1 Whatever the cost enlightenment is cheap

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‌CHAPTER 1

Whatever the cost enlightenment is cheap

17 January 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

KOKE RECEIVED A HORSE FROM THE EMPEROR DOKO AS A REWARD FOR HIS TEACHING. HE RODE AWAY ON IT, BUT THEN FELL OFF AND BROKE HIS LEG. WHEN HE RETURNED TO THE TEMPLE HE HAD THE HEAD MONK MAKE SOME CRUTCHES. SUPPORTED BY THE CRUTCHES, KOKE CAME ACROSS A MONK, TO WHOM HE SAID, “DO YOU KNOW ME?”

“WHY SHOULDN’T I KNOW YOU?” REPLIED THE MONK.

KOKE SAID, “HERE’S SOMEBODY WHO EXPOUNDED THE DHARMA, AND CAN’T WALK AS A RESULT OF IT.”

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, A MONK ASKED KOKE, “WHAT SHOULD WE SPEAK ABOUT BEFORE THE MANY-CHILDREN STUPA?”

KOKE SAID, “IF ONE TELLS A LIE, TEN THOUSAND REPORT IT AS TRUTH.”

AT ANOTHER TIME, HOJU, A DISCIPLE OF RINZAI, SAID TO TANKU, A FELLOW DISCIPLE, “WHEN A MAN COMES TO YOU WHO HAS NOT PUT AWAY THE SECOND AND THIRD ROOTS, HOW DO YOU RECEIVE HIM?”

TANKU RESPONDED, “YOU HAVE, IN BRINGING UP THIS QUESTION, ALREADY MADE A MISTAKE.”

2

HOJU REPLIED, “YOU ALSO HAVE NOT AVOIDED ERROR.” TANKU CONTINUED, “BE MY FRIEND!”

HOJU ADDED, HIS HAND BY HIS SIDE, “YOU OLD ROBBER!”

FRIENDS, the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, has made a statement to an international conference. the statement says that the earth is one. All national boundaries should be dissolved. all differences of caste and race and color should be dissolved. All divisions of organized religions should be dissolved.

I have been saying the same thing for almost twenty years, and my every meeting is an international conference. But I don’t have the power; I am not a politician.

I would like Mr. Rajiv Gandhi to understand the implications of what he is saying. I support him with my whole heart, but the question is: Who is going to begin it?

If I had the power, India would have been the first nation in the world to dissolve its armies, to drown all its armaments, to dissolve all distinctions of caste and religion and race.

I would like to know from Mr. Rajiv Gandhi: Can you practice what you are preaching? And if you cannot practice it, please don’t preach nonsense.

You have the power, you have the idea – now go ahead! Somebody has to begin it. Don’t wait for somebody else to begin. And the idea is yours – take the risk! You are young enough, intelligent, have guts. Take the risk and begin to act on what you are saying. Let India be the first nation to dissolve all distinctions and become part of one earth, one world.

Perhaps Rajiv Gandhi has not looked into the implications, and I am wondering why nobody stood up at that international conference and asked him, “If this is your idea then start it. Take the risk.”

There is no evolution in the world without any risk.

I am reminded of an old story which I have refined, and I go on refining.

You must know – and Mr. Rajiv Gandhi must know the old story, but he may not be aware of the refinement, so I have to repeat it.

The old story is ... for millions of years international conferences of mice have been discussing the problem: How to be safe and secure against the cats? And they have always, without fail, come to the conclusion that there is only one solution. A bell should be put around the neck of the cat. A good idea, because the bell will make the mice aware that the cat is coming, and they can simply slip into their holes.

But the problem is: Who is going to tie a bell around the neck of the cat? And there all international conferences ended.

And here comes my refinement.

The last international conference of the mice was again discussing the same problem – and there is only one, the cat. After long discussions they came to the same conclusion, but the problem was: Who is going to do it?

A young mouse stood up and said, “I am going to do it.”

All the elders laughed. They said, “You are too young, you don’t understand the risk.”

The young mouse said, “I understand everything. Tomorrow you will see the cat with the bell.” They looked at him, absolutely unbelievingly, but he managed it.

He went into a medical store next door to the house, found some tranquilizers, and put them into the milk of the cat. When she was fast asleep under tranquilizers, he managed to tie a bell onto her neck.

Next day all the mice could not believe it; and the cat also could not believe it. “What has happened? Wherever I go, the mice immediately disappear.”

Rajiv Gandhi, you are a young mouse. It is time not just to talk. Take the risk. Begin with this country.

And I have immense trust in the intelligence around the world. If one country takes the risk, others are bound to follow.

Don’t wait for there to be an agreement amongst all the nations to do it simultaneously. Then it is never going to happen. That agreement is impossible. One has to start, knowing perfectly well the danger and the risk. But I remind you, nothing happens without risks – no evolution, no progress.

Yes, the earth has to be one. Without the earth being one, we cannot solve its problems. It is now so clear that even blind people can see it, that unless the earth is one, without boundaries ... in a world without boundaries we can dissolve all the problems from which humanity is suffering immensely. And in the coming ten years it is going to suffer almost a suicide.

There is still time. Somebody should come out. You have made a beautiful speech, but you are not aware that somebody is going to ask you, “If you have the idea, why not start practicing it?”

Who is preventing you? That which is preventing you is preventing everybody – the fear. Come out of the fear.

Anyway, you have nothing to lose. This country has lost everything. Only a poor country which has nothing to lose can take the risk. America is not going to take the risk, neither is the Soviet Union. They have too much to lose if they take the risk.

But what have we got? Nine hundred million poor people who are going to die in utter starvation, misery and suffering in the coming ten years.

It is a good opportunity.

I hope you will understand what I am saying.

From tomorrow morning, start dissolving the armies, drowning all your armaments in the ocean, and hope for the best – that the intelligentsia around the world will follow.

Nobody listens to words. Actions are needed to materialize any idea into a reality. I will wait for tomorrow.

What I have said should be sent immediately in a telegram to Rajiv Gandhi.

Tomorrow morning begins a new history for man. Otherwise, take your words back, and apologize to the whole of humanity. These political talks have tortured us too much.

