One
priest invites another priest to lunch at his house. At the end of the meal, the
guest, who is slightly drunk, notices how pretty the maid is.
He
turns to his colleague and says, "You are an old friend, you can tell me --
do you sleep with the girl?"
The
host is very angry. "How dare you speak like this in my house?" he
cries. "Please leave immediately! "
After
his friend has gone, the priest notices that a beautiful silver spoon has
disappeared, so the following morning he sends his friend a note saying,
"My dear holy friend, I am not saying that you are a thief, but if you find
my silver spoon, please send it back!"
The
answer comes quickly:
"My
dear holy friend, I am not saying that you are a liar, but if you had slept in
your own bed last night, you would have found your silver spoon!"
THE VENERABLE MASTER SAID:
WHEN MAN ATTAINS THE POWER TO
TRANSCEND THAT WHICH CHANGES, ABIDING IN PURITY AND STILLNESS, HEAVEN AND EARTH
ARE UNITED IN HIM.
THE SOUL OF MAN LOVES PURITY, BUT
HIS MIND IS OFTEN REBELLIOUS. THE MIND OF MAN LOVES STILLNESS, BUT HIS DESIRES
DRAW HIM INTO ACTIVITY. WHEN A MAN IS CONSTANTLY ABLE TO GOVERN HIS DESIRES, HIS
MIND BECOMES SPONTANEOUSLY STILL. WHEN THE MIND IS UNCLOUDED, THE SOUL IS SEEN
TO BE PURE. THEN, WITH CERTAINTY THE SIX DESIRES WILL CEASE TO BE BEGOTTEN AND
THE THREE POISONS WILL BE ELIMINATED AND DISSOLVED.
THE REASON MEN DO NOT POSSESS THE
ABILITY TO ACHIEVE THIS IS BECAUSE THEIR MINDS ARE NOT CLEAR AND THEIR DESIRES
ARE UNRESTRAINED.
HE WHO HAS THE POWER TO TRANSCEND
HIS DESIRES, LOOKING WITHIN AND CONTEMPLATING MIND, REALIZES THAT IN HIS MIND,
MIND IS NOT; LOOKING WITHOUT AND CONTEMPLATING FORM, HE REALIZES THAT IN FORM,
FORM IS NOT; LOOKING AT THINGS STILL MORE REMOTE AND CONTEMPLATING MATTER, HE
REALIZES THAT IN MATTER, MATTER IS NOT.
Tao believes in spontaneity -- not
in cultivating virtues, not in creating a character, not even in conscience,
they are all ego efforts, and ego is against Tao. Tao is a state of let-go: to
be in tune with existence with such totality that there is no separation at all.
You are not even the part, you are the whole. You are not the wave but the ocean
itself. Hence there is no question of doing. Tao means being.
All other so-called religions
insist on doing. They believe in commandments: "Do this, don't do
that." They have many shoulds and should nots. The Buddhist scriptures have
thirty-three thousand rules for a monk; even to remember them is impossible.
People forget even what the Ten Commandments are -- how can they remember
thirty-three thousand rules? Their whole life will be wasted only in remembering
them. When are they going to cultivate these rules? It will take millions of
lives.
Maybe because of this the idea of
many many lives became so significant in the East, because time is needed to
cultivate. One life is not enough -- even a thousand lives will not be enough --
you need millions of lives to cultivate all this. In fact, the whole approach
helps you to go on postponing. The tomorrow becomes bigger and bigger, almost
infinite, and the today is so small that you can deceive yourself, you can say
to yourself, "Let me remain whatsoever I am today; tomorrow I will change.
And today, anyway, is so small, nothing much is possible. I will start
tomorrow." Of course the tomorrow never comes; it is there only in the
imagination.
Tao believes in this moment; Tao
has no idea of future. If you can live this moment in purity, in silence, in
spontaneity, then your life is transformed. Not that you transform it: Tao
transforms it, the whole transforms it. You simply allow the river to take you
to the ocean; you need not push the river.
But when such great truths are put
into language, difficulties arise because our language is made by us. It is not
made by people like Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Ko Hsuan, it is made by the
mediocre people the world is full of. Obviously, language is their invention and
it carries their meanings, their attitudes towards life. So whatsoever you say
is going to be somewhere inadequate -- not only inadequate but deep down wrong
also.
This has to be remembered, and even
more so about these sutras because these sutras were written originally in
Chinese. Chinese is a language totally different from any other language, it is
the most difficult language in the world for the simple reason that it has no
alphabet, it is a pictorial language. Pictorial languages are the most ancient
languages; they must have come from the very dawn of human consciousness,
because when man is a child he thinks in pictures, he cannot think in words, so
his language is pictorial. That's why in children's books there are so many
colored pictures; the text is not much but pictures are many. The child is not
interested in the text, he is interested in the pictures. Looking at the picture
of the mango, a very juicy colorful mango, he may become interested to know what
it is called, how it is written, and he may read the text -- only a few words
about the mango. Slowly slowly the mango disappears, giving place to language.
In the university books pictures disappear completely. The more scholarly a book
is, the less is the possibility of pictures; all is language. In your sleep you
still dream not in a linguistic way but in a pictorial way because in your sleep
you again become a child.
Chinese is a dream language -- and
we know the difficulty with the dreams. You have dreamed something, but in the
morning you cannot figure out what it means. You will need an expert to
interpret it, and even experts won't agree. The Freudian will say one thing, the
Jungian will say something else, the Adlerian may say just the opposite. And now
there are many more new trends, new schools of psychoanalysis, and they all have
their interpretations. And whomsoever you are reading will look valid,
reasonable, because they can all provide great rationalizations The dream is
yours, but you don't know what it means because a dream can mean many things; a
dream is multi-dimensional.
