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CHAPTER 12
Your depth is infinite
7 June 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
BELOVED OSHO,
A MONK ASKED SEPPO, “HOW ABOUT WHEN THE OLD VALLEY WATER IS A COLD SPRING?” SEPPO ANSWERED, “STARE INTO IT AS YOU MAY, YOU CAN’T SEE THE BOTTOM!”
THE MONK SAID, “WHAT ABOUT WHEN WE DRINK THE WATER?” SEPPO SAID, “IT DOESN’T GO IN THE MOUTH.”
THE MONK WENT TO JOSHU AND SAID WHAT HAD BEEN DISCUSSED.
JOSHU SAID, “IF IT WON’T GO IN THE MOUTH, IT WON’T GO THROUGH THE NOSTRILS.”
THE MONK THEN ASKED, “HOW ABOUT WHEN THE OLD VALLEY WATER IS A COLD SPRING?”
JOSHU SAID, “HOW DISAGREEABLE IT IS!” THE MONK SAID, “WHAT ABOUT DRINKING IT?” JOSHU SAID, “YOU WILL DIE.”
WHEN SEPPO HEARD OF THIS CONVERSATION, HE SAID, “JOSHU IS ONE OF THE ANCIENT BUDDHAS,” AND BOWED DOWN IN RESPECT TO JOSHU, FROM A DISTANCE. AFTER THAT HE ANSWERED NO QUESTION HIMSELF.
Zen is just like this silence – it is here, but you cannot hold it in your hands. When the hand is open it is, and when the hand is closed it is not. It all depends on your opening or your closing. Zen is at a tremendously great task, eternally insisting on one thing: just be, and don’t ask any question, because there is nobody to answer it.
‘Nobody to answer it’ means you are the answer! And you are being disrespectful to yourself when you ask a question. Who are you asking?
This small anecdote has to be understood as deeply as possible.
A MONK ASKED SEPPO, “HOW ABOUT WHEN THE OLD VALLEY WATER IS A COLD SPRING?” SEPPO ANSWERED, “STARE INTO IT AS YOU MAY, YOU CAN’T SEE THE BOTTOM!”
To anybody who does not understand the language of Zen it will all look like nonsense. But it is more than any sense can contain. It is certainly beyond so-called sense; it is certainly not common sense, it is very uncommon.
The monk has asked Seppo, the master, “HOW ABOUT WHEN THE OLD VALLEY WATER IS A COLD SPRING, when the valley water becomes just solid ice?”
Seppo lived near a spring. SEPPO ANSWERED, “STARE INTO IT...” Remember the words,
“STARE INTO IT AS YOU MAY, YOU CAN’T SEE THE BOTTOM!”
On the surface, to the intellectuals, it may seem irrelevant to the question – it is not. Seppo is saying, “Stare deeply; howsoever deeply you stare into a solid spring, you cannot see its bottom.” The same is your own situation: stare into yourself, you can go deeper and deeper, but you cannot find the bottom. Your depth is infinite.
THE MONK SAID, “WHAT ABOUT WHEN WE DRINK THE WATER?”
He cannot understand what the master is saying. He is still struggling with his question about drinking water when the spring becomes frozen.
SEPPO SAID, “IT DOES NOT GO IN THE MOUTH.”
Ordinarily it will seem as if he is answering the monk and saying to him that, “When the spring becomes solid, ice, you cannot drink from it, it does not go in the mouth.” But that is not his meaning. He is saying: truth does not come from outside, it is already within you. It may be spring or it may be summer, it doesn’t matter.
THE MONK WENT TO JOSHU, another master, AND SAID WHAT HAD BEEN DISCUSSED. JOSHU SAID, “IF IT WON’T GO IN THE MOUTH, IT WON’T GO THROUGH THE NOSTRILS.”
Why have you come here? You have been answered! You are still seeking outside; your question is like pointing an arrow at something outside and you, the one who is holding the arrow, are the very target. Just try to understand that by changing the master nothing is changed.
“IF IT WON’T GO IN THE MOUTH, IT WON’T GO THROUGH THE NOSTRILS.”
THE MONK THEN ASKED, “HOW ABOUT WHEN THE OLD VALLEY WATER IS A COLD SPRING?”
This is the mind of man. This monk represents the mind and its obsession; it goes on asking again and again without seeing the point. The point is obvious.
JOSHU SAID, “HOW DISAGREEABLE IT IS!”
Your superficialness, your question, “HOW DISAGREEABLE IT IS!” THE MONK SAID, “WHAT ABOUT DRINKING IT?”
