
Gorbachev is intent upon really getting rid of the memory of Joseph Stalin. So he orders Stalin's bones to be removed from his grave in the little village in the Caucasus, and tries to find some other country where Stalin can be buried.
Gorbachev calls up Margaret Thatcher in London, and asks her if Stalin can be buried in England.
"Sorry, old chap," replies Thatcher, "but we already have Karl Marx buried here. Two big-time communists would be too much and too many for us!"
Then Gorbachev dials Berlin, and asks if Stalin can be buried there.
"Sorry, comrade," says Helmut Hamburger, the government spokesman, "but we already have Adolf Hitler buried here. Two such tyrants in one place would be too much for us."
But Rubin Rosenbaum, from the Israeli government, hears of Gorbachev's problem and phones the Kremlin.
"Since Stalin fought against the Nazis," says Rubin, "we agree to bury him here, in Jerusalem."
"Thanks," replies Gorbachev, "but no thanks! We cannot risk another idiot getting resurrected!"
Gorgeous Gloria goes to have her eyes checked with Doctor Peek, the eye specialist.
"Doctor," says Gloria, anxiously, "I think I am going blind!"
So Doctor Peek gives Gloria a thorough check-up, but cannot find anything wrong.
"Your eyesight seems perfect to me," says Peek. "Twenty-twenty vision."
"Yes, but you don't understand!" insists Gloria. "The problem happens every time I make love."
"Really?" says Doctor Peek, eyeing Gloria. "Well, in that case, I shall have to make a more thorough examination!"
"Ah! Doctor!" says Gloria, taking off her clothes, and lying down on the couch. "If you insist!"
A few minutes later, Doctor Peek is huffing and puffing, and Gloria is moaning and groaning.
"I still don't see any problem," gasps Doctor Peek.
"Go on! Go on!" cries Gloria, moaning louder and louder.
Suddenly, Gloria lets out a loud, orgasmic shriek -- "Now, doctor! NOW! I cannot see a thing!"
Paddy makes a lot of money on his used furniture stall one year, so he shuts up shop and goes to Paris for a holiday.
Two weeks later he is back in Ireland, sitting in the pub and telling Seamus all about his adventures.
"Oh! It was great!" says Paddy. "Paris is out of this world!"
"Really?" says Seamus. "But how did you get on, without knowing a word of French?"
"It was simple," says Paddy. "For example, I met a girl in the park. So I took out a pencil and a piece of paper and drew a picture of a taxi. She knew what I meant, so we went for a drive. Then I drew a picture of a knife and fork and she knew that I wanted to take her out to dinner."
"That sounds great," says Seamus.
"I'm not finished yet," says Paddy. "Then I drew two people dancing and we
went to a night-club. At the end of the evening, she took the pencil from me and drew a big double bed."
"Amazing!" cries Seamus. "She even knew that you were in the furniture business!"
Nivedano... (Gibberish) Nivedano...
Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your bodies to be completely frozen.
This is the right moment to enter in and rush towards your very center of being.
Gather your whole energy, your total consciousness and rush faster and faster, deeper and deeper.…
As you come close to your center, a great silence descends over you.
Just like soft rain... so cool, so serene, so peaceful... as if in the Buddha Auditorium there is no one.
A little deeper and you will find tremendous blissfulness.
Just one step more and you are at the very center of your being.
A great ecstasy arises in you, a great divine drunkenness; you feel almost drowned in ecstasy, and you encounter your original face for the first time.
Your original face is the same as the buddha's face.
Everybody is a born buddha. Whether he realizes it or not, that is his choice. The buddha has only one quality, and you have to understand that quality because only if you understand that quality, buddha can become your reality, your day-to- day reality.
Then you don't need meditation. Your whole life is meditative. That quality is witnessing.
Witness that you are not the body. Witness that you are not the mind. Witness that you are only the witness.
At this moment you are the buddha, the awakened one. This is your birthright.
At this moment you enter into an eternal life, immortal existence. All the cosmic doors open for you.
At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth because everybody on the earth is involved in trivia -- money, power, prestige. You are moving into a totally different dimension, diametrically opposite -- just trying to find the origin of your life.
The origin is also the goal.
When the origin is found, you have found the goal. The circle is complete. From the same silent space you had arisen, just like a wave arises in the ocean and again disappears in the ocean... Meditation is a way of disappearing as a dewdrop, as a wave, and appearing as the ocean.
To make the witnessing more clear, Nivedano...
Relax, let go. But remember only one thing: You are a witness.
As your witnessing deepens, Gautam the Buddha Auditorium starts turning into an ocean.
You start disappearing like dewdrops, slipping from the lotus leaf into the ocean. No waves, no ripples. Absolute, perfect silence.
This is your very nature, dhamma. This is your very being, the buddha.
This very body is the buddha and this very earth the lotus paradise. Only people
in deep meditation can understand such a tremendous sutra.
Gather the many flowers that are growing all around you, gather the ecstasy and drunkenness which is divine.
You have to bring this drunkenness, this ecstasy, all these flowers of blissfulness, to your day-to-day life. And don't forget, you have to persuade buddha to come along with you.
He has to come, he is your nature. It is just that you have never asked him, never invited him. He has remained just a seed hidden deep in the center of your being.
Once you start asking him, requesting him, welcoming him, he has to come. These are the three steps of your enlightenment:
First he will be coming just like a shadow behind you. But his shadow will be almost tangible, you can touch it, you can feel it. He will surround you with a strange fragrance from the beyond.
Second step: you will become his shadow.
And the third step: you will disappear into the buddha. You will not be anymore; only the buddha, only the existence. You are burned in the Zen Fire, and the Zen Wind has taken all your ashes far away.
Nothing is left.
This nothing is your inner sky. This nothing is your very nature.
Buddha is nobody. Buddha is a pure nothingness, an open space, infinite and eternal.
Nivedano...
Come back, but remember to come as a buddha -- with the same grace, the same silence, the same beauty, the same blissfulness.
Sit for a few moments just to recollect what space you had entered. Remember
you had gone beyond your mind, remember you had touched the greatest experience in the world
-- of witnessing -- and you followed a golden path which leads exactly to the hidden buddha, to the hidden splendor inside you.
And just feel, the buddha is behind you. His coolness is almost tangible, his fragrance fills your whole being. His luminosity makes you more and more drunk.
My whole effort here is to create drunkards, drunks of the divine -- people who have found their buddha, their dhamma, their nature. Once you find it, everything starts growing in you, to your very potential. You will reach the highest peak, the Everest of consciousness, and you will reach to the greatest depth of the Pacific Ocean of your being.
The day you merge with the buddha, the day you disappear and only buddha remains, will be the greatest day of your life.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Beloved Master.
Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind Chapter #7
Chapter title: My interest is in you
5 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
code: 8902055
ShortTitle: FIRE07
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
142
mins
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
WHEN UNGAN HIMSELF BECAME A MASTER, HE ONCE SAID -- WHEN
ADDRESSING AN ASSEMBLY OF MONKS -- "HERE IS A CHILD FROM A RESPECTABLE FAMILY: WHATEVER YOU ASK, THERE IS NOTHING HE
CAN'T ANSWER."
ONE OF HIS DISCIPLES, TOZAN, STEPPED FORWARD AND ASKED, "HOW
MANY BOOKS ARE THERE IN HIS HOUSE?"
UNGAN REPLIED, "HE DOESN'T HAVE ANY BOOKS, NOT EVEN A SINGLE
LETTER."
