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Chapter 9 - Lovers of tao
This is a strange world. When you are able to read there is no point in reading, and when you are incapable of reading you read too much and that goes on creating more confusion in your mind.
I have read Rinzai, and I have found that it is very rare to find such a confused enlightened master. He certainly did a great job -- others have to sort it out. But at least he carried the message from China to Japan. Those who followed Rinzai, they dropped his philosophy, they dropped his superstitions. They carried only the pure, clean experience of consciousness.
Rinzai is still worshipped. He has his own school, one thousand years after he was alive.
But the masters who followed really did a good sorting out; almost ninety-nine percent of Rinzai has been dropped. One percent is so true that you cannot drop it. But he was not the man to express only that one percent, he made much fuss about it. It would have been far better for him first to forget his philosophy, drop his superstitions, sort out for himself what is actually his own experience and then give an expression to it. But others have to do this laundry job. He left a mess behind him.
A master, Kansan, of the same lineage as Rinzai, says in a few words much more than Rinzai's big discourses.
Kansan says:
I CLIMB THE ROAD TO COLD MOUNTAIN,
THE ROAD TO COLD MOUNTAIN THAT NEVER ENDS. THE VALLEYS ARE LONG AND STREWN WITH STONES;
THE STREAMS BROAD AND BANKED WITH THICK GRASS. THE MOSS IS SLIPPERY,
THOUGH NO RAIN HAS FALLEN;
PINES SIGH, BUT IT IS NOT THE WIND.
WHO CAN BREAK FROM THE SNARES OF THE WORLD, AND SIT WITH ME AMONG THE WHITE CLOUDS?
He is saying, the road is a non-ending road. Your inner world has no limitations to it. Just as the outer universe has no boundaries, your inner world also has no inner boundaries. He is simply describing the whole path he has moved through.
I CLIMB THE ROAD TO COLD MOUNTAIN.
Because as you go deeper it becomes colder and colder. All the heat is sickness, it is fever.
THE ROAD TO COLD MOUNTAIN THAT NEVER ENDS. THE VALLEYS ARE LONG AND STREWN WITH STONES;
THE STREAMS BROAD AND BANKED WITH THICK GRASS. THE MOSS IS SLIPPERY,
THOUGH NO RAIN HAS FALLEN;
Osho - The Language of Existence 112
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