< Previous | Contents | Next >
Chapter title: Magicless Magic
12 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code:
7606120
ShortTitle:
DANG02
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
100
mins
The first question:
Question 1
YESTERDAY WHILE SITTING IN ZAZEN I FELT MYSELF GET HIT WITH A STICK ON MY HEAD. BUT PRADEEPA THAT TIME HAD NOT HIT ME. ALSO
TODAY DURING THE LECTURE I GOT HIT TWICE ON THE HEAD BUT NO
STICK-HITTER WAS AROUND. IS THIS MAGICLESS MAGIC?
It is sheer imagination, and on the path of meditation imagination is the greatest pitfall.
Be aware of it. You can imagine so deeply and you can believe in your imagination so intensely that it can appear more real than the real.
Imagination is a great force. On the path of meditation, imagination is a barrier; on the path of love, imagination is a help. On the path of love, imagination is used as a device: you are told to imagine as intensely and passionately as possible. But on the path of meditation the same thing becomes a barrier.
Imagination simply means that you visualise a certain thing but you put so much energy into it that it almost becomes real. Every night we all dream. While dreaming, every dream looks real. To come to know in a dream that this is a dream will be the end of it; then you will find yourself awake. The dream can continue only if you believe that it is real. And even people who are very skeptical, doubting, of the scientific attitude, even they go on believing in the night, they go on believing in their dreams.
Every morning you find that it was just imagination but again every night you become a victim to it. And again when the dream unfolds you start believing it. On the path of meditation that hold of the dream faculty has to be loosened. Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples. 'Unless you can remember in a dream that it is a dream, you will never awake.'
This whole world is a dream -- a dream is a private world, the world is a common dream.
If you cannot awake while dreaming, it will be impossible to awake while you are awake, because now the dream is very big, and it is not only your energy that is creating the dream, it is the energy of all. It will be difficult. If you cannot come to see that something in your dream is false, when you alone are to decide and nobody else can interfere.… It is nobody else's business. You cannot invite anybody else into your dream because it is so private.
It happened that two patients of a psychoanalyst tried to play a trick on the analyst. It was the first of April and perfectly appropriate.
They decided that the next day they would come, separately, and they would relate the same dream -- they decided on the details of the dream -- to the
psychiatrist and watch how he feels. It is impossible to dream the same dream together, two persons have never dreamed one dream together, so they wanted to shock him.
The first related his dream. When he left the second came and he related his dream. And he waited for some hint that the psychiatrist was shocked or surprised, but he was not surprised at all. He simply listened as if there was nothing out of common, as if it was just usual, as if it were an everyday affair.
The man asked, 'Are you not surprised?'
The psychiatrist said, 'This is the third time I have heard this dream.' The man said, 'Third time? Who is the third person?'
He was shocked because only two persons knew about the dream. Who was this third person?
The psychiatrist laughed. He said, 'You cannot play a trick like that on me, because no two persons can dream the same dream. It is impossible.'
It does not happen that way because a dream is an absolutely private world. You cannot invite anybody else into your dream, you cannot ask anybody else's opinion about your dream -- whether it is true or untrue. It depends absolutely on you. And if you cannot even awake in this, how will it be possible for you to awake in the great MAYA, the great illusion that the world is?
So Gurdjieff used to say that the first effort is to awake in a dream and see the dream as a dream. He had a few techniques for how to awake in a dream. He would teach his disciples that every night, when they went to sleep, they should go on repeating as deeply as possible, as passionately as possible, 'This time when I start dreaming in the night I will raise my hand and touch my head. And immediately when I touch my head the remembrance will happen to me that this is a dream.' For months together the disciple would think, auto-suggest. Every night falling into sleep they would repeat it again and again with deep passion, so that it entered into the very unconscious layers of the mind.
When it enters deeper than the dream then one day it happens; while dreaming, automatically the hand goes to the head and suddenly he remembers that this is a dream.
But the moment he remembers that it is a dream, the dream simply withers away, fades out. He is awake while asleep, and the dream has left him.
If it happens that you awake in a dream, in the morning the whole world has changed. It is no more the same world because your eyes are clear, you have attained to a certain clarity of perception. Now dreams cannot deceive you, now you see things as they are.
You don't project.
Beware of imagination. You would like me to tell you that yes it was me. You will feel very much fulfilled if it was me hitting your head. People like to believe in miracles; hence miracles happen because people like to believe. People feel happy believing in their dreams; they go on giving energy to their dreams. That's how you have lived for many, many lives in a dream world.
I am not going to cooperate with you in any way. It was sheer imagination, you imagined it. Now you want my help also.
I have heard.
The rabbi of Chelm was distracted by children as he was preparing a sermon. He hollered out the window to chase them away, 'Hurry down to the river where a terrible monster is in the water. He is breathing fire, and is an ugly dragon.'
The children ran to see what was going on. People followed them, the crowd grew.
As the rabbi saw the mob running, he asked, 'Where is everyone going?'
'Down to the river where there is a monster breathing fire. It is an ugly green dragon.'
The rabbi joined the race.'True, I did make it up, ' he thought as he panted.'Still, you never can tell.'
You may be creating something but if others start believing it you will start believing it.
This is your imagination. If I say, 'Yes, it was true,' then you will suddenly
believe in it, and you will think that you have believed in me. You have simply taken my support for your own dream.
Mind is a great liar, it goes on lying to you. Beware of the tricks of the mind.
A little girl was always lying. She was given a St. Bernard dog, and this little girl went out and told all the neighbors that she had been given a lion.
The mother called her and said, 'I told you not to lie. You go upstairs and tell God you are sorry. Promise God you will never lie again.'
She went upstairs and said her prayers and then came down. Her mother said, 'Did you tell God you are sorry?'
The little girl said, 'Yes, I did and God said that sometimes he finds it hard to tell my dog form a lion too.'
That's how it goes on. But I am not going to help you in any way, because any hint of help will be destructive for you. On the path of meditation, on the path of Zen, all imagination has to be avoided. You have to be indifferent about it.
And the more you enter into meditation, the more and more imagination will try to distract you. It is not a new phenomenon, it has always happened. All the great meditators have come across it. Buddha is distracted by Mara, the god of devils. Jesus is distracted by the devil. Sufi mystics are distracted by Satan. There is no Satan, no Mara, no devil --
the real devil is in your mind, the imagination.
There are stories of Hindu seers that when they reach to the final step of their meditation they are distracted by Indra. He sends beautiful maidens, APSARAS, to distract them.
But why should anybody distract these poor saints? Why? They are not doing anybody any harm. They have left the world, they are sitting under their trees or in their caves in the Himalayas, why send beautiful maidens to them?
Nobody is sending anybody. There is no agency like that. Imagination is playing the last tricks, and when your meditation goes deep, deeper layers of imagination
are provoked.
Ordinarily, when meditation is not there, you live on the surface of the mind. Of course, your imagination is also superficial then. The deeper you move in meditation, the more the deeper layers of imagination will be revealed to you, they will be more real. They will be so real that you cannot even think that they can be imagination.
Now you can even bring proofs that they are not imagination. For example, this SANNYASIN who has been hit twice, he can even show his head and you can find the marks. Now, he will say, 'How can it be imagination? Nobody has hit me
-- and these marks are here?' Then you ask people who know about hypnosis. In deep hypnosis, the hypnotist suggests that he is putting fire in your hand, and he puts nothing -- but the hand gets burnt. Now what happened? It was just that the imagination worked so tremendously. The body is also under control of imagination. So if you think yourself beautiful you will become beautiful. If you think yourself ugly you will become ugly.
Your imagination will give a mould to your body.
That's how there are fire-walkers. If your imagination takes it deeply that you are not going to be burnt and God is protecting you, you will not be burnt. You can pass through a pit full of burning coals without being burnt. But even if a slight suspicion arises in your mind, then immediately you will be burnt. Because that slight suspicion is a loophole in your imagination. Then you are no longer protected by the seal of your own imagination.
So the deeper you go in meditation, the deeper will be the games of imagination.
Sometimes it will come as APSARAS, beautiful maidens, dancing, provoking, seducing you. Sometimes it will come as tremendous fire-monsters throwing fire from their mouths. Or, anything that you can imagine will surround you. And if you get caught into it, if for a single moment you forget that this is imagination, then the imagination has destroyed your penetration into meditation. You are thrown back to the surface again.
Then you will have to seek the path again. So if you are sitting in zazen, as the SANNYASIN has said, then remember it.
But this is a good indication. That you could imagine so deeply shows that
meditation is going deep. The deeper the meditation, the deeper will be the imagination. Only at the last point does meditation take over. Until the last, the struggle continues between imagination and meditation. And sometimes the imagination is so beautiful.… This is not such a beautiful imagination, you have been hit twice! Still you want to believe in it, because just to think that miracles have started to happen to you, just to think that your Master is working hard on you, just to think that he goes on making you aware and hits on your head when you were falling asleep, is very ego fulfilling.
There are many beautiful imaginations -- they will come. Flowers will shower on you and you can almost smell them. It is possible that you can imagine very deeply that roses are falling on you and you can smell them. That's okay -- but somebody else passing by your side may be able to smell your roses! Then it becomes tremendously powerful.
It means your imagination is not only passive, it has become active. You are creating a certain smell inside your body by your imagination. Your body has all that the earth has.
The earth creates the rose. If the rosebush is not there you cannot smell roses in the earth, there is no smell. But if you put a rosebush there, one day suddenly it flowers and the smell is there. The earth was containing the smell and the rosebush helped the smell to come to an expression. Your body is earth, it contains all that is contained by earth. If your imagination is tremendous, not only you will smell, others also can smell the rose.
But still it is imagination. Your imagination functioned just like a rosebush; it helped to express something that was hidden within you.
Man is earth. The word human comes from 'humus'. Humus means the earth. The Hebrew word 'adam' comes from a Hebrew root which means the earth. We are made of earth, we are miniature earths. We carry all that is hidden in the earth, that is our potentiality also.
Once you help through imagination your potential starts becoming actual.
But on the path of meditation even beautiful experiences like these are to be avoided.
Because once you get into them you are getting into the mind, and the whole
effort is how to drop the mind, how to get rid of the mind. Once the mind is not there then you are completely separate from the body -- mind is the bridge, mind connects you with the body. Mind dropped, there is the body, the earth, and there is you, the sky -- totally separate realities. Then you have become a witness.
