Thank Osho

Prayer Meditation - Osho Meditation

WHAT IS PRAYER?

Prayer is wonder, reverence. Prayer is receptivity for the miracle that surrounds you.

Prayer is surrender to the beauty, to the grandeur to this fantastic existence. Prayer is nonargumentative dialogue with existence. It is not a discussion... it is a love-dialogue. You don't argue... you simply whisper sweet nothings. When a man falls in love with a woman he whispers sweet nothings into her ear. When a man falls into love with existence... the same romance: prayer IS romance. It is fantasy; it is becoming available to the miraculous. Many people have lost the capacity to pray, because many people have lost the capacity to wonder. They have lost the capacity to be surprised. You go on seeing millions of wonders every day but you are not surprised at all. Your eyes are so full of dust and knowledge that you don't see anything. A seed is sprouting, and you don't see any wonder. A new leaf coming out of the tree, and you don't see any wonder. A bird singing, and nothing happens inside you. A peacock dances, and nothing dances inside you. A white cloud floats in the sky, and you remain untouched. Then prayer is impossible. Prayer needs a poetic heart, a loving heart. Approach reality more poetically -- don't be too much of a scientist, don't be too much of a rationalist. don't think that you know; nothing is really known -- ignorance is absolute, ignorance is ultimate. Once you understand that nothing is known, and ignorance is ultimate, you will again be full of those beautiful eyes you had when you were small children. I have heard... The husband was one of those cynical, sour guys whom nothing moved or impressed. To him, everything was just a big "so what?" He visited a psychiatrist, and after a short examination was given this diagnosis: "You are cold and blase. To you, everything means a big nothing. You are married, eh? Well, here's what you do. Ringling's circus is in the town: take your wife and see the show. Take a look at how red-blooded people live and act. Watch the performers who live dangerously; see how they pulsate and glow." The schnook took his wife to the circus. Out into the ring came the roaring lions and tigers. The wife was thrilled by the excitement, but the husband yawned and replied, "Yeah? So what?" Finally there came the grand finale where the daredevil was shot out of a cannon three hundred feet into the air, turned several somersaults, and then, pulling out a clarinet, began playing before hitting the net. The crowd roared its appreciation for the act, but the husband, after a few minutes of thought, turned to his wife and grunted in a bored manner, "A Benny Goodman he's not!" Prayer is the capacity to be amazed. prayer is the capacity that you had as children, and you have lost. Claim it -- reclaim it -- because with prayer you have lost all. The day your wondering eyes closed, God became nonexistential to you. Open your wondering eyes again, and you will find him pulsating again. He's very close by... he's all around you... he is within and without.

Osho - The Divine Melody,

Ch#6 - Chapter title:: You will awake praying - Question 5

am in Buddha Hall

Opposites

Tantra goes on working on all and every technique possible. Tantra is not for someone, it is for all. EVERY TYPE OF MIND CAN MOVE THROUGH TANTRA. Every type of mind cannot be Christian, every type of mind cannot be Hindu, every type of mind cannot be Buddhist. A particular type of mind will be attracted by Buddha, a particular type by Jesus, a particular type by Mohammed. Shiva contains all. Shiva can have an appeal for every type possible. The total, the whole has been included, it is not a partial standpoint. THAT'S WHY TANTRA HAS NO SECT.

You cannot create a sect around the whole; you can create a sect only around a fragment. You can live the whole, but you cannot create a sect. A sect can be created only when you are for something and against something else. If both the opposites are contained, how can you create a sectarian mind? SO TANTRA IS THE ESSENTIAL RELIGION, it is not a sect. Hence so many techniques.

People keep on coming to me and asking, "There are so many techniques, and one technique contradicts the other?' Yes, it contradicts the other -- because it is not meant for a particular mind. In these hundred and twelve techniques, ALL THE POSSIBLE TYPES OF HUMANITY HAVE BEEN INCLUDED.

You please don't be concerned with all the techniques, otherwise you will get confused. You simply find that which suits you, that which appeals to you. Towards it you will feel a deep affinity, an attraction; you will fall in love with it. Then forget all the remaining one hundred and eleven techniques. Forget them. YOU JUST STICK TO THE ONE THAT WORKS FOR YOU.

In these one hundred and twelve techniques, ONLY ONE TECHNIQUE IS FOR YOU. If you try many techniques you will get confused -- because to try so many techniques, you will need a very big mind which can absorb contradiction. That's not possible right now. One day it may become possible. You can become so complete, so total, that you can move easily with many techniques. Then there will be no problem. But then there will be no need also! Right now is the need. Find out your technique.

I CAN BE HELPFUL TO YOU in finding which technique will be suitable for you. And if you feel that other techniques are contradictory to the technique that suits you, don't think about them. They are contradictory. But they are not for you. At least they are not for you now. One day it may become possible that when you don't have the ego within, then you can move to the opposite without any problem. The ego creates the problem. It is stuck somewhere, it clings to something, it is not liquid, it cannot flow. And Shiva is flowing in all directions.

So remember, don't start thinking about these techniques: that this technique is against that. Shiva is not trying to create a system here, he is not a system-maker. Shiva is giving all the techniques without any systematizing. They cannot be systematized, because a system means that the contradictory, the opposite, must be denied. AND HERE THE OPPOSITE IS INCLUDED. It is both Apollo and Dionysus; it is both serious and laughing; it is immanent and transcendent both; it is earthly and unearthly both -- because it is all.

OSHO

Vigyan Bhairav TantraVol 2,

Ch #35: The search for the rhythm of the opposites

pm in Bombay, India

Fortunately/Unfortunately

Once there was a man who took a ride in an airplane.

Unfortunately he fell out of the plane.

Fortunately he was wearing a parachute.

Unfortunately the parachute was not properly packed and it did not open.

Fortunately there was a haystack in the field below.

Unfortunately there was a sharp pitchfork sticking straight out of the haystack.

Fortunately the man missed the pitchfork.

Unfortunately he also missed the haystack!

THAT'S HOW LIFE GOES ON. There is no need to be too much worried about it. Enjoy your energy. Sometimes it is fortunate, and sometimes unfortunate -- YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT BOTH. If you want it always to be fortunate, then you are asking too much; it is not possible in this changing world.

EVERYTHING IS GOING UP AND DOWN ALWAYS. So when you are up, enjoy; when you are down, rest and wait, then soon you are going to be up. The down periods should be rest periods, and the up periods should be dancing periods. And it is perfectly natural. Otherwise life will become very monotonous. This tragic-comic drama -- one moment it is tragedy, another moment it is comedy -- makes life more juicy, more spicy.

