OSHO on Truth, Awareness and Enlightenment

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Monday, February 08, 2010

Osho ~ Alexander and Diogenes

Osho : When Alexander the Great was coming to India he met one great man, Diogenes. In their dialogue there is one point which is relevant. Diogenes asked him, "What are you going to do after you have conquered the whole world?"

Alexander said, "After I have conquered the whole world, I am going to relax, just like you."

Diogenes was having a sunbath, naked. He lived naked, by the side of a river, and he was lying in the sand enjoying the morning sun and the cool breeze.

Diogenes laughed and he said, "If after conquering the whole world you are just going to relax like me, why not relax right now? Is conquering the whole world a precondition for relaxation? I have not conquered the whole world."

Alexander felt embarrassed because what he was saying was right. Then Diogenes said, "Why are you wasting your life in conquering the world -- only to relax, finally, just like me. This bank of the river is big enough, you can come, your friends can come. It is miles long and the forest is beautiful. And I don't possess anything. If you like the place where I am lying down, I can change!"

Alexander said, "Perhaps you are right, but first I have to conquer the world."

Diogenes said, "It is up to you. But remember one thing: have you ever thought that there is no other world? Once you have conquered this world, you will be in difficulty."

It is said that Alexander became immediately sad. He said, "I have never thought about it. It makes me feel very sad that I am so close to conquering the world ... and I am only thirty-three, and there is no other world to conquer."

Diogenes said, "But you were thinking to relax. If there was another world, I think first you would conquer that and then relax. You will never relax because you don't understand a simple thing about relaxation -- it's either now or never. If you understand it, lie down, throw these clothes in the river.

If you don't understand, forget about relaxation. And what is the point in conquering the world? What are you going to gain by it? Except losing your life, you are not going to gain anything."

Alexander said, "I would like to see you again when I come back. Right now I have to go, but I would have loved to sit and listen to you. I have always thought of meeting you -- I have heard so many stories about you. But I have never met such a beautiful and impressive man as you. Can I do anything for you? Just a word, a hint from you, and it will be done."

Diogenes said, "If you can just stand a little to the side, because you are preventing the sun. That will be enough gratitude -- and I will remain thankful for my whole life."

When Alexander was leaving him, Diogenes told him, "Remember one thing: you will never be able to come back home because your ambition is too great and life is too short. You will never be able to fulfill your ambitions, and you will never be able to come back home."

And actually it happened that Alexander never could reach back home. He died when he was returning from India, just on the way.

A fictitious story has been prevalent for these two thousand years. The story has some significance, and some historicity also about it, because on the same day Diogenes also died.

Both died on the same day, Alexander a few minutes before, and Diogenes a few minutes after him; hence the story has come into being ... When they were crossing the river that is the boundary of this world and the kingdom of God, Alexander was ahead of Diogenes, just a few feet ahead, and he heard a laughter from behind.

It seemed familiar and he could not believe it -- it was Diogenes. He was very much ashamed, because this time he was also naked. Just to hide his embarrassment, he told Diogenes, "It must be an unprecedented event that on this river a world conqueror, an emperor, is meeting a beggar" -- because Diogenes used to beg.

Diogenes again laughed and said, "You are perfectly right, but on just one point you are wrong." And Alexander asked, "What is the point?"

Diogenes said, "The emperor is not where you think he is, nor is the beggar where you think. The beggar is ahead of me. You have come losing everything; you are the beggar. I have come living each single moment with such totality and intensity, so rich, so fulfilled, that I can only be called an emperor, not a beggar."

This story seems to be fictitious, because how can one know what happened? But it seems to be significant. The moment you know that life and existence are fleeting phenomena ... it does not mean you have to renounce them; it simply means: before they fly away, squeeze the juice of every moment.

That's where I differ from all the enlightened people of the world. They will say, "Renounce them, because they are changing." And I will say, "Because they are changing, squeeze the juice quickly. Before they escape, taste them, drink them, rejoice in them. Before the moments go away, make them a celebration, a dance, a song."

Because they are fleeting, that does not mean you have to renounce them. It simply means that you should be very alert, so nothing can escape without being squeezed completely.

This world has to be lived as intensely and totally as possible, and it is not against your awareness. In fact, you will have to be very aware not to miss a single moment. So awareness and enjoying this life can grow together simultaneously. And this is my vision of the whole man.

Source: “The Great Zen Master Ta Hui” - Osho

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Listen, Learn and Enjoy

OSHO: YOU ARE ENLIGHTENED! THIS IS YOUR STORY.

Osho ~ You are Enlightened! This is your story.

I have told you a beautiful story about Rabindranath Tagore. In one of his poems he has the same glimpse that is expressed in your question.

In the poem he says, ”I have been searching for God for many, many lives. Sometimes I saw him near a faraway star, and I was immensely happy that although the star was far away, it was not impossible to reach. And I started moving there, but by the time I reached the star God had moved to some other place. But he was visible – so far away, but inviting, creating hope. And I went on running around the universe for many, many lives.

”One day it happened, I came to the house of God. I could not believe that I had arrived. It was such a shock, but still I stepped towards the door. As I was going to knock on the door my hand suddenly froze. A thought arose in me: Just wait a minute and think it over. It is written outside the door, ‘This is the house of God.’ If by chance it turns out to be really the house of God then you are finished. What are you going to do then?

”For millions of years your training has been only for searching. You are perfectly disciplined as a seeker, but finding? That is absolutely new; you are not acquainted with it. And moreover, a finding of the ultimate, the absolute God, beyond which there is nothing to search... what will you do then? What will you be? And it is going to be forever – an eternal situation of a full stop.” He took his shoes in his hands. He was afraid that as he goes back down the steps, if God hears some noise outside and opens the door... And then he ran away, not looking back.

The poem is beautiful because it says, ”I am again searching him. I know him, his house; I go on avoiding it. I go in every direction, but I keep myself far away from the house where he is, because I know that meeting him is going to be my disappearance.” Enlightenment is nothing but your disappearance. It is nothing but a pure silence. Naturally one feels afraid and one starts thinking, ”It is better to remain unenlightened and searching for it.” The story that I told you from Rabindranath’s poem is your story. It is everybody’s story. That’s why I say, you are enlightened, but you don’t want to recognize it. You want to find some way so that you can
start searching for enlightenment again.

Source: “Hari Om Tat Sat “ - Osho

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Monday, February 08, 2010

Osho ~ The Way Out

Osho : Bees seem to have something like human minds, exactly the same kind of stupidity. The doors may be open, but if a bee is inside the room, caught inside the room... and she may have come from the open door but she will try to get out from the closed window. Not only bees but other birds also behave in the same way. Any bird can enter in your room; the doors are open, he has come from the door, but he cannot go back from the same door.

He starts trying to get through the wall, through the ceiling... and the more he tries, the more desperate he becomes, because there is no way to get through the ceiling or through the wall or through the closed window. And in that desperation, frustration he becomes more and more blind, afraid, scared. He loses all intelligence. And the same is the case with human beings.

One day Buddha came into his assembly of the monks. It must have been just a morning like this. His sannyasins were sitting and waiting for him. They were puzzled because this was for the first time that Buddha had come with something in his hand – a handkerchief. They all looked at the handkerchief What was the matter? There must be something special in it. And Buddha sat on the platform and rather than starting speaking to the assembly he looked at the handkerchief, started tying a few knots in it, five knots in all.

The whole assembly watched – what is going on? And then he asked the assembly, ”Can anybody tell me: is this handkerchief the same as it was before the knots were tied?”

Sariputta said, ”This is a tricky question. In a way the handkerchief is the same because nothing has changed, in a way it is not the same because these five knots have appeared which were not there before. But as far as the inner nature of the handkerchief is concerned – its nature is concerned – it is the same; but as far as its form is concerned it is no more the same. The form has changed: the substance is the same.”

Buddha said, ”Right. Now I want to open these knots.” And he started stretching both ends of the handkerchief farther away from each other. He asked Sariputta. ”What do you think? By stretching farther will I be able to open the knots?”

He said, ”You will be making knots even more difficult to open because they will become smaller, more tighter. ’

Buddha said, ”Right. Then I want to ask the last question: what should I do so that I can open the knots, the tied knots? How I can untie them again?”

Sariputta said, ”Bhagwan, I would like first to come close and see how in the first place the knots have been tied. Unless I know how they have been tied it is difficult for me to suggest any solution.”

Buddha said, ”Right, Sariputta. You are blessed, because that is the most fundamental question to ask. If you are in a certain fix, the first thing is how you got into it rather than trying to get out of it. Without asking the most fundamental and the primary question, you will make things worse.”

And that’s what people are doing. They ask, ”How we can get out of our sexuality, greed, anger, attachment, jealousy, possessiveness, this and that?” without asking, ”How in the first place we get into them?”

Buddha’s whole approach is, first see how you get into anger. If you can see the entrance, the same door is the exit; no other door is needed. But without knowing the entrance if you try to find out the exit you are not going to find; you will get more and more desperate. And that’s what people go on doing. In the scriptures, what are you looking for? – solutions. You create the problems – and the solutions are in the scriptures! Why don’t you look at the problems yourself. How you create them?

Why don’t you watch when you are creating a certain problem? And you create every day, so it is not a question that you have to go back. Today you are going to be angry again, today you will feel again the sexual urge: see how it arises, see how you enter into it, how you get hooked into it, how it becomes so big like a cloud that surrounds you and you are lost in it. And then you go to ask others! You are functioning almost like a stupid bee. Bees can be forgiven, but you cannot be forgiven.

Source: from book "Zen: The Special Transmission" by Osho

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Sunday, February 07, 2010
Osho ~ Mind of a Sage

Osho : One Zen monk, Bokuju, was passing through a street in a village. Somebody came and struck him with a stick. He fell down, and with him, the stick also. He got up and picked up the stick. The man who had hit him was running away. Bokuju ran after him, calling, ”Wait, take your stick with you!”

He followed after him and gave him the stick. A crowd had gathered to see what was happening, and somebody asked Bokuju, ”That man struck you hard, and you have not said anything!”

Bokuju is reported to have said, ”A fact is a fact. He has hit, that’s all. It happened that he was the hitter and I was the hit. It is just as if I am passing under a tree, or sitting under a tree, and a branch falls down. What will I do? What can I do?”

But the crowd said, ”But a branch is a branch, this is a man. We cannot say anything to the branch, we cannot punish it. We cannot say to the tree that it is bad, because a tree is a tree, it has no mind.”

Bokuju said, ”This man to me is also just a branch. And if I cannot say anything to the tree, why should I bother to say anything to this man? It happened. I am not going to interpret what has happened. And it has already happened. Why get worried about it? It is finished, over.”

This is the mind of a sage – not choosing, not asking, not saying this should be and this should not be. Whatsoever happens, he accepts it in its totality. This acceptance gives him freedom, this acceptance gives him the capacity to see. These are eye diseases: shoulds, should nots, divisions, judgments, condemnations, appreciations.

Source: from book “Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi” by Osho

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Osho ~ Master is always here



Osho : A Sufi story.... A man went in search of truth. The first religious man he met was sitting under a tree, just outside his own village. He asked, ”I am searching for a true master. Please tell me the characteristics of a true master.” The fakir told him the characteristics. His description was very simple. He said, ”You’ll find him sitting under such and such a tree, sitting in such and such posture, his hands making such and such gestures – that is enough to know he is the true master.”