And that's the difficulty with the
Chinese language: it is a dream language, a pictorial language -- each picture
can mean many things. Hence there are translations of Chinese scriptures, many
translations, and no two translations ever agree, because a picture can be
interpreted in as many ways as there are people to interpret it. The Chinese
language is only symbolic; it indicates. It is very poetic, it is not like
arithmetic.
If you remember this, only then
will you not fall into the trap in which almost all the scholars have fallen.
These sutras were not written in an
alphabetical language so whatsoever is being said in these sutras is an
interpretation. And I myself don't agree in many places; if I were to translate
it, it would be a totally different translation. I will tell you where I differ
and why
THE VENERABLE MASTER SAID:
WHEN MAN ATTAINS THE POWER TO
TRANSCEND THAT WHICH CHANGES... HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE UNITED IN HIM.
The first thing that's absolutely
wrong is the idea of attainment. Tao does not believe that you have to attain
anything or that you CAN attain anything. You are already that which you can be:
nothing more can be attained. The very idea of attainment, of achievement is
alien to the Taoist approach. There is nothing to attain, nothing to achieve.
The idea of attainment and achievement is rooted in our egos. The ego is always
ambitious; it can't be otherwise. Either it has to attain worldly things or it
has to attain other-worldly powers, SIDDHIS, but something has to be attained.
The ego lives by attaining.
And Tao says the ego has to be
dissolved, you cannot be allowed to be ambitious -- to be ambitious is to go
against Tao. Tao teaches non-ambitiousness. You have just to be yourself as you
are. You are already perfect; you have never left your perfection for a single
moment. You are already in Tao; it is just that you have started dreaming that
you have lost it, that you have gone far away.
It is just like as in your sleep
you remain in your room, in your bed, but you can dream of faraway places. You
can visit the moon and Mars, you can go to the stars, but in the morning you
will find you have not left your bed, not even for a single moment.
When one becomes conscious one
becomes aware of the whole ridiculousness of all the achievements and failures.
It is the idea of achievement that brings failure, frustration in its wake. If
you succeed it brings ego. Ego is misery because the more ego you have the more
you think that you are separate from the whole, that you have become somebody
special, unique, superior, higher, holier, that you don't belong to the ordinary
world, that you are a saint, a mahatma. If you fail, then there is frustration;
that brings pain, that brings anguish. Whatsoever happens, success or failure,
you will suffer. Ego brings suffering; whether it succeeds or fails makes no
difference. Hence with the Taoist approach this idea of attainment is totally
wrong -- remember it.
The translator says:
WHEN MAN ATTAINS THE POWER...
Again the word "power" is
not right because Tao does not believe in power. It believes, really, in utter
powerlessness, because when you are powerful you are fighting against the whole.
Adolf Hitler is powerful, Alexander the Great is powerful, Ivan the Terrible is
powerful; Genghis Khan, Tamburlaine, these are powerful people, but they are
fighting against nature, spontaneity.
Jesus is not powerful, Jesus is
utterly powerless. When Jesus was crucified his disciples were waiting:
"Now is the time he will show his power." The enemies were waiting,
the friends were waiting for the same thing: "Now he is going to show his
miraculous power, now he will prove that he is the only begotten son of
God." He didn't prove anything, he simply died. He died like any mortal --
he died like the two thieves who were crucified with him. He was just in the
middle; on either side of him there was a thief. The enemies were frustrated,
the friends were frustrated even more. What happened? Where had his power gone?
And he was always talking about being the son of God... But to be the son of God
simply means to be utterly powerless.
How we go on misunderstanding
people like Jesus, Lao Tzu, Ko Hsuan! Our misunderstanding is almost infinite.
He surrendered to God. Yes, for a moment he himself had become aware of all the
expectations. Almost one-hundred thousand people had gathered to see; friends
were very few. He must have seen the expectation in people's eyes -- they were
expecting miracles. Great things were going to happen -- something that only
happens once in thousands of years. For a moment he may have been impressed,
hypnotized by so much attention, by so much expectation. The whole atmosphere
must have been charged with only one desire: to see his power.
And he asked God, "Have you
forsaken me?" But then immediately he understood -- he was a man of
intelligence, tremendous intelligence. Immediately he understood that whatsoever
he has said is wrong. How can God forsake him? The very idea that God can
forsake him is negative, is ugly; it is not trust.
If God shows miracles, then it is
very easy to trust. If he is proving your power then it is very easy to trust;
anybody will be able to trust. No intelligence is needed to trust, no special
understanding is needed to trust; any fool would have trusted.
But nothing was happening and the
last moment has arrived. Jesus immediately understood the point -- this is the
time to understand. He surrendered. He said: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
Don't listen to me, you simply go on doing whatsoever you want to do. Who am I
to suggest? I am no more, I am in your hands.
This was real powerlessness. This
is Tao. Ko Hsuan would have understood it; the Jews could not understand it. And
the whole gathering was of Jews, friends or enemies. And they had always
believed in achievement, in power, in ambition -- all their prophets had been
doing miracles. If they were angry with Jesus the reason was that he was not
coming up to the mark: he was not proving himself to be really a prophet,
because the ancient prophets had done so many miracles.
