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]