The seeker started searching. It is said that thirty years passed while he wandered the whole earth. He visited many places, but never met the master. He met many masters, but none were true masters. He returned to his own village completely exhausted. As he was returning he was surprised, he couldn’t believe it: that old man was seated under the same tree, and now he could see that this was the very tree that the old man had spoken of ”... he will be sitting under such and such a tree.....” And his posture was exactly as he had described. ”It was the same posture he was sitting in thirty years ago – was I blind? The exact expression on his face, the exact gestures....!”

He fell at his feet saying, ”Why didn’t you tell me in the first place? Why did you misdirect me for these thirty years? Why didn’t you tell me that you are the true master?”

The old man said, ”I told you, but you were not ready to listen. You were not able to come home without wandering away. You had to knock on the doors of a thousand houses to come to your own home, only then could you return. I said it, I said everything – beneath such and such a tree. I was describing this very tree, the posture I was sitting in, but you were too fast, you couldn’t hear correctly, you were in a hurry. You were going somewhere to search. Searching was very important for you, the truth was not so important.

”But you have come! I was feeling tired, sitting continuously in this posture for you. You were wandering for thirty years, but think of me sitting under this tree! I knew some day you would come, but what if I had already passed away? I waited for you – you have come! You had to wander for thirty years, but that’s your own fault. The master was always here.” It happens many times in our life that we cannot see what is near, and what is far attracts us. The distant drum sounds sweeter, we are pulled by distant dreams.

Source: “The Mahageeta, Volume 1” - Osho

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Osho ~ Sound of One Hand Clapping


Osho ~ If you have heard about Zen masters... they go on telling their disciples to go and meditate, meditate on the sound of one hand clapping. We can create a sound by clapping two hands. Zen masters say to their disciples, ”Go and find out that sound which comes out of only one hand: the clapping of one hand, not with anything else.”

We know this is absurd. A sound can come only with conflict, with two things clashing. Two hands can create sound, not one hand. Zen masters also know that, but still they have been giving this meditation for centuries. From Buddha up to now, Zen masters go on giving it. They know, their disciples know, that this is absurd. Then what is the significance? One has to watch, meditate, and move towards a sound which is already there, which is not created. That is the meaning of the sound of one hand.

I have heard a story. A small boy, just ten or twelve years of age, lived in a Zen monastery. Every day he would see many seekers coming to the master to ask for help, methods, techniques, guidance. He also became attracted, so one day he also came in the morning in the same way a seeker comes to a Zen master. With deep reverence he bowed down seven times. The master started laughing:

”What has happened to this boy?”

And then he sat in the way seekers should sit before a Zen master. Then he waited, as seekers should wait, for the master to ask, ”Why have you come?”

The master asked, ”Toyo” – Toyo was the name of the boy – ”why have you come?”

So Toyo bowed down and said, ”Master, I have come in search of truth. What shall I do? How should I practice?”

The master knew that this boy was simply imitating, because everybody he heard came and asked the same questions, so just jokingly the master said, ”Toyo, you go and meditate. Two hands clapping can create a sound. What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Toyo bowed down seven times again, went back to his room, started meditating. He heard a geisha girl singing, so he said, ”Right, this is the thing.”

He came immediately, bowed down. The master was laughing. He said, ”Did you meditate, Toyo?”

He said, ”Yes sir, and I have found it: it is like a geisha girl singing.”

The master said, ”No, this is wrong. Go again, meditate.”

So he went again, meditated for three days. Then he heard the sound of water dripping, so he said, ”Right now, this is the thing – I have got it.” He came again, the master asked... he said, ”The sound of the water dripping.”

The master said, ”Toyo, that too is not it. You go and meditate.”

So he meditated for three months. Then he heard locusts in the trees, so he said, ”Yes, I have got it.” He came again.

The master said, ”No, this too is not right.”

And so on and on. One year passed. Then for one year continuously he was not seen. The master became anxious: ”What happened to the boy? He has not come.” So he went to find him. He was sitting under a tree, silent, his body vibrating to some unknown sound; his body dancing, a very gentle dance, as if just moving with the breeze.

The master didn’t like to disturb the boy, so he sat there waiting. Hours and hours passed. When the sun was setting and it was evening, the master said, ”Toyo?” The boy opened his eyes and he said, ”This is it.”

The master said, ”Yes, you have got it!”

This aum is that sound. When all sounds disappear from the mind, then you hear a sound. The Upanishads have made that sound the symbol of the whole, because whenever the whole happens to the part, it happens in that music of aum, in that harmony of aum.



Source: from book “Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi” by Osho

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10
Osho ~ be indifferent

This is a Sufi story: An old man and a young man are traveling with a donkey. They have reached near a town; they both are walking with their donkey. School children passed them and they giggled and they laughed and they said, ”Look at these fools: they have a healthy donkey with them and they are walking. At least the old man can sit on the donkey.”

Listening to those children the old man and the young man decided, ”What to do? – because people are laughing and soon we will be entering the town, so it is better to follow what they are saying.” So the old man sat on the donkey and the young man followed.

Then they came near another group of people and they looked at them and said, ”Look! – the old man is sitting on the donkey and the poor boy is walking. This is absurd! The old man can walk, but the boy should be allowed to sit on the donkey.” So they changed: the old man started walking and the boy was allowed to sit.

Then another group came and said, ”Look at these fools. And this boy seems to be too arrogant. Maybe the old man is his father or his teacher and he is walking, and he is sitting on the donkey – this is against all rules!”

So what to do? They both decided that now there is only one possibility: that they both should sit on the donkey; so they both sat on the donkey.

Then other groups came and they said, ”Look at these people, so violent! The poor donkey is almost dying – two persons on one donkey. It would have been better if they carried the donkey on their shoulders.”

So they again discussed, and then there was the river and the bridge. They had now almost reached the boundary of the town, so they thought: ”It is better to behave as people think in this town, otherwise they will think we are fools.” So they found a bamboo; on their shoulders they put the bamboo and hung the donkey by his legs, tied it in the bamboo and carried him. The donkey tried to rebel, as donkeys are they cannot be forced very easily. He tried to escape because he is not a believer in society and what others are saying. But the two men were too much and they forced him, so the donkey had to yield.

Just on the bridge in the middle a crowd passed and they all gathered and they said, ”Look, these fools! We have never seen such idiots – a donkey is to ride upon, not to carry on your shoulders. Have you gone mad?”

Listening to them – and a great crowd gathered – the donkey became restless, so restless that he jumped and fell from the bridge down into the river – died. Both men came down – the donkey was dead. They sat by the side and the old man said, ”Now listen....”

This is not an ordinary story – the old man was a Sufi master, an enlightened person, and the young man was a disciple and the old master was trying to give him a lesson, because Sufis always create situations; they say unless the situation is there you cannot learn deeply. So this was just a situation for the young man.

Now the old man said, ”Look: just like this donkey you will be dead if you listen to people too much. Don’t bother what others say, because there are millions of others and they have their own minds and everybody will say something; everybody has his opinions and if you listen to opinions this will be your end.” Don’t listen to anybody, you remain yourself. Just bypass them, be indifferent. If you go on listening to everybody, everybody will be prodding you to this way or that. You will never be able to reach your innermost center.

Source: “Tantra: The Supreme Understanding“ - Osho

Note: Osho further says in the same book using this story “All meditation is to become centered, not to be eccentric, to come to your own center. Listen to your inner voice, feel it, and move with that feeling. By and by, you can laugh at others’ opinions, or you can be simply indifferent. And once you become centered you become a powerful being; then nobody can prod you, then nobody can push you anywhere – simply, nobody dares. You are such a power, centered in yourself, that anybody who comes with an opinion simply forgets his opinion near you; anybody who comes to push you somewhere simply forgets that he had come to push. Rather, just coming near you he starts feeling overpowered by you.”

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Thursday, February 18, 2010
Osho ~ Books I Have Loved ~ Chapter 3
1984 in Lao Tzu House

Now my work begins. What a joke! The joke of all jokes is that Sosan, the Chinese sage, was knocking at the door of my consciousness. These mystics are too much. You can never know at what moment they will start knocking at your doors. You are making love to your girlfriend, and Sosan comes and starts knocking. They come all the time, anytime, they do not believe in any etiquette. And what was he saying to me? He was saying, ”Why haven’t you included my book?”

My God, that is true! I have not included his book in my list for the simple reason that his book contains all that is. If I include his hook then nothing else is needed, then no other book is needed. Sosan is enough unto himself. His book is called HSIN HSIN MING.

HSIN has to be written not like the English ’sin’ but h-s-i-n. Now you know the Chinese: what a way to commit a sin! Hsin... HSIN HSIN MING.

Okay Sosan, I include your book too. That becomes my first book today. I am sorry, it should have been the first from the very beginning, but I have already talked about twenty others. It doesn’t matter. HSIN HSIN MING whether I said it or not, is the foremost, the first. Write the FIRST, Devageet, in capital letters.

HSIN HSIN MING is such a small book that if Sosan had known that one day, after him, Gurdjieff would write a book called ALL AND EVERYTHING, he would have laughed, because that title belongs to his own book. And Gurdjieff had to write one thousand pages, yet the few words of Sosan are far more penetrating, far more significant. They go directly to your heart.

I can even hear the noise – not of those words going to your heart, but some mouse, some devil,
doing his work. Let him do his work. Sosan’s book is so small, just like ISA UPANISHAD, and far more significant. When I say that my heart breaks, because I would like ISA to be the ultimate book, but what can I do? – Sosan has defeated it. Tears come to my eyes because ISA is defeated, and also because Sosan is victorious.

The book is so small, you can write it on your palm; but if you try, please remember... the left hand. Don’t write it on the right hand, that will be sacrilege. They say, ”Right is right, and left is wrong.” I say left is right, and right is wrong, because the left represents all that is beautiful in you, and Sosan can enter only through the left. I know because I have entered thousands of hearts through the left hand, through the left side, through their feminine, their yin – I mean the Chinese yin – I have never been able to enter anybody through his yang. The very word is enough to prevent anybody: yang. It seems to say ”Keep away!” It says ”Stop. Do not enter here. Keep off! Beware of the dog!”

The right is like that. The right belongs to the wrong side of your consciousness. It is useful, but only as a servant. It should never be the master. So if you write Sosan’s HSIN HSIN MING, write it on your left palm.

It is such a beautiful book, each word is golden. I cannot conceive of a single word that could be deleted. It is exactly that which is needed, required, to say the truth. Sosan must have been a tremendously logical man, at least while he was writing his HSIN HSIN MING.

I have spoken about it and I have never loved speaking more. The greatest moments of my speaking were when I was speaking on Sosan. Speaking and silence together... speaking yet not speaking, because Sosan can be explained only through no-speaking. He was not a man of words, he was a man of silence. He spoke just the minimum. Forgive me Sosan, I forgot you. Just because of you I remember a few more who can knock at my door and disturb my afternoon sleep, so it is better that I should mention them.

First is Sosan’s HSIN HSIN MING.

Second is P.D. Ouspensky’s TERTIUM ORGANUM. It is a miracle that he wrote it before he had even heard of Gurdjieff. He wrote it before he knew what he was writing. He understood it himself only afterwards, on meeting Gurdjieff. His first words to George Gurdjieff were: ”Looking into your eyes I have understood TERTIUM ORGANUM. Although I have written it, now I can say that it has been written through me by some unknown agency I was not aware of.” Perhaps it was that rascal Gurdjieff who wrote it through him, or maybe somebody else whom the Sufis call the Ultimate Rascal, who has been doing miracles – miracles like TERTIUM ORGANUM.

