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CHAPTER 2 - Master and Disciple
22 February 1975 a.m. in Buddha Hall
EVERY TIME LIEH TZU WAS NOT BUSY, YIN SHENG TOOK THE OPPORTUNITY
TO BEG FOR SECRETS. LIEH TZU KEPT TURNING HIM AWAY AND WOULD NOT
TELL HIM UNTIL EVENTUALLY HE SAID: "I USED TO THINK YOU INTELLIGENT -
ARE YOU REALLY AS VULGAR AS ALL THAT? HERE, I WILL TELL YOU WHAT I LEARNT FROM MY OWN MASTER.
THREE YEARS AFTER I BEGAN TO SERVE THE MASTER, MY MIND NO LONGER
DARED TO THINK OF RIGHT OR WRONG, AND MY MOUTH NO LONGER DARED
TO SPEAK OF BENEFIT AND HARM. IT WAS ONLY THEN THAT I GOT SO MUCH
AS A GLANCE FROM THE MASTER.
AFTER FIVE YEARS MY MIND WAS AGAIN THINKING OF RIGHT AND WRONG, AND MY MOUTH WAS AGAIN SPEAKING OF BENEFIT AND HARM. FOR THE
FIRST TIME THE MASTER'S FACE RELAXED INTO A SMILE.
AFTER SEVEN YEARS I THOUGHT OF WHATEVER CAME INTO MY MIND
WITHOUT ANY LONGER DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN RIGHT AND
WRONG, AND I SAID WHATEVER
CAME INTO MY MOUTH
WITHOUT ANY LONGER
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN BENEFIT AND HARM. AND FOR THE FIRST TIME
THE MASTER PULLED ME OVER TO SIT WITH HIM ON THE SAME MAT.
AFTER NINE YEARS I THOUGHT WITHOUT RESTRAINT OF WHATEVER CAME
INTO MY MIND, AND SAID WITHOUT RESTRAINT WHATEVER CAME INTO MY
MOUTH WITHOUT KNOWING WHETHER THE RIGHT OR WRONG, BENEFIT OR
HARM, WERE MINE OR ANOTHER'S, AND WITHOUT KNOWING WHETHER THAT
MASTER WAS MY TEACHER OR NOT. EVERYTHING WAS THE SAME.
NOW YOU COME TO BE MY DISCIPLE, AND BEFORE EVEN A YEAR HAS GONE
ROUND YOU ARE INDIGNANT AND RESENTFUL TIME AND TIME AGAIN!"
The greatest art in the world is to be a disciple. It cannot be compared to anything. It is unique and incomparable. Nothing like it exists in any other relationship, nothing like it can exist.
To be a disciple, to be with a master, is to move into the unknown. You cannot be very aggressive there. If you are aggressive, the unknown will never be revealed to you. It cannot be revealed to an aggressive mind. The very nature of it is such that you have to be receptive, not aggressive.
The search for truth is not an active search, it is a deep passivity - in your deep passivity you will receive. But if you become too active and concerned, you will miss. It is like being a womb, it is feminine; you receive the truth as a woman receives a pregnancy. Remember this... then many things will become easier to understand.
To be near a master is to be just a passivity, absorbing whatsoever the master gives or whatsoever the master is - not asking. The moment you start asking you have become aggressive, the receptivity is lost, you have become active. The passive, the feminine, is no longer there. Nobody has ever reached the truth as a male - aggressive, violent. That's not possible. You reach very silently. In fact, you wait and truth reaches you. The truth seeks you, like water seeks some hollow ground, moves downwards, finds a place, and becomes a lake.
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An active mind is too filled with itself; an active mind thinks that it knows what truth is.
One has only to ask, at least the question is known; only for the answer does one have to seek and search.
But when you become passive, even the question is not known. How to ask? What to ask?
For what to ask? There is no question, one cannot do anything else but wait. This is patience -
and this is infinite patience - because it is not a question of time, it is not a question of you waiting for a few months, or a few years. If you have patience for a few years, that won't help, because a mind that thinks that it has to wait for three years is not, in fact, waiting. He is looking actively, to when the three years are over, then he can jump, be aggressive, and ask; then he can demand that the period of waiting be over, that now he is entitled to know. There is nothing like that. Nobody is ever entitled to know the truth.
Suddenly the moment comes when you are ready, and your patience has become not of time, but of eternity; you are not waiting for something, but simply waiting, because the waiting is so beautiful; the waiting itself is such a deep meditation, the waiting itself is such a tremendous achievement - who bothers about anything else? When the waiting has become so total, so intense, so whole, that time disappears and the waiting takes the quality of eternity, then immediately you are ready. You are not entitled, remember - you cannot ask. You are simply ready and you are not even aware that you are ready. Because the very awareness will be a hindrance to your readiness; the very awareness will show that the ego is there, watching in the corner, hiding somewhere.
And the ego is always aggressive, whether hiding or not hiding, apparent or not apparent.
Even hiding in the deepest corner of the unconscious, the ego is aggressive. And when I say that to become totally passive is the art of being a disciple, I mean - dissolve the ego. Then there is nobody who is asking, demanding, then there is simply nobody - you are a vacant house, a deep emptiness, simply waiting. And suddenly, all that you could have asked for is given to you, without you asking for it.
Jesus says: Ask, and it shall be given to you. But that is not the highest teaching. Jesus could not give the highest teaching to the people who were around him because they did not know how to be disciples. In the Jewish tradition teachers have existed, and students, but a disciple and a master are basically an Eastern phenomenon. Teachers have existed - who have taught many things; and students have existed, sincere students - who have learnt much.
But Jesus couldn't find disciples there; he couldn't give the highest teaching. He says: Ask, and it shall be given to you. Knock and doors shall be opened unto you. But I tell you, if you ask, you will miss; if you knock, you will be rejected.
Because the very knocking is aggressive, the very asking is of the ego. In the very asking you are too much, and the doors cannot be opened for you.
In the knocking, what are you doing? You are being violent. No. At the doors of the temples knocking is not allowed. You have to come to the doors so silently that even the sound of your feet is not heard. You come as a nothing, as if nobody has come. You wait at the door and whenever the door opens you will enter. You are not in a hurry. You can sit and relax at the door, because the door knows better than you when to open and the master inside knows better than you when it should be given.
Knocking at the door of the temple is vulgar; asking the master is unmannerly - because he is not going to teach you anything, he is not a teacher. He is going to toss something to you from his innermost being - a treasure - and unless you are ready, it cannot be done. The pearls cannot be thrown before the swine. The master has to wait until your swine has disappeared, until you have awakened and you have become really human and the animal is no longer there
- the aggressive, the vulgar, the violent. The relationship between a master and a disciple is not of a rape: it is of deepest love.
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That is the difference between science and religion. Science is like rape; there is aggression towards nature to know its secrets. Science is a violent effort to force nature to reveal its secrets. Religion is love, it is a persuasion, it is a silent waiting. It is making oneself ready, prepared, so that whenever the moment of your inner readiness comes, suddenly there is a tuning, everything falls into line and nature is revealed to you. And this revelation is totally different. Science may force nature to give a few facts - but the truth? No. Science will never be able to know the truth. At the most, robbers, aggressive, violent people, can snatch away a few facts. That's all. And those facts will be of the surface. The innermost center will remain veiled for them because to reach the innermost, violence is not to be used - cannot be used.
The innermost center must invite you, only then can you enter there. Uninvited, there is no way. As a guest, invited, you enter into the inner shrine.
The relationship between a master and a disciple is the highest possibility of love
- because it is not a relationship of two bodies, it is not a relationship of any
pleasure, or any gratification, it is not a relationship of two minds, two friends, in subtle, psychic harmony.
No. It is neither bodily, nor sexual; it is neither mental nor emotional. It is two totals, coming together and merging into each other.
And how can you be a total if you ask a question? If you are aggressive, you cannot be total. A totality is always silent; there is no conflict within. That's why you cannot be in conflict without. Totality is serene and tranquil and collected. It is a deep togetherness.
Waiting near a master, one learns how to be together, with no movement. A simple unmoving center simply waits; thirsty of course, hungry of course, feeling the thirst in every fiber of the body, in every cell of the being - but waiting, because the master knows better when the right moment comes. Not knocking... the temptation will be there, and, when the master is available, the temptation becomes very, very deep and intense. Why not ask him? He can give, then why wait, why waste time? No, it is not a question of wasting time. Really, waiting patiently is the best use of time. All else may be wasted but waiting is not, because waiting is prayer, waiting is meditation, waiting is all. Everything happens through it.
And I call it the greatest art. Why? Because between a master and disciple the greatest mystery is lived, the deepest is lived, the highest flows. It is a relationship between the known and the unknown, between the finite and infinite, between time and eternity, between the seed and the flower, between the actual and the potential, between past and future. A disciple is only the past; the master is only the future. And here, this moment, in their deep love and waiting, they meet. The disciple is time, the master is eternity. The disciple is mind and the master is no-mind. The disciple is all that he knows, and a master is all that cannot be known.
When the bridge happens between a master and a disciple, it is a miracle. To bridge the known with the unknown, and time with eternity, is a miracle.
Doing is on the part of the master, because he knows what to do. The doing is not on your part, should not be on your part, because, by your very doing, you will disturb the whole thing. You don't know what you are - how can you do anything? A disciple waits, knowing well that he cannot do. He does not know
the direction, he does not know what is good and what is bad, he does not know himself. How can he do anything? The doing is of the master; but when I say that the doing is of the master, don't misunderstand me.
A master never does anything - if the disciple can wait, the very being of the master becomes a doing. Just his presence becomes a catalytic agent, and many things start happening on their own accord.
When somebody asked the great master Zenerin: What do you do with your disciples? He said: What do I do? I don't do anything. The questioner asked: But so many things happen around you, you must be doing something. Zenerin said: Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
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This is what a master is doing: sitting quietly, doing nothing, waiting for the right moment, the spring. Suddenly, when the disciple and the master meet, there will be spring - the spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. And this is how it happens. A master simply sits, not doing anything and a disciple waits for the master to do something. Then comes the spring and the moment they meet, the grass grows by itself.
In fact, truth is a happening; one has only to allow it. Nothing is to be done directly; one has only to allow it. You will not be able to know it, unless it happens, because all you know is that only when you do something does something happen. When you don't do anything, nothing happens. So you are completely oblivious of a totally different dimension of things.
But, if you observe your own life, you will see many things still happening without your doing. What do you do when love happens? The grass grows by itself. Suddenly the spring is there and something flowers within you, flowers for somebody - you are in love. What have you done?
That's why people are so afraid of love - because it is a happening, you cannot manipulate it, you cannot be in control. That's why people say that love is blind. In fact, just the opposite is the case - love is the only clarity of vision. Love is the only eye, but people say that love is blind because they cannot do anything about it. It takes possession and they are no longer in control, they are thrown off- center. They say it is blind because reason is not there - it is irrational. It is like madness; it is like a high fever; it is something that has happened to you, like a
disease. It appears to be so, because you are no longer in control - life has taken over.
Truth is of the quality of love. That's why Jesus goes on saying, "Love is God", or "God is love", because the quality is of the same source. Truth also happens like love, you don't do anything about it. You don't even knock on the door.
You breathe in, you breathe out; that is what life is. How do you do it? Are you the doer?
Then hold your breath in, for a few seconds, and you will come to know that you are not the doer. You cannot hold it for long. Within seconds the breath will force itself out. Hold it out: within seconds you will find you cannot do anything - the breath is forcing itself in. In fact, the grass grows by itself, just like breathing. It grows of its own accord; you are not the doer.
But the ego avoids looking at such facts. The ego looks only at things which you can do. It chooses, accumulates things which can be done, and it avoids, throws into the unconscious, those things which happen. The ego is very choosey. It doesn't look at life in its totality.
Truth is a happening, the final happening, the ultimate happening, in which you dissolve into the whole and the whole dissolves into you. In the words of Tilopa, it is MAHAMUDRA, the ultimate orgasm that happens between one unit of consciousness and total consciousness, the total ocean of consciousness - between the drop and the ocean. It is the total orgasm, in which both are lost into each other and the identities dissolve.
The same happens between a master and a disciple. The master is of the quality of the ocean and the disciple is still a drop - the finite meeting the infinite. Much patience is needed, infinite patience is needed. Hurry won't help.
Now, try to understand this beautiful Zen parable. Each word has to be allowed to reach your deepest core of being, because this is what you are here for. If you can understand this story, it will be easier for you to be closer and closer to me.
EVERY TIME LIEH TZU WAS NOT BUSY, YIN SHENG TOOK THE OPPORTUNITY
TO BEG FOR SECRETS.
Lieh Tzu was one of the masters of the school of Lao Tzu, one of the enlightened disciples of Lao Tzu. And Lieh Tzu was not an ordinary master, not concerned with your small 18
problems, your actions, not concerned with small teachings. Lieh Tzu was concerned only with the ultimate. He had many disciples.
There are two types of disciples. One type of disciple is chosen by the master; another type of disciple is one who has chosen the master. Their qualities differ. This man, Yin Sheng, must have been one of the second category - and vast is the difference. When a master chooses you, it is totally different. Of course, you will never be allowed to know that the master has chosen you. In fact, the master will persuade you in such a way that you will feel that you have chosen him. He has to be very subtle about it, because if he allows you to know that he has chosen you, your ego can create a disturbance, because the ego likes to be the master; the ego likes to be in control. Every day I encounter the same situation: I have not to allow you to know that I am choosing you, I have to give you freedom to choose me.
But the difference is vast, because when a master chooses a disciple, he chooses with perfect understanding. He looks through you, all your potentialities, possibilities, past and future - the whole destiny is revealed to him. But when you choose a master, almost always you will be wrong, because you grope in the dark. Not knowing who you are, how can you choose? Not knowing what truth is how can you choose a master? How can you judge?
Whatsoever you judge is going to be wrong. I say unconditionally: it is not a question of whether something can be wrong and something right. No. Whatsoever you choose, will be wrong, because you are in darkness, you don't have the inner light by which to judge. You don't have any criterion, you don't have any touchstone. You cannot know what is gold and what is not gold. A sincere seeker simply allows the master to be; a sincere seeker allows a master to choose him. A foolish seeker tries to choose the master, and then, from the very beginning, trouble arises.
Lieh Tzu and his master, Lao Tzu, had a totally different quality of relationship. Lao Tzu had chosen Lieh Tzu. This Yin Sheng had chosen Lieh Tzu, and when a disciple chooses he is aggressive - because of the very choice the aggression starts. And a master cannot reject you, even if you choose him, just out of his
compassion he cannot reject you.
EVERY TIME LIEH TZU WAS NOT BUSY, YIN SHENG TOOK THE OPPORTUNITY
TO BEG FOR SECRETS.
That begging is not really begging; it is just a way to snatch. In fact, he is aggressive, not a beggar, the begging is just diplomatic. He is a thief, not a beggar. Whenever he found any opportunity and Lieh Tzu was not busy, he started begging for the secrets. Lieh Tzu kept turning him away and would not tell him until eventually he said Many times Lieh Tzu avoided, postponed, and
said: Sometime I will tell you, some other time; it is not the right moment. You are not ripe. But Yin Sheng persisted until eventually Lieh Tzu had to say the truth.
HE SAID: "I USED TO THINK YOU INTELLIGENT - ARE YOU REALLY AS VULGAR
AS ALL THAT?"
What is the vulgarity? Secrets cannot be asked for, you have to earn them. You have to become capable. Secrets are gifts from the master: you cannot steal them, you cannot beg them, you cannot snatch them, you cannot rob them - there is no way. Secrets can only be gifts, nothing else. So you have to be capable, capable so that the master can give them to you as gifts. He would like to share them, but you have to rise above your ordinary mind, because the ordinary mind will not be able to share. That's what Jesus goes on saying: Pearls cannot be thrown before the swine. Because the swine won't understand, the understanding is not there.
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You can understand words: those secrets are not words. You can understand concepts: those secrets are not concepts. They are not philosophies, doctrines. Those secrets are the innermost energy of the master, his treasure of being. If you rise higher and higher, then only will you be nearer and nearer the master, and only when the master feels that you can sit on the same mat can the secrets be given to you. Not before. Even if he wants to give, he cannot. To whom?
He would like to give them out of his compassion, but they will be simply wasted.
It happened in the same way that a Sufi mystic, Dhun-nun had a disciple. The disciple must have been like Yin Sheng, persistent, asking again and again. One day, Dhun-nun gave him a stone and told him to go to the market, to the vegetable market, and to try to sell it. The stone was very big, it looked beautiful. But the master said: "Don't sell it, just try to sell it: observe, go to many people and just report to me how much we can get for it from the vegetable market." The man went. Many people looked at it and they thought: It can be a good show-piece, our children can play with it, or we can use it as measures for our vegetables. So they offered, but just few small coins, like ten paisa. The man came back. He said: "At the most, we can only get ten paisa for it
- and responses were different, from two paisa to ten."
The master said: "Now you go to the gold market and ask people there. But don't sell it, just enquire how much." From the gold market the disciple came, very happy, and he said:
"These people are wonderful. They are ready to give a thousand rupees for this. Responses were different, from five hundred to a thousand rupees."
The master said: "Now you go to the jewellers, but don't sell it." He went to the jewellers.
He couldn't believe it. They were ready to offer fifty thousand rupees. And when he wouldn't sell, they went on increasing the offers - they reached one hundred thousand rupees. But the man said: I am not going to sell it. They said: "We offer two hundred thousand rupees, three hundred thousand rupees, or whatsoever you say. But sell it!" The man said: "I cannot sell. I am just to enquire." He couldn't believe it - these people were mad. He himself thought that the price that was offered in the vegetable market was enough.
He came back. The master took the stone and said: "We are not going to sell it, but now you know that it depends on you, on if you have the touchstone, the understanding. You go on asking questions and you live in the vegetable market. You live in the vegetable market and you have the understanding of that market. Then you ask for valuable secrets: you ask for diamonds. First become a jeweller, and then come to me. Then I will teach you."
A certain quality of understanding is needed, only then can certain truths be given to you.
And secrets? You cannot ask for them, because in the very asking you show that you come from the vegetable market. You have to wait; you have to wait infinitely. Then you show that you are ready to sacrifice your whole life for them. Then you show how much you value the secrets - you are ready to sacrifice yourself completely. Then the master simply shares his being with you. Nothing is to be given, because these are not things. Energy simply jumps from the master towards you like a flame. It enters you and transfigures you completely.
"I USED TO THINK YOU INTELLIGENT - ARE YOU REALLY AS VULGAR AS ALL
THAT?"
This persistent asking shows a vulgar mind. You don't understand what you are asking.
Juvenile, childish, you seem to be absolutely uncultured, not knowing with whom you are, not knowing what you are asking.
And then he told his own story with his own master. It is a rare story.
