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CHAPTER 29
When your hands are empty...
18 April 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,
HOW DO YOU EXPERIENCE YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT?
Milarepa, enlightenment is not an experience.
Experience always divides the experiencer from itself. But enlightenment knows no duality; hence it is not an experience but simply experiencing. It may not be right language; in fact, it cannot be right language because the linguist will not understand what you mean by ‘experiencing’. One has to know it.
But some effort can be made; some indications and hints can be given.
When you are in love, is it an experience? Is it objective? Is it separate from you? Is it something that you can exhibit? Is it something for which you can give some evidence, proof, argument? No, love simply knows itself. It is self-evident. It needs no proof and no witnesses. It needs no evidence, no arguments, no philosophy.
Enlightenment goes even deeper than the reaches of love. Enlightenment simply means you have awakened. Can you describe, every morning when you wake up, some experience? All that you can say is, “Up to now I was unaware of myself and the world. Now I am aware of the world, aware of things around me, aware of myself.” But this is very superficial – that’s why I call it only “hints.”
When you awaken in your deepest core of being, in the very center of your existence, then there is only silence, immense joy and celebration. But to find an expression for it has not been possible up to now, and will never be possible – this much can be said with absolute certainty. Language is left so far away that when you try to express your innermost awakening, it becomes distorted. The medium of language is not capable to reflect it in its purity.
Language is not meant to express such deep awakenings. The language has grown up in the marketplace where people are discussing and talking about things, about objects. Hence, there is no word capable of conveying the essence of enlightenment. It is beyond language.
You can say, it is the beyond.
It is our innermost and our ultimate nature. In total awakening... with no darkness around, no dreams, no thoughts, but just a pure fire, a pure love that knows no limits, that knows no boundaries. It is more like a fragrance that you cannot catch hold of. It is there, you feel it, but it is so invisible...
It is just like the air: it is there; you cannot live without it. But you cannot catch hold of the air in your fist. The moment you close your hand and make a fist, the air is out; it is not enclosed, it has escaped.
When your hand is open you have all the air of the world in your hand.
One Zen master, Bokoju, used to say to his disciples, “The day you come to something which you cannot express however hard you try – no word is sufficient, no word can justify itself, in fact every word will destroy its beauty, its joy, its aliveness – then come to me. Till then, meditate.”
In other words he used to say, “When your hands are empty and the whole sky is in your hands, come to me with absolute, inexpressible eyes, almost dumb.”
One of his great disciples used to get Bokoju’s slap every time he would go to him. In the tradition of Zen, that is not only accepted but respected. It is the master’s compassion that he slaps you. Bokoju slapped his chief disciple each time he came to say that he had found that which cannot be expressed. He would hit him hard – “If you have found that which cannot be expressed, then even in saying that it cannot be expressed you have expressed something about it!”
The disciple was at a loss. If you say something, you are in trouble. If you say, “It is inexpressible,” you are in trouble.
One day he came and without saying anything simply sat by the side of the master. The master looked into his eyes, laughed, and said, “For the last time, let me hit you once more. Because it will not be possible again. You have found it. Why are you so silent? Why don’t you speak?”
The disciple was totally silent, and the master was poking him to speak: “Let me at least for the last time have the pleasure of slapping you. Afterwards I will not be able to slap you. You have found it. This slap is a certificate.”
Zen is a very strange tradition but one of the profoundest. The disciple stood up and slapped the master! The master said, “That’s right! I have needed for a long time for somebody to slap me.
My old master is dead – he used to do it. Nobody can do it that way, with such love, but you have managed. From now onwards you are allowed to slap others. You can sit here because I am getting old, and the whole day slapping people... it is becoming very tiring. You sit here and when somebody comes” – because there were hundreds of disciples and everybody had to come to report whether he has found or not. And once in a while the idea was entering into everybody’s head that “Perhaps this is it.”
Somebody would see a beautiful sunset and... utter silence. And naturally, the idea would arise, “My god, this is it – enlightenment!” And he would rush to the master. Now, the master simply used to give a hit to the disciple – slap him, hard – “A sunset, howsoever beautiful, and the silence that comes with the experience of the sunset, is not enlightenment. Just go back and come again when you have found it.”
The finding of oneself is the most mysterious experience. You are both – the knower and the known.
This is the difficulty, this is why it cannot be expressed – who is there to express it? You are the experience itself.
But the moment you express it you will become separate, and that will be absolutely unjustified. You are asking me, Milarepa, “How do you experience your enlightenment?”
I simply don’t experience. I am simply enlightenment. It is not an experience, it is my being. It is not something that has happened to me, it is my very soul.