Question 1

One friend has asked,

“EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD, FOR SOME SUPPORT OR TO NEGATE SOMETHING, PEOPLE ARE ASKED TO RAISE ONE OF THEIR HANDS. WHY DO YOU ASK US ALWAYS TO RAISE BOTH OUR HANDS?”

A relevant question, but I never do anything which I cannot scientifically explain to you.

Your two hands are connected with your two brains, crosswise. Your right hand is connected with the left brain, your left hand is connected with the right brain, and these two brains have no bridge, no communication between themselves. So when you are asked to raise one hand, it is bound to be the right hand.

A strange fallacy has persisted for centuries, as if right is right and left is wrong. So people are asked to raise their right hand in support or in negation, but that represents only the left brain, only half of your being. Your right brain may not be with your left brain, may not support it.

One hand is half-hearted, that’s why I ask you always to raise both hands. Both hands represent your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole being. Nothing is left out of it.

Raising one hand does not prove that you are totally with the hand. Half your mind, half your body is not with it.

So it is not without reason that I have always asked you to raise both your hands. It is because I want you always to be total. Never be partial; only a total man is an authentic man.

And a third small thing .…

A British scientist, James Lovelock, has been working for almost twenty-five years, trying to prove that even Earth has its own organic life. If it can be proved that Earth has its own organic life just as you have, then it only remains to take the theory to the stars, to the moon, to the sun. They all have their own life.

It has been very difficult for the poor British scientist. The whole scientific mind is against the idea; that’s why he has been struggling for twenty-five years to prove it. Now he has come up with evidence that life is not your monopoly; neither is mind your monopoly. Animals have it, trees have it. And just as trees come out of the earth, we are also made of the earth.

Remember Omar Khayyam: “Dust unto dust” The day will come when we will go back into the

dust. Everything that arises from the earth finally goes back to the earth. It cannot be that the earth is dead, otherwise life would not be possible at all. From where will trees get their life? From where will you get your life?

The Earth has a certain atmosphere around it, two hundred miles deep; a layer of breathing space. Birds, animals, trees, man – all species breathe this air.

What is your food? It comes from the earth. It gives you life, it gives you intelligence. Unless it contains all this, it cannot give it to you. That is so simple a logic.

And James Lovelock is perhaps not aware that for thousands of years in the East, without any scientific experimentation, the mystics have propounded these fundamentals. Their very clarity of no-mind has seen life all around. There is nothing dead.

But perhaps he is not aware of the East, he is not aware of the Eastern mystics, otherwise he would have found an immense support – if not from the scientists, then from the mystics, who have a far wider perceptivity, a far deeper sensitivity. They have gone deep into themselves and they have found that life arises from the cosmos. Just as we are getting life from the cosmos, all the planets, all the stars are getting life from the cosmos.

Do you know, every day dozens of great stars are born, and every day dozens of great stars die. Everything that is born and dies must have life in between birth and death; otherwise, what is birth and what is death? Unless life is in between birth and death, birth and death have no meaning.

Perhaps he is going to have great difficulty convincing the scientists, but I give him my whole support on behalf of all the mystics – Sufis, Zen, all the buddhas. He should look to the East for his support and to the Eastern concept that everything is life in different shapes, in different forms, expressing itself in immense variety. And that variety makes existence beautiful.

Man in his ignorance has been disturbing the life of this planet. The earth needs a certain amount of trees, and we have cut them down just to make paper for third-rate yellow newspapers. There is no need for these yellow newspapers, these pornographic magazines.

When there are alive people, why bother about a picture of a naked woman – just a photograph?

When I was in the first American jail, in my cell I had one Negro partner. He was a very pious fellow, although he was charged with murder and rape and all kinds of things. Pious people do all kinds of things.

He used to put his head on the Bible every morning, every evening. He would put the Bible on the bed, kneel down on the ground and put his head on the Bible. He was not educated, so he could

not read. And just above the Bible he had all kinds of nude women in all kinds of insane postures which he had cut from magazines. The whole wall was covered with nude women.

I asked him, “Do you bow down to these nude women?” He said, “No, I have the Bible.”

I said, “You don’t know how to read?” He said, “No, I don’t know.”

“Who told you that this is a Bible?”

He said, “The jail authorities have given it to me.” “And what do you do when you kneel down?”

He said, “I pray to God.”

And I said, “I have been watching you for three days continuously. The nude women laugh.” He said, “They laugh?”

I said, “I have been watching. Because you are putting your head on the Bible with closed eyes, you can’t see – and it is only at that time that they all laugh!” He looked at me. I said, “What kind of religion is this?”

He said, “I am a devout Catholic.”

I said, “Great. These are Catholic saints?” He said, “I am sorry for that.”

And I said, “You have been doing both things together. Every day I see you cutting some picture from some magazine – PLAYBOY, PLAYGIRL, PENTHOUSE – and you go on putting them up. Don’t you see the contradiction – that this is your repressed sexuality?” A repressed sexuality can never be prayerful; the prayer will be polluted with repressed sex. A sexually repressed human being can never be in meditation. Those sexual pictures will arise from the unconscious.

And this is not only so about that poor Negro. The Hindu scriptures say that when the seers – great Hindu seers, their great saints – reach to the ultimate peak, just one step more and they will become gods .…

Hinduism is not a one-God-oriented religion, it has many gods; in fact, thirty-three million gods. Once upon a time India had a population of thirty-three million. At that time those scriptures were written. Obviously, everybody needs a god, a personal god, just like a personal guard. One god cannot maintain correspondence and answer prayers. It seems to be perfectly mathematical that each person has a god of his own he can approach; twenty-four hours a day the god is at his service.

These gods in heaven have a chief god to maintain the thirty-three million gods, otherwise there will be chaos in heaven. They will fight, because there are beautiful women available, so they will fight for the women; there will be bloodshed. So one god is the chief god to keep order; his name is Indra. And that chief god always becomes afraid of anyone reaching to a higher consciousness than himself, because if somebody reaches to a higher consciousness, he will come to heaven and dethrone Indra and take his place. It is sheer competition: the big fish eats the small fish. The same law of the jungle applies to heaven, to gods.