And my feeling is that he never did
any miracles. If he had done any miracles, all the Jews would have converted;
they would not have crucified him. It is enough proof that he never did any
miracles. And all the miracles that are propounded by the Christians are
invented. These Christians are also of the same mind, the same desire, the same
ambition: "How can Our Lord be without miracles? If ordinary prophets were
doing so many things, how can Our Lord be without miracles?" So they have
invented even better miracles, greater miracles than those of all the prophets.
But my feeling is that Jesus was a
man of Tao. He was really a man who can be called religious.
I have heard a beautiful story. It
is not recorded anywhere. It must have gone from one Master to another, just by
word of mouth: that Moses, Abraham, Ezekiel, three ancient prophets, were
sitting under a tree in heaven talking about great things, talking about the Old
Testament. Then suddenly Abraham said, "We know everything about the Old
Testament. Had Jesus been here he would have told us something about the New
Testament."
Moses laughed and he called a boy
who was sitting just by the side of the tree and said, "Jesus, please go
and bring three cups of coffee for us."
Abraham was shocked. This is Jesus?
And Jesus went to bring three cups of coffee for the old prophets.
But I love this story. Only Jesus
can do that -- so utterly powerless. His powerlessness is his miracle: he has
annihilated himself totally. They were not even aware of his presence, that he
is sitting by the side of the tree. He didn't say a single word: that "I am
Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God. And what are you saying? I should go
and bring three cups of coffee for you? You go yourself! Is this the way to talk
to the son of God?" But he simply went.
Only Jesus can do it, or Lao Tzu or
Ko Hsuan or Bodhidharma or Basho. These are people who have dropped the whole
power trip, the whole number.
Ko Hsuan cannot mean what the
translation will create in your mind. It says:
WHEN MAN ATTAINS THE POWER TO
TRANSCEND THAT WHICH CHANGES...
No. If I were to translate it... I
don't know Chinese at all, but who cares? I can still translate, not knowing a
single word of Chinese, because I know the spirit of Tao; that's my experience.
If I were to translate it, I would say;
WHEN MAN SURRENDERS TO THE POWER OF
TAO, HE TRANSCENDS THAT WHICH CHANGES.
When man becomes utterly powerless
as a separate entity, then he transcends that which changes. Then he abides in
purity and stillness. Then the purity that comes to him is not something
cultivated from the outside .
It is not something that you have
to maintain continuously, that you have to guard because otherwise you will lose
it... Your saints are continuously on guard. They know perfectly well that even
if they are relaxed for a single moment they will lose all their purity. They
don't abide in it, it is not natural to them, it is something artificial,
arbitrary; they have imposed it on themselves.
You don't need to BREATHE, YOU need
not remember to breathe; otherwise you would have been dead long before now,
because any time you forget about breathing -- a beautiful woman passes by and
you forget about breathing -- and finished! There is the full point. Then you
cannot breathe again. But breathing continues even while you are asleep -- not
only while you are deeply asleep, even if you are in a coma breathing continues;
it does not depend on you.
Once I went to see a woman... Her
husband loved me very much. He came crying and weeping and he said, "This
was my wife's last wish, that she wanted to see you. But for nine months she has
been in a coma and the doctors say there is no possibility that she will ever
become conscious. But please come with me just to fulfill her last desire. That
was her last desire before she became unconscious."
So I went to see the woman. For
nine months she had been in a coma, but she was breathing perfectly. To be in a
coma means to be almost dead. And she died after three months; after remaining
one year in a coma she died. But for one year she continued to breathe; her
breathing was perfect, there was no disturbance in it.
Tao takes care of your breathing;
it is natural. Your blood circulates continuously, day in, day out, year in,
year out. For centuries man used to think that there was no circulation of the
blood in the body; blood simply filled the body as water filled a pot. It is
only three hundred years ago that it was discovered that blood did not just fill
the body; it continuously circulates, it goes on circulating at a very great
speed. That keeps your inner world alive, dynamic. Who is circulating your
blood? -- certainly not you, otherwise you might forget it. Who digests your
food? -- certainly not you. In fact, if you become very conscious of digestion
you will disturb your stomach.
Try a simple experiment for
twenty-four hours: when you are eating just become conscious that the food is
going into the stomach; now you have to digest it. And troubles will start: you
will feel heavy and you will not know what to do, how to digest it. Just remain
conscious that the food is in the stomach and it has to be digested, and you are
almost incapable of doing anything. Do a few yoga exercises, stand on your head,
jog, jump, and within twenty-four hours you will have a bad stomach; you will
have disturbed the whole process. It does not need you at all. Once the food has
gone below your throat you need not bother about it; Tao takes care of it.
All that is essential is natural,
and to live your whole life in a natural way is the only teaching of Tao. It
teaches you powerlessness, but there is great power in powerlessness -- the
power of God, the power of the whole, not your power, not my power, not
anybody's power.
Then there arises a purity in you.
You are not the author of it, you are not the architect of it; you are simply a
witness, a watcher. And there arises a tremendous stillness, not something
forced from the outside. That's what your so-called religious people are doing
all over the world: they are forcing purity. And whenever you force purity on
yourself, whenever it becomes a cultivated phenomenon, it is repression and
nothing else. And repression only creates ugliness; it creates a split in you,
it makes you schizophrenic.
One priest invites another priest
to lunch at his house. At the end of the meal, the guest, who is slightly drunk,
notices how pretty the maid is.
He turns to his colleague and says,
"You are an old friend, you can tell me -- do you sleep with the
girl?"
The host is very angry. "How
dare you speak like this in my house?" he cries. "Please leave
immediately! "
After his friend has gone, the
priest notices that a beautiful silver spoon has disappeared, so the following
morning he sends his friend a note saying, "My dear holy friend, I am not
saying that you are a thief, but if you find my silver spoon, please send it
back!"