The same obsession. The question has not changed even a single inch. JOSHU SAID, “YOU WILL DIE.”
If you go on asking in the hope of finding an answer from the outside, there is nothing else for you, “YOU WILL DIE.”
Only death comes from outside, life is within.
Life is,
death comes and goes.
Death is only an episode
in an eternal journey of consciousness.
WHEN SEPPO HEARD OF THIS CONVERSATION, HE SAID, “JOSHU IS ONE OF THE ANCIENT BUDDHAS,” AND BOWED DOWN IN RESPECT TO JOSHU, FROM A DISTANCE.
AFTER THAT HE ANSWERED NO QUESTION HIMSELF.
After this anecdote Seppo never spoke again. Seeing the futility of people’s minds, their consistent misunderstanding, not only Seppo but many mystics have remained silent. Their silence is
immensely symbolic of our stupid, obsessive, continuously questioning mind. Their silence is the answer although you have not asked it. In their silence perhaps you may also become silent.
I have been talking about synchronicity and it just happened in my bathroom. I had a weighing- machine, which was as unreliable as any of you. Sometimes it showed one answer, sometimes another – you just step on it again and it has changed. I ordered another of the same kind of machine to check it.
On the first day they both gave different answers; but during the night, in the darkness of my bathroom, something must have happened. In the morning they started giving the same answers. And now for almost eight days they are giving the same answer, without wavering. Both have agreed to be together, have fallen in love.
Being silent with a master, neither questioning nor thinking, a synchronicity happens. The same kind of consciousness that the master has starts filtering into you, filling your inner being. Soon there is no disciple and no master, but purely a dance of joy, of deep understanding and bliss.
Seppo did not answer questions again. He is perfectly right, but still I would have asked him not to stop. One never knows, somebody may come by the way, may fall in love with you, may get the flavor of your being. With this hope all the masters have been speaking, just a hope in the darkness of some guest coming.
Seppo should not have stopped, but now nothing can be done about it. I can only say to you that if you at any moment come to your inner flame, don’t stop like Seppo; share it, unconditionally, even to those who will not understand. Perhaps today they may not understand, tomorrow they will; perhaps not in this life, but in some other life the understanding is going to blossom. Trust existence.
Seppo was at a fault: just because one single human being has not understood you, it does not mean that you have to stop. It simply means you have to refine your answer. The answer is not just a verbal and intellectual thing – the answer is to go on creating situations in which awakening is possible.
Seppo cannot be forgiven for being silent. He should have continued, whether anybody understood or not. I have been speaking for thirty-five years continuously, searching for those who will understand. It has been a long search, but I have found all of you – and many more around the earth – who have started to understand a little bit.
But just a little bit is more than enough. Just a cup of tea, a little taste and then you can go on your own. You know the way, you have felt it.
Question 1 Maneesha has asked, BELOVED OSHO,
IN THE PAST I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY THAT FOR A DISCIPLE TO MOVE FROM MASTER TO MASTER IS LIKE CONTINUOUSLY DRILLING HOLES THAT NEVER GO DEEP ENOUGH TO
REACH THE WATER. YET, THAT SEEMS TO BE JUST WHAT ZEN MONKS DID – MOVING FROM ONE MASTER TO ANOTHER, OFTEN WITH THE SAME QUESTION.
TRUST AND INTIMACY WITH THE MASTER WERE APPARENTLY LESS SIGNIFICANT THAN FINDING THE MASTER WHO COULD CREATE THE RIGHT SITUATION.
WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?
Maneesha, they were not going from one master to another master. They were moving from one teacher to another teacher in search of the master. They were moving from one monastery to another monastery to find a place from where they wouldn’t have to go anywhere else. It was a search for the master amongst thousands of teachers. One has to move to feel with whom your heart starts dancing.
Today the situation is different. There are not thousands of teachers proclaiming that they are enlightened, you don’t have much choice. Still, the fact remains that you can’t stop unless you have found the one who goes straight into your being – just like an arrow without missing the target.
It is said of Baso that he never took leave of his master. Although the master said, “You can move, you can go into other monasteries, there are other masters, other ways of teaching, other ways of reaching. Why don’t you move?”
Baso’s answer is worth remembering. He said, “Others are moving because they have not found. I cannot move because I am already there where I wanted to be. I have found you! And in finding you I have found my heart’s longing. Now there is nowhere to go.”
Once a disciple finds the master, the master is his whole world, his love affair.
But before that, Maneesha, it is perfectly right: one should move, one should not remain with someone with whom he cannot feel the intimacy, with whom he cannot have the same wavelength of life. He may be right or wrong, that does not matter. What matters is whether you feel yourself enriched by the presence of your master, whether you feel aflame. Then there is no need to go anywhere.