So whenever a Hindu saint reaches to the highest peak, Indra immediately sends the most beautiful woman from heaven. Uruvasi is one of the most beautiful women in heaven – he sends Uruvasi immediately. He monopolizes Uruvasi, he does not allow any other god ... she is the most beautiful woman in heaven.

If by chance you reach there, first find out where Uruvasi is. Perhaps she is the reincarnation of Cleopatra – or Amrapali, India’s most beautiful woman of the times of Gautam Buddha.

He sends Uruvasi, naked. Uruvasi dances around the saint. Obviously the poor saint has been sitting on a volcano of repressed sexuality, and such a beautiful woman, who does not perspire .… No deodorants are needed, no mouthwash; she is always clean and fresh. She never ages, she is always sixteen years of age; for centuries she remains sixteen years of age – time has stopped, perhaps the clock has stopped.

Naturally this old idiot, who has been thinking he is a saint, opens his eyes, he forgets all about saintliness, gets involved with Uruvasi, and he is finished. Then Uruvasi disappears. Once he has ejaculated, Uruvasi is gone; that was the purpose. Now again he has to begin from zero, and by the time he reaches to the top of the ladder, again Uruvasi will come.

A strange gameYou call it religion?

But these are mass-oriented ideas. Whatever the mass wants, whatever the unconscious mind of people wants, religions are ready to supply the demand.

But there has been a small line of authentic seekers in the East, who will agree with James Lovelock. He calls his theory Gaia.

The Gaia theory says that Earth is an alive organism which maintains its own balance. But man is trying in every way to disturb the balance, because he has not recognized that the earth is your mother, and the sky is your father – not any God.

You are beings of the earth and the sky.

You are the meeting point of the earth and sky.

You are born out of earth and sky. That’s why in the East the woman is called the earth and the man is called the sky.

And certainly it balances. That proves its intelligence.

Whenever there are one hundred girls born, one hundred and fifteen boys are born simultaneously. Strange, but fifteen boys die before the age of marriage, so by the time they are marriageable, the balance is there: one hundred girls, one hundred boys – an indication of the very life process, that it keeps on balancing everything.

But because of his ignorance, man does not understand the ecology; he goes on destroying the balance. He has now even made holes in the ozone layer that surrounds the earth after the two hundred miles of air. A thick ozone layer all around the earth protects it from the sun’s deathrays.

All rays are not nourishment to life, there are rays which are fatal to life. This ozone layer turns back the deathrays and allows only those which enhance life. But we have made holes in the ozone layer by sending rockets to the moon. Utter ignorance!

And now scientists are regretting what we have done, because rockets going, rockets coming – Russian rockets, American rockets – they have made hundreds of holes in the ozone layer. Now from those holes deathrays can enter onto the earth; they are entering.

The rate of cancer has gone four times higher since the ozone layer has been broken. But man in his utter stupidity .…

What is the use of going to the moon? You cannot manage even the Earth; what will you do on the moon? You will simply stand there and look stupid. There is nothing: no water, no clouds, no rain, nothing green. No visible life has happened yet on the moon. The moon may have a life of its own, but it has not come to expression because many things are missing. Water is missing, fire is missing; without water there cannot be any clouds. The ozone layer is missing – because ozone is just like oxygen with a little more oxygen than ordinary oxygen.

It is a well-founded theory that quantity changes quality. When oxygen is thicker, at a certain moment it becomes ozone.

Now you have cut the trees which breathe out oxygen. Every day hundreds of trees are being cut in every country, for useless things which are not necessary to life. And as there is not enough oxygen even for human beings and the animals, those holes cannot be filled with ozone, otherwise the Earth would have managed to fill those gaps again with new ozone. But there is not even enough oxygen to support life here on the planet; restoring the ozone is a faraway thing.

James Lovelock has come to a tremendously meaningful discovery. Mystics have been talking about it all the time, but nobody hears the mystics because they cannot produce any evidence. They are not scientists, they don’t have any labs to experiment in. All that they have is their inner perception, their clarity, their enlightenment, their awakening to this great life all around.

I would like James Lovelock to come here.

Lovelock is not a good name, James. We will open the lock, and return you back just as James Love.

The sutra:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

KOKE RECEIVED A HORSE FROM THE EMPEROR DOKO AS A REWARD FOR HIS TEACHING. HE RODE AWAY ON IT, BUT THEN FELL OFF AND BROKE HIS LEG. WHEN HE RETURNED TO THE TEMPLE HE HAD THE HEAD MONK MAKE SOME CRUTCHES.

There was a time in the world when the horse was the most valuable animal – the fastest in peacetime, the most courageous in war. It was one of the great gifts in those days.

So when Emperor Doko heard that Koke had become enlightened, he thought, “What to send as a present?” He must have sent some Arabian horse, because they are the best in the world – pure white, and of the greatest speed, and tremendous power.

India has been defeated again and again for almost two thousand years. You will not believe me, but the reason was that the enemies were very small countries but they were coming on horses, and India was vast but India’s emperors had armies of elephants. That was the reason for its continual defeat. Because elephants are royal people, they don’t compete with small horses. They walk just like emperors.

And because horses were small, they could enter into the army of Indian emperors, inside. And once the enemy attacks the elephant, he goes crazy, he creates a stampede. Then he does not bother whom he is destroying – his own people, his own army. He turns back and starts killing people. Now you cannot control him.

India was defeated for this simple reason, again and again. They thought that the elephant is a great animal. He is, but in war a horse is more practical.

If a marriage ceremony is happening, an elephant is perfectly good. But war is not a marriage ceremony.

So Emperor Doko sent Koke a beautiful horse as a present. Now, Koke must have never ridden on a horse. There is no need for an enlightened man, living on his mountain, to have a horse. This must have been the first time; seeing the beautiful horse, Koke rode on it.

This shows one thing, that even enlightened people can commit mistakes. Except the Christian pope, everybody commits mistakes. Only the Christian pope is infallible.

Even Jesus commits mistakes. He talks about loving your enemies, even loving your neighbors. I wonder: he has forgotten to tell you, “Love your wives too, your husbands too.” And I think it is a tautology, loving your enemies and loving your neighbors – they are the same people.

