Chapter 4. How coarse

Osho - Rinzai Master of the Irrational

Chapter 4. How coarse

Our beloved master,

One day when Rinzai and pu'hua were both attending a dinner at a patron's house, rinzai asked: "A hair swallows up the great sea, and a mustard seed contains mount sumeru. Is this the marvelous activity of supernatural power or original substance as it is?" Pu'hua kicked over the dinner table.

"How coarse!" exclaimed the master.

Pu'hua retorted, "What place do you think this is - talking about coarse and fine!"

The next day Rinzai and Pu'hua again attended a dinner. The master asked, "How does today's feast compare with yesterday's?"

Pu'hua kicked over the dinner table as before. "Good enough," said Rinzai, "but how coarse!"

Pu'hua commented, "Blind man! What has buddha-dharma got to do with coarse and fine?" Rinzai stuck out his tongue.

Maneesha, before I discuss this small and yet significant anecdote about Rinzai, I have to introduce to the Museum of Gods a gift from Rafia.

For a few months there has been a very strange tension arising in American traffic, because so many cars are on the road that you can walk home faster than you can take your car. For three hours, four hours, five hours people are simply stuck. Naturally, there is a limit to patience, and a few people started bringing their guns.

In San Francisco and L.A. six persons were shot for no reason, but just because after honking for five hours and not being able to move one inch, they became so angry - and anger is inside everybody, just it needs a certain time to surface - that they shot people who were absolutely unknown to them.

These people were not blocking the way, they were not the cause; they also were blocked. Nobody knew where the flow of the traffic had been stopped or what had happened - whether it was an accident or a truck had turned over.

Seeing this situation, that six people have been killed within a week, other car owners started purchasing guns, because it is getting very dangerous; at least in self-defense, even if you are not going to kill somebody, you can show your gun.

But the situation was becoming worse because in America you don't need any license for guns.

They are freely available in the market. The license is needed for the seller, the shopkeeper, not by the owner of the gun. It is absolutely stupid to give people weapons that are dangerous to life, but the constitution of America allows it.

It was allowed in the beginning, but now it has become a solid tradition. The constitution allowed guns to people to kill Red Indians. Red Indians were killed just like animals - hunted, chased deep into the forest or into the mountains. Now America belongs to non-Americans, the whole of America, and strangely enough the American constitution talks about freedom, about freedom of speech and individuality, and they themselves are holding onto somebody else's land.

It seems that the whole world is blind.

France has sent as a gift to America the Statue of Liberty, and America is the greatest slave land today. In fact the slavery is such that there is no possibility for the Red Indians - to whom the land belongs - ever to be back again in power. They have been crippled completely. Most of them have been killed, and the rest are forced to live on reservations, in deep forests, not allowed to live in the cities, and they are given pensions.

One would think this is very compassionate, but the real reason for giving them pensions - not work - is a very psychological strategy. What will they do with the money? They will drink alcohol, they will go to prostitutes, they will gamble, and they will produce more and more children, because each child brings more pension. They have completely forgotten the very idea of freedom, that this is their land.

At that time guns were allowed freely for everybody, and that situation continues. Still you can have almost any kind of gun, automatic or semi-automatic - and if the government says that only six people were killed, you can be sure at least eighteen people must have been killed. Always remember, any government report is bound to be a lie. If it is concerned with the enemy, then too it is a lie.

A few months ago, when the Russian nuclear plant had an accident, American radio immediately declared that two hundred people had died. "Their dead bodies have been found, and many more may have been consumed by the fire."

A group of journalists from Europe came to explore the situation - and only four persons had died.

The American radio has not even been asked for an apology. From where did they get the idea of two hundred dead and many more consumed by the fire? So when it is concerned with others they lie, when it is concerned with themselves they lie.

Politicians' main function seems to be lying.

And this mad humanity seems to be concerned continuously with war. As far back as you can see, there are wars and wars and wars, and each war has taken millions of lives.

Genghis Khan killed forty million people, Tamerlane killed thirty million people alone - and they did not have very sophisticated means. Data is not available about many other killers. Alexander the Great and Napoleon and Ivan the Terrible all killed... their greatness depends on how many people they have killed. Adolf Hitler killed thirty million people. Joseph Stalin killed in his own country one million Russians.

It seems the main purpose on this earth is to kill; and particularly in America today they are piling up weapons, knowing perfectly well that they have enough weapons to destroy this earth many times.

But it seems to be a mania, a kind of neurosis.

Rafia has brought a small gift for the Museum of Gods, and it is not a toy. In the beginning it was produced as a toy. Now the so-called intelligent and civilized and mature people are carrying it with themselves, and psychologists are even suggesting that it is helpful. If you are feeling angry, rather then using a machine-gun, use this small instrument. If you are wanting to use old methods, then the middle button is for bombing... (The master aims a small black box at the audience and pushes the middle button, making bombing sounds for some time. See photo on page 190.) The first button is for death rays...

(He pushes the left button, making electronic siren sounds.)

And the third button is for nuclear weapons, missiles...

(He pushes the right button, making sounds like flying missiles that land with loud explosions.)

Buttons exactly like these are going to destroy humanity. And why have people started carrying this toy? Psychologists suggest that it helps to release your anger.

If there is somebody you want to kill, three ways are available. For a faraway enemy - this is the latest witchcraft - send nuclear missiles...

(He pushes the button, making more missile sounds.)

If the enemy is very close by, bombing is better...

(He pushes the bombing button again.)

If you don't want to destroy things, only life, then death rays are good...

(He sends out some more death ray sounds.)

Now it is being carried by adult, mature people in their pockets. It seems that killing has become a god in itself. There have been war-gods, whose only function is to create war; there have been destruction-gods - for example Shiva, in Hindu mythology, is the one who will destroy the whole of humanity. I don't think Ronald Reagan will be able to compete with Shiva. He is trying his best to be the Shiva of Hindu mythology.

This small instrument shows the mind of man. Death rays simply kill life; they don't destroy your houses, they don't destroy your furniture, they don't destroy anything but only the living. You will be destroyed, your plants, your trees will be destroyed, and all that is dead will remain. Just think of a place where everything alive has been destroyed and only dead things are standing untouched: it will create a nightmare to your mind.

And this small instrument is exactly the replica of what Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan are carrying with themselves. It is just a question of pushing a button, and immediately life will disappear from this earth. It has never been so easy to destroy.

All religions have been life-negative, and that is the cause of this much destructiveness in the human mind. If they had told people to learn silence and peace and meditation, and love life, and dance life, then these idiots like Ronald Reagan would not have happened. It is all the religions that are destroying man's love for life, man's love for joy, man's love for laughter, for dancing, for playing music, for singing. Everything has been denied by the religions, and the ultimate consequence is that the whole creative energy in man has turned to being self-destructive.

Nobody analyzes exactly why people are so much interested in destroying. Where has the joy of creating gone? The whole responsibility lies with the religions. These politicians are simply carrying the ideologies that religions have preached. Any kind of ideology that is life-negative is dangerous - more dangerous than death rays, more dangerous than nuclear missiles.