OSHO

The New Dawn

Ch #9: The more you know it, the less you know it

pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Relationship

If I’m allowed to give my advice to the world, my advice will be: Help people to experience as much love as possible. Let them go into the turmoil, into the cyclone, and let them find, in the cyclone, their rootedness. Don’t try to hide them in the house, don’t close the windows and the doors. Of course they will be more comfortable in the house, but dead. Then the best comfort is in the grave – no worry, no problem, nobody can harm you any more; even death is impotent now. What more security, what more comfort, what more luxury can you expect? A marble grave and your name written in golden letters on it. But you are dead.
No, this is not the way to live and to experience life and to experience what I call godliness.
And the same is true about meditation – even more true, because if they have destroyed your love, they have not destroyed your spirituality. They have only destroyed your biology, your lower being. But they have been trying to destroy your higher being too. By taking a child to the rabbi, to the pundit, to the imam, they are destroying your higher possibility too, for the same reason – the reason is the same, but now it is even more dangerous.
In the first, you may have been in trouble, but that trouble was not much of a trouble. People get into such trouble and get out of it, it is not much of a problem. But the spiritual part of your being is vast, enormous, infinite. If you are lost in it, then you may never be able to find the way back home. You may go on and on, farther and farther away from home.
And what is home? In their mind, a Jew thinks the Torah is the home, a Christian thinks The Bible is the home, a Hindu thinks the Gita is the home. And the people who become bridges to the Torah, to The Bible, to the Gita – they are the masters. They are not. They are only teachers. They teach you whatsoever they have been taught, they have not experienced anything.
Hence the difference and the unique relationship between me and my disciples.
I am not a teacher. I am not teaching you anything at all. I am not a bridge between you and The Bible, between you and the Gita, between you and the Koran. I am not even a bridge between you and God – no. I am not giving you a teaching, a dogma, a creed, a philosophy, a theology. So understand the difference between a teacher and a master.
In the old religions teachers are called masters. They are simply teachers, they know the teaching.
They have been handed down that teaching by other teachers; they will hand it over to you. They have not experienced anything, and through their teaching you are not going to experience anything either. Those are just beautiful words, and they can give you consolation – as if you know.
A master is not a teacher in the first place. A master shares his being with you, not his philosophy.
A master exposes himself to you, allows you closeness so that you can see your face in his mirror.
A master is exactly a mirror.
He never does anything to the disciple. Let me emphasize it. A master is not a doer... because if I start doing something to you I may spoil your being. I may give you a mask, a discipline, and I may change you into something else that you are not. The master cannot do that.
The teacher does that. He gives you a teaching; he teaches you discipline and then he enforces it through greed, persuasion, fear, in every possible way. He tries to fit you into a mold: how a Christian should be, how a Buddhist should be. There are thirty-three thousand rules for a Buddhist monk. I do not think that I can remember thirty-three thousand rules – what to say about following them, I cannot remember them! And anybody doing that will be in the same situation as it happened in one of Aesop’s fables.
A centipede is just going for a morning walk. Now, a centipede has one hundred legs. A frog looks at him, cannot believe his eyes, blinks his eyes, looks again... a hundred feet! How does he manage?
Which one to raise first, then the second, then the third, then the fourth...? One hundred legs! If you forget the number you will be caught in your own legs and fall down.
He rushes up to him, jumps, stops the centipede and asks him, ”Uncle, I should not stop you on your morning walk, but a very philosophical question has arisen in my mind, which I cannot solve – I am just a frog, you know. Only you can help.”
The centipede says, ”What is the problem?”
The frog explains to him, ”This is the problem. I saw your hundred legs, I counted them; and the problem is, how do you manage?”
The centipede said, ”I had never thought about it. I will try and see how I have been managing. I have never thought about it – I really have never looked down and counted the legs. You are great; you are a mathematician and a philosopher!”
The centipede tried, and you can visualize what must have happened. He fell immediately, all his hundred legs entangled in each other. He was very angry at the frog and said, ”Never again ask anybody such questions. Keep your philosophy to yourself! You idiot – I have been managing my whole life, and not only I, millions of centipedes are managing perfectly well. Nobody has fallen like me. But now I am afraid: you have created such a question in my mind that if I don’t get rid of this question I may not be able to walk at all. Now tell me how to get rid of this question.”
The frog said, ”I don’t know. I am myself puzzled. I asked you because you are an experienced person, an old centipede, and you go every day for a morning walk; if you cannot solve it, how can I? I am just a poor frog.” I don’t know what happened to that centipede afterwards, but I can imagine that his whole life must have become a mess. Again and again the question would have come to him, ”A hundred legs! Am I putting the right leg in the right place?”
Life has its own ways. The moment you start managing everything, you spoil it.
Allow life its freedom.
About love, allow freedom, and don’t be guided by fixed ideas.
Experience – don’t go with the idea that love is permanent or not permanent. Experience, and you will know it, what it is.
Don’t take the criterion from others about what is true and what is not true. These are the teachers who have been spoiling the whole of humanity. They tell you how to walk, which leg first and which leg second, and if you put them in some other order you are a sinner, you will fall into hell. Hell is far away; you will fall here! You may not be able even to reach hell, because one needs legs. It is a long journey. Only very expert teachers, professors, philosophers, have been able to reach there. It is no ordinary person’s business to reach hell. It is a long, long journey, and very complicated.
The master’s function is not to mold you into a certain idea, but to withdraw all the crutches, all the supports that the society has given to you. Of course in the beginning you will feel very much afraid – all supports gone, crutches gone, the very earth you were standing on is no longer there.
There will be great fear, but it has to be faced. Only by facing it, going through it, will you be able to overcome it.
Love will give you troubles, anxieties, anguishes, but it is lack of intelligence that is making the whole problem. Just be a little intelligent and see that love has done nothing. It has simply given you a few beautiful, tremendously ecstatic moments. And it has not asked anything in return. It was not a bargain, it was a sheer gift. And what kind of person are you – you don’t feel even grateful? You feel revengeful?
The person who made it possible for you to have those few moments, the woman, the man – be grateful, immensely grateful to the person. Yes, those moments are no more there. Nothing can be done about it. They cannot be pulled back, and even if there was some way to pull them back, they would not be the same. It would be a repetition. It wouldn’t bring you the same joy, the same ecstasy. It is good that they cannot be pulled back, otherwise even the memory of those cherished moments would be spoiled.
Respect the person, be grateful to the person that, for no reason at all – she is a stranger, you are a stranger – for no reason at all, for no bargain, there was no business... mysteriously the universe managed; something transpired between you. And it was nourishing to both of you. It has made you more mature.
Perhaps tomorrow again some spring breeze may move towards you. But never ask the return of the past. It is not possible, and it is not possible for your good. Keep the future open, available.
Don’t carry any grudges, because those will close the future. If you are angry at one woman, or one man, you are angry at all women and all men – because a woman is nothing but a representative of womanhood, a man is nothing but a representative of manhood. If you start feeling hatred, anger, you are closing the doors and the windows. Now no spring breeze will be able to enter your house.
For the higher level, I am not a teacher. I don’t want to make something of you resembling some of my ideas. I don’t have any idea about you. I don’t carry any image that everybody should fit into.
My whole approach is that each individual is unique, and nobody can predict what you are going to be. Even the master cannot predict what you are going to be, because predictions are possible only about things, not about consciousnesses. Consciousness is unpredictable. What is going to blossom in you can be known only when it blossoms.
So the master can do only one thing: he can remove everything that can stop your blossoming.
Hence the master will look very hard.
The teacher will look very compassionate, because he will be giving you every guideline, he will be taking all responsibility. He will be showing you the path; he will be leading you on the path, and you have just to follow.
The master is not interested in you following him. No, just the contrary; you should not follow him, otherwise you will miss becoming yourself. Then what does he do? In fact, all his functioning is negative. He destroys your crutches, your supports. He makes you vulnerable to all kinds of fears, anxieties, challenges. This is all negative. As far as positivity is concerned, he does nothing. He is just a mirror.
He allows you to come close and see your face in his mirror. He does not want you to imitate and become his face. He wants you to look into him. He has no ideas. That means all the dust from the mirror is gone. His mirror is clean. You can come close and look, and you will find your face. The mirror simply mirrors; it is not a doing, it is not an act.
Certainly my relationship with you is unique. In the first place it is not a relationship, because what relationship can you have with a mirror? You can see your face and be thankful, be grateful – but that is not a relationship. What relationship can the mirror have with you? There is no possibility.
The mirror is simply there. It does not relate in any possible way, it simply exists.
So the relationship is unique because if you go to other religions, the master – who is not really a master in the first place, but they call him the master – the master, the so-called master, will have a thousand and one demands to be fulfilled because he is going to do a great job for you. I’m not doing anything for you, so I cannot demand anything from you. The ’master’ will have conditions to be fulfilled. If you fail to fulfill the conditions, then the condemnation; if you fulfill the conditions, then the praise, the reward.
I cannot condemn you, I cannot reward you – because I don’t have any conditions that you have to fulfill. To be my disciple is your decision. It has nothing to do with me. To accept me as your master is your decision, it has nothing to do with me. I am not seeking converts; I am not a Christian missionary. I am not striving so that people should be converted to my way of thinking, my way of life. No, not at all. Otherwise in these thirty-five years I would have converted millions of people, with no trouble. They were ready to be converted; I was not ready to convert.
It is your decision. Always remember, whatsoever happens here is your decision.
If you are a sannyasin, it is your decision.
If you drop sannyas, it is your decision.
If you take it again, it is your decision.
I leave everything to you.
So it is a unique relationship: it is absolutely onesided; from my side there is no relationship. It has to be absolutely clear: from my side there is no relationship. From your side... and that is continually changing. When you first come, you come as a student. It is a different kind of relationship from your side. Then you just want to learn something. Being near me, slowly you understand that learning is not enough. Some experience is needed. You become a disciple, you become a sannyasin. That is your decision. You simply indicate that you want to come closer to me. What else is sannyas?
Just your declaration that you would love and like to be closer to me. From your side, the student is disappearing and the disciple is appearing. And then the last stage comes, when you feel even experiencing is not enough: being.
Now see the three points. Teaching is a very faraway thing, borrowed: experience – but it is outside you. You are the experiencer, and the experience is there: beautiful, ecstatic, blissful, but you know it is there, an object; inside, but still an object. No, you want to be at the center of your being. Then you come even closer: the disciple disappears into the devotee. Now, the devotee means from your side also the relationship has disappeared. Now you are absolutely happy just to be the way you are. You understand now why there was no relationship from my side. I am enjoying my aloneness, and you start enjoying your aloneness.
So the relationship is not static like father and son, brother and sister; it is not static. It is not like marriage. There is no law that prevents you from dropping sannyas or that forces you to be a sannyasin. Slowly you understand that your relationship also is disappearing. When you were a student there was a very strong relationship with the teacher, with the master. When you are a disciple the relationship is fragile, like a lover. When you are a devotee you have come... arrived.
Now you can blossom in your aloneness.
Gratitude is there; gratefulness is there, thankfulness is there, and infinite gratitude – but no relationship, no demand from your side or from my side. Then it is just as if two candles are burning side by side, so close that their flames become one.
Okay Sheela?