So if next time it happens -- this magicless magic -- to you, and you feel a hit on the head, don't be concerned by the hit, simply remain aware. Just watch. Whether it is true or untrue is irrelevant, remain a witness. Simply remain a watcher, don't get involved in it in any way and soon it will disappear. And once you have learned the technique of how to drop the games of imagination it is going to be tremendously beneficial to you. Because the more you go into meditation, the more and more imagination will be coming.
Stronger and stronger waves of imagination will pass through your being, and you will have to be aware and alert.
If it is difficult for you, impossible for you, then the path of meditation is not for you.
Then the path of love, then the path of BHAKTI and devotion, where imagination is not avoided but used, is for you. Then you forget all about zazen, that path is not for you.
Then you forget all about Buddha, Mahavira, that path is not for you. Then you move into the world of Meera, Chaitanya, Mohammed. Then you move into the world of devotion.
Remember, one thing can be a help on one path, and the same thing can be a hindrance on another path. For example, there are rails, the train runs on them, they are a help, without rails the train will not run. But if you start moving a car on those rails you will be in difficulty. They are a help for trains but they cannot be a help for cars. Cars need a more free way, more freedom. So remember always, a thing which is a hindrance on one path need not be a hindrance on another path.
But if you choose zazen I think the SANNYASIN who has asked this question
will be tremendously benefited on the path of zazen because such imagination that he could believe it to be true simply shows that his sitting is helping. He is relaxing into deeper layers of consciousness.
The second question:
Question 2
WHILE PRACTICING ZAZEN, JUST SITTING, I DISCOVERED THAT I HAD
BECOME THE GREATEST FOOL ON EARTH. BUT SUDDENLY I REMEMBERED
ONE PROVERB: WHEN IGNORANCE IS BLISS, IT IS FOLLY TO BE WISE.
THOUGH THIS STUPIDITY HAS MADE ME A FOOL, I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO
FULL AS I AM NOW. I HAVE NOW FALLEN IN LOVE WITH THIS ZAZEN
STUPIDITY. I INVOKE YOUR BLESSINGS SO THAT I REMAIN A FOOL TILL
ETERNITY.
Yes, there is a foolishness which is wisdom, there is a foolishness which is enlightened.
There is a foolishness of the wise. Why call it foolishness? It is foolish in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of the worldly because it belongs to a different realm. It is not of the world of calculation, cleverness. It is innocent.
Jesus looked like a fool. Lao Tzu also looked like a fool. In India for the fool we have a term, BUDDHU -- it comes from Buddha. Buddha must have looked like a fool, tremendously like a fool, hence the term BUDDHU. We call a man BUDDHU if we want to call him an idiot. BUDDHU means buddha-like.
Buddha must have looked like a fool when he renounced his empire. He was going to be the king and he became a beggar. Can you find more foolish a person? He had the most beautiful women around him and he escaped from the palace. What foolishness! When Buddha escaped, renounced, he didn't stay in his father's kingdom because the spies of his father would have followed him
and they would have caught hold of him again. He immediately left the kingdom, went outside, and entered into another kingdom.
But the king was a friend of his father. So when the king came to know he came to see Buddha and he said, 'What foolishness you are doing! If you are angry with your father, don't be worried, you come to my palace. Get married to my daughter and be a king here.
If there is some trouble with your father, forget all about it. I am just as loving towards you as your father. He is my old friend, and my kingdom is not lesser than your father's kingdom. So come! But what nonsense you are doing! Begging on the street? You are not a beggar. Your family has been royal for centuries.'
Buddha laughed and he said, 'As far as I know I have been a beggar for many lives. I don't know about my family, but I know about me. And I come through my father but I don't belong to him. He has just been a passage.'
Yes, if you move deeper than the mind, you will start looking foolish to others -- even to yourself you will start looking foolish, because you will fall out of line. That is the meaning of the word 'idiot' -- one who has his own idiom of life, his own private style of life. That is the meaning of 'idiot'. If you have a language of your own nobody will be able to understand it. Then people will say, 'Why are you talking like an idiot? It is gibberish.' You may be using a perfect language of your own coinage, but unless it is social it cannot be accepted as language. Unless your life belongs to the society you cannot be thought intelligent. People who are thought to be intelligent are those who are in the rat race in this competitive world, hankering to cut each other's throat, trying to reach to the topmost, trying to become the first in the world.
Jesus says blessed are the meek, the non-competitive; blessed are the poor, those who have nothing. Of course he's talking nonsense. If Jesus is right then all the politicians are foolish. If Jesus is right then all the rich men are foolish. Then what about Alexander the Great? If Alexander the Great is right, then of course Jesus is a fool. And Alexander the Great seems to be right because the crowd believes in him. Jesus is lonely, Lao Tzu is lonely, Zen Masters are lonely -- solitary beings, idiots, they have their own idiom. They live their life according to their own being, they don't bother a bit, they don't fulfil the formalities of the society. They live as individuals, that is their foolishness. They don't live just
like mechanical parts of society, they are not robots. They are alive beings.
If you are alive, if you are really alive and vibrating with life, you will look foolish; that's why children look like fools. Old people look wise because they are dead, stiff -- all life has oozed out of them. They are alive only for name's sake. They may have died a long time before.
I have heard about one man who made a will when he died. And in the will he said,
'Write on my tomb: Born such-and-such year, died when thirty, buried when seventy.'
Almost always it happens that people die near about thirty, then they are buried at seventy. That's another thing: burial is one thing, dying is another thing. When society comes to know that you are dead that's another thing.
I have heard about a priest -- a Catholic priest of course -- who died, and for three days he could not understand what had happened. Then he came to his church and tried to communicate with his successor, and said, 'Be aware. I died, but for three days I did not think that I was dead because I was more dead while I was alive. I was feeling more alive so I did not think that I was dead. It took three days for me to realise the fact that I had died.'
Children look foolish, and Jesus says, 'Unless you are like small children you will not be able to enter into my Kingdom of God. In fact he is saying, 'Blessed are the fools.'
Children are fools, that's why everybody tries to make the children wise. The very effort to make them wise simply kills them. By and by they become afraid to live; their streaming life is crippled from everywhere, only a very narrow passage which is socially acceptable is allowed for them to live in. Then through that tunnel only, they somehow cling to life. That tunnel is just a very small thread -- they don't die, that's all, but they don't live either. They don't live at all. They somehow drag.
So if you sit in zazen and you move deeply into it, your mind will start falling away, and your mind has up to now been your cleverness, your so-called intelligence. Your mind has accumulated all your experiences, your past. And when the past starts withering away and you become fresh and alive in the
moment, you are again like a child, again a fool.
Lao Tzu said, 'Everybody is clever except me. Everybody seems to be very calculating, I am just muddle-headed.'
It is related that Rabbi Hanuk told this story.
For a whole year I felt a longing to go to my master, Rabbi Bonon, and talk with him. But every time I entered the house I felt I was not man enough. Once though, when I was walking across the field and weeping, I knew that I must run to the rabbi without delay.
He asked, 'Why are you weeping?'
I answered, 'I am after all alive in this world, a being created with all the senses and all the limbs, but I do not know what it is I was created for, and what I am good for in this world.'
'Little fool,' he replied.'That's the same question I have carried around with me all my life.
You will come and eat the evening meal with me today.'
Ordinarily we think people who know answers are wise. They may be learned but they are not wise. They may be very well informed, but information has nothing to do with wisdom. People who are really wise, in fact, have no answers. They have a quest, an enquiry, a tremendous enquiry in them, but no answers. By and by they come to understand that all questions are meaningless, so they drop questions also. A man becomes perfectly wise when he has no answers and no questions.
Ordinarily, if you have many answers you will be thought wise. But religiously, in the Zen way, if you don't have any answers and no questions Questions
exist in the mind and then mind tries to find out answers, then through answers mind creates more questions, and so on and so forth it goes. It is an endless chain, it goes on ad nauseam.
Once you understand this -- that this whole game is a mind game -- you simply drop it.
You don't hesitate in dropping it, you don't postpone it for tomorrow -- 'I will drop it tomorrow' -- you drop it right now. You say, 'This is just foolish.'
Then, of course, when you drop your foolishness, you will look a fool to the world. If somebody asks you, 'Who are you?' and you say, 'I don't know,' will you look wise? He will think either you are a fool or a madman.'You don't know? You don't know your name? You don't know who you are? You don't know your identity?' The man will become suspicious of you, he will report to the police immediately that here is a man who seems to be suspect, who could be dangerous. But if you say, 'Yes, my name is this. My address is this,' then everything is settled.
Socrates said in his last days, 'When I was young I knew many things, and I used to think of myself as the wisest man in the world. The more I grew, the more I became aware that I didn't know much. And then the last thing happened -- one day I suddenly realised that I knew nothing.'
It is said that the oracle at Delphi declared that Socrates was the wisest man in the world.
People who had heard the oracle came to Socrates and told him that the oracle has declared that he was the wisest man in the world. Socrates looked shocked and he said,
'There must have been some mistake, because just today I have realised that I don't know anything at all. I am the most ignorant man in the world! You please go and correct the oracle.' And they went and they told the oracle that Socrates himself says that he is the most ignorant man in the world. The oracle said, 'That's why I have declared him the wisest.'
The more open you become, the more innocent, the more childlike you become, the more the winds of existence start flowing in and out of you. The more you are knowing and have the gesture of knowledge, the more you are closed. Then you don't allow the winds of existence to enter you, then you are always distrustful, you don't trust life. A fool is one who goes on trusting; a fool is one who goes on trusting against all his experience.
You deceive him, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you. Then you will say that he is a fool, he does not learn. His trust is tremendous; his trust is so pure that nobody
can corrupt it.
Be a fool in the Taoist sense, in the Zen sense. Don't try to create a wall of knowledge around you. Whatsoever experience comes to you, let it happen, and then go on dropping it. Go on cleaning your mind continuously; go on dying to the past so you remain in the present, here-now, as if just born, just a babe. In the beginning it is going to be very difficult. The world will start taking advantage of you... let them. They are poor fellows.
Even if you are cheated and deceived and robbed, let it happen because that which is really yours cannot be robbed from you, that which is really yours nobody can steal from you. And each time you don't allow situations to corrupt you, that opportunity will become an integration inside. Your soul will become more crystallised.
I have heard.
A thief visited the house of a Sufi mystic at night, and spread his shawl to wrap up the loot. After a long search he had not found anything. In the meantime the dervish sleeping on the floor had rolled over onto the shawl. When the thief came to pick up his shawl, he saw the dervish sleeping on it.