If we want to save the world from being destroyed unnecessarily, a world which has created people like Buddha and Mahavira and Bodhidharma... An earth that is capable of reaching to such heights of consciousness is worthy to be saved. The whole universe is so vast, yet we are not certain that anywhere life has reached to such heights as we have come to. It is suspected that five hundred planets in the whole universe must have some kind of life, but it is just guesswork - although it is being done by scientists, so it must have some possibility.

Nobody can say with absolute certainty that there is anywhere else in this vast universe a consciousness of a buddha - and you are destroying this earth, which is the only place in this vast universe a small planet has come to the highest peak of consciousness. It is not only a crime against humanity, it is a crime against the whole universe.

War is not a god, and man has not to be sacrificed to it. But the only way to save man from this destructiveness that is coming closer and closer is to spread more love, is to spread more meditation, is to spread more freedom, more individuality. More life-affirmation is the only way to prevent this beautiful earth and its tremendous possibilities from being destroyed.

Even though man has remained mad, fighting continuously, a few individuals have been creating also. We can be proud of Leonardo da Vinci, we can be proud of Michelangelo, we can be proud of Leo Tolstoy, we can be proud of Fyodor Dostoevsky, we can be proud of Chuang Tzu, we can be proud of Rinzai. Thousands of flowers, in spite of the madness of the masses, have still grown up and blossomed, have left tremendous fragrance that is still alive, goes on moving from one being to another being.

The politicians have to be prevented in any case because it is not only destroying this humanity, it is destroying the only living place in the whole universe. The earth has taken four million years to bring about human beings, and all human beings can become buddhas. Perhaps four million years more may be needed.

And a buddha is such a beauty, is such a grace, is such a rose, that to turn the whole earth into a graveyard will be the greatest crime. But it will remain unrecorded because there will be no one to record it. It will consume everyone; nobody is going to be the victor, nobody is going to be the defeated. The only difference will be ten minutes: if Russia starts the war, within ten minutes - just ten minutes - American missiles will be on the way. If America starts, within ten minutes Russian missiles will be turned towards America.

So only a time span of ten minutes... and everybody will be consumed alive in the greatest fire that has ever happened on the earth - millions of wars together, not only destroying man but animals, trees, anything that has life.

So this is Rafia's very significant gift... because war has been the undeclared god of the mad humanity up to now.

The director-general, Avirbhava, is not present, she is sick, so Anando, the associate director- general of the Museum of Gods, should take it for your museum.

(Anando comes forward to take the small black box, and as she sits down a missile sound accidentally gets triggered. Everyone, including the master, starts laughing. See photo on page 191.)

Don't start bombing here!

Maneesha has brought a very small anecdote, but very difficult to understand. Many may have read it without knowing what it signifies. But you have to understand it very clearly; it has great significance, but in a Zen way.

One day when Rinzai and pu'hua were both attending a dinner at a patron's house, rinzai asked: "A hair swallows up the great sea, and a mustard seed contains mount sumeru. Is this the marvelous activity of supernatural power or original substance as it is?

What he was saying is of great significance. Have you ever thought that even a simple mustard seed can make the whole earth green? Any seed, a single seed, contains infinity. First it will become one plant, and that plant will bring hundreds of seeds; then each seed will become again a plant, and that will become a continuous chain, unending. The whole earth just needs one single seed of anything, and it will soon be green all over.

Rinzai is saying that the smallest life contains the eternal life; the small and the bigger are not different.

He is making a significant statement, but Pu'hua kicked over the dinner table.

"How coarse!" exclaimed the master.

The disciple, rather than saying anything in response to it, kicked over the dinner table. What is he saying by kicking over the dinner table? He is one of the intimate disciples of Rinzai, and he is saying, "This is not the right place to say such great and immensely meaningful things. The people who have arranged this dinner cannot understand what you are saying."

The master said, "How coarse! It is not expected from you to be so coarse. You could have acted in some more sophisticated way and told me that, 'This is not the right place to make such great statements. Great statements can be made only to great people, people who have the open being and the silence of no-mind. Only they will understand this.'"

Pu'hua retorted, "What place do you think this is - talking about coarse and fine!"

The next day Rinzai and Pu'hua again attended a dinner. The master asked, "How does today's feast compare with yesterday's?"

Pu'hua kicked over the dinner table as before. "Good enough," said Rinzai, "but how coarse!"

Pu'hua commented, "Blind man! What has buddha-dharma got to do with coarse and fine?" Rinzai stuck out his tongue.

Zen is a very playful religion. Rinzai sticking out his tongue to his disciple must be absolutely unparalleled. No master anywhere in the world would have done such a thing. But Zen accepts with absolute certainty that whatever the master's action is, it has significance. He is not condemning Pu'hua, but just making a laughingstock of him.

He is saying, "Whichever the place, whether the person can understand or not, you still can make great statements. They fall into the person like seeds. Perhaps not today, but tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, when the rains come the seeds may sprout." You may not understand today, you may ignore it today, but who knows about your tomorrows? Tomorrow you may suddenly become aware of what a great seed has been sown in your unconscious mind.

So Rinzai's standpoint is that it does not matter whether the person is capable of understanding it or not. If you have it, share it. Don't be bothered whether the person deserves it or not.

Everybody intrinsically is a buddha. Sooner or later he will understand it. It may not happen in your life, you may be dead - but the day he will understand it, he will bow down to the earth in deep respect, in gratitude that when he was not even prepared you had delivered to him the very master key which opens all the doors of existence.

He is not agreeing with Pu'hua, whose standpoint is very ordinary and practical. Pu'hua says, "What is the point of saying things to people which are absolutely irrelevant to their mind?"

But even that which is not understood this moment... you may suddenly get it in the middle of the night. Suddenly a great realization may come as you are relaxed and silent, and you will see what you have missed. But it does not matter if you miss in the morning and get it in the evening.

Whenever you get it, it is always early.

Rinzai's standpoint is that of a great master.

I am reminded of Jesus' once saying - and Pu'hua will agree with that saying - "Don't go on throwing your seeds; they may fall on stones, they may fall on roads, they may fall on the boundaries of fields where people walk. They may sprout, but still they will be killed. Throw your seeds in the very good soil."

Pu'hua will absolutely agree with Jesus. But that is a statement not out of abundance, not out of your too-much-overflowing energy; that is the standpoint of a miserly man.

Rinzai says, "Don't bother! Even the stone sometimes becomes a fertile ground. Don't bother, because the more you give the more you have, so it does not matter even if it falls on the wrong ground. You should not be the choosers; that is judgmental. Who are you to choose who is worthy and who is not worthy?"

He is perfectly right, and although Pu'hua seems to be more pragmatic, practical, still he has something to contribute to the anecdote.

At the end he says, "Blind man! What has buddha-dharma got to do with coarse and fine?"

Because Rinzai has made the statement, "Your kicking over the table is very coarse," he says,

"Blind man! What has buddha-dharma got to do with coarse and fine?"