Question 2
Her second question is:
AS A SPECIES WE REGARD OURSELVES AS THE MOST CONSCIOUS AND EVOLVED FORM OF LIFE, AND THUS ABLE TO HELP ALL OTHER FORMS OF LIFE. BUT ZEN SEEMS TO INDICATE ANOTHER EQUALLY IMPORTANT TRUTH – THAT ALL LIFE FORMS, AND THE MOST MUNDANE OF ACTIVITIES INVOLVED IN LIFE, ARE ALL POTENTIAL TRIGGERS TO HELP US REALIZE THE ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS.
THROUGH THESE EVENINGS WITH YOU, THIS HAS BECOME TOO OBVIOUS TO COMMENT ON; AND YET TOO MARVELLOUS, NOT TO.
Maneesha, even the bamboos are no longer commenting. When you are feeling it so solidly, there is no need for any comment. You are the very few human beings on the earth today who are, at this moment, so much blessed, so much in tune with existence. This silence is just a simple proof. Why have the bamboos stopped making their commentaries? Not without reason.
Before you also enter into the same silence as the bamboos... a few laughs.
Paddy is in court, requesting damages for injuries to his arm, which happened in an accident at work.
“Would you show me how far you can raise your arm now?” asks the defense advocate. With a great deal of effort Paddy raises his arm six inches.
“And could you raise it higher before the accident?” asks the advocate. “Of course,” says Paddy, “I could raise it this high...!”
This is our unconsciousness.
A young policeman is escorting a drunk driver down to the prison cells at the police station. “You are going to be locked up for the night,” he explains.
“What is the charge?” demands the prisoner.
“There is no charge,” says the cop. “It is all part of the service.”
Bertie Ballsoff, the company chief, telephones his home one afternoon. The Mexican housemaid answers.
“Put my wife on the phone,” booms Ballsoff.
“Senor,” replies the servant, “I am sorry to tell you thees, but your wife is in the bedroom, making love to the neighbor.”
“Now listen carefully,” snaps Ballsoff. “Go into my room, open the desk drawer and take out my loaded revolver. Then go and shoot them both!”
“But Senor!” wails the housemaid, “I can’t do that.”
“You had better,” replies Ballsoff, “or I will come home, shoot them and you too!” The housemaid puts down the phone and returns a few minutes later.
“Okay Senor, I have done it,” she announces, “I keel them both and throw them in the pool.”
“Pool?” says Ballsoff, “what pool? Hello! Is this the Ballsoff house?”
Walter Wibbles, a skinny little man, is in the back of the church one day, praying to God. “Please God,” he moans, “I can’t keep up the payments on my house; my wife wants a new dress, and my car is broken down. You have got to help me!”
Just then, the church door bursts open and a big black guy comes in, walks straight to the front of the church, looks up to heaven, and shouts,
“Hey, God, I really dig you, man! I want a new car, a new house and a new girl-friend. And I want it NOW!”
He then turns around and walks out.
Walter can’t believe it and goes on muttering quietly.
Next week, Walter is in the same place, in the back of the church again.
“Please God,” he whimpers, “my wife wants to leave me, I have just lost my job and...” But he is interrupted by the screech of brakes outside. Then the church door bursts open and the black guy walks in with a beautiful girl on his arm.
They walk up to the front and the black guy shouts, “Hey, God, I really dig you, man, The car is great, the house is terrific and the chick is farrr-out!”
This is too much for Walter. When the black guy has gone, he walks up to the front, raises his arms and says, “God, what is going on? You give him everything he wants, but you give me nothing! Why?”
Suddenly a booming voice comes down from heaven, saying, “I just don’t dig you, man!” And now...
Nivedano... Go deep!
This moment... (Drumbeat) (Gibberish) Nivedano...
(NIVEDANO IS ABSENT TONIGHT... IT TAKES A FEW SECONDS FOR HIS SUBSTITUTE TO RESPOND.)
(Drumbeat)
Although Nivedano is not here, still he has to beat the drum. Nobody is there.
Just be absolutely silent, gather your whole energy inwards, just like you are coming home. This, remember This... is the ultimate reality of your being.
Nivedano... (Drumbeat)
Fall dead, absolutely dead.
Don’t be bothered about the breathing body. Be in your grave.
This...
This...
Don’t miss it.
I am offering you all the greatest peak of consciousness. Don’t miss it.
Just be and you have got it. Nivedano...
(Drumbeat)
Come back to life, with totality, aliveness. Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.
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