One day it happened that he passed two, three villages and they were not welcoming; they were angry, they closed their doors. They did not give him food or water, or shelter. So he was getting angry, although he says that you should not be angry, you should always be pure love – love even the enemy.

And then hungry and thirsty he comes to a tree, and although it is not the season for the tree to give fruits – but when you are angry you are blind – he curses the tree, a fig tree, saying, “You have insulted the only begotten son of God by not producing figs!”

Now it is not the season, and the fig tree has no concern with any God. She is not even aware that the only begotten son is hungry. And he curses the tree: “You will be condemned forever!”

Now this man talks about forgiveness as the greatest virtue, anger as a sin? Certainly he himself cannot practice what he is saying in his sermons. He is as fallible as any human being.

I am not condemning him, I am simply saying he is fallible.

Only these idiot popes are infallible. And there are thousands of instances which prove that they are fallible.

One pope ordered that a great investigation should be made about a young woman, Joan of Arc. The investigation was made. The whole country loved the woman because she had been fighting for the country and she had achieved freedom for the country. This angered the pope, that she was being worshipped more than him.

His investigation team proved that she was possessed by spirits, the devil was at work. The woman was burnt alive. The whole country was shocked.

After three hundred years, seeing that the wound in the country’s heart had not healed and they were still angry at the pope – although that pope was gone and some other pope had taken his place – the pope thought, “It is better to console the people. It is dangerous to let them move away from you.” So he declared that the woman was not possessed by spirits, she was not possessed by the devil; she was a saint.

So after three hundred years her grave was opened again. Only bones remained. The bones were worshipped – even the pope was there to worship the bones – and then a great memorial was made.

Who says that popes are infallible? Either the first pope was fallible or the second pope was fallible. It is such a clear-cut instance. It is sheer stupidity to call yourself infallible. Even God is not infallible; I have my evidence for it.

It is said that God made the whole world, then he made man and woman. After that he realized the mistake – that he had gone too far. Since then nobody has heard about him, he has been on holiday. Sunday never ends, it has been for eternity.

What happened to him? He was expected to come to his job on Monday. He has left the whole world in a mess, everything incomplete, everything undeveloped!

But why did he become so afraid? As he created them he recognized that he had committed a mistake by creating man and woman: “These are the people who are going to destroy everything that I have created.”

... One was hoping that when President Ronald Reagan retired, the new president, George Bush, would prove more human. But the situation is just the opposite. He is now supporting, with three billion dollars, the creating of the greatest death gas, which will kill living people, living trees, living animals, and leave the houses intact, roads intact, cars intact, railway trains intact. Everything will remain intact; the gas will kill only the living beings.

Just see this nightmare of the earth: houses and houses, streets and streets, trains standing at the platform and nobody on the platform, airplanes on the runway and nobody in the airportNo dogs,

no peacocks, no swans, no trees – just man-made things which are dead.

And the gas will be invisible. It can be simply showered on you and you will not know when you are alive and when you are not. In a single moment, as you take one puff of the gas, one breath, you are finished.

Ronald Reagan had been thinking to create this gas – which is going to be the most fatal instrument in any war because you will not even be able to see it. The whole earth can be drowned in the gas clouds and life will disappear.

Seeing the man and the woman, God disappeared, because he must have seen in them the faces of men like Adolf Hitler, Ronald Reagan, George Bush – they are all going to be descendents of this fellow Adam. He stopped creation immediately and escaped one knows not where; it is a vast universe without any boundaries .…

The master Koke did not realize that to ride on a horse, and particularly a horse that has been sent by the emperor, you need a certain training, you need a certain education. That was not an ordinary horse, it was not a donkey from Poona.

HE RODE AWAY ON IT, BUT THEN FELL OFF AND BROKE HIS LEG. WHEN HE RETURNED TO THE TEMPLE HE HAD THE HEAD MONK MAKE SOME CRUTCHES. SUPPORTED BY THE CRUTCHES, KOKE CAME ACROSS A MONK, TO WHOM HE SAID, “DO YOU KNOW ME?”

Certainly he looks different with the crutches and the wounds. He asks, “DO YOU KNOW ME?”

“WHY SHOULD I NOT KNOW YOU?” REPLIED THE MONK.

KOKE SAID, “HERE IS SOMEBODY WHO EXPOUNDED THE DHARMA

– here is somebody who has been teaching how to be enlightened – AND NOW HE CANNOT WALK AS A RESULT OF IT.

“I became enlightened; I had no idea that the emperor would send a horse as a present, otherwise I would have remained unenlightened.” Now see the situation: “As a result of my enlightenment, I cannot even walk.”

It is a good warning to you. Before you become enlightened, have another thought, think again or take some advice, because who knows what kind of troubles you are going to go through after enlightenment?

I know perfectly well. Since enlightenment I have gone through thousands of troubles! But those troubles are just outside; they have not touched me at all. I don’t repent, but still I warn you that

when the moment comes and you see enlightenment coming, have at least one more consideration: “Should I become enlightened?”

But the reality is, you don’t have time for it. When enlightenment comes there is no way to get out of it. It suddenly comes and surrounds you, and wherever you go it is with you.

But certainly problems are bound to arise which don’t arise for ignorant people. Once you are enlightened everybody is against you, because the very phenomenon of your enlightenment hurts their egos. You are just as human as they are, and you have become enlightened and they have not become enlightened. They cannot tolerate your height and their smallness.

They have only two ways out: either to grow up to your full height, which is an uphill task, or the easier way is to destroy the enlightened one – to poison Socrates, to crucify Jesus, to murder al- Hillaj Mansoor. That is easier. Then the whole crowd is satisfied and consoled: “There is nobody who is above us. Everybody is of the same size.”

An ancient Greek story is:

A famous king had made a guesthouse for other kings when they used to visit. He made such a beautiful guesthouse, even better than the palace, and he made a golden bed which exactly fitted him: if he was five foot five inches, he had made the bed exactly five foot five.

Nobody had the courage to ask him, “What are you doing? Somebody may come who is six feet, and he will not find it comfortable on this bed.” But it was well known that if you asked this king anything he answered with his sword, your head would be cut off. You could not ask anything; his word was the law!