Osho

From Unconciousness to Consciousness,

Ch#18. MARRIAGE – THE COFFIN OF LOVE
pm in Lao Tzu Grove

No Water, No Moon

WHETHER YOU HONOR HIM or whether you dishonor him, cannot make any difference to a sage, to a man of purity. What you think about him is really irrelevant.

WHY IS IT SO RELEVANT TO YOU WHAT OTHERS THINK? Why is the opinion of others so relevant to you? Why do you care so much?

BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE, YOU DEPEND ON THEIR OPINIONS ABOUT YOURSELF. That is your only self-knowledge. If they say you are good, you are good; if they say you are bad, you are bad. You have nothing inside which can say, "Their opinions are their opinions. If I am good, I am good, and whatsoever they say makes no difference. If I am bad, I am bad. The whole world may respect me like a saint, but if I am bad, I know I am bad, and this reputation cannot become a substitute; it is useless. And if I am good, the whole world may say that I am not good -- bad, evil, the very devil incarnate -- but what difference does it make? How does it make any difference?"

ONE WHO KNOWS HIMSELF IS NEVER DISTURBED BY WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT HIM. But one who doesn't know himself -- he is always disturbed, because his whole knowledge consists of your opinions. His whole knowledge is just a file he has gathered on what people think about him. This is not knowledge, not self-knowledge. This is self-ignorance, which you hide, disguise, by others' opinions. Your whole identity, your whole image is made by others. You are bound to remain in constant anxiety because others go on changing their opinions.

OPINIONS ARE LIKE THE CLIMATE: IT IS NEVER THE SAME. In the morning it was cloudy and now the clouds have gone. Now it is sunny, and the next moment it is raining. Opinions are just like clouds, just like the climate. What can you do about it? Look at Richard Nixon. Just a moment before he was everything, and just a moment later -- nothing. The opinion has changed, the people who were for him are against him -- and the same people!

This is the beauty of it: THE SAME PEOPLE WHO WILL PUSH YOU TOWARDS THE THRONE, WILL PULL YOU DOWN. There is a dynamics, an inner law that the people who respect you, deep down also disrespect you. The people who love you, also hate you -- because they are divided; they are not one. So when they help you to reach the throne, one part of them is finished -- the love part. Now what will happen to the hate part? Immediately the hate part starts functioning. So, once a man becomes respectable, the climate is already changing. Once a man has become a president or a prime minister, the voters are already changing. Really the moment they voted, one part finished -- the love part. Now the hate part will come up. So the same people take you to the throne, and the same people bring you down.

ONLY A SAGE REMAINS UNDISTURBED. Why? Because he never pays any attention to what you say. What you say is really rubbish. You don't know anything about yourself, and you say something about Mahavira, Buddha, Christ. You don't know anything about yourself, and you are so confident about Jesus: that he is good or bad. It is rubbish! And a person can pay attention to your rubbish only if he is just like you. A sage is not like you, and this is the difference....

IN MISERY, IN HAPPINESS, THE SAGE REMAINS THE SAME. Respected, insulted, the sage remains the same. In life, in death, the sage remains the same.

OSHO

No Water, No Moon

Ch #3: Is that so?

am in Buddha Hall

The Mahageeta

Religion is nonaggression, nonviolence, freedom from competition. It is not struggle, it is surrender.

Nothing needs to be taken from anyone else. One declares what he has. When we have so much, what need is there to steal from others? Only those who don’t know themselves can steal. They are fighting over bits and pieces when God is enthroned inside. Dying over bits and pieces while the ultimate expanse is present within. The ocean is present, and they crave droplets!

Only those who don’t know themselves can be in politics.
And when I say politics, I don’t mean only those who are in political parties. By politics I mean all those people who are struggling in some way: struggling for money, money politics; struggling for power, power politics; struggling for renunciation, the politics of renunciates.

Among renunciates there is great rivalry that no other renunciate should get ahead. An Olympics goes on among the renunciates, that no mahatma becomes too big. One mahatma will go out to defeat another. If the Olympics are ever hosted by India, there should also be an event for the competition of mahatmas.
But wherever there is competition, there is politics. The basis sutra of politics is, ”What I don’t have, someone else has; I can seize it and make it mine.” But what you take from others, how can it become yours? How will stolen goods become yours? What has been seized will be taken away.

If not today, tomorrow someone else will take it from you. And if no one succeeds in taking it from you, death will surely take it. Only that which you don’t have to take from anyone else is yours. Then even death will not be able take it.

Yours is what you had before you were born, what you will still have after death.

Seek that one.

And to search for that one, Ashtavakra says you don’t need to practice: only be alert, only witness.
Many times you feel you are running unnecessarily, but how to stop? It is not that you haven’t felt it is a meaningless rat-race. You have, but how to stop? And the training for the rat-race is very deep.

You have forgotten how to stop – your legs are in the habit of running, the mind is in the habit of running. Your training is such that you can’t sit. Training for sitting has disappeared.
”A complaint came to my lips but who to tell it to that it won’t be meaningless. Swallowing the pain, I keep moving along, refusing to sit, refusing defeat.”

And people still think it is defeat to just sit. If they sit they think they are defeated. If they sit they think it is escapism, running away! If they just sit the passing thousands will look with condemnation... so people keep moving.

”Complaints that all is useless come often to the mind, but who to tell? Who will understand? Here everyone is like you. No one tells anyone. People go on moving, each hiding his own wound.”

”A complaint came to my lips but who to tell it to that it won’t be meaningless.” If you meet an Ashtavakra or a Buddha it is meaningful to say it. Here who can you tell?

”Swallowing the pain, I keep moving along....” People swallow the pain and move on. ”Refusing to sit, refusing defeat.”
And this becomes the idea of the ego: ”Sitting defeated means... finished, gone under, dead. Keep going, keep doing something or other. Keep trying to accomplish something or other. If not you will be lost.”

And those who just sit attain. Those who stop attain.
God is not attained by running, he is attained by stopping.

Ashtavakra says attain in ultimate ease.
Just sit sometimes. Find some time, only to sit, not doing anything. Zen monks have a meditation technique: Zazen. Zazen means just sitting not doing a thing. It is a very deep method of meditation.

To call it a method is not right, because there is no method, just sit not doing anything. Zen says the same as Ashtavakra is saying: Sit down! Sit for a while and relax. Leave this turmoil for a while.

Leave all ambition a little while. Leave the mind’s running around, leave its rat-race. Simply sit a while, and sink into yourself.

A light will gradually begin spreading inside of you. Perhaps you won’t see it at first. It is like returning home in the bright afternoon sun, at first the house seems dark inside. The eyes are used to the sun. Sit a little while, and the eyes will adjust, and the room becomes lit. Slowly, slowly light comes into the room. It is the same inside. You have been going out, going out for lives, so it seems dark inside. The first time you go in nothing will be visible... nothing but darkness. Don’t freak out. Sit...

let the eyes get adjusted to the inside. The pupils of those eyes have been used to bright sun.
Have you ever thought, in the sun the pupil of the eye becomes small. If you look in a mirror right after being in the sun the pupil will appear very small because so much sunlight cannot be taken in, it is more than enough, so the pupil contracts. Contracting is automatic. Then when you come into the dark the pupil has to expand, the pupil has to enlarge. After sitting in darkness for a while, again look in the mirror and you will find the pupil has become enlarged.

For the third eye it happens exactly the same as with the outer eyes. To look outside the pupil should be small; to look within the pupil should be large. There has been a long and ancient training. To destroy that training no new practice is needed – just go on sitting.

People ask, ”What will we do sitting? Just give us ’ram-ram,’ some mantra to chant, we will repeat it – give us something to do.” People say, ”We want crutches, we want help.” As soon as you practice, bondage starts. Just sit! By sitting I don’t mean sitting down; you can remain standing, you can lay down also. Sitting means don’t do anything, in twenty-four hours just spend some time in non-doing.

Become free of action. Remain empty. Let what is happening happen. The world is flowing by, let it flow. It is moving, let it move. Sounds come, let them come. A train starts out, a plane flies over, there is noise – let it be, you go on sitting. Don’t concentrate – you just sit. Samadhi will gradually start becoming strong inside of you. You will suddenly understand what Ashtavakra means – what it means to be free of practice and rituals.