The title means ’the third canon of thought’. The Sufis give that ultimate agency a name; it is not a person but only a presence. I can feel that presence right now, here... this very moment. They call it a certain name, because everything has to be given a name, but I will not say it, not in the presence of this beauty, this splendor... of this exuberance... of this exaltation... of this ecstasy.

I said it is a miracle that Ouspensky could write TERTIUM ORGANUM, one of the greatest books in any language of the world. In fact it is said, and rightly so – remember, I emphasize and repeat, rightly so – that there are only three great books: the first is ORGANUM written by Aristotle; the second is THE SECOND ORGANUM written by Bacon; and the third, by P.D. Ouspensky, TERTIUM ORGANUM. ’Tertium’ means third. And Ouspensky has, very mischievously – and only a saint can be so mischievous – introduced the book by saying, without any ego, simply and humbly, that ”the first exists but not before the third. The third existed even before the first came into existence.”

Ouspensky seems to have been spent, totally and utterly spent, into TERTIUM ORGANUM, because he never could reach to the same height again. Even reporting Gurdjieff in IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS he has not attained to the same height. When he betrayed Gurdjieff he tried finally to create something better than TERTIUM. As his last effort he wrote THE FOURTH WAY but failed utterly. The book is good, good for any university curriculum. You can see I have my own ways of condemning a thing....

THE FOURTH WAY can be part of a regular curriculum in a university course, but more than that it is nothing. Although he was trying to do his best it is the worst book that Ouspensky has written. It was his last book.

That is the difficulty with all that is great: if you try, you miss. It comes effortlessly or not at all. It has visited him in TERTIUM ORGANUM and he was not even aware of it. The words in TERTIUM are so powerful one cannot believe that the author is unenlightened, that he is still looking for a master, that he is still searching for the truth.

I was a poor student, working the whole day as a journalist – that is the worst job you can do, but that’s what was available to me at the time – and I was in such need that I had to join a night college. So the whole day I worked as a journalist, and at night I went to college. In a way my name belongs to the night. Rajneesh means the moon: rajni means the night, eesh means God – God of the night.

So people used to laugh and say, ”This is strange: you work the whole day, and go to study at night. Are you trying to fulfill your name?”

Now I can answer them, yes – write it in capital letters – YES, I have been trying to fulfill it my whole life. What else can be more beautiful than to be the full moon? So as a poor student in those days, I used to work the whole day. But I am a crazy man, rich or poor does not matter....

I have never liked to read books borrowed from others. In fact I hate even borrowing from a library, because a library book is like a prostitute. I hate to see the marks, the underlining of other people. I always love the fresh, the snow-white freshness.

TERTIUM ORGANUM was a costly book. In India, in those days, I was getting a salary of only seventy rupees each month, and by coincidence the book cost exactly seventy rupees – but I purchased it. The bookseller was amazed. He said, ”Even the richest man in our community cannot afford it. For five years I have been keeping it to sell, and nobody has purchased it. People come and look at it, then drop the idea of buying. How can you, a poor student, working the whole day and studying at night, working almost twenty-four hours each day, how can you afford it?”

I said, ”This book I can purchase even if I have to pay for it with my life. Just reading the first line is enough. I have to have it whatsoever the cost.”

That first sentence I had read in the introduction was, ”This is the third canon of thought, and there are only three. The first is that of Aristotle; the second of Bacon, and the third, my own.” I was thrilled by Ouspensky’s daring, that he said, ”The third existed even before the first.” That was the sentence that caught fire in my heart.

I gave the bookseller my whole month’s salary. You cannot understand, because for that whole month I had to almost starve. But it was worth it. I can remember that beautiful month: no food, no clothes – not even shelter; because I could not pay the rent I was thrown out of my small room. But I was happy with TERTIUM ORGANUM under the sky. I read that book under a street lamp – it is a confession – and I have lived that book. That book is so beautiful, and more so now that I know that the man did not know at all. How could he have managed it then? It must have been a conspiracy of the gods, something from the beyond. I cannot resist anymore from using the name the Sufis use; they call it khidr. Khidr is the agency that guides those who need guidance.

TERTIUM ORGANUM is the second book.

Third: GEET GOVIND – the song of God. This book was written by a poet very much condemned by Indians, because in GEET GOVIND, his song of God, he talks too much of love. Indians are so against love that they have never appreciated this great work.

GEET GOVIND is something which should be sung. Nothing can be said about it. It is a Baul song, the song of a madman. If you dance and sing it, you will understand it, there is no other way.

I am not mentioning the name of the man who wrote it. That is not important. X-Y-Z... not that I don’t know his name, but I will not mention it for the simple reason that he does not belong to the world of the buddhas. Yet he has done a great service.

Fourth: Now be patient, because I have to complete the list to ten. I cannot count more than that. Why ten? – because I have ten fingers. That’s how the number ten came into existence: ten fingers. Man started counting on his fingers so ten became the basic number.

Fourth: Kundkunda’s SAMAYASAR. I have never spoken about it. I decided to many times but always dropped the idea. This is one of the greatest books the Jainas have produced, but it is very mathematical; that’s why I have always dropped it. I love poetry. If it was poetic I would have spoken on it. I have even spoken on unenlightened poets, but not on even enlightened mathematicians and logicians. Mathematics is so dry. Logic is a desert.

Perhaps he is around here among my sannyasins... but he cannot be. Kundkunda was an enlightened master, he cannot be born again. His book is beautiful, I can only say that much. I will not say anything more because it is mathematical.... Mathematics too has its beauty, its rhythm, that’s why I appreciate it. It has its own truth but it is very limited, and very right-handed.

SAMAYASAR means the essence. If by chance you ever come across Kundkunda’s SAMAYASAR, then please never hold it in your left hand. Keep it in the right hand. It is a right-hand book, right in every way. That is why I have declined up till now to speak about it. It is so right that I feel a little aversion to it – of course with tears in my eyes, because I know the beauty of the man who wrote it. I love Kundkunda, and I hate from my guts his mathematical expression.

Gudia, you can have a little more freedom because I have to talk about four books more. If you want you can go out again.

Fifth: J. Krishnamurti’s THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM. I love this man, and I hate this man. I love him because he speaks the truth, but I hate him for his intellectuality. He is only reason, rationality. I wonder, he may be a reincarnation of that goddamned Greek Aristotle. His logic is what I hate, his love is what I respect – but his book is beautiful.

This was his first book after his enlightenment, and the last too. Although many other books have appeared they are only poor repetitions of the same. He has not been able to create anything better than THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM.

It is a strange phenomenon: Kahlil Gibran wrote his masterpiece THE PROPHET when he was only eighteen years old, and struggled his whole life to create something better but could not. Ouspensky could not go beyond TERTIUM ORGANUM even though he met Gurdjieff, lived and worked with him for many years. And such is the case with J. Krishnamurti: his book THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM is really the first and the last.

Sixth. The sixth is a book by another Chinese, THE BOOK OF HUANG PO. It is a small book, not a treatise, just fragments. Truth cannot be expressed in a treatise, you cannot write a Ph.D. on it. A Ph.D. is a degree that should be given to the fools. Huang Po writes in fragments. On the surface they seem to be unconnected, but they are not. You have to meditate and then you can find the connection. It is one of the most meditative books ever written.

In English THE BOOK OF HUANG PO is translated in the English way as THE TEACHINGS OF Huang PO. Even the title is wrong. People like Huang Po don’t teach. There is no teaching in it. You have to meditate, to be silent, to understand it.

The seventh is THE BOOK OF HUI HI. Again in English it is translated as THE TEACHINGS OF HUI HI. These poor Englishmen, they think there is nothing more in life than teaching. These Englishmen are all teachers. And be aware of Englishwomen; otherwise you will get caught with a schoolteacher!

Hui Hi and Huang Po are both masters. They impart, they don’t teach. Hence I call it THE BOOK OF HUI HI, although you will not find it in the libraries. In the libraries you will find THE TEACHINGS OF HUI HI.

Eighth: the last – at least for today, because one never knows about tomorrow. Other devils may start knocking at my doors. I must have read more than any man alive on the earth, and remember, I am not boasting but simply stating a fact. I must have read at least one hundred thousand books, possibly more, but not less than that, because after that I stopped counting. So I don’t know about tomorrow, but for the eighth today.... I am feeling a little guilty about GEET GOVIND because I haven’t told you the name of the author. I will tell you, but first let me finish the eighth.

The eighth book that has impressed me immensely is a strange one, obviously; otherwise it would not have impressed me at all. You will be shocked! Guess what the eighth book can be.... I know you cannot guess it – not that it is in Sanskrit or Chinese, Japanese or Arabic. You have heard about it, you may even have it in your home. It is the SONG OF SOLOMON in The OLD TESTAMENT. This is a book I love wholeheartedly. I hate all that is Jewish except the SONG OF SOLOMON.

The SONG OF SOLOMON is very much misunderstood because of the so-called psychologists, particularly the Freudians – the frauds. They have been interpreting the SONG OF SOLOMON in the worst possible way; they make it a sexual song. It is not. It is sensual, that’s true, very sensual, but not sexual. It is so alive, that’s why it is sensual. It is so full of juice, that is why it is sensual... but not sexual. Sex may be a part of it, but don’t misguide humanity. Even the Jews have become afraid of it. They think that it has been included in the OLD TESTAMENT by accident. In fact this song is the only thing worth preserving; all else is worth throwing into the fire.

Is my hour over? So bad. You say ”Yes,” but what can I do? – this is the very beauty. Thank you both.

Om Mani Padme Hum, Osho

How beautiful to stop at this beauty. No, no, no. This ”No” is what the Indians say when they attain to enlightenment. Then they don’t want to be born again. They say ”No, no, no....” After this beautiful experience, what is the point of continuing?

[heartbeatsalute]

I gave the bookseller my whole month’s salary.

You cannot understand, because for that whole month I had to almost starve. But it was worth it. I can remember that beautiful month: no food, no clothes – not even shelter; because I could not pay the rent I was thrown out of my small room.

But I was happy with TERTIUM ORGANUM under the sky. I read that book under a street lamp – it is a confession – and I have lived that book. That book is so beautiful, and more so now that I know that the man did not know at all. How could he have managed it then? It must have been a conspiracy of the gods, something from the beyond. I cannot resist anymore from using the name the Sufis use; they call it khidr. Khidr is the agency that guides those who need guidance.--OSHO--

[heartbeatsalute]

Listen, Learn and Enjoy


"Osho,

I remember while you were in the police station in Crete, those two young smiling Greek women, dressed in black like typical Cretan women, coming to the window, holding your hand and saying in very broken English, "Osho, we love you. We are Cretan, we want you to stay here."

It seems that as the governments become increasingly strident in their attacks on you - in spite of the increasingly obvious love the common man has for you - one of the most important parts of your work will be to show how the bureaucracy, far from representing the common man, is in fact in complete opposition to him."

"I certainly remember those two young women holding my hand and trying to convey to me that "We, the people of this island, want you to stay here. We love you."

The question you have raised has occurred to me many times in my life, again and again. The bureaucracy is not for the people, it is against them. It uses them, it exploits them, it manipulates them; it makes them believe that it is serving their purposes. But the reality is just the opposite.

They define democracy as the government of the people, for the people, by the people. It is none of these things. It is neither by the people, nor of the people, nor for the people.

The people who have been holding power down the centuries have always been able to persuade people that whatever is being done, is done for their sake. And the people have believed it because they have been trained to believe.

It is a conspiracy between religion and state to exploit humanity.