So the craftsmen made the bed exactly to fit a man who is five foot five inches. But it is very difficult to find the same sized people .…

The first emperor who came as a guest loved the guesthouse. He repented later on, but then it was too late. In the night four big wrestlers came in. Because he was six feet tall they had to push him from both ends to fit the bed.

The king had ordered, “Everybody has to fit the bed. If he is too long, cut him short, or push him in! If he is too short, make him longer! Don’t be worried whether he lives. Alive or dead – I have made a special bed of pure gold”

The emperor tried hard, but those four wrestlers first tried to push him in to fit to five foot five, and it was a difficult job. How to squash a man of six feet? They almost killed him. He said, “What are you doing?”

They said, “You have to fit with the bed.” But because they could not manage to push him shorter they had to cut off his head; then he fit the bed perfectly. And they told the king, “The guest is in absolute rest.”

Just two, three more people were caught by him, and then the story spread. But he killed three kings just by trying to make them fit according to the bed.

That is being done all over the world by all the religions. They want you to fit their ten commandments, they want to make you fit according to their scriptures. They don’t care about you; their bed is more important. It is made of twenty-four-carat gold. Now all those commandments, all those disciplines preached five thousand, ten thousand years ago, have become out of date. They need refinement. They also need to evolve as everything is evolving. But no religion is ready to modify anything or refine anything or evolve anything. It has been given by God, and he knows better, so you have to follow things which don’t suit you.

All the religions are old and everything has changed since then: only those scriptures are dead and cannot change. But their ideologies are poisonous, they will kill you. They are killing human beings – their very spirit is destroyed, their radiance has been taken away, their growth stifled.

And for all this they are respected as virtuous, honored as saints. The more you cut yourself according to out-of-date principles, the more respectable you become – but the more dead. You will not find a respectable person alive: he cannot afford to be alive.

Women have been taught by all the religions not to enjoy lovemaking; to enjoy it is a sin. Remain almost dead, not enjoying it, so the whole sin goes to the man; you are out of it.

I have heard about a drunkard who was brought into the court in France. He had been making love on the beach to a dead woman.

The judge asked, “Did you realize that the woman was dead?”

He said, “No, I thought she was English.” She was lying so silently, unmoving, she was certainly not French!

All the religions have taught this. That’s why only the missionary posture is allowed – the man on top of the woman, so he can have movement but the woman cannot move. The beast on the beauty.

The woman has been told not even to open her eyes, because even to enjoy what is happening by opening your eyes is a sin. So every woman closes her eyes, becomes completely cold, almost stops breathing, and just waits until the beast finishes.

For that reason, only in this century have psychoanalysts discovered the possibility of a woman having an orgasm. For millions of years woman was not even aware that her body was capable of having an orgasm. She was just a factory for reproduction.

These stupid ideas! What is wrong, when you are making love, in enjoying it? I don’t see any sin in it. Make it more joyful, make it more blissful, make it a dance so that you can come to an orgasm.

This experience may lead you towards meditation – because what happens when you are in a state of utter joy and blissfulness? Time stops, mind stops; just for a few seconds, but in those few seconds, the doors of meditation open.

My own understanding is that it is through sexual ecstasy that man has discovered meditation. He discovered that in sexual ecstasy, when both the partners have disappeared almost into each other,

and both are throbbing with joy and blissfulness ... those who were intelligent detected what is happening. They witnessed that time has disappeared, that mind has disappearedIt was a very

easy conclusion that if you can manage for time to disappear and mind to disappear, perhaps you will come to the same space for a longer time, because it will be in your hands.

Sexual ecstasy cannot last long – perhaps for a few minutes. But if you are a witnessI will not say

don’t enjoy it, I will say rejoice in it, but remember to witness whatever is happening, what changes are happening in your inner being.

Where is the mind? There is no thought. Where is time? Suddenly there is no sense of time at all. And these two are the basic things. If they disappear you are in meditation. Then the woman does not need the man, the man does not need the woman. For the first time they become independent.

Meditation was discovered through love.

But the people who have been told to repress their joy, to repress their ecstasy, are never going to find the taste of meditation. A very unrepressed, uninhibited energy is needed for meditation.

But once you become enlightenedKoke says rightly,

“HERE IS SOMEBODY WHO EXPOUNDED THE DHARMA, AND CAN’T WALK AS A RESULT OF IT.”

But still I will say to you, even if you can’t walk, even if you can’t live any more amongst the insane world, still enlightenment is not to be missed. At whatever cost, it is cheap.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, A MONK ASKED KOKE, “WHAT SHOULD WE SPEAK ABOUT BEFORE THE MANY-CHILDREN STUPA?”

KOKE SAID, “IF ONE TELLS A LIE, TEN THOUSAND REPORT IT AS TRUTH.”

On the mountain where Koke used to preach there was a memorial which was called Many-children Stupa.

Now, children are not given memorials, and children have not yet been able to become enlightened. A stupa, according to the Zen tradition, is made only in the memory of a buddha, of an awakened one.

It is a huge, round, very vast and big memorial with beautiful carvings all around it and a beautiful gate – either golden or marble, or of some special stone.

If you want to see beautiful stupas, Sanchi, near Bhopal, is the place. It has the best stupa in the world. Just to see the gateone can imagine it must have taken hundreds of years to make such

a beautiful gate. Each inch is carved in stone, and there is such symmetry. The stupa is a beauty to see.

But a stupa is given only as a memorial to the enlightened one. So of course this “Many-children Stupa” must have been a lie. Hence Koke says,

“IF ONE TELLS A LIE, TEN THOUSAND REPORT IT AS TRUTH.”

Lies are very impressive. You just start a lie and by the evening the whole city will be believing it. Perhaps on the way home it may come to you also, and you may suspect whether it is a lie or a truth. If the whole city – such a self-styled cultured city – believes it, it must be true.