”Know that which has form is false, and know the formless as unchangeable and everlasting.
Learning this truth it is not possible to be born in the world again.”

Then you are what the Buddha has called anagamin – a person who never returns after death. We come back because of our desires, we come because of our politics; we come back because of desires and hopes. One who dies knowing, ”I am the knower,” doesn’t enter again. He is released from this useless wheel – from coming and going.

”Know that which has form is false, and know the formless as unchangeable and everlasting.
Learning this truth it is not possible to be born in the world again.”
”Know that which has form is false....” Within us what has form is illusory, what has no form is the truth. Look at a whirlpool sometime. What is a whirlpool but waves arising in water? When it becomes calm, where has it gone? There was no whirlpool, it was just a wave in the water, it was just a shape that arose in the water. Likewise, we are just waves of the divine. When the wave is gone, nothing is left behind. Not even ash is left, not a trace remains. It is like writing on water, it disappears as you write – in the same way all that happens in our life are only waves.

”Just as a mirror is the same inside and outside the image reflected in it, God is the same inside and outside this body.” You have seen that when you stand in front of a mirror it makes a reflection.

Does something happen in the mirror? A reflection made means that nothing happens. Move aside and the reflection is gone – the mirror remains just as it was. Your reflection is made by your coming before it; step aside and it is gone. But in the mirror nothing is made and nothing moves aside. The mirror remains in its own nature.

This sutra of Ashtavakra says: stand before a mirror, a reflection is made in the mirror, but is a reflection really made? It seems to be. But don’t be fooled by the reflection. Many are fooled by reflections.

And this sutra says that reflective mirrors are surrounding you; outside, inside, mirrors are reflecting in mirrors, and there is nothing at all. In just the same way God exists inside and outside of this body.

God is within, God is without, God is above, God is below, God is in the west, God is in the east, God is in the south, God is in the north – in every direction that same one. We are small whirlpools, small waves rising in that vast ocean.

Don’t get confused by thinking of yourself as a wave – think of yourself as the ocean. Just this much difference in belie: it is the difference between slavery and freedom. See yourself as a wave and you are bound, see yourself as the ocean and you are liberated.

”Just as the one all-pervading sky is the same inside and outside a pot, the eternal everlasting Brahma is the same in all things.”

”Just as the one all-pervading sky is the same inside and outside a pot....” Consider a pot: it is the same sky inside the pot, the same sky outside. You may smash the pot but the sky is not smashed.

You can make a pot but it doesn’t distort the sky. No matter how the pot is shaped – crooked or round – the sky takes no form. We are all vessels of clay, earthen pots. It is the same outside, the same inside: don’t place too much value on the thin wall of clay. This wall of clay makes you into a vessel – don’t be too tightly identified with it. If you believe you are this wall of clay, you will go on being made into pots of clay, your belief will pull you back here again and again.

No one else brings you into the world. Your fixation that you are a pot brings you back. Once you know that you are the emptiness inside the pot.... Lao Tzu’s statement is meaningful. Lao Tzu says, ”What is the meaning of the sides of the pot? The real meaning is in the emptiness inside the pot.

If you fill it with water, the water fills the space, not the sides. When you make a house, do you call the walls the house? That is not right. The empty space left inside is the house. You live in this, you don’t live in the walls. The walls are only a boundary. In reality we live in the sky. We all exist as digambaras, sky-clad. What difference do the walls make? We remain in the sky, inner or outer.

Today the wall exists, tomorrow it will fall – the sky always exists.
If you mistakenly take the house as the walls, take the pot as layers of clay and take yourself as a body, it will be the same bondage. Just a small mistake in reading the sutra of life and everything goes wrong; a very small mistake....

Once Mulla Nasruddin boarded a bus. Absorbed in thought he took a seat and lit a cigarette.
”It is clearly written that smoking is forbidden on the bus,” the conductor angrily said. ”Didn’t you read it? Don’t you know how to read?”
”I read it but there is so much written in the bus. Which of them should I do?” Nasruddin said. ”Look at this: it says here, ’Always wear Handloom Saris!’”

One need only be a little careful to avoid such mistakes. The body is very close – to read the language of the body is very easy. And the body is so close that its shadow falls on the inner mirror and is reflected. You are in the body, but you are not the body. The body is yours, you are not the body’s. The body is your means, you are the end. Use the body, don’t lose your mastership. Though living in the body, remain beyond the body – like a lotus in the water.

Hari Om Tat Sat.

Osho
The Mahageeta, Vol 1, Ch#5
15 September 1976 am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

The Upanishads

BELOVED OSHO,
ARE THE UPANISHADS AND ZEN THE SAME?

They are not.

The upanishad is a happening between the master and the disciple, Zen is the happening in the disciple himself. The master may help him, may create devices, show the path – but Zen is basically an individual experience. It is not like love. It happens in your aloneness. It is not a relationship.

Upanishad is the greatest relationship. It cannot happen if the master is alone. He may be full, overflowing; but it cannot happen because the receiving end is absent. It cannot happen if the disciple is alone, however open, however available – but available to what? Open to what?

Upanishad is a more human phenomenon than Zen. It is closer to human reality because it is closer to love. It can be understood more easily, because it is very difficult to find a person who has not tasted something of love in some moments. There is some experience which can be used to explain to him what happens when a master and a disciple dissolve into each other.

So the first thing: the upanishad is a totally different phenomenon than Zen.

And the second thing: the experience is the same. The paths are different, but finally – whether you have followed Zen and reached alone to the peak, or you have allowed a master to hold your hand in deep trust and reached the peak – it does not matter how you reach the peak. Your vehicles can be different, your means can be different; the peak is the same. The experience of finding oneself and simultaneously finding the whole secret of existence is the same.

So on the one hand I say they are totally different.
On the other hand, I say they are exactly the same.

And there is no contradiction in these two statements. The paths are different but the ultimate finding is the same.

Zen is an arduous path, a hard and long way. But it is up to you – there are people who love to go the hard way. The simple way does not appeal to them; the hard way is exciting.
Upanishad is not a hard way. It is a very simple and relaxed experience. It is the shortest way possible to the ultimate reality.

But there are different kinds of people in the world; they all need different paths to reach to their fulfillment. These are the two extremes. In this sense, Zen and upanishad are as far away from each other as two points can be; and yet, the final conclusion is always the same. One is a hard way, a long way, but a few people need it.

One mystic in Sri Lanka was dying. He declared that the next morning he would be dying. He had thousands of followers; they all gathered. He was old, almost ninety years, and he had been teaching these people for sixty years. And the Buddhist teaching is a very hard way. But the mystic, at the point of death said, ” I have been teaching you the way I have followed, the way that has helped me to attain to the ultimate. But I now know that there is a shortcut in reaching to the ultimate too – so short that if somebody wants to go with me, stand up! I am leaving.”

People looked at each other, at those about whom they thought, ” These are very religious people, perhaps they may stand up. As far as I am concerned there are so many problems.”
Nobody stood up. Only one man raised his hand.

The old man said, ” Even that is a great consolation to me. But why are you not standing up?”

He said, ” Because I don’t want to go right now, but I want to know here the shortcut is in case at some time I want to go. Why bother with the hard and long way? That’s why I just raised my hand. I cannot stand up. As far as the hard way is concerned, we know – because for sixty years you have been teaching it. And at the last moment.... You are a strange fellow. At least tell us where the short way is!”

The mystic said, ” The short way has a condition: it is only for those who are ready to go right now. I give another chance – stand up!”

Even that man’s hand went down, and there was utter silence. And everybody was looking at each other....

The old man died.

People want the way to be hard and to be long because this is a good excuse for avoiding – because the way is so long and so hard... life is so short and so many problems, so many responsibilities; so much has to be done. The children are growing up, they have to be married, the business is not good – or the business is so good that this is not the moment to meditate.

Upanishad is the shortest possible way. Neither has the disciple to do anything nor has the master to do anything. Doing is not part of it.

I have quoted the great Zen poet Basho many times to you: ”Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.” As far as upanishadic methodology is concerned, even doing nothing is not needed. And what are you going to do even if the grass grows by itself?
Whether you sit silently or not, it will grow. Whether you sit silently or not, the spring will come. You are unnecessarily taking the credit for the grass growing by itself – because you have been sitting silently, doing nothing! Even when you were not, the grass used to grow; when you will not be here the grass will continue to grow. It has nothing to do with you.

The upanishad does not even ask you to sit silently doing nothing.
Even doing nothing is a doing.

The whole approach of the upanishad is so totally different... the disciple is available, the master is overflowing, and something transpires. Nobody is doing it. Nobody can take the credit for it; hence, I say the way of the upanishad is the most mysterious way in the whole human consciousness and its evolution.

