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Chapter title: Showering invisible flowers
16 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
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8902165
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121
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OUR BELOVED MASTER,
SEKITO'S "SONG OF THE GRASS HUT."
I MAKE A GRASS HUT IN WHICH INSIDE THERE IS NO WORLDLY TREASURE.
I EAT AND SLEEP NATURALLY AND EASILY. WHEN I MADE THE HUT, THE
REEDS WERE NEW. WHEN THE HUT GETS TORN, I COVER IT WITH
REEDS
AGAIN. THE PERSON LIVING IN THE HUT IS ALWAYS THERE. HE DOES NOT
BELONG TO INSIDE OR OUTSIDE. I DO NOT LIVE WHERE ORDINARY PEOPLE
LIVE; I DO NOT LOVE WHAT ORDINARY PEOPLE LOVE.
ALTHOUGH THE HUT IS SMALL, IT CONTAINS THE DHARMA WORLD. A MAN OF ZEN UNDERSTANDS IT WELL. BODHISATTVAS OF THE SUPREME
VEHICLE HAVE NO DOUBT ABOUT IT, BUT THE MEDIOCRE ARE BOUND TO
BE DUBIOUS.
IF I WERE ASKED WHETHER THIS HUT BREAKS DOWN OR NOT, I WOULD
SAY THAT THE SUBJECT IS ORIGINALLY BOTH IN THE BREAKABLE AND
UNBREAKABLE. I DON'T LIVE IN THE NORTH OR SOUTH OR THE WEST OR
EAST.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE HUT IS THE MOST SOLID. UNDER THE GREEN
PINE TREE, IN THE HUT'S BRIGHT WINDOW -- EVEN A GOLDEN PALACE
CAN'T COMPARE. IF I COVER MYSELF WITH THE OLD QUILT, EVERYTHING
SETTLES. THEN I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING.
LIVING IN THIS HUT, I STOP LOOKING FOR ANY SOLUTIONS. WHO WOULD
PUT THEM PROUDLY IN THE SHOW WINDOW FOR THE PEOPLE TO BUY?
WHEN EVENING COMES AND THE SUN IS SETTING, I COME BACK TO THE
HUT. MY BEING IS SO VAST THAT THERE ARE NO DIVISIONS. MEETING
WITH THE INTIMATE TEACHINGS OF THE ANCESTRAL MASTER, I MADE A HUT WITH GRASSES AND DON'T THINK OF LEAVING. I JUST LET THE
HUNDRED YEARS GO AS THEY PASS BY.
IF I MOVE WITH MY HANDS OPEN, THERE IS NO PROBLEM. A THOUSAND
WORDS, TEN THOUSAND SOLUTIONS, ONLY KEEP YOU IN IGNORANCE. IF
YOU WANT TO KNOW THE IMMORTAL PERSON IN THE HUT, WHY DO YOU
GO AWAY FROM THIS SKIN BAG?
Friends,
I hope that the Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, will cancel the ban on Salman Rushdie's book THE SATANIC VERSES. It is absolutely innocent. The fanatic Mohammedans who are trying to destroy the book, to ban the book, perhaps have not read it.
Rudolph Salman Rushdie was born in India as a Mohammedan, then he moved to England, and has become a worldwide literary figure. Being born in India, he has every right of an Indian citizen too. The Indian constitution gives to every individual freedom of speech and freedom of expression as a fundamental
human right.
Salman Rushdie's book has only one mention of Mohammed which is not at all condemnatory. It is a factual thing that he describes, and it has already been accepted by the Mohammedan theologians for centuries.
The incident is concerning the earlier version of the Koran, in which Mohammed accepted three female deities. Later on he cancelled those verses concerning the female deities, and declared that those verses were inspired by the devil. Now it is a well-known fact that Mohammed changed those verses. If Salmon Rushdie writes about it, it is not condemnatory, he is simply stating a fact which has been accepted.
But the anger is coming because the world will know that even Mohammed was capable of being deceived by the devil. What about the other verses? If he had not said it, those verses would have remained in the Koran.
But Salman Rushdie is not responsible for it. Mohammed himself has to take the responsibility, and Mohammedans have to accept the fact that he was capable of being deceived. Now this is hurting them. But Salman Rushdie is not responsible for it. He has simply picked up theological information and written it into his book THE SATANIC
VERSES.
In Pakistan already five people have been killed because they were surrounding the American Embassy. The book has been published in England and now it is going to be published in America. And they were demanding from the American Embassy that it should not be published in America, "otherwise we will destroy you." Just to protect them from these fanatical Mohammedans, who know nothing about the book but have just heard the rumor, the police had to fire at and kill five Mohammedans, and it is a Mohammedan state.
India is a democratic secular country. Rajiv Gandhi's banning the book simply shows fear. And the fear of Rajiv Gandhi should not be against the constitution of India, against the laws of India. The ban should be immediately removed. That's why I said perhaps he has not read the book himself, otherwise he would see that it is a beautiful fiction.
And now even Mohammedan scholars are coming out in favor of Salman
Rushdie. Of course, they are all outside Iran. The so-called religious leaders are the worst kind of butchers. They would have killed anybody who would have raised the question. And I doubt whether they have read the books that they are condemning or not. I suspect that the book contains nothing, nothing that should cause four persons to be murdered as a punishment. It is against Islamic law and it is against Iran's constitution. But in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini is the law, is the constitution.
He should be condemned from all corners of the world, whether one is a Mohammedan or not. He is taking away a human right, and that too, unnecessarily, because Salman Rushdie's book contains nothing condemnatory about Mohammed. Just stating a historical fact which has been accepted for fourteen hundred years by Mohammedan scholars is not a crime. And his coming to the radio and declaring: "It is the duty of every Mohammedan around the world to kill these four persons -- Salman Rushdie, the writer, the publisher of the book, the printer of the book, and the sole agent of the book. These four persons have to be killed without any mercy ..."
Salman Rushdie is hiding in England, and has canceled his tour of America to promote the book and its publication there.
I was waiting to tell Rajiv Gandhi, waiting until some Mohammedan scholars would raise their voices. And all around the world voices are being raised.
I have received this news report:
EMINENT MUSLIMS, INCLUDING THE FORMER CHIEF JUSTICE OF MADRAS
HIGH COURT, JUSTICE ISMAIL, HAVE UNEQUIVOCALLY CONDEMNED
AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI'S "DEATH SENTENCE" ON AUTHOR SALMAN
RUSHDIE AND ALL THOSE ASSOCIATED WITH THE PUBLICATION OF HIS
BOOK THE SATANIC VERSES, DESCRIBING IT AS AGAINST ALL LAW INCLUDING ISLAMIC LAW.
ISLAMIC SCHOLARS STATED THAT "THE SENTENCE WAS DUBIOUS ON
THEOLOGICAL, NOT TO MENTION LEGAL GROUNDS."
HESHAM EL-ESSAWY, SPOKESMAN FOR BRITAIN'S ESTIMATED ONE
MILLION MUSLIMS, SAID, "ANYONE CARRYING OUT KHOMEINI'S ORDER
WOULD BE GUILTY OF MURDER. WE VERY MUCH REGRET AND DENOUNCE
KHOMEINI'S STATEMENT. THREATS LIKE THIS, OR ANY VIOLENT
RESPONSE, IS NOT THE CORRECT RELIGIOUS RESPONSE. IT IS A VERY
DANGEROUS DEVELOPMENT AND WILL GIVE RUSHDIE SYMPATHY WHERE
IT IS NOT DESERVED."
BRITISH MP'S HAVE ALSO CALLED FOR THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT TO
FORMALLY PROTEST TO IRAN.
One has to be very aware about the fanatic and fascist attitudes of religious leaders. A great consciousness is needed, particularly for those who are in power, that they don't misuse it. Banning Salman Rushdie's book is a misuse of power, and I condemn it with my whole heart.
I have nothing to do with the book, or with Islam, or with the writer. My concern is that these things become precedents for destroying freedom of speech, freedom of expression, which are necessary foundations for a cultured society, for a humane society.
I hope that Rajiv Gandhi comes to his senses and takes the ban away.
And the same should be done around the world by all the political leaders, otherwise all creativeness in poets, in novelists, is bound to be destroyed. And they are the very salt of the earth, they are the only people who are creating something. Religious leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini have not contributed anything to the world, to its beauty, to its truth, to its culture, to its civilization. They have only destroyed. But they destroy in the name of God, and the poor God cannot even say anything because he does not exist.
The second thing I was going to say to you before I take the questions from the sannyasins is that I came to know this day that Chinese sannyasins are a little bit upset because I may have told you that a few of the Zen masters are Japanese, and their disturbance is that they are Chinese.
I am not a very informed person. I don't speak out of information, I speak out of my transformation. I know that Zen belongs to no country, so to me it does not matter whether they were Chinese, or Japanese, or Indians. At least Zen should not be confined to any country, to any race, to any language. It belongs to the whole universe. So what is the fuss all about?
I have never read the sutras. Maneesha finds the sutras; I simply speak spontaneously.
My concern is Zen, not China or Japan. And you will see Sekito himself says, "I don't belong to the east, I don't belong to the west, I don't belong to the south, I don't belong to the north." If Zen is also to be confined to a race, to a language, to a certain part of the earth, then it is not Zen.
So you have to be very clear. Neither am I a scholar, nor am I knowledgeable, informative. What I am saying is my moment-to-moment response. And my consideration for Zen is that it belongs to the whole universe.
So don't be bothered. It is good that you got upset. I love upsetting people. And do you see the trivia you get upset about? What does it matter where Sekito was born -- China or Japan?
I don't belong to India, I belong to this vast universe, and I want you also to belong to this vastness. Why be confined into small prisons created by politicians and priests?
The whole effort here is to bring you back to the vastness and infinity and
eternity of the universe. And still you think about China and Japan and India? Then in China there are many states, and in every state there are many districts, and in many districts there are even smaller units ...
A Zen master is simply a Zen master. He belongs to Zen, not to China, not to Japan, not to India. I would like you also to be clear about it. These boundaries have to be dropped.
Why cling to such small meaningless, mediocre things? Why not open up yourself to the whole universe, this vast sky, the beyond? Zen belongs to the beyond.
Don't be mediocre. I don't want my sannyasins to be mediocres. I want my sannyasins to be universal citizens.
Question 1
The first question:
NOW BEING FREE FROM THE CONCEPT OF GOD, IS OUR NEWLY FOUND
DIGNITY THAT YOU SPOKE OF THE OTHER DAY, NOT PRONE TO BECOME
ENTANGLED IN THE EGO?
You will not be entangled in the ego, because the ego is part of your mind, just as God is part of your mind. Both are fictions; they both are relatives. The moment you drop God ...
If you have guts to drop God, you certainly will have guts to drop the ego -- that is a smaller God within you. And once the bigger brother is dead, the little cousin-brother will die. First you have to kill the big brother; it is his reflection in you. Your God is an egoist, an arch-egoist, and he gives you the idea of the ego.
Don't get confused between dignity and ego. Dignity is very humble, very simple, very innocent; it belongs to the trees. When they blossom in spring, you just look and watch their pride, their dignity. Just watch when a peacock is
dancing. Those psychedelic colors, and the beautiful dance ... do you think there is any ego? But there is certainly dignity.
Dignity is a totally different phenomenon, it is self-respect. Ego is domination over others. Dignity is just standing on your own feet, independence, freedom; it is not domination over others. The moment you start thinking of dominating, you are falling into the trap of the ego. And God is the greatest ego because he created everything, he dominates everything. He is present everywhere, he is all- powerful. And his reflection in the priests ... The pope claims that he is infallible. Now this is ego.
A man of dignity, a man of self-respect will not say such things. Certainly he will walk straight with his head raised in dignity. He will not walk like a slave, surrendered, subdued. He will walk like a lion and roar like a lion. But that is your intrinsic energy, your intrinsic power.
The power that depends on others creates the ego. The power that comes from within your own sources of life creates dignity. Meditation brings tremendous dignity, a great grace, but not even a shadow of ego is found in it.
If you are capable of murdering God, you will certainly be capable of murdering his image in you. In fact, the moment God is no longer there, you will suddenly be surprised.
Where has the ego gone? If the moon is not there, the reflection in the lake of the moon will disappear.
To me, egos are reflections of one moon in different ponds, in different lakes, in different oceans, in different rivers -- millions of reflections. But just remove the moon and all the reflections are removed. You don't have to remove every reflection. It will take millennia to remove all those reflections. And in fact, if the moon remains, you cannot remove the reflections.
So I am hitting directly on God's head. Zen masters have been hitting on poor disciples'
heads. I am hitting to the very source from where your ego is arising. God removed, you will not find the ego at all, it is a reflection.
The Bible says, God created man in his own image. This causes ego. You are the
highest creature in existence because God created you in his own image, and he created all the animals for you to eat. These are your religions, scriptures which are telling you to destroy the ecology of existence, which are telling you to destroy beautiful animals which bring grace and joy all around you. But God himself says in your holy scriptures, "I have created everything for your use." He is giving you the first incentive for the ego.
Once God is removed, you will simply find your ego is gone. It was the shadow, the reflection of God. And then you will find a totally new phenomenon, a dignity which is not a domination over others, which is not superiority over others. It is simply the joy that existence loves you, that existence creates you, that existence needs you, that you are not accidental. This gives you dignity, this gives you honor, and it is not dependent on others.
It comes from your own innermost experience of your being.
The moment you find yourself existential, that you belong to the whole cosmos, and the whole cosmos belongs to you, there arises a tremendous splendor in your being --
Himalayan peaks of consciousness, Pacific depths of consciousness. That brings you the lion's roar.
You realize for the first time you are not a slave.
You realize for the first time you are not a created creature.
You realize for the first time that existence is your home, you are not an outsider, and existence is nourishing you every moment.
There must be a certain purpose, a certain destiny that existence is seeking through you to reach, a certain height of consciousness, a certain height of love, a certain height of compassion, understanding, wisdom, enlightenment. Existence is trying in every possible way to create a buddha in your very innermost being. The moment you are a buddha, there is dignity without any superiority.
There is dignity in a roseflower. Do you think it has any power over anybody? It is so delicate, so vulnerable, but it has tremendous dignity. When it is dancing in the sun, in the rain, in the wind, it knows existence has created in him one of the
most beautiful things.
Dignity arises out of meditation. Ego arises out of mind.
So don't be worried about it. Meditation will take care.
You will not become egoist, that's an impossibility. Question 2
The second question:
IN THE FIRST LECTURE OF THE SERIES, GOD IS DEAD, NOW ZEN IS THE
ONLY LIVING TRUTH, YOU SAID: "EXISTENCE NEEDS YOU." FOR ME THIS IS
LIKE A NEW BELIEF BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW THIS.
I have not told you to believe it; I have not told you to disbelieve it. It is my experience, I am sharing it with you. You don't have to believe it, you don't have to disbelieve it. You have to inquire into it. You have to go to the same depths, to the same heights from where I am speaking, to the same center of your being. Then you will understand it, not believe it. You will know it. Existence needs you, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
Why should you be here? Why should existence bother to keep you alive eternally?
But if you start believing in my statements, you are misunderstanding me. I am not here to create any belief system in you. Whatever I say is not to be believed or disbelieved. It has to be simply understood and inquired into. Search inside yourself for what I am saying to see whether it is true or not. Put it to the test. I know that when you put it to the test, you will come to experience it.
I am not converting you towards any theology, belief, any philosophy. I don't do that kind of dirty work. There are enough missionaries around the world doing that. I destroy your beliefs, and you start believing in me?
Please, don't believe in me! Belief in anyone is ignorance -- I am included in it. Just listen to me, and then put whatever you hear and understand to a fire test. Go into the exploration. I don't want you to believe, because I know what I am saying is truth. You don't have to believe it, you have just to inquire and you will find it.
The people who tell you to believe -- for example Jesus, who goes on saying to people,
"Believe in me," is not certain about his truth. If he was certain about his truth, he would never have insisted on belief. He would have said, "Explore. Inquire. Search." I am simply giving you an incentive, a sense of direction where to go. Then find yourself.
Because it is truth you have to find it, and you will find it. Only lies have to be believed.
So all those messiahs and prophets and incarnations of God who have talked you into beliefs, are destroying your truth. They are taking you away from your innermost realization. They are taking you away from your own buddhahood, from your own nature, from your own truth.
My effort is totally against all the messiahs, and all the avataras, all the tirthankaras, all the prophets, and all the messengers. My work is not only totally different, but absolutely against them. They were creating beliefs. I am destroying beliefs, because I know the truth. And I know that if you inquire -- I am absolutely certain -- you will find it.
So why should I insist on belief? Only people who are not certain about their own experience, who are concerned that if you go deeper inside you may not find what they are saying, insist on believing.
So you never go. Once you believe in a thing, all search stops. That's why I want you to be open, no belief system. Just inquire into your own consciousness, and all that is truthful, all that is beautiful, you are going to find it. You will realize, when you are centered in your being, that existence needs you, because you are
nothing but projections of existence, hands of existence reaching for the stars.
Evolution of consciousness is just the greatest ambition of existence, and it has trusted you a tremendous responsibility.
Rise above the mind which is a social product. Rise above everything that others have forced upon you, and be authentically yourself. Try to find what it is that you are in your innermost being which never changes. The body goes on changing from childhood to youth, from youth to middle age, from middle age to old age, from old age to death.
The mind moves even faster. Every moment it is changing. In the morning it is one thing, in the evening it is something else. But behind mind and body there is some space which is absolutely eternal and remains the same whether your body is that of a child or of an old man, whether you are alive or dead. It does not matter to your innermost consciousness. That is the only truth, and realizing it you will see how much existence needs you.
You are its greatest potentials on the way to become Gautam Buddhas. Now the sutras:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
SEKITO'S "SONG OF THE GRASS HUT."
I MAKE A GRASS HUT IN WHICH INSIDE THERE IS NO WORLDLY TREASURE.
I EAT AND SLEEP NATURALLY AND EASILY. WHEN I MADE THE HUT, THE
REEDS WERE NEW. WHEN THE HUT GETS TORN, I COVER IT WITH REEDS
AGAIN. THE PERSON LIVING IN THE HUT IS ALWAYS THERE.
He is talking about the body; the hut is only a symbol. The person living in there is always there. That will give you the clue that the hut is just a symbol, otherwise sometimes the person will have to go out to find food, to find water.
But the person remains there always.
"HE DOES NOT BELONG TO INSIDE OR OUTSIDE" -- how can he belong
to China or Japan?
"I DO NOT LIVE WHERE ORDINARY PEOPLE LIVE ..." Where do ordinary
people live? -- in the body, in the mind. Sekito is saying, "I DO NOT LIVE WHERE
ORDINARY PEOPLE LIVE; I DO NOT LOVE WHAT ORDINARY PEOPLE LOVE."
What is the love of ordinary people? -- money, power, prestige.
Sekito is saying, "I also love, but not the way the ordinary people love, and not the objects that ordinary people love. I love their subjectivity. I love their subjectivity because I know my own subjectivity. Just as I am there always, they are also always there. They may know it, they may not know it. I don't love their bodies. I don't love their minds, but I love that which is behind and beyond their bodies and their minds.
"I don't love the way they love. They always love with conditions and conditions and conditions. They destroy their love because of so many conditions attached to it. I simply love because it is my nature to love. I have come to the point from where love is overflowing. There is no condition attached to it."
If you receive Sekito's love, or my love, you are obliging me and Sekito. You could have refused. It was within your power, but you received it with joy. You are not to be grateful to me or to Sekito. I have to be grateful to you. I was too full of love, and you came on the way and unburdened me. I have to be obliged to you, and I have a deep gratitude towards you.
ALTHOUGH THE HUT IS SMALL, IT CONTAINS THE DHARMA WORLD.
The hut is small in the sense that it is within you, but the moment you realize -- not as a concept in the mind, but as an actual experience beyond the mind -- you suddenly see that the smallest center of your being contains the whole dharma world, the whole world of nature, the whole existence. A small seed contains so much, it can make the whole earth green. Your smallest center contains so much that the whole universe can be filled by it.
Once you know it, you know it; it is without limits and without boundaries.
A MAN OF ZEN UNDERSTANDS IT WELL -- that although the hut is small, it contains the whole existence. BODHISATTVAS OF THE SUPREME VEHICLE HAVE
NO DOUBT ABOUT IT, BUT THE MEDIOCRE ARE BOUND TO BE DUBIOUS.
And the world is full of mediocre people.
Just today somebody has written an article against me -- as an example of a mediocre mind -- because I sent the telegram to Rajiv Gandhi. It said if you are honest and truthful, then throw away all your weapons, arms, into the ocean, and let your armies be dissolved.
Put all those people into the fields, into the orchards, into farms, into gardens, to create and to work.
The telegram was in response to his address of an international gathering of scientists, and he was telling them that there was no need for nations, there was no need for boundaries, there was no need for arms, there was no need for wars. My telegram was simply to provoke him and focus his mind -- "Can you do it? And if you cannot do it, you don't have the right to tell others to do it."
I was simply making it clear to him that he is not capable of doing it. Nobody else is capable of doing it for the simple reason of the fear of being invaded. But if you are not capable of doing it, you should understand nobody is capable of doing it. Then don't talk nonsense.
My telegram was not an appeal to him to throw away the arms into the ocean and dissolve the armies. I was trying to check upon his intelligence. He has not answered, because he knows perfectly well this cannot be done.
He was simply imitating Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi had said it to Louis Fischer an American writer who was living with Gandhi and working out and preparing a biography of Mahatma Gandhi. Louis Fischer asked Mahatma Gandhi, "When India becomes independent" -- it was before independence -- "what are you going to do with the arms, because you are nonviolent, and you preach nonviolence? What are you going to do with your armies? What will
happen to your factories which produce a tremendous amount of arms?"
And without any hesitation Mahatma Gandhi said, "I will throw all these arms into the ocean, and I will make all the armies retire and go back to work. We don't need armies, we need more people, strong people to create more food, more clothes."
The obvious question was, and Louis Fischer asked it, "What will happen if some foreign country invades you?"
And Mahatma Gandhi, without any hesitation, again said, "We will receive them as our guests, and we will tell them, Ìf you want to live in this country, you are welcome.'"
Rajiv Gandhi was simply imitating Mahatma Gandhi. It is very good to use sweet words, but the point is that even Mahatma Gandhi did not prove true to his own promises. He was the first man to bless three airplanes full of bombs who were going to attack Pakistan. They came over the house where he was staying in New Delhi, Birla House, with one of the most super-rich families in India. He talked about poverty, and he lived in Birla House which is a palace .…
And the three airplanes, before going to Pakistan, came as close to the house as possible to receive the blessings of Mahatma Gandhi. And he came out of the house and he blessed -- "Go away and be victorious." Seeing his hand raised as he was standing in the garden of Birla House, those three airplanes were the first to attack Pakistan. And this was the man who just a few years back was talking about throwing arms into the sea and receiving invaders as guests.
So I was simply provoking Rajiv Gandhi to come to his senses: "Don't talk nonsense." I have every right as a citizen of this country to ask that the prime minister of this country does not talk nonsense. If he is honest, he should answer me and ask for an apology for those things he said to the international conference of the scientists -- or he should do what he has said!
Now this man has written a whole article against me saying that I am suggesting to Rajiv Gandhi to throw away all the arms and dissolve the armies. "Then what will happen if somebody attacks?" -- this man asks me -- "Have you gone mad?"
I have returned him the answer that first think about Gandhi. Was he mad? And you are a dim-witted fellow that you could not understand the telegram. You are
a mediocre. You don't have even the capacity to understand that the telegram was not an appeal, it was a response to his absolutely nonsense words to the international conference.
And he contradicted himself just after four days. Then he was addressing Hindu chauvinists. Then he said, "We should save our national heritage." And just four days before that he was saying, "All boundaries of nations should dissolve." From where has the national heritage come now? And if you are going to save your national heritage, why should others dissolve their national heritage? -- "We should be patriotic!"
Politicians have so many masks. I was just trying to pull his mask and let him see his original face. But this idiot who has written the article did not understand the meaning of the telegram. It was against Mahatma Gandhi, it was against Rajiv Gandhi. It was against all the politicians who say one thing and always do just the opposite.
But this is how it has been since man started growing on this planet. The mediocre are bound to be dubious, they cannot understand. Only bodhisattvas, the potential buddhas ...
that is the meaning of the word bodhisattvas. You are all bodhisattvas, potential buddhas in the seed, in the essence.
So when you go to your very center in meditation, I start calling you buddhas.
Particularly, at that moment you are a buddha. You will again fall and become a bodhisattva, but slowly slowly, you will start feeling the difference between a bodhisattva and a buddha. I want this distance to disappear. The bodhisattva turns into a buddha, dissolves into the buddha. Only buddhas know exactly what is the truth. And only they are capable of not misunderstanding.
"IF I WERE ASKED," says Sekito, "WHETHER THIS HUT BREAKS DOWN OR
NOT, I WOULD SAY THAT THE SUBJECT IS ORIGINALLY BOTH IN THE BREAKABLE AND UNBREAKABLE."