The religion goes on preaching belief and destroys the intelligence of people to question, makes them retarded. And the state goes on exploiting them in every possible way -- still managing to keep the people's support, because the people have been trained to believe, not to question. Any kind of government -- it may be monarchy, it may be aristocracy, it may be democracy, it may be any kind of government.... Just the names change but deep down the reality remains the same.

In Japan before the second world war, Hirohito, the emperor of Japan, was believed to be the direct descendant of the God Sun, and whatever he was saying was not human, it was divine; his order had just to be followed. For centuries Japanese people have believed in him as a Sun God, And they have died in hundreds of wars, willingly, joyously, because they are dying for God himself. What more blissful and beautiful a death could one aspire to?

Japan is a small country but no other country has been able to conquer it -- even countries like China, vast countries. China is the greatest country as far as numbers are concerned, as far as land is concerned, but a small tiny Japan was able to defeat the Chinese because the people had this fanatic belief that God is behind them, so victory is theirs. And more or less the same has been the situation all over the world.

That day when those two Cretan women, holding my hand with great love, said to me, "We are not against you. We love you and we want you to stay here," they represented the real consciousness of the people. And then I saw at the airport, three thousand people -- it must have been the whole population of Saint Nicholas -- came to show their support, and to show that they are not with the brutality and nazi actions of the police against me, that they are for me.

Yes, it has to be one of my works to awaken people to the real situation: you are being exploited in different names. The exploiters even call themselves public servants, to tell you that they serve you. For thousands of years they have been "serving," -- and the people are in immense misery, ignorance. They don't have anything to their life; they are born, they somehow live, and they die. Nothing happens to them which could be called ecstatic, which could be called an experience.

Empty from birth to death, nothing flowers, nothing blossoms...and they have all the potential of being a song of joy. But these bureaucracies, religious and political, would not allow it. They are so afraid of joyous people.

It was a strange feeling for me in the beginning.

I had never thought that people should be so afraid of joyous people.

Slowly slowly, I became aware that joy has many implications:
A joyous person is not retarded.
A joyous person is intelligent.

A joyous person knows the art of life; otherwise he cannot be joyous. And a joyous person is dangerous to all those vested interests which go against humanity.

Those interests want humanity to live in hell forever. They have managed in every possible way to keep you in misery. They destroy everything that you can rejoice in, and they give you ample opportunity to be miserable. A miserable person is not a danger to this rotten society.

Yes, it has to be one of my basic works to make people aware that the powerful ones -- either religious or political -- are not your friends. They are your enemies. And unless the common humanity goes through a rebellion against all types of bureaucracies, man will remain stuck, not evolving, not reaching to the heights which are his birthright."

[heartbeatsalute]

Those interests want humanity to live in hell forever. They have managed in every possible way to keep you in misery. They destroy everything that you can rejoice in, and they give you ample opportunity to be miserable. A miserable person is not a danger to this rotten society.

Yes, it has to be one of my basic works to make people aware that the powerful ones -- either religious or political -- are not your friends. They are your enemies. And unless the common humanity goes through a rebellion against all types of bureaucracies, man will remain stuck, not evolving, not reaching to the heights which are his birthright." ---OSHO--

[heartbeatsalute]

War or Meditation

Each decade a great war is needed to unburden humanity of neurosis. You may be surprised to know that in the First World War, psychologists became aware of a very rare, strange phenomenon. When the war continued, suddenly the proportion of people who used to go mad fell almost to nil. Suicides were not committed, nor murders. People even stopped going mad. That was strange - what has that to do with war? Maybe murders declined because murders joined the army, but what happened to people who commit suicide? Maybe they also joined the army, but then what happened to people who go mad? And then again in the Second World War the same thing happened, in a grater proportion; and then the link was known, the association.

Humanity goes on accumulating a certain quantity of neurosis, madness: each decade, it has to throw it out. So when there is war - war means when humanity has gone mad as a whole - then there is no need to go mad privately; what is the point? All are mad - then there is no point in trying to become mad privately.

When one nation is murdering another, and there is so much suicide and murder, what is the point of doing these things on your own? You can simply watch TV or you can read in the newspaper.
The problem is not war, the problem is individual neurosis. A man who has become enlightened looks deep into the cause of things. Buddha, Christ, Krishna, they have been looking in to the root, and they have been trying to tell you: Change the root - a radical transformation is needed; ordinary reformation won't do. But then you may not understand - because I am here, I go on talking about meditation… no you can't see the relationship, how meditation is related with war. But I can see the relationship.

My understanding is this: that if even one percent of humanity becomes meditative, war will disappear - and there is no other way. That much quantity of meditative energy has to be released. If one percent of humanity - that means one in one hundred people - becomes meditative, things will have a totally different arrangement.

Greed will be less; naturally poverty will be less. Poverty is not there because things are scarce; poverty is there because people are hoarding, because people are greedy. If we live right now, there is enough, the earth has enough to give us. But we plan ahead, we hoard - then trouble arises. Just imagine birds hoarding… then a few birds will become rich and a few will become poor; then American birds will become the richest, and the whole will suffer. But they don't hoard, so there is no poverty. Have ever seen a bird poor?

Animals in the forest - nobody is poor, nobody is rich. In fact you don't even see fat birds and lean and thin birds. All the crows are almost alike; you cannot even recognize which is which. Why? They enjoy, they don't hoard.

Even to become fat means you are hoarding inside the body - that is a miserly mind. Misers become constipated; they cannot even throw out. They hoard: they control even defecation, they go on hoarding even rubbish. Hoarding is a habit.

To live in the moment, to live in the present, to live lovingly, to live in a friendship, to care… the world will be totally different. The individual has to change, because the world is nothing but a projected phenomenon of the individual soul.

THE DIVINE MELODY, OSHO
'

[heartbeatsalute]

To live in the moment, to live in the present, to live lovingly, to live in a friendship, to care… the world will be totally different. The individual has to change, because the world is nothing but a projected phenomenon of the individual soul. --OSHO--

[heartbeatsalute]

Tuesday, March 02, 2004
The Great Challenge

This always happens: when I say something, I create two groups of people around me. One group will be exoteric. They will organize, they will do many things concerned with society, with the world that is without; they will help preserve whatsoever I am saying. The other group will be more concerned with the inner world.

Sooner or later the two groups are bound to come in conflict with one another because their emphasis is different. The inner group, the esoteric mind, is concerned with something quite different from the exoteric group. And, ultimately, the outer group will win, because they can work as a group. The esoteric ones cannot work as a group; they go on working as individuals. When one individual is lost, something is lost forever.

This happens with every teacher. Ultimately the outer group becomes more and more influential; it becomes an establishment. The first thing an establishment has to do is to kill its own esoteric part, because the esoteric group is always a disturbance. Because of "heresy," Christianity has been destroying all that is esoteric.

And now the pope is at the opposite extreme to Jesus: this is the ultimate schism between the exoteric and the esoteric. The pope is more like the priests who crucified Jesus than like Jesus himself. If Jesus comes again, he will be crucified in Rome this time—by the Vatican. The Vatican is the exoteric, organizational part, the establishment.

These are intrinsic problems—they happen, and you cannot do anything about it.


The Great Challenge, OSHO

[heartbeatsalute]

Union Minister of State for External Affairs, Shri Vinod Khanna, launched "Einstein the Buddha", a book on Osho's insights on the new man, at Osho World stall during the 16th World Book Fair on 22nd February 2004.

The book "Einstein the Buddha", in two volumes, is the compilation of Osho's beautiful insights on the new man who is a merger of science and spirituality.
Osho in His discourses extensively spoke on the evolution of the new man who is a meditator, a conscious individual, rich from within, multidimensional in approach and remaining available to the inner and the outer both.

Osho's vision of the new man is "Einstein the Buddha".

In His discourses, Osho speaks of creating a synthesis and to bring one unity between the materialistic, scientific approach of the West and the spiritual, meditative approach of the East. That will make man complete, whole. And to be whole is the only way to be holy.
Osho says that there have been Buddhas and there have been Albert Einsteins, but we are still waiting for a Buddha who is also an Albert Einstein or an Albert Einstein who is also a Buddha. The day is coming closer and closer.

Sharing His insights, Osho says, "If Einstein had also been a Buddha, there would have been atomic energy but no atom bombs, and atomic energy would have become a blessing -- the greatest blessing ever. The earth would have become a paradise. But Albert Einstein is not a Buddha; unfortunately he knows nothing of meditation -- a great mind, but the master is missing; a great mechanism, a great airplane without the pilot."

"I would like you to be enriched by Newton, Edison, Eddington, Rutherford, Einstein; and I would like you also to be enriched by Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Mohammed, so that you can become rich in both the dimensions -- the outer and the inner."
This book is an invitation to explore one's inner and outer through the beautiful insights of Osho.

"Albert Einstein is half; that is the tragedy of the West. Buddha is half; that is our tragedy. And the work for the future is to bring them together." _Osho

[lonestar]

Right now, continue to remember only one thing: that you are separate. From everything that surrounds you, you are separate. The knower is not the known. Go on feeling it more and more so that it becomes a substantial crystallization in you that the knower is not the known. You KNOW the thought, you SEE the thought — how can you be the thought? Osho

i had never read that from Osho, it reminds me of when j krishna talks about The observer is the observed.

heres some cool music from Native American Elmara that lighthouse turned me onto to.

Wonderful Chill Out Music - Elmara Native American [HD] - YouTube

Wonderful Chill Out Music - Elmara Native American [HD] - YouTube

[heartbeatsalute]

Originally Posted by lonestar

Right now, continue to remember only one thing: that you are separate. From everything that surrounds you, you are separate. The knower is not the known. Go on feeling it more and more so that it becomes a substantial crystallization in you that the knower is not the known. You KNOW the thought, you SEE the thought — how can you be the thought? Osho

i had never read that from Osho, it reminds me of when j krishna talks about The observer is the observed.

heres some cool music from Native American Elmara that lighthouse turned me onto to.


Wonderful Chill Out Music - Elmara Native American [HD] - YouTube

Yes, he has said that in many different ways, including when Osho says:
"you are not the body" (mind included).

WOW! Thank you for sharing your video, beautiful images and great music,
loved it!

[heartbeatsalute]

My religion is only a quality, a religiousness. This is the problem for
politicians. They think that here in our city, state and religion are mixing. They are absolutelt wrong. Here, state and religionness are one, not mixing.
There is no question of mixing.

What do you mean by mixing? In washington they are mixing. In salem they are mixing. Here they cannont mix. Here, they are one, because here religion is not Christianity, is not Hinduism. Here religion is only silence of the heart.
--OSHO--

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"For an hour every morning in the auditorium, the sannyasins gathered and Osho sat silently on a three-foot-high podium. They
bowed to their master dressed in white and chanted the Pali mantras
they had learned during the last days of Pune, the ones that Gautama
Buddha's disciples had chanted 2500 years before.

Buddham sharanam gacchami
Sangham sharanam gacchami
Dhammam sharanam gacchami

As they bowed their heads towards the floor, there was a ground
rumble of all those voices coming back at their faces. It swelled and
then dissapeared, like water going down a drain. When they were fin-
ished, they sat silently with closed eyes, listening in turn to the music,
the recited words of Osho, and the air. A single cough was enough
to ruffle the atmosphere."

From: A Passage To America by Max Brecher

Buddham Saranam Gacchami To Osho The Lord of the Full Moon - YouTube

Buddham Saranam Gacchami To Osho The Lord of the Full Moon - YouTube

Love the music in this video.