Zen is mysterious, but yet it can be understood.

Upanishad is simply mysterious, there is no way of understanding it. You can have it, you can dissolve into it, but there is no question of explanation – only experience.

All over the world there have been mystery schools. In Greece, Pythagoras founded mystery schools. In the religion of the Jews, Baal Shem founded a mystery school called Hassidism. In China there is the mystery school of tao, and when Buddhism reached China a new mystery school, a chain of new mystery schools opened, ch’an. The same mystery school, ch’an, reached Japan with the name ‘zen.’ But the word ‘zen’ or ‘ch’an’, or the Buddhist word ‘jhan’ are all different forms of the Sanskrit word ‘dhyan’.

In India dhyan has been known for centuries – before Gautam Buddha ever meditated, that mystery school was there.
There was the mystery school of tantra. There were the mystery schools of different types of yoga.
I have gone through all these schools not as a scholar – that is not my approach – but as an experiencer. I can say to you: nothing rises higher than the mystery school of upanishads – because it is the shortest. Nobody is expected to do anything, and yet the miracle happens.

Osho

The Osho Upanishad,

Ch#9 - The way of the Upanishads

Question 3
24 August 1986 pm in

Awakened

Projections... [part 2 of 2]

THUS, THE SAGE DOESN'T USE HIS MIND TO LOOK FOR REALITY, OR REALITY TO LOOK FOR HIS MIND, OR HIS MIND TO LOOK FOR HIS MIND, OR REALITY TO LOOK FOR REALITY. HIS MIND DOESN'T GIVE RISE TO REALITY. AND REALITY DOESN'T GIVE RISE TO HIS MIND. AND BECAUSE BOTH HIS MIND AND REALITY ARE STILL, HE'S ALWAYS IN SAMADHI.

This is a beautiful definition of samadhi. When the mind is still and the reality is still -- when you are out of the vicious circle -- all is silence, profound silence.

The word, SAMADHI has to be understood. It means coming to a state of absolute equilibrium, coming to a state of absolute balance. The word comes from Sanskrit. And Sanskrit is one of the languages in the world which has words with profound meaning. Not just dictionary meaning, but with existential meaning. Other languages have only dictionary meanings.

Sanskrit is the only language in the whole world which was created by enlightened people. It is a created language. It has never been a language of the people. There was no time when the whole country was speaking Sanskrit. All other languages of the world have been used by people at some time or other. Many have become dead languages, like Latin or Hebrew or Pali or Prakrit. Many languages which were once living languages, have become dead ones. But Sanskrit has never been a language of the people.

This is a very strange phenomenon. It has been the language of enlightened people, hence every word has two meanings; one, a dictionary meaning for the scholar and one, the existential meaning for those who are in search of truth.

Sanskrit has two words VYADI and SAMADHI. VYADI means "sickness of the soul" and SAMADHI means "health and wholeness of the soul." But these are existential meanings. A man who has not experienced samadhi is spiritually sick. He may be bodily fit, but he is not spiritually fit. It is possible a man may be bodily sick, but he can attain to samadhi. Even at the last moment of your life, you can attain to samadhi. Your spiritual being comes in all its health, wholesomeness. Even if for a single moment you have known samadhi, you have known the greatest secret in existence.

There is no word in any language synonymous to samadhi. Only one word in Japanese comes a little close to it, but it is not synonymous. That word is SATORI. And unfortunately, the Japanese have stopped at satori thinking that it is samadhi.

Satori is only a glimpse of samadhi -- a faraway glimpse. For example, you can see the Himalayan peaks from hundreds of miles away, but to see the peak when sitting on it, is a totally different experience. Satori is only a faraway vision of samadhi; a glimpse, beautiful in itself but not equivalent to samadhi.
Samadhi is your very nature in its absolute clarity, in its absolute purity, in its absolute awareness.

Samadhi is your real home.

And the people who don't know samadhi are wandering without a home. They are homeless people, rootless people and their whole life is nothing but a tragedy. Samadhi gives you roots in existence, and it opens the doors of your home. Samadhi is the ultimate actualization of your potential.

And the way to samadhi is simple. Drop the mind -- go beyond the mind and you will enter into samadhi. Mind is the only barrier and strangely we are continuously educating the mind to become more and more powerful. Our whole educational systems around the world, are nursing the mind -- your enemy, making it stronger, more informative, more knowledgeable.
In a more intelligent world, meditation should become absolutely mandatory in every school, in every college, in every university. And unless a person has some taste of samadhi, he will not be allowed to leave the university. He will not be given the certificates to leave.

And if we can make meditation an intrinsic part of all education systems, then naturally these people are going to be politicians, these people are going to be business men, these people are going to be industrialists, these people are going to be musicians, these people are going to be painters, actors, dancers. But they will all have one thing in common and that will be their experience of meditation. And that will be the common element joining the whole of humanity into one whole.

A man of meditation functions differently. Whatever profession he chooses, it does not matter. He will bring to his profession some quality of sacredness. He may be making shoes, or he may be cleaning the roads, but he will bring to his work some quality, some grace, some beauty, which is not possible without samadhi.
We can fill the whole world with ecstatic people. Just a simple thing has to be accepted .... Whether you are going to be a doctor or an engineer or a scientist, whatever you are going to be, that does not matter. Meditation should be the foundation for every profession, for every dimension of education.

Wars will disappear on their own. You will not have to protest against nuclear weapons. Population will start declining on its own, because a man of meditation functions with awareness. If he sees that the world is overpopulated, he cannot produce children. Nobody has to tell him. Why should he bring his children into a world which is going down every day towards a disaster? Who wants his children to go through a third world war? Who wants his children to die hungry and starving on the streets?
Meditation is the only cure for all sicknesses that man is prone to; a single medicine. And I should remind you that the word meditation and medicine come from the same root. Medicine for the body and meditation for the soul. They both bring health. ...THE SUTRAS SAY,

"NOTHING HAS A NATURE OF ITS OWN."

This is one of the greatest contributions of Gautam Buddha and his disciples like Bodhidharma. NOTHING HAS A NATURE OF ITS OWN.

It means, your consciousness is a pure space. It does not have any attributes. It is utterly empty, yet full -- full of joy, full of light, full of fragrance -- but utterly empty.
There is no self nature which makes people different. The moment you are in samadhi, you will see trees are also in samadhi. The mountains are in samadhi. The stars are in samadhi. The whole existence is in samadhi. Only you had gone astray. You have come back, merged and melted into the wholeness of the universe.
"NOTHING HAS A NATURE OF ITS OWN." ACT. DON'T QUESTION.

Bodhidharma is not a philosopher and he is not interested in any kind of philosophizing. He is a simple man of action. He says, ACT. DON'T QUESTION ...because questions lead nowhere. Every answer will create ten more questions.

And you can go on asking, life after life, and you will not be able to find the answer ...ACT.
WHEN YOU QUESTION, YOU ARE WRONG.

It does not matter what question you are asking. WHEN YOU QUESTION, YOU ARE WRONG. And when you don't question and silently act, samadhi is not far away. Questions come from the mind and whatever answers are given, your mind rejoices in becoming more and more knowledgeable. It becomes more and more powerful. Bodhidharma said, "Please don't ask anything. If you want to know the answer, don't ask the question. Act."
Act, transcend the mind and you will find YOU are the answer. Your very being is the answer.
WHEN YOU ARE DELUDED, THE SIX SENSES AND FIVE SHADES ARE CONSTRUCTS OF SUFFERING AND MORTALITY.

He has great acumen in saying tremendously meaningful things in small sutras. He is saying when you are deluded, when you are in the mind in other words, then the five elements create the world and your six senses.

It is a very strange thing, because it is only just in this century that science has discovered the sixth sense. Otherwise, all old scriptures talk about five senses. It is only Bodhidharma alone, who talks about six senses. And the sixth sense is such, that it is a miracle he came to know about it. It has just been discovered.

It is inside your ear. The ear has always been accepted as one of the five senses, but we didn't know that inside the ear there are two senses. One is the sense of hearing and another is the sense of balance. If you are hit strongly on your ear you will immediately lose balance. When you see a drunkard coming home in the late night, you cannot believe how he manages. He has lost all control and all balance because alcohol affects the sixth sense. Every drug affects the sixth sense and immediately you lose balance.

A drunkard came home late in the night and was trying to open the lock. But his hand was shaking and the lock was shaking; his other hand was shaking and he could not manage to enter the key into the lock. Both were shaking. He said, "My God, what is happening? It must be an earthquake. Everything is shaking."