Now you can understand clearly, he is not referring to any hut. He is saying,
"Whether this hut breaks down or not, does not matter." One who is living in it, the subject, your interiormost consciousness which is living in the body, is not affected whether the hut is breakable or unbreakable.
Even in your death you never die. Even in your birth you are never born.
You have always been here. Birth and death have happened many times, just small episodes in an eternity-to-eternity long life.
I DON'T LIVE IN THE NORTH OR SOUTH OR THE WEST OR EAST.
Where is China? Now where should I put this fellow Sekito? When I don't find any place, I put people in Japan, because that is the most crowded place in the world -- no land! So I go on increasing the crowd there.
So don't be worried. Japan has to be worried, why should you be worried? I hope sooner or later, the emperor of Japan is going to object saying, "You are sending too many people to Japan, and we are already so crowded."
Tokyo is the most crowded city in the world. Now they are creating artificial islands because there is nowhere to go. It is a small country, and had an immense increase of population after the second world war. That always happens after war, because nature immediately replaces. Seeing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that so many people have died, nature immediately rushes and starts bringing more and more children. It is a well-known fact that after every war there is a boom of children. They suddenly go on and on.
It is very difficult to stop them.
So Japan had a great boom of children. And Japanese children are really beautiful. What happens to them afterwards is a tragedy. The Japanese children are so beautiful. I don't think anywhere else such beautiful children are born -- just like Japanese dolls. But something goes wrong. When they grow up, then all that beauty simply disappears. Then they look like rats, but very dangerous rats. I have always wondered what happens -- such beautiful children suddenly disappear.
I love Japan because of those children. And I love Japan because of the second
birth, when a man again becomes a child -- those are the Zen masters. So forgive me please.
A man of Zen belongs to the universe, not to the south or the west or the east or to the north.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE HUT IS THE MOST SOLID. UNDER THE GREEN
PINE TREE, IN THE HUT'S BRIGHT WINDOW -- EVEN A GOLDEN PALACE
CAN'T COMPARE.
I am reminded of an ancient parable .…
A poor man in his hut ... it is the middle of the night, and the hut is so small that only the husband and wife can sleep in it. That's enough space, that is all.
And somebody knocks on the door .…
It is raining so much, and the dark night -- perhaps somebody has forgotten the way.
Deep in the forest they lived.
So the husband told the wife, who was near the door, "Open the door." The wife said, "But there is no space."
The husband said, "It is not a palace, it is a poor man's hut; there is always space. Only in palaces is it very difficult to find space."
The wife said, "You always say strange things. In the middle of the night that fellow must be drenched with water. It is pouring, and you want him to come in?"
He said, "Yes, you just open the door. Nobody should go away from my door!" So the woman reluctantly opens the door, and then asks, "What should we do?"
He said, "There is no problem. We were lying down, now we will sit. For three persons it is enough space to sit, and we will talk. We have not seen anybody coming from the city for many days, so he may have some news, and he will gossip. And the night is not long -
- half is already gone, half will also go."
So the man comes in and they sit. The man looks around and sees that he has intruded upon their privacy -- there is no space. But there is no way of going out, there is too much rain and it is too dark, and he has forgotten the way. So he said, "Forgive me."
They said, "There is no problem. It is not a palace, it is a poor man's hut. There is always enough space."
So they started talking, and suddenly another man knocked on the door. And this stranger inside was sitting close to the door, so the man, the owner said, "Open the door."
The stranger said, "What? There is no space!"
The man said, "If I had listened to my wife, who was saying there is no space, you would not have been in. Just open the door. There is enough space, we just have to sit a little closer. And you, who have been given space, should not object."
Reluctantly that man opened the door and another man came in. And he said, "Forgive me, but there is nowhere to go. The light from your hut has been my only safety. I have been walking all the way just looking at your hut -- a small light from the window. So forgive me for intruding."
The man said, "You are not intruding. We can sit closely and it will be warmer also. You are drenched and you must be feeling cold. So the more people who are inside, the warmer it will become. Sit down and be close."
Now this new stranger is sitting closest to the door, and a donkey comes and knocks on the door by his head.
The man said, "Please open the door, because I know that donkey loves me. He always comes. And when there is trouble, the poor fellow has nowhere to go.
Just open the door."
The second stranger who was sitting by the side of the door said, "What? For a donkey
...? Where is the space?"
The man said, "This has been the problem, and I have been creating space. We will create space, don't be worried. We are sitting, we will stand, and the donkey can be just at the center -- and he is such a lovely philosophical-minded fellow. We will all enjoy him."
Those strangers said, "You are a very strange fellow."
He said, "I am. Otherwise you would not have been in. My wife is absolutely rational, she would not have allowed anybody. So please open the door. It is my hut and you should not forget you are only a guest. Another guest has come. Just open the door."
So he has to open it, but very reluctantly, angry that a donkey was being brought in. And the donkey entered and stood in between, and all those people stood up.
"Now," the man asked, "do you see how a poor man's hut is so spacious?
"It is not a question of the hut, it is a question of the heart. If you have space in the heart, you have space in the hut. In the palaces there is no space in the heart, that's why there are empty palaces, but no space. Doors would not have been opened for you.
"This poor donkey has no chance of entering into a palace, but a poor man's hut respects everybody."
So he says, "THE FOUNDATION OF THE HUT IS THE MOST SOLID. UNDER THE
GREEN PINE TREE, IN THE HUT'S BRIGHT WINDOW -- EVEN A GOLDEN
PALACE CAN'T COMPARE."
The foundation is on a rock. You know Sekito -- he used to remain on a rock, that's why he became famous as Stonehead. A completely shaven head that looked like a stone, and he was always sitting on a stone. And it was the master Nangaku who ordered his people to make a hut for him -- around him, because he was a strange fellow, he would not even move.
So the foundation was really strong. It was a flat rock, and he remained sitting while Nangaku's people were making the hut around him. He did not say anything -- whether to make it or not to make it, he did not take any note.
A man reported to Nangaku: "That fellow is very strange. We are making a hut around him, and he does not even inquire what we are doing."
Nangaku said, "I know him. Even when he was not enlightened he was very strange. And now that he is enlightened, he is the strangest man. But you finish the job; don't be bothered by him, and don't be afraid of him. He is a very soft- hearted man, just his head is like a stone, hard."
He is right. If you are really alive, then even a small hut with a window goes on giving you a sunset, a sunrise, the moon and the whole sky full of stars, a beautiful pine tree and the fragrance of the pine filling into the hut. Who cares about palaces?
He is saying that a man of consciousness is in a palace everywhere. His palace is this whole sky. His foundation is absolutely solid, his center is absolutely solid. Now it doesn't matter where he is. Wherever he is, he is the emperor. Wherever he is, he is in the palace.
"IF I COVER MYSELF WITH THE OLD QUILT, EVERYTHING SETTLES.
There is no sun, there is no moon, there is no sky, there are no stars -- everything simply disappears, there is no world. The moment I cover myself with the old quilt, EVERYTHING SETTLES. THEN I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING."
This is the beauty of a Zen master. He can accept his ignorance. He can accept that "I don't know anything."
Out of this not-knowing arises tremendous wisdom. Out of this ignorance arises innocence.
Out of this not-knowing, this darkness of not-knowing, comes a fresh sunrise. This not-knowing is not the mediocre man's not-knowing. This not-knowing is beyond the mind.
Mind can be a knower, it can be a non-knower -- those are possibilities of the mind. But beyond the mind you can only say, "I am." Or perhaps even "I" is not needed, perhaps
"am" is also not needed, only existence is.
It is a tautology to say "existence is," because isness is what is meant by existence. So just isness, a pure isness without any disturbance of knowledge, information .… But the purity of it and the beauty of it is beyond limits. Its abundant blossoming of all the qualities that man has always cherished, hoped, dreamed, have become realities. But they are coming from an innocence. All those flowers, all those lotuses are blossoming out of not-knowing.
A mirror does not know anything, but when you come in front of the mirror it immediately responds, reflects. A Zen master functions in the same way. You put a question to him ... he is not filled with knowledge or readymade answers. You put a question to him, and just like a mirror he reflects your question. The answer is coming out of not-knowing. It is not from scriptures, it is from absolute awareness and spontaneity.
LIVING IN THIS HUT, I STOP LOOKING FOR ANY SOLUTIONS.
The man who has gone beyond has no doubts, has no beliefs, has no questions, has no answers. He simply is, and this isness is the ultimate blossoming of your potentialities.
WHO WOULD PUT THEM PROUDLY IN THE SHOW WINDOW FOR THE
PEOPLE TO BUY? A man who has become a buddha, a man who is enlightened can share with you all that he has, but he has nothing to sell.
All the religions are selling. They are selling God, they are selling beautiful places in paradise, they are selling bank accounts in paradise. They are selling everything and pocketing the money from you. And you are not getting anything, and you don't know anything about what is going to happen after death. You don't have even a receipt to show to God: "I have deposited so much
money with the priest. Where is my bank account? He has not given me even the number of the bank account." And one never knows.
One thing is certain that everything you give to the priest goes into his pocket. It never reaches beyond that. And how can the priest manage? He himself does not know the address of God. Where has he to send it?
He is simply selling things which don't exist. But because he is giving you hope and consolation for after death, you feel it is good to purchase something for the long journey after death. One never knows, he may be right. At least it is a great consolation that you are prepared. You have done the homework, and you can go into the darkness of death. It is a tunnel, whether it will end anywhere or not you have no idea. But at least while you were alive you dropped the fear of death. The priest was giving you the consolation, you were giving your money.
God is for sale. All churches, all denominations, all religions are selling God. They are the most dangerous people in the sense that they are giving you hopes which will never be fulfilled, and they are giving you consolations you will be utterly disappointed in.
Hence, I don't want to give you any hope, any promise. I simply want you to explore on your own. If you can find something, good. If you can't find something, I am helpless.
But I know if you search deeply enough you are bound to find. If I have found it, if Sekito has found it, then there is no problem for anybody. Every human being is born as a bodhisattva. It is only a question of turning the seed into a plant, and then the roses will come on their own.
WHEN EVENING COMES AND THE SUN IS SETTING, I COME BACK TO THE
HUT. MY BEING IS SO VAST THAT THERE ARE NO DIVISIONS. MEETING
WITH THE INTIMATE TEACHINGS OF THE ANCESTRAL MASTER, I MADE A HUT WITH GRASSES AND DON'T THINK OF LEAVING. I JUST LET THE
HUNDRED YEARS GO AS THEY PASS BY. He lived one hundred years -- the
whole century.
But he is saying, "I don't go anywhere or leave the hut. I am utterly contented. There is no need to go anywhere in search. I have found it; it is within me." So a hundred years have passed by the side, but Sekito remains almost a child. Those years have not been a corruptive influence on him. He has remained a tabula rasa, nothing is written on his slate. Utterly empty, nobody special, but hundreds of people managed to reach, finding his slippery path.
A certain magnetism arises with enlightenment, and those who are searching, knowingly or unknowingly, are pulled, sometimes in spite of themselves. They don't want, but something is more forceful than their wanting or not wanting. Some challenge is coming from some direction, and they start moving.
You can see people here from all over the earth, from every nook and corner, and I am the most condemned man, the most notorious man around the world. Why should you be here? All the governments are against me, all the religions are against me, all the nations are against me, but it does not prevent you. Something far more powerful is pulling you.
You had to come; it was impossible to resist. And once you have come, it is very difficult to go away.
Even if you go away, you will be carrying me with you -- not in the luggage but in your heart, because luggage gets lost many times. Don't trust luggage. And I don't like to be in a suitcase. I don't have any!
Avirbhava has all the suitcases. She carries things for me in her suitcases -- eighteen in total. I wonder where she lives in the room when there are eighteen suitcases. Perhaps keeping her feet in one suitcase and her head in another ...? Yes?
(THE MASTER TURNS TOWARDS AVIRBHAVA WHO SHRIEKS IN SURPRISE
AND SQUIRMS IN HER SEAT. EYEBROWS RAISED AND CHUCKLING, HE
ENJOYS THE SITUATION FOR SOME SECONDS.)
IF I MOVE WITH MY HANDS OPEN, THERE IS NO PROBLEM. A THOUSAND
WORDS, TEN THOUSAND SOLUTIONS, ONLY KEEP YOU IN IGNORANCE. IF
YOU WANT TO KNOW THE IMMORTAL PERSON IN THE HUT, WHY DO YOU
GO AWAY FROM THIS SKIN BAG?
Your skin bag, your body, your hut, contains the buddha. If you really want to live without any problems and without any solutions, without any questions and without any answers -- just a pure innocent life, undisturbed by anything -- then don't go anywhere else. In this very bag of skin, in this very body is the buddha, and in this very place is the lotus paradise.
Sekito's statements are tremendously beautiful. It is absolutely right to call them Sekito's
`Song of the Grass Hut.' It is a song, and sung with great dignity and with great joy.
Issa wrote:
I HAVE NOTHING AT ALL -- BUT THIS TRANQUILITY!
THIS COOLNESS!
Perhaps he was writing for you. Just watch this tranquility, this coolness -- I have nothing at all. But to have such tranquility and such coolness, you don't need anything. You have all! You have the whole universe within you -- in the dewdrop the whole ocean, in the seed the whole greenery of the earth.
"I have nothing at all" -- Issa is right. He does not possess anything, but a great tranquility surrounds him, and this coolness that penetrates deep into the very center of your being. That tranquility is present here, and that coolness is possible to be felt by you.
Issa has put the whole of Zen into a small haiku. I HAVE NOTHING AT ALL --
BUT THIS TRANQUILITY! THIS COOLNESS!
Question 3 Maneesha's question:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
ALAN WATTS HAD A NOVEL IDEA FOR HOW EASTER SHOULD BE SPENT.
"EVERY EASTER SUNDAY SHOULD BE CELEBRATED WITH A SOLEMN AND
REVERENT BURNING OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES," HE SUGGESTED, "FOR
THE WHOLE MEANING OF THE RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION OF CHRIST
INTO HEAVEN (WHICH IS WITHIN YOU) IS THAT GOD-MANHOOD IS TO BE
DISCOVERED HERE AND NOW, INWARDLY, NOT IN THE LETTER OF THE
BIBLE."
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HIS IDEA?
Just great!
Maneesha, it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Put on the lights! I want to see my people laughing, celebrating.
In Leningrad, in Soviet Russia, the Jehovah's Witnesses have been allowed to build their own special church called The Kingdom Hall. At the first service, there is a lot of hooting, shouting, fainting, preaching and sermonizing before the service finally comes to an end.
Perspiring, old Grandma Botovitch, shuffles up to the front of The Kingdom Hall. She prostrates herself under a huge statue of Jesus nailed to the cross, and then lifts her head and plants a big wet kiss on Christ's feet.
Officer Molotov, of the KGB, has been watching Grandma Botovitch closely from behind a curtain. He marches over to the old woman and says, "Would you kiss the feet of our great leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, like that?"
"Sure," replies Grandma. "If you nailed him up like this!"
The pub door swings open and Chicken Chopper walks in with an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. He goes over to the bar where Dick Puller is smoking a cigar and drinking a beer.
"Have you got a light?" asks Chicken. "Fuck off!" says Dick Puller.
"Hey!" says Chicken. "I only asked for a light!" "I heard you," snaps Dick. "Fuck off!"
"Hey!" cries Chicken. "Why won't you give me a light then?"
"Because if I do," replies Dick, "you will buy me a drink. Then I will have to buy you a drink. And then we will both get drunk. And then we will both become friends. And then I will invite you over to my house. And then it will be too late for you to go home, won't it?"
"Gee! I guess so," replies Chicken.
"Yes! That's right," snaps Dick Puller. "And then you will want me to give you a bed at my house -- won't you?"
"Well, yes," replies Chicken. "Maybe."
"And my daughter is a real beauty," continues Dick, "so you will want to sleep with her --
won't you?"
"Yes, sure!" exclaims Chicken.
"And then," continues Dick, "you will make her pregnant, won't you?" "Yes!" cries Chicken.
"But you won't marry her, will you?" asks Dick.
"Ah yes I will!" cries Chicken Chopper. "I will marry her!"
"Ah no you won't," says Dick, "because I am not giving you a light!"
Two Englishmen, Charles and Henry, are getting drunk at their local pub, The Duke and Tart, in London one evening. They see Paddy and Sean, the two Irishmen, at the other end of the bar, and decide to pick a fight with them.
"Just watch this, Charles," says Henry. "I will make that Irish idiot so pissed off that he will have to hit me, and start a fight."
So Henry wanders over to Paddy and says in a superior tone, "Listen here, my good man, do you know Saint Patrick?"
"Yes sir, certainly," says Paddy, putting down his beer glass. "Well, I don't actually know him personally, but I do know of him, certainly sir!"
"Well, then," continues the Englishman, "you must know that he was a pooftah -- or to put it more bluntly, a bloody homosexual!"
"Ah! No, sir," replies Paddy, politely, "I did not know that. That's certainly interesting though -- a pooftah, you say?"
"And not only that," continues Henry, still trying to provoke him, "but Saint Patrick was a shithead, as well!"
"Really?" replies Paddy. "That is amazing. Well, you live and learn, don't you, sir?"
Henry gives up and goes back to the other end of the bar. But Charles, seeing Henry's failure, jumps to his feet and says, "Leave it to me! I will get him going!"
So Charles staggers over to Paddy and says, "Listen here, you idiot, do you know that Saint Patrick was an Englishman?"
"Yes, sir, I do," replies Paddy, "your friend just told me!" Nivedano ...
(Drumbeat) (Gibberish) Nivedano ... (Drumbeat)
Be silent ... close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen.
This is the right moment. Everything is tranquil, a great coolness surrounds you. You can move inwards very easily.
Gather all your energies, your total consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment of life, rush towards your center of being. It is just exactly two inches below the navel inside you.
Faster and faster ... Deeper and deeper ...
As you start coming close to the center of your being, a great silence descends over you like soft rain.
A little closer, and peace starts growing in you -- very luminous. This peace has been called by the mystics, "the peace that passeth understanding," because it is beyond mind.
A little closer, and you start becoming drunk with the divine.
The final step into the very center -- and you are pure ecstasy, a dance without movement, a song without words, a music without sounds.
This is your original being.
Zen calls it the original face which you have been carrying eternally with you. It resembles symbolically the face of Gautam the Buddha.
Not knowing it, you are only a bodhisattva. Knowing it, you are a buddha.
At this moment you are a buddha.
Buddha has only one quality -- that of witnessing. Witness that you are not the body.
Witness that you are not the mind.
And finally, witness that you are only a witness.
This is the whole secret of meditation, the master key of Zen, which can open all the mysteries of existence, all the doors upon doors, skies upon skies. There is no end to it, only a beginning.
Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, "Ignorance has no beginning but an end.
Enlightenment has a beginning but no end" -- a very significant statement. Let it sink deep in you. This moment you are so vulnerable you can allow it to sink in you. It will blossom into tremendous experiences.
I repeat it: Ignorance has no beginning but an end. Enlightenment has a beginning but no end.
You are at the beginning point. From now on starts a journey into the infinite, into the eternal, into the ultimate, into the absolute.
To make the witnessing more clear,
Nivedano ... (Drumbeat)
Relax ... but go on remembering that you are not the body, you are not the mind, you are only a witness. And as the witnessing will start becoming deeper and deeper, you will suddenly feel a great melting of consciousness, all boundaries disappearing.
Gautama the Buddha Auditorium becomes an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas dissolve into one consciousness, an oceanic consciousness without any ripples or waves.
The whole existence starts rejoicing with you. It starts showering invisible flowers over you.
At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth, because all the others are concerned only with the trivia. You are working and searching for the essential, for the eternal.
All are concerned with lies and consolations about God. You are working and trying with intensity to find the truth.
The truth is that existence is enough unto itself, it needs no God. It certainly needs every living being to rise to such heights as Gautam Buddha.
Collect all these flowers, these fragrances from the beyond. You have to bring them with you.
And persuade Gautam Buddha -- it is your birthright, it is your nature -- to come behind you.
He will come first as a shadow, but the shadow will be very solid, a foundation for enlightenment. It will have immense warmth surrounding you, it will be almost tangible.
On the second step, the buddha comes in front of you -- you become the shadow. Your shadow is just a shadow, it starts disappearing in the light and radiance of the buddha.
At the third stage, the final stage where you become enlightened, you disappear. You have been just a shadow, a fake personality, a mask. You disappear completely, only the buddha remains.
This remaining consciousness is your essential being. It is your existential truth, it is your life. To know this, every moment becomes a celebration.
I celebrate myself, and I hope soon the day will come you will be celebrating yourself.
And when thousands and thousands of people around the earth are celebrating, singing, dancing, ecstatic, drunk with the divine, there is no possibility of any global suicide. With such festivity and with such laughter, with such sanity and health, with such naturalness and spontaneity, how can there be a war?
The third world war is not going to happen! I predict it! It is not going to happen, because of you, because of my people around the earth! They are the only hope. Only millions of buddhas are capable of creating the atmosphere for peace, for love, for compassion, for celebration.
Life is not given to you to murder, to destroy. Life has been given to you to create, and to rejoice, and to celebrate.
When you cry and weep, when you are miserable, you are alone. When you celebrate, the whole existence participates with you. Only in celebration do we meet the ultimate, the eternal. Only in celebration do we go beyond the circle of birth and death.
Nivedano ... (Drumbeat)
Come back ... but come back as buddhas, carrying with you all the peace the silence, the grace.
And sit down just for a few seconds to remember the golden path that you have followed, all the experiences that you have encountered, and the buddha that has come with you.
Feel the warmth, the radiance, the light, just behind you.
The day will come soon -- soon the spring will be here -- and buddha will not be a shadow to you, you will become a shadow to buddha. And once you are a shadow then the final step is very easy. The shadow disappears in the light, in the luminosity of the buddha, the awakened one.
The third step happens so spontaneously. You are no more, only existence is.
This brings you to the celebration I have been talking about. Unless you are full of songs, full of dances, overflowing life, abundance of love and compassion, you have not lived at all. You were simply slowly dying, dying, dying.
I want you to live intensely, totally, because only those who live intensely and totally are transformed. Only they know what is the ultimate secret of life.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Beloved Master.
I Celebrate Myself: God Is No Where, Life Is Now Here Chapter #5
Chapter title: Don't knock, wait!
17 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
code: 8902175
ShortTitle: CELEBR05
Audio: Yes Video:
Yes Length:
204
mins
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
GOSETSU AFTER BECOMING A MONK UNDER MA TZU, CAME TO SEKITO
AND SAID, "IF YOU SETTLE THIS WITH ONE WORD, I WILL STAY HERE. IF
NOT, I WILL LEAVE."
SEKITO, KNOWING THAT THIS MAN HAD PROMISE, MADE A GESTURE, BUT
GOSETSU DID NOT GET IT. SO GOSETSU TOOK HIS LEAVE AND MADE FOR
THE GATE, WHEN SEKITO CALLED TO HIM "TEACHER!"
GOSETSU TURNED AROUND, AND SEKITO SAID, "FROM BIRTH TO OLD AGE, IT IS ONLY THE FELLOW THERE AND NOTHING ELSE -- DON'T LOOK
ANYWHERE FURTHER."
AT THIS, GOSETSU WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED. HE STEPPED ON HIS
STICK TO BREAK IT AND STAYED THERE.
ONCE, SEKITO SAID TO HIS ASSEMBLED MONKS, "EVEN IF LANGUAGE IS
USED, IT IS IRRELEVANT."
HEARING THIS, YAKUSAN SAID, "EVEN IF LANGUAGE IS NOT USED, IT IS
IRRELEVANT."
SEKITO SAID, "HERE, EVEN A NEEDLE CANNOT GET THROUGH."
YAKUSAN SAID, "HERE, IT IS LIKE PLANTING A FLOWER ON A ROCK."
SEKITO INDICATED HIS APPROVAL OF WHAT YAKUSAN SAID.
Friends,
I have been telling you that God has been the greatest poison to humanity and its evolution towards ultimate peaks of consciousness. Ayatollah Khomeini has supported what I have been telling to you, by declaring a death sentence on Salman Rushdie and three others for simply publishing a factual statement. No law of any country supports it.
No constitution in the world supports it. But this has been the attitude of the priests all down history.
A second ayatollah -- Ayatollah simply means a religious leader -- not Khomeini, but another ayatollah, and there are two thousand ayatollahs in Iran, has come up with a better support to my argument. Now he has declared that if Salman Rushdie's head is presented to him, he is going to give two point six million dollars if the person who presents it happens to be an Iranian. If it is a non- Iranian, then one million dollars.
From every Mohammedan country, including Pakistan, death squads have moved into England to kill those four people -- and if not four, at least Salman Rushdie for writing the novel -- and to bring his head to Iran.
Now this will show you why I have been condemning all God-oriented religions, because finally the God-oriented religion is in the hands of the priests. God does not exist, the priest exists. And the priest does not know any civilization, any culture. Murdering a man is not an argument, it is really accepting defeat. A cultured society needs dialogue. If you have something against Rushdie, you have every right to say it and criticize him -- that is human. If you feel he is
wrong, you have all the freedom to criticize him.