So I cannot say more than Yaa-Hoo! BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE RIGHT REMEMBRANCE THAT BUDDHA TALKS ABOUT?
I GO ON REMEMBERING ALL KINDS OF THINGS YOU HAVE SAID, AND MY OWN IN SIGHTS, BUT ISN’T THAT MY MIND
TRYING TO DECEIVE MIND? AND WHO IS REMEMBERING IT?
Anand Agyeya, what Gautam Buddha calls the right remembrance is not what you understand by remembering. To create the distinction between what he means and your understanding of remembering, he uses the word ‘right’; otherwise there is no need to use that word.
His original word is sammasati; sati is remembering, it is memory. It is all the experiences that you have passed through. Right remembrance is not memory, it is remembering yourself – who you are.
Not your education, not your culture, not your civilization, not your religion, not your profession – who you are. The moment you remember yourself – “I am this... this moment, this consciousness, this bliss, this eternity” – it is right remembrance.
It is the same poverty of language that each mystic has suffered from. Even Buddha could not do much more than that. He had to use a word from the language which knows nothing about the self; which knows about everything else in the world, but don’t ask “Who are you?” because that creates great anxiety.
Just think: if somebody asks you, “Who are you?” – not your name, obviously; not your caste, obviously; not your nation, obviously. Who are you? Not your body because it changes every day. Will you be able to recognize a picture of yourself from the first day your father made your mother pregnant? Your picture will not be more than a small dot on the paper. Will you be able to recognize that this is you?
And since then, every moment you have been changing. Once you were a child, once you were young, once you were old, and some day you are going to be dead also. You are a constant change. It is not still photography, it is a movie.
But in this whole changing, riverlike being... who are you? Only the stupid will speak out; the wise will remain silent. One who knows not will say, “I am this; I am a man, I am a woman, I am young, I am Hindu, I am a Christian...” Only the stupid will speak out.
The wise will become absolutely silent. He is also answering – his silence is the answer. Buddha calls this silence “right remembrance”... sammasati.
You are saying, “I go on remembering all kinds of things you have said, and my own insights...” Agyeya, I had no idea that you also have insights! But... okay.
Remembering all kinds of things that I have said, and what you have imagined as your intuitions... just try to find a single intuition that is yours, and you will be surprised. It is borrowed. Either you have heard it from someone or you have read it. You may not remember the source, but all thoughts are borrowed.
Once your insight starts functioning you won’t ask any question. Your insight will be the answer to all the questions that can be asked. That’s why I say without any hesitation, without any uncertainty, that you are befooling yourself if you think you have insights.
And moreover, just insight is enough – in singular, not in plural. “Insights” – those are all imaginations. They are also borrowed; perhaps you may have forgotten the source. Mind tends to forget the source so that it can claim, “It is my thought, my insight. I am the originator of it.”
And then you ask, “But is that not my mind trying to deceive mind? And who is remembering it?”
One thing is certain, I am not remembering it! One thing is certain, that nobody else is remembering it. It is still your mind, deceiving you. It is not the self-remembrance of Gautam Buddha.
How to make the distinction? The distinction is very simple. If it were your own insight into your own being, if your inner eyes were open, the question would not have arisen. But because the question arises of who is remembering it...
There is only pure consciousness in you. This pure consciousness is in itself the remembrance – not of many things, but only of one thing: of itself.
Mind is a junk yard, it is a junkie. It goes on collecting all kinds of things. It enjoys collections very much, all kinds of stupid collections – postal stamps, strange things, which children can be allowed to do but I have seen even old people collecting postal stamps, purchasing ancient postal stamps. There is a great market; all around the world there are those idiots who are selling their collections and there are people who are purchasing them. Ancient coins, maybe two thousand years old.…
I was a guest in a beautiful house in Greece. The house belongs to a famous film producer. His collection is of old pottery – all kinds of ancient pots; perhaps he is the greatest collector of old pots.
Mind collects outside, mind collects inside. Mind is such a great collector – and the thoughts that are arising in you as insights are nothing but borrowed thoughts whose origins you have consideredly forgotten. If you want to remember, you can remember because your unconscious still goes on keeping the record of each forgotten source. But what Gautam Buddha or what I am saying to you is to be in a state where there is no thought, no insight, no imagination, no emotion, no sentiment.
Just simple consciousness, utterly empty.
Only in that utterly empty consciousness blossoms the mystic rose. That is your very being. Out of that being arise all kinds of ecstasies, but it is not a thought. It is not part of the mind.