A policeman watching him from the road felt compassion for him. He was a good man but had fallen into wrong company ...just like you. You are all good men fallen into wrong company. Soon you will be walking like a drunkard. The policeman came to him and said, "Can I help you?" He said, "Yes, it would be very kind of you, if you could hold the house for a moment so that I can put my key into the hole. Just hold the house. There seems to be a great earthquake."
It is very strange because that sixth sense is hidden inside the ear. Hence, nobody has ever talked about it because nobody was ever aware of it. It was only in this century, surgeons became aware that in the ear there is also another sense that keeps your body balanced.
But Bodhidharma says six senses and five shades ARE CONSTRUCTS OF SUFFERING AND MORTALITY. When you are deluded, when you are in the mind, the five elements and the six senses of your body create for you, suffering, death and nothing else.
But: WHEN YOU WAKE UP, that is, when you go beyond the mind, THE SIX SENSES AND FIVE SHADES ARE CONSTRUCTS OF NIRVANA AND IMMORTALITY.

Everything is the same; the same six senses and the same five aggregates -- the elements that constitute the world. Once you are beyond the mind, they create nirvana and immortality.
So Bodhidharma is not against the body and he is not against the world. He is against your sleep. He does not want you to renounce the world. He does not want you to torture the body, because this body and this world will behave absolutely differently. You just have to be awake. So the whole answer is:
Renounce sleeping, renounce the mind which is the citadel of your sleep.
Go into silence, which will release your dormant awareness. And your whole being will become luminous with consciousness.
Then the same body, the same senses and the same world has a totally different significance. It becomes nirvana. It becomes immortality.

SOMEONE WHO SEEKS THE WAY DOESN'T LOOK BEYOND HIMSELF. HE KNOWS THAT THE MIND IS THE WAY. BUT WHEN HE FINDS THE MIND, HE FINDS NOTHING. AND WHEN HE FINDS THE WAY, HE FINDS NOTHING. IF YOU THINK YOU CAN USE THE MIND TO FIND THE WAY, YOU ARE DELUDED. WHEN YOU ARE DELUDED, BUDDHAHOOD EXISTS.

This is a very beautiful statement. It is very rare to come across such a statement. WHEN YOU ARE DELUDED, BUDDHAHOOD EXISTS because WHEN YOU ARE AWARE, IT DOES NOT EXIST.

It is a very strange statement. You would have thought otherwise. You would have thought that when you are deluded, buddhahood does not exist, and when you are aware, it does exist. But Bodhidharma is saying just the opposite. And he is right.
WHEN YOU ARE DELUDED ...when you are wandering in all kinds of illusions in the world, there is a desire in you, deep down. Sometimes you become aware of it; sometimes you forget all about it. The longing to be a buddha, the longing to become aware, the longing for enlightenment ....
Even in the deepest sleep, somewhere in the corner of your darkness, a small longing goes on continuing to be alert -- to be awakened, to be enlightened because nobody can be satisfied with misery, agony, anguish, forever. One wants to get out of it. That's why Bodhidharma says: WHEN YOU ARE DELUDED, BUDDHAHOOD EXISTS. WHEN YOU ARE AWARE, IT DOES NOT EXIST. BECAUSE AWARENESS IS BUDDHAHOOD.

When you are aware, you are a buddha and the longing for buddhahood disappears. And when you are a buddha, you are not aware that you are a buddha. Awareness cannot be aware of itself. Innocence cannot be aware of itself. So the buddhahood exists only for those who are far away from it.

Buddhahood disappears for those who have reached home. A buddha does not know that he is a buddha. Knowledge is always about the other. The mirror can reflect everything in the world except itself. The mirror does not know that he is. ...DON'T HATE LIFE AND DEATH OR LOVE LIFE AND DEATH. KEEP YOUR EVERY THOUGHT FREE OF DELUSION, AND IN LIFE YOU WILL WITNESS THE BEGINNING OF NIRVANA, AND IN DEATH YOU WILL EXPERIENCE THE ASSURANCE OF NO REBIRTH.

It fills me with great surprise that the whole Western sphere has never thought about rebirth. Great philosophers from Plato to Kant, to Feuerbach, to Bertrand Russell, to Jean Paul Sartre -- a great line of immensely intelligent geniuses, but not a single person has ever thought about rebirth. Their whole idea has remained ...just one life. It is too miserly.
Existence is not miserly; it is overflowing with abundance.

Every death is a beginning of a new life, except only rarely, when somebody becomes enlightened. Then his death is the ultimate death. He will not be born again. He will not be engaged in a body again; he will not suffer the agony of another mind again. His consciousness will melt, just like an ice cube melting in the ocean and becoming one with it. He will be all over, but he will not be in any particular place, in a particular form. He will be all over, but formless. He will be the very universe.

Each time a man becomes enlightened, the whole universe gets a little higher in consciousness, because this man's consciousness spreads all over the existence. The more people become enlightened, the more existence will be richer. So it is not only a question of a single person becoming enlightened. In his enlightenment, the whole universe gains immensely. It becomes richer, more beautiful, more joyous, more celebrated.

TO SEE FORM BUT NOT BE CORRUPTED BY FORM OR TO HEAR SOUND BUT NOT BE CORRUPTED BY SOUND IS LIBERATION. EYES THAT ARE NOT ATTACHED TO FORM ARE THE GATES OF ZEN. EARS THAT AREN'T ATTACHED TO SOUND ARE ALSO THE GATES OF ZEN. IN SHORT, THOSE WHO PERCEIVE THE EXISTENCE OF PHENOMENA AND REMAIN UNATTACHED ARE LIBERATED ....
WHEN DELUSIONS ARE ABSENT, THE MIND IS THE LAND OF BUDDHAS. WHEN DELUSIONS ARE PRESENT, THE MIND IS HELL.

I am reminded of a great Zen master. The emperor of Japan had come to see him and he had been wanting to come to see him but the path to his monastery was dangerous, going through wild forests, dangerous mountainous parts. But finally, the emperor decided he had to go. His death was coming near and he couldn't take the risk .... Before death came he must have some understanding that death cannot destroy.

He reached the Zen master who was sitting under a tree. He touched his feet and said, "I have come to ask one question. Is there really a hell or heaven? Because my death is coming close and my only concern is: where am I going; to hell or to heaven?" The master laughed and said, "I have never thought that our emperor is such an idiot."
To say to the emperor, "an idiot" ...! For a split second, the emperor forgot and pulled out his sword, and he was going to cut off the head of the Zen master.
The Zen master laughed and said, "This is the gate of hell."
The emperor stopped, put his sword back in the sheath, and the master said, "You have entered into heaven. Now you can go. Just remember: anger, violence, destructiveness. These are the gates of hell. And the hell is in your mind.

"But understanding, compassion, silence, are the doors of heaven. They are beyond your mind. And I have given you the experience of both. Forgive me that I called you an idiot. I had to. It was just a response to your question, because I am not a thinker and I don't answer the way thinkers answer questions. I am a mystic. I simply create the device so that you can have some taste of the answer. Now get lost."

And the emperor touched his feet with tears of gratitude, because no other answer would have been of much help. It would have remained just a hypothesis. But the man was a tremendously insightful master. He created the situation immediately, just by calling him an idiot. And he showed him both: the doors of hell and the doors of heaven. Your mind is hell. Going beyond your mind is heaven.

Go beyond the mind. That is the essence of the whole teaching of all the awakened ones.
Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.

Osho
Bodhidharma The Greatest Zen Master,

Chapter #11 - Chapter title: Mind is the greatest enemy of man

am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

[part 2 of 2]

Projections

Bodhidharma

WHEN DELUSIONS ARE ABSENT, THE MIND IS THE LAND OF BUDDHAS. WHEN DELUSIONS ARE PRESENT, THE MIND IS HELL.

The understanding of Bodhidharma's teachings will be easier if you understand a few points. First is the hypothesis of reincarnation. All the religions born outside of India believe in only one life. The religions born in India differ on every point, but not on reincarnation. They all insist that you don't have only one life. You have had thousands of lives before and you will go on having lives again and again until you realize your self nature.

Life is only a school and unless you learn enlightenment, you will go on moving into the circle of life and death. This is something very essential.

If there is only one life of seventy years on average, then you don't have much time left for meditation, for exploration of your being -- searching for the path. Seventy years is such a small span that one-third of it is wasted in sleep; one-third of it is wasted in educating you to earn your livelihood. And the remaining one-third, you waste in many ways because you don't know what to do with it.

I have seen people playing cards or chess and I have asked them, "Can't you find anything better to do?" And their answer has consistently been the same ...they are killing time. Such is the unawareness of man.

You don't have much time.
You cannot afford to kill time.
Moreover time is killing you; you cannot kill time. Each moment, time is bringing your death closer and closer.

