Osho – ZEN IS JUST ZEN. There is nothing comparable to it. It is unique — unique in the sense that it is the most ordinary and yet the most extraordinary phenomenon that has happened to human consciousness. It is the most ordinary because it does not believe in knowledge, it does not believe in mind. It is not a philosophy, not a religion either. It is the acceptance of the ordinary existence with a total heart, with one’s total being, not desiring some other world, supra-mundane, supra-mental. It has no interest in any esoteric nonsense, no interest in metaphysics at all. It does not hanker for the other shore; this shore is more than enough. Its acceptance of this shore is so tremendous that through that very acceptance it transforms this shore — and this very shore becomes the other shore: This very body the buddha; This very earth the lotus paradise.

Hence it is ordinary. It does not want you to create a certain kind of spirituality, a certain kind of holiness. All that it asks is that you live your life with immediacy, spontaneity. And then the mundane becomes the sacred. The great miracle of Zen is in the transformation of the mundane into the sacred. And it is tremendously extraordinary because THIS way life has never been approached before, THIS way life has never been respected before.

Zen goes beyond Buddha and beyond Lao Tzu. It is a culmination, a transcendence, both of the Indian genius and of the Chinese genius. The Indian genius reached its highest peak in Gautam the Buddha and the Chinese genius reached its highest peak in Lao Tzu. And the meeting…the essence of Buddha’s teaching and the essence of Lao Tzu’s teaching merged into one stream so deeply that no separation is possible now. Even to make a distinction between what belongs to Buddha and what to Lao Tzu is impossible, the merger has been so total. It is not only a synthesis, it is an integration. Out of this meeting Zen was born. Zen is neither Buddhist nor Taoist and yet both.

To call Zen “Zen Buddhism” is not right because it is far more. Buddha is not so earthly as Zen is. Lao Tzu is tremendously earthly, but Zen is not only earthly: its vision transforms the earth into heaven. Lao Tzu is earthly, Buddha is unearthly, Zen is both — and in being both it has become the most extraordinary phenomenon.

The future of humanity will go closer and closer to the approach of Zen, because the meeting of the East and West is possible only through something like Zen, which is earthly and yet unearthly. The West is very earthly, the East is very unearthly. Who is going to become the bridge? Buddha cannot be the bridge; he is so essentially Eastern, the very flavor of the East, the very fragrance of the East, uncompromising. Lao Tzu cannot be the bridge; he is too earthly. China has always been very earthly. China is more part of the Western psyche than of the Eastern psyche.

It is not an accident that China is the first country in the East to turn communist, to become materialist, to believe in a godless philosophy, to believe that man is only matter and nothing else. This is not just accidental. China has been earthly for almost five thousand years; it is very Western. Hence Lao Tzu cannot become the bridge; he is more like Zorba the Greek. Buddha is so unearthly you cannot even catch hold of him — how can he become the bridge?

When I look all around, Zen seems to be the only possibility, because in Zen, Buddha and Lao Tzu have become one. The meeting has already happened. The seed is there, the seed of that great bridge which can make East and West one. Zen is going to be the meeting point. It has a great future — a great past and a great future. And the miracle is that Zen is neither interested in the past nor in the future. Its total interest is in the present. Maybe that’s why the miracle is possible, because the past and the future are bridged by the present.

The present is not part of time. Have you ever thought about it? How long is the present? The past has a duration, the future has a duration. What is the duration of the present? How long does it last? Between the past and the future can you measure the present? It is immeasurable; it is almost not. It is not time at all: it is the penetration of eternity into time.

And Zen lives in the present. The whole teaching is: how to be in the present, how to get out of the past which is no more and how not to get involved in the future which is not yet, and just to be rooted, centered, in that which is. The whole approach of Zen is of immediacy, but because of that it can bridge the past and the future. It can bridge many things: it can bridge the past and the future, it can bridge the East and the West, it can bridge body and soul. It can bridge the unbridgeable worlds: this world and that, the mundane and the sacred.

Source – Osho Book “Ah This”

Osho – Everything that we go on doing on the surface will be just like changing a name. Inside you will remain the same. Your persona can never become more than skin deep — your know ledge, your identity in the world is nothing but a persona, a dressing.

Zen says you are wasting your life. Go deep, go beyond your knowledge, go beyond your name and your form, go beyond that identity that the society has given to you. Zen Masters give koans to their disciples to look into their original face — the face that you had before you were born. Now you have a false face; it has been given to you by the society, it is just a formality. And if you think it is you, you are in a very bad shape.

Somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan, somebody is a Buddhist — all these are just superficial things, accidents of birth. You are not a Christian, because Christ has not touched your heart yet. You are a Christian because you were born in a Christian home. You are a Buddhist because it was just an accident of birth, co-incidence. It happened that your father and mother were Buddhist — hence you are a Buddhist. But Buddha has not yet happened to you.

Remember, this is very cheap. Drop Christianity, drop Islam, drop Buddhism, drop that which has been given to you by the society, by birth, by association, by culture, by country. Drop all that so that you can find out who you really are. These things will be taken away by death; death will burn your persona. And then you will come face to face with your being and you will not even be able to recognise it, because you never knew that this was your face. We live very superficial lives.

I have heard. A beggar clutched at the sleeve of a benevolent-looking passerby.
‘Five cents, sir, for a cup of coffee,’ he whined.
The other turned and surveyed him.
‘Why,’ he asked, ‘should I give you money? What brought you to this sad plight?’
‘A terrible catastrophe, sir, ‘ the beggar replied. ‘Two years ago I was a prosperous business man like you, I worked industriously. On my desk was the motto ‘Think Constructively, Act Decisively’. Money poured in and then, and then’…the beggar’s frame shook convulsively…’the cleaning woman burnt my motto!’