[heartbeatsalute]

OSHO : Rinzai: Master of The Irrational, Chapter 2

OSHO,

On one occasion Rinzai said: "Whoever comes to me, I do not fail him: I know exactly where he comes from. If he should come in a particular way, he would be as if he had lost himself. If he should not come in a particular way, he would have bound himself without a rope. Never ever speculate haphazardly. Understanding and not understanding are both wrong. I say this straight out. Anyone in the world is free to denounce me as he will."

The master further said: "Each statement must comprise the gates of the three mysteries, and the gate of each mystery must comprise the three essentials. There are temporary expedients, and there is functioning. How do all of you understand this?"

The master then stepped down.

Maneesha, Rinzai is right. The way you walk, the way you talk, the way you see -- all your gestures indicate your inner reality. It cannot be otherwise, because whatever is shown on the circumference must be coming from the center.

Rinzai is saying: "I can see the person in his wholeness, and whether he is enlightened or not, just by the way he walks or the way he talks." This statement is significant in the sense that enlightenment is not an intellectual phenomenon; it is existential. It transforms your total being.

So whatever you do, it does not matter what it is -- even if you don't do anything but simply sit down silently -- you cannot deceive a man of enlightenment. He will be able to see through and through, straight into your being. Whether you are silent or speaking does not matter. Even if you are sleeping...the enlightened man sleeps in a different way than the unenlightened. It simply shows that all our actions, gestures, words, silences, arise through our being. All these waves come from the very center.

The unenlightened person creates a different aura around himself. He has no presence; he is almost absent. He is a somnambulist, as if walking in sleep, stumbling in the darkness.

The enlightened man simply is a man whose inner being is full of light. He does not stumble, he does not grope. He has nothing to choose.

This I emphasize: the enlightened man is choiceless. He has not to choose what is good and what is bad. Whatever comes out of his spontaneity is bound to be good, is bound to be beautiful, is bound to be a tremendous grace. His every action or inaction is not only a blessing to himself -- he has so much of it that he can bless the whole world.

The enlightened man has become part of the abundance of cosmic reality.

He is no more a miser, a small island. He has become a vast continent. He is no more an individual.... First he dropped his personality and attained individuality; then he drops his individuality too and attains to cosmic reality. At that point, he is everywhere and nowhere. Everything around him changes.

So if you see such a man and if your vision is clear, there is no need for him to say to you that he is enlightened.

There is a small incident: One of Gautam Buddha's disciples, Manjushri, became enlightened. He had been meditating for almost twenty years, and those who had already become enlightened immediately recognized him. Sariputra told him: "Why don't you go and tell the master?"

Manjushri laughed. He said: "Do I have to go to the master for recognition? I know that whenever he comes across me, he will see it. I don't have to say it." And that's how it happened.

The next morning, when Gautam Buddha was going for a morning walk, he came by the side of the tree where Manjushri used to meditate. He stopped, he looked around, and he said: "Manjushri, you should have come and announced your enlightenment. Do you think you can hide fire? All around you there are flames declaring your enlightenment. All around you flowers have blossomed, which may not be visible to the ignorant, but anybody who is enlightened will recognize you whether you say it or not."

Manjushri touched Gautam Buddha's feet and he said: "This was the reason that I did not come to you. If it is authentic, if I am not in a hallucination, if I am not imagining that I have become enlightened, then it is better that Gautam Buddha himself recognizes it, rather than my going to him. He knows hundreds of people who have become enlightened under him. If he passes by me without recognizing it, that simply means my time has not come yet, I am simply imagining."

And that was not the only incident -- because under Gautam Buddha more people became enlightened than under any man in history. Ten thousand monks continuously followed him, and all they were doing the whole day was simply meditating, just witnessing their minds. In time, in season, the right climate, the right moment...one by one they started exploding.

My experience is that it is very much a triggering process. If one person becomes enlightened and you are sitting close by him, something may trigger in you. Just his changed energy can give a push to your own energy.

Our enlightenment is not something of a kind that has to be achieved; it is already there, it is our very nature. It is the simplest thing in the world, and that has made it the most difficult.

Going within yourself just needs a small push, and that push need not be physical.

It is not physical; it is more something like magnetic energy, or something more like electricity. You don't see it, but it can travel from one person to another person, if the other person is ready enough. He will be surprised by the explosion.

Gautam Buddha allowed ten thousand people to be always with him simply to create an energy field. Somebody is a step ahead of you, somebody is two steps ahead of you, somebody is very close to the explosion. If he explodes, he can create a chain reaction and those who are just behind him may catch the fire. Hence in Zen it is called the transmission of the lamp, or transmission of the light.

But nobody can act like an enlightened man; it is not possible, because enlightenment has no particular form. Each enlightened being is so unique that you cannot imitate. And imitation takes you away from yourself. The more you imitate, the less is the possibility of your becoming enlightened.

So one has to learn how to be with an enlightened man. It is not something to be learned; it is not something like a teaching or a discipline. It is a way of receptivity, of opening, of allowing the master to enter in you.

We are ordinarily very afraid. We keep a distance from each other, and we keep our defenses. We are afraid that somebody may offend us. Defense is necessary. Somebody may humiliate us, somebody may hurt us, so we go on creating defensive measures around our being, and we always keep a little distance even from those we love.

Adolf Hitler never married for the simple reason that he could not allow anybody in his room while he was asleep, because who knows, everybody is a stranger.... He got married just three hours before his death, when the enemies were bombing Berlin and it became absolutely certain that there was no possibility now except defeat. It was only a question of hours.

In the middle of the night he called a priest into his bunker and got married. His friends said to him: "What is the point now that you are preparing poison?"

He said: "Now there is no danger; I will die married. This woman has always been hankering to be married, and I was postponing it." Now there was no point in any defense. He got married and the next thing they did was they both took poison and went on a spiritual honeymoon.

But the fear of not keeping people at a distance is always there. One has to become aware of being with a master. You have to drop your defenses, that's all. You have simply to be open and available. Keep your doors open. At the right moment the master is going to step in -- not physically, but just his spiritual energy is going to give a new dance to your being.

Rinzai's statement is significant.

On one occasion Rinzai said: "Whoever comes to me, I do not fail him. I know exactly where he comes from."

He does not mean the place from which he is coming, but the space from which he is coming, in what space he is, in what state of consciousness.

If he should come in a particular way, he would be as if he had lost himself.

He will come stumbling, fumbling. He will look...in his eyes you will find that he is simply lost. He does not know where he is going or why he is going. Almost exactly that is the situation for the majority of humanity. Nobody has the sense of direction; they are all just groping.

Rinzai is saying: "I never fail anybody. I simply see straight to which place this man is coming from, in which space he is. I see whether he is hesitant, doubtful, uncertain, looking for guidance, or is full of knowledge which is borrowed, and has a great ego as if he knows."

If he should not come in a particular way, he would have bound himself without a rope.

Everybody looks as if they are free; nobody is handcuffed, nobody is bound by a rope. But look a little closely: you are bound by too many ropes, which are pulling you in certain directions, and perhaps in contradictory directions. That creates split personalities, that creates fragmentary personalities.

You may call those ropes love, you may call those ropes ambitions, desires, jealousies, hate -- it does not matter what you call them, they are all ropes. But if your mind has any content in it, that content becomes your rope.

Only a contentless mind knows what freedom is.

From the outside everybody looks free, but Rinzai is talking about the ropes that are invisible. And you can understand, you can see your own ropes -- your fixations with the mother, with the father, with the wife, with the husband, with the children, with your friends, with your enemies.

It happened when Mahatma Gandhi was shot in 1948. Jinnah was the man who had fought Gandhi his whole life for a separation of the country into two parts -- a separate and sovereign country for Mohammedans. He was sitting in his garden reading a newspaper when his secretary came running and told him that Gandhi had been shot, he was dead. The secretary could not believe that Jinnah had tears in his eyes. He did not say anything, he simply went back into his room. In fact, at the same moment Jinnah died. He became sick and he never came out of his room.

Many times he was asked: "Why should you be so much concerned? You were perfectly healthy. This news of Gandhi...."

Jinnah said: "Now I can see that even with enemies there is a certain relationship. Without Gandhi I am no more. And if Gandhi can be shot by a Hindu, I can be shot by a Mohammedan any moment." He had never had guards around his home before Gandhi was shot. He had refused, saying that: "Even to conceive that any Mohammedan will do any damage to my life is just absurd. I have fought for them, I have given them their country." But the day Gandhi died, he immediately ordered that guards should be put around his home.

Nobody could understand that it would be such a shock to him. He himself could not understand it: "I should rather be happy that Gandhi is dead, but my eyes are full of tears. Without Gandhi I have lost myself. Fighting with him was my whole life. Half of my life is finished. Now I have to live a crippled life" -- and he never became healthy again, he died just a few months afterwards.

If you look around yourself you will find many ropes -- almost a net.

And if there was one rope only, it would be easy to cut it and be free. There are so many ropes...your whole personality consists of ropes. Even though those ropes make you a prisoner -- they give you nothing but misery and trouble, they don't allow you to have your dignity and your mastery -- somehow they are long-time acquaintances and to drop them feels like you are cutting something of your own being. They have become your second nature.

It happened in the French Revolution that the revolutionaries opened the doors of a great prison thinking that they were doing something great. That prison was meant only for people who were to be imprisoned for their whole lives, the very dangerous criminals, so their handcuffs had no keys, because there was no need, they would never be free. So after handcuffs were put on and chains on their feet, the keys were thrown in a well which was just in the center of the prison.

The revolutionaries tried to cut off their handcuffs, their chains, and they could not believe that the prisoners were so resistant. Somebody had lived for forty years, somebody for fifty years -- there was even a man who had been there for seventy years, and he said: "Now the eyes cannot tolerate even to come out in the light. We have been living in dark cells, and after seventy years the world must have changed too much. Even our own friends and wives, most of them must be dead. Even our children won't recognize us.

"It is so cozy and comfortable here -- no work, the food is given. It is rotten, but it is given at least every day, you don't have to work for it; you don't have to look for employment. And we have become so accustomed to our small dark cells that we cannot conceive now of another kind of life." But revolutionaries are revolutionaries; they are stubborn people. They forced them. They cut their chains and their handcuffs and forced them out of jail. But they were surprised that by the evening they were all back.

It is something so important, it is far more important than the French Revolution itself. The prisoners begged them: "Don't force us. Outside does not exist for us. The gap is too big -- seventy years -- and we are living very happily." A few of them said: "We cannot sleep without the chains." They have become almost like teddy bears.

The same is the situation of almost everyone: your chains have become teddy bears. However dirty, smelly, greasy and Italian, but on every airport, on every railway station you will find children dragging their teddy bears. They will not leave them because they cannot sleep without them. With them it feels so warm and they have been such friends, no quarrel.

We are all accustomed to many ropes.

Rinzai is saying: "If he should not come in a particular way, he would have bound himself without a rope."

Only if he comes like a lion roaring, alone, no more part of the crowd, no more dependent on the crowd, no more a Christian, no more a Hindu, no more a Buddhist -- if he has thrown all the scriptures and all the conditionings away, he will come in his full glory, a man in his total dignity.

This dignity is not a comparative thing. It has nothing to do with anybody else; it is not relative. It is his own nature come to full blossoming. He has thrown all hindrances away.

If you come across a man who has no ropes, no chains, no conditionings, you will immediately see the difference between yourself and that person. His freedom will be almost tangible and you will see your slavery clearly in comparison to him. Of how many things you are a slave! Your slavery is multidimensional. But you go on living because everybody else is also living in the same way. You think perhaps this is the only way of life.