If you say the truth to anybody, nobody is going to believe it: “You! And you have found the truth?” Just keep your mouth shut. If people hear it, they will kill you. But if you give a beautiful lie, everybody enjoys it and it goes on from mouth to mouth immediately, like wildfire. And soon it becomes true. It gathers new information that you had not imparted, it gathers new ornaments, and by the evening when it comes back to you, you cannot believe this is the same lie that you had started.

The world loves lies, because lies don’t need you to be transformed. Lies are good conversation, but truth is a danger. To utter it is to invite all kinds of calamities.

I have watched all kinds of stories against me, even when I was a student in the university. I was expelled from this college, from that college, from this university, from that university, just because I did not tolerate any lie on any subject matter.

In one college I fought for eight months continuously on one subject. Finally the professor resigned. He said, “If this young man remains in my class, I cannot teach. When am I going to finish the course? Eight months are gone, and he won’t let me move a single inch! He brings such strange arguments, and he comes with a lot of information to support them.”

I was searching in the library, in all the encyclopedias, because all the professors, if they are experienced, are at least twenty to thirty years behind. In thirty years, knowledge has grown so much – objective knowledge, scientific knowledge – that what was right thirty years ago is no longer right. But those people who had been studying thirty years ago, were still carrying the same ideas. And when I brought the new ideas, they felt embarrassed. They wanted the principal to expel me.

I was called again and again to the principals’ offices or the vice-chancellors’ offices, and asked, “Why do you create trouble?”

I said, “I don’t create trouble. I simply want them to admit that what has become out of date is a lie! The truth should be spoken. These teachers are dead; thirty years ago they died. Since then they have not looked into the world; everything has been changing.”

The principals accepted that. “You are right, but we cannot afford the resignation of such a well- known professor. He is our most prestigious person.”

I said, “You are giving more credit to prestige than to truth. You can expel me, but you will regret it. It will remain like a wound, because you are accepting that I am right and still you are expelling me. Do you have any sense of dignity or not?”

And when it became well knownThe city I was studying in had twenty colleges, and so there

were enough possibilities for me to move from one college to another college. But soon it became known in every college and they simply started refusing me: “We will not allow you in this college.

What is the point? Within two months you will be expelled, not more than that because we know your whole history. You have not lasted in any college.”

I had to take the support of a lie because the truth was not functioning. So rather than going to the office, early in the morning I inquired about the principal: what kind of life does he live? What are his beliefs? They said that he was a devotee of the Mother Goddess of Calcutta.

That temple of the Mother Goddess is the ugliest temple in the whole world, because the Mother Goddess of Calcutta is a black woman, standing on the chest of her husband – every woman does it – in one hand holding a freshly-cut head, blood dripping, and in the other hand a sword, very ferocious-looking.

And Calcutta, one of the greatest cities in the world – at one time it was the greatest city in the world, the most educated city in India – worships this Mother Goddess. Worship means killing goats: every day dozens of goats are killed, and then the meat and the blood are distributed among the devotees and they eat raw meat as a gift from the Mother Goddess. This is the most murderous, primitive hangover of religion.

So I inquired about the man, I looked at his photograph. He looked perfectly the right person to worship the Mother Goddess. He had been a wrestler in his youth, now he had a big belly; a black man, very fat, looking very dangerous.

I inquired what time he worshipped the Mother Goddess. He had a small replica and had made a small temple, so I went there early, at five o’clock in the morning. He was worshipping Kali: “Jai Kali! Victory to Kali!”

I entered the temple and by his side I also started saying, “Victory to Kali! Jai Kali!” He looked at me, and he said, “You are also a worshipper of Kali?”

I said, “I have always been a worshipper of Kali. You are the only man in this whole city who knows what real truth is.” He looked at me – everybody thought that he was a little cracked, a crackpot – and I said, “You are the only religious man in this irreligious city.”

He said, “Strange that only you recognized me. We are brothers in faith.” He hugged me.

I said, “Don’t kill me!” – because he had been a wrestler. The only safety was his belly: he could not pull me closer than his belly. There was some distance, so I was safe.

He said, “What do you want? What have you come for?” I said, “I want simply to sit at your feet and learn.”

He said, “Come to the office. And because you have recognized me, I also recognize you. I will give you full freeship” – an extra scholarship which is under the power of the principal. “And whatever you need – accommodation in the hostel, free food ...” I said, “Everything.”

But just the second day the difficulty arose. The professor of philosophy went to him and he said, “You have created trouble for me. That young man is difficult and impossible, and he creates such arguments that the whole class laughs and I feel very embarrassed. Perhaps he is right, but that is not the point. The point is my prestige. If I lose my prestige, nobody is going to listen to me.”

The principal called me. With great respect he called me close to him, pulled up a chair, told me to sit down, and he said, “These people will not understand us. They are utterly blind. I cannot expel you as others have done, so some other way has to be found. I thought that I will give you a full one hundred percent attendance if you don’t come to the college.”

I said, “Great. That suits me.” So I never went to the college; but I used to go once in a while at five o’clock just to give that man a little juice.

When I passed and graduated from his college, I told him that it was all just a joke. He said “What?!”

I said, “I have to tell you the truth, now you cannot harm me at all. I hate your Kali, and I say to you: Death to your Kali and you! You are perpetuating a murderous creed! Are you a cannibal? That woman is holding a man’s head, freshly-cut, and blood is dripping.”

He said, “But for two years continuously you were saying ‘Jai Kali! Victory to Kali!’”

I said, “I had to say it. I tried truth in many colleges; truth is expelled. I thought perhaps a lie would succeed, and it succeeded. This is my certificate, and it is based on a lie. You have lied, because I never came to the college. One hundred percent attendance you have given me, one hundred percent I was absent.”

He became afraid I might expose him to the newspapers. He said, “Okay, okay. Cool down. You have your way, I have my own way.”

I said, “That’s right. Don’t ever use the word ‘us’; that does not apply. I was just tolerating the situation for these two years to somehow get my graduation so I can move to some university far away from this city.”

Where truth brings trouble, lies bring great fortunes, because the whole society lives on lies. Their God is a lie, their heaven is a lie, their hell is a lie, their devil is a lie. Their conception of morality is full of lies.

Surrounded by the ocean of lies, if you insist on being true, obviously you are going to get into trouble. But it is a joy. To get into trouble for the sake of truth is one of the greatest blessings one can think of.