Just as he was leaving empty-handed, the dervish woke up and called after him, 'Please shut the front door.'
'Why should I?' the thief answered.'I came and supplied your mattress, someone else might come and bring your blanket too.'
So remain open, don't be worried -- even a thief cannot steal anything from you. He may supply a mattress or a blanket, that is another matter. He may give something to you but he cannot take anything from you, because that which can be taken is not yours. That which cannot be taken, only that is yours.
Be a fool. Zen is the effort of dropping the mind, destructuring it, so that your innocence that has become hidden behind the structure reveals itself again. You were born without knowing anything. You were born with clear eyes with no thoughts in them, with no clouds. Your inner sky was pure. Then you were taught, conditioned -- a thousand and one things -- and you became cluttered with knowledge, from the school, the college, the university, and life's experiences. And you were taught how to doubt -- because doubt is the
intelligence of the wordly man.
Trust is the intelligence of the religious man. You were taught to doubt, trained to doubt, but because of doubt you became closed. A man who doubts cannot remain open; a man who doubts always feels;insecure. A man who doubts always thinks about the world as if it is the enemy; the man who doubts is constantly fighting. That fight is going to end in your defeat because the part cannot win over the whole. That's not possible.
So you are fighting a doomed fight. You are going to be defeated finally. You may have small victories here and there, but they don't count. Finally death comes, and all is taken away. And in this fight you could not enjoy, you could not delight in life. To delight in life one needs to be a fool, trusting.
Read Dosteovsky's 'the Idiot'. The main character in 'The Idiot' is a Zen character, a Tao character, a prince who is foolish, totally foolish. But his doors are open, he is not in any way fighting the world. He is relaxed. All tensions gather in you because of doubt, all tensions make their abode in your being because of fear, insecurity. And you are just a small wave in the ocean but you are afraid of the ocean and you are trying to fight with the ocean. You will simply waste an opportunity which could have become a celebration, which could have become festive.
The same energy which could have laughed is turned sour and bitter and becomes poisonous. To be alive.… When I say 'to be alive' I mean to be alive in the whole spectrum of life. Alive to cry and alive to laugh; alive to weep and alive to love -- the whole spectrum. I see thousands of people living half- heartedly. They have chosen a certain colour of the spetrum and they have narrowed down their being. Now they are missing, they are missing much -- because you can enjoy life only when you are a rainbow.
A man was deeply in love with a woman, but he was a very shy man. Finally he succeeded in persuading her to be at least friendly towards him.
This man was a friend of Henry Miller, and Henry Miller was asking again and again,
'What is happening in your love affairs?'
One day he came and he said, 'I was almost on the verge of succeeding. I had
succeeded so much that I persuaded her to undress completely, but more than that she would not do.
What do you suggest I should have done?' Miller said, 'Why, you should have wept.'
'Wept?' The man could not believe what he was saying.
He said, 'What else can you do? Laughter I cannot see in you, it is impossible. It is very, very far away because you have not even wept yet.'
Laughter is possible only if one is able to cry and weep deeply. The child cries -- that is the first relationship with the world. Every child born cries first. That is the first rung of the ladder. Miller says rightly, 'You should have wept because I don't know that you can do anything else. But this much you can do because this much you must have done when you were born. You should have wept.'
A fool is one who lives the whole rainbow -- he cries, tears are flowing from his eyes, he is not blocked in any way. He can cry in the marketplace, he is not ashamed of life.
Unashamedly he lives, and lives totally. That's why he is a fool, or thought to be a fool.
He laughs, and he delights. He is a rainbow. And God comes only to those who are like a rainbow.
Blessed are the fools. The third question:
Question 3
I FEEL THE WORD 'GOD' HAS NO HEARTFELT POTENTIAL, YET THE SKY
AND PLANTS CAN BRING ME TO MY KNEES AND THERE IS A HEARTACHE
FOR SOMETHING UNKNOWN. ZEN ATTRACTS ME WITH ITS FRESHNESS, COOLNESS, BUT ITS DEMANDS MAKE ME FEEL IMPOTENT. YOU SEEM THE
MOST ATTRACTIVE, YOU WARM MY HEART AND HAVE THE COOLNESS OF
A STREAM. ARE YOU POSSIBLY A THIRD WAY? BECAUSE I CAN'T DECIDE.
I am not a way at all, I am just a presence. You have to understand it because you are going to be with me. You have to understand it as deeply as possible.
I am not a way. A way leads you somewhere, it connects you with the there, and my whole effort is to bring you HERE. A way is there -- oriented, and I am here- oriented. A way is needed if the goal is far away from you. If the goal is away, distant, then the way is needed. As I see it, the goal is within you; you are the goal, you are the target. So there is nowhere to go, a way is not needed. In fact, dropping all the ways, dropping the very search and just being yourself is enough. Because you cannot do that you have to be shown a few ways to walk and get tired on. That is just to exhaust you.
The whole effort is to exhaust you. When the effort is exhausted and you are really tired and you fall down, and you say, 'Now I don't want to go anywhere,' and you relax... you reach. Seeking is not the way to reach, but seeking is needed because you are very active.
Even to reach God, ways are needed -- and God is here-now. He is your surround, he is within you and without. It is as foolish as a fish seeking the ocean and living already in the ocean. You are in truth because there is no other way; only in truth can you be. You may have forgotten it or you may not be able to recognise it because it is so obvious. It is so close that there is no distance to see it -- distance is needed to have a perspective, you cannot see things from very close. And God is not only close, he is not only the closest --
he is you. God is not a 'seen', he is in the see-er; God is not a goal, he is in the seeker. The seeker is the sought.
So I am not a way. I talk about ways because you are mad. I talk about medicines because you are ill and you cannot understand the vision of no-way. You will
have to walk, seek, get frustrated. When I say there are two ways, I mean there are two ways to get frustrated.
One is of love, and another is of meditation.
But I am not a way. I am just a presence. And those who will understand me will not need anything more than just being with me. That's what in the East we call SATSANG -
- just being with me, just being in my presence, just relaxing in my presence, just allowing me to enter you, not resisting, not fighting with me.
And suddenly one day you will start dancing, singing, celebrating. One day suddenly you will start laughing. What were you seeking? You were seeking yourself. How can you seek yourself? You are already that.
The questioner says: I FEEL THAT THE WORD 'GOD' HAS NO HEARTFELT
POTENTIAL.… I know it. Theologians have killed it. They have killed a very beautiful word, 'God'.
Jews were right because they were very reluctant to call the name of God in any way.
They were very reluctant. They were right because if you use the name of God, too much use will destroy its beauty. Before Jesus, Jews were not allowed to utter the name of God.
Even now, if you look in Jewish books, and if they write God, they don't write G-o-d.
They simply write G-d; they leave out the 'o'. Because how can you pronounce his name in totality? He is so big. Whatsoever you call him is going to be incomplete, so they write G-d, not G-o-d -- the 'o' is left out. And it is good that they leave out 'o' -- 'o' is the symbol of emptiness, SHUNYA. 'O' is void, zero. That is the very soul of God, 'O', zero, that is his very being -- so they leave it out.
For many centuries only the high priest in the temple of Jerusalem was allowed to utter the name of God, and that too only once in a year, and that too in total
aloneness. People would wait, millions of people would wait together outside the temple. Then the high priest would go into the innermost shrine, all the doors would be closed, nobody will be able to hear, and there, in the innermost shrine, he would whisper the name. That's all.
It was good because words like 'God', 'love', should not be used too much otherwise their beauty is lost. Theologians killed the beautiful word 'God'. Now it is almost ugly, it is almost vulgar.
How theologians have killed it has to be understood. Each of you has a theologian inside.
You have been conditioned for so many centuries that the theologian has almost become a part of you. God is wild, has to be, but the theologian is always afraid of the wild God, the theologian is always afraid of anything alive. So by and by he cuts out all wildness from God. He polishes, trains, and conditions the very word 'God'.
If you go to the old scriptures of the world, God was wild, as wild as you can imagine. He used to be angry also; he used to fall in love also; he used to run after women also. He was very human, down-to-earth, and very alive, throbbing and kicking.
But then it was not acceptable to the theologians because it was difficult to categorise him and it was difficult to use him. So by and by, limb by limb, they destroyed God. Now only a mummy, a dead body exists, preserved by chemicals, in churches. Churches are the tombs of God, their God has died. They made God more and more further away from man because it was impossible for their egos to understand that God could be in any way related to man. The creator and the created, the creator and the creature, how can they be related? No! The creator is far away in the seventh heaven and we are just like worms crawling on the earth, sinners asking to be forgiven. They condemned man and they went on raising God higher and higher. A moment came when the bridge broke.
It is so simple to see that the creator has to be related with the creation. A poet is deeply related with his poetry, has to be so, he loves his poetry. A painter is deeply related with his painting -- it is his life, his flowering, his expression. A sculptor loves the statue he has made. Watch a sculptor when he has finished a
statue, how he touches and feels it --
almost as if it is the girl of his dreams, his beloved. Watch a sculptor when, in difficult circumstances, he has to sell his art work. Tears come to his eyes.
If God is the creator, he has to be close to creation, he has to be deeply in love with his creation. But then you cannot condemn man and then you cannot make man feel guilty.
And if you cannot force man to feel guilty, then churches cannot exist, then their whole business disappears. The whole business of the church exists only if you are guilty.
Because of your guilt you need their help; because of your guilt you need salvation.
If God is already close to you, and if God is already breathing in you, singing in your heart, then what is the need of any salvation? If God has created you, then how can you be sinners? Then you cannot be condemned, the signature of God is on you.
But then the whole business of religion disappears. So they went on making God more and more clinical. Now he smells almost like a hospital -- no life, but everything clean.
They became so afraid of the germs of life that they killed all the germs. But God also is killed.
The word 'God' has lost the heartfelt potential.
One of my SANNYASINS has sent a beautiful anecdote to me. Listen to it, meditate over it.
The anecdote:
Yesterday somebody knocked on my door, and I opened it and it was God. And he asked me if he could use my bathroom. I said, 'Sure, come on in.'
When he finally came out of the bathroom, he explained that he had been having some trouble finding somebody who would let him use their bathroom because
most people like to think God never has to go to the bathroom. Then he thanked me and told me he was looking for somebody to be the Messiah and he thought I showed promise.
I asked him if he really thought so. And he said he liked my bathroom. God is eccentric, otherwise why should he create such an eccentric world?