TOZAN THEN ASKED, "HOW COULD HE BE SO WELL INFORMED?" "HE SELDOM SLEEPS DAY OR NIGHT," WAS UNGAN'S RESPONSE.
"I WANT TO ASK SOMETHING OF THE CHILD," CONTINUED TOZAN. "IS IS
POSSIBLE?"
"HE COULD ANSWER, BUT HE WOULD NOT," REPLIED UNGAN.
ON ANOTHER OCCASION, UNGAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE HAVE YOU
BEEN?"
THE MONK REPLIED, "I HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THE DHARMA TO A ROCK."
UNGAN ASKED, "DID THE ROCK NOD?"
THE MONK HAD NO ANSWER AND UNGAN COMMENTED, "IT NODS BEFORE
YOU TALK."
Friends,
First, a little bit of news.
The first failure of Comrade Gorbachev:
The central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has declared that Gorbachev's first act of reform, to eradicate alcoholism, has failed. The party declared that Gorbachev's radical changes have not yet been achieved; on the contrary, the sale of illicit liquor has grown, state liquor revenues have fallen, and the masses have been constantly complaining about long queues to buy vodka.
Second:
Over the past year Comrade Gorbachev has allowed the following symbols of capitalism to do business in Russia: Coca-Cola, MacDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Fast Food Pizza.
This is all junk that America wants to pour on the very innocent people of the Soviet Union.
Third:
Just today he has allowed the world's largest advertising agency, Saachi and Saachi, to begin advertising campaigns in Russia for western goods. Saachi's, who are advertising agents for Margaret Thatcher, said they would also like a contract "to polish Gorbachev's image, although he does not really need it at the moment."
On the one hand, he is saying that Russia's economy is failing, and on the other hand, he is giving contracts to advertising companies to advertise western goods in Russia. Do you see the contradiction?
The latest data about the economy of Russia is that twenty percent of the people are living below an adequate nourishment level. But in America, fourteen percent of the people are below this level -- the difference is only six percent. For just six percent, if communism has to be thrown out and American capitalism has to be brought in, it is a total tragedy. Six percent of the people can be helped without bringing American capitalism in.
There was no need to declare to the world that they are no longer making nuclear weapons. There was no need to tell the world that they are cutting their military budgets and armies. They should have done it silently, and raised the level of those six percent without any problem! It is so simple, but Gorbachev is going about things absolutely irrationally. He is throwing out the baby with the wash water!
His effort is absolutely against the Soviet Union, and this first failure of his policy will not be the only failure. This is the beginning of the end. All his policies are going to fail because all his policies are against basic fundamentals of communism. And one man cannot undo seventy years' sacrifice of millions of people who have created communism
-- the first experiment in human history to bring a classless society into existence.
Now the questions.… Question 1
The first question:
ACCORDING TO YOUR VISION, WHAT EXACTLY IS COMMUNISM?
Communism simply means moving private property into the hands of the collective --
because private ownership of property creates classes, the oppressed and the oppressors.
Money brings more money, attracts more money; poverty attracts more poverty. And a man who sees all around him people having money, beautiful houses, cars, and he has not even food to eat... his dignity as a human being is destroyed. He starts feeling subhuman, inferior, unsuccessful, and to create this feeling in millions of people just for the sake of a few who will be rich is against the whole of humanity.
Communism brings dignity to everybody because all the properties, the land and everything, belong to the collective. Nobody can be richer than you and nobody can be poorer than you. Equality is equivalent to communism, and equal opportunity for everyone to blossom into whatsoever he has hidden in his potentiality.
Communism is only the first step of a great experiment. Once people are without inferiority complex, once religions are removed -- that is part of communism, that there is no god and the so-called religions are just the opium of the people. Once religions are removed, soon a tremendous vacuum will be felt by everybody, because these religions have been stuffing you with systems of belief which are all fiction. But they help you to feel that you are full.
I have come across poor aboriginals in Bastar, in the central provinces of India, who sometimes don't get even one meal in a day. And without food, sleep becomes absolutely difficult. The stomach is asking for food, goes into cramps, and you cannot sleep. I have seen with my own eyes, people just drinking water to fill the stomach, to deceive the stomach, and putting a brick on their bellies and binding it around themselves with a rope, so the stomach feels that it is not empty -- inside water, outside the brick. You can deceive the stomach by such false methods, but that is not going to give you nourishment.
So they are just skeletons.
Religions have been giving you false ideas, fictions, to console you.
Communism means removing all fictions from the human mind, giving it a good cleaning of all the past that has filled it with rubbish.
Marx's vision never reached beyond that, but my understanding and my vision is far more perfect. To me, communism is only the first stage -- not the last. And as communism succeeds, people will drop the inferiority complex -- which is needed by the priests, which is needed by the people who are driving humanity into different kinds of slavery.
And when there is no God, there is no guilt -- without guilt no organized religion can live. It is guilt that takes people to the churches, because they become afraid: they have committed sins, now they will suffer hellfire for eternity. So something has to be done to remove the guilt.
All religions provide fictions.
In India just now there has been a kumbha mela; it is going on in Allahabad. Millions of people -- perhaps this is the biggest fair in the world -- just go to the Ganges.… To take a dip in the Ganges means all your sins are taken by the Ganges and you come out absolutely clean. That does not mean that you will stop committing sins; that simply means you have found a very cheap method to get rid of your sins and guilt, so you can commit as many sins as you want! There is no problem, just a small journey to Allahabad, take a dip in the Ganges, and all your rapes and murders, and anything that you have committed, the Ganges takes away. This is the Hindu strategy to keep you feeling guilty.
And the priests are there, you cannot take the dip alone. The priest has to take you into the Ganges in a boat. And he will be reciting mantras, and then you take the dip, and you have to pay the priest. The priest is the agent of the God who does not exist.
In the Catholic religion, you have to go to the priest to confess your sins, and for just ten dollars and five "Hail Marys" your sins are erased. God has forgiven you.
I have always wondered that not a single Catholic theologian -- and they have great theologians, very intellectual -- has raised the question that when a man rapes a woman and God forgives him just because he has given ten dollars to the priest and done five
"Hail Marys," is God absolutely unaware of the woman who has been raped? The criminal is forgiven -- and the victim? Not a single theologian of any religion has ever thought, "What about the victim who has suffered?"
A man kills someone and he goes to the priest and he is forgiven. He goes to the Ganges, gives some money to the priest, takes a dip, and he is forgiven. What about the murdered?
God does not seem to be just. He is in favor of the criminals and sinners. For them he is a father who forgives -- but what about the victims? There is not a single word in any scripture of the organized religions which takes note of the victims. God seems to be favorable to the sinners, to the criminals, but not favorable to the victims. He has no sympathy for the victims.
Just today I received a letter from a sannyasin who has been abused by her father in her childhood, sexually abused. And now she suffers continuously the nightmare that her father exploited her innocence. She did not know anything about sex, and her own father.…
Now that father must have gone to the church and been forgiven by God. What about this girl, who is suffering even now? God has no consideration for this girl. Because the father has abused her, she has become afraid of sex, so she cannot fall in love. The image of the father comes in between. So she is suffering because of the father, she has nightmares about her father and all the abuse that he has done to her, and because of all that, she has become frightened of love. If anybody approaches her she will escape, so she will suffer more because she will never be nourished by love. Because her own father has destroyed her trust in love, her trust is completely finished. If the father cannot be relied upon, then on whom are you going to rely? But God has no consideration.…
This God is an absolute fiction created by the priests. Communism dissolves these priests, dissolves organized religion, takes away all the opium that they have been giving to the people.
