CHAPTER 15
The house where nobody lives
11 July 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
BELOVED OSHO,
WHEN THE HEAD MONK, RYOSUI, WENT FIRST TO SEE MAYOKU, MAYOKU TOOK UP HIS HOE AND BEGAN TO WEED. RYOSUI WENT TO THE PLACE WHERE HE WAS WEEDING, BUT MAYOKU DELIBERATELY TOOK NO NOTICE OF HIM AND WENT BACK TO HIS ROOM AND SHUT THE DOOR.
THE NEXT DAY THE SAME THING HAPPENED, BUT THIS TIME RYOSUI KNOCKED AT THE DOOR.
MAYOKU SAID, “WHO IS IT?”
RYOSUI HAD HARDLY UTTERED HIS NAME WHEN HE WAS ENLIGHTENED AND SAID, “DO NOT MAKE A FOOL OF ME. IF I HAD NOT VISITED YOU, I WOULD HAVE BEEN DECEIVED ALL MY LIFE BY THE TWELVE DIVISION CANON.”
MAYOKU OPENED THE DOOR AND CONFIRMED RYOSUI’S ENLIGHTENMENT.
RYOSUI WENT BACK TO HIS PLACE OF LEARNING, RESIGNED FROM IT, AND SAID TO THE ASSEMBLED LEARNERS, “WHAT YOU KNOW, I KNOW; WHAT I KNOW, YOU DON’T KNOW.”
ONE DAY SEKITO WAS WALKING IN THE HILLS WITH HIS DISCIPLE, SEKISHITSU, AND, SEEING BRANCHES OBSTRUCTING THE PATH, ASKED HIM TO CUT THEM AWAY.
“I DIDN’T BRING A KNIFE,” SAID SEKISHITSU.
SEKITO TOOK OUT HIS OWN AND HELD IT OUT, BLADE END FIRST, TO SEKISHITSU, WHO SAID, “PLEASE GIVE ME THE OTHER END.”
“WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH IT?” ASKED SEKITO, AND SEKISHITSU CAME TO REALIZATION.
RYUGE WAS ASKED BY A MONK, “WHAT WAS IT THE ANCIENTS FINALLY GOT, SO THAT ALL THEIR LABORS WERE OVER?”
RYUGE ANSWERED, “IT WAS LIKE A ROBBER BREAKING INTO AN UNINHABITED HOUSE.”
Maneesha, before I enter into the world of Zen, something has to be said about the Shankaracharya of Puri.
His declaration that the untouchables are God’s people makes it absolutely necessary that God’s people should be allowed in every temple which claims to be God’s temple.
Secondly, by declaring the untouchables to be God’s people, he himself has become untouchable. He is also part of God’s people. He has made the whole Hindu society harijan. Either all will be allowed into the temples or nobody should be allowed into the temples.
Poor harijans are being used by politicians for their own ends. But fortunately Swami Agnivesh, who was trying to take a procession into Nath Dwara temple, could not gather more than one hundred and fifty people. And as they came closer to Nath Dwara they all disappeared! Even the son of Doctor Ambedkar, who was the great leader of the harijans, did not appear in the procession. He had promised to come. This is a great defeat of Agnivesh, and if he has any intelligence he will see that it means that harijans are so afraid ... thousands of years of conditioning cannot be removed by politicians.
The only way for the harijans is to ask for a separate vote. Other than that, there is no solution. And no harijan should try to enter into any Hindu temple. They can have their own small temples, even in small bamboo huts. But it is insulting to go somewhere where you are unwelcome; there is a limit to everything. But it seems that with thousands of years of condemnation, even the harijans have taken it to heart that they are untouchable, that by touching them, anyone will become dirty.
This kind of conditioning cannot be broken by politicians. Harijans need a psychological insight; first they have to be free from being untouchables. Just by entering a temple they will not be in any way free from their untouchability. First they have to gain their dignity, their respect. They should refuse to enter any temple, because what kind of temple is this, which refuses people? A temple should be open for all. God is not a monopoly of anybody.
On the one hand, Agnivesh could not collect people, but Nath Dwara temple collected five thousand people to fight if Agnivesh had reached the temple. Fortunately he could not reach; otherwise those harijans would have been massacred. It has been done in this country for centuries: living harijans have been burned, their villages completely burned. Nobody is allowed to escape, and their women have been raped. They have become accustomed to this kind of humiliation.