But religions don't believe in dialogues, they believe in murder, in the sword -- that is their argument. To me, it is their defeat.
These people have been keeping the world retarded. A few people from India, and from other countries who have condemned Ayatollah Khomeini and the other ayatollah, have been receiving anonymous phone calls, that they will be killed also.
Here in India, one of my friends, Madhu Mehta, made a statement condemning Ayatollah Khomeini. He is a man of immense intelligence, culture, education. He leads a certain movement called the Hindustani Andolan, the movement for a new language which will not be Hindi, the language of the Hindus, and which will not be Urdu, the language of the Mohammedans, but a combination of both, Hindustani. Of course, he has no support.
Neither are Mohammedans ready to support him, nor are Hindus ready to support him, but he goes on. For years he has been working on it.
That seems to be the simplest solution -- for India to have a national language, otherwise this country is not going to have a national language, ever. For forty years -- more than forty years -- the constitution has declared Hindi the national language. But the government has not been able to implement it because the Mohammedans are against it and think Urdu should be the language. And there are thirty-two languages accepted by the constitution as state languages. They all are claiming that they should have the right to be the national language. Now thirty-two languages fighting amongst each other ...
there seems to be no way.
Madhu Mehta has received an anonymous phone call that he also will be killed and that anybody who says anything against Ayatollah Khomeini will be murdered. Are we living in the twentieth century, or some thousand years back where only killing and murder was the argument? -- whoever kills, whoever wins in killing is the right person.
It is very easy to kill a Gautam Buddha. Any idiot can do it, in fact, only an idiot can do it. But that does not prove that the idiot's idea of religiousness is correct, nor does the death of a Gautam Buddha prove that his philosophy is wrong. In
fact, it just does the opposite. It proves that the unconscious and retarded humanity, for which all the religions are responsible, have a tremendous poverty of philosophy, of argument, of a cultural and civilized dialogue. And it goes back, as far back you can see.
Socrates is poisoned -- that was not an argument against his philosophy -- poisoned by the masses. The reason? The reason was: "He is destroying our religion and our morality, and corrupting the youth." Socrates was one of the most intelligent persons who has ever walked on this earth. And anybody who has intelligence is not going to support a God-oriented religion, or a God- dictated morality, because it is coming from the priests, not from the God. The priest is interested in keeping the whole of humanity as retarded as possible. That's what makes him powerful, holier, higher and more superior.
There are two ways to become superior: one is to evolve your consciousness and become a buddha; another is to keep the whole of humanity retarded so you appear higher to them.
I am reminded of a small anecdote about one of the most significant emperors of India, Akbar. He was a Mohammedan but not a fanatic, and he gathered into his court all kinds of religious people, from different religious sources. He had in his court all the intelligent people of the country without any discrimination of religion or caste.
One day he came to the court and asked all his wise people of the court, "I am trying to solve a problem and I need your help." And then he drew a line on the wall and asked those people, "Can you make it smaller without touching it?"
Obviously, you cannot make a line smaller without touching it, so they were all at a loss.
But every court in the past used to have a man of immense sense of humor, so that the court keeps balanced, it does not become serious, tense, stressed.
Birbal was Akbar's man of a sense of humor. He stood up finally, and he went to the wall and drew a bigger line underneath the line that Akbar had drawn, and made it small without touching it.
The priests have been trying in every way to keep humanity at the lowest intelligence.
This is their way of keeping themselves holier and higher.
If everybody starts growing in consciousness, intelligence, awareness, that is going to destroy all fictions about God, heaven and hell, and that is going to destroy all the business that the priests are doing all around the world. Millions and millions of priests are just parasites. Unless we get rid of the priests, it is very difficult to get rid of God --
they are both very deeply connected. It is easy to get rid of God if there is no priest, because God does not exist, and the priest exists.
It is the priests who have programmed your minds as Christians, as Hindus, as Mohammedans, in the name of God. And it has been going on for centuries.
As far as I am concerned, I don't think humanity has a mental age of more than seven years.
In America, where our commune was destroyed by the fundamentalist Christians
--
Ronald Reagan himself is a fundamentalist Christian, a fanatic. And the only reason to destroy the commune was that they could not tolerate a Godless commune living so happily, so joyously, singing songs and dancing and celebrating without any fear, without any inhibition, without any guilt.
The Attorney General, Ed Meese, admitted it before a press conference. When they had already deported me, he accepted that I had not committed any crime, but I had to be deported. He said, "Our priority was to destroy the commune, but without deporting Rajneesh we would not have been able to destroy the commune."
Why was it a priority for them to destroy the commune and to propose thirty- four absolutely imaginary crimes against me?
In fact, they were committing the crime against five thousand people who had simply escaped from centuries-old slavery and declared their dignity and freedom. This was intolerable. People declaring their independence and freedom? Their dignity and their prestige and their pride. Their individuality? This could not be tolerated by any fanatical so-called religious person.
I had said at a press conference that in Oregon, where the commune was situated, people are retarded. All the politicians were angry; the whole of Oregon was angry. And finally, the University of Oregon decided to take a survey -- because that is the only civilized way to prove me either right or wrong. And their conclusions are immensely valuable.
They surveyed cross sections of society in Oregon, and they surveyed the commune.
They were puzzled. They found that the average mental age of Oregonians was seven years, and the average mental age of the sannyasins was fourteen years -- double that of any Oregonian. And I don't think that if we take into account the whole of humanity, the mental age will be more than seven. It will be less than seven years, because millions of people are far more retarded than the Oregonians. When the average is taken, it may come to three and a half at the most.
People have been kept in this slavery just for a few people to enjoy the superiority.
Obviously these people who have enjoyed superiority -- the brahmins, the priests, the ayatollahs, the imams, the rabbis, the popes -- will not easily allow human beings to declare their independence.
You have to understand deeply. My whole work here is to make you declare freedom and total independence from all prisons -- religious, national, racial. Only that is going to give you a life of celebration. Your freedom will give you the space to dance, to sing, to celebrate. My vision of religiousness is that of sheer celebration, a tremendous joy in life, in love, in creative actions. This is my manifesto, the Manifesto of Zen.
Unless humanity is taken out of their prison cells -- we are living in the dark ages -- every vested interest is going to be against me, it is going to be against you. Every manifesto of freedom will be crushed.
It is not accidental that Socrates is poisoned, that al-Hillaj Mansoor is murdered, that Jesus is crucified, that Sarmad is killed, that many attempts were made on the life of Mahavira, that many attempts were made on the life of Gautam Buddha, and finally, he died from food poisoning. There is every suspicion that it was deliberate poisoning.
Gautam Buddha was certainly a religious man. As he was dying he told his disciples, in particular Ananda -- he called him close and whispered to him, "It does not matter that I am dying. I am concerned about the man who has given me the food that has poisoned me. You have to protect him, otherwise the people who love me will kill him.
"So spread the idea around my disciples, and my lovers, and my sympathizers, that two persons are the most blessed: the one who for the first time gives nourishment to the enlightened one -- of course, that is the mother -- and the second is the one who gives him his last food. These two persons are the very blessed ones. Create this rumor, so that the person who has poisoned me should not suffer unnecessarily."
This is the way of a religious man -- a great concern even for the murderer. Unless we fill this earth with such people, humanity is not going to have all the great experiences which every human being has the birthright to attain.
Everybody is prohibited from making this earth a lotus paradise, and from experiencing in his own body, the very consciousness of a Gautam Buddha. All religions are against you because they are against freedom, and they are against human culture, civilization.
They are against any kind of dialogue. Murder is their argument.
This simply shows the poverty of all religions, and this also shows that humanity has to revolt against these religions, these churches, these temples, these mosques. A great revolt, a rebellion can only give you the opportunity to grow, otherwise you simply grow old, you don't grow up. And remember the difference between the two.
Growing old is not of any worth, every animal does it, it needs no intelligence. Growing up is a totally different experience. Growing old is horizontal; growing up is vertical, it leads you to heights, it leads you to depths.
And strangely enough, you will be surprised to know that time is horizontal. One moment passes, another moment comes, another moment, another moment ... in a line, a horizontal line. Time is horizontal, and mind is also horizontal. One thought is followed by another thought, and by another thought, and by another thought, but in a line, in a row, a procession, or just a traffic -- but it is going horizontal.
Meditation is vertical, it is going beyond mind and beyond time. And perhaps, ultimately you will find that time and mind are equivalent, two names of the same phenomenon --
the horizontal procession of thoughts, of moments. Meditation is to stop time and mind both, and suddenly you start rising up in eternity. Eternity is not part of time, and eternity is not a thought; it is an experience.
It is a difficult task to get rid of God and God-oriented religions, and the priests who are supporting this lie by threatening people with murder. These murderers should be exposed, and they should be dethroned. The basic need is a deep understanding of your own divinity. Then there is no need for an external God, and then there is no need for any mediators between you and God.
Meditation is a rebellion, perhaps the most fundamental rebellion against all fictions, against all lies, and against all those who are living on those fictions and lies.
I teach you rebellion, I teach you revolt.
I teach you freedom of your individuality. Destroy all kinds of prisons, destroy all kinds of lies -- and you can destroy them only by meditation. Rise beyond time and mind, and you will find not only that you are divine, but the whole existence is divine, life is divine.
And you enter into a totally new dimension that has been completely blocked by scriptures, by priests, by God, by heaven and hell, by all kinds of fear, by all kinds of greed.
It is a very unnatural phenomenon that a person goes on growing physically but his mind is stuck somewhere below seven years. It cannot be natural! The mind is kept retarded, otherwise just as your body grows, your physiology grows, your mental age will follow simultaneously. When you are seventy years old, your mental age must be seventy years old. But it is seven years old .…
According to me, if this is possible then the opposite is also possible. If a man of seventy years' age of the body has only the mental age of a seven-year-old child, then the reverse is also possible. A man of seventy may have the mental age of seven hundred years.
Once Emerson was asked, "What is your age?" And he said, "Three hundred and sixty years."
The man who had asked could not believe it. Three hundred and sixty years ...? He said,
"I did not hear, please repeat what you have said."
Emerson said, "You have heard it: three hundred and sixty years."
The man said, "I cannot believe it. You must be joking ... you don't look more than sixty years."
Emerson said, "Yes, my body is only sixty years old, but my consciousness is six times more than sixty. I count my age according to my intelligence, not according to my body, because I am not the body, I am my intelligence."
Religions have kept you chained, because a man of intelligence is not going to believe in any lies. So intelligence has to be crippled, and all the religions have been involved in this crippling process.
In Japan, there is a certain method, which is ugly to me, but which is very much appreciated by the Japanese people. There are four-hundred-year-old trees which are only six inches high. They look very ancient, but their height is only six inches. And the strategy that has been used is the strategy that has been used against every human being by your religions, by your God and God-oriented theologies.
The trick is very simple. For four hundred years a family, generation after generation, keeps a tree. It is kept in a pot which has no bottom, so they can go on cutting the roots from the bottom. If you don't allow the roots to grow, the tree cannot go high. They don't touch the rest of the tree; it simply becomes older and older and older. But the tree does not reach to the height which was its potential, because the roots are being continuously cut.
Intelligence is your root.
They show those trees as if it is an art.
To me, it is against nature, against those poor trees. You have not allowed them to grow.
And perhaps if those trees have a certain kind of mind, a certain kind of intelligence, they will think, "This is how we are: six inches high." They will not be able to discover at all that they have been kept imprisoned by cutting their roots -- because they don't see the roots.
You don't see your roots in existence.
Only a meditator comes to see his roots in existence. Those roots have been cut completely, continuously, century after century, generation after generation, by the priest.
You have been kept retarded in intelligence.
People ask me why the masses don't come to me. They cannot understand me. Only very intelligent people who have a certain individuality and a certain sense of freedom, can understand me. The masses can only murder me. Only the intelligent, the elite ...
To understand me you will have to go through a transformation, you will have to look into your roots: Who has been cutting those roots? Who are these rats who have been cutting your roots? All your rabbis, all your bishops, all your ayatollahs, all your shankaracharyas ... they are the rats who are cutting your roots. And they don't give you a chance to have a fuller life. Otherwise every person will have a tremendous life of such great fulfillment that who cares about what happens after death? One has lived so totally, loved so totally that who cares about what happens after death?
There are only two possibilities: either you die, then there is no problem, or you continue to live. And you know how to live, you know how to be total, so you will live more totally without the body. You will have the whole sky available to you. So whether you are atheist or theist does not matter. What matters is to live life so totally that death becomes absolutely unimportant, because only two alternatives are left: either you will die ... so what is the problem?
Do you think you had any problem before you were born? Just think of that. You had no problem, you were not there. So how can the problem exist without you? Do you remember any problem before you were born?
I say to you, that is one side; the other side is death. You won't have any problem if you really die. If you don't die, you will have all the opportunities, more than you have now.
But you have to discipline yourself for living so abundantly that if you survive death, you will be able to live more abundantly because you will have more space to dance, more space to celebrate.
As far as I am concerned, I know there is no death. But I don't want you to believe it, I want you to experience it.
The religions have been creating all kinds of devices to keep you blind and in darkness.
An ancient saying describing a philosopher says: A philosopher is a man who is blind, in a dark house where there is no light, and he is searching for a black cat which is not there.
This is not the description or the definition only of a philosopher. This is exactly the description and definition of all human beings. Religion has kept them blind, in utter darkness, telling them lies, and telling them to find it: a black cat that is not there! All religions are telling you to find God, and you don't have eyes, and you don't have any light, and God does not exist. God is the cat!
And you go on groping and stumbling. The more you grope, the more you stumble; the more fractured you are, the more despair and anxiety and anguish that perhaps others have caught the cat and you have not fulfilled the promise. Your hands are empty and death is coming every moment closer and closer. Naturally the whole of humanity has lost the sense of humor. People smile only a lipstick smile. It does not go beyond the lipstick. And lipstick makes women so ugly -- anything fake makes people ugly.
Even my sannyasins, when they go back to the west, start painting their lips. When they come back, it takes a few days to clean that dirt that they have been putting on their lips. I can't conceive that any man of intelligence could kiss a woman who has lipstick! That lipstick is almost a China Wall -- you don't reach the woman at all. At least I am certain about me. The moment I see lipstick, I know that this woman is phony. Avoid it; it has no soul, it is just a mask.
Just a few days ago, a very rich young Indian woman -- because Indian women
don't use lipstick unless they are very rich and convent educated -- came because she is the owner of a magazine and a newspaper. She wanted to write a story about me, and she wanted a photograph with me.
And Anando was telling me -- Anando is my legal secretary -- she was telling me that she is a very beautiful woman. When I saw her, I saw only the red lipstick and nothing else. I tried to avoid her face, and I told Anando, "You were telling me this woman is beautiful?
Have you not seen her lipstick?"
No falsity can be beautiful, only authenticity, sincerity. As you are, in your utter nudity, you have a beauty, you have an individuality.
But all the religions are creating hypocrites. Not only is their God a lie, but they have caused the whole of humanity to be in deep hypocrisy. Pretend -- that is their preaching.
Exhibit that you are a moralist, that you are a puritan, that you are a saint. They have not allowed you any transformation. They have only given you masks, personalities, and they have deprived you of the individuality which is your eternal right.
Declare your eternal right, and that right will destroy the gods and the priests, because they are conspiring together against whole of humanity.
Your God is not a creator of life, he is the enemy of life, because life is truth and God is a lie! But he continues to live because of the priesthood. That's why the priesthood has no evidence, no argument for God, only murder!
Now this nonsense that a man who has not done any harm to anybody, but has simply stated a fact that Mohammed himself had accepted ... that the devil inspired him to write a few verses describing three female deities. If the prophets of God cannot even understand who is inspiring them -- whether it is God or the devil -- then they are not worth calling prophets of God. And what is the certainty about these prophets' others statements? Perhaps they are also dictated by the devil!
And it is a strategy, the same as I told you about this American TV preacher Bakker, who has been one of the most famous TV preachers. This is a new kind
of priesthood arising in America. Millions of people used to listen to him every Sunday. He was talking about celibacy, and he was found red-handed in a sexual relationship with a woman. And then it was discovered that he was also having homosexual relations with his assistant. And because he was caught red-handed -
- it is very easy to throw the blame on the devil -- he immediately said, "I was forced by the devil!"
It is strange. He had been having these love affairs his whole life, and he did not tell anybody in all these sermons -- every Sunday for years -- "I am being forced by the devil
..." Suddenly now that he is caught ... if he had not been caught, he would have remained the representative of God.
But strange, when I saw this, that the man was now blaming the devil ...! That the devil was forcing him to make love to his secretary, to make love to his assistant who was a male, to make love to other women who were part of his congregation ... it was the devil!
But how do you know it was the devil and not God? If you were not caught -- and it is such an easy device ...
Then all the criminals can say in the court, "I was inspired by the devil. I have not murdered, it was the devil who was forcing me to murder. I have not raped, it was the devil!" Then no criminal can be punished -- "If you want to punish, punish the devil."
And that Bakker, after one year's penance, is back on the TV -- again as God's representative!
Watching his whole strategy, I was reminded of a woman who was confessing to a Catholic priest .…
She said, "I have been raped."
The priest said, "You have been raped continuously for six weeks. Every Sunday you come ... how do you manage it?"
She said, "It is the same person. And it is not once in a night, sometimes twice he rapes me."
The priest said, "Do you understand the meaning of raping?" She said, "I understand."
"The same person goes on raping you for six weeks? Sometimes even twice a night ...
and you just confess? And again the raping continues. Why do you confess?"
She said, "I enjoy confessing. It gives me such joy, almost exactly the same as when I am raped. Just the whole scene ..."
And she used to describe it in absolute detail, minute detail. Now can you conceive people's blindness? Bakker is back .…
Mohammed, in the last part of his life changed those verses, and the reason was not the devil. The reason was a male chauvinistic idea. Then why had he written those three verses? The reason was his wife.
He married a very rich widow who was forty years old and he was only twenty- six. The reason to marry that woman was simply her riches, her prestige, her power. She was a powerful woman, Khadija. She was the first Mohammedan.
Mohammed himself was epileptic. He used to have fits, and one day he came home trembling and feverish. Khadija asked, "What happened?" He was a shepherd. He used to take the goats and sheep to the mountains, and on the mountain it happened. Most probably it was again an epileptic fit, because there is no God to say anything to anybody.
He said, "I became almost unconscious. I was foaming -- when I became conscious I saw the foam on my mouth, and God spoke to me. And since that moment I have been trembling and feeling deep fever."
So Khadija put as many blankets as possible on him, but he was still trembling. And she convinced him, "It was God! Don't be worried! And I am your first disciple."
Because of this woman, and because of her riches, Mohammed was able to spread Mohammedanism around Saudi Arabia. My understanding is because of
this woman he included those three verses saying that there are three female deities. Once Khadija was dead, there was no reason to keep those verses in the Koran. Now his male chauvinist mind -- which has been there all over the world in every founder of every religion ...
Jainism, which is one of the most refined religions in the world, declares that no woman can become enlightened. But one woman managed to become enlightened. And the whole reason that a woman cannot be celibate was because of her menstrual period. A man can pretend to be celibate, can manage, but how can a woman pretend that she is not having the menstrual period? And particularly in the religion of the Jainas, because you cannot become enlightened unless you become nude.
So there are five stages ... slowly, slowly you drop your possessions, and the final stage is of the muni -- the muni becomes naked. Now a naked woman -- how is she going to deceive people when her period comes? This was the trouble.
People condemn me that I am concerned about trivia, and Mahavira and twenty- four tirthankaras of the Jainas were concerned about the woman's period! And because of the period -- because you cannot hide it, and particularly when you are nude -- the woman cannot become enlightened, she cannot be celibate. She cannot change her biology, nor does any man ever change his biology. It is beyond the mind's control. No man has ever been celibate ... all pretenders, all hypocrites.
But one woman was very courageous, Mallibai -- because women are courageous, particularly in a society like India where the woman has to hide herself in a sari ... The sari is very beautiful in hiding the woman, her proportions, her curves of the body. The sari is a beautiful device. You only see the woman's face, you don't see anything else.
And in such a country, in such a culture, the woman will be shy to be nude.
But Mallibai must have been a tremendously daring woman. I have immense respect for that woman who stood nude. And unwillingly they had to accept that she was enlightened. You cannot deny enlightenment, but they managed to once she was dead.
They changed her name from Mallibai to Mallinath. Now Mallinath is a man's
name.
Nath changes everything. Bai means a woman, and mallibai they changed into mallinath.
And not only that ... In Jaina temples you will find twenty-four statues of the tirthankaras, but you will not find any statue of a woman -- they are all naked, so you can find out.
I used to harass my father every time I went with him to the temple, "Where is Mallibai in these twenty-four statues?"
And he used to say, "I don't know at all, and you continue to ask again and again.
Whenever you come with me, the first thing you ask is about Mallibai. And how am I supposed to know? These twenty-four all are male, nobody is a female."
I said, "What happened to Mallibai?" They have changed even the statue. It is not of a woman, the statue is of a man. The name changed, the statue changed -- because they have to save this male chauvinistic idea that only a man can become enlightened.
All the religions in some way or other, have condemned the woman. So Mohammed must have felt that when Khadija died, that it was time to change those three verses. Now, the blame goes to the devil.
The Koran is one of the most strange books, because it has not been written in a continuity -- one verse today, one verse ten days after ... because Mohammed was uneducated. He did not write it himself. He used to dictate whenever he found something worth dictating. So-called holy scriptures are written by self- styled prophets and messiahs
-- and they are called "holy"! I don't see anything holy in them.
So many Mohammedan friends have asked me, "You have spoken on many religions, why don't you speak on the Koran?"
I said, "Do you want me to be murdered?" I have something else to do meanwhile.
Finally, when I think that it is time for me to leave the body, I will speak on the Koran.
And I will manage to have one of my sannyasins kill me and get 2.6 million dollars for my work! While my work is incomplete, I am not going to speak on holy scriptures, because they are the most primitive kind of literature.
These so-called prophets are suffering from all kinds of mental sicknesses; they are epileptic, neurotic, psychotic and schizophrenic. They are not worth discussing at all.
These priests all around the world are holding the whole of humanity in their clutches.
They are vultures, not human beings.
This is your work: to spread the message of freedom, of individuality of a religiousness which is a quality, and not to be a member of any organized religion. It is purely an individual affair, just as love is. It is the greatest and highest and the purest love with existence.
You have fallen in love with a woman, this is a small matter. You have fallen in love with a man, this is a small matter. Once you fall in love with existence itself, with life itself, then it is the great matter. Zen masters call it The Great Matter.
But it is individual, it has nothing to do with any institution. In institutions, only mad people live. When people call marriage an institution, I agree. It is an institution, because in institutions only mad people live.
Religion has nothing to do with organization. The moment you organize truth you kill it.
A bird on the wing is one thing. You can catch hold of the same bird and put it in a golden cage. Outwardly it is the same bird, but inwardly it has lost its freedom. It has lost its joy in the sun, in the rain, going beyond the clouds. It has lost its sky, its space; it is not the same bird. Just in appearance it is the same, but in truth it is a slave.
The bird on the wing was in total freedom, dancing over the clouds, going across the sun towards the unknown without any fear. But now, there is nowhere to go -
- although the cage is golden. All responsibility is taken by the owner. The bird will have his food, nourishment ... everything, but it is selling your soul too cheaply.
Don't be encaged in any religion. Be religious.
Create the vastness of sky which is already there. You just have to discover it within you.
And you will be free of all prisons, of all religions, and of all the Holy Bibles, the holy Koran, the holy Gita ... none of them is holy. The only holy place is within you. And once you have known it, then you know that it is within everybody. Wherever there is life, all over there is sacredness, holiness.
You are not only being prevented from growing into your intelligence, you are being prevented from knowing the authentic divineness of existence, the authentic sacredness of life.
These priests are murderers -- not literally -- actually. They have murdered more people than the politicians. And they are still there; they are still openly declaring and supporting murder. And anybody who opposes it has also to be murdered. They know only one language -- that of murder. They have not learned anything that can be called human; they are animals. But even animals are more cultured.
Question 1
The first question:
GOD IS A FICTION OF THE MIND, AN INVENTION OF RELIGIOUS
POLITICIANS. BUT MY MIND WANTS FICTIONS, HOPES, FUTURE. IS THIS
NATURAL?
No, not at all. You have been programmed, you don't know what nature is. All these hopes that you think your mind needs, are created.
The old economists used to say that wherever there is a demand there will be supply.
Now things have completely changed. Manufacturers of all kinds of goods first start advertising, they have not yet manufactured the thing. They put more money into advertising than in producing the product, because that advertising creates a false need in people's minds that they need it. Once the need is there ... It is false need, because they have never needed it.
Just this advertisement consistently, constantly, hammering on their heads from every television set, from every radio, from every corner of the street, from every magazine, from every newspaper -- how long can you avoid? You are surrounded continuously by the same advertisement, and soon you start feeling that you need it, you cannot live without it. It is not even produced. When the manufacturer finds that people have started feeling the need, then he manufactures it. So now it is a created need which you take for granted as if it has been your natural need.