"HERE, I WILL TELL YOU WHAT I LEARNT FROM MY OWN MASTER." 20
His own master was Lao Tzu, the source of the Taoist tradition, one of the greatest beings who have ever walked on the earth. Says Lieh Tzu:
"THREE YEARS AFTER I BEGAN TO SERVE THE MASTER, MY MIND NO LONGER
DARED TO THINK OF RIGHT OR WRONG, AND MY MOUTH NO LONGER DARED
TO SPEAK OF BENEFIT AND HARM. IT WAS ONLY THEN THAT I GOT SO MUCH
AS A GLANCE FROM THE MASTER."
Three years passed. He simply served the master. What else can you do? You can simply serve the master. Nothing else can be done by a disciple. No questioning. No asking. No demanding. A disciple simply becomes a shadow of the master, serves him, and through service, through his love, reverence, trust, a change starts in the mind.
Says Lieh Tzu:
"MY MIND NO LONGER DARED TO THINK OF RIGHT AND WRONG."
It became almost impossible to think about what is right and what is wrong. When you live near a master, you need not think. You simply move with him. You simply follow his movements. You leave everything to him. You surrender.
Says Lieh Tzu:
"MY MIND NO LONGER DARED TO THINK... AND MY MOUTH NO LONGER
DARED TO SPEAK OF BENEFIT AND HARM."
Because in living near a master your whole attitude starts changing. For the first time, from the window of the master, you look at the total: where wrong and right meet and mingle with each other, where darkness and light are no more separate.
Says Heraclitus: God is night and day, summer and winter, hunger and satiety.
Through the master first glimpses start coming to you. The master becomes a window: the closer you come the more your own understanding is thrown into chaos. Whatever you knew before becomes absolutely useless, futile. You are shaken. Your whole foundation is shaken.
You are thrown off-gear. You no longer know what is right and what is wrong. You have looked through the master at the whole, and the total comprehends all. The total comprehends all contradictions, the total comprehends all paradoxes, in the total all opposites meet and become one. That's why Lieh Tzu said that he no longer dared to think of what was wrong and what was right. All the criteria of
right and wrong dropped. All the concepts of what is benefit and what is harm simply evaporated.
"IT WAS ONLY THEN THAT I GOT SO MUCH AS A GLANCE FROM THE MASTER."
Three years of deep trust, service, and when the master saw that now the old mind was no longer functioning - the old mind, which lived in opposites, in divisions, good and evil, ugly and beautiful, this and that - that dividing mind was no more,
"IT WAS ONLY THEN THAT I GOT SO MUCH AS A GLANCE FROM THE MASTER."
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What does Lieh Tzu mean? Is it that for three years the master never looked at Lieh Tzu?
That is impossible. Serving the master continuously, the master must have looked millions of times. Then what does he mean by a glance?
A look and a glance are totally different. A look is a passive thing. When I look at you, my eyes function as a window, you are mirrored, it is not a glance. A glance means that my eyes don't function as windows, but that my eyes start functioning as a pouring of my energy into you. They are not passive; they are loaded with the master's energy. When the look is loaded with the master's innermost energy, then it becomes a glance. It is a very creative force. It simply goes to your very heart, like an arrow, it penetrates to your very deepest core. In a sense it is like an arrow, because it penetrates; in another sense it is like a seed
- you become pregnant. A glance is a look that makes you pregnant with the energy of the master. A glance is totally different from a look. In a glance the master travels from his own being to your center. A glance is a bridge. The master must have looked at Lieh Tzu many times in three years, but it was not a glance. And you will know the difference only when I give you a glance. Sometimes, I give you a glance - but whenever I give the glance to a certain person, only he knows, nobody else can know it. The glance has to be earned; you have to be ready for it. The look is okay, but the glance has a very intense energy in it. It is a transfer of the master's being, his first effort to penetrate you.
"IT WAS ONLY THEN THAT I GOT SO MUCH AS A GLANCE FROM THE MASTER."
Remember the difference between a look and a glance. A look is just a look - nothing more. A glance is qualitatively different - something moves. The look becomes the vehicle - it is no longer empty, something travels with it.
If you have fallen in love with somebody you may know what a glance is. The same woman had looked at you many times, but it was an ordinary look - as everybody else looks at you. Then suddenly one day, a spring morning, she gives you a glance. It is totally different; it is an invitation; it is an offer; it is a call. Suddenly something pierces your heart. Now the woman is no longer the same. Something has happened between you. Something only you two will know, something absolutely private. It is not public, nobody else will be aware that something has happened; that a look has become a glance.
But this is nothing, a love glance is nothing compared to when a master looks at you, and it is no longer a look but a glance. Because when two lovers look at each other with a loving glance, they stand on the same plane. The glance cannot be very loaded; it is just like a river moving on the same plane. When a master looks at you, it is like a tremendous waterfall, because the planes are different. It is as if Niagara is falling into you. You are completely washed away and you will never be the same again. You cannot be the same again - there is no return.
Once a master has glanced at you, your innermost being hums is a different way, lives in a different rhythm. In fact you are no longer the same: the old has disappeared through the glance and a new being has come into being. That's what Lieh Tzu says - for three years of serving the master continuously, waiting and waiting, not asking anything, one day, he got a glance from the master.
"AFTER FIVE YEARS MY MIND WAS AGAIN THINKING OF RIGHT AND WRONG, AND MY MOUTH WAS AGAIN SPEAKING OF BENEFIT AND HARM. FOR THE
FIRST TIME THE MASTER'S FACE RELAXED INTO A SMILE." 22
Try to penetrate this story: this is your story. It is not something that happened in the past, it is something which is going to happen in the future. All Zen stories
are future stories about you. So don't think it is something that happened in the past. Zen is never in the past, it is always in the future. And you have to bring it into the present. What happened? After three years of serving the master he didn't dare to think of what was right and wrong, didn't dare to say what was right and wrong, what was harmful and what was beneficial. Then what happened after the glance?
"MY MIND WAS AGAIN THINKING OF RIGHT AND WRONG, AND MY MOUTH
WAS AGAIN SPEAKING OF BENEFIT AND HARM."
What happened? First you think something is right and something is wrong, because society has conditioned you that way. It is not your thinking, it is not you; it is the society in you. Society has conditioned your mind. It has penetrated within you and controls you from there.
Now scientists say that sooner or later we will be able to fix electrodes in the deepest part of the mind and, through those electrodes, a man will be able to be controlled. The government will be able to control the whole country, and you will not know that somebody else is controlling you. You will feel that you are doing these things. You can be pacified immediately: a knob has only to be pushed. You can be made angry: a knob has only to be pushed.
Delgado did a very famous experiment. He fixed an electrode, a small, tiny electrode, in the brain of a bull. Then he gave a public demonstration. He had a small mechanism in his hand, just a small radio with a few buttons on it. He pushed one button and the bull rushed towards him, ferocious, and everybody became concerned that Delgado would be killed. Just in the nick of time, exactly when the bull was going to penetrate Delgado, he pushed another button. Suddenly, the bull stopped as if dead, like a statue. The inside electrode was controlled by the wireless - the bull would become ferocious just by pushing a button, and it could be stopped just by pushing a button.
This is a very, very new finding but society has been doing it since pre-historical days in a different way, in a subtle way. Society doesn't fix an electrode in your mind although soon it will do that, because it will be cheaper, and easier, and then there will be no possibility for human freedom. Delgado has done one of the most dangerous things, more dangerous than atomic energy, an atom bomb,
or an H-bomb - because they can kill your bodies, but Delgado can kill your very soul, the very possibility of your freedom. And you will not be able to know that you are functioning because of somebody else's directions, you will think that you are doing it.
The same is being done by society in a very subtle, primitive way. Society teaches you what is right and what is wrong. From the very childhood it forces what is right and what is wrong onto your mind and then continuous repetition hypnotizes you - the continuous repetition and feedback. Whenever you do right you are appreciated, and whenever you do wrong you are condemned. Whenever you do right, there is a positive feedback; prizes are given to you, appreciations. Whenever there is something wrong, a negative feedback is given; you are punished, condemned. This is how society has been fixing the electrode inside you. Then it controls. If your society has conditioned you to be a vegetarian, you cannot eat meat. Not that meat cannot be eaten, but simply the electrode, the conditioning controls and, seeing the meat, you will start vomiting. It is nothing that you are doing, it is being done by society, and every society conditions in its own way. That's why it is very difficult to live in another society; to live in a foreign country becomes difficult. Your conditionings are 23
different and their conditionings are different and all moralities are nothing but conditionings.
So when a person starts moving towards the ultimate freedom and truth, first the conditioning of the society falls.
That's what happened to Lieh Tzu. After three years of serving the master, watching, living, being with him, he came to know that all right and wrong are just social conditionings.
They fell. Then arises your own conscience. The real conscience. The conscience that you carry right now is false, it is borrowed. Then arises your own conscience: then you have your own vision of what is right and what is wrong. That is what happened.
"AFTER FIVE YEARS MY MIND WAS AGAIN THINKING OF RIGHT AND WRONG, AND MY MOUTH WAS AGAIN SPEAKING OF BENEFIT AND HARM. FOR THE
FIRST TIME THE MASTER'S FACE RELAXED INTO A SMILE."
Not that the master was continuously sad for these eight years. Hard, serious? No! A master like Lao Tzu is always laughing. He is not a serious man. Seriousness is a disease. An enlightened man is always playful; his whole life is nothing but a play. How can he be serious?
What happened? For these eight years, did Lao Tzu never laugh nor smile? No, that is not the point: he must have laughed many times, and he must have smiled many times. But for Lieh Tzu, in his innermost being, something happened on that day: for the first time the master's face relaxed into a smile. A master has to haunt the disciple continuously; he has to be very hard; out of compassion, he has to work continuously. This is about the inner face, not about the outer face. For these eight years Lao Tzu must have followed the innermost being of Lieh Tzu with a very hard face, very hard, for the inner discipline. Then seeing that Lieh Tzu's own conscience had evolved, he must have smiled, for the first time. That smile was concerned with the inner, not the outer face. For the first time, Lieh Tzu felt many smiles from the master falling on him like showers. He could feel that the master had relaxed about him - no longer hard, no longer a taskmaster. He had smiled.
Once your own conscience has arisen, there is no need for the master to be hard on you. He had to be hard because you had a false conscience in the first place. That had to be destroyed.
Then he had to be hard because your own conscience has to be crystallized. When it has crystallized, you have your own center of being; then the master can smile and relax. Half the work is done. Now there is no need for any outer discipline from the master for you. You have your own conscience. Now you have your own inner light, which will show you what is wrong and what is right. Now you can move on your own.
That is the meaning of the master smiling - it is felt. When really you attain to your own conscience, you will feel the master's smiles falling within you, showering; they will surround you from every corner of your being. That is why the master celebrates the birth of your inner conscience.
"AFTER SEVEN YEARS I THOUGHT OF WHATEVER CAME INTO MY MIND
WITHOUT ANY LONGER DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN RIGHT AND
WRONG, AND I SAID WHATEVER
CAME INTO MY MOUTH
WITHOUT ANY LONGER
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN BENEFIT AND HARM. AND FOR THE FIRST TIME
THE MASTER PULLED ME OVER TO SIT WITH HIM ON THE SAME MAT."
Again, it is like a spiral or like a mountain path. You come again to the same point at a higher altitude, again and again, the inner spiral. The false conscience fell, the conditioning of society fell and your own inner conscience arose. Now that too disappears.
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"AFTER SEVEN YEARS I THOUGHT OF WHATEVER CAME INTO MY MIND
WITHOUT ANY LONGER DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG, AND I SAID
WHATEVER CAME
INTO MY MOUTH
WITHOUT ANY LONGER
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN BENEFIT AND HARM."
This is total relaxation. A conscience, an inner conscience, is also needed because you are not absolutely natural. An outer conscience is needed because you don't have an inner conscience. The inner conscience is needed because you are not absolutely natural yet: something wrong can happen through you. But when you are absolutely natural, what Tilopa calls "loose and natural", then no harm can happen through you. You simply are no more; you cannot harm. Now there is no need, so your inner conscience also dissolves. Now you become like a small child, simple and pure, saying things that happen to you, thinking things that happen to you. Thoughts float in your mind, but you are not concerned; your mouth says things, you are not concerned. It is like a small child, or like a madman: absolutely relaxed, as if there is nobody in control. And when the control is completely lost, the ego disappears because the ego is nothing but the controller - when there is no control, who are you? You are just like a river flowing towards the ocean, or like a cloud floating in the sky. You are no longer there; the human, the ego, has disappeared. Now you are simply natural.
"AFTER SEVEN YEARS I THOUGHT OF WHATEVER CAME INTO MY MIND ..."
You cannot do anything, because there is nobody to do. If thoughts come, they come. If they don't come, okay; if they come, okay. The mouth says something - there is nobody to control it, so it says. Sometimes somebody asks and no answer comes; such a man will remain silent. Sometimes there is nobody asking anything and this man laughs and answers, because it comes. This man behaves like a madman!
In India, there is a sect, a particular sect, called BAUL - the word BAUL means the mad.
They live in this third state continuously. They do whatsoever happens: no good, no bad, no choice on their part. They move like winds, and they are one of the most beautiful phenomena in the world. They dance, they sing, even sometimes when there is nobody, on a lonely path, they will still be singing; like a flower that has come to bloom on a lonely path where nobody walks. But the flower has the fragrance to spread, and it goes on spreading the fragrance.
They live simply "loose and natural".
"AND FOR THE FIRST TIME THE MASTER PULLED ME OVER TO SIT WITH HIM
ON THE SAME MAT."
Now the disciple has disappeared; the ego is no longer there. Now the master and the disciple have become one, now there is no distinction. The master pulled Lieh Tzu over, for the first time pulled him over to sit with him on the same mat. Just symbolic, but deep inside very, very significant. The master has pulled him towards him now, seeing that no barrier exists, there is no ego to resist. When the disciple disappears, the master also disappears.
The master was not there, in fact, from the very beginning. It was only because of the ego of the disciple that he was the master. The disciple was ignorant, that's why he was the master. Now there is no disciple and no master. Both have disappeared.
The master has pulled him onto his own mat; inside, the master has pulled him and they have become one. This is MAHAMUDRA. This is the orgasm that happens between a master and a disciple when they meet. A faint glimpse can come to you through sexual orgasm, very 25
faint, very pale. But it is difficult to have any other parallel, that's why I say through sexual orgasm - something of the same happens. Something. As a drop can be compared to the ocean
- just like that. Sexual orgasm is like a drop, and when a spiritual orgasm happens between a master and a disciple it is an oceanic feeling.
"AFTER NINE YEARS I THOUGHT WITHOUT RESTRAINT OF WHATEVER CAME
INTO MY MIND, AND SAID WITHOUT RESTRAINT WHATEVER CAME INTO MY
MOUTH WITHOUT KNOWING WHETHER THE RIGHT OR WRONG, BENEFIT OR
HARM WERE MINE OR ANOTHER'S, AND WITHOUT KNOWING WHETHER THAT
MASTER WAS MY TEACHER OR NOT. EVERYTHING WAS THE SAME."
First the good and bad disappeared, then benefit and harm disappeared, and then the idea: Who is who? You and me, I and thou, they disappeared.
Martin Buber has written a beautiful book, "I and Thou". Jewish mysticism comes to this point then remains stuck there. It is one of the very high points, where the disciple and the master are the seeker and the whole. They come to a point of direct dialogue between "I" and
"Thou", but they remain there. Eastern mysticism takes the final jump - "I" and "Thou" also disappear. The dialogue disappears. There is only silence.
EVERYTHING WAS THE SAME.
Now Lieh Tzu was not even aware whether Lao Tzu was his master or not. He was not aware whether he was a disciple or not.
In such moments many unbelievable things have happened in the history of Zen. The master always hits the disciple many times in many years. Sometimes he throws him out of the door and kicks him! Zen masters are very harsh. And then the disciple becomes enlightened, after twenty or thirty years of hard work and discipline with the Master. And he comes and he slaps the master - this has never happened anywhere before. And the master laughs, a belly laugh, and he says: Exactly right. You did well.
It happened once that a disciple was going on a journey and the master called him and hit him hard on the head and slapped him. And the disciple said: "This
is too much. I have not done anything. I have not even uttered a single word. I entered your room and you started hitting me. This is too much." The master said: "No! You are going on a journey and I can see that the moment you come back, you will be enlightened. And this is my last chance to hit you!"
"NOW YOU COME TO BE MY DISCIPLE
said Lieh Tzu to Yin Sheng
AND BEFORE EVEN A YEAR HAS GONE ROUND YOU ARE INDIGNANT AND
RESENTFUL TIME AND TIME AGAIN."
It took twenty-four years for Lieh Tzu to come to a point where the master pulled him onto his mat, and opened his heart and the hidden-most secret of his being. And this disciple had only been here for one year and he felt resentful, aggressive, angry, because Lieh Tzu wouldn't answer his questions and wouldn't give him the secrets he was hankering for.
What is one year in the infinite expanse of eternity? Nothing. But your hurry makes it look very, very long. Twenty-five centuries have passed since Lieh Tzu was. If he came back, he 26
would not be able to believe that it has become almost impossible for people to wait for even one year. I have come across people who say: We have come only for three days. I have come across people, who meditate once, and then they come to me and they say: Nothing has happened yet.
Man has become more and more stupid, vulgar. You can get small things easily, they are like seasonal flowers: you put the seed in the soil, and within three weeks they sprout. But, by the season's end, they will be gone. They are momentary. You can have instant coffee: you cannot have instant meditation. In the mind of the West particularly, time is too important, too heavy. The West is time obsessed. Listening to these Eastern tales, you may enjoy them, but you must be aware about your own time obsession. In the West everything is done in such a hurry that you cannot enjoy anything. You move from one place to another, always on the go, travelling fast. The faster you go the less significance there is in travelling, because you go from one point to another and all that is in between is lost. To travel by a bullock-cart has a beauty of its own. To travel by a
jet plane is foolish because it is not travel at all. It may be a business trip. That's okay. For business it's okay. You save time. But for travelling, for travelling you have to move slowly. There is nothing like wandering on your feet, then you enjoy each moment of it - each tree that passes by. You become one with millions of things, and you are enriched through it.
Because of time obsession, speed has become the only goal. You don't know where you are going, but you are very happy because you are going fast. The direction is lost but speed is in your hand.
This mind will not be able to seek the ultimate because the ultimate means the eternal. It is not like a seasonal flower: it is the ultimate, eternal tree. For it to become a soil, and for it to take roots in you, infinite patience and waiting is needed. If you can only wait, then all else, I can promise, will come. You simply wait with me, and everything will follow. But don't be in a hurry and don't ask for secrets - they will be given to you when you are ready. They are always given. In fact, to say that they are given is not exactly right. When you are ready, you will suddenly find that whatsoever you were trying to achieve was already within you. You had it always: it was already the case. The master is just a catalytic agent; he sits silently, quietly, not doing anything. Spring comes and the grass grows by itself.