But theologians have killed him completely. They cannot think that he needs a bathroom, there is no provision in heaven for that. He simply sits on his throne, he never goes to the bathroom. An inhuman God is a dead God. God has to be made alive again, he has to be brought home. Then your heart will start throbbing for him. If you drop theology then religion is beautiful, but if theology is always there between you and religion, then the theology is ugly and it makes religion look ugly also.
I FEEL THAT THE WORD 'GOD' HAS NO HEARTFELT POTENTIAL, YET THE
SKY AND THE PLANTS CAN BRING ME TO MY KNEES. AND THERE IS A HEARTACHE FOR SOMETHING UNKNOWN.… That's good. That's how
one should approach God, without theology. Don't use even the word 'God', there is no need, because the word 'God' is not God. The word 'love' is not love -- drop the word, you just carry the innermost core of it, the significance of it, the song of it. That's the only real way to enter into his temple -- nature, the trees, the birds, the sun and the stars. He is all around you, calling you in many, many ways. Don't go to the church. That is the last place you can hope for him to visit. Last! Maybe in some crisis, but otherwise not.
He's alive in the flowers, he's alive in the rainbows, he's alive in the birds. Listen to him.
In fact, if you learn how to listen, you cannot avoid him for long. Love -- if you know how to love you cannot escape from him for long. Love is his shrine and listening is the way to help him come into you.
There is an anecdote in the annals of Hasidism.
'Where is the dwelling of God?' This was the question with which the Rabbi of Coates surprised a number of learned men who happened to be visiting him.
They laughed at him.'What a thing to ask, Rabbi! Is not the whole world full of his glory?'
Then the Rabbi answered his own question.'God dwells wherever man lets him in.'
Let him in. He is knocking at your doors, allow him in. You need not go anywhere. Just relax, trust. His hand is already searching you. Just allow him to find you, and immediately a great transformation happens.
So that is the right way. Question 4
...THE SKY AND THE PLANTS CAN BRING ME TO MY KNEES AND THERE IS A HEARTACHE FOR SOMETHING UNKNOWN.
Yes, God is the eternally unknown. Even by knowing him, one never knows him; even by knowing him, he remains unknown. His unknowability is his mystery. And it is good that man cannot know him, otherwise he will become part of science, otherwise he will be just caught in a test tube somewhere in a lab. And you know what scientists can do. They will torture him if they can find him. They will poke him from here and there to find out secrets, just as they are torturing monkeys and other animals. They will torture God if they can find him.
No, God can never become knowledge. The word 'science' means knowledge. God can never become knowledge and can never become science. He is not a riddle to be solved, he is a mystery to be lived, a dance to be danced, a song to be sung, a love to be dissolved in. Yes, you can come to feel him but you can never come to know him. The unknown God is the only God there is.
There is a story about St. Paul. When he came to Athens to the Greek world to preach Christianity, he was very much surprised. In the centre of Athens there was a temple dedicated to the Unknown God. There was no image, the temple was absolutely empty and silent. There was no one inside it. Just on the door of the temple there was an inscription: Dedicated to the Unknown God. And people used to come to pray there, to feel God there. There was no priest and there was no theology and no philosophy around it.
St. Paul destroyed it because he started teaching people and he laughed at the
stupidity of this temple. He is reported to have said that it was absolute foolishness. How can you love an unknown God? Here he was and he would show them the known God. God had become known in Jesus Christ.
He was thinking that he was doing a great service to humanity but he is one of the greatest criminals. He destroyed the concept, or no-concept, of an unknown God. That is the only God there is. He may have been reflected in the eyes of Jesus but he still remains unknown. In fact, by knowing him, he is not known, you also become part of his mystery and become unknown. Jesus has become a mystery by knowing him -- not that he has become known through Jesus. There is no way. He is so vast it is impossible to put him down as a formula, as a theory, as a dogma, as a creed.
Forget the word 'God'. Don't make that your obsession. It has nothing to do with God.
You can drop the word. Dropping the word will be helpful, because with that word, all that theologians have done up to now will be dropped. You just look around, look into the eyes of a child, or into the eyes of your beloved, your mother, your friend -- or just feel a tree. Have you ever hugged a tree? Hug a tree. And one day you will come to know that it is not only that you have hugged the tree but that the tree also responds, the tree also hugs you. Then for the first time you will be able to know that the tree is not just the form, it is not just a certain species the botanists talk about, it is an unknown God -- so green in your courtyard, so full of flowers in your courtyard, so close to you, beckoning you, calling you again and again.
Forget the word. Forget all words! If you can dedicate your being to the unknown, that is the best dedication possible. Theologians, priests, and people who do the business of religion have different things in their minds. They are not concerned with you or with God. Religion has become a great investment. In fact, it is the biggest trade in the world.
No millionaire is so rich -- and he cannot be -- as churches are. No company Burmah Shell or Standard Oil -- is so rich, they cannot be. When religion becomes an investment, then there are other reasons than religious, other considerations.
I have heard an anecdote -- it happened in a Jewish temple. Jewish temples and
synagogues do not pass the plate as do the Christian churches, consequently they have to raise money in other ways. One of them is the sale of tickets for reserved seats for the high holy days when business is best.
On one holiday a young man went to the synagogue in Philadelphia to look for his uncle.
The guard refused him admittance because he had no ticket. 'Look', the youngster said,'it is very important.'
'Not a chance,' said the guard.'Everybody says that. Nobody gets in here without a ticket.'
But the boy pleaded,' It is a matter of life and death. Please, I will only be two minutes.'
'Well okay, if it is so important,' the guard said.'But don't let me catch you praying!'
This can happen in this ashram also. This happens always. Because whenever something of the unknown descends on the earth, immediately man's cunning mind starts changing it into a commodity that can be sold in the market. Immediately the profit motive comes in. The word 'God', the churches, the temples, the synagogues, they have become marketplaces. You cannot find your heart there. The only way to find your heart is to see the unknown again. You will have to move alone, you will have to go alone. You cannot follow a crowd. If you follow a crowd you will reach some temple, or some synagogue, or some church. If you want to find the wild God, the God of this universe, the unity, the cosmos, then you will have to seek on your own, alone.
Pray to a tree, pray to a river, pray to a rock. Feel, there is no need for words. Let your heart communicate. Melt yourself into the world and let the world melt into you. This communion is prayer.
The person who has asked the question will be helped if he moves on the path of love.
Zen will not be helpful for him. He has a very feeling heart. Listen to the heart.
Many other questions are there, questions about making a synthesis of love and meditation, of heart and mind, of thought and feeling -- because many people would like to move on both the ways together.
Synthesis comes, but you cannot make it. If you follow the path of meditation, one day you will attain to love as a consequence. If you follow the path of love, one day you will attain to meditation as a consequence. Synthesis comes, but you will have to follow one path. If you try to follow two you will be in confusion. Synthesis comes at the end on its own accord, so don't be worried.
It is always so: if meditation happens, love is bound to happen. If love does not happen, then that simply shows meditation has not happened yet. If love happens, meditation also happens as a shadow. If meditation has not happened through love, then your love is not yet real. If it has not happened yet, you may be thinking about it, but you have not moved into the world of love. So don't be worried about synthesis. You cannot make a synthesis.
It is not for you to worry about it. Follow one, whichever feels more close to you.
There are a few questions which ask, 'Both seem to be almost fifty-fifty, so what to do?'
If both seem fifty-fifty, then Zen is your way. Because a person who cannot decide is not the man of the heart; a person who cannot decide is the man of the mind. If it is heart it is always decisive. Have you ever fallen in love with two women together, fifty-fifty? If you fall that way, then one thing is certain, it is not love. There may be other considerations. One is rich, another is a daughter of a prime minister or something like that. Love is not a consideration. If love is the consideration then immediately you choose one, then there is no problem.
So if you have a problem to decide, then it is decided: you are the mind type, you will have to follow Zen. If you can decide, then good; if you cannot decide then take it for granted that the very doubt, the indecisiveness, shows that you are a mind type, thinking, doubting, analyzing, thinking about pros and cons. And then your greed says, 'Is there not a way to make a compromise of both?'
Remember, compromise is not a synthesis. Compromise is a dead thing; synthesis is organic unity. You can make a compromise but through compromise nobody has ever grown; you cannot make a synthesis, it comes.
You start growing on one path, because both the paths use different devices, not only different, diametrically opposite. If you try to make a compromise, it will be impossible because one goes to the south, another goes to the north. So one leg will be going to the south, another will be going to the north. You will not be able to reach, you will be divided, you will become split. In making the compromise you will become a schizophrenic. That's how the human mind has become schizophrenic, split.
Don't bother about compromise. It always comes. Those who have attained through zazen have attained to the same love as those who have reached through devotion, BHAKTI.
A man, a Christian, came with the Bible to a Zen Master and started reading the Sermon on the Mount. After a few lines the Master said, 'Stop, there is no need. Whosoever has said these words is a Buddha.'
He had never known anything about the Bible, he had never heard anything about Jesus, he used to live in a far-away cave, completely out of the society. But he said, 'No need to read it anymore. Even one sentence is enough. It has the taste of the sea. Whosoever has said this is a Buddha -- is enlightened.' If you ask Buddha, Meera is enlightened, Chaitanya is enlightened. If you ask Meera and Chaitanya, Buddha is enlightened, Bodhidharma is enlightened.
Let me put in this way. If you follow love, devotion, surrender, one day you will suddenly find you are full of meditation. If you follow meditation, one day you will find the beloved has come, he has knocked at the door.
Dang Dang Doko Dang Chapter #3
Chapter title: 'As within, so without' 13 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code: 7606130
ShortTitle:
DANG03
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
100
mins
AFTER BANKEI HAD PASSED AWAY, A BLIND MAN WHO LIVED NEAR THE
MASTER'S TEMPLE SAID TO A FRIEND: 'SINCE I AM BLIND I CANNOT
WATCH A PERSON'S FACE, SO I MUST JUDGE HIS CHARACTER BY THE
SOUND OF HIS VOICE.
ORDINARILY WHEN I HEAR SOMEONE CONGRATULATE ANOTHER UPON
HIS HAPPINESS OR SUCCESS, I ALSO HEAR A SECRET TONE OF ENVY.
WHEN CONDOLENCE IS EXPRESSED FOR THE MISFORTUNE OF ANOTHER, I HEAR PLEASURE AND SATISFACTION, AS IF THE ONE CONDOLING WAS
REALLY GLAD THERE WAS SOMETHING LEFT TO GAIN IN HIS OWN WORLD.