These priests, religious politicians, have been doing the same kind of advertising for thousands of years. They give you the idea, and they preach continuously. Their scriptures are continuously preaching all the old methods. And they are now using the new media also: television, radio, satellites ... to propagate lies.
You think you need -- your mind wants fictions. No, these fictions are created.
Just don't tell a child there is a God, and he will never feel the desire to find God. It is so easy to understand. In the Soviet Union nobody is searching for God, because they have a totally different programming, the communist programming, atheist programming. From very childhood the child is told there is no God. But in the past, people were so stupid they used to worship a lie, a fiction.
One of my friends, Rahul Sanskritayana, a scholar of Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit, was a Buddhist monk. But he also became interested in communism because of the simple similarity that Buddha has no God and Marx also has no God. So he started becoming interested in Marxism, and finally he became a communist. And the Soviet Union asked him to go to Moscow University to teach Sanskrit there. So he went to Moscow.
Out of India, in Moscow, things were different. Here it would have been impossible for him to remain a Buddhist monk and yet fall in love. In the Soviet Union there was no difficulty. He fell in love with a beautiful woman, Lola -- she was also a professor in the same university, and she had two children.
But the Soviet government did not allow him to take the wife or children out of the Soviet Union. He could live there, but he wanted to come back to his own country. And he was also afraid. In a way the government was fulfilling his innermost desire -- how could he go to India with a wife and two children? He would be condemned by everybody, particularly the Buddhists: "You are a monk!" So he was happy in a way, that the government itself did not allow it, so there was no question.
He came back. He told me, "When I first went to the Soviet Union, I asked a small boy,
`Do you believe in God?' He said, `God? People used to believe in that in the dark ages.
If you want to see the statue of God, you can go into the museum.'"
But this is also programming. It is not that these small boys know there is no God, or that even Karl Marx knew there was no God. Only a man of immense meditation can know whether God is or is not.
So you are programmed, and so deeply ingrained is the program that you think it is your nature. Your fictions, your hopes, your future ... nothing is natural.
Nature knows nothing except this moment. Nature knows nothing about hopes and desires and wants. Nature simply enjoys whatever is available this moment, now and here.
You are asking:
OR IS IT A DISTORTION, A REFLECTION OF A SICK CULTURE?
Yes, absolutely and categorically, yes. It is a distortion, a reflection of a sick culture.
And you are asking:
IS THE STATE OF GRACE THAT I SEEK HIDDEN FROM ME BY NATURE FOR
SOME PURPOSE?
There is no purpose. Purpose again brings the whole lot of lies in. Existence simply is.
Just look at it from this angle. When you are sick you go to the doctor and you ask,
"What is the cause of my sickness?" You ask for the diagnosis. But when you are feeling healthy, do you go to the doctor and ask, "Diagnose! What is the cause of my health?
Why am I feeling so happy?" You don't go to the doctor, or to the psychiatrist, or to the psychoanalyst. And if you go, that means you are mad. If you ask, "Why am I feeling so happy ...?"
No, happiness needs no cause. It is your simple nature, you are intrinsically happy. No cause, no purpose, no goal is needed. Life is in itself enough. It needs nothing else to complete it. It is complete! It is entire! It is already what it has to be. So there is no purpose in existence and no goal in existence.
Existence is a sheer dance.
Picasso was constantly bothered by people because his paintings seemed to be purposeless, meaningless. Once a critic was staying with him and he was painting. He watched and watched, and he said to Picasso, "Why are you wasting your time? This is nothing. There is no purpose in your painting."
He said, "This is strange. I am at least painting. And why are you sitting behind me. For three hours you have been wasting your time and you are telling me that I am wasting my time. I am enjoying immensely. There is no need for any purpose. Just painting, just playing with these colors is so great. Who cares about the purpose and the meaning and the goal?
"Why don't you go into the garden and ask the roses, `What is the purpose of your being?
Why are you dancing without purpose? Why are you looking so happy and smiling? Shut up! You don't have any purpose, and you are dancing in the wind and under the sun.
What is the great idea? Why are you spreading your fragrance?
"Why don't you go into the garden? And if a rose need not have a purpose, why should my paintings have a purpose? They are existential." And the man was perfectly right, just in a wrong place.
These people like Picasso needed the environment of Zen, but they were living in the West where everything has to have a purpose, otherwise you are insane. Why are you doing it? They can't understand that just doing it can be out of sheer joy. Playing with colors is a sheer joy in itself. Trying to find meaning in it is just your programming: everything has to be meaningful.
I was a student in the university, and I was winning all kinds of debates, eloquence competitions, all over the country. I had filled my head of the department's office with all kinds of trophies and cups -- gold and silver. And he started telling me, "If you go on winning in this way, I think I will have to move out of my office. There is no space left."
I said, "You don't have to move out, I will move all the trophies and all the cups."
He said, "No, that is credit to the department."
I said, "Then you have to decide whether you want to be in the office or not." And finally he had to move out of the office. He created another small office on the verandah where he used to sit, because his whole office became a showplace for any guest.
One day he asked me -- because in my own university there was going to be a national university competition -- "Why do you go on unnecessarily traveling long distances?
What is your purpose?"
I said, "I don't have any purpose. I love it -- that's my way of playing. That's my way of telling stories which have no purpose at all. Just the sheer joy,
overflowing life. I am not old enough to think about purposes." He said, "What?"
I said, "Yes, I am not old enough, and I will never be old enough to think about purpose and meaning. I rejoice in whatever I am doing. There is no purpose."
Do you think talking to you there is any purpose? I just enjoy it. You enjoy listening, I enjoy talking, it is complete. There is no need beyond it. If something happens within it, that is not my responsibility.
If you become enlightened, it is your problem. So be careful!
I am just enjoying talking, you are enjoying listening. In between these two things anything is possible. You may become enlightened, but remember, never condemn me for your enlightenment. It is just your problem, not mine. I have my problem -- you don't worry about it.
So I told my head of the department, "There is no purpose. I enjoy talking. I love a heart-to-heart talk."
And that day the competition was going to be held ... There used to be two persons from each university -- one opposing the subject and one supporting the subject. I was opposing the subject, but my partner became so nervous ... it was his first time to come to the stage.
The student who used to come with me around the country had died in an accident, so I had to find a new partner, and that was his first time. I tried hard to prepare him ... to repeat his speech many times, but finally when the time came he disappeared.
So the vice-chancellor asked me what to do? I said, "I can manage. First I will speak in support -- because my partner is missing, and I don't want to lose that prize -- and then I will oppose."
He said, "My God! You will do both the things?" I said, "Just try. It will be a great enjoyment."
So I spoke for it, and I spoke against it, and I had both the prizes, first and second.
And as I was going out, the vice-chancellor took me into a corner and said, "It was a miracle. When you were speaking in favor of it, I was thinking what will you do? You are giving such a great argument in favor, I don't think you will be able to oppose it. But when you started opposing, I thought, My God! -- your arguments are so clear. What happened to the other arguments ...?"
He said, "But I want to ask you one thing, that's why I have pulled you out of the crowd.
Do you have any convictions of your own?"
I said, "I just love talking. You have heard only two sides -- there are many sides. And if you want some day I can speak from many points of view. These are only two polar opposites, but there are middle positions and there are at least seven positions on each subject."
He said "That would drive me mad. Just these two positions drive me completely out of my mind. I don't think I am going to sleep, because I am wondering what is right."
I said, "That is your problem. I enjoyed the whole game, and I have got both the prizes.
And this is far better. If you can convince other vice-chancellors that only one person is coming and he will represent both the sides, it will be far easier for me because I won't have to prepare the other person. It is better and easier. I don't have any belief, I don't have any prejudice. I am utterly open. And because I love, it is a game."
Your life should be a playfulness, not a purpose. Your life should be a fun, not goal oriented.
It should not be business, it should be pure love. What is the purpose of love? If there is no purpose in love, why should there be purpose in meditation? Why should there be any purpose in nature and existence?
Purpose is always an end somewhere far away that you have to achieve. Purpose is an achievement of a distant goal, it is never herenow, and life is herenow. It is not going anywhere, it has no purpose.
And you don't understand the implication of the word `purpose'. If once purpose is fulfilled, life will be dead. Then there will be no need for existence -- the purpose is fulfilled, the game is finished. Because it is an ongoing game, eternity to eternity, it can't afford to have a goal, it can't afford to have a death, it can't afford to have a purpose.
Unless you understand how to live purposelessly, you have not understood the meaning, the significance of life.
Life has everything that it needs in itself; it is intrinsic, not outside. It is an unfoldment of more and more joy, of more and more blissfulness, of more and more ecstasy. But the unfoldment is in the present. As you go deeper and deeper, and higher and higher, you become more and more playful. And to be playful takes all seriousness away.
Purpose makes people serious, and I consider seriousness to be sickness of the soul.
Laughter is health, but laughter has no purpose. It is so beautiful in itself, it need not have a purpose. It is not a means to any end. It is means and end both together.
And finally, you are asking:
IS MY IDENTIFICATION WITH THE EGO A NECESSARY STAGE IN A NATURAL PROCESS?
No, it is again a created phenomenon by the priests, by the politicians, by your parents.
The child is born without any ego. Have you ever watched a small child who says -- if his name is Johnny -- "Johnny is feeling thirsty"? He never says, "I am feeling thirsty," I will come later on when programming has happened. In the beginning the child says, "Johnny is feeling sleepy."
One of the Hindu mystics, Ramateertha, never said "I" in his whole life. He
would always say, "Rama is tired. Rama is hungry ..."
He went to America. Here, the people who surrounded him, understood him, but in America it seemed a very strange type of language that he used. "Rama is feeling thirsty"
-- and people would look around wondering, "Who is Rama?" And they asked him, "Why don't you simply say Ì am feeling thirsty'?"
He said, "That I cannot say, because there is no Ì'. So I just use the name, which is a false thing, apparently false, because it has been given. It is a label put on me, but there is no Ì' in me. And my innermost space is neither thirsty nor hungry. It is the body, and the label of the body is Ramateertha. It is not my name. I am nameless and formless; name and form belong to the body. So I cannot use the word Ì', because there is no corresponding reality to it inside me."
And he was absolutely right.
The ego is created by ambition, by desire, by greed. Everybody is telling you: "Become somebody special. Have power, prestige, respectability, money, things that matter in the world." All these create slowly, slowly the idea of the ego, of superiority, of holier-than-thou, higher-than-thou. This ego creates your saints, this ego creates your so-called priests, your politicians, your presidents, prime ministers. This is all the projection of the ego.
But ego has no natural existence. It is a by-product of a certain programming that society manages to befool you with.
Once you see that the ego is false, handed over to you by others, the whole house of falsity simply disappears, like darkness when you bring light in.
Meditation will bring the light from your very center, a cool fire. And when your interior becomes luminous, you will not find any ego, any I. You will simply find the whole existence pouring into you.
The ego is also an imprisonment.
Being egoless you are again out of the golden cage.
My parents used to say to me, "The way you are going, you will end up being
nobody."
And somebody else would say, "You will end up in being good for nothing." I have ended up being nobody, good for nothing. But I am enjoying this good-for- nothingness, this nobodiness so much that each moment has become a splendor, a magic, a miracle.
Out of this nothingness arises my freedom, my wholeness. Out of this nothingness I meet with existence with an easy heart, relaxed, in a deep let-go. There is no ego, no somebody to prevent me. I don't have any borders, any limits. In this nothingness I have arrived at the very source of existence.
I would love you also to be good for nothing, a nobody. And then you will find a tremendous dignity -- for no reason, but just because the whole existence is overflowing, and all around you flowers are blossoming, stars are dancing. For the first time when you are nobody, you feel your heartbeat and the universe's heartbeat are in deep synchronicity. That feeling is the greatest experience in existence, the most divine, the most godly.
Now the sutras:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
GOSETSU, AFTER BECOMING A MONK UNDER MA TZU, CAME TO SEKITO
AND SAID, "IF YOU SETTLE THIS WITH ONE WORD, I WILL STAY HERE. IF
NOT, I WILL LEAVE."
His question certainly shows he is coming from Ma Tzu.
Ma Tzu is the most strange master that ever happened. He must have heard this statement from Ma Tzu, or in the air of Ma Tzu where there were many people just becoming afire, coming to their real home.
He is asking Sekito, "IF YOU SETTLE THIS" -- remember the word "this." The whole emphasis is on "this" -- "IF YOU SETTLE THIS WITH ONE WORD ..." He is saying,
"By a single word if you can say what this is, I will stay here. If not, I will leave."
SEKITO, KNOWING THAT THIS MAN HAD PROMISE -- his very question
showed an intense longing to understand this. But he does not want to go into details, he does not want any unnecessary commentary. He wants simply a single word: "Settle it and I will stay here; otherwise I leave."
A man fiery enough, bold enough, daring enough, challenging a man like Sekito. SEKITO, KNOWING THAT THIS MAN HAD PROMISE -- he could see the
promise in his eyes, in his very air, in his very approach -- MADE A GESTURE,
a silent gesture.
Even a single word is too much. That was the emphasis of Sekito, "Why are you asking for even one word? One word leads to another and to another, and then the whole theology and the whole philosophy, and the whole religion goes on growing. Words and words ... and you forget all about this.
"So I won't use even a single word -- that is too much. You have already gone, you have already passed this. You have moved into language from existence. And that is the greatest distance in the world: the experience of this, and making a statement about it.
That is the greatest distance possible. Even stars are not that far away. They may be millions of light-years away -- that does not matter. The distance between this and the statement about this is the greatest distance between two points."
Sekito avoided even a single word.
Always remember, one thing leads to another and to another, and then there is no end.
You are lost in a jungle of words. So he would not say even a single word, he simply made a gesture. And his gesture was immensely profound, but it was utterly silent.
Gosetsu did not get it. He wanted a word. He was looking for the word, that's why he missed the gesture. Whenever you are looking for something, you will miss the truth.
Don't look for something! Just go emptyhanded, without any projection, without any prejudice, without any belief. Perhaps he had come from Ma Tzu hearing his words, and he wanted Sekito to say something greater, in a single word, condensed. But one word or one thousand words ... it makes no difference.
Sekito is utterly truthful, absolutely honest. Not uttering a single word, he simply made a gesture. And in his gesture there was thisness. In his gesture was suchness. In his gesture was the whole existence. In his presence and the gesture, everything was contained; nothing was left out. Nothing was said, but everything was indicated -- a hint, a naked truth without clothes.
All words are clothes. The more words, the more clothes. Finally, you have layer upon layer of language, and the truth is lost in the jungle.
But Gosetsu missed it because he was waiting for a word. His focus was for a word, otherwise he would not have missed it. He was alert and waiting for the word, and the word did not come. Because of his narrowing mind upon a word, he missed the vastness of this that Sekito was indicating by a gesture.
Never look for anything. That which is, will declare itself to you, you simply be silent and wait. Yes, waiting is the right approach to truth.
Wait, be a witness, be patient.
Keep your doors open for the guest, because one never knows when the guest comes and knocks on your doors.
Do you remember a small poem by Rabindranath Tagore, "The King of the Night"?
There used to be an ancient temple, very ancient. The temple was vast. It had thousands of statues and one thousand priests. The high priest one night dreamed that God was saying to him, "Tomorrow sometime I am coming to visit the temple. Clean it, prepare it.
I am coming for the first time to your temple. You have waited long, now the time has come."
He woke up in the middle of the night. He called all the priests from their bedrooms.
They were surprised: "What is the matter?" -- because it had never happened before.
The arch-priest said to them, "I had a dream. Although it is a dream, who knows? It may be true, it may be just an indication that he is coming."
They laughed, they giggled. They said, "You are getting old, you are getting senile. A dream is a dream, and you disturbed our sleep."
The arch-priest said, "I am sorry, but I have to say to you not to take chances. There is nothing wrong in cleaning the temple and preparing the richest food, the best room for him to rest. Anyway this is going to give the temple a good spring- cleaning. It has not been cleaned for hundreds of years, so this is good chance. If he comes, good; if he does not come, there is no harm."
They could see the argument.
And he said, "If we don't do anything and he turns up, then don't blame me. I will not be responsible. I have told you."
They all felt that there was some grain of truth, an argument, very convincing in it. So they cleaned the whole temple the next day. It was a vast temple. To clean it -- and it had not been cleaned for hundreds of years -- was a tremendous job. They called many other people -- one thousand priests and hundreds of other people from the nearby villages who used to worship. So they came, and all the statues were cleaned -- fragrance, flowers, garlands, great sweets and delicious food was prepared. For the first time God was coming. But they all knew deep down, "It is just a dream, and we are unnecessarily being harassed, but what to do?"
And they waited and they waited and they waited. It was sunset and he had not turned up.
And they were becoming angry because the priests could not eat unless God has taken the food. Every day they were offering food to the statues, and statues don't eat -- that is the only good thing about statues. So they would offer the food, and they would take the food back. Now it had become sacred, God had given it as a gift. It became prasad, it became holy, sacred. Then they would eat it.
But today was different. God himself was coming, and if he found them eating before he had come, there was going to be trouble. But by the evening they became very angry with the arch-priest. They said, "Your dream has disturbed our night, has disturbed our day.
We have been laboring the whole day and we are hungry, and we cannot eat, we cannot drink. And now it is sunset, the day is finished. So it is better that we now offer our food to our statues, take it back, eat it and go to sleep."
The arch-priest could not say anything more. He also felt, "They are right." But deep down his dream was so vivid and so colorful that only with reluctance did he allow them.
But he could see their argument: "How long do we have to wait? The day is over, we have waited enough."
So they ate. They were tired, so they went to sleep early .…
And in the middle of the night the chariot of God came, making great noise ... the chariot's wheels on a dusty road. Somebody heard the noise and half-asleep and half-awake he said, "Look! It seems he has come. I have heard the noise of a chariot's wheels."
Somebody shouted, "Shut up! Now don't bring that subject up again. Do you want to disturb our sleep again? It is not a chariot! It is just clouds thundering in the sky! Go to sleep!"
And then the chariot stopped in front of the temple, but the door was closed. Still, he went up the steps -- there were many steps to the temple.
There are temples in India with one hundred steps, two hundred steps, three hundred steps ... then you find the main door.
The Kind of the Night knocked on the door. And again, another priest heard the knock.
He said, "Listen, somebody is knocking on the door. Perhaps he has come."
Again somebody shouted, "Will you not stop? Can't you allow us to rest? There is nobody knocking on the door! It is just the wind!" So they again went to sleep.
The King of the Night waited at the door. There was no sign of anybody coming to open the door, so he returned to his chariot.
In the morning, they saw that a chariot had come up to the door on the dusty road. They could see the marks of the wheels of the chariot, and they could see on the dust that had gathered on the steps, that somebody had walked up to the door. But now it was too late -
- nothing could be done. They missed it.
This is a small poem by Rabindranath Tagore, emphasizing one point: waiting. It is never enough. Waiting consciously, alert, witnessing whatsoever is happening but not asking a certain hypothesis to be fulfilled, because the mind has the capacity to create any hallucination you ask. You can see Christ, you can see Krishna, you can see anybody you want.
Mind has the capacity to dream, and it has the capacity to dream with open eyes
-- that is called hallucination. If you go on asking for something, it will appear as if it is real. Mind can give reality to all kinds of lies.
So you have to put aside all your prejudices, all your conceptions, all your projections ...
all your gods aside. You have to enter into your own being just watching, waiting, trusting existence that whenever a time is ripe and your spring comes, the grass will grow by itself.
Every tree trusts existence -- the spring comes, the flowers blossom, the fruits arrive.
Why can't you wait for the right time? Why should you make demands on nature? A demanding mind is not the mind of a seeker. A seeker simply waits and allows existence its own time, its own wisdom. Whenever you are ripe, whenever you are really ready, the doors will be opened for you. You don't have to knock.
Jesus says to you, "Knock and the door shall be opened." I say unto you, "Don't knock, wait! When the time is ripe, doors shall be opened unto you." Knocking is demanding, knocking is interfering. Knocking is not trust. Knocking is forcing existence to appear in a certain way according to your hypothesis, according to
your belief system. No, no knocking! Just wait and watch.
Jesus says, "Ask, and it shall be answered." No, never ask, otherwise it shall never be answered. Just wait. In the right moment you will find the answer.
Jesus says, "Seek, and ye shall find it." I say unto you, "Don't seek, otherwise you will never find it," because seeking means you already know what you are seeking. Seeking means you already believe in a certain hypothesis. Seeking means you have already an idea about truth. This is dangerous. No seeking, just waiting ... in utter silence, in tremendous trust. And as your silence deepens, you will see things are happening on their own accord. And as things start happening on their own accord, your trust deepens. This is almost spontaneous.
Just waiting, and Gosetsu would have understood the gesture of Sekito. But he was asking, demanding. Just look at his question: "IF YOU SETTLE THIS WITH ONE
WORD, I WILL STAY HERE." As if Sekito needs his staying there. He is making a bargain: "I will stay here if you explain this in one word" -- now this is a demanding mind. "If not, I will leave." Whom is he threatening? But because of this he was full of bullshit and missed.
But even though he missed, Sekito knew that beyond this bullshit there was someone very promising, a bodhisattva. Once this nonsense is dropped, that bodhisattva will surface as a buddha, as an awakened soul.
SEKITO, KNOWING THAT THIS MAN HAD PROMISE, MADE A GESTURE, BUT
GOSETSU DID NOT GET IT. SO GOSETSU TOOK HIS LEAVE AND MADE FOR
THE GATE, WHEN SEKITO CALLED TO HIM, "TEACHER!"
You have to understand the difference between master and teacher. The master is one who knows, the teacher is one who knows not but is knowledgeable. He has collected much information, but he has not gone through the transformation. So when Sekito called to him, he used the word `teacher', not `master'.
He was full of knowledge; his question shows it. He has heard much, read much.
He is a scholar, a knowledgeable person, learned; hence he called him teacher.
GOSETSU TURNED AROUND, AND SEKITO SAID, "FROM BIRTH TO OLD AGE, IT IS ONLY THE FELLOW THERE AND NOTHING ELSE -- DON'T LOOK
ANYWHERE FURTHER."
What is he saying? He is saying, "What are you asking for? It has been there within you from birth to death, from eternity to eternity. And just by turning back, you have yourself given the answer. Just look there, don't go anywhere else, turn back. Turn inwards -- that is a complete turn back. Don't go further, just turn in, turn back, and you will find this --
the suchness of existence, the tathata. It has been there always.
This turning around ... "FROM BIRTH TO OLD AGE, IT IS ONLY THE FELLOW
THERE ..." Who has turned? Who has heard the word `teacher'? And who has followed the word and turned around? This is it! The fellow there inside you
..."THE FELLOW
THERE AND NOTHING ELSE -- DON'T LOOK ANYWHERE FURTHER."
AT THIS, GOSETSU WAS GREATLY ENLIGHTENED. HE STEPPED ON HIS
STICK TO BREAK IT AND STAYED THERE.
People who go on the mountains take a stick as a support ... steep mountains. So he has come with a stick to the mountain where Sekito Stonehead was sitting on a rock.
You know that Ma Tzu said to another person who was going to Sekito, "You are going.
That's perfectly good, but do you remember Sekito's path is very slippery?" He was sitting on a rock and the path was very slippery, so anybody who had to go there had to bring a stick with him.
This action of Gosetsu, of breaking the stick, shows that now he had found his master and there was no need to go anywhere. He was not going down that steep hill again. Finished!
He had heard it, he had found it. This gesture on his part shows that now he is going to stay forever. All bridges were broken. With that stick breaking, all the
bridges that lead backwards to the past were finished. He had found the man, he had fallen in love. He knew: "You are the master."
He became greatly enlightened by this simple act of Sekito calling him -- "Teacher!" --
and his turning around and Sekito saying to him: "This fellow has been there always and always. Don't go further."
A very immense statement, but it needs a very alert mind. First, he had asked the question, he was full of his question and wanted one word. There was wanting, desiring, and all kinds of things. Now, just as he was going out of the hut -- he had dropped the idea of finding anything from Sekito -- suddenly he heard, "Teacher!" And he turned. He must have been utterly empty because there was no question. He had not asked anything.
In that silence he heard that impeccable, that profound sentence: "This fellow who has turned around has been there always and always."
A single statement from a master sometimes triggers a chain reaction and leads a silent being into enlightenment. This is one of the most important gifts from Zen to humanity.
ONCE, SEKITO SAID TO HIS ASSEMBLED MONKS, "EVEN IF LANGUAGE IS
USED, IT IS IRRELEVANT."
All language is irrelevant as far as truth is concerned.
Hearing this, another master, Yakusan, said, "EVEN IF LANGUAGE IS NOT USED, IT
IS IRRELEVANT."
Language certainly is irrelevant. You may not use the language, you may keep your mouth shut, but the language is going round and round in your head. So just not using language is not enough -- that too, is irrelevant. Language or no language, both are irrelevant.