It is true, buddha-dharma has nothing to do with coarse and fine. It has to go beyond both. That's where rinzai stuck out his tongue - just making a laughingstock of Pu'hua, but not denying him, or that what he was saying was right.

So the anecdote is very strange in the sense that Pu'hua is right on a very practical ground, and Rinzai is right as far as the ultimate is concerned. Both are right, just their rightness is concerned with different contexts.

Where Rinzai is, he is sharing himself out of abundance. He is just a rain cloud so full of water that it does not matter where it falls; he has to unburden himself.

And Pu'hua is also right, but on a much lower level. He is saying, "You should give your insights only to those who understand." But if buddhas become so miserly, life will lose many significant explosions in people's consciousness, because sometimes a casual visitor suddenly catches fire.

Life is so mysterious that somebody may be searching for truth for years and will be getting even farther away from it by his searching - searching in a wrong direction. And somebody may be a casual visitor who has nothing to do with truth, who has never thought about it, but he is innocent, he has no prejudice, no idea. Coming close enough to a master he may suddenly become aflame.

So one never knows, one should not be judgmental. If you have it, share it with the stones. Even the stones one day can become buddhas. Share with everyone - with the blind, with the deaf, because their day will also come. It is only a question of time. Everybody is going to become a buddha, everybody is on the path. However far astray you go, you will come back. You have to realize your being and its potential.

Ikkyu wrote:

Straw-sandaled,

With emaciated legs and no intimates,

Only the pillar moves with me,

Accompanying my song.

The cuckoo laments

With its blood:

It is spring in my heart.

He is saying, "I am a poor beggar - straw-sandaled. I have only sandals of straw - with emaciated legs and no intimates, only the pillar moves with me."

What is this pillar? In Zen they call the consciousness your real pillar. Only the pillar moves with me, accompanying my song. The cuckoo laments with its blood; it is spring in my heart.

It does not matter that you possess money or power, it does not matter that you are an emperor. All that matters is whether you possess the pillar of consciousness - your whole being just lighted inside, no darkness. In that very moment it is spring for you. Thousands of flowers will start blossoming around you.

It is one of the great contributions of Zen that whenever one person becomes enlightened the whole existence rejoices in it, because we are all connected, so deeply connected that even if one person becomes enlightened, his enlightenment is a moment of joy for the whole existence. Not only man, but trees will rejoice, the birds will sing, the whole sky will be filled with tremendous love for you. It starts showering on you.

It is so clear when your enlightenment happens that you have been a welcome guest to all the mysteries of existence. Your springtime has come.

Question 1:

Maneesha has asked:

Our beloved master,

With the path of sufism, the way of the heart behind us, where does the devotee fit in?

Maneesha, the devotee fits in everywhere. Of course the context becomes different.

In Sufism, the devotee is devoted to God to such an extent that al-Hillaj Mansoor started shouting, "I am God!" The devotee disappears into God. But God is a hypothesis, so the devotee in Sufism is only living in a very great hallucination. It is his mind's projection.

But the devotee in Zen has no hypothesis, he is not devoted to any God or to any fiction. His devotion is to a living human master. It is not a fiction, it is a real being-to-being contact.

So don't think that the devotee has no place in Zen. In fact, in Zen the devotee has a more authentic and real meaning. In Sufism it is only imagination, great imagination. It will bring many flowers, will make the person very blissful, but it is just like a person who is intoxicated.

It is not a coincidence that in Sufism they have wine, and saki - the woman who brings the wine - and God conceived of as a woman. The man who gets deeply involved in Sufi imagination almost looks mad, but you can see he is very joyful; he dances and sings, his whole energy is now being dominated by his imagination.

But if a person, by drinking alcohol or by taking marijuana, dances and sings, do you think it has any significance in the ultimate sense? It is just chemical. Soon the chemical will be out of the body and with the chemical going out of the body, the person is back down to the earth, more shattered than he was ever before. Imagination is a certain release within you of something intoxicating.

That's why I said to Coleman yesterday, "You bring a Sufi to me, and within one hour I will bring him down to the earth. Otherwise he is flying in the sky."

There have been cases when people under LSD thought they could fly. It was so clear for them, without any doubt, that they flew out from a seventeen story building. It was not a question of courage, it was not a question of any decision; they were so certain under the impact of LSD that they were found shattered on the earth in pieces.

Sufism is a much lower state, but very simple to be intoxicated with. But the devotee on the path of Zen does not disappear, he simply takes a new context. Now it is a question of coming closer to a living master. It is not a question of coming closer to God, which is only a hypothesis. You can come close to God only in imagination, and you don't know the powers of imagination.

It happened that Ramakrishna tried many paths. He was the first man in the history of seekers who had tried many paths to see whether they reach to the same point or not. So whatever was available around him in Bengal, he tried. There is a sect which believes that only Krishna is the male and everybody is a female. He followed that path also. It is absolutely imagination, but the story shows the power of imagination.

For six months Ramakrishna lived like a woman, and his disciples were completely shocked to see that he started walking like a woman. Not only that, but his breasts became like a woman; not only that, but he started having periods. Even doctors could not believe it. His voice changed; and when he started having regular periods, his disciples tried to hide the fact, because if others knew they would laugh. They persuaded him to change this path: "You have gone too far!" - and it took almost six months for him to be his own self again.

Imagination is not a small thing, it has tremendous power. If you follow imagination - and all the religions have been doing that - you will see Krishna and you will see Christ. But all that seeing is just your projection. You want to see Krishna, you insist on your imagination producing Krishna, and it will produce. But you are falling into a trap of your own mind.

A devotee in any other religion is devoted to God; only in Zen is his devotion towards a living master.

There is no question of imagination. Imagination has to be avoided completely if you want to know the truth.

Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Where is he? Anando, send missiles!

(Anando shoots death ray sounds in sardarji's direction.)

No, I think bombs will be better!

(Anando sends some bomb sounds across the auditorium.)

Bert Badbreath suspects his wife, Luscious Lucy, is cheating on him, so he hires Manfred Sneek, the private detective, to follow her.

Manfred gets hot on Lucy's trail, watching her in bars, nightclubs and hotels all over the city. The next morning, Sneek comes back to report to Bert.

"I followed her into the Crawling Cat bar," says Sneek, "and then she gave me the slip. And then I traced her to the Rotten Jazz nightclub, and she gave me the slip there too."

"This is getting ridiculous," cries Bert. "What happened next?"

"Well," says Sneek, "then I traced her to Screwing Sands hotel...."

"Don't tell me," interrupts Bert. "She gave you the slip there, too!"

"That's right," reports Sneek, with a big grin, "and also her panties!"

A landscaping crew has a large, fully-grown pine tree suspended in the air on chains from a boom truck. Suddenly the boom moves sharply and the tree swings around, hitting a brand new Cadillac parked by the side of the road.

Betty Cheese jumps out of the smashed car and looks at the damage. "You will have to come with me and explain this to my husband," she says to one of the men.

"Don't worry, lady," replies the landscaper. "My company will pay for the damage."