Just the burning of the motto!’The cleaning woman burnt my motto!’ — that has made him a beggar. Have you anything more than just a motto? What do you call your name? What do you call your identity? It can be burnt; death will take it away. Death is nothing but a cleaning woman. It will clean it away and you will cry convulsively. Then you will say, ‘Death has killed ME.’

Death has never killed anybody; death has no power to kill; death is the most impotent thing in the world. You make it potent by clinging to the superficial. The power of death is not intrinsic to death, the power of death is given by you. Death is empowered by you because you go on clinging to the superficial. Death can take only the superficial, it cannot enter the depths of your being.

But if you think your clothes are you, your body is you, your mind is you, then you have given power to the hands of death. Death will destroy this and then you will convulsively weep that ‘I have been killed’ and for your whole life you will be afraid of death. Zen says that if you drop knowledge — and within knowledge everything is included, your name, your identity, everything, because this has been given to you by others — if you drop all that has been given by others, you will have a totally different quality to your being — innocence. This will be a crucifixion of the persona, the personality, and there will be a resurrection of your innocence; you will become a child again, reborn.

Hindus call this state DWIJ, twice born. This is a second birth. A man becomes really a Brahmin when he has gone through the cross — the personality burnt and destroyed by death. Or he has renounced it himself voluntarily, then innocence arises and he is reborn. Then he is a Brahmin because then only does he come to know what truth is. But we have decided to follow the short-cut, the way of the belief. We are hoping against hope that somebody else’s eyes will do the work for us.

Source – Osho Book “Dang Dang Doko Dang”

Osho – KNOWLEDGE IS not enough, to rely on it is dangerous. Knowledge is borrowed, it is not knowing. Knowing grows with you, knowing is a growth, an evolution, knowledge is implanted within you from me outside, knowledge is borrowed, it is counterfeit. It looks like knowing, it is not. It deceives, it gives you a feeling that you know you don’t.

On the path of Zen the first thing to be aware of is knowledge: the tradition, the scripture, that which has been handed over to you others. Those eyes are not yours, that light is not yours, and it is better to remain ignorant than to become knowledgeable — because at least ignorance is yours. A least it is authentic, at least it is true, at least it belongs to you Out of the truth of ignorance, knowing can grow, but out of the falsity of knowledge, you will be lost. Nothing can grow out of it. Knowledge is an accumulation of dead facts and information. It has no life in it. It is like stones piled up, one upon another. It can rise to a very great height, but it has no growth because it has no sap of life in it.

A tree is totally different. It so goes higher and higher but it has an organic growth, a sap of life, running through it. It is growing on its own accord. It is rooted in life. It is an alive process. You can keep a plastic tree and it will look just like any other tree: it can be even more green, it can be even more deceptive, more beautiful — but it will be dead. It will not have any roots anywhere, it will not be grounded in existence, it will not be at ease and at home, it will not be an insider. It will be a foreigner, it will be alien..

This is the first thing to understand — then only can you understand the radical attitude of Zen. It is very easy to borrow knowledge. That’s what the schools, the colleges, the universities, are doing. They go on transferring information from one generation to another. They are the via media. And people who collect knowledge from them start feeling that they know. But how can you know if YOU have not known it?

I can talk about love to you, you can listen to me, you can even agree with me, but your agreement is not the point. I may be logical and clever enough to persuade you to agree with me but that will not give you any taste of love. To know love, you will have to fall in love. To know love, you will have to travel the path of love. To know love, you will have to take the dangerous journey.

Knowledge is more of a certainty; knowing is more uncertain. That’s why people choose knowledge. Knowledge is more guaranteed, it has authority, centuries are standing behind it. That’s why every religion tries to prove that it is the oldest religion in the world. Why? Because the older a religion is, the greater the authority it has. Hindus say that the Vedas are the oldest scriptures in the world; — Bibles and Korans and Guru Nankers are just very late arrivals. The Vedas are very, very old. Why so much insistence? Because the older a scripture is, the longer it has stood the test of time, the greater the authority it has gathered around it. Millions of seers are witnesses to it.

Zen says truth has nothing to do with authority, truth has nothing to do with tradition, truth has nothing to do with the past — truth is a radical, personal realisation. You have to come to it.

Knowledge is certain; the search for personal knowing is very, very hazardous. Nobody can guarantee it. If you ask me if I can guarantee you anything, I say I cannot guarantee you anything. I can only guarantee danger, that much is certain. I can only guarantee you a long adventure with every possibility of going astray and never reaching the goal. But one thing is certain: the very search will help you to grow. I can guarantee only growth.

Danger will be there, sacrifice will be there; you will be moving every day into the unknown, into the uncharted, and there will be no map to follow, no guide to follow. Yes, there are millions of dangers and you can go astray and you can get lost, but that is the only way one grows. Insecurity is the only way to grow, to face danger is the only way to grow, to accept the challenge of the unknown is the only way to grow. So I can guarantee only growth.

Knowledge guarantees everything. There will be no danger if you follow the Veda, if you follow the Bible — then you need not worry. Now it is Christ who has to worry about it, and he knows. You have simply to imitate him. And the seers of the Vedas know and Mohammed knows, so there is no need for you to make your own private effort. It has already been known, you simply believe. All that is required from you by ordinary religions is belief.

Zen says belief is counterfeit, borrowed. You have to grow and you have to take the risk. I can guarantee you risk. In the open sky of the truth one searches, with trial and error; many times going astray, and again and again coming back to the right path. That’s the only way. Truth is not cheap; belief is very cheap. Truth is very costly — you will have to pay with your life. Truth requires total sacrifice, nothing less will do.