SEKITO SAID, "HERE, EVEN A NEEDLE CANNOT GET THROUGH." He
is saying,
"HERE, EVEN A NEEDLE CANNOT GET THROUGH -- as far as truth is
concerned, the path is so narrow, only a witnessing, silent witnessing can pass through. It is far more subtle than even a needle. Even a needle is too solid, too tangible, too material, it cannot enter into the immaterial space of your being."
YAKUSAN SAID, "HERE, IT IS LIKE PLANTING A FLOWER ON A ROCK."
Both masters are enjoying pulling each other's leg. That can happen only in the world of Zen; otherwise, Ayatollah Khomeini ...! These kinds of playful dialogues between masters are of immense beauty.
What Sekito said was absolutely right, and what Yakusan said is also absolutely right --
different expressions.
"HERE IT IS LIKE PLANTING A FLOWER ON A ROCK."
You can't plant a flower on a rock. Putting language in the service of truth is just like planting a flower on a rock where it cannot grow. It will simply die. The moment you bring truth to language, it dies on the way.
But just not using the language is not enough either. You have to use silence. Not using the language is negative; using the language is the positive side -- but both belong to language. Saying is positive; not saying is negative -- but both are irrelevant. You have to indicate without using language, or without not using language. You have to create a device, a gesture -- maybe just a look into the eyes of the disciple, or just as Sekito called him, "Teacher!" and he turned around utterly empty. He caught him in the right moment.
When he first came he was too full of knowledge. Now he has dropped the idea of being with Sekito, so he was caught suddenly. And whenever you are caught suddenly, your mind cannot function. The mind needs time before it can figure out what is the matter.
Just a small space of no-mind and no-time, and suddenly he realized Sekito is
saying,
"This fellow who has turned around, this fellow is the answer. And this turning around is enough. Don't go further!"
SEKITO INDICATED HIS APPROVAL OF WHAT YAKUSAN SAID.
He did not say anything, but just indicated his approval. We don't know how he indicated. Maybe he just took Yakusan's hand in his hand and pressed it, or just looked into his eyes and showered his love, or just remained silent and closed his eyes, radiating the vibe of the man who knows his nothingness.
It is not said how he indicated, but there are millions of ways -- according to each, a master uses a certain way to indicate. But he approved what Yakusan was saying. Both were saying very significant statements.
Zen is not argumentative, it is what Martin Buber would have loved, it is a dialogue, a dialogue in which two persons are not forcing their ideas on the other, where two persons together are trying to find something existential. It is not a question of defeating the other or being victorious. A real dialogue is when two persons are discussing just to find the truth. And truth is nobody's monopoly
-- nobody is a winner, nobody is defeated. Truth is victorious, and both are surrendered to the truth. You have to remember in all these dialogues this different quality.
Socratic dialogues are argumentative, they are logical. Zen dialogues are absolutely beyond logic, beyond mind. They are very mysterious, but far more profound than any Socratic dialogue. Even Martin Buber's understanding of dialogue is not the ultimate understanding, because he continues the dialogue with these two words: I and thou. But in the Zen dialogue there is no I, no Thou.
Two Zen masters, both are empty, and playing just like children playing on the seabeach
-- running around, finding colored stones and seashells .… Two Zen masters are just like children -- shouting, shrieking, screaming, for no reason at all.
You know Avirbhava's shrieking .… That is Zen shrieking -- for no reason at all. Because I don't do anything to her ...! But I miss her when she is not there at the door. She is almost like a gong declaring: "The Master has come!" When she is
not there, I miss her.
Her screaming is just like a small child, so innocent, without any purpose. But she is total when she screams, it is not from her mind, it is coming from deeper spaces. So even sometimes when I have entered the hall, she goes on screaming. My car goes away and then she drops on the ground with immense joy.
The dialogue of Zen has a difference to Socratic dialogue, or to Martin Buber's idea of dialogue.
Martin Buber could not drop the idea of I and thou; hence he remained in the mind, could not enter into the beyond. And the Zen sky is of the beyond.
Boncho wrote:
THE NIGHTINGALE SINGING. THIN SNOWFLAKES.
Do you see any connection? Do you see any logic? "The nightingale singing" -- that's one thing.
"Thin snowflakes" -- that is completely another.
But in a meditative mind nothing is separate. All things are joined together. The nightingale singing and the thin snowflakes -- both are part of one existence, they cannot be separated. Only mind separates them: this is one thing; that is another. And how are you putting them together? But they are together, and not only these two. Then the bamboos cracking, and the wind blowing through the pine trees, and the clouds coming with great lightning -- everything is connected.
In these two small sentences he has said that everything is so connected with each other that you cannot create separations.
THE NIGHTINGALE SINGING THIN SNOWFLAKES.
I have heard that scientists say that if -- and someday it is going to happen -- the
sun loses all its energy ... It is losing every moment; it is burning out. One day it will be simply a black hole, no light will be coming to the earth. It takes ten minutes for the light to come to you, so if sun dies ... and it is bound to die. Everything that is born needs one day to rest. Everything gets tired, everyone gets tired. Even suns are going to die, and new suns are being born.
It will take four billion years, they say, to die. But in an eternity, four billion years are just like four seconds, or maybe not even that much. But they say if the sun dies, then for only ten minutes will you still be getting light. So for ten minutes only, life will exist after the sun dies. And then there will be no life without the sun, no warmth, no life.
But they have not looked at it from the other side, because they don't know that there is another side also. It is true that the sun gives us life, but it is one-sided. If on the earth life disappears, I say unto you the sun will die immediately. Not even ten minutes will be taken, because life is a continuous communication, it is a dialogue.
If we need the sun, the sun needs us! Without us do you think the sun will have a sunrise?
I am absolutely certain that without life on the earth, the sun will not rise again. For whom? For what? No flowers, no nightingales, no people, no birds. On a dead earth even the sun will be ashamed to arise because everything is so deeply connected -- from the smallest grass blade to the greatest sun in the sky.
Our sun is a very mediocre one, it is middle class. There are suns far bigger than it, but even the smallest grass blade on the earth is connected to the farthest star. They are all cousins, parts of the same existence.
But Martin Buber could not understand that between I and Thou there can be a discussion but not a dialogue. A dialogue needs no I, no Thou.
When I read his book, I AND THOU, I immediately wrote a letter to him -- he was alive
-- asking him to please try to understand, "No I, no Thou." And I said, "That is an absolute necessity for a dialogue. What you are talking about is not dialogue, it is only discussion."
I received a small note from him saying, "I will think it over." I replied immediately,
"Thinking is not going to solve it. Thinking is the barrier. It is thinking that is making you propose that there is dialogue between I and Thou. I am speaking from a state of no-thinking. No I, no Thou, then there is a dialogue, and very playful dialogue."
He did not answer again, seeing the situation that whatever he would say would be part of thinking. He was a great thinker, no doubt, but even the greatest thinker has nothing to say about the truth. Only the space which is beyond thought brings you closer to life and existence. And when two persons are settled and at ease with existence, there is no I, no Thou, just a play. That play can be called dialogue. Only Zen masters know what dialogue is.
Question 3 Maneesha's question:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
HUBERT BENOIT SUGGESTS THAT EVEN THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE
SUFFICIENTLY INTELLECTUALLY EVOLVED NOT TO BELIEVE IN A PERSONAL GOD, STILL RETAIN THE CONCEPT, ALTHOUGH IN DIFFERENT
TERMS.
HE SAYS, "THEY IMAGINE THEIR SATORI AND THEMSELVES AFTER THEIR
SATORI, AND THAT IS THEIR PERSONAL GOD -- A COERCIVE IDOL, DISQUIETENING, IMPLACABLE. THEY MUST REALIZE THEMSELVES, THEY
MUST LIBERATE THEMSELVES. THEY ARE TERRIFIED AT THE THOUGHT OF
NOT BEING ABLE TO GET THERE, AND THEY ARE ELATED BY ANY
INNER
PHENOMENON WHICH GIVES THEM HOPE."
BELOVED MASTER, WOULD YOU AGREE THAT THERE IS A DANGER OF THIS HAPPENING TO MEDITATORS?
Maneesha, Hubert Benoit has written a very scholarly book on Zen, THE SUPREME
DOCTRINE, but it is only an intellectual understanding . Although he went to Japan, and he lived in Zen monasteries and watched the meditators, and he thinks that he has known the inner story -- that is wrong.
Just being in a Zen monastery does not mean you have become an insider. You are still a spectator -- you are watching others meditating. You are not meditating, and unless you meditate there are bound to be such questions arising in you.
So Hubert Benoit has written a very beautiful book for intellectuals. He is a giant, and I don't think there is any other book from any Western philosopher or thinker, which conveys something about Zen in a better way than Hubert Benoit's THE SUPREME
DOCTRINE.
But still it is intellectual, highly polished, refined. His arguments are beautiful, but not based in experience; they are not existential. That's why he could say that even people in their satori think they are. But if they think they are, then that is their personal God --
again it asserts. They denied the God, but now they themselves become the God. But this is an outsider's viewpoint. He does not know what satori is.
In satori, or in samadhi -- satori is the Japanese word for samadhi -- one is not. So who is there to think of himself that he is God? Gautam Buddha uses the word anatta. In the Pali language, which was the language Buddha used, atta means self, and anatta means no-self. In samadhi, in satori, you come to a point when you suddenly remember you are not
-- just a pure space, throbbing with life, dancing with joy, but you are no more. You are dissolved just like ice melting and becoming the ocean.
He is concerned because he does not know the real experience of satori. He says, "They must realize ..." There is no question of realization. There is nobody to realize, and there is no question of must. In the vocabulary of Zen there is no must.
I have read a book written by a famous American author, Napoleon Hill, YOU MUST
RELAX. Now if there is must, how can you relax?
Now Hubert Benoit says, "They must realize." There is no one to realize. Whom is he talking about? "They must realize themselves, they must liberate themselves." From whom? There is nobody. This is liberation: when you are not. It is not a question of liberating yourself, because if you liberate yourself, you will be there.
But it is the problem of all intellectuals. They can't look beyond the words, beyond logic and language. "You must realize," and "They must liberate" -- but liberate? Neither is there one who is unliberated, nor is there one who is forcing them to remain unliberated.
There is only liberation!
The meditator comes to see that he is liberated from himself. He is no more -- that is his liberation. But looking from the outside, even a man of such a refined and cultured mind, Hubert Benoit, misses the point completely.
Once you are in deep meditation, you are not -- this is liberation, and there is no other liberation.
It has been long enough to be serious. It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Put on the lights! It is good you can be serious when it dark, but when the light comes, laughter follows.
One afternoon in Doctor Feelgood's office, Buster Chubbs comes staggering in. He is the most haggard-looking patient Doctor Feelgood has seen in a long time.
"I cannot sleep, Doc," moans Buster, pulling on his thinning hair. "I have got dogs to the left of me, dogs to the right of me, and dogs running all around me! They bark all night --
and I am telling you, they are driving me crackers!"
"Don't worry," says Feelgood, sympathetically. "There is a new sleeping pill on the market called Knock Out. I have been having a lot of success with it. Try it!"
Buster Chubbs calls in at the drugstore, buys a box of pills, and staggers home. One week later, he is back in Feelgood's office. He looks even worse than before.
"It is no good, Doc," groans Buster. "I have not slept all week. I am up all night chasing those goddam dogs. And even when I catch them, they refuse to swallow the pills!"
Young Duncan MacPherson tiptoes into the room where Hamish MacTavish is sitting by the fire, reading his newspaper.
"Mister MacTavish," says young Duncan, nervously. "I have come to ask for your kind permission. I would like to ask you if I can marry your daughter, Tillie."
"Well, well, lad!" says Hamish, looking up. "Before I say a word about the matter, my boy, have you seen my wife, Mrs. MacTavish?"
"Yes, sir," replies Duncan. "But I still prefer your daughter!"
The scene is outside Moscow in the heavy snows of midwinter. Colossus G. Magnus, the greatest Hollywood movie director of all time -- known as "Big G." Magnus -- is ready to complete his most daring epic, the multi-billion dollar movie: "Napoleon Eats Russia!"
Across the vast snowy plain, "Big G." Magnus has constructed four huge towers, each complete with camera, lighting and sound crews.
Gigantic snow machines are standing ready to whip up an instant blizzard of snow. The crews are ready, and the cast of five thousand soldiers, with horses, cannons, swords, and everything, are poised and ready to go.
The big snow fans slowly start to blow, and suddenly, director Magnus, sitting in tower number four, shouts out, "Action!"
An incredible flurry of battle follows with fury and authenticity. For forty minutes the Russian and French armies clash, recreating history amongst booming cannons, and screaming men and horses.
Finally, "Big G." Magnus shouts out through his microphone, "Cut!"
Immediately, all the actors, technicians, and crews burst into loud cheers and applause.
"Big G." smiles to himself with satisfaction, and reaches for his telephone. He dials up film tower number one.
"You got everything, Paddy?" asks the director.
"Mister Magnus," hiccups Paddy, "it is Thursday -- the power failed! We did not get a single shot!"
It seems Poona also belongs to Russia -- every Thursday the power fails!
"What?" screams Magnus, slamming down the phone and dialing tower number two.
"Seamus," shouts the director, "how was it?"
"Mister Magnus," replies Seamus, "please don't get mad, but my cameraman forgot to put film in the camera."
"Idiots! Turkeys!" shouts "Big G." "You are all fired!" Frantically, Magnus dials up tower number three.
"What about you, Sean?" he cries, perspiring. "How did it go?"
"Ah! Mister Magnus," replies Sean. "Never was there such a scene! It will make film history! You are a genius ...!"
"Cut the bullshit, Sean!" shouts "Big G." "Did you get it all on film?"
"On film?" asks Sean. "You wanted me to photograph it? I thought it was a rehearsal!"
"You moron!" roars Magnus. "You imbecile! You will never work for me again!" And he slams down the phone.
"Big G." Magnus mops his forehead with a handkerchief and then turns to his own cameraman, Stonehead Niskriya.
"Jesus Christ!" shouts Magnus. "Thank God you are here, Stonehead! I am sure everything here is okay!"
"Absolutely!" confirms Stonehead Niskriya. "First class -- number one!" "Enough film in the camera?" asks "Big G."
"Plenty, Mister Magnus," replies Stonehead. "Sound okay?" asks Magnus.
"You bet!" replies Stonehead. "Perfect sound."
"Those new lights from Berlin working okay?" asks Magnus. "Just great!" enthuses Niskriya.
"Thank God!" shouts Magnus.
"Ja!" says Niskriya. "I am ready to start when you are!" Nivedano ...
(Drumbeat) (Gibberish) Nivedano ... (Drumbeat)
Stop. Close your eyes ...
Be silent ... and feel your body to be completely frozen. This is the right moment to look inwards.
Gather your energy, your total consciousness, and rush towards the center of your being.
It is just below the navel -- two inches below the navel, inside. The Japanese call it the hara. It is the center of life. You have to move faster, with an urgency as if this is the last moment of your life. Now or never.
Faster and faster ... Deeper and deeper ...
As you are coming closer to the center, a great silence descends over you, just like falling rain, very soft rain. You can feel the coolness of it.
A little closer to the center, and a great peace surrounds you. Your whole inner being becomes full of light, a luminosity you have never known before, a blissful moment, utterly ecstatic.
It is the right time to step into the very source of your life. You will feel drunk with the divine. You will find the original face. Symbolically Gautam Buddha's face has been accepted in the East as everybody's original face.
Just remember one thing: the buddha has only one quality, that of a witness. Witness that you are not the body ...
Witness that you are not the mind ...
Witness that you are only a witness and nothing else. This will take you deeper and deeper into the source of your being. It will open doors into eternity.
To make this witnessing more and more deep, Nivedano ...
(Drumbeat)
Relax ... but remember you are only a witness. You are not the body, not the mind, just a pure witness. And immediately, Gautama the Buddha Auditorium starts becoming an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas disappear as separate beings into one oceanic consciousness.
This moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.
Everybody is concerned with trivia, nobody cares to look inwards. Everybody's eyes are focused on objects which are not going to help you, which are not going to be with you.
Death will take everything away from you -- money, power, prestige. Death will leave only one thing: that is witnessing. If you have it, there is no death. If you don't have it, there is only death and nothing else.
There are three steps which can be remembered at this silent moment. The first, the buddha follows you behind like a shadow. The second, instead of buddha being your shadow, you become the shadow of buddha. And the third, you disappear even as a shadow, only the buddha remains.
Only the witnessing pure consciousness remains -- no I no Thou, no God no soul, just a vast nothingness. An immense universe opens all its doors to you, it pours into you abundantly, splendors, miracles. Your life starts becoming a magic, a grace, a beauty, a truth.
Gather all these experiences you are having now. You have to bring them from the center to the surface, to your ordinary day-to-day life.
And persuade the buddha to come along with you. He is your Dhamma, he is your nature, he is your Tao. He is bound to come. He has been waiting and waiting, but you never invited him. You never even bothered about him.
It has been long, a millennia he has been sitting there just like a seed. Allow him space.
Invite him so he can surface just like a lotus coming from the dirty mud and passing beyond the waters and opening its petals to the sun and to the moon and to the stars.
Nivedano ...
(Drumbeat)
Come back ... but come as a buddha. Come with grace, silence, peace. Settle down just for a few moments to remind yourself of the golden path you have traveled, and the great silence, peace, ecstasy that you have experienced. You are still drunk with the divine.
You can feel the buddha just behind you, his warmth, his love, his presence. He is only a presence, he is not a person.
I hope the first step will be followed by the second, the second will be followed by the third, and it will not be long before one day you will find yourself no more and only existence is. That will be the most glorious day of your life. Not only will you celebrate, the whole existence will celebrate with you.
Celebration is my manifesto. Let it be your manifesto too. Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Beloved Master.
I Celebrate Myself: God Is No Where, Life Is Now Here Chapter #6
Chapter title: Come to your own festival
18 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
code: 8902185
ShortTitle: CELEBR06
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Yes Video:
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OUR BELOVED MASTER,
SHODAI, WHO WAS BORN IN 738 IN CHINA AND DIED IN 820, WAS A DISCIPLE OF SEKITO.
SHODAI STAYED AT MOUNT NANGAKU UNDER SEKITO FOR THREE YEARS, THEN WENT TO MOUNT SHUKO WHERE HE SAW MA TZU.
MA TZU ASKED, "WHAT DID YOU COME HERE FOR?"
SHODAI SAID, "I CAME HERE FOR BUDDHA'S JAMUNA DARSHAN."
MA TZU SAID, "BUDDHA HAS NO JAMUNA DARSHAN. JAMUNA DARSHAN IS
THE WORLD OF DELUSION. YOU ARE FROM MOUNT NANGAKU, BUT IT
SEEMS THAT YOU HAVE NOT YET KNOWN THAT YOU NEED SEKITO. SO
YOU SHOULD GO BACK."
HEARING THAT, SHODAI WENT TO SEKITO. ON MEETING THE MASTER, SHODAI ASKED SEKITO, "WHAT IS BUDDHA?"
SEKITO REPLIED, "THERE IS NO BUDDHA NATURE IN YOU."
SHODAI ASKED, "WHAT ABOUT ALL LIVING BEINGS?" SEKITO REPLIED, "THEY HAVE BUDDHA NATURE." SHODAI ASKED, "WHY DON'T I HAVE IT?"
SEKITO SAID, "BECAUSE YOU DON'T ACCEPT IT." AT THIS, SHODAI DECIDED TO STAY THERE.
LATER, HE LIVED IN THE SHODAI-JI TEMPLE AND DID NOT GO OUTDOORS
FOR THIRTY YEARS. WHENEVER A SEEKER CAME TO HIM, HE WOULD SAY,
"GO AWAY -- YOU DON'T HAVE BUDDHA NATURE."
Friends,
A famous psychoanalyst, Franz Strunz from Munich, has been studying child behavior in dreams, and he has found that Sigmund Freud's original idea was not right.
Sigmund Freud's original idea was that the child -- every child, particularly in the civilized and cultured world -- lives under repressive morality, repressive priesthood, repressive parents, and he cannot understand exactly why his natural and spontaneous behavior is unacceptable. He is not yet grown up in the mind -- the mind will come slowly -- but he has been born as a natural being. So he finds it absolutely difficult to understand why his natural behavior is condemned.
But because he has to be dependent on the parents -- and he is utterly helpless -- he has to accept the God that the parents believe in, and he has to accept all the commandments in which the parents believe. And they drive the child to the church, or to whatever religious organization they belong. This is the beginning of programming the child.
Sigmund Freud's original thesis was that under these circumstances the child finds only freedom in his dreams. The parents are no longer there, the priest is no longer there, God is no longer there ... no morality, no condemnation, no
repression, no inhibition. In his dreams he lives a very natural and very pleasant life. That becomes a substitute for him.
And I am absolutely in agreement with Sigmund Freud.
The child does not know yet what is dream and what is real, it takes a little time. That is why you cannot remember if you go backwards. Up to the age of four you may be able to remember a few things; beyond that is a complete blank, but things were happening.
From your birth, up to the age of four, things were happening but you don't have any memory of them because you did not have yet a mind.
The mind is a social product. It takes at least four years to program the child to be ready to accept anything that is told to him, because he knows if he denies it, he will suffer punishment -- not only here but in hellfire.
But in his dreams, up to the age of four, he enjoys absolute freedom. Hence Sigmund Freud said that children's dreams are very pleasant, very beautiful. In fact, the child can cope with reality only because of his dreams. The dreams are compensatory.
This man, Franz Strunz, has been surveying hundreds of children and their dreams, and his conclusion is that Sigmund Freud was wrong. So first I have to give you his statement.
SIGMUND FREUD'S VIEWS ON CHILD DREAMS HAVE BEEN CHALLENGED
BY MUNICH PSYCHOLOGIST, FRANZ STRUNZ.
SIGMUND FREUD CLAIMED THAT CHILDREN'S DREAMS REVEALED THE
PLEASURE-ORIENTED NATURE OF NOCTURNAL FIGMENTS OF AN
IMAGINATION, WHICH WAS NOT HAMPERED BY THE SUPPRESSION AND
REPRESSION OF THE adult EMOTIONAL MAKE-UP, AND WHICH
AIMED AT
MAKING SECRET WISHES COME TRUE.
Obviously, dreams are very private. Nobody can enter your dreams, and nobody can know what you are dreaming. The child has absolute freedom, but he is not free when he is awake -- naturally he compensates. Whatever has been denied in his waking life, he fulfills those wishes in his dream. And because he cannot make the distinction that the dream is just a dream and the reality is a totally different matter, he is completely happy.
He can tolerate this society and this repressive culture, and these unnatural demands made by religions, their God, their priests, just because he has a freedom at least when he is asleep.
This has been challenged by this Munich psychologist:
STRUNZ'S RESEARCH SHOWED THAT CHILDREN'S NOCTURNAL FANTASIES
ARE MAINLY ACCOMPANIED BY STIFLING FEELINGS OF UNEASINESS AND
UPSET, AND THAT ALL KINDS OF THREAT ANIMALS, THIEVES, ROBBERS, MURDERERS, CATASTROPHIES, DEATH AND FRIGHTENING STRANGERS
GREATLY DISTURB SLEEPING CHILDREN.
MOST CHILDREN, HE SAID, ARE PARALYZED WITH FEAR BY THE DANGERS
THEY DREAM ABOUT.
I absolutely disagree with this Munich psychologist. In a hurry to criticize Sigmund Freud, he has forgotten that Sigmund Freud was surveying the dreams of totally different children. A great thing has happened in between that he has not taken note of: that is television.
It is television that has changed children's dreams -- what God could not do,
what the priest could not do, what the parents could not do. They used alphabetical language, logic, which the child was not yet capable of understanding. The child lives in a primitive way. Pictures he can understand; his language is pictorial. His dreams are very vivid, very colorful and very alive.
Television has created a great impact on children, on their behavior, on their dreams, because dreams and television look alike. Now the child cannot tell the difference between television and dreams. And on the television he sees all these things that this Munich psychologist is trying to use as a criticism of Sigmund Freud's fundamental hypothesis: " ... STIFLING FEELINGS OF UNEASINESS AND UPSET, AND ALL
KINDS OF THREAT ANIMALS, THIEVES, ROBBERS, MURDERERS, CATASTROPHIES, DEATH AND FRIGHTENING STRANGERS GREATLY DISTURB SLEEPING CHILDREN."
All this is the gift of television. It has nothing to do with Sigmund Freud's fundamental hypothesis; it is still right.
But this is how even your psychologists, world-famous people, behave unconsciously. He has completely forgotten that a new thing has happened between him and Sigmund Freud
-- and that is television. And it has changed not only the child's dreams, but his behavior too.
He sees all kinds of robberies, rapes, murders, thieves ... all kinds of dangerous people on the television. Those are pictorial. The sermons of the priest were not pictorial, they were linguistic. His parents' teachings were linguistic, and he was not yet able to understand language and logic. But pictures he understands. So television has given all kinds of threatening, sensational, dangerous ideas to children's minds.
It is television that should have been noted by the psychologist. But rather than focusing on television, he has immediately gone to criticize Sigmund Freud.