On the contrary, it is called no-mind, no-thought, no-insight. Gautam Buddha was very particularly insistent that unless you achieve a state of nothingness, you have not found yourself. It looks contradictory to the mind, because mind is searching for something and Gautam Buddha is saying, “Unless you find nothing, you will not find yourself.” Logically, Buddha is making an irrational statement. But existentially, he is absolutely true.
And we are here not to learn logic, we are here to feel existence, to feel life and its flame within you. That is possible only when you are surrounded with absolute nothingness.
When everything is discarded, when nothing remains, you are. Only you cannot be discarded. How can you discard yourself?
That’s why Buddha is absolutely right – he tried to negate, to eliminate everything, till there is nothing to negate. But you are there, who has negated everything.
This great negator has been called by many names. One of the names is enlightenment. Question 2
BELOVED OSHO,
GURDJIEFF IS SAID TO HAVE COMMENTED: “UNTIL A MAN DISCOVERS THAT HE CANNOT BE IMPARTIAL THROUGH HIS ORDINARY FUNCTIONS, HE CANNOT BE IMPARTIAL.”
CAN AN UNAWAKENED BEING EVER BE IMPARTIAL?
Mada, an unenlightened being can never be impartial. He does not know himself; he has not the awareness that can make it clear to him what is right and what is wrong. He cannot discriminate, he can only be prejudiced. His prejudice may be ancient, may be supported by religions, may be in the scriptures, but a prejudice is a prejudice and mind is full of prejudices. People never think that what they are judging is only based on a prejudice. All their judgments are going to be prejudiced.
I was arrested in America; the topmost attorneys were working for me. And the strangest thing they said to me was, “You should not utter a single word in the court.”
I said, “This is strange, because every kind of illegality has been done: I have been tortured, harassed in six jails, not been allowed to sleep for twelve days. They had no grounds to arrest me, I have not committed any crime. They had no arrest warrant either. And you say to me that I should not say anything?”
They said, “We are sorry to say to you that whatever you say, you will not get justice! It is impossible for you to get justice anywhere in the world. We have looked through your books and even we have been shocked by your statements and their truth. It is better you keep absolutely silent. You have got three top attorneys; we will fight for you.”
I said, “This is going to be a strange fight. You are putting chains on my mouth. They have chained my hands, my feet, and now you are putting chains on my mouth!”
They said, “We are sorry, but you cannot get justice because the minds of the judges you will be facing are already prejudiced. First, you are not white: that makes things difficult. Secondly, you have made a commune which indicates towards communism. You have made statements which are absolutely true, but they go against the prejudices of the Christians. And all these judges are Christians, Americans; their minds are not impartial – cannot be. We are fighting for you because we are being paid, but going through your books, even we cannot accept many things – and we know they are right, but our minds... We cannot accept that Jesus was a little psychologically sick.”
I said to them, “If you meet a man on the road and he declares, ‘Listen, I am the only begotten son of God,’ what will be your reaction?”
They said, “Obviously that man is mad. Nobody has seen God and this guy is proclaiming that he is the son of God? He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but not a son of God.”
I said, “If you had met Jesus, then what would have been your reaction? And what is the difference between meeting A or B or C? The point is, the statement is illogical, absurd. He cannot produce any evidence for it. And do you think all the rabbis who agreed for the crucifixion of Jesus were barbarous people? They were very learned people, just as you are learned.”
But I can understand. Before his crucifixion, Jesus was presented to the Roman governor of Judea – Judea was not an independent country; it was under the empire of Rome. Pontius Pilot was not a Jew. Naturally, he had no prejudices like the Jews; he had his own prejudices, which were Roman.
He could see that this man was absolutely innocent and he wanted to save him, because he had not committed any crime. Even if he has proclaimed himself to be the son of God, so what? He may be. If you can believe in a God whom nobody has seen... at least this fellow Jesus is visible, tangible. At least you can have a conversation with him, you can say good-bye; he is real. And what wrong has he done to anybody? If God is angry he will punish him. Who are you to punish him? On what grounds? Who has given you the authority that you have to prevent people from declaring that they are the only begotten sons of God?
Being a Roman, Pontius Pilate was not filled with the Jewish prejudice. He could not see any point – “Why is so much fuss being made?” And not only fuss, they are forcing him to crucify the man.
My attorneys told me, “You are far more dangerous...” because Jesus was not saying a single thing against Judaism. He was not saying anything against the Jews – in fact, he was simply saying, “I am the fulfillment of your expectations. You have been expecting that God will send his son. He has sent me.”