Marx was not aware that this was not going to be the complete phenomenon. I can see with more clarity than any Karl Marx or Lenin or Stalin.
Communism has created a vacuum.
You must be surprised, you must be continuously talking amongst yourselves;
Amrito informed me that in the canteen it seems like the early days of the Soviet Union before the revolution, when all the young people were discussing about communism and revolution. The whole Soviet Union before the revolution was agog; everybody was talking about what this revolution is going to be -- "What is communism?" And there were anarchists like Prince Kropotkin and Bakunin, who were talking about a world without the state, without government, without any kind of domination, and all this was discussed.
For all these days you have been discussing -- only the Indians had disappeared. They have come back today, knowing that this is the last day. Such cowards -- and they think they are spiritual! And if any problem is going to happen, it is going to happen to me, not to them. They are just listeners, nobody is going to put them in jail, and they are not going to be shot, but they all disappeared. I have been watching. Already there are no more than half a dozen people who come from Poona, but they also disappeared, seeing the danger.
Communism creates a vacuum -- that is why I support it. My whole vision is that that vacuum can be only filled by meditation. And I am against Gorbachev because he is filling it with Coca-Cola, bringing the priests back, opening the churches. I have some fundamental reason to oppose him because he is opening the doors to all the rubbish that took the communists seventy years to finish.
Now is the time that meditation should be introduced in the Soviet Union. The door should be opened only to the people who are awakened, enlightened -- the buddhas --
because they can fill the vacuum, not with any fiction but with your own potential growing into the vacuum and blossoming into lotus flowers.
So communism is a first step. The second step is spiritualism, and the third step is anarchism. Anarchism is not possible unless people are really, authentically spiritual.
Prince Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Bakunin -- all were unaware of the fact that they were talking about the flowers but they had forgotten about the roots and the trunk. You cannot create flowers without roots, without a trunk.
Communism is just the roots, and the trunk will be meditation. And the flowers will be a world without any domination, without any interference with individual growth -- a world without states, a world without boundaries. Just a world
consisting of individuals -
- not organizations, not nations, not races.
These are the three steps, and I can see them clearly because I have no identification with any -- neither communism nor spiritualism nor anarchism. I am just a witness. I have no involvement with anybody. I am just a mirror who can reflect the whole situation as it is, and even the future as it can grow if the right nourishment is given.
So don't think that I am a communist. I don't identify with anything. Don't think that I am an anarchist. I don't identify with anything. Don't think that I am a spiritualist. I don't identify with anything.
I am just a pure awakened being, just a mirror who reflects -- who has no involvement, no commitment to anything.
I don't belong to any organization, I don't belong to any party, I don't belong to any 'ism'.
You have to understand clearly:
I simply see things because I have gone beyond thoughts. My no-mind is just a pure space in which I can see the actual growth of consciousness and how it should happen.
So communism, to me, is just a basic ground. It is the roots. Spirituality is going to be the trunk and the branches and the foliage. And then at the highest peak comes the absolute freedom from all kinds of dominations, oppressions, suppressions, from all priests, from all politicians.
You blossom like a buddha.
My only interest is to bring out your buddha as a fully-opened lotus in the early morning sun, with small dewdrops shining so beautifully that even real pearls cannot compete with them.
I am not a politician, but that does not mean that I am not interested in human welfare.
And I will say things which may hurt your prejudices. I want to destroy your prejudices completely. I want to create a vacuum. That vacuum is absolutely needed; otherwise you don't have space to grow your potential.
You are filled with religious rubbish, you are filled with political rubbish, you are filled with economic rubbish, all kinds of ideas that you have borrowed. You are not having your own insights -- that rubbish prevents it, it keeps you blind, it gives you a sense of fulfillment which is false.
So remember it. It will be very difficult for outsiders to understand me, almost impossible. Misunderstanding is the only possibility for me as far as the outside world is concerned. But at least you should not misunderstand me.
I have no interest in Stalin, and I have no interest in Gorbachev. My interest is in you!
And when I see that you are filled with a certain prejudice I have to bring that prejudice to the surface so you can see it. All kinds of moral, puritan programming -- I have to fight so many enemies that you are nursing within you! But my whole concern is to make you utterly empty.
So I am not preaching anything; I am not supporting anything. I don't have any doctrine, no philosophy, no cult, no creed. My whole effort is to clean your inside completely from all that the society, the education, the religion, the family, have forced into you. Unless you get rid of it you cannot grow in meditation. You cannot become a buddha.
Communism is a better opportunity than any other kind of social structure because it is negative, because it is without God, without heaven, without hell, without the idea of reincarnation. And it creates a certain equality of opportunity for man and woman.
I have told you just a few days ago that Gorbachev cannot succeed in prohibition. You cannot succeed in prohibition even in India, a hot country which does not need any alcohol. It is absolute nonsense in a country like the Soviet Union which is half the year covered with snow. Taking poor people's vodka, which keeps them warm, is an absolute impossibility! He started with a wrong policy. That shows he does not understand simple arithmetic. If he wanted to be successful he should have declared that nobody can drink his own urine. He would have been successful -- of course you are allowed to drink anybody
else's, but not your own -- and he would have been hailed as a messiah! Only one person, Morarji Desai in India, would have felt a heart attack, but who cares about Morarji Desai? In fact, he needs a heart attack! That program would have successful immediately. The whole of the Soviet Union would have hailed Gorbachev as the greatest man of their history.
Just choose the right things, which are going to be a success. Gorbachev is choosing wrong things.
Now his second policy is that women should go backwards. No woman is going to go back to the kitchen. Women are professors, women are engineers, women are doctors.
They are pilots in the army, and they proved in the second world war that they could fight shoulder to shoulder with any man on every front. They were bombers, they were flying planes to bomb. Now you cannot force them back. It is as impossible as... once you have taken the toothpaste out of the tube, then try to force it back, and you will understand how unsuccessful Gorbachev is going to be. Just a small experiment you can do in your bathroom -- nobody will know about your failure.…
Now these women who have lived as professors, doctors, and engineers and pilots and scientists and academicians -- you want them to go back to the kitchen? It is impossible!
The whole of womankind in the Soviet Union will oppose Gorbachev.
I have heard that his wife is very intelligent, is a law graduate just as he is a law graduate.
In fact, she should start a revolution against Gorbachev! She can understand the situation of women far better than Gorbachev.
And for what is he doing this? Again reducing women to a second-class category of citizens -- what is the reason? Just those six percent... If women are forced back into kitchens and imprisoned to take care of the babies and the husband, and their financial independence is destroyed, there will be more posts vacant for men to occupy. It is because of this small unemployment that is creating a certain undernourishment -- just to give men more opportunities, withdraw all women from the status that they have gained. Do you think he can succeed in it? A
woman who has lived as a free individual, not dependent on her husband's bank account... Only in the Soviet Union do women have their own bank accounts, their own salaries, their own way of living. Only in the Soviet Union are women free to move. They have their own clubs, they have their own societies, they have everything they want.
All over the world the woman is immobile. She is completely crushed, and her birthright to freedom of movement has been taken from her. She can go only to the church -- that's why in churches and temples you will find only women.
Once I was addressing a meeting on the birthday of Krishna, and I was amazed: there were only women! It was a huge temple devoted to Krishna, and the speaker of the assembly in that state where the meeting was held was the inaugurator of the meeting.