The answer comes quickly:
"My dear holy friend, I am not
saying that you are a liar, but if you had slept in your own bed last night, you
would have found your silver spoon!"
All cultivated purity creates
hypocrisy, it creates a duality in you. It is bound to create it because you
have not understood; you have simply denied something. It has not disappeared;
it is there waiting to take revenge. And it will find its own way -- it will
come from the back door. If you don't allow it to come from the front door it
will come from the back door.
Tao does not believe in any
cultivated character; it believes in a natural purity, in a natural stillness.
You must have watched how if you try to become silent then each and every thing
becomes a disturbance, a distraction. Just a dog barking, who is not at all
aware that you are trying to meditate, who has nothing against meditation, who
is not an old enemy, who is not taking any revenge on you for some past karma...
He is enjoying his barking; that is his meditation. Maybe he is doing Dynamic
Meditation! He seems to be more modern and up to date than you -- you are doing
vipassana and he is doing Dynamic! But you will be disturbed. He is not
disturbed by your vipassana and you are disturbed by his Dynamic Meditation for
the simple reason that you are forcing something; it is not natural. It is just
a very thin layer of stillness that somehow you have painted upon yourself. Deep
down a thousand and one dogs are barking, and they immediately understand the
dog barking and they start feeling a great urge to bark. The distraction comes
from your inner dogs, it is not coming from the outer dog; the outer dog is not
responsible at all. If your silence is natural, the dog's barking will not be a
distraction; it may even enhance your stillness, it may become a background to
your stillness. That's how it happens.
When in the night you see the
stars, beautiful stars have you ever thought what happens to these stars in the
day? They don't go away -- where can they go? They are there, but because the
background is no more there, the darkness is no more there, you cannot see them.
In the night the darkness functions as a background: the darker the night, the
more shining are the stars. They are not so shining on a full-moon night, but
when there is no moon at all the stars are really beautiful.
The same is true about a real
silence: everything that ordinarily proves a distraction becomes a background.
The dog barking, the traffic noise somebody shouting, children crying, running,
the wife cooking food in the kitchen -- everything becomes a background and
everything deepens your silence because you are not concentrating, you are not
forcing anything; you are simply relaxed. Things go on happening, you remain
untouched; you remain absolutely centered, and effortlessly centered.
This thing has to be remembered:
Tao teaches you effortless naturalness; it does not believe in effort as Yoga
does. Yoga and Tao are totally opposite to each other. That's why Yoga could not
penetrate China. Buddha impressed China for the simple reason that he also says
that you should be natural, that your meditation should be effortless, that it
should not be imposed from the outside, that it should arise from your innermost
core. It should not be a plastic flower, it should be a real rose.
WHEN MAN ATTAINS THE POWER TO
TRANSCEND THAT WHICH CHANGES, ABIDING, IN PURITY AND STILLNESS, HEAVEN AND EARTH
ARE UNITED IN HIM.
That's what I call the meeting of
the East and the West, the meeting of materialism and spiritualism. That's my
idea of Zorba the Buddha: HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE UNITED IN HIM.
Tao is not other-worldly like
Jainism; it is not this-worldly either like Charvakas. It believes in the unity
of existence; it does not divide existence in any way. Its whole vision is that
of total unity, organic unity.
Heaven and earth are one; in you
they are already meeting. Your body is part of the earth, your soul is part of
heaven. The meeting is already happening -- you are not aware of it. If you
relax you will become aware of it, and the meeting is tremendously beautiful.
Earth alone is dead. That's why a materialist philosophy of life sooner or later
comes to realize that life is meaningless.
That's what has happened in the
West. All great thinkers of this century in the West are obsessed only with one
problem: the meaning of life. And they all agree on one point at least: that
life is meaningless.
In Dostoevsky's famous novel, one
of the most important novels ever written... If I am asked to name the ten best
novels in the world, then this will be one of those ten -- not only one of them
but the first of those ten: THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. It is one of the greatest
creations.
In THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV one of
the characters says to God, "Where are you? I want to meet you -- not that
I am interested in seeing you, not that I want to know about you; I simply want
to give you back the ticket that you gave me to enter into this world. Please
take it back! This whole world is absolutely meaningless."
Marcel says in one of his writings
that suicide seems to be the most important metaphysical problem. If life is
meaningless then of course suicide seems to be the most important metaphysical
problem. Why go on living? In the past people used to think that it was only
cowards who commit suicide; now the pendulum seems to have moved to the other
extreme. The materialists are feeling so meaningless that the idea is arising
slowly and gathering force that it is only cowards who go on living; it is the
brave people who try to commit suicide. Why go on living if there is no meaning?
But this has happened because only
earth was accepted, not the sky, not heaven. Earth is meaningless, barren;
without the sky there is no soul -- you are just a body, a corpse. And what
meaning can a corpse have? When the soul leaves the body, meaning has left the
body. And if you don't believe in the soul then you are bound to feel sooner or
later that life has no meaning. The West is feeling this great meaninglessness.
And the East believed only in
heaven, only in the soul, but that is an abstraction. The body is concrete, the
soul is only an abstraction; it is intangible. And when you start running after
intangibles, after invisibles, you lose track of all that is concrete. That's
why the East is poor, starving, ill, burdened with thousands of problems and
seems to have no way of solving them for the simple reason that for centuries we
have never bothered about the earth; our eyes were fixed on the sky.