'IN ALL MY EXPERIENCE HOWEVER, BANKEI'S VOICE WAS ALWAYS
SINCERE. WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED HAPPINESS, I HEARD NOTHING BUT
HAPPINESS, AND WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED SORROW, SORROW WAS ALL I HEARD.'
MAN IS SPLIT. Schizophrenia is a normal condition of man -- at least now. It may not have been so in the primitive world, but centuries of conditioning, civilization, culture and religion have made man a crowd -- divided, split, contradictory. One part goes one way, the other part goes in just the diametrically opposite way and it is almost impossible to keep oneself together. It is a miracle that man is existing at all. He should by now have disappeared long before.
But because this split is against his nature, deep down somewhere hidden the unity still survives. Because the soul of.man is one, all the conditionings at the most destroy the periphery of the man. But the centre remains untouched -- that's how man continues to live. But his life has become a hell.
The whole effort of Zen is how to drop this schizophrenia, how to drop this split personality, how to drop the divided mind of man, how to become undivided, integrated, centred, crystallised.
The way you are, you cannot say that you are. You don't have a being. You are a marketplace -- many voices. If you want to say 'yes', immediately the 'no' is there. You cannot even utter a simple word 'yes' with totality. Watch... say 'yes', and deep inside the
'no' also arises with it. You cannot say a simple word like 'no' without contradicting it at the same time. In this way happiness is not possible; unhappiness is a natural consequence of a split personality. Unhappiness, because you are constantly in conflict with yourself. It is not that you are fighting with the world, you are every moment fighting with yourself. How can there be peace? How can there be silence? How can you be for even a single moment at rest? Not for a single moment are you at rest. Even while you are sleeping you are dreaming a thousand and one things. Even while sleeping you are tossing this way and that -- a continuous conflict. You are a battlefield.
You say to somebody 'I love you', and the more you say it, the more you have to repeat it.
It appears there is suspicion behind it. If you really love there is no need even to say it, because words do not matter. Your whole being will show your love; your eyes will show your love. There will be no need to say it, there will be no need to repeat it continuously.
You repeat to convince the other and at the same time to convince yourself -- because deep down, jealousy, possessiveness, hatred, the urge to dominate, a deep power politics, are hidden.
In his epistles St. Paul uses 'in Christ' one hundred and sixty-four times. He must have been a little doubtful about it.'In Christ. In Christ. In Christ...' one hundred and sixty-four times! It is too much. Once would have been enough. Even once is more than enough. It should be your being that shows that you live in Christ -- and then there is no need to say it.
Watch. Whenever you repeat a thing too many times, go deep within yourself. You must be carrying it. But you cannot falsify it, that is the problem. Your eyes will show that it is hidden behind.
Have you watched? You go to somebody's house and he welcomes you. But there is no welcome in his presence. He says, 'I am very happy to see you, glad to see you.' But you don't see any gladness anywhere; in fact, he looks a little anxious, worried, apprehensive.
He looks at you as if trouble has come to his home. Have you watched people saying to you 'take any seat' and simultaneously showing you a certain seat to take? They say 'take any seat' but they show you, in a subtle gesture, 'take this seat'. They go on contradicting themselves.
Parents go on telling their children, 'Be yourself,' and at the same time they go on teaching how one should be.'Be independent' -- and at the same time they go on forcing the child to be obedient. They have their own idea about how the child should be and when they say, 'Be yourself,' they mean, 'Be the way we want you to be.' They don't mean, 'Be yourself.'
Continuously something else is there present and you cannot really falsify it. But man has become cunning about that also. We don't look into each other's eyes because eyes can show the truth, so it is thought to be part of etiquette to avoid eyes. Don't look into somebody's eyes too much or you will be thought a little uncultured -- transgressing, trespassing. It is very difficult to falsify the eyes.
You can falsify the tongue very easily, because the tongue, the language, is a social by-product. But eyes belong to your being.
You say something but your eyes continually show something else, hence in all the societies of the world people avoid each other's eyes. They don't encounter -- because that will be looking into the truth.
But you can watch these contradictions in yourself and it will be a great help. Because unless your 'in' is just like your 'out' and your 'out' is just like your 'in', you can never be at rest.
In Tibet, in Egypt, they say, 'As above, so below.' Zen says, 'As within, so without.'
Unless your within becomes as your without you can never be at rest because your periphery will continuously be in conflict with your centre. The problem is that the periphery cannot win. Ultimately only the centre can win. But the periphery can delay, postpone; the periphery can waste time and life and energy. If you go on living on the periphery and just go on pretending, not really living, you will have many faces but you will not have your original face.
I have heard.
Abrahamson had reached the grand old age of eighty and decided to celebrate. All his life he had been orthodox, had worn a long beard, black hat, black suit and black overcoat.
Now to celebrate his birthday the old man shaved off the beard, replaced his sombre black clothes with the latest style green checked suit, a burgundy tie and blue striped shirt and headed for the massage parlour.
As Abrahamson crossed the street he was struck by a truck and killed. In heaven he spoke to his maker, God, 'Why me? I was a good husband, I gave to all the charities, I have always been a religious man.''To tell the truth,' said the Lord, 'I did not recognise you.'
And I would like to tell you even God will not be able to recognise YOU either. He changed his dress only once and became unrecognisable and you change your periphery every moment, you change your dress every moment, you change your face, your mask, every moment. Forget about God -- you cannot recognise
yourself. You cannot say who you are.
In Zen they have a koan, a deep object for meditation, to find out one's original face. The Master says to the disciple: 'Go and sit silently and find out your original face.' They mean the face you had before you were born or the face that you will have after you have died -- because the moment the child is born, the society starts giving him false faces; the moment the child takes his first breath, corruption starts. The child has entered into the world of politics, falsification, untruth. Now, layer upon layer, there will be many faces.
And the clever man has many more faces than the simple man. So whatsoever the need he immediately changes his face. He adjusts his face.
Have you watched? You are sitting in your room and your servant passes by. You have a different face for the servant, a very indifferent face. In fact, you don't look at your servant, he is not worth looking at. You don't recognise that a man, a human being just like you, has entered the room. It is as if a mechanism has passed. You don't recognise the humanity of the servant. But if your boss comes into the room immediately you are standing, wagging your tail, smiling -- all smiles. You have a different face for your boss.
If your wife comes you have a different face, if your mistress comes you have a different face.
Continuously you go on adjusting, manipulating. One has to understand otherwise one cannot find one's original face.
A man who has an original face has a unity. He remains the same. Buddha is reported to have said that the taste of an enlightened man is just like the taste of seawater -- wherever you taste it, whenever you taste it, it always tastes of the salt.
The enlightened person always shows one face. Not that he is monotonous.… Remember, don't misunderstand me -- he is not monotonous at all. In fact, you are monotonous because your faces are all dead. He is alive, growing, but his face is his. The face goes on growing, it goes on becoming richer and richer, it goes on taking on more and more awareness, it goes on becoming more and more radiant, alive, beautiful, a grace goes on increasing around it, it is surrounded by a light, but, it remains the same face. You can recognise it. There is a discontinuous continuity or, a continuous discontinuity. He changes yet he
remains the same. He remains the same and yet he goes on changing. You can recognise the continuity and you can also recognise a constant growth.
Growth always happens to the original face -- remember. False faces cannot grow, they are dead. They have no life in them, how can they grow? You can bring plastic flowers --
they cannot grow. You can keep them, you can deceive people, but they cannot grow.
Real flowers grow. Only life grows.
If you are not growing you are dead. Remember that each moment should be a growth moment. One should continuously go on moving and yet remain centred, rooted in one's being.
You can deceive others, you cannot deceive yourself. But there are also very, very clever people who can deceive themselves also. They are the worst enemies of themselves.
Mulla Nasruddin had been pulled from the river in what the police decided was a suicide attempt. When they were questioning him at headquarters he admitted that he had tried to kill himself. This is the story he told:
'Yes, I tried to kill myself. The world is against me and I wanted to end it all. I was determined not to do a half-way job so I bought a piece of rope, some matches, some kerosene and a pistol. Just in case none of those worked I went down by the river. I threw the rope over a limb hanging out over the river, I tied the rope around my neck, poured kerosene all over myself and lit the match. I jumped off the bank, put the pistol to my head and pulled the trigger.
'Guess what happened! I missed. The bullet hit the rope before I could hang myself so I fell into the river and the water put out the fire before I could burn myself. And you know, if I had not been a good swimmer, I would have ended up drowning my fool self!'
That's how things go You want to do a thing and yet you don't want to do it.
You go on and yet you don't want to go. You live and yet you don't want to live. You even try to commit suicide and yet you don't want to commit suicide. That's
why out of ten suicide attempts only one succeeds. And that too seems to be by some error. Nine attempts fail.
People are contradictory. They just don't know how to do a thing totally. And it is natural.
It can be understood that when they try to commit suicide they cannot be total, because they have never been total in their lives. They don't know what totality is. They have never done a single act with their total being. Whenever an act is total, it liberates; whenever it is half-hearted it simply creates a conflict. It dissipates energy, it is destructive, it creates bondage.
In India you have heard the word KARMA -- the very cause of all bondage. A KARMA is a KARMA only if it is half-hearted -- then it binds you. If it is total it never binds you, then there is no bondage for you. Any act lived totally is finished. You transcend it, you never look back. Any moment lived totally leaves no trace on you -- you remain unscratched, untouched by it. Your memory remains clean, you don't carry a psychological memory about it. There is no wound.
If you have loved a woman totally and she dies, there is no wound left. But if you have not loved her totally and she dies then she continues to live in the memory. Then you weep for her, you cry for her, because now you repent. There was time, there was opportunity when you could have loved her, but you could not love her. And now there is no opportunity; now she is there no more. Now there is no way to fulfil your love.
Nobody weeps and cries for somebody's death -- you cry and weep for the lost opportunity to love. Your mother dies. If you have loved her really, totally, then death is beautiful, there is nothing wrong in it. You go and say goodbye to her and you don't carry any wound. You may be a little sad -- naturally, she has occupied your heart for so long and now she will not be there -- but that is just a passing mood. You don't carry a wound, you don't go on crying continuously, you don't hang with the past. You did whatsoever you could -- you loved her, you respected her -- now it is finished. One understands the helplessness of life. You are also going to be finished one day. Death is natural; one accepts it.
If you cannot accept death that simply shows there has been a contradiction in your life.