And that's why I say these politicians are retarded.… He was the speaker and the chancellor of the university. And he was inaugurating the meeting, not even seeing that these women were sitting keeping their backs towards him because they were gossiping with each other and looking at each other's clothes and each other's ornaments. Who cares about Krishna? They have only this possibility, only this chance to meet with other women.
There must have been at least twenty thousand people, maybe one thousand men and nineteen thousand women. And they were grouped in separate small groups, because you cannot talk with nineteen thousand women, so four women, five women were making a group. The whole meeting was divided into small groups, and great gossip, and so much noise!
And that idiot speaker... his name was Pandit Kunjilal Dube. Kunji means key, but it can also be kunj. Kunj means a beautiful grove of flowering trees. So the name was given by his parents because Krishna used to play his flute by the side of the Jamuna River in a beautiful kunj, in a beautiful grove of mango trees. So he was named after Kunjbihari, which is another name for Krishna. His parents must have given him the namèKunjilal'
thinking that kunj is a sacred word for the worshippers of Krishna.
But in Hindi kunji also means key -- and chabi means key. But with kunji there is a difficulty, it can also mean kunj. So the whole university where he was the chancellor called him Pandit Chabilal Dube, because chabi exactly means kunji,
exactly means
"key." No problem about chabi, there is only one meaning to it.
... So Pandit Chabilal Dube was inaugurating the meeting, and I pulled on his shirt and I told him, "To whom are you talking? Nobody is listening! Women are sitting, keeping their backs to you -- what kind of retarded mind have you got? Perhaps the students are right when they call you Pandit Chabilal Dube. You are just retarded!"
And he was very angry with me, because I was in his university -- a professor in his own university...! But he knew me, and that if he makes any fuss, I will take him to task and I won't care about any professorship. I used to carry my resignation always in my pocket. And I used to show people that, "Only the date has to be signed. Any moment you want my resignation it is here. I keep it -- typed -- in my pocket. Who knows at what time...?"
I refused to speak. The organizers were very much disturbed. They said, "What to do with these women?" They were shouting on the mike again and again, "Stop gossiping!
Turn towards the speaker!" Nobody was interested. Everybody knows about Krishna, what are you going to say about Krishna?
And I simply refused to speak. I said, "I am not an idiot. And this is my last time. I will never again accept any invitation by any organized religion. Anyway you are fortunate that I am not speaking, because I was going to condemn Krishna as much as possible! So these women have saved you. I am going." And I told Pandit Chabilal, "You come with me. Why are you sitting here? You have inaugurated, just be finished! Come with me."
I had to call him out because he had the car. And out of fear he started calling me
"Panditji." I said, "Never use that dirty word for me. You are Pandit Chabilal, I am not. I am not a pandit!" -- Pandit means rabbi, bishop, priest. "You think it is honorable -- I think it is a four-letter word. You just drop it. Don't ever use that word for me, otherwise I will hit you" -- in his own car!
He said, "Don't say it so loudly, the chauffeur is there."
I said, "I don't care! He knows absolutely about you, who you are." And the chauffeur started laughing. It was a limousine, so he immediately closed the window; he said, "You are a dangerous man -- in my own car...?"
I said, "This car belongs to the state, it is not your own car. It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you."
He said, "What?"
I said, "Yes! It is owned by the state, and I am as much a citizen of this state as you are.
And you are a public servant -- I am the public."
He started looking out the window just to avoid me. But I said, "I will continue -
- you have to listen. Why have you taken me in your car?" He said, "Strange. You called me out!"
I said, "I had to call you, because I have not brought my car. The organizers brought me in their car; now that I have told them I am going to speak against Krishna, they are not going to give me their car. I needed a car, I don't need you. You can get out if you want!
And your chauffeur is in my favor: you saw how he laughed."
He said, "You don't understand that I am also the chancellor of the university."
I said, "I don't care about chancellors and vice-chancellors." I showed him the card that was my resignation.
He said, "Why are you showing me this card?"
I said, "I have just to put the date, and finished! You are no more my chancellor and I can throw you out of the car. I am just being courteous to your old age, because the danger is you may be finished if I throw you out. So keep quiet, and don't harass me."
He said, "Strange!? You are harassing me -- in my own car!"
And it used to happen with that Pandit Chabilal Dube in many places, because he was a speaker of the state and a great scholar of Hinduism, and the chancellor of the university.
Just by virtue of holding the office, every speaker of the parliament becomes the chancellor of that particular university where I was a professor.
So I told him, "You are not really even worthy to be a lecturer in the university. You are only B.A., Ll.B. -- that too, third class."
He said, "Who told you?"
I said, "I have my sources -- your wife. She showed me your certificates also. I have taken photocopies of them, and if you make any trouble for me I am going to publish all those certificates in the newspapers. A third-class B.A., Ll.B. who is not even a postgraduate is the chancellor of the university!"
He said, "It is better not to fight. I am sorry that I disturbed you, but don't publish anything." I had no copies of the certificates or anything, but I knew he was a third-class Ll.B. and had become a politician because he could not succeed in the court.
The same was the situation of Mahatma Gandhi. He became a politician because the first time he entered court... The whole night he had been preparing and preparing his first appearance in the Bombay High Court. And he was a barrister from England. As he entered the court, his legs started trembling, and he could speak only two words --
"Your Honor" -- and he flopped down perspiring and had to be carried out. That's why he became a politician!
But nobody bothers about the realities of life. These failures become politicians because politics needs no qualifications, has no standards. This is the only profession which any idiot can enter.
Communism, to me, is a very significant step towards the ultimate buddhahood. Question 2
The second question:
APPARENTLY WHEN RONALD REAGAN OR GEORGE BUSH GO TO THE
CHURCH TO KNEEL AND PRAY TO THEIR GOD, AT THEIR SIDE IS AN AIDE
WHO CARRIES THE BRIEFCASE WITH THE CODES THAT ALLOW THE PRESIDENT TO SIGNAL AN IMMEDIATE LAUNCH OF THEIR NUCLEAR
ARSENAL, THEREBY EFFECTIVELY TERMINATING ALL LIFE ON EARTH.
BUT STILL STALIN IS THE BAD GUY. IS THERE ANY LIMIT TO OUR HYPOCRISY?
Even in the church -- this is a fact! When Ronald Reagan used to go to the church --
and now George Bush, because the White House has its own church, the presidential church -- one aide would carry a briefcase. And people became concerned: what is in the briefcase? Why every day when Ronald Reagan is kneeling down and praying to God, does one man stand by his side with a briefcase?
Finally it was discovered that the briefcase is not an ordinary briefcase, it has all the buttons inside for nuclear weapons to be launched, immediately -- from the church! If there is not time enough to reach to the White House where they have all the buttons for the nuclear weapons... This was a portable death to the whole earth.
But it is still carried; now it is George Bush who is kneeling. And one never thinks about what kind of hypocrisy... You are praying to God, you are kneeling down, and you are keeping by your side death for the whole planet.
There is certainly no limit to our hypocrisy. We have succeeded only in creating a hypocrite world. It is not civilized, it is not cultured.
Question 3
The third question:
IN THE USA, AWASH WITH DRUGS, VIOLENCE, MENTAL ILLNESS, AND
GENERAL ALIENATION, IT SEEMS THAT MARX'S MUCH-AWAITED CRISIS OF
CAPITALISM HAS COME. BUT IT IS A SPIRITUAL RATHER THAN AN ECONOMIC CRISIS. WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?