So it is not a question of politicians, it is a question of people of intelligence raising harijans to their dignity and reminding them that, “You are human beings and you need not beg for it from anyone. It is your basic right to be individuals. And it is perfectly right to deny the Hindu fold completely, because it has repressed you for ten thousand years and it is ready, even today, to do the same.”
It is good that the harijans did not follow Agnivesh, who is just a tiny politician. He is not interested in harijans; otherwise he would see that the whole point is to clean the unconscious of the harijans. That cannot be done by entering the temple. That needs a tremendous movement for meditation so that harijans can throw out all the conditioning that has been imposed on them. Only through meditation can they regain their dignity, their humanity. This way it is so insulting .…
Now Agnivesh is responsible, because the whole country will laugh: “Look what happened – the harijans escaped from the procession, they never reached Nath Dwara.” Agnivesh is responsible for this ugly situation. Again the Hindu mind of casteism has been victorious. It will remain victorious, unless harijans themselves deny Hindu temples, deny Hindu rituals, and ask for a separate vote for themselves, saying they will not vote for Hindus. Then, and only then, there is a possibility for this slavery – perhaps the longest slavery in the world – to end.
This temple is open for all. Harijans should come here to meditate and to understand the whole process of why they have accepted this degradation.
And even to say that you want to enter the temples is to accept that those temples are holy places. Those holy places have been cause of all oppression, suppression, suffering, burning living human beings. Those temples are no longer holy. And anybody who wants the harijans to enter, they should make it clear to him: “Don’t play politics. We don’t belong to the Hindu fold and we need not belong to any other fold. We will exist as harijans, people of God. We will make our own gods, as you have made your own; we will make our own prayers, as you have made your own. We will not accept your scriptures or your traditions. We will begin a new brotherhood.” Only this, a meditative revolution, can free them into liberation.
But the human mind is a very complex thing. I have been for women’s liberation, and my secretary Hasya was in Europe, meeting different groups. She went to see women’s liberation groups also, but because a book is written by a man, they will not accept it. The same stupidity – I am for their liberation, but because I am a man, they will not accept my book or my ideas for how women can attain liberation. And they themselves are doing stupid things in the name of liberation. What is their liberation? Just smoke like a man, dress like a man, use dirty words like a man. Soon they will ask to urinate like a man. This is their liberation!
It is the same question with all kinds of slavery: the slave himself is unable to get free of his conditioning. Otherwise, it can happen in a single moment. Here nobody even inquires who you are, we simply give you the opportunity to drop your conditionings. Whatever those conditionings are, whoever has imposed them, Hindus or Mohammedans or Jews or Christians, it does not matter. The question is to drop them and just be yourself, clean, as if you are just born.
This is the only revolution that can make all kinds of slaveries disappear from the world. And we need a world of freedom, of all kinds of freedom – of speech, of movement, of dignity. The whole past is so dark that it is time to disconnect ourselves from the past absolutely and to create a new future.
And particularly in these moments, during the last part of the twentieth century, it is becoming more and more imminent: either you create the new man and a new humanity or you are going to destroy this beautiful planet. Either a tremendous revolution, that throws away all the past that we are loaded with, or we will be killed with the weight. And not only we will be killed – the trees, the birds, the animals, the flowers, everything will disappear. This cuckoo will not sing. There will not be a silent assembly like this.
In the past it was just a philosophical, ideological question. Now it is a very practical, pragmatic, factual question: Do you want to survive? Then drop all kinds of slaveries and all kinds of unconscious superiorities, inferiorities. Just let each human being be himself, accepted, respected.
If existence respects you, who are the brahmins to condemn you? If existence accepts you, then you can have a feeling of tremendous responsibility: you are needed by existence, and this is enough to feel fulfilled and contented.
But this fulfillment comes only through a deepening of meditation.
I am interested in Zen only because Zen is pure meditation. The very word ‘Zen’ means meditation. It has nothing else, it requires no rituals. Just as you are, the only requirement is to go in and discover your eternal self.
That eternal self is neither brahmin nor harijan; that eternal self is neither man nor woman. That eternal self is a blissfulness, a peace that passeth understanding.
