Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

1 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007015 ShortTitle: GWIND01 Audio:

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

The only way to know god, to feel god, is meditation. Meditation means a state of consciousness when all thoughts have been dropped.

The Zen masters call the state of meditation the season of autumn, when all the leaves fall and the trees are standing bare, naked. When consciousness drops all thoughts it is like a tree without leaves, without foliage, exposed to the wind, to the moon, to the sun, to the rain uncovered, unhidden. In that exposure there is communion with god. That communion is love. In that communion one becomes a beloved of god.

There is a very famous Zen koan. A monk asked a great master, Ummon, "What will happen when the leaves fall and the trees become bare?" Zen people always ask questions indirectly because life is such a mystery, you have to be delicate about it, you cannot ask directly... To be direct appears to be aggressive and violent; hence Zen has created beautiful metaphors. Now this is a metaphor: the monk is asking "What happens when meditation happens?", but not so directly. He is asking in a more poetic way; not so mathematically, but more metaphorically.

He says, "What will happen when the leaves fall and the trees become bare?"

Ummon simply said, "The golden wind." This is the whole story, but all has been asked and all has been said; nothing more is needed.

The monk bowed down, touched the feet of the master and thanked him for his great insight and compassion.

In autumn the breeze is very cool, very fresh, very rejuvenating, and when all the leaves have fallen and are fluttering, all those yellow leaves create a golden atmosphere. They make even the wind golden!

Although the wind remains uncolored, you can feel the song of the leaves, the dance of the leaves, the joy of the leaves, and you can see the wind enjoying the whole dance.

Once a Zen master was teaching the art of gardening to the king of Japan. After three years of teaching he said, "Now I will come and see your garden -- that will be the examination of what you have done in these three years." And he told him before that "Whatsoever you are learning go on practising in your palace garden, any day I may come."

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The king had prepared the garden and he was waiting for that great day; he rejoiced that the day had come. For those three years he had used nearly one thousand gardeners to implement everything in the minutest detail. And for that whole day and night -- because tomorrow morning the master would be there --

the garden was cleaned, everything was put exactly right, as it should be, no error, no mistake...

The master came. The king was very happy because whatsoever the master had said had been absolutely fulfilled; it was impossible to find any fault. But the master looked at the garden and became very serious --

which was not natural to the master. He was a man of laughter. He became sad.

As they moved into the garden he became more and more serious and the king started feeling a little trembling inside: Was he going to fail? What had gone wrong? The silence of the master was too heavy.

Finally the king asked, "What is the matter? I have never seen you so serious. I was thinking you would be immensely happy that your disciple had worked hard."

The master said, "Everything is right but where are the golden leaves? I don't see any dead leaves, yellow leaves fluttering in the wind. Without that the garden looks dead; there is no song, no dance. Without that the garden looks very artificial.

The king had removed all the dead leaves, not only from the ground but even from the plants and trees.

He had never thought of it, that death is also part of life, that it is not its opposite but its complementary, that without it there would be no life. And certainly the master was right: Yes, the garden was beautiful, but it looked as if it were a painting, not alive.

The master said, "The golden wind is missing. Where is Ummon's golden wind? Bring the golden wind!" The master took a bucket and went out of the garden, outside the gate to where all the leaves have been thrown. He collected the leaves in the bucket, came back and threw the leaves on the path. Suddenly the wind started blowing them here and there, and there was noise and there was music, and there was dance. The master said, "Now there is life! The wind is golden again."

This is Ummon's golden wind: when all thoughts fall down from your mind and your consciousness stands absolutely bare and naked. Deep down near your roots the wind is blowing and all your thoughts are fluttering far away from you, no more part of you. They still remain there, they don't go anywhere, but they are no more part of you. You have transcended; you are standing above them, a watcher on the hills. That's what meditation is.

Meditation is not against thought; it is for transcendence, it is going beyond thoughts. It is becoming so utterly naked that you can be seen by god as you

really are: with no masks, with no garments, just like a small child. And these are the great moments of life, when love starts showering from the beyond and one becomes a beloved of god. But one has to earn it, one has to be worthy of it, one has to deserve it.

That earning comes through meditation. Meditation prepares you to receive love. God is always ready to give it, but we are not ready to receive it, we are not empty enough to receive it. We are so full of rubbish, we are so full of thoughts, desires, memories, dreams, that there is no space within us. That space has to be created. That is the art of meditation: to create inner space. And then you will start dancing in the golden wind.

Love is the ultimate godly experience. Love proves that existence is not without meaning, that life has significance. Except for love there is no proof for life's significance. If one has not experienced love one will feel meaningless, accidental, just driftwood, at the mercy of unknown, unconscious, natural forces.

That's how materialists look at life: just a combination of matter, just a by- product of matter, an epiphenomenon. But then there is no significance, and without significance one can only drag, one cannot dance. Without significance only cowards can live. The courageous one will commit suicide, they will commit hara-kiri.

The existentialistic philosophers must be cowards because they go on saying that life is meaningless, still they go on clinging to life. If life is meaningless then why should one live? For what? If it is all going to end in nothingness, if matter is going to disappear into matter and there is going to be no outcome of it, then why all this anguish, anxiety, despair, struggle? And these are all the themes of existentialists: anguish, anxiety, despair, fear, death. If life is meaningless then why should one be worried about death? One should rejoice! Then to commit suicide should be the only worthwhile act, the first and the last. But they don't commit suicide; they go on talking about the meaninglessness of life. In fact this very talk becomes their purpose.