This is the USA: full of drugs, and full of nuclear weapons, mental illnesses, violence --
violence without purpose. I have told you that just recently six people were killed in L.A.
because the cars were delayed, some accident somewhere miles away must have happened. Now people get angry, they want to reach their home as quickly as possible. In L.A. or in New York, in San Francisco, you can reach your home from the office by walking more quickly than by driving.
This was discovered when once it happened that for three days the electricity went out in almost half the northern part of America. All the lights disappeared; elevators could not work, signals on the road stopped working. So the traffic had to stop; otherwise there would have been tremendous clashes. When there are no signals giving a red or green light to stop or to go... so all the traffic had to be stopped, and people had to walk. Then they discovered that by walking they reached to the office more quickly, they reached their homes more quickly!
Now cars in America are moving with less speed than bullock carts in India! For hours the traffic is jammed, and it certainly creates anger. You are hungry, you want to go home to eat something, to drink something, and here you are sitting in the car just boiling, honking your horn. But that is useless because everybody is honking his horn for miles. So you only hear horns, honking and honking.
Then a few people became so furious that they forgot completely that the man ahead is in the same trouble. He is not preventing you -- nobody knows who is preventing; nobody knows what has happened far away. Maybe a truck has
upturned, maybe a crash of six cars, and unless that is removed.…
Until the police come, it cannot be removed, because the police have to take care. Until the insurance agent comes it cannot be removed, because the insurance agency has to pay the price of the car. If a man has died, there is even more delay. One never knows what is happening.
But people -- six people, not one; just in one day! -- went so mad that they took out their guns and shot the people just ahead, who were not at all responsible.
But in anger, in rage, you become absolutely blind. It is not only that love is blind --
hate is much blinder, but nobody has said it. "Love is blind" -- nobody says about hate, how blind hate can be.
Now this anger is absolute madness -- shooting the poor fellow ahead, who is in the same jam as you are. And then immediately the sale of machine guns, automatic rifles went up. Every person who had a car purchased an automatic gun, because it is dangerous -- at least if somebody kills you, you can also kill somebody. It does not matter who is killed, but somebody is killed. At least you can show the gun. And people hang their guns above their heads in the car, so everybody can know: "Beware! If you honk too much behind me or ahead of me, I am going to shoot!"
America is perhaps the only country where there is no special license needed for keeping such dangerous arms, automatic guns. One gun can kill one hundred sixty people without reloading the bullets, and you can purchase one from any dealer. The dealer needs the license to sell, but the people who purchase don't need any license.
And in mental illness, America is far ahead of any other country. So many psychoanalysts, so many different schools of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, psychology, psychosynthesis, analytical psychology, and many kinds of therapies are available to people. Millions of people are suffering from mental sickness. Millions of people are suffering from too much eating. Millions of people are suffering because they don't have any food, any clothes.
This decadent America, this absolutely sick country -- and Gorbachev wants to imitate America! He wants to become another President Ronald Reagan or
George Bush, and he wants his beautiful Soviet land to be turned into a sick, decadent, rotten America.
Yesterday I was telling you that Ronald Reagan has also been nominated for a Nobel peace prize. I thought and thought: What peace has he created in the world? Then I remembered that he has done something peaceful, and he needs a Nobel Prize for it.
Many of you must remember Rajneeshpuram, our commune in Oregon, in America. It was a desert, one hundred twenty-six square miles of just pure desert. It had been for sale for forty years and nobody purchased it -- what will you do with a desert? We purchased it, and we transformed the desert into a beautiful oasis. Five thousand sannyasins were living there, working there, dancing, singing, meditating. It was one of the most joyous places in the whole world -- so much dancing, so much joy, so much love, such friendliness. No family -- the whole commune was one.
So I remembered: Ronald Reagan has destroyed Rajneeshpuram violently, and he has restored the peace of the desert. That seems to be the reason for his nomination for the Nobel peace prize. Now it is peaceful again: no dance, no singing.…
The day I arrived there was only one house which they had made for me. There was not a single bird. I was amazed to see, it looked like a nightmare! All around just bare mountains with no trees, with no birds. In the morning you could not hear a cuckoo, you could not hear any chirping and tweeting of all kinds of birds. Neither in the evening could you see thousands of birds coming back to their trees. It was a dead desert!
We cultivated it, we made it green. We made small artificial rivers, we made a big dam.
Even if for five years there had been no rain, we had enough water for five thousand people. And at the time of festivals there were twenty thousand people, and we had beautiful tents for fifteen thousand people. We had created a new kind of tent. And rather than giving us a reward for the new tent, we were punished! A court case was put against us saying that these people have created, without permission, a permanent structure. A tent is not a permanent structure!
We had made a tent which can work all the year round -- in rains, in summer,
when the snow is falling in winter, when it is too cold. It could be heated, it could be air-conditioned; there was no question of any rains or any snow getting inside it. It was a totally new phenomenon. All those who saw it were immensely impressed, that we had made something which could have a world market. In Saudi Arabia, or in deserts where people live in tents, but in the hot sun the tent is just boiling... an air-conditioned tent you have never heard of! And in snow, in winter, the tent can be heated. It was absolutely safe all the year round.
And a court case was filed against us saying that we had made a permanent structure. I told my attorneys, "Just take a tent in a truck, take it inside the court"
-- because it takes only ten minutes to put it up, and ten minutes to take it down. "A building that can be put up in ten minutes and taken down in ten minutes cannot be called permanent. If the judge has any eyes to see, there is no need for any argument. It is not a question of law, it is a question of whether the judge has eyes or is blind."
Can you put the White House together in ten minutes and then within another ten minutes take it down?
They called it a "permanent structure." A permanent structure needs a license or permission from the government. We never thought that a tent could be a "permanent structure."
With violence, with lawlessness against their own constitution, they destroyed the commune. That I remembered yesterday, that perhaps because he has restored the peace of that dead desert, Ronald Reagan deserves the Nobel Prize. I don't know of any other peace that he has created.
Gorbachev is trying to bring this decadent and mentally sick America into the Soviet Union where there is no psychoanalysis, no psychiatry. People are as mentally healthy as they have ever been anywhere, for the simple reason that their food is simple, nourishing but not fattening; their work is simple, their life has no complications. The wife earns, so there is no problem of continuous fighting that she wants a fur coat, she wants a new car, or she wants this and she wants that and you cannot afford it, you are going bankrupt, so rather than fulfilling her wishes you jump from a one hundred-story building. The business is finished, the wife is torturing you, what else to do?
So many people jump out of their windows. Do you think all these people are
taking LSD? -- because LSD is the only drug that gives the idea that you can fly. So LSD has to be taken only under guidance and all doors and windows have to be closed, because it creates the absolute certainty in the mind that you can fly: you just jump out of the window and open your wings.
America has been discovered many times, and always has been hushed back up. Now that moment has come again. America has to be hushed up again and forgotten. Columbus has not done a great service to humanity. He is one of the enemies.
Seven hundred years ago, America was known but then hushed up. Five thousand years ago America was known but was hushed up, because whenever... it seems the very land is poisonous. It drives people crazy.
So it is not for the first time that we will have to hush it. It has been hushed many times, discovered again, hushed again. Now if you don't hush it again, it is going to destroy the whole world.
And this poor fellow Comrade Gorbachev, who is no more a comrade, wants the Soviet Union to become America. He has forgotten that even if you become like America you will be second-rate. The Soviet Union had a dignity of its own, far more healthy mentally, far more healthy physically.