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CHAPTER 3 - Emptiness and the Monk's Nose 23 February 1975 a.m. in Buddha Hall
SEKKYO SAID TO ONE OF HIS MONKS: "CAN YOU GET HOLD OF EMPTINESS?"
"I'LL TRY", SAID THE MONK, AND HE CUPPED HIS HANDS IN THE AIR.
"THAT'S NOT VERY GOOD", SAID SEKKYO, "YOU HAVEN'T GOT ANYTHING
THERE".
"WELL, MASTER", SAID THE MONK, "PLEASE SHOW ME A BETTER WAY".
THEREUPON, SEKKYO SEIZED THE MONK'S NOSE AND GAVE IT A GREAT
YANK.
"OUCH!" YELLED THE MONK, "YOU HURT ME!"
"THAT'S THE WAY TO GET HOLD OF EMPTINESS", SAID SEKKYO.
Man is too full of himself and that is his undoing. Man should be like a hollow bamboo, so that existence can pass through him. Man should be like a porous sponge - not hard - so that the doors and the windows of his being are open, and existence can pass from one end to another without any hindrance; in fact, finding no one inside. The winds blow - they come in from one window and they go out from another window of his being. This emptiness is the highest bliss possible. But you are like a hard, unporous rock, or like a hard steel rod. Nothing passes through you. You resist everything. You don't allow. You go on fighting on all sides and in all directions as if you are in a great war with existence.
There is no war going on, you are simply befooled by yourself. Nobody is there to destroy you. The whole supports you; the whole is the very earth on which you are standing, the very sky in which you breathe, you live. In fact, you are not
- only the whole is.
When one understands this, by and by one drops the inner hardness; there is no need for it.
There is no enmity; the whole is friendly towards you. The whole cherishes you, loves you.
Otherwise, why are you here? The whole brings you forth, like a tree is brought forth by the earth. The whole would like to participate in all your blessings, in all the celebrations that are possible. When you flower, the whole will flower through you; when you sing, the whole will sing through you; when you dance, the whole will dance with you. You are not separate.
The feeling of separateness creates fear, and fear makes you unporous. The feeling of insecurity, as if the whole is going to destroy you, the feeling that you are a stranger here, an outsider, and that you have to fight your way inch by inch towards your destiny, makes you a hard steel rod. Of course, then many things simply disappear from your life. You live in anguish, you live in anxiety, you live in intense pain, but you live this of your own accord. Be porous. Be floating. Fight is not needed at all. Rather, a merger is needed.
These are the two attitudes open to man: the attitude of a warrior and the attitude of a lover. It is your choice - you can choose. But remember... certain consequences will follow.
If you choose the path of the warrior and you become a fighter with everything that surrounds you, you will always be in misery. This is creating a hell around you; in the very attitude of fighting the hell is created. Or you become a lover, a participant, then this whole is your home; you are not a stranger. You are at home. There is no fight. You simply flow with the river. Then, ecstasy will be yours; then each moment will become ecstatic, a flowering.
There is no hell except you and there is no heaven except you. It is your attitude, how you look at the whole. Religion is the way of the lover: science is the way of the fighter.
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Science is the way of the will, as if you are here to conquer, to conquer nature, to conquer nature's secrets; as if you are here to enforce your will and domination on existence. This is not only foolish, it is futile also. Foolish because it will create a hell around you, and futile because finally you will become more and more dead, less and less alive; you will lose all possibilities of being blissful. And, in the end, you will have to come back from it, because you can go for a while on the path of the will, but only frustration and more frustration will happen through it. You will be defeated more and more. You will feel more and more impotent, and more and more enmity will be around you. You will have to come back from it
- grudgingly, resistant, but you will have to come back from it. Finally, nobody can rest with a fighting attitude, because with a fighting attitude no rest is possible, you cannot relax.
The path of religion is the path of love. From the very beginning you are not fighting anybody. The whole exists for you, and you exist for the whole, and there is an inner harmony. Nobody is here to conquer anybody else. It is not possible. Because how can one part conquer another part? And how can a part conquer the whole? These are absurd notions which only create nightmares for you, nothing else. See the whole situation... you come out of the whole and you dissolve into it, and, in between, you are every moment part of it. You breathe it, you live it, and it breathes through you, it lives through you. Your life and its life are not two things - you are just like a wave in the ocean.
Once you understand this, meditation becomes possible. Once you understand this, you relax. You throw off all the armour that you have created around you as a security. You are no longer afraid. Fear disappears and love arises. In this state of love, emptiness happens. Or, if you can allow emptiness to happen, love will flower in it. Love is a flower of emptiness, total emptiness - emptiness is the situation. It can work both ways.
So there are two types of religion. One which creates emptiness in you and around you so that a flowering becomes possible; you have created the situation, now the flower bubbles up automatically. Finding no resistance, the seed suddenly blooms into a flower. There is a jump in your being, an explosion. Buddhism and Zen follow this path - they create emptiness in and around you.
There is another path also, a second type of religion, which creates love in you, which creates devotion in you. Meera and Chaitanya love, and they love the total so deeply that they find their beloved everywhere; on every leaf, on every stone, is the signature of the beloved.
He is everywhere. They dance because there is nothing else to do but celebrate. And everything is ready - only the celebration has to start on your part. Nothing else is lacking. A BHAKTA, a lover, simply celebrates, enjoys. And in that enjoyment of love and celebration, the ego disappears and emptiness follows.
Either you create emptiness, like a Buddha, Tilopa, Sekkyo and others or you create love, like Meera, Chaitanya, Jesus. Create one and the other follows, because they cannot live separately, they don't have any separate existence. Love is one face of emptiness; emptiness is nothing but love in another aspect, they come together. If you bring one, you invite one, the other follows automatically as a shadow of it. It depends on you. If you want to follow the path of
meditation, become empty. Don't bother about love - it will come of its own accord.
Or, if you find it very difficult to meditate, then love, then become a lover, and meditations This is how it should be because there are two types of human mind: the feminine and the male. The feminine mind can love easily but to be empty is difficult. And when I say feminine mind, I don't mean females, because many females have male minds, and many males have feminine minds. So they are not equivalent. When I say feminine mind, I don't mean the feminine body - you may have a feminine body but not a feminine mind. The feminine mind is the mind that feels love easier, that's all. That is my definition of the feminine mind: it is 29
one who feels love easily, naturally, who can flow into love without any effort. The male mind is one for whom love is an effort - he can love but he will have to do it. Love cannot be his whole being - it is just one thing of many other things, not even the most important. He can sacrifice his love for science, he can sacrifice his love for the country, he can sacrifice his love for any trivial affair, for business, for money, for politics. Love is not such a deep thing with him, a male mind. It is not as effortless as it is for a feminine mind. Meditation is easier.
He can become empty easily.
So this is my definition: if you find being empty easy, then do that. If you find it is very difficult, then don't be unhappy and don't feel hopeless. You will always find love easier. I have not come across a man who finds both difficult. So, there is hope for everybody. If meditation is difficult, love will be easier, it has to be. If love is easier, meditation will be difficult. If love is difficult, meditation will be easier. So just feel yourself.
And this is not concerned with your body, not with your physical structure, your hormones.
No. It is a quality of your inner being. Once you find it, things become very, very easy, because then you won't try on the wrong path. You can try on the wrong path for many lives but you will not attain anything. And if you try on the right path, even the first step can become the last, because you simply, naturally, flow into it. Nothing like effort exists -
effortlessly you flow.
Zen is for the male mind. Soon I will balance it by talking about Sufism, because Sufism is for the feminine mind. These are the two extremes - Zen and Sufism.
Sufis are lovers, great lovers. In fact, in the whole history of human consciousness, more daring lovers than Sufis have never existed, because they are the only ones who have turned God into their beloved. The God is the woman and they are the lovers. Soon I will balance.
Zen insists on emptiness, that's why in Buddhism there is no concept of God, it is not needed. People in the West cannot understand how a religion exists without the concept of a God. Buddhism has no concept of any God - there is no need, because Buddhism insists on simply being empty, then everything follows. But who bothers? Once you are empty, things will take their own course. A religion exists without God. This is simply a miracle. In the West, people who write about religion and the philosophy of religion are always in trouble about how to define religion. They can define Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, easily, but Buddhism creates trouble. They can define God as being the center of all religion, but then Buddhism becomes a problem. They can define prayer as the essence of religion, but again Buddhism creates trouble, because there is no God and no prayer, no mantra, nothing.
You have only to be empty. The concept of God will not allow you to be empty; prayer will be a disturbance; chanting will not allow you to be empty. Simply being empty, everything happens. Emptiness is the secret key of Buddhism. You are in such a way that you are not.
Let me explain a little more about emptiness to you, then it will be possible to go into this Zen anecdote.
Physicists have been working for three hundred years to find the base, the substance of matter, and the deeper they reached, the more they were puzzled. Because the deeper they groped, the less and less substantial matter was; the less and less material matter was. And when they really stumbled upon the source of matter, they simply couldn't believe it, because it was against all their conceptions. It was not matter at all: it was simply energy. Energy is non- substantial. It has no weight. You cannot see it. You can only see the effects of it; you can never see it directly.
Eddington, in 1930, said that we were in search of matter, but now all new
insight into matter shows that there is no matter, it looks more and more like a thought and less and less like a thing. Suddenly the insight of Buddha became very, very significant again, because Buddha did the same with human matter, the human stuff. Physicists were trying to penetrate 30
matter in an objective way to find out what was there inside it, and they found nothing. Total emptiness. And the same was discovered by Buddha in his inner journey. He was trying to find out who was there inside - the substance of human consciousness - but the more he penetrated, the more he became aware that it becomes more and more empty. And when he suddenly reached to the very core, there was nothing. All had disappeared. The house was empty. And around this emptiness everything exists. Emptiness is your soul, so Buddha had to coin a new word which had never existed before. With a new discovery you have to change your language. New words have to be coined, because you have revealed new truths and old words cannot contain them. Buddha has to create a new word. In India people had always believed in the reality of the soul, ATMA, but Buddha discovered that there was no soul, no ATMA. He had to coin a new word - ANATTA. ANATTA means no-self. The deepest hidden in you is emptiness - a state of no-self. You are not; you only appear to be.
Let me explain to you in a different way because it is one of the most difficult things to understand. Even if you understand intellectually, it is almost impossible to trust it. You are not? Your being seems so taken for granted. And you can always ask foolish questions.
Buddha was asked again and again: If you are not, then who is speaking? If you are not, then who becomes hungry? And who goes begging in the town? If you are not, then who is standing before me?
The emperor Wu, in China, asked Bodhidharma immediately: If you say that you are not and nothing is, and emptiness is the very substance of your inner being, then who is this fellow talking to me, standing before me? Bodhidharma shrugged his shoulders and said: I don't know.
Nobody knows, and Buddha says that nobody can know, because it is not a substance that you can encounter as an object; it is no-substance, you cannot encounter it. This Buddha calls realization: when you come to understand that the innermost emptiness cannot be known, it is unknowable, then you have become a realized man.
It is difficult, so let me again explain it to you. You go to a movie. Something beautiful is happening there. The screen is empty. Then the projector starts working. The screen disappears because the projected pictures hide it completely. And what are these projected pictures? Nothing but a play of light and shade. You see somebody throwing a spear on the screen, the spear moves fast. But what is happening exactly? The movement is only an appearance, it is not happening. It cannot happen. In fact a movie is not a movie at all, because it has no movement; all the pictures are still. But an appearance is created through a trick. The trick is that many still pictures of the spear in different positions are flashed on the screen so fast that you cannot see the gap between two pictures - and you have the feeling that the spear is moving. I raise my hand. You take a hundred pictures of my hand in different positions and then flash them so fast that the eyes cannot catch the gap between two pictures.
Then you will see the hand being raised. A hundred still pictures, or a million still pictures, are projected and the movement is created. And if the film is a three dimensional film and somebody is throwing a spear, you may be so much taken in by it, that you may lean to the right or to the left to avoid the spear. When three dimensional pictures came into existence for the first time, they scared people. With a horse running at you, you become afraid because the horse is soon going to enter the hall; and you may even lean to the right or left, as the case may be, to avoid the clash. The movement is false; it is not happening there, it is just fast-moving still pictures. And the falseness is not apparent unless you see the film moving very slowly, being projected very slowly.
The same, in a different sense, is happening in life. Thoughts are projected by your mind so fast that you cannot see the gap between two thoughts. The screen is completely covered by the thoughts and they move so fast that you cannot see that each thought is separate. That's 31
what Tilopa says: Thoughts are like clouds, without any roots, with no home. And a thought is not related to another thought; a thought is an individual unit, just like dust particles, separate. But they move so fast you cannot see the gap between. You feel they have a unity, a certain association. That association is a false notion, but because of that association, ego is created.
Buddha says: Fast-moving thoughts create an illusion, as if there is some center to them, as if they are related to one thing. They are not related, they are without roots - like clouds.
When you meditate you will understand that each single thought is an individual thought, not related to another. Between the two is the emptiness of your being. They come and go, but they come and go so fast that you cannot see the intervals. Ego is created.
And then you start feeling that there is somebody as a center in you to which everything belongs - thoughts, actions. But Buddha says that there is nobody inside you. When you go deeper you will understand the truth of it: it is not a philosophical doctrine.
Buddha can be defeated very easily by argument; he was thrown out of this country because Indians are great arguers. They have done nothing else for five thousand years but argue, and through argument Buddha can be defeated because the whole thing seems to be absurd. Buddha is saying that there are actions, there is no actor; there are thoughts, there is no thinker; there is hunger, there is satiety; there is illness, there is health; but there is no center to which they all belong. They are just like clouds moving in an empty sky, not related to each other at all. Through experience nobody can defeat Buddha, but through logic it is very simple.
Soon Buddha became aware that through logic he could be defeated very easily. So what to do? India had great scholars in those days, great pundits, great logicians, hair-splitters. So Buddha simply declared: I am not a metaphysician, I am not a philosopher, and I have no doctrine to offer. These are not conclusions of my intellect. If somebody wants to understand them, he will have to come and live with me, and do whatsoever I say. And after a year, if he lives with me silently in meditation, then I am ready to argue with him, never before.
And it happened that although many great scholars came to him, this was his condition.
Sariputta came. He was a very famous scholar, and he had five hundred of his own disciples.
They were great scholars in their own right: they knew all the Vedas, they knew all the Upanishads, they knew all the wisdom of the centuries, and they had very, very keen intellects. Sariputta came and Buddha said: You have come, that's good. But for one year you have to remain silent, because I have no doctrine to propose, so there is no possibility of any argument. I have something in my
being to share, but no doctrine to propose. So, if you like, you can be here.
Then came Moulunkaputta, another great scholar, and Buddha said the same to him: For one year you sit silently by my side, not raising a single question. For one year you have to let your mind subside and penetrate into the intervals. After one year, exactly one year, if you have some questions, I will answer.
Sariputta was also sitting there. He started laughing.
Moulunkaputta asked: "What is the matter? Why are you laughing?"
Sariputta said: "Don't be befooled by this man. If you have to ask anything, ask immediately, because after one year you will not be able to ask anything. This has happened to me. One year, meditating silently, questions disappeared. One year, meditating silently, the argumentative mind disappeared, and the arguer disappeared. One year, sitting by the side of this man, one becomes empty; and then he laughs, and then he plays tricks, and then he says:
'Now you ask. Where are your doctrines and principles and arguments?' And nothing arises inside. So, Moulunkaputta, if you have to ask, right now is the moment - otherwise, never."
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Buddha said: "I will fulfil my promise. If you remain one year and if you have any questions, I will answer, whatsoever the questions." Moulunkaputta remained. One year passed. He forgot completely about the year passing and that the day had come back; but Buddha remembered. After one year, on exactly the day, he said to Moulunkaputta: "Now you stand, Moulunkaputta, and you can ask."
Moulunkaputta stood there silent, with closed eyes, and then he said: "There is nothing to ask, and there is nobody to ask. I have completely disappeared."
Buddhism is an experience and Zen is the purest of all Buddha's teachings - the very essence. And the center around which the whole experience moves is emptiness.
How to become empty? That is what meditation is all about: how to become so silent, that you cannot even see yourself - because that too is a disturbance.
Feeling that "I am", is also a disturbance - even that goes. One is completely effaced, utterly effaced. The sheet is clean, it becomes like a summer sky - clouds are no longer there, just the depth, the infinite blueness, ending nowhere, beginning nowhere. This is what Buddha calls the ANATTA, the innermost center of non-being, of no-self. Buddha says: "You walk, but there is no walker; you eat, but there is no eater; you are born, but there is nobody who is born. You will be ill, and you will become old, but there is nobody who becomes ill and becomes old. And you will die, but there is nobody who dies." And this is what eternal life is... not being born, how can you die?
Not being there, how can you be ill or healthy?
These things happen, and if you become a deep witness to them, by and by you will know that they happen on their own accord. They are not concerned with you. They are not in any way happening in relation to you. Unrelated, homeless, rootless - this is the utter enlightenment.
Knowing this, that things happen, like dreams, one is not bothered this way or that, one is neither happy nor unhappy. One simply is not. Buddha says: "You can never be happy, because, in the very insistence that you are, unhappiness hides. You can never be liberated, because you are the bondage. Liberation is not of you, liberation is from you." This is the deepest core ever touched, the deepest core.
Mahavir says: "You will be enlightened." Buddha says: "You are the hindrance."
Mahavir says: "You will live in MOKSHA, in the ultimate state of consciousness
-
blissful, eternally blissful."
Buddha says: "Unless you die, you will never attain to that state."
You are the only barrier, the only hindrance, the only obstacle. When you are not, that state is. That state is not yours, you cannot claim it; in fact, because you are, you don't allow that state to be. It is already here within you, this very moment, but you don't allow it to function.
You try to control it, manipulate it. The ego is the great manipulator, the controller, and the controller disappears. That is what I am trying to do with you with these many meditations.
The effort is how to drop the control, how to drop the great manipulator.
You whirl in a Dervish dance. In the beginning you are there. Soon you feel nausea, but that nausea is not only physical, it is deeply spiritual. You start feeling nausea when the moment comes for control to be dropped. When that moment nears, you start feeling nausea.
The nausea is that the control is being lost. You feel dizzy; you feel that you may fall down.
These are not just physical things - deep inside the ego is feeling as if it is being thrown off the track. The ego is feeling dizzy. It is feeling that if this whirling continues for even a little longer, I will not be able to be there. You start to feel like vomiting. In fact, that vomit is not only physical, just one part is physical; a deeper part is the vomit of the ego. If you continue to feel disturbed, there will be a physical vomiting, but if you don't bother about it, soon 33
physical vomiting will disappear. And then the real vomit will happen: one day, suddenly, the ego is vomited. Suddenly an ugly phenomenon within you escapes; suddenly the disease from you is thrown out; suddenly you are ego-free. It happens unexpectedly. When it happens for the first time, you cannot even believe it; you cannot believe that, without the ego, you are.