If you count all your activities .... Shaving your beard twice a day -- how much time you put into it! Listening to the radio or watching the television -- how much time you waste on it. An American survey shows that each American wastes seven and a half hours every day watching television. That is one third of his life he is just sitting, glued to his chair, watching all kinds of nonsense.

How much time do you waste smoking cigarettes, cigars? There are people who are chain smokers .... How much time you waste in reading newspapers which never bring any news! All that they bring is simply sick -- murders, rapes, suicides, wars. They make you believe that this is the world and this is our life. They relieve you from your responsibility. They convince you that the whole world is like this. Nothing is wrong, everybody is doing it ....

They never bring you any news of somebody becoming enlightened. Perhaps that is not news. Somebody is entering deeper realms of meditation -- perhaps that is not news. Somebody has become calm and quiet and gone beyond anger, greed, agony. That is not news!

Once Bernard Shaw was asked, "What is news?" He said, "When a dog bites a man, it is not news. When a man bites a dog, it is news."

How much time you are wasting in reading about how many men are biting dogs! If you count carefully, you will be surprised that you don't have, in your seventy years of life, even seven minutes for yourself. This is such an idiotic situation.

And then because there is only one life, there is great speed. Why has the West become so addicted to speed? The idea of one life given by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, has made people speedy. They are always running -- on the run -- because time is short and there are so many ambitions to be fulfilled. They have to become the richest man, they have to attain great power, they have to become a celebrity. They have to do a thousand and one things and life is so short. The only way is to do everything as quickly as possible.

Most of the housewives in the West don't know what cooking is. The best housewife is the one who knows how to open cans. Everything has to be done quickly and fast. Why bother about cooking?

Nobody is in a state of stillness; they cannot be. That seems to be a waste of time. Sitting silently, doing nothing is the foundation of meditation. In the West, meditation is not possible for the simple reason that one life span is too short. And death comes too quickly. It does not give you enough time.

The Eastern concept takes care of your spiritual growth. The hypothesis of reincarnation, a continuous eternal cycle of birth and re-birth, gives you enough time. You can sit silently for hours; there is no hurry. There is no need to be speedy. There is an eternity available to you -- not only seventy years.

The West is very poor. They have only seventy years for each person. The East may look poor from the outside, but its inner arrangement is very rich. Eternity behind -- eternity ahead.

Secondly, just one life is not enough to make you bored. Seventy years goes so fast that boredom is not possible. But life after life, running after money. Life after life, running after power. Life after life, running after men or women. As you become aware of this long series of the same stupidities -- in which you have succeeded many times, but you have not gained anything ....
Each life you have to begin again from A,B,C. Just visualize millions of lives behind you .... You have loved so many women and you have told every woman, "I will love you forever and forever." And you have told every woman, "You are the most beautiful woman in the world." And you have been saying that for millions of lives to millions of women, to millions of men. It is tiring -- just the very idea.

It brings a certain maturity to you that now it is time to stop being childish. You have been playing these games so long that it is time to grow up; to do something else that you have never done before.

Meditation fits perfectly well in the Eastern vision of life. That is the only thing you have never done before. You have earned money, you have become rich, you have been in politics, you have become ministers and prime ministers and presidents. You have become great celebrities. You have done everything, because in so many lives there was so much opportunity -- so much time.
And once you understand it ...that you are still doing the same things, again and again and again. It is good to commit a mistake once, but to go on committing the same mistake again and again proves your stupidity.

And there is a great and urgent need to do something that you have never done before -- a search for your own self. You have run after everything in the world and it has not led anywhere. All roads in the world go round and round; they never reach any goal. They don't have any goal.
Visualizing this long perspective, one suddenly becomes sick of the whole action; love affairs, fights, anger, greed, jealousy. And one starts thinking for the first time, "Now I should find a new dimension in which I will not be running after anybody; in which I will be coming back home. I have gone too far away in these millions of lives."

This is the foundation of the Eastern wisdom. It creates a great boredom with life, death and the continuous vicious circle. That is the original meaning of the word, SAMSARA; it means the wheel that goes on moving, on and on; it knows no stopping. You can jump out of it, but you are clinging to it.

This is the basic device to bring you to your senses.
You have fooled around enough.
Now stop it, and do something that you have been avoiding for centuries, that you have been postponing for tomorrow.

These are very beautiful sutras. In the East people have never spoken unless they have understood. It is the greatest dishonesty, the greatest crime to speak, either for or against something that you don't know.

In the East, even people who have known -- who have come to the ultimate flowering of their being -- many of them have not spoken because they were not able to find the right words. They were not articulate, hence, they decided to remain silent. It is better to be silent rather than give wrong ideas to people. Only a very few people have spoken. And they have spoken, only when they were absolutely certain that what they were saying may help millions of people down the ages.

The East has never been interested in the daily newspaper. It has been interested in statements which have the quality of eternity, which will remain valid in every age, in every time. As long as man remains on the earth, the validity of these statements will not be challenged.

A newspaper becomes useless by evening. In the West, there are morning editions and afternoon editions because by the afternoon, the morning edition has become useless. Evening editions, because by the evening the afternoon edition has become useless. Night editions, because by the night the evening edition has become useless.

These sutras will remain as fresh and as young as when they were uttered for the first time -- but only for those who can experience what is contained in them.

Otherwise, it is so much prose. Once you experience it, the prose starts turning into poetry. The words start turning into silence. The statements prove to be only devices to give you the feel of an eternal dance of existence.

No Western book, and I have gone through all the philosophers and all the theologians -- it was a tedious journey -- no Western book has anything parallel to the Eastern sutras because they are only mind stuff. The Eastern sutras have a qualitative difference. They have nothing to do with mind. They have something to do with your innermost being and its experiences of blissfulness, ecstasy, the universal joy that pervades this vast existence. Only man is missing it. And man is missing it because of his knowledgeability.

The trees are not missing it because they are innocent. The oceans are not missing it. The mountains are not missing it. The stars are not missing it. They are absolutely innocent, they are not trapped in knowledge.

The first sutra of Bodhidharma says:
"NOT TO LET GO OF WISDOM IS STUPIDITY."

Your so-called wisdom is all borrowed. It is not wisdom at all; instead, being wise, you are otherwise. You go on repeating things that you don't understand; things that have not grown up in your own being, things that are absolutely foreign to your own existence, to your own life. You have been collecting, just like small children, sea shells on the beach and thinking that you are creating a great treasure. Yes it is possible to deceive others, and to deceive yourself.

One of my professors has a doctorate on a strange thesis from the University of London -- very prestigious. His subject matter was the ways of the growth of consciousness. I was his student. He presented his book to me when it was published, and said, "I would love very much to know your opinion."
I said, "I don't have to read the book. I know you."
He said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "I simply know, that you know nothing about any growth of consciousness. So everything that you have written in this book is borrowed. You deceived yourself, you deceived the professors of London University who have examined it, and now you have published the book, millions will read it and be deceived. Rather than presenting the book on consciousness to me, show some consciousness."

He was very much shocked and he knew what I was saying was right. He was a drunkard. Without drinking alcohol every evening, he could not live.

I said, "Just drop this addiction with unconsciousness, because alcohol is doing nothing but creating more unconsciousness. And you have some nerve to write a thesis on the subject matter of consciousness."

But he was a very learned man; he knew many languages. He had collected materials just sitting in the library and he had managed to write a very beautiful thesis. But I said, "I will not read it because it is simply the work of a clerk. Anybody who has a little intelligence could have taken the information from the many sources which are available and collected it. I will read your book, only when you show me, something as a growing consciousness in you."

I returned the book to him. He said, "I am fortunate that you have not been an examiner of my book. Otherwise, I would have never got the doctorate."

I said, "Between you and me, you will never get it. You can befool the world but not yourself."
People go on collecting knowledge and get mixed up and start thinking that this knowledge is wisdom. Knowledge is not wisdom.

Wisdom comes through your growth of consciousness, and knowledge comes through collecting from the scriptures, from learned people, and making some sort of a system. But you remain the same; you don't go through any transformation.

Hence, the first sutra: NOT TO LET GO OF WISDOM IS STUPIDITY. Just drop your wisdom and with your wisdom gone, your stupidity will also be gone. If you cling to your knowledge, which you think is wisdom, you will remain stupid forever.

WHEN THE MIND DOES NOT EXIST UNDERSTANDING AND NOT UNDERSTANDING ARE BOTH TRUE.

The moment the mind is silent, nonfunctioning, everything is true. It is the mind that distorts everything and makes everything untrue. Knowledge comes through the mind, and wisdom comes when there is no-mind. This is a distinction which has not been made by the great philosophers of the world, except by the mystics of the East.