Zen says that if you are believing scriptures, tradition, others…. It is irrelevant if they are wrong or right, that is not the point. Remember, Zen doesn’t say that the Bible is wrong, Zen doesn’t say that the Veda is wrong — Zen says they are irrelevant. I t has nothing to do with right and wrong. They may be right, they may be wrong, but that is not the point to be considered at all. Through them growth is not possible. Those who have written them were grown-up people, mature. They have asserted something that they have known — but for them that was KNOWING, for you it will be knowledge.

Knowing means that you have seen it with your own eyes; knowledge means you have heard it from others. It is very poor, and one who remains with knowledge remains poor. A pundit, a so-called learned man, is the poorest man in the world. He has only counterfeit money and he goes on counting it.

Source – Osho Book “Dang Dang Doko Dang”

Question – Is Zen against Politics?

Osho – Zen is so much against politics that it never talks about it. It is so much against politics that it cannot even be against it. If you are against it, it will affect you. Then somehow you will remain in some way related to it. To be against is to be related. When you are very much against, you are very, very related. It is a way of relationship — you are related to your enemy too, sometimes even more than you are related to your friend.

Zen is so much against politics that it does not say anything about it, but it is against it. any religion, any religion worth calling a religion, is bound to be against politics because the very phenomenon of religion is non-political.

What is politics? Politics is ambition, politics is ego, politics is aggression, politics is violence, politics is an ego-trip. How can a religious person be political? He can pretend that he is religious but he cannot be religious. And how can a political person be religious? He can pretend that he is religious but he cannot be religious.

These two thugs cannot go together because to be religious one has to drop ambition. And if you drop ambition politics disappears. To be religious one has to drop the ego, and when you drop the ego, politics is dropped. A religious person has to be without any ego whatsoever.

So religion as such is anti-political or non-political. But the religions that you see around you — Hinduism, Mohamedanism, Christianity, Jainism, Buddhist are all political. They are no longer religious. Whenever a religion becomes too organized, whenever religion becomes all establishment, whenever religion has a vested interest in the society, in this particular society, in the STATUS QUO, then it is no longer religion. A Buddha is religious, Buddhism is not religious. Jesus is religious — that’s way he was crucified by the politicians — but Christians are not religious, they are very, very political.

A large political meeting was attended by a small boy trying to sell four young puppy dogs. Finally, a man approached the boy and asked jokingly, ‘Are these political pups, sonny?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, then,’ said the man, ‘I’ll take these two.’

A week later at the same place there was a religious gathering and the same boy showed up to sell the remaining two dogs. A man walked up to him and asked, ‘My little lad, what kind of puppies are these you have?’
‘These are religious pups, sir.’

The first man who purchased the other two dogs happened to overhear this. ‘Say,’ he said, ‘didn’t you tell me that those pups that I bought from you last week were political pups?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the young dog-seller, ‘but these puppies ain’t — they’ve got their eyes open.’

Politics is blind. It is a blind trip of the ego. One goes on groping to find some source of power so that one can feel, ‘I am somebody.’ Politics comes out of an inferiority complex. Deep down you feel that you are nobody, deep down you are afraid of your nothingness. You cannot accept it. You have to deny it. Politics is a denial of your inner nothingness, religion is rejoicing in it.

Let me repeat it. Politics is an effort to deny your inner nothingness. Of course, you can never succeed in it because that inner nothingness is your very nature, it cannot be denied. Your interpretation is wrong. That inner nothingness has nothing to do with inferiority complex, it is your interpretation that creates the inferiority complex. And out of the inferiority complex you start to become superior — you become a prime minister, you become a president or something. This inner nothingness drives you somewhere — it may be to money, it may to power, it may be prestige, it may be knowledge, it may even be to renunciation — but this inner nothingness drives you to find some way to forget that you are nothing, to start feeling that you are somebody, that you are something important, valuable, significant, that without you the world with be at a loss.

This inner nothingness is a driving force towards politics, but nobody can succeed in denying it. You can manage to postpone it but again and again it will assert itself, again and again it with be there sitting on the throne, again and again when you think you have arrived you will know, deep down, whenever you look inside, that you have not arrived.

The inner nothingness is untouched by whatsoever you have done, by whatsoever you have accumulated, by whatsoever you have achieved — it remains untouched, that emptiness is still there. That’s the misery of the successful man. Nothing fails like success. Failure is never such a failure as success is a failure because the person who has failed can still hope. In failure the hope that you may succeed some day is still there, but in success all hope disappears.

I have heard about President Coolidge, one of the great American presidents. When his term was over he declined to stand again for the presidency although there was every possibility that he would be chosen again. He was very much loved — he was such a silent man.

So people started approaching him and asking, ‘Why? Why are you not standing again? It is almost certain you will be chosen.’ But he would say no. And he would say no with very deep, sad eyes. Finally somebody forced him to answer exactly why he went on saying no. He said, ‘Because I have come to know that there is nothing in it and to repeat it a second time will be stupid. I have come to know that nothing is gained by gaining such things. I remain the same person.’

How can a chair change you? You can sit on a golden chair or you can sit on a very, very ordinary stool, it doesn’t make any difference — you remain the same. How can the chair change you? How can the change of the chair change you? But this is the was the politician goes on be fooling himself.

No. A religious person cannot be politician. A religious person, by his very religiousness, is non-political. He approaches life in a totally different way. What is the difference? What is the radical differences The radical difference is that the religious man does not interpret his nothingness as inferiority. That is the revolution. The day it happens that your inner nothingness is not inferiority, that your nothing is your very being…. It is the way God is in you. God’s way of being present is being absent — that’s how God is present in the world. He is so non-violent that he remains absent.