I am taking it as an example to give you a sense that even your psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, are as unconscious as anybody else. There is no
difference.
Not only have the dreams changed, but even the behavior of children.
In America, just a few days ago one child went into school with his father's gun and killed four children at random. And it was not that they were enemies or anything -- just random. He fired just because he had been watching continual killing, murder on the television ... a great excitement. And it is not an exceptional case.
Young boys have been found trying to rape small girls. The idea is being given by the television. Children of the age of seven and eight are taking drugs. They have left hippies far behind. At least to be a hippie you used to be eighteen, nineteen, twenty ...
Hippiedom exists only from twenty to thirty. After thirty the hippie disappears -- in his place comes the yuppie. By the time he is thirty, he starts understanding that this way of life is not going to last long. Now his parents are refusing to support him, and the hippie has to change into a square world. He has to go back to the same society, clean shaved, well dressed, looking very professional and efficient. And yuppies have proved that they are capable of doing things. Now they have their homes, their cars, their wives, their children. And nobody can imagine that these people used to walk around the streets dirty, unclean.
Uncleanliness had become their philosophy. It was a reaction, because their parents were telling them, "Cleanliness is just next to God." And they have heard the news that God is dead. Now who is next to God? Cleanliness? The reaction was against the parents and their constant effort to repress their nature. They started moving to the one extreme, the other extreme. They started to have a philosophy of uncleanliness, dirtiness. But then they became dropouts, and society would not accept them; they became unfit.
But they could manage only up to the age of thirty. By that time their parents are fed up --
they have been trying hard, but they were not listening at all. They were not going to the church, they were moving towards Kabul, Kulu Manali, Kathmandu, Goa ... and ending up in Poona! This was their route. You know what route has brought you here -- Poona was the dead end!
But the new children are taking drugs because they are watching all kinds of drug stories on television, and certainly they become interested. Children are very curious to explore anything that they see on television. Seven-year-old children are taking drugs, hard drugs, and it is becoming a widespread danger in America.
Their dreams are full of dangers, murders, suicide -- that's what they are watching for almost seven-and-half hours on average per day! You cannot expect
... If you are wasting one third of your life on television, then it is going to have a deep impact. Children understand the language of pictures, and television brings all these colorful sensational stories.
Their dreams have changed, their behavior has changed.
I would like this Munich psychologist to survey a place where television has not entered, and I am absolutely certain he will have to support Sigmund Freud's hypothesis. And if he really wants to go deeper into his search, he should go to the aboriginals, where not even television has entered. Even the priest has not reached, even God is unheard of.
People are living naturally: no repressive, no inhibiting morality. If Franz Strunz goes to those places he will be surprised.
First, he should explore countries where television has not yet come, because these will be the children whom Sigmund Freud has studied.
I know children in India ... almost ninety percent, or even more than ninety percent of India has no idea of television or movies. Small villages ... there I have come across people who have not even seen a railway train. Electricity has not reached to many places, so there is no question. And television has just been introduced to India, so only big cities -- like Bombay, New Delhi, Calcutta and Madras may have television, but not the major part of the country. He can study the children there.
I have studied children for my own purposes, and I can give a guarantee that if television and movies have not reached, you will find Sigmund Freud's hypothesis absolutely correct. And if you go to the aboriginals ...
Particularly one tribe of the aboriginals in Burma has been studied by psychologists and they could not believe it: that tribe had never been in any war.
They don't fight with each other -- not even in their dreams. They don't have so many dreams as you have. There are hundreds of people in that tribe who have never dreamed. When you talk about dreams, they just look at you -- "What are you talking about? When we are asleep we are asleep.
What do you mean by dream?" In their language there is no word for dream.
And if once in a while a child dreams, or a man dreams anything -- for example, having a fight with some neighbor, or having a love affair with some woman -- first thing, in the early morning, he has to confess the dream to his parents. And then all the elders of the village gather together to figure out who the person is that he has murdered in his dream, or was fighting with him in his dream, or who the woman is that he has fallen in love with in his dream. They figure it out. He gives the complete detailed description, very vivid and very real. So they can figure out who the person is -- it is a small tribe.
Then the elders tell the person who has been dreaming, "You should take sweets and flowers and gifts to that woman, let her know that you have misbehaved with her in the dream, and you have come to be forgiven. Go with an apology to the woman or to the man with whom you have been violent. And unless they forgive you, don't return, sit there." And obviously, the person had nothing to do with it -- you have not murdered him, you just dreamed -- so obviously, he is willing to forgive you.
This has been their culture for thousands of years -- that even the dream has to be taken into account. And the ultimate result is that the people ordinarily don't dream. Only once in a while does somebody dream, and that happens only when he has repressed something natural. For example, he has been looking at a woman with lust, but could not express it in reality; hence the dream comes as a substitute for wish fulfillment.
That society knows a far better psychoanalysis than our so-called civilized world. They have been psychoanalyzing for thousands of years, and their method is far more effective.
They have relieved people's sleep completely of dreams. They know authentic sleep, what Patanjali calls dreamless sleep.
He divides your states of mind into four: the so-called waking state, the dream state, deeper then is dreamless sleep, and deeper than that is samadhi, a real
awakening. The first is called so-called waking; the last is called real awakening, which makes you a buddha.
But these aboriginal tribes don't have the dream state at all. From the waking state they simply move into dreamless sleep. And they are innocent, utterly graceful. Not a single war in their whole history, not a single murder in their whole history, not a single suicide in their whole history! They are just like flowers -- innocent, natural.
And you call yourself civilized, and you call them uncivilized ... primitive ... pagans ...?
So if this psychologist is really interested, first he should study people who don't know television, who don't know movies, and he will find the hypothesis of Sigmund Freud absolutely correct.
Then he should study those aboriginals who have lived so naturally, without any repressive church, without any Christianity, without any God, without any priest. Just like animals, just like birds, just like trees, part of this immense existence, naturally flowing, they don't have dreams at all. Once in a while somebody may have a dream, but only once in a while. And then the elders of the society gather together to decide what has to be done.
First, one has to figure out who really was the person he dreamed about. He gives the whole details, and then goes with an apology and with some gifts -- sweets, fruits, flowers; they are poor people. He just offers these gifts and asks for their forgiveness. In his dream he has been nasty to them, angry to them, violent to them, lustful to them. Now it is absolutely obligatory that he should ask for their forgiveness: "Unless they forgive you, just sit down in front of their houses ..."
This is a more authentic psychoanalysis -- not lying on the couch of a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst and just talking about your dreams. It goes on and on, because every day you are repressing so much that it bubbles up in the dreams. No psychoanalysis has ever been complete. There is not a single man in the whole world whose psychoanalysis is complete.
It cannot be complete, because every day you are creating fresh material for new dreams.
You go on getting analyzed, and you go on getting repressed by the priest in the name of God.
God and the priest together have conspired against human consciousness so deeply and so violently that they have disturbed your waking state, they have disturbed your dream state. And because these states are so disturbed, you cannot go beyond. This disturbance keeps you engaged and occupied.
People who are moving directly from the waking state to the dreamless sleep, are very easily capable of slipping down to the fourth state. That's why the ancient Zen masters continuously say you have just to relax, you don't have to do anything.
It is not a question of doing, it is a question of non-doing. Just relax and rest, so that you can reach to the fourth stage where you are suddenly awake for the first time. Then you know that your so-called wakefulness was not authentic, it was a very small, thin layer, very fragmentary, not of much use.
You will be surprised to know that in these aboriginal societies, there are no buddhas.
There is no need. Those people are naturally entering finally into the fourth stage. As they become more and more experienced, and become more and more peaceful, centered, they start moving into the fourth state without any effort, without any teaching, without any scripture.
If you understand me, a natural life will end up in enlightenment without any effort. You will suddenly find you are enlightened. That's why no recognition is given to the enlightened person. That is a natural phenomenon, just as every rosebush if watered well, if allowed to have some sunlight, if given good soil, will come to flowering. That is not a miracle.
Every man comes to flowering, he becomes a Gautam Buddha without any effort. And because every natural human being is bound to become an enlightened person, no recognition is taken of it. It is just as childhood is followed by youth, youth is followed by middle age, middle age is followed by old age and you know that old age is followed by death. It is just a natural sequence.
Buddhahood should be a natural sequence. It is not, because of your God and
your priest and your scriptures; they are preventing you. Freedom from all these is absolutely necessary.
And strangely enough, every government knows that television is harming people immensely, ruining their physical health, ruining their mental sanity. Still, because all the great corporations which support the politicians for their elections own these televisions
... The churches have their own television stations, radio stations, magazines, newspapers
-- in different names so you will not know it.
One of the British publishers, Sheldon, has published nine of my books. I had no idea that it was just a front, and behind it was the church. As the church authorities became aware that my books were being published, then I came to know. The man who was the manager of Sheldon Press must have been sympathetic to my thoughts, my approach to things. So without asking the church, he continued publishing. Nine books he published.
And then he informed me, "The church has found that I have been publishing your books, so they have put an absolute ban on it. So please forgive me, I will not be able to publish any more. And they have ordered that these books should be given for recycling --
whatever has been published -- so they can be destroyed."
But the man must have been in great love with me. He did not give them to the recycling factory. He sold them to a secondhand bookstore, and he informed one of my sannyasins,
"You can get them from the secondhand bookstore." So we got all the books at a throwaway price, but it was the Sheldon Press manager who managed it. Then we became aware that Sheldon was a fake name. You would not think that it had anything to do with the church.
I have been informed from Germany that all the great newspapers are owned by the church, but you would not know. Television stations are owned by the church, radio stations are owned by the church. Satellites are owned by the church ... and big corporations.
People have not looked into the big corporations. They are international like Coca-Cola.
Only the Soviet Union was not aware of Coca-Cola, but now Comrade Gorbachev has brought Coca-Cola into the Soviet Union. Now the only international thing is Coca-Cola.
Wherever you go you find billboards declaring, "Things go better with Coca- Cola."
There are ten rising corporations and one survey says that in the coming ten years, there will only be these ten corporations in the whole world, because they are purchasing all the small corporations. The small corporations cannot compete. These ten corporations will have all the wealth of the world in different names so you will not even suspect a new kind of imperialism, and a very subtle kind that you will not be able to figure out who is behind it.
These corporations own almost all the television stations, and their interest is not in people's psychology or their disturbance. Their whole interest is that fifty percent of television time is devoted to advertisements -- that is their income. But that income is possible only if millions of people are watching their programs, otherwise nobody is going to advertise.
To attract millions of people to the programs they have to make it as sensational as possible. It has to be a triangle story: two women and one man, or two men and one woman. And then murder, and suicide, and mental sickness, and insanity and all kinds of sensations have to be brought every day. It is the same story that goes on and on.
And they don't allow you to see the whole story. They give you a fragment, and then comes the advertisement. When you are getting hot, excited, then suddenly comes the advertisement. In that hot state, vulnerable, you immediately swallow the advertisement.
You don't care whether it is healthy or whether you need it or not, it simply makes an imprint on your mind.
And again the story comes, so you don't even have time to think over what has got into your mind; they don't give you the chance to think. Again the story starts, and you forget all about the advertisement. A fragment again, and again
the same advertisement is repeated. It goes on from six o'clock in the morning till twelve o'clock in the night. And people are just being imprinted by all kinds of nonsense and stupidity.
Television has become one of the great dangers to humanity. It could have been a great bliss, a great blessing. It could have been tremendously useful as education.
According to me, all television stations should belong to the universities, to the colleges, to the schools. And they should have programs which educate people. No advertisements
-- that is not education, that is mis-education, that is exploitation. They should teach people history, geography ... Small children who cannot get it through language, will be easily interested in learning history, in learning geography, in learning other kinds of subjects. Sciences, literature, fiction, poetry, painting ... all kinds of arts can be brought to children of all grades.
So there must be television stations for small children, and then there should be some for the college graduates. And there should be television to the highest grade, postgraduate and research people. Professors have to be continuously made aware of all new kinds of discoveries, otherwise they are lagging behind, almost twenty years behind. They studied twenty years ago when they were in their postgraduate classes, but that knowledge has become out of date.
To update professors will be very easy with television. To bring students tremendous interest in all kinds of subjects, in whatever they are interested ... If they are interested in music, they can be taught music, musical instruments. If they are interested in painting, they can be taught painting, sculpture. They can be taught meditation. All kinds of possibilities are there, once television is taken out of the hands of the exploiters, and out of the hands of the religious preachers. And then these children will prove Sigmund Freud's hypothesis absolutely.
This man has taken a revengeful attitude. It always happens. Because Sigmund Freud is the founder of psychology, every psychologist feels to take revenge, just as every child feels to take revenge with the parents.
This research simply shows a very deep hidden secret of this psychologist -- that he wants to take revenge with the father figure, Sigmund Freud. Otherwise, this was so simple to understand that technology has brought so many things to the
children which were not available in Sigmund Freud's time. The new children were not available for him to study, nor was he aware of the aboriginal children. He was aware only of Christian and Jewish children -- both repressive religions.
Christianity is a child of Judaism. So is Mohammedanism. All three religions born outside India are branches of Judaism, repressive. The God is angry, the God is jealous, the God is going to punish you with eternal hellfire. But these words do not get into the minds of the children. They start after four years of age, but television can be watched before four years of age.
Small children are watching television because they know the language of pictures and color. Their world consists of pictures. That is why in children's books first you have to print a big picture. If you want to teach them what a mango is you have to put a big picture of a mango. Saliva comes first; then comes the word `mango'. Looking at the picture, the child starts feeling to eat it, and the picture becomes associated by and by with the word `mango'. As the child grows, the mango picture becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. In the university, pictures completely disappear from the books; words become very small, longer, complicated, and sentences become complex. Now the child has moved from pictorial language to an alphabetical language -- to words from pictures.
Now words don't have color, and words don't have that kind of impact which a child can understand.
So what this psychologist has to understand -- I am going to send him the whole discourse -- is that his hypothesis is absolutely wrong and biased, and it is just a revenge against Sigmund Freud. Otherwise, a conscious researcher would have looked at what changes have happened between the time of Sigmund Freud and our time.
Are the children the same that you are surveying? They are not the same children. Then you cannot condemn Sigmund Freud's hypothesis because he was studying a different kind of children. Those children are disappearing from the West completely, so this hypothesis will be accepted. That's why I have taken it for your consideration that this hypothesis is wrong. This hypothesis is bound to be accepted, because you can study the children and that study will support it. But the reason is television, not the children!
Remove the television and you will find children exactly as Sigmund Freud found them.
But he also missed the aboriginal children who don't have any dreams at all.
He could not have conceived that there are people who don't have any dreams, because the Christian-Judaic religion is so repressive. People who have been brought up in that culture cannot conceive that there are still aboriginal people around the world, hidden in deep forests, who are absolutely natural beings. Those people have never heard that there is anything to be repressed.
Just in the middle of India there is a state, Bastar. It used to be an independent state under British rule, and the king of Bastar was my friend. And he became my friend by a strange coincidence .…
We both were traveling in the same train compartment, and we both looked alike. He had a beard exactly the same size as I had at that time, and he used to wear the same kind of long robe with a lunghi wrapped around. So we were sitting in the same compartment looking at each other, thinking, "This is strange." And he was also looking at me and watching, thinking, "What is the matter?"
Finally, he said to me, "We both look so alike. From where are you coming?" I told him.
He said, "Strange ... and where are you going?"
So we were going to the same place, Gwalior. And we were going to be the guests at the same palace of the Gwalior maharani, the queen of Gwalior. We were both going to participate in an annual conference she used to call a World Conference of All Religions.
He was going to represent the aboriginal idea. They are pagans, they don't have any organized religion or dogma; they don't have any holy scripture, they don't have any priest. And because he was an educated person, he was going to represent pagans.
I was invited by some misunderstanding. The maharani must have read some of my books and thought that I was a religious person. On the first day of the meeting, she became so worried, because at least fifty thousand people were
there in the palace grounds.
Gwalior's palace is a very big palace, and has acres and acres of greenery around it, and small bungalows, and it is all in a walled garden. Almost half of the city belongs to the palace. And just behind the palace is a huge mountain where they run a school for all the princes of the country and even outside the country. That school belongs to the palace. It was created just for Gwalior's sons and daughters in the beginning. Then it became a royal school for all the royal states of India.
It is a beautiful palace, and it has a huge ground where fifty thousand people can sit every year. But when I spoke, she was completely shattered. She could not sleep. At twelve o'clock in the night she knocked on my door. I had left her at ten o'clock after the meeting. I could not think who would be knocking on my door, so I opened the door, and it was the queen herself.
She said, "I cannot sleep. You have shattered my whole mind. And now I cannot allow you to speak tomorrow." The conference was going to continue for seven days, I spoke only one time. And she said, "My son wants to see you, but I have prohibited him." She said, "Whatever you said feels to be true, but it goes against all our beliefs, all our religious feelings."
I said, "Do you think about truth, or do you think about lies and consolations?"
She said, "I can understand, but my young son who is going to be the head of the state is too young, and he will be impressed by you immediately." She requested me, "Just for my sake -- even if he comes, don't allow him in."
So I said, "If I am not going to speak, then I don't have to stay here. You have asked me for seven lectures, and just one lecture and you are finished. Let me do my job. Those fifty thousand people will ask for me."
She said, "I know it, because you were the only one they seemed to be interested in, and there was absolute silence. I have never seen such silence in the crowd. The priests go on speaking, who cares? They are telling the same thing again and again, year after year, the same dogmas. For the first time," the queen said to me, "I understood what it means to have pindrop silence. So they will be asking, but it is difficult, because all the other participants are absolutely against you."
Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians -- they were all there, so they approached the maharani after the lecture, "If this man remains here for seven
days, then we are leaving.
We cannot sit on the same stage together, because he is destroying every religion."
I said, "They are so many, they can defend. I am alone" -- there were almost twelve people on the stage with me -- "They have enough time ... there are twelve, they can defend."
The maharani said, "I know they cannot. They don't have the guts, they don't have the argument, they don't have any idea how to defend. And you have destroyed their smallest things, which I could not have conceived can be destroyed!"
Just before me, one of the shankaracharyas was speaking, and he told a small story which I love to tell myself, but when anybody else tells it, that is a different matter.
It is an ancient story he was telling:
The story is that ten blind men were crossing a flooded stream. Being frightened, they were holding each other's hands, and somehow they managed. It was not deep, but the current was forceful. They reached to the other side, and somebody amongst them said,
"We should count, because we don't know if the river has taken somebody away, or we are all together still."
So they started counting. Everybody counted, and it was always ending with nine because he was leaving himself out. He would count the others: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine -- one man was missing! They all tried, but it always stopped on the ninth!
One man, sitting by the side of the road, working in his field, was watching all this nonsense that was going on. And all the ten blind men had started crying and weeping, because one of them, one friend of theirs had been taken by the current.
So finally, the man came up and he said, "What is the matter?"
They said, "We were ten, and one person has gone with the river. Now we are only nine."
The man immediately looked -- they were ten. So he said, "I have been watching. Now I will count. Stand up! I will go on slapping. First I will slap the first person one slap, and I will say one! Then I will slap the second person twice, and I will say two, and the third person three times, and I will say three ... and this way I will count."
They said, "Any way ... just bring our tenth man."
So he counted -- and they were ten. And they were rejoicing, although they had been beaten well.
It is an ancient story. And the shankaracharya was telling it to show that this is the way we are: forgetting ourselves and looking around the whole world; trying to find peace, trying to find bliss, trying to find God, and not looking inwards, not counting ourselves.
After him I was to speak, and for the first time I had to criticize this story, which I have told you. But my context was totally different!
So I said to the shankaracharya, "Your story is absolutely stupid, because you have first to explain how they came to know they were ten. Before they started moving into the river, how did they manage to count? And if they knew how to count, how did they forget it just by crossing the river?"
Now he was at a loss.
I said, "There are only two possibilities: one is that somebody else has counted them just as somebody else counted them afterwards."
He said, "Perhaps."
I said, "That's the trouble with borrowed knowledge. Because somebody else has counted them, that created the trouble. It was not their own understanding that they were ten. It was somebody else's understanding that they were ten, and they were carrying borrowed knowledge. That borrowed knowledge is not going to help. When they themselves counted, the borrowed knowledge did not help at all. Again they needed somebody else to count them, again the borrowed
knowledge.
"I am against borrowed knowledge because it is not going to help you. It is going to create more misery, more anguish, more anxiety. What happened to those blind people?"
And I asked the shankaracharya, "Whatever you know, is it your knowledge or just borrowed? And be honest, because I have ways to check out whether it is your knowledge or borrowed."
He said, "I don't know myself; I am a scholar. I know the Vedas, I know the Upanishads, but I don't know myself."
I said, "Then you are a blind man. Sooner or later, passing any current you will be in difficulty. You will always remain dependent on others, you will never be free. And without freedom there is no spirituality."
For the first time I suddenly found the criticism, I had never thought about it.
But the queen said to me, "This is dangerous. You finished that shankaracharya, and everybody was laughing and enjoying. Now that shankaracharya is very angry. He is sitting in my palace."
I was staying in the guest house. Everybody had a guest house. They had at least twenty guest houses in the thick garden ... huge and ancient trees. The shankaracharya was sitting in the main palace where the queen and the king lived. And he said, "I am not going to leave unless you make the arrangement. Either we all will leave -- twelve persons ..."
I said, "Don't be worried, I will speak for three hours continuously. Those twelve persons are not needed. I will manage the fifty thousand people. In fact, tomorrow you will have difficulty because more people will be coming. These fifty thousand people are going to tell at least one hundred thousand people. So don't be worried, there is going to be a double gathering. You have to make arrangements. Let these twelve people go, I will manage the seven days."
She said, "But I cannot do that. I am an orthodox Hindu."
I said, "That does not matter. I will finish all orthodoxy in seven days."
She said "That I can understand. You will finish, but I cannot tell all those religious leaders to go away. And they are twelve, and you are alone."
I said, "That does not matter. I am enough for those twelve. If they don't want to sit on the same stage, make another stage for them, and I will just sit alone on my stage. I will take care of each of the twelve."
She said, "You are going to create trouble, and I want no trouble."
I said, "Then if you want to keep those people, you don't understand. You will be in trouble."
At that moment the Bastar maharajah also came in. He was staying in the next room in the guest house with me. And he said to me, "You have done a great job, and if you have to leave, I am coming with you."
That's how we became friends. And he invited me to his state. So from Gwalior I went directly to Bastar. It is far away from Gwalior. And he introduced me to the people of Bastar. They are aboriginals, and they live almost naked. They put only a small piece of cloth around them when they come to the main capital, Jagdalpur -- otherwise, in the forest, in the mountains they live naked.
You can ask a woman, even by touching her breast, "What is this?" -- and she will not feel embarrassed, she will not feel offended. She will say, "This is just to give milk to my child," with no idea that "you are being offensive, you are touching my breast." She is not going to scream, and she is not going to any police station; in fact, there is no police station there.
The people are so innocent, that rarely does it happen that somebody kills someone. It has happened perhaps twice in this maharajah's lifetime. Then the person who has killed comes to the capital himself, because only the capital has the police station and the court.
He goes to the police station and informs them: "I have killed a man and I need to be punished." Otherwise no one would ever have known that he had killed anybody. Nobody goes into those deep forests. They live in caves; nobody goes there. And they have such beautiful caves.
And they are such beautiful people. You will not find anybody fat, you will not find anybody thin -- they all look alike. They live long, and they live very
naturally. Even about sex they are very natural, perhaps the only natural people left in India.
And exactly what they do, has to be done all over the world if you want people not to be perverted. Behind all kinds of mental sicknesses is sexual perversion. In Bastar I found for the first time, people totally natural.
After a girl and a boy come of age -- that is thirteen and fourteen ... They have in their villages, in the middle of the village, a small hall just made of bamboos, as their huts are made. The moment a girl starts having periods, she has to stay in the central hall. By the time a boy is fourteen, sexually potent, he has to live ... All the girls and the boys who have become sexually mature, they start living together, sleeping together, with one condition -- and that is a beautiful condition
-- that no boy should sleep with a girl for more than three days. So you have to become acquainted with every girl of the village, and every girl has to become acquainted with every boy of the village.
Before you decide to marry someone, you must know every woman of the village, so there is no question arising afterwards that you start feeling lustful for some woman. You have lived with all the women of your age, and it is your choice after the experiment with all the woman.
And there is no jealousy at all, because from the very beginning everybody is living with every girl. Every boy has the chance to be acquainted with every girl of the village, and every girl has the chance to be acquainted with every boy of the village.
So there is no question of any jealousy, there is no competitive spirit at all. It is just an experiment, an opportunity for every child to know sex with different people, and then find out who suits you, and with whom you were the most happy, with whom you settle harmoniously, with whom you felt your heart. Perhaps this is the only scientific way to find a soul mate.
But these people are called uncivilized, and missionaries are doing a great job of civilizing them: opening schools, hospitals. They don't need hospitals. They are such healthy people, and these missionaries bring all kinds of diseases to them. They have never heard about gonorrhea, they have never heard about all kinds of perverted diseases.