It was the Soviet Union who stopped the second world war. If Adolf Hitler had not gone more insane... because for years he had success, continuous success, and no western power was able to prevent him. Great nations like France surrendered in twenty-four hours. Naturally, he had a pact with Stalin before he started the war, that "We will remain friends. Neither you have to attack Germany, nor will we attack you." Because he knew perfectly well that in the first world war it was because of Russia's snows that Germany was defeated -- not by Russia's armies; just the snow is enough to destroy any enemy.
When Russian snow starts falling, you cannot move an inch. All your tanks, all your trucks, all your food supply is blocked. The snow is heavy, and it goes on falling for six months continuously. Your soldiers are covered, your tanks are covered; even helicopters cannot find where to drop the food. Everything has disappeared under a vast cover of white snow.
In the first world war it was not the czar's soldiers, because they had returned home, but snow started falling and Germany got defeated. Hitler was aware of it.
He first made a pact and treaty with Stalin, that "You will not attack us, and we will not attack you."
Hitler went on winning for years continuously, all over Europe, and Japan was winning continuously for years -- even Calcutta was ordered to be evacuated because Japanese armies had reached Rangoon, and the second attack was to be on Calcutta. The third attack was to be on Jabalpur -- where I used to teach, but not at the time of the second world war -- because Jabalpur was the very center of India and because of its position the British government had its biggest factory for armaments there. So after Calcutta, the next target was Jabalpur. Even Jabalpur was getting ready to be evacuated. Once they attacked Calcutta, Jabalpur would have to be evacuated.
Such tremendous success got into the head of that madman Adolf Hitler, and he started attacking the Soviet Union. He forgot the treaty, he forgot that the Soviet Union had kept its word and had not interfered at all. And that was the point of his defeat. It was Stalin who was responsible for saving the world from Adolf Hitler and Hirohito and Benito Mussolini.
Just not to give the whole glory to the Soviet Union, America immediately rushed to help Europe. Up to now, America had been keeping aloof, but when they saw that the Soviet Union was going to have the whole glory of saving Europe and the whole world, they immediately rushed in on both fronts. MacArthur was sent with great armies to fight Japan, and Eisenhower was sent to Europe. If Adolf Hitler was going to be finished, the glory should be shared by the Soviet Union and America both, not only the Soviet Union.
But it was, in fact, only the Soviet Union who ended the second world war and the desire of fascism to rule over the whole world.
Question 4
The fourth question:
HEARING YOU TALK, I HAVE THE FEELING THAT CHRISTIAN FASCISM
WON'T REST UNTIL IT HAS DESTROYED EVERY TRACE OF COMMUNISM. I FEEL CHRISTIANS' VENGEANCE AGAINST COMMUNISM FOR POWERFULLY
CHALLENGING THEIR WORD OF GOD.
That's true. The whole of Christianity is against communism for the simple reason that the communists have thrown the Bible and thrown God and thrown all the Christian missionaries and Christian priests out of the Soviet land.
The whole of Christianity is sitting on a volcano. And America is basically a fundamentalist, fascist Christian country. It is so fascist in its ideologies that all Charles Darwin's books, Ronald Reagan wanted to burn. His teachings should be prevented in every school, college, university, research institute, and all his books in all the libraries, all the colleges, schools, universities, should be burned. Why? Because his idea of evolution goes against the Christian idea of creation. This is real fascism.
Certainly Christianity will take every chance to destroy communism, but it is not going to succeed. Seventy years has made the Soviet Union strong enough. Gorbachev will be thrown out; Russia is not going on the way of capitalism and Christianity. The time has come when the Soviet Union should say to Gorbachev, "Good-bye comrade," and expel him from the Soviet Union. He can have the Nobel Prize and go to America and become a Yankee.
The sutra:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
WHEN UNGAN HIMSELF BECAME A MASTER, HE ONCE SAID -- WHEN
ADDRESSING AN ASSEMBLY OF MONKS -- "HERE IS A CHILD FROM A RESPECTABLE FAMILY: WHATEVER YOU ASK, THERE IS NOTHING HE
CAN'T ANSWER."
You have to understand a few symbols. Ungan himself became a master, became an enlightened buddha. Addressing an assembly of monks, he said, "Here is a child..."
Unless you become a child again, you cannot be a buddha. That innocence is needed, and I am destroying all your conceptions in every possible way, just to
clean your mind and bring it closer to that of a child who knows nothing. "HERE IS A CHILD FROM A RESPECTABLE FAMILY."
He is not talking about ordinary families. In Zen the "family" means the whole lineage of Zen masters. That is called the "dhamma family," from Buddha to Mahakashyapa, to Bodhidharma, to Rinzai -- this is the family. He is not referring to his ordinary family.
Whenever you come across the word `family' in a Zen anecdote, remember: they are referring to their masters, who have given them their second birth. The first birth is physical, which parents give to you; the second birth is spiritual, which only one who is enlightened can give you. It comes from master to disciple.
This is the family; it goes back twenty-five centuries to Gautam Buddha. So when Ungan said, "HERE IS A CHILD FROM A RESPECTABLE FAMILY," he
is saying, "Here is another buddha again, from the lineage of thousands of buddhas. That is my family, I am coming out of it. My master has given me a new birth.
"WHATEVER YOU ASK, THERE IS NOTHING HE CAN'T ANSWER."
This child, this innocent clarity, can answer any question. Whatever you want to ask, you can ask and you will receive the answer.
ONE OF HIS DISCIPLES, TOZAN -- who finally became an enlightened master --
STEPPED FORWARD AND ASKED, "HOW MANY BOOKS ARE THERE IN HIS
HOUSE?"
You are talking about the child, and he is asking, "How many books are in the house of the child?" Because at that moment he was only a scholar and he knew only that unless you have scriptures, you cannot answer all the questions. From where will you get the information? He had no idea that there is another source, transformation, from where answers simply arise -- not out of information, but out of an inner revolution. At this moment he was only a scholar, so of course he asked, "How many books are in that child's house?"
UNGAN REPLIED, "HE DOES NOT HAVE ANY BOOKS, NOT EVEN A SINGLE
LETTER."
He is saying that for a man who is awakened there is not even a single letter, nothing to say about a thought, nothing to say about scriptures. That child is absolutely innocent.
There is no knowledge, no information; there is only a clarity.
Out of that clarity a response comes. That response is original and authentic, to any question.
TOZAN THEN ASKED, "HOW COULD HE BE SO WELL INFORMED?"
If the child you are talking about has no books, not even a letter, then how he can be so well informed that, as you are saying, he can answer all your questions?
This is the way of the scholar. He cannot go beyond the words, he cannot go beyond the scripture. He cannot go beyond information.
Information comes from outside and transformation comes from inside. He is not aware that there is another way also. Not that the childlike consciousness -- that purity, that innocence of a buddha -- has all the answers in it. No, nothing -- it has no answers, but as your question arises that purity responds. It is a mirror. It shows your face; it reflects.
Out of nothingness, out of silence, arises a right answer.
TOZAN ASKED, "HOW COULD HE BE SO WELL INFORMED?"
Ungan's response is very important. He says, "HE SELDOM SLEEPS DAY OR NIGHT."
His awareness is so complete that there is no trace of sleep left in him. No trace of any unconsciousness, no trace of any darkness -- everything has become so luminous and light.…
It is from this alertness, day and night -- awareness, day and night -- that his answers come.