One great philosopher, Zeno, lived a very long life -- more than ninety years -- and for his whole life he was teaching that life is meaningless. In fact it is said that a few fools committed suicide in following his 1/08/07

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ideas; he was a very convincing man. When he was on his deathbed somebody said, "This is very strange, that you lived ninety years and many of your followers have committed suicide following your ideas. Why did you not commit suicide? He said, "I had to live so that I could teach my philosophy." Now that was his only purpose: to teach philosophy, to teach this philosophy that life is meaningless. It was as if that became his meaning.

No, nobody really agrees -- not even the existentialists who go on saying that life is meaningless really agree with their own philosophy. Deep down they are still doubting: there may be some meaning. Perhaps we have not discovered it yet. Who know? -- maybe tomorrow we will stumble upon it. We may not have come across it up to now but it can happen tomorrow. So let us wait, live and go on searching.

Nobody really becomes convinced that life is meaningless because life is not meaningless; it has intrinsic value, but it has to be discovered. We are unconsciously, intuitively, instinctively aware of it. We have just a hunch that there is -- there is bound to be some meaning -- but we are not clear about it. It has not come to light; we don't have any proofs for it. Love gives us proofs for it.

A lover has no doubts about life's meaningfulness, its significance, its joy. It is only through love that people have slowly slowly discovered the ultimate meaning, god. It is only through love they have discovered the whole science of meditation because in loving moments, mind stops. When you are really in love, in those moments you don't think. The past disappears, the future disappears, the present becomes all and all -- and that's what meditation is. Love gives you a glimpse of meditation, and through meditation a window opens into the existence of god; hence I call love the most godly phenomenon on earth.

My sannyasins have to be meditators and lovers and together, because both are supportive energies for each other. If you love, you will be able to meditate more deeply; if you meditate you will be able to love more totally, and so on, so forth. They go on helping each other; they are very supporting. Slowly slowly a pyramid is created in your consciousness. By the bricks of love and meditation one can reach the highest peak of existence.

The man who knows only meditation is missing something, and the man who knows only love is also missing something. The whole man knows both; he has both aspects of the coin in his hands. He has all that is valuable within him. His life becomes an exquisite phenomenon, a beautiful song, a graceful experience.

He lives on the earth but he is part of the sky. He is a miracle, he is a paradox, but in his paradoxicalness he is whole -- and to be whole is to be holy. That is my definition of a holy man.

Esther has two meanings; one comes from Hebrew and the other from Persian -- both are significant.

The Hebrew meaning is a plant with white flowers; it symbolises love.

White flowers have always symbolised the purest, the most innocent phenomenon. White means innocence and white also means totality. Every other colour is only one aspect of white. When all colours are mixed together white arises. When white is divided into all its components then the seven colours, the whole spectrum of colours becomes available. That's how the rainbow comes into existence.

In the rainy season, when small drops of rain-water are hanging in the air, if the sun rises, the rays pass through those hanging drops of water and those drops, at a particular angle, start functioning like prisms: they start dividing the white ray into seven colours. That's how the rainbow arises.

All colours are parts or white. Black represents no colour; it represents absence, negativity, hence it has become the symbol of death. White represents all colours, positivity, hence it; is the symbol of love.

Love is a rainbow, a multi-splendoured experience, a multi-dimensional phenomenon. That meaning is beautiful. To attain to love is to attain to bliss -- they come together. Without love there is no bliss, without bliss there is no love. They never come alone, they cannot come alone -- they are inseparable. They are two names of the same thing.

And the Persian meaning is a star. That too is beautiful. Love is a star. It is the only star in the darkness of life, in the darkness of the night. If one can go on remembering love one can pass through this whole dark night of the soul.

Become blissful, become more loving, and your inner being will become a source of light, a star. Your inner being will also become a garden full of white flowers. And unless one blooms one never feels fulfilled, one never knows what contentment is. And not to know contentment, fulfilment, is to miss the whole point of life.

Truth is known only through a deep inner harmony. Ordinarily we are a chaos, very discordant. There is not one person in us but many. We are multi-psychic; there are many minds inside, and they are all dragging 1/08/07

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us in different directions -- many voices and you cannot figure out which is yours. One voice says 'Do this,'

another voice says, 'Don't do this.' One is constantly wavering. One is almost broken into thousands of pieces like a mirror thrown on the floor. That's the situation where man finds himself. But all those fragments can be gathered. They can be melted into one whole; they can be integrated, crystallised.

That's what sannyas is all about: it is the science of crystallising your fragments into one organic unity.

The moment that unity arises in you, great music is born, all noises change into an orchestra, and then only can you see, hear, feel the truth of existence. It is always there but our minds are so noisy that we cannot feel it.

The moment this inner chaos is gone we can hear the still, small voice within. And then indubitably, unmistakably one knows, 'This is My voice, this is god speaking in me!' And there is never any doubt. Even if the whole world doubts it, you will not doubt it: it is indubitable. Only on that rock of indubitability, on that rock of certainty, can life become a temple -- otherwise we are simply making sand-castles.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #2

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