That eternal self is pure ecstasy. You can sing and you can dance and your singing and your dancing, if they are coming from your innermost core, become your only prayers. They are the only authentic prayers; all others are composed by man, and a prayer composed by man is of no value.
A prayer that arises within you, like a flame ... and that is what happens in deep meditation. Suddenly you start experiencing a new warmth and a new flame, a new joy that you have never experienced before. It has been dormant, it has been repressed continuously, for millions of years. It has gone so deep that you will have to go that deep to find it.
That’s why I go on insisting: go on, deeper and deeper, and go on throwing the garbage that the past has left in you.
These small anecdotes are all concerned with meditation in different ways.
WHEN THE HEAD MONK, RYOSUI, WENT FIRST TO SEE MAYOKU, MAYOKU TOOK UP HIS HOE AND BEGAN TO WEED.
Zen is such a symbolic and poetic phenomenon, each gesture signifies a tremendous philosophy. Now, you would have missed, as Ryosui missed. Without even a single word being expressed on either side, MAYOKU TOOK UP HIS HOE AND BEGAN TO WEED. RYOSUI WENT TO THE PLACE WHERE HE WAS WEEDING, BUT MAYOKU DELIBERATELY TOOK NO NOTICE OF HIM AND WENT BACK TO HIS ROOM AND SHUT THE DOOR.
It looks absurd on the surface. But what he is saying is, “There is no point in coming to me unless you have taken out all the weeds from your being. Unless you come with a clean soil, I cannot sow the seeds.” He has not said a single word, although he has made it absolutely clear.
THE NEXT DAY THE SAME THING HAPPENED, BUT THIS TIME RYOSUI KNOCKED AT THE DOOR.
The first day Ryosui could not figure out what was happening, why he was being treated this way. Not even taken notice of, not even a hello ... but he must have pondered, meditated over the fact that there must be something, some reason why a great master should behave with a new seeker in this way. “Certainly I must be wrong. He cannot be wrong ...” And he must have, in his silent moments, seen the point that unless you take all the weeds out, there is no point in coming to a master.
The next day he went again: THE SAME THING HAPPENED, BUT THIS TIME RYOSUI KNOCKED
AT THE DOOR. Now he had some confidence. He had understood the message: the master was not rejecting him but provoking him – “Unless you knock on the door, the door will not open by itself.”
MAYOKU SAID, “WHO IS IT?”
Just the word WHO ... RYOSUI HAD HARDLY UTTERED HIS NAME WHEN HE WAS ENLIGHTENED AND SAID,
“DO NOT MAKE A FOOL OF ME ...”
Don’t ask me who I am. The question makes me simply a fool. You know who I am, because we are not different. This time I have come without the weeds and this time I have gathered courage to knock at the doors.
IF I HAD NOT VISITED YOU, I WOULD HAVE BEEN DECEIVED ALL MY LIFE BY THE TWELVE DIVISION CANON.
The Buddhist scriptures are divided into twelve divisions. It is among the greatest literature, no other religion can compete with it. He said to Mayoku, “IF I HAD NOT VISITED YOU, I WOULD HAVE BEEN DECEIVED ALL MY LIFE BY THE TWELVE DIVISION CANON, I would have gone on
reading and reading and reading. But with a single act you have taken me to a state of no-mind.” MAYOKU OPENED THE DOOR AND CONFIRMED RYOSUI’S ENLIGHTENMENT.
The moment he said, “I am finished with thinking, philosophy, with mind ...”
It is enough if a person understands that mind is not the way, but the peace and silence of no-mind. Suddenly he is aflame with a new and eternal life.
RYOSUI WENT BACK TO HIS PLACE OF LEARNING, RESIGNED FROM IT, AND SAID TO THE ASSEMBLED LEARNERS, “WHAT YOU KNOW, I KNOW; WHAT I KNOW, YOU DON’T KNOW.”
To the fellow scholars who were pondering over scriptures, before leaving them he made the statement, “What you know – the scriptures – I also know. But what I know – myself – you don’t know.”
There is no way of knowing oneself through words, systems of beliefs, scriptures. There is only one way, and that is to enter immediately into your own self as deeply as possible, cutting all weeds, not being prevented by any thought, and suddenly you come to the source of your life. It is fire and it is eternal fire. Once you have experienced it, it is always with you. It will radiate in your presence; even others will feel the radiation. Those who are a little receptive, those who are not utterly blind, will even see the change, the rebirth, the revolution that you have gone through.