Anando comes to wake me up at 3:30 in the afternoon. It is a difficult task, to wake somebody who is awake. So poor Anando, as she opens the door I say, "Hello, Anando."
She has never had a chance to wake me up to now. Just hiding behind my blanket, I say,
"Hello, Anando!"
Just the other day she was asking, "It is strange -- I open the door so silently and you are hiding in your blanket and you immediately respond."
Amrito knows that it is absolutely impossible for me to sleep. He tries every possible medicine and he brings all kinds of compact disks which create sleep, and the whole night I have to listen! But I am not at all tired. In the morning when I wake up from my whole night of awakening, I have lost the very sense of time.
That's why last night I went on and on. I would have gone on and on, just I remembered Sardar Gurudayal Singh; otherwise there was no question. Only in the car, Anando told me, "You know it is 11:05!"
I said, "My God, that is a record! If I had not remembered Sardar Gurudayal Singh, last night was going to be a marathon discourse. Only early in the morning when sun was rising, I would have allowed you to go for breakfast! Some day it is going to happen.…
"I WANT TO ASK SOMETHING OF THE CHILD," CONTINUED TOZAN. "IS IT
POSSIBLE?"
"HE could ANSWER, BUT HE WOULD NOT," REPLIED UNGAN.
Now he is saying something very important. He could answer, but he would not because the answer will not be as authentic as his experience. The answer will be far below the truth. He can answer, he knows the truth, but he would not answer
because he cannot betray the truth.
So every buddha is talking around and around, hoping that somehow you will look at the center at some point. But he goes on round and round, taking you in circles, pointing always to the center but never saying a single word about your center.
You have to experience it. You are the answer.
So Ungan replied, "HE COULD ANSWER," because he knows it, "BUT HE WOULD
NOT," because language does not allow it.
ON ANOTHER OCCASION, UNGAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE HAVE YOU
BEEN?"
THE MONK REPLIED, "I HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THE DHARMA TO A ROCK."
UNGAN ASKED, "DID THE ROCK NOD?"
... Because in Zen the rocks are as alive as you are. They grow. The trees are as sensitive as you are -- perhaps more sensitive. You can talk to them. So Ungan does not question the fellow -- "Are you mad, talking to a rock?" -- on the contrary, he asks, "DID THE
ROCK NOD?"
The question is not that you were talking, the question is whether the rock was listening.
If it was listening it would have nodded.
THE MONK HAD NO ANSWER AND UNGAN COMMENTED, "IT NODS BEFORE
YOU TALK."
That's what makes Sardar Gurudayal Singh special. He laughs before you tell the joke.
Everybody laughs after the joke, that is very normal, but laughing before the joke shows immense trust that something great is going to happen.
Ungan said, "IT NODS BEFORE YOU TALK. If you are really in tune with the rock, it nods before you start talking. And you have not even received the nod after you stopped talking." Of course the man was completely embarrassed, shocked: what is this man saying, that the rock nods before?
It really nods before.
You have to be a master -- then everything around you is always receptive, always ready to receive something from you. Even rocks are not rocks; they also have a heart, perhaps of a different kind.
The whole existence is alive. Nothing is without life. This is one of the fundamentals of Zen, that the whole existence is alive. That's why it can discard the concept of God. There is no need. The whole existence is alive, sensitive, intelligent, is capable of growing into a divine experience of being the awakened one.
Basho wrote:
ALL THE CUCKOOS DANCING
IN THE TREES.
The cuckoo is the sweetest musician. The cuckoo creates the sweetest songs. Its body is ordinary; if you see the cuckoo, it looks just like a crow, not much different, but it has a tremendous spirit. When it sings there is no comparison to it.
Basho must have opened his eyes, sitting in a mango grove, because cuckoos are found more often in mango groves. They like the mangoes. The mango is
thought, particularly in the East, to be the king of all the fruits. It is! Its sweetness is such that wherever there are mango trees, you will find cuckoos waiting for the mangoes to become ripe. And when they become ripe then they go really cuckoo! Dancing, singing, "The mangoes are ripe!" They love the mangoes. So Basho must have been either by the side of a mango grove or inside it.
Buddha always loved, his whole life, to have his camps -- because he was continuously moving -- in mango groves. Perhaps India has more mango trees than any other country, and at Buddha's time it had even more because it was thought to be one of the virtues to plant mango trees. All the kings, all the rich people tried to create as many mango trees as possible; all roads were surrounded for hundreds of miles by mango trees. And every village, every town, had its own mango grove outside the town, by the riverside or by the lake, because the mango grove was the shelter of all the wandering mystics.
The trees are very thick, shadowy trees, and when there are thousands of mango trees they give a great cool breeze even in the hottest summer. When the mangoes are ripe, cuckoos come running from all over because the mango has a very special fragrance.
That fragrance brings the cuckoos from far away and as long as the mangoes last, they remain in the mango groves, singing and dancing. Their song is certainly the sweetest song in existence.
So Basho must have come out of his meditation, and suddenly he saw all the cuckoos dancing in the trees.
Just visualize these haikus, always. See the mango trees, see the hundreds of cuckoos dancing, singing, and their sweet song will fill your very heart.
Question 5 Maneesha's question:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
HEARING YOU TALK ABOUT COMMUNISM BEING COMBINED WITH ZEN, MARX COMBINED WITH BUDDHA, I HAD THE FLASH THAT ROSA
LUXEMBURG WOULD BE DELIGHTED TO HEAR YOU.
I HAVE THE FEELING THAT THIS IS WHAT SHE WAS LOOKING FOR AND
COULD NOT FIND OR EXPRESS IN HER TIME, BUT SHE MUST HAVE HAD
THE LONGING IN HER ALREADY.
SHE WROTE THE FOLLOWING WHILE SHE WAS IN PRISON IN BRESLAU, GERMANY, IN 1917.
"HERE I AM LYING, ALONE, WRAPPED IN THESE BLACK FOLDS OF DARKNESS, BOREDOM, IMPRISONMENT, THE WINTER -- AND AT THE
SAME TIME, MY HEART BEATS WITH AN UNBELIEVABLE, UNKNOWABLE, UNKNOWN INNER JOY.…
"IN THE DARKNESS OF LIFE I'M SMILING, AS IF I KNOW SOME MAGIC
SECRET THAT GIVES THE LIE TO ALL EVIL AND SADNESS AND CHANGES IT
INTO BRIGHT LIGHT AND HAPPINESS. I'M LOOKING FOR A REASON FOR
THIS HAPPINESS AND I DON'T FIND ANY, AND I HAVE TO SMILE AGAIN. I THINK THAT THE SECRET IS NOTHING ELSE THAN LIFE IN ITSELF."
WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMENT?
Maneesha, I have always loved the woman revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg. She is the topmost revolutionary as far as women are concerned. She had the same quality of revolution as Lenin -- and she was a woman, so certainly she had a totally different approach to revolution. It has not to be just of the body, it has also to be of the soul. It has not be just on the outside of man, in the social
structure; it has to be of man in his consciousness also.
Certainly she was not aware of any meditative rebellion within. That's why she says, "I'm looking for the reason." And she thinks she has found the reason in life itself -- but that is a very superficial reason. Without meditation you don't know the secrets of life, you know only the surface of life. Even that much gives you enough joy, but you don't know the depth, the abysmal depth and the infinite height, immeasurable both. Once you know this vertical dimension of height and depth, life becomes a pure joy, a laughter, a song, a dance, an ecstasy.