There is nobody inside, and you are; and you are so perfect and so beautiful and so blissful -
without anybody being there!
The ego has to be thrown off-center, because it has become so deeply rooted in your mind, through many lives. It has usurped the whole being; emptiness has been thrown into the background, into the unconscious, and the ego has usurped the throne. Now the ego has become the king, and it goes on manipulating everything.
This parable, this small anecdote, will tell you many things about how the ego can be thrown off-center.
SEKKYO SAID TO ONE OF HIS MONKS: "CAN YOU GRAB HOLD OF EMPTINESS?"
"I'LL TRY", SAID THE MONK AND HE CUPPED HIS HANDS IN THE AIR.
The master is playing a trick. The master asked: "Can you get hold of emptiness?" The question is tricky, and if the disciple was of any understanding, he would not have tried. The very effort to catch hold of emptiness is stupid. You can catch hold of something; you cannot catch hold of nothing. How can you catch hold of nothing? The disciple still feels that emptiness is something; he still feels that emptiness is not empty - it is a name, a label of something which can be caught hold of. If he had a little understanding, even a little understanding, he would have done something else than catch hold of emptiness. That was the test.
There are stories where a master asks a disciple: "Can you get hold of emptiness?" and the disciple seizes the master's nose and gives it a great yank - that would have been absolutely right, because the question is absurd. Whatsoever you try it is going to fail from the very beginning. Nothing will help.
These are the Zen koans. A Zen master gives you an absurd problem, which cannot be solved. There is no answer to it.
I have heard about a toy-shop somewhere in America. A father was purchasing a toy puzzle for his child. He tried to fix it, and he tried and tried in many ways, but something was always wrong, it wouldn't work. So he asked the manager of the shop: "If even I cannot make head or tail out of this, how do you suppose that a small child will be able to?" The manager said: "Nobody can do it. This is just to give the child a taste of modern life. It is not meant to be, nobody can do it, it cannot be fixed. The part, the different parts, are not made to fix."
This was just to give a taste of modern life: whatsoever you do, nothing is of any avail; in the end you will feel frustrated. Do this or that, there are millions of alternatives, but all are false, because they fail from the very beginning. The puzzle was not a puzzle, but an absurdity. A puzzle is that which can be solved by some intelligence. An absurdity is that which by its very nature is not solvable, cannot be solved. A koan is an absurd puzzle.
The master says: "Can you get hold of emptiness?" Now, from the very beginning, any solution is debarred. In the very wording of the question he has
created an absurdity. How can you catch hold of nothing? You can of course, catch hold of something. But nothing?
Emptiness? All your efforts are doomed from the very beginning. And this is the whole thing: the master is trying to help the disciple to become aware, but the ego takes the problem immediately and starts trying to solve it. It becomes a challenge.
That's why so many people try a crossword puzzle, this and that. Just looking at the newspaper their ego is challenged; they have to solve it, otherwise it will haunt them. They 34
are so intelligent, how can this puzzle exist? They will have to solve it, it becomes an obsession. Millions of people waste millions of hours solving foolish things. The ego takes up the challenge.
When the master said: "Can you get hold of emptiness?" he was exciting the ego and ego is the most stupid thing in human life. You can excite it by anything - by anything.
At an advertisement in the newspaper: Do you have a two-car garage, or only a one-car garage? - immediately the ego feels disturbed because other people have a two-car garage, and you have only one. Your life is wasted. You existed for nothing, Move fast, borrow money. Do something! Even if you get ulcers on the way, it is okay. Cancer one can tolerate, but one cannot tolerate a one-car garage. Commit suicide, but you have to have a two-car garage. Ego is the most stupid thing, and the whole market of salesmen and advertisers depends on your ego. They excite the ego: they exploit you. And it is difficult to prevent them unless you drop the ego. They will go on and on. A big car becomes an ego symbol.
I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin went to America. In his town he had never seen a bigger car than a FIAT. When he saw such big cars he was simply puzzled: What to call them?
Because they are not cars, and they are not buses; and in such a big car only one person sits or a dog. What is the matter? He saw such big houses - what to call them? In his town a two-storey house is called an ATARI, a palace. Then he saw a hundred-storied house. His mind boggled. You cannot call it a house, you cannot call it a palace - there simply exists no word for it.
And then he saw Niagara. He closed his eyes and he said: "It seems I am seeing a dream."
He had seen small waterfalls, his town had a waterfall, but it ran only in the rainy season.
What is this? And he became so puzzled that it was even impossible to appreciate such big, tremendous things; and he was not able to say anything to the guide. So then he started feeling guilty - he should say something.
Then they came across a small river. So Mulla Nasruddin thought: This is the opportunity.
And he said: "It seems somebody's car radiator is leaking."
Things go on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger just because of the ego. They are not needed. There exists no necessity for them. Life becomes more and more complex because of the stupid ego. And once it takes the challenge, it is always ready to take it, without even asking if this is possible, impossible, rational, irrational.
The master Sekkyo said:
"CAN YOU GRAB HOLD OF EMPTlNESS?" "I'LL TRY", SAID THE MONK.
This is the answer of the ego: "I will try." It takes all sorts of challenges and a koan is a great challenge. It is made in such a way that you cannot solve it. And trying to solve it, you will become aware that your very effort to solve it is idiotic. In trying to solve it, you will become aware that you have taken the challenge. That was wrong. The one who says within you: "I will try and I will do", is impotent.
A koan is given to a disciple to feel the impotency - which you cannot do - to feel the helplessness, because the ego can disappear only in a helpless state, otherwise not. The ego can disappear only when it is a total failure; when not even a slight possibility of its success exists. Only then, otherwise it can go on hoping that it will do something else, or something else, and it will try this alternative and that. There must exist a possibility for the emptiness to be caught,
for you to catch hold of it: I will try. Remember always to watch before you say: "I will try." Don't allow the ego to come in. Just watch. Be intelligent, don't be egoistic.
Intelligence is good. Being egoistic in fact hinders the functioning of your intelligence. Such a 35
simple thing. The disciple should have hit the master, right then and there. What type of nonsense are you telling me?
But people have tried to solve all sorts of nonsense, because the ego says: There must be some way. The ego says: If the problem exists, the solution must exist. What is the necessity?
You can create a problem, but there is no necessity in nature for the solution to exist.
And, as I have observed, ninety-nine per cent of the problems of philosophy are foolish.
They cannot be solved, but great minds are involved in solving them. For example, simple problems like: "Who created the world?" are foolish, but great theologians, religious people, scholars, waste their whole life on them. For thousands of years many have been worried about who created the world. And it cannot be solved; it is a koan. It is absurd, because the very question is such, the nature of it is such, that whatsoever you do, it will again jump up and stand on its feet, it will not be killed.
For example, if you say: A created the world, immediately the question is there: Who created A? B created A. Then the question is there: Who created B? You go on, and on, and finally, just fed up with the whole thing, you will have to say: This Z, nobody created this Z.
But why get to Z? Why not say in the first place that nobody created this world? Why go from A to Z? When you have to concede that nobody created God, then why say that God created the world? If God can exist without being created, then why not this existence? There seems to be no reason. But people go on, and they think that they are doing very serious religious thinking. This is not religious at all; in fact, no thinking is religious. Non-thinking is religious.
Can you get hold of emptiness? What nonsense! Emptiness is nothing, how can you get hold of it? It has no boundaries, no limitations to it, it is not possible, but the ego says: I will try.
"I'LL TRY", SAID THE MONK, AND HE CUPPED HIS HANDS IN THE AIR.
Not only did he say it, he tried - he cupped his hands in the air. You may think that you would have done better. What would you do? Whatsoever you do will be the same. Without knowing what you would do, I say it will be the same. You jump this way and that, and try to catch hold - you will simply look foolish.
... AND HE CUPPED HIS HANDS IN THE AIR.
"THAT'S NOT VERY GOOD", SAID SEKKYO, "YOU HAVEN'T GOT ANYTHING
THERE".
There is something to be understood here - if your hands are open, emptiness is there; if your hands are not open, and you have made a fist, emptiness has disappeared. In a fist there is no space; in an open hand the whole sky is there, but it is in an open hand. The meaning is very subtle, but very beautiful - if you try to catch hold of it you will miss, if you don't try it is already there. If you don't try, in your open hand the whole sky exists; nothing less than that.
If you try to catch hold of the sky, and you make a fist out of your hand, everything has disappeared.
What is there in your fist? Maybe a little stale air - and that too shows that the fist is not exactly complete. That's why. If the fist is exactly complete, the whole sky has disappeared from it.
The ultimate is already there; no effort is needed to get it. In the very effort you miss and lose and go astray.
One man came to Lin Chi, a great Zen master, and said: "I am very troubled. I would like to become a Buddha myself. What to do?" Lin Chi chased him out with his staff, out of the 36
temple. He hit him hard, the man started running, and he chased him out of the temple.
Somebody who was standing by said: "This is too hard. The poor man has not asked anything wrong. He was simply asking a very religious question, and he looked very sincere - you should have looked at his eyes, his face. He had really travelled a long way to come to you, and he was asking a simple sincere, religious question: how to become a Buddha. And what you did seems to be too hard on the poor man, and unjustified." Lin Chi said: "I chased him out because he was asking an absurd thing. He is already a Buddha. If he tries, he will miss.
And if he can understand why I hit him and chased him out, then he should leave all effort -
there is nothing to be achieved, he has just to be himself. He has to be just whatsoever he is."
Be loose and natural, what Tilopa says, and then Buddha is already there in the inner shrine. One has not to become a Buddha; one is always born a Buddha. Buddhahood is your innermost essential nature. You need not enquire about it: you need not try for it.
The poor seeker went to another master, thinking that this Lin Chi was mad: I ask a simple question and he hits me hard, and then chases me out of the temple. He is completely insane.
He went to another master; a master who was opposed to Lin Chi. They had their monasteries nearby in the same hills. He went there. He felt: This man will be right, because he is opposed to Lin Chi. And now I know why he is opposed.
He went to the master, the other master and asked the same question. The master said:
"Have you ever been before to any other master?" He said: "Yes. But it was wrong of me to go there. I went to see Lin Chi. He hit me hard, and chased me out of the temple." Suddenly, the master became very ferocious, as if he would kill him. He pulled his sword out of his sheath, and the man ran away. The master said: "What do you think? Do you think I am an ignorant man? If Lin Chi can do that, I will kill you completely."
He asked somebody on the way what to do. The man said: "You go back to Lin Chi, he is more compassionate." And he did. When he went back Lin Chi asked: "Why have you come back?" He said: "The other man is dangerous, more dangerous than you. He would have completely killed me. He seems to be a maniac, ferocious." Lin Chi said: "We help each other. It is a conspiracy. Now you be here and never again ask how to be a Buddha, because you are already. One has just to live. You live like a Buddha. You don't bother, don't try to become one." And he became enlightened.
This is the greatest teaching possible: you live it out. And this is what I would like you to do also. You live it out - you need not bother to become, you are already. And Buddhahood is a being, it is never a becoming. You can never become. How can you become a Buddha?
Either you are, or you are not. How can you become? How can an ordinary stone become a diamond? Either it is or it is not; becoming is not possible. So you decide: either you are, or you are not. If you are not, forget everything about it. If you are, there is no need to think about it. In either way you simply be whatsoever you are, and in that very being everything is caught hold of - you can catch hold of emptiness without any effort.
"THAT'S NOT VERY GOOD", SAID SEKKYO, "YOU HAVEN'T GOT ANYTHING
THERE".
"WELL, MASTER", SAID THE MONK, "PLEASE SHOW ME A BETTER WAY".
There are no ways better or worse. The way doesn't exist, because the way means that something has to become. The way means that some distance has to be travelled. The way means that you and the goal are separate. The way is possible if I am travelling to come to you, the way is possible if you are travelling to come to me, but how is the way possible if I am trying to be myself? There is no distance.
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If you are trying to reach yourself, the way is not possible. There is no space, no distance.
You are already yourself, the way doesn't exist. That is why Zen is called the pathless path, the gateless gate. The gate is not there, and this is the gate. The pathless path - the path doesn't exist, and to understand this, is the path. The Zen effort is to throw you onto your reality immediately. There is no need to postpone.
"WELL, MASTER", SAID THE MONK, "PLEASE SHOW ME A BETTER WAY".
He is still in the same trap. The ego is asking: then something else may be possible; maybe something can be done and you can catch hold emptiness.
THEREUPON, SEKKYO SEIZED THE MONK'S NOSE AND GAVE IT A GREAT
YANK.
Why are Zen masters so rude? And only Zen masters are so rude. They have a real compassion, and you can be thrown to yourself only in such a way, there is no other way. You need shock treatment. Why shock treatment? Because only in a shock, for a small portion of time, does your thinking stop, otherwise not. Only in a shock you become aware, alert, your sleep drops. Otherwise you are a sleepwalker. Unless somebody hits you hard, your sleep cannot be broken.
THEREUPON, SEKKYO SEIZED THE MONK'S NOSE AND GAVE IT A GREAT
YANK.
"OUCH!" YELLED THE MONK, "YOU HURT ME!"
In this "Ouch!" is the whole mystery. Somebody yanks on your nose - what happens inside? The first thing is that it was never expected. The mind was expecting some intellectual answer. This is rather total. He was asking for some theory, some doctrine, some method, technique: he wanted a head-to-head communication. This is rather total. The total master jumps on him, just like a cat jumps on a mouse. A total thing. The whole cat jumps, not the head; and the whole mouse is caught, not the head. This is a total thing, unexpected.
And unexpectedness is the key, because if the mind can expect, there will be no
shock. If the mind can expect, then the mind is already dead. So if you go to Sekkyo, remember well - he will not do the same to you again, because you can expect it now. He will do something absolutely unexpected.
Because Zen masters hit, throw people out of the window, jump on them, do anything, it has sometimes happened in the history of Zen that people will come completely ready.
Dimensions are limited. What can you do? You can hit, you can throw, you can jump on the man. Just a few alternatives are there. So people will come completely ready. But you cannot deceive a master - he will not do anything; he will simply sit silently - and that will be unexpected.
Unexpectedness is the key, because in an unexpected moment the mind cannot function.
That's what "Ouch!" means. The mind has simply stopped. This voice doesn't come from the mind; it comes from your totality. It is not manipulated by the ego, because there is no time for the ego to manipulate, it has happened so suddenly, the master has jumped upon you so suddenly, there was no time to prepare, to get ready, to do something. This "Ouch!" comes from your whole body, mind, soul; from your very depth of emptiness it comes, it has a flavor of the total.
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And there is no manipulator, nobody has done it - it has happened. And when something happens and the doer is not, that is how you catch hold of emptiness.
This is emptiness. This
"Ouch!" comes from the inner emptiness. Nobody is a doer of it. The disciple has not done it: it has simply happened. And in that happening, in that "Ouch!" mind is not functioning. It has passed through the mind, but it has not come from the mind. And it has passed through the mind at such a fast speed, in fact, if you are really hurt on the nose, yanked, the "Ouch!" that happens breaks the sound- barrier. You go and ask the physiologists: it moves faster than sound. It has a total energy in it and it is beautiful, because this man may have completely forgotten the spontaneousness of being. He is thrown back to his spontaneousness. He is thrown from the mind deeper into his own innermost shrine: from there comes this "Ouch!"
Unexpected, not doing it, it happens. It happens out of emptiness, you have caught hold.
"OUCH!" YELLED THE MONK, "YOU HURT ME!"
And immediately comes back the echo: "You hurt me." It lasts only for a single moment, not even a single moment, a minute part of it, a glimpse, a lightning, and immediately the mind takes control again: You hurt me.
Look at these three words - you, hurt, me. This is the whole of life: you and me and the hurt. Immediately the whole mind is back, with all the basic elements; you, me and the hurt.
"THAT'S THE WAY TO GET HOLD OF EMPTINESS", SAID SEKKYO.
He has revealed it. He has not explained, he has already given it. He has not only indicated, he has created a situation in which it happened. That's what a master is for: to create a situation in which things happen to you, to create a situation in which you can become aware of the mechanicalness of the mind, and of the spontaneousness of your inner no-self. And then you can move, by and by, from the mind to the inner spontaneousness. You can become loose and natural. You have to understand that everything can go on without your mind trying to manipulate - everything in fact goes on very beautifully. The trouble starts when you take hold, when you try to manipulate, when you want the mind to be in the saddle - then the trouble starts. Otherwise everything goes on, and goes on so beautifully. There is no need to improve it, and you cannot improve it.
The master gave him a glimpse of his inner being, because the "Ouch!" came from the very center. It was not of the body, not of the mind. It was of the total, and in that moment he functioned as a spontaneous being, not as a doer.
This functioning can become your whole life - that's what religion should be. A religious life is a functioning of the spontaneous being. There are situations every moment. You act, but not as a doer, you act spontaneously. Somebody smiles, what do you do? You can smile as a doer, you can manipulate; you can smile because it will be impolite if you don't smile; you can smile, because in a society you have to exist and this man is very important. In fact, it is greatly flattering that he smiled at you, so you have to. It may be a bargain, a business, a trade, a social mannerism, or it may be simply an unconscious habit. Somebody smiles - you react, you smile. A push-button smile, your being is absolutely
unaffected. In fact, you are not in your smile at all. It is just on the lips, a painted thing: just an exercise of the lips, nothing in it, absolutely empty. You manipulate.
It happened once I stayed in a house and the man of the house died. He had no wife, so his sister came to help arrange things. And I was staying there and was simply watching what was happening. Whenever somebody came the sister would look out of the door and immediately she would start crying and weeping and saying things about the dead man: that he was so 39
beautiful and he is gone and her whole life will be now sad, a light has disappeared - and everything! And she would do it so mechanically; immediately saying something if somebody was coming. She in fact told me: You sit more outside in the garden. If somebody comes, simply give me a knock.
And when the person had gone, she was perfectly okay. Tears were flowing down her cheeks when she was crying and weeping, but as soon as the man was out of the house, his back towards the house, the tears would disappear and she was perfectly okay, talking and chatting and doing things. I was simply surprised. I asked: How do you do it? You could have been a perfect actress. You simply do it so perfectly that even the tears come down!
Manipulation. You are not only manipulating another's body, you are manipulating your own body - and this goes on and on continuously. All spontaneity is lost; you become a robot.
This is how life becomes ugly, crippled; this is how a hell is created. Then your love is false, your hate is false, your smile is false, your tears are false. And how do you suppose to live in such falsity and think of bliss; to live in such falsity and think of truth; to live in such falsity and think of liberation, MOKSHA? There is no MOKSHA for a false being. Falsity should drop. Be spontaneous, there is nothing to lose and everything to be gained.