This is not the only way of life. In fact, it is not a way of life at all. It is a way of missing life. Without blossoming into your full potential, you have dragged yourself from the cradle to the grave, but you have not lived.

I have heard about a man who died, then he recognized that: "My God, I was alive!" -- but now it was too late.

Most people will realize only when death strikes: "I have lived without living. I have not danced, I have not blossomed, I have not known myself, and death has come." And death means all doors are being closed. Now one knows nothing of what is going to happen. There is no more future. You cannot plan for tomorrow, and all yesterdays are gone -- great opportunities to become awakened, great opportunities to become a Buddha.

You have missed.

Rinzai goes on: "Never ever speculate haphazardly. Understanding and not understanding are both wrong."

This a tremendously important statement: Understanding and not understanding are both wrong. Ordinarily you will say: "Understanding is right and not understanding is wrong." But I will support Rinzai. He is right. It is not a question of understanding or not understanding, it is a question of realizing.

For example, a blind man can understand what light is intellectually, but what is that understanding? A blind man can write a treatise on light, on colors, and can be very logically right. But what is that understanding? He has never seen colors.... And this is the situation.

People are writing about God, describing in detail as if they have seen God, quarreling with others because they have a different conception of God. For thousands of years people have been fighting about God, about heaven and hell, and nobody seems to realize the fact that these are all hypotheses. Nobody has seen God. So if somebody says: "I understand about God," it is as futile as not understanding about God.

The question is knowing -- directly, straightforwardly. The question is being one with the truth, not knowing the truth from far away, from others' experience, from scriptures. You cannot borrow truth; it is not a commodity.

You have to become the truth.

Even if a person says: "I have seen truth," it is wrong, because you cannot see truth -- truth is not something material -- neither can you see God. If you see, it is hallucination.

That's why Buddha has said to his disciples: "If I meet you on the way, just don't hesitate, cut off my head and throw me out of the way. Pass me without looking back" -- because in meditation it is always possible that the last barrier will be the master. That is your last love, your great love affair. You may pass through all other small matters, psychological fixations, but what are you going to do with the last rope?

It happened in Ramakrishna's life: Ramakrishna was a great devotee, and the path of devotion is full of imagination. Mind has the capacity to hypnotize itself and can see the object of imagination just standing before it.

You should pay attention to the fact that no Mohammedan or Christian ever experiences Krishna, no Hindu ever experiences Jesus. They all see what they imagine, what they believe in, what is their hypothesis.

If you continuously go on insisting on a certain hypothetical concept of God, one day you will see that hypothesis becoming a reality.

Ramakrishna was a devotee of the Mother Goddess of Calcutta. An enlightened man, Totapuri, was just passing by. He looked at Ramakrishna and he felt great compassion for the poor fellow. He told Ramakrishna: "You think that you have experienced the Mother Goddess."

Ramakrishna said: "See, I have talked with her, and not one day, but every day." He was an honest man, and what he was saying was absolutely true.

Totapuri laughed and he said: "Listen, that Mother Goddess is nothing but pure imagination. Unless you drop that you will never become enlightened. So sit down. I will remain here for three or four days, just for you. I have to help you in somehow dropping the Mother Goddess."

Now that was a very difficult matter. Ramakrishna had loved the Mother Goddess his whole life, danced before her. And he was not a traditional fellow; he was very untraditional, very loving, very innocent -- so much so that twice the trustees of the temple in which he used to worship, where he was the priest, had to call him saying: "This is strange what you are doing...."

First he would taste the food that was to be offered to the goddess, and then he would offer it. Now this is absolutely wrong according to the Hindu tradition. First you should offer it to the god and then you can distribute it, you can eat it.

But Ramakrishna said: "My mother always used to taste it first and then she would give it to me. I don't care about anybody, I know what the reason was. The reason was whether it is worth giving. Is the taste right? Is the sweetness not too much or too little? I cannot offer it without tasting it first."

He used to fight with the Mother Goddess. Nobody could understand what was happening. He would lock the temple for three or four days and would tell the Mother Goddess: "Remain inside the temple, because you are not doing anything for your devotees. So many people come and they ask you and their prayers are not answered. I am the priest here; it is my duty to take care. Now remain locked up. After three or four days I will see you again."

The trustees said: "You are here as the salaried priest. Your work is to worship every day."

He said: "That is not the question. The question is that the Mother Goddess has to listen to me. When she listens I prepare such good food for her and bring so many roses and so many flowers. When she is really listening to the prayers I dance the whole day. But when she is not listening, becomes adamant, then I am also a man of some dignity...."

Totapuri said to Ramakrishna: "You sit in silence. You don't have any other ropes that I can see, just this one rope. So when you see the Mother Goddess arising in your imagination, just take the sword and cut the mother in two pieces. They will fall, and with them will fall the last barrier."

Ramakrishna said: "From where am I going to get the sword?"

Totapuri said: "From where have you got this Mother Goddess? -- From the same place. It is your imagination. That is also your imagination; only imagination is needed to cut it."

It took three days, because he would go into meditation and the Mother Goddess would be standing there, and he would forget all about Totapuri. He would forget all about the sword, and tears would start flowing from his eyes, and Totapuri would shake him saying: "What are you doing?"

Ramakrishna said: "What to do? -- Because once I see her, she is so beautiful.... Don't force me to cut her."

Totapuri said: "Listen, I can see even from the outside: your face immediately changes when you see the mother. I have brought a piece of glass, and the moment I see that you are seeing the mother -- because your tears start flowing, your face becomes so beautiful -- I will make a cut just on your third eye center with the glass. I have to do this because tomorrow I leave. I cannot waste any more time. This is the last chance: either you do it or I am finished with you."

And Totapuri said: "When I cut your forehead and blood starts flowing, don't hesitate, just take the sword and cut the mother."

Ramakrishna cut the mother and he remained silent for six days. Totapuri remained for six days, and when Ramakrishna opened his eyes he thanked Totapuri and said: "If you had not come, I would have lived my whole life with the hallucination. My last barrier has fallen away."

Ramakrishna became enlightened after he had cut the last barrier. But even the followers of Ramakrishna don't mention this incident, because this incident makes the whole effort of worshipping futile. If you have finally to cut it, why start it in the beginning?

Neither understanding is needed -- because understanding is intellectual -- nor not-understanding, because that too is intellectual.

You can be a theist, you can be an atheist, that does not matter; both are intellectual standpoints. You have to drop them both and you have to see without any prejudice, without any hypothesis, without any belief system. Only then...then you don't see the truth, you become the truth. And unless you become the truth you are not enlightened.

So see the difference: it is not a question of seeing God, it is not a question of seeing Buddha. It is a question of being a Buddha. There are not three, the one who sees, the one who is seen, and the process of seeing; there is only one.

You are it.

This is the greatest understanding Gautam Buddha brought into the world.

Rinzai is saying:

"I say this straight out. Anyone in the world is free to denounce me as he will."

The master further said: "Each statement must comprise the gates of the three mysteries, and the gate of each mystery must comprise the three essentials. There are temporary expedients, and there is functioning. How do all of you understand this?"

The master then stepped down.

What are the three Mysteries? Our every experience is divided into three: the observer, the observed and the process of observation. You can take it to different dimensions -- the knower, the knowledge, and the process of knowing. Unless these three mysteries become one, when the observer is the observed also....

When you are a god, then all the mysteries disappear, then the whole existence is clearly available to you. All the doors are open, nothing is hidden. The whole splendor of existence is available, but it is available to a consciousness which has come to a peak where there is no subject and no object and nothing relating them, where the three have become one.

This oneness is the buddhahood, is your buddha nature.

In this oneness you become part of the cosmic whole -- and not just a part. It is the strangest experience: when a dewdrop disappears in the ocean, you can say that the dewdrop has become a part of the ocean, but the reality is that the dewdrop has become the ocean. There is no question of being part. Part is still apart, there is a distance. Just pure oneness....

William James gave the right words for this experience: the oceanic experience. You have become the whole ocean.

Rinzai is saying that he will be denounced -- denounced by all devotees, denounced by all those people who keep a distance between you and God. He will be denounced by all those who cannot conceive that you are in your intrinsic reality nothing but a divine force, and the whole existence is a divine dance. "But," he says, "it does not matter if I am being denounced. I have to say the truth."

Zen is the only way of seeing the truth without any belief. If you have a belief already, your belief will become the barrier. One has to be utterly belief-less. I am not saying that you have to be a disbeliever; that is again a belief. Believing or disbelieving, both are belief systems. Theist and atheist are both two extremes of one concept, of one hypothesis. One is saying yes, the other is saying no, but both of them are absolutely unaware of the truth.

That truth cannot be denied, and no evidence can be given, or proof. One has to live it; only life is a proof. When somebody has reached to the point where he is truth, obviously all his actions are bound to change. All his life patterns are going to be different.

Rinzai is right that he can see the moment somebody enters into his temple in what space he is, what are his ropes: Has he any direction in life or is he just going haphazardly like dead wood floating in a river? Has he any consciousness that each moment he is missing the significance and meaning of life or is he just sleepy, keeping himself occupied so that the question, the ultimate question does not arise?

Ikkyu, a great Zen poet, writes:

Forests and meadows,
rocks and grasses
are my companions.
The "wrong ways" of this
"crazy cloud" won't be changed.
Ordinary people call me a fool
but I'm not bothered.
Since I'm already labeled
"heretic" and "demon,"
there's no new punishment
left for my afterlife!

A man of truth is bound to be condemned, because our whole lives are lived on consolations, which are lies. We are all under the opium that religions have been supplying to us. The moment a man comes out of this state of sleepiness, the whole crowd will be against him, because his behavior will change so totally from the crowd's.

The crowd cannot tolerate anybody who behaves differently. The reason is a great fear that perhaps he may be right. And he looks right: his beauty is changed, his grace has changed, his words have an authority which they never had before. His silences are deep. He is surrounded by an aura of a new energy.

This makes people very much afraid -- afraid that "this man may be right; then we have missed our whole lives. This man somehow has to be destroyed." It is not for no reason that Socrates and Anagoras were poisoned and al-Hillaj Mansoor was crucified. Sarmad and Jesus...and there are hundreds of others who have been stoned to death or burned alive, and their only crime was that they had attained the truth.

Now this reminds me that in South America in the early part of this century a small tribe was discovered living in the deep forest -- only three hundred people, but all blind. They had no idea that they were blind because they had never seen anybody with eyes -- and there was no question of seeing because they had no eyes.

A scientific researcher heard about this tribe, so he went into the forest, lived with the tribe to understand them, did not offend them by saying that they are blind, pretended that he was also just like them. He found that the reason why they were all blind was a certain fly. When the child is less than six months old, if that fly stings the child, he will become blind.

So there were children who had eyes, but the fly was a common fly in every house everywhere, so it was impossible for any child to get away. And nobody can remember the past beyond the fourth year or the third year at the most; nobody can remember what happened when they were six months old.

So the whole tribe lived and they lived perfectly well. They managed to farm something, they managed to bring wood for winter. They managed to bring water from the well. They became adapted to the life of blind people. And because the whole society was blind, only this young researcher could find the fly. If after you are six months old that fly bites you, you will not become blind, so only for six months a child has to be protected. But there was no question of protection in the tribe; they had no idea what was happening. A six-month-old child cannot say: "Protect me from the fly."

He remained so long there that he fell in love with a woman. He wanted to marry her, but by and by the tribe became suspicious of the man. Although they were blind, they started finding that this man walks in a different way, talks in a different way, knows things that they don't know. He says: "Now it is sunrise"; he says, "now the whole sky is full of stars" -- and those blind eyes could not see any star.