Deep inside you the hole that you feel, the dark hole, is not dark. It is luminous with light. Enter into it. And it is not nothing, it is the very secret of the whole life, the whole existence. It is all. That nothingness is just the way God appears to those people who don’t look deeply. It is a misunderstanding.

The religious man befriends his nothingness. That’s what meditation is all about: befriending your nothingness. He enjoys it. He celebrates it. He dances it. He sings it. He goes again and again into it. Whenever he has a chance, whenever he has the opportunity, he closes his eyes, he drops into his nothingness, he disappears there. What is the very door of God. From there you connect yourself to the divine.

Once you have started enjoying your nothingness, who bothers about politics? Nixon was out walking along the beach at San Clemente and decided to go for a swim. He got out beyond the waves and suddenly began drowning. Three teenage boys happened to come along, dived into the ocean, and pulled Nixon ashore. When he had regained his breath, Nixon thanked the boys. ‘In appreciation,’ he said, ‘I’d be willing to use my influence to help you boys in any way I could. Is there anything special you want?

‘I’d like to go to West Point!’ said one boy.
‘I believe I can arrange that,’ said the ex-President.
‘I’d like to go to Annapolis!’ said another boy.
‘I’ll see to it immediately,’ said Nixon.
‘I’d like to be buried in Arlington Cemetery,’ Announced the third boy.
‘That’s a very strange request,’ said Mr. Nixon. ‘Why would you want to be buried in Arlington Cemetery?’
‘Well,’ said the youngster, ‘my father is a religious man and when I get home and tell him who I saved from drowning, he’s gonna kill me!’

Remember, the politician is always there. Till the ego is completely thrown away it is always there. The ego is the politician. If you are egoistic, you are political. You may not stand in an election, you may not strive for any political power, but if you have the ego you will remain political in subtle ways. You may dominate your wife or your husband, you may dominate your children, you may dominate your servants. You will remain cunning and you will never miss any opportunity to dominate.

So when I use the word ‘political’ I don’t just mean state affairs, no, I mean all affairs where domination is involved. If you want to have more money you are political because if you want to have more money you will have to exploit people. If you want to have more power you will have to fight. If you want more prestige you will have to be competitive. Your so-called saints are all political. They have their ambitions. Each saint wants to become the greatest saint — then he is political, then he will have to fight with other saints who are competitors.

A religious person is non-competitive and that’s why I insist again and again — I am never tired of this insistence — on you being meditative, because meditation is the only joy which is non-competitive, the only joy that you attain but nobody loses because you attain. Nobody is a loser.

If you have more money somebody will have less money; if you have more power somebody will have less power; if Morarji becomes the prime minister, Indira is no longer a prime minister. Somebody loses. Somebody’s gain is going to be somebody else’s loss.

But a religious person will not like to do anything in which somebody becomes a loser. This is violent, this is ugly, this is inhuman. Then what is left for the religious person? He can celebrate his being. He can meditate. In meditation you gain and nobody loses. Only God is infinite, everything else is finite. Money is finite, power is finite… if you have it somebody will not have it. Only God is infinite. You can have as much as you like. You can have the whole of it and yet nobody is a loser. That’s the beauty of religion — it is non-violent joy, it is non-competitive joy.

A panhandler stopped a congressman on a Washington street and asked him for a dime.
‘A dime won’t buy anything these days,’ said the politician. ‘Don’t you want a quarter?’
‘No,’ replied the panhandler, ‘with all the shady politicians around here I’m afraid to carry too much cash.’
He is right.

And this is one from the twentieth century, somewhere in the twentieth century….

The anchorman on an educational TV late night news program me surprised his viewers with this announcement: ‘We have good news and bad news for you. First the bad news: our planet is being invaded by Martians. And now for the good news: they eat politicians and pee gasoline.’

Source – Osho Book “Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 1″

Osho – Zen people have always liked the bamboo. The bamboo is their symbol. And the reason? It is green all the year. In every season it is green — come rain, come summer, come winter, it is green. Nothing changes it. It lives a kind of eternity. Its greenness means its freshness, its youth, its radiance, its aliveness. To does not gather dead weight.

Secondly, it has very full roots in the ground, it is very grounded. That too is a very, very significant point to remember. A man needs to be very grounded. We are on the earth and we are of the earth and we are made of the earth. We need to be tremendously grounded. Very few people are really grounded; they have become like trees which are up-rooted. And, particularly, your so-called religions make you very up-rooted. You start living in the heaven, in the high sky, and you forget the earth. In fact, not only do you forget, you have been taught to be against it. You condemn it. How can you get grounded if you condemn the earth?

Zen is very grounded in the world. Is is not against the world, it is beyond the world — remember it. It does not teach you any anti-worldly religion, it teaches you a very worldly religion and yet a very unworldly one. It says: be in the world but don’t be of the world. It does not say to you: renounce the world.

That’s my standpoint too, hence nay love for Zen. We pulsate on the same wavelength. The bamboo is very grounded. It goes high into the sky. Impossibly high it goes. A bamboo is a thin tree but it defeats many trees. It goes very high. It moves int he winds with no fear because it is grounded int he earth. It sings a thousand and one songs in the sky but it is not against the earth. It has wings but it has roots too.

And the third thing which is very, very significant is: it is empty inside. And that’s how man should be. Grounded, every green, young, fresh, alive, living, pulsating, streaming with energy, dancing, celebrating, and yet empty inside — just empty like a bamboo.