In the beginning you may sometimes feel a little awkward because you wanted to smile, it was needed as a social mannerism but a spontaneous smile was not there. But only in the beginning. Soon your authenticity will be felt by others also, and soon your authenticity will start paying you. It pays so tremendously, that when a real smile comes to your lips, it will be as total as the "Ouch!" - the whole being smiles, the whole being becomes a smile. All around you your
smile spreads like ripples in consciousness. Everybody who is near you will feel a purity, a bath-like purity, and you will feel a tremendous bliss happening to you.
A simple act of authentic spontaneity, and immediately you are transported from this world to another world.
Love - or even anger... I tell you that even positive emotions, false, are ugly; and even negative emotions, authentic, are beautiful. Even anger is beautiful when your whole being feels it, when every fibre of you being is vibrant with it. Look at a small child angry - and then you will fell the beauty of it. His whole being is in it. Radiant. His face red. Such a small child looks so powerful that it seems he could destroy the whole world! And what happens to a child once he is angry? After a few minutes, a few seconds, everything is changed and he is happy and dancing and running around the house again. Why doesn't this happen to you? You move from one falsity to another. Really, anger is not a lasting phenomenon, by its very nature it is a momentary thing. If the anger is real, it lasts for a few moments; and while it lasts, authentic, it is beautiful. It harms nobody. A real, spontaneous thing cannot harm anybody. Only falsity harms. In a man who can be angry spontaneously, the tide goes after a few seconds and he relaxes perfectly to the very other extreme. He becomes infinitely loving.
On the contrary, it creates it again and again, renews it.
If a wife and husband never get angry, you can be certain there exists no love between them. That's absolutely certain. But if sometimes they get angry, really angry, that anger refreshes everything. In fact, after the anger is gone they will again have a new honeymoon.
Now everything is fresh, the storm has passed, it has cleaned everything. Again they are new.
They moved away, now they fall in love again. To fall in love again and again and again is the eternity of love. If there is no anger, real anger, if you are boiling within and just go on with a smile on the face because you are a husband and she is a wife and anger will create trouble - if now you smile, that smile is false. And the wife knows that your smile is false; and you also know that her smile is false. In the house you live a false life. And this falsity becomes so ingrained that you have completely lost track of what a real smile is, of what a real kiss is, of what a
real embrace is, you have completely lost track. Then you go through the motions -
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you embrace your wife, you kiss her, and you think of other things. You move through the motions but they are gestures, impotent, dead. How can your life be a fulfilment?
And I tell you that even negative emotions are good, if real; and if they are real, by and by, their very reality transforms them. They become more and more positive and a moment comes when all positivity and negativity disappears. You simply remain authentic: you don't know what is good and what is bad; you don't know what is positive and what is negative. You are simply authentic.
This authenticity will allow you to have a glimpse of the real. Only the real can know the real, the true can know the truth; the authentic can know the authentic that surrounds you.
That's the way to get hold of emptiness.
The master created a situation, allowed the disciple to move in a spontaneous act, howsoever small - just "Ouch!" and lightning happens. This can become a satori, the first enlightenment.
So remember a few things: you have to move from the mechanical to the spontaneous; from the mental, the verbal, to the non-mental, the non-verbal; from the part to the total; from the false to the real; and from the ego to the non- ego - from the self to the no-self. Already the no-self exists by the side of yourself. Just a change of attention, a change of gear is needed.
The non-mechanical exists by the side of the mechanical, the real is always waiting by the side of the false - just a change of gestalt, just a look towards the spontaneous is needed. Try it for twenty-four hours. Whenever you have an opportunity to move from the false to the real, from the mechanical to the authentic, immediately change the gear. And remain floating as if you are emptiness; don't try to control yourself too much. Remain loose and natural.
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CHAPTER 4 - The Cataract at Luliang 24 February 1975 a.m. in Buddha Hall
CONFUCIUS WAS LOOKING AT THE CATARACT AT LULIANG. IT FALLS FROM A HEIGHT OF TWO HUNDRED FEET, AND ITS FOAM REACHES FIFTEEN MILES
AWAY. NO SCALY FINNY CREATURE COULD SURVIVE THEREIN.
YET CONFUCIUS SAW AN OLD MAN GO IN. THINKING THE OLD MAN WAS
SUFFERING FROM SOME TROUBLE AND WAS THEREFORE DESIROUS OF
ENDING HIS LIFE, CONFUCIUS BADE A DISCIPLE RUN ALONG THE BANK TO
TRY TO SAVE HIM.
THE OLD MAN EMERGED ABOUT A HUNDRED PACES OFF, AND WITH FLOWING
HAIR, HE WENT CAROLING ALONG THE BANK.
CONFUCIUS FOLLOWED HIM, AND WHEN HE CAUGHT UP WITH HIM HE SAID: "I HAD THOUGHT, SIR, YOU WERE A SPIRIT, BUT NOW I SEE YOU ARE A MAN.
KINDLY TELL ME, IS THERE ANY WAY TO DEAL THUS WITH THE WATER?"
"NO", REPLIED THE MAN, "I HAVE NO WAY; PLUNGING IN WITH THE WHIRL, I COME OUT WITH THE SWIRL. I ACCOMMODATE MYSELF TO THE WATER, NOT
THE WATER TO ME. AND SO I AM ABLE TO DEAL WITH IT AFTER THIS
FASHION."
You have a thousand and one problems, and you try to solve them. But not even a single problem is solved. It cannot be solved, because in the first place there are not a thousand and one problems, there is only one; and if you see a thousand and one problems, you will not be able to see the one that really is. You go on seeing things which are not, and, because of that, you miss seeing that which is.
So the first thing to be understood is the basic, the only problem. It is perennial; it doesn't belong in particular to you, or to me or to somebody else. It belongs to man as such. It is born with you and, unfortunately, as is the situation with millions of people, the problem will die with you. If the problem can die before you die you have become enlightened. And the whole effort of religion is to help you to dissolve the problem before it has killed you completely.
There is a possibility of a man without any problems, and that is the religious man. He has no problems, because he has solved the basic problem. He has cut the root.
That's why Tilopa says: Cut the root of the mind. Don't go on cutting the leaves and the branches. There are millions, and, by cutting them, you will not be able to cut the root, and the tree will go on growing. It will become even denser and thicker and bigger if you go on pruning the leaves. Simply forget about the leaves. They are not the problems. The problem is somewhere in the root. Cut the root, and the tree by and by disappears, withers away.
So where is the root problem of the mind? It is neither yours, nor anybody else's; it belongs to man as such. It comes into existence the moment you are born, but it can dissolve before you die. A child is born...
Follow me step by step, if you can understand the problem rightly, it is solved immediately, because the problem carries its own solution within it. The problem is like a seed and the solution is like a flower that is hidden in the seed. If you can understand the seed correctly, totally, the solution is already there. To solve a problem is in fact not to solve it, but to understand it. The solution is not external to it, it is intrinsic. It is hidden in it. So don't look for solutions, just look deeper into the problem. Find the root. In fact, there is no need even to 42
cut. Once you have understood it, the very understanding becomes the cutting of the root. So, follow me step by step to see how the problem is born. And don't be concerned with the solution - that's how philosophy arises in the world. There is a problem; the mind starts to find some solution. Philosophy arises. There is a problem, the mind tries to understand it, religion is born.
... a child is born and the child is absolutely helpless, particularly the human child. He cannot survive without others' help. So this is the first thing: no problem exists for animals and trees and birds. They live a non-problematic life. They simply live without any problems, anxiety, ulcers, cancer: they simply live and enjoy and celebrate the moment while they are.
They have no problem in their life and they have no problem in their death - they live a non-problematic existence. Only a human child is born helpless. All other children, animals, trees, birds, can survive without the parents, can survive without society, can survive without a family. Even if sometimes help is needed, it is very little, a few days, at the most a few months. But a human child is so helpless; for years he has to depend, and it is there that the root has to be sought.
Why does helplessness create the human problem? The child is helpless, he depends on others; but the ignorant mind of the child interprets this dependence on others as if he is the center of the whole world.
The child thinks: Whenever I cry, my mother runs immediately; whenever I am hungry, just an indication, and the breast is given. Whenever I am wet, just a slight crying, weeping, and somebody comes and changes my clothes. The child lives like an emperor. In fact he is absolutely helpless and dependent, and the mother and the father and the family are all helping him to survive. They are not dependent on the child; the child is dependent on them.
But the ignorant mind of the child interprets it as if he is the center of the whole world, as if the whole world exists for him. And the whole world is, of course, very small in the beginning: the mother, on the fringe the father - this is the whole world. And they both love the child.
The child becomes more and more egoistic. He feels himself to be the very center of all existence. The ego is created. Through dependence, helplessness, the ego is created.
In fact the situation is just the contrary; there is no reason to create the ego. But
the child is absolutely ignorant, and he is not capable of understanding the complexity of the thing: he cannot feel he is helpless. He feels he is the dictator. And then for his whole life he will try to remain the dictator. He will become a Napoleon, an Alexander, an Adolph Hitler - your presidents, prime ministers, dictators, are all childish. They are trying for the same thing, they want to be the center of the whole existence: with them the world should live, with them the world should die; the whole world is their periphery and they are the meaning of it, the very meaning of life is hidden in them. The child, of course, naturally finds this interpretation correct, because when the mother looks at him, in the eyes of the mother he sees that he is the significance of her life. And when the father comes home he feels that he is the very meaning of the life of the father.
This lasts for three or four years - and the four years of the beginning of life are the most important; never again will there be such a potential time in life. Psychologists say that after the first four years the child is almost complete. The whole pattern is fixed; throughout his whole life he will repeat the same pattern in different situations. But the pattern is there already, complete. By the seventh year the child is perfect: now nothing else is going to happen to him. He has all his attitudes confirmed, his ego settled. Now he moves into the world, and then everywhere there will be problems, millions of problems. And he carries the root within him.
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Once out of the circle of the family, problems will arise. Because nobody bothers as your mother bothered about you; nobody is concerned as your father was concerned with you.
There is total indifference. And the ego is hurt. But now the pattern is set. Whether hurt or not the child cannot change the pattern, it has become the very blueprint of his being. He will play with other children and try to dominate. He will go to school and try to dominate, try to come first in class, to become the most important man. And he believes he is the "superior-most", but other children believe also in the same way. There is conflict, there are egos is fight, struggle.
Then this becomes the whole story of life: there are millions of egos around you, just like yours, and everybody is trying to control, manoeuvre, domineer - through wealth, power, politics, knowledge, strength, lies, pretensions,
hypocrisies, even religion, morality. And everybody is trying to dominate, to show the whole world that "I am the center". And this is the root of all problems.
Because of this concept, you are always in conflict and struggle, with somebody or other.
Not that others are enemies to you, everybody is just like you, in the same boat; the plight is the same for everybody else. They have been brought up in the same way.
There exists a certain school of psycho-analysts in the West who have proposed that, unless children are brought up without their father and mother, the world will never be at peace. I don't support them - because then they will never be brought up in any way. They have something of a truth in their proposal, but it is a very dangerous proposal. Because if children are brought up in nurseries without fathers and mothers, without any love, with total indifference, they may not have the problem of the ego, but they will have some other problems, in the same way dangerous, even more so.
If a child is brought up in total indifference he will have no center in him. He will be a hotchpotch being, clumsy, not knowing who he is. He will not have any identity. Afraid, scared, he will not be able to take even a single step without fear, because nobody loved him.
Of course, the ego will not be there, but, without the ego, he will have no center. He will not become a Buddha; he will be just a dull, inferior being, stupid and always feeling afraid. Love is needed to make you feel fearless, that you are accepted, that somebody loves you, that you are not useless, that you cannot be discarded in the junkyard. If children are brought up in such a situation, where love is lacking, they will not have egos, that's right. Their life will not have so much struggle and fight. But they will not be able to fight at all, and they will be always in flight, escaping; escaping from everybody, hiding in caves in their own being. They at home. They will simply be eccentric, off-center. That will not be a good situation either.
So I don't support these psycho-analysts. They will create robots, not human beings -
robots of course have no problems. They may create human beings like animals; there will be less anxiety, less ulcers, less cancer. But that is not worth achieving.
Then you are not growing to a higher peak of consciousness, you are falling downwards. It is regression. Of course, if you become an animal, there will be less anguish, because there will be less consciousness. And, if you become a stone, a rock, there will be no anxiety at all because there is nobody inside to feel anxious, to feel anguish. But this is not worth achieving. One has to be god-like, not rock-like.
And the meaning of the word "God" is this: to have absolute consciousness and still have no worries, no anxieties, no problems; to enjoy life like birds, and to have a consciousness that is absolutely perfect; to celebrate life like birds, to sing like birds - not by regression, but by growing to the optimum of consciousness.
The child gathers ego - it is natural, nothing can be done about it, I accept it. Only later on there is no need to carry it.
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That ego is needed in the beginning for the child to feel that he is accepted, loved, welcomed; that he is a guest, not uninvited, invited. The father, the mother, the family, the warmth around, help him to grow strong, rooted, grounded. It is needed; the ego gives him a protection. It is good. It is just like the shell of a seed. But the shell should not become the ultimate thing, otherwise the seed will die. The protection can become too much, then it becomes a prison. The protection must remain a protection, and when the moment comes for the shell, the hard shell of the seed to die into the earth, it should die naturally so that the seed can sprout and life can be born.
The ego is just a protective shell - the child needs it because he is helpless; the child needs it because he is weak; the child needs it because he is vulnerable and there are millions of forces all around. He needs a protection, a home, a base. The whole world may be indifferent, but he can always look towards the home, from there he can gather significance.
But with significance comes the ego. He becomes egoistic. And with this ego arises all the problems, the thousand and one problems. This ego will not allow you to fall in love and millions of problems will arise in your life. This ego would like everybody to surrender to you; this ego will not allow you to surrender to anybody - and love happens only when you surrender. When you force somebody to surrender, it is hate, destruction, it is not love.
And if there is no love, your life will be without warmth, without any poetry in it. It may be a plain prose, mathematical, logical, rational. But how can one live without poetry? Prose is okay, it is utilitarian, needed, but it can never be life because it can never be a celebration, it can never be festive. And when life is not festive, it is boredom. Poetry is needed, but for poetry you need surrender. You need to throw off this ego. If you can do it, put it aside, even for moments, your life will have glimpses of the beautiful, of the Divine. Without poetry you cannot really live, you can only exist. Love is poetry.
And if love is not possible, how can you pray? Then prayer becomes almost impossible, and, without prayer, you will remain just a body, you will never become aware of the innermost soul. Only in prayer do you reach to the peaks. Prayer is the highest peak of experience, but love opens the door. Prayer allows you into the innermost mystery of life.
When you cannot pray, then millions of problems arise.
Carl Gustav Jung, after a whole life of studying thousands of people, thousands of cases of people ill, psychologically defective, psychologically confused, said in his last testament: I have never come across a psychologically ill person whose real problem after the fortieth year is not religion. After the fortieth year... it is just like after the fourteenth year every boy and girl will have to tackle sex - and there will be problems. And if you tackle them wrongly, then those problems will continue, hovering around you.
Exactly as sex becomes mature at the age of fourteen, so a new dimension opens at the age of forty-two. Because every seven years there are biological, psychological and spiritual changes in your being - every seven years. Childhood is finished by the seventh year, by the fourteenth, adolescence is gone, by the twenty-first there are changes - every seventh year.
There is a rhythm in life. By the year forty-two a new dimension arises, the dimension of prayer, the religious dimension. And, if you cannot tackle it rightly, if you don't know what to do, you will be ill, you will lose all rest, you will become restless.
If you cannot love at the age of fourteen, you will not be able to pray at the age of forty-two.
You have been missing, and the whole growth is a continuity. If you miss one
step, it becomes discontinuous. The child gathers ego - he cannot love, and he cannot be at ease with anybody. The ego is constantly in fight. You may be sitting silently, but the ego is constantly in fight, just looking, watching how to dominate, how to become dictatorial, how to become the most supreme-most person in the world.
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This creates problems everywhere. In friendship, sex, prayer, love, society, everywhere you are in conflict. Even with the parents who have given this ego to you there is conflict. It is rarely that a son forgives his father, rarely that a woman forgives her mother. Rarely.
Gurdjieff had a sentence written in his room where he used to see the people. It is simply unbelievable that a man like Gurdjieff should write such a simple sentence on the wall. The sentence was this: If you are not yet at ease with your father and mother, then go away. I cannot help you. Why? Because the problem has arisen there and it has to be solved there.
That's why all the old Eastern traditions say love your father, respect your father as deeply as possible, because the ego arises there, that is the soil. Solve it there, otherwise it will haunt you everywhere.
Now psycho-analysts have also stumbled upon the fact; all that psycho-analysis does is it brings you back to the problems that existed between you and your parents and tries to solve them somehow. If you can solve your conflict with your parents, many other conflicts will simply disappear because they are based on the basic conflict. For example, a man who is not at ease with his father cannot believe in God, because God is a father-figure - the father of the whole. A man who is not at ease with his father cannot be at ease with the boss in the office -
never, because he is the father-figure. A man who is not at ease with his father cannot be at ease with his master or guru, because he is a father-figure. That small conflict with your parents continues to be reflected in all your relationships.
If you are not at ease with your mother, you cannot be at ease with your wife because she will be the representative woman; and you cannot be at ease with women as such, because your mother is the first woman, she is the first model of
a woman. If you hate your mother, or, if you have a certain conflict in your mind, if you cannot be with your mother for a long time, you feel bored and you want to escape, you will not feel at ease with any woman in the world.
Because wherever a woman is, your mother is, and a subtle relationship continues.
In India, in the ancient days, in the days of Upanishads, whenever a newly married couple came to an enlightened man the enlightened man would bless them with the blessing that they would become father and mother of ten children. And to the woman he would say: Let it be remembered that unless your husband becomes your eleventh child the marriage is not complete.
Why? Why should the husband become the eleventh child - otherwise the marriage is not complete? This is the reason: if the man has come to terms with his mother, he will finally find the mother again in his wife. A man remains a child, and a woman is a born mother. So the ultimate flowering of a woman is to become a mother of the whole. That's why I call my SANNYASINS "Ma" - mothers. And the ultimate peak of a man is to become child-like, innocent again like a child and then the whole world and existence become the mother. This is the intrinsic potentiality - but one has to come to terms with the father and mother.
Ego is born there; it has to be tackled there. Otherwise you will go on cutting branches and leaves and the root remains untouched. If you have settled with your father and mother, you have become mature. Now there is no ego. Now you understand that you were helpless, now you understand that you depended, that you were not the center of the world. In fact, you were completely dependent: you could not have survived. Understanding this, the ego by and by fades, and, once you are not in conflict with life, you become loose and natural, you relax.