You loved and yet you were withholding yourself. Now that withholding creates the problem.
If you have enjoyed food, you forget all about it. Once you are finished, you are finished.
You don't go on thinking about it. But if you were eating and you were not eating totally, if you were thinking about a thousand and one other things and you were not at the dining table at all -- you were just physically there but psychologically you were somewhere else
-- then you will think about food. Then food will become an obsession.
That's how sex has become an obsession in the West. Making love to a woman or to a man you are somewhere else. It is not a total act, it is not orgasmic, you are not lost in it, so a greed arises. You try to satisfy that greed, that unfulfilled desire, in a thousand ways: pornography, blue movies, and fantasy, your private movie. You go on fantasizing about women. When a real woman is there and she is ready to love you, you are not there. And when the woman is not there, you have a woman in your fantasy.
This is a very sad state of affairs. When you are eating, you are not there and then you are thinking about food, fantasizing about it. This is happening because you are not total in your act, you are always divided. While making love you are thinking of BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy. Then while being a celibate you.are thinking of making love. You are never in tune, never in harmony.
And one goes on pretending that everything is okay so one never faces the problem.
I have heard about one couple who was known all over Poland as the most ideal couple ever. Sixty years of married life and never had there been a conflict. The wife was never known to nag the husband, the husband was never known to be rude to the wife. They had lived very peacefully -- at least it appeared so.
They were celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary. A journalist came to interview them.
'How old is your wife?' enquired the journalist.
'She is eighty-seven,' said the husband, 'and God willing, she will live to be a hundred.'
'And how old are you?' enquired the journalist.
'Eight-seven too,' answered the husband, 'and God willing, I will live to be a hundred and one.'
'But why,' asked the journalist, 'would you like to live a year longer than your wife?'
'To tell the truth,' said the old octogenarian, 'I would like to have at least one year of peace.'
Appearances are very deceptive. Appearances may give you respectability but they cannot give you contentment. And some day or other, in some way or other, the truth has a way of surfacing.
Truth cannot be repressed forever. If it can be repressed forever, eternally, then it is not truth. In the very definition of truth one should include the fact that truth has a way of bubbling up. You cannot go on avoiding it forever and ever. One day or other, knowingly or unknowingly, it surfaces, it reveals itself.
Truth is that which reveals itself. And just the opposite are lies. You cannot make a lie appear as truth forever and ever. One day or other the truth will surface and the lie will be there condemned.
You cannot avoid truth. It is better to face it, it is better to accept it, it is better to live it.
Once you start living the life of truth, authenticity, of your original face, all troubles by and by disappear because the conflict drops and you are no more divided. Your voice has a unity then, your whole being becomes an orchestra. Right now, when you say something, your body says something else; when your tongue says something, your eyes go on saying something else simultaneously.
Many times people come to me and I ask them, 'How are you?' And they say, 'We are very, very happy.' And I cannot believe it because their faces are so dull -
- no joy, no delight! Their eyes have no shining in them, no light. And when they say, 'We are happy,'
even the word 'happy' does not sound very happy. It sounds as if they are dragging it.
Their tone, their voice, their face, the way they are sitting or standing -- everything belies, says something else. Start watching people. When they say that they are happy, watch.
Watch for a clue. Are they really happy? And immediately you will be aware that something else is saying something else.
And then by and by watch yourself. When you are saying that you are happy and you are not, there will be a disturbance in your breathing. Your breathing cannot be natural. It is impossible. Because the truth was that you were. not happy. If you had said, 'I am unhappy,' your breathing would have remained natural. There was no conflict. But you said, 'I am happy.' Immediately you are repressing something -- something that was coming up, you have forced down. In this very effort your breathing changes its rhythm; it is no longer rhythmical. Your face is no longer graceful, your eyes become cunning.
First watch others because it will be easier to watch others. You can be more objective about them. And when you have found clues about them use the same clues about yourself. And see -- when you speak truth, your voice has a musical tone to it; when you speak untruth, something is there like a jarring note. When you speak truth you are one, together; when you speak untruth you are not together, a conflict has arisen.
Watch these subtle phenomena, because they are the consequence of togetherness or untogetherness. Whenever you are together, not falling apart; whenever you are one, in unison, suddenly you will see you are happy. That is the meaning of the word 'yoga'.
That's what we mean by a yogi: one who is together, in unison; whose parts are all interrelated and not contradictory, interdependent, not in conflict, at rest with each other.
A great friendship exists within his being. He is whole.
Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of it -- and suddenly you forget your split, your schizophrenia; you relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow
on the Himalaya peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together. Or, listening to beautiful music, you fall together.
Whenever, in whatsoever situation, you become one, a peace, a happiness, a bliss, surrounds you, arises in you. You feel fulfilled.
There is no need to wait for these moments -- these moments can become your natural life. These extraordinary moments can become ordinary moments -- that is the whole effort of Zen. You can live an extraordinary life in a very ordinary life: cutting wood, chopping wood, carrying water from the well, you can be tremendously at ease with yourself. Cleaning the floor, cooking food, washing the clothes, you can be perfectly at ease -- because the whole question is of you doing your action totally, enjoying, delighting in it.
The society is not in favour of an integrated man, so remember, society cannot help you.
It will create all sorts of hindrances for your growth. Because only a disintegrated man can be manipulated -- the politicians can dominate him, the teachers can dominate him, the religious priests can dominate him, the parents can dominate him. Only a disintegrated soul can be forced into slavery.
Integrated, you are free; integrated, you become rebellious; integrated, you start doing your own thing; integrated, you listen to your own heart, wherever it leads. Such types of individuals can be dangerous for the dead so-called society. They can create trouble --
they have always created trouble. A Jesus, a Socrates, a Buddha... they have always been troublesome because they are so integrated that they can be independent. And they are living so blissfully that they don't bother about other nonsense.
Try to understand it. If you are unhappy, you will become ambitious; if you are happy, ambition will disappear. Who bothers to become a prime minister unless you are a little insane? Who bothers to become the richest man in the world unless you are mad? Who bothers about fame? You cannot eat it, you cannot love it, you cannot sleep with it. In fact, the more famous you become, the more difficult it becomes to be happy.
The richer you are, the more worries you have -- problems of security, future.
Whatsoever you have, you have to hold it. You have to hold it against others because they are constantly watching for a right opportunity to take it back. Whatsoever you hold, you hold out of violence. And of course, if you have been violent then others can be violent to you. They are just waiting for the right moment. The richer you get, the more worries, more problems, more fears you have. Who bothers, if one is happy?
It is said that a Taoist mystic was sought by the emperor of China because he had heard that the mystic was very wise and he wanted him to become his prime minister.
Ambassadors, with a golden chariot following them and with many presents from the court, were sent to him.
The two ambassadors were puzzled because they found this wise man sitting on the bank of a small river fishing, very poor, just ordinary. But the king had ordered so they told him, 'The king wants you to become his prime minister. You are welcome. We have come to take you.'
The mystic looked at the ambassadors and then he looked around. A turtle was wagging his tail in the mud, enjoying, just by the side of the river, by a small pool.
The mystic said, 'Look at that turtle!'
The ambassadors said, 'We don't understand. What do you mean?'
He said, 'I have heard there is a turtle in the emperor's palace three thousand years old --
dead of course -- encased in gold, with valuable diamonds, very precious. The dead turtle is worshipped. If you ask this alive turtle, 'Would you like to become the dead turtle in the king's palace? You will be encased in gold, surrounded with precious stones and you will be worshipped by the king himself, ' what do you think this turtle will choose?
Would he like to go to the palace or would he like to wag his tail in the mud?'
They said, 'Of course, he would like to wag his tail in the mud.'
The mystic said, 'Do you think I am more foolish than the turtle? Go back! I would like to wag my tail here in this mud -- I would like to be alive.'
Who has ever heard of anybody living in a palace and being alive? Difficult, almost impossible. If you are unhappy then you become ambitious, because an unhappy person thinks, 'If I attain much wealth I will become happy.' The unhappy person thinks, 'If I become the prime minister, the president, then I will become happy.' An unhappy person starts projecting into the future; a happy person lives here and now. And he is so happy, so infinitely happy, that he has no future. He has no concern for the future.
That's just what Jesus means when he says, 'Think not of the morrow. Look at the lilies in the fields. Even the great Emperor Solomon was not so beautiful, arrayed in his precious dresses, as these poor lily flowers. Look at the grandeur! And they toil not and they think not of the morrow.'
The whole society depends on creating ambition in you. Ambition means a conflict, ambition means that whatsoever you are, you are wrong -- you have to be somewhere else. Wherever you are, you are wrong -- you have to be somewhere else. A constant madness to be somewhere else, to be somebody else, is what ambition is.
So every child is corrupted, destroyed. The parents were destroyed by their parents, and they go on destroying their children -- and so on and so forth. Of course they don't know what else to do. They simply repeat the old pattern: whatsoever was done to them by their parents, they do to their children. The parents say, 'Go to school and come first. Go to university and attain the gold medal.' Then for their whole life they are always chasing and chasing the gold medals. They live in a dream -- and because of this they have to follow many things which are against their nature, they have to do many things which are against their nature. If they are to attain some goals in society they have to follow the society.
And society is constantly trying to force something on you: a certain morality, a certain religion. Whether it suits you or not is not the problem; whether it is going to help your being flower is not the problem. The society goes on enforcing things on you.
One day I met Mulla Nasruddin on the road. He was walking with his two children.
So I said, 'How are your two children?' He said, 'Both are good.'
I said, 'How old are they?'
He said, 'The doctor is five and the lawyer is seven!'
Already the future is fixed in the mind of the father. One has to become a doctor, the other has to become something else. The children have not been asked. Now the father will enforce. He can enforce, he has power. The children are helpless. And if the child was going to become a singer and he cannot become a singer but has to become a doctor, he will never feel at ease. He will be false. He will be carrying something false --
continuously dragging himself. His whole life will be destroyed. It will be a sheer wastage. There are doctors who would have been beautiful singers or dancers or poets and there are poets who would have been better to have been doctors or surgeons. There are poets who should have been engineers, scientists, and there are scientists who should have been somewhere else. It seems that everybody is in some wrong place because nobody has been allowed to be spontaneous and to be himself.
The society forces you to be something that you are not meant to be. Nobody else can know who you are meant to be, your destiny has to unfold within you. It is only you, left to yourself. A society can help. If a real, right society exists some day in the world, it will simply help you. It will not give you directions, it will give you all support to be yourself.