Source – Osho Book “Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 1″

Osho – Ordinarily we think people who know answers are wise. They may be learned but they are not wise. They may be very well informed, but information has nothing to do with wisdom. People who are really wise, in fact, have no answers. They have a quest, an enquiry, a tremendous enquiry in them, but no answers. By and by they come to understand that all questions are meaningless, so they drop questions also. A man becomes perfectly wise when he has no answers and no questions.

Ordinarily, if you have many answers you will be thought wise. But religiously, in the Zen way, if you don’t have any answers and no questions…. Questions exist in the mind and then mind tries to find out answers, then through answers mind creates more questions, and so on and so forth it goes. It is an endless chain, it goes on ad nauseam.

Once you understand this — that this whole game is a mind game — you simply drop it. You don’t hesitate in dropping it, you don’t postpone it for tomorrow — ‘I will drop it tomorrow’ — you drop it right now. You say, ‘This is just foolish.’

Then, of course, when you drop your foolishness, you will look a fool to the world. If somebody asks you, ‘Who are you?’ and you say, ‘I don’t know,’ will you look wise? He will think either you are a fool or a madman.’You don’t know? You don’t know your name? You don’t know who you are? You don’t know your identity?’ The man will become suspicious of you, he will report to the police immediately that here is a man who seems to be suspect, who could be dangerous. But if you say, ‘Yes, my name is this. My address is this,’ then everything is settled.

Socrates said in his last days, ‘When I was young I knew many things, and I used to think of myself as the wisest man in the world. The more I grew, the more I became aware that I didn’t know much. And then the last thing happened — one day I suddenly realised that I knew nothing.’

It is said that the oracle at Delphi declared that Socrates was the wisest man in the world. People who had heard the oracle came to Socrates and told him that the oracle has declared that he was the wisest man in the world. Socrates looked shocked and he said, ‘There must have been some mistake, because just today I have realised that I don’t know anything at all. I am the most ignorant man in the world! You please go and correct the oracle.’ And they went and they told the oracle that Socrates himself says that he is the most ignorant man in the world. The oracle said, ‘That’s why I have declared him the wisest.’

The more open you become, the more innocent, the more childlike you become, the more the winds of existence start flowing in and out of you. The more you are knowing and have the gesture of knowledge, the more you are closed. Then you don’t allow the winds of existence to enter you, then you are always distrustful, you don’t trust life. A fool is one who goes on trusting; a fool is one who goes on trusting against all his experience. You deceive him, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you. Then you will say that he is a fool, he does not learn. His trust is tremendous; his trust is so pure that nobody can corrupt it.

Be a fool in the Taoist sense, in the Zen sense. Don’t try to create a wall of knowledge around you. Whatsoever experience comes to you, let it happen, and then go on dropping it. Go on cleaning your mind continuously; go on dying to the past so you remain in the present, here-now, as if just born, just a babe. In the beginning it is going to be very difficult. The world will start taking advantage of you… let them. They are poor fellows. Even if you are cheated and deceived and robbed, let it happen because that which is really yours cannot be robbed from you, that which is really yours nobody can steal from you. And each time you don’t allow situations to corrupt you, that opportunity will become an integration inside. Your soul will become more crystallised.

Source – Osho Book “Dang Dang Doko Dang”

Osho - Truth is all around, but your interpretations are YOUR interpretations. God is speaking all the time, but you hear not, or even if you hear, you hear something else. You hear according to you, your mind comes in, and hence you go on missing.  Unless the mind is dropped you will not be able to know what truth is. Truth cannot be discovered by mind; mind is the barrier. It is because of the mind that you have not been able to discover it. It is not a question of how to train the mind to know the truth. The more the mind is trained and becomes capable, the less is the possibility to know the truth. The more skilled a mind, the farther away you are from the truth.

Mind is the barrier. No-mind is the door. How to attain to no-mind? The only way — the ONLY way — is to be in the present. The only way is not to think of the past, not to think of the future. And you cannot think of the present. That is the whole secret: you cannot think of the present; there is not space enough for thought to move. Thought needs room to move. Can you think anything right now? If you
think it, either it will be of the past or of the future.

This moment of silence. If you think, “Yes, this is a moment of silence,” it is already past. Or you say, “How beautiful!” It is already past. Utter a word “beautiful,” and it is already past. You cannot think. Thinking stops when you are in the present. So that is the only key, and it is a master key; it unlocks all the doors of being. Immediacy, that is the whole insistence of Zen.

If you go to a Zen Master and you ask something, it is unpredictable what he will do to you. He may hit you. Or he may not hit you; he may hit himself! Or he may say something absurd, totally irrelevant to what you have asked. Somebody asks, “How to attain Buddhahood?” and the Master says, “The cypress tree in the courtyard.” Now what? How are they related? They are not, but the Master is indicating, “Please, drop all this nonsense. Look at this — THIS — cypress tree in the courtyard. What nonsense are you talking about? – Buddha, and how to become a Buddha. You are talking about the past and the future. You have heard about Buddha in the past, so you have a greed, a desire. Now you want to become a Buddha in the future, so you have come to me. All nonsense.” He simply gives something immediate; he says, “Look! The cypress tree in the courtyard.” It is not relevant if you think in terms of the mind. If you think in terms of no-mind it is the only thing relevant.

A man comes to a Zen Master and asks, “What is the way?” And the Master says, “Listen,” and everything becomes silent, and just by the side of the Master’s hut flows a fountain, and the water is making the sound, the murmur. The sound of the water, the sound of the running water. For a moment everything is silent, the seeker, the questioner, is also. The Master says, ”Listen. Hear. This is the way.” The sound of the running water? That’s all he has heard. And the Master says, “Hear! This is the way to become a Buddha, to attain to enlightenment.” He is bringing the mind to an immediacy, to a state of immediacy.