AT ANOTHER TIME, HOJU, A DISCIPLE OF RINZAI, SAID TO TANKU, A FELLOW DISCIPLE, “WHEN A MAN COMES TO YOU WHO HAS NOT PUT AWAY THE SECOND AND THIRD ROOTS, HOW DO YOU RECEIVE HIM?”

The Second and Third Roots are the three poisons: desire, hate, ignorance. The question was,

“WHEN A MAN COMES TO YOU WHO HAS NOT PUT AWAY THE SECOND AND THIRD ROOTS, HOW DO YOU RECEIVE HIM?”

TANKU RESPONDED, “YOU HAVE, IN BRINGING UP THIS QUESTION, ALREADY MADE A MISTAKE.”

He is saying: A man who is full of poisons – desire, hate, ignorance – will not come to a master in the first place. In the second place, if he comes, the doors will be closed in his face. There is no question of welcoming him. Your question is fundamentally wrong.

In the first place, such a man will never come to the master. He will avoid the master. Even if the master comes close to him, he will escape, just as darkness escapes when you bring the light in.

Have you ever seen darkness coming close to light, just to have a closer look, or to have a little conversation in the middle of the night? No, such a person will not come near to a master. And if by chance he happens to come, the master will close the door in his face.

First he has to clean himself of the lowliest poisons, only then a search for truth can begin. HOJU REPLIED, “YOU ALSO HAVE NOT AVOIDED ERROR.”

Tanku has said to him, “You have already made a mistake by asking the question.” HOJU REPLIED, “YOU HAVE ALSO NOT AVOIDED ERROR

by answering it, in any form. You should have remained silent.” Both are masters and just playing with each other.

TANKU CONTINUED, “BE MY FRIEND!”

HOJU ADDED, HIS HAND BY HIS SIDE, “YOU OLD ROBBER!”

This is a greeting in Zen. “You have robbed my heart” – the old robber. Meisetsu wrote:

BUTTERFLIES FOLLOW LOVINGLY THE FLOWER-WREATH

PLACED ON THE COFFIN.

For butterflies there is no difference between death and life.

BUTTERFLIES FOLLOW LOVINGLY THE FLOWER-WREATH PLACED ON THE COFFIN.

This should be the attitude of a meditator: witnessing everything, birth and death, with the same love, with the same clarity, with the same silent witnessing.

Question 2

Maneesha has asked a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

IT IS GENERALLY ACCEPTED THAT EVOLUTION IS FOR THE BETTER, THAT IT IS A PROCESS OF IMPROVEMENT, OF REFINING. BUT FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE MAINTAINS THAT SPECIES DON’T GROW MORE PERFECT, BECAUSE THE WEAKER – WHO ARE IN THE MAJORITY – DEFEAT THE STRONG.

WHAT IS YOUR UNDERSTANDING?

Maneesha, I agree with Friedrich Nietzsche totally.

Man would have evolved tremendously, but because of the weaker masses Socrates is poisoned. Now, Socrates was a peak of evolution. If the weaker people had not destroyed Socrates, Greece would have been at the top of all the nations today. With the poisoning of Socrates, Greece has fallen lower and lower and lower – not evolution, but INvolution.

And Nietzsche is right that the weaker are in the majority; hence they can destroy the delicate flower of evolution – which has a strength of its own; even destroyed, it will somehow remain in the air. Socrates is still more alive in the air than even the alive people are.

But the majority, which is the little man, cannot tolerate a very evolved being like Buddha. Buddha suffered many attempts on his life.

The story is very beautiful .…

One day Buddha’s own brother, Devadatta, who had become his disciple, wanted Buddha to declare him his successor. Now, no buddha declares successors. It is not a dynasty, it is not like wealth that the elder son will succeed to it: You become a buddha. It is not a question of succession. Nobody is preventing you.

“I am giving you as much attention as everybody,” Buddha told Devadatta. “You become a buddha, it is not a question of succession. I cannot declare you to be my successor. There are many enlightened disciples and you are not even enlightened.”

This hurt Devadatta very much. He dropped the commune. He was also a prince, and he had a small gang of followers in the commune. They also dropped with him. He was thinking to create another commune in which there would be no need for anybody to make him a successor, he would be the founder. But he could not gather people; he had no light in his eyes, no grace in his hands, no ecstasy in his heart. He was just hungry for prestige, power.

Slowly slowly, those who had come with him also deserted him. Most of them went back to Buddha with apologies. Being alone he became furious, almost mad. He wanted to kill Gautam Buddha, his own brother, and he tried.

Once Buddha was sitting on a rock meditating; Devadatta was hiding just behind him up a big hill, and he rolled a big rock down the hill, directed towards Gautam Buddha. It would have crushed the fragile flower of the Buddha. All that is higher is fragile; a lotus flower, a roseflower – they have a certain strength and beauty, but if you put them under a rock they will be destroyed. Of course their fragrance will remain in the air.

The story is beautiful. It says that the rock came directly towards Buddha and just as it was going to hit Buddha it changed its route, leaving Buddha alive.

It looks just like a parable, but one never knows. Rocks are also alive, they grow, they have a certain sensitivity. Perhaps it is a factual phenomenon, because many other things of the same category happened.

Devadatta became very mad, he could not believe how the rock changed its course. Just one foot more and Buddha would have been crushed under it.

Devadatta’s father had a mad elephant who was always kept in chains. He was very dangerous. Criminals who had been sentenced to death were thrown near the cage of the mad elephant, and he immediately pulled them in, killed them and ate them. They were keeping that elephant just to kill the criminals.

Devadatta got the key and asked the man in whose control the elephant had grown upStill, even

in his madness, the elephant remembered him and always followed him. Wherever the man wanted to take him he could take him; the elephant never harmed him. It is said that elephants have perhaps the greatest memory system, they never forget. If you kill one elephant, a husband, or a wife – they live in couples – never leave the other one alive, otherwise the other one will find a way to kill you, wherever you go. Even twenty years afterwards people have been killed.