"No, you don't understand!" cries Betty. "I want a witness to be there when I tell Chester that I was parked and a tree ran into me!"

Doctor Horton, the anthropologist, stumbles upon a tribe of cannibals in the middle of the jungle.

Standing in the center of their village is a tall pole with a hat hanging on the top.

Immediately, Doctor Horton recognizes the hat and shouts to the cannibal chief, "My God! That is Doctor Fracture's hat! He is my best friend!"

"He was your best friend," says the cannibal chief, picking his teeth with a toothpick. "Last night he was our dinner."

"You ate him?" cries Doctor Horton.

"Yup," says the chief. "First we chopped up his legs, then we deep fried them and served them with lots of Pepsi-Cola."

"Really?" exclaims Doctor Horton.

"Yup, " replies the chief. "Then we boiled his arms in garlic sauce and ate them, also with lots of Pepsi-Cola."

"Really?" cries Doctor Horton in disbelief. "You really ate all of him?"

"Yup, " says the chief. "All of him, with lots of Pepsi-Cola."

"You mean," shouts Doctor Horton, "you even ate his... his... his thing?"

"That's right, we ate his thing," says the cannibal. "But not with Pepsi-Cola - with Coca-Cola...

because things go better with Coke!"

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

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.

The center is not very far away, and as you come closer to the center you will start feeling a coolness, a fragrance, an immense silence, and a great joy.

This moment, when you are at the center, you are only a witness. The body is far away, the mind is far away - you have left them all.

You are just a mirror, alert, aware, watchful, and flowers start showering on you - new fragrances, the peace that passeth understanding. Suddenly you are part of the whole cosmos.

In this Buddha Hall, ten thousand buddhas have disappeared.... Just one buddha-consciousness...

To make it clear,

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Just remain a witness. The body is there, the mind is there, but you are neither the body nor the mind. You are an eternal witness.

Since existence began, you have been there as a witness in different forms. Witnessing is your exact nature, and to realize this witness is to become a buddha.

All boundaries disappear, and the Buddha Auditorium becomes a lake of silent consciousness without any ripples, so silent that it becomes almost a mirror.

You are fortunate to be here at such a momentous event. The whole humanity is so poor in comparison to you. You may not have anything, but if you have your buddha awakened, you have all the treasures of existence in your hands.

You have to bring this awareness, this witnessing, this buddhahood, from the center to the circumference of your day-to-day life.

In every action, buddha should be expressed. In your silence, buddha should be present. In your songs you should allow the buddha to sing. In your dances, you should not dance; allow the buddha to dance.

Slowly, slowly your whole life is completely overtaken by your innermost core. The difference between the circumference and the center disappears.

That is the most precious moment.

In Zen they call it coming back home.

Soon Nivedano will be calling you back. Collect as much flowers and fragrance... Persuade the buddha to come with you. He has come always; just a right persuasion...

At the center he is only a seed, at the circumference he will become the flower.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, but come back as a buddha - with the same grace, with the same beauty, with the same blissfulness.

Sit down for a few moments just to recollect the space you have been in, the path, the golden path that you followed towards your center, and the same path you have followed back.

Remember, the buddha is not an achievement, it is a revelation. You have always been a buddha; just a little recognition and your whole life goes through a transformation.

This is the only revolution worth calling a revolution.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Chapter 3. Either experience or just go home

Osho - Rinzai Master of the Irrational

Chapter 3. Either experience or just go home

Our beloved master,

On one occasion Rinzai said, "Followers of the way, you seize upon words from the mouths of old masters and take them to be the true way, saying, 'These good masters are wonderful, and I, simple-minded fellow that I am, don't dare measure such old worthies.'

"Blind idiots!" commented Rinzai. "You go through your entire life holding such views, betraying your own two eyes. It is only the great master who dares to disparage the buddhas and patriarchs. From olden days our predecessors never had people anywhere who believed in them. Only when they had been driven out did their worth become recognized. If they had been completely accepted by people everywhere, what would they have been good for? Therefore it is said, 'The lion's one roar splits the jackals' skulls.'"

Maneesha, there are a few essential things which make Zen absolutely different from any religion, any sect, any kind of discipline, teaching. The most important of these essentials is that Zen is a revolution. All other religions are servants to the vested interests.

The rich people and the powerful people, the politicians, have dominated all the religions. The priests have been nothing but servants to these criminals. It is such a worldwide conspiracy that no one recognizes it. It is so obvious and so simple that we are from the very beginning, from our very childhood, being programmed.

This programming is done with all the good intentions in the world. The parents love you, but their love is as unconscious as they are. The parents want you to follow the same path as they and their forefathers have followed. Neither have they come to know the truth, nor have their forefathers. They just go on teaching old words to the small children, who are absolutely in a helpless situation.

The children cannot prevent them. Firstly, they are dependent on the parents for food, for clothing - for their whole livelihood. And secondly, they do not know what is being done to them. Taking them to the temples, to the mosques, to the churches, to the synagogues... they feel happy. They don't know that they are being enslaved in a very subtle way. They rejoice because all their parents, their neighborhood, their society rejoices. They don't even question what is being put into their minds.

They had come with a clean slate, but every moment something is being written on the clean slate.

The universities are slaves, the colleges are slaves - because they depend for their existence on the government money. So the politicians dominate....

Just now, because Ronald Reagan is against Charles Darwin's theory of evolution... Being a fundamentalist, fascist Christian, he can only see that the world was created - that is the Christian standpoint - that the world was created in its wholeness, there is no question of evolution. But Charles Darwin's tremendous inquiries show that there is evolution; the world was not created as complete, it is always incomplete and evolving. It is none of the business of any government to prevent new ideas from being placed before the students.

Now Ronald Reagan is trying to ban Charles Darwin from America. His book on evolution has been banned from the libraries, from the universities. Now even to use his name is a crime.

Galileo for the first time wrote in his book that the old idea of the sun moving around the earth is only supposition; it is not the truth, it only appears so. The truth is just the contrary: the earth moves around the sun.

Now, it was against the statements of the Bible, and the Bible is the word of God, and God can never commit a mistake. What to say about God - even the pope is infallible, and he is a very faraway relative to God; he does not commit, CANnot commit any mistake. And particularly when God himself has made the world - he knows better than Galileo whether the sun is moving around the earth or the earth is moving around the sun.

Galileo was old, almost on his deathbed. He was dragged to the pope's court and he was forced to change the statement. He tried to persuade the court, saying that, "I am also a Christian; I am not an atheist. I believe in God, I believe in Jesus - but this is a scientific fact and a small fact which has nothing to do with religion."

The pope said, "It has much to do with religion. If one thing is wrong in the Bible, then people can start thinking, 'Who knows, other things may be wrong also.' We cannot allow anything to be wrong in the Bible. It is the very truth. You have to change it; otherwise face death."

Galileo said, "Death I am facing anyway, but just for your joy I will change the statement. But remember, I will have to make a footnote...."

The pope did not ask what footnote; he said, "You just change the statement and whatever footnote you want to write, write it."