My attorneys said, “You are far more dangerous because you are against all the conditionings of all the religions, all their basic hypotheses. You are against nations, their boundaries; you are against religions, their claims. Naturally it is better that you remain completely silent.”
And you will be surprised that in the two courts where the case was presented, I simply remained silent. My attorneys would not allow me – just for my sake, I understood, that if I said anything it would be held against me.
It is not a question of truth or untruth. Things are being decided by people with their prejudices. Only an enlightened man can be impartial.
Your question is, “Gurdjieff is said to have commented: Until a man discovers that he cannot be impartial through his ordinary functions, he cannot be impartial.”
Gurdjieff’s way of saying things is a little roundabout. That was his way – that which can be said directly, he will go miles... He has written a book of one thousand pages. It is such a headache to go through it, because he is not saying anything. But I am also stubborn – I went on. I have found only so much substance in that big book that it can be written on an ordinary postcard. But that was his way. He will go into allegories and... I don’t object, I simply say that was his uniqueness. And he suffered for his uniqueness. He could not find many people even to listen to him, because he was a torture.
Now, he is simply saying that unless you are awakened, you cannot be impartial. But rather than saying it the simple way, he is saying, UNTIL A MAN DISCOVERS THAT HE CANNOT BE IMPARTIAL THROUGH HIS ORDINARY FUNCTIONS, HE CANNOT BE IMPARTIAL. Until a man
discovers that he cannot be impartial... naturally, such a man will become awakened. If he can find out that he cannot be impartial, then he will drop judgment.
All our judgments are our prejudices.
A man who is awakened has no judgments. He does not divide people into saints and sinners, into good and bad, because they are both the same. Their prejudices may be different, but a prejudiced mind is the real problem. Whether your prejudiced mind has made you a saint in the eyes of other prejudiced minds...
You can see it: for example if you ask a Jaina, who believes in nonviolence, “What do you say about Jesus, who used to drink alcohol, used to eat meat... is it possible for Jesus to be awakened, enlightened?” The Jaina will simply refuse. There is no question of such a man being awakened, who cannot even understand simple matters of virtue. Being awakened is very far away for him. But ask the Christian about Mahavira: “Do you think Mahavira was a great religious figure?” And they will ask, “How many orphanages was he running? How many Mother Teresas were working under him? How many schools did he open for the poor? What is his teaching about serving the poor?” There is no such teaching. He cannot be called a religious man according to the Christian prejudice.
But a really awakened man knows that everybody who is prejudiced – his prejudice may be good, may be bad; he may be very saintly, very nice, but if he is not enlightened, his niceness, his saintliness, his virtue is just a mind game. The sinner is playing one game, the saint is playing the opposite game.
And in fact, every football team needs two sides – otherwise the game stops. Do you want to stop all the games in the world? This too is simply a game, that somebody is a saint, a great saint, and somebody is a sinner. And do you think there are not sinners who proclaim with great strength that they are the greatest sinners? What is the difference? Both are proclaiming their egos.
I have heard... A man enters a jail and in the cell to which he is assigned there is already another man – deep inside the cell, resting. He inquires of the newcomer, “How long are you going to be here?”
The man says, “I have been sentenced to this jail for ten years.”
The other man says, “Okay, then you can keep your bed just near the door, because you will be going soon. I have been sentenced for thirty years. So don’t enter too far. Just remain near the door, you will be going very quickly.”
“I wonder,” that man said, “why do people commit small sins? If you have guts then do something great – just ten years of jail, and you are not even ashamed.” Strange – sinners also have their dignity. He is just an amateur; the old sinner is well trained, may have been in jail many times before. And perhaps this is the last time, because now he is going to be there thirty years.
I have remembered the story of three Christian monks. There were three Christian monasteries and these three heads of those monasteries once met on the road by chance. It was raining, so they stopped under a tree.
One said, “I accept that your monasteries are great, but you cannot compete with our monastery as far as learning is concerned. Our monastery is the most learned monastery in the world.”
The second said, “I accept it. I know it, but learning does not matter much. The question is of being virtuous, and as far as virtue is concerned you are far away from us, far below. Nobody can compete with the virtue of our monastery.”
And they both looked at the third man. He said, “You are both right. But as far as humbleness is concerned... in humbleness, we are the tops!”
Even the humble person has his ego.
It is because of this fact that I don’t teach you to be virtuous, to follow a certain discipline, to have a certain system of beliefs. I simply want you to be more alert, more awake, more silent.
In other words: more yourself and less mind.
The day you are completely unidentified with the mind and you are just simply innocence, you have arrived home.
Now is the time for a few prayers.
After returning from church one Sunday with his parents, little Ernie surprises them by saying, “I think I might be a preacher when I grow up.”