ONE DAY SEKITO WAS WALKING IN THE HILLS WITH HIS DISCIPLE, SEKISHITSU, AND, SEEING BRANCHES OBSTRUCTING THE PATH, ASKED HIM TO CUT THEM AWAY.
“I DID NOT BRING A KNIFE,” SAID SEKISHITSU.
SEKITO TOOK OUT HIS OWN AND HELD IT OUT, BLADE END FIRST. SEKISHITSU SAID, “PLEASE GIVE ME THE OTHER END.”
Naturally, when you give a knife to somebody, you keep the blade in your hand. You don’t give the blade, because that can cut the other person. But this is what Sekito did: blade end forward, he offered his knife.
The disciple said, “Give it to me from the other end.” A small incident, but sometimes these small incidents trigger great phenomenal changes.
“WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH IT?”
It cannot cut the weeds, you need the sharp blade to cut the weeds. Hearing this, SEKISHITSU CAME TO REALIZATION.
We all are beginning with the wrong end. People who want to know about themselves ask others. People who want to know about themselves read scriptures. You are beginning from the wrong end.
If you want to reach yourself, just enter yourself as a sharp knife, cutting all mind rubbish, reaching to the very consciousness which cannot be cut.
And there is no need to be worried. The consciousness cannot be cut, cannot be burnt. There is no way to destroy it. It has no form, it never dies. It only goes on moving from form to form, to higher and higher peaks. The highest peak we have attained up to now is the buddha nature.
If you go deep within yourself, you will find a buddha. It does not matter whether you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian, a harijan, a man or a woman; the buddha is your very nature. The question is just of going deep enough.
RYUGE WAS ASKED BY A MONK, “WHAT WAS IT THE ANCIENTS FINALLY GOT, SO THAT ALL THEIR LABORS WERE OVER?”
RYUGE ANSWERED, “IT WAS LIKE A ROBBER BREAKING INTO AN UNINHABITED HOUSE.”
A very beautiful statement ... Ryuge is a master, and a disciple monk is asking him: what was it that Gautam Buddha or the other ancient masters got through all their labors, disciplines, methods? What was it? The answer is tremendously beautiful. It can come only from a man who knows. Ryuge said,
“IT WAS LIKE A ROBBER BREAKING INTO AN UNINHABITED HOUSE.”
A robber makes great efforts – breaking the wall, being afraid somebody may hear the noise and he may be caught red-handed. But when he enters into the house, he finds there is no one.
All your meditations are the robber’s effort. When you succeed, you will find a pure, uninhabited space inside. Its virginity, its purity, is its power.
On his enlightenment, Bunan wrote:
THE MOON IS THE SAME OLD MOON, THE FLOWERS, EXACTLY AS THEY WERE, YET I HAVE BECOME THE THINGNESS
OF ALL THE THINGS I SEE!
THE MOON IS THE SAME OLD MOON – nothing has changed in the moon. THE FLOWERS, EXACTLY AS THEY WERE – they are still the same.
YET I HAVE BECOME THE THINGNESS OF ALL THE THINGS I SEE!
When a man of enlightenment looks at a roseflower there is no division between the knower and the known; he becomes the very heart of the roseflower. When he looks at the sunrise he becomes the sunrise, when he looks at a white cloud, he becomes the white cloud. It is not by any effort. He has just become a mirror, so clean that everything that comes before it is reflected in it. He becomes it.
And to be identified with everything that surrounds you is the greatest experience man has ever come across. Then the cuckoo singing is not something outside you, it feels as if the song is arising within you. The flower is blossoming within you. The idea of yourself has become so wide that it covers the whole of existence.
The moon is the same, but it is no longer outside. The flowers are the same, but they are blossoming inside. It is the exact meaning of the word ‘transformation’: you become the very things you see.
And another poet, particularly for this Zen series ending today: THE CUCKOO:
ITS VOICE ALONE FELL,
LEAVING NOTHING BEHIND.