The missionaries bring the diseases, and then the hospital.
The missionaries bring the idea to them that you are poor. They have never thought about it -- they are all equal, equally poor. There is no question of comparison, and they are living perfectly well, and healthy, on one meal a day. They are more healthy than anybody else in the world.
Just recently scientists have been experimenting on rats, and they were puzzled. They kept two categories of rats, the same kind. To one category they were giving as much food as they wanted -- American rats. And to the other category, the Bastar rats, they were giving food only one time. And they were surprised. The rats who were given whatever they wanted, lived to be only half of the age of the rats who were fed only one time. They were double the age -- twice the American fellows!
So Bastar people live longer, although they don't know how long they have lived, because they cannot count. They live up to one hundred years very easily, one hundred and twenty very easily. If you search deeper in the forests, perhaps you can find a person who has lived one hundred and fifty years. They don't know it -- you have to figure it out.
And they don't look that old either.
Even the oldest person goes on working. Life is hard, but it is beautiful. Every night --
particularly when it is fullmoon nights -- they dance to abandon. The whole day they have been working hard, and in the night they dance. All the women, all the men together
... no question that you have to dance with your wife. People go on changing partners. It is a social phenomenon, it is not a question of possessiveness that you should dance with your own wife. And if she is dancing with somebody else, then you are looking jealous, you are looking murderous.
I have watched their dances. They look so beautiful. There is no question of any lust, because they are fulfilled, sexually fulfilled, physically fulfilled.
They don't have dreams. I have asked many. I have asked the maharajah. He said, "They don't have dreams, but I have because I am an educated person. They destroyed me. I was born in these hills, and I would have loved to remain just as uneducated, as uncultured as these people. Their joy is infectious, their laughter
is infectious. But they don't have any dreams."
There is no need for dreams. A dream is a need created by a repressive morality, by a repressive God, by a repressive priesthood. These are the people who have created dreams. And then another priesthood has come into being, the psychoanalyst. They exploit your dreaming. One priesthood has created the dreams, another priesthood ... and both were Jews.
Jesus was a Jew, and Sigmund Freud was a Jew. One Jew has created Christianity -- the most repressive religion in the world, and the other Jew has created psychoanalysis to analyze your dreams. And both are having great fun. Both are the most highly paid people ... psychoanalysts and the missionaries, and the priests and the bishops, and the cardinals and the pope .…
Psychoanalysis will remain incomplete unless it comes to understand the people who don't have dreams. Then you will have to change the whole idea. It is not that by analyzing people's dreams you are going to give them mental health. The question is how to help them move from dreamless sleep to relax into the fourth stage called turiya, samadhi, satori, where one becomes utterly awakened, the state of a Gautam Buddha.
And a good news before I take the sutras.
A famous New York sculptress, Martine Vaugel has just now taken sannyas from the New York Center of Neo-Sannyas International. She is a world-famous sculptress. She must have been listening to my tapes, and must have been hearing Sardar Gurudayal Singh's name every day. So, without seeing him -- she has not yet come to Poona, and she has not seen Sardar Gurudayal Singh ... but this is the sensitivity of an artist, a creativity. She has made a statue of Sardar Gurudayal Singh, and she has sent me a picture of the statue to see whether she is right? And I was amazed. She is absolutely right. The picture looks almost like Sardar Gurudayal Singh.
(THE MASTER HOLDS UP THE PHOTOGRAPH OF SARDAR GURUDAYAL
SINGH FOR ALL TO SEE. IN RESPONSE, EVERYONE CHEERS AND
CLAPS.) Sardar Gurudayal Singh ... take your picture!
(THE MASTER, ENJOYING THE SITUATION IMMENSELY, HOLDS OUT
THE
PHOTOGRAPH FOR SARDAR TO TAKE.)
Question 1
The first question:
SO-CALLED "MODERN CHRISTIANS" PARTICULARLY YOUNG
PROTESTANTS, TALK ABOUT GOD AS IF HE IS NOT A PERSON -- LIKE "GOD
IS EVERYWHERE, IN EVERY BEING, IN EVERY TREE, IN NATURE" -- NOT A PERSON HIDDEN IN THE CLOUDS.
DO THEY GET THE POINT OR IS IT JUST OUT OF CUNNINGNESS, BECAUSE
THEY SEE THAT THE OLD-MAN GOD HAS NO GROUNDS AT ALL AND NO
FUTURE?
It is out of absolute cunningness, because they go on saying that God is not a person.
Then why do they go to the church? Then why do they continue to pray to God as a person? If God is not a person, prayer should be stopped, going to the church should be stopped. If God is not a person, then Jesus cannot be his begotten son. Then you have to drop the idea that Jesus is related to God especially.
If God is really everywhere, then he is no more in Jesus Christ than in you. Then why should you worship? Then what is the function of the priest if there is no God as a person? The priest has to disappear.
That's why I say these people are simply repeating the approach of Zen -- which has become known to the West now -- that there is no God. But they cannot say it exactly,
"There is no God" -- it hurts their programmed minds. So they are finding excuses in such a way that it appears God is, but it is not a person.
But they don't understand the implications. They say, "God is everywhere." If God is everywhere, then no place can be called sacred. If God is everywhere, in every being, then you cannot be violent to the animals, you cannot hunt animals, you cannot kill animals for your food. You are killing God. If God is in every being, then everybody has to be vegetarian. Nobody can be non-vegetarian; otherwise you are killing God and eating God.
In every tree in nature ... and you are cutting trees, you are destroying the ecology of nature.
Just when India became independent, forty years ago, there were nearabout one hundred and fifty million hectares of trees in the country. Now there are only sixty million hectares. Over half of the trees in India have been cut. And the Christians are saying now that God is everywhere, even in trees ...? Hindus have been saying it for centuries that God is everywhere. That is the meaning of òmnipresent'. And if God is everywhere, then why do you go to the church, why do you go to the temple, why do you go to the mosque? And why do you listen to the sermons? Why do you carry a Holy Bible or a holy Koran?
I don't think a non-personal God can write the Vedas and the Bible and the Koran -- or a non-personal God can send messengers and prophets and messiahs. Then if you are honest all your holy scriptures have to be burned. And all your churches have to be demolished, if you are honest. And all your priesthood has to be told: "You have exploited enough; now start working. Unless you work you will not have anything to eat."
If you don't do that then it is mere cunningness, because you cannot prove the personal God anymore. You are trying to create an impersonal God, but your whole religion continues to be the same. It does not change.
It is such a great change from a personal God to an impersonal God that your whole religion will go through a revolution -- no church, no priest, no holy scripture. Then the whole existence becomes the holy scripture.
And if God is everywhere there is no need to pray. The closest is your own being, so first find God in your own being.
But still these Christians are not interested in meditation. These Christians are still praying, to an impersonal God.
Prayer is absolutely absurd. And if these Christians do understand the implications, then Christianity disappears and the pagan appears again. That was the only problem.
Christianity killed millions of pagans who believed in the whole of nature, in the whole of existence as divine; who worshipped trees, who worshipped the moon, who worshipped the sun, who worshipped rivers, mountains, anything -- because everything was sacred. Christianity destroyed them, and converted those pagans into Christians --
from an impersonal God to a personal God, from natural people into repressive maniacs!
And now if you again disperse the personal God into the whole of existence, you will have to disperse the whole of Christianity. You will have to disperse all the religions, and the whole earth will be full of pagans, Zorbas.
That is my effort -- to create the Zorba as a solid foundation for a buddha. Zorba is the earth.
Buddha is the sky.
And when these two meet there is communion. When these two meet, there is synchronicity. When these two meet there is revolution. You are no longer the same, nor is the world anymore the same. Everything changes in a totally new perspective. New doors open -- and a new human being, and a new, fresh existence without any priests to poison your nature.
No, these people, the so-called new Christian theologians are just deceiving themselves and other Christians, because their whole structure remains the same. Just God ... because they cannot support by logic or evidence, and they can see the point of Zen, at least intellectually. Not to feel inferior, they are talking about the impersonal God.
That's what Eckhart was doing, that was what Saint Bernard was doing -- trying to make God impersonal. But they don't understand that it means destroying
your whole structure of religion. If they truly understand the phenomenon they will destroy all Bibles, all churches, popes, the Vatican ... all should be finished, there is no need. God is everywhere -- there is no need for any priest to stand between you and God. He is surrounding you, he is in the air, and he is in your blood and in your bones. He is in your very marrow and he is in your inner space
-- as he is everywhere.
But to know that he is everywhere is not a logical conclusion. To know he is everywhere has to be an existential experience. First you have to go into yourself. Unless you know it in yourself, you cannot say it is in the trees and it is in every animal and it is in every living being. You are a living being -- first enter into yourself.
These Christians are not talking about meditation at all. So all the talk is simply to deceive themselves and others, as if they have risen to the same height of Zen. Just by talking you cannot do that. You have to give evidence, proof, by your every gesture, by your every action, by your every word.
But I watch, I have been aware of these new Christian theologians, and their behavior is the same as any Christian. That behavior proves that their understanding is just to camouflage people's minds, to create confusion. They are protecting the old God with a new name -- "impersonal God" -- because their whole religion remains the same.
How can it remain the same if God is impersonal? That is the equivalent to there being no God only godliness, a quality pervading the whole cosmos.
There is a beautiful story .…
al-Hillaj Mansoor, who became finally a great enlightened being, was murdered by the Mohammedans. He was a poor man and he wanted to go to Kaaba because it is the duty of every Mohammedan, at least one time in your life, that you should go for haj, for a holy pilgrimage to Kaaba. If you don't go at least one time you are not a Mohammedan.
So even the poorest Mohammedans sell their houses, their land, and go at least one time to Kaaba.
Mansoor was very poor. His father and mother died when he was very young, so he was almost an orphan, a beggar. The neighbors helped him up to his youth
and then he started
-- because there was no education for him .… People were going ... there is a special month every year when Mohammedans from all over the world go to Kaaba. Many people from the village were going, and he started telling them, "I would like to come."
But they said, "You don't have any money." So he collected money from every house.
But by the time he had collected money, the other pilgrims had already left.
So alone, he started his journey. Just outside the village, underneath a tree was sitting a man who was going to become his master -- Junnaid. And he said to the young man,
"Where are you going?"
al-Hillaj said, "I am going to Kaaba. All the pilgrims from my village have already left."
Junnaid said, "Come here!" The voice of Junnaid was such ... his eyes were such that al-Hillaj could not say no. He said, "Give me the money! There is no need to go anywhere. I am the Kaaba and I have come to your village just for you. You can make seven rounds of me, just as the other pilgrims will be making seven rounds of Kaaba. That is a stone --
I am a living human being."
al-Hillaj was so magnetically drawn to the man that he gave all his money to him, and made seven rounds.
And Junnaid said, "Now you can go to your village. And I will be leaving tomorrow morning, so if you want to come with me, you can come."
He went to the village. The villagers asked, "What happened? You had gone to Kaaba" --
it used to take three months walking to Kaaba, and three months to come back -- "and you are back just within half an hour! Where is the money?"
al-Hillaj said, "What to do? I met Kaaba just outside the village. He was sitting under a tree."
They said, "You idiot! You have given the money to THAT Kaaba?"
He said, "He asked, and he told me to make seven rounds around him. So I made seven rounds and I am feeling so fulfilled, and so dignified that Kaaba himself has come."
They said, "You come with us. We want to see who this man is who has cheated you.
You are a simpleton! How can Kaaba come here, and for you?"
He said, "You can come. Tomorrow morning I am leaving with Kaaba."
He said, "You come with us. First let us see who this fellow is -- he is a man?"
al-Hillaj said, "Of course. And a very magical man. I think it is Kaaba personified."
They said, "You keep quiet, you just follow us." The whole village gathered, and they could see. The man had a tremendous light around him -- it was night now -
- and they could feel as they started coming closer to him, that he was in deep silence with closed eyes. The light was radiating, and al-Hillaj was not wrong, there was an immense attraction, the man had charisma.
They all went around him and Junnaid opened his eyes and said, "First put the money! I have traveled to your village and you are doing your haj without paying the money. Bring the money first!"
al-Hillaj said, "Now you know that he is not an ordinary Kaaba, he speaks too!" And the whole village, whatsoever they could bring, brought and gave to him.
Junnaid allowed them to make a round, and the day after, he left with al-Hillaj. The whole village had come to send them off. They thought, "This al-Hillaj, although he was an orphan, proved to be more blessed than we are. He has found a master."
Only the enlightened man can say such a thing, that there is no God, because he knows God is a quality, it is the fragrance; you cannot catch hold of it, but it is everywhere.
Wherever life is, wherever laughter is, wherever love is, that quality pervades, penetrates your heart. And in meditation it goes to the deepest part of your being. Only then can you say there is no God. That does not mean you are atheist, that simply means you are denying a personal God, a creator God, and you are accepting existence itself as divine.
But then there is no church and then there is no priest, and then there is no holy scripture.
If these neo-theologians are really sincere, honest human beings, they should start destroying the holy scriptures -- at least the Christian ones, since they are Christians. And they should start demolishing the Vatican, taking away the power from the priests, and abolishing the monasteries.
But they are not doing anything of the kind, so it is all bullshit -- just bullshit and nothing else.
The sutra:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
SHODAI, WHO WAS BORN IN 738 IN CHINA AND DIED IN 820, WAS A DISCIPLE OF SEKITO.
SHODAI STAYED AT MOUNT NANGAKU UNDER SEKITO FOR THREE YEARS, THEN WENT TO MOUNT SHUKO WHERE HE SAW MA TZU.
MA TZU ASKED, "WHAT DID YOU COME HERE FOR?"
You can see the difference between so-called religious people and the Zen masters. Ma Tzu knew that he was coming from Sekito. Rather than feeling happy that he had got a disciple from Sekito and his number of disciples had at least increased by one, Ma Tzu said, "What did you come here for? Sekito was enough for you."
This is the beauty of Zen -- an immense reverence for everyone who is
enlightened.
There is no competition at all. Never heard of in the world of Zen is the word
`competition' ... no effort to convert anybody. Ma Tzu simply asked him, "Why have you come here? For what? Everything was available where you are coming from."
SHODAI SAID, "I CAME HERE FOR BUDDHA'S BIRTH CELEBRATIONS, JAMUNA DARSHAN."
Buddha's birthday was coming. And Buddha's birthday has a very special coincidence.
He was born on the same fullmoon night as he became enlightened, in the same month, on the same fullmoon night, as he died eighty-two years afterwards -- the same month, the same fullmoon night. A strange man -- birth, enlightenment, death, all happened on the same fullmoon night, in the same month of the year. So his birthday is also his enlightenment day. It is also his death celebration. So in a single day all three experiences happened. That's why for Zen the full moon has become something special -- because everything that happened to Buddha happened on the fullmoon night.
So in every Zen monastery on the fullmoon night people just sit under their trees and watch the full moon. The full moon has become symbolically connected with Gautam Buddha. And just watching and witnessing the full moon, they enter into deep meditation.
The fullmoon night has a specialness that is now being recognized by science itself. They have to approach it from the wrong side, because scientists are living on the wrong side of the earth, in the West. They became aware that more murders happen on the fullmoon night, more suicides happen on the fullmoon night, more people go insane on the fullmoon night ... strange. This fullmoon night certainly affects people and their psychology. It affects the ocean -- that is a known fact. On the fullmoon night waves become very tidal -- as if the ocean is trying to reach to the moon. Man consists of eighty percent of ocean water, so something in him also starts feeling a subtle vibration.
Scientists say that the first living being was the fish. Man is the other end of progress -- in the beginning was the fish. So we have a very deep connection.
Our real forefathers lived in the ocean -- they were fish.
So don't eat fish! You are eating your own forefathers, and that is nasty! And I see people carrying tinned fish -- forefathers tinned! And people love eating fish
.…
If life was born in the ocean then life is bound to be affected when the ocean is affected.
There is a deep connection, underlying currents. But Western psychologists became aware from the wrong side: suicide, murder, madness. The East became aware that more people have become enlightened on a fullmoon night; in fact, almost all except one, Mahavira.
He became enlightened on the no-moon night, amawas. The fullmoon night is called purnima -- the moon has become perfect, purna. And the no-moon night is when there is no moon at all, absolute darkness. Except Mahavira, nobody has become enlightened on amawas, no-moon night. Mahavira's name was not Mahavira -- Mahavira means a great warrior. His name was Vardhaman. But because he became enlightened on amawas, no-moon night, he proved that he could go against the current. It was natural for everybody to become enlightened on the fullmoon night, but this fellow Mahavira tried to go against the normal order of things, and still managed to become enlightened.
In India, people have completely forgotten why every year on a particular amawas, no-moon night, they celebrate Diwali, a festival of lights. You must have seen people putting all kinds of candles, lamps, lights in their houses. This is the night when Mahavira became enlightened. And this festival is in remembrance of Mahavira but nobody even thinks of Mahavira.
Those firecrackers are in celebration of Mahavira. He certainly did something unique which never happened before and never happened afterwards. So it is perfectly right to call him Mahavira, a great warrior. A very strong man ... otherwise it is almost impossible for anyone to become enlightened on the no- moon night.
In Zen, on the fullmoon night of every month, they watch the moon the whole night. And as they go on witnessing the moon, a deep tranquility and silence descends over them, particularly on the night when Gautam Buddha was born, became enlightened, and died.
So this is a special, very special night for the people belonging to the small stream of Zen.
Shodai said, "I have come here for Buddha's birthdate celebrations." Ma Tzu was a very famous master; Sekito was not that famous. Slowly, slowly he became famous after his death, but Ma Tzu was famous while he was alive -- very famous, because of his strange behavior. Shodai must have thought that on the celebrations of this moon, it would be good to go to Ma Tzu -- something might transpire. So he said, "I have come here to celebrate the birth of Gautam the Buddha."
Ma Tzu said, "Buddha has no birth, no death -- Buddha is eternal. Life has no beginning, no end, it is eternal. The very word `birth' belongs to the world of delusion, because that which is authentic in you is never born. It has been coming from one house to another house, from one body to another body, but it is eternal in itself. So no birth, no death happens to it. It happens only to the outside of the house, which becomes tattered so it has to be renewed, or else you have to move into a new house."
Ma Tzu said, "Buddha has no birth, no death. The very idea of birth and death is delusion. YOU ARE FROM MOUNT NANGAKU, BUT IT SEEMS THAT YOU
HAVE NOT YET KNOWN THAT YOU NEED SEKITO. He is your master. I
don't think it is the right time for you, or that there is any need to change your master. You have not allowed your master to transform you yet. SO YOU SHOULD GO BACK. You cannot stay here."
HEARING THAT, SHODAI WENT TO SEKITO. ON MEETING THE MASTER, SHODAI ASKED SEKITO, "WHAT IS BUDDHA?"
All the way coming back he must have been thinking, "Ma Tzu said there is no birth of the buddha and no death of the buddha. Then what is the buddha?"
The buddha is equivalent to awakened life.
SEKITO REPLIED, "THERE IS NO BUDDHA NATURE IN YOU." SHODAI ASKED, "WHAT ABOUT ALL LIVING BEINGS?"
SEKITO REPLIED, "THEY HAVE BUDDHA NATURE."
Sekito was strange in his own way. Ma Tzu had very strange behavior; he went to the extreme. But Sekito was not just a normal enlightened master either; he had his own uniqueness. He said, "All living beings have buddha nature, but Shodai, you don't have it!" This is a very strange statement. Why does this poor Shodai not have the buddha nature? When all living beings, even animals, even trees have buddha nature -- only Shodai has not!
SHODAI ASKED, "WHY DON'T I HAVE IT?" SEKITO SAID, "BECAUSE YOU DON'T ACCEPT IT."
The only question is of recognition, of accepting, of remembering. Even if you have immense treasures but you are unaware of them, what is the point whether you have them or not?
An ancient story says that one master and his disciple were moving from one village to another village. But they started late because people were trying to persuade them to stay a little longer in their village. Starting late, the master was continuously looking into his bag. That he had never done before. And the disciple was behind -- he was also thinking,
"What is the matter? Why does he go on looking into the bag, and then close it?"
And again and again he said, "We should go faster, we have to reach the other village before sunset."
The disciple simply could not believe it, because there had been many nights when they stayed in the wildest parts of the forest where there were all kinds of dangers ... and the master had never bothered. They had slept soundly under the trees, knowing perfectly well there was danger all around. But what had happened today? He wanted to reach to the other village before sunset. There was danger -- what kind of danger?
Then they stopped at a well, and the master had to wash his face and do his evening prayer before the sun set, so he was in a hurry. He gave the bag to the disciple and told him, "Keep it carefully." That too was strange. He had given the bag to him many times, but he had never said, "Keep it carefully." Of course he had always kept it carefully.
So when the master started drawing the water from the well, the disciple looked in the bag. And then he knew what the problem was: he was carrying a golden brick, a complete brick of pure gold. He knew now what the danger was. So while the master was praying
-- and he was praying quickly, and fast -- the disciple threw that golden brick at the side of the well into the forest and took a stone of the same weight and put it in the bag.
The master quickly finished his prayer and immediately took the bag ... felt the weight.
The sun was setting and it was getting dark. Feeling the weight, and touching the bag, he was perfectly satisfied. They started moving and the master said, "We have to run. We have to reach the village anyway, we cannot stay in the forest in the night. It is dangerous."
After two miles of running, both were tired, huffing, puffing .… Finally, the master said,
"It seems we are on the wrong track because there seems to be no village ahead. Far away we can see -- not even a single light. And the danger is there ..."
The disciple said, "Don't be worried, I have thrown the danger near that well."
He said, "What!!" He looked, he took out the stone, and he said, "You threw that brick gold of? I told you to keep it carefully!"
And the disciple said, "I have kept it carefully! For two miles you have also been keeping the stone carefully. Not knowing that it was a stone, you were worried. Now can we stay overnight?"
He said, "Now there is no problem! You really threw away the whole danger." They slept very well in the night .…
If you don't know, you can carry a stone as if it is gold. And you can carry gold as if it is nothing if you don't know.
You are carrying a tremendous treasure within you -- the buddhahood, the
enlightenment.
But unless you realize it, whether it is there or not does not matter. It is the same.
That's why Sekito said, "You don't have it. All other living beings may have it, but you don't have it. That much is certain. All living beings are not here, so I don't know, but about you I know -- you don't have it."
He said, "But why? Why make me an exception then? Every living being has it
...!"
He said, "BECAUSE YOU DON'T ACCEPT IT. You don't explore it, you don't recognize it. You don't remember a forgotten language."
AT THIS, SHODAI DECIDED TO STAY with Sekito.
Ma Tzu was right. This was the right man for him.
First he must have felt a little disappointed in Ma Tzu, a little humiliated that he had been sent back. But now he recognized: "Ma Tzu was right. Sekito has the secret in his hands, and he is my master. Ma Tzu has a different discipline and he will have to begin from ABC, and Sekito has been working for years over me."
So now everything was clear why he had been sent back. "Go to the same master who has been working on you, and he has been working perfectly rightly. His method is his; my method is different."
But methods don't matter, they are pure devices to bring you a certain awareness, a certain realization, a certain deepening of your consciousness. This statement: "Because you don't accept it, you don't have it. Just realize it and you have it -- you have already had it for centuries, but you have never looked at it." At this, there must have been a lightning flash in Shodai's mind, in his consciousness. He decided to stay with Sekito.
LATER, HE LIVED IN THE SHODAI-JI TEMPLE -- he created a temple, and he lived in the temple, which used to be called Shodai-ji temple -- AND DID NOT GO
OUTDOORS FOR THIRTY YEARS.
This is simply symbolic and factual, both. He did not go outside the temple for thirty years. After this statement of Sekito -- "You have it, but because you don't accept it you don't have it" -- for thirty years he did not go outside the temple. Nor did he go out of himself for thirty years, he went on in and in and in. Those thirty years he was not even counting. The only thing that mattered was that he had to remember the hidden secret of buddhahood. He had to give birth to his own buddhahood -- and he had gone to Ma Tzu for the birth of Buddha's celebration.
How can you celebrate Gautam Buddha's birth if your buddha is still unborn? You can't understand what Buddha means, you can't understand what this festival is for, because you have not come to your own festival.
First you have to celebrate yourself.
Only then can you celebrate all the buddhas, awakened or asleep, can you celebrate the whole existence. ... AND DID NOT GO OUTDOORS FOR THIRTY YEARS --
neither out of the hut nor out of himself. He went on in and in -- went on digging.
WHENEVER A SEEKER CAME TO HIM, seeing the temple, and knowing that Shodai was inside meditating for thirty years ... People used to bring some rice, some food, some water, inside the temple. But he never asked anybody and he never went out.
In the East that has been a very virtuous act if somebody is meditating so deeply that he has no time for food, no time to beg, no time to go out. People have a tremendous reverence for meditators. They may have been poor and they may have cut their own food into two pieces -- one they would eat, the other piece they would go and offer to Shodai.
