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Chapter 4 - Beyond life-and-death
what have you been doing for seventy years? Seventy years' training of life ends in a single moment? No, the more accurate account is that you start dying the day you are born.
Every day you are living and dying, living and dying; both processes are together. At a certain point in the journey -- seventy years, eighty years, ninety years -- the energy that was carrying you is finished. The roots no longer support you, the roots no longer nourish you; you shrink, you close your eyes and you die.
All the meditations are in fact in the search for the roots from where the life has arisen and to where the life goes back -- to where? If we can find the roots, we can find from where it is getting its nourishment. And to know the universal life as your nourishment, you have gone beyond life-and-death. This is the authentic Zen experience.
THAT ROOT IS NOT SOMETHING THAT FELL FROM HEAVEN OR SPRANG UP
FROM EARTH. IT IS AT THE CENTER OF THE FUNCTIONING OF EVERY MAN, LIVING WITH HIS LIFE, DYING WITH HIS DEATH, BECOMING A BUDDHA, MAKING A PATRIARCH.
Whatever you do, at the center of your being is the root that is connecting you with the universal life source.
THESE ARE ALL IN DEPENDENCE OF IT, AND ONE WHO GOES INTO ZEN HAS
TO PIERCE AND BREAK THROUGH THIS THING.
WHAT IS CALLED ZEN SITTING IS NOT SOME SORT OF OPERATION TO BE
PERFORMED, AND TO TAKE IT SO IS WRONG. IN OUR LINE, IT IS SIMPLY
REALIZING WHAT ONE'S OWN TRUE HEART REALLY IS, AND IT IS NECESSARY
TO PLEDGE ONESELF TO THE TRUE HEART.
GOING INTO ZEN IS SEEING ONE'S ORIGINAL NATURE, AND THE MAIN THING
IS TO MAKE OUT WHAT ONE WAS BEFORE EVEN FATHER OR MOTHER WERE
BORN. FOR THIS ONE MUST CONCENTRATE ONE'S FEELING AND PURIFY IT, THEN, ELIMINATING ALL THAT WEIGHS ON ONE'S THOUGHT AND FEELING, ONE MUST GO TO GRASP THE SELF.
WE ARE SAYING THAT THE SELF SEEKS TO GRASP THE SELF, BUT IN FACT IT
IS ALREADY THE SELF, SO WHY SHOULD IT GO TO GRASP THE SELF? IT IS BECAUSE IN THE MASS OF KNOWINGS AND PERCEIVINGS AND JUDGMENTS, THE TRUE SELF IS ALWAYS SO WRAPPED UP IN THE
DISTINCTIONS AND EXCLUSIVITIES THAT IT DOES NOT EMERGE TO SHOW
ITSELF AS IT IS.
Bukko's way is very special in the lineage of Zen masters. He ends up in the same place but he follows a very different route.
He is saying: first you have to encounter your heart, the very center of your being. And as you encounter it, hold on to it. The holding of your own self is necessary because so many judgments, imaginations, theories, rationalizations have been forced upon you. They drag you away from yourself; otherwise every child is born with a pure self. Just turning his eyes in, he will encounter himself, there is no need to grab. But for you, you are lost in a crowd of many conceptions, many ideas about the self -- what it is, how it functions, whether it is or not.
Osho - The Language of Existence 42
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