An ancient Greek parable says:
One very famous astrologer was
looking at the sky in the night, watching the stars, studying the stars. He lost
his way, naturally, because he was not looking at the earth where he was
walking, and he fell in a well. Then he became aware, but then it was too late.
He started shouting, "Save me!" He was outside the village.
An old woman who lived nearby
somehow managed to save him. When he came out he told the woman, "You may
not know me, you may not recognize me in this dark night, but I will tell you
who I am: I am the king's special astrologer! It is very difficult for people
even to approach me, but you can come to me. I will tell you about your
future."
The old woman laughed. She said,
"You fool! You don't know even where is the well and where is the road, and
you will tell me about my future!"
That's what has happened in the
East: the East has fallen into the well, lost track of the concrete, become too
metaphysical.
Tao seems to be the only life
vision which is total. It does not deny the earth, it does not deny the sky. It
accepts both, it accepts the unity of both. It says: The man who has come to
know spontaneous purity and stillness, who has become relaxed with the whole,
with the law of the ultimate -- in him heaven and earth are united.
That's my concept of a sannyasin
too. In you I would like this meeting to happen. You will be misunderstood all
over the world: in the East people will think you are materialist, in the West
people will think you have become metaphysical. That means you have gone crazy,
berserk, that you are talking mumbo-jumbo. They will say, "Stop all this
nonsense! Be realistic, Be pragmatic." You will be misunderstood everywhere
because the East has believed only in half and the West has believed in half.
I believe in the whole. To me to
trust the whole is the only way to be holy, and to trust the whole is the only
way to be whole. And when you are whole, life is bliss, life is benediction,
life is a celebration.
THE SOUL OF MAN LOVES PURITY... BUT
HIS DESIRES DRAW HIM INTO ACTIVITY,
Man has three layers; those three
layers have to be understood. The first, the deepest core, is the soul; the soul
means your center of being. And the outermost circumference consists of desires.
And between the two is another concentric circle, half way from both, from the
outer and from the inner. It is neither outer nor inner -- that is your mind.
THE SOUL OF MAN LOVES PURITY . .
By purity Ko Hsuan always means
innocence, so don't misunderstand it with any moralistic meaning of purity
because Tao does not believe in any morality or any immorality: only innocence.
That's why the child is innocent, because when he is born he is just the
intrinsic center; the two circles have not yet gathered around the center.
That's why every child looks so beautiful. Have you ever come across an ugly
child? It is impossible. And what happens to all the beautiful children? --
because if all children are beautiful then all people should be beautiful
because these same children become grown up people. But somewhere on the way
they all disappear; something ugly sets in. We give them wrong circumferences;
we give them wrong minds, wrong desires. We create such a dichotomy in their
being that they become a crowd, not a unity. They are no more integrated beings;
they become fragments. And to be fragmentary is to be ugly because you lose all
harmony, and without harmony there is no beauty, no grace.
THE SOUL OF MAN LOVES PURITY...
If you reach to your innermost core
you will suddenly find innocence arising in you, roses of innocence flowering.
... BUT HIS MIND IS OFTEN
REBELLIOUS.
But the mind is not willing just to
be innocent. Innocence says yes, it is trust; the mind says no, it is doubt. The
mind always lives through the no, it is negative; the soul is always positive.
The soul has no idea of saying no, it knows nothing about the no; and the mind
knows nothing about the yes. If the mind sometimes has to say yes, it only says
it unwillingly. You can watch it in yourself: whenever your mind says yes it
says it unwillingly because it cannot find any way of saying no, that's why it
says yes. Yes is not spontaneous for the mind; no is spontaneous.
Watch the truth of this statement.
These are not theories, hypotheses, these are simple facts. You can just watch
it in yourself: the first thing that happens to your mind is no; it immediately
says no -- even if there is no reason to say no.
Just the other day I received a
letter from a sannyasin: "Osho, when you talked about Prem Chinmaya's
coming back, his dying from the sixth center and that he will have to live only
one more life, I cannot believe you or trust you."
You may not know anything about
reincarnation; you can simply say, "I don't know about it, so how can I
believe or disbelieve?" You can remain open. But you will not miss any
opportunity of saying no. Now, this sannyasin must be waiting for something to
say no to. Do you know what it means to die from the sixth center? Have you any
idea of the inner physiology of man?
Ask Puja and Sheela what happened
when Chinmaya died. They were surprised -- they could not believe what was
happening: his whole body became cool, his head became very hot. He complained
also that something strange was happening "... as if my whole energy is
coming into the head. My body is cool and calm, but my head is feeling almost as
if it is on fire."
Whenever the soul leaves the body,
the center that becomes its leaving center becomes hot -- naturally, because the
whole energy concentrates there. The energy that is spread all over the body
gathers together at one point; that point certainly becomes absolute fire.
You don't know anything about the
inner physiology. If you don't know, I am not telling you to believe in it -- I
am the last person to tell you to believe in anything -- but there is no need to
say no either; you can simply remain open, you can say, "I will see what
happens when I die."
And then he says, "I don't
believe you, I don't trust you. Does it matter?" To me it does not matter,
not at all, because I don't depend on your belief, but it matters immensely for
you. I am not saying force yourself to say yes to me, because a forced yes will
be only a disguised no, I am simply saying being here be open. There is no need
to say yes or no, you can simply say, "I don't know." Function out of
a state of not-knowing so that you remain available to experiment, to
experience. If you say no you have become closed, and yes you can say only when
you have experienced. So I am not asking you to believe in it, but I will
certainly request you not to disbelieve. There is no need for belief and no need
for disbelief. But this sannyasin's mind must have been waiting for some
opportunity.