Then you float. Then the world is not filled with enemies, it is a family, an organic unity; and the world is not against you, you can float with it. That is the meaning of this small parable.
This is a parable used by Zen people and Taoists, and I must tell you a few things before I enter into it.
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Taoists and Zen people have always joked about Confucius. This is, in fact, a joke.
Because Confucius to them is the pinnacle of the legal mind. Confucius is the very paragon of ego - subtle, polished, cultured.
The whole Confucius philosophy is how to polish your ego in such a way that you retain it without being in conflict with others. That's what a cultured man is. A cultured man is not humble, no never; a cultured man is a very subtle egoist. He is very cunning, clever. He will not bring his ego into any relationship, he will hide it, and he will try to show that he is very humble. He will smile and bow down, and you can see well that this is just diplomatic. To live in the world, Confucius says, you have to exist with other egos and you should be very, very intelligent about how you behave, otherwise unnecessary troubles are created. So Confucius has three thousand three hundred rules for how a man should behave. For each step he has rules: how one should dress...
And try to see the difference between the Taoist, Zen and Confucian minds. Because that is how, all over the world, the distinction has existed: the moralist is different from the religious man. The difference is very subtle. A moralist tries to be humble; a religious man is humble.
A moralist poses humility all around - it is a pose, it is a gesture, cultivated.
A religious person is simply humble, it is not a pose. Finding that the ego is nonsense, finding that the ego has no grounds to exist, finding that the ego is just a childish dream, misconceived in ignorance, the religious man simply becomes egoless. Finding no ground for the ego, the ego evaporates. Not that he becomes humble, no, he simply becomes egoless.
How can he become humble when there is no ego? Only ego can become humble, so who will become humble? He simply comes to know that he is not, that he is just a part of this vast organic universe. He is not separate, so who is going to be an egoist and who is going to be humble? He is not. He simply finds there is nothing like a center in him: the center is in the universe and he is part of it. Religious people have said that if there is a God, only he can be permitted to use the word "I". Nobody else should use the word "I" because there is only one center in existence. There cannot be millions of centers, because there are not millions of universes, only one universe. So, if there is a center, there can be
only one center. We all participate in it, but we cannot claim that center in ourselves. That's why Zen says: Don't be humble, be a no-self.
Because humility is a trick of the ego, it is the polished ego, not vulgar.
So there are two types of ego. The vulgar ego you will find in the uncultured, uncivilized, uneducated person. Then there is a cultured ego, refined, polished, perfumed, very subtle; you cannot detect it. Always posing humility, humbleness, simplicity - these are all postures.
Confucius is the paragon of the civilized man, he believes in civilization, and he says that rules have to be followed; strict discipline has to be imposed, because life is a struggle.
And don't provoke anybody unnecessarily. Conserve your energy, because you will need it in some fight. So don't go on fighting with everybody, because that is unnecessary. Conserve energy. Then when there is really a need you can fight, but that fight should be very cultivated and cultured. How to sit and how to stand, how to move, how to behave - Confucius has rules for them, because there are millions of egos and you have to find your path through this vast jungle of egos. And, if you want to reach the goal, don't be unnecessarily in conflict with each and everybody. Just passing, pass in such a humble way that nobody hinders you. So this humility is diplomacy: it is political, not religious.
Confucius is not a religious man at all. Because of Confucius, China could fall a victim to communism, because Confucius has remained the central force in China. Many people ask me how it happened that such a religious country like China could fall a victim to communism, to an absolutely materialistic philosophy. It is not an accident. Buddha entered China with his teaching; Lao Tzu lived there; Chuang Tzu lived there - but they could never become the 47
central force. The central force has remained Confucius, and Confucius and Marx are fellow-travellers so there is no problem. It is difficult for India to become communist. It was very, very easy for China to become communist - and so suddenly, and so easily, because the Confucian trend is absolutely political, diplomatic, material.
Zen and Taoists have always laughed about Confucius, and this is one of their subtle jokes.
Try to understand it.
CONFUCIUS WAS LOOKING AT THE CATARACT AT LULIANG. IT FALLS FROM A HEIGHT OF TWO HUNDRED FEET AND ITS FOAM REACHES FIFTEEN MILES
AWAY. NO SCALY FINNY CREATURE COULD SURVIVE THEREIN.
YET CONFUCIUS SAW AN OLD MAN GO IN. THINKING THE OLD MAN WAS
SUFFERING FROM SOME TROUBLE AND WAS THEREFORE DESIROUS OF
ENDING HIS LIFE, CONFUCIUS BADE A DISCIPLE RUN ALONG THE BANK TO
TRY SAVE HIM.
THE OLD MAN EMERGED ABOUT A HUNDRED PACES OFF AND WITH FLOWING
HAIR HE WENT CAROLING ALONG THE BANK.
CONFUCIUS FOLLOWED HIM AND WHEN HE CAUGHT UP WITH HIM HE SAID: "I HAD THOUGHT, SIR, YOU WERE A SPIRIT, BUT NOW I SEE YOU ARE A MAN.
KINDLY TELL ME, IS THERE ANY WAY TO DEAL THUS WITH THE WATER?"
It looked almost impossible to Confucius that in this big waterfall, with the river falling from the height of two hundred feet and creating so much foam that it spread over fifteen miles; an old man was going to take his bath, to bathe in the river. It was impossible! The tremendous energy of the waterfall would kill the man; he would not be able to come out again. He would be forced into the river, to the rocks, to the very bottom. At first he thought that this man must be going to commit suicide, because you could not come alive out of this waterfall. So he told a disciple to go by the bank and try to save him. But the man jumped, and then a few paces away he came out of the river, perfectly alive. It was
unbelievable!
Why? For Confucius it was unbelievable, because he believed in fight. He did not know how to flow with nature. That is the joke in it. He did not know. He might have known all the rules and regulations and how to swim, but he did not know how to flow with the river. He did not know surrender, the secret of it. So he couldn't believe his eyes. He thought that this man must be a spirit: the physical body cannot survive, it is against all rules. He ran after the man and when he got hold of him, he asked:
"I HAD THOUGHT, SIR, YOU WERE A SPIRIT, BUT NOW I SEE YOU ARE A MAN.
KINDLY TELL ME, IS THERE ANY WAY TO DEAL THUS WITH THE WATER?"
You have done a miracle: it is unbelievable. Is there a certain way to deal thus with the water?
Confucius believes always in ways, methods, techniques - the way. This is how the ego believes.
There are people who come to me and they say: How to fall in love? Is there a way? How to fall in love? They ask for a way, a method, a certain technique. They don't understand what they are asking.
Falling in love means that now there is no way, no technique, no method. That's why it is called "falling in"; you are no more the controller, you simply fall in. That's why people who are very head-oriented will say: Love is blind. Love is the only eye, the only vision, but they will say that love is blind, and they will think that this man has gone mad. It looks mad to the 48
reason, because the reason is a great manipulator. Anything in which the control is lost looks dangerous to the reason. So Confucius asked for the way: How do you behave with the river?
How have you survived, sir? There must be some technique.
This is the technique-oriented mind, the mind that creates all technologies in the world.
But there is a world of human heart, and there is a world of human being and consciousness where no technology is possible. All technologies are possible with matter; with consciousness no technologies are possible. In fact no control is possible. The very effort to control or to make a thing happen, is egoistic.
Confucius doesn't know that there is something like surrender.
If you have been a lover of rivers, and if you have been swimming in rivers, you will understand what that old man said. I myself have loved rivers very much, and to fall in a whirlpool is one of the most beautiful experiences.
In rivers, particularly when they are flooded, in the rains, many whirlpools are created, very powerful and strong. The water moves round and round like a screw. If you are caught in it, you will be forced, pulled towards the bottom, and the deeper you go, the stronger the whirl becomes. The natural tendency of the ego is to fight with it. Of course, because it looks like death and the ego is very much afraid of death. The ego tries to fight with the whirl, and if you fight with the whirl in a flooded river, or near a waterfall where many whirls exist, you are lost, because the whirl is very strong, you cannot fight it. Violence won't do - the more you fight with it, the weaker you become because the whirl goes on pulling you, and you are fighting. With each effort to fight you are losing energy. Soon you will be tired and the whirl will suck you downwards.
And this is the phenomenon of the whirl: on the surface the whirl is big; the deeper you go, the smaller and smaller the whirl becomes - stronger, but smaller. And nearly at the bottom the whirl is so small you can simply get out of it with no fight. In fact the whirl itself throws you out, near the bottom. But you have to wait for the bottom. If you start fighting on the surface, you are done, you cannot survive. I have tried with many whirls; the experience is lovely.
And it is exactly as it happens in deep meditation, because there also you fight. When your inner being yawns and the abyss opens, it is just like a whirl: if you start fighting, you will be crushed. You have to allow it; you simply move with it, you don't fight. You simply move with it; wherever it leads, you go. You preserve your energy; not a single iota of energy is lost, because you are not fighting, you are moving with the whirl. You are enjoying the whole phenomenon, as if you are on the wings of the whirl, flying. Within a second you are pulled to the bottom because it is such a tremendous force. It kills many people. And, once near the bottom, you can simply slip out - there is even no
need to slip out of it, you will slip out because it is so small it cannot contain you.
The same exactly happens in deep meditation. You feel suffocated, you feel in the grip of something, possessed, being pulled to some magnetic force. You start fighting and resisting.
If you resist, only then will your energy be sucked.
Jesus says a very unbelievable thing, and Christians have been at a loss as to how to interpret it for these two thousand years and they have not been able to interpret it. Jesus says: Resist not evil. Even if it is evil, don't resist; because, if you resist, the evil will win. You are such a tiny energy - resist not. In the very fight you will be defeated. Don't fight and nobody can defeat you. Even if a very evil force, the devil is there, if you don't fight, he cannot defeat you. If you start fighting, you are already defeated. Fight, and the failure is absolutely certain; don't fight, and there is no possibility of failing. Because how can you fail if you don't fight?
This is the art of judo and ju-jitsu: not to fight. In Japan, they have developed a very subtle art of judo. The man who is trained in judo cannot be defeated, because he doesn't fight. Even if 49
you hit him, he absorbs the energy that you have thrown by your hitting. He doesn't resist; he doesn't fight. And within minutes even a very strong person can be defeated by a very weak person if he knows judo.
You observe it many times happening all around. Every day you see small children falling
- the whole day. They fall, and they get up, and they forget about it. But if you fall like a small child, you will always be in the hospital. What happens when a child falls? He simply falls; he doesn't resist. He moves with the pull, with the gravitation. He simply falls - like a pillow falling, no resistance. When you fall, you resist. You first try not to fall. All your fibres, all your bones, become tense and strained. When strained bones and a strained nervous system fall unwillingly, fighting, then many things are broken. Not because of gravitation, but because of your resistance. You sometimes see a drunkard falling on the street, lying down in the gutter - nothing! By the morning he is absolutely okay, he goes to the office - and every night he falls. He must know some trick that
you don't know. What does he know? Simply this: he is so drunk that he cannot resist. He cannot resist, he simply falls, like a feather drops down, with no inner resistance or fight. That's why in the morning he is absolutely okay again, laughing and going to the office. If you fall like a drunkard, you will immediately have to be transported to the hospital, many fractures would have happened. Those fractures happen because of your fight.
In judo they train the person not to fight. If somebody attacks you, you simply absorb the attack. If he hits you on your head, you absorb. When somebody is hitting on your head, a certain amount of energy has come to his hand. If you fight, then two energies fight and are destroyed. If you don't fight, you become receptive. It is a very difficult art. It takes many years to learn because the ego again and again comes in. Once you have known the knack of it, then you simply absorb the energy of the enemy. And soon, just by throwing out his energy, he becomes weak, and by and by you become stronger. He is defeated by his own effort and you win with no effort.
This is what the old man said.
"NO, REPLIED THE MAN, I HAVE NO WAY; PLUNGING IN WITH THE WHIRL..."
- with the whirl, not against the whirl -
"... PLUNGING IN WITH THE WHIRL, I COME OUT WITH THE SWIRL."
I have no way. It is all done by the whirl and the swirl. I don't come in, I move with it -
"PLUNGING IN WITH THE WHIRL, I COME OUT WITH THE SWIRL. I ACCOMMODATE MYSELF TO THE WATER, NOT THE WATER TO ME."
The ego is trying to accommodate the whole world to itself. This is the trouble. A man who has no ego accommodates himself to the world. In fact, it is not good to say that he accommodates - he simply finds that he is accommodated.
The ego tries to accommodate everything to it; this is very childish, just like a child. A child wants everything to be done, instantly; whatsoever he desires should be done immediately. If he desires the moon, the moon should be produced immediately, right now.
He cannot even wait. A child wants everything, everybody, to accommodate to him. A child is a dictator, and whenever a child is born into a family, he changes the whole atmosphere. He makes everybody a servant, his dictatorship has no end - and the ego is born in that childhood.
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The ego is the most immature phenomenon: it is childish, immature, not knowing what it is doing.
Who are you? Why should the whole accommodate to you? You are just like a wave on the ocean and you are trying to make the ocean accommodate to you. Foolish. Patently foolish. There is no need for the whole to accommodate to you. It cannot be possible; it is not possible. You can go on thinking about it, but you will be a failure. Ego is always a failure, because the impossible is asked. Napoleons, Hitlers, Alexanders - ask them. In the end, they are great failures. Rich people - ask them, in the end. They have accumulated much, but they feel a deep failure inside. You can accumulate power in many ways, but you will be a failure.
Ego can never be victorious.
Mulla Nasrudin was telling stories to his child. I was also listening, and the child was insisting on more, so he invented a story. He said: "There was one worm that was an early-rising worm. He woke up in BRAHAMAMUHURTA, early in the morning, thinking that religious and moral teachers have always said that early rising is beautiful. But he was caught by an early-rising bird who was also a believer in religious precepts: that to rise early is good." The child was very excited and he said: "What happened to the other worm? You said that one worm was an early riser - and the other?" Mulla said: "Yes, he was a late riser, very lazy. But a child found him asleep and killed him."
The child was a little confused. He said: "But what is the motto of the story?" Said Nasrudin: "Motto? You cannot win."
Whatsoever you do, early riser or not, in the end everybody is killed. This absolutely true about the ego - you cannot win. Whatsoever you do, be it virtuous or good, if this virtue and goodness is based on the ego, you cannot win, you have the very seed of defeat in you. You can serve people, become a great servant of the society, but if the ego is the base, you cannot win. You may do
millions of good things, but if the ego is there, poison is there. It will poison everything you do. Be poor, be rich; be religious, be irreligious; theist, atheist; moral, immoral; criminal, a saint - it doesn't matter. You can't win if the ego is there, because the ego is the seed of failure. And if the ego is not there you cannot be defeated. Your victory is absolute. This is the secret-most teaching of Zen.
Be in accord with the whole, move with the whole, with the river. Don't even swim. People try to swim against the current, and then they are defeated. Don't even swim. Can't you float?
Can't you just allow the river to take you? Allow the river. You just move with it
- relax with the river of life and let it move you. It reaches the ocean, you need not bother.
The old man said:
"I ACCOMMODATE MYSELF TO THE WATER, NOT THE WATER TO ME."
This should be a constant remembrance; a constant mindfulness of it will help you tremendously. Whenever you feel that you are fighting, relax. Whatsoever the case, you float, you don't fight, and then the goal is certain. In fact, then there is no goal in the future; right now, this very moment, you have attained it - flow with nature, loose and natural, allow nature to take its own course, don't force it in any way, remain passive, not aggressive and violent. Just like a small child going for a walk with his father - wherever the father goes, the child is simply going with him, happy, not knowing where he is going, why he is going. Even if the father is going to kill the child there is no problem with the child.
There is a Christian story. A man thought that he had been ordered by God to kill his son.
He was to take the son to the forest, so the son was very excited. Early in the morning they had to leave, and the son was awake by midnight and he was saying: "Father, when are we going?"
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The father was troubled, because he was going to kill the son in the forest and
the son was so excited, he didn't know what was going to happen. But the man believed in the voice of God, in his own Father the man believed. And the child believed in HIS father: there was trust.
The father took the child, and the child was very happy. He had never been taken to the forest. Then the father started sharpening the sword with which he was going to kill, and the child was very excited and was helping. The father was crying inside because he knew that this child didn't know what was going to happen. Then the child asked: "What are you going to do with this?" The father said: "You don't know. I am going to kill." And the child laughed, he was enjoying, and he said: "When?" He was ready. This is what "floating-with" means.
The father took the sword and the child was leaning in front of him, happy, smiling; it was a game.
I don't know whether the story is true or not, but it seems to be true, should be true, it carries a deep meaning.
Just in the middle, a voice was heard: "Stop! You trusted me and that's enough." And the child was saying: "Why have you stopped? Do it! It is a good play." The child was in a playful mood.
When you trust life, you trust God, because life is God and there is no other God. When you trust and float with it, even death is transformed. Then there is no death. You never tried to exist separately so how can you die? The whole always lives: only individuals come and go. Waves come and go: the ocean goes on and on and on. If you don't believe in yourself as a separate wave, ego, then how can you die? You will live always and always in the whole. You lived before, when you were not, you are living right now, when you think you are, and you will live again, when you will not be there. The dream of your being separate is the ego, and the ego creates conflict. Through conflicts you dissipate and die. Through conflicts you are miserable. Through conflicts you lose all that was possible for you. Every moment the benediction is possible; every moment the ecstasy is possible, but you miss. You miss because you are a fighter.
The man said:
"I ACCOMMODATE MYSELF TO THE WATER, NOT THE WATER TO ME. AND SO I AM ABLE TO DEAL WITH IT AFTER THIS FASHION."
But it is not a method, it is not a technique, not a way; it is an understanding.
And remember, finally, either ego can exist, or understanding, both cannot exist together.
If the ego exists, you have no understanding; you are just an ignorant child believing that you are the center of the whole, and, finding that it is not so, you are miserable. Finding that you are not the center, you create your hell. Understanding means understanding the whole situation. Simply looking at the whole phenomenon of your life, inner and outer, ego disappears. With understanding there exists no ego; understanding is the path, the way.
Then you are in accord, in harmony, in rhythm, in step with life. Then suddenly you come to feel that you plunge in with the whirl and you come out with the swirl. And this game is eternal - plunging in with the whirl, coming out with the swirl - this is the eternal game.
That's what Hindus have called LEELA, the great cosmic play. You come sometimes as a wave, and then you disappear. Then again you come as a wave, and you disappear. And this goes on and on, there is no beginning to it and no end to it. The ego has a beginning, the ego has an end, but you, without the ego, are beginningless and endless. You are the very eternity, but in the whole, in accord with the whole. Against the whole, you are a nightmare to yourself.
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So there is either ego or understanding. The choice is yours. There is no need to be humble, just understanding. And it is as if you have lighted a candle in a dark room -
suddenly the darkness is not there, because light and darkness cannot exist together. So, ego and understanding cannot exist together.