Galileo did a great job. He changed the statement, and underneath in the footnote he said, "Whatever I say, it makes no sense. The earth still goes around the sun. Who am I to decide?"

Now, the fear of all these kinds of primitive minds - their gods, their greed of heaven, their fear of hell - is being imposed continuously on the child. It is continued in the educational systems.

No educational system exists in the world at this moment which can be called creating rebels, not creating slaves. The world is full of slaves.

You will be able to understand Zen and Rinzai, their tremendous effort to bring the rebel into the world, to create a religion which is also rebellion. Of course, every rebellion has to be against the past.

The common masses think that the more ancient a scripture is, the truer. They fight, their scholars continuously argue that "our scriptures are more ancient," and they don't understand a simple thing:

that the more ancient a scripture is, the more primitive it is going to be, the more fallible, and more stupid, because man's consciousness has been continuously growing - objectively in science, subjectively in energy fields like Zen.

This statement will shock the priests and the so-called religious people, but it is absolutely true.

Rinzai says on one occasion,

"Followers of the way, you seize upon words from the mouths of old masters and take them to be the true way, saying, 'These good masters are wonderful, and I, simple-minded fellow that I am, don't dare measure such old worthies.'

It is thought that all that is old is gold. This is not always the case. It may be just gold plated, simply polished to look like gold.

Truth has nothing to do with being old or new. In fact it is always the new, because consciousness is continuously growing and finding more and more space and new mysteries.

The same attitude existed with scientists in the early days of science's growth, three hundred years ago, when it started growing as a separate world from religion. They had still the mind of the fanatic and they started using the same mind about scientific truths - that these truths are eternal.

It is only in this century, with Albert Einstein, that it became clear that not even scientific truths are eternal. Those truths only show our limitations. If we have better eyes and better instruments we will be able to see much more, which will destroy the principles.

Now the situation is such that science is growing with such vastness, such speed, that you cannot write a big volume on scientific research, because by the time your big volume will be finished it will be out of date. So science has to depend now on papers, periodicals. The moment you find something you have immediately to publish it in scientific journals or papers, because the next month nobody knows - somebody may find something else and make you out of date.

Rinzai is saying, "People think anything that has come from the mouths of old masters..." In the first place you cannot decide who is the master unless you encounter him. Old masters may be just fiction, just an idea that has been implanted in you and has gone so deep in your consciousness that you don't question it.

Millions of people are worshipping such superstitious things, and they don't ask a question. If you raise a question you will be dragged to the court: you have hurt somebody's religious feeling. Truth is not important, but some idiot's religious feeling. That idiot cannot be religious in the first place; how can he have religious feeling?

But the masses go on carrying the dead. Now there is no way to prove it, no evidence that these people were enlightened, that what they have said is true. They may have been just poets, they may have been just good writers, they may have been good philosophers, clever and articulate. But because the person is not present, it is very difficult to see his aura, it is very difficult to feel his presence.

It is very difficult, if the master is dead, to find out in his words anything living. The words are alive when they are just coming fresh from the empty heart of the master, and their life is very short. Just for a moment, if you are receptive, they may enter into your being. If you start thinking about them, by that time they will be dead. It is an immediate transmission.

So the old masters... just because they are old and worshipped by many people for many centuries, does not make any sense.

Rinzai is saying to his followers,

"Followers of the way, you seize upon words from the mouths of old masters and take them to be the true way, saying, 'These good masters are wonderful, and I, simple-minded fellow that I am, don't dare measure such old worthies.'

How can I question? How can I measure? I am an ordinary man and these are extraordinary people.

Some have claimed that they are prophets of God, some have claimed that they are messengers of God, some have claimed that, like Jesus, they are the only begotten son of God. They are very rare people; how can you question them? You are an ordinary human being.

But the truth is, all these prophets and messiahs and messengers of someone who does not exist are exploiting people. What they say is just words, but they are hiding behind masks of being prophets.

These people who claim to be prophets are psychologically sick. Just to be human, purely and utterly intelligent, with an empty heart to experience the world, is enough. You don't have to be a prophet, you don't have to be a messenger, a paigambar, a messiah.

But this strategy of being a prophet, a messiah, a messenger, is to make their own statements authoritative. They are speaking in the name of God, and unfortunately God does not exist.

I am not in agreement with Friedrich Nietzsche, who said that God is dead. He said really a great thing, but I don't agree because God has never been born, so how can he die?

God is only the accumulated fear of humanity.

Man feels so insecure surrounded by death, surrounded by all kinds of anxieties and anguishes of the world, he needs psychologically a protector, somebody there above to whom he can pray in times of difficulties, on whom he can rely, who will be just and compassionate and merciful. Man has projected all these ideas on a hypothesis of God.

There are egoistic people who can proclaim, "I am the prophet. I have been sent specially by God to deliver the message." But the message is so rotten that it proves it is not even written by a good writer.

Just look at your PURANAS: they are so filthy, pornographic. But no Hindu ever inquires, "Does God write pornography?" They are obscene. Koran or Bible or Hindu PURANAS, they look so childish.

They don't have the polished, sophisticated look even of a great writer like Leo Tolstoy or Fyodor Dostoevsky. They are written by uneducated people.

Mohammed could not write, he was absolutely uneducated, so whatever he has said has been written by his followers. Jesus was uneducated, a carpenter's son, the poorest of the poor. He could not read or write, but he had gathered from meetings of rabbis, listening to the rabbis in the synagogues. He must have been a megalomaniac, proclaiming himself the only begotten son of God. Not a single statement shows any originality. It is simply repetition of the old.

But people go on believing in them, neither asking their credentials, nor bothering that their claims show a certain psychological sickness, that they want to be known as superior to human beings when their acts show that they are not even human.

Mohammed married nine women. Now it will create a chaos in the world, and he has put in the Koran that it is every Mohammedan's birthright to marry four women at least. Now, in nature the proportion of men and women is equal; nature knows how to keep the balance.

Psychologists became aware after the first world war, and more aware after the second world war, that nature is not unintelligent; there is some great intelligence functioning behind it. Because in the wars many men died, the proportion, the balance was disturbed; there were many more women than men. After both the wars more boys were born than ever before.

Ordinarily, if one hundred girls are born, one hundred and fourteen boys are born, because boys are not, as you think, stronger than girls. They are more fragile, they are more prone to be sick, so by the time they get married, fourteen boys have already died and the balance comes equal - a hundred girls, a hundred boys.

But after the world war, suddenly - that gives an indication that nature wants to keep the balance - the centuries-old one hundred girls, one hundred and fourteen boys simply changed. After the war it became one hundred and forty, one hundred and fifty boys to one hundred girls, because the old proportion had to be restored.

If every man starts marrying four women, what about the three men who will be left without women?

Do you think they will just sit silently doing nothing and let the grass grow by itself? They will corrupt the whole society. For them you will have to manage prostitutes. They will create all kinds of sexual perversions and you will have to be too protective of your wives, because the fear will be there that there are three persons around who are unmarried.