It is very rare here because I
don't talk about things which you will find difficult to believe -- I rarely
talk about things which are beyond you. I leave them; I prepare you so that you
can experience them one day. But once in a while something happens. For example,
Prem Chinmaya's death was such an occasion that I had to say something about
death, something about which center he died from. I had to say this, that he
will be back here soon. And these things are not beyond your comprehension if
you are going deep into meditation, but if you are not going into deep
meditation they are beyond comprehension.
The mind wants to say no and if you
listen to the mind you stop listening to the Master. If you want to listen to
the Master, first you have to be open so that one day yes can surface in you
spontaneously. It matters much as far as you are concerned.
Being here and saying no in some
way simply means you will be physically here and spiritually absent. It will be
a sheer waste of your time; then there is no need to be here.
The whole effort of this
Buddhafield, the whole purpose of it, is to help you to go beyond mind, to go
beyond no.
Ko Hsuan's sutra says:
THE SOUL OF MAN LOVES PURITY, BUT
HIS MIND IS OFTEN REBELLIOUS. THE MIND OF MAN LOVES STILLNESS, BUT HIS DESIRES
DRAW HIM INTO ACTIVITY.
The soul loves purity, innocence;
that's its natural joy. The mind is not interested in purity, in innocence,
because innocence needs yes as a foundation and mind lives through no. But
because the mind continuously says no it has to suffer much turmoil, hence there
is a great need in the mind to be still, to be silent, to be calm and quiet.
THE MIND OF MAN LOVES STILLNESS...
But then there is another outer
circle in your being -- the circle of desires which don't even allow you
silence; they drag you into activity. The mind drags you into no's, into
negativity; that disturbs your purity. Yes is your innocence, no means you have
lost your innocence. Then there are desires which don't leave you at the mind,
they want some activity; just no won't do. They drag you into a thousand and one
activities -- the Chinese expression is into "ten thousand things";
they keep you constantly occupied -- money, power, prestige; they go on goading
you, "Do this. Achieve this. Without achieving this you are not a real man.
Prove that you are powerful, prove that you are great, prove that you are
special." And to prove it you have to move almost into a state of insanity.
That's what politics is.
Politics is the other pole, exactly
the opposite pole to religion. Religion takes you to the essence of your being
and politics takes you to the accidents of your desires. The desires keep you so
occupied with the mundane, with the futile, that you start forgetting everything
that is intrinsic, that is really valuable. Running after money, you forget all
about the inner treasure. Running after power, you forget all about the power of
Tao, which is the supreme power. Running after name and fame, you forget
completely that name and fame are just momentary. But they go on goading you;
they won't leave you for a single moment. In the night you will dream about
desires, in the day you will run after desires. And all desires are mirages,
like the horizon that looks so close that if you just go, within an hour you
will be able to reach it. But you never reach it because it does not really
exist.
You go on forgetting everything:
you forget the soul, the heaven; you even forget the body, the earth. You become
almost mad. All your politicians are mad. All your people who are running after
money are mad, who are running after fame are mad. But because they are in the
majority, they appear to be absolutely right. In fact, the person who is not
interested in name and fame, power and prestige seems to be a little out of his
senses. What has happened to this man?
You will be asked again and again,
"What has happened to you? Why are you not interested in accumulating more
money? What do you do just by sitting silently looking inwards?" You will
be condemned by the world because the world consists of extroverts. They will
call you introverts, they will tell you that introversion is a kind of
perversion, they will tell you that you are selfish, that you are narcissistic,
that you are only interested in your own joy, that you should be concerned with
others, that you should live like everybody else, that you should be part of the
crowd. Of course, they are many and you will be very alone.
Jesus has said to his disciples,
"I am sending you amongst wolves." And I know what he means. When I
send you into the world I also know I am sending you amongst wolves. You are
trying to be silent, innocent, childlike, and the world is trying to achieve
just the opposite ends.
WHEN A MAN IS CONSTANTLY ABLE TO
GOVERN HIS DESIRES, HIS MIND BECOMES SPONTANEOUSLY STILL.
Again wrong words have been used.
WHEN A MAN IS CONSTANTLY ABLE TO
GOVERN HIS DESIRES...
No, Ko Hsuan cannot say "to
govern his desires" because that means repression, that means control. He
can only say:
WHEN A MAN IS CONSTANTLY ABLE TO
understand HIS DESIRES, HIS MIND BECOMES SPONTANEOUSLY STILL.
Only understanding is needed;
nothing else ever helps. If you understand a desire it disappears. Desires are
like darkness: you bring light and darkness disappears. You need not throw it
out, you need not repress it, you need not close doors to keep it out -- you
cannot do anything directly with darkness -- you just have to bring light in. A
small candle will do, and all darkness disappears. Just a little light of
understanding and desires start disappearing. Then arises spontaneous stillness.
Remember this word
"spontaneous"; that is the key word as far as Tao is concerned.
WHEN THE MIND IS UNCLOUDED, THE
SOUL IS SEEN TO BE PURE.
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And when there are no desires, thoughts automatically disappear, because
thoughts are servants of desires. When there are desires, your mind is full of
thoughts, full of plans -- what to do, how to do, how to fulfill these desires.
When desires disappear you have cut the tree from the very root. Then leaves
start disappearing, branches disappear, the tree itself disappears of its own
accord, and the mind is unclouded. In that unclouded state of mind, in that
thoughtless state of mind you will be able to see the purity of your inner
being.