But this society first tries you to make somebody else -- imitators, carbon copies
-- and when you have become carbon copies then people start saying that you are not yourself.
A Jewish momma found herself sitting next to a young man on a bus. She looked at him quizzically for a few moments, then nudged him in the ribs and said confidentially, 'You are a Jewish boy, aren't you?'
He said, 'Er, no, as a matter of fact, I'm not.'
She laughed and said, 'Oh, go on, I'm Jewish myself -- I can always tell. You're Jewish, aren't you?'
He said, 'No, missus, I'm not.'
She said, 'What's the matter? You ashamed of it or something? You're Jewish.'
So just to keep her quiet, the young chap said, 'All right, if it'll make you happy -
- yes, I'm Jewish.'
She said, 'That's funny, you don't look Jewish '
That's how it goes on. First everybody is trying to convince you that you are this, and once you are this, suddenly you find -- and everybody else starts saying -- that you don't look yourself.'What is wrong with you? You look unhappy, you look sad, you look frustrated, you look depressed -- what is the matter with you?' First they try to force you to be somebody else that you are not and then they want you to be happy also. This is impossible!
You can be happy only if you become yourself. Nothing can be done about it, that is how it is. You can be happy only if you are yourself -- but it is very difficult to find out now who you are because you have been so confused, you have been so crippled. And society has entered so deep down in you that it has become your conscience. Now your parents may be dead, your teachers may be dead -- or even if they are alive they are no longer sitting on your head -- but still whatsoever they have taught you goes on speaking in subtle whisperings within you.
It has become your conscience. The parental voice has become your ego. If you do something against it, it immediately condemns you. If you do something accordingly, it applauds you, appreciates you. Still you go on being dominated by the dead.
I have heard.
Rothstein owed a hundred dollars to Wiener. The debt was past due and Rothstein was broke, so he borrowed the hundred dollars from Spevak and paid Wiener. A week later Rothstein borrowed back the hundred dollars from Wiener
and paid Spevak. Another week went by and Rothstein borrowed back the hundred dollars from Spevak to pay back Wiener. He repeated this transaction several times until finally he called them up and said.
'Fellers, this is a lot of bother. Why don't you two exchange the hundred dollars every week and keep me out of it!'
This is how it has happened. First your mother, your father, your teachers, your priests --
they have put things in your mind. Then one day they come and they say, 'Now you be on your own. Keep us out.' Now the conscience goes on functioning as a subtle agent.
Remember, the conscience is your bondage. A real man is conscious but he has no conscience. An unreal man is unconscious and has a very strong conscience. Conscience is given by others to you; consciousness has to be attained by you. Consciousness is your earned being, your earned quality of awareness. Conscience is given by others who wanted to manipulate you in their own ways. They had their own ideas and they manipulated you, they coerced you, tortured you into certain directions. They may not have been aware of it themselves because they were tortured by their parents.
This is how the future is dominated by the past and the present is dominated by the dead.
A real man has to drop his conscience. The parental voice has to be dropped.
There are a few sayings of Jesus which are very rude but true to the very core. He says,
'Unless you hate your father and mother you will not be able to follow me.' Now this looks very rude. The language is rude but what he means is what I am saying to you --
drop the conscience. He is not saying you should hate your father and mother, he is saying you should hate the mother's and father's voice inside you. Unless you drop that you will never be free; you will remain split, you will have many voices in you, you will never become one.
You have lost your original face. People have painted your face too much according to their own ideas. They have made you. Now you have to take the whole process in your hands you have to become aware that you are not here to fulfil anybody's expectations.
You are here to attain your destiny.
So don't choose the safer way which you have been choosing up to now. It is safer to follow society because then society does not create trouble for you. It is very, very dangerous to follow your own voice, very dangerous to follow yourself, because then you are alone and society is not there to support you.
They used to tell a story of the Russian dictator, Stalin. The dictator walked into a movie incognito and sat in the last row. Suddenly his picture flashed on the screen and everybody rose in salute. He remained seated, enjoying the spectacle of his power, when suddenly an usher poked him in the back and whispered harshly: 'You'd better get up too if you know what's good for you. I don't like him any more than you do, but you'd better get up. It's safer.'
We have been choosing the safer, the secure, the socially approved. You will have to get out of it. There are two ways to get out of the socially approved: one is the way of the sinner, the criminal; another is the way of the saint, the holy man. These are the two ways to get out of the structured being that the society has given to you, cut of the role that the society has given you to play.
One is the criminal way. That is a reactionary way, foolish. It is not going to help you.
You may get out of the social structure but you will find yourself in prison. That is not going to help much; you cannot go very far on that way. That too is a way of getting out of the bondage of society -- the criminal is also trying to be free. Of course, he does not know how to be free, so he gets more into bondage. But his desire is the same as that of the saints. He is moving in the wrong direction, but his desire is the same. Society has forced many people to be criminals because the structure is too strong and people don't know how to get out of it. So they do something wrong, just to get out of it.
The saint is also doing the same but he is trying to create devices. Meditation is a device, zazen is a device to get out of society without becoming a criminal.
So remember, that danger is there. If you understand me and you think, 'Right, I will get out of society,' and you don't understand what I mean by meditation, you will become a criminal.
That's what hippies are doing in the West. They are hankering for freedom and their desire is right, absolutely right, they have absolute birthright to be free -- but they don't yet know the way of the saint. So knowingly, unknowingly, they are moving onto the path of the sinners. Sooner or later they will be crushed by society.
Just to be free of society is not enough. To be free and responsible, to be free and responsibly free -- only then are you free, otherwise you will be caught in another pattern.
The hippie is reacting, the people of Zen are rebelling. In reaction you just go to the opposite: if the society says no drugs, you say drugs are the only panacea. If the society says do this, you immediately do just the opposite. But remember, in doing the opposite, you are still in the trap of society because society has decided what you should do. Even the opposite is decided by society. The society said no drugs so you say, 'I am going to take drugs.' By saying no, the society has decided your direction.
So the one who is conventional is within the society and the one who has reacted against it, again gets caught in the society. One says yes to the society, another says no the society, but both react to the society. The man who really wants to be free says neither yes nor no.
The language is created by the society so the language is simply contradictory. Either you have to say yes or you have to say no. Sometimes you don't want to say either yes or no but there is no word. Just lately Edward de Bono has done a great service to humanity.
He has invented a new word, 'po' -- just in the middle of no and yes. Because there are situations when you would like to say po. You mean, 'I don't want to say yes, I don't want to say no, I don't want to take any alternative between these two. I want to be free. If I say yes, I am caught -- you decided my yes; if I say no, you decided my no in the opposite direction. I say po.'
A Zen person says po, the hippie says no -- and much is the difference, great is the difference.
The language is decided by the contradictory mind so everything is divided into two: heaven and hell, god and devil, yes and no, good and bad, the sinner and the saint.
Everything is divided into two, and in life, in fact, it is totally different -- it is a rainbow.
All the seven colours are there. There are many stages between the saint and the sinner; there are many possibilities between yes and no. And dark and light are not only two possibilities -- they are two poles. Between these two poles are all the rays, all the colours of the rainbow.
But the aristotelian logic, which is the logic of the society, divides only into two. That two creates a falsity in man. If you don't want to say yes and you don't want to say no, the language does not give you any other alternative. Somebody says, 'Do you love me?'
What are you going to say? If you say yes it may not be true, if you say no that also may not be true. You may like to remain uncommitted, you may like simply to shrug your shoulders -- but in language there is no way to shrug your shoulders.
I have heard about a man who went to visit a church with his wife. The church had over the portal the inscription: This is the house of God. This is the Gate of Heaven.
The man must have been a logician, a follower of Aristotle. He glanced at these words, tried the door and found it locked.
Then he turned to his wife and said, 'In other words, go to hell!'
Because the door to heaven is closed, where to go?'In other words, go to hell!'
Life is divided into two -- that is too miserly a division. Life is much richer. Life is neither white nor black, it is grey. White is one end of it, black is another end of it, but life is grey.
If you don't know that language is also a social trap, morality is also a social trap, formality is also a social trap, etiquette is also a social trap, you will not be
able to get out of it. And this is possible only if you become very, very aware, very keenly aware, sincerely aware. Then you will see traps all around. Don't react to them. Sinners have always been there, criminals have always been there
-- they tried to break out of the bounds of the society, but they never could get very far; they were always caught.
The only way to get out of it is a very subtle one, and that is to get within yourself so deeply that the society cannot reach there. That's the only way -- to become true, to get to your centre. That's what Zen is all about.
Once, at a scientific gathering, a young physicist approached the British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington and asked:
'Is it true, Sir Arthur, that you are one of the only three men in the world who really understands Einstein's theory of relativity?'
Then noticing the look of discomfort that came into the astronomer's face, he apologised.
'I'm sorry,' he said.'I didn't mean to embarrass you. I know how modest you are.' 'Not at all,' said Eddington.'I was just wondering who the third man could be.'
All your social formality, modesty, politeness, is just a layer, a very thin layer -- like when you pour oil on water and a thin film of the oil covers it. It is not even skin deep.
Don't be deceived by it. The only way to get beyond is to go within. You can become rude -- that is happening. Just to become sincere, some people are becoming rude. That is not the way. Just to be honest, people are becoming violent. Just to be true, they are becoming angry and insane. That is not the way. If you want to be true, move to the centre -- because if you remain on periphery you will remain untrue. Let your centre dominate the periphery. You move to the centre.
And be in a hurry. I don't mean be impatient. I mean don't be lazy. Because the problem is that if you have lived too long in the society and you have followed its rules and regulations for too long, one becomes accustomed to it. One forgets that it is a bondage, one forgets that these are chains. The chains start appearing like ornaments. You in fact start protecting them.
It happened.
To celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary, Mulla Nasruddin came home and presented his wife with a little monkey.'Are you crazy or something?' shouted Mistress Nasruddin.'Where the hell are we gonna keep a monkey?'
'Don't worry,' said Nasruddin.'He will sleep right in the bed with us.' 'And what about the smell?'
'If I could stand it for thirty years, he will get used to it soon.'
Be in a hurry because once you get settled it will be difficult. Difficult because you will not realise that you are in bondage. If you can escape younger, it will be easier. The older you grow, the more difficult it becomes.
Now, the story.