Then there is every danger that you cannot love four wives equally; you must have one wife you love more. Four wives will not be equally beautiful either. There will be constant conspiracy and constant jealousy and constant fighting among the four wives to possess the husband, so the whole life will be a continuous struggle - and outside you have left three persons in search of a woman.

Now, will God send this kind of message?

And if you say to Mohammedans that this is absolutely stupid, God cannot commit such a mistake...

He himself created one man, one woman, and that is a sure proof he wants keep the balance. He created Adam and Eve, he did not create four Eves. One was enough to destroy Adam's peace.

One was enough to drag him out of heaven.

In a small school, the schoolteacher was asking the boys, "Can you relate the story of God becoming angry because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve?"

One boy stood up and said, "Everything is clear. Just one thing I don't see how he managed, because in the books nothing is written about it. It says God drove them out of paradise...." The little boy was asking in which kind of car. It must have been a Ford - but were there cars in those days, in Eden? He drove them out, and driving certainly implies that there was some vehicle. The boy was asking what kind.

But he has created only one woman and one man; that is enough proof that existence needs a certain balance. This idea of Mohammed's was only an emergency. It is not a dictate from God and it is not forever to be true. It was only in a particular situation in Saudi Arabia where there were more women and less men, because men were continually fighting, so the proportion had come to such a situation that unless one man marries four women, three women will remain unmarried, and that will create trouble. So it was simply a matter of a certain situation; it cannot be made a principle for eternity.

But even now, far away from Arabia, in India, even the Indian constitution accepts that a Mohammedan can marry four women. Now, Mohammedans cannot find four women themselves, so they have to abduct other people's wives, daughters. And you will be surprised to know that even though they got a separate country saying that they could not live with Hindus, still in India they want a separate land of their own. Now the original country is divided into three countries, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Hindustan, and still India has the greatest Mohammedan population in the whole world.

No other country has this big a population of Mohammedans. From where is it coming?

If one man marries four women, naturally he can create four children in a year. If four women marry one man, that will not do....

I mean, if four men marry one woman, still there will be one child. The opposite will not work. I committed a mistake! I am not infallible, you should remember that. I am neither a prophet, nor a messiah; I don't accept any god. I am just myself - why should I be a prophet or a messiah in the service of some hypothetical god? I am not a postman. All these prophets are postmen, but they think they are very great.

Rinzai is saying that this superstitious idea has to be dropped. He is very clear.

He says,

"Blind idiots!" commented Rinzai. "You go through your entire life holding such views, betraying your own two eyes. It is only the great master who dares to disparage the buddhas and patriarchs. From olden days our predecessors never had people anywhere who believed in them. Only when they had been driven out did their worth become recognized. If they had been completely accepted by people everywhere, what would they have been good for? Therefore it is said, 'The lion's one roar splits the jackals' skulls.'"

A very significant statement, very unique. He is saying that if you are accepted by everyone, that simply means you belong to the mediocre masses - you are a Mahatma Gandhi, you are not a Socrates.

A man of truth is bound to be burned alive or stoned or poisoned or crucified, because he will stand against the masses and their consolations. He will say things which are not contained in their scriptures. He may even contradict their scriptures.

You can see, as an existential example.... I have not done any harm to anybody in my life but I am condemned all over the world for the simple fact that I will not accept any lie as a consolation.

Consolation is only for the cowards. It is good for the mediocre.

The man of truth is bound to contradict many superstitions which have been hanging around you for centuries, and as time has passed they have become more precious. The man of truth, the man of experience, of enlightenment, is bound to contradict many of your so-called religious leaders.

Rinzai is saying, "If anything Buddha says" - even Buddha, and he is a follower of Buddha - "even if Buddha says something which does not conform with my experience, I am going to contradict him."

This has been Zen's tradition, a very living tradition. They will worship Buddha, they will offer songs and flowers to Buddha's statue, but as far as their experience is concerned, if Buddha goes against it, then they don't care. They trust their own consciousness, and if it comes to this point, they will have to contradict even Gautam Buddha.

This, ordinary people cannot understand. They think that either you worship Buddha, or you don't.

But Rinzai is saying that you can love even though you may not agree.

Buddha is a personality really worth loving. No other man of that grandeur has walked on the earth - but that does not mean that he is infallible. He committed many mistakes, and the man of experience will expose him although he follows him and loves him, respects him, has tremendous gratitude. That does not mean that anything that is not right should be overlooked.

Rinzai is saying,

It is only the great master who dares to disparage the buddhas and patriarchs. From olden days our predecessors never had people anywhere who believed in them.

Zen does not want anybody to be a believer. Either experience or just go home. Except experience, no belief is going to help.

So those who have followed Zen masters were not followers, they were fellow travelers. They were rejoicing in the master's enlightenment. They were drinking as much of his wisdom as possible, and they were finding the path so that they could also experience the same lightning experience which dissolves all questions, all answers, and leaves you simply innocent, centered - eternity in your hands. But they were not followers, and this is very difficult for the ordinary masses to understand.

One Hindu monk was traveling with me in the train some thirty years ago and he was very well known in North India. He asked me, "How many followers have you got?"

I said, "No, I don't have any followers."

He said, "You don't have any followers? Then in what way do people think that you are a master?"

I said, "Mastery has nothing to do with followers; otherwise the more followers you have the greater master you are. Then nobody can compete with the pope. He has six hundred million Catholics: he is the greatest master."

I told him, "I have fellow travelers. I have friends.... Friendship is giving respect to a person, dignity to a person. Following humiliates."

Never be a follower, because that means you are just a shadow, just moving in the footprints of somebody else, not trying to find your own path and your own being. Followers are weaklings.

A man of courage finds his own path. He can rejoice in the enlightenment of someone. He can love someone to the extent that he can call him his master, but the master can never call him a follower, only a friend who is just a little behind - a few steps more and he will also become a buddha. To reduce him to a follower is very insulting and humiliating. But all the religions have done that; they have reduced the whole humanity into slaves.

"From olden days," says Rinzai, "Our predecessors never had people anywhere who believed in them."

They discouraged people from believing in them; they encouraged people to trust in themselves.

And that's where the paths of all the religions become separate from Zen. They are all trying to gather more converts, more Hindus, more Catholics, more Mohammedans. It is a political game; it is not religion.

Did you see when the pope came to India? - the president and the prime minister of India were present to receive him. They don't come to receive any Shankaracharya, they don't come to receive any Acharya Tulsi, they don't come to receive any Mohammedan Sufi. What is special about the pope? He has six hundred million people behind him; he has a tremendous political power.

But Zen is not interested in political power. It has a totally different kind of power - the power of love.

That does not reduce you into a slave, into a shadow, but raises you up to the same state of being in which the master is.

Buddha is reported to have said, "I will not be satisfied unless all those who have been with me become buddhas. Less than that will not satisfy me. If you want me to rejoice and celebrate, then don't waste time - become buddhas." This is a very human, very respectful approach. And another very important thing he says....