Slowly, slowly they found that this man had some way which was different from them. They forced him, saying: "You have to be honest with us. What is the difference between us and you? -- Because we don't see any sunrise, we don't see any sunset, and you talk about flowers and colors, and you talk about stars. Where are these things? There must be some difference between us and you."

He had to be honest with those poor blind people. He said: "I have eyes and you don't have eyes. Although you are born with eyes, a common fly here destroys the eyes before the child passes the six-month limit. I can be of much help; I can bring medical help to kill these flies and perhaps some way to cure you also, so you can see."

But they refused. They said: "We are so happy as we are, we don't want any disturbance. And as far as your marriage -- the condition is that we will have to destroy your eyes; otherwise we cannot believe a man with eyes.... You can do any harm to us and we will be absolutely vulnerable."

So they gave him time: "You can think for twelve hours. If you want to marry the woman, we will destroy your eyes. We will find them. And if you want your eyes, then you cannot live with us and you cannot marry the woman."

That night he thought many times: "What to do? These idiots don't want to be helped. They are perfectly happy in their blindness." One can understand that there will be trouble if three hundred blind people suddenly get eyes.... You see your wife and you say: "My God! This buffalo is my wife?!" And you see your own face in the mirror and you cannot believe that this is you, because you have never seen your face. Everything is going to be disturbed.

That researcher escaped in the night, dropping the whole idea of helping them, dropping the idea of getting married to the woman. His idea had been that he should get married and then take away the woman to the civilized world where she could be treated, and if he succeeded in treating her, then he could bring a medical team and treat all those three hundred people.

The same is the situation with every Buddha.

He brings a new light, a new life, a new eye. But you start stoning such people. The only crime of Socrates was that he wanted to teach people how to find the truth. The only crime of al-Hillaj Mansoor was that he declared: "Ana'l haq! I myself am God" -- but he was not declaring it as part of an ego-trip, because he was saying: "You are also God, you simply don't know it. I know it."

Al-Hillaj Mansoor's case is particularly special. His teacher was Junnaid, and Junnaid said: "Mansoor, I too know I am God, but I also know the crowd will not tolerate such a declaration. You keep it within yourself; you help people to recognize that they are gods, but don't start declaring that you are God. You will not be tolerated."

But Mansoor was young. Junnaid was old and he had seen what kind of people were all around. Mansoor did not listen to him and started declaring: "I am God, and you are God also; the difference is just that you are not aware and I am aware." He was completely butchered, it cannot be called crucifixion. Jesus' crucifixion was simple. Mansoor was cut piece by piece, legs, feet, hands, eyes, tongue, head -- piece by piece he was just destroyed.

Why does it happen? These people become a danger to our consolations. They start declaring things which we are afraid to know. We don't want to know who we are, because that may disturb everything in our life. We have a settled circumference; if we know the center, we will have to change everything on the circumference. It is risky. And we are living in our misery and in our suffering, but it has become such a familiar way of living. Everybody is living in the same way -- so why take the risk?

But the presence of a man like al-Hillaj Mansoor provokes you to change your life. It irritates people, it annoys people that somebody knows more than they know. They cannot tolerate such a person. To think in this world is the most criminal act; to know in this world is to prepare for your own crucifixion.

OSHO,
Professor Coleman Barks has asked a question:
I feel very grateful for your enlightenment, your wisdom, your daring experiments, your life.
Thank you.
Rumi said: "I want burning, burning...." What is that burning" Shams said: "I am fire." Do you have any word on Shams? From Shams?
What do the burning and the fire have to do with my own enlightenment?

Coleman, you have asked a very dangerous question! -- Because burning has nothing to do with your enlightenment. On the path of enlightenment there is no question of burning.

But because you are in love with Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi.... I also love the man. But you have to understand that Sufism still depends on a hypothetical God. It is not free from the hypothesis of God. And particularly Sufism has the concept of God as a woman. Love is their method -- love God as totally as possible. Now you are loving an impossible hypothesis, and totality is asked. You will feel the same kind of burning, in a more intensive way, as lovers feel on a smaller scale.

Lovers feel a certain burning in their hearts. A deep longing and desire to meet with the beloved creates that burning. To love God is bound to create a very great fire in you. You will be on fire because you have chosen as your love object something impossible; your object of love is hypothetical. You will have to weep and cry, and you will have to pray, and you will have to fast, and your mind has to continuously repeat and remember the beloved.

The mind has the capacity to imagine anything and also has the capacity to hypnotize itself. After long repetition you can even see God, just the way you imagined. It is a by-product of your mind. It will make you very happy, you will dance with joy.

I have been with Sufis and I have loved those people. But they are still one step away from being a Buddha. Even though their poetry is beautiful -- it has to be, because it is coming out of their love -- their experience is a hallucination created by their own mind. In Sufism, mind is stretched to the point that you become almost mad for the beloved. Those days of separation from the beloved create the sensation of burning.

On the path of dhyan, or Zen, there is no burning at all because there is no hypothesis, no God. And it is not a question of love. A man of Zen is very loving, but he has not practiced love; it has come as a by-product of his realization. He has simply realized his own buddhahood. There is no question of another, a God somewhere else in heaven. He has simply reached his own center of life, and being there he explodes into love, into compassion. His love comes after his enlightenment, it is not a method for enlightenment.

But for Sufis, love is the method. Because love is the method, it remains part of the mind.

The effort on the path of Zen is to go beyond mind, to attain no-mind, to be utterly empty of all thoughts, love included. Zen is the path of emptiness -- no God, no love, nothing is to be allowed; just a pure nothingness in which you also disappear.

Who is there to feel the burning? Who is there to feel the fire?

So although I love Sufis...I don't want, Coleman, to hurt your feelings, but I would certainly say that you will have one day to change from Sufis to Zen. Sufis are still living in imagination; they have not known the state of no-mind. And because they have not known the state of no-mind, however beautiful their personalities may become, they are still just close to enlightenment, but not enlightened. Remember, even to be very close is not to be enlightened.

And the reason is clear: Sufism is a branch, an offshoot of Mohammedanism. It carries almost all that is good in Mohammedanism. But Mohammedanism is the lowest kind of religion. Mohammedanism, Judaism, Christianity -- all are hypothetical.

There have been only two religions which are not hypothetical, Buddhism and Taoism. Zen is a crossbreed of these two, and the crossbreed is always better than both the parents. It is the meeting of Buddha and Lao Tzu; out of this meeting is born Zen. It is not Buddhism, it is not Taoism; it has its own individuality. It carries everything beautiful that comes from Buddha and everything great that comes from Lao Tzu. It is the highest peak that man has ever reached.

Hinduism is a mess: thirty-three million gods! -- What do you expect? Hinduism has remained a philosophical, controversial, hypothetical religion. It has not been able to reach the heights of Buddha. Buddha was born a Hindu but revolted against this mess, searched alone rather than believing. That is one of the most important things to remember. Any religion that begins with belief is going to give you an auto-hypnotic experience.

Only Taoism and Buddhism don't start with a belief. Their whole effort is that you should enter yourself without any concept of what you are going to find there. Just being open, available, without any prejudice, without any philosophy and scripture -- just go in, open-hearted, and when you reach to the point where mind is silent, not a single thought moving....

According to Tao and Buddha, even God is a thought. When there is no thought, you reach the highest Everest of consciousness. At that point you know that every living being has the potentiality of being a god.

Buddha is reported to have said: "The moment I became enlightened, I was surprised: the whole of existence is enlightened, only people don't understand. They are carrying their enlightenment within themselves and they don't look at it."

Buddha has reported his past lives' experiences. When he was not an enlightened man but was just a seeker, he heard about a man who had become enlightened, so he went to see him. He had no idea of what enlightenment is, and he had not come with any prejudice for or against. But as he came close to the man, he found himself bowing down and touching the man's feet. He was surprised! He had not decided to do it -- in spite of himself he was touching the man's feet. That was one surprise. And as he stood up, the second surprise was even bigger: the enlightened man touched his feet. He said: "What are you doing? You are enlightened, it is perfectly right for me to touch your feet. But why are you touching my feet?"

And that man laughed. He said: "Sometime before, I was unenlightened. Now I am enlightened. You are unenlightened now. Someday you will become enlightened. So it is only a question of time. As far as I am concerned, you may not know it but I can see your hidden treasure."

So everybody is a Buddha, either aware of it or unaware of it. No hypothesis comes into the path of Zen.

What Rumi is saying -- "I want burning, burning..." -- is the mind focused on a hypothetical beloved, and the burning desire to meet him, to melt in him. But it is an objective god -- it may be woman or man, it does not matter.

In Bengal, in India, there is a small sect which believes that only Krishna is male and everybody else is female. Because everybody is female and there is a great burning to meet the lover, the god, they sleep with a statue of Krishna in their bed.

But these are all mind games. Except for Gautam Buddha and Lao Tzu, and the people who became enlightened from their lineages, the whole of humanity is living in hypotheses. I appreciate the poetry of Rumi, I appreciate the beauty of many Sufi mystics, but I cannot say that they are enlightened. They are still groping, and their groping will stop only when they drop this hypothesis of God.

The search has to be inwards, not outwards. Any search that is outwards is going to change your personality. It can make it more beautiful, more loving, but it is just imagination.

It happened that one Sufi master who was very much loved...his disciples used to come to me and say: "When our master comes, we want you both to meet."

I said: "On one condition: your master should be my guest for just three days, and you have not to come for three days."

So the master came, as he used to come every year for a month or two to that place. He was a lovely man, very fragrant, very radiant, very joyful. He used to dance and sing and play on instruments. When he came to my house, I closed the door and told the disciples: "Now you disappear, and for three days leave him with me."

The master said: "What do you want?"

I said: "You put your instruments away, and for three days don't think about your beloved God."

He said: "What is the purpose of this?"

I said: "The purpose will be known after three days. Just for three days be normal. You are abnormal."

He said: "You are a strange fellow! I am abnormal?"

I said: "Just drop this idea of a hypothetical God. Have you seen God?"

He said: "I see God everywhere."

I said: "When did it start happening?"

He said: "It took twenty years for me to see God in everyone. Finally, I started seeing."

I said: "That's why I am saying that for three days, don't do anything you have been doing. For these three days take a holiday from your practice of seeing God in everyone."

Just in one day it was finished! The next day he was very angry with me. He said: "Just let me go. You have destroyed my twenty years' effort. For just one night I followed your idea, and now in the morning I don't see any God anywhere."

I said: "A God that you have been seeing for twenty years disappears within a single night -- what is it worth? Can't you see that it is a hypothesis that you have imposed? And twenty years are not needed for such programming -- such programming can be done within hours."

A person can be hypnotized just for seven days continually and told he will see God everywhere, in everyone, and he will be very joyful, very loving.

Within seven days the person can be programmed just like a computer, and he will start seeing God. But this is not the way of truth.

Coleman, it is perfectly good: enjoy Rumi's beautiful poems, enjoy beautiful Sufi stories. I have enjoyed them. But I warn you, don't get lost into them. They are just a game of the mind, a strategy of self-hypnosis.

I said that you have asked a dangerous question. I don't want to hurt your feelings and your love, but I have to say the truth even if it hurts. One day you will feel grateful to me.

Sufism is nothing. You can find good poetry anywhere. And if you want, bring any Sufi to me and I will take away all his experience within one hour. These are abnormal people, hypnotizing themselves.