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CHAPTER 5 - The "Master of Silence" 25 February 1975 a.m. in Buddha Hall
THERE WAS A MONK WHO CALLED HIMSELF "THE MASTER OF SILENCE".
ACTUALLY HE WAS A FRAUD AND HAD NO GENUINE UNDERSTANDING.
TO SELL HIS HUMBUG ZEN HE HAD TWO ELOQUENT ATTENDANT MONKS TO
ANSWER QUESTIONS FOR HIM - BUT, AS IF TO SHOW HIS INSCRUTABLE SILENT
ZEN, HE HIMSELF NEVER UTTERED A WORD.
ONE DAY, DURING THE ABSENCE OF HIS TWO ATTENDANTS, A PILGRIM CAME
TO HIM AND ASKED: "MASTER, WHAT IS THE BUDDHA?"
NOT KNOWlNG WHAT TO DO, OR HOW TO ANSWER, HE LOOKED DESPERATELY
AROUND IN ALL DIRECTIONS FOR HIS MISSING MOUTHPIECES.
THE PILGRIM, APPARENTLY PLEASED AND SATISFIED, THANKED THE MASTER, AND SET OUT AGAIN ON HIS JOURNEY.
ON THE ROAD THE PILGRIM MET THE TWO ATTENDANT MONKS ON THEIR
WAY HOME. HE BEGAN TELLING THEM ENTHUSIASTICALLY WHAT AN
ENLIGHTENED BEING THIS MASTER OF SILENCE IS.
HE SAID: "I ASKED HIM WHAT BUDDHA IS AND HE IMMEDIATELY TURNED HIS
FACE TO THE EAST AND TO THE WEST IMPLYING THAT HUMAN
BEINGS ARE
ALWAYS LOOKING FOR BUDDHA HERE AND THERE, BUT ACTUALLY, BUDDHA IS NOT TO BE FOUND IN ANY SUCH DIRECTIONS. OH WHAT AN ENLIGHTENED
MASTER HE IS, AND HOW PROFOUND HIS TEACHINGS!"
WHEN THE ATTENDANT MONKS RETURNED, THE MASTER OF SILENCE
SCOLDED THEM THUS: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME? A WHILE AGO
I WAS EMBARRASSED TO DEATH AND ALMOST RUINED BY AN INQUISITIVE
PILGRIM.
Life is a mystery. The more you understand it, the more mysterious it becomes. The more you know, the less you feel that you know. The more you become aware of the depth, the infinite depth, the more it becomes almost impossible to say anything about it. Hence silence.
A man who knows remains in such awe, such infinite wonderment that even breathing stops. Standing before the mystery of life, one is lost completely.
But there are problems, and the first problem with the mystery of life is that there is always the possibility of frauds, people who can deceive others, people who can cheat. In the world of science that is not possible. Science moves on a plain ground with infinite caution - logical, rational. If you utter something nonsensical, immediately you will be caught, because whatsoever you say can be verified. Science is objective, and any assertion, any statement, can be verified in experiments in the laboratories.
With religion everything is inner, subjective, mysterious, and the path is not on a plain. It is a hilly track. There are many ups and many downs, and the path moves like a spiral. Again and again you come to the same place, maybe a little higher. And whatsoever you say cannot be verified, there is no criterion of verification. Because it is inner, no experiment can prove or disprove it; because
it is mysterious, no logical argumentation can decide this way or that.
That's why science is one, but there exist almost three thousand religions in the world. You cannot prove any religion false. Neither can you prove any other religion to be true or authentic. That is not possible, because no empirical test is possible.
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A Buddha says that there is no self inside. How to prove this or how to disprove this? If somebody says, "I have seen God", and he sounds sincere, what to do? He may be a deluded lunatic, he may have seen a hallucination, or he may really have seen the reality of existence.
But how to prove or disprove? He cannot share his experience with anybody, it is inner. It is not like an object you can place in the middle and everybody can watch it, and everybody can experiment and dissect it. You have to take it in faith. He may sound absolutely sincere, and may be deluded: he may not be cheating you, trying to cheat you, he may be himself deceived.
He may be a very true person but he has seen a dream and thinks it is real - sometimes dreams have the quality that they look more real than the reality itself. Then dreams look like visions.
He has heard the voice of God and he is so filled with it, so thrilled. But what to do? How to prove that he has not gone mad, that he has not projected his own mind and idea? There is no possibility.
If there is one genuine religious man, there are ninety-nine others all around him. A few of them are deluded: poor, simple fellows, good at heart, not trying to harm anybody, but still they harm. Then there are a few cheats, robbers, deceivers: cunning, clever people who are knowingly doing harm. But the harm pays. You cannot find a better business in the world than religion. You can promise, and there is no need to deliver the goods, because the goods are invisible.
I have heard an anecdote - in America they invented invisible hair-pins for ladies. One lady was purchasing them at a supermarket and the salesman gave her a packet of invisible hair-pins. She looked in the box and she couldn't see any. Of course, they were invisible, so how can you see? And she said: "But I
don't see anything in it." The man said: "They are invisible, so how can you see?" So the lady asked: "Really? Are they invisible?" The man said: "You are asking me? For seven days we have been out of stock, and still we are selling them. They are absolutely invisible."
When things are invisible, you can go on selling, promising. There is no need to deliver the goods, because in the first place they are invisible, so nobody can ever detect them. And you cannot find a better business than religion, because the goods are invisible. I have seen many people being deceived, many people deceiving. And the thing is so subtle that nothing can be said for or against.
For example, I know a man who is a simple, plain, stupid man. But stupidity has its own qualities. Particularly in religion, a stupid man can look like a PARAMAHANSA. Because he is stupid, his behavior is unexpected, just like an enlightened man. The similarity is there.
Because he is stupid, he cannot utter a single rational statement - just like an enlightened man.
He is foolish, he doesn't know what he is saying, how he is behaving. Suddenly he can do anything: and this sudden doing seems to be as if he belongs to another world. He has epileptic fits, but people think he is going into samadhi. He needs electric shock treatment!
Suddenly he will go into a fit and swoon, and the followers will beat their drums and they will sing to the glory of God, that their master has gone into great samadhi, ecstasy. And his mouth starts foaming, and his saliva flows out - he is simply in a fit. He has no intelligence.
But that is a quality, and there are deceivers around him who go on spreading things about the
"baba".
And many things happen near him: that is the miracle. Many things happen, because many things happen of their own accord. The baba is in a swoon, and many people will feel their kundalini rising. They are projecting. There is a certain phenomenon: if you sit quietly for a long period, the body accumulates energy, and then the body starts moving, feeling restless.
Sudden jerks start coming - they think this is kundalini. Kundalini is rising and when it rises in one person, how can you lag behind? Then others start. Then it is just like if one person goes to the toilet, then others feel the urge: if one person sneezes, others have a tremendous 55
sneeze coming to them. It becomes infectious. But with so many things happening, the baba must be in samadhi. He is simply in a fit. In the East it has been my observation that only one genuine person exists, ninety-nine are false - either themselves deceived, simple, poor people; or deceivers, cunning, clever people.
This can go on, because the whole phenomenon is invisible. What to do? How to judge?
How to decide? Religion is always dangerous. It is dangerous because the very terrain is mysterious, irrational. Anything goes, and there is no outer way to judge it. And there are people with their gullible minds, always ready to believe something, because they need some foothold. Without belief they feel unanchored, uprooted; they need somebody to believe in, they need somewhere to go and feel anchored and rooted.
Belief is a deep need in people. Why is it a deep need? Because without belief you feel like a chaos; without belief you don't know why you exist; without belief you cannot feel any meaning in life. No significance seems to be there. You feel like an accident with no reason at all to be here. Without belief, the question arises: Why are you? Who are you? From where are you coming? Where are you going? And there is not a single answer - without belief there is no answer. One feels simply without any meaning, an accident in existence, not needed at all, not indispensable. You will die and nobody will bother; they will all continue. You feel something is lacking, a contact with reality, a certain belief. That's why religions exist - to supply beliefs, because people need them.
A person without belief has to be very, very courageous. To live without belief is to live in the unknown, to live without belief is a great daring. Ordinary people cannot afford that. With too much daring, anguish comes in, anxiety is created. And this has to be noted: to me a real religious person is without belief. Trust he has, but not belief, and there is a vast difference between the two.
Belief is intellectual. You need it, that's why you have it. It is there because you
cannot live without belief. Belief gives you a support to live by; it gives you a certain meaning, howsoever false; it gives you a certain blueprint for life, how to move, where to move. You are on the highway, not lost in the forest. Belief gives you a commodity, there are other believers just like you; you become a part of the crowd. Then you need not think on your own, then you are no longer responsible for your own being and what you are doing. Now you can throw the responsibility on the crowd.
An individual Hindu is never as bad as a Hindu crowd. An individual Mohammedan is never as bad as a Mohammedan crowd. What happens? Individuals are not bad, crowds are simply mad - because, in a crowd, nobody feels responsible. You can commit murders in a crowd easily, because you know the crowd is doing it and you are just a wave in it, you are not the deciding factor, so you are not responsible. Individual, alone, you feel a responsibility.
You will feel guilty if you commit something. It is my observation that sin exists through crowds; no individual is ever a sinner. And individuals, even if they commit something wrong, can be taken out of it very easily; but crowds are impossible, because crowds have no souls, no centers. To whom to appeal?
And in all that goes on in the world - the devil, the evil forces - the crowd is in fact responsible. Nations are the devil; religious communities are the evil forces. Belief makes you a part of a bigger crowd than you, and there is a feeling of elation when you are a part of something bigger, a nation - India, or America, or England. Then you are not a tiny human being. A great energy comes to you and you feel elated. Euphoria is felt. That's why, whenever a country is at war, people feel very euphoric, ecstatic. Suddenly their life has a meaning - they exist for the country, for the religion, for the civilization; now they have a certain goal to be achieved, and a certain treasure to be protected. Now they are no longer 56
ordinary people, they have a great mission. Belief is the bridge from the individual to the crowd.
Trust is totally different. Trust is not an intellectual concept. Trust is a quality of the heart, not of the head. Belief is a bridge between the individual and the crowd, and trust is a bridge between the individual and the cosmos. Trust is always in God, and when I say "God", I don't mean any belief in God. When I say God, I simply mean the whole.
Trust is a deep understanding that you are simply a part, a note in a great symphony, just a small wave in the ocean. Trust means you have to follow the whole, flow with the whole, be in accord with the whole. Trust means: I am not here as an enemy, I am not here to fight; I am here to enjoy the opportunity that has been given to me; I am here to be grateful and celebrating. Trust is not in a doctrine: you need not be a Hindu, you need not be a Mohammedan, you need not be a Jain or a Sikh. Trust is a commitment between the individual and the whole. Trust makes you religious - not Hindu, not Mohammedan, not Christian - simply religious. Trust has no name. Belief makes you a Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. Belief has names, millions of names; there are thousands of beliefs - you can choose. Trust has only one quality: the quality of surrender into the whole; the quality of moving in accord with the whole; the quality of not forcing the whole to follow you, but simply allowing yourself to move with the whole. Trust is a transformation; trust has to be attained; belief is given by birth. Nobody is born in trust, everybody is born in belief: you are born a Hindu, or a Jain, or a Buddhist. Belief is given by society, because belief is the bridge between you and society.
If society doesn't give you a belief, there is a fear - you may become rebellious. In fact it is certain that if the belief is not given, you will become rebellious, and society doesn't want that, can't afford that. Society, before you become aware, gives you deep beliefs. Into your blood it goes - with the milk of your mother the poison of belief seeps into your being. By the time you become aware of what has happened you find you are already a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Christian. The straitjacket is already there: you are imprisoned.
And it is very difficult to get out of it because it gets into your unconscious; it becomes your very foundation. Even if you get out of it, even if you go against it, it will remain in the foundation, because to cleanse the unconscious is very difficult. Consciously you can't do it.
I have heard, it happened that Mulla Nasrudin became an atheist. And he was dying, so the priest came. The priest said: Mulla, now this is the last moment and the last opportunity. Still there is time left, you confess your sin and you confess that you went wrong by becoming an atheist. Become a theist and die believing in God.
Mulla Nasrudin opened his eyes and said: "Thank God I am not a theist."
Even if you are not a theist, you will thank God. Deep down it remains in the unconscious, it becomes a foundation. Whatsoever you have learned in your childhood before the age of seven has become your foundation. To uproot it, very great effort and meditation is needed.
You will have to move back, only then can it be wiped out. You can create anti- beliefs, they won't help, they cannot help. You can become a theist. You can be a Hindu in your childhood, then you can be converted to a Christian, but you will remain a Hindu - your Christianity will be coloured by your Hinduism. You may become a communist, but, deep down, the unconscious is there and it will colour your communism. A deep meditation is needed to cleanse the unconscious.
Trust is totally different. Trust is not in words, in scriptures. Trust is towards life
- the very energy that moves the whole. You trust it and you float with it. If it takes you down in the whirl, you go down in the whirl. If it takes you out in the swirl, you come out in the swirl.
You move with it, you don't have your own mind about it. If it makes you sad, you become sad. If it makes you happy, you become happy. You simply move with it, with no mind of 57
your own, and suddenly, you come to realize that now you have achieved a point where bliss is going to be eternal. In your sadness also you will be blissful, because it is none of your business. The whole is doing it that way and you are moving with it. Happiness - okay.
Sadness - okay. You simply "okay". Everything is Okayed. This is what a religious man is: he has no mind of his own. Belief has a very strong mind of its own.
It is said about a great saint, Tulsidas that he was invited into a Krishna temple in Mathura, and he was a believer in Ram. He went there, but he would not bow down, because the statue was of Krishna with a flute on his lips. It is said that he said to Krishna: "I can bow down only to Ram, so, if you want me to bow down, you take the bow of Ram in your hand. When I see that you have become Ram, only then will I bow down."
This is the mind of belief. Otherwise, what is the distinction between Ram and Krishna?
And what is the distinction between a flute and a bow?
And the story goes on: it says that the statue changed, it became the statue of Ram, and then Tulsidas bowed down very happily.
Now the problem is, what must have happened? My understanding is that the statue must have remained the same, because statues don't bother. They don't bother whether you bow down or not. But the mind of a believer can create things. Tulsidas must have projected: it must have been a projection; it must have been a hallucination. He must have seen that's certain. He must have seen, otherwise he would not have bowed down: that's certain. The possibility is that his own mind created, and when you are too filled with belief you can create. You can see things which are not there, and you can miss things which are there. A mind that is filled with belief is a mind which can project anything according to the belief.
When you see things, always remember this.
People come to me.… If somebody is a believer in Krishna and he meditates, immediately Krishna starts coming to him. Visions. But Christ never comes to him. A Christian starts meditation - then Krishna never disturbs his meditation, only Christ comes. To a Mohammedan, neither Krishna nor Christ comes; and Mohammed cannot come because Mohammedans have no pictures of Mohammed. They don't know what he looked like, so they cannot project.
Whatsoever you believe, you project. Belief is a projection. It is just like a projector in a movie film-house: you see something on the screen which is not there. The projector is hidden behind, but you never look at the projector, you look at the screen. The projector is at the back, and the whole game is going on there, but you look at the screen. The whole game is going on in your mind, and a mind filled with belief always goes on projecting things in the world, it sees things which are not there. This is the problem. The mind which believes is always vulnerable and always provides an opportunity to be exploited by the cheaters - and the cheaters are all around. The whole path is filled with robbers, because no map exists.
Moving into religion is moving into the uncharted, into the unmapped. Robbers can flourish there very easily, they can wait for you - and they are waiting. And sometimes, even if the person is not deceiving you, you want to be deceived.
Then you will be deceived.
Nobody can deceive you if, deep down, you are not ready to be deceived.
Just a few days before, a man came to me and he said: A baba has deceived me, and he is a great yogi. I asked him: And what has he done? He said: He can make gold out of any metal.
He has shown me and I have seen it happening with my own eyes. Then he said that I should bring all my gold and he would make it tenfold. So I collected all my ornaments and he has simply escaped with them. He has deceived me.
Everybody will think that he had deceived him, but I told this man: It is your greed that has deceived you. Don't throw the responsibility onto anybody else. You are simply foolish.
Greed is foolish. You wanted your ornaments to be made tenfold. That mind has deceived 58
you; the other person has simply used the opportunity. He is just a clever person, that's all.
You are the real problem. If he had not deceived you, somebody else would have.
So who deceives it not the question. It has been my observation that if somebody deceives you, it shows a certain proneness in you to be deceived. And if somebody can lie to you, it means you have a certain affinity with lies. A man of truth cannot be deceived. A man who lives in truth cannot become a victim of liars. Only a liar can be deceived by another liar; otherwise there is no possibility. There are millions of people who are ready to be deceived, who are simply waiting for someone to come and deceive them - because of their beliefs, because of their vicious desires, because of their greed. And remember well that greed is greed, whether it exists in the material world or in the spiritual makes no difference. The quality of it remains the same. You would like somebody to increase your gold tenfold - this is greed. Then somebody says, "I will make you an enlightened person", and you fall in line immediately. That too is greed.
And I tell you: It is possible to increase gold tenfold very easily, but it is almost impossible to make any other person enlightened. Because that is no game. The
path is arduous. In fact nobody ever makes you enlightened - you yourself become enlightened; the other may be a catalytic agent at the most, nothing more. But in fact everything happens within you; the other's presence may have helped, that's all. And if you are really sincere, even that is not needed. If you are sincere, those who can help will seek you, if you are insincere, you will seek those who can harm. That is the difference. When a disciple seeks a master, there is almost always going to be something wrong. When a master seeks a disciple, only then something authentic is going to happen.
How can you seek a master? Whatsoever you may think will be your mind, and you are completely ignorant, you are a sleepwalker. You will seek somebody according to you. YOU
will be the criterion. Then you will go and seek somebody who is doing a miracle.
You may go and seek Satya Sai Baba, because that will be a deep fulfilment of your greed.
You will see: here is the man. If he can produce things out of air, he can do anything. Now your greed is provoked. Now a deep affinity happens immediately. That's why you will see thousands of people around Satya Sai Baba. If a Buddha exists, you will not see multitudes there, because there is no affinity. Satya Sai Baba has an appeal deep inside you: your greed is provoked. Now you know this is the right man. But you are wrong. How can you decide who is the right man? You create your deceivers, you give them the opportunity. You follow magicians, not masters.
If you really want to seek a master, drop greed and drop your beliefs. Go to a master completely nude in the mind, with no beliefs; as if you are a tree in the fall with no leaves, naked, standing against the sky. You go and seek a master with a naked mind, with no leaves, with no beliefs. Only then, only then, I say, will you be able to see without projection; only then will something penetrate into your life from the above. Then nobody can deceive you.