AFTER BANKEI HAD PASSED AWAY, A BLIND MAN WHO LIVED NEAR THE
MASTER'S TEMPLE SAID TO A FRIEND: 'SINCE I AM BLIND I CANNOT
WATCH A PERSON'S FACE, SO I MUST JUDGE HIS CHARACTER BY THE
SOUND OF HIS VOICE.'
'ORDINARILY WHEN I HEAR SOMEONE CONGRATULATE ANOTHER UPON
HIS HAPPINESS OR SUCCESS, I ALSO HEAR A SECRET TONE OF ENVY.
WHEN CONDOLENCE IS EXPRESSED FOR THE MISFORTUNE OF ANOTHER, I HEAR PLEASURE AND SATISFACTION, AS IF THE ONE CONDOLING WAS
REALLY GLAD THERE WAS SOMETHING LEFT TO GAIN IN HIS OWN WORLD.'
'IN ALL MY EXPERIENCE, HOWEVER, BANKEI'S VOICE WAS ALWAYS
SINCERE. WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED HAPPINESS, I HEARD NOTHING BUT
HAPPINESS, AND WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED SORROW, SORROW WAS ALL I HEARD.'
This is the greatest homage that can be done to a man, to the memory of a man.
Bankei was one of the greatest Zen Masters. This blind man who used to live near the temple could not see people's faces. Blind people become very, very perceptive. Because they are blind they become very perceptive. Because their eyes are not functioning, the whole energy and the capacity to see moves to their ears. Their ears become substitutes for eyes.
And there is a difference between eyes and ears. Eyes are linear, they look only in one direction. Ears are not linear. The ears hear from all directions, the sound is caught from all directions. Ears are more total than eyes. Eyes just focus; eyes are more concentrated.
Ears are more meditative; hence all the meditators close the eyes, because with the eyes the mind becomes linear. It is easy to concentrate with the eyes; difficult to meditate.
Remember the difference: when you concentrate, you focus your mind exclusively on something, and everything else is excluded out of it. You include only the certain thing on which you are concentrating, and everything is excluded. You focus. But ears are more meditative. They include all, everything that happens around. If you are listening to me, you are also listening to the birds. It is simultaneously happening. To the ears, existence is simultaneous; to the eyes it is linear, gradual. If I start looking from this side to that side, first I will see Amida, then Teertha, then somebody else, then somebody else
-- you are all here together. But eyes will create a linear procession which is a falsification of reality. You are not here in a queue, you are all here together. But if I listen with my ears, with closed eyes, to your breathing, your being -- then you are all here together.
Ears are closer to existence than eyes, and it is a misfortune that ears have been
neglected and eyes have become very predominant. Psychologists say that eighty per cent of human knowledge is gained through the eyes. Eighty per cent! It is too much. It has become almost dictatorial. The eyes have become the dictators. Ears are closer to the existence, to the diffused existence, to the togetherness of existence.
There are methods, particularly in Zen, where one simply sits and listens -- listens to existence, not concentrating anywhere. It is easier for eyes to be closed; you can open them, you can close them. Your mind can manipulate your eyes, but your ears you cannot close. They are always open.
So if your emphasis moves from eyes to ears, you will become more open. The eyes can be manipulated more easily, the mind can play tricks with the eyes. With ears it is more difficult to play tricks.
If you have come across a blind man, you will see, it happens. He starts seeing by his ears. And he can see many subtle nuances which eyes cannot see. He becomes more perceptive. By the sound, by the tone, by small waverings in the tone, fluctuations, he starts seeing deeply into you. And because he is not part of the society -- society belongs to those who have eyes -- a blind man is almost an outcast, out of the society. So you don't know how to deceive a blind man. You know how to deceive people who have eyes but you don't know how to deceive a blind man. You have never practised it, it has never happened. Rarely do you come across a blind man.
He starts seeing many things. Even by your footsteps, by the sound of your footsteps, he starts recognising many things in you. Are you a man rooted in the earth? Grounded in the earth? A blind man can see just by your footsteps -- he can hear whether you are grounded or not.
Every person moves in a different way, walks in a different way. If a Buddha walks he is tremendously grounded. His legs are almost like the roots of a tree. He is in deep contact with the earth. He is nourished by the earth, the earth is nourished by him. There is a continuous transfer of energy.
Ordinarily people are uprooted trees. They walk as if they are uprooted; they don't have roots in the earth, they are not grounded. You try sometimes. Just stand with naked feet on the earth or on the sand on a beach and just feel that your legs are like roots and that they are reaching deep into the earth. And start
swaying with the wind like a tree. Forget that you are a man, think of yourself as a tree, and soon you will see something transpiring between you and the earth. It may take a little time because you have forgotten the language but one day you will see something is transpiring. Something is given by the earth to the feet and you are also returning, responding. And the day it happens you will start walking in a totally new way -- rooted, solid, not fragile, not sad, more alive, full of energy. You will be less tired and your footsteps will have a different quality.
A blind man can immediately say whether this man is rooted in the earth or not.
A man who is a thief walks in a different way -- continuously afraid. The fear enters into the footsteps, into the sound of the footsteps. A man who is walking in his own home -- at home, at ease -- walks in a different way.
The blind man who lived near Bankei's temple must have known thousands of people. He was a beggar. He said, when Bankei died,
'ORDINARILY WHEN I HEAR SOMEONE CONGRATULATE ANOTHER UPON
HIS HAPPINESS OR SUCCESS, I ALSO HEAR A SECRET TONE OF ENVY.'
When people congratulate others, deep down they are jealous. The envy is there. It is just a social formality that they are fulfilling. Their voice will show it. You watch, you start watching life. It is a beautiful thing to watch. Many things are happening around you continuously. You are missing tremendous experiences. Watch people's voices --
someone congratulating someone. Try to see what his voice says -- not what he is saying, but what his voice says. And immediately you will understand what this blind man means. There is a subtle jealousy, envy, pain, misery, frustration -- that somebody else has succeeded and he has not succeeded. It is just a lip service.
'WHEN CONDOLENCE IS EXPRESSED FOR THE MISFORTUNE OF ANOTHER, I HEAR PLEASURE AND SATISFACTION '
The second thing is still deeper. The first thing you can understand. You can say, 'Right, true. There is jealousy when you congratulate somebody.' But the blind
man says that when you condole, when you see somebody has died or somebody has gone bankrupt or somebody's house has burned, and you go and you sympathize and you say, 'It was very bad,' deep down there is a subtle satisfaction and pleasure. Because deep down you are feeling good that your house has not been burned, somebody else's has; that your wife has not died, somebody else's has; at least your child is still alive, somebody else's has died. God has not been so cruel to you. You feel a subtle joy.
Whenever you sympathize or express condolence, watch. Or when you watch others doing that, just look deep down into their voice -- something else is also present; bound to be so. In your love, hatred is present. Even when you laugh, something deep down goes on crying within you. Your laughter is not pure; your laughter can be changed into crying very easily, your crying can be changed into laughter very easily. You know it.
You love a person and you can hate him any moment. You were ready to die for him, and now you are ready to kill him. A friend can become foe any moment. Man is contradictory, schizophrenic.
And the blind man said,
'IN ALL MY EXPERIENCE, HOWEVER, BANKEI'S VOICE WAS ALWAYS
SINCERE. WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED HAPPINESS, I HEARD NOTHING BUT
HAPPINESS...'
It was pure, uncontaminated by the opposite, uncorrupted, uncontradicted. It was simple.
It was not complex. It was sincere.
'...AND WHENEVER HE EXPRESSED SORROW, SORROW WAS ALL I HEARD.'
This simplicity is the goal of Zen; this sincerity is the goal of Zen.
I was reading a few lines of T. S. Eliot the other day: A CONDITION OF COMPLETE SIMPLICITY (COSTING NOT LESS THAN
EVERYTHING) AND ALL SHALL BE WELL AND ALL MANNER OF THINGS
SHALL BE WELL WHEN THE TONGUES OF FLAME ARE IN-FOLDED INTO THE
CROWNED KNOT OF FIRE AND THE FIRE AND THE ROSE ARE ONE.
They express the very essence of Zen. AND THE FIRE AND THE ROSE ARE ONE.
There comes a moment of simplicity when the energy that is invested in hatred and the energy that is invested in love are released from their polar opposites. AND THE FIRE
AND THE ROSE ARE ONE.
Then a man is simply simple. He has no contradictions in him. You can taste him; his taste is always the same. And whatsoever he does he does it totally -- there is no other way. He cannot do even a small thing without being total in it. Even a small gesture of his hand and he is totally there in that gesture. He looks at you and he is there in his look --
totally there. He touches you -- it is not only his hand that touches you, it is his whole being.
Ordinarily we are manipulating things -- chairs, tables, a thousand and one things -- and we have forgotten that hands are meant for something more also, not just manipulating things. So when you touch your beloved's hand, you touch as if you were touching a table. You have forgotten that hands are not just to manipulate, they are to give also. The hands have become dead.
When a man like Bankei touches, then you will know what touch is. He will flow through his touch totally into you; he will pour himself into you. His touch will be a gift, his look will be a gift, because he has attained. He has given the ultimate gift of his own being to himself -- AND THE FIRE AND THE ROSE ARE ONE.
Listen to your heart, move according to your heart, whatsoever the stake: A CONDITION OF COMPLETE SIMPLICITY
COSTING NOT LESS THAN EVERYTHING.…
To be simple is arduous, because to be simple it costs everything that you have. You have to lose all to be simple. That's why people have chosen to be complex and they have forgotten how to be simple.
But only a simple heart throbs with God, hand in hand. Only a simple heart sings with God in deep harmony. To reach to that point you will have to find your heart, your own throb, your own beat.
'THIS IS MY WAY,' Nietzsche used to say. 'WHERE IS YOURS? THUS I ANSWERED THOSE WHO ASKED ME THE WAY. FOR THE WAY...THAT DOES
NOT EXIST.'
'THIS IS MY WAY, WHERE IS YOURS? THUS I ANSWERED THOSE WHO ASKED ME THE WAY. FOR THE WAY...THAT DOES NOT EXIST.' Only
ways exist
-- THE way does not exist. Your way, my way, yes -- but THE way, no.
Zen is an absolutely individual path. It is not a religion in the sense of Christianity, it is not a religion in the sense of any organization. One has to become individual. The word
'individual' is good. It simply means: one who cannot be divided. Indivisible means individual. You are not yet individuals because you are split. Become one and you will become individuals.
Great is the stake, great is the risk, but it is worth it. Dang Dang Doko Dang
Chapter #4
< Previous | Contents | Next >