Before I say it... there was one important thinker in India, Mahatma Bhagwandin. Only two persons were known as Mahatma, Mahatma Gandhi and Mahatma Bhagwandin. Mahatma Gandhi was a politician; all his gestures were just to catch voters. But Mahatma Bhagwandin was an independent thinker. It was just coincidence, but I used to meet him once in a while in some conference or somewhere. He loved me, and the day he died I was present in Nagpur. Just by coincidence, I had been coming from a lecture tour, from Chaanda and Wardha, to Nagpur, and just as I was going into Nagpur University to speak, somebody told me that Mahatma Bhagwandin was on the verge of death. So I dropped the lecture and I went to see him.

He had become absolutely a skeleton. He held my hand and he told me, "It is good that you have come, and so unexpected. Just one thing I always wanted to say to you and I have never said it.

Now there is not much time, I should say it. You will have to live a life of persecution. You will be condemned by millions, because whatever you say goes against the mass mind. But," he said, "don't change your path. Whatever happens - even if crucifixion happens it does not matter. What matters is that truth should be proclaimed."

Rinzai is saying that only when these old masters had been driven out did their worth become recognized. When the masses had stoned them, thrown them out of the crowd, spread all kinds of lies and rumors about them, only then were they recognized.

If they had been completely accepted by people everywhere, what would they have been good for?

Rinzai is making a very pregnant statement. If you are accepted everywhere, respected everywhere, it simply means you are good for nothing. It simply means that you are a cunning diplomat, that you go on saying things that appeal to people, that you never say anything that may hurt the mass mind, the retarded people. You don't speak from your heart and your experience, you simply look at the people and you speak what they want to hear.

That's what your priests and mahatmas are doing. Whatever you want to hear they repeat like parrots. It is a very vicious circle. You wanted to hear it; they repeated it. They became very respectable to you because they have confirmed your lie as a truth, they have helped your consolation. You will raise them into great mahatmas and saints. But saints have never been rebellious.

I have to make it clear that all your saints were diplomats, clever and cunning. Whatever you wanted they did. They confirmed your beliefs, howsoever stupid, and they became great in your eyes.

The really great are those whom you have crucified. Their fault was that they did not console you; they simply stated the fact, the truth. That truth is a lion's roar.

Rinzai is right when he says, "Therefore it is said, 'the lion's one roar splits the jackals' skulls.'"

The ordinary, retarded humanity I call retarded because it has been found after the first world war...

At that time the psychologists had discovered how to measure intelligence. So they measured the intelligence of soldiers and they were surprised: they were all below fourteen percent. You can have one hundred percent intelligence; fourteen percent is a very retarded intelligence.

The speaker of the Indian parliament, Lok Sabha, was angry with my statement when I said that all these politicians are retarded. He wrote a letter to me saying, "You have insulted the parliament.

You will have to answer, otherwise legal action can be taken against you."

I told Neelam, my secretary, to write an answer to the speaker, to whatever questions he has asked.

In those answers, as a preface, I told her to write that I am ready to bring a group of psychoanalysts to the parliament to check the intelligence of the members "... and if it is proved that it is below fourteen percent, you all will have to resign. If it is proved that it is not the truth, they have an average of above fourteen percent, I am ready to suffer any punishment for it.

"A legal judgment will not be decisive. The only way to prove whether I am right or wrong is first to take a psychological test of all the Lok Sabha members. Either they will all have to resign, including you, or I am ready for any punishment. There is no need to go to the court; the Lok Sabha itself can decide any punishment. I am perfectly ready for it."

He became silent, and I have been waiting for almost two years now. He saw the point, that I will create trouble. Those politicians are chosen by the ordinary masses; they represent the ordinary.

They are not great intellectuals, intelligentsia.

But he must have looked at the situation. He knows in this parliament people throw shoes at each other in argument, they beat people, they have to be dragged by police officers out of the parliament house. All their actions prove that they are retarded people, but clever enough to persuade the masses, because the masses are even lower.

But his silence is great. His silence proves he understood the point - that it will be a worldwide uproar if the whole parliament is proved to be retarded. And there is every possibility... He knows what goes on happening every day in the parliament.

Rinzai is saying, "Only when they had been driven out did their worth become recognized. If they had been completely accepted by people everywhere, what would they have been good for? Therefore it is said, 'the lion's one roar splits the jackals' skulls.'"

One man of ultimate intelligence is enough to drive the whole humanity against him. Twenty-one countries have banned my entry. Strange... what can I do on a three weeks' tourist visa? I am not a terrorist, I don't carry bombs; I am against any kind of violence. But whole parliaments without a single person objecting decided that not only can I not enter into their country, but I cannot refuel my airplane at their international airports, I cannot even land my airplane on their airports. They say that my presence will be disturbing to their morality. Just on the airport, miles away from the city, my presence will be spoiling the morality, the religion, their way of life, their tradition, their orthodoxy.

Just standing at the airport in my airplane....

In England, which is thought to be one of the most intelligent countries, I had to stay only for six hours and I wanted to stay only in the airport lounge. I had both things - I had my own airplane, my own pilot, and I had also purchased a first-class ticket, so that they could not say that the lounge is only for first-class ticket people.

The chief of the airport was in a very embarrassing position. He said, "What can I do? The home ministry says on the phone that this man should not be allowed even in the lounge. He is a dangerous man."

I said, "You can check my luggage. I am not carrying any bombs. In what way can I disturb the morality of England and their religion? And if their religion and morality can be destroyed so easily, are they worth keeping?"

He phoned again to the home ministry and the reply was the same - that if I want to stay I can stay six hours only in the jail, but not outside the jail. And I had to stay for six hours in the jail because the flying time of my pilot was over. Every pilot has a flying time - that was the difficulty - and it is against flying laws to fly overtime, so the pilot has to rest for six hours. I and my few friends who were traveling with me had to rest in the jail. The same happened in many places. It is now almost one man against the whole world.

The archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, the most ancient church of Christianity, threatened the prime minister and the president that if they didn't remove me immediately he would dynamite the house in which I and my friends were living. We were living on an island just for the duration of the four weeks' visa; we were not going to stay there. I had not stepped out of the garden of the bungalow in which I was staying.

But the archbishop of the Christian church, the oldest church, forgets completely about the teachings of Jesus, that you should love your enemy. I am not even a friend.... But this is the world we are living in. A world full of slaves with different trademarks - Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian.

Zen is a revolutionary statement about religiousness.

A Zen poet, Ikkyu, wrote:

Rain has fallen since dusk,

Wailing over the hsiang river.

Yet the homeless traveler

Sings with his whole soul.

This blue sea and blue sky

Hold the essence of my heartbeat.

Zen is a religion of beauty.

You know the Upanishadic description of the ultimate reality, satyam, shivam, sundram. Either a man can reach to the ultimate by finding the truth of his being, satyam, or he can reach by finding the divinity of his being, the goodness, or he can reach to the ultimate by finding the eternal beauty of his being.

Zen is a religion of beauty. The strange fact is that if you can get one, the other two follow automatically. If you attain to truth, satyam, then shivam and sundram will follow automatically.