What is he saying? He is not saying anything about the sound of the running water. In that moment, when suddenly the Master shocked the inquirer — because he was asking about the way to attain to nirvana, and the Master says, “Listen”, it is so out of context, it is so unrelated to his question, that for a moment, out of the shock of it, the sheer shock of it, everything becomes silent. And when the Master says, “Hear. This is the way.” He is not saying anything about the running water or its sound. He is indicating the silent moment that has penetrated into the consciousness of the inquirer. He says, “Hear. This is the way.” If you become immediate you attain. If you live moment to moment you attain.

Source – Osho Book “The First Principle”

Osho – Man ordinarily lives in these three states, sometimes waking, sometimes dreaming, sometimes fast asleep; this is the wheel man moves in. And because of these three states of mind many things have arisen into human consciousness and in human culture, civilization.

The first kind of consciousness, waking, creates its own culture, its own civilization; the West represents it. The second kind of culture is created by the second kind of consciousness, dreaming; the East represents it. That’s why you find it very difficult to communicate; the Western mind finds it almost impossible to communicate with the Eastern mind. It is not only a question of language – language you may understand – the question is of the orientation.

The waking consciousness is objective: it thinks of the object, of the reality there outside; it is a kind of concentration. TheWestern mind has evolved powers of concentration hence the birth of science; out of the powers of concentration, science is born. The East could not give birth to science, and the reason is that the East has not paid much attention to the first kind of consciousness.

The East thinks in terms of dreams. The East thinks in terms of the inner. The East thinks in terms of the subjective. The East thinks with closed eyes; the West thinks with open eyes. The West concentrates; the Eastern mind meditates, that’s why in the East you will find visionaries, poets – people who have experienced great revelations inside. But they cannot prove it; the experiences remain individual, private.

The Western emphasis is on the objective, the public: when you are wakeful, whatsoever you see others can also see. You are seeing me here, everybody can see me – one who has eyes can see – there is no need for any proof. The sun rises, and you know: the proof exists in the very experience. And everybody is experiencing it – there can be a collective consensus about it. But when I say I have seen the sun rise in the evening it is no more a collective experience; it is no more objective, it becomes subjective.

In the East you will find people who have experienced kundalini rising in them, great light exploding as if thousands and thousands of suns have suddenly risen on the horizon; you will find people who have seen lotuses blooming inside – and to the Western mind it looks all nonsense. The Western mind has developed technology, science – objectivity. It lives in the first, the waking, state; the visionary is rejected. In the West the visionary is a marginal phenomenon, he exists on the outskirts of civilization. He is at most tolerated; he is harmless, he can be tolerated. But he has no roots in the culture at large, he is not the main current. In the East the scientist lives in the same way – on the margin; he is not the main current. He can be tolerated, he can be used, but the respect goes to the visionary, to the dreamer, to the poet who dreams great dreams.

These are the two ordinary states; the third state happens to both, but you cannot catch hold of it, the mind dissolves. In SUSHUPTI, in dreamless sleep, you disappear as an ego, and you disappear so utterly that you cannot even remember in the morning what happened. You can remember your dreams, you cannot remember your dreamless sleep, at most it can be remembered as gaps. You can say ’I slept so deeply that there were not even dreams.’ But that is guess-work; there is no direct experience of SUSHUPTI.

No culture has evolved out of SUSHUPTI because there is no possibility to catch hold of it directly. But that is the deepest ordinary state of mind. It is out of SUSHUPTI, dreamless sleep, that you get rejuvenated every day. You go to the source, you move to the source, you are again in contact with the primal consciousness, you are again in contact with your ground. You are no more human, you are no more Hindu, no more Christian, you are no more a man or a woman, black or white, you are no more Eastern, Western; all disappears – all distinctions. You are, but there is no identity, that’s why out of dreamless sleep great peace is felt.

If you move into deeper meditation, you will come to the third state where one can become aware of dreamless sleep too. And many have stopped there; because it is so blissful, many religions have stopped there, they don’t go beyond it.

There is a fourth state also, and unless you reach to the fourth, go on remembering that the third is very alluring, the third is very beautiful, very blissful, but still you have not arrived home. The fourth is the home; the Eastern mystics have called it TURIYA, turiya means the fourth.

Waking is objective, outer; it is a kind of concentration. Dreaming is between the outer and the inner, a link between waking and deep sleep, and deep sleep is the inner. Then what is the fourth, the turiya? It is both and neither. It is both inner and outer, and because it is both, that’s why it is neither.

It transcends both, it is non-dual, it is total. Now nothing is outer, nothing is inner. Objects disappear and, simultaneously, the subject tOo; there is no experience and no experiencer. This fourth state is called SAMADHI, SATORI. And the beauty of the fourth is that you can live in the world and yet be not of it.

Zen believes in the fourth. Those who believe in the third have to leave the world, they have to go to the Himalayan caves. Only there is it possible that they can fall into continuous deep dreamless sleep. It is falling into a beautiful coma. Its spiritual worth is nothing, although there is no misery, no anxiety, because the mind is put aside. But it is a state of coma, it is escapist. And the man has not known yet what the truth is. He has chosen one thing: escaping. The Western mind moves deeper and deeper into the world, into activity, and the Eastern mind moves out of activity, more and more out of the world.

Now, here both kinds of people have gathered. When the Western mind comes to me he always asks how to relate with people – that is his basic question – how to be more loving, caring, how to grow deeper into relationship. No Indian, no Easterner, ever asks this – that is not his question at all, his question is how to get out of relationship, how to forget all this misery – birth and death, and reincarnation, and the whole wheel – how to stop it, how to jump out of it. You can watch it, it is very apparent. The Western mind is clear-cut, logical, rational, mathematical, alert. The Eastern mind is dreaming and, according to Western standards, lousy, sloppy, messy, because in a dream you cannot be very clearcut, otherwise the dream will disappear. To the Eastern mind the Western mind is worldly, calculating, cunning, clever.