THEN, WITH CERTAINTY THE SIX
DESIRES WILL CEASE TO BE BEGOTTEN AND THE THREE POISONS WILL BE ELIMINATED AND
DISSOLVED.
This is something very significant
to remember.
All the religions have talked only
about five senses it is only Tao that talks about six senses. All the religions
have talked about five desires because man consists of five senses; Tao talks
about six desires. The insight is tremendous because just recently, just in this
century, science has discovered the sixth sense; otherwise the sixth sense was
not known. Your ear has two senses; your ear is not a single sense -- hidden
inside it is another sense: the sense that keeps your body balanced.
That's why when you see a drunkard
walking you can see that he cannot walk straight; zigzag he goes. His steps are
not in harmony for the simple reason that alcohol affects the sixth sense, that
which keeps your body balanced. It has been a Taoist insight for five thousand
years that there are six senses. Through the eye the desire for beauty arises,
through the ear the desire for music arises, from the nose the desire for nice
smells arises, from the tongue the desire for taste, and from the whole skin the
desire to touch -- these are the five traditional senses -- and from the sixth
sense the desire to remain in control, balanced. If somebody hits your ear hard
you will lose balance; you will see stars in the day.
These six desires no longer arise.
Not that the eyes go blind; in fact, now they can see beauty more truly, but
there is no desire to possess beauty. Not that you become deaf to music, but now
there is no desire to possess anything. You enjoy more because your energy is
free and your senses are more clear, more transparent.
Nobody can see beauty more clearly
than a Buddha, nobody can hear music more deeply than a Lao Tzu, nobody can
taste better than Jesus. All their senses become truly sensitive, they are real
senses. Your senses are dull. Your society helps you to keep them dull because
the society is afraid: if your senses are really very keen and very sensitive
then you can be a dangerous person because of your desire to possess. You see a
beautiful woman: she is somebody else's wife, and if your eyes are really able
to see the beauty and you have the desire to possess also then you will grab the
woman, you will escape with the woman, you will rape the woman. Something
criminal is bound to happen.
Nature allows you total sensitivity
only when you become capable of dropping all possessiveness, all idea of
possessing. Then you can touch, and then even rocks feel velvety. Then
everything starts having a divine quality, everything is transformed.
... AND THE THREE POISONS WILL BE
ELIMINATED AND DISSOLVED.
What are the three poisons? The
first is sexuality -- not sex, remember, but sexuality. Sex is natural. Tao is
not against sex, it is the only religious approach which is in total agreement
with sex. Tao has its own science of sex, it has its own Tantra, which really
goes far deeper than Indian Tantra. But sexuality is a totally different
phenomenon; sexuality means a perverted state of sex energy. Then it becomes
poisonous.
The second poison is anger and the
third poison is greed. Sexuality, anger, greed: these three poisons combined
together, this unholy trinity, creates your ego. And all these three can be
dissolved, eliminated. If sexuality disappears you will be surprised that anger
disappears -- without any effort on your part. Anger simply means that your
sexuality is hindered. Anybody who hinders your sexuality creates anger in you;
he is your enemy. And sexuality creates greed; greed is a form of sexuality, it
is a perverted form. Money becomes your object of love because the society does
not allow any other kind of love. It allows money, power; they can become your
objects of love. It helps to change your object of love. First it changes your
sex into sexuality...
See the difference. Sex is a
natural phenomenon; it is your capacity to reproduce. Sexuality means your mind
is continuously occupied by sex; it is no more a natural phenomenon, it has
become cerebral. It is no more confined to the sex center, it has gone to the
head. Now you are constantly thinking.
Just watch for one hour how many
times you think of sex -- you will be surprised. Psychologists say that you are
in for a great surprise if you watch your mind to see how many times in an hour
you think about sex. Men think about it twice as much as women do; that may be
one of the causes of conflict between them. They have a different kind of
sexuality. Man's sexuality is more repressed than woman's for the simple reason
that man has to earn money, has to become famous, has to be a prime minister or
a politician. Naturally, from where is he going to get all this energy to be the
president? There is only one energy; you don't have many energies in you, mind
you, you have only one kind of energy. Whatsoever name you want to give to it
you can give, "xyz", but you have only one kind of energy. Sigmund
Freud has called it libido, but it simply means sex. Now if you want to have
more money or more power, you want to be the president of the country or the
prime minister of the country, then you have to take your sexuality and
channelize it.
I have heard:
One day Carter and Brezhnev met for
a long meeting. The two wives waited outside the meeting room for so many hours,
they eventually struck up a conversation. Soon they were finding they liked each
other and were sharing intimacies.
Rosalyn Carter confessed, "You
won't believe this, my dear Brezhnova, but Jimmy just isn't the same man I
married. For such a long time now he hasn't even looked at me. He comes home so
tired he immediately goes to bed and falls asleep."
"With me it is the same,"
said Brezhnova. "I just don't know what to do."
"The other night,"
explained Rosalyn Carter, "I finally decided to tempt Jimmy. I put on my
transparent black negligee and some expensive perfume, turned down the lights,
put some sexy French music on the stereo and piled pillows on the bed. And then
I waited for him in the bedroom.
"He came into the bedroom
already talking about all the problems in the Middle East, the dollar going
down, etcetera, etcetera, and I threw him down on the pile of pillows, took off
his shirt, opened up my negligee to show him my bare breasts and asked him,
'Jimmy, does this remind you of anything?'
"He looked at my tits, put his
hand to his forehead and said, 'Of course... I must call Moshe Dayan!'"