“That’s fine,” says his mother, “but what gave you that idea?”
“Well,” replies little Ernie, “if I have to go to church anyway it would be more fun to stand up and yell than sit still and listen.”
A tourist in the hills of Virginia sees one of the locals sprawling in the grass, sunbathing, while his wife is carrying firewood into the house. “Say, mister,” says the tourist, “is it not pretty strenuous work for a woman?”
“Could be,” replies the man, “but we work in shifts.”
“Ah,” says the tourist, “you mean when she gets tired, you take over?”
“Me?” cries the man horrified. “When she gets tired working out here, I let her shift to working in the kitchen.”
A giant black man comes into a bar in the Deep South of the United States. He has an eight-foot alligator walking behind him on a rope.
“Do you serve martinis?” he asks the bartender, who is trying to hide under the bar. “Yes,” stammers the bartender, “we do.”
“Do you serve niggers?” asks the black man. “Yes,” says the bartender, “we do.”
“Okay,” says the man, “I will have a martini for myself and a nigger for my alligator.”
Ronald Reagan is flying to India to meet Rajiv Gandhi when the plane is diverted to Bombay airport. In the extra confusion caused by his arrival Ronald Reagan gets lost in the crowd and finds himself
being harassed by an immigration official. Reagan allows his passport to be processed through the computer, but when the computer shows that he is a dangerous criminal and should not be permitted to enter India, Ronald Reagan loses his temper.
“This Bombay,” he shouts, “it is the asshole of the world!”
“Yes sir,” agrees the immigration man. “Just passing through, are you?”
Edward, the young zoologist, and his wife Betty return from their honeymoon. The next day Edward collects a male gorilla from the zoo and takes him to the lab to continue his studies of gorilla behavior.
He becomes so absorbed in his work that when it is time to leave, he realizes that the zoo is already closed and all the keepers have gone home. So he puts a jacket on the gorilla, gives him a shot of tranquilizers and takes him home in his car. When they arrive, the maid comes to open the door. Edward tells her to take his friend to the guest room and put him to bed because he is not feeling well.
“Don’t worry about him,” continues Edward, “I will take care of him in the morning.” The night passes and in the morning, Edward takes the gorilla back to the zoo.
Later that day, the maid bumps into Betty and asks her if Edward is still as passionate as he was on the honeymoon.
“Ah, yes,” replies Betty, “in fact, he made love to me twice last night.”
“That’s nothing,” says the maid, “you should have seen the friend your husband brought home last night. He made love to me five times without even taking off his fur coat.”
Jerry Jostel walks into a small-town bar and when he has ordered a drink he bets the bartender fifty dollars that he will be crying in three minutes.
“That’s a deal,” says the bartender, “I have not cried since I was ten years old. That time, someone ran over my pet frog.”
Two minutes pass in silence and finally, the bartender says, “you know there is only thirty seconds left and I don’t feel like crying.”
“That’s okay,” replied Jerry, “my friend Boo will be here soon and he will get you going.”
“Boo who?” asked the bartender. He shrugs, then reaches in his pocket and pulls out fifty dollars to give to Jerry.
Jerry sidles along the bar to where big black Duggie is drinking a beer and makes him the same offer. “Man,” says Duggie, “I ain’t cried since I was a baby.”
Two minutes pass in silence and Duggie looks at his watch. “Don’t worry,” says Jerry, “my friend Boo is due here soon. And he will make you cry.”
“Yeah?” asks Duggie, “Who be Boo?”
I don’t know who is this Boo. Some faraway cousin of Hoo. But Hoo makes people laugh and Boo makes people cry.
So remember it: if you want to enjoy laughter, say, “Yaa-Hoo!” If you want to enjoy crying – which is also a very delicate dish – then sit around and say, “Yaa-Boo!” And once you enjoy crying you will see how fresh it makes you. All dust that has gathered goes because of your tears. It cleanses your eyes, makes your heart function well.
So remember, “Yaa-Hoo!” is not a bachelor. It also has a wife, known as “Yaa-Boo.” Once in a while we can practice it here.
What do you say, Niskriya? Good idea?
If everybody really cries... because all over the world they are talking in the newspapers and magazines and televisions about “Yaa-Hoo!” Now I am giving them another thing: “But that is nothing – now comes the wife, Yaa-Boo!”
Sit with four or five friends together and start crying and see how young and fresh it makes you. Some day we will do it here, but today just be silent for two minutes. No movement, close your eyes... feel as if you have become frozen, just like a statue.
... Now relax, let go. Now come back to life... Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.
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