The third kind has happened both in the East and the West very rarely. In the West monasteries have existed, and people have renounced the world and moved – in the East too. One who becomes interested in dreamless sleep… And it is greatly satisfying – no doubt about it, there is great pleasure in it, it is very tranquil, undisturbed, but it is a kind of death, not life. And there is fear that it can be disturbed – any small thing can disturb it – a small thought can move, and all is lost. A small dream is enough to destroy it.

Zen people have worked for the fourth. The fourth means: live in the world like a lotus leaf in water, be awake and yet remain centred. So all that is needed to be done, be in the cyclone and yet remain in the centre of it, unaffected by it. Naturally, the Zen man creates the most alive, living, streaming, pulsating life. The Zen man creates action in inaction, or inaction through action. Polarities meet and merge, and wherever polarities meet and merge there is God.

The fourth is the primal state, the very basic and fundamental state out of which these three have arisen. These three are branches, the fourth is the root. The sutras of today you will be able to understand only if you understand this approach, the approach through the fourth, through totality. One has not to escape, one has to go into the deepest world but is not to be lost there. One has to remain conscious, one has to remain alert, and one has to go deep into the world. The meeting of the extremes will bring you the richest crop of life.

It happened… Vivekananda once told his Master, Ramakrishna, that his highest spiritual aspiration was to remain immersed for days on end in NIRVIKALPA SAMADHI, the disappearance of all forms into absolute Godhead. He sincerely longed for what he then considered to be the ultimate spiritual experience.

But Ramakrishna, who had once spent six months in unbroken NIRVIKALPA, his body kept alive only by force feeding, relied ’You are a fool. There is a realization higher than NIRVIKALPA SAMADHI.’ Vivekananda was at that time dedicated to the third dimension of contemplation, and Ramakrishna was attempting to turn him toward the fourth dimension, or TURIYA.

NIRVIKALPA SAMADHI IS a state of deep sleep. All has disappeared; it is absent, it is negative. The cup is empty, utterly empty; ready to be filled, but not yet filled. The empty cup is not the goal – cannot be the goal; emptying is only the method so that one day the cup can be filled with the presence of God. But God exists as the world – there is no other God. God has appeared as the world; God is not somewhere else. The world is God manifest. One has to empty oneself to prepare, but one has to remain in close contact with the world otherwise one becomes disconnected.

This is my approach to sannyas too. That’s why I don’t say leave the world, I say live in the world, accept the challenge of it because behind it, behind the screen of it, is God himself. If you accept the challenge and if you live the challenge totally, you will find that all that is needed is here. It has to be discovered. Become more and more alert and conscious.

So don’t get too much into the objects – don’t become a Westerner, and don’t get too much into the dreams – don’t become an Easterner. Don’t get too obsessed with kundalini and experiences like that because those are all mind things. Remain alert while moving with people, while moving in the world, remain alert while moving in dreams. And there are beautiful dreams too, spiritual dreams too – remain alert, don’t get distracted by them. And when you are able to be alert in the objective world and then alert in the dreaming world, slowly slowly you will become alert in the dreamless deep sleep too. And then you are at the gate of the fourth. And when you enter the fourth, you are back into the world; the circle is complete. But now you are the centre of the cyclone.

Source – Osho Book “The Sun Rises in the Evening”

Osho – I am taking away from you all that can create boredom in you. My whole effort is to give you again a natural life — wild, adventurous, dangerous; then boredom cannot exist. The new man will live dangerously. He will live like wild animals, not like tamed animals in a zoo. He will live like trees in a forest, not as trees in a British garden. Even the garden in Britain is boring.

My people have to learn to live like a Zen garden, where nothing is symmetrical, where trees are allowed to grow the way they like. The gardeners are not continually after them, pruning them, giving them a shape.

One beautiful Zen story is that a king sent his prince, who was going to be the next king, to learn gardening with a Zen master. It took three years, and whatever the prince learned… in the garden of the palace, he had one thousand gardeners; he told them how to do all that he had learned to create a garden. After three years the master would come,
and if he was satisfied the prince would pass the examination; otherwise, again another three years.

The master came. It was a beautiful garden — one thousand gardeners were working in it. But the prince was becoming afraid because there was no smile on the master’s face, and finally the master said, “Everything is right, but you will have to come back for three more years.”
The prince said, “What is wrong? You say, `Everything is right,’ then why have I to come back?”

The master went out of the garden, brought thousands of dead leaves which the gardeners had thrown out… the whole night they had been cleaning the garden of all the old dead leaves, so when the master came there would be nothing to object to. And the master brought the leaves and threw them on the garden path. The wind started playing with those dead leaves, and there was a certain music of the wind playing with the dead leaves, and the dead leaves moving all over the path.

The master said, “Now everything is okay. Without the leaves the garden was looking too man-made; now it looks natural. But as far as you are concerned, you will need three more years, because you have not learned the basic lesson that the garden should not be man-made. Man should help the trees to grow in their own way, in their own individuality.”

A Zen garden is a beauty which no other garden in the world can be compared with… suddenly a pond, suddenly old rocks, trees growing in their own way; it is more a forest than a garden. The forest has something of godliness, the garden is too sophisticated. You cannot be bored in a Zen garden; you can be bored in the garden which Europe has
invented, that is man-manufactured.