The dictionaries will say wisdom is knowledge, but actual reality and the experience of it, is not a dictionary. It makes a clear-cut distinction that knowledge and wisdom are not only, not synonymous, they are antagonistic. If your mind is full of knowledge you will remain unwise, stupid.

And if your mind is dropped and you go beyond it, you enter into the world of wisdom -- into the world of awakening. In that awakening everything is true. Because you are true, everything is authentic because YOU are authentic.

In the mind you are untrue, you are false. That's why whatever happens through the mind turns into a falsity, a hypocrisy.
Mind is the greatest enemy of man.

WHEN THE MIND EXISTS, UNDERSTANDING AND NOT UNDERSTANDING ARE BOTH FALSE.
WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND, REALITY DEPENDS ON YOU.

This is such a pregnant statement that you should try to feel it, not just to hear it: WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND, REALITY DEPENDS ON YOU. And when do you understand? When the mind is put aside and your being encounters reality directly, without the mediator, mind, then reality depends on you. You have risen higher than reality. You have risen to the ultimate reality. Otherwise reality is relative reality.

WHEN YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU DEPEND ON REALITY.

When you don't understand -- when you are in the mind -- you are a victim of this mundane reality that you see all around. Money deceives you, power deceives you, prestige deceives you, anything ...

You are living in so many misunderstandings that if you come to see, you will be surprised at how articulate you are in creating falsehoods.

Everything that passes through the mind, is almost as if you have taken a straight staff and put it into the water. You will suddenly see the straight staff is no longer straight. It has become bent at the place where it is in the water because water functions differently. You take it out; it is again straight. You put it back into water; it loses its straightness. The same is the situation with mind. Mind has only one capacity -- to falsify things.

Unfortunately we are educated only as minds. And if the world lives in hypocrisy, in misery, in anguish, it is not a wonder. If the world goes on fighting and killing and goes on preparing for a global suicide, it is not a surprise. Mind cannot do anything else. It poisons everything.
The whole message is to get beyond the mind and then everything is crystal clear. Then you don't ask any questions. You simply act out of your clarity, out of your transparent vision. And each of your acts has a beauty -- tremendous beauty of its own. It has a grace. And it has a power of blessings to shower over the whole world.

WHEN REALITY DEPENDS ON YOU, THAT WHICH IS NOT REAL BECOMES REAL.

Right now, it is a weird situation. Everything is real which is not real. And everything that is real, is unreal. Have you ever thought: Is your soul a reality to you? It is not a reality to you. You have only heard about it, but you don't have any experience of it.

But thousands of false things are real. A stone statue in the temple is real to you. Your own consciousness is unreal. Your own buddha nature is unreal. And a statue of marble is real to you. Before the false, you bow down, you worship the false not knowing what you are doing. You are insulting yourself and you are insulting all the buddhas of the past, of the present, of the future.
You are a buddha. You don't have to worship. There is nobody higher than you; there is nobody lower than you. You don't have to worship anybody and you don't have to accept anybody's worship. This whole existence is equally divine.

WHEN YOU DEPEND ON REALITY, THAT WHICH IS REAL BECOMES FALSE. WHEN YOU DEPEND ON REALITY, EVERYTHING IS FALSE.

Everything that you have known up to now, as real ....
I have heard: In a great city, one man had the best palace. People used to come to see it. It was a miracle of architecture. But one night, suddenly, it caught fire. The man had gone to a friend's house. Somebody informed him, "What are you doing? Your palace is burning." He ran; nothing could be more shocking to him. Without his knowing, tears were running from his eyes. His most precious thing, his greatest attachment was being destroyed before his eyes and nothing could be done. The fire had gone too far.

Just then, his youngest son came running to him, telling him, "Father, don't be worried. Yesterday I sold the house. The king was continually saying that it was embarrassing to him that you have a better palace. Finally I decided to sell it -- and he was ready to give any price."

Suddenly the tears dried and the man started smiling. Nothing had changed. The house was burning but it was no longer his. So who cares? So it was not the house that was hurting him, it was the ego, HIS house. And then his younger son came and said, "Father, what are you doing here? Although we had agreed to sell the palace, no sale deed has been written yet. And of course the king is not going to pay the money. I have every suspicion that he is behind the fire."
And again the tears started coming. And the situation was the same; nothing had changed. Only the idea had changed; the house became his, then there was great misery. The house was no longer his, all misery disappeared.

And then the king himself came in his chariot and he said, "You need not be worried. I am a man of my word. If I have purchased it, I have purchased it. No sale deed has been written, no money has been advanced, but because yesterday we agreed verbally, that is enough. It is MY house that is burning. You need not be worried."
And suddenly, instead of tears, the man was smiling.

WHEN REALITY DEPENDS ON YOU, EVERYTHING IS TRUE.
THUS, THE SAGE DOESN'T USE HIS MIND TO LOOK FOR REALITY, OR REALITY TO LOOK FOR HIS MIND, OR HIS MIND TO LOOK FOR HIS MIND, OR REALITY TO LOOK FOR REALITY.

It is a vicious circle: mind and reality, mind and the world. Mind creates a certain world which is nothing but your projection. And then, that certain projection creates your mind. And this way, this vicious circle goes on supporting the other; your mind supports your projections, your projections support your mind. And you go on living in a hallucination.

THE SUTRAS SAY,

"NOT TO LET GO OF WISDOM IS STUPIDITY." WHEN THE MIND DOESN'T EXIST, UNDERSTANDING AND NOT UNDERSTANDING ARE BOTH TRUE. WHEN THE MIND EXISTS, UNDERSTANDING AND NOT UNDERSTANDING ARE BOTH FALSE.

WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND, REALITY DEPENDS ON YOU. WHEN YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, YOU DEPEND ON REALITY.

WHEN REALITY DEPENDS ON YOU, THAT WHICH ISN'T REAL BECOMES REAL. WHEN YOU DEPEND ON REALITY, THAT WHICH IS REAL BECOMES FALSE. WHEN YOU DEPEND ON REALITY, EVERYTHING IS FALSE. WHEN REALITY DEPENDS ON YOU, EVERYTHING IS TRUE ....

THUS, THE SAGE DOESN'T USE HIS MIND TO LOOK FOR REALITY, OR REALITY TO LOOK FOR HIS MIND, OR HIS MIND TO LOOK FOR HIS MIND, OR REALITY TO LOOK FOR REALITY. HIS MIND DOESN'T GIVE RISE TO REALITY. AND REALITY DOESN'T GIVE RISE TO HIS MIND. AND BECAUSE BOTH HIS MIND AND REALITY ARE STILL, HE'S ALWAYS IN SAMADHI. ...THE SUTRAS SAY, "NOTHING HAS A NATURE OF ITS OWN." ACT. DON'T QUESTION. WHEN YOU QUESTION, YOU'RE WRONG. WHEN YOU'RE DELUDED, THE SIX SENSES AND FIVE SHADES ARE CONSTRUCTS OF SUFFERING AND MORTALITY. WHEN YOU WAKE UP, THE SIX SENSES AND FIVE SHADES ARE CONSTRUCTS OF NIRVANA AND IMMORTALITY.

SOMEONE WHO SEEKS THE WAY DOESN'T LOOK BEYOND HIMSELF. HE KNOWS THAT THE MIND IS THE WAY. BUT WHEN HE FINDS THE MIND, HE FINDS NOTHING. AND WHEN HE FINDS THE WAY, HE FINDS NOTHING. IF YOU THINK YOU CAN USE THE MIND TO FIND THE WAY, YOU'RE DELUDED. WHEN YOU'RE DELUDED, BUDDHAHOOD EXISTS. WHEN YOU'RE AWARE, IT DOESN'T EXIST. BECAUSE AWARENESS IS BUDDHAHOOD. ...DON'T HATE LIFE AND DEATH OR LOVE LIFE AND DEATH. KEEP YOUR EVERY THOUGHT FREE OF DELUSION, AND IN LIFE YOU'LL WITNESS THE BEGINNING OF NIRVANA, AND IN DEATH YOU'LL EXPERIENCE THE ASSURANCE OF NO REBIRTH.

TO SEE FORM BUT NOT BE CORRUPTED BY FORM OR TO HEAR SOUND BUT NOT BE CORRUPTED BY SOUND IS LIBERATION. EYES THAT AREN'T ATTACHED TO FORM ARE THE GATES OF ZEN. EARS THAT AREN'T ATTACHED TO SOUND ARE ALSO THE GATES OF ZEN. IN SHORT, THOSE WHO PERCEIVE THE EXISTENCE OF PHENOMENA AND REMAIN UNATTACHED ARE LIBERATED ....

Osho

Bodhidharma The Greatest Zen Master,
Chapter #11 - Chapter title: Mind is the greatest enemy of man
am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
[part 1 of 2]