They are one thing looked at from three standpoints.

Because beauty is the heartbeat of Zen it has been more creative. It has created great poetry, great paintings. It has transformed ordinary things like archery or swordsmanship into meditation. It is not a non-creative religion; it has created and added to the beauty of existence.

Question 1:

Maneesha has asked a question:

Our beloved master,

Can only other enlightened beings, or people who are yet to come, be contemporaries of a master?

Yes, Maneesha, because enlightenment is beyond time, so all enlightened people are contemporaries. The distance in time between them does not matter at all at that peak that is rising beyond time.

Whoever reaches... the distance between two persons may be twenty-five centuries or five thousand years, but that distance is in time. That distance is a measurement of the mind, and enlightenment is both beyond time and mind. Hence, only enlightened people can be contemporaries.

The unenlightened has the potential to explode into enlightenment, and this very moment he will be moving in the world of the buddhas. This very moment he will find himself standing beside Gautam Buddha and Rinzai.

I am reminded of a small anecdote.

In Zorba the Buddha Rajneesh Restaurant in heaven, Gautam Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tzu are all sitting around a table, and a very beautiful young sannyasin carrying a very beautiful jar comes along and asks, "Would you like to have a taste of life?"

Confucius immediately closed his eyes and he said, "Enough is enough. I have lived life and I don't want anything to do with life at all."

Buddha said, "I would like to have a sip first to see how it tastes" - Buddha was always on the middle path. So he took a sip and he said, "It is very bitter."

The girl was going to ask the same to Lao Tzu, but before she could say anything he took the whole jar and drank all the juice, and he said, "Unless you drink it wholly and totally, how can you know?

This Confucius is behaving as much like an idiot as he used to behave on the earth - closing his eyes. Buddha is behaving the same way he used to behave on the earth - always the middle path.

Unless you know the whole, you don't know."

So when you become buddhas, you will be meeting all kinds of fellows, you will be contemporaries of all the buddhas of the past. But you carry the potential this very moment.

Question 2:

Maneesha has asked another question too:

Our beloved master,

Are you not the greatest, the most daring iconoclast of all time?

Unfortunately, Maneesha, I am.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

Baron Fuzz-butt, a nobleman at the court of King Arthur of Merrie England, has a reputation for being very gallant towards women.

"There is no such thing," he announces one day, "as an ugly woman."

He is overheard saying this by a woman who has a nose that is really squashed flat on her face, and she confronts Fuzz-butt.

"Confess the truth!" she cries. "You are now face to face with an ugly woman!"

"Not at all, madam," replies Baron Fuzz-butt gallantly. "You are like all women, an angel fallen from heaven. You were just unlucky that you fell on your nose!"

Gorgeous Gloria starts dating Rock Hunk, the film star, and soon moves into his penthouse apartment, high above the smog of San Francisco.

One evening, Gloria comes back from shopping to find that Rock is not at home. Feeling hungry, she looks in the freezer and finds that it is empty, so she goes out to eat at a restaurant.

By chance, she goes to the same restaurant where Rock is having a quiet candlelight dinner with Luscious Lucy, another of his girlfriends.

Gloria takes one look at the scene and quickly makes her way towards their table.

Rock Hunk looks up as Gloria comes storming across the restaurant, and then quickly looks away again as though he does not know her.

"What's the matter, darling?" snarls Gloria, as she reaches the table. "Don't you recognize me with my clothes on?"

Leroy, the black dude, is sitting up in a tree one day in Central Park, New York, enjoying the view. He is dozing off when a young white couple comes and sits on the park bench below him. The couple starts petting and kissing, and before long they are sprawled on the bench, making love.

Just then a policeman walks up and arrests the young couple for indecent exposure. The cop sees Leroy sitting up in the tree and drags him along as a witness.

The next day, in court, Leroy is in the witness stand, and the judge says, "Now, Leroy, will you tell the court what you saw?"

"Yes, your honor!" cries Leroy. "They was a-fucking!"

"Now look here!" snaps the judge. "You cannot use language like that, or I will hold you in contempt of court! Now, tell me again: what were they doing?"

"They was a-fucking!" cries Leroy.

"Right!" says the judge. "I sentence you to one month in jail for contempt."

A month later Leroy is back in the witness stand and the judge asks him again what he saw.

"Your honor!" cries Leroy. "They was a-fucking!"

"One month in jail for contempt!" cries the judge, and Leroy is taken away.

This goes on, month after month, for the next few years. Finally, when Leroy comes back for the two-hundredth time, the judge says, "Look, Leroy, I am completely fed up with this case. We are all a lot older now; surely you can tell me, in decent language, what happened that day in the park!"

"Okay, your honor," says Leroy, "let me put it like this:

His pants was down

Below his knees,

His balls was swayin'

In the breeze.

His you-know-what,

Was you-know-where,

And if that's not fucking,

Give me the electric chair!"

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent, close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen.

Now look inwards with your total life energy, with your whole consciousness and with a great urgency, as if this moment is the last moment. Penetrate into your center of being just like an arrow.

There, at the center, you are a buddha and a contemporary of all the buddhas. Even this very moment time has disappeared... mind has been left behind. You have gone beyond both.

This silence, this blissfulness, this utter serenity... Only one thing remains, witnessing, because witnessing is another name of the buddha.

Hold on to witnessing as Nivedano will give you the signal to relax.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Hold on to the witnessing.

You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are just a pure consciousness, an awareness. As you become deeply aware, your individual entity disappears. This Buddha Auditorium really becomes a buddha lake. I can see your consciousness melting and merging into a lake without any ripples.

At this moment this place is the holiest, because nowhere else in the world are ten thousand people trying to reach to the center.

This center has to be brought slowly, slowly to your ordinary activities.

The same witnessing, the same silence, the same grace, the same joy - whatever you do around the clock, remember you are a buddha and you have to keep the dignity of a buddha, and your whole life will be transformed.

Now, collect as much awareness, as many flowers that have been showering on you... The beauty, the truth, the good, you have to carry them back.

This evening was beautiful on its own accord, but the ten thousand buddhas melting into an ocean made it a historical moment.

There were days in the past when in many places this golden moment was happening. Now all those places have disappeared.

I am trying to revive a forgotten language.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back... but don't forget that you are a buddha. Silently, peacefully, carrying a great awareness with you, remain in this awareness twenty-four hours a day. Slowly slowly it will become your very heartbeat. You will not have to remember it; it will be there just like an undercurrent in all your actions, gestures, words, silences.

Collect the experience.

Remember the golden path that you have gone in by, and have come out from the same path.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Chapter 2. Empty heart, empty mind

Osho - Rinzai Master of the Irrational

Chapter 2. Empty heart, empty mind

Our beloved master,

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.

Question 1:

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 RIGVEDA.

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."

Question 2:

Maneesha has also asked a question:

Our beloved master,

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."

"Oh!" says Gorbachev. "Never mind - you can have Abu Dhabi!"

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...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

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 of 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...

(Drumbeat)

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...

(Drumbeat)

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, Beloved Master.