In the East, meditation has not been thought of as a personal matter. It is not that you are doing something selfish for your own self; it is something that you are doing for the whole existence. If you become blossomed, you will be a proof to everybody that they can also blossom. You will become an argument for the inner world. You will become an incentive for others also to explore -- it is possible; it is not impossible. It is not only that Gautam Buddha can become enlightened, Shodai also can. He has been refused by Sekito
-- "You don't have it!" This hit him hard.
But this was the device of Sekito. He needed that much of a hit. So he retired into a temple, meditated for thirty years, became enlightened. But whenever anybody would come to him, he would say, "Go away -- you don't have a buddha nature."
The same device that had been used on him by his master, he went on using his whole life. And he helped many people, because the moment he would say, "You don't have buddha nature," immediately they would ask, "What about other living beings?" And he would say, "Of course, they have it."
Naturally, the same dialogue happened again and again, and the person would say, "You are being absurd. If everybody has it, why have I not?" And he would say, "Because you don't accept." Just remember -- it is a forgotten nature. Just go in.
Shodai was not very inventive -- that's what I call a "normal" Zen master. He simply had one small statement. Even that small statement helped many, but could not help a really great number of people, because those people who were coming to him were not in the same state in which he was when he asked Sekito. He had been meditating with Sekito for years. He was just on the verge ... the last hit .…
But the people who were coming were absolutely beginners, so with many nothing transpired. Once in a while, if a man had come from some other master
... perhaps the master was dead, or perhaps he had become tired -- how long had he to wait? And he became anxious: "My master is becoming old and I am not yet enlightened ..." People like these who had been meditating and were just on the verge -- this man Shodai succeeded by hitting them. He knew only one hit -- a poor Zen master.
There are poor Zen masters and rich Zen masters and super-rich Zen masters. You are caught up with a super Zen master! I hit you without hitting you. I hit you in so many ways, from every direction possible, and my hits are not cruel and primitive. They are very contemporary -- in fact very few contemporary people are going to understand me.
Perhaps a century or two centuries afterwards, my hits will shake people into awakening.
But right now you are caught up, and you cannot go anywhere because you will not find me anywhere around the world. You will find just poor masters. Those super-rich masters have disappeared from the world.
We are living in a poorer world spiritually than before. Materially we are living in a richer world, but spiritually it is a very poor world. When Ma Tzu was there and Sekito was there and Rinzai was there and Nangaku was there, Yakusan was there ... there were so many masters just in Japan -- or in China ...! When Gautam Buddha was here in India there were eight masters just in the small province of Bihar, and they transpired hundreds of people into enlightenment.
But you are blessed. You have found a super-rich Zen master. Don't miss this opportunity, because the world has been becoming thinner and thinner as far as spirituality is concerned.
You have to create a great rebellion around the earth. You have to upset all the organized religions.
Only then will people be liberated from their mind programs. And to liberate anybody from his mental programming, conditioning, is one of the greatest virtues. You are helping that man towards freedom. But you can help only if you are free. If you are not free, there is no possibility to help. A blind man cannot help another blind man. First you have to open your eyes and recognize your buddhahood, and then it is very easy to trigger the same experience in others.
There are many who are ready, on the verge, but there is nobody to push them.
Everybody needs a push, and everybody needs a certain proof that buddhahood is a reality.
You will be surprised to know that when the Christian missionaries first came to India --
and they were the first to translate the Buddhist scriptures into English -- they did not think that a man like Buddha had ever been there. It seemed to them almost an impossibility; they had never heard about enlightenment. They had heard about prophets coming from God, they had heard about messiahs, messengers, they had heard about the only begotten son Jesus. They believed in them, but they had never heard about enlightenment.
Was Moses enlightened? Was Jesus enlightened? They had no answer. They had never heard about the phenomenon at all. So Buddha was a strange phenomenon. The early missionaries simply canceled the idea that he was a historical person. It took almost one hundred years of research for Christian missionaries to accept that Buddha was a real human being, not a fiction. This shows that they had been believing in fictions!
So they thought, deep down ... nobody can believe in Jesus and his miracles. Howsoever great an effort you make to believe, the doubt will remain underneath and will surface whenever your belief will be shaken by something -- and it will be shaken by anything, because a belief has no evidence, no proof.
Every Christian, every Jew, every Mohammedan, every Hindu, is living under such beliefs which they themselves know cannot be true. But out of fear they are accepting it.
But fear cannot transform you. There is only one way to be transformed, and that is to find your buddhahood. That will give you the proof that other buddhas have actually happened.
If you can become a buddha, you are the argument, you are the proof. And unless you know buddhahood you cannot come to a trust that such a miracle is possible. And it is the greatest miracle. Walking on water is just stupid; it is not a miracle.
It happened once .…
A man came to Ramakrishna and he had trained himself in a certain yoga method. There are yoga methods by which you can throw all the air out of the body so you become a vacuum inside. You cannot remain in that vacuum for more than ten minutes, but ten minutes is enough to show that you can walk on water. If you are a vacuum you can walk on the water.
But it takes almost eighteen to twenty years to learn that method of creating the vacuum.
Once you have created the vacuum ... I have seen one man only. If you can create a vacuum you can do strange things. I have seen this man in my childhood, and my memory is absolutely clean about that man. I can see him still, because he was doing such a strange thing. From his prick he would drink
water! And that is possible only if you can create a vacuum inside. Then the vacuum pulls the water, pumps the water in. But I have come across only one man. I have tried hard again to find somebody ...
I asked him, "How long did it take for you?"
He said, "It is a very difficult job. It took at least twenty years for me to create the vacuum. And only for ten minutes ...!"
A man came to Ramakrishna and he said, "I have heard much about you, but can you walk on water?"
Ramakrishna said, "That's nothing. You can?" He said, "Of course."
Ramakrishna said, "I prefer riding on a cloud. Do you know the art?" He said, "No, I have never heard."
Ramakrishna said, "How long did it take for you to learn the knack?" The man said, "Eighteen years continuously I have been ..."
Ramakrishna said, "You are an idiot. Because when I want to go on the Ganges"
-- and they both were sitting by the side of the Ganges under a beautiful tree where Ramakrishna used to sit and just watch the Ganges flowing. It is a beautiful place where Ramakrishna lived -- outside Calcutta, a very silent, peaceful place. Just one temple existed at that time in which he lived, just on the bank of Ganges.
So Ramakrishna said, "Whenever I want to go there, you see that ferryboat? -- it takes only two paisa. And that too, that boatman does not take from me. He says,
`Not from you ... I earn enough, I can take you without it.' So when I can go to the other side without even giving two paisa, why should I waste eighteen years of my life in learning to walk on the water? And do you think it is something of spirituality? All the fishes are doing that, and there are so many water animals ... so what is the point? How do you think it is connected with your spiritual growth? You wasted your eighteen years in sheer stupidity. And I don't ride on the clouds either. I was just trying to show you that even riding on the clouds
will not be of any value."
The real value is: are you acquainted with your buddha? It is the only thing that matters.
When Christians, the missionaries, came to know about Buddha and his scriptures they were very much amazed, because these sutras of Buddha have such beauty that the Bible simply fades away, looks very childish.
One great missionary in Japan had gone to see a Zen master, and he believed he could convert him. His idea was that if he could convert this Zen master, to whom even the emperor of Japan comes -- and he had large following -- just converting this one man, he could convert the whole of Japan. The emperor would be converted, thousands of his disciples would be converted. So rather than working on ordinary people, it was better to work on this man. And certainly there are beautiful statements in the Bible, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, so he took the Bible.
He was greeted by the Zen master, and he said, "I have brought you my holy scripture. I would like to read it to you and I would like to know your opinion."
So he started reading the Sermon on the Mount. He had gone two or three lines when the Zen master said, "Stop. Whoever wrote it, in his next life he may become enlightened."
He did not even listen to the whole sermon. He said, "Just stop. Whoever wrote it, in his next life will become enlightened. But right now these sutras are coming from an unenlightened person."
Shocked, the missionary could not understand -- "Jesus Christ is unenlightened?"
But the idea of enlightenment has never happened in the West. The very idea is missing.
So it was very difficult for them to understand that there have been a totally different kind of people. They have always believed in God, his son, which is not possible without God.
His prophets which come from the God, his messengers, they come from the
God --
everything comes from God. That hypothesis is fundamental. If you deny that, then the whole of Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, all three religions flop down. They simply disappear with one hypothesis which is absolutely unproved.
Here they came to understand a totally different process. A buddha does not come from above, he comes from below and he rises upwards. You see the difference: he becomes godly as he goes on upwards. And all the Christian or Jewish or Mohammedan prophets and messiahs come from up to down.
Buddha is an evolution. It is an intrinsic potentiality that starts going upwards like a tree, and when the spring comes it blossoms. They have never thought that man becomes godly; they have always thought only God can come down. Hindus believe in incarnation
-- God comes as Krishna, God comes as Rama ...
And it is absolutely clear that God has been coming so many times -- and the world is such a mess! What has God done to the world? God comes in Krishna as a perfect incarnation -- and what has that perfect incarnation done? Nobody asks the question: Why has he come in the first place? And if he has come then what has he done?
Krishna has promised, and Hindus are still believing that he will be coming. His promise is: "When there will be danger, when humanity will be in pain and anguish and anxiety, when there will be atheism spreading in the world, when saints will be tortured ...
whenever there will be such a crisis in religion, I will come." But I have been asking so-called Hindu saints, "The last time he came, what did he do? And why are you waiting for him? The last time he proved nothing. Even if he comes he is not going to do anything. And how many times has he come?"
Hindus believe that he has already come twenty-three times; the twenty-fourth time he has to come. But twenty-three times he has been a failure. That is enough proof: the twenty-fourth time he is not going to be a success.
And what have the prophets of the Jews done? And what have the prophets like
Jesus or Mohammed done to Christianity or to Mohammedanism? They have created an ugly human psychology, neurotic. They have not been helping the evolution of consciousness.
So Buddha is completely a different category. He is not coming from any hypothesis downwards. He is not special. He is just an ordinary human being like you and me, but he starts growing his potentiality upwards. He touches the very stars, he grows roots into the earth, goes to the deepest possibility. He stands vertical, leaves the horizontal plane of consciousness which belongs to the animals. He is really a rebel, an authentic rebel.
Naturally, every word that has come from him has tremendous meaning, because he is not accepting any lies, any consolations. And he is not giving any lies to people or any consolations. He is simply saying what his experience is, and that it can be your experience also.
Buddha created a totally different world, and following him, masters upon masters ... but certainly they remain a very thin stream. Buddha belongs to the very intelligent people. It is not for the mediocre, it is not for the retarded, it is not for the masses.
But if the intelligent people of the world rise into buddhahood, they will help the whole of humanity at least to see what is possible for a human being, what is hidden in us. And if thousands of people can bring it to blossoming, why cannot we?
Every buddha becomes a proof, an argument to the whole of humanity. He raises the level of existence spiritually, and each buddha goes on raising the level of humanity without your knowing. You are more close now after twenty-five centuries than you were when Buddha was alive.
Most of you must have been around him. Most of you must have been around other buddhas, because you are not new to the world. You have been here always, but you never managed up to now to go as intensely as possible. Hence my insistence: Don't miss this opportunity.
You have to decide -- you have to be very decisive: "I have to bring my potential to its ultimate flowering. I have to become a celebration, a festival. I have to contribute to the beauty and truth and the divineness of existence."
Basho wrote:
EARLY SPRING
A NAMELESS HILL KNEE DEEP
IN THE GAUZE OF MORNING STILLNESS.
These are all statements of meditators, and Basho is a great master and simultaneously one of the greatest haiku poets.
"Early spring" -- just visualize. "Early spring" -- it has just come fresh. The trees have been waiting for it, the earth has been waiting for it. Those who have some aesthetic sense -- the painters, the poets, the musicians, the dancers, the sculptors
-- they have been waiting for it. It has come. Early spring -- such a joy comes following with it, such freshness all around. Such fragrance of flowers.
"A nameless hill knee deep in the gauze of morning stillness." Even the hill is feeling the spring breeze, "knee deep in the gauze of morning stillness." Not only am I kneeling down in my gratitude for existence, for this fresh spring, but once more, the mountain is also knee deep -- is as grateful as I am.
EARLY SPRING
A NAMELESS HILL KNEE DEEP
IN THE GAUZE OF MORNING STILLNESS.
Those small hours before the sunrise, when the night is just going and the sun has not arrived on the horizon, are the most peaceful. And meditators have found that that is the best time to meditate -- particularly in the East, when those moments are the coolest in the day.
Perhaps it may not be true about the West; it may be too cold. Perhaps for the West the best time will be midnight. It is good for the East also, but the early morning when just the flowers are opening to welcome the sun, and the birds are fluttering their wings getting ready to sing their songs and dance into the air ...
And that stillness ... Night is gone, almost gone, and the morning is not born yet. That in-between moment has been given a special name in the East, sandhya.
Sandhya means the interval between day and night. So it comes two times -- in the morning and in the evening, when the sun has set and the night has not come. So these two times are called sandhya, intervals.
In these intervals you can meditate more deeply than at any other time. It is just an existential experience of thousands of meditators.
Basho is expressing his own experience in this haiku. Question 2
Maneesha's question:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
PAUL TILLICH, THE PROTESTANT THEOLOGIAN, ASSERTED THAT "GOD
WILL REMAIN SOMEHOW REMOTE AND ÒUT THERE,' UNLESS THERE IS A COMPLETE TURNABOUT IN WHICH ALL REFERENCES TO THE HIGH AND
THE BEYOND ARE TRANSLATED INTO TERMS OF DEPTH. THIS INFINITE
AND INEXHAUSTIBLE DEPTH AND GROUND OF ALL BEINGS IS GOD. THAT
DEPTH IS WHAT THE WORD `GOD' MEANS. HE WHO KNOWS ABOUT DEPTH
KNOWS ABOUT GOD."
WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMENT?
Maneesha, Paul Tillich and all neo-theologians are trying their hardest somehow to save God, and there is no way to save him, he is already dead!
Now he is giving another idea: take God from there beyond the clouds and put him deep down. But what is the difference? Deep down where? -- in America?
Because from this place, if you go on digging you will suddenly see, My God! all Americans are walking upside down. Are they doing shirshasan, headstand? Because from here you will reach exactly into America -- the shortest way. People are unnecessarily flying ... just dig a hole! And from both the sides it can be started -- from America towards India, and from India towards America. And the meeting will happen just in between.
But as far as America is concerned, India will be the depth. As far as India is concerned, America will be the depth. Where are you going to put God? In the depth? They are just trying absurdities to save the name God, because the danger is that God is becoming more and more an impossible hypothesis to prove.
So change his place. Take him out from the clouds, take him from there in the beyond, and put him there in the depth.
But you cannot save him. He is dead there in the beyond, and he will be dead in his grave in the depth. You are only digging a grave. Paul Tillich is just a gravedigger and nothing else.
And you can see clearly what he is saying, "God will remain somehow remote and òut there,' unless there is a complete turnabout ..." But still the distance will be the same.
First he was beyond in the clouds; now he will be deep inside the earth. In fact, it was easy to go to the clouds, going inside the earth will be more difficult. And you don't know what is inside the earth, volcanoes ... It is all hot and melted. The deeper you go, you will come to a point when everything is melted. Fire, still alive, that comes through the volcanoes. You can see it. You are putting God there? I like the place. That will be his funeral pyre.
"This infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all beings IS God." But he will cling to the word `God'. There is no change, just the place has been changed. God is the same -
- he has moved the house. "That depth is what the word `God' means." First he was the height, now he is the depth, but he is.
"He who knows about depth knows about God" -- great!
Those who have known the depth or the height are the people who have declared
there is no God. There is only a quality, a fragrance, which you cannot catch hold of, but you can feel overwhelmed by it. But it is not God, it is the very flavor of existence itself. It is the very life.
Why create an unnecessary hypothesis? Be a little scientific. In science it is an accepted fact that no unnecessary hypothesis should be accepted. Do with as few hypotheses as possible, because every hypothesis creates new problems and solves nothing -- and particularly unproved hypotheses which for centuries man has been trying to prove and has failed. All theologians have failed! No theologian has been able to give any proof for God.
They are trying to do, Maneesha, something impossible. God is dead, and it is good and great that God is dead, because it brings freedom and dignity to life, to existence. It destroys our spiritual slavery, it gives us a great pride that we are existence and nobody is above us.
One of the Baul mystics, Chandidas, has made a beautiful statement: Sabar upar manus satya, tahar upar nahi. He is a Bengali mystic; the statement is in Bengali. Sabar upar manus satya -- above all is the truth of man. Tahar upar nahi -- and beyond that there is nothing.
This is what I call the dignity of man, of life, of existence. Why unnecessarily drag humanity into slavery? Paul Tillich, and all those who are trying to save God, the neo-theologians of Christianity, are going to fail, because all that they can do is give new words, new meanings, new references, new addresses. But when you reach, you will find nothing. Neither is he beyond there, nor is he in the depth somewhere hiding.
God does not exist and has never been in existence. Life exists.
Celebrate life. Rejoice life.
Let life be your freedom, your pride, your dance, your celebration. This is the right time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Put on the light!
Old Miss Crumbum, the Jehovah's Witness, is going round from door to door collecting money to send missionaries abroad. She knocks on the door of Hamish MacTavish, the Scotsman, and when Hamish opens the door she starts her speech.
"Praise the Lord, good sir!" intones Miss Crumbum. "We are planning to send twenty Witnesses of Jehovah to the African countries. Please give generously for our missionary service overseas!"
"Absolutely not!" replies Hamish. "I totally disapprove of those foreign missions."
"But, good sir!" cries Miss Crumbum. "The scriptures command us to feed the hungry!"
"Well, that's fine," says Hamish, "but surely we can feed them on something cheaper than missionaries?"
The new priest in the village, young Father Fever, is coming to visit the Sidebottom household. So little Sally's mother gives her daughter some instructions.
"If the new priest asks you your name," says Mrs. Sidebottom, "say Sally-Jane. And if he asks you how old you are, say you are seven years old. And if he asks who made you, say, `God made me!' Can you remember all that?"
"I think so," says Sally.
A few minutes later, young Father Fever arrives, puts down his hat and his Bible, and walks up to little Sally. He pats her on the head and says, "I am Father Fever, your new priest. And what is your name, little girl?"
"Sally-Jane," replies Sally.
"And how old are you, Sally-Jane?" asks the priest. "Seven years old," replies Sally.
"Well, that is nice," says Fever. "And do you know who made you, Sally-Jane?"
Little Sally hesitates for a moment, and then says, "Shit! Mom did tell me, but I have forgotten the guy's name!"
Late one evening on the little Greek island of Crete, old Mrs. Lilypopolis is weeping into her black handkerchief, mourning the recent death of her old friend Mrs. Acreepolis.
"Ohhh!" wails old Mrs. Lilypopolis to Bishop Kretin who is holding her hand, "God is so unjust! He is knocking off us old ladies one by one. I must say, Bishop Kretin, that my faith in the Blessed Bleeding Virgin is beginning to wobble."
"Don't worry my child," comforts Bishop Kretin, impatiently. "You are only ninety-seven years old, you have lots of life in you still. Just pray to God Almighty and everything will be fine."
But over the next few days, old Mrs. Lilypopolis gets freaked out. She starts looking around for something else to strengthen her faith. One night she is wandering around the streets of the village and finds herself in Madam Goggle's fortune telling parlor.
"I have been a Blessed Bleeding Virgin Christian all my life," says old Mrs. Lilypopolis,
"and you are a spiritualist and a pagan -- but I have come to you because I have lost faith in Bishop Kretin. I come to you in the hope of receiving the answer to one question."
Madam Goggle nods her head and closes her eyes, lapsing into a deep trance. "Go ahead," she says in a spiritual voice, "tell me your question."
"I want to know," says old lady Lilypopolis, "when I die, will I go to heaven -- I mean my Christian heaven -- to be reunited with my friends, Mrs. Souvlaki, Mrs. Theocrapolis and Mrs. Acreepolis, in the glory of eternal paradise?"
After some time in a deep trance, Madam Goggle opens her eyes and speaks, "I have asked the sacred ones if you will go to heaven," moans Madam Goggle. "And their answer is ... their answer is ..."
And the old fortune teller rubs her thumb and forefinger together under the old Greek woman's nose.
"Oh, yes!" cries old Mrs. Lilypopolis, fumbling in her purse and bringing out a handful of money. She puts it on the table and then Madam Goggle continues.
"Well, there is some good news and some bad news. First the good news Yes,
Mrs.
Lilypopolis, because you have been such a good person you will be transported by the heavenly angels to paradise -- to the Golden Throne in the skies. And there you will remain throughout eternity with all the other blessed virgins, sitting on God's knee."
"Oh!" cries old Mrs. Lilypopolis, "Oh, I am completely overwhelmed!" "Wait!" continues Madam Goggle. "And the bad news is "
"But, Madam Goggle!" interrupts the old lady. "After such wonderful good news, what news could possibly be bad?"
"Well," says Madam Goggle, "you will be going there tonight!" Nivedano ...
(Drumbeat) Be silent ...
Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen.
This is the right moment to enter in your inner world. You have to reach just below your navel, two inches exactly below, inside.
Gather your energy and total consciousness, and rush with a deep urgency as if this is going to be your last moment on the earth. Only those who have such urgency and intensity ever reach to their center of life.
Faster and faster ... Deeper and deeper ...
As you are coming closer to your center, a great silence descends over you just like soft rain falling. You can feel the coolness.
A little closer, and you find an explosion of light. Your inner world becomes luminous.
A little deeper, and flowers of blissfulness, flowers of ecstasy suddenly start showering on you. Existence is rejoicing in your inner journey. This is the only spiritual pilgrimage.
Just one step more and you are standing at the very center of your being.
This is the state of a Gautam Buddha, the space of all the buddhas. At this moment you are no more, only the buddha is. And the buddha has only one quality: witnessing.
Witness that you are not the body. Witness that you are not the mind.
And witness that you are only the witness.
This pure witnessing opens all the closed doors of existence and life, of song and dance, of the ultimate celebration of becoming one with the cosmos.
To make this witnessing deeper, Nivedano ...
(Drumbeat)
Relax ... but continue to witness.
That is your very eternity -- no beginning, no end ... infinite, inexhaustible, sacred.
This is your original face. We in the East have symbolized Gautam Buddha's face as everybody's original face -- that is only a symbol.
Recognize it!
And rejoice in its recognition.
At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth. Everybody is concerned with the trivia, you are trying to explore the very center of life and existence.
Other than this, there is no religiousness. Other than this, there is no spirituality.
And this experience is absolutely individual, it has nothing to do with the collective, with the society, with an organized religion.
And from this opening, you can see there is no God, there is only godliness surrounding you -- all around limitless.
The height is infinite.
The depth is infinite, but you don't find any God anywhere. On the contrary, you start melting and disappearing.
Gautama the Buddha Auditorium has become an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas have joined together into one consciousness.
This is your truth, and this is the beauty of the truth, and this is the divineness of the truth.
One who knows this center and this opening into existence, knows all.
Collect as many flowers as you can of serenity, of tranquility, of silence, of peace, of ecstasy, of a divine drunkenness. You have to bring all these juices of life from the center to the surface of your day-to-day life. You have to start living like a buddha, with the same grace, with the same beauty, with the same truth, with the same authenticity, with the same originality.
This opening and the experience of it will bring you a dignity which is not ego, a pride which is not ego, but simply a joy, simply a remembrance that you are existential, not accidental. Hence, the possibility of celebration.
The accidental person lives in anguish, in anxiety, in angst.
The existential person lives in celebration, in love, in grace, in gratitude. Do not forget to persuade the buddha to come with you.
These are the three steps of enlightenment.
The first step, buddha comes behind you as a shadow. But the shadow is luminous, it has tremendous warmth, and it surrounds you with a new fragrance, fragrance of the beyond.
The next step, the second step, you become the shadow, buddha comes in front of you.
Your shadow goes on becoming thinner and thinner as buddha becomes more and more solid and existential.
A moment comes and the third step happens on its own accord: your shadow has disappeared, you are no more; only the buddha is, only life is, only the existence is.
Hence the celebration. Nivedano ... (Drumbeat)
Come back ... but come with all the glory and the splendor of a buddha, with all the grace and silence and peace.
Sit down just for a few seconds to remind yourself of the golden path that you have followed, and the depth you have reached within yourself, and all the experiences. And feel the presence of buddha behind you.
The day is not far away when the first step will turn into the second step, and the second step will turn into the third step. You will be no more. And when you are no more there is dance, there is song, there is joy, there celebration of life.
I celebrate myself, and I teach you nothing else but celebration.
Religiousness has fallen into wrong hands, and they have made the whole world
sad and miserable. I want the world to be filled with laughter, with joy, with festivity.
The whole life, moment to moment has to be lived as a celebration. That is the only religious life. You have every potential and every opportunity.
Just a little relaxed effortless melting into the ocean that surrounds you -- and the dance begins. And the dance never ends.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Beloved Master.
I Celebrate Myself: God Is No Where, Life Is Now Here Chapter #7
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