When every day in meditation you throw away all your garbage, what is left behind is pure silence. A poem by Tokugako:
ORIGINAL FACE IS THE REALITY OF REALITIES:
STRETCH YOUR HAND TO THE WINGING BIRD. VERTICAL NOSE, HORIZONTAL EYES – AND THEN? WHAT IF YOUR MIND IS EMPTY?
Just hold a bird in your hand and don’t think about it ... or a flower in your hand, and don’t think about it. Just see it. Without any thoughts moving between you and the flower, what happens? Suddenly you are the flower. And if you feel one with the flower you have felt one with existence.
A man of enlightenment, feeling one with existence, needs no morality, needs no ethics, needs no teachings about what is right and what is wrong. He is so in tune with existence that everything that happens through him is bound to be just right. There is no possibility of anything going wrong.
Meditation is an art of bringing you closer to the heartbeat of existence. The deeper you go within you ... you will find the very heartbeat of existence. Then there is no morality for you; all that you do is beautiful. Then you love without conditions, without demands, without possessiveness. Then you give out of joy, not to oblige; then you share because you are so full that if you don’t share, the burden of your joy will be too much. You become a raincloud which has to shower somewhere, because the rain is becoming heavier and heavier.
If the buddhas have spoken, it is nothing other than rainclouds showering spontaneously. Then each gesture is automatically right; then each word comes out of your deepest being, brings some dance and some joy and some fragrance with it.
Question 1 Maneesha has asked:
BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE CUCKOO THAT WILL BRING US CLOSER TO YOU?
Maneesha, there is nothing to be learned from the cuckoo. Just listen .…
And as you listen to the cuckoo, the sound disappears, the song disappears. Even its echo, far away, disappears. Only a silent space is left behind. Then you have come closer to me, because I am not there. I am the house where nobody lives. If you also become a nobody you will know the taste of my being, because the taste is the same, whether it is your being or my being.
Gautam Buddha is reported to have said that the taste of sea water is the same whether in the east or in the west, in the south or in the north. Whenever you come to utter emptiness, you have come close not only to me, you have come close to all the buddhas of the past and all the buddhas of the future, because it is the same reality which is throbbing in all of us.
Before we enter into our meditation, just a little cutting of weeds. And laughter is just like a very sharp sword – it cuts.
Paddy and Sean stumble out of the pub late one night, very drunk. They are heading for home when Paddy stops, points up to a street light and says, “Sean, look at that beautiful full moon!”
“Don’t be an idiot, Paddy,” says Sean. “That is the sun!” They argue back and forth for a while, but cannot come to any definite conclusion, so they decide to get a third opinion. The next person to come along happens to be Kowalski, also very drunk.
“Excuse me, sir,” says Paddy, pointing to the street light. “But would you mind telling us whether that is the moon or the sun?”
“How the hell should I know?” replies Kowalski. “I don’t live around here!”
It is three o’clock in the morning and Paddy and Seamus are absolutely drunk, trying to find their way home. But the street is dark and completely lined with trees. They keep hitting one tree after another, staggering on, trying to pass their whiskey bottle back and forth.
It seems impossible to walk as they knock into this tree, bump into each other, and knock into that tree.
This goes on for twenty minutes when Paddy, totally exhausted and bruised, stops and turns to Seamus. “I think maybe we should stop drinking so much,” groans Paddy, “and wait for this goddam parade to finish!”
Now, Nivedano, give the first beat and everybody goes into absolute craziness. Say the things that you have never said, use any language that you don’t know – even sounds will do, but beat everybody else around you.
Nivedano ... (Drumbeat) (Gibberish) (Drumbeat)
Be silent. Close your eyes, no movement ... just get deeper into your being. Deeper and deeper.
This moment you are the buddha.
If you can remember it twenty-four hours, you will see the tremendous beauty of life.
The great bliss that has been known only by very few, but which was the right of everyone. If you miss, only you will be responsible.
To make it go deeper ... Nivedano ... (Drumbeat)
Relax ... let go, almost die.
The body goes on breathing, you go in.
This is the uninhabited house, the place where roses grow. This space makes you one with existence.
Your heartbeat becomes in tune with the universal heartbeat. Other than this, there is no religion.
Nivedano ... (Drumbeat)
Come back as a buddha, with the same silence and with the same beauty, with the same grace. Sit down, just a little rest ...
Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.