The real thing is to come to a point of dehypnotizing yourself, because every society has already hypnotized you. A Hindu thinks Krishna is a god, and never bothers that Krishna stole sixteen thousand women from different people. He was married only to one woman. But sixteen thousand women -- any beautiful woman, and his soldiers would catch hold of her; he just had to make a sign that they should take her to the palace.

Krishna behaved with women like they were cattle, and he never thought that they have children, they have husbands, they have their old parents, or their husband's parents, and he is destroying their whole family life. And what is he going to do with sixteen thousand women? He is not a bull. Even a bull will be tired. Sixteen thousand -- it is a record. Still, no Hindu will question the point.

Rama is God to the Hindus, and nobody questions that he killed one poor untouchable, a young man, just because he heard somebody reciting the Vedas. The Hindu society has maintained the caste system for five thousand years, and the untouchable, the sudra, the last, is not allowed to read any religious scripture. He is not allowed to be educated either. Untouchables are not allowed to live in the city; they have to live outside the city. They do all the dirty work of the city and they live the poorest life in the world. Their whole dignity and manhood is taken away.

And this young man had not read anything, he simply heard some brahmin reciting the Rig Veda. Just hiding behind the trees out of curiosity, he was caught hold of, and when he was brought to Rama because he had committed this great crime, Rama told his people: "Melt some lead and pour it into both his ears, because he has heard the Veda, which is prohibited."

The man certainly died. When you pour burning lead into the ears, you cannot expect the man to remain alive. He fell dead then and there. And no Hindu questions it. Even people like Mahatma Gandhi just go on repeating the name of Rama; he is a god.

And this is the situation all over the world, with every religion. I have looked in all nooks and corners, and except Zen I don't find any religious phenomenon which is absolutely pure and which has not committed a single crime against humanity. It has only contributed more beauty and more grace and more love and more meditativeness.

So it is perfectly good, Coleman; enjoy the poetry, but don't think that these poetries are coming out of enlightenment. They have not even heard the word enlightenment. No word exists in Persian, in Urdu, in Arabic, equivalent to enlightenment. They have "God realization," realization of the beloved -- but the beloved is separate from you.

The whole point is that even if you find a god which is separate from you, millions of others must have found him before.

You will be in a crowd. And what are you going to do when you meet God? -- Say: "Hello, how are you"? There is nothing much in just meeting -- you will look embarrassed and God will look embarrassed: Now what to do with this Professor Coleman? "It was very good...you were doing good translations, but why have you come here?"

Now don't do any such thing, creating any embarrassment for God. There exists no God. What exists is godliness, and that godliness surrounds you. We are all in the same ocean.

An ancient story is: A young, very philosophical-minded fish asked other fish: "We have heard so much about the ocean; where is it? I want to meet the ocean."

Everybody shrugged their shoulders; they said: "We have also heard about the ocean, but we don't know where it is."

An old fish took the boy aside and told him: "There is no other ocean anywhere. We are in it. We are born in it, we live in it, we die in it. This is the ocean."

And I say unto you, the same is true with us. We are born in godliness, we live in godliness, we die in godliness. Just one thing has to be remembered: either you can pass through this tremendous experience of life asleep, or fully awakened.

Meditation is the only way to make you aware. And once you are fully aware, all around is the ocean of godliness. The very life, the very consciousness is divine. It expresses in all the forms -- in the roses and in the lotuses and in the birds and in the trees. Wherever life is, it is nothing but godliness. We are living in the ocean of godliness. So don't search anywhere. Just look within, because that is the closest point you can find.

Sufism is beautiful but is not the ultimate answer, and you should not stop at Sufism. It is a good training to begin with. End up with Zen.

And it is a great, surprising thing, that from the peaks of Zen you will be able to understand Sufism more than you can understand by living in the Sufi circles. Some distance is needed, and Zen gives you the distance. From that distance you can witness all the religions. What are they doing? -- Playing games, beautiful games, but games are games after all.

You are asking: "What do the burning and the fire have to do with my own enlightenment?" Nothing at all. You are enlightened in this very moment; just enter silently into your own being. Find the center of your being and you have found the center of the whole universe. We are separate on the periphery but we are one at the center. I call this the buddha experience.

Unless you become a Buddha -- and remember, it is the poverty of language that I have to say "Unless you become...." You already are. So I have to say, unless you recognize, unless you remember what you have forgotten....

Every child in its innocence knows, and every child goes astray because of so much knowledge being poured in by the parents, by the priests, by the teachers. Soon the child's innocence is completely covered with all kinds of bullshit.

The whole effort of meditation is to cut through all the dust that society has poured upon you and just to find that small buddha-nature you were born with.

The day you find the buddha-nature you were born with, the circle is complete. You have again become innocent.

Socrates in his last days said: "When I was young I thought I knew much. As I became older I started thinking I knew everything. But as I became still older and my consciousness became sharper, I suddenly realized I don't know anything."

It is a beautiful story that in Greece there is -- used to be, now it is ruins -- the temple of Delphi. And the oracle of the temple of Delphi declared that Socrates was the wisest man in the whole world. The people who had known Socrates rushed to tell him: "The oracle has declared you the wisest man in the world!"

Socrates said: "The oracle for the first time is wrong. I know nothing."

The people were very much in a puzzle. They went back to Delphi and told the oracle: "You say he is the wisest man and he says he knows nothing."

The oracle said: "That's why he is the wisest man in the world. He has again become a child. He has come back home."

OSHO,
Maneesha has also asked a question.
You have been speaking on the empty heart of Zen. Last night we spent an evening listening to Rumi's expression of the Sufi heart. Could you talk of the difference between the two?

The reality is that what the Sufis call the heart is just part of their mind. The mind has many capacities: thinking, feeling, imagination, dreaming, self-hypnosis -- these are all qualities of the mind. In fact there is no heart as such; everything is being done by the mind.

We have lived with this traditional division, that imagination and feeling and emotions and sentiments are of the heart. But your heart is just a pumping system. Everything that you think or imagine or feel is confined into the mind. Your mind has seven hundred centers and they control everything.

When Zen says empty heart it simply means empty mind. To Zen, heart or mind are synonymous. The emphasis is on emptiness. A mind that is empty becomes the door to the divine that is all around -- but first it has to be empty.

Sufism is a beautiful imagination. Zen has nothing to do with imagination. Everything has to be emptied out. The name of Rumi is beautiful in a sense: not in Persian but in English,, "roomy" means empty. The room either can be full of furniture or it can be without furniture, simply a room. That empty room contains the whole space, the whole existence.

Sardar Gurudayal Singh must be waiting. Coleman has asked a very serious question, and Sardar Gurudayal Singh is thinking, what happened about his time?

Betty Cheese, the wife of Chester, and Miss Goodbody, the unmarried schoolteacher, go on holiday together in Jamaica. They are lying around on the beach, thoroughly enjoying themselves, when Miss Goodbody says: "I think I will send a postcard to my boyfriend, Herbert."
"That's a good idea," says Betty. "I will send one to Chester." So the two girls run off and buy a couple of postcards.
Miss Goodbody writes on hers: "Dearest Herbert, The place is beautiful, wish you were here."
Betty Cheese writes: "Dearest Chester, The place is here, wish you were beautiful!"

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev are scowling at each other across the conference table in Geneva. They are perched on the brink of nuclear war, in a dispute over who has control of the small oil-producing country, Abu Dhabi.
"Look here, Reagan," says Mr. Gorbachev. "Why should we destroy the whole world just because of a small piece of real estate?"
"You are right," replies Reagan. "But how can we settle this argument without a war?"
"Simple," says Gorbachev. "You and I can have a contest of courage right now -- man to man."
"Great!" says the senile president of America. "What shall we do?"
"Well, in Russia," says Gorbachev: "we settle things like this: we just stand in front of each other, and each one of us gets to take a good kick at the other, right between the legs. Whoever can get up the quickest afterwards is the winner."
"Great idea!" says Reagan. "Let us get started."
The two men stand up, and Gorbachev goes first. He winds up and lets fly a mighty kick that nails Ronald right in the nuts. Reagan screams, falls over, and rolls around on the ground with his eyes popping out. After about five minutes of this, he manages to drag himself to his feet.
"Okay," gasps Ronnie: "now it's my turn."

Herbert Hoop reaches the age of thirty-two and decides to take out a life-insurance policy. He goes along to the Ripoff Insurance Agency and is shown into the doctor's office for a complete physical examination.
After a thorough check-up, the doctor tells Herbert to get dressed.
"All the tests came out fine," says Doctor Bandaid. "But if you don't mind me making a personal observation, you have absolutely the smallest prick I have ever seen. Do you have any problems with it?"
"Well," says Herbert: "I have been married for ten years and we have two lovely kids and a good sex life. The only problem I have with my prick is that I have difficulty finding it in the daytime."
"Really?" says Bandaid. "And what about at night?"
"That is no problem," replies Herbert. "Then there's two of us looking for it."

Nivedano.... Nivedano beats the drum to signal the beginning of a guided meditation. First a short period of "Gibberish." A drumbeat signals the end of that meditation.

Be silent.... Close your eyes, feel your body to be completely frozen. Now look inwards with your total consciousness and with a great urgency as if this is going to be your last moment of life. Pierce the center like a spear. It is not far away, just one step.

The moment you reach your center you will find a tremendous silence, a great serenity, and a joy that you have never known before. Flowers will start showering on you, because existence rejoices very much. Any evolution of consciousness -- when ten thousand people are at their center, it is a momentous event.

This moment you are the Buddha. You don't have to become, you have always been. Your work consists in bringing this Buddha from your hidden center to the periphery of your life, to your activities, to your relations.

Slowly, slowly bring the Buddha from the center to the circumference...and you have passed through the greatest revolution possible. I know no other authentic revolution than this.

Just witness carefully. Buddha is not in front of you, you are the Buddha. Be careful about it. If you see the Buddha outside, cut the head off the Buddha immediately. Your witnessing is the Buddha. Your very isness, your very life, your very being is the Buddha.

To make it more clear,

Nivedano...

(Nivedano beats the drum again, at which point every lies down in a relaxed let-go.)

Now witness. You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are just a witness, a witness of emptiness, a witness of nothingness, and suddenly from the very center of your being arises a great blissfulness, a great ecstasy.

At this moment the Buddha Auditorium has become a silent lake of consciousness. You have melted into each other. You are just part of the ocean. Don't ask where the ocean is. Thisness, suchness is the ocean. To be here now is the ocean, and the oceanic consciousness is the ultimate freedom.

Before Nivedano calls you back, gather as much experience and the flowers and the fragrance and persuade the Buddha to come with you. He comes...he is your intrinsic nature. Just as he can be at the center, he can be at the circumference.

That fortunate day certainly comes one day that your whole life becomes filled up. All your activities, all your gestures become so graceful, so divine. Your very silence becomes such a song. Your unmoving center becomes such a dance.

And one who knows his center, also knows his eternity, his immortality. Buddhas don't die, neither are they born. They simply appear and disappear into the same ocean just like waves.

Nivedano.... (A final drum-beat brings everyone back to the sitting position.)

Come back, but come as Buddhas, peacefully, silently, gracefully. Sit for a few minutes to collect the space you have been in, the path you have trodden.

You have to go deeper and deeper every day, you have to bring more and more of the Buddha to the circumference of your life.

It happens, certainly -- I say it with absolute authority because it has happened to me. Why cannot it happen to you? It is our birthright, just you have to claim it.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.
OSHO : Rinzai: Master of The Irrational, Chapter 2