So don't be bothered and don't condemn the deceivers: they fulfil a need. Because you need them, they are there. Nothing exists without any cause. People exist all around you, because you need them. Thieves exist, robbers exist, exploiters exist, deceivers exist, because you need them. You will be nowhere if
they all disappear; you will be simply unable to live your life if they are not there.
This story is beautiful, and has to be understood deeply.
THERE WAS A MONK WHO CALLED HIMSELF "THE MASTER OF SILENCE".
ACTUALLY HE WAS A FRAUD AND HAD NO GENUINE UNDERSTANDING.
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You can pretend, and in religion you can pretend more than anywhere else. Because people are clever in their worldly ways but they are completely innocent as far as religion is concerned. You may be able to know everything that goes on in the market, you have lived there, you know the tricks and the ways and everything - you have yourself been doing those things. You are wise as far as the world is concerned, but when you move into the world of a monastery, from the market to the monastery, there is a great difference. In the monastery you are completely innocent, like a child. You may be very old, sixty or seventy years of age, but in a monastery, in a temple, you are just like a small child. You have not lived there, and the same things exist there also. Again it is a market.
When Jesus entered the temple of Jerusalem, he entered with a whip and he started beating people, because many shopkeepers had entered the temple and many money-lenders. He turned their tables upside down and he said: "You have made my God's temple a market. You traders - you get out!" This is really something - one single man, and the whole crowd of traders escaped.
Truth has a strength of its own. When something is true, you immediately become weak, because you are a liar and you immediately understand: That's right. Those shopkeepers didn't fight; those money-lenders could have killed Jesus; he was alone and they were many. But simply at the truth of it they escaped outside. And only when they reached outside did they start planning what to do with this man - and it was their planning that finally crucified Jesus.
In the monasteries, in the temples, in the ashrams, another world exists. You don't know the laws of it, the rules of the game. You can be deceived there very,
very easily. And pretenders abound because it is so easy.
This has been my feeling: two types of people move towards religion. One is the man who has lived in the world, lived it through and through, and has come to understand that it is futile, useless, a wastage of life. It is just like a dream, and that too not a beautiful dream, but a nightmare. This is one type, the genuine type, the authentic, who has lived through the world and found it useless, a desert, with no oasis in it, and has turned away. His turning is total. He will not look back. There is nothing to look back to. Buddha used to ask his disciples: "Have you really turned completely or would you like to have a little of your mind always looking back, a part of you always looking back?" This is the first type who is really genuine, who has lived in the world and found it just a frustration. That's why he has moved towards religion.
Then there is another type which is completely opposite. The first type is one per cent; the second type is ninety-nine per cent. These people are very much attracted towards religion.
This type is those people who couldn't succeed in the world, who couldn't succeed in their ambitions, who could not become important. They would have liked to have become prime ministers and presidents, but they couldn't. They were simply not made that strong to fight there. They are people who would have liked to have become Rockefellers, or Fords, but could not because the competition was too great and they were not made of the right strong metal. They were lacking, because life is a struggle and they were simply inferior. They didn't have that much intelligence, or that kind of strength to fight through and to fulfil their ambitions. These people also turn towards religion.
These are the great deceivers. They will become the problem for religion and for people who seek religion. They will be deceivers all around the temple; they will make the temple a trade-house because their desires are still there lurking. They have turned to religion as politicians - of course, politicians who have failed in politics. You go all over the country -
around gurus everywhere you will find politicians who have failed. Ex-ministers will always be found coming to some guru - people who wanted too much in the world and couldn't get it, they turn towards religion, because there things are easier. Competition is not much, and you 60
can pretend, and you can believe easily that you are a very superior being. And there is no competition. You can simply say, "I have become enlightened", and nobody can deny it, and nobody can disprove it. There simply exists no criterion to judge it, and you can always find foolish people to follow you.
Even a Muktanand can get followers. Once I passed Muktanand's ashram, and just to see what was happening there, I went in. I have never seen such an ordinary man becoming a great religious leader of people. No potential, no achievement, no insight - if you saw him walking in the street you would not recognize that there is something there. Just plain ordinary - and not ordinary in the sense of Zen - just plain ordinary. But even he can find followers.
In the world, millions of fools exist; and they are always ready to believe, always ready, ready to fall into the trap of anybody. In fact, sometimes there is no trap at all, but they fall, because they would like to believe that something is happening. Man is so imaginative, and, because of his imagination, he starts believing that something is happening. These people know at least this much about what to do.
Somebody comes to me and says: "I have a certain pain in my backbone." Now, if I say that this is simply a pain, go to a doctor, he simply turns away from me and never comes back, because he had not come for that. He had come for an approval. If I say: "Yes your kundalini is rising", he will be happy. These fools will always find their Muktanands.
And not very ordinary people, sometimes very intelligent people come. Just a few days before, a film producer came to me - a well-known name all over India. His blood sugar has gone beyond all ordinary limits; it has reached five hundred. He should really be dead by now.
He is a drunkard, and a great food eater, obsessed with eating, but still he continues and continues eating sweets and drinking alcohol. Now, because of so much blood sugar, his whole body is trembling. It has to, because his whole body is ill, every fibre of it is ill, and there is a deep trembling inside. He was sitting there when I was talking to others, and he was trembling. Then he asked me: "What do you think? What is it - is it kundalini rising?"
Now what to do with these people? These are the victims, and these are participants in creating deceivers; they are also half responsible. And I know this man also belongs to Muktanand's group.
Now the problem arises for me - what to do? If I say: "Yes. It is Kundalini rising and this is your last life. Soon, within days, you will be enlightened," he will bow down, touch my feet and will go away very happy. He will be happy, I will be happy, and everything is settled.
And he will go around talking about me, that this is the right, the greatest master that he has come to know. It is good business. Simple. But then I am deceiving him, and not only deceiving. I am killing him, I am a murderer, because I know that he is dying of diabetes, and the diabetes has gone beyond all limits. If I say, "This is kundalini and enlightenment is coming, and this is like samadhi, that's why you are trembling; it is God descending into you,"
or, "You are rising towards the Divine," or "The Divine is descending in you," he will be very happy, everybody is happy, there is no problem. He will work for me and until he dies he will go on talking about me.
But the moment I said: "This is nothing to do with any enlightenment. This is simple - too much sugar in the blood. Your whole body is feverish. You don't waste time, you go to the doctors and listen to them," immediately I could see the change in his face. It changed: "This man is not a master at all. How can he be a master, and enlightened, when he cannot understand such simple phenomenon that is happening in me?"
It actually happened. A man, very well-known in the West, Franklin Jones, was a disciple of Muktanand - and then his kundalini arose. Muktanand approved: "You have become a SIDDHA." Not only did he approve, he gave a written certificate. I simply cannot believe 61
what foolishnesses go on - a certificate that you have become a SIDDHA, enlightened! So of course the man became a SIDDHA and he changed his name. He was Franklin Jones, now he is Bubba Free John, and he has many followers of his own.
Now the trouble came in, because he had become more enlightened than Muktanand ever expected, and he had become a guru in his own right. No he wanted - he came again just a few months ago - now he wanted another certificate. Now he wanted to show: "There is no need for me to belong to any master, because now I am a master myself, and my karmas with you, with Muktanand, are fulfilled. So, give me a certificate that I am absolutely free."
Now Muktanand hesitated - this was going too far. So he denied; he would not give another certificate. But the thing had already gone too far. The man returned home, wrote a book, and said: "Of course Muktanand helped me a little on my way, but he is not an enlightened man and I dissolve all my links with him. He is an ordinary man."
This is how things go. He was an enlightened man because he gave the certificate; he was the greatest master in the world. Now he is no longer. He is an ordinary man - "I dissolve all my links with him."
These things go on. Remember this, because you can become a part in such a game yourself. Never believe in yourself too much. Remain aware. When you come to me I will say exactly what is happening. Many have gone from me because I will not support their egos and I will not fulfill their wishes, and I will not say what they want me to say. And once they go away, they are against me, they have to be. These are the traps. Not only do the deceivers create them, you help to create them. Don't be a participant in any deception, be very, very alert.
This monk, who was a fraud and had no genuine understanding, called himself "The Master of Silence". That's very beautiful, because if you utter something you can be caught. It is simply beautiful to remain silent; then nobody can catch you. They say it is good for two kinds of persons to be silent: the very, very wise have to be silent, because what they know cannot be said; and the very, very foolish, because if they are not silent, they will be caught.
So this man, who was a fraud, used to call himself "The Master of Silence". He would not utter a single word. But if you don't utter a word you cannot sell anything. If a salesman is silent, how will he sell things? So he devised a plan.
TO SELL HIS HUMBUG ZEN HE HAD TWO ELOQUENT ATTENDANT MONKS TO
ANSWER QUESTIONS FOR HIM - BUT, AS IF TO SHOW HIS INSCRUTABLE SILENT
ZEN, HE HIMSELF NEVER UTTERED A WORD.
ONE DAY, DURING THE ABSENCE OF HIS TWO ATTENDANTS, A PILGRIM CAME
TO HIM AND ASKED: "MASTER, WHAT IS THE BUDDHA?"
This is one of the Zen questions. It means: what is DHARMA, what is religion? It means: what is awareness? It means: what is an awakened being? It is one of the most fundamental questions in Zen - What is the Buddha? What is that utterly enlightened state of being that we call Buddha?
NOT KNOWING WHAT
TO DO, OR HOW TO
ANSWER, HE LOOKED
DESPERATELY AROUND IN ALL DIRECTIONS FOR HIS MISSING MOUTHPIECES.
THE PILGRIM, APPARENTLY PLEASED AND SATISFIED, THANKED THE MASTER
AND SET OUT AGAIN ON HIS JOURNEY.
ON THE ROAD THE PILGRIM MET THE TWO ATTENDANT MONKS ON THEIR
WAY HOME. HE BEGAN TELLING THEM ENTHUSIASTICALLY WHAT
AN
ENLIGHTENED BEING THIS MASTER OF SILENCE IS. 62
He projected, of course. He must have heard that those who know remain silent. He must have read it in the scriptures where it is said millions of times that one who knows, never says; one who says, has not known yet.
But these are very, very paradoxical things. Lao Tzu says in the very beginning of "Tao Te Ching", that truth cannot be uttered, and that which can be uttered is not true. But Lao Tzu uttered this - so what to think about it? Is it true, or not? It is the uttered word, it has been said. Now you will be in very deep trouble, Lao Tzu says that truth cannot be said, but this much he is saying. So is this saying true or not? If it is not true that will mean that truth can be uttered; if it is true then even this cannot be uttered.
Religion is full of paradoxes and that's the problem. This man must have read many Zen masters saying that truth cannot be said. This is right: truth cannot be said. But this much can be said, many things can be said, millions of things can be said which will be helpful to find that which cannot be said. Many things can be indicated, and that which cannot be said can at least be shown. The whole meaning is only this: that the truth is greater than the words. It is greater than the silence also. Truth is so vast that it cannot be forced into the capsule of words and it cannot be forced into silence either. In fact, silence exists in truth, and words also exist in truth. Truth is the very sky, the very space.
This master pulled a trick. Thinking that truth cannot be said, the best way is to keep silent
- but then no one will be attracted to you. So he had two attendants to talk about him -
mouthpieces. That is a good arrangement, because if they say something wrong, he is not involved, if they say something right - so far, so good. But one day he was caught. You can deceive people for the time-being, but you cannot deceive people for ever. Some day, somewhere, you will be caught. You cannot make an arrangement of lies which can go on for ever. The truth will erupt. Ninety-nine per cent of the time you may succeed, but one per cent you will fail. And that
one per cent will bring the whole success to failure. It will destroy the whole thing.
One day a pilgrim came and asked: "What is the Buddha?" The master desperately looked this way and that in all directions for his missing mouthpieces. This was the truth; he had no answer to give. And by looking in all directions, he was looking for something else - not for truth, not for Buddha, not to indicate anything by a gesture. But the pilgrim projected. By his looking in all directions, the pilgrim thought that he was really a Zen master, a great master.
He would not utter words, but he was showing that you can look in every dimension, in every direction, and you will not find Buddha there, because Buddha is inside. You can seek and search and you will not find, because he is in the seeker himself. This was the projection, and this is what you can do easily. This is how people are deceived - they have their own minds and beliefs and concepts and theories, and they project.
Many times it has happened to me. People project. A man came. He came with a bag. I didn't know what he had in the bag. He touched my feet and the bag was in his hand, so the bag also touched my feet. I thought it was just accidental. But the man had a bottle with water in it inside the bag, and it was not accidental. He wanted my feet to touch the bottle, and I was completely unaware of what he was doing. Then, after a few days, he came and he thanked me, and he was very, very grateful. He said: "You cured my illness." I asked: "What illness? I don't know your illness." He said: "I had a severe headache for many years, a sort of migraine, and the water I brought last time I came, you touched it with your feet." I said: "I never touched it with my feet." He said: "Whatsoever is the case, you touched the bottle and I drank it for a few days and the headache is completely gone."
Now what to do? If I say that this is simply his own magic, he has done it, it is an auto-hypnosis, then there is a possibility that the headache may come back; because you cannot 63
believe in yourself, you always believe somebody. You cannot believe in yourself - but if you cannot believe in yourself, how can you believe in anybody? But this goes on. You feel impotent inside: you cannot believe in yourself. You seek somebody, and through somebody's belief, your own magic, your own auto-hypnosis starts working. This man was cured. In the first place,
his headache must have been created by himself - because a real headache cannot be cured in such a way, only a false headache, a psychological one - in the first place the headache was a hypnosis; in the second place, he had cured it. But this man is dangerous, because if you can create a headache you can also create cancer. Projecting things...
Once it happened that a man stayed with me and we were sleeping in the same room. In the night I must have gone to the toilet and he must have been very sleepy, half awake, half asleep. So he looked at my bed and I was not there. Then he must have fallen asleep for a few seconds. When I came back and he must have looked again - I was there! So he thought that for those few seconds I had disappeared. He jumped out of the bed, caught my legs and said:
"Just tell me - you have done the miracle - but tell me how you did it? Now I will never leave you. You are the right master!" So I told him: "It is okay. You will not leave me; but at least give me a chance also to say whether I would like you to be with me always, or not - because you are simply a fool." But the man said: "No, you don't try to escape. I am not going to leave you. I have seen the miracle: for this I was waiting. I will choose the master who can disappear. You have done it. I have seen it with my own eyes!"
Mind is a very subtle game. You can hear things I am not saying; you can go through things I am not doing; you can deceive yourself. So it is not necessary that somebody should deceive you. You can deceive yourself. You are a self- deceiver.
The man, seeing the silent master looking desperately all around, thought that this was the right man, a great enlightened man, indicating that the Buddha cannot be found anywhere. So, satisfied, well pleased, he thanked the master and set out again on his journey.
ON THE ROAD THE PILGRIM MET THE ATTENDANT MONKS ON THEIR WAY
HOME. HE BEGAN
TELLING THEM
ENTHUSIASTICALLY WHAT
AN
ENLIGHTENED BEING THIS MASTER OF SILENCE IS.
HE SAID: "I ASKED HIM WHAT BUDDHA IS AND HE IMMEDIATELY TURNED HIS
FACE TO THE EAST AND TO THE WEST, IMPLYING THAT HUMAN BEINGS ARE
ALWAYS LOOKING FOR BUDDHA HERE AND THERE, BUT ACTUALLY, BUDDHA IS NOT TO BE FOUND IN ANY SUCH DIRECTIONS. OH, WHAT AN ENLIGHTENED
MASTER HE IS, AND HOW PROFOUND HIS TEACHING!"
WHEN THE ATTENDANT MONKS RETURNED, THE MASTER OF SILENCE
SCOLDED THEM THUS: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME? A WHILE AGO
I WAS EMBARRASSED TO DEATH AND ALMOST RUINED BY AN INQUISITIVE
PILGRIM.
Remember this story well, because it can be your story also on the path. And this should not be so - this story should not become your story. I am telling these stories and talking about them to make you aware of certain things. I love these stories, because they indicate so simply and so directly and so immediately certain phenomena which are possible for every pilgrim to meet on the path.
How to avoid them so that you are not deceived? Nothing can be done about the deceivers. What can you do? They are there and the whole allows them also - that far it is good. You cannot do anything about the deceivers, so don't be worried, let them be themselves. But you can do something about yourself, that is the point.
I don't want you to become revolutionaries and go and hunt babas. No. Leave them to themselves. I'm telling you, not to become revolutionaries, but to become more aware so that 64
such things don't happen to you, that's all. Babas will continue, always and always, because fools are there, and they need them; they fulfil a particular need.
So what is to be done? You can do only one thing. You drop that need within you. Don't project. Don't allow beliefs to settle in your mind. Clean the mind every day, as one cleans the house; dust gathers the whole day, in the evening you clean it, and again in the morning. In the night you have done nothing, but even in the night dust settles, so in the morning you clean again. Continuously clean your mind of beliefs, concepts, theories, ideas, ideologies, philosophies, doctrines, scriptures. You simply clean your mind of verbal chattering and you try to look at reality without any mind inside. Just look, a pure look, stare naked. Tilopa says:
"Stare naked and MAHAMUDRA will be yours." You will attain to the highest enlightenment possible to human consciousness. Stare naked. Let your eyes be clean of all concepts. Then the reality will be revealed to you, because you will not distort it and you will not project it and you will not put anything into it.
What did this pilgrim do? He had some ideas and he put these ideas into the gesture of the master who was looking all around for his mouthpieces. Into that situation he put his own ideas. He must have read somewhere that the Buddha cannot be found in any direction. That was projected.
Don't be a projector, don't be an active mind. Let your mind be completely passive, receptive. Don't bring anything from the mind into the reality, otherwise you will distort it.
Simply allow the reality to enter the mind and you be a passive watcher, a passive witness.
Then, whatsoever the case is, you will know. Then that which is will be revealed to you, and only that can lead you to maturity, to growth, and to the final flowering.
Drop the mind if you want to know the real. Put aside the mind if you want to penetrate into the truth. The truth is always there, but your mind is standing just in-between. Put aside the mind, make a window and look, and everything, the very mystery of life, becomes unveiled before you. With the mind nobody has ever been able to know the truth. Without the mind anybody can know the truth, because the mind is the only barrier. The mind must cease for the truth to be.
And you have nothing else but mind, so it is difficult, very difficult to put it aside -
arduous, but it happens if you go on trying. In the beginning only a few seconds of glimpses will be there. But even those will give you a new dimension. For seconds mind stops, and suddenly, as if there is lightning, the whole world of mind disappears and the world of the real is revealed. These lightnings will happen to you, and then, by and by, you will get settled into the state of no-mind. Then there is no need for lightning, the sun has arisen. Now it is the morning, all darkness disappears.
A religious person is a person of no mind, no belief. A religious person is a person of trust.
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