Rosa Luxemburg was in a wrong place. She should have been in the East. Out of all the revolutionaries in the West, perhaps she was more sensitive and would have learned the Eastern way of getting deeper into life, not just on the surface.
On the surface life becomes "eat, drink, be merry." It is superficial, you get bored sooner or later. Unless you reach to the abysmal depth and infinite height, simultaneously, you don't know what a miracle life is, what a mystery life is.
But she was in search; she died before she could have found it. But death is not death.
Rosa Luxemburg may be here -- if not today, then tomorrow.
All those who are seeking the depth of life and the secret, the ultimate secret of consciousness, are bound to move -- knowingly or unknowingly -- towards someone who has already reached the whole.
... It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh again.
Officer Dopeski, of the Warsaw Police traffic control team, is sitting in his car eating a potato sandwich when he sees a bright red Ferrari speed past him at one hundred and eighty miles per hour.
Officer Dopeski nearly chokes on his sandwich in excitement as he slams his door, starts his car, flicks on his red flashing lights, flicks on his siren, fastens his seat belt, checks his pistol, opens the glovebox and looks for his ticket book, slams the gearshift into GO, and stomps on the gas pedal.
One hour and two hundred miles later, Officer Dopeski finally manages to stop the speeding Italian sports car.
"Okay," says Dopeski, fumbling nervously with his ticket book. "Just tell me your name!"
The driver of the Ferrari looks up and says, "My name is-a Alfonso de Villa Martino Rivera Giovanni Tortoni Baloni."
"Well..." replies Officer Dopeski, perspiring, "... don't do it again!"
Newton Hooton drops into the Lucky Luke Saloon one evening, and orders a triple martini.
"What a coincidence," says Max, the bartender. "Just an hour ago, I was saying that nobody ever orders a triple martini any more."
As Max is mixing the drink, both he and Newton look up as Lucy Leggs rushes in and asks for a triple martini.
Newton and Max look at each other in amazement.
"Hey, lady!" cries Max. "That is incredible! The gentleman here just ordered a triple martini, and we were just discussing how nobody ever orders that drink these days. This is really a coincidence!"
"Well," says Lucy, "I am celebrating a very special occasion. My husband and I have been married for nine years, and we have always wanted a child. Just today, I have learned that I am pregnant!"
The two men congratulate Lucy and then Newton says, "Well that is a coincidence, because I am also celebrating a very special occasion. I have been breeding exotic chickens for years, and I have been trying to produce a purple- spotted hen. And just today, I found out that I have been successful."
"What a coincidence," says Lucy. "How did you manage it?" "Well," replies Newton, "I just changed cocks."
"Wow!" cries Lucy. "That really is a coincidence! Me too!"
Comrade Gorbachev has heard rumors that his policies are being discussed in Poona, India, so he decides to go and check it out. When his plane arrives at
Poona airport, the Indian Army is there to welcome him.
As Gorbachev steps off the plane, the military guard of honor fires off the traditional twenty-one gun salute.
"What were those shots?" asks Swami Deva Coconut, standing in the crowd. "Gorbachev has arrived!" says the man next to him.
"Really?" replies Coconut. "You mean they could not get him with just one shot?"
Nivedano... (Gibberish) Nivedano...
Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen.
This is the right moment to turn in. Gather your whole energy and rush towards your center of being, with your total consciousness and with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment of life on the earth.
This urgency is absolutely needed to reach to the center. Faster and faster, deeper and deeper...
As you start coming closer to your center, a great silence descends over you like soft rain.
It is so tangible, you can feel it.
As you come even closer
a great peace arises from your very sources surrounding you
into great fragrance
of the beyond.
Just a little more
and you are on the center facing your original face.
Your original face
is the face of the buddha, the awakened one.
At this moment you are the buddha. I teach the buddha, I don't teach Buddhism. The only quality buddha has is witnessing. He is a pure witness -- no judgment, no identification, just watching without having any opinion.
Witness, you are not the body. Witness, you are not the mind. And witness... you are only the witness. And as you relax into witnessing, a great ecstasy, a great divine drunkenness overtakes you. You suddenly become aware of your immortality, of your eternal life.
To make this witnessing deeper, Nivedano... Relax, let go.
But go on remembering you are a buddha, a pure witness. And as your witnessing goes on becoming deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, you start melting like ice in the ocean.
I can see it. Gautam the Buddha Auditorium is turning into an ocean of consciousness.
Ten thousand buddhas have melted into one ocean.
A pure ocean of consciousness without any ripples or waves.
At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth, just because you
are centered at your very ultimate nature. The buddha is your dhamma,
he is your very nature.
The evening was beautiful on its own, but your totality, your intensity, your urgency, your honesty, has made it a great splendor. The whole existence surrounding you is celebrating your great victory.
There is no other victory greater than this.
To become a buddha is the most important, the most significant, the only meaningful act in your whole life.
Gather as much experience and as many juices of life... and the blossoms and the flowers and the fragrances,
the peace, the silence, the serenity, the divine drunkenness, the ecstasy.
Collect all of them. You have to bring them to your life. Your life has to become a life of songs, a life of dances, a life of eternal music, a life of divine ecstasy.
This is the transformation which Zen Fire and Zen Wind brings to you.
And never forget to persuade the buddha to come along with you. He is coming every day closer and closer and closer. You will feel his presence just behind you, coming, following, like a shadow.
This is the first step of meditation: buddha coming behind you as a shadow. But the shadow is very solid, very tangible; you can touch it, you can feel it, you can have a tremendous fragrance arising from it.
The second step: you become the shadow and buddha comes ahead of you, in front of you.
The third step: your shadow disappears into the transparent awareness, awakening, enlightenment of the buddha.
You are no more, only the buddha is. You are no more, only the existence is.
This is the ultimate revolution, the ultimate evolution -- the ultimate truth, beauty, godliness.
Nivedano...
Come back. But come as buddhas, with the same grace, the same beauty, the same joy, the same ecstasy.
Sit just for a few seconds to remember and to remind yourself where you have been -- to what depth, to what height you have reached... to what opening of space you have experienced.
And see that the fragrance of the innermost has come with you, surrounding your being.
And watch, feel... the buddha is standing behind you.
He is your very nature, he is your blissfulness. He is your benediction.
And the day is not far away when you will take the second step and become the shadow of the buddha. Once you become the shadow of the buddha, the third step becomes very easy. The shadow can disappear into the buddha without any trouble.
When only the buddha is left, alone, you have come home.
This is the search of all human consciousness; this is the search of all living beings. This is the source from where we have come, and this is the goal to where we are going.
Once the circle is complete -- the source and goal meet together -- you have come to a perfection of which you cannot even have a dream. You cannot even visualize what that perfection is. Even after reaching it, you cannot manage to describe it, you cannot manage to explain it, you can simply dance.
Your eyes will shine with it,
your silence will become a song about it. Your words may carry a little fragrance of it.
Your very existence will radiate with the light that you have found in the completion of the circle.
The source and the goal meeting... now, once this happens to any consciousness, any human being, he is not to be born again into a prison of body, of bones and blood and flesh. Then he disappears into the cosmos and becomes one with the cosmos.
Just a sincere passion
to disappear into the cosmos is needed.
It is not a long journey, it is just a quantum leap.
And you are trying the best that you can do.
I am absolutely happy about you. And the day when you all will start blossoming into buddhas will not only be a day of happiness for you, it will be a day of great celebration for the whole of existence.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Beloved Master.
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