A man also should be a little raw, a little wild, ready to live in insecurity, ready to risk, ready to go on the untrodden paths, always ready to take the challenge of the dangerous. Then life is every moment an ecstasy, and boredom disappears.

Source – Osho Book “The Golden Future”

Question – For zen it is: “eat when you are hungry and drink when you are thirsty.” For Patanjali it is: “regularity — niyam.” How to reconcile spontaneity and regularity?

Osho – There is no need to synthesize. If you are really spontaneous you will become regular. If you are really regular you will become spontaneous. There is no need to reconcile. If you try to reconcile you will become a mess, so choose one and forget about the other. If you choose Zen forget about Patanjali as if he never existed; then he is not for you. And one day you will suddenly see that the regularity has come following spontaneity.

How it happens? If you are spontaneous, if you ea( when you feel hungry — and if you only eat when you feel hungry and you never eat against your desire, you never eat more than your desire, you always follow your need — by and by you will settle to a regularity, because the body is a mechanism, a very, very beautiful biomechanism. Then every day at the same time you will find you are hungry again; every day at the same time you will find you are sleepy again. Life will become regular.

But if you are afraid of spontaneity…. As people are afraid. because culture, civilization, religion — all the poisoners of the world — they have poisoned your mind and they have made you afraid of spontaneity; they say you are hiding an animal within you and if you are spontaneous you may go astray. If you are too afraid of spontaneity, then listen to Patanjali.

Patanjali is always a second choice to me, never the first. It is for ill people, corrupted by culture, unnatural, poisoned by civilization and religion, destroyed by priests and preachers. Then Patanjali. Patanjali is a therapy. That’s why I say Patanjali is useful for ninety-nine percent of the people, because ninety-nine percent of the people are ill. This earth is a great hospital. Patanjali is a physician, a scientist.

Zen is for natural people, uncorrupted, for innocent children. If there is going to come some day a beautiful world, Patanjali will be forgotten; Zen will remain. If the world is going to be becoming more and more in, Zen will be forgotten; only Patanjali will be there. Zen says be natural. Do you watch nature? Have you seen nature’s spontaneity and regularity both? Rains come, summer comes, winter comes — they follow in a regular pattern.

And if you see some disturbance it is because of you, because man has disturbed the climate, man has disturbed the ecology. Otherwise nature was so predictable — and so spontaneous — you could always see when the spring has come. You could have heard the first steps of spring all over: in the songs of the birds, in the trees, the happiness that spreads. It was absolutely certain, regular, but now everything is disturbed. That is not because of nature.

Man has not only poisoned man, man has started to poison nature also. Now everything is irregular: you don’t know when the rains are coming, you don’t know whether it is going to rain less or more this year, you don’t know how hot this summer is going to be. Nature’s regularity is disturbed by you, because you have broken the circle. Otherwise nature is absolutely spontaneous — and the nature does not need any Patanjali. Now it will need. Now, to set the ecology right, a Patanjali is needed.

So you have to choose. If you choose Zen forget Patanjali; otherwise you will be very much confused. And I tell you that Patanjali will come automatically — you need not worry. But if you feel that you are very ill and you cannot trust in yourself and you cannot be spontaneous, forget about Zen; it is not for you. It is just like there exists a book of exercises for a healthy man. hmm?… who is going to take part in a world olympic: you can read it if you like. but don’t try it — you will be in danger. You are Lying in the hospital; you don’t ask how to reconcile this book and your situation. You don’t ask. You listen to the physician: you follow. Someday when you are healthy, back to your natural spontaneous being, you may use This book, but right now it is not for you.

Patanjali is for unhealthy people, but almost everybody is unhealthy. Zen is for very natural people. You have to decide about yourself. Nobody else can decide it for you; you have to feel your own energy. But remember, you are not to reconcile — never do that. Choose one, the other follows. If you feel you are ill, already corrupted, you cannot be spontaneous; try to be regular. Regularity will bring you, by and by, to health and spontaneity.

Source – Osho Book “The Yoga, Vol5″

Question – Why do Zen monks have to have been living near their masters for ten, twenty, or even for forty years for the sudden enlightenment to happen?

Osho – Because of their stupidities. You can be enlightened in a single minute; you can wait for forty years. It depends how gross you are. You can wait for lives; it depends how much you cling to your ignorance. The Zen Master is not responsible that the disciple had to wait for forty years. The disciple is responsible. He must have been a very dull-headed man, a dullard; nothing penetrates in his mind. Or he may have been intellectually very clever, so whatsoever is said he creates an intellectual understanding around it — and misses the point that can be caught only from heart to heart. In a deep rapport, where heart and heart meet, the flower of understanding blooms.

So those who had to wait for forty years either must have been very foolish or very knowledgeable. Both are types of foolishness. They must have been either pundits or just idiots; both are the same.

Pundits miss more than idiots. Even an idiot sometimes can understand, can have understanding, because he is simple. He has no complex mind: if something penetrates it penetrates. But with a man of knowledge — a scholar, a logician, a theologian, a philosopher — there are subtle layers which are almost impossible to penetrate. If you are simple it can happen right now. If you are not simple you will have to wait; and then you have to understand what complexity is creating the problem.

You alone are responsible for whatsoever happens. The Master is just a presence. You can partake of him. He is just like a sun, a lamp of light: you can open your eyes and you can see, but if you don’t open the eyes, the lamp is not going to force you to open the eyes. Even the sun cannot do that. But always remember, if you are waiting it is because of you, either your cleverness or your stupidity. Drop both. That’s how one becomes a disciple — drop both your stupidity and your knowledge. When you drop both there is no barrier; you are vulnerable, you are open. In that opening the enlightenment is possible any moment.

Source – Osho Book “The Yoga, Vol5″