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