The same is true about cobra snakes: they live in couples. Never kill one; if you want to kill one, kill both. If you kill one the other will find a way, wherever you go; years may pass, but he will find a way to kill you. Their memory system is very strong.

Because this man had raised the elephant from his very childhood, even in his madness the elephant remembered him – his love, his compassion. Devadatta bribed the man and told him to take the elephant towards Buddha, who was meditating outside the city in a mango grove.

The man took the mad elephant, who had killed many men; as they reached close to the mango grove his chains were removed. The man who controlled him took him directly to Gautam Buddha. There was every possibility – they had not thought that anything else could happen – that the elephant would kill Gautam Buddha.

But the elephant came near Buddha; with his small eyes he looked at Buddha, and then, bending his knees, he touched Buddha’s feet with his head.

Neither the man who controlled him could believe it, nor could Devadatta believe it. But such is the blindness of man, that Devadatta continued to do something or other trying to destroy Buddha. Seeing these two phenomena he should have stopped. Even a mad elephant had the sensitivity to

see that this was not an ordinary man to be destroyed, he was not a criminal. Even a rock moved, changed its course.

But Devadatta was much more unconscious than the elephant and the rock. He continued for Buddha’s whole life to try to kill him. There is every suspicion ... Buddha died of food-poisoning but nothing is on record; there is every possibility that Devadatta’s hand was behind his death. The food was given to him by somebody else, mixed with poison.

Maneesha, man could have grown to immense heights, to the Himalayan peaks of consciousness, but because of the unconscious, stupid majority of people, evolution is delayed continually.

You kill one Socrates, you have delayed evolution perhaps for one thousand years. You kill a Buddha by poisoning, you have again delayed evolution for another thousand years. You kill al-Hillaj Mansoor and you have delayed evolution.

Evolution is being delayed continually, because the majority cannot tolerate anybody rising like an Everest – the highest peak of the Himalayas – in consciousness, in love, in compassion.

We have to create a great force of thousands of buddhas. Only then there is a possibility of a quantum leap in evolution. It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

“Thanks for the new drum-set you gave me,” says Little Ernie to Uncle Newton. “It is the best present I have ever had.”

“Really?” says Uncle Newton. “I am very pleased you like it.” “Yeah,” exclaims Ernie, “and I’m getting rich already!”

“Really?” asks Uncle Newton. “Rich? Are you becoming a professional?”

“Kind of,” replies Ernie. “You see, my mom pays me a dollar a day not to play those drums you have given me during the day, and Grandpa pays me ten dollars a week not to play them at night!”

George Bush’s appointment as the president of America goes to his head completely. He becomes even more power-mad and rude and throws his weight around a lot.

One day, Bush is invited to a big gathering of the Intellectuals of America Society. He is pushing his way through the guests to get to lunch, when he stomps on Professor Popoff’s toes.

“Well,” says Popoff to Bush, “the least you could do is apologize!”

“Me? Apologize?” says Bush. “Do you know who I am? I am the president of America!” “Thank you,” says Professor Popoff.

“That may not be an apology, but it is certainly an explanation.”

One day at the Sunnyvale Insane Asylum, Crazy Karl escapes and runs to town. He is very impressed when he comes upon the local laundromat, so he decides to go in and wash his clothes.

As he is doing his laundry, he sees two very pretty girls, Grizelda and Bimbo, also doing their wash. Crazy Karl likes them both, so he asks them if they would like to make love. They both smile and say “Yeah,” and the three of them get going at it right there.

Just then, Bernie Bernstein, the local newspaper reporter, stumbles upon Crazy Karl and the girls making love on top of a washing machine. Bernie takes one look, then pops a photograph of the orgy for his paper.

Crazy Karl looks up in shock and then runs off.

Bernie, with camera in hand, rushes away to report the story. That afternoon the headlines read:

“Nut Screws Washers and Bolts!” Nivedano ...

(drumbeat) (gibberish) Nivedano ... (drumbeat) Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards. Gather your whole life energy, collect your total consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is the last moment of your life, rush towards the center of your being.

That is the only shelter in existence, because that center is beyond birth and death. It is your eternity, it is your cosmos, it is your buddha.

As you go deeper and deeper you come closer and closer to yourself.

A great silence starts descending on you, an immense peace, a great joy.

As you come to the center of your being you have found your original face. Your original face is the buddha.

Remember only one quality of the buddha – because buddha has no other quality – witnessing. Witness that you are not the body.

Witness that you are not the mind. Witness that you are not the astral body.

Witness that all the experiences that are happening and will be happening, you are not. You are just a detached, unidentified witness.

This witnessing is the greatest miracle in the world, because it takes you out of the circle of birth and death and gives you the wings to fly into the eternal sky.

It brings you to your home, it makes you aware of the forgotten language of your being.

It fills your heart with love, compassion, kindness. It creates a strange longing in you: How to share it?

To make it clear, Nivedano ... (drumbeat)

Relax .…

But remember not to forget the witness. That is your very soul, that is your spirituality, that opens the door of all the mysteries of existence.

At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.

Collect as many flowers, as much fragrance as possible. Persuade the buddha to come along with you. Every day the distance is becoming less and less.

When the buddha starts to be your ordinary life, your day-to-day life, when he expresses his grace, his understanding, his enlightenment, in your ordinary activities, gestures, words, silences, waking or asleep, you have found the ultimate truth of your being.

The day it happens is the most glorious, the most splendrous, the purest of your life. There is nothing beyond it. It is the truth, it is beauty, it is godliness.

Before Nivedano calls you back, just witness that your separation from other buddhas has melted down.

The Buddha Auditorium has become an ocean of consciousness of ten thousand buddhas, without any ripples, without any stir.

Collect the juice of life, the sense of eternity, and persuade the buddha to come along with you. He will come, he has always come. Without any doubt, it is your intrinsic nature. It is nobody’s monopoly. It is absolutely your territory, nobody can interfere in it.

Nivedano ... (drumbeat)

Come back, but remember you are coming back as a buddha – with the same grace, with the same beauty, with the same grandeur.

Sit down for a few moments just to remember the golden path you have followed in, just to remember that buddha has come very close to you like a shadow.

One buddha can create enough fire to make millions afire, aflame. Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

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