"That's nothing," said
Brezhnova. "With me it was worse. I did everything you did, except I didn't
bother with the negligee. As soon as he lay down on the bed I jumped on him and
put my cunt right in front of his face and said, 'Look at this, Brezy... does it
remind you of something?' And he replied, 'Oh yes! I forgot to call Fidel
Castro!'"
It is bound to happen. You have to
divert your sexual energy; then money, power, prestige, they become your sexual
objects. And these people can talk about morality and discipline easily; they
can teach others how to control their sexuality very easily, but in fact what
they are doing is nothing but a perversion of sex. And these people become very
violent; they are violent -- they keep the whole world always on the brink of
war.
When sex becomes perverted, love
becomes hatred. Nothing is wrong with sex, but everything is wrong with
sexuality. Sex should be allowed a natural flow. Yes, one day, if you live it
naturally, transcendence happens; but it is spontaneous, it is not celibacy. It
comes through celebration.
Just as at the age of fourteen you
become mature sexually, at the age of forty-two, if you have lived your sex
naturally, you will go beyond it. But it is a strange world. Children become
sexual, children who are not sexually mature, because the whole atmosphere is
poisoned. Small children start thinking of sex. Seeing films, reading novels,
looking at obscene magazines, they start thinking about sex.
Italian Piero comes to a village.
He asks a farmer, "Do you know where little children come-a from?"
"They grow out of
cabbages!" the farmer answers.
Piero walks a little further and
meets the milkman. "Hey!" says Piero. "Do ya know where little
children come-a from!"
"Sure," answers the
milkman, "the stork brings them."
Piero continues on his way a little
despondent, then..."Ah!" he thinks, "here comes-a the right-a man
to ask-a! Vicar! Do ya know where little children come-a from?"
"Yes, my son," responds
the Vicar. "God sends them from heaven."
"Shit-a!' exclaims Piero.
"Isn't there anyone in this-a village who fucks-a?"
Children become sexual before their
time, and then you will find eighty year-old men running after women. Both are
in an unnatural state.
Tao believes in total naturalness.
It is not against sex, it is against sexuality, because it knows that if
sexuality does not enter in your life -- that means if perversion does not enter
in your life -- if nobody teaches you to be against sex there will be no
perversion. It is because of your saints and moralists and puritans that you all
have become perverted -- children and old men, all. If sex is left alone without
interference from any moral teaching, then one day the child will become
sexually mature nearabout fourteen, and one day nearabout forty-two he will
transcend it. He will have seen by that time that it is child's play and enough
is enough. And that transcendence is beautiful. Anything that happens on its own
is beautiful because it comes through Tao. And then anger will not be there in
your mind, neither will greed.
THE REASON MEN DO NOT POSSESS THE
ABILITY TO ACHIEVE THIS IS BECAUSE THEIR MINDS ARE NOT CLEAR AND THEIR DESIRES
ARE UNRESTRAINED.
Meditation brings both clarity and
a certain inner discipline. And by "meditation" Tao simply means
watching your mind and its functions.
HE WHO HAS THE POWER TO TRANSCEND
HIS DESIRES, LOOKING WITHIN AND CONTEMPLATING MIND...
That is the definition of
meditation according to Ko Hsuan:
... LOOKING WITHIN AND
CONTEMPLATING MIND...
Just silently watching all the
processes of the mind -- thoughts, memories, imagination, dreams, desires -- a
realization happens, a realization that:
... IN HIS MIND, MIND IS NOT...
This sutra is immensely
significant. When you watch the mind clearly, silently, the mind starts
disappearing. More watchfulness, less mind. One percent watchfulness,
ninety-nine percent mind. Ninety-nine percent watchfulness, one percent mind.
One hundred percent watchfulness and there is no mind in the mind. All thoughts
have gone, the mind is absolutely empty. And in that emptiness Tao comes in,
rushes in. You have created the right space for it.
... LOOKING WITHOUT AND
CONTEMPLATING FORM...
Then you are capable of looking
without. First look within, let the mind disappear, attain to clarity, then look
without.
... LOOKING WITHOUT AND
CONTEMPLATING FORM...
Then meditate on the forms outside:
the trees, the clouds, the stars, the moon...
... BE REALIZES THAT IN FORM, FORM
IS NOT...
Then you will be surprised to see
that the waves are not there, only the ocean. In the form there is no form. The
trees are not there but only life expressing itself in millions of forms but not
confined to any form; it is formless.
... LOOKING AT THINGS STILL MORE
REMOTE AND CONTEMPLATING MATTER, HE REALIZES THAT IN MATTER, MATTER IS NOT.
That too is of great significance.
It is only now that modern physicists have said that matter does not exist, but
Tao has been saying for five thousand years that:
... IN MATTER, MATTER IS NOT.
If you can meditate, start from
within, then look around and then look into things at their deepest core. First
mind disappears, then form disappears, then matter disappears. Then what is
left? That which is left is Tao, is nature. And to live in that nature is to
live in freedom, is to live in eternal bliss.
"Tao" is the word of Ko
Hsuan for God. "Dhamma" is the word of Buddha for Tao. Buddha says:
AIS DHAMMO SANANTANO -- this IS the eternal law. Once you have seen the eternal
law you become part of eternity. Time is transcended, space is transcended. You
are no more and for the first time you are. You are no more as a separate
entity, but for the first time you are the whole.
This is my vision too. My agreement
with Tao is absolute. I cannot say that about other religions; with Tao I can
say it without any hesitation. Tao is the most profound insight that has ever
been achieved on the earth.
